Golf Talk Live - Season 13 Episode 10 | May 15th, 2025 - Golf Talk Live

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
The following broadcast is brought to you by the I
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Speaker 2 (00:14):
Golf Talk Live is sponsored by the I Golf Sports
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
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Golf Sports is a live stream broadcast and media production
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(00:42):
Welcome to Golf Talk Live with your host Ted oto Rico.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Join Ted each week.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
As he speaks with some of the best in golf.
This week's special guest will join us a bit later.
But first up is another great discussion on Coach's Corner,
So let's introduce tonight's coaches Corner Panel.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
All right, good evening, everybody, and welcome to season thirteen
a Golf Talk Live. I'm your host, Ted oto Rico,
got a great show for you this evening. Joining me
this week on the Coach's Corner panel is my good
friend and fellow golf professional John Decker. I'll tell you
about him in just a moment. And then this week
we'll be bringing back the travel segment. I'm going to
be joined by co host and travel expert Robert Kaufman,

(01:25):
and he'll be joined tonight as well by our special
travel guest, Dustin Irwin, who's the club director of the
Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in California. He'll be
coming on the travel segment tonight as well. And then
tonight's featured guest is Ken Griffin, director of golf sales
and Marketing at Boyne Resort sorry, Boying Golf up in Michigan,
So he'll be joining me on the latter part of
the show. Really really excited to have him on. He's

(01:47):
been on before, but he's got a lot of exciting
things happening up at Boyn right now.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
So we're going to get up to speed if you will.

Speaker 5 (01:54):
For that.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Let me just remind everybody, of course, we're recording on
the Riverside dot FM network, But if you want to
catch all of the podcast, if you go to YouTube
dot com forward slash at I Golf Sports that's I
Golf Sports is the channel that they're all being featured,
or you can also go to Spotify dot com. They're
on there as well for both Golf Talk Live and
also my Tuesday broadcast Women of Golf Show with my

(02:16):
good friend LPJ professional Cindy Miller. And just a point
of interest, Cindy was inducted into the Miami Golf a
University of Mammy Golf Sports Hall of Fame just a
few weeks ago, and she is now being inducted into
the LPGA Teachers Hall of Fame as well the Professionals

(02:36):
Hall of Fame coming up here as well, so I'm
really really excited for her.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
So congratulations Cindy.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
And also if you want to listen to the audio
broadcast of this or the other show, Women of Golf,
I can go to spreaker dot com or basically wherever
you listen to podcasts, so make sure you do that.
And I'm going to introduce John here. We're going to
get into discussion, but if you want to get more
information on our discussion, if you go to Golf tipsmag
dot com and check out the latest instructional post. It's

(03:02):
going to be on tonight's topic and I give you
my thoughts and opinions. So I'm gonna get John's now
on the shows, let me introduce John. We'll bring him
on and we'll get into the Coach's Corner segment. John,
of course, as I said, as a good friend of mine.
He is the director of instruction at the Medallion Club
in Columbus, Ohio. He's also a senior contributing editor and
top twenty five instructor with Golf Tips Magazine, and twenty
fifteen he was the Southern Ohio Teacher of the Year,

(03:24):
and he's authored two books, Golf Is My Life, Glorifying
God through the Game and his most recent one, Fairways
to Heaven, One Shot at a Time. He's also a
host of his own podcast by that same name, Fairways
to Heaven, and he's also available for public speaking upon request.
So John, welcome back to Coaches Corner here in Golf
Talk Live.

Speaker 6 (03:44):
Dad. It's great to be with you tonight. Looking forward
to it.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah, we got a great discussion tonight. And as I said,
I actually just posted my answers and my thoughts on
this in a great post I think, and under the
instructional section up at Golf tipsmag dot com. But we're
going to get your your thoughts and opinion. So what
I put together was five signs at a golfer maybe
losing confidence. And we're going to go through each of those.

(04:08):
And as I said, I put my responses up on
the Golf Tips mag website, but I wanted to get
your thoughts on this because this is something that happens
a lot.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
So I'm going to go each one.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
I'll get your thoughts, I'll give you a sort of
a general overview of what I'm specifically talking about, and
then I'll let you go for it. So the number
one is is and again no particular order, but number
one here on our discussion is worrying too much about
making mistakes. And what I'm referring to here is, you know,
golfers tend to lose a lot of confidence. Maybe they're
overly concerned trying to avoid those bogies and obviously hitting

(04:42):
some bad shots, and it tends to cause them to
start feeling a little bit anxious and really unable to
focus on the present task at hand or in the
present moment. So worrying too much often about mistakes is
I think a big one for a lot of people
to lose their confidence. So what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 6 (05:00):
Well, Ted, that's a great question.

Speaker 7 (05:02):
I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can
lose your confidence on the golf course. But the thing
that I try to I am really trying to emphasize
to my students, and i've really this year, I've really
made a point.

Speaker 6 (05:13):
To do this.

Speaker 7 (05:14):
And a lot of this has to do with the
fact that I'm now playing competitive golf again and I'd
gotten out of competitive golf, and when you get out
of it, you kind of forget, you know, the feelings
that you're going to have when you're playing in the tournament,
and that is emphasizing your target and not emphasizing swing mechanics.
And so what I mean by that is is no
matter what shot you have, whether it's a putt, a chip,

(05:38):
or a driver, you're always making sure that you're having
a target and you're swinging to that target. The other
thing is is your target is not always the flagstick.
And so a lot of times if I put the
average golfer out into the fairway one hundred yards from
the green and there's three bunkers and there's a lake,
there's going to be anxiety.

Speaker 6 (05:58):
Even for a season player.

Speaker 7 (06:00):
You're going to be looking at oh, well, okay, I
can't go there, and I can't go there, and so
picking a very conservative target line and then that allows
you to free up and make an aggressive swing. So
a lot of times the anxiety about, like you said,
not making a mistaken and if you're trying to be

(06:20):
perfect in golf, you're you're going to fail. You're going
to make mistakes in golf. And so understanding that if
you make your target line conservative, then you can free
up and be aggressive. And this is not something that
I came up with. This is actually a quote that
I heard from Tiger Woods, and Tiger says, I always

(06:41):
swing aggressively, but I have a conservative target and Jack
Nicholas was very famous for that as well. So if
you'll focus on the target and not the golf ball.
And then the other thing that I've been telling my
students this year is that when you're setting up and
you're playing, or when you're practicing, you're only allowed to
look at the golf ball for one So if you're

(07:01):
going to look at the golf ball for eight or
ten seconds, you're going to freeze up. So look at
the ball and then look at your target. You can
look at the target for two, three, four seconds. But
then come back to the ball and then start your swing.
And if you'll focus more on where you want the
ball to go and less about hitting the ball, you're
going to free up and you're going to play the

(07:23):
best your abilities.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah, that's a that's a great point. It's it's really
about focusing. Where as you said, where you want the
ball to go. Too many people are focusing on the ball,
they're focusing on swing mechanics. We're going to talk about
some of that here shortly, but you know, a lot
of people get on to that and you raise some
great points. It's funny you mentioned both of those players,

(07:45):
because I've got a couple of things a little bit
later on that I'm going to mention as well from
both of those. So it's kind of interesting you brought
both Nicholas and tiger Woods up. But yeah, you know
that's those are great rate points because again, a lot everybody,
it doesn't matter what whether you're a season or you know,
somebody that's just playing for the first time. We're all
a little bit nervous out there, and when you start

(08:05):
making mistakes, it's very easy to fall into that trap,
and you know, mental game starts to get diminished and
so forth.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
So yeah, it's very very much. So we're all gonna
make mistakes.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
It's how you deal with those mistakes that really makes
the difference of a good round or a bad round.
Brings us to number two, and we've all had this,
the pre round jitters that don't seem to go away,
you know, anxiety and a tight feeling that persists, you know,
even beyond the first hole can be can indicate a
loss of confidence as well, and an inability to relax

(08:35):
and trust the game. So we it's not just sometimes
stepping up to the first t I mean, that's a
kne nokraph for most people. Even the pros will admit
that that's a little bit nerve racking starting that fresh round.
But even sometimes two three holes in a lot of
players still have some anxiety because they're not sure how
the round's going to go, and especially if they've hit
some bad shots to get things started off on not

(08:56):
on a positive track. So what are your thoughts here?
How do you what are some of your things that
you try to do to help them overcome some of
those pre round jitters.

Speaker 7 (09:05):
Well, first of all, I let all my students know
that if you're not nervous before a tournament, that means
you're you're probably not human, or you just don't care.
And so I want my students to obviously care that
they're in a tournament. That you know, you don't just
sign up to a tournament just to play in a tournament,
so obviously it means something.

Speaker 6 (09:23):
And so there, it's normal. It's normal. Everyone's nervous.

Speaker 7 (09:27):
Even the people that look calm, cool and collective, the
inside their stomach's turning and they're a little bit nervous. Okay,
So that's normal. The second thing is is this is
not life or death. So if you go out and
have a bad day, it's not like the whole world
is going to think that you're a terrible player, because
most offers and tournaments they don't care what you're shooting.

(09:47):
They care what they're shooting. So just focus on your
game and don't get worried about the other distractions of
what other people are doing and what other people are going.

Speaker 6 (09:57):
To think about you.

Speaker 7 (09:58):
But it's interesting that you brought this up because I
had a guest on my show this week.

Speaker 6 (10:02):
Her name is Matti Schultz.

Speaker 7 (10:03):
She plays at Youngstown State University, and she actually just
majored in psychology and we were talking about this, and
her coach actually works with them a lot on the
mental aspects of the game. And one of the exercises
that they try to do is when they're playing. And
keep in mind, when you're playing in collegiate golf tournaments,
a lot of times you're playing thirty six holes in

(10:23):
one day. That's a lot of golf, and so you
can't be just raise or focused for thirty six holes.
There's no one can humanly do that. So you have
to know how to kind of turn your mind on
and off. And so what she likes to do is
she likes to like notice things in nature. I mean,
we're all outside on a beautiful golf course and we're

(10:44):
this is supposed to be a leisure activity. There's nothing
wrong with just looking off at nature or doing something,
whether it's prayer, whether it's meditation, whether it's a conversation,
lighthearted conversation with those that you're playing with, things that
will distrust to you a little bit. And after you've
hit your shots and you're maybe waiting on a group

(11:05):
ahead of you, or you're walking down the fairways or
writing in a golf cart with someone, conversation, things like that,
to be loose.

Speaker 6 (11:13):
If you're trying to be.

Speaker 7 (11:14):
Just stoic and you're not gonna have any way to
get those nerves out, you're gonna just explode inside. And
so it's good to to, you know, do those things.
Lee Trevino what he would do. He had a lot
of nervous energy. He would just talk. And Phil Rogers
told me a funny story. And actually this is not
from Phil. This is one of the famous quotes, is right.

(11:35):
I think it was in nineteen seventy one Nicholas and
Lee Trevino were paired together and Nicholas said to him
before the round, He's like, you know, Lee, I don't
really want to talk today. I just want to I
wanna be focused on golf. And Lie said, don't worry,
you don't have to talk. I'll do all the talk
and you could just listen. And so I think that
Lee Trevino is just a type person that he had

(11:56):
to talk. That was the way he got rid of
his energy. So we all have to have ways that
we can get rid of that nervous energy. And I
think if you can do that, it definitely helps you
to relax.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
Yeah, and you know, Lee must have had a lot
of nervous energy, because yeah, he talked a lot of there.
But then I think after a while, I think, you know,
as he became a more seasoned player, I think that
was just his thing. Yeah, and he found he also
discovered it was a way of throwing others off, because
Nicholas used to complain sometimes, I mean not not really hard,
but he would use to say that it was a

(12:28):
distraction for him because he was a very you know,
mentally focused player. But you know, I look at this way,
as I said, you know, even not just stepping up
with the first tee, but even sometimes when you're trying
to get a few holes under your belt.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
I think one of the other things too that.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
Caused a lot of uh, sort of that nervousness and
is a lack of preparation, you know. And I'm always
a firm believer. I think that if you if you
prepare well, and that means when you're hitting the practice range,
you want to go there with a sense of purpose
and maybe some of the things that you might want
to do, and we've talked about this before as well,
is you might want to go out and visualize if

(13:02):
you're maybe playing on the weekend and it's Wednesday, and
you're thinking, Okay, i've got a couple of days here.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
I'm going to go out to the range.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
I'm going to visualize the holes that I'm going to
be playing, and you know you don't have to do
them all, but maybe you pick the first three or
four and you say, Okay, I'm going to pretend I'm
playing those holes. I'm going to visualize it out in
the range, and I'm going to pick the clubs that
I'm going to use on each of those holes, and
I'm going to mimic. Obviously I can't putt, but you
know I can mimic the longer shots, and then I
can go to the practice putting green after and work

(13:30):
on some of the putts. Makes them imagine maybe this
one was a twenty foot putt, maybe this one was
a ten foot putt, And practice those things well and
give yourself a sense of okay, of accomplishment, because what
that does builds confidence. Same thing with the warm up routine.
You know, you know it's not going to be as long,
but if you're going there and you show up thirty
minutes early, you know, again, practice what you're going to
be playing. Pretend you're playing some of those holes, and

(13:53):
certainly you want to loosen up and things, and you
definitely want to be stretching and loosening up those those
tense muscles. That's gonna help us well. But I think
if you have a sense of purpose, if you practice
with purpose when you go to the range, whether it's
for a full practice session, either on your own or
with your coach, or you're just warming up before and
a round, if you visualize what it is that you're doing,
as you said earlier, focusing on the target as opposed

(14:15):
to worrying about swing mechanics. There's a time and place
to do that, but not when you're getting ready to
play in a tournament or you're getting ready to play golf,
you know, in a couple of days, or even maybe
later that day. So let's focus on making some good
strokes and making some good shots here, but put it
in perspective as to what you're gonna be faced without
in the golf course. There's no sense in hitting shots
that you know you're not gonna be faced with. They're

(14:36):
not all gonna be perfect lies. You're gonna have some
bad lies. Too, and you got to work on those.
But great answer, John, and you hit a lot of
excellent points as well. The other one is losing confidence
after a single bad shot. You know, this is a
big one because you know, obviously we can have a
bad hole and certainly even a bad round, but sometimes
even just one shot can be enough to derail. So

(14:58):
if a single bad shot or squ or quickly roads
some of that confidence and leads starts to lead to
a frustration, then it starts to suggest a struggle with
maintaining a positive mindset. So this starts to creep in.
You know, we've seen that I hit that bad shot.
I have a specific method that I like to do
to help golfers, but I want to hear what your
thoughts are.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
So you get a bad shot, what do you do
from here on?

Speaker 7 (15:21):
I this is a great I mean I literally wrote
a whole book about this, you know, fairways to having
one shot at a time. I wanted to show how
golf is one shot at a time and you live
your life one day at a time and one moment
at a time. Well, when I went to Orlando during
the PGA show and took a lesson with my old
teacher Fred Griffin, and we were it was a rainy day.

(15:43):
Unfortunately we were able to get the lesson in, but
we were sitting there at lunch talking and I was
talking to him about the struggles because I was trying
to play competitively again and the struggles I was having
and quieting my mind and and dealing.

Speaker 6 (15:56):
With, you know, four shots.

Speaker 7 (15:58):
And he told me that what he has all of
his students do is when they hit a shot, whether
it doesn't matter whether they hit the best shot or
they hit the worst shot of the day. After you
hit a shot, if you hit a good shot, you
tell yourself that's it.

Speaker 6 (16:15):
That's the swing that I want to make.

Speaker 7 (16:16):
You know, that drive on the first hole, you hit
it right down the middle, That's the swing I want
to make. Let's say you get up there and you
don't hit a good drive. So as soon as you
get done, you or as soon as you hit your
shot you hit a bad drive, you kind of move
over the side. Now the other person's hitting, and then
you try to mimic exactly what it is that you
want to do. Don't get wrapped up in I did

(16:38):
this wrong or I did that wrong. Tell yourself what
you want to do and say that's it, and then
you go to the next one. So no matter whether
you hit a good shot or a bad shot, you
leave that shot behind knowing that you know exactly what
it is that you want to do. Now, if you
don't know what you want to do and you're hitting
bad shots, you need to go see a golf professional

(17:00):
because every player needs a teacher, in my opinion, even
the players at the highest levels. And we can't all
see ourselves. We can't see ourselves on the golf course.
A trained eye to someone that can look at your
golf swing and say this is what you want to do,
so that when you do hit that bad shot you
know exactly what it is that you need to do.

(17:21):
You can tell yourself, Okay, I did this wrong, but
this is what I need to do. That's it now
I'm gonna move on to the next shot. I think
that's a great way to mentally play on the golf
course because you're gonna hit bad shots. If you think
you're going to go out even on your best day,
you're still gonna hit bad shots. You have to know
what to do to nip it in the buds so

(17:43):
it doesn't happen again. And I think those mental exercises
are important. I've also heard like Butch Harmon, he will
tell his students, you know, you're allowed five steps after
you hit a bad shot, and after that you got
to let it go, so you can if you want
to get mad and if you want to say whatever
it is you want to say or get you know,
frustrations out for five steps, and then after that you've

(18:06):
got to move on to the next shot. So there's
a lot of different ways. It's a lot easier said
than done. But you have to learn this skill. I
don't care what level you're playing at. You have to
learn this skill. Otherwise you're going to drive yourself crazy.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, and that's a great point.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
And I look at it this way, and this is
some of what I talked about in the article. And
you know, you look at it so you hit a
bad shot, well, who hasn't, right, We all hit bad shots.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
But that doesn't.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Necessarily mean that the round is over. And it just
means you hit a bad shot. Let's just call it
what it is. And what I like to do is
I like to encourage students, especially when I was working
with a lot of my corporate golfers because they tend
to analyze, you know, they're very analytic and very specific
because they're.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Trying to solve issues in the boardroom.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
And I'd say, when you're at the golf course, when
you're playing around of golf, stick that bad shot in
the back of your mind, and let's analyze it post round.
Let's continue on, let's focus on the task at hand,
and let's put that in in a private box and
say we're going to get to that after the round.
We can talk about it, you know, in a in
a lesson and analyze what went wrong. And I'm like you,

(19:12):
I think what's important is you have to I think
what happens is when when you've hit a bad shot
like that is you you all suddenly have sort of
some bad or negative energy and you need to get
rid of it. And obviously on a golf course you
can't be yelling and screaming, whipping clubs and things like that.
But you know the five step rule or or some
other way of expelling that negative energy and then reinforcing

(19:35):
it very quickly with something positive. Maybe you hit a
great shot on the last tee, put that in your
mindset and say you know what, Yeah, I hit a
bad shot here. I'm not happy about it, but you
know what, I'm still okay. I've got an opportunity here,
and I'm going to be thinking about that great shot
that i just hit on the last hole that really
went well.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
I got on the green in two.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
I'm really excited about that and enter some positive start
of absorbing that positive energy if you will.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
But you have to be able to learn from your mistakes.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
But you need to be able to put it in
the past and not keep dredging it up throughout the
round because if you every time you hit a bad shot,
you start to hear, God, that happened on whole number two.
Remember that if you're just it's like a broken record,
just playing it, playing it, skipping all the time. So
that shot is gone, learn from it and move on.
And I think that's the best way, as what you
said as well, is just to be able to do that,

(20:22):
because we're all going to hit a bad shot. I
don't care, even the best players. We saw that at
the Masters this year with Bryce and Deshambeau on I
think it was whole number eleven, you know, ended up
going to the pond. So you know they hit bad
shots too, and unfortunately there's cost a lot more money
but than with ours do. But it's still nevertheless so
but great answers. So again, losing confidence after a single

(20:47):
bad shot, you know that's one as well.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
And I think focus.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
You touched on this earlier, and I wanted to get
into this because I think this is important. I think
focusing excessively on the technique or how to make the
perfect swing. I don't know how many times I see
people rehearsing and in a full blown blown uh practice session. Okay,
you can focus, or when you're working with your coach,
you can focus on some technique if there's things that
need to be worked on. But when you're up there

(21:11):
just practicing, if you're constantly focusing, then you get out
on the golf course and you're worried about, well, is
my elbowing coming in right? Or is my wrists right?
And you're focusing on that all the time. Then you're
over controlling the swing, and then you're not really thinking
about the target as you suggested earlier. So let's talk
about that. That's a big one, I think for a
lot of people for losing confidence.

Speaker 7 (21:31):
I have my students do I tell them when you're practicing,
you know, especially when you're working on new and a
lot of you know, sometimes they might be totally new players,
so they're going to have a lot of technical thoughts.
That's this, they're learning how to hold the club for
the first time. But I always tell them, I want
you to hit five balls where you're focusing on the technique,

(21:55):
and then I want you to hit five balls or
you're only focusing on the target, and then go back
and forth so that you're productively maximizing your practice time.
Because I do if I give some one some technical
work to work on, for example, a drill. If I
give a student a drill, I expect them to do

(22:17):
the drill during their practice sessions, not on the golf course,
but during their practice sessions. Otherwise they're not going to
get any better and we'll just be rinse and repeat.
We'll be doing the same thing the next lesson. So
the students that.

Speaker 6 (22:30):
I have, I don't want them to just go.

Speaker 7 (22:33):
And all they do is focus on their golf swing,
because I want them to play golf as well. So
if you will do the five and it doesn't have
to be five balls, it could be three balls, it
could be ten balls. It doesn't really matter. The idea
is that you commit, okay, on these five balls. I'm
gonna do this drill that John gave me, and I'm
going to just focus on the drill. I'm not going
to worry about where the ball goes. I'm just going

(22:55):
to focus on the drill. And now I'm going to
hit five balls as if I'm in the Saturday, you
know hot game and we're playing for five dollars nasshaul,
and I'm gonna pretend I'm hitting a shot at a target,
and then for these five balls, I'm gonna do that.
If you go back and forth like that, I think
to me, that makes practice a lot more fun than

(23:16):
just standing there doing the same thing over and over
again and maybe not seeing good results.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah, the old saying spice, spice, variety of spice of life.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
And yeah, and again, you've got to make it fun.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
And that's why, you know, I said earlier in the
discussion about imagining that you're playing some of the holes
that you might be faced with, and you don't even
necessarily have to play the first you know, five holes.
You can maybe play the first couple and then maybe
there's a couple on the back that offer a little
bit of a challenge, So be creative, say, okay, well
this part three that's going over water is a little
bit challenging for me, and how can I approach this differently? Well,

(23:52):
I noticed that there's a bigger landing area if I
hit it to the right a little bit more, there's
more forgiving forgriveness on the green. So instead of trying
to go over now, sometimes you obviously have to go
over water, but you know the path to less resistance sometimes.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Is the best route.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
So if there's a big body of water that's more
to the left and you know the pins cut over there,
well that's not a good option. So maybe I need
to you know, not necessarily lay up, but maybe move
it right a little bit and hit the fat part
of the green where I'm going to give myself a chance.
Even if I come out away with par it's a
lot better than hitting it in the drink. So there's
another old saying if you've been around golfer an length

(24:26):
the time, and that is drive for show and putt
for dough. And I talk about this in the article
as well in my points as I answered the different questions,
and you know, there's a good reason for it. You know,
everybody likes to bomb their drives, you know, down the fairway.
It looks great, but most amateurs really lack, I think,
the skills to do that consistently.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
So they're you know, one.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
Minute they're maybe hitting one in the fairway, the next
their left, and then they're right, and then they're this
and that, and so they're not very consistent. And there's
really not that many drives that you're going to be
faced with in a round of golf, but you are
going to be hitting a lot of pit shots, a
lot of chipping, and a lot of putting. And so
I like to say to you know, work on the
short game. You know, get more proficient on the short game,

(25:08):
so if you hit a bad drive, you can recover.
That's what Tiger did. I mean when Tiger first came
out on tour. Yeah, he get a long way, but
he was sometimes in the next fair way or sometimes
in the rough. But he had incredible recovery and hit
some amazing shots. I still remember when to hit in
the Buick Open that he was in the rough and
had some trees and he ended up this big old
slice and you know, was ten feet from the hole,

(25:31):
and you know, people were like wow, and he was
one hundred and eighty yards or hundred ninety yards, I
forget now what it was, but you know it was
with an iron.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
He cut it.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
But he worked on those shots, and he worked on
you know, the short game. So I think that's another
way to really help build your confidence when you feel
that things you know are moving in a bad way,
and especially you know again, to stand there and be
constantly worried about how good your swing looks.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (25:59):
I mean, in my way of thinking, is there really
is no perfect golf swing. There's a lot of really
good looking golf swings, but there isn't. There's maybe a
perfect swing for you, and there may be a perfect
swing for me based on our body types, but other
than that, there's no perfect golf swing. And if you
try to pursue that, and there's a lot of guys
I can think of a few off the top of
my head. Nick Folda was like that very early in
his career, trying to go for the perfect swing, and

(26:21):
it served him well to a point, but then after
a while he wanted to keep pushing it up, pushing
it up, and eventually, you know, he sort of fell
away to the waist side.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Another one was, oh, uh, you.

Speaker 6 (26:33):
Could put Tiger in that category. Tiger. Tiger was jumping.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
Around for all these coaches, and I kept thinking, why
you're the number one player in the world, You're you
can Why do you he changing your coaches?

Speaker 6 (26:47):
I never understood that.

Speaker 7 (26:48):
That was I think he was so talented and so
good that he chased perfection, and I think and and
I think.

Speaker 6 (26:57):
It was a little bit of a detriment. Who knows.

Speaker 7 (26:59):
I think I think he could have passed Jack's record
because he had a lot of When you start changing
your golf swing at that level, it's you don't just
do that in a couple of lessons. That's a that's
a huge commitment. So I was I was shocked by that.
I mean, but he won a lot of Yeah, I
didn't understand it.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
I didn't understand that ease either.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
And and again, you know, I think though sometimes and
again we're not in their heads. But uh, you know,
I remember, you know, Nicholas uh tried to change you know,
he hit that fade famously for years, and somebody that
he decided to change things up. He was looking for
a little more distance again. He tried to start drawing
the ball and he tried that for a season. It

(27:39):
just was disastrous. And he went back, you know, and
and started hitting the shot he you know, his bread
and butter and you know when winning a bunch more turns.
In fact, I think he had done that before he
won the eighty six Masters, So you know, obviously it
was a smart move coming back. But but yeah, it's
it's something that you know again, that pursuit of perfection.
You know, Luke Donald comes to mind another one. I mean, yeah,

(27:59):
he's got a great look and swing, but when you
look at it and you peel back the layers of
the onion, how many tournaments does he won compared to
many others? Look at Lee Trevino, as you mentioned earlier,
you know his wonky looking swing. I mean, come on,
let's be honest.

Speaker 6 (28:11):
Well, Luke Donald played well today.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
He's.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
I've got all right, So well, there you go. But
that things it failed him. But you know, he wanted
to be a really good ball striker and he certainly
accomplished that, but for a long time he struggled putting.
You know, putting those shots together and winning tournaments, and
you know, you haven't heard him in the leaderboard for
a long time. So I'm glad to here that's that's positive.
So maybe talking about him is is going to help

(28:36):
him propel in the next round. So but the last
point here is is getting easily frustrated and or playing cautiously,
and so frustration when when not playing to expectations or
a tendency to protect a score when things are going well,
can suggest a lack of confidence and a fear of losing.
So this is a big one as well. Give me

(28:57):
your thoughts and then I'll conclude with my Well.

Speaker 6 (29:01):
I mean, you know, it's tough.

Speaker 7 (29:03):
There's no one answer for that because you know, if
a person has a two hundred and fifty yard shot
over water, I want them to play conservatively. I want
them to be I want them to play the smart shot.
But what I tell every one of my students is
is you're not always going to know whether you hit
the right shot, and you're not always going to know

(29:24):
whether you hit you know when it's over, whether it's
right or wrong. But I want you to commit to
that shot. I would rather you play the wrong shot
and be fully committed than to play the correct shot
and not be committed. And so that is what's important,
is commitment to the shot that you're hitting and then

(29:45):
weighing the odds. You know, is it a shot that's
you know, over water with the wind in my face
and it's stretching this club to its maximum.

Speaker 6 (29:54):
No, that's not the time to hit that shot.

Speaker 7 (29:56):
That's where I would rather you lay back to a
yardage and then and knock at it, you know, be smart,
or play around the trouble and try to you know,
play to a bell out area.

Speaker 6 (30:06):
So I think the.

Speaker 7 (30:07):
Commitment part is important because I've done this where I
stand over a shot and I'm not committed, and so
there's been you know, a great way to do this
is and I'm not positive I can I can't remember
if it's a half a shot or a quarter shot.
But they've done research on this, and every time you
hit a shot on the golf course, you just ask you,

(30:29):
I don't care if you if you hit it right
down the middle or if you hit it in the trees.
You ask yourself, was I committed to that shot? And
if you were committed to the shot, that's good. If
you were not committed to the shot. You put a
little check on your scorecard, and at the end of
the day, each one of those checks is worth either
a quarter.

Speaker 6 (30:49):
Or a half of a shot.

Speaker 7 (30:50):
And if you look down and go, oh, my gosh,
I've got twelve checks, my goodness, that's you could. You know,
you're talking three, four or five shots that you could
that you're costing yourself not because your swing wasn't right,
because you weren't committed. And if you're not committed, your
brain just doesn't work that way. Your brain it is

(31:12):
very specific. Like I tell myself I'm gonna do something,
my brain will tell my body to do it. But
if I'm telling myself my body, if I'm holding a
five iron in my hand and I'm hitting a shot
that I know I'm not capable of hitting, there's gonna
be the marriage between my mind and body is not
going to be there. So I think commitment in the

(31:33):
mind of what you're trying to do first, you make
that decision first, or what you're gonna do, and then
you have to tell your body, this is the swing
that we're gonna make to hit this shot, and then
you have to have that marriage of the commitment in
the swing. But if you don't have that marriage, it's
not gonna work. You've got to have that the commitment first,
and then feel the swing and then do it, and

(31:56):
then you have to accept you can do all of
those things and then make a bad swing like you
talked about earlier, and you accept. And I I don't
have a problem if I if I say to myself,
I committed to the shot. I hit the shot that
I wanted to I tried to hit the shot I
wanted to hit, and I made a bad swing. I
just chalked that up as a bad swing. I don't
give myself an X because I did commit. And that,

(32:18):
to me is the most important thing that great players
are have the ability to do is stay in the
moment and commit to the shot they're hitting and then
just accept whatever happens and go with it.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
Yeah, well said, And and you know I look at
it this way too, John, is you know at some
point when you're you know, when you've become a confident player,
you can lose it just as easily. Yeah, you know,
as as it comes. And a lot of times players
will bring emotions. They can often get the best of us.
We get frustrated with anxiety bills. And one of the

(32:52):
mistakes that I've seen with a lot of uh, you know,
pretty good players is when they've you know, had a
bad shot, you know, bad whole, bad round, whatever is,
they start to change the way they play. And what
I mean by that is a player who maybe typically
you know, likes to fire is a little bit more aggressive,
likes to fire it the pins a lot, and that's

(33:14):
you know, for them to decide Whi's good or bad
for them, all of a sudden, because they've had a
few bad holes, gets a little squeamish, so they start
pulling back and they get too conservative. Now I'm not
saying you know it, you shouldn't, as you point it out,
be a little bit more conservative, but there's a time
and a place. But if you're somebody that typically plays
a more aggressive game and you all of a sudden
start pulling back the reins too much, then you get

(33:34):
out of your own natural rhythm and then you start
to struggle and other things start to fall apart. And conversely,
the same thing happens that you know, somebody that maybe
tends to be a more conservative player starts having a
bad round all of a sudden, they're thinking.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Oh boy, I've lost a few strokes here.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
Now I've got to start playing more aggressively in order
to catch up and to get those strokes back. Now,
all of a sudden, they're firing at or hitting shots
that they're normally not equipped to handle, hitting over that water,
or hitting around you know, trees a little bit more aggressively,
or whatever the case is. Now, all of a sudden,
they're out of their rhythm as well. So I'm a
firm believer is you have to stick to your game,
play your game, and don't try to change who you are.

(34:11):
You can certainly adjust and adapt within reason, but you
can't sort of do a one eighty. So again, if
you're a more aggressive type player, it's okay, it's a
bad hole, it's a bad you know, couple of shots,
what have you. You got to stick to your game plan,
however you come into that tournament or however you come
into that game, you got to stick with it. And
if you start making drastic changes like that, you know,

(34:32):
then you're going to, you know, get in a situation
where now you're not playing your game anymore, you're playing
to your fears and your anxieties. And you know, you
never saw Nicholas change his game mid round, you know,
as an example, you know, when things weren't going his way,
you know, not likely you have and and.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
So really why should you?

Speaker 4 (34:51):
And you know, sometimes you just need to stay the
course and play the way you always have. And I
think a lot of times making drastic change like that
can turn something small, typically into something worse. And I
just want to add in conclusion to that because I
mentioned about Tiger as well. You know, Tiger Woods often
said and I used to laugh when I hear him
say it, and a lot as a lot of people.
He'd say in his interviews, you know, I didn't play

(35:13):
my a game today, but I'm happy with the results.
You know, I'm paraphrasing, and he sometimes would word it differently.
And and you know, if he was one of the
best players in the world, arguably along with Jack, and
that's what they were assessing from their own game, then
why shouldn't you What makes you think you're going to
be any better or any different? So sometimes it's not

(35:33):
the game that needs to be changed. Sometimes it's just
the attitude as well. So if you're coming in with
a positive attitude, and even if you have some stumbles
along the way, put those you know, issues behind you,
deal with him at a later time when it's appropriate,
and let's stick, you know, keep our mind in the
game right now and do the best we can moving
forward and forget about the past until we get off

(35:54):
the course. Then you can address some of the issues
that maybe needed to be addressed. But I think that's
a good way to look at it. And I think
that those five tend to be very common issues that
a lot of people have when they lose confidence. And
if you want to regain that confidence, then you have
to do some of the things that we talked about,
because and again it's a journey, you know, you're it
took you a while to build that confidence up and

(36:16):
all of a sudden you lost it. You know, maybe
in a few rounds or a few holes. You can't
just snap your fingers in its back. Sometimes it takes
a little bit of extra work, whether it's practicing with
the purpose, whether it's you know, uh, not over analyzing
your swing and just focusing on the target more. There's
a lot of different things that we talked about, but
you know, it's very easy to regain your your confidence

(36:37):
if you're willing to put a little effort into it.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
And I think that's really what most people need to do.

Speaker 6 (36:43):
Well, said, what are you.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
What are your final thoughts on that? I think you know,
I think it's pretty straightforward, don't you.

Speaker 7 (36:49):
Yes, I liked what you said about having a plan
before you go out there. You know, when I was
playing a lot of competitive golf, I would in my
mind the day before the night before the tournament, I
would just visualize how I wanted to play every single hole.
This is what I'm going to use a driver here,
I'm gonna use a three wood here, I'm gonna use

(37:11):
a hybrid here whatever, and I'm gonna try to I
could see my target. I could see I had an idea.
Use Usually you have an idea where the pins are
gonna be. Tournament pins are going to be usually a
little different than regular pins, and so you you visualize
that and then when you go out and play, obviously
things don't go always exactly.

Speaker 6 (37:32):
The way you want them to go.

Speaker 7 (37:34):
Then you have to have the ability to make you
know choices and adapt at times, maybe the weather is
a lot different than you expected, or maybe you're hitting
the ball not as well. You know, maybe you're hitting
a shot that you don't normally hit and you have
to have the ability to play play with what you

(37:55):
have at that moment and get through the round and
rely on your short game. If that that's the case,
If you're clicking, then you can just stick to the.

Speaker 6 (38:03):
Plan and you don't.

Speaker 7 (38:05):
You don't vary and you and you also when you're
playing well, you don't want to start changing your plan.
Like if you're playing going into the tournament, was I'm
gonna play that par five as a three shot hold
because I really can't get there. And let's say you're
really playing well, don't say, you know what, I'm going
to go ahead and try to try to play this
as a two shot hold.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah I will.

Speaker 7 (38:26):
I don't think that's smart because that wasn't in your
plan to begin with. And you need to stick with
the plan because you you know, Zach Johnson won a
green jacket and he never went for one part five
in four days. Yeah, so you if your plan was
to play this as a three shot hole, stick to
your plan.

Speaker 6 (38:43):
And I think that's important.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
Yeah, if you very So, That's kind of what I
was getting to earlier as well. If you start to
vary things too much, then you get out of sync
and you get out of your plane. We see a
lot where players are leading a tournament and then all
of a sudden they get faced with a situation they
decided I'm going to go for it now instead of
maybe laying up, which I was in my game plan,
and now all of a sudden that they don't get
the shot off the way they want it. Now, all

(39:04):
of a sudden they're scrambling and it throws them off
their game. And then the next hole comes along they're
doing the same thing. And we've seen a lot of
players lose the lead that way on Sunday. So it's
not a smart way to go into a golf tournament.
You go in with the game plan either win or
you lose, and it's a you know, a hit or
miss in that situation. And yeah, to start messing around
with things like that, But great discussion. And again, as

(39:27):
I mentioned, this topic was something that I put together
in a great post up in Golf tipsmag dot com.
So if you want to go and see that, go
to Golf tipsmag dot com and under instruction you'll see
that there right on the front page. And you can't
miss it. It's got a golfer looking into the sunset
and there's an explanation for that as well, and they
lead up into the story. But go and check it

(39:47):
out at Golf tipsmag dot com. John is always thank
you very much for coming on and doing Coach's Corner
and I'm going to give you a moment or two
if you want, just to let the folks know if
they want to reach out to you and how they
can listen to your podcast as well.

Speaker 6 (39:59):
Well. Ted first of all, as always, thank you for
having me on.

Speaker 7 (40:02):
Thank you for this platform and this new video part
is really taking it to another level. And congratulations all
the success with the magazine and now with the video
format and the website. Everything's going really well, so I'm
really happy for you for.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
The listeners out there.

Speaker 7 (40:20):
If you want to reach me, the best way is
to go to my website deckergolf dot com. All of
my content tent information is on there. I have videos
on full swing, hutting, chipping, pitching, bunker, all aspects.

Speaker 6 (40:32):
Of the game.

Speaker 7 (40:33):
They're all housed under the umbrella where you're going to
get a consistent message. I also have information on there
about my two books that I've written. I'm a Christian author,
so my first book was Golf is My Life, Glorifying
God through the Game, and the second book is fair
Ways to Having One Shot at the Time.

Speaker 6 (40:50):
So those books are on there as well. I have
a Bible study as well.

Speaker 7 (40:53):
I have sixteen churches that have anticipated in that and
I'm really excited about the Bible study that's that information
is on the website as well.

Speaker 6 (41:03):
And then i have a new show.

Speaker 7 (41:04):
It's called Fairways to Heaven and it's on Bowl Brave TV,
so it's a simulcast, so it is on television, but
it's also on YouTube if you go to my YouTube channel,
which is John Decker Golf Instruction, or you can find
it on deckergolf dot com as well. All of my
shows are housed there as well. So I'm going to

(41:27):
have you again, Ted. You've been on as a guest
a couple of times and you're going to be coming
up again. So I'm really excited to have you on
and thank you again for all your support with this
new venture. And your job is a lot more difficult
than my job hosting hosting the show. Hosting the show
is a lot more difficult to being the guest because

(41:49):
there's a lot of prep work, and you do a
great job. You make it look a lot easier than
I do.

Speaker 4 (41:54):
Well, you know what, I've been doing this a long time,
and as I said to you many times in the past,
you know I I'm never afraid of competition.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
I think it's great. I think the more that do that.
But it is a lot of work.

Speaker 4 (42:05):
And I always when people ask me and say, you know,
I've thought about doing this, and I always ask them
a few questions. And I did that to you, and
obviously you've answered them well, and you've answered the call.
And I'm excited to be on your show. I think
I'm going to be on next Wednesday, I believe the
twenty first, so I'm looking forward to that. And we
had a good time the first two times I was on,
and I'm glad to be welcome to come back anytime
and offer whatever words of wisdom I can to your audience.

(42:27):
But congratulations and all your success as well in both books,
and I'm excited for that as well. But John, thank you,
and I will talk to you on Wednesday.

Speaker 6 (42:36):
All right, Ed, have a great day you too, staying.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
With me, and we'll be right back.

Speaker 4 (42:40):
I'm going to take a quick commercial break, and when
I come back, we'll be starting our travel segment for
the evening. My good friend Robert Kaufman will be joining
us as well as our special travel guest for the evening.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
So you're right back.

Speaker 8 (42:50):
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(43:13):
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Speaker 4 (43:20):
All right, welcome back everybody, and tonight we're going to
start our travel segment. Let me introduce the gang, and
then I'm going to actually leave the room as it
were for a little bit and let these two guys,
my guest tonight, actually talk about our travel segment. First up,
of course, is my co host and travel expert Robert Kaufman.
He's an award winning photographer and golf travel writer golf

(43:43):
media consultant. He's worked with a number of great publications
such as Trouon goolf and Travel Magazine, PGA Magazine, of course,
Golf Tips Magazine, along with a host of others. And
if you want to see more of his great work,
you can visit his website Pitcherparfect dot com. And I'll
tell you a little bit more about that a little
bit later on. Our special travel guest tonight is Dustin Irwin.

(44:03):
He is the club director for Omni LaCosta Resort and
Spa and he was born and raised in Wisconsin. His
first job, of course, in golf was as a caddy
at age thirteen at Pine Hills Country Club. He attended
Farris State University and majored in marketing and Professional Golf Management.
He's been a PJ Class A member since two thousand

(44:25):
and three, and after graduating, he worked for about ten
years for the Ritz Carlton Marriott Golf at properties in Jamaica, Jupiter, Orlando.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Grant came in Atlanta and.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
Tucson, and he was three years in Maui working at
Capealua in sales and marketing for Truon Golf. So both
of you, Robert and Dustin, welcome to the show. I'm
glad that you're both able to reschedule for tonight from
our earlier attempt to do this broadcast. So Robert, I'm
going to turn it over to you, and I'm going
to i think disappear for a little while and then

(44:57):
you can just let me know one night.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
All right, sounds good to thank you, Thanks Ted, Dustin.
Robert's life down there hun sunny San Diego.

Speaker 9 (45:11):
It's it's pretty sunny.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I'd like to be training places.

Speaker 9 (45:16):
Yeah, yeah, great place.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Probably about three hundred and sixty four days out of
the year.

Speaker 9 (45:20):
Maybe, Yeah, it doesn't rain much. Yeah, as you know,
we're known for our weather.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yes you are. Yeah, it's a good spot to be.
You've had a uh, you've had a nice road in
your career to get to where you are.

Speaker 10 (45:35):
It's been uh, it's been a lot, you know, gypsy
life for about fifteen years. But but it was a
lot of fun and uh, yeah.

Speaker 9 (45:42):
I've been I just actually celebrated my eighth year anniversary
on La Costa and I hope to be here for
a long long time. It's a it's a wonderful place,
and I just I love coming to work every day.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
That's awesome.

Speaker 5 (45:53):
Well I remember from.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
My brief visit down there. I mean, I love staying
at the resort. And you know, one of the great
things about it is you just practically roll out of
bed onto the first t So it's pretty nice having
that right outside your back door.

Speaker 8 (46:09):
Yes it is.

Speaker 10 (46:10):
Yeah, it's actually that's you know, we're hosting the NCAA's
right now. That's one of the best features that the
players love is being able to stay on site and
you know, just kind of get in their element and
not have.

Speaker 6 (46:19):
To take a shuttle.

Speaker 10 (46:20):
So yeah, it's a wonderful setup here.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Yeah. Well we're going to get into that. I want
to hear more about that, but first I want to
get from you if you wouldn't mind just kind of
talk a little bit about you know, obviously the location
we were, the cost of resort is at, and you
know a little bit of the history because it does
have quite a bit of history, especially.

Speaker 5 (46:41):
With the PGA tour.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
You know, when they came on board and so on
and so forth, and the courses have been you know,
gone through some transformations over the years since nineteen sixty six,
I believe they were introduced.

Speaker 10 (46:57):
Yeah, your client's actually this is this is our diamond anniversary.
So we were established in nineteen sixty five and this
is our sixty year anniversary.

Speaker 9 (47:06):
So it's a really special year for us. And yeah,
as you said.

Speaker 10 (47:11):
Rich tournament history at LaCosta with over thirty five PGA
Tour events, you know, starting with the Tournament of Champions
and moved into the the Eccentric Match Play Championship, had
a couple of key of classics towards the end of
Lacosta's professional tournament run and then yeah, we just started
up with the NCAA National Championships.

Speaker 9 (47:31):
Last year was our first year.

Speaker 10 (47:33):
So we're in year two of five, and you know,
there's a there's a there's a good chance and a
push that that we become the permanent home of the
of the Championships, which would be something really special.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, So back back in the day, you know, with
the uh, the turn, you know, the club hosting the
Tournament of champions I mean that was one of those
sought after destinations for the PGA Tour players I mean
now it's Capaloa, but back in the day it was
it was Carlsbad, California. They all wanted to come here
when it went an event on the on the tour

(48:07):
and then find their way there and what was January
for them?

Speaker 10 (48:11):
So yeah, it was in January, you know, which you know,
when the West Coast Swing comes through California, it's it's
not typically our best weather. But but you know, I
think the players really just love the you know, the
campus style of.

Speaker 9 (48:24):
This resort and again being able to walk out of
your room and walk to the range in five minutes.

Speaker 10 (48:30):
And we've got world class identities, you know, dining a
world class TOI and you know, we were we pride
ourselves on the hospitality we provide and we have an
amazing staff here.

Speaker 9 (48:41):
That's you know, we've got.

Speaker 10 (48:42):
Employees that have been here for fifty years, which is
really a testament to the to the culture that La
Costa has.

Speaker 9 (48:47):
And I always like to say, like the first time
my mom ever stayed at LaCosta.

Speaker 10 (48:50):
And she stayed at some nice places, like when I
worked for Ritz Carlton, she stayed at many of the hotels,
and the thing that stuck with.

Speaker 9 (48:56):
Me the most.

Speaker 10 (48:57):
She said, LaCosta is the most comfortable place I've ever been.

Speaker 9 (49:00):
And you know, I think that says.

Speaker 10 (49:01):
A lot like it's it's it's it's warm, relaxed, refined,
but but it's laid back.

Speaker 9 (49:06):
And that's what I think is what makes it so special.
It's really it's the people.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Oh no, for sure. And I got that vibe instantly
when I was down there. I mean it, you know,
the hospitality from from your staff and like you say,
I mean it's a testament to the resort and the
company and the culture there for how long people have
been there, forty fifty years. I mean that that's that's
unheard of in the industry.

Speaker 9 (49:32):
It's amazing, especially especially in hospitality. You don't see that.

Speaker 10 (49:37):
It's usually a very high turnover industry. But yeah, to
have to have people here, you know, celebrating forty forty.

Speaker 9 (49:43):
Five fifty years of services just is astounding. I hope
to be there.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Someday too, not so fast.

Speaker 9 (49:52):
Yeah, I got a few years ago, right working till
the ninety.

Speaker 5 (50:00):
Well, you can do it.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
I got faith in you, so give us. I mentioned
earlier about the transformation of the courses that it's been
through over the years. Give us a little background on that.
You've got two courses there to eighteen hole North and South,
you know, I mean, if you can take us back

(50:22):
to the beginning. I know you weren't there, but certainly
there were much different courses back then than what they
are now.

Speaker 10 (50:31):
Oh yeah, absolutely so the original designs it was a
Dick Wilson and Joe Lee collaboration.

Speaker 9 (50:38):
And the original eighteen you.

Speaker 10 (50:40):
Know, it was built in nineteen sixty five, and then
throughout the years two more nines were added on and
we had the North and the South course for a
very long time really through that that PGA Tour and
LPGA Tour history. We had some renovations done in twenty
eleven and twenty thirteen where the golf courses were changed
to the South course changed to the Legends Course, North

(51:01):
course was changed to Champions and those those renovations were
done by Peyton Pascuzo. And then when we and then
this this whole concept of the NC double a you know,
really kind of started in I want to say, like
twenty sixteen when when Coach Fields from University of Texas
and Jeff Shackelford were.

Speaker 9 (51:20):
At the I Leeve was the Walker Cup at.

Speaker 10 (51:22):
Los Angeles Country Club, and they just kind of started
kicking the idea around of having you know, the championship
at a neutral site and at a place in southern
California that you know, would allow for primetime television viewing
and really predictable weather.

Speaker 9 (51:39):
And coach Fields knows.

Speaker 10 (51:41):
Our ownership well, they were University of Texas alum. He
pitched the idea and that's so that's really kind of
where it started. Fast forward a few years, we announced
the renovation and won the bid for the NCUBAA Championships.
We announced that in November twenty nineteen. Obviously, the world
kind of turned on its head shortly thereafter and twenty
twenty and so we initially were going to start hosting

(52:03):
the NCAA tournament in twenty twenty.

Speaker 9 (52:05):
Three, but due to COVID everything was pushed back a year.

Speaker 10 (52:09):
Our ownership selected Gil Hands to do the renovation of
the North Course and he did just an amazing job.
The golf course is just it's spectacular.

Speaker 9 (52:19):
And for people that have played it, you know.

Speaker 10 (52:21):
Before the renovation and posts, i mean, it's the one
word as wow, it's it's just and I've I've probably
toured the golf course seven hundred and fifty times, and
I just I love every change. Every hole was changed,
and I just love what he did. I mean, he
took out a lot of bunkers are on the green side,
so he added a lot of lomo areas, which is

(52:42):
great for the higher handicap. So it's it's obviously a
golf course that's very stout. It's one of the most
challenging courses in southern California.

Speaker 9 (52:51):
But at the same time, you know, with six.

Speaker 10 (52:53):
Sets of teas on the north course, the yard adurine
just from forty five hundred to seventy five hundred yards,
and with removing about forty five of ninety green side bunkers,
you have a lot more options to you know, to
play around the greens like you can.

Speaker 9 (53:06):
I use a putter quite a bit. So I like
those options.

Speaker 10 (53:09):
And Sam, you know, sand can be difficult, and so
I like that you have a few more options to play,
and you.

Speaker 9 (53:16):
Know you can pick you pick the right yardagy and
you can have a very enjoyable time.

Speaker 10 (53:19):
I mean, it's obviously a stern test of golf, but
it's it's just fantastic and we we made the decision
when this renovation took place to revert back to the
original North and South names because.

Speaker 9 (53:31):
We felt like with this renovation, with.

Speaker 10 (53:34):
The NC double A coming that it really launched LaCosta
kind of back into the major tournament golf discussion, which
is I think exactly where it belongs. So it's been,
it's I've kind of, you know, I kind of have
to pinch myself because I I just I'm so fortunate to.

Speaker 9 (53:50):
Be here and to witness this transformation.

Speaker 5 (53:53):
You know.

Speaker 10 (53:53):
In addition to the to the North course, we redid
our practice facilities, which our world class. All of our
rooms at the recon or we have six hundred rooms
at the resort, were redone. The meeting space was redone,
the spa was redone. So we're really, uh, kind of
turning over a new leaf.

Speaker 9 (54:09):
Out La Costa. And it's it's it's been.

Speaker 10 (54:11):
It's been a really exciting time to be here. And
that's really why I hope to stay.

Speaker 9 (54:15):
Here for a very long time because it's just a
wonderful place.

Speaker 5 (54:19):
No, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Yeah, So when when gil Hans came in, what was
the I mean for him or you know, the people
on staff there, what what was the main primary focus
of the renovation, what what needed to be done? And
primarily on the North course because that or the championship

(54:41):
course at the time. But now the North Course, what,
what was the what was the real motivation behind that?

Speaker 10 (54:48):
Well, it was it was due for it needed some love,
you know, the the irrigation.

Speaker 9 (54:54):
Needed to be redone, and so that was that was
a big part of it. We had a lot of you.

Speaker 10 (54:58):
Know, like low lying areas, and in California, like most places,
we use reclaimed water, so we we struggled with some
positions in low areas with really high salt build up.
But really, you know, he pulled his inspiration from kind
of the classic courses in southern California, the Beller Country Club,
the Riviera As, the Valley Club of Montecito. You know,
kind of dragged back on those amazing designers that you know,

(55:20):
he looked at kind of the surrounding hillside and basically said, like,
I want.

Speaker 9 (55:24):
To make the golf course feel like it's been here
for forever, and you know.

Speaker 10 (55:30):
Like it's it's just it's really amazing to see the process,
like you know, we've we had a hole by whole
renderings of the plan changes and it really kill makes
a lot of changes in the field, like kind of
as he's as he's on site and on you know,
pushing dirt around like so it's it's really been a
great process. I mean the so some of the things
like a really established native area which has you know,

(55:54):
churf grasses that are that are indigenous to this.

Speaker 9 (55:56):
Area are drop tolerant and from going for good test
if anybody's hopefully you all tune.

Speaker 10 (56:03):
Into the n C Double A Championships that'll be on
Golf Channel this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the women's
championships and then the following Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for the men.

Speaker 9 (56:12):
You'll see the native.

Speaker 10 (56:13):
Areas are are very defined. It's it's a beautiful look
and it's it's very penal if.

Speaker 9 (56:18):
You miss the fairway.

Speaker 10 (56:19):
But the fairways are also really generous, so you have
to hit a pretty whelward ship to miss it.

Speaker 9 (56:24):
If you do miss it, you're going to be pnalized.
The greens were reduced in.

Speaker 10 (56:29):
Size and uh, you know, had some slight undulations added
to it, so it really puts a premium on your
shot placement. The greens are tricky, they're they're they're beautiful,
bent drass greens rolling.

Speaker 9 (56:42):
Just spectacularly, and you know, you.

Speaker 10 (56:45):
Really have to make sure you you put the ball
in the right place, which I know that's kind of
any place in golf, but but out here, if you
miss the green in some areas, it's it's really tricky.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
LaCosta is going to get quite a bit of TV
carverage over the next week or so and they to
tune in and have a look at what you're all
about down there and get a look for themselves.

Speaker 9 (57:05):
Absolutely, yeah, we'll be We'll be live on Golf Channel.

Speaker 10 (57:07):
It's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday next week and then the following
week as well. It'll be from let's see here, six
to ten pm Eastern time, so right in that prime
time viewing slot for the.

Speaker 9 (57:18):
For the East Coast and right when everybody's getting off
of work on the West Coast. But the course will
look amazing.

Speaker 10 (57:23):
It's it's gonna be a it's gonna be an exciting championship.

Speaker 9 (57:26):
We actually start the women's championship tomorrow.

Speaker 10 (57:28):
We just just concluded the practice round, so the maintenance
team is out doing their thing. Golf Channel booth announcer
Booth just got installed behind the sixteenth green, so we're
fired at all cylinders.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
That's awesome. How many total players do you have down
there from from.

Speaker 9 (57:44):
The teams, so there's one hundred and fifty six.

Speaker 10 (57:47):
There's one hundred and fifty six players to start, and
so we have three rounds of stroke play. After the
after three rounds, there's a cut and the top fifteen
teams and top nine individuals move on to the final
round of stroke play and so on on the next week.
Next week, Monday will crown our individual champion, and then

(58:08):
the top eight teams after Monday move into match play
and they'll play match play in the quarters and semi
finals on Tuesday, and then the match play team championship
is on Wednesday, which is always a lot of fun,
very high drama. And last year, last year the Stanford
women went ahead and maybe got the w and the

(58:30):
Auburn Tigers for the men won so I think, you know,
they were both the top ranked teams. So I think
the golf course did exactly what we wanted it to do,
which is identify the best players, and that certainly happened,
and I'm excited for year two.

Speaker 9 (58:44):
It's it's a really fun event. It is a very
long event, but.

Speaker 10 (58:47):
It's a lot of fun, and it's just the energy
at this property is just incredible and it's really you know,
enjoyable interacting with the athletes and we're just excited to
have another great championship right.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
There, real quickly. For anyone that's living down in southern
California or in your area, what's the.

Speaker 5 (59:04):
Uh the entry?

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Is there a fee to come down to watch or
just how does that work? What's the fan experience?

Speaker 9 (59:11):
So the tickets are really affordable.

Speaker 10 (59:13):
It's it's eight dollars for a single day for the women,
ten dollars for a single day men. You can do
multi day passes where you get like a two dollars
a day discount. So it's really approachable. Free parking when
it's off site. We do park spectators on site for
the match play days because.

Speaker 9 (59:28):
The crowds are a little bit slower, but really approachable.
It's a great experience. We're actually this year trying something
different from the spectator experience. We took the rope and
stake down so the spectators can.

Speaker 10 (59:38):
Actually walk on the fairways with the players, which is
something that's very unique. So be able to get up
close and personal with the players.

Speaker 9 (59:45):
Obviously you got to give them space.

Speaker 10 (59:47):
But but I think I think that's gonna be a
really unique aspect of the championship that you don't really
see very often. So I'm I'm excited to see see
what it's like with with the gallery out there tomorrow
and I'm anticipating some big crowd.

Speaker 9 (01:00:00):
We've got some local schools usc U c l A.

Speaker 10 (01:00:04):
For the women, We've got you University of San Diego
made it in from from a local school, so it's
going to be an awesome championship.

Speaker 9 (01:00:12):
Pepper Dye made it as well. From the men.

Speaker 10 (01:00:13):
We've actually got a couple of our of our LaCosta
members that grew up playing.

Speaker 9 (01:00:17):
Here that are playing.

Speaker 10 (01:00:18):
So we've got Luke Potter from the University of Texas
and Luke Bailey that plays for pepper Dye that'll be
playing in the National Championship on their home course. So
definitely keep an eye on those two names because they
certainly have some course knowledge. So it's gonna be it's
gonna be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Awesome, well good. I'm gonna tune in for sure, and
can I wait to see who's on the winner circle
and we come come to the end of this thing.

Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
So I'm going to bring Ted back in this year.
Ted's lurking in the background.

Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
I'm lurking in the background. Well, I want to thank you,
Dustin uh for for coming on. And obviously we had
a little bit of a glitch there part way through,
but I think we got a lot of the important
stuff out and but I want to thank you for
coming on. We'll definitely have you back again. And and
but you've got a lot going on there and as
Robert said, you're probably trying to sneak a few holes
in before the sun sets, so we'll let you go
and enjoy that. But Dustin run the club director of

(01:01:11):
the Omni LaCosta Resort and Spa getting ready for some
great golf this weekend to watch some of the n
C Double A. So excited for that. And thank you
always Robert for doing a great job. M Welcome back everybody,

(01:02:09):
and it's time to introduce this evening's featured guest joining
me tonight on Golf Talk Live is very special guest
Ken Griffin. He is the director of golf Sales and
Marketing at Boying Golf and I'm going to tell you
just a little bit about him, and then I'm going
to get him here into a very interesting discussion about
Boying Golf. So he's had over twenty five years of
experience in the winter sports industry. He brings a wealth

(01:02:32):
of knowledge to the table, and after joining Boying back
in two thousand and eight, he progressed through the ranks
and now focuses on growing the team's golf opportunities year round,
expanding their efforts beyond the strong regional brand that they
have enjoyed, with a goal of establishing Boying Golf at
a national level, which I think they've done very well.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
We'll hear more about that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:52):
And in his spare time, he enjoys visiting his adult
children in Colorado and pursuing his hobbies of snow skiing.
I want to talk to him about that, hiking, water skiing,
and officiating ski races for the US Ski and Snowboard Association.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
So Ken, welcome to Golf Talk, Liven.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
Thanks very much for having me on tonight. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):
And the last time I had you on, you know,
we were doing a audio only broadcast. This is my
first season doing the video podcast. Obviously I had to
step into a little bit more of the modern age
as it were, and always lots of fun doing it.
But it's been a lot of fun so far doing
it this season, and I'm glad that you were able

(01:03:33):
to come back and and join me and we actually
get to meet sort of face to face on cameras,
so exactly amazing.

Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
You know, when we were kids, they told us this
was going to happen, we just didn't believe them.

Speaker 4 (01:03:43):
I know, they they used to talk about Buck Rogers
two back then, and we didn't believe them, right exactly,
And most of the people young listeners to the I
won't even know who we were talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
But so I want to I want.

Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
To start with you just a little bit, if we
don't mind, just to talk a little bit more about you,
and then we're going to get into it the boine.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
Of course, what's the best part of your job? What
do you enjoy the most about what you do?

Speaker 5 (01:04:04):
At points, you know, through my entire career and especially
the last sixteen years of point, if I look back
to people that I went to school with and stuff,
they kind of say, are you ever going to grow up?
Or You're ever going to get a real job because
I sold ski equipment. I went to work marketing for
a ski company, and here I am like most people
that moved to ski areage. You know, you might go

(01:04:25):
for the winter, but then you stay for the summer,
and then you're hooked. And that you can kind of
say that happened with me. You cannot be around the
Born organization too long, especially in northern Michigan, without falling
in love with the area and without falling in love
with golf. And I'd have to say that I'm addicted
to both now. So I get to ski a great
number of days, which has been a passion for lifetime,

(01:04:46):
and I get out on the course a lot. I
kind of split it up two ways. I say that
in any given year, I probably play twelve or fifteen
rounds for myself, and that's what I count, of course,
are pros and see me go through and entertain writers
and host tour operators and things. I probably get another
thirty five to forty rounds in that I call work.

(01:05:07):
So whenever that's my work life balance, it's I say
that I've got one of the best jobs in the US.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
Oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
Yeah, no, no, empathy here, I'll tell you that that's
a great gig if you can get it. You know,
that's what's fun. And this is what I enjoy about
being in the industry as well. I've been a teaching
professional now for over thirty two years, and what I
really enjoy about it is, I think the people that
you meet. I mean, obviously every job you meet a
lot of people, but you know what you're doing specifically,

(01:05:36):
you get to a chance to not just meet people
within your own organization. Of course, you get to know
them and become friends in many cases over the years
at all different levels.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
But you get to.

Speaker 4 (01:05:46):
See people coming and going from the resort. Some of
you're playing with, not just you know, not just corporate
types that are you know, coming to you know, set
up an event or coming to you know, host something
at that point, but you get to see the every
regular day folks that just want to come out and
enjoy what you guys have to offer.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
And so it's got to be fun. I mean from
that aspect as well.

Speaker 5 (01:06:07):
Right, Oh, it's extremely rudy. I mean to hear the
guest stories and how they found out about us, or
how many years they've been coming one of the stories
I like to relate to. As I was standing out
on the patio above Heather eighteen a couple of years ago,
and I heard a group of four ladies asking about
a question about the water to hit over a hole,

(01:06:27):
and I said, I don't mean to barge in, but
I did hear your question and I have the answer.
So as we got talking, I said, okay, I said,
four of you from Texas. What And they're like, oh, well,
she's been coming for fifteen years, she's been coming from then,
she's been coming for five she's the newbie. And I'm like,
so you ladies just came up here for the week.
And they're like, actually, we came for two. We brought
our husbands the first week, and then we set them

(01:06:49):
packing and now we're enjoyed at ourselves and we play
around today and we go shopping, and we go to Macca.
You know, we do all the activities we wanted to do.
So we had a lot of golf and then we
let the boys go home and we stay. And those
kind of stories are you know, hit right, hit home
on what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
You know, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (01:07:08):
It's funny that you mentioned that because you know, we
obviously have seen over the years. You know, it was
always sort of a male sport. You saw a lot
of the guys going on the buddy trips and things
like that. Then you start to see a little bit
more couples. But now you're seeing the ladies coming out
and they're saying, hey, we're doing a girls trip. And
you know, some of them will certainly do as these

(01:07:28):
ladies have done and bring their husbands for a few
days and they send them packing and it's now about
them having Then they really let their hair down and
have some fun. And and you know, I'm sure you
there's probably a million stories that you know that you
could share and uh, but I obviously want to give
you a chance to talk about the facility.

Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
Uh. But before I do that, I want to ask
you what's the most challenging.

Speaker 4 (01:07:48):
Part of what you do? You've said the rewarding, but
what's the most challenging.

Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
I would say there are two challenges. One in today's market.
I mean, you know, when I started my career years ago,
you know, it was a lot easier to figure out
what channels you were going to market on because you
didn't have so many options. Did you want this print
or did you want? You know, now, where are those
people that you want to attract? What are they listening to?

(01:08:14):
So it's twofold. Where are they coming from? You know,
if we go back ten years ago, eighty percent of
our golfers were coming from the Midwest, and the vast
majority of those were certainly coming from Michigan. I mean
you could, you'd probably say one hundred percent came from
the Midwest and eighty percent of that was Michigan. We
look at it now, fifty five percent of our golfers
come from Michigan. So forty five percent of our golfers

(01:08:36):
have changed in the last ten years, you know, as
we've become more of a national destination. And then you
take all these diverse markets all across the US. One,
how do you get the message out to them, both
the people that know you and the people that don't.
And then two what form of communication did they happen
to be listening to at this time?

Speaker 6 (01:08:57):
You know?

Speaker 5 (01:08:57):
And it varies by age, but not necessarily. I heard
it said one time years ago by an editor for
Ski magazine. He goes, I have the best demographic in
the world. He goes, they have money, okay, they're they're
they're slightly shoulder and he goes, but they think they're
twenty okay. And I think that also relates to the golfers.

(01:09:17):
I mean, everybody that I know that lives an active
outdoor lifestyle, whether it's golfing, whether it's seeing any of
the things we do, mountain bikey. We all think younger.
None of us believe we're our age. Sometimes it costs us,
sometimes we spend a little time and emergency room because
but at the end of the day, we all have
a very young mindset and we're very active, and that

(01:09:38):
not only impacts how we behave, but it also affects
what channels of communication we listen to and how you
get through to us. And I think that's the second
biggest challenge is how do you talk to people nowadays
where they want to listen.

Speaker 4 (01:09:52):
Yeah, you have to sort of go, you have to
meet them where they are. And that's a great point
that you that you bring up. And you know, with
with the onset of obviously the internet and podcasts like
this where you can bring a visual component in, you know,
you get to see the people that you might meet
it at the resort and in some cases, and and
you know, you just get a little bit sense of

(01:10:13):
the way you're communicating the messages now compared to what
it was, uh, you know, even ten fifteen years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
It's just amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:10:19):
I mean, you know, you can post something up on
social media and literally hit millions of people in a
matter of of you know, an hour or less depending
on where you're putting it right, And we're you know,
to get that kind of audience before, you know, it
would take you a lot longer and a lot more expensive.
And now it's just a matter of a click of
a button and that information is available and so it

(01:10:41):
makes it very easy. Tell us what what is Boying Golf?
Give us give us your overview of about Boying Golf.
This is this is your baby. I want you to
talk about it.

Speaker 5 (01:10:51):
Okay, Well, I say is that you know it starts
with ten extraordinary courses, Okay, you know, set among three
incredible resorts, you know, and it's just a great golf
vacation thought. I mean, our location in northern Michigan provides
us with extremely long days. Were on the far side

(01:11:11):
of the Eastern time zone and we're just north of
the forty fifth parallel well, when you put those two together.
We start golfing at six thirty in the morning, and
you can play at this time of the year. You
can play it on nine thirty. In another couple of weeks,
you'll be playing until ten o'clock at night if you want.
But you don't have to play golf at ten o'clock
at night. We just say you have the ability to play.
So if you're in northern Michigan, you can play from

(01:11:33):
six thirty till ten o'clock with sunlight, whether it's golf
or whether it's some other play that you want to do.
So you know, the long days are incredible, you know,
the the and our three resorts each have their own
unique character and feel. You know, at Boyne Highlands it's

(01:11:54):
really the Highlands. It's really a Scottish steam It's set
in the in the Scottish high and the motif and
right down to the Scottish cattle that you have that
you've passed driving in. When you go to Boyne Mountain,
it's set in a Bavarian thing. Okay, it's more of
a mountain setting down there. And then you know at
Bay Harbor you really have a you know, classic Lakeside Hotel.

(01:12:21):
Think of the Del Coronado, think of the Sagamore in
New York those, think of the Mount Washington. But it's
one hundred years newer than all those facilities. It's one
hundred and twenty five room Marriotte Autograph Hotel. So you
have quality courses, you have quality lodging experiences. But the
other thing is well two things. One is the unmatched

(01:12:42):
terrain variety most of the other places you go in
the US when you get there outstanding golf. I mean,
and I think of Pinehurst. It doesn't get a lot
better than that there. Incredible course is there? Think of
Bandit and credible courses, incredible views. The terrain's very similar.
I mean you're looking over the Pacific or you're looking
at sand We have a lot of variety. You know,

(01:13:03):
at Boyne Mountain, it's a one point two mile drive
to the top of the mountain and then you play
golf back down to a four hundred and fifty acre
lake when all one hole as a downhill hole. Then
you you know, eighteen miles north, just as outside of
Koski or three courses of Bay Harbor and one across
the Stree to Crookatry and those are set on Lake Michigan.

(01:13:24):
You have views of one hundred and forty miles to Wisconsin.
There is not a not there's nothing in the way.
You're just looking across Lake Michigan and you think it's
an ocean, and then you go twelve miles north, so
twenty minutes from there. If you go to the Highlands
and it's set on about thirty five hundred acres and
there's a lot of variety there, you have the original course.

(01:13:46):
The Heather was the first real resort golf course in
Northern Michigan. It's the one that really started the America
summer golf capital in Northern Michigan. But the Heather was
built in an old blueberry bog. And you go a
little bit farther north than we have the Arthur Hills
that was built in the late nineties, and Arthur built
that through it's his signature course. He built that through

(01:14:09):
pine forest and mountainous terrain. So you go from flat
pine forest, full production for uts that were never harvested.
The cart path is nine miles long. It's forty five
minutes if you don't play golf, and there's one hole
on there that it's a three hundred and fifty foot
drop from tee to green and you're looking at four
thousand acres of Michigan forest and you cannot see a building.

(01:14:35):
So the variety all within an eighteen mile area. I
mean it's you know, in our courses, we don't look
at it like we have a big two in a
little eight or a big three in a little eight.
Almost anywhere you go, there are some that are just
treated a little bit. It's all good, our quality across
all of them. Our superintendents have to meet the same specs.
Whether it's the course you've never heard about but you

(01:14:57):
schedule around, or whether it's the force and dying to
get on whenever you come to northern Michigan. But our
steps feeds the terrain, the conditioning is just where hell
of the supers are held to the same standard on
it every port.

Speaker 4 (01:15:12):
How do you find when it comes because you've got
so many options of courses and that, how do you
find balance when it comes to playing? And I'll give
you an example here. You know, you get a lot
of new people coming to the game that maybe aren't
as you know, their game's not quite up to snuff.
Yet and they're a little bit attimidated about coming to
a big resort like Boyne and saying, Okay, yeah, you've

(01:15:34):
got a lot of golf courses there, but you know,
I don't want to look foolish out there. So are
they are some of the courses more challenging for higher
caliber players and some maybe a little easier or are
they all pretty accessible? Just you decide what level you
want to play at it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:48):
That's our goal, okay, is that like every course that
we have has at least sixty boxes. And we've been saying,
and we started this long before USGA started saying move
it forward. And it comes from our founder. I mean
Stephen Kirscher's our CEO. Now Jesus Tratch golfer or one handicap.
His dad got into golf kind of not unlike I did.

(01:16:10):
His friends convinced him that he's got a great opportunity
to do golf here. But we try not to make
them hard. Now, if we have a tournament with our
goal is to make all of them tournament calitay courses
that in two or three days, the superintendent could get
any one of them ready, and they do. Whenever we

(01:16:30):
have you know, so we'll bump the stem steeds a
foot or a foot half, but our goal is to
make it playable. We want you to enjoy around and
come back. Now, how do you find out which one
would be best for you? The other thing is is
whenever you take a look at on the website, you
don't find a place to book a golf package on
the website, we say, please call and talk to one

(01:16:53):
of our guest experience agents because they all have a
ton of experience. There are no new people there. There's
nobody taking golf calls that hasn't worked there for three
to five years, and most of them are like fifteen
to twenty. They know the courses they want. They'll they'll
ask you more questions and tell you where you need
to go, and they'll try and help build out your
itinerary based on you know, what type of golf you like,

(01:17:15):
whether you like more open, or whether you like whether
you want more golf legs, or whether you want to
you know, Arthur Hill Sports, Atlanta, seven forty seven. So
you tell us what type of golf you're looking for,
and we have the variety that they can try and
match it for you, and you know, then you then
you get to enjoy around.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
And that's a that's a really great point, ken that
you raise, because that that's you know, for people that
I've talked to over the years that have gone to
a resort type facility, and that was one of their
pet peeves is you know, and I want to be
able to come and enjoy it. I want to you know,
enjoy some of the many other amenities, but the courses
are just too challenging for me. And and you know,

(01:17:58):
I mean it's more than just you know, increasing the
speed of the greens and things like that. You really
have to know the area very well. And I like
the fact that you can't just go on there and
book whatever you want. You've got to speak to somebody
that has experienced because in that way, they can sort
of walk you through. They can assess what it is
that you're looking for, what type of experience, and they

(01:18:19):
can tailor and customize something obviously that's within your budget,
but also within your wheelhouse of you know, either expertise
or lock thereof. And that's a big selling feature, especially
going to a national awareness if you will, that BOYN
is doing now, and that's that's important. A lot of
people are looking for, especially the new people to the game.

(01:18:40):
That's what they're wanting. Yeah, well we hors you and
your staff.

Speaker 5 (01:18:42):
Thanks. We had to defend that a couple of years ago.
We had a new CMO cayment and he's like, well,
everything's online now, you just need to put everything online.
And we're like, well, we have over three thousand beds,
we have one hundred and twenty room types, we have
ten courses. They're not all sitting exactly beside each other.
And we're like, we don't let anybody take calls for

(01:19:03):
us until they've done it for three years. What would
make you think somebody could go online in an evening
and in twenty minutes book an experience. Could they do it, yes,
but would they ever come back? Would they really create
the memories that they want to create for these golf
trips of a lifetime. And he's like, well, that's a
really good point. I hadn't looked at it that way.
We were trying to make it easy on the front end,
and we're like, well, but if if somebody is going

(01:19:25):
to come, you know, our average night's stay is four
nights for a golf trip, just because we have so
many courses, then it goes to five, then it goes
to three. But the thing we find is, whenever you're
planning a longer ver age, it's worth taking a little
bit of time. It's worth planning earlier. You're looking farther
ahead and you're willing to take the time to plan
a better vacation.

Speaker 4 (01:19:46):
Yeah, and as I said that, that's important. I think
for a lot of people, and you're seeing more and
more couples. You know, it's not just the guys going
to play, and it's not even just the girls going
to play. A lot of couples want to come. They
want to make it not just about golf. I mean,
obviously golf is big part of it. But you know,
I liked what you said earlier. You talked about really
a lot of the different experiences that they're gonna they're
gonna see when they come into your properties. And you know,

(01:20:10):
there's a lot of history there as well, so people,
you know, people like to investigate when they come to
a resort. They want to have an experience, not everybody,
you know. I mean, obviously they want to tee it
up and have that experience as well, but there's they
want to have other experiences, and it sounds like, you know,
there's a lot of history behind Boying that they can
explore and learn more about and see for themselves, and
you know, the different elevations and things like that, and

(01:20:33):
and that that's something you can't always get from a
brochure or from a website. It's you know, you've got
to have somebody that's been there and has a very
good understanding of what, uh what to expect, because you know,
people people visualize things in their mind.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):
They plan.

Speaker 4 (01:20:48):
I've planned you know, trips myself and got there and
was disappointed because I thought, well, I didn't really know
as much as I thought I did. And uh so
I like the sort of the the more customer care,
as I would put it, that you're you're putting into
your experience and rightly so, you're you're a big organization.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
You're not, you know, small potatoes.

Speaker 4 (01:21:06):
So let's talk about something exciting here for a second
that you guys, and not say that it was. Don't
let me rephrase that something even more exciting, and that
is the recognition by USA today. You guys had some
big news in April. You guys were recognized their ten
best Awards named Boying Golf as the number one golf
resort destination in the US for two twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:21:27):
That's got to be exciting. Talk about that.

Speaker 5 (01:21:29):
It's extremely exciting, and in a large part that was
helped by whenever you know, they did a number of categories,
eight courses, they did resource the Highlands was the number
two resort, right behind Big Seater. You know, so I
take a look at the top ten and I always
look at, Okay, what's the validity look at the top
ten that we're into voting. So it's great, great courses,

(01:21:51):
and great company to be considered and we're humbled by it.
But that also helped us, and we do believe we're
one of the top golf destinations in the US. And
it's it's it's it is very humbling, but it's also
very rewarding, especially for the team that works so hard
to produce it. You know, the marketing guy has the

(01:22:12):
easiest job in the world. I just have to get
you there once, and once you experience it, you know
what they produced, Like, how did I not know about this?
And that's like, well, because the marketing guy wasn't doing
a good enough job or even known about fighters, right,
but it's really just it. It does confirm the national awareness.
So we've we've been fortunate. We've hosted golfers from forty

(01:22:33):
eight states each in the last three years. It'd be
no surprise if I told your listeners that, you know, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio,
Illinois or top four. But whenever I then say that Texas, Florida, Arizona,
Colorado are are all also in the top ten, Missouri,

(01:22:55):
I mean, those are the ones that like really and
I feel we've been helped a lot to over the
course the last six or seven years. Traverse City's airports
and our hour and a half max from our courses
from the farthest course, and they now have direct flights
from twenty US cities. So the accessibility it isn't just
an ate our drive around the Midwest, but the accessibility

(01:23:17):
their work. Even we made an upgrade to our airport
so those that have access to private jets, we did
a four million dollars upgrade to airports. It's about one
thousand feet from the hotel at Poynte Mountain and we
can put an eighty five thousand found sixteen passenger jet
down in all weather on that airport. Now, so those

(01:23:39):
accessibility and quality courses and those you know, it's a
member somebody said a long time ago, after seven or
eight years were an overnight success. But you know, it
takes time, built slowly, but it's good foundational growth that
people learn, they tell their friends, and we think that's
you know, a strong way that people are about us.

Speaker 4 (01:24:00):
All yeah, and and you know, I think it's like anything.
You know, if you if you build it, they will come.
And then once they do, you know, in order to
keep them there and have them coming back. It's not
I mean, you can have the prettiest property, you can
have the most amazing property. But it's the people too

(01:24:20):
that work around you know, your facilities and a different
you know, levels and and uh uh you know, different
jobs and that sort of thing that make it like
almost like coming to a family resort, if you will,
in a sense that you know, everybody's there to help you,
everybody's there to make sure it's it's a wonderful experience

(01:24:42):
that you're gonna want to come back again. And this
brings me to you. You touched on a few things.
You mentioned some of the other areas, but boint is
obviously more than just golf. You have so many other things.
I mean, you know, golf is really just scratching the surface.
So talk about you know there there's obviously, you know,
a big harbor and Harbor Springs and all that sort

(01:25:05):
of stuff, and some great shopping. What are some of
the other things that people come there besides great golf
and a great hotel?

Speaker 3 (01:25:11):
What else is there to do it?

Speaker 5 (01:25:12):
Boyt Well, you know, you could come and stay at
any one of the three properties and spend four to
five days or a week, and you'd probably check it
off the list like a bucket list. Okay, been there,
done that. We're a little different. A lot of places
want you to do that. They you know, the invisible
barriers you don't really need. Actually, we encourage it. We
have tremendous lakeside towns in Boyne City and Walloon Lake

(01:25:37):
and Tosky and Harbor Springs, and we do a lot
of training with our staff. But I'm not sure, I
mean we reinforce it. But even the local community, I mean,
they embrace tourism, they embrace people coming in, and they
love where they live. They've made life choices to come
to Northern Michigan and do this instead of maybe doing that.
But they love where they live. They love to share

(01:26:00):
with other people to come and you know the I
learned a long time ago. Somebody said, what makes Point great?

Speaker 6 (01:26:08):
You know?

Speaker 5 (01:26:08):
Is it because of the golf, because of this year?
Because of this? And I said no, I said, I
think boy It took me a few years working for him,
even after calling on him for a long time, and
it was that Boyne is really good hairing people that
have a passion for what they're doing, and then Boyne
gives them the resources to share their passion with all
of the guests. And it's a pretty great combination when

(01:26:31):
those that are working for you share the love.

Speaker 9 (01:26:34):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:26:34):
I use zip line as an example because we have
ziplines to both property and like those guys fly those
zip lines three times a day and there's excited at
the third trip, at the end of the day, at
the end of the summer, as they are. And I said, yeah,
they're passionate about it. They have a passion about that.
If you took them over here, if you just if
you took them over and put them on a golf course,

(01:26:56):
striving am or they may not like that. But if
you find the right slot for him and they can
share what they love with other people, I think it's
a winning combination.

Speaker 4 (01:27:05):
Oh yeah, if you put some And it is really about,
you know, finding the right experience for each person that
that working at BOYD, because you're right, when somebody steps
into the right slot for them, they're going to talk
about it with everybody. I mean they're going to be
so excited and they're gonna, you know, I mean to

(01:27:26):
the point where you're going to say, wow, even if
you don't zip line, you know, even if you know
that sounds great.

Speaker 5 (01:27:30):
I shouldn't do that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
Yeah, yeah, I should do that.

Speaker 5 (01:27:33):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:27:34):
Same with the skiing. You know, hey, I'm gonna do
the skiing too, But you know so, and that's what
you want. You want people that are that are passionate
and it's not just well you go over here and
you go over there. They're actually excited. It's almost like
they're a guest. They're saying, Hey, I just love it here,
here's why. And when you're here, make sure you go
into town and you check this out and stuff like

(01:27:54):
and that. That again says a lot because again, you
can have the prettiest resort on the block. But it's
the people that work there, the passion that they bring
to that work every single day. And you know, I
know it sounds a little bit, you know, over the
top a little bit, but the truth of the matter
is if you really enjoy what you're doing, it's not

(01:28:14):
a job exactly. And that's what it sounds to me,
like what you're experiencing at Boyn not just for yourself,
but for everybody else. And when it's not a job,
then everybody like me and everybody else there's jealous because
we're say why can't I have a job like that?
And that's what you want. You want that feeling of
people coming up there and just diving into the experience

(01:28:36):
and being as excited about it as you are, and
not just looking through a brochure and and saying, Okay,
that looks cool, let me check that out. They want
to hear it in your voice, and when they hear
it in your voice, that gets them jazzed up and
gets them excited and makes them want to come back
even more and explore it. But yeah, I think that's fantastic.
What are some of the other things if I'm coming

(01:28:57):
to Boyne obviously the golf and drive into town. What
are some of the dining experience that's something too.

Speaker 5 (01:29:03):
We encourage you. I mean we have, Like I said,
you could base your vacation and stay there because we
have multiple restaurants at each of our facilities, and the
Inn Bay Harbor is also attached to a thirty eighth
or yacht basin that's right there with its own little
village and name. But really we encourage you to get
off campus because instead of saying, well you try this restaurant,

(01:29:24):
not that, when we're like, have you been to Harbor
Springs yet? Okay, you've eaten the country club and you've
eaten at the dining room here, and you've had breakfast here.
Why don't you go? You know it's ten minutes away.
Why don't you get down Because what we found is
instead of checking every box off maybe at the resort,
that you all of a sudden you go to town
and this whole new world opens up about how cool
the area is, and it happens at all three properties,

(01:29:46):
and tross is over, so that you find things in
town and you do things that you really enjoy. You
pick what you want to do. Now that may mean
there's a couple of things on your list that aren't
checked at the resort, and there's probably even a bigger
list of that resort or one of the other resorts
that you didn't get to do, or maybe you didn't
get to make a trip to Macinawe Island because you

(01:30:07):
did so many things. You know, Mackinawe Island is a
great destination. It's only forty five minutes from the Highlands.
Kind of where Catalina meets Midwestern values. I say, but
you have to walk. It's an old, historic island. There
was a fort right in the middle of two Lake
Michigan and Lake you're on. But you know, those things
that you don't get to check, that's what's going to

(01:30:28):
drive you back for another vacation. And that's what we
want you to come once. There are plenty of things
to do that you're not going to get bored. I mean,
I personally know people who've been coming for twenty years.
That's not everybody. I know people that come every two
to three years. That's fine, but like experience what we
have experienced, the things around us that everybody that works
for us loves, and we think you will do.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
Yeah, and again.

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
You know, that's really what you want is you want
people to not just you know, I mean, you're never
going to I don't care where you go, You're never
experiencing everything all at once. But at the same time,
you want to leave them wanting more and saying, you
know what, I had a great time. We had a
great experience, boy, but there was still lots left to see.
Maybe we need to come back next year. Maybe we
need to come back in the fall. Let's see what

(01:31:13):
it looks like here in the fall. You know, those
types of things. You want them to have, that that
sort of mindset and and you know what, maybe they
can't come back for a couple of years, that's okay.
But the idea is they want to come back because
they had such a great experience. And you know, obviously
you've you've got some golfers out there that, you know,
maybe make it their bucket list every year. We've got
to play BOYD this year. Let's get let's get the

(01:31:33):
guys together and let's go. And so you want to
have that too. What's on tap for the summer? What's
coming up this summer? Any special events?

Speaker 5 (01:31:40):
Well, we've got a few things. First of all, we've
been working on for a couple of years. Is the
opening of the new nine hole short course Tune Bray.
To our knowledge, it's the first golf course built on
a ski hill, first nine hill short course. It is
sitting on the lower slopes. Why it's not open yet,
we were waiting for the snow to melt off down
on the lower slopes. But it's a new nine old

(01:32:01):
short course laid out inspired by greens. Ray Hearn was
the architect, inspired by courses and holes that he played
and actually some of them are are CEO when he
was in school, played with Ray Hearn whenever he was
a professor at Michigan State. You know the the uh

(01:32:21):
you know, Winning bray and the postage stamp and so
what they are seventy percent full seventy to eighty percent
full sized screens with shortened fairways. I mean your fairways
are fifty seven to one hundred and fifty yards is
along with stairway, and then we have a twenty seven
hole Himalayan hunting area beside it. We're also in early
June coming up pretty quick. We annually host the Adida

(01:32:44):
State Pro Am up at the Islands early July. We
had we annually host a j g A Coca Cola Championships.
I think this is your twenty two or twenty three
for it, and then we also have our tournament champions
Very unique. Yeah, I wish your listeners could play in
it unless they live in Michigan won a championship, they can't.

(01:33:06):
But it's Michigan Championships. Men, women, Junior, seniors, amateurs, pros,
all levels, no handicap, they play from different piece that's
the only thing. Wow, we've had women win it. One
woman won it. We've had numerous women in the top ten,
and a lot of people that come back to play
in it as former Michigan champions. They're either on the

(01:33:27):
corn Ferry Tour or they've played PGA. I mean it's
a very stiff field, you know, Michigan's you know, with
eight and fifty nine courses, Michigan is a pretty good
state for golf, and especially in just a short season.
I think we are number three in rounds play, three
or four overall, and when you think about it that

(01:33:48):
we only really play from mid April. I mean we
open our courses late April early May and we shut
down in Milwauko, so that's kind of the window you
look at, but you know, and then also so take
a step back. In mid June, we're going to host
the Epsentur for on the on the heather. The header's
kind of our our first course is still our best

(01:34:10):
championship course for that type of play, the Robert Trent
Jones Senior Course that was developed in nineteen sixty six.

Speaker 3 (01:34:18):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:34:19):
And so you've actually got two LPGA events, Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (01:34:22):
That are going to be?

Speaker 5 (01:34:23):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:34:24):
I know you've done a number of just the pro.

Speaker 5 (01:34:27):
Am now Michigan and and I think best you know,
we always say June is Golflint in Michigan, and I
think we can be more specific. In Michigan. In the
month of June, we have five women's professional events. There
are three epsentur events. We host the middle one on
the tour. State of Michigan actually is putting in a kicker.
There's a pure Michigan Championship for those three events. And

(01:34:50):
then we have two LPGA events, one around Grand Rapids
and one in Midland in the middle of the lower
So five women's professional events in the month of June
in the state of Michigan. So a lot of good
golf that people can watch.

Speaker 4 (01:35:06):
Tell us about the new short course. Now that's what
you're talking about, the putting right that was there was a.

Speaker 5 (01:35:13):
Nine hole short course and then right beside it is
an eight and a half putting course. So we got
at the backyard. Yai are in our parken to our
Scottish charity.

Speaker 4 (01:35:25):
So now now that is open, or that is open,
it will open in about three weeks June sixth, it's
the opening date. So tell us about that. That's obviously
very unique as well. Tell us a little bit about that.
How did that come about? Why did you guys decide
to do that?

Speaker 5 (01:35:41):
Well, short courses over the last few years have become
more and more popular and we we knew we wanted
to put one in. In fact, we're also developing one,
you know. We in addition to the ten eighteen whole
courses we have in Michigan, we also you know, we're
point Is is pretty big in golf, but in Key.

(01:36:01):
We're actually the third biggest ski company in the United
States behind Vale and all Terra. So we also own
eleven ski areas across the US, including the two in Michigan.
But we owned Sundry River, Main and Sugarloaf, Maine and
Big Sky, Montana, so we have courses with those we're
also developing. We are developing a nine hole short course
at the sugar Loaf in addition to the one at

(01:36:22):
the Highlands. In all honesty, it's about two years behind
where we thought we were going to be with opening
it up, because, like I said, it's set on a
ski slope, and we made plans after COVID to put
in a new six passenger high speed lift that goes
right over top of the course in the wintertime. Well,

(01:36:44):
it didn't make sense to build a course and then
dig it all up to put chairlift towers in, so
we actually wait until we put the chairlift in and
then broke ground a year and a half ago on
the new short course, so it very unique. The only
whole you can see is whole number one. There's fescue
around all the holes, and you can see the fairway

(01:37:07):
for number one in the first hole, and after that
every hole and the fairway are hidden by fescue. You
have to be on the hole to see the hole,
and when you're standing at the bottom all you see
are a bunch of we We had a couple of
days of test play last fall with members just to
catch the flow. So by the time we opened to
the public, we had a better idea of what would happen.

(01:37:31):
But something we didn't expect was as people were walking,
all you see are these people moving about on the
course from their knees up. Oh as you look up
the dell, so and you don't walk up and down
the hill. Okay, So I know a lot of people
that have that idea. So there is a little you know,
up to and down three and a little bit of up,

(01:37:53):
but then you really zigzag back and forth. To Carl
Ray designed a great layout that didn't work its way
excuse me, up and down the hill every hole, but
rather it just works back and forth and then seamlessly
right back close to where you started.

Speaker 4 (01:38:08):
So now you have a season you said sort of
comes around about mid to late April or early May
and then ends about mid October. I think you said,
if you were if somebody wanted to come the first
time is what's the best time. I know, obviously in
that window is any good time. But if you were booking,
if you were the one talking to them, what would

(01:38:28):
you recommend, say you got to come around this time,
I think you'll enjoy it the.

Speaker 5 (01:38:31):
Most if somebody's coming and traveling from a distance. I
say that anytime between Memorial Day and the twenty fifth
of September to maybe the first of October, we have
one course that will shut down the last week just
because we don't have as many golfers. We don't need
ten courses open by that time of the year, right,
But then we really after the first weekend in October,

(01:38:55):
will shut down three courses, and then the next week
we'll shut down three courses. We just work our way,
you know, three or four courses at the time until
we have one or two open it and then we'll
close that thirty week walk over. But if you're in
those windows, that's probably your your safest bet for your
best and you know, the busiest times, the hardest times
to get times are are June and July weekends. You

(01:39:20):
you know, need to look early, you know, before we
open the golf course. This year, we had seventy five
percent of our room nights from last year on the
books and or actually about ninety percent of the room
nights and about seventy five percent of the golf so
you know it books ahead, we do still have openings.
That's one advantage of having three resorts with three thousand bests.

(01:39:42):
So it's not that we're full for the year, but
for the best opportunities and the lowest pricing, the earlier book,
the better off it's going to be. Whenever somebody's looking,
it's your best opportunity to lay out the schedule you're
looking for and not be dictated by we. And we
actually are book in twenty twenty six right now. We

(01:40:02):
just start now. So if somebody wants to take a
look that far ahead and they're ready to plan that
far ahead, we're ready to take a look with them
that far ahead. But you know it gives you great
those are great times now. The secret is the time
that is in a great time to play golf and
isn't as busy. It's probably the last two weeks of August.

(01:40:23):
Our schools start in September and everybody goes, well, you know,
you don't get busy. You know it slows down when
school starts, and I'm well, when the school really start,
you think of everybody with an active outdoor lifestyle. Schools
is you sit in a class, it starts when banned
cheerleaders football soccer when all the team activities, you know,

(01:40:44):
so somewhere between the tenth and the fifteenth of August,
there are just people that have other life commitments and
those are great times to look for secret openings on courses.

Speaker 4 (01:40:53):
Steven Now, yeah, and you know, again it goes to
being able to reach out to your staff and the
folks are going to be able to best guide them,
you know, for whatever meets their their needs. And that
what about just one last thing I wanted to ask,
and then we'll give them that website so they can
at least go and check some of the things we've

(01:41:14):
been talking about out. Are there any festivals or any
special events that go on through the season that you know,
people may want to plan their their trip around. Is
there things going on in some of the local towns
or even on the resort itself, any sort of fest
You don't have to talking about any events.

Speaker 3 (01:41:29):
Oh yeah, that's besides golf events.

Speaker 5 (01:41:31):
There certainly are, you know, obviously too many for us
to list or talk about just a big one. But
we actually because like I said, we encourage you to
get off property to do some of those things. If
you look, we have links to the area of visitors
bureaus that will tell you if you're choosing a resort,
if you're choosing a harves Springe, if you're choosing to
task your booring area. Then there are links on our

(01:41:52):
website to see everything that's going on locally that you
might want to take advantage of too. So there are
partners in our guests having a good time, so we
want to try and that's that's why we say just
go to boinggolf dot com because you can learn about
all ten courses. You can learn about dooing bray in
the backyard, you can learn about flights and how to

(01:42:12):
get there from different businesses, and you can learn about
the local towns and the local activities. And you know
what we haven't mentioned. Jet's our own Boying Golf Academy.
I mean that the Highlands there's a thirty two acre
practice facility. There are very few thirty two acre practice facilities.
The mountains smaller, it's only twenty five. But I mean
we have sports AI, we have gears, we have TrackMan
in fact thirty two acre facility as a TrackMan range

(01:42:35):
on it. So we are invested in continuing to grow
the sport and people will enjoy themselves. I know that
the Golf Academy is not for everybody, but for those
that are, we have an award winning you know, golf
academy that people can take advantage of, and a couple
and is you know, we talk about women coming, men coming,

(01:42:55):
couples coming, that kind of thing. That's really made our
Golf Academy more diverse to meet those needs. Those are
our guests are coming. But we used to do a
Nike camp. Now we do our own in house camp
because we have enough staff to do that. So we
have a junior camp. The kids come. We used to
stay out property. Now instead of that, they stay with
their parents. Parents play golf all week. Kids are in

(01:43:17):
our Golf Academy camp. We also have couples. We also
have women's you know, and a traditional golf week.

Speaker 3 (01:43:26):
Well. And it makes sense too.

Speaker 4 (01:43:28):
I mean, if you want to come to somewhere like
Boying and you want to especially if you're fairly new
to the game and you want to you know, get
the best experience of it, going to the Academy makes
perfect sense. Or if you need a bit of a
tune up when your game, maybe you haven't picked up a.

Speaker 3 (01:43:41):
Club for a little while.

Speaker 4 (01:43:41):
There's a lot of those guys out there, you know,
some of the older guys particularly that maybe haven't played
as much golf recently and but want to get back
into the game. That's a great opportunity for them as well. So, yeah,
that's that's a great point that you raised. Final thoughts
before we wrap up, and then we'll give them the
website and let them go to town.

Speaker 5 (01:43:59):
Yeah. Well, I mean, just if you have played our courses,
then I think you'll understand what we've been talking about.
If you haven't played our courses, you know, take the
opportunity to do it. I mean we, like I said,
there's six hundred and fifty public courses. There's eight hundred
and fifty courses Tota Win Michigan. We think we have
some of the best golf in the state and the Midwest,

(01:44:21):
if not the nation. Do we think that the state
makes us be better at it because we have all
these courses we have. Sometimes it's harder to get guys
from Grand Rapids to come play because of everything they
drive by, than it is to get somebody on a
plane in Arizona that's willing to come a lass but
come enjoy it. Flights are easy, tremendous facilities, tremendous amount
of variety. You can have whatever type of lodging you're

(01:44:43):
looking for, and the experience both on course, on the
resort or off the resort that you're looking for vacation.
It can be golf centric, but not just golf specific.

Speaker 3 (01:44:55):
Yeah, that's a great point. Ken.

Speaker 4 (01:44:58):
Thank you very much for coming on. It was great
to again sort of meet you face to face, and
exactly I'm looking forward to coming up.

Speaker 3 (01:45:04):
I'm good. I promise you. I'm going to make it up.

Speaker 4 (01:45:07):
I know you've invited me in the past and it's
just a matter of carving out some time for me,
So I'll have to make that happen. Hopefully I can
do it this year. I'm going to be praying that
I can do it this year. I want to thank you. Yeah,
I want to thank you very much. Ken Griffin, the
director of golf Sales and Marketing at boyin goolf It
has been speaking for the last little bit about not
just a great property, great golf and skiing and zip

(01:45:30):
lines and all these other great things that going on
in that area. And Michigan is a beautiful state. I
have been there many times over the years. I haven't
been a boyn yet, but I'm going to make a
point of going there, so I think you should too.
And if you want to get more information and just
see a little bit about what we've been talking about,
you can go to their website, boyin Goolf dot com.
It's boyin Goolf dot com and it's spelled b O

(01:45:50):
y n e golf dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:45:52):
But Ken, thank you very much.

Speaker 4 (01:45:54):
If you can hang tight, I'm just gonna wrap up
real quick here and then we'll be done with the broadcast.
I want to thank also my other special guest, John Decker,
and also Robert Kaufman, and also Dustin Irwin for joining
me a little bit earlier on in the broadcast, and
again my special future guest tonight, Ken Griffin from Boying Golf. Ken,
thank you very very much. It's been a pleasure and
an honor, and I hope you come back and visit

(01:46:15):
me again, and I'll see all of you next time
here on Golf Talk Live. God bless everybody. Have a
great weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:46:25):
Thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this week's
broadcast of Golf Talk Live. We'd like to thank this
week's Coaches Corner panel, and a special thank you to
tonight's guest.

Speaker 6 (01:46:36):
Remember to join Ted.

Speaker 1 (01:46:37):
Every Thursday from six to eight pm Central on Golf
Talk Live, and be sure to follow Ted on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. If you're interested in being a guest on
Golf Talk Live, send Ted an email at Ted dot
golf Talklive at gmail dot com. This has been a
production of the Igolf Sports Network

Speaker 5 (01:47:00):
On the Banda the Ra

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Golf Talk Live - Season 13 Episode 10 | May 15th, 2025

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Golf Talk Live - Season 13 Episode 10 | May 15th, 2025