Chaz Rough: Welcome everyone to this edition of Lookin’ @ Louisville. My name is Chaz.
Stacey Yates: I’m Stacey.
Chaz Rough: Now, what are we going to be doing in this episode?
Stacey Yates: We are going to be doing Ryder Cup comes to Louisville. This is an international Golf event where the city is hosting in 2008 and we are so excited. It could be once in a lifetime.
Chaz Rough: Huge.
Stacey Yates: Yeah, it’s not gone in two cities repeatedly, so maybe we’ll show them a good time, they will. But we’re not just going to talk about the actual golf tournament. We’re going to talk on some folks that are planning all these city wide advance that they’re going to carry on this kind of like our city is best sort of like the Derby Festivals hear the Kentucky Derby?
Chaz Rough: And that’s the best cup of experience.
Stacey Yates: Where you can have experience and that we’re going also to do our dining segments.
Chaz Rough: Yes.
Stacey Yates: In one of my favorite restaurants, so we’ll spend the whole time mostly outdoors except for the restaurant.
Chaz Rough: And then of course we need to go to Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: That’s right.
Chaz Rough: This is a PGA course. This is a Mac Daddy course and we need to go there maybe they’ll let me play little golf on there.
Stacey Yates: Maybe they will, maybe they will let you drive golf cart, who knows.
Chaz Rough: Or maybe they’ll make me carry on.
Stacey Yates: We’ve got a lot of fun and so well, let’s go at it.
Chaz Rough: As we started.
Stacey Yates: We are on 4th Street live with Mark Wheeler, who is a Regional Manager for US bank, but more importantly for our purpose the chairman of the Cup Experience. Now this is that events that you can anticipate in even if you don’t have tickets to Valhalla for the Ryder Cup. So Mark tells us about all the great things that we can expect.
Mark Wheeler: Well, we’re standing here at the center, the Cup Village.
Chaz Rough: Fourth Street lot.
Mark Wheeler: Fourth Street lot and it’s for everybody. I mean people can come here during the day, during the tournament. Men at night time for banks and everything else. We have big screen TVS, so a real place for people to come to the big part of the whole celebrations, so this is kind of the main event. Then we have several others we have the Five Master Cup which is the first ever competition between European Union One Hour Golfers and the United States One Hour Golf Association, And that’s can be held at Colonel Club.
Stacey Yates: Here at the tie event?
Mark Wheeler: That’s more on the under the spanners, the church are down
Chaz Rough: Alright.
Mark Wheeler: There are delightful people that are coming here to celebrate. Now at the right of to see the church on down.
Stacey Yates: You can see the historic church.
Mark Wheeler: To see one of our historic venues. This already has a big see price so per table price, but everything else you just be here to spend where the Cup Experience Field, and we’re going to be selling those of different institutions and companies around global as well as that all Americans except it’s a major funding source.
Chaz Rough: What’s the cost for that?
Mark Wheeler: That can be $5 and it’s going to be the biggest thing that has ever come. A net wise to Kentucky over 609 people will watch the tournament around world.
Chaz Rough: Wow!
Mark Wheeler: So don’t think bigger is the —
Stacey Yates: They can already get back to 120 million in our city.
Mark Wheeler: Yeah, that economics in April is huge.
Stacey Yates: We are at one of my favorite places with one of my favorite people. This is Michael Reidy, the owner of Irish River on Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill. I’m here every week pretty much, right?
Michael Reidy: Yes, you do and we are proud to have you.
Stacey Yates: Thank you. What are the reasons we were featured in at this particular podcast for right of him is because the last Ryder Cup was in Ireland.
Michael Reidy: The Ryder Cup brings people from Germany from we see Ireland, England, Scotland the home of golf. When this folks from Europe and all over the world come to see us. This is one of the things we’re known for is our fine dining and on occasional dining at this year in Louisville and we hope to open and eagerly embrace each and everyone.
Stacey Yates: I know about you but I’m stuck. What a great meal, what a great conversation with Michael. Isn’t it great?
Male: Michael is a great man. He influenced me in so many ways. I drink my pint and I have my food. It brought me back to my Irish roots from my grandfather.
Stacey Yates: Nice, tell us what you have.
Male: Listen, more than I have an Oscar.
Stacey Yates: In normal speaking ways.
Male: My normal she has voice. I had a grilled salmon and vegetables and I had a pint.
Stacey Yates: And at that Mark had the fish and chips which were a wonderful and I had when I always get the farmer’s plate of green veggies which is great. And when I come with my kids I always sneak and get some of their fish and chips. Now we had some great appetizers Scotch egg which is a hard boiled egg rolled in sausage and then deep fried which gets any better than that.
Male: Well, with much mushroom is incredible.
Stacey Yates: It’s a nice and nice real thing sauce with that.
Male: Those are wonderful.
Stacey Yates: And then of course every trip to Ireland is not complete without the smoked salmon plate so we had that, that’s wonderful.
Male: In another words, huge stuff we’ve got our food in this and we’re ready to go and —
Stacey Yates: I’m really for a nap a little bit but—
Male: Well we’re going to go Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: Right.
Male: And play little golf and hopefully I can play it a little bit maybe you can carry from yourself.
Stacey Yates: Yeah, that will be great as long as I can drive the gold cart. That’s all I can do it too, yeah, now.
Male: Yeah, actually we’ll give you another pine drill. We’ll take you for a drive.
Stacey Yates: So got a little ways to go it’s about 30 minutes from here, so let see the road to Valhalla.
Male: Let’s go.
Stacey Yates: Alright. We are here at the Valhalla with one of my good friends, really and neighbors and Tara Guenthner, she is the tournament director for this year’s Ryder Cup. Tara, tell us about what we can expect with this historic event, the Ryder.
Tara Guenthner: No US city has ever hosted this event twice, so this really could be a once in a lifetime deal so if there’s anything that maybe when you did this twice.
Stacey Yates: It’s possible, right?
Tara Guenther: Yes, it’s possible, that’s right. Possible in this city, right? So but it’s going to be international, its got so much spirit and passion and when you add the country pride and the flags and the anthems and people from all over the world, it’s just a lot of fun.
Stacey Yates: International Olympic type, is it?
Tara Guenther: And that.
Stacey Yates: I’ve heard you tell the story couple of times and hope you will share this with our podcast viewers. The whole story about Ryder Cup and a lot of people know what it is and that Europeans as well as the Americans, but where did it all came from?
Tara Guenther: Right, yeah, there’s a gentleman Samuel Ryder and he had great passion for his job, and at the age of 50 like many of us maybe with a fortune in the bank, but he has lots of stress on his shoulders his doctor said, “Hey you need to relax and you need to get outside.” So he took up golf. He came up he was in the right circle of people like Walter Hagen and he inspired. He loved the game and he came up with the idea from a competition between Great Britain and the United States. So it started in 1927.
Stacey Yates: Okay.
Tara Guenther: First event was on the outside of Massachusetts. It’s a Worcester Country Club and Samuel provided the gold trophy that they played for that year, and that’s the same coveted cup that our US team are so much hoping for.
Stacey Yates: We’ve lost how many times?
Tara Guenther: Right, lost three times. We’ve lost and they make that sounds slightly more grand, that’s five out of six, so we just time the winner either cup at Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: Okay, so anyway we can do it a little bit more.
Tara Guenther: Right, that’s right.
Stacey Yates: And we can’t drive here or even take a taxi, right?
Tara Guenther: Right.
Stacey Yates: Where we need to take a shuttle.
Tara Guenther: Exactly, right.
Stacey Yates: And explain that how’s going to work.
Tara Guenther: The parking free shuttle are free and so Kentucky has position center for all of our ticket holders, but those that live close to downtown or maybe work downtown there’s a free shuttle.
Stacey Yates: What’s a good website to follow with their—.
Tara Guenther: Right, www.rydercup.com it’s a good website today, but during Ryder Cup week it’s a phenomenal website.
Stacey Yates: Okay.
Tara Guenther: And definitely tune in.
Stacey Yates: And tell us where we are, what hall number we are at?
Tara Guenther: We’re on the 13th Street of Valhalla which is our signature hall. One of the film nest on purpose with that some of the maintenance crews putting up new side and making it even more beautiful and what it already has.
Stacey Yates: Right.
Tara Guenther: We actually have one of the best maintenance staff in the world, the ground staff here and they will be joined by about 100 different numbers of the agronomics community as volunteers during the week of the event to make this really the best course in the history of the Ryder Cup.
Stacey Yates: It’s amazing. I know you’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve catch you in your prime season and there are not many days left for this.
Tara Guenther: Right.
Stacey Yates: Thanks for having us and have a great Ryder Cup.
Tara Guenther: Thank you.
Chaz Rough: Okay, we’re here with Mark Wilson. He is the golf course superintendent here at Valhalla. Now Mark from what you’ve been telling me you’ve really done a hands-on of work over three years of work to make this course very user friendly when people come up and experience the Ryder Cup. What have you done to this course to make it up?
Mark Wilson: We re-grass all the greens here at Valhalla to the latest and hottest new bent grass there is. A-1-4 bent grass and plus Jack Nicholas at us. We changed four greens where we completely move them. One green got moved as much as 40 hours, okay.
Chaz Rough: Wow!
Mark Wilson: Well I said one green and then we did one stuff further. We mold in our green 80 yards, so we add a lot of length to challenge the best players in the world.
Chaz Rough: Now what about bankers?
Mark Wilson: We started out with 43 bankers. We now have 60 bags so not only do we work on all the old bankers. We add a new ones and that they will drain better, work better and be more statically pleasing, and we added eight new tees and like I said in order to create a more open golf courses ergonomically as well as viewing and we limb up trees, but we probably dumped as many 10,000 trees and under brushed these all the woods and everything that we could.
Chaz Rough: So now everybody come here just get a bit of the green they’ll come in and dig it up.
Mark Wilson: We hope not.
Chaz Rough: I’m just kidding. He’s going to kill me for saying that.
Mark Wilson: We’re helping for some good golf.
Chaz Rough: Well, if you come out here to the Ryder Cup this is the man right here to see him, walk up to him first, and thank you for such a beautiful course so that you can enjoy.
Mark Wilson: Thank you.
Chaz Rough: Well, thank you.
Stacey Yates: So how do you do?
Chaz Rough: Well, I don’t think golfer is going to be calling me anytime soon, but other than that I had a great time out of here at Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: It’s an amazing. It’s a great privilege to be out here on the ground.
Chaz Rough: Yes, very elegant.
Stacey Yates: And you we’re going to let today and if you don’t have tickets to the Ryder cup what you can do, I’ll give you Louisville or coming to Louisville without a Cup of Experience of them and like Tara said just follow them on television by tuning on what’s going on. It’s great amount to pay, right.
Chaz Rough: Yeah, if you have any questions about this event all you have to do is send us an email, podcastgotolouisville.com and we can send you anything that you will need to know about this event. So as always.
Stacey Yates: You’re looking at Louisville. See at the Ryder Cup.
Chaz Rough: See you well soon.
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