00:00:00
Speaker 1: When Mike Kaiser opened Abandoned Dunes in nineteen ninety nine, his son Michael was eighteen years old. Michael went on to play a key role in the expansion of the Kaiser family's dream golf empire. He and his brother Chris oversaw the development of Sand Valley in Wisconsin, which turned into one of the most architecturally experimental golf resorts in the country. Now, Michael is creating three new resorts of his own, all opening within the next year and a half or so. There's Wildspring Dunes in East Texas, There's Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, and Old Shores in the Florida Panhandle. Meanwhile, Michael is supporting a few municipal golf projects in his home state of Wisconsin, so he's got a lot going on. These are big, legacy defining moves, and I'm curious to find out how he views this new phase of his development career, what he's borrowing from the past, and how he's trying to innovate. But most of all, I want to know more about what these new places are going to look like. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing golf.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Michael.
00:01:23
Speaker 1: Welcome to the pod. Thanks for being here, Thanks for having me Garrett. So you've been very busy, or at least it looks that way to me. You've got a number of projects underway, including a few that are finishing up and even opening soon. So I thought it would be a great time to bring you back on the pod and talk about everything that's going on in your world. Why don't we start by talking about wild Spring Dunes in East Texas, which has its grand opening as I understand it, on Friday, September eighth. So could you tell me about this, uh, this property in general? What what what makes this play special?
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Speaker 3: It's interesting because it's it's the one that sort of I've gotten involved in most recently, and it's the furthest along right now. So it's it's it's so it's strange to me that Rodeo Dunes has been eight years in the making, in old Chore six years and uh, you know Texas, things really move quickly. So it was one when I first heard about it, I was reluctant to take on because I quite quite a bit on my plate and wasn't looking for another project. And you know, when Brett, who found the site originally reached out. I just said I didn't even want to see it. His partner flew up to Madison and convinced me to at least come down and see the property. And I did, and I fell in love with it, and UH couldn't couldn't say no to it, even though it was probably the prudent UH decision. It's such a unique property. It certainly different than any site that I have worked on, but I think it's really distinct, you know, in golf, and it has qualities from a lot of different places that I love and they all sort of come together in one routing. So when I first got down to the property and Brett showed me around, we walked through some of those different environmental elements. And at the time, there were three golf courses routed on the property, and they each used one or two of these areas, which I'll describe in a minute. But what I said was, if I'm going to get involved, we have to create that super course, right, use all of these environments and go in and out of them and explore them. And at the time, that meant there's only gonna be one golf course. So we went from three golf courses to one super golf course. We're now back to three and I'll get to that. But you know, this land has some very sort of gentle open sandy ground in the center of it that is a little bit like Pinehurst. It has these really sharp, deep ravines that cut in and out of the property that remind me so much of shore Acres where I've played a lot of golf. Uh, and I've learned a lot about architecture through the agronomy changes that happened under Brian Palmer. Uh. You know, the depth and size of those are so familiar to me through through I might have such chicagoff shore acres.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: Just to clarify, Yeah, you did say Short Acres, which by the way, is in the suburbs of Chicago. Seth Rayner course. Yeah, Mike Michigan.
00:04:40
Speaker 3: Fantastic, fantastic content on those ravines. It has some bigger some some bigger bold landforms that reminded me a lot of Pine Pine Valley. And it even has a hole that is inspired, you know, by the Second Hole fame. You know, I guess they're all famous at Pine Valley, but the Second Pine Valley. It had some ridges that remind me a lot of sand Valley right, these big sort of dune ridges that and then it has this massive dune in the center where Tom's course starts and ends. So tying those all together, Tom developed a new routing that does such a you know, it goes from that dune to the meadow, to the pine valley to the meadow, there's a couple of these ravines introduced along the way, then goes into you know ravine, Pine valley, little meadow finished with ravine. So it's just this great way of going in and out of these ecosystems and coming back at them from a new perspective that I think is required for a really outstanding routing. And I think Tom's routing is outstanding.
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Speaker 1: And for those who don't know your Tom refers to Tom Doak, who's doing the first course at at well it's being nuts.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for clarifying. So that's the first course we did end up finding. It was right under our nose, but adjacent property that is totally different from the first really leans into into these big, bold, even boulder ravines. It's in a really exciting way. Bill Cors and Ben Crunshaw are working on that project. And then some fairways that have some neat you know, tilt and then crowns to them. And then this wonderful, delightful surprise we discovered as we've been opening up the routing is some smaller micro contours in the fairway that are really interesting, so it's completely different than than Tom's. And then through some acquisition, thinking about a third course which we've been talking informally with Jim Craig about that has a lot of those ravines and and some neat hills, but will really be a more intimate, compact routing. The first two are similar to a lot of things we've done where they're sprawling. You know, I talked about Tom's gobbling up three courses with of land bills. Is not all that different. That third course is tight, and it's intimate, and it's over similarly exciting terrain, but it's pretty wide open and you're gonna see a lot of golf and golfers around you while you're playing. Let me just cruise through these courses and then I'm sure you have questions, but you know, after that, we're planning a twelve our course, you know, similar in par and length and whole number to the commons that's something I really want to incorporate at each of these sites I'm working on. Uh. And then Clyde Johnson has developed this really school putting course. You know, these putting courses you know, sprouted up during the Victorian era, which was quite a long wayne and it you know in these you know Victorian bath you know, on beach places. And we think of putting courses like the Himalayas or the punch Ball or the Rockies we're doing out it Dunes. But there's a lot more variety in those early ones. Uh. There I see this great really old black and white photo. There was one on the roof of a building. You know. They were There's a lot more variety and and and some of them played through these formal gardens where there was you know, a garden on either side of the hole. So we have this beautiful meadow at wild Spring Dunes and Clyde has routed a thirty six hole course that plays through this meadow where each putting hole is contained. It looks like a miniature golf hole, and I think that's where this term miniature golf you know, came from. So something that's really different, really fun, you know, it's right in the heart of the village. We've designed so golfers could just go out in the afternoon and put and have fun. So that's that's sort of the golf of Wild Spring Dunes.
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Speaker 1: You've worked with Tom Doak and Corn Crunshaw now on a number of different projects each. I wonder at this point if you have some ideas about what differentiates the two of them, you know, the differences that you see in their working methods and their design styles both at Wild Spring Dunes and and elsewhere that you've worked with them.
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean that's remind me of the two, but it's methods and styles that the methods are, you know, completely different, and obviously they're both. They both deliver at such high levels that there's not a better or worse method. But you know, Bill's a grinder, so he just grinds through routings, you know, over years, and trip after trip after trip after trip that continues on while he's building the course in you know, layer cakes, you know, layer at a time, just little moves that are constant and relentless. So that's like a broad way of describing, you know, his methodology. And I'll come back to elaborate on that. You know, Tom you know, generally gets his routing pretty far along, you know, on paper on topo certainly confirms that in the field, and then like at All Shores, there's been some routing changes as we've you know, begun begun the project. But his shaping methodology is compact and intense, and I call I describe it, and I'd say this to him as a feeding frenzy. So they bring in the whole renaissance team. You know, the last time Tom and I were on site of Old Shores, Eric Iverson was there, Brian Slonik was there, Clyde Johnson was there, and Angela was there, and for seven or eight days they just all shaped like crazy and Tom's jumping around editing. Oh I should add that Tom's now started shaping. His first green in a long time was the fifteenth at Sedge Valley and then he worked with Brian at High Point a lot and now a hole that seems to be everybody's favorite hole at Old Shores is one that Tom shaped. So those are five people going around the clock for seven or eight days, very different than you know, a green is shaped in eight days where you know, we worked on the ninth Green at Royo Dunes for well over a year. And you know, probably right, there's just little you know, taking away little pieces, adding little pieces really slow and steady, that Bill's sort of grinding method. So their methods are wildly different. What was the second part of it?
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Speaker 1: You said, design styles is what I was also interested in. But really you can take this those are kind of my two suggestions. But you already have such interesting thoughts about the differences between these two architecture firms that yeah, I'd just be interested in general.
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Speaker 3: I mean, I think, you know, on design style, I think they would say, like, we don't have a design style, right right. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Bill Krr especially always sort of resists that yeah kind of question. He always says, you know, I'm land first. The style is whatever, but the land is the thing.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: With that said, there are some themes, you know, that we could talk about. And you know, I start with fairways and I saw this, you know, caddying at pac Dunes and you know, spend a year at Barn Google and I mean Tom does very little with this wild ground, like he just sort of he really leaves it alone. I mean, far more than Bill and Ben so sort of up into the green. Tom does very little. Bill. You know they're minimalists, but you know they say in their company sometimes you have to move a lot of sand to make it look like you moved a little bit. He's much more inclined to you know, the tenth hole at Sand Valley, that left side came up eight feet, you know, cut four feet off. So it's all based off of the ground that's there, and it's not a massive construction project. But Sand Valley we have one or two dump trucks work in every day, you know, in fairways, whereas Tom might dump a little sand for the greens, but you're not seeing dump trucks, you know, doing big cuts and fills in the fairways. So stylistically what that means in Tom's architecture, I see a lot more, you know, quirky, rough wild shapes that are what's the I'm trying to think of the the word in music, but where it's sort of left hanging right. And Bill, I think Radio Dunes is a big exception. And I want to share a conversation Bill and I had when I was seeing for the first time the second Hole in Scotland at cool Links and I sat there and it was so odd and off balance and outstanding, and I said, you know, Bill, I think this is one of the best holes in Scotland, certainly one of the most original holes I've seen a long time. And I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but when I think of your architecture, I think of perfect balance and harmony, and I think of one of those Calder sculptures, you know, those aerials, and if you've seen them, the color of a painter and a sculpture, and they hang from the ceiling and they don't go like this, They balance, And I just feel like if you took his bunkering and shapes and connected them through rods and held them on a string, they would just balance. The scales would balance evenly, whereas toms might tip over a little bit. So I said that, you know to Bill, and you just sort of nodded. And the next time I saw him at Rodeo Dunes, the you know, the routing, he blew it up and sort of, you know, nine of the holes were new, and this is after he'd been working on it for several years and made a lot of changes. And one of the things I asked, you know, Bill and John Hawker to do it Rodeo was to leave some of those awkward shapes alone. So I actually think a lot of his fairways remind me a lot at Rodeo Dunes feel like Tom Doak fairways. Stylistically, you know, just a big, huge mound in the set of the fairway. We didn't have to cut it down and raise the hole. It's just you know, it's it's it's it's dramatic or if there's if there's a shape. You know, in the first hole, there's a big mound that's too steep to mow in front of the first green, So instead of smoothing it out and making it fairy, just left it alone as this native area that sticks into the hole. So stylistically, I think every one of the courses are so different. But I think those are maybe because Tom moves less in the fairway and Bill and Ben tend to move a little more. You see some differences in the fairways, you know, getting you know, Rucker style is different for every project. For both of them green shapes, I h I don't want to speak. I don't think I could speak eloquently, and you know, really comparing and contrasting they're greens. But I would say that Bill finishes every green himself. And I think one of the things he does, maybe better than anybody on the planet is like when you have a twelve foot putt, you're never confident with the line. Is I mean, it's just like it's always like is it breaking a cup or might have just straightened out at the end. Like that's where Bill comes in and as those shapes that are so beguiling, right, And some people might not like that. I love it because it's not just like up there's a line, it's a cup and a half to left. If I hit it, I know what's going in. You're always left wondering until that ball drops in the cup, right, And I think that's a maybe that I know about Bill's green's you know, speaking as a collection, I don't if I haven't processed that information yet.
00:18:14
Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America or GCSAA. GCSAA supports more than twenty one thousand members worldwide, from superintendents and equipment managers to students and educators. Celebrating it's one hundredth anniversary this year. GCSAA continues to ensure that its members are on the forefront of research, education, innovation, and advocacy through a range of programs and services. Its mission is to serve its members, advance the profession and improve communities through the enjoyment, growth, and vitality of the game of golf. You can learn more about how GCSAA is keeping the game on course for the next one hundred years at g c s A a dot org. So, I think I just remembered the musical term you were searching for, Michael. It might be dissonance to describe Tom Dooke's willingness to let things kind of clash or or you know, let there be some awkwardness or some loose ends, or or you know, little just little jagged corners of things. Whereas you know, what what makes Bill Correr's work, finish work so remarkable is how harmonious it is, right, how balanced everything is, and it's beautiful. But it's it's really interesting that that you've kind of pushed him recently to to consider leaving some things maybe a little bit more unfinished, just to just to try to find something new in there. I think that's really interesting.
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Speaker 3: And it's it's unresolved, right. Sometimes this is just unresolved in music. Yeah, and it doesn't take a lot of encouragement. I mean, Bill is so fun to work with because he he just loves anything to riff off of, give me anything. There's a pile of garbage, Okay, I'll make that. He he's he's he's like Miles Davis, you know, and so he's great, Yeah, let's go with that. And he's gonna make that brilliant, which makes you know, somebody throwing something out feel great. There's that. This this story about Herbie Hancock was playing with Miles Davis and uh, you know, they were they were jamming and Herbie just hit a note that was like way off right and mouth Davis was a strict task master, so he thought for sure, like this isn't gonna go well, I'm gonna get fired. I mean, just bullivant, just like whoops. And he said that. Miles Davis started put his trumpet down a little bit and was just thinking, and then when he started up again, he made Herbie's note right. You know, he made it work right. And that's like Bill, like, give him anything. I could say, Oh, I don't want to touch these mountains, and you know, he might be thinking, well, that's garbage, but he's but then he's like, I'm gonna make that right, right, And that's what he does. And that's why he's so so fun to work with, because there's almost nothing you can't throw out at him that he could make right and make it, you know, right.
00:21:43
Speaker 1: He's always working with what. What he's given in a very interesting way, is what he bases everything on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, we've already sort of talked a little bit about it. But the next project of yours that I love to talk about is Rodeo Dunes in Colorado. The first course, as you mentioned, was designed by Corn Crenshaw. It's on schedule for an opening next year. I believe the preview play has been has been happening for a while. You you told me about the land at wild Spring Dunes. What kind of land are you working with at Rodeo Dunes. What's special about it?
00:22:24
Speaker 3: We're in some choppy sand dunes, right, which is sort of ideal ground to build a golf course upon. It, particularly where Bill's course heads and Jimmy's. It struck, you know, my first impression was. It reminded me of Western Ireland, right, just big, huge, bold movements that I hadn't seen you know here, you know before. One of the things that some he pointed out to me, and he was right, is that when we do have those valleys, they tend to be wider. You get into some valleys, what's the course not well, Carn's a good example of it. But also and it's grown. Well, you're playing with the in these amazing dunes, but you know, they come down in the fairway and some of them get a little tight, and then it's very steep and sharp. So we have these big movements, but then space within them, and within that space you're allowed to make more interesting angles. So I just played Bill and Dunn's course for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I knew I loved it. There's such enormous variety, like no two holes are alike, right, and the angles of the routing are so amazing, And so I knew all the things I loved about it without playing it. What blew me away was how amazingly important those angles are. And even though it's a wildly different golf course, I had the same joy from it that I get playing the lido where it's so wide. I mean, Bill build a resort course in the wind, so it has a lot of width, but the angles aret but are so important and I just loved that that. You know, the people I were playing against the there's a fifth hole and the pin was on the left side, and their layup it's part five, was a little a little sloppy, and they're left with a shot where the ball, you know, they have a wedge in the ball's now running away from them, so they want to land short of the pin, but they could clip a dune that's in the way really hard up and down. If you come in from the right, it sort of goes on. You get a little back forward like you're attacking it. So that's just one example of an angle where it's like, okay, you got to lay up off of an awkward lie so it's not just an easy five iron layup. And depending on where the pit, when the pin's right there, you want to come in from way left. So I guess going back to the site, you know, Ireland and big and bold, but with with there's also huge variety out there. There's a site I really like to build on that a lot more Scottish, right, just like smaller you know, Microw really perfect for golf. So it's not all just huge and big and bold. There's an area to the north that is little more hilly, a little more at sand hillsy you know, but with some chop mixed in it. So I think you'll find a lot of variety from one course to the next. Gym's routing plays on top of these plateaus a little more than Bill's. The greens are more short grass around them, where Bill's greens, you know, sit in you know, pockets a little more so amazing chop, but extraordinary variety within that chop.
00:26:03
Speaker 1: You've mentioned the second course at Rodeo Dunes, which is being designed by Jim Craig, longtime associate of Corn Crenshaw, somebody that you've worked with quite a bit at this point. Jim Craig was one of the driving forces behind the Sandbox at sand Valley, shaping a lot of those greens, and they are truly a fantastic set of greens. He was also behind the recent recently opened twelve hole golf course the Commons at sand Valley. Now you're working with him at Rodeo Dunes.
00:26:37
Speaker 3: Again.
00:26:38
Speaker 1: What excites you about about Jim Craig's approach to golf architecture.
00:26:44
Speaker 3: There's a lot of I mean, he was metored by Bill and Ben, so there's so much of that, you know, improv in him. And what they do so well is they don't hold onto ideas, right like, they let ideas evolve and flow. And that's just fun creatively to to for ideas to evolve. And similar to Bill, like he could make any idea great. So it's really fun for me. I feel very involved collaborative in it. But he's the one who really makes these ideas out outstanding. So I and and he and I just I like, I like his company, right, We have a great ban tour and we tease each other and it's just it's really fun. You know, Cummins was almost completely manufactured, which is extraordinary. You know. Now he's given a perfect site, right and we're given a perfect site and room to go wherever he wants. And uh, I'm excited for people to see what he could do with that when he when he when you know his restraint, you know what what it's sort of the opposite of the comments, like you know, it's the route and then restraining some of some of the movement. So I'm excited. Uh, I'm forgetting the question a little bit, but I'm his routing is so good. It's so different from bills. It's really playful and whimsical, you know. I think there's six part threes. We had no idea when when it was being routed, but somebody just added it up. You know. It's like sixty six hundred from the tips. We talked a lot about North Barrick when we were building, you know, building it and just creating fun holes, you know, I mean that that whole perfection, which we have a hole inspired by that. I think it's the fourteenth at North Barrick. You just hit that wedge over the hill and it runs down.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, the blind the blind approach shot. Yeah, I kind of is that an amazing golf al I don't know, but it sure is a lot of fun, you know. Like so we're just going out there trying to find really fun, unusual holes with shots that just in different ways are just fun.
00:29:01
Speaker 3: Right he is the seventh. The eighth hole is you know, really inspired by the ninth at Cypress Point, right in this huge dune like Cypress and then a huge drop off, you know behind it. Cypress drops off behind it, but that's not really in play. This one, you know's a little more in play. So just a lot of really fun shots was the goal.
00:29:29
Speaker 1: What are some of the future plans that you have at Rodeo Dunes that that you can tell me about at this point?
00:29:36
Speaker 3: Sure? Well, to start, we just grasped our putting course, which we're gonna call the Rockies right where you see the Rockies from the Himalaya's best putting course, uh, you know at St. Andrew's there. So I'm excited for people to play that. It's sort of a perfect putting course site. It's the seven acres contained bowl in the dunes with the backdrop of the Rockies. We could have just seated it without doing any work and it would have been great. We asked Clyde to sharpen some of those movements a little bit. We're gonna run it a little slower on the stemp, you know, the him Malayas probably ruins it like a six or seven, you know, and because of that, you could have far more severe contours that are just to me more fun that some of our modern putting courses over here, which run at a ten, eleven or twelve a just less less fun than these, these just sharp shapes. It that the MLA is. So I'm excited about that. We have a twelve hole routing. I don't want to announce the architect, but a twelve all routing playing out of you know this this first core gym and Go and Ben share a tea going in opposite directions. The putting courses right below it in the twelfth hole tease off eighty yards away. So that's what we have in the works. After that, you know where, we were going into these huge hills and dunes, and they recently I've been thinking about going sort of in the other direction, more towards these more subtle gentle call them Scottish dunes, because because the first two play through such big stuff, I think it might be nice to go in the other direction after that. A lot of ideas, but nothing I'm actively working on. But we have a lot of land. It's all great, and there seems to be tremendous demand for rodeo, so I think I hope we're gonna be able to keep going at a pretty good clip.
00:31:44
Speaker 1: All right. The final project resort project that is that that I want to talk with you about is old Chores in the Florida Panhandle. What made you want to build golf on on this piece of land? You know, from my perspective, just look looking at it and maybe you can tell me that that that I'm wrong about this. It seems like an unusual piece of land for you to build golf on it. You know, Wild Spring Dunes maybe reminds me in some ways of a heathland site or you know, kind of sandy inland site, Pinehursty, Pine Valley. Those are the kind of references you mentioned there. And then Rodeo Dunes is classic, classic Duneland golf. Old Shore seems to be a little bit different. So so tell me about that site and what interests you about it.
00:32:35
Speaker 3: It is so different and it's it's so hard to compare it, and that's part of what I like about it. It's as distinctive site as I've ever seen, forget put aside the golf, just visually when you're there, you've never seen any place like it, with these sink with these massive you know sinkholes and lakes that you know, rise and fall over the years. And you know, river goes through the routing and these massive prairies. It's so unusual, and so many people ask like where am I. You know, it's really hard to place because it's so unusual. And the question we've been asking a lot is it's more like when am I? It feels like it doesn't feel like it's of this time even, you know, like maybe we go back, you know, five million years, and this is what a landscape might look like on this, you know, the shores of you know, that continent. So it's just so distinct, and it's also so beautiful, this white sand with all these sharp, crispy, you know, varieties of green punctuated by the colors in our prairies which were restoring, and then the live oaks and the long leaf pines and the water. It's just so beautiful and it's a place I just keep wanting to go back to, just to spend time in the landscape. When Tom finished his routing and I walked it, I was like, con that's you know, and I think this speaks to the site and his routing. I was like, if we don't build a golf course here, I would love to just start every day off with that walk. It's so delightful the way you navigate this distinct piece of ground. So it always started with the beauty and how unique it was. You know, a lot of it when we first got involved, were covered in pine, and then it went to that prairie that we've restored, and then it went to mow down fair ways. Ooh, were starting to see it, and then to the sand. And as we got closer and closer to the ground, it was clear to me that the ground was getting better and better in terms of the quality of the golf. So the way I perceive the ground for golf now I think it's incredible. When I started, I'm like this is really cool and it's different, and now I'm like, this is amazing. You know, it has You're not going to believe how much contour, how much movement there is that it's in Florida, has these wonderful crowns down into these sinkholes, wonderful tilts. It's just it's really neat. It's dramatic. You know, there's a wedge over you know, like this island lake. There's a whole like Cyper sixteen where you hitting a three wood, you know, over the water to you know, peninsula. It's very dramatic the second course. So that that's that's Tom's just a quick preview of the second course. Uh. You know, Brian Schneider used to mow greens at Augusta National. And Josh Pettitt has that great book on alistair.
00:35:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, The Mackenzie Reader is the compendium of Alistair McKenzie writings.
00:35:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, and about the time he's publishing that, I think there are a lot of conversations about, you know, the evolution of Augusta and you and Andy I think it a great podcast on it. And so when we were talking about that second site just has enormous movement. Right the tenth that Augusta drops one hundred and ten feet right before it comes up to the green. We have movement like that in the fairways. Right. So what I asked Brian is what if we built a golf course that was like post Perry Maxwell Augusta ninth, Augusta nineteen thirty eight. Right, that's what we're shooting for on this site. And that's what he's been asked to deliver. And he has a really cool routing and it's it's gonna be wide there's gonna be fewer bunkers than you'd see in today's Augusta. It's gonna have you know, some some wild greens, but there's gonna be you know, just like Augusta, not every hole drops eighty feet or climbs up, you know, like the eighth or the ninth. You know there holes like five that you know, play along, you know the plateau there. But but it's gonna be big and bold, and but we're gonna keep it rough, you know, like like maybe the very original Augustca where they're like twenty bunkers and they're just scraggly and rough. And so that's our inspiration for the second course. We've designed this village that you've talked about, which I'd love to go into more detail, but in this walking village, you will be able to walk very short distances to the first tee of those two golf courses. We're about to start in the center of the village. We're about to start sodding our children's course, which is a nine hole golf course in the center of town. Right that's gonna have a children's membership that's gonna be incredibly affordable, but it's also gonna be fun. If me and Andy went out without without kids, we're gonna have a blast playing it. It will feel a lot more like a par three, right, but there are neat holes like the second where it's one eighty five. But the kid who takes this driver way out to the left and pitches in might win with his four, whereas unless we hit a great five iron, we could get into a lot of trouble. So if you play it as a par four, you're going to win a lot of the you know, and it's a stroke call, you're going to win a lot of the holes. So that's also in the center of town, also walkable. We're gonna have a twelve o golf course and a par three. So in this village inspired by some of my favorite places in Scotland, you'll be able to walk to all those golf courses, in your restaurants and your room. Uh. And it's going to be really different and I'm just excited about that overall experience. You're also going to be able to jump on a horse or go fat tire biking or hiking on this sixty five thousand acre you know, primordial uh property.
00:38:55
Speaker 1: This land plan idea that you have for old Chores is really interesting to me because it's not just about the architecture of the golf courses now right. You're you're really thinking through the landscape design, I guess, or even the the urban design, so to speak of of this central village where you, I guess you've basically created a kind of walkable or are creating a walkable city where where people don't have to use cars to get from place to place. And it all feels very very centered and intimate.
00:39:29
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: You mentioned that the the inspiration here might be some uh some some Scottish towns or uh, you know, things that you've seen overseas. Uh what what specifically made you want to focus on on this aspect of of old chores.
00:39:46
Speaker 3: So it started with old chores where I was forced into that. I have a partner at Old Chores who prefers to remain unnamed for now, and he's he's a he's an urbanist and when we met, he wasn't a golfer, didn't even like the idea of golf. But he's acquiring these large tracks where he plans to build walk up. He hates sprawl and he wants to build these walkable cities ultimately.
00:40:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when you described old shores, it it's funny that he's an urbanist because it really does incorporate ideas of urbanist writing that that that I've read this is this is straight out of that playbook.
00:40:29
Speaker 3: It's it's been really fun for me because I through through him and his team, I've learned about this. They give me great books and we have these great charettes. It's an incredible team. So just forced into it very happily because I mean, as soon as we connect to the dots that we realized he wanted to build a North Barrack or Dornick ultimately a Saint Andrew's, So it didn't take much convincing. I was really inspired by him and his team, and it's so it's like in hindsight, it's it's sort of like obvious, but you know, we brought sort of golf over here, but we forgot the urbanism. And when I think about my favorite places in the world, as much as I love some of these extraordinary golf resorts, my top ten favorite places to go are all in towns or villages or cities. Yeah. Right, if I had to go, you know, if I think, Okay, where's the number one place I want to go? What's the number two? They're all in talent in villages. Because I love that whole experience of incredible golf coupled with being part of a real, you know, community whose members all love golf. I mean that it is nice that it's gotland, Like a lot of people play golf, but they have other interests and other lives, and you know, I love that. You know, I was the last time I was playing in North Beric. I was playing the seventh I think it's the seventh hole with the burn right in front of it, and you know, two guys just walked across the fairway with their surfboards. So from their homes, they just crossed the fairway and they're going surfing. You know. On that same course, I bumped into my friend's mom who's making her way back the basketful of vegetables from the farmer's market. You know, it's like that, that friction and connection is so enjoyable that I think it beats these resorts. So that's what started for me. We've we've now moved that urbanism to wild spring dunes and Rodeo dunes, so our master plans there have. These are urban. They have some some you know larger, a few number of like satellite you know, homes and hotel rooms, but it's mostly walkable. So wild Spring Dunes right now from your room, you're less than a four minute you will be less than a four minute walk from Tom's course, Bill's course, Gym's course, two restaurants, a wellness center, your room, and the driving range right and and we're not going to have shuttles, and you know, at all shores, we're not gonna lock cars. We get you out of your car and you walk everywhere. You know. The team's like, well, what happens if it rains. It's like maybe use an umbrella, you know, like what.
00:43:14
Speaker 1: Happened, same thing that happens in North Perock. I guess, yeah, yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker 3: We don't have to pamper our guests and like you know, like shield them from any discomfort. And walking in the rain is not uncomfortable, and it's actually if you have the proper gear an umbrella, it's delightful. The sounds, the colors sharpen, you know. So so that urbanism is like Rodeo Dunes. It's really fun because it's urban but it's Western, like Cowboy, Western influenced. You know, are most Western towns of you know, the early nineteenth century, they were made so quickly that they don't exist anymore. They've all turned to dust. So are unders standing of Cowboy Urbanism is framed entirely through film, right. So I got this great land Planning book which studies the Master Urban land Plan of the Alamo and all these amazing Western you know towns and sort of like Disneyland. You know, these the street widths were designed to be seen on film, not necessarily reflecting what they what they were historically. You know, it just fits the frame so well, and we're going to lean into that, and you know, and it brings up nostalgia from our guest, youth watching, you know, whatever it is. So they are all gonna be different, but they're all gonna be urban. Rodeo dunes are gonna be walked, walked to. These four eighteen hole courses will be all all walk Wow.
00:44:57
Speaker 1: That's it's interesting that you've that you've dug into of what an urban setting might look like in the West, because yes, I think all of us who have seen Western films can immediately imagine what one of those sets looks like. You think of Tombstone or My Darling, Clementine, some of the older Western like john Ford. Western's what those towns look like. They're kind of they're attractive, right, There's these films about the wild West and violence and and you know they unsettled communities. But you look at those towns and you think, well, I kind of want to live there. I'd be kind of cool to go to that barber shop and then go to that saloon.
00:45:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just walk it across and then on the outside, you know, on the outside it's you know, the wilderness. So the inside is urban. Some of our team was calling it London in the front, you know, La in the back. That we try to make our plan so that when you're walking up to your room, you're in a very urban environment. But you know, because our scale is not five thousand units, every everybody looks out at wilderness or golf or park, right. So in the wild West it's where urban. They probably didn't have back views. That's probably where they serviced the buildings, but if you did, you'd look out towards the mountains, right, or the Tetons or wherever. The film was at. So we're excited to just play with urbanism in a lot of different ways.
00:46:31
Speaker 1: Nice. So, you know, looking at these these three new resort developments, wild Spring Dunes, Rodeo Dunes, and old shores, you know, it's hard not to from my perspective, to just to see them as kind of a new phase in what you're doing in golf course development. It's really interesting to me. For the past decade or so, I guess you have you have you and your brother have developed Sand Valley, and you've tried a lot of fresh things there, you know, both architecturally and in terms of the model of the resort and the general recreational offering there. So you know, I wonder as you move into this phase where where you have these three developments kind of you know coming up, what have you taken from your experiences at Sand Valley and the experiments that you that you tried there. What did you learn? What are the big takeaways from from trying new things at Sand Valley that you're now applying to to these new places.
00:47:37
Speaker 3: We learned a lot. And I love you describing them as experiments. And I've heard you at a different time described Sand Valley's like a laboratory of ideas, which was I was flattering but also inspiring. It made me lean into that more like, yeah, okay, we got to keep pushing and testing. So we're gonna We're going to continue to try to innovate and test new ideas, but we we are gonna take some of those winning ideas from Sand Valley and transfer a transfer them all over. I mean some of it is that I think a lot of resorts, you know, first course, we want this to be. You know, bandon Dunes is so so many people of different abilities can enjoy a bandoned Dudes or old Mac right, which is extraordinary. You know, a great golfer like you can enjoy it, hack like me can enjoy it.
00:48:33
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not a great golfer, and he's a great golfer.
00:48:36
Speaker 3: We know that's right. You can sink Yeah, you lousy, like why am so? We So that's really an incredible model. And then you have five courses that do that. At Sand Valley, we want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy enjoy a golf course. But we could we could pull you know, we could have golf courses that cater to a smaller group within that resort guests. So Alito is a great example. It's probably the most dislike course we've ever built, but forty percent of our guests think it's the greatest golf course ever built. And therefore it could be full if we want it to be like that's okay. Everybody doesn't have to love it for us to be successful. Right. At the same time, you could have you know, mammoth uns right, which is, you know, on sort of the opposite extreme of Liedo, you know, and so just trying to instead of having circles that overlap in terms of the program elements of a golf course, to separate them out. We could have a six thousand yard course. I want to build a forty six hundred yard course. We could have a twelve hole course, we could have a par three, you could have a championship course. You could have a North Barrack whimsical fund course. So is much variety, not just within a course, but you know, throughout the resort. And when you think about it, when we hit a certain you know, six eighteen old courses and six alternative courses. Everybody doesn't have to love every one, you know, because they don't come for two weeks, but if they have their two or three or four that they think are the greatest in the world. And there's some overlap, but a different group that likes these courses over here, like that model really works and it's really different. It's really distinct. You guys have talked about the two courses that were all counting down. They couldn't be more different, right, whereas I think the resort model they would have, you know, we're all counting down a brutal test, extraordinary, but for the greatest golfers, amateur golfers. What's the name of the other course, that's fortunate, you know, in that fun anybody could play it. A resort would do two that are sort of more in the middle. They pulled that apart. In Scotland. My experience is they pull everything apart. You know, there's the kids course, the ladies course, the King's Course, the Championship course, the putting course. So just like everything we do, we're just trying to rab Scotland blindly of all its great ideas well, that's one of the things that will make it different, you know, I think pushing the greens, you know, and as much variety as possible within within the greens. I think there's more contour at the Sandbox and commons and sedge than you might you know, have at let's say, you know, Vandon Dunes, so you know, creating more variety within you know, the putting, the putting surfaces. This urbanism is an idea that didn't come from Sand Valley, but that's going to connect them. I mean, one thing that's great at Sand Valley it has become a real community where people who want resort guests spend a lot of time at the resort. Employees on their off days come and enjoy the resort. I'd like to just get better and better at that because to me, it's a more interesting place if you have a broader group of people coming together to share the experience. So we'll see that from the hospitality side, you know, I've brought in team members who are extraordinary entrepreneurs in the restaurant, you know, creative restaurant space. I want to continue to elevate our dining experience and some of our hospitality experiences. The idea of renting a home is unique at least sand all other places. More and more places are doing it, but that's been a huge winner. Guests love staying in renting a home. You know, thirty percent of our covers are now done in the home, so people could shower, have a meal served to them, go straight out to the screen porch or the fire pit, you know, in their foot flops or barefoot. So I think a lot of that covers, you know, we are going to bring wellness, you know, into the play. Sand Valley has non golf activities, you know, Sam Valley. It's great for the golfer, but it's also great for the golfers family and friends. You know. I just had my high school or my college buddies and their spouses and their children out to Sand Valley. There's not there's a fair amount of golf play, but not a ton and everybody had a ball. So we want to create places where everybody feels welcome. They're not walking on eggshells. They're curious and want to explore golf and there's a place for them. But they also feel that they could be a part of the community without being in a you know, hardcore golfer. That's how we move people into the game of golf, make them feel welcome. So that's a theme that you know, we talk about a lot. It's just making people feel welcome and not scaring them away from this game.
00:53:52
Speaker 1: In terms of the golf itself. As you move into these kind of three new resorts, have you found your influences kind of changing over time? In other words, are there reference points or courses or architects that you now go back to more often that you didn't have on your mind as much at the beginning of Sand Valley? In other words, how have your influences evolved over time and which ones are kind of primary for you right now?
00:54:31
Speaker 3: It's continually evolving, and a lot of that again, I just rob other places blind, So a lot of it's just based on where I've been able to make a trip that year. And I just even if something is a really good idea, I don't necessarily want to do it all over again, right, just to keep you know, life interesting. But just as an example of that, you know, when we spent a couple you know, summers in Scotland and I was lucky to have a couple of friends in Mierfield and got to enjoy that experience a lot. You know, So playing playing foursomes ultimate shot, learning about what made you know, that golf course so interesting for foursomes, and that made me want to come over here and design the first course in America designed specifically for forsomes, right, So that's That's one example. When I saw the shapes of Presstwick on you know those original twelve holes in particular, you know fairways like you know thirteen or fifteen and sixteen or approach on four mind bending to me, or the second fairway in the seventeenth at North north Barrick, like, oh, you could make greens this nuts, or the fairway's this nuts. Direct inspiration went straight into commons. You know, the what's after the re dawm the sixteenth at North Barrick, Oh, you could make a green this insane? You know. It's so I'm constantly inspired by different and new things. I haven't been able to play much golf this year, either at home or are away, but that's one of the fun things about travel. And again, it's not just golf. It's experience you had in a in a pub, or at a restaurant or in a community. So it's constantly evolving, uh, And it's just pulling great ideas from other great places.
00:56:30
Speaker 1: And as you think about, you know, trying to make things new or push into new areas. How do you think about the architects that you work with. Recently, you've you've started to work bring some you know, newer names into the mix. And I say newer because they aren't new names to people who follow golf architecture, but they perhaps haven't gotten that big solo commission opportunity yet. So I'm thinking of like Jim Craig and Brian Schneider at Old Shores. You're working with Clyde Johnson on on that really interesting sounding putting course at I think it was wild Spring Dunes where where he's doing that, but also the Rockies at at Rodeo Dunes. You are bringing some of these these fresh voices into the mix. How do you think about kind of balancing working with architects that you know can deliver a great product and are at the top of the game versus working with architects who might inject something new into into the bloodstream.
00:57:36
Speaker 3: You know, it's such a risky business that I spend a lot of my time mitigating risk in all.
00:57:41
Speaker 1: Ways, right, and it's a bit it's a big investment.
00:57:45
Speaker 3: And who's never built a golf course like your dad. And I'm like, because you know, like I could hire a mild court. So but it's not even like the business side of it. I do think, you know Bill in if a young person is as talented as Bill, right, Uh, they don't have forty years of experience, they don't have a team around them. You know Tom's team. They're all amazing architects that you could hire tomorrow to build an amazing golf course. So experience matters, team teams matter. So I'm just sort of like, how could you if you're lucky enough to hire one of these you know, known names, how could you not. At the same time, we want to bring in you know, fresh ideas. So one thing you'll see is that I'm not just working with people that I haven't worked with. You know, I worked with Jimmy on sand Valley and the Sandbox and then right comments, Clyde is building this putting course because I consider him, you know, the world's expert, you know, but that will give it, that gave him an opportunity to showcase his talents to me, and now, you know, maybe there's another project for him. The twelve all archite checked, you know, I'd worked with, So I don't know if that's answering the question. I don't think I'm just going to hire some I'm not going to hire somebody with no experience ever, and to hire somebody who I've never worked with, I'm gonna have to see a body of work that is like really exciting and inspiring those people. Also, there's people do exist out there that we have a limited number of projects. So if I had more projects, there's so many people I haven't worked with who are so talented that I'd love to work with. But you know, finite number of resources and sites. We have to make choice choices. So I think I think you'll see me working with some people over and over again. I mean, Jimmy Craig, you know, I want to, you know, sign like a fifteen year contract now or you can't work for anybody else, And I just I'm a hold of him, you know. I think you'll see some you know, some you know studio musicians, and then you'll see some new people coming in. Yeah.
01:00:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it makes sense. It's a it's a relationship business, I guess you could say, and you have relationships with these quote unquote new or architects are coming in. It's not as though you're unfamiliar with what Brian Schneider might do on a golf course site. You've seen him work before. You know what you're going. What level of architecture are you going to give them?
01:00:25
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what. There's a lot of value in building that professional relationship knowing each other, you know, like Tom and I now, I think it's like we understand each other right. We've invested the time to build that professional relationship. On top of that with Tom and Bill and Jim develop personal relationships and those matter right. And you know Bill's globe trotting all over the world. I probably won't hang out with him casually as as a friend unless i'd bump into him at an opening or a vad And I just love spending time with him, and building a golf course is a great way for us to spend time to get so that's you might say that's not a great business decision or creative decision, but when it's coupled with incredible talent, it makes it an easy choice to hire him to do the second course. It wells from you.
01:01:12
Speaker 1: I want to carve out a little bit of time here at the very end, just to talk briefly about some things that you're doing for public courses in your home state of Wisconsin. A couple of years ago, you spearheaded a renovation at what's now known as the Glen, which I visited and very much enjoyed, and you know, I think is a great model for how you can kind of revive a neighborhood course like that one in Madison.
01:01:40
Speaker 3: Now I've seen some.
01:01:41
Speaker 1: Reporting that you're involved in another renovation at another Madison municipal course, this one called I believe it's O'donna Hills. I'm not sure how it's pronounced. What's the plan there?
01:01:55
Speaker 3: Well, just so backing up, I mean, building great accessible golf is really important to me. Let's say San Valley or these new projects are abandoned, but in order for this game to flourish, we also have to create affordable golf, right that any that you know that a twelve year old could play three times a week in the summer, right every every day to get hooked on this game. So that's really important to me. It's just as important to my wife, and we've been given so much by the game that we're going to continue to grow the way that we affect affordable golf, starting in Wisconsin, but I'll get to some projects outside of Wisconsin. So Odana is a wonderful site. It's a very popular course. Now, you know, Glenn has grown fifty percent since we did the renovation. Odana is already pretty pretty full. But I you know, I hear from a lot of people who said, I grew up playing that course, and we want to introduce architecture that will inspire the next generation to grow up playing that course. And it's a nice piece of land, and it's again it's talk about urbanism. It's right in the center of Madison, just like the Glen. I have a friend who lives halfway between both of them, and like he and his son are gonna be able to walk to Bolt and I'm so envious of him. But these are urban, you know, golf courses. So really excited about Odana to be able to do it with eighteen holes. Add add add more bunkering part of the program at the lenn As. We wanted fewer bunkers because the biggest cohorts of golfers are senior women follow by senior men. So we use green surround short grass contour over bunkering, and we're going to be able to We're going to add a little more bunkering at Odana, which I think can help strategically, you know a little bit more. So that's really exciting. Shoot Park, which Craig Golftam has spearheaded but I've been involved in and we'll work with him on, is an existing nine hole course that on Lake Michigan, but with bushes growing along the whole so you can't see it ten feet from Lake Michigan.
01:04:06
Speaker 1: It is literally yeah, it's right on the shoreline. It is a pretty extraordinary location for.
01:04:11
Speaker 3: A golf course. So Craig Leopold, who's a part of the Johnson family, has made an incredibly generous donation to that project to build basically whatever we can imagine on that site, and it has the potential to be very very good halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago in ray scene on the lake with this gorgeous white, tall whitehouse. That's really exciting. So those are the two projects we'll be building next summer. But we're always looking at new opportunities in a nearby Ish state. I'm working on the potential municipal project, So just really excited to over time do more and more to support local golf in Wisconsin in America.
01:05:09
Speaker 1: A nearbias state. So this is an as yet unnamed project, but you've got something cooking.
01:05:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The clock is ticking. So by the end of the year, we either will have a project that you and I could talk about or not. But it's not going to drag on. So we're you know, we're the finish line. We could see the finish line, and I hope we get it done. It's a really exciting project.
01:05:35
Speaker 1: How do you think about the difference between working at one of these destination resort courses and working at a municipal course. Is the architectural approach generally different in some ways?
01:05:50
Speaker 3: Yeah. At a resort, we say, whatever it takes to build, try to build a greatest golf course in the world. We will do, right. I always tease these architects. We give them these huge sites and they ask for more, you know, like, well he needs is seventy thousand ye you know, eight acres.
01:06:08
Speaker 1: Tom Doak is kind of famous for this. It's like, only you could just buy that little five act plot over there.
01:06:14
Speaker 3: Bill's done it to us David And how do you say no, Jimmy Craig, I tease him and he's gonna hate hearing this, but I hope he laughs a little bit. His second green, like literally the back ten feet of the green is requiring me to exercise an option an additional six hundred and forty acres of land for keen Vita Green. So we do whatever it takes to build, you know, the greatest golf course in municipal settings. We've limited resources and a different audience. Right, So my wife and I have made a sizable donation to Odana. But the mission isn't let's build the greatest golf course in America. It's with these resources, how can we make it as spectacular as possible? So, you know, and how do we serve the local community? We're not the audience is local. It's not you know, how do we get you you know to come. So it's so it's very different. It's it's not quite as am ambitious architecturally, but it's maybe more ambitious and trying to make something that is really inspiring for much more affordable budget that people can love playing every day of the week for the rest of their lives.
01:07:35
Speaker 1: You know all right, Michael Kaiser, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Looking forward to seeing all these all these new projects come online.
01:07:42
Speaker 3: Garrett, thanks for having me on. I always enjoy our conversations and I hope I can meet you in person on some of these sites. We gotta we gotta play golf together. Absolutely.
01:07:58
Speaker 1: This episode of Design Golf was produced by Will Balsom. Thank you Will. If you enjoy architecture discourse, then you have to join Frida Egg Golf Club. We've got a lot of discussion of golf courses going on in the membership. We have a new app which is which is fantastic for communication among members. Of course, you know, golf architecture is not the only topic we discussed in there. We also talk about professional golf and just golf in general. These are avid players who love the game and if you want to join this community, go to the Frida Egg dot com slash membership and see what it's all about. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.
Speaker 1: When Mike Kaiser opened Abandoned Dunes in nineteen ninety nine, his son Michael was eighteen years old. Michael went on to play a key role in the expansion of the Kaiser family's dream golf empire. He and his brother Chris oversaw the development of Sand Valley in Wisconsin, which turned into one of the most architecturally experimental golf resorts in the country. Now, Michael is creating three new resorts of his own, all opening within the next year and a half or so. There's Wildspring Dunes in East Texas, There's Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, and Old Shores in the Florida Panhandle. Meanwhile, Michael is supporting a few municipal golf projects in his home state of Wisconsin, so he's got a lot going on. These are big, legacy defining moves, and I'm curious to find out how he views this new phase of his development career, what he's borrowing from the past, and how he's trying to innovate. But most of all, I want to know more about what these new places are going to look like. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing golf.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Michael.
00:01:23
Speaker 1: Welcome to the pod. Thanks for being here, Thanks for having me Garrett. So you've been very busy, or at least it looks that way to me. You've got a number of projects underway, including a few that are finishing up and even opening soon. So I thought it would be a great time to bring you back on the pod and talk about everything that's going on in your world. Why don't we start by talking about wild Spring Dunes in East Texas, which has its grand opening as I understand it, on Friday, September eighth. So could you tell me about this, uh, this property in general? What what what makes this play special?
00:02:05
Speaker 3: It's interesting because it's it's the one that sort of I've gotten involved in most recently, and it's the furthest along right now. So it's it's it's so it's strange to me that Rodeo Dunes has been eight years in the making, in old Chore six years and uh, you know Texas, things really move quickly. So it was one when I first heard about it, I was reluctant to take on because I quite quite a bit on my plate and wasn't looking for another project. And you know, when Brett, who found the site originally reached out. I just said I didn't even want to see it. His partner flew up to Madison and convinced me to at least come down and see the property. And I did, and I fell in love with it, and UH couldn't couldn't say no to it, even though it was probably the prudent UH decision. It's such a unique property. It certainly different than any site that I have worked on, but I think it's really distinct, you know, in golf, and it has qualities from a lot of different places that I love and they all sort of come together in one routing. So when I first got down to the property and Brett showed me around, we walked through some of those different environmental elements. And at the time, there were three golf courses routed on the property, and they each used one or two of these areas, which I'll describe in a minute. But what I said was, if I'm going to get involved, we have to create that super course, right, use all of these environments and go in and out of them and explore them. And at the time, that meant there's only gonna be one golf course. So we went from three golf courses to one super golf course. We're now back to three and I'll get to that. But you know, this land has some very sort of gentle open sandy ground in the center of it that is a little bit like Pinehurst. It has these really sharp, deep ravines that cut in and out of the property that remind me so much of shore Acres where I've played a lot of golf. Uh, and I've learned a lot about architecture through the agronomy changes that happened under Brian Palmer. Uh. You know, the depth and size of those are so familiar to me through through I might have such chicagoff shore acres.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: Just to clarify, Yeah, you did say Short Acres, which by the way, is in the suburbs of Chicago. Seth Rayner course. Yeah, Mike Michigan.
00:04:40
Speaker 3: Fantastic, fantastic content on those ravines. It has some bigger some some bigger bold landforms that reminded me a lot of Pine Pine Valley. And it even has a hole that is inspired, you know, by the Second Hole fame. You know, I guess they're all famous at Pine Valley, but the Second Pine Valley. It had some ridges that remind me a lot of sand Valley right, these big sort of dune ridges that and then it has this massive dune in the center where Tom's course starts and ends. So tying those all together, Tom developed a new routing that does such a you know, it goes from that dune to the meadow, to the pine valley to the meadow, there's a couple of these ravines introduced along the way, then goes into you know ravine, Pine valley, little meadow finished with ravine. So it's just this great way of going in and out of these ecosystems and coming back at them from a new perspective that I think is required for a really outstanding routing. And I think Tom's routing is outstanding.
00:06:00
Speaker 1: And for those who don't know your Tom refers to Tom Doak, who's doing the first course at at well it's being nuts.
00:06:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for clarifying. So that's the first course we did end up finding. It was right under our nose, but adjacent property that is totally different from the first really leans into into these big, bold, even boulder ravines. It's in a really exciting way. Bill Cors and Ben Crunshaw are working on that project. And then some fairways that have some neat you know, tilt and then crowns to them. And then this wonderful, delightful surprise we discovered as we've been opening up the routing is some smaller micro contours in the fairway that are really interesting, so it's completely different than than Tom's. And then through some acquisition, thinking about a third course which we've been talking informally with Jim Craig about that has a lot of those ravines and and some neat hills, but will really be a more intimate, compact routing. The first two are similar to a lot of things we've done where they're sprawling. You know, I talked about Tom's gobbling up three courses with of land bills. Is not all that different. That third course is tight, and it's intimate, and it's over similarly exciting terrain, but it's pretty wide open and you're gonna see a lot of golf and golfers around you while you're playing. Let me just cruise through these courses and then I'm sure you have questions, but you know, after that, we're planning a twelve our course, you know, similar in par and length and whole number to the commons that's something I really want to incorporate at each of these sites I'm working on. Uh. And then Clyde Johnson has developed this really school putting course. You know, these putting courses you know, sprouted up during the Victorian era, which was quite a long wayne and it you know in these you know Victorian bath you know, on beach places. And we think of putting courses like the Himalayas or the punch Ball or the Rockies we're doing out it Dunes. But there's a lot more variety in those early ones. Uh. There I see this great really old black and white photo. There was one on the roof of a building. You know. They were There's a lot more variety and and and some of them played through these formal gardens where there was you know, a garden on either side of the hole. So we have this beautiful meadow at wild Spring Dunes and Clyde has routed a thirty six hole course that plays through this meadow where each putting hole is contained. It looks like a miniature golf hole, and I think that's where this term miniature golf you know, came from. So something that's really different, really fun, you know, it's right in the heart of the village. We've designed so golfers could just go out in the afternoon and put and have fun. So that's that's sort of the golf of Wild Spring Dunes.
00:09:20
Speaker 1: You've worked with Tom Doak and Corn Crunshaw now on a number of different projects each. I wonder at this point if you have some ideas about what differentiates the two of them, you know, the differences that you see in their working methods and their design styles both at Wild Spring Dunes and and elsewhere that you've worked with them.
00:09:46
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean that's remind me of the two, but it's methods and styles that the methods are, you know, completely different, and obviously they're both. They both deliver at such high levels that there's not a better or worse method. But you know, Bill's a grinder, so he just grinds through routings, you know, over years, and trip after trip after trip after trip that continues on while he's building the course in you know, layer cakes, you know, layer at a time, just little moves that are constant and relentless. So that's like a broad way of describing, you know, his methodology. And I'll come back to elaborate on that. You know, Tom you know, generally gets his routing pretty far along, you know, on paper on topo certainly confirms that in the field, and then like at All Shores, there's been some routing changes as we've you know, begun begun the project. But his shaping methodology is compact and intense, and I call I describe it, and I'd say this to him as a feeding frenzy. So they bring in the whole renaissance team. You know, the last time Tom and I were on site of Old Shores, Eric Iverson was there, Brian Slonik was there, Clyde Johnson was there, and Angela was there, and for seven or eight days they just all shaped like crazy and Tom's jumping around editing. Oh I should add that Tom's now started shaping. His first green in a long time was the fifteenth at Sedge Valley and then he worked with Brian at High Point a lot and now a hole that seems to be everybody's favorite hole at Old Shores is one that Tom shaped. So those are five people going around the clock for seven or eight days, very different than you know, a green is shaped in eight days where you know, we worked on the ninth Green at Royo Dunes for well over a year. And you know, probably right, there's just little you know, taking away little pieces, adding little pieces really slow and steady, that Bill's sort of grinding method. So their methods are wildly different. What was the second part of it?
00:12:16
Speaker 1: You said, design styles is what I was also interested in. But really you can take this those are kind of my two suggestions. But you already have such interesting thoughts about the differences between these two architecture firms that yeah, I'd just be interested in general.
00:12:33
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, you know, on design style, I think they would say, like, we don't have a design style, right right. Yeah.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: Bill Krr especially always sort of resists that yeah kind of question. He always says, you know, I'm land first. The style is whatever, but the land is the thing.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: With that said, there are some themes, you know, that we could talk about. And you know, I start with fairways and I saw this, you know, caddying at pac Dunes and you know, spend a year at Barn Google and I mean Tom does very little with this wild ground, like he just sort of he really leaves it alone. I mean, far more than Bill and Ben so sort of up into the green. Tom does very little. Bill. You know they're minimalists, but you know they say in their company sometimes you have to move a lot of sand to make it look like you moved a little bit. He's much more inclined to you know, the tenth hole at Sand Valley, that left side came up eight feet, you know, cut four feet off. So it's all based off of the ground that's there, and it's not a massive construction project. But Sand Valley we have one or two dump trucks work in every day, you know, in fairways, whereas Tom might dump a little sand for the greens, but you're not seeing dump trucks, you know, doing big cuts and fills in the fairways. So stylistically what that means in Tom's architecture, I see a lot more, you know, quirky, rough wild shapes that are what's the I'm trying to think of the the word in music, but where it's sort of left hanging right. And Bill, I think Radio Dunes is a big exception. And I want to share a conversation Bill and I had when I was seeing for the first time the second Hole in Scotland at cool Links and I sat there and it was so odd and off balance and outstanding, and I said, you know, Bill, I think this is one of the best holes in Scotland, certainly one of the most original holes I've seen a long time. And I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but when I think of your architecture, I think of perfect balance and harmony, and I think of one of those Calder sculptures, you know, those aerials, and if you've seen them, the color of a painter and a sculpture, and they hang from the ceiling and they don't go like this, They balance, And I just feel like if you took his bunkering and shapes and connected them through rods and held them on a string, they would just balance. The scales would balance evenly, whereas toms might tip over a little bit. So I said that, you know to Bill, and you just sort of nodded. And the next time I saw him at Rodeo Dunes, the you know, the routing, he blew it up and sort of, you know, nine of the holes were new, and this is after he'd been working on it for several years and made a lot of changes. And one of the things I asked, you know, Bill and John Hawker to do it Rodeo was to leave some of those awkward shapes alone. So I actually think a lot of his fairways remind me a lot at Rodeo Dunes feel like Tom Doak fairways. Stylistically, you know, just a big, huge mound in the set of the fairway. We didn't have to cut it down and raise the hole. It's just you know, it's it's it's it's dramatic or if there's if there's a shape. You know, in the first hole, there's a big mound that's too steep to mow in front of the first green, So instead of smoothing it out and making it fairy, just left it alone as this native area that sticks into the hole. So stylistically, I think every one of the courses are so different. But I think those are maybe because Tom moves less in the fairway and Bill and Ben tend to move a little more. You see some differences in the fairways, you know, getting you know, Rucker style is different for every project. For both of them green shapes, I h I don't want to speak. I don't think I could speak eloquently, and you know, really comparing and contrasting they're greens. But I would say that Bill finishes every green himself. And I think one of the things he does, maybe better than anybody on the planet is like when you have a twelve foot putt, you're never confident with the line. Is I mean, it's just like it's always like is it breaking a cup or might have just straightened out at the end. Like that's where Bill comes in and as those shapes that are so beguiling, right, And some people might not like that. I love it because it's not just like up there's a line, it's a cup and a half to left. If I hit it, I know what's going in. You're always left wondering until that ball drops in the cup, right, And I think that's a maybe that I know about Bill's green's you know, speaking as a collection, I don't if I haven't processed that information yet.
00:18:14
Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America or GCSAA. GCSAA supports more than twenty one thousand members worldwide, from superintendents and equipment managers to students and educators. Celebrating it's one hundredth anniversary this year. GCSAA continues to ensure that its members are on the forefront of research, education, innovation, and advocacy through a range of programs and services. Its mission is to serve its members, advance the profession and improve communities through the enjoyment, growth, and vitality of the game of golf. You can learn more about how GCSAA is keeping the game on course for the next one hundred years at g c s A a dot org. So, I think I just remembered the musical term you were searching for, Michael. It might be dissonance to describe Tom Dooke's willingness to let things kind of clash or or you know, let there be some awkwardness or some loose ends, or or you know, little just little jagged corners of things. Whereas you know, what what makes Bill Correr's work, finish work so remarkable is how harmonious it is, right, how balanced everything is, and it's beautiful. But it's it's really interesting that that you've kind of pushed him recently to to consider leaving some things maybe a little bit more unfinished, just to just to try to find something new in there. I think that's really interesting.
00:20:05
Speaker 3: And it's it's unresolved, right. Sometimes this is just unresolved in music. Yeah, and it doesn't take a lot of encouragement. I mean, Bill is so fun to work with because he he just loves anything to riff off of, give me anything. There's a pile of garbage, Okay, I'll make that. He he's he's he's like Miles Davis, you know, and so he's great, Yeah, let's go with that. And he's gonna make that brilliant, which makes you know, somebody throwing something out feel great. There's that. This this story about Herbie Hancock was playing with Miles Davis and uh, you know, they were they were jamming and Herbie just hit a note that was like way off right and mouth Davis was a strict task master, so he thought for sure, like this isn't gonna go well, I'm gonna get fired. I mean, just bullivant, just like whoops. And he said that. Miles Davis started put his trumpet down a little bit and was just thinking, and then when he started up again, he made Herbie's note right. You know, he made it work right. And that's like Bill, like, give him anything. I could say, Oh, I don't want to touch these mountains, and you know, he might be thinking, well, that's garbage, but he's but then he's like, I'm gonna make that right, right, And that's what he does. And that's why he's so so fun to work with, because there's almost nothing you can't throw out at him that he could make right and make it, you know, right.
00:21:43
Speaker 1: He's always working with what. What he's given in a very interesting way, is what he bases everything on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, we've already sort of talked a little bit about it. But the next project of yours that I love to talk about is Rodeo Dunes in Colorado. The first course, as you mentioned, was designed by Corn Crenshaw. It's on schedule for an opening next year. I believe the preview play has been has been happening for a while. You you told me about the land at wild Spring Dunes. What kind of land are you working with at Rodeo Dunes. What's special about it?
00:22:24
Speaker 3: We're in some choppy sand dunes, right, which is sort of ideal ground to build a golf course upon. It, particularly where Bill's course heads and Jimmy's. It struck, you know, my first impression was. It reminded me of Western Ireland, right, just big, huge, bold movements that I hadn't seen you know here, you know before. One of the things that some he pointed out to me, and he was right, is that when we do have those valleys, they tend to be wider. You get into some valleys, what's the course not well, Carn's a good example of it. But also and it's grown. Well, you're playing with the in these amazing dunes, but you know, they come down in the fairway and some of them get a little tight, and then it's very steep and sharp. So we have these big movements, but then space within them, and within that space you're allowed to make more interesting angles. So I just played Bill and Dunn's course for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I knew I loved it. There's such enormous variety, like no two holes are alike, right, and the angles of the routing are so amazing, And so I knew all the things I loved about it without playing it. What blew me away was how amazingly important those angles are. And even though it's a wildly different golf course, I had the same joy from it that I get playing the lido where it's so wide. I mean, Bill build a resort course in the wind, so it has a lot of width, but the angles aret but are so important and I just loved that that. You know, the people I were playing against the there's a fifth hole and the pin was on the left side, and their layup it's part five, was a little a little sloppy, and they're left with a shot where the ball, you know, they have a wedge in the ball's now running away from them, so they want to land short of the pin, but they could clip a dune that's in the way really hard up and down. If you come in from the right, it sort of goes on. You get a little back forward like you're attacking it. So that's just one example of an angle where it's like, okay, you got to lay up off of an awkward lie so it's not just an easy five iron layup. And depending on where the pit, when the pin's right there, you want to come in from way left. So I guess going back to the site, you know, Ireland and big and bold, but with with there's also huge variety out there. There's a site I really like to build on that a lot more Scottish, right, just like smaller you know, Microw really perfect for golf. So it's not all just huge and big and bold. There's an area to the north that is little more hilly, a little more at sand hillsy you know, but with some chop mixed in it. So I think you'll find a lot of variety from one course to the next. Gym's routing plays on top of these plateaus a little more than Bill's. The greens are more short grass around them, where Bill's greens, you know, sit in you know, pockets a little more so amazing chop, but extraordinary variety within that chop.
00:26:03
Speaker 1: You've mentioned the second course at Rodeo Dunes, which is being designed by Jim Craig, longtime associate of Corn Crenshaw, somebody that you've worked with quite a bit at this point. Jim Craig was one of the driving forces behind the Sandbox at sand Valley, shaping a lot of those greens, and they are truly a fantastic set of greens. He was also behind the recent recently opened twelve hole golf course the Commons at sand Valley. Now you're working with him at Rodeo Dunes.
00:26:37
Speaker 3: Again.
00:26:38
Speaker 1: What excites you about about Jim Craig's approach to golf architecture.
00:26:44
Speaker 3: There's a lot of I mean, he was metored by Bill and Ben, so there's so much of that, you know, improv in him. And what they do so well is they don't hold onto ideas, right like, they let ideas evolve and flow. And that's just fun creatively to to for ideas to evolve. And similar to Bill, like he could make any idea great. So it's really fun for me. I feel very involved collaborative in it. But he's the one who really makes these ideas out outstanding. So I and and he and I just I like, I like his company, right, We have a great ban tour and we tease each other and it's just it's really fun. You know, Cummins was almost completely manufactured, which is extraordinary. You know. Now he's given a perfect site, right and we're given a perfect site and room to go wherever he wants. And uh, I'm excited for people to see what he could do with that when he when he when you know his restraint, you know what what it's sort of the opposite of the comments, like you know, it's the route and then restraining some of some of the movement. So I'm excited. Uh, I'm forgetting the question a little bit, but I'm his routing is so good. It's so different from bills. It's really playful and whimsical, you know. I think there's six part threes. We had no idea when when it was being routed, but somebody just added it up. You know. It's like sixty six hundred from the tips. We talked a lot about North Barrick when we were building, you know, building it and just creating fun holes, you know, I mean that that whole perfection, which we have a hole inspired by that. I think it's the fourteenth at North Barrick. You just hit that wedge over the hill and it runs down.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, the blind the blind approach shot. Yeah, I kind of is that an amazing golf al I don't know, but it sure is a lot of fun, you know. Like so we're just going out there trying to find really fun, unusual holes with shots that just in different ways are just fun.
00:29:01
Speaker 3: Right he is the seventh. The eighth hole is you know, really inspired by the ninth at Cypress Point, right in this huge dune like Cypress and then a huge drop off, you know behind it. Cypress drops off behind it, but that's not really in play. This one, you know's a little more in play. So just a lot of really fun shots was the goal.
00:29:29
Speaker 1: What are some of the future plans that you have at Rodeo Dunes that that you can tell me about at this point?
00:29:36
Speaker 3: Sure? Well, to start, we just grasped our putting course, which we're gonna call the Rockies right where you see the Rockies from the Himalaya's best putting course, uh, you know at St. Andrew's there. So I'm excited for people to play that. It's sort of a perfect putting course site. It's the seven acres contained bowl in the dunes with the backdrop of the Rockies. We could have just seated it without doing any work and it would have been great. We asked Clyde to sharpen some of those movements a little bit. We're gonna run it a little slower on the stemp, you know, the him Malayas probably ruins it like a six or seven, you know, and because of that, you could have far more severe contours that are just to me more fun that some of our modern putting courses over here, which run at a ten, eleven or twelve a just less less fun than these, these just sharp shapes. It that the MLA is. So I'm excited about that. We have a twelve hole routing. I don't want to announce the architect, but a twelve all routing playing out of you know this this first core gym and Go and Ben share a tea going in opposite directions. The putting courses right below it in the twelfth hole tease off eighty yards away. So that's what we have in the works. After that, you know where, we were going into these huge hills and dunes, and they recently I've been thinking about going sort of in the other direction, more towards these more subtle gentle call them Scottish dunes, because because the first two play through such big stuff, I think it might be nice to go in the other direction after that. A lot of ideas, but nothing I'm actively working on. But we have a lot of land. It's all great, and there seems to be tremendous demand for rodeo, so I think I hope we're gonna be able to keep going at a pretty good clip.
00:31:44
Speaker 1: All right. The final project resort project that is that that I want to talk with you about is old Chores in the Florida Panhandle. What made you want to build golf on on this piece of land? You know, from my perspective, just look looking at it and maybe you can tell me that that that I'm wrong about this. It seems like an unusual piece of land for you to build golf on it. You know, Wild Spring Dunes maybe reminds me in some ways of a heathland site or you know, kind of sandy inland site, Pinehursty, Pine Valley. Those are the kind of references you mentioned there. And then Rodeo Dunes is classic, classic Duneland golf. Old Shore seems to be a little bit different. So so tell me about that site and what interests you about it.
00:32:35
Speaker 3: It is so different and it's it's so hard to compare it, and that's part of what I like about it. It's as distinctive site as I've ever seen, forget put aside the golf, just visually when you're there, you've never seen any place like it, with these sink with these massive you know sinkholes and lakes that you know, rise and fall over the years. And you know, river goes through the routing and these massive prairies. It's so unusual, and so many people ask like where am I. You know, it's really hard to place because it's so unusual. And the question we've been asking a lot is it's more like when am I? It feels like it doesn't feel like it's of this time even, you know, like maybe we go back, you know, five million years, and this is what a landscape might look like on this, you know, the shores of you know, that continent. So it's just so distinct, and it's also so beautiful, this white sand with all these sharp, crispy, you know, varieties of green punctuated by the colors in our prairies which were restoring, and then the live oaks and the long leaf pines and the water. It's just so beautiful and it's a place I just keep wanting to go back to, just to spend time in the landscape. When Tom finished his routing and I walked it, I was like, con that's you know, and I think this speaks to the site and his routing. I was like, if we don't build a golf course here, I would love to just start every day off with that walk. It's so delightful the way you navigate this distinct piece of ground. So it always started with the beauty and how unique it was. You know, a lot of it when we first got involved, were covered in pine, and then it went to that prairie that we've restored, and then it went to mow down fair ways. Ooh, were starting to see it, and then to the sand. And as we got closer and closer to the ground, it was clear to me that the ground was getting better and better in terms of the quality of the golf. So the way I perceive the ground for golf now I think it's incredible. When I started, I'm like this is really cool and it's different, and now I'm like, this is amazing. You know, it has You're not going to believe how much contour, how much movement there is that it's in Florida, has these wonderful crowns down into these sinkholes, wonderful tilts. It's just it's really neat. It's dramatic. You know, there's a wedge over you know, like this island lake. There's a whole like Cyper sixteen where you hitting a three wood, you know, over the water to you know, peninsula. It's very dramatic the second course. So that that's that's Tom's just a quick preview of the second course. Uh. You know, Brian Schneider used to mow greens at Augusta National. And Josh Pettitt has that great book on alistair.
00:35:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, The Mackenzie Reader is the compendium of Alistair McKenzie writings.
00:35:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, and about the time he's publishing that, I think there are a lot of conversations about, you know, the evolution of Augusta and you and Andy I think it a great podcast on it. And so when we were talking about that second site just has enormous movement. Right the tenth that Augusta drops one hundred and ten feet right before it comes up to the green. We have movement like that in the fairways. Right. So what I asked Brian is what if we built a golf course that was like post Perry Maxwell Augusta ninth, Augusta nineteen thirty eight. Right, that's what we're shooting for on this site. And that's what he's been asked to deliver. And he has a really cool routing and it's it's gonna be wide there's gonna be fewer bunkers than you'd see in today's Augusta. It's gonna have you know, some some wild greens, but there's gonna be you know, just like Augusta, not every hole drops eighty feet or climbs up, you know, like the eighth or the ninth. You know there holes like five that you know, play along, you know the plateau there. But but it's gonna be big and bold, and but we're gonna keep it rough, you know, like like maybe the very original Augustca where they're like twenty bunkers and they're just scraggly and rough. And so that's our inspiration for the second course. We've designed this village that you've talked about, which I'd love to go into more detail, but in this walking village, you will be able to walk very short distances to the first tee of those two golf courses. We're about to start in the center of the village. We're about to start sodding our children's course, which is a nine hole golf course in the center of town. Right that's gonna have a children's membership that's gonna be incredibly affordable, but it's also gonna be fun. If me and Andy went out without without kids, we're gonna have a blast playing it. It will feel a lot more like a par three, right, but there are neat holes like the second where it's one eighty five. But the kid who takes this driver way out to the left and pitches in might win with his four, whereas unless we hit a great five iron, we could get into a lot of trouble. So if you play it as a par four, you're going to win a lot of the you know, and it's a stroke call, you're going to win a lot of the holes. So that's also in the center of town, also walkable. We're gonna have a twelve o golf course and a par three. So in this village inspired by some of my favorite places in Scotland, you'll be able to walk to all those golf courses, in your restaurants and your room. Uh. And it's going to be really different and I'm just excited about that overall experience. You're also going to be able to jump on a horse or go fat tire biking or hiking on this sixty five thousand acre you know, primordial uh property.
00:38:55
Speaker 1: This land plan idea that you have for old Chores is really interesting to me because it's not just about the architecture of the golf courses now right. You're you're really thinking through the landscape design, I guess, or even the the urban design, so to speak of of this central village where you, I guess you've basically created a kind of walkable or are creating a walkable city where where people don't have to use cars to get from place to place. And it all feels very very centered and intimate.
00:39:29
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: You mentioned that the the inspiration here might be some uh some some Scottish towns or uh, you know, things that you've seen overseas. Uh what what specifically made you want to focus on on this aspect of of old chores.
00:39:46
Speaker 3: So it started with old chores where I was forced into that. I have a partner at Old Chores who prefers to remain unnamed for now, and he's he's a he's an urbanist and when we met, he wasn't a golfer, didn't even like the idea of golf. But he's acquiring these large tracks where he plans to build walk up. He hates sprawl and he wants to build these walkable cities ultimately.
00:40:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when you described old shores, it it's funny that he's an urbanist because it really does incorporate ideas of urbanist writing that that that I've read this is this is straight out of that playbook.
00:40:29
Speaker 3: It's it's been really fun for me because I through through him and his team, I've learned about this. They give me great books and we have these great charettes. It's an incredible team. So just forced into it very happily because I mean, as soon as we connect to the dots that we realized he wanted to build a North Barrack or Dornick ultimately a Saint Andrew's, So it didn't take much convincing. I was really inspired by him and his team, and it's so it's like in hindsight, it's it's sort of like obvious, but you know, we brought sort of golf over here, but we forgot the urbanism. And when I think about my favorite places in the world, as much as I love some of these extraordinary golf resorts, my top ten favorite places to go are all in towns or villages or cities. Yeah. Right, if I had to go, you know, if I think, Okay, where's the number one place I want to go? What's the number two? They're all in talent in villages. Because I love that whole experience of incredible golf coupled with being part of a real, you know, community whose members all love golf. I mean that it is nice that it's gotland, Like a lot of people play golf, but they have other interests and other lives, and you know, I love that. You know, I was the last time I was playing in North Beric. I was playing the seventh I think it's the seventh hole with the burn right in front of it, and you know, two guys just walked across the fairway with their surfboards. So from their homes, they just crossed the fairway and they're going surfing. You know. On that same course, I bumped into my friend's mom who's making her way back the basketful of vegetables from the farmer's market. You know, it's like that, that friction and connection is so enjoyable that I think it beats these resorts. So that's what started for me. We've we've now moved that urbanism to wild spring dunes and Rodeo dunes, so our master plans there have. These are urban. They have some some you know larger, a few number of like satellite you know, homes and hotel rooms, but it's mostly walkable. So wild Spring Dunes right now from your room, you're less than a four minute you will be less than a four minute walk from Tom's course, Bill's course, Gym's course, two restaurants, a wellness center, your room, and the driving range right and and we're not going to have shuttles, and you know, at all shores, we're not gonna lock cars. We get you out of your car and you walk everywhere. You know. The team's like, well, what happens if it rains. It's like maybe use an umbrella, you know, like what.
00:43:14
Speaker 1: Happened, same thing that happens in North Perock. I guess, yeah, yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker 3: We don't have to pamper our guests and like you know, like shield them from any discomfort. And walking in the rain is not uncomfortable, and it's actually if you have the proper gear an umbrella, it's delightful. The sounds, the colors sharpen, you know. So so that urbanism is like Rodeo Dunes. It's really fun because it's urban but it's Western, like Cowboy, Western influenced. You know, are most Western towns of you know, the early nineteenth century, they were made so quickly that they don't exist anymore. They've all turned to dust. So are unders standing of Cowboy Urbanism is framed entirely through film, right. So I got this great land Planning book which studies the Master Urban land Plan of the Alamo and all these amazing Western you know towns and sort of like Disneyland. You know, these the street widths were designed to be seen on film, not necessarily reflecting what they what they were historically. You know, it just fits the frame so well, and we're going to lean into that, and you know, and it brings up nostalgia from our guest, youth watching, you know, whatever it is. So they are all gonna be different, but they're all gonna be urban. Rodeo dunes are gonna be walked, walked to. These four eighteen hole courses will be all all walk Wow.
00:44:57
Speaker 1: That's it's interesting that you've that you've dug into of what an urban setting might look like in the West, because yes, I think all of us who have seen Western films can immediately imagine what one of those sets looks like. You think of Tombstone or My Darling, Clementine, some of the older Western like john Ford. Western's what those towns look like. They're kind of they're attractive, right, There's these films about the wild West and violence and and you know they unsettled communities. But you look at those towns and you think, well, I kind of want to live there. I'd be kind of cool to go to that barber shop and then go to that saloon.
00:45:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just walk it across and then on the outside, you know, on the outside it's you know, the wilderness. So the inside is urban. Some of our team was calling it London in the front, you know, La in the back. That we try to make our plan so that when you're walking up to your room, you're in a very urban environment. But you know, because our scale is not five thousand units, every everybody looks out at wilderness or golf or park, right. So in the wild West it's where urban. They probably didn't have back views. That's probably where they serviced the buildings, but if you did, you'd look out towards the mountains, right, or the Tetons or wherever. The film was at. So we're excited to just play with urbanism in a lot of different ways.
00:46:31
Speaker 1: Nice. So, you know, looking at these these three new resort developments, wild Spring Dunes, Rodeo Dunes, and old shores, you know, it's hard not to from my perspective, to just to see them as kind of a new phase in what you're doing in golf course development. It's really interesting to me. For the past decade or so, I guess you have you have you and your brother have developed Sand Valley, and you've tried a lot of fresh things there, you know, both architecturally and in terms of the model of the resort and the general recreational offering there. So you know, I wonder as you move into this phase where where you have these three developments kind of you know coming up, what have you taken from your experiences at Sand Valley and the experiments that you that you tried there. What did you learn? What are the big takeaways from from trying new things at Sand Valley that you're now applying to to these new places.
00:47:37
Speaker 3: We learned a lot. And I love you describing them as experiments. And I've heard you at a different time described Sand Valley's like a laboratory of ideas, which was I was flattering but also inspiring. It made me lean into that more like, yeah, okay, we got to keep pushing and testing. So we're gonna We're going to continue to try to innovate and test new ideas, but we we are gonna take some of those winning ideas from Sand Valley and transfer a transfer them all over. I mean some of it is that I think a lot of resorts, you know, first course, we want this to be. You know, bandon Dunes is so so many people of different abilities can enjoy a bandoned Dudes or old Mac right, which is extraordinary. You know, a great golfer like you can enjoy it, hack like me can enjoy it.
00:48:33
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not a great golfer, and he's a great golfer.
00:48:36
Speaker 3: We know that's right. You can sink Yeah, you lousy, like why am so? We So that's really an incredible model. And then you have five courses that do that. At Sand Valley, we want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy enjoy a golf course. But we could we could pull you know, we could have golf courses that cater to a smaller group within that resort guests. So Alito is a great example. It's probably the most dislike course we've ever built, but forty percent of our guests think it's the greatest golf course ever built. And therefore it could be full if we want it to be like that's okay. Everybody doesn't have to love it for us to be successful. Right. At the same time, you could have you know, mammoth uns right, which is, you know, on sort of the opposite extreme of Liedo, you know, and so just trying to instead of having circles that overlap in terms of the program elements of a golf course, to separate them out. We could have a six thousand yard course. I want to build a forty six hundred yard course. We could have a twelve hole course, we could have a par three, you could have a championship course. You could have a North Barrack whimsical fund course. So is much variety, not just within a course, but you know, throughout the resort. And when you think about it, when we hit a certain you know, six eighteen old courses and six alternative courses. Everybody doesn't have to love every one, you know, because they don't come for two weeks, but if they have their two or three or four that they think are the greatest in the world. And there's some overlap, but a different group that likes these courses over here, like that model really works and it's really different. It's really distinct. You guys have talked about the two courses that were all counting down. They couldn't be more different, right, whereas I think the resort model they would have, you know, we're all counting down a brutal test, extraordinary, but for the greatest golfers, amateur golfers. What's the name of the other course, that's fortunate, you know, in that fun anybody could play it. A resort would do two that are sort of more in the middle. They pulled that apart. In Scotland. My experience is they pull everything apart. You know, there's the kids course, the ladies course, the King's Course, the Championship course, the putting course. So just like everything we do, we're just trying to rab Scotland blindly of all its great ideas well, that's one of the things that will make it different, you know, I think pushing the greens, you know, and as much variety as possible within within the greens. I think there's more contour at the Sandbox and commons and sedge than you might you know, have at let's say, you know, Vandon Dunes, so you know, creating more variety within you know, the putting, the putting surfaces. This urbanism is an idea that didn't come from Sand Valley, but that's going to connect them. I mean, one thing that's great at Sand Valley it has become a real community where people who want resort guests spend a lot of time at the resort. Employees on their off days come and enjoy the resort. I'd like to just get better and better at that because to me, it's a more interesting place if you have a broader group of people coming together to share the experience. So we'll see that from the hospitality side, you know, I've brought in team members who are extraordinary entrepreneurs in the restaurant, you know, creative restaurant space. I want to continue to elevate our dining experience and some of our hospitality experiences. The idea of renting a home is unique at least sand all other places. More and more places are doing it, but that's been a huge winner. Guests love staying in renting a home. You know, thirty percent of our covers are now done in the home, so people could shower, have a meal served to them, go straight out to the screen porch or the fire pit, you know, in their foot flops or barefoot. So I think a lot of that covers, you know, we are going to bring wellness, you know, into the play. Sand Valley has non golf activities, you know, Sam Valley. It's great for the golfer, but it's also great for the golfers family and friends. You know. I just had my high school or my college buddies and their spouses and their children out to Sand Valley. There's not there's a fair amount of golf play, but not a ton and everybody had a ball. So we want to create places where everybody feels welcome. They're not walking on eggshells. They're curious and want to explore golf and there's a place for them. But they also feel that they could be a part of the community without being in a you know, hardcore golfer. That's how we move people into the game of golf, make them feel welcome. So that's a theme that you know, we talk about a lot. It's just making people feel welcome and not scaring them away from this game.
00:53:52
Speaker 1: In terms of the golf itself. As you move into these kind of three new resorts, have you found your influences kind of changing over time? In other words, are there reference points or courses or architects that you now go back to more often that you didn't have on your mind as much at the beginning of Sand Valley? In other words, how have your influences evolved over time and which ones are kind of primary for you right now?
00:54:31
Speaker 3: It's continually evolving, and a lot of that again, I just rob other places blind, So a lot of it's just based on where I've been able to make a trip that year. And I just even if something is a really good idea, I don't necessarily want to do it all over again, right, just to keep you know, life interesting. But just as an example of that, you know, when we spent a couple you know, summers in Scotland and I was lucky to have a couple of friends in Mierfield and got to enjoy that experience a lot. You know, So playing playing foursomes ultimate shot, learning about what made you know, that golf course so interesting for foursomes, and that made me want to come over here and design the first course in America designed specifically for forsomes, right, So that's That's one example. When I saw the shapes of Presstwick on you know those original twelve holes in particular, you know fairways like you know thirteen or fifteen and sixteen or approach on four mind bending to me, or the second fairway in the seventeenth at North north Barrick, like, oh, you could make greens this nuts, or the fairway's this nuts. Direct inspiration went straight into commons. You know, the what's after the re dawm the sixteenth at North Barrick, Oh, you could make a green this insane? You know. It's so I'm constantly inspired by different and new things. I haven't been able to play much golf this year, either at home or are away, but that's one of the fun things about travel. And again, it's not just golf. It's experience you had in a in a pub, or at a restaurant or in a community. So it's constantly evolving, uh, And it's just pulling great ideas from other great places.
00:56:30
Speaker 1: And as you think about, you know, trying to make things new or push into new areas. How do you think about the architects that you work with. Recently, you've you've started to work bring some you know, newer names into the mix. And I say newer because they aren't new names to people who follow golf architecture, but they perhaps haven't gotten that big solo commission opportunity yet. So I'm thinking of like Jim Craig and Brian Schneider at Old Shores. You're working with Clyde Johnson on on that really interesting sounding putting course at I think it was wild Spring Dunes where where he's doing that, but also the Rockies at at Rodeo Dunes. You are bringing some of these these fresh voices into the mix. How do you think about kind of balancing working with architects that you know can deliver a great product and are at the top of the game versus working with architects who might inject something new into into the bloodstream.
00:57:36
Speaker 3: You know, it's such a risky business that I spend a lot of my time mitigating risk in all.
00:57:41
Speaker 1: Ways, right, and it's a bit it's a big investment.
00:57:45
Speaker 3: And who's never built a golf course like your dad. And I'm like, because you know, like I could hire a mild court. So but it's not even like the business side of it. I do think, you know Bill in if a young person is as talented as Bill, right, Uh, they don't have forty years of experience, they don't have a team around them. You know Tom's team. They're all amazing architects that you could hire tomorrow to build an amazing golf course. So experience matters, team teams matter. So I'm just sort of like, how could you if you're lucky enough to hire one of these you know, known names, how could you not. At the same time, we want to bring in you know, fresh ideas. So one thing you'll see is that I'm not just working with people that I haven't worked with. You know, I worked with Jimmy on sand Valley and the Sandbox and then right comments, Clyde is building this putting course because I consider him, you know, the world's expert, you know, but that will give it, that gave him an opportunity to showcase his talents to me, and now, you know, maybe there's another project for him. The twelve all archite checked, you know, I'd worked with, So I don't know if that's answering the question. I don't think I'm just going to hire some I'm not going to hire somebody with no experience ever, and to hire somebody who I've never worked with, I'm gonna have to see a body of work that is like really exciting and inspiring those people. Also, there's people do exist out there that we have a limited number of projects. So if I had more projects, there's so many people I haven't worked with who are so talented that I'd love to work with. But you know, finite number of resources and sites. We have to make choice choices. So I think I think you'll see me working with some people over and over again. I mean, Jimmy Craig, you know, I want to, you know, sign like a fifteen year contract now or you can't work for anybody else, And I just I'm a hold of him, you know. I think you'll see some you know, some you know studio musicians, and then you'll see some new people coming in. Yeah.
01:00:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it makes sense. It's a it's a relationship business, I guess you could say, and you have relationships with these quote unquote new or architects are coming in. It's not as though you're unfamiliar with what Brian Schneider might do on a golf course site. You've seen him work before. You know what you're going. What level of architecture are you going to give them?
01:00:25
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what. There's a lot of value in building that professional relationship knowing each other, you know, like Tom and I now, I think it's like we understand each other right. We've invested the time to build that professional relationship. On top of that with Tom and Bill and Jim develop personal relationships and those matter right. And you know Bill's globe trotting all over the world. I probably won't hang out with him casually as as a friend unless i'd bump into him at an opening or a vad And I just love spending time with him, and building a golf course is a great way for us to spend time to get so that's you might say that's not a great business decision or creative decision, but when it's coupled with incredible talent, it makes it an easy choice to hire him to do the second course. It wells from you.
01:01:12
Speaker 1: I want to carve out a little bit of time here at the very end, just to talk briefly about some things that you're doing for public courses in your home state of Wisconsin. A couple of years ago, you spearheaded a renovation at what's now known as the Glen, which I visited and very much enjoyed, and you know, I think is a great model for how you can kind of revive a neighborhood course like that one in Madison.
01:01:40
Speaker 3: Now I've seen some.
01:01:41
Speaker 1: Reporting that you're involved in another renovation at another Madison municipal course, this one called I believe it's O'donna Hills. I'm not sure how it's pronounced. What's the plan there?
01:01:55
Speaker 3: Well, just so backing up, I mean, building great accessible golf is really important to me. Let's say San Valley or these new projects are abandoned, but in order for this game to flourish, we also have to create affordable golf, right that any that you know that a twelve year old could play three times a week in the summer, right every every day to get hooked on this game. So that's really important to me. It's just as important to my wife, and we've been given so much by the game that we're going to continue to grow the way that we affect affordable golf, starting in Wisconsin, but I'll get to some projects outside of Wisconsin. So Odana is a wonderful site. It's a very popular course. Now, you know, Glenn has grown fifty percent since we did the renovation. Odana is already pretty pretty full. But I you know, I hear from a lot of people who said, I grew up playing that course, and we want to introduce architecture that will inspire the next generation to grow up playing that course. And it's a nice piece of land, and it's again it's talk about urbanism. It's right in the center of Madison, just like the Glen. I have a friend who lives halfway between both of them, and like he and his son are gonna be able to walk to Bolt and I'm so envious of him. But these are urban, you know, golf courses. So really excited about Odana to be able to do it with eighteen holes. Add add add more bunkering part of the program at the lenn As. We wanted fewer bunkers because the biggest cohorts of golfers are senior women follow by senior men. So we use green surround short grass contour over bunkering, and we're going to be able to We're going to add a little more bunkering at Odana, which I think can help strategically, you know a little bit more. So that's really exciting. Shoot Park, which Craig Golftam has spearheaded but I've been involved in and we'll work with him on, is an existing nine hole course that on Lake Michigan, but with bushes growing along the whole so you can't see it ten feet from Lake Michigan.
01:04:06
Speaker 1: It is literally yeah, it's right on the shoreline. It is a pretty extraordinary location for.
01:04:11
Speaker 3: A golf course. So Craig Leopold, who's a part of the Johnson family, has made an incredibly generous donation to that project to build basically whatever we can imagine on that site, and it has the potential to be very very good halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago in ray scene on the lake with this gorgeous white, tall whitehouse. That's really exciting. So those are the two projects we'll be building next summer. But we're always looking at new opportunities in a nearby Ish state. I'm working on the potential municipal project, So just really excited to over time do more and more to support local golf in Wisconsin in America.
01:05:09
Speaker 1: A nearbias state. So this is an as yet unnamed project, but you've got something cooking.
01:05:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The clock is ticking. So by the end of the year, we either will have a project that you and I could talk about or not. But it's not going to drag on. So we're you know, we're the finish line. We could see the finish line, and I hope we get it done. It's a really exciting project.
01:05:35
Speaker 1: How do you think about the difference between working at one of these destination resort courses and working at a municipal course. Is the architectural approach generally different in some ways?
01:05:50
Speaker 3: Yeah. At a resort, we say, whatever it takes to build, try to build a greatest golf course in the world. We will do, right. I always tease these architects. We give them these huge sites and they ask for more, you know, like, well he needs is seventy thousand ye you know, eight acres.
01:06:08
Speaker 1: Tom Doak is kind of famous for this. It's like, only you could just buy that little five act plot over there.
01:06:14
Speaker 3: Bill's done it to us David And how do you say no, Jimmy Craig, I tease him and he's gonna hate hearing this, but I hope he laughs a little bit. His second green, like literally the back ten feet of the green is requiring me to exercise an option an additional six hundred and forty acres of land for keen Vita Green. So we do whatever it takes to build, you know, the greatest golf course in municipal settings. We've limited resources and a different audience. Right, So my wife and I have made a sizable donation to Odana. But the mission isn't let's build the greatest golf course in America. It's with these resources, how can we make it as spectacular as possible? So, you know, and how do we serve the local community? We're not the audience is local. It's not you know, how do we get you you know to come. So it's so it's very different. It's it's not quite as am ambitious architecturally, but it's maybe more ambitious and trying to make something that is really inspiring for much more affordable budget that people can love playing every day of the week for the rest of their lives.
01:07:35
Speaker 1: You know all right, Michael Kaiser, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Looking forward to seeing all these all these new projects come online.
01:07:42
Speaker 3: Garrett, thanks for having me on. I always enjoy our conversations and I hope I can meet you in person on some of these sites. We gotta we gotta play golf together. Absolutely.
01:07:58
Speaker 1: This episode of Design Golf was produced by Will Balsom. Thank you Will. If you enjoy architecture discourse, then you have to join Frida Egg Golf Club. We've got a lot of discussion of golf courses going on in the membership. We have a new app which is which is fantastic for communication among members. Of course, you know, golf architecture is not the only topic we discussed in there. We also talk about professional golf and just golf in general. These are avid players who love the game and if you want to join this community, go to the Frida Egg dot com slash membership and see what it's all about. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.
