“The Charlie Rymer Golf Show” with Legendary Course Designer Rees Jones

Legendary golf course architect Rees Jones checks in with Charlie to talk about his and his family’s golf course work in Myrtle Beach, which includes The Dunes Golf & Beach Club and Arcadian Shores Golf Club. Rees also shares his insights on design philosophy, and how he’s applied it to his work on numerous renowned layouts worldwide.

Charlie Rymer:
I’m Charlie Rymer and this is the Charlie Rymer Golf Show, powered by PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com.

Charlie Rymer:
Folks, here on the Charlie Rymer Golf Show we like going to the top and that’s what we’ve done today. Thrilled to be joined by Rees Jones. Rees is credited with well over 200 golf courses around the world, original designs, redesigns. Roughly 50 of those are tournament golf courses that have hosted USGA championships, men’s and women’s major championships, PGA TOUR events, LPGA events, Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup. In spite of all of that, along with being educated at Yale and Harvard, he’s one of the most humble people you’ll ever be around. Rees, we appreciate you joining us and taking some time today. How you doing?

Rees Jones:
I’m doing fine. It’s great to be with you, Charlie.

Charlie Rymer:
Like everyone else, you’re in quarantine. I’m assuming you’re down in Florida and where you are, I don’t think you’ve been able to get out and play any golf, is that correct?

Rees Jones:
We played for awhile. Palm Beach County closed their golf courses and Martin County, just north of us, their courses open but they will allow anybody without a Martin County driver’s license to play up there, so I’m sort of stuck.

Charlie Rymer:
I know Florida, I’m here in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the country, the whole world, we’re all ready to get unstuck, there’s no doubt about that. Rees, I’d like to talk to you about Myrtle Beach because over the years you’ve done a lot of work here. Of course, your dad did a lot of work here as well. Your first designs on your own were here in Myrtle Beach, Arcadian Shores. I hate to bring up a golf course that doesn’t exist anymore, but I loved it so much, the old Gator Hole Golf Course that you did in North Myrtle Beach. It’s such a small world, my colleague, your friend, Kelly Tilghman from Golf Channel, (Kelly’s father Phil Tilghman) did Gator Hole and you did the golf course for him. It was a huge success for years and years and years. What do you remember about Gator Hole?

Rees Jones:
Well, I think what Gator Hole really taught me was that you don’t have to have a long golf course to make sure it’s popular. I think we’re getting into that right now as far as golf is concerned. I think we build courses over too long. Gator Hole was 6,000 yards long, par 70. It had six par 3s and it had four par 5s, two of which you could really reach in two easily. It packed them in, but of course the Tilghman family with Phil and Kelly and our friend Gene Weldon had a lot to do with that. It was a very playable and enjoyable. The live oaks, the ponds, the natural wetlands, it was a spectacular golf course. They sold it for like 25 million, so they did okay.

Charlie Rymer:
I know. Some people read the golf course shutdown, “Oh my goodness, business was bad.” It was just the fact that Myrtle Beach, the growth was exploding and they had such a great site. It was tragic for a lot of us that spend a lot of time at Gator Hole to see it go, but from a business standpoint, when you got a large retail entity there that’s ready to write you a big check, sometimes it’s hard to say no. In the golf industry, a lot of times closing isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the principals involved.

Rees Jones:
No, absolutely not. I think that they sold at the right time and when North Myrtle Beach was really booming. What I used to love about Gator Hole, I used to play there with Jack Newton all the time, the pro that lost his arm with the airplane accident. He played on the tour and he lost to Tom Watson in the British Open playoff, but he could never break par at a 6,000 yard golf course. That really pleased me.

Charlie Rymer:
Yeah. I don’t see you bow up like that very much. Look at that smile, I love seeing that. You mentioned the PGA professional there,mthe only one Gator Hole ever had, Gene Weldon, very influential in our area. He loved junior golf, he loved mentoring other PGA professionals, he was really an ambassador for Myrtle Beach golf around the world. You had a good friendship with Gene. Could you speak to that relationship that you had with Gene?

Rees Jones:
I designed Arcadian Shores early in my career, which became a Top 100 golf course for several years on the Golf Digest List. Gene was the assistant pro under Mac Briggs, who was really quite a character and he learned a lot from Mac. Then when we built Gator Hole, I convinced Phil Tilghman that Gene was the guy to become the head pro there. Boy, was he successful along with the whole Tilghman Family. I think he still leaves his legacy at Myrtle Beach as far as junior golf and you guys have started that foundation in his name. I think his legacy will last for a long time.

Charlie Rymer:
Yeah. We have the foundation, Gene’s Dream Foundation, Rees is actually a board member. We conduct events, and golf and away from golf, and raise money and those funds go to help junior golf in the area and all honor our late friend, Gene Weldon. For information on that, you can go to genesdream.com. I miss him every day, especially when I go up to North Myrtle Beach and drive by what used to be Gator Hole.

Rees, let’s shift gears a little bit, I’d like to maybe walk our viewers through some basic golf course architecture concepts. People, they show up at a golf course and everybody’s a critic and everybody’s an expert, but really nobody knows how a darn golf course gets built. They just don’t, unless you’ve worked in the industry. Architecture 101, let’s say you’ve got an agreement that papers are signed and you’re going to do an original Rees Jones design, what happens next? Will you walk me through that process?

Rees Jones:
Then we get the mapping and then we get all the environmental considerations and we determine where there are areas you can’t go. We looked at the grades. We want the golf holes to fit naturally, especially if there’s a topography like the McLemore Course in Georgia that you and I have played together. In Myrtle Beach, we really had to worry about the wetlands and the natural marshes. That gives you the Lowcountry feel, the Lowcountry look.

I think we did the layout, we did several layouts, we come to a conclusion which is the best. We like the finish and a spectacular setting like we did at ocean pars, finishing on the ocean at Sea Island, Georgia. I think we want to make sure that the holes are oriented differently. You don’t have all the par 3s going the same direction, par 5s, because wind is a factor too. We take the wind, the sun, the vegetation, and the topography into account, we then do the routings. Everybody takes the routings for granted, you’re absolutely right. What they criticize are the bunkers, or where the water is, or the contours of the greens. They don’t really, really think about how the course is routed, and how you have an ebb and flow, and how you go from long holes to shorter holes, the long par 5s, the short par 5s, and really kind of mix it up so you never lose the interest of the golfer on a continuing basis.

Charlie Rymer:
One of the things that fascinates me when I’m able to visit a golf course construction site, the shapers. You get these shapers and they’re all different shapes and sizes and all different personalities. Most of them I’ve been around are a little ornery, to be honest with you. But they’re artists that are up on bulldozers. The dialogue that you, the designer, has with a shaper, I know you got the maps, and topos, and all that, but a lot of it is more artistic than scientific, right? It’s just sort of getting on that dozer and just a feel for shaping things and getting feedback from you. That process to me is just fascinating how it works.

Rees Jones:
You’re honestly, right. If you look at The Dunes Club, my father (Robert Trent Jones) was doing The Dunes Club in the late 40s when he was working at Augusta National, and it had the same shaper that he was doing all the work for Bobby Jones at Augusta National that he did for Jimmy D’Angelo and Mr. Bryan at The Dunes Club. If you look at The Dunes Club, there’s a lot of similarity in the elevated greens, the contours, the bunker style as Augusta National. That means the shaper actually is somewhat of a designer too, because he kind of follows a pattern that he knew my father liked and continues it at Lake or The Dunes Club.

Same thing with Gator Hole, the shaper there was a guy named Clive Hall and he’s done work for me all over the place. I had a shaping company for like 25 years and he was my top guy. Right now he’s reshaping all the bunkers at Briar’s Creek, near Kiawah Island and on Johns Island. It’s a lot of artistry, there’s a lot of engineering, but I think the artistry is what the golfer remembers.

Charlie Rymer:
You are a busy man. If you’re doing an original design, you’re not going to be on that property every day. You’re going to be on there maybe at the beginning of the month, a week or two later, a month later, a month later. You’re passing directions to these shapers, that process sometimes, the give and take, when you’re having a conversation, are you issuing written orders? Is it verbal? How does that work?

Rees Jones:
We’ve done sketches. I would do sketches, like I do sketches on the ground, I do sketches at the office. I send them down and then I get on the ground with the shaper and basically make changes in the field. People don’t understand that when they look at the old plans, when they’re thinking about restoring golf course, let’s say a Donald Ross golf course, the final product looks nothing like the original plan because basically it doesn’t always fit the ground as you think it would on paper. You work on the ground. But now with the videos, and Skype, and Zoom, and FaceTime, we can do a lot from a remote area much more easily than we could in years past. In fact, I’m redesigning a course in Japan and we can’t get there. I got one of my former shapers, Guy Shapiro, on the job, and we’re just going back and forth every night, talking about the design with the videos.

Charlie Rymer:
It seems to me like the design process works fairly smoothly until you get the owner involved. One of the most fascinating afternoons I’ve ever spent in my life was walking at Trump Doral, the Blue Monster, with Gil Hanse, who had done the redesign, and President Trump. Of course, this was before he was president, but a man with a lot of opinions and in particular, about golf. Just watching Gil deal with Mr. Trump, that’s a battle in so many ways between a designer trying to give an owner what they need rather than what they want. That’s got to be one of the toughest parts of your jobs, is it not?

Rees Jones:
Yes, and I think it’s gotten more prevalent now, the owner involvement or green chairman involvement because of the internet. They have a lot more information at their disposal. A lot of it isn’t valid, but they really think they have more knowledge about golf course design at their disposal. They do have opinions and they’re very strong opinions. You have to work with the chairman of the greens committee or with the owner to convince them that the other way is the way you want to go. I would tell the owner when he and I would disagree, I’d say, “If you really want to do it that way, I’m going to lie in front of the bulldozer.”

Charlie Rymer:
Just not going to do it. Not that you’d have to share it, but I bet you’ve had some pretty boisterous arguments with owners over the years, would be my take on it.

Rees Jones:
I don’t know if it’s arguments, it’s discussions, it’s disagreements. Where you really have the most difficulties when you have a greens committee and you have one guy that has one opinion, and another guy has another opinion, and they’re fighting in front of you and you become the peacemaker to some degree. But then you ultimately have to determine what’s best for the golf course, because that’s going to be what’s lasting. You can’t let their ideas prevail if they’re really bad ideas. Like a reverse slope of a green on an elevated green site, the ball won’t stop on it. If that’s what they want, you’ve got to tell them no.

Charlie Rymer:
The term, consulting architect, I think a lot of even avid golfers don’t really understand what a consulting architect does. You’ve created a lot of your own original designs, you’ve done a lot of redesigns, and you’ve served as a consulting architect quite a bit. Will you explain that concept to me?

Rees Jones:
Bill Bergin at McLemore in Georgia and also in Winter Haven in Florida, he was the one doing the plans but I was really kind of talking to him about style, about green contours, about elevation to greens, about angles. I would say to some degree, every golf course designed is a combination of different ideas and different people, whether it be the owner, whether it be my associates, Greg Muirhead, Bryce Swanson, or Steve Wiser, they’re predominantly just as much of an architect on all these jobs as I am because they’re a right arm of mine. I think that’s been the case over the history of golf course design with (Tom) Fazio’s outfit or Jack Nicklaus. A lot of associates are really the designers. The consulting architect or the main architect is just a part of the team

Charlie Rymer:
When you’re doing any particular redesign work and you know that project is for a major championship, or Ryder Cup, or Presidents Cup, USGA championships, that sort of thing, what’s the biggest challenge in designing a golf course that is up to the test, but also works for the rest of the golf that’s played there the other 51 weeks a year?

Rees Jones:
That’s a great question, Charlie, because you don’t build a church for Easter Sunday. You’ve got to be careful that you don’t just design it for that once in every 10 years championship. Tillinghast was the best at shot options. An open entrance, protected part of the green, you want to make sure that there aren’t too many frontal hazards on your greens. You want to have holes that can be accessed by the ground and by the air because the angles are much more important for the ground player than they are for the aerial player. I think you just have to really consider the long-term playing ability of the golf course while you really get it ready for the championship golf.

I just redid Torrey Pines again for next year’s U.S. Open. We did it last summer, I did it originally back in 2001 before we had the 2008 U.S. Open, which may have been the most incredible U.S. Open ever when Tiger Woods won on a broken leg. We’re looking forward to next year’s championship, but we had to make changes based on what we’ve seen them play in the Farmers Insurance Open. We also wanted to make sure that the 75,000 players that play the South Course every year can get through it and enjoy themselves. I think we accomplished that task. Then when they had the Farmers Insurance Tournament, they had a questionnaire for the pros and there was not one single complaint about the changes we made. That might be a first for me.

Charlie Rymer:
Wait, wait, wait, it might’ve broken up a little bit. PGA TOUR players and no complaints, is that what you said?

Rees Jones:
Some of them might not have gotten the questionnaire. Who knows?

Charlie Rymer:
I’m glad you brought up the idea of criticism. When you’re the man that prepares golf courses to be the biggest stages in golf, when you take that on, you know you’re going to take criticism. It’s going to come from players, it’s going to come from the media, it’s going to come from all quarters. I’ve had a chance to get to know you, I think fairly well over, in particular, these last several years, I’ve never one time seeing you do anything but take the high road when it comes to criticism. That’s one of the things that I respect you the most for. How in the world have you been able to stay above the fray when a lot of this criticism has been thrown your way? I think the majority of it, I know some criticism, every now and then we learned from criticism, but the vast majority of it being unfounded, how have you been able to stay above that, Rees?

Rees Jones:
I was brought up with it. My father probably got much more criticism than I did because he was dramatically making the golf courses tougher like he did at Oakland Hills when they called it The Monster. I think I saw how my father handled it and I learned from that. I learned one thing, if you crowned Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines or Bethpage after you’ve redone them, that’s pretty darn good. I’d say that the criticism can roll off my back as long as the golf course achieves the task of crowning the best player in the championship that’s played on a golf course. Like Curtis Strange at The Country Club, he was number one player in the world at the time. I think that’s happened a lot on my golf courses.

Tiger’s won at Cog Hill, he’s won at Medinah, he’s won at East Lake, all those courses I completely redid. He’s made me look good over it over a period of years so I sort of look at it that way. But also my father used to say, “As long as they spell your name right. no matter what they say, it’s good for you.”

Charlie Rymer:
I know you learned a lot from your father, no doubt about that. I love the way you put that. I guess if you were a professor and you were designing a test, and your smartest student made the highest grade, no matter how much everybody complained you’d have to say that’s a pretty darn good test.

You’ve mentioned some great moments that occurred at your golf courses, Tiger was at Torrey Pines. I’m going to go to another Tiger Woods moment. 2018, went in at East Lake, coming down what’s now 18, used to be number 9. By the way, I love when you switch those nines, that’s provided, I think, some amazing drama there and East Lake’s one of my favorite golf courses. That moment, Tiger coming back, winning the Tour Championship, and I heard it was an accident, the tour let the fans come in. That’s an iconic moment in golf. How did that Sunday rank with maybe some of the other Sundays that you’ve observed on your golf courses?

Rees Jones:
For golf and for the strength of golf, for Tiger to come back, because he’s so important to the game, and to come back at East Lake, which we really developed to revive a community, or really save a community, save a lot of lives. I think he and his father, when we opened the Charlie Yates Golf Course there, the three of us opened that golf course together. I’ve got a wonderful picture of the three of us doing that, we were a little bit younger then. He was closely associated with East Lake to some degree because he’d been there before and understood what we’d achieve for the people’s lives. But also to redo the course that Bobby Jones grew up on, the history of East Lake, and really the foundation does so much for everybody.

Not only does East Lake revive Bobby Jones’ legacy as much as Augusta National does, but also really revived and restored and gave people a chance at their lives. So many of those kids are going to jail and now they’re going to college on scholarships. In fact, last year, the charter school at East Lake won the State Golf Championship. It was the first time an all African-American team won the State Golf Championship. That’s quite an accomplishment for the whole East Lake Foundation.

Charlie Rymer:
It is an amazing project. I was in school at Georgia Tech, that was one of our home courses, and that golf course was in moth balls, the clubhouse was in moth balls. Tom Cousins, who basically built Atlanta, came up with the project, the belief of what could be done there, had you come in. You were telling me actually, before we started the show, that you spent a good amount of time at East Lake learning about the history, the heritage of that club, going back to when it was Bobby Jones’ home club, the athletic clubs, some of the folks who spent some time with. Do you remember any particular Bobby Jones stories that influence anything that you did at East Lake?

Rees Jones:
Yeah. I would go around with Charlie Yates, who won the British Amateur. Charlie Harrison was a great Georgia golfer and Tommy Barnes, who was a sensational Georgia golfer-

Charlie Rymer:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Georgia Tech golfers, all three of those? Not University of Georgia, Georgia Tech golf. There’s a big difference between a Georgia golfer and a Georgia Tech golfer, Rees. I’m a Georgia Tech golfer. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I’m interrupting to clarify there.

Rees Jones:
No, I get that because they’re all good guys, especially you and Matt Kuchar, those are my buddies. Anyway, the funny thing about it, we’d go around, and there used to be double greens at East Lake, a summer green and winter green. They would talk about that, they’d talk about where Bobby Jones would get behind the tree and how he cut it around the tree. They mainly talked about how they competed against Bobby rather than telling me how to redesign the golf course. It was kind of funny because they had all these stories, especially Tommy Barnes, who I think beat Bobby Jones on several occasions.

It was a real joy to have the opportunity to really delve into their minds, both as far as how the game should be played, how it was played, and then how East Lake used to play. We really brought the place back to what it was, and really enhanced it by adding length, and brought it into today’s game for the modern pro. The pros, to a name, loved that golf course because it isn’t overly difficult, but it is challenging. You can make some birdies, but you can get in some trouble too. I think Tom Cousins deserves a lot of credit for reviving that whole part of the city, as well as bringing back the East Lake Golf Course.

Charlie Rymer:
It’s amazing also that not only has that project revitalized that part of the city, with the centerpiece of course being East Lake, but that formula has been replicated in other cities all across the country. I believe there’s about 20 other projects, with plans for a lot more, to take that same formula to help other places. That gets back to the roots of what golf is all about is helping people.

Rees Jones:
Yeah, we did that in New Orleans for City Park, the Bayou Oaks Golf Course where Hurricane Katrina went over it. They did the same thing with the housing, reviving the golf course, building the golf course, and someday maybe they’ll have a championship on that one too. I think what’s so fascinating about the whole process, they call them purpose-built communities, I think it’s all privately funded. Joey Robertson’s involved, Warren Buffett’s involved, Tom Cousins got involved in that because he said, “I gave money and all of these charities and I asked him, ‘What happened to my money? What did you do with it?'” Nobody could tell him. He said, “I’m going to have my own charity so I can observe what the money does.” That’s exactly what he’s done at East Lake.

Charlie Rymer:
It’s been amazing to see the results that he’s gotten. I know early on, there was a lot of heavy criticism, this is just somebody else is going to come in and pretend they’re going to throw some money into this community and take advantage of it. Now, this is a wonderful part, some of his fiercest critics in the beginning are flipped, they’re on the other side. They can’t praise him enough for what he’s been able to do. No doubt about, Tom Cousins made a big difference in his own community and it spread really across the country and the world.

Rees, I appreciate your time. I want to finish with one question, it’s an open-ended question. I love having these conversations with you, but the open ended question is, especially in light of what we’re going through right now, not only in the U.S. but globally, what’s next for golf?

Rees Jones:
I think once the states open up the golf courses, we’re going to find that golf is a very important fabric of people’s lives. It’s a thing that you can play from when you’re a little kid ‘til when you’re in your 80s or 90s. A grandfather can play with the grandson like I do with mine.

I think we’re finding that it’s going to be an endeavor that people are going to really love to do more than ever, because they can get outside, they can social distance, they can play with their friends, they can converse. I think what we’re really missing right now are our ability to get near other people and socialize. I think what we don’t stress enough is how important for socializing golf is. It’s not just a game, it’s not just how you score. It’s how you get together with your friends and talk about things that you probably wouldn’t be talking about on the phone or on the computer. I think with the internet and with iPhones, I think we’ve lost a lot of our opportunities to converse. Golf is a great way to get together with your friends and really enjoy each other’s company. I think that’s what we’re really learning.

The golf courses today that are open are packed. Even though you have to ride by yourself in a cart, or pull your trolley, or carry your bag, they’re packed in a lot of places. I think it bodes well for the game of golf, I just hope that this pandemic doesn’t last too long and that most of the golf facilities will survive.

Charlie Rymer:
Amen. Rees Jones, thank you so much for joining us on the Charlie Rymer Golf Show. We really appreciate your time.

Rees Jones:
Okay, Charlie. Thanks.

Charlie Rymer:
Thanks for joining us, I’m Charlie Rymer. We’ll see you next time on the Charlie Rymer Golf Show, powered by PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com.