Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a bride Egg
Speaker 2: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: brigg Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and
Speaker 2: today we are debriefing our own Andy Johnson's media lottery
Speaker 2: round at Augusta National. Here to discuss that with me
Speaker 2: is Jeff shackle No, it's Andy himself. Andy. It's now
Speaker 2: a couple of days since you played Augusta. Have you
Speaker 2: snapped back to reality at this point? Have you had
Speaker 2: any sort of humbling experiences that have brought you back
Speaker 2: down to a sort of regular level.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that would have been the case if
Speaker 3: I had returned immediately to my my wife and daughter
Speaker 3: and been you know, just as anytime you're gone for
Speaker 3: a while, as you and Shane talked about on Tuesday,
Speaker 3: you kind of you kind of assume assume heavy duties
Speaker 3: right away on the home front. And I have yet
Speaker 3: to return, so I'm still.
Speaker 4: Kind of living. I'm still buzzing.
Speaker 3: I saw the park, a new Gil Hanson design here
Speaker 3: in West Palm Beach, which was really cool. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to talk to about that at a future date, but
Speaker 3: like definitely saw some stuff out there that you know,
Speaker 3: you maybe maybe the first green there had a little
Speaker 3: bit of Augusta National flare to it, So it is, uh,
Speaker 3: I'm still kind of buzzing on it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The amazing thing I think, like, I obviously I never
Speaker 3: expected to be playing Augusta National. You know, if you
Speaker 3: said at twenty seven year old me would pretty much
Speaker 3: the dream of playing Augusta Nashville was gone. But you know,
Speaker 3: getting getting to play it was amazing. And I think
Speaker 3: the thing that I'm shocked by is like how many
Speaker 3: people from my my life have reached out about about
Speaker 3: like wanting to talk about the round. And it just
Speaker 3: shows like how much of a special place Augusta National holds.
Speaker 3: And everybody's like, you know, golf life, right, it's a
Speaker 3: uh And I think, you know, for me being a
Speaker 3: kid that like grew up watching the Masters and and
Speaker 3: grew up going to the putting green at my local
Speaker 3: Muni and hitting putts to win the Masters and different
Speaker 3: things like it's it's super understandable why it is. It
Speaker 3: is a golf it is a golf course in a tournament.
Speaker 3: That really is one of the big things that makes
Speaker 3: people love the sport more, you know. And I think
Speaker 3: that's the thing that the couple of days after I've
Speaker 3: kind of picked up on just from people reaching out
Speaker 3: spent it's spent kind of nuts.
Speaker 1: Ay.
Speaker 3: Uh, so many text messages and phone calls. Uh, and
Speaker 3: you know, everybody wanted.
Speaker 4: To hear you know.
Speaker 3: It's like I wrote twice seven hundred words that people
Speaker 3: still have more questions.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, maybe we can get to some of
Speaker 2: those questions in this episode. You know, you can bring
Speaker 2: up stuff that people have asked you. I'll bring in
Speaker 2: some stuff from Twitter.
Speaker 3: Well, I wanted to talk to you. It was your
Speaker 3: first time there. I think that we're burying the lead here.
Speaker 4: This is you.
Speaker 3: This is your first time seeing it in person. I
Speaker 3: wanted to hear about.
Speaker 2: You, you know, I try to keep it under wraps
Speaker 2: a little bit that I had not been to Augusta
Speaker 2: National before because it's just one of those things that
Speaker 2: gave me ongoing imposter syndrome. You know, I had studied
Speaker 2: the course so much, but never actually set foot on
Speaker 2: the property. I had read everything I could about it,
Speaker 2: watched every Masters for a few decades, right just as
Speaker 2: you have, and done as much as I could to
Speaker 2: learn about the course without actually going there. So I
Speaker 2: got to cover the Augusta National Women's Amateur a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago, and for the first time actually, you know,
Speaker 2: have Augusta National grass under my feet and go walk
Speaker 2: the golf course, and so that was an amazing privilege,
Speaker 2: really fun, enlightening. And so I can talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about that, but you know, people really want to
Speaker 2: hear about your round, and I can kind of chip
Speaker 2: in my own observations here and there.
Speaker 3: Before we get into to something that I don't really
Speaker 3: like talking about my golf round.
Speaker 2: We won't focus too much on your golf shots themselves.
Speaker 2: We can talk about the course. We're in a safe
Speaker 2: space here the Friday Podcast. I mean, I think people
Speaker 2: expect you to talk about the architecture as opposed to
Speaker 2: your birdies and bogies.
Speaker 3: What was your like if you had one big takeaway?
Speaker 3: What would be like one big takeaway from you know,
Speaker 3: obviously studying, watching and then being there.
Speaker 4: You know, you can go hills.
Speaker 2: This is no, no, no, I mean well because I
Speaker 2: expected that, right everybody says the hills are bigger in
Speaker 2: person than they are on TV. That's become a cliche.
Speaker 2: It's become a joke at this point, right.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean it's insane, though it is, it is
Speaker 4: really impressive. That was something for me, well, being out
Speaker 4: there when no people were around.
Speaker 3: I was looking at two and I'm like, that looks
Speaker 3: like a fricking ski run right down the hill and
Speaker 3: ten and.
Speaker 2: Then how amazingly uphill eighteen is. But the thing is
Speaker 2: people have heard other people say these things before, and
Speaker 2: so I think that they've lost impact. So saying just
Speaker 2: saying like, no, really the hills are really big, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure is going to convince people any further. One
Speaker 2: thing that I did pick up on related to the
Speaker 2: topography was how many shots have obscured sightlines. I think
Speaker 2: that that's something that people maybe don't appreciate enough because
Speaker 2: the land is so dramatic. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: not necessarily blind shots, but partially blind shots. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of t shots where if you hit the
Speaker 2: ideal landing zone, you don't see your ball come to
Speaker 2: rest and that's something that is the result of the topography.
Speaker 2: You can't build a course on land that dramatic and
Speaker 2: have every shot be kind of perfectly visible from beginning
Speaker 2: to end. Really, the eighth hole is the only tea
Speaker 2: shot on the entire course where you can completely see
Speaker 2: your tea shot come to rest. Otherwise, you know, there's
Speaker 2: a situation on every hole where you can kind of
Speaker 2: be blind as to where your ball ends up. And
Speaker 2: so you know, that's that's a little thing about the
Speaker 2: land that really struck me. But you asked for a
Speaker 2: big takeaway, I really don't have one. I just have
Speaker 2: a lot of details, right. That's the big thing for
Speaker 2: me is that I you know little details about each hole,
Speaker 2: about each green that I didn't really appreciate until I.
Speaker 3: Saw them, to be completely honest, I think like your
Speaker 3: takeaway about the obscured site lines off the tee that
Speaker 3: makes a huge impact on.
Speaker 4: The T shot.
Speaker 3: I like, I was shocked at how hard and uncomfort
Speaker 3: the T shots are. Yeah, like I hit a fade
Speaker 3: so that like that doesn't go well there. I mean
Speaker 3: you think about the T shots like two, five, seven,
Speaker 3: even you kind of want to draw the ball in
Speaker 3: seven because of the slope of the fairway and it's narrow,
Speaker 3: like you don't have a lot of space.
Speaker 4: Nine ten.
Speaker 2: All of the t shots are uncomfortable in some way
Speaker 2: or another. They really are.
Speaker 4: But all those are draw holes.
Speaker 3: But the thing about it is the obscurity of the
Speaker 3: sight lines also makes it because there are these big
Speaker 3: cascading slopes and it makes you feel like you need
Speaker 3: to do more than you actually do need to do. Right,
Speaker 3: but like sometimes like you feel like you're hitting especially
Speaker 3: it was pretty gusty wind the day I played, and
Speaker 3: the wind out there it's nuts. It's just you hear
Speaker 3: the South of telcasts and I like, I know people
Speaker 3: give tell broadcasters a lot of shit about talking about things,
Speaker 3: but the wind out there is crazy. Like you you
Speaker 3: stand one place and it feels one way, and then
Speaker 3: you're in a different place and you're like, well, it
Speaker 3: was down on two. It can't be, you know, it
Speaker 3: can't be a like down on four.
Speaker 4: But you know, you get.
Speaker 3: Into these little tunnels and you're it's like, no, it
Speaker 3: actually might be. And then you hit shots and it
Speaker 3: all leads to this like obscured sight lines.
Speaker 4: The wind thing.
Speaker 3: What it does is it creates doubt and that's the
Speaker 3: thing out there that you cannot have, Like uncommitted swings
Speaker 3: are just like the death. Like I was like very uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: I wrote this in the article, but I it's been
Speaker 3: a long time since I played a tournament, like probably
Speaker 3: like four or five years since I played my last
Speaker 3: tournament round, and I kind of felt like I felt
Speaker 3: it would feel on like the first hole of a tournament,
Speaker 3: like a say like a state qualifier, USGA qualifier, where
Speaker 3: you have this like nervous energy about you, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think the thing about it, and this is what
Speaker 3: happens to so many inexperienced tournament players, Like it's always
Speaker 3: like I always found a humorous like people like, oh,
Speaker 3: he's the best player at this club, and then they
Speaker 3: go out and shoot eighty and every qualifier, right, and
Speaker 3: it's like it's different golf than club golf, right. And
Speaker 3: that's the thing out there that I noticed is like
Speaker 3: it puts you on tilt because of like you really
Speaker 3: want to play well, Like it's around you want to
Speaker 3: play well, and you put a little bit more pressure
Speaker 3: on yourself to play well, but you're also nervous because
Speaker 3: of the place, the reputation of the place and all
Speaker 3: the golf shots that you've watched out there over the years, right,
Speaker 3: it's impossible to not be nervous.
Speaker 2: I think out it's sort of like what happened to
Speaker 2: Gordon Sargent at the Masters. All this type leading in.
Speaker 2: This guy has unbelievable skills, he's so long's his practice
Speaker 2: rounds have been unbelievable. He gets in the tournament and
Speaker 2: things go sideways really really quickly, And I think that
Speaker 2: that's something that this type of course does. I don't
Speaker 2: know if there's a type of course that Augusta National
Speaker 2: and bodies, but there are just a lot of variables
Speaker 2: out there. It's not one of these courses where you
Speaker 2: can ever get into a groove and feel like you're
Speaker 2: hitting driving range shots. It's just one where when you're
Speaker 2: hitting a shot, and I would I'm asking for confirmation
Speaker 2: here because I haven't actually hit shots there. When you're
Speaker 2: hitting a shot, it just seems like you have so
Speaker 2: many different variables to go through and you end up
Speaker 2: focusing on a couple and forgetting about one or two.
Speaker 2: And those one or two variables that you forget, whether
Speaker 2: it's the wind or the lie that you have or whatever,
Speaker 2: those end up coming back to bite you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Like the only it's the only time you get like
Speaker 3: relief is on part threes when.
Speaker 4: You're on flat tea ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like they're actually kind of like your sanctuary where
Speaker 3: you get to hit the driving range shot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and those happen to be they're tough, like they aren't easy,
Speaker 3: Like twelve is twelve you can't figure out the wind's
Speaker 3: that's totally a thing. But yeah, you know, like a
Speaker 3: couple examples of that, right, and these are things that
Speaker 3: you just don't like you can't pick up even watching,
Speaker 3: Like I think the other thing to preface this with
Speaker 3: is like I've gone the last two years as media,
Speaker 3: I've walked the course probably twenty plus times. I'm very
Speaker 3: familiar with the golf course, but you don't really know.
Speaker 3: Like we got a mailbag question about this in Club
Speaker 3: TFE our membership that I did a mailbag for is like,
Speaker 3: you know, what are the advantages disadvantages of walking versus
Speaker 3: playing when you're kind of like seeing a golf course.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I said is like when
Speaker 3: you walk a golf course, one of the tough things
Speaker 3: is you can't feel the shots, like you don't feel
Speaker 3: what it's like to stand on the tee and like
Speaker 3: you're addressed to the ball looking out and the stuff
Speaker 3: that's going to go through your mind. Yes, and likewise,
Speaker 3: like that's I think that's the big thing. The difference
Speaker 3: between walking Augusta National twenty times and playing it is
Speaker 3: that when you're playing it, you get these weird feels
Speaker 3: and you you just like that's that's the stuff that
Speaker 3: I took away the most. You know, example, the second hole,
Speaker 3: I was playing the members teas. I played person a
Speaker 3: person driver and uh in seventies blades. So like one
Speaker 3: of the nice things with that is I I can
Speaker 3: hit the ball pretty far. Is that it brought a
Speaker 3: lot of hazards back into play. It didn't bring all
Speaker 3: of them into play that the pros content with with
Speaker 3: the with the back teas, it made some T shots harder,
Speaker 3: Like five, I found it to be a really hard
Speaker 3: T shot for me from the Members ta's because like
Speaker 3: I had like a a diagonal right hazard with those trees.
Speaker 3: But like the second hole, for example, I hit it
Speaker 3: over the bunker. I think that bunker shouldn't be there.
Speaker 3: It wasn't an original bunker, and I've always said that
Speaker 3: it stops balls from running into the pine straw on
Speaker 3: the right. My ball ran into the pine straw on
Speaker 3: the right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is where John Rum was in the in
Speaker 2: the final round actually, because he carried the bunker and
Speaker 2: he kind of ran down there.
Speaker 4: And it's not it's like a it's a cool place.
Speaker 3: It's like if it was just fair way grass, it
Speaker 3: would be like a delightful place to hit a shot from.
Speaker 3: I would I would really enjoy hitting a shot from
Speaker 3: there because you've got like you kind of have this way.
Speaker 3: You get a really nice angle to swing it into
Speaker 3: that back right pin, you know, with the contour. But
Speaker 3: I'm standing over the shot and the ball's like, you know,
Speaker 3: five or six inches below my feet, you know, and
Speaker 3: then it's on a downslope and I was like standing
Speaker 3: over the shot and I'm like, I'm really worried about
Speaker 3: just hitting the ball right now because like if my
Speaker 3: foot slips, like I might shank this because like you're
Speaker 3: it's just like you're on this lie. And then it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, I hit a pretty good shot, but like,
Speaker 3: what what didn't happen? Why I didn't hit it perfectly
Speaker 3: flushed and hit a great shot was like I didn't
Speaker 3: engage my lower body the right way like so in
Speaker 3: that case, like one of the things I was so uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: I forgot to move the right way right and when
Speaker 3: you so, I caught.
Speaker 4: It just a little thin. It tailed a little bit
Speaker 4: on the right.
Speaker 3: I had a left to right wind there a down
Speaker 3: left to right wind, and it got in the wind.
Speaker 4: A little because it just wasn't hit as crisp as
Speaker 4: it should.
Speaker 3: Have been, and it ends up in the bunker, you know.
Speaker 3: And then from that bunker, it's not an easy shot.
Speaker 3: It's deep, you know, the back right pin, you're in
Speaker 3: the right bunker, Like you have no green to work with.
Speaker 3: I try to use the slope, hit a little too hard,
Speaker 3: end up on the back edge of the green, and
Speaker 3: I have that downhill putt and it's like you can't
Speaker 3: keep that putt, Like a great putt is six feet away.
Speaker 4: So then all of a sudden you got six.
Speaker 3: So I three putt, I make a six, and I
Speaker 3: had two hundred and twenty yards in you know, And
Speaker 3: it's just that's the way that golf course works. It's
Speaker 3: just like, you know, you get out of position and
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like you did anything that wrong, but
Speaker 3: it gets you and it's like funny because like you
Speaker 3: think about Augusta National As, it's like fun court, Like
Speaker 3: there's space right, you can make a lot of birdies.
Speaker 3: It is like if you hit great shots, you you
Speaker 3: will make birdies out there. But the thing about it
Speaker 3: is it's really freaking hard if you if you just
Speaker 3: get a little out of position. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the thing. It's like it's super fun. It's super fun
Speaker 3: to play. But one of my big takeaways is like, god,
Speaker 3: it's freaking hard. And obviously I played in the Sunday
Speaker 3: Masters Pins and with the way the weather was, the
Speaker 3: course had firmed up from Sunday because it was really cool,
Speaker 3: crisp and windy. So like I you know, like I
Speaker 3: hit a wedgend of three. I couldn't believe I barely
Speaker 3: made a ball mark. Like it was like you know,
Speaker 3: it's got it got kind of firm, and you know
Speaker 3: that's that you just have to be so precise. So
Speaker 3: like that's the case on on two and I don't
Speaker 3: I hope, but this isn't a long winded But then
Speaker 3: the one I wrote about in the article is ten
Speaker 3: so ten I had a really good three wood down
Speaker 3: there and I had I think it was one ninety
Speaker 3: uh and I.
Speaker 2: Were you on the right side or the left side.
Speaker 3: So there's a there's a ridge in the middle of
Speaker 3: the fairway. I don't know if you've seen that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's sort of a plateau.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And and that used to be a really good place
Speaker 2: to approach where the green was to the right of
Speaker 2: the famous bunker. Right, it's kind of you're sort of
Speaker 2: on on on high ground there. And the trick was
Speaker 2: on the old hole that if your ball kicked down
Speaker 2: to the left, then you had a really hard shot
Speaker 2: over that bunker. But if you managed to keep it
Speaker 2: up to the right, you you know, you could go
Speaker 2: straight into the green.
Speaker 3: But now it's the opposite, yeah, exactly. So my ball
Speaker 3: ended up like right on the edge of the ridge.
Speaker 3: So I had a really severe side hill. Yes, So
Speaker 3: it was like not on the top on the right side,
Speaker 3: It wasn't on the left side.
Speaker 4: It was kind of in the middle.
Speaker 3: And it was right by that tree that a few
Speaker 3: people got caught behind Morikawa and Kopka, and maybe the
Speaker 3: third round it was they got caught back there.
Speaker 4: Maybe this maybe the final round. I can't remember.
Speaker 3: It's kind of all running together the way the tournament worked.
Speaker 3: But anyways, so I'm there. So I got one ninety.
Speaker 3: It's downhill, it's downwind, and I hit what what would
Speaker 3: be like a modern six iron. I think maybe it
Speaker 3: might have been two hundred. I'm not sure. I can't.
Speaker 4: I can't remember exactly.
Speaker 3: But I had the side hill downhill lie, very severe
Speaker 3: sidehill lie, downhill lie.
Speaker 4: You know I got. I got comfortable over the shot.
Speaker 4: I was ready to hit it.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things with that lie, with
Speaker 3: the down with a downhill lie, my tendency is to
Speaker 3: miss right. It kind of squeezes out right and fades
Speaker 3: on me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might hit it thin sort of healing.
Speaker 3: So that the tendency now of the side lie is
Speaker 3: the for the ball to go left right. So you're
Speaker 3: thinking about both of these things, right, And I'm choking
Speaker 3: up to make sure I hit it solid because I
Speaker 3: like to choke up when I'm on a side hill
Speaker 3: and take a little extra club because I'm choking up
Speaker 3: four inches. So anyways, I hit the shot and like
Speaker 3: the last thing I thought versus two, like my body
Speaker 3: didn't move right when you get this awkward lie. My
Speaker 3: body didn't move and it's an easy thing to forget.
Speaker 4: To do right.
Speaker 3: And when you have these lies, if your body doesn't move,
Speaker 3: it extent accentuates your miss is way more than a
Speaker 3: flat lie. Like you can get away with not having
Speaker 3: great body movement from a flat lie.
Speaker 4: When it's an uneven lie.
Speaker 3: Usually if your body doesn't move right, it's going to
Speaker 3: be a pretty poor shot. So anyways, I really focus
Speaker 3: on that and I just flushed it like hit it perfect.
Speaker 3: It was one of the best iron shots I hit
Speaker 3: of the day. And I just one of the things
Speaker 3: I didn't consider enough was the wind. You know, I
Speaker 3: just it wasn't in my thought process as I got
Speaker 3: up to the shot. And that's the tough thing is
Speaker 3: that you have the physical nature of the golf course
Speaker 3: where you know, i'mlike, by like the eighth hole, I
Speaker 3: was kind of like, wow, this place is a beast
Speaker 3: walking wise, and I know that from walking around it,
Speaker 3: but it's just like you know, like you really feel
Speaker 3: it in your body. But then on the you know
Speaker 3: the other part of it is it will mentally exhaust
Speaker 3: you as well because of how engaged and how many
Speaker 3: things that you have to consider on every shot that
Speaker 3: that shot landed pin high five feet left of the flag.
Speaker 3: It was a great iron, bounces over the green, and
Speaker 3: you know, I hit a great pitch, but I still
Speaker 3: had eight feet and it's just like, you know, you
Speaker 3: hit that shot, and it's like, Wow, I hit a
Speaker 3: great drive, a great second shot, and I'm and I'm
Speaker 3: walking up and it's like, well, I'm probably going to
Speaker 3: make another bogey, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you missed, you missed a variable. And that's
Speaker 2: the concept.
Speaker 3: It is like that shot though, at almost every golf
Speaker 3: course in the world, especially like even like if you
Speaker 3: compare it to like Cyper's point, you probably get away
Speaker 3: with that shot a little bit more there, right, Like,
Speaker 3: it just doesn't so few places have such a seismic
Speaker 3: impact when you when you miss by so such small margins.
Speaker 2: You know. I saw Roseng hit an approach into ten
Speaker 2: from basically the same position on Saturday at the Annwha.
Speaker 2: This was the first time that she played ten, because
Speaker 2: she played it again in the playoff and sort of
Speaker 2: corrected some of the mistakes that she made the first time,
Speaker 2: but she ended up in that position that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: She had the ball above her feet, but also a
Speaker 2: downhill lie, and it was clear that she was just
Speaker 2: really uncomfortable with it. And if you look at that green,
Speaker 2: it just totally accentuates the discomfort of hitting off of
Speaker 2: an uneven lie, because this green is just sort of
Speaker 2: awkward perched on a knoll. There's a really severe drop
Speaker 2: off to the left, like huge plummeting drop off to
Speaker 2: the left, and then to the right there's this bunker
Speaker 2: and the land is high, and so you're looking at
Speaker 2: either side of this green and you're saying to yourself,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be on either side of this green.
Speaker 2: I can't be anywhere except for down the middle on
Speaker 2: this green because if I'm left, I'm way down below
Speaker 2: the green. I have a really tough chip back up.
Speaker 2: If I'm on the right, then I might end up
Speaker 2: running across the green down the slope to the other
Speaker 2: side and going down that big drop off and being
Speaker 2: in even more trouble. And so it just gets into
Speaker 2: your head. You're like, I don't really have a good
Speaker 2: place to miss here, right or left. I don't have
Speaker 2: a side of the green really to prefer. And also
Speaker 2: I'm on this weird lie that's kind of pushing me
Speaker 2: in different directions, and it messed roseing up up and
Speaker 2: she ended up hitting you know, pulling and kind of
Speaker 2: hooking her approach into the green and she is way
Speaker 2: down on the left. But you know, she would never
Speaker 2: hit that shot from an even lie into one of
Speaker 2: the greens that champions retreat. She just didn't hit that
Speaker 2: shot at all, but she was influenced into doing it
Speaker 2: by the topography because she was a little bit out
Speaker 2: of position on her t shot.
Speaker 3: I think the other aspect of this that we haven't
Speaker 3: talked about is with Augusta in general, is like at
Speaker 3: most courses, twenty five feet is a really nice like shot,
Speaker 3: like it allows you to play super conservative, and a
Speaker 3: lot of golf courses like the thing about golf is
Speaker 3: like the very best players in the world are generally
Speaker 3: the most conservative players in the world. They refuse to
Speaker 3: give up shots and they do that by being conservative.
Speaker 3: At Augusta, you know, here's the thing, is like twenty
Speaker 3: five feet away on almost every hole is a really
Speaker 3: you don't want to be there because then you're like,
Speaker 3: I have, like I have a lot of work to
Speaker 3: do to get this down in two and it's going
Speaker 3: to be very difficult.
Speaker 4: It's not a put I want.
Speaker 3: So what happens is that those understanding the two putt
Speaker 3: aspect of it, like being somewhere and having to contend
Speaker 3: with all this slope sometimes a lot of speed is that.
Speaker 4: You know you put it.
Speaker 3: It makes you play more aggressive because you do not
Speaker 3: like the other option as much as you do at
Speaker 3: a let's just say TPC Louisiana, Right, I don't want
Speaker 3: to pick on on that, but like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, we know what you mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, or even like.
Speaker 3: Beth Page, Beth Page would be a great comp Like
Speaker 3: those greens are so flat and and like they have
Speaker 3: this amazing topography and everything. But the greens, once you
Speaker 3: get to them, it's like, oh, I'll take thirty feet
Speaker 3: because I know I've got a decent chance at running
Speaker 3: one in every once in a while, and I'm not
Speaker 3: going to three put at Augusta. When you're thirty feet
Speaker 3: pin high, it's like, man, I got to hit like
Speaker 3: a great leg putt to get it to four feet,
Speaker 3: like you know, like that, and then like four feet
Speaker 3: is not fun, Like it's not like I I struggled
Speaker 3: mightily with short putting, and I think it was a
Speaker 3: combination of just being a little nervy and uncomfortable with
Speaker 3: like what what's going on on the greens.
Speaker 4: They're kind of tricky to read.
Speaker 3: And and you know, this gets to another point with
Speaker 3: the land is that the greens are really hard to
Speaker 3: read because they're very deceptive. A lot of greens are
Speaker 3: benched into big slopes, and your eye sees the big
Speaker 3: slopes and then the big slopes on the green and
Speaker 3: it you know, you really have to read.
Speaker 4: Greens with your feet out there. It's the only way
Speaker 4: to read them.
Speaker 2: Oh, no, with you have you have to do aim point.
Speaker 4: Huh I I mean a little bit.
Speaker 3: I don't use aim point, but I like to walk
Speaker 3: around a putt like that's kind of how I figure
Speaker 3: out uphill downhill. And then I read with my eyes.
Speaker 3: I struggled reading with my eyes because they're tricked by
Speaker 3: like a good example, and I wrote about this is
Speaker 3: the seventeenth the seventeenth hole, like it's benched into a
Speaker 3: really big side hill there that green. But you know,
Speaker 3: you think about the Sunday pin with it back right,
Speaker 3: it looks like it's up on a plateau, right, But
Speaker 3: if you hit a putt from the left side, to
Speaker 3: the right side of that green. It's insanely fast, and
Speaker 3: you would never think that because you're like, wait, it's
Speaker 3: up on a plateau. But like you're that the bigger
Speaker 3: hill is the hill that it's benched into where the
Speaker 3: green sits is the big hill. But that plateau, because
Speaker 3: you're looking at it, looks like it's a big hill,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It looks like, well, this is one of the things
Speaker 2: that really surprised me when I was out there. I
Speaker 2: was walking the course backwards basically as you have recommended before,
Speaker 2: and so I walked backwards with meg Atkins down the
Speaker 2: eighteenth hole and so we got past the eighteenth tee
Speaker 2: and saw the back of the seventeenth green and it
Speaker 2: is hugely built up back there. The backside of that
Speaker 2: green and the right side of it are just really
Speaker 2: really pushed up, and I think artificially, I think it
Speaker 2: moved a lot of dirt things to raise up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it would be weird if that were a
Speaker 2: natural landform, that would be that would be an odd
Speaker 2: little part of the property. But but it's it's not
Speaker 2: the kind of build that you associate with Alistair mackenzie.
Speaker 2: It's more the kind of build up that you would
Speaker 2: associate with Langford and Moreau or Seth Rayner, where they
Speaker 2: would just like you know, lift up a side of
Speaker 2: the green to situate a green on a hillside right
Speaker 2: in order to make the green flat enough to be puttable.
Speaker 2: And that's what they did at the seventeenth Green hugely,
Speaker 2: but it's still it tells you how severe that side
Speaker 2: slope is that it's on, that the green is still
Speaker 2: very very severely cantid down the hillside, even though one
Speaker 2: side of it is pushed up as much as it is.
Speaker 3: I was talking with an architecture nut yesterday who's who's
Speaker 3: been to Augusta a few times, and he was actually
Speaker 3: talking about the support structure of the fourteenth Green, and
Speaker 3: there's like a mound, there's a mound like twenty yards
Speaker 3: in front of the green, but that that right side
Speaker 3: is really built up similarly to seventeen. Very And I
Speaker 3: had a putt from the right side up fourteen from
Speaker 3: like the pin high right of that back pin, and
Speaker 3: it was insanely slow. I hit it so hard. It
Speaker 3: was a great I hit a great putt, but I
Speaker 3: hit it so hard because it was just so uphill
Speaker 3: and like people talk about this Rays Creek thing. Yeah, like,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people love to give announcer shit
Speaker 3: about the mountain.
Speaker 2: Every putt breaks toward rays Creek. Yeah yeah, but it's
Speaker 2: not if I can jump in here, it's not that
Speaker 2: Ray's Creek has like a mis stickle pull. No, the
Speaker 2: land all moves that way, and so you know, you're
Speaker 2: accustomed to that, and so you don't think that the
Speaker 2: greens are tilted, but actually most of them really do
Speaker 2: move with the.
Speaker 3: Land exactly exactly like the greens are all set into
Speaker 3: that hill. And so even if your eyes see the
Speaker 3: slopes that are close to you, there's a really big
Speaker 3: other slope, right if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, there's the hidden slope is the overall slope
Speaker 2: of the property. Augusta National is built on a hillside.
Speaker 2: You know, eleven and twelve and thirteen t are at
Speaker 2: the bottom, but the clubhouse is at the top and
Speaker 2: everything else is on a hillside. And it's I think
Speaker 2: a testament to the artistry of the routing that you
Speaker 2: don't feel like it's repetitive or dull that you're just
Speaker 2: on this hillside and it's basically one dominant slope throughout
Speaker 2: the golf course. The routing does a really good job
Speaker 2: of kind of hiding that and making it feel more
Speaker 2: varied than actually that piece of land maybe naturally is.
Speaker 2: And so I think that that's one sort of underrated
Speaker 2: under the radar thing about Augusta National. It's built on
Speaker 2: a hillside, and a lot of hillside courses are kind
Speaker 2: of dull because it's just one basic landform. But through
Speaker 2: some genius and routing, this course doesn't feel like that.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's do a quick ad read for
Speaker 2: our partner, Athletic Greens, and then we'll get to your
Speaker 2: We have to hear some more details about your round there.
Speaker 2: I think people are tuning into this podcast they want
Speaker 2: to hear about some some of the birdies and bogies.
Speaker 2: We can hit on some highlights, so we'll get to
Speaker 2: that in the in the second part of the episode. Here,
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Speaker 3: Yeah, this has been I travel a ton. I mean clearly,
Speaker 3: I spend a lot of time on the road, and
Speaker 3: like one of the things that's plagued me the last
Speaker 3: few years, it's just really hard to be healthy on
Speaker 3: the road, especially I'm up early, I'm shooting golf courses.
Speaker 3: I'm out late shooting golf courses. Like there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of time in between, especially if you're seeing the
Speaker 3: course in the middle of the day to do things
Speaker 3: like for yourself and eat healthy and different things. I'm
Speaker 3: on a three week trip and I'm at the very
Speaker 3: end of it. I brought enough of the travel packs
Speaker 3: for the three weeks, and like, I can't tell you,
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Speaker 3: I think a lot of it has to do with
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Speaker 3: not like just avoiding I'm not like depriving it of that.
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Speaker 3: of this trip. I feel a lot better than I
Speaker 3: usually feel at the end of a three week trip.
Speaker 3: And uh, I'm you know, I'm excited to get home,
Speaker 3: but like I'm also excited. Usually my wife's used to
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Speaker 2: the fried Egg. Check it out. So let's not do
Speaker 2: a shot by shot summary of year round. You know
Speaker 2: that that's not the type of content that we like
Speaker 2: to do really ever, even in this case when you
Speaker 2: got to play Augusta National on the media day, So
Speaker 2: maybe just give me from the front nine. One big
Speaker 2: highlight and one big low light.
Speaker 3: Okay, highlight, I'll give you two highlights. I got two
Speaker 3: that are actually yeah, I'll give you two I got yeah.
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
Speaker 3: There's like three clear highlights, but I'm not going to
Speaker 3: do all three. But all right, So the the third
Speaker 3: hole I hit, I hit a driver.
Speaker 4: I saw.
Speaker 3: I you know, I didn't have my phone much this week.
Speaker 3: I saw this was a big controversy. But I hit
Speaker 3: my drive by percubit. It was into the wind and
Speaker 3: I hit it right to the shelf. It was great.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe how nice that shelf is. On three,
Speaker 3: you have basically a full wedge from a dead flat
Speaker 3: lie to a a level green that like happens never
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but look, Google Earth tells me that I need
Speaker 2: to hit driver up into the terrible lie down left
Speaker 2: of the green. You know, that's what Google Earth and
Speaker 2: data say. Listen, we're not gonna we don't have to
Speaker 2: get into it. It's a really nice lie up there.
Speaker 2: It's a nice full way.
Speaker 3: It's hard to get to it, though, like I get it.
Speaker 3: It's like I got to I was thinking that I
Speaker 3: was going to get down, but it was into the wind.
Speaker 3: One other thing just really quick. I've never been I've
Speaker 3: never been to a golf course that it is nice
Speaker 3: to chip off of the lies. It's really truly like
Speaker 3: what Mike Clayton always says is like impossible chip shots
Speaker 3: from perfect lies Augusta National that tert that ry overseen.
Speaker 3: The way the ball sits up and the way your
Speaker 3: club reacts with the grass is unbelievable. It's like it's
Speaker 3: really like, if you know what you're doing around the greens,
Speaker 3: it's really hard to hit, like have a poorly struck
Speaker 3: chip shot right, you might misjudge where to hit it
Speaker 3: the but like the way the ball and club interact
Speaker 3: with the grass is amazing. It's it's unbelievable. So anyways,
Speaker 3: three that I was like, I've looked at that green
Speaker 3: so many times, so many times. I understand it. And
Speaker 3: the web shot I kind of was just like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can hit this. It was like I think the
Speaker 3: yard is was like ninety two yards into the into
Speaker 3: the wind. I hit my sandwich about one hundred and five.
Speaker 3: It's just like the it was just a perfect number
Speaker 3: for me, and I hit this great wedge like it
Speaker 3: you know, you you always want those wedges to come
Speaker 3: out with kind of kind of lower trajectory, and they
Speaker 3: you can just you can kind of feel the spin
Speaker 3: on your cut when you hit it off the off
Speaker 3: the face.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I just say a sign that it's spinning
Speaker 2: a lot if it's coming out kind of low.
Speaker 3: And it it just like it was just a beautiful
Speaker 3: wed shot and and it was probably in the running
Speaker 3: of the best shots that I hit all day. And
Speaker 3: it landed like five feet left of the flag and
Speaker 3: it ended up like fifteen feet away. I got up
Speaker 3: there and I couldn't believe how far away it was.
Speaker 3: Like when I hit it, I kind of was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I got like a four footer, like you know, because
Speaker 3: you can't see you can't see the around the cup
Speaker 3: from there. It's because because of that front of the
Speaker 3: green and why you can't see it getting on the
Speaker 3: green and feeling it on your feet. The green runs
Speaker 3: away like it's like very severely running away, and I
Speaker 3: so I have like fifteen feet I couldn't believe that
Speaker 3: it ran out that far. But then the other thing
Speaker 3: that like I just started to think about was like,
Speaker 3: how fricking good some of the shots that I've seen
Speaker 3: in my life into that green are the guys that
Speaker 3: are hitting it and zipping it back against that slope,
Speaker 3: Like just how much spin they are putting on the
Speaker 3: ball to do that. The chip shot from down to
Speaker 3: me seems like the worst thing in the world and
Speaker 3: the especially as somebody who doesn't practice, Like, no, I
Speaker 3: don't want a forty forty yard chip up to like
Speaker 3: a green, Yeah yeah, twenty feet above me that's pitched
Speaker 3: away like crazy, Like no, no, I don't want anything
Speaker 3: to do with that, especially with like sticky grass going up.
Speaker 3: It's not a shot that I could hit a bumper
Speaker 3: and just have it like I can't hit that shot,
Speaker 3: like and I might be able to like I might
Speaker 3: be able to hit it, like at that point i'd
Speaker 3: be playing defense. I'd be like, okay, where could I
Speaker 3: throw this onto the green? And then like every green
Speaker 3: out there when you play defense and you're like trying
Speaker 3: to hit it to twenty feet all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: then it's like, okay, I've introduced a very hard two putt.
Speaker 3: So that was that web shot was a high, and
Speaker 3: then another high which I didn't like. Get to see it.
Speaker 3: I hit a great drive on eight. I was in
Speaker 3: a great spot and I got kind of bit up by.
Speaker 3: I heard Phil talk or Phil I think Phil talk
Speaker 3: about it how like bad left is on eighth and
Speaker 3: I kind of I that upslope. Your tendency is to
Speaker 3: hit like a hook. I hooked a three wood into
Speaker 3: the tree and it came straight down. So I was
Speaker 3: in the tree and I hit like I had some
Speaker 3: tree trouble. I like hit a kind of basically like
Speaker 3: a massive flop from like fifty yards like and I
Speaker 3: hit it up through the tree, got through the tree,
Speaker 3: and it landed like right and caught the slope and
Speaker 3: rolled down to.
Speaker 4: Like three feet.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, So that was That was an amazing I
Speaker 3: wish I would have seen it on the green. So
Speaker 3: that was those were two two highs. The other high
Speaker 3: real quick. I hit it like pin high twenty feet
Speaker 3: or fifteen eighteen feet right of six.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 4: Where was I was just in the fringe. It was
Speaker 4: the back right pin, the Sunday pin.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 4: So I was like I was in like the garden spot.
Speaker 4: I mean like I had.
Speaker 3: I was a yard off the green, and but putting
Speaker 3: through that stuff is really hard. I think that's one
Speaker 3: of the things when you think about, like I heard
Speaker 3: you and Joseph talking about how like Victor Hovelin will
Speaker 3: notch a bunch of like six to twentieth finishes. Yes,
Speaker 3: I think Joseph said, because you just can't ship, like
Speaker 3: think about like the some of the best players, like
Speaker 3: the best masters, the most consistent master players who haven't
Speaker 3: like won there like Westy and and I think Ernie
Speaker 3: Els is a different conversation, but like Westy and Paul
Speaker 3: Casey are like effectively that player. They can't ship. And
Speaker 3: the thing about think about Augusta is when you're a
Speaker 3: yard and half with that rye overseed off the green,
Speaker 3: you really don't want to put it because you have
Speaker 3: to hit it so hard to get it through the
Speaker 3: rye and then it gets on the green and it's
Speaker 3: lightning fast, right, Like, the difference in speed from fringe
Speaker 3: to to green is insanely different. So you have to chip, Yes,
Speaker 3: like you can't pull out your putter and put it
Speaker 3: from around the greens at like at maybe Pinehurst number two.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and west Paul Casey and Victor Hoveland are
Speaker 2: all exceptional ball strikers, yes, And so you can coast
Speaker 2: for a while at Augusta National if you're hitting every green,
Speaker 2: which essentially Victor Hoveland was doing for a while this
Speaker 2: past weekend. But eventually things do go sideways. You're forced
Speaker 2: to scramble, and the guys who can't scramble just don't
Speaker 2: seem to be able to hang around the top of
Speaker 2: the leaderboard.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And they can fit, they can have exceptionally
Speaker 3: high finishes because they meet the demand's tea to green,
Speaker 3: But the difference between winning and finishing eighth is literally
Speaker 3: like four or five up and downs in a tournament, right,
Speaker 3: that's the difference, right, and those guys just aren't as good.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the beauties of Augusta, I think,
Speaker 3: is like it really puts a premium on every skill, right,
Speaker 3: Like I talked about the driving, how surprised I was,
Speaker 3: how tough it was to drive out there, Like it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: It gives you enough space though that if you drive
Speaker 3: it really well, you're gonna get rewarded for driving it
Speaker 3: really well, right, Like, It's not like a narrow US
Speaker 3: Open venue where it's like, okay, like if I drive
Speaker 3: a grade, I'm gonna hit eight fairways. If I drive
Speaker 3: a grade out there, I might hit every fair away, right,
Speaker 3: And versus you know, and that's I think the thing
Speaker 3: is like, and the same thing around the greens is
Speaker 3: like it really rewards you because like guys could hit
Speaker 3: a ton of greens out there, but then when they miss,
Speaker 3: they have to chip it. You're not putting, you know,
Speaker 3: it's very hard to put out there. So my low light,
Speaker 3: I've got a few. I did not get off to
Speaker 3: a great start. I was very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Little nervy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and my low light would have to be nine.
Speaker 4: I hit a great drive.
Speaker 3: It was like one of the few drives that I
Speaker 3: turned over and I was really happy about it. I've
Speaker 3: turned it over right to left. It was amazing, bounded down.
Speaker 3: I was down in the flat. It was a great place.
Speaker 3: Like I was really nervous about kind of fanning it
Speaker 3: out right and having that really awkward downhill Lie.
Speaker 4: And side hill Lie, and I hit. I had a
Speaker 4: great number.
Speaker 3: But then I had watched guys just zip it off
Speaker 3: the front of the green all day when you know, yes,
Speaker 3: the day before, right, you know, everybody was kind of
Speaker 3: like struggling and spinning it off the front, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: at that point, few over par I made a boat
Speaker 3: Bertie on eight I'm starting to think, all right, let's
Speaker 3: get this thing going, you know. And I tried to
Speaker 3: hit like this, like chippy. I tried to hit a
Speaker 3: cute shot, like a chippy little nine iron that had
Speaker 3: no spin, that came out low, and uh, I just
Speaker 3: came over it, which is what you do when you
Speaker 3: don't play a lot of golf, and I, you know,
Speaker 3: close it down, ended up on the back of the
Speaker 3: green and it was like very close to where Tiger
Speaker 3: hit his putt from and I.
Speaker 4: I thought I had a good read.
Speaker 3: I thought when I hit it, I was like, it's
Speaker 3: it's not going to be that bad, Like it's it's
Speaker 3: I think this is good. I think like the first
Speaker 3: ten feet of it were really encouraging, but then it
Speaker 3: just kept picking up speed like it just and wanted
Speaker 3: to just right off the front. And I was like,
Speaker 3: but then you get down there and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is why guys are fine zipping it off the front.
Speaker 4: Is the chips pretty reasonable?
Speaker 3: But I did what a lot of guys do is
Speaker 3: I hit a really good chip shot almost went in
Speaker 3: and then ended up four feet past it. And that
Speaker 3: puts awful. It's like you're playing it outside the hole.
Speaker 3: You're barely but and it's really hard to play putts
Speaker 3: outside the hole when you can't hit the ball, like
Speaker 3: you can't hit it because it's so fast and you're
Speaker 3: aiming it outside the hole. So I I like, I
Speaker 3: missed that I made double there. That was It was
Speaker 3: a low point i'd right when I started to think
Speaker 3: I like was starting to cook.
Speaker 4: I played.
Speaker 3: I played really good, six, really good, seven, really good, eight,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I'm start to feel really good.
Speaker 3: And then nine I make a double and it's like,
Speaker 3: I didn't you know, if I had just accepted that
Speaker 3: I'm probably going to end up off the green, I
Speaker 3: would have, you know, saved a shot there.
Speaker 2: You know, something just clicked for me about that putt
Speaker 2: on nine, which I've seen a lot of players miss.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We see a lot of short misses on the ninth green.
Speaker 2: I feel like among even leaders in the tournament, right,
Speaker 2: we saw brooks Kopka and John Rown both miss like
Speaker 2: makeable length putts on the ninth green in the in
Speaker 2: the final round of this Masters, something just clicked for me.
Speaker 2: When you're way downhill on a putt, as you are,
Speaker 2: if you're above the hole and it's breaking a lot.
Speaker 2: You almost feel like you can't hit the putt hard
Speaker 2: enough to get it high enough, yes, to get on
Speaker 2: the right line, because you're just tapping it. And so
Speaker 2: at what angle do you need to tap it for
Speaker 2: it to even find the right place to break into
Speaker 2: the hole. And so it's that that is an extremely
Speaker 2: uncomfortable putt. But it also raises a question that Jay
Speaker 2: Yarrow asked on Twitter. I looked at some of the
Speaker 2: questions that Brendan Porath gathered from Twitter users and picked
Speaker 2: out a few that were interesting. What do you make
Speaker 2: of green speeds at Augusta National? Because you have railed
Speaker 2: against green speeds high green speeds a classic courses before,
Speaker 2: would you put Augusta National in that same bucket of courses?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a golf course that's been altering their
Speaker 3: greens to fit the green speed, right, yep. I don't
Speaker 3: think that's a great thing. It's extreme. But I will
Speaker 3: say one of the things I think I took away
Speaker 3: is that Augusta Nationals where they put flags, Like if
Speaker 3: it was a PGA tour where they put the holes,
Speaker 3: If it was a PGA tour set up, players would
Speaker 3: be bitching like crazy, like if the PGA Tour did this,
Speaker 3: or the USGA, if the USGA trotted out a whole
Speaker 3: locations like Augusta Nationals, they be irate because, like, like
Speaker 3: you said, the hardest thing on those short putts is
Speaker 3: like is figuring out how to get the ball on
Speaker 3: the right start line without like hammering the ball. You know,
Speaker 3: what you have to do is you have to hit
Speaker 3: putts and not be thinking about what happens if I miss.
Speaker 3: And that's what I thought. My mentality was wrong all day.
Speaker 3: And it's like the best putters in the world do that,
Speaker 3: is they are not concerned about the next putt on
Speaker 3: anything inside twenty feet or so.
Speaker 4: They are.
Speaker 3: They are trying to make the putt and if it misses,
Speaker 3: that's their next problem. It's not something that they consider.
Speaker 3: And where I went wrong was I was so afraid
Speaker 3: of the next putt that I didn't I didn't try
Speaker 3: and make the Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, yeah, You're putting defensively. This is how I
Speaker 2: put all the time. Actually, so I mean, even if
Speaker 2: I'm not an Augusta National, this is how I putt.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid of the comebacker because I just don't want
Speaker 2: a three put and end up leaving it short. And this,
Speaker 2: by the way, is the magic of a putter like
Speaker 2: Cameron Smith. Cameron Smith has confidence in making that comebacker
Speaker 2: and so he has really nice, strong speed on his
Speaker 2: lag putts and his ten to fifteen footers, and that's
Speaker 2: something that probably helps tremendously at Augusta National because especially
Speaker 2: where they put pins to tie back to that point,
Speaker 2: the balls often going to run quickly away from the hole.
Speaker 2: If you miss on the low side, or if you
Speaker 2: hit it a little bit too firm, it's going to
Speaker 2: get farther away from the hole than it would at
Speaker 2: a regular PGA tour setup where they have a certain
Speaker 2: area of flatness around the pin that they have to have.
Speaker 2: They don't do that with the pin positions at the
Speaker 2: Masters at all. And so when you miss your fifteen footers,
Speaker 2: it's not going three feet by, it's going sometimes eight
Speaker 2: nine feet by, and you can't really stop it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. If you can't be concerned
Speaker 3: about the next put out, there is definitely a takeaway
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 2: So all right, let's talk about a little about the
Speaker 2: back nine. You've told this story in the article that
Speaker 2: we posted on the Friday dot Com. That's gotten a
Speaker 2: good bit of reading. People have been people have been
Speaker 2: going to our little website and reading your article in
Speaker 2: numbers that I think surprised all of us and delighted us.
Speaker 2: And so I would say that a lot of people
Speaker 2: listening to this podcast have probably read that story and
Speaker 2: they know that you really started to pick up steam
Speaker 2: on the eleventh and twelfth holes on Amen Corner. You
Speaker 2: birdied eleven, chipped in for a birdie on twelve. Now
Speaker 2: you described your birdie on twelve in the article, right,
Speaker 2: you went a little long between those two bunkers and
Speaker 2: you hold the chip coming back, and that's unbelievable. I
Speaker 2: don't know yet how you birdied eleven. What shots did
Speaker 2: you hit on eleven that allowed you to birdy that
Speaker 2: kind of beast of a hole?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean from the members is.
Speaker 2: Not as much of a beast, Yeah, I guess that's true.
Speaker 3: It's so much shorter, yeah, and it's the fairway super wide,
Speaker 3: Like I mean, like that was like the one t
Speaker 3: shot where I like just stood up and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I could just hammer this thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you.
Speaker 3: Know, I think like that's one of the things of
Speaker 3: one just like observation playing the Vemberte's.
Speaker 4: It's a delightful walk. It's just like green.
Speaker 2: Right right from there to the tee. That's yes, yes, Well,
Speaker 2: one thing I noticed Meg and I when we were
Speaker 2: walking the course, we made sure to look at where
Speaker 2: the number tee is and at where the championship tee is.
Speaker 2: Obviously they're very far apart. Everybody knows that it's seventy
Speaker 2: five hundred yards from the championship teas and it's what
Speaker 2: sixty nine from the numbers two?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's like sixty four?
Speaker 2: Oh man, How wrong was I about that? Why did
Speaker 2: I think it was sixty nine. Maybe that's because the
Speaker 2: championship te's were sixty nine back in the in the nineties.
Speaker 2: That's that's where I got that from. Yeah, okay, unbelievable,
Speaker 2: of course, yeah, sixty four brain fart, it's.
Speaker 4: Like sixty three seventy or something.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's not believable. A thousand yards difference, So yes,
Speaker 2: the space is huge. But the other thing I noticed
Speaker 2: is that the championship tees are really elevated compared to
Speaker 2: the members teas in most places.
Speaker 4: Well, it's because they they're going back up hills they're.
Speaker 2: Going back up hill now exactly. And yes, so you
Speaker 2: go into.
Speaker 3: The green in fifteenth case, you're going down the hill
Speaker 3: and it's further low, it's lower.
Speaker 2: It is lower, yes, because that's yeah, because you're going
Speaker 2: down towards sort of eleven or fourteen.
Speaker 3: Fourteen would be the same, seventeen would be the same.
Speaker 3: They're down lower, they sit down lower because you're not.
Speaker 4: You know, So it's one.
Speaker 2: One is higher, five is higher, eleven is way way high.
Speaker 2: It's like the championship tee is up in the sky,
Speaker 2: the member tee is nice and down low, and it's
Speaker 2: just like a really different hole. There's nothing more to
Speaker 2: say about it. Like it's such a different hole from
Speaker 2: not only that much farther forward, but also from that
Speaker 2: much lower. Your sight line is so much different. It's
Speaker 2: more of an up and over tee shot almost eleven, yeah,
Speaker 2: from from the member tee, as opposed to just a
Speaker 2: pure downhill ski slope type shot, which makes eleven sort
Speaker 2: of similar to ten in some ways. From the championship tease.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hit it down and I had like a
Speaker 3: wedge in yeah, So I mean it's a way easier
Speaker 3: shot to what these guys but I was on the
Speaker 3: left side of the fairway, so like I had the
Speaker 3: bad angle. I will say, like one of the things,
Speaker 3: like I saw some old pictures of the eleventh and
Speaker 3: and the green is so much better than it is now.
Speaker 3: Like the green looks like I don't want this to
Speaker 3: be taken the wrong way, but it looks like like
Speaker 3: a like a very it's a very ordinary green. And
Speaker 3: it lost those mounds that kind of came into the
Speaker 3: front of the green. Yeah, and like were integrated into
Speaker 3: the front of the green. They have those big mounds,
Speaker 3: but they used to run into the green.
Speaker 2: And is that because the green came farther forward or
Speaker 2: because the mounds were structured.
Speaker 3: Down the mounds the mounds went into it, and now
Speaker 3: it's like a valley. It looks like really silly, to
Speaker 3: be completely honest. And it's like it was hard to
Speaker 3: decipher that from where they have the ropes. But then
Speaker 3: when I was looking at it from like the left
Speaker 3: side of the faraway, which is way over there where
Speaker 3: you don't have the mound obscurity, like I kind of
Speaker 3: was looking at it, and I was like, this doesn't
Speaker 3: look quite right, you know. But anyway, so I had
Speaker 3: to wedge in there. This is just a side from
Speaker 3: the from the round, but I had a wedge in
Speaker 3: there and I hit a wet I hit a great shot.
Speaker 3: I mean it landed like probably like seven feet pin high, right.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that I took away the
Speaker 3: greens down there and that part of the course are
Speaker 3: way softer. It's zipped back. It like really grabbed and
Speaker 3: zipped back. I had a big ball mark and it
Speaker 3: just because it's in the low part of the property
Speaker 3: and then you have the trees all around, there's not
Speaker 3: a lot of airflow. It doesn't matter how good your
Speaker 3: subare is down there, like how much subare you have,
Speaker 3: Like it's got to be really hard comparatively, like from
Speaker 3: three and to eleven to have similar green.
Speaker 4: Firmness. And this isn't a knock.
Speaker 3: I think that greens should be different firmness like that
Speaker 3: we shouldn't be artificially doctoring greens to to try and
Speaker 3: have some consistency bar like it's this is just like
Speaker 3: the way it works, Like the eleventh green isn't gonna
Speaker 3: dry out as well as a third green on a
Speaker 3: plateau up in the wind, like it's down in a
Speaker 3: valley with very little airflow, so like that thing spun back,
Speaker 3: I had like twenty five feet. I remembered Brooks hitting
Speaker 3: a putt that I think he came up short. Somebody
Speaker 3: I watched on eleven on Sunday came up way short
Speaker 3: on the similar putt.
Speaker 2: Brooks was sort of on the left side, left side
Speaker 2: of the I was left side and so near the water.
Speaker 2: I think that was Brooks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So I made a note like this put's
Speaker 3: really a lot slower than you think, and I hit
Speaker 3: it firm and it went in and unbelievable.
Speaker 2: You did a little bit of scouting that. That's got
Speaker 2: to be cool to like do some scouting about what
Speaker 2: a player did in the Masters and then apply it
Speaker 2: to a round that you played the next day. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's just cool.
Speaker 3: It was like the first putt so like I you know,
Speaker 3: this was like a good moment for me because it
Speaker 3: was the first putt where I was just like, let
Speaker 3: go and just hit it, you know, and wasn't wasn't
Speaker 3: worried about the next one, and and I made it.
Speaker 3: It was great, and it was it was awesome, awesome
Speaker 3: birdie to make. And then uh, then I went to
Speaker 3: twelve and twelve twelve. Well, there's a little backup. Lots
Speaker 3: of people were taking photos. As you can imagine, I
Speaker 3: could take photos by share them, you know, So a
Speaker 3: ton of people were taking photos. So there's a little backup.
Speaker 3: So we stood on the eleventh t. The wind change
Speaker 3: direction four times in like the fifteen minutes we were there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, twelfth t.
Speaker 2: Everything they say about the wind down on the twelfth
Speaker 2: t eleventh green is true. And something that really registered
Speaker 2: for me on Saturday at the Annwah was that it's
Speaker 2: a really strange, uncanny, uncomfortable sensory experience down there because
Speaker 2: in general, you can't feel the wind unless it's like
Speaker 2: really strong. You can't necessarily feel a consistent wind, even
Speaker 2: if it's a fairly windy day, which it was on
Speaker 2: Saturday at the Anha. And so you're down there in
Speaker 2: this little valley, the wind is being blocked by the
Speaker 2: trees and by the slopes on every side of you.
Speaker 2: But you're aware that there is wind because you can
Speaker 2: hear it in the trees. It's very very loud in
Speaker 2: the trees, the wind is and that's just going on constantly.
Speaker 2: You're constantly aware of that, and so It's this weird
Speaker 2: thing where the primary sense that you use to notice wind,
Speaker 2: which is you know, feel right your body, you can't
Speaker 2: use that. You have to use your ears to know
Speaker 2: that there's wind up in the air, and that, to
Speaker 2: me just it's just sort of threw me off. It
Speaker 2: disoriented me, and so I understood why being on that
Speaker 2: twelfth t is so uncomfortable for people, why we see
Speaker 2: so many bad shots. It's not just because they miscalculate
Speaker 2: the wind, which is easy to do obviously, but it's
Speaker 2: also because you're just thrown off completely. The usual way
Speaker 2: that you experience wind is not working well.
Speaker 3: It's doubt too, right, Like the best it's that Pete
Speaker 3: die quote, like if I get them thinking, then I win. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: Like if I get the best players in the world
Speaker 3: thinking about a shot, then I win.
Speaker 4: And that's like totally it.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, it's funny because I talked with the
Speaker 3: caddies in our group a ton on the twelfth tee
Speaker 3: about like what should I do?
Speaker 4: What should I do?
Speaker 3: And they all were like, hit it, hit it over
Speaker 3: the bunker, hit it over the center of the bunker,
Speaker 3: hit it over the center of the bunker, And like
Speaker 3: we settled on one sixty and and and over the
Speaker 3: center of the bunker, and I hit it just like perfect.
Speaker 3: I hit it a great iron and it just carried.
Speaker 3: It was downwind. We weren't sure how much, you know,
Speaker 3: like it kind of was swirling. We thought it was downwind.
Speaker 4: But I hit it.
Speaker 3: I hit it great, and it ended up in between
Speaker 3: those two bunkers, which was lucky because the bunkers are
Speaker 3: not a good spot. Like that's really really hard, and
Speaker 3: the in between them is not great because you get
Speaker 3: like that. You I had like a downhill I and
Speaker 3: you know it was I hit I hit just such.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget that chip because I just hit it
Speaker 3: exactly how I wanted to, just landed dead on that
Speaker 3: green and rolled right. I mean like three feed out.
Speaker 3: I knew it was in and uh it was. So
Speaker 3: that was really cool. It was I mean, Bertie, Bernie
Speaker 3: and eleven at twelve was was great.
Speaker 2: I assume that that was really the highlight of the
Speaker 2: back nine. Also there was a highlight on fifteen. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so you had a great drive on fifteen take
Speaker 2: me in from there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I missed the fairway on thirteen and fourteen and
Speaker 3: those were probably the two approach shots that I wanted
Speaker 3: to hit the most. So I was super bummed about that.
Speaker 3: I may par on both the holes. And and you know,
Speaker 3: one thing I'll say, just like a really so the
Speaker 3: wind we had was coming off our right, and I
Speaker 3: think something that goes like that gets just like a
Speaker 3: little bit under talked about. With that right pin on
Speaker 3: thirteen is how freaking hard it is to get the
Speaker 3: ball to the right pin from the thirteenth fairway. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like because because making the ball, yeah yes, and everything
Speaker 3: is making the ball go left, especially with I had
Speaker 3: the the wind and we saw on Sunday it was
Speaker 3: the same wind as Sunday, it was just a little stronger,
Speaker 3: and we saw so many balls end up left.
Speaker 4: Everybody.
Speaker 3: Everybody was left in the final few groups, and like
Speaker 3: it's impossible.
Speaker 4: To get the ball right.
Speaker 3: It's so you have to like you have to start
Speaker 3: it out over the creek almost to get it to
Speaker 3: be into that bowl area. So that was one kind
Speaker 3: of huge takeaway. So fifteen on fifteen te like, I
Speaker 3: kind of gave myself like a self pep talk because
Speaker 3: I just had hit like two big wipes right like
Speaker 3: right they started right and faded right and I kind.
Speaker 4: Of like was like you got it.
Speaker 3: Hit hit a frick a good T shot here, like
Speaker 3: it just you have to hit a good T shot here.
Speaker 3: And I hit the best T shot I hit all day,
Speaker 3: and uh, I mean it was it was bombed and.
Speaker 4: Uh and I went I was down. It's like two
Speaker 4: hundred yards out. What a cool, cool.
Speaker 3: Spot to hit an approach, Like you've watched all these
Speaker 3: guys over the years hit shots in there, and like
Speaker 3: I was super nervous. I was like I was standing
Speaker 3: over the shot. It's a slight down slope and like
Speaker 3: you're just like you see all the places that are bad.
Speaker 3: Like I kind of had my eye on the right
Speaker 3: bunker as like okay, like if this is if this doesn't,
Speaker 3: like where where am I missing? Like right bunker was
Speaker 3: looking really good. It looked like great, Like the right bunker.
Speaker 3: You're standing over the shot. I always feel like you know,
Speaker 3: when you're standing over shot, you're looking places that are
Speaker 3: you know where you.
Speaker 4: Might want to miss.
Speaker 3: And and again like I you know, I think back
Speaker 3: and like where I like when I really focused on
Speaker 3: my body and how my body moved, I hit my
Speaker 3: best shots. That is what I was thinking about on
Speaker 3: the Tee's what I thought about on ten. It's what
Speaker 3: I thought about, you know, on three. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like when I thought about really thought about like swinging
Speaker 3: the club the right way with my lower body and
Speaker 3: then my shoulders. Making sure that you know, I tend
Speaker 3: to get when I hit bad shots, my shoulder turn.
Speaker 3: I don't turn, like I'm trying to explain, like my
Speaker 3: plane on my shoulders goes down. My left shoulder kind
Speaker 3: of turns down a little, and it creates an angle
Speaker 3: and I get steep. Like That's that's when I struggle,
Speaker 3: is when I do that and I don't use my
Speaker 3: lower body. So like all I was thinking about on
Speaker 3: that shot was like using my body, and I hit
Speaker 3: just this amazing iron like it was a it was
Speaker 3: a five iron, and it started like the winds off
Speaker 3: my right and it started five yards left of the
Speaker 3: flag with a little cut and it just held right
Speaker 3: there and ended up pin high fifteen feet.
Speaker 4: I was I haven't tried on a putt like.
Speaker 3: Those, honestly, Like since I stopped playing competitive golf, I
Speaker 3: would say that those two shots, the three shots in
Speaker 3: a row, were probably the most focus of expended on
Speaker 3: the golf course was where the tea Like I.
Speaker 4: Really wanted to hit a good drive. It was super fun.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, my I just didn't quite hit my putt hard enough. Again,
Speaker 3: it was going away from the creek, like you're on
Speaker 3: that green. You have this putt, like the last thing
Speaker 3: you want to do with an eagle putt, you know,
Speaker 3: everybody I always think like people like, oh, you got
Speaker 3: to give it an eagle putt. It a great chance.
Speaker 3: It's like, so I've got to hit it six feet
Speaker 3: harder than I usually hit it. Like, you know, it
Speaker 3: doesn't make a sense like if I haven't if I
Speaker 3: have a good, makeable eagle putt, yeah, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: make it, but like I also like want.
Speaker 4: To have like a tap in birdie, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the principle of what makes a good putt
Speaker 2: doesn't change just because it's an eagle putt. That's that's
Speaker 2: people make, right. It's just because it's an egle just
Speaker 2: because it happens to be for eagle doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: the fundamentals of what makes a good putt are suddenly different.
Speaker 2: All right. So anyway, you were trying hard on this putt,
Speaker 2: but you weren't you weren't looking to put it into
Speaker 2: the pond. It wasn't like pond or.
Speaker 3: Make it's yeah, I just like I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 3: judge the that I was putting away again up the hill,
Speaker 3: up the slope. This is the things that trick you
Speaker 3: out there, right, and that you would learn over time. Right,
Speaker 3: It's like one thing I learned is putting from the
Speaker 3: left side to the right side, there is slower. Even
Speaker 3: though it doesn't look slower, you know it it felt
Speaker 3: like it kind of looked like I was put on
Speaker 3: a flat putt.
Speaker 4: And when I went around to the other side of.
Speaker 3: The I usually like read uphill downhill with my feet,
Speaker 3: but then I go to the behind the hole to
Speaker 3: see uphill downhill. And it's funny because on from one
Speaker 3: side I was reading it one way from behind when
Speaker 3: I was when I was like down reading it, it
Speaker 3: looked like it was downhill, but it wasn't. And and
Speaker 3: so anyways, I left it it just it. I didn't
Speaker 3: leave it short. It just ran out of steam like
Speaker 3: it if I hit it with six more inches of pace,
Speaker 3: it's in. So anyways, then I went to maybe my
Speaker 3: when I think back about the nine so I'm too
Speaker 3: wonder at this point, and I was like, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm like you for extensive mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're walking on air right now.
Speaker 3: I'm I was like, and I just like, you know,
Speaker 3: you get into these golf you know, I always think
Speaker 3: you play golf and waves right, you know, like when
Speaker 3: you don't think you're ever going to get out of
Speaker 3: a bad funk, when you're on the course and you
Speaker 3: need to hit like a couple of good shots to
Speaker 3: get out of it.
Speaker 2: Well, well, I would say, especially you, this isn't unique
Speaker 2: to you, but you are somebody who who rides on momentum,
Speaker 2: whether it's positive momentum or negative moment Oh yeah, you
Speaker 2: are kind of You're kind of the microwave man in
Speaker 2: one way or another. You can you can be pretty
Speaker 2: low and you can do things that kind of keep
Speaker 2: you there, and you can be pretty high and you
Speaker 2: can really like get hot and shoot very low scores.
Speaker 2: So I would say that this is a a characteristic
Speaker 2: of you as a player.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I was feeling great and like usually when I
Speaker 3: get into this, I get like, I get really cooking.
Speaker 4: And sixteen we had the number everything.
Speaker 3: Matt McCatty was awesome, and we had the number and everything,
Speaker 3: and like so one of the things with my blades,
Speaker 3: with my seventies blades.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I should mention for people who
Speaker 2: haven't listened to past podcasts where you've mentioned this or
Speaker 2: read the articles where you've talked about this, you aren't
Speaker 2: playing these clubs because you're like, look at how hardcore
Speaker 2: I am. I'm playing Augusta National with my vintage set,
Speaker 2: and then you go home and you know, bring out
Speaker 2: your modern equipment and you play that every day. This
Speaker 2: is actually the set that you have been playing full
Speaker 2: time for a while now, at least since you broke
Speaker 2: your modern driver in Nebraska last year.
Speaker 4: So what happened.
Speaker 3: What happened was my old set of clubs that were
Speaker 3: fit by Club Champion, my irons, my six iron broke,
Speaker 3: the POxy just ran out. I'm for people that don't
Speaker 3: know me, like this is like, you know, for people,
Speaker 3: for normal a normal person, this is like, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go get it fixed. And I would go like
Speaker 3: me going to get it fixed is like the herculean
Speaker 3: task of the century. Like me, if somebody left their
Speaker 3: hat at my house, like getting me to get it
Speaker 3: to the ups store and ship. It is like that's
Speaker 3: an act of God to get me there. So like
Speaker 3: when things like this happened, it's just like I like
Speaker 3: am like, okay, you know, and I have to go
Speaker 3: get fit a club champion. I've been putting it off
Speaker 3: for a year just because of the time commitment. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go do it. But anyways, so I my six
Speaker 3: iron broke and at that point I went to half set.
Speaker 4: I went to all all odds yes, and it was great.
Speaker 4: I loved it. And then my eight iron broke.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: No, not my eight arm seven.
Speaker 2: Eyes, so you couldn't do either or evens figure yes.
Speaker 4: So I went from five. I went from five to eight,
Speaker 4: and I was like, I can't do this.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this part of the story. That's so funny.
Speaker 3: So a guy Elliott Ross, who used to work for
Speaker 3: Tom Doak. He runs a company called Tworld Clubs. Now, yeah,
Speaker 3: he had sent me these clubs. He's like, I think
Speaker 3: you'd really love playing with these clubs. He's right, I
Speaker 3: love playing with them. And my one thing was like,
Speaker 3: can you put the shafts that I have in my
Speaker 3: clubs in these clubs?
Speaker 4: So they're blades.
Speaker 3: They're seventies blades, but they have like the shaft, the
Speaker 3: same shaft that I had in my old club championship.
Speaker 2: It's like a Project X moderate shaft. Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like so anyways, he sent them to me
Speaker 3: and I've bet so. I then at that point I
Speaker 3: was like, well, I'm gonna use these because I don't
Speaker 3: have another option. Well, my old miszouos. I gotta throw
Speaker 3: my buddy under a bus. I had some beautiful Mizuno
Speaker 3: MP thirty threes and sixties. He was getting into back
Speaker 3: into playing golf. He hadn't played since he was a kid,
Speaker 3: and we were roommates at the time, and uh, He's like,
Speaker 3: do you have clubs that I could use?
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, you could use these irons.
Speaker 3: And they're like they're the maybe my five favorite irons
Speaker 3: I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 4: He gave them away.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, some MP thirty three's. That's that's a
Speaker 2: really it's a really nice set of golf clubs.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm still mad about it. Yeah, I'm still
Speaker 4: still pissed off about it.
Speaker 2: All right. Anyway, anyway, so long story short, this is
Speaker 2: this is your permanent set. You're not, You're not doing
Speaker 2: this as some sort of performative.
Speaker 3: Like well, then my driver, my modern driver, which I
Speaker 3: used to carry a modern and a persummer around with me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and my modern driver broke at sand Hills last year
Speaker 3: and I almost cried because I loved it. I like
Speaker 3: loved it, and I like it was like a very
Speaker 3: bad day when it broke, you know. So anyways, that broke,
Speaker 3: so like at that point, I didn't have a driver,
Speaker 3: So it's like I have this persum and driver and
Speaker 3: that's what I use. I use a precimit driver. I
Speaker 3: use the blades, and it's because all my other clubs broke.
Speaker 3: So anyways, I'm sixteen. One of the tricky things with
Speaker 3: these irons, right is I get yardages and like I
Speaker 3: still remember what I used to hit from yardages, and
Speaker 3: I have to add one club.
Speaker 2: Yep, there's a number that feels right you associated with
Speaker 2: a certain club. But now that's different because these loss
Speaker 2: are like like the pitching wedge that you have in
Speaker 2: your set is like fifty degrees.
Speaker 3: Yes, so like I have to add a club to
Speaker 3: every every club. So so the number we set on
Speaker 3: was one seventy, and I could hit a seven at
Speaker 3: my old seven iron. My modern seven iron was one
Speaker 3: seventy five, so it's like a nice smooth seven iron,
Speaker 3: and I just like didn't think that's a six iron.
Speaker 4: I just pulled seven.
Speaker 2: You didn't convert, Yeah, And I think it.
Speaker 3: Was because I was rolling, you know, because like I
Speaker 3: wasn't think. I was like I had and I hit
Speaker 3: this thing. The line to that Sunday Pin is the
Speaker 3: left TV tower if you if you're watching, so it's
Speaker 3: the left TV tower, and I just I hit one
Speaker 3: of my best irons of the day, pured it and
Speaker 3: it came up like fifteen yards short, ten fifteen yards short,
Speaker 3: and it was like that it ended up on the
Speaker 3: front part of the green I and I like, I
Speaker 3: didn't realize I hit the wrong club until eighteen when
Speaker 3: I pulled seven iron, and I like thought back and
Speaker 3: I was like, wait a second, I hit seven iron
Speaker 3: on sixteen, not six, you know. Yeah, And that's what
Speaker 3: I realized that I just pulled the wrong club out.
Speaker 2: And so you three putted there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a super slow putt again. You're putting away,
Speaker 3: that's right, you're putting toward the clubhouse. It was I
Speaker 3: hit what I thought was a really good putt, and
Speaker 3: I tried to swing it in off the slope and
Speaker 3: it just died. It didn't have enough speed to catch
Speaker 3: the slope all the way. And then I missed the
Speaker 3: next one. That was a really hard putt. The putt
Speaker 3: from like pin high right, it's really really hard. So yeah,
Speaker 3: then I got to seventeen. I made it double there.
Speaker 3: I told that story of the shotgun start. It was
Speaker 3: I hit it into the grand stand, which was intentionally.
Speaker 4: I hit it left off the tee. You never hit
Speaker 4: good putt.
Speaker 3: You never hit good t shots after three putts unless
Speaker 3: you really like take your time and concentrate. And I
Speaker 3: was kind of pissed off, and I was I was bad,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to make a par because I was
Speaker 3: still under par. And that's why I wanted to get
Speaker 3: into the house at with the on the back nine,
Speaker 3: and I hit it into there, and then I had
Speaker 3: the optical illusion on seventeen that we talked about at
Speaker 3: the top. I hit what I thought was a perfect
Speaker 3: chip from left to the green. I like it was
Speaker 3: one of those chips where you're just like, Okay, that's
Speaker 3: gonna be super close. It rolled off the back hit
Speaker 3: another chip up missed another short putt. There's a theme
Speaker 3: of the day with short putt missus.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I've probably missed like five putts inside five
Speaker 3: feet it was it was hard, and then eighteen eighteen
Speaker 3: so narrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that T shot is crazy. I mean those bunkers
Speaker 2: that well, the bunkers are like the whole thing is
Speaker 2: weird looking. But I see the point of it. I
Speaker 2: see why it is the way that it is because
Speaker 2: it's just very challenging and intimidating. But when you're looking
Speaker 2: through that shoot, all you see is those bunkers. They
Speaker 2: fill your field of vision and that's that's really all
Speaker 2: that you have to focus on. So it's hard to
Speaker 2: imagine hitting a successful T shot there. It would be
Speaker 2: hard for me to stand on that tee and see
Speaker 2: where I needed to hit it in order to be
Speaker 2: successful because all I'm seeing is those bunkers and the
Speaker 2: trees on either side. But it sounds like you hit
Speaker 2: a good T shot there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what I did is I switched to
Speaker 3: my three would I hit three wood twice off the
Speaker 3: tee and I hit it right, like dead nuts straight.
Speaker 3: I like one of my regrets I should have hit
Speaker 3: that more because I I hit it really good. I'm like,
Speaker 3: just I very I love that club. It's a pt
Speaker 3: three wood. I love it, And like I think there's
Speaker 3: always something if you like just love a club, like
Speaker 3: you swing better with it.
Speaker 4: And I love hitting that club.
Speaker 3: And and I didn't drive it great with the with
Speaker 3: the per simmon and uh, and I hit it just
Speaker 3: like my my caddy was kind of surprising.
Speaker 4: It's like you're hitting three wood and I just I
Speaker 4: hit it perfect. I had.
Speaker 3: I mean that that second shot so uphill, it's it's
Speaker 3: plus fifteen.
Speaker 2: It's crazy hill.
Speaker 4: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: You can't see anything like you just it's just it's wild.
Speaker 2: It doesn't to an extent like this might be a
Speaker 2: weird thing to say, but it almost doesn't even look
Speaker 2: like a golf hole. It looks like they put a
Speaker 2: golf hole like almost in the wrong place on the property.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's nuts.
Speaker 3: And then you're hitting from the upslope, and like we
Speaker 3: tell talked about on eight, like one of the things
Speaker 3: when you're hitting from that, you miss left. You don't
Speaker 3: want to miss left. So I think a lot of
Speaker 3: guys miss right because of that, like they're conscious of
Speaker 3: like I'm hitting from an upslope. The tendency's go left,
Speaker 3: so you hit right. And I think that's just like
Speaker 3: an interesting thing about the shot. I hit a great
Speaker 3: iron I had. I was like probably fifteen feet pin
Speaker 3: high right, and I hit a really bad putt. Never
Speaker 3: had a chance. It was left left from the start.
Speaker 3: So that was a bubber not making I not make
Speaker 3: a birdie. There was a bubber. But it was fun.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a super fun putt because like
Speaker 3: you've seen that putt so many times. Oh yeah, like
Speaker 3: I know it looks like it breaks a lot, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't break as much as you think, you know
Speaker 3: type thing, and it's like it's the Marco Beerra putt
Speaker 3: effectively right.
Speaker 2: Right, all right, So that that wraps up your round
Speaker 2: at Augusta National. What are what are some closing thoughts here?
Speaker 3: I think like just my general thought is, like I
Speaker 3: I kind of put this in the article, but like,
Speaker 3: you know, life's funny, right, It's it's a long journey,
Speaker 3: and when you're a kid, you think it's gonna you
Speaker 3: just are naive, right, and it's like, oh, I'll play
Speaker 3: Augusta National someday, right Yeah, But then like you know
Speaker 3: in my twenties, Like you know, I just didn't think
Speaker 3: it was ever gonna happen, Like you know what, you know,
Speaker 3: I was just a normal guy working in working in Chicago,
Speaker 3: and and you know, to get this opportunity was so cool.
Speaker 3: So one of the coolest traditions to play it right
Speaker 3: after the right after the Masters was it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And uh, I think, like I think that's the thing
Speaker 3: is I'm just extremely extremely grateful for the uh, the
Speaker 3: chance and and like I mean it's something like I
Speaker 3: don't you know, I I have a weird golf mine.
Speaker 4: My wife drives my wife nuts.
Speaker 3: I like can remember a shot from you know, I
Speaker 3: can tell you every shot I hit in the twenty
Speaker 3: fourteen State am you know, if we wanted to go
Speaker 3: back to it, and uh and I have this weird memory,
Speaker 3: but this one like you create these like vivid golf memories,
Speaker 3: and these are gonna be probably the most vivid.
Speaker 4: Golf memories I have. And and I think, you know, listen,
Speaker 4: like a lot of people have been like is it
Speaker 4: your number one? Would you play?
Speaker 3: Like I think the thing about it is like I
Speaker 3: don't I think it's all the memories of watching the
Speaker 3: tournament over the years, and like, you know, there's something
Speaker 3: about the Masters where it's just I mean, I'm still
Speaker 3: thinking about it because of you know, covering it now.
Speaker 3: It's it's a completely different experience and a little bit
Speaker 3: I heard it you should you asked Shane about this
Speaker 3: and like I do I do miss like being a fan,
Speaker 3: Like I don't, I don't get Master Sunday, and like
Speaker 3: it's funny because like the memories I had were like
Speaker 3: of like back to like the the early Masters. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the stuff I was thinking about. Was like the
Speaker 3: Masters I watched when I was a kid was what
Speaker 3: I was remembering, almost more so than the you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, like I remember a little bit of Crenshaw.
Speaker 3: My dad was a golfer and my mom picked up
Speaker 3: golf when I was when I was when I started playing,
Speaker 3: and it's like I remember watching Crenshaw. I wasn't a
Speaker 3: golfer at that point, and and you know, but Faldo
Speaker 3: was my first big memory. It's just I don't know
Speaker 3: that was it was so cool and obviously just a
Speaker 3: you know, lifelong dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know a lot of what you're saying there
Speaker 2: really resonates with me. Too. I didn't get to play
Speaker 2: the place, but this was the first time that I
Speaker 2: visited it, and so I had a lot of the
Speaker 2: same thoughts. You know, I have been a golf fan
Speaker 2: who has watched the Masters every year since I was
Speaker 2: probably nine or ten years old. Those are at least
Speaker 2: the ones that I remember. The Crenshaw Masters actually is
Speaker 2: the earliest one that I remember really vividly, because I
Speaker 2: was a big fan of Ben Crenshawe. I related with him.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be like him. I had a putter
Speaker 2: sort of like his. I didn't have the eighty eight
Speaker 2: oh two, but I had a ping Sedona, you know,
Speaker 2: is sort of similar shaped, and I tried to putt
Speaker 2: like him, really kind of risty and flowy, but I
Speaker 2: just couldn't. I couldn't do it. And I just thought
Speaker 2: he was so cool and sort of handsome and well
Speaker 2: spoken and gentlemanly, and seeing him win the Masters and
Speaker 2: break down afterwards and talk about his mentor just had
Speaker 2: a huge impact on me. And so those are the
Speaker 2: kinds of memories that came back to me when I
Speaker 2: visited the place. It wasn't the sort of nuts and
Speaker 2: bolts architecture that we talk about now. I don't want
Speaker 2: to dismiss that. I think that what we focus on
Speaker 2: as journalists or as you know, whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call us, as architecture writers, when we go to Augusta National,
Speaker 2: we want to describe to people, what is it beyond
Speaker 2: the mystique that makes this course great? What are the
Speaker 2: actual things that that you know have have formed this
Speaker 2: course's reputation in the first place. Why is this a
Speaker 2: great golf course beyond all the other stuff that's around it,
Speaker 2: beyond all the pomp and circumstance. That's kind of what
Speaker 2: we focus on as the fried Egg. Right when we're
Speaker 2: writing about the architecture of Augusta National, we're almost like mythbusting.
Speaker 2: We're kind of getting to the getting to the real
Speaker 2: core of what this golf course is, how it was designed,
Speaker 2: how it's presented, and we see things that are both
Speaker 2: really good and other things that could be improved, other
Speaker 2: things that we would like to see changed. And so
Speaker 2: to say that Augusta National is my favorite golf course
Speaker 2: or your favorite golf course kind of misses it because
Speaker 2: you know, obviously we've we've given both praise and critique
Speaker 2: to the golf course, and I think it deserves that.
Speaker 2: When you strip away all the other stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: what you have is a really really strong golf course
Speaker 2: that does have some weaknesses. But I was struck by
Speaker 2: how little of that really mattered to me on my
Speaker 2: first visit there, and how much I thought of my childhood,
Speaker 2: how much I thought of the really deep past Masters,
Speaker 2: the ninety seven Masters, which I sort of the final
Speaker 2: round of which I kind of know shot by shot,
Speaker 2: even shots that Tiger Woods didn't hit, even if it
Speaker 2: was like Tom Kite hitting a chip with his little
Speaker 2: lob wedge. You know, I remember those kinds of shots,
Speaker 2: and that all came rushing back to me, and I
Speaker 2: think that that's not something to shy away from that.
Speaker 2: This course really means something to us as lifelong golf nuts.
Speaker 2: It really it really has an impact being there in
Speaker 2: person that goes beyond the architecture. And I think that
Speaker 2: it's it's fine to just say that I was wowed
Speaker 2: by it. I was overwhelmed by it. It brought back
Speaker 2: wonderful memories, and I have enormous gratitude forgetting to go
Speaker 2: out there and walk around the place. And again, like you,
Speaker 2: it's something that I didn't expect from my life. You
Speaker 2: know what, five years ago, six years ago, I was
Speaker 2: a high school teacher with no designs whatsoever on becoming
Speaker 2: a golf writer or being on a podcast or doing
Speaker 2: anything of the sort. And now here I find myself.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not young. People don't usually change careers
Speaker 2: in their mid thirties. I did. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I'm in a position where I get to be a
Speaker 2: member of the press and go walk around Augusta National
Speaker 2: and that is really cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was such a cool thing.
Speaker 3: I you know, one like like last thing just about
Speaker 3: kind of along the same lines as that is, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, I played a ton of golf with my
Speaker 3: dad and my mom growing up, right Like that's you know,
Speaker 3: we would go to the municipal golf course and like
Speaker 3: a lot of times, you know it was with my
Speaker 3: dad on a Saturday afternoon and everything. But one of
Speaker 3: the things, like as I played tournament golf, like the
Speaker 3: first person I'd call after every tournament was my dad
Speaker 3: and we just like talk about what happened, like you know,
Speaker 3: you go through the round and everything, and you know,
Speaker 3: the last few years, I haven't played any tournament golf.
Speaker 3: I haven't played a lot of golf with my dad
Speaker 3: or my mom. And you know it's funny because like,
Speaker 3: I'll go to sand Hill. We went to sand Hills
Speaker 3: last year twice and then called my dad after that round.
Speaker 3: You know, I play a lot of great places. I
Speaker 3: don't call my dad after I play. Like I got
Speaker 3: in the car, I pulled out of the gate and
Speaker 3: the first person I called was my dad, just like.
Speaker 4: You know, it's just like it was.
Speaker 3: That's like the level of what you know that that
Speaker 3: it meant to me.
Speaker 2: All right, that's a good place to wrap up. Thank
Speaker 2: you Andy. This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was
Speaker 2: produced and edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. One
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