Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: We are back with another edition of the Friday Egg Podcast,
Speaker 1: and I am joined with Garrett Morrison Man, the editor
Speaker 1: of The Friday Egg. Hey, hey you're back.
Speaker 2: I'm back.
Speaker 1: Successful podcast debut with Bob Crosby got a lot of
Speaker 1: great feedback. I was, I don't know where I was
Speaker 1: a lot of people are telling me they loved it though.
Speaker 2: That's great to hear. Bob was an awesome guest, and
Speaker 2: so it's all downhill from here.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know a least see you'll have those the
Speaker 1: glory of your first time, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So today we've got Kevin More coming on. He is
Speaker 1: a University of Georgia mathematics professor also runs a business
Speaker 1: doing golf course strategy. So I think this was inspired
Speaker 1: by Rory's comments about setup and strategy this weekend from
Speaker 1: the Dunhill Links. So Garrett, you've got more on Kevin
Speaker 1: and kind of the basis for this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. I mean, Kevin is just a really good
Speaker 2: and unique thinker about golf in general. He sort of
Speaker 2: has a foot in both camps where he's a competitive
Speaker 2: golfer with a real pedigree and he advises competitive golfers
Speaker 2: on how to manage their games. But at the same
Speaker 2: time he's a lover of golf course architecture, so he
Speaker 2: should be a really interesting person to talk to. So,
Speaker 2: you know, in addition to being a professor of mathematics
Speaker 2: education at at Georgia, the founder of the course management
Speaker 2: company you talked about, Squares to Circles, he's also involved
Speaker 2: with a new club and finally he'll be a participate
Speaker 2: a participant in our roundtable at the Thoroughbred, which takes
Speaker 2: place on Saturday, October twelfth at Ach and Golf Clubs.
Speaker 2: So that should be a really interesting discussion as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that should be fun.
Speaker 1: We'll have Kai Goldby there too, so an architect, so
Speaker 1: that should be it'll be an interesting discussion about design
Speaker 1: and strategy with those two. And Kai was a great
Speaker 1: player in his own regard. He played in college, he's
Speaker 1: cousins with the Hosses, and his father won the Masters. Yes,
Speaker 1: so he knows a little pretty decent competitive golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so here we go. Here's our conversation
Speaker 2: with Kevin Moore.
Speaker 3: The Frida egg requires a different technique. What you need
Speaker 3: to do is actually square the face so they'll down
Speaker 3: underneath that bad lie and propell that ball right out
Speaker 3: onto the green. Here's the take.
Speaker 1: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely
Speaker 1: different than playing out of a nice clean lion of
Speaker 1: green side bunker. You need to be aggressive on any show,
Speaker 1: whether it's sitting cleanly or it's a Friday egg.
Speaker 2: Well, we've all faked the dreaded Friday. Not to be
Speaker 2: feared though.
Speaker 3: It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit. Kevin, how
Speaker 3: are you Andy? I'm doing good. How are you? Oh?
Speaker 1: Just swell, you know, just a swell, wonderful day here
Speaker 1: in Chicago. What's the new? What's the down in Georgia?
Speaker 1: How's the how's the golf season going?
Speaker 3: The golf season is ninety five and hot. We haven't
Speaker 3: got that fall break yet, but that still means we
Speaker 3: can play a lot of golf. Uh, Unlike you all,
Speaker 3: we don't have to worry about our season running out.
Speaker 3: So I'll keep on playing through the entire year while
Speaker 3: you suffer through that Chicago winter.
Speaker 2: That seemed like an unnecessary swipe there, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, we got to take it where we can
Speaker 3: get it. You know, we struggle all summer, so we
Speaker 3: have to we have to bask in the glory of
Speaker 3: our November, December and January.
Speaker 1: Yeah, luckily my golf game is uh is making me
Speaker 1: long for a hiatus playing lovesy golf, So it's about
Speaker 1: time to hang him up for a while.
Speaker 3: I'll get to see it in person on Thursday.
Speaker 1: It's true. Right around the corner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to get to hang it up
Speaker 2: that that's soon. Right, we're all woods.
Speaker 3: He's just walking me into a hustle. Right there is
Speaker 3: what he's doing.
Speaker 1: I got, I got two way mess gone, so I'm
Speaker 1: not hustling anyway.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Then you're not you're not my you're
Speaker 3: not my teammate. Then if you have that going, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's uh so Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyways, this weekend, big comments from Rory McElroy when he talks,
Speaker 1: everybody listens. And he went after the European Tour for
Speaker 1: set up and saying, is SAT separating the good players,
Speaker 1: you know, SATs separating good and bad shots or good
Speaker 1: and bad shots enough, and then went into some strategy piece.
Speaker 1: So we figured he'd be better to talk to you
Speaker 1: than Kevin Moore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right when he talks, I typically listened with
Speaker 3: just nodding along. But these ones are a little perplexing
Speaker 3: in some points, a whole lot to unpack with some
Speaker 3: of the things that he said.
Speaker 2: What did you find perplexing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Rory what he's been one of the
Speaker 3: biggest I guess in terms of professional golfers, proponents of
Speaker 3: you know, those of us that are are hearkening back
Speaker 3: to some of the older days and like to just
Speaker 3: play with the thought experiments of what what older technology
Speaker 3: look like. And he's spoken, you know, his message off
Speaker 3: and reverberates with that. But you know, this one he
Speaker 3: went in on course set up and he sort of
Speaker 3: conflated two things he doesn't typically conflate in terms of
Speaker 3: mixing strategy and shot making along with course setup, which
Speaker 3: has really made it a sort of a jumbled mess.
Speaker 3: If I'm being honest, I think a lot of it
Speaker 3: was in reaction to unhappiness with display and everything. Obviously
Speaker 3: is a very articulate and very intelligent golfer. But yeah,
Speaker 3: just in terms of the comments that were there, there's
Speaker 3: just a whole lot that was meshed together, right.
Speaker 2: And he said at one point that you play with
Speaker 2: more strategy at PGA Tour courses, or that the soft
Speaker 2: setups on the European Tour demand less in the way
Speaker 2: of strategy than American courses on the PGA Tour do.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering what do you think he means by strategy?
Speaker 2: There as somebody who works with, you know, elite golfers,
Speaker 2: really good golfers, on how to approach a course tactically.
Speaker 2: What do you think he means by that?
Speaker 3: Honestly, that's a hard question to answer because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of different directions we could go with that. You know,
Speaker 3: we could look at the different setups across the European Tour,
Speaker 3: which I see a wide variety of golf courses, probably
Speaker 3: arguably much wider than the PGA Tour sees, right, but
Speaker 3: they have a lot of courses more in line with
Speaker 3: the Trinity Forest than we have one trinity for us
Speaker 3: where they also range into their tree line, dog leg,
Speaker 3: bunkered courses as well on the European tour that we
Speaker 3: see all across the PGA Tour. So maybe, I mean,
Speaker 3: he definitely could have been speaking just relative to his
Speaker 3: recent experiences what he spoke to with Renaissance in the
Speaker 3: Old Course in Carnoustie as well as Kings Barns. They
Speaker 3: didn't see the toughest conditions. So you run into those
Speaker 3: courses and it's not a very penalizing game. There's not,
Speaker 3: honestly for a pro tour player on those courses under
Speaker 3: those conditions, there's not a whole lot of thinking going
Speaker 3: on in a lot of cases, so you just hit
Speaker 3: it out there. You know where line you're taken, hit it,
Speaker 3: find it, hit it again. We're certainly on a more
Speaker 3: penal style golf course, like the typical PGA Tour course
Speaker 3: where they're bunker at two seventy two ninety three ten
Speaker 3: playing into greens that are decently bunkerd possible water hazards.
Speaker 3: There's some thinking going on where okay, there's a if
Speaker 3: I missed this shot by five to ten yards, there's
Speaker 3: a decent penalty to be paid paid. And it's also
Speaker 3: an aerial game, so there's a little bit more control,
Speaker 3: where on his most recent experiences, where it's a little
Speaker 3: bit more of a ground game, you have a lot
Speaker 3: less control, so you know where you're hitting it in.
Speaker 3: From there, it's just take the rubbit of green and
Speaker 3: go from there. So maybe you know, maybe he was
Speaker 3: tainted a little bit by his recent experiences and not
Speaker 3: really thinking about the whole landscape of the European Tour
Speaker 3: could be one case, but it's certainly the case in
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour. There is thinking that goes involved just
Speaker 3: because of or along and a round, just because of
Speaker 3: the penalties that exists across most golf courses there.
Speaker 2: What do you think that thinking consists of typically on
Speaker 2: a PGA Tour course, because it doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 2: thinking in the sense that golf course architecture nuts are
Speaker 2: accustomed to thinking about it. What type of thinking goes
Speaker 2: into it? Is it? Is it club selection? Primarily?
Speaker 3: Certainly club selection? I mean teeing decisions is a huge one, right,
Speaker 3: what do I take off the tea and what's the
Speaker 3: thinking that goes into that? And there are a lot
Speaker 3: of the decisions. Okay, how much is if I push
Speaker 3: up a driver because I'm always going to start there.
Speaker 3: That's start with driver off the tee and think about that.
Speaker 3: Is there a penalty in play? If there's not a
Speaker 3: penalty in play, the decision's done. All right, we're sending
Speaker 3: driver and we're going to play off that. Now, if
Speaker 3: there is a penalty on in play, well housing that penalty.
Speaker 3: How much of a corridor do I have where the
Speaker 3: penalty area exists? And if there's enough there, then it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: let me step back a club and say what where
Speaker 3: does that club put me? And go from there? Right,
Speaker 3: The objective is with today's game, with the way the
Speaker 3: rough is, the aerial in the and supporting an aerial
Speaker 3: game in the greens, get it up as far as
Speaker 3: possible as much as possible, you know, And that's ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the golf courses they play. And then obviously
Speaker 3: playing into the green. It depends on the length playing
Speaker 3: into it, but typically these players are hitting mid irons
Speaker 3: to short irons in so it's a it's a pretty
Speaker 3: aggressive game even from there with the softness of the greens,
Speaker 3: which again that was perplexing when he talks about firmness
Speaker 3: where a lot of the a lot a decent amount
Speaker 3: of the court course condition on the PGA tour is soft.
Speaker 3: Now you do have your exceptions. Murfield gets pretty firm
Speaker 3: as one example, when they can get it there. This
Speaker 3: past year was definitely not that with the rain, but
Speaker 3: you know, Jack likes to firm that up. I'm sure
Speaker 3: a lot of his renovation that's going to happen. It's
Speaker 3: going to be geared towards always having that the conditions.
Speaker 3: But a lot of the courses, the greens are soft
Speaker 3: enough that you know, pins are pretty accessible even when
Speaker 3: they're tough, and that worse, you're just going a couple
Speaker 3: feet inside of them, you know, five to ten feet
Speaker 3: inside of a pin towards the bat side of the
Speaker 3: green and playing from there. So a little bit of
Speaker 3: thinking on that, but not a ton yeah.
Speaker 1: That to me, it seems like the one of the
Speaker 1: courses I hear the most talk about strategy on is
Speaker 1: the YOUGC Mexico course Chapoltepec, which is all kind of
Speaker 1: do you hit driver And to me, just from my observation,
Speaker 1: it seems like that for the professional golfers is when
Speaker 1: it when it impacts the t shot. That's how they
Speaker 1: what they feel like strategy really is. That's kind of
Speaker 1: the way they think about strategy versus an architecture nut
Speaker 1: who thinks about angles and different things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's completely accurate. And you know, I
Speaker 3: have that architect nut as well as strategy and math
Speaker 3: nut inside of me, and it drives the architect nut
Speaker 3: inside of me crazy. Right that the best way to
Speaker 3: challenge a tour player thinking off the tee is to
Speaker 3: have penalty areas you know, call it trees, call it
Speaker 3: bunkers or whatever, all the way up and down the
Speaker 3: hole to force them to make a decision of how
Speaker 3: aggressive they want to play. And Chapolo Peck is a
Speaker 3: great example of that, where you know, we know from
Speaker 3: dispersion driver three wood, two iron, it does doesn't matter
Speaker 3: that much left the right, you're still getting pretty wide
Speaker 3: with all three of those clubs that say, so, now
Speaker 3: you have the situation where, well, all three of them
Speaker 3: are going to bring in trees. So what do I
Speaker 3: decide to do? How much do I take into that account?
Speaker 3: And we saw a very different play down at Mexico
Speaker 3: into to be supportive of that, we saw a nice
Speaker 3: variance in leaderboard in terms of how people played the course,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a little better than we'd see in
Speaker 3: other tournaments. So obviously still still privileges pushing up a
Speaker 3: lot of cases, but we saw some nice variety there,
Speaker 3: more so than maybe other tournaments.
Speaker 2: And yet at CHAPULTAPEC the winners have generally been bombers,
Speaker 2: but you saw variants in the kind of top tier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think. I mean everybody, I mean everybody that
Speaker 3: works in the strategy business will admit this, right, It's
Speaker 3: you're never going to get around it being a bomber's paradise, right.
Speaker 3: Bombers are all that's going to be a skill set
Speaker 3: that's always well, especially with today's technology, is just going
Speaker 3: to be rewarded and maybe someone will crack the code
Speaker 3: of how to really break against that. But you're going
Speaker 3: to see that. So you know, that's just where we're
Speaker 3: at in terms of a game, and you're gonna expect
Speaker 3: to see a bomber as a winner probably more often
Speaker 3: than not. But yeah, really what's important is looking at
Speaker 3: the top ten, the top twenty, right, because let's face it,
Speaker 3: like the guys winning tournaments, they're all around great players, right,
Speaker 3: most weekend week out. Yeah, we get a couple of
Speaker 3: crap shots that come out and they just win a tournament, disappear,
Speaker 3: or they get hot. You know, this point's been made
Speaker 3: with Cameron Champa, and Andy's made this point several times
Speaker 3: that he's that type of player that will probably get
Speaker 3: hot for a couple of weeks, and if he does
Speaker 3: that every year, he'll probably get a victory as well, right,
Speaker 3: because he's got enough of a game and the distance
Speaker 3: is privilege that he'll get there. But by and large,
Speaker 3: the winners are just great golfers, you know, and the
Speaker 3: week they win, yes, distance helps put them in position,
Speaker 3: but they also are maybe outliers in the putting or
Speaker 3: outliers and approach relative to their normal game, so they're
Speaker 3: at least making it up in other areas and then
Speaker 3: across the top ten or top twenty and see variance there.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's just more compelling pro golf. Right if
Speaker 3: at least we're seeing everybody up on the leaderboard be
Speaker 3: a little different, it's a little bit more watchable, at
Speaker 3: least to some of us that pay attention to that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a misconception of is like the
Speaker 1: you know, Hey, like this guy won because he hit
Speaker 1: it far. But like, one of the things with distance
Speaker 1: is that it's a constant skill, Like almost every other
Speaker 1: skill on golf is variable. Like you might put bad today,
Speaker 1: put well tomorrow. You know, you might be really accurate
Speaker 1: with your driver today not tomorrow. Same with your irons.
Speaker 1: But with the distance you have that every single day
Speaker 1: you go to the golf course, which is something that
Speaker 1: I think some people like tend to and that's always
Speaker 1: going to be a huge advantage if you're long, But
Speaker 1: it seems to me that it's become more and more
Speaker 1: advantageous as you know, as players have gotten longer. In accuracy,
Speaker 1: you know, it's to keep it on the plan. There's
Speaker 1: less downside to hitting it far today than there used
Speaker 1: to be or hitting it hard, So to.
Speaker 3: Say, oh, yeah, I mean the hitting it far is
Speaker 3: one comment we could expand on. But then just hitting
Speaker 3: it hard as another one. Right, that brings into technology
Speaker 3: issues and what the technology enables us to do in
Speaker 3: terms of maximizing and optimizing the way we hit the
Speaker 3: ball and what the ball spin ray does. Right, that's
Speaker 3: the big question. Well, if we went back to say
Speaker 3: per Simmon and a wound ball, Well, what would hitting
Speaker 3: it hard look like? Could you act? What would optimizing
Speaker 3: everything look like? And would it be manageable in a
Speaker 3: way that you could still play the game at a
Speaker 3: very competitive level. Because to your point, like in terms
Speaker 3: of hitting it far, you know, when we look at
Speaker 3: the strokes gained it and I don't know what it's
Speaker 3: say over the last two years, but you know it's
Speaker 3: basically approach where it's basically trended to where like to
Speaker 3: be a top player, it's almost forty percent approach and
Speaker 3: forty percent driving. You know, maybe you could argue thirty
Speaker 3: five percent thirty five percent just in a sort of
Speaker 3: upper echelon area, And question is is that good for
Speaker 3: the game? Right? Like is you know, if I just said, okay,
Speaker 3: from a mathematical standpoint, what would be Like Rory's comment
Speaker 3: was what a complete player? I think, well, what would
Speaker 3: be a complete player? Be the best players in the
Speaker 3: world we or the like their trends would be okay,
Speaker 3: twenty five percent strokes gain attributed to putting, twenty five
Speaker 3: percent strokes gain attributed to around the green, twenty five
Speaker 3: percent approach, twenty five percent driving, or you can match
Speaker 3: the percent just to the number of strokes played from
Speaker 3: those positions, right, So like if you play thirty percent
Speaker 3: of your shots from around the green or on it, well,
Speaker 3: thirty percent of a winner's category should come from those areas.
Speaker 3: You know. Maybe that's something you know, that's fun to
Speaker 3: think about in terms of what would we want a
Speaker 3: complete player to be and what we how would we
Speaker 3: want that privilege.
Speaker 1: It's it's Rory's comments too when you talk when you
Speaker 1: talk about complete player, and I think this gets lost
Speaker 1: sometimes when everybody talks about Rory is like he is
Speaker 1: one of the you know, albeit sometimes he struggles on
Speaker 1: the green, he is as complete of a player as
Speaker 1: you get. On the PGA Tour last year he ranked
Speaker 1: in the top twenty five in every strokes game category,
Speaker 1: and I think he's the only player that did that.
Speaker 1: Adam Scott was close, but nobody else, you know, nobody
Speaker 1: else really was close outside of Adam Scott to doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean going back to Rory's comments, right, It's
Speaker 3: good that he's speaking out, and I would love to
Speaker 3: know how much of it comes from a place of
Speaker 3: him acknowledging and understanding that if there was ever such
Speaker 3: a cal rollback, we're just stopping where we're at like
Speaker 3: that only benefits him, benefits a player of his caliber
Speaker 3: or someone like Adam Scott, the Tiger Woods of people
Speaker 3: right that have the complete games, and I mean Ricky
Speaker 3: I think Ricky Fowler is a great example as well.
Speaker 3: That's someone that all around is a good player, does
Speaker 3: a lot of things really well, can hit a lot
Speaker 3: of golf shots, and sees a lot of golf shots. Right.
Speaker 3: Those guys seagull shots more than other guys in terms
Speaker 3: of just feeling comfortable in a golf course and seeing
Speaker 3: a shape and how much they would benefit from something
Speaker 3: that brought back more shape into the game and what
Speaker 3: we would how would we see that correlay or associate
Speaker 3: with different strokes, gained data in the statistics behind things.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that became pretty clear from
Speaker 2: Rory's comments is that he is thinking of strategy primarily
Speaker 2: in terms of what we talked about earlier, what club
Speaker 2: you play off the tee? Should you hit driver every time?
Speaker 2: He seems to think that on European tour course setups
Speaker 2: that there's not much of a question on the tee
Speaker 2: as to what you're going to do, and that means
Speaker 2: that he's thinking of strategy primarily along the vertical axis, right,
Speaker 2: the why axis of a hole. How deep into the
Speaker 2: hole should I push the ball in order to get
Speaker 2: the best results. Architecture geeks, on the other hand, tend
Speaker 2: to think of strategy more laterally along the X axis.
Speaker 2: What side of the fairway do I want to be
Speaker 2: on in order to open up a view of or
Speaker 2: an angle into the green. Now, as somebody who has
Speaker 2: a foot in both camps and the analytics camp as
Speaker 2: well as in the golf architecture geekery camp, I'm curious
Speaker 2: what you think about the claim that a lot of
Speaker 2: analytics driven course management folks make about hunting angles and
Speaker 2: the fact that that's not something that anybody should do
Speaker 2: on a golf course, right, That you shouldn't be trying
Speaker 2: to get to a particular side of the fairway, that
Speaker 2: you should just sort of pick a target that makes
Speaker 2: it least likely that you're going to find yourself in
Speaker 2: a penalty hazard, and that essentially lateral strategy as architecture
Speaker 2: folks have thought about it for over a century is irrelevant.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with that? And could you explain that position?
Speaker 3: Man, I'll put my best academic hat On and say
Speaker 3: I don't agree or disagree with that, right that there's
Speaker 3: it's sort of the position that we that we take
Speaker 3: of all the different things we can go here, like
Speaker 3: what do we want golf to be? How do we
Speaker 3: perceive playing golf at what level? Is a sport raging
Speaker 3: from a game? Like I thought your interview with Robert Crosby,
Speaker 3: Bob Crosby's phenomenal, and you got into the sense of
Speaker 3: like golf is a sport versus golf as an adventure,
Speaker 3: and we could go down all those rabbit holes as
Speaker 3: much as possible, But I'll start with just to think about, like, okay,
Speaker 3: in terms of the pro game on the typical TPC
Speaker 3: golf course, angles and that sort of stuff, even on
Speaker 3: a even on a soft trinity for us, that's say
Speaker 3: some of that's not super firm and the ball's not
Speaker 3: getting away. Angles don't matter. I mean, it's an aerial game.
Speaker 3: They they're playing along the y access they know how
Speaker 3: far their ball carries. Picking up, you know, trying to
Speaker 3: move over to an angle, but then having some of
Speaker 3: your shot dispersion play into a bunker. That's just that's
Speaker 3: not smart, right, You're better keeping that entire shot dispers
Speaker 3: an out of the bunker and playing to the lowest
Speaker 3: basically your lowest expected value. I saw that conversation with
Speaker 3: Scott and some other people, you know, the idea of
Speaker 3: blackjack was brought up, and it's a probability model, is
Speaker 3: what it is, especially when there's no variable of a
Speaker 3: ground game, right, and that your angle coming into a green.
Speaker 3: I mean, how often do we see on the pro
Speaker 3: game where there's a pin cut beside behind some slope
Speaker 3: where coming from that angle over the slope, you can't
Speaker 3: stop the ball at the pin. You just don't see
Speaker 3: that out there, right, And that's the beauty of links
Speaker 3: golf where you do have that, and you also have
Speaker 3: playing corridors that allow that. Right, you can have an
Speaker 3: eighty to ninety yard corridor where an average shot dispersion
Speaker 3: for a driver is anywhere from you know, sixty to
Speaker 3: seventy five yards. So you need that playing corridor to
Speaker 3: move that around. If you're thinking just strictly from the
Speaker 3: analytical probability model, you need a huge corridor and you
Speaker 3: need to angle to actually matter. So you need to
Speaker 3: turf conditions or to playing conditions to matter, or at
Speaker 3: least yardage in just the matter too. You know, some
Speaker 3: dog wags could get into it like a dog leg.
Speaker 3: With a center line bunker combined with it, you might
Speaker 3: be able to make up some differences there.
Speaker 2: So should I guess there are two different questions here.
Speaker 2: Should a player It sounds like it depends on the
Speaker 2: course for you, and it depends on the conditions. But uh,
Speaker 2: the one question is should a player ever find himself
Speaker 2: or herself in the position of preferring a side of
Speaker 2: the fairway in order to find a good angle into
Speaker 2: into the green? Is that ever a tactically sound approach
Speaker 2: to a golf hole? And then the other question, implied
Speaker 2: on the other side of it is should architects be
Speaker 2: designing courses that supposedly summon these decisions?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so yeah, should you do that? It's rare
Speaker 3: that you should actually be hunting angles. I mean, I'll
Speaker 3: let go Scott Fawcett on that, right, Like, it's just
Speaker 3: there's typically just not enough with where it actually matters.
Speaker 3: You can't control your ballflight that well, So don't be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to hug this bunker over here, because now
Speaker 3: you're just bringing in the bunker where I mean aim
Speaker 3: down the spair way and just play to that, and
Speaker 3: then half your shots are going to end up over
Speaker 3: there and you'll get the good angle the other half
Speaker 3: or not the good angle. But guess what likely the
Speaker 3: conditions are going to afford you playing a direct shot
Speaker 3: to the whole. Anyways, if you're a high level player
Speaker 3: on a typical course on what in terms of what
Speaker 3: they play right now? I mean, should how to design
Speaker 3: against that? It's I mean one aspect of it. It's
Speaker 3: really hard because playable with right like in terms of
Speaker 3: a player's dispersion, the designing for that, how wide a
Speaker 3: hole would have to be. That's a really hard thing
Speaker 3: to design towards. But you can do it like what
Speaker 3: you're looking for. And this relates to a point Garrett,
Speaker 3: that you made in the sort of driveable part four
Speaker 3: article that you made. Okay, like, what would a good
Speaker 3: like mathematical hole be that includes decision making? And this
Speaker 3: could because of angles or it could be because of
Speaker 3: distance the yax's how far do I push up them back?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Like? I'll use a very simplistic version where there's just
Speaker 3: two options. Right, The really cool mathematical hole design that
Speaker 3: would actually make people think that follow you know, some
Speaker 3: of the stuff I teach, and obviously Scott was Scott
Speaker 3: teaches and some other people. In those two options, they
Speaker 3: need to come out to the same average, so we'll
Speaker 3: just make up they come out to a four average.
Speaker 3: And for simplicity's sake, you say, well, one option, every
Speaker 3: player would make a four from. In the other option,
Speaker 3: every player would make a three or five from. So
Speaker 3: you'd see the same average between the two options, but
Speaker 3: you'd see bigger variants in one of the options. First,
Speaker 3: the other one being a safe option where hey, not
Speaker 3: much variance in you're scoring, you kind of know what
Speaker 3: you're going to score from there, and then huge variants
Speaker 3: in the other option. And we could extrapolate that across
Speaker 3: you know, three or four different options of playing a
Speaker 3: hole and a different variance that you would see. So
Speaker 3: in terms of strategy and mathematics, that would be an
Speaker 3: ideal hold of design, which you could do by taking
Speaker 3: a look at stroke gain and positioning hazards. Think of
Speaker 3: like where your ball lands, you haven't expected value from it,
Speaker 3: and what kind of hazards could we put around those
Speaker 3: to change that to some number? And then if we
Speaker 3: pull back, okay, what can we do from there to
Speaker 3: make it so it plays the same average as that
Speaker 3: other area, and you could go through and design of
Speaker 3: course like that. I have no idea how interesting that
Speaker 3: would come out or what. And again, we're designing for
Speaker 3: the top point one percent of golfers. Is that something
Speaker 3: we really want to go down? Like, I don't care
Speaker 3: what people say when they say, oh, change happens or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's like, No, the top level game matters. It influences
Speaker 3: the entire rest of the game. People watch it, people
Speaker 3: pay attention to it. Golf clubs strive to be what
Speaker 3: tour courses are. I mean, they're the they're for better
Speaker 3: or worse, a big vocal part of our game, the
Speaker 3: top level players and what they do. So we can't
Speaker 3: ignore that. So I hesitate to ever put down on
Speaker 3: paper what you know, what it could be, because I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the Pandora's box. If we put it down as
Speaker 3: soon as we are going down that level or that road,
Speaker 3: I don't know if we end up in somewhere. We
Speaker 3: want to be those of us that think about golf
Speaker 3: also as the game, as the adventure as you like
Speaker 3: to talk about, which which I really really care to
Speaker 3: do and I really value and think that's a that's
Speaker 3: what ultimately is healthy for the game, is that aspect
Speaker 3: of it because we're not we're not tour players. My
Speaker 3: game looks nothing like a lot of college coaches, a
Speaker 3: lot of college coach kids I work with, and it
Speaker 3: definitely looks nothing like a tour players game. And I'm
Speaker 3: an okay golfer, so I hesitate to ever to ever, Yeah,
Speaker 3: push towards something that really just privileges the pro game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about how strategy is different for say, the
Speaker 1: lower trajectory, lower spend players, And do you have any experience, say,
Speaker 1: like contrast, have you ever advised on like an LPGA player,
Speaker 1: semester tour player, or even a women's college team, and
Speaker 1: comparing contrast that with the elite men's game, whether it
Speaker 1: be college or professional.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you see a couple of different things. The most
Speaker 3: striking is honestly dispersion a little bit lower spin, lower
Speaker 3: trajectory player. And I'm thinking primarily an LPGA game, a
Speaker 3: college female game here that the dispersion is tighter, especially
Speaker 3: playing in the greens with irons and even off the tees,
Speaker 3: because I mean, I'm not super well versed in terms
Speaker 3: of engineering and physics. I did a physics background. This
Speaker 3: is my batcher's degree, but that doesn't make me an expert,
Speaker 3: so I can't. Everything I'm doing is kind of spit
Speaker 3: ball a little bit from just.
Speaker 2: Talking yeah we need to Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I should, I should know. If I adopted his attitude,
Speaker 3: I would just sit here and just pull the chalkboard
Speaker 3: and start talking about I don't know, optimal spin rates
Speaker 3: or something. Uh, but yeah, they're they're a lot tighter.
Speaker 3: So in that way, there's a little bit, honestly, less
Speaker 3: strategy involved in that. It's easier to just say like, hey,
Speaker 3: you can it really really straight? And now playing into
Speaker 3: the green, there's a little bit more thinking to be
Speaker 3: done because the positions matter a little bit more. Conditioning
Speaker 3: matters a little bit more, slopes matter a little bit
Speaker 3: more when you're play into the green at a lower
Speaker 3: trajectory in the ball is going to be on the
Speaker 3: ground and running a little bit. Where the ball lands
Speaker 3: matters a little bit more. And understanding that, Okay, the
Speaker 3: short shot in my dispersion pattern, here's the consequences of it.
Speaker 3: The long shot in my dispersion pattern, here's the consequences
Speaker 3: of it. What does this mean for playing into this
Speaker 3: green and how I need to play into say a
Speaker 3: front pin, back pin, left, right, and so on. And
Speaker 3: you compare that versus a tour player that's stopping things
Speaker 3: primarily with trajectory, and those questions aren't playing into green
Speaker 3: or the longer is are no longer as much of
Speaker 3: a concern because if we're stopping it with trajectory and
Speaker 3: the conditions are allowing that when the ball comes in,
Speaker 3: it's kind of selling down where it is, right, even
Speaker 3: in terms of my own game like that, that's the
Speaker 3: transition I've seen a lot in it that playing into
Speaker 3: a green is just I don't have to think too much,
Speaker 3: like I don't worry about the ball getting away from
Speaker 3: me once it gets on the ground, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: very different from experience that, say, overseas. I think that's
Speaker 3: a little bit more a kin you know, if you
Speaker 3: think of a PGA tour player playing overseas on really
Speaker 3: really firm conditions, that may be more kin to an
Speaker 3: LPGA player and how they're playing into the greens. But again,
Speaker 3: it's a great example of how technology has helped the
Speaker 3: highest wing speeds. Right, That's where you see the biggest
Speaker 3: dividends in ms in terms of what we see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean in terms of like the Since
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, LPGA Tour players have only gained
Speaker 1: three yards of distance compared to eighteen on the web,
Speaker 1: which would point towards you know this it in a
Speaker 1: way is from what I'm gathering, it's becoming the distance
Speaker 1: is creating more interest from the pro game off the
Speaker 1: t and less into the green, whereas the women's game
Speaker 1: would have less interest off the team, more interest into
Speaker 1: the green and than not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely more strategy thinking in the green, just more variability,
Speaker 3: that's there.
Speaker 1: So it with with regards to like the normal person,
Speaker 1: Let's just would you say, obviously dispersions get wider with
Speaker 1: handicap levels, but also swing speeds create lower trajectories, you know,
Speaker 1: like lower swing speeds, lower trajectories, less spin. Is strategy
Speaker 1: for your regular golfer more or less important than the
Speaker 1: the tour pro?
Speaker 3: Now? Do more or less important? Is the question?
Speaker 1: I'm saying strategy have more impact on the high level
Speaker 1: pro or the you know, ten fifteen handicap at the club.
Speaker 3: I mean in terms of that, well, yes, just mathematically
Speaker 3: it has to write there's more to be gained at
Speaker 3: a fifteen handicapper in terms of improving their game. And
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things you can do to see
Speaker 3: pretty significant dividends right away, right just sitting down and
Speaker 3: playing around with them and looking at the decisions they make.
Speaker 3: It's all with a fifteen handicapper, you can almost guarantee
Speaker 3: saving them one to two shots just strictly on what
Speaker 3: they're trying to accomplish when they're hitting a golf shot. Right.
Speaker 3: Use my dad as example. You know he's getting older,
Speaker 3: and you know two twenty two to ten used to
Speaker 3: be a shot he would get to the green every time,
Speaker 3: and now he tries to pull out the three wood
Speaker 3: and hit it and it just doesn't do anything positive.
Speaker 3: So when I or whatever I'm playing with him in
Speaker 3: like a best ball, then it's like that, just hit
Speaker 3: it up there one hundred and eighty yards and play
Speaker 3: from there, right, and the scoring average comes down. It's
Speaker 3: pretty natural. And also just every player good or bad
Speaker 3: things there, they hit tighter golf shots than they do
Speaker 3: so definitely just in terms of a dispersion pattern for
Speaker 3: any handicapper to understand, like, okay, on your best day,
Speaker 3: the quote I always uses on your best day, you're
Speaker 3: worse than you think you are because your dispersion pattern
Speaker 3: is always in play. Like even on our best rounds
Speaker 3: in our life, we typically hit a foul ball somewhere.
Speaker 3: We just often forget about it because we hit it
Speaker 3: from the trees and made a birdie. So that's something
Speaker 3: they can always take into play. On the flip side
Speaker 3: of that, at the top level, everything exists on the margins.
Speaker 3: It's essentially f one racing at the pro level or
Speaker 3: high level college, at the top level of college, because
Speaker 3: you can't gain a shot. You just can't. You're already
Speaker 3: you know, the top level college players already shooting sixty nine, seventy,
Speaker 3: sixty eight, sixty six, sixty five, sixty seven. It's just
Speaker 3: you're not going to pick up a full shot somewhere.
Speaker 3: But you have to pick up a tenth of a
Speaker 3: shot or a fifth of a shot, or a half
Speaker 3: of a shot over the course of one round or
Speaker 3: two rounds. So just in terms of an absolute difference,
Speaker 3: I mean, it definitely can make more progress at the
Speaker 3: top or at the higher handicap level than the lower
Speaker 3: handicap level, but it's still making a difference.
Speaker 2: So taking a step back from the kind of business
Speaker 2: of applying analytics to course management. I think your relationship
Speaker 2: to golf is really interesting. You know, obviously we've talked
Speaker 2: a lot about these issues, and you are maybe more
Speaker 2: romantic about golf than anybody I know. You just love it.
Speaker 2: You believe in the spirit of the game, You love
Speaker 2: the walk, you love the adventure, and that comes through
Speaker 2: in everything you do and say. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: you are very well qualified in mathematics, in analytics, and
Speaker 2: you are on a venture right now to demystify the
Speaker 2: strategy of the game, right which is essentially a rationalist enterprise.
Speaker 2: Do you have or feel those two parts of yourself
Speaker 2: coming into conflict?
Speaker 3: The short answer is yes in a lot of ways though, Yeah,
Speaker 3: So like this is what romanticism versus rationalism in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways. And what's cool is, you know, we
Speaker 3: create these dichotomies as if they're opposed. A lot of
Speaker 3: times they work together or in fact coexists. So golf
Speaker 3: is one of the I think golf, I mean, golf
Speaker 3: is a great example of that for so many reasons,
Speaker 3: especially the personal venture of it. But if we think
Speaker 3: of like the romanticism rationalism sort of ideas on it.
Speaker 3: So in terms of the romantic aspect, yes, we have
Speaker 3: this huge emotional attachment. Golf is an adventure and it
Speaker 3: takes us on this sort of spiritual, soulful walk that
Speaker 3: makes us challenge ourselves and really pulls out the worst
Speaker 3: of us and the best of us all at once, right,
Speaker 3: really exposes our ego, our moral character, everything that we
Speaker 3: do in it. Right, we're always facing difficulties, having successes
Speaker 3: and having to respond to those. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: like when we think about it, especially a lot of
Speaker 3: the conversations you know, the three of us have and
Speaker 3: amongst our friends and ourselves, you can't just rely on
Speaker 3: those responses to dictate, well, what's good for the game,
Speaker 3: what's good for me as a person? You know, what's healthy? Right,
Speaker 3: Because addiction is a great example of if you don't
Speaker 3: question things, it's easy to become addicted to something because
Speaker 3: you just yeah, this is great, this is great, this
Speaker 3: is great. Stimulus, stimulus, stimulus, and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: you're addicted to whatever it is that you're getting involved with.
Speaker 3: In golf's the same way where we have to think about, okay, well,
Speaker 3: what is in terms of the tent in the game
Speaker 3: and the things that enable it to have this character
Speaker 3: in this soul, like what enables that? And now that
Speaker 3: moves into more of a rationalist, you know, rationalism type
Speaker 3: of mindset where I need to break down my own thinking,
Speaker 3: my own experiences and what contributes to us. And so
Speaker 3: I can take the same aspect with the strategy side
Speaker 3: of it, where yes, there's some days where it's like, man,
Speaker 3: especially as I'm doing like a Reese Jones course or something,
Speaker 3: where it's just like what I'm like, what am I
Speaker 3: doing here? This is this is boring, and this is
Speaker 3: not enjoyable for me. Yes, this is challenging for the
Speaker 3: players and creates the good par score or whatever it
Speaker 3: is you want to say it does, but what's going
Speaker 3: on here? And that gives me an opportunity to inject
Speaker 3: some of the romanticism of the game into it. When
Speaker 3: I'm working with especially individual players, to help help them
Speaker 3: understand the architecture that's there, what they're seeing on the
Speaker 3: golf hole, what makes it, what makes really a compelling
Speaker 3: golf hole versus what makes something that's just very formulating,
Speaker 3: and help clarifying their own think you know, these like
Speaker 3: even these top level players, they'll build play say a
Speaker 3: core Crunshaw, a Pinehurst, a pine Valley, A name your
Speaker 3: pasta Tampo that say, they'll play those and just think, man,
Speaker 3: what an awesome experience that was. That was that was amazing.
Speaker 3: But then I'll go play all their tournament golf courses
Speaker 3: and to them that's also a great experience or whatever.
Speaker 3: So helping them be reflective and thinking about, like, what
Speaker 3: was so amazing about pasa tempo posita tampa? You said
Speaker 3: you love that? Why did you love that so much?
Speaker 3: So I enjoy the sort of teaching us side of
Speaker 3: the strategy management where I can take it a little
Speaker 3: deeper than just how to play a golf course, but
Speaker 3: also thinking about the design of a golf course, what
Speaker 3: goes into it and what really piques their interests the most,
Speaker 3: you know, So that moves from that kind of blends
Speaker 3: the two together to maybe help them become more romantic
Speaker 3: with the game in terms of the course design and
Speaker 3: understanding why why architecture is important even if it doesn't
Speaker 3: challenge their game. Right, if they go play a Corey
Speaker 3: Creutshaw that's not set up very difficult, it's not going
Speaker 3: to challenge that much, but they can still hopefully appreciate
Speaker 3: the golf course for why it's there outside of their
Speaker 3: own own golf game plane and even experience the experience
Speaker 3: or even enjoy the experiences that they had and say, hey,
Speaker 3: I shot sixty two there, but the andyes, adjusted par point,
Speaker 3: maybe sixty two was my adjusted park for that golf
Speaker 3: course because of the playing conditions that were there. And yeah,
Speaker 3: that webshot that I had to take off a backboard
Speaker 3: and suck back, Yeah, it was easy to get the
Speaker 3: five feet. That was awesome to do. And I should
Speaker 3: get that the five feet. But if I would have
Speaker 3: messed up, have sucked it back off the green, and
Speaker 3: I would have not made Bertie, So you know, get
Speaker 3: him to appreciate those sorts of things. It is something
Speaker 3: that I enjoyed doing as part of the the analytics
Speaker 3: side of things.
Speaker 1: So on the Shock, something about making Dunhill Part sixty
Speaker 1: seven for the pros and if they had done that,
Speaker 1: the winning score would have been I think two under.
Speaker 1: Would Rory have had the same comments if the winning
Speaker 1: score was two under.
Speaker 3: Rory, I don't know if he would have, because I
Speaker 3: do believe a lot of his reaction was in the
Speaker 3: moment being frustrated with his own finishes. I do think
Speaker 3: he's also smart enough to be like, yeah, part doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: So I'm sure he probably wouldn't have had the same reaction,
Speaker 3: but I know a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 3: it would, and a lot of tour players it would
Speaker 3: influence that reaction. What part was right if you changed
Speaker 3: part to on them all of a sudden, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, a hard hole becomes easy or an easy
Speaker 3: hole becomes hard. It was that I forget what tournament
Speaker 3: was last year, and I was sitting there and there's
Speaker 3: a college team talking about it and they changed the
Speaker 3: par five to part four and one of the players
Speaker 3: was like, man, that hole is so hard and it
Speaker 3: used to be an easy Part five and like it's like, no,
Speaker 3: it's the same hole. It's literally the same hole that's there.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, definitely part And I mean even on
Speaker 3: the psychology side, right, the loss of verse sort of
Speaker 3: nature of people changes how they play. Even though it shouldn't,
Speaker 3: it still does.
Speaker 2: So what are some of your thoughts about how professional
Speaker 2: golf could be more interesting than it is now, or
Speaker 2: maybe you think the professional golf still still is interesting
Speaker 2: in a sense. But in what you're saying before about
Speaker 2: the differences between competitive and recreational golf and the places
Speaker 2: of a rationalist approach and a romantic approach in one
Speaker 2: or the other, it struck me that in competitive golf
Speaker 2: there is a distinct lack of mystery and romance about it.
Speaker 2: That so much is known now about the golf swing
Speaker 2: and about course management, for instance, that players are very
Speaker 2: rarely at a loss, players are very rarely dealing with
Speaker 2: ambiguity and mystery, and there is a kind of business
Speaker 2: like efficiency in the way that the best players approach golf.
Speaker 2: And to me, it reads very clearly through the television
Speaker 2: that that's happening, and it makes me lose a little
Speaker 2: bit of interest. Does it make you lose interest in
Speaker 2: the same way? And if not, why, and then? And
Speaker 2: what are some of your thoughts about how some intrigue
Speaker 2: and mystery could return to the game.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've got to start talking more about air
Speaker 3: density and what that does to.
Speaker 2: That's what the people want, right, No, oh.
Speaker 3: Man, this is so. I mean, a lot of personal
Speaker 3: preference is going to come out here in terms of
Speaker 3: yes to all of those points. But I'm not I'm
Speaker 3: in terms of explain my personal preference. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is going to solve all the problem. It's more like,
Speaker 3: I think it actually would support this more exploration or
Speaker 3: re exploration of the game and what it means to
Speaker 3: optimize it. Right where, Okay, I'll start with this is
Speaker 3: one of the pieces of evidence in the premise for it.
Speaker 3: So with distance gains, distance gains aren't absolute, they're relative, right,
Speaker 3: So it's not like, oh, all of us shifted up
Speaker 3: ten yards. No, that's not how it worked. That's how
Speaker 3: it worked. You know, that wouldn't be such a big deal.
Speaker 3: But it's like, no, you have you know, maybe I
Speaker 3: gained five, but someone ahead of me gain eight yards
Speaker 3: and someone maybe had that because of ball speed, gained
Speaker 3: twelve yards. Right, So like the absolute difference is between
Speaker 3: the distance change. The distance differences have grown an increase, right,
Speaker 3: which in terms of like the spirit of yeah, I believe, yes,
Speaker 3: pros play a different game, but it's much cooler when
Speaker 3: we kind of it kind of resembles what the game
Speaker 3: we play, right, So we lose that there on one
Speaker 3: piece of the argument. So I would like to see
Speaker 3: that shrunk down. So that obviously brings in the idea
Speaker 3: of rollback in some sort of form, regardless if it's
Speaker 3: shrunken driver, heads, wound and ball for Simon, Ballata Hickorys.
Speaker 3: But we could sit here and argue all day about
Speaker 3: what we want to go back to. But I do
Speaker 3: I do think there's some viability in that, in that argument,
Speaker 3: in terms of rolling back to something and changing in
Speaker 3: technology somehow, if if some of the principles that are
Speaker 3: wrapped up in the game or something we really value
Speaker 3: and want to see in the pro game as well.
Speaker 3: And now on the flip side of that, this idea
Speaker 3: of expiration and optimization and just making the game inquisitive again,
Speaker 3: I would I could see that as a significant strength
Speaker 3: that movement and actually doing it, because it would even
Speaker 3: for the OEMs, open up a whole new revenue in pursuit. Right, Oh, shoot,
Speaker 3: we're going back to this technology. Well, frankly, let's say
Speaker 3: it's persimmon. Let's just go there. We'll say it's Persimmon
Speaker 3: with a lot of balls. And that's not a personal
Speaker 3: preference in mind to go to that version of it,
Speaker 3: but let's say that's what it is. All of a sudden,
Speaker 3: everybody in the game of golf at a high level
Speaker 3: is to think how do I optimize that technology? Right?
Speaker 3: What does my swing speed need to be? Like? Can
Speaker 3: I actually have this huge swing speed with you know,
Speaker 3: hitting up on the ball trying to launch at this angle?
Speaker 3: All that has to be figured out again? And what
Speaker 3: does that mean in terms of how the game's played?
Speaker 3: How does course conditioning now play a role in that?
Speaker 3: It would just sort of open up a new you know,
Speaker 3: path to go down and have to figure out, which
Speaker 3: I think could be could be exciting. You know a
Speaker 3: lot of people talk about it, we'll turn people from
Speaker 3: away from the game, And I don't know if I
Speaker 3: buy that argument. I think Bob spook to this a
Speaker 3: little bit on the on his his podcast that maybe
Speaker 3: in a short term you'd have a few people leave,
Speaker 3: but really would they? I mean, is if all of
Speaker 3: a sudden you put for Simon in the fifteen handicappers' hands,
Speaker 3: is it really going to change their one just their
Speaker 3: scoring and how they play the game, but also their enjoyment?
Speaker 3: Is that are they really playing the game because they
Speaker 3: have a four hundred and sixty cc tailor made in
Speaker 3: their hands? Where they playing it for other reasons? You know,
Speaker 3: would and that's and also for Simon has great self
Speaker 3: correction off the face. People people think like, oh, the
Speaker 3: argument for rolling back stuff means like, oh, you're going
Speaker 3: to hit it one hundred and fifty yards off line.
Speaker 3: That's not the case. It actually brings more variability in
Speaker 3: the y axis if anything. Right, that's where we see
Speaker 3: huge variability where with the current drivers. Right, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: I hit the heel, I hit the toe, I hit
Speaker 3: off the top of the face, I hit off the
Speaker 3: bob in the face. Oh, I hit on the toe
Speaker 3: on the hot spot. I mean, the balls flying pretty
Speaker 3: similar distance.
Speaker 1: It's I've got so many buddies that are relatively new
Speaker 1: to the game but young, and they you know, some
Speaker 1: of them swing a pretty pretty like well in terms
Speaker 1: of speed, and the distance that they launched the ball
Speaker 1: offline is astounding to me. I've never seen the ball
Speaker 1: go so far offline. Then with one of my buddies
Speaker 1: and it's like, and I gave him my per Simon
Speaker 1: driver the last time we played, and he hit like
Speaker 1: three shots with it, and the worst one was only
Speaker 1: like thirty yards off line, because like it can't go
Speaker 1: as far off line, I.
Speaker 3: Mean per Simmon, like in terms of the result and
Speaker 3: the what we're looking for per Simon, were the original
Speaker 3: twist face right like they like they self corrected balls
Speaker 3: off of them because of the way the face was
Speaker 3: curved with the way the ball performed like it worked
Speaker 3: together that when you hit a toad for Simmon right,
Speaker 3: it starts right kurves left. If you hit the heeled
Speaker 3: for Simon, it starts left and curves right. It was
Speaker 3: just may like just for whatever reason, the materials did that.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, that doesn't go very far, but it kind
Speaker 2: of it stays in play. Whenever I think of this,
Speaker 2: I think of this guy that I played with a
Speaker 2: pasim but not somebody that I knew beforehand, and he
Speaker 2: honestly launched fifteen balls into the middle of neighborhoods. He
Speaker 2: was swinging so hard, had no idea where it was going,
Speaker 2: and the ball went enormously high up into the air
Speaker 2: and was just dropping bombs in the middle of the
Speaker 2: surrounding neighborhoods at Pasa Tiempo over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: I was just watching this guys. He needs a driver
Speaker 2: that doesn't go as far. He would score so much
Speaker 2: better and also there would be less death and property
Speaker 2: damage in the wake of his playing this golf course.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's I mean, how many people even talk
Speaker 3: about that senior golfer in their league that's seventy and
Speaker 3: just hits it dead down the middle one point eighty,
Speaker 3: hits it up by the green and just whips them
Speaker 3: to no end even though they're trying to blast it
Speaker 3: to seventy. Right, it's well, you could kind of have
Speaker 3: that a little bit more than you do if we
Speaker 3: made some changes to technology and what it does.
Speaker 1: I feel like that golfer is like the envy of
Speaker 1: all golfers too, which is so ironic that like, everybody's
Speaker 1: in this pursuit for hitting it far, but really the
Speaker 1: golfer they envy the most is the guy that's like
Speaker 1: the steady grinder at their club.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually absolutely comical.
Speaker 2: It seems like a fun way to play the game
Speaker 2: when you see it in action, And that sort of
Speaker 2: leads me to something I wanted to get your thoughts on. Recently,
Speaker 2: you participated, maybe even organized, I don't know, you seem
Speaker 2: to be organizing a lot of things these days. The
Speaker 2: oil hardened Classic run under the auspices of the Eternal
Speaker 2: Summer Golf Society, I believe at Sweeten's Cove, and the
Speaker 2: notion was to have everybody play with persimmon woods and
Speaker 2: bladed irons and see what would happen. You were involved
Speaker 2: in this, right, and how was that experience? What did
Speaker 2: you learn from it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I can't take credit for organizing, that's uh. Peter
Speaker 3: Schmidt is a good friend of mine, writer for w
Speaker 3: r X, now going to graduate school, get into turf business,
Speaker 3: just to just I mean, another just soulful guy that
Speaker 3: just loves golf for all the right reasons across the
Speaker 3: board to an equipment junkie as well. Right, he is
Speaker 3: a huge equipment junkie. So yeah, he and I did
Speaker 3: a little bit of background soundboard for him in terms
Speaker 3: of putting it together, but definitely his his venture. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we brought together a bunch of guys. Just it's exactly
Speaker 3: what you said. We're gonna play for simmon, We're gonna
Speaker 3: play blades. Uh, those are the rules. Whatever ball you want,
Speaker 3: modern or not, that's fine. Every other you know, rules
Speaker 3: on board, modern putter, old putter, however you want to
Speaker 3: do that, that's fine. You know. Jeremy is Louis Little
Speaker 3: Golf helped us out participate in it as well. Uh.
Speaker 3: And we just brought a guys with two teams sort
Speaker 3: of Ryder Cup style where we did going back to
Speaker 3: the spirit of the game, four ball, alternate shut and
Speaker 3: foursomes in the morning and we played singles matches in
Speaker 3: the afternoon and just and just had a blast. And
Speaker 3: I think sweet a place like Sweeten's Code. If you
Speaker 3: talk to me, I talked too much about the place,
Speaker 3: you know, It's one of my spirit courses in love
Speaker 3: with it. Just appreciate what Rob Patrick and Tadd and
Speaker 3: everybody created there. But playing a place like that, I
Speaker 3: think really helps accentuate the benefits of plane the golf
Speaker 3: that style, with the trajectory, they'll they'll run out the
Speaker 3: ground game a little bit more. Just how much? How
Speaker 3: much more you notice? You know, I've played I don't
Speaker 3: know how many times I've gone around Sweeten's probably one
Speaker 3: hundred at this point or so. And that was. Honestly,
Speaker 3: I've never seen it in that way. I've played Hickory's
Speaker 3: on it. I'm not a great Hickory golfer, so I can't.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Tad King has already seen Sweetens the way
Speaker 3: I saw it with for Simmons. But it was just
Speaker 3: fascinating how much more of the ground you saw with
Speaker 3: the ball rolling, how much more thinking you had to
Speaker 3: do playing into greens, playing just set up shots there,
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff. It was absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: And I heard you played pretty well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I broke the thirty barrier for my first time
Speaker 3: ever on Sweetens.
Speaker 2: What I didn't know you played that well.
Speaker 3: Sure, I shot twenty nine and I missed two ten footers.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Dan Nelson, won my opponent in that match,
Speaker 3: and fellow new club guy. He came out and he
Speaker 3: was going nuts too early, the both of us, and
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, he just sparked a fire under me
Speaker 3: and he just had a blast.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's amazing that you shot your your
Speaker 1: lowest nine ever and you felt yourself having You know,
Speaker 1: part of me sometimes feels I play with old equipment
Speaker 1: half sets. I actually didn't play with like a conventional
Speaker 1: set from March till was it August this year? And
Speaker 1: what I find is I'm so much more mentally stimulated
Speaker 1: in the round when I play with non just straight
Speaker 1: modern and what that does is that it keeps me
Speaker 1: in the round more did you feel that way?
Speaker 3: Absolutely like yourself. I mean huge half set player for
Speaker 3: the exact reason that you're speaking of, where I just
Speaker 3: take out half of half the clubs in my bag
Speaker 3: and play other things in this And I learned this
Speaker 3: from like Vision fifty four is a good group they
Speaker 3: talk about in terms of training. To be a good golfer,
Speaker 3: you have to learn to hit golf shots right. And
Speaker 3: part of learning to hit golf shots, and I mean
Speaker 3: shots at shape that play that played to a distance
Speaker 3: that's not natural for that club. You have to think
Speaker 3: about the implications of that. Where is this going to land,
Speaker 3: how is this going to run out? What's my miss
Speaker 3: going to be? All those things come into into the
Speaker 3: mind where now it's like I have to control the trajectory.
Speaker 3: What trajectory do I wanted to come in at? And
Speaker 3: when you're playing a course like a Sweeten's Cove or
Speaker 3: you know, think of your favorite firm and past golf course.
Speaker 3: I probably plays like Shinacock, right, those questions actually matter
Speaker 3: or the old course, and you have to think about those.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things I was just talking
Speaker 3: with the college coach recently that's both a friend and
Speaker 3: a colleague of mine, and we were just talking about
Speaker 3: how college a lot of college kids, even your best kids,
Speaker 3: don't know how to hit golf shots right. They can
Speaker 3: have a wedge in their hand, and if it's not
Speaker 3: the exact yard to just they need, they's somewhat stabbing
Speaker 3: in the dark, or they're just going full bore at everything.
Speaker 3: So even something as simple as like hey, go play
Speaker 3: with the half set, because now when you're one sixty
Speaker 3: in your nine irons not in your bag, you have
Speaker 3: to think, well, do I do something in the wedge?
Speaker 3: Do I do something with the eight iron? What do
Speaker 3: I have to do with this club to make it
Speaker 3: go the distance, land where I wanted to be and
Speaker 3: do what I wanted to do when it hits the ground.
Speaker 3: And to me, that is just it's just more interesting golf.
Speaker 3: I just find out to be more pure form of
Speaker 3: golf because it just engages the mind so much more,
Speaker 3: because it engages both my analytical and just sort of
Speaker 3: creative multiple options mine.
Speaker 2: So to get more specific about that, if you were
Speaker 2: to put on your analytics hat, if you were to say,
Speaker 2: prepare a course guide for Sweeten's gut Cove for yourself
Speaker 2: using modern equipment versus one where you were using the
Speaker 2: equipment that you used at the oil hardened Classic per
Speaker 2: Simon and bladed irons. What would be the differences between
Speaker 2: those those course guides from a statistical perspective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so one thing, I'll never do a course guide
Speaker 3: for Sweeten's Cove. That is my escape. So I will
Speaker 3: never have anybody that wants me to do one thing.
Speaker 2: You're not going to violate it in that way.
Speaker 3: I will not violate it that I even feel bad
Speaker 3: when I do the little videos of it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, well let's call it. Let's call it
Speaker 2: Athens Country Club or something like that. Let's let me
Speaker 2: another course any other course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all right, So I will say this with irons,
Speaker 3: like even blade irons, not much is different, right. The
Speaker 3: current irons are really very similar to the old irons.
Speaker 3: There's not a huge change in those when you're talking
Speaker 3: taking into account the modern ball. Now, if we're talking
Speaker 3: if we wound the ball back a little bit, with
Speaker 3: a ball with more curvature on it, things do have
Speaker 3: to be thought about a little bit differently because and
Speaker 3: this is actually one of the open questions why I
Speaker 3: always say I don't have an answer, because I honestly
Speaker 3: wonder what does a dispersion pattern look like if we
Speaker 3: were had a seven iron with a wound golf ball right,
Speaker 3: does our left the right dispersion change significantly? And more importantly,
Speaker 3: does our dispersion within it change? Do our percentages change
Speaker 3: where like our fifty percent of balls are a little wider,
Speaker 3: a little more narrow Like those questions would have to
Speaker 3: be thought out, and I don't have an answer to
Speaker 3: those because honestly, I've just never sat down with one
Speaker 3: hundred wound balls and hit seven irons to see what
Speaker 3: would happen versus my seven iron, And we grabbed a
Speaker 3: you know, a b toad or something like that and said, hey,
Speaker 3: hit these seven irons for me and I'll hit your
Speaker 3: seven iron. That's see the differences and in the same
Speaker 3: level like persimmon to like the modern driver, I think
Speaker 3: what changes there is a little bit of how the
Speaker 3: ball flies. It's not going to have as much carry
Speaker 3: and for me personally, it's going to have a little
Speaker 3: bit more run out. So I'm gonna have to think
Speaker 3: about that now, like, Okay, this ball is going to
Speaker 3: be on the ground a little bit more. It's gonna
Speaker 3: have some curvature on it. When my ball gets on
Speaker 3: the ground running, if this thing's firm and passed, where's
Speaker 3: that ball going to run to? And what are my
Speaker 3: consequences of that? Now, if we're on a soft course,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be honest, the balls not running much,
Speaker 3: there's not too much to think about. You just where's
Speaker 3: this ball gonna land? And that's all I need to know,
Speaker 3: And I'll design everything based on that. And my distance
Speaker 3: might be a little less with the persimmon, but guess what, like,
Speaker 3: my dispersion is probably gonna still be pretty similar, and
Speaker 3: the way the holes are played are going to be
Speaker 3: pretty similar other than adjusting for distances. But you start
Speaker 3: putting it firm and fast and the ball's curving, Now
Speaker 3: you know it's the whole point that's made. Once that
Speaker 3: ball's out of the on the ground and out of
Speaker 3: your control, that's that's where things can get scary. So
Speaker 3: you have to think about that a bit more so.
Speaker 2: As we mentioned earlier in the podcast, Kevin is going
Speaker 2: to be joining us at the Thoroughbred Friday Egg event
Speaker 2: held at Aching Golf Club. Kevin, you're a resident of
Speaker 2: the of the South. You've been to Aching Golf Club.
Speaker 2: What are your what are your thoughts on that course?
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, are you gonna are you gonna
Speaker 2: come up with a course guide before you arrive?
Speaker 3: I think so I've only been to Aching once, you know,
Speaker 3: I think we went on two loops. I was actually
Speaker 3: over there with a mutual friend of Jason Way and
Speaker 3: his son and then Dave I think his last name
Speaker 3: sink Guard. I think that's right. Thinking, Yes, just an
Speaker 3: absolute pleasurable day. But you know, I had the role
Speaker 3: of Tony Plane at once. I still haven't unlocked its secrets,
Speaker 3: so I don't want to say a whole lot about
Speaker 3: it until I played a couple more times. But I
Speaker 3: got admit it was. It was special. It had It
Speaker 3: was almost like walking back in time in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways. I felt like I was back in Pinehurst,
Speaker 3: like in the nineteen fifties, or how pine Hurst would
Speaker 3: have felt in the fifties, with just this sand sort
Speaker 3: of sand hills sand belt style golf course weaving through
Speaker 3: a neighborhood, which is aggressively cool contours throughout the entire course,
Speaker 3: especially playing into the greens. I mean, I'll never forget
Speaker 3: the fifteenth green. It reminded me of this Walter Travel
Speaker 3: Travis green up at kate Arundel that was just had
Speaker 3: this huge tier kind of cutting right through the middle
Speaker 3: of it where you walk up and you're like, that's
Speaker 3: just the coolest green site to put that there and
Speaker 3: place that down and just made you think about like, Okay, again,
Speaker 3: I can't control my angle, but if I'm on this
Speaker 3: side of the fairway, like how I'm gonna have to
Speaker 3: play into that green versus I end up on that
Speaker 3: side of the fairway, what I'm gonna have to do
Speaker 3: and how can I use the ground to help it out?
Speaker 3: So I'm just, yeah, really looking forward to getting back
Speaker 3: to it and getting experience it again and just having
Speaker 3: it come alive.
Speaker 1: I'm actually curious about this, with that whole being like
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy yard to sixty, could you technically
Speaker 1: actually control your angle into that green with like a
Speaker 1: forty yard wide fairway knowing that you could go wedge wedge.
Speaker 3: If you could go wedge wedge, So at a wedge
Speaker 3: you're looking at, I mean, you're still getting up pretty good.
Speaker 3: I don't remember the specific numbers off my head, but
Speaker 3: it's like a twenty five yard window that you're still
Speaker 3: operating at, so a little bit, yeah, you control it
Speaker 3: right now? Yes, Okay. The cool thing about the wedge
Speaker 3: is like seventy five percent of your balls are going
Speaker 3: to end up on a pretty tight window, So yeah,
Speaker 3: a little bit with a wedge wedge, you can control
Speaker 3: it a bit more now. But yeah, my analytics hat
Speaker 3: on is I'll echo I guess Scott Fosse. It would
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, but you're playing through a worst score.
Speaker 3: To me, that's still golf, right. I go around Sweetens
Speaker 3: a lot of times when I'm playing there and I'm
Speaker 3: not playing to my best overall score. I'm playing to
Speaker 3: my best score along a certain path. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: execute every shot as best I can along a certain path,
Speaker 3: and that's to me, that's still golf. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna doing.
Speaker 1: That when there's aggressive contours and FERB conditions and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, then angles matter a lot more. How
Speaker 1: does that relate to like the general formula? Does it
Speaker 1: throw it out of wax? Is this one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we see in like open championships, you know, a
Speaker 1: leaderboard that's distinctly different than a PGA Tour setup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the two biggest variables are winding firmness. Right, because
Speaker 3: once the ball is on the ground, you unless you
Speaker 3: have a nice topographical map of what's going to do
Speaker 3: and you have a system that would tell you where
Speaker 3: the ball is going to land, it's almost impossible to
Speaker 3: design for low it's expected score perfectly right to say, yes,
Speaker 3: this is definitely where you want to play because when
Speaker 3: the ball hits here, here's all the possible runouts. You know,
Speaker 3: that's what matters now. I think what this really speaks
Speaker 3: to is also what I believe is a true the
Speaker 3: true spirit of the game and aspect of it too.
Speaker 3: And and you know, my fifth time I mentioned Bob
Speaker 3: Crosby's podcast with Garrett that he spoke on this too.
Speaker 3: Golf is not about fairness, right, variability, chance rubbed the
Speaker 3: green and luck should be part of it. And that's
Speaker 3: if you look up how a game is defined. I
Speaker 3: think under the definition you even have chance or luck
Speaker 3: as part of defining a game wor sport in its outcome. Right,
Speaker 3: it's an or it's skill like athleticism or luck. So
Speaker 3: you should have all aspects involved with it because part
Speaker 3: of golf is also it's egocentrism, right, it's feeling with
Speaker 3: your own ego to accept, Hey, yes, I hit the
Speaker 3: perfect shot there, I got a bounce that put me
Speaker 3: in the road hole in the monker, and that's just
Speaker 3: what it is, and I have to deal with that.
Speaker 3: I have to get over that to move on hit
Speaker 3: the next shot, realizing that was a one in a
Speaker 3: million break. That was bad. But I need to bounce
Speaker 3: backward and still try to score the best I can
Speaker 3: from the next shot. And I think that's a critical
Speaker 3: important element of the game that makes it more interesting
Speaker 3: than that. Go hit a great one day, shoot thirty eight,
Speaker 3: Go hit it great the next day and shoot twenty nine.
Speaker 3: That's just I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? Though, Like we have when there's a
Speaker 1: center line bunker.
Speaker 4: Or a green that might be difficult, players now complain about,
Speaker 4: you know, getting it removed. But in football, a punter
Speaker 4: that get hits a perfect punt that gets a bad
Speaker 4: bounce and goes into the end zone for a touchback
Speaker 4: doesn't ever complain after the game about the oblong shape
Speaker 4: of a football and ask for it to be perfectly round.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating right in terms of always
Speaker 3: always think about just what golf exposes in terms of
Speaker 3: our personal preferences in the way we're able to deal
Speaker 3: with adversity, right, and golf just really, I think, especially
Speaker 3: golf at the high level game exposes that. And it's
Speaker 3: easy to coddle to a top level player, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's easy to buy into that mindset. I'm sure I
Speaker 3: bought in that mindset when I was a college golfer
Speaker 3: of like, yes, this should be fair, Like this should
Speaker 3: be straightforward. When I hit a good shot, I should
Speaker 3: be rewarded. But over the time I've come to realize, like, no,
Speaker 3: that's you know, part of the game does reward good shots,
Speaker 3: but it's okay when those aren't always rewarded. But still
Speaker 3: your ability to rebound after that. And why do we
Speaker 3: think places like Shinnacock and Augusta, especially when Augusta's firm,
Speaker 3: Like why is that the most compelling golf to watch?
Speaker 3: I think it's because, both as a player as well
Speaker 3: as a spectator, we get that element. We get that
Speaker 3: luck element when Tiger hits it in the middle of
Speaker 3: the trees but then plays it off a bounce and
Speaker 3: one time on eleven it bounces perfectly down in the
Speaker 3: middle of the green and the other time bounces off
Speaker 3: to the right of eleven. Now he's faced with a
Speaker 3: tough up and down like that. Variability makes golf much
Speaker 3: more compelling than a point and shoot model in my
Speaker 3: personal opinion.
Speaker 2: All right, great, thank you so much, Kevin. We'll see
Speaker 2: you very very soon the event's coming up, and really
Speaker 2: looking forward to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, look forward to seeing you all there
Speaker 3: and everybody else coming naked.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 2: We do the digging for you.