Like A Rolling Stone (with Kyle Franz Golf Course Architect)

Kyle Franz (00:00)
I always say that you know, I think there's there's five five individuals that have really set the entire course for for golf in America. and we might have to update it soon. Like Bill Corr, Tom Doak, these guys, they have they've had a monumental impact. but you know, for me.

for somebody that grew up during the 90s to 2000s. I mean to me it's Bobby Jones, Palmer and Nicklaus um,

the in the Tiger in the modern era, but then Donald Ross. And this is a man that built great golf courses in every time zone. he did so many of them he made it possible for the ordinary average American to see really rock solid architecture across the board out there.

Matt Considine (00:45)
Welcome to the Bag Drop, Untold Stories in Golf. I'm your host, Matt Considine here with the Professor. Professor, good morning, Slauntia. How are ya?

The Professor (00:56)
It is a great morning. you know, golf course architecture brought me back into the game. and there's been a few names I've never got to meet in person and today one of I least get to check it off virtually. and definitely one that was very formative for me. Getting back in the game. So I'm still uh that's right.

Matt Considine (01:09)
Geez, jumping, jumping straight to our guest intro, not

even letting, I thought we were gonna have story time, it's funny you say that. I remember you getting back into the game and how golf architecture was a huge element of that. I hope New Club had a little something to do with it, because I was I was bugging you

The Professor (01:23)
A smidge, maybe. Maybe smidge.

Matt Considine (01:25)
about what we were trying to build, our little golf society. But there was a blog, I don't know if you remember this, there was a blog post you wrote for a new club.

In twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen about mid pines

The Professor (01:37)
huh.

Matt Considine (01:37)
and and your walk around mid pines. It wasn't about hitting shots. You were talking about your walk. like I still think about that a lot a lot so much of it had to do with the gentleman we're having on the show today, Kyle Franz, who's gonna join us. but yeah, so so technically Kyle Franz just got you back into golf. That's what happened.

The Professor (01:53)
Th that's exactly right. We'll just give all the credit. No, it sounds like you got a story to tell. You're sitting here saying I'm cutting off story time. What what you got for us?

Matt Considine (02:00)
So,

we all got the golf chats, right? We got our buddy friend groups. I got one that that i is pretty hilarious. And I I I've I've probably brought a story or two from this thing onto the show before, but it's it's got some new club members in it, has some some of our buddies elsewhere. this one gentleman, I'm gonna change names to protect any uh any innocent

The Professor (02:21)
Yeah.

Matt Considine (02:22)
bystanders, but that's just call him

let's call him Chris. He he had a great one from his Monday night league I guess their second session of the league, you know, it's fall, things are winding down. Their their second session of the league is is coming to a close. And his team, they actually won their first session, but they got no chance at the second. th the last night though, he's playing the guys that are firmly in second. Well they're clear of third, but they

Could potentially win the the first. and so I wanted to share, you know, some of some of this with you, Professor. I might just read it verbatim.

The Professor (02:53)
Oh,

some juicy league. I love juicy league stories.

Matt Considine (02:56)
He said,

Gentlemen, I I had a good one last night. Playing George, and I should probably add a little more context. George is his old basketball coach. So he played basketball for

The Professor (03:07)
okay.

Matt Considine (03:07)
this gentleman. Yeah, he he in high school. So it's his old basketball coach. So I'm playing George and his partner Fred, who are in the hunt to win our second session. With no Bob, I should change names, with no Bob, who's his partner,

George totally knew that they had a chance to rack up the points against us. And he basically asked me to take a dive on the first tee and help him out, which

The Professor (03:28)
But no

Matt Considine (03:30)
of course I am ethically very, very, very against. but I have been getting bored in the second session. I think I can kind of relate to this when you're playing the same, you know, nine holes every, and if you're not in the hunt, you kind of get a little bored. He's like, I've been bored, and I saw a video online about a drivers only content.

And I started to think about the course we play at. And I kind of had this strategy in my head. So as I'm standing there I on the T and George is asking me to take a dive, I tell him, as long as you don't tell the commish, how about I play with only my driver to help you guys out? Now I should say, every shot.

The Professor (04:08)
whole round, driver the whole round every shot. Not just T balls, every shot.

Matt Considine (04:12)
Well, he said, what? Like the whole round? I said, Yep, just the big dog. He laughed.

He shook my hand. You could feel how giddy he was already counting his title. He clearly just assumed I was throwing in the towel and letting his partner, Fred, clean up against me. So I think Fred's the one or two handicap. I should say Chris is a good player. You know, this is a this is a zero or better that we're talking about here. So he walks us through the round, and I maybe I won't put you in the car. Well, maybe I will. First hole, 265 yard par four. Driver to the fringe.

Driver two putt, birdie, one under. Second, 140 yard par three. Haven't got this swing down yet. Driver 50 yards long, driver pitch to the fringe, driver three putt, plus they're one over. Third, 500 yard par five. Driver to the right rough, driver long, driver pitch, driver two putt. I love that he just kept listing driver. Still at plus one. Nice par on the third. Fourth, driver, middle of the fairway.

Driver pitch from 40 yards, driver one putt were even par.

The Professor (05:16)
made a bird okay.

Matt Considine (05:17)
He said at this point, George was not even talking to him. He was furious that that he's even par through four holes. on the fifth, he hits a driver in the right rough, driver from 115, driver pitch, driver two put back to one over. On the sixth, he says he hammers his driver, a driver 30 yards through some long rough.

Can't get to the green. Another driver for 15 yards through the rough, had to make a 12-footer for Bogey. He's two over. The seventh is a drivable par four. He hits it to 30 feet, lips out for Eagle, taps it in for a birdie. He's back to one over. At this point, George is screaming at Fred to play better and get his stuff together, or else he's gonna lose to a one-club driver. On the eighth, he drives to the fringe.

The nerves started to get to him because it he was pumped up. He three putts from the fringe on on the eighth.

The Professor (06:12)
so it's so he's one over so he's one

over through eight, right?

Matt Considine (06:17)
yep. And on nine a hundred and forty yard par three with the entire league looking there the last match out. He hits a high spinning driver that hits front left of the green 20 feet and spins uphill directly towards the pin to six feet. Misses it actually blows it

The Professor (06:37)
Uh.

Matt Considine (06:37)
by. He said he had to make a six-footer coming back to to shoot. He shoots 36 and

George, his former basketball coach

The Professor (06:47)
Informer friend.

Matt Considine (06:49)
and former friend, and his partner, Fred, he got this, he did get points, but definitely not enough to win, you know, the overall title. They fell a couple points short of it. But I guess Fred was all into it, supporting him, excited that he was, you know, about to lose this guy. Fred did shoot 36 as well. They actually tied

I just thought that was so great. And do have you ever done stuff like that, like late in the season, just take one club out or ever do drivers only?

The Professor (07:15)
yeah, certainly do the the the over under club challenge where whatever your club is that you would hit, you have to choose a different club on every shot. certainly do some some fun stuff like that. But I think that one right there is just a case of ball, don't lie. You asked for the guy to throw it. It it didn't matter what he did, full set, putter only driver, the golf gods were not gonna look kindly upon you and let him play poorly. You were not gonna win a title by asking the other

Matt Considine (07:40)
Well, and and

The Professor (07:41)
person to throw it.

Matt Considine (07:42)
any anybody who had, complicated coaching relationships growing up can appreciate how he closed it off because I hope he learned his lesson. You don't call me soft and make me take charges as a sixteen year old at practice. well, we got an awesome guest today, Professor, What do you got for us, Teach? Anything to teach us?

The Professor (07:58)
How much time do you think you spend on your phone in a day? Do you track do you track debt? Do you use I know I know you use Do Not Disturb. Have you ever used their focus where it literally turns off apps? You can set what apps it turns off and for a certain time period so for two hours you can't even open up messages. Have you used something like that?

Matt Considine (08:14)
Buddy, w

with with with my brain, I it's a requirement these days. I I have different focus settings for every hour of the day.

The Professor (08:23)
Yeah. so you've had to guess how much time do you spend on the do you ever I don't look at the report. I I I look at it occasionally

Matt Considine (08:28)
I don't look at it, but

The Professor (08:29)
just to track it a little bit, make sure I'm not getting a little bit abusive with it, but

Matt Considine (08:33)
It's a couple of hours minimum, I'm guessing.

The Professor (08:36)
So typical American, right? It's about four to five hours a day that they spend on the phone.

Matt Considine (08:42)
Cheese.

The Professor (08:43)
And you can look at different generations and you see actually some stark differences. Some actually younger generations are using it a little bit less than others, which is interesting. but let's say you use it just a little over four hours a day. Okay, what is that? That sounds like a lot in a day, but we can actually extrapolate that out. That ends up being about two point five months of phone time a year if you're using that.

Matt Considine (09:04)
That's disgusting.

The Professor (09:04)
So

every ten years, that's two years you're giving up to the phone. So every ten years of your life, you could just take erase two years of it. That was dedicated to time on your phone, or over the next fifty years, that'd be ten years of your life. So imagine w we me and I hopefully live another fifty years. That would be if we do on average four you da hours a day, but a little bit over in that, that's ten years that we'll give up on the phone. Um so

Matt Considine (09:28)
Yeah,

uh no, let's not do that. That's so terrible.

The Professor (09:31)
Yeah, that's the

Matt Considine (09:32)
But like being on your phone, I mean it's just used for so many things. Like i being on a screen is is that better if I'm doing stuff on my computer and not my phone? Probably not.

The Professor (09:41)
Well reminded this reminded me, I saw this the other day, of a fact you gave at one point where you know, when the work week shortened, you know, used to work six hour, you know, twelve hour days for six days a week was the typical, you know, at the United States worker. And we eventually got down to the forty hour work week at five hours a day, and it's like, this extra time for family, friends, outdoor activities, whatever. And you always said it was replaced by what? That time was filled by T V time.

Matt Considine (10:07)
T V time when the yeah, when

T V the hit the yeah.

The Professor (10:10)
Yeah, so this isn't a you n new fad at all, right? It I'm sure a lot of the T V time's being replaced with phone time, but it does you know, I think it speaks this sort of fact speaks to like, should we be I mean, think of that, two years of the next ten years, you're on your phone. What could you do with those two years? Even if you cut down to a year, what could you do with that extra year in your life in terms of connection with friends, going to play in great golf courses, yeah, go get another degree or three?

Matt Considine (10:32)
Be could be like your wife and just go get another degree. Yeah, just keep racking up degrees.

The Professor (10:36)
Yeah, that's lots of different things we could do at that time.

Matt Considine (10:40)
That's a good one. Yeah, it's a good reminder for all of us. Get out there. Do you go learn an instrument or do something better than scrolling on our phones? our guest today doesn't need any introduction, but I'll give it anyways. Kyle Franz, he's the founder and owner of Kyle Franz Design. his work includes mid-pines, pine needles, southern pines, Carew at Cabot's Sisters Farm, site of our winter meeting last year, and Broom Sedge, a place that we've

Become very fond and look forward to seeing again this spring, where he was co-designer with Mike Kaprowski. today I'm especially excited to chat with him about Whispering Pines, uh Ellis Maple's course and collab, I

The Professor (11:14)
Mm, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Considine (11:17)
think, with Ross. We'll find out more, which is near his home. I think it it what what I liked about the brief on on that project is it seemed to have a a slightly different outcome goal of, you know.

a a place within reach for both locals and visitors golf is booming, rates are up all over and and, you know, I'm sure that that continues, but also just like I I think they had that in mind with this plan from from the hop, to keep it within a reach of more folks. So I'm I'm curious to hear about how that changes design process professor, but really excited to have him on today.

The Professor (11:52)
Yeah, as you mentioned, earlier we started off the show. Man, mid pine special place. you know, I'm gonna try not the the hogged episode with just Donald Ross and the Piners, because he's done so much more than that, right? You've already mentioned a few. You know, he took part in also the lookout mountain work, and that's one of my favorite places to spend a a weekend is up there in a little cooler weather than the Athens, Georgia summer. so yeah, I'm gonna have to contain my little fanboy during this episode a bit.

Matt Considine (12:17)
Well, here at The Bag Drop, we are fans of our friends over at Holderness and Bourne. And Professor, there's nothing like a good pairing in the game. Alex Holderness, John Bourne, well, they they're one of the best in the golf business. Like you and me, they became friends on the golf course back in college. for them, that was C.B. McDonald and Seth Raynor's Yale golf course, amongst many other things. They bonded around

golf's

history, it's timelessness, and they both had disdain for ill-fitted dress that they saw on the pro shop in the pro shops that they visited. So they made a plan to make a better one, a better polo. it started with one shirt, three colors. They made a thousand of them and their first sale was Wingfoot. not a bad first first partner to have, but they had an order with Wingfoot and within a couple of weeks the shirts were were gone.

Today you'll find Holderness and Bourne in around 2,000 golf shops, including many of the country's very best clubs. The details are why. They feature an English bred collar with hidden stays, so it never curls. And their signature fit is designed for everyone in your foursome. So when I started New Club Professor, that was the first polo I tried on, and I never looked anywhere else

we are restocking for the holidays, it's where we still go first. And their styles are consistently the first to go and sell out. Find them in your pro shop or head over to hbgolf.com. Holderness and Bourne classic style, signature fit. Thanks to them for the support of today's show. All right, professor. Should we get onto it?

The Professor (13:53)
Let's do it.

Matt Considine (13:59)
Kyle Franz, welcome to The Bag Drop.

Kyle Franz (14:03)
Gentlemen, good morning. How we doing?

Matt Considine (14:05)
We're doing fantastic. good to be with you here.

Kyle Franz (14:08)
Standard.

Matt Considine (14:09)
You know, the professor, you probably heard he he's gonna derail us and and just not be a professional podcaster, probably just be a total

The Professor (14:16)
Ha ha.

Matt Considine (14:17)
fanboy today. But but I I I I'm I'm suspecting that Mid Pines is his favorite work he's he's done. Kyle, this has got to be an impossible question, but for a golf course architect, can you have favorites? Are you allowed? Are you allowed? I know like as a parent, people say I can't have a favorite.

The Professor (14:33)
you have a favorite.

Matt Considine (14:33)
Secretly,

I totally do. do do you is that a thing?

Kyle Franz (14:38)
I think that's a fairly accurate assessment that we're simply not allowed to do that. however, it also becomes completely impossible. there's gonna be special projects along the way that you appreciate forever. it was very easy for me because, I I was just sprung forth in this industry on one of the best golf courses ever built, Pacific Dunes in Oregon in Bandon. You know, it's my

The Professor (14:57)
Ha.

Kyle Franz (14:57)
first internship. I'm a native Oregonian. I love Oregon, I love the landscape there. And so to have gotten the opportunity to work for

Tom Doak, who is the architect who I wanted to work for all throughout my teenage years, having read all of his all of his magazine stuff and book stuff, hard for hard for that not to be a special moment in one's life. Just gonna spill out into the industry like that. And then you already nailed one, you know, Pacific Dune or sorry, Mid Pines is is my first solo project as an architect. on just a just a wonderful Donald Ross course. And just, you know.

Mid Pines is just pure romance, it's the romantic golf course here in the Pineurs, Southern Pines area. So, that's how I got hired over there is I was working on the restoration of Pioneer's number two for Corinth Crenshaw. And we kept going over to Mid Ponds just to see the golf course and to see the greens. They'd never been changed US GA greens, so they'd never really been like fully reshaped. And I got to know Kelly Miller and the rest of the family that owns the the resorts and

became friendly with him and he was nice enough to hire me for mid pines. So while we're not technically technically supposed to have our favorites, it's just doggone impossible. So so right you are good opening collection.

The Professor (16:08)
I'm gonna follow up that and then a curveball, it's not gonna be about mid pines. I do wanna go back to Pacific Dunes and and your work with Tom Doak there. When you were going into that project, obviously you were familiar with Tom's work and you know, as you said, as a teenager, influential, you're an Oregon guy.

When you went on the job, what was that s that internal feeling of yours? Did you realize how special that course was gonna become, and what it could become? Or were you more just so young and naive, you just looked at this is my first opportunity. I wanna make the most of it.

Kyle Franz (16:37)
It was a combination of yes, I was young and young and super excited, just want really excited to be there. but it was it was not lost on anybody, just how special that piece of land was, how special the project was. and you know, so we knew we knew all along it was like this has got a shot of being one of the very best golf courses in the world. The more the bigger questions to me was always how the public was going to react to it.

'Cause sandhills was obviously this omnipresent moment in the history of golf course architecture. It's the watershed moment where where mineralism and and neoclassical design went crashing through to the mainstream on a whole new level. You know, I mean Fazio did what he had done, to kind of send architecture back out of like the the die and the the the the multitude of different things going on during the sixties and seventies, obviously. But you know,

and Thomas did great work in the in the between High Point, Stonewall, Bill and Ben with Kapalua. so people gotten to see a little bit of a of a of a shift in the dynamics of what what the new guys were building out there, but Sandhills just crashed that door down. And um

The Professor (17:46)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (17:48)
but that all happened on a very private level, you know. the closest the public was getting to Sandhills was you know.

Seeing it in the Nike golf commercial was on TV during the 90s, mid 90s for a bit. or, you know, I had pictures of it on my wall in my room during my high school golf days. But, you know, I mean, it was a private club in the dead middle of the country, the middle of nowhere, you know. So when Bandadoes came along, it was a really great taste test of what you could do on the Oregon Coast on something that really felt like Scotland, obviously. but there was

there was elements still of modern construction attached to to Bannon Dunes. it had it had, drainage basins out there and it had been, you know,

The Professor (18:26)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (18:27)
a lot of the buildings had been moved around and they'd had to cap sandstone areas and whatnot. And and so, you know, the the little mini revolution was starting to succeed, so to speak. Tom had done you know, that course in in southeast Michigan. it's by the Dunes Club. my goodness one.

Matt Considine (18:42)
Lost students.

The Professor (18:43)
Lost dunes,

yeah.

Kyle Franz (18:44)
Lost tunes, last students, yes. And and so I knew of that and Tom was on the brink at that point. But there was some question in in my mind as to whether the public was really ready for that extent of full, perfectly copied links architecture and some of the more hairy moments out there. you think about six the drivable par four, you know, twenty-five, almost thirty foot deep bunker.

Well, you had to go outsiders. There's no getting up on that green going

The Professor (19:11)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (19:12)
the stateway, you know? And I wasn't sure that people were really ready for that, you know. And did that with 18, you get into that thing on the left, you know, could spend the rest of your life trying to dig your way out of that thing. So you know, I mean, we were still I was I was working for an architect that was really, really talented and I thought he was gonna change the world, just so like I thought Corincreto was gonna change the world, but you just didn't really know at that point, you know. So

I think probably the first time that I I really realized that I think everybody was gonna get it is I just took some of my high school golf buddies from my hometown three or four hours away and went out and I explained the architecture kind of hole by hole and we were able to play the the kind of soft opening loop of what was like I guess seven or eight holes at that point and they were just blown away. And that's when I was like, Okay, here we go. This thing might be like a top twenty in the golf course rankings in the world.

The Professor (20:01)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (20:02)
um

project and and away it went. You know, it was pretty cool. as I've said many times ever since. It's, you know, very cool to be a part of and the project changed the lives of everybody involved. It was pretty pretty cool, pretty special experience.

The Professor (20:14)
Yeah, I wanna stick go go ahead, Matt.

Matt Considine (20:14)
You know, um

I I know f Kevin s stick with yours, but I but I wanted to ask this because I doing what I do, I see a lot of regional cultural differences on you know what preferences are for for golf. Obviously there's the agronomy and climate differences, different places, but I love that idea. Like we almost think it's it was inevitable conclusion looking back of Bandon, but like are people ready for this? Like that is a legitimate

concern you guys had and and rightfully so in s in in so many cases. regionally, and and I'm tr maybe I'm trying to take us to the sand hills here, but do you ever do have you had that moment in the the sand hills as well where it's like, okay, the clientele, a lot of it is destination based and people are gonna come from from all over. But i do you ever feel that if you're operating in the southeast on something versus out there on the West Coast, that gosh, I I don't know if this particular region or

This area is is ready for that. Does that does that happen to you?

Kyle Franz (21:14)
Absolutely. Yeah. No, especially that particular period. the you just you never knew how people were really gonna react to that. The I've always kind of described like that that one, two, three, four, five pun show, you know, Banded Dunes to Pacific Dunes to Friars Head to that whole period in there. You know, it felt to me kinda like it was kinda like the you know, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones or the Beatles and the Beach Boys, you know, like the you know, they're pushing pushing pretty cool boundaries.

But they were also able to make it really commercially, it was equally as artistically progressive and cool as it was commercially successful. They hit the nail on the head on that one. And, you know, I mean, that's that's just part of like doing great progressive design, you know. I mean, Tom's continued to be very innovative all throughout his career. and every time I chat with Tom, which I still do fairly, fairly often, you know, I always have to compliment him on that, you know, like wanting to go out and do something like the reversible golf course at at Forest Dunes.

Takes guts, and you know, he wanted to do that all the way back to back to when we were working Pacific Barn Boogle Dunes period, which is my third golf course for him that or that I worked for him on Barn Boogle. And I remember him saying once that like he pitched a couple clients and nobody had bitten, and it still took him another whatever it was, dozen years or whatever after that before he f somebody finally did. but I remember him saying that

He was he was joking that he was just gonna do it at one point and he was turning to turn around on opening day and just turn around and go the dead opposite direction. They find out

The Professor (22:40)
Ha ha ha ha.

Kyle Franz (22:41)
that way, you know. So and you know, anybody that knows my work and what I've been doing in my solo career outside of our, you know, restoration, but even it dab dabbles in sometimes in our restoration is is I'm the same way, you know. I wanna keep like progressing architecture and pushing boundaries. Everything we do is very classically oriented and

And very much rooted in history. but having fallen straight off into the industry on projects like that, like Pacific Dunes, where there was an edginess to it, you know. that's part of the reason why I build what I build. You know, there's a bunch of people out there that's I mean, literally I've had people ask me for memorabilia, they've named their dog after me, they they come running across.

one hold or the other on the new courts in St. Andrews, they love Caro so much. And there's also people out there that that probably want to assassinate me, know, and uh

Matt Considine (23:29)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (23:30)
and so I actually really like that aspect of architecture. I remember I can't remember it was some famous pro I was told literally walked right off of Barnabaldo and Sut the Greens were too wild, you know. And and you know if we're gonna keep preg progressing architecture in a lot of cool different directions, you know, you gotta take a chance every once in a while, you know, and so obviously with you know like the stuff that I've done

with with Cab at Carew, it's edgy, and and the p while most of the places where you see edginess in the roots course where I was partnered with with Nuzo and Whitman and and Rand Morris that that's usually me kind of, you know, just pushing this out into some kind of cool, you know, edgier sort of zones. Yeah, same with with with Brooms edge, you know, I just like to I like to, you know,

do do fun and innovative stuff. I'm always looking for something that really still speaks, speaks and works commercially. But we're gonna take some chances and try and try some stuff that maybe even my mentors wouldn't have been that comfortable doing. A lot of times that's the places where I look is is like, well, you know, Tom, he wasn't really quite comfortable doing that, or Bill and Ben weren't. Why don't we find a way to make it work? And and you know, those guys, they're they're brilliant.

I love all all them for the opportunities that they have given me. nobody's ever gonna beat them of being them. So I've never felt like I was going the right direction by just being like, I'm gonna copy exactly what what they're doing. You know, we wanna do some some cool fun stuff and fortunately people have have appreciated it. you know, we've we've got some best new awards and and whatnot. And but I also I I I certainly don't mind the fact that that it doesn't just perfectly fit into everybody's cup of tea.

know,

The Professor (25:04)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (25:05)
wanna challenge the people and and challenge their perceptions of architecture and make them think about it a little bit differently.

The Professor (25:10)
That's right, Kyle. I think, any artist that creates something new, you know, is pushing boundaries, the typical reception is gonna be mixed because people don't know what to make of it, right? It's something that if you create something people already know, the reception is typically not gonna be mixed. People already know where they fall, where they get to the middle ground like, wait, I don't like it. But then typically 20 years later, that person probably likes it. What I wanna know is when your boots in the ground and you're shaping dirty, you know, if it's at Pacific Dunes,

If it's, what you're doing at mid pines and you're like anything creative, what's that look like for you as an artist? Is your confidence ever shaken when you're ground? You're like, I'm not sure about this. Or once you commit to it, are you someone that's like, I'm pushing this forward and this is gonna be great? where do you exist in that conflicted artist as I as you're trying to create and push boundaries?

Kyle Franz (25:57)
you know, I just always did have like a a just a pure confidence. You know, I I I loved architecture growing up and and you know, so I knew that I could contribute right out of the gates in interesting ways. But I was also surprised at times going all the way back to then, you know, since you're asking about Pacific Dunes. I was also surprised sometimes when Tom would ask for the ax ask my opinion of things. But you know, my background was that you know, grew up in Western Oregon.

And my grandfather collected every golf digest and every golf magazine in the eighties and early nineties. And that's how I got familiar with Tom's work was I kept reading all these back issues of top one hundred lists and major championship reviews, the works on architecture, anything was architecture I would absorb. And I kept finding that name Tom Doak. And I realized he had gone on to become an architect with Stonewall and whatnot, and and that I got a hold of his books and and how I found out that they were building Pacific Dunes.

is, you know, speaking of like, you know, how much of a of a a wild wild card it was when Bandit Dunes opened, they had a Twilight rate for $35 to go play Bandit Dunes in the wintertime, those first few years on the golf courses. So imagine that now. Like now you have to book like a year

The Professor (27:10)
no.

Kyle Franz (27:10)
in advance. Yeah, you know, I mean it was pretty wild. So me and my friends would like burn a a a lane back and forth from from the valley.

And

on a spring break trip, I noticed there was a dozer working up on number five of what became Pacific Dunes. And I asked one of the caddies in our group, it was like a driving rainstorm. We're like the last people on the golf course at that point. And I said one of the caddies, and he's like, Well, they're not really telling anybody yet, but they're starting they're starting work on a second golf course. And I've never been perfectly fuzzy on the exact beginnings, but I've heard versions maybe that you know, that maybe they'd

plan it starting with a few holes and they were gonna decide where they were gonna go from there. I'm not really sure if that's true or not. I've never asked Tom after the fact because I was hired, after that period. but that's how I found out that the golf course was kind of kind of going and and I was like, are you kidding me? Tom Doaf, the architect that I've wanted a last job to, is working at Bandit Dunes. And so

it was not long after that that he posted someplace. It was golf club Alice. So he's posted that he was interested in interns. And I was like, Are you kidding me? So I emailed Tom and I asked him for a job. and went down and saw him. And and you know, I could I I had studied architecture so rigorously, reading, even though I hadn't got to really travel very much at that point. and I didn't have that many really like truly world-class golf courses around me in the Pacific Northwest.

I did have some cool stuff, It was a really cool period. you know, Waverly is where Tiger Woods won his third and final US junior amateur. I was there for

The Professor (28:39)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (28:40)
that. And then I was at Pumpkin Ridge for the third and final amateur championship. It's pretty lucky that I got to see the greatest player of our generation

The Professor (28:47)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (28:47)
uh few

Matt Considine (28:47)
Pretty good one there, yeah.

Kyle Franz (28:49)
formative victories, like that. So, and then you know, I was very lucky that I was a complete bench warmer on a

what wound up being really a historic Oregon high school golf team. The guys that I played with, a bunch of them went on to play Division I golf and were really, really good. So we got to go to a bunch of cool places because of that. Like Portland Golf Club where they have a Ryder Cup and a PGA championship and whatnot. So even though I get to travel very much, I'd studied architecture to a really, really intensive level the day that I walked on to Pacific Dunes with Tom. So I could talk about golf holes and

features of golf holes that even that I'd never been to. I'd I'd nerd out watching the 95 and the 2000 open, British Open at St. Andrews, like just

The Professor (29:32)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (29:32)
ran the tape constantly, you know. So so I felt I had the confidence that I could jump in and and I could participate in interesting ways. And especially with like the native grasses and whatnot, because I was from Oregon. I spent a bunch of time in the dunes and a bunch of time like designing golf holes in my head and that kind of setting. So

So I was able to jump in and help with the artistry right of the gates. And Tom was really great about the fact that, he's had substantial internship programs all throughout his career and brought up a lot of good shapers and a bunch of them become architects now, you know, me included.

The Professor (30:01)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (30:02)
And and the great thing about Tom is he's really he just sets you out there and lets you go. I think what I do the same with my staff a lot of the time, where I will just simply turn them loose and give them the general idea of what we're doing. but I will just

Turn loose and see what they come up with. and sometimes I get stuff that's surprises me. It's just like a little bit off kilter and kitschy because, just whatever they they came out on the other side. And and that's the way Tom was. You know, he was very, he would he really encouraged me like right out of the gates. Yeah, I remember still remember the email that he sent me. It's like, you know, if you're talented, you're gonna make this thing better. And that was a

The Professor (30:36)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (30:36)
cool thing for a 19-year-old kid to hear. and high

very highly motivating, So it was it was fun to just get out there to start working on that kind of stuff, bunkering and native grasses and wander around with Tom and and Jim Urbina and those guys and you know so so I was able to contribute on some things right out of the gates, but I also found myself in really fun positions where you know I'd be standing there on a T with Tom and be like, what do you think? And you know it was pretty pretty cool for for somebody that age. Between

Just the inspiration of the site, like walking up onto the tees for thirteen. Obviously, everybody knows that hole. It's like one of the greatest holes built in the last 40 years and an amazing piece of of land. Like that's a life changing moment. Just stepping up onto that dune and seeing like what we're gonna get to build that coming up here, pretty cool.

The Professor (31:21)
Ha ha.

Kyle Franz (31:22)
Pretty cool experience, especially again for a native Oregonian, somebody that loves the landscape out there. Pretty cool experience.

Matt Considine (31:29)
When I've you know, read about your work and and heard you or have heard you speak before about it. I like the inner artist, I I it's so apparent, right? And you have that creative gene I think so many of us admire and wish we we had, you know, just to bring things into the world, to to see it, to have that vision and then, you know, make make of it from the dirt. But the thing that always I I also really have enjoyed is your

study of history and and architectural history, but it just seems like you have so much working knowledge of the past. Obviously with Donald Ross and and the the incredible golf courses you led the restoration on of his. But I I'm kind of curious because there seem to be there's this pressure or tension of the unknown w when you're making decisions in that creative space.

Is history sometimes a tool for you to say all right, we're gonna be okay, because a hundred years ago this stuff resembled that and people really liked it. People really enjoyed it. Or for how does history play a part in what you do? I guess is the broader way to ask that question.

Kyle Franz (32:42)
absolutely. the I think that most, you know, obviously most American golfers have a good sense for architecture. It's become much because of guys like you guys, it's been so much more it's become so much more of a mainstream topic, you know. Back when back when Rand Morriset started golf digest, you know, it was completely, you had your your your rare interludes into golf magazine, golf digest.

of architecture. So again, we were talking about the print map major championship previews, those kinds of things. But you know, Rand Morris was this little man on his computer writing and writing and and the and he you know he helped to popularise what has all become all the podcast stuff now you know and the so learning about what architecture is like now is way easier. Like I'm gonna just get on my phone you find all kinds of cool

Photos on Instagram

The Professor (33:31)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (33:32)
or wherever, well, that's what that's what Port Rush looked like in the late 1800s. That wasn't really that easy to find when I was a kid in the nineteen nineties, and so for that reason, I think most most golfers, they're getting a little bit more of a sense for it now, but back then people would be shocked as to what British golf links looked like during the period where the guys had inspired and designed all the stuff that we love in America, what it looked like to them.

and the short answer is just open chaos. the most of those golf courses still had animals living on them, you still see at Aurora and places over there. And when you have whenever you have the animals, you're gonna have huge blowout bunkers like what we built at Pacific Dunes, you know. the a lot of that like just purebred links architecture is

is is is something that is is foreign. everything has been turned into revetted bunkers there over time. And so with sand hills and Pacific dunes and your friars heads, it really just can't brought those concepts back through to the to the mainstream. And you know, I always feel like whenever we're building something kind of edgy, you know, a lot of the time I have a a specific idea that I saw in golf courses in the UK when I was working over there 20 years ago.

Or when I've gone back since I did a big long run of a month and a half over there last year. And a lot of time when people are like, that's too hard, or that's too wild or too edgy, I'm like, nah. The that's that's what that's what the game was developed on, you know, in the UK. And so yeah, I look backwards constantly, and especially, you know, if if somebody is is is is is throwing the yield, it's unfair card. No.

No. Green at St. Andrews. You know, so and so yeah, I look back at it at golf history and architecture and also I take a lot of a degree of inspiration from other arts as well. You know, I'm a big I'm a big music guy, big movie guy, and and because of that, you know, I look at I I try and see things through different lenses of how people are gonna respond to a lot of work.

And and also, you know, displaying a little bit of patience, I think a lot of time. If if people don't immediately react to it as well as is as people would hope or whatnot, you know. a lot of great movies out there that completely flopped on on opening week, month, you know. I mean obviously Citizen Kane, nobody gave it almost won best picture, but it it also I think

barely made barely made its buddy back if if even at all. since it was about what it was about, it was running against some pretty heavy headwaters or headwinds. and so that movie really did get popularized. Now everybody thinks it's the greatest movie of all time. Usually it's ranked as such, but that thing wasn't really popular until the late fifties or so, you know, there's a bunch of movies out there in that in that category. You know, obviously you look at things like the

in music like the Velvet Underground. Nobody gave a damn about the Mel Velvet Underground when they when they were going on, the at least from a commercial level, there's always been that line about them that that few people saw the Velvet owned around or listened to them, but everybody did start

The Professor (36:34)
Mm, mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (36:35)
their own band, you know. And and so a lot of the time I I don't really get caught up in when, you know, somebody criticizes something or or things of that nature. I think there's some

There's been some really good work the last 20 years that has probably been looked over at times because people were it was a little bit too edgy for and people have come on to appreciate it more. Something like a tobacco road, know, uh

The Professor (36:55)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (36:55)
where really, really edgy. And even there's there's a lot of things out there, so like, ooh, I don't know about that.

Matt Considine (37:00)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (37:01)
but you know, it's also been a a a brilliant talking point for for almost thirty years now. So

so yeah, I definitely do look laterally a lot of the time for for examples of interest and not just in golf design and and other art forms out there.

The Professor (37:17)
I tell you what, if there's one truth I've figured out, it's if a golf course architect makes music or movie references, that means they're really, really good at their craft. it seems to be a common comparison that I've got, you know, a few friends in business and that's yeah, it just seems to stand out. I I'll I'll entertain me with a quick question, Kyle. I know Matt wants to probably take us somewhere else, but if you had to compare Donald Ross to a band or a producer director, is there a comparison relative to making a little golf music

Movie comparison?

Kyle Franz (37:46)
I

think it's gotta be the gotta be the Rolling Stones, right? You know, I mean the longevity, the pro being that being that prolific as an artist, but also being at the front edge of of being innovative right out of the gates, like a lot of Ross's early work in Pinehurst, he got skewered for like they were really hard golf courses. It's I'd encourage any listen out there to get a hold of of the aerials and the maps, you know, you see around of of of

Pinehurst, all the golf courses that they did progressively through the the teens and the twenties. I mean, he started out with like a dozen holes of forced carries all over the place out there. You

The Professor (38:22)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (38:22)
know, like jumps, like all those sandy native areas that are off to the side now. There's some pretty big jumps on those, you know, like 50, 70 yard jumps. And you know, so he was he's pretty edgy and you know, the he took some lumps and some criticism early on for the severity.

Pine or summer two. There's a long loss to history now. And he owned it and continued

Matt Considine (38:40)
Well here's my

Kyle Franz (38:41)
to work on it and he found the sweet spots where it really you know kind of worked. But you know, I always say that you know, I think there's there's five five individuals that have really set the entire course for for golf in America. and we might have to update it soon. Like Bill Corr, Tom Doak, these guys, they have they've had a monumental impact. but you know, for me.

for somebody that grew up during the 90s to 2000s. I mean to me it's Bobby Jones, Palmer and Nicklaus um,

The Professor (39:09)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (39:10)
the in the Tiger in the modern era, but then Donald Ross. And this is a man that built great golf courses in every time zone. and he did so many of them that that he he made it possible for the ordinary average American to see really rock solid architecture across the board out there.

I was having a great conversation with the Maples family. Ellis Maples from is the designer of our Whispering Pines restoration. I was met with his his son and grandson. I just had a fabulous time chatting with them and hearing stories from the the family. And Ellis Ellis you know, he did a bunch of great work. I think he was arguably the best golf course architect operating in that very that weird period of the fifties to sixties, seventies. He just kept doing classical stuff.

Bunch of people went off in a bunch of wild different directions and got a bunch of notoriety for it. But he really just cuck stuck to his guns and did really fabulous work. And they were telling me one of the one of the stories they got from Ross was was that at the end of his career the was that, you know, Ross he wasn't quite sure that maybe it was the best idea that he took on so much work because, you know, he wasn't able to have like a hands on touch with every single one of those. but obviously we owe his very best work is as good as anything.

That anybody has built my my thought of it was thinking about that conversation is like Donald, I think he did just fine. uh Like uh

Matt Considine (40:26)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would he would approve.

The Professor (40:26)
Ha ha ha.

Kyle Franz (40:28)
it's they don't all have to end up dead on perfect. we all want to do that. And but the the the legacy that he left across American golf is pretty cool. You know, back to your question. I mean, that's the Rolling Stones, man. They've left a uh a cool

Matt Considine (40:43)
I was gonna say.

Kyle Franz (40:44)
impact in every wing of of of modern music.

Matt Considine (40:48)
I I was gonna say, I did not know the name Ellis Maples, I'll be honest, before doing some prep work for talking with you today and and him having his name to whispering pines. But does that is he like the Keith Richards then of Ross's Mick Jagger? Would would that be a a decent comp?

Kyle Franz (41:05)
I think that you definitely have to think about it in those terms. Yeah, your boss

Matt Considine (41:07)
Ronnie Wood, maybe?

Kyle Franz (41:09)
Ross had had a lot of good associates. Yeah, Patch, Jamie McGovern, like he had really great guys. You do that many golfers,

Matt Considine (41:17)
Sandy Alves.

Kyle Franz (41:18)
you got good guys. but Ellis came in kind of later because he he grew up here. He grew up in in Pinehurst and his his dad was the famous director of agronomy and construction.

For all the courses here. Frank Maples is a legend here. he built Piners number two with Ross and all these. And and he was a great constructor, just in the same way he was great with agronomy. He I think the best way to describe it is you know, everybody was coming through here in those days, you know, from the Founders to everybody, everybody came to Pine Res. and Robert Hunter made it here and saw pine needles very early on, and and he had a great quote about Frank Maples where he felt like Frank Maples was doing.

the very best construction in America at that point. That's during

The Professor (42:00)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (42:00)
the period where where Robert

Matt Considine (42:01)
Cheese.

Kyle Franz (42:01)
was hanging around at Cypress Point and a lot of fun stuff out west from Mackenzie. So that is high praise from a professor. So

The Professor (42:08)
Yeah, and Hunter doesn't lie.

Hunter doesn't just wax words either. He doesn't say things just to say things. He was always pretty forthright. Yeah.

Kyle Franz (42:13)
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

No, he was he was super complimentary of of Pine Eatles. That's that in in a place where he'd spent a lot of time. I don't know exactly how much time here, but the way he wrote the quote made it sound like basically like Pine is one of his hangouts. So he spent a lot of time here. and and he said that Pine Needles was was one of his favorite pla new places.

one of his old hangouts and or something to that effect and then complimented Frank as he did. So the Maples family has been, you know, entrenched here for for from the very beginning and and Ellis Ellis basically started his career just across the property from me over at Mid Pines. He he was a young teen when that thing was growing in and opening so he was around that and around a lot of the editorials because Mid Pines liked

Piner Summer Two went through a lot of different editorial processing in those first several years and made the jump from sand greens to grass greens. So he got he cut his teeth really in construction on it. And and so Ellis developed a a fabulous resume working for Ross. He also did some other projects, kind of of I don't know the the exact particulars, but I think it's more like you know, kind of the public works sort of stuff during the 1930s, during the depression. And he was around to the very end, basically.

I I was very fortunate to get to restore Raleigh Country Club um

The Professor (43:32)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (43:33)
in the in the very complex year of the COVID year. and unfortunately Ross had passed away when that was construction, but it was the last plan that he drew. and he drew it with JB McGovern of Aaron fame. And you know, for all of you that well, everybody's got to see aeronome now, with PGAs and everything up there, lots of clusters of bunkers, you know, three, four,

The Professor (43:53)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (43:53)
two.

Just clustering everywhere. That was McGovern's thing. He really liked to do that. And Ross must have really liked him because he gave him a tremendous amount of latitude to work in that style. And and so McGovern was the associates whose name was on the plan for Raleigh. and then and then Ellis constructed it after Ross had had unfortunately passed away. And by that point, McGovern was a pretty, pretty elderly kind of guy. So really became

Ellis's project. I think a lot of people would have expected me to come in and just plant the thing with grass face bunker there, grass face bunker, just standard Ross heavy soils work. But instead I tried to peel a little bit of influence from all three men, which was turned out really cool. the you got a you get a little bit of the beautiful flashing of the bunkering of mid pines that Ellis would have been, familiar with in his in his youth and the the clustering of the bunkers that McGovern

you know love to do and Ross gave him so much flexibility on and and then but we stuck to the the the concepts of what Ron Soss was kind of accomplish on paper. so it came out as a really cool project that doesn't get a lot of light but is a really unique delve in the history. so yeah Ellis and Ellis and the family a very cool history right here in the neighborhood. Ellis, you know

worked on pine needles, all the rest of these, and so it's nice to to shine some light on his work. Like you said, I'm not surprised he didn't get a chance to know that much about him. he did some really, really neat work and it was a part of all the great work here. The building of the greens during the thirties at Pineur's the golden age. Yeah. So

The Professor (45:25)
Kyle, that makes so much more sense with Raleigh. I got to play it soon after it opened from your work and you just articulated exactly I was like, wow, something's different here. And the way you took the, you know, the different influences and put them into the ground. I walked off there, I was like, wow, it's so impressive, the renovation.

Matt Considine (45:42)
You know, it kinda I

Kyle Franz (45:43)
cool, glad you liked it. Yeah, we had a lot of fun with it.

Matt Considine (45:45)
I I I love the you know, I don't know if it's in just a white male golfer in your forties, like two things happen. You like seeing new golf courses and you just get obsessed with history. Like I I I

The Professor (45:57)
Ha ha

Matt Considine (45:58)
watch documentaries, I read golf history books, like it's I I don't know what's happening to me. But combining those two, I I think like what's so cool about you know, discovering a place like Whispering Pines or

up

here in the Midwest, I my my little project this year, I've done some research and called the tough archives to find out about a guy named Sandy Alves, who was one of the main construction managers for Ross in the 20s throughout the Midwest, because he's got a number of golf courses to his name that I had never played. Not many, golfers would seek them out. It's not like they had a pedigree or anything. But man, are they awesome? And to your comment of of Ross thinking the

he would definitely approve of Whispering Pines for for what Ellis and and Frank Maples did. Th these places are are part of their legacy as well, right? It's like who you learn from. It's very s synonymous with your story about Doak giving you a shot and you know, Coor giving a shot. It's just it's kind of that continuation. You could even have a family tree of architects probably all connected in in some way. But for for you, a project like Whispering Pines, is it

Cause I think you have other projects going on right now that we've heard more about. It's just, not in the the the elevated state. And we'll get to the brief of of what you guys set out to do there. But before we do, are do you take like in the way I get excited about sharing that hidden gem from that construction manager of Ross? Was Ross there? Was he not, you know, just talking to my group chat? Do you get excited about git going to those places and saying, yeah.

People might not know about it right now, but they will. is that the attitude when when you when you get assigned to one of these?

Kyle Franz (47:38)
Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's both, golf courses in the United States, but especially in the UK. So I did a a project right after I finished for Doke at Stone Eagle and the before that was Bandit Trail, that barn boodle period, early two thousands. I went over and did it STIM in the UK. And it was it was gonna be for the Kohler folks and Tim Liddy, you know, Dy's right hand man for years on the Dukes course in St. Andrews.

The Professor (48:04)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (48:05)
And it was only supposed to be a month gig.

and we I got over there. The weather was classic St. Andrews in the fall time, it was wild as hell. and and they didn't know how they were gonna like get the project finished in time for the next year. And they were like, Well, why don't we ask this one over here? The other ones all want to go home and get out of the mud. as other

Matt Considine (48:26)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (48:26)
like Ty Golby and Dan Proctor, those guys, and

Brian Caesar, guys that have gone on and either helped on my projects where I've worked with a ton over the years. And they were like maybe this youngster will keep working on this thing through the winter time. Like we're gonna get the hell out of here. And I was like, are you kidding me? You're gonna pay me to you're gonna pay me to stay here. Uh you're gonna

The Professor (48:41)
Yeah, he he's he's dumb enough.

Matt Considine (48:44)
Yeah, he's not smart enough yet to know that we don't work at this stuff.

Kyle Franz (48:47)
pay me to stay here for this wintertime. I will absolutely do that. And and so I got the whole project kind of done actually it was I think it was almost early for them. They

They were gonna have to thought they were gonna have to finish in the springtime, but I was able to get it done. So it was a nice feather in my cap as a young shaper and project manager. and I just got to hang around there. And I got it was the winter time, so the hours for sunlight weren't great, but I did spend, several weeks after that just kind of going around and and studying golf courses. And then I just got to do this phenomenal like sabbatical last year. This group told called the World 100 Club.

and they're kind of like tied in with the American Society of Golf Course architects. They they were kind of baffled that like I'd done that time over there and I'd never really gone back again. I never had the opportunity. I've been so busy in my career that I hadn't really got to go back other than just for three days for the British Open in 22, the 150th. And so the itch was there and they they gave me this phenomenal paid sabbatical to go over there. I just had the time of my life where I got to go revisit.

bunch of my favorite courses over there and and also just go check out some new ones and and my walk away from my first experience over there and then my second was that for anybody that's interested in architecture at all, wants to go into architecture, go over there, go see all the cool classics, but go check out the obscure stuff. Anything that's in the links that had like a a decent architect atta attached to it, which they're

growing trees over there, you see a bunch of really cool stuff. the Fraser Bar, for example, you know, it's pretty well known in British,

The Professor (50:22)
yeah.

Kyle Franz (50:22)
but you know, nobody was talking about that like circa when I was before I was going over there, I went out there, I'm like, what's going on here? Like, why is this thing not not famous? And now it's taking on a really nice following, you know, like Gall Caballus did a profile on it and

And so for anybody out there's interested in architecture, that's really where I I've gleaned a lot of my ideas. Everybody's gone and studied Nearfield and St. Andrew's Rook Royal Barkdale. but I've got as many good ideas or been inspired by as much as like a bunch of those more obscure links courses have four, five, seven holes where like, that's an idea for someday. And they come out like Fraserbear, for example. you know, we're trying to figure out what the heck we were gonna do with the ninth green.

On the Re Olympic course when I was working for Gil down there and I was like, I got one. There's this whole it's Fraserborough that has these two big dunes in front of the green and this kind of bankboardy fruit effect at the rear. And and it was like, Well, okay. Well go go go try it, go build it. And and I was really happy. Like I remember Gil saying the week leading up to the event that he thought it was one of the cooler greens that they they'd ever built, you know, at hands designed. So

It was cool though. That leaked out from Gill and it got back to the folks at Fraserburgh. It's neat when these more obscure places get a little bit of credit for the for the cool stuff that they have. So so you know I love I I still love doing that. I love getting out and studying architecture, what people are building now, but also trying to find those cool hidden gems out there. And there's still there's still plenty of them around out there that that deserves some light on them.

The Professor (51:56)
Yeah, Kyle, I love to make a music tie, I love like the mind of an artist and you see a couple different ways they function. And in music, often you have the artist that writes down lyrics religiously, right? And they're just one-sentence lyrics and they keep notebooks and notebooks and notebooks. And then eventually they pull a bunch of those lyrics together of the song. You have other artists that write a song from the first word to the last word, right? They never write anything in a notebook until they actually have a full song. So when I I'm interested in your case, being such a creative, like,

When

you see these cool things on a property, are those things that just get filed away in the back of your mind and all of a sudden you're somewhere and it brings forward, or do you take copious notes and writing things down? Do you have a s specific process you use relative to that?

Kyle Franz (52:37)
I think it's probably a combination of both, really. You know, like there are certain times where I whereas I have like a specific vision in front of me that I think is gonna work and it does remind me of a previous golf hole that I've seen, or it's something that, you know, like it's something that kind of just kind of speaks to me and I'll I'll be like, Well, that's the direction we're gonna go and I'll arrive at it later. I'll be like, yeah, I guess there's a little bit of a resemblance, these three things over here to something.

that that I saw even if it's even it's more like subconscious intellect involved, you know, like you know obviously one the great songwriters and lyricists of the last of the last 40 years is Kurt Cobain. I mean

The Professor (53:15)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (53:16)
when Nirvana blew the doors off the entire industry and brought you know i alternative music into the mainstream and you know I've always been kind of amused of hearing little bits and pieces I guess you know a lot of the a lot of their lyrics you just feel like

that line from that section of poetry or something he wrote down and you pull another from another page, some completely area else, and it all came together and obviously, you know, some of the best music that's been, you know, released in the last and most influential, you know. And so sometimes I will kind of get like a little bit of a a piece of that where you know, where that'll be something that I that I'm like, well I know that's what we want to do over there and

And I'll either think of it from another golf course or I'll be reminded of it. And it comes together in a lot of different pieces. There's a lot of that, I think, especially with with cab at Carew. you know, a bunch of the golf course, you know, we stayed within the same corridors of of what Fozio had, but we completely remanaged reimagined the concept for the whole.

The Professor (54:11)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (54:12)
Ben Calendura really wanted me to do something that was transformative. He kept using that word of reimagine and uh

The Professor (54:18)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (54:19)
And so we regreted a lot of it. And and so a lot of my favorite elements of of British architecture come pouring out ironically on that site in Florida. Yeah, the the thing that's always kind of like I've always been stumped by is usually when people do like these quarry, sandy quarry projects, the fairways are all like smooth and gentle, like Pine Valley, one of the greatest golf courses ever built. but if I if I did have one criticism of it, because it doesn't get very many criticisms, so it might as well get one every once in a while.

Is that you don't have a lot of really cool interest in tight mow around the greens. and there's not a lot of contour going on in the fairways. It's just kind of like sweep, like in a natural landscape, if you have like blown out quarry stuff, that sand blows stuff somewhere and it does something interesting. You know, that's what every golf course in the UK is. And so I had a phrase with my with my crew and shapers during that project where I'd be like, you know, just you know.

Imagine this a category five hurricane hit it, instead of it just being like building gentle, smooth fairways the Fozio people did, just you know, build stuff that's almost more like links like in the UK, like it's just blowing around. Like imagine if that golf course had had time to sit around for five years, you know, foul, just j sitting around for five years for that sand

The Professor (55:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Franz (55:33)
to bowl around and just do wild stuff. And we had two hurricanes during the course of the

opening sequence of the project. And then we realized that in Florida, there's some days where there's some real epic stem wires just on that that west coast. it's not storm revolved or anything. There were days where it would be like a sandstorm out there during the project. there was a day where I was working on the 18th green and one of my lead shapers of the project, Sam Tartuff, was working on the 11th hole, maybe just 200 yards away. Couldn't see him because the sand was just blowing by everywhere. And so we

The Professor (56:04)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (56:04)
realized like

if we really just left this thing for a long time, there's a bunch of features out there that the wind just created for us. And we were like, okay, well, what if we left this for five years and s as opposed to five months? And and you wind up with some really wild stuff out there. So that's where you get a lot of the cool links contouring around the greens, is we you know, we wanted to do not just kind of the cliche version of quarry quarry golf like everybody has done or like Sandy Corey golf. We wanted to throw some almost like a lynx-y sort of contouring in there.

if it gotten to blow around quite a bit. That's where you get a bunch of the fun stuff around the greens where it's almost like North Barrickey or St. Andrewsy, where you know putt, chip, hit bump and runs and just be ultra creative with the with the shot making.

Matt Considine (56:46)
So it's stand on sand, because this this will be my attempt to take us to the boring business side of golf that I I tend to to gravitate, but I find really interesting. I think others do too. at Whispering Pines, the sand is being played as waste areas, or at least I think that's what it is gonna play out. no no traditional bunker as we as we know it today. w where does that type of thing come from?

Kyle, in i is that you out in the field? I know that's your style. You guys are gonna i or or did that come from a prior conversation between you and Kelly Miller around the affordability intentions of this particular, you know, site that they th there there are some restraints around that. Did that help me understand where where those come from when when the they actually those decisions are being made and the conversations are had.

Kyle Franz (57:31)
Yeah, so first of all, Kelly, he's he's a really good player. you know, he he's multi time club champion at at Seminole and Pine Valley. so he knows what it's like to go have he Yeah,

Matt Considine (57:42)
Pro proper stick. Proper stick.

Kyle Franz (57:44)
he knows he knows how to get his ball around under pressure, with a few footprints flying around, you know, in the sand. So he's not really afraid to to to take the plunge like that. We are gonna have a few rakes. We're kind of like

taste testing the the public's aptitude for that one. You know, so there's gonna be a few rakes in places where, you know, where we just don't want to like huge hook prints around like greenside bunkers and things like that. But but yeah a lot of the periphery is just gonna be lay natural and and be just super, you know, light on the maintenance. You know, again one of our as you know, one of our goals is to really try and be cost effective on that project and

really do a cool thing for public and affordable golf here in the neighborhood. since obviously, you know, Pine Earth's model has been mostly, you know, the club and the stay and play variety over the the decades. And and you know, I think for for all of us, but especially me, I've always felt like it would be it's a really cool thing to kind of like re-energize the original market and

and focus of of of what Pine Earth was. Originally it was a wintertime, you know, resort and that was its focus because it was the quickest place you could get to from the snow belt on a train, without with likely not having snow. It was just far enough north that you get there really quick from Cincinnati, Buffalo, New York, Boston, the works. but you could

but you were far enough south that there's a lot less snow than southern Virginia. And and so I think we're gonna get a lot of play with the price point we're trying to do, where it's, you know, more affordable sort of thing to where it's like your high school golf teams, high school golfers, you know, like like me and my buddies, you know, like that thirty five dollar you know, Twilight rate at at Banadunes back in the day. You know, you know, college golf teams, families just want to do like a

a drive or hit a train or or hit a quick flight. it's so much easier to travel these days, I joke all the time that I almost set up my flights like Ubers and, as busy as we got from 22 to 25, 26, I did a lot of flights. I was probably doing everybody, every young architect expects to get their big break, just maybe not in fours and fives at once. So I just made the commitment. I

Matt Considine (59:54)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (59:54)
think I'll be on the road solid for two years.

And so I was at probably 300 flights a year, including connections. I was flying

The Professor (1:00:01)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (1:00:02)
back and forth everywhere. And so it's it's just really easy to set up travel these days. So I think there's gonna be a lot of people that are they're in New York on a on a on a Thursday night or a Friday morning. They're like, I've had it. Let's go, let's pull a good play golf and piners for the weekend. And here's a great price point. You can take a bunch of kids or high school again, college golf teams.

They've already set up a a college tournament that we're gonna have on it, So and so I think that it's gonna be really kinda popular in in that sort of category, you know. So um

Matt Considine (1:00:33)
I love that.

just that that ideal of of what it went originally was and served such a a clear purpose of, you know, like you said, that drive or that train market and you know, still can play when the snow's flying up north. I I see a huge need for it. Obviously, there's like huge demand in the buddies trip, right? And the big

Kyle Franz (1:00:52)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Considine (1:00:53)
two, three day, you're going to your sandvals, you're going to your abandons, you're going to your cabots, and and

those things are selling out and you gotta be on it in order to to lock them in for your crew. But there is this need of the either the smaller buddies trip or just the different type of golf trip. And that might be you're taking dogs and kids, it might be you're taking a couple non-golfers, but to do that price is a significant cause you're not gonna do that with the the the cost of those, you know, really acclaimed destinations. And

And so that's why I just get fired up about this idea of, having a affordability piece to a project as the outcome. Was that a discussion around like here's the target green fee, here's the annual maintenance number that we have to have, or or or is it just Kyle, a list of smaller things? Like, like frankly, Kyle, you can just do less with this and that'll that'll take care of that.

Kyle Franz (1:01:55)
Sure, yeah. Well we got I was started with that conversation is the is the the rates, the maintainability and all those kinds of things. The short answer is yes, is that we started out with the goal that we really wanted to do something at a phenomenal price point. the is Kelly, you know, the owner of Mid Pines, Pine Needles, Southern Pines here. We went and looked at that in the weeks immediately after the women's open at Pine Needles, in twenty two. And

And so we went around Foxfire and and both golf courses. And I was immediately smitten with the Pines course. I'm like, I'm I know this may look like chaos right now because it was pretty rough, They I don't know how close it ever was to closing over there or not, but I'm guessing there's more than a few. that's really valuable land over there for whispering pines.

The Professor (1:02:38)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (1:02:38)
And I'm guessing somebody probably made him some offers to try and turn it to housing in some way. Thank God they didn't. And because I was immediately smitten with the land, I felt like

We could do something really cool with it. And even though it was very rough at that point, the greens were, pretty, pretty beat up and the bunkers were all completely tired and just a mess. and even the fairways had just a lot of just problems, just bad conditioning, that it just it's just a crude, you know, stuff. it was it felt like a golf because it was on the near point of closure. but what it did have was like this awesome membership. Like the members are so fun and so happy. It's been like

a career pro privilege to work with the membership over there that have they have had this experience where you know they they they have this cool neighborhood. There's a beautiful lake over there with Lake Thagard and bunch of cool just little houses and neighborhood and but their golf course was just kind of run down and you know Kelly's coming in and he's and he's injected this this this money in the in the in the and there's just a a direction, you know, for it and

And so while I was really left at that point, I'm like, there's a reason why I keep saying, Let's go work on the pines, let's go work on the pines, let's go work on the pines. And I keep telling them, like, trust me, trust me on this. And the I felt from the beginning like we could make the pines course at Whispering Pines as good as our work at Mid Pines and Southern Pines and and and pine needles and and sure enough, we've done it. Like I had a bunch,

For the first couple of weeks, I just had to tell everybody that I thought that it did, that I came out that good.

The Professor (1:04:05)
Ha ha.

Kyle Franz (1:04:06)
Now, unfortunately, we got a whole boatload of people who have been telling us that, both from the members and riders and outside folks who are like, This is as good as your other golf courses. How'd you actually keep this quiet for so long? You know, and that's pretty cool. The I believe that we could do it because I thought the land was really good. And then we realized very early that it was really great sandy soils. The soils are as good as anything.

We

worked on here, even better so than Pinterest Summer Two is really good. And so what I pitched Kelly on last year was it's like, well, I have a brief gap before we start with the Country Club Charleston project, where my main focus of shaping guys will go down to I've got we've got some months in here before we start that. Let's just put them all out there and just crash on it, like really work fast and hard with almost more peep shapers than we would normally have.

almost like condense down the the amount of shaping time and machinery and everything and really like shorten the amount of time and labor that would go into it and but i also knew that that strategy was gonna be pretty transformative for him we were gonna go through we were gonna crash out like 12, 15 holes at warp speed and and he was gonna see very quickly like whoa Kylen joking this looks really cool and

That's exactly how it went down. We got in, we were maybe eight holes in, and we were looking around 15 and 14, more the the towards the two-thirds of the way into the shaping. And he was like, This turned out really good. And and that's where I can totally tell he got excited. And Dave, our director of grounds, and so the the the concept worked really well. You know, we we brought in a very small elite labor crew for it. Guys that has worked on all of our great work, whether it's

know Broom Sedge award-winning project same with both cabot projects Eastward Ho our our restoration on what's a top twenty-five course in America lookout all these great projects that we've done in recent years Woods Hall we just brought in a but a very small elite group that's where I've joked several times already that it's it was kind of like our our version of the baseball movie Moneyball you know it was

We weren't trying to hit home runs every time. We were just trying to do really cool, really maintainable shaping and whatnot, but just following a lot of the strengths of what Ellis had. but also I just injected in a few pieces here and there of what I felt like Ellis would want to build out there if he had the opportunity with modern play. And and then everybody kind of sailed off to Country Club Charleston from a shaping standpoint. We left that elite labor crew there.

And the guys that are really talented at our crew, the artistry stuff, a lot of the the native sandiary stuff from Easter Ho that makes the golf courses work look like it's been there for a hundred years, like

The Professor (1:06:44)
Hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:06:44)
what we were talking about in the UK a hundred years ago. They were really good at doing that kind of detail work out there. And then well, you know, kind of Sam Tardiff was the leader on the on the the crash course at the beginning. we have a great architect artist that works for us who's actually a full on artist. He's a street painter in New York, Dan Loveridge.

he took the shaping range from there through the wintertime. It's like a one man crash course with his band of eight, like

The Professor (1:07:09)
Ha ha.

Kyle Franz (1:07:10)
usually have like thirty people doing restorations or forty people. instead it was Dan at eight people and they just crushed it. They did a really great job on it. So that's you know, it started out with the right plan. We weren't gonna do too much. You know, again, we weren't trying to hit grand slams. It was more like again, muddy ball singles or we're gonna generate runs.

The Professor (1:07:28)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:07:29)
And I and I

And I can I can live in that mentality, I'm I'm an Oregon State baseball guy. That was Pat Casey through and through. We

The Professor (1:07:35)
Ha ha.

Kyle Franz (1:07:36)
have three national titles out of that psychology. So I'm all about it. And but the guys really, really performed well. I I I set that goal for him. I'm like, look, we've got to be better than we've ever been on this project because we're gonna do try and do more for less than we've ever done. I gave him that famous Bear Bryant speech to the freshman about about you're gonna,

Well that guy's an eighty per potential, and he's only performing to sixty, you're gonna be an eighty, you're gonna be a hundred, and we're gonna walk out of your national championship. I gave him that speech and they performed like that. They did a really nice job. So so I can't I can't be happier that the whole thing has really worked out. It's again, I really do think it's it's up there, quality wise with the rest of our work and the and I it's delightful that people have said that, you know, where they

Where they feel like, we could set them down on pine needles or mid pines or southern pines or whispering pines and not tell them the name of it and they would probably come back with very even splits in terms of votes as to which one is their favorite. But there's lot of people have already said that they think that whispering pines is their favorites. And getting out of the you know the details of that, you know, Chris Bowie, who's the great Donald Ross historian by extension of that,

The Professor (1:08:41)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:08:42)
the Maple family, I was really delighted that he he told me that he thought that this was our

our best restored set of greens within that grouping. uh

The Professor (1:08:50)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (1:08:52)
pretty high praise from from a pre professor there. really appreciate the app of Chris. So that's a good project.

The Professor (1:08:57)
Well, I'm really hopeful that Whisp

yeah, Whispering Find sets a a a model example for so many other clubs to follow, especially you can produce just all star work without, going, to the nines in terms of budget and everything being built in. And I gotta give shout

Kyle Franz (1:09:10)
Absolutely. Yeah.

The Professor (1:09:12)
out quick quick like I forgot Eastwood Ho that to me that's one of the best golf courses I've played in the last ten years. Played it last year and phenomenal work. But since Matt's taking us to the business side, you know, I think a a lot of our audience is very f the

It's easy to grasp the idea of a quick renovation, right? You come in, okay, we've got two years, here's maybe some plans. We're just gonna do this full on renovation. All right, we're done. Look at this awesome golf course, you know, wherever it ends up. but I know you're also invested in thinking like long term planning. You know, what what's different about that versus the typical, you know, th the typical renovation that's hey, it's two to three years and we're out, we're done. In terms of the work you have to do, how you think about it, what is different there?

Kyle Franz (1:09:54)
mean, for me, I just always try to be really flexible of what my clients want to accomplish as much as anything. the you know, the country of Charleston where we just finished up, you know, a massive project where we rebuilt all the grains, all the bunkers, regrassed everything. You know, that was that was kind of the the the end game of years of planning. But I also worked there where we worked on seven or eight holes leading up to the two thousand nineteen women's open.

and and that was a blast to work on even equally as much as it was to, flip the whole thing and get everything exactly right the way we wanted. We work at other places like you know, Minicotta Club in Minneapolis, where you know, I was just I was just there the other day and I absolutely loved working there. You know, the the superintendent Jeff Johnson is a fabulous guy, he's super into restoration of history. You walk into the office and all the the aerials of the golf course were up around the wall.

And he just loves it. He's really big into that. And we've done both a combination of, you know, like years of like, you know, smaller projects. And then we also did like one bigger project where we did, you know, 50 bunkers or so in the fall of of 21. But we started out there just by fixing the pond on number six, where you know, it's a par three lake front left of the green.

Bunker front right. She got a little fade into some of the pins, drawing to some of the others. Bobby Jones won the 27 ameter there. And there's been a lot of speculation over the decades that that was the hole that he was inspired by when he told RTJ to build 16 Augustus that we see today. You the the resemblance is pretty obvious to see them. But the pond would be kind of tinker with along the edge, and I was like, Well, you gotta be able to flop off into the water here, you know, or to really play as well as that one. And so we started out with just that, you know,

and we've just done a a lot of just smaller projects, but I I love working there because of the just incredible history, you know. I mean, Bobby Jones won again the amateur there. Chick Evans won the the US Open there a dozen years before that. And uh

The Professor (1:11:55)
That's right.

Kyle Franz (1:11:56)
what better hits than that? You know, the two guys that won the open and the amateur in the same year in history, you know, champions

The Professor (1:12:01)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:12:02)
there. They also had the Curtis Cup there. And Ross did some really cool work there. You know, his typical flair for

For the the dramatic going on, even the quirky. there's some really cool stuff that he put out there, bunkers just flat out in front of T's and the property is is like beautiful, glacial till, like where it's almost like dunes in the UK. I mean, it's really wild to sections of the property. Then it goes into like super genteel sections as well. And and so you know, I've loved those kinds of projects. We just worked there years and years and years, but it's gotten better and better and better. Like you can see the

even though it's happened slowly over time and it's not like one of these, projects that you're gonna see in the magazines for the award winners. And we've just slowly gone up and up and up in the rankings and and really improve the the property. We still still love working there. Yeah, that's part of the reason why I was there. Last week we're always looking for our next round of items that we want to accomplish out there. So, you know, and that's that's always my goal is I really want to get my clients to

go where where where they can benefit and where they can where they can go and to achieve the highest level, whether that means it's gonna take, you know, two years or twenty five years. There's a a club that we work at in in Vermont where I know it's probably gonna take most of my career to get exactly where we want, but it could be

The Professor (1:13:16)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:13:17)
a lot of fun to do and I'm totally committed to doing that because, you know, it's a beautiful mountain setting up there and I just love going up there. so yeah, I I enjoy our projects.

is

is the big the big award winning ones that we do, these new builds, equal as much as as things like that. And that really that fits to my my overall philosophy is is you know I really just try and run these projects and run my company and spend my clients money as though it was my own money. You know, I try and use every every element that I've learned over my career to try and

guide them in in the direction the best they can to get the most out of their money. Sometimes they don't even realize that I'm doing it. they're like, what the hell does he really want to do it that way for? But or where I push contractors or push the results where they need to go. But it all makes sense in in the end. And so a lot of that's just being a a a good steward and and a good advocate for their for their needs.

Matt Considine (1:14:09)
it Kyle, it's so clear that you're you know, hands on and whether it's making decisions out in the field or talking about your small team and and the the pep talks. I I would love to be there for one of your pep talks, by the way. I feel like that would get me going. but I I I guess his next question is like the the result of success, right? Because with with more projects and more demands on your time.

And you know, that flight schedule that you mentioned, have you learned through managing the bus your business, like what can be handed off, what can be delegated to someone else on the team? I know you you mentioned you let your guys go like you know, Tom and and Bill gave you those opportunities, but what what are some things that you have learned to hand off and what are some things that you know still require you

standing there and and handling it. do you give us maybe an example of that? 'Cause I'm sure there has to be some.

Kyle Franz (1:15:08)
you know really it's almost like kind of constantly evolving, you know. A lot of it's about just dealing with what we actually need to get done and the times and whatnot and and how we go about it. But I think the the hardest thing to explain is that it almost is kind of evolving at different points. And that's that's almost by design. And I'll explain that 'cause I think there's a pretty interesting window for, you know, folks that are interested in architecture to, you know, understand, you know, how I work, how my mentors work, you know, for

For as close as the styling is between Bill and Ben Doke and Gil Hants, et cetera, you know, they work completely different from how each other works. You know, it'd be shocking for as close as they are, you know. in the case of of Gil Hants, Gil is always gonna be most happy in a bulldozer doing the work himself, shaping and and just kind of doing his thing. And he said to me multiple times over the years, like the day that I don't want to do that anymore is the day we're done. And

He loves that, but that also means you're in the machine and you are fixated on that. And that that's your role at that point, In the case of Bill Corps, Bill Core doesn't shape. I don't know if Bill ever did shape or not, but he loves to finish the greens and he's that meticulous. So we're talking about like one of the most like

The Professor (1:16:18)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:16:19)
meticulous individuals in history. so he loves to get on the sampro and personally float out. you only rarely allow other people to kind of do the the finish, or at least up until when I

Period that I work for them. Almost never. Um,

The Professor (1:16:31)
Yeah. Wow.

Kyle Franz (1:16:33)
and and but you know, he's not gonna get on a bulldozer. So he kind of splits time between fit green finishing and then he's walking around theorizing. Whereas for Gil Hance, like the walking around theorizing, it's not really as possible because he's more in the bulldozer a lot of time, just simply doing it, you know. And and so like he'll just crash things in with the dozers, rough things in really quickly for people to follow behind. In the case of Tom Doak.

Tom doesn't finish the greens and Tom might get in the in machine and shape for amusement every once in a while, but more more just for amusement. and whereas he is kind he's like you know the deep thinker, like he's always walking around thinking about what they're doing, theorizing. You know, that's his thing, and that's also how he's able to be efficient and do the math, like the they're definitely the most globetrotting of of architects,

that have worked at this high level over the last years. And so, you know, there's both strengths and probably little weaknesses to each one of those, but those weaknesses never shown through in any sort of way because they're just flat ass brilliant at what they do. It's just

The Professor (1:17:35)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:17:35)
that good. You know, but, you know, I mean, the what I've tried to do is I've tried to take the influence of all of them and it kind of infuse that into my own kind of construction and planning mentality. Like

you know, there's there's times where I will still shape, just like I become sort of like Gil Hans for a little while. There's times where I'm gonna be out and I'm gonna walk and I'm gonna really theorize and think about what we're doing in the same way that Bill and and Tom do. and if there's something that is super complex on a green that like it's really, really hard, I'll get on there and I'll hit it with the sam pro, you know, myself. And and so that's just you know, I've just kind of become a byproduct of

Of my mentors and what I learned from them and those strengths and weaknesses. And that is how I was able to make the jump from, you know, being an architect who was doing good restoration work to doing cabbage, citrus farms, bow projects, broom sedge, Luling, which still hasn't got to open up to the a public level yet, but it's as good as the rest of them, if not our best work. And the it's just waiting for the second golf course by Ovally talking of me to open up. you know.

All of our great restoration work that was going on at the same time. you know, that was all happening, Broomsed to to Eastward Hoe, to Woodshole, to Lulling, to Cabot Bow projects. And I would not have been able to make that jump if it wasn't for the fact that I'd worked for all those guys, see how they handle it, you know. So so you know, in terms of of how we achieve the work to answer your question, it changes almost by by the project and by day, really.

What would need be accomplished, what I'm gonna do. But that also comes from the fact that we have really talented guys that work for us. we we have guys that are really, really good shapers. And then we've done something a little bit different with with the labor factor of it, where we have a a contingent of, you know, sometimes it goes from 15 all the way up to 30, you know, laborers that have worked around our projects. We know they're really good at it, so we just hand them off to a contractor here or a client there.

and so we have great continuity from from from job to job. You know, Gill used to always say that's one of the the challenges we see is you know, you work with a contractor, gets ever everybody a dozen, 15 holes to get on the same page, and then you disperse, you never see those people again. Don't want to deal with that. You know, we want to have

Matt Considine (1:19:46)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:19:47)
the same guys, and that's where you know, that's where we were able to do something like to arrive at the really the point with whispering pines. We have guys that know exactly what I want to accomplish and have known.

And it worked for us at really at a high level for for many years now. They just simply they jump right in. That's how you get numbers like that.

Matt Considine (1:20:06)
Yeah, I I it's such a I sh I I took a lot from that answer, Kyle, because I stink at delegation. I've realized and and one thing I've I've realized is I was kind of always approaching it as what? Like what am I delegating? Right? What is something that other people can find? And that's even how I asked my question. But what I heard there was actually way more important is when and and why and and w when you're doing it,

Definitely d definitely matters 'cause it's it's all you know, all projects probably are somewhat interrelated in a way of your time and that you have to to decide like, this isn't there yet, or the communication isn't, you know, relayed yet, so it can't be delegated yet. Or or it has been and it's like, Yeah, my guy knows exactly what we're trying to achieve here. Let's see what they can cook. I I think that's that's really insightful. I I just just a little comment on on your answer there. I I

Kyle Franz (1:20:57)
I

the the guys that have that that work and shape on our jobs, most of them are guys that I've already worked for me for five or six years or so. Some of them are guys that I've known for twenty years. And so one of the things that I really work hardest on is the selection of who's gonna go to what projects and who I would like to work on them. And that can achieve all kinds of different things, you know, like the the Luling project, for example, the the Texas project. So

for the general theme of that property. It's beautiful Texas prairie land, scarred by multiple barrancas arroyos across the property. There's five big ones. And then the the topographic map for the property, there's so many little like three the big ones are thirty feet deep. the smaller ones, the little fingers of them are like three to five feet deep. These little washes and barrancas that go everywhere. And there's so many of those I've never even tried to count them up. That's just

contour everywhere. So we've been able to build a course where there's a lot of really cool stuff around the greens, almost like St. Andersy stuff, but it was built by Wash as opposed to Windblow, and and from right out of the gates I knew that I wanted to build something that was very like George Thomasy. You know, I love multiple fairway, multiple route architecture in this bomb and gouge age where you know everybody's trying to just crash at 350 yards and they don't care as much about strategy.

I'm gonna be like, no, I'm gonna force

The Professor (1:22:21)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:22:21)
you to make a decision here. You're either gonna

Matt Considine (1:22:23)
Yes.

Kyle Franz (1:22:23)
try and hit that fair or that way where you're gonna make a decision, And and so I felt like that's like as these guys hit it and further and further, that's a definite way forward in architecture. You see it with with cabot citrus farms in a

The Professor (1:22:35)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:22:36)
on a multitude of holes. You see it in the varying degrees at a broom sedge as well, you know, with something like 15 where it's like you're taking on the boundary line or you're taking on a much safer route.

we played with it in varying degrees in that project, but mostly we relied more on the boundary lines of like the do or die of hitting out of bounds or not. but in the case of the Texas property, it's just perfect land for Thomas's multiple route, multiple fairway architecture. If you've ever, you know, look through the book Golf Architecture in America, his book, like

He drew a lot of cool stuff you see it shown through with the multiple fairway holes of LA or Riviera, but he was mostly working some pretty tight canyons and and with boundary lines to his properties. Whereas in t in the Texas project had 1200 acres, I could do whatever I wanted, you know?

The Professor (1:23:21)
Ha ha.

Kyle Franz (1:23:22)
And and so in his book, he he drew multiple fairway holes that were way more aggressive and

The Professor (1:23:29)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (1:23:29)
wilder than he ever got to build. And

I was like, well, we're gonna build the stuff that he grew. this thing is really wild and fun and it goes a lot of different directions. And again, it really forces players to to think about what they're gonna do. But I wanted the bunker style to really almost like mimic the washes there. and and then we had a lot of work to do to to put these barrancas and arroyos back together because they had to be cleared of thousands of trees. They were kind of gonna they were really cool and really awesome to walk through, but with which one whether

Mother Nature created. It was one of the coolest sites that I've ever been on. the washes were just incredible. But when you have to cut thousands of trees, you're gonna destroy those. And so the first person that I hired for that project was a guy named Robert Nelson, who did all kinds of creek work at LA LA Country Club for Gil Hance. He worked at Southern Hills, it's kind of his thing. He's always been great at doing like waterways, and he did a fabulous job with that that element of the design. However

the eroded weird quality to the the barrancas on the bunkering. I wasn't sure that I could get that out of out of a professional shaper. they were there's just a different touch to what Mother Nature's throwing to it, where everybody wants to build something that more looks like a lot of the bunkering we built the last 30 years. And so with the washes and the slough offs of grass and whatnot, there'd almost be like one, two, three lip lines on these these features, like instead of just their classic.

One line and you're done on a bunker,

The Professor (1:24:53)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:24:54)
right? And so I'm like, I don't know who the hell I can get to actually do that and not start go back to like their default style, what they built their whole career. And so I brought in the guy that I mentioned, the the street artist, Dan Loveridge,

The Professor (1:25:06)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:25:06)
who worked at Whispering Binds, because Dan is like such an out of the box artist, you know, like he's not as much a professional shaper as a lot of the other guys. And so I took him out, showed him the

the the washes and some of the first bunkers I told him I was like I didn't even tell it was a bunker to start shaping that. And he hit the nail on the head. It's one of the coolest bunker styles I think anybody's done the last X amount of years. as part of it's just staffing properly. You know, somebody that that won't build like you know cliche stuff. Somebody will simply go look at weird erosion and be like we're gonna do that. You know, and so so I do work really hard on trying to get the right

people in the right places. In the case of of our Woods Hole project, which is a a cool old classic course, 1899 on the the Cape, about an hour

The Professor (1:25:51)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:25:52)
from Eastwood Hoe. Really beautiful glacial till property, rock walls. Like it's it's as close to like a in America, like an English countryside course, you know, where like rock walls are in play, out of bounds all over the place, and really quirky, shorter kind of architecture.

And I wasn't sure that I could really get that out of our more professional shapers. it's like, well, I'm gonna take my two youngest and least experienced guys out there and I'm gonna go sh take them out there, turn them loose, and I'm gonna show them some like really wide variety of different old English countryside kind of shaping. even if it almost feels at times like what's a little bit disjointed, and I'm just gonna turn them loose. And it came out fabulous. It ended up, you was third in one of the restoration rankings.

And I think it's some of our our best work. in the case of Broom Sedge, which I know you guys been to, I've got one of the Broom Cedge flag sticks sitting here at my my my desk. the the funny flag sticks, you know, in the case of that project was a huge job with uh really

Matt Considine (1:26:50)
Was that did you help with

that decision? Was the flag six your call, Kyle?

Kyle Franz (1:26:54)
I I cannot take any

The Professor (1:26:55)
Ha ha ha.

Kyle Franz (1:26:55)
credit for it. Those wild boys figured that whole show out. That's Mike and David McFarland at their at their most eccentric and genius. Um but I love them.

Matt Considine (1:27:04)
Genius. Genius is the word.

Kyle Franz (1:27:05)
No, they're there Mike has so Mike's just so much fun to work with. And we went to the he went to Notre Dame, great huge academic resume. Duke Harvard, Notre Dame, on his academic resume.

Anyway, so he we went to a football game, the Duke and and or sorry, North Carolina and Notre Dame game the other day. And he Mike's just so he's such a brilliant artist and so eccentric in his own right. He had like five of these things in the car. I'm like, Can I have one of those? And he's like, yeah, sure

The Professor (1:27:32)
Ha ha.

Kyle Franz (1:27:32)
So

Matt Considine (1:27:33)
And

you know

what you know what I love about him? versus all the other Notre Dame graduates I I know and somehow call friends, he didn't tell me he was from Notre Dame. He didn't tell me he went there. You know, all the others just tell you immediately, Hey, nice to meet you, Mike from Notre Dame. My Mike Mike was humble, n

Kyle Franz (1:27:47)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Matt Considine (1:27:48)
humble indeed.

Kyle Franz (1:27:49)
He's he is absolutely as humble as it gets. almost to a a fault. Bring me back to that story where we gotta we gotta talk about Mike's like humbleness. So like um when he reached

The Professor (1:27:59)
Ha ha.

Matt Considine (1:27:59)
boy.

Kyle Franz (1:28:00)
out to me during the he reached out to me like three weeks before we were gonna start at Southern Ponds. You know, he'd been in DC politics and doing all this stuff and but he built like a backyard par three when he was a kid that I think it made into a magazine or something like that.

And he wrote me this note. And for any of you out there that has ever written me a note like wanting to get a job or because there's a bunch of them, I apologize if I've never gotten back yet. The timing most of the time has to work out perfectly, absolutely perfectly. Cause I plan ahead as you're we're talking about, I plan ahead months and years for our jobs as to who's gonna work there. And so I I wish that I could hire everybody, but unfortunately, I just never do it. And but

With Mike, he was from here in Piners, writes me this note. I read it and I'm like, this sounds like an interesting guy, but he's from here, so it really had a huge advantage. because that's where it's hard to hire people from around the country, is like getting him housed and everything for these jobs. And and Mike didn't even mention that he had degrees from Duke, Harvard, and Notre Dame. I had to go to his LinkedIn account to find out. I was just like, This guy sounds really interesting. And I did like a just a quick search on him. like

Well, we'll I'll give him a call. We'll give him a shot. Go have lunch with him and see what he's like. And and and he and I immediately hit off. Now I went to Oregon State, but and I almost went to Oregon. That's exactly

Matt Considine (1:29:18)
The Harvard of the Pacific Northwest, as everyone knows.

Kyle Franz (1:29:22)
right. Yes. The everybody asked me what was gonna happen to the Pac twelve. Simple. The Ivy League. That's what it is. So

Matt Considine (1:29:28)
Ha ha.

The Professor (1:29:28)
There we go.

Kyle Franz (1:29:29)
watching the state in Oregon State. But you know I I also almost

I studied turf at Oregon State, was gonna go to Oregon for landscape architecture, but really gotta get all the turf guys abandoned talking in to stay with the Oregon State side of it. but you know, I grew up going like that dark age of football before the ducks got good and Oregon State was bad, just real bad during

The Professor (1:29:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:29:51)
the eighties. So I had to have hope on a on a college football Saturday. So because Notre Dame was on TV all the time, I would watch

The Professor (1:29:59)
Uh

Kyle Franz (1:29:59)
Notre Dame games and root for Notre Dame. So

Mostly I just wanted to get get Mike out to lunch and get what I get all the time because I'm an Oregon stater that will root for Notre Dame and be like, you know, Notre Dame obviously has a huge, huge following of of lovers and haters. And so I just couldn't wait to sit down at lunch with with Mike and be like, I just can't stand Notre Dame. I hate Notre Dame and get the look on his face.

And but humor aside, Mike's just a a a great guy and he's been so much fun to to work with. and you know, I mean the from the flag sticks to the wild flag sticks to everything else. Like just a great team performance on that whole thing, everybody, the entire ownership group and and you know the it it goes kind of where we were going with the conversation of construction, you know.

we knew we had a great site and we knew we were gonna be able to use the boundary lines with some really cool innovative architecture. We really threw some cool, interesting thing into the into the plan. But we massively on that project, you know, improved in the field, the plan versus what we built. There's a lot of improv out there. And that's the the benefit of two things. One is Mike being out there every single day, but we also staffed the thing brilliantly. And it was the same,

Same philosophics that I was talking about in the other project is getting the right people in place to do that job. As Joe Hancock um

The Professor (1:31:17)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (1:31:18)
I hired the

Matt Considine (1:31:18)
Joey the Nose.

Kyle Franz (1:31:20)
that's right, yeah, to be

The Professor (1:31:21)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:31:21)
the lead shaper on it. And that came together at almost the last minute. Like we were so busy at that point with all those other jobs. Again, the the every architect expects to get their break, just not in fours.

We had some really good guys that were gonna go out there and shape it from Brian Caesar to Mark Christensen, who's an excellent shaper, did great work on our on our Texas project, built some of our our coolest screens we've done. but Robert, the guy that was on the Texas project, dude, the Barrancas ticked me off ticked me off that Joe Hancock was looking for for a gig for a while. Like, you kidding me? Like one of the legendary shapers of this industry in the last 30 years. I'm calling him right now and

And that that wound up being just an awesome, awesome hire. He just just did a fabulous job shaping that thing. And everything that I've seen of the photos that him and Mikey have done over at Candy Root look amazing.

The Professor (1:32:10)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:32:10)
those guys, those guys like they work perfectly together. And so yeah, a lot of a lot of setting these jobs up for success is about who you put on and taking advantage of the guys that that

Become a babyable even if they are if you didn't know until the last minute. Jump on getting the right guys. And that's something that I learned from Tom. we always had so many super talented guys around those projects. Jim Urbina gone on to be an architect on his own.

The Professor (1:32:36)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:32:37)
Brian Slanick is one of the wrong longest running design associates at Dokes Company. Those are guys that I work with right at Pacific Dunes, you know, architects deserve

credit for the for what they do and how they do it. but the guys that that make these projects happen out there, they deserve a lot more credit than than they get. You know, there's some really talented guys out there. And some of the guys you did never even go into Europe. You know, we have

The Professor (1:33:03)
That's

Kyle Franz (1:33:04)
a guy

Matt Considine (1:33:04)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:33:04)
one of the one of those laborers that I was talking about at Hironimo fabulous guys this this Latino guy that works on all of our projects and

and and he just knows how to build natural, beautiful stuff. He did most of those sandy native areas on the the the the Easter Ho project. uh

The Professor (1:33:23)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (1:33:23)
and he was able to take stuff and make it look like it'd been there for a thousand years, when it only been there for maybe a thousand seconds. And so and he was able to come in and do a lot of that kind of stuff on our project at Whispering Pines. And so that's why, you know, we really tried to

keep around the really talented guys that really work well together. working on, working in an artistic industry and building stuff is the same dynamics of a band. when we were talking about, you

Matt Considine (1:33:45)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:33:45)
music earlier, you need to get the guys that really mesh well and get along really well and and they're supportive of each other. And and we've been really honing down to a really great team of that on our projects the last several years.

Matt Considine (1:33:58)
Yeah,

it's it's so it's such a great cause you're you're make it forced me to reflect on some of my favorite conversations on this show. This being one of them, but like Joey the Nose Joey Hancock, he he he was on our

Kyle Franz (1:34:09)
Okay.

Matt Considine (1:34:09)
show. I don't know if that's his public nickname, but I've I I've heard him refer to that as

Kyle Franz (1:34:12)
It's not.

Matt Considine (1:34:13)
most of the time. But Joey Hancock was on the show and like e hearing his stories and how he talks about working with, you know, a variety of what

what I would call the celebrity architect now, right? everyone wants to hear what you guys have to say. The guys with name sits on the scorecard. But the more times you dig into that story, just like with a band or a good sitcom or whatever, it's the collaboration that is is so much of the story. And you know, a good meal too. Like the celebrity chefs are the same way. You sit down and and they'll tell you right away. It's like, yeah, our staff is frickin dialed tonight. Like everyone's working and meshing well together.

I I just think that's such a a a lost thing, but it's a nuance thing. Like you gotta really be in this to to to dig in and and figure out who the whole crew was that put this, you know, great course at Broom's Edge together. But like when you do, you're kind of rewarded with a a connective piece to it where it's like, yeah, like Mike made that call as an improv call in in the dirt and Joey recommended this for the the shaping on 18 green and it was taken. I love that stuff, Kyle. So like

thanks for sharing that with us 'cause I I think it it really

Kyle Franz (1:35:18)
No, no.

Matt Considine (1:35:18)
is illustrative of the places we love.

Kyle Franz (1:35:20)
The I mean building all of course this is collaborative collaborative experience. And again, just like the every every little little fascinating quirk of what became broom sedge. just even like the the styling, how they've marked it all that that comes from just the quirky portions of the personalities of the guys involved. Like there's a picture someplace of David McFarlane having like tied together an actual broom sedge plant in the field, and that's where this thing came from. You know, the uh

The Professor (1:35:47)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (1:35:48)
the to the best of my recollection, that's where they they they were they had it in their mind, they were talking about doing it and they were like, let's just tie one of these together and see what it looks like, and and so and and abrog and abroad that became the logo and a pretty sweet logo that it's like now become pretty famous out there, pretty cool that that it's been embraced the way that it has. and those guys were even more wild is to come up with the idea to to

to stick the thing on top of the flag stick. when I when I was working at Stonewall for for Doke, my second internship, I went over to Brian Schneider's house in Philadelphia because he was shaping that job. It was his first job for Doke and it was, the second that I worked on. And but Brian had worked at it at just an incredible number of of elite clubs from Shinnecock, Augusta National, Pine Valley, Marion, and

And I think we're probably outside of the window. So so I think I don't think that anybody's gonna finally charge against Brian, but think he ran off with one of those wicker baskets. Um when he left the when he left the club

The Professor (1:36:45)
Ha ha

Kyle Franz (1:36:48)
and I was like and I'm like, Can I have this? He's like, There is no chance you're getting that thing. No.

The Professor (1:36:52)
Yeah.

Matt Considine (1:36:52)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:36:53)
and but anyway, you know, like these cool little quirky things like this, you know, it's pretty neat that it's been embraced this way. And and

if if if if if some kid in a hundred years runs off with with one of Mike and David's broom set flag sticks, all the better. I think I think that's very appropriate, you know. So but yeah, I mean humor

Matt Considine (1:37:14)
That's great.

Kyle Franz (1:37:14)
aside, golf course architecture and these projects, they're they're collaborative experiences, which is why, you know, I mean my computer bag, which I take around on every one of my visits and everywhere, you know, it's just part of my travel life.

I I have in like a like a special holder where I keep a bunch of things. I still have the same printout that that the Dokster himself, the Tom Doke gave that email that I was talking about, you know, where where he said, you know, if you're talented, you're gonna you're gonna make this project better. You know, I always have that printout in my bag. It's just a a reminder of me of

The Professor (1:37:48)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (1:37:48)
just how important, you know, I was just a 19-year-old kid, nobody at that point.

but I I was able to help that project and a lot of the projects after. And so that's where that's where a moment where a guy like Mike Kaprowski, gives me gives me a note and he sounds like he has something cool that he can add to it, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna jump on it. design is is a collaborative program for sure. Trying to be any good anyway.

Matt Considine (1:38:09)
Kyle, I I this is this is

so fun, man. You have just so much knowledge in your your brain that can come out at any second. And I could talk to you for another two hours. we'll do it again, I hope. So maybe that's my my bid to have you back on here. But I I got one last question for you, and it's it's a bit of a out there question, but it's been in my mind since you said it earlier on. you were talking about your upbringing and your inspiration and some of your experiences around

I

guess I call it competitive golf, not just pro golf, but the am at Waverly, the Am at Pumpkin Ridge, people like Palmer Nicholas, Tiger Woods, obviously. But you talked about all that in really appreciative terms, like like almost reverent terms. And I find, and we've had plenty of architects on the show, like th a lot of times, especially with modern architectural trends, like there's a very antagonistic relationship with competitive golf, with

professional golf in particular. And and I that just stuck with me, just the way that you were talking about that as inspiration. And I'm just curious to get your take on what is that relationship between competitive golf and architecture, which obviously architecture has so much to do with the recreational game that all of us play. the pr I I think a lot of us like to just assume well, competitive professional golf is different and it doesn't, you know, keep it, keep it separate.

But th but the way you were talking about it, I it feels like you did not have that approach. you clearly feel like they're intertwined because they had a lot to do with your inspiration. watching the open, I think was another example you you shared. So, like, what what do you think the relationship is? What do think it should be? And and maybe if you can remember, what what does competitive golf now what is that gonna say about our architects fifty years from now? What will that become?

Kyle Franz (1:39:54)
Yeah, the you know, obviously there's there's a stigma among a lot of architecture nerds, that that you know, that maybe professional golfers aren't as good at designing. Well, take one look at Ben Crenshaw, you know, the he's he's w he's one of the greatest architects of all time. And you know, since there's

I I I get to spend a bunch of time with Dave Axel and Dan Proctor, the old guard from the Court and Grand Shop Boys, during my formative years. And I was I was always fascinated to I I love to ask those guys to just absorb every story about the creation of CNS. Again, we start with that because it's it's it's the it's it is the Nirvana's never mind of uh

The Professor (1:40:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:40:38)
of the minimalist movement. You know, it's where where this cool idea that was hatched in guys like

Go Bill Corps, Tom Doak with with High Point, or I went crashing through to the mainstream. And so I've just loved absorbing, everything about their projects. And I've always been surprised to find that, you know, most of them will say, you know, that you know Bill from having been part of the coming up working for Die compared to you know, Ben always just being a fan of architecture and playing with a lot of different kinds of people during programs and whatnot.

It was Ben that actually pushed them more in the more conservative ways and the more like

The Professor (1:41:11)
Mm.

Kyle Franz (1:41:12)
restraint, and that that makes sense if you really kind of think about it, you know. and you know, I mean, look no further than everything in golf course architecture resonates obviously away from St. Andrews and old Tom Morris. He's the first golf course architect, essentially. other than much Mother Nature and early golfers deciding what they liked.

on the old course and and so you know the he really did as much to pop obviously other people dabbled in it to some degree in the early stages of the game but he really is the person that that spread you know world class caliber architecture all throughout the British Isles, you know. He also just happens to be the best player of the nineteenth century, you know.

The Professor (1:41:53)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:41:53)
So there's an intertwining there. You know, obviously there's been plenty of tour pros that have just come in

Slap their name on on projects that maybe weren't all that great. But a lot of my interactions with professional golfers over the years have been an absolute blast. I've always felt like, you know, case in point when we were talking about, you know, like Citizen Kane. You know, here's a movie that everybody thinks is number one today or in the top five. and you know, it barely made its money back and nobody cared about it for its first 18 years out there. it had to be it had to

Time had to go by for people to really appreciate that. I think one of the projects that I've worked on that has been monumentally underrated, two of them. One is is the Rio Olympic course, you know, like the real the Olympics by nature just sort of like it it it just sort of like it breeds sagas, you know, and like it was a project where we're dealing with a lot of complications working down there and whatnot, and so

I felt like there was a media stigma attached to that project. And I think it's some of Gil's best work. I think it's a really, really cool golf course. And it's so far away that not many people get to see it. The second golf course that I've worked on that I think is massively underrated. And I think in in the coming decades it'll become more appreciated. just like I think Re Olympics probably gonna get much more credit when people look back at the at the canon of Gil's work and be like, Why do people miss this one? This thing's really good.

The Professor (1:43:13)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:43:13)
another one is gonna be the the prairie club in the in the San O's of Nebraska. That thing is really, really good. And we had excellent shapers that that worked on it. There are who's who of of the good shapers the last X amount of years. You know, you had Will Smith, who's now you know, one of the outpost

The Professor (1:43:30)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:43:30)
guys, but he worked for on a bunch of projects for for Gil Hance and Tom Doak, George Waters from the US G A.

The Professor (1:43:38)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:43:38)
back when

George was still working in construction or architecture. he shaped on that with us. A guy named Philippe Minette who worked at Barnbow Loons for Tom as well and shaped around the industry for a good while. And then I was the lead shaper on the job. We had really talented people on that. an architect named Ron Ferris finished the greens. Jack Dredla who's worked on a bunch of Core and Crenshaw and Dave Axel and those guys work. So we have really good guys on that. But

Chris Brands and Tom Lehman, they worked really hard on the routing of that thing and put together a great, great foundation. And but we had a really good team that that really made made their ideas really, really sing and you know, they crushed that project. But I felt like that's actually a project where the stigma against professional golfers as architects probably probably actually hurt the project even a little bit. You know, they

They've done some other really good work, like the other thing that's in Valentine out there, but they also did a a bunch of projects where they were either tethered to another architect or maybe to a contractor that wasn't very good, or they didn't have the shaping talent around it. But in that one singular project, all the pieces came together. And that was not by any degree accident. How I got hired to lead shape that job is, you know, you guys have heard me sing sing obviously the praises of everything sandhills already multiple times.

I'd been there, I'd driven across to I worked with it. There was a photo of it on my wall when I was 14 years old. I wanted to work in the Nebraskan Sand Hills someday. but I was working on the Cow Club project for Kyle Phillips. I was the lead shaper of that job. And I think Tom Lehman and Chris Brands had interviewed for that job, and they actually lost the job, and still we're interested to go back to see what we did, which architects rarely do. There's usually the sour grapes of like, damn it, I didn't get that job. And and

So I'm I'm working on what's that now? That that famous boomerang to the right across the top of the ridge, seventh hole. Yeah. I'm

The Professor (1:45:27)
Yeah, number seven, yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:45:29)
working with a dozer on that thing. I'm like, what the hell? What is Tom Layman running up to my bulldozer and waving at me? And that's how I met Tom Lehman was was then. Is he just wanted he was in town, wanted to see what had become of that job. And uh and

The Professor (1:45:42)
Wow.

Kyle Franz (1:45:43)
he's like, he's like, can I get your your number or a business card or something like that?

I love the shaping work you're doing here. And we got this cool project in the sand hills next year. And I'm like, yeah, I would love to work in the sand hills, So because there was such a deep talent pool of of talented guys that work for corner correction at Doak and and Gill, you know, I was always eager to jump on those opportunities for, you know, another architect that didn't have that kind of access to talent because I was able to make big career leaps like that.

being able to finish that project in the due course in St. Andrews, that that wintertime when nobody wanted to be on the mud anymore. Or in the case of, you know, layman and and brands, they just didn't have, you know, like those kind of guys like like the talent that is stockpiled at at Hanson and Dokes companies and and so I jumped on the opportunity and when I saw how good of a routing those guys had done, I was I fell in love with the project. I volunteered to go out and

and mow the entire perimeter of the holes and it just sh mow around anything that I thought was cool. if there was a a little blown out bunker or a little natural feature that would never show up to plan, I would work around that and some of the holes ended up being designed around like that. there's a there's a little baby bunker in the middle of the twelve fairway that is about as big as the table in front of me here and I just mowed around that thing and that wound up being the central hazard for that

That t-shot. So, so I've Tom was a blast to work for, which is really cool because he was one of my play my heroes as a kid, as a player. I grew up during that that 90s period where he got hot and he crushed it for those few years. So it was a it was great to to work for him and and for him to be a lot of fun to work with. But also in in recent years, you know, I've got to know Brad Faxon really well, and Brad loves

The Professor (1:47:26)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:47:27)
architecture. Brad

His his grandfather, his his grandfather's name is on the pro shop at Woodshole, again, a project that I'm super passionate about. I love how it turned out. and his family's been playing there for decades. and and then also he played a ton at Eastern Hoe, has a bunch of friends that were on my master plan committee there. And and so not only we partnered and worked on Woodsole together, we were also he he really went to bat for me.

on the Easter Hope project, get it approved. And then the

The Professor (1:47:58)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Franz (1:47:58)
big and more expensive project that we needed to do at Country Glove of Charleston the last year where we had to rebuild all the greens, huge exchanges of the bunkers, finally get native grasses out there, which has been kind of a problem for for Country Glover Charleston for a long time. It was just like a huge mono stand of of Bermuda grass. So it lacked like the color contrast of a Yaman's hall and these other ones. And so it just always was kind of like lagging a little bit behind.

But it took years to get all those pieces of the puzzle across the line. I think really when we had everybody finally on the same page was when when Brad came in and did a great talk about our master plan last year before the project. So so I've had, you know, I mean, there's some you know, again, stigmas, stigmas aren't always accurate. And and so you know there's a bunch of those

Matt Considine (1:48:43)
That's

Kyle Franz (1:48:43)
guys that really love and appreciate architecture. We see it with, you know, OCM, Ogly Cocky, Meade,

The Professor (1:48:48)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:48:48)
Mike Fulton.

Mike Clayton was a blast to work with on on Barnburgle Dunes. you know, he he loves like details and architecture. I loved it. I loved chatting with him about Royal Melbourne or specific, you know, little features and details that he loved on the old British links. So so yeah.

Matt Considine (1:49:05)
Kyle, I it's such

a instructive answer that actually reinforces your prior one around collaboration, right? every example you just gave us five of that are are really interesting pl places and projects. And w when collaboration is there, then those things do work together. But like in the echo chamber

Kyle Franz (1:49:23)
Absolutely.

Matt Considine (1:49:24)
of architecture or the echo chamber of competitive professional golf, like, yeah, you're gonna maybe be one dimensional and and

That's that was really a a great way to to share it and break it down. thanks for w

Kyle Franz (1:49:35)
I think that's a

place where my my background as a restoration architect has kind of shown through in a in how I approach the the work is new builds and restorations today. You know, I Cal Club project, for example, which I did working for Kyle Phillips. we were all well aware that, you know, Mackenzie gets the credit for what that thing really looks like, but in truth, it was multiple different people.

Watson had worked on it and and A.V. McCanders, a really talented architect that few people know much about outside of the Pacific Northwest. really, really talented guy. And he did a bunch of great work out there. And so Josh Smith, the great painter, turned golf course superintendent. He used to call the project a MC-Can-Zie you know, and uh

The Professor (1:50:19)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:50:20)
and so you know, I'd already worked at that point f on Pasitiempo for Doak you know.

McKenzie's perhaps most personal leperty live lived right on the golf course, and and so I know exactly what him solo looks like, you know. it's it's it's hardwired. But Cal club's a little bit different. He only got to work around X amount of the of the greens and then all the bunkers, and and so there's a difference. Like Cal Club is different from his other work, and it's because of that collaborative aspect. I see that with Midakata Club, like Ross worked there some of some of the time.

Willie Watson had worked there, Bendelow had worked there. you know, there's there's like a different there's a different like feeling to these than like Ross's most, you know, the work where he was there every single day on these. And and so so yeah, that's part of the reason why I've been actually been really glad that I've got to do the collaborative projects that I have. You know, something it fits into what I want to do from a designer, you know, like we talked about how, you know, nobody's ever gonna beat my old bosses over.

what they do. And so I'm really trying to find my own path and do really cool, classically oriented stuff, but find different niches and different interesting ways to attack it, whether it's the multiple fairways and the way in the quarries at at Carew or what we were trying to do with the Texas project, a lot of different routes, but more with the Barrancas, using the property lines as aggressively, fearless of liability, all of it with what we do with Broom.

we're trying to make all of our projects a little bit different to the point where, people are like, Wow, they really did that in the same time space. That's what I love about the Beatles. Back to the music analogy. People can hardly believe that that that all happened in seven short years, you know. or that simply, you know, that music

The Professor (1:52:02)
Yeah.

Kyle Franz (1:52:02)
that they made on on Sergeant Peppers was occupying the same brains of something that was on you know, more like like help, you know. the

That's what I want our projects to be like. a lot of variety to them. And it gets a lot easier when I have great partners like that. You know, the having, you know, Rod and and and Mike's influence on on something like the Roost, you know. I mean, it's just different personalities. and you know, Mike, Mike is so much fun to work with. We had a blast with with Broom and Hancock's influence as well as as a lead shaper on that, you know,

Everybody has their own kind of piccadellos and and things that they love and and things they gravitate towards. And and so it's really fun to work with different kind of people that to really spread the the variety of what we're trying to do.

Matt Considine (1:52:47)
Yeah, well you've you've done it well, Kyle. we'll let you get rolling back to one of the many projects. And man, it was just so fun having you on. I have a hundred more questions that have stemmed from this, but I'd love to to have you back on the show or get together sometime because your your your work, the way you go about it, man, it's put putting good creative stuff out in the world.

It it makes golf a heck of a lot more interesting for guys like us. So thanks for for sharing some of it.

Kyle Franz (1:53:18)
Yeah, no, thank you guys for having me. anytime and feel free to come out and see some of our stuff coming up. Let's get out and play. love to get you out to Whispering Pines, go see the country of Charleston work. And they've done a pretty nice job of somehow hiding our Texas project under the radar from everybody. We're starting to let people kind of leak in now. We're getting close to getting that second golf course done. So it's been a really exciting year with you know with

Whispering Pines project and then Charleston. I think we really we finally hit the nail on the head there with getting the native grasses, getting the bunker scaling where it needed to be and getting the greens restored properly. so it's been a great year. then with next year with with Lulling, it's gonna be another really exciting world year to show off all of our stuff. So let's get out and tee it up.

Matt Considine (1:54:00)
We got we got a lot more pins on the board now after this chat, for

Kyle Franz (1:54:03)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Considine (1:54:03)
sure. I'm gonna ask my editor how many independent golf courses did we mention on this show? you you I I think I think we got at least half

The Professor (1:54:08)
I think we did a good job.

Matt Considine (1:54:10)
of and thank you for

Kyle Franz (1:54:11)
Yeah, we

didn't even talk about lookout. All kinds of fun stuff coming up. But a fun thing here. Yeah.

The Professor (1:54:14)
uh that's like I said, next episode, baby.

Matt Considine (1:54:14)
Oh well that Yeah,

yeah, we'll get back to it. and and thank you everybody for listening. if you're not a subscriber, please subscribe to the show. It helps us know who's out there and you can also tell us what you think of it. If you enjoyed the the chat with Kyle today, you can like, rate, review, send us an email at The Bag Drop at newclub.gov. just helps me the professor and I dedicate some more time making sure that we're getting good guests like Kyle and asking the right questions. So if you

Want connect with us? Our links are always in the show notes, as well as our guests. but you got to time up the email apparently to get Kyle. and and he's a busy man. The Bag Drop and this show and new club is in partnership with Holderness and Bourne. as many of our listeners know, last summer our buddy and new club's HB rep Andrew Bailey was working in the HB merchandise tent at the U.S. Open. Well, this fall, he won the U.S. Midam at the Lido, which puts him

In next year's field at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Another congrats to our friend and partner, Andrew Bailey, at Holderness and Born. He went from selling shirts to actually planning the thing. So, believe in yourself, folks. but find Holderness and Born and their full fall line at either your pro shop or at hbgolf.com. Classic timeless style with HB signature fit. We'll catch you all on the next one.