Rod Whitman

And so we barely, uh, we'd barely started construction in '08 when, um, you know, we sort of stopped for the winter and wondered if that was stopped forever and, you know, a little bit of an existential crisis.

As you noted, there was no golf being built, but, you know, Rod Whitman moved to Inverness and through '09, uh, you know, one of four in the world, and Rod worked seven days a week on a bulldozer shaping Cabot Links.

And obviously, Mike loved what he saw, um, so did I, and we got to, uh, got to get through it and open, uh, open Cabot Links in 2011.

Um, so, you know, that was sort of a, a long and arduous and brutal journey and, uh, a lot of lessons learned, but, uh, it ended up with, uh, you know, an unbelievable education and an unbelievable partner and Mike and building Cabot Links with Rod Whitman and, uh, and Cliffs with Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and sort of setting the stage to give us the opportunity to, to move forward with, uh, our fledgling brand.

When you look back on that guy, that Ben Cowen doer from that time, do you recognize that person? Is he the same person that you are now? Or you mentioned, you used the word naivete.

It takes a lot of...

So I think, you know, uh, there's lots of me that's still there, and I think the parts of it that made it work, I grew up, you know, in a small town and, uh, and you know, you were nice to everybody 'cause you met them again and again and again.

And I think some of those things of, you know...

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I came back, uh, came back a month later with Rod Whitman, who was really the unheralded great Canadian architect who ha- who hadn't been given a shot at that point.

And it was a total blizzard, and it was a whiteout, and it was cold, and the wind was blowing.

And I said, you know, "Rod, can you see it?" And he said, "No, literally my eyelashes are frozen shut.

It, you know.

What have you learned about giving talented people, really talented people that canvas and then, a- and then letting them do their magic? Uh, what, what's your process with them?

You know, it's wild, um, and it's evolved as I've matured, but I drove Rod Whitman crazy because, I mean, I had all these ideas.

I'd always wanted to build a golf course, and Rod had worked for Pete Dye.

It's visually outstanding, but the quality of golf is very, very good at Cabot Cliffs.

Now, Cabot Links is a Rod Whitman and Dave Axland course, and Dave had a lot to do with the Coor Crenshaw Cliffside course here at Barton Creek.

Dave was one of our lead associates here that we did in 1991, which is actually the second course we ever opened.

So Dave's...