No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 358: Gil Hanse Recaps the U.S. Open

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Gil Hanse joins us to discuss how the 2020 U.S. Open played out at Winged Foot, his reaction to what Bryson was able to do, how he restored Winged Foot, green firmness, how to test the best players in the world, regulation at the USGA level, a few of his ongoing projects, and so much more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah! That's better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Podcast, a little bonus episode for you post US Open. This is Gil Hans, interview with Gil Hans, coming shortly. He was fantastic.

We tried to get him on. Leading up to the US Open, he said, you know, he's got a lot going on. I'd love to do a recap then. I think this actually ended up working the US Open. He said, you know, he's got a lot going on. I'd love to do a recap. And I think this actually ended up working out even better. We had a lot to react to from Bryson's Triumph at Wingfoot, a lot on course setup and design and the Greens. And for all the discussion we had about it, we should have just probably called him one of the nights. Just had to go through everything for us. So I think this is extremely enlightening. A quick video programming note before we get to our conversation with Gil,

excited to announce our third installment of our What's in the Bag and Why series is dropping tomorrow. It might already be up by the time you're listening to this featuring yours truly. Keep an eye out for that. Always amazing. We got so many questions, so many requests

for what's in the bag video. A lot of questions on our clubs. We video. A lot of questions on our clubs. We also get a lot of questions on our shoes. Most of us usually are wearing something from Quater. I know Tron, he loves the wild card, the lightless, spikeless shoe. He says he just wants to drink beers and hang. That's the shoe he wears.

As opposed to the Quater legend, which is Quater's take on the traditional Tor style shoe. He says he wears that when he's getting serious about his game. So, Neil loves the ringer, which is a more athletic-looking spike shoe. I prefer the legend because I take things way too seriously as you might be aware of. The shoes are incredibly comfortable, stylish with all the technical elements you need to help you play your best. I'll say this about the legend. They look big, clunky, heavy.

They are some of the most, maybe the most comfortable golf shoe I've ever worn. Good news. First time customers get 15% off their purchase when they visit Quader.com. Like most of our advertisers, I don't know why all of our advertisers, it's a name you need to spell out.

So we'll spell it out for you. C-U-A-T-E-R dot com, Quader.com, you don't need a discount code or anything, you get 15% off your first quater purchase at quater dot com. Thought you further delay, here is Gillhance. So, what's it like to see your work on display for the world to see? I know you're not the original designer of Wingfoot, but it is your restoration work on display, on television at the US Open. What's that like for you to watch that? Exciting first and foremost, a little nerve wrecking,

but ultimately truly rewarding. See the golf course, especially the way that Steve Rabidoo and his team presented it was amazing. And yeah, it was fun to watch. But like you said, if everything went was all it was ultimately all about telling us to not about uh... not about kill hands or gym Wagner so i think that also went really well yeah but rabbit o has to he has to resign now right didn't you say he was

going to resign if the winning score was under par i didn't hear that his urban legend just grows more more more with everything i hear maybe he didn't say that. I wouldn't put it past him, but I didn't hear that. Were you in any way either positively or negatively surprised at the scoring, anything that kind of jumped out at you as something you weren't maybe expecting? You know, I think it all ultimately came down to one player. And yeah, I think what he did with the golf course, to the golf course, everyone, want to put it.

And ultimately his final score was, yeah, it was surprising. It was something that I was skeptical about at the start of the week when he proclaimed what he was going to do out there. But like a lot of the pundits, I was absolutely wrong. So I think that part of it was definitely surprising the way the rest of the field handled it. And ultimately, the rest of the score is all being only one player at even par, everybody

else over par. I think was probably more in line with what we thought the entire field would do. Yeah. I want to kind of get into some of that, but I want to kind of first go back and you just understand what goes into a restoration with something like Wingfoot. What's that proposal like? How detailed is your plan? Do they come to you saying, hey, this is exactly what we want

and you're the guide to actually shape it and do all that? Do you have kind of, you come to them with ideas and say, hey, I'd love to do this here. What's that look like? I'm sure that varies from club to club, but for Wingfoot specifically, what was that like? Yeah, I think, if our member correct it was about nine years ago, I think they interviewed three or four architects.

They asked each of us to look at both the East and the West and give them an idea of what we thought needed to be done. And like every other project that we do on these great, all historic courses, if it's Tilling Has to Wingfoot, but whether it's Rainer or Ross or whatever, it's always in our mind first and foremost about the original architect. And we always are straight up and say, listen, if you want us to put back AW Tilling Has as he did it at Wingfoot, we're excited and we'd love to be involved. If you're looking for Gil Hans's interpretation of Wingfoot or Tilling House, then you got the wrong guys

because that's really what we're trying to do here. That's interesting because I'd imagine it's... I thought you were going to go a different direction with that honestly. I thought you were going to say, if you're looking for Tilling House, that kind of, what he intended is no longer how golf is played, and you almost need to put your interpretation on it to try to instill the principles and the philosophy and the strategy that he intended, but with modern technology, is that something that you ultimately end up doing, and maybe that's just not the way you frame it?

Yes, there certainly is that, but it's all within the context of what the Tilling has to do. So I mean, if Tilling has to have a bunker down the left hand side of the fairway, just because that was the preferred angle into the green and it happened to be at 240 yards and we can pick that bunker up and move it to 320, we feel like we're still interpreting what he was trying to do, but only shifting it in line for where the modern player hits it. Now, if moving it to 320 means we had to put it over a ridge or over hill and you couldn't see it, well, then we wouldn't do it.

I mean, a perfect example was the fourth hole at Wayne Foot West. And you saw the guys kind of bombing it over the bunkers. Well, we just couldn't push them any further because it was over the brow of a hill and we would have had to raise them so ridiculously high out of the ground. They wouldn't have looked like any other bunker at Winkfoot in order for you to see them off the tee. So we basically had to say, okay, this is as far as we can go. We can't push 4T back because you'd be pushing it right into the middle of the third hole. So we're kind of stuck here and in our mind it's better to be stuck and be truthful

to Tilling Us original presentation style, etc. Then to bastardize that and push it down where where the guys are going to hit it. Now other holes, like second hole had a Tilling Us had a bunker on the outside of the dog leg. That we were able to move down and it was perfectly in play for that we were able to move down, you know, and it was perfectly in play for everybody in the field, even the longest hitter. So, you know, when you can do that, or you can move a tee back, you absolutely do it, but you don't do it in a fashion. Well, telling us that a bunker on the left, but I think we better have a bunker on the right, so we just move that bunker across the way. We would never do that. Well, is it fair to say that if you were coming in to remodel wing foot or for the US open, if you were going to be doing something specifically

to the US open and not trying to stay true to Tilling House principles, would that look drastically different than kind of what a restoration project would look like? No, I don't think so because, you know, until this week, I always thought it was about, you know, thick rough and firm greens and wind. You know, you've got some air movement. It's really the only way to challenge these golfers, I think. You know, they're so good at what they do and they're, they're, it's's just you can't make a golf course long enough and I think it so ultimately when you combine what we thought was you know very penal rough at wing foot with you know greens that got firm because we rebuilt

them to the same kind greens that have contours that are just amazing and probably if you if we built those or corncrenshaw built those or Tom Doke or anybody built greens like that in this day and age, we'd probably get crucified. So I felt like those were, you know, the defenses were all in place, the ones that you would traditionally rely on. So I always believe that, you know, those guys of that era built golf purely for golf, right? There were no real estate developments, there were no posters or calendars or hey,

we need a waterfall, we need a flower arrangement here, we're going to take a good photo so we can quote unquote have a signature hold. None of that ever entered their minds nor should it any modern architect, but it does. And so by restoring what they build, generally speaking, it still is applicable to today because it's predicated on first and foremost, you know, what we think is good golf architecture and what we think is good for the playing of the game. And so just by stretching it, you know, repositioning things, yet still keeping basically all of the tenets and all of the philosophies that they preached in place, I think every great old modern golf course, if you can stretch it, is still applicable to today's the way they play today.

Well, I don't think it's technically your job to challenge the best players in the world. I mean, you were in charge of the renovation restoration of this golf course, and I think that's essentially where I think your job ended, and I want to divide those out specifically, because I think those in charge of course want to divide those out specifically because I think those in charge of course set up and tournament set up are the ones that are, you know, setting this up for the US Open. So I'll just ask it this way, how do you view? If you were in charge of set up this week, how would you challenge the best players in the world and kind of put into context what you think the actual challenges of the golf course were for

the players this past week? Maybe exclude one guy from it. Just talk about the rest of the field. But what are the challenges these guys are overcoming? So I think one of the things that any good architect or good architecture provides multiple options for setup. And then you're right, It's ultimately up to the guys who are in charge of setting it up to set up whatever challenge they want to create. They want to create an easy challenge. They want to create a hard one. But as long as the architecture provides them the variety necessary to do that, then I

think it's good architecture. But ultimately, like you said, the way it plays is based on the setup, guys. And I think, I felt like they pretty much got everything right. I know there was some discussion about the first day and some of the ease of the whole locations. And, you know, could they have found some more difficult ones that they maybe, you know, certainly they could have. But, you know, when they go into a week, they basically have a game plan and they don't.

They vary it based on the weather. They hopefully don't vary it based on whether a guy shot while or you know, that's what a reactionary stuff. I don't think is good for promoting the quality of the architecture. I think it's just okay. Here's our game plan. If Mother Lake nature allows us to execute it, then let's execute it. And let's go. Let's go forward. And I think ultimately the first day set up was probably maybe a little bit softer and

upon intended than they might have wanted. It was a little bit sticky, the emitting blah, blah, blah. So I think accepting the sort of the relative ease of the first day, I think they just nailed it the rest of the way. And they allowed the golf course to, the phrase they used, is come to them. You know, the golf course came to them. It just kind of day by day got harder and harder and et cetera. And I think that, you know, what we saw at Wingedfoot, which was, I don't know if anybody touched on this on the broadcast, but it was one of those things where you almost had a golf course that was

perfectly susceptible to what happened. From the standpoint of all of the greens slope severely from back to front. So even if you're hitting out of the rough, you're landing it into a severe upslope, so you're going to take a lot of the juice off of that shot. And a lot of the greens at wing foot are open in the front. So if you can judge distance to land a ball short and then allow the green, you know, the contour of the green to kind of absorb the speed of the shot or the, you know, the lack of spin and then just get your aim right. And you know, one of the things that they did also didn't talk much about is frequently those guys missed on the right side of the fairway.

If they were going to miss in the rough, they were missing left and the pin was right, vice versa. I don't know if that was, obviously they were trying to hit the fairway, but those guys are so good that they know, okay, if I'm going to miss, it's got to be left because it's the right pin. So, I think the combination of the strength, the technology, the architecture being open in front, which is again great old classic architecture, the greens being that severely pitched towards them, allowed some of those players in particular to be really successful out of the rough because they're

basically hitting eight or nine irons into it. And it was something that I never thought of going into the week. It didn't really, you know, firmness on greens is definitely a big defense against that class of player, but it doesn't really matter how firm the greens are if, you know, they're sloping at you at four, four and five percent or even steeper. That's where I think the golf course, if they wanted to just make it winged foot in general harder, and you could make the greens smaller and you could not have the run-up areas in front, right? It's not like there aren't answers to that.

The question to that, I would say to that, is like, what does that make a better golf tournament? Does that make a better test of golf? Does that make it better architecture? I definitely don't think so. I think having those options in the different pins and making sure you are still maintaining that the angles are mattering to your point there, it probably wasn't emphasized enough,

be making sure guys are missing on the right, the proper side of the fairway, was made a big difference in, you know, wolf being able to hit two fairways on Saturday and actually be able to shoot 65. So kind of help us, we had a lot of internal debating this past week and we're not a Granami expert so I think we were you know going back and forth on whether or not the greens could

have been pushed harder how Thursday happened how it was so soft. Can you talk to us about what it's like that climate September in New York with that kind of temperature, that rain schedule they had leading up to, I just set the scene for why the greens were the way they were, could they have been pushed harder? Is that realistic and kind of help settle all that debate basically? Yeah, sure. I talked to Steve Rabbit this morning,

and he said the greens were doing great. So could they have been pushed harder, yes, because they're in great health right now. He doesn't really he's not worried about them bouncing back. You know, sometimes you come out of a major championship and it takes a long time for them to bounce back, but he seemed very comfortable that they would bounce back. And a lot of that has to do with September. I think I think what would happen on Thursday was it was the last sort of warm and a warm and a relative term. Day, and there was still some pretty high humidity.

And so I think overnight, you know, they had built up sort of the dualist testing on firmness and the thump meter and moisture content and the greens. And I think they felt like they were in a pretty good place going into Thursday night, or sorry into Wednesday night, and then I think the dew points changed and they got a lot more humidity and a lot more moisture on the greens that morning. And so I think they started off a lot softer, and then on Thursday, if you remember, the wind didn't blow at all. And help with, help me with that, because that's what I've tried to make this case to Randy and Tronda, like wind is going to dry out greens and that's going to like so help me there.

Yeah it does. I mean it definitely dries out the surface. I mean everything about these greens was constructed, you know they were constructed with sand underneath and drainage so we're basically drying down the profile of the soil is all what's happening underneath but the surface itself if there's high humidity and a little bit of dew and in the morning, then I think some of that just, it's just residual is part of the plant. You know, you're, you're, you're taking a, you're whipping them off, you're mowing them, you're rolling them as well,

so it's not like the dew is sitting on there when the first guy is, you know, you're gonna see and do a little path for the first putt on the group first group out. But there's still enough moisture in there. And to be honest, I think part of what the USGA is trying to do and their setup is to ensure that they don't have dead greens at the end because no club is really going to want to have that. So I think as I said, you start off with a game plan on Wednesday going into Thursday thinking it's going to be X and then you know it turns out to be Y and then you know there were a couple they expected a little different they expected some wind it didn't happen so they put some locations that you know and it it it was just a confluence of a couple of events but then at the end of the day you know the way the way the wind blew on Friday and the way they were able to dry down the golf course. I don't think they've watered anything.

They maybe give them a spritz after play going into the evening, but there was definitely no moisture in the plant the next morning. Does it seem like it seems to me that that line of balance is so tight and that the difference really was whether the wind laid down six, seven miles an hour or less than they thought on Thursday, but it really does seem that small of a change can dictate a huge swing in scoreability, firmness, accessibility to some of these pins,

whether or not balls are catching some of these balls and funneling back to pins and all that. Is that fair to say that, you know, with the skill level of these guys and how tight and how difficult the maintenance is of these golf courses that that six or seven miles an hour a win can make that much of a difference. Yes, 100%. I've watched the last five years in my role, my very short TV career, when Fox had the

US Open, watching every morning set up and going through all the meetings and everything and watching the level of detail that these guys have and you're right, I mean, it can just, it's such a fine line and such a razor's edge that they're balancing this on and sometimes it can go bad, which we've seen. And I know the USG doesn't want that to happen and I think one of the great testaments

about the golf courses that, you know that we went through this whole tournament. And guys got bloodied by a golf course. And not a single one of them really complained about it. Right. Yeah, they're all pretty accepting of their fate and said, hey, if I'd played better, I probably could have scored better out there. Yeah.

That's where I ended out. It felt like a great test. Some guys will say, hey, if they're not complaining, then something's wrong with it. But I generally, I know a lot of players, people don't necessarily always side with the players when they complain about setup. But for the most part,

these guys know what they're talking about. They're not asking it for it to be TPC and DeadSoft and all that. They like a good firm, difficult challenge as long as things. I guess help me with that. Fair versus unfair. Some people will say, why does it matter?

Everyone's got to play the same golf course. I've made my stance on that pretty clear as to what the difference is between fair and unfair. But in your mind, what is it? I think as it relates to tour players, I think they appropriately look at it and say we're not an arrogant way, but the best players in the world, and if they can't play something or something is unplayable for them, then

what are we doing out here? What does that mean from a set-up perspective? So I think they don't like to be embarrassed number one, and they don't like it when there's just something that even you or I or anybody can look at and say there's just something clearly wrong if the best players in the world can't even get close to this or it's just not working out for them. So I think that draws a line and I think you'll you know you can tell the difference between when they're you know whining about something that's not Versus you know when they have a legitimate complaint and I think You know what they what they saw out there this week was was hard, but you know I hate the word fair, but you know golf isn't fair But I think they they felt like there were opportunities to play the whole if you hit

Excellent golf shots. I think if they feel like if they hit an excellent golf shot And and the only thing that happens is they're punished instead of potentially rewarded, then that's when they feel like it's crossed the line. And by excellent shot, you don't just mean I hit it a great seven iron right at the flag and it went over. It also means the proper shot. And if there's not a possibility for a proper shot, I think that is where I think most,

if not everyone can agree, that's when the unfair factor is. I don't, I love seeing a guy thinking he can pull off a certain shot and land it in a spot and it doesn't work out because he didn't see the other route to the hole. But if there isn't another route to the hole, I think that's kind of where I net out,

it's like, all right, that's when the golf is kind of silly. I agree. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. And you know, you know, you know, when you see it, I guess it's that's a subjective way, but I think golfers in general know and understand what that means. Yep.

I want to talk a little bit more about what you did, kind of mostly with the greens at Wingfoot. And then I want to kind of get back into course setups course setups and what you got going on in Frisco and how that's all going to be addressed and how Pro Golf is going to fold out, fall out over the next couple of years. Going back, it seems to me, big emphasis on tree removal and green renovation. How did you come up with the greens that we ultimately saw last week at Wingfoot? The greens just used to be way bigger and slowly got smaller over time and you just restored

them. Did you have plans to work off of where they, a bit of an interpretation, kind of take us to how you would describe the work you did on the greens at Wingfoot? So it was completely restoring, recapturing space that had been lost over time. I mean, it is just literally, you know, you lose an inch of green space every for 90 years. You can lose a lot of green space. And I think it was never any nefarious plan to make them smaller or to change them. It was just evolution. That combined with, you know, bunker splashing, really kind of forming some stronger slopes

feeding into the greens, eliminated a lot of you know, edge hole locations, which you saw them use quite a bit of this week. So it was, it was really studying old photographs. We had great set of photographs, Neil Reagan, the club historian was, it was amazing. Anytime we'd ask, a shameless mailey who was our guy on site, and Jim Wagner and I, anytime we'd ask for something, he'd find it. And we had, we used opening day photos for the scale and the size and the sort of the relationship, the horizon lines on the greens, the, you know, how the edges of the greens interfaced with the bunkers.

And then we used the aerial photographs from when Bobby Jones won the US Open in 1929 when he played in the playoff with Alan Espinoza They had aerial shots and they basically had you know point to point eight you know Jones hit it here Espinoza hit it here dot dot dot for all 18 holes. So that gave us the actual shapes and rectangular nature of a lot of the greens that we saw so a combination of those things and Then Neil Reagan would work with us out there would be shoveling and raking and he'd say, well, intuition says this and good God, he was almost right all the time. It was amazing. So I mean, it was really we're lucky to have all of that sort of information at our fingertips and be able to work our

way through it. Somebody asked me prior to the championship, did you spend a lot of time studying the 2006 US Open to set up and the program, I said, no, did you spend a lot of time studying the 2006 US Open to set up and the program? I said, no, we actually spent a lot of time studying the 1929 US Open program. And that was really where we got most of our information. Well, for people that if the 2006 US Open isn't at the top of people's minds, what is the big difference in how it all played out, how the Greens were? To be honest, I don't really, I'd have to go watch the highlights

to go, you know, see what was starkly different and maybe you've really ignored it more than, you know, more than used it, but what would be the big difference? Well, I think the size and scale of the greens, we added probably about 20 to 30% on almost every single greens. So they're significantly larger. And I think really when we talk about scoring, the greens were in perfect condition. I mean, they were so good.

And these guys are so good that if they, you know, if they read the line right, they're generally putting the ball on the line that they read. And when the greens are this pure, if they've got the right read, it's going in the hole. I think that was discounted because my understanding, everything I've read and seen in06, the greens were really bumpy. By the time the leaders got on, one of the caddies, I think it was the impolters caddie, said, hey, if the greens were really good, the winning score would have been even or one under or two under or something like that. So I think it was a combination of just pure putting surfaces and more of them. We thought we were some really interesting hole locations.

The thing I found most fascinating was just the way these guys were really observant. Utilizing slopes and backboards and bowls and funnels, all kinds of descriptions of the contours around the Greens, but I thought we saw some of the most creative play. You know, we always look forward to that in Augusta National. You know, when a guy hits a button, he's got his back turned to the home.

It's kind of fun to see how they visualize that stuff. Well, we saw a lot of that at Winkfoot. I was hopeful that would happen going into the championship and it was pretty cool that I actually did. Yeah, I think you answered a lot of my next question, which is how in general do you think the Greens played for the championship? Did you feel like that the intent and the design behind them was well executed? Yes, I do. I think again all credit to Steve and his team. They had them singing and they got firm towards the end almost to a point where I was watching the play into 18 and you know that's the traditional Sunday whole location, it's where Bobby Jones made

the great putt to force the play off. And I almost feel like with the expanded greens and the firmness of them, that whole location was pretty, playing pretty benign because the guys could just throw it all the way behind it and let it basically come all the way. We saw a guy after guy after guy doing that. So it was it was a little bit different than it happened in the past, but you know, so maybe I have to rethink that Sunday whole location. Well, how much of the renovation would you say was for the US open for this past weekend? And how much is it for member play? What and what's it like striking that balance?

I mean, from from what I gather, the members like the course tough, and they want it to be tough, which hopefully makes it easier for you to blend the two. But how do you consciously go through as you're going through a project like that? How do you balance it to? Yeah, it's difficult. And I think it all ultimately comes back

to the first thing we talked about is our charge is to put back telling us. It's not to put it back for the US Open or put it back for the members. It's to put it back because it was a great design and it worked for every class of golf. Now, I winged for it. It's a little bit easier because everybody expects it to be tough. The members like it to be tough. They don't complain about it. The guests all expect when they show up, they're going to get beat up and that's okay. So you're, it's not like you don't have to think about what the average member or complain about it, the guests all expect when they show up, they're going to get beat up and that's okay.

So you're, it's not like you don't have to think about what the average member or the average guest, how they play it. We do, but it ultimately is, you know, a winged foot, it's all about championship golf. And so I think we would tend to skew much more in that direction than if we were, restoring a golf course and you know their highest aspirations were like a state open or a state amateur or something Then you might skew it a little bit more towards You know towards member play Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna work this back around back into the us open as we go To just discuss the future of the game technology us open set up all that to just discuss the future of the game, technology, US Open, setup, all that. But you're currently working on it,

and correct me if I'm wrong, the new PGA Championship course, the East Course in Frisco. For people that aren't familiar with what's going on there, I'm wondering if you can kind of take us to what, what kind of work you're doing there, and I just want to pick your brain on, if I may define it this way,

and you may define it different way, but this golf course is basically being designed to host large championships. What goes into that building is something like that. For the modern day professional player, what are you putting in play to challenge these guys? And we can kind of bring that back around and talking about how the challenge is kind of playing out

on classic golf courses. But what are you doing to challenge the top premiere player back around and talking about how the challenge is playing out on classic golf courses. What are you doing to challenge the top premier player in the game at some where like Frisco? So you're right, and the golf course is complete. We have to grasp a couple of fairways, but all the construction is pretty much done. It's interesting because as you mentioned, we're not only hosting the PGA Championship or hosting the Senior PGA Championship in the KPMG Women's PGA Championship. So, we, and then we're having a resort place.

It was one of the things, one of the things that Jim Wagner and I talked a lot about there is, all right, if we can find a grass, which we did, it was Northbridge, Bermuda, that we can have it be basically a hybrid golf course that, you know, if we want, so it's wall-to-wall Bermuda. If we want to grow the rough up and bring and narrow the fairways, we just basically set a new fairway line for, let's say, for the men. And then if we want to widen it out for the seniors, we can do that. So we have, we're utilizing the turf itself to basically be a hybrid where it can move in and out and we can reset angles. We've reset, we've built bunkers now that are carrying at 340 from the back tees because

that's what happens. In Frisco, we're going to be really fortunate. It's a windy site. You know, as most golf courses in Texas are. So we've utilized the wind in different ways, you know, we've changed a lot of change of direction. Some of the longest holes play into the wind and uphill. We just feel like, you know, you don't want to build...

If you build every hard hole downwind or down hill, then you're basically building a bunch of medium length holes. So we really have taken, I think it was Pete Dye, talked a lot about that, make the hard holds hard and go from there. But we do have a lot of variety. I mean, the golf course, if you play from the tips to the back hole locations, can play probably up to 7,900 yards.

So it's going to be all that they want in the wind down there. So I think it's a combination of having that flexibility, the ability to allow setup. One of the things we did at the Olympic course in Rio, and Kerry Hague did the setup there, and Kerry Hague will be involved in the setup at this golf course in Frisco is that, you know, we tried to give him as much variety, we've created really, really difficult locations on each green and then we've created some easier ones, and we've given him lots of different ways to set up the golf course, as I mentioned earlier, you know, if you set up as hard as you want, set up as easy as you want. So I think we'll have a ton of options for him and ways that he can set up the golf course, and I think, you want, set up as easy as you want. So I think we'll have a ton of options for him

and ways that he can set up the golf course. And I think the length, the wind, and the ability to move the grass and it out is probably about as good as we can do. Does what we saw this past weekend, does it change in your mind in any way or make you start thinking about, do we have things backwards maybe trying to set up some of these golf courses for professional golfers?

I mean that in terms of both where your job applies and just in general, with tournament golf where you have nothing to do with it. What do you think would be a solution or anything you would do like to see done differently with course setups other than long and narrow fairways like we saw at Wingfoot. Yeah, it's difficult because we've had these times and maybe not to this extreme in golf, where can we tiger proof golf courses?

Now can we Bryson proof them is this? We're ultimately talking about one guy. But of all of a sudden, you start to see every kid that comes out of college trying to do this, so this becomes, I mean, Matt Wolf obviously hit it a long way. As you mentioned, his Saturday round was pretty epic. I honestly don't know. I followed Bryson's group around on Thursday and Friday because you know he had these proclamations that I wanted to see if he could do it. Like I said, I doubted it, but he did.

And congratulations to him. So it's not a beautiful way to play golf. It's not shot-making. It's kind of just bludgeoning. And I feel sad about that, that that's really the way the game of golf is going, but also, like I said, it was impressive to watch that. And so I don't know. I think it's still a little too early. Hopefully we don't overreact. I still think there's some arrows in the quiver for the governing bodies.

If all of a sudden we start to see this style of golf render, architecture, and strategy obsolete, then I don't. I think the thing we've got to really, like I said, is I think it's still too early, but we've got to be careful not to overreact because at the end of the day, he did what he did, but he put it beautifully. Yeah. I mean, he put it the crazy good. And he has shorted it. Well, and he had good iron blood. Yeah. Exactly.

And you could see, I mean, for people who think that there's somehow or some way dumbs down the game, if you watch him, he's as smart as anybody. He's trying to figure out every single advantage that he can get. And he's thinking his way. You see, we talk about architecture and strategy and thinking your way around a golf course. He still did that.

His thinking is in a completely different direction. But when you look at the way he analyzed every single putty, analyzed every single shot. and he, in theory, you know, I even heard him say this directly, but he knew, like we said, to miss, if it was gonna miss, it was gonna be here. You know, he still is a very, very cerebral golfer, even though he's gone in the direction of just trying to overpower a golf course. Yeah, and that's where I agree that we don't have to overreact as

Bryson specifically, but I would, I'd be hesitant to call it an overreaction when we have all this data that shows how advantageous it is to straight bomb it and how many up and coming guys are doing this not to Bryson's extent, but how these majors are shaking out with just the such clear advantage that goes to hitting it very, very far and kind of a bit of a lost art of mid-Iron play and all kinds of things. That to your point, it makes me sad too. I just think that some of these guys are so much more talented

than people even can know and appreciate, but we only see them hit wedges. And I just, with the fact that there was all this discussion around no one hitting fairways and appreciate, but we only see them hit wedges. And I just, you know, with the fact that there was all this discussion around no one hitting fairways and how, and, you know, are they, if they're so narrow, does that help bombers? I just was really curious to pick your brain to say, like, hey, if we made it really wide, how would that change things? If we made it shorter and wider, how would that change things? And, you know, scores might be lower, but do we get a more diverse skill set that would

potentially win it? I just was wondering what you thought the better answer was. things and you know scores might be lower but do we get a more diverse skill set that would potentially win it? I just was wondering what you thought the the better answer was because I don't think it's make it even more narrow and make it even more long and grow the rough of you in higher. No I agree and I think that that's the beauty of our game is that it's contested on every single golf course is unique one from the other it's not uniform set of set up it's not uniform set of set of presentations. It's not a uniform set of architecture. So we will see. I mean, we're going to have plenty of opportunities to see him play. Obviously, this year, we didn't get to watch him play an open championship golf course, but when the wind blows and the ball is bouncing and running and taking only these kind of crazy bounces and kicks, does that change? Maybe? I honestly don't know. I'm excited

to watch him play Augusta. You know, is that a golf course he will overpower? Because you're right. That's a wide golf course most everybody's going to hit fairways there. You know, and it obviously requires an amazing amount of precision. But I mean, if he's hitting a wedge and somebody else is hitting a seven or eight iron, in theory, he should be able to be more precise with that. So it'll be interesting to see like you said, I mean the US Open is what it is and that setup is going to require or the golf courses like next year at Torrey we'll see narrow fair. I mean that's just the way that golf course has been designed and set up. I'm literally sitting at the country club we're working on some green expansions here and I'm looking around in this place is scruffy and rugged and

We're working on some green expansions here, and I'm looking around in this place is scruffy and rugged. It's narrow, but it's not wing foot narrow, so that'll be a completely different test for these guys. Let's let them get more of a track record. Like I said, I think the people are not really recognizing that how susceptible wing foot was to that type of play with the greens. Like if he tried that at at at Pinehurst, yeah, and was hitting to those crowned greens and wasn't as precise and the balls are running out. You know if he's hitting out of the sandy scrubby stuff and the balls running away as opposed to you know hitting into the green and staying, it may be a completely different result.

So I think he came into Winkfoot, as I said, he's incredibly talented, but cerebral. He came into there believing, obviously he's very confident in his abilities, but he came in there believing that that golf course would allow him to do that. He may believe that every golf course will do it, but we'll find out. And that's what I guess was alarming to me was to your point of, you know, we'll see what happens in a British hub when the ball is bouncing all that. It's like, the ball was bouncing out there and he was playing the slopes right and doing all that. And that's where I think it was just kind of like, whoa, if this style is working on a course that

requires this many, you know, different kinds of shots than that, especially alarming. But you said something interesting there. I wanted to, you said the USGA may have some quivers that they are levers that they could pull potentially. I'm curious as to what you think those levers might be that they could potentially pull to mitigate some of these things. Well, you know, we've got the distance report that's been out and I guess it's gonna be delayed

no other year now for more fact finding and collecting of information and opinions and thoughts, etc. But I think everybody in the industry feels like at some point in time the distance is something has to be done by the USU and the RNA to regulate distance. And I don't know what the answer is there, whether it's the ball, it's the driver. I'm not smart enough to figure that out, but I think everybody, you know, people have been saying that Bryson is going to revolutionize the game and change the game and change the way it, but one of those outcomes might be that he actually changed it because he forced

the governing bodies to actually step up and do something about distance. So we'll see. I mean, I have no, I don't know what they're going to wind up doing, but I know there's been enough talk about it and that Something will come out in the next year year and a half and it wouldn't surprise me based on if this If he wins the master's the same way and or somebody else does the same thing next year at the US Open or at the open championship that we don't See some momentum not only From the governing bodies, but just from the Gulf community to say, wait a second.

Is this really what we want the game to be? Well, help me explain this better than I've tried to explain this in the past, and I think it would make me maybe make more sense coming from you, someone that specifically designs courses like this. But I think a lot of people, what they don't understand about the distance debate is that is how much effort and consideration goes into the hazards and intended strategy of a whole from the T, right, especially, you know, back in the past, and saying like, hey, this has been here for 90 years, and this has been the goal that the architect had was like, hey, either wrap it around this bunker or take the risk of flying it, et cetera.

And when a player is able to bypass all of that challenge and how to become a complete afterthought, it is a waste of one of the great joys of the game, I think, and that it's not something that you can, you know, bring back or bring in just by lengthening it and putting in new teas. Can you summarize that maybe better than I can or maybe I did a better job than I think I do? No, you did a great job. I think you're spot on. And even the debate becomes that even if they don't fly over at all, let's say we move bunkers out to 360. Embrace and lands, or I don't know what keep you using MetWolf or Gary Woodland or Dustin Johnson, whoever hits it a long way, winds up in that bunker.

There's still, unless we make the golf hole, 580R Part 4, there's still only hitting the wedge or a nine iron out of that bunker. Now, what do you have to do? Make the bunker 12 feet deep. So it's one of those things that you're right. I mean, they're basically watering down the opportunity for the architect to influence the way the golf course is played because they are either stretching things out so far that, okay, if we put a bunker at 300 and three. So there's a ripple and domino effect, and that's why I say let's not get too far ahead of ourselves right now in thinking that, okay,

this is the way the game is gonna be played by everybody. You know, there's an amazingly wide spectrum. I think the people who are knowledgeable about the distance debate really always point to the fact that what is truly happening is that the gap between what the way they play the game and the way the rest of us play the game is just it's getting miles apart. You know, it used to not be that far apart. Now it's getting miles apart. Okay. How do we

design for those two very now becoming very disparate groups? And what do we have to do within the confines of a golf course? And also, the part of the thing is that we're talking about a very small fraction of golf courses that these guys are going to play. You know, it's not like you're your local municipal or your local great members course that's 6,600 yards and everybody loves and has fun on is they got to start looking around to add you know 500 yards of length. No, that, you know, it's just this very select group

of courses that we have to have this conversation. Yeah. And switching gears a little bit here, but you know, you talked about Pinehurst kind of being a completely different kind of test and we'll have different defenses than say what we saw at a wing foot. What about LA Country Club that we're going to see here

in a couple of years as well, due to the turf they have there and the run offs there? What will that challenge look like for the pros? Yeah, I think that that's an interesting setup issue or conversation to have. I mean, Bermuda Ruff in the summer, certainly in June and LA, I think can be fairly challenging.

The ball will certainly settle down in and I don't know what height they're gonna have it come out at, but the rough can certainly be penal. I think one of the great things about LACC is there's significant fairway contour, and I mean elevation change and pitch from side to side. Wingfoot has that, but in bi and bi it's fairly flat golf course. So I mean, the cross slopes are going to be maybe five or six feet.

Whereas in LA, you look at a whole like the 13th hole, you use like 20 feet. You know, your ball starts rolling and it doesn't stop until it gets into the rough on certain holes out there. So I think part of what George Thomas did when he designed that golf course is very few fairway bunkers because he wanted. You know, the fairways to be the hazard. You got to control your ball to keep it on the proper side, left or right, and utilize play with or against the slope. So I think given Southern California, it'll be June, it'll be dry, it should be firm. I think that's going to be a completely different part of the examination while it should be firm, you know, I think that's going to be a completely different part of the examination

while it will be wider because it needs to be. The effective width of the fairways is actually going to be pretty narrow. And then if it's feeding it into some fairly dense thick, permute aruff, it'll be interesting to see, you know, how they can handle that. Yeah, it's a lot different playing out of permute aruff than it is playing out of the rye or the bluegrass or whatever that is up there. It's a wing foot, I would imagine. I meant to shoehorn this question in, we were talking about the greens, but I want to hear a little bit more about that first green. And whether or not there was any discussion, you know, about softening that green sum, the the bold contours of it and kind of what the philosophy is on starting a golf course with the green is bold and it required different maintenance I understand this past week compared

to the other green. So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the first green. Yeah it was so one of the things we tried to work really hard on was again Neil Reagan pulled out some great old photographs was to restore those edge hole locations. So you certainly saw it on Friday Saturday Sunday, you know, two on the left and one on the right. The one on the first round was in a bowl that was restored right in the middle and proved to be, I mean, it was the first time in the history of the any US Open at Wingfoot where the first hole actually played under par. I think the Scory

Hour just 3.9 something, which you'll tell you a little bit about, you know, how soft the greens were and how soft that hole location was. But I think, you know, by restoring the edge holes, we were able to kind of put them in the little bowls, which allowed the severity of the green not to need them to change the way it was played, you know, the way it was presented very much. In 2006, the green was two feet slower on the stint meter. And so that was, that's a noticeable change for anybody, not only on a tour pro, but I think, and I know for in fact this year it was about half a foot at its, at its biggest peak. I mean, it got closer and closer. So by the end of the,

end of the week, it was running in the same range as the rest of the greens. I think the first day, it was maybe half a foot slower than the slowest other green. So we worked hard as a team to make that green so that they didn't have to maintain it differently. And I think we were successful in that regard. But it's winged foot it's a you know there's no light up there and it's kind of okay welcome welcome to a to a really difficult test and I think

telling us hit you between the eyes right right off the with that first green yeah that was one of the most fun fun fun holes to watch and fun greens to watch but we're gonna let you out here on this, got to ask, I'll combine two questions into one here, but about two projects you have ongoing or coming up, or you can update us on the status of it. But one being the National Links Trust Project in DC, one if you can tell us a little bit about that as well as what you've got going in Nebraska. Yes, so thanks, William. So the National Links Trust project um we're gonna be in charge of the plant the project at Rock Creek Park which is originally a William Flynn golf course um a lot of the holes have been abandoned or kind of grown grown over um we're working hard to to restore some of the playing

corridors there I think the you know the trees have become had a significant impact on that but it looks like when we're all sitting down, we're really going to work hard to get a full nine-whole golf course and a nine-whole par three and a really good driving range to kind of serve some of the, what we feel are the important needs for public golf is, you know, quick rounds of golf and nine holes will certainly suffice. Par three will help introduce people to the game

and then obviously a great place for people to go and practice. And I know that Will Smith and Mike McCartan from National Links Trust are trying to get it to be kind of a really cool goat hill kind of vibe where it's a place you want to be. So we're excited about restoring reclaiming that space and then we also have a similar project to go off one more. Our West Palm Beach, we're going to be rebuilding the West Palm Beach Municipal Golf Course. And we're really excited about that. I think with the sand, it's got an opportunity

to be very sort of Melbourne sand-belty-looking golf course. And so I think that's going to be also a great community asset. And then the Cap Rock Ranch in Nebraska, the golf course is finished. It was all seeded about three weeks ago. It's an amazing, amazing piece of ground. We have the sand hills, not quite the big chop, but some really nice rolling ground. And then we have eight holes that play along the edge of 200 foot canyon that drops down to the snake river in Nebraska. So it's a very, very different site for what

people think of when they think of sand hills area golf. So we're excited about how that's come along and that should probably open some time next August. So yeah, we're really fortunate. We've got a lot of great stuff going on. And you know, it's like said, we're here at the country club. So we're getting this place ready to host in about 20 months. I keep thinking it's two years, but it's actually not. It's a little bit shorter than that. That's right. Yeah. You're truly one of the busiest guys I know. I don't know how you do all this, but really appreciate you. I got a lot. Sorry. I got a lot of great guys working with me. I mean, I'm really doing. That's the only way this whole thing gets home together.

Yeah, I know I appreciate it. I don't know how you get anything done when you have Wagner around though, because we experienced some of that last year pine herds. And man, that guy is a hoot, that's for sure. He is the best. Yeah, he's funny and great, but amazing. Like the most talented guy I know in our business.

That was what, you know, he was kind of an easing entertainer and then as soon as it was time to switch gears to talk about sod and soil and all that it was like whoa okay yeah you're not just like you're very very clearly a professional but also maybe a professional entertainer so. Well Gil thanks for taking the time I know it's been a crazy couple of weeks for you, but actually that might just be normal for you for what we'll use to. Well, it was a good time, and thank you, thanks for having me on, I appreciate it, I always do. You guys do a great job, I really enjoy listening to you.

Thanks, Gil, appreciate it, take care. Bye, cheers. Bye. I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah! That is better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most!

Expect anything different.