24 Questions with Justin Carlton

Bothering me probably, um,

tight dog legs with houses at the corner.

That, that, you know, that does bother me, but you know, I think what's interesting to me and it's not a, not a hate on anything, but like right now it's like, I think our whole industry is like so heavily bunkered

and

it's, I think we're getting very repetitive as, like, design in general, and I think it'd be nice to, like, us figure out how to use land and contour a little bit more to control the ball, you know, below your feet, above your feet, you know, create some different characters on misses.

And, you know, I think a lot of people... fill voids and spaces to create scale with bunker.

And I think sometimes it's just hurting people like as far as bad players or like, you know what I mean? I think you don't want to take away the design.

I'm not trying to say we're dumbing it down at all, but I think that we can do other things instead of just like having 200,000 square foot of bunkers on the golf course.

You know what I mean? That's like, I think that's probably where our brain's going now.

And it's the jobs that Lee and I've been involved in so far, um, I'll give you an example.

We did Broadmoor Golf Links in Asheville just after the hurricane.

Helene came through and destroyed it, had 22 foot of water on it.

Not a heavily bunkered course, but we did probably we eliminated a lot of bunkering and made it more interesting.

You know, I mean, it's not an overly daunting golf course to play, but the character of the smaller bunkers that are in there kind of stands out and gives it a little bit more teeth than if you just did like.

Sand all the way down a hole, you know, sometimes it's no discredit.

We love I love waste bunkers I love all the looks of it.

I love the minimalistic stuff I'm not taking a shot at that But I think sometimes we can get more creative trying to do other things outside the box and just add the bunkers everywhere

Yeah, it's kind of like the difference between like really savvy strategic singular bunkers versus using bunkering as landscape and

Which I

agree, we've seen a lot of in the last 20 years, bunkering is just filling up space.

And obviously it looks good and has an audience, but I don't think the use of contour, and as you put it, landforms, has really been explored to its fullest.

I think there's a lot of potential there in golf design to think about how to create movement in the earth when the ball lands and using different stances to, to, to subtly impact how people flight their balls.

I don't think that's been explored.

I think there's a lot of opportunity to subtly make golf courses more challenging, not more difficult because you're still hitting off grass, but more challenging that it's the control factor and being a little uncomfortable.

If you have a downhill lie or your balls below your feet, those are tough shots for a lot of players.