	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 4, 2019

Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii

KRIS STRAUSS: Aloha and good morning. Welcome to the press conference related to the Kapalua refinement project being taken forth with the Kapalua team and the Troon team and the architects team here. Today we have Alex Nakajima, the general manager of Kapalua golf; Dana Garmany, our CEO and chairman of Troon; Mr. Bill Coore, the golf course architect at Kapalua and many other great facilities around the world; and Mark Rolfing with NBC and Golf Channel and also our de facto historian for Kapalua golf. So without further ado, we would like to start this press conference asking Alex Nakajima, the general manager: From an ownership standpoint we have an owner here that's really dedicated to providing a great product, whether it be what we're doing on the Bay Course to up here at the Plantation Course. Why don't you explain what we're undertaking and from ownership standpoint why it's important.

ALEX NAKAJIMA: Sure. Happy to answer that. Ever since I've been here for two and a half years ago, came from Princeville Kauai, but I noticed the Kapalua assets were a little bit tired. Plantation Golf Course opened in 1991, same as this clubhouse, and the Bay Course, 1975. So everything we saw in the beginning it was time to touch up and dress up. And immediately spoke to the ownership and said what's our plan for the future? The golf course definitely needs some makeup, the clubhouse and the facility as well. So it's almost been two years ago that we started to talk about our transition plans. And then that was the time that we connected with Mr. Bill Coore, Mr. Crenshaw to discuss how do we make this transition happen. We have been testing the best players of the TOUR for many many years, but also 51 weeks of the year we're catering to the resort players. And what's the variation, what's the variety that we want to provide for long-term.

So those are the discussions that we began to have and our owner's commitment, he just wants the best for the Kapalua community. Also the economic factor to protect the west Maui communities. This tournament is important for the state of Hawaii, significant importance. So he's all in and we're happy to announce some of the changes. I'll elaborate a little bit. We already moved the Bay Golf Course clubhouse last month, November 15th, to a new building, which is right next to the golf academy. And the academy tee box, driving range, that has a new surface as well. So those two things happened in 2018.

Also, this Plantation golf shop was also renovated in the summer. So those three things are done. But next year Plantation golf course -- I'm sorry this year, 2019, February 11, we will close the golf course at Plantation golf course for approximately nine months and then we'll have a brand new surface, brand new green complex, bunkering, every single items on the golf course will be touched. So the players, when they come back a year from now, they will be re-learning the golf course.

And then also this building here, 27 years old, we have to address the roof, doors, hallways, restrooms. So when the return -- the players return they will have a brand new feel and where you can't wait to bring them back.

KRIS STRAUSS: Excellent. Mr. Coore, why don't you explain some of the agronomic, architectural changes and refinements that we're going to do with the golf course this next year.

BILL COORE: Well, first of all, to Alex's point there that when he says the players will see an entirely new golf course, our hope is that the golf course that will be presented next year will be more of a restoration and rejuvenation, maybe refinements in certain areas, but a restoration of what the course was in its early days. There's no intent on our part to create a golf course that's unrecognizable from what's been here before. It will just be a more polished version of that, and in many ways we hope will address developments, evolution that's happened with the best players in the world. But as Alex said, too, our primary focus as it was 30 years ago, was to address the, hopefully the play, the enjoyment, and the experience of the resort players who are going to be here. So we hope it will be a new Plantation Course, but a highly recognizable one. There won't be dramatic changes to the point that you go, gee, where did this hole come from, type thing.

KRIS STRAUSS: Good point. Mark, you have a tremendous amount of history, more so than probably anyone on this panel at the moment here at Kapalua. You were here in the '80s, you saw the Plantation Course come up from birth in 1991. What are you excited about with this refinement project?

MARK ROLFING: Well, there's a number of things I'm excited about. Having been on Maui for 40 years, I pretty quickly recognized the responsibility I had at the time back in the mid '80s, and I'll never forget when Colin Cameron and I made the agreement to develop the Plantation and I effectively became the owner. One of the first things he said to me is, you are going to become the steward of this land and that is a very important responsibility. I didn't take it lightly then and I don't take it lightly now. I'm not the steward of the land now. Mr. Yanai and the great folks at Troon here are and I think they have done a fabulous job. But what I want to be able to do through this, as Bill said, is restore the integrity of the design that we first came up with when we saw what the site was going to be able to deliver us. And I think now that I know way more than I did then, Bill and I were both pretty much youngsters back then, I now realize that there's two really important things for a golf course architect in doing something like this. They have to understand the site, but equally as important they have to understand the owner and the mission of the owner. And interestingly enough, back then my main mission as the owner was to sell real estate, and I had to figure out how are we going to pay for all this and that was kind of an overriding factor in a lot of decisions that were made. And I'm just kind of so grateful now that we have a situation where the palette is sitting there and it can be worked on without the real estate component, where we have to take the high ground and use that for the real estate and the low ground is going to be the golf course and we have to factor in all these things. We don't have to do that anymore. So I think being able to now look at the golf course as a pure course and a pure test of golf, 51 weeks a year, one week a year, I think you've got an incredible group here that's going to be able to just really refine it magnificently.

BILL COORE: Can I elaborate on what Mark just said? I remember years ago when Mark and Ben and I were here and of course we have got a lot of good humored back and forth during the years about all the elevation change out here. But Ben and I tried to layout a golf course that we thought would be playable on a very extreme site and extreme site meaning the elevation changes, the slopes, and of course the wind conditions. And those conditions are all magnified here because they all align. The slopes go toward the ocean, they go downhill, sweeping downhill, toward the ocean, the grass tends to, the sun sets at the ocean, the trade winds go toward the ocean, all those things combined to magnify the effects of slope, elevation, grain on the greens, grain on the fairways, and the way the course plays. And so we did the best we knew how to do to create a playable golf course in those conditions. Through the years we have been asked numerous times, what would you have done differently? I don't know how many times I've been asked that. Given the experience that you have now, what would you have done differently? We have talked about this seriously and of course leading up to this project and quite frankly, not much. We, when you look at the combination of the factors I just talked about and you look at the golf course that's out there, it does allow for playable golf in very extreme conditions. And that's why I said earlier, it's not our intent to come rebuild or build a new golf course on top of the Plantation Course, it's our attempt to come and refine it, restore it and refine it, with the background the knowledge of how the game has changed for the best players in the world, but again, with the understanding of what the, what we hope the experience will be here for the resort guests.

KRIS STRAUSS: Well said. And that's a good segue to Dana. As the chairman and CEO of Troon and is involved with managed service at over 400 golf courses around the world, what trends do you see globally relative to the game and the changes of the game and why projects like these are important for the resort properties that you have come in touch with.

DANA GARMANY: Well, a couple things. No. 1, to follow up on Bill, you have an award winning golf course here, so the last thing we want to do is make it a non-award winning golf course when you're finished. So you shouldn't change too much because it's pretty darn good.

For one thing that Bill will have to think about is when they did this golf course in 1989, '90 opening in 1991, I think. The golf course is 28 years old, which is remarkable since it opened. But the long driver of the TOUR that year was John Daly, 291. Almost 50 yards longer. So what do you do with that? But the bottom line is 51 weeks of the year we're trying to make it a better experience for the other players. And every successful renovation refinement that we have done, to be very honest with you in the last 15 years, has literally been to make the golf courses more playable. More fairway space, more green space, green speed, adjustments, things like that. Even this golf course, if you get the greens over 10 or even over nine and a half for the average guy with the wind blowing, it's really going to get away from you very quickly. So the extremes that you face here we don't face at other places. But the mantra has been to try to make the golf course as playable and enjoyable for the people that are there. Knowing that that one week a year we have an event or something we want to make it a challenge, but that's not the real end game for us.

KRIS STRAUSS: Alex, why don't you go into some specifics relative to the turf changes that are being done on the greens and the fairways, etcetera.

ALEX NAKAJIMA: So we have selected, we contemplated looked around at different types of grass for the next year's renovation, I'm sorry, this year's renovation, but we selected the celebration Bermuda, wall-to-wall. So we'll be re-grassing this summer. Also, bunkers will be dug up. And then drainage, it will be improved. Greens, green complex, approaches. So everything about this golf course will be touched. And then just like Bill said, it will be a refinement project. We're taking what's good already and improving over the 30 years that's been nice test to the community and the top players, we're just trying to make it a little bit better going forward. So that's our commitment.

KRIS STRAUSS: Excellent. So Mr. Coore, back to you, again. Relative to that -- how will that, the turf changes, help what we see on TV this next week the Tour players and also how will it help the resort golfer as well too?

BILL COORE: Well, I think the ability to re-grass the golf course is huge because in its early days, as Mark and Ben and I and anyone who was here in those years knows, the golf course played much faster, much firmer, much faster than it does and has in the last decade, let's say. That, those conditions which we happen to like, particularly coupled with the wind, give a situation that players can make determinations how they want to play. The fairways may be huge, may be hugely wide, but if you, if the ground is firm and fast even the best players in the world have to pick a proper line to play on otherwise their ball's carried by the wind and the slope into some area they might not prefer. And yet for the average resort players the ball used to, years ago, would chase and chase forever and go. And so it made them feel good because they would hit the longest drives they could ever hit in their lives here and it gave them a chance to get to these greens. Now people look at the greens and complexes and approaches and say oh, there's a lot of slope, there's this, there's that. That slope, Mother Nature provided a great deal of it, but at the same time we tried to take advantage and incorporate it into the golf course so that you could use the ground not just on the putting surfaces, but the ground that led to the putting surfaces to help you, whether you were one of the best players in the world or whether you were the resort player who had no chance to get to the green in the air, could land it short and roll the ball on. This new turfing I think will restore those characteristics. Our, it's probably our single biggest goal in this is to try to restore the playability of the golf course that it used to have and has diminished through the years.

KRIS STRAUSS: Mark, do you want to elaborate on that as well, too, given what you've seen over the 28 years --

MARK ROLFING: Well, the cause and affect -- the first thing is, we're going through climate change on Maui. There's no question about it. Now, it may be temporary. I don't want to speculate on what's causing it, but the fact is we have had three of the wettest winters in a row here. You all have seen how soft it is out there on that golf course. I had to play it Sunday morning, which was quite a task, with the best players in the world. And the cause and affect of what has happened is that for the average player the course has become much harder. For the best players in the world the course has become much easier.

BILL COORE: Exactly.

MARK ROLFING: And one of the goals I think of this refinement plan is to kind of switch that, how do we go the opposite direction, how do we make it more of a challenge for the best players in the world and at the same time more playable so and consequently more enjoyable for the average player.

DANA GARMANY: Good example on this golf course, too, is this is a golf course where literally during the tournament the golf course probably plays harder with almost no rough because the players have to be very careful with those lines where the fairways skinny. For the average player, rough may stop the ball from going somewhere much worse. So the setup of the golf course might be quite different from tournament to something else.

MARK ROLFING: All you have to do is look at the 18th hole. Once we picked the clubhouse site here, and you could see what the terrain looks like. We had 750 acres, it was really only one place you could put the clubhouse. There was no way you could play up the hill. That wasn't going to be the first hole. The first hole was going to go that way and the 18th hole was going to come this way. Ben and Bill and I kind of agreed it would be nice to have a dramatic finishing hole, reachable par-5, etcetera, etcetera. We moved the 18th tee back at least five times. At least five times. I remember starting at, say, 565 or 570, thinking that was going to be a good distance. We kept going back, back, back to 665. Now we have had a year a couple years ago where not a single player reached the green in two shots in 72 holes and we had to go up. So we went back, back, back, back, and then up. And it really is a total byproduct of the way the course is playing right now. And we have got to adjust to those conditions, and then we have to try and change those conditions on the ground.

KRIS STRAUSS: One more question and then we'll turn it over to Q&A, but go ahead, Mr. Coore.

BILL COORE: Well, the one thing I would add to that, Mark, is that the most frustrating condition you can probably get in golf, whether it's for the resort players or the best players in the world, is to have soft approaches, ground that leads to the putting greens and then quick firm greens. That's just a nightmare situation that frustrates everyone. And in the old days when, even though the greens would be really quick, particularly downhill, downwind, down grain, you could still land the ball far short. I remember maybe the first year here Andy Bean I think made a 2 on the 18th hole with a 6-iron, and I was in the clubhouse. I happened to be watching him hit it. And he must have landed a 120 yards short of the green and it hit, boom, boom, boom, and you could just watch the ball go. And it crept up on the green, crept out, and just went right in the hole. And today the last few years, and I haven't been here for the tournament in several years, but the last few years we watched it on television. Here the best players in the world that are landing the ball 20 yards short of the green and it doesn't get there. And now they have this little chip or pitch to a really fast downhill, downwind, down grain green. That is not a good situation.

KRIS STRAUSS: Great. Last question for Mr. Garmany. Troon has been involved in building, constructing, consulting, hundreds of golf courses coming out of the ground, you've worked with a lot of different architects over the years, what do you like best, from an owner's standpoint, with Coore-Crenshaw and now today with Coore-Crenshaw and Mark -- what do you like best working with Coore and Crenshaw, relative to the architecture style and the process?

DANA GARMANY: We have had the good fortune and Ron Despain will be here this weekend that has worked with Bill and Ben several times. And I think from walking some golf courses together in the Hamptons to Scottsdale and other places, we have enjoyed working with them. I think the best thing about it is it's still an art form. There's a science to it, obviously, and you're trying to contain costs and so forth, but this golf course will be built with -- or refined with Bill and Ben on the ground, not from a CAD somewhere back in Texas. So -- or Scottsdale in Bill's case. So it will be done here and so they're doing touching it like an artist would do versus something that's very mechanical, so that's the part we like the best.

KRIS STRAUSS: We'll open it you up for questions.

Q. Bill, this might be strictly a tournament question. But I seem to recall a couple years ago there was some talk about doing something with the 3rd and 9th tee, providing some options or something. Is that in play now or --
BILL COORE: It is.

Q. Was I making that up?
BILL COORE: No, no. That is definitely in play. There will be just a few tees that will be worked on or addressed or added, in this case, that affect the tournament. The majority of them, the vast majority of them that will be worked on during this process will be for resort play. But the 3rd and 9th, yes. It's not known just yet. We will probably make this decision actually on Monday, but whether there will be a combination tee that you play 9 one way and 3 perpendicular to the other way or whether there will be two distinctly separate tees. But they are going to increase the yardage on number 9 and number 3.

Q. I have a Maui question for you. You mentioned some of the design sort of being hands-on and being here when it happens. As far as the execution of these changes, are you committed to using local crews for that?
ALEX NAKAJIMA: Thank you. That's a great question. Yes, we, there's so many expertise to refine the golf course, touch the golf course. There's a local construction crew will be handling that have done work on numerous courses on the islands. So we're confident that they can produce and then they can deliver the quality that we're looking for and that's a nice comfort to have. But also our Troon golf corporate resource, that is significant because I will be on-site wearing a hard hat coordinating all of this, however, I can't do it without the expertise. They're scientists. Like Dana said, Mr. Ron Despain is flying in on Sunday to look at and then Bill Coore/Crenshaw with the architect, and then the PGA TOUR, they provide inputs as well. And then on-site crew. How is a local community and the public play the golf course from the starters, the pace of play issues, the caddies, they all give us a good, great inputs and these are the teams that we put this project together. So there will be a significant amount of local involvement.

BILL COORE: It's interesting, to your point, to your question, all those years ago when we built the golf course it was built primarily by Hawaiian construction companies. And we did have three guys on the site who were helping do what we call the creative shaping of the greens, tees, and bunkers. But the vast majority of the work was done by Goodfellow Brothers at the time. And I envision this as being very much the same. Interestingly enough, the same three guys who worked with us, who worked building this golf course, are coming back to work on it.

Q. Why isn't it as fast as it used to be? Is it drainage, is it age, is it what?
BILL COORE: Well, grass is, like all living, breathing things, it evolves, it grows. And it's probably like some of us through the years, it's gotten a little puffy.

DANA GARMANY: Puffy, touchy, nasty. To Mark's point, you have had these especially wet winters, so the golf course that we watched on TV at probably the worst possible time as far as roll out, so it exacerbates that. But it's a combination of thatch and weather, because the golf course certainly isn't being overwatered for sure.

BILL COORE: No. And the fact that this golf course has been extraordinarily popular throughout its lifespan. It's very difficult. If you're at clubs that can shut the golf course down completely to do major maintenance-type work on it, I'm talking about invasive-type maintenance work, then that's one thing, but here that's very disruptive thing. So they have tried through all these years to keep maintenance at a very high level. But still it's Mother Nature at work and the grass never stops growing here. There's no winter season. The daylight hours reduce the speed of how the grass grows or the whole growing process, but it never stops like it does at most courses during the winter period.

Q. I'm afraid to ask this because I flunked agronomy, which is not true because I never took agronomy, but why Celebration as opposed to -- full disclosure, Dustin at the Honolua store was thinking it should have been Paspalum.
ALEX NAKAJIMA: So the question was, why did we choose Celebration Bermuda to be the next grass?

Well, we looked at Paspalum at Princeville, on the Kona coast. A lot of courses are going to Paspalum and that wins the beauty contest all the time because it's a lush and a nice cushy lie. Maybe that's the one, that's the type of grass that public are looking for. However, the key deciding factor was the quality of the water. So when you have a pure water from the mountain right here, and our water quality's excellent, okay. So how Kona coast line, some of the courses over on Kona decide to go to Paspalum was they don't have a good quality of water, so when the Bermuda grass comes up and then when it's competing against the weeds, they turn on the irrigation and then that will wilt the weeds. And we don't have that benefit over here and then Paspalum also plays a little bit softer, slower, and that's that was the key decision point that we wanted to stay with.

DANA GARMANY: The fairway grass here is actually all 328, which was a greens grass from way, way, way back. So it clumps up and does a lot of different thing. So the modern grasses should tumble the ball a lot further, whatever rough you do have should be a lot more uniform in selection for sure.

BILL COORE: Well I would have to add to what Alex and Dana just said too, I actually have, I remember I was in the grocery store in Scottsdale and Jeff Spangler, who is in charge of all the agronomy for Troon Golf, turned the corner in the aisle we came face-to-face in the grocery store and he said, Bill, we're thinking seriously about doing Paspalum at the Plantation Course and I remember going, oh, God, there it went, we would have no playability, it's gone. Because Paspalum is a fabulous grass, we have used it before, it's fabulous in the right conditions, but as Alex said, with the water quality here and with what we're hoping to be with the firmness and the ability for the ball to roll here, it just, Ben and I were very pleased when the decision -- and we didn't make that decision, we certainly consulted -- but when the decision was made to stick with Bermuda as opposed to Paspalum.

Q. Bill, it was brought up about climate change and you obviously have been all over the world recently working on different properties. Can you talk about how much climate change is affected, A, your designs, and B, how much it may make a difference in some of the best courses may no longer be able to be played down the road.
BILL COORE: Oh, I don't know. We do, as far as just pertaining to our designs, as you well know, we have not been prolific, so we haven't done that many courses. We have been in some, in different countries and but I personally certainly agree that that process is occurring, I think it's something that the golf courses all over the world, depending upon their micro climates and their situation, are going to have to be aware of as to how those changes are affecting each course individually or certainly regionally and there's certainly places that as water tables rise and rainfall increases some low lying courses certainly experience greater difficulty with drainage and maintaining proper turf. The reverse occurs in other parts of the world where droughts are becoming more common place and water or the availability of water as it becomes more scarce becomes the over riding issue. So it's, without question, it's a major, major consideration for golf as it moves forward. Water being the single greatest resource for all of us who are sitting here but also for golf as well and how do you manage it to be the way in the most efficient and sensitive way. And those practices vary from course to course.

DANA GARMANY: The best example I can think of from an operator standpoint would be look at the I-20 corridor sort of Dallas all the way through to Atlanta. And basically that used to be sort of dividing line between bent grass there north and now you got, with warmer temperatures and maybe some moisture certain times of the year, whereas all the good clubs of, the upper end clubs in that quarter would be bent on greens, they're now predominantly more and more Bermuda. Some of it is that Bermuda is better, part of it is it's harder and harder to keep bent grass, so no question there's some change there and that line for sure you've gone from 95 percent of the upscale courses being bent to 35 percent being bent.

MARK ROLFING: One thing too with the climate change, it's really important to consider where it impacts a course the most. So if you take a look at Shot Link out here for example, this week and really the last three years, the two most difficult holes on this course have become No. 1 and No. 2. Which during a tournament situation that doesn't really have much of an impact. But if you think about 51 weeks a year for Alex, if his two hardest holes are the opening two holes for all the players that is not a great situation. No. 2, I believe the climate change has impacted that hole as much as any hole on the course and having the second hole as a par-3 is tough enough as it is in a normal golf course routing, but when you've now got a shot there that you can't bounce up like it was always designed to do on that green, that hole has become really, really difficult for the average player. So the fact that it's impacting certain areas on this course it's probably way more extreme than maybe some other 18 hole courses. Even in Hawaii.

Q. Can you think of other holes, maybe 6 or any other holes that are really bad?
MARK ROLFING: 15, for example. If you look at the 15th. Dustin drove it to the bottom of the hill yesterday at 172, it was just unbelievable. Those players can hit those kind of shots, but the average player now, average resort player, to get the ball up on to the second level it was taking players seven, eight, nine shots to get it up there. And if you look for example at our teeing complexes, one of the things that we're going to take a look at is all three of those tees teeing areas are within 40 yards of the back of that hole. There probably needs to be a forward tee on 15, 200 yards up there, where you can drive it fairly close to the edge so that you can then get it across and then start playing the hole. That hole is severely been affected.

BILL COORE: Well that's what we were saying earlier too, the biggest change to this golf course is the playability aspect of particularly for the resort players. Where they used to hit balls that would roll and roll and roll, seemingly forever, now they don't go far. And it just adds to, without question, to their frustration, it's created a demand certainly for shorter tees as well, but I mentioned to these guys this morning and I realize I'm off on a bit of a tangent here, but I played in the pro-am here the first year that it was played at the Plantation Course and I was paired with a gentleman who, is sorry to say, I can't remember his name, but he's from Germany and his best drive would be maybe 180 or 190 at most 200 yards. And yet the ball would just keep chasing. And on the 7th hole here we played, he had 255 yards -- I remember this distinctly -- because it's so played into what Ben and I and the guys had tried to do with this golf course, he had 255 yards to the green, he walked over of course pulled out his biggest fairway wood and was about to proceed and I remember just walking to him and I said, you know, before you do that, would you consider this, what club do you hit 150 yards? And he said, well, a 5-iron. He said, but it's 250 to the green. I said, yes, but there's a big down slope that starts about a hundred yards short of that green. I said, would you trust me on this and hit your 5-iron. You don't have to hit it the best you can, just hit it to hit it 150 yards and play it just left of the green but out there. And you could tell he was sort of was rather baffled by this, but he did it, he hit it perfectly, exactly on the line, the ball hit and of course it disappeared. And he looks at me and goes, well it's miles short of the green. I said, wait, wait. And it seemed like a minute later here the ball comes out on to the front of the green, rolls down, within three feet of the hole and the man makes a three. That won't happen anymore. That man would hit that same shot today and he would be 80 yards short of the green.

DANA GARMANY: And on the Tour players side what happens is when they designed this golf course back when the golf ball was really shorter, I remember Bill telling me way back then even that the fairways were super wide, but there was one part of the fairway that was set to propel the ball. You hit the ball on right you get more roll it will be down to the bottom. Well now the carries today, they're carrying it all the way down. So for those guys it doesn't really matter, they're blowing the ball down there whether it rolls or not. Now in certain aces certain holes where the ball used to roll 200 yards more you still argue the same distance, but you are already flying the ball out there at 340, 350, 360 versus 270, 280, 290.

Q. For Mark and Bill, I can remember being one of the first to be able to play course back in '92. When you think back 27 years and you think of all that's happened here in this great tournament here, is this what you had, what you two guys maybe envisioned for to happen here at the Plantation Course when and I know that's kind of a vague question, but when you think about the 27 year history of this place and this tournament, is this kind of what you had in mind back in 1992?
MARK ROLFING: Absolutely. As much as we have talked about how soft it is, I thought the course played great yesterday. And one of the things that I have always enjoyed so much about living here and kind of the life-style on Maui is that things are pretty predictable. And I can tell you my job in this refinement over this four or five month period is going to be exactly the same as it was 30 years ago. And that is the most important thing all day is for me to go to the store and get the sandwiches and Maui chips and bring them back up here. That's going to be my job. I love that predictability of it and I think that's really what's happened here. Yeah, it's what I envisioned, that's for sure.

BILL COORE: I have to admit, I'm going to go the opposite end of the spectrum here with this one because when Ben and I started here we actually thought we were building a golf course just for the resort and of course the Maui, the Kapalua Invitational was here and those were some of the best players in the world, but they came here for that tournament was more of a family, fun type event. And then Mark came one day and said, oh, by the way, this is probably going to turn into an official TOUR event. And I remember Ben and I going, ooh, this is, hmm, because we knew, we knew because of, again, those things I mentioned earlier, the slope, the wind, the conditions, and it was a different type of golf course. It was a course that you really, to be successful needed to play the ground and the ground not just at the putting surfaces, you didn't play point A to B to C. You played sometimes to point D to get to C, you know? And you did it differently and any time you do a golf course that's different, it can be very controversial and in the first years here I know there were, it was, it was a bit misunderstood. And yet through all these years now I look at it and it seems to be extraordinarily well.

DANA GARMANY: I think the issue probably shows too -- I don't have a list of winners in front of me right now, but I think when the ball rolled further you had more of an equalizer too on who could win here. Because you could get the ball running down the slope the same place that Dustin would hit it flying it over the slope. And you can't get that today. So it's become more of a bomber kind of thing I think with the wet conditions.

Q. I don't know if I saw it anywhere but can you talk about the cost of the renovation and just to confirm, this renovation is really guided more towards the resort player than it is really actually the professional, even though they will benefit from what happens here.
ALEX NAKAJIMA: I'll be happy to answer that. Well the cost is, it's fluid, actually. However, it's significant and you can just imagine what the Hawaii factor that have is versus the main land. It's up, it's around 10 million dollars for this property. And then based on as we go and then Bill, as we're walking the golf course, based on how the greens will go and where the bunkers will be located, it's going to be moving. So we're expecting about 10 million plus for this renovation. Also, like I said earlier, this building, this building will be addressed and then for the he enjoyment of the public, we want to up our game experience. So from the minute you walk in to somebody leaving at the bag drop we wanted to improve.

DANA GARMANY: One thing that will be there versus when Bill did the golf course originally is that there's data available. So Mark's going to be able to say, hey, by the way, during the event this pin placement was X, Y or Z. So there's so much more today to work with so I think there will be some side benefits that will make the golf course have maybe a few pins here or there that are different or at least some differentiations that will be fun for everybody.

KRIS STRAUSS: Mark, do you want to talk about the benefit to the TOUR player versus the resort.

MARK ROLFING: Actually I think for the tournament itself a lot of the refinement is going to be aesthetics, which I think will be really good. Every hole is going to be looked at in terms of the way it's presented visually. That's such a big part of Ben and Bill's philosophy architecturally and mine too. And I think you will see a lot of things -- I have a pet peeve about the guard rail up on 15 for example that's such a prominent part of that hole. I think you'll see us making changes on things aesthetically on all the holes that may not affect the actual playability, but from a tournament standpoint are going to make it a whole lot more attractive. I think the focus really is going to be on some specific areas of the course and that's where you'll see the most change and the most work done. We were talking about the tees at 3 and 9. That's going to be fairly significant. But I think the greens that we have had issues with, tournament-wise, let's say number 10 and number 13, you'll see some softening there to potentially get some more hole locations that could be used. But also put us in a situation where we're a little safer if the conditions do get pretty extreme. You saw that four years ago with that big high pressure system out to the north. So there will be a few areas where there will be some pretty extreme changes.

BILL COORE: And to that point, we have consulted with the PGA TOUR, I talked to this week two or three times actually with Steve Wenzloff who is the architect for the TOUR, who works with the TOUR officials and we have all the scans of the slopes of the greens and to Mark's points and to Dana's point, slopes that were acceptable in '91 are no longer usable for pin able areas today. So even though the greens may not look much different when you come back next year, we will work on softening some slopes. And in the case of greens like 10 and 13 and probably 6, you may see a difference because we will, we will work on those. But for the most part it's trying to spread the pin able areas into greater portions of the greens.

KRIS STRAUSS: Excellent. Thank you very much and thank you all for your time today enjoy the tournament.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297