Where Does the Water Go?

Every golfer has stood over a putt and guessed. Erik Belgum learned to ask one question instead: where does the water go?

In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Erik Belgum —  a design associate with Billy Fuller and Tom Kite, and right now he's elbow-deep in the dirt at Otter Creek in Columbus, Indiana — a Robert Trent Jones original being reimagined into cradle-to-grave golf. He walks Matt and the Professor through the parts of course design nobody romanticizes: the AutoCAD, the budgets, the order of operations, and the moment a green gets approved before it's actually ready.

The conversation dives into:

How a kid pulling a cobwebbed pull cart in Iowa City ended up self-taught at Atlanta's Bobby Jones muni — on a $300 junior pass, with a five-questions-a-day limit from the pro shopThe church pew that changed his life: ending up in a congregation with two working golf architects, Bob Cupp and Billy FullerThe real story of the Billy Bunker — how a highway shoulder, a McDonald's playground, and Dow Chemical turned into the industry standardThe Cayman ball: the McGregor experiment Jack Nicklaus commissioned to make 5,000 yards play like 7,000, and the 13 dozen Erik inherited from his mentorWhy constraint breeds creativity — bunkerless greens at Setting Down Creek, and slope as strategy at Otter CreekConnect with our guest

💼 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-belgum-2a587874/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/billyfullergolfdesign/

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