Golf designer Jay Blasi comes on the Feed the Ball podcast to talk about the challenges and importance of good public golf, comparing building new holes on top of existing holes versus working new land, the expectations versus outcome of Chambers Bay, the challenge of having to deal with cart paths, the challenge of making…
Jeff Stein began his career shaping courses for Gil Hanse, Tom Doak, Jim Urbina and other designers. Now he has his own business consulting with clubs and a partnership with Brian Ross designing new courses. They recently opened Great Dunes on Jekyll Island in Georgia and are exploring other opportunities. Jeff talks with Derek Duncan…
Martin Ebert is one of the founding partners, along with Tom Mackenzie, of Mackenzie & Ebert, arguably the top golf design firm in Europe. Ebert has been the lead consulting architect, with Mackenzie, for most of the Open Championship courses as well as dozens of clubs in the U.K., Ireland and Europe. They also have…
Jerry Pate burst into the golf world when he won the 1976 U.S. Open at Atlanta Athletic Club in just his second year on tour. From 1976 through 1982 when he won the first Players Championship held at the new Pete Dye-designed TPC Sawgrass he was one of the best players in the world, contending…
Trey Kemp has been one of the most active and influential figures in public and municipal golf design in Texas for over 15 years. He spent much of that time working with John Colligan and now has his own firm, continuing to improve public courses while also pursuing new course commissions. He joins the Feed…
Golf course designer Riley Johns joins Derek and Jim from his home in Canada to fill us in on his latest thoughts on course building and artistry. Johns has been splitting time between his own growing business with partner Keith Rhebb, leading projects for Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and even working with Jim on…
You may have read or heard someone talk about good or bad “tie-ins” on a golf course. It loosely has to do with how the architecture is connected to the land during construction, but the topic is much larger and more nuanced than that. Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina define and discuss tie-ins, what they…
Looking ahead to The Players Championship, former PGA Tour player Richard Zokol and designer Jeff Mingay drop in from Canada to break down everything there is to know about The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass (Zokol actually competed on Sawgrass in the 1980s). We get into the history and creation of the course, how…
Former Australian, European and PGA Tour player and current CBS Sports golf broadcaster Ian Baker-Finch joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina on the Feed the Ball podcast. They discuss the lack of architecture discussion during tournament television broadcasts, the dangers of the distance professional players are driving the…
Keith Cutten comes back on the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the new Shorty’s course at Bandon Dunes that opened last year, Brantford Golf & Country Club in Ontario and building Ken Baskt’s The Ranch near Hobe Sound, Florida. He also explains the working dynamics of his firm Whitman, Axland, Cutten (WAC), how Dave…