No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 494: Mike DeVries

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Golf course architect, and Michigan native, Mike DeVries joins Soly to discuss his courses featured on the current season of Tourist Sauce as well as his background in the golf course architecture business, his work both domestically and around the world, his design influences and philosophies, and much more.  Catch Tourist Sauce: Michigan with new episodes premiering on the NLU YouTube channel Wednesday nights at 9p ET.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Today's episode is with Mike Diveries, who you are going to be hearing a lot from in the coming episodes of Taurus Saus, our travel series that is on YouTube. We are traveling the state of Michigan. New episodes premiere at 9 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays.

That series is brought to you by our Friends at Precision Pro, which we're gonna talk about here soon. But this conversation with Mike spans, you know, a lot of his career, a lot of what he's got going on down under, what he's already done down under, and what he's done in Michigan. And I think we're gonna hear from him a lot in the future

because this guy is a very, very talented architect. And if you've ever been lucky enough to play in any of his courses, you can kind of see what we're talking about here. And we play about five of them, I think, throughout this series. And a bunch of those are in this week's episode in Grand Rapids, the mines, pilgrims run in diamond springs. We talk about some a little bit about all those.

We kind of spend a lot of time talking about Australia. So apologies if we didn't spend enough time talking about Michigan. We got enough Michigan content on our YouTube channel, which of course, again, brought to you by our friends at Precision Pro Golf. In Golf Confidence is a wonderful thing. Doubt is not. That's why everyone at NoLong Up carries Precision Pro Golf Range Finders. Precision Pro believes that golf is enjoyed most when you're confident that's exactly what

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Here's Mike Diveries. Everyone always wants to start with background. I know you've been asked a million times about your background, but I'm gonna wait at least a couple questions get going on that, because I can't even wait to hear, I can't even wait that long to hear about Tasmania and what you guys have going on down there.

I'm up to speed a little bit, but for the listeners that maybe aren't, tell us about what you have going on down there. Yeah, so seven mile beach is a brand new golf course project, Matt Caggan, who played on the PGA tour for a number of years. Grew up in Hobart for people that don't understand Australian geography. Tasmania is that island that's below Melbourne, below the Bass Strait. Hobart is the capital of Tasmania. There's about 250,000 people there. So it's a really good sized town, great foodie town,

So it's a really good sized town, great foodie town, probably the best museum in all of Australia's there. And there's this spit of land that's seven miles long, hence the name Seven Mile Beach. That is Pure Sand Dunes. The airport's located on that spit, like on the sort of the western side of it. So the golf course site is a totally undeveloped piece of property, ocean front dunes, and it's about two miles east of where the Hobart International Airport is. So you could you could be in the sand, the sand belts or in Sydney or whatever, and you could fly to Hobart and land in 15 minutes, you're going to be on the first tee. It's a really really cool amazing sight. Doons up to about 60 feet and then

you know low profile stuff on the shoreline also. So there's a wide variety we're doing the first golf course for Matt. There's room for a couple other golf courses there and it's a it's super exciting. It's a great great place. So people are awesome and really can't can't wait to get there. My partner Mike Clayton, who's part of Clayton's recent pot, he's lives in Melbourne so he's close but due to the COVID and all the stuff that's going on, he can actually he can't even get to the whole bar right now. So we're anxiously waiting to have all this stuff sort of work its way out.

And we should be there hopefully mid-December, push and dirt and having fun. Well, I think no matter what you said in some way, it was going to downplay. A particular quote that I've read from Clayton a few months ago, and has always stuck with me, and it's to make just a really good golf course there would be a bit of a failure. I don't think anyone will ever build a better golf course

than Royal Melbourne in Australia, but this needs to sit right underneath that. What kind of pressure is that to put on you before you build the golf course? I'm shaking right now. No, it is pretty extraordinary. And of course, Royal Melbourne is quite fabulous. And Clayts was involved at Barn Boug Gould Dunes and I did Cape Wickham and those are right behind Royal Melbourne right now.

So our joke is we have two and three, we want to go for one. But I don't, you know, each project just evolves and we're going to enjoy it. And it's always an interesting process and it'll be, you know, it's going to be a great cough. Of course, it's just super fantastic. And everybody that's involved, Matt's a really awesome guy.

And, you know, obviously, he's played all over the world, knows golf really, really well. But it's entrusting us to do the right thing. And the superintendent that we have, two E is grew up playing golf with Matt. It's been in the golf business forever. And so, you know, there's a really great team that, you know, we have assembled to, you know,

to do this. And it takes a lot of people and a lot of time to get things just right. And we're dedicated to doing that. You know, we share a lot of our opinions and takes on golf courses. And I have my reasons for why I think Royal Melbourne is great, but I'm super keen to hear someone like yourself with your background and your experience seeing golf courses

and building them as well. You know, you mentioned, you know, with clates being the course that came out of clates mouth first there and of course you hold in high regard, just simply asking, what makes Royal Melbourne great? Why is that so unanimously revered? It's just got all the right movements to the ground. It's undulating, but it's not like excessive ideal soils.

You got this sand that's, I don't know how deep it is, a couple hundred feet or whatever that goes down. It creates the great Melbourne sand belt bunkers that, you know, everybody that goes to Melbourne and then comes back to, why can't we have bunkers like Melbourne? So, I mean, it's a phenomenal piece of terrain to work with just to have that happen. And so you have great conditioning, you have unbelievable holes that have great strategy to them. There's width to it. You've got to figure out what's the best way to get to the hole.

And that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people from the high level pros that go there. And sure, they, you know, they get going, they shoot a low number. That's not necessarily a bad thing. They're, they're that good. They can do that. But the average member or guest that goes there who's a bogey golfer, he's going to have some exhilarating highs and he's going to have an opportunity to make some pars or a birdie here or there and he's gonna find his ball and he's gonna get around and play it and every hole is just super dynamic so so much fun and there's great holes there when you start to look at 10, you look at really the opening

stretch. Like one doesn't really seem like it's a very exciting hole, but you know two, three, four, five, six, that whole stretch, four, five, and six, around, around that, you know, it's a little hill there. Really sets the tone for what you're gonna do and what you're gonna see and what you're going to do and what you're going to see and what you're going to play. So the Aussies are really welcoming people. They love their golf and it all culminates and really comes to Royal Melbourne all the time. And they hold major tournaments. They have a really active membership.

It's a great place. You said something interesting though that I think might be a good bridge into just discussing your overall architecture style or your design style, which is figuring out the best way to get to a hole. And to me, that sounds very different than just hitting golf shots. And I'm wondering if that is, if I'm onto something with that and kind of wondering if you could describe, you know, why using that as a North Star, figuring out the best way to get to a hole, why that might be more interesting than a round of golf where you're just going around hitting pretty normal golf shots

Yeah, so when you think about you know normal golf shots. I mean if you're If you're just executing a great stroke you can do that at the range right? I mean, you know that you can hit a new simulator You can you know you can work on hit a new simulator, you know, you can work on it. And that's all important to like learning the game and stuff like that. But when you're out in the elements, when, you know, the wind is blowing out of the, you know, the southeast instead of the southwest or the northwest or whatever this day or that, every hole has the opportunity to change. And so maybe a hole that you've played a hundred times

is going to have a different flavor to it. And you're going to have to figure out what you're doing with that. And you have to have the ability to, as a golfer, you have to think, hey, you know, I can't execute the shot to really go for it right here because of what's happening and how I'm playing today, etc. them and really get some excited about that haul or that day or the golf shot. Any of those elements that you can put together makes it more and more exciting and fun for a better round of golf and something you want to go back and try again. So those those those great courses that you play when you get off 18 you're like I want to go right away I want to go now that's what you're searching for right. You don't want to like get down and go, well, that was horrible. I want to have 14 beers because I just

can't handle it. That was that was too tough or whatever. But if they're like a golf course can be difficult. But if you had really fun shots and you had opportunities to try stuff that maybe you don't get to try elsewhere or that maybe they sort of tempt you to try. And maybe you don't get to try elsewhere or that maybe they sort of tempt you to try and maybe you shouldn't try. That's a whole another category of things we could talk about, but that's engaging the golfer and that makes it makes it fun every day. Yeah, there's the things that came to mind with what you were saying there were ones. The two things we're going to get to, which is one of the feeling I had coming off Kingsley after playing 18 holes was like, oh, I cannot wait to go back out there this afternoon because I can unlock this.

I know how to do this now this, this, this, and this. It may or may not have worked out that way, but that's the feeling I got walking off the 18th green and then at pilgrims run the number one. the number one, that hole right there, just talk the different things you had to consider to get to the hole or the different route there. I just like look back at that hole and wonder and like, man, I could have played that five different ways and we're only on the very first hole. But we're not to Michigan yet.

We're gonna get to Michigan, but still, you know, we're still on seven mile beach because I wanna know, what's it like trying to come up with a routing on land that I think you could, it sounds like the way it's been described is pretty much perfect. It sounds like it sounds like a dream job and I'm sure it is but what are the challenges that come with you know a site that is as good as you guys have said it is. Well like you said first I mean it's a lot of pressure but you know kind of throw that once you're on site you kind of throw that aside and

you're just like hey what's the what what can we do here? What's the best result? And, you know, I'm seeing something and Clayts is seeing something and, and we're going to like, okay, but what about this? What about that? And so that's, you know, that's the fun part of the project of trying to figure out what's the greatest solution. And, you know, Clayts has said it a bunch of times in various little snippets that have come out. He's like, you know, we think we have a we think we have the best routing,

but that's going to get tweaked. That's going to continue to evolve into something that's better. So it's an opportunity to try certain things. Maybe they're new things or how do we take what we have on the site just to make it feel like it flows and fits into the land as best as possible. Great sites demand, they demand a respect, there's a lot of ways you could go with something and it wouldn't work out for it well. You could have a very dramatic site and you might not optimize the golf out well. And you know, you could have a very dramatic site and you might not optimize the golf out of it.

You know, the good golf that's making a golfer engage and be excited about something and try something. But if you sort of miss on a certain number of elements, then you could feel like, wow, we didn't really, like we didn't get all of it out of it that we could have. And at the same token too, when you have something that's super spectacular, you want to try and figure out how can you sort of tone that down or, you know, use restraint because you don't need to do much. And that's a hard thing because humans were trying to fix everything. You know, we're

trying to like make it better and do this and do that. Sometimes you just have to go, hey, that's enough. Let's just let's sit back and let's try and do what's right for it. I've had some really dramatic sites and thinking about Tasmania and Cape Wickham. I mean, this place is so, I mean, it's so spectacular that that was one of the main things I was thinking about. Like, we just need to figure out how to connect the golf halls because there's so much drama here. We don't we don't need to create drama. We just want to figure out a way to, you know, to have people think, wow, that's, oh, I want to try this shot. And not because all you have to do is turn your head and there's another view of the ocean or there's, you know, there's the lighthouse, et cetera. And really what was the most important thing was like, can you get the golfer to focus

on the shot at hand and what's going on. And we're going to have some of that at seven mile beach, too, because the water is right there. It's on both sides of us. There's a smaller inlet bay on the north side of the of this spittle land. And then you have the bigger body of water to the south right on the golf course. I'm wondering if you're experienced at Cape Wickham has you feeling better about the task at hand in accomplishing this because I've heard I I've not gotten the Cape Wickham, but I've heard nothing but just absolute rave reviews. I'm looking at pictures right now on the website and I'm kicking myself for it. I've not included it in the one time that I've made it down under.

And I'm wondering if what the experiences were you've learned from that and the amazing site there you had on King Island. And what it's like to look back at that five, six years now, I think after it has opened and what it's like to reflect on that accomplishment. Well, there's the knowledge that yeah, you can do it. You can achieve that thing. I think we did a really great job there of making sure that the golf came forward. And we weren't, we weren't just focused on it being like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, because if you just, there is a lot of wow. But if you, if that's all you do and you don't have good golf with it, it sort of loses something.

Because there's a lot of eye candy golf courses in the world. I think that's fair to say. Oh, sure. Absolutely. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff. You know, it's one of the things, just to sort of's a lot of stuff. It's one of the things, just to sort of digress for a second. But some of the things that you, when you do 3D visualizations of stuff and the computer technology and all that kind of stuff is great, but it's hard to build something exactly

like that. It all has to happen in the dirt. You have to make sure that it fits. And no matter what you do, you know, technology wise to show this is what the hole is going to look like. And that, once you get out there, there's a different sense of that. And you have to figure out how to make that fit and work. And so having a really spectacular sight like Cape Wickham, which seven mile beaches also. And you know, thinking that we did a really good job there, I know that we can do it again. And I

know that we're going to create a golf course that is going to be super fun to play and is going to meet, you know, the expectations of everybody that we want to do. It's a lot of hard work, but we're going to get it done. We're dedicated to doing that. That's why we're, that's why we've had success. And I think it's going to be if the whole project is going to be fun doing it. And I just can't wait to get back down there. When is that going to be? Yeah, what's the timeline looking like in both in a perfect world and what's looking realistic with everything going on in the world? Australia is a lot more restrictive than we are. So hopefully we're getting down there and in November and we should be able to get to Tasmania mid-December.

It sounds like because Western Australia and Tasmania have been more restrictive just within Australia itself as far as like letting people in and doing that and and stuff. So before the new year, we're going to be there and I'm shaking. I can't wait. It is really cool. It's super fun and just talked with clates this afternoon. And just really looking forward to getting down there and making things happen. I don't need much more justification to get down there,

but I think, you know, with a couple of other new courses opening up in New Zealand, this opening up and, you know, all the slew of courses we didn't get to the first time around, we might have critical mass to finally have the full excuse to get back down there once, once restrictions are, you know, fully closer to being lifted. But I think you got to have it be no laying up, goes down under construction. You know, we'll get you guys on some equipment and get you dirty. I mean, that'd be a whole nother.

That's a, that's a, that's a whole, I don't know. That's a, you got to have a new, new, new name for that kind of show or something. That'd be really awesome. I'm a, I'm a city boy, man. I don't think I would, I've cut out for that life. Some of our guys, but no, I would love that. I really, I visited a site of Bobby Weed

was designing a course here. It still is building one here in Jacksonville. I've never really been on on site of a course being built. And man, it was kind of addicting. I like to fancy myself a golf course architecture enthusiast, but when it comes to actually being the creative behind it is something I've always had appreciation for. But even just looking at a pile of dirt,

I don't think I can necessarily come up with interesting features or great golf holes or link them all together. I don't think people fully grasp all the things that have to go and consideration wise when it comes to drainage in this. And you know, all the drainage is, you say that that in one word but it's a million different things you got to do in sequential order to get that to get all that right and yeah your your guys jobs

I think are different than it's not just drawing stuff out on a piece of paper and I think for a long time at least I thought that was the majority of the job. There are a lot of aspects to it and there's And there's a great team that you have to have that to make everything come out together, certainly. And for you guys, and how you're looking at golf and thinking about that stuff, it might be interesting for you to see that. And seriously, it'd be awesome to have you on site

because you would see something happen. And then like six months later, here's, this is is what it is and two years later, you know, after that, you know golf courses evolve from from that first growing, you know, the turf mature is everything changes. It takes time for for those things to really develop and and what we're trying to do is, you know, in day one, when they open, we want it to look like it's been there for 100 years. And people would go, wow, that seems like that's totally natural. How did you guys find that, you know, green site? And it might be something totally artificial.

That had happens. Like people are like, wow, that's the most natural greens I've ever seen. You know, it's like, yeah, that was, that was the most unnatural one on the property. A quick break here to check in with our friends at Walker Trolley, Justin Hubert. If you are listening to this, I want my Walker Trolley back. You borrowed it for Q-School and haven't given it back yet. So I'm officially calling you out. The Walker Trolley Cape 1.5 is the number one premium push cart on the market, bringing

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This is a thought I haven't fully fleshed out, but to me it seems like the golf course design business is extremely competitive. It's top heavy, you know, with a lot of the names that roll off the top of people's tongues, tip of people's tongues, you know, just talking about the the hands is the doaks, the core crunches, all that stuff. And I've

gotten this like a weird little sense slash feeling that it almost seems like with how competitive and how things have trended that at times it feels like do I guess as an architect yourself, do you feel pressure to almost kind of one up yourself to kind of say like, you know, I find usually subtlety to be some of the most interesting features on golf courses yet it's harder and harder to justify being subtle when, you know, clients are expecting bigger, bolder, stronger, you know, I don't know if if I'm striking a court here with anything I'm saying,

but it seems like there's a fine line to be drawn between being bold and justifying the expense that comes with some of these big architecture firms and whether you classify yourself in that category as well. And some of the subtlety that goes into a place like real memorand that you raved about. I threw a lot at you there, but I'm wondering what your reaction to that is. Yeah, that's a great question. So the thing that is, you know, restraint is this thing that's very difficult to do. And I think that becomes really important. And the better courses that you see over time, they show better restraint with, you know, not trying to one up each, you know,

if you get on a golf course and hole one is, oh, that's this is cool. Hole two, wow, that's really cool. Hole three, wow. And you can't sustain that. Golf has a rhythm and a flow to it that really talks about, you know, the cadence of the round. You have 18 holes, right? And it's not just about the bad term signature hole or, you know, it's not about maybe this

stretch of holes, but how does everything work together? So you can analyze it golf course in a lot of different ways. And that could be, we got great part 5. So if great part 3 is short 4's, long 4's, etc, etc. You could talk about, oh, this is the best front nine or the best back nine, you could talk about, oh, this is the best front nine or the best back nine, best stretcher holes, the dreaded signature hole, all those types of things. But really, you have to find a way to make those things engaging for a long period of time. And so restraint is a really difficult thing to do. But ultimately, I think leads to a better process. So you have to have a good client that is understanding

of that. You know, what is the goal? Is the goal to, you know, sell real estate? So, okay, we're going to build a really good golf course and we're going to have a name that's behind this big tour player. Nothing against tour players, but my new client, Matt, is a tour player. He was a tour player for years. But a lot of times that happens and that's a mode to sell real estate. And I wasn't a tour player, it's a sort of thing of how can we create the best golf? And is that golf going to be engaging and long-term engaging? Not just a while, not just wow,

that was spectacular, but okay, I'm out in the next go. I want people to want to go back, I want to play again and again and again, and enjoy it again and again and again. And to do that, you have to think about things in a longer timeframe. And also, you have to get back to that thing you have to like pull back and not pull out all the stops. You got to like every hole can't have 14

different features on it that are overwhelming the golfer and it's sensory overload and so if you know if one hole has this spectacular view, you probably don't really need to do much to it, right? It's probably got this great view. And if you can just set up simple strategy, but clear, great strategy that makes you execute a shot and at the same token you're looking at the mountains or you're looking at the ocean or or you know some other dramatic feature, that could be a city skyline, it could be any number of things, then I think you probably achieved what you want to do with that hole. But how does that hole relate to the hole after it, the hole before it, and the sequence of the hole around, and is their balance. So you can think about a golf course from you know the visual highlights, you can think about it from the architectural highlights, you can think about it from the shot value highlights, and you have to have balance among all of those things and that that requires restraint,

not just one up in the last thing that you did. And that's and you got to have a lot of things come into place to do that. And that goes like I said with a with a good client that you did. And that's, and you got to have a lot of things coming to, coming to place to do that. And that goes, like I said, with a, with a good client, that understands that. And is it something that, I don't know, I just thought of this question, is it something that you almost don't even want the golfer to notice that they are noticing throughout the course of around? You know, I don't, I, you know, unless I'm really critiquing a golf course, I don't think too much about how it's flowing, whether the balance is right, it left to right shots, right to left, or part four, is part five. Is that kind of what you're saying is kind of setting an undertone that, you know,

it just naturally exists and flows for the golfers so they don't have to think about these things when they're playing it? Certainly, that's a natural cadence, like a human scale. All golfers are different. So some guys may be super critical and over-analysed every different shot or whole and how did that relate? And then there's other guys like, hey, what do I gotta do here?

Oh, I meant the driver and a four iron. Okay, great. So you're trying to find a way for the golfer to maybe, let's say if it's a private course or a course that someone plays a regular amount of time and repeatedly over a long duration of time that they're constantly seeing different stuff or different stuff is evolving.

And those are the really great golf courses of the world. Why is Maryam good? Why is Crystal Downs good? Why is the old course good? Because you're always constantly seeing stuff that sort of creeps into the mindset and changes kind of how you look at the golf hole maybe the next time they play it.

And not every golf course does that or can do that. So if you can provide an opportunity for a player to maybe look at things consciously, end or subconsciously it leads in like you're saying, like it just sort of, wow, this just feels good. That leads to a better product. So you think about like Donald Ross golf courses, a lot of Donald Ross golf courses in America. There were a lot of projects that he did that he wasn't as involved with as he was with other projects. He's got a lot of great golf courses, had a lot of, quote, championship golf courses and things

like that. But there's a lot of really good Donald Ross golf courses that are just good solid golf all the way through. And that's a really great trait to think about, you know, hey, this is another solid par four, you know, 380 yards, 410 yards, here's a nice par three, etc. And they seem to fit, right? And they don't maybe blow you away because it might just be a tree line, you know, forested course in the North Carolina. It might be something more dramatic,

but it just depends on that. He finds a way to sort of give you a good solid golf hole and over time, that doesn't lose its attraction. It becomes something that's, wow, this is just good solid fun golf. It's an admirable thing to sort of shoot for. We don't have to over sensationalize every golf hole. I think that I copied this and I think this came from your website.

But I believe it's a quote of yours that says, mere length and difficulty in the attempt to create a championship course frequently results in a dull, insepid affair that brings no pleasure to the participants who soon grow weary of such play and grow elsewhere. I think you pretty much summed that up there with what you said there. Yes, I did.

No, but that, that, you know, I think when we were up in Michigan, especially it was coming kind of fresh off, you know, US Open at Tory Pines and you know, we often are critical of architecture on the professional golf level because it just seems to be like what we started this conversation talking about execution tests versus, you know, finding the best way into the whole and I guess I'm more and more amazed that more golfers don't embrace that concept more and more often. And I always say when it's when I'm not thinking about my golf swing, I'm having a really fun day on the golf course because you're just trying to use the land, trying to use features, get the ball close to the hole. And you know, we allegedly brought you on to talk about Michigan, which I know we're going to get to.

But and we're about maybe halfway through here. And I haven't asked you the question I promised I'd ask, which is what your golf background was and how you ended up as a golf course designer, what your influences were. And yeah, where that starts for you. Yeah. So I was really fortunate that my grandparents and uncle, my mom's side, they were golfers, my, my uncle, who was a seven years younger than my mom and he's only 20 years older than me. He's kind of the cool uncle, you know, and he was a scratch golfer. And so he was kind of the guy that you, you know, you idolized when you're a kid. And I would like, you know, follow them around and kind of put my ball or my uncle finish and, and

try and do what he did, or, you know, beat him or whatever if I could on that little chip or something like that. So I just, I learned the game from my grandparents when I was six or eight years old. And I just was fortunate that my family was in Northwest lower Michigan near Crystal Downs. And so they played golf there, and I would follow them around, and there was also a little nine-hole Frankfurt Golf Club, which unfortunately no longer exists,

but was a fun little executive course, part 32 type thing where you went there, and they hooked you up with whoever was playing. It could have been some other kids, could have been an older couple, could have been an older couple, could have been just random people. And it taught you a lot about the game. And I learned a lot about going around

with my grandmother, my grandfather, and my uncle. And that's one of the really amazing things about golf is that there's this multi-generational ability to sort of transfer on not only the game of golf, but you know qualities of life and sort of learning about those things. You know, this is when I was eight years old, this is how you mark your ball, you don't like walking somebody's line on the green, you know, you don't jiggle your change, you don't make noise when someone's

playing. So it's, you know, that's a, I think one of the things that doesn't get talked about enough about golf is that there's this opportunity to sort of engage with, with a whole, another set of people that maybe you normally don't do, or in my case, my grandparents, I did, but you get to engage with them in a way that you, you know, that's sort of an activity that crosses all generations. And ultimately that led to me working in the,

in the bag room and the pro shop when I was 14 for Fred Muller, though, who was a long time pro at Crystal Bounds. And that was a fabulous opportunity. And when I was 16, I started working on the ground screw too. So I was mowing greens and cutting cups and things like that. And by the time I was 17, I was only working on the ground screw. And I just liked getting up in the morning and going and working on the ground screw and I just like to get up in the morning and you know going and working on the golf course and then you know being done in the middle of the afternoon

and I could go play golf or go you know sailing or you know see friends or whatever. I was very fortunate to to be able to do that and I was working at Crystal Dounce which is one of the 20 great golf courses in the world. And Alison McKenzie, you know, was the designer, Perry Maxwell was the day-to-day construction guy. So I was able to sort of compare what I was doing there with the municipal golf course in Grand Rapids that I played. And the little Frankfurt golf club that I talked about always kept going back to that throughout high school and college and the summers finished college and Did something else and figured out their mission in life and mine weren't going the right direction and same direction and

Got married and went back up and worked on the golf course before I got married and and a couple weeks ago I went in I said to Fred. I go keep coming back to golf. He goes If you met Tom Do Doak I'm like no you didn't know who Tom was you know that he was working on his first golf course high point over in Trevor City about 50 minutes away so my former boss the the green superintendent at Crystal Downs was the project manager Tom Mead and so I you know I called them up and I went over and I spent the day with Tom Doke and learned about what they were doing and it's like, wow, this can be a job. I didn't really think about it that way. This is 1988, long time ago.

So we went on a honeymoon, came back and I started working for Tom, worked with him for about two and a half, three years, helping him finish up high point and then down in Mertle Beach at the Heathlands course at the Legends Complex and then I went back up to Michigan and we built the Black Forest and I ran that project and then we didn't have another project to go to. So I ended up going back to school getting my masters in landscape architecture from the University of Michigan which is a different program. It was in the school of natural resources and environment, which is most landscape architecture programs are in with architects and engineers and so all design sort of oriented and based. Michigan's program is unique that you have three disciplines where you study the landscape, the design of the landscape,

landscape architecture, where you study like hardcore bugs and trees, that, you know, hard sciences of the environment, and then the social sciences, which is, you know, how do we react to the landscape and how do we respond to those types of things. So these three major disciplines, and I was able to study ecosystems and plant systems and how they could be utilized on golf courses. And so that was kind of what my main research and practicum sort of results were. And so that was a really, you know, fantastic sort of deal. And then when I finished, I did some work for Tom Fazio on a couple different projects.

I'd worked on a course that they did in Northern Michigan at Treetops Resort and in a separate capacity and not necessarily working for him. At that time, I was working for the resort in the middle of kind of doing my master's work. I got to know some of their guys and I ended up working for him for about 15 months on different projects. It's sort of being the on-site guy. They needed for a couple of different things.

Since then, I've been doing my own stuff for the last 25, six years or whatever. So one thing that stuck out to me as we talk about Michigan is one that's going to be highlighted in an episode three I believe of our series here is the public golf specifically around Grand Rapids. And your name is all over that with three courses that we played Pilgrims Run, Diamond Springs, and the mines. And I was amazed by an Andy Johnson has called this, you know, the best most affordable golf trip you could take is to Grand Rapids. I forget what his

exact words were, but I want to just understand for you what what makes it work? What makes it public golf does not work in a lot of places for a variety of Reasons and I'm curious as to why you would say I would call all three of these courses to be great successes at least from the Experiences we've had why does it work in Grand Rapids and what makes these places special well first of all and in Michigan in general there's There's a lot of good terrain. You know, we have that came down thousands and millions of years ago, but more recently 10,000 years ago or whatever. And we kind of mashed everything up and that ended up leaving us with these glacial deposits that in a lot of cases can be real sandy.

So the pre-draining, they are great for farming, so you find a lot of excellent farming, you know, whether it's fruit farming or corn, things like that, Michigan is a pretty good producer of all those types of things. And that applies, you know, turf is basically a crop, so there's a good opportunity there, and you've got rolling terrain. So there's, you know, from real radical movements or bigger formations like you would find in the northern lower peninsula with some, you know, bigger hills like Boine and, you know, those areas are their ski hills and ski resorts and things like that. To, you know, gentler rolling terrain that you find in Southern Michigan and Southeast Michigan, you know, tends to be generally flatter and maybe less, less sandy soil there. That's more of the outwash just from a geologic standpoint. So there's really good land and Grand Rapids. There's a lot

of farming around Grand Rapids and there were opportunities. It may be a farm, a family farm or whatever and they were sort of transitioning out and farming farming maybe wasn't as good as it had been. You know, I'm talking, this is maybe 40 or 50 years ago in some cases. And they just, you know, golf was starting to come up. You know, Arnie was, you know, bringing the army and, you know, Jack was around. So in the 60s and 70s, all of sudden You know we needed more golf courses, and it was easy to convert a golf course from Farming or if there's a here's a guy who's got a tractor. He understands how to grow grass. He understands how to grow plants and They they produced a lot of you know some very basic golf courses that were, you know, that were well kept up

just because they had a decent amount of sandy soil and they also had a plentiful supply of water. We got a lot of fresh water, obviously, with the great lakes. They're able to provide a decent product and it's pretty inexpensive to build and or maintain. There's been kind of a, you know, there's been an opportunity there for a lot of that to happen. And, you know, some of those courses are still around. Some of those courses have disappeared because now there's, you know, there's more development. Grand Rapids is a growing town. And then there are, you know, there are opportunities to do things and in the case, I've been, you know been very fortunate with the three projects that you mentioned. Pilgrims run diamond springs in the mines where I had owners that wanted

to build better than average golf. And we had really good sites and we had decent soils. And they put that effort into it. And it's been really successful. And age really well too. I mean, I was surprised that Pilgrims run felt newer to me than it was at 98 that it opened, is that sound right? Yes, and so I want to talk about Pilgrims run especially because this is the course that I keep going back to. I think Kingsley was my favorite on the trip and I think Pilgrims run was my second favorite.

And I'd have to really audit that and think that through, but I'm leaning towards it. I really am. I felt like it was just, it was very thought-provoking. What I love the most about golf is firm turf, like fast conditions. And this didn't even have that. I mean, it's in a forest, and I still loved it that much.

And I'm curious if, you know, it felt like a very unique blend matchup in terms of architectural and strategical interest in a golf course versus a, you know, a public golf course that gets a lot of play from people that I would say probably don't even like tend to notice or think about, you know, golf course architecture in that way. And I'm wondering what it's like to design a course. Maybe Pilgrim's run is a different question because one, tell us about the concept of that golf course and how it, I guess, how it evolved from what it was originally concepted out to be

to how it came together. The owners of the Van Campen family, which is the Van Campen Mutual Funds, a very successful business organization. They had this large piece of property and they ended up hiring a local superintendent, Chris Schumacher, who he was down in the Soggetuck area in the mid 90s and they knew him from the course there

and Mr. Van Camp and wasn't really a big golfer but he had a number of employees who did various things for him. And they were like, you know, hey, we've got this property. Why don't we build a golf course? This would be cool to have clients here. And we could have a golf course. And he thought it was a good idea.

And it thought it would be a fun project for them to sort of be involved. So there were six of them. They were going to all design three holes a piece. So sounds kind of crazy, right? So, so, so ended up that Chris, he sort of analyzed the property that they that they had, which was, which was over on the west side down to the Grand Haven. And he thought they didn't have enough property there to do, you know, do a full golf course there. And he searched and he found this property't have enough property there to do, you know, do a full golf course there, and he searched and he found this property north of Grand Rapids,

which we're, we're a prognos runnist. And so ultimately they ended up buying the property and they, they just literally randomly picked numbers out of a hat, you know, I got holes for seven and 15 or whatever and they did a little horse trading and you know because somebody Chris had done a preliminary routing and so that you know the holes were sort of this is a par three four five and kind of outfit You know some guys wanted to have you know a par three and a par four and a par five and someone wanted to have

Three holes in a row or whatever the deal was. And there was all different for everybody. They had different ideas of golf and they were different levels of golf or two. It was really good players and then you know just sort of average players too. But they were all passionate about it. And then I got involved really, I was connected to Chris via the Toro distributor and he said you know you should give this guy a call that he needs help on this and that and I ended up meeting with Chris and and then finding out about the process and they sort of cleared the front nine they'd started opening up part of the the

project there and you and cutting trees down and and sort of some basic grading and things like that just you know just just cleaning up the site because it's all forested and so there's a lot of work involved in that and ultimately it ended up that I ended up consulting on the whole thing and was really taking all these ideas and concepts. And some of the guys were like, they were just sort of taking what Chris and I gave them and said, wow, that's really cool. Great. And some of them wanted to do things more specifically.

And then we had to figure out a way to make it all work together. I had one of the gentlemen. He wasn't really involved in as much the design process, but he wanted to be involved. And he came out one day and just edged bunkers with me. And we were around the six hole. And he had a shovel in his hand, and we were edging bunker. We were, there was a boom box playing music.

And it was a, that was an experience for him. So it was really different for everybody. And, you know, I give Chris Schumanker a lot of credit because, you know, we had to figure out a way to, he and I had to figure out a way to get all this stuff to fit together and to blend into one golf course. And, and what you have is a, you know, is a very spacious property.

And it's a lush environment. It's bent grass, tees, greens, and fairways, so it feels like a private golf course for a lot of people and you're sort of separated. Most of the holes are, you have some windows into other holes, but a lot of the holes are kind of isolated from each other. So it was really just awesome. kind of isolated from each other. And so it was really just awesome. And they've been fantastic people. And they do a great job there. And it seemed hyperbolic when I said it.

And I still will stand by it, though. The comp I had after playing it with what you're just talking about for the holes being separated and wooded and all that. Honestly, it felt like a public pine valley. And I'm wondering if you'd ever heard that from anyone else. No, not that specifically, but that's a high compliment. Thank you.

I thought that's just, that's like, the feeling of that, you're exactly right though. It feels like a private golf course. Like it just, I don't know how else to describe it. I couldn't help but notice too,

at each of the courses of yours that we played on this trip, I noticed how, how stout and thought-provoking the opening holes were. And I'm just curious if you had any specific philosophy when it came to, when it came to opening holes. I'm thinking of the par 5 first at Kingsley and especially that par 5 first at Pilgrims Run that I mentioned where just to give you, give the listeners an idea what I'm talking about. It's always hard to describe golf holes, but it's a par-fied that bends to the left, but there's a couple bunkers that kind of pinch the fairway, and the best route to the green is to hit it directly

in front of the bunker that guards the right side of the fairway. That gives you a shoot through the trees to hit it through towards a narrow green, yet if you're too far left You got to shape it around some trees that almost play like center line trees in between the fairway in the green yet If you drive it too far you could end up in the bunker and then on your layup You got to steer it around those trees and maybe to get you know the further left you go the better angle You get down the green that's kind of the layers of which we're talking about, just to kind of set the scene.

But yeah, I'm wondering if that's a specific thing that, you know, you learn somewhere or picked up somewhere or that you make sure you do with golf courses, you do. Well, I don't think it's necessarily that I have a sort of a set program for that, but I guess it's also, there's always this thing of the gentle handshake, right? I guess I, you know, I grew up at Crystal Downs working and playing there and there's definitely not a gentle handshake there. So I guess I'm not afraid of the opening hole asking you questions and making you figure things out. Maybe it's not necessarily the most difficult hole on the course, but it can definitely be challenging. And so, having a par-5 to do that

is often a good way to engage the golfer do that, where they can sort of, they can swing away and let the ball fly a little bit, but they can't be too reckless either. If they're reckless, then they're gonna pay for it, right? So, it can't be boring. It's got to start engaging the golfer right from the bat. And I think that's kind of what you get in different ways there. Kingsley's intimidating the scale of it and stuff, but I think it plays fair.

Pilgrim's run is like you say, there's this gap between the trees, there's a pine tree there on the left that sort of gives you this angle into the grief for the, you know, really for the bigger hitters. I mean, for the average player, it's certainly a much safer play to just play out left and then have a wedge in and it's not super long, but you got to hit sort of a quality shot and a crisp shot and there's something to that,

to not necessarily making it too crazy for him, but it's not a push over either. And so tell me about comparing, I didn't get to go to Diamond Springs, but the guys came back. We couldn't get a word in just each raving about the different experiences we had on that day. It's also within earshot, a grand rapids, kind of in the opposite direction, but same blueprint. It's affordable, also within earshot a grand rapids kind of in the opposite direction, but same blueprint. It's affordable public golf yet from what I understand a different, a different golf course than Pilgrims run.

What was, what was the order of operations there? Which one came first and why does Diamond Springs work kind of in the similar vein of where we're talking about why Pilgrims run works? Yeah. So Pilgrims run was was the first course in Kris Schumacher, who was the superintendent there. He ended up leaving Pilgrim's run and had some other guys and he was involved. He was kind of the initial guy at Diamond Springs also.

So it was an interesting, you know, Chris and I had worked together, obviously, at Pilgrim's run for a couple of years and really, you know, knew each other and he had this new project and the concept of making it because this is this is this is a little bit further removed a little more of a you know, but they're both removed from Grand Rapids 30 minutes for say Pilgrims' Run and maybe 35 40 minutes for for Diamond springs. He's found a really good track of land. Again, it was very sandy. And it was flat. It was generally a flat piece of ground

with a couple of long eskers that go through the property. And for people that don't know, an esker is like a long ridge landform that's really a glacial deposit that can be anything from a small bump to a large formation that maybe is 10 or 15 feet high and brought enough to put teaser greens on or something to drive over. So it was a really interesting, cool piece of property. It was relatively easy to walk, but then had these interesting features kind of crisscrossing east, west across the property.

And in the northeast side of the property, there was a deep ravine that was an old mill. And so there's basically a gorge that was 20 or 30 feet deep and from 100 to 250 feet wide, that you know, used to have a, there's still a stream at the bottom of it, but used to have a, you know, some sort of probably a flower mill,

or so I don't think it was a saw mill, I think it was a flower mill of some type, and processed and stuff. This is probably going back to the 1800s, and so there's this, you know, this really dramatic feature in the in the ground. And so really good piece of property, trying to figure out how to do it. Again, Chris was kind of did the initial routing and all. And, and we talked about, you know, how it could work. And this and that made some adjustments and things. Ended up building, you know, a golf course that has one cut of grass.

So, well, two cuts of grass. There's green site, and then there's basically fairway. And Chris was looking at, how can we do this, you know, being a superintendent, he was like, how can we maintain this golf course and do it really, really efficiently and inexpensively, but still make the golf engaging and fun. And so, you know, the way that he was thinking about that was, well, it's, I can mow one height of cut for teased, fairways, rough, et cetera. And then it just goes to woodland or outside, you know,

slash native rough or fescue, however you wanna think about it. And then there's a greens height. You know, greens are bent grass and we can have some contour and things like that. So it could be very walkable, but still cart friendly and all that kind of stuff. And that's kind of how the whole, that's how the process started. And ended up, you know, being a very different experience because it's bluegrass,

fairways, bent greens, but then just a super wide cut. So think of like how the old course is really. I mean, it's just, it's one wide cut and then it goes into native. And the average golfer can hit his ball out there and, you know, find it really quickly and, you know, advance it. And the really good players got to think about, well, I don't have this 25-yard wide fairway that I have to hit. So I have to figure out what's the best way to get to the pin and what's my best angle to do that for where the pin is that day. And so it makes them hit try and hit certain shots to get to a certain position to have an advantage.

Gosh, yeah, we played a lot of golf in this trip. And here it is another course that I didn't, you know, that I'm kicking myself that I didn't get to play. But, you know, we also got a look at nine holes of your course, the mines, which is, you know, I would say Diamond Springs and Pilgrims run are along the same vein, but it seems like the mines is a very different project. What can you tell us about that course? Yeah, so it's right downtown. It's literally five minutes from the heart of Grand Rapids. It's astonishingly close. It really is. Yeah, yeah, five minutes in traffic. I mean, that's like hitting every light. It's over a portion of the old

gypsum mines, which the gypsum mines in Grand Rapids covered about 600 acres and were mined from the mine gypsum from like Civil War time into the 1980s. And this property is over a portion of that. So the mining is all underground, what's called the Rumen Pillar thing, where they extract these veins of gypsum, and then they leave these large caverns in there. The ground above it is not necessarily suitable for building development,

because you might have some subsidence and things like that. So you might get a sinkhole or something like that over time. But the upper property was all forested. And it looked like you were in Northern Michigan, fully forested area right next to neighborhoods and stuff. And so Dan Chimble, the owner, found this property and family business was involved with the Santa Gravel development and things like that. So, you know, he knew all about these materials and things like that. He got this property. He's a big golfer,

and we had played golf probably five years before he got this property and he called me kind of out of the blue and and I was kind of scratching my head and trying to remember, why do I know this name? But ultimately I was like clicked went down, you know, the amazing thing is I grew up in Grand Rapids. And this is kind of on the west side, I was on the east side of Grand Rapids, but I just never really had an idea that there was this kind of wild ground, right in the heart of Grand Rapids. And there's four different sort of sections of the property. And those sections are divided by a road and by big power lines.

So it was a challenge to kind of develop a routing there that worked, because you can't change the road, you can't change the power lines, things like that. What sounds like it'd be really disjointed, but essentially you go from where the clubhouse is, you go across, you play a hole's one to four, and then you just cross the road and go under the tunnel, and then you play a couple of holes next to the clubhouse, and then you go to a fire section. So you kind of weave your way between basically three of the four sections of the property. You know, it's a hilly

undulating property. You see some development, some neighborhoods on one side of it, but really you don't, you don't see much of, you know, sort of civilization right in the downtown Grand Rapids. So it was really, really fun project. Dan's was a great orange. He's actually just sold the golf course to a young guy. So, you know, it looks like, you know, we have a new owner and I've known the new owner Chris Sobeck for a while too and he's excited about it and it's been on the golf business for a while. So I think it's going to continue for quite a bit and it's maybe the most difficult golf course I've built. It's got some challenging long par fours on it.

That makes it, it makes it stout, but those are sort of par fives for the average golf for anyway. So that's, that's, that's all right. Busy place. Man, that place was absolutely hummin. I think we didn't have a T-time until about 6.40 pm or something like that. And they were, they couldn't have cards for us. It was so busy and it just seems like a community center.

I think that's really, really freaking cool. And then I guess that brings us to Kingsley, which I can't believe took us this long to get to. And we've touched on it and mentioned a couple things here and there about it. But it was the highlight of the trip for I think pretty much all of us. So we had heard rave things about it and getting to spend the day with you, I think definitely, definitely helped it. But what's it like designing a golf course like Kingsley, a private golf course first,

the public ones that we've discussed? And, you know, what what what freedoms come with that? What are some things that are making a little bit more difficult? And what what's brings to mind is we'll get you excited to talk about Kingsley, I guess. Yeah, it's a great question. You know, public versus private. Obviously, you've got to think about how many people

are playing the golf course at one time. You know, is this, you know, some private clubs are real busy, some are less busy. This was going to have a national membership. But the two owners Ed Walker and Art Preston, the guys that founded the club, they wanted to have a great golf course. That was their main goal and their, you know, passionate golfers themselves. And so that was that was a particularly important aspect for them.

Fred Muller, the pro at the Crystal Bs, you know, knew both of them and was was really involved with the project too. But I didn't have like a massive committee, you know, I had Ed Walker who lives in Traverse City and art was, you know, around occasionally here and there because he lived down south. And then, you know, Fred was was involved and, you know, was my first sort of real job boss and has you know sort of coached me and golf throughout my life and so you know having him as a sounding board was was really good. Back kind of to public versus private, they were gonna always have kind of a membership that wasn't gonna be a lot of play

at least not you know it's it's not like every day of the summer where it's going to be full up. I mean, it was going to be busy, but it's going to fluctuate and it's going to be the sort of thing where people are going to probably come and stay for several days and they're going to want to play golf for several days, stay in the cabins, play 36 holes a day, or play a different set of teas, things like that. So that gave us a lot of flexibility to do different things with regards to how kind of how holes cross over and fit. And so the way that the property is there, which is a very, there's about 120, now 100, probably 105 feet of overall 20, no, probably 105 feet of overall high to low elevation, but there's some areas that are chopier and more undulating than other parts. And so it was either how is it easy to get to or away

from those areas of the property and how do we make that blend in with everything else and make sure that it's a good rhythm and again rhythm and flow to how the golf course went. We definitely wanted it to be walkable so that people had an opportunity to really, you know, feel the ground and feel the cadence of the golf course. That gave us the ability to have sort of shared T-box locations, which you wouldn't, you know, likely do in a public golf setting type facility because that could lead to conflicts or waiting for this group or this group's crossing in front of the other group. But if you're in a private setting,

it's like, hey, Jack, how's it going? How's your round today? You sort of see it's a social game, right? So you have the opportunity to sort of engage with people in a different realm or, hey, I saw you 3jack that last whole or whatever. So, you know, that's fun because it becomes, it's a whole another sort of dimension that gives you the opportunity to do things. A vibe can greatly contribute to somebody's experience, you know, that's the exact kind of thing. It sounds like you spend a lot of time

thinking through. Yeah, I think that that was was that was really important because Ed and Art, you know, they'd travel a lot, you know, over to Ireland and and other places and play to other golf together. And you know, they always had a group of guys. And so, you know, it's for them, it was a social sort of thing. It's like, you know, hey, we're out with our buddies. It's kind of like, it's like the, it's like the no-line up guys going and everybody's, you know, giving each other a hard time, right? I mean, there's that aspect of it. It's not just about the golf. It's also about, you know, being with your buddy, you know, having a good time. That's an aspect, you know, golf that, yeah, you have that with other sports, but it's usually like the activity is

concentrated on that and then you have that afterwards where golf you have adhering the activity and also afterwards, you know, that lives on when you when you win two bucks or five bucks or whatever your bet is from your from your buddy, that lives on until the next time you play, right? So I think I think that's what they were one of the things that they were really trying to achieve there was was to you know bring golfers together and to have them engage with each other and be really excited about it. That was fun to try and figure out that type of stuff. And at Kingsley, we were able to bring that into you know, think about the golf really, really intently and then think about how that that action works. So play

first holds a big par five that goes out and then you have what I call the South 40, which is the 40 acres that's really holds two, three, four, five, six, and then seven, leaving that that sort of section of the property. And there's a big sinkhole in the middle of that. That holds two, four, and six go around. And so there's, it's almost kind of a double figure eight where you sort of get to preview several of the pins before you get to that green, before you play them, but you also get to kind of come back around and see parts

of the land forms from a completely from a 90 degree angle or 180 degree angle. And so you over time you develop this subconsciously, you sort of develop this appreciation for the land and the diversity of the land and the different types of shots you can play. So it's really engaging for the members to, you know, to come and, you know, to bring new people to it or to play with members that have been members in Friends of the Years for a long time, because they always have kind of an opportunity to play something different, or to choose a different tee from a different angle.

Where then we have some opportunities to do that on the golf course there. Yeah, that's another you mentioned that it's kind of like a, I remember getting out on maybe like the third hole and you do see so many other holes on that front nine that you're not. It's almost hard to stay focused on the whole of your playing because you're like, whoa, what's that? What were you coming in from that one? Like, it seemed like there was two just so much. We played a different t-box on pretty much every hole

in the afternoon round from the morning round. It seemed like there was so much attention paid to. You could play the ninth hole from, you know, I think we played a 90 degree difference. You played straight on to the left side of that green or from the left side hitting kind of down the line with the slope to your left to it. And it just seemed like there was a ton of thought that went into the different ways you could play a whole

if you were playing a 36 whole day or the different T-boxes you could use or make up your own routing. Is that fair to say? Certainly, yeah. And the ninth hole is those T locations were just there in the natural landscape. And you know, we just leveled off some of those, you know, those little mounds and hills and stuff and created and we had the opportunity to do that and being a part three, you want to have more T space if you can because there's more divots, right? It's a short, it was a short part three, too. So you got a lot of short short irons hitting in there and so you wanted to have that opportunity to try and provide different things and if you came there with the group of guys and the morning you play the south orientation on nine and in the afternoon you play the west orientation it's a little different difference in length it's a little different orientation depending on the win that day sometimes the win turns

around so for morning to afternoon, that can happen. And I think, you know, there's five par threes on the on the golf course. So the night toll has the the south T's that's the only south to north orientation from a from a par three. So, you know, if you had to play one, you know, for a tournament or something like that, I think that gives more variety, but the West T's are super fun and You know, they're great also. So, you know, it's it's serving its purpose pretty well. It's a special special place and that I promise I'm gonna let you out of here soon

We just played so many darn courses of yours on this trip It takes a while to get through here But the last one and we and we topped off the trip at Greywalls up on the upper peninsula. This is a course that I have to admit, I think I was beat down on the trip by the time we got to it, and I would love a second shot at it.

So I'll say this, would you consider Greywalls to be polarizing, or more polarizing than some of your other designs? Not usually. Okay. I think it's very different. It is. Because the UP has got some really, you know, it's got some very terrain and crazy stuff going on. So, it's a big property, 200 feet in elevation. So, you know, pretty extreme in that regards. And, you know, how do you compress that into it? And then you've, you know, pretty extreme in that regards and, you know, how do you compress that into it?

And then you've, you know, all over the property you've got, you know, you've got 50, 60-foot granite walls and you've got rock outcropping, sticking out of the middle of a fairway here or there. Those are just sort of natural features that you can blast them, but they're really unique. So how can we try and integrate that stuff and get those things into fit into a golf course? And that was a real challenge, but it also gave you some very definite limitations and stuff. So like, hey, that's such a great natural feature.

I don't wanna disturb it if I can. How can we use that as as an element of the golf hole? For instance on the fourth hole, there's sort of this this big high upper left plateau for the fairway and then there's sort of a lower one on the right that bends out and you can't even see some of that because of the angle where you come in from the green because there's a rock out crapping that kind of sticks out short of that and then there's a there's a rock out crapping that separates the two. It's a medium-long par four. The left side of the hole is just hillside where there's rocks and trees and things like that. And right the green

sort of sets on a flatter plateau and behind it there's a there's a big rock face that's maybe 40 50 feet tall but it's well past you know it's past the green and things like that. But that center rock outcropping that separates the the upper left plateau and the lower right plateau Separates that provides for definition, but you also can get a really weird bounce You know, hopefully you don't but if you you know if you're a bit hitter you can crest that upper left fairway And you can have a short iron in and if you're you know if you're a slicer of the ball, a lot of average golfers are, you're probably going to end up in the lower fairway on the right and still have a pretty

good angle straight up at the green. So there were ways of dealing with that and keeping those types of things in there. There also was a knob, there was a little, there was a very small sort of rock out crappin' about 25 yards short of the green. And we had that, that was one of the four little places where we blasted, we, you know, we put charges in the ground and blasted that rock out because that one sort of obscured the green from the lower right section of the fairway. And that, that was sort of like like that's kind of the safe drive, right? And so I was like, we got to get that out of there. You know, can we do that?

And they blasted that out and then we put soil over it. And you know, it ends up working out really, really well. So there were compromises that you had to make. There were certain things that you had to do because of just the way the train was. And that leads to a really unusual sort of collection and certain things that are kind of crazy that you're just aren't gonna see on another golf course.

Yeah, there was so many holes on that golf course that I, like that stretch from 4, 5, and 6 is what I'm thinking of the most in terms of the way those rock outcroppings are used. That fifth hole, I wanted to hit that shot about 50 times. It was one of those where I had a weird sense on the tee that I was like, you know what? I know. I think I need to go so much further left with this.

If I want to put it on the green, then it probably looks like it to my eye from the tee. And yeah, I just had never seen a golf course that included so much, you know, rock outcroppings in the places that it had and how just bold the terrain was at that place. It was just, it was, like I said, like you said, I guess very different than what the rest of your golf courses that we played on this trip. And I was just curious as to, you know, one, do you have video of all the times you use charges to blow up stuff? Well, I'd love to see some of those.

Uh, I never did, no, I never, never took a video of that. I mean, when that stuff happens, you don't want to be near it. You want to, you want to be safely away. Cause, you know, things can happen. It's, it's mother nature. So it is a bit difficult, but, um, that was very, um, you know, know, we only spent $27,000 in blasting, I think. And that's not much at all. You know, blasting is pretty expensive. It's really expensive fireworks. So compared to other projects, we did really quite well with regards to that, budgetary-wise.

And then also kind of retaining the character of, you know, those unique features that are there. And that takes the place of, you know, bunkers and other types of things that, you know, might be, you know, there's, there are some creak crossings, but they're not necessarily right next to a green or anything on the golf course. But only 38 bunkers, or maybe 36 bunkers there and I think rock out crowd. I don't know, I haven't counted all the rock out crappings else. There's probably at least 40 out rock out crappings too. Depending on how many you counter, you know, five big ones and, you know,

I don't know how many small ones maybe. Yeah, so that place gets real, real firm. I would love to see how far some of those drives would go or how challenging that golf course would play because it's dramatic terrain and some big ups and downs. I mean, I imagine that's got to be one of your most challenging construction projects to date. Is that fair to say? Oh, yeah, certainly.

Yeah, very difficult. The amazing thing is despite all the rock that's everywhere, there are places where you could move over and you could just put the dipper down on the excavator and you'd hit pure sand for as far as you could dig. So the whole lower south end of the property, hole is 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, that's all smaller, 13, 14, 16, that's all smaller, ungelating, rolling, you know, really, really good golf land. You know, it doesn't have the rock, the rock outcrapings are sort of north of that on the right

side of 16 and then further north. But that's, you know, that's just, that's just pure butter down there. That stuff's really great. And so we fortunately that we had that opportunity to use that material for greens mix and for you know places where there might be rock that we wanted to cover or have some cushion over. That made you know construction really well. So the property drains really well. Turf agronomically works really well and it's amazing to think that you know you wouldn't think that with all the rock everywhere that you could grow grass but Craig does a phenomenal job and you know he gets a lot there's a lot of play there so long long daylight hours and far north and on the western end of the eastern time zone so they're putting carts away at quarter to 11 at night because it's

just that busy yeah and you, it's spectacular views. Yeah. We need some more time up in the UP. I think it two weeks on the road to have that one as our anchor. I know I have for one probably didn't appreciate it as much as I as I as I probably should have and just looking at pictures right now. I want to get back and hit some of those shots again. So they got they got the old course there too, which is really I know. Yeah, the original original nine by Langford and Marrow has been helping Craig just mark things out. And when he gets a chance, he's he's been mowing those out. And those are really phenomenal, you know, on a par with with Lasoni the links. holes. I mean, it's it's it's really a neat place. Fantastic area. It really is.

Well, with that, we're going to get you out of here, Mike. I greatly, greatly appreciate you coming on the podcast, sharing some stories for spending the day with us up at Kingsley and really adding a ton of insight into our video project and this complimentary feature to it as well. And I'm excited. Excited for the world to see it. If you're listening to this past, you know,

December of 2021, it's out there. And you can watch it on our YouTube channel. If you listen to it as it comes out, it'll be featured several several weeks coming here on YouTube on Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. And they'll live there forever. So thanks again for everything, Mike, and hope we cross paths soon. And I hope it's, I hope it's down to seven mile beach. And I'll get on a dozer if you still need to work. Absolutely. We got to get you down there. Get the whole crew down there. We got rakes and shovels we can have you use to. That's a problem. That detail work. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's really fun. Loved what you guys do and it was really fun being out there with you when you played Kingsley and and glad you got around see some of the great stuff

We have in Michigan here. Well next time make sure no no jet skis or whatever Water skiing put you out in there so you couldn't play with Yeah, that that was that was yeah, definitely. I'm off the injured reserve now, so we're all we're all good Appreciate that, thanks. Thanks, here. So thanks, get Michael Chatsune to take care. All right, cheers. Cheers.

Give it a big, right club. Be the right club today. Yes. Yeah. That is better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most.