WEBVTT
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Hey, it's Josh carp and it's Friday, which means that
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we are airing a Golf Smarter Mulligans episode from the archives.
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Next week. We'll have a new interview on Tuesday with
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golf historian Stephen Proctor, so tune in and we're going
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to have a special giveaway. This week's three run is
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episode five hundred. Golf's Ultimate Goal Shooting Your Age Are
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Lower with Richard Sezna.
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Gol Published on August fourth, twenty fifteen. Golf's Ultimate Goal
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Shooting Your Age with General Manager of Paradise Valley Golf,
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rich Sesna. This is Golf Smarter Premium.
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Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
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Rick, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.
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Rymma, it's great to have you on, and it's great
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to have you in your own community here. I'm going
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to take notes as we have our conversation.
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I hope you don't mind certain.
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And also not only will we have a Q and A,
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but we're go also have some tree of your questions
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and maybe you can win some prizes when we're all done,
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and we have some gifts for you when we're done.
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As well, we are live here at the Paradise Valley
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Estates in Fairfield, California, which is right near Travis Air
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Force Base in northern California. And this is really fun
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for me to be here with all of you today.
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Thank you so much. Rich briefly tell me your history
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in golf, and then I have other questions for you
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about that.
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I certainly played high school golf and then went on
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to the San Diego Golf Academy, ran out of.
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Money and story of many golfers in.
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The United States Air Force, Thank you golf in the
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United States Air Force a lot of golf. Actually tried
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out for the Air Force golf team and made the team,
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but got bumped because the major that was retiring unretired
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of course, so I went back to my duties on
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the floor lightline, but spent four years in the Air Force,
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and at the time I volunteered at a golf course
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near Luke Air Force Base, which at the time was
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the only TAC base that did not have a golf course.
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So I volunteered.
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And while I'm volunteering, then I had access to both
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professional and amateur events. I always played as an amateur
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then individual that I worked with at this golf course,
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went on to work for the PGA Tour. Well, my
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enlistment was coming up, and I was torn between reopp
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and or whether or not I wanted to stay in golf,
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And of course it was unfortunate unfortunately for the military,
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I hope, but fortunate for me. I chose golf and
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I went to work for the PGA Tour.
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Then when did you start playing?
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I started playing actually in high school. I didn't start,
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oh really as a youth.
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I my dad played Triple A.
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Baseball oh for the Philadelphia Phillies organization.
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Wow.
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He was a catcher, so the years that he played,
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he was a home run hitter and a strikeout artist.
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So I grew up playing baseball. And I injured my
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shoulder in a bicycle accident between my eighth and ninth year,
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and so I didn't I wasn't gona be able to
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play baseball that year. So one of the one of
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my buddies who played golf, told the golf coach, you
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had to ask rich to try out for the team.
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So I did. I went out and I thought it
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was great.
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But baseball season was coming up, and I tried out
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for baseball again.
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But the baseball coach.
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And the golf coach had gotten together and decided that
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I was playing golf. Oh really, I wasn't playing baseball.
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And for the Riveries, I was in ninth grade. I
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was five feet tall away one hundred pounds, so.
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That's a golfer's body.
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Yeah, it was better for golf it was for baseball.
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So I ended up on the golf team.
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So was it the golf coach who was pushing the
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baseball coach? Who was the baseball coach. It's going you
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know what, I don't take them. He's yeah, take them.
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I don't know that the two of them conspired to do,
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but they made the great choice. Ye first year, my
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in tenth grade played pretty well. I picked up the
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game fairly fast. The fact that I was playing a
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lot of different sports being athletic helped. The baseball movement
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does help. There is some things that can hinder a
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golf swing from baseball.
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But I then went on and.
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Got a job at the golf local golf course. I
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fell in love. I couldn't that was it.
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I was hooked.
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It happens every bit.
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So I then the next year I became I was
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third on the team, and then the following year I
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was most improved golfer. So I was progressing and I
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was enjoying at an awful lot.
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So where did that?
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How did that get you to become a PGA professional?
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After I left the Air Force and joined the PGA Tour,
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I immediately then joined PG of America. Because apprentice program, you're
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supposed to get in about achieve your apprenticeship to a
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class A golf professional about thirty six months. I did
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it in twenty eight. I wanted it. I really wanted it.
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I love the game and I wanted this to be
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my profession. So once I became a class A golf professional,
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then that gives you the opportunity to the next start
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exploring other jobs within the golf industry. So I spent
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eleven years working for the PGA Tour and then in
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two thousand and one Keptra Sports, who I currently work for,
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who we just hosted the us Open Chambers Bay.
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They hired me away.
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That didn't go from Kemper Sports. I'm sorry to distract
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on that, but no.
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Actually, keep in mind that when the USGA comes in
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to set up an event, it doesn't matter what golf
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course it is it's going to be hard.
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It is a US Open. It's supposed to be the
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hardest test, sight.
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Out fast, It's going to be very difficult, rough will
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be tall.
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But for us, it's a huge success. Yeah, having it there.
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We're the first golf management company to ever be selected
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to host.
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A US Open.
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Oh as opposed to a specific course or country clubs
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exactly right, interesting and a completely different venue. Right yeah,
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But do they have any sense that they think maybe
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it's not coming back to Chambers? But because there were
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so many complaints by the by the even the Hall
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of famersre it had issues with the golf course.
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Well, I think if you look at the results and
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the numbers that these golfers shot, some of them shot
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some very low rounds, right, So the guys that that
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shot seventy four, seventy five, seventy six are probably going
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to complain, But they'd complain at any golf course they
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played shot that number. So no, I don't I think
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it'll certainly be back to Chambers.
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Was it Nicholas or Palmer that talked about You know
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when a when a player complains that it doesn't suit
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their game, it's like, sorry, you're supposed to suit your
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game to the course.
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That was Nicholas.
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In fact, Chlais said he identified those that were complaining
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and knew he eliminated them from the field.
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Interesting because it wasn't a positive approach.
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Everybody is playing the exact same golf course for every event.
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So now doing a little more research on you, before
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you started playing golf in high school, you had a
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very interesting life. Share that tell us a story about
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where you were doing as a young boy.
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Well, for anybody that's interested in looking it up, look
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up kid Ko Ki d Coo. It was a movie
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about my life when I was a young man. When
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I turned eleven, I started my own company, I Incorporated,
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and I became the youngest president of any corporation in
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the history of the United States at that time. I
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don't know what it is today. We sign an agreement
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with the developer in our area to maintain the seven
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major streets so that when they were bringing prospective clients out,
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they wanted no construction to bring whatsoever on the streets.
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And how old were you eleven?
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You were eleven and you said I have one of
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adults working for you, Well we did.
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In fact, I was one of I'm one of ten kids.
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I grew up in the farming and ranching industry, and
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the four youngest children were the four that were involved
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in Kidco. And then we because we didn't have anybody
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of legal age, we hired my dad as our general manager,
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so we had somebody that could at least sign the.
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Documents leaders sid the checks.
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Yeah, absolutely, and we get involved in selling. We had
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a lot of horses on our property and we started
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selling horse manure as fertilizer to the local developer because
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by California code, you had to encourage growth when you
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put in a new road for embankments, and the developer
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found a way to do it for relatively cheap compared
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to sprigging or what any other means of putting vegetation down.
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So once the Board of Equalization got ahold of that,
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they thought for sure that we were a front for
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my dad, and so once they came in, they filed
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charges against us. They threatened us with jail time. It
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got really crazy.
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Well, that was an.
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Invite to send that out to the media. My dad
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was a great promoter, and so he did so. It
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immediately hit the news wires and I ended up on
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Mike Douglas and MERV Griffin for folks in the audience
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would remember those kids are people too. I was on
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Ronald Reagan's program twice when he was governor. In fact,
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I have a famous line from one of his shows.
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I said, if I was old enough, I would vote
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for you twice. And Ronald Reagan has written me several
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times he had handwritten notes. Really, I say, yeah, So
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I had an excite career as a young man in
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Hollywood picked up the story and then made the movie
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called Kidko.
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You're kidding. No, it's about you.
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It's about myself and my three sisters and what we
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did with our own business.
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Okay, got to look up the movie kid Co.
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Yes, you were a.
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Staff member of the Board of Equalization in the late
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seventies when this was going on. They weren't very happy
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because the number of individuals that called in to their
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facility in San Diego repeated those calls so often that
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it shut down their phone systems time and time again,
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and they literally came up with a way for us
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to be exonerated.
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Oh my gosh, Oh it was terrific. Great story. Was
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a great life growing up.
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Great story, great story let's get back to golf a
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little bit, and you're talking about Chambers Bay Kemper Sports,
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and it seems like numbers are high for great tournaments
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like this watching. But let's talk about the state of
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the industry right now. It seems as if there are
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golf courses closing all over the country. Not many are
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being built anymore. I think in twenty fourteen I read
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four courses opened in the United States and one was
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closing every eleven days.
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Correct, what's going on.
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We are no different than any other industry. We are
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subject to our own economy, whether it be a microeconomy
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or not. But we're also subject to major recessions. So
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there's going to be in every industry retractions. During the nineties,
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we were building two three, four hundred courses a year
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based on the prediction that we would never run out
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of the golfers.
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We ran out of golfers.
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As the segment of golfers changed, we then started seeing
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reclining declining numbers. So it's a natural retraction. It's unfortunate.
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It's the industry I'm in and I love it, but
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you are going to have to have this balance. The
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Many experts say that we have about sixteen thousand golf
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courses within the United States. Many experts say that a
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healthy balance is probably twelve five hundred. So seeing so
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many golf courses close is just a result of too
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many being built.
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What do you think was the factor they got all
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the excitement, of course, is the glut of courses being built.
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A couple of things.
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There was a major report put out in the late