No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 315: Rob Collins

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

Rob Collins from King Collins Golf Course design joins us again to tell the Sweetens Cove story from the top. The little nine hole course with a shed for a clubhouse has become a cult favorite, and now features a celebrity packed ownership group, but it was many years of challenges, blood, sweat, and many tears before that became the reality. Rob takes us on this journey, and updates us on his latest project (Landmand) in Nebraska, a new site for The Buck Club, and a lot more. Thanks a ton to our partner Charles Schwab for feature Rob in their "Challenger" series which you can find at www.schwabgolf.com.  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. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang Up Podcast. Today's interview, I am so, so excited to play it for you. We caught up with Rob Collins, the designer, and golf course architect, of course, for Sweetens'

Cove. We talk a lot about Sweetens Cove. We talk about Landman. We talk about the Buck Club. It's pretty all encompassing. You know, we've gotten bits and pieces of the Sweetens Cove story from Rob on the podcast over the years and in videos, but we needed the whole thing in one place. And that's what we got today.

And it got emotional at certain times. He kind of teared up a little bit. I couldn't help but tear up, you know, talking about the story. I'm a sucker for a perseverance story, of course. And gosh, he really, he tells it. And you can see the effect it's had on. And there's some shocking revelations about about that story. So even if you're not familiar with sweetens code, I think this, that story is going to mean a lot to, for people to hear. So I want to give a shout out to our partner Charles Schwab, the Rob and his partner, Tad King,

are the subject of one of the latest videos, the Challenger series that they do. If you go to SchwabGolf.com, you will see a series of the whole lineup for season two for the Challengers. People have the challenge to status quo and be used awesome films that episode four develops for them. One of the subjects you might recognize,

five of the subjects you might recognize on that webpage, but as well you'll see Robin Tad story on there. We're gonna tweet out the link to that as well, along with the link to this podcast. But they are the ones that kind of help set up this network for this challenger series of these podcasts. We're gonna do what we did the same thing last year. Brought you Mike Kaiser and Bill Kor and all kinds of

Casey Martin, all kinds of great context. So Schwab's really doing some awesome stuff in the game of golf. SchwabGolf.com, as where you can find all those. And check out the kids video. We got a pretty sweet one. They came to the Kille House and made a nice little video on the five of us and turned out great. We were very humbled by that. One last shout out again to our friends at Callowave. You go to CallowaveGolf.com slash the match, they are, you can sign up to subscribe to the email for a chance to win a Callaway staff bag signed by Phil and there's some other signatures on that. I may say that you might

recognize and you can also sign up to win a custom fit set of Callaway Maverick clubs. So keep an eye on their social channels throughout the week as they give you details on how you can win those. You might even notice they won the driver count at the match. Of course Phil is game in the Maverick, but if you look closely in the bag of one of the quarterback, I'll just say the quarterback that was able to keep the ball on the planet, you might have seen a Maverick driver in his bag. And also Chuck Charles Barkley had a Maverick that he, I think he kind of threw under the bus. We're going to assume jokingly as he went to go try to at least make Bogie or better on the 18th hole is kind of the little bonus

thing that they filmed early in the day. But yeah, if you look closely at the match, there was a lot of Callaway in the bag. And yes, go to CallawayGolf.com slash the match. The match has passed, but I don't, don't let this content go to waste. There's some good stuff on there. Fills podcast episode with Calo ways up there. And it's it's classic fill. It's exactly what you'd expect from fill, but it's definitely worth your time. So again, go to Schwab Golf.com, go to calway golf.com slash the match without any further delay. Here is the man Rob Collins. Well, I'll start this by saying you've been on before. You were on the Zach

after the ringer, a call about a year and a half ago. If we cover a couple of things twice, I'm not worried about it. We're happy to welcome back Mr. Rob Collins. We are in the sweetens house. We're in the sweetens house. Could you have pictured a world that this, something like this would existed?

No. People are buying a real estate around one of your gold prices. No, it's crazy. In fact, Colton, the shed today, he looked at me, he goes, Rob, this is just one of those days. Could you imagine this? And it was when, you know,

Kisner was out there playing Drew Holcomb, and no, no, I couldn't have imagined this. And here you guys already got you kill House North over here. The bird house, I believe. The bird house is so big. The official name, all right. We got a special Sweden's wall to it.

We've been decorating, we built. You helped us build. Tell us about the front yard, what's in the front yard? We've got an awesome team. For people that don't know, we bought the house next to the first green at Sweetens Cove with some friends of ours and we'll be renting it out to people over the course of the years. It's the one that overlooks the first, basically the first all the part five. So tell us what's in the front yard. So the guys had an idea for us to help them build a little T in the front yard. And one of our good friends, Jesse Smithy,

a good friend of the program, got him some sweet astro turf. We put down, I got an excavator out here and got him a little flat spot. And then Justin Hill came out and dialed in a flat concrete pad and laid down the grass. So it's now the 10th hole. It's now the 10th hole. Is it going the routing and stuff?

Exactly, yeah, it's good routing. It's a good angle. Well, as funny the, we were at the ringer. I forget when it was about a year ago, I guess around this time. We're doing an alternate shot match and I won't throw my partner into the bus, but my partner hooks one,

oh, what would be OB on one, but everything's lateral here. And it goes in this yard right next to a first sales sign. And I had to hit it out of this yard and I hit it onto the green as a wild shot. And I came back and we were like, everyone's like, oh, you got to buy the house now. And I walked in to the club house. And I was like, guys, that house next to number one, he said, we're already on it. We're already made, we already got the phone number down. We want to buy it. That's amazing. I was out here a couple months ago with somebody

and they were like, I can't believe no one had bought that house. I knew I should have bought that house. So you had some competitors and I'm glad you guys swooped in and nailed it. Well, I want to talk a lot of sweetens. I know we've done that before, but I think people would also love to know

a couple of different projects you are involved in and in different parts of the process. Let's start with Landman. For if someone is listening to this and has no idea what Landman is, what is it, where is it, and what's the current status? Landman Golf Club is gonna be a new 18-hole course in Homer, Nebraska, which is about an hour and a half

north of Omaha. And is really on a wild piece of terrain. It's sitting on a bluff basically, overlooking the Missouri River. And the analogy that I gave was like, if Sandhills and Chinnacock Hills had a baby, but instead of giving the baby straight milk, they put some LSD in it's milk,

it would, this is the site. That's what their baby would look like. It is insane. Like, there's one tree on the whole site. It's just this crazy rolling terrain. We got contacted by a guy named Will Anderson. His family owns a farm out there and it's a really important part of their family history. His granddad used Granddad Houston and he's really good golfer loves golf and he contacted us out of the blue last summer and we went out there and saw it and Tadden I were just like holy shit look at this place I mean we've been fighting for five years to get that big break and we knew it

right then we saw it and it's funny because it's like the opposite problem we had at Sweet and Scove which was if he haven't played it, it's a dead flat piece of ground flat as this tabletop, and we had to pump everything up to make it interesting. We moved 250, 300,000 cubic yards of dirt and we built these features up to kind of create interest and contour there. We're toning everything down. Is it a site that would, I guess, scare other potential architects? Is it that dramatic?

It is that dramatic. I mean, in fact, there were... The scare might not be the right word there. I think you can just add that. Well, it just... There was a few that looked at it. There was one other guy who wanted to do a project there. And unfortunately, we got it, but there was another rather famous architect who looked at

it. And he felt like it would cost too much money to build a golf course there, and he wanted to do a golf course down on a piece of property they have on a some sand down about the Missouri River. But when Tad and I looked at that site, we felt like it was an interesting site, but it had water table issues. And we were doing that. We were doing that. And it turns out they had historic flooding in that area this year, and there was water

all over that golf course. What would have been that golf course? So we feel like we've definitely made the right decision. And a site like Landman's just really Taylor made for us where we can turn Gus loose and Let him do their thing and you know the end result or the end goal is to have everything tied down and look like we didn't move any dirt And you know, you have to have big broad tie-ins to do that and that's what we're gonna do

But in reality to build seven or eight holes, seven or eight of the holes out there requires some pretty heavy moving, just to make it work. Just to make it, and that, like you said, that's softening, though. It's not, it's not making it. We're softening.

More dramatic, but I wanna make you repeat it, because what you told me when I saw you last was you were describing, I don't know what whole number it is, but the sit well green that you're designing at Landman. The description of what that green, the actual height in the elevation change within that green, stunned me. I still have struggling to understand it. So what could you tell us about that?

So if you don't know, there's a famous green that Alistair McKenzie built at a place called Sitwell Park. And he received a lot of, you know, got a lot of flack for it, but some people loved it, but ended up getting demolished, but there's a picture you can Google it. Google Sitwell Park, Alistair McKenzie, and this picture will come up, and there's seven or eight guys standing on different levels of this green,

and it's this green that's climbing this hill, and it's just this insane green with all these different pockets and huge contours and tadden I always wanted to do a sit-well part green we've always looked for a place and to do it and we found this piece of land out there it's gonna be the 17th hole and the end result is the green probably climbs 25 30 feet from the very bottom to the top. And it's going to probably end up being about 30,000 square feet. And it sounds insane, but I promise you it's actually going to work. I mean, it's so big and so broad.

And it's a short par four, so it works too. It's like a 300 yard par four. And if you get in the right spot, you can make a birdie or eagle, but it can punish you too. So it's just a different take on an old thing. Well, you used the phrase there, big break, and that was kind of something I wanted to talk about as well. What, I guess did it take longer than you thought it would have for a big break considering the success of sweetens cove,

and especially, it's a weird timeline, and considering the success of sweetens cove. And especially, it's a weird timeline. And I wanna do the sweetens cove timeline here, but it was a long time before sweetens cove got recognized by anyone. But even once it started to be recognized, it felt like we're kinda like, when is it, like he's gotta be getting a big job at some point?

And this feels like that big break to you. Yeah, this is definitely our big break. There's no doubt about it. And we only do two jobs a year maximum. This is our first great project on a great site for a great client. And I was thinking about it last night and it's like not only is this our first big job,

we've really got to hit a home run. So we're trying really hard for that reason, but also for the Anderson family. I mean, they gave us our break, and we want to hit the biggest home run ever for them. So there's that side of it, and then it's also just kind of the reality that these types of jobs just don't come along very often. We're just out there really buckling down. We're fortunate to have a lot of really talented people

working with us. And I couldn't be happier about what I'm seeing so far. Yeah, that's exciting. Well, why don't we do some sweetened stuff now? Because I've keep referring back to the lying for blog post by Will Bardwell. They did a great interview with you. And I'm not asking you to regurgitate everything, word for word from it.

You mentioned we as in your group, I'd like you to describe who your firm is and who your company is and how that came to fruition and what your background and architecture is and how you ended up where you are today. Sure. So, in 2005, 2006, I was working for Gary Player as a what's called a design coordinator. It's basically like the on-site architect carrying out the vision of the senior designer from player. And Tadden, I met on a project in Florida. Tadking. Tadking, my partner on a project in Florida called the Aerie at Twin Eagles, which it's actually no longer in existence.

And Steve Smirons ended up coming in redoing it. But any long and short of it was, is Ted and I were on that project. And we noticed that there were real inefficiencies between the way things work between a contractor and the architect. I was having a hard time getting the contractor to do what the player group wanted and every time you tried to make a little adjustment there was a change order and it was expensive and and Tad and I looked at each other we hit it off and got to be buddies and said look let's one day let's form a business we'll call it King Collins and we'll be a design build firm and we cut out you know all the BS in the middle and we'll have total artistic control and everything take the whole project and the you know the recession in 2008 really forced our hand and I moved home I didn't have a

job I ended up having to do some landscape architecture work which was like pulling teeth for me. Not going too fast past that you were in the middle of constructing a golf course. That's right. I was exactly. We were doing a project up in Wildstone in Grand British Columbia, which I believe a few you guys have played. I know Tron's played it.

Neal's played it. It's a really neat golf course. We were right in the middle of that. The day that was at Lehman Brothers, it collapsed. And we were grasping the third fairyway. and I walked up to this guy named Ryan Kalinka who was grasping the hole and I just said dude we're fucked we're totally fucked this is over and sure enough you know a month and a half later I was driving my young family back to Chattanooga to live in my mom's house you know which is not the greatest

feeling in the world is at that point, 33-year-old. And so, I did it when I was there. Exactly. I mean, it's exciting. I'm lucky we had a place to land, but that was a low point. I didn't, this career that I was after was up in smoke, and I didn't know when the next time I'd be able to do it was and about a year later, Todd and I kept standing touch and I said, man, let's just do it.

You know, let's go for it. And so in 2010, we formed King Collins and right around that time we got real lucky and had this nine-holar out in the Squatchie Valley falling our laps. I mean, it's a dream site for golf. There's already a great golf course there. Right. I mean, it was a it's a dream site for golf. There's already a great golf course there. Right. I mean, it's a great population. The great market for golf. Yeah.

When you when I'm looking at this great picture of Terri Edie and it was a lot like that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, the golf course already there. Yeah, it's all we had to do. It's just we just pushed it around a little bit. Exactly. So what?

Gosh, I didn't even know where to start with it. But what was here? What was here and how did you end up convincing someone, this non-existent front, literally had zero work to its name, correct to this point. So, hey, let us design a golf course here. We got a really good recommendation from a local Chadenigga golfing legend, a guy named King Emig,

his family has a long history in golf in Tennessee, and he recommended me to the client who was the Thomas family, the own a local concrete manufacturing company, and they owned the golf course, which was the old Sequatchee Valley Golf and Country Club. The two kings always confuse me. It's very confusing. It's confusing exactly. And so the Thomas has ended up hiring us to rebuild this very decrepit nine-hole golf course,

which at one time had been a really important part of the community here, but had fallen on tough times, had gone through a couple owners and it was an important part of their family history and they wanted us to improve it. We said about doing that. We built the golf course in 2011, 2012. It took us about a year to finish it. It was pretty clear early on that we had done something that had far outstripped the local market,

which we had been very transparent going in. That was our intention. I told Reese, I said, look, our goal is to build the best nine-old golf course in the world. If that's what you want, hire us, if you don't want to hire somebody else. But that's what we want to do. And so they hired us and they had some difficulty on their end kind of knowing what to do with it. And there was some differences of opinion about what to do with it. And the golf course actually ended up getting abandoned in 2013, having never been open, which the analogy always give when I tell the stories like that scene from Temple of Doom when the guys rips the heart out of people's chest. I mean I just I remember that day. It was August of 13. I just could not believe that this golf course that was finished minus some

sand and bunkers was not going to get open. And what how so how long did you been working on at that point? Well, we we've grasped it out in 2000, summer of 2012, and it was being maintained. And I mean, that's a little bit of a sidetrack here, but the seed that we put out on the bunkers, if you've ever been to sweetens cove, there's like miles of bunker edge. It didn't germinate. It was stored in a hot trailer, the framing around the bunkers. The framing around the bunkers never germinated. And so we were like, well, I mean, we've got to replanate. And I actually work for free in all of, from like January to August of 2013, like redoing

all the bunkers and helping the maintenance crew with other projects, just to get the golf course open. And we regressed all the bunkers and everything and that's when that's when they pulled the plug. But from it would have been it was totally playable minus sand in the bunkers for the majority of 2013. But that was at a time when it was they just didn't know what to do with it. So they were just kind of maintaining it.

And I was helping them maintain it and helping them get the bunkers ready and everything. Well, let's let's backtrack a bit into what is the golf course, what became of the golf course, how what your inspiration was for it, and how you came up with, and how you would actually describe the philosophy of the golf course. It's unlike anything I've played before,

but why is that? Well, it was really clear to me early on, I think there were a couple of factors outside of our control that really helped drive the philosophy on it. One of which is it's a nine-hole golf course. Number two, it's in the middle of nowhere. And I told Reese, I was like, look, man, we've got to do something different.

We can't just come out here and do like something that looks like nine holes at the honors course. You know, as good as that may be, we got to do something different We got to be outside the box and one of my biggest architectural Inspirations for heroes is Mike strants and there's a lot of kind of tobacco road out here I'm a huge fan of Pinehurst number two Worship at the altar of Pinehurst number two. There's a lot of Pinehurst out here

There's a little bit of Pine Valley. There's's the original version of Augusta National was a big inspiration. Big wide corridors, wild greens, short grass everywhere, tiny little windows where you really want to be in order to get the best angle. You know, you might have a hundred yard wide fairway, but there might be a 15 yard wide alleyway where you really want to be. And so those kinds of things were what we were thinking about, and which all that's of course handed down from the old course, and Tadden, I wanted to basically mix it all up. Like, if you put all these ideas in a blender and spit it out, you might see something you'd say,

like, gosh, that kind of reminds me of Pine Valley, or that kind of reminds me of Pinehurst, but I'm not quite sure. So everything in its physical representation is a little bit of a play on some of these things you've seen elsewhere and I think that's why it may feel familiar but different at the same time. I don't like using the word easy with it, but it is nothing, I don't want to say nothing intimidating about it because some of the slopes, well you get the ball running away from

you like it ever heard, but I consider of the slopes, you get the ball running away from you, like it ever hurt. But I consider that the most enjoyable punishment in golf. I hate hitting it OB. I hate looking for balls. I hate hitting it in the water. I can't, I don't know anyone who loves going through multiple golf balls in a round, but you still want to be stimulated and challenged.

Exactly. So at the same time, there's no shot, shot almost no shots or there's always a way to get to the holes out here probably using some kind of slope That's not right in front of you That's right. The first hole hits you right off the bat with hey like a big par five You can come in with a five iron you come with a three wood you can come in with a nine out whatever you come in with But there are just eight different mounts around that green You can use to get to the hole. That's 100% right.

And that's a lot of the philosophy behind it. And, you know, you look at a hole like number one or number four, which is a part three that's semi-blind with a 20,000 square foot serpentine green with all these mountains and falloffs and everything. And on its face, it looks crazy. But what I was thinking about and what tad now we're both thinking about during construction was like, you know, there's going to be easy pins on this and there's going to be hard pins on this. It's all

about variety. But, you know, also we were thinking, okay, let's say you have a 170 yard, just standard part three with a bunker on the right and it's angled a little bit and a bunker behind. Your average 15 handy cap is going to, if they play that whole 10 times, is gonna have an average score of what? Maybe four or four and a half, something like that. I mean, they're gonna, they're gonna be a bogey golf run it. And I feel like that's basically the same thing that happens to you on number four at Sweden's Cove, even though it's a completely different golfal. Like a 15 handy cap's probably gonna average a four, they're a little bit higher.

But one day, they might just get absolutely ejected and eat and alive and make like a six. And then the next day, they, you know, might have a little tap-in birdie. But it's like there's so many different options and so many different ways that the game can play out on that canvas that it it's just it's more interesting and you know first time around you might look and go this is Mickey Mouse or this is stupid this is this is too much but after repeat lay you start to realize that you know there's a lot of thought that went into it and it it asks things of you that maybe you're not accustomed to were you afforded, I was getting ready to say

afforded luxury, but that's just the wrong word to use in this whole entire time period. But were you afforded the luxury of, during this weird time period, shortly after the financial crisis, there wasn't a lot of jobs to be had, so that you had the possibility of the time and to basically extend your time frame that you worked on this and the time to basically extend your timeframe

that you worked on this into making it a masterpiece. Like you weren't under a tight timeframe in doing this. Is that sound right? That's basically correct. I mean, we did have a budget and we did have a timeframe within which we wanted to finish the golf course and do it under a certain budget. But at the same time, it was a home game for me

and then Tad moved down here for the last four months or so of it. So we were able to dedicate ourselves 100% to this thing. And that's a rare thing in golf architecture. I think at the time there was maybe five or six golf courses being constructed domestically in the United States and the weird thing.

As two of them were nine whole golf courses in Eastern domestically in the United States and the weird thing is it's two of them We're nine whole golf courses in eastern Tennessee the other being the soani golf course Where I went to college just 30 minutes up the road from here And so that was kind of a weird quirky thing, but we you know, it was everything to us I mean the thing that kept resonating in my mind was like if we screw this up There is no number two. We will never get another. I mean I'm gonna end up being doing something I hate for the rest of my life. We cannot mess this up. And I actually carried around this, I carried around two pictures in

my wallet. I got this golf holiday calendar for Christmas the year before. And there was a golf course somewhere, I can't remember where in the northeast by, I won't say the name of the architect. And it was the most bland bunkering, just total closure eyes, no artistic input whatsoever. Just, there's a big waste bunker like the kind of ones were built out of sweetens but it was just lifeless. lifeless. It looked as dead behind the eyes. And I had a picture of I can't tour the golf course the 14th Hall at Boston Golf Club or the 13th. You know that hole that that swoops down that really cool hole with the big artistic bunker

that Gill and Jim did on the left hand side. It's the pop bunker in the middle of the the centerline bunker and then they took it out. That's good. I can't remember. It's a part, I think it's a part five, but it's got this amazingly artistic bunker along the left hand side. And I knew how it's obvious how much they tried,

how much effort they put into that. I said, this is what we got, you know, not necessarily trying to exactly copy that look, but we're copying or we're driving inspiration from that effort in construction to really build something special. And so for me personally, one of my main responsibilities on the project had finished all the greens and teas and fairways. I did most of the bunkering.

We had a assist from a core-crenshaw sh or named Dan Proctor, who was awesome to work with too, but when it all came down to it, at the finish, it was just me and Todd and some local guys, and every square inch of bunker out there was ended up being hand-edged by me. And it was like, I didn't care if it was like the back of a bunker on an island on the left side

of number three that you're literally never gonna see see unless you duck hook a ball in there. If it's like in front of number nine green, everybody's going to see all of it mattered to me the exact same. And that was just the constant push was like just the more I put into it, the more I wanted it. The more I wanted it, the more I put into it. It just became the snowball and it just became part of me and I couldn't let it go. I could not let it go. And it just consumed me.

That's why I felt like I owed it to myself. Like I fucking worked my ass off here. You know, I've got a, you can't stop now. You know, okay, will that bunker it up and look right? We'll get back out there and make it look right. Yeah, when I'd even when I didn't want to or it was hard or I wasn't, you know, I was working for free Yeah, tell explain that you're working for free. It's well, I mean we had the the client had you know Completed their obligation to King Collins. They were they were a great client. I mean I credit Reese Thomas Our main contact with he has as much responsibility for the existence of sweetens cove as anyone. I mean he turned us loose and let us go and I mean just remarkably

grateful for for that and you know, we We were done in 2012 and it was the client's obligation at that point to get the golf course open. But as I had told you the story about the bunkers and everything, you know, they were on a budget and there wasn't a budget to pay me. But I was like, well, if I want it done right, I got to do it myself. And so, you know, I had a few just like random landscape architecture jobs that I could do on the side to help pay the bills, but basically all of my working time in 2013 was coming out to sweetens and I was not getting compensated. How is that work within your family?

Well, tough conversation. You know, she's trusted me a lot with this and has really supported me. I mean, it's not been easy for her. That's what I think, you know, people can kind of tease people that are part of the sweetens. Oh, it's like it's a cult. I think at this part. It's totally a cult. But the story behind it is what makes it what it is. I mean, and that's just that's one punch you got. What are some other examples of just punches you received along the way? Because that's not the only one. Well, here's a humorous punch. We got probably in June or July of that 13 year. I came out in the

morning and if anybody's been spending any time around the Patrick Boyd, my friend, former GM calls me the most hydrated man in America. I drink like two gallons of iced tea a day. I don't know why, but I do. And I came out in the morning and I had to pee really bad. And I pull up and there's a mobile drug lab that's going to test all these guys that are working for the concrete company. And why? Well, I don't know why, but they were there. It was through the company.

And if those guys had gotten tested, we had a bunch of guys out there at that point. We had a pretty big crew going to help us get these bunkers right. I'm like, if these guys get axed, like this isn't gonna, we're not gonna finish. Like we need their help. Because every single one of them smoked weed or whatever and they were going to fail.

So I've filled up a- That's part of the reason why the bunkers look so good. Exactly. Exactly. So I filled up a very on-brand for Marion County, like a 20-ounce Mountain Dew bottle with my own urine and took it down to the place where they were supposed to be in the cup and every single one of them poured it in the cup and they all passed. Except for one guy who said, Rob, I sprinkled a little bit of mine in there and it's like, what did you

do that? He's anyway. I mean, that's just one example. I mean, you know, the biggest gut punch was the leaving them leaving the golf course and they actually got approached that day and they said, Rob, do you want to take it over? I know you're the one who's most passionate about this and my first reaction is like, well, no, I don't want to take it over. I want you guys to run it. And then I thought about it for a day. I talked to Denise I talked to Ted and I mean it just didn't there's no precedent for that. No, I mean, I just I needed like one one millionth of a mile an hour win behind my back to have I was going to jump off the cliff. And so within 24 hours, I decided I was going to in fact take it over. I needed a partner though. And I look for a partner, look for a partner.

And November of 13, I met Ari Techner, the founder of Scratch Golf and Patrick Boyd, our future GM. They came out to tour the golf course. The course had been abandoned for three months at that point. And Ari was like, yeah, sure, I'll do it. And I'm like, sweet. And so we got real serious, a break.

We got real serious about the negotiations. And then finally in May of 14, we took it over on our own. And it was me and Ari. And then in time, we brought on some more people. A huge kick in the teeth was we were chronically underfunded. We knew that we needed financial help. There was no way for me and R.A. to do it ourselves. And we had talked to a developer out in Knoxville,

and that ended up falling through. And we opened the golf course in October of 2014. I have some really funny pictures from that, like Ron Witton, like the preeminent golf architecture journalist in the world, and Adam Lawrence, another one, like the preeminent golf architecture journalist in the world and Adam Lawrence, another one of the most preeminent golf architecture journalists in the world. He's from England. He was in the Sequatchee Valley for God's sakes to come to this opening.

And it was just the most cheap ass opening you've ever seen. I mean, my dogs are walking around. We had crackers. I mean, there was nothing, you know. There's a blue port or a left, maybe. And in case you're not familiar with sweetens, there was nothing, you know. There's a blue porterlet, maybe. And in case you're not familiar with sweetens, there's no food stand, like the clubhouse is really a shed, there's no bathrooms or any of that. So that's how is that the scene? Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, we had these like really important people in the world of

golf architecture there to see this opening. And we ran out of money that day. And I had to let the maintenance crew go. We had no more money. And then so Tad and I maintained the golf course by ourselves in December and then Tad had to go home and go to another job, ended up getting a job at like in Jordan or some place. And then I continued to maintain the golf course for myself through the remainder of 14.

And then in early 15, we raised some capital to kind of help us move on and we hired a. When you say maintain the golf course yourself, are you mowing? Are you breaking the course? Well, it was in the winter time. And so there's a lot of bunker work that the grass wasn't growing but it gets cold here and so you have to put tarps on the greens and I'd have to pay out of my pocket to get three or four guys to help me put the tarps on the greens and

I'll just go to some of the tarps. Which is no size. It's an absolute beast trying to put tarps on these greens. And we did all that. Patrick and I have a funny story of Patrick's one of the most loyal guys ever. And Patrick's like, Rob, I believe in you. I believe in this place. I want to be the GM. I know you can't pay me now,

but just pay me my back pay. I'll sit up in the shed. And so Patrick would, we were open. So Patrick would sit in the shed not receiving any compensation on the hope that somebody would invest before April world around. Because once the grass starts growing, if you're not, then it's done.

If you're not getting play, you're done. Exactly. And we weren't getting any play at the time. And so. How do you even drum up play? Well, we were just, it was scrambling so hard to get the word out, but we would make $150 in a day or something, and all that money was going to the bank to keep the

equipment package. We were way behind on our lease payments, and they were threatening to take the equipment. If they took the equipment, we were done. Which end was going to be compounded by me probably having to file personal bankruptcy and all this other awful stuff. So we just kept maintaining the golf course hoping we'd get some money and we raised some money in February, but it's like right in time and we hired Brent, who's still our superintendent, does an awesome job out here. And we opened with very, very limited maintenance crew and we got caught up on our lease payments and then we just kind of just barely just one foot in front of the other for a long time. But it's still, I mean, 14 and then I guess you tell me the timeline into 15 where you know you're getting play, you're trimming on vitrists but still, money's not flowing in.

No, not at all. In fact, we were hemorrhaging cash. We were losing, losing money all through 15 loss money, loss money and 16, which we have this thing right now called the the summer of 16 at sweetens where we've changed our way we're running the Business where we limit the number of people out on the golf course on the weekends We it's like the summer of 16 where we had like this really well-maintained golf course, but nobody was on it It was like this magical time. I mean, the only thing that sucked about it was we were constantly worried about going out of business. But hopefully you got some play-in. But we got some.

Yeah, you've exactly got a little play-in. And it was just kind of a wild time to go out there on like a 75 degree day. And it would be like 10 people on the golf course and the course is in perfect shape and it was very stressful and then fast forward to 2017 at the end of 2016 I took one last insane financial risk that was just I mean if it didn't succeed, I was really in big trouble personally. And the golf course was definitely done. And we were just blasting through money in 2017, even on a, with a shed on top of the

hill, of minimal maintenance crew, we just could not make the dollars work. And golf course business is just highlighting how freaking hard it is. It's really hard. It's why you don't want to manage it yourself. It's really hard. And so I had gotten to be friends with this guy named Dylan DeChair who now writes for Golf Magazine and the long story short he caused me and says that he was right, wanted to write a story about sweetens cove and he was going to shoot for the stars and try to get it in the New York Times.

And I was like, sweet, go for it. You know? Good luck, but yeah, they'll probably end up in, you know, who knows what publication, but he called me in early August of 2017 and said that he had done it. And the times was going to pick it up. And this was at a time when I was working on a project with Tad down in Florida, and I was in full panic mode. I mean, I was absolutely freaking out. It was, we were done.

I was convinced that we were done. And we had just a tiny little bit of money in the checking account. My last minute gambit had not worked. It had failed. We were failing. And that thing went in the checking account. My last minute gambit had not worked. It had failed. We were failing. And that thing went in the times and it just, it saved it. That was everything. It saved it. What started cash flow at that point?

And what was the uptick like after? It was, it was immediate. I mean, we, two straight months, we actually broke even or made a little bit of money. It was just Patrick and our other investors were just beside ourselves. Like, oh my god, this could actually work. You know, like we just got this tiny little glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. We just kind of kicked the name door down. Do I have this right? I guess this is in Will's article as well. To this day, you've never drawn a salary from Sweden's cuff.

I've never made a penny. To this day, I still haven't made a penny. I've never made anything. That's insane. I don't even understand that. Okay, so. All right, so fast forwarding now, 2017, in near 2017, is kind of when you start positive, 2018 is a good year. 2018 was, you know, we did okay in 2018, but it wasn't, you know, we were growing. You know, the dots weren't quite in 2018, but it wasn't, you know, we, we were growing, you know, the dots weren't quite connecting yet, but it was, it was like, it wasn't to the point of losses where you were, you know, I could put some money in from a, you know, if King

Collins had a project, I could, you know, I could take some of the money I made from that and put it in and prop it up for a month or two and that kind of thing. But you are actively looking to be out of the management. Oh, 100% of the data. Yeah, we were, and that was the whole thing all along was like, Ari and Patrick and I and our other investors were like, we've got a, this is a great golf course. People love it. It's starting to develop a following.

We know that there's somebody out there. We know it. And that was the whole intention was we got to find that guy. We talked, we had talked to so many people in Chad and Nuga, so many people, you know, across the country. And I mean, I, it started to develop a little bit of chip on my shoulder about it with respect to the Chad and Nuga thing. I'm just like, I cannot believe that there's not somebody in Chad and Nuga who doesn't want to get involved out here. I mean, I can't understand it. And the more knows we heard, the more pissed off I got

and the more I dug my heels in. It's like with the bunkers, like the more up and into it, the harder I stuck my feet in the ground. Which something I've always noted with you is you have a tremendous pride in this place and a confidence in it. You know, it was not like, oh, maybe it's not that good, maybe it's not worth it.

It's always like, no, no, this is my thing, and it's great. Like, it is great. I always admire people that are confident enough in what they've done to be like proud of it in that way. Otherwise, you wouldn't have risked everything to be with it. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it was like, this place has totally worked. And it will work, I know it'll work. And I know we can make it work. We've just got to find the right person. And the fact that it took four years, four or five years was just a total head scratcher. I go. But if you were to make a wish list of people

that you would want to be a part of this ownership group in the state of Tennessee, what would that wish list look like? Well, I want you to tell the story in sequential order. So again, you're dreaming. Well, yeah. So Patrick and I are dreaming in 2016, 17, 18, and we would sit on the porch and talk about people and like, man, if we could ever get Peyton Manning interested in this, like he's a cool guy,

he loves golf. Who knows? I mean, he'd be the ultimate guy. I mean, the list was Peyton Manning at number one, and then at number 199 is somewhat somebody else. I mean, it's just, there's no one. There was, he was the one that we would ultimately want more than anyone.

So there's rumblings. When do you start hearing some rumblings that you have some interest in a potential, and a potential buyer or investor group went and kind of walk us through that timeline? So I was sitting in the shed working, checking people in in September of 2018, kind of the season's kind of winding down and I got a phone call out of the blue from this guy named Mark Rivers, who's a partner with another guy named Skip Bronson. They have a ton of real estate experience.

Skip's really in the golf and Mark's talking to me about this project that he's interested in King Collins doing in New York and I I thought, well, that's cool. I'd love to meet this guy. And Mark comes out and we hit it off and I'm giving him a tour around sweetens. And he starts asking me questions. And I'm like, I don't think he's only interested in this project in New York, just the way the things he was asking me. And then very matter of fact,

at the end, after he bought some merchandise, he looks at me, goes, yeah, I think we'd be interested in getting involved here too. And I was just like, oh yeah, here we go. And we had just come off a very serious conversation with another golf developer, well known golf developer, who had made a very serious offer to us to take sweetens off of our hands and he just wasn't offering enough. And we said no. We walked away from it. At that point in time we were like, it has to be the right fit. Right. I mean, with this point we've kind of, we're not making any money but we're not going to be destitute either. We've got an asset. We've got to find the right person. So we were, we knew we needed the right group and the conversation and the tenor,

the negotiations with Mark and Skip and were completely different than anything I'd ever encountered. For the first three years, it was always just total dismissal from people. Like, oh, they'll never work here basically an idiot for doing this. And then it was like, oh yeah, this place is amazing. We want to steal it from you.

Mark and Skip were like, we want to be partners and we want to give you the rocket fuel that this place needs to really take off. And as it turned out, we cut a deal with them. And Mark was really good friends with Andy Roddick and Andy was part of the group and another guy named Tom Nolan who is really well connected in the golf industry. He used to run the golf Swarov-Flaur in division and is very well connected. He's part of the ownership group

and it was just a dream scenario and that all came about right around the time of the ringer and I believe it was in March of 19. We were kind of sealing that deal up. Sealing the deal up and so you go out to dinner with with Mark I believe. That's right. Yeah. To settle it. Yeah, we actually Mark and I we had a deal in place and I was gonna get to go meet Tom Nolan for the first time I'd never met Tom. Mark said let's go we're gonna go out to dinner and Tom's coming in town and we're going to meet him. And I'm like, okay, great. That's awesome. So we went to this Ruse Chris steakhouse and I'm sitting at

the bar with Mark and my back to the door and Mark goes, oh, hey, they're here. And I thought they, that's kind of weird. I thought we were only meeting Tom. And I turned around and walking towards me is this guy that's one guy that I've assumed was Tom Nolin. The other guy definitely wasn't Tom Nolin. It was Peyton Manning. And Peyton walks up to him and goes, hey, I'm Peyton Manning and I said, hey, I'm Rob Collins.

And Mark goes and he's your fifth partner. And I just, it's I'm Rob Collins and Mark goes and he's your fifth partner and I just It's like holy shit Unbelievable and walking through a crowded restaurant on a Thursday night and Ched and Niga to a back room behind Peyton Manning and looking at the looks on people's faces It's over saying I mean I think you go from I mean he's you you go from, I mean, he's, you know, people just like, oh my, that's pain-maning, you know. Yeah, he has a way in the state still, for sure. But it's like, how do you go from everything you're talking about from 2013 to that moment?

So. It wasn't saying, I mean, I texted Denise and I said, you'll never guess who the fifth partner is and she texted back and she goes, Peyton, question mark, and I've seen her this gif of one of Peyton and that one of those commercials where he's nodding his head. And then a text of Brent, Brent's a huge Tennessee fan. I said, you'll never guess who the fifth partner is and he goes, oh shit, I'm gonna shit. Is it Peyton?

And I was like, just wait till tomorrow, you'll see. And you know. Is it Peyton? That's like, just wait till tomorrow, you'll see. And, you know. And I believe you relate this story of you calling Patrick. Didn't you give Patrick a call and say, ask him the question like, who's the... Yeah, I said Patrick, who's the one guy we want? Peyton?

Yep. Patman. It was just unbelievable. It was just, I mean, every time I read Will's piece, I get choked up in the restaurant scene. I mean, it gets me every single time. I just can't believe that it happened. We were so close to dying so many times.

And then to like, hit a walk-off rancelam in the bottom of the night to the World Series, like out of the stadium, bat flip. It was just insane. God. And now you're onto Landman. And now we're on the Landman, and you know, Sweetens is the analogy I give is that it's like a fruit bearing tree. And it took a long time for it to bear fruit, but now it is. And now we're getting those phone calls that we always wanted. And I always used to get kind of triggered and I'd spout off on Twitter every now and

again. But, you know, oh, you know, so and so is doing a golf course. And well, they're going to look at Dave McClade, Kid, Core Crenshaw and Tom Doke. And no, they might call Gil Hans too. It's like, oh, a big fucking surprise, really? But, you know, sweetens just kept growing and everything that Tad and I have is thanks to sweetens. I mean, the leads that we get, I just talked to a client today, you know, that looks like there's something

that could happen soon, that I was thought was shelved. And that's thanks to sweetens, Landman thanks to sweetens, Will's buddy CJ knew all about sweetens cove, Will actually hadn't heard of it. And CJ will interview a few other architects and everything. And CJ's like, you ought to call these guys, it did sweetens gov and so will email me and I email them back and that's how it happened. You know, no sweetens, no land man, no nothing.

Well, what would you have done if you, it's hard to say now, whether you landing in such a great situation, finally, after so many years of perseverance, but what would you have done differently? Man, I, gosh... I don't know. I mean, I... I think the perseverance was an essential part of it, but, you know, without that, it... it wouldn't happen, but like maybe we could have been a little more proactive here and there trying to talk to different investors, but like maybe we could have been a little more proactive here and they're trying to talk to different investors, but I was always a hard conversation, but the funny thing

about it is, is like, if I had done something differently, the history may be completely rewritten, and we wouldn't have gotten that grand saying, we would have like hit a double off the wall. Butterfly effect is exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's too much. We would have liked to double off the wall. Butterfly effect is exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's too much. We didn't...

I don't remember this until recent years. When did the flood... We kind of hinted at the top. When did the flooding hit you? Where does... Explain to us where sweetens sits and what happens periodically up here and why. So sweetens is in a floodplain next to a creek called Battle Creek that spills into the Tennessee River and periodically the golf course floods. We had one flood during

construction and it was rather harrowing to see it the first time. You just can't believe that all this sand and all this shaping that you've put together is like underwater. And we all panicked, and then it goes away, it goes down through the drainage system, and it goes away. And normally when you put the word flood and golf course in the same sentence, it's like this brings up these really bad images, but catastrophic images like the green briar where there's rocks all over the greens and stuff. But that doesn't really happen here. It kind of just comes up slow and goes away. And like this year was just the worst year we've ever had with flooding it flooded eight or nine times. And I feel so bad for Brent and the guys. I mean, they've got to go out there and put it

all back together. And I mean, it's funny. you look at there's certain parts of the golf course like over by number three and number five where the water comes across and it comes across at the exact same point every single time it's been doing it for thousands of years. And it just rips the sand right out of the right out of the bunker and they have to go and put the sand back in that same spot. And you know, you do that nine times in a year and you clean all the debris off and the fish out of the catch basins. It's just a nightmare. But it's a resilient course too. It survives, man. It survives. I'm playing it today. It was in incredible shape. I couldn't compliment Brent and those guys enough. I mean, for the condition that sweetens is in right now

with all that water, they've done a remarkable job. It was fast and firm and the grains are incredible right now. All right. Well, we're almost 50 minutes into this chat. And we haven't talked about the buck club yet, which has been it. We had you on the podcast a year and a half ago with Zach. Where's that one? Talking about the, we got to answer that question. Talking about the buck club, the plans for it.

I think at that time, Zach had insinuated that those years might hopefully start May of 2019. That did not happen at your top, but the butt club is active and running, so tell us about where things currently stand. So Zach had his eye for a couple years on a piece of land in the Sandy piece of land in the southeastern United States where he could potentially launch the butt club and of course it was always considered a Utah project and that was the intention. But as we got into trying to make the numbers work between a very expensive land purchase

and a very expensive construction because that golf course on the upper 100 side out in Morgan, Utah needed to be sand capped, you know, it needed drainage and it was double the amount that it's going to cost to build even more holes in the southeast on sand. It's not possible to just put sand down on a soil and have it be the way you want to play. Yeah, I mean, it just takes a long time and it costs money. I mean, you have to bring that sand in and Zach found a sandy site, which is the ideal, you know, soil for a golf course.

It requires less drainage. So it costs half as much as it would have cost to build out in Utah. And when you start talking about those kind of differences and numbers, you get into a place where economically the butt club starts to make sense. And so Zach has secured this really remarkable piece of land, Sandy, 407 acres, rolling terrain. It's pretty funny.

Zach has one of the most creative minds of anyone I've ever met. And he's always tweaking around with the routing and the whole designs and stuff that he's putting together. And he'll send me these voice text messages. And I was listening to one the other night. And Denise goes, oh, here we go again. And you know, he's got his voice. It's very distinctive. And he's like, okay, here's what I'm thinking on number three. So you got this fucking sick dog leg in this and that. And I've gotten those messages. It's so fun to go through that process with him.

And he's actually got a lot of founder commitments already. I, this thing is happening. It's really happening. How many holes? Where is it? Well, this close in the exact location. So, Zach has a absolutely brilliant concept. This was his idea. We were out there two weeks ago walking around. Originally we thought we were going to do 36 and then it was going to be 18 and we were trying to route the best 18 holes in Zach. Looks at me and goes, I think we ought to do like four different loops of six holes.

So 24 holes, the clubhouse is gonna be cited kind of in the middle of the property. So a lot of the times the holes are kind of coming back to the middle of the property to the clubhouse and his idea is to have a championship routing. Then off of that, there's like three or four different rowdings where you could play like a 6,800 yard par 69 course or a, you know, a 6, 6, 6 course. There's a short course and there's all these different iterations of the routing

in those 24 holes. And so what the concept is, in the mornings, you'd play the quote unquote, you know, championship TBC course, the, you know, kind of the big one. And then in the afternoon, on a Monday, let's say it's routing number B. And then in the afternoon on a Monday, let's say it's routing number B. And then on the afternoon on Tuesday, it's routing C. And on afternoon on the following day, it's routing D. And so, you know, you kind of get always getting a different look. And then, you know, the way the cabins are going to be set up, it's really cool. You can kind of come out of the back of your cabin and play a quick three or four or five hole loop.

It's just tons and tons of variety, great piece of ground. They're it in the square inch of that 407 acres that you couldn't easily build a golf hole on. So it's got tons of potential. Everything's lined up with financing and land and everything. It's you guys are way further along. He's we're a lot further along than we were in Utah. He's working on the financing side of it, but he's raising that right now and the land is locked down. So he's not funding it just from selling hats, correct? That's right.

Yeah, exactly. We've got real, real, real, real, exactly, real serious founder commitments of a real dollar figure. Completely private, sorry if I missed this completely. Well, my understanding at the moment is to have a private time of year and then also a public time of year. So it's a little bit of both.

Okay. Has that balance in there? Yep. So what everybody would get a chance to play it, which is really cool. The original routing of the buck club in Utah, we have it hanging up in the killer house. I want to know how much of that the idea as you guys came up with there, how much is bleeding over into the new routing, how many holes are similar. I know it's completely different piece of land. Is it completely scrapped and separated or? I would say that the holes are not necessarily transferable, but the mindset and the design philosophy behind it is the same.

The butt club in Utah was all about multiple avenues to the hole width and all kinds of different playing scenarios, shortgrass everywhere. It's a similar concept, but just more fit to this different type. That's exciting. Well, it's going to be fun to follow. It is. We're pumped about it. Rapping all this up and kind of summarizing your career in golf, your life in golf, what's

your overall message about it? How do you summarize and tie together everything you've been through and where you currently are? It's just been an unbelievable ride. I get phone calls and emails and stuff from guys who are in turn with us, which I want to do. I want to pass the buck along to people who help me. I just always say to guys,, you're gonna hear the word no 99 times for every time you hear the word yes. And if you really wanna do something in golf or golf architecture, just focus, keep working hard,

keep plugging, and good things will happen. And I think I believe that's true. I think if you focus and have your eye on an in-goal and don't give up, you're gonna get good results. Well, in my head, I like to give us credit for how hard we work to build our brand. But in comparison, we haven't really faced adversity. I don't know if I can actually pretty confidently say,

I don't know if I would have lasted as long as you did as far as getting punched in the face as many times as you had. And we all get to, that's what, I think I said at the end of the video that we made it at the ringer sweetens is like, thank you for building that, because it brings a lot of people together. And it could have very easily, very, very easily, not have happened.

Very easily. Not have happened. Well, and I always say to you know, to you guys that sweetens would not exist without no laying up. Period. Would not exist. Tron played it with Neil in 2015 and 16. And, you know, when I, we're Patrick and I were working out in the shed all those days, we always asked people, where, where did you guys hear about it? I mean, every single day, even when it wasn't crowded,

oh, we heard about it from no laying up or the Friday. And you guys are a huge part of the reason that we're here. And the fact that you guys have this house here is like the perfect, you know, it's perfect. It's a great story. It brings it up. It's awesome.

So there it is. We both had equal contributions to Sweden's co-fin. That's it. We ought to go hit some shots off the mat and see what it is. We both had equal contributions to Sweden's co-fizz. We ought to go hit some shots off the mat and see what we got. We should go play. We have a grab a couple beers and go do it But thank you for finally sitting down and doing the whole story. I feel like I you big hug at the end. I know We will do a yeah, Corona fake There won't be any real hugs, but thank you mr. Rob Collins and let's go play some. Let's do it There won't be any real hugs, but thank you Mr. Rob Collins and let's go play some golf. Let's do it. It's gonna be the right club.

Be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. That is better than most. Better than most.