Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hey everyone, welcome to Private Club Radio, the industry stores for news trends and updates.
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Whether you're brand new to the private club industry, welcome.
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Or a consummate professional, welcome back.
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The show dives into all topics private golf and country club related.
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I'm your host, denny Corby.
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Thank you all for being here.
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In this episode I chat with general manager COO of Old Corkscrew Golf Club, mark Iwinski, and I got linked up with him through my really good friend, Jason Becker from Golf Life Navigators and I was down with Jason and I just got done speaking at a MDASF events Marketing Directors Association of Southwest Florida.
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Shameless plug for myself.
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If you or your club is looking for some amazing entertainment, a really fun evening, I have the Denny Corby Experience Magic, mind Dreaming and Comedy the most fun you and your club are going to have guaranteed.
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It's a really great time.
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If you're interested in learning more, head over to dennycorbycom.
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Holler at me.
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I'm always on LinkedIn and the socials as well.
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Anyway, I was chatting with Jason and I was driving to the airport and he said hey, you have to go chat with my friend, mark Iwinski over at Old Corkscrew.
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He's really great dude, really good story.
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It's a really cool course.
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So this is just a fun conversation me and Mark had there in person.
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My big butt broke one of the chairs.
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It has that like webbing netting.
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It was a time, uh, we are talking outside and people ended up coming and some things happened.
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So the noise, background noise there.
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There there's a little bit uh, conversations, a little little all over the place, but still just a really fun, fruitful, um, human to human conversation I had with my new friend, mark Iwinski.
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How long have you been?
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here for I started the golf course, came with the group.
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You started the club yeah, yeah, it was 18 years ago.
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The original investors and players in the club that were part of the group this was back in, back in Okay.
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Okay, yeah, it's just going to be easier Okay.
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Is this good enough?
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Yeah, so back in.
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Oh, I was hired by the entity in 2005, late.
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We started construction in 2006 and then opened a soft opening in late 2006, 2007.
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What a time to start a club.
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Yeah, and that's part of the story.
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It's.
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I think we caused an economic downturn back then once we opened our doors.
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It was just an omen or maybe something.
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Once we opened the doors, that was it.
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That was the tilting point.
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I guess you'd say, but no, we came out of the gates really strong.
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I mean gosh, we were.
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And this is back in 2005, and charging almost the same rates we are today.
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And so that puts kind of a little depiction of where we were back in the economy, back in the heyday I mean down here it was.
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You know, I always tell folks, I think, what happened in this market and I don't know how much Southwest Florida itself influenced the whole market, but there was the Wall Street Journal, Cooker's here.
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Oh, that's, all right.
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No, they're ready.
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Those go back to 2006.
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So there you go.
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So there, you didn't want to move.
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Now I'm glad I didn't break you, let's put it that way.
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But no, we're fine.
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Danny, but it was interesting times indeed.
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So we came out of the gate.
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It was shortly after that that the economy turned and you wouldn't have recognized this area back then.
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I mean there were clubs, big players in this market who went belly up.
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I mean it was across the gamut, belly up.
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I mean it was across the gamut and it was a fortuitous thing for a lot of these private clubs, for the members there, because they were able to get in on the cheap and purchase these clubs.
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And now it's just a complete reversal.
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You're just not coming up the road here, oh yeah.
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And you know not a golf course being constructed in sight.
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I don't know if you've studied the area, but everything now is moving inland and I mean inland 30, 35 miles, big projects.
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I believe the Colliers have something going on the golf and rod and gun club, very high-end private initiation and it's also part of a development that they'll have out there and there's talk.
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We were you know I had several entourages out here.
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Oh, certain something.
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We have a small membership and we're also open to the public here.
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How many memberships do you have?
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Oh, I might be stretching at 60.
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And it's sweet for them because they get that royal treatment and it's nice.
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They get that royal treatment and it's nice.
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There is some feeling of ownership here with these folks that this is their place and it's fun having them too.
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So my background was actually in the summer.
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Private club industry was actually in the semi-private club industry.
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I have a background of a few clubs I've worked at in the market here.
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Sorry about this you know semi-private and then both of them have converted to being fully private.
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But I like this world.
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I like dealing with you know fresh faces every day.
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What's it like?
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Being at the same place since 2005, 2006, 2007 it just doesn't seem that long when I say that 18 years, one of these folks I try not to embellish at all, but it was.
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We're in 2024 and this was yeah, it was 2005.
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So that's have I got my math correct?
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I hope 30 years to 2005, weird.
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No, 30 years, 20 years, so yeah, yeah, there you go going on 20 years.
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Maybe I tried to forget it.
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You know, since I go Go on 20 years, maybe I'd try to forget it.
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It means I'm having the children too.
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No, but it's.
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I think rare to see people in the same position for so long.
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It has to be something to.
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You must be doing something wrong.
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Yeah, it's dodging bullets you know laying low, no, it's.
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I've always had this way about me.
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You know, treat everybody the same.
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I mean it's genuine, what you see is what you get.
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So you don't ostracize folks.
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Or you know, treat people with preference and then the other group not, because I've always come back to you and that's what happens in a lot of clubs.
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I know many good friends who are quality guys and that, but they may have rubbed that wrong person, you know, in the wrong way and that person is then the chairman of the club board and I've never actually worked for a board head of clubs, so I don't know.
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Yeah, so I've had the fortune of working for ownership private owners, it's nice.
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You guessed it Concert Golf Partners.
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It's a back and forth flow.
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You're not being segmented into different committees that will answer this, and I respect those guys that work at those types of clubs.
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It's a lot, it's hard yeah.
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It's hard.
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Yeah, it's hard.
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Yeah, it's hard.
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I don't know if I'd really do it.
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There's so many, I know so many.
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When people say they may have like 300 bosses.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, all the credit to them.
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It's a lot of work.
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It really is.
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Just recently here there were some clubs.
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Their opportunities have opened up.
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You know they're in certain positions and I was serious.
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These folks, I was at a club I previously worked at and I could see where they were going.
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I just shook my head.
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No, anything to do with meals in the evening.
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You know, when you have night dining and that it's that opens itself up to a lot of challenges.
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You know you've got staffing issues and folks leaving there.
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You know, at midnight, close to it, who knows if they're going home, type of deals.
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Oh yeah, no, this is enough and it's a lot of fun.
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Are your now?
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Are there houses on the course here?
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No, no, and it's a lot of fun.
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Are there houses on the course here?
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No, no, it's a core golf and a little history.
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This was actually a project that was started by the Bonita Bay Properties back in the day and this was going to be an auxiliary course for all their golfing communities.
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So they saw the demand, or at least they had forecasted there would be enough demand that there would be some overflow.
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So this is where those overflow folks would end up.
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And there was a previous turn, a little blipip in the market, and they put the project on hold and the group that hired me.
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They saw the opportunity, they purchased the property.
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Everything was laid out.
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It was almost too easy, like cheating.
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Nicholas had already done all the engineering the layout, sight lines were drawn and it was technically a shovel-ready project so we were able to start on the way saved us a lot of time.
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We built it I say start to finish in less than 10 months.
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That's pretty quick.
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That's pretty quick.
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That's pretty quick, can be done.
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There was a rock underneath there so we didn't have to do any blasting.
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That's one thing you run into in Florida.
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You hit the wide rock and next thing.
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you know you're having to not just dig but blast as well.
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So that was For the TNT, yeah.
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So it was nice for the construction of it that was doing that.
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They had a nice go at this and then they were able to mold the fairways and sculpt it the way that they want without any impediments.
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So that also expedited the process.
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You guys have a lot of really good reviews online as well.
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We do yeah.
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To see people who have more than 20, maybe even 100 Google reviews.
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You've done this 500.
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Yeah, that's not really good.
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I was happy to see that.
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I appreciate that.
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Yeah, we're sensitive to, of course, the patrons coming out.
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A lot of challenges we have here.
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You know the severity of the course.
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And then last year we had a little reversal at the most inopportune time when our grass on our greens decided not to grow any longer.
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Yeah, and who knows?
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Anyone's guess I mean people say fungus, I'm not going to fungus, I don't take fungus, but it was the trying time last year at this time.
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So what did you do?
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So we pretended like we were in good shape.
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No, we just put on.
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You know, I tell folks, you know my kids I had enough Disney in me.
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you know you put on the Mickey Mouse costume and, yeah, a lot of refunds back last year at this time and people and actually it's so funny because out of that, in that period I met some really great folks.
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I mean that you know they were upset but then, after chatting with them and taking care of them and, you know, nursing them back to our side they know this established nice relationships that carry on yeah to this day.
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But yeah, it was what we have.
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Was it all the grass?
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It was, I tell folks it might as well have been it was.
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It would have been better, I think, had all the grass disappeared, because then you know what you're up against.
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You're.
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You're basically putting on dirt, the ball's rolling, true, and and that, but it was, uh, yeah.
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So, um, we, uh, yeah, we were able to, you know, find the person, the superintendent, and get it back in track.
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There's something about, you know, obviously Florida and the sunshine Grass wants to grow down here.
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Yeah.
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So again, kind of a mystery.
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We had experts, I mean the leading guys in this field, you know, come down here and again you know various opinions and that you know the standard permutant decline.
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Well, okay, that's a fever, like what's causing it, you know.
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So our owner, great gentleman David Hoffman, I begged him.
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I said, whatever you do, don't re-grass the greens, we'll get these back.
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And he believed me.
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And we're in much better shape.
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The horse is in really good condition.
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So you had some sick grass, sick grass, sick grass, yeah.
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So anyone's guess, you know, is still a mystery.
00:16:33.581 --> 00:16:34.567
So what did you end up doing?
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Well, you get out of, okay.
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So again, you know this is happening.
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Last year we had a couple of weather revers reversals.
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You know you have these fluctuations.
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You know the very cold days followed by high uh, humidity days with uh, you know, higher temperatures.
00:16:58.582 --> 00:17:15.593
So the grass goes dormant for a while, not totally off like up north, but you know your Bermuda will really go to sleep on you and once that is, if you're losing your grains, then the grass is going to sleep.
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It's pretty much game over.
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So we had, yeah, so as the temperatures came back and rose, you know the conditions were more in line to growing grass.
00:17:26.871 --> 00:17:34.993
You know the greens start to pop and, just you know, start doing good horticultural practices.
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Luckily, yeah, did it happen all like, does it happen all at once?
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Or was it like or was it like you know, like a little thing here and there and like, so it happened.
00:17:48.406 --> 00:17:49.862
Oh, that's, that's wild.
00:17:50.123 --> 00:17:51.326
No, no, you know.
00:17:51.326 --> 00:18:04.506
That's an excellent question, denny, because again, it's not my field and and I I won't say I know enough make myself dangerous because I know more than that.
00:18:04.506 --> 00:18:09.875
I know, but you know it's, I understand.
00:18:09.980 --> 00:18:13.891
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00:19:16.866 --> 00:19:33.939
You started the club yeah, yeah, it was 18 years ago and the original investors and players in the club that were part of the group this was back in, back in.
00:19:34.481 --> 00:19:37.567
Back in Okay.
00:19:39.557 --> 00:19:41.142
Yeah, it's just going to be easier.
00:19:41.142 --> 00:19:42.065
Okay, is this?
00:19:42.164 --> 00:19:44.758
good enough, yeah, so back in.
00:19:44.758 --> 00:19:50.086
Oh, I was hired by the entity in 2005, late.
00:19:50.086 --> 00:19:58.848
We started construction in 2006 and then opened soft opening in late 2006, 2007.
00:19:59.455 --> 00:20:00.401
What a time to start a club.
00:20:01.336 --> 00:20:03.825
Yeah, and that's part of the story.
00:20:03.825 --> 00:20:05.896
It's.
00:20:05.896 --> 00:20:12.449
I think we caused an economic downturn back then once we opened our doors.
00:20:12.449 --> 00:20:16.282
It was just an omen or maybe something.
00:20:16.282 --> 00:20:18.007
Once we opened the doors, that was it.
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That was the tilting point.
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I guess you'd say, but no, we came out of the gates really strong.