No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1106: What Happened At Kapalua?

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

For the first time in many years the PGA Tour season will not begin at Kapalua’s Plantation Course. For this episode, DJ and Charlie Van Kirk hear from several voices inside and outside of golf to unpack the layers of drought and water shortage issues on Maui that have forced the cancellation of the 2026 Sentry, and put the long-term future of the event in serious doubt. Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nolayingup.com/esf⁠ Support our Sponsors: Titleist Rhoback Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 11:00 - Overview 15:00 - Mark Rolfing 37:00 - Other voices from Hawaii 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. 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 presented by our friends at Titleist, the number one ball in golf.

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but there's an exciting update coming about that new golf ball very soon i know neal's going to be very excited about this uh so tune into tidalist social channels and titlist dot com on wednesday to learn more about that thank you to title list let's get on with the show so what are we doing today we got a good one today we are uh much like we had planned to do it this time last year we're going to be talking about coppelua uh not really in the conversation that uh any of us had had pictured uh the tournament has not happening this year as as many of you know and for reasons that we're going to get into with our guy, Charlie Van Kirk. Charlie works behind the scenes with us, kind of a jack of all trades.

He's worked on a lot of the sounds of the master's podcast, the sounds of the Ryder Cup. He's worked on a lot of audio editing. He does a lot of stuff with our video entity as well. But he's also just a prime question asker, digging into stuff guy. And so we had him dig into what's going on at Koppelui. He made a ton of phone calls. He actually went and visited in person, did a ton of on-the-ground reporting. And we're going to talk through a lot of that today.

Charlie, how are you, my man? Doing well, DJ. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Did you notice how I did not introduce you as the Big Cans guy? Charlie also made the Big Cans high noon remix for us, which now lives in infamy. I noticed, I noticed, yeah. I mean, one could say that I took the past 15-year career as a music producer and just channeled all of that craft into what was a very unhinged short piece.

of music with the goal of getting you canceled on a golf podcast. Yeah, unsuccessfully washed but not canceled. I tried. Charlie, we're going to be talking about a couple of today. And you spent a ton of time digging into the store. You and I have been going back and forth about this for a couple months now, trying to get our arms around. What happened?

What's going on? If you're just hearing about this for the first time, Charlie, let me see if I can get my, my arms around it here. Essentially, Hawaii, Maui, West Maui, in particular, experiencing very, very, very prolonged periods of pretty extreme drought earlier in the year the golf course kind of starts to wobble starts to you know fall into disrepair and it turns out there's not a lot of backup water sources uh in west maui when stuff like this happens and so the rubber starts to meet the road the pj tour looks at what's going on decides we don't know what's about to happen in the next six

months we can't have this tournament here uh and you know the tournament gets scrapped is that pretty much the long and short of it i think you've done very well it's music to my ears honestly, hearing you summarize this after I've been feeling pretty like Charlie, always and Sunny, like lost in the details of the story that has gotten very complex and gone back a couple hundred years into Hawaiian history. And you've got lawsuits crossing three lawsuits to date. It's very messy. So I think, yeah, you've done a nice job of framing that succinctly. Well, I want to get into a couple of the specifics just to set the conversation, because we're going to hear from a lot of people, basically firsthand audio from a lot of these interviews that you've done and people trying to put this situation into their own words.

So before we get there, just to kind of set the table, for those that don't know, the Capulua has two different golf courses. They have the plantation course and they have the Bay course. I think that's going to be important for, you know, water disbursement purposes here because talk us through kind of like how those two courses have experienced the last, I don't know, eight months or so. Yeah. So the Bay Course is all but irrecoverable at this point. It is closed to play. I'm going to flash up my Maui Big Board here on the screen, which is a mess. Yeah, this is you manifesting now the cork board. You're literally putting yourself on the cork board now. Here we are. For those of you watching on YouTube, I've got a highly scientific diagram of the entities involved in this situation. which, if you can picture the summit of Puku Kui, which is the water source for the golf course, about 6,000 feet high up in the West Maui Mountains, the water from that water source goes down a stream and is diverted from a stream into a ditch.

The ditch feeds the golf courses and other parts of the county of West Maui, some farmers and some residents. So 500 feet elevation is the plantation course to answer the first part of your question. It's still pretty high up the hill. That's the course that we're all familiar with from the same. century tournament over the years. And then down low, much closer to the ocean, is the Bay course, which I mentioned is closed and browned out at the moment. So most of the community and most of the folks I've got labeled up here at the top of my court board live down in the lowlands

where it is quite dry, very different microclimates from up in the mountains. And the reason I kind of bring up both is because basically they're, both pulling from the same water source. And so when, when things started to really hit the fan, not only was there not enough water to go around to both courses, it's kind of not really enough water to go around to one course. And so Capulua kind of had to prioritize the water that was coming out of that ditch system just towards the plantation course. So, you know, I think earlier this summer, there were photos going around all over the place before the tournament got canceled of like, oh my God, here's what Coppelua looks like. I think a lot of those photos were of

the bay course, which was totally completely dead, looked like midsummer Scotland, essentially. And now they've diverted a lot of that bay course water to the plantation courts, which you were just at and looks quite beautiful from what I've seen. That's correct. This is what the plantation course looks like. Currently, it is a lush green carpet. We're also in a rainier season right now. The winter historically receives a lot more rain than the summer on Maui.

and you're correct they they triaged out the bay course in an effort to save plantation well i think we'll get into kind of your experience at capulua later on in the episode and and later on in the conversation but before we get to some of the interviews and some of the audio again just very high level we don't need to get hyper nitty gritty about the lawsuit but what is the lawsuit about because on one hand there's a simple explanation of it's a drought and it just didn't rain enough. And on the other hand, there is finger pointing on no, it's actually the ditch system and it's you didn't maintain this. Just paint that picture for people. Yeah. So the two billionaire backed entities that are fighting here are the golf course on one side, which is owned by

Tadashi and I of TY Corporation. He's the CEO of Uniclo, second richest man in Japan. And on the other side, you have a company called Maui Land and Pineapple, which no longer farms pineapple. There's There's no pineapple farming left on Maui at this point, but that was their original business goal. Their majority shareholder is this guy, Steve Case, who is the co-founder and CEO of AOL that I have also on the big board. So the golf course is saying essentially that even though there's a drought, there still should be enough water to go around from Poo Kui, and that the problem is the infrastructure of this Honokahua ditch system. That is the thing that diverts from the stream and conveys this water, 11 miles or so, down from the mountains to the course. On the other hand, you have Maori Land and Pineapple or MLP saying this drought is very serious. The golf course should not be using as much water as it is.

Our ditch system is essentially fine. I'm, again, paraphrasing the lawsuits pretty reductively here, but you get the idea. The MLP says ditch system is fine. The golf course allegedly illegally used a bunch of potable drinking water, groundwater over the summer to irrigate. And there's, yeah, there's crossing disagreements to that effect. I think there's probably a four-hour version of this podcast where we get into why we're relying on a 120-year-old ditch system and how sugar plantations and pineapple plantations shaped not only the, ecology of Hawaii, but also the infrastructure of Hawaii. How overwhelming was it as you're

diving into this to be like, all right, what is relevant to the golf tournament and what is relevant to like trying to tell the story of what's going on? Because am I characterizing that right? Yes, deeply overwhelming. I think is the answer to your question. I would love to get Ken Burns with this and just, you know, make it that four or 40 hour multi-part series, partially because I think it's super fascinating the fact that these pineapple and sugar cane plantations rolled in in the early 1800s through the 20th century and uprooted all of these native tarot farms and introduced pesticides and polluted groundwater wells and basically wreaked a bunch of havoc on the environment going from like what was a bunch of small, sustainable mom and pop tarot and colo farms to this

farming for profit and mass consumption. It's very different worldviews. And it's also quite sad for the community on Maui who had their farms uprooted, which directly led, I'm not saying Maui land and pineapple specifically or individually, but all of this long trend led to the line of wildfires two years ago in that all of these non-native grasses that had dried out were part of what accelerated the blaze. So it's safe to say that freshwater is a very charged issue on Maui. Yeah, and I think it's easy to keep it to a golf story and keep it to what's going on with the golf course.

And I know that is what's most relevant probably to most of the people listening. But even you go back and I was going back and reading old articles, you know, getting ready for this. And even a lot of those wildfire articles are like, hopefully this is a wake up call that we can figure out what to do with the water system because a lot of those were, you know, people go into fire hydrants and they have no pressure. because the system's not operating the way it should be. And it just is, I understand how the golf course can be kind of a lightning rod for this

conversation, which I think we're going to get into and we're going to hear through your interviews. Very much so. Yeah, there's this undercurrent from a lot of members of the community, one of whom I spoke with and you'll hear from later, but lots of others testifying at Water Commission hearings saying essentially that these two moneyed interests, the fat cats fighting is sort of sucking all the oxygen out of their, the community's water permit designations that they're trying to get approved for their houses for, you know, affordable

housing units and things like that. So I think they are kind of getting screwed in some ways. And that's, that's an important thing to sort of remember keep keeping our minds as we go through this. Well, let's, let's start with the golf stuff. And I think any time, anytime we're talking, golf on Maui, I think you know whose music that is. Who's the first call you're making in this in this interview? Trade wins, aficionado, Mark Rolfing, of course. I submit that we begin a, like a Rolf Menace Index as part of this. I, you know, I had been endeared to Mark's folksy twang on the broadcast over the years, as I think many, many other golf fans have been. and just to hearing you guys on the pod over the years talk about Rolf's season.

But I did not know the extent to which he is omnipresent on this island. Yeah, what was your experience? I know you talked to him a bunch of times. So this audio that we're going to play is kind of a compilation of a couple different interviews. So if there's kind of different, some of it's in person, some of it's, you know, through Zoom. So if there's some different audio qualities, that's why. But what was your experience of getting to know him and interviewing him through this? It was really interesting.

I mean, we spoke at least half a dozen times, maybe more. I went to his house for dinner in the lowlands close to the ocean on Maui at one point. After, I don't know, two or three chats with him, I started just writing out his CV just to wrap my head around all of the things that he's done on the island from working in the cart barn at the bay course. and technically being an employee of Maui Land and Pineapple at that time when they still owned the golf courses to, you know, parlaying a short appearance in a broadcast booth to a 40-something year career as a broadcaster after sitting down with Trevino and Vince Gully. And, you know, some people, many people probably know this, but he was the one who hired Corinne Crenshaw to build a plantation course in the first place. and he put up the cash for it in a joint deal with Maui Land and Pine and all this stuff. So it's just the list keeps going. All right.

Well, without further ado, let's hear from Mark Rolving. When did you first have a sense that there was a problem with respect to this whole drought? I first went to the PGA tour in March and said, boys, we got a major problem on Maui, and you got to get this thing solved immediately. I talked to Mike Crawford, the head of the PGA tour, ground on me as late as the last. week in June. And he basically said, there's no problem. Everything is fine there. Don't worry. Everything is fine there. I said, Mike, I live here. I know everything's not fine here. I just want you to know.

Where are you guys? I haven't seen any agronomy people here. I haven't seen. We've got impending disaster and nobody's here. That's basically when it all started. It was the month of July. And it went from, from everything's fine, you know, at the end of June to we're closing the course in a month. Yeah, I mean, it's easy for me to say and to cast judgment from many thousands of miles away, but one would hope that after the fires in August 2023 that the golf course might have started to accelerate some alternative water solution planning. Do you agree with that? That's a great job, Charlie.

That's a fabulous thought. It really goes as far back as 2018, which is the storm that damaged the ditch. That was Hurricane Lane. But I think that's where the problems really started. So when Ty Why purchased the course from MLP in 2009, I read in the lawsuit that they were promised a sufficient amount of water to be used for irrigation. Do you know what that exact quantity of water was supposed to be? Where do I start? Actually, the process started in 1987.

So in 1987, all we had was the Bay Course. But the tournament, which was that we were now into our fifth year, first year was 82, so by 87, we were still playing the Bay Horse only. That was the only course that the tournament was used on. tournament was used on. And it was in 1988, early 88 and 89, that we created this gigantic project called The Plantation. And it was a joint venture between Maui Land and Pine and Rolfing Sports. It was a 50-50 joint venture. Maui Land and Pine put up the land. Rolfing put up the cash. to build the court.

And probably the most difficult agreement in that whole project. It was a 600-acre project. The most difficult agreement was the water agreement. Because of the need for water and a long-term need, there had to be a water agreement. So the water agreement goes all the way back to 87, Not 2009.

How much water did we need? That is a good question. I don't know why I think it's 750,000 gallons a day. Hmm. You know, I've grown used to watching this tournament and loving the super lush aesthetic of it and everything is so rich and saturated. But just seeing some of these more Scottish-esque browned-out fairways, is there a viable solution that you know of from a?

an agronomy standpoint where the course might be able to do more with less water in the future? Is that a naive question? No, that is probably the smartest question you've asked yet. And the answer is yes. You've asked a lot of smart questions, but that's the smartest. So I'm a minimalist and you wouldn't know it because I basically with Bill Coran Ben Crenshaw built the plantation course. It wasn't built as a minimalist course. But the next course that I was involved in, two years later, was the exact opposite.

And that was Sand Hills. And so I was one of the original five founding investors of Sand Hills. And that was when I switched. I went from being a lush green, you know, soft golf course. advocate to a minimalist and it was primarily because well first of all that's what was dictated in Sand Hills but there were really three three issues that I was starting to realize were potential problems in the game and the three problems were the game is too difficult

number one, number two, it takes too long to play, and number three, it costs too much. And my feeling at the time and has been since is that all three of the potential issues or challenges, let's say, with the game in the future, can be resolved or at least mitigated, by creating a firmer, faster golf course. Okay.

Harder ground, the ball's going to go farther. The course is going to play easier. It's going to take less time and translate into a lower cost to the consumer. Right, so there are benefits besides just the environmental ones to a firmer and faster course. So are you party to any discussions at the plantation course about accepting some of that minimalist treatment in terms of water and irrigation at the moment? Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways you can look at it, Charlie. The first one is the fairways are some of the widest fairways you'll ever see.

They're in the 70, 80, 90-yard range. Does that have to be the case necessarily? No. I think there can be less manicured and, you know, shortly mown grass. And so I think as time goes on and as water becomes more valuable, 50 years from now, certainly when I'm not around, you know, it's going to be a completely different look and feel, I think. Yeah. Do you know if those views are shared at all by the agronomy folks at the course? Well, you know, it's interesting that you've got three different entities involved at this point. One is T.Y. Corporation. They're the owner. Two is Trune Management Company, which is the operator of the course.

And number three is the PGA Tour, which owns and operates the tournament. So, you know, there's a lot to kind of consider there, but I really don't see any serious objections to creating certain areas of the course that play differently than they do now. In the early days, back in the 1990s, when the plantation courts first opened, you know, the approach areas to all the greens were very firm and fast. If you take a look at that, Ernie L. Tiger Woods playoff in the year 2000, which was the greatest finish in the history of the century. And that was only year one. That was only year one. You know, that thing looked brown. You know, the putt tiger made it number one. And the sudden that playoff was bouncing all over the place and went in.

Mr. United, T. Y.I. Corporation did own the course at the time. Right, it was 2009, correct, when it changed hands? Correct. Correct. Interesting. So maybe a return to the early aughts style is in our future, perhaps? I really, I don't know that sustainability will be something that's possible in 50 years. As we basically run out of land and water and equipment changes and you name it.

Yeah, I think it will change. Okay, so it's December 2025. What's the word on the ground right now about possible futures for the tournament? I would say I'm probably less optimistic than I was the last time I talked to you after all my conversations. I don't see movement on either T.Y or my Atlanta Pines side toward finding out solutions. here and that that is a concern i i don't we're 13 months away from what the date of the two thousand and twenty seven tournament would be so i frankly don't see a scenario where a

two thousand and twenty seven century is played here the trial has now been set for this whole water issue uh and it's set for march of two thousand and 27. Whoa. How about that? Okay. So that's a problem. I'm not necessarily taking a side one way or the other on this. I'm trying to find a solution between these two parties. Not saying one guy's right, one guy's wrong. I mean, I think there's some wrong in both sides and there's some right in both sides. What do you think is going to be the starkest difference next week compared to, yeah, the previous 30 years? Moot of the people. Everybody's just devastated, you know, as we get close now.

I think everybody thought there was a chance that just water issue was going to get solved. And we keep hearing from different people, Mr. Unine says, I really want to have the tournament. If you look at the pictures of the course, my God, it's beautiful. You know, that's what I think probably makes everybody sad. than anything be an unbelievable week next week well there's a couple things uh that stick out to me listen to that i think and and the big one is just the um the window it takes to to green light one of these tournaments you know and and that's what i think really stuck out was at first when i saw this news i was like oh man no no uh no no Maui this year we'll get them in 27 and it just feels

like the more people you talk to the more it's just like oh no that might be that might be it uh you know especially we'll get into some stuff you know later about the actual pj tour and some of the changes it's making but uh was that the sense that that you got i mean i feel like that was the first time that ralph quote at the end where he's just like i don't see how there's any way this happens in 27 it was the first time i was like man okay this this might be a a shake up here yeah i think there is an inference that could be made that the tour doesn't want to get in the middle of this water dispute um and there are a number of well there are other reasons that that will hear as well that to the effect of why they might not want to come back to Maui.

But yeah, certainly like the logistical lead time of setting up a PGA tour tournament is not my area of expertise, but from everyone, more so yours, I'm sure from everyone that I've spoken with a year to 16 months, like Mark mentioned, seems to be about the window. What else stuck out to you listening back to that? Well, one point I want to make is that on the subject of reducing the width of the fairways, potentially, we were speculating a little bit in that conversation. You heard some of the sound effects, the swooshy sound effects as we were jumping through time over the past few months.

But recent information, very recent, is that Corrin Crenshaw are on site at the course this week with the goal of reducing the amount of turf acres or grass, Bermuda grass that needs to be irrigated. about 112 irrigated acres right now. And the goal is to get it down closer to 100. Which is obviously step in the right direction. And that's, that's great. It's, it is one of the things that sticks out to you when you're there is it's a, it's a lot of grass. I mean, it's a, there's a lot of green grass everywhere. But then you go play the golf course. You're like, ooh, I'm glad that green grass is there because this place also is

on the side of a mountain and it's extremely windy. And the ball doesn't just travel north, south it travels east west a ton out there and so it is uh i don't know it was built that way for a reason uh and so i'll be very curious to see what's what's actually possible you know while keeping kind of the the golf uh from from getting overly difficult or silly or any of that stuff yeah i played the course when i was there with the pro michael castillo and the greens were rolling at about a nine which felt very slow to me given how pure and smooth they were in these you know, wetter winter months, but he was making the point that if you get them too fast, the ball's just going to disappear into oblivion because it's so windy and undulating.

Yeah. There's another aspect to this, another element to this, that you kind of just alluded to, which is not only is all of all of these water issues going on at Koppelua, the PJ Tour is also in a massive state of flux. As Brian Rolap comes in, we hear scarcity, scarcity, scarcity, we hear for-profit entities. It's very expensive to have a tournament on Maui. It's a logistical challenge, I would say. I don't think it's the easiest place to go for the PJ tour, but you uncovered another clip here that we'll play that that kind of shows that there's a little bit more to it going on behind the scenes as well. The interesting part about it is that in In 2024, the Sentry Purse went from just under $9 million to $15 million.

So it went up big time. Did you have a part in negotiating that? Oh, yeah. But, okay, that was $15 million. So they kind of went along with it, and everybody said, okay, let's come up with a long-term agreement. Before you know it, Century had a deal through 2035, with a purse of $15 million. It's a strong commitment.

That's the strong one. The problem is, a few months later, they raised the purse to $20 million. What? Why did they do that? They didn't need to do that. It was a small field anyway. It's 36-man field or 38, something like that.

38, something like that. Anyway, they did it, and none of the people work there anymore, that were involved in that. But the purse went to $20 million, so now they got stuck with the purse being $15 million from the title sponsor, but yet they're paying out $20 million. It's the first time I've ever heard that I can recall of a title sponsor not covering the purse of a tournament,

Oh, interesting. Wait, so is it the tour that's covering the $5 million difference? Correct. Okay. Over 10 years. Not 5 million over 10. Yeah, 50 million. Because we talked a lot over the last few months about potentially lowering the purse again to making it viable. Gotcha. Didn't have to raise it, but what they didn't have was the sponsor covering it. Interesting. So are you saying that that extra $5 million is disincentivizing the tour from wanting to continue there? Hmm. Where did you come up with that thought?

That's a pretty good one. No, yes. Yeah, that does. That really worries me. If you were Brian Rollaps sitting there, you got all new guys working there. And your guys came in and sat down to desk and they go, okay, whatever we were talking about today. Well, we have to talk about Hawaii. Hawaii. You know, we got this situation going on. We got this water problem on Maui and we got this and that and everything else. But, you know, the real issue that we've got at Century is that the purse is not covered by the sponsor. They're $5 million short because they raised

the person extra $5 million. And Rollap looks at everybody. He says, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, what are you telling me here? What you tell me is that we're $5 million short. Wow, $5 million. That's a lot of money. They kind of look at roll up and they go, well, actually, you know, it's not, it's not five million. It's 50. Yeah. 50. 50 million.

You know, you guys are fired or you're crazy. Yeah, this has shades of the Mets paying Bobby Bonilla a million dollars plus every year. You're right about that, Charlie. There's, uh, yeah, there's a lot there. And, and for those, you know, that don't remember, I mean, this is kind of that. as all the I don't want to say all the cards are falling but as things got very uncertain

as far as trying to keep players and lives taking guys and signature events are coming online I mean there was just a lot of moving fast and breaking stuff I think going on at the PJ tour of bumping up purses figuring out how people are going to pay for them whose sponsors are in who's going to cover what and this kind of feels like the first

I mean other than other title sponsors leaving I guess or letting contracts run out it feels like kind of one of the first like other foot dropping type of moments. But did you dig into this at all anymore? I did. And you just alluded to it, but one clarifying point from the tape is that the 15 million

was raised to 20 for purse parity between the other signatures. So it wasn't out of nowhere necessarily. But yeah, I reached out to Century and to sources at the tour about this and didn't get any smoking gun clarity, honestly, about... what this looks like moving forward is certainly no one at the at the tour seems to want to say yes this is disincentivizing us from continuing on Maui that that may or may not be true Century was not asked by the tour to raise their commitment from 15 to 20 the agreement was 15 and it's staying that way yeah uh well yeah it's just it's interesting like I said would

you pair it with a lot of the stuff we talked about up front which is just it's expensive place to go. It's expensive place to get to you, hard for players to get there. It's a lovely TV product, but it is a tough one. All right, quick break in the podcast to hear a word from our friends at Roeback. It's officially outerwear season. Nobody does this better than Roeback. Best fit, best feel, hands down. You've heard of say it before, but it always holds up, especially in the brisk weather. You don't have to tell me about the brisk weather up here in Milwaukee. If you're looking for vests, full zips, jackets, pullovers, rowback has it all. just got a great, uh, fulton vest in, uh, in the mail. Uh, that's going to be a great piece here as the, uh, as the winter, uh, cools down. Uh, Roeback has it all for men and women. The Fulton performance vest. I mentioned one of our favorites available in a bunch of different colors and sizes. Also, also check out the glide down jacket, uh, the ideal balance of, of warmth and mobility and the summit fleece. I think I've wore that with yesterday, uh, available in full zip and half zip made from the temperature dips, but your plans don't slow down. So as we head in a full. fall. Checkout rowback.com. That's Roback, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com. Use code N-L-U at checkout for 20% off

your first order through the end of the week. Polos, hoodies, shorts, whatever you need. Robax got you covered. Let's get back to the show. All right. So Mark Rothing was clearly going to be the first call you made in this. Who was the second call once you're trying to get your arms around the situation? Well, I have a friend who lives on the Big Island, and she told me that she ran into this guy out for a walk when she was visiting a friend on Maui and that he was really plugged into the water scene there and I'd done, I don't know, three to five Google searches at that point about what's the water situation on Maui. And I asked her, was it Jonathan Lekekeke Schoyer?

And she said, yes. I had already ordered his book with some glare here called Water and Power in West Maui, a book that he co-wrote, reached out to him. And he got back straight away and was happy to chat, super lovely and forthcoming. I've come to learn since then that I started kind of at the top of like water expertise levels on the island. He's he's kind of the dude. Jonathan Lee K.K. Schoyer and the book that I co-wrote is called Water and Power in West Maui, which when, you know, I was asked by a West Maui community organization who had helped publish a series of books on the history.

of West Maui to write a book focused on water, which when it came on in 2021, even my water-oriented and environmentally oriented friends were like, well, that's oddly specific. And then after the Lahaina fires suddenly became of tremendous interest to a lot of people when they realized what the correlation was between the history of water in West Maui and the Lahaina fires. To start, can you paint me a picture, please, of the water source in question for this Kapalua lawsuit, what and where is the Pukukui watershed? So the Puukui watershed covers the summit of Monaco, Holivai, or the summit of the West Maui mountains, as they're sometimes referred to, in and of itself, one of the wettest places on

earth, but that water is not really evenly distributed. In some ways, Hawaii has the same kind of patterns on an island scale that you see on the continental scale of the solar. Like in the west coast of the U.S., you have mountains, the coastal mountains and the Sierra get that huge amounts of rain and right behind the desert. So the windward side of Hawaii, Hawaiian Islands, the high Hawaiian islands, including the windward side of West Maui, the northern side gets a tremendous amount of rain. But six miles away at the resorts, you can be getting 15 inches of rain of year versus 400 inches of rain of year a few miles away. And much of that rain infiltrates into groundwater, emerges some of it as stream water. And so Honokohal Valley, which is a northern valley on that island, had a irrigation system developed in it during the sugar and pineapple plantation era in the 1910s and 1920s and diverted most of the stream flow from that valley all the way water could actually be transferred all the way there over 10s. miles away to Lahaina through various ditches and irrigation systems. And the two golf courses

at Kappa, Lua, were dependent on that surface water system, are dependent on that surface water system, even though sugar and pineapple is no longer grown, and both through drought and changes in state law, there's much less water available for diversion. Zooming way out, can you tell me what West Maui looked like, let's say, 250-ish years ago before the sugar and pineapple plantations arrived compared to how it looks now. Yeah. Well, obviously not there, but what I know from early written accounts as well as oral histories.

So the coastal plain, far from the mountains and then up to the foothills of the mountains, were often very carefully and heavily farmed and irrigated with ancient ditch systems that diverted water, but only within watersheds from a portion of a stream to flooded fields for Kolo or Tara, the staple food of Hawaii, and then back into the stream. And that, along with water coming up out of the ground as springs, meant that places like Lahaina, which are now known as being dry, were actually described by earliest Western visitors as the Venice of the Pacific. That was so wet, and there were so many wetlands, fish ponds and tarot fields and waterways

that you could traverse this fairly large coastal landscape by boat rather than just by foot. So what are the destinations currently for the Honokoha Howe Ditch System? How many places is the Pūukukui watershed actually providing water to? So it provides some water to, or not in the case of drought right now, but some water for irrigation of the golf courses, some landscape irrigation at the Kapalua Resort. It actually also provides water to reservoirs for two of the luxury subdivisions within the resort. It provides fire protection, the water in the people's fire hydrants. And then the ditch system goes all the way down the coast towards Lahaina to a place called Mahinaina where there's a surface water treatment plant and it provides water to the county of Maui, which is, has one of three major drinking water systems in West Maui and that water is treated there and put into the system for sort of regular residents.

Is there any sort of hierarchy of importance that's established anywhere in legislation? or otherwise that says, you know, X gallons must be in a firefighting reserve before the golf course can receive X gallons, things of that nature? So, yes. So water in Hawaii is a public trust resource, which means that it's unlike some areas of the United States where if you hone senior water rights, like in California, they're almost like a private property right, which can be bought or sold. Water in Hawaii was never privatized.

It is held by the government in trust. And over years of litigation, the courts have identified five what are called public trust uses or public trust purposes of water, which are, in theory, in the black letter law, are supposed to be provided water before water is available for private, commercial, non-public trust uses. So what's supposed to happen is everybody but the state in allocating water especially is supposed to provide for those public trust purposes first, and only if there's extra water available, including during times of drought, make them available to private commercial uses like a golf course. Okay. Can you give me just like a high level paraphrased summary of how you see the lawsuit? What's interesting from what I can see from news reports in this case, Maui Land and Pine itself is actually saying, listen, golf courses are in our public trust use, there's not enough water in the streams, so we're not going to deliver water to you. And that led to the lawsuit and TY management, the owner of the golf courses, along with their others, are saying, well, we don't think it's actually a water shortage that's what's wrong. we think you're not managing the ditch system itself efficiently. So a couple of things that stuck out to me from listening to that a couple different times.

One, I know it can be a little pedantic or a little dry to start getting into water rights, public trust use cases. I see what you did there. Oh, I actually wasn't even thinking of that. But yeah, yeah, that's true. It's, yeah, I know it can be a little, it can seem like we're turning this into a city council meeting. But I think it is important to definitely set context for the rest of the episode, but also just kind of try to paint a little bit of a fuller picture of the complexities of like, why don't they just turn the water back on? Why don't they just water the golf course?

What's the big deal? And I think Jonathan does a good job of painting the picture of not only how much the land has changed over the last, you know, apparently 200, 250 years. Anybody who's been to West Maui knows it definitely does not feel like the Venice of the Pacific anymore. It feels quite dry outside of the pockets that receive a lot of that runoff. But then the other thing, like I said, up top, just like how a lot of this infrastructure got put into place, how a lot of this traces back to a pretty ancient, you know, feels ancient now, 100, 120 years, but a pretty ancient infrastructure system and all the complexities, you know, that go into like the rights and how this stuff gets distributed. Because, again, I think a lot of this will come out with some of the other people that you spoke to.

But anything else to add from Jonathan's tape? Yeah. So I told my friend Stowe about this story and his kind of punchy summary that he came back with was, wait, so you're telling me that one of the wettest places on Earth is running out of water? What's happening? And what does that mean for the rest of us? I think this is partially such an interesting golf story because freshwater scarcity is not a unique issue

to Maui. It's particularly pronounced on Maui because of the fires and this very clearly delineated history of pineapple and sugar cane plantations. But, you know, do we, like, what are golf courses in deserts doing to manage their water? And how is the game going to last in a way that makes sense for the place that it comes from in years to come? Yeah. Well, he mentioned at the end of the clip, the lawsuit that's going on. Rolf mentioned, date has been set for March 2027, which obviously doesn't do us a ton of good for the 2027 tournament. But let's get into the two entities a little bit, because I know you talk to both of them as well. First, the ownership group. Who actually owns Koppelua? What's the status

there? What did you learn from talking to them? Yeah, so I mentioned briefly before that Tadashi and I, the CEO of Uniclo, his TY management corporation, are the ones who own the golf course. They have hired Trune to operate the golf course, and they, T.Y. purchased the plantation and bay courses from Maui Land and Pineapple in 2009. So this whole situation is quite intertwined in their corporate histories. So both of these large companies have represented in different ways their community outreach and are meeting with members of the community. And there are mixed and complex feelings, as I was alluding to earlier, from the actual members of the community about all of that. But there's a lot of philanthropy that's happened

from both sides, both MLP and Ty. And you'll hear in this next tape that we play, I believe, when the tournament was canceled, Mr. Unai donated $750,000 to local nonprofits and charities, which is the amount that they would otherwise be receiving when the tournament typically comes to town. So he was, you know, trying to make them whole to the extent possible out of his own pocket, which is just good and benevolent. Yeah. The, uh, when it comes to like the actual water usage, because they're kind of weighing in on this as well, like they don't have a lot of other, the reason they keep pointing the finger at the ditch system is like they don't have a lot of other options, right? I mean, it's not like they can, you know, there's just, yeah, there's just

not a good a lot of good backup sources right that's correct uh at least there are not good backup sources that are presently accessible they are working on allocating resources from elsewhere r1 or recycled wastewater is the first thing that usually comes up on the list after getting this stitch system to perhaps work more effectively there's competition for this limited quantity of wastewater. Like since Lahaina burned down and they're actively rebuilding, there aren't a lot of people living there yet at the moment. And so there just isn't a huge quantity of wastewater available today for the county. But when that does become available, the golf course is not the only party that's interested in acquiring some of that wastewater. There's

Department of Hawaiian Homelands and some other places. Someone, a source close to Tiwi, told me that the discussions with the county to access that wastewater are not going as well as they'd like. I don't know what that means practically, but that's option one on the table. The other is desalination. They have ample salt water, as you may. Very expensive. As you may have heard, yeah, it is the most expensive option, as it was framed to me by folks at Ty.

Granted, you have the second richest man in Japan can likely afford to set up a desolate. cell plant, but I think there's a lot of permitting and county partners and things that need to go into place for them to get that up. So then when they find themselves in emergency situations and there's no water coming out of the ditch is where we turn to the groundwater, the potable water, which is, it sounds like what was used in emergency, you know, this past year, which we'll talk about later. But we're going to hear a little bit of that in this tape. Who are we going to hear from next? Next, we're going to hear from Caroline Sloiter, who is a PR representative for the firm hired by T.Y. So she works for T.Y and Kapaloo Gulf, summarizing some of their positions on this whole

situation. I mean, I think our main points are that Mr. E. Nye's, you know, his heart is in it for the community and for helping, you know, Maui, West Maui in particular. Uniclo is his his business where he makes money, but he really doesn't look at a Koppelua golf as a moneymaker. It's more kind of a passion project. He loves Koppelua. He loves the golf. He loves the people. And he plans to spend more time there.

So if he's in it for the long haul, he would like to help. You know, it's like you mentioned, right? It's this legacy plantation water systems on Maui. There's 70% of the water systems on Maui are controlled by private entities. he believes it's a public trust that should go back to the people so he wants to help fix it and then have it go back into the hands of the county or the state so that's one thing and then he knows that it's not a quick solution so unfortunately that's why you know to try to use maybe some groundwater right now but that's definitely not the long-term solution and that he's

thinking in, you know, he's not just thinking in five or 10 years. He's thinking in the next 100 years. Like, how can he contribute to the system when he's long gone so that it's, it's a, you know, it's an adequate and responsible system for all of the people of Maui. What are TY's views then about these backup water source options compared to that, which comes from Pukukukui via the Honokaha Ditch? I think the big picture goal is is that Kappalua and TiWi would much prefer to use the recycled water. And then if we have our own wells, we would give that water the county for the use of the people. So really, we don't, you know, that is the big picture goal is to use the recycled water.

Either that or, you know, if, I mean, desalinization is a long and difficult process, but something like that. So, I mean, really, the only reason we would want to use the groundwater right now is, like an emergency measure to try to get the PGA back because, you know, it's a great event, but it's also a very strong economic driver for the island of Maui and the state of Hawaii. Additionally, so many nonprofits benefit from it and local small businesses. So that's the last thing the golf course and the TY and Mr. Unai wants to do is use groundwater on the golf course, but that's just an emergency measure for the short term while they work on the long-term plan. So I think just to put into perspective the amount of water that we're talking about here,

I think Rolf was right, right, in all your other reporting, 750,000 gallons per day per course is the ideal. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. When I spoke with Caroline, I also spoke with Kenji U.E, who's a general manager for TY, asked him that question. And indeed, he said that 750 per day. 1.5 million gallons per day for both courses is the optimal amount for them, but that they could get by with two-thirds that amount, a million per day total or 500,000 gallons per course. I don't have a lot of, yeah, I don't have a lot of perspective on how much water that is,

other than to say that seems like a ton of water to me, but I think that, you know, I know that stacks up faster than people would think. Yeah, I looked into this to get a little bit of frame of reference. And the numbers from the USGA that I have, that golf courses in hot, dry climates can use up to six acre feet per year of water, which would amount to approximately 600,000 gallons per day for a 112 acre golf course, which is what the turf acreage is currently on plantation. So 600 is the high end of the range, according to USGA. 750 exceeds that range by a good amount. Yeah. Well, she mentioned and made illusions, and you did too, about using groundwater during the drought to basically keep the course alive. I can't imagine that was a super popular

decision amongst some stakeholders. What can you tell me about that? The people were pissed. The people were not happy. And I say that people, I mean, many people, I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth here. I watched hours and hours of the Commission for Water Resource Management hearings just because folks just tune in to Zoom and patch in and weigh in. They get typically two minutes to testify about one topic or another. So you'll have somebody will be in the room in Honolulu from Tiwi. He'll sit down. Kenji will sit down and give his testimony. And then Grace Randall, MLP's CEO will sit down and give his testimony. And then all these people will patch and it was just person after person were alarmed and sad and angry that, in particular after this

one report came out from Earth Justice, talking about the fact that the golf course did use some of this water, this groundwater that is drinkable from an aquifer to irrigate over the summer. Environmental law firm Earth Justice claims two Koppelua golf courses illegally used millions of gallons of potable groundwater to keep fairways green during drought restrictions. And the firm says the commission chair Don Chang knew about it, but it shouldn't be allowed because their permit application does not allow it. Bottom line is that under the code, this use is currently unlawful and must stop immediately. All right, who are we going to hear from next? So I tracked down Drew. I wanted to ask him about this report that he issued stating

or alleging that the golf course's use of groundwater for irrigation was illegal. And we talked for a long time. This is, again, a conversation that I've chopped up a little bit, but I think fairly represents his positions, Drew Hara with Earth justice. You know, I know that Tywy and others, Mark Rolfing, other folks have put a lot of attention, and there's this like $50 million figure of for the century in particular, sort of like an injection into the Maui economy. And I can take that, I'll take that figure on its face. I mean, I would like to see where that money actually goes and how it's distributed and how much, you know, trickles down to actual residents there. But, you know, even assuming that that's true, my impression, having worked with a lot of the

community members across Maui Komohana is that they would not lose any sleep over golf leaving West Maui. So I'm not a golfer. I'm not necessarily anti-golf, but all of a sudden beginning this summer, because we're in drought, because there's now this dispute between TY and MLP about water delivery, inklings that the PGA might be pulling out, that Koppelua is going to have to shut down one of the courses.

There suddenly is a lot of, it's like a fire has been lit under the commission and the governor's office to, let's find solutions, let's find water, let's help save this and make this happen. And I think this full process it's just another example of special favors, special attention for a large economic interest or a politically powerful interest at the expense of everyone else.

So I think looking to the Maui community agnostic of how they feel about golf. Like I'm sure there are plenty of golfers among them actually, right? And they might, TY makes the point that they, you know, people have to live there and work there. So they employ, I think, 170 people or something. And that's great. Again, I'll take them on their word that they are, they've represented. It's not a money-making venture for them. It's, you know, it's excuse the pun, but like for love of the game, right?

And wanting to be a part of the community. And it's great to say all that. But I think this community in particular, beginning with the plantations, have seen these sort of like paternalistic, large moneyed interests, come in, exercise control, tell them we have your best interest at heart, we're going to take care of you, just trust us, and they've been burned time and time again, and their streams are still running dry, their entire town burned down two years ago because of mismanagement of water. The issue, I think, viewed in context is you're having, again, special treatment

for someone who has enough resources to get the governor's attention. There's no other way to put it then it's it just comes across as a slap in the face of the community listen charlie i love watching golf i'm a big golf big golf guy i love i love rooting for golf i love i love playing golf i love watching golf uh and so my perspective on this is i would love to see golf uh in in hawaii i love koppelua i love the tournament it's hard to listen to a piece of tape like that and not pretty deeply empathized with man i've been trying to get attention for this topic forever and the only way we can seem to attention is when it affects the the $20 million golf tournament. I imagine there was some of that going through your mind as you're driving around and walking around West Maui as well,

but I'm curious what your perspective was. Yeah, it is always interesting to encounter hostility to golf and sort of forces the self-reflection of like, are we the baddies kind of kind of scenario. I think you've put that very well. Just like physically on the island, I mean, you've been there. This course is so separate from the rest of the community in aesthetic and also in elevation. Like you cross this big road.

And there, as the GM of Trune at Capulot-Lo described to me, this lush, luxury look of the landscaping around that sign. and it's pretty pretty quiet there aren't a lot of people there it's just like its own you know little little world up there so talking to people like like drew i really did start to feel that like oh gosh this is there's a stratification here on a number of levels so talking about this is is this a zero sum as it's seeming in in these interviews do you know what I mean like is it either the water goes to the golf course or it goes to somewhere else like can you clarify a little bit of that for me yeah my impression is

that so the the water from puukukui it's meant not to go exclusively to the golf course the county of maui is also a recipient of that water and the use of groundwater i think is the biggest problem here i know that the golf course is representing that they've only did that for an emergency But at least in my mind, it's a very separate bucket of using non-potable surface water for irrigation compared to water that's already ready for drinking. Yeah. Did you see any other tape or any other perspectives that kind of lends more clarity to that? As a matter of fact, yes, I spoke with a guy called Paella Kiakona, who is a native Hawaiian activist.

He grew up in the Honokohal Valley. and he is with an organization called Lahaina Strong. Drew introduced the two of us, and it was also quite interesting to hear where he's coming from on a lot of this stuff. There are multiple developments right now, affordable housing developments, that are ready to go,

infrastructures in the ground, they just can't build yet because there's not enough water. Maui, Hawaii, we're all in a housing crisis, right? So now you kind of feel where we're coming from. We're in a housing crisis, We have housing that could be built. We have Hawaiian homelands that could be built.

We have all of these things that could be built to house our people of the place. But we can't because we don't have water. But you know what? Go ahead and go water the golf course. Again, I'm not taking a shot at all at golfers or golfing. I golfed in high school.

I have fun doing the sport. But it comes, there is a point where we need to prioritize things. What is the most important thing is the people of the place? This is hardly the most important thing that we're talking about this afternoon, but your golf history, have you entirely put down your clubs? Did you give them away? What happened as your activism kind of helped make that decision for you? Yeah, I put my clubs away. They've collected a pretty thick layer of dust by now because I did not want to contribute to a problem that I saw.

It's a double standard. If I'm being critical of the golf course and the place, then how is it at all right for me to go and golf? Like, I want to. I have fun doing it. I love to do it, but then I just want to lead by example. I'm curious what your view and the community's view is of this $15 million figure that's thrown around. That's how much money the community receives when the tournament comes. Is that something that anyone is going to lose sleepover? It's sounding like maybe not, but I'm curious about it. You know, your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, I can't speak for the entire community, but no, for many, we wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Because again, the priority is like what good is the money if our people are not home? The priority of government, the priority of anybody who has capitalistic interests in the place, they'll see the economy as the health of the people. If the economy is thriving, that means the people are thriving. That may be the case on a continent, but we're on an island where 90% of our food is being imported, where this place alone had close to 2 million people before Western contact, and we were able to supply enough food for all of those people. But now we're importing 90% of it. We import everything.

The price of everything is just through the roof. And what happens when we lose all of our, like if something happened, if a war broke out or something crazy happened where we stopped receiving that? Was putting the economy over the health of the place worth it at that point because I can speak from experience. After the Lahana wildfires, we were completely cut off from the world, right?

We can't do anything without enough water. We live on an island in the middle of the Pacific. If we are not stewards of our place, we have nowhere to run. You can drive around all day with bald tires and one day that's just going to catch up to you. August 8th was that catching up to us. We've been driving around with bald-ass tires for a long time now and we ended up crashing. I think what hits me from that is, you know, we do a lot of talking about the PJ tour and

the impact on community and a lot of those things. This is the first time I feel like I can remember, I mean, maybe other than like the very obvious, you know, Palisades fires and canceling Riviera and that stuff, but when some of that economic impact is like directly at odds seemingly with, you know, with the drain on the natural environment or the, you know, the drain on day-to-day life is, I think the first time I've seen that balancing act kind of like thrown into relief a little bit. Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean, I had a much longer conversation with Pile than we were able to use for this episode, but he talked about his friends who work in the restaurants.

that see increased foot traffic and tips during the tournament. And he's not blind or deaf to the actual benefits. But yeah, there is this very, very high level kind of difference of looking at the world. Like our people were self-sustaining before the point of contact when Americans and Europeans showed up in the late 1700s. And now we have to import everything and everything's super expensive. And it's just hard to live and get enough drinking water for our, affordable housing and all this stuff yeah a couple more things to get to i know you you reach out to

the mlp folks as well the maori land and pineapple folks anything to to run out there a little bit yeah i spoke with race randall the CEO of mlp i wanted to put the questions to him directly to see if he would respond to me in in a way that maybe was different than than other video interviews he's given on on different news outlets so i i asked about his thoughts on the Allegations from Tiwai that this Honokau ditch system is in disrepair and isn't conveying water effectively. So MLP gave me a statement to read here in response to that. Regarding the maintenance of the water system, quote, the system is extremely efficient at diverting water from the stream. The issue was extreme drought conditions, which caused low stream flow.

State law prohibited any diversion of water for any reason unless the minimum in-stream flow level is met. Consistent with state law, we did not divert water unless we believed in-stream flows were being met. And regarding the lawsuit, Maui Landed Pineapple has always prioritized collaboration over litigation. We have reached out. The rest is up to T.Y. End quote. See you in March 2027. It sounds like.

So we've mentioned this a couple times, but you went out to Maui a couple weeks ago, spent some time, you know, exploring Koppelua and West Maui and Lahaina and a lot of these different areas. Did you get a sense of what the shutdown period was like? I mean, I know the golf course is back open now and it's looking beautiful and they've got some golfers back out there and there's probably people booking trips and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But what was it like, you know, when it was closed and what kind of tact did they take during that time? Yeah, this is where the benevolence of a well-resourced owner comes in. I think during the closure, I spoke with Alex Nakajima, the GM at Trune, director of golf. Kapalua and to ask him essentially what it was like for staff and people on the ground over the summer. As an operator of the golf course, it's been an extremely hard year. We're not trained to close the golf course and then reopen and shift resources to the other departments. So when we started this

battle in the spring with no irrigation, we watched the golf course die every day. So it turned in color, what people are talking about what's going to happen next month or two months from now if the water issue doesn't get solved and then really golf course became unplayable meaning that ball was running off the fairways it wouldn't stop it would just go down to the bottom of the hill so before we got to that point I had to call it and said tell my owner saying golf course has become unplayable it's time to shut it down Yeah, so there was a lot of talk about what do we do with the staff. For example, maintenance, there's still maintenance work to be done, even if the golf

course is not irrigated and closed. So maintenance department was okay, there's things to do. But the guest service, somebody like cleaning clubs and golf carts, they had nothing to do. No guest to assist, right? The golf shop remained open, so it was business as usual, but a lot less volume. Reservation center, no phone calls. People are asking what to do or what's going to, what's happening, but a lot less reservation

off, of course, or we were canceling reservations, taking reservation off. So once they got through that phase, there was not a whole lot to do. Anyways, to answer your question, we shifted those guests facing associates to the maintenance work into facilities maintenance and in the golf course maintenance. We gave some choices. And we also took this two and a half month, this opportunity to, how can we get better? For example, can we renovate the restroom? Can we re-carpet the hallways?

Can we do some paint touch-ups and repairs? These are the things that we did for the two and a half months. So we actually came back better than ever, so I'm happy to say that. Repaved the cart path, cracked cart path was fixed. So I think everybody did different type of jobs, but all contributed to reopening. So once we set our opening date, Andrew gave us a go-head on November 17th. We were extremely happy, and then everybody was going back to the the old jobs what they're used to and then life was where life was coming back to normal so extremely

happy with that with all of those role shifts guest services to maintenance and things like that did you keep everybody on board for that yeah that's another uh achievement uh thanks to our ownership yes we kept everybody we didn't lose anyone uh we also work with uh local unions so these are union positions and it was extremely important to assist them to say that there's a there's their pay you know wages are 100% and they have things to do yeah so we're extremely proud of that i do i like hearing a little bit of you know lemons into lemonade i suppose some capital improvements get get people working on other stuff you know that's there's a glimmer of hope in this in this uh podcast it feels a little bleak at times it's very nice to hear that they could keep everyone on board for

sure. You know, not everyone was as rosy, I'll say, in their characterization of this whole dynamic, how it played up. There were some sources close to the course who were upset with the tour for the cancellation. They felt that the tour was strong-arming them. I believe bullies was the word used in a private conversation on that subject, not understanding why once the golf course realized that they could get back up and running in time they couldn't turn the ship around things of that nature it is you know an enormous leverage point one can imagine with just all of these folks coming to the island and the economic infusion to just picture like this is where you you live and work and for the first time in 30 something years there aren't going to be all these people

here this week yeah kind of interrupts the natural flow of uh of the year and the passage of time for sure it's going to be quite a quite a whole uh this week on on the island i'm sure i think uh the last stakeholder here we haven't really talked about is century uh where i don't where are they at in all this do you talk to anyway from century what's the what's the status there i did i did i did not travel to stephen's point wisconsin for this interview i really wasn't thorough enough in my reporting um but yeah no i talked to the cmo stephanie smith at century and And learned a few things from her, essentially, like, everyone involved in this, the tour and the course has been pretty glowing in their praise of Sentry as a partner.

You know, the 15 and 20 million discrepancy that talk came up earlier, didn't come up in conversation with anyone really at all as like a, yeah, point of contention. So Sentry says that they're being patient. They are on Maui this week, tournament week. The quote from Stephanie was that they're there to give their friends on Maui a hug and donate a bunch of money essentially to a number of different charities on Island. What would you say is the ideal future of this tournament for a century from 27 through 35? There are so many things in play.

What we want and we've talked with the tour about is being tied. of a significant event where there are things that have to happen. You know, what's the water situation? What is the future competitions committee going to do? So we're staying in touch with the tour, but we know we have to let some things play out. One thing I do know is that there will be a century played in 27. I just don't know where.

Where at that point? I feel like that, that kind of maybe is the title of the episode, right? It's like, yeah, I know there's going to be a century, but we don't know where, I think is a load-bearing phrase that I think kind of sums up everything we've been talking about for the last hour. Yeah, maybe so. They certainly looked into alternative course options for 2026. And I think the quote was they exhausted those possible options and did not find a suitable replacement for the plantation course. You know, it's too cold in the desert. It, Wailai is, two people have told me that they think that Waili and plantation are the only viable courses

on any of the Hawaiian islands to host PJ Tour golf. I think maybe that's a little bit subjective, but the idea of putting back-to-back tournaments this week was floated. This week and next week was floated, but because next week is the Sony, and this week would have been Century, it would almost be a little bit like starting the show with the headlining band and then going to the opener, like starting big rebranding. And yeah, so that wasn't looked favorably upon allegedly by Century or Sony. Yeah, and I think it leaves you in an interesting spot for, again, just what happens in 27 and all this is speculation, obviously. But there is something about, I don't think it's, this is my perspective. I don't think it is necessarily just starting the

year in Hawaii. I mean, I like Wailai. I think it's very cool. I like watching the Sony. I like the viewing times. I like the kind of cast of characters you get. But there is something very specific about Koppelua, right? And it is kind of like, it's the views and it's shooting down the mountain. It's the whales. It's the mountains. It's ralphing. It's all of that stuff adds up to a one plus one equals three. I don't think it's necessarily. just like if we start somewhere in Hawaii then mission accomplished i mean i know you know some of this is out of our hands but it's like um i don't know just i i start to think about the other potential solutions and i just get pretty bearish i guess pretty quick if if kappalo is not the

answer yeah i totally agree i mean there's the cachet of the history as well that mark mentioned earlier the tiger and ernie duel in in 2000 this tournament has been been played there for for ages and and we have that those those memories built up and it it's certainly be big shoes to fill yeah uh anything else in the notebook from you anything any other proposals going on any other any other thoughts we before we get out of here yes mark doesn't want to see this tournament go as you could imagine he helped bring it there in the first place helped develop the golf course as we established he doesn't want to see it leave he has been a champion for this tournament on this place for ages and he made kind of a Hail Mary proposal to the tour. He described it to me

as like trying to throw a casting net for fish in the water, you know, one of these big nets with weights around the perimeter and you got to tie it around the crook of one arm and release it in such a way that it lands evenly and all the weights sink down. Anyway, that marks an analogy. A lot of metaphors in this podcast. A lot of analogies. Neil's going to like this podcast. We're just getting warmed up, yeah. So the proposal was this, that the tournament get played in 27, I believe the week of February 7th, which is in between the NFL conference championships and the Super Bowl, as a potential blockbuster season opener. Now, this is all big, big hypothetical. I don't think Mark knows.

I certainly don't know what's going on in the future. competitions committee behind closed doors. That was just a thought thrown out to the ether. Not sure really what's what's going to happen, but suffice it to say that Mark is doing Mark things and and putting ideas out there. Yeah. Well, it's timing up for that. Doesn't have to be first week of January. That's that's fine with me. I like that idea. Depending on, you know, whether they can, yeah, fix all the other issues and have a little more predictable summer, I guess, going forward. But, well, Charlie, this was awesome, man. Thanks so much for all the hard work and for digging in and for all of the phone calls and the tireless tracking down of people.

I certainly understand it better than I ever thought possible, which is exciting. Thanks for letting me run with it and your editorial magic on the back end here. Yeah, I don't know about that. Editorial something. All right, man. Well, we will catch you next time. Thank you to everybody for listening. Thanks to everybody for participating who we heard from Mark and and everybody else out on Maui and we will catch everybody next time. Cheers.