Connect with fellow members and join the conversation

Curious if there’s a FEGC contingent of superintendents or turf professionals willing to share some perspective.

I’m 34, married, no kids, and no interest in fighting. About a year ago, I left a flying career with the Air Force to pursue my passion for golf. I’m currently on the agronomy team at a private club in the Denver metro area and fortunate to be learning under a great superintendent who’s been generous with mentorship and GCSAA exposure. I’m also starting Penn State’s turfgrass management program this January.

While that guidance has been invaluable, I’d love to hear from people with different paths especially those who care deeply about golf course design and architecture. It often feels like the industry rewards the “hard chargers” chasing PGA events or ultra-private, blank-check clubs. I respect that path; I’m just not convinced it’s mine.

I’m drawn to the idea of working on a Golden Age course, or one with architectural significance. I want to work extremely hard for good people and a good course, but I also value a healthy culture over constant high-pressure environments. With internships on the horizon and a later start into the industry, I’m trying to be intentional rather than impulsive.

Am I naive, or is there a realistic lane in turf for someone wired this way?

Visiting CO for the holidays, and I snagged the last tee time at Commonground today.

If anyone else is going to be out there, drop me a note at ahhatcher@gmail.com and I’ll try to find you.

Morning! I apologize if this is already out there somewhere... but I am a new FEGC member just digging into all the content. As I am reading about various architects and also just the fundamentals of design, I would love to see a grouping of architects by similar styles and then highlight the key elements they predominantly use in their course design.

Golfweek reports that TPC Craig Ranch, host of the PGA Tour's CJ Cup Byron Nelson, has reopened after a renovation by Lanny Wadkins. Kudos to Tim Schmitt, the author of the article, for getting this startling sound bite from Wadkins about the brief he received from Invited, the course's owner: "Invited basically said they didn't want 30-under winning the thing anymore. And I told them, don't worry."

You're not supposed to say that kind of thing out loud, Lanny!

In any case, I do appreciate Wadkins's and Invited's honesty in admitting that they had little interest in making TPC Craig Ranch better.

Have 3 last minute open spots for 9:20am at Olivas Links tomorrow for anyone looking to get in a last minute holiday round 🤙🏽 $30 to walk.

Bounty Club, a new private retreat near Nashville, Tennessee, posted some footage of its nearly complete King Collins Dormer design. The course is looking good! KCD's stylistic signatures are in evidence — huge, undulating greens, along with even bigger and more intricate bunkers — but in slightly toned-down form. Since this is probably the most golf-ready land KCD has ever worked on, I wouldn't be surprised if the firm consciously decided to take a more restrained approach.

The Bounty Club project was announced back in early 2023, and the course is expected to open next year. The developers are 8AM Golf, owner of Golf Magazine and other well-known golf properties, and Justin Timberlake, avid golfer and seemingly-past-his-prime pop star. Naturally, Golf Magazine has provided regular coverage of the construction process.

As you may imagine, this time of year, when our team isn't researching for 4-hour Year in Review podcasts we are doing a lot of planning for next season. We're pretty excited about some internal projects we're plotting, we're monitoring architecture news, and professional golf continues to be annoyingly complex so yes, we'll be covering all of that.

And while we have a ton of ideas and plans already, I'm curious what FEGC members are hoping to see/want to see out of our team in the new year? I can't promise that we'll go out of our way to cover something we aren't planning to already, but if there is something you have top of mind please let us know! Maybe we'll already have something in the works or will be able to incorporate it in our schedule. We want FEGC members to enjoy what we're putting out, after all!

I'm in Fort Worth visiting my in-laws for the holidays and my father-in-law is a collector/hoarder of vintage clubs. With no real agenda I figure it would be fun to share a few of my favorites.

The Ben Hogan sand wedge was a gift from Ben Hogan himself! Enjoy!

My home course, Forest Hills Golf Course (www.golfforesthills.com), takes a group of 52 players to Bandon each January and we have two spots available. This will be our 17th year and we have a wonderful group of players ranging from low single digits to some high teens all with great personas. Here's the deal:

Cost: $1045 - includes 3 rounds, 2 nights, 1 dinner + $20 each day for payouts

January 9th - Bandon Trails - 10am start times

January 10th - Bandon Dunes - 9am start times

January 11th - Pacific Dunes - 8:30am start times

Lodging: Chrome Lake Lofts (https://bandondunesgolf.com/lodging/chrome-lake/)

Please let me know ASAP if interested. Marcus@golfforesthills.com

I didn’t lose power, but we will rebuild.

Awesome podcast.

I am starting a thread on it and the courses we would add to the list.

I'll start with Lofoten Links. I've never been, and I'm not sure if it counts (it was 9 holes before 2010 but only extended to 18 in 2025). But I think if I'm going outside the US and Australia-New Zealand, it would probably be the top course to mention.

The other would be Mach Dunes for showing how one can do environmentally sensitive work in GB&I. If Coul Links gets built, its because of the trail Mach Dunes blazed. I think it's technically 2009, but close enough.

Few notes

1. How are these not just “The Eggies?”

2. Rory has to be the Player of the Year. Winning the Grand Slam in an all-time Masters. Winning an away Ryder Cup after saying he was going to. Winning at Pebble, Sawgrass, and his home open. The Data Boys can go pound sand.

3. Collin didn’t really create any jobs. It was just one job with a cast of characters filling it. This job existed before the year. So zero jobs created. One man did create some jobs. Xander Schauffle. Zero webmasters before this year. At least one now. Hopefully more!

Is it too soon to start asking which courses will be featured in volume 2? Volume 1 was just delivered this week but slid it under the tree for a Christmas gift. Really excited to get into it. Here's a list of courses I'd love to see (warmer weather places as I'm already over winter).

Cal Club

Abaco Club

The Park

WP9

Tree Farm

Chechessee

Austin Golf Club

SFGC

Streamsong Blue

Pinehurst 2

28, no kids, and consequently a reasonable amount of free time on my hands. As we’re rapidly approaching the second tgl season I thought I’d share some of my thoughts with a brief team-by-team preview following a hectic offseason.

The Drive - the defending champs have a lot of questions to answer going into season 2. JT is out for the season and Billy Ho is coming off injury (which may have been caused by doing the dirty bird too much), but rumor is his surgery was planned so his recovery would peak just as season 2 begins. Lucas Glover is splitting time between his golf game and increasingly popular radio show, and the Pat in the hat had a year so bad he fell from 11th in the world this time last year to his current standing at 24th (somewhere he hasn’t been since the SGS was only a few months old).

NYGC - Rickie is still Rickie, but aside from that the team is on the rise. After a heartbreaking defeat in the championship last year, Cam Young (Mr. ~746) has caught fire, Chicago’s son is back playing well, and Xander has a new app and ended the year looking not that bad I guess.

LAGC - The Brits on this team are playing great, with Rosey sitting at 10th in the OWGR and YouTuber/Fedex cup champ ( listed in order of importance) Tommy Fleetwood ending the year as the hottest player on the planet(?). How will that translate to an indoor sim league with horribly inaccurate launch monitors? Not sure. The Americans on this team are another story. Sahith was out for most of this year injured, and Colin might holdout because this will be too much media interaction. Maybe he and Marty can bond over what product they use to coif their hair.

The Bay - Honestly I don’t have much on these guys. Thank god the Chef didn’t go to Liv or else Matt Berry wouldn’t know what to talk about. Wyndham is probably still doing community service on the grounds of Oakmont so who knows if he’s even eligible to play.

Jupiter Links - Did I miss something or do we still not know what’s going on here? Tiger certainly can’t play but he still could probably crutch out there and be better than Kis. Max and TK both aren’t playing great to my knowledge. I’m not a gambling man but the line for holes won for the year with this lineup has to be O/U 6.5.

B Frogs - I think Rory announced on the SGS that Michael Thorbjornsen was joining the team, so does that mean someone is leaving? Do they just get another player since they didn’t win a game last year? Or is it a prize for Rory winning the grand slam? No matter, things have to be looking up for the Frogs as they can’t do worse than last year and the “players” have them first in the preseason polls.

Pre Season Power rankings: 1. NYGC 2. The Bay 3. LAGC 4. Frogs 5. Drive 6. Jup Stinks

Maybe this will be a weekly power rankings (probably not) with inspiration taken from the WOWgr, which left us far too soon.

Thoughts on the golf games? Feeling a lot of the fatigue Brendan referenced on SGS with these “the match” style tv events. Seems like the main focus is to pack as many sponsorships and gambling promos as possible. The idea of a golf skills competition is fun, but when Rory was on the pod and said the idea was just brought to them and there wasn’t much input into the events it didn’t sound good.