00:00The point you make, too, about the grasses and the visual nature of a course restoration, taking it back to
00:06its original roots, where I feel like some of the things that I find most intriguing on Ross Courses, and
00:11a lot of this we've kind of dug into as we prepare for our own restoration next year, is that
00:16there are, of course, bunkers like the one you just mentioned, the cross bunker at one, that PGA Tour pros
00:21actually have to think about and get a number on and figure out how they're going to avoid it or
00:25really kind of push it up on either side.
00:29Or play it short of that, things like that.
00:31But there are also so much of the bunkering that Ross did was just creating visual discomfort off of tees
00:38and kind of trying to force you, not dissimilar to a lot of stuff that Alistair McKenzie did, but just
00:42kind of forcing you into these uncomfortable feelings on the tee to really make it a more challenging shot, even
00:48if some of those bunkers or hazards didn't really come into play.
00:50And then I thought that, you know, for a lot of courses that did kind of get botched in their
00:55restoration or renovation efforts, you lost so much of the intrigue of the approach shot, because it boils down to
01:02short bad, center of the green good, long bad.
01:05Whereas instead, now you look at some of the hole locations at Detroit Golf Club today, or the work that
01:10Gil Hanson down at Seminole, and it's like, so they have like four or five different, really interesting hole locations.
01:17And you really standing over that approach shot thinking about, okay, you know, the wind's doing this, but like, if
01:22I end up on the wrong side of this thing, I'll be lucky to two putt, like might as well
01:25mark down a three putt.
01:26I think that is very, very cool. And it is cool to, you know, it's, it's interesting later in the
01:33show, we're going to talk about the future of the PGA tour and the destinations are trying to go to.
01:38And, you know, we're talking, we were losing this event, you know, at a classic Donald Ross course, we lost
01:43Sony. We're not gonna see that anymore. Seth Rayner course, it kind of bums me out that you're losing these
01:49classics that have these really old school architectural feel.
01:53There's less and less on the PGA tour these days. You know, it's, it kind of just made me start
01:57thinking about just golf courses in general, thinking about courses like the one we go in Houston, Memorial Park doesn't
02:06have hardly any bunkers out there.
02:08They pretty much have the whole design catered around it being a second shot golf course with the movement around
02:14the greens and the distance in which you're going to be playing into the greens, which is fairly long for
02:18the most part.
02:19Um, and then you go to the other side of the coin of what we were just talking about with
02:23the Donna Ross course that, you know, you're standing on a tee and, you know, the fairway may be 40
02:29yards wide, but you're sitting on the team.
02:30You're like, there, there might be like seven yards of fairway that I feel like I'm looking at here and
02:35there, and there's not a wrong answer of, of which one is right.
02:39Because I've played, you know, sometimes on golf courses, the best hole on the course is the hole that doesn't
02:46have a fairway bunker or a bunker on the hole in itself.
02:49You know, I grew up on a course where Jack Nicholas's best hole was our fourth hole and there wasn't
02:53a bunker on the hole.
02:54And now it was tree line and we had a tornado roll through.
02:57And so things have changed out of that hole, but, uh, it just made me think about, you know, what
03:03I prefer in a golf hole.
03:05You know, there's especially in all these restorations and, and new designs that we're seeing and just what architects tend
03:12to prefer.
03:13And I'm not saying that again, that there is a right or wrong answer, but I do like a mix
03:19of both.
03:20You know, I like, I hate feeling uncomfortable on the tee where I feel like I'm being squeezed, but I
03:24also love when architects are able to just do it with angles, right?
03:29If you're able to, you know, make you challenge up one side of the fairway to give yourself a better
03:35angle into a, a green that's more shallow or more diagonal versus more and more that has a run up
03:41area.
03:41Uh, you know, that's like another cool aspect of what I like in golf architecture too.
03:46It's like a good mix of both.
03:47I, I don't like to feel squeezed on every hole, but if you're able to like mix in a little
03:54bit of, of, of both, that's where I'm, I'm like, yeah, give me some of that.
03:59Oh, I think, I think for a lot of people, the, the, the test boils most simply down to like,
04:04if I leave this golf course, how many holes can I remember?
04:07You know, that, that kind of makes the course, how long is it going to stick in my brain?
04:10Did I like it?
04:11Did I not like it?
04:11And so I always feel like playing courses where there is a, your wheels are turning a lot over every
04:17shot.
04:18So we're talking about bunkers placement off of T's where you're really like, Oh, like I know the angle of
04:24the hole.
04:25I should go over there, but that looks right.
04:27You need a yardage book too.
04:28But I think I just, in general, I make it as much more simplified, you know, that, that it really
04:33is.
04:34But in general, it's like, if I'm thinking a lot before every shot, I'm really trying to feel like, you
04:39know, I can't just hit, hit driver anywhere.
04:42And then like, yeah, you can, this is kind of what you want to do on the green, but you're
04:45pretty safe everywhere.
04:46Like that course is going to exit my mind pretty quickly.
04:48Whereas like the fact that I'm thinking about all these shots and the way I want to hit them, you
04:53leave, you're like that, that course is serious.
04:55It's weird into my memory just because I went through the process on each hole in such great depth and
05:00detail.
05:00So yeah, it's, I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's like when I leave a golf course and it's so
05:07often you hear somebody say, you know, if I just had one more round at this place, I'd be able
05:11to figure it out.
05:12Yeah.
05:13I, I oftentimes think that when I say that about a place, like half the time, I mean it half
05:19the time.
05:20I don't, the other half I'm thinking like, I don't think really it was that great of a golf course.
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