Chaz Rough: Welcome everyone to this edition of Looking at Louisville. My name is Chaz.
Stacey Yates: I am Stacey.
Chaz Rough: Now, what are we going to be doing in this episode?
Stacey Yates: Well we are going to be doing a Ryder Cup comes to Louisville. This International Golf Event where the city is hosting in 2008 and we are so excited. It could be once in lifetime.
Chaz Rough: Huge.
Stacey Yates: Yeah and it’s not going to two cities repeatedly, so maybe if we 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 to some folks that are planning all these city wide events that are going to occur around us; kind of like Arseda’s Best, sort of like the Derby Festival to the Kentucky Derby.
Chaz Rough: And that is the Ryder’s Cup experience.
Stacey Yates: The Ryder Cup experience and we are also going to do our dining segment.
Chaz Rough: Yes.
Stacey Yates: In one of my favorite restaurants so we’re going to spend the whole time mostly outdoors except to the restaurant.
Chaz Rough: And then of course we get to go to Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: That is right.
Chaz Rough: This is a PGA course, this is a Mac Daddy course and we get to go there, maybe they’ll let me play a little golf on it.
Stacey Yates: Maybe they will, maybe they’ll let me play a little golf cart, who knows?
Chaz Rough: Or maybe they’ll make me caddy, I don’t know.
Stacey Yates: We’ve get a lot of fun in store so let’s get at it.
Chaz Rough: Let’s get started.
Stacey Yates: We are on Fourth Street Live with Mark Wheeler who is in Regional Manager for U.S. Bank but more important for purposes, the Chairman of the Cup Experience. Now this is that event that you can participate in even if you don’t have tickets to Valhalla for the actual Ryder Cup. So Mark, tell us about all the great things that we can expect.
Mark Wheeler: Well we’re—you know, we’re standing here at the epicenter; the Cup Village.
Chaz Rough: For skid live.
Mark Wheeler: Of course get live and it is for everybody—I mean people can come her during the day, during the tournament and at night time for bands and everything else. We’re going to have big screen TV so it will be a place for people to come to be part of the of the whole celebration. So this is kind of the main event then we have several others; we have the Fightmaster Cup which is the first ever competition between European Union, one-armed golfers and the United States One-Armed Golf Association and that is going to held at Cardinal Club.
Stacey Yates: During a black tie event?
Mark Wheeler: The spires, Churchill Down, he said it’s late for people that are coming in to celebrate the Ryder Cup to see Churchill Down and see one of our historical venues.
Stacey Yates: They can see historic Church.
Mark Wheeler: The suroix has a per seat price or a per table price but everything else you just need this pin of the cup experience pin and we’re going to be selling those at different institutions and companies around Louisville as well as that all of Bourbons; it’s a major fun experience.
Chaz Rough: What is the cost for that?
Mark Wheeler: It’s going to be $5.00 but it’s going to be the biggest thing that has ever come but that wise to not Kentucky, over 600 million people will watch the golf tournament from around the world so it’s the old thing bigger is that—
Stacey Yates: They can only gain back to the 120 million.
Mark Wheeler: Yeah, that’s economics is huge.
Stacey Yates: We are in one of my favorites places with one of my favorite people, this is Michael Reidy, the owner of Irish Rover on Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill. I ate here every week, pretty much, right?
Michael Reidy: Yes you do and we are proud to have you.
Stacey Yates: Thank you. One of the reasons we would feature it in this particular podcast for Ryder Cup is because the last Ryder Cup was in Ireland.
Michael Reidy: Ryder Cup brings people from Germany from obviously Ireland, England, Scotland; the home of golf. When these folks from Europe and all over the world come to see us, this is one of the things we have known for is our fine dining and the casual dining atmosphere in Louisville and we hope open an eagerly embrace each end everyone.
Stacey Yates: I don’t know about you but I am stuffed. What a great meal and what a great conversation with Michael, isn’t he great?
Chaz Rough: Michael is a great man, he has influenced me in so many ways, I drunk my pint and I had my food, it is probably back to my angry shirt from my grandfather.
Stacey Yates: Nice. Tell us what you had.
Chaz Rough: I have an—
Stacey Yates: Your normal speaking.
Chaz Rough: My normal Chaz voice. I had a grilled sandwich and vegetables and I had a pint. It was wonderful.
Stacey Yates: And Mark had the fish and chips which were wonderful and I had what I always get the Farmers Plate; real veggies which is great and when I come with my kids, I always sneaking it on some of their fish and chips. Know we had some great apps,scotch egg which is a hard boiled egg rolled in sausage and then deep fried. I don’t think it gets any better than that.
Chaz Rough: Oh then the mushrooms were incredible.
Stacey Yates: Those were nice and sauce for that.
Chaz Rough: Those were wonderful.
Stacey Yates: And then of course, every trip to Ireland is not complete without the smoked salmon plate so we had that. It’s wonderful.
Chaz Rough: Well now that we’re juiced up, we’ve got our food in us and we’re ready to go and I—
Stacey Yates: I’m ready for a nap a little bit but—
Chaz Rough: Then we’re going to go Valhalla and play a little golf there and hopefully I can be play it, maybe a little bit, maybe you can caddy for me as well.
Stacey Yates: Yeah, that would be great as long as I can drive the golf cart. That’s what I was looking forward to. Yeah.
Chaz Rough: Yeah. Actually that would be fun. We’ll give you another pint.
Stacey Yates: All right, so we got a little waste to go, it is about 30 minutes from so let’s go on the road to Valhalla.
Chaz Rough: Let’s go.
Stacey Yates: All right.
We are here at Valhalla with one of my good friends, really and neighbors Tara Gueethner who is the Tournament Director for this year’s Ryder Cup. Tara, tell us about what we can expect on this historic event at Louisville.
Tara Gueethner: Right, yeah. It is a no U.S. city has ever hosted this event twice so this really could be a once in a lifetime deal for us, although if there is any city that might be able do this twice, Louisville is possible.
Stacey Yates: Possible, right?
Tara Gueethner: Yes, it is possible. That is right. Possible city, right?
So, but it’s going to be international, its got so much spirit and passion—their passion and when you add the country pride and the flags and the anthems and people from all over the world, it is just a lot of fun.
Stacey Yates: International Olympic type event?
Tara Gueethner: It is.
Stacey Yates: I’ve heard you tell this story a couple of times and I hope you’ll share this with our podcast viewers; the history if Ryder Cup, a lot of people know where it is and he Europeans versus the American but where’d it all come from?
Tara Gueethner: Right yeah, there is a gentlemen Samuel Ryder and he had great passion for his job and a the of 50, like many of us, maybe with a fortune in the bank but 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 as he met people like Hagen and he was inspired. He’s loved the game and he came up with the idea of from a competition between Great Britain and the United States. So it started in 1927.
Stacey Yates: Okay.
Tara Gueethner: First event was outside of Massachusetts at Worcester Country Club and Samuel Ryder provided the gold trophy that they played for that year and that is the same coveted cup that our U.S team will—
Stacey Yates: And very confident, right? We’ve lost how many times?
Tara Gueethner: Right. Last three times, we’ve lost and that it makes that sound slightly more five out of six. So, it is time to win the Ryder Cup t Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: Okay, so maybe we can do it on Louisville, Kentucky.
Tara Gueethner: Right, that is right.
Stacey Yates: I know we can’t drive here or even take a taxi right?
Tara Gueethner: Right.
Stacey Yates: You need to take a shuttle.
Tara Gueethner: Exactly right.
Stacey Yates: Explain how that is going to work.
Tara Gueethner: Parkings are free, shuttles are free and so it is Kentucky exposition center for all of our ticket holders but those that live close to downtown or maybe work downtown, there is a free shuttle.
Stacey Yates: What is a good website to follow is there—
Tara Gueethner: Right. www.rydercup.com is a good website today. During Ryder Cup week, it is a phenomenal website.
Stacey Yates: Okay, excellent.
Tara Gueethner: Definitely tune in.
Stacey Yates: And tell us where we are, what hole number we are at?
Tara Gueethner: We’re on the 13th green of Valhalla which is our signature hole. We wanted to film this on purpose because some of the maintenance crews putting up new sod and making it even more beautiful than it already is.
We actually have one of the best maintenance staff in the word; the ground staff here. And they will be joined by that a 100 different members 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: Amazing. Well I know you have got a lot of work to do, we’ve catch you and the—your prime season, there’s a—not many days left for this.
Tara Gueethner: Right, right.
Stacey Yates: Thanks for having us and great Ryder Cup.
Tara Gueethner: Oh Thanks, thank you.
Stacey Yates: Thanks.
Chaz Rough: Okay we’re here with Mark Wilson; now he is the Golf Course Superintendent here at Valhalla. Now Mark, from what you have been telling, you really have done a tons of work over three years of work to make this course very user friendly where people come out and experience the Ryder Cup. What have you done to this course to make it better?
Mark Wilson: We regrassed all the greens at Valhalla to the latest and hottest new bent-grass there is, 814 bent-grass and plus Jack Nicklaus status, we changed for greens where we completely moved him, one green got mood as much as 40 yards, okay?
Chaz Rough: Wow! That’s a little big.
Mark Wilson: We’ll I said one green and then we gain one stunt further, we moved to another green, 80 yards so, we add a lot of length to challenge the best players in the world.
Chaz Rough: And what about bunkers?
Mark Wilson: We ended up—we start out with 44 bunkers, we now have 65. So not only did we work on all the old bunkers, we added new one and that they’ll drain better, work better and be more statically pleasing and we added eight new ties and like I said, in order to create a more open golf course agronomicaly as well as viewing and we limb up trees but we probably took as many as 10,000 trees and under brush this, all the woods and everything that we could.
Chaz Rough: Soon everybody would come here, this gets —take a little bit of this green with them, right? You know come in and dig it up.
Mark Wilson: We hope not.
Chaz Rough: I’m not just kidding. He’s going to kill me for saying this.
Mark Wilson: Yes. We’re hoping for some good dog.
Chaz Rough: Well, if you come out here to the Ryder Cup, this is the man right here. If you see him, walk up to him personally and thank him for such a beautiful course so that you can enjoy.
Mark Wilson: Thank you.
Chaz Rough: Thank you.
Stacey Yates: So how’d you do?
Chaz Rough: Well, I don’t think Paul is going to be calling me anytime soon but other than that—
Stacey Yates: And why not?
Chaz Rough: I had a great time out here at Valhalla.
Stacey Yates: Isn’t it amazing? I feel very privileged to be out here on the ground.
Chaz Rough: Yes, very elegant,
Stacey Yates: And yeah, we’ve learned a lot today, even if you don’t have tickets to the Ryder Cup, what you can do, if you're in Louisville or coming to in Louisville or coming to Louisville without a cup experience events and like Tara said, just calling on in television to actually know what is going on. I’m supporting it right?
Chaz Rough: Yeah. If you have any questions about this event, all you have to do is send us an e-mail, podcast@gotolouisville.com and we can send you anything that you’ll need to know about this event. So as always.
Stacey Yates: You are Looking at Louisville. See you at the Ryder Cup.
Chaz Rough: See your real soon, yeah see you real soon.
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