"You look like you're shooting 70 but you're shooting 90. I look like I'm shooting 90, but I'm shooting 70" - Pete Dye
As to getting into golf course design, "I was born a poor black child......." No, just kidding. Sorry for the old movie reference......Cue the song....."Memories......of the way we weeeeerreeeee!"
My next door neighbors belonged to Medinah. We snuck out there on a Monday, so my first round of golf was Medinah No. 3, a US Open course. I fell in love with golf courses that day, and the ambiance of the club. At age 12, no less. I went home and told my parents I was going to be a golf course architect! Prior to that I had thought I would be a building architect (or as my Dad always called it, a "regular architect." When I asked him if I was an "irregular architect" he said, "No that comes later in life......" (rimshot!) At about the time I took up golf, he had been bringing me home architecture books from his Saturday trips to the library. One was on lawsuits against architects for boiler explosions and the like. In addiiton to being impressed with the ambiance of Medinah, I began thinking that golf courses don't blow up.......
Actually, my ASGCA ties go back to that period. Dad noticed in the Trib that the ASGCA had just moved its HQ from Wash DC to Chicago and sent for all the info they had, including some from NGF on golf course design. One day, he came home with an envelope containing perhaps 20 phamplets and the booklet "Planning and Building the Golf Course" by the NGF. And the ASGCA roster. I wrote RTJ and got a nice letter back. I also wrote Killian and Nugent (being somewhat surprised to see a member in the next town over) and went in for an "interview" where they told me the basic plan to become a gca - summer jobs for landscape companies and golf courses, pursue and excel in landscape architecture, supplmented with turf classes, soils classes, surveying and site engineering.
I did all that and they felt obligated to hire me when I graduated in 1977. I felt badly because Jim Blaukovitch was let go, although they had agreed he was going to go back to the Philly area where he was raised. I worked there until the split up in 1983 and spent the next nine months working for Ken Killian, mostly because I was mostly working with him on projects at the time. (Nugent thought I was too much of a smart ass, I think.....) I didn't like it too much. At the same time, we were working with Bill Kubly in a very much smaller Landscapes Unlimited. It didn't escape my attention that he was six years older than I and had been in business.....six years. I walked in to Ken Killian's office on my 29th birthday and quit. To avoid competing with him, get in what I thought was the "hotspot" of golf design (and access a southern central connecting airport) I picked DFW to base my practice out of. My market reseach consisted of looking in the yellow pages of several big city phone books (again at my local library) and seeing that Dallas was the only one without a golf architect listed. Dallas, here we come!
I made a side trip home from the ASGCA meeting that year in Palm Springs, and picked out an office and apartment in a weekend. I went home, got married and moved back down to Dallas within a few months. I got my first job, again with some help from Mr. Kubly, who let me route a nine hole course extension in Holdrege, NB that he was going to build. I did it on my parents kitchen table, having already vacated my apartment.
Later, he helped again by introducing me to a few Dallas folks at Eastern Hills in Garland, TX, east of Dallas. My second clients were Wichita Falls CC and then the city of Wichita Falls who came by when we were working at the club. I was on my way! Within a few months, I got a call from a club near Shreveport, LA and the head of the selection committee was in the same boat I was, but in irrigation construction. He took pity on me, and realized that a struggling associate probably did a lot of the work of a bigger firm and hired me.
In quick succession, I got a similar call from Odessa, TX and when they heard I had worked on Misson CC for KN, they hired me for the skill, proximity, and of course, lower fee. About the same time, I was getting some photos printed, and ran into a local land planner, who told me a local city was doing an interview. I got that job by pushing my public course experience when some of the bigger known firms pushed their "best work" rather than their public work.
A year later, I was slowing down, napping a bit I think, when the phone rang and it was Larry Nelson's Dallas based agent, trying to save a long distance phone call and get some info on Larry working with a gca. I didn't let him get too far down the list......and in 1987 Brookstone in Atlanta opened. It took until 1989 to secure a DFW 18 hole course, given how provincial Texans can be.
At the moment, I think I have designed 51 courses, although that includes 9 hole extensions, executive courses, etc. But, more than half are new 18 hole courses. I have done about twice as many remodels of various sizes and types, but less than 10 full blow outs.
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Fast forward to today, and current projects include Firekeeper in Mayetta, KS which is heading towards grassing next week and some smaller stuff:
- Prelim design and grading for a housing project in the Midwest. It stopped last year and is trying to get back off the ground.
- Two master plans starting next month,
- A new/better short game area for my course in Newton, KS, because they are going after the national Publinx Championship.
- A prelim study for a Britsh gent who is trying to buy a golf course here in Texas. Right now, we are trying to give him an idea of just how much renovation would be necessary, and what he would accomplish golf and housing wise with various options, but I think/hope it will turn into actual construction. I have done a few of these. Seems like this "British Invasion" is a bit more golfy and a lot less musical than the one in 1964......
- I also have two consulting gigs, both focused on some damage assessments from some public utility "takings" from the golf course land.
I agreed to do this in part because on Monday I will have the kind of field day most associate with a gca since Firekeeper has many operations going on now - I will be marking grass lines and bunker edges, and approving shaping on the last few holes. On Tuesday, Notah will be there, so I presume I will be at the (media) circus that day. And then on Wed, I have breakfast with a supplier selling me the latest whatever before coming back to work on one or more of the projects listed above, not to mention that my Golf Industry Magazine column will be due the next day.
As I understand George's intentions with this, I gather I will post periodically through the day, perhaps starting Tuesday night upon my return from KS on the first two days. At the same time, I guess you can all ask questions as we go.
My pig has been guineaed!