Show Notes

• Growing up in a golf family
• Tom’s approach to design
• “I’m always looking to the future”
• Great expectations
• How to design the best playable golf for all levels
• “What would you do if you could do it all over again?”
• The importance of putting your family first
• Dynamics of course design
• What makes a golf course great
• Life lessons from the game of golf
• “Who’s your favorite child?

Connect With Tom Fazio

Website: https://www.faziodesign.com/

Summary

Tom Fazio has designed and built more than 200 golf courses, including some of the most exclusive private courses in the world. He shares his philosophy and approach to design, and provides tips on how to maximize your enjoyment of the game – whether you’re a scratch golfer, or a weekend duffer.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Throughout his 50 plus years in golf course design, Tom Fazio has been recognized for creating award winning courses throughout the United States. No living designer has more credits on Golf Digest’s list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses and Golf Week’s Collection of America’s 100 Best Modern Courses. After winning the Golf Digest poll for Best Modern Day Golf Course Architect three consecutive times, that publication discontinued the award for lack of competition. Tom attributes his success to maintaining a team concept in design shared by his dedicated staff of design associates, many of whom have worked with Tom for anywhere from 30 to 40 plus years. This visionary group, with a diverse base of knowledge and united love for the game of golf, enables Fazio Design to continue to create courses that are noted throughout the industry for their excellence. Tom and his wife, Sue, have six grown children and 17 grandchildren. They’re active in their community and support many organizations philanthropically. Tom and Sue founded the Boys and Girls Club of Henderson County and they also support various children’s causes with the Tom Fazio Children’s Charity Fund, which benefits from fundraising endeavors such as Tom’s book, “Golf Course Designs.” Welcome, Tom, and thanks for joining us on Life Excellence.

Tom  

Thank you. Glad to be here and looking forward to it.

Brian  

Let’s jump right in. What caused you to become interested in golf course design and how did that interest evolve into a vocation and eventually starting your own golf course design business?

Tom  

It’s an obvious question and I have been asked that a lot. I find that sometimes I change that answer because I’ve said it so many times. I’m one of those kinds of people that have a brain that’s always thinking and I never want to be bored, boredom is not for me. But it’s an actual fact [that] I probably didn’t have a choice. I grew up in a golf family. My uncle happened to be a tournament golfer in the Sam Snead, Ben Hogan era in the decade just before World War II, in the 40s and 50s. I started very young, in a family that you had to work early; that’s what you did, you didn’t even complain, you just did it, because that’s what you had to do – do as you’re told. That’s what everybody did that I knew and where I grew up. So from a young age that’s just what I did. I did what I was told to do by my family, my father, and then my uncle. After having roughly 18 years of a father, the next twenty I had an uncle who was my father in a different way. That’s how I started and I just became someone that never thought about doing anything else. I do reminisce and go back and think about it when people ask me that question. When you’re very young and a little kid it used to be you wanted to be a fireman, a doctor, a policeman or whatever. When I was a kid, those were the choices prior to being ten years old. But then in high school, I could see that at the time that’s what I needed to be doing, was working for this family business and that’s how it evolved. It’s probably hard to imagine, but what do you think you would have done had you not become a golf course architect? Again, I’m asked that and I think about that; it’s such a piece of my being, of doing what I do, that I can’t even imagine. Now I would have liked to have been…because I like people, I’d like your job. Maybe I’d like to do something that relates to being around a lot of people, helping people. I kind of like being in charge though, because I grew up…I’m in charge of everything – until I’m around my wife, then I’m in second position there – but it’s good. I like doing what I’m doing.

Brian  

Well, I’m so glad you ended up doing what you did. Obviously you’ve made a big impact in the world with your courses. Tom, you’ve designed and built more than 200 courses over five decades and we’ll get into more detail on that, but how would you describe your philosophy or your approach to design? I’m guessing that’s evolved considerably through the decades.

Tom  

True, it has evolved. I look back and think back…fortunately, my brain continues to be active and working. And I sit around at times and think – I like to write notes, too – and I go back…the numbers game for me bothers me a little bit relative to when you talk about age, bothers me in the sense that you start doing the math and it sounds like this guy must really be old. Well, I don’t think I’m ever going to get old. I’m going to die young; I’m going to because I think young. So now I think, not in terms of years, I think in decades. For one, I started working with my uncle in the 60s, so when you do the math on that, there are many decades; I don’t even count how many decades, they’re just a lot of decades. So I look back at all those and it’s amazing the progress of life. I look at my business and my personal life as to how do you deal with the conditions that we had to deal with growing up. Family I grew up [with] which was, I had an older brother – I still have an older brother – and my father was a blue collar worker. He was the oldest male of six brothers and there were two girls, he had two sisters. Since he grew up in that depression era prior to World War II, the oldest brother – the oldest son – he was the worker, and he was the one who helped take care of the family and went out and went to work and helped support and take care of his family. Because that’s what his parents told him to do and that’s what you automatically did in that era in time, and he did that. I learned a lot from him; you just go to work, and you just produce and do the best you can do. Things were very different back in the 60s decade in terms of the responsibilities, [they] were different, the liabilities in business and work were very different. So I started off with a great opportunity at a very young age. By the time I was literally 19 years old, my uncle had me running a business, hiring people and signing the checks. I was the guy who was in charge besides being in the field. That was at 19 years old. So I kind of just grew up that way and that’s the way it was.

Brian  

So how does that play into your approach to design? I’ve heard you say a couple things already. One that you’re you’re going to die young, that you don’t feel old at all, you feel young. I get the sense that you have this excitement about life, a passion for life. Curiosity, I think, might be part of it too. So how does your background and the way that you’ve lived your life and the way that’s evolved, how would you connect that with the way you design golf courses, if there is a connection, or maybe that comes from something completely different?

Tom  

Well, I think, again, it goes to that point of I’m always looking to the future. I’m always looking at tomorrow, I’m always looking at next week, and how do you do the best you can do to be in the position for the future, whether it’s the immediate future, down the road future, and even at my age, I’m looking down the road. My age is again, I think, young. In fact, in the last year, at my last birthday, I just knock ten years off and tell everybody I’m ten years younger, because I want to be. I think that way, just why not? [Chuckling.] In terms of how it affected my business and design business, I think it goes to the fact…again, going back to those earlier decades. If you go through the process of golf design and how – even business related – how things have changed, but for me it was doing the best each day, whatever the conditions were. When I started in the industry, it was very different, like most businesses we started from the bottom. How do you get from the bottom…I didn’t go from the bottom to the top. I didn’t win – actually I did win the lottery – I won the lottery when I was born. That’s because I was [born] into this life that I evolved into and somehow that happened. I look back and say how did it happen, I don’t know. But looking at the design, back in those early decades, it was dedication and work, and it was, even though it sounds like – most old people will tell their children and young people – I worked and never took time off, I never did this and never did that, only work, work, work work. That’s usually exaggerated, mostly, although I did, but I loved what I was doing. It was what I knew, what I was going to do – at least that’s all I could do. Maybe in my brain, subconsciously, you just had to do what was in front of you. And so I just took that as a positive. Then you take the industry of doing the best you could do and usually, economics always [play a] role, no matter what business it is – it’s not nice to say – you’d like to think you’re just a creator and a designer and you don’t think about economics. That’s not the real world; the real world is what do you have to work with, what are the resources? That’s capitalism in is finest form; it’s what I believe in. And so you do the best you can for what you have to work with and the resources. Then as things changed; again, when I started in the golf design business, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in the 400s to 500s and look at where we are today – maybe not today – but look where we were last month, a year or two ago. But still, it’s changed and evolved. I think we all, as people, tend to evolve and, hopefully, do the best we can do. That also relates to whatever industry you’re in. For me in golf design it used to be – in my early days – when you finished and completed a golf course, hopefully you’d get an answer, when someone looked at it, like this; boy, that is really a wonderful golf course. Someday, when that matures, it’s going to be really good. Well, today, that’s a failure. We’ve evolved to where when you play a new golf course today, and certainly in the last couple of decades, it’s being compared – that particular product – is being compared to the best that someone has ever played. So the expectation now is, when a person walks off your new golf course, to say, that’s as good or better than anything I’ve ever seen or played. Now, there’s a big difference between those early times and those late times. And how did that happen? Well, it happened through a lot of efforts by a lot of people in the industry itself and the economics. Of course, I think all of us, [our] expectation level has risen; like who would have thought we’d be driving a car that drives itself. Now, I don’t trust that yet. I don’t know if I’ll take my hands off the wheel. Maybe my kids will probably do that. I’m not sure I’m taking my hands off the wheel anytime soon. But look at the things we have; the sensors that are around cars when somebody walks near them, and it’s all wonderful, great things, as well as (now that we get older) it’s kind of nice to have a camera looking in the back since our bodies don’t turn as easily as they did when we were younger. It’s kind of nice to look in the camera and see what’s behind you. So evolution of time and process and industry has allowed me to take and produce golf courses – and everyone in the industry, we have a wonderful group of talented young designers and older designers and we’ve all moved upscale to…again, it’s the expectation. People now expect it to be of the highest level from day one. So that just happened to be that way.

Brian  

Well, I think that’s a testament to your success and longevity in the business that you’ve been willing and able to adapt to those changing times. Obviously the world is different than it was even a couple years ago, three years ago, five years ago, certainly 20 years ago or or longer. I commend you for being able to adapt to that time. One of the things that I find really interesting is how different golf courses can be. So you’ve designed, again, some 200 golf courses. Talk about a couple; for example, on one product and project – your Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas – you moved more than three million cubic yards of earth around the desert floor to create this completely isolated, insulated golf experience. Then in a totally different type of project – Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando – the course is the centerpiece of this luxurious 600 acre residential development. The residents aren’t just run of the mill, novice golfers, they include dozens of PGA and LPGA Tour professionals. Those are just two examples. I’m sure every single project has its own story. I’ve read that you’re really hands on, not only creating plans for each of the courses, but also overseeing much of the on site development as well. Walk us through, if you would, what a project looks like from start to finish, because I’m fascinated how you have the skill of being able to look at this piece of land, this blank canvas, if you will, visualize an 18 hole golf course, and then design and build some of the masterpieces that you’ve created.

Tom  

Well, interestingly enough, it usually starts before even looking at the land, it’s usually a phone call from someone that says I am thinking and planning to build a new project. Now that project may be a private residential community, it may be a resort hotel, it could be a combination of many things, but that’s kind of the idea. So now, it’s the process of evaluating and looking at the total picture. For me, the most important – and what has evolved, again, going back in the earlier stages, in my career – the piece of land was really important. That was maybe even a primary step. That’s how things have changed. The reason for that was when you talked about having a wonderful golf environment, it usually started with having a good piece of land. When you could do the study of that, it also gets back to economics; the better the land, the less manipulation you have to do to the land to produce golf to the best you can do so. Then we’ve evolved again, over these decades of time, you could have, in the early days of golf design…and interestingly enough, golf [has] only [been] in America, about, I call it, 12 decades of golf. There are a few more but I take out a few of those pieces for World War I and World War II and the Depression of the 30s when nothing happened. So it’s really not that long of time. If you do this study in the history of the evolution of golf in that time, you’ll find how it has progressed. It was at a point where there were no rules relative to environment. The relative constraints for your property today, when someone has a piece of land, when we look at a map or we look at the setting, the first question you ask, the first question and study that has to be done is an environmental assessment and the constraints of the site. I don’t really like this word. In California, they call it – I call it – the E word. To me, the key word is entitlement. What is the government entitled to take from you? Now I don’t want to get into politics, but the bottom line – and I’m all for environmental constraints and environmental awareness, I’m involved in a company…my son has got me involved with renewable energy, because I believe in it; it’s a big thing and it’s a future thing, so I’m on that side of it. But on the golf side, this evaluation of the property as to what you can do and what you cannot do, what are the rules and regulations; now there’s federal, state, and there’s regional and local, so they have to be put into the equation. So now you take a big piece of land that looks like…how do you, where do you start? You have 1,000 acres – pick a big number – and say, we’re going to put golf and associated development, whatever that may be, around it. Now you start drawing the lines of where you can’t do anything; you cannot touch that land because of whatever the conditions may be. And there’s endless possibilities there, whether it’s endangered species, whether it’s burial grounds in the past, or whatever it may be. So you start putting that together. Now you wind up with net acres that you’re allowed to work with, whatever that may be, and depending on where it may be. Now, the interesting thing about Las Vegas, that you mentioned, that turned out to be a very easy project because there were no environmental issues. There were no environmental rules. We had a piece of land that was roughly 350 acres and you could do whatever you want, no constraints. Interestingly enough, that was easy. Fortunately, we had an owner who had a great vision and understanding and also had the resources to do the implementation, to do the details to make that happen. But with this piece of land now that you’ve gone to the net acres you’re allowed to use, you start looking at elevations, site conditions and little things like what makes a golf hole great. Generally it’s a frame, it’s a definition, it’s an environment, it’s the setting of the elevations, and if a property has a stream on it, well, that’s a very important key piece of potential where a golf hole could be. But we’ve evolved to the point in some states’ regulations that you’re not allowed to go near the stream, within 50 feet of the edge of the stream; no disturbance, no tree removal, no vegetation removal, not allowed to drain the land adjacent to the stream into the stream, it has to drain away from that. So now that gets into details of where the ground has to be graded and how you design. Now, the bottom line is we’re always into how do you have the best playable golf for every level player. I mean, I’m thinking about Dustin Johnson, and Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, designing every course. But I’m also thinking about how the average player plays, how [the] high handicapper plays, how young people play, because it’s important to tie in the details for all levels of players. So there are so many vast elements. That’s what makes it fun and exciting. Every one is different; every site, every location. Now and then you get into external issues of environment, whether it’s when I’m doing a new golf course in Barbuda down in the Caribbean where the prevailing breezes are the number one design factor there. It’s ocean front, it’s beautiful. Its setting is flat and a little boring, in that sense. But we’re going to take that and build low profile, like natural areas, and create environmental holding basins to make sure that nothing – for the environment around it, the reefs around the ocean – so all the things that golf brings with it; maintenance and fertilizers, even though they’re organic, in most cases we have to protect the environment around the golf and those kinds of things. So there are a lot of pieces and there’s not a checklist because every location and area [is] a very different area. So again, that’s what makes it fun; that every golf course becomes unique, distinctive, one of a kind. That’s one of my philosophies. Going back to the question you asked, how do we do…what’s the programming? Well, one that you’ve never seen before. I’ve done many golf courses, with 36 holes – two different golf courses, sometimes built at the same time, sometimes two or three or five years later. The goal is, within that environment, [to] have a very different type of golf course and playability for no other reason than interest. I was lucky enough to do three golf projects near Hilton Head right on the main road going into Hilton Head, South Carolina – great golf state, South Carolina, great golf environment with with so many courses – so there it happened to be 36 holes on each property. Now, this is over about a 25 year period of those projects being completed. So it’s six golf courses – two on each project – there are six different golf courses there. They don’t look alike, you would think maybe a different designer designed them. I had another personal goal for that reason and that evolved…how that happened for me, since I was not a world person – not that I’m against the world, I am for the world, but I didn’t want to have to work…the biggest challenge and negative of my business and career is my work is out of town. I have to travel, I only can do a few golf courses wherever I live. So that means you have to leave town. That means your wife and kids are home and you’re gone. So that was the biggest challenge and probably the most difficult part of the business that I’m in. So I figured a way to do that the best I could, I would look at the map and I decided, well, where do I live? Let’s take a line and strike it right up the Mississippi River; that segments the country, obviously, from north to south. And if you pick those directions there, they know that they’re only an hour or two from the center point that you can go. Then when we had children, we actually moved to the middle of North Carolina, in the western part near Asheville – Hendersonville, little town – and if you draw a circle around that area you can go anywhere within about two and a half hours. So I did something that related to my personal life and how I could work that, in the earlier days of my career and I’m sure my father and uncle – they were gone by this time – they would have never believed it and they would have probably been against it but I bought an airplane. An airplane, I couldn’t afford it. I could not, it was like stupid, why would you do that, and I was in debt to do that. But I knew that could bring me home, then it could make my business work or I would take my kids. Now it wasn’t a big expensive airplane and of course I didn’t fly it, I had a pilot. But it was enough that I could take my kids to school in the morning, drop them off at eight o’clock, go to the airport, spend the day:  fly to Hilton Head, fly to Augusta, fly to Atlanta or South Florida or Pennsylvania or Michigan and be back home for dinner that night. Or more importantly than dinner was soccer games, football games, basketball games, dance recitals; all those things. We had six children within a ten year period. So they were clustered together and I just didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be a part of that. I had a question that I asked a lot of people, because over my career I’ve had the chance to work for a lot of very influential people, kind of as you do, and talk to a lot of different people. I usually have asked them the same question and it was related to what would you do over again, if you could do it over again? To me, that’s a very important part…and I do that even in my own business when I look at a golf course and I finish it, I get my staff and we talk about it. So what should we have done? What could we have done? What did we miss? How do we make it better? Because it’s always about the next one. It’s about tomorrow and about the future. So this question I’d ask, what would you do over again, if you could – especially extremely successful, even well known people – almost everyone would have an answer, like, if I could, I would have spent more time with my family. If I could give up some of the financial resources I made, I would give it up and spend more time with my family, that’s what I would do. I got that so many times so I decided I’m going to take heed to that, I’m going to figure that one out. That helped me because I really did not miss much. I couldn’t be home all the time – you have a business, you have clients, you have people you have to work for, and I did have to go out of town. I would program it, I’d go out of town and maybe be out of town Tuesday night and Wednesday night. That would allow me to work three days a week out of town and only be away two nights. But if Tuesday night was a major sports night or dance recital night or piano night, I would go to Wednesday, Thursday or whatever. I had another personal thing, a little quirk for me, especially when we evolved into having a weather channel. I mean, my early career [there wasn’t] a weather channel, now we have a weather channel and have had for many decades. But I turned the Weather Channel on early in the week or on the weekend to see where the “H” is going to be. I only look for “Hs” – high pressure systems – which means it’s clear and not bad weather The “Ls” are a good place to stay away from, especially in the wintertime, because that’s rain, maybe snow, sleet; the low pressure areas are weather related, so I would plan my weeks. Now since I worked for myself, I was the boss, I could do that. I would get with my clients and evaluate that. So those were my personal quirks of how I ran my business to do it to fit my family, and I’ve always told my employees, you put your family first. If you don’t put your family first and your wife’s not happy, nobody’s going to be happy so figure that out. Your job, we can make the job work. A job is very important to be successful, somewhat important, but all that success is not going to do you much good without a family and without a personal life. Too, that you’re happy, you have a relationship with your friends, family and people; so we can work out the details, maybe you can’t go to that important meeting next week because your daughter is in the school play, or whatever; that’s important, I don’t care how important the meeting is. There’s nothing generally that’s that important. It can’t be adjusted, but we’ll figure it out of how to get it done. I’m rambling a little bit but that’s the pieces for me of how I evolved into all those adjustments to make the business work.

Brian  

Well, I really appreciate you sharing that Tom, the show is called Life Excellence and life excellence for me is about excellence in every area of life. If you have an excellent career and you’re doing great and you’re successful in your career but you don’t have that same level of success at home, I guess I would question how successful – at least by my definition – someone is, so I admire you for that, I applaud you for that. I appreciate you sharing that. That has nothing to do with golf, but it has everything to do with what’s important in life. I admire that you molded your life around your career. I have a couple of questions around that. So when did you first do that? When did you come to the realization that maybe you were going outside the lines of that and had to start to define that a little more clearly and create those boundaries?

Tom  

I’d have to really do a study about that to find out when, but interesting enough for me – and my wife gets a little upset when I say this but it’s true in the sense of the timing – when I was 30 years old, when I got married in 1975…if you look back, again, on the business and financial life where we were in 1975…if you go back a few months earlier, in the fall of 1974, we had a major economic recession in the country that affected real estate, which affected golf development. So we had a crash that was a much bigger crash than even the crash of 2007-08 with the real estate industry and the golf industry, kind of the same, but different timing. So for me, I didn’t travel, there were very few projects, there was no place to go, no place, nothing to do, so I got married – not just for that reason. But I’m not sure, if the economy continued to boom since the 70s, I’m not sure I would have gotten married because I’m not sure my wife – who became my wife – would have sat around and waited for me because I traveled, I was working, I was running a business. I was working for a very difficult taskmaster; my uncle who expected you to work, literally, in the early days, from daylight to dark, seven days a week. That’s the way you work. That was the old school thinking. That’s how you got ahead for people who started from down at the very bottom. That’s the way you do…a lot of people…that’s how America was built and, in a lot of cases, with people who had to continue to keep working. So for me, this girl I met, who I really liked, we talked about it. Then eventually she gave me an ultimatum – at least this is her side of the story, so I’m not too nervous about saying this – she said if we’re not married by next Valentine’s Day, this is over, I’m out of here. And that was in the summer of 74-75, and now the real estate market crashed and the golf industry crashed. We have no projects, I’m staying home, not traveling and I’m kind of liking it and I certainly like her. I’m thinking, I better do this, because if I don’t, then I may lose this person. This is the greatest person I’ve ever met in my life and I can’t lose her. So we got married in 1975. Looking back now 47 years, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me because I wouldn’t have these great children, I wouldn’t have the home life and the family life and all the other. I’d have a business, and who knows, probably or maybe would have made more money, who knows. Maybe I wouldn’t have, you never know, but it worked out pretty well for me. That was a very important part of my life. Also maybe I was happier having this family life; the business life and golf, I love, but I also have always said, as I mentioned and I’ve told my staff, if your job and business interferes with your family, change your job, change your thinking, because family is the number one important thing. You can always get a new job. You think you love what you’re doing…I use the analogy, I love my job, I never would change, I’d never leave. Okay, suppose I offer you a job making twice what you’re making, would you change jobs? And people say, oh, well, maybe, for twice? And if you’re not sure, how about if I offer you three times what you’re making, would you change jobs? And if the answer is yes, well, obviously, it is about that financial commitment that you feel is necessary for you. You can change your family; we have lots of issues of people with breaking up marriages and relationships, and good relationships starting again. I mean, I’m not that person that can solve those problems, all I know is me personally, what I did, how I did it, why I did it; it works for me. It’s a God…I call it the God thing, it just worked out for me. I did those things and it just happened, that’s where it evolved to. So when I look back at that, that’s how, for me, it was an important part of my business career.

Brian  

Well, that’s terrific, I think we could spend the entire rest of the show talking about life design. Maybe I’ll have you back on the show, because your philosophy around life is very much in sync with mine, and you have six children and 17 grandchildren and you obviously live that philosophy. I think we have a lot to learn from that, so I appreciate you sharing that. I do want to get back to Golf Course Design a little bit. You mentioned earlier, Tom, that you like to design courses for guys like Justin and Rory, and on the other hand, design courses that make it enjoyable for golfers like me. It seems incredibly challenging to do both of those things and yet you do it. That’s part of the challenge for all golf course architects. How do you design courses, though, for both extremes, something that’s going to be challenging on a PGA tour stop and then also challenging for a foursome of 25 handicap golfers on a Saturday?

Tom  

Well, I don’t think it’s…it’s not a trick. It’s not. It’s not secret for me. And by the way, there’s one other thing that happened, in what we’ve been talking about, it’s number 18. Eighteen grandchildren now; a new one came along not too long ago, so I’m up to 18 grandchildren.

Brian  

Congratulations. I had a feeling when I said 17 that maybe I was off because you do have several children and you’re in that stage of life. So congratulations, and I stand corrected, 18.

Tom  

So, what you mentioned, it makes people nervous when you say I design golf courses for Rory or at least that level of skill player. Mainly part of that is, it’s equally important that, if you take a golf club or anywhere – it doesn’t even have to be a club per se, it can be a public and municipal facility – the chances of that golf course having a PGA Tour or major event of any type are very, very slim. We have roughly over 16,000 golf courses in the continental United States. So there’s only the PGA Tour, and the so-called Korn Ferry tour, the senior tour and the ladies’ different tours, [they] only add up to maybe a couple of hundred golf tournaments a year. So these are all the best players, and take all the college players, and so maybe come up with a couple thousand [players]. Well, we have millions and millions of people playing golf. So it’s important for looking at how does everyone play, but the most important part – because in design, first of all,  the mechanics of a golf course starts at the back tee, in terms of grading, in terms of environment, in terms of setup of a golf ball, whatever that back tee may be. Now those back tees have been extended 10, 20, 30 percent in the last several decades, in terms of percentage of distance. But just a very basic thing is, from a visibility and a positioning of contours of elevations, that’s where you have to start from, that’s a starting point and obviously the green is the finishing point. Now you have this piece of land to fill in between. So kind of a an exercise, if I were to explain it to the person that didn’t even play golf, of what that evolves to, that would relate to things like that starting and finishing point. Now you have from far right to far left to fill in the spaces. What should those spaces be? We have palettes of environments based on locale, based on whatever the setting and the piece of property may be, whether it’s ocean front or desert landscapes. So it’s important that each piece fill in those spots, and the most important position becomes a very simple basic form that I use:  where are the hazards? What are the hazards? Hazards are anywhere that’s not fairway that’s reasonably flat or very short cut grass. And then where’s the immediate area after that fairway, maybe the semi rough, and then the edges outside – far left, far right – and maybe the angle, the green, and where are the hazards around the green. So now you have a list of basics, but there are endless possibilities of where hazards could be; the more hazards you have, the harder it is, the less hazards you have, obviously easy, very basic. But the golfer, like the elite player who’s playing from the back tees, they play golf in the air, mostly. In the time they hit a golf ball and that ball is traveling in the air and hits the ground, it may roll five or ten yards, or 15. Depending on if it’s wet, it’s going to roll no place it just hits and stops. If it’s dry, it may roll a few yards. So assuming a hole is…let’s assume it’s 500 yards, a par four from way back. Now that used to be a par five, but today, it’s a par four for the elite players. For the rest of us, club players and public golf players, that’s still a par five. But in terms of numbers, that distance from the next tees forward – depending, again, on where the club is and who’s designing the golf hole, what it is, you may move up as far as 150 yards from that 500 yard tee to be 350 yards for, let’s call it a middle teeing ground and maybe even 20 to 30 yards forward, that would be a forward tee position. And again, they used to be termed “ladies’s and men’s” [tees], well now it’s not designated, and not for social reasons; it’s more that we have different levels of golfers and we have very proficient lady golfers who play farther back than players that maybe are beginners or whatever. So now it’s not about gender, it’s more about the the type of player that you are that we have these different positions where you’re playing from. Now the important part is based on those tees. Where does that player miss the golf ball? For me it’s important where do they miss it? Because generally, they’re not hitting the middle of the fairway. That’s the easy part. So you start looking at how much and how difficult should those hazards be including vegetation, [which] becomes a major hazard; obviously, water and those types of environments; we have a lost ball. You can have a lost ball in vegetation as well. And if you have a high level or a large number of that on both left and right of the hole, for an errant golfer, you can lose a lot of golf balls. So you start defining in detail in each one of those specifics as to where and what placement of the hazards. One of the things we’ve evolved to, again going back to those decades I talked about earlier, what is a golf hole; our ultimate goal is for a golfer to stay on the tee and look at the golf hole before they even play it and say, wow, look at this golf hole, this is as good a golf hole I’ve ever seen. That used to be called a signature hole, to some degree. Well, we’ve evolved to every hole is a “wow” or a signature hole because that’s the competition. That’s what expectation we have evolved to in golf; it goes back again to what I said earlier about these expectations. So having said that, the more elements of change or variety you have in that golf hole – it’s kind of like looking at a painting. When you start looking at a painting and an important part of the painting – in a general way, not necessarily to an old time, very famous painter – what’s the frame on the painting? What’s the frame doing for you? It’s really creating that definition. Same way with a golf hole, what’s the frame on the picture you’re looking at? And then the details that are filled in for each individual player; where are the hazards, how deep, how steep, how dense? All those factors really work into that and now you have to do it 18 times so it’s a puzzle. It’s a personal choice. That’s why some golf courses, if you look – arguably Pine Valley Golf Club in southern New Jersey – is considered by [many] in all the rankings as maybe one of the best in the world – it has that style. If you look at a frame, you look at that picture…if I showed you 18 pictures of that, if you could show your audience those 18 pictures – and if they’ve never been there – you’d say it’s the hardest golf course I’ve ever seen because they have sand-based soil; and it’s sand in front of the tee, it’s sand on the right, it’s sands on the left; there’s sand every place. What makes it great is the playability, the challenge for all levels of golfers. It’s probably a little bit too hard for a real high handicap player. But that’s a very unique place. So again, it’s a long winded answer, but how we do it for each level of player, it’s extremely important that we give people a place to play and enjoy and have fun and hopefully not lose multiple golf balls. I’m still working on that last part – I have all the other things down pretty well – I’m still still trying to play with fewer balls. But it’s a wonderful challenge that you had mentioned that today versus in the past, every hole is a signature hole, or that’s the level of expectation that’s been created. Is that expectation created by golfers, by the golf community, or is that within your profession that the designers are trying to constantly raise the bar? They want to create those 18 signature holes, rather than, say, on two or three holes on a course? Well, it’s a combination of all the above. And I say that, one of my opinions would be that, the golf ranking system, this so called top 100, top 200, best in the world, top 100 in the world, the top 10 in the state – we have all these rankings and it’s in the last 30, 40, 50 years; again, multiple decades since I started. We have these comparisons. It’s kind of what we do in America, for example, and around the world, of course. But it’s a gauging rating system and we keep coming up with those types of things. So that’s an important part, how do you get recognized. It also gets the economics of what your goal is and what your market [is] and who you’re trying to appeal to. So all of that has evolved to that point. Now, again, one of the pieces on the playability side, the challenge becomes how do you do that and create all that drama? Let’s call it drama relative to the visuals, which would continue on to the playability. But how do you do it and not make it too difficult and too hard? Now we have another factor that we’re moving into as well – it’s always been a piece of it but it’s gotten more so in the last few decades – the economics of maintaining that and taking care of a golf course, which relates to the end user and it relates to the price. What does it costs for that one round of golf to be played? Golf, as we know, is not an inexpensive sport. A lot has to do with location, a lot has to do with the economics to produce that product for someone to play. Now, we’ve also evolved into this acceptance level of perfection. How many times have you heard someone say, well, the bunkers, the sand, is not consistent – it’s firm in one hole, it’s soft in one hole. Well, to some degree, in the old days and the way things used to be and certainly back when economic times weren’t as good, the answer would be well, that’s a hazard. No hazard is supposed to be consistent. It’s a penalty location. But then we’ve evolved to like, for example, the PGA Tour, because that PGA Tour is controlled by the PGA Tour Association and they want consistency in the bunkers because the players go from week to week playing their game, and it makes sense that we’ve evolved into that. But, as you’ve noticed, what is one of the easiest shots for PGA tour events – hitting a ball out of sand close to the hole. We all marvel at how good they are. But for them, it’s not that hard of a shot. And so little pieces like that are very important. The detail, again, goes back to that level of hazard placement, [which] becomes the impact for the golf hole.

Brian  

Do you ever get – along the lines of playability and difficulty of holes – the phone rings and you pick it up and it’s a tour pro PGA or LPGA, and they say, Tom, I just played this course, as you know, last weekend, and hole number 13, what in the world were you thinking – sort of questioning the design of that?

Tom  

I may not get the call on the phone, but I certainly would talk to them somewhere along the way. And if it happened to be a hole where it didn’t work out for them too well, and it cost them maybe a championship, obviously it goes to the highest level. Yes. And there are discussions; that’s the unique thing about golf design, the fact that there are very few rules, there are almost no rules in golf…design. Now when I say there are no rules in golf, the United States Golf Association [inaudible] wouldn’t like me saying that, because obviously they control that part of the game. But I refer to it as design – there are endless possibilities. And if you find a golf hole, let’s say it’s a new golf hole somewhere – and I’m not defending my work or my position or my industry since there are so many golf environments throughout the world – you could have a golf hole that you don’t like, for some reason it didn’t fit your eye or whatever, or you didn’t like the setup; there’s a very good chance that I could find the equivalent to that golf hole, almost duplicate it on some of the finest golf courses in the world that you would or could go play, and you wouldn’t have the same feeling about it. Some of it’s perception and about us. I think we do that in life as well. We have this judgment that we put on something that we get in our brain, and we’re stuck with it and whatever it is, and it’s about us, it’s about me, me me. I say get over it, it is what it is, you go play it. [Chuckle.] Everybody’s playing the same hole and yes, you want to blame me, okay, I’ll take the blame, but just move on. And that’s why I said the phone call because it strikes me as sort of a knee jerk reaction that, geez, say they’re sort of bugged by something that happened in their round and if you ask them about it a month later, maybe they wouldn’t feel the same way. Tom, one of the things that absolutely fascinates me is your ability, and the ability of designers in your profession, to look – as I stated earlier – at this blank canvas and to be able to create some of the just absolute beautiful masterpieces that you and your colleagues have created around the world. I imagine you’re inspired by golf courses designed by other architects and by courses that you’ve designed in the past, but I’m curious, do you also draw inspiration externally, inspiration that’s completely outside the golf world? And if so, where does that come from? For me, I don’t believe I do that generally. Maybe it’s the way I grew up. I’m not sure, because I get asked that question in different ways and I think about it. I generally don’t go see other golf courses. In my particular case, since time – especially moving on to the the age that I am – the most important thing to me is time. It really sounds a little crass, but I really don’t need more friends, I don’t need another house, I don’t need more cars or an airplane. I’ve got everything I need. What I don’t have enough of is time. So it’s important for me to take the time that I have, so it’s not about going to other places and looking at other things to get new ideas. I think my brain has always been such that the challenge – it automatically comes to me. Think out of the box, think it’s not what you’ve ever done. Don’t even talk about this is what we did here or did here and we can do that. I grew up in an era where golf design, when you look at it, again going back to America, how did we get started in golf design in America? Well, we had a few people, Scottish people from Scotland, where the game was modern – let’s say the modern game, the last 200 years evolved- and you brought these fellas, the Donald Ross and the Mackenzie’s, different people who had these wonderful ideas. They took the ideas from what they saw of links land and how golf evolved from a property where some grass was cut and some vegetation was removed and this game evolved. So they came to America and produced some of the things that they saw, and were a part of, in the early stages. Donald Ross did that at Pinehurst in the late 1890s, right around 1900, and built many golf courses there. He did several, maybe three or four hundred he’s credited with in the US. His style of golf and what he believed golf should be from what he had learned; I think we’ve all evolved from that with many other early designers. But for me, for my career, and then the fact that my uncle was this golf tournament player, and he had a vision of how he played golf, that’s how I learned the game from a golfer, and how you execute and play. Then again, having no resources other than we have a piece of land that we’re going to go put a golf course on, we have limited resources. How do you remove vegetation? How do you contour land? And how do you put this puzzle together of 18 golf holes in different lengths and forms and have it accepted in the marketplace? I mean, it’s a very simple, basic kind of thing for me, and it just kept evolving. And then we only had limited resources to build it; literally, in round numbers, like $10,000 a hole was a budget for golf when I started. It seems like yesterday, but you know that today we have golf courses where we’ll spend over a million dollars a hole based on the environment, based on the location. Now, you would not have built a golf course in the 1960s on land that we do today in a lot of locations, because the resources were not there, so that evolved. How do you get to do that and how do you learn that process? Well, you do it by execution. In Hawaii on a project I did for Discovery Land, it was 100% lava rock, and there’s been a lot of golf courses a lot of other architects have done on lava rock. But what do you do about that? Well, what you do, the first thing you need to do, is take a bulldozer and walk it over the lava to break off the edges of the sharp pieces that dried from the wet lava that flowed so you can walk on it. Because you can’t even walk on it; you’d fall down and scrape and bruise and cut yourself all over. From that you have to rip it and you have to move it and adjust it. That’s extremely expensive. I’m not sure I could have done that in my earlier career. I could not have done Shadow Creek in 1989, (1963-64 was the first golf course I worked on for my uncle) there’s no way that I would have the expertise to do that and no one else would have done it, I don’t think, including an owner. You don’t go to Las Vegas and take a boring, flat, ugly piece of land, and overnight have something that knocks your socks off. It’s like this is maybe as good as anything I’ve ever seen. That’s exactly what Shadow Creek evolved to. That came for me from an education over time and then having the right person – that’s a little, quick story of how that evolved. This person said to me that he wanted to create a golf course as good as any in the world and his family, his business, was in Las Vegas and that’s where he wanted it to be because that’s where he was. My first line was, well, what you’re talking about…and he asked me a question no one ever asked me – no interview person, no golf writer, a very basic simple question. I’m shocked that I was never asked it – what makes a golf course great? Isn’t that an interesting question? Well, I almost didn’t know what or how to answer because I had to think about it. What does make a golf course great for all the golfers out there? Put that in your brain; what makes it good? What is your definition? There are so many different possibilities, so many different ideas. Usually it’s a piece of land. The first basic thing is if you have a great piece of land, you should have a great golf course; you have a bad piece of land you’ve got a big job to do. So my answer to him was usually a great golf course relates to a great environment, whether it’s an ocean, whether it’s mountains, whether there are streams, whether there’s vegetation – some type of environment. I said this land does not have any environment, and he said well, why don’t we build an environment and put a golf course in it? Hmm, very interesting, build an environment and put a golf course in it. Next response for me, right out of the box, of course, goes back to my upbringing and background. Do you know what that’s going to cost? I didn’t know what it was going to cost. And he said, you know, that’s not your job. He said, that’s my job. Your job is the thing. This person was Steve Wynn, who created many of the great environments in Las Vegas, and buildings, and the guy is brilliant, great ideas. And he said to me, you think about it, because you’re the artist and don’t think about my part of the job paying for it, you just figure out how to do it. I never had that happen. So I’m in the business of my career 25 years and this happens and it was a game changer. I think it changed golf in a sense. We learned how do you build great golf without having an environment for golf. I think as we move into future sites, because of our golden desire and rules and regulations to protect existing environments, protect existing land and wetlands and vegetation, we, the industry of golf designers, have evolved into that and understand and can do a better  job doing that because it isn’t about…So again, people ask me, where would you like to design a golf course? Usually, most people would think about Scotland and Ireland or the sand hills of Nebraska or Australia, or other places. My answer is – I would love to do it, it’s one of my long term goals – the answer is the Mall of America parking lot. [Laughter] That’s my dream place to build a golf course. What is the Mall of America parking lot? I’ve never been in the Mall of America, but I know what it is. It’s blacktop. It’s poles with lights on them and it’s big drains with grates on them to take the water, the surface is all this blacktop. Now to me, wouldn’t that be a great, exciting place to build a world class, one-of-a-kind, best-you’ve-ever-seen golf course? That’s what I like.

Brian  

If anybody can do it, you can do it. I have been to the Mall of America. Maybe for the first time ever in either of our lives, I have a vision for something that you haven’t quite taken the time to consider yet but that would be terrific. Tom, your career, I suspect, at the core comes from your love of the game of golf. What is it that you love about golf? And what advice do you have for golfers, whether they’re scratch golfers or 20 handicap golfers, about how to maximize their experience; how to maximize their enjoyment from a round of golf?

Tom  

I go back again to my earlier career and the question for me is that I just grew up in it, automatically accepted it, and was forced to it. There was nothing else that I did. It was kind of a family thing. My wife became a golfer. The first 38 years we were married, she didn’t play golf. She’s an artist and she’s great mother and evolved to charities and all kinds of things. It’s interesting, when after our last child left the house she said to me – and she’s a little bit of bizarre person, as well, so take that with a grain of salt, what I’m going to say – she says, Tom, I think we either have to get divorced or I’m going to have to start playing golf. And I said, what did you say? She’s like, we have to get divorced or I can start playing golf because you’re always on a golf course and you’re traveling, you’re doing this and that, and I don’t play golf; maybe we’ve got to think about it, let’s talk about it. I don’t want to talk, it’s like, first of all, the immediate answer is I’d like you to start playing golf, it’d be a lot cheaper if you just played golf. That would be better for me as well. So she started playing golf. Well, within a short period of time, she gave me a little bit more insight into what golfers, like most people, accept and why they do it. She loves it. She’s addicted to it. It got in her soul, her brain. She says it’s the greatest game ever, and I would have never guessed she would say that. I never even thought that would happen. So again, it didn’t affect me the same way, that’s not the way I felt, I accepted [it] because that’s who I am. I’ve been in golf, never done anything else and love it. I mean it’s in me, I just don’t know how to explain it. But she explained it to me, what it means A – to be outdoors, B – to have the game [of] you against that golf hole or the golf ball. You can’t get your brain to take the club and do what you want it to do or what your brain is telling it to do, and your body’s doing something else. And then, how do you accept failure because you didn’t do very well, and you hit that ball in the water, and you had a very easy shot and you know you can do it. Again, it’s all the principles, there’s so many life lessons there; not being frustrated, not being upset and mad, and then enjoying something that you have, maybe this is the best you’re going to be and that’s the way it goes. But you always have the desire, and you always have the opportunity to improve through lessons, through attitude; attitude becomes a major force. I think there are so many life lessons in the game of golf. I see that, again, I didn’t understand it, per se, until I got it from her understanding. I think that is what I like about it so much. I mean, golf is my life – other than my family, of course – that is what I do. I just take it for granted, because it’s so much fun, and it takes you to so many great places.

Brian  

Well, it’s a wonderful game. I would agree with everything you said about your wife’s description of what makes golf so great. The other thing that stands out for me is if I can go out and have an enjoyable time on a beautiful course and play halfway decent, but then hit one or two really good shots; so that long putt or that chip from just off the green, or maybe a nice shot out of the sand trap, for me, it gives me hope, like maybe I can get better at this game if I just invest a little more time, if I practice a little more. So it’s always nice to have, for me, those one or two good shots. Of course for professionals, they don’t want the one or two shots that aren’t good in the entire round but it’s a different perspective. The great thing about golf is everybody can play it at all levels, everybody can enjoy it. Everybody can marvel at the types of courses that you’ve created, so we appreciate you for that. One last question, and this might be a twist on the “who’s your favorite child” question, but, Tom, what two or three courses are you most proud of and what causes you to feel that way? Maybe if I asked you, of the 200, what are the two or three courses that I absolutely need to play if I really want to get a sense of what Tom Fazio’s golf courses are like?

Tom  

Well, again, that is definitely a hard question for me because I’ve been so fortunate to have so many great environments, and so many great people to work for, and locations. When you ask me that, I would wind up having a discussion with you and talking you into accepting my answer, different than what you would expect it to be. What kind of environments do you like? Do you like the desert? Do you like ocean? Do you like mountains? Do you like hilly topography? You know, because I have so many golf courses I’ve done in different environments and for me, I like them all. So I would give you two or three of each one of those environments. And then I get you to say what state do you live in? Well, I’ve got a couple there, here’s a couple I’d wind up, then I’d say I’ll tell you what, if you’re really going to press me and push me, I’m going to write down 75 golf courses that I’ve done. I’m going to write them down. And I’m going to put the names on them and I’m going to put them in a hat. I’m going to stake my reputation on any one of those two or three you pick and those are the ones you should go see. The way my brain works, I can’t just go to one place. It’s interesting for me; every day my brain is thinking about golf holes, golf courses I’m currently designing, and my staff and I are working on golf courses I’ve done in the past, maybe the immediate past ones that I’ve done decades ago. All day long I drive down the road and I see a setting and say that reminds me of a course in Waynesboro, in Philadelphia, that I did 1964, or in Pinehurst in 1976, and I remember all these golf courses. One little piece of that because, again,  I’ve been asked a question like that [before], I thought I’d come up with my 18 favorite, because it relates to not just individual holes, and it wasn’t about 18 favorite holes or 18 favorite individual greens or whatever; one morning [I thought of] my 18 favorite clients that I worked for, and it wasn’t even about the property, wasn’t my 18 favorite properties. So I started writing [them] down because that’s where it starts. You have to work for someone, that phone call – going back to that phone call – how do you get involved in a project? And what are the constraints in the environments for doing the project? So I started writing down my 18 favorite, and I started in the decades because that’s how my brain could work. I can tell you where I worked and what year and what decade and what golf courses. I started writing them down by decades. Well, it turned out, I got up to 74 names – 74 names – by the time I came to current day. Now, then I start going through; how am I going to take this person out, how am I going to take that person out; most of them became very personal, good friends of mine. Unfortunately, a lot of them passed because I was a lot younger than them, especially in those early days. Now, my clients are younger than me in a lot of cases. So it’s interesting. I don’t think I gave you an answer to your question but that’s the way I would answer it because I can’t, I just don’t have that kind of brain that picks a favorite because I’ve been lucky and blessed to have so many. You pick. I’ll give you the list. You pick it and I’ll stand by it.

Brian  

Well, the good news is we have lots of wonderful, wonderful choices. Tom, thanks so much for being on the show today. It’s been great having you. I’m hoping to get up to Tree Tops this summer in northern Michigan and I’ll certainly think of you when I do.

Tom  

I have lots of stories there for you as well. That would be great, look forward to it. Thank you.

Brian  

Thank you again. I enjoyed it. Thanks for tuning in to Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Tom Fazio on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams, hit them straight, and make each day your masterpiece.