Listen: I’m going to (again) shout this out for the cheap seats: Buddy’s is majorly overated. Loui’s Pizza on Dequindre in Hazel Park has the best Detroit Style pizza in the world. Bar none. And the salad dressing for the antipasto salad is to die for.
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And the surly waitresses with cheap bottles of Chianti hanging from the ceiling. It’s the best.
Interested to see how Strokes Gained Tango shakes out for the big guy
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I did dishes there in my high school years. I have more than a few bottles on the walls signed.
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I need to know the series of events. Did @Randy come to the realization that he wasn’t utilizing his hips AFTER the tango lesson? Is dance the secret to the big guys game?
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I tried to do some forensic analysis but Randy is wearing like five shirts in the first fifteen minutes of the episode. So either someone is too liberal with editing of the timeline or Randy had some major sweats going on. Hard to tell but I assume tango might have been night one and it did indeed lead to the hip epiphany.
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Thanks for this - high praise!
There are a ton of obvious tropes and stereotypes about Detroit, and certainly some are true and there are vast areas of the city that are run down. But at this point there are so many encouraging developments, cool shit sprouting up where there was ruin, and still with a certain authenticity that often goes by the wayside when you’ve got gentrification. The bright spots still feel quintessentially Detroit and gritty. I’m sure there are many that aren’t, and there’s a whole conversation to be had about Dan Gilbert, but we tried to find the positive.
Between Franklin Hills, Oakland Hills, Meadowbrook, CCoD, DGC, Indianwood, Orchard Lake, Barton Hills, Bloomfield Hills, etc. there’s so much classic golf. And we took a look at Rouge Park, but having played Rackham prior to this trip and loving it and wanting to show all the good stuff that Karen is doing there, it just made sense to feature. Wish we could’ve gotten more granular on 14/15/17/18 but the course was packed and the light was tough for droning and the puddles were a tough deal, so we went with a bigger picture thing. Rackham back nine is probably ripe for a follow-up Crash Course with hole by hole drone stuff and close-ups on the greens. Meadowbrook was our other choice for a course but ti didn’t parallel the “Detroit” themes we were going for and it’s also a little bit of eye candy. And then Oakland Hills was on no visitor policy, so we went with DGC. The South course at DGC was wonderful. Also, former mayor/Piston Dave Bing played in the group behind us. Was a fitting thing for the episode. And I can’t emphasize how aggro Gus Johnson’s outfit/dog was.
Also: seeing @sundaybag get worked up at Buddy’s was a highlight. He does not do well with apathetic service!
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Considering Gus manages to have about four different patterns going on for B1G football broadcasts, I can only imagine the shit he’d wear on the course.
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Fast-forward to the goals pod: 2022: The Year of the Hip-iphany
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Rouge is another of those “great bones, rough around the edges” courses.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on it if you ever get the chance to play it. The 100 yard par 3 up a 60’ hill is a blast to play.
The 3 Detroit courses (Rackham, Chandler, Rouge) absolutely embody what municipal golf should be. Accessable, affordable, and fun.
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It seems as though Doak courses crossing the line from fun to silly with conditions/setup is a trend I’ve noticed. Firstly, with the comments from the NLU gents on Pac Dunes and The Loop.
Now, I’ve played Pac Dunes about 5 times. 4 times were in March and had a winter wind and I walked away with Pac Dunes as my favorite of the 4 (Sheep Ranch not being opened yet). The 5th was with no wind, foggy/the lightest drops of rain sticking to everything. And I still saw few faults. With all the being said, I can definitely see it being a trainwreck waiting to happen with a summer wind, and a STRONG summer wind that it tends to be. Just like how Old Mac plays like dogshit in a winter wind, but I can see it being a blast in a summer wind.
Going back to the fun to silly line, the Doak course I have the most experience with is Ballyneal. It’s a fantastic golf course. The conditioning is everything you want with firm and fast conditions… except when it’s too fast. A 20-30 mph wind/gust whipping across the start of the Great American Desert is pretty common and can come out of nowhere and disappear several minutes later. This can bake out the greens even more and they can get pretty shiny some days. The problem is that the greens have a TON of internal (and external) contours, and they were designed with fescue greens in mind. A few years back, they switched the greens to a bent/fescue mix because the fescue would NOT do well in the hot and humid days of the summer. There is dormant fescue and then there is dying fescue, which is where it got by the end of most summers. So, they switched grass types, and they did so without changing any of the internal contours. In most cases, this would be applauded; however, you can cut bent tighter than fescue, and, as a result, the greens roll quicker than they used to. Maybe 2-3 feet quicker. When you combine the faster green speeds, the shininess of the greens, and the internal contours, there are some days where I find the greens more silly than fun. A similar experience to the boys at The Loop it sounds like
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Ballyneal’s greens seem like they need to be kept around 9 to be playable. That’s the most internal contouring I’ve ever seen on a set of 18 greens. I last played it in 2012 before the conversion, it took a couple days to get used to how slow they were, but that’s how slow they had to be to be fun and playable. I can’t imagine how they’d be at anything much above 10. I don’t recall the Loop having greens that wild. Lost Dunes has some pretty wild greens as well, but they’re playable. I remember sections of Streamsong Blue being wild, like the big ridge on 11, but nothing like Ballyneal. Our superintendent at Kingsley does a good job of keeping the heavily contoured greens at a very playable speed. If they got up above about 10.5, they’d be impossible and/or you’d lose a lot of pins.
He does challenge convention from time to time, and when he talks about it, it makes sense, but it can be polarizing. On the fourth at Lost Dunes, there are a couple pins that are not accessible from other parts of the green that aren’t far away. Like on the left side there’s a shelf where, if you’re above it, you cannot make the putt, and you may hope to get the ball to a makeable spot about 8-10 feet away. But it’s a really short par 5, almost to the extent that you need to throw out the idea of a par 5 being three shots and two putts. Why can’t a par 5 be 2 shots and 3 putts? That green makes sense in that context. Of course, he also says that the owner wasn’t sold, and Tom told him “let me build this green and no one will complain about any of the other greens”. Seems to have worked out.
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Thanks for the detail. Very interesting. I wasn’t really trying to defend Doak or anything, but I guess I had different experiences. I’ve played Pac Dunes 3x now, all in the summer. Once was a summer morning like 7 years ago, so I don’t remember it being crazy windy. The second was probably the one rainy day Bandon got summer 2019 where there was little wind, and what wind there was was out of the winter direction (4 played slightly into the wind, 13 slightly downwind). Then the last time was in the afternoon in the summer with what felt like pretty good winds. I’ll agree that Doak went with a much more North/South routing than Bandon for example which has lots of holes crosswind. That makes 10-13 a bit of a slog into the summer wind, but then 14-16 are with the wind. The points on 14 and 16 are fair: I didn’t feel like 14 was crazy, but maybe it was just the pin we got. 15 plays I think pretty easy into the summer wind, at least to make a birdie. Then 16 yeah I think I’ve just gotten really lucky where the last time I played I drove the green and made birdie. I may also feel differently b/c I hit the ball very high (too high tbh): that might make it easier to stop downwind than a lower traj.
The stories on Ballyneal are very interesting. I appreciate that for sure. Haven’t played Ballyneal, but it looks sweet. I’ll have to broaden my Doak experiences a bit more and see if I still feel the same way.
(Apologies from deviating from Detroit pizza conversation again)
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I jumped to the bottom as I didn’t have time to read everything and just watched over lunch.
Kudos on a fun episode. Highlighting Detroit was a fun way to start the story and really encapsulates how I feel about a lot of cities. Whether they are loved or not, all of them have something to enjoy and I’m glad you guys showed that. Props to @Randy for the tango stuff. As an avowed non-dancer, braver man than me!
@MerchCzar along with the big man’s guess of # of courses had me rolling. A true Strapped guess.
Randy is the only one of the fellas I’ve played with, but I’d look forward to teeing it up with all of them. I felt it in my bones when @djpie said Neil hits it 100 past him.
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Having all the golf pros I work with also drive it 100 past me, I too felt this in my bones
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Minus the 2500 trees they need to take out a Rouge Park.
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Can’t wait to see The Loop episode based on the recap pod. I played it last year and, minus ping-ponging between two bunkers on the second hole and fighting a hook all day, the course seemed pretty fair. Especially as Randy or DJ noted, it passes the 1-ball rule quite well, and it was fun to try to pull off tough/quirky shots without having dire consequences at risk.
Listening to the podcast, I get the sense that a competitive round under super tricked out conditions isn’t quite the way the loop is meant to be experienced. Kinda feels like going to a wing restaurant, doing their spicy wing challenge and judging their wings on that experience.
That said, am I still going to try to play in the dual next year? Hell yeah.
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Still throws me off whenever one of the guys says jif instead of gif.
This episode was amazing. Immediately texted my foursome and asked when we’re going to Michigan.
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Watched it with my lady. We’ve been talking about a trip in lieu of Christmas presents this year and she asked “damn babe do we need to go to Michigan?” So… that’s what’s up.
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