No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 254: Bill Coore

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Bill Coore joins us to discuss how he got into the golf course design business, what intrigued him about Pete Dye, centerline bunkers, width, Sand Hills, Bandon Trails, Pinehurst No. 2, Old Town Club, and many other courses. We also went into detail on the reaction to Trinity Forest, how it has played differently than it was designed to play, designing courses for professionals, and a lot more. Bill was extremely gracious with his time, and we hope to have him back again soon.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Alright guys, welcome back to the No-Lang Up Podcast. Got a nice lengthy one for you today. Had a great conversation late last week with Golf Course Designer Bill Korr. You've heard us talk a lot about a lot of his golf courses.

Got the opportunity to learn a bit more from him on where he got his inspiration from and his philosophies. And I know we've done a lot of architecture stuff lately, but this is really good when I felt and I was really, really excited that Bill was willing to spend so much time with us. He's joining us as part of our partnership with Charles Schwab. You know, we've talked, we've had several people on Casey Martin. Mike Kaiser is part of the Challenger series they do. I've encouraged you guys in the past. Go to SchwabGolf.com. Check out these videos. They're four minutes long, five minutes long, and just talk a bit about some of the people

that have been really influential in the game of golf in recent years. And Bill Kor is definitely one of them. The cinematography of these things is awesome, and they're really inspiring for five minute videos, stuff like that. SchwabGolf.com for more information there. If you guys like our video content, you're gonna absolutely love that, because it looks a hell of a lot better than ours does. And before we get going,

I have a bit of a confession to make. Actually, before we do that, I wanna give a shout out to my Fredix Cup team, sweeping first, second, and second place. I had two guys tied for second place and Lonso Griffin won it. It's looking like a runaway. It's a tough scene.

The first year they actually let me drive for myself and I believe that puts us over $4 million in earnings for the year. So shout out to the squad. And before we get going here, I have a bit of a confession to make. I cheated on Truvus this past weekend. I put the soccer ball patterns, the Calloway Chrome Softs, the Trouvus patterns that you've

heard me rave about. I put them away for a little bit and tried out the triple track. I have not done the triple track. It was just a little weird to me. It was a little too much information. I don't trust my putting stroke. And it was, you know, that line was just a little too much information. I don't trust my putting stroke and it was, you know, that line was just a bit too much. I mark it and I stand over it and I change

my line every time anyways. So the triple track was never that appealing to me. Put the new jaws wedges in the bag as well. So the combination of those two things, two new things for my game and I shot my lowest score of the year on Saturday. So yeah, you've heard me talk a lot about the jaws wedges, the groove and groove technology, the tightest walled edges that are possible in a wedge, and it's a big difference, and the golf ball was tremendous, so I can't wait to see what else the triple track brings me. CallwayGolf.com for more information.

Votin' Your Father Delay, here is the legend, Mr. Bill Corp. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang Up Podcast. Join today by someone we wanted to have on for quite some time is it's Bill Corp from the Corp and Crenshaw Design Group. Bill, thank you so much for joining us. I think we actually caught you at home today. How many days a year are you actually home? Oh, gee, Chris.

Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. And you would think I would know the answer to that question easily. And I don't, obviously at berries, but I'm generally gone from home, you know, over 200 days a year and usually more in the 220 or 30 range. Is that number getting any smaller later in your years? Not really, not really. You know, it's been pretty consistent. Chris, and I'm so fortunate to have my wife as her own business. She travels a great deal still as well.

But we work our schedules out as much as we possibly can to travel together. And then of course, when we're home, we just stay home. People get us all the time. So where do you go? Where's your favorite places in Scottsdale to eat or go or the set? Now that we just go home, when do we come home? We stay home.

All right. Well, I know you are a busy person. We appreciate your time. Got a lot of topics to discuss here. But I want to start broad. It's what we typically like to do, and kind of understanding where your background in golf comes from, where your passion for architecture comes from. I know you worked with Pete Dye, I wanted to know what your timeline was for your introduction

to the golf industry and what made you want to work with Mr. Dye as well. Well, Chris, I'd been exposed to golf, you know, as a young person growing up in the mountain, the very rural part of North Carolina, not near any cities or really any significant towns in terms of population. But my next door neighbor, we lived down a dirt road where like there was one other house on this dirt road besides the hour two homes.

And, but he enjoyed playing golf. And so he's the one who got me exposed to it first. of the hour to homes, but he enjoyed playing off. And so he's the one who got me exposed to it first. Just hitting balls around in between his family, George and I are yard and then later cating and then playing off with him. So I was exposed to it early, but just like most of us who enjoy the game, it was just that. It was an enjoyment of the game, and particularly the game that could be played by yourself. I mean, because there were just not many people around where I grew up. So hitting balls across the

yard and through the fields, and even in the corn fields, when the corn was plowed under, was a part of my adolescent. A lot of us have played a lot of your golf courses and I just want to kind of get as best I can in understanding of where you got your inspiration from. Was there anything you played kind of or encountered in your younger years that kind of made the light bulb go off for you in terms of what you really liked about golf courses and why you wanted to design them yourself. Well, there was Chris.

Growing up in Davidson County, North Carolina, I played basically public, very, very inexpensive public golf courses to say they were rudimentary would be a vast understatement. But that being said, my neighbor took me a couple of times when I was young to Pinehurst and played, and then later when I was in high school and in college, I would continue to go back to Pinehurst, particularly in the summers, when it was there at that time and there, you know, the history of Pinehurst, it was, that was their slow period in terms of resort guests. So the fees were, you know, heavily discounted, and you can play all the golf you wanted to in one day. And we would often, if somebody had a car, we would often drive to Pinehurst

and play 54 rolls a day carrying our bags. So without question, playing it pioneers, not just on number two courses, number two course, but the others, was my first introduction to what interesting golf and interesting golf architecture is all about. And I can't truthfully say I was aware of it or not significantly aware of it at the time, but as the years went by and I kept becoming more and more exposed to that type of golf, it became a cornerstone of what I later came to believe was really interesting and enjoyable golf and golf architecture. Well, what was your next step from there? Did you become a book reader?

How did you learn more about it and what really inspired you to do that? Well, let's go wait for us, Chris. And there again, Pinehurst said, I guess you'd say, was the introduction into interesting to off-and-golf architecture, but then while at Wake Forest, an old-town club, a period-maxile design course that's immediately adjacent to the campus at Wake Forest and was open to the students at Wake Forest at the time, probably still is, but I would go there every chance I got, carry my gloves across the campus and ride onto the golf course and begin playing and the influence of an old town club in Winston-Salem and combine particularly the influence of the number two course that

pine herds were without question in the cornerstones of my appreciation for golf and especially golf architecture. Wow, well, we'll get to some of those, but it had to be pretty thrilling for you later in your life to get a chance to do renovation work at both of those golf courses. But you were a lot of people that are making big waves in the golf world these days, work for Pete Die. I'm curious, how did you end up working with Pete Die and did you cross paths with any

other big names while doing some shaping and work with Mr. Die? Well Chris, I had really no ambition or intention or even thought of being in the golf course design business when I was playing golf my early years and then even when I was at Wake Forest, it was I'd actually planned to be a university professor and play a bit of amateur golf. That's what I sort of envisioned would be a nice way

to go through life. But I spent a couple of years, well more than almost three years actually, in the Army, Uncle Sam decided I should do that instead of going to graduate school after I graduated from Wake Forest. And when I was about to get out of the army, Chris, that I saw a course that Pete died was doing.

A public off course called O'Call, not too far from where I lived in North Carolina. And it was very different. I didn't know who Pete died was. I'd never heard the name. I knew nothing like that. It was still in the era of Robert Trent Jones senior. But I saw this golf course. It was so different. It was very much of the harbor town type mode and shorter golf course based on finesse with quirky things like railroad ties and

pot bunkers and just so different than what was prevalent in terms of the courses that were being put forth at the time. And I thought, wow, this is interesting. And it got me thinking again about playing off at old town playing and punters playing at different places and thinking, this is neat. I wonder how you do this. And I had no clue. But I was then coming upon that watershed event, I guess, of having to decide am I going

to go to graduate school? Or am I going to do something different? And once you're away from school for two and a half years, you, it's not necessarily the easiest thing to just go back and I was fascinated by what Pete was doing there. So I'd badgered a guy on the maintenance crew to give me his number, his phone number, and I started calling Pete just, you know, just out of the blue. He was very polite, but he was certainly not offering anything. But one thing led to another, and I finally convinced him that I really would like to work on a golf course since you were doing one, and anywhere remotely near where I lived. And then not too long after that, he did start the Cardinal. Golf club in Greensboro, North Carolina. And I could drive to that from, you know, from my home. And I was fortunate enough, you know, Chrissy, for whatever reason, I think it's because I just

aggravated him so much probably. But he, he just finally, he told John Gray, who was the construction superintendent on that job, he says, you know, this got something to do. So I started as a laborer and then an equipment operator and one thing and another. And you know, it went from there, but up until that point, I was really extraordinarily ignorant when it came to Goff architecture. I just knew what appealed to me in terms of certain features of Goff courses, but I had not studied it that much. It was only after starting to work for Pete and then later going to Florida to work in Playscold John's Island in Florida for Pete. I was so much not a key person on the crew that when Pete and Alice died with Gwata Town, they

would often ask me to babysit their two German Shepherd dogs, Otto and Gypsy, to white German shepherds at their house. And when I did that, I discovered in the library there all these architect, golf architecture books, which I, you know, out of, certainly interest, but I probably to be candid sometimes boredom would just start reading and studying. And it was only in later years then that I realized and were discovered that Ben Crenshaw

had been reading the same book. And so that in a very sort of circuitous way became a connection we had, even before we knew each other. Well, that ties into what I was going to kind of get to next with what your career steps were after working with Mr. Dai. You broke out on your own there for a while and then how did you and Ben end up meeting? How did you guys decide that you would be great partners to work together

and how long did you guys know each other before you went into business together? Well Chris, you're right. Pete Feet had sent me to work with his brother Roy at a golf project in Texas and East Texas. And I was there that I actually ended up inheriting the golf course superintendent's job and being there for, I think, six years, I believe. And in that capacity. While I was there, the then project manager of where I was in East Texas came to me one day in East Abil. I know this is what you're doing is superintendent, but I know you've really expressed some interest

in the golf course design business. I know some people in down the Gulf Coast of Texas. And they need someone desperately to be their golf course architect. So he took me down, introduced me to some folks at a place called Rockport in Texas down the Gulf Coast. And they were a press. They were desperate for whatever reasons.

They were in the process of building nine holes and it parted ways with their original golf art, and they had equipment working out there and they were pretty good. Okay, you want to do this. Here's our budget, which was minuscule to say the least. And here's the thing, you can't spend one1 more. And they're working out there now, so you can do it if that's what you want to do. I'm remembering me, leaving the room, meeting with them and walking out there

and seeing equipment running. Oh my gosh. So you talk about stepping off in the deep end of a pool, I guess it was. But that was my initial step in the golf course design. From that project, which interesting enough was quite well received, and once it was completed in another nine holes, we added to it, and it was a project manager of another project on the Gulf Coast of Texas who had seen that course and they'd called me about potentially looking at a proposed site for his proposed

golf course. It was terrible, Chris. I mean, it was a nice man that the site was terrible. It went underwater, high high tide saltwater. I mean so even if you dredged it up it was black gumbo and full of salt and I just remember saying his name was Charlie Bell later. I just remember saying Charlie I still appreciate your thank him but I just can't build the golf course here. And he said, okay. And he asked me a question that I'd been asked a number of times before Chris is like, you know, you've done this interesting golf course, but obviously

no one's ever heard of you. And why don't you work with a well known player? And it wasn't something I'd given really much thought to nor was I particularly interested in to be perfectly candid Chris So I just I just I sort of passed it off and he said well if you could who would you work with? Well, this is 1984 and Ben Ben had just won the Masters literally there probably a month before this and masters literally, they're probably a month before this. And I'd read, well, maybe it must have been a couple of months, because I'd read some magazine articles after being one of the masters. And he's told me I was love of reading about golf history and golf architecture. And I could tell this guy, this guy was actually read about this. he's very knowledgeable about golf architecture and golf courses. And so I just sort of blurred it out, probably as much as anything, to end the conversation

with Charlie Balear. And you say, well, I don't know, but if a great, if a buddy probably Ben Crenshaw, he seems to have a love for this and a great knowledge of it. Loan Boles, Charlie B Belair, took it upon himself to call Ben's then business manager, trying to get Ben and I to come together at his project that I had recently looked at. Charlie Belair calls me back and he says,

Bill, he's been coming down here on such, such a date. Would you come and I want to get the two of you together? So that's in essence how it happened Chris Ben shows up on the Gulf Coast of Texas. I show up the same day. We'd never met each other. We're introduced. We're there. We go out to look at this side.

Of course, Ben looks at it. And immediately, you know, it's just, well, you can't build a golf course here. And he says, this is fine for coastal development of homes, but not for golf. And so there's all another backstory this I won't go into, but it just end up being that Ben and I have spent the rest of the day together,

you know, just talking about golf architecture and stuff. And Ben had heard about the course that the guys and I have spent the rest of the day together, just talking about golf architecture and stuff. And Ben had heard about the course that the guys and I had done on the golf course. And it was within 20 minute drive. So we drove over and we walked around the golf course where we'd done in Ben and somebody. He'd heard about it. He liked it, that sort of thing.

And for the rest of that year and the majority of the year after, you know, 84 and then 85, we would just have reoccurring phone conversations about golf architecture and courses. We met a few times and we'd go walk around a few golf courses and there was never any discussion about work in the gather that just sort of evolved out of this what became you know a mutual interest in the subject of our architecture and to this day Chris and I've said that's before but I can recall no great event or dinner or too many beers or anything else. At what's point we say, why don't we do one of these? There was no absolute moment that that occurred. It just sort of evolved into, well maybe let's just see if we if we thought about doing one of the, one of these courses together, how would we go about doing it? And we went from there. So it really was an evolutionary thing.

Well, yeah, that's, that's interesting is because, you know, in my personal experience, I don't want to put words in your mouth here, but most players, you know, especially top players just have suspect histories designing golf courses and that maybe they don't have the best understanding of how 99% of emitters play the game and they just don't come from that core experience that you had, like learning from a seasoned architect, right? I mean, they've seen golf courses that they like, but it might be because that fits their game

for a tournament style. So I was always curious about that. That's a good question for Mr. Krenshaw too, of just how his understanding and appreciation for golf courses, where that comes from, because a lot of professionals don't really have, you know, an architectural mind, at least from like a playability and a fun standpoint.

I can't think of too many golf courses I've played that famous players have designed that are as fun and entertaining and engaging as the courses that you guys create. But how does it work between the two of you? I mean, how does the work get divided up? I imagine it varies from project to project, but is there overriding kind of duty understanding between the two of you? Not specifically Chris. It's, you know, we explore opportunities in terms of

if a potential client calls or contacts us about the possibility of working with him on a site. And we try to both go see the you know the proposed site and see if it If it looks like it has potential for golf and You know we in the perfect world we try to go together to do that or at least both see it and you know at very different times There have been times that see it at different times. There have been times that we've actually agreed to work on courses where I only saw the site and felt strongly that it was something interesting and there have been a couple of times where Ben saw the site and thought it was something interesting. interesting and our preferences and our personalities and our philosophies are very closely aligned

Chris and our preferences for property are closely aligned as well. So it's been this sort of combination of studying property and then coming to a conclusion, whether it's... You both have a standing on the site or one of us seeing it and talking to the other, that this is something interesting, we should pursue this. Once that's the case, if there's been any more consistent delineation of duties, it's, I've probably historically in our career done most, not all, but most of the rowdings for the golf courses. And that's very simply a crisp because, you know,

particularly when Ben was still playing a lot of golf. I had more time in rowding a golf course who's very time consuming,uming, very at least the way we do it, because we walk the property, we study it, we try to get the feel of it, and it's obviously done in conjunction with mapping and that sort of thing, but still it's a time-consuming process. So, I have done the bulk of that. We then study those rowdings. We make alterations to them.

You know, we walk the ground with different routing options and potentials. And come to agreement between us. What is the best routing and what is the best sequence of those. And then what's the concept that we feel like the golf course should be, to fit the routing but complement the property. And we do that together. So we create the concepts together. We then go through the process with the extraordinary talented folks with whom we work on the ground and we present concepts for the design of the individual features

and panels and the overall course. But they're just that Chris, they're just concepts. And from that point, we would come very much editor allowing the guys we work with to do their own own site implementation of concepts, but knowing they have the freedom to their from those concepts at any time, if they see something in their experience or from their perspective, it could actually be better. So that's where we become more of the editor type thing, observing what they're doing,

and then trying to guide the process through it. Well, I was gonna save this one maybe towards the end, but this seems like a good time to ask it now. I don't know if you could tell the story of what, at least the story we heard of what happened with the second green at Lost Farm. The second green at Lost Farm. The second green at lost farm. Well, I don't know what story you might have heard there.

We are, I don't know who it was. I know what a, I heard that somebody may have been a little bit, something was still in their system maybe from the night before and ended up creating a bridge through the green that was not intended. And then somebody looked at it and said, actually, you know what, that actually kind of works. Well, yeah, I think what you're referring to is Dave Axelon, who works with us for so many years, actually Dave and I worked to go longer than I am. And Dave was there at Lost Farm and we had talked about where the second green was going to be.

And we had talked about it could be over here to the right, it could be over there to the left more. It was a big, wide fairway that would offer all sorts of latitude and different angles of play. And Dave had gone in the next morning that brought some sand and piled it all up. And it was piled up kind of in the middle of the green to use either to the left or to the right. And I remember walking back there and looking at it early in the morning, walking around the Dave and we were talking about right left and go. It's not the sand down, knock that down, let's make a ridge, something, let's

see what it is. And Dave literally went down there in the matter of about two hours, knocked it around some, we walked back in the fairway, looked down to, let's just make the whole thing green. We'll make, let's say the part that was going to be the right green is in it, the part is going to be the left green and the middle with the, you know, with the doing rich type thing in it as well. So that's that I'm assuming is what you're referring to right there. And yeah, that was Dave Axelund and that was that was me standing out there. And it's There's a prime example. Chris of how we started with a concept of a green in one spot and then looking at it in the fields and well the green could be here based on how the fairway bunkering is going to be and then realizing when dirt was in this case sand was piled in between those two

spots looking at it and thinking maybe the most interesting thing of all is to make it all green a big wide shallow green that you could approach. Depending on where the pen is going to be far right, far left or even part, you know, spotter to in the middle near the ridge, it would determine how you want to play to the fairway. And then once that happened, that dictated as we came back the fairway to do some central type bunkers in the midst of an enormously wide fairway that could present different avenues of play. So that's a bit of what you're speaking of, of course.

Now, you mentioned there's centerline bunkers, and I kind of want to, that's a bit of what you're you're speaking of. Now, you mentioned there's center line bunkers and I kind of want to that's one of the topics I wanted to discuss as well, but you know, people people will kind of kid us for how excited we get about center line bunkers sometimes. But can you want can you explain the concept of the center line bunker and why that adds so much intrigue to a golf hole? I know some of the some of the I can picture pretty vividly the third hole abandoned trails. Great center line bunkerline bunker there on the par five, but you know, why, it's a concept you guys use pretty frequently and really well. So explain that to listeners that maybe don't quite fully understand why, hey, there's a bunker in the middle of my fairway. What's that doing there?

Well, they're, they're often so effective in just influencing thought and breaking up the what we often for over a period of years or so is the best place to play is a middle of fairway middle of fairway you'd hear that on television you know you just hear and the fairways got so narrow that the middle of fairways only plays you could play, almost to be in the fairway. That became a very standardized form of golf, particularly in America. But Ben and I were both enamored of so many of the old courses that gave you so much or latitude in terms of width of the fairway. way, but it was not uncommon to see a bunker or a mound, you know, a feature that was some

sort of a contour that was right in the absolute spot where you, most players would most want to be. In some cases, it's the safest spot to be right in the middle. And so, you know, we would see those old courses with that sort of thing. And we'd read the stories about whether it's in myopia, a hot club where they didn't put the bunkers in until, you know, they'd quite watch the players, the best players play the course and wherever the most, the shots of the very best players ended up. Alpha T is often where the bunker was placed and to give the best players to create thought,

not just randomly, you know, play between one side and another like kicking field goals. But if there's a centralized bunker right, exactly where you most want to be, particularly I'm talking about very accomplished players, then a decision has to be made. They're like, oh, I really want to be as close to that as I can. Do I play short of it? left of it, right of it, where I'm I capable of hitting over it. And that is much more thought-provoking than just the expansive fairway out there between some heavy roughs on both sides. So, there was a golf architect I'm sure you've read about Max Bayer from California who actually wrote a whole treatise on this

central type hazards in Gav, he called it the Line of Charm, and it's just been one of the most interesting aspects of Gav's architecture throughout history. And so we're not doing anything new. We're just carrying on, I guess, a bit of tradition. Yeah. And I think, you know, along the same thought process, it's really obvious to me. I can almost tell kind of what era course was born in by saying, you know, if the landing area is, between at 275 yards, there's a bunker on the left and a bunker on the right. And the question that's being asked is like, hey, hit it between these two bunkers. Or compared to some of the places I've played in the UK,

where they stagger the bunkers along the fairway, the fairway might be lined with a couple hazards on each side, but they're at different yardages. So you are given a kind of a decision of like, okay, I want to take on, I'm gonna go carry this bunker at 220, but I need to stay shorter than 1 take on, I'm gonna go carry this bunker at 220 But I need to stay short of the one at 250, but that's gonna bring the one at 235 on the right side In the play and I think that that is the big difference is, you know

Just just giving people that kind of thought makes such a it's such a different more different experience You know you go to someplace like say take Hazel team for example a lot of the questions are like I see the two bunkers. I got to hit it between, I don't know if I can do it, but that's really my only option here. And that's just not nearly as interesting of a style of play as I think is what we're talking about here. I couldn't agree more Chris, just that I could not possibly agree more. I mean, generally speaking, If you create situations in golf that dictate how the whole is to be played, that most often becomes the easiest form of golf for the very best players and the most difficult for the average or lesser skill players. I mean, you can, you know, for the best, very best players, you can put something

on the right, something straight across it from the left, and even cut off something in front at a certain yardage, and just give them a nice neat field goal or box in which to hit T-shots, and they can do it. It frames it in perfectly visually and they have the physical skills and talent to be able to hit that shot particularly once they can focus on it and they can do it repeatedly. And yet the lesser skill players, not so sure where his or her ball is going, is a huge disadvantage in that. And as you do it more in the fashion, you just described in a staggering fashion, it creates that thought. Again, from those players, ooh, I need to play over this one, but I better be left to

that one, or right to that one. I got, anytime you create thought, you create interest for all classes at Gallifers. Along those same lines, you talked about it when it comes to, you talked about the latitude and what makes it important to have these center line bunkers. But for those that maybe struggle with the concept of width, what is, I think it can get misconstrued to being why just means easier. And then when people say they want things wider, they just want the golf course to be easier, how do you introduce more challenge that comes with, say, a wider fairway? And it kind of explained

that for people that maybe just think that wider means easier. Well Chris, I, with we have, and I the believe is crucial to interesting golf. For the reason we just discussed about different angles of tee shots and that sort of thing, but I know the perception is that makes it easier. It depends. If you have very wide fairways and very soft conditions where it's kind of like dark boards and you can pinpoint, you know, if a ball lands where it's the kind of like dark boards and you can pinpoint you know if a ball lands here it's only going to run 10 12 yards or 15 or something that's one

thing then width does most likely become easier. With combined with firmness and angles, if it's just width straight away with no central bumpers or no central features, then okay, I could possibly fall in line with the argument it makes it easier, because even if it's fern, balls are just going to roll further and you're hitting down this wide, wide corridor. If width is there but set on diagonals or different angles and staggered directions off the tee, and particularly that combined with a little bit of tilt of the ground and firmness of the turf that I'll sudden width looks enticing and it becomes certainly no more easier and not easier in terms of getting your ball into the fairway because with firmness even with width if you're playing across an ankle and you say, well I better pick the right angle if you don't you play a little

too conservatively, the firmness or the tilt of the ground or all that combined in some cases with some wind carries the ball right through what appears to be really wide fairways into the rough or into whatever is on the far side. And so you just encourage this different angles of play and different thought, for can I do this physically or am I mentally set to play this shot on this angle knowing that you can do it. It allows you to do it, but you still have to be precise. I mean, with the've done really well can also demand precision. That's, you know, listeners of this podcast have heard me cite this example many, many times, but my first time playing the old course, I protect against a right miss. That's my miss.

And, you know, I don't usually don't go left too badly, but I, when I went out on that front nine, and I was just in love with the T-Shots. How, this couldn't be any easier. Look how much room I have to the left. My only real risk here is I might hit someone coming down the back nine, because you got these shared fairways. And I would get up and I couldn't get it up

the ball on the green from the left side. And I just, I hate this place. I don't understand it. I can't, you know, I can't hit wedges off this firm turf and I can't, how am I supposed to carry that bunker? And it took a caddy to point out to me, he's like, no, you need to take on the risk off the tee. You need to play down the right side if you won an angle.

And the first couple of times I did that, and I saw the angles, I was like, oh, no. Now I get it. So, but like you said, if it's not firm, then all of that goes away, especially when it comes to the top, top level. And Trinity Forest is obviously a well-regarded project of yours.

I'm curious, has it kind of bothered you, concerned you guys at all how the tour event has gone in its first two years being there, being the AT&T Byron Nelson? Either the way it's been set up, or kind of some of the things that players have said about the golf course? Well, I think Chris, Ben and all the guys that worked on it

and the folks at Trinity Forest, we knew that any time something is different, it's going to be a subject to lots of commentary. And like at Trinity Forest, much of which has been very, very good, some of which has been far less than positive. So, but we think everybody knew that going in. I think a couple of things have happened. It turned deforest one, and for good reason, the PGA tour was very cautious, the first two years, and particularly the first year

because it was going to be such a different course. And, you know, they, you know, they for as it's been described before, the PGA tour is an entertainment business. It's, you know, they would like for it to be as positive as it possibly can for everyone including their players. And so they were, they were very cautious about the way the course was set up. They were nervous about how fast it was playing prior to the tournament, you know, how firm the greens were, and that sort of thing. So they were pretty protective. This past year a little bit less so, but still pretty cautious. I think this time goes by. You'll see the course, or at least hopefully, we'll see the course, you know, both presented

and play more the way that it was intended, which would be very fast and very exposed to the wind, which for the first two years, well, last this past year, that huge amounts of rain, so the course plate ferries off, rains huge amounts during the tournament. But neither year has there been any wind, which for May and Texas is unbelievable. In the spring and Texas you just expect the wind to come whipping across, you know, particularly in the Dallas area. And that golf course was a great, like a lot of it's obviously it's not a links course, it's actually on the land but the contours are such and the openness such that it's presented like a seaside course. And as with those seaside courses, when

there's no wind, they play, they can play quite forgiving. But when there's wind, it's gonna be a whole different process. Well, that's the thing is it just, they take so much of the bite away, and whether by watering the course or natural rain, to me, you can correct me if you disagree here, but I've always viewed, any has, bunkering hazards around the green usually are not very challenging for

professionals long rough around the green or kind of you know ankle deep rough around the green stops the ball very close to the green and what Trinity Forest has is it has contours that are going to make your ball run away from the hole in far if you get on the wrong side of it. I we played nine holes out there in January of this past year and I just remember the low scores from it. I was like, oh, we could probably tear this place up. That was most definitely not the case because it had just tons and tons of bites. So how do you, is that something that, you know, it's something that a lot of, you know, golf fans, maybe not a lot of golf fans, at least us here really

want to see the players challenged in different ways other than just kind of the same format week after week. How do you go about, you know, with the technology as insane as it is? How do you guys factor in for your championship golf courses that you worked on? Trinity Forest, Capelua, how do you guys go about setting up challenges for professional golfers. Well, I would say, first of all, Chris, we then and I, and neither have throughout this period, we've, we've been trying to build a few interesting courses.

We've not really done one that specifically for tournament play, Trendy Forest hosts the bar announced and yes, but Trendy Forest wasn't built, you know, designed for, you know, PGA tour golf. It was designed for the members, for guests, for people who would be coming out there, you know, charity events that they hold for public situations and much like a couple, a couple of the plantation course was not designed for tour, for tour golf. It was designed for resort and people to have fun and to, to, in both cases, to experience a different type of golf,

where you could get golf, you could play golf on the ground as well as in the air. And we're under the right conditions. People who weren't strong enough to get the ball to the green and two shots on par fours could land it short and watch it roll long and eventually get up onto the putting surface. And that sort of thing, just things that we thought were interesting and you didn't see that often anymore,

whether it was back in the very beginning in the 1990s, like Papalua, or whether it was more recently in like Trendy Forest. So we just felt like those two courses, as different as they are, they presented some very, very traditional design concepts and an encouragement for styles of play, very individual play, depending on the player, even if they were own very non-traditional type sites. So it was just our way of looking and saying, we think this is interesting golf and we think it's interesting golf. First of all, for the people who are gonna play it on a a regular basis. And oh, yes, now they're going to play a professional tournament on it. We didn't go out to either one, but certainly not trendy for us and say,

oh, we need to make it longer. We need this. We need that because that's a losing proposition, Chris. We can't make the course long of a guy from the Dallas Morning News called when we were just finishing up in trendy forest. And I remember him asking. He said, he said, Bill, tell me how you and Ben are doing to address the players. It would be here for the Byron Nelson, you know, how far the ball goes today and players hit their tee shots and so on and so forth. And I remember Chris just saying, Tony, we're making a course shorter and wider. And he, of course, thought I was kidding. He starts laughing. He says, no, really, what do you, what do you kind of do? That's it. Oh, that's it. We're making the course shorter and wider, because if you, you know, we're giving width to create decisions

off the tees, but they also, if you drive it through the fairways, you're in a bit of problematic situation, but also to give angles into these greens. If the greens are firm, the fairways are firm stuff, it does exactly what you just described a few minutes ago, Chris, talking about the old course. You can drive it in the far left side of the fairway and on, on, let's just say some hole at Trinity Forest, only to find that the green is angled such a way or bunkered on the front left or the contours or tilt away from the front left. Some way or another that all of a sudden you go, wow, I can't get remotely close to the hoax from here. And that's where I think the one that the softness again

has affected that, but to the television networks, oh, it's the viewers a little bit to start explaining this a little bit better. Rather than seeing somebody pound a driver and be like, yep, that's fine right there. As Noah's understanding what sides of the fairway you need to be on and why that matters. Do you, you've done this for several decades now.

Do you see the gap between professional golf and normal amateur golf widening? And is it becoming, is it more and more of a challenge for you guys that, for these projects that you work on that do host professional tournaments? Well, I think there's no question Chris. It's widening. You know, that I don't know the statistics by any means. I just know that, you know, 20 years and more ago, the difference between the link that the best players in the world hit the ball and the average golfer was

much less Difference than it is today. I mean today. It's just astronomical You know, I mean if I don't know what the average player male player may drive the ball 210 yards or something. Maybe I don't do, I mean, I don't know the statistics, but you just think about that. The average ground tour now is probably approaching 300 and the long ones are far beyond. And it's just incrementally and sometimes dramatically gotten more and more and more. So the discrepancy between the best players, the most highly skilled player and the average players is just huge.

And, you know, we still try to do our courses really more for the people who are going to be playing there the best majority of the time. And we feel like if they're done in such a way that people who are going to be playing there the best majority of the time. And we feel like if they're done in such a way that with green contours or with angles of play or bumpering, that sort of thing, and particularly given wind angles, that they're still going to present interesting situations for the very best players. And yes, they may, they may shoot good scores, but they're not likely going to do it every day, you know?

Right. Well, yeah, I think it and kind of going back to what we said, it just, it just needs to be that bite. I mean, I, I really enjoy the idea of, you know, giving players opportunities for birdies, as long as there's a risk that comes with that, and I feel way too often in professional golf now, it's very safe, very, very easy, pars. And, you know, it still might be a challenging birdie, but there's just not that, you know, dividing line of, I may make bogey if I go at this pin, but I might make birdie, it just seems,

kind of, I mean, for somebody that's done this for so long, does it frustrate you at all, either with some of your own work or some of the people of the architect that you admire? And I personally, I consider golf courses that are, you know, not only are they historic, but they're all, they're works of art. I mean, to see some of them rendered obsolete, does it frustrate you at all? Kind of that we've traded in, you know, for the sake of,

I'm not really sure what. I mean, it's a lot of revenue for a lot of people at the top level of the game, but is it frustrating to you at all to kind of see where the game is heading technologically? Well, I think without question, Chris, I mean, I think of, you know, I'm getting to be a pretty old guy now, but I think you talked almost anyone of my generation or even younger, but who were still exposed to different type of golf, which was much more strategic and just involved a lot of different thought processes than what we tend to see today. I think we do appreciate what we came to know years ago. I mean, you had to appreciate watching someone

like Sam's need hit a long iron or Tom Wyskopf hit a long iron. I'm talking about just amazing when hitting long iron for as few people in the world could do. And I'm talking about even among the best players, they didn't put all that well. And it was just incredible to watch extreme talent in the way they would figure out how to manage their own games and get around the golf course and it seems like the older courses just allowed people different ways to play. They just didn't dictate so much that you have to hit between, you know, you have to hit to a certain distance at least you get in play and then once you're at that, you have to hit to a certain distance, at least you get in play, and then once you're that, this you have to have between a point on the right and a point on the left, the field

gold again. You have to do that, and you have to play the grain and carry the ball in the air to the grain. You know, between two bunkers or over a bunker or something, the grain, it just seemed like a lot of the older courses just gave you different ways that said we're not gonna tell you how you have to play we're gonna give you options and we're gonna let you figure out what's the best way for you to play and I think in you know certain years years gone by when you saw even among the most

successful players in the world. You would see really extraordinarily long players, but they could also be mixed with players who literally drove the ball, not tremendous distances past the average, the average male golfer. And yet, some of these players were highly successful in tournament golf. And you, they, you know, some of these players were highly successful in tournament golf. And you could see how you'd go watch them play and just watch how each type of player would go about his business, you know. And I think that's much, quite frankly, I think it's much more interesting to what's women's golf. Yes. You know, because I think you still see that today. You see long players in the women's

game, but you also see finesse players. And they're, you know, in the ways they manage to negotiate the, you know, the hazards of a golf course. And it's really quite fun to watch. I agree. You have the correlation with driving distance and accuracy. I mean, that's the thing, too. These guys are so freaking accurate with the drives, not only hitting them far, but the correlation has never been stronger towards shooting low scores as it is with hitting the ball really far. But I can't believe we made it this far without talking sandhills or really pine hers, but I want to start with pine hers. It's probably my favorite golf course to play in the United States.

For a place that meant so much to you growing up and getting getting the chance to lay your hands on it, what's that process like? I mean, I know you probably have some ideas of what you want to do. It is a restoration, but with this modern era of technology, you also have to put your own stamp on it. Were you nervous to touch a masterpiece for somebody that you looked up to as much as Donna Ross in a place that meant so much to you? And did you come into that with a very clear mindset as to what exactly what you guys wanted to do. Well, I get the answer to your first question, or because what was it like? It was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. And not just for me having grown up in North Carolina, experienced pine hersters a very young golfer, but for Benant, you know, it played there many times and in different

championships and so revered the history of what the Tufts family and Mr. Ross, and of course in more recent years the Deadman family had done for Pinehurst. And so, yeah, it was a daunting proposition. And I remember vividly, Ben and I going there and when Bob Deadman, Elner Pinehurst, and then the President of Pinehurst, Don Pagent, was who was since retired. But we'd been, I went and we sat down with them. They said, guys, we've really been thinking, seriously, about the possibility of trying to restore number two course. And

we'd like for you guys to talk to us about it. And I remember Ben and I both were just going, well, maybe the first question has restored to what it had evolved so far from where, you know, had the type of course it had been when Mr. Ross was alive, that you had to look at and say, what era of Pyners number two are we going to try to restore? And to us, that was the first question. I mean because there were very few people quite frankly, very few people living who had seen the golf course more in the character that Mr. Ross had developed there for the course. And so when I say terrifying's terrifying, Don Paget and Bob Bedman didn't make it any easier, because they have, they both looked at Ben and Maynay, so well that's up to you.

Oh no. Oh, thanks. Okay. Well, you know, Chris, you start thinking about it, too, and you think, number two, course, it's ir. I think more than ever was established. You from that period until the very early 1960s, or even middle 1960s, then I felt like that was the number two course, the character, the strategy, the appearance,

the everything that had established its worldwide character. And so we went to Mr. Edmund and on pageant and said, this is what we would try to go back to if you're agreeing to do this. And they agreed with that assessment and they walked away out on the land. Chris, I mean, bought the Edmund.

I remember him standing out there because you have to put in the context that Pioneer's number two had gone far, far away from what it was. And from the early 60s back to 1935, we were beyond. And it had grass everywhere. I walked out on one of the holes, one of the, when I first went there to look at it, when they first called about possibly restoring it, and I counted six heights of cut of grass on one hole, six. And, well, now one of them in fairness was no cut. You know, just neon 80s stuff out there, but six, they're nights of grass, a one hoe.

And most all the sand and wire grass and things that I remembered as a kid going out there to play in the old pictures and things was gone. And so number two, it become more of, kind of a representation of Tom Springs than it had a representation of the Sandhills in North Carolina, which it was in Mr. Ross's day. So when we decided to do this, about dead men, we took out nearly 40 acres, basically 40 acres of turf off that golf course. And I remember Bob standing out there looking

as they were hauling grass. I mean, this is a good turf being rolled up and hauled off and given the churches and playgrounds and schools and all this kind of stuff. People, he might want it basically. And they're in Bob's standard feeling. Well, this is either the smartest thing I've ever done or the dumbest. And there was real question about that Chris, could you put in the context that business model wasn't

broken? Minors was doing fine. There were thousands of people coming there, you know, thousands of people literally still playing golf at Pyners number two, playing rather large sums of money to do so. And we were told about changing its entire appearance. And we knew there would be people like you described it, even at Trinity Forest, who's going to be so different. There will be people who will think this is a really, really bad idea. So it didn't come without risk, and particularly for Bob Devin. Well, and that's kind of the main argument. A lot of people, architecture junkies will

every year that the AT&T rolls around. They argue that Pebble needs to be restored and should be restored back to its sandy or look. But it's the same thing. It's like, how do you shut down? When you're, people are going off at $600 at T time, by four sums every 10 minutes, it's pretty hard to argue. It's like, oh yeah, that's probably best for everyone. If we just shut the course down for a while and spend a bunch of money tearing it up

and can't let anybody play for a long period of time. Right, exactly. Couple of us just going through it, Chris. Yeah, I was gonna to say let's talk about that one then. What you know that you guys I forget what year Capelua opened after you guys and it was the early 90s maybe mid 90s. What what had happened to Capelua over over time that you know caused you guys to come in for refinement and what what will that look like when people see it in January? Well yes Capelola the plantation course opened at 91,

spring of 91. And what had happened because you pretty much hit upon it right there is Coppola is very very popular resort. You know it's their goffers wanting to play all the time and very, very little downtime for the course and you think about it I guess 28 years of constant play and in Coppola the grass you don't have winters obviously so it doesn't go dormant doesn't stop growing so it's been growing for 28 years and it does slow down the winter because of the daylight hours get shorter. But still, it it had evolved over that time period from a golf course that you could use the

sweeping just sweeping long contours of the land. You could use those landforms and the elevation changes, particularly downhill, and most importantly, the wind angles, particularly down the wind. You could use those to land ball far shorter the grain, use the ground to get the ball to continue to tumble along and run to the pudding surface. And that was the intent of the golf course. It was a it's a very windy site. It's a giant site of a giant scale, you know, the sweep, the land forms, and then given the wind effects, it needed to be a course of very large scale.

And what we tried to do all those years ago was create a golf course to showcase the property, obviously the vistas in the process, but showcase the property and use the land to enable you to play. Some hopefully some enjoyable golf. And it used to be a golf course that the resort player could go play. They could hit tee shots out there. Even if they didn't hit that far in the air, they would start to roll and roll and keep rolling. And as a result, they could reach, you know,

holes sometimes in two shots and things that they wouldn't likely ever do at home because of the firmness of the ground. Over the years, the golf course changed dramatically. Just by the evolution of turf growing and getting more tatch built up and more softer and softer and holding more water, as the turf became thicker. And so it became, of course, where T-shirts would go out there and not roll very far. And of course, then became far too long for the resort players.

And in the process, it became far too easy for the best players in the world who were playing there in the tournament of champions. Because if you think about it, the conditions that defend against the best players, likeness of the turf, speed of greens. It combined with slopes and wind. Those are elements that can defend almost any golf course. And in this process of evolution with the turf of Kapalua, the best players in the world who could hit the ball easily far enough on any hole, even the par-fives in a to-reach and into, even with softer turf conditions, they could play

to certain parts of the fairway with no fear of running through the fairway into something, you know, a treacherous, they could play to the greens areaally with no fear of bounding over, which used to happen in the early years at Coppola. And so the course just became easier and easier for the very best, and particularly the strongest players. And to play from point A to point B to point C. And with confidence in each of those points. What we hope has happened because they've regressed the golf course being regrown in, people won't see. Visually, it will look just like the course that's been there for the past 28 years.

But we hope that the playability aspects of the course have been restored. And by that again, I'm talking about the firmness of the turf, the ability to hit shots out there for the average players who just run, run, run, they're run seemingly forever. And yet for the best players, make them have to be more thoughtful or more precise, just to where they land their tee shots and some of those enormously wide fairways just to keep the ball from not running 100 or more yards into something where they don't

position or where they don't want to be. And then again going toward the greens, restore the idea that yes, if the pen is in a certain part of these large greens, you may, if you're into the wind and particularly a bit uphill into the wind, you may be able to fly it back toward the pen, but you won't be able to do that no matter how much spin you can put on a ball. If you're playing downhill, downwind, and the grain of the grass is growing toward the oceans, all those things work in the same direction, a couple of. And so I think you probably this year, Chris, if you watched the tournament this year and you went back and watched it from, you know, the early 1990s.

I think you may see the course play very similar. I was gonna say, yeah, it's not the, it's not getting the ball to go far that concerns professionals, it's getting it to stop. So they're not going too far. Exactly where they fear the run outs is where, that's what always makes the, you know, the bridge open so interesting.

And I've always said, most interesting golf hole I watched last year was watching guys play the sixth hole at, at Karnusti, because they couldn't figure out what to do with it, with the OB left and the bunker down the middle, and they couldn't get the ball to stop. They didn't know where to, where to aim it. But, uh, turns us into another job that I know is a popular one. You get, you get asked about a lot and it's kind of a course that is, maybe not a lot of people realize is very responsible for kind of changing the landscape

of modern golf course design and resorts and everything, it's Sand Hills. And I kind of want to know how you guys got on the radar for building that golf course. And what was the, your initial thoughts when you heard about a place, where there's just no one anywhere near the golf course, how concerned you were about getting people to play it and

what got you guys, what eventually landed you guys at Sandhills Nebraska? Well, Dick Young's cap, the founder of the Sandhills Golf Club there in Nebraska. Dick, you know, Dick was a golfer. He was, he enjoyed it. He was more of a recreational, you know, golfer. And, but he had, he was an architect. I mean, a real building architect by profession, but he, he had, uh, devoused a project called Firethorn in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was a peak die golf course and it was done in the 1980s and was quite successful. It was a combination of golf club with very good golf course and in some residential. The peak had Dick had a brother-in-law, John Lee was his name, who was a rancher in the sand hills. And Dick and his wife Barb would, you know, fairly Gregor basis go up for family gatherings and things to the sand hills.

And he would drive through this all these sand dunes. And he would just, you'd have to talk to Dick about this, but my sense is he just kept visualizing. This looks like what I see in Ireland and Scotland in these places, these classical courses, this may be ideally suited for golf. And he came up with this idea that maybe we should explore the possibility of building a golf course. And Chris, to say it was, most people thought it was outlandish. It was, you know, heard a crump's folly, a plain valley will believe me.

A young scouts folly at the sand hills was equally ridiculed, you knowuled in the beginning because there are no people. There are two people per square mile on average where the sand hills was built. And yet Dick was a firm believer that the best golf courses in the world are site driven and not demographically driven that each you found a really, truly special site and did something complimentary to that site. You had the chance to do an extraordinary golf course. And that was his background with this. And so he was sort of tiptoeing in all this, but had been thinking about it. And he asked Ben and I'd come and take a look. And I remember when he called to ask us amazing enough,

we were both in the office. And he called to see if we might come to the Sandills in Nebraska. And Ben and I need one. They'd been there. But it was interesting, Christopher, because years before and I want to say is a National Geographic magazine. Ben had read a story about ranching in the sand hills in Nebraska and he talked about remembering so vividly the photographs that accompanied that story. He just remembered

looking at his clothes. It just looks like golf, you know. And the story was obviously about ranching and not golf, but Bench's recollection. He soon as Dick Young's kept saying, it's Sandhills in Nebraska, the proverbial light bulb went off with Ben like, whoa, I remember what this photograph looked like. I'd like to see that. In my case, a very similar thing happened on that same phone call because when Dick mentioned the Sandhills in Nebraska, I remembered years before I was doing some work at Prairie Dune, you know, in Hutchison, Kansas, and Doug Peterson, who was then the superintendent at Prairie Dune and was originally from Nebraska. I remember walking down the eighth fairway at Prairie Dune and just an extraordinarily

beautifully contoured fairway in the dune. And I remember saying to Doug, Doug, can you imagine having a piece of property like this to work with? And Doug Peterson turned to me in the eighth fairway at Prairie Dines, who's a bill. I know where there's land even better than this. And I looked at him, I said, where? He said the sand hills in Nebraska. And of course I'd never been in Nebraska, so I thought Nebraska was just a cornfield, you know, flat. And when Doug Peterson said that, and I remembered because not long, but well, it had been three or four years before that.

Not long, but well, it had been through four years before that. I was having a conversation with Ron Witton, the architecture editor still to this day of Gough Digest, and Ron's from Nebraska. And I remember asking him, if he were Ron, you know, of all the places, what's the best land for Gough he's ever seen? He said Sandh hills in Nebraska. And so when Dick Young's cap mentioned sand hills in Nebraska, I'm saying about Ron Whitten, I'm saying about Doug Peterson,

and Ben's thinking about the photographs he'd seen in the article about the ranchers, and we both just kind of look at Asia, we'll be there. So yeah, it was, and of course, when we got there, you know, it's just, you have to experience it to believe it. Well, that's the thing is, you know, architects dream of, you know, great sites to build golf courses, but is there, you know, the way the stories that I've heard from Sandhills, it sounds like your guys issue was,

it was all, I don't mean this lightly, it was almost too good of a sight for golf, and that once you got there, you're a bit overwhelmed with the options you have to do a routing. So the story's a bit famous at this point, but how long did you walk the land before you came up with a routing

and how many holes did you guys come up with in different rowdings that you have before you settled in the final 18? Well Chris, we were really making numerous trips up there. I don't remember, I don't remember how many. It was over about a two year period because Dick Yonk's cap was trying. First of all, they had to buy the property and it was for sale, but they had to put together a group to get the funding to buy the property. And it was for sale, but they had to put together a group to get the funding to buy the property. Then Dick had to put together another group to get some funding

to build the golf course. And so that was a laborious and time-consuming process that he was going through. Meanwhile, Ben and I were going up there walking around through all those dunes and trying to narrow it down. First of all it was 8,100 acres. So you actually got to narrow it down and that didn't take too long to get down to a thousand acres. And then but still a thousand acres. A lot of ground that keep walking over. And particularly when there's no starting point, there's nothing out there. So you have to start there. Topo masks were worthless because they just had, you know, contours on a Topo map, which was, didn't have any aerial photography then with Topo. So we just had, you know, if you had a Topo map, it just, it just looked like 10,000 Cheerios on a piece of paper. So it didn't tell you much because you didn't know which little tune or whole you were standing

in. And it was just a process of going up, spending like a week or sometimes 10 days at a time and just wondering about and marking things on the ground and remembering where those were and just trying to put together holes. And yes, there's that what's now become quite, I guess, well, a known story that we did. We laid out 118 holes. Actually, you could almost say it was 132, but we let Nate some pretty quickly, but they were on the ground, but obviously they're not going to all be there. They criss-crossed each other as soon as you decide

we'll pick this one and that one, you probably eliminated three, three others, you know, or more. And it was just this process, we had the luxury of time. And so there's a process of wondering, see there, putting it together. And then finally, at some point, saying, this is what we're going to go with, you know, we're going to go with this. Knowing has as well been the case that people would come up there and say, oh, you could build holes anywhere. Well, that wasn't quite correct. You're walking around through there, you find that you don't build holes quite anywhere. But we knew that we had an , well, we had just one of the world's extraordinary pieces of property to work with. And if we didn't build a truly extraordinary golf course, we failed.

It was that simple. And so there again, that I've had people say, what in building the sand hills, what in that a lot of fun. There's a lot of ways I'd describe it in rewarding as maybe the top of the list fund. I don't know about that. But just the extreme potential it offered made it. Again, kind of like pioneers, the quite frightening proposition because you knew the odds for failure could be extreme. But now we put together the final 18. We felt like we wanted to build and I remember walking after a bend, just the two of us.

The course had not officially opened. Any and I were out playing golf on the course and we were walking along and we were nearing the end of the round and I said, Dan, I said, Ben, is there anything else we should have done? Because the worst thing we wanted to do was to go out after the course was finished and say, we should have, we should have gone there, we should have gone here. And I said, is there anything you would change now that we're out here in the midst of it with the finished product? And he said, no, I'm very happy.

And I was too. And so, you know, it's just one of those extraordinary opportunities, Chris. And you mentioned the effect that's had on golf architecture. We just knew it was an extraordinary opportunity to do something special, but we never, never. And I remember while this imagination dream that it would have the effect that it has had on golf architecture. So the effect that I was mentioning

that you acknowledged there was what came next, maybe not necessarily next, but the sand hills was a big inspiration for bandendoons. So I wanna know where you've done a lot of work with Mike Kaiser in the 20 20 years 25 years since then. Where did your relationship with him start and were you where you guys ever in the running to do either of the first two courses at bandendoons? Well, Mike Kaiser was actually a founding member of the sand hills. I met Mike at the Sandhills initially. I didn't get to know him at all and didn't really know him. After that, I just remember meeting in

there. Mike is certainly the Sandhills was influential in what Mike was wanting to do, although he'd already done the nine-holt dunes course, up in New Buffalo, Michigan, which was so well done and but was private. And Mike was, he had had this desire to find a piece of property to do something interesting in dunes along an ocean. This all tracks back to his, his particularly a trip he took to Darnak and Scotland and his love of seaside golf.

But he, Mike, was there. I think he would tell you that to ask him, but I think he would say that Sandeel's was influential, you know, and into his thinking that he would start to pursue one of these things, his difference was he wanted to be public access golf. So he spent a lot of time in a talking Dick Young's cap and when the opportunity abandoned, presented itself, Mike took advantage of that.

He got the property. And, of course, you know, got David McLeod kid to do the first course, which was a very good choice and a very good move. And on Mike's part, but I think Mike would eat the first to tell you Chris. He wasn't sure that Bannon was going to be a success. He thought he just wanted to see what does it like to build a course in the dunes on the ocean and he I've mic stole me he felt like if it if he could just break even with it somehow would be a success. I'm not sure you ever really in the beginning initially envisioned multiple cough courses there.

in the beginning, initial invasion, multiple cough courses there. And as you know, as Bannon went the first year and was so successful, it gave reason for Mike to expand and move into what became Pacific Dins, which was certainly established Mike's principle of established Mike's principle of its geometric, not necessarily arithmetic progression, in that one plus one is three, not just two, in terms of its appeal to bring people. And as Mike would say, you need two courses for a destination. And what Tom Doke and Jim are being in the guys that did it, the Civic Doons, of course, was just extraordinary. And the combination of that with Band and Doons, of course, cemented the Band and Doons as a golf destination. And, you know, did Mike consider us to do one of those?

Yes, he would say, I would defer to him to give the correct descriptions, but in general, in general, I've heard him say more than once that he did consider us to do the course at Bannon, but we had just finished the sand hills. And he just felt like he would be better going in a different direction to not have abandoned be perceived as just coming along in a line of things that we were doing. And his was absolutely the right decision. things that we were doing. And his was absolutely the right decision. That being said, it did lead to later. He did contact us about doing what it became band and trails. And then of course,

later the preserve and then here most recently the sheep rights. Let's go say that the relationship has worked out wonderfully, but were you guys at all hesitant to be the first inland course at Bandon? Did you, you know, was there, what was that kind of process like for you guys over you just pretty much thrilled to be working on that property? You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a serious concern of ours, Chris. I mean, my 21st call, he was very candid about it. He said, Bill, you and Ben may not be interested. This is not on the ocean. It's going to be perceived as the course, not

on the ocean. And I remember saying to Mike, then, I said, Michael, come on, let's study the property, son, and we'll see if we feel like we can do something that will compliment the other two courses. That's all we ask. If we don't want to go build a golf course, the company perceived this quote, totally the third course and no one wants to go play it. Now, yeah, obviously we didn't want to do that, not just for our sake, but for the sake of the resort. But I said, let's look at it. So, you know, when I started looking, walking about, starting it, then, you know, just came to the conclusion that we could do some interesting golf here, and it's going to be very different

than, you know, the two courses, but we felt like it would have an appeal to people. And certainly, in its very early years, band and trails was, you know, I'm sure a lot of a number of people perceived it as the third course, it's not on the ocean, you know, but you know, it's proven itself pretty well. Okay, I remember when we said, I was talking to Mike and as a Mike, you know, we've been fortunate at this point in our careers to build work on some really neat places. But you watch this one. You watch band and trails.

It'll probably start off like, well, it's the course, not on the ocean. But there's some really neat stuff and detail out there that we think will start to appeal to people as they experience the course more frequently. It will start to reveal itself. It will probably come more and more appreciate this time, which seems to have proven out. For sure. I absolutely love Ben and Trales. I was going to say, I think my Kaiser made up for it by giving you guys the site

that you guys are building the sheep ranch on currently. So, this is a very unique golf course. You know, it's got a lot of publicity lately. I haven't been out there yet, but it is a bunker-less golf course perched the top, even higher cliffs from my understanding that banning and pacific are on. What are some of the challenges of this job? What made this one unique and why is this,

you know, are people raving about this site so much? Well, Chris, you're right. I mean, Mike's yet again has given us an opportunity that if you're in our profession, they're just simply in a way you can describe how grateful you're for it. I mean, it's a truly special site and it's different than any of the other sites at Bandon. The difference starts immediately with

the coastline, which is much more varied in terms of direction than at Bandon dunes or Pacific dunes. Those two courses, the holes that are along the coast, basically the coast is very linear. So you need to play to the coast away from coast or along it. At the Sheep Ranch, there are a couple of prontories that stick out into the ocean that afford opportunities to play,

you know, not just to the ocean, but then diagonally across the ocean, back to the main land,, you know, not just to the ocean, but then diagonally across the ocean back to the into the mainland so you can and in different directions. And it was a mile of coastline at C-Pranchen. It was configured in such a way that it just gave us the opportunity to come to it and go away and come back again, play along it, like, you know, in all different directions in Proximity to the ocean. And, you know, it's just something you don't often see. And then the land forms themselves that had been created by both natural and human activities out there. We're just so enticing for golf.

Some of those beautiful contours, undulations for golf that you could hope to see and people often think of when they look at the sheep ranch from a distance, they get flat. It's anything but flat. It's just sweeping swirling, twisting contours. It's got some elevation change to it, but it's not mountainous in any sense. It's just beautiful land for golf.

It looks incredible. It really does. And I've always said, you know, any critique of a golf course that doesn't have elevation change, you know, is critique of a golf course that doesn't have elevation change, you know, is kind of perceived as flat, but there's a big difference between no elevation change and flat, if you ask me. I mean, the old course does not have elevation change, but it is not flat by any regard. So I imagine a site that, you know, doesn't have elevation change and doesn't have a lot of bunkers means there's going to be some very intriguing contours.

Am I sniffing around the right bush there? No question, Chris. The golf course is based upon contours. Well, it's based on contours. Well, I guess you'd be back up here. It's based first and foremost upon the shoreline. Second, the contours, third, the wind. And it's those three elements who make it interesting, I think, and Ben and all of us who have worked on it will live it. We think it'll make the golf course interesting for whether it's resort players

or the far varying capabilities or the very best players in the world. We think we'd go out there and have an enjoyable time and, and be tested quite frankly. And, uh, so it's, um, we'll see, we'll see how it all goes, but it's, uh, we were just, again, who was just so amazing. I remember when Mike Cudger called, asked if it comes study the property, and I went out and I met with him and his old college roommate business partner for so many years, Phil Friedman, and their co-owners of the land at Cheap Ranch. I remember meeting with Phil and Mike and just talking about what were they envisioning and at one point, because I knew other people, Tom

and Jim and Tom Dove, Jim and Meena, and even Gil Hans had been out there looking at it, so I was quite surprised that they wanted us to, you know, give it a study, so speak, but I just, I remember talking to Mike, standing there, and just him, Mike, you've given us so many opportunities. I almost felt guilty about this. And he said, well, Bill, I remember when, because I was, we're backing up here now to band and dangerous work when we were doing band and trails. I was taken over to the property that later became Old MacDonald.

And I'm looking at all these beautiful contours on the ground. They're close to the ocean on this. And so I was asking Mike, I said, Mike, why are we back here in the trees trying to deal with this giant dune ridge? And all this one we could be down here working. And he would laugh and be so well, that's for later, sometimes, sometimes. But then when later came here, just when the, as I was describing on the stand there,

it's sheep ranch with Mike and Phil, and he goes, well, Bill, you guys worked away from the ocean. Maybe it's time you work on the ocean. And so, we're gonna, we're gonna throw it out there, Chris. And we're gonna see what people have to say, but we're pretty proud of it. Wow, I'm excited to see it. You've been extremely generous with your time.

I'm gonna get you out of here on this last question. And if you ever come back, I've got a hold of it. We got a ton of projects that you've worked on that we haven't got a chance to talk about. But is there anything you guys haven't done that you'd love to do, anything, you know, I'm thinking along the lines of, we didn't really talk much about Bannon preserve, but it's just an unbelievable par three course there at band and

but what's something out there that you guys haven't done that you're really interested in doing? It's a very good question, Chris. We have again been so fortunate. We've been given truly extraordinary sites to work with. We've been given some, we've been given and accepted some very difficult sites to work with. We've now worked on a landfill at Trinity Forest. I wasn't sure we would ever do that, but we have. We've done something

in recent years and you just alluded to one of them, meaning part three courses and you know, the preserve had abandoned and then the sandbox, it's in Valley and part three course at Friars, we'd done several parts three course before but all the private clubs, Friars, they had Colorado Golf Club, Austin Golf Club, those things but a chance, ban an eye for years, because we both grew a play in on par three courses, and nine whole courses, and different types of, not just 18-oh regulation courses. And we used to talk to potential clients about, if they had a property, it was interesting, but maybe not quite big enough, or had some awkward spots, or something, and make 18-oh

different, would they consider building a nine-oh course, or a par three course, or a quite big enough or had some awkward spots or something and make 18 holes different. Would they consider building a nine hole course or a par three course or a hybrid type of kind of an executive they used to call them. Of course with some a few fours and mostly threes and maybe an odd five or something. Those arguments are those those requests years ago, just fell completely on deaf ears because anything other than 18 old was considered to be not proper and not marketable. And we've enjoyed working on these par three courses so much. There again, thanks almost entirely to Mike Keajer, because even though we had done Part 3's, some of the private clubs who'd worked with, they weren't getting, you

know, for obvious reason, very few people saw them. A lot of attention. And then Mike decides to do the Part 3, abandon, and suddenly Part 3 courses are in, and people want them. And now you see them starting to be built not just a private place But resort places and and my sense is you know they they will make a comeback into public golf even municipal golf and that's That's fantastic. I To be on that. I don't know. We've

We've done We've done two nine hole courses through the years. They're both at membership clubs so they don't get recognized. As much, it might be fun to do a nine hole course. Without question, we would be interested in doing another course similar to what we did at the Farmington Country Club in Charlottesville, Virginia. Their East course is its known, which was a nine-hole regulation course. It's their third nine. But it was a regulation nine-hole that was highly underutilized by the membership and it was converted into a practice area teaching area but a hybrid type course with a short force, one short par 5 that plays back up the hill and a majority of par 3-Hose and it was just fun to do. It was fun to do my understanding from listening now

for the last two years is that it's been extremely well received and fun to play and for members and their guests and certainly for time constraint reasons. But just as importantly, just from the enjoy of the last night. So maybe some more, maybe another one of those somewhere. There you go. Yeah, that's, you know, I see how little land some of these so part three courses take up

and how much fun people have on them. And, you know, oftentimes 36 holes is too many, holes for people in one day, but, you know, 18 plus a part three is just the right amount of balance. So I really enjoy seeing those pop up in a lot of these places. So no question Chris. I was literally was a planners last week and I was walking past the cradle, the par three core share that Gille that Gille Hans and Jim

Wagner designed and built there did such a beautiful job. And it was just jammed with folks playing and families and different age groups and stuff. It was just fantastic. And a lot of smiles out there. A lot of people were just having fun on that little hill. So, all right, Bill, thank you so much for joining us. This was extremely enlightening. I know it took a ton of your time, but I know our listeners are going to really, really appreciate

this one. So, thank you so much for your time and enjoy your time at home and we'd love to have you back sometime. Okay. All right, Chris. thank you so much appreciate right be the right club today that's

better than most how about him that is better than most better than most. Better than most.