No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1097: Aussie Golf Check-In

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

With the Australian Open underway at Royal Melbourne, Soly and TC bring on Scott Warren and Matt Mollica - the hosts of the Australian Golf Passport Podcast - to discuss the tournament and a bevy of other golf topics from down under including: moving the tournament away from a co-sanctioned event with the women’s open, the future of both men’s and women’s opens, recent course architecture renovations and updates at New South Wales and Royal Sydney and elsewhere. Plus, we cover recent updates to the World Top 100 rankings and their favorite interviews from their podcast so far. Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nolayingup.com/esf⁠ Support our Sponsors: Rhoback The Stack If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. Yes. I mean, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here got a fun, a very, very long connection cord going for this recording, 7 a.m. here in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. I believe 11 p.m. for our guest, T.C., I'm going to throw it to you to let the people know who we're talking with today. Yeah, I've been excited for this one for a while. It's Australian Open Week. It seems like a bigger Australian Open than we've had in recent memory and who better to join us to talk about all things australian golf than the the founders and hosts of the australian golf passport podcast mr scott warren and matt mollica

long-time friends of the program gentlemen are soss alums recognize your faces from torresauce as well thank you for having us excited to be here before we do get going here we want to give a shout to our friends at rowback fall golf is here you already know it they are our go-to for polos hoodies joggers pants all of it best fit best feel simple as that the delta pants are our favorite they got a stretch elastic waistband it's a game changer gives you extra room for some added comfort maintaining the best fit possible the fabric is super smooth it's wrinkle resistant easy to pack comfortable to wear they are my if you see me on the golf course wearing pants you're going to see me in the delta pants second the fulton vest the vest the vest is awesome it's got a nice light insulation i have one

over here in my office somewhere i keep it in my office just to throw on at any point during the day when i get a little bit chilly interior and exterior pockets a great layering piece as we hit the course despite the temperature dropping and you know it the hoodie the hezzy hoodie it's so soft i think i have about 20 of them in my closet every color every combination i got multiples of some of them just because i wear them out uh that hard i really do wear them almost every single day roback has got what you're looking for as we get deep into fall here go to roback dot com r hobac k dot com use code n o you at checkout for 20% off your first order through the end of this week pants hoodies vest roback has you covered tc i'll throw

it to you take it away So, guys, I think just to give a little run a show today, we're going to talk this week's Australian Open. Kind of bits and bobs from that, particulars as far as composite course and field and just, you know, what the conditions are down there. We'll talk some courses in architecture, a lot going on in the architecture world, I don't know, Australia, between new courses, renovations, restorations, some ranking stuff, top 100 rankings came out here of late. and then kind of current state of of australian golf both professional amateur and i don't know it's it's one of our favorite places in the world golf wise and and uh it yeah i don't think it gets the shine or the the run that it it's so richly deserves so and then might talk a little live on the back end and and and just your journeys as as podcasters these days too so matt

i'll throw it to you first he wants your thoughts on the clique's additions that's what it is It's not about, like, Live Adelaide or anything like that. It's just the big moves his team has made. Matt, I'll throw it to you first. Like, what are we seeing down in Melbourne this week? It's been a little bit rainy, I guess, the last couple weeks, but it looks like the weather forecast for the week looks awesome. Yeah, Sunday, Monday was quite wet and cold.

I was on the grounds on Tuesday for the first practice day and watched Rory play nine holes. It was warming up and getting a little windier and drier on the Tuesday. We had 29 degrees Celsius today. We have huge winds forecast for tomorrow and 30 degrees Celsius for the day one play, which is going to be very, very exciting. Sully, if you remember that Saturday of the Asia Pacific Amateur, when you were last down here, how the course just got really baked,

greens were crispy, everything was just rolling and rolling with lots of wind. I think we're going to see that at least tomorrow morning and hopefully for much of tomorrow and Friday. Royal Melbourne, I love playing that golf course. Do not get me wrong when I say this, but there's very few golf course. I put Cypress in this bucket, T.C. at the Walker Cup of like, there's very few golf courses that are somehow maybe even more fun

to watch others play when it gets really difficult and really challenging than it would be to play yourself. And I would put Royal Melbourne in that category of, you know, just watching some of the shots coming down the stretch watching on really, really firm greens, the wind coming out of what looks like the wrong direction of where you would want to shape the ball into and watching the really, really good players try to solve the puzzle that I'm not going to be able to solve. I'm just not.

Like, it's just, it's, that's too challenging for me. It, it, it, it, it, there's something really, really, really special about that golf course in the way that it doesn't just test where you hit the ball to. It tests how you hit it there. And I, the fact that you just said that it's going to be windy like that day. at the Asia Pacific Amateur has me even more geek for this week than I already was.

Rory coming out with a little bit of, I don't want to say heat this morning, but kind of throwing a shot across the bow at Roll Melvin's saying, Zan, he prefers Kingston Heath down there. And he opened it with the classic, no offense to anybody. You're like, you know,

don't take this wrong way, however. It's why we love Rory. Yeah. I will say he's wrong, but it's why we love him. He got absolutely swamped on Tuesday, and he could not have been better with crowds. He autographed hundreds and hundreds of things. He was having photos with kids and fans.

He was engaging with galleries between Green and NextT. He's given the crowd heaps so far this week. And I assume that it continued today during the pro am. He looked tired when he arrived here, but that didn't stop him from going to a dinner last night. Press it today after the proam. So I think golf Australia has done a great thing getting him here And they're going to get great value for having him here this year and the next Even though he might not have indeed himself to a few Royal Melbourne members during the press conference today

I like that I mean it's it's uh you know I think I think there's an argument to be made I don't know if I agree with it but I think there's an argument to be made and it's it's you know comes down the personal preference right just pausing on this tc just real quick of just I know we've celebrated that rory's down there playing this but the answer to so many questions of, all right, we talk about golf in Australia a lot. We talk about how much we'd love to see the best players play down there. And the answer is just usually like, yeah, the guys don't want to travel down there to do it for the most part. Financially, when you could play for $20 million state side almost every week,

yeah, it just doesn't make a ton of sense to have to travel around the world from a financial standpoint. Rory's out there doing it this week, man. Just shout out to him for doing it. And this is like a person, a player doing something more for the best. of the game globally than it is something person i'm sure he's enjoying it and loves to play this style of golf and and loves to participate in it but it'd be easier to stay home and uh he's one of the few guys out there out there uh top guys out there doing it so i just wanted to want to

shout that out as a big win for golf this week amen yeah we'll get to some of the golf australia stuff and just kind of the trajectory of this event as well um talking specifically about this week what's what version of the of the composite course is being used this week because i know that That can be a very, just complicated, layered question. And I don't think it's the one from the President's Cup, correct? Not the President's Cup. It's the original and the best. Okay.

Composite was first played in 1959 for the Canada Cup, which is now the World Cup. And most of your listeners probably know that Royal Melbourne's two courses are spread out over four parcels of land or paddocks, the biggest of which has the clubhouse and the car park and 21 holes from the east and west courses and so they've cherry picked 18 of those six east 12 west start on one west go to two west then go one east two east five west par three the iconic par three is the fifth hole place six seven ten eleven west go about around the back 12 17 18 come back to three, which some of your listeners will recognize as the opening hole for President's Cup, Four West, and then you finish with a few East holes to finish.

So they play 17, 18 as their final two. Is this the same routing as the Asia Pacific Amateur? No. So that was different again. And I don't know. It's different every time, I swear. So sometimes Four East is in. Sometimes they omit that for 16 East.

So the 2011 President's Cup, they had 16. East, that really, really amazing green complex with the lobes here there and everywhere. Four East is a longer par three that plays up the hill down in the very bottom corner of the property. It's probably a better test for professional players. And it mixes things up a little bit in terms of the other par threes that they play throughout that round. So, yeah, the traditional holes that were selected and the sequence in which they're played

from 1959 for this week. And I'd said to Scott earlier today in prepping for this episode that, Yeah, I think it's the original and the best. We play that for one or two events throughout the year as members, and everyone licks their chops. That time sheet fills out really, really fast for that event. I love the third hole at like three West later on in the round. That's such a cool kind of thing to look forward to.

And you're really, like it's, like, it kind of, it's that early test in the round normally. And being able to reach that hole, you're fully, fully warmed up and, and your RPMs are going is, is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I feel similarly about 17 and 18 West early in the back nine. I think it's that gut check of, you know, you've got to earn the right to be in contention with those two holes that are so exacting and so different.

You know, it's not, it's not right at the pressure point of the round, but it's almost like you're earning your right to try and win the trophy. Anything else we should be looking for this week, Matt, as far as the course or, or just any tweaks or things to feature, other than just the normal everyday majesty of the place? I think the different wins. And I'm hoping that you get some different camera angles and that they use a little bit of drone footage,

whether it's in the promos or in the actual coverage of the event, if they can show off some of the topography and some of the changes in altitude between Fairway and Green on some. holes, I think that would really be a beneficial thing for a lot of viewers. The field itself, like it's, it's, it's the first year for a few years that we've had a standalone men's Australian Open and then a standalone women's Australian open some months later.

And the return to that singular gender format, it's seen a really, really interesting field assemble. I'm sure that it's not just the course and it's not just Rory being there. Joaquin Neiman's in town David Pugge is on a bit of a heater He won the Australian PGA last week Cam Smith's got a bit of a point to prove After missing the cut there last week

Leash had a strong finish in Royal Queensland's Australian PGA last week And he feels very much at home At Royal Melbourne So I'm expecting a strong showing from him But I mean there's Cam Davis I saw Eddie Pepperall on the practice range yesterday Yannick Paul

I saw Charlie Hoffman on the practice range. I was really surprised to see him in town. So there's going to be a lot for people to look at. And if you're on the grounds at some stage during the week, you might think, well, I'm going to avoid the crush around Rory's group or around Adam Scott or Minwu Lee or Elvis Smiley, one of those other homegrown stars that tends to grab some of the headlines

and maybe follow someone else that you've not perhaps first targeted as a, as a real attraction, but there's plenty out there. Yeah, it seems like I saw Matt McCarty's in town. His game should suit down there. You've got Siwu Kim, Foxy, and Joaquin playing together. Let's see who burned Weasperger's down, Kira Deck. You know, it's it's a super interesting field. You got, you know, some of the old-timers, Rod Pampling, Brett Rumford, who

Bob Voki has said is one of the best shippers of the golf ball he's ever seen, like just the best wedge player he's ever seen. So as far as the trajectory of this event, going back to is it pretty much universally accepted that the co-ed staging of this event was something worth trying, but that it detracted from kind of both the women's Australian Open and the men's Australian Open. It was an ambitious thing, but at the end of the day, it was everybody was kind of poorer for it because of the sacrifices that had to be made agronomically and just from a, you know, smaller fields perspective.

I feel like for the most part, it was the women who lost the most. I mean, they had a much more notable Australian Open than the men did for a lot of years. They had stronger fields. They had, you know, more interesting tournament play. A lot of the courses that we host our tournaments on probably work better for the women's professional game than the men's professional game. So I feel like they really suffered more than the men in terms of, you know, compromising the event.

And I think the shame seems to be. I mean, you listen to Hannah Green and you listen to Cameron Smith last year. I don't feel like either contingent of players was really consulted ahead of time, you know, and potentially it was a commercial reality for Gulf Australia coming out of COVID. There's probably good reasons in a boardroom. But I don't think it ever had, you know, ultimately your golf tournament's only as good as your players. Players weren't happy with it. It was never going to work. So I think it's smart of Golf Australia to reset. And yeah, of course, the women are playing Cuyonga in March. I think

that's going to be a great tournament as well. And then, you know, the rain is the only thing that Cam Smith has to lament if the course is too soft again this year. The March date suits the ladies schedule a lot better as well. Like it feels less tacked on at the end of the year and more, you know, hey, this is on the front end of the back end of our first Asian swing here. And, you know, it really feels more cohesive. So I think just talking to my friend Maddie Kelly the last couple of years is a course setup just seemed impossible for them to, you know, properly challenge the men while also being, you know, being realistic about some of the shots that the ladies can hit into into these firm. you know, brilliant greens. Matt, is that something that you felt like was sacrificed? Yeah, I think a little bit. Maybe not, ironically, not as much as was reported and suggested

down here, but I do think they have to compromise that a little bit. Field size and the logistics and a headline act, I think were probably more noticeable problem areas. You cut sizes on the Saturday night for the Sunday or the Friday night for the Saturday where are going to be a little more generous this year and you could have someone who's seemingly a long way back still make a rush and be in contentioned by the time the 72nd holes concluded and you just didn't get that when you had a co-ed field and I don't think you're ever a chance to lure someone like Rory

or Jordan Spieth or another world top 10 name down here when there's so many people on the stage. Yeah. What's the drawing back to the BMW Aussie PGA last week. What's the trajectory of that event? It seems like it was kind of on life support there for a bit. It seems like it's back on the up swing. They've run a good event the last few years up at Royal Queensland. They've had strong corporate support for that. BMWs really being front and center and helped to promote that event and make it bigger and better. and they've had good fields, they've had a good international contingent attend, good TV coverage here domestically as well, and a good string of winners.

So all of that has helped. I think this was the last year that Royal Queensland is scheduled to host. Scott, am I right? It is, that's right, yeah. So it's hosted for the last five years. They're about to do some work ahead of the 2032 Olympics that they're hosting. And so it actually looks like, I think it's 25 years that tournament's been played. played in Queensland.

It looks like it might be on the move to Sydney. People are talking about the lakes as a potential host, which has hosted a handful of Aussie opens in the last kind of 10 or 15 years. So be ashamed for it to leave Queensland. I think it's an interesting link with it having been in Queensland. Of course, most of our best players of the last 15 years, Jason Day, Adam Scott, Cam Smith, all Queenslanders. Even before that, you know, the likes of Norman and Grady, Queenslanders.

Queensland has produced more than its fair share of our greatest players. And I think giving those guys a reason to go home and legitimately go home to their home city, not just their home country, I think that's helped that event always draw quite well. So, yeah, it'd be interesting to see if it's the same feel in Sydney. I suspect it may not be. Transitioning there over to, over to architecture. We've had a lot, like you guys have covered, covered New South Wales quite a bit, the renovation at Royal Sydney.

Let's start at Royal Sydney, because I think that's, It seems like that opened back up, what, beginning of, beginning of this year? In April, yeah. Okay. And what's your assessment there? How did that end up? It's fantastic. I mean, it was always a good piece of land, you know, a little bit flat in the middle,

but they've certainly got the budget. They've got good soil. We've got the climate in Sydney. Gilhance is done an incredible job. I mean, they left no stone on turn. They were shut for 18 months. They spent somewhere in the vicinity of $45 million Australian dollars, which for context, you know, our renovation at New South Wales costs about five.

So they really, I mean, to the extent that they sent some of their greenkeepers two hours out of Sydney to the turf farms to maintain the turf on the farm as it would be maintained once it's a golf course. So if it was going to be rough grass, it was maintained on the farmer's rough. So the day that they laid out the turf, there was definition between fairway and rough. Like they've done it the right way and they had the luxury of closing for as long as they did but Gil and his team have done what Gil and his team do

and yeah look it's probably without foreshadowing our rankings that are going to come out this month like it's probably gone from a 50 to 60 in Australia course to probably a top 20 course. I feel like it might be slightly higher than that. I haven't played it but I walked it mid-year and occasionally you go to a place that's had a renovation and you've had a feel for the land.

You've played that course previously and you have this nagging feeling inside you that things could be so much better. You recognize the potential and if only they could do this. If only they did that, it'll be interesting to go around there with clubs or speak to people who've played a lot

over the second half of this year, but I feel like they've extracted almost every possible drop of potential out of that property. Set the scene for listeners. When you walk it prior and say you could get so much more out of it and what they actually did. Can you tell us the story of what that might be? I don't experience golf courses that way.

I kind of wish I did. I don't look around and say like, oh, that should be, they should tweak this bunker and that would make it so much better. Usually when it's done, I'm like, oh, yeah, you're right. That is better. But I don't see it that way. But I know your brain works a little bit differently, Matt. It's very kind of you, Sully.

I didn't say it was. I didn't say it as a compliment. I didn't. The comment that me and Scott have repeatedly come back to is that they had one probably predominant pocket of topographic interest on their property in the southeast quadrant of their parcel of land on which their course sat and you sort of got to it very, very quickly and perhaps didn't really use it in the most inspiring way. And then no sooner had you been in that little stretch of the course and you left it.

and then you played a long stretch of holes on relatively flatland afterwards. And by the time you're sitting down, absorbing things post-round, that topographic highlight, that ground movement interest, that was like two-thirds of the golf course back. And it didn't leave this fresh, lasting, significant impression in your mind. And to bring it closer to, well, current day, like TC, we've talked when we've gone around Royal Melbourne, Now, that one topographic feature, that big rise early on when you play west,

you sort of play that whole, play three West with the fairway and the green influenced by the slope that's nearby. And you drive over a big set of bunkers cut into that rise on four. Five green is benched into that big rise. Six T takes you from it. So you utilize that topographic feature in multiple ways on multiple holes. and Gills reimagined routing at Royal Sydney does that, but then you come back to that point later on.

So you visit it, go away, come back to it later in the round and go away. And I think they've extracted maximum interest out of one small feature that they sort of almost used fleetingly in the previous iteration of the course. Can I just brag, like, or not brag on you, but just the way that you describe golf courses and get to the like cut to the core both of you guys it's it's so eloquent and uh it's it's not overwrought either it's it's it's it's eloquent and efficient and uh in technical while at the same time i'm so jealous of it i love like i love listening to your podcast i do not miss an episode and it like it doesn't matter if you're talking about a nine whole backyard course or

literally the best golf course in the world. It's, it, it kind of just, it shines through on all of those. So, kudos. You guys are like really, uh, exceptional at, at that. 11 years with TZ's never given me a compliment like that. But I would say like the way, uh, the way you just describe like the, the way you just described that, again, is not how a lot of people would think when they play it. It's not a lot of, the way a lot of people think when they play golf in general or think about

golf courses but all the things you just talked about do add up to whether or not you may enjoy the golf course or it contributes to your enjoyment of that day or that place or whatever to the to the point where you know yeah i i don't expect everyone to geek out about architecture stuff but a lot of people do and if you put that trust in the right hands it it can lead to a better golf experience that for everyone that plays it even if you don't know all those details and think about think that way because again like i said i don't process it that way but it does exactly what you said like oh gosh yeah i would have never thought of that with that golf course i haven't been there before but i probably wouldn't have thought they they used the best part early

don't really come back to it but uh that's a big part of what goes into building these things and getting the most you possibly can out of a property sorry scott as i say i think a lot of golfers too they subconsciously notice it but they don't they're not aware you know they experience it and it and it shapes their feelings or their opinions but they're not aware of that i think another thing you see a bit which royal sydney used to do is you got a great piece of land and an architect uses it for one par five you know and i think a lot of a lot of the better architects will say put your par five is where you want to get through a piece of land quickly and royal sydney had what was their seventh hole was was on this great sort of tightrope ridge and that's now

two back-to-back short falls and they're both absolute highlights of the golf course and before you know it sort of was lost because two of the three shots you hit were just a drive and layup. So, yeah, Gil's definitely, he's focused the golf in where the land is good and where the land's not so good, you know, you breeze through that pretty quickly. What did he do on the, was it the 18th hole that was somewhat historic but also maligned as well? Yeah, so the 18th was, it's one of the great kind of tournament finishing holes in Australia. It, you know, plays up to there's this beautiful old kind of as a Georgian clubhouse, Maddie. I'm not great with my building architecture as my golf architecture, but this approach shot up to kind of the

doorstep of the clubhouse. But the drive was through this narrow shoot of thick trees and it was sort of lacked any strategic merit or any, you know, really the drive just set up the approach shot. If people go back and watch, there's a Australian Open Playoff featuring Jordan Speath and Cam Smith from about 12 years ago, that whole, that whole features. And so, you know, those trees were essentially to protect a little practice facility that's off to the left of the fairway. Gilles' view was the 18th hole of your championship course trumps your practice facility. Maybe your practice facility moves or goes somewhere else or, you know, the first hole of

their extra nine hole course needs to go somewhere else. Let's make this finishing hole a grandstand finish. And so those trees are gone. There's sand down the inside of the dog leg. And now it is like from Teter Green. It's majestic now. And it's kind of this fitting finish to what that golf course is. And when it does eventually host the Australian Open.

it again and it will, you know, it's going to be a worthy finishing hole of a national open. Let's change gears to your home course, Scott. And, you know, from a expectations perspective, I think I know the answer, but did the renovation accomplish everything that you wanted it to? This is New South Wales for the listeners' sake, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think the thing that always hung in my mind was that we were a top 30 in the world piece of land with a top, you know, last ranking before our update was 64th. That was probably fair to slightly generous. And so the renovation was really about lifting the floor of the golf course. You know, holes like five and six and 13 and 14, you know, they're all world holes. You don't need to do anything really to those other than. than make them consistent style-wise with the rest of the golf course. You know, we had five architects had work on our course.

So it was very, you know, piecemeal and like a patchwork quilt of architecture. So we needed consistency. We needed some of the holes inland to be lifted, you know, into polite society. We needed, you know, candidly, some of that, that middle paddock of the golf course was fairly municipal in that it was like, Cooch Fairway, Cooch, Fairway, Cooch, Fairway, not much detail. So I think it was bringing some of the texture of the sand. and the bunkering and McKinsey and Ebert came in on the heels of, you know, we had Tom Doak signed up to do the work, didn't work out between the club and Tom,

and I think getting McKenzie and Eben and I was really interested in, okay, these guys are a British firm, they work on the Open Rotar. You know, I was really curious about a British link-centric take on this very Australian bold golf course, and it's turned out brilliantly. You know, it's now, I never used to drive to golf at New South thinking, oh, I wonder where the pin is on X, Y, and Z. And now my drive is, oh, I wonder where the pin is on three. And, you know, if I see a mate coming off the course, I'll ask him, oh, you know, where is it on six? So that anticipation and excitement that only a great set of greens can create, we've got that now, you know, and so it is legitimately, you know, the new golf magazine, world ranking has us back in the top 50, you know, and you can hand on heart say, yeah, that's right.

makes sense. And we've got, you know, that was without the course being even finished. We've got a couple of holes that have just been tweaked in the last couple of weeks where got new bunkers and sandy waste going in still. So yeah, it's really exciting. I think that finally that potential might get met. Matt, do you agree? Yeah, yeah. The little areas of weakness that most attractors would have voiced about New South Wales. I think McKenzie and Ebert have addressed them and played there again that same trip

that I went up to Sydney to go and have a look at Royal Sydney and play New South Wales see Scott, see Maddie Burns in the shop it was a pleasure to walk around New South and see all the work that was done I was probably a bit less maybe not less positive

a bit more nervous than Scott perhaps I thought oh if they're going to start working on this ridge on 12 or they're going to do too much maybe it's going to look a bit obvious or they might not quite execute, but I think they've done a fantastic job on the courseworks. That's a course that I think back on, and I'm like, man, on a really windy day out there,

I don't know if I'm a good enough player to play regularly out there. That place, I have a lot of respect for the members out there that it is a brawny, brawny piece of land. And if you're hitting a little bit offline on the tee, especially kind of the meat of those holes coming in, that you're in for a really challenging day. Do you see, we need to play it in the wind. You tell me, Scott, which direction it would be.

We need five into the wind. Five is this par five that for people that haven't seen it is there's this big, a big, massive slope that is quite easily reached if you're hitting downwind. And it will run, like literally, I think the two times I've played, I think I've hit lob wedge into the green because you get 150 yards of run out. Yet if it's into the wind, you can't reach the top of the mound. and the hole would just be never ending, I feel like. But I want to, usually I'm rooting for a downwind par five.

I want to play that hole into the wind at some point. Because there was, what event did you say was there, Scott, that were guys were just re-teeing on repeat when it was into the wind? Was that you that was telling that story? 09, Ossie Open. There was carnage. And there was, we have a bad habit in Australia for about 10 years there of like historic winds coming up during Australian opens.

And, yeah, there was some incidents on the sand belt. I think there was a suspension of play the one time we had the Aussie open at New South. So, yeah, it's, and look, you just said, I don't know how you play it. I played it today in 30 clicks of wind. And I said to my mate, it's a good thing I'm enjoying the walk and the company because some days the golf just doesn't turn up. And yeah, Mark Leachman in 30 clicks, that's worth watching. Me in 30 clicks is not worth watching.

Well, what's the whole, is it 14 or 15, like the, like the, that drive kind of to the saddle fairway. I'm like, yeah, I remember playing that with Randy and both of us just looked to each other. We're like, I can't hit this fairway. Yeah. Yeah. And Randy had it on a string that day.

So as memory serves me solely, you only got Randy by one. So, you know, Randy was, Randy was vibing. And he brings this up and not the Bonnie Dune 65. We were talking about the lakes, which is right next to me. You don't even mention that.

You bring up me shooting whatever I shot at news. Thank you. Thank you. much that's great yeah well uh oh i can you find the hell it still as narrow as it ever was changing the subject to a a new build you guys were just recently at at seven mile beach take us there what was uh it's it's it's i feel like you've properly been patient on hey what is this place going to be we're not going to over hype it we're not you know we're going to see you know we're going to be patient with letting it grow in and all of that but listening to

to you guys it sounded as like the substance is there and it sounds like it's it's well on its way to being just an all world experience and geographically describe the journey as well for people that aren't familiar where it is and how you get there so well seven mile beach is essentially next door to hobart airport hobart's the capital city of tasmania it's about three hours south of barnbougal so for those who visited barn bugle june's barnbog lost farm. It's on the northern coast of Tasmania. Hobart is the southern coast of Tasmania. So Tasmania is not a big island. That's only three-hour drive. But Hobart was, you know, 2008, I first visited Hobart. You couldn't find a place to serve your dinner on a Friday night at

815. You know, it was a sleepy little town. It's come a long way. And, you know, world-class museums and whatnot, they're getting an Aussie rules football team. And this golf course, it's quite inspiring really because Matt Goggin who a lot of people would know as an Aussie touring pro of the kind of early 2000s he's one of the many people along with Tom Watson that almost won the 09 Open and so he was 15 you know playing in those dunes with his mates and he started to dream of golf in those dunes and he's now 51 and he's finally built the golf course so it is a great story it's right on the beach seven mile beach next to hobart airport and it had been a pine plantation. So you know, you walk that site now and it's this pure dunes land. It's sort of

of this west of Ireland links, you know, big shapes and big greens. But you look at, you look at the before photos and it really does make you respect. So Mike DeVries and Mike Clayton are the two architects. How they look at a piece of land covered in pine and conceive of what they've built is, is remarkable. And what they've built is, you know, I think it's, it's probably going to debut straight into the World Top 100, and that doesn't even feel particularly, you know, over the top to say. And I think as well, it's the kind of course that Matt and I both drove away from our day there. We played the best part of 36 holes.

And it's like, I need to see that hole five more times with five pins and different wins. And I think you can, you often can't discern the texture and the layers and the levels to a course, but you can feel when it's there. I think we've all played a course where we've driven away and gone, yeah, I've seen that. And I've experienced that now. Much as I love Bamboogle Dunes,

I think it's probably an example of that. But this course is just the prevailing feeling I have a week after playing it is I need to get back down there and play it like five more times. You're not helping my phone mode for golf travel. It's literally about as far away

as I could possibly travel to a golf course. But that, I'm like thinking, I think it is all next fall. Could we do it, T.C.? Can we get that? there, would that be the best time, period? I'm sure. What would be farther away?

Perth or Hobart for us? Probably Hobart just with the extra flight, right? Yeah, travel time. You're going a long way other way, just doing both. Yeah. Matt, what was your impression? I was just, much as, much as Scott said, just so much to consider such an amazing site and to think that it was just covered in pine trees and clearly a lot of it is

manufactured but doesn't feel or look manufactured. I think you'd have to be really, really invested within the project from a decade ago to think, oh, no, no, no, no, they moved all this or they did all that or this was all under trees and you'd never have that if you were just new to the course and came along and visited and hadn't heard stories about. tens of thousands of pines being cleared from the site previously. It's a great set of greens, really imaginative greens in parts. Just endless fun around greens as well. And we walked off one hole and then you'd look back at the green and think,

oh, next time if we come here and the wind's quartering from a different direction or the pin is in this spot, more fun, different shots, maybe a different drive line as well on that hole. really cool rhythm to the round as well there's there's good interplay between a few short holes and longer ones easier ones testing ones a segment of the course where you feel like you can really put your foot down and be assertive if you want and then one or two holes later in the round where you want to buckle in and hold on and get a good score on the card i think it will i think it'll stand the test of time i think people will want to go back and play it again and

And I think it'll, and these things are always personal taste. Some people have Barnbougal Dunes, Lost Farm and Cape Wickham in a slightly different order to someone else. But it's in that bracket. It's amongst the very, very best courses in the country. And 11 bunk of screens too. So, yeah, that's bravery, I think, from the architects to build 11 bunkerless screens. And I think that probably speaks to how good the landforms are, too, that they can carry the interest in the challenge without sand.

It looks like the collaboration between yeah Mark the Mike DeVries and Mike Clayton like I mean it's like two great stewards of the game right like those two are such a great match for each other and the way that Clayts talks about golf courses versus you know the way and the way Mike designs them like it it's a it's a really really cool combination and I'm stoked to hear that you guys liked it that much did they get their water issues sorted? Yeah, they've got a recycled pipe coming through power to the site which will make the next course much easier to build, which King Collins are going to be very, very appreciative of, no doubt. An unmade road heading in there for the last couple of miles, but they've got a good site cleared for a clubhouse that's going to be central to both courses. ultimately they've got a car park sealed for that eventual clubhouse side as well. So they're making progress. It's really good to see. A quick break here to remind you. There is a way you can get better at golf this winter.

If you're putting the clubs up for a little while, there is still a way you can train your body for when that springtime rolls around, when you're getting back out with your buddies, you will be better at golf. And that is if you go to the stack system.com slash NU. Use code no laying up to get 10% off their offerings there and start the speed. training program. It is remarkably easy to do. It takes one hour, maybe an hour, 10 minutes total out of your week. Two workouts a week that includes the stretching routine that comes with it.

Your body will be in better physical shape. You will be very easily get in touch with the faster twitch muscles. I don't know the science behind it. I don't. All I can say is I have done it. I've never gotten more feedback on any product we've ever endorsed in terms of the immediate returns they've gotten out of this speed training program. It tells you exactly what to do, when to do it. and you will come out next year hitting the golf ball farther and with more ease you it's people conflate swinging fast with swinging hard this is not about swinging hard it's about swinging faster with more ease it's just easier to tap into your power my body has been breaking down on me and i've admittedly not been involved in the stack and my speed has gone down and it's

killing me i'm ready to get back into it this winter i need this back and wrist to get a little healthy but that's on me you should try it the stack system dot com slash and on you code no laying up And if you've been waiting, if you're an Android user, if you've been waiting for the stack to arrive there, it is here, it is ready, the speed training is ready, the learning library is ready. Wedge and putting is coming here soon. That's a whole other avenue, great offering that you get with a stack subscription. It's worth it. I promise you. There's just been so much great feedback from so many people, and I can tell you personally. It's been a great, great tool to have in the bag that extra speed when you need it. StackSystem.com slash an all you, code no laying up. Back to Maddie and Scott. you guys had had tom doke on last month or two months ago a month and a half ago uh and just listening to him talk about the build at teraidi and and you know obviously that one was much more natural on the ground but how challenging that was just because it was same same thing it was pine forest and you know you wouldn't know that all this stuff was was kind of down below and the pictures that i see of seven mile beach obviously you know not not kind of

want to slope down towards the water more more kind of you know dunesy lynxland part up against the water but it just it looks like the australian answer to terra it from a from a at least from a drone perspective is that is that is that is that off basically yeah aesthetically there's a lot there's a lot there that's similar uh obviously the people who are listening and and are like oh i'd like to check this place out hopefully unlike tarati this is completely public So jump on the website, book a tea time, you're there, you're away. Yeah, look, I think architecturally it's, it's probably a bit less refined and a bit less subtle than Taradi. I think it's, you know, Matt Goggins talked about this being their big Irish links and then the King Collins course next door will be their Scottish links, a bit like lower profile, smaller dunes.

So the style of the golf's different But I think the look and feel And the texture of the place Yeah, it does call a lot of Tauridi You know, it's next to an airport But you don't really experience that You see the planes, you don't hear them You're right on the beach, you're looking across the water

To, you know, some other landforms So it does have that feeling of remoteness That the Tarridi also has What's the timeline on the second course? I think they want to get started next year so they've got an MOU with the state government which is always helpful and yeah my understanding is you know some work next year you know probably if King Collins can can make time because like they're everywhere now yeah I'm just looking to you could go I mean is this a viable thing if

you're in Melbourne on a sand belt trip you could jump a flight 645 a.m. out of Melbourne to Hobart 10 minutes to the golf course play the golf course fly back that afternoon 440s it'd be $175 flight and whatever fare it would take to get you to the golf course and you'd be right back in the bed. You slept in to start the day. It's quite a light lift, honestly, especially just the proximity to that airport has to be a huge selling point. Yeah, we had our rankings panel down there with us last week to play it before our rankings were due. They're going to come out later this month. And we had probably half a dozen of our panel from Melbourne who flew down first thing in the morning, played 36 holes and flew home, well, home for dinner.

I reckon 50% of my missions to Barnboogel have been hit and run missions in the same day. And I'll play 27 or 36 in the peak of summer and get the first flight in, last flight out. And you're making that drive back down to Launceston Airport looking at your watch, but it can be done. And it's infinitely easier because there's just such a short commute time between the airport and the first T for 7 Mile Beach. So definitely doable. And like coming out of Sydney, I've got, I've got two flights a day to Launceston to go to Bamboogel. Like there's nine from Sydney to Hobart, direct, no stops. So yeah, it's going to be a cinch for a day trip.

What's the museum in Hobart? No, no. Okay. That place sounds wild. Yeah, yeah, there's some stuff there that you're not going to see in a lot of other museums. you know walls of certain female body parts you know presented as art

so yeah certainly like the opposite of playing golf whatever the opposite of a down the golf course is I think Mona ticks that box well I know TSI you unfortunate for you I think you've said your trip to Hobart is going to be you're not even going to bring your club

you want to go down there and not even play golf so unfortunately I think that's yeah yes you did that was your I just want to hang out in Hobart for a couple of times not even bring my clubs unfortunately you got to check that off before you bring your clubs down and play seven while.

Go ahead. There's another course coming for Hobart, if they can get the approvals, their approval's been a little bit more challenging than seven mile. But a course called Arm End, which is across the water from seven mile. It's a OCRM, Ogivocke and Mead course. And, you know, they're hoping to get started next year. But that's going to be, you know, one of the kind of calling cards of Mona is Constitution Wharf in Hobart, which is kind of famously where the city to Hobart,

yacht race finishes every year. You catch a ferry up the river to Mona. It's part of the kind of thing. The drive out to Arm End is pretty long. So they're going to be running a private boat, you know, kind of Fisher's Island style out to Arm End. So potentially, you know, if all these things come to fruition, Hobart, Hobart could legitimately be the second best Gulf City in Australia in 10 years time.

Wow. What are OCS up to down in Australia right now? They've got a ton of stuff going. here in the states. But, okay. They're putting the finishing touches on one. I'm working on a theory that Mark and Ashley have cloned themselves because it's the only way I can explain that they're doing all of the work they're doing.

Kind of like Gill as well. I've always wondered that about Gil. But now, what were you going to say? They're putting the finishing touches on Long Island, which is the fourth course of the national, next door to Peninsula Kingswood. so they've got a bit of a novel concept going there with a course within a course

and they'll have a couple of different sequences and routes that you can follow so you might say that Friday is going to be course A but Monday is going to be course B they're steadily nearing the finish line at Huntingdale which is next door to Metropolitan so that's sort of

the that was the multi-decade host of the Australian Masters back in the day where Greg Norman won all of his gold jackets when we played for the Australian Masters here. So they've done a ton of work there and that's that's looking fantastic and there's a discussion that's been brewing in Melbourne for the last couple of years as to whether Metropolitan and Huntingdale would merge. And this hasn't been the first time that this has been discussed, but this is probably the most serious the discussion's ever been, and I think it's in large part because metropolitan members look over the fence and

think, oh, we're going to be playing a very good golf course if we merge with these guys. So it'll be interesting to watch all of that unfold in the next little while. OCRM and doing some work at Royal Queensland, sort of getting a little bit of stuff done in terms of grasses, greens, bunker linings, one or two other little things in preparation for the Olympics, which are less than seven years away and Royal Queensland is the host for the Olympic Games golf, 2032. What else are they doing, Scott?

So they've made a few changes at the lakes this year. They have recently finished a massive redo of Mount Lawley in Perth, which has been really super well received. They're doing a lot of work at, so it's interesting, my clock, sorry, my cocking and Ashley Mead were both associates

of Mike Clayton's back in Mike Clayton Golf Design Days became Ogleby Clayton, became OCCM. And they're doing a lot of work at places that they would have worked at as associates, you know, when Clayton did big redesigns. And I think there's probably natural that, you know,

you're working on a project for someone else and you, there's something you might have done differently and, you know, a lot of those renovations were probably 2005, 2008. So they're almost 20 years old. And those clubs are looking at refresh, you know, in Sydney, you know, Bonnie Dune's been done since then New South, we're all Sydney. So there's a challenge to kind of always be keeping yourself up to date. So it's interesting, I think, for Mike and actually going back into places where they're

now the principal and they're kind of doing those things the way that they would like to do them. But they are working, yeah, basically everywhere. And then they're also, you know, well, they got probably half a dozen courses on the go in the US. Yeah, I played the, I played the, Kyle Franz course at Luling down south of Austin a couple months ago and I toured the the OCM course and what they're doing there is I mean I think like one of them's going to be like it like it's it's the closest thing I've seen to like the old course the concepts on the old

course in the United States just you know biggest greens you've ever seen like massive double greens and some you know crazy railroad ties just just some some really wild stuff at scale so uh what are what's what's what's clay's up to other than than seven mile beach he's got uh portsy going right or or planning that out yeah he's he's busy as well he's doing a little bit of work uh with harley cruise and some vegetation stuff at yariara as well sort of putting the finishing touches on the course there after all, the Renaissance work was done a few years ago. He's consulting at a couple of different clubs in Victoria

and throughout other states as well. And I think... Yeah, they're doing some work at Royal Perth. Yeah. Royal Perth. And he's also doing Eleanor in Sydney, which is potentially, like, that could be a really fantastic golf course. It's not currently.

It's overgrown and there's some bad decisions, at the last renovation or rebuild that they did. So I think Clayton Harley are at the moment trying to, I think, win the trust of the membership to get them to give them the keys. But if Clayton Harley could get free reign at Eleonora, that could become, you know, a must play in Sydney course. Is Perth on the come up? Like it seems like there's some cool land out there.

It seems like a really cool city, too. I've talked to Curtis Locke about it. I've talked to Lucas Michelle about it out there. It sounds like there's potential there. There's just, you know, there's just not a big reservoir of, of, you know, classic design to draw upon there. Yeah, Karen Up is really, Lake Karan Up, which was designed by Alec Russell, so Royal Melbourne East's creator, creator of Parapuramu Beach and Yarra as well.

Lake Karanup is his work over in Perth. Robert Trent Jones did 27 holes at Jundle up there around the time that he was in Australia to do the old course at the National and he also did High at Regency Cullum up north of Brisbane when he was down here doing that work. There's some modern stuff in Perth.

There's Mount Lawley, as Scott said. There's Royal Perth and Royal Freo that are going to get worked on and improved a little bit particularly in regards to Royal Perth. There's little course. here and there that you'd sort of find little hidden gems around Perth as well. Occasionally I have a soft spot for some city.

Kennedy Bay has been a highlight for WA golfers as well. That's a link-style course that Ian Baker-Finch had a little bit to do with decades ago, and that's very British in feel, very understated flatland, quite close to the water, subject to some good winds. And so they've done some nips and tucks around that. It was nine holes for a while, but only recently just opened up as 18 again. So that'll be exciting to see that return to its place of prominence in W.A.

And then just kind of completing the circle around Australia, Adelaide, and what's the latest on Kangaroo Island off the coast there? We had some drone footage for the back of a truck. about two weeks ago. So they've been quite guarded with footage or photos of that. There's essentially one hole that you get photos of and one of the holes on the cliffs there. That's, of course, a Darius Oliver course,

who was co-designer to Mike DeVries at Cape Wickham. Obviously, famous golf author who's kind of parlayed that into a career in architecture. We had a listener who was there with his family just on a family trip and had his drone and took it for a fly. and it looks like it could be a pretty provocative course. It's on gigantic cliffs. It's got a significant amount of the course inland. There looks to be some really oversized greens and some big features,

nice and wide. So they're talking about some preview play about April, May next year. So not too far away. Whole thing's grasped and growing in. It looks like it's going to be an interesting, an interesting course. And for Darius, I think, a pretty significant course because of some of that conjecture about, you know, who the father is of Cape Wickham.

I've always felt like, well, Mike DeVries has kind of made his case for himself through all his work in the US and whatnot. For Darius, I feel like the first thing, the first significant course he does after Cape Wickham is almost going to reinforce or discredit his claim to having a significant role in. Cape Wickham. I mean, as much as you can tell anything from some drone, you know, up in the air, it looks like it's going to be a course that's going to be definitely worth seeing. It's going to get some

chat. How's 18 at Cape Wickham doing? It's slowly falling into the ocean solely. And yeah, it's a bit of a sore point with us because, you know, we talk about this and people think that we have decided that we're going to death ride Cape Wickham. And it's certainly not the case, but I think it's just the reality that that hole is that hole is getting narrower you know it's the erosion has reached the green side now so i think there's going to have to be a long-term solution that involves they're not being a golf hole you know in that specific place which is a great chain because i mean it was one of the most striking eye-catching holes in australia but you know the southern ocean is undefeated i was blown away just even thinking about i really like to keep work i'm

I just thought, I thought ocean dunes was so underrated for what it was. And, and, yeah, there's, there's a few holes that are wonky. Like, you know, it gets docked points for the routing and it's, it's definitely a riding course. You know, there's some, there's some wonky moments there. But just as far as the golf holes on the ground at Ocean Dunes, I thought it was, it was kind of put forth as, hey, this is, this is the B-side course on the island. And I thought, man, for a FISA course, that was the, I think they had two, two A courses on the island. I think the challenge was always going to be just the commercials, right, of King Island is, is so remote and it's expensive to get to, you know, if you're nervous about small planes, that can be a challenge. Accommodation options are pretty few and far between.

and you know you look at ocean dunes well if you're in melbourne you can drive down to the morning's peninsula and you can play the june's or st andrews beach for a hundred bucks so i think the challenge has always been like it's not the merit of the courses so much as the proposition for a golfer who's spending money out of their pocket to go here or go here leaving aside barn boogel which is you know you can fly a bigger plane in less time and and the rounds are cheaper. It's always just that commercial puzzle. I think if they can solve the commercial puzzle,

it's got so much going for it. But until that happens, I think there's going to be some questions about the future of golf on the island, unfortunately. Just listen to how you guys are describing all the work that's going on just like in, you know, on the mainland of how already

some of the best golf in the world is getting elevated, like to your point, the reason to go specifically to King Island. Those are amazing golf courses. It's an amazing experience. But you know, you could spend two weeks between Tasmania, Sam Beldon, up in Sydney, and not run out of great golf supply. So why need to go to King Island for great experience?

It's a very unique problem, I think, for golfing to your guys part of the world. What's a course? I'll ask each of you guys this, Sala, you included. what's what's a course that you haven't played in australia you're that's that's tops on your list to play well i'll go first is cape wickham i um i had to miss a trip unfortunately with mattie when it opened and it's just you know i guess i'm probably an example of the golfer that i just described there's there's always been another option that makes more sense i need to go and do it now like i just need to prioritize it and go uh but yeah i guess that's

That's the one. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm fascinated to talk with you once you've, like the pod we record after you've played that. I'm so looking forward to that, Scott. Like it's just because that probably also means that I'll go down there with you. That means I get to see it again,

which I'm really excited about. The course for me is Cathedral Lodge, David Evans, private club, Norman Design, course up in rural Victoria. If you drive out of Melbourne towards the Arrow Valley and the wine producing region, that's about 50% of the way.

You get about another hour in the car and you're finally at Cathedral Lodge. It's been there for years and the stars just haven't aligned so I've not seen it, but I'll hopefully see it in the next couple of months. I had to Google it just to check. TC, we've done pretty well in Australia.

I'm pretty, pretty proud of it. I've played all the top 10 in Australia except for Ellerson, which is the famously mega private golf course. And I don't know much about it. I have no desire to play specifically just because it's in the top 100. That's not a reason why I would desire it much. But I end up at the national. I've never played any of the courses at the national.

They sound fantastic. I don't hear a lot of conversation about them because, again, it's such an embarrassment of riches down there. But it sounds like there's some fantastic golf to be played down there. And the views look incredible as well. So you drove really close to it on tourist source season one, Sully, when you went down to St Andrews Beach on that first day

to stretch the legs and adapt. The National is down there. And so Trent Jones course was designed in the late 80s and it's classic sort of Robert Trent Jones Jr. 80s style aesthetic. And it's big and curvy. And it's, that's it. There's another site where you just look and think,

how the hell did they end up routing 18 holes and constructing 18 holes on this property? It is dramatic. And there's some beautiful views to be taken in and little receptive bowls within greens. So if your wedge game's on and you've brought your imagination and you know where putts are breaking,

you can have a heck of a time on that course. And it's not going to enter the world top 100. It's not going to enter the world top 200. But it is a course that definitely leaves a lasting memory. And the other the other newer courses down there at that at that Mornington Peninsula site for the National Moona course, which was designed by Bob Harrison and Greg Norman. I have this feeling that you would love that solely. I don't know what makes me say that, but I just, I feel like you would be really

buzzed playing that course and that it would really resonate with you. And then Gunnamatta is Dock's redo of a Peter Thompson course that opened about 25 years ago, called Ocean, or the Ocean course. And a lot of pushed up greens and a lot of long holes and perhaps a bit of inartistic bunkering and construction and a few head scratches in terms of green complexes on ocean. And so the club did a great thing, in my opinion, and getting Tom Doak in to come in and reimagine that course. So they've got 54 holes with each course being of distinctly different flavour.

if you could get down there and play for two days and tick all of them off, you would have a blast. Yeah. Yeah, three really distinct courses as well, you know, which they all have their merit. There's not one that's like a Diet Coke version of the other. And when I think of like golf in Australia, if I had to drop someone in to play one golf course in Australia,

that was representative of Australia as a country, it's the moot of course at National. It's unvarnished. it's bold and it's a bit aggressive and there's some stuff that doesn't quite make sense but it's memorable and it's fun so yeah i probably think gunman is a better course but i think mooner at national to me is bob harrison's best golf course and that includes ellister i think it's commonwealth i've never played commonwealth i've heard wonderful things about the renovation it just feels like a total blind spot for me in the midst of all this other great golf i've played on

the sand belt um i've never played yara era as well but but i think commonwealth just talking to people and and you know knowing that routing and and you haven't looked at it a little bit it's like all right i'm very keen to see what what the what the renaissance golf guys did there they did a really good job um they had an official opening of the the reworked course about this time last year brian slournick got up and spoke to hundreds of members and He got a few questions from the floor and a few questions from the MC that night. And I remember he was talking about his first guiding principle of respecting the good stuff that was there and first do no harm. And so he had to restore a lot of the luster to what was there from decades prior.

And I think the membership is unanimous that he's done that. They had a really sort of seminal figure in their early club history, a guy named Charles Lane. who's also almost a mini Australian version of CB McDonald, went over to the UK, studied different golf courses, came back here with all of these thoughts in his mind and helped to round out the 18 holes at Commonwealth. And there's pictures of him in summer, in a bunker, shirt off, digging bunkers.

Like it's got to be on this side of the fairway, but that side of the green. And Doak talked glowingly about Commonwealth in that first iteration of the confidential guide. And it's, the course is now probably closer to Doke's description then, than it's been at any point prior, well, in the, in the, in the, in the 40 years prior. So. Nice.

Yeah. It's, uh, yeah, Solonix work at, at Royal Adelaide has been fantastic as well. And, um, yeah, it's just, you know, just thoughtful, thoughtful stuff. So what, uh, Scott, any word on Moore Park? Any news on that front? the Muni in Sydney there? Yeah, so Moor Park, for those who don't know, is a public golf course

essentially right in the middle of Sydney. It's in the middle of a Centennial and Moore Park precinct, which is probably 100 hectares of parkland. The Lord Mayor of Sydney has wanted this notch on her belt for 15 years. She's wanted the golf course gone, notwithstanding that that parkland

is tremendously underutilised. and we had a change of government in New South Wales about two years ago and the previous liberal government, which is our conservative side of government, had basically said, no, it's our, you know, it funds the rest of the park lands. We maintain all the park lands off the revenue from more park. They do about 75,000 rounds a year. And that doesn't include the people who jump on at Twilight and play a few holes. You know, it's a real kind of starting point for golfers in Sydney.

It's like a $55 golf course. So the current government has said, look, yep, we hear you. It's going to get out of nine holes. We're going to give all this parkland back to the community. I mean, the land they want to give back to the community is next to a like nine lane road with a tunnel under it as well. Like it's not enviable parkland. There's, as I said, you know, basically, you know, Hyde Park in London or Central Park in New York. Like that exists 400 metres to the east.

It's underutilised. It's there. The argument is, oh, these people don't want to walk for 100 metres. They want to recreate on their doorstep. It's going to be an absolute debacle if it happens. The plan is for the changes to happen the middle of next year. I think from a golfer's point of view, we hope that the fact that that's during an election campaign

might help a stay of execution for Moorpark. Shout out to Jared Kendler and the Save More Park Alliance who've been working really hard to, you know, they've come up with an alternate concept. They've presented a government saying, we can keep 18 holes and give you 20 hectares back. You know, they've worked really hard to respect the fact that, okay, let's give some more land to the community,

but we need to keep 18 holes on this piece of land. It's really a misplaced kind of act of class warfare by the Lord Mayor. But, you know, as we've just talked about Royal Sydney and New South Wales and the lakes and the Australian, and this isn't hitting class warfare. this is hitting people who pay 50 bucks for a game of golf or who pay, you know, a very small amount for an annual membership. A lot of people get into the game through more park.

So we hope that there is a way forward to keep 18 holes there. But it's very much, you know, the momentum is against the golf community. So I think it's important for golfers to just keep respectfully advocating for golf to keep, to keep golf on that property, United House. I think on that note, like, I thought the podcast that you guys did with, is it Kate, Kate Torgerson or on kind of vegetation and, you know, flora and, you know, just natural, you know, settings on golf courses was like one of the most impactful things I've listened to this year of thinking about golf courses as a part of the ecosystem

and as regenerative instead of this, you know, thing that sits there as like a blight on the landscape and just, you know, you were talking about the wildflower walks that Mr. Forsyth does at rural Melbourne or, you know, Clyde Crockford stuff or the seed banks and the green orchids popping up after after stuff gets burned off i like i thought that that was such a because that's what i really uh started to value a lot more over the last couple of years is just time on a golf course is time in nature and you know that's that's really uh that's really shown itself to be true like on trips to nebraska uh or when we went to sweden sale and you were surrounded by all these wildflowers and it's just it's like man like that's that's a big part of my

enjoyment of golf is just feeling like I'm on a walk in nature and really leaning into that and learning learning about the various plants or the various trees or, you know, just mosses out there. It's cool. So, but also, like, I think that's really important for non-golfers to realize, hey, this isn't just, you know, like a hundred acres of, of fertilized grass. There's more going on. Yeah. I think golf's been really bad at demonstrating. its environmental bona fides, you know, particularly in Australia for the last 10 years, golf in big cities has been under fire. Like Melbourne has lost a course, Brisbane has lost a course, Sydney's now at risk of,

golf I think needs to do better at showing that, you know, there's a lot of really threatened habitats in Australian cities that only really exist in 2025 on golf courses. So, you know, Royal Sydney had a hell of a time getting approval to pull down a bunch of oak trees and pine trees and stuff that should never be in Sydney and replace it with indigenous vegetation that's going to increase biodiversity, flora and fauna biodiversity.

Like it is good for the environment. It is good for everyone who breathes air around that golf course. But I think golf's kind of had this siege mentality and they've probably arrived at it reasonably. But I think the way out of this for golf is to advocate for all the good things that golf courses are doing in urban environments.

rural Melbourne's a shining example but like in Sydney there's this eastern suburbs banksia scrub that essentially doesn't exist anymore other than on four or five golf courses when I remember when we were at Bonnie Dune to just how much how much work was going on between holes on on vegetation stuff I don't remember the details of what it was but I just remember being like huh like I wouldn't have would not have thought of that I would not have thought that would have been a a priority on a golf course, but, you know, once it was pointed out, it was like, huh, that's, that's super interesting. Matt, have you done a lot of time, you had a lot of time that day to look at that stuff

solid because you only hit the ball 65 times. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. You're back in good graces. Thank you, Scott.

Matt, have you done that wildflower walk? Yes. Yes. I go to it most years and always learn something new. Always see lots of interesting stuff. And it makes me appreciate the course more and more every subsequent round. We have a horticulturalist at Real Melbourne who works alongside Richard Forsy, a guy who has been there more than 20 years, Stuart Moody.

And just the intellectual property possesses the care and the love that he shows for that whole landscape is amazing. So he usually co-hosts that walk. And we get a reasonable number of members. We get a good number of people from the local municipality and council and a couple of people from just the nearby community who are interested to see what's going on. So they come and do the walk for a few hours and then they're able to stick their nose into the clubhouse

and have a coffee and chat and look around and think, oh, this is what's behind these fences. And they have a bit more of an appreciation, rounded appreciation for the Corsend Club, which is fantastic. excellent yeah i think that's one of those things that takes a really great golf course and you go out there on a you know on a late afternoon early evening and the sun is shining just right and it takes it from you're playing golf to almost a religious experience of you know getting those layers and those those extra it's just that extra bump which uh speaking of which that extra bump what did you guys

think any big what were your big takeaways from the golf magazine top 100 worldwide that they came out i was i was a tiny bit surprised that peninsula kingswood's north course wasn't in there uh they'd listed in just one big cluster the one the 101 to 150 and it not being in there i'd just automatically assume that it would be somewhere inside the world top hundred um what else what else i was happy for i was happy for cape wickham's sake that it was in the top 100 and it's still in people's consciousness i think that's going to help drag a few more people along to go and see it which is which is positive always selfishly happy to see your own clubs enjoy a high ranking and some and some recognition as well i can say that i personally

feel royal melbourne east is is underrated like there's there's There's a lot of courses on the ranking that I'm like, man, I would, I would play a role in EAST ahead of that. So question then, it's up to number 82 in the world, T.C. Where would you look at Royal Melbourne and say that is appropriately rated? I would say top 55 or 60. I mean, there's, you know, it's just kind of when you're, when you're going against, it's almost like individual matchups, right?

Would I rather play there or there? Would I rather play? Because I think, you know, like you said earlier when you're talking about the composite routing, some of the strongest holes on on either course or on the east. And, you know, I think one of the things that's maybe looked at as a flaw is, is, you know, the scale changes a little bit when you get off that main paddock. But to me, that actually makes me appreciate, like, it's more of a journey when you're, when you're playing that course because it kind of goes from big to, you know,

a little bit smaller or a little bit more narrow scale. And then it kind of opens back up. and it makes you, like, it's a cool visual journey, and it kind of makes you appreciate that main paddock even more. Plus, the part of the reason are just epic. Yeah. Beth Page is 56 on this list. Like I would, what's it, 9-1?

I'd rather play role Melbourne East over, over Beth page. 10-0. 10-0. I was pretty nice. Yeah, 10-0. I'll say this. I thought this was going to be blasphemous. I don't know if you guys heard our pod a couple weeks ago after we played the park down in West Palm.

Like T.C. had said before we went down there, T.C. does not usually use hyperbole very often, but he had said, like, this is, you're going to love this place. It's the closest thing to the sand belt I've seen. And I was like, okay, sure, dude, but it's fine. Man, there are some Royal Melbourne golf holes on that course. The, like, the ninth hole is a par five that is, like, 17 east. Like, it's right along the property boundary on the right. There's cross bunkers that come in short of the green that start, you know, kind of front left and move to the back right. and then you get to get to 11 and he's like what hole is this and I turn around like oh my God this is five on west like this is unbelievable just even the way he tied some of these holes it it's is really impressive and again I don't say this lightly knowing the affinity we have for golf and your part of the world of like they that is the closest I've seen to the Melbourne sand bout anywhere here in the states it's really really impressive very good that's an achievement to do it down there Because there's... Climate and agronomy are not sort of lending themselves to that

as much as they would in a cooler part of the US. That's interesting. Yeah. I've got to say, the closest I've felt to Australia in the US was on Pinehurst No. 2. Yep. You know, I felt like I walked off Pinehurst number 2 and if there was Tui's new on Taping the Clubhouse,

I wouldn't have been shocked. yeah i think the thing with the park is it it both feels it's very much on the ground uh you know tight turf everywhere short grass everywhere very much second shot golf course um but but not mindless off the tea uh but i think the other thing that just brings it up to that that world class level for me is like the the flora the plants i feel like I feel like I'm looking at exotic stuff, and I feel like they're, you know, I feel like I'm down there and there's, there's parakeets flying and there's, there's cool stuff. So I'm talking about birds here.

I don't want to get you going too much, but, uh, but, uh, you know, just, just seeing, you know, some trees that you don't normally see, you know, elsewhere in the States or some, some stuff that's really, you know, kind of framing. Scott, any, or, uh, Matt, any update on, on, on, on your tree. on on on uh on that main paddock there it's a sensitive subject but um i know that's your lifelong crusade it's had a little trim since since you're in town last still standing still standing for for context this is this is the which hole the the 15 on the glider tree east yes yeah correct yeah lone tree that sort of

skewered from your view on the tea, but it's on the inside of the dog leg. Not a super attractive tree, not a remarkable specimen. And you can be in the fairway and have hit a very deliberate and skillful long iron or fairway would fade to a correct portion of the fairway to have the best angle into a back left pin and you just can't see the green because that tree's in the way. I feel it would be a much better hole if that tree was not there. It's very diplomatic. That's what else stated.

Don't you on that hole? So you just miss the green way right then chip in? Like that's, I think that's in the yardage book. You remember my golf game better than I do my own, I think. Yeah, that was in the match against Ben. I extended it in my life a little longer

with a chip in on that hole. Do you guys have any big trips coming up? beyond Australia and this is probably a lead into talking about Terry Eadie a little bit and your trip up there recently but anything planned. I just want to go back there.

I'll just go back there, thanks. I'm going to try and get some links golf in next Aussie winter, northern summer. I'm going to pitch it to my wife that our kids are now old enough that she could fly with them and I could maybe go a week ahead and saves me playing golf on our family holiday.

That's, you know, I have concepts of a plan. It's very self-person. Yeah. Very good. I'd like to get back to seven miles ago. I would love to get to, I'd like to get to King Island with Scott. And I'm just going to keep entering the old course and reverse ballot until I hit it. I've got unfinished business

and then I went over to Scotland almost 25 years ago and did not play North Berwick. It's a bit of a bag tag Barry and I've got some things to address there. So I think that... Matt is one of those guys that went to Scotland

and played the open rotor. You can tell it's weighing on his conscience, 25 years. Unfinished business. Got some things to settle. Some scores to settle over there. I can't think of a person that's better qualified both objectively and subjectively to appreciate the old course in reverse of

I think it would be you know you would be a very deserving recipient of of one of those times thank you I was motivated looking at you guys navigate it I was living very vicariously through you when you when you filmed that round and presented all of that I I wasn't really very enamored with the weather. That was just brutal, brutal. You could have jumped in a cold tub and, you know, and then live vicariously through us. I think that's the worst weather I've never played in.

I've never, you wouldn't ever think you'd get to the, what is essentially the 18th hole at St. Andrews. You're teeing off from the second fairway and think, like, I truly don't know how I can hit this fairway. With how hard this wind is blowing left to right, I don't know where I'd have to start this to hit the widest fairway in the world. I don't know how I'm going to hit this one.

Like, you hit the ball and it just, it starts drifting right. You're like, hold on, hold on. Stop, stop, stop. And I barely, I think I barely kept it in play. It was, it was blowing that hard. Yeah, water on the club face, just, yeah, like 38 degrees, just brutal. I'm going to say, too, away from architecture and not pissing in your pockets. A trip I want to do is I want to come and play in the Nest Invitational Tournament one year.

That looks like a hell of a lot of fun. And for whatever reason, I've always been intrigued by desert golf. Everyone tells me that it's not particularly good and that I shouldn't be intrigued by it, but I just need to come and play golf in Arizona and the NIT looks like a huge amount of fun. So, and November's a pretty good time of year to duck out of Sydney. Yeah.

We can make that happen more. I think it, what Dobs and Ranch is where we play it, it would not be, it would not fall in that desert golf category because the desert golf you've heard described is like deserts and cactuses lining each fairway. You miss the fairway. You might lose your ball or get bit by something poisonous.

And that's what makes Dobson Charming is it's in a pad. It's in a, you know, there's neighboring holes and it's not routed out through desert. Charming is one way to put it. I think it's charming. I really do think it's very flat. We hit it at tricky time because they've just overseated. So it's pretty soft and slow.

But it actually makes it this really interesting test to where puts a real premium on your iron play. You got to hit you got to hit greens and you got to hit it pretty close to make birdies. It's a blast. Great group of people. And, you know, Aaron does. Yeah, like the event, like the draw cut. It just looks like a really sweet. Open invite for you guys.

Yeah, we can definitely make that happen. Yeah. Doing your own rankings. What does that look like, that process look like? And what have you learned so far? or have you come to appreciate some of the existing rankings more knowing how hard it is? I think what's interesting is that everyone seems to have, you know, do you have criteria? Do you rank in buckets or do you rank in order?

And I think we identified very early on our own shortcomings. And we, so we got a listener who's a statistics PhD reached out and said, if you'd like my help, I'm happy to help. And what was really great was our instinct was just get, just get people to rank the courses in the order that they think they go and his advice was you know there's actually that's a statistical model called plaque it loose he said yes you should use that so i think it was it feels right for golf architecture to not tell your panelists well you have to score it out of 20 for this and 40 for this and to just get the right people on your panel and just say put them in

order from one to 50 or 55 or wherever how deep you want to go and just trust people to not know what golf architecture means to them. And so, you know, we're still getting votes and we're still peeling through them. But I think what I've noticed is that we've given nobody any direction. Half our panel has never ranked golf courses before. And there's this clear consensus, I think, on, you know, the tiers of golf courses that we have in Australia. There's not really been any wild ballots that we're just kind of like questionable. I find it interesting that we've sort of got to that without an obvious pervading group think,

given the diversity of our panel. They're men, their women, they're young, they're old, they can play, they can't play, they're spread across various states. We've got an international contingent that supplements the locals. And people are going to use different methods as well. Scott was talking with me not too long ago about some people assessing, course quality by virtue of its, how high is its ceiling? Others will say, oh, I'm going to mark it down by virtue of how low its floor is. Others look and say, well, how unique was it? And so

we all arrive at that final decision on a course's rank or worth or merit in different ways. But then, yeah, I have this feeling that there'll be relatively clear strata to the different courses at the point of end in Australia. Yeah, I'm fascinated to see what you guys come up with. because it's such an interesting exercise and you guys are both extremely well equipped to kind of navigate those waters. The statistical stuff from our help from Davis, who's going to help us has helped us a ton already.

I'm interested to see how he can slice through some of that data and perhaps look at it in a slightly different way, presented or massage it and tease out certain. amounts from it, little things that a traditional 1 through 50 list on one page doesn't necessarily give you. I remember I sort of surreptitiously surveyed friends almost 20 years ago and I asked them for their best, I think I asked them for their best 15 courses. And so I started to, in a very rudimentary way, look at people and say, well, have you seen everything in what most would consider the top 10? And if so, what did you think of Kingston Heath? What

do you think of this course relative to that course? Where did you have Barne Bougall Dunes? Where did you have lost farm relative to Barn Bougal Dunes? And then you look at someone else and say, oh, okay, you've only seen three of the top 10 courses in the country, according to popular opinion. How does your ballot differ to everyone else's? And I think that we'll be able to tease some of that information out. And I think that will make for interesting food for thought. Yeah. And how do our women panelists see courses versus our men panelists. How do our, you know, 12 to 18 handicaps see it compared to our scratch to forwards? Like, I'm really keen to dig into a bit of that. How do different segments of

the golf community engage with courses differently? It's going to be fun. Yeah, I'm excited to listen. What, uh, let's talk Terry Edy and TRI for a moment. Just, you know, yeah, just take us there. What was your, you know, I took my second trip there. This. year we did a podcast on it, Neil and I, and I was a little bit surprised to see Tehride North crack the top 100, especially at this point. And I was blown away at Hi, South, how much it had grown in over the last couple of years since I was last there. And then Terry Eadie is just Terry Eaty.

It's spectacular. And Matt, you've said it's, you know, you think it's the best course in the southern hemisphere. And it's tough to find calm with that. I think that's that he's holding out Mattie maintains R&West

has got his nose in front I thought you said on the Doke podcast that it was slightly ahead of of the composite or the of of RM West

and you didn't think the composite course should be considered because that's not an everyday golf course did I say that I think I think I think RN West's marginally

ahead of it I think Scott thinks that Terry is marginally ahead of RM West but there's not I don't think think there's much between them and they're different different creations and different ages

and different settings. There's so much that's different, but they're, it's, it's, it's just heavenly visiting, isn't it? It's surreal. I mean, it doesn't, it truly doesn't feel real. On the pod that you did with Neil in the washup of the visit to TRI and to Tariari Neil made a comment very, very early on where he talked about, oh, I thought this was just all photos that had filters on top of them. And this can't be the real colour. And he got there and it's like, oh, hang on, no, it is. And that really struck a chord with me, that comment,

the colour of the trees, the soil, the sky, the water, every time I'm there. And maybe I've just been blessed with great conditions. but I think I've been to Mungify three times now, one time pre-Tarrati and then the other two to play. And there's just something magical about the place. And then the courses themselves, each different to one another, but so much fun to play,

so brilliantly presented. Yeah, just an incredible creation. And I think you had said, just a testament to the strength of the vision of one man. So Rick Kane's commitment to do something really, really meaningful. Like they've, they've hit the bull's eye on that, haven't they? Yeah. I think too. Like I, the first time I went, we had great weather the entire time. This time it was more shoulder season. Like we went late April. And we got all range of conditions. We had some rainy sideways

wind days. And I came to appreciate the courses that much more on those days, too. It was, it was, you know, It was like a different filter, but, but, you know, just as, just as substantive. So, Scott, what was your, what was your impression? I was just, I was overwhelmed by the, like, the class of Tara Edy. You know, it's, it's an extremely classy golf course. I thought in terms of a golf course just being super artistic as a landscape, you know, I think Tara Eadie is a masterpiece. And really, honestly, the trip made me really appreciate, you know, TRA North might not be for

everybody, but just Tom Doak's range in what he can build, you know, like North and Tarahidi are very, very different golf courses, but it's just different briefs at different points in time, you know, once for a small private membership, once for a resort. I just, it really is a different. place to describe. I think it's, I've always felt, I felt a little bit this way, talking about seven mile on our pod this week.

There are some, there are some experiences that you have, similar for me when I went to Dornock. You know, you, you can't articulate certain feelings. And, you know, it's, it's a shame that more people

won't see Tara Edy because I genuinely think, you know, I think it's a better course. Everyone talks about Sandhills as being the best modern golf. course. I think, I think Tara Edy is the best modern course I've seen. I've seen a lot of the candidates. It's 19 in the world now. I think it's still deeply underrated at 19. I would agree. I think it's, yeah. I think it's played both this year. I think they're neck and neck.

And I would probably put just, and they're both very singular and unique. But I think Terry Eadie is just, there's just so many layers there. You can play it so many different ways. and it's you know it gets better with each playing um and in north i think was very um like i thought this the stuff that i didn't love on south has grown in nicely and i think it's like you know and then like the stuff that i did love the first time on south like the second hole uh it's just brilliant stuff like that like oh like i you know i like that just as much but i thought on north the um the par three is just left me wanting a little bit i felt like i was hitting the same shot into the par threes and over and over again but i also i respected doke in that it is different and

his brief was different and it's it's an inland you know forested piece of land and it makes you think and it would be it's a great counterpoint to what is already there what's in the ground already on south and with terry edie and so i think he accomplished like what he set out to um i'll be curious to see kind of how it grows in over the next next four or five years That was one of the real takeaways I had with, you know, Tara Edy being about a decade old, TRI South being, what, three or four years old, and then North being 18 months old,

you can see that even when a golf course, you know, is finished and North is in perfectly fine condition, but just the ability for the maintenance team to refine certain things and a bit extra short grass here or, you know, green aprons that kind of bounce and run a bit truer and firmer. Yeah, I think North needs probably five years to really settle into itself. You know, and golf courses are always evolving.

So I think given the opportunity to maybe identify some of the things that don't quite work and play with them, but I think also that the unspoken star of this trip is just New Zealand and the New Zealanders. I genuinely think that, like, New Zealanders are who Australians like to think they are. And it just adds this, there's this lack of worry. and there's this relaxed environment and I think that really complements a golf trip and everyone's just proper chilled

and there's no real hurry or drama and the people they genuinely just want you to have an incredible time. I think you're selling Australia short a little bit there of you guys are besides the same coin as far as like 1A and 1B as far as like favorite people in the world for me.

So, you know, but yeah, I definitely get that a little bit more, more relaxed. But I would say some Kiwis would probably say that's maybe one of their faults is there's maybe a lack, you know, like some would say there's a lack of ambition or, you know, really keen Paul Poppy syndrome there as well, right? Yeah. Yeah, possibly true. So what, let's kind of round it out here. I guess two kind of divergent questions here. Firstly, you guys are 80-something, 83 episodes in your podcast or 82 episodes into your podcast. What have you learned thus far?

Like, what's been the biggest takeaway? What do you wish somebody would have told you from the start or just, I don't know, like what do you look back on and are most proud of? I'm really proud of the range of people that we've interviewed and the way in which it's grown. I thought we would have been hanging up the headphones and the microphones after maybe 20 to 25 episodes. We'd made our little chapter book. We had a little chapter on each course that people might want to see if they came to Australia. And it's grown to be so much more than that.

I was watching the Friday YouTube clip on Gil Hans's work at Seminole recently. And my wife was in the room and was. She was watching it, and then Josh came on screen, and then Gil came on screen, and then Kathy, my wife looked at me and said, didn't you do a podcast episode with those guys a while ago? I said, oh, yes, we did. And if you'd said to me that that was going to happen as a consequence of the discussion Scott and I had back five years ago, maybe we'll do a pod together, I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that would happen. so that's that's been a really pleasing thing um it was cool listening to the doke episode with you guys and how that felt like such a uh just you know almost self actualization and just a realization of like oh my gosh like what a you know i mean mattie you're talking

about sitting in the airport there you know on the way down to barbougal for the first time and just that full circle moment of having doke on the podcast was really cool. Yeah, that was crazy, crazy. And he was so cool to speak with. And I've had a few little things that I thought, oh, I wonder if we'll touch on this. I wonder if he'll be able to talk about that. And he just hit them all without prompt.

And we went there naturally. And he was, so many people have come up to me or sent messages and said, man, I love that episode. And it's, I think, I think if we're, we go back through our catalogs got we look at all that Spotify data that our three most listen two of our three most listened to episodes of one with you TC and and Tom so he speaks with a lot more clarity and wisdom than I do I was you know I was really pleased all my experiences with Tom have always been really positive and he's been very generous and thoughtful and

expansive and I don't know that he's always got that kind of of appraisal. And so I was really chuffed that the Tom Doke that we could present on our podcast was really, that's Tom as I've kind of known him in the small amounts of time I got to spend with him. And I was honestly chuffed that for this little Australian podcast, you know, he turned up prepared and briefed and like energetic to chat. And yeah, that was, yeah, we've had Maddie like Gil, Mike DeVries and Tom. Like, the The thing that the thing I take away is, and I still think about it often, is that starting a podcast is much simpler than sustaining a podcast, particularly given that we both work full time and we have wives who work full time. We have kids and this is just a hobby.

Yeah, sustaining it can be a challenge, but it's funny. I always finish an episode and I'm just so glad that we're doing it. And like it's super niche, golf architecture in Australia. you know it's a niche thing but it's meant that we've connected with a really highly engaged audience that's as passionate as we are about this stuff and we can do tsa you you called it out earlier we can do an episode on sandbelt vegetation and our audience like that's probably the episode we've had the most feedback about people love that stuff and i think it's nice to know that there's an audience for the stuff that we're really really keen on it's such a great

combination of, you know, expertise. Like you guys, you guys know your shit. You can't, can't fake that. But at the same time, curiosity and knowing what you don't know. And then also just taking the audience on that journey with you. I think I love it when you do go. Because ostensibly, it's a golf podcast about, you know, very niche Australian golf course architecture and that sort of thing. But I think it's just a podcast about golf through that lens. And it's, you know, people learn your, your sensibilities and your personal preferences and everything. But, like, you guys just, I'm always impressed with the organization and just the flow of the episodes as well. Everything is so, so well curated.

That's Scott. That's not me. Someone said to me on Tuesday that, how long have you known, Scott? They bumped into me at the practice day for the Australian Open. I talked about how we first cross paths on a golf forum more than 20 years ago. And it's a really good combination. He's in Sydney. I'm in Melbourne and Yin and Yang.

And we sort of compliment one another. And he looked at me and I could tell he didn't want to insult me. But he said, yeah, if it was two of you, Matt, it wouldn't be good. But it was too much, right? know you know yeah that's that's the beauty that's the magic that's the recipe you know well guys this has been a just a absolute pleasure i mean i could talk i could talk for another two hours it's i love love chat with you guys it's k c it's one a m here and i could talk for another two hours so yeah it's be fun yeah awesome