No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1111: C.B. Macdonald Deep Dive - Part 2

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

We’re back with part two of our look at the life of C.B. Macdonald as DJ takes us through Macdonald’s most notable designs at the National Golf Links of American and The Lido, his partnership with Seth Raynor, and his legacy as one of the most enduring Golden Age golf course architects.   Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nolayingup.com/esf⁠ Support our Sponsors: Titleist Rhoback 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 today that's better than most that is better than most ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the no laying up podcast presented by titleist the number one ball in golf my name is dj and you have stumbled upon part two of our deep dive into the life and times of c b mcdonald glad you're here thank you to everybody who reached out over the last week about the last episode and how much I think people seem to like it. Thanks to Neil and Randy for playing the role of the interested students, made it a lot of fun. And we're going to do a lot more of that in part two today.

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control your spin a little bit better with some new wedges. And they've dialed in the flight and spin even more with better CG location. and groove technologies. Look, there's a reason that more than half the sand, gap, and lob wedges in play last week at the Sony were Vokies. If you haven't tried them yet, now is a great time to get dialed in. So head over to tidalist.com to learn more and check out Titleist and Voky Wedges social channels this week for some cool wedge content from the Amex as these new ones start to roll out. So without further ado, let's get into our deep dive. All right, guys, we're back for part two uh i've got the the steamed student body assembled here uh neal how are you i'm good uh cars

got me a foot massager for christmas and she's one those the chiazzi ones so i was just getting my just getting my foot massager dialed i'm fired up maybe let's go don't fall asleep randy greetings hello how are you hey great good good to be back excited to learn more about our guy yeah this is going to be a little different layer this is going to be a little different one last time was a lot of biographical stuff, you know, a lot of like who, what, where, where, when, why, where'd you go to school, where'd you live, where's your house type of stuff. A lot of also kind of how, you know, our guys very strong-willed, as we learned last time, kind of a, how did you form those opinions? Where did those come from? And now in today's part two,

we're going to kind of see what that led to. What'd you do with all that knowledge? What'd you do with all those takes? What'd you do with all that money? And how do we bring some of this stuff to life. So it's going to be a little different. It's a lot of, um, Neil, I think you'll agree with me here. I like a lot of the, okay, you worked on this project, but like who financed that project? How did they get their money? How did this thing even like get online? It's a lot of that stuff. So I think, I, you know, technically about CB McDonald's, but it's about a lot more than well, I'm a little disappointed. I thought we part two is just going to be all about, you know, Sanford White. Yeah, there's, he pops up. He pops up. He's omnipresent in this thing. It's crazy.

I don't know if you guys took a deep dive on him afterwards, but yeah, the personal life section of that, that Wikipedia, uh, strong. Strong stuff in there. Rainy, you know, you had a little time to sit with the last one. Any big, you know, things that jumped out at you? Besides our guy being a, the worst sore loser in the history of golf. No, I mean, I just think it's, uh, honestly what, what I reflected most on was just how one man's past. fashion can lead to so much, honestly, bringing the game over from Scotland and really spearheading, you know, laying the foundation for the game here in America, it really is pretty remarkable,

I think. And so just taking some time to really chew on that was where I went. Well, the foundation is laid, baby. So let's see what happens next. I'll see what kind of house they put on that thing. Neil, anything before we get started? Well, just Randy talking about, you know, what passion can do. I hope he does the same for, for rollerblading as CV McDonald's done for golf. Come along, people. Creating a culture. Would you say I yearn to balance and roll and roll?

I want to roll. Have you rolled here? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Really? I did. Logged in his whoop.

It was sick. Oh my gosh. I got to pay closer attention. It's a, I'll say, good, sneaky good workout. I was out there for about 30 minutes. Yeah, I was I was rolling. I love it. I love it. Total flow state.

That will be the end of the rollerblading appearances in this podcast, I believe. But if it comes back up, Randy, please jump in with any key learnings or insights. So hopefully you guys, hopefully the people listening here have a little bit of a feel for where we left off. CB McDonald becomes consumed by this idea, building the ideal golf course comprised of ideal golf holes. Right. He's been scouring the globe. He's been looking for the best holes in the world, learning everything he can about them so he can bring over either exact replicas or, you know, part and parcel kind of

composites, composites of those holes back to the United States. And so he knew what he wanted to build golf wise. What he needed was a place to do it, obviously. According to his book, he had a few different options and ideas in mind. He liked the idea of Cape Cod, but he knew that was going to be too remote, too far from the power brokers in New York that are probably going to finance this whole thing. It was going to be tough to bring in members, get an investment going all that. He also had his eye on the land way out on the tip of Long Island. Neil, we're talking between Amagansett and Montauk. Oh yeah. Great, beautiful land, a lot of sand, you know, obviously plenty of sand-based area to

build golf out there. But what he quickly realized was like, I don't know how to plant grass. I don't know how to grow grass on top of, you know, just sand. And so he figured he was going to have to top dress the whole property with topsoil. That was going to cost him a fortune. that wasn't going to work. He ended up getting like $70,000 for this project that we're going to talk about in a second. Just a top dress, the amount of top dress he would need out there was going to cost him like 300 grand. Okay. So again, I think the reason I say that is we're going to bump up pretty quickly against like things that have become pretty common practice, not common practice back then, extremely cost prohibitive.

So in the meantime, as he's looking for land, he's trying to figure out what to do. He puts together this group of 70 men who each pledge $1,000 each. These are great men. These are great men. We're going to talk about that $1,000 back then is like $40,000 in today's value, which again. That's really puts into perspective the 300K. Kind of a deal. For sand.

Imagine what people back then were, you know what I mean? And that 300K in that day's money, people are like, you're going to spend what on sand? But also, I would say 40 grand. today's money for somebody who's like, no, I'm building the best golf course ever who wants to get involved. It's like, oh, what a steal compared to what some of these people are charging today. Wish I could find one of those out around here in Denver, you know. Right. So this is going to be his war chest that he's got to make something happen.

He's got like 70 grand. Very impressive group. Great men, as you guys said. You could probably do an episode on each one of these guys that are part of this consortium that he puts together. CB McDonald, of course, William Vanderbilt, Horace Harding, his guy Devereaux Emmett, who we talked about last time. Also on this list, Robert T. Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln. Sure. Had no idea Robert T. Lincoln was deep in the golf scene.

He pops up on the charter of like a lot of these places. Just like, oh, yeah. And then of course, Abraham Lincoln's son is going to be a member as well. Didn't know that. So he's got his 70 grand. Like, as we mentioned last time, he's living in New York at this time. All the Chicago days are behind him. Sorry, give me the year just so place me here.

Yeah. So this is probably 1906. 1907. So he's living in New York by this time. Yep. And not only is he playing at Garden City, which we talked about last time, Devereaux, Emmett, Walter Travis, all that stuff. He's also a member out on Long Island at a place called Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. And Shinnock sits on a piece of land that was massive at the time. As far as my like reading and then laying that reading on top of Google Earth can kind of tell me, I think it basically sat on like 2,000 acres. at the time, which is basically from where you see, if you're watching this on screen,

you see the current Shinnecock Hills Golf Club up here in kind of the top right, northeast corner. I think their land stretched basically all the way over to this channel on the western side of this, this map. And so there's a lot of land that they own, which is all kind of owned by this real estate group out of Brooklyn, I believe. They had bought all this land, this real estate group, had recently bought all this land for like $50 an acre.

and CB McDonald says, you know, well, you're not using all of it for your golf course. Like, could we maybe put another golf course on that land? And so he goes back to them and he offers them $200 an acre just to buy 120 of these 2,000 acres. And the spot where he's looking is, I believe, up in this like northwest corner of the map that you're looking at here. So basically between like this channel that connects the Shinnock Bay up to the peconic bay in the north and the peconic bay. So where you see like, you know, the Beach County Park there. I think he's looking at like 120 acres in that corner. And he offers him basically four times the original price for that land because he's trying to, you know,

he doesn't want to totally step on the toes of Shinnecock. He's a member. He knows all the people there. He doesn't want to, you know, doesn't want to put it next door. So he's trying to get a little distance. But the members at Shinnecock are looking at this and very much hate this idea, right? He's coming in with his normal blustery talk about this is going to be the best. course ever. This is going to be, this is going to blow every other course out of the water.

Basically, every other course is illegitimate after I paint my masterpiece here. I understand why they would be like, this is not, you know, probably not a great idea for him to do this on our own land. So they, the members at Shinnecock go back to this real estate group with a very clear message, just do not sell this land to this guy. And the real estate group listens. And, you know, they decide not to sell it to him. And he is a member at Chinnecock. He is a member, which becomes a little more complicated as the years go on. A lot of ups, a lot of downs.

A lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what have you to that membership. But he's unfazed. He says, all right, fine, you're not going to sell me this land. Goes right on looking for another piece of land. And if you know anything about the relationship between Shinnecock and National coming into this episode, you probably know that the land that he happened to find, happened to be right next door. probably much closer if my Google Earth and reading, you know, kind of synthesis is correct. I think much closer than he was originally actually planning because while the Shinnecott Group

owned all this land to the west, they didn't own the land to the north. And up there was this 450 acre tract of land that had previously been totally overlooked for any kind of development because it was as our guy, George Bato, wrote the Evangelist of Golf, wrote, quote, a worthless mess of brambles, swampy areas, and murky bogs. CB McDonald writes about this, said it was covered in blackberries, huckleberries, all kinds of bushes, and infested with insects. Randy. I mean, that's the worst.

That's the worst of it. In fact, this land was so bad that they couldn't even traverse most of it on foot. Him and his son-in-law, Jim Wiggum, I believe, who Neal glossed O-P-H-J-Wiggum on the last episode. my guy. They had to get on horseback to navigate much of the land because they could like barely even walk through there. But still, they like what they saw. Even without clearing anything, even without filling any of these bogs or doing anything,

they saw a place where they could put their Alps hole. They saw a place where they could put their Redan hole. They saw a place where they could put their Eden hole. They knew the land was sand-based, but they figured they could grow great turf. I mean, they were doing it, you know, right next door at Shinnacock. Just took a little bit of imagination to picture it. And so they thought that after they kind of drain the swamp, you know, shout out to everyone, that they would have a piece of land that was, you know,

worthy of what they're trying to do. And there was another thing that this piece of land had going for it, which was that it had this awesome stretch of waterfront, which Chinatock does not have. Shinnecock's totally landlocked, right? Beautiful piece of land, but not on the water. This is obviously great for views. It's great for actually like, you know, the golf course and implementing holes on the ocean and all of that.

But it's also great for yachts, right? Because a lot of these masters of the universe, the infrastructure is not great. Wouldn't mind taking the yacht out there for the weekend. I need a place to dock it. I want to be able to see it as I'm coming in. You think about all that like soft stuff. I mean, that kind of makes a lot of sense, right? If I had a nickel for every time Neil complained about nowhere to park his yacht out on Long Island,

Tell me about it. I know. Well, he would have liked this. There's a lot of these projects that are yacht forward. I'll tell you that. So he'd been doing all this research on golf holes, right? And he'd been studying them, measuring them. He had a good idea of what he wanted to build.

But I think very important to realize, like, these are all finished holes that he's looking at. Right? He has a lot of opinions, but he has no idea how to actually do any of this. It'd be kind of like any of us just going and being like, I've done the work. Now it's time for me to build a golf course. None of us know how to build a golf course, right? None of us know how to earth move, figure out drainage, all of that kind of stuff. And so he needed some help with like the surveying and the construction

that was going to be needed to actually build this course. And also before he bought it, you need to figure out if this land was even going to work for the project. He thought it would, but, you know, maybe let's get a little confirmation before I start spending Robert Todd Lincoln's money on this joint. And so to help him, you probably can see where I'm going. before he brought it in the he uh he bought the land he hired a surveyor from nearby southampton you guys know this guy's name by the name of set set j rayner was his name landscape architect right down the street in southampton uh who finds himself i mean talk about being in the right place at the

right time man holy smokes uh so reiner uh obviously could should possibly will have his own podcast episode like this but it's pretty much impossible to untether him from CB McDonald's as we're about to go through. I mean, all of their projects, you know, so much of it runs concurrent that it's, it's very hard to like keep one in one episode and one in the other episode. You kind of just got to smash them together. And the other thing about Rainer is like unlike a lot of the other people at the time, CB McDonald's for sure. Rainer wasn't just like writing out every thought that came into his mind. He wasn't publishing his journals. He wasn't writing all kinds of articles. He was like very reserved and very quiet. And so because of

there's like not that much information out there about him that's why i think for a really long time particularly like before this kind of golden age resurgence and all these places being dusted off and restored and you know turned back into kind of the forefront he was pretty underrated like understated figure in golf history very much like a background guy and a lot of that comes from him just not really marketing himself in in any way which i thought was was kind of interesting all right question for you uh is okay if you don't know the answer Was he in golf at the time or was he just a formal landscape architect? This is the whole question.

This is a great question. He was not in golf at all. CB McDonald says he barely knew the difference between a golf ball and a tennis ball when they started. He did not play at all. Because I got a story when I would play at Southampton and we did a crash course video on it. I believe the sixth hole there is the Rainer Dogleg. And the story was that he wrote into, you know, the diehard's going to be mad. Country Life magazine.

Crunchy living or towning country for a golf hole competition. And he sent in a submission for a golf hole. And that was kind of how he got his start. But I'm wondering if he sent that in after he started working with CB. And he had a little taste of doing some golf work. But I guess what I'm getting at, though, what I'm hoping, I love the idea of somebody that has a skill, a general skill in landscape building architecture, that then gets applied to this new niche.

activity. I think I'm getting it's such like he doesn't have any of the preconceived like it has to be an alpshole you know he's not doesn't have any of the of the like high minded BS it's like no I just know how to like move earth and like I have a vision you know

he's just good at like the blocking and tackling that's how I want to picture it I think I could have just spent an hour running through all of this and I think you just summed up exactly what what I'm trying to convey that's exactly what happens is he does not play he does not play any golf he does not have any preconceived notions i might i have this in my notes later

so apologies if i am redundant but the other interesting thing is like he never even goes to the uk to see all of these original holes so he's taking all of the things that he's doing and he's just using like the the synthesis of all these holes through c b mcdonald who then says build it this way and so he's he's kind of a he's an order taker for sure right like he's you know we'll get into kind of how they built the holes, but he also then is able to take all of that learning by doing and just applying it to his own designs as we go on. But that's like the most important thing is he comes into all of this without any golf knowledge whatsoever. In fact, the plan is to just survey this land, true one-off job. Like you're thinking about buying this land? Great. Let me come out and make you a survey

map, tell you how everything's working. And then I'm going to go back to my landscape architecture practice. And CB McDonald gets to know him and he sees, you know, what a good job he does. He sees that the land is going to work. This guy's already got this knowledge of the land. So he says, like, man, it would be really great if you could oversee construction for me. Right. And he's like, you know, I kind of got this other business and maybe I'll go back. And he's like, no, no, no, please stay.

This is going to be a great project. Please work on it. And so great men supporting it. Truly, truly, truly. Robert Todd Lincoln's in the wings, man. Come on. I hope the T stands for Todd. I think it does.

but I'm thinking maybe Gordon Leavitt is involved. Yeah, I looked it out. It does. Because I was curious, I didn't realize Lincoln had that many children because I knew one died early, so I did look it up. God, what was the one that died early? Joseph Gordon Levitt plays him in Lincoln, in the movie. You know what? Hand up, I've never seen it. I need to.

I don't know how. I don't know how. I know. It's bad. It's bad. I got to see it. I know. I got to see it. It's a hole in the resume, brother. I forget the name of the kid that died. It had a tad. I think it's William, William Wall, or no, Edward Baker is the one who died really young. And then he had another one that died like when he was 12. And then his wife. Yeah.

William Wallace. Yeah. Cover that in the Abraham Lincoln deep dive. Yeah. So he convinces Rainer to stay on. You know, not only do I need you for this surveying, I need you to run construction on this, help me build this thing. It seems like we're on the same page here.

And then obviously they would go on for the next 20 years and build some of the most important golf course is ever built, at least certainly here in America. And I think to your point, Neil, very interesting that, you know, all of this stuff, like you can look at it all laid out on a timeline in front of you. But Rainer, I don't think, has any idea necessarily what he's walking into because he's not a golfer. But when you start looking at all, like, how the deck is set here, it's like golf is about to explode.

You just walked in with the guy who knows everybody who has access to all the money and you're like a highly competent person who can just knock out jobs and the economy starting to absolutely like rip yeah like this is going to be fish in a barrel man if you want to build there's going to be courses to build and so it's kind of one of those like yeah there's probably only so much landscaping and landscape architecture to do in southampton you know brother you just kind of wandered through the you know through the right door here yeah it's great yeah it's interesting So back to the national. So he's got much more peace of mind.

He looks at the survey that Rainer does. He thinks his land is going to work. And so he puts together preliminary routing, figures out what they want to do, and him and the prospective members by 200 or some, 205 acres of the 450 acre tract that's north of Shinnecock. That would become national golf links in 1907. Owned not by the trust, owned by the neighbors.

owned by the trust so the land closer to the course was also owned by the trust yes no no sorry sorry they buy this from a separate owner this is not owned by the schenacock people yes owned by the not sell them this land that was like down the street correct it wasn't that close by and he's like oh cool I'll just go work with somebody across the street and you guys can't do anything about this correct so they buy this land in 1907 course would not open until 1911 11 another four years that's because a lot of stuff happened that we're going to we're going to get into when they're ready to start actually laying the golf holes out McDonald asks for help from his son H.J. Wiggum your boy and another architect Walter Travis who we talked about in the last episode I got a big Walter Travis detour later that I don't know is optional but I think it's worth it and so we're going to get to that later it's very important though that when we're talking about like

laying out golf holes, Walter Travis is involved in that process. He's one of the people on the very short list of dudes, you know, walking through the Blackberries looking for green sites. Okay. So the first thing they get to do laying out the golf course, naturally, very clear what McDonald wants to do. It's got these idea for the ideal holes. And so they're looking for green sites first.

And they have natural spots, like I said, for the Redan, natural spots for the Eden. But it becomes pretty clear, pretty fast that they're going to have to make some modifications and move some earth. if they're going to properly build the rest of these, the way that he's kind of envisioning. Sounds like maybe CB tried to either obscure the truth or maybe hide this fact.

George Bato says that he later claimed that the majority of the holes were on natural sites, and in reality, quote, he manipulated a huge amount of soil to build national golf links. Is it minimalist, Randy? Which is another funny one. We're kind of just, there's not a huge precedent for that, again, right? Like just moving truckloads of earth.

It sounds like eventually admitted they had to bring in over 10,000 truckloads of soil in order to a lot. It's a lot. Not even the biggest amount of truckloads that we're going to see, not by a long shot. They had to bring in all that dirt just so they could kind of contour things the exact way that they wanted. And this is where, again, Rainer really comes in handy because doing this at scale is pretty brand new, right? And it kind of becomes, it comes back to these two just being a very natural fit because, you know, McDonald has like the artistic view and the playability view and like what's in his head making that come to life is hard right and so they had to figure out a way to do this especially with the guy who doesn't

play any golf and so cb would build these like plasticine models of like i think you know here's what i want go make this happen on the land which again in 1907 1908 is like that's a big ask man that's that's that's that's wild that Rainer was able to do it so well but because he was able to do it so well. That's why CB was just like this guy can't go anywhere. I need him. I mean, are we sure they're like, were these wagon loads of dirt or truckloads? Uh, good question. I don't know. I don't know. That's what I'm always amazed by when you see some of these Rainer course and you're like, it's what's done with like, right plow and a donkey. At this point, 1906, 1907, like we're in the early days of the automobile. For sure. Yeah.

I don't know what the, I don't know what the payload was that they were they were shipping in and out of there. But yeah, I can't imagine it was efficient. You know, it's not a big truck. Maybe, you know, maybe set up like temporary railroad tracks, right? They definitely did that at the Lido later on. Yeah, I don't know if they did that at other places, but they would definitely do that later on. The one place, I love this detail. The one place where they kind of bumped up on this, like, art versus science was when he was trying to shape the greens. Because I think you could understand what I'm saying here. It's very easy to take a sheet of paper. draw out a cool golf hole and be like, oh, here's how the strategy is going to work.

If I made you then like draw the elevation of like, what does the green contouring look like? I think your brain would kind of glitch out a little bit because it would feel very arbitrary if it's not something that's just found. Right. If you're trying to like make it play a certain way, it would feel very arbitrary and very hard to make it feel natural. And that's what he runs into is like, God, how do I make the whole point of greens is that they're supposed to feel natural. these feel too overdone how am i like how am i going to figure out how to do this and so he asks uh his friend horse hutchinson more on much more on him later uh for some advice he's from the uk very involved with a lot of golf courses and he says what you know what's your advice and

hutchinson's advice is to take a sheet of paper and draw the shape of the green draw the outline of the green and then take a handful of pebbles drop them on your sheet of paper and just see how the pebbles land and his idea is like you know that's what nature wants to do with with how those rocks fall and it kind of takes the decision out of your hand. It gives you like gets you out of your own head. And so that's what you did. You did that for like a couple of the holes on the golf course, particularly the sixth,

which is the short. And this is going to be the first of many times that I've mentioned. I have not been to National Golf Links. So please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this stuff. But, well, the other, if I think the templates that are the most unnatural green white,

like double plateau would be the one. And I think that's in the 11 or 12 out there at national. I know it's on the back nine. So yeah, I could see how that would make you glitch out. Or maybe not. Maybe that one's so specific. It's like, we have to have three, you know,

tiers here, basically. Yeah, and I think when it's that expressed, it's probably, yeah, it's probably almost easier. But I think the ones that would be hard

is when it's like a cape hole or something. Yeah. Like, oh, God, I don't know. You could, what do I do with this? And so I just,

I love that little drop in pebbles analogy. I thought that was pretty cool. A couple of other specific whole by whole things. Neil, please chime in. I know you've played the golf course. Randy, have you, you haven't been out there? No, certainly looking for an invitation.

Top 100, Randers. He is available. Top 100 Randy at AOL.com. That's right. So the Eden hole is a fun example of him deviating from the original Eden hole, obviously based on the 11th at St. Andrews. This was one of the greatest holes in the world, according to that Best Holes discussion in Golf Illustrated

that we talked about last time. But there was something about the Eden hole that pissed these guys off. Really pissed these guys off. And that was the fact that the bunkers on St. Andrews, the Strath bunker and the Hill bunker that front the 11th hole are so penal

that a lot of people realize that they could just take a putter off the tee and just put it either like to a safe spot, short in between the bunkers or out to the left or just like completely take the bunkers out of play with a putter. Then they knock their next shot

on the green with the putter. And then they'd probably two putt, make a four, and essentially take the bunkers out of play, just not make a six or an eight or a nine or a ten, getting stuck in one of those bunkers. And so this is the area involved, D. That's right. So this pissed off CB McDonald. This pissed off a lot of the Brits as well, apparently. And so this is the reason why whenever you see a McDonald-Rainer Eden hole, there's usually a big-ass hazard in front of the green,

so that you literally can't put and take, uh, and take, uh, those bunkers out of play. So this is the 11th at National. You must play through the air. Exactly. You have to. The Redan was turned out to be number four. Massive hit. Famous story here was that when the course opened,

Ben Sayers, who was the North Barrett Pro at the time, came to see it. I got to see what all this hubbub's about. And even he was like, ah, this is better than the one at North Barrick, unfortunately. And again, this is one that they basically found. So he didn't have to get too deep in his head about the green and the shape and all that stuff he just kind of had to dig out like the front left bunker

and the t-box and so neil is this one as good as advertised people people are losing their shit about it's severe as some other ones that rayner specifically does later yeah uh but it's it's very good it's yes it is uh you know it's the textbook one i i would say i have not played north barrack though so that maybe that's you know heresy for me to say out loud but i think like when i think about you know the bigger and more outrageous the better and I think about piping rock I think about margot's radan you know like just outrageous country club of charleston outrageous you know it just that that kicker gets bigger and bigger it's almost like for me like a ranger joke he's like yeah let's go bigger this time so a lot of people uh in when this course ends up opening complaining this holds way

too hard which is a theme we're going to hear down the road about the course in general but here's McDonald's thoughts on it quote some people think the hole is too difficult altogether but anyone who gets a legitimate three there especially in a metal round is sure to say that it's the finest short hole in the world whichever of the various methods of attack is chosen the stroke must be bold cleanly hit and deadly accurate at the ordinary hole of 180 yards it is a very bad shot that doesn't stay on the green at the radan it takes an exceedingly good shot to stay anywhere on the green and to get a put for a two is something to brag about for a week Randy, I thought about you in hearing that, a guy who loves competing against himself, a guy who loves the score on the card. Does this resonate with you? Where do you stand on holes that are maybe just a little, a touch too hard? Oh, no, they're great. You know, I think you take the good with the bad.

I would say there's no such thing as a hole. It's too hard. So I reject the premise straight away. But I can certainly resonate with the feeling of like being very, jazz to make a par. I think that's one of the more underrated feelings in golf, honestly, are holes where, you know, you make a par. I'm thinking of the road hole at St. Andrews, right, being one where I'm like, ah, real sense of accomplishment there. I might be talking about that for a week, let alone a birdie. So, yeah, I dig it. Like the philosophy. The only thing I'd

add there is I think that that concept of a hard-earned par works best on short holes. Yeah, I agree with that. A par threes, you know, versus like sometimes, Randy, yeah, Yeah, if it's just like a long, really hard or four, a long par five. And you're like, I mean, this is just kind of like, yeah, an execution test. And I can't execute. Totally. I think it also speaks to the history of the Redan and what it actually is supposed to be talking specifically about like the one at North Barak here, which is it's not supposed to be a hundred 80 whole yard hole where you just throw it up 200 feet in the air and drop it right next to the hole. Like the whole point is you have this big shoulder you can use.

You have this knob in front of the green that is kind of a ball splitter, as TC and Sully would like to say, you got bunkers everywhere. You got to figure out what the wind is doing. You're supposed to have to pick the right way to attack this hole on any given day depending on the forces like at play, depending on your score, depending on the time in the match, depending on your strengths and weaknesses. You're supposed to be able to figure out like, do I want to try to run it up? Do I want to take that slope? Do I want to play it out to the left and try to get up and down for par? Do I want to, am I okay being in that bunker? you know, there's supposed to be like a lot of different shit going through your head.

Like that's the point of the name. It's supposed to feel like a fortress that you're trying to break into. Sir David Baird, if your family's listening, I bet you didn't expect to get a shout out here, was a British Guards officer. And when he started playing the 15th at North Barrack way back in the day, he said it reminded him of a fortification he had stormed in Crimea 20 years before. And so it was called the Redan, which is Randy, French word. I don't know if that came up in your

dualingo or not, but the Redan specifically is like, I'm showing a picture on YouTube, it's like the jut out arrow that juts out of some of these like fortifications. And so again, knob. That's the yeah, that's kind of, or even maybe the larger metaphor of just like, you're going to have

to think about the best way to get in here. You can't just throw a cannon from, you know, from 500 yards away. Like you might need to be a little more tactical on which angle you're coming in from, right? Not to be confused with a redoubt, which is also a small and closed military fortification. I didn't know that. Not to be confused.

If anybody was confused, there you go. I think another simple thing that I think about with the Redan or maybe good architecture, but I think it shows itself most on short challenging holes is when you have to aim away from the flag from a short distance. Totally. Do you have the self-control to do that? Yep. Because it's such a, you know, in goal.

all for us. It's like, no, you go, you aim at the flag. It's like the, no, you are supposed to aim away from the flag is just sometimes hard subconsciously to, to really commit to. Well, and I think it speaks also to his, you know, some of the stroke play stuff we talked about last time, right? And him being like, you know, him wanting people to take the aggressive shot and not necessarily, like basically testing exactly that self-control, right? You know, depending on the situation of your match, like, can you go for it or do you need to play it safe? And what's that going to lead to? and just makes the game endlessly more interesting. So I think that's a small example of that.

Randy, you mentioned the road hole. Number seven was his take on the roadhole. Obviously, didn't have a lot of old railway sheds lying around. So kind of had to figure out how to... No ugly hotels. No hearing aid color hotels, as our guy, Patty, like to say. And so he had to figure out how to recreate that angle with, you know, so a bunch of waste kind of on the right that people would have to fly.

A fun roadhole fact. I found Alan Robertson, the great man Alan Robertson, who placed the roadhole bunker, the whole kind of traces back to, never actually made a birdie there. So there you go, Randy. Don't beat yourself up. Sometimes you got to chase your whole life, man, and you still never get there. It's great. Yeah, that's cool.

I like that. The long, number nine, was modeled after number 14 at St. Andrews, also the long, has another modification. Doesn't have recreation of the hell bunker, which I don't really know why. Why that seems like kind of one of those things. I don't know if that was a construction headache or what the deal was. But he did try to put some bunkers on the left to kind of force more of like a diagonal T-shot similar to kind of the Elysian Fields, you know, kind of effect at St. Andrews.

Just a side note there, I don't think I'd ever really made the connection between having the Elysian Fields and the hell bunker on the same hole, you know, kind of a heaven and hell situation. think there's enough mythology storytelling yeah going on in our our current architecture so i'm gonna i'm putting all architects other than our guy pisa uh at tgl i'm putting all other architects on blast uh to do more storytelling and more more more more naming of bunkers yeah more just more labeling of uh yes create a narrative with your golfes exactly gill we're talking to you mr doke tell a story up tell a story listen to some of these influencers man it's all about storytell what do you what is your brand doing for story yeah like the 10th hole is called shin acock uh for it's the course's famous neighbor uh trying to maybe keep up relations

i don't know uh not not really a specific template well it is the one that's right on the on the property line yes and that is uh it was originally going to be the first hole which was interesting uh and what's kind of interesting about it is you know he's got his 70 grant to kind of play with here and and work on to to do this course most of that money's going into the golf course doesn't have a lot of money lined around for a clubhouse all of that stuff and so what they he's hearing from these members is like it's a bit like sweetens honestly where he's like man we're coming all the way out here from from the city like we got to have a place to kind of get a r and r here man like it can't just be a can't just be a shed and so he's like all right fine well

we got this shiniccock hotel that's right here next to the tent like right next to this t-box that's going to be the first hole like we'll just use that as kind of like our de facto clubhouse the course opens hotel burns down unfortunately but uh eventually a couple years later they would carve out the the big beautiful land for the clubhouse up on the top of the hill there great view i'm told uh all of that stuff uh jarvis hunt is uh is contracted to build that architect or to build that uh clubhouse unfortunately our guy our guy stanford white got slimes back in 1906 so he's uh he's out he's not able to do it but jarvis hunt uh jarvis hunt uh interesting He did the clubhouse at Chicago Golf Club, which is very famous.

Also qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in 1904, the Olympic golf team, way back when golf was in the Olympics the first time around. Didn't know that. Just great men, Renaissance men, you know, they're popping up everywhere. God, that clubhouse just makes me think of like Jane Eyre. Yeah, for sure. It's like with the gates and stuff, you're just like, oh. Sorry, you're talking the national?

Yeah. Okay. Do you want to is this the time to tell the story about when you went to national? I'd be happy to if you if you like a little I think this is probably yeah I think this is private the time. All right. I got invited out to play this was in 2020 the only time I played for you know 36 whole day you know the class I guess the classic day. I was really I was well so I was really nervous in a lead up to it and I called TC and he was with Zach Blair I think they were playing golf somewhere and I was like guys help me out.

I'm packing to go out to national golf links. I keep hearing out. I have to have a coat and tie. Like, what should I pack? They were extremely unhelpful. Like, yeah, I might pack a suit or maybe just a blazer. I don't know. You'd have a blast, man.

Don't worry about it. It's kind of, I was like, cool. So I ended up packing like basically a suit. Wait until you see her a dad, man. Yeah, that's kind of what the conversation ended up being. Like, oh, look at you wet in your beak. Like, okay, thanks for the help. So I pack a suit.

I pack like, okay, maybe I'll pack like a little bit like more casual option to change into in between rounds for this lunch I keep hearing about. I was going to read the vibe. Yeah, so I basically got a, you know, pretty sizable duffel bag along with my golf bag. Of course, I'm running a little late when I pull in, and it's like these big gates with like, I don't know if they're eagles, statues on the tops of them, but you pull down this long driveway and the clubhouse sits up on this hill, like, isolated, like against the horizon. And it, you know, it looks, it's striking and intimidating.

So there's no, there's no gate attendant or anything. I pull up and it's like, you just park. and I probably parked, like, I may have parked in the wrong parking lot. Who knows? I'm like, there's no signage. I'm like, all right, cool. I'm, and I'm kind of rushing. There's no, it's like nobody's there in the front of the clubhouse or there's no,

there's no signs of human life around the clubhouse. Which is a hallmark of these places. There's no like, members who are clearly not ever, have never been here before. Here's exactly what you do type of blueprint. It is just wandering into the dining room. You know, so I'm just trying to be there before. I can't remember what time I team. time was but I'm still probably like 30 minutes early you know I'm not like way behind but I'm like

okay I get the normally you know a lot of times someone will tell you where to go uh not the case here so I walk up this is during COVID and I walk up the left side of the clubhouse so like towards I didn't drive up to like the front drive I just parked in the parking lot because I was in a rush so I walk up I see a door on the left side of the clubhouse I guess it would be the south side and it had masks and keys and like like there was like a tray out of outside the door. I was like, well, let's be the locker room. Great. So I go in there and I'm no, no locker room attendant. And I'm looking at the names. I'm like, oh, Mike Bloomberg, what's up? You know, like, CB McDonald, like on the lockers. I'm like, this is sick. Cool.

I'm like, all right, I'll just stash my bag underneath the bench. You know, I hope that's cool. And I don't think blueberry is covered today. No, I didn't use any lockers. I just used under the bench. I was like, I'll just put my bag under the bench. So I walk around the side and to go into what I think was, oh, this must be like the pro shop, you know, and I walk in and I get like, I almost like run into the locker room attendant. And he's, you know, a little gruff. He's like, who are you? I'm like, I'm, you know, I'm here. I'm playing with so and so. And like, he's like, you're late. I'm like, I know I'm rushing a little bit. He's like, where's your stuff? I'm like, I put it on the other side of the locker room. He's you did what? I was like,

I was like, I was like, what? He's like, that's the founder's locker room. You're not allowed in there. I'm like, if you knew I was trying so hard not to be this guy and I just got like outed like within three minutes of being on property. And so then the clubhouse is like 150 yards over the hill, like away from the clubhouse. So I get up there. And they were. And then from there, like everybody was super nice. But the whole, the best part of story is because of COVID, they weren't doing lunches.

So like I didn't have to bring any of that. Catch it on crustables. I got, I finished the first eight. He was like, oh, yeah. No, like the, the grills club. closed inside, so we're just going to eat out here. I'm like, I brought like all this shit for nothing. I went to the tailor.

I got a jacket. I just felt like such a moron. So anyway, that's the story. I love it. God, that's very relatable. I don't want to look like a tourist. And I, within three minutes of being on property, it was like, this guy does not belong here.

I'm like, I'm innocent. I swear. Tough. I didn't do nothing. All right. A couple more things on the, on the holes. The 14th is the cape hole. which is one of this is one of the few diagrams I ripped from George's book here just because I think it kind of illustrates the point I feel like we should talk about this because I think this temple gets very confusing as far as what it actually means this was another CB original here and George Bato describes it he says most golfers or students of golf architecture even golf course architects believe the fundamental principle of a cape design is a T ball over over a diagonal hazard I think many people on this podcast.

have made that same error arriving on the T-box and saying looks very capy to me, things of that nature. Not the case. Not the case. In 1914, writing about NGLA, McDonald's says the 14th hole and National Golf Links is called the Cape Hole because the green extends out into the sea with which it is surrounded upon by three sides. So if you'll see this diagram that I have up on here and I'll explain it for people who

who cannot see it, this is the 14th underwent some changes. But originally the green was where you see that jut out into the water right above where it says sabonic inlet there. Yes. It was like a truth surrounded on three sides sort of green. And the whole point was like there's danger on all three sides. Choose very carefully how you're going to attack this thing. They ended up having to move that. And I think there was a lot of reasons they had to move it.

I think there was this access road you can see in this diagram had to come in. I don't know if they had issues with like erosion and stuff. with that much water exposure. But anyways, they had to move it. And they recreated the effect by putting bunkers on all three sides. And so it's a weird template to spot because when you get to the T-box, you don't always notice like, oh, that was a cape until almost like you're done playing it. Because you've got to kind of see where the bunkers are.

But I just wanted to help anybody out. The key to the cave is the hazard has to wrap around the back of the green. Exactly. But I'm okay, as we like to do, D, saying it has, you know, a little capey dog. Yeah, it's capey. It's got whiffs of the cape, but if it doesn't, if that cape doesn't wrap around, we can't call it a full cape. That's right. That's right. So there's that. Uh, the punch bowl number 16, I think most people are very familiar with what this is. Green's a big punch bowl, right? Uh, these holes, uh, thrilling, obviously, uh, to play.

Could also be a huge pain in the ass for maintenance purposes, because that's naturally where all the water's going to collect, uh, get very soupy down in there, very prone to disease. But again, I think That's where some of the engineering comes from in making this thing work. I always like, you know, I think about the one here at Blue Mound. When you get on a punchball green, just taking a second and stopping and being like, man, where does all the water go? Because if you do that, you almost can kind of see it in your mind and you can kind of work backwards. I'm like, oh, that's how they did it. That's how there's usually some sort of like pretty clear drainage path that leads down into some way.

It's just one of those. It's like kind of the easiest way to see the seams, you know, or like kind of how the things. was made, which I have a question, stupid question here, novice question, but maybe someone else in the class has the question. Is it required to have a blind shot into a punch bowl? Is that part of the template concept? I don't know. It's a good question. Could you essentially have a, a recited punch bowl at, or the punch pole at like sleepy hollow? I mean, most of the best, I feel like the punch bowl doesn't have a ton of bite to it. If it doesn't have, because the, the, the payoff is they usually have a big pole behind them because you can't see the green but like if you get it

anywhere within 20 yards of that pole like you better start running it might roll into the hole sure you know what i mean like that's the thrill of the template but i've never really understood if the blind approach is is required i think call it a punch bowl i got i quickly get out of my depth on all the uh nomenclature stuff but i think that's where you get into like the alps punch bowl hybrid that's right so that's where i'm like okay so then it's a combo of the alps and the punch bowl at a lot of these places I think about like the one at what like old Mac, right? Which is like that's not really blind kind of sort of blind. It kind of has the knob in front, but it's not.

That's the 18th. Yeah. I feel like it is kind of blind though with that bunker in front. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what the, I don't know. I know what you're saying. It's not up over the hill.

Right. Because then the Alps is what at Old Mac like 16? Yeah. And that's a blind over the, over the mountain. Right. The blind shot. But there's no punch bowl. Yeah.

I don't know. I have to dig into that. Okay, quick pause in the action here to hear a word from our friends at Roback. Guys, new year, the same subtle dog logo that we love so much. Still going to be around. You know that we are deep into layering season. I can speak to this personally. It is currently one degree outside my house. And so for the NLU community, you know that means Roebuck is in full rotation.

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So that's kind of a very, very, very high overview of the specifics of the golf holes. There's obviously much, much more to it than that. Go by George Bato's book if you want to get super nitty-gritty on all the details. He's got sketches of everything. He's got photos of everything. Like I said, I've never been there. I'm going to be talking around my ass if I try to do them any more justice than that. So they find all the golf holes.

They flip the routing. They argue about the routing. They do all that stuff. And eventually the course is ready to go. And again, you're probably wondering, you know, this is like 1908. Course doesn't open until 1911. What happened? The disaster comes trying to get grass on the greens.

Because you have to remember there's not a ton of turf grass knowledge floating around the U.S. at the time. And I just really like just the idea of buying grass seed in 1908, right? Like you go buy grass seed now and it's just like, yeah, we can tell you who this grass seed's grandparent was. You know, like we got everything so optimized and dialed. And you read like accounts of buying grass seed at the time. And it's literally like people taking a handful of this big mix of grass seed and just being like, I don't know, just plant this. Like something's going to grow. Right. And it's like, fescue bank grass, you know, all kinds of like meadow grasses. And they're all mixed together. It's not pure distinction. It is not. It's not. Bermuda was the father.

It's not pure distinction. No. And so what they do is like they scatter this kind of like hodgepodge grass seed. And what ends up growing is just like the coarsest nastiest stuff that basically like snuffs out all the other seed, right? And so the greens, as one writer put, just start to look like these cabbage patches. We just have like clumps after clumps and dirt. And it's just really tough. And it literally takes them like two years to get this figured out. And this makes McDonald's furious. Obviously, he's got Abe Lincoln's son, you know, wait to go play some G. And so he just throws himself into, you know, like how all this stuff works. Like he gets very into agronomy, builds a nursery on site, National. He builds another nursery at his house. And he just gets like deep into trial and error.

Like, all right, well, then maybe I'm going to figure this stuff out. And he ends up writing a paper called the growing of fine turf grass on sandy soil of Long Island. I could not find this paper. I did try. But apparently this went on to be like a pretty seminal text for future greenskeepers. Because not a lot of golf courses, not a lot of greenskeepers at this time. And so anybody who's publishing anything, it ends up kind of being the guy who's sharing the key learnings and best practices. Can I share a personal anecdote on this note? So we have the birdhouse at Sweetens Cove and we put in the T-box in the front yard. So it's like the 10th hole at Sweden's. And T-C. and I did like the landscaping. D.D. You help with the path. But then we built these like flower

boxes on the front and the side of the T-box. And you know, Damasku's like, yeah, we got a sandpit behind the, you know, shed. Like, go, if you want to, if you need some sand, go for it. Because we were like, and I went and pulled it out of this, like, kind of nasty sand pit thinking like, oh, it's no big deal. I think there's a bunch of weed, you know. So all of a sudden, I come back like a month later and like all the flowers that we had planned have just been overtaken by the cabbage patch.

Yeah. I was like, ah, there's just a bunch of stuff living in that sand that's going to, you know, it's going to, it's going to live, baby. That's right. Weeds will survive. It was interesting, Randy. As best I could tell, you know, there was obviously seed problems here, but I think they had a loam issue as well. I'm not going to get too deep into Greenskeeper, the world of Greenskeeping, Ray.

I know that's kind of your block. Yeah, Randy, any words of wisdom here? No, I don't think what we're doing here. Let's just keep this a little basic. Yeah, I think that's. I wouldn't want to bore you with the nitty gritty. It was too much loam, Randy. or not enough loam.

I don't know, but they got it figured out eventually. And the one thing I will say about the agronomy at National here is that it became very clear that there was going to be a need for much more control over the conditions. They kind of thought, you know, again, this is not Scotland that we're talking about. It's very different. And during the summer, things got way too baked out, way too dried out. Things got rock hard.

And it wasn't like in Scotland when it's like, oh, that's a great thing. You know, it was like, no, it's just hard pan. And you just the golf ball just literally doesn't stop people even with these old drivers are driving them all 300 yards You can't keep it on the green and so you've got all this like again. It's just kind of it is funny man when you think about like Okay, I'm gonna be so meticulous about how I'm shaping all of these humps and where I'm putting these bunkers and where the angle is and it's like fuck now everybody's hitting it 300 yards Well you've also set the bar this is gonna be the best golf course ever built yes it's like god we gave it grow grass And so they try to figure this out and they try to get like, they need more control over what's going on with the golf course. And so there's a water tower on site.

I can't tell if this was there before, like if it was an existing water tower. I think George Bato calls it an existing water tower. But they take this and they retrofit it into this like gravity fed irrigation system. So basically the first golf course irrigation system in America, which is kind of interesting. And this led to massive improvement in the conditions. got much more control over everything. And so when the course finally does, like officially, officially open, the playing surfaces became one of the things people were raving about.

But true country club fashion, right? All of all the members are never going to be happy. So course is playing great. But I don't know if this is a true story or if this is a tall tale or what, but this is the story that's out there. This guy, Dan Pomeroy, who was the president of Condé Nast at the time. And he was an official associate member. member of national.

One day he's talking to CB at the bar and he says conditions are great, but this water tower is like kind of an eyesore, man. It's, it's pretty, it's scarring the landscape, right? And it'd be so much better if you cover it up with a windmill, right? Why don't we just take, I agree, I get that this water tower has to exist. Why don't we cover it up with a windmill? That's a big swing, by the way, as I'm just kind of saying that out loud. like he could cover it up with any number of things, but like a big giant windmill is,

is definitely a big swing. And so I've read a, CB loves this idea, first of all. He says, that's a great call. And I've read a couple different stories on this. I can't really pin down whether it was like an original design and build windmill or whether they literally got it from Holland, disassembled it, brought it over, reassembled it. I've kind of read it both ways. But either way, the whole membership is pumped when this thing gets put up because it's

this big 50 foot windmill. You could see it from everywhere on the course. It's striking when you're coming in on the yacht. What's the first thing you're going to see? It's Don Quixote's place over there, right? You see the windmill. And then the fun part, and this is the part that I'm like, I don't know how true this is or if this is a tall tale,

is the day after the windmill's completion, Dan Palmeroy, the guy whose idea this was, goes to his locker. You find something in there waiting for him, which is the bill for the windmill from CV McDonald, which is good stuff. that's classic kind of country club tall tail stuff he's being boys well i just i picture that conversation and you know in the at the club going hey charlie man great course but based on our last episode

how much these guys like to drink and party water towers it's problem man it looks like shit man's scar in the landscape how about a windmill how windmills are sick maybe they had a list of things that were sick maybe windmills are cool windmills are cool so again i don't know if it's a tall tale or not as far as like the billing goes i had wolfey help me out uh because a lot of the history of these places are like you know they're not on wikipedia like they're all contained in these like super exclusive club history books that then gets sold for a bajillion dollars to people like wolfe but he i had him pull some pages about the windmill and uh this is from the the club history that came out in 2016 what we know is that the the gift of the windmill was included in the club's minutes

in 1916, and we know that there were some, quote, difficult problems that baffled the engineers, and that it took, like, five years to complete it. And so that makes me think it was probably purchased and, like, reassembled later, but that's just speculation by me. So question, though, is it a functioning, was it a functioning windmill? I don't know. Actually, no. I don't know. That probably, that's a good point. I don't know. Did it serve a purpose? Did it produce energy? Did it spin? Yeah. I did all of, you know it slaps. Did it spin? All good things to ask. I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that. We also don't know if Pomeroy donated the windmill or if CB made him pay for it, but there's a couple of little breadcrumbs in there. There's a letter from Pomeroy to the club secretary from the time that offers a little bit of a hint. It says, quote, it's given me no end of pleasure in supplying this feature of our landscape. My motive in doing so is expressed in the sentiment inscribed on a small plate that will have its everlasting resting place over the entrance door.

You guys want to know what that plaque says? Of course. It says, presented to the National Golf Links of America by Daniel E. Pomeroy to Charles B. McDonald, father, builder, and autocrat of the club. I think that word autocrat is doing some heavy lifting. Maybe a term of endearment, maybe a joke, but that's maybe a bit of a tushay. Like, yep, all right, I'll pay for it. You know what?

Charlie, I'll pay for it. Yeah, exactly. So once construction is done, they got everything looking pretty good. They're ready for a little test run. So they have this tournament, a little bit of an influencer outing out there in July of 1910 before a soft launch, soft opening. So they have this little invitational tournament. And one of the people who plays in it is Walter Travis. There's only like 16 people invited to this tournament.

Walter Travis plays in it. And this is not surprising, right? He's been involved pretty heavily throughout the process. he's one of the guys that was out there originally kind of stomping around when it was a bunch of blackberries. But it's good to pin that date to a time where Walter Travis is involved. So this is 1910 and they're clearly getting along. I think there's photos of them playing together. But that would not always be the case.

And I think that brings us to our little Walter Travis side dive here. There's a line in McDonald's book that goes back to that beginning of when they start to lay out the hole, start to figure out what's going on at National. And he says, basically I asked these guys for help. It's, it's H.J. Wiggum. It's Devereaux Emmett, I think is there. And Walter Travis. And then he says, quote, eventually I dropped Travis, end quote. No explanation as to why that happened.

And so as you can imagine, this is pretty niche shit that we're talking about here. Not a lot of investigations into what happened here. And so this is why, you know, one of the many reasons for this podcast, it's a good reason that Golf Club Atlas exists. because there's a piece written there by a guy named Mike Serba who dove very, very, very, very deep into this question of why Travis got dropped by CB McDonald's. Because these guys were boys for a long time. They were on the USGA's Rules Committee.

They were both Garden City guys. Travis was so fired up by this talk about traveling to see the ideal holes that he started taking similar trips to Europe, got really into golf course architecture, obviously, became a very well-known. architect here in America. And there's a lot of documentation, like I said, about him being involved from the beginning. There's even a letter got published in like 1906 that I think is like as they're

either keeping investors apprised of what's going on or trying to get more investors. They're kind of like, oh, CB's out in Europe. Don't worry about what he's doing. All he's doing is just scouring for great holes, man. He's dialed. This project is on time and ready. Send your check here. And it's written by Walter Travis. Like he's speaking on behalf of CB McDonald. So he's, he's very, very involved. So Serb's whole article is trying to figure out like what happened, what, where was the fracture or what went wrong? And he pins it. His, his summation is to look all the way back to that USAM that I mentioned in the last episode. This is 1901. This is when Walter Travis is playing the Haskell ball and his opponent isn't. And there's like a little bit of chippiness going on about like,

yeah, is this guy played by the rules? Is this legitimate? Just like a little bit of talk, right? like nothing disqualifying, just, you know, he starts to maybe get rubbed the wrong way. Because there's a couple more similar incidents after that. Specifically, 1904 is the year Walter Travis goes over to the British AM and he becomes the first player from America by way of Australia to go over and win the British amateur, massive feat. That week he does, and even after, it doesn't get the warmest welcome at the tournament to begin with, if you can believe that. The Brits are a little frosty to our guy.

They don't like that he's smoking a big cigar. They don't like that he's taking practice swings. They think that makes it hard to play with. But what they really don't like is the fact that he's using this center-shafted putter. It's a mallet, center-shafted mallet putter called the Schenectady putter. I don't know if you guys have heard that name, but this pissed off some people that he's using this putter. And, you know, he kind of just like sits with what happens this week for a long time. It's nothing like official happened.

He didn't break the rules. It's just a lot of people like talking. Travis sits with it. He doesn't like people. People, the boys are talking shit. Yes. And he doesn't like it.

And he sits with it for like six years. If you got something to say, say it to my face. And he sits with it for like six years. In fact, until he writes, he starts his own magazine. Uh, the American golfer. It's called. And then kind of out of nowhere, he just writes this like hit him up style piece that just names like all the slights that he.

received this guy said this to me this guy treated me like this yada yada yada and he just kind of airs out like all of this stuff this pisses off all the people who get aired out and now it kind of just restokes this whole question of like should you even be using this putter should this be legal is this even a real victory all of that stuff and so were people triggered by the center shaft is that the problem and i think the mallet time is a flat circle tell me about it exactly and so the rna starts drafting some legislation saying like sort of signaling like maybe we need to ban this putter we might need to ban this connectedy putter make it illegal which a lot of people again this is kind of the the thrust of mike service article is like a lot of people think that this is basically

just like politically motivated to diminish older Travis's victory and so all this puts c b mcdonald his boy in a very interesting position right because he's mr rules he's mr rna now he's mr us SGA. He's Mr. We can only have one set of rules. But he also can't see the point of like what this ban is accomplishing. He's like, what are we even talking about? This is such a stupid rule. And so he writes a letter to the RNA imploring them like, don't go, don't go through with this. Don't ban this.

RNA does it anyways. They ban this putter. And now Travis is really pissed off. Right? Because, you know, he writes another editorial in his magazine about all this is bullshit. this putter's been used for 10 years. No one is asking for this. What are we even talking about?

James Brade is a punk bitch. Yeah, Sanford White. He's a creep. He's American. He's on our side. Then there's even more gas that gets poured on the fire when Horace Hutchinson, this great man of the UK, comes over to America to see some of the courses. And he writes glowingly about national golf links.

Oh, my God, this is the best place ever. And then he goes and sees all these other places in America. And he just shits all over him. And a lot of these are Garden City where Walter Travis has done a bunch of work. I think Essex maybe was on that list and a couple of other places. And he just is like, oh, these places are so stupid. And they're just years behind and yada, yada, yada. And so Travis now fires back at him.

This time under the, I don't know why, under the pen name Ameri-U-S, A-M-E-R-I-C-U-S. And he's, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. this is completely reductive criticism, like all of these things. It just keeps going back and forth until eventually Travis starts coming at CB McDonald. And basically, like, why are you not backing me up here? What is this like personal loyalty you have to the RNA instead of, you know, a commitment to common sense? We need to set the USGA on the right path.

We need to form our own set of rules. Fuck those guys. Like, this is bullshit that this is getting banned. And so Travis gets so mad that he writes a letter to president Taft. about about this uh present half must not i don't know if he didn't have a lot going on or what but he writes back he says quote my dear mr travis i think the restriction imposed by st andrews is too narrow i think putting with the schenectady putter is sportsman like and gives no undue advantage case closed now travis is just flying the banner anyone who is standing against me is now

defying the president of the united states and so all this is kind of like going on as national is uh is like getting ready to open its doors. And there's somewhere in this fuzzy stretch where CB McDonald kind of starts to distance himself from Walter Travis. And by the time it opens, he's not included in the opening day invitational tournament,

which seems outrageous, you know, considering like he was there in 1910, he was there for the land. He's one of the best players in the country. Wasn't there for that. He's not included in any of the letters that CB writes to the membership, you know,

thanking all the people who helped turn national into a reality. It's just like a very weird omission considering how, you know, involved he'd been from the start. And so over the years, Travis starts to realize, like, what's happening that he's kind of getting erased from the story of this great golf course. And in 1914, this was another great find from Mike Serba. Seemingly out of nowhere, he drops in his magazine, the American golfer. This just, like, little footnote, little tidbit.

And it's this little blurb. It's called Facts for Posterity. It's basically just like, oh, just one more thing, by the way. and he says in here, the National Golf Links of America was laid out primarily by three men, Mr. Charles B. McDonald, Mr. Walter J. Travis,

and Mr. Devereaux Emmett. These three men tramped over the ground in its rough state and how fearfully rough it was with Blackberry Vines and Huckleberry Bushes galore. The result of their joint labor of love is what may be seen today insofar as the location of the several holes is concerned without any material change

from the original plan. I think a good way to summarize that would be like I was there to they didn't change anything from what I worked on, and I'm not included in this, essentially. And then he throws this in at the end. Oh, by the way, the name of the club was decided upon by Mr. McDonald as the national golf course of America,

but upon the suggestion of Mr. Travis, it was subsequently changed to the national golf links of America. So not only that, I named it, but I came up with the name too. And the point of this is, you know, not only is he no longer a national member, he's basically like trashing the course now each time that he takes the opportunity to write about it. One of his first write-ups about the course says,

the plain truth is that they've overdone it at the National. The scores in the recent tournament go largely to support this. Fancy Mr. Norman Hunter taking 87 at St. Andrews or Mr. Hilton, 89, as they did at the National. They have overdone it and making every hole a difficult one. It is too much. There's no let up, no breathing spell. One's nose is everlastingly at the grinds. Stone, which after all is not golf for golf is a game, a recreation. And he just keeps,

he just keeps going. Just keeps doubling down, tripling down, very clear that the relationship with McDonald is beyond repair. Those two never seemed to reconcile. Travis, he also fell out with Devereaux Emmett, which was his, his Garden City guy. They had their own spat about changes at that golf course. I found a letter that Emmett sent him. The full extent of the letter was, my dear Travis, We were friends so long and I've always regretted our estrangement cannot we be friends again Unclear whether or not Travis ever responded so he called the guy the fancy Tom No, he said fan like fancy mr. Norman hunter it does sound like he's saying fancy mr. Norman hunter but yeah I think he's saying like imagine Norman hunter shooting 87

I was I was picturing like you know d t little marco sleepy fancy tom yeah sleepy mr hilton so disingenuous charlie So what's the point of all of this question worth asking? This is the first time the USGA has basically had to break with the RNA on the rules because they do eventually say, we're going to carve out a local rule saying that Schenectady putter is legal to use in the US. Eventually, there's clarification in the 50s about how now it's permissible to be used anywhere in the world. So it's just this weird, fractious moment that I think is really interesting.

And again, it kind of shows that CB McDonald's directly or indirectly is kind of like at the center of all of this stuff. There's like 20 pages of his memoir that's dedicated to this Schenectady Potter situation. So it very clear that was on his. What I'd like to say is it is almost endearing and refreshing to know that we look back on these great men and how much respect and class and elegance they had.

But they were arguing over very, very dumb stuff. Very dumb stuff. And again, they were just as petty and catty as all of us could get. That's refreshing to know. Sure. It is the more things change, the more they stay the same. That is that is for sure. So back of the national, just a couple more, a couple more things. Everyone else seems to be just heaping praise on the new golf course. Harold Hilton, our guy, sleepy misery Hilton, who had won the open twice by that point, said no two holes are alike in any way.

In particular, I'm in love with the short holes to Charles Blair McDonald and to those who have helped him in the task, I take off my hat. Bernard Darwin, Neil, your guy. Had a great write-up on his first visit when he said, how good a course is it? I hardly dare trust myself to say on such a short acquaintance. These guys, they could turn a phrase, man. I'm going to pocket that for tourist sauce. Yeah, how dare I, such a short acquaintance.

How dare I have a take on this? How dare I even give it? He did finish that article by saying, the National Golf Links is truly a great course. Even as I write, I feel my allegiance to Westward Ho, to Hoy Lake, to St. Andrews tottering to its fall. Wow.

Yeah. Tottering. Fun fact here, the National goes on to host the first Walker Cup, 11 years later after this fact. And in 1922, Darwin was a very famous golf writer. You can see him in this picture

second from the left there. He actually gets asked to sub in as an alternate when one of the British, like, they had playing captains at the time and the British team captain got sick. And so they needed another British player to come in and play and Darwin was there covering the event. So he got subbed in to play.

And he actually won a singles match. Hell yeah. Which is pretty sick. He played against T.C.'s guy, W.C. phones. Two phones. Yeah. There was only one phones there. He looks like Arthur Shelby.

Yeah. That's a great call. So that's just, you know, Bernard Darwin, an endlessly fascinating guy in his own right. So the golf course was hard. I mean, there was no doubt about it. They had a pro tournament. Pro's got their asses kicked. Tommy Armour went 77, 77 to win the tournament on the weekend.

And, you know, the scoring average for some of these guys was like 79. I think CB McDonald really enjoyed the fact that it was a hard golf course. So much so that one of the most famous legends about the course has to do with someone making a claim that the first hole was too easy. Have you guys ever heard this story? No. Okay. So the story goes that it was actually CB McDonald's grandson, a guy named J. Peter Grace. And he loved to get under CB's skin, great-grandson in that way.

He loved to poke him, love to get him riled up about comments about how the course was too easy. He knew this was going to get a big rise out of him. He loved doing it, especially in front of other members. Just kind of see it out fired up his grandpa would get. I can't find what year this was. I think it was like sometime in the 30s because Peter Grace was born in like the 1913. So he must have been in his 20s when this happened. But one day he really turned his guns on the first hole.

And he's saying this hole is way too easy. It's too short. It was like 315 yards at the time when it was originally laid out. And he started getting really vocal about it in the clubhouse. He's telling everyone that he could drive the green. It's not that hard. And CB takes the bait. And he obviously pushed back hard.

He says this is absolutely impossible. There's nobody that can drive the green. Shut up. What are you talking about? And they get in this big argument. And eventually they make a $20 bet. And they grab a driver and they grab three golf balls. And they head to the first tee.

and i'm going to defer to our guy george botto uh in his book for what happened next year quote with a slight tailwind peter's third attempt just barely crossed the fringe onto the green c b mcdonald was livid with rage grace's gleeful request for payment of the wager landed on deaf ears mcdonald was steaming and ignored the issue peter grace continued to gloat and insisted loudly in the clubhouse before some members that the lost bet be paid finally an infuriated McDonald threw the money at his feet and stormed out of the clubhouse. The next morning, McDonald promptly phoned his attorney and had Peter removed from his will.

Oh, Peter Grace, winner of the $20 bet, lost an estimated $4 million of it. It was an expensive golf shot, but let us not feel too sorry for him. The heir to the Grace shipping lines, Fortune actually had more money than his grandfather, end quote. So not only was, you know, not only was he just needling, but like he had more buddy than him to.

It's just a very funny story. I love it. Hey, Papa, the personal stinks. Stings. Oh, I could drive it. God, just for doing. It reminds me of like Bill Murray and Rushmore. He's got those two kids just yelling out of in the backseat. It's just, I just love it. It's great. Peter Grace, quick, quick little side detour here. He ended up becoming the CEO of W.R. Grace and company. And he was the head of that company for 48 years. His Wikipedia says he was the longest serving CEO of a public company, I believe in America.

Wow. Which is, that's a, that's a stat. Here he is with Ronald Reagan. He got tapped by by Reagan to lead the Grace Commission, which let me know if this sounds familiar. Was a commission to crack down on waste and inefficiency in the federal government. Again, just kind of the more things change. Wasn't familiar with Mr. Grace's game. I will say, you know, had you just flashed me that picture and asked if that guy was capable of driving it, you know, some 315.

I would have taken the under, too. 100%. That's what I was kind of thinking. I'm guessing this probably had to be the 30s. I don't think this was around the Reagan time. So, guys, that's pretty much the long and short of it as far as national goes. We didn't really talk about the logo, which I don't know if you guys kind of know the backstory on where this comes from. This is basically taken inspiration from things called Delft tiles, which is a kind of pottery tile sort of thing that comes from Amsterdam.

Largely, a lot of them are created in this Netherlands city called Delft. And CB bought this big collection of these tiles from Randy's guy, W. Laidlaw Perves, who was the guy who originally laid out Royal St. George's. And he just really liked these tiles. He liked the little characters that were on them. Some of them had these little characters playing like a stick and ball game. I think it was probably more of like a hockey style game than it was a golf game. But took some inspiration from that. Love the symmetry.

He put two people facing them. He added a little bit of his own spin with the golf clubs and the golf balls. I don't know, maybe some template hole comparisons, right? Like taking something old and putting your spin on it and, you know, making it feel classic. So that's the logo. So by the time National opens like 1911, there's already a ton of word of mouth, right? This thing has been written about in America, certainly, but also in the UK is just like, this is, this is it.

This is the absolute pinnacle here. And so obviously there's a lot of interest for CB McDonald to already design more golf courses. That starts right away at Piping Rock, Neil, which you mentioned earlier, which he's invited to go check out the same year, 1911. And I think it's important to say that for as much as egos involved with CB McDonald here, it's involved all the time, right? The stuff, as we mentioned last time, is never about profiting or building like a successful business through his golf course design company.

And so, in fact, it's almost like the opposite. And so the way to get him involved is like to appeal to, you know, like the creative merits of the project, right? And so, but what that means for him is like he's very interested in the creative side of He's very interested in the fun stuff, not interested in the nitty-gritty detail and the X's and O's and trying to bring this to life. That's why he has Rainer, you know, that's why Rainer's so important to him. It's like I. That's why my guy, Seth's here.

Yeah, talk to Seth. You and Seth work out all the details. And so Rainer, like we said, he's planning to after National Opens, originally was planning to go back to his, his architecture practice in Southampton. but like we said, C.B. keeps him on. He starts to see like, oh, man, there's a lot more jobs stacking up already. This can actually turn into quite a thing. And eventually he moves to Manhattan to be closer to C.B. McDonald and keep kind of pouring gas on this business. We mentioned this earlier, Neil.

Seth had no experience with golf previously. So, you know, that comes with a lot of positives and negatives. The positives totally unvarnished. He could just take whatever C.B. McDonald. said to him, negatives quote unquote, like he wasn't really going to push the envelope, right? When he did kind of strike out on his own, he was still doing the template based stuff. He was continually like iterating on it, but he wasn't necessarily pushing it to, pushing it to like wildly different things.

But I think where that, I think where that leaves us is like his stuff also just always feels classic, right? Like it always feels he wasn't following a bunch of weird trends. He wasn't following like flavors of the moment. He kind of was just taking like the classics are classic for a reason and and sort of continuing down that road. And I think that obviously makes things age really well. I would add to that is it's not the, is brilliance isn't like the creativity. It's like the ability to build a beer it's where he did at the creek.

Yeah. Like the engineering feat of like doing that in the title pool. Yeah. You know, in a time when you didn't have a lot of machinery to execute. So like taking a vastly different landscapes and creating a uniform thing that can be compared in this catalog. The other analogy that I always think about is a lot of architects, they're almost making new albums. I think about Rainer like jam bands. It's like, no, you got to like, you got to listen to a hunger strike from Radio City.

You know, it's compared to MSG. You know what I mean? like it's it has there is a connective tissue of like certain places it's like man that one i'm really viking with that version of the beer i think uh you're going to find community with your guy tom doke uh who had a great quote about exactly this he said when modern golf architects repeat their own work and they they do all too often uh i find it distasteful wondering why they can't think of a fresh idea for a hole but when i play another version of rainer's version when i play another of raynor's versions of the radan i confess a fondness for it am i hypocrite perhaps

But I believe there's a difference. McDonald and Rainer were paying homage to a classic form and at the same time trying to devise improvements to it based on the local situation. I've learned much about the Redan and about golf design in general by comparing Rainer's different versions and analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. You know, there you go. And I think in Rainer's case specifically, what's important to call out is like I kind of started this little section here.

Like CB McDonald's very interested in the places that have great land. he's very interested in the clients that are his buddies. You know, Rainer doesn't have those necessarily like he needs to turn into a business. Like this is his livelihood. And so there's a lot of places where he has to be like, man, the customer's always right. And I got to make it work, you know, inside of these fucking constraints that they're given me. And there's a lot of places where he's got worse land. And there's a lot of places where he's got to like go through the challenge of like figuring all these things out that C.B.

McDonald doesn't necessarily have to figure out. I was an interesting quote from Doak. Yeah. It makes me think, I wish there somebody, it would be so ambitious and, you know, daft, but like somebody was like, I'm going to create new templates. Sure. And repeat them, you know, like I think about when I was laugh about like the Muni template. Yeah.

Like the early straight long par five that you see it like bad muni. Well, we like, Randy, you kick this off by talking about one man's passion, Neil. I mean, I think if there's anything to take away from this, second career, baby. You could be that guy, Neil. There's got to be more templates. You got a platform. You can get some seed investment, you know? Yeah.

Talk to the links down guys. Maybe they'll get you some dough. So Rainer McDonald worked together for a few years. We'll go into some of those projects in a second. But just to kind of tie the loop on Rainer. So by 1914, three years after national opens, McDonald's almost 60. He knows he doesn't want to design golf courses full time, but they both see the boom that's coming here. And so he encourages Rainer like, hey, yeah, you and I'll do some stuff together.

But like, go do some stuff on your own, too. This is 1916. A bit of a geese situation. 1914. 1914. Yeah. And again, the deck's stacked because McDonald hangs out with all these guys. He can just feed him jobs.

And, you know, he can kind of get to this point where he can do as many golf courses as he wants. Which kind of causes him, you know, if I'm reading between the lines, it's just stretch himself very thin and do do a lot. Rainer gets very, very busy, very fast. In fact, he gets so busy that he needs to bring on more help about to. 10 years later, it comes in the form of Charles Banks, who joins the squad in 1924. I'm zooming past a lot of history here that deserves its own deep dive. But just an example of how he's crisscrossing, like, around the country at this point. He, again, this is kind of like in the era before, you know, it's train travel.

There's not really good infrastructure and stuff. And so he's just getting to all of these places somehow. There's one stretch that had him going from Florida, where he's working from, he's working on the Everglades Club. in Palm Beach, to Chattanooga, to route Lookout Mountain, to California, to work on the Monterey Peninsula, to Hawaii, to lay out Waili and Mid-Pacific, then all the way back to Florida to the Everglades Club. And by the time he gets back to Florida here, he's in pretty rapidly declining health, pushing himself very, very hard. And when he gets back to Florida to that Everglades Club in 1926, he dies of pneumonia at the age of 51. McDonald wrote this about him in his memoir. He said

He died at his prime at Palm Beach in 1926 while building a course there for Paris Singer. It was like singer sewing machines. Rainer was a great loss to the community, but it's still a greater loss to me. I admired him from every point of view. Beautiful, beautiful phrase. I admired him from every point of view. I really like that. I didn't realize he died that early.

I thought he died in the 30s. Dang. No, 51. I mentioned he was out on Monterey Peninsula. Some people are going to know where I'm going with this. but through a project that he worked on with CB McDonald that we'll talk about in a second. He got to know Marion Holland, who of course would go on to develop that whole area. And as that work, you know, part of that work got going, he got awarded the chance to go do Monterey Peninsula Country Club, awesome place out there.

And because of that, he was rewarded with the contract to do another course, Randy's home course, Cypress Point. And he did a little bit of preliminary work out there before his death when the job was ultimately. given to Dr. Alastair McKenzie instead. So obviously one of golf's great what ifs there. You know, there's a lot if you would like to dive into some arguing on the internet. There's a lot of that. What did Rainer know? When did he know it?

Is there a Rainer master plan? Did he lay out 16? It's in the ceiling tiles in the club. Yes. There's a lot of that stuff that's very fun to dive into. Did he do any work on Pebble Beach? I don't know. I don't believe so.

But he was out there a lot. So I don't know how that timeline kind of lays out. random aside but i mentioned charles banks just to kind of like tie the note the the loop on him a little bit he's kind of interesting in all this because when reiner dies there's a bunch of projects in progress right so he's there to kind of finish all of those that's like while i look out mountain s6 county fisher's blue mound those all got finished up by oh he didn't finish fisher by charles banks uh and you know by this point macdonald's like in his 70s so he's not super interested in doing a lot of work. Charles Banks' partner just died at age 51. Oh, by the way, here comes the depression.

You know, and so Banks just kind of gets duffed by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He does a couple things by himself, Tamarack, which I know you saw. Yes. It looked awesome on our video. Whippoorwill, some other ones, but then in 1931, he dies very young as well. He dies at the age of 48. So another kind of what if there. I hate that. Yeah. But kind of an interesting, interesting, you know, run. So I know that's a digression, and we're jumping around a little bit, but just trying to tie the loop on that. I mentioned piping rock. McDonald started that project back in 1911, right after National got opened.

This was a club that got founded in 1909. It was a polo and hunting club. But like many of these great golf courses, like out on Long Island, they wanted to build something much closer to the city. Neil, I'm sure you can relate, work hard, play hard. You know, I can't be getting out to the Hamptons all the time. You got to build something closer to the city. this one almost blew up before it started over the fact that piping rock was not going to allow any of the land that the polo field was currently on to be used in the golf course all of these

projects kind of start i'll just spoiler alert they all start with like macdonald flew off the handle the project almost blew up uh but then cooler heads prevailed i think a lot of that was probably rainer uh coming in and be like no we can figure it out it's not that big we can route it around you know and you kind of see that at piping rock of like the i think i believe the polo feel is kind of like the range now. Exactly. Right, which is kind of funny, isn't it? The big thing at Piping Rock is

that it was a chance after the National for McDonald's to use another one of his templates that he had in his notebook that he hadn't been able to use yet. Do you know what we're talking about? Volcano? Not the volcano. Oh, man. Volcano hole there is sweet.

It is the beer it. I don't know. Oh, okay, yes. The beerits, which is... Six or the seventh out there? Which is... There's no beer, it's at Nashville. I'm surprised. Interesting. Which was, it was modeled after a Willie Dunnhole in Bieritz, France.

This is of course, if you don't know we're talking about the famous kind of long par three template. It's got a huge almost comical swale in the middle of the green or in the middle of the green or the front of the green, depending on how it's mode. This is another good example of if you take the story at its face, you know, the template seemingly looking nothing like the original because the most common story that you hear is you'll see this photo. thrown around a lot as a photo from that course in beeritz, France that no longer exists anymore. There's a photo that we're looking at of the chasm hole. It's called, it was this 220-yard par three that played over the Bay of Biscay over these two massive cliffs, like a 80-foot drop, 100-foot drop down into the bay. This is nothing like what a beeritz looks like, right? I mean, the thought with a Beirits is to play a low running shot that kind of takes the swale,

then lands on the other side. I don't think that would work very well if you're trying to hit it over, you know, a hundred foot cliff, right? So this is one of those, like, I don't know how this became the story as far as like, this is what this holds based on, but you just see that like throwing around a lot. You could all say that it's the template is like using the inspiration of a chasm on a micro scale on the green. If you were trying to fly it over, right?

But it seems like the point is to kind of use it to either slow your ball down or whatever. So I don't know. I'm not saying it's not based on this, but there's definitely some speculation that someone got their wires crossed at some point because this was basically the hole kept being called Beeritz. So they knew it was like that was intentional. And this was the most famous hole at the Beeritz course. So I think everybody just kind of put two and two together. But there's some people who think the beer is based on the 16th at North Barrack, the one with the crazy green that has the swale in it. There's some people that think it's based on the Valley of Sin in front of the 18th green at the,

old course and then there's some people i think this is probably where i subscribe who think it's just based on another hole at the beer it's course that was just far less famous than the chasm hole um who knows you could well i welcome the the some some well actually guys in the comments but i believe at the piping rock it was mode almost the front uh plateau was like fairway yeah and then it was one of those versions where the the dip is the start of the green and then up But then like at Southampton, it's like two, it's two very distinct tiers of the green with the big trench in the middle. Correct. And that's how I, you know, the same thing at the creek or some of these other.

As the Beirits keeps getting built, it seems to be all green. But it was almost feels like the early ones were fairway into the trench and then green. Correct. Yeah, there's definitely some license taken depending on on how the architect wants to do it. Or the agronomy team or whoever. After piping rock, the boys head to Randy's another another one of his fan. favorites, Sleepy Hollow Country Club, where McDonald gets, you know, every time I'm out, they drag me back in. His famous and powerful friends, they lasso him to come build another course.

This list of founders at Sleepy is a wild list. William Vanderbilt, James Colgate, Everett, Macy, A.O. Chote, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and so on. Also on the list was a guy named John Jacob Aster, who's picture I'm showing here. It's a good one to pause on. One of the most wealthy people on the planet at the time is worth more than $87 million, equivalent to about two bill today. Total Renaissance man. He wrote a science fiction novel in the year 2000, like set in the year 2000.

He patented a bunch of inventions. He also became a real estate mogul. He built the Astoria Hotel in New York and then merged it with the Waldorf Hotel, which was built by his rival and his cousin, William. Shout out to, you know, the Waldorf Astoria and CB McDonald's party with Stanford White after the you know before the the US amateur John Jacob Astor however did not get to play a lot of golf at Sleepy Hollow do we know do we know why the Titanic that's exactly right hell yeah okay so a couple things here

one it's John Jacob Astor the fourth the original it's worth noting the OG John Jacob Astor was made his fortune in fur trading guy was killing all the beavers out west And so a lot of his a lot of the fourth John Jacob Astrid was a successful man, but there was a there was a big foundation there, I think, from lineage on the shoulders of giants. Yes. But yeah, he went down with the, the titanic. Oh, man, that's such a good pull. That's a, yeah, I was going to, I was going to rope a dope you guys because he got, he got married or he got divorced and they got remarried to this 18 year old girl when he was 47. Not a popular wedding amongst the social circles that he was, he was rocking.

And so they took this like year-long honeymoon, very, very long honeymoon to Egypt and then to Europe. And they're going all over. And while they're on this honeymoon, they're trying to let the gossip die down. While they're on this honeymoon, his wife gets pregnant. And so they're traveling around. And by the time the pregnancy, you know, she's four or five months pregnant. They're like, we got to get back to America, get back settled in, you know, get her feet under us before we have this baby. So they board a ship back to America called the RMS Titanic.

His wife did survive, however, and in one of the lifeboats. A lot of Titanic-specific John Astor stuff, if you want to go read that, and gave birth to the son four months later. So there you go. He didn't, yeah, unlike Billy Zane. Yeah, he should have just jumped in. No, there's pretty- documented stuff about him decidedly not get in the lifeboats and point into the women and children first, I believe. But great call out there, Neil.

Well, he's also mentioned the James Cameron movie. You know, exactly. I just hadn't seen that in a while, so I couldn't remember. But the history of the property at Sleepy Hollow itself is kind of interesting. There's this guy, Colonel Shepard, Colonel Elliott Fitzshepard, who was a lawyer. He ended up marrying one of the Vanderbilt's. And they bought this 500-acre stretch overlooking the Hudson. I've never been here either.

Randy looks absolutely stunning. It's awesome. Yeah, looks very, very cool. You guys will recognize the massive, massive house. that's there, which is this couple that got married and bought this land. They wanted to design a manor house, somewhere they could live, you know, a bit of a manner. And so they hired who to design this? Sanford White.

Stanford White, exactly. Stanford White, not Sanford, with a T. Stanford White. And he did not just make them a house. He made them a 75-room Victorian mansion that cost two and a half million dollars, equivalent to about $90 million today. A lot of dough. A lot of dough. according to George Bato's book,

this was the most expensive building owned by an individual at this point. This is a brief aside, but I just read the John D. Rockefeller book, Titan. Yeah. And there's a whole chapter in there about he's a golf fanatic. Really? And I'm just shocked that he didn't end up.

But he was, you know, he's very, like didn't drink, didn't party. Like he didn't run with the Stanford White Circle for sure. But he had like golf courses at his estate, Pocentino,

which is up the Hudson Valley. and then he had what he called the golf house down in Jersey like Lakeland, New Jersey. But I'm just baffled that he never had one of these architects coming to design. Now, then I'm thinking like, okay, 19, this is right in the region where he steps back from Standard Oil. And he's old. He play golf every day from like the age of 50 something until he died every day. But he played like a speed golf. Like he did not want to wait.

He played with the same crew on the same days every week. But I'm just shocked that he didn't have one of these famous architects like design a force form. So, Neil, that's great, a great call out because, uh, unfortunately, our guy, Colonel Shepard doesn't even live to see this house completed. He dies, uh, before, before it's finished. And, uh, eventually like, the house and the whole thing, parcel of land gets sold to William Rockefeller, who buys the land. And that's what brings us back to the golf course because apparently William Rockefeller, uh, big tree guy. And so where he clashed head, you know, where he clashed like butted heads with C. B. McDonald was, would love to

build a golf course here you cannot cut down any trees uh c b mcdonald as we learned from his his formula uh for for an ideal golf course not a big tree guy uh but eventually kind of front i was front running you there no it's good no it's a good connection uh because in the book william rockefeller noted like just worshipped his dad yeah and his dad was really in the landscape architecture and like the grounds of his estates and and and it was almost like he just like existed like please his dad and do it like i just want to continue your legacy you know so Yeah, the trees must stay. Don't we all?

So eventually cooler heads prevail. They build the golf course. A big notable thing here is their first reverse Redan. So we're continuing to iterate, baby. Sure. And of course, Tilling Hass would come in later in the 1920s, expanded to 27 holes. But next up, St. Louis Country Club, not a ton here. This brings McDonald back to his native Midwest, you know, for the first time since the Chicago days, really.

It seemed to go pretty smoothly. five par threes. They always built the part threes first. They must have really liked what they saw because they built five of them. Don't have a ton on the golf course. It sounds like it's just a place that's like better than the sum of its parts.

Just extremely high floor. Hosted a US Open, 1947. Lou Worsham, your winner there and over Sam Sneed, who famously never won a US Open. We head to the Greenbrier next. Probably more of a Rainer story,

honestly, than McDonald. The big thing, they eventually would go out and build the number one course that would go on to become the old white course eventually the old white tpc one of the most the old white gym justice comical names a lot of old whites hanging out at the green briar uh there was uh robertie lee lived there for three years after the after the civil war rannies boy there's so much

shit about the greenbriar that i'm almost like i kind of want to do a we could do that that we can do that i am with you i'm fascinated but never been uh i think i think sally would be great for that one he's been there a couple times, but there's so much stuff that I'm not going to get lost in the weeds on. They build a golf course there. There was a nine hole golf course there that was called the Oakhurst Club, I believe, that a lot of people think is maybe the first nine holes kind of laid out in the United States. So continuing the golf tradition of the Greenbrier, they bring in McDonald and Rainer to build another golf course. Those golf courses are in various states of restoration or complete obliteration because Rainer would eventually go back and build another course.

that got blown up by Jack Nicholas in order to build the Rider Cup course that that existed in the 70s. So I think we come back to the Greenbrier. Let's do a whole episode on the Greenbrier because there's so much railroad stuff and elixir stuff. The presidential stuff. There's the casino stuff. There's all the elixirs of the springs. People thinking it cures ugliness, like that getting shipped up to the northeast. It's awesome.

So we'll just a whole concept of like I'm struggling with over exertion or hypertension or. yes uh no co got convalescence just wasting diseases yeah yeah like i yeah i just had to go out to the mountain i need to go take the cure man i did three months yeah exactly so anyways back to our back to our story we're now at 1914 and the the mcdonald reiner machine is is humming uh so much so that you know cb realizes he's getting tired of traveling all over building courses for all his friends he kind of just wants to hang out at the national play golf with his buddies right which i think is something we could probably sympathize with. He has all kinds of proposals to build golf courses,

which he's passing off to Rainer. Rainer's obviously doing like we talked about. But remember, he's not taking money for these. So the way to get to him is with the ego, right? And that's what a man named Roger Winthrop figures out how to do because the two had met at Piping Rock back in the day. And Winthrop now had this group of very wealthy investors. Let me know that sounds familiar that wanted to build something new.

Let me know if that sounds familiar. Something big. They were just figuring out how to get McDonald's interested enough to do it. What they wanted was the greatness of national golf links. They wanted the proximity to the city of piping rock. But they wanted more than that. They wanted a big, opulent type of setting that was going to draw an international membership in. They wanted a massive hotel.

They wanted tennis. They wanted equestrian, fishing, shooting, and they wanted all of this to be on the beach. and they called this idea the Lido Club, as you guys may have been a step ahead of me in figuring out. They had plenty of money to do all this, the Vanderbilts and the cons and so on. And they knew that money wasn't the way in with CB, but it also kind of was the way in with CB

because what they were able to do is tell him like, I know you're not taking money for this, but the money is endless. You can do anything that you want with this course. If you want to change something, if you want to move Earth, if you want to fill stuff in, if you want to build stuff up, you're the, you're the guy here. You can do whatever you want.

And obviously he gets very into this idea. He writes later on to me, it was like a dream. The more I thought it over, the more it fascinated me. It really made me feel like a creator. That was what Sully said after the creator classic as well. Yeah. And it's in his backyard. Yes, exactly.

You know, just outside New York City or I guess potentially like in the city limits. It's right here. So this is the map of what we're talking about. Lido Beach. CB is enthusiastically on board for the reasons you mentioned, Neil. The problem is the land, which is a shit show, basically. It is a mess. It is right on the south shore of Long Island, Lido Beach. It's 115 acres of what he called sea swamp and quagmire, a virtual no man's land at the time, is barely above sea level, nearly untroversible by foot, like we've heard in the past. Also, there's just a huge lake in the middle of the property that was obviously going to cause issues with routing the golf course and where they're going to fit the actual holes and so after seeing this mcdonald is convinced like okay never mind this is preposterous i'm out there's no way to build anything resembling a golf course the organizers reminded him you know not only are you you you already said you were going to do this but like the money's endless man if you want to fill it in the lake fill in the lake like we get we got you whatever you want to do man let's let's do it and so

he has Rainer running all the construction and they get to work in 1914 on building the Lido. And so the plan was to do a ton of dredging from the Reynolds Channel, which was just to the north of the golf course. And they're going to pump all that sand. They're going to kind of create this like slurry almost and pump all this, you know, sand back onto the land and like basically, you know, shape exactly what they want. And so what that does, I think it like, it basically flips the construction, right? Instead of taking what's there and shaping it however they want, they're just building it from scratch. And I think this idea is worth pausing on. There's another Doke thing that I found.

Obviously with, you know, the Lido at San Valley coming online in the last couple of years, there's a ton of stuff out there about the Lido now. And one of these things, it was an interview with Derek Duncan from Golf Digest that he did. And Doak is talking about how what he was struck by most when they're recreating it in Wisconsin was that with this construction process, essentially starting from like a dead flat piece of land, that basically means every square inch of that place is pretty intentional, right? If you think about like our putting green thing and dropping the pebbles and how do you make it feel, you know, intentional and natural and all that stuff, it's like that that's exactly

what they had to do here for pretty much every square inch that they're. remediation with all this land. And so what that means is like the landing areas are on purpose. The bunkers obviously are very on purpose. All the greens are very on purpose. It's just, uh, it makes you think, I think essentially when you, you know, especially when you go to, if you go to the Lido in person, Randy, I'm curious what you think, but like, there's a lot of stuff that just feels, uh, I don't want to, it feels

created, right? When you think about it through that lens, like it is, uh, it is a little just weird. And some things are built up and some things aren't. And I just found that very interesting, like thinking about it through that reading. It's not a found golf course. No, it's not. But it's supposed to play like one. Yeah.

Which almost makes the modern version, like, work even more. Yeah. It's like, well, the original one wasn't natural either. Right. You know, so like it's, uh, it's an interesting concept. I, I'd shout up, uh, Brendan Quinn's article in the athletic from six months ago. He did kind of a deep dive into the history of the, the, the Lido. I got a lot out of that.

I thought that was a fantastic piece. Agreed. Yeah. It doesn't feel, it doesn't, like having been around the Lido once, you know. It does do a good job of like, it does feel like weirdly natural, but you know that it's, to DJ's point, like, every single thing that was done on this piece of property was very intentional. Yeah. And done by human hand, which is a weird juxtaposition. It is.

And so to that end, like, it became clear very quickly that this was going to be a shitload of work. This was going to take a long, long time. It was going to take years to do. All in all, I think they had to pump in more than two million cubic yards of sand. So according to something I read, that's like 2.7 million tons. Or in other words, 200,000 dump truck loads of sand. So I pulled this from our friends at Home Depot. that's 10 cubic yards of like mulch or black dirt or something.

They needed two million cubic yards of sand in order to do this. So it's a lot. Like you said, there's a lot out there about the Lido right now. So I'm not going to go like super deep on hole by hole stuff or anything like that because there's a lot of that out there. And you can look at those photos for yourself or better yet, go see it in in Wisconsin for yourself because it's very cool. The channel hole, very cool.

One of the coolest holes probably ever made. McDonald called it the finest two-shot hole in the world. The one thing we just legally have to mention, of course, is the story of the 18th hole. By this point, I think McDonald realized, like, the template hole idea could probably use a little infusion of creativity, you know, creativity, maybe a couple new ideas. So we got with our guy Horace Hutchinson, Bernard Darwin, to dream up a contest in the pages of Country Life magazine. People have probably heard this story, you know, submit a design for a great hole.

A great two-shot hole and the winning design is going to be incorporated into the Lido. McDonald, I think, also knew this was going to be just a great promotion for the golf course. And the contest was won, of course, by a 34-year-old non-practicing physician from England named Alastair McKenzie. And that hole, or at least like a simplified version of that hole, became the outstanding finisher at the Lido. And so they finished the golf course. It opens in 1918. All comes at the cost of $1.43 million, equal to about $30,000. million today. That doesn't include any kind of design fee. It doesn't include the clubhouse.

Definitely doesn't include the fucking massive hotel that would go up like 10 years later. And not surprisingly, as you've heard before, reviews are great. Some people think it's way too hard like the National. But largely it's immediately on par with National is one of the greatest courses in the country. Bernard Darwin goes one step farther. He writes, Lido is the finest course in the world. It's a standing miracle, the wonder of which will never feel. fade. Obviously some tough accidental phrasing there, considering what would happen. The wonder may not have faded, but pretty much everything else did. And it's funny, again, it's a bit like what I was saying earlier. Benefit of hindsight, right? You can see all this stuff on a timeline.

And when you start getting into it, even if you didn't know what was going to happen, you're just like, oh, man, this isn't going to go well. Right? And like, there's a couple of instances where it's like they started construction, the week after they start construction, Franz, France, Ferdinand gets assassinated, World War I kicks off, right? Right, about the time the course is ready to open, the U.S. gets into World War I. And so all these, like, investors have either lost interest or they're moving on to other stuff or doing, you know, God knows what. And but then, you know, the roaring 20s come around and everybody's got money again. And so it stays on life support and, like, then eventually thrives.

They get like 1,500 members. They're ready to build this massive hotel. And then think about the timing on the hotel. They build this like gigantic five-story 400-room hotel that opens in 1928. What happens in 1929? October of 1929. Yeah. And so they just build this thing where like the footprint of running this club just became so astronomical

that it just was like totally untenable to keep running it. And so it forced the founders, the people who were very in on golf and the intentionality of the golf course to sell to a real estate development group. who had very little interesting golf and quickly realized like, oh shit, we have all this waterfront property. What are you guys doing putting these golf holes on the water? That's where you put the houses and the condos and all these other things. So very quickly, a lot of that property got sold off. There was some road changes that came through. Lido Boulevard got expanded into like a bigger road. That moved through a bunch of the holes.

And so a lot of these holes that are like, you know, again, every mound, every shot is like crafted for a specific. reason now all of a sudden it's like well what if we just took 60 what if we just move the tea up 60 yards i don't know what if we just you know and so it's it's just not really uh playing the way it's supposed to and it's kind of becoming a a shell of itself and so sometime before a lot of this stuff happened before they put in all the houses and did all these things uh mcdonald makes another trip back out there and the way he writes about it is just straight up like very depressing he saw the you know the tides had washed away part of the holes he saw other holes have been changed entirely and basically like all of this had been done without anybody actually overlooking what it was going to do to the

intent of the golf course and what he writes was after the great flourish of trumpets by the original organizers as to the future of this course to find that they had all left it and permitted it to fall in the hands of a real estate development company people who knew little about golf and cared less but simply held the club together to further real estate ventures was a bitter disson disappointment to me. An ideal golf course must be controlled and developed by men who love and are devoted to the game without any possible emolument. Altogether, my pilgrimage to the Lido only brought sadness to me and I returned home feeling as if it were a love's labor lost. Tough one to read when you think about pumping in two million cubic yards of sand or just a lot of

fucking work. A lot of effort. A lot of effort. And then, you know, Hitler delivers the final blow. World War II. World War II delivers the final nail in the coffin. 1942, the U.S. Navy takes over the entire area, calling it a strategic defense site, which officially closes down the Lido. There's a site next door, Robert Trent Jones, built a new Lido course in 1956.

It has a replica of the channel hole. Never played it. Don't know a lot about it. Google reviews has it as a three and a half stars out of five. Also, there you go. Robert Moses' pitch and putt is out in these parts. maybe a different barrier island.

I can't remember, but worth seeing pitch and put on the ocean. So all at all, it takes like four years to get the Lido open. And because it was taken so long, that gives Rainer the time

to work on all these other projects, right? He can kind of start construction projects at one place and then go oversee something else while people are carrying out those designs. And one of the things that happens during this time

that doesn't get talked about a lot. I don't think unless I missed all this, is Rainer and McDonald come in to redo Shinnecock as well. Because CB McDonald is still a member there. They now are starting to feel a little dusty, especially with National right next door and the Lido going in and all these great courses on Long Island. They're starting to feel a little old.

And so they bring in CB McDonald and Rainer to spice up. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't really know that either. I think it became pretty, I don't know if it swept under the rug, but like eventually George Bato writes about this that some of the Rainer McDonald's holes were kept. He said six. It feels like it gets a little murky because, of course, they hired Flynn. I think they had a move part of the golf course.

Rainer dies and McDonald's no longer a member at Shinnecock like shortly after this. George Bato writes his brusque demeanor and controversial opinions had caused some rancor among a few members. And in the wake of yet another quote incident, McDonald resigned or was asked to resign. his membership. And so I think that kicked off kind of like a little bit of a silence about their involvement and their place in kind of the written history, at least until like the 1995 U.S. Open came around and people started to dig more into the club history and stuff like that. I love this. George Bato quotes a passage in the 75-year history book. It was written by Ross Goodner that says, despite the apparent harmony, he's talking about the

relationship between National and Chinatock. despite the apparent harmony the sailing was not always smooth for example many old timers claim that it was more than coincidence that the shinnock club manager the chef the menus and even the flag eventually found their way over to national so just kind of an interesting push and pull there so reiner macdonald after this they work on a few more projects together they did ocean links in rhode island uh great story there was a newport member named thomas suffren taylor who insisted newport r get redone. Newport didn't listen to him. So he started his own nine hole course. He wanted it done so fast that when the ground started freezing, he made Rainer and the boys use dynamite to quote unquote thaw the ground so that they could keep going. Probably not a lot of naturalism going on there.

Can I be on? I never heard of Ocean Lakes. I don't know if that exists anymore. Yeah, it only lasts until the 40s. Okay. It was a nine hole golf course. Only lasts to the 40s after Taylor died, got run by a management group and then eventually sold off.

The next one I dig. This is one that we got to spend a little bit of time on. This is the Lynx Club in North Hills, Long Island. Wild story. This is how George Bato opens his description of this place. Quote, the story of the Links Club is above all else a cautionary tale about how a once great club's reclusiveness bordering on paranoia can inflict irreparable damage upon itself. You got my attention, right, with that.

description and take notes top 100 ran that's right yeah and before we get into this you mentioned this right off the jump neal in the first episode this is different than the links which the links is a private club uh on 60 second street the upper west side of manhattan uh i don't know if you've ever peaked your head in there for for brochure uh no i haven't but my my wife has been there really multiple times oh gosh that's great we should have brought her on for some intel yeah uh yeah private club that c b macdonald also started for his buddies, a place to hang out, a true social club, right? Bar, meeting rooms, fireplaces, expensive artwork on the walls, and still in operation, as you mentioned. So I can't find too much out there about like membership lists or anything like that, but I did find one

thing and excuse some of the sourcing on this, but go with me because it's kind of fun. There's a guy who had a WordPress site back in the day called Valuable Books. And back in 2020, 12. He got his hands on a membership book from 1955 that had all the members of this club listed and he published it. And a smattering of the people who were members there at the time. President Eisenhower, Prescott Bush, a couple of the Rockefellers, William Boeing, Clifford Roberts, Marshall Field, J. Peter Grace, our guy. All kinds of high-level military personnel. Henry Morgan and Harold Stanley. Shout to Team Rose on that one. I saw a great stat.

This is how I'm going to be measuring the merit of clubs going forward. Of the 113 members that were listed in the handbook, 24 of them had at one time been on the cover of Time magazine. Wow. Great stuff. Masters of the universe here, right? And so there's very obvious, like obviously there's very little about the actual club, what's inside.

But there's another blog from 2007. Top one, this is, Ray. I don't know if you were blogging during something. of those Mcgladry days. Top 100golf.blogspot.com, which might actually be the same guy as the valuable books guy, because this guy's name, John Sabino, his name is on both websites. But he was a guest, and he wrote about his whole experience.

He took a bunch of photos while he was there and published a ball of this blog spot. I can't imagine that was like super popular. This is for the city club. City Club. Yeah. Looks awesome. This looks like fucking phantom thread in there. I mean, just like really, really, really cool.

photo here. I love this kind of grainy photo of the guy who's like, oh, God, you really, I shouldn't be in a photo probably, but you're just going to take this like flash photography image of me in this, in this quiet club. So just a good one to seek out if you want to read about the experience. He lays it on pretty thick, I will say. I just got to quote one passage here because it involves our guy, CB McDonald. Business is not allowed to be conducted in the public areas of the links. You cannot sit in the library, dining room, or bar and have work papers or briefcase. present or talk business. You cannot have a cell phone or a Blackberry or any other electronic devices in the club. Gentlemen must keep their jacket and tie on at all

times when in public areas of the club. And while you can certainly conduct business behind closed doors in the meeting rooms, the primary purpose of the links is quote social intercourse as CB McDonald called it. Massive, massive fan of this phrase social intercourse had never heard that before. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do socializing. I'm just going to walk around this room, man, and I am just going to get into it with everybody. Yeah. What are your thoughts on geopolitics? Mr. Big, I'll go to you first. Actually, Mr. McDonald, I have this book. I'm just trying to sit here, read my book. That's all. Pull it down. Let's see what we're working with. Let's get it on the table. Social intercourse.

I just, I love that. That's good stuff. So that was in 1917 when the social club opens. years later, the golf course called the Links Club opens. And this one has a pretty similar vibe, a high, high level of privacy at this place. And what comes along with that is like, this is the rare one where CB McDonald is very hands on in the details. Whereas he used to like, you know, he'd come do the broad strokes and the layout and here's where we should put the holes. Now Rainer, like you go execute it. This one, he's involved like very closely with, with everything because it's for like the tip of the pyramid, his very close friends. And the second thing that sticks out is just like the privacy of this place.

George Bato writes about this. He says, guest play was frowned upon and required special permission and no cameras of any type were allowed on the premises. It was as if the club fearing contamination from the outside world considered itself under siege for all 66 years of its existence. So tip of my hand there that it's only in existence. for 66 years, but a fucking incredible detail that's in George's book is that for the 66 years that this club was open, they had one superintendent and one head professional. Wow. That's it.

Benny Zucoski and Joe Phillips were there the entire time from 1919 to 1985 when the course closed. These guys are done. Yeah, we're just going to shut it down. And Zucoski, who's the superintendent, is especially interesting because he was still alive by the time George is writing this book. So he's like, here's this guy as George is writing this book about C.B. McDonald who worked for C.B. McDonald for 20 years.

Worked for Seth Rainer, had all these stories. You know, it's just, I don't know, not to get to like history dad, cheesy about it, but it's like crazy how you can compress time like that, where you have a guy who's writing a book, talking to a guy who worked for the guy who took lessons from old Tom Morris. you know it's yeah it's like a i don't know it's like fucking time travel in a way right it's it's very cool to get like a firsthand account of here's what he was like he and here's how he wanted the golf course was the other yeah right because he wanted he knew that he wanted the rough high

heavy wanted it to be hard and randy god i thought i've been just building towards this quote because i think you're going to love it no rakes in any bunkers punishable by death do not rake the bunkers. This was what CB wrote. Errors in play should be severely punished, but now the golfer wants his bunkers raked and the unevenness of the fairway rolled out. If I had my way, there would be a troop of

cavalry horses running through every trap and bunker before a tournament started. God, that just warms my soul. That is amazing. It's one of the most important blocks, I think. Unless CB's playing in the tournament and then I'm getting a free drop.

That's right. Nice lies in the bunker for me, but not for the. Exactly. So as you can tell from, you know, what I was saying there, course doesn't exist anymore. They basically just got so focused on exclusivity and privacy that they just wouldn't let anybody else in. They would only let direct family members in.

And eventually they got to this point where there was just like 13 members scattered all over the country and nobody wanted to just became like a graveyard. Yeah, nobody wanted to keep up with it. And so in 1985, they decided to disband, sell off the land to a real estate developer. and so it no longer exists. And what's crazy is that at this point when it's like about to be shut down, there's like no photos of this place at all.

There's like one aerial from an airplane that flew by and took a picture of it. But outside of that, man, there's like, there's nothing. It is. It was in North Hills. Yeah. Okay. So that's just like just south of Manhasset.

Yeah. So right in that kind of same north-south access as like Locus Valley or piping rock and all that stuff. So it's also very. cool about this is that there's a golf club atlas post from february of 2003 from user tom doke where he describes going to see this place before it got shuttered and bulldozed a few things from this post he says quote this is from user tom doke uh i visited the club three times in the early 1980s

the first time i went in and introduced myself to joe phillips the pro and he told me to leave the second time i hung around longer and eventually the superintendent came around and gave me a tour of the course but asked me not to take any photos. He told me that Mr. McDonald did not think photographs, he told me that Mr. McDonald did not think photographs do proper justice to the contours of a golf course. So they never allowed anyone to take pictures. Unfortunately, before they plowed the place under,

when I was doing the reconstruction work at Piping Rock, Jim Albus got a couple of living members of the links to okay my going out and taking some photos of it. They agreed that Mr. McDonald would not like to see the place pass into a housing development without any record. So I have 50 slides of it and gave them to George Bato for use in his book. Again, by the book, I didn't want to just like take those photos and display them on here. It's very cool. Those are the only photos that exist from this like super secretive place

built by C.B. McDonald. So I just a mind blower for me. Shout out to Doak, man. He's a true student of the game. For sure. For sure. Do you respect that? Do you know if the links club downtown the social get together place is still like hyper, hyper exclusive or what's has, have they kind of open up a little bit what's the vibe there i don't know that's a pretty question for neal and his bride yeah uh yeah it's a you know kind of like your classic city like the you know san franciscois like the union club you know and so it's or there's like the bohemian club i think it's along those lines probably not as exclusive as it used to be randy would be uh without betraying anything unfortunately randy you know

details on yeah i i i've run into a lot of people that have been there for uh like gatherings like work stuff you know what I mean it's not like a nobody's walking through these doors if you're not a member type of thing so that that kind of ends like the real deep dives uh he works on a couple more projects in the last 15 years of his life him and reiner uh consultant on a project again probably deserves its own deep dive that marion holland started in new york that's how they got to know each other i did not know this she was going to build or she did build a a women's national golf and tennis club basically one for the ladies uh we want to build an ng Langell for the ladies.

And they ended up building this. Like this just seems, I don't know, like with where golf is and investment is and all these things like pretty far-fetched even today to do something like this, let alone 100 years ago to get something like that done is like crazy impressive.

But Marion Holland's got super deep into it. She went through Europe to find her own holes that she thought would work for the women's game and then consulted with McDonald and Rainer and Devereux Emmett on all of this. And they built it and this course lasted until World War II. Eventually there was some financial hardships forced them to merge with the creek where a lot of the women's husbands were members. And eventually the land that the women's national was on became Glenhead Country Club.

So, Neil, if you're ever driving around, you see Glenn Head Country Club. There you go. And then, of course, Marion Hollins goes out to California and does all of that stuff. They worked on a place, Gibson Island and Maryland. I think there's nine holes of that one left. They built the Creek Club. Neil, I know you've been out there a few times. Awesome, awesome place.

It was called the million dollar golf club, asserting it was the richest club in the world. At the time, of course, famous for the 11th hole, the island. Beirits, kind of more and less of an island as the tide comes in and out. Deepdale golf and country club they did. This one was in progress when Seth Rainer. I didn't know they did Deepdale. Probably not the Deepdale that everybody's thinking about. They did an original Deepdale.

And then in 1954, the Long Island Expressway got routed, right through the middle of it. And so they sold off that land to something I think it became Lake Success Golf Club. And then the Deepdale Club hired Dick Wilson to go build another course down the street, which is the Deepdale that people know today. And they did Mid Ocean, which is another big one down in Bermuda. McDonald was smitten with Bermuda, much like Neal in that way. Never been going down there forever.

He'd been going down there since like 1904. Always wanted to build a course there. A bunch of his friends tried to convince him to build something in Cuba instead. Obviously, a little different world. That would have been so sick. Back then, would have been very sick. He was very stuck on the idea of building something in Bermuda. Mid-Ocean, probably most famous for its fifth hole, the cape hole, which many people say the best cape in the world.

CB loved it down there. Spend his winters down there. He built an estate and a winter cottage down there called Bluebird, which is, of course, designed by Stanford. Stanford. Stanford White. There's a great story about Babe Ruth playing the fifth hole, the cape hole at Mid Ocean, much like the story of our guy, J. Peter Grace, the babe thought he could cut the corner.

He could drive the green at the fifth. And apparently he tried it 11 times in a row before he finally admitted defeat and walked off the course. And finally, there's Yale, which is, again, much more of a Rainer story than a McDonald's story. But CB was on the board that kind of helped get that project across the line. that one, a much, much bigger, larger story that we could get into another time. But so that's kind of it.

I mean, Rainer dies in 26, like I mentioned. The, the output kind of slows down after that. Banks finishes up the projects that they're, they're working on. And McDonald's pretty content in his later years to just hang out at National and mid-ocean and kind of fiddle with the masterpiece, you know, just, let's still a little tweak here and a little tweak there. And he gets sick. He's sick for about six months before he passes away late 1938 has a tough, tough six months. He goes down to Bermuda for the winter.

He makes it back home to National, and he passes away in April of 1939 at the age of 83. And he is now buried at the South Hampton Cemetery next to his wife. Francis, that year that he passes away, his son-in-law, your boy, H.J. Wiggum, writes an expanded obituary. Where else? Country Life magazine. It's a great piece. Very worth seeking out. It's called The Evangelist of Golf, same as George's book. And I think he bottom lines it, man.

A lot of takeaways in here. he says charlie macdonald was a born leader who could have inevitably achieved success in any pursuit that he chose he happened to put his tireless energy and enthusiasm and vision to the service of the game that he liked to play and in doing so he probably did more for the health and happiness of the american people than most statesman inventors or philanthropists end quote guys that's it that's that's c b mcdonald and associated personnel uh how about it yeah so i don't know the yeoman's history of c b mcdonald that's right that's right the people's history of c bctonald i've mentioned him a bunch can't shout out his book enough c b mcdonald's book is great a lot of the

golf club atlas stuff is fun and just you know a lot of the other obituaries and newspapers and stuff that i've nice horse hi man thanks i thoroughly enjoyed the story time office yeah thank you guys for for hanging out man It was really fun, really genuinely fun. It was a topic I didn't nearly know enough about and just made me want to go dig into 50 other things, which I think is kind of the, you know, that's a measure of success for something like this. Yeah, it really kind of connects the dots to a lot of people, places, things that I kind of know, but this solidifies things for me. I appreciate it.

Well, I appreciate your active listening and your enthusiasm, gentlemen. and I think we need to pick another topic. Let's get another one of these cooking, man, because I really enjoyed it. Here, here. Well, thank you to everybody for listening, and we will catch everybody next time. Cheers.

Creckle.