Sit back and get ready to take off with Dynamic Golf.
Hey welcome back everybody.
Welcome our Dynamic Golf listeners.
Welcome I am your co-host Tim McElvanah.
With me today is Sean Klotz.
Sean who is our special guest today?
Hi Dynamic Golf listeners.
We have a very special guest today.
His name is Mike Kelly.
He's been a member at Oakley.
I'm going to let him kind of do some of his bio for us.
But you know again kind of being up here for the first summer.
It's been really interesting meeting some of the different personalities of Oakley Country Club.
And Mike surely fits that.
So Mike just kind of introduce yourself to the listeners.
We were talking yesterday when we were playing.
You've been a member out here.
Your dad's been a member.
Kind of go through some of that history if you don't mind.
Yeah.
I'm the son of Doughton Jack Kelly.
Who were members here for 27 years from 1960 to 1977.
I rejoined the club.
I joined the club myself in 89.
So that's about 35 years.
Wow.
I am the father of three.
My wife Carol.
My daughter Collie.
Kirsten and Jane.
All two grandkids.
I'm the personal line insurance agency.
And have a real love of this.
Donald Ross' original golf course.
So golf's kind of running your family right?
Your dad was a player.
He was heavily involved here at Oakley.
He was golf chair.
He was a Northern Twy captain.
These are events that still go on to this day.
Which is the cool part of Oakley.
We talked about the history.
The Northern Twy that he mentioned is a golf league that played during the summer.
And that's one of the oldest leagues in the country.
In the country team.
Yeah, it is the summer Twy.
I mean just the history up there.
From all the way back to now it's just so rich.
You can pick out any decade or any generation and there's just a rich part of history up there in that area.
It's amazing.
So he walked in this morning, which is ironic.
He walked in this morning with a wedge that he got from one of the previous golf professionals here.
Paul Donahue, which we actually have a championship named after the Donahue Cup.
Paul was here for 30 years?
Like 34?
Yeah, he was a member here.
He was club champion before he became a club.
Okay, yeah.
So he walks in with this wedge which has got one of those old green golf pride grips on it.
And it's got his imprint on it.
Paul Donahue because that's the way that's called it.
McGregor.
Yeah, McGregor would put the pros name on the back of the wedge which I think is the actual signature.
Yeah.
Wow.
So pretty neat.
So I mean you've seen a lot of changes there, right Mike?
I mean over the years.
Oh, a lot.
I mean, wow.
A lot of changes.
Yeah.
So similarities because the course still stays a lot to what Ross had done for it.
It's still the, I believe it's the 1910, the last time Ross did some work here was 1910.
Yeah.
He left for Essex in 1910, 11.
I know you had that podcast with me and me.
So what's the conditions changed meaning like even the improvements in sort of agronomy,
sort of how they cut the greens better, faster than they did maybe 20 years ago.
Oakley's always been known for quick.
Yeah, Oakley's signature has always been the greens.
Okay.
And I also understand that Pat did a podcast which I did listen to.
Yeah.
And he's got these things this time of year when they get hot and fast, they stimp about
12, 13 down the stimp meter and they can be very difficult.
Yeah.
Do you remember like the layout of the golf course is the same layout except for maybe
hole number three currently like just the green change and like.
Yeah, I would say yeah, the green change on three.
You know, we've made 10 a par four.
Okay.
Yeah.
It was a par five.
You know, the original Ross course was a par 71.
Oh, okay.
And a few years back it got changed to a par four.
Most difficult hole on the course now.
Yeah.
Especially for a 12, 13 handicap.
An aging 12, 13 handicap.
Hey, don't let them fool you, T-Mac.
You don't want to play them for 10 bucks or whatever.
Don't do that.
Tough competitor, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's great.
So some of the par threes, Ross always has some signature par threes at his golf course.
I think 15 might be just one of the most picturesque holes that we have out here.
Yes, yes it is.
You know, seven is my favorite.
Is it?
Yeah, yeah.
It's my favorite and, you know, that was the last work that Ross did on this golf course
was that hole.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I think it's cool how Ross always, and T-Mac, you would understand this from some of the
courses down in Florida.
Sarabay, the Bel Air Country Club that Ross did down there.
He always has, like, they don't always have to be 190 yards, 220 yard par threes.
He can make a great hundred and, our 12th hole is 140 from the back.
Yeah, right?
Yeah, 140 and arguably one of the harder.
We talked about that yesterday.
It felt a little old.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's all about how you design a hole, not the length of it.
I think, you know, a lot of the more modern designers of today's age have just gotten
in love with length and high rough.
And I think, you know, if you look at the contours of your green and you look at the
position of the tee, back in the old days you really had to think about those things
and not just kind of press the button and make something happen.
A lot of thought went into that, I think, personally.
Yeah.
No, it's so true.
And I played, so I played with Mr. Kelly, Bob Kelly yesterday, and Jim Conroy.
They're all members.
Jim's been out here for about nine years.
Bob's been out here for 35 years, I think, and then Mr. Kelly, you know.
So my point is, after a summer of playing, I feel like I'm a brand new golfer because
I learned so much as far as what you just said, T-Mac, like hitting it to certain spots,
right?
You can't overpower sometimes the call.
Of course, you have to almost do what the designer gave you in front of you and hit
it to a certain spot.
And just accept par is okay.
Par is an okay score.
You have great score.
Absolutely.
It's a U.S. Open kind of venue at that point, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
You know, we have five par threes here, and they really are the teeth of the golf course.
When the greens are running fast, if you make five pars on the par threes, you're going
to have a pretty good round.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're going to probably pick up some shots on some of the golfers out there, too.
So, Mike, talk to me a little bit about Green's committee or Grounds Committee chair.
You've been this for how long?
And basically, I know you've got a Grounds Committee with you, which is including Jack
Bartley, Herb Klein, Phil Drupaux, Sharon Hayes, Po Shang Chen, Jim Conroy, and Steve
Emery.
And how does that whole thing work?
How do you either sort of on a seasonal basis maybe work that and then kind of go back to
Pat and kind of work with him?
So sort of just walk the listeners through that at a private country club.
Well, you know, I got appointed with the Grounds Chair resigned.
And I got appointed by the president to take the finishes term.
And then I went in front of the nominating committee and the nominating committee for
my own term, which was three years.
Okay.
So I mean, my first year is that three year term.
I kept the committee that the former Grounds Chair had all members, you know, they were
working hard at it.
And we've met a couple of times.
How does the budget part of it work?
Do you do you guys the budget?
Does Pat kind of present a budget to you guys and say that presents the budget?
We bring it to we bring it to the board.
Okay.
And then the board makes decisions.
And then we make some decisions based on capital improvement.
Yeah.
So we need a new Greensmiller or something like that.
Pat writes that into his budget.
All right.
Hey, here's the reasons why.
And then you guys either.
Oh, mention Dan Tarrant is also on that list.
And I could see the college classmate of mine who's strong in budgets and accounting.
So I of course, I had to put him on the committee.
That's true.
I heard there was some type of Yeah, I have a Dan Tarrant story.
I don't know if it's good for the podcast about about the stroke holes or whatever it was or when you started a match a couple of weeks ago and it was going to establish the rules of the match.
Oh, yeah, no, this.
Yeah, yeah.
We and I have a lot of fun going back and forth on that.
It's basically whether we play a NASA or a distance match and the different the different things that go along with it.
But we've had a few laughs over.
Tim, do you know what a distance matches?
Have you ever heard that term?
No, I've never heard of what is a distance match.
That sounds interesting.
So this is not you should play the match.
It's it's an 18 hole match.
You set an amount on what you want to play for for that match.
And then you can close out for half.
If you get closed out, you can you can you can press for half of the balance of the holes.
Okay.
And, you know, there's other things that go along.
We have what they call the greenies, which with the five part threes and we've got this thing called the double bubble, which if if you're in the different rules that have been changed over the years with it is, you know, if you hit if you hit the light, it could be if you hit the last one, you get the double bubble, which doubles the bet.
And it's it's a lot of fun.
But the rules change as we go.
It's always been something that you have to you have to make the make the game on the first tee.
So it's always always some fun go around about that.
That's cool. That that's really cool.
And, you know, it just seems like, you know, everybody there has a really good time what they're trying to do.
And it just seems like all the members are there for so many years and just there's got to be such camaraderie around there.
Yes. So we were able to play in an event yesterday, Tim, that was basically Doc Cansey and David Cansey and kind of set this up. It's pretty much an annual event as far as I know.
Right. Like he he has been doing it for a number of years. Yeah.
So basically, the idea was that there'd be a staff member, you know, professional with the members and they're probably about five or six groups of us.
You know, just all got to be able to kind of create that camaraderie.
I know Mr. Kelly, but being able to spend four hours with him on a golf course really kind of changed some of the things that I see when I when I walk around here and then on the back porch, we're all having dinner last night.
And it's just it's a great accepting culture from the membership.
It's really nice to be included in that as a staff member and not feel like you're solely a staff member.
You're also part of the family at Oakley.
I think that's kind of one of those things that definitely separates Oakley from other facilities that mean you honestly event.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it just sounds like when every time I talk to you, Sean, it just seems like the golf course you want to work at.
You know, when when we went to PGA school and everything we kind of envisioned, it's kind of like where we want to be.
Right. I mean, you're being accepted into the to the membership.
You know, the members are liking you.
There's history that's involved.
There's a great architect that's part of attached to the history of this lore.
You know, just to me, it just seems like when I want to get into the to the industry, that's kind of where I want to be like where you're at right now.
Yeah, it's it's great.
And it's when we work for Brantley down there in Tampa, he was a single owner, an old farmer guy.
Right. But he had that kind of that respect for the staff.
And at the same time, he included you as part of the family, too.
We would do Christmas parties, that type of stuff.
So anyway, yes, it's a great, great day and really neat to be able to kind of hang out with Mr.
Kelly. And and I got to see him chip in on number 18 out of the bunker.
We told me he had to make birdie in the fairway and he just went ahead and did it.
It was it was good. It was fun.
Mike, what would you say is the strength of your golf game?
Oh, there's a good one.
I'm a team act. I'm still working on that.
Sixty six years old and I wish I could tell you, you know, it comes and goes, you know, you putt with one day, you drive it one one day.
But as as I've accepted old man golf, it's all about the wedges now.
Yeah. You know, it's all about the wedges for me.
Yeah, absolutely. He's he's very consistent with his ball striking.
He also is coachable, by the way, too.
He listens. He listened to Bob Kelly yesterday on a putt.
He listened during the middle of one of these WSL, which is the league that we have.
He asked me kind of quickly on the first tee, what do I think about?
And I told him, you know, whatever, hit it down the middle, put it on the green.
He had one of his better rounds of the year type of thing.
This was my my best front nine ever.
Exactly. That's great.
Yeah. Sometimes you just got to turn the old mind off and let the old body do what it needs to do. Right.
That's it. You know, T Mac, I got to tell you, you know, Sean joined joined the staff.
And, you know, I worked in the bag room with a kid under Mr. Donahue.
And he really brings something for this club as far as, you know, I used to get he's he's he's got a little old school in him, which is which is I really enjoyed.
Right. Great. That's great stuff.
So talk to us about how does the idea for renovating Hall number three, the green, how does that idea go from idea to sort of maybe committee to board to actual hiring and architect?
How does that work in a private facility? What's the process?
Well, you know, you know, I could I could I could tell you the story of the third green. And, you know, when I when I when I took over for the past year, we had a capital budget number for the third for the keys on the third hole.
So my first router right around with Pat.
No, I didn't know Pat real well. Pat, our superintendent, we went over that we went over to the third hole and we were standing behind the third green and there was talk about putting keys over the walls.
And so the first thing I said to Pat, having been a longtime member here, I said, how do you put keys over that wall without fixing the screen?
And Pat looked at me and he said, you know, Mr. Kelly, I think you're right. And that's how it got started.
You know, fooling around with original Donald Ross screens is a difficult is difficult to do.
Yeah. Ron Force has always done our work here. The architect. Long time, long time.
Donald Ross architect. Pat, no, I, you know, I brought it to the board.
The board made a decision that we should get some numbers on it.
Got the numbers. You know, we went to committee. We got the numbers on it. We brought we brought forth in.
We brought some committee members out with the president.
And by the way, without historical, I brought Dan, me and Doc Healy, who wrote our hundred and twenty five year history book, which I think they did a wonderful job on.
And that's how we that's how we get started on it.
And then we got it. Got all the numbers together.
There was no way I was going to do this project without the membership signing off on it.
So we brought it to the membership and the membership voted to do it.
So, I mean, that that's it in a nutshell.
The one thing I can say is we had the Francis Wee met tournament out here for one hundred and twenty fifth where all the good players in the state play.
And, you know, if you know the whole you got to get up here, it's a blind, blind green part three.
And, you know, I was out following Rick Santelli, who was who was a member here that was playing in the tournament.
And he was playing with Steve Cascio, a great player, Anthony Lee and Herbie Aikens.
So I'm watching from up from the green and I watch Herbie Aikens hits that hit the shot into the third green.
And I can tell he thinks he hit it perfect. And the ball, you know, it's a perfect it rolls from from the left side of green, rolls across the green.
And it and it and it fell off the green.
And I saw him drive up and he looked and he said, and you could just tell I hit that shot perfect.
And it's just that's the way over the years that the green the green ran.
So having, you know, having seen that, you know, I always thought that, you know, a good golf shot should be rewarded.
And that's how we get started on it.
I think Ross would say the same thing. That was his whole point.
Make it challenging. It's what we talked about yesterday.
It's six thousand yards, our seventy or part seventy one.
But it's one of the more challenging six thousand yard golf courses.
And people don't go super low when they come out here because the defense is the is the greens. Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's very interesting, Mike, that that you talked about an architect that you bring out that's been studying Donald Ross.
I think that's very important, too, is to have that that mind, you know, when you guys are all sitting down and discussing changes or implementing anything is is bringing in an architect and bringing in all these these great minds.
Because, you know, Donald Ross's work is just, you know, it's so historical and keeping that correct is amazing.
So I really hats off to you guys bringing in all the resources just even for one hole or one little thing.
That's that's great. That's amazing.
Team that team that we had, you know, Ron Force took a 1930.
You know, it's a restoration also that green with square value.
We've got a night. We don't have plans that Ross when Ross did this golf course.
But it was a 1938 photo that our historical group got together.
We have and, you know, that green was was squared off.
So Ron Ron took that drawing on the green, you know, did the slope and so forth.
So it's, you know, it's a restoration also.
That's amazing.
That's yeah. What it does is when you do hit it, actually the first good shot I hit yesterday took me three holes.
But it was the seven wood on as my little seven wood club.
Make sure more people eight and seven woods.
Anyways, but it was seven wood is playing about to 10, I think, to a nine.
But the shot was like you envision kind of like you just talking with her shot.
Like the ball went up in the air and kind of came in from a good trajectory and it landed and it didn't.
It didn't roll off. It kind of landed where it should and stayed.
So that's probably what one of the things you were trying to achieve is get rewarded for a good shot.
That's great.
You know, technology made a lot of golf courses obsolete in this golf course.
And then I used to run the pro member many years ago when Jeff Bailey was the pro and it was an old pro.
And I was talking to Sean about this when we were playing this old probe ball Barkhouse.
And somebody asked him what he thought of Oakland and he said when the wind blowing and the greens are running, it's fifty eight hundred yards of all you can handle.
So I you know, I just a lot of young kids are hitting it an absolute mile today.
And Oakland's got some issues with that.
We're trying we're trying to we're trying to have a golf course for everybody if we can do it.
Yeah.
You know, the other thing I find very interesting about Oakley Country Club is that you guys have always been on the cutting edge of technology as far as like what Donald Ross would bring in.
But you guys are also, you know, easy not to implement so much of that technology into your courses.
I think you guys do a great balance of bringing in technology and leaving some technology out.
Does that make sense, Mike?
Yeah, it does.
It does. You know, we've been you know, we can get you some members have a lot of members with one of five being the grounds chairs.
You get a lot of suggestions.
And you know, you can you talk about you talked about modern stuff.
I mean, one of the things we're talking about that we kick around is bunkers.
And there's a new process called the Billy Bunker.
And we've got some I've got some members on my committee and members that, you know, if we get to the point where we start doing bunkers over, you know, this Billy Bunker is the new technology.
So, I mean, that's one of the things that could you elaborate a little bit on the Billy Bunker for the members?
You know, I wish I could give you a basically it's it's it's so that, you know, you don't have to the drainage.
And once you do it, I think you've got drainage forever.
It doesn't become like a dirt.
Yeah. And it doesn't get compact and so forth.
Okay. And it's you know, it's I don't know.
It's like I guess it's like a mesh type thing.
It's like a plaster of Paris.
Mike Mike, one of my committee members, Jack Botley has been really and by the way, I've told him as a committee member that he researched that I told him, you know, I got another two and a half years left doing this.
I doubt it'll be done under my under me as the grounds here.
But it's certainly we're going to get the information together and see where it goes.
I think we've seen that feedback and probably some listeners when you redo a bunker, the most important part is the underneath part of it.
Like how that drainage is going to happen from the underneath side.
So you have that, you know, fairly consistency of bunkers, which you want it to be hard and fast so they can play it out of it.
And then green side bunkers, you'd want it to be in general a little bit more of a sandy, you know, beachy consistency, depending on where you're where you're at.
Did you ever go down to the PGA National Teaching Center in Port St. Lucie?
Yes, sir. I did. Yes, sir.
Yeah. So I think that's a great way to kind of describe this.
If you go down to PGA Teaching Center, that's where we did our first are all three of my levels of PGA schooling.
They have I think it's like eight different bunkers with different consistencies from around the world.
You know, so you can practice from places because the sand up in Massachusetts is way different than the sand in Tampa, Florida, different than Ireland, different than Australia.
So it really you kind of learn to use the bounce on the club and how you're going to make a swing through the shot.
Well, I know every every student there went to the the the England or the European or UK one and hit sand out of there that everybody went to that.
And like, I'm sure there's sand from all around the world, but everybody went over there to say, hey, what is it like out of the bunker of, you know, the U.S. or the open championship?
So very true. So, no, it's it's like you said, just a good message of kind of how Oakley is taking.
They don't want to change the world out here because it's such a good historical basis and you just want to be really careful and mindful.
I think that's what Mike and the committee do so well.
Even some of maybe the upcoming changes that might be happening.
You know, it's a process. It's something you have to you got to be mindful of what you're going to do out here.
Yeah. And be respectful of it. Really.
Well, you really are a steward of the golf course because it's not, you know, as Mike said, he's going to be making decisions, you know, in the next two years that are going to affect the club later on in the future.
You know, so I mean, it really is a stewardship.
You know, you do you do what you need to do for for that time and you make sure that you leaving it better than what you accepted it as.
Right. You know, T-Mac, I'm going to.
It's the first time I've done the podcast and so forth.
Being a steward of this golf, what I feel strongly about and decisions that get made here are made by by the professionals.
The membership makes the decision whether we want to do them, but we get we get all the all the information we can.
You know, this being this being the first Donald Ross course.
We had we had Andrew Green here two days ago. Oh, wow. And he he walked the golf course all morning by and walked it by himself.
And then we met with him about noon time and his exuberance about this golf course was infectious.
I mean, it was just unbelievable. So we're hoping to get him in the pipeline soon.
Good for our for our listeners that may be a little bit more of an amateur than a professional in the world of architects.
Andrew Green is in many of his accomplishments.
Accomplishments. One of them would be that he's the redesigner of Eastlake Woodlands.
Sorry, Eastlake in Atlanta, where they just held the tour championship.
Yeah, so I think you did a good job there, too.
Yeah, yeah, that credibility. You know, that's where Bobby Jones cut his teeth.
And, you know, it's a Donald Ross design. So you also did over Oak Hill for the PGA.
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. To your point, team act, they don't bring in just, you know, anybody off the street.
They're they're really regarding the the history of the place and and willing to, you know, make a change, but know why they're making changes.
So that's something pretty exciting for the membership in the future.
Yeah, I mean, it just shows how much the membership loves the course and they will take the time to to to make the right decision, not a rash decision, which is which is very rare these days for golf clubs, to be honest with you.
So I want I want to give the last couple minutes to Mike.
He's probably got, you know, enough stories of Oakley for some of the different things that have happened out here.
But to fill another podcast, but but kind of give us the Jeff Bailey story when you're out there playing with him and sort of how that whole thing worked.
And so, you know, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff Bailey was our pro for years, a real good player.
And Dr. Joe Sulu, Steve wanted to bring his pro up from Florida.
And he asked me to be the fourth. And it was it was Jeff and I against he and his pro.
So Jeff, long story short is Jeff birdies the first five balls against the against the pro from Florida.
And so he's standing on the 18th tee, 10 under par.
And I'll never forget Dr. Sulu.
He says, and Jeff didn't have a lot to say a lot of time, but Dr. Sulu, he says, I never remember being this many down.
And Jeff, Jeff, Jeff says, says, Doc, when have you played with a guy that's 10 under?
So now the old pro Donahue, long story, when on the 18th tee, it's the only time that Jeff gets conservative on the whole.
He hits an iron off the tee and he pulls it on 18.
And he pulls it off. So he ends up on the edge of the green and three on the seventh on the course record holder Paul Donahue was standing on the 17th tee looking down on the green, watching him.
He leaves the putt on the lip for the course record.
So he now shares the record with Donahue and Scott Johnson, our current pro.
We have three and you know, it was just an unbelievable round.
And what I was most impressed, it's funny, it was the course record round.
But what I was most impressed with is the pro from Florida who had never saw the golf course shot seven.
Wow. So it was a really a real fun, fun day. Very cool.
Wow. That's enjoying watching a lot of good ball striking and putts going in the hole right there, right?
Oh, yeah. Very cool. So, well, hey, Mike, I just want to really thank you for coming.
Yeah, I think this has been great to kind of tell some of the listeners what's going on here at Oakley.
And hopefully the membership gets a different perspective of some of the behind the scenes stuff too.
And then, you know, private facilities all over the country. This is how they operate.
But again, I think it's just a little bit a little bit special here at Oakley Country Club.
So, T-Mac, you got anything else to add in?
No, I want to say thank you, Mike. Very interesting learning about Billy Bunker and hole number three today.
Really enjoyed it. Great story about the pros.
You know, that's that's why we come on this podcast is to hear those stories and to hear those things and bring them to our listeners.
So thank you very much, Mike. We really appreciate it.
I'm happy to do it. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Thank you guys. Welcome. Thank you guys again here at Dynamic Golf Podcast.
If you like this, please like and subscribe.
Once again, I'm Tim McElvanagh and my co-host, Sean Klotz.
We'll see you guys next time. We got another one good another good one coming up.
But I really appreciate Mr. Kelly being here. We'll talk to you guys soon.
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Kelly.
Anytime. Thank you, T-Mac.