Geoff Ogilvy talks golf course architecture and more

GO: I’m a tour a pro, yeah. I couldn’t do this without Michael and Ashley. There’s a lot of skills. I mean, I can see good holes and I think I can come up with some pretty good stuff. They get on machines, they can work with maps, and they understand all the macro drainage stuff and all that. I don’t understand any of that. But I’m learning along the way. So, I see myself as a golfer, and my education in this area is by visiting and playing all the golf courses around the world.

Michael comes from an engineering background. He was an elite golfer, too. He nearly won the Australian Masters as an amateur. So he was really, really good. And then decided he was too smart to be a pro and got an engineering degree and sort of fell straight into working for a company from the beginning and the ground up. So he’s been doing this since basically he finished university.

Ashley was a nice golfer, too, in Melbourne and he went down the superintendent route. He started raking bunkers and then ended up getting to become a superintendent. He understands the construction side, Michael’s sort of the artistic guy, and I’m sort of the golf guy. I think to have two or three minds, it’s better than one. We all see golf in a similar way but from a different perspective, I guess. Once I’m done playing golf, I’d love to think I could do this, but I wouldn’t want to do this without them.

When I go home at night, I’m regularly thinking about golf and my golf swing. They go home and think about getting on the bunker rake and finishing the green off. I think it helps to have that blend. We’re really a good complement to each other. Two eyes are better than one. If you start staring at it on your own forever, you almost can’t see anything anymore. If you have someone else come along they’ll ask why would you do that? And suddenly I didn’t see that.

Bill (Coore) and Ben (Crenshaw) work that way, too, they are massively better, the sum of the parts is greater than the individuals. I still look at golf holes as how I would play them.