Speaker 1: Hi, This is Paul Dundas in addition to being a
golf Mader listener since the beginning. I'm from wothenar And
in Netherlands and I play at the Boston Artha Golf
Club Rosenstearin. This is golfmart number.
Speaker 2: Four hundred and ninety one, published on June two, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
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Speaker 4: Is much more in the East, and if you think
about it, that's the way that golf moved across the
United States. I mean it started in the East and
moved west. And so these nine hole courses, a lot
of them, were built in the early days of golf
and then late eighteen nineties into the early nineteen hundreds,
and then they were updated by better architects along the way.
Some were expanded into eighteen holes, like Myopia. Some Whitonsville,
which was built in nineteen sixteen state is that the
ones up and down the main coast state is nine
hole golf courses. But I think as golf moves west,
eighteen holes become standard. And the reason you see nine
in the Midwest states it's population reason for they have
enough people to play in it, and the budgets upkeep
so by the time it gets to California, golf is
real and golf is eighteen holes, and so you see
very few. You see Glenn Eagles in southern San Francisco,
and then you see Northwood north of California outside of
the Bohemi Club, but that's too in that entire state
that I came across, I didn't really have anybody say
to me, you know, you missed this. In California. The
bulk of the good nine old golf courses are in
the east.
Speaker 2: Nine hole courses are not a joke. They're really awesome.
Our guest is author of To the Nine's Anthony Poppy.
Speaker 3: This is Golf Smarter Premium.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast. Anthony.
Speaker 4: Hey for how are you doing, Matt.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. Welcome back.
Speaker 4: It's been a while, has it.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, it's been a long time. You were one
of the first guests. You were on episode number fifty one.
We're approaching episode number five hundred now, and you were
back in December of two thousand and six, so it
was almost our one year anniversary at that point, actually
is one short of our one year anniversary, and at
the time your book came out, why don't you hold
up the new version? And to let everybody who's listening
to the podcast know, we are broadcasting this interview as
well on Periscope. It's being done live, a live video
feed of Anthony, who's actually on Skype and I'm looking
at him through my phone on periscope.
Speaker 4: Your technology is beautiful, and you're in California and I'm
in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Don't you love the Internet? I do too, so yeah.
So for those of you who are not on Periscope,
we are at golf Smarter. You can follow us on
Twitter as well. And if you are on Periscope and
you have a question for Anthony while we're going through,
please submit it. It'll come up on my phone and
I will be able to hopefully write it down and
ask that ask that question that you've submitted. So Anthony.
Let's let's get to the book all right, originally the
Book to the Nines with a wonderful forward by Brad Faxon.
How did you get Brad Faxon to write your forward?
Speaker 4: Well, I had known Brad Faxon a little bit at
the time, and he, you know, you hear that he's
really into golf course architecture, and you know, don't believe
everything you hear, don't believe everything you read. He really is.
I mean, he's one of those guys that would drive
twenty five miles out of his way to go to
a night old golf course that has one good hole
on it. He's really that kind of person. And he
grew up playing essentially, you know, public golf as a kid.
And so I chatted with him about this and in
the area where he is and he's from New England
and I'm from you know, he's from Rhode Island that
I'm from Massachusetts and on living Connecticut. Now. He he
just thought it was such a great idea to talk
about these you know, legitimately really wonderful golf courses and
that that people just I think overlook and at times dismiss.
And he's not that kind of guy. You know, he's
the guy that he's going to go see a golf
course and go see a golf hole. You know, that
kind of person.
Speaker 2: So it was very nice of him to write this
for you. This is yeah.
Speaker 4: I said, well, here's the concept of the book and
he was like, wow, I've never thought of that. You know,
in New England we all grow up playing nine hole
golf courses. I said, I'd really appreciate if you did this,
and he said, not a problem, and he did it.
Speaker 2: Amazing, amazing. Let's talk about nine hole golf courses are
not really in great favor these days. Let's go back.
Let's talk about the history of nine hole golf courses
when they were popped.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I think they were popular right up until
World War Two. First US Open US AM in our
Newport country Club was nine holes. I think the last
US Open played on a night whole golf course was
It was at Myopia and I want to say nineteen
ZHO six somewhere around there. And at that time all
the great architects were building nine hole golf courses. SETH.
Rayner built a nine hole golf course one that two
possibly too. I'm just trying to think about got I
think two. Donald Ross built a number of them. Alistair
McKenzie built them. And what it was is in a
lot of situations, it was It's what my friend Bob
labanster since past, who wrote the chapter on Maine and
since passed away, talked about is they were referred to.
We referred to them as village courses. That people who
summered in these small towns, one who wanted to sail,
who wanted to ride horses, who wanted to swim, who
wanted to play tennis, wanted a good nine hole golf course.
So they brought in and nine holes because it was
part of what they were doing for the summer activities.
It wasn't just dedicated to They weren't just dedicated to golf.
So Wayne Styles and Donald Ross and Walter Travis and
people like that designed nine hole golf courses and nobody
ever thought of them as not a real golf course
or a little golf course. I don't like that phrase.
It's a little golf course. It's a nine hole golf course.
It's not a little golf course. And those guys built them,
you know, the Bohemian Club in Northern California, had a
nine hole Alistair Rickenzie golf course built for them. They
didn't considered it a little golf course. They considered it
a nine hole golf course.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the little term is probably because of
executive golf courses, right, these little par three courses.
Speaker 4: Right, and executive courses. And so I didn't realize because
I used to say the phrase, it actually has become
it fuses people because I've got one of the most
frequent questions I get about this book is are you
talking about executive courses? Are you talking about par three courses?
I said, no, I'm talking about nine hole golf courses.
And there seems to be this kind of confusion over that,
you know, And it's amazing because I think, and it
still holds true, there's eight states that have more nine
hole golf courses than eighteen whole golf courses. The only
one east of the Mississippi is Maine. But a lot
of the Upper Midwest courses, I mean Upper Midwest states
have nine whole golf courses because there's not enough people
to support an eighteen whole public golf course or an
eighteen hole and another eighteen hole, So there's nine whole
golf courses all through the Dakotas and Wyoming and Montana
and places like that, and so I don't think any
of those people consider them, you know, little golf courses.
I think they consider them their golf course.
Speaker 2: Do you think that those the states that have more
nine hole courses than eighteen whole courses, you think that
has anything to do with farm country in the sense
that people don't have as much free time because they're working.
I don't know, I'm making yourself.
Speaker 4: I think it's just the the the small amount of
people that live in an area. You know that if
you have one hundred square miles and there's not that
many people, I don't think they can afford the upkeep
of an eighteen old golf course, or there's enough people
to play in a to play in a you know,
to play an eighteen whole golf course, that makes it worthwhile.
You know, it should be a thousand square miles, not
one hundred square miles. A thousand square miles where you know,
there's just you go through and there's these these these
nine hole golf courses kind of dotting the countryside. You know,
you just drive up and people are playing and it's
not a it's not a social place. It's a you know,
it's not someplace you hang out and eat and drink
after you play. You you play golf and then you
go on. It's just it's it's really much the way
golf started. The golf course is just about golf.
Speaker 2: I just want to let at golf trips know that
he's watching on periscope, and he has submitted a couple
of interesting questions. I will get to those when we
get to that part of the conversation. So thanks for
the questions. And again, anybody on periscope is watching. If
you want to submit a question, I will try to
pay attention to Anthony and right down the question at
the same time.
Speaker 4: Awesome.
Speaker 2: So these nine whole courses, they've got par three's, par four,
par five. How do they break them out? They've got
long hole short holes. It's the real deal. It's just
not eighteen.
Speaker 4: Right exactly, it's the real deal. Some of them do.
And this is rare is that some of them will
actually set up different ts. Not just so if the
second time you play it the yardage is different, but
that angles are different. But they're true golf courses. I
mean it's you go out and you golf, you ball.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: A few years ago, the USGA made it so you
can now enter a nine hole school or for your handicap,
you know, with your gin. And the USGA, which is
now has this play nine initiative, is helping to leg
once again legitimize nine hole golf courses. I mean, you're
the real deal.
Speaker 2: Do you think it will be accepted by players? Do
you think people will think it's just nine holes? I
want to go out and play a full a dean
come on.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I understand that if somebody plays a lot
of golf, playing the same nine holes over and over
and over. But you know, for for people, if you're
really a golfer and you truly enjoy golf and golf courses,
then then dismissing I think dismissing a nine hole golf
course is kind of like dismissing a diner because you
don't think there's going to be good food there, or
you don't or you're you know, you're looking for whatever,
you know, hot cuisine you want, and to just not
go to a five star restaurant every time if you're
a true lover of food, doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: I love the retro reference on that being a diner
being you know you, You wouldn't be a diner. I'm
not going to go there. I need but I need
a real restaurant like Denny's.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, you know you'. And that's that's
an interesting reference too, because so much of golf now,
or so much of it after World War Two, was
cookie cutter and really repetitive and not thoughtful and didn't
require strategy that it did become Denny's. You know, since
Pete Dye in the late eighties when he brought strategy
back to golf, it's gotten much better. And what all
but two of these golf courses in my book are
classic era golf courses before before nineteen sixty, and they
all have, you know, some very cool hole, some wonderful strategy.
You're not going to go there and just hit it.
Hitting it straight at every hole is not going to
be off. The t is not going to be the answer,
and that's what makes it fun. The course on the cover,
that's the second hole at Fenwork in old Saybrook, Connecticut,
and that's one hundred and ninety five yard part three,
and the flag is actually blowing. So that's the left bunker.
You're looking at the whole place, the whole place from
your right, as far as the way we're looking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, show us the cover again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let me get this right. So you're playing
from this direction. But that's the ocean right there. That's
Long Island Sound, and right over here is the house.
Speaker 2: Like we're move moving a little more there a little
bit right there in front of you would be oh,
is that right?
Speaker 4: And so she grew up playing fenwork. And this is
one hundred and ninety five yard hole and you if
you want, you can fly it to the green and
the wind, the prevailing wind is the way the flag
is blowing. There. That's Long Island Sound, and you see.
And the play is to play the ball out to
the right and let the wind bring it back. But
the real play is to play it low. Is to
play a pure link style golf shop because this is
a course with no fairy irrigation. And if you know
the course, there's a kick slope about twenty yards short
of the green, and all you need to do is
flight something about one hundred and sixty five hundred and
sixty yards and it will run onto the green underneath
the win.
Speaker 2: That's a hell of a lot of strategy for one
golf that's amazing.
Speaker 4: And that's one wind, and the wind swirls and the
wind changes and all of that. So people who come
to me and say, you know, Fenwick really isn't that
much of a golf course. It's twenty five hundred yards
at par thirty five. My question is, I say to them,
We'll go play and come back and tell me what
you shot. Let me know if you shot below par,
let me know if you if you shot below your handicap,
tell me what you played. And nobody ever comes back
and says, no, I was right. I killed this golf course.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love when people say I don't want to
play the front tees. I don't want to play that course.
It's boring. I don't want to play the front tease.
It's not long enough. It's like, oh, are you going
to shoot par?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: No, well, then shut up.
Speaker 4: Rory McIlroy's hitting driver at and the Masters players are
hitting drivers six iron into par fives. That's us playing
a fifty eight hundred yard golf course to do the
same thing.
Speaker 2: Incredible. There are resort courses. I'm seeing more and more
that have three sets of nine and they're like on
Mondays you'll play nine A and nine C, and on
Tuesday you'll play nine B and nine A and once.
You know, so if you're staying at a resort, you
can play every day, but have different combinations in different courses.
And they're completely different courses too, right, And you know,
does that count for nine hole courses or no?
Speaker 4: It doesn't for me because that was built as twenty
seven you know, if you like, I consider the front
nine at Rolling Rock, which is Rolling Our Club now
an eighteen old golf course. It's in the book because
it was built by Donald Ross's as a nine hole
golf course. And so my whole discussion is about the
front nine of that golf course. But if you build
it like that, that's just a twenty seven hole golf course.
You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so that makes sense. And I don't
even know if you can get a nine hole rate
at those courses. It's like you just want to say, no,
I just want to play nine today because I want
to play first thing in the morning. Then I want
to go be with my family all day. I don't
want to t off at eight and miss lunch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's you know around here. In fact, in
West Hartford there's two twenty seven whole private courses and
they're setup for the membership is you know, like the
Red White and Blue nine. So if you play Red
and White as the eighteen whole course, blue is a
nine hole course for the day. And I think that's
fantastic because that's where people go and get a quick
nine in, that's where people go and play with their kids.
That's where people go who are learning the game. It's
really cool because you're not in anybody's way and you're
still on a golf course, you know what I mean,
And you're still at the.
Speaker 2: Club exactly exactly. Actually, that's one of the questions that
at Golf Trips asked on the periscope was about different
color flags.
Speaker 4: Oh for what on.
Speaker 2: You can recognize which course you're playing if it's got
multiple lines on there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess I'm trying to think. Yeah, I think
there might be situations where you need to make sure
you're walking to the right tee on the right nine
and playing to the right green and all that. And
the two courses here they just have the you know,
the if they're private, so you know where you're going.
But I could see that being a heck of a
problem at a resort.
Speaker 2: And what about courses again, if I'm going to take
Golf Trip's question about holes with two flags on one green.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of get that. I'm not sure I'm
a fan of that. If the course is if the
green is big enough, if we're talking a green that's
you know, double the average size of a double the
size of an average green, say somewhere in the vicinity
of ten to twelve thousand square feet. I get that,
but I'm not sure I want to. I want to
get involved, make my superintendent have to be doing that
kind of stuff and putting to different places and all that.
One of the interesting ones is the Dunes Club out
in Michigan. Mike Kieser, the guy who started banding Dunes.
This was his first course. He has the flags changed.
He has the flags change once a day at the
nine hole course. So you played a two, if you
played twice in a day, you played a two separate
or two different two gole locations.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's very cool. A couple months ago, I was
back in visiting a friend in Maui, and he's a
member of Maui Country Club and it's a nine hole
track with different tea boxes. You play eighteen holes, but
you really are playing, you know, and some of the
tea boxes are in a completely different location. The look
is different, the feel is different, the bunkering just comes
into play so differently. I was thinking at first, I'm like, really,
you pay membership to be on a nine hole course,
But that after I was like, Okay, I loved that.
That was so much fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I wouldn't be surprised if that's if that's
a trend that we see, because with with land issues
and cost issues for construction and all of that, you know,
the cost of adding entirely separates is so much cheaper
than building another nine holes. I mean, you're not talking
about changing the whole quarter with of the existing nine
or the first nine. It's really a way to make
to make the nine play completely, you know, completely different
a second time around. And then what you start to
do is you can then mix and match. You know,
just because you have a technically a front nine and
a back nine doesn't mean you have to play it
that way all the time. You know, you can flip
your par threes, so you're playing your first nine out
of you're playing the back nine of one in the
front nine of another. It actually ends up with a
whole bunch of, you know, cool scenarios to keep you
interested in the golf course.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned there are eight states that have more
nine hole courses than eight whole courses, I being a
West Coast person, I don't see any good nine hole
I don't see any nine hole courses. I see a
lot of executive courses. I learned how to play on
a par three and I played it once or twice
when I was a kid, and then I never played
golf again. And then as I started playing as an adult,
there was a nine hole track right down the street
from me that was an executive It's a par three
and par four, No par five's on it. And yeah,
so are does the West Coast? Is it mostly an
East Coast thing that there are great nine hole tracks
with par three four, part four and par fives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's there's much more in the East and I
and if you think about it, that's the way that
golf moved across the United States. I mean it started
in the East and moved west and so these nine
hole courses, a lot of them were built in the
early days of golf, and then you know, late eighteen
not late eighteen nineties, into the early nineteen hundreds, and
then they were updated by better architects along the way.
Some were expanded into eighteen holes, like Myopia, some like Whitonsville,
which was built in which I could nineteen fifteen, nineteen sixteen. State.
Is that the ones up and down the main coast,
you know, State is nine hole golf courses. But I
think as so then as golf moves west, eighteen holes
become standard. And the reason you see nine like we
talked about in the Midwest States, is that it's a
population reason for it. You know, it's not that people
are looking for nine hole. I think it's all that,
like we said that they can they have enough people
to play in it and the budget to upkeep. So
by the time it gets to California, you know, the golf,
golf is real and golf is eighteen holes, and that's
what a country club is. And so you see very few.
I mean, you see Glenn Eagles in San Francis, San Francisco,
right southern San Francisco, and then you see Northwood, you know,
north of California outside of the Bohemi Club. But that's
too in that entire state that I came across. I
didn't really get any after I wrote the first book.
Had anybody say to me, you know you missed this
in California. There's a couple I wish I could have
gotten to and you know, done some more with. Willie
Nelson owns a nine hole golf course called Pernallis and
I was never able to line up doing that, but
that would have been a wonderful story. But the bulk
of the bulk of the good golf nine golf courses
are in the East.
Speaker 2: At a quick Willie Nelson aside, since I brought up
the Maui Country Club, oh boy, hope, I'm get in
trouble for this one. He he came out to that
court course at Mali Country Club and he was asking
there are people allowed to smoke on the course and
they said, well, of course, he goes, no, no, no, man,
can they smoke weed on the course? So they have
the Willie Nelson role at the MOUNTI I didn't say that.
I didn't say that, Okay, well, and.
Speaker 4: He I think the name of his course is Pern Allison.
He's famous for the line he who has the fastest
golf card never has a bad line.
Speaker 2: That's a great one.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And one of my friends who actually who co
wrote the book The Towel of Willie with Willie. His
name is Turk Cook and he's a golf writer, talks
about playing in a fourteen some with Willy there because
it's Willy's golf course. He makes the rules and it
was fourteen people in fourteen golf cards.
Speaker 2: That's very funny. It's the golden rule. He who has
the gold makes the rules.
Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the guy who owns Bandon Dunes. Have you
ever been out there?
Speaker 4: I have. I haven't seen Old McDonald, but I played
the other three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's he opened a fourth course there.
Old McDonald beat the crud out of me. But they
have one of the most fun nine hole courses I've
ever played. It is a part three. It's an executive style.
But I had so much I would go back to
Bandon just to play the par three again. It was
that much fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, it's cool. The whole concept that he
has out there was great, and that he built something
like that. That par three golf course, I think really
indicates that he understands what is what makes golf fun
and how it's not just big eighteen hole flash sand
bunkers and you know that kind of stuff that you
can go play a par three and have a blast,
you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, No, all the courses that he's built there
are truly done with reverence to the game. There's no
question about it. It's spectacular and band and it again,
it was the hardest golf I've ever played in my life,
and I hated it while I was there, but once
I left and I started looking at the pictures and
thinking about it, it was like it was magic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I argue with you. You know, somebody else by
another place has that concept is the Prairie Club, Nebraska,
which has thirty six holes, but they have the ten
hole horse course and there's ten sets of te's and
ten greens and there's no scorecard and no direction on
how to play it, so you can walk well it's
not even tease. You kind of walk off greens and
hits whichever flag you want, and there's no yardages. And
I don't think that I think the longest hole is
one hundred and forty yards and so you just take
a handful of clubs and you go out and play.
It's a blast. It's an absolute blast.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it was designed by somebody from our
generation who is part of the woodstock generation, who had
one too many sugar cubes and said, dude, let's play
some golf.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty cool. And the only thing that's out
there is trash cans. A couple of tresh kids here
in there, because guys, after they've played their thirty six holes,
eat dinner and just walk back outside and play some
holes and beers on their hands and just drop them
in the drop them in the cans and just in
the bins and just keep playing. And you can play,
you know, play until ten o'clock at night during the summer.
So it's really really a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: That may have that may have been the birth of
disc golf. Those trash cans. That's the next book. That's
the next book. There are some very famous nine hole tracks.
We talk about Bandon Dune's Olympic Club in San Francisco. Again,
I think that's an executive nine holer. Augusta on Wednesday,
Par three. There isn't that interesting. So they're not that famous, uh,
nine hole tracks, they're just little executive courses that are cute.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Augusta's Augusta and Pine Valley which is
ten holes. They don't even have part fours. Those are
just straight par three's interesting. Yeah, kind of like the uh,
the little course in front of the Turnbury Hotel, which
I think is twelve holes. Those are all par three's. Wow.
Speaker 2: Architects who've been involved in the design of nine hole
courses some pretty famous names that we're doing some great
work on nine hole tracks. Give us a little background
on that too.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Donald Rossa did something in Kinetic excuse me in Massachusetts,
and it's interesting that in two the best I think
where's now the best hole golf nine hole golf course
in the United States is Whitensville, which is a Whitensville,
mass which was the Witton family and the Witton family
owned this big mill and they built a golf course
for their employees and they brought Ross in and ross
did a great job. They had the plans. The ninth
hole is and I talked about this in the book.
The ninth hole is one of Ben Crenshaw's favorite par
fours in the world. It's really an astoundingly cool part.
Four down the road from that, twenty miles is where
I grew up in a town called Southbridge, and we
used to have the American Optical Company, which is the
largest manufacturer of eyeglasses in the world, and the Wells
family built a nine hole golf course. Just like in Whitonsville,
they had Ross come in. It was built for them
originally that then became a country club, but not in
the way that we think about a country club. It
was very much a blue collar country club. It was
for the mill workers and and there are people that
could afford to play golf, and so Ross did things
like that very very often. Where where it was it
was built, it was built for a specific family, a
wealthy family that you know, there's there's a Ross course
in I'm just trying to think Petersham, Massachusetts. He built
that for I think that was Pittsburgh Steel summertime steel money,
so they wanted and they wanted a nine hole golf course.
So Ross Ross did a lot of them, I would
get I would think that Ross did more for whatever reason.
It may be his New England roots did more than
anybody of the classic care.
Speaker 2: Architects, but he wasn't the only one. I mean, I
saw another very classic name in your list while I
was reading the book again, Mackenzie. What's that, Alistair Mackenzie.
Speaker 4: Mackenzie. Mackenzie built this this nine holes at Northwood, uh,
you know, north of San Francisco. That's just astounding is
Ben's changes in the golf course. One because the Russian
River wiped away a green and they had to sense
during a flood, they had to move a tee for
safety reasons. But you just get out there, and he
didn't mail this one in. I mean, this is a
real golf course and he's got some strategy and some
options and deception going on out there. That's just amazing.
And it's carved through a redwood forest. And for somebody
like me who's from New England, to be playing golf
in a redwood forest in itself is just an amazing experience.
But to be playing a Mackenzie course at the same time,
it's just over the top.
Speaker 2: Well, you're gonna have to let me know when you
come back out and visit, and we'll take a tour together,
because I seem to be playing along tall trees all
the time. All right, all right, yeah, And what's really
interesting because of the drought situation here now the Russian
River is going dry. It is, yeah, so they're not
gonna be wiping away any floo, any greens, but but
the Russian River when we do have lots of rain,
the Russian River wipes out towns, right it overflows.
Speaker 4: And the cool thing about Northward for me is that
you know, it's it's it's above the vineyards, it's you know,
north of the vineyards and all that. And you get
up there and you think to yourself, like what am
I going to do? And there's and there's a little
motel right there, and so you can bop around that
area and see what's going on, and there's some cool
nature thing. But here's this Alistair McKenzie night whole golf
course that's incredibly affordable and you're literally a four minute
walk from the first t That's amazing. Yeah, that's fun.
Speaker 2: Wow. So your book came out originally in two thousand
and six, which is when we did the first interview,
and the reason you've come back now is because you've
got a new chapter, just the one or there's there's
it's a new edition of the book. Congratulations, right and why.
Speaker 4: Well what happened was is that I was about a
year ago, I was approached by people from the publishing
house Roman and Littlefield.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: One of the guys involved with the company had read
the book spend some time every year and I'll say
Brook knows Fenwick, loves the Nighthole golf course at Fenwick,
and asked me if I would be interested in them
the book's been out of Princeton's twenty ten, I believe,
asked if I would be interested in the book coming
in them and them reprinting the book. And that's you know,
that's the dumbest question I've had asked me in the
last year. Absolutely, you know, let's do this again. And
I said, there's this new there's this course that just
opened in uh are about to open in Tennessee. It's
the only one that's opened since the a note that's
opened since the book came out. And I'd like to
add that course. And they said, you can do whatever
you want. Uh, we want you to update the chapters
that the existing chapters and we and we'd love you
to do that. So I went out to Swanee in
South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, near Chattanooga. And that's the new chapter.
And the course opened in October to rave reviews and
continues to get ray reviews.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: I think it's the best. I think it's the best
nine to hold golf course built since since the end
of World War Two. I think it's better than the
Dunes Club.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Why it's really really, really amazing.
Speaker 2: Why do you think it's so great?
Speaker 4: Well, it has an immense amount of strategy to it.
Rob Collins and Tad King who designed it. It's Rob
Collins or the architect. He partners with Tad King who's
the construction superintendent and the shaper. And their whole concept
was really what Augusta National concept was, which is now gone.
But the kind of the Inland Links course, very very
wide fairways, no rough. Anybody can play the golf course.
Most of the greens are open in front, so you
can bounce the ball onto the green. But there's specific
strategy to every hole. So when a when a whole,
when a whole quarter is eighty five yards wide, you
can you still have to come in from a correct side.
And so that's really really fun. The greens have a
lot of movement in and but they're big, so they're
not lacky, you know what I mean. You have some
big sweeping putts, but the cupable areas are very sublime.
It's a lot of fun, a lot a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: And what about the future of nine hole courses? Because
the United States, there are no new courses being built.
There's no money going to it's all going into China.
It seems like there hasn't been a new course. And
some people blame the tiger effect on this, but there's not,
you know, a lot of construction being done. And it's
also because of the classic complaints. It takes too long,
it's too hard, it's too expensive. People's lives are so
there's so much going on in everybody's lives, they just
don't have time for a full eighteen holes. Nine holes
seems to be the perfect you know, resolution for this,
Is that the right word? Resolution?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay? And I mean, like I would love to be
able to go out to my favorite course and say
I just want to play nine today and say I'm sorry,
you can't do that after eight thirty in the morning.
Another way, I would love to see it is break
it up into six, twelve or eighteen.
Speaker 4: Right, they do that to you that you can't play nine. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I recently I said do you have a nine hole rate?
And they said not eight after eight thirty in the morning.
Speaker 4: That's interesting because that's the usg HIT now has come
out with this play nine initiative, and it's multifaceted. The
idea is to get people back to golf to golf.
They're letting people know that you can submit a nine
old round as partry a handicap. You can go on
the website and find nine hole golf courses, but you
can also go to the web and find go to
the website and find eighteen hole or golf facilities that
are nine hole friendly. You know, all the nine hole
eighteen hole golf courses in my area that are public
are nine hole friendly. You can play nine holes. They're
also encouraging people to go and practice, to go and
chip and pod to go or the range to have fun.
But I think I think you're going to see the
end of excluding nine hole play pretty soon. I mean,
that's that doesn't make any sense from a business model
standpoint to me. And I think you know, we're in
a downturn for golf for whatever reason. It may just
be cyclical, but I see nine holes rounds and rounds,
and I guess that the realization that nine hole golf
courses are out there, you know, becoming more as time
goes on. And I hope that that's true, because there's
some really good golf courses that are being overlooked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, for me what would be awesome
is because I usually I like to play later in
the afternoon, so I play a lot more when it's
daylight savings time. So when it's not daylight savings time,
if I want to go out at two o'clock, I
can only get nine holes in any way, right, you know.
Speaker 4: So there's a municipal golf course in the top next
to me, Meriton, and they usually have very busy play
in the morning, so they would do it, you know,
a double crossover started both teas one and ten crosses
over the course is full. When the course opens up again,
they dedicate one T to eighteen and one T to
nine And that's really cool. If you pitch your nine
hole early afternoon play out there and they're done in
two hours.
Speaker 2: And now I would love to get a quick tip
from you.
Speaker 4: Okay, I've given this tip to a lot of people
that come back to me and told me it was
spot on. Go find a nine hole golf course that
you've overlooked, that people have told you isn't worth playing,
isn't a true golf course, isn't a real golf course,
and go play. You're going to be pleasantly surprised.