Sony Open Picks, Sentry Recap, Favorite Golf Courses of 2023, & Golden Gate Park with Stephen Hennessey and Jay Blasi
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Jay Blossom, Recap in the Century, Sony Open Picks, Favorite Golf Courses of 2023, Golden Gate Park. We are jam-packed with a ton of content in this one. But first, we are presented, as always, by Rumpier Sports. Gave a big spiel, gave a big ad read on the podcast that I put out on Sunday morning. So no need to belabor the point. All that I will add is that I'm running a giveaway right now.

For anyone who signs up, only time that I'm going to do this, you got to forgive me for the excitement. Second week on the job, I'm pouring my heart and soul into this to make this the sharpest, most active, engaged community in the space. So all you have to do is shoot me a message in the discord when you sign up. That's it.

Let's chop it up. I'll introduce you to the game, to the gang. Now is the time to do it because Sony Open is probably my most profitable tournament of the year. And my full course breakdown and model is live already on runpuresports.com. You're getting all of my premium in-depth articles. But you got that at the last place. The real reason to sign up, well, it's still part of it, but mainly the Discord community.

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mainly access to me for any questions. So the best place to chop it up been a very lively Monday in the RPS discord. That's, it's kind of what we're trying to do instead of just posting the article. Let's talk about golf all day in there. So rump your sports.com code Andy. That is the important part to get that 15% off discount. Shoot me a message in the discord. When you sign up, you will be automatically entered into that draw and,

And we'd love to have you as part of the community. All right. Coming up on this podcast.

I'm bringing back my good friend and colleague at Golf Digest, deputy editor of Golf Digest, Stephen Hennessey. He was my boss. Well, he still is my boss. But when I was an intern way back in the day, this is at the beginning of COVID, Stephen was the guy who was in charge of me and actually gave me the chance to write and contribute for the website. So I really credit him a lot for that.

my career, um, for giving me that opportunity. Um, and we've continued to stay great friends. Uh, we talked about that a little bit on the podcast. We also talk about the century. We do a little recap there, talk some Sony open picks, and then what we actually love to talk about, which is our favorite golf courses of 2023. Uh,

Maybe, well, we didn't really get, I'm recording this after the podcast, so I'm reminded that we didn't get to wishlist for 2024. I guess I'll have to have him back to do that. But that was part of the outline that we didn't get to because there's so much rich material in there already. We cover a lot of ground in there. And then in the second half of the podcast, I'm bringing back my friend Jay Blasey. We recorded this together about a month ago.

I hit him up when the rollback news dropped and I said, hey, I'd love to get an architect's perspective on this. Then I went on vacation. I did a bunch of season preview stuff and I thought, okay, when's the best time to release this? Maybe I'll just...

save this until Golden Gate Park is opening because we talk about Golden Gate Park, his new golf course in San Francisco a bunch as well. And it is opening in three weeks now. I have that confirmed. So we talk about rollback. We talk about the opening of Golden Gate Park and then all of the stuff with Steve as well. So this is a jam-packed episode without further to let's get to it.

All right. Stephen Hennessy is here, deputy editor of Golf Digest. We're just talking. We didn't get to play golf last year for the first time, I think, in a couple of years. So we're going to have to amend that. But I know, you know, I got to say your fatherhood content on Instagram is an A plus. It really is. I get so much enjoyment out of that. And I know you've got your hands full with

You did a ton of travel this year. We're going to talk about that in the second half of the podcast.

you obviously have a young child as well, and you've got a pretty impressive day job as well. So hopefully we can get out there in 2024, but it's great to have you back, my friend. Yeah, we're going to do it. We're both pretty busy. And a lot of people you have to play golf with when you're up here in New York. So you threw a few invites my way, I threw a few your way. And we're just busy people, but we're going to make it work this year.

Speaking of golf kind of things returning and things we are excited about for the new year, I have to say, I know that there was some talk in the weeks leading up to the century last week at, at Kapaloo about, um,

Football season is still going on. There's a little bit of dullness. We're starting to feel the absence of our last two winners here were Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith. Both of them now are playing on a different golf tour. I got to say, maybe it's the golf course. Maybe it's just being transported to Hawaii, but-

I felt like Kapilua really delivered and I felt like the energy was strong. I thought it was a pretty exciting Sunday. I think it was a thought it was a pretty exciting weekend in general. It felt to me like at different times of the tournament, there was a moment where, you know, Scotty had a moment where we thought he was going to win. Colin or Carla had a moment where he thought he was going to win.

I felt like Xander had a chance for a while. Cantlay had a chance for a while. Spieth made a little bit of a charge. Sahith is always fun when he's in the mix. So I would say overall, like as a, as a debut golf event of the season, uh, I was pretty impressed with, with Kapaloo this year. Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, there were a bunch of stories on Sunday that, you know, were intriguing to watch and that's,

you know, that, that ultimately, you know, captivates you and makes you not want to change the channel back to football. And, you know, we have enough screens in our lives. We could keep track of it all, but I agree, you know, at no point during any of the week was I like, man, I wish John Rahm was here. And, and,

you know, that might change at a few events later this year. I think a lot of it is we were just so pumped that golf was back and it's Hawaii. You know, there's something to turning on your TV when the season starts in 2024 and seeing, you know, the waves and the ocean and the trade winds at Kapalua. You know, it's nostalgic for a lot of us who are so hooked on the pro games. So yeah, we didn't miss them yet. That might change, I think, but...

But yeah, it was a good week for sure. I was disappointed. Morikawa wasn't more of a factor. That blew me a top five each way. Going down the stretch, my guy, Benny Ahn, didn't make that happen. But regardless, it was a decent week. That bogey on 17. I remember he was making everything on Sunday. And then he just had a pretty seamless three putt on 17 that kind of came out of nowhere. He's got that in the bag. Yeah. Yeah.

But was Chris Kirk on your radar at all? Because hand up on that one. He was not for me. I overlooked him. My friend Wiley hit him at 150 to one. I saw that. Their colleague at odds checker, Tom Jacobs was on him at all. But yeah,

Kirk was not, you know, Kirk winning the century was absolutely not on my bingo card to start the year. No, no. I, you know, I saw the field come out on Friday and Kirk was like up on the leaderboard. I was like, oh, I'm a hundred percent betting Kirk at Sony, you know, hoping to get like a 35 or 40. And surprisingly we still have that. I'm surprised he's not lower. We'll go over the odds in a bit, but yeah.

yeah, good for him, man. You know, the last I thought of him and saw him over the break was he was hitting left-handed shots on Instagram. So I didn't expect him to beat the best players in the world. That's for sure. Does it that speak to the futility and the silliness of what we do? And I know people in the NFL speak about this a lot. It's like,

God, we're really going to spend all this money wagering on games that are so impacted by the human error of referees in golf. It's like you got a guy practicing left-handed for the entire month of December, and then he wins one of the stronger field events of the year in the first week of January. How, how are we supposed to predict that? Yeah.

It's unreal. A couple of guys did. Wiley, shout out to him and Jacobs for getting it done. But no, I feel like he could go back to back, though. I'm still of the belief this is a great course for Kirk, as we've seen year over year. But yeah, I mean, all the hours...

you know, that we produce content and then consume content. No, I didn't hear a lot of Chris Kirk. Yeah. So there'll be a lot of hands up in the industry. Did you see, there is a, uh, Twitter account that is tracking our golf digest picks. I did see that. Yeah.

I think you and Powers started out with a pretty good lead. So shouts to you. Was it you or Powers that had the JT post in top 10? I had the top 10 on the post, man. So that was nice. Good for you. Yeah. Imagine having that free time to create an account and a Twitter thing. I mean...

I don't want to say anything negative, but that's impressive. That's all I have to say. No, I don't think it's malicious. Like, I don't think it's meant to make us look bad, although it does have the unintentional effect of potentially that happening. Right. Although I'm confident in us. We always we always do really well. We're there for a reason.

But yeah, there'll be an extra added element of accountability this year. We're going to get reminded. We're going to get reminded every single Sunday afternoon exactly just exactly how we did.

That's a good thing. Accountability. I'm all for it. You know, we count all the units in the golf digest betting column, you know, from matchups and top tens. And yeah, we had a pretty solid last year. So yeah, I hope everyone keeps coming at us. There are a couple people on Twitter who are negative about,

about us. But, um, Hey, I mean, we were the first ones to do it when betting was legalized in 2018. And, you know, I think our products, I was an intern. I remember very well. I always forget you were an intern. I was an intern for you. I would, I would argue, I would argue that you were actually one of the more seminal figures in my entire career because I had some internships

I think everybody's had those internships where the entire job is getting coffee and you don't really learn anything, but you're also not really in a position to say anything to your superiors about potentially getting more work. And it's just kind of an uncomfortable position where you don't really know whether or not you're supposed to ask questions or not. Golf Digest was like,

Hands down the best internship I ever, I don't know if you offer that internship anymore to people. Sure do. Yeah. I still manage it. Yeah. Okay. So I actually, and maybe this was because I was good at it, but you gave me the opportunity to write legitimate articles for, for the website. Like as an intern for three months, I had no,

Not super long form, but like 800 word pieces up interviewing. I remember I interviewed this random guy that just wanted to talk about all of the golf courses that he got to play this year. And you were like, maybe we could steer away from the guy that just wants to name drop every one of the most exclusive golf courses in the world and talk about, I think it was like his...

his a ball marker collection or, or something like that. Oh, that's right. You remember the guy? Yeah. But moral of the story, it was a blast because I actually got to do things and learn things. And I remember at that time, um,

This was prior to them talking about gambling on the telecast. I think it was prior to them having any of the PGA Tour, having any big deals with the sports books. Now they have live odds on the PGATour.com leaderboard. And I remember I was doing some of the compiling for you guys making gambling picks. Right. And it was...

Not a lot of people were doing that at the time. It was kind of surprising. It was some real avant-garde golf digest on the edge of the gambling wave shit back in 2018. That's right. Yeah. I still remember getting a meeting invite from our boss, Chris Reynolds, in August of 2018. The meeting was just gambling. And I was like,

fuck, I'm busted. They found my offshore account. I'm getting shut down. It's an intervention. But turns out it was a meeting about gambling content. And yeah, you were a part of it. And I'm of the belief as an intern, in college...

you learn your best just doing stuff. Like there's only so much you could learn in the classroom about writing and, you know, content creation. And, you know, that's how I learned was, you know, working at the student newspaper at Penn State just,

hours and hours. So I'm of the belief our interns should just be writing and that's, that's how you're going to learn. And, you know, I'm glad to hear you had a positive experience and yeah, I made it into a pretty nice, pretty nice career. Yeah, you did. You did. Yeah. Not every intern gets all the, uh, opportunities that you did. You obviously were, uh,

You know, very well versed in golf course architecture, you know, at a young age and obviously showed an interest in sports betting. So, yeah, we threw you right into the fire and now look at you.

I do remember we're going to get to the Sony in a second. I can use this to transition us into the Sony, but I remember one of the first things I did was, do you still compile the odds? It's a really easy assignment, but you basically just on Mondays. I know where you're going to go with this. Yeah. You compiled the full odds. You had to copy and paste. Right. And you do a little, but you do a little graph or two about, Hey, we're actually still do that for you guys. I do.

I just sent you my DFS picks where you do a little graph about, hey, we're heading down to Honolulu this week. The PGA Tour returns for its second. I could write those in my sleep at this point. We call it boilerplate stuff. You just throw it at the top.

Who knows who actually reads that stuff? Probably nobody. Probably no one, but I learned to do that at Golf Digest, and I cannot tell you how much that skill has helped me in writing in the future. It's like, just, hey, we need one paragraph at the top to perfectly intro the reader in to what they're going to get, and it has to be concise.

you kind of have to jam in like the key players, the course, maybe one little funny sentence about Hawaii or something like that. But anyway, point being we are on to, uh, we're on, we're hopping one aisle over to Maui this week. So, uh,

Uh, have you gotten a chance yet to look at the odds board today? We're recording this on Monday night. So I know I'm probably catching you a little bit early. Maybe I know, uh, we do, I do my, we do our pecs on Tuesday kind of afternoon. So maybe I'm catching you a little bit early, but have you checked out the odds board this week for the Sony?

Yeah, I mean, last week I was I was pumped because we had odds on like Saturday. I threw my Morikawa bet in early. Yeah, I was checking Monday morning as I always do. And like I said before, Kirk stood out to me at 35 to one. You know, it feels like he could go on sort of like a Jimmy Walker, ask a run and, you know, put together a few wins in a row. This is such a perfect situation.

course for him. So, um, you know, and I think he's, he's extra motivated, you know, he's obviously not going out and celebrating a ton after Kapalua. This is a strictly business trip. So I like Kirk here. Kirk over Tagala is a matchup I like as well. We'll, we'll get right into it. It's a good sell high on Tagala week. I think. Yeah. That was your point. Yeah. He's going to have a little, a little bit more trouble when he's not

to 60 yard wide fairways. Yeah. He'll be the first to admit it. He plays his best when he could be creative and, you know, his, his weakness is, you know, a wide miss off the tee. And, you know, you, you can miss here at, at YLA. Uh, the rough isn't, you know, anything crazy, but you can miss big and, you know, that's, that's his weakness. So yeah, I like Kirk over to Gala there. And as you said, in the DFS post, you know, a salary increase of like 1500 bucks, um,

And this is a great field too. So it's not as if Tagal is like the class of the field. There's a lot of good players here. So yeah, I don't quite get that. I'm glad you brought that up because it is probably the strongest Sony field that we've seen in quite some time.

We have three European Ryder Cup stars kind of in Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrell Hatton, and Ludwig Obert. All three have never played the golf course before, but they're at the three at the top of the odds board. And the reason why I find that interesting is because

And I was surprised to find this. And I think it does kind of speak to some of the nuances of, you know, Seth Rayner's architecture, even though this golf course has pretty much been largely lost to time and outdated by modern technology. In the hotel, yeah. Right. But did you know that Wiley has the second highest correlated course history out of any other golf course on the PGA Tour outside of Augusta? That surprised me.

Yeah, me too. I've learned that reading and editing your article, which people can find at golf digest.com. But yeah, I would have thought like Harbortown would have been up there. You know, the greens here, a lot of them have that Seth Rayner characteristic, but I,

They're mostly flat, and they've lost a lot of that extreme undulation that we know so well from other rainer designs. So that does surprise me. But maybe it's just a matter of the players who choose to come here year after year,

you know, play, they know they play well here. So it's sort of a course where if you're a player and you know, this course doesn't suit your game, you're not going to come all the way to Hawaii for it. So that might have a little bit to do with it too. So it'll be interesting to see how those three guys do, you know, especially Obear, you know, I'm not sure how much this course suits his game, but

Maybe he's just good enough and, you know, could forget the disappointing Kapalua week and, you know, contend again. I wouldn't be surprised. Not to get us too sidetracked, but have you checked out the new Rainer book?

I've seen it. It looks a little expensive. It's excellent. It's excellent. Well, it's a good gift. I got one for myself. I got one for my girlfriend's dad. It's a great coffee table book. I think you would love it. Sweet. So anyway, I can't recommend that book highly enough because it goes into –

It's more of a coffee table book than, you know, like, it's not like you're reading a novel or anything. So I get a lot of pictures. Anyway, point being, I feel the same way about, uh, Oh, bears you. I think that this golf course doesn't do the best job of, uh,

I think it devalues a little bit what he does best, which is this is not a golf course that is going to necessarily reward elite or long driving quite the opposite, which is why I felt pretty comfortable going down a little bit lower into that range that you talked about with Kirk. Yeah.

Corey Connors was, was my first bet. Now I know that he's going to be fairly, fairly popular already this week. I will, I will just tell you, Steve, if you're looking for an indicator of popularity, I put out my Sunday podcast and I usually spotlight a player. And usually people love to tell me how stupid I am, how, how much my picks have no chance. I talked about Corey Connors on the podcast this week on, uh,

that I released yesterday and I got 10 different messages saying great pack. I'm on Connors as well. When usually the messages are a little bit more malicious and skeptical of my insights. So that could be probably a sign that a lot of people feel the same way about Corey Connors this week. So maybe he ends up being a fade in, in daily fantasy, but I thought at 33 to one Connors fits that perfect intersection of, of,

Hit the ball really well at Kapalua, but didn't putt or chip well enough to get an inflated price based on his finishing position. Amazing course history, top 12 finishes four years in a row, and checks that final key third box of me of very elite short to middle iron play, which is-

Outside of course history, if we're dumbing this course down to two crucial aspects for me, it's experience at this track and short to middle iron play. I think that's how you win here. A hundred percent. Yeah. I'm with you on Connors and you know, that's why I like Kirk and Brian Harmon was the other name that sticks out. And I hate betting Brian Harmon mostly because I don't like Brian Harmon. That's probably a different story for another podcast. He burned me once when I was on assignment.

Golf Digest, I'm just not a Harmon guy. But, you know, at over 20 to one here, he impressed that Kapalua, of course, that well, you know, the second shot in wedge play is so important there. So maybe not a surprise he did so well. So, yeah, I think you got to consider Harmon around 22, 25 to one as well.

Uh, the other name that I'll throw out there for you before we dive a little bit deeper into the middle tier of the odds boards, but your guy, JT Poston, I see no, I see no reason to hop off. Right. I mean, the irons look great. He's played some good golf at this course in the past and, and,

He checks that box. If he's a really solid short to middle iron player, I got him at 40 to one. I think that's dropped a little bit, but I'm kind of cool with him all the way down to 35. Yep. Also put that bet in at 40. Um, couldn't, couldn't agree more. It feels like his career trajectory is about to take a little leap forward. I mean, he was really rank and file just, you know, two or three years ago, but, um, you know, he has the potential to be a

top 40 player uh for sure with how elite his short game is and you know no one could get a hot a hot putter like he can here so yeah i like jt for sure if i asked you who led the field in approach on sunday at capitol do you think you'd be able to tell me maybe from my article

I want to say Justin Rose just because I did read your article. You're correct. Yeah, you're correct. I'm cheating. I would not have known that. It's hilarious because I was watching this on Sunday and Justin Rose is T46 and he's like on the brink of shooting 59. And he's... No one knew that. Yeah, he parred. He had... He was, I believe...

10 under par with four holes to go. And it's a par 73. He was 10 under par through 15 holes or through 14 holes with two par fives left. Two par fives, right? Yeah. Two par fives left. And he ended up shooting 60, I believe, or 61. But let the field and approach play. I got him at 55 to one. Mm-hmm.

And I like playing guys like that. I think that his prices based on his finishing position in the tournament, the fact that he played better than anybody at capital on Sunday, and it was a total drop in the bucket, but a deeper inspection shows that he clearly found something. It wasn't just his putter on Sunday. He was the best iron player in the field. And, um,

He's been really good at this golf course too. He finished runner up in, in 2017. So Justin Rose, 55 to one, that was my third bet.

Yeah, I like that. And, you know, his putter could get super hot too. You need that kind of intangible here to go super low to gain, you know, four or five, six or more strokes putting. So J Rose, I like that. And in that same vein, Denny McCarthy, I feel like at 50 to one, you know, wedge fest, you know, best putter in the world, generational putter. Give me Denny at 50 to one, you know, shook out the cobwebs last week. So.

Yeah, all about Denny and J. Rose in that range. I'm with you. Of a lot of the players, how do you assess performance last week? Because I was looking at this and...

I don't have the exact number in front of me, but I want to say that it was something close to 70% of the last 20 winners did play at the century, but not all of them were good at the century, right? There's all these instances of guys playing really poorly at the century. Kevin Na, I think two years ago, finished nearly dead last at the century and then went on to win the Sony last week. And that has me wondering and thinking if

Cam Davis at 50 to one and Hideki Matsuyama at, at 50 to one. If we're putting the card a little bit before the horse on those guys, based on a small, a very small sample size at a golf course that is wildly different from while I, I mean, to be honest with you, I'd rather have them play bad at Kapalua than have their last competitive golf appearance be in October. Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. You know, I think even though it's a different sort of approach week, you know, in a lot of cases at Kapaloo, you have to aim away from pains and let the green kind of, you know, take a ball back to the hole. Whereas Wiley is not like that on all the greens, you know, it's, it's a lot of, you know, point and shoot.

on a decent amount of greens at least. I think you're right. I think you could have some bad ball striking numbers. We just fall in love with looking at last week's strokes gain and all the data that we have. But

Yeah. I mean, there's evidence of guys just, you know, getting into that competitive mindset last week and that being a huge factor because it's a huge layoff, as you said, from October to now, you know, it's one thing to go out and shoot low rounds with your buddies when the stakes are low. But, you know, ask Tiger, who's admitted that it's tough for him to kind of turn on that competitive gear when he hasn't in a while. And that's

His biggest adjustment coming back on tour, only playing a couple rounds a year. I think that's huge for those guys this week. So I think it would be good to see some semblance of a game and a guy like Rose at least having a hot weekend gives you a little extra reason to back them. But yeah, I wouldn't completely rule out a guy like Cam Davis or Hideki.

Is there anybody I want to spend the back half of this podcast doing something a little bit even more up our alley? But is there anyone as we get from 50 to 100 plus that you want to shout out as well? Because I have one more guy I want to mention, but I'll kick it to you first. Yeah, I have three guys. I'll mention the two that I've bet and then the one who I want to ask you about. Emiliano Grillo, I think, kind of fits that mold from last week. Shook out the rust. Had a few...

good rounds and another great wedge player really improved his putting from two years ago. We saw that last year. So he's 101. I feel like he's worth a bet. And then the other guy is Justin saw another guy. I'm just high on this year, you know, contended a few times last year and tends to play well on tougher courses. So I don't necessarily love his game, but what I do like is the putter, which could get super hot. So, so,

So those are the two bets I made, you know, at triple digits. And then the guy I want to ask you about is Adam Hadwin, another guy who played last week, had a hot Sunday. And, you know, you're a big Hadwin guy. I'm wondering how you think his game suits here because he could get super hot with the putter too. Yeah, I like Hadwin a lot, mainly because...

The middle iron place with him specifically, like he's had a ton of success, not just on Bermuda greens, but he's had a lot of success on some of these shorter tracks that place the place, a large emphasis on short to middle iron play. That's kind of where you want had one. Cause he's, he's not a very long player. He starts to struggle a little bit more, the farther you get him away from the hole. So I a hundred percent, what was the Hadwin number?

I'm seeing 66 here. Okay. Okay. So I might have room for him because the only other guy that I have is...

I saw Tom Hoagie at 125 to one, which was very shocking to me because, you know, he's 7,600 on draft Kings. Like all the other guys at 125 to one or very low 7,000. It's on Caesar sports book. If anybody wants, if anybody has access to that, I want to give people the opportunity to tell them where it actually is. But I, I was very surprised at that because I,

hoagie is another player that to me is is in that zone of guys like hadwin that are priced in in the 60s and actually you mentioned griot 100 that feels a bit high to me as well but yeah a lot of those guys that were were just okay last week at at capelo and hoagie was fine um yeah he had a couple bad holes but i think he finished middle of the pack i think he finished 35th out of 59 players and i just saw the 125 to 1 and

He checks those two key pillars for me, Steve. He's an elite middle iron player, and he's played well at Sony in the past. So I think if you want to distill it into a super elementary level this week, if they're checking those two boxes for me, I'm probably in or going to give them a look. And if they're not, it's probably a good reason to pass. Yeah. I like Hoagie, too. Maybe four or five years ago, he had a shot to win here. Might have been the Keziah year or maybe the—

Justin Thomas here, I'm forgetting, but he was right up there going into Sunday. So that's a good shout too. All right. Let's spend the second part of this talking a little bit about some golf travel in 2023. Nice. One of you and I's favorite things to talk about. I'm a little self-conscious now about golf.

My list. I don't have many. There's really two standout golf courses for me that I want to highlight, but I feel like it pales in comparison to some of your golf travels this past year. I don't know. But you know your job. So actually I'll say this. Maybe we start here. I don't know if this was one of the golf courses you wanted to talk about, but your trip to stream song actually influenced me to. Yeah.

book a trip to stream song. Look at that. I think I messaged you. So whatever stream song was paying the golf digest guys to come over and post content, it worked like they should raise your rates. I booked pretty much on the spot. One of my best friends who's a big golfer who I've

Went to Ireland with, we, we love doing golf trips. We try and do it every year. We're getting, he's getting married this year. So we wanted to do some sort of bachelor party slash golf trip before his wedding. Um, and we were kind of in between sand Valley, the band ends, uh,

Oh, Cabot. We, we gave a look at which I still need to hit as well. And he's a New York guy. So we ended up saying, gosh, stream song just makes the most sense. So I will be there in March. Um, but did you check it out for the first time this year? No, I mean, that's probably like my sixth or seventh time at stream song. I've been there. The new short course though, right? Yeah. The chain just opened, or I guess it'll officially open in a few months. They have a few of the holes, uh,

open, but CP and I were the first ones to play all 19 holes, which was awesome. We had a chance to make the first hole in one at the chain too. We failed to do that. Played well though. The chain is a lot of fun. Obviously that's a big trend in architecture, as you know, are these shorter courses that

you know, they're not just kind of pitching putts there. You know, this is corn Crenshaw design with really interesting greens. And the fun thing is they get to do things that they wouldn't normally probably do on a lot of their part threes if they were designing a full 18 hole course. So, you know, the, the highlight and you'll see, you've probably seen pictures of this already is this punch ball green, the 11th it's,

I mean, it's probably about 35 to 40 feet high, the highest point of this green it's massive. And you're hitting a tee shot over the water. You know, it could play as long as two 10, uh, cross, cross the water to this huge punch bowl. I mean, so much fun. And they have a few holes that aren't, you wouldn't call part threes. There's, you know, a 260 yard hole, um,

So it's just so much fun. It's meant to be, you know, you play around on one of the other three courses and you have a bet to settle. So you go over to the chain and you get a little game going and it's a ton of fun. You could tee off from, so they, instead of tee markers, they have chains and the chains could be, you know, 50 to 60 yards long.

So, you know, whoever's honors it is gets the tee off from wherever they want to, wherever suits their game. So yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun. And the other three courses are, are awesome too. Red's my favorite. We played blue, which is great. It,

It's Cork Crenshaw have one, Hans has one, and Doak has one. Yeah, red is Cork Crenshaw, so that's my favorite. Blue grows on me. The more I play it, that's Doak. And then black is Hans, which is also great. It has the largest greens in North America. They're massive and some really good holes. So it's kind of the perfect place if you're on the East Coast, like your buddy from New York, you could get there.

Pretty easily. You know, there, there's nothing much to do outside of the resort. That's like going to ask if you had any hacks or tips for the non golf hours of the day, food recommendations, anything like that? Yeah. Like Tampa is a good hour away. So, you know, if you want the nightlife, like it's a full drive and you know, no Ubers go to

Bowling Green, Florida. You can't order an Uber from the lodge, but they have great restaurants there, some good bars. If there's sports on, they have a good sports bar up at the

the top rooftop there. So, and they got like the skeet shooting and there's a nice spa. So, uh, you know, they, they do a very good job there. And like I said, I've been going since it opened in 2011 and it just keeps getting better and better and they have room to build more golf courses too. So that'll be interesting to see how many courses they end up there with.

So I didn't ask you to rank them or anything, but was the chain on your short list of best new golf experiences of the year? Yeah, probably. I didn't travel that much this year. I obviously got to play Augusta last year, which doesn't seem real. That's got to be number one, I would imagine.

I think I put on Instagram that my favorite course of the year was a course that you know very well, the Creek. Oh, man. So, I mean, Augusta, like, it's a little unfair, but getting to play there, obviously, you know, the access, no one's able to play there. So that part of it was amazing. But the Creek, man, that's instantly, I've told you this, it's instantly in my top 10 courses list.

that I've played in my favorite courses, which is different than best courses to me, but it's in my top 10. I have long maintained. I think the sixth hole is the greatest par four in America. I think the stretch, once you get into the inlet of the drivable par four straight into the beer at screen and that little, I mean, honestly, six through 12 is just banger after banger after banger.

It's all world. Yeah. Yeah. I, I said this to you, I think one of my first, and now I, I see it starting to rise, but I remember when I first started looking at the top 100 list and I was so, I was so shocked that Creek wasn't higher and it, it probably gets, and this is good because, um, one of mine is a long Island course. So I can, I can talk about this as well. Cause this is another golf course that kind of gets lost in the shuffle, but

It's just the best. It's the Mecca of golf. Right. And so when we talk Long Island, we talk about Shinnecock and national and friars had right. Yeah. And Maidstone and I feel like if the Creek was, uh,

in the middle of Nebraska or basically in any other state or part of the country outside of the south shore of Long Island, it would maybe be viewed differently. And the next course I'm about to talk about carries the same thing. But I just think some of these Long Island courses that get lost in the shuffle stand alone in other parts of the country we talk about and think about them differently.

Yeah, 100%. You know, Piping Rock made our 100 greatest last time. I think it might have been the first time ever. And I've gotten to play that too, but... Piping's amazing too. I don't like it as much as the Creek, but Piping's unbelievable too. Yes. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like tomato, tomato between the two. But to me, I think the Creek has a little more intrigue and unique figures or unique characteristics. So...

Yeah, I think it belongs in our 100 greatest. The reason it gets killed, and I know this because when I had access to the back end of reviews, I would search the golf courses and see what people were saying about this.

The first stretch of... The first four holes. The first four holes. That's what everyone kills about it, which guess what? It's the same criticism, Ballybunion. There are a million golf courses where you could talk about there are a few... I don't even think they're weak holes. I think the green on one is one of the better greens on Long Island. But I do...

I do understand that the course really picks up in steam once you have that downhill tee shot on six. That's where the course truly opens up and you have that giant vista of Long Island. And the first couple of holes are on just a different piece of land that isn't as dramatic.

It's a good point. Piping Rock starts out with Principle's nose and then Dan's right there. The complexity of the routing, you're instantly hit with and then the continuation of that. That's a good point. That's probably why

piping rocks above it. But I don't know. I think, you know, there's something to the buildup of the round too. And, you know, you're in the woods and you play the first four holes and you're like, yeah, it's pretty good. But then the big reveal face with that reveal, every course at Bandon has a big reveal. I talk, I've talked about this before too. It's, you know, it's the ghost tree on old Mac. It's when you first start to see the ocean at Pacific. Um, so anyway, I'm going to talk about another Long Island course briefly, but

But I played Garden City for the first time this year. My, oh my, Steve, what a gem of a little spot in Long Island. That's what I've heard. And now here's the thing about Garden City. It's actually not on an incredibly interesting piece of land. It's a really flat piece of property. And-

I really do believe this. I think it's a Walter Travis course. I think what Travis was able to do with such a flat piece of property in terms of the greens that he was able to create and the subtleties and the undulations, there's like inverted sand bunkers there, just really provocative avant-garde shit going down at Garden City. And there's no views of the water. It's actually...

The 18th hole is a par three with a phenomenal green, but you're, I mean, you're up against the backdrop of a, of a hotel, right? So I understand why it's never going to be able to come close to some of the other ocean, more dramatic Long Island golf courses. But in terms of what Walter Travis was given to work with, I don't know if I've ever seen a better golf course on a worse piece of land.

I don't know if I've ever seen an architect do more with less. And then also one of the cooler club atmospheres I've ever been to in terms of the back patio.

uh the history you and i are a sucker for all that stuff but they have this phenomenal reading room call me old-fashioned like i'm a fan of the blazers in the clubhouse yeah the locker room i like it should they allow women probably it's probably 23 but we did say again another podcast but anyway garden city was a a massive massive highlight for me in 2020 yeah

you would love Hollywood golf club in New Jersey. If you haven't played that, that's another Travis. I've heard. I've heard. Yeah. I've heard. Incredible. Unbelievable. Some of the bunkering is it's as good as Travis did. And, you know, it's been recently restored, made our second hundred for the first time this year. And yeah,

Yeah, it's only getting better and better. So yeah, you got to put that on your list for this year. Maybe that's where we'll go play when you're back up here. I'd love to. I do know one. There is a guy who I play with in Los Angeles who is a member there or goes back. He switches LA and New York sometimes. So I have to follow up on him about that because you're like the third person that has mentioned to me how amazing Hollywood is. Okay, I only have one more to talk about. So give me one of yours.

Let's see. Well, I should talk about my Cabot trip as well. So this is what I was waiting for Steve. And I don't know, all I have seen about this golf course is your content and the golf digest video. So I give me the full rundown. Yeah. So St. Lucia, I mean, incredible. What Corin Crenshaw did there. I mean,

It's the most visually stunning golf course that I've ever seen. And, you know, I've walked Pebble Beach, you know, Cypress might be more visually stunning. I haven't gotten to walk, you know, 15, 16, 17. But I mean, the dramatic topography that they routed a golf course on is just incredible. And, you know, you go down into this valley from the fifth hole to the ninth and you're

you get off of the ninth hole and you're like, there's no way the back nine could be as good. Like they, they messed up. They should have made this the last four holes. And, you know, I said, that's one of my playing partners who's played. And he's like, just wait. And, you know, you hit over the water on, I think eight tee shots or nine tee shots. It's just like, you know, a kid in a candy store and you're in paradise in St. Lucia and,

It's incredible. And we were lucky enough to fly private from the Cabot folks. We first played the Citrus Farms course, which is the old world woods outside Tampa. Pie Barrens, yeah. Exactly, yeah. And Rolling Oaks. So that is just opening this year, reopening after renovation. And that's going to be on everyone's

bucket list. So they're going to have the two 18 hole courses and then there's two shorter courses. So there's a more typical 11 hole par three course. Is that St. Lucia or Citrus Farms? This is Citrus Farms in Florida. Yeah. And it's all under the same banner. So these are the people that

created Cabot, the developers that created Cabot, and now they've expanded to St. Lucia and also Florida. Yep. And then they're expanding to Scotland, Castle Stewart. They acquired that property and they're building another course there. And then they have another one, Rebel Stoke. So they're really upping their- They're coming for Kaiser's territory. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Kaiser is an investor and a partner. Probably has his hands all over. Yeah. Ben Calendwar, who's the owner of Cabot, him and Mike Kaiser have been partners since the opening of the Canadian property. But Citrus Farms, man, is great. So the first 18-hole course opened, we got to play that. We were one of the first to play it. And then the second 18-hole course will open in May or so. But they're building this...

this development, it's going to be like a self-sufficient place. And you could own property at all the Cabot facilities. So you could own a house, but this one will be open to the public. St. Lucia, I think will be very limited to the public. You really have to own real estate there to play it. So that was my next guess. Is this the Meldman discovery model or how are they doing this?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So super high end houses, you know, probably on the lower end, just under a million. And then, you know, on the higher end, five, $6 million houses overlooking, you know, the sea, the Caribbean and this amazing golf course. So it's going to be fun to see that place continue to develop, but don't sleep on citrus farms too. That's, that's a tough one. Is that can, can, is that going to be a resort or is.

Yeah. Yeah. You'll be able to like rent, rent out some of the privately owned homes and, you know, stay at one of the cottages for the week. And, you know, there's going to be lights on, on the shorter courses. So you could go out at night and play, you know, the other course designed by Mike Nuzzo is great. A couple longer holes, some par fives on that. Also it's a 10 hole routing. So good. So yeah,

And they have track man on the range. It's they've done things really smartly. So yeah, that, that was one of the, one of the best experiences of 2023 for sure. It's interesting because the way that Cabot, I haven't been to the Canada one, but I I'm friends with a caddy over there and yeah,

That model is essentially like bandit, right? Like that's, that's basically just a resort. So St. Lucia, they're doing it more of a discovery model. And then citrus farms, they're maybe doing a little bit of both. Like they'll have properties that you can buy, but they're also, because there's, there's not a hotel at citrus farms, is there?

No, it'll just be the cottages. It's actually how Canada is too. There's a lot of people who own those cottages. And if you go to play there, you just rent it from the owner of the cottage. They don't have a hotel at Cabot. It's not like they don't have a band and ask hotel at Cabot. I actually didn't know that.

I'm not 100% sure. I haven't been there, but I know that Cabot is all about the real estate and selling those. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Either way, you could go play it. And yeah, that's on my bucket list for this year as well. Me as well. Me as well. Okay. Let me give you my last one that I wanted to highlight.

Nenea out in Hawaii. Yes, man. I was so jealous when I saw you there because David McClake kid has become a friend and he's been talking about that place for a while. Okay. Let me talk to you about David McClake kid. I, I'm so excited to talk about this course. I've been, I've been brimming to have somebody to talk about it without a podcast. Cause I just got back. I played it like two weeks ago. So David McClake kid, as you know, it,

This was right on the heels of Bandit. So if people don't know the backstory, David McClay, Kaiser kind of took a chance on him at Bandit. Big time. He's a very young, sort of unproven architect, and he came in and he crushed Bandit dudes, right? I mean, resounding success. And then Chuck Schwab and George Roberts basically said, hey,

we love what you did at Bandon. Can you come build a golf course for us in this molten lava rock volcano? I mean, that's just to set the scene of Nenea. It's a golf course on the big island of Hawaii, but it's actually, you have water views, of course, because you're so high up. You're kind of on the edge of a volcano and the clubhouse is really cool. It's like three inverted domes that are supposed to be inverted volcanoes. Anyway, point being,

What I loved about Nenea is not to do the like, you know, super in the weeds, late period kid versus early period kid. But it seems like with Bandon and Nenea,

Like Nene is hard. Um, and so is banded banded a tough golf course, you know, banded one of the tougher, I don't think it's as tough as Pacific, but it is a real challenge, particularly for a resort course. That's pretty daring to make a resort course that hard. And there was some pushback, you know, in the creation of banded of, you know,

making it that hard for a resort course. And, and Nenea is the exact same way, Steve. And I think what we've seen out of kid more recently is he, he went on to do a gamble sands and mammoth dunes and, and,

Those golf courses, I've never played them, so I can't speak to them. But the book on those is basically like Mammoth Dunes is the most wide fairways in the United States. Every green is a punch bowl. And it seems like with those courses, he leaned far more into playability and resort play with Mammoth and Gamble Sands. I actually think he's at his best when he's fucking with the golfer a little bit more. Yeah.

I really do because Nenea is, is really tough. It's not overly difficult to the point where, um,

you're beating yourself up out there. But it reminded me so much of Bandon. And I hope that, I think T. Thoreau is like this from what I've heard in terms of David, I think the story is McClane designed T. Thoreau after he was going through a divorce or something like that. So he made that one really difficult. But I hope that he doesn't fall into, I hope, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I hope he does more stuff like Bandon and Dinéa

And maybe left stuff like Mammoth and Gamble. Because I think he's at his best when he's really, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, he got a lot of pushback when he did the course at St. Andrews, the castle course. And people said, you know, this is way too hard. You know, you did not remember this is designed for a resort golfer who's spending thousands of dollars coming over from America. Maybe the pendulum swung too far with him, right? Yeah. He kind of got in his head about the criticisms of being too hard.

And it was right at the start of the trend in architecture being more toward fun, away from the penal style of architecture. So yeah, I got to play Mammoth Dunes actually with his father. I was there for opening day. Jenny?

Yeah, Jimmy Kidd. Legend. I mean, you're 100% right. That course is built for you to go out and shoot your career low round. And you know me, I'm not very good at golf. And it's just so much fun. It's like you can't miss a fairway. But the greens are super interesting and hard. And it's great. And I do think that sort of influenced now looking at Citrus Farms, the Karoo course,

what Kyle France did there, you should see these fairways. Some of them are 110 yards wide. It's pushing it a little bit, but as he calls it, it's adventure golf. You kind of like could take your different route every time you play it. There's all these double fairways with a bunch of exposed sand and there's trouble to be found, but still options for the worst player. So

You might like the more penal style, but I'm obviously going to side with the playability side of it. Well, Nenea, it is playable. It's like Band and Dunes is the way I would describe it. Band and Dunes is very playable. It's not Mammoth Dunes style of Weth, right? But you can still go out and score there. But there's a lot of challenge and a lot of it has to do with the wind, right? And I think that's...

I played in a three days in a row and I don't know if there's a prevailing when there, but there were certain holes that played dramatically different from day to day. And I think that's kind of a dream scenario for a guy like David McClay kid. Who's so great at designing the links as courses and obviously grew up in Scotland. You know, it's, it's funny. They say he comes whenever he comes to visit in a, uh,

He's like, Gus, this is so green. Like this golf course is supposed to be browner and faster, but I'm sure, as you know, a lot of members like to have it a little greener and you kind of run into some difficulties with past Paul in many ways. That's a true. So hot in Hawaii. That's a grass. That's the sustenance is more for to withstand warmer temperatures. Right. So it's, it's never a golf course that was really ever going to be able to get super firm and fast. Um, but yeah,

there's like the 14th. I remember, I remember it so clearly and it, it, it's a drivable par four, but you are not even remotely, um, approaching that hole the same way, two days in a row. Like I remember the second day with, with the caddy, he was like, you actually could hit driver over that Hill. And I, I said to him, I was like,

Why didn't you say that to me yesterday? Like I didn't, I didn't know that was in play. And he was like, well, cause it wasn't in play. That wasn't even remotely in play, but it's in play today. And it's like a wind switch, like 10 miles per hour. That's crazy how this whole could play so differently. So I love golf courses like that. Cannot,

cannot say enough good things about Nenea. I could do a six hour podcast with you on garden city and Nenea. Nenea made our hundred greatest for the first time last year. Cause we reduced the number of evaluations you need, you know, to make hundred greatest. So it always got the scores to be in our hundred greatest. So I was excited to see us to, to get to include it this time. So as I'm sure you were. Yeah. 49 debuted at 49. Um,

Here's what I'll say. They don't seem like they have a ton of interest in publicity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not the type of club that I think –

cares as much about certain things like rankings as, as, as other places do. I mean, Steve, that golf course is empty. Like I've been to empty golf courses before, like golf club of purchase. No one's there, but I mean, there's, there's nobody at Nenea and it has maybe the best food.

Like the best fresh poke bowls and Chinese chicken salad. The fish has been swimming in the ocean that morning. And you show up there and you just order whatever you want because there's nobody at the golf course. It's amazing. And the outdoor showers I've heard are incredible. Outdoor showers. Yeah. Great range, like really underrated range. You're hitting kind of up into –

kind of the mountains and the lava rock. So anyway, um, it's, it's a phenomenal golf course. I'm glad that they lowered the minimum rating because it's a, it's a tough place to get to. Yeah. Um, and I'm very lucky to, um, hopefully be marrying the daughter of my brother.

Oh, there you go. So that's the way to do it. Good for you. So, yeah. So hopefully, hopefully, cause I don't, I don't think they're the type of club that's reaching out to golf digest and they don't host Raiders. Yeah. But, but hopefully Steve, it will be a place in close to me for a very long time. So we will make it happen someday. Love it. There you go. Any more for you before we get out of here? Hmm.

Hmm. Well, Olympia Fields was great too. I got to play that with CP for our buddy, our mutual friend, Dan Rapoport's wedding out in Chicago. Yeah. Just moved back to LA. I saw him at El Cab the other day with my buddy. Yeah. He's an LA guy now. I'm excited to play a lot of golf with him here. Yeah. So Olympia Fields was a surprise, I think, because the book on it is just sort of really hard, old school architecture, but

But, you know, it's really not that. And the vibe from the membership is not that either. You know, the locker room, which is probably the largest locker room in North America, you know, you have all these

successful members doing zoom calls from the locker room. You know, it just feels like they're adapting to, you know, this century in the right way. And the golf course is really good. It could use a good bunker renovation. I think, you know, they haven't been touched in, in a long time. So we were talking a little about that with our hosts, but yeah,

Yeah. Anyone who has access to Chicago area courses, you know, needs to try to get on Olympia Fields. It's still one of the country's best old school designs for sure.

I was really bummed to see how the pros tore it up for the BWS. Yeah. After 2020, I mean, you know, I thought it was going to be single digits again, but yeah, I guess you have to make it super, super firm and fast to, to get it to play the way that it did that raw. Yeah. But I hope that's a golf course that can host major championships in the future again, because I,

I think I've talked about this a ton on podcasts, but I think major metropolitan areas are underserved in golf. Like there should be more golf events.

in New York, like close to New York city, close to Chicago, coast of San Francisco, LA does a better job. Right. But like we should be going, I think we should personally, I think we should be going to Chicago every year on the PGA tour, but I hope that we could, I hope that we could host more majors there because that's kind of the,

I mean, Medina is the other one, right? Which also I'm excited to check out because they just did a whole new renovation as well. So Medina and Olympia fields are kind of the two, maybe we get Chicago golf club with a rolled back golf ball, Steve, but I'm not going to count my, I'm not going to count my, they're going to have to roll it back like 50, like 30% and, and have a dramatic change of club culture for, for them to ever want to bring a championship.

there, but it was good for the senior women's. They had the senior women's a couple of years ago and that was Walker, the Walker cup too. Right. I mean, I don't know the last time Walker cup, but yeah, I mean, that's moral of the story. There's incredible golf in Chicago. Yes. Yes, there is so underrated that in Philly are, you know, they're not quite New York and they're not quite, you know, the best areas of California, but they're three and four best areas of, of golf in the country. So.

Would you put a last question, but the New Jersey powers thing, it's a bit- It's so tiring. New Jersey's not better than Long Island at golf. It's not. But I will say this, Somerset Hills ranks, like if you put Somerset Hills on Long Island, I still think it would rank. Oh, yeah. That golf, I've never-

There are a lot of golf courses in New Jersey I haven't played, never played ball to stroll. You mentioned Hollywood. Pine Valley, I think, is considered more of a Philly than a New Jersey. I call it more Philly, but it's in New Jersey, as Powers would say. Right. But really the only, you know, I haven't been to Ridgewood or Plainfield, but really the only New Jersey one that the big New Jersey one I've hit is Somerset. And it's like a top 10 golf course for me in the country. Oh, same. Yeah. It's my favorite in Jersey. Love Somerset. I

I think Power's argument, you know, I think he has a point in terms of the depth of real

really great golf courses in New Jersey. We had an event at North Jersey Country Club, another Walter Travis. Yeah. They just did this massive renovation. They're still doing work. Brian Schneider has done a great job there. And that's now it's probably a top 15 or 20 golf course in New Jersey and no one outside of the tri-state area has heard of it. So, you know, his point was,

is like, we have all this great golf and no one knows about it, but Long Island and Westchester has the best golf and you can't really dispute that. So his argument, you know, falls on deaf ears to anyone who knows what they're talking about. I'd say that to his face. He doesn't listen to golf podcasts. He doesn't listen to golf podcasts. There's a 0% chance Powers is ever going to listen to this. So unless, you know, it's completely fine.

We could tell him he's in it. Yeah, we could tell him he's in it and maybe he would listen, but we've tried that before. He would listen because he knows that I love to take shots at him. So if he thought that I did take a shot at him, he'd listen to this for ammunition. For sure. For sure.

So what do you guys got? Anything outside of the phenomenal work in the daily fantasy and gambling stuff that I help you with? Now you're running Golf Digest, as Wiley said. Wait, did he say that? I heard that. He did. Was that on a podcast? On my podcast, did he say that? On the Run Pure Sports video you guys did last Monday. Oh my gosh. Talking a little about Golf Digest. And he's like, well, you basically run...

Golf digest now. Okay. His words, not mine. I'm messing with you. I far from run golf digest. You know, I'm a fan of Wiley. I'm, I'm just messing with you. You, you are running our DFS column and doing a great job. There you go. And, and our, our gambling, um, a small part of the incredible gambling content that we do as well. So, um, okay. Anything else for you this coming week with, uh,

With the podcast or anything like that? Well, I would say keep an eye out. We're talking about all these new courses. Our best new awards will drop, I think, Saturday. They're supposed to release on GolfDigest.com. Probably Old Barnwell, right? Is a shoe-in. So that one opened a little too later in the year, so our panelists weren't able to play it. Okay.

Okay. That'll be for next year. But, you know, some of the ones that were up for consideration. Well, oh, Lido. What am I talking about? It's got to be Lido, right? Well, the Lido's up there and don't want to spoil any, any awards. But yeah, Fields Ranch is up there. Sure. Ladera, which I'm sure is on your radar. Very much on my radar.

Yeah, I got to play that one with kid gloves. I know some people that are very prominently involved, but you know how it goes. You got to kind of play it cool. But yeah, they're very much on my radar. Just so people have some context, this is a new Gilhance design in Palm Desert. I don't know the exact name. Yeah, it's like a half hour outside Palm Springs. Okay. So it's... Yeah, and it is...

It's going to be a private club. Elite of the elite. It's going to be, it's going to be very small. This is a Irving is often Eddie Q joint production. And, um, from what I've heard, uh, well, I mean, obviously bias, but, uh,

They really gave Gil the car keys and, and he was, he did some, some pretty provocative stuff and no water on the course or it's, it's true. It is shot makers, golf course, cool, cool logo too. Um, I haven't seen the logo that my friend Cameron, uh, uh, made up. So yeah, I, on my list in a big way that that place looks awesome. Awesome.

Yeah, the pictures, we have a video to go with it. It looks sweet. Black Desert Resort out in Utah, that's going to host the PGA Tour event this year or next year. I'm forgetting which season it technically is, but that looks incredible in St. George's, Utah. So that's a destination on my bucket list now.

So, yeah, I mean, there's this is a great time in golf course architecture because finally, like, you know, we're past all the, you know, the closers that the golf course is closing up. And there's a lot of new opportunities for younger architects. And, you know, the Gil Hansen's of the world get a Ladera. They get the park in West Palm close to our guy, Joe Idoni. Yeah, that looks incredible as well. So, yeah, I need to go play that. Yeah.

the fields ranch that's another gilhans course the fosio reese jones here is kind of

coming to an end. It feels like. RIP. RIP. Yeah. All right, Steve, this is a blast. I could talk to you about this stuff for, like I said, another six hours. So we will have to do it again soon. And you're not making any West Coast trips, are you at all, for Torrey or Riviera or anything like that? Not planned, but we'll see what happens. My brother's in Orange County, so I'm always trying to get out there. Okay. We'll make it happen this summer then. Good to see you, my friend. Thanks for doing this, buddy. Thanks, Andy.

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All right. Jay Blasey is here. A golf course architect that has been on this podcast before he's recently renovated golden gate park. I probably know some of his work from chambers Bay as well. And, uh,

I have a lot of questions that I want to ask you. I know we have a limited period of time, but I think we got to start with the elephant in the room, Jay. What has been your reaction to the recent rollback news that has kind of sent the golf world into a bit of a tizzy?

Well, yeah, a little bit of mixed emotions. Probably still want to learn a little bit more. You know, you get little tidbits here and there as to how everything came about. You know, I think like most golf designers and I guess like many other people in the game, I've shared the concern of how far the tour pros hit it or how far the bombers hit the golf ball. What does that mean for golf?

championship golf, but what does that mean for just regular golf courses in terms of when the golf ball goes further, it also goes further offline. There's safety issues with that. You need more land. When you need more land, you need more resources to

to build golf courses, to maintain golf courses, those costs then get passed on to the consumer. And what does that, what does that mean for, for the game? So I think I've always been comfortable with the idea of bifurcation. You know, I don't feel like I play the same game as, as the pros. And, and so I would have been totally comfortable if, if,

They had, you know, whether it's a tournament ball or just, you know, rules for the pro events or whatever, that would have been fine with me. The idea of the universal rollback or whatever, I think stopping or slowing down the ball at the highest levels is a good thing.

What impact that will have on all of us and whatnot, I think probably remains to be seen. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how far you hit it. It's how many shots it takes to get in the hole. And can you get in the hole better than your opponent? So to me, how far the ball goes shouldn't really matter. It's all relative to who you're playing against and whatnot. Yeah.

I think you're a pretty good person to talk to on this because you've actually been tasked with designing a golf course that you knew was going to be used for major championships. I'm talking about Chambers Bay. From the nitty gritty design aspect of this, how much did how long accounting for how long players hit the golf ball factor into the calculus when you were designing a golf course like Chambers Bay?

Well, I think we knew all along that there was a desire to host big events. And then at the time, we built the golf course from 2004 to 2007. You knew what that meant. So I think chambers can be stretched to right around 7,800 yards. And that was factored in. That was thought about ahead of time.

We had a situation where we thought about some of these super back tees and do we need to build them right now or do we wait to see if we get a championship and then build them? That kind of thing. But it was in the front of your mind as to...

If we had built a 6,800-yard golf course, we weren't going to have a major championship there. And that doesn't necessarily mean that a 6,800-yard golf course would be any worse, but you weren't going to be hosting a major championship. You have...

recently built a golf course or restored, renovated a golf course in Golden Gate Park on a much smaller piece of land than a property like Chambers Bay. Could you maybe walk through some of the listeners of the differences of challenges in terms of what it's like to design a golf course on a really small

piece of land versus the challenges that are required when you're building a massive championship golf course on a big piece of land that's going to cater to professional golfers. Because one of the big talking and discussion points in all of this has been, well, maybe if we're able to start

using smaller pieces of land to design these golf courses that could actually host pro tournaments, right? Then maybe, maybe this could actually cut some of the costs of what,

It may be for the regular consumer to play these golf courses that have to be 8,000 yards now. A guy who plays from the 6,500-yard tees on an 8,000-yard golf course, they're not getting a discount on their greens fees just because the golf course has to be designed to be that long for pros, but they're not using all that land.

Well, yeah, you touch on a good point is that so much of what happens at the very highest levels of the game, whether it's his championship courses or whatnot, is

are catering to those who don't pay to play golf, but get paid to play golf. And so there's lots of debate as to that dichotomy there, right? And who should we be focusing on? And so, you know, the difference between Chambers Bay and Golden Gate Park, very different on many levels, and yet there are some similarities as well. So, you know, Chambers Bay was a municipal golf course developed by Pierce County, Washington.

It sits in a former sand and gravel mine. The golf course portion of the site is about 250 acres. There's about 200 feet of elevation change. And the way that the sand and gravel mine had been left prior to us redeveloping it into a golf course was such that we had to move 1.5 million cubic yards of that sand and gravel around. So it was a very, very big

earth-moving job in order to craft the golf course. Some of the similarities to Golden Gate Park are they're both municipal. The golf course at Golden Gate Park is owned by the city of San Francisco. They're both on sand. Chambers, the former sand and gravel mine, Golden Gate Park, that portion of the park in the 1800s was all sand dunes.

So the golf course is literally built on sand. And, you know, both close to the water, Golden Gate Park is 450 yards from the Pacific Ocean and Chambers Bay is, you know, probably 50 yards from Puget Sound. So there are some similarities, but Golden Gate Park sits on about 20 acres. It's within the larger park, which is one of the great parks in all the world.

And there's probably about 40 feet of elevation change. So it's really ideal terrain for golf. It makes for a wonderful walk. You know, the site for Golden Gate Park, it's a nine hole par three golf course. So it's all par threes, just nine holes.

But the walk is really wonderful in terms of you kind of ascend up a little dune. You get to the high point and can look out and see the ocean. There's windmills that you can see. You can see parts of the city.

and the buildings and whatnot of the city and then you basically kind of descend back into the the forest and meander through the forest for a while and pop back up to the high point and and then meander again throughout the rolling terrain so it's a you know i can't think of a better nine hole par three walk anywhere that i've seen one of the um

I was talking to one of my friends about this recently, who's talked to, you're the first architect that I've talked to on this, but my friend had spoken to a couple more architects on this recently as well. And it seems like a lot of the consensus in the architecture community, not just from people like me who study it and love it, but from people like you who actually build golf courses, is that despite the fact that in theory,

rolling the ball back would potentially give you guys less work, right? Like think about how many opportunities there are for people like you to come in and renovate and restore these golf courses that have become somewhat obsolete due to the distance problem in golf. And think about how much work there is in terms of like having to

build, you know, longer tees and make these golf courses stand up to the test of time that you would think that it would potentially be in a lot of architects best interest to say, no, I don't want to roll the ball back. Where am I going to have any work to restore all of these golf courses?

But it's been heartening to see that it seems like most people in the architecture community actually see the upside of what this could ultimately do for the future of the game. Has that been your experience as well? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's all sorts of aspects to that, but

How many thousands of golf courses are there? And how many are actually going to host championships? There's going to be a couple dozen champions. So there's, you know, I think some of that gets overblown. Now, the reality is courses that are never going to host major championships are

also are seeking added length, you know, to satisfy their scratch handicaps that are at their club and hit it 340 yards, right? So, you know, I think some of it just boils down to long-term sustainability of the game. You know, nowadays we're talking about the 350-yard drive. You know, when Tiger Woods was just coming up, we were talking about the 300-yard drive.

How long before we're talking about the 400-yard drive? I think I heard some of the USGA officials saying that if you really put it into simple terms, people are adding a yard a year. So it won't be too long before the 400-yard drive. And as I touched on earlier, the further the golf ball goes, the further it goes offline. And so...

The corridors for play need to get wider. Many of the golf courses built between 1950 and 2000 were housing developments or had hotels or resorts adjacent to the golf course. And so is that going to create safety issues on that front? So whether it's water, the resources to buy land or to maintain land, whether it's the safety issues, all of those things just make sense now.

with the golf ball not going as far. And it's truly kind of arbitrary how far it goes. I mean, if you were really thinking about it, wouldn't we all be better off if the maximum length of a golf course was 4,000 yards or 5,500 yards? Obviously, there's a couple hundred years of tradition there that that would go against. But if you were really

Thinking ahead in terms of resources and sustainability, you could make a golf ball that a long drive was 200 yards and you could have golf courses that fit on 70 acres instead of 170 acres. Right. Might that be better long-term?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think of all of one of the reasons why I think Golden Gate Park is such a cool and intriguing project is because as you mentioned, it's right in one of the most densely populated areas in the entire country, right? So think about how many people are going to be able to walk to this golf course from their homes and probably be introduced to the game.

through this golf course that is right outside of their backyard. So many people aren't even going to have to get into a car to have to access this place. So this idea, kind of a macro level, that if we can

reduce the amount of land that it requires for us to build a standard golf course on for amateurs or for pros, suddenly this opens up an idea where maybe there's

Other pieces of land closer to bigger cities where we could also start building golf courses and smaller pieces of property on. And then suddenly you have this, all of these positive downstream effects of suddenly there's more places like Golden Gate Park in Chicago and Los Angeles and New York City. And in my opinion, I know I said this last time we talked, but like that is the actual way that you grow the game. It's not giving pro golfers $500 million. Right.

Amen to that. You know, I think one of the things that's exciting is, you know, there's been so many great kind of golf developments over the last 20, 30 years, and many of them are in remote locations. And that's great. That's where lots of the sandy land is found and it makes for a wonderful buddy's trip and they're great experiences and we're fortunate to have them.

But one of the things that we think is really special about Golden Gate Park is just like you said, it's right there. It's in the city. You can get there. You can walk or take your bike. You can get there by Muni bus. Golden Gate Park's been a beloved part of the community for decades. Many people have played their first round of golf there and, and,

We firmly believe that the work that we've just done is going to set that up to continue that way for decades to come. And you touched on

growing the game and the barriers to entry are significant, right? Golf takes a long time to play. It's hard to learn. The equipment is expensive. Learning the game and getting lessons is expensive and playing the game is expensive. And here at Golden Gate Park, we feel like we've done everything in our power to reduce those barriers to entry. You can play the golf course in 45 minutes to an hour.

Uh, for local residents, I think it's going to be right. That's a huge thing. Yeah. I think it's going to be 20 to $25 or something like that. It's run by the first T of San Francisco. Who's teaching kids the game of golf and all the life skills that go with it.

You know, the turf that we used, it's fescue turf out there, which is very, very, very sustainable, low inputs, low water. So that is going to allow us to maintain it at a high level very, very efficiently, which means that you don't have to keep raising green fees all the time. So all of those different, you know, barriers to entry are,

are minimized at a place like Golden Gate Park. We think it's a model that would work well just about in any community across the country, big or small. I'm sure there are towns of 20,000 people that might have a community open space that's big enough to have a five-hole par-three course or something like that. What would that mean for the community? Hopefully, it's a model that

we'll see develop throughout the country as years go by.

I hope people can see that from like a 40,000 foot view. Just in general, those developments are made more possible if we address the golf ball distance problem right now, right? Like I think even if it's the difference between, I know with Golden Gate Park, you didn't really have enough land for that to really be an 18 hole course. But if we can just

start addressing something now and say, okay, like if we are actually starting to get on the path, maybe to scale,

create a game with a little bit less of a big footprint and start utilizing spaces of land that maybe can actually be a ton of fun for people to play. And we don't, we no longer have to worry about the 350 yard drive that goes, you know, I'm not going to get into like the whole golf safety thing, but like, and that's, and that's part of it too. Why I think, um,

A lot of people are, I'll get you out on this question because I know you have to go, but a lot of people are talking about how, oh, this is going to make me so much worse of a golfer. Right. And I think the thing lost in that, and this is also going to make, this is also going to make golf slow down, right? This is going to do the opposite for the pace of play problem in our country as well. And my pushback to that would be.

Well, if you told me I'm a pretty good golfer, a single, a low single digit handicap. And if you told me that I would eliminate the one big mess slash out of bound shot that I have per round, as opposed to hitting a four or five yards on every approach, I think I'd take

the second option, right? So where do you kind of net out on this, uh, on your own enjoyment of the game and how you may affect how this may affect the amateur level?

Well, I don't, I'm not well versed enough in the data to know all the specifics, but from my understanding, what we're really talking about is something that people are just not going to notice that, you know, if we're talking about a few yards on a drive for an average person, uh,

and maybe a yard or two on an iron shot for a person. Let's face it, you know, 90% of golfers are trying to make solid contact and get the ball airborne and get it towards the target. You know, whether or not the ball flew 163 yards or 161 yards, they're not going to know the difference. It's not going to matter. And at the end of the day, I don't think that's really going to impact the footprint of golf. I think what will impact the footprint of golf are developers.

If a developer decides that, hey, I'm going to build 12 holes and we're going to, you know, we're going to build 12 golf holes on 70 acres instead of 18 golf holes on 150 acres or, you know, however that math works out, whatever. But I think that I can build something that's going to be fun and people will come and it'll and I can make it pencil. You know, I can make.

have a return on my investment to build something on a smaller footprint. That's going to change the game. I don't think the rollback ultimately is changing the footprint of golf. I mean, it's not like all of a sudden with this rollback, we're going to go from 160 acre golf course down to 100 acre golf course. That's just not accurate at all. I do think it's a positive step in that

we're not, we're maybe slowing down the race to 200 acres or 300 acres. We're good for the next 15 years, but we're probably going to have to have the same conversation in 2015. It's not changing things. And I don't think the recreational golfers are really going to recognize any difference. And so, um, you know, there might be a lot of hand-wringing and whining about it, but you know, how,

How many golfers that you know today knew if their golf ball flew 163 or 161 yards in the air? I don't think they know. No. And it's proportional too. It's based on how much you compress the ball as well. So it's actually more like the better at golf you are, the more you're going to notice a difference. I think most of the people complaining or upset about this are...

People that maybe don't play a ton of golf and golf's already very hard, right? 15, 20, 25 handicappers. Put it this way. It's more likely because of this that a one handicap goes to a three handicap than it is a 20 handicap goes to a 21 handicap, if that makes sense.

I think that's probably accurate and fair. I think the question is, is it going to change your enjoyment of the game? Are you not going to golf because the golf ball goes two yards less? And I would venture to say no.

So we've got a lot of people talking, a lot of people, you know, the ones who are very vocal opposed to this are the ones who make golf balls or get paid by companies who make golf balls. Yes. And I've never understood the argument from the golf ball manufacturer, you know,

X number of people play golf a year, they're going to hit and lose however many golf balls a year they're going to lose. So I don't see this impacting them at all. If you have to make two different kinds of golf balls, again, I don't see that impacting them because the people are going to have a curiosity. Let's say you made a tournament ball for Augusta or the US Open or whatever.

A bunch of people who are not scratch handicappers or don't hit it 400 yards are going to want to try out that golf ball just because that's what they see on TV. So I've never understood the idea that they're going to sell less golf balls or anything like that. That makes no sense to me, but yeah,

And there's a lot of punditry from golf ball manufacturers and people who get paid by golf ball manufacturers. I don't think it relates to 99% of the people who play golf. And they're going to sell more golf balls right now because think of all the people that are saying, I need to buy all the Pro-V ones before they run out. Yeah, let me go stock up right now. Stock up and have them all in my basement. All right, Jay, this has been a blast.

I'm super bummed I was in New York to miss the rescheduling of the media day, but I will hit you up as soon as I get back to the West Coast and I'm super, super excited to check out Golden Gate Park in January. When does it officially open for public play, Till? I think it's still to be determined. The clubhouse is...

driving that the clubhouse is, uh, that under construction for five years, it was supposed to open in October. That's why they canceled. That's why they rescheduled the media day. Right? Yeah. So we, you know, they're, they can't really open the golf course until the clubhouse is open. They need a point of sale system and stuff like that. So it's a little bit of a moving target. Our best guess is probably within the first 45 days of 2024. But again, that's a little bit of a moving target. We'll keep everybody posted once we know more about the clubhouse, but yeah,

Yeah. I can't wait to get you out here a week. I've been out there and witnessed three hole in one, so you can play with me and you'll make a hole in one. Wow. That's awesome. That's incredible. All right, Jay, happy holidays. Uh, and we'll do it again soon, my friend. All right. Take care. Good to talk to you.

All right. That is it for the podcast. Special thanks to Steve Hennessey. Special thanks to Jay Blasey. We will be back next week, breaking down the American express on this podcast feed, as well as all of my stuff for golf digest and rump your sports. You can find on both of those sites right now. One last reminder, rump your sports.com code Andy. We are doing a giveaway today.

Just shoot me a message in the discord when you sign up. That is the, uh, that is all you need to do to be entered into that giveaway. And as I mentioned, that golf only option is available right now. So we'd love to have you as part of that community. Best of luck with your bets this week at the Sony. Let's try and go back to back and I will see you next time. Cheers.

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