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Candyroot Lodge, a new public golf facility in the sand hills outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, marked the end of its first week of construction with an Instagram post. Mike Koprowski, who collaborated with Kyle Franz at Broomsedge Golf Club and joined Andy Johnson on the Fried Egg Golf Podcast last year, is designing Candyroot's first course.

Initially, Koprowski was engaged by Candyroot's owners to build a single course, tentatively named Downbonnie. Since announcing that venture in May, however, the owners have brought on additional investors and developed bigger ambitions. Koprowski now tells me that Candyroot will feature multiple regulation layouts (three or four), plus a short course. An architect has not yet been selected for the second course, but interviews are ongoing.

If Candyroot Lodge follows through on its plans, it would be one of the largest and most exciting public-golf projects of the 2020s undertaken by developers not named Keiser.

Here are three recently announced renovation projects that caught my eye:

Todd Eckenrode is restoring William P. Bell's mid-1920s design at Annandale Golf Club in Pasadena, California. Annandale has good potential (the historical aerials are tantalizing, but sadly not much can be done to bring back the property's former vistas and openness), and Eckenrode knows Bell and California Golden Age architecture as well as anyone in the industry. This is a project to track.

Trey Kemp, a very capable Dallas-based golf architect, has started the first phase of his master plan for Hogan Park Golf Course, a 36-hole municipal facility in Midland, Texas. Hogan Park is an important hub of the game in the growing but somewhat golf-poor Midland-Odessa region. Over the past decade, Kemp has developed a specialty in reviving municipal courses in Texas. His work at Stevens Park and Rockwood Park in the Dallas-Fort Worth area has been especially well received.

Architect Nick Campanelli and influential golf writer Bradley Klein have been engaged to renovate Willie Park Jr.'s design at Shuttle Meadow Country Club outside of Hartford, Connecticut. Campanelli and Klein plan to adapt some ideas from Huntercombe Golf Club, Park's strange masterwork in the English heathlands. Golf Course Architecture has a thorough writeup on the project.

Every once in a while when i run out of pods to listen to i throw on an SGS episode from a handful of years back. Commentary is hilarious and it’s interesting hearing the state of golf then and seeing how much it’s changed. I noticed on Apple Podcasts that there are no episodes pre June of 2019, are those available anywhere or are they the lost pods?

Jeeno's pile of cash got a whole lot bigger this weekend. She's never finished outside the top 10 at Tiburon, so there's a good chance she just keeps on cashing big checks there for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure what I find harder to believe....Nelly going winless this year or Jeeno still not having a major. Plenty of great moments from this year, but overall, what a strange season. What stands out to everyone as the moment of the year?

I recently noticed on a local course that they're maintaining rough around the bunkers (both fairway and green side) at a higher height than their regular rough. I left my rough ruler at home, but my guess is rough is maintained at 2.5" throughout the course and 3.5" around the bunkers at width of 1 to 2 feet. I'm not sure I've noticed this at other clubs and I am struggling to figure out why they're doing this (course in question has no shortage of financial resources)

Bay Area members,

We're excited to announce that we're hosting an FEGC meetup with the team over at Poppy Ridge on Sunday, December 28 at 11:00 a.m. Jay Blasi, architect of the new course, is going to be on site with us to talk through the project and then we'll head out and play the new layout.

We have space for 20 people so if you'd like to attend, please reply here or shoot me an email at will@thefriedegg.com. This will be a walking only event.

Garrett and others,

I've enjoyed listening to your reflections on your trip to Surrey/Berkshire and Kent. I was wondering if you could say a bit more about what fascinated you so much about RSG and Deal and why you had them seemingly higher than Sunningdale or St George's Hill. I play most of my golf on the west links of North Berwick, so maybe I'm spoiled by links and heathland feels like a change of pace, but I'm much more enamoured by the heathland than the links of southern England. That isn't to say that Kent courses aren't fantastic, but the routing, greens, and turf around Surrey only compete with the Sandbelt in my opinion. Is it a case of preferring links? Or is it something about the greens at RSG that put it over the top for you?

Josh

Kansas City Country Club posted some drone footage of its A.W. Tillinghast-designed course, which recently underwent a historical renovation by Andrew Green. Lots of cool-looking holes out there. I'm not a fan of the all-green-everywhere turf presentation, but just about every club does it these days, so I can't fault KCCC specifically.

Videos:

Front Nine

Back Nine

Hear ye, hear ye! Golf.com has published its latest ranking of the top 100 golf courses in the world! And it's... remarkably similar to the 2023 edition!

Seriously, what's the point of going through this exercise every two years? The list has barely changed.

Oh, right. Golf media outlets need to sell magazines and drive website traffic in November.

Also: I need something to talk about, and here I am. I'm part of the problem.

Anyway, I spent about 10 minutes comparing the 2023 and 2025 lists, and here are the main differences I spotted (I may have missed a few):

New-course debuts:

• Childress Hall (Upper) at 73
• CapRock Ranch at 84
• Te Arai (North) at 98

Some of my colleagues have been to Tom Doak's Upper Course at Childress Hall, which opened last December, and they tell me that the hype is real. Amazing golf course. But I remain opposed to the idea of ranking a course ahead of Old Town Club and Machrihanish before it's even a year old. At least give the place time to grow in fully.

Double-digit risers:

• New South Wales from 64 to 26
• Royal Troon from 66 to 53
• The Lido from 68 to 48
• St. George's Hill from 71 to 57
• Lofoten Links from 88 to 66
• Bandon Trails from 90 to 76
• Royal Melbourne (East) from 92 to 82
• Shanqin Bay from 95 to 64

The Lido appears to be holding strong after a big debut on the 2023 list. It now out-ranks every Dream Golf course except for Pacific Dunes.

New South Wales recently underwent a renovation by Mackenzie & Ebert and seems to be reaping the benefits.

Double-digit droppers:

• Ballyneal from 51 to 63
• Cabot Cliffs from 52 to 78
• Cape Kidnappers from 55 to 65
• Woodhall Spa from 58 to 74
• Rye from 72 to 90
• Rock Creek Cattle Co. from 73 to 88
• Cabot Links from 79 to 96
• Winged Foot (East) from 80 to 91
• Ohoopee Match Club from 81 to 99
• Les Bordes (New) from 83 to off the list

I wouldn't read much into any of these declines (or into the rises I mentioned earlier, for that matter). A lot of the reshuffling from year to year is basically random. But I do think the new-car smell is starting to wear off of some of the modern courses listed above. The really good ones will bounce back in the panel's esteem.

Since I find this ranking somewhat boring, I'll try to spice things up: what do you think is the most overrated course on the list?

I'll stake my flag on No. 60, the East Course at Oak Hill Country Club.

Golf Traveler, always looking to play a new to me course. 47, 621 courses to date. @amgolfblog on IG, new member to FE, can't wait for the events.

I have two tee times booked at Poppy Ridge in mid December. I got the earliest times I could get, and the Sunday time is definitely a twilight time with some finishing risk. My son will join on Sunday.

• Sunday, Dec 14, 1:10pm, $100 per player (Chris Brooks, Jacob Brooks, two openings), pay at course
• Monday, Dec 15, 12:20pm - pre-paid $486.00, $121.50 per player (Chris Brooks, three openings)

I will also book the 9 holer for Monday morning (lots of times available) once we have an idea of our numbers. I'm going to be staying somewhere in Livermore on Sunday night.

Who wants to join?

Just dropped a new blog going over a little BTS for an LPGA/Epson PT this past year! A short read for those who would be interested in hearing a little more about the physical therapists role with the players on a given week!

Can't get the link to work but if you copy and paste this URL it will take you straight there!

https://www.back9pt.com/post/tour-diaries-behind-the-scenes-with-an-lpga-pt

I had the great pleasure of meeting up with four FEGC members yesterday at Golden Gate Park GC. Myself along with Chris Brooks, Ray Gobberg, Brett Hochstein, and Jamie Hiteshew had a great round. We snuck out at 3:00 and played as a group of five. Rounds like this are truly what fill my tank.

There were plenty of good shots to recount, but my favorite moment of the day was when Brett, who is a wonderful guy and who also happened to do a lot of work on Golden Gate Park during the renovation, recommended we all hit low runners into the seventh green, which he shaped, to try to catch the contours in the ground and sling balls into the back right pin. For those of you who haven't played GGPGC, the seventh has an awesome green with three distinct quadrants. Each quadrant is relatively small, but there is a lot of mounding to work the ball into tight spaces. It's phenomenal work that Brett did and provides an equal amount of fun and challenge. I've added a couple of photos below.

The pin shown above is in the back left quadrant, whereas we were playing to the back right (just over the bunker in this picture).

Here's a more aerial view of the entire green. If you choose, you can run shots into the green using the ground and mounding on the left to feed balls hard to the right.

My highlight from the day, though, was when Jamie tried to snipe a 4i into the green and got a wee bit aggressive with his swing and sent the ball sailing onto the next tee box, coming to rest at the feet of the group of golfers in front of us. At that very moment, I remembered reading a lot of member intros where most identify as "not interested in fighting." Thankfully for us, Ray's immediate comment was something to the effect that there are five of us and only four of them AND they look old, so we can totally take them.

So I guess the TL;DR here is that Ray Gobberg is interested in fighting!

Garrett’s Bob Parsons impression on the architecture pod today was all time. Laughed so loud in my office, le wife had to come make sure I wasn’t choking on my bagel.

Also got me thinking, what are some other great impersonations we’ve heard over the years, golf-wise?…KVV’s Gary Player comes to mind immediately, as well as Porath’s ability to spit Paul McGinley bars at the drop of a hat.

Maybe PJ could put together an all-time FE impersonations power ranking…

Hello everyone,

With the holiday next week, I will be doing a general mailbag with PJ, I will pull some questions from last week's architecture focused ones into the podcast but just wanted to put a call out for any questions. Thanks!