Garrett Morrison and Andy Johnson are back with another architecture-centric podcast. To start, they run through the just-announced schedule of 2025 Fried Egg Golf events, sharing their excitement for courses such as Moraine Country Club, Mid Ocean Club, Kingsley Club, and more. From there, Garrett and Andy react to Golf.com’s recent ranking of the Top 100 Courses in America, with The Lido, Old Barnwell, Interlachen, and Medinah No. 3 as some of the new entries on the 2024 list. They discuss the trends in modern golf course architecture and how the mentality of “keeping up” impacts these rankings moving forward. To finish this episode, Garrett and Andy answer some listener-submitted questions through social media about par-3 courses, the future of shorter courses, and more. Stay tuned for another golf architecture mailbag podcast later this week.
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Brendan Porath – https://twitter.com/BrendanPorath
Garrett Morrison – https://twitter.com/garrett_TFE
Joseph LaMagna – https://twitter.com/JosephLaMagna
Will Knights – https://twitter.com/WillKnightsTFE
Meg Adkins – https://twitter.com/megadkins_TFE
PJ Clark – https://twitter.com/TheRealPJClark
Matt Rouches – https://www.instagram.com/mattrouches
Cameron Hurdus – https://www.instagram.com/cameronhurdus
7 Comments
I’m very lucky to have played at some of the “best” courses around (Turnberry, Pebble Beach, blah blah, yada yada), but…Teeing it up with strangers playing horrible golf at glacial pace is nothing compared to playing with friends at my local. As much as the course, people make places. In terms of trends looking stupid in the future? Just check out the haircuts you’ve had over the years in your photo albums 😂
Wouldn’t know how good Old Elm – or maybe I could just identify as a boy for the day 🤣🤣🤣
Hoping Interlachen was agreeable for the MN road trip next year.
The course I grew up playing is the PERFECT example of mismanagement of the land at a golf course's disposal. Silvermine Golf Club in Connecticut is a Par 70 playing at 5257 yds from the tips. It's on a really hilly and interesting land with small and undulating greens that make it a course for players whose strength is their wedges and don't reward the long hitters. The problem is that they know when prospective members visit the course, many will be turned off if it's a par 68 or 69. So instead of re-thinking the existing holes and asking the question, "how can we use this land to make the best golf hole possible", they sacrifice the experience and force the golfer to make some extremely boring golf shots.
The 17th hole is best example, a 486 yard Par 5 that goes down a big hill to a tight fairway veering to the left with trees that block off any shot that is hit slightly left. Any shot hit slightly right finds thick rough or bunkers. You'd imagine that's a fair compromise since the hole is so short by modern standards of a Par 5, but there is huge pond in front of the green and long is completely dead. Although the majority of the membership is going to lay up no matter what, the longer hitters are almost always either blocked off or in a bad lie in the rough/bunker that will makes going for it in two extremely risky. Unless you can carry it 290 yards, you have to hit a perfect shot to have a unblocked look in the fairway. So, what happens is the better players at the club hit an extremely boring 100 yard layup shot in front of the pond to hit their third from 80% of the time.
The decisions makers at the club do not want to reward the longer hitters because the old farts would complain, so instead of expanding the fairway or moving the tees up 20 yards to make it a long-ish Par 4, you get an extremely boring Par 5 for the better players at the club.
Golfclubatlas is awesome
So glad the website existed 2005-2010
Silver Spring in Riverside, East Providence, RI is a perfect example of a small community golf course. 6 holes on a small L-shape parcel of land. Different tee boxes for different loops, with small greens, maintained just enough to justify taking your putter with you. An excellent scale for a quick hour of golf, and convenient for those in EP. Closer to a field with some flags in it than Augusta National, but absolutely a worthwhile property for a golf sicko just needing that quick fix in a busy schedule. Lack of funding always an issue for it not to meet a similar fate as the Donald Ross Metacomet down the road (which closed post-pandemic, but re-opened as a 9-holer called "Met Links", selling off the other land for development I believe), but if not for volunteers and a committed and understanding membership, would not exist for an area starved for accessible/affordable golf.
Moraine also gets overshadowed by NCR which is literally right next door. But Moraine is excellent. If you've got an event there that is pretty sweet.