Serial Golf Entrepreneur, Marc Bender, Shares Views on Best Courses in The World

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm Richard Ladadio from North Caldwell, New Jersey. I
play at Montclair Golf Club, established in eighteen ninety three.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to Golf Smarter.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hi. This is Bill Farmer from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I
play at Sharon Woods Golf Court.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
And this is Golf Smarter number one thousand and nine
Gary player who is one of the most gregarious, friendly
people you could ever meet. Loves to talk, loves to
live life to the fullest. At eighty nine years old,
he'll be ninety in November, and he is a true
scratch golfer. I had the thrill of a lifetime playing
with him in May. Watched him shoot seventy three like

(00:40):
it was nothing and hit his drive two hundred forty
to two hundred and fifty yards at eighty nine years old.
But the thing that he told Adam and I when
we played with him, he was not that level of
friendly when he was playing tournament golf. He was focused.
He didn't talk the way he talks now, and he
was focused on winning tournaments and nine major championships on
the regular tour, nine major championships on the Senior Tour.

(01:02):
He won the Grand Slam on both tours, the only
player ever to do it. He has that track record
to show for that. Laser focus.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Serial golf entrepreneur Mark Bender shares his views on the
best courses in the world. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you
lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host,
Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast. Mark.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Great to be here with you, Fred, Thanks so much
for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I'm excited to talk to you. We had a really
interesting introduction to one another, and we had lunch together
at the Masters on Wednesday. At the Masters, eating in
the founders what do they call it, the Founder's n Cafeteria.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Founder, the Founder's Room, Live, the Founder's Room.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
The Founder's Room. Yeah, And there were what half a
dozen people sitting at the table. My host Chet was there,
and you were with one of your partners, and there
was another couple guys there and Charlie Yates, who was
our host, my host. How did you know Charlie.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh, that's a great story. Yeah, yeah, So Charlie has
been a good friend now for many years. And the
golf world is very small, and there's a phrase that
is out there that's pretty accurate, that says the golf
world gets smaller every day. And the short version is
Charlie and I have a bunch of mutual friends and

(02:42):
we both follow a lot of different discussion boards with
regards to golf course architecture and the fun debates that
exist with regards to what golf course is more interesting
than another. And do you like the older historic courses
or do you like the newer modern style courses tree
line courses that are tight with really challenging greens most

(03:04):
of the time sloping back to front with little nuances,
or do you like modern architecture where you have so
many of the great top tom Fasio courses that are
out there and what have you, where the greens have
a lot more shelves and terraces and different sections that
allow for faster green speeds without the topsy turzy what
they like to call potato chip shaped greens. So that's

(03:27):
how we got to know each other. We have mutual
friends and we became fast friends. And obviously his touch
to history in golf with his dad is really incredible.
Hearing the stories and his passion for people who are
passionate about golf is terrific and he's one of the
great people that I know.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Now I'm curious about these debates about golf courses. Where
do you stand.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, you know, I can appreciate the beauty of the
historical courses and what makes them so different than the
way golf courses are built today. As my really good
friend Steve Smiers tells me, who's a golf course architect,
and some of the courses in his resume include Old

(04:13):
Memorial down in Tampa, which is a fabulous place founded
by the owners of out Back Steakhouse, and his course
aile Worth, which has been around since Tiger really lived there,
and Steve was hired to basically Tiger proof the course
and get it ready for him to be his home
training ground. And as he always shares with me, you know,

(04:36):
green speeds back one hundred years ago did not have
the equipment for agronomy that we have today, and the
average green speed was between three and five on the stimpmeter,
And people just don't realize how different that is from today,
where most golf courses try to get their greens at
least over ten and that includes public courses and resort courses.

(05:00):
Sometimes if they're any faster than that, it leads to
very long rounds and slow pace of play, which of
course affects everyone. So when you include private clubs that
have a faster pace of play, those greens often today
run twelve plus on the stip meter. But if you
take a course that's one hundred years old and you
run those greens at a twelve and they were designed

(05:21):
to run a three and five, it's really fun for
match play, but it can be really difficult and painful
in stroke play when you have to hit it in
the hole because you could have six feet above the pin,
and it doesn't matter what you do if you don't
make it. Basically you could have twelve feet coming back.
So people tell you oftentimes here's my advice for you,
fred leave it below the hole. But then what you

(05:43):
realize is a lot of the older style courses were
built in a way that greens are elevated in front,
making them all carry and you can't really run it up,
and then they slope from back to front. So if
there's a pin that's in the middle or front of
the green and somebody tells you keep it below the hole,
keeping it below the hole usually winds up meaning short

(06:05):
of the green, because if you keep it below the hole,
you have really very little margin to do that, and
most of us aren't at that level where you have
that precision within a couple of yards, and more often
than not, what winds up happening is you wind up
twenty feet above the hole and then you take your chances.
So fast greens are awesome. I love fast greens, but

(06:26):
if you want to know where I come out on it,
I can really appreciate where greens teeter on playable versus
less playable really around the concept of when they were
built and how they were designed based on green speeds
during that era. So if greens you know of courses

(06:46):
were built in the nineteen teens, nineteen ten to nineteen twenty,
and nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty, when so many golf
courses were built before the Great Depression, what happens is
you have greens that were three to five on the
stint meter, and then all of a sudden, you have
them run ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and you wind up

(07:07):
getting yourself in a situation where it becomes really tough
to score. And it can be a different kind of challenge.
But you talked about Pinehurst before we came on the
air here today, and you know Pinehurst number two. Those
greens are upside down saucers and that course has been
around for I'm sure about one hundred years or so,
probably a little bit longer, and they're upside down saucers

(07:28):
where when those greens were rolling at five on the
stint meter. They're very playable because balls would actually stop
on the sides of hill or hills or tiers and
you can hit those putts a little bit harder and
not have to worry about them going twelve feet by.
But one of the things you'll hear from the great
putting instructors that are in the world today, whether it

(07:49):
be my long standing thirty year friend Darryl Kessner who's
one of the best putters in the world, best putting
teachers in the world, that deep Dale Golf Club were
in modern day times, Brad Fax or mister Sweeney who's great,
or David Orr, these are Stan Utley. Those are really
the top putting gurus in the world today and they'll
all tell you the same thing when you're over a putt.

(08:09):
The most important thing to understand this speed, but also
matching the line with the speed, and you really want
to try and come in on the high side of
the hole. But what happens is if you are playing
greens that are so severely sloped and you hit it
on the high side of the hole, what that usually
means if it misses is that you have three, four, five, six,

(08:30):
seven feet left instead of twenty feet left. If you
miss it on the low side, it doesn't mean that
you can miss on the high side and it's just
going to cozy up to six inches or a foot
or a foot and a half and you're just going
to have a tap in. So where I come out
is I love the old courses, I love the new courses.
I love studying golf course architecture, but it's really important

(08:51):
that golf course set up enables you to have that
playability where you feel like it's conceivable to get a
put close to the hole.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
So you talk about the way golf course architecture has changed,
especially on the greens, when did we see I see
old videos and you'll see, you know, Nicholas getting down
for one of his putts long ago, and you can
just see how thick the grass is there and how

(09:28):
already has to hit it with his little blade and
it's barely rolling. Where when we were at the Masters,
I was blown away that these guys were making a
tap that was looked like a five foot putt and
it went thirty five feet.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
When did all of that change on greens occur?

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that I
think really the turn of the century or the millennium
in two thousand is when agronomy and technology really took off,
which allowed a combination of grasses that could maintain and
sustain green speeds that were much faster and firmer turf

(10:11):
where they didn't have to be over watered as much,
which makes them softer. And also where the rollers that
they used today which compacts the grass and has the
ball roll that much smoother. And really I describe it
as the ball glides across the grass moor, which is
exactly what you were referring to, which you saw at
the Masters. That really has been in the past twenty

(10:34):
five years. And there's a great golf digest little thing
that you can search up and find that will show
you what the green speeds were in nineteen ninety seven
and What that shows is that many of the courses
that you today know to have some of the fastest
greens were at a totally different speed relative to what

(10:58):
people perceive them to have been back in nineteen seventy seven.
So to give you some examples, I just pulled up
the chart here. Congressionals greens were six foot four inches
on the Stemp meter in nineteen seventy seven. It says
that the Masters was seven feet eleven inches just under
eight on the STEMT meter. Harbortown, one of Pete Die's

(11:20):
signature courses, Jack Nicholas's first design that he did with
Pete Die back in I believe it was back in
the sixties or seventies, the greens average rolling a five
point one on the Stemp meter. Oakland Hills, fabulous course
outside of Detroit, has hosted many, many major championships, and

(11:41):
it's set to host many more. I still remember in
nineteen ninety six Steve Jones winning the US Open there
and beating Davis Love the third, who was charging and
I think might have finished second. The greens rolled eight
feet five inches. And as we just saw the US
Open at Oakmont a couple of weeks ago, which always
is sort of the gold standard for green speeds. Those

(12:04):
greens rolled nine feet eight inches in nineteen seventy seven
and today they average well over thirteen on a regular basis.
Pinehurst Number two six feet ten inches in nineteen seventy seven,
Shittacock seven feet two inches, San Francisco Golf Club seven
feet two inches, and the famous wing foot seven feet

(12:24):
five inches. So think about the difference between green speeds
then versus now, and each year agronomy just advances more
and more. If you look at some of the great
companies that provide the equipment for maintenance, two of which
I can think of as Toro and John Deere, their

(12:47):
equipment allows for the compassion of grass to be greater.
The irrigation systems are phenomenal and really given credit where
credit is due. The savviness and expert of golf course
superintendents is the best it's ever been. I always think
if you talk about the most thankless job you could

(13:10):
think of, being a green superintendent, golf course superintendent is
one of them. Because everybody wants firm, fast conditions, everybody
wants perfectly rolling greens, but nobody wants to risk losing
their greens or pushing them too far, and then when
you get heat and humidity and moisture all coming together
at the same time, you certainly risk running into a

(13:30):
situation where greens can teeter on the wrong side of
that aggressiveness and you could really lose your greens for
an entire season. So hats off to all the superintendents
out there that work countless hours. They're up before dawn
and oftentimes they're there until the twilight hours.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Amazing. And so who do you think in those years,
I mean, you're talking about how around at the turn
of the century, So then post that would be the
Tiger era, who do you think was hurt the most
by those changes in green speeds being and grasp being thicker.

(14:10):
It's probably rolling truer now than it ever did before
from all those changes. Who do you think on tour
from your perspective and you've watched closely, who has impacted
the most and suffered from it?

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Well, that's an interesting question. I would say that the
way most analysts, top teachers in golf, top putting gurus
would explain it is that I know, for me, putting
has always been the best part of my game, so
I love fast greens. If you give me greens up

(14:49):
to twelve or twelve and a half on the stint meter,
I feel like I have great speed control and I'm
going to output most people that I play with in
terms of my putting stats and data. However, or if
you give me greens over thirteen that have serious undulation,
then I start to lose speed control because they're just
so fast. And if you give me greens that are
under ten on the stimpmeter, I'm gonna look much more average.

(15:12):
So what the conclusion to that insight gives you is
exactly what the experts in putting and teaching will tell you,
which is a poorer putter will always put better on
slower greens, and a better putter will always excel and
put better on faster greens. And the reason for that
is getting your ball on the green within a three

(15:32):
foot circle on slower greens is a lot easier than
on faster greens because the margin of error is greater.
You can hit a ball a little bit thin and
it'll probably stop three or four feet past the hole.
If you hit a ball a little bit thin on
super fast greens that are going straight downhill away from
you past the hole, you could have a ball roll
completely off the green, and that's the difference. So it's

(15:55):
really the poorer the players who have a poorer short
game in terms of pitching, ability to spin the ball,
understanding how to land the ball with the right trajectory
and how it's going to react out of bunkers, really
understanding on a leg put what goes on past the hole.
A lot of people that read greens will look at

(16:15):
what's going on until the ball reaches the hole, but
they may tend to forget what happens three feet after
the hole. So the toughest pins on fast greens, for sure,
are the ones that are on top of a little
knob or on top of a little hill, because you
have to hit the ball up to get to the hole,
and then it looks fine as it's slowing down, but
sometimes two three feet past the hole, the ball runs

(16:38):
away from you and then all of a sudden you think,
oh my goodness, that's not what it looked like it
was going to do, and then you feel very silly.
So there's this program out there now that's called easy
Hole Locator that gives you all the best pinnable positions
to cut a hole, and sometimes they look like they're
right on the edge of a green and years ago

(16:58):
no one would ever use those pins, but the area
surrounding the hole is actually pretty flat and usable. What
you want to make sure you do there is not
short side yourself, because if you do getting twenty twenty
five feet to be the best you possibly can. And
again giving my great friend Steve Smyers some credit, who
has really studied a lot of the data out there,

(17:21):
and he follows decade Golf online, which gives you a
lot of great insight in terms of how to play
smart golf and how to save shots where you can.
Since we all know there are lots of things in
golf that are out of your control, especially your missus.
Golf is a game of misses, and if you can
understand that and live that, you can appreciate that some

(17:43):
of your best rounds will be the rounds not where
you hit your best shots or the largest number of
your best shots, but actually when you control your missus
the best. Some of my best rounds have had the
best misses. Very few, if any, of my best rounds
have been me just hitting the ball the best they've
ever hit it. So to that point, what happens is

(18:04):
you aimed for the middle of the green, as my
friend Steve Smyer says, and rely on your leg putting,
and you're gonna always be in great shape if you're
a good leg putter. Then firing at a pin that
short sides yourself and gives you very little chance to
get up and down. And here's a little fun fact
for you. Many know but some don't, that the Tiger

(18:24):
Woods is arguably the best putter ever to play golf,
and if he's not, he's as good as any putter
ever was. And the reason for that is that you
may not even see that in his putting data in
terms of, you know, his average putts per round. And
the reason is that he aimed for the fat part
of the green more than any top player. And he

(18:45):
would always say that if he got really close to
a pin that was tucked, he probably didn't hit the
shot that he was trying to hit. So he may
have hit some of these heroic shots where a pin
was cut three paces from the right edge of the
green with a deep bunker right to the green if
you miss it, and he may have aimed thirty feet
left and tried to work the ball right and cut

(19:05):
it into the hole, and basically the ball would bounce
and spin towards the hole and take the natural terrain,
or he might have overcut it a little bit and
it gets close. But when all's said and done, he
was really happy to have fifteen to thirty five footers
all day long, hit more greens and regulation than anyone
else out there, considering he's one of the best iron
player of all time, iron players of all time, and

(19:27):
just rely on being an incredible putter.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
What's fascinating about this conversation so far, and we have
a lot more to go about. Fascination is that you're
a You're not a golf instructor. You're a golf businessman
and you have been for decades, and we're going to
get into the variety and the variety of businesses that
you have that are recognizable. But I'm just curious. You

(20:00):
know that you've been around the industry for a long time,
but you're a golfer. You're not a competitive golfer that
I know of the you know. I mean, you may
play in local tournaments whatnot, but we're not watching you
on the tour. We're watching you in the background doing deals.
What's the hardest course you've ever played?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Well, that's a great question. I would name there's three
or four that based on conditions, can all fit that answer. Okay,
I would say that since it's so timely, what you
saw happen at the US Open at Oakmont is consistent
with what you see on a day in the day
out basis. Maybe the rough isn't quite five inches like
it was, but I could tell you the green speeds

(20:43):
are probably even faster than they played during the US Open.
They had a couple of weather delays and elements that
put moisture in them, which slows down the speed, and
the greens always grow throughout the day and they probably
get a foot slower as the day goes on. So
Oakmont is a golf course that is just It tests
every part of your game. It tests your patience. You

(21:03):
could certainly see that by some of the players reactions
and showing their full range of emotions during the US
Open and basically which you don't see on a regular
tour event. You know, Oakmont is as hard as any
golf course in the world because it tests every part
of your game. No matter what you could be hitting
the ball really well. Tests. I played Oakmond three times,

(21:27):
three times. Oak Hill, which hosted the PGA Championship a
couple of years ago when Brooks kept Goa won. That
golf course was renovated by Andrew Green, who really modernized
it in a lot of ways. It's got some fairway
bunkers that are super deep and same kind of thing.
It just tests every single part of your game. If
you go internationally, you can look at you can look

(21:51):
at a rural county down and you can understand that
those fairways, regardless of what the width is in terms
of pure yards, on a technical basis, it effectively plays
much more narrow because having a twenty five to thirty
mile an hour winday, you probably get a third of
the days out there, and the turf conditions overseas in
Ireland and Scotland are so much firmer than they are

(22:14):
here that if you have side spin on the ball,
your ball may start landing in the fairway, but it
oftentimes winds up finishing in if you're lucky, light fescue,
and if you're unlucky, dense, thick, knee high grass and
that's really hard to recover from your your hacking out
if you find if you find your ball exactly you know,

(22:35):
and then coming back coming back stateside, you know. Obviously
I could also include Carnusti, which takes pride in all
their ballmarkers say the hardest links course in the world.
It is really hard. Pine Valley, which by most measures
is the number one rank course in the world. It
is my favorite. I think it's the best golf course

(22:55):
in the world. The thing that makes Pine Valley hard
is that the fairways are plenty space, the greens are
plenty large, but if you leave the fairway, it's one
of the hardest courses to recover from. So they give
you spacious fairways, but you better hit them. And if
you look at the visual intimidation, since it's really set
up and designed in a way by George Crump where

(23:17):
you're going island to island, it's fairways that are cut
in an entire sandy dunes environment and topography and land
and uphill downhill side hill stances and lies, and basically
you have to you have to hit the ball straight
and you have to be able to land it into
the greens pretty high and soft, and the greens are

(23:39):
no bargain, but they're fair. They're very puttable. I don't
think anyone leaves the golf course and says it's unfair.
You just have to hit the shots so you finish
that round. There's really no lucky breaks. You shoot what
you should shoot every single time. And I think I
think that's great. And if you look at a modern
golf course, since I named all older courses, there are
two gentleman named Bob Gwynn, who is an amateur architect,

(24:03):
just a passionate golfer like me, built his own golf
course in West Virginia called Pikewood National, and it's really
amazing what he did. He built eighteen unique holes and
they are all inspired by different design elements, many of
which are from some of the most famous architects over time,
one hundred year old architects. And they have holes that

(24:24):
you probably know, fred have names. You know. There's Cape holes,
there's Dan holes, there's Eden holes, and there's a Cape
hole that Pikewood National that's fabulous, a par five, and
there's every other type of hole you can imagine. And
that is unquestionably one of the toughest courses in the world.
Thick rough, really tough walk, but one of my favorite

(24:45):
places for a course that's built within the past thirty
forty years, and they did a fabulous job, and that
course has become more and more noted and improved in
the rankings and deservingly so. And by an amateur architect
who just studied golf course architecture and did a fabulous job.
And then, of course, another modern course that everyone's familiar

(25:07):
with is TPC Sawgrass. The difference at TPC Sawgrass where
Pete Dye designed this course with Dean Beeman back in
the early eighties to try and be a stadium course
that had that thrill factor. Everybody that knows golf and
follows golf on TV knows what the finishing three holes
look like at TPC Sawgrass, A dramatic, reachable par five

(25:28):
in sixteen a Devilish Island Green Part three and seventeen
where it's debatable whether the effective green size is too
small or it should be bigger. A lot of people
will tell you it should be a couple thousand square
feet bigger. A lot of people will say these are
the best players in the world. They can hit a
gap wedge or pitching wedge with precision. But what you
don't necessarily see on TV, but you see when you're

(25:50):
there in person, is that it's like a wind tunnel.
So when that wind is gusty, you hit a shot
and you're just praying that you're getting the distance to
the center the green. I don't know anybody who's firing
to the pin there, because each section is so small
that if you hit it in the center of the green,
there's a good chance by accident, you're going to get close.
And if your ball winds up anywhere on that green,

(26:11):
I think it's pretty much too puttable from anywhere on
that green. So that hole is totally dramatic, and the
fact that it comes on the seventeenth hole just proves
that Alice and Pete Dye came up with an unbelievably
dramatic concept there that's withstood the test of time. You're
talking over forty years now, being in twenty twenty five, right,
And then the eighteenth is one of the most incredible

(26:34):
finishing holes that really as a nail biter, you can
decide how aggressive you want to be. If you lay
back and leave yourself two hundred yards the fairways wider,
and if you take on the most narrow part, there's
a heck of a good chance you're going to wind
up in the right trees. Because the last thing going
through your head, consciously or subconsciously, is don't hook it.
Because when you're in that water, you're looking at double bogie.

(26:54):
It's not the classic. You hit it in the penalty area.
So take your drop and try and just put it on.
It is not that easy. It's a heck of a
finishing hole. So when you get the wind blowing at
TPC Sawgrass and you get the rough up higher, that
golf course can make a scratch golfer shoot ninety. I
can tell you from first hand experience. I've shot seventy

(27:15):
five there and I've shot eighty seven, And on that
eighty seven, I didn't think I played too badly, but
I caught it on a day there was two three
inches of thick bermuda rough And the most important factor
for you is it was a two and a half
three club wind and I played there two weeks before
the Players Championship, So that's a time that they grow
the grass pretty high in the rough and then they

(27:37):
can cut it down if they need to. But as
you probably know, there's no magic button like a switch
that you could turn on to densify rough. You can't
just make it thicker right before a PGA Tour event
that's arguably the fifth major. So that's my long winded
answer for the toughest courses I've played.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, you clearly have a deep, deep appreciation of golf
course architecture and you have access so which is really
rare for you know, a golfer, you know, but again
being a businessman, So what is it that you base

(28:16):
your opinion on what makes a great golf course that
you've played? Is it your score or is the architecture
or that day? I mean, how do you come up
with the answer of what's your favorite course? Yeah? So hey,
when people ask me what's your favorite course.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, it's one of the toughest questions. You're asking great
questions because, thank you, they don't necessarily none of them
have a right or wrong answer. We all know that
golf course architecture, your favorite course, your least favorite course
is very subjective. For me, what I try really hard
to do is have no emotion impact my opinions on

(28:54):
golf courses in terms of the way I play That
doesn't mean emotion will not come into if I think
something is just totally unfair, or I think the aesthetics
are awful, but the golf course architecture is good, or
on the same note, Probably the most debatable course in
golf course architecture is Pebble Beach. And the reason it's
debatable is not because everybody doesn't think it's fabulous. It's fabulous,

(29:18):
there's no question about it. Is it a top course
in the world. Of course, it's a top course in
the world. The question that comes up, and again I'm
asking it in the form of a question, not giving
you an opinion, And it's something for every one of
your listeners to think about. It's something for you to
think about. Something that I think about, which is how
do the inland holes that are not on the ocean
compare to the quality of the ocean holes. I think

(29:40):
the statement that holds true for everyone who plays Pebble
Beach is that the six or seven holes that are
on the ocean collectively are as good as any six
or seven holes in the world. They captivate you. The
architecture of them is off the charts phenomenal. I agree
with the statement that The second shot on the eighth
hole at Pebble Beach is as good as any approach

(30:02):
shot on any hole in the world. You stand up
there and you almost wish time would stand still. Do
you want to take a picture? Do you just want
to walk around three hundred and sixty degrees and take
in the beauty and take a deep breath and say,
of all the places I could be if I love golf,
there is no greater place than I could be standing
than right here right now. I know that Jack Nicholas

(30:23):
feels that way. I know that almost all the tour
players that are walking up that hill on eight before
they see that dramatic drop with the green down below
and a pretty long shot relative to a very small target.
Something most people don't really understand is that the size
of the greens at Pebble Beach are really small, and

(30:45):
that's why the difficulty in scoring is what it is,
because modern day courses have much bigger greens. The greens
at Oakmont are probably I think I saw a statistic
that the what a green was, and maybe it was
the ninth green at Oakmont was the equivalent of six
greens at Pebble Beach. Five greens of Pebble Beach combined
something you can look it up and find it, and

(31:06):
that does we all know oak lots super tough and
Pebble Beach can be super tough. Now, the question is,
are the inland holes at Pebble Beach also fantastic or
would they be less fantastic if they weren't attached to
the same course that has six or seven of the
greatest holes you'll find anywhere, all in one spot. And
I'm not here to give you that answer. I can

(31:27):
ask the question and let everyone who's played Pebble Beach
think about it, or who yearns to play Pebble Beach
hopefully get the opportunity and privilege one day to play
it and then make their own decision. I think the
golf course is fabulous. I would never turn down and
invite to go there, and it's clearly one of the
great courses in the world. I have a lot of
friends that have played hundreds, if not thousands of golf

(31:48):
courses and it's their favorite course by far. And I
have lots of friends that say some of those inland
holes don't really do it for them, and they're entitled
to that opinion. So for me, it's a golf course
that sort of takes me on a journey, captivates me
for the three and a half or four hours that
I'm out there, and it just makes me have that
feeling when I get off the eighteenth hole. If my

(32:11):
time allowed me to, would I want to race back
to the first tee and right then and there play
the course again? Or do I say to myself, you
know what, that was great. If I don't come back
here for a couple of years, that's totally fine. And
there are courses I could answer you in an easy
way by not naming one, but naming a handful that
give me that feeling when I finished the eighteenth green,

(32:34):
and they would be Pine Valley, they'd be Rural Port
Rush that's hosting the Open Championship in a couple of
weeks coming up here. It would be Chicago Golf Club
that has no difference between the weakest hole and strongest hole,
meaning all eighteen holes that C. B. McDonald and SETH.
Rayner designed there are equally strong. If you sat in
the room after a round and you asked six people

(32:56):
who just played the round of golf there what their
favorite three holes are you very likely would have all
eighteen holes mentioned, and you don't get too many golf
courses that say that. I think Marion is an unbelievable course.
The routing on a small piece of property and small
amount of acreages off the charts incredible. It's just second

(33:18):
to none in terms of the way that the land
is used and not feeling like one hole is on
top of the other. And to do that and accomplish
the eighteen unique holes that were built there is really
just off the charts incredible. And in terms of just
looking at what Hugh Wilson did there as an architect,

(33:41):
it's pretty incredible. I think that if you look at
the fact that Hugh Wilson, I believe, only designed Marion
and mister Founds only designed Oakmont, and the fact that
those two gentlemen were able to build two top ten
courses in the world, in the country, however you want
to look at it, we all know that they're that's
pretty incredible. But just to give you a fair answer,

(34:03):
because I don't want to really only focus on courses
to your point that everyone doesn't have access to. I
want to include some of the real public access courses
and resort courses, because that's what's been great about the
past twelve thirteen years is there are so many courses
being built that are publicly available resort courses. You know,
I think TPC Sawgrass is a fantastic challenge. It frustrates

(34:27):
you and gives you a thrill factor. It teases you
and lets you make a birdie, and then it takes
it all away when you make a likely double bogie.
Pinehurst is iconic in the world of golf. They just
continue to invest in the property. They just built Course
number ten, led by Tom Doak and his team, which
I haven't been to yet but I hear is fantastic.

(34:48):
Gil Hands did course number four and redid it a
few years ago. Bill Corn Ben Crenshaw are designing what's
going to be Course eleven. Rhys Jones, who is a
fabulous architect, has designed the course there. Tom Fazio has
designed the course there and he's one of the best
of the best, And you know, I think that from
that standpoint, there were so many modern courses that allow

(35:11):
everyone a chance to experience this architecture. Stream Song in
Florida has three courses. Phil Hands did one, Tom Doak
did another, Bill Core and Bran Crenshaw did another. You'd
never know you're in Florida. It's got dramatic land movement.
It's so much fun. It's available for anybody to play.
If people want to hear a hidden jam. There's a

(35:32):
place called Lossnia Lynks that is in Wisconsin that you
may never have heard of. It's a couple hour drive
from Milwaukee. It's about one hundred and twenty five dollars
for around the golf and it's fantastic. It's loved by everybody.
So there's one that hopefully should give people a treat
if they just want to take a journey, you know, Whistling,
Straits and Destiny. Kohler has so many great courses. Everyone

(35:54):
talks about the Straits course and basically they have the
Irish links there that are great. Black Wolf Run that
Pete de did and he designed all the courses there
and they're great and sort of finally for you, the
one that most people know about this hosting the Ryder
Cup this September. Bethpage Black is as good as it gets.
Beth Page Red, which is not nearly as well known

(36:18):
as Beth Page Black, and Tillinghast who designed Wingfoot Quaker Ridge,
Baltis Rowl, Somerset Hills, Baltimore Country Club and Philadelphia Cricket
Club designed all the courses at beth Page And there
are lots of people that you could ask that are
great golfers that really understand architecture that'll tell you beth
Page Red is every bit as good as beth Page Black.

(36:40):
But everybody knows about beth Page Black because they've seen
the two US Opens held there in two thousand and
two and two thousand and nine where Tiger and Lucas
Glover won those US Opens, and then they saw the
PGA Championship held there that Brooks Capca won, and then
they're going to see the Ryder Cup this year, and
all of that is featured on the Black course where
Rhys Jones did an incredible renovation in nineteen ninety eight.

(37:02):
And I know that because I had the thrill of
qualifying for the two thousand New York State Open at
Bethpage Black as an amateur, and that was an incredible
experience for me where I got to get beaten up
by the golf course and see that I was pretty good,
but not nearly as good at golf as I wished
I were, So you know, anybody can play Bethpage black

(37:23):
and Beth Page red and Bethpage yellow and blue, and
they were all fabulous. And I love all these golf
courses that I just mentioned. So there is no single
course I would give you as that answer, because and
by the way, I'll give you one more. There's a
course we work closely with at one of our companies
at Tea Times USA and Golf pack Travel called Southern Dunes,

(37:43):
right outside Orlando. It's thirty minutes outside Orlando, and we
book customers there all the time, and Steve Smeiers happens
to have designed it. If he was on with us,
he'd make a joke and he'd say it's his least
controversial golf course that he designed, because it's it's right
in front of you. But if you think of Florida golf,
many people who are golf course architecture officionados will tell

(38:05):
you that golf course architecture in Florida is pretty boring
because the land is pretty flat and all you see
is lakes and bunkers that look alike. But I'll tell
you something hidden, a real hidden gem is Southern Dunes
because that golf course is just fabulous. It's got movement
in land, it's got some elevation changes, it's got great
bunker and great green complexes, and it's playable. Here's the

(38:29):
key point for you, Fred. If I wrapped up golf
course architecture and what makes for a great golf course,
what I would tell you is it has the ability
to be playable for your fifteen twenty twenty five handicap,
but at the same time it has the ability to
test to scratch golfer or a plus handicap, and to

(38:49):
find that balance is much easier said than done. There
are lots of courses out there that can challenge the
best players in the world, but they may not feel
so playable to the twenty handicap. And since we all
collectively that love golf want the game to grow, you
want to make golf fund for people, and in doing that,
you want them to feel like they're able to finish
a hole. And that's one of the reasons why a
lot of these modern courses are being built in a

(39:11):
way that have very wide fair ways and a lot
of sandy areas that make the driving off the tea,
which is the hardest part of the game for a
lousy player, many of whom have slices. It makes for
them to have the ability to find their drive, not
lose many balls, but then have tons of challenge around
the green that can be hard for them but also

(39:32):
hard for the scratch golfer. And that's why those modern
courses that have recently been built, and I'm sure Pinehurst
number ten is the same way, which I hope to
get to play one day soon, where it's very forgiving
off the tea, but very challenging around the green and
striking that balances are really it's an art, not a science.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
You have really thrown me for a loop here, because
tension was to dig into your businesses and I'm still
planning on doing that, but this is so fascinating, so
interesting to me to talk to someone who has such
great access as just a golfer. I'm assuming you're a
very good golfer, but still you're a golfer, right. But
what you haven't mentioned in all of this is where

(40:20):
we at at Augusta National. How many times you played it?
How many times have you been the Masters? And what's
your opinion of the course.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Sorry to ask three questions, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Good answers, so I'll let you rip.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah. So, I mean, look, I've been very lucky that
I've been able to play Augusta National before. I've played
a couple of rounds there. And what I could tell
you is that, so, first of all, I call it
a one handicap day in and day out, and like
anyone else understanding how the handicap system works, my average
scores around seventy five. Because the handicap system takes your

(40:57):
best eight scores twenty exactly, it's really your potential. And
I think that's a good thing because most people wouldn't
think I'm working hard enough if my handicap or average
score or any lower.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
So I don't think it's a good thing when it
comes to the gambling part of it. I think that
should be your average score, not your potential.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Right, I'm with you. I'm with you. That's a debate
for another day. But you know, I try when I
give those answers not to just give the obvious ones
that have been talked about so much. And you know,
Augustin National as a golf course, if you really study
the history of it, has evolved tremendously over the years.
There's been a lot of changes that have been made

(41:37):
to keep up with modern technology. If you look at
the distance of the course when Tiger won his Masters
with a record score, I think it was eighteen under
back in nineteen ninety seven, you know, right after Sir
Nick Faldo won in ninety six, when he won his
third Green jacket. I think that the golf course was
about sixty eight hundred or sixty eight fifty from the

(42:00):
back tees and now it's about seventy five hundred. And
the holes play very differently for some and the way
that they were designed to play by Bobby Jones an
Alistair McKenzie, in terms of the original design. You know,
I'll leave the debate of where that shakes out for
traditionalists that want to have the course the way it's

(42:22):
always played versus those who think that it needs to
be protected and modernized. I'll leave that debate to others.
I would just say to you, that's an incredibly special place.
It just has, you know, a feeling like none other
when you're on property, and that's separate from when the
Masters is going on, but also when the Masters is

(42:44):
going on. I think the golf course has everything you
could ever want. It's got downhill lies, uphill lies, downhill holes,
uphill holes, flat holes, dramatic holes, holes that test every
part of your game. You have to be very patient.
You have to let the golf course sort of dictate
if you take your medicine, if you get in trouble

(43:06):
in terms of some of the pine trees. But one
of the things I absolutely love about it is the
thrill factor of watching your ability to recover. I want
to make sure I get this quote accurately, but I
think Bobby Jones said something the likes of which that
the great test of a golfer skill is their ability
to hit a recovery shot. And a recovery shot can

(43:27):
be defined a couple different ways. It could be a
chip out when you have to take your medicine, because
that's the high percentage play, because trying to hit the
heroic shot just as two lower percentage chants. I've definitely
been victim of playing too aggressively at times, and I
kick myself after. I always say that I'm not the
sharpest knife in the drawer as a golfer, because my

(43:49):
goalie round has nothing to do with scoring. It has
to do with if I can get through a round
feeling like I made no mental mistakes, and believe me,
we could have a whole episode for you on the
mental side of game. I've been lucky enough to get
to know Bob Ritella over the years, and you don't
even need to know him. You could just read his
books and it would help everyone if you understand it.
You know, if you understand that golf is a game

(44:11):
of missus, what do those words actually mean? They're not
just words. It's understanding that you don't want to go
from bad to worse in golf. You want to go
from bad to recovering. Give yourself a chance to save par,
but make a bogie worse. I think for any golfer
at any level, if you can avoid no worse than bogie,

(44:31):
if you're a low handicap, it's never going to hurt
you too bad. If you can avoid no worse than
double bogie, if you're a lesser skilled golfer, it won't
hurt you as bad as a triple or quadruple. And
the easiest lesson to learn in golf is that it's
a heck of a lot easier to save shots than
to get them back your birdie to bogie ratio is
really not going to match up unless you're a top

(44:52):
hundred player in the world. So if you can avoid
double bogies and just make your share of birdies, or
of avoid triple bogies and make your share of pars
if you're a twenty handicap, that'll help you a lot.
In terms of the Masters, there's no experience like it.
I've been very lucky. I've taken my dad to the
Masters numerous times and it's been our greatest memories. You

(45:13):
could possibly imagine. You're just in an environment where look
at how you talk about agronomy and how it's evolved,
look at how technology has evolved. You know, where do
you go where for eight nine, ten straight hours, you
don't have a cell phone in your pocket. You are
just sitting there. There's no phone ringing, phones ringing, there's

(45:34):
no your pocket isn't vibrating, you're not hearing the noise
of a text message. You're just in the open air
on a historic golf course. That's one of the two
golf courses that Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur golfer of
all time, had a hand in designing, and the other
one by the way is Peachtree, which in that regard
is absolutely as favorite of course I have as anywhere,

(45:58):
So I didn't mention that earlier, but you know, it's
one of the two courses that Bobby Jones had a
big hand in designing. He designed Peachtree with Robert Trent Jones,
and that golf course is near perfection, if not perfection.
But going back to the Masters, everything about the way
the event is run, from what Chairman Johnson did to

(46:19):
Chairman pain to now Chairman Ridley, it's just how many
things can you say as a sporting event somehow up
to their game and gets better every single year, Very
very few. Right, The super Bowl is an iconic event.
It's incredible. Everybody gets all excited, you have the two
weeks off leading up to it. Nobody watches a sporting
event more than the super Bowl is watched. But the

(46:41):
event itself is very similar year after year. There's different teams,
and there's a different venue and that city where the
venue is highlighted, and the Masters takes place at the
same site every single year. But on the same note,
you have something that gets better and better, and from
a patron experience, you have nothing like it. It's spotless,

(47:06):
the snacks, the food and beverage, the sandwiches, it's affordable
for everyone. The system in which you can get tickets
where it's a lottery and everyone can enter the lottery,
and they're very clear in terms of making that lottery
accessible and everyone knows when it starts, and yes, it
is what it's called. It's a lottery. So you might
have years and years of being disappointed, but if you

(47:27):
actually get a ticket and a chance to experience it.
The parking, there's enough spots for everybody to be able
to park a car there. If you want to go
by ride share and go by that form of transportation,
you can get dropped off at a central point and
it's an easy access in and you look at just
the practice facility and it looks just as good as

(47:48):
the course. And if you love golf and you don't
love the Masters, you need your head examined.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
The fact that it's in the same location every year.
But with Jim NaNs and I talked about on a
episode one thousand, is how the Masters has become the
right of spring. It announces that golf season is here,
and it's even become more important in the sports world

(48:15):
than spring training, which used to be really important, seems
to have faded a bit, but the Masters continues to
grow in importance in the golf world and in the
sports world every year.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah, for sure it does. And Jim coining the phrase
a tradition unlike any other is spot on as you
can get because if you like golf, when the first
week of April comes along and you know that next
week the Masters is coming around, it just kicks off
the golf season and it just sets the tone in

(48:53):
a way that nothing else does. And my whole life
I've wanted to actually be believe it or not a
golf commentator, I just idolized Jim in terms of the
way thank you, in terms of the way he captures
the moment. And you know, it is true that some
people may think it's corny or what have you, but

(49:14):
when he says hello, friends, you really do think that
he's talking to you, and then he says, welcome to
the Masters, A tradition unlike any other. You know, when
you have the music in the background, then you really
just have the feeling that you don't have anywhere else.
And the way it works with past champions, if you
grew up in the era I did. And you watch

(49:37):
Nicholas and Palmer and Sevi Balisteros and Bernard Longer and
you know Sir Nick Faldo, and you know all the
heartbreaks for Greg Norman and Ernie Els and David Duval
at the Masters, three guys right there that everybody thought
would possibly win a Masters. And then in ninety eight
when Marco Mira birdied the last two holes to win

(49:58):
his first Major Chanceampionship, and then he followed it up
a couple of months later winning the Open Championship to
win his two majors. You know, he's the first person
ever markomert A birdie the seventy first and seventy second
hole at the Masters to win, And you just think
about what that means to everybody in terms of the

(50:19):
players that you're most drawn to, and the fact that
those players play well into their sixties and try everything
they can to compete on a course that gets very
long for them very quickly as they age, but they're
still allowed to. And Freddie Couples, you know who in
golf doesn't love Freddy You think about how meant to
be it was when his ball hung up on the

(50:41):
twelfth hole in the final round of the Masters in
nineteen ninety two for him to go on to get
up and down and win his one and only major.
So just these conversations, If you bring up the Masters
to anyone who loves golf, you'll have this conversation and
we could take up the whole show talking about it.
So that tells you right there, how special an event
it is compared to any other event really in sports,
but certainly in golf.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
I promised you we were going to talk about your businesses,
but this has been so fascinating to talk to you
as a golfer about your love and appreciation of so
many golf courses that we've only heard about and can
only dream about. But you've got you're a managing partner
with all these different companies. I don't even know where

(51:28):
to start. I'm going to let you start with where
would you start when you talk about your various businesses
in golf?

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Yeah, no, Look, I appreciate the opportunity for it. It's
great to be able to talk about what we've done.
So you know, my background is I'm a lawyer by
training and have a legal background, and then I worked
for a family office for about eight years right out
of law school, all of which happened by accident. I
was all excited to be either an entertainment lawyer, or

(52:00):
a trial attorney or a corporate attorney. And then, just
through some contacts and connections in golf, somebody who I've
casually played golf with a couple of times asked me
if I meet with the patriarch of a family, and
I went and wound up having a conversation with him,
and he told me he respects me already because he
absolutely hates golf because it's the most frustrating game in

(52:22):
the world, and he doesn't like doing anything he's not
good at. And if one I'm good at golf, and
two I have the patience to play it, that's a
positive in his mind. But he hates the sport, and
I just told you why. So I worked with him
for about eight years and worked my way up to
become a part of the senior management team there and
continue to build out my golf network through some of

(52:44):
the people that I met over the years, and that's
how I really got into spending time studying golf course architecture.
And then I wound up working for a couple of
other Wall Street firms, and then a really good golf
buddy of mine going back to the late nineteen nineties,
Adam Walker, who's my business partner today, came up to
me and he approached me and said, hey, I found

(53:05):
a business that we should buy together. And the company
was called Tea Times USA. It's been around since nineteen
ninety one. It works in the world at the time
with packaging golf courses and lodging and rental cars only
for golf trips to the state of Florida. Now keep
in mind that you're talking about ninety seven ninety eight
percent of the Tea Times USA customers that are getting

(53:28):
on an airplane, so they're booking their qualifications far in advance,
and being able to have access to the t sheets
of these courses to get those customers the courses that
they want, when they want, on the days of the
week that they want is a real advantage when you
factor in that as a company, Tea Times USA has
no service fees and we get paid by our partner properties.

(53:50):
We collect the money from the customers and we transact
with customers, but basically we don't charge them anything for
our service and we have the beauty of being able
to give them unbiased advice. And the vast majority of
the Tea Times USA customers figure eighty percent of them
are on a budget. So they'll tell us they have
one thousand dollars to spend for four nights and four

(54:11):
or five rounds of golf, and they want to maximize
that budget as the best as they can. That budget
does not include airfare. We don't do airfare at all.
And basically, at the time, this is going back to
twenty thirteen, Tea Times USA only sold these golf packages
to the state of Florida, so three hundred golf courses,
two hundred lodging partners, so five hundred total properties. And

(54:34):
if you said to me, hey, Mark, I've got one
thousand dollars, not including airfare, what can you get me
for it? And if I showed you what we could
get you for that thousand dollars, you wouldn't believe it
because if you pay, if you had that same trip
somewhere else in the world, it may cost you twenty
five hundred dollars. So we're able to extract a ton
of value based on our experience, our knowledge, our partnerships,

(54:56):
and understanding where we can get customers a lot more
value you than they could potentially get on their own,
which is kind of timely and cool because with everything
going on in the world with AI today, you would
think our business could be quickly eliminated, but it can't.
And one of the reasons to that is we have
access to a lot of the t sheets with the
courses that we work with much further in advance than

(55:18):
the public would have access. And remember we're working with municipal,
public and resort golf courses mainly in the US. So
long and short of it is, in twenty thirteen, after
spending a few days analyzing this business, Adam and I
bought and acquired Tea Times USA and very quickly, within
a month we expanded to offer vacations to Scottsdale and

(55:39):
then Las Vegas, then Palm Springs, then Myrtle Beach, then
Hilton Head and then all of the bucket list courses
that you're familiar with, from Pebble Beach to Whistling Straits
to Sea Island. We already worked with TPC Sawgrass, but
that's certainly a bucket list course and many others, so
we have some of these other destinations that we've added
over the years. We've worked worked with some of the

(56:00):
courses in Texas. We're adding Saint George, Utah to our offering,
which has some great courses. We work with Traverse City
in Michigan that has some great courses, And we just
love to bring customers as much value as we possibly
can with truly unbiased advice, because we make basically the
same amount of money wherever we send our customers, so

(56:20):
we want to send them to the places where we
think it's going to match their personalities, their skill levels,
and what they're trying to accomplish with their trip. Are
they trying to just play as much golf as they
can at the best courses they can, or do they
really want the championship courses that are the greatest test
of golf for highly skilled golfers. So that's how Tea
Time's USA came about. And I left Wall Street Cold

(56:43):
Turkey at that point, and it was like a pluck
and play. I left on a Friday, started with Adam
on a Monday, and the next thing I knew, we
were commuting from New York to Florida every week for
the next seven months to try and get our arms
around the business that was based one thousand miles away
from home. So we did that for three years, and
then a company called golf Pack Travel, which was our

(57:05):
biggest competitor. The owner was in his late sixties and
wanted to retire and kind of hounded us to acquire him.
And short version of a much longer story is we did,
and as I speak to you today, we own both
golf Pack Travel and TI Times usay pretty similar companies
in terms of what they do, but a very loyal
following to their brands. So we have a lot of people.

(57:27):
Our average person in sales has been with us over
ten years, tremendous experience, really cares about our customers, and
again they're not pushed to They're not positioned to push
certain properties more than others. We definitely have properties that
we think deliver the best customer experience, so we push those,
just trying to make sure customers feel like they have

(57:47):
great value in what they do, and we work with
a thousand properties now in the US and the Caribbean.
And golf Pack Travel has been around since nineteen seventy five,
the year I was born, so they are the original
golf tour operator, and the difference between what they do
and what Tea Times USA does versus a travel agency

(58:08):
is that we are a seller of travel, not a
travel agency, and we don't charge our customers any service
fees at all for what we do. Customers book groups
and they have changes and we let them make as
many changes as they need to, and we don't charge
them any change fees whatsoever. So we have a lot
of patients, we have a lot of overhead that we
carry in terms of our sales team, our terrific admin team,

(58:31):
our management team, and we do that just to make
sure that we can just be the industry leader in
service really throughout all our companies, but certainly on the
domestic side within the US and the Caribbean.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
And where did that lead to next? What was the
third company?

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Yeah? The third company travel Company. No, we actually have
a golf gift card called Go Play Golf, which that
will lead us into a whole other conversation because we
have a partnership with PGA of America on multiple levels,
one of which is that golf card is sold at
over thirty five thousand retail stores. So in the US,

(59:08):
if you go to your local pharmacy, you go to Walmart,
you go to Target, you go to whatever the supermarket
market chain is in your area, whether it's Kroger, whether
it's Albertson's, whether it's Publics. If you're in Florida or Georgia,
you will see our gift card on the gift card
wreck you'll see about twelve Starbucks gift cards, and then

(59:29):
you'll see a gift card that says golf in bright Green,
and that gift card will stand out and it's the
anything everything golf gift card. It could be used to
play golf at five thousand public or resort courses, So
wherever anyone lives, there's an option to use it to
play golf locally, there is the option. It's great online.

(59:50):
You have the option to redeem it with our terrific
partner at worldwide golf shops where you can redeem it
online for the latest, greatest merchandise with no restrictions. Can
redeem it for golf balls, an accessory, a training aid,
a wedge, a potter, a driver, a set of irons,
you name it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
This is amazing because just recently my daughter in law said,
I need to buy a gift for a golf gift
for a client of mine. What should I get? I'm like,
I now have something to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Go play golf gift card is your answer. So it
can be redeemed for a lesson with a PGA pro
So we work with the PGA of America to facilitate
that it can be redeemed and converted to Top Golf,
which is so much fun. So if you're an off
course golfer that really wants the entertainment side of things
or a bar and grill, you can take it and go.

(01:00:38):
We can go to top Golf and you can redeem
it there. You can redeem it for a pinned rangefinder online,
so you have a distance measuring device, which is great
because it speeds up the pace of play and it's
pretty versatile. So there's a lot of things that it
can be redeemed for. And that's a company that we

(01:00:58):
acquired back into and eighteen and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
What was the next company.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Next company was my shirt right here Hidden Links. So
right after COVID began, that was a tough time in
the industry for international travel because, as you know, coming
from the US, you really couldn't go to many places,
certainly not internationally and we acquired Hidden Links and that
was really, I would say, the missing piece to our
puzzle in terms of our domestic travel brands, because it

(01:01:25):
was the perfect compliment. We actually did through golf Pack
Travel have an international arm called golf Pack International, and
then we had one called golf Pack Scotland and Ireland,
which was really just a rebrand. But the reality is
that we were not anywhere near the presence we wanted
to be. We were a very tiny player in this space.

(01:01:46):
And then when the opportunity presented itself to acquire Hidden
Links right at the beginning of COVID five years ago,
we jumped all over it and we were just very
lucky to be able to successfully get that to the
finish line. And here we are five years later. The
business has a much bigger presence in the marketplace. It's
a much higher end type of customer because by definition,

(01:02:07):
the trip is just much more expensive. But taking a
trip to Scotland and Ireland, or England or Wales to
play golf is like none other because it allows you
the opportunity to understand the history of golf where it
all came from, potentially play Saint Andrews and the home
of Golf were lucky enough to be an authorized provider
that allows us to sell some guaranteed tea times on

(01:02:29):
the Old Course at Saint Andrews. And what's really nice
is that's a very regulated price point and package, so
anyone that you book it with should be selling it
for the exact same But it's quite costly, and it's
quite costly because there's only a small percentage of the
total tea times that are available to be guaranteed. Everyone
else goes into one of the types of lotteries where

(01:02:52):
you can basically be in a have fair competition with
everyone else to get on the Old Court. But we
work with so many courses that have been around for
hundreds of years and we just love it more than
anything because, just like the name would sound hidden links,
we're giving our customers a lot of hidden gems that
go above and beyond the most famous courses that everyone's

(01:03:16):
heard of, whether it be the Mere Fields or the
Old Course at Saint Andrew's or Carnousti or Rural Port
Rush or Rural County Down or Turnberry or Rural Truon.
Most of those courses people have heard of, but there's
a lot of courses we work with that people haven't
heard of, and many times because they don't have high
expectations for a course that they're unfamiliar with, those courses

(01:03:37):
become some of the favorite parts of everyone's trip. And
it's a great way for us to add rounds to
people's packages and they get to have a longer trip
and get to play these hidden gems. And we work
with plenty of customers that are on a budget that
want to essentially put the majority of their budget into
the best golf courses they can play and the most

(01:04:00):
number of rounds they can play within a reasonably short
period of time to experience what for many is a
once in a lifetime trip. And in other cases, we
have customers that want the best of the best. They
want five star lodging and accommodations like our fabulous partner,
the Rusas Hotel that's on the eighteenth hole of the
old course at Saint Andrew's, or they want to just

(01:04:22):
have five star dining, five star accommodations, and five star golf.
And then the real piece of the puzzle that's the
most exciting is when we're able to include transportation, for
which we offer multiple types. We have chauffeur drivers that
are in the equivalent of a Mercedes Sprinter, where it's
a pure life of luxury for a week, let's say,

(01:04:44):
or eight days or ten days, and the drivers have
tremendous experience and they give you a whole history tour
throughout the trip. So you may have a two and
a half hour drive from Royal Port Rush to Rural
County Down, or Royal Port Rush to Dublin, which of
course is a fabulous city in Ireland. That driver may
give you an entire history education throughout that drive when

(01:05:05):
you're in the coach, and people just love it. But
if somebody doesn't want to pay the added cost to that,
since it doesn't come free, there could be just point
to point transfers that will go out of our way
to drop customers off at a particular point. We'll pick
them up and drop them off for golf each day.
They'll be centralized in a town where they can just
walk out of their hotel and have lots of local
restaurants or pubs that they can go visit and they'll

(01:05:27):
just have a great time that way, and they'll be
saving a lot of money. So there's tons of value
that is embedded in that trip for every customer we
work with, regardless of how big or small their budget is,
but we just want to make sure everyone has a
great time. And right after shortly after acquiring that company,
about a year into it, we partnered with Sir Nick Faldo,

(01:05:48):
who became our global ambassador, and that's just been a
fabulous partnership for us. We're in our fourth year of
working with Sir Nick and we've gotten to see a
side of his personality in a positive way that many
didn't get to see when he was on tour as
a world number one, because he had tremendous laser like
focus where he really couldn't toggle between being super friendly

(01:06:13):
and playing world class, world number one golf. So he
had that laser focus and we've had many a conversation
with him about how he was that focused, and he
explained why he needed to be in order to be
a world number one. And I think we can all
agree that Tiger Woods had that laser focus, and VJ.
Singh had that laser focus when he was number one,

(01:06:35):
and I think Jack Nichols would tell you when he
was number one in the world, he had that laser focus,
which was just incredible and gary player who's one of
the most gregarious, friendly people you could ever meet, loves
to talk, loves to live life to the fullest. At
eighty nine years old, nearly ninety, he'll be ninety in November,

(01:06:55):
and he is a true scratch golfer at eighty nine
years old. I had the thrill of a lifetime playing
with him in May, just a couple of months ago,
and watched him shoot seventy three like it was nothing
and hit his drive two hundred and forty to two
hundred and fifty yards at eighty nine years old. But
the thing that he told Adam and I when we
played with him is that he was not that level

(01:07:18):
of friendly when he was playing tournament golf on tour.
He was focused. He didn't talk the way he talks now,
and he was focused on winning tournaments and nine major
championships on the regular tour later and nine major championships
on the Senior Tour later. He won the Grand Slam
on both tours, the only player ever to do it.
He has that track record to show for that laser focus.

(01:07:40):
So we've had a great partnership. Sorry, I got off
on a tangent there but hopefully it was entertaining and
fun because we've had a great partnership with sir Nick.
He's been fabulous in our commercials. We just filmed what
I think is our seventh commercial in Ireland that launched
on the Golf Channel during the US Open, where we
filmed it the spectacular Old Head, which rivals the views

(01:08:01):
at Pebble Beach with many holes, meandering on a peninsula
around the ocean and right on an ocean setting, and dramatically,
Nick Faldo needs to skydive to make it to meet
Adam and I of all people on the first tee
to make his tea time. And he's never late for
a tea time. So I'll leave it to all of
your listeners to go onto YouTube and watch our commercial

(01:08:26):
and see if he makes the tea time or not.
But I could tell you in order to make it
he needs a skydive and parachute to get there. So
it's pretty dramatic and exciting and a lot of fun
and hopefully pretty memorable and gets everyone excited to want
to play a course like Oldhead.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Your fifth business. You stepped out of your comfort zone.
You left the travel part, you left the gift cards.
I mean, the gift cards is a little aside, but
the whole travel section and you jumped on something that
is really well, you describe it. It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Yeah. Upper Deck Golf is pretty incredible, and there's so
many things about it that I love. The feeling that
I get going to each stadium and the emotional attachment
that you have to a particular team, either good or bad. Right,
if you're a Yankees fan and we have an event
with the Red Sox stadium at Famway Park, you're probably

(01:09:26):
not so excited to be in that environment. And if
you're a lifelong Boston resident you are a Red Sox fan,
there's nothing like you better go.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Through security at Yankee Stadium.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
If you're going there, you go exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
You got to describe what what golf?

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
So Upper Deck Golf is a fascinating business. Three terrific people,
Brian and Carly Graham and Frank Brown founded this company
in twenty seventeen, and it was just an idea that
they came up with to basically set up a Major
League Baseball NFL or college as a nine hole golf course.
And we set up nine target greens right on the

(01:10:05):
field and you get to hit shots throughout the stadium
at every level, including going all the way to the
tippy top and hitting from the upper deck. And some
stadiums have a higher tiered sort of altitude than others.
You know, we have Wrigley Field as one of our
top partners, where, of course the Cubs play. I think
it's the oldest stadium in baseball if my data is correct.

(01:10:26):
You can look that up and somebody can just there
you go. So we're actually doing two events at wrigley
Field this year. We did one, believe it or not,
how timely is this? We did one during the Masters
and had the Masters airing on the jumbo tron right
in the stadium, so people were playing golf in wrigley Field.
But Wrigley Field is the largest stadium that has only

(01:10:50):
two decks, so the highest point in wrigley Field is
not that high. And then you go to the other
extreme and you think of Dodger Stadium, which is the
only stadium in baseball that has four tiers. And we'll
be at Dodger Stadium the second week in December this year,
and that stadium allows us to hit a shot from
the tippy top that's about one hundred and forty yards

(01:11:11):
and it is so dramatic. You're hitting out into the
mountains that is behind the stadium, and when you do
it at night and you have the sparkling beaming lights
on you and you see that ball tracking in the
air forever. We have a fabulous partnership with PXG and
we have PXG golf balls that many people don't even
know exist in the marketplace. But we've got two colors.

(01:11:31):
We've got white that's a super bright white for what
it's worth, and a beautiful yellow ball and you see
it tracking in the sky. And these are premium golf balls.
These are right at the level of all the other
top golf balls on the market. We've got PXG equipment
and all their latest and greatest wedges and Sugar Daddy
wedges that are super soft and forged and have a

(01:11:53):
great feeling and great design behind them. And then they're
Wildcat wedges and they're black ops wedges and irons that
go all the way to an eight iron for some
of the longer holes, and you get to hit at
least two, if not three shots per hole depending on
what package you get. You get a minimum of eighteen
golf balls. And if you get a package with what

(01:12:14):
we all wish we could have on the golf course,
you get four Mulligan balls. If you get a Mulligan package,
don't you wish Fred when you played golf you had
four traveling Mulligans. I know, I know I do, because
every time I make a mental mistake, I'd pull out
another ball and I'd be like, Okay, I am not
going to do that again. Well, let me tell you
when you come to Upper Deck Golf, the greatest bargain

(01:12:36):
we offer is the Mulligan package.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
One.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Arguably, a mulligan in golf is priceless because they don't
really exist on a real golf course. Right, But if
you can get a mulligan at Upper Deck Golf and
you don't like the shot you hit to a target
green from one hundred and twenty yards, you get the
chance to hit another one. So our holes range from
anywhere from really fifty to fifty five yards all the
way up to one hundred and forty yards at Dodger Stadium,

(01:12:59):
and it is the most immersive experience because most people
have never seen a stadium with less than thirty five
thousand to one hundred and ten thousand fans screaming, and now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Unless they've gone to a game in Oakland when it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Was there, well, there you go, there you go. But basically,
what we have is the ability to we have the
ability to allow our customers to have really no more
than five hundred to one thousand people in the stadium
at any one time, and you get a tea time
at Upper Dick Golf just like you would on the
golf course. I'll share for everyone listening out their little
insider's tip. You know, if you're a little bit late

(01:13:33):
to your tea time, we're still going to let you like,
so you're not going to miss your tea time or
get a two stroke penalty. And that's one of the
things that just makes it so much fun because people
come and they come to the clubhouse and we've got
a fabulous twelve hour music playlist that runs that's choreographed
specifically to the type of customer that typically comes at

(01:13:54):
a given point in time. So the music you would
hear our tea times usually run from seven in the
morning till nine at nine, so we're open for fifteen
hours when we rent out a stadium, and the music
that is playing from seven to eleven in the morning
is quite different than the music that's playing from six
to ten at night, and the crowd that's there, it's
different and people are looking for something different, and you know,

(01:14:15):
the bars are open, The stadium is super Our sort
of course is really well laid out. You can't wind
up in the wrong place. You get a great workout
work walking from hole to hole. And most important to
everything I just mentioned, we have an incredible partnership with
Stand Up to Cancer. So a very nice portion of

(01:14:36):
our profit and revenue goes to Stand Up to Cancer
in the form of a cash donation, and they've been
an incredible partner for us, and all their research that
they're doing is just fantastic and it just makes us
feel great. So you'll feel all their branding wherever you
go completely around the stadium is right next to our
upper deck golf logo and they do a fabulous, fabulous job.

(01:14:59):
And that's a national partnership that we've had for a
long time. So we've got the charity element, and then
inside the clubhouse, we've got several contests set up that
go beyond the shots you get to hit out in
the stadium. We've got a close Lit to the Pin contest,
We've got a putting contest, and then we've got a
long drive contest. So all the latest, greatest PG drivers

(01:15:21):
are there for people to test with every type of
shaft you could imagine. And many of the events we
have a PHG specialist who's there from their local store
who helps fit people. And you can even get discounts
on a PHG fitting if you go through us. You
can get a dozen balls if you go for a fitting.
There's lots of things we do to really utilize the

(01:15:42):
partnership in a way that brings value to our customers.
And they're hitting premium equipment. So Upper Deeck Golf is
a lot of fun. We're going to do twenty events
this year that run the country. I'll reel off a
few of the stadiums for you since we're talking now,
mid Stadium Midsummer. Next weekend, we'll be at Cincinnati at
Great American Ballpark, home of the Reds. Then a couple

(01:16:05):
weeks later we'll be at Buffalo at high Mark Stadium
where the Buffalo Bills play. The week after we're doing
an event at University of Wisconsin where you have camp Randall.
That's a great college stadium. A few weeks ago we
were at University of Michigan for an absolute sellout, epic event.
It was so much fun I was there. It just

(01:16:25):
was great to be able to hit golf balls inside
of Michigan's football stadium. It doesn't get much better than that.
And we started the season indoors in Houston this year,
home of the Astros. It used to be called Minute
Made Park, now it's Dykin Stadium, and that was fabulous.
And then we've got an absolutely packed fall. I'm doing

(01:16:46):
this all by Hartfred, so I'm not even looking at
a sheets. So I'll tell you what was just fabulous
about the fall is that we've got a lot of
events one after another. The first week of August will
be at Fenway Park for a sold out event that's
literally six days long. Will be at Fenway. Most of

(01:17:07):
our events are two or three days, but some of
our most popular events we extend to four or five
or even six. And we basically go from Fenway Park
to Seattle, where we'll go to lumen Field, home of
the Seahawks. Will be there August twenty second and twenty third.
We'll be back at Wrigley Field September eighteenth and nineteenth,

(01:17:27):
and then we're going to head to probably head to
another event that we haven't announced yet, so I'll leave
that for our team to put out. But then we
head to Coors Field in Denver, where the Colorado Rockies play.
And then we have a big one that we just announced.
We're going to go to City Field, home of the
New York Mets, my hometown, which is just going to
be pretty epic. Can't wait to get there at the

(01:17:50):
end of October for Halloween and that weekend. And then
Comerica Park in Detroit, home of the Tigers, one of
the oldest stadiums right there. Then kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
Older stadiums for you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Older stadiums it's been around.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
Yeah, yeah, because it's it's.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
And it's not Rigging Field, and it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
About six years ago. I guess Top Golf kind of
started doing this. You've you've really developed it so much
more than what they did. They did one in San Francisco,
and I went out with some listeners and we had,
you know, as they did their event where it was
just trying to hit targets. Like Top Golf, it wasn't
playing nine holes like you're doing now. But it was

(01:18:33):
so much fun. I enjoyed it so much, even though
I have a difficulty with hitting. I can't even hit
balls on the second deck of a of a driving
range because I just get anxious about heating up above
and hitting the ball. So being on top of Dodger
Stadium would probably make me throw up. But it's so

(01:18:53):
great that you know p XG, who's been a sponsor
on the show, that you're partnering with, and I think
Five Hour Entergy is partnering with some of these events.
They've been a sponsor here. So I just love that
this is going on. But I love that it's not
just a one shot and that you guys are developing
this and creating such amazing opportunities to do something very

(01:19:17):
different and really fun.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty incredible. We have a tie
in at Upper Deck Golf where we've got a military hole.
We do a lot of things that support the military
with PGA Hope. So I touched on earlier in the
show today that we have this partnership with the PGA
of America. So they have a military program called PGA Hope,

(01:19:40):
which is just fabulous. It takes veterans and gives them
a wonderful path forward after their service to be able
to tie it into golf. And they've got a fabulous
program that we're partners with. We donate a bunch of
trips with our partners to their events and they use
those trips for island and live auctions, and all the

(01:20:01):
money that they raise goes to support the organization. And
we have a PGA hopehole at every single event we
do at Upper Deck Golf. So that's a really great
part of our partnership with the PGA of America and
I can't say enough about how great a job that
they do. And wrapping up the end of the year
will be in Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park, will be

(01:20:23):
in Atlanta at Truest Park, Home of the Braves, and
then as I mentioned, we'll wrap up the year in
December at Dodger Stadium. So Top Golf had this business
for a period of time and I'm sure they did
a very good job, and you know they did.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
An advance doing it much better.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
Well. Look, Top Golf is a great partner of ours
and I have nothing but great things to say about them.
But we're just happy that We're going to do about
twenty events this year between college, NFL and Major League Baseball,
and we have some big plans to continue to grow
and expand at Upper Deck Golf. We've got a great team,
and I think the price to value perception for customers.

(01:20:58):
You know, our tickets priced anywhere from ninety to one
hundred and forty dollars, and people spend anywhere from three
to four hours at each event, so I think that
really great value and it's a lot of fun. It's
a lot of fun. We have a very polished team
of about twenty five twenty six people that go to
all of our events, so we work closely with each

(01:21:19):
stadium and their teams, but we have our own full
time team that's like a traveling band, and they're just
absolutely awesome and I get excited to work with them
at every event that I go to, and we're just
very lucky to have a terrific business like Upper Dick Golf.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
Among others. Mark, I clearly you're a very very busy man,
and I know getting your time is not easy. I
truly you've been one of the easiest guests I've ever had,
but highly entertaining, and I truly appreciate you sharing your
time and your stories with us.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Hey, Fred, thank you so much for allowing me on
the show and giving me so much time to share
a lot of this. Anytime you want to come to
an upper deck golf event, we definitely have tickets for you.
We'll give you some mulligans and we'll keep you on
the lower levels so you don't have to do it's want.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
To be able to do this with some listeners. That
would be maybe for twenty twenty six. We can work something.
I can do some traveling and meet up with some
listeners and that would be mind blowing. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
Sounds like a plan. We'll talk about it all.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Right, Mark, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Absolutely my pleasure. Fred. Hopefully we'll get to do it
again down the road at some point

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