Feed The Ball – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

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

Golf course builder Allan MacCurrach began working on crews for Pete Dye in the late 1970s and opened his own golf course contracting company in 1987. He’s been involved in building or remodeling over 20 courses for Dye, who passed away in early 2020, as well as architects like Tom Fazio, Bobby Weed and Rees Jones. MacCurrach is also responsible for constructing–and designing, through interpretation of the numerous conversations and planning sessions he had with Dye —The Dye Course at White Oak, Golf Digest’s Best New Private Course of 2022. White Oak, located near Jacksonville on the Florida/Georgia border, is extremely private and is played only occasionally by its billionaire owner, his few guests and select Golf Digest panelists.

MacCurrach joins the Feed the Ball podcast to talk about his involvement in the White Oak project, creating something distinctive on a non-distinctive site, the opportunity and challenge of attempting to carry out Dye’s design directives after Dye could no longer participate in the construction, the evolution of Dye’s green contours as a reaction to higher green speeds, how the golf course building business has changed to a renovation business and the artistic and engineering genius of the original TPC Sawgrass design.

Photos: Cover page–The 16th hole at The Dye Course at White Oak (Brian Oar); Above–White Oak’s par 3 17th (Brian Oar).

See more White Oak photos and flyovers here.

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The post Episode 82: Allan MacCurrach appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Peter Kessler was the face and voice of the Golf Channel when the station first went live in 1995. Over the next seven years he commanded the show, mastering ceremonies and interviewing virtually every important figure in golf and instruction. In the course of that time period, and for years following hosting his show on Sirius XM’s PGA TOUR channel, Kessler has intersected with virtually everyone in the game of golf, old and new.

In part 1, he joins the podcast for an entertaining discussion leading into the Masters about how to project a winner, what happened during the infamous interview with Arnold Palmer over the non-conforming Callaway ERC II driver, trying to understand the bewildering argument behind the resistance to bifurcation, how ad dollars influence the way the media addresses the distance and technology debate, and a question about why golf can’t limit the ball flight the way tennis slowed its ball. [Note: this talk took place the Friday prior to Masters week.]

(photo: Stephen Szurlej)

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Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

The post Episode 17: Peter Kessler, Part 1 appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Brad Klein has been one of the media’s foremost authorities on golf course architecture since he began writing for Golfweek Magazine in 1988. He created that publication’s highly influential ranking of America’s 100 greatest modern and classic courses, and he recently, after 30 years, moved on to a new position with Golf Advisor and the Golf Channel.

Klein joined Derek Duncan on the podcast to share his thoughts on the sadness of sitting in airports on Saturday nights, life as a college activist in the ’70’s, life as a part-time caddie on the PGA Tour, having an outsider’s view on the calamitous overbuilding of the 1990’s and the insidious nature of the game of golf being run as a business, the absence of frank commentary in the media, loop golf courses, the honor of being threatened by Donald Trump, the short and ugly lives of Golden Age courses and what the next decade or so realistically looks like for golf design.

Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

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The post Episode 16: Bradley Klein appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Keith Cutten is an integral player in golf design’s next generation who has worked alongside a variety of architects including Bill Coore, Jeff Mingay, Doug Carrick and, most importantly, his mentor Rod Whitman shaping features, drafting plans, developing budgets and running job sites. He’s also one of the leading young historians on golf course design and expects to publish a book, “The Evolution of Golf Course Architecture” later this year.

He joins Derek Duncan to talk about the kinds of things Bill Coore might like as a gift, Canadian architects, the Dark Ages of architecture, why design styles changed after World War II and how architecture moved from the field into the office, the continual effort to combat technology with design, the effect of television on the increased presence of water hazards, the deleterious effect of advanced irrigation, Horace Hutchinson and the influence of the British Arts & Craft movement on Golden Age architecture and the possibility of Mammoth Dunes being the apotheosis (and final chapter) in the width/minimalist movement as we know it.

Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

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The post Episode 15: Keith Cutten appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Ian Andrew is one of golf’s most respected restoration and preservation specialists, working principally on Golden Age courses in Canada. He has few peers when it comes to observation and the analysis of golf course architecture, and he rarely shies from expressing candid opinions on the state of the game. His writings can be found in numerous magazines as well as online (ianandrewsgolfdesignblog.blogspot.com and thecaddyshack.blogspot.com) and a book on five of Stanley Thompson’s greatest courses is expected later this year.

Andrew joins the Feed the Ball podcast to talk about whether we’re taking the correct view of the “Second Golden Age” of architecture, how it’s difficult to find surprises in modern design, the trap of the “Prairie Dunes” aesthetic, the need for complete conviction in art, his idea for a third course at Sand Valley, the chase to design a sub-par-70 course, whether we’ve reached the end of the age of restoration, who he would choose to grass a golf course over anybody else in the business and who his Spidey-sense tells him might be the next great architect.

Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

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The post Episode 14: Ian Andrew appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Mike DeVries belongs to an elite class of golf architects working today who have been fortunate to work on properties that qualify as some of the best sites golf has seen since the 1920’s. His jaw-dropping design at Cape Wichkam Links on Kings Island in Tasmania, with wide holes rolling along the rocky ocean shore, stretching along high headlands and rumbling through interior sand dunes has rocketed into the world top 100 since opening in 2015.

DeVries sits down with Feed the Ball to discuss the wonderful provocations of Pete Dye, the devastating effect of higher green speeds, working long summer days at Crystal Downs, the “billion” holes that existed on the Cape Wickham property, which hole at Wickham he thinks is one of the coolest in the world, working with a young Tom Doak, the skills of Tom Fazio, not being a member of the ASGCA, owning one of the rare original Sand Hills t-shirts, and the person to whom he’s passing the crown of “most underrated architect.”

Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

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The post Episode 13: Mike DeVries appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Dr. Michael Hurdzan was on golf’s center stage the summer of 2017 during the U.S. Open, contested at Erin Hills, the giant, rambling meadow course he designed with then partner Dana Fry and Ron Whitten. It was a well-deserved moment for the architect known as much for building some of the most artistically voluptuous courses in the U.S. as for his nearly bottomless knowledge of golf, its history, equipment, construction methods and turf science.

Hurdzan joins the Feed the Ball podcast for a discussion that touches on his career, the future of golf design in China (Chinese architects?), the surprising sophistication of building courses with horses, how military tanks influenced golf design, serving in the chemical corps during the Vietnam War, how an architect can game the rating systems, how Erin Hills was intended to be a $50 “poor man’s Whistling Straits,” growing up in Columbus in the time of Jack Nicklaus, having Jack as a collaborator at Scioto and the virtues of being a golf course “plumber.”

(Photo, Shelter Harbor by Larry Lambrecht)

Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

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The post Episode 12: Dr. Michael Hurdzan appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Do you love Donald Ross and the idea of experiencing accurate expressions of his designs? Then this podcast is for you. Architect Kris Spence made the jump from golf superintendent to the design and build world when a club in North Carolina hired him to help restore the lost features of its Donald Ross course. 20 years later he’s become one of the country’s most passionate and dedicated practitioners of golf course restoration and an authority on Ross designs in particular.

Spence spends some time with Feed the Ball to talk about sand greens, following Ross’s career path from greenkeeper to architect, how his first restoration project came about because other architects turned down the job, his revelation at Pinehurst No. 2, pure restoration vs. “intent” restoration, the frustration of dealing with the PGA TOUR‘s tendency toward timid and destructive course set-ups, Ross’s philosophy of angles, restoring Ellis Maples, occasionally getting out of the Ross “box” and who Tom Fazio’s wife thinks is the one of the game’s greatest architects. Plus: a breakdown of Streamsong’s Red and Blue courses!

(photo: Roaring Gap Club, NC, by krisspence.com)

Listen here to Derek Duncan discuss Tom Coyne’s “A Course Called Ireland” with hosts Rod Morri and Adrian Logue of the iSeekGolf Podcast.

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Feed the Ball on iTunes, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

The post Episode 11: Kris Spence appeared first on Feed The Ball.