[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Andy from the CNC Golf Factory podcast. Welcome to episode 16. As I was editing this podcast for consumption, realized that about the last 15 minutes of it, there were some technical difficulties, things that I couldn't recognize or see while the recording was happening.
It is listenable, but I just want to make you aware that the audio. Audio towards the end, it's not your computer, it's not your phone, it is the actual recording. It just sounds a little digitized, if you will. You'll understand when you hear it. We talked to Kyle Walton, who is the owner and purveyor of the Gimme Golf club with two locations over in St. Charles and Fenton. And we hope that you enjoy our conversation with Kyle coming up right now on this episode of the CNC Golf Factory podcast right here on the St. Louis podcast Network.
Welcome to the CNC Golf Factory podcast on the St. Louis podcast Network with Kurt Rowey and Kurt Goff II. Kurt Rowey is the executive director of the Metropolitan Amateur Golf association in St. Louis.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: This calls for the old Billy Baruch.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Kurt Goss II is the head PGA professional at the Country Club of St. Albans.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: I for short.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Now it's time for the only podcast dedicated to St. Louis local golf.
Let's get into the CNC Golf Factory podcast on the St. Louis podcast Network.
Welcome on in to CNC Golf Factory podcast right here on the St. Louis podcast Network. I'm enhanced alongside Kurt Rowey and Kurt cost. Third gentlemen, we are. We are live and in person tonight. We are doing this for the first time ever. We've been doing it virtually remotely, however you want to say it, for the better part of 2023 and the very tail end of 2023. We're at a really fun spot tonight, and we get to do this in person.
[00:02:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: On location for the first time. We're here in St. Charles at Gimme Golf Club, the clubhouse.
We'll get to talk to Kyle Walton, one of the founders here, in a little while. But I know he refers this as the OG clubhouse. So, yeah, it's exciting. It is a little different, a little awkward having sitting here and actually look at you guys live. I know, but it's kind of cool.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Goss is freaking me out over there.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: I don't know why.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: He's just bothering me.
[00:02:33] Speaker E: I love it. I think you guys are much better looking in person. So it's fun to do this as opposed to on the small 13 inch laptop at home, watching the family walk.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: By in the kitchen without question. And hopefully that doing this together in person. We can kind of read each other a little bit and really put together a good show. The focus of tonight's show will be talking about gimme golf club. Gimme golf club.
Not a sponsor, just here hanging out. Kyle Walton is a good friend of. And so we decided that we'd come out here and do the show and kind of talk about what they're doing a little bit.
But what's been going on so far? As we wrap up the fall officially today, as it is the first day.
[00:03:13] Speaker E: Of winter, it's the shortest day of the year, which means tomorrow is going to get a little bit longer.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Just a little bit.
[00:03:19] Speaker E: Just a little bit. Don't worry. Don't be trying to book tea times at 06:00 p.m.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: It'll still be.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: No.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Going to be dark. Going to be dark.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: No.
[00:03:26] Speaker E: Over at St. Albans, weather has been pretty darn good. We've been wrapping gifts, selling gifts. Let me rephrase that. I've been selling gifts. The rest of the team has been selling gifts. But Joe the pro, and Brooks Morris, one of our assistants, they have been manning the wrapping station.
I like to sell stuff. I don't want to wrap stuff. It doesn't look good. I made Brooks wrap a couple of gifts for my wife today.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: How'd it go?
[00:03:51] Speaker E: It went very well. He did use the same paper on both gifts. No, I know, but I left it alone. I don't even know why we wrapped them. Because she knows what they are. She picked them out about two weeks ago. But no, it's plugging away. I know there's some fun stuff at St. Albans right now. We have an outdoor pavilion patio near the range near the Lewis and Clark halfway house. Going in, we have a new path.
[00:04:18] Speaker F: Oh, yeah.
[00:04:18] Speaker E: New cart path. Leaving 18 Lewis. It's still war zone because this will be going on till probably early April. But thanks to the good weather, we are probably a hair bud scheduled to get this done. But I know things will turn, but whatnot. So it's fun for the members to have something fun and exciting in the near future for them.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: I know they're all kind of weather nerds. And I was reading something yesterday from Chris Higgins over at the lovely two Fox. He said that the previous record for no snowflakes in St. Louis was December 23.
And we are going to exceed that without question because Sunday is going to be 65 degrees on Christmas Eve.
You got a full t sheet out there on Sunday.
[00:05:02] Speaker E: It's not bad. I mean, it's not packed. I think probably because it's Christmas Eve. A lot of people are like, myself, have 04:00 mass. But we got to get there at two so we can get a pew saved for the family.
But, yeah, I love knowing it's going to be 65 degrees in a packed church on Christmas Eve for two and a half hours in a sweater and a dress shirt, just waiting to get home and change into a t shirt because I'll be sweating up a storm. But it's all worth it to be with friends and family during.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: You could just wear the dickie.
[00:05:31] Speaker E: My wife made me throw it out after our first date.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Why would you wear a dickie on your first date? And I'm not surprised to hear that.
[00:05:41] Speaker E: I've never owned a dickie.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Okay, thank you.
[00:05:44] Speaker E: I've never owned a dickie.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Golfers don't own dicky.
[00:05:46] Speaker E: I don't even know where you buy them. But if there's a golf company selling them at the show next month in January, I might have to look at them. If we can get them embroidered, boy.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Can we do the show from down there. Can we tag along? That'd be a lot of fun.
[00:05:57] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:05:57] Speaker E: Come on down.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: We really. Sure. Can you get us in?
[00:06:01] Speaker E: Absolutely. We can get you in.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: No way. What days is it?
[00:06:06] Speaker E: I'm going to kind of look towards my assistant Paul here.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Yeah, assistant Paul from St. Albans is here in the house tonight, too.
[00:06:12] Speaker E: I think it's the 24th, and we.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Have a live studio audience.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Fantastic.
[00:06:16] Speaker E: Thank you. Our one listener is here alive on set.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:20] Speaker E: I think it's January 24, 25th, I believe. But, yes. Ironically, we can get friends and family in Andy, because they do allow us a couple of non PGA guests.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:30] Speaker E: We've had members down there before.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Do you got much going on the end of January?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: I don't think so. I have to look, I got to.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Pop down to Orlando for a couple of days. I need to get the hell of a dodge.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Good chance. Good chance. I've been to the show one time back in. Oh, my gosh. I think it was 2016. I went one time and I said, I really have no reason to ever come back here, but I'd be interested in going back again.
I know golf associations who go, and they do go every year. And I went to once, and I'm just like, all right.
Because I'm not buying a bunch of stuff. Right. So it was cool. I got to see it. It's big. It was neat. But I hung out more, I think, in the Johnny o booth more than anything, because I know John so that was kind of neat. I'd always go by there about 03:00 because he had cocktails.
Yeah.
I'd go back and check it out for a day or two.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: That'd be pretty awesome. Let's talk about that for sure. Absolutely.
[00:07:32] Speaker E: And it is, Andy. It's somewhat sensory overload. It is large and in charge. And I know Covid, there was some uncertainty about what was going to happen. It obviously came back. It continues to grow to what it used to be. Some people said they didn't care if it hung around. I love it because I do spend a couple of days meeting with smaller reps vendors. I don't meet with my Peter Millar rep, Jake wall, when I'm down there. Jake and I will spend 3 hours at St. Albans and then grab dinner afterwards. These are 30 minutes meetings for me. My Wednesday is already full from 830 to 530. And then, like Roe said, a lot of these booths have cocktail hours. And actually Thursday at five or 06:00 Jake Owen will be performing a concert Thursday night.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:08:23] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: We like concerts.
[00:08:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:25] Speaker E: So a free concert, but no, it's great. Joe, my boss, Joe Schwint, he does a lot of the four t's, golf. Genius stuff. What can we look at for the range? I spend Wednesday from start to finish, literally, in meetings.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:40] Speaker E: A guy like is a couple of meetings and then I just start to wander around. What's new, what looks cool, what do I think makes sense for the shop at St.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: A guy like you is going out to fill your shop. You're going out to place orders and place orders for the year and do all the stuff that you need to do. So I'm interested to see that happen in action again. Probably a one time thing, because I've never been.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be kind of a cool thing to do.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: As we wrap up 2023, this was all certainly new to Kurt and I and me too.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: I mean, just seeing how this thing was going to develop.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: And I think I've certainly learned a lot in this first year and I think we probably all have, even though, Andy, you've got a little more experience in doing this. But I think as we go into 24 and continue this, I'll use the motto we use in the golf association. And people ask, why are you guys. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but why are you guys so good at what you do? It's because you got to continually raise a bar. What did we do last episode? Or what can we do better next episode or the next year that we didn't do in the year before, and that's what we got to look forward to.
I think we're on a good track.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: So exciting out here at gimme golf club in St. Charles. The OG, they have a second location over in fence, and we'll be talking to Kyle Walton, and our interview with him starts right now. Kyle, what's going on, man? How's it going tonight?
[00:10:05] Speaker D: I'm doing good, man. Welcome to the gimme golf club.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: We are very, very happy to be here. We've been sitting here talking for the past ten minutes. I didn't know who you were before you walked in the door. I have heard of the guys that told me about the gimme golf club and that we were coming out here and I thought I was just a guy who kind of started a cool club and talking about what you've been doing over the past two years, we're going to get to that, but first, I think our listeners want to know the whole backstory. So let's start with your background, where you're from.
Let's start with that.
[00:10:35] Speaker D: Yeah, sure. So I'm from north county originally. Grew up right off of west Forson 270. Sort of grew up playing my golf at Eagle Springs and old florescent.
Sort of grew up as a caddy at Norwood Hills, did some work at Glen Echo, worked at Meadowbrook, sort of. Kind of was a bit of a golf bum, worked to play sort of situation.
But, yeah, most of my junior golf, and I think the reason why there's a bit of disconnect me and Kurt have chatted about this, too, is I played most of my junior golf in Indiana, so my dad lived in Fort Wayne. I went there in the summers, and I played on all of the junior tours and did all my junior golf sort of up there. So I never really played much, any tournament golf or any sort of junior golf in the St. Louis area.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: What kind of stuff were you interested in when you were in high school?
[00:11:23] Speaker D: I mean, I played a lot of sports, so I was a three sport athlete. I played soccer, played basketball, played golf. I went to a small Christian school, north County Christian school, sure. And did a big fish, little pond situation, played a lot of sports. And then, yeah, sort of went on to college in Indiana, actually, and played some. Played for tri State University, did a little golfing there. And then I actually came back to a little small southern baptist school called Hannibal Lagrange in Hannibal, Missouri.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: So, small school. Small school. Small school.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Small school.
[00:11:57] Speaker D: Small school. Small school. Yeah, for sure.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Interesting.
Let me keep going.
[00:12:04] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: So we're through college, and golf is still just kind of a hobby for you.
[00:12:09] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: You graduate college with a degree in.
[00:12:14] Speaker D: Marketing, basically a business degree. It was a pretty.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: I'm guessing we're the same age. This is mid 90s, probably.
[00:12:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
I'm 42 years old. I was basically 2000 and I think four, basically, when I graduated college.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Okay. Just trying to give the listeners a time frame.
First job.
[00:12:38] Speaker D: First job out of school. I worked at GNC as a sales guy, and then I worked at Hibbitt Sports.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: I know there's one in Edwardsville.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:51] Speaker D: Of.
[00:12:52] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:12:52] Speaker D: Hanging on.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Hanging on. They're going to open a dick's across the street.
[00:12:57] Speaker D: Not long.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:58] Speaker D: So I was a manager at Hibbit Sports, and then actually, I worked in a chemistry lab in a very od sort of way for about three years.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:13:06] Speaker D: Yeah, no, it gets super.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's dig more into this. So then you mentioned earlier in our little pre show conversation that you ended up at enterprise doing graphic design.
[00:13:17] Speaker D: Yeah, I was a senior graphic designer at Enterprise, so I was at the chemistry lab. I ended up backdooring my way into some marketing jobs. I taught myself Photoshop and illustrator, ended up doing graphic design for them. Left there, went to a product development company where I helped sell, basically, body scales and food scales into big box retail. Went three person company. We were selling stuff into bed, Bath and beyond. Learned a lot there. And then left that job and went to Enterprise and was there for, I think, five years. I was there for a long time. I actually really enjoyed my time at enterprise listeners.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Hang on. I promise this gets super boring. This is the boring stuff. But I think it's interesting to establish that there's a very strange background getting to where we're going. So you leave enterprise?
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:07] Speaker D: So I started doing freelance work while I was at Enterprise. I basically convinced one of the head marketing guys to start a video department.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:18] Speaker D: I convinced him to spend $35,000 on video equipment, and I had never turned.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: On a camera because that was my question. What is your experience with video at this point? None.
[00:14:28] Speaker D: Zero.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: And you said, but buy me the $35,000 camera, maybe we can do a couple of things.
[00:14:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:32] Speaker D: I convinced him to kind of do some stuff.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Had you seen it? Something along those lines that you're like, I've seen a video like what they're looking for here. I think I can make this happen, or I know somebody who can show me how to use this thing. Or I can just kind of figure it out. Like you trained yourself on illustrator and Photoshop.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:49] Speaker D: So I had started to do some animation. So I'd started to see some things move as opposed to being still on a screen. So it started to interest me. And so then the narrative and the story stuff started to get super interesting. So I convinced him to start a video department.
I made one video there. It went really well. But then what ended up happening is that enterprise has a bunch of agencies on retainer. So they just made me an idea guy. So I started pitching all the ideas of the videos that I wanted to make. And then I was never making anything.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Gotcha.
[00:15:19] Speaker D: But then I started using the video equipment for freelance because no one else.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Was using Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Andy. Yeah, and Chrissy, thanks for letting me borrow your stuff.
[00:15:31] Speaker C: They were fine with it.
[00:15:32] Speaker D: I was learning, so I used it to learn. I built up a freelance clientele. And then that's how I was able to kind of pull.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Were you doing anything in the golf realm, in the freelance world?
[00:15:42] Speaker D: Absolutely not.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: You told me what you were doing, but let's tell the listeners what you were doing.
[00:15:49] Speaker D: Yes, I was working in the agriculture industry. So I was making videos on cornfields.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Which are very pretty in their own right, for sure.
[00:15:58] Speaker D: I was in basically every farm in America. I was there. I was on site at 03:00 a.m. When the dairy farmers were up. I mean, honestly, some of the hardest workers in the world. I loved it. It was great. But at some point, I was just sort of sick of making videos about cows.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:16] Speaker D: And so I started to kind of pivot a bit.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: And you pivoted towards golf?
[00:16:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Were you playing much on a regular basis at this point?
[00:16:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Speaker D: Don't get it twisted. I'm an absolute sicko. Like, I play golf. I care about architecture. I am a full on golf sicko.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: And I've always architecture nerds here, too.
[00:16:34] Speaker D: I've always been a sicko. And so I was always playing. But somebody sent me a video and they said, hey, man, this looks like something that you would make.
What was the a? It was like a Eric Anders Lang video. It was called dear golf.
It was more of like a heightened kind of concept of like, this is why I like golf. Not necessarily about golf swing.
[00:16:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:56] Speaker D: More on the emotive side. And why you like golf side. And they said, this looks like something you make. And I was like, it does.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: You're obviously a very creative guy. Did you like being the idea guy or did you want to be the idea guy and the guy to put it on tape. Well, or the zeros.
[00:17:12] Speaker D: I think if the end game was to be an idea guy, then I had to put in the 10,000 hours of actually executing work, and before I could tell people what to do, so I wanted to actually hit record. Okay, so that was sort of where that came from.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: So you're pivoting towards golf. You hook up with a guy. Yeah, that sounded bad.
[00:17:33] Speaker D: Yeah, that sounded really bad.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: You meet a guy in the golf world who has some followers on Instagram, and he's like, hey, tag along with me if you want to do some stuff, and maybe we can get something going here.
[00:17:43] Speaker D: Some would say that I hooked up with a guy. That would be what? That's what someone would say, right?
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Right?
[00:17:47] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Or you can say you hooked up with a guy. Who knows? I think so.
[00:17:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:51] Speaker D: So I was down at the PGA show, and I met a gentleman who, his name is Matt Cardis. He actually has an Instagram channel called golf in your state. He kind of has a Mercedes sprinter van. He's a photographer. He kind of travels the United States taking pictures of golf courses for the listeners.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: How do you spell Matt Cardis? If they want to look him up?
[00:18:10] Speaker D: Yeah, Matt. And then Cardis is C-A-R-D-I-S. Golf in your state is the Instagram handle. He's a fantastic guy.
He asked me to do some stuff for him, actually, while he was quarantining. So he went down to a little course in Tennessee called Sweden's Cove, and he quarantined for about 35 days down there just by himself. The course was closed. And he asked me, hey, how should I shoot this?
[00:18:34] Speaker A: So this is 2020? Yeah, 2020, like April and May of 2020, for sure.
[00:18:38] Speaker D: And so he's down there sending me footage. I'm editing it for him. He's putting it up on YouTube, and it actually went pretty well for him.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:45] Speaker D: And so he ends up going over to Pinehurst and quarantining kind of around the same time that Riggs was over there for about 100 days. And then he started chatting with some USGA folks, and then they were planning a trophy tour, but they were not going to send the winner out on the trophy tour, so they were just going to pedal some simpler humans out there for the trophy.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Mean, obviously they're taking the trophy around to places, but what does it entail?
[00:19:10] Speaker D: Yeah, so normally it entails, you know, it entails the winner going around and sort of touting the trophy around the United States to some, you know, all that stuff. That was what it was. But he sort of pitched, hey, like, why don't you let me take this trophy to US Open venues? I'll play the course, I'll figure out the history of the US Open. Maybe we can set up a few small meetups where some actual regular people can get the people's trophy sort of in their hands. And it was sort of like an eight video kind of idea. So they greenlit it, which was amazing. And this was really one of my first gigs in the golf space.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: And that went well.
[00:19:55] Speaker D: So we picked up the trophy at Winkfoot, we made a video there. Then we went to Pinehurst, then we went to Oakmont, Aaron Hills, Colorado, to Cherry Hills, up to Olympic club, to Pebble beach. And then Tory Pines was where the next year's US Open was going to be. And that's kind of where we dropped off the trophy. So we made eight videos. 25 days. We did all of that in 25 days.
[00:20:19] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:20:20] Speaker D: Yeah, it was quite a haul.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Were you driving or flying around with it?
[00:20:23] Speaker C: A little bit of both.
[00:20:24] Speaker D: Like Lexus gave us. It was sponsored by Lexus. So we had an suv that was kind of wrapped that we took around most of them, but there was a couple legs that we had to fly to for clarity.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: For the listeners, let's make sure that none of this stuff is, like, really for public consumption. It's not on YouTube.
[00:20:38] Speaker C: It is.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Oh, it is on USGA, but through the USGA?
[00:20:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:44] Speaker D: If you go to the USGA's channel, you can find the trophy tour.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: It's other places we're going to talk about here in just a minute, maybe. Okay, so you've been contracted by the USGA to create this content. Okay, so it is republicans. I thought that those are something.
[00:20:57] Speaker D: My check came from the United States Golf association.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Incredible. So you do this tour with the US Open trophy.
[00:21:04] Speaker D: And I would say normally there's a production team, but because it was sort of COVID situation, it was my video, my camera, my drone, my edit. So when people were asking who made it, it wasn't like a production company. It was like Kyle. So that's what ended up setting me off, because then the phone started to ring from there and who else called? Lots of people have called, but I've been fortunate enough to do multiple us Opens.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm assuming the religion with the USGA is continuing.
[00:21:36] Speaker D: Walker Cup, Curtis Cup. I went over to Scotland before the British, before the open championship.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: I saw your badges hanging over here and I figured you was like a rules guy or something. You were just out there walking around, hanging out with a guy like Rowey over, you know, who's a rules expert. Not the case.
[00:21:54] Speaker D: At, no, not, not the case. Fortunate to be inside the ropes and sort of get a lot of to least feel a lot of that juice that those players feel is the stuff.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: With the USGA negotiated work at this point. Where do they even put it up for bid anymore? Do they just kind of say, hey, Kyle, come on out?
[00:22:11] Speaker D: Odly enough, I actually turned down the work this year, and that's a different conversation, but because basically gimme golf club is sort of requiring a little bit more of my time.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: And we'll talk about that, too.
[00:22:22] Speaker D: Yeah, for sure. And then I have two great little girls and kiddos at home, and I was on the road 25, 30 days straight, and I come home and your kids are taller. You kind of have to sort of renegotiate things. And my wife's been a saint, but, yeah, I was gone a lot. So we're trying to figure that out. But there's still one tournament that I go to every year so far, and that's the Masters.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: And that's my next question. You've been contracted by the Augusta National Golf Club to. Your cameras are not allowed on the grounds during tournament time, except if your name is.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: So been.
[00:22:56] Speaker D: Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to be just a part of that team. You can go. There's actually like a link on masters.com where they sort know, highlight the photographers that are on the property.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And actually, I think I saw it on their instagram last year that they were having pictures of guys and people that were taking pictures for taking pictures of fans.
I'm a big Rick Shields guy on YouTube, and I guess. Were you there on the Monday following the Masters, too, taking pictures of the guys, of the media members who get to play the course afterwards?
[00:23:28] Speaker D: No, but he did come into our room and chat with us. He was kind of wanting to see how everything was breaking down.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: He's kind of a nerdy guy about this kind of stuff. Like, I think kind of all of us are very cool, man. Yeah. The background is incredible. What kind of events do you have going on this year in your terms of your video stuff?
[00:23:50] Speaker D: I mean, I'm trying to focus more content on basically more experiential. So, like this year, Dreamgolf hired me to take four guys to Bandon and basically play the entire time and make a video about our experience.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: I've seen other videos like that.
What is that.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: Oh, my God.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Is it called, like, country club guy or country club experience or something along those lines?
He draws four random people from around the world.
[00:24:19] Speaker D: That's interesting.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: They all enter, and they get.
The one at Aaron's Hills was a guy from India, a guy from Africa, a guy from South Africa, a guy from the United States, and it was four people who had no idea who they were, and they were just four random draws. And I wish I could think. I'll find out what it is and maybe include it in the show notes, but, yeah, very similar experience. And actually, they broke that up into, I want to say, four episodes of it, because otherwise you're watching a movie for two and a half hours.
[00:24:54] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: So it's a little more consumable. Well, that's awesome, man.
[00:24:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:57] Speaker D: So some work for Dreamgolf. Do a lot of work with brands like Imperial. Headwear is a big brand ambassador. They're actually a big partner of Gimme golf club.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: They're also a big partner of the Metropolitan Amateur Golf association. And I think lots of different public golf. They're great around here, too. Yeah, Imperial is great in that now almost four year period between April of 2020 and now December of 2023, three and a half years, you founded, started the thing, the gimme golf club.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Talk about that from the birth. Where's the idea? Where'd that come from? What'd you see that you liked? Somewhere like, I can do that. I can do that. Awesome. I can do it. Mo Betta, if you will.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:44] Speaker D: I think ultimately, I feel like, at the time, I felt that there was a bit of issue with sort of public golf. I felt like at the time, and I don't want to put, like, golf now on blast, but, like, at the time, I think golf now was sort of doing a disservice to a lot of golf courses because they were sort of creating a race to the bottom. But I think since then, they provide a lot of hardware goods. They've done a lot of stuff to sort of fix that. But they were putting out hot deals. Those hot deals were creating a certain price point, and then a lot of courses seemed like they were lowering prices because guys are like, oh, I played it for $12. Why am I getting charged 35? Which created a lot of weird pricing things for a while there. And then courses sort of, I feel like, weren't as nice as they had been. And it's like, well, what do you expect? These guys need this money in order to make these courses what they're supposed to be. And so to me, it just felt like an opportunity to sort of flip the model on its head. And most of the marketing that I saw were people going to golf courses and saying that I can bring you people if you just pay me this amount of money. And I said, well, what if I just pay you? What if I just pay the golf course, and then I bring you people, and in exchange, I can do what I'm good at, which is build a brand, build a community, and do the things that I'm good at.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: So it started as playing actual golf courses. Did the sims come later?
[00:27:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I pitched this idea to three golf courses. I pitched it to Eagle Springs, I pitched it to Sugar Creek, and I pitched it to rolling hills. And what I did was I sat down in front of them and I asked them if I could write them a $10,000 check and it would be worth, I want that to be worth 500 rounds of golf. 500 rounds of golf or $10,000 worth of card, that's $20 around. If. If I get more than 500 rounds in your golf course, I will write you a $2,000 bonus check. But it has to cap it that much. They looked at me, the check was on the table, and they said, how many members do you have? And I said, zero. I have no members. And they snatched the check up, and they said, good luck. And one of the courses I won on, and the other two absolutely fleeced me.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:52] Speaker D: And that's what started the business. I was able to grow members, we were able to get guys in. We were build culture. It was a digital community. We had no physical location, and we were able to sort of play golf, go through these courses, and sort of build a relationship.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: I'm a business guy.
Did you have this 30 grand in cash yourself, or did you talk a bank into give you a line of credit for this?
[00:28:20] Speaker D: Well, I had a little, not a lot. And then we actually crowdsourced a lot of it. I gave away some OG memberships for a pretty solid price, and sort of promised to grandfather them in over the years if they got on board now. So I was able to get a lot of people to kind of blindly give me a decent chunk of change and didn't know who I was and just had a website, and they kind of bought in.
And to this day, I owe them everything. They've been fantastic.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: My mind is blown, because it's awesome.
It's exactly how startups start in 2021 and 2022 is either go to a bank and get a line of credit or crowdsource it and figure it out and finding people that believe in what you believe in and giving it to sell, obviously, you're good at selling it as well because I'd like vote for you for senator right now as we're sitting here talking. But man, that's incredible. So you've sold these memberships. You've got three golf courses online. Eagle Springs, Sugar Creek and rolling hills. Great. Kyle Williams over in Godford. Was it Kyle? At the time, it was not there anymore.
[00:29:32] Speaker D: And honestly, Kyle's.
Mike Boeber was at Eagle. Yeah, Mike's at Bear Creek now. Sark was at Sugar and Kyle was at Rolling Hills. And honestly, those three guys, that could not have been better.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: As I look through your catalog of golf courses now, you have about a little bit less than ten, but maybe pushing ten.
[00:29:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Is this your third full year then?
[00:29:56] Speaker D: Yeah, we'll be going into 24.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:59] Speaker D: So we went from three courses and no facility, and then we went into winter. And what happens is you have 115, 120 members, and then when it gets cold, they drop off. I had a member number 24, Kenny Riley, who's my business partner. He actually, very early on, I got on board with Kenny really early because he sat down, he asked me to go to dinner, and he said, hey, these OG memberships, he's like, what's going on with these? I'm like, well, I'm trying to crowdsource it. He's like, what if I bought all 50 memberships right now? He's like, I'll buy them and I'll sell them myself. And I was like, no, I'm not going to give anyone that much leverage on me. Right, but stay close. I like your attitude. And so he got on board very early, and then when the opportunity arose and we started chatting about a facility, he's like, I've always wanted a facility. And so Kenny and his dad and they got involved and we were able to acquire this building that you're in right now. So we bought this building in late 20, and then we renovated all through late 20, and then early 2021 in March, when we went from 115 members down to 20, we relaunched in March with this facility with 20 members, basically. And then from there is when it really went.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: How many members are you at now?
[00:31:18] Speaker D: We're at about 430 members.
We have 430 members. We have two locations now. We just opened one in Fenton as well. And then we have eleven courses. So three courses, no building, one building, six courses, two buildings, ten courses. And now we're heading into another year and we actually just had a couple of really good chats with a couple of courses today.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: I think one of the actual hosts of the podcast actually wants to ask you a question. Now. I'm just a producer.
[00:31:47] Speaker C: I love it. Come on in, man.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: No, this is great. And this is actually perfect. And I'm just trying to think back, Kyle, when you and I really first met, I think you reached out to me and we got to talking, and first time, I think we talked and you kind of explained to me what you were trying to do.
I'm sure I didn't tell you this, but I probably walked away thinking, the hell is this guy? This makes no sense.
But now, I've been here several times, I've been to this clubhouse. I haven't been to the new one yet, but I think it's great what you've done. You're a member club of the golf association.
Your members, your members are getting our services that we provide.
I think that's really cool. We're seeing your golfers on our leaderboards, playing in our events and all that.
So it's hard to believe it's only been a couple of years. I mean, it seems like, it really seems like longer ago, but what's next for gimme golf club?
Where's this thing? Well, what's the next step?
[00:32:52] Speaker D: Yeah, in the immediate future, we have about 1500 sqft in the back of our building that has been leased out by a bar. So we will be opening up a sort of ten tap tap house in the back that will be open to the public, which will sort of, my hope is to give people a chance to sort of experience this club. Our tagline is everyone only. Our goal is always to sort of provide a non intimidating space for someone to sort of be introduced to the game of golf. And so I think that's a great way that people will sort of be able to do that. So that's like a first and foremost sort of situation.
We're not used to being general contractors, so we're trying to get all that sorted, and then we're just looking for more golf courses. We've had chats with courses, we had plenty of no's. We've had plenty of people that maybe don't quite understand what we're doing. Anybody that's signed up has not left. Our goal is to provide value like our members are always going to get value. So if a golf course isn't happy with what we're doing, our business goes away. So our goal is to continue to provide value to the courses and work with them in ways to make sure that they're happy.
We had five meetings this week with five different people that want to open up a gimme golf club.
I don't know that we're quite there yet. That's terrifying, truthfully.
But we're starting to have very real conversations with people that have the ability to sort of flip that switch. And so we're just doing our best to grow slowly and to make it make sense. The revenue is not quite where we need it to be. Look, in order to partner with these courses, we have to give away a lot of money, right. So it's a formula that we've set up that they all agree to, and we write them checks every single month, all of them, all ten in our network. And that's if there's six inches of snow on the ground or not.
[00:34:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:34:48] Speaker D: And so that's a whole nother part of the business. And I think we're always trying to sort that out and make sure that everybody's happy.
[00:34:56] Speaker C: And I think that it's really important for us to create an affordable option for golf. Like, I've been having this conversation a lot lately, and I think I've said we could double the price of this thing and have half the members and be creating the same amount of revenue. But I think we would look a lot like.
We would look a lot differently than we look right now. And I think we always want to continue to be an affordable option for everybody because there may not be a ton of diversity in golf. I think we all know that that may not be the case, but there's a lot of socioeconomic diversity, and there's a lot of people that want to play golf, and they need an option that makes sense for them. So we have members of Belle Reeve and Westwood, and we have guys that are asking me to not pop their card till next week because they had a medical emergency and they play golf together. And to me, that's what we're trying to do here, is we want everybody from all walks of life to play golf together, and that's sort of where we're at. Is there anybody else doing this that, you know, mean? Is there anything remotely close? I mean, I think early on, I wanted to maybe call this thing the public country club. And there is a PCC that exists in Minnesota, I believe. There's nothing new under the sun, right. You go on the Internet, it exists, but there's no brick and mortar. So they have a similar model, but I don't think anyone at this point has an actual brick and mortar.
I laugh because a lot of people ask a question like that as far as innovation. But I went to Scotland this year, and off the right side of St. Andrews, there's three golf clubs, right? St. Rule Club, St. Andrews Golf Club, new club. These all exist with their own club champions. They exist with their own bars, their own culture, their own community, and they play other public golf courses. This isn't a new idea. This has been around since the 18 hundreds. We're doing what Scotland did, and we're trying to create our own community and culture here and sort of use our members to point them at public golf and try to make it work.
[00:36:37] Speaker F: Kyle, that's great. And again, thank you for having us out here and getting to learn more about the gimme golf club.
First off, your story is the true american dream.
[00:36:48] Speaker C: Now, you didn't come here from Scotland.
[00:36:50] Speaker F: 42 years ago, but with $3 in your pocket. But to take chances, to take risk during a time of uncertainty in early 2020. I can tell you as a PJ professional, I did not think that the golf boom would continue nearly four years. And it's crazy to think someone maybe just made an eagle, by the way, on the skins game out there.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: But no.
[00:37:11] Speaker F: I mean, we're nearly four years into this. I don't know if we still call it the pandemic, but sure, I will tell you that I'm very fortunate, and it's a crappy way to go about being fortunate is Covid. But it's been such a boom to our business. The indoor golf business a couple of years ago was 1.5 billion a year. It's now doubled to 3 billion. You obviously are catering to the indoor, the outdoor. I love the fact that you're catering to, whether it's a bell Reeve member that's a member here or the guy that needs you to hold his card for a week, because I grew up in south county. You were north county. I grew up playing $25 public golf courses. Paradise Valley, Sunset Lakes. Rip to sunset Lakes. I spent seven years of my career, high school, and college there, but I.
[00:37:46] Speaker C: Needed places like that.
[00:37:47] Speaker F: Very fortunate. I work at a facility. I've maybe gotten a little bit golf snobbish with some of the places I.
[00:37:52] Speaker C: Played as a PGA professor. Same.
[00:37:54] Speaker F: And you and I can have plenty of stories in the future because I would love to talk architecture.
[00:37:58] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:37:58] Speaker F: Around your little office here. I get the chills, but, I mean, this is crazy. From what you took up to 120 members, you lost nearly 100 as you went into the winter, and here you are a couple of years later, you have two properties, and you got people asking you to grow. And I respect the fact that you're not just jumping into trying to throw another building up and another building up. It sounds like you're a pretty intelligent businessman, knowing. Hold on, let's make sure this all works and makes sense. I mean, this is such a great business model, and you talk about golf. Now, I've been at St. Albans for ten years, but for four years before that, I ran a public golf course in Waterloo, Illinois. And it was not Ambriar. It was a cheaper golf course, but.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: It was great for my career.
[00:38:34] Speaker F: Great owners, great people. But we had that partnership with golf now, and they had two tea times a day, and we would have sometimes in the summer, guys got tea times, literally, this was 13 years ago for 699 for the cart. And again, you come back, and if.
[00:38:48] Speaker C: That guy doesn't get that hot deal.
[00:38:49] Speaker F: A week later and you say it's going to be 35, well, why would I pay 35? It was $7 last week. We're business guys. If you want things mode and carts to run. So, I mean, this business model, what you have here on a Thursday night is incredible. And I'm just getting chills hearing your story. And I follow you.
[00:39:06] Speaker C: Kyle Walton on Instagram.
[00:39:07] Speaker F: Just the drone footage, the band, and you asked me about an hour ago, have I been to Sand Valley? That's like the one place I haven't been to yet here in the United States that I want to get to. We talked a little bit of the lido and future projects with Mount Oak, so thanks for getting me all hyped up. I'll be looking at Sand Valley all night tonight when the little one is asleep.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: No.
[00:39:27] Speaker F: So, I mean, you said what the.
[00:39:30] Speaker C: Next step is, but what's maybe the next step from a content?
[00:39:33] Speaker F: Not trying to get away from golf. Golf for a second. But what's next for Kyle, besides, obviously the 2024 Masters? Is there a big tournament in 2024 you're excited to, or property that you haven't been to yet?
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we have right now is we have something called the Gimme Golf studio, which is sort of our agency that makes content in the golf space. And we just landed basically all of the content for imperial headwear for 2024. So there's going to be a few series that comes from that that's going to go onto their YouTube. There's going to be a couple of travel series that are going to come from that. There's some content around Gimme golf club that's going to come from that. That's going to be pointed at Gimme. But about with imperial sort of as a sponsor. And so landing that gig was super important because I didn't really want to go try to chase it. Like the freelance world can be pretty interesting.
The golf industry has plenty of money, but it's small, very few decision makers. So if you do get in, you can sort of navigate some waters and find some gigs. But it's always nice to know that you have something for a year when you're in the freelance world. So we like what Imperial is up to. We like the people that are sort of in charge there and they're at a position right now where they really want to do more. And so we kind of jumped at the chance to sort of maybe help dictate that a little bit and be creative. And so I kind of pitched them just a few ideas that I really, really wanted to do and they just said yes. And so now I have basically the backing to do that. And we'll put their logo on it and put it on their channel. But I'll still get to make the stuff that I was wanting to make. So that's probably the majority of 24. And then I'll probably just start telling stories about this place.
I think we're to a point now where people need to hear about this place. I think what we're doing is different.
I think we're doing some really cool things here in the midwest. And I don't need to hire anybody to tell a story. So I think we can start pointing our camera back at us, start telling some member stories, start doing some things around the St. Louis area that are going to be content driven and things like that. I'm trying to wrap up a handful of projects and then point the camera back at gimme in 2024.
[00:41:26] Speaker F: That's awesome. Imperial, what a great partnership for you guys. Imperial is great headwear, not just trying to give you guys give Imperial a plug. Knowing the previous owner, he was a St. Albans member before he sold the company maybe a year and a half, two years ago. But the folks at Imperial, they kill it with headwear. I've sold a boatload. I know that you've done a little bit with them, so that's awesome. I know you'll do great. But that's really cool to hear that you're going to be able to point that content or focus that content more on. We'll call it your third child here. And it's just cool. And to know that you're in our backyard. And I just think at the end of the day, looking at you guys in this room, knowing that we put this together back in April, even though Rowie and I talked about it for, I don't know, four years, whatever, probably before COVID And then here we are a couple of days before Christmas, kind of wrapping up the. I mean, Kurt and I are in the same. Know this is something fun for us. It's a project. We're not quitting our day jobs because of this podcast, but the four of us.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: I am.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: You are? Yeah. I'm done. Congratulations.
[00:42:28] Speaker F: You're going to be poor.
[00:42:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: And that's fine, because there's zero responsibility with this, and that's fine by me.
[00:42:34] Speaker F: I just love the fact that the game of golf brings all walks of life together. And I am so thankful to be a part of the game of golf and to meet people like you, Kyle and Andy, and obviously Kurt for years. And I got one of my fellow pros from St. Albans, Paul, over here, hanging loose again.
[00:42:52] Speaker C: It's great friendships. I know that Paul might say, after.
[00:42:54] Speaker F: Working with me for six months, that.
[00:42:55] Speaker C: It'S not always easy peasy.
[00:42:57] Speaker F: I apologize, Paul. Thanks for hanging in there. You've been great to the team.
[00:43:00] Speaker C: But at the end of the day.
[00:43:02] Speaker F: This sport is very special.
So, again, I appreciate what you.
[00:43:06] Speaker C: Kenny.
[00:43:06] Speaker F: We've done a little bit of work with. And Kenny and I were talking earlier. I love it, and I hope you just keep living your american dream, college. It's fantastic.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: I appreciate that. Yeah, I want to just touch on a couple of things. You mentioned the indoor golf game, and I had a meeting last week with my golf genius rep who takes care.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Of our golf genius is our software company that does all the stuff.
[00:43:27] Speaker C: And this is a whole new arena, even for them. I mean, he was meeting with somebody else in St. Louis about using golf genius to run. It's another indoor facility, but it's a whole new avenue and business model that's opening up a bunch of new doors, even for a software company that runs a tournament software company. So that's just crazy.
You just alluded to it from billion and a half to now, a $3 billion industry, and you're expanding on it. Yeah, it's pretty wild. We are able to do a lot. I think one thing that maybe people don't know about gimme is we're pretty much like a full functioning club. Absolutely. We have a member, guest we have a member.
[00:44:08] Speaker F: That's where I wanted to go next. I wanted you to talk a little.
[00:44:10] Speaker C: Bit more about what you got here in the club. We have an outdoor league that has a point total for the season. We have a club championship. We have indoor league with 140 players currently playing. We have a Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night skins game that gets pretty wild in here. And so we're trying our best to provide all the services that, like a standard club would provide. We go on two trips a year. We went to outer Banks and Kansas City. We played a couple of Donald Rosses and KC and went down to OBX and played some great golf. And we do a bunch of merchandise and it's a turnkey situation for, we call them camps camp gimme. We've done four of those now. So we're doing our best to sort of provide a service that's above and beyond what the membership costs. The way I view it is $125 a month gets you unlimited golf at free or for a very small discount. And then you have access to this club and you have access to sort of all these things that we provide. I think it's the best deal for golf in the country. I don't even think it's close, but I don't know that people really realize exactly what we're doing here.
We have a Slack channel now. Slack is like a business productivity app.
[00:45:08] Speaker E: That you can use.
[00:45:09] Speaker C: We have 450 members on that thing. We have a t sheet channel every single day. Hey, I'm playing at 10:00 at Eagle and I got three spots available. I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. Hey, 805 tomorrow. Who wants in? Like 150 out of those 400 guys are on there every single day going to play golf with other members. Like, you would never play golf alone if you didn't want to. If you're a member of a golf club, it's an incredible community, and I'm not taking credit for this. This is a beyond me. I did not do this. I set up the Slack channel to communicate with members. They set up the Tsheet. They are running with it. They are way more generous with their time than even I am. Like, they are unbelievable members. We have a really good membership here of guys that just want to play golf and want to meet new people. And so that's what we've been doing here. So it's a little different. It's a club, but it's not. We use the public courses. We have our own facility landlocked by four streets we just don't have a golf course in our backyard, but we try to patronize our network and bring business to the public courses. Well, I think that's one of the great things, is, yes, you have your club, but you got ten other clubs in the area that are benefiting off of your club. Sure.
How to say this right? You don't have any competition, but you're providing to these other golf courses, too. That's still a crazy mile, Kyle. I don't care how you go about it, and it's almost hard to wrap.
[00:46:21] Speaker F: Your head around it.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: It is, but it's obviously working.
[00:46:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: So you're trying to understand it, and it makes sense on paper because we've all worked or been members of or grew up at country clubs and understand the concept of club, but just without.
[00:46:36] Speaker C: Having the court and the way you.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: Put it is perfect that you're a country club without the golf course.
[00:46:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
I grew up playing public golf. I love it. And I think that our goal has been, again, in order for something to be affordable and to create that opportunity, that's sort of where we have to have.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: And I think where it really stems from is that the members believe in you because it makes them want to make this a better place for themselves, too. And so the way that you sell it as the kind of camaraderie lottery that you can have here, and it makes them want to grow. And as you can say, and as you say, there's 150 guys out of the 450 members every day.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: Go not beat it around. Yeah. Truly, we have a Friday night skins game that we'll get 40 or 50 people at over at Baldwin. That's open to the public, by the way. We call it the potluck. Potluck. Everybody should come out there on a Friday night. That gets pretty fun. We do a bunch of member, like, we call them community events where we'll play as like a 50 some, right? Wow. Yeah. So we play it. We'll play it like eagle Springs, par three. Everyone hits it once. Basically, if you hit the green, you can putt for birdie. If you miss the green, you grab a beer and introduce yourself someone new. You sit out that hole. We kept up with a Tucson. We ended up playing nine holes in about an hour and a half, and it's a great time. We do a couple of them a year, and it's just, look, I've been around golf my whole life. I still think going into a pro shop is one of the most intimidating places in the world for the most part, I don't understand why, but a lot of people just, the customers service piece is usually missed a lot in golf. And so typically, it's a very narrow sales funnel where a lot of people come in and they get told exactly what they're not supposed to do. You can't do this. You can't say that. You can't wear this. You can't be there. You can't stand there. And when you come over here, it's a wide sales funnel, and it's a sort of a lawless experience. Right? You whack a ball around, you yell, you scream, you have a beer. It's in a place where that can happen. And a lot of people get worried about that. I've even had members be like, dude, what are we doing? But then if that person takes to the game, he's going to start watching it, he's going to start playing, he's going to start learning about what he's supposed to do, and he's going to sort of work his way to that middle ground where I think a wide sales funnel where you're not being told what to do, and the answer is yes, is going to introduce people to a game that they're going to figure out what it's supposed to be as opposed to the other side of it, which I think is what we've been doing for a really long time, which is, hey, don't do that. And then they don't even want to get involved. And so I think the way we're doing it is, again, we always call it a non and committee way. It's like, yeah, dude, you can suck.
How good you are at the game of golf does not mean how good you are as a human being. And I think that that's a very interesting thing. In the game of golf, a lot.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: Of guys associate their self worth with their golf score.
[00:48:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: And it's a very, very sad, unfortunate thing.
[00:48:59] Speaker C: I agree. The game is so much better than that. It is. It really is. And just because someone's good, that just doesn't mean it makes you. Doesn't make you a good person. And so it's the play good, play fast, play bad, play faster. Right. We want to make sure we're moving around, but you don't have to be good. Some of the biggest dicks I knew.
[00:49:14] Speaker A: In high school were the good golfers.
[00:49:16] Speaker C: That's facts.
[00:49:18] Speaker E: We know that.
[00:49:23] Speaker F: Oh, yeah.
[00:49:23] Speaker C: I do.
[00:49:25] Speaker F: I will say, kyle, I think you're a part of the least stuffy club in the United States.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: A question.
[00:49:33] Speaker C: Hey, man, everybody's got their shirt untucked tonight, backwards hat.
[00:49:37] Speaker F: And I was okay with it.
[00:49:38] Speaker C: I walked in, I didn't know to.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: Do with my t shirt.
[00:49:41] Speaker C: They got the sweatpants on.
[00:49:42] Speaker E: They got the t shirts sitting in the corner with a creek hat on.
[00:49:45] Speaker C: I designed that a couple of years.
[00:49:46] Speaker F: Ago with g four.
[00:49:46] Speaker C: So I love that awesome little bit everything guy.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Like, we talked to a guy named Jerome Harris earlier this year.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: He's the one that puts on all of the. He's the founder of urban golf of greater St. Louis.
[00:49:55] Speaker C: Yeah, he was just in here last week.
[00:49:57] Speaker A: Yeah, great guy. Incredible story, just like you. I mean, just mesmerized by his story and what he's able to do, even during the interview. So I'll make sure I say, now it's guys like you and Jerome that are actually growing the game of golf. When you talk about the bullshit going on, we don't actually growing the game. It's grassroots efforts, like what you have done here with gimme golf club. All right, I'd like to do my Frank Cusamado impression.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: Okay, Kyle.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: No hedging very quickly.
[00:50:24] Speaker C: All right.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: Favorite golf course anywhere.
[00:50:26] Speaker C: Favorite golf course that I've played, played.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Or want to play or just anything.
[00:50:31] Speaker C: Probably prairie dunes.
Favorite local golf course. It's a good ball. One.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: Favorite encourage drink.
[00:50:40] Speaker C: Spear.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: Favorite after golf meal.
[00:50:43] Speaker C: After golf meal, pizza.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Favorite current golf youtuber.
[00:50:48] Speaker C: I watch Nolan up like those guys, too. Finally.
[00:50:51] Speaker A: Best restaurant in St. Louis.
[00:50:52] Speaker C: Best restaurant in St. Louis. I live in St. Peter's. I love noto.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: There you go. It's Kyle Walton. He is the founder of the Gimme golf club. Find them
[email protected]. Where you can find out where you can play golf cheap or for free. And also details about all other different membership levels, which there's about.
[00:51:08] Speaker C: Looks like there's four different levels you.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Got going on here, or you just.
[00:51:11] Speaker C: Call or send Kyle an email and.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: He'Ll be more than happy to tell you all about it.
[00:51:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Everybody's first indoor experiences on the house. Call us. Set up a tea time. You can come in here for an hour on the house. We'd love for you to see us.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Kyle, thanks so much for joining us.
[00:51:21] Speaker C: Yeah, my pleasure. Welcome. Thanks for being here.
[00:51:23] Speaker F: Yes, thank you, Kyle, and Merry Christmas to your family.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: That wraps up this episode of, essentially, episode 17.
[00:51:28] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:51:29] Speaker A: How about that? I know guys of the CSV Golf Factory podcast on the St. Louis podcast network.
