Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 3: A brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida,
Speaker 3: egg Frida, egg Frida egg bride egg lie, I'm about
Speaker 3: ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. Today I am
Speaker 2: joined by two great guests to talk about the US
Speaker 2: am This is one of the events that I am
Speaker 2: most excited about the rest of the golf calendar. The
Speaker 2: US Amateur will be played next week at Marion Golf Club.
Speaker 2: There will be extensive coverage on both Golf Channel and NBC.
Speaker 2: I think I probably got more excited about this. I
Speaker 2: spent a couple of days out at the Western m
Speaker 2: last week at Beverly, which was a great tournament, and
Speaker 2: it's an exciting year for am golf. Obviously, you have
Speaker 2: the Walker Cup and that kind of adds to the
Speaker 2: storylines for the US Amateur. But being at Marion, it
Speaker 2: just gives us a kind of a check in on Marion,
Speaker 2: which has undergone since we last saw it on you know,
Speaker 2: it played the Curtis Cup, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: but for a men's, big men stage. Last week saw
Speaker 2: this was a twenty thirteen US Open that Justin Rose won.
Speaker 2: So I can't wait for this week. I think it's
Speaker 2: gonna be appointment television. It'll be it'll be just a
Speaker 2: fascinating tournament to watch, and you know, we dive into
Speaker 2: it with two guests here. Up first, we'll be Brentley
Speaker 2: Romine from Golf Channel. He will be talking kind of
Speaker 2: about storylines and players for the US AM. Brentley does
Speaker 2: exceptional work on the collegiate and amateur game as well
Speaker 2: as covering the pro game. You know, someone that is
Speaker 2: versed in kind of covering young players and then just
Speaker 2: knowing everybody's backstory on the PGA Tour because of his
Speaker 2: coverage of junior and amateur golf over the years. So
Speaker 2: great to have Brentley on. And then Garrett Morrison joins
Speaker 2: me to talk about Marion for about thirty minutes, which
Speaker 2: was which was a joy. So one of the great
Speaker 2: American venues and in the next wave of young stars. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Miles Russell has been having quite a summer. Preston Stout
Speaker 2: will be in the field. Should be an awesome, awesome tournament.
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Speaker 2: get to Brentley Romi. All right, Brentley, welcome on. It
Speaker 2: is peak amateur golf season. The Western Am just wrapped up.
Speaker 2: The USAM is barreling down. It'll be played next week
Speaker 2: at Marion Golf Club and really it's kind of the
Speaker 2: last tournament before Walker Cup selections. It's a rare back
Speaker 2: to back Walker Cup year. They'll be playing at La
Speaker 2: Hinch And it seems like there's just a lot of
Speaker 2: storylines to talk about. And I think, you know, just generally,
Speaker 2: in the last couple of years, there's been a few
Speaker 2: with expanded coverage, there's been a few events that have
Speaker 2: really I think started to grow and pop popularity, and
Speaker 2: that's really I think the us AM. I think if
Speaker 2: you go back, I think one of the big splashes
Speaker 2: for the USAM most of the Banded Dudes USAM where
Speaker 2: it was on in primetime, and it felt like a
Speaker 2: real moment for the USAM where it started kind of
Speaker 2: to grow in popularity. And I think last year was
Speaker 2: a really wonderful year for the USAM. Obviously you had
Speaker 2: the Nile Shields down again story, which was a huge story,
Speaker 2: and again on in primetime at Olympic Club. And this
Speaker 2: year you go to one of the most famous golf
Speaker 2: courses in the world. Marion, I think it'll be an
Speaker 2: amazing tournament. What is your favorite part of covering the
Speaker 2: amateur game? You, I would say, are on the forefront.
Speaker 2: You cover the men's professional game and the amateur game.
Speaker 2: You go to the majors of both of these levels
Speaker 2: of play. What's your favorite part of ring the amateur scene?
Speaker 3: Well, first off, any thanks for having me on. Secondly,
Speaker 3: you talk about how it's grown in stature since like
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. It's hard for me to tell, because you know,
Speaker 3: I've been obsessed with it, you know, since I started
Speaker 3: covering golfer Golf Week back in twenty eleven, twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: But I do think that's that's right, and probably my
Speaker 3: favorite part about it is and This is really kind
Speaker 3: of amateur college golf writ large too, Like it's just
Speaker 3: telling the stories that people probably haven't heard yet. Like
Speaker 3: Nile shields Don again, like we had heard about him.
Speaker 3: We had heard about his dad, you know, our buddy
Speaker 3: Lawrence Donagan, a former journalist and rock star, but no
Speaker 3: one had heard in the general golf public about Nile
Speaker 3: shields Don. Again. Same for Jimmy Abdo. I mean, Abdomania
Speaker 3: was really storyline b last year at Olympic Club coming
Speaker 3: over from Lebanon, and like, to me, those are the
Speaker 3: stories that I like to get in and tell and
Speaker 3: talk to family, talk to college coaches or instructors or whoever.
Speaker 3: And then you watch these really cool Cinderella runs. You
Speaker 3: just really don't get that. And professional golf because I mean,
Speaker 3: to be on the PGA Tour you have to earn
Speaker 3: your card and you know they're getting rid of Monday
Speaker 3: qualifiers pretty much across the board, so you don't get
Speaker 3: that kind of story like you do out of us
Speaker 3: am plus, like you've said this a lot, the golf course.
Speaker 3: If the golf course isn't one of the main storylines
Speaker 3: going in, it's probably not going to be a very
Speaker 3: good golf tournament and with USGA championships, the golf course
Speaker 3: is usually always one of the story, you know, top stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this year will be probably the
Speaker 2: big story. I think we're gonna kind of track down
Speaker 2: three stories for this year's us AM. There's three big storylines.
Speaker 2: Then you're gonna give us some players to watch. The
Speaker 2: golf course to me is the big, big story this week.
Speaker 2: It is. Last time it hosted a big time championship
Speaker 2: was the twenty thirteen US Open. Justin Rose obviously won it.
Speaker 2: I think it was a kind of a moment in
Speaker 2: time in terms of the golf course setup. It was
Speaker 2: extremely narrow fairways, extremely penal rough set up to kind
Speaker 2: of curb scoring. It wasn't really putting Marion on display.
Speaker 2: Since then, the golf course has been had a historical
Speaker 2: renovation by gil Hants. They are much wider fairways, corridors.
Speaker 2: It seems like those from the renovation are exactly what
Speaker 2: will be put out there this year this week for
Speaker 2: the USAM and it feels like a real, i would
Speaker 2: say test run for the twenty thirty US Open which
Speaker 2: will be held there. This is a golf course that
Speaker 2: you know, maybe can stretch just a nudge over seven
Speaker 2: thousand yards. It is not a long golf course. The
Speaker 2: par threes are are very long there. You're gonna have
Speaker 2: a lot where you're gonna get long irons as par
Speaker 2: threes and par fives. There are a lot of wedges available.
Speaker 2: But I am fascinated to see how Marion will play
Speaker 2: for the world's best amateur players. You were out there
Speaker 2: for media day. Was that the first time you've been
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, first time I had been in the Philadelphia area.
Speaker 3: We played. We got in fourteen holes, so I didn't
Speaker 3: play one through three or eighteen, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had the same the main you get the
Speaker 2: main hits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean we started on on four and
Speaker 3: had a nice chip in on six and the one thing.
Speaker 3: A couple of things I did notice, And you know,
Speaker 3: keep in mind, this was two weeks ago. There's probably
Speaker 3: you know, almost a month run up before the actual championship.
Speaker 3: From that point, things were pretty soft, and I think
Speaker 3: it was because of the rain and it was it
Speaker 3: had been very humid, so things weren't as fast, Like
Speaker 3: particularly on five, how that green slopes down and you
Speaker 3: can play it off the right and have it kind
Speaker 3: of run run down to the hole. It was very
Speaker 3: difficult to do that. Play balls were kind of getting
Speaker 3: hung up and so it was just really soft. And
Speaker 3: then the rough was pretty gnarly and juicy around the greens.
Speaker 3: I think Ben Kimball, the who had the set up there,
Speaker 3: he said the goal is to start it at four inches.
Speaker 3: I didn't see that yet, kind of off the fairways.
Speaker 3: Like I was able to get six irons on the green,
Speaker 3: including on sixteen where what do they call that little
Speaker 3: courier at no man's land like on sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the sandy waste area, which you find
Speaker 2: if you find yourself in there, probably feels like an.
Speaker 3: Abyss and in a crazy green too, where there's like
Speaker 3: that backshelf and that huge fall off and basically every
Speaker 3: shot ends up in that front area unless you hit
Speaker 3: a really good shot, so it's a really tough two put.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the rough was not super thick, like, it
Speaker 3: was very kind of patchy in spots. So hopefully that
Speaker 3: you know, they can get that I think it's bluegrass
Speaker 3: or maybe they've changed it since back in the day,
Speaker 3: but hopefully they can get that point super thick because
Speaker 3: like I don't know, I mean, you you'd probably be
Speaker 3: a better exploiner that than I would. But I feel
Speaker 3: like maybe it's a good thing that you can take
Speaker 3: on greens from the rough and not just have to
Speaker 3: play hackout ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a it's a balance, right, It's tricky, right,
Speaker 2: like you just don't want it the I think the
Speaker 2: balance in and high level Ben's golf is like, how
Speaker 2: do we make it not a just a bomber fest
Speaker 2: and reward accuracy? And I think Marion will do a
Speaker 2: lot of that with just the the tilt in the greens,
Speaker 2: there's just a lot of slope in the greens. How
Speaker 2: do you reward accuracy and when you're when the golf
Speaker 2: course is shorter, And I think in a way it
Speaker 2: does because you you know, distance it a little bit
Speaker 2: muted when you have so many holes that are you know,
Speaker 2: sub four hundred yard par fours or sub four really
Speaker 2: for the pro game or for the high level am game,
Speaker 2: it's like sub four hundred and fifty yard par fours,
Speaker 2: which is insane to think. I mean when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, four hundred and fifty yards seemed like it
Speaker 2: was like a a mile a mile long. Part four
Speaker 2: Now it's you know, driver wedge for these kids. But anyways, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, I think, I'm I think we've seen this
Speaker 2: with a lot of courses where they've they've put the
Speaker 2: kind of US am in the ahead of the of
Speaker 2: the US Open as kind of like a test run,
Speaker 2: and I think they like to they like to see
Speaker 2: how the course plays because it's super instructive of as
Speaker 2: to where the the pro game will be in a
Speaker 2: few years. I saw it last week. I was out
Speaker 2: of the Western m a couple of days. It's it's
Speaker 2: amazing how good so many of these amateurs hit the ball.
Speaker 2: I think the real difference right now between high level
Speaker 2: amateur players and pros is not necessarily it's it's mostly
Speaker 2: decision making and and the ability to hit a lot
Speaker 2: of off speed shots where and what I mean by
Speaker 2: off speed shots is your your controlled wedges, your flighted wedges,
Speaker 2: your your three quarter you know, hold off iron shots.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, if you thought about it in
Speaker 2: pitching terms, it's developing your you know, your your third
Speaker 2: and fourth pitches. These all these kids seemingly hit the
Speaker 2: ball extraordinarily good, hit it out of the center really well,
Speaker 2: and where they where they can brush up and get
Speaker 2: take their games to the next level. Is around like
Speaker 2: kind of the finer points of the game, whether it
Speaker 2: be short games and and and wedge play rather than
Speaker 2: you know, it's like just amazing to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and that's why someone like Miles Russell is
Speaker 3: so good at this age, and why Jackson Coyven's had success.
Speaker 3: And you know, guys who can do some of the
Speaker 3: things that most of the elite amateurs can't, like, like
Speaker 3: you said, like the decision making, the confidence, the short game,
Speaker 3: kind of the creativity around the greens. And I mean
Speaker 3: that's why Miles Russell's had some success is because the
Speaker 3: short game is probably the best in amber golf, like
Speaker 3: go even by far the best putter amongst the elite AMers.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's probably guys who play amateter golf at
Speaker 3: some you know, lower level d one who's probably statistically
Speaker 3: maybe a better putter than Jackson coyven, but at least
Speaker 3: in terms of someone who's going to strike it at
Speaker 3: an elite level as well, he's he's by far the
Speaker 3: best I've seen. You mentioned the par four's like over
Speaker 3: four hundred yards I count him. There's only six and
Speaker 3: there's only two over five hundred, which you go back to,
Speaker 3: you know, Oakmond and Cherry Hills and Pinehurst and all
Speaker 3: these kind of US Open previews for these US Ams,
Speaker 3: like pretty much every every part four was like four
Speaker 3: sixty or or more unless it was set up as
Speaker 3: like a short driveable part four. And so, I mean
Speaker 3: that's interesting. You the total yardage is going to be
Speaker 3: sixty nine thirty nine, which is only about seventy yards
Speaker 3: more than it was in five when Dodo Molinari won
Speaker 3: the last US Amateur at Marion. So I think that
Speaker 3: kind of speaks to your point that you know, Marion's
Speaker 3: defenses are are more than just adding length to holes.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's nowhere to go.
Speaker 3: It's twenty acres, I think, and it's like an.
Speaker 2: L It's tiny, tiny, It's amazing the golf course fits
Speaker 2: into the land. It does. I think the the the
Speaker 2: big thing is, uh, this is gonna be a ball
Speaker 2: control week. It's gonna be a week of restraint. I'll
Speaker 2: be curious to see. I think this is like the
Speaker 2: big question of the tournament is if the rough is
Speaker 2: at a manageable height, does but does bomb and gouge
Speaker 2: become the prevalent UH strategy and the strategy that wins
Speaker 2: out over someone you know, taking irons off te's and
Speaker 2: being tactical. I personally think that restraint is gonna be key. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're gonna hit, You're gonna have to hit some drivers,
Speaker 2: but there's gonna be a lot of holes where if
Speaker 2: you can get yourself in the right spot, you will
Speaker 2: you will have a huge, huge reward and being able
Speaker 2: to control your spin and distance with a with a
Speaker 2: wedge from the fairway. That's that's what I find just
Speaker 2: with like the general belief of how you play golf
Speaker 2: for these juniors is it is just drive it up
Speaker 2: close and figure it out so often, and that's what
Speaker 2: I'm really curious to see if that becomes the prevalent
Speaker 2: strategy out there. Let's get to some players who you know,
Speaker 2: like in terms of storylines, like what's your what's your
Speaker 2: biggest player driven storyline?
Speaker 3: Like to me, it's to me it is Miles. I
Speaker 3: know Preston Stout's the top rank Dameter in the world,
Speaker 3: and the top Rankdameter hasn't won the USM since Peter
Speaker 3: yu Line in twenty two, who you know, by the way,
Speaker 3: was an Oklahoma State cowboy as well. But to me,
Speaker 3: it's just Miles with the way that he's played the
Speaker 3: opportunity to become the youngest US Amateur champ. Ever, he's
Speaker 3: a few months younger than ben On was when when
Speaker 3: he set the record, And I feel like at this stage,
Speaker 3: like as a golf fan and kind of the golf community,
Speaker 3: like we just love these young stars. I mean, kind
Speaker 3: of the point of Jackson Coyven, Like we're just so
Speaker 3: eager to jump on, like who's the next big thing?
Speaker 3: And to me and everyone I've talked to, from scouts
Speaker 3: to agents to equipment reps, like Miles is the real deal.
Speaker 3: Like he is the best junior golfer that they've seen
Speaker 3: since Tiger Woods, like hands down. And that's not just
Speaker 3: like a couple people saying that, that's like the common thread.
Speaker 3: And so for me, with the summer that he's had,
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit worried about the amount of golf
Speaker 3: he's played, you know, playing however many rounds that was
Speaker 3: to make the final of the US Junior and then
Speaker 3: deplay the Western and making into match play this week,
Speaker 3: and now he's got a week off and turn around
Speaker 3: and go play. You know, if he's going to win.
Speaker 3: He's got to play seven eight rounds of high level
Speaker 3: championship golf. We'll see if he can. You know, he
Speaker 3: has the endurance to do that. He's kind of a
Speaker 3: small guy and he's been struggling a little bit off
Speaker 3: the tee and I think when you get tired, you
Speaker 3: can get a little bit more wayward than usual. But again,
Speaker 3: like if you say ball control like flighted wedges, short
Speaker 3: game like can make putts like, to me, Miles is
Speaker 3: built for this course. So along with a few other guys.
Speaker 3: But you know, I really think that's probably the big
Speaker 3: storyline is is Ken Miles Russell come out and do
Speaker 3: what what Bobby Jones did way back in the day.
Speaker 3: I mean, people know, people know about nineteen thirty, right,
Speaker 3: Bobby Jones completing the Grand Slam, But he won his
Speaker 3: first us Am six years before at when I believe
Speaker 3: he was around the same age as as Miles was.
Speaker 3: So so to me, Miles is is storyline number one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, I think the you know, being
Speaker 2: out at the Western Uh, one of the things that
Speaker 2: stuck with me was just the gravity that he possessed
Speaker 2: possesses he kind of has this like care free attitude.
Speaker 2: His his demeanor inside the ropes, well there weren't ropes up,
Speaker 2: but his demeanor while in the configurition is like very
Speaker 2: he's loose, you know, Like that's the thing. I think.
Speaker 2: You see so many of these kids that are uptight
Speaker 2: and trying to be something that they've been told they
Speaker 2: need to be. I think one of the things I
Speaker 2: took away from the week was like I'm amazed at
Speaker 2: how comfortable he is in his own skin, and he
Speaker 2: seemingly plays golf the way he is in real life,
Speaker 2: right where he's just kind of got this like little,
Speaker 2: this care free attitude, and you see it. He converses
Speaker 2: with the players, He converses with people, you know, he
Speaker 2: he kind of is a breath of fresh air in
Speaker 2: terms of like we see kind of this conveyor belt
Speaker 2: of players who act the same way, and it's like,
Speaker 2: we can't we suppress all the emotions out of golf.
Speaker 2: We suppressed like don't talk to your playing partners. We
Speaker 2: have to be locked in, and he kind of is
Speaker 2: the antithesis of that. And I'm pretty excited, you know,
Speaker 2: I tend to be a contrarian. I'm pretty excited about
Speaker 2: about Miles Russell. That being said, I think there's some
Speaker 2: really really good other players like Tyler Watts, I think
Speaker 2: is super impressive, not that much older than Miles Russell.
Speaker 2: And obviously you hit on press and stout, but but
Speaker 2: I think you know, to your point about how much
Speaker 2: golf byles are playing, he's seventeen, I don't think. I
Speaker 2: don't think he's worried about the violeage he's putting on.
Speaker 2: I think this kid's out there loving what he's doing
Speaker 2: and and just going at chasing championships. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think like a story is like he's come up
Speaker 2: short a lot, you know here, whereas like he gets
Speaker 2: to the semis of the Western he gets to the
Speaker 2: finals of the US Junior, he comes up short. My
Speaker 2: big question like can he punch through with the US
Speaker 2: AM And it's so hard to do it in these
Speaker 2: match play championships. There's fluky there. You know, anybody can
Speaker 2: beat anybody on a given day. What's more telling is
Speaker 2: is the obviously the stroke play results winning the Western AM.
Speaker 2: You know, he's he's he's.
Speaker 3: Something at the Junior too. Yeah, I mean, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is the same championship.
Speaker 2: It's the first player in history to do that medalists
Speaker 2: of the Junior and medalist at the Western am I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean thanks to the great research of our
Speaker 3: guy called golf book David Tennyson, Who I mean he
Speaker 3: thought I liked college golf or left college golf. This
Speaker 3: guy like eats, sleeps, and breathes college golf like he's awesome.
Speaker 3: Like he's he's They've they've done this really cool website
Speaker 3: for college golf too, for record keeping and all that.
Speaker 3: But yes, I just wanted to give him a quick
Speaker 3: quick shout out. But one more thing on Miles too.
Speaker 3: Have you heard the uh and I think it's a
Speaker 3: perfect nickname, But have you heard the nickname for Miles
Speaker 3: that I think sums it up really well? What Benjamin Button?
Speaker 3: So he looks like he's about twelve, but he acts
Speaker 3: like he's like forty five, like he's been on tour
Speaker 3: for twenty years. I mean, the guy like he's like
Speaker 3: talking to like a full grown adult and he's been
Speaker 3: that way for two or three years. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm a huge fan. He's actually he's actually fairly aggressive too,
Speaker 3: and I think that comes from the confidence. Like at
Speaker 3: the US Open qualifier when Charlie was on the bag.
Speaker 3: Miles was in that playoff and my mind's blinking a
Speaker 3: little bit. Get who he was. He was on that
Speaker 3: last playoff hole with because Ryder Cowan had gotten through
Speaker 3: the hole before. But the guy he's playing against hooks
Speaker 3: it into the water. It's a par five. All Miles
Speaker 3: has to do is basically lay up and then wedgehn
Speaker 3: and make a par and then he's through. He just
Speaker 3: pulls out a five iron and flags it. And I
Speaker 3: asked him afterwards, I'm like, did you think about playing
Speaker 3: like laying up or you know, playing it safe? And
Speaker 3: he just kind of like laughed and was like, now
Speaker 3: like like I'm going to hit the five, irony, why
Speaker 3: wouldn't I? So I just I love that he's like
Speaker 3: super confident in himself, super aggressive, and yeah, I just,
Speaker 3: you know, hope we don't get some some fluky winner.
Speaker 3: Hopefully we get someone like Miles or pieced out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean there are a lot of names
Speaker 2: on this list that wouldn't be fluky winners. And it'll
Speaker 2: be it'll be fascinating to see what you said about
Speaker 2: is like when you watch him do an interview, he
Speaker 2: does look like he's like a forty two year old
Speaker 2: tour pro the way, like just like his body language
Speaker 2: in an interview is so comfortable. He's so comfortable talking
Speaker 2: to people. It's it's wild to see.
Speaker 3: He's also have you seen how many high level lefties
Speaker 3: there are coming up right now? To mean you mentioned
Speaker 3: Tyler Watts, I mean Luke Colton. We haven't even talked
Speaker 3: about Luke Colton. Another you know, he's going to Vanderbilt.
Speaker 3: I mean three b Reeby's lefty, Philip Dunnam. I believe
Speaker 3: is is a lefties going to Alabama. I mean there
Speaker 3: there are tons like it's it's pretty insane, Like I
Speaker 3: don't know what what could explain that.
Speaker 2: I think it's the proliferation of lefty clubs being available.
Speaker 2: What honestly, like this sounds crazy. When I was a kid,
Speaker 2: you know, early two thousands, it was like hard to
Speaker 2: get left handed equipment and people would just be like,
Speaker 2: you're a righty, Like I.
Speaker 3: Played lefty, yeah, you do you right left handed?
Speaker 2: No? But I played hockey left handed, And I wonder like,
Speaker 2: if it was different, would I have played golf left handed?
Speaker 2: But it was just not the time, uh then, to
Speaker 2: to do that because equipment was just hard to find.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could probably talk to Bacon about this.
Speaker 2: Bacon is uh He's always like, well, I probably I
Speaker 2: could be able to Whenever I talk about retro clubs,
Speaker 2: He's like, well, I probably won't be able to find
Speaker 2: that club because it's hard to find left handed equipment
Speaker 2: like that. So, uh yeah, I think that's some of it.
Speaker 2: I think some of it's that, and there's I think
Speaker 2: there's a nature of some of the golf. I think
Speaker 2: some golf design kind of like fits a fade or
Speaker 2: fits a draw, and right handers used to hit more draws,
Speaker 2: but now lefties hit fades on, you know, And I
Speaker 2: just think that's it's just you know, you could go
Speaker 2: through every golf course, but for example, like Augusta Nashville
Speaker 2: is the famous one. It's way more advantage to be
Speaker 2: a left hander than a right hander at Augusta. But
Speaker 2: in the eighties a lot more players hit draws because
Speaker 2: back then, if you hit a draw, you hit it
Speaker 2: twenty yards further than if you hit a fade, and
Speaker 2: until the prov one came around, you couldn't hit the
Speaker 2: fade as far as the draw. Now you hit a
Speaker 2: draw and a fade basically the same distance in a
Speaker 2: fade's way more controllable. But if you think about it,
Speaker 2: like a lot of golf golf courses were designed when
Speaker 2: like right handers hit draws, and now no right handers
Speaker 2: hit draws and left handers hit fades that simulate effectively
Speaker 2: a draw.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe, And there's I mean there's definitely some holes
Speaker 3: that come to mind at Mary and I mean ten
Speaker 3: being one of them. Yeah, I mean that's really kind
Speaker 3: of the only way to get at that green.
Speaker 2: Right, It's not just like or ten yeah, ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, ten. Yeah, the driveable.
Speaker 2: Fives a lot better if you sixteen you're left.
Speaker 3: Right to left, yeah, twelve is is a is massive
Speaker 3: left to right. That's the one thing I noticed too,
Speaker 3: is there's a lot of like diversity, like from hole
Speaker 3: to hole, Like you're not hitting really the same club
Speaker 3: off the tee more than maybe two holes in a row,
Speaker 3: Like you're going right to left, left to right. I'm
Speaker 3: not a huge fan of the par fives on two
Speaker 3: and four, Like those are the only par fives you get,
Speaker 3: and they're in the first like four holes. I'm not
Speaker 3: like a huge fan of that, But I mean I
Speaker 3: do like quirkiness, and that's probably as quirky as it gets.
Speaker 2: But part is just a social construct, so especially once
Speaker 2: you get to match play, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Matter, right, correct, Yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess.
Speaker 2: What's what's your third storyline to watch?
Speaker 3: I mean third storyline? And this will get a bunch
Speaker 3: of other players in the mix for us to talk about,
Speaker 3: but it's it's the Walker Cup. You mentioned it off
Speaker 3: the top, and the first time since the mid twenties,
Speaker 3: I believe that we've had a Walker Cup in back
Speaker 3: to back years. Obviously they're trying to get back away
Speaker 3: from being in a Ryder Cup year, so so to me,
Speaker 3: that's that's always storyline number one when it is a
Speaker 3: year that we're playing a Walker Cup going into the
Speaker 3: USAM not only because it's the final chance for guys
Speaker 3: to earn a pick, but it's also, you know, now
Speaker 3: the final chance for someone to grab an automatic spot
Speaker 3: by winning, because the you know, if an American wins
Speaker 3: who's not on the team like Mason Howell did last year,
Speaker 3: like they're on, so that could throw a wrench in everything.
Speaker 3: But I usually when I prognosticate, I like to operate
Speaker 3: as if someone's going to win who's already on the
Speaker 3: team or they're not American. So right now, like I'll
Speaker 3: just give it kind of a brief rundown. We have
Speaker 3: four guys already on the US team, and we'll say
Speaker 3: the CHP and I talk for you know, another day,
Speaker 3: because who knows what they're going to end up doing.
Speaker 2: I pulled up the wagger real quick before we get
Speaker 2: to the GB and I talk. This has got to
Speaker 2: be the strongest GB and I team in a long
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yes, but there's a big concern at the
Speaker 3: top because Tyler Weaver, who's second in the world Amber
Speaker 3: golf ranking from Florida State, he hasn't played since the
Speaker 3: a SEC Championship. He's got a back issue. You know.
Speaker 3: The last that I've I've talked to Trey Jones, the
Speaker 3: coach at at Florida State, Tyler was going to try
Speaker 3: to play the US M. The back's been been a
Speaker 3: major problem, and I think there's some really concern that
Speaker 3: he's not going to be be healthy enough to play
Speaker 3: in the Walker Cup. So that could I mean, that
Speaker 3: would be a huge loss because I mean, Tyler Weaver
Speaker 3: is the guy who you know they put up against
Speaker 3: Jackson Coven last year at Cyprus Point and he held
Speaker 3: his own. He played well. But yeah, I mean you're
Speaker 3: you're right. But behind that you have Nile obviously going
Speaker 3: to be back on the team. Connor Graham is someone
Speaker 3: who I kind of tabbed as a potential. He's not
Speaker 3: really a sleeper, but to most people he probably would
Speaker 3: be a little bit of a surprise winner next week.
Speaker 3: And that's just because the guy has a crazy short game,
Speaker 3: crazy between the ears. He has a temperament that I
Speaker 3: that I think is probably fiery, to put it mildly,
Speaker 3: So who knows. I mean, he could he could get
Speaker 3: upset and uh, you know, break every club in his
Speaker 3: bag and and and have to w D But uh
Speaker 3: but no, he's He shot sixty one at the South
Speaker 3: of Iris or sixty two at the South of Ireland
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago, so he's he's in top form.
Speaker 3: But you know, I really like Connor Graham this week,
Speaker 3: and I think they'll probably get like six of the
Speaker 3: five or six guys from last year squad on and
Speaker 3: then it's all about do they want to take some irishmen?
Speaker 3: Is David Howell lad even though he's way off the
Speaker 3: radar wagger wise, does qualifying for the Open and playing
Speaker 3: well at the South of Ireland, does that make you
Speaker 3: know the the Irish people you know, with it being
Speaker 3: at Lahinish, does that, you know, make them want to
Speaker 3: include more more Irishman. So I think that's that's interesting.
Speaker 3: But as far as the US team, Preston Stout's already on,
Speaker 3: Ethan Fang's already on. College teammates they played last year,
Speaker 3: Miles Russell, Tyler Watts already on. So those are the four.
Speaker 3: I have three locks. We'll start with with Big stew
Speaker 3: probably going to play in a sixth straight Walker Cup.
Speaker 3: There's been some maybe pushback in the mid amateur community.
Speaker 3: I guess a lot of people believe Christian Cavaliery he's
Speaker 3: had a great, great year. I believe he was runner
Speaker 3: up at the Ike, he was third at the Coleman.
Speaker 3: The thing is it qualified for the US AM but
Speaker 3: he hasn't played any elite amateur events this summer. Whereas
Speaker 3: Stuart has gone employed the Southern Am. He was top
Speaker 3: ten there. He was the low kind of American mid
Speaker 3: am at the Northeast finished in the top twenty five
Speaker 3: or so. Only mismatch play by a couple shots this
Speaker 3: week at the Western So to me, other than maybe
Speaker 3: Brandon Holtz, who's the reigning US Midam champ who hasn't
Speaker 3: done anything since, to me, no one's close. So I have.
Speaker 3: Stuart Hegas said, as a lock, you may think differently,
Speaker 3: other people may think differently. But I mean until Bobby
Speaker 3: Wyatt decides he wants to play full time mid am
Speaker 3: or golf, I just I don't. I don't see anyone
Speaker 3: who who is at the level of Stuart Hegas said right.
Speaker 2: Now, I think it. Honestly, I think he probably is
Speaker 2: a lock. And I think the lock was last week
Speaker 2: at the at the Western Am. Uh making it to
Speaker 2: the you know, seventy making the thirty six hole cut,
Speaker 2: then base being right on the bubble. Shot here, shot there.
Speaker 2: You think about seventy two holes. The way the Western
Speaker 2: Am works is after seventy two holes, the top sixteen
Speaker 2: players go to match play. It is so hard to
Speaker 2: make the match play of the Western Am and to
Speaker 2: be on that bubble of match play where literally a
Speaker 2: bounce here, a bounce there, a you know you you
Speaker 2: think through it. I caddied in Stu's group. I cady
Speaker 2: for Max here and Dean, And honestly, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of what we were talking about early on about the
Speaker 2: difference between tour pros and and high level ams, and
Speaker 2: like young high level ams, I would I would recommend
Speaker 2: anybody that's going out to watch a great exercises to
Speaker 2: go watch how Stu plays golf versus how these kids
Speaker 2: play golf. And if you watch over the over the
Speaker 2: course of eighteen holes, you're like, God, Stu just makes
Speaker 2: his life so much easier than these kids. Uh, Like
Speaker 2: I he just lays up into the right spots. He
Speaker 2: takes what the golf course gives him. He is an
Speaker 2: incredible wedge player, like incredible wedge player, and he's very
Speaker 2: happy to take wedges. I think it'll be I think
Speaker 2: Marion sets up well for him in that sense of
Speaker 2: there's so many sub four hundred yard par fours he's
Speaker 2: going to be able to play, you know, pretty conservatively.
Speaker 2: He obviously gives up some some yardage off the tee
Speaker 2: to these to the real powerful am players, and and
Speaker 2: I just I think he's uh, I think I would
Speaker 2: agree with you where he's kind of a lock here,
Speaker 2: especially with the Western Western Am results in And I
Speaker 2: would expect him to play well, I'd expect him to
Speaker 2: make match play here at Marion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean he's he plays those
Speaker 3: classic golf courses where like you really have to think
Speaker 3: so well. I mean, you want to see b McDonald
Speaker 3: at National this summer or this year as well. And
Speaker 3: cb McDonald was kind of a consultant for Marion too,
Speaker 3: right back in the day.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But yeah, I think I think Stu's Stu's in there.
Speaker 3: You had a front row seat to Bobby Massa as well,
Speaker 3: in that lot of skin of another guy, a lot,
Speaker 3: a lot of speed. Maybe Marian's not quite the ballpark
Speaker 3: for for Bobby Massa. But interesting fact about Bobby Massa,
Speaker 3: not to get too far off track, but he actually
Speaker 3: trains Fred Purpaul, Yeah, the former president of the U
Speaker 3: s g A. So that's that's kind of a cool.
Speaker 2: But Bobby said that he's got two kids under the
Speaker 2: So does I think, like Midam Golf. You know, people
Speaker 2: people ask me all the time Midhem Golf. I think
Speaker 2: like there are guys that are so talented, like Bobby
Speaker 2: Wyatt you mentioned, you know, anyway, anybody in the consideration
Speaker 2: of a walker cup Spot, Stu you know, Christian Cavalary.
Speaker 2: There's a long list of guys you could get. Everybody's talented,
Speaker 2: but there is like an exercise of like how much
Speaker 2: time you have to devote to the sport and things
Speaker 2: that get in your way of time devoting to midam golf.
Speaker 2: Are our kids in your job, you know? And when
Speaker 2: you have when you have a couple of kids under
Speaker 2: the age of three, it's just going to be really
Speaker 2: hard to be to be a high level mid And
Speaker 2: I think like I think like Bobby, Bobby is obviously
Speaker 2: great player, He's done really well in the us AM
Speaker 2: a couple of times. Having two kids, two young kids,
Speaker 2: is just kind of a that's a that's a death sents.
Speaker 2: It's your golf game if you're if you're not playing professionally,
Speaker 2: if you can't claim this is my job, uh, that
Speaker 2: is is a hard thing to do. So but I
Speaker 2: think that's that's a I think people overlook the the
Speaker 2: time element to when we talk about mid.
Speaker 3: AM's Yeah, and we didn't even talk about Justin Huber.
Speaker 3: He could I mean, he could win the us M
Speaker 3: and that would.
Speaker 2: Really get people would riot. It seems like he's squarely
Speaker 2: in the crossherrs of.
Speaker 3: I heard John Kurran just got his amateur satisfact too.
Speaker 3: I mean a guy who played.
Speaker 2: On for he almost won the memorial he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I mean there's that. But I
Speaker 3: think I would predict that at some point in the
Speaker 3: near future we're gonna get some sort of rewritten, reinstated
Speaker 3: amateur rules. But who knows. Who knows?
Speaker 2: He's out of the bottle to the U s g A.
Speaker 2: I think, listen, I love a lot of what the
Speaker 2: USGAS does. I think the USA does not like being
Speaker 2: the bad guy. They do not like governing, and anybody
Speaker 2: governing point to his equipment. But the mid Am governance
Speaker 2: is an absolute dumpster fire. Like I you know, I
Speaker 2: think I've told this story before on the pod. I
Speaker 2: played the twenty sixteen Midam and I used to go
Speaker 2: to I used to practice when I was a kid
Speaker 2: at Northwestern's Gleecher Center. And when when I was practicing there,
Speaker 2: jess Daily was in school and so thus, like you know,
Speaker 2: I'd run into him, and I was like always like
Speaker 2: following the career, like I was opening opening up the
Speaker 2: pages of Golf Week and tracking like how he was
Speaker 2: doing in all these tournaments as a kid, and then
Speaker 2: fast forward, I'm in this midam and I'm hitting ball
Speaker 2: sex to him and I'm like, listen, like I just
Speaker 2: I spent the last ten or eight years of my
Speaker 2: life at that point like tied up to a desk
Speaker 2: and I like work my ass off so that then
Speaker 2: I could work on my game on the weekend at
Speaker 2: this point and play in this stuff. And then I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm looking at I'm like, this guy played pro golf
Speaker 2: for twelve years. This guy played on the Courn Ferry
Speaker 2: Tour for longer than I've been out of college, and
Speaker 2: I'm looking at this and I'm just like this is
Speaker 2: this is not And now you have guys like Justin Huber,
Speaker 2: John Kern, Bobby Wyatt almost won on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's wild to me what's going on because
Speaker 2: it's just you don't if you're a real midam, like
Speaker 2: and what I mean by real midam someone who has
Speaker 2: not like turned pro outside of like, if you you
Speaker 2: are in a great life situation, You're never going to
Speaker 2: get the reps that these guys get. It's like the
Speaker 2: competitive reps never leave you. And what I mean by
Speaker 2: like where it shows up is like when you're just
Speaker 2: like it's really like a you know, hard situation and
Speaker 2: you're gonna get nervous. Is like if you've for your
Speaker 2: living for a living for ten years, you don't get
Speaker 2: his nervous. Yeah.
Speaker 3: What about someone like Bobby Massa, who you know, kind
Speaker 3: of a quick background on him. He played college golf,
Speaker 3: he turned professional, never had a corn free tour card
Speaker 3: or the equivalent of e that was kind of just
Speaker 3: a mini tour guy, got some starts, got the driver
Speaker 3: yips really bad, and basically quit golf for like four
Speaker 3: or five years, picked it back up again around covid,
Speaker 3: gets his amateur status back, and now he plays midam events.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I think this is the hard thing,
Speaker 2: and it's probably why they've been procrastinating on actually setting
Speaker 2: real tidelines.
Speaker 3: Like eleven or twelve of the guys who were in
Speaker 3: the round sixteen last year at the US Midham were
Speaker 3: technically reinstated. Yeah, I mean some to greater extent than others,
Speaker 3: for sure, But I mean Brandon Holtz was a reinsteaded amateur.
Speaker 2: And Brandon Holts like he was basically just playing the Illinois.
Speaker 3: Open, you know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like, okay, like where where's the line
Speaker 2: to me? To me, there has to be like a
Speaker 2: number of years for every year accrued on a PGA
Speaker 2: Tour sanctioned tour that to me or European Tour, the
Speaker 2: big If you've played on the Corn Fairy and PGA
Speaker 2: Tour Americas for ten years, I'm sorry, you need to
Speaker 2: sit on the pine for like twenty to level out
Speaker 2: what you've done. And I don't know, but that's just
Speaker 2: my perspective. The the guys would say where should we play,
Speaker 2: It's like, well, then just keep playing pro golf, play
Speaker 2: Illinois Open, get play in your section events, like there's
Speaker 2: competitive outlets for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, what else?
Speaker 2: What else? Would the water? We just had a divergence here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean I think that was good. And
Speaker 3: that's a that's kind of a big storyline too, is
Speaker 3: because Justin Hubert did qualify, so that'll be a storyline.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I have two more locks. I'll kind of
Speaker 3: spin through these real quick and then we can kind
Speaker 3: of like decompress at the end. But William Jennings, who
Speaker 3: rising junior at Alabama, was a really good AJGA player,
Speaker 3: and then his freshman year last or you know, two
Speaker 3: years ago twenty four to twenty five, didn't play in
Speaker 3: the fall. Made his first college start at Water Sound
Speaker 3: in January of twenty five, and he shot ninety two
Speaker 3: in his first round of college golf, second round on
Speaker 3: his way to not breaking ninety again. And j Sewell,
Speaker 3: the head coach at Alabama, takes the scorecard out of
Speaker 3: his hand so we can't post another score in the nineties,
Speaker 3: didn't play for like a few more months. What had
Speaker 3: happened is the kid is six six. He's a big kid,
Speaker 3: like he's he looks about his biggest Tommy Morrison, but
Speaker 3: he's just a couple of inches short, but he is.
Speaker 3: He is a massive unit. And he had gone from
Speaker 3: three fourth inches longer shafts to two inches longer than standard.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, thought that was going to be the answer.
Speaker 3: Totally messed up this game. Couldn't hit the ball, and
Speaker 3: I mean conversely, couldn't couldn't hit couldn't break break ninety.
Speaker 3: But he's gotten it back. He was runner round at
Speaker 3: the NCAA's He's won some big events this past season.
Speaker 3: He won Colonial, he won Olympia Fields. He's just had
Speaker 3: a really great year he's up to a third or
Speaker 3: fourth and wagger, so he's a lock in my book,
Speaker 3: along with Josiah Gilbert, who was Coven's teammate at Auburn.
Speaker 3: He's going to be a senior this year. A couple
Speaker 3: of years ago changed his nationality from Australian to American,
Speaker 3: so there's a little bit of you know, maybe a
Speaker 3: select group of people who probably don't think he should
Speaker 3: be on the team, but you know, he he's lived
Speaker 3: in Alabama, his family has they moved about four or
Speaker 3: five years ago. He's got four or five siblings as well,
Speaker 3: so he's part of a big family. So he's he's
Speaker 3: a lock. He's just been very very consistent, good match
Speaker 3: play player, good good team guy as well. And then
Speaker 3: Ryder Cowen's another lock. The USGA loves their their low amateurs,
Speaker 3: guys who qualify for the US Open and then played
Speaker 3: well that week. Scotti Scheffler is a great example. Back
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen when the Walker Cup was at LACC, like,
Speaker 3: Scotty was kind of a bubble guy along with Zalatoris
Speaker 3: and Sam Burns, so he was really the maybe second
Speaker 3: to last guy on that team. Sam Burns was left
Speaker 3: off Zalatrris I think was last guy on. But Scotty
Speaker 3: was the low am at Aaron Hills that year and
Speaker 3: so that to me, I felt like got him over
Speaker 3: the bump. And so I think that's what gets Ryder Cowen,
Speaker 3: who was the first team All American last year, that's
Speaker 3: what gets him on the team. So we're at eight guys,
Speaker 3: there's two spots left. At this point, there's four guys
Speaker 3: for two spots, not counting potential USM American champion. But
Speaker 3: one of them is key Akina, who won the Michelson
Speaker 3: Award as a Top freshman last year at BYU, member
Speaker 3: of the US national Development team. Like really like just
Speaker 3: kind of like Miles type in terms of small guy
Speaker 3: does a lot of things well, very cool and calm
Speaker 3: and confident, just not quite to the level of Miles.
Speaker 3: But the thing that Key Hay has going for him
Speaker 3: is he went over the pond or across the pond
Speaker 3: earlier this summer and made the quarters of the British
Speaker 3: A and and inn away a Walker Cup year. I
Speaker 3: think that's a huge feather in his cap. And you
Speaker 3: know he's he won a couple of times. They didn't
Speaker 3: play the schedule that some of these other guys did,
Speaker 3: but they played a good enough schedule, like he has
Speaker 3: played in some PGA Tour events. He's he's done well.
Speaker 3: I think at this point he's on. And then I
Speaker 3: mean recent development with jayl from Stanford winning the Western.
Speaker 3: I mean the last time we had a guy win
Speaker 3: the Western and not make the US Walker Cup team
Speaker 3: was Dawson Armstrong in twenty fifteen. Not that long ago
Speaker 3: with the Walker Cup being every other year, but still
Speaker 3: like it. It rarely happens these days. And so I
Speaker 3: think Jay Lang has done enough now to bump Eric
Speaker 3: Lee from Oklahoma State on the outside looking in. Carson
Speaker 3: Birtek Knowles had a great, great year as well. I
Speaker 3: think he's still in the running. The rising sophomore at
Speaker 3: North Carolina, a couple top threes and some big events
Speaker 3: including the Northeast this summer. Really good team guy, like good, good,
Speaker 3: good wedger, good good ball striker. So he's in there
Speaker 3: as well. But just want to close, like talking about
Speaker 3: Jay Lang for a second, kind of an interesting story,
Speaker 3: like have you seen his golf swing?
Speaker 2: Very very short takeaway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's almost like like there's that famous Ryan
Speaker 3: Gerard quote where he said his swing has been referred
Speaker 3: to as if like Jim Furick and John Rahm had
Speaker 3: had an aneurysm, like Jay lang swing might be if
Speaker 3: like Ryan Girard swing had an aneurysm. Like he it's
Speaker 3: it's all self taught. I actually talked to Conrad Ray,
Speaker 3: the Stanford coach, for a little bit last night, and
Speaker 3: he was talking about that's like what they didn't want
Speaker 3: to do as it is just totally change a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff, because like the most important thing about
Speaker 3: golf and the golf swing is not what it really
Speaker 3: looks like. It's do you know your swing well enough
Speaker 3: to know what you do well and know how to
Speaker 3: fix things when when the ballflight's not where you want
Speaker 3: it to be. And and Jay Lings knows how to
Speaker 3: do that. And like the thing for him is he's
Speaker 3: just gotten a lot stronger. I mean, he was someone
Speaker 3: who was ral Thinn didn't work out what I mean,
Speaker 3: it was a really good junior, played on the Junior
Speaker 3: President's Cup team, won a bunch on the A J
Speaker 3: G A, but just not strong at all. Didn't think
Speaker 3: he had to work out, And in the last year
Speaker 3: or so is sophomore year, he's kind of gotten in
Speaker 3: the gym, gotten stronger, like the swing is what it is,
Speaker 3: and he's gotten a lot better on the greens as well.
Speaker 3: So you know, kind of a kind of a cool
Speaker 3: story going from like one hundred and thirty ninth and
Speaker 3: Wagger to start the year. Now he's twenty third, So
Speaker 3: I mean to me, he's he's probably on at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feels like anybody that wins the Western probably
Speaker 2: should be on the.
Speaker 3: Team, Yeah, unless they're completely off the radar. And for
Speaker 3: for Jay Lang, I mean he was. He was like
Speaker 3: in the top forty of Wagger, Like he had a
Speaker 3: great summer, a couple of top fives at the Southern
Speaker 3: and the uh in the Northeast as well. So I
Speaker 3: mean he had, he had shown glimpses. It's just when
Speaker 3: you go back to January, he was he was. He
Speaker 3: wasn't even on the radar, Like, he wasn't anywhere close. So,
Speaker 3: but you always have a guy or two come out
Speaker 3: of nowhere. I mean I think I think back to
Speaker 3: mccameron Champ in twenty seventeen, kind of did that got
Speaker 3: hot in the summer. Jordan Neiebrugie in twenty thirteen when
Speaker 3: they played at national, Like, he had a like a
Speaker 3: crazy summer, won the Western, won the Wisconsin State am Like,
Speaker 3: just had this crazy thing, right, he won like three
Speaker 3: straight amateur tournaments. So there's always like you have to
Speaker 3: take one hot guy. I feel you can't just go
Speaker 3: fully based on on Wagger because it's it's a two
Speaker 3: year period.
Speaker 2: So that's the thing with Lang, right, if you go
Speaker 2: to the Goodwin, he finished his third at the Goodwin,
Speaker 2: seventh at the Western Intercollegiate, seventh in ACC's, eleventh in
Speaker 2: the regional, now forty ninth in nationalities ehip.
Speaker 3: Which is good because there's thirty there's one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty something something players at the.
Speaker 2: And then second at the Northeast, fifth of the Southern
Speaker 2: am and wins the Western DAM. Like I hard does
Speaker 2: hard to argue that there's ten better players that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and if you would compare him, like like
Speaker 3: Burt's kind of got a similar resume other than the
Speaker 3: Western m but he made match play at the Western.
Speaker 3: Eric Lee won a regional but like hasn't really done much.
Speaker 3: So it's just kind of like, do you take someone
Speaker 3: like Eric Lee who had a great summer last year
Speaker 3: he made the semis of the us AM. Or do
Speaker 3: you take like a hot guy and to me, that's
Speaker 3: like I would I would give the edge to Jay Lang. Frankly,
Speaker 3: I think he's ahead of key Hey at this point too,
Speaker 3: Like Jay Lang would be my ninth guy on key
Speaker 3: Hey would be my tenth. Eric Lee would be my
Speaker 3: eleventh right now, and then Bert would be twelve, and
Speaker 3: then after that everyone else has to win the us
Speaker 3: AM in my opinion, like no one's getting in with
Speaker 3: Just like if Willie Walsh from Pepperdine or Connor Williams
Speaker 3: of Arizona State, if they make like the final and lose,
Speaker 3: I still don't think that's enough interesting.
Speaker 2: So if like you don't even think like if if
Speaker 2: one of these these people on the on the outside
Speaker 2: makes the final loses to Miles Russell day in like
Speaker 2: an all time match, they don't get the no.
Speaker 3: No, not like not any one outside of Bird or
Speaker 3: Eric Lee or or or those guys. Like it's just
Speaker 3: like at some point you have to you have to
Speaker 3: select the team based on like some sort of period
Speaker 3: of merit, Like you can't just be such a prisoner
Speaker 3: of like the last even though it's the biggest event
Speaker 3: of the year. He like, I don't know. To me,
Speaker 3: it's to me, the USAM as always the tiebreaker. It's
Speaker 3: not necessarily like who goes based on what? Like last
Speaker 3: year is a perfect example, Jacob Madleski and Miles were
Speaker 3: were neck and neck. Madleski made it to the to
Speaker 3: the quarters, Miles made it to the round of sixteen.
Speaker 3: So that kind of and and and Max was. Harrendine
Speaker 3: was kind of in a similar scenario. He ended up
Speaker 3: I think he lost a mile in the in the
Speaker 3: first round of of match play.
Speaker 2: So that kind of been Coyn last year.
Speaker 3: Did he so he might have lost to Coyven? He
Speaker 3: lost to someone he beat? Did he beat Coven?
Speaker 2: He lost to? I can't remember who he lost to.
Speaker 3: I think he lost after after he played. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: he made the second round.
Speaker 2: No, I think he was at least the third round
Speaker 2: round of round of sixteen. So it'll be I, I, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm pulling for harn Dean, my fellow line.
Speaker 2: I uh make a little run here and and and
Speaker 2: get himself into consideration. Another just name that isn't going
Speaker 2: to come up because he's not in the Walker Cup discussion.
Speaker 2: I think is uh is Daniel Bennett the Texas He'll
Speaker 2: be a junior at Texas, was a great had a
Speaker 2: great freshman year and made match play at the Western
Speaker 2: m another kind of stud and could be a really
Speaker 2: great short game for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, great Wedgard each short game. Harrndean lost to
Speaker 3: Mason Howell in the round of sixteen, so you were correct.
Speaker 3: I knew he lost to like a big name junior.
Speaker 2: Doesn't seem like Bason Howell hasn't had the best year
Speaker 2: since that.
Speaker 3: No, No, and I mean he wasn't. I mean, he's
Speaker 3: obviously one of the best recruits in the country coming
Speaker 3: into Georgia this fall, but he wouldn't have made the
Speaker 3: Walker Cup team otherwise last year. He wasn't even in
Speaker 3: the conversation. So I mean he benefited by getting the
Speaker 3: automatic spot. I don't think he was ever gonna it
Speaker 3: was going to be very difficult, even though we had
Speaker 3: an amazing week at Cyprus, I mean with the albatross
Speaker 3: in practice on two long birdie putts on fifteen sixteen,
Speaker 3: the whole out on seventeen, like he had an amazing week,
Speaker 3: But you just kind of knew it was going to
Speaker 3: be very difficult for him to get back at least
Speaker 3: this year, because I mean, juniors don't have the luxury
Speaker 3: of playing these high level college events like every other
Speaker 3: week to boost the resume, and you can't really to
Speaker 3: resume playing the junior you know, junior players and Sage
Speaker 3: Valley and stuff without winning. And he just didn't do that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it'll be it'll be a fun week. I mean,
Speaker 3: like Mary, and to me, I've been very excited about
Speaker 3: this one for a while because there's just been so
Speaker 3: much history made there, so like to me, like having
Speaker 3: hosted six previous USAMS and you walk around there and
Speaker 3: not only do they they have the Hogan plaque on eighteen,
Speaker 3: which everyone everyone knows about when he came back from
Speaker 3: the accident and one in nineteen fifty and hit the
Speaker 3: one iron there which I heard you hit that shot
Speaker 3: into the patio.
Speaker 2: It was a classic double cross. I felt like I
Speaker 2: brought a one iron just for that shot and I
Speaker 2: felt like it was too much club and I needed
Speaker 2: to hit a fade and like a big fade and
Speaker 2: then I hooked it. End it was. It was.
Speaker 3: It was tough, but I mean there but there's that,
Speaker 3: there's the Bobby Jones plaque on eleven, you know, when
Speaker 3: he completed the Grand Slam, And eleven's kind of an
Speaker 3: interesting call. I took a video of it. Have you
Speaker 3: seen the big It looks like kind of a cornfield
Speaker 3: right of the green, Yeah, I think so, Yeah, eleven,
Speaker 3: it's kind of right. Reminds me of like a little
Speaker 3: bit of a Field of Dream scenario where like Bobby
Speaker 3: Jones is going to walk out of the the the
Speaker 3: cornstalks like during the during the championship. So I'll have
Speaker 3: my eye on that for sure. But yeah, there's just
Speaker 3: there's a lot of history. Like I didn't realize this either,
Speaker 3: and I had because I'm reading this book. It's called
Speaker 3: Miracle at Marion. It's by David Barrett. It's pretty good
Speaker 3: so far. But there were some things like I didn't
Speaker 3: know and you probably have heard some of this, but
Speaker 3: William Flynn was actually the first greens greens keeper at Marion.
Speaker 2: I knew that that he. I mean a lot of
Speaker 2: people say he's it should be he should have some
Speaker 2: design credit on it. Hugh Wilson's obviously the architect, but
Speaker 2: William Flynn was like huge, huge in the development of
Speaker 2: Marion into what it is today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because because Hugh Wilson died of pneumonia in like
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty five, like they didn't really finish Mary, like
Speaker 3: they tweaked it like every year until like they hosted
Speaker 3: that first US Open. Yeah. So I mean what there
Speaker 3: was a lot of years, like after Wilson's death were
Speaker 3: William Flynn and his what was it his brother were
Speaker 3: like the the guys.
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, William Flynn probably was underappreciated man
Speaker 2: in golf Golden age golf history. It's a shame he's
Speaker 2: not in the World Golf Hall of Fame, is he not?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think there's also in Texas
Speaker 2: Donald Ross, Stevie McDonald, aw Tilling Hast, Robert Trent Jones,
Speaker 2: and Alisa Mackenzie.
Speaker 3: Okay, so so Fazzia is not not in it.
Speaker 2: No, not yet. I think that there needs to be
Speaker 2: a little bit more architect representation. Probably should be some
Speaker 2: superintendents in the World Golf the Hall of Fame too,
Speaker 2: But it's it's a little bit more obsessed with players
Speaker 2: than you know, the people that pushed the push the
Speaker 2: general participation of the sport.
Speaker 3: So well. Tom Tom's uncle George played played in the
Speaker 3: US Open in nineteen fifty at Marion, Like that's kind
Speaker 3: of a fun fact and one last thing storyline no
Speaker 3: one is going to talk about except for maybe me
Speaker 3: the week of Okay, so the greens keeper, the longtime
Speaker 3: greens keeper who succeeded Flynn was a guy by the
Speaker 3: name of Joe Valentine. Not I don't think any relation
Speaker 3: to Bobby Valentine's. But his original name was Giuseppe Valentini.
Speaker 3: So maybe maybe Giuseppe playbla can channel the you know,
Speaker 3: you find that juice.
Speaker 2: Giuseppe playbla young junior, great junior player who qualified for
Speaker 2: the US to Open. Uh, going to Florida.
Speaker 3: Right, going to Florida's second rank behind Miles, like got
Speaker 3: qualified for the US Open, same side as Miles, like
Speaker 3: very good friends with Miles, really good player, and another
Speaker 3: one like I don't know, I feel like these juniors
Speaker 3: like the the not generations, but you know kind of
Speaker 3: four or five year period these groups of juniors like
Speaker 3: had went from like when Scheffler was a junior, you
Speaker 3: had like kind of these really buttoned up, polished like
Speaker 3: country club kids, and then you went into like a
Speaker 3: period of like the the Fortnite as I like to
Speaker 3: call them the Fortnite Crew, where all these kids did
Speaker 3: was like play video games and they were kind of
Speaker 3: silly and you didn't think they really took stuff seriously.
Speaker 3: And now it's kind of evolved into these really polished
Speaker 3: kids again, whether it's Juice or or Miles or Luke Colton,
Speaker 3: like these guys who just love golf and are just
Speaker 3: obsessed with golf. So so that's pretty cool. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the that's the US Amateur. I mean there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of either. I mean there's three hundred and twelve
Speaker 3: guys in the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it should be. It should be an awesome week.
Speaker 2: We'll look forward to reading your coverage and watching you
Speaker 2: on Golf Channel, so everybody can read your stuff there
Speaker 2: and then also watch you. I assume you'll be doing
Speaker 2: the post round interviews like you were last year.
Speaker 3: Well, so it's an unfortunately, you know, not to be
Speaker 3: the bearer of bad news. I don't think that I'll
Speaker 3: be doing the latter. It's an NBC production this year,
Speaker 3: which is actually good. I mean to get out in
Speaker 3: front of a wider audience. The NBC, you know crew
Speaker 3: does have the playoffs FedEx got playoffs this year, so
Speaker 3: it'll be on starting on Wednesday, so there's I think
Speaker 3: it's like three hour coverages every day from Wednesday through
Speaker 3: the final one Sunday, and then on the weekends there's
Speaker 3: like an hour on Peacock and then two hours on
Speaker 3: on NBC. So it's Dan Hicks, I believe it's Smiley
Speaker 3: and then and then Burko is going to be doing
Speaker 3: kind of the role that I did last year. So
Speaker 3: I mean, you get someone who's even better.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Well, we'll look forward to reading your stuff and
Speaker 2: I know you'll be providing a lot of valuable information
Speaker 2: to the NBC team. So thanks so much Brentley, and
Speaker 2: look forward to talking to you again.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Thanks Andy.
Speaker 2: Before we kick it over to Garrett, let's take a
Speaker 2: moment to talk to you about our friends really us
Speaker 2: at Friday Golf Club. Garrett is a huge piece of this.
Speaker 2: What we originally launched as Club TFE is now Frida
Speaker 2: Egg Golf Club and it's your gateway to great golf.
Speaker 2: The team has built FEGC to be a place where
Speaker 2: you go discover great golf courses, connect with our community,
Speaker 2: and play more great golf. Today the club features a
Speaker 2: live list of course profiles available to members with me
Speaker 2: with member reviews, a live feed of discussions happening across
Speaker 2: the app. We have an app and a map showing
Speaker 2: where members live across the country. Live lists of open meetups,
Speaker 2: upcoming events and international trips on the calendar. Get involved
Speaker 2: today and join the club at thefridagg dot com slash membership.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to Garrett Morrison and talking about Marion
Speaker 2: Golf Club. All right, Garrett Morrison, the host of the
Speaker 2: golf podcasts, You've got a big podcast out about Marion.
Speaker 2: We're going to bite grab you for a bite size
Speaker 2: amount of discussion on Marion Golf Club, host of this
Speaker 2: year's us AMATE, one of the most decorated golf courses
Speaker 2: in an American golf Garrett, you went out to Marian
Speaker 2: for the first time about I don't know, two weeks
Speaker 2: ago or so, what I wanted to kind of pinion
Speaker 2: down here for three things about Marion. What was your
Speaker 2: first big impression that it made on you.
Speaker 1: The first thing about Marion that I think is important
Speaker 1: or that jumped out to me as soon as I
Speaker 1: played the course walk the course was the ingeniousness of
Speaker 1: the routing, just how the routing works across the small property.
Speaker 1: When you're playing the course, you don't have the sense
Speaker 1: that this is just one hundred and fifteen acres that
Speaker 1: the course itself sits on, and then the total property
Speaker 1: is something like one hundred and twenty six very small
Speaker 1: property by championship golf standards. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at Shinnecock Hills, for instance, you're up around two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty acres maybe two hundred for just the golf
Speaker 1: course itself, and so a petite property. But when you're
Speaker 1: playing the course, you have the feeling of expansiveness of like,
Speaker 1: these holes have plenty of room and they're just doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. You're not going back and forth. You're
Speaker 1: kind of looping around the property in a pleasing way.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's all down to how well
Speaker 1: the concept of the routing works. And the basic concept
Speaker 1: of the routing is that once you cross Ardmore Avenue,
Speaker 1: which you do after you play the first hole, you're
Speaker 1: kind of in this valley that's about three hundred yards
Speaker 1: wide and maybe a thousand yards long, and in this
Speaker 1: valley you sort of do a couple of overlapping loops
Speaker 1: right as you go through the valley, you're always changing direction,
Speaker 1: you're looping through the property rather than just kind of
Speaker 1: playing back and forth through it. And that kind of
Speaker 1: continues throughout the golf course, where where where the routing
Speaker 1: is is always you know, creating these circles rather than
Speaker 1: just laying holes next to each other. And even in
Speaker 1: the parts where holes are kind of next to each
Speaker 1: other and playing back and forth for maybe two or
Speaker 1: three holes at a time, they're they're playing at angles,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're finding new ways to to use the land.
Speaker 1: And so it's just an absolutely brilliant routing. It's really
Speaker 1: subtle how it works. You kind of have to to
Speaker 1: see it and walk it in order to understand it.
Speaker 1: But that's the number one thing that I think is
Speaker 1: great about this golf course. It's just it's just the routing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree, it's hard to visualize until you're
Speaker 2: on property. So for the podcast listeners, I think, like
Speaker 2: you know, for me, where like really sets in how
Speaker 2: neat the holes interact is when you're standing on three
Speaker 2: tuh to me is like a moment, so you know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of right in the middle of the valley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then in two you play you go across
Speaker 2: the road and then you play this par five up
Speaker 2: the hill and then you're standing on three and it's
Speaker 2: this par three and it's a it's a ridged ridge hole.
Speaker 2: So you're teeing off from one the high ridge that
Speaker 2: two's on, and you're teeing off to this other ridge
Speaker 2: that some uh some of the other holes like seven
Speaker 2: are situated on, eight is situated there, four T is
Speaker 2: situated there, And you're sitting there and you're looking across
Speaker 2: the screen and then you're looking down five, which to
Speaker 2: me is like as all world of a golf holes
Speaker 2: it gets, and it's just like perfectly fit into this
Speaker 2: little valley. And then six T plays out of the
Speaker 2: valley up and you're just like in your tea across
Speaker 2: this valley and it's like, oh, this is how like
Speaker 2: you economize, Like you get eighteen holes on a tiny property.
Speaker 2: Is indeed, like everybody will be like, oh, why can't
Speaker 2: we build marions anymore? Why can't we build these golf
Speaker 2: courses that fit perfectly into this one hundred and fifteen
Speaker 2: acre site. I would just like point out that the
Speaker 2: reason that this is even possible. Is that the land
Speaker 2: just like they found a piece of property that was
Speaker 2: perfectly scaled for a golf where there's nothing too severe
Speaker 2: and there the every contours is about the right size
Speaker 2: for golf, and they that's how they fit it all together.
Speaker 2: Is like, yeah, there's some corners that they cleverly get
Speaker 2: out of, but for the most part, there's nowhere on
Speaker 2: the one hundred and fifteen acres that you would put
Speaker 2: like a big X as they like, we can't go
Speaker 2: here because there's no way to get out, and it's
Speaker 2: just it's it's fascinating. I think, like it's the charm,
Speaker 2: it's the it's the secret sauce, the the most amazing
Speaker 2: thing about Marion. But as equipment has has has not
Speaker 2: been regulated. It's also kind of the curse of Marion
Speaker 2: in the sense of it's this golf club that is
Speaker 2: like holding on for dear life to championships. And I
Speaker 2: think it's the most interesting part of the USAM this
Speaker 2: this year. I talked about this with Brentley also, but like,
Speaker 2: how does this hold up to the modern game. We
Speaker 2: haven't seen it since twenty thirteen. In the last thirteen years,
Speaker 2: a lot a lot has changed and I think it's
Speaker 2: the most fascinating thing. And there's nowhere for it to go,
Speaker 2: you know, there's nowhere to build back teas. And I
Speaker 2: think like the USGA kicking the can on the on
Speaker 2: the rollback but setting a firm date twenty thirty, this
Speaker 2: is happening is because twenty thirty US Open host is Marion.
Speaker 2: There's nowhere to go. It's sub seven seven thousand yards
Speaker 2: and fifty too. Yeah, yeah, we're.
Speaker 1: Gonna keep going. We're going back there every ten years.
Speaker 1: It's like a little check in, can we still play here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's but it's one of the great ballparks
Speaker 2: that that we have in the sport of golf. And
Speaker 2: I think it it like most likens to a Rigley
Speaker 2: or a Fenway in sense of like it's kind of
Speaker 2: like intimacy and and just romanticism as a golf course.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. Yeah, And as you say, the property
Speaker 1: is sort of underrated because the topography is kind of rolling.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a general tendency of the land.
Speaker 1: You know that eleventh green is the lowest point and
Speaker 1: the fifteenth green is the highest point. So so there
Speaker 1: is a general tilt to the land, But within that
Speaker 1: tilt there's a lot of There are a lot of
Speaker 1: little pocket valleys. There's of course the famous quarry where sixteen,
Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen are located. There are little knolls and
Speaker 1: ridges and spines and channels and all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: for the golf holes to use, and so clearly a
Speaker 1: well selected piece of land. They didn't need at the
Speaker 1: time more land to do what they were doing, because
Speaker 1: you know, I would assume they could have used more
Speaker 1: land if they had wanted to, because a lot of
Speaker 1: them surrounding neighborhood was not yet built, and so you know,
Speaker 1: they may have been able to expand the property or
Speaker 1: buy a couple of extra parcels, but they just they
Speaker 1: didn't feel that they needed to. This is the land
Speaker 1: that they needed. They packed in the holes, and you know,
Speaker 1: it still stands as pretty relevant for championship golf today.
Speaker 1: But we'll see exactly how relevant this coming week.
Speaker 2: Probably about is fun of one of the championship courses
Speaker 2: for like a regular golfer, and part of that is
Speaker 2: because of the size of it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely it's a I mean, it's a really easy walk
Speaker 1: obviously because everything is pretty close together, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not overwhelming in it's in its size and scale.
Speaker 2: What's your second thing?
Speaker 1: Second thing is related to a point you were just
Speaker 1: making about its its relevance for a championship golf. I
Speaker 1: think that this golf course in a really interesting way
Speaker 1: resists pure raw inaccurate distance. It does so in some
Speaker 1: ways that are maybe not so great, which we can
Speaker 1: talk about later. But the brilliant thing about the current
Speaker 1: version of Marion is that there aren't many holes where
Speaker 1: you even want to hit a three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: yard t shot. There are a couple holes in that
Speaker 1: opening sequence of the golf course where, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: let loose a little bit. You can hit it long
Speaker 1: on the second hole, you can hit it long on
Speaker 1: the fourth and fifth holes, and maybe even on the
Speaker 1: sixth hole. But once you get to the seventh hole,
Speaker 1: this is where the kind of shorter section of the
Speaker 1: course kicks in, right. It's what the Golf Digest editor
Speaker 1: Jerry Tarty referred to as the comedy section of the
Speaker 1: golf course, where you have a bunch of short par
Speaker 1: fours and then thirteen is a short par three. Well,
Speaker 1: as you're playing through this section of the course, there's
Speaker 1: really nowhere where you want to let loose and hit
Speaker 1: a three hundred and fifty yard drive. You're going to
Speaker 1: be hitting you know, elite players are going to be
Speaker 1: hitting a lot of irons and then you know, shortish
Speaker 1: approach shots, but they're not going to be trying to
Speaker 1: drive the green on these holes. They're just going to
Speaker 1: be playing to certain landing zones and then hitting their
Speaker 1: approaches from there. And so I think that Marion as
Speaker 1: it currently stands is a course that's not easily overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by top end power because on a lot of holes,
Speaker 1: there's just not much of an incentive to really hit
Speaker 1: it as far as you can. So you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to see longer players hitting quite a few irons
Speaker 1: off the t's, you know, hybrids and things of that nature,
Speaker 1: rather than just reaching for driver every time. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why a sixty nine hundred yard golf course,
Speaker 1: which this essentially is, can still host big championships. It's
Speaker 1: because it's not like the old course where you can
Speaker 1: sort of hit driver everywhere. There are more of these
Speaker 1: kind of precision, constricted holes that limit the amount of
Speaker 1: distance that you even want to pursue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking with a competitor about Marion and
Speaker 2: they were kind of asking me, you know, hey, what
Speaker 2: do you think, Like I said, this is a ball
Speaker 2: control golf course. This is a golf course that if
Speaker 2: you can really execute a sound game plan. And what
Speaker 2: I mean by execute is where you have one of
Speaker 2: those weeks where you really have good control of your
Speaker 2: golf ball and you can really really you can. It's
Speaker 2: just a tactical golf course. You have to think to me,
Speaker 2: like you can push with driver, but it's it's not.
Speaker 2: It's fraught with risk because the way the greens are.
Speaker 2: I feel like when you're in the rough and you
Speaker 2: have like those sixty seventy yard shots or fifty yard shots,
Speaker 2: if you're in the wrong spot, you're just gonna have
Speaker 2: a really hard time, you know, dealing with that versus
Speaker 2: you know, it presents an opportunity to hit a lot
Speaker 2: of irons as you were saying, and played one hundred
Speaker 2: yards to one hundred and you know, one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty yards and control your spin, control your ball. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of like obviously ridges that green sit on,
Speaker 2: and there's some fierce false fronts and it is a
Speaker 2: it's just like a it's a it's a very it's
Speaker 2: I'm really interested to see how how players deal with
Speaker 2: the golf course. I think there's going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of people that try to overpower it, and I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated to see how it goes because like, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure this is the thing that the USGA is watching
Speaker 2: very closely with it. But yeah, I you know, it's
Speaker 2: like funny, like you play after you play six, it's
Speaker 2: like seven, you can hit driver. You don't have to Eight,
Speaker 2: you can hit driver, you don't have to Nine. Obviously
Speaker 2: iconically long par three, they might hit the driver there
Speaker 2: depending on the wind.
Speaker 1: You know, they put it at that like two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy yard tis or whatever they have back there.
Speaker 2: We played that when I played in the Fall, I
Speaker 2: hit three wood and it was the flag was back.
Speaker 2: It was you know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I heard you guys played the back teas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or he did not.
Speaker 1: At the USGAMI Medio day we played we played nine
Speaker 1: at like one thirty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fun. It was fun playing the back teas.
Speaker 2: It's like I to me, it's like, it's it's funny.
Speaker 2: You know, I've said this before. I played it in
Speaker 2: Succession in the Fall of Shinnacock and uh An Ironomy
Speaker 2: were the three courses three days in a row. I
Speaker 2: found Marion to be the most gettable, and that's just
Speaker 2: for me personally, right, And I didn't obviously play it
Speaker 2: in championship setup conditions, so it's like important caveats. But
Speaker 2: I thought that this was the course that, like, oh,
Speaker 2: if you really have control of your golf ball, like
Speaker 2: there's not that many obstacles in your way, now, you
Speaker 2: know it could I could have just caught it on
Speaker 2: a day where I played exceptionally well and that's how
Speaker 2: you walk away feeling. But I felt like putting at
Speaker 2: Aronomic was much more challenging. From middles of greens to pins.
Speaker 2: I think this is a golf course that I'm just
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated to see what the scoring looks like. If
Speaker 2: the rough is not insane, ru.
Speaker 1: Is gonna be pretty high. I mean it was high.
Speaker 1: I think it has to be. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think they're gonna I think they're gonna go hard
Speaker 1: at the Amateur. But yeah, I mean, as as you say,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit hard to tell because again we
Speaker 1: have not seen the course in elite, high profile play
Speaker 1: since twenty thirteen, and a lot has changed since twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: But I think a big reason why a lot of
Speaker 1: players may not use driver repeatedly off the tee or
Speaker 1: try to you know, you could maybe some of the
Speaker 1: longer players could maybe go for the seventh green for instance,
Speaker 1: short part four a lot will be long enough to
Speaker 1: maybe go for it. But the problem is on some
Speaker 1: of those holes you have out of bounds coming into play.
Speaker 1: So on the first hole, for instance, probably reachable from
Speaker 1: the tee for some players, depending on where the tea
Speaker 1: markers are located. But if you go over, if you
Speaker 1: pull it left, if you go over the green, or
Speaker 1: you go through the fair way through the dog leg,
Speaker 1: you might end up on Ardmorn Avenue. Then on the
Speaker 1: tenth hole, it's kind of the same deal, right, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of players are going to be going
Speaker 1: for that green, but if you take too much club
Speaker 1: or you hit it a little bit too far, you
Speaker 1: could go out of bounds. There's out of bounds right
Speaker 1: along the right side of the seventh hole, along the
Speaker 1: right side of the eighth hole, there's very much out
Speaker 1: of bounds in play. On the fifteenth hole, this dog
Speaker 1: leg right where out of bounds cuts in sharply from
Speaker 1: the left. So if you take too much club and
Speaker 1: you pull it a little bit, you're going to be
Speaker 1: on the road or maybe even in the houses on
Speaker 1: the other side of the road. Like, that's very much
Speaker 1: in play on those holes, and so I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are going to be some players who want to
Speaker 1: get aggressive, but they might end up ob which I
Speaker 1: think is the biggest and maybe one of the last
Speaker 1: remaining disincentives for trying to overpower a golf course is
Speaker 1: that presence of a OB And that's very much in
Speaker 1: play at Marrying because of the constricted nature of the
Speaker 1: property and the fact that the holes have to be
Speaker 1: right out to the edge of the property in order
Speaker 1: to create room in the middle for more holes. So,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's that's kind of what I'm going to
Speaker 1: be keeping an eye on, is like how much are
Speaker 1: these guys really willing to risk.
Speaker 2: Ob Yeah, I mean it creates a lot of Uh.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the challenge comes from the
Speaker 2: par threes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not really really long.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have a lot of variety in terms of
Speaker 2: of of yardage. You know shot you know you hit long,
Speaker 2: you hit long, clubs into three of the four par threes,
Speaker 2: and then they have the great shorty that plays right
Speaker 2: back to the clubhouse thirteen. But you know three is
Speaker 2: from you know, the back t two fifty six. Nine
Speaker 2: is two thirty six, and then you obviously have seventeen
Speaker 2: to two forty six. You know, you could theoretically if
Speaker 2: they you know, I think it's the job of the
Speaker 2: Championship to vary these distances, because I think some of
Speaker 2: them do. Like I think three, you know that that's
Speaker 2: going to be a long, hardhold no matter what. I
Speaker 2: think nine could be pretty interesting at different yardages.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, in different pin positions, right, Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: have the easier and the harder pin positions on nine
Speaker 1: because that's a pretty big green, right and a complex
Speaker 1: screen relatively in terms of contour. So you could have
Speaker 1: funnel pins, you could have knob pins, and you could
Speaker 1: move the tee up or back depending on whether you're
Speaker 1: where the pin is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's like to me, that's where those are
Speaker 2: the holes where you're just like holding on for hope
Speaker 2: a lot of the time, and there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: obviously challenging part fours, Like you know, the eleventh is
Speaker 2: a very hard part four. You know, the fifth is
Speaker 2: an incredibly hard part for the sixth is a tough
Speaker 2: part four, you know, the and you could slip up
Speaker 2: on the other part fours. You have the sixteenth which
Speaker 2: is hard par four and eighteen hard part four. But like,
Speaker 2: there's also so many wedge opportunities. It's really like if
Speaker 2: you kind of I think Augusta plays out a little
Speaker 2: bit like this, but in a different fashion. Where at
Speaker 2: Augusta you have really scorable holes and really challenging holes,
Speaker 2: and there's a set of each. At Augusta there's a
Speaker 2: little bit more variety of where those challenging holes fit
Speaker 2: in in terms of like different you know, different types
Speaker 2: of holes. Here. To me, it's the par threes and
Speaker 2: the long par fours, and and that's kind of the
Speaker 2: story of the golf course. Get well, get your like,
Speaker 2: get your scoring done on the on the shorter holes,
Speaker 2: take care of business there, and just try to score
Speaker 2: a get in a round par on the other holes,
Speaker 2: and you're going to you know, you're going to have
Speaker 2: a good score.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to give you my third thing now
Speaker 1: because I think it's somewhat relates to this discussion of
Speaker 1: how Marion tries to combat distance, and that's narrow fairways
Speaker 1: and thick rough One thing that really jumped out to
Speaker 1: me during my round was how constricted a lot of
Speaker 1: the fairways are and how the mowing lines just kind
Speaker 1: of converge into the middle. If you compare it to
Speaker 1: William Flynn's vintage plans of the East course at Marion,
Speaker 1: you'll see that today's fairways are much much smaller. And
Speaker 1: this is the case even after gil Hans's you know,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen twenty nineteen renovation of Marion. Usually something that
Speaker 1: gil Hans will do at golf courses when he restores
Speaker 1: them or historically renovates them, is that he will expand
Speaker 1: the fairways. At Marion, not much of that occurred. A
Speaker 1: couple of holes got bumped out a bit from their
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen dimensions, but for the most part, what we
Speaker 1: see at Marion are very narrow fairways, and this comes
Speaker 1: through very clearly on a couple of particular holes on eleven,
Speaker 1: a short par four going downhill with a green kind
Speaker 1: of nestled into the bend of a creek. It's a
Speaker 1: famous green site. People have probably seen pictures of it.
Speaker 1: Really beautiful location. This fairway used to be pretty wide
Speaker 1: and you could kind of position yourself wherever in order
Speaker 1: to attack this fiercely protected green. Now that fairway very hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's visually hard, visually intimidating. You can't see much and
Speaker 1: there's no room for air. Right the green is sort
Speaker 1: of pushed up, and then you have the creek and
Speaker 1: you have runoffs on the sides. So it's a tough
Speaker 1: web shot, even if it is a web shot. Well,
Speaker 1: the fairway now is extremely narrow. You really don't have
Speaker 1: anywhere to play, and so it's just one option. You're
Speaker 1: playing to one particular location and then you're hitting from there.
Speaker 1: And so I would say on a lot of holes
Speaker 1: at Marion, it's kind of target golf right now, and
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a bummer. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you can totally understand what the club is doing because
Speaker 1: this is one thing that is going to keep scoring
Speaker 1: at top tournaments in check. If you widen those fairways,
Speaker 1: driver would be more available off the tee on a
Speaker 1: lot of holes, and scoring would be different. I think
Speaker 1: the golf course would be better and more interesting, But
Speaker 1: would it still be a viable US Open venue? I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure. So I get the conundrum that the
Speaker 1: club finds itself in. This is a course that you
Speaker 1: can't lengthen much beyond, you know, sixty nine hundred yards
Speaker 1: or so, and so they feel that they absolutely must
Speaker 1: keep those fairways narrower and then grow up the rough
Speaker 1: so that you manufacture some higher scores. But certainly it's
Speaker 1: not you know, faithful to the original design or to
Speaker 1: the intentions of Hugh Wilson or William Flynn. And in
Speaker 1: my opinion, it just doesn't it doesn't make the golf
Speaker 1: course better.
Speaker 2: I you know, I completely agree. I think like I
Speaker 2: found myself laughing on the eleventh hole.
Speaker 1: You can't well, I mean on the eleventh hole, there's
Speaker 1: this other thing that's it's the same case on the
Speaker 1: seventh hole. You can't see any fairway grass from the tee.
Speaker 1: It's just all rough in front of you. So the
Speaker 1: fairwaight is not only narrow, but it starts really late, right,
Speaker 1: it starts really far downrange, and so you're just staring
Speaker 1: at all this rough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like so out of scale for the
Speaker 2: the you know, property is like nobody in the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties and I think that it's a you know, Mary
Speaker 2: is like the maybe the ultimate, like how do you
Speaker 2: stay relevant in Like what what are the crazy things
Speaker 2: we have to do to stay relevant in the modern era?
Speaker 2: And like you hit on a lot of the things
Speaker 2: they do. It's narrow fairways, thick rough and you know,
Speaker 2: I think it's gotten to the point though, where like
Speaker 2: the ball goes so far and players hit it so
Speaker 2: far that you know, it takes driver even out of
Speaker 2: the equation on holes that used to be driver holes,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think that's like what I'm really
Speaker 2: really compelled to see this this coming week with the
Speaker 2: amp is like I think it's a golf course. There's
Speaker 2: like there's like four or five driver holes on the
Speaker 2: whole thing, and if you just play back, you're still
Speaker 2: only hitting nine irons or wedges into the greens on
Speaker 2: a lot of these holes. With how far the ball goes.
Speaker 2: It's just I'm not I'm I don't know, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: I completely agree. I think the golf course would be
Speaker 2: way more fun day and day out with fairways that
Speaker 2: were even closer to their original size. Now that runs
Speaker 2: completely counter to what they're trying to do. As one
Speaker 2: of the USGA, you know, anchor sites, regular host and
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do with that. It just doesn't
Speaker 2: match right what this golf course wants to be and
Speaker 2: what it was. It was a outstanding championship course. It
Speaker 2: kind of reminds me a little bit of the conundrum
Speaker 2: like that Myopia Hunt Club finds itself in or Myopia
Speaker 2: Hunt Club, Like when you walk into Myopia Hunt Club,
Speaker 2: you're going to hear about you know, the highest US
Speaker 2: Open scorer ever was at Myopia Hind Club. It was
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds, like and it's like, but we're
Speaker 2: holding on to that that pretense of it, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, I this is Mariyanto Me is like at
Speaker 2: the forefront of the ball and the manufacturer discussion with
Speaker 2: the USBA, And it's fascinating that it and Pebble to
Speaker 2: Me are like the two golf courses. Like if you
Speaker 2: said to me, like what do we need to do
Speaker 2: to get the players and equipment manufacturers on on board?
Speaker 2: If I'm the USGA, I'm just going to start retiring
Speaker 2: places and Marion and Pebble to Me are would be
Speaker 2: retired tomorrow. If I was the Tzar of Golf I'd
Speaker 2: be I'd say, you know, if I was a czar,
Speaker 2: I don't have a listen to the equipment manufacturers, but
Speaker 2: I would say, well, we can't go there anymore because
Speaker 2: you're the clubs and the equipment go too far. You know,
Speaker 2: I just watched I was, you know, the morning after
Speaker 2: this recording. I just I'm fresh off two days and like,
Speaker 2: to me, it's like I could not imagine the anger
Speaker 2: from fans if you said that Wrigley Field and Fenway
Speaker 2: were no longer capable of hosting baseball games. And that's
Speaker 2: effectively where we've gotten with like Marion. Marion has to
Speaker 2: do all this stuff in order to try to host
Speaker 2: and now people are going to beat their chest and
Speaker 2: be like the last time Moss heroes one over, but
Speaker 2: they completely manufactured that score with like hack it out
Speaker 2: rough and extremely narrow fairways, which is not the original
Speaker 2: intent of the golf course. And now the discussion, though
Speaker 2: becomes like should the intent change, Like if you actually
Speaker 2: were trying to scale what golf was and what golf
Speaker 2: is now, fairways would be wider than it used to
Speaker 2: be because the golf ball goes further and thus the
Speaker 2: cone of like driving accuracy is wider. Yeah, Actually, narrow
Speaker 2: fairways would be better if the golf ball went thirty percent.
Speaker 1: Shorter, Yeah, I mean I think there is, then it.
Speaker 2: Would go thirty percent less offline.
Speaker 1: Right, It would make more sense for Yeah, the scale
Speaker 1: of the shot being hit. You know, this is something
Speaker 1: our colleague Joseph Almania talks about a lot. I think
Speaker 1: there are, you know, quite a few fairways even at
Speaker 1: the current version of the East Course where it would
Speaker 1: be more or less random whether you hit the fairway
Speaker 1: with a driver, right, and and that's not really what
Speaker 1: you want from a competitive standpoint. But the thing is
Speaker 1: people are so focused on score and on score in
Speaker 1: relation to par that you know, it creates this this
Speaker 1: motive for the USGA and for their host clubs to
Speaker 1: get that score no matter what the other effects on
Speaker 1: the golf course. And so you know, there's a version
Speaker 1: of Marion where it's just treated as a kind of
Speaker 1: museum piece, where the intention is just to preserve the
Speaker 1: architecture of Hugh Wilson and William Flynn and to offer
Speaker 1: members a historically authentic version of a great golf course.
Speaker 1: But it's so baked into the ethos and attitude of
Speaker 1: the club. I think that they are a US Open host,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be hard to uproot that feeling
Speaker 1: in the club. It's kind of part of who they
Speaker 1: think they are. And so this is the golf course
Speaker 1: you get as a result. But yeah, of course, you
Speaker 1: and I wish that they would just say we're no
Speaker 1: longer hosting the US Open in this era. We're you know,
Speaker 1: I think if enough clubs, in fact, if enough powerful
Speaker 1: clubs put their feet down and said we can't host
Speaker 1: anymore with this equipment, then there there would be maybe
Speaker 1: more movement on the equipment regulation front. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the best version of the East Course at Marion would
Speaker 1: result from the club just saying, yeah, we can't do
Speaker 1: the US Open anymore. We can't even do the US
Speaker 1: Amateur anymore. Bring us the US Women's Amateur, bring us
Speaker 1: the US Women's Open. But otherwise we are going to
Speaker 1: focus on and prioritize our golf course. That's that's when
Speaker 1: you would start to get you know what, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: would be the greatest version of this golf course.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's an interesting cultural thing. Like Chicago
Speaker 2: Golf Club a couple of years ago, looked very very closely.
Speaker 2: A lot a lot of discussion exploration around hosting a
Speaker 2: US Open, and you know, it's just an interesting the
Speaker 2: difference of clubs and but like championships haven't been a
Speaker 2: part of the ethos at Chicago Golf. Like, yeah, sure
Speaker 2: they hosted a lot of like cool tournaments over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's been a long time since they hosted a
Speaker 2: a US Open.
Speaker 1: The big tournament stopped like early in the twentieth century, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they kicked the can. They've got like a
Speaker 2: pretty big property, They've got the ability to stretch the
Speaker 2: golf course pretty far. But what happened was in order
Speaker 2: to do it, they were going to have to build
Speaker 2: a new hole and rearrange everything. And I think this
Speaker 2: is it's very similar to like the links what's going
Speaker 2: on in the UK right now. And when it got
Speaker 2: to that, the club said, what are we doing, No,
Speaker 2: we'll host the were happy hosting the women's and not
Speaker 2: changing our historic golf course and present the our golf course.
Speaker 2: And and the discourse really I think with the USGA,
Speaker 2: from from everybody I've talked to about it over there,
Speaker 2: centered around like we don't we actually don't care about
Speaker 2: score at all. If we do this, we whatever they shoot,
Speaker 2: they shoot, But they are playing Chicago Golf Club presented
Speaker 2: the way Chicago Golf Club is is was presented like
Speaker 2: that was kind of and it's just interesting, like every
Speaker 2: club has a different kind of ethos and it's you know,
Speaker 2: I understand why Marian's is so rooted in in US
Speaker 2: opens championship golf courses. It has a you know, a
Speaker 2: vibrant national membership. It has like I mean, they they
Speaker 2: have a ton of visitor play, that guest play that
Speaker 2: comes from you know, we're going to play one of
Speaker 2: the great American championship golf courses and that And it's
Speaker 2: not nothing's wrong with that, it's just it's it's just
Speaker 2: it's a representative. It's just so representative of where modern
Speaker 2: championship golf is between you know, infrastructure, but also just
Speaker 2: how far golfers hit the ball. It's just like the
Speaker 2: perfect golf course that encapsulates the whole push and pull
Speaker 2: of of high level men's amateur golf or high level
Speaker 2: men's competitive golf right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's a it's a great test case
Speaker 1: and I think the US Amateur is going to provide
Speaker 1: a nice little check in to see how we're doing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's great that this tournament has
Speaker 1: come right after the USGA has once again decided to
Speaker 1: put off the decision making and the implementation of this
Speaker 1: proposed golf ball roll back. You know, Let's let's see
Speaker 1: how that's going. Let's see how the the younger generation
Speaker 1: of male golfers is now playing Marion. I think it
Speaker 1: will be very interesting.
Speaker 2: All right, Garrett, everybody can go listen to your full
Speaker 2: what is it about an hour and a half.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good. It's going to be somewhere around there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I did an interview with Wayne Morrison, who is
Speaker 1: the foremost authority in the world on William Flynn and
Speaker 1: probably knows more about Marion specifically than anybody else. So
Speaker 1: I interviewed him and and that's going to be on
Speaker 1: the Design and Golf podcast, So a little bit of
Speaker 1: an in depth exploration of Marion's history and design there
Speaker 1: if if people want to want to go a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper. And then we also have a video that
Speaker 1: just came out on the on the morning that you
Speaker 1: and I are recording this so that it'll be up
Speaker 1: on the YouTube channel by the time people are listening
Speaker 1: to this certainly where you know we we basically walk
Speaker 1: through the East course and talk about how the routing works.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you want to see some some
Speaker 1: visuals put to the routing discussion that that we had
Speaker 1: on on this episode, then then that's a good place
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks Garrett, look forward to here in your podcast,
Speaker 2: and thanks as always for everything you do from on
Speaker 2: the architecture front at Friday Golf. Thanks Anny, all right,
Speaker 2: big thanks for listening to another edition of the Friday
Speaker 2: Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ for editing and producing this.
Speaker 2: It's been a busy week for him. He's in Chicago
Speaker 2: with me this week filming some stuff for the upcoming
Speaker 2: President's Cup. So big thanks to our guests as well,
Speaker 2: and thanks for listening as always to the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 2: We'll be back next week.