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