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Nick Schaan works side by side with architect David McLay Kidd out of their offices in Bend, Ore. Kidd is one of the most esteemed and decorated designers in the business over the last 25 years, and since 2006 Schaan has been instrumental in bringing to life acclaimed courses like Tributary, Mammoth Dunes and the new GrayBull course in the Sand Hills of Nebraska.

Schaan joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss GrayBull, making the new course at Gamble Sands different than the first, flying with Kidd as he pilots his private plane, the mastery of Pete Dye, the challenge of building Huntsman Springs (now Tributary), advancing their concept of “playability,” how they routed GrayBull and his thoughts on what the next generation of architects need to do to inherit the torch from Kidd and his peers.

Photos: Above, Gamble Sands’ 17th (Brian Oar); Main page, GrayBull’s 11th.

Outro song: “Wishlist,” Pearl Jam.

Watch Derek Duncan break down The Postage Stamp at Royal Troon.

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The post Episode 89: Nick Schaan appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Mike Cocking is the “C” in the Australian golf design firm OCM. His partners are former tour player and 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy and Ashley Mead. The trio have built courses in Australia and Asia and consult with some of the top historic clubs Down Under including Victoria and Kingston Heath. Over the last five years they’ve gained a foothold in the U.S. as well, beginning with the renovation of Shady Oaks in Fort Worth and more recently executed the radical reconception of the famous #3 course at Medinah outside Chicago. They have new projects, too, including the Fall Line in central Georgia, Tepetonka in Minnesota and a course near Austin.

Cocking joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss how OCM broke ground in the states, the influence of Alister MacKenzie in Sand Belt golf, caddie culture, the insurmountable cost of building affordable public golf, the DNA of Sand Belt golf, the rare privilege of routing courses, the role of aesthetics in perceptions of greatness and the concept behind the revamping of Medinah.

Photos: Main Page, Victoria Golf Club (Gary Lisbon); Above, Medinah #3 (Medinah C.C.)

Outro song: Modest Mouse, Sunspots in the House of the Late Scapegoat

Watch Derek Duncan break down The Postage Stamp at Royal Troon.

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The post Episode 88: Mike Cocking appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Lee Schmidt’s lengthy golf architecture career began in the early 1970s working for Pete Dye and took many different detours through the decades. He worked closely with Landmark Land Company on numerous Dye projects in the 70s and 80s before taking a job with Jack Nicklaus’ design firm. In the late 1990s he created his own firm with Brian Curley, and the two built courses across the U.S. and also made deep inroads into the Asian market, becoming the most influential American architects in the region. Today Schmidt is semi-retired, though as is always true in golf architecture, there’s always work that keeps pulling him back.

Schmidt joins Golf Digest’s Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina to share stories about Pete and P.B. Dye, learning about golf design from Bill Diddel, the different construction approaches of Dye and Nicklaus, building the Alcatraz Bunker at PGA West’s 16th hole, Dye’s love of building courses that were challenging to professionals, the decision to leave Nicklaus, how he formed his partnership with Curley and opened over 60 courses in China and rooming with Bill Coore in the early 70s.

Photos: Cover page, The Wilderness Club (wildernessclubmontana.com); Above, the Alcatraz Bunker at PGA West.

Watch Golf Digest’s drone video of Pinehurst No. 2 here.

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The post Feed the Ball Salon 28, ft. Lee Schmidt appeared first on Feed The Ball.

If might seem like golf course architect Scott Hoffman came out of nowhere with his design at Lost Rail, opened in 2022 outside of Omaha. However, he’d previously worked for over a decade with Tom Fazio, designing courses in the western U.S. He then worked with Tim Jackson and David Kahn for a number of years. Hoffman wasn’t pursuing new work when he was approached about looking at land for a club near Omaha, where he’s from, and those interests turned into Lost Rail, Golf Digest’s runner up for Best New Private Course for 2023. He’s now busy constructing Mapleton, another new stand-alone club near Sioux Falls, Idaho.

Hoffman joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan on the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss finding the land for Lost Rail, his instinct for routing golf courses, the insomnia-inducing puzzle of routing Lost Rail, the freedom of working for Fazio versus being his own business, how to water a 20,000 square-foot green, whether classical architecture influences his designs, the futility of properly evaluating a course after just one round and how he compares and contrasts Shinnecock Hills with National Golf Links of America.

Photos: Cover page, Lost Rail (Lost Rail Golf Club); Above, the par-3 11th at Scottsdale National.

Watch and listen to Bill Coore narrate the latest Golf Digest Every Hole at Cabot Saint Lucia (script by Derek Duncan).

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The post Episode 87: Scott Hoffman appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw joins golf course builder Jim Urbina and Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss his long time partnership with architect Bill Coore and the beliefs and impulses that define the many courses they’ve built, from Sand Hills to Friar’s Head to Bandon Trails, all the way through to their newest courses including Point Hardy at Cabot Saint Lucia.

Crenshaw talks about meeting Urbina for the first time, Coore grooming green contours down to the quarter inch, how his roots playing dry and windy courses influenced his preference for designing toward the ground game, the importance of matching turf conditions to the architecture, the influence of Perry Maxwell in his green building and the intuitive and enduring chemistry between he and Coore.

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Watch and listen to Bill Coore narrate the latest Golf Digest Every Hole at Cabot Saint Lucia (script by Derek Duncan).

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Photos: Opening page, Sand Hills #4; Above, Sand Hills #2

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Golf course architect Greg Letsche, lead designer for Ernie Els Design, joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina to discuss his early years working for Pete Dye, how running projects for Jack Nicklaus differed from his experience with Dye, the design similarities between Dye and Nicklaus, the sometimes absurd challenges and hiccups working internationally in different cultures, how Els’ sympathy for poor golfers manifests in his designs, reuniting with Nicklaus at The Bear’s Club and transitioning into renovating older courses like the Scarlet Course at Ohio State (MacKenzie) and Wentworth (Colt) near London.

PHOTOS: Cover image: Albany, Bahamas (albanybahamas.com); Above: Anahita Mauritius (ernieels.com)

Watch Derek Duncan discuss Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, host of the 2023 U.S. Open.

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 26, ft. Greg Letsche appeared first on Feed The Ball.

In less than 10 years in the profession, Blake Conant has risen from crew member to shaper to the co-designer of Old Barnwell, a stunning new course near Aiken, S.C. Conant has primarily shaped greens and bunkers for Tom Doak at projects like Houston’s Memorial Park, Bel Air, The National’s Gunnamatta Course in Australia and St. Patrick’s in Ireland while working closely with Doak’s associates Eric Iverson, Don Placek, Brian Slawnik and Brian Schneider, who is his co-designer at Old Barnwell.

Conant joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the difference between being a shaper for someone else and having final edit responsibility at Old Barnwell, how the search for creative opportunities stokes his passion for golf design, whether he and Schneider began with an initial vision for Old Barnwell, originality vs. derivation, drawing inspiration from other forms of art and nature and if designers of his generation need to be more ethically aware of golf development’s impacts on sustainability, social connections and the economy.

PHOTOS: Cover image: Old Barnwell, 13th hole; Above: Old Barnwell’s 6th and 7th holes.

Watch Derek Duncan discuss Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, host of the 2023 U.S. Open.

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The post Episode 86: Blake Conant appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Shortly after Tom Weiskopf broke with design partner Jay Morrish in the late 1990s he turned to architect Phil Smith. Smith had been working with Nicklaus Design in Arizona, but the opportunity to partner one-on-one with Weiskopf was too good an opportunity to pass up. Over the next 24 years, Smith and Weiskopf designed courses in numerous countries with most of their best work occurring at gorgeous sites in the U.S. west, in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Their latest work, completed after Weiskopf succumbed to cancer in 2022, is at Black Desert Resort in southern Utah, a dazzling course blasted from a landscape of black lava outcroppings.

Smith joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the potentially contradictory transition from Weiskopf the elite professional golfer to professional architect, the importance of playability and aesthetic appeal (versus “championship-style” designs), the evolution of the “Weiskopf bunker,” the almost guilty feeling of building golf in many of the pristine environments they’ve worked, designing good drivable par 4s and the courses they’ve built that best represent the Smith-Weiskopf design philosophy.

PHOTOS: Cover image: Black Desert, Utah (courtesy of Brian Oar); Above: Spanish Peaks in Montana (philsmithdesign.net).

Watch Derek Duncan discuss Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, host of the 2023 U.S. Open.

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The post Episode 85: Remembering Tom Weiskopf with Phil Smith appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Don Placek began working for Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design in 1997 after being in Perry Dye’s Denver office for several years. It was a significant jump, going from the types of technical builds Dye was coordinating in the western U.S. and Asia to Doak’s more intuitive, organic way of designing and constructing courses. Placek began producing plans and blueprints for Doak’s projects and eventually migrated to the field where he helped shape and oversee numerous Renaissance projects, including The Renaissance Club in Scotland and CommonGround in Denver while consulting with venerable clubs like Shoreacres and Camargo. One of the profession’s great graphic artists, Placek has run the day-to-day operations at Renaissance Golf for 25 years and is often the point-person prospective clients first speak to regarding hiring Doak and the firm. Along with fellow associates Eric Iverson, Brian Slawnik and Brian Schneider, he’s now an owner and partner at Renaissance.

Placek joins the podcast to discuss some lean years partnering with Iverson, getting started with Doak and the impact of showing that large sums of money aren’t required to build great golf, Renaissance Design’s “Hippocratic oath” to do no more than is necessary to a site, what golfers like versus what they want, restoring Seth Raynor greens, the future of Renaissance design and the importance of short courses.

PHOTOS: Cover image: Placek’s map of Cabot Highlands in Inverness, Scotland (courtesy of Cabot); Above: The “Short” 11th hole at Camargo.

Watch Derek Duncan discuss Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, host of the 2023 U.S. Open.

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Twitter: @feedtheball

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The post Episode 84: Don Placek appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Architect Stephen Kay has been involved in the building, remodeling or renovation of over 300 courses during his design career spanning back to the mid-1980s. He was one of the pioneering voices in the late 80s for looking at the historical record of a course during renovation to attempt to honor the original architecture. He built numerous new courses in the 1990s and early 2000s, many public, including The Architects Golf Club in New Jersey (in collaboration with Ron Whitten), where each hole was based on the style of a different architect. He continues to be busy with major remodels, consultations and a new municipal course, and is always one of the most entertaining voices in the room.

Kay joins Derek Duncan on the podcast to share story after story about what the business was like in the late 70s and 80s, the myth of green speeds, the impact of turf technology on golf course design, building the minimalist Links of North Dakota at the same time Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw were building the minimalist Sand Hills and a host of other intriguing topics.

Photos: Cover page, The Architects Golf Club (thearchitectsclub.com); Above, The Links of North Dakota (thelinksofnorthdakota.com).

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