During his tenure as executive director and CEO of the USGA, Mike Davis had the fortune of playing and studying most of the great golf courses in the United States. For over 30 years he traveled the country to explore potential tournament sites for the 15-20 events the USGA organizes each year, and Davis’ job was to determine which courses would be the best hosts based on the players, format and infrastructure demands.

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Once Davis and his colleagues set the tournament schedule, he continued to advise the host clubs on tournament setup and any upgrades or renovations that might be needed, whether at venerable clubs like Shinnecock Hills, Olympic Club and Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open, or more modest courses where a U.S. Women’s Amateur Four Ball might be played.

Davis left the USGA several years ago to embark on a second career as a golf course designer. His ability to draw upon his experience observing how golf is played in all shapes and formats, as well as how professionals and top amateurs navigate the most notable and historic holes in the U.S., would seem to be an invaluable asset in his new job.

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His first work is at the vast new Apogee Club near Hobe Sound, Fla. There he’s been helping mega developers Stephen Ross and Michael Pascucci (developer of The Bear’s Club and Sebonack in New York) oversee the construction of three 18-hole courses, including the Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner-designed Apogee West, which opened last year, as well as various short courses and a large, industrious practice facility.

Apogee South

Jim Urbina

He’s also co-designed the Apogee South course with Tom Fazio II, an ambitiously engineered course where several massive lakes have been excavated to provide the sand fill to create 20- and 30-foot elevation across what was a flat section of land. That course opened in November.

Listen to Davis discuss his first foray into golf design with Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and fellow architect Jim Urbina on the latest Feed the Ball podcast.

Davis talks about the paradox of his maiden design being so unlike the way his favorite old courses were built, collaborating with veteran designer Fazio, how he tried to bring the nuance of great historic holes onto the blank slate of Apogee South, and the challenges as USGA director of balancing the ongoing demands of the power game and space-age agronomy with the architectural integrity of our country’s greatest architecture.

You can stream the conversation below, or download the Feed the Ball podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com