Feed The Ball

Brett Hochstein is one of the most prominent shapers and collaborators in contemporary golf course design having worked closely with Tom Doak, Gil Hanse , Todd Eckenrode and many other designers. Most recently he was instrumental in the reconstruction of the bunkers and greens at Pasatiempo with Jim Urbina while simultaneously building a roster of his own unique clients. Brett sits down with Derek...

The evolution of Aronimink Golf Club in Philadelphia is one of the most interesting and mildly contentious in American golf. This episode of The Rap with Ron Prichard , who consulted at the club from 1994 to 2015, gets into the details of why. Photos: Cover page, Aronimink, hole 3. Above, hole 10 (Derek Duncan). See “Every Hole at Aronimink” here . Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple P...

Joe Hancock is one of the OG’s of golf course building and shaping, and has worked with the profession’s greatest architects. The list of courses’s he’s helped build is staggering. He joins Jim Urbina and Derek Duncan to discuss how Mike DeVries pulled him into golf design, how his own sense of frugality influences his design outlook, the importance of collaboration in succ...

Architect David Kahn of Jackson Kahn Design comes back to the podcast to update us on his twin daughters afflicted with juvenile Batten disease and the 2026 Take a Swing Fore Batten auction. He also sits in the spotlight to answer questions about the challenges and advantages of building estate courses for private owners (that no other golfers get to see), how he views the contemporary trend of id...

Golf course designer Dave Zinkand joins Derek Duncan on the Feed the Ball podcast to talk about his work at Bandon Trails and Bandon Preserve with Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw , what “sympathetic restoration” looks like to him, what Harry Colt and Tom Simpson taught him about using the ground surrounding hazards, establishing name recognition with new clients and the power of having tim...

Jim Urbina returns to the podcast, this time back in the guest chair, for a free-flowing discussion about the proliferation of bunkers in contemporary design, the sameness of courses now, whether designers and developers are pushing a vision or emulating others, and how much William Watson he feels he needs to bring back to his remodel of the Ocean Course at Olympic Club in San Francisco. Photos:...

Golf designer Jay Blasi comes on the Feed the Ball podcast to talk about the challenges and importance of good public golf, comparing building new holes on top of existing holes versus working new land, the expectations versus outcome of Chambers Bay , the challenge of having to deal with cart paths, the challenge of making it in a tough industry where you’re two calls away from being out of...

Ran Morrissett is the founder of GolfClubAtlas.com , the most influential golf architecture website of the past 25 years, which means, of all time. He’s a prolific writer and photographer, a consultant in course designs like The Roost at Cabut Citrus Farms in Florida, the former administrator for Golf Magazine’s top 100 U.S. and World courses, and one of the most eloquent advocates for...

Jeff Stein began his career shaping courses for Gil Hanse , Tom Doak , Jim Urbina and other designers. Now he has his own business consulting with clubs and a partnership with Brian Ross designing new courses. They recently opened Great Dunes on Jekyll Island in Georgia and are exploring other opportunities. Jeff talks with Derek Duncan about the unpredictability of the equipment available when bu...

Golf architect Todd Eckenrode has built and re-built golf courses up and down California and knows the work of historic architects like Alister MacKenzie, George Thomas, William Watson and Max Behr as well as anyone. He joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss working at and learning to play at Pasatiempo , when to try to “restore” original architecture and when to make alterations,...

Golf course designer and builder Jaeger Kovich , who has shaped projects for Gil Hanse and Tom Doak and now is establishing himself as one of the busiest remodel specialists in the business, joins Golf Digest’s Derek Duncan to answer 24 questions about his views on architecture. Photos: Cover page, The Cradle (Pinehurst Resort). Above, Laurel Links (propergolf.com). Music: “24 Frames,&...

Architect Tyler Rae is part of the next wave of major golf course designers. He joins Derek Duncan in the hot seat to answer 24 questions about golf, his career and his outlook on design. Photos: Cover page, Old Sawmill (Tyler Rae). Above, Lookout Mountain, 11th hole. Watch Derek Duncan break down the 16th hole at Cypress Point . Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts and Spotify . Twitter:...

Martin Ebert is one of the founding partners, along with Tom Mackenzie , of Mackenzie & Ebert , arguably the top golf design firm in Europe. Ebert has been the lead consulting architect, with Mackenzie, for most of the Open Championship courses as well as dozens of clubs in the U.K., Ireland and Europe. They also have several new courses currently under construction around the world. Ebert joi...

Jerry Pate burst into the golf world when he won the 1976 U.S. Open at Atlanta Athletic Club in just his second year on tour. From 1976 through 1982 when he won the first Players Championship held at the new Pete Dye-designed TPC Sawgrass he was one of the best players in the world, contending in other majors and earning a spot on the 1981 Ryder Cup team. Injuries forced him off the Tour and into...

Trey Kemp has been one of the most active and influential figures in public and municipal golf design in Texas for over 15 years. He spent much of that time working with John Colligan and now has his own firm, continuing to improve public courses while also pursuing new course commissions. He joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the challenges and opportunities working in the public sphere,...

Lost Rail Golf Club Bill Kubly is one of the OG’s in golf course architecture. He’s the founder Landscapes Unlimited , of one of golf’s most prominent course construction companies (opened in 1976), and has had a hands-on, up front view of the profession for 50 years. Kubly joins the Feed the Ball podcast to share stories from a long career building golf courses for virtually all...

Ron Whitten , historian and former Golf Digest architecture editor, and Mike Davis , former USGA CEO and executive director, delve deep into the origins, evolution and architecture of Oakmont Country Club . We discuss how and why Oakmont developed the way it has, what makes it arguably the greatest championship venue in American golf, what makes the greens so unique and so fast, whether it’s...

Golf course designer Riley Johns joins Derek and Jim from his home in Canada to fill us in on his latest thoughts on course building and artistry. Johns has been splitting time between his own growing business with partner Keith Rhebb , leading projects for Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw , and even working with Jim on the renovation of St. Charles in Winnipeg, a club with nines by both Alister MacKen...

Augusta National is complicated. It’s the most famous course in the world and has been an architectural and maintenance ideal for decades, even though the design is in a continuing state of flux and the turf and bunker conditions have been far from perfect over its life. If it isn’t what we think it is, and perhaps never was, and if it has passed through numerous very different version...

You may have read or heard someone talk about good or bad “tie-ins” on a golf course. It loosely has to do with how the architecture is connected to the land during construction, but the topic is much larger and more nuanced than that. Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina define and discuss tie-ins, what they are, and why doing them correctly is important to the functionality and enjoyment of a...

Looking ahead to The Players Championship, former PGA Tour player Richard Zokol and designer Jeff Mingay drop in from Canada to break down everything there is to know about The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass (Zokol actually competed on Sawgrass in the 1980s). We get into the history and creation of the course, how it exemplifies Pete Dye’s architectural genius, its influence on golf...

Writer Michael Croley , author of the book Any Other Place: Stories , veered into the world of golf with a revelatory profile on Tom Doak in 2017 in the Virginia Quarterly Review , hardly the place you’d expect to find an expose on a golf course architect. Now fully entrenched in the golf writing world while teaching creative writing at Denison University, Croley joins the Feed the Ball podc...

Former Australian, European and PGA Tour player and current CBS Sports golf broadcaster Ian Baker-Finch joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina on the Feed the Ball podcast. They discuss the lack of architecture discussion during tournament television broadcasts, the dangers of the distance professional players are driving the ball, the importance of s...

Hole No. 17 credit: LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of Whispering Pines GC (or however Larry Lambrecht likes his credit to appear) Texas-based architect Chet Williams joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss designing the 2024 Golf Digest Best New Private Course , The Covey at Big Easy Ranch near Houston. He talks about what made the land special, the ideal of creating as much hole-to-hole variety as poss...

Keith Cutten comes back on the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the new Shorty’s course at Bandon Dunes that opened last year, Brantford Golf & Country Club in Ontario and building Ken Baskt’s The Ranch near Hobe Sound, Florida. He also explains the working dynamics of his firm Whitman, Axland, Cutten (WAC), how Dave Axland and Rod Whitman work, the importance of small contours and...