00:01The next sort of stop in this architectural journey, at least in the United States, is Shady Oaks Country Club,
00:07which is really, it's part of the fabric of American golf history in that Ben Hogan's a founding member.
00:12He practices there for a number of years. He calls us, you know, sort of as his pet. He's there
00:16almost every day when he's in town.
00:19And so you go there, you renovate the 18-hole course, you take the sort of grounds where Ben Hogan
00:25practiced and turned into a little nine.
00:26How do all the things, and we'll show some pictures here as well for everyone watching on YouTube, how do
00:32all those design principles you just discussed inform the project that you're sort of taking to a different, maybe a
00:37different sort of terrain here in Fort Worth, Texas?
00:41Yeah, I mean, it was a pretty classic park lane course, I would say, Shady, prior to the renovation.
00:48They had like 24 acres of fairway, so not a lot of fairway really, pretty narrow.
00:52So, but a great bit of land. It was a really interesting bit of land.
00:57They had these kind of big ravines through the golf course, kind of like barancas.
01:01They had a river.
01:03Yeah, they kind of had this river cutting through a couple of holes, had beautiful old live oaks.
01:09Hogan kind of famously told the developer, Marvin Leonard, he thought the land was too severe.
01:15But I kind of think it was, I don't know, maybe that was tainted with, as a Texan, he was
01:21just used to kind of flattish golf courses.
01:23Perhaps this was just a bit too undulating, but we thought it was just about the right amount of contour.
01:29And we, yeah, we started there in 2019, just before COVID, really, or just, so yeah, kind of mid-2019,
01:37and wrapped this up just when, pretty much just when the government were telling us that you had to leave
01:42the US and come home.
01:46But it, we doubled the amount of short grass.
01:49We introduced a lot of these concepts of short grass around greens, you know, whereas I guess the classic parkland
01:56look was always rough all the way to the edge of the collar of the greens.
01:59And so we introduced this idea of, you know, all this variety with recovery play around the greens, you know,
02:05so the older members loved it.
02:07They could hit a little bump and run or a part for better players.
02:10They had all these different shot options.
02:13We used short grass to link holes together, wider fairways, and I think a pretty interesting mix of greens as
02:21well.
02:22So it, yeah, that became, that was our first project in the US.
02:25So it's still like going home for me particularly.
02:28I spent a lot of time there.
02:31And as a bit of a golf geek, spending time, you know, at Hogan's home club and, you know, a
02:38lot of the members there used to shag for Hogan and Mike Ross.
02:42Right, the pro there became a good friend, he had a lot of Hogan stories, so it was just, it
02:47was a, it was the perfect first job, I would say, in the US for us.
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