TOUR Championship Course Looks VERY Different Now

we're here at East Lake host of The Tour Championship and of course the FedEx Cup playoff finale and it's been one of the great spots for drama you think about the Rory mcky whole L think about Jim furick with his backwards hat Bill hos out of the water well the golf course has gone through some serious changes over the last 11 months and we wanted to highlight some of those changes when the PJ tour returns for the Tour Championship [Music] Mo GRE this morning is going to be shorty you'll be gc1 Lee gc2 Eric gc3 Sam gc4 and Garvey gc5 we're going to try to mow approaches a little later this morning um so the guys that are mowing approaches we're just going to rake Fairway bunkers for right now and then as soon as yall finished with Fairway bunkers we're going to get on the triplexes okay totaled up the rain for the month of July that's 9.74 in of rain I don't know what the record is but that's got to be pretty close I would imagine the 10day forecast there's actually some days with some sunshine in it so we need to make hay while we can okay how's it been the last let's say 10 10 and a half months a little bit stressful but the stress kind of goes away the more you get used to it the more experience you have with it but this year is obviously a completely different [Music] game how are the conversations with Andrew Green and his team you know it was a solid year plus of planning before before the first dozer ever even hit the ground how many days after the vi hin putt did you start working on the golf course was it the next day we started working on Tuesday there was an event Monday they started clearing out the buildout you know so all the structures started on Monday but we started construction on Tuesday and we had a milestone to complete the front nine by Christmas and then the thought being that we could finish this other side on the second half of the project window there were a few hurdles there a few anxious moments but overall we had an amazing team over 200 people took part in the construction of this and everybody's sole effort was to create the best golf possible for this year's T Championship kind of serving more like a GC than a superintendent honestly just having to you know figure out and coordinate all the different contractors that are on site at all times and making sure that people are coming in at the right times to finish up in certain areas and you know instead of honing in on every tiny last little blade of grass like we typically are it's more like hey are we just going to be able to have a sod on the ground here instead of clay so uh just trying to make sure that you know all those boxes get checked this year the golf course got a lot of rain last night so we're GNA kind of get the bunkers back in shape Sam yeah that's right all right will you show me the skill set let's see how good you are all right you just go from like right here and then just push it up like that okay did you see that he gave me one breake tip that's all you need and then we're just going to go all the way around you go all the way around to all the edges sweet what time's call time every day Sam uh 6: a.m. 6:00 a.m. and then you're just going to start in the center here just go around in circles and make a circle all right go around in circle make a circle seems easy enough Sams like I'm going to start coming in at 6:15 now look at that thing good work hey there's there's one footprint in there might have to go fix it I'm I'm good I'm leaving it I'm leaving it nobody's playing golf out here when we were interviewing with Andrew one thing that he did that was really cool in his process was he was able to find photos from archives of an aerial shot of the property from like literally from every decade we really like to find something in the 30s or as close to the depression as possible that shows us the closest thing to the an original say it's in the teens or 20s to how it would have been presented here we found one in 49 typically that's way too late that there's been a lot of life that's led to that but this one in particular was a very high quality image so when you zoomed in anything that had been lost to time you could still see some sort of Remnant and he was like this was kind of my nor star for the design of the property and then we just had a bunch of other supplemental information that just kind of reinforced what we were seeing in that picture what pole is going to be the most different from pre- restoration to this season's FedEx Cup finale seven we opened up a lot of views coming down the right side of the hole and we kind of opened up the hole itself this tree lined all the way up this way yeah this was like a full tree lined Edge down the down here this whole left side had more trees coming down it as well okay and then you kind of got down to this area over here on the right side of seven and this was just a solid wall of trees you couldn't see so we wouldn't be able see nothing the fact that we've opened this up now the views are just unbelievable and it's kind of like a full experience as you're playing the hole the hole it's still a par 4 there's still some risk reward but it's unbelievable the architecture that Andrew came up with on that hole I think the biggest thing will be the greens they've all changed in their shape and a lot of them have changed locations the routing has stayed pretty much the way it was previously but we really worked with available topography to to provide more variety so the six par five uh scoring hole but the green is in a very different position you you're saying the green was what 40 yards left of here yeah it used to be 40 yards left kind of tucked up under those trees right there and there were a few more trees right here that kind of blocked it from getting the amount of sunlight that it really needed for a Bermuda grass green Andrew pulled the te South and he pulled the Fairway South and he kept the pivot point in the same spot and then he took the green and he pulled to the South too so you know you went from a a dog leg like that to a dog leg like that so um and it it lengthened the hole a little bit too but it it'll still be getable for the tour players but it plays dramatically different did anything shock You by that image did you see something on the image and you went I can't believe this existed here or I didn't even know yeah I think the Dual greens is going to continue to kind of be towards the top of that list why why why was there two greens was it grass for the weather or what yeah exactly so they had kind of a winter green and a summer green and depending on the time of year you play to one or the other maybe sometimes you could play it either one you want right so we have 36 greens for 18 holes so sometimes he would kind of take inspiration from both of those screens and kind of create one out of it which is like what he did on number one and then when you read some of the the information that uh Bobby Jones talked about or reporting on his play you see some really cool stuff like 17 there was a par three version so one way it was a three other ways it was a four crazy when you're at an amazing place like East Lake where so many amazing players have been here obviously fostering Bobby Jones it's just super important to the legacy of the club to respect that past you mentioned the club The Tour Championship in the FedEx Cup is important very important for one week out of the Year 51 weeks out of the year it's important for the members to enjoy the golf course how do you balance that how do you build a golf course or restore a golf course and allow a 15 handicapper that hits at 200 yards to enjoy it and also have Rory mroy be able to go out there and have a a tough test or a Stern test we put the Fairway bunkers in the best locations for kind of the back te's and then we situated the other T's to kind of play into that so the best players from every te is challenged to make sure they pick a line and a distance that's best for their play around the greens we were certainly able to really respect the history because the putting surface their shapes and the bunker configurations they work whether it's 1920 or 2024 uh the variety of whole locations allows the Tour Championship to set up as hard as they want okay or maybe as gently as they want and then allows the average player to have a lot of fun playing time and time again and so you know that's really the magic of this is taking all the history all the goals for today and tomorrow and trying to make it fit together when you think of Donald Ross what do you think of as a designer he did 400 and some courses whatever you know I'd like to see where he took a piece of ground and unlocked its potential interesting so I just love looking at all his different work and seeing how he was able to put those pieces together I think there's just a a beautiful breadth of his work and I think a few of the features we have here really speak to that this golf course was was designed in the 20s is that right I mean it's 2024 how do you go about combining kind of new age philosophy fees in terms of architecture with technology and also keeping this thing classical obviously to an O to Donald Ross folks that'll be watching the event they're certainly going to see the difference in the grasses we've got brand new zoa grass in the fairways and a really interesting cool kind of putting green quality zoa grass around the greens themselves that is a huge upgrade the traditional nasty 419 Bermuda still here the ball's going to sink to the bottom for sure um when it comes to the greens themselves there's a lot of inherent infrastructure we've got a A system that connects to the drainage underneath allows you to push air in pull air out as well as water especially on a day like today and then we also have the ability to heat and cool the greens with a hydronic system 12 in beneath the actual surface that we're standing on we have a series of uh PEX tubing pipes which are all 9 in apart um and that'll give us the ability to run water through those pipes and you can heat the water or you can cool the water and that'll give us the ability to change the ambient temperature within the green itself it's really about trying to take your worst day and your best day and shorten the Gap in between them as an anonomous you're trying to allow for the highest level of conditioning possible on a reasonable [Music] basis viewing wise the the fans out here will have a way better chance to see more golf is that fair to say oh yeah the views that have opened up and the opportunity to see different shots is it's so much better especially on the front side in the sight lines not only for The Spectators but for the golfers there's some places where especially 15t there was a spot where we had to make sure that that te would allow for flexibility and its placement during the event because if not the structure would block a player sight line and with 15 especially it's such an amazing hole that would not be a good thing there's not a single green out here that mimics one that used to be here uh the greens are unbelievably interesting but you know Andrew takes all the credit for that we just kind of paint the canvas that he created we did work hand inand with the tour agronomist and some of the tour design staff to just make sure everybody was totally comfortable that we had plenty of good usable whole locations and a lot of variety when this thing got started back in September October it wasn't uncommon to have people come out here and be like are you going to get it done there's so much dirt like questioning the how are you going to do it and just the fact that we you know we able to and uh We've created the product that we have and we're going to be playing the Tour Championship out here you know I think there's a lot to be said for that I'm really proud of the team has this been the most taxing testing experience of your career it's certainly a career Milestone to be proud of and I'm I'm glad we were able to you know achieve it and create something that the membership here can be proud of