Interviews

An Interview With:

STEVE GLOSSINGER
Caves Valley Golf Club course manager

TOM FAZIO
Caves Valley Golf Club architect

MARTY PARKES:  It's my pleasure to welcome into the interview area, Mr. Steve Glossinger, golf course manager of Caves Valley, and Mr. Tom Fazio, golf course architect.  And I'm going to open it up for questions.

Q.  Mr. Fazio, if you want to talk about the beauty of this piece of land before you even laid a finger on it, your first glimpse of this piece of land, and did it immediately come to you that this was going to be a great tract for me to work on?

TOM FAZIO:  It was about 12 years, maybe 13 years ago was the first visit I had out to this property, before it was named Caves Valley.  And when I was called -- and I get calls, and have all through the years, you get a call from a person, "We want to talk to you about some great new piece of land, we're creating a great new golf course, and we think we have the best piece of land you've ever seen, and come to talk to us."  I hear that all the time.  You get lots and lots of things, and I could give you lots of stories about how that happens.

Most of the time it's semi-exaggerated, and for all different reasons.  But when I first was driven out, I was surprised it was so close to the downtown Baltimore area, pretty much in the Beltway area, so that surprised me, because most of the new golf facilities tend to be out in a rural area.  So, that impressed me to start with.  And then, when I came out and was driven in the property and shown that we actually had the opportunity for land on both sides of the entry road as you drive up, on the main road, and all the land that was to the left of the road and all the land to the right.  And we drove up to the so-called main house, as it was called at that time.  We drove in a different driveway that existed there.  And we went into the old house and walked out to the back patio, which pretty much exists pretty much the way it exists today with more stone.  And you stood out there and all you saw was open space and trees, and the beautiful rolling terrain.  And I thought, I think they may have under exaggerated how good this really is.  And so, I was excited from day one.

So, that was the start, but what made it even more special was the overall concept and idea and program for what the intent of it was, the intent of the end result of what the group was looking for.  And I don't know if you know Leslie Disharoon he's such an enthusiastic, great guy, and he expressed what his vision, and the vision of the founders were for what they anticipated the golf club to be.  And that to me made it even more special.  When you added the great piece of land and the concept of literally a "golf only" kind of environment.  And as a designer you can imagine having all this land to work with and there was no plan already preconceived, and it was just, you take the plan and you tell us what should be done with it.  And that really was special.  That's how it started.  So I was charged up from day 1.  And the whole concept of creating a golfers golf club, creating something that would be very special for the region, the area.

When I was out there today taking a Tour and walking the back 9 and watching the players, it's kind of nice to be a part of people's dreams, and you can actually help people fulfill their dreams.  That's what this was, a dream to start with, 13 years ago or something like that, and all of a sudden here it is.

Q.  Some of the players or I guess one of the players yesterday said something about the fact that the course was really -- some courses are designed around the fact that it's going to be a country club, members are going to use carts.  Was this course designed -- with that thought in mind that this is going to be a course that people are going to ride or did you take walking into account?  Did you think this may host a major championship one day, and I can't really do anything about it in terms of how difficult it is to walk the course?

TOM FAZIO:  Well, the idea was always the intent that there would hopefully be some major championships played.  Now, you factor that into the site conditions of the property, the fact that especially the ridge area, of the starting point, it's a fairly hilly piece of property.  So that dictates what you're able to do in terms of contours.  So then you have to program in the environmental and the rules and laws and regulations of what today is all about, of how a golf course evolves.  So under our total plan we had to traverse the golf course in and around and near a trout stream, which had rules and structures of how you're allowed to do things.  We also had tree ordinances -- they're not excuses, but they are the rules and the laws of how you had to do things.  So that, itself, set the tone for the contours and how the golf course would evolve.

And just the fact that you start on top of a hill, the reason you have such a gorgeous great setting with that clubhouse and view down to the valley, because it is the view down from the top of the hill, you playoff from it, and back to it.  You're going up-and-down hills and that's the normal process of how it would work.

Now, certainly I've had that question asked many times by players.  Some even trying to be kinder, some not as kind.  It's too hilly.  Some say it's a little hilly from places.  If you take a look at many of the modern golf courses that were done and you see connections of golf holes and you look at bridges and walkways through wetlands, this is kind of the way modern golf evolves because of the restrictions and issues of how you have to put a golf course on a piece of property.

Q.  Steve, this course as a reputation for being maintained so well.  Can you talk about -- on most days couldn't you pretty much just throw the pins out there and have a Senior Open?  How much do you have to tweak this course for an event like this?

STEVE GLOSSINGER:   Tom is the artist, he created the masterpiece, and basically I just preserve it.  I want to make sure that his creation will go for many generations.  And I'm just a small piece of the puzzle right here.  But it is well maintained.  That's our philosophy at Caves Valley.  We try to do everything as best as we can, within reason.  Obviously, there's budgets in any walk of life.  But that's our philosophy.  We want to be a cut above.

Q.  How much faster are the greens this week than say normally?  Is there really that much difference?

STEVE GLOSSINGER:   Well, there is.  The greens go under a tremendous amount of stress for this.  You want to keep them firm, so you have to keep the moisture off.  With this weather it's posing a problem, really.  The membership speed is usually around 10.  I can remember breaking into the business, that was USGA championship speed.  And we've been stimping right now between 12 and 12 and a half, and we expect tomorrow to be probably 12 and a half.

Q.  Tom, I'm wondering if you can address the feelings that you experience when you've created a course and by all considerations everybody is happy with it, and then a few years later you get a call to come back and say we need to change this or that, and whether you think that's the normal course of doing business as you do it or how you go through that process?

TOM FAZIO:  Well, after 35 years of designing golf courses, I've seen lots of different scenarios of -- there's no set pattern.  And also having been fortunate enough to be involved with some of the older golf courses in renovation, both from the standpoint of renovation, restoration and preservation.  There's a lot of different words that are used there of how golf courses evolve.  In the work I did last year at Augusta National, which was major in terms of scale of physical work, but the goal was to make it look like it was the old golf course or the style of the old golf course.  So by lengthening and moving bunkers you would call that -- I'd call that renovation, but we're trying to preserve the integrity of how the golf course was originally designed and its playability characteristics.

When you go and you look at even a golf course that I've done, and you go back years later, many things could change.  Sometimes it's as simple as the initial stages, you only had a certain budget to work with, and as Steve mentioned earlier, you only can work within certain constraints.  Other times the program at that time may not have been for having the event that maybe is coming, things do change.  So, I think most of the time what I have found, if you put your ego above things and you hold on to it's this way because that's the way we originally did it, I think you wind up having issues and having problems that way.

So, I look at it as what's the best you can do every day that you're involved in something.  And you have a client that calls you back after even it's originally designed and say, "Here's where we stand and this is what we'd like to do."  Now, if you stand there and say, "Well, we did it this way, because that's the way we wanted it and you're not going to change it," well, I'm not a believer in that.  I also am a believer there isn't anything that can't be improved.  Things just get better and better.  It's like at some point -- now, I have a head cold, a summer head cold, my head is a little congested.  At some point as wonderful as this press facility is and as great as this tent is, someone is going to make an air conditioner that's not so loud so you don't have to have it up so high.  This is wonderful, I'm not complaining, it's cool in here, but with that noise level, and to me everything, I think, our goal is, it's part of who we are, is how to make it better, how do you do it and make it better.  I look at golf the same way.  I get criticized a lot by especially the purists of the game who may not want to change, they like to keep it the way it was.  But I'm a forward thinking person, and it's hard for me to look back.

Q.  Steve, you've had USGA preparation experience by being superintendent at Oakmont Hills.  Has your philosophy in terms of bringing crews from the area around changed.  How long has your expanded staff been working to get preparation done?

STEVE GLOSSINGER:   Actually, that is a good question.  I think we're under more pressure for the Senior Open, because we have two starting times.  '96 we had all the players off the first tee.  This year it's 7:15 off of 1 and 10.  So that means essentially -- that's at 7:15.  Essentially, you have to have two crews off each 9.  It takes extra help, what we call our volunteers.  We've got a pool of guys from area clubs that come over, superintendents and assistant superintendents, they've all rallied around this thing.  But it's amazing to me how big this event is compared to '96.  This is really big.  And you cannot run these without volunteers.  You have to have them.  Everything has to be cut first thing in the morning and we have to be off the golf course by 8:00 o'clock.  So we start at 4:30.  And to get everything coordinated and get everything cut and prepped and the bunkers right and everything watered properly.  It's a big task.  But we've been preparing for a long time and I think we're ready to go tomorrow.

Q.  Tom, a lot of the players have talked about the finishing holes at this course, how difficult they are and probably some of the most difficult finishing holes of any major championship.  Do you want to talk about the last four holes?

TOM FAZIO:  Certainly the last four holes do have some strength to them.  Interestingly enough, if you look at the front 9 and at the last four holes there, you find the same thing.  So in our initial planning, based on the routing of the golf course, we planned that if the greens were changed for a major tournament, mainly because the front nine has more open space, and more space area, actual acres of land, more open space, so we worked at creating that same kind of strategy on the front nine on the finishing part.  So throughout the original routing plan that if you noticed and looked at the score card you'll see that there are some short par-4 golf holes throughout the routing.  And that really occurred through the permitting process and how we had to transverse the environmental constraints of the land.  But one thing that we knew that we were able to commit to that we could handle the short golf holes as long as we could literally makeup for it at some point along the round.  And I kind of always referred to it as the old style of golf.

Now, you have to remember, go back in time 13 years to when this -- maybe ten that we've been open -- but in the planning stages, and you think about having an event at some point in time, like a Senior Open, having some of the greatest players in the world playing.  The idea was to create a setup for a golf course that would have some variety to it and also have some memorability to it.  But blending it with the short golf holes, I felt like it was like the old-style golf courses, like Marion.  If you play there, it has a reputation of being a short golf course, because it's an old style course, and from the back tees I think it's only 6800 yards, but the golf course gets real long starting on the 14th hole.  When you walk off the golf course, you don't feel like you played a short golf course.

Many of the old courses were that way.  Many of the old courses had the strength built into the finish and Caves Valley just fit in that way where we had -- we could start with some of our elevations, even a hole like the first hole playing downhill.  The 10th hole playing as a short par-4.  The 14th hole playing as a short par-4, and that gave us the opportunity to build real strength in.  So, it was pretty much preplanned.  And we don't do that as a matter of every golf course is not the same.  It really is based on the layout and the terrain, topography, site conditions, and it just so happened to fit here that the short holes were short and the long holes were long, and the long holes tended to be at the end of the round, that's kind of how it evolved.

Q.  Steve, could you give us some statistics from the golf course, width of fairways and length of rough, et cetera?

STEVE GLOSSINGER:   Let's start with the putting greens.  The putting greens are cut just under an eighth of an inch.  The fairways are just under half inch, 450.  The rough is being topped at four inches.  And we're going to cut that throughout the championship to keep it topped.  The width of the fairways, it's a little generous, probably, for an open, but our widths are averaging between 30 and 34 paces.  Greens are USGA specs, they're built to USGA specifications, as well as the tees.  The tees are specification.  The grasses on the green are penncross bentgrass.  We have Kentucky bluegrass in our primary rough.  Our native areas are Indian grass and some tall fescue, along with some blue stem.  And our bunkers are -- the sand comes out of West Virginia, it's a quartz type of a sandstone.

TOM FAZIO:  I think one of the things you mentioned on the widths, with some of the widths being measured wide as you've noticed, holes like 11, and holes like 18 or 17 where you have side slope, and you have contour and elevation, that's taken into account also with the widths of those fairways where they're actually cut in actual dimensions wider, because the balls will tend to roll off some of those slopes and hill sides, and you can use those slopes to your advantage, but also it means that you do need a little bit more width, when you have those side slopes.

Q.  In terms of the width, does that also play to the length of the course that you figure that this is one of the longest courses that an open has been played on, so you're giving them a little more room to drive?

STEVE GLOSSINGER:   I think that was a big consideration.  It is the first Senior Open, to my knowledge, over 7000 yards.  I'm sure equipment has a part of that, and most of our landing zones, we are hitting into a just slightly uphill, so we're not getting the roll that -- I think we have a couple, No. 10 with a downhill landing zone and 16.  Most of them you're kind of hitting in.  It's probably playing a tad longer than 7005.  But that was a consideration, exactly.

MARTY PARKES:  Thank, you, gentlemen, for coming in.

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