The Hole Story - Golf Podcast

The Man Who Wrote South Carolina Golf - A Conversation with Bob Gillespie

• BestBall • Season 4 • Episode 46

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Few people know the story of golf in South Carolina better than Bob Gillespie. Join us as we explore his journey as an author and storyteller, the rich history of the game's greatest courses and characters across the Palmetto State, and why preserving golf's stories is just as important as playing the game itself.

https://x.com/scgolfguy

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*Music by AlexGrohl via Pixabay

SPEAKER_00

I was home visiting my parents, went by the Orangeburg newspaper, the Times and Democrat, which I had worked for in the summer, and they said, How do you like your job in Greenville? And I said, It's not me. They said, Come in here, we want to talk to you. Next thing I know, I'm on the staff of the Orangeburg paper. Two months later, the sports editor quit, and I got his job.

SPEAKER_02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Whole Story Podcast. Jonathan and Robbie here. Jonathan, this was this was kind of like the home game today. We talked with Bob Gillespie for those in South Carolina, around South Carolina, or have just paid golf, paid attention to golf in South Carolina, will know this name and definitely recognize the voice if you've heard him on many, many countless radio things. But probably read an article or anything. But yeah, the legendary Bob Gillespie. Jonathan, what do you think of this?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I feel like our GameCock count is still definitely uh teetering that direction versus others. He did probably mention Clemson more than we've ever had anyone mention Clemson on our podcast. But I'll filter all that out. Right, exactly. Well, they'll bleep that out. That way we don't have to. It is always interesting. Uh I love it whenever we get writers together because as you'll you'll hear, there's there's a story, there's just a story after a story after a story. Like it just uh it never and not never ends in a bad sense, just in the sense of like you had to write for so long and s every day that there's always something you found interesting. And so uh I mean I don't know how how many stories he would have about South Carolina golf and everything that could be told. Uh he could probably write a book about every single golf course that he's played and all the memories that go along with it. So I hope you enjoy it because it it was it was enjoyable to listen to the first time. You all get to hear the second.

SPEAKER_02

It would be a it would be a huge book if he wrote out everything he knows and has done in in the Carolinas in golf. So yeah, he uh he was great. I I met him, I'd been a fan, I I'll admit I've been a fan for a while, and he said don't date him on this, but I have been a fan for a long time of his writing and hearing him on the radio at different times. And I got to meet him at the Colonial Life Charity Classic when it was here, the Corn Ferry event when it was here, I don't know, a month ago now, uh, in Columbia. And yeah, we might be able to do some things together with him uh down the road with uh with some other folks in the South Carolina media. So it's uh it's been fun, man. Again, golf is people, and you never know who you will meet and where that will go. And again, the whole spider web thing of like you do one thing, you end up here, and you meet this person, and who knows what opportunities will come from it. So uh I hope y'all enjoy our chat with Bob Gillespie. He he threw out the name Brad Faxen as somebody he knows, and Brad, like us, uh, loves the folks at Summit Golf Brands. Uh Braddy, Zero Restriction, Fairway, and Green. Uh, Brad could probably hook you up with a really, really good discount, but uh we can we can help you out with about a 20% discount if you use Best Ball20 at any of those sites and you can get 20% off your order. But yeah, let's get to our chat and conversation with the legendary Bob Gillespie. Y'all enjoy. All right, joining us today on the whole story, Mr. Bob Gillespie. For those that do not know, Bob, you might recognize the voice for those listening or uh the name, but if you are in South Carolina and you have paid attention to golf, I'll just say over the last couple years, you know exactly who Bob Gillespie is. He is uh golf in South Carolina. So, Bob, thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, happy to do it. Always look always happy to talk about golf.

SPEAKER_02

Well, who's not, right? Like Jonathan and I used to do sales in different industries for 20 plus years, and we keep joking that asking somebody to come on a podcast to talk about golf is the easiest sale that we have ever done. Like we get meetings all. I mean, if this counts as a meeting, we get more meetings doing this than we ever did in any of our regular sales jobs. So uh yeah, golf is a is a subject that everybody wants to talk about, everybody's got a story, and that's why we're here. So um as we jump into this thing, let's let's just go back to when golf became a thing for you. Like, did you grow up playing golf? When did when did that become a become a passion and hobby for you?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's sad to say when I was 12 years old and my younger brother was nine, um, the pro at Arnsburg Country Club, which is in a totally different location now than it was back then, uh, was doing clinics for members' children. We were my parents were members, and so they said to us, they said, Look, you know, we think you ought to be exposed to golf. So go out. It's a week-long thing, you know, every morning, I think for three hours or something like that. And they will show you, you know, what golf's about, how to hit golf balls and things like that. And if you don't like it, you don't have to do it anymore, but we think you ought to be exposed. So we went. So we did it for a week, and at the end of that week, they asked me, they said, Well, what do you think? And I said, Well, you know, I'm still kind of into, you know, football and other things, so I'm not all that crazy about it. My brother said, Well, I kind of like it. I think I'll stick with it. Okay, now that was more years ago than I care to admit, but uh my brother at one point was the club junior champion, and still at age 72 now, is a pretty good player. And I didn't touch a golf club again until I was out of college. And uh if you saw me play now, you'd understand, yes, that's why. So the point being is I had my opportunity um many years ago to get in on the ground floor and become a golfer, and I just didn't do it. And I've regretted it ever since. Uh, but I still enjoy playing. I'm not very good, but um, as an editor of mine once said at the state newspaper, he said, you know, it's a good thing for you that you write it a whole lot better than you play it. And uh, which is, again, still true. And that's not saying that I'm a great, great writer, but uh, the playing part is uh is a struggle sometimes. And then uh when I got into the newspaper business in uh 1976, um a lot of what I did was write about golf. Not immediately, but uh the longer I went along with it, the more uh golf became part of what I did uh for the uh Charleston newspaper, the then the News and Courier and the Evening Post, now just one paper, the Post and Courier. Uh that was in 78, I guess. Uh and then I came back to Columbia and I was covering golf for the Columbia Record uh until the Columbia Record was folded in 1988, and they put me over and they merged everybody from the uh old Columbia Record onto the state staff uh and let attrition take care of the overage on numbers. And so pretty much ever since then, um I've yeah, to greater or lesser degrees, I covered golf. In 2000, 99, 2000, somewhere around there, I pretty much went exclusively uh Sunday features, longer stories about whatever, and golf. And golf, I was the golf writer for the state from uh from 2000 99, 2000 until I retired or took a buyout, as we say, in 2010. So it's been you know again sporadic, but golf's been part of what I do uh as a writer for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_01

Well, talk about from that perspective though, for the long, long time. Because a lot of people, if you put a lot of our listeners are gonna be about our age, so we haven't been even been around golf as long as you have. Um what what would you say are the two things that have both uh changed the most and also stayed the same?

SPEAKER_00

Good question. Um well um what's changed, and then really it's been in the last probably three years, four years, is the upsurge of golf in South Carolina. Now, if you guys follow, and I know you do, uh uh around the time of COVID, uh golf had really not grown that much. I mean, people were playing and things like that, but the game was in a little bit of a lull. Um, there had been no new golf courses built in, gosh, maybe 10 years. Um, and uh I'm on something called the South Carolina Golf Course Ratings Panel, had been for oh, too many years to count. And we used to have a category was best new golf course in South Carolina this year. And we didn't give out an award because there were no new golf courses built in South Carolina. But COVID changed everything, uh, not just in South Carolina, but everywhere, because um COVID golf was one of the things you could do under COVID restrictions. Um, you know, you were outdoors in the fresh air. Uh you weren't you didn't have to be that close to people. Uh you guys probably remember right when COVID came in. If you were playing golf in a cart, they put one person in a cart. They didn't want two people for fear that one would infect the other. Um, but if you walked, then you know, you put your bag on a cart or on your shoulder and off you went. And you could stay as far away from the other guy you were playing with as you wanted to. Six feet was the recommended distance. Well, anyway, um, as COVID wound down 2022, I guess, um, all of a sudden there was this upsurge in interest in golf. And that in turn, not sure it was a direct translation, but all of a sudden, more golf courses were being built in South Carolina. Um I do some freelance writing for the South Carolina Golf Association's monthly or three times a year magazine, Palmetto Golfer. And at one point they called me up and they said, Hey, um, there's a kind of a number of these new courses coming online in South Carolina. We think it's, you know, like eight or ten or twelve or some, or no, excuse me. They said, I think there's about five new golf courses. So I started looking. There were a dozen right then, and there's more coming on all the time. Um, some of them are redoes, like for example, we were talking about uh the State Amateur, which is coming up uh in July at Coyote Club, which was the old Sunset Country Club in Sumter, which was bought by the uh Thompson brothers over there, and um they brought in architects from uh architect from Pinehurst who totally redid it. And that is now a private club, uh fairly high-end, and uh for better or worse, that seems to be where golf has gone in South Carolina. And I'll get back to why South Carolina in a second, but it seems like all the new courses, with a few exceptions, are private and fairly high-end. Um that just seems to be the business model that people have decided that's the way to go. So in the Aiken area, you have the tree farm, you have Old Barnwell, uh coming soon, is 21 Club, which I don't know as much about. Uh, their courses down in um in the Hilton Head area in Bluffton, uh, May River, which has been there for a little while, is added uh Palmetta Bluff development is developed, Anson Point, which has just come out now. They have another one called Crossroads, which is unique, I think, in South Carolina. It's a reversible nine-hole course. You play nine holes one way, then you turn around and you play the same holes, but from the back the other direction. Uh again, this is down in uh the Palmetto Bluff subdivision, or excuse me, development. And uh there's a course over near Camden uh called uh called uh Brooms Edge, which I again I have not seen yet over in Rembert. And then there's some more. There's a course in uh Simpsonville that's uh in the process of being built called Kawanu. I could go on and on. There's a long list, and people want to know, they can look it up and bring your bring your gold card or your sil your platinum card if you want to join for most of them. But there are some new ones. There's uh one called uh being developed now, which I think will come into play probably the end of this year, called Candy Root, and it is located, I'm not sure exactly where, but it's somewhere between Charlotte and Columbia, about halfway. And that will be high-end, but public golf. And uh, you know, again, bring your wallet and your your uh credit card, but it will be open to most people. So that's kind of where golf is, uh has come the last two, three, four years. And everything that I've read is that um uh if you're familiar with Pinehurst, uh Pinehurst is in something called the sand belt in North Carolina. Well, that sand belt extends from North Carolina down through the Midlands of uh South Carolina and all the way into the Aiken, Augusta area in Georgia. Uh it's perfect soil for uh golf courses to be built. Sandy soil, good for drainage, good for growing grass and all this. And this seems to be where all of this is, most of this is coming. Again, like I said, there's some in Charleston area, some up in the Greenville area, but for the most part, it's through the Midlands of South Carolina. And there will probably be more courses. As we speak, there's probably a new one coming online that I don't know about yet. Uh, but that's kind of where golf is in South Carolina. Uh for a long time, South Carolina was kind of um private courses in some towns, uh, Columbia, Barnsburg, Charleston, all that. And then resort golf started back up probably am I going on too long on this, guys? Tell me because. But uh if you if you know uh well, for instance, the heritage, the Harbor Town course was built in 1969. Pete Dye and Jack Nicholas, mostly Pete. Jack put his name on it. And that started a lot of the golf that you see down in the um Hilton Head and then up into Charleston, a little less so in Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach has been kind of the home of public golf for, gosh, I don't know, 40, 50 years. At one point, there were a hundred golf courses, more than a hundred golf courses in Myrtle Beach. Some of those have gone the way of um real estate that weren't doing that well, but it's still that's they they bill themselves as the golf capital of the United States. And there's a lot of golf there. Uh again, range from uh some private, some high-end public, to, you know, you can go there with a buddy trip and pay 30 or 40 bucks and play golf. Um, and that's kind of the story of South Carolina. It's considered probably one of maybe the top five states in in the United States for golf, both private and public. And uh that's what that's what we have. So that's kind of that's kind of a broad layout of of where things are. So um again, I do better when I'm asked questions. So, you know, ask me what you want to know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, absolutely. So uh what I mean, what you're saying is there are plenty of stories out there for anybody wanting to talk about golf in South Carolina. And and yeah, being in Columbia, Jonathan over in Augusta, we we jokingly say that the you know, the stretch between Columbia and Augusta right now on I-20 is you can you know turn off any exit and pretty much find a brand new golf course. Uh and and we have, and there's some amazing places out there. But I guess I want to get back to your writing, right? And like when how did you decide like writing was going to be what you wanted to do for a career? And then uh specifically, how did you say, well, I'm gonna focus on the golf piece?

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Well, when back back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in high school, um, I had a English teacher once who was the advisor for our high school newspaper. And I thought, I knew early on, I don't couldn't tell you exactly when, but pretty early on I wanted to write. Uh, and I like the newspaper model because you can't you wrote something every day or almost every day, and um, but I wasn't selected to be on the newspaper staff. And I went, oh, well, maybe I'm wrong. Well, uh, I had this English teacher, and she called me in one day and she said, You know, you you know, your writing's pretty good. Why aren't you on the school newspaper? And I said, Well, you know, I applied and they turned me down. And she said, she said, Listen, she said, what they do is they every they get a list of names for people who applied and they take every other name. You just name fell in the wrong spot. She said, as far as I'm concerned, you're on the staff now. So that's how I got started. Did that for a couple of years. And uh so when time to go to college rolled around, South University of South Carolina had a very well-regarded journalism program. So that's where I decided to go and uh went there, worked in um actually uh started out in uh news, what they call news editorial, which was newspapers, magazines, that sort of thing. But my typing skills were not great. And so I said, oh, well, you know, I could get into broadcasting. All you gotta do is be able to talk. Later found out I actually got to be able to type there too. But I majored in broadcasting at USC, finished up. Um there were no jobs when I came out, so I turned around and uh managed to uh procure a graduate assistantship, which helped pay for graduate school, and in um working with a professor in advertising who, oh, showing my age, he is still with us in this world. Uh he's 90 years, almost 91 years old now, lives in Columbia, good friend. And so I did that for a few years, and then I got out, and um I thought, well, now what do I do? Um there was a couple of radio jobs that I applied for, got one, and then a professor of mine at the school said, Um, got a job for you. I said, I got a job. He said, Well, we got a better job. That was in public relations in Greenville. That lasted about eight months, and that was not me. And I was home visiting my parents, went by the Orangeburg newspaper, the Times and Democrat, which I had worked for in the summer, and they said, How do you like your job in Greenville? And I said, It's not me. They said, Come in here, we want to talk to you. Next thing I know, I'm a writer, I'm on the staff of the Orangeburg paper. Two months later, the sports editor quit and I got his job. And that's kind of how it got started. Uh, as far as the golf end of things, I always enjoyed it. Like I said, I took it up after college and was no good, but enjoyed the game. And I s I heard about the heritage. Oh, okay. This is a PGA tour event in South Carolina at Hilton Head. I think I want to go to that. So 1977, really dating myself here, I put in for a credential, was applied was approved, and drove down on Saturday night just long enough to cover one round, the final round. Fellow named Graham Marsh from, I believe, Australia, won the tournament. And that was fifty years, roughly fifty years ago. And with the exception of two years of COVID, I've been to every heritage ever since. So this year I did my 48th Heritage. So that's that's that's golf on the grand scale. Um, but you know, when you're going to the heritage every year, the newspapers guys, well, you know, we got a local tournament here, you ought to go cover that. Or we got a guy, some guy who went to Clemson or South Carolina who's now on the PGA tour, you need to call them up and do an interview with them. And it just it just grows. It, you know, it it's it's uh newspapers in South Carolina, fortunately for me, realized that golf was a story that people wanted to know about, wanted to read about. And they said, Well, we got this guy, he seems to know a little bit about it, let's send him. And that's kind of how it's happened.

SPEAKER_01

We'll we'll also tell everybody you were a child prodigy. So whenever you know 48 years, you're only 10. 10 years old whenever you first start. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, nobody's gonna buy that. Nice try. Kid reporters. We got it. We got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, talk about I mean, talk about the professional golf scene in South Carolina. You you're talking about the heritage, right? We've had that, and we've had you know some majors uh roll through down at uh Kiowa, things like that. But talk about your experience covering uh professional golf, and I guess we can throw in uh some of the some of the greats from schools in the Carolina that have made it uh to the pro ranks.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Well, um probably a good place to start with that would be Clemson, which has produced a pretty fair number of professionals. Uh one of the first that I knew was Jonathan Bird, who grew up here in Columbia. Uh his dad was a great golf fan and encouraged Jonathan and his brother Jordan, who is now the golf coach at Clemson, by the way. And so um I can tell my favorite Jonathan Byrd story. So Jonathan is a very successful, he's three-year-American at Clemson and golf, comes out and goes through what was then, I guess, the Nike Tour or the Web.com tour. I forget. It's been many names. It's now the Corn Ferry Tour. Right. And so um Jonathan won a tournament out there and got on the PGA tour. And I want to say this was either 2000 or 2001. My memory's not the best. And so um he was he had played in four tournaments, missed the cut in all four. Kind of disappointed. He goes to Hilton Head, plays of the heritage, misses the cut. So now he's five tournaments into his career and he hadn't made a dime yet. And but I just I just had a feeling about him that he was gonna be pretty good. And I went to my editors and I said, you know, I'm doing these long stories. Um I'd like to do one on him, and I want to follow him for a whole week at a golf tournament. And I said, uh, they said, Well, what's coming up? And I said, Well, and they're not gonna s the paper's not gonna send me to California. Fortunately, the week after the Harris that year was Greensboro. Hey, you can drive to Greensboro. You can find an inexpensive hotel room. Newspapers tend to be a little tight fisted on stuff like this. So I said, Okay. So I approached Jonathan and said, I'd like to do this. He said, Okay, we'll do that. Well, so I I went up to Greensboro and showed up, I think like on Tuesday of the tournament. And of course he's there hitting practice rounds. And at that time his caddy was a fellow named Mike Carrick, who is legendary on the Pro Tour as far as caddies go. I'm not sure he's still doing it now, but 25 years ago he was. He had been Tom Kite's caddy for a number of years. So uh I hit it off with Carrick and we talked. And so for several days there, uh I was going everywhere Jonathan went. If he had a practice round, they actually back then you could come inside the ropes and walk with the caddy while he played his practice round. So I did that for a couple of days. Um when he went to the workout gym, which was a new thing then. They had a portable trailer with all sorts of workout equipment, and Jonathan was big into this. Um, one of my favorite stories in that story that I wrote was I was asking him about this, watching him do his weights and so forth and golf specific exercises. And uh I asked him, what's a good story about it? He says, Well, best story is this. So I go to the trailer one day and I'm in there. And back then it wasn't nearly as many. Now all of them are working out, all of them are doing fitness. But at the time there wasn't that many of them. So Jonathan's in there, he says, So I'm working out this one day. He said, You know how you can feel when somebody's watching you? And I said, Yeah. He said, I just had this feeling somebody's watching me. So I look over at the door and there's this guy leaning up against the door watching me do my workout routine, Tiger Woods. And so he said, he didn't come over, but then when I walked out, he stopped me. He said, Hey, bird, he said, uh, where'd you get that routine work out your routine? And I looked at him, and it turned out they had the same trainer. Tiger didn't know that, and he said, I got the same place you got yours, and said the guy's name. And oh, okay. So anyway, so the week goes on, and getting to the important stuff, he goes out and he plays the first round and he's right around the cut line. And of course he knows what this is like because he's been there before. He goes to the second day, which is make it or break it day, and he comes to his 18th hole, which was the ninth hole at the at Forest, Forest Hills, I believe it is, or Forest Something in Greensboro. And he's again right on the cut line. He can't afford to make a bogey. He comes to the that the ninth hole, par five, hits a nice drive, he's in the middle, pulls out his three wood, he's gonna hit it on the green. And I'm standing, by now I can't be inside the ropes, but I can be over on the ropes. And as soon as he hits that ball, I hear him go, oh no! And I'm going, uh-oh. I'll be going home early this week. And so I hustle on up to the green, and lo and behold, his ball is in the bunker next to the green. And I thought, well, that's not so bad. And somebody says, Yeah, that ball was coming over here, and it looked like it was going to go past the green, bounced out of bounds into the parking lot, underneath a parked courtesy car. I said, Well, what happened? And somebody says, It hit that guy. It's a North Carolina highway patrolman. I walk over to the guy and I said, What happened? He said, It hit me on my thigh and bounced into the bunker. I said, Was it where was it going? He said, parking lot. I said, Wow. So Jonathan comes up, he gets the story, he goes over, thanks the guy profusely, gets up and down from the bunker to make the cut by stroke, yeah, by one stroke. Instead of right on the line, he's one stroke to the good. And so you say, Well, okay, good for him. That weekend he goes nuts. Sunday, he make he manages to finish third, biggest paycheck he's gonna see for a while. And and I was there for the whole thing. And I came home and wrote this massively long story that took up way too many pages in this in the following Sunday paper. And somebody said to me when I got back from uh the tournament, they said, Well, what was that like? I said, I'm gonna ride that guy all the way to retirement. And I don't mean his, I mean mine. And sure enough, that's pretty much what I did. So Jonathan was kind of like my first those. Then, of course, Lucas Glover came along. 2009, he goes up to uh Beth Page Black and wins the U.S. Open, which is huge. Um, then of course, Jonathan, uh not excuse me, um uh Dustin Johnson comes along. Dustin goes to the U.S. Open and keeps coming close, keeps coming. I don't know if you guys remember this. He had a chance to to tie for or win the PGA one year, and he took it took an illegal, played a ball illegally out of what they called a bunker, which was a sandy spot about as wide as my hands right now, but that was the way it was set up. Then he goes to um to not Aaron Hills, that's up in Chambers. Yeah, Chambers Bay. Same thing. He's got all he needs, he's got a putt to win. He misses the putt. He's got a putt to tie, and he misses that. And Justin, I think was that Speeth. Speith wins the open. Yeah. Speeth in Chambers Bay. And you go, oh, what a shame. He comes back the next year and wins the thing handily, wins the U.S. Open. And then in 2020, during the COVID year, um, when they played the Masters in November, he goes to Augusta and breaks and sets the record for 30 for 72 holes and wins the Masters. And so I was at none of those, unfortunately. Uh, but followed them on TV and did his interviews over the phone, or next time I caught up with these guys. So we've had our share, yeah, we've had a share of really good players uh come through South Carolina in the last, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. Um, some of them are aging out a little bit. It struck me the other day, a while back, I called up Jonathan Byrd because he was going to be playing in uh the Myrtle Beach tournament. And he said, yeah, I said, well, so what's your game like now? He said, Bob, I'm 48. I'm getting ready for the champions tour. And I thought, okay, you're old, you're if you're that old, then I'm really old. Um, but he's 48. Lucas Glover is 36, still a still a factor. He's hasn't won a lot lately, but he's been a factor a couple of years ago. He finished his two of the last three tournaments he played in at the end of the year. Um, and um, you know, still a factor. Again, Dustin Johnson, of course, everybody knows, he just he opted out a few years ago for the LIV tour and has made a fair amount of money over there. He still gets to play in the majors uh most years, uh, but he hasn't been a factor, and I don't know if you know Dustin, Dustin loves golf, but he doesn't necessarily love professional golf. He made a ton of money with Live, and in my mind, he still wants to win, but the the passion maybe is not quite there like it was when he was playing every week on the PGA tour. So anyway, that's uh that's South Carolina golf in a fair nutshell. You got new guys coming along. Um uh who am I trying to think of? Jacob Jacob Bridgman played at Clemson, went out, won the Genesis this year. That gets him into everything. I think that kid can win a major. I really do. I'm impressed with him.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, he won the Genesis after being very close here at Pebble, and he put the ball on the beach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, this is this was this has been his year to really make a name for himself. And I've I I can see him uh again, talked with um Larry Pennley, the longtime coach at Clemson, 30 some odd years at Clemson, and then Jordan Byrd, both, then they both rave about Jacob Bridgeman. Say, this is the guy, you know, he's gonna be the he's gonna be the next big number coming out of Clemson. And South Carolina's has had some good players over the years, but nothing like the Clemson program. And there are a few guys there that uh are you know just breaking in now. Um again, names escape me sometimes.

SPEAKER_02

But South Carolina probably has more notoriety on the LPGA tour with players like Christy McPherson and some of these others that are that are taking off.

SPEAKER_00

Well, of course, the original of course is Beth Daniel, who was playing when I was in Charleston back in the late 70s, she was a teenager uh and then played at Furman, uh won two U.S. amateurs and won it, didn't win it, won it, and um, and then went out and uh made the uh uh LPGA Hall or the World Golf Hall of Fame, um, and won uh one major, the LPGA Championship one year. And Beth now is uh again, she's iconic in Charleston and in South Carolina. Uh the South Carolina Golf Association has an annual Boys and Girls Player of the Year Award. The Girls Award is Beth Daniel Award, and the Boys Award is the Jay Haas Award. And we could talk forever about Jay Haas. Uh this guy came so close to winning majors. I think he finished third in the May in the Masters one year. He had other years where he was right there. He's gone out on the champions and had a really good career. And Jay's still competing, although he is now, I want to say he's hit 70. I believe that's true. And um and one of the best, one of the best people you will ever meet, and the whole family, too. Uh son Bill uh won the uh 2011 uh tour championship as well as the FedEx Cup and cashed a nice $11 million check. So and Bill is 44 now. And this past week uh he had to try and qualify for the U.S. Open uh in Gaston, North Carolina, shot um shot 63 in the first round, and you're saying, well, it could be okay, and then she's 72, did not make did not make the U.S. Open this year. Uh nor did he. Yeah, Will, his son Will. Uh I taught I texted with Bill, wanted to maybe do a story about him and Will doing that, and I think he was still just a little, you know, kind of disappointed that he shot such a great round the first round and then went back on the same golf course later in the day and did not do nearly what he did the first round. He had a bogey on the first hole and then eight birdies the rest of the round to shoot that 63, but only I think he had like one birdie and two bogies or something like that. And again, it just didn't hold together. And he was disappointed, but uh he he seemed to really enjoy having his son on the bag. There were some videos of Will being interviewed by an interviewer uh with a microphone in his mouth. And say, Yeah, well, it's my job to just keep him, you know, keep him focused. And Bill's saying, Yeah, I'm yeah, I need you to keep focused. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

But uh I would assume every week there's a story or two that doesn't get told just because there's only so many inches in the column of a newspaper. You have one or two that stick out that maybe you wrote it and then it just made the it, you know, it didn't make it to the uh past the cutting floor that you think, man, a player or a course that really should have been told that unfortunately wasn't able to.

SPEAKER_00

Oh wow, you're gonna test me now. Um again, that probably you have to remember too, I've been quote unquote retired from the newspaper for 16 years. So some of those stories are somewhere back behind me there. Um, I mean, there's been some good stories. I hopefully they have too many of them hadn't ended up on the floor. Uh one of my favorites, well, just recently, um was at the Myrtle Beach Tournament. And again, the Myrtle Beach tournament is what they now call an alternate field tournament. That same week, the truest was being played in Charlotte. That's where the top 70 players were going for $20 million, and the guys in Myrtle Beach are going for about three, or about what the winner gets in Charlotte. But um, you know, there's some good stories down there. And I think it was the second or third, I think it was the second round maybe. Brant Snedeker is in the contention. Well, yeah, Brant Snedeker won the heritage um 15 years ago, and he's 45 now. Again, you know, he's he's looking at that champions tour thinking, okay, that's where I'm going to be here before too long. But um, you know, I talked to him a little, got to talk to him a little bit about the heritage 15 years ago and how much that meant to him. And if you may recall, 2011 was a critical year for the heritage. That was the year that their Verizon, I think it was, yeah, Verizon sponsorship ran out. And they were looking for a new sponsor, and they didn't find one right away. And um, so they went to the the town of Hilton Head and the surrounding communities, and they had a little bit of a rainy day fund, and they managed to put up the, I think it was a million dollars that they had to put up back then to have the PGA Tour endorse them as a site. So they played that year as the Heritage, no sponsor. And that was the year that Brent Snedeker won. And um, you know, fortunately for them, they were in negotiations, and before the week had run out, by Sunday, they were able to announce that Royal Bank of Canada, the RBC, is coming on as our new sponsor, which kicked in in 2012 and has been the sponsor ever since. So again, again, that's a pretty significant year for the heritage. There are other ones too. Um, but that one was the most recent one. So, you know, I got to chat with Brant, and Brent Sneddeker is just one of the nicest human beings on the planet, let alone a golfer. So we go out, uh, we go back in there on Sunday, and he's, I think, four or five shots behind the lead. And unfortunately, the leader, one of the guys at the lead was Carson Young, who's a Clemson player, who has been close a few times and has just never quite been able to carry it through to the last day. And unfortunately, that's exactly what happened this year is he, you know, he didn't shoot a bad score, but other people shot a lot better score. And so Snediger puts himself in contention and um goes to the final hole and bogies the last hole and falls out of a tie for the lead. And they'd be like, oh no, that's too bad. Well, the fellow who he's tied with, who, again, I'm sorry, my memories, my memory just a couple of months ago is not good. Guy did the same thing. And so now Brant ends up anyway, long story short, Brandt Snedaker at age 45 wins for the first time in six, seven years. Uh now he is eligible for the U.S. Open. The PGA came up immediately, he was eligible for that. He'll be eligible for the U.S. Open coming up next week. Uh, all these good things that you get, even if it is an alternate field tournament, you get to play in. And the man came in, and when people start asking, what does this mean to you? You could see there were tears in his eyes. And that just tells you how much professional golf can mean to a guy who's made it his career, and probably figured, okay, my my my winning days are behind me until I get to the champions tour, then maybe I can contend again. And he comes up and beats guys, you know, 20 years younger than him. And um it just it it it just it was a very moving thing. You're talking about on the cutting room floor, backing up a little bit. For the last three years, um, I have written for a website. I'm gonna plug- Can I plug myself? Absolutely. Websites called straightupsports.net. And I've written about pretty much anything they say, bright up whatever you want to, one story a week. So unfortunately, the way the deadlines fall, I needed to have a story for that weekend by Sunday morning. So I wrote Brant Snedeker and said, we don't know what he's gonna do, but we're gonna pay attention. And lo and behold, he goes out and wins past my deadline, and I called the guys up and I said, Can I update this story? And like say he won? Okay, yeah, what the heck? Do it. And so they finally got the story updated by about Tuesday. And so I ended up writing double doing double duty that week, but I was happy to do it because it was such a good story. But that one almost got lost, as you said, on the cutting room floor.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. Yeah, pretty good for uh uh the I guess upcoming President's Cup captain. I mean, maybe maybe we'll have another controversy like feeding where he's gonna be tempted to pick himself. Probably not this time, but uh probably not. But um Let me ask you this. I I've been curious about it. So reporters, media, things like that. When you have credentials and you go to an event, the questions that you ask, do you have a story in mind kind of that you you might like to write about and that you might be kind of you know leading questions towards answers that would fill that story, or are you letting it develop and kind of seeing what comes up to maybe ask questions then around kind of current things to then create a story or find the story there?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's it's not hard and fast. It's probably the best way to say is it can be one, it can be the other, it can be a blend of the two. And again, reporters who just show up at a tournament and don't do their pregame research to me are not doing their job. So again, like you mentioned, for instance, when I saw Brant Snedeker was near the lead after the second round, I said, Oh, Brent Snedeker, he won the heritage in 2011, he's got a history in South Carolina, uh, he's the uh he'll be the captain of the president's cup team. And so you go in with those questions in mind, you know, because uh especially the stories I'm writing now are not really deadline stories. I wasn't writing, okay, I'm writing today for what happened today, and tomorrow I'll write what happens tomorrow for the next day, and that sort of thing. The old newspaper model. The stories I do now are more at the end of the week, this is what you want to have said about what you saw over the course of a week. So it's a little different now. Now, back in the day when I was writing a daily story, it was based more on what happened that day, but it could also you also want to be able to put put it in context, I guess is the best way to play it. You don't want to just say, well, you know, uh Justin Thomas um is leading the tournament after 36 holes. Well, yeah, but Justin Thomas won this tournament a couple of years ago. You need to get that in there. This perfect example, I was at Hildenhead doing a different freelance job for the uh Orangeburg paper. So I'm writing every day for the next day. So it's more of what you're talking about, what I call deadline pressure. And um, so going into the final round, uh, Matt Fitzpatrick, who had won the tournament a couple of years back, was in contention. Scotty Scheffler, who is the world's number one, was also there. And I wanted to kind of put it in context of, okay, um, both these guys know they can win this tournament. Scheffler is probably the favorite. But Fitzpatrick's not bad either. Well, as it turned out, Fitzpatrick went out and won the tournament. So when I wrote my final story, it was more from Fitzpatrick, it was from the Fitzpatrick angle, but it was also like, what's wrong with Scotty Scheffler? Because if you followed him this year, you know he won early in the year on the West Coast, and then he's been right there several times, and either had a bad, usually he has a terrible first round or terrible for him. He shoots 3-4 over par, and now he spends the rest of the week getting himself back in contention. Can't quite close the deal. And so that was my angle going into um the final round of the heritage is well, Matt Fitzpatrick won, and he's won here before, and that's great. But Scottie Sheffer is the guy everybody keeps expecting to win, and he keeps coming close, but no cigar. And I and that'll and I promise you that will be the angle next week at the U.S. Open because several reasons. One, of course, like I said, he's the number one player in the world. One of these days he's got to win again. And second of all, if he wins the U.S. Open, he becomes the next Rory McElroy, and he ends up with the grand with the uh grand slam, or the or yeah, whatever you want to call him. And uh he'll that will give him all four majors in his career. Um and so I imagine that'll be that's where it'll be written a lot uh next week up at Shinnecock Hills. And uh I wouldn't mind being there, but that's that's I went to Beth Page Black in the year Taiwan, I want to say 2002, and possibly the worst experience you can have is covering a golf tournament on Long Island because there's no place close by, everything's extraordinarily expensive. You spend half your life riding to and from the golf course on a bus and then riding back to your hotel late at night. And uh so I'm I'm on the one hand, I wish I could be there. On the other hand, I'm perfectly happy to watch it on TV this year.

SPEAKER_02

You can write a lot of stories from your uh from your couch for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah, oh yeah, and will. Same.

SPEAKER_01

Is there is there a tournament or a space in South Carolina that you really wish you either could write again or one that you feel like you missed along the way that you just never had the opportunity to?

SPEAKER_00

Hmm. That's a good question. Um the only one I can think of just in those in that category is there have now been two tournaments played at Congoree. Y'all are familiar with Congoree, the course down near Hilton Head. Uh they played the um one year they played the equivalent of the RBC Canadian, they didn't call it that, but that was the, you know, that was during COVID, and they were willing to host it, and Canada would not host it in Canada. So they played down there. I went down, I saw the course, I got to actually play the golf course, which was way too hard for me. Um, but got to play the golf course uh on Media Day, but then I really didn't have anybody that was going to send me back down there, and especially during COVID, I'm not sure, you know, they were very restrictive as to who could cover and what things you had to do to be there. So I didn't do that. Then they came back, the CJ Cup, the Korean tournament, was played there again, I think either the following year or two years later. And again, I did not have anybody that said to me, Hey, we're willing to pay you to go down there and we'll put you up in a hotel and all that stuff. So so I that would have been nice to see. I'd seen the course and I had a kind of a handle on it, and again, could watch it on TV, but didn't get to cover that one in person. Pretty much everything else around here, uh, you know, I've been to the I go to the here I find a way to get to the heritage every year. And I've got two more to 50, and that's my goal. When I hit 50, then I'll have to read. Think it over and see do I want to keep doing this or not. And I've been to all three Myrtle Beach tournaments. Um been to a bunch of there were um uh there were women's tournaments, there were a couple of women's tournaments back at Beth Daniels Heyday uh at Hilton Head that they played at Moss Creek. I got to all of those. Um no, not I I I can't think of anything I said. You know, that's the one I really missed, other than again, one of the Congregate tournaments would have been fun to cover live, but I did cover them from long distance. I get that.

SPEAKER_02

Well, let me ask you this. Uh, just thinking more about South Carolina golf, and we talked at the beginning uh a lot about just the boom of especially private courses and things like that. And you mentioned Candy Root has the public option uh that's coming in between Charlotte and Columbia. But what is what is missing in South Carolina? I know that's that's a hard question to think about, but what is missing in South Carolina, or what in relation to golf does South Carolina need more of?

SPEAKER_00

Well, the easy question would be more public golf, more good, you know, more affordable public golf. Uh that's been the concern talking with uh Biff Lathrop and the folks with the South Carolina Golf Association. I mean, they're thrilled that golf is booming in South Carolina, but they realize that a lot of their um SCGA members uh will, unless they know somebody or can get an invitation, they'll never get to play uh tree farm or they never get to play Old Barnwell. They never get to play uh, well, Broom's Edge is different. I'm under from what I understand, Brooms Edge may have to cause, may consider, for whatever reasons, I don't want to speculate, may have to consider a public option. That is, okay, we're gonna keep it pricey, but we'll let others in there. Because I think, you know, and this is what we've been concerned about is that it's great that they have all these golf courses, and they're great that people are putting the money in and spending the money and bringing great architects, building on great, great land, creating really fascinating new courses that are going to end up in these high ranks, but over a long period of time, are they going to be feasible? Are they going to be affordable? Um and you know, so that's kind of two ends of the same question. Will there be courses that people in South Carolina can play that where they're not members of a course? And will the courses that are now high-end and high dollar courses, will they be able to make it long term? And we don't know. I mean, that's a question that'll be answered. Um, case in point, right here in Columbia, um, I'm sure you're both familiar with the old Indian River, which has now become Selena, which is the Bryan brothers and the Middleton family. The Middleton family kind of bankrolled most of that. The Bryan brothers oversaw the reconstruction of it. And that's, of course, I played for years. And sadly, it was always, you said, this is a really nice design. It's too bad it's never in good shape. Well, I agree. Bryant, you know, Wesley Bryan especially came in, moved tease back to make it more challenging. Uh, they did a great job with uh bringing in uh the architects, doing the uh the upgrade of it and all that stuff. Um will that be able to make it in Columbia? I mean, so far, so good. Um, and it it never hurts to have a sugar daddy. Uh, I know this very well. I can tell my story of I grew up when I was when I started playing, I would play at Orangeburg Country Club, which my parents were members of, and my brother is still a member of. And but in 2009, uh, they were a lot of their members were aging out, they were getting too old, they didn't want to play. Uh young people were moving away from Orangeburg, and the membership was way down. And the course, quite frankly, was getting close to being bankrupt. And a gentleman named Frank Tourville, who was the money and the brains behind Zeus, which is a company that still manufacture, they do polymer products for everything from jet aircraft tubing to medical tubing. You know, they've got consistencies. It was at one point I could ask, I could, they were proud, they didn't have to tell me that I just came to the conclusion they were worth at least a hundred million dollars. Well, Frank Tourville was a crotchety old gentleman from um from Vermont, uh, who made his fortune in polymer business in New Jersey, decided that the Sunbelt was where he wanted to be. He sent out flyers all over the southeast, and the only he said the only city, only town that responded was Orangeburg, South Carolina. He went down, he decided that's where he wanted to put his Zeus plant, went in, put it in, and it's a huge business in South Carolina. Now I'll get to that in a minute. But he loved golf. And he went to the Orangeburg Country Club, and he actually went to the mayor of Orangeburg, who was also a realtor, and said, I want a house, but it's got to be on the golf course. And the guy said, We can do this. So they found him a course on the fourth T and he had his cart in the garage, and you know, a lot of people, and would play the club and was a member. Well, when he realized that they might be about to go under, he went to the owner of the uh excuse me, the membership and said, Gentlemen, here's the deal. I will pay you one dollar for your golf course, but I will absorb a million and a half dollars in debt that you owe, and I will commit to putting a million and a half dollars in infrastructure and upgrades. And they all went, Yes, come please, come come do this. So they did. Well, Mr. Turval was never one to do something halfway. So he brought in an architect named Richard Mandel out of Pinehurst and brought him in and said, I want to redo this golf course. He said, Well, what do you want? And um, like I said, this is not really our rate of. He said, I want the best golf course in South Carolina. Mandel said, I'll do what I can. And they put a lot of money. Nobody will ever tell you how much they put in. When I asked Mandel, I said, Well, you know, the story was that uh Mr. Tourville committed to a million and a half in improvements, and he laughed. He said, Bob, we put that much inside. So they redid Orangeburg Golf Course in the year in 2009, reopened in the fall, and it has quickly returned to being one of the best golf courses in South Carolina in a town that really has no reason to be able to support a course like that. Now, here's what's happened since. Uh about three years ago, Mr. Tourville, who had a number of health issues, was a benefactor to numerous um places in Orangeburg and Charleston, including a lot of MUSC stuff. There's a couple of buildings in MUSC in Charleston named for him and his wife. Uh, but he passed away. Um and his sons inherit took it over and as well as Zeus. Well, Zeus was sold about a year and a half ago for $4.5 billion. That's what the family got. And uh one son who owned a brewery here in Columbia decided, why am I in the brewery business when I just got my share of that? So he closed the brewery down. But so far, so good, Nockwood, um, his son Doug and Doug's wife, Daryl, are maintaining Armsburg Country Club. And it's never going to be a moneymaker. There's just no way a town that size with a membership that size can keep it at the level it has been. So we all sit around and we we have you know fingers crossed because it's such a beautiful place, beautiful golf course. Uh Mandel did a fabulous job on it, and it remains one of the better, especially one of the better, what they call classic courses, which is anything built before 1980. Uh the course out there was built in the early 60s. Um, 1920.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah. I I love that course. It's great, except for whatever that hole 12 is, the dog leg left around the water, like that one. They could redo that one.

SPEAKER_00

12. Hold on, I yeah, I should know this. Oh, yeah, yeah. The murder hole. Yeah. Number par four. Yeah. Nobody pars that hole. And yeah, I play the four.

SPEAKER_02

It's a triple bogey waiting to happen.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's the toughest hole on that golf course. And it and number seven, which is the par four where you have to carry the water on the approach. I don't know if you remember that one or not. But those two are really yeah, but I mean, yeah, it there's there are no bad holes on that golf course. In fact, interesting story for you. Uh, are we okay on time? Yeah, I guess we are. Sure. So when I was doing, you know, um, well, okay, backing up again. When I left the newspaper, I did a lot of freelance on a lot of different stuff. And one day I went down to Orangeburg, because I hadn't been down there since they redid it in 09. This was probably 2010. And I played it and I loved it. And I uh went home and went to the newspaper where I still had a relationship, and uh they've said, What have you been doing? I said, Well, yeah, I went down to Orangeburg and played. They said, Orangeburg? I said, and the publisher, not the publisher, excuse me, one of the editors was a golfer. And he said, Is that course any good? I said, Son, you need to go down there. I said, They have done so much for that golf course in the last six to eight months. And uh, and then I started talking about Frank Tourville, who, like I said, if there was a good cause in the Orangeburg area, he gave money to it. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Chamber of Commerce, um Um Harvest Hope, Habitat for Humanity. If there was a cause, he gave money to it. And just a great human dream being, great citizen. And the executive editor heard me talking about that, and he said, he said, I don't know about this guy. Have we never written a story about this guy? And I said, Not that I'm aware of. He said, Why don't you do that? I said, Okay, you're gonna pay me for that. Oh, yeah. So I went down, interviewed him, talked about the golf course, talked about him, wrote that story. And a few weeks after that, his vice president called me up and he said, We'd like to hire you to write about our golf course and publicize it. And I said, Okay, I'm that's fine. I'm not working for the newspaper anymore. So I did, and that created a relationship between them. So I was like the Arnsburg Country Club writer for about eight years until Mr. Tourville passed away, and they said, Okay, we appreciate it. Thanks, goodbye. So so I've known that course all my life, and I've known uh the country club since 2009 pretty intimately. I've written every time it gets a rank or got ranked somewhere nationally or or statewide, I got to write about it. So that's that's my baby down there.

SPEAKER_01

That is one of the one of the few courses in uh South Carolina I have not played that Robbie has frequented or others have. So I've heard good things.

SPEAKER_00

Robbie, tell them to come tell them to come to Columbia sometime. We'll we'll see if we can work that out.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, listen, we can make it my my favorite one's Lenric, but that would be a whole nother conversation.

SPEAKER_00

So Yeah, Lenric is they they've they've done some work at it, Lenric. And there's another project. Do you know about the Hidden Valley project?

unknown

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

I've heard a little bit about it. Okay. I don't know a lot about it, but apparently, I think either Lexington County or some entity in Lexington County bought it. And they are, again, it's another one. They're redoing it, uh, upgrading it. Um, I play, I used to play out there all the time. Uh, you know, it's public golf. You know, conditioning, you just didn't know depending on what week you were there. But apparently they're gonna put put some money into it and make it a viable public golf course out there. And I'm looking forward to seeing it. I think probably this fall sometime, it should I'm waiting to see what it's like.

SPEAKER_02

We could definitely use, like we were saying, we could definitely use some more good public options uh in the cloudy area.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And what I'm afraid, what I think it's probably gonna be do done is it's gonna be courses like that that were marginal, and then somebody said, okay, there's enough money to be made to make it viable for us to bring it back as a public golf course like that. You mentioned Lenric. Lenric, again, is county owned, so there's not that same kind of incentive, but uh they have put some more money into it. They've redone the greens a couple of times. Uh I hope they've I haven't been out there in a while. You know, they need need all the bunkers are always an issue, and that's any golf course. Bunkers are always going to be the biggest issue, keeping them sandy and not muddy and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, as we begin to wrap up, we always ask all of our guests uh a question and from the very beginning. Good golfers, it's always hard to choose from. I'm not a very good at golf, and you you said you're not either. So you might have one of these in your bag. What is the story of your most memorable golf shot?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, mercy. Um, got two. All right. Um, and only because they're the only two, well, three, excuse me, only three Eagles I've ever made. So the first one, um, and this is close to my heart. I'll save this one for last. First one was I was playing with, I mentioned Teddy Hefting, who has a radio show, invited him down to Orangeburg. We played, it was the I have to walk my way around because I can't remember. Short part, relatively short par four. I had a nine-iron into the green, one hop into the hole for a for a birdie, excuse me, for an Eagle, Eagle Two. Teddy insists I go up there and stand there with a ball in my hand and the flagpole in the other. He takes my picture with his phone camera, it's still on my phone somewhere. Okay. In 2013, I was invited to play in a golf writer's uh junket tour to Ireland. And you know, that was one, yeah. You can if you can get if you can get to Dublin, we can put you out and all the golf you can play for a week. Sign me up. And same thing. Yeah, it's par five, and um uh hit hit my third hit my third shot in there and it rolled in for a bur for an eagle. And that was fun. And got that photo too. The only one I don't have a photo is I was playing in a golf tournament for writers in Myrtle Beach. And we were playing three courses, only one of two, one of which is no longer there, The Witch, The Wizard, and the Man of War. I don't know if you guys know those. Robbie's sick in his ass, but you know. And of course, the the witch they closed down for real estate because it kept flooding. It was too low. But the wizard and the man of war are still there. So this was Man of War. I'm playing with my best friend in the business. And I don't know how long you guys have read newspapers, but I would hope you guys were familiar with Ken Berger, who wrote for the Charleston newspaper, one of the best sports writers or writers of any kind ever. And Ken was my dear friend, and Ken unfortunately passed away uh in 2015 from an aggressive form of prostate cancer that plagued him. He fought it for eight years bravely and finally succumbed to it. But this was 2013. His health was pretty decent at this time, and we were playing in this tournament, and we were playing the net division. So we go out and we're four or five shots off the lead, and we come to this par five, and I hit driver, and I hit three wood, and I had an eight iron into the green and hit it up to the green, couldn't see it, walked up there. We walked around, where's my ball? Where's my ball? Where's my ball? Finally, Ken says, Look in the hole. I said, Yeah, right. Sure enough, there it was. Now, the great part about this is we were in the handicap division. I was getting two strokes. That was a net one. I looked at Ken and I said, play hard the rest of the day, man. I've done my part. And we won. And I still have a um a little plaque with a picture of him and me uh about first place net. And that's that still warms my heart because he was such a good guy. And um, you know, we we did not need to lose him way too early. So that's probably those are probably my three favorite golf memories of all time in terms of one shot.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. Well, I I think the highlight of that is you remember the the last one more because of who you played with than what happened. But yeah winning and getting an eagle is uh is pretty good uh constellation prize as well. But I'll take it. Yeah, golf is uh it's all about relationships, who you know, who you get to play with, and spend time with. So very nice. Well, let me ask you this. We we do this thing called a quick nine, it's a rapid fire. Uh we'll just ask some kind of favorite kind of questions. So the first one is we want to know what the favorite course, and why don't we limit this to South Carolina? What is the favorite course that you've ever played? And it might be the Arnsburg.

SPEAKER_00

Orangeburg would be one up. Yeah, it's hard to say because they differ. Um, I can't play it, but the ocean course at Kiowa is just unbelievable. Um, I think everybody ought to at least go play it one time to figure out what golf is like places other than the United States, because it's it's not a true Lynx course, but is as close as close as you're gonna get to a Lynx course unless you go to Bandon Dunes, which I've never played. Um it'll tear you out for sure. Arnsburg near and dear to my heart. Um I do love uh the new course, Coyote, over in Sumter. Uh again, too tough for me, but they really did a good job there. Um I'm sure I'm leaving somebody up. Those would be my South Carolina courses. Can I throw in an international course? Sure. Actually, two of them. And uh first played them in 2013, played both of them again in 2015, and then again in 2018 in Ireland. On the west coast of Ireland, it's called the Wild Atlantic Way. Two courses. One is Carn Golflings in a town of about a thousand people in County Mayo called Belmulle.

SPEAKER_02

And the other one is that flag right there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, mine's right there.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, you've been there? We have. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you played Anniscrone about an hour away, same thing. Huge dunes, you play between the dunes. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. I I encourage that. Okay. I I ran on too long. Ask me the other ones.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01

We we are big fans of Karn, so we completely agree with that.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Do you have a bucket list course that you haven't played yet?

SPEAKER_00

Ooh. Um St. Andrews. I've been to it, I've walked it, I've never played it. That would be nice.

SPEAKER_01

That one's that one right there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good one. Very nice.

SPEAKER_02

All right. Well, Armsburg is one that might qualify for this, so let's go with something different. What's the favorite course that no one knows about?

SPEAKER_00

Favorite course no one knows about. Oh boy. I know there I'm there's some. I tell you what, and we we've, you know, golf panel rated. Aiken Golf Club. If you've ever been there, it's under 6,000 yards, and it is the toughest course under 6,000 yards you will ever play in your life. It is wonderful. It reminds you of Pinehurst. Um, yeah, I love that course. And Jim McNair, the guy who owns it, is fabulous, just a great man. You can't ever get him on the phone because he's always on a bulldozer doing some upgrades. So that would be my favorite for that. That would be the unknown, yes.

SPEAKER_01

That's a great course. Yep. Who would be in your dream force them?

SPEAKER_00

Oh boy. Well, he's gonna hate this. My brother, David, who's a pretty good player, my dad, if we could bring him back, and probably my cousin Raleigh, who he and I have actually never played together. We keep threatening to. So that'd be the force of I mean, you know, yeah, Tiger Woods, sure, but uh but uh yeah, actually, probably I I got to play with Jay Haas one time. Again, great player, one of the nicest people on the planet Earth.

SPEAKER_02

All right. What is your favorite snack at the turn?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, don't tell my wife it said so, but nothing like a good golf course hot dog. That's right. I agree. Chili and mustard, no ketchup. No ketchup. You put chili on it too? Chili Well, sometimes, but mustard for sure. But no ketchup. Can't do ketchup on a hot dog. That's that's a crime against humanity.

SPEAKER_01

I'll I'm a mustard fan, so we can go with that. Uh what is your favorite golf course logo?

SPEAKER_00

Hmm. Um actually the one from Carn is pretty nice. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. The swans? I have a I have a shirt from there. Yeah, it's it's it's in Gaelic. It's not well, it's whatever the native Irish is, yeah, Gaelic or whatever, and then it says carn golf links underneath. Yeah. I would I would go to my closet and bring it out and hold it on camera, but that take too long.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um, well, you have been in uh multiple pro shops. So um what has been your favorite pro shop purchase?

SPEAKER_00

Wow. Um, well, most recent, um, this this is it takes a second or two, but so I was in I was in um Scotland and Glasgow at Royal Trune for the for the open in 2018. And I'd planned to get, you know, the the the you've seen the logo, the the open logo. And every year the open logo is the same logo with the the number of the year of the um tournament and the course itself. And so I was thinking about getting one from Trune, and a friend of mine who was there with me said, here's what you need to do. He said, We're on the train from Glasgow to Trune. If you get back on that train and go one more stop up, you come to Prestwick, which is where the first open championship was held. They have shirts with open championship one first and Prestwick underneath it. And if you went up there that week, you could get a shirt and a hat for about what it normally costs for a shirt. I said, put me on that train. Ran up there, made the purchase, met a guy from um from Wyoming who was doing the same thing, and we chatted away and had a nice visit all the way on back down to the golf course. So yeah, that that that would be my favorite purchase. That's a great purchase. Yeah. All right. What is one thing golfers should do? Um play faster, don't don't poke along, don't, don't plumb bob and do all that stuff. Get over the ball, get your line, crouch down behind it, and then hit the damn putt. Love it.

SPEAKER_02

All right, last question. Uh, and I want you to finish this sentence.

SPEAKER_00

The best part of golf is friendships, people you know, people you play with, people you have relationships with for years and years with memories and all that stuff. That's it. Yep. Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_02

Indeed. Bob, this has been awesome, man. We really appreciate you you taking some time to join us and telling some stories. We could we could go on and on for a long time, but we do want to respect your time. But thank you for uh thank you for being with us today.

SPEAKER_00

It's been my pleasure. Thanks for bringing back some good memories. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

Well, for Bob Gillespie and Jonathan, this is Robbie, and y'all have been listening to another episode of the Whole Story Podcast.

Head Shot

Jonathan Hill

Co-host
Head Shot

Robby Woodard

Co-host