Fore Play - The Architect, with David McLay-Kidd

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

David McLay-Kidd and some trusted associates sit down with Riggs at Gamble Sands in Washington. The designer of Gamble Sands, Bandon Dunes, Mammoth Dunes, The Castle Course at St. Andrews, and much more, has an announcement. We have some questions: on design philosophy, mistakes made, terrain differences, starting points, green sites, what qualities make a “great” golf course, and much more.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Foreplay, I present our Barstool Sports. We got an extremely special show today. We're in Brewster, Washington. Is that correct, gentlemen? 100%. We got David McLeod, kid, who is the architect here at Gamble Sands.

We've got your boys, Nick. We got Tori, who, owner of the property? Project manager. Project manager. You managed the project. I kept telling me he was the winner. No. That's all right.

Was it an MFI-Double C? So we're here at Gamble Sands. We're in Washington. Gamble Sands was, I want to get into the history of it, I want to get a lot of it. We also, in a very, I think, unprecedented situation on the four-play podcast, we have an announcement that we're going to make that Gamble Sands is, and I know nothing about this other than the bare minimum, the bones, the skeleton. Gamble Sands is building a new golf course

and that, David, you are going to be designing it or have designed, is that correct? We already laid out. You'll have to excuse me because I've lost my voice. This is my fault. We were at the bar. We were burning both into the candle. Yeah, you did keep us at the bar until 1 a.m.

I always get blamed for this. My voice is now gone. People always blame me. They always get mad at me for that. It's a free country. You can do whatever I like. I think you sound nice. Staying in the bar until 1 is what I wanted to do.

Okay, so new course coming here. We have design. We have, what do we got? What are we working with? I think we're looking at 11 green over there. Yep. Right there, I don't know if the camera can see it, but you're looking at the par 311 full on the other side there.

It starts up near the existing clubhouse and plays out over completely new terrain. Stuff that we would have used the first time, but we had some power lines and things that were in the way that Tories now figured out how to get rid of. So now we're going to build the second full 18 at Gamble Sands, the places filled full of golfers and they want more. Yep. We have a name yet?

No. Okay. One thing he taught me early on is if you don't, you don't want to give it a name too early because it usually sticks. So we didn't want to name it something stupid and then have it stick. Fair.

So we're going to wait until... Yeah, we're going to leave it open. Yeah, we're going to wait until something strikes us. So any suggestions are okay? No. Who makes that call? What's that? Who makes that call?

It just kind of comes down to, you know, get in the end of it. And then the family, I kind of put it to a family committee. And we kind of figure it out. So you guys have the 18-hole course here, Gamble Sands. You have Quick Sands, which is Part 3 course. I haven't seen it yet. How many holes is the Quick Sands? 14.

14 holes. You've got this putting course. You've got a bunch of putting greens up there. Now you're going to have an additional 18 holes. I assume you're going to be adding some lodging because it sounds like there's going to be a lot of people come and playing a lot of golf around here. Yeah, plan is to add 36 more rooms

and hopefully that's a little bit before the opening into the next course. Because we're getting a lot of people want to come and stay and play. That's kind of our big thing. We're out here in the middle of eastern Washington. There's not a lot of options for lodging here. In the middle of nowhere. Well, yeah.

I live here, so there it is somewhere. For you. Yeah. For the average person. That's fine. We could say that. But we want people to come over, stay and play and do that. We were talking a lot last night, which unfortunately took David's voice. But we were talking a lot last night about the fact that if it weren't for golf,

and if it weren't for you guys having the vision, the commitment, all of that, thousands of people, myself included, would most likely have never ended up in this part of the country, of the world, would never be looking at this view, which is the what lake? This is Columbia River, but what's the lake? River, this is affectionately called Lake Pataris. Lake Pataris. Yeah. We got snow cap mountains back there.

We're in central Washington. People would never be here. We wouldn't get to know each other. What's the background? Why did you guys, how did this come about? How did you bring this hooligan in here? You know, how'd all this come about? You know, long story short, you know, the family is very built in athletically.

I mean, they would do a lot of stuff with baseball and basketball. And when I got out of college. Is the family athletic too? Yeah, there's several of them. Played baseball and basketball at Gonzaga and all the grandkids and cousins. They all play basketball. They're all nice. You said Gonzaga.

Yeah. I learned that you say, well, have you say Gonzaga. I did hear Corey on your podcast correct that, and I was very proud of them for doing that. Yeah, I'm a Gonzaga grad. A little baseball there, so I make sense. You know, you want to keep that going. That's what I would guess, yeah.

But no, we wanted to do something. you know, outside and with sports, and the family owns a lot of property. So one big thing was creating a draw that would help the economic viability of Brewster going forward and the housing and small businesses. So we started looking at golf and... What year was this? I got out of college in 97 and I started dinking around with golf in 1999. We had a course above Brewster that we actually routed and shaped with the Dye family.

Okay. And got that going, but we shifted gears in, what was that, 2008. Yeah, when economic changed, you know, we went less from a real estate play. And the economy, yeah, things changed that here. Yeah, so we went less from real estate play to Pure Golf. And this site was always on the plans, but it was coming later. So we, David had already been here. So we shifted gears and said, hey, if something's going to work, this is the place to make it work.

so so Nick your partners with David here yep um your first involvement with this property understanding hearing about it when was that how that happened what do you remember so that uh we met tory at the chevron station down in town okay uh i think 2008 you know came up walked around it um i grew up in Seattle. So I've known kind of this region before. And there's some places that, you know, we'd come play golf over here, but they weren't just, you know, the vibe and the place that this has become. You know, steal one of David's line. I mean, sand is kind of the magic elixir to golf, right? So, I mean, this place is packed with it. I never came over here to play golf. And even as an avid golfer, we came and played in the river. And now with, you know, my own

family. We'd come spend a week, 10 days, two weeks up here for the last few years and we bring our boat and we play in the river and we come play golf. We had a bunch of guys here last year from my family and other things. We're playing quicksands and board shorts and flip flops. It's great fun. All right. We're going to get you guys back to the podcast here in a second. But first I got to tell you guys about Sirius XM. You can listen to Sirius XM app at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I just got a car. It has Sirius XM. I listen to it all the time.

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So you mentioned sand earlier and how important sand is. I think to the average golfer, they don't really understand that. They understand the difference between what's underneath them when they're walking around playing. see fast greens. Explain why and how important sand and sand-based terrain is for building great golf courses. You only have to look at the top 100. You know, the tall 100 in the world. Three quars of them are on sand. So it allows grass to grow really well. Firm surfaces, smooth. You're going to have to take it from here. Less expensive to build on. You're not having to move tons of earth. The way

that it forms geologically, you know, tends to be... What's the bad stuff to deal with? Clay. Clay, rock. I mean, rock's hard. You can't grow grass and rock, right? You can grow grass and clay. But then you're spending a bunch of money in drainage. You're pitching the surfaces in certain ways, you know, to get surface drainage and you're adding a bunch of, you know, subterranean pipe.

Instead of just being able to build purely what you want to build. Yeah. And there's no drain pipes in any of these golf courses here. That's incredible. You know... No cart paths. No cart paths. Right.

Because and because you haven't spent money on drainage and cart paths and moving dirt and moving rock and all of that, you can make the golf course bigger. You can make it more playable and more friendly, but you can also spend some of that money on being creative and, you know, creating some of the different shots and strategies that use that space in a really meaningful way. rather than just having to hit it down a 40-yard-wide corridor with U.S. Open Fairways 28 yards wide that your average golfer can't play. Right. It makes it simpler. And it's, you know, think about like you're not building greens, right? So typical golf courses that aren't built on sand. You're shaping greens.

You're putting in a drainage layer. You're putting in four to six inches of gravel depending on what kind of aggregates and sands you have. then you're putting in 12 to 16 inches of sand depending on the sand and all of those it becomes like building a building right so your ability to be finitely creative in the finish and tie things together and you know this little bump or that little ripple it becomes really difficult to do where here i mean we're designing right up until we plant grass and you can't do that if you're not in sand It's extremely interesting because again, I think most people wouldn't understand it. When you guys get, or they just don't think about it. It's not on that radar, right? Like whatever, I'm just playing golf. It's green grass.

Very cool, whatever. When you guys get brought in, you're getting courted, whatever, to do a new project, a new course. How does that work? What percentage of projects do you get brought in to see that you don't do? That's hard to say. And I think I come at it on each new project about whether we're a good fit or not. And, you know, very difficult sight, a client who has very specific ideas of what they want. You know, those are probably not best suited for us.

So you're just trying to find a site that fits. This is a beautiful landscape. It's all sand. You know, working with Tori and the family. They're great. So, you know, we think we're a good fit there. So we're just looking for that every time if you can get it. Like guys are abandoned, the same thing.

You know, great client, great piece of land. Makes it easy. Why would we make it hard? You guys have done some hard projects that are more difficult than others. Yeah. You know, what's the most difficult project that you've had to work on? I sold you, baby. Probably two.

My first one and the last one, the first one being Huntsman Springs now called Tributary, it's over near Jackson Hole, you know, big fat plants flat site in a really cool landscape. It's right at the base of Grand Ititon National Park. And we moved a lot of dirt there to create this faux landscape that really served a giant engineering purpose to, believe it or not, managing irrigation water. And that was the whole premise of the golf course. And then the real estate play on back that. And it's, you know, doing great now. It's wild fun.

And then Rolling Hills in L.A., we took an old sand and gravel pit and an existing private club. And the sand and gravel pit was 300 feet deep. And we built a golf course. We moved six and a half million yards on just 300 acres. That was a, you know, reclamation project, basically, for this sand and gravel pit that had no other use. and I mean it was we had you know clay layers that we were putting down to cap the old parts of the pit that were you know geologically unstable and you know all sorts of technical engineering requirements giant drain pipes I mean 12 foot diameter drain pipes you'd drive a golf cart through and then build a golf course on top of it and if if I took you there you wouldn't really know any of that stuff was there right um and it you In that, you think about the whole sand question and that, you know, what's most difficult? It was an old sand and gravel pit.

So we were able to mine sand out of the sand and gravel pit and cap the entire surface that we shaped and not great soils with a foot and a half sand. So it plays rock hard like a sand golf course just like this. A foot and a half is enough? What is? Huntsman Springs, tributary, same thing. You know, it's capped. There's no topsoil. The subgrade there is like cobblestone, say softball size and smaller and gravel.

So it drains really well. So it drains so well that in the spring melt, the groundwater actually comes up. And then it recedes, I mean, it moves tens of feet throughout the year. And then it's covered in a foot and a half of sand. And it's rock hard and firm. Wow. And in January, it'll be 30 below zero. And probably today, it's probably much like here, 80 degrees and sunny.

Right. One thing that I was amazed by, and we were talking about yesterday, and again, I'm from Missouri, I don't know that's part of the country particularly well, but understanding that there's in Bandon, for example, where they get a ton of rain, 100 inches or so, whatever it is a year, and here they only get 10, maybe, and how massive of a difference that is for a golf course, because this does play, and I've played it twice in the last 24 hours now, this course, Gable Sands plays as firm and fast as any golf course I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, the links courses of the British Isles usually only play to their true capabilities in the middle of the summer. Yeah. When it's not raining and they're baked out and they're hard, just like we're going to see at St. Andrews in a couple weeks' time. Gamble Sands plays like that pretty much all year.

It's rock hard all year. So those shots that you're going to see at the British Open, you can come here and April and you probably play the same shots. You can chip a ball 70 yards and it'll run another 100 yards. You saw yesterday when we were putting lots of the fairways here, as good as a lot of golf course is greens. Shady rays, the official sunglasses of four play. I'm actually wearing shady rays right now.

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don't pot off them. We're talking, I think it's the sixth hole, the part three, that is 235 or so from the T's that we were playing downhill. And it was downwind. You yesterday and we hit you know i went up there with a five iron thinking like i'll fly something maybe whatever 200 to and then eventually went all the way back down to a seven iron and we were hitting it 30 yards right of the green and 20 30 yards short of the green and letting it bounce and trundle and i think that most people in america grew up playing especially like public typical public golf in the united states don't get to play that kind of golf ever it's target golf right it's this It's the tragedy of American golf that the game from Scotland, which is not Target Golf, came to America and became Target Golf.

How did that happen? I'm not exactly sure. I think the advent of irrigation making surfaces soft, improvements and equipment. So the trajectory of the ball gets much higher that lands sharper softer. The first golf courses in America weren't built on sand. which were what which courses probably you'd have to

you'd have to get all the way out to like national and shinnock till those you know first sets of golf courses right were built on sand because very few were built on sand yeah total I mean I don't know off the top of my head which is probably terrible professionally which

golf course is the oldest in America but I know that it was more I was a course in New York that was through an orchard right but it was on running it was on run heavier soils. And, you know, I think that's probably part of it. But you're talking about the six hole.

Let's say that that was 240 yards downhill. Same relative situation on any other golf. Let's say it's the country club at Brookliner, Oklahoma. How would you have played that golf hole yesterday in that 30 mile an hour wind? Did him. I mean, it would have been, yep, brutal. It would have been impossible.

Yeah, because you, right, because you would have to, so for anybody obviously listening, it's an audio podcast, I mean, it's a, it's a 230-ish yard, part three, it's downhill, it's over a ravine and then a bunker, and there's a whole bunker left, and then the entire right side of the green is a large hill that kind of runs down towards the green. And essentially what we're doing is like, you can throw it as far out onto that hill pretty much as you want. And it will trundle all the way down onto the green into the middle of the green. and it was downwind and, you know, watching the first guy go hit like a seven iron and hit the ball farther than I did. Hit a seven iron. It landed probably on the front side of the green,

front-ish area of the green, and bounced 15 yards over the green. And the next guy hits a five iron and hit one that landed in the same spot and ran over the green. So I clubbed down two, hit it way right, and it trundles about 10 high,

and it was super fun to watch and everybody's like laughing and a whole deal. If you have to play that in a normal American parkland-style course, You have to fly that all to the green. It stops pretty softly. And if you don't have that precise shot, you really don't have a chance. Whereas this one, again, we can hit all kinds of different clubs, throw it out to the right, and we did it today. And everybody can get to the green in sort of a different way, and it's fun to watch it roll.

It's not fun to just watch the ball plop and stop. And when we did it today, even though you were playing out away from the green, we were picking a pretty precise target. Right. If you got it just in the wrong part of the slope, but actually go to the back of the green, not the front of the green. and so it's fun you still have to pick a line you just have some different options and you can't do that you can't do that on heavy soils or rock and a cool part about building with these guys is they think about the average golfer and how they're going to have fun doing that shot you know because if that shot was just an island green out there at 2 30 most guys

would be in the sand and chipping out or pulling it out of the canyon but i mean i remember when we started shaping that hole we've got a basketball out and learned how the bulls were ball's going to roll down the hill and you'd kick it and watch how the ball fed down there. And these guys are giggling the whole time thinking how much fun people are going to have doing it. And I think that's just a testament to how much they love the game and want to have people love the game too. So they do it on site. They don't do it on paper. They go and look at the dirt and make it work.

So one of our big tricks is a basketball. Yeah. Okay. That's your go-to. It's a basketball. What are rolls. So basketball on finished rolls pretty similar. similar to a golf ball. Very similar. We tried soccer balls. We tried like a big red

kick ball from like elementary school. They're not a volleyball. None of them are heavy enough. A basketball just seemed to have enough weight and momentum in it to yeah. So that's what you use. We go grab one. We start every project. We're not convinced if you can get a basketball to do it. A golf ball will do it. That's incredible. I never knew that. And we're out there with a bulldozer. Like, oh, it didn't, it didn't release fire far enough. Bring bulldozer back in, make it steeper, make it longer, whatever. And then roll the basketball. Okay, perfect. It's always interesting to me because there's a lot of spots as an average golfer where you're like, you're always debating, can I throw this up

into that backstop? We'll roll the way back to the hole. You guys legitimately just test that with the basketball. We do. It's good to know. Scientific. Very scientific. So this course, one of the most fun courses I've ever played start to finish. There's a, seems to be in there, I think we're getting away from it a little bit, there seems to be this concern

with difficulty being somehow associated with the quality of a golf course. I don't give a shit. I couldn't give a fuck less. Of course, is they're hard. I don't want courts to be hard. I want to go out and play well and have a good time. Where do you do you think

that we're getting away from people necessarily needing to consider a golf course difficult in order for it to be great. I think we're trying. You know, we're trying that. I think our clients certainly see that that's true. You know, when I get around, you know, better players and we have that conversation, similar to the conversation we're having about Cyprus versus Bebble and all of that. I think when you look at the British Open in particular,

on years where it's firm and fast and dry and a little bit, windy. The scores are closer to par. But if it's rainy and even maybe windy, but if it gets soft, the winning score goes way down. And so I think that, you know, yesterday, we played the same golf course we played today. How many shots better were you today? Yeah, it was, I would say today was a good four to six shots. The only difference was the wind. And the wind yesterday wasn't ridiculous. I mean, the balls weren't moving on the greens. It was playable. It was just windy. I mean, that's, and so I think the measure of difficulty and playability can be manipulated based purely on weather. And I don't think, I wish I could articulate it better with my.

I think you sound great. There's a misconception that playability and challenge are like the scales of justice. And somehow, as one goes up, the other goes down, I don't think that's true at all. If I take you to the back T's here and I get Josh, the superintendent, to put the pins on the edges, and you're trying to make birdie, every single hole out here is hard. If you play off the right set of T's with reasonably tame pin placements, you're probably thinking you could party every hole. Right. But you still won't. Right.

No, no, never, I mean. Golf is hard. Right. It's just really hard. Yeah. Even if a course is considered an easier golf course, the game that we're playing is still. Golf is hard when I'm on the range. Just extremely difficult.

What's the most two fun things in golf? I'll say if you're hitting from a T or a perfect spot in the fairway, it's hitting a great shot, right? Yeah. The next most fun thing is hitting a great shot from the absolute ball washer. Yep. True. And you can't do that if that balance isn't right. I mean, the average golfer plays a U.S. Open course or even a course.

or even a course that's halfway there, they miss a fairway, they're just hacking out. They got no chance of having that thrill of just getting up and down from the garbage can. Or maybe it's not even up and down. Maybe it's saving a par from a terrible T-shot. And, you know, think... It's space and...

It's recovery. Recovery is... What we've lost in golf is the ability to recover exists in the British Isles. You can play a pretty bad shot. probably find it and you've got some hope that you could recover. And a lot of where golf has gone, as course has got more and more difficult, is the average golfer had absolutely no chance of recovery.

It might not even find the ball. And that's no fun. It sucks. It sucks. Oh, that's my least favorite kind of golf in the world. It's why I like Florida. I hate Florida. Well, you said it best today is when you got up the tea last, or the last green last night,

you wanted to go back to the first tea. Couldn't wait. and I think that's that's the goal was to not want to go hey I paid my 200 and got my ass kicked and that horse was really hard let's go to the bar I'd rather go hey man that was a lot of fun let's go back to the first tee and if you're an operator and you're wanting people to come back and have fun and continue to pay the pay the fee that's that's what you want to have I think whistling straits are great example whistling straits I played it twice now and I would say visually it might be the most spectacular course I've ever seen

It's just phenomenal. I thought the Ryder Cup was incredible. By the time I get to the 12th and 13th hole, if you told me, like, you excited to go back to the first T. after this, I would tell you to go, fuck yourself. I hate it. I just want to get off the golf course.

I'm not having fun. I wish we just walked. I wish we just put our clubs down and grabbed a coffee and just looked at it. I just am not having a good time playing it. It's not that enjoyable. Whereas not to pump your tires too much, D.M.K.,

but, you know, here, bandon, mammoth. Like, the first inclination is, like, I just want to try that again. I want to get to that first tee, and I want to put it down, and I know now a little bit. I understand the brakes, the indolations, and I understand that that shot was blind. I thought that pin was front right, but it's actually back left, and now, and you want to get another shot at it.

And I imagine, and I know after playing it today, I was looking at the schedule being like, all right, we're doing this podcast, we're going to do this fun event. How can I somehow squeeze nine more holes in on that golf course? and not to shit on whistling because I've gone that, I've had a great time, it's fun, but it's like people legit, every person in my group, every time we play there,

has been like, I can't wait to get off this golf course because it just kicks you in the teeth. And it's like, this is such a different experience. And I think that that's cool and beneficial to the game of golf overall that people are starting to return to, it should be fun. It should feel like you accomplished it,

like you had a chance. And a lot of times it doesn't. Do you think it's fair to say that golfers, every time they step on a tee, they're in one of two mindsets. You're either aggressive or defensive. Most golf courses, most teas, you step on the tea and you're defensive. How do I not screw this up? How do I put myself in a position where I get to keep playing?

And then there are a few holes in every golf course that you stand up and go, oh yeah, I got this. Here we go. I'm going to be aggressive. We want to build 18 holes that you at least think you can be aggressive. because it's way more fun to be a confident, aggressive golfer than always being

defensive, tentative, nervous. It's just not fun. Right. And that's not fun. And I don't think that the playability and challenge are joined together at the hip or not. We can build a golf course. It's plenty challenging, but it's still

super playable. Right. Right. Which is hard. That's the artistry of it. A lot of the people that might argue or debate the, you know, playability versus challenge and fun and all of that tend to be better golfers. And I think as they get older in life,

golf becomes less. This happened to me. I mean, golf, every thing used to be about score. And, you know, probably when I got 35, so seven, eight years ago, golf really came, became about being social. Yep. And you start to play with wider ability levels.

And when you can go to a golf course where everybody can play to some level and you can socially have fun and it's a giggle and it's just more fun. And those are the places that you go to. And, you know, Bandon, you know, Mammoth here, when you get giant groups, the number of ladies that come play from the Seattle area, I mean, David and I have worked on a few things in Seattle at some of the private clubs. They're all wearing Gamble Sandsgear. and they come over here by the droves.

And they tell us about, we love the place. We come over here. We have so much fun. How many places do you hear women golfers in particular raving about how much fun they had? Right. And it's because they're low trajectory shows. Roll out.

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entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Again, go to Shopify. dot com backslash four right now that's shopify dot com slash four you know it's it's funny like when i think about the difference when i step onto a t like the second hole here or i think it might be the seventh that are both pretty short part fours where you can kind of rip it up near the green eight eight and i and i think about how i think about the difference in that feeling and that mindset when i step onto those t's and i realize we're on that kind of hole when i look at it what's going on

and how excited I get of like, oh, boys, here we, here we go. We got a shot here. This is exciting. Like, we can make something happen here. And the difference between that, when I step on a tee of just a brutal, like, 460-yard, dead straight, trees all down, both sides, par four, where I'm like, fuck. And when you do that times 18 for four and a half hours, that's going to affect your experience and your mindset and your general happiness around the game of golf. and it's going to affect millions of people that have that same feeling. So I think it's so good overall that we're getting more and that people are hiring more

and bringing in more folks with design philosophy. Like you guys have like, yes, there's plenty of challenge. You can set up the pins in the course where there's plenty of challenge. We'll see that tomorrow with the Barstall Classic, I'm sure. But generally, like, it should be enticing and fun and give you some confidence because Otherwise, you're just going to lose interest in the game. I think if a lot of people really just checked their ego and got real about their golf game, if you had a 400-yard golf hole that was dead straight, nothing in the way, it's 100 yards wide.

How many times do they make Bertie par or bogey? It's probably they score way higher than they think they would. Yep, definitely. Yeah, we don't have to do a lot for you to screw up your own card. Right. But we want to make it interesting, interesting and engaging. And part of that is, you know, the landscape and the fun that we bring to it and the sites and our clients. Having people, you know, like you guys and other groups out come enjoy it.

I think we want to, you know, we do this for fun, right, for entertainment. So when you step on the tea out there, we want to grab you and then keep your interest for four hours and not have, not lose it. Like we want you to feel like, okay, I got to read the contours. I got to look at where the bunkers are. I got to think about where the pin is. You know, what kind of show could I hit? Am I going to rip a driver? I'm going to lay up with an iron?

You know, what can I show am I going to play in? You're constantly in this attack mode. And when you're playing in that mode, you're having way more fun than, oh, shit, I'm about to lose another ball. It's so much more fun. And Nick and I were talking about that today because we're having a little match. And I like to hit, like, irons in certain spots and, like, try to play to my strengths. And there's not a lot of courses, as crazy as that sounds, around. in the states in general where you really can do that.

I mean, there's a lot of them where, you know, you roll up in your cart, you grab, you know, you haven't, you put your head cover for your driver in the back basket and you grab it on every single T. Every T, knowing, no matter what, I'm just, I got to just hit driver here. That's just kind of it. There's really no other option. And why would there be another option? It doesn't make any sense. Whereas here, again, with the terrain and there's little speed slots and it's like, no, if you hit some little low chaser out here,

it'll be way up there, you know, near a lot of different guys drives. There's different ways to get to certain positions. I think that it's really important for keeping people in the game of golf to expose them to that type of experience because, again, they don't get that very often. And when you're trying to find a way to win a match against a couple buddies, a couple of gals, like really thinking your way through how you're going to make a certain number on a whole, hole and then standing on another tee looking at a hole and being like holy shit look at this hole what am i going to do here for four or five hours that's you know that's why people try to play

you know poker or chess or whatever because they want to get into these mental exercises and pairing that with the physical of trying to hit golf shots is maximizing your golf experience and i just i think that your courses do that extremely well and not a lot do well well we didn't always do that. I think we learned over 20 years. You know, we built our fair share of hard courses as been well documented. And, you know, I think I identified that, saw it, and realized that people were playing band and junks and loving it. And then I would go to courses that I built around the late 2000s and they would go play them and they were getting all sorts of awards and stuff. But the players didn't rave about it. They weren't desperate to go play again.

getting their assets handed to him. And Nick and I said, hey, we need to rethink this. How do we, how come I was so successful building Bandon? And then as I actually got more skillful, the golf course has got less fun to play. So how do we bring that back? So that's what we've spent the last dozen years doing. And we still do it. You know, we come play here.

We go to Bandon, play all the courses of Bandon. We go to Mammoth. We go to Stream Song. We go to some other places that are living that culture and doing well. And we look at it and we're like, it works. You know, how can we do it better? How can we do it differently, but under the same ethos, you know, it's constantly evolving. And I think that's part of the art of it too, right?

It's not just going to replicate the same thing. Right. But it's the, you know, the theory behind it and to apply it. You think about a golf course versus other sports. Most other sports are played on a defined playing field. Maybe baseball is probably the loosest, right? The walls and the fences and the distances. It's pretty similar.

But, I mean, to the back of the infield, this is the same everywhere. Maybe there's more foul territory, right? A golf course is never the same. And I don't even know if we built the same golf course on the same site twice. we would never build it same twice. Interesting. That's an interesting question too because one of the questions I always get lately

is why would you hire David to do another course here? So number one, I trust his team that they're going to build something that's just as successful as the other one and not have to go through the whole tuition period with another designer and get maybe something that's better or worse or whatever else.

but I think that, like what Nick just said, they can go out on a different piece of land 200 yards away and built something I think that's going to be as exciting or more. Yeah, and that is, Nick, it's a really interesting point of, you know, if you guys were given this exact same parcel of land next year that Gamble Sands is on and the new one's going to be on, and you went and you started from scratch, it would look different than it does.

Because you've learned, right? You've evolved. This course is built in 2009. It wouldn't look like it was built right. It's amazing. That's interesting. Like he said, he learned something in those few years. Yeah. I mean, even today we were walking around and there's, you know,

there's some different mowing patterns that have changed, right? Some of the bunkers have been, you know, howling winds blown against them all winter and they change and the edges changed. And we're constantly looking at things you would do different. And it's not because you would, do them different because something's broken, it would just be, you see something different. You know, it might be like beer or wine. Like one night you drink this and you're like, that's awesome, but you just drink that only. Now you're like, nah, well, gin and tonic tonight.

Right. Marjorie to tomorrow. And you just kind of in a different headspace. But the foundation of what you're trying to do doesn't change. Just the recipe maybe a little bit. Right. All right. We are going to get you guys back to Riggs and David McLeigh kid in just a second. I am here to talk to you guys about I trust. By now you probably heard all about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. You might even be investing in a few of them. But did you know that you could invest in cryptocurrencies through your retirement account? That's where I trust capital comes in. With I trust capital, you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies from a crypto IRA and get all the same tax advantages as a traditional IRA. All of this stuff, it's a little bit over my head. but I know that it is the future. Everybody who's smart that I know is investing in cryptocurrencies and IRAs. It's just the future. That is where everything is headed.

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with a risk of loss. I trust capital incorporated does not provide legal investment or tax advice consult with a professional legal investment or tax professional. So the new course over here. How, you know, how similar, different?

How is it going to be different? You know, what characteristics from this, do you want to take over to there? How is that challenge of the course that's right next door to the other one, same architect, same team? How is that challenge of making sure that you make it, you know, I think it has to be, it has to be similar in terms of the playability. People are coming here to play a hard, fast golf course that gives options that allows recovery. So we still have to integrate all of those. basic fundamentals. How we actually mix those ingredients is going to be different. It's a different

piece of land and it's almost 10 years later. It's smaller. I think the overall envelope on the wind is a little bit smaller. Okay. The vegetation is different. The terrain is different in terms of it's a little bit tighter, steeper contours. So, you know, some of the speed slots and some things like that, you know, are going to be different. It might be, you know, we need more width in places because the ball might move on the ground more. We can use that to make, you know, set up greens and teas so that it takes advantage of that. It rewards that. It, you know, is a fundamental part of the strategy and enjoyment of it. I think that'll be huge. I think it's also, you know, part of it sits a little bit on of a crowned hilltop. So in some point,

places, it might be a little bit more exposed to the elements. And the beginning of the golf course actually sits down in a hollow, so it might be less exposed. And all of those things just play into it. And it's, you know, designing and building these isn't a set playbook. I mean, when we're, I think some of our peers, you know, similar, when we're drawing a set of plans, we're doing it to get things about the right size, make sure we have the right pieces of equipment, the right amount of materials and the general ingredients to bake the cake, so to speak, right? But whether it's a two-layer cake or a three-layer cake or it's chocolate or vanilla or the frosting is this color or that, it's more like sculpture.

If you think a sculptor starts with a sketch and, you know, the face might look totally different by the time they're done because, you know, the tools move in a certain way and things happen and evolve. And it's very fluid like that. You guys ever build something and then you see it? I got socks. We're not doing it. Oh, good, yeah.

All the time. So, you know, a lot of the times, you know, right now, I probably spend it. I spend more time on site maybe than David on a duration. And I'll build something at times that we've talked about, right? We've walked through it. We've talked about, hey, we're going to try this and do this. And we'll go at it for a week and build a couple golf holes, shape them. And me and the crew that's on the ground and Tori were like,

he's going to love this. It's going to be awesome. We ticked every box. It always happens the same way when it happens. David will come in. We'll walk through it. We're all jazzed, right? And we can't decide whether they'd be excited or kind of quiet,

play it, you know, slow roll our hand a little bit, all that. And if he's pretty quiet, I can almost guarantee you that the bulldozer, the biggest one we got is coming that afternoon. And, I mean, we've built holes where we just, It's not so much that we hate it, but sometimes when you build something that you've talked about... Maybe I just had a better idea. You're like, you know, we didn't see that before. We did this, and now we see that, and that would be way cooler.

And, I mean, we've built golf holes or we just wipe them right off the face of the mat. And I think I've learned. Amazing. Sounds cheap. I mean, I'm 55 this year. Sandhill. For a while. I trust my instincts.

So if I do go on sight and the guys have been working at something and it just, my instincts tell me it's just wrong. There's this, isn't it? Then I think I will listen to him. And the guys that have been with me, Nick, for 16 years, he knows that my instincts are usually pretty good. And so usually there isn't much of a fight. They're like, okay, what comes next? And as long as what comes next is better, then I guess everyone's, everyone's. keeps trusting my instincts. If what comes better isn't, then I'm screwed. And sometimes even our

instincts, you know, we might be excited about it because we poured a bunch of time and effort into it. Right. I want you to tell the opposite side of this as well. Yeah. I mean, there are other times where, you know, we do something. He's like, we never thought of that. That's awesome. It happens both ways. It's, it's super, again, it's fluid. It's collaborative. It's Yeah. It's a big think tank. There are no rules. There are no, you know, we always know that, you know, when David's on site, whether

it's for a couple of days or two weeks or a month or whatever it is, how it works out. You know, ultimately he has the veto card. And what that allows, I think, the rest of our team to do and ownership like Tori, that's part of the discussion and the collaboration every day that's fun is we get to push the envelope. because we always know that if we push David has the ability to kind of rain us back in and you never build something as cool as it can be by tiptoeing. Think of it as a 30-foot putt.

If you just lag, lag, lag it up there, is that exciting? But if you just creep it right up to the front edge and maybe it goes in, you're like, go, go, go, go. And it's super exciting, right? You can't get to the 10 on the Richter scale of fun unless you get to 11

and then pull it back yeah right unless you're willing to go to 11 or 12 or 13 it's always easier to melt it down on the dish it up yeah chill out yeah chill it I think that's a lot of the editing that I do is you know

restraining because the team are really creative and they're go go go and I'm like do we really need three bunkers you know maybe one's enough disagree and really have to have that lump in it maybe it doesn't Yeah, so I think a lot of the time

it's restraint rather than sort of pushing it in the other direction saying it's not enough. Sometimes it is, but often it's we're raining it in. I find the routing extremely interesting because, well for a lot of reasons, but I'm looking out here at the, what's going to be

the new course, and I know nothing about it. I know that, you know, that flag is going to be the 11th green out there. When I'm looking, I have no fucking idea how you're going to get there. I don't know where you're going to from i don't know where the rest of the holes are i don't know when when you either of you when you walk on to a site you know do you start to visualize a routing right away do you rely on do you need to

rely on do you need to go back and look at it for a few days a few months do you know is that not is it godgiven where does that come i think sometimes it's it's a lot simpler than maybe some people think it is okay and other times it's a lot more complicated you know you know things like Like, let's say just for instance, you get a giant site, you know, 2,500 acres out in the middle of nowhere. What's like an average size site? 200 acres. It takes 200 acres, build a golf course. Okay.

All right. I mean, reasonably. Even on it, so on a 200 acre site, you start to think about where can I get access to the piece of ground and where can I get to? Yeah. Right. You're almost certainly going to have a clubhouse or some sort of place that you start at. I mean, you don't know where it is, but you're going to get power to it, water to it. You know, all of those sorts of things are part of that equation that I don't think the people that are into the subtlety and nuance talk about.

Right. We certainly don't, I think, on any project go, unless there's a really good set of reasons. Like, we're going to start here and finish here. I think, I mean, Mammoth Dunes, for example, David and I made four trips. for about 10 days each. And I wish I had a pace counter because we walked forever. And we would go walk for three, four hours.

And while we're walking, you know, like scribble kind of golf, or whatever. And then we'd go back to the hotel room. We'd have all, you know, the topo maps laid out. And we'd draw three or four holes that we think maybe work that we've just walked or sections of pieces of land and all that. And then go back out and walk it.

It doesn't work. And it's, you know, that was a very different experience. So we're looking at 3,000 acres, 4,000 acres. I mean, the golf course could have been over here, it could have been over here. I mean, we know. Do you almost prefer them to just tell you where it needs to be? Sure makes it a little faster. Three or four thousand acres.

Yeah. And you only need to. Right. Right. Yeah. You know, this property, for example, we knew because of the irrigation water delivery they had that we were going to get water from a certain spot. We knew that we could get a road into the property from a certain spot.

And so that kind of probably divided the land that we had to choose from into two sides. And for reasons with existing utilities we couldn't move and crop circles and things that wouldn't be easily movable or relocated quickly, the first golf course at Gamble Sands ended up over there. But the clubhouse almost certainly could have been down at the other end where 9 and 10 are. There were just a lot of things that came together. Or right here. or right here. Right.

Yeah, that's fascinating to me. So with Gamble Sands, with this course, is there a place that you started? Like, is there a certain green site or something where you survey the property and you go, this is going to be, this is the par four. I see it.

We're going to start here. We're going to build around here. Or, you have to, here. We had to work out from the irrigation lake. Yeah. In terms of construction. I think a lot of times when you identify a spot that you have to get to, we think about the routing is almost like an adventure, right?

Like if you were going to come to a bare piece of land and you were just going to wander through the whole thing, just by wayfying, taking a hike, right? No necessarily prescribed, developed trails. How would you, you might start at a spot and be like, oh, that looks cool. I want to go see that. And then you get to the next, oh, I want to go see that.

and we think about like finding that path but it's not yet split up into fours and fives and threes or there's a green here it's just how are we going to get around the property an interesting way and we lay holes in top of it mammoth dunes for example the original clubhouse site that we had at mammoth dunes yeah is 180 degrees opposite of where it is the third green site yeah was where the clubhouse was on our original plan that Mike awarded us the job off. And then you just changed it.

He changed it. He said, I would prefer that it was at the other end. He changed it. And we said, well, okay, we'll relay out the golf course. And he said, no, no, I like the golf course. Just moved the clubhouse. A mile. Yeah, pretty mile.

Maybe half a mile or three quarters of a mile. And you felt like a mile. You put it wherever you want. Like here, there was infinite green sites. You guys went out and picked out, I don't know, over 100 type of green sites. Oh, yeah. And then figure it out which are the best ones and how they get together. Yeah, there's green size everywhere.

Yeah. This is great for that. The second hole wasn't even on the plan. It was a par three. No way. I didn't we start actually shaping it as a par three? I think we actually like began. And then at some point during the construction of it, we were like,

yeah, this would be way cooler. The 16th hole this year. Yeah, 16 year in London when we thought, hey, this would be a way cooler to be over here. and the 15th green should be there. So the original 16th never got built. The 16th all you play came out. I wasn't even here. I came in and I was like, oh, that looks super cool.

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I mean strategically. Tons. You can probably hit five different clubs off that tea. Yeah. And every one of them could be a scoring shot. Yeah. You know, I played with one of your team Ryan this morning. And, you know, he would step up to the ball.

And he'd look at the GPS and he's like, oh, I'm 180 out. And he'd look at the pin. I was like, hole after hole. I'm like, dude, it's like 150. And I want to aim 20 yards left or 20 yards right. And he's like, really? I said, just trust me. I built the plate.

I found us. We were then sneaking over trying to. hear you say that so that we knew that kind of knowledge because again that's just so i am still waiting on my 20 bucks yeah it's coming we're gonna add them up a little bit god man i don't like losing but you're right um so a new course plan uh timeline where we got timeline on the new course yeah the major goals are to get it going next spring uh build out and open some time in 25 25 guarantee a day but usually that's going to be mid maybe late summer 25 you guys kind of just let these guys they take the wheel oh yeah it's pretty collaborative oh very collaborative in that sense you know we know things that we have to deliver and yeah they're going to deliver but at the end of the day their creativity and everything else we let them do all that we built the first course here there was no a general contractor it was you know our team and the the the farm team and we so together our own self-construction company and built the golf course.

There's a lot of kumbaya. Kumbaya. You just hire a lot of locals to help you out. We have guys that, you know, through our agricultural company that are very capable of doing a lot of stuff. So whether it be irrigation or, you know, dump trucks, haul and gravel and all that other stuff. Pretty simple.

Yeah, we have a big leg up from other guys that are doing that in that sense. And then this climate up here, this is mostly. mid-spring to mid-fall-type spot? For construction? For playing golf? Oh, yeah, golf is typically April until the middle of October. Okay. Sometimes we shut it down a little early in October to take care of the golf course,

and so have it come out of winning a little bit. Yeah, because the course probably doesn't get to breathe very often. No. People are just hammering away out there all the time. You always told me if you have those problems, those are good problems I have. You put whining about them. Yeah. And the part three, which I haven't seen yet.

It's pretty wild. It's crazy? It's crazy. Yeah, it's wild. You told me you took all the good parts about a certain place you've seen and got rid of all the bad parts. Well, wait. I looked at a bunch of different par three courses because they're, you know, very popular. Hot in the streets, you know.

Yeah. And try to figure out what makes them more fun and what makes them less fun. And the more fun seems to be when you can hit. A shot over there and then watch the bowl roll. The last one is losing golf balls. You have a reasonable opportunity to make a one on every single one of those holes. I mean, you don't have to hit, you know, the, I got to throw a dart, right? I mean, you can choose your own way.

Every single one of those holes. I mean, there's no sucker pins get trapped, you know, kind of stuff. Force carries. No. Yeah. It's... The third hole is great fun. Can't see the green.

You barely see the top of the flag. You're throwing it uphill, 50 feet, into a giant bowl from 130 yards. I think a lot of par three courses are a big course shrunk down. What we tried to think of was a putting course shrunk up. Wow. You'll see it's like a giant putting course that you have to use. you know, irons and wages. There's more like a putting course.

Are you surprised at all at how kind of popular of the part three has become around the golf world, really? Yeah, I am. And I think that they're highly specific to certain properties. They don't work everywhere.

There's a lot of places, you know, it doesn't make sense. You know, I think when you've got Destination Golf with overnight accommodation, then it makes sense. Yeah. But, you know, if you're a private club somewhere or a destination that has no pressure on the golf course, you know, people are always going to probably prefer to play the golf course

than play a short course. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, because they've just been popping up all over the place from the, you know, pebble, the hay they did it, and obviously the cradle and you got one here. It just seems like everybody's, everybody's kind of doing it. They're hot in the streets. You got a captured audience. It's a great filler for people.

I just don't want to go play in the room or whatever. You know, you got an hour and a half. Hit the bar too early. Yeah. And it's a hit and giggle. You're not carrying your whole bag so you can, you know, you might have a small bag or you got a couple of closet. You carry a drink. No scorecard.

So no one cares. Like I said, last summer we played in flip-plopping board shorts. Half the guys I brought up here, you know, 15 guys, half them don't even hardly play golf. We had a blast. I can't wait to play. And in that sense, it was a time filler. We needed something to do for a couple hours. All the stuff that you did out on the main course,

where you're hitting those bagboards, we just took that and amped it as high as we could get it, like as wild as we could possibly get. This is where you were talking earlier, like if you want to get to 10, you got to go to 11 or 12. It's 11 or 12. It's got to be able to mow it.

Explain the crater hole. There's a crater hole? Like an asteroid? The number three was just on that. You'll play the first hole, right? And you play way downhill and you work through some pretty wild terrain. And the crater hole is it was playing up to this kind of high spot. And literally, you know, we were talking about in the office, we were kind of joking about the whole template thing, right?

Like, hey, let's make a template that doesn't exist. You might say punch bowl. This isn't a punch bowl because nothing around the green itself, right, is receiving. Literally went up on top of the hill. And one of the other guys that we were working with on site was like, I'm not sure quite. And I was just, I don't run equipment that great. I was just clearing brush.

And I was like, you know what? I'm going to go up to the crater and I'm going to make a crater. And I literally just went into the top of the hill with a dozer and I just dug a big hole. It's a volcano. And we built a green inside of it. And people just love it. You'll see. Yeah.

That's got to just be fun to do that. Yeah. You couldn't do it on a regular, of course. There are holes we've been. built out there that I think are fun. Like if you were playing backyard golf like horse, right, there's enough space to play, but there's some of the holes,

you know, the ninth hole is corkscrew. We were talking about, hey, you know, if we could get this to do, you know, similar to say six at Mammoth,

right? Yep. I like cars. Corkscrew is a famous corner at Laguna Saker racetrackers, double corners. And the ninth green, like,

oh, we're going to call it corkscrew. And literally, we were watching videos of cars driving the corkscrew corner as we were shaping it. We're like, and then we're rolling a basketball around it. And how do we get it to land front left and end up front right? I mean, and it's great fun. It's fun to build.

It's fun to play. Right. It's just fun. Hitting giggle. Fun's the whole purpose. Great to play with 12 guys. So we're going to, we got the, the Open and San Andreas coming up a couple weeks. You're obviously Scottish guy.

And we're going to hear a lot of when it comes to the hotel, hole and hit it over the sign and try to hear the other. We're going to hear a lot of the phrase, you know, you could never build that today, but it's great. You know, do you subscribe to that, that you can't build stuff today that? We built a hole in Seattle that was basically a takeoff of the road hole. Yeah, are you trying to like bring that? Is that sort of when we're talking about amplifying it up?

Are you trying to bring back the boldness? You can build anything you want to build that's reasonably playable and not unsafe. That's probably the key. And when you hit it over the corner of the Old Course Hotel, you know, I mean, over out of bounds, over out of bounds, over a sign, you know, that would be tough to do.

The average customer that probably plays there that's not the British Open, I don't know that they have to hit it that hard over that sign. True. This is the best players in the world. But, you know, how much danger is there really that somebody would get injured by a golf ball who's not a golfer probably not and i think that's where it really comes to when we were talking earlier it's like you know this putting course if they're you had a big event like your guys event where you're basically going to have the run of the whole place right

you know could you put a mat or have turf there and do like 18 whole kp contest you don't have to go putt or whatever what are the chances somebody'd skull a wedge into one of those rooms extremely high so you can't do it right right right but It sounds fun. And I think that's really where it's at. If it's reasonably playable and it can be safely done, you can build whatever you want. And we've got the thing, we did a renovation project in Seattle, San Point Country Club, the 18th T, to get some more length out of a 6,000-yard golf course, you've hit it right over the top of 17 green. Okay.

The second T shot at St. George's Hill in London does that. You're seeing it on all of these kind of restomod, you know, restoration that, you know, some of the major championships have been moving to to do that. And I think if you think about the sequence of play and how people move through the golf course and all that, you can do that. I mean, Shinnock Hills, you hit it over a road like three times. Yeah, right. You have for, since it was built. You don't think anything of it.

Yeah, I like the, um, if a. The weirder somebody tells me a course is, or if somebody's saying, it's just like a really weird course. I'm like, I got to see that. Me too. How weird could it be? Right. Right. Like, what's weird about it?

I kind of like weird. I played, when I was a kid, I played one eye on the West Coast of Skoll and called Darnanavorty. Okay. And all the greens are rectangles and squares. Every single one. I mean, the green itself still moves, but they're mowed as a rectangle or square. And I've always tried to do that here. I've suggested it to a few owners.

No one's bitten. I bet you've presented some bold shit to speak. Yeah. And maybe they were right. But, you know, I think that it probably works. At some point I'm going to do it. Sure. You go, sure.

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Yeah, I, you know, I just think that it's, golf should not be boring. It should be exciting. And a lot of that's going to come in what happens, right? I mean, with the shots and the match that people have. But with the architecture, you're kind of steering people around. So it's cool to hear from people who are the ones, you know, actually designing it. Do you feel a lot of pressure when you get brought in to deliver or to, you know, create? Because it's something that's going to laugh, right?

That's long-lasting. piece of property that you're shaping and creating. I don't think so. No. I just don't care. If you've answered the first question you asked, which was about how do you, you know, pick projects, we're confident that we're a good fit and were the right people for that project, then the pressure, you know, really doesn't exist.

If you've taken on something that's not in your wheelhouse that, you know, you shouldn't have, then maybe there's some pressure, right? But we know what our capabilities are. And sometimes it's fun. You know, we take on things like the thing in L.A. at Rolling Hills where there's a hurdle. It's a little bit of a challenge, right? It's something different. Right.

But never did we think we couldn't build something cool. Yeah, the only, I guess the only time I felt real pressure was the castle course at St. Andrews. 600 years of golf, home of golf, Amoskosman. You know, I felt that way of history as we were doing that and knowing that I probably couldn't succeed because building anything new was almost inevitably going to get rocks thrown at it because you're at the home of golf. Right.

And so having to accept that, having to just understand that that criticism is going to come and you're just going to have to live with it your whole entire life and probably after you're dead, maybe then someone will give you a little credit, but it's not going to happen while we're alive. What kind of advice did you get going into that project? You know, my dad gave me the best advice.

He was a superintendent for 60 years, 50 years plus anyway. And he said, you realize you'll never please all the people. And, you know, the thing you have to be, you have to live with is pleasing yourself. You have to be able to please yourself. And if you don't do that and then you still don't please everyone, then you completely fail. So that really helped frame my mind, like, okay, me and my team have to build something that we are proud of. We are committed to.

We feel that it's the best we could have done. And then the criticism will come anyway. And, you know, the castle course is, you know, half the people love it and half the people hate it. But guess what? Half they hate it. Still paid to play it. Facts. That's true.

I think sometimes if it's, even if people hate it, if it's intriguing enough, they'll still come back because they're like, you know what? It got me last time. But there's just some ounce of attraction to it. Like, maybe I can do better. Totally. I wonder how many people play the old course and hate it. Yeah.

There's a fair number. They barely say it out loud. you're not allowed to but yeah but they don't really love it trapdoor comes out and they disappear yeah you already picks up a sniper that's right it's just yeah uh yeah it's over if uh some do you feel you know we talk a lot about like i never want to listen to my own podcast i hate the sound like my own voice and it do you ever feel that way when today you do when you uh when you go play your own corsors is that do you ever like not want to play them

no no no no i no i no i no i no i no I think we have such and a huge amount of fun building them that we know all these shows that we're trying to get you to discover and find that when we play them we already know where they're there we know where all the tricks are

It is interesting that when you get bad Like playing a video game where we know where all the drop doors are Right right right You hit a shabby shot or you hit a good You hit a shot that you think is just right on the margin of being great And you get the rub of the green in the wrong way It's like man it's just kicking your own ass you know, maybe...

What kind of asshole made it this way? Yeah, right, right, right. That should, that was a good shot. That should end up good. How did I end up here? And you're the one that built it. It's got to be tough. Yeah, I, you know, look, I'm a huge fan of this place.

This has been on my list for several years to get up here. And, boy, I couldn't recommend it, you know, more high to people. You guys are pretty full, right? right now you guys are pretty jam-packed when it comes to bookings and business up here oh this is running for another okay that's good that's good things are good here i feel like yeah it's moving along very well we're happy with it and that's why we're gonna just create more of it and keep the same vibe you know is that room for more than one more golf course uh yeah with a few creative you have to get real creative yeah might know a couple guys maybe i could get i could get real

creative. Have you done two courses on one site before? Never. First time. First time. You got like renderings? Can we look at him off camera? Yeah. Pictures. Yeah. Teasing people. One cool story about this place is, I mean, David getting the job was his dad coming out on a, on a walkthrough that we did. And Cass, who you met earlier up at the restaurant, David's dad was walk around a little 35 millimeter camera that you like clicked in between, you know, you rolled it up. And we got done and Cass asked to me, he says, man, I noticed you took a lot of pictures. You know, because honestly, we didn't know what we had here. You know, we were just guys that thought we needed something about a little bit about

a golf and got the right guys, again, Orrin Vincent. We should probably mention here. He passed away last year, and he was a guy that was a very influential person and getting us hooked up and getting this whole place rolling. But David's dad told Cass that, you know, this is one of the best sites I've ever walked with David. And I sure hope he gets the opportunity to do it. good old dad yeah

whether he was full of crap I don't know but he's just coming in to seal the deal he didn't get it then no that was one of the big big reasons because he looked at him and he was really pumped

about the project I mean this place is breathtaking I think we're probably not doing it justice enough I mean sure people people on YouTube that are watching this

are like yeah I can I can see it it's breathtaking but anyone that's just listening I mean it is when you get here you know we have our Barstow classic crew that we have a group

text and and the first person that arrived yesterday just sent and just said this place holy fuck that was just their text and we don't send that anywhere like we go to 25 stops on the country have never seen somebody send that kind of text i'm posting pictures of people's reaction are just like what are you on mars like where are you like what is that so i i want to make sure for anybody just listening purely that they can understand how breathtaking this place is and torrey you're used to it because you know you've been around here for much of your entire life but But man, this place outside of the architecture and how good these guys are at their jobs and the sand base and how fun the ball reacts. And we talked about all the great benefits of that.

Just if there wasn't even a golf course here, just standing right here, this place is spectacular. Yeah, it's a great place to be. Sure is. Great place to be. Wow. We're very lucky. Well, I appreciate it. 2025.

The new course is the plan. The new course to open up. You guys got some work to do. You got other projects going on too, right? Yeah, we do. but this will be a big focus. I mean, as it should be. I'm excited to see it.

I want to get some renderings off camera. I want to get perks that other people can't get. You know, what do you guys? Software? You got all kinds of software you use? Are you guys more feel guys? We'd do it all. A little bit of both.

Yeah. Well, we have projects right, you know, across the portfolio where the plan is a little more than a routing plan to drawn full-scale, you know, engineered Earthworks plans. and, you know, all the software that, you know, we use. I mean, we've got the capability to do all of that. It's almost great by fly. Awesome.

Well, I appreciate it. I know this was a long chap, but it's worth it. I think that, like, I mean, a lot of people listen to our show and listen to what we do. You know, they work hard. They save up. They jump on their email chain or their group text with their pals, trying to pick, you know, what it is that they build up towards. And that is a golf trip every year, a couple trips a year.

every two years, every five years, whatever it is, and they're trying to figure out where to go, and there's a lot of different options that they look at. So giving them all the information and allowing them to understand that there's something like this that's out there, I think, is really helpful to people, and I think a lot of people are gonna come here, and I mean, they already are,

but hopefully a lot of people come here and check it out, because like I said, if it weren't for the golf and what you guys have done, people would just never see this part of the country, or at least a lot less of them would. So you guys have done a good thing. job here it's really awesome thanks thank you very much absolutely thank you guys for joining i appreciate it thanks