The Q & A was from last week at Muirfield Village. High praise from Jack Nicklaus.
Q. Jack, I just wanted to go back to condition of the course. You have a superintendent here, Paul Latshaw, who's been here six years, regarded as one of the best in the business. Your comments about how the course looks perfect. I just want to get your opinions of the job he's done since he's been here.
JACK NICKLAUS: If it's perfect, he's obviously pretty good, isn't he? Don't tell him that. That costs me too much money.
Paul's done a great job. He's more than a golf course superintendent. He's a student of he's got his Masters or Ph.D. in grass. I don't know what he has. But he keeps going back to school to get more education and keeps expanding what his knowledge is. He's a very, very intense young man who really likes what he does.
You know, when I hired Paul actually, I hired him. His father Paul Sr., Paul had started at Oakmont and grew up there. His father went to Augusta, went to Congressional, Riviera, maybe some other places, I'm not sure.
Paul went on to Oak Hill. When we were having problems here, I needed to make a looking for a superintendent. I called his father, who I'd offered a job to about 15 years earlier. And I said, "Paul, I'm looking for a young superintendent. I know that you have a lot of young guys that have trained under you around the country, and I'm trying to find one that you think would be suitable for us to have."
Well he said, "I've kicked myself for 15 years for turning down the job." And he said, "I'll tell you the guy that I think would be the best one would be my son. I think he's the best one of the lot." And I said, "Where's your son?" He says, "He's at Oak Hill. They just finished up the PGA Championship at Oak Hill."
And he said, Oak Hill won't have an event for quite a while, and Paul would like to get involved where we're going to have a tournament every year where he can get involved in the tournament preparation and so forth and so on.
So that was right down Paul's alley what he wanted. And I knew that Paul, obviously being at Oak Hill was going to do a good job. I never realized how good of a job he would do because he has taken this course to the next level.
I mean, all the drainage that he's put in this golf course. The restoration of all the creek banks and the erosion factors that we have because, when we started doing this golf course, remember number 6, we used to walk off the tee and jump over the creek, just take one step. It's ten yards now. The water comes down through this property from developments north of here. It's really created a lot of havoc within the property, so we had to control it.
Paul's controlled that very well. We put a pipe pass on number 5 this year. The 5 fairway comes through, and we put a pipe down through the fairway where it picks the water up. Put in a 36 inch culvert down through the fairway. More than a two year flood, the water comes down through there and never gets any flooding. The water stays at a constant level.
I wouldn't have dreamed of doing something like that. It's a creek. Why would I want to go through it? That's his background. That's his education, to be able to do those kinds of things.
It cost more money to have Paul, but that's okay in the end because in the end, instead of spending, you know, $10,000 or $20,000, $50,000, whatever it is, to clean up and fix erosion, you do it one time, and you're done. That's not going to go anywhere now.
So he's terrific. He's just done a wonderful job here. He's taken the greens to the next level.
When we redid the greens here about 10, 12 years ago, the subsurfaces, we put a mix in that was very quick draining mix, and that draining mix was actually I did not realize it because I didn't realize what we put in, but we'd put in a fairly round sand. When you put in a round sand, it doesn't compact. It drains beautifully, but it doesn't compact. You never get the greens firm.
And so Paul's been working on changing the profile without having to redo the greens. Putting a little more angular sand to slow down the greens and get some compaction and get the greens firmer when you want to get them firmer. All of those are things that he's been able to do. He's just done a very good job.