No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 117: David McLay Kidd

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

Golf course architect David McLay Kidd joins us to talk about the development of Bandon Dunes, his new course at Sand Valley (Mammoth Dunes) design philosophies, his peers, and more. We also talk about the... The post NLU Podcast, Episode 117: David McLay Kidd appeared first on No Laying Up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right guys welcome back to the podcast spent some time at the PGA show last week and was able to meet David McLeod kid And we immediately started talking about him coming on the podcast So this is a definitely a different look. This is the first ever architect We've had on the podcast and another one of our takeaways from the PGA show after spending some time at the Callaway booth Was the buzz and the excitement over the new Chrome soft golf ball One of the R&D guys actually gave us a walkthrough of the new material called Graphene. This is a Nobel-Wit prize winning revolutionary carbon material. It's known as the world's lightest and strongest

material. You can cover an entire football field in a thin layer of this material and it will weigh less than a dime. So this demonstration definitely caught our attention. It's in the ChromeSoft and ChromeSoft X-Ball. And it's an infused outer core with graphene, allowing them to engineer a thinner outer core in a significantly larger inner core. This means you're going to get a softer feel with less spin off the tee and more spin around the greens, unlike anything you've experienced before in a golf ball. It's already been proven on tour.

Sergio Garcia is one with it in his first event with the Chrome Soft X. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm super pumped to try this out in 2018. CallawayGolf.com slash Chrome Soft 2018 for more on the ball that changed the ball. Let's get now to David McClay kid. Apologies on the audio on my end.

We switched from Skype over to FaceTime to get, because of some technical difficulties. And my mic settings were not turned on for FaceTime. So it recorded through my Macbook. So my part of the audio is not perfect, but I don't talk that much in it anyway. So enjoy having McLeod kid, really enjoyed this one. And thanks for tuning in. better than most. First of all, I have the first question I have to ask you is the people need to understand

the deal behind three names here. Mr. David McClay, kid, there's no hyphen. Is there a hyphen? Can you please explain the three names? It's not as some people have thought. It's not me trying to build up my self-importance. If what McClay is my mother's maiden name, and she was an only child and so when my grandfather go ill and my mother is an only child the name McLeod would have died out with him as the

last male and I'd been given that name as a middle name and on my 21st birthday as a present to my grandparents, I had my name legally changed to put the McClay in as part of my surname so that if I had a son which I do have, the name would pass on and not die out with my mother. I knew there had to be a good story behind that. That's a worthy one. But for all it was, it wasn't me trying to be Robert Tyree Jones, right? For listeners that are somehow not familiar, David is, of course, a tremendous golf course architect.

And I actually, before I started digging into your entire portfolio, I'd played a lot more of your golf courses than I had even realized. But probably best known for your work as the designer of bandendoons. But to set the scene, I want to kind of get some background into how you got into golf course design in the first place. I know it's a pretty tremendous story, the age at which you started working on bandend doons. But what was your childhood like, I guess, growing up in golf, and how did you get into

golf course architecture? Well, I was born and raised in Scotland. And my father got a job on the local golf club in the village that my parents come from when he was 14. And he worked hard, and by the time he was in his early 20s, he was a head greenkeeper at Glasgow Golf Club, which is one of the oldest clubs in the world. And he is incredibly passionate about golf. He's still alive and very healthy.

And I learned everything, most everything I know was through my father and his passion for the game. And he was a great, or is a great historian. He did lots of studying on Old Tom Morris, and Young Tom Morris, and the great triumbrate, and his favorite was always braid and braid courses, and he taught me lots about Colt as well. And so this stuff was permeated my childhood. The house was full of old dusty books from the 1800s that were golf annuals. He collected old plans that were drawn by these guys 100 years ago that he got from his friends and the golf

business that were stuck in drawers for two generations. And so I was just surrounded by it. And I loved everything about golf and golf courses. I didn't find the maintenance of golf courses. It didn't enthrall me. I did it from such a young age that as I got older and went to college, I wanted to experience different things. My father suggested I go work for a golf construction company and I really loved that. I loved the fact that I could take everything I'd learned about maintenance and the history of golf design and actually implement it in construction

and build these things from nothing. And that was really where I came at architecture from. You know, I came from a maintenance background, I experienced construction and I got to realize these design ideas and so I pursued a career in design and construction So what is what was your portfolio? I guess or what was your resume like before Getting contracted to work on band and doons or before you even invite it to see the land that would eventually become band and doons for the first time How was how was I guess what what what would take us back to your early 20s? What did you would done at that point in your career? Not a whole lot.

I guess I was like, I think what Mike Kaiser saw was a bit like a pony, right? You know, the lineage was good. a bit like a pony, right? You know, the lineage was good, and that's what Mike was buying. Mike Kaiser, the owner of Vandagins, he was buying a lineage that he knew my father, they're the same age. He really respected my father and my father's

a passion for golf, real golf. And so he figured that the apple wouldn't have fallen far from the tree, and he hired me as the young buck version of my father, I guess. I hadn't done a whole lot. I'd worked, I'd left college at 21. I worked for an architect in England called Howard Swan. I worked on my handful of small regional projects, the relatively slim budgets in the field actually designing and building them. There was really no contractor. We were building them ourselves. I then joined a big development firm and worked for them for another few years and learned about large scale development projects and master planning and and all that kind of stuff

and somewhere in the mix of all of that without getting into the minutia I ended up meeting Mike and my father came out with me the first few times and the trips were really Mike and his brains and my father and I few times and the trips were really Mike and his brands and my father and I as we figured out the rooting for the first course at Bandin and where the clubhouse would go and the entry roads and the first thoughts on clubhouses and lodging and all that kind of stuff. And that basic simple master plan that I thought up as a 26 year old is basically what you see at Band engines today. But what is before you had gotten the job, I think, you know, was there any A was there kind of competition to design that first course there?

And did you see the land before kind of agreeing to do the job? Or what was the process like in getting that all set up? You know, I was working for a development slash consultancy firm and they invited, I was invited out my father and I to talk to Mike and we got out there a week before he arrived and we wander around these sandsions and to be honest they weren't sandsions, they were covered in pintries and gorse bushes so you couldn't really see the real potential underneath it So we wandered around on this stuff, and I thought you know, wow what an opportunity this rich guy from Chicago Doesn't fully appreciate what he has

And he obviously hasn't spoken to the the true greats in our business You know, I seem to have snuck under the wire here. So maybe through blind luck, I could get the chance to do this because of his lack of knowledge. And somewhere in the week that we were there, we met Shorty Dau who was the caretaker of the land. And he showed me a pile of business cards of people that had already been on the site and it had everybody. Everybody's name was in his hand on these business cards. So I

quickly realized that I wasn't going to be sneaking under the wire on anything that Mike was pretty sophisticated and he wasn't going to be choosing me out of a lack of knowledge. And so I, for writer for wrong, sort of took it as kind of an insult that, you know, why would this guy possibly hire a 26 year old who hasn't done anything and is son of a humble greenkeeper from Scotland? You know, there's no way he's going to hire me. And so with the bit between my teeth and a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, greenkeeper from Scotland. There's no way he's going to hire me. And so with the bit between my teeth and a little bit of a chip on my shoulder,

I carried on through the week and conceptualized the first two golf courses that could be on the golf course. And when I eventually met Mike, I explained my thinking and I told him in no uncertain terms, well, if you were to hire someone like me, I wouldn't be putting the clubhouse out on the cliff edge, because that's not where the Scottish or the Irish would ever put a clubhouse, we would have put it in land and we'd use the best land for golf. And we certainly wouldn't be covering it in carpass and allowing people to lazily drive carts around it. We'd make them walk because that's what golf is. It's an interaction between you and nature. And so they should walk and you shouldn't put

carpass into even allow them the opportunity. And Mike's friends that were with him sort of stood there and shook their heads and and kind of chuckled because what I was saying was so insane. And Mike said thank you and my father and I left. And as far as I was concerned, I said my piece I had had one myself respect, at least in my own head, and this guy from Chicago would probably go higher, Jack necklace, and build a carted golf course with boring bunkers and a clubhouse out on the point and real estate behind it, and so another full-links golf course would be constructed in America.

But that's not what happened. What happened was a few weeks later, Mike called back and said, did you believe all that stuff you said? And I said, yeah, I did. I believed every word of it. And he said, okay, why don't you come back and spend a few more days on the site and work up your plan a little farther and we'll kick this down the road a

little bit more and just see where it goes. And so then I realized that instead of snubbing my client, I was actually preaching to the choir, but I would never have known it. So at that point I came back and I kept pushing that the clubhouse shouldn't be on the the water and there shouldn't be carts and the golf course should have rumpled in uneven fairways and all the trees should come out and we should build a course that would look completely at home on the west coast of Scotland or Ireland 200 years ago and that was preaching to the choir as time went on Mike allowed me to continue down the design process and the first course was built and the first

course was really the course that had to knock down the barriers to get the the American general public to accept a type of golf that most had never seen before. Right. So it sounds like you're almost working to your advantage was the fact that all these big names typically had a lot, I guess a lot of influence and a lot of resumes and examples of typical American golf courses that were being built. I'm sure there was architects not necessarily just all from the states there in the running,

but the fact that you were willing to do something different was so much in line with what Mike had envisioned. It's easy to look at band and dunes now and see all of the incredible golf courses along that style and thought process that have been built since then, but kind of like you just alluded to, like breaking down the barrier. I'm curious how much did something like Sandhills, which I think had just been built right around the time

that you were first looking at the land or maybe even started afterwards? How much did that kind of service of blueprint or kind of example of, hey, it's possible to build great golf courses in very, very remote locations. Did that do that? Do you remember sandhills having any kind of influence on bandin? Sandhills had massive influence on Mike's opinion of what bandin could be, but I had none on mine, because I had never seen sandhills. I didn't know anything about it. Sandhills had only been open

I didn't know anything about it. It's sand hills had only been open a couple of years at that point. It had a hundred members You know, it wasn't ranked number one at that point if it was I wasn't aware of it You know sand hills Definitely was the very first one to break that Barrier, but it did so in such a remote location. And it was private. No one got to see it. So it didn't really have any influence on me. I wasn't, when it's funny when you say, you know,

band and it was different. It wasn't different. It wasn't different to me. Sure. Band and I was just doing what I knew to be golf from my childhood. You know, bandin doesn't look any different to me than the old courses in Andrews or Macrohannish or Kurnusti or Turnbri. You know, there are so many features of those courses that exist at bandin.

There's very little of what I look at at bandin that's truly unique. And yet, to a passionate golfer that had never traveled overseas, they arrived at abandoned. The first thing they see is the clubhouse isn't in the Primo spot. They can't drive a car. There's not a flat lie out there. There's this old Fescue grass that's wiry and tough. There were so many boundaries broken

for a traveling American golfer that were just the norm to a Scotsman. That's one of the big takeaways I had from spending a lot of time in Scotland last summer is just that I got taking what you guys call a buggy, what we call a golf cart is just an unheard of thing. I guess the golf courses are set up just so much differently to be walked and that's what kind of what I meant in that, you know, from an American standpoint, it was different to do this style of, you know,

and that's why you were alluded to people kind of scoffing and laughing at the potential, no golf carts. It's one of those things that, you know, I grew up in the States. I just was used to always playing courses with cart paths and near them and golf carts, you take them in between shots and you just, you don't really think about it until you realize what else is out there from that potential standpoint but so what all right so you you contracted to do the work

did you have a design team at the time I mean there's one thing to kind of come up with the ideas for a golf course but you know to put it into action and to build it how at that age that you were at with your relative lack of experience were you able to assemble a team to actually construct the thing? Well, I worked for my father, my whole childhood, and he'd always built stuff himself, you know, with his greenkeeping team. And then when I left and went to college and joined small architectural firm in England, we did the same thing. We would go higher equipment piece by piece and maybe a contractor to do the irrigation system and we

would build them ourselves. So I'd never really, as a designer at least, I had never hired a contractor. My involvement with a contractor was actually as an employee. I worked for Southern Golf, one of the big contracting firms in Europe for 18 months. So I had plenty of experience in building golf courses. I knew how to actually construct them. So that didn't scare me. And Mike associated me with a couple of other people that helped me put together the resources I needed to build a golf course. So I went down to the pub and, you know, or the bars in Bandon and found, you know, fishermen and loggers and cranberry growers that were out of work and, you know, one could drive a bulldozer and another could drive an excavator.

And so we put our own little team together. You know, funny enough, a lot of those people then went on and became quite influential building golf courses for other people. You know, one of the guys that I found was this, we hired Troy Russell, who was a fertilizer salesman as the first superintendent on bandin, and his brother Tony Russell was a local dairy farmer. We hired Tony and he used some of his farming equipment to do a lot of the final prep and grassing on bandinjins.

He then went and worked on Pacific Jins, then he went and worked on trails, and now he works doing a lot of shaping work for Bill Cure and Ben Krenshaw. Wow, I've never heard that's amazing. You just literally found people in pubs to help you build a golf course. I mean, I think it's, I guess I said it's so easy to look at, you know, four courses plus the par three course, and they're at Bannon and all the, all the, it just to know that it started for nothing and that, you know, you're, there's nothing there and you're finding people in local bars to I'll be able to cough.

Of course, that's incredible. It was important to use people that didn't know what golf was because if I'd have hired an American golf contracting company, they would have come with a mindset that might have been difficult to change. That makes sense. Yeah. So it was easier to hire people that had no idea because they didn't know what was right or wrong. They didn't have a preconceived idea of what a bunker should look like or a green or a fairway or so I could say, hey, you know, just push that or, okay, that's good. You know,

it could be really loose. And over finishing is an absolute enemy to minimalistic golf design. You really have to try hard not to over finish. And so when you saw the land for the first time, was it really easy to envision building a course out there? I know you have mentioned that it's kind of the challenges that are on the landscape. But I mean, could you have envisioned it turning out as good as it did? No, I mean when we first when Mike first bought the land it was absolutely covered in Gorse, which is an invasive species in Oregon, and this Gorse was anywhere from

10 to 20 feet deep, and it completely flattened out the shapes that were underneath. It grew fairly short on the tops of mounds and fairly deep in the hollows. And so it flattened everything out and you couldn't tell what was there. So in my first initial routines we were clearing pathways with a little build those are so we could even walk the layout. And it really wasn't until we had the site cleared that we could really plan accordingly and we were clearing while we were building. So we built the the back nine first and the front nine still wasn't completely cleared. So some of those holes weren't even fully planned out right before we started building them. I remember hearing that in the book, there's books that have been literally a book that

they sell in the pro shop there of the building of band and dunes, but I remember hearing that the 12th hole at band and was the first hole built there, which is a part three that goes back out kind of towards water. Was that kind of the hole that you based your routing on, or why was that the first hole that was built? Well, when you build a golf course, you don't build it in sequence.

You know, you don't start at one and build to 18. You build it based on a bunch of logistical issues, and those logistical issues could be things like where the irrigation water's coming from if you're doing a course in the desert. Or it could be where the major drains would be outletting if you're doing it somewhere where it rains a lot. So at band and junns, in order to have a construction process

that was efficient, you would start at the lowest point on the golf course and work to the highest point. So the 12th green was the obvious place to start. That's where one of the three drains that drains that golf course discharges. There's another one at 16 and another one at 17. And so that's the sequence of building. We built 12 and then 15 and then 16 and then 17 and then we worked back towards the club house and then up towards the highest point, which is the thirtees.

And there's a lot of golf courses, I think, in the states that kind of either claim to be links courses or claim to be link style. I mean, it could be in the middle of Ohio. I know there's a golf course that's built in my hometown that, you know, it's called the golf club of Dublin and it's kind of trended after trying to be like a link style Irish course, but it's of course not a links course. What is like the biggest difference between the links course you built abandoned dunes and what like a typical

maybe American style link style course is does that question make sense? Yeah, I get it. You know, the debate about the word links and what it really means. You know, you can go from one extreme to the other. You know, one end of the spectrum, I would say if you've built a golf course and the whole golf course is on sand, there's an argument you could potentially call that links. But that would be at one end. At the other end, you know, it has to be on sand

previously underwater, fescus, you know, all sorts of other requirements that would define it as the purist of links. So somewhere in between those two, you can debate it. But when you're in the middle of the country on heavy clay soil, driving a cart, and they told you it was a link style golf course, I have a hard time believing it. Is there anywhere else in the States that really even remotely compares from a links perspective in your mind

that you've seen? Yeah, lots of places. Okay. Lots of what's the example? Any course in the sand hills of Nebraska, I'm going to say that that is a very, very near links experience, even though you're a thousand miles from the nearest ocean and three thousand feet in the air, you're still playing over tight-fescue on top of

free-draining sand, and that makes for the ball to roll. And maybe that's the true nature of links, is if the grass is firm and the surface is hard and the ball rolls, that's Lynx Golf. That's probably the simplest definition of it. And when you, I guess if I really was controversial, if you're playing golf at Pebble Beach and you're playing on Poaña, that's not got sand underneath, and the ball leaves a pitch mark, are you really playing Link's golf? I'm not sure. Totally different kind of style.

That's kind of the difference for me too as well as, you know, Link's just encouraging me to play along the ground instead of playing through the air. It's the biggest difference maker for me. The technicality of the definitions, you know, that I can give or take that, or take or leave that. But just courses that encourage you to play along the ground. I didn't realize, I mean, I've always loved golf. I didn't realize how much I loved golf

until I started playing those style courses. And then it makes kind of going back to aerial style courses, just almost feel not even worth it to be honest after, after playing a bunch of those. But you told a great story when we were at the PGA show about what Tom Doak said to you about band and dunes, whether you're still trying to figure out if it was a compliment or not. I was hoping you could relay that story.

Well, the story I think you're alluding to is a couple of years after Pacific Dunes opened, Tom and I were invited by Brad Klein at Golf Week to give a presentation to the Golf Week panelists. And at the end of our presentations, that was opened up for questions and one of the questions asked to both of us was, if you have your time over again,

what would you do different? And Tom had the mic, and so he proceeded to talk about very subtle nuances on Pacific Juns that he may or may not have done slightly differently. You know, well, the third tee on the fourth hole, and maybe could have moved three more yards left, and made a slightly different angle. You know, that kind of stuff. It was pretty nuanced. And after a while he handed the mic back to me and I said bluntly I'd have gone second.

And my point although intending to raise a laugh was pretty serious. You know I spent the nine months that I was building band and the three or so years prior to that when Mike was working through the permitting, you know, pushing against convention. Mike was the only one that believed my rhetoric. Everybody else that Mike brought thought Mike was mad and I was probably dumb and naive. I mean, that's being maybe a little harsh, but somewhere in there was the truth. And so all the time, even with campers sports, the managers, they would come out and I'd have these pot bunkers in the middle of fairways and huge rolling, spilling fairways and they would look at them and say you know our our experience in public golf is this

is not acceptable our our public golfers do not like this they want to write a card they if they hit the middle of the fairway they want a nice flat lie if they put it in a bunker 200 yards from the green they want to be able to have some chance of recovery and this golf course doesn't offer that and so I was pushing at these boundaries all the time. I wanted to use face-view grasses on the greens. You know why in the hell would you use these old-style thin, slow grasses when you could use the latest bank grasses that are incredibly good at stopping and incoming short, they putt so reliably and consistently, I mean, why would you want to do this? So I was fighting all of these preconceived ideas all the time.

And then when Bandon was a success, Tom walked through an open door. Right. There was none of that left. He didn't have to waste time persuading anyone that these decisions that I had made were right. He was able to just plow on and be creative and do, you know, really, he could push to the next level and create golf holes that really pushed against convention with blind t-shirts and tucked greens and bunkering that had real Mackenzie-esque wild shapes to them, giant dunes that are

completely exposed sand, there were so many new other things that he could do that I probably couldn't have done in the first go-around. So I'll be at a joke, I really thought that going second gave an advantage. And following up on that, the talk that you heard me give at the PGA was with Bill Kurr. The air mic didn't indeed give me my chance because we went second behind Bill Kurr at San Valley. And again, even though it was to a lesser extent, Bill had already invented the wheel. He'd done a number of things that worked really well, and I was able to just follow them. So along with that story about going second, you also mentioned something

about what Tom said. A story Tom told you about arrows. Can you repeat that story? Because that fascinated me. Quivers, in your era, quivers yes yes. You know when I when I was building the castle course at St Andrews I was given a 220 acre potato field to build it on. I mean absolutely devoid of anything. No, not a contour on it, not a tree, nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. But it is it's in Andrews and it had a great view back into the old town and the East Sands. So I'm working at S& Andrews doing only the 6th, 18th whole golf course there in 600 years with a fantastic view but on a devoid piece of land, heavy soils, no sand, and so 15 years after Bandon, I'd learned a lot, I'd built a number of courses around the world, I had a very talented team of people around me, so we employed every single skill we had to turn a flat potato field into

an awe-inspiring golf course in our image. And I asked Tom to come have a look when we were about maybe a third of the way through. And he was actually a little resistant at first. I had to kind of twist his arm to get him to come have a look and give me his thoughts. And he went and he had a look and he called me up and he said, you know, it's like when you did band and you really only had the one arrow in your quiver and you shot it, you know, straight and true. And when you got to band it, when you got to the castle course, you had a clutch of arrows and you're shooting them in every which direction. You know, there's just, it's like you just spewed every skill you'd learn out onto this one

piece of land. And his point was that, you know, maybe I was, I was over cooking the soup and I needed to think about using fewer arrows Better than lots of arrows in every direction And that was probably good advice that I didn't take That makes a lot of sense. I think does it are you able to kind of take feedback like that? And there was some of his feedback on the course is very public obviously and is in his confidential guide He rated the course zero, which just tip, you know, people can confuse what the doke scale means. It means mostly just this course should not have been built

for a myriad of reasons. And I think kind of some of the factors you may have mentioned there about the land probably contributed to him reaching that conclusion. I'm definitely not saying that course should not have been built. But is it easy or how hard is it, I guess, to take that kind of feedback and not take it personally, and it has like effect to your relationship

with one of your peers like that? Well, I guess that's where I get to an impasse. I was with Tom two months ago at StreamSome, and he and I, for the first time, talked about that zero, and I asked him, what know, what was it about? You know, what was the purpose of that? And he said, well, I was trying to help you. And I said, Tom, you got my number. You could have called me, you know, he point, you know, scoring it as zero comes off as either childish or a disrespectful.

And, you know, I didn't really get it. If it was intended to sell more copies of the book, then it does him a disservice. If it's intended to be a slight to me, you know, then that's unworthy of them. I didn't really get it. I didn't think it was necessary. I think that if he thought it was a zero he'd have been better leaving out of his book than creating controversy between two people that I hope history will relate kindly to and our efforts to make golf more enjoyable. I didn't think that it was something worth doing. It brought a bunch of negative

attention to him and I, and it probably did him more harm than me. Does it, do you think that a lot of the criticism that comes with it, how much can be tied to the fact that it is, has Saint Andrews in the name? You know, Sinandruz is a controversial place. You know, it's just filled with controversy. The thing that I knew going into the seventh at Sinandruz was, it's a place where there are too many intellectuals in too small a space. And that leads to some very strong held opinions. So the whole way through the pre-construction of the castle course, there was a lot of heated

debate between the locals about whether the course should ever be built and how much of the process was open to the public to review, there were all sorts of controversies. I wanted, as a Scotsman, as the son of a fairly well-known greenkeeper in Scotland, I wanted to be part of building a golf course at St Andrews. Who wouldn't? And if Tom felt that the golf course shouldn't have been built for numerous technical or political reasons. That's a lot different than scoring one of his peers as zero. You know, those two things shouldn't have been related to one another. The course was built.

And whether it was politically right or wrong has nothing to do with his confidential review of a golf course, I wouldn't have thought. Did it hurt my feelings? Not particularly. I don't think that I was particularly hurt by it. I've known Tom for 20 years, so I know that he can be pretty blunt. It didn't shock me. It caused a lot of questions, and even now, that book's been out for what, two or three

years, and I'm still answering questions on it. No, I think I knew that you had that fascinates me just because I think I'd seen pictures of the two of you together at StreamSong a couple of months ago and just wondered what how that how that falls out because I know that kind of in that in that business especially you know there are some there are some rivalries within the business, but at the same time, you guys have a history together and you guys have designed courses on the same property and had a relationship.

So I was just kind of curious how that played out, but I think that kind of makes sense. But going back to some things, again, we talked about the PGA show, was you had addressed that after Bandin, I guess when you design Bandin, you kind of after Band-in, I guess when you design Band-in, you kind of described yourself as being, I don't know, not in your own words, but saying kind of young and dumb, and that you kind of nailed that first design without fully

knowing what you were doing, then you had mentioned you kind of got in your own head, kind of falling into some certain traps over designs over the few years. So in your own words, kind of, what were you, what did you mean by, you know, as you learn more, perhaps some of your design techniques became a bit more flawed? I think what happened was when I was 20 in my late 20s designing and building bandin, I didn't know enough to get my own way. So what I knew was this very simplistic view of golf on a beautiful landscape. And so that's what I executed at bandin. Wasn't in my head to build lakes and streams

and fake mounding and wild greens and complex grasping. And I just didn't know how to do it much less have the desire to and then as my career blossomed I had developers building these incredibly expensive projects with real estate involved and a desperate urge to get to win favor with the golf media and so I was encouraged to be more creative and build things that garnered more attention. And in so doing, I maybe started to cook these things a little harder than I had previously. I spoke to a journalist the other day and I was making a similar point and he stopped me and he said, none of these courses that you keep beating yourself up about are bad. They're all really good courses.

I've played them all. I love them all. I don't understand why you keep beating yourself up about them. And so I think I need to stop that. You know, the two that I keep picking on would be the castle course in Scotland and Tethero here in Oregon and yet both of those courses are extremely successful. They are Tethero is fully subscribed and and does a vast amount of rounds as does the castle course. So I don't think at any point in my career did I completely drop the ball. I maybe came under the eye of some sophisticated golf critics,

but to the average golfer they still love the look and playability of these courses. They may be a little harder. They might beat them up a little more. And I certainly am my own worst critic. And I may take the advice of the chap I was talking to last week and stop beating myself up quite so badly because these courses are still successful. I totally agree. And it's kind of a thing that we experience as well.

The more people that you reach, or the more people that notice your work, just your bound to receive more negative feedback, more positive and more negative. And you kind of can't help but start to hear the negative feedback in base, what you do or say, kind of in anticipation of negative feedback. So for some of it, it works in such a public forum and having to, and I don't want to say having

to answer to like top 100 lists and golf course critics and stuff, that's just got to be so difficult to balance like what you envision and what you would like to do versus knowing what or knowing, I don't want to say knowing what people like, but that pre-deceived notion of some of the things you're talking about, like pot bunkers in the middle of fairways and things that just aren't normal in design. You have a vision for how that works yet you know it might not be received as strongly as if you followed a traditional design. So, was there kind of a turning point in getting back to trusting yourself in that regard? I mean, I remember, if there is a turning point, what is kind of the golf course where you felt like

you were able to just block out all the noise and do what exactly what you wanted to do? I think it was right around the beginning of the last major recession. you know, 2008, 2009, you know, I built a number of courses that were winning, you know, best new of the year. I was voted in the inaugural Architect of the Year in Golf Magazine. There were, if you looked at my business, I was achieving all sorts of things. But, you know, what I was hearing, the background of all of this, achieving all sorts of things. But, you know, what I was hearing the background of all of this, was the average goal for,

was saying, you know, I played the course, it beat me up, I didn't really have that much fun, I will probably won't come back anytime soon. And I heard that, you know, a few times, and that had a greater impact than anything, the golf media or the magazines or the panelists could ever say. That made me realize that I had I'd lost the pulse of my audience and that's ultimately the most important thing right. I mean we build golf courses to be

enjoyed by the masses of players who play them. You me to build a golf course that no one loves but me defeats the object completely. A bit like a director making an absolutely horrible movie that he goes on show after show in defense. Well no one likes your movie buddy. It's a crappy movie. I'm sorry. I get it that you made it for all the right reasons and it was a passion project and a lifetime's work, but it sucks. So I didn't want

to be that guy. I wanted to get the pulse of my audience and understand the things that they really truly love and enjoy. And so back in 2009, I took my two closest colleagues, Casey Crainbuele and Nick Sean, and we went back to band in June, neither of them were involved in the original building of band. But I said to them, even though I built the first one, let's imagine I didn't, and spend a few days here and play all the golf courses, and really think about

why is banding so popular? What makes it banding? And I don't want to talk about airy fairy generic terms, you know, it's the vibe or you know, it's the history or you know, I don't want the details. What is it about this? Blow by blow that makes it popular.

And so we took the four courses apart. We deconstructed them down to their individual ingredients. And we talked about what were the common themes between the courses. And what lessons can we learn from that and take to our next project and replicate. And so that's what we did. We talked, incessantly, for, and still do, about what is it about those courses that make them so popular. And we started down a path, a redirection, a very conscious redirection, down a path

where instead of trying to pander to panellists and magazines and best new lists, the only person we're trying to pander to panellists and magazines and best new lists. The only person we're trying to pander to is the average golfer who's spending his hard earned money and even more hard earned time playing something that we've created. How do we get that guy to come off and say, oh, I want to do that again. That was so much fun. Now, I think that I played one of your courses this past summer, MacriHandage Dunes, where it was kind of a transition point for me, is like I'm learning more about golf architecture and kind of really getting the lay of the lay when it comes to links courses.

I've become less in throw with my own score and more about how much fun I had. What if I had a, let's say I'm out of play off the tee, yet I'm hitting a fifth shot as a chip shot, and I get to use an awesome contour, and it rolls up and I'm making double in the hole, but I got to play a really fun shot. I can really appreciate the fun that comes in that. So an example of that, if I had to play macrohandish dunes maybe three years ago, I don't think I would have understood because I would have looked at it and said, this is different, this is crazy,

there's a lot of blind shot, some of these land formations are insane. I played at the summer and I had absolute blast because I had some of the most unique looks of golf holes I'd ever seen. So, how did Macro-Handish Dunes come about and what was your overall real design philosophy of that course?

Well, Mac Dunes came about because I spent my entire childhood on those dunes playing on them as a kid. My parents have had summer home on that peninsula for three generations. So I spent a lot of time out there and as my passion for golf increased as I got older, my dad would take me around MacRanage Golf Club and he would point over at those dunes to the north and say, you know, there's room for another two or three golf courses there, my son, and that always stuck in my head. So after I built Band-in, I tried to encourage

various developers that I made to give me the money to build MacRannis Jones. I never could pull it together and then someone else beat me to the punch, Brian Keating and David Southworth and they provided the money to get the permitting and then build the golf course. So that was how it happened. What was the design intent? The design intent was just to get permission to build a golf course. That piece of land is Not regionally not nationally, but internationally protected. It has some species there that grew nowhere else on planet earth And those species are very rare orchid bulbs that exist in the hollows between the dunes, between the highs.

And so that piece of ground is incredibly fragile. For all sorts of reasons, the most important of which is the pyramidal orchid, which is the most beautiful flower. And so it falls under the designation of a site of special scientific interest, which means don't even think about it. So when I first approached the the body that protects it, which is a SNH Scottish natural history, they basically said don't even think about it. Scottish natural heritage is the proper title. So I tried over a number of years to get the officials at SNH to understand that they want to protect that piece of land, but they don't have any power, they don't have any money. So their

protection is to put this designation on it. And the designation allows it to be used in agriculture. In agriculture, often isn't the best protection. The farmer is looking at winter grazing for a herd of cattle. He's looking at storing a spent machinery. He's looking at who knows what else. He doesn't have the conservation protection as the foremost objective in his mind. He's a farmer making a living off the land. I tried to persuade them that the golf course only wants to be there because of the high value of the land. And if we could find a

way to allow the golf course to coexist with the most fragile and important parts of the land, the golf course would provide the armor, the protection for it forever. That's in so much time I managed to persuade SNH that that was indeed a legitimate objective that the golf course would provide the armor to protect the fragile parts forever. And so we basically agreed that a golf course could be built, but really it wasn't built. They allowed us to create flat spots for teas and do some very minimal grading on the exact perimeter of a putting green. They allowed us to take existing scars and enlarge them a little bit into bunkers and that's all we could do. So there was no real construction of a golf course. We didn't build a golf course.

real construction of a golf course. We didn't build a golf course. The fairways that you played on were the same fairways that sheep were grazing on the day before we started building and inverted calmer's a golf course. That's amazing. Was this, I mean, we hear a lot about these areas of special scientific interest and obviously the Trump course in Aberdeen was eventually built in this area and there's another project potentially going through the debate process at the moment called Cool Links at Bill Koran and Ben Crenshaw are working on potentially up in Dornock. Was this the first course to be built on this special scientific interest land? It's the only one so far. Is the Aberdeen course not technically on the land?

It's just around the land then? I don't think it was on a triple SI. Okay. I'd have to check that, but I don't think so. And you know, when we were building MacJuns and Trump was building a Aberdeen, it was a true David and Goliath because SNH were dealing with both. And on one hand they had a very willing partner that was trying to get a win-win-win for all involved. And on the other hand they had Trump Aberdeen that was looking to achieve

their objective at the cost of any other parameter that was being said. So SNH got a bloody nose and Aberdeen and got a kiss on the cheek at Macrannis Juns. You could argue, you know, which one came out better and some would say, well, you know, the Trump course came out better than Macrannis Juns. And that may well be true. I would hope that when I built golf courses in Scotland, and I've done three of them, it's a game that you're playing for the long hole, not a short term. There's no real estate on these golf courses, and Europeans, and particularly the Scots, think in terms of eons, you know, decades, generations, centuries. I would like to think that these golf courses will only truly reach their best long, long after I'm

dead and going. And at that point, the fact that we work so hard to protect all of the flora and fauna at macrownish, hopefully we'll pay dividends in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years. Yeah, I do know there's some serious questions about the sustainability of the Trump course in Aberdeen, but so it kind of is refreshing to hear the minimalist, I guess, attitude, and it's true as form, it sounds like within macrownish dunes. But we're going on 50 minutes here. And I had plans to talk to you plenty about your new project here at Mammoth Dunes.

I know that was kind of the purpose of the conference there in Orlando last week, but seems to be some very strong excitement about it. You seem to have a lot of energy dedicated towards, you know, you kind of lit up when talking about Mammoth Dunes and your excitement for it. So taking some, I mean, I've not seen it. A lot of people listening to this have not seen it. What's your best way of describing what mammoth dunes is going to look like when it opens up this spring? You know, everything I was telling you

earlier about figuring out what it is that golfers really like and enjoy. You know, mammoth juniors are latest attempt to take all of those boxes to create a visually inspiring feast for the eyes and golf course where every golf or feels like they can be aggressive. They can really go after it and try and score on the golf course because the teeth are off to the sides and it's not overly penal. You know, I didn't, you know, one of the things we figured out in our analysis was, you know, there's too much given to defending par. And I think that golf course architects have been Sold kind of a lie to themselves that they they try and defend par so hard and they succeed so well That the average golfer can make bogies and double bogies all day long and that feels like failure

You know that doesn't feel that good. So par is actually something that the average goal for feels like, oh, you know, I didn't do bad. I didn't do great, but I didn't do bad. And so I've kind of tried to think up golf holes where if you want to play pretty conservative golf, I'm not gonna put up too many defenses against par. I'm gonna kind of let you have that if you can execute a couple or three reasonably good shots. Where the teeth start to come is when you start to cut corners and try and make bogies and, hey, sorry, birdies and eagles. Now the defenses start to appear and that could lead to bogies and double bogies.

So San Valley is hugely wide, but the tight lines are there. A good golfer is going to quickly see that, okay, that fairway is 100 yards wide, but to get in position A, I have to hit a five yard wide slot and avoid not going in the trouble. And so, I'm going to be really, really thrilled after three years of working on it to have mammoth students open to the public and allow passionate golfers to go out there and try

and take her apart. I know they won't, but they're going to think they can. What is, I've never been to the site. I heard descriptions of it, but you know, my Kaiser's project obviously was abandoned doings that part of the main appeal was its coastal location. What is the appeal of going to Central Wisconsin to build a golf resort and build two golf courses on it? Well, it looks every time you climb up one of these dunes in the middle of Wisconsin, you'd expect an ocean to be on the other side sides so the fact that it doesn't have an ocean is more of a surprise than an

expectation. When you're building that on this beautiful sand, pure white sand, if you were to do that on the coast anywhere in the world really you can't really have too much open sand because the wind at the coast causes mayhem with acres and acres of open sand, which is why Pine Valley has a look all unto itself. And so, Mike's tube, the courses that he holds in highest regard on the planet earth, are Royal County Down and Pine Valley. And royal county down in his head was his model for everything abandoned june's anything that had any glimpse of royal county down made make very excited and at sand valley anything that had a

smattering of pain valley made make very excited so I would say for him and he may not agree that band and junz is his old to Royal County down and San Valley is his old to Pine Valley. And I did everything I could to take our new commitment to our own design ethos but do it in a way that has the look and feel of Pine Valley. I know, though many of your listeners have never seen or never will see Pine Valley, mammoth, junds, they get that opportunity. Very nice. Unfortunately, don't have a time to talk about every one of your designs, but I gamble sans is one that, you know, in preparing for this, I was very intrigued by,

to be honest, didn't know a lot about going into it, is one that you know in preparing for this I was very intrigued by to be honest didn't know a lot about going into it is one of your designs in Washington that is opened I believe in 2014 is very highly acclaimed. What is what can you tell us kind of about what you saw out there on that land to be able to make a golf course out of and what that golf course is like? Well it sits on 300 feet of sand above the Columbia River. So it's a common theme I'm noticing here. Yes, the minute you minute, the minute you give a golf course designer with with any announce a sand site, you know, special things can happen. And if it's a sand site with a really cool view of water, then the key ingredients are

there. And that's what we had. We had a really cool view of the water, all in sand, no real estate, a developer that wanted to build a pure golf course. He was also willing to let us use Fescue grasses because it's in the Pacific Northwest. So it had all the same ingredients as ban in june's without the Pacific Ocean, but it did have the Columbia River instead. It wasn't a hard site, a beautiful rolling site on sand, fescue grasses, an owner that gets it. You know, those are the dream jobs for a golf course designer.

And even though it's remote, three hours from Seattle, the Pacific Northwesterners love golf. You know, the vast majority of golfers at Van and Junes are from the Pacific Northwest. So, the opportunity to do something that's of that ilk, but it doesn't rain or blow a gale, is pretty appealing to people from Portland and Seattle and Boise and Salem and from all around the Pacific Northwest. Great, I'll let you out of here. I've got a few kind of shorter questions, but you'd mentioned some courses that you kind of grew up roaming the grounds of and learning from.

But what are some of your favorite courses in the world that you look to specifically for architectural influence? Oh, good. I mean, that's another hour. You know, San Hills, when I finally got there, I was mesmerized. You know, I thought, wow, this is incredible. The strategy there is all diagonals.

You know, everything set up on diagonals. Big greens, small greens, ridges, you play over, blind shots, all sorts of strategy there. It's just an art form. Forces that have been constructed from nothing, Kings Barnes, you know of all the courses I've ever seen that were built on a relatively weak site, you know but Kyle took a site that wasn't what you see today and he created a world class links golf course from nothing, you know, absolute genius, work of art. I have nothing but respect for Kyle and what he created there.

The old courses, you know, I got to play Chicago Golf Club last summer for the first time. A really, really weak site. I mean, if someone showed me that site today, I would bet you that Tom Doke would turn that site down. That site not sand, boring trees around it, nothing. It's not even in Chicago. There's nothing on that site that tells you that a great golf course could have been built other than genius architecture. And so it is, it's genius. So all of these things from fantastic sites to fantastic architecture to amazing engineering. I love it all. You know, I love looking at the time I live in with the architects who are my peers and look at what they're capable of and I marvel.

And I, you know, when the lights are out at night, I think I'm not worthy, but I hope that others will say I am. How much influence have other architects had on your style and who are the main architects you would say that you draw the most inspiration from? You know, I was thinking about it the other night, you know, I think back to my childhood and my father talking like it was poetry about the great triumvirate. And although the modern architects of my era are not players, I wonder whether history would be willing to put a great triumvirate or maybe it's more than three together. The work that Tom Doke does, the work that Bill Kurr does and now Gill Hans, it's absolutely stunning.

And I think that there are others waiting in the wings, be it Jim or Vina, Mike DeVries, Michael Clayton, there's some really amazing architecture and passionate people out there. It's exciting times to be in this business, even though there aren't that many projects being built. The ones that are are so much better than what was being done 20 years ago. It is exciting. It's tough to keep up with, even all the great stuff that's going in.

And there's always a ton of historical places. We'd all love to visit and then all these new great ones keep popping up. It's fascinating. On that note, what are the plans for you and your company and your design group in the immediate future? What's your 2018-2019 look like? It's pretty exciting. We've got a pretty good slate of projects coming up. We're looking

at doing a little more work overseas, whether it's in the Middle East or the Caribbean. We're looking at a second course at Gamble Sands. We may even be doing another project for Mike Keiser somewhere. So there's a bunch of stuff coming down the line. There's no shortage of really cool projects, but we're always looking for more. So if someone's got a site with sand, the flat is a billiard table. Call us up. We'll take it. I did see some sites on the North Island of New Zealand way up north, even further up north than where Teri 80 is. As soon as I drove by them, I was like, somebody could do something with this.

Was that up at 90 mile beach by chance? Yeah, right around up. Well, it was on the opposite coast of, it was on the opposite coast of it was on the east coast actually, but I have no I I am so far from qualified to determine whether or not land is good for a golf course, but did see some stuff there that caught my eye. So last very last question, what is you have a favorite hole on the course that you built your favorite hole that you've ever built? Oh, that is tough. You know, I guess most people would probably point right at the 16th of band and jins. It's the key point on the whole resort

is probably 16th of band and jins. And that might be chiseled into my headstone and 50 years time, hopefully. But for me, it's hard to take credit for something like that because nature created 99% of that whole. It's hard to take credit for something like that because you know nature Created 99% of that hole and I just Turned it into a golf hole rather than at the coolest point in Oregon Some holes I get a huge kick out of where we created something from nothing You know the second that gamble sands which I see in magazines all the time, you know

Casey Crambule and I dreamt that up That wasn't there and we thought that whole up and then we built it And the players who play it absolutely love it is one of the most talked about so things like that I can For an architect I get the biggest kick out of doing something unexpected and creating something far beyond its original potential. And so 16 doesn't take that box at band and tunes, but two that Campbell Sands would. That's a good answer.

And I'll finally let you go on that one. So thank you, David, for the time that was a lot of fun that hours flew by. I'm actually never, this is your first architect ever be on the podcast. I'm always I'm always afraid that I'm very underqualified to have these conversations But thank you for entertaining me and the listeners and that was a lot of fun That's my pleasure when will you a publish this? Oh, it'll go out probably tomorrow. So Wednesday, so people will get right all over it All right, I'll retweet it as soon as I see it. Thank you so much for coming on, David, and hopefully this big seat.

Alright, thanks Chris. Be the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most.