Golf Design: My Common Thread - Walker Simas
Embarking on my golf course design journey wasn't a predetermined path but a series of unexpected opportunities that unfolded during my college years. It all began with Wofford's Interim program, where I sought a broader perspective beyond my competitive golf. A chance exchange with Mike Cocking led to a transformative internship with OCCM in Melbourne, opening my eyes to new horizons- a proof of concept. A pivotal juncture was my adventure to Landmand Golf Club in Nebraska after senior year, credit to Rob Collins. This not only broke me in a voluntary way, but also exposed me to the raw and real aspects of golf course construction. As I removed myself from golf for the first time, the decision to begin podcasting added a new and vital layer, providing an avenue for me to explore and share insights with a wider audience.
Melbourne, AUS
A key reason I went to Wofford was for Interim, a 30-day exploratory learning period required for all students. It was time that would not be given to the golf program– time for me to become more prepared for my future. Come Sophomore year, I was DMing back and forth with Mike Cocking who was playing a key role in then OCCM (Ogilvy, Cocking, Clayton, & Mead), now OCM (Clayton now at Clayton, DeVries, & Pont). He kindly offered me an internship and come January, I was there.
From jump, it was becoming clear that this may be the vehicle to get on the sites I had dreamt most of seeing and experiencing for myself. From the first shower of the trip in the Kingston Heath Men’s Locker Room to driving through the gates of Royal Melbourne, it was incredibly exciting stuff for me at the time.
Very quickly though, the real work began. It was clear that I didn’t truly understand the size and scale of some of these projects until I was physically standing there. We spent a great deal of time on weekdays down south on the Mornington Peninsula working at Peninsula Kingswood Golf and Country Club for the second 18 of the 36-hole construction. I found myself imagining what a budget for this sort of project would look like, how it was assembled, and how many people had a very large hand in those figures. Simply from a human standpoint, I remember being blown away by the seriousness that most everybody took towards their jobs. Now, that seems standard- but at the time I was amazed how many people had put nearly two years of their lives into this project and were feeling the pressure and excitement as new holes got grassed and ready for member play.
There were other examples, too. We did a “small job”- the expansion and re-leveling of the Kingston Heath practice facility, where I was running loads of dirt to other areas on the range. There were a range of experiences in that 30-day period that were so beneficial for me to see. In the Kingston Heath example, I remember how big the operators were on efficiency, on placement, on speed. They wanted what they wanted, and I did my best to be in the right place at the right time without exception, ready for more dirt. In the case of Peninsula Kingswood, I remember cutting and laying fine fescue sod with Shane and Cruze (two PKGCC employees) all day. Are you getting work done? Absolutely. Instead of that high paced environment with heavy noise, they got to ask me what a kid like me was doing laying sod halfway across the world, and I got to ask about Aussie football, cricket, and smoko.
To fill in all of that, I had some casual rounds with Mike Cocking and some other members at Kingston Heath, plus Mike Clayton took me around Metropolitan, Commonwealth, and another half-dozen sandbelt courses of varying hierarchies. We spent so much time just looking at features as I would learn about the history of why they were there, who in the golf world had influence on them, and why they were good changes, bad changes, or needed to be changed. I was always amazed by Mike Cocking’s seriousness in his profession, as well as the knowledge of history that Mike Clayton had.
Without a doubt, the travel expanded my horizons. That short trip had me battling a 14 hour time change while working normal business hours, and I’ll never forget my first morning up at dark- walking a half mile to the station, catching a train while listening to the same playlist day after day, grabbing a sandwich on my way back, and walking the city in my free time during weeknights and weekends. Beyond that, it felt like a first of many. In what capacity, I wasn’t sure. I just knew there was another adventure to come.
Homer, NE
Fast forward to my Senior year of college. It’s late October in 2019 and I’m studying for an economics final and am in the middle of a crisis deciding on what direction I want to take out of school. My teammate, friend, and classmate and I are on a study break discussing just that as my phone dings - BING - a DM response from Rob Collins. I had thrown an emergency line in the water along with buckets of chum, hoping for another unconventional option to think over for the holidays. Like every senior knows, once you’ve reached the spring, you’d like to already know what you're going to be doing after graduation. To my surprise, Rob had a spot open at this new project called “Landmand” based in Nebraska to be their first ever 18-hole project. It was to be fully public, he loved the owner, and was excited about the land. I said yes later on.
In early June, I packed my car and set out for Homer, Nebraska passing through St. Louis to see some family friends and see St. Louis CC, then Kansas City to see Ben at “Some Guys Backyard”. I pulled off a gravel road into this one story ranch house with an above ground pool and was greeted by two of my five future house mates, and then that feeling sets in. New bed, new folks, new chapter, new life. This is home, now.
The first few weeks there were some of the most memorable weeks of my life so far. We’d wake up every morning, drive 25 minutes in the pitch black dark, and park right by the old white barn at the entrance of Landmand. At that point, there was a massive strip of hillside that fell into the irrigation pond very gently, and that was used as a runway for supplies, parking, and staging. We’d begin every morning greasing machines before the shapers arrived, then work sun-up to sun-down unprotected from the dusty wind and rain. All of us were given chances to ride along with Rob, spend time around conversations with the shapers, or spend time on machines early in the process. But if we had to break down the hours… take your pick at a shovel or rake.
The bulk of the work was drainage. The most expensive and severe features needed drainage almost directly after being built. Greens and bunkers were those features mainly, but that was scheduled work. Because we had opened up the entire site from rooted vegetation (in order to tie in all the landforms), one big rain could change our day or week substantially. Even the act of preparing for weather events was a job in itself. We worked hard- harder than I had ever worked before, which wasn’t saying much, but is true. Despite that, there is something so raw and real about living and dying by acts of nature. Checking the weather was as important as checking the time, but we reached a point where you can nearly do both by looking at the sky.
The theme of this experience was change-by-environment. I lived my entire life up to that point in a very singular way- loved by family and friends, no real trauma, great education, the ability to compete and get better at something with resources to do so, all the way down the line. I went to school with people who also came from those backgrounds, and to add- it was even more of an echo chamber when it came to positivity and optimism. I needed a change - needed to see the world as it really was - get broken in a little bit, and I knew it. To put it lightly, I got it. All of us waded through the mud of misunderstanding, and we spent many days digging trenches and nights by the fire discussing our paths to get there. We were of different ages, family backgrounds, and past experiences. Most everybody had seen some shit. I liked that. You didn’t (couldn’t) call it pretty, but you could certainly call it real.
I spent some pretty lonely days out there. I remember stretches of time where family or friends would call and ask what I had been up to the last 2-3 weeks. The answer? I had been in the same seat of the same tractor scraping off 3 inches of dirt per pass for the last 270 hours of daylight. When asking what they had been up to, I got answers like “we finished up that project for our client and the response was really good” or “just got back from a two week mission trip to Guatemala- it was amazing”, or even worse, “we just had a great lunch with the family and grandparents- everyone misses you”. That being said, the highs were incredibly high. Sunday day trips to Wild Horse Golf Club, a triad playing golf in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota in one day, and many more great days on site and post-work rounds at Old Dane- it made it all worth it. Leaving that place in the dead of winter, I was a much more calloused human.
To work at Landmand was to become part of a family, and I’m sure that feeling is not singular. Especially for individual clients who have owned the land they build on for a long time, you’re very much a guest at their place and you’re playing a role in taking a field of hills into a destination people will travel to far beyond my lifetime. That collective effort breeds a sort of pride and brotherhood that’s hard to replicate with an institution and bunch of contractors. For that reason and many others, I was so pleased to see the success Landmand has had since opening to the public. Even though we as a collective made a large contribution to the project, I felt as if my individual impact was miniscule. That being said, for the first time, I felt the shared accomplishment any architect would feel after completing a project. We were all so happy for all parties involved as we had seen the sacrifices firsthand. We lived the article. I now understood the context behind the features in the magazines.
Greenville, South Carolina
By the new year I was living in Greenville spending my days working on a construction crew in the North and South Carolina mountains up to Lake Keowee and Clemson. The previous winter, there was no construction work with King Collins going into the first months of the year. I needed a job, and I was optimistic that I would find my way back to design, just not through that avenue. I spent most mornings meeting customers in my red shirt, most afternoons cutting irrigation pipe, grading, laying stone, or splicing wire. I was drifting quickly away from my life in golf.
A weekend trip to Charlotte on a winter day led to drinks with Henry and Jubal Early, the 3rd member of The Tie Podcast at its inception. That night, a podcast was mentioned as a joke in my memory, but we never looked back. We spent the next 4+ months recording every weekend- our version of MudBallMonday- and before long were were confident enough to throw them on the internet. To this day, none of the day 1 episodes have aired, and I am pleased to say that.
Podcasting has taught me so much more than I thought it ever would. Though I still listen to other podcasts and pick up an interest, idea, or perspective- the real fruit in doing this has been the sum of all the reps and the connecting of many dots between guests. It’s the prep- listening to how guests navigate other hosts, figuring out how to take a new angle, and stepping in their shoes. We started by interviewing people that have a unique perspective on the game, and we’re still doing that. What feels different is the compounding effect is kicking in. There’s a larger (and ever-growing) pool of experiences and conversations to draw from when talking with people inside and adjacent to the golf course design space.
We’ve heard from shapers who are taking on some of their own designs like Trevor Dormer, Jaeger Kovich, Quinn Thompson, and this week’s guest Benjamin Warren. We’ve heard from highly accomplished golfers who are head over heels for design, getting their toes wet in golf course construction such as Lukas Michel and future guest Brad Gehl. We’ve heard from superintendents Kyle Harris and Rich Shilling. Plus, we’ve heard from architects Brian Schneider, Blake Conant, Kyle Franz, Mike Clayton, Mike Nuzzo, Rob Collins, Ben Hillard (Hanse Associate), and Geoff Shackelford.
The sum of those prep sessions, conversations, follow-ups, site visits, and text threads has had such a profound impact on my willingness to continue down the path of golf. When I think of the gift of not having golf forced on me, the decision to take it seriously, the outrageous opportunities to play great courses, the people who have been willing to support my interest- it’s no mistake we’re here. Like the paragraphs above, I’m in the middle of a future reflection. I look forward to adding onto this story later down the line, but for now, thanks for helping me build what comes next.
A wise man once told me “there must be a common thread amongst your story– your own red line”. That common thread (the tie), clearly, has been golf design and development, with a keen interest in the people who create it, play it, and see it differently than others.
Cheers,
WS