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 a.
Speaker 1: Brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg,
Speaker 1: Frida egg, Brian egg Frida egg bride egg Lie.
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off the golf course. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I
Speaker 2: am your host, Andy Johnson, and today I am thrilled
Speaker 2: to be joined by the great him Diaz Uh, one
Speaker 2: of the great golf writers and sports writers of our time.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure to be joined by Hi May to
Speaker 2: break down a big event like the six US Open
Speaker 2: at Shinnakok Hills. This will be the fifth time that
Speaker 2: Shinnakok has hosted the US Open in the modern era,
Speaker 2: the sixth time overall in recent US Opens since I've
Speaker 2: been alive, so the last forty years. This is forty
Speaker 2: years after Ray Floyd in nineteen eighty six to one
Speaker 2: at one under a sensational tournament, so many people in
Speaker 2: the mix. Ninety five you saw Corey Pavin win at
Speaker 2: Shinnikok Hills at even par. Two thousand and four, Ratief
Speaker 2: Goosen won at four under and kind of a thrilling victory. There,
Speaker 2: great tournament and then, of course most recently twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: Brooks Koepka survived a crazy day, a crazy week, shot
Speaker 2: one over par. So this has been a test that
Speaker 2: has been able to stand up to the monern game.
Speaker 2: I think that's a huge storyline for the week is
Speaker 2: can I stay up and stand up to the monern game?
Speaker 2: And what type of setup does the USGA deploy as
Speaker 2: Shinnecock can get a bit crispy and can be a
Speaker 2: little bit unpredictable. We have really dove into the golf
Speaker 2: course on a lot of channels. Check out our website,
Speaker 2: Thefrida egg dot com. We already have a ton of
Speaker 2: articles up about Shineakak Hills. Also check out our YouTube page.
Speaker 2: We have our Allgrasses Local series on the turf operation.
Speaker 2: We have the architecture of Shinnacock Hills. We were joined
Speaker 2: by the great Wayne Morrison, a William Flynn historian, as
Speaker 2: well as Bill Corr and Garrett and I break down
Speaker 2: the golf course on the golf on the golf course.
Speaker 2: That's a great video. The architecture of Shinnakok Hills and
Speaker 2: also we have Ry McElroy talking about Shinnecock Hills and
Speaker 2: I think what really makes it a tough test for
Speaker 2: players like of his ilk. So check out our website,
Speaker 2: check out the YouTube page for a ton of preview content.
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Speaker 2: all right. I am joined by the great High Mayds,
Speaker 2: long time writer at SI Golf Channel contributor now writer
Speaker 2: at large at Golf Digest. I May has seen many
Speaker 2: of the ratest golf championships. It's always a pleasure to
Speaker 2: be joined by him. Hi, May What do you think
Speaker 2: about Shitnacok Kills? Obviously in your illustrious career you've covered
Speaker 2: it many times. What is your favorite tournament that they've
Speaker 2: had at Shinnacock.
Speaker 1: Well, it might be a little bit romanticism on my part,
Speaker 1: but the first one was eighty six, and I've just
Speaker 1: come off the first matters i'd been to at eighty six,
Speaker 1: and you know, arguably that was the best Masters and
Speaker 1: arguably eighty six was the best Open, at least for me,
Speaker 1: that I've seen for many reasons, and one of them
Speaker 1: was Shinnecock itself. There was a lot of skepticism going
Speaker 1: into that tournament about the site. It was really sort
Speaker 1: of this kind of fever dream by Frank Hannigan, who
Speaker 1: ran the USGA in the eighties and was a great
Speaker 1: thinker of the game, did a lot for golf architecture
Speaker 1: as far as bringing awareness about the great architects. He
Speaker 1: did the first really long and you know, very very
Speaker 1: informative and thought provoking feature on an architect. It was
Speaker 1: on aw tilling Hast, and nobody knew who the tilling
Speaker 1: Hast was. I shouldn't say nobody, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of historians did, but the general public did not even
Speaker 1: really put architects first when they thought of the golf courses.
Speaker 1: They just thought of the tournaments that had been held there.
Speaker 1: But it just opened up the world for people learning
Speaker 1: about Ross and Mackenzie and everybody else. The Golden Age.
Speaker 1: Nobody talked about the Golden Age. Suddenly you're talking about, oh,
Speaker 1: the best golf course in the best land was, And
Speaker 1: you guys at friday E know it better than anyone.
Speaker 1: You know, how golf exploded because of you know, the
Speaker 1: great architects building great golf courses back in the twenties
Speaker 1: and even before that, of course Shinnecock. So you know
Speaker 1: what Flynn did in the thirties was, you know something.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be classic, and I honestly think
Speaker 1: it's my favorite US Open site. I mean, I won't
Speaker 1: go on and on, but go ahead, you know, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little more about Shinnecock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to get some stories from the eighty six.
Speaker 2: So this is your first US Open you covered.
Speaker 1: Then I covered. Yeah, I'd actually become the sixty six
Speaker 1: US Open. That was just because I lived in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: but it was the first one I covered. I went
Speaker 1: to eighty five at Oakland Hills, but I was really just,
Speaker 1: you know, very much a bench player. But it was
Speaker 1: still a great experience. But the US Open, say that again,
Speaker 1: t C US Open, TC CHIP, the US Open and
Speaker 1: Andy North grinding it out and sebb that was his
Speaker 1: best US Open ever, I believe.
Speaker 2: With eighty six. I mean, I guess, like I think
Speaker 2: about the way I cover golf, though as I go out,
Speaker 2: I go out watch. But in that US Open, similar
Speaker 2: to the Masters, I mean, it was anybody's game. You know,
Speaker 2: it's ten ten players at one point within you know,
Speaker 2: I think ten players held the lead on Sunday.
Speaker 1: I would just eat. You may have this. I always
Speaker 1: referred back to it Sal Johnson's old print kind of
Speaker 1: a comprehensive statistical summary of all the US opens up
Speaker 1: I think through ninety six. But he said at four
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday, nine guys were tied
Speaker 1: for the lead. And I do remember that in sitting
Speaker 1: in the in the in the lunch room I was
Speaker 1: sitting with I mean, I was total, you know, very
Speaker 1: much deferential just to kind of a rookie with Dan Jenkins,
Speaker 1: Mike Lupica, Dave Anderson, Herbert Warrenwin. I'm just sitting at
Speaker 1: this table and you know, kind of listening and but
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the leaderboard, going well, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: out there. Uh. And it was hard to leave that
Speaker 1: table just because it was just so much lore being
Speaker 1: flung around and wise cracks and just really skilled, incredible
Speaker 1: uh you know, golf minds, and uh, you know, I left,
Speaker 1: but and I followed Floyd and and and were on
Speaker 1: the way in.
Speaker 2: What was what was Ray floyd reputation with the media.
Speaker 1: With the media, well, he was one of those guys
Speaker 1: that put out a very gruff exterior and was skeptical
Speaker 1: of talking to the media and would kind of repel
Speaker 1: people just with his just with his mood and his
Speaker 1: or at least his the mood that he affected when
Speaker 1: the media came around that I saw. You know, so
Speaker 1: he's a little intimidating. But if you could kind of
Speaker 1: cut through and just keep asking a decent question that
Speaker 1: that showed that you might have an idea of what,
Speaker 1: you know, what professional golf's about, he would be very
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say engaging, but he'd be very thoughtful and
Speaker 1: and smart about the game. And you know, I ended
Speaker 1: up doing a book with with Raymond. The elements of
Speaker 1: scoring was about the short game mostly, but you know,
Speaker 1: just in general, his course management and the way he
Speaker 1: thought his way around to go off course and just
Speaker 1: the inside kind of mental part of the game. Of course,
Speaker 1: he had some you know, some technical stuff he did
Speaker 1: with his golf swing, but it was very much a
Speaker 1: homemade golf swing. He was a great athlete. He got
Speaker 1: drafted by the Cleveland Indians as a pitcher, and so
Speaker 1: he really knew sports and he really knew golf, and
Speaker 1: he knew the competitive side of it wonderfully. I mean,
Speaker 1: like he he mentored Freddie Couples and and and just
Speaker 1: took him up a level just in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: Usier's power intelligently and you know, lecturer, don't, don't make
Speaker 1: big mistakes and all these things that you know, they're
Speaker 1: subtle and they're nuanced. But Raymond could coach it and
Speaker 1: he could talk it. So, you know, not to say
Speaker 1: he was expansive that week, but on Sunday he was
Speaker 1: quite eloquent. I thought about, you know, the way he
Speaker 1: the way he not conquered, but the way he handled
Speaker 1: Shinnecock and what Shinnecock demanded of a player. It was
Speaker 1: really an artistic golf course, and he was an artistic golfer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, watching the telecast a couple of weeks ago, they
Speaker 2: made o they I can't remember which broadcaster was like
Speaker 2: we I talked to Maria ray Floyd's wife, and you know,
Speaker 2: Floyd hadn't had a lot of success in the US Opens,
Speaker 2: and she said that this week was the most conservative
Speaker 2: approach he's ever ever taken to golf course at Shittacock.
Speaker 2: And you think about where modern golf strategy has gotten
Speaker 2: and you know, basically the gospel is to play you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get too far out over, but
Speaker 2: ultra conservative is the way to play. You avoid hazards,
Speaker 2: you avoid bunkers. You and if you you know, aim
Speaker 2: at middles of greens all day, you're going to roll
Speaker 2: in a couple of putts and you're going to miss
Speaker 2: a couple close and that's how you get to you know,
Speaker 2: four under part. But it's interesting to hear, you know,
Speaker 2: he had success when he plays ultra conservative, and I think,
Speaker 2: like it's fascinating, Like there's this lore about so many
Speaker 2: players in the sport, and you know there's obviously a
Speaker 2: ton of you know, love of Ben Crenshaw, Ray Floyd
Speaker 2: one one leg away from from the Grand Slam. I
Speaker 2: feel like he is one player that is consistently underrated
Speaker 2: or underappreciated of that era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and part of it was because he wasn't real
Speaker 1: expansive and told his story a lot, and you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that engaging with the press. He could have
Speaker 1: he could have controlled the narrative a little bit more,
Speaker 1: but inside the game he was I would say revered
Speaker 1: as extremely good mentally, especially down the stretch. You know,
Speaker 1: we did see him lose the Masters in ninety and
Speaker 1: that was a killer when he lost to Faldo. He
Speaker 1: didn't usually make those kind of mistakes. So you know,
Speaker 1: what he did at Shinnecock was an interesting week because
Speaker 1: the week before he had led the third round at
Speaker 1: Westchester and shot seventy seven on Sunday and you may
Speaker 1: know the story when they were driving from Westchester to
Speaker 1: Shinnecock he and Maria. Maria was very challenging and she
Speaker 1: was the one who turned Raymond's career around because in
Speaker 1: the sixties he was this really talented, long hitting, powerful
Speaker 1: player who just kind of screwed around too much, going
Speaker 1: to the racetrack and you know, late nights and bachelor
Speaker 1: and you know, living the life but not getting the
Speaker 1: most out of his golf. And when he met Maria
Speaker 1: and they got married, it just changed him and he
Speaker 1: would always talk about that as the turning point of
Speaker 1: his career. And so she said, you know, Raymond, we
Speaker 1: got to talk about what happened on Sunday here. You know,
Speaker 1: you just didn't handle it, I mean, what was wrong.
Speaker 1: And Floyd didn't want to talk about it. And you know,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, leave me alone right now. And
Speaker 1: they're in the car anyway, they end up pulling over
Speaker 1: on the Long Island Turnpike and having this screaming match.
Speaker 1: And Maria was a very strong woman and really smart
Speaker 1: and very accompli business woman before she met Raymond, and Raymond,
Speaker 1: you know, was really strong personality. But that's you know,
Speaker 1: he deferred to her in many ways, and she won
Speaker 1: the argument because they did talk about it. And you know,
Speaker 1: I guess he got his mind right at Shinnacock, whether
Speaker 1: it was conservative play or just you know, just being
Speaker 1: really focused. And I may screw this up, but you know,
Speaker 1: he used to talk about Raymond having the look, which
Speaker 1: was this glazed look he would get on Sundays when
Speaker 1: he would close out tournaments, because he won the PGA,
Speaker 1: I think by you know, he'd led by eight or
Speaker 1: something coming down the stretch at Southern Hills and just
Speaker 1: dominated the whole tournament and shot record score. So when
Speaker 1: he got it going, you know, he would just get
Speaker 1: in this wonderful zone. And she said, you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen him. I've seen him win without the look, or
Speaker 1: I've seen him how did she put it, I've seen
Speaker 1: him win occasionally without the look, but I've never seen
Speaker 1: him lose with the look. And he had the look
Speaker 1: at Shinnacock and it was you know she was she
Speaker 1: was playing with with with Payne Stewart. And later when
Speaker 1: Payne finally won some opens and one of his majors,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I kind of got an education
Speaker 1: from Raymond Floyd. He just had this aura that you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of shrunk in its presence because it was
Speaker 1: really a powerful mental focus that just kind of emanated
Speaker 1: out of him and the players felt it. So you
Speaker 1: know that that's what Raymond I think had the And
Speaker 1: he had all kinds of shots. Incredible wedge player, incredible
Speaker 1: wet chipper of the ball, and could could move the
Speaker 1: ball around. He was a good ball striker when he
Speaker 1: when he got it going. He was not always a
Speaker 1: great ball striker. That was his challenge was finding you know,
Speaker 1: the right swing. Thought, let's say on Tuesday afternoon or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seemed he got it really going. Watching that,
Speaker 2: you know, you're describing him his relationship with the press,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of his his I would say, Aura,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to use Pj's generations terms here.
Speaker 1: Right that was before they don't know that one.
Speaker 2: But he kind of revives, uh be a little bit
Speaker 2: like the way he's been described in articles I've read
Speaker 2: and you by you here of Brooks Kopka.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say Brooks Brooks could get in
Speaker 1: the zone, especially at majors obviously, and you know, Raymond
Speaker 1: early in his career could be very distracted, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: he hung around with some guys al Bessa Link and
Speaker 1: Doug Sanders and Bob Rosberg and Rossi in particular, loved
Speaker 1: to play the horses, and he was sort of known
Speaker 1: for like if he was four over on you know,
Speaker 1: Friday morning, after seven holes, he'd walk off and and
Speaker 1: he'd go to the track and sometimes he take Raymond
Speaker 1: with him, and and Raymond knew he was you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't really know it. He lived in San Francisco
Speaker 1: in those days, by the way, you know. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he owned the club, right, He owned part of a
Speaker 1: strip club, a topless club in on Broadway there. Uh
Speaker 1: so he was the man. He was the boulevard deer,
Speaker 1: you know. But he did not He was a hell
Speaker 1: of a gambler, one of those guys who you know,
Speaker 1: very tough to beat on it Tuesday or Wednesday practice round.
Speaker 1: But he just didn't have the sustained focus, so when
Speaker 1: he did get it, it would just open up a
Speaker 1: whole world of how good he could really be. And
Speaker 1: I forgot your original question, and if I'm not answering
Speaker 1: it sent me straight.
Speaker 2: It was just about Brooks.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I know Brooks. The only reason I brought
Speaker 1: that up was a good Brooks. You know, he would
Speaker 1: He's frankly said, you know, it's hard now. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: different since he's come back from living appreciates maybe with
Speaker 1: the tour really is every every week, but he would
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, week to week, I don't really
Speaker 1: get up for the tournaments, but when the majors come,
Speaker 1: I'm at my best. And you did see his mean,
Speaker 1: his demeanor and his facial expression get hardened during those majors,
Speaker 1: and he was really a you know, he won five.
Speaker 1: It's just incredible you think back, I mean, Brooks is
Speaker 1: not really a force at the moment, but you just
Speaker 1: can and he's not that old. You can't ignore he's
Speaker 1: won five majors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I had We obviously did our five
Speaker 2: things here for this pod, but he has. He's he
Speaker 2: made mine. I think, like whether he contends or not
Speaker 2: this year, you know, I think the the win at
Speaker 2: Shinnikok Hills is about as good of a US Open,
Speaker 2: you know, achievement as you can get. And when I
Speaker 2: think about all of Brooks as majors, the Shinnacock Hills
Speaker 2: Open is the one that I think of as quintessential Brooks,
Speaker 2: where you know, he played the golf course smart, he
Speaker 2: hit lots of driving irons, he he in where what
Speaker 2: I think about the most is like there are a
Speaker 2: lot of excellent approach shots and excellent you know, just
Speaker 2: excellent play out of the back eye to close out
Speaker 2: the US Open in twenty eighteen. But I think about
Speaker 2: the up and down for bogey.
Speaker 1: On eleven eleven yeah, eleven, say yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the up and down from he was about
Speaker 2: fifty yards short of fourteen green it was humming down
Speaker 2: wind a front pin, and the up and down there
Speaker 2: as these two just like that's Brooks Kopka in a
Speaker 2: nutshell at a major championship. And obviously you know it
Speaker 2: doesn't you know, distance Shinnacock's I think this is important everywhere.
Speaker 2: I don't think distance is like a prerequisite at Shinnacock.
Speaker 2: And when I look at like, what's the big difference
Speaker 2: between brooks Kepka today and you know seven years ago
Speaker 2: or eight years ago when when they played at Shanaicagas,
Speaker 2: he's not overwhelmingly powerful anymore because of the way the
Speaker 2: tour has just gotten faster, and he's you know, you
Speaker 2: lose a superpower. You you aren't going to be you know,
Speaker 2: the you know, the same dominant force that he was.
Speaker 2: And I do I think like the way he it
Speaker 2: will always go under the radar. And talked about the
Speaker 2: way he understood how to attack a golf course and
Speaker 2: understand how to attack a golf course. You know, they talked,
Speaker 2: he talked after O Kill about O Kill about this
Speaker 2: at the US Open at la how he he really like,
Speaker 2: if you want to understand a golf course, you stand
Speaker 2: on the back of the green and you look back
Speaker 2: and I know which way where I want to be
Speaker 2: approaching the green from from for different pins. And he
Speaker 2: really you know, I think like because of his persona
Speaker 2: and his personality, he will never get the credit for
Speaker 2: the golf brain that he had.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing, go ahead, scuse me.
Speaker 2: And Shinnakock was that moment you know of of like
Speaker 2: you know, this is this is a place that is
Speaker 2: the peak place to win a US Open.
Speaker 1: Well, I think one thing that validated him in my mind,
Speaker 1: besides the wins and the way he played, that was just,
Speaker 1: you know, very very much a parent just visually was
Speaker 1: helping Doak at uh at Memorial Park, and Doak you know,
Speaker 1: he's not always the easiest collaborator by his own you
Speaker 1: know admission. I don't mean personality wise. I mean he
Speaker 1: just has his his ideas and and they're great ones usually.
Speaker 1: But he said, Brooks really gave him a nice perspective
Speaker 1: about what tour players, you know, find difficult in green surrounds,
Speaker 1: and that golf course has very few bunkers, and it's
Speaker 1: it's amazing how well out of golf course as a
Speaker 1: municipal or a public course holds up. And it's because
Speaker 1: of the way that the greens challenge, especially you know,
Speaker 1: shots around the green. And so you know, Brooks added
Speaker 1: that to it. And I think of that shot, the
Speaker 1: up and down at eleven eleven's probably the most diable,
Speaker 1: diabolical part three at Shinnecock and maybe anywhere. I know.
Speaker 1: He actually chipped it in the bunker from over the
Speaker 1: green and then he got up and down. He made
Speaker 1: about a fifteen foot or so. It wasn't stellar short
Speaker 1: game play, but it was. It was that toughness and
Speaker 1: rising to the moment and not make in the big mistake.
Speaker 1: And he he made bogey there and I think DJ
Speaker 1: three putted and made bogey and that looked like a
Speaker 1: big flip and ended up being nothing and he and
Speaker 1: he may have won the open on that hole. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the big thing about Brooks is he is a very
Speaker 1: smart course manager and he's pretty well rounded. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about now, Pete Brooks. He had a good short game,
Speaker 1: he was a good putter, he was a good he
Speaker 1: was a good iron player. I think actually the driver,
Speaker 1: I mean, because he hit kind of a cut and
Speaker 1: his his swing is not optimal as far as the
Speaker 1: angle of attack for distance. It's kind of steep, and
Speaker 1: he spun it a lot, but he was you know,
Speaker 1: he got it in the fairway and he was just
Speaker 1: such a brute that he could get it out there
Speaker 1: pretty far. But it's not a swing for maximized distance.
Speaker 1: I mean, you almost never see him turning over with
Speaker 1: a draw, so you know he was giving up distance
Speaker 1: even then. But he was so powerful and the game's
Speaker 1: changed obviously, and I think more than anything when I
Speaker 1: watch him now, it's the putter if he puts well
Speaker 1: and gets that back because I didn't he play well yesterday?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, who knows back. Yeah, I wouldn't count him out. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's due for something. I think. I gotta believe his
Speaker 1: mindset is so much different and appreciative and grateful that
Speaker 1: he's back, and you know, probably with a very good
Speaker 1: attitude at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think I wouldn't be surprised if if
Speaker 2: he's back in the mix. I think it would be
Speaker 2: one of the one of the better stories you could have.
Speaker 2: Just I think when like Floyd, when Brooks is in
Speaker 2: the mix, it's it's got he gets that, he gets
Speaker 2: that look and he gets going and and it's like
Speaker 2: it's a hard player to have in the mix, uh,
Speaker 2: on the leader board just because of the his closing
Speaker 2: ability and and pedigree at majors and at a golf
Speaker 2: course where like you know, Shittacock, I was telling some
Speaker 2: people this the other day, is like I believe and
Speaker 2: I know you want to talk about Shittacock Hills. I
Speaker 2: believe Shittacock is extremely like what I love about Shitnacock
Speaker 2: is it allows you to go you can make birdie's
Speaker 2: every hole, I think every hole out there. You look
Speaker 2: at it and it's like, if I execute, I can
Speaker 2: make a birdie here. There's no hole that is like
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly difficult. But what is overwhelmingly difficult about Shittacock is
Speaker 2: stringing together a series of great holes. And I think,
Speaker 2: like what I love about the golf course is that
Speaker 2: you can go out and you could play a great
Speaker 2: round at Shitakock. And we saw that last time the
Speaker 2: US Open was here with rounds from like Tommy Fleetwood,
Speaker 2: Tony f Now played a great round, Daniel Berger played
Speaker 2: a great round. You can go out and you can
Speaker 2: really achieve a great round. But what's tricky about Shittacock
Speaker 2: is doing it multiple days in a row.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean it's unrelenting in that regard. You
Speaker 1: have to hit it solid and really conceive your iron
Speaker 1: shots correctly to hold the greens. The targets are so
Speaker 1: small on the greens themselves. To me, it's a second
Speaker 1: shot golf course. And you know, it's interesting they they've
Speaker 1: allowed the fairways to be wider this year. John Bodenhemmerh
Speaker 1: was just talking about that, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: they want they want to see the artistry from the
Speaker 1: fairway with the irons and let that be the determiner
Speaker 1: of who's the best player. And I think that's actually
Speaker 1: the most beautiful kind of golf because then you see,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a physical challenge, great athletic of
Speaker 1: I think act to hit a really solid compressed iron
Speaker 1: shot that's well shaped and you know, is the right
Speaker 1: is the right trajectory and all those things that go
Speaker 1: into a really great iron shot and do a great
Speaker 1: green complex and see that over and over somebody do that.
Speaker 1: I think that's what the most memorable rounds are about
Speaker 1: that I've seen anyway. And nobody does that right now
Speaker 1: better than Shuffler. Uh. But you know Jack Jack didn't
Speaker 1: go pin hunting a lot, but man, he hit a
Speaker 1: million greens and he always hit the right shot. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you know he I remember talking Arnold Palmer wants
Speaker 1: saying that the best part of Jacks games is middle
Speaker 1: iron game. He goes, he's just relentless with that doesn't
Speaker 1: miss greens, hits the right shot, can hold the greens
Speaker 1: when they get really really firm. In majors, and and
Speaker 1: that's what Shennikock's gonna demand. You cannot you can't be
Speaker 1: you know, kind of slapping iron shots around. And we
Speaker 1: do see that with some players, you know, when the
Speaker 1: greens are a little softer, they can contend Shehnnacock and
Speaker 1: the opening general is about that. But Shennacock especially, uh
Speaker 1: will separate those guys out. You've got to be a
Speaker 1: really you know that that that that flusher that you
Speaker 1: you know, sound, all that stuff that's really beautiful about
Speaker 1: the game, especially on the practice team when you when
Speaker 1: you see guys just you know, just hitting these artistic, beautiful,
Speaker 1: solid iron shots. That's what Shinnakock asked for.
Speaker 2: So you've seen a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 2: great Championship golf courses you've attended, so may it covered
Speaker 2: so many of the US Opens. Do you believe Shannakok
Speaker 2: Where do you think it stacks up in the great
Speaker 2: US Open venues?
Speaker 1: Well? To me, it's the best one. And you know
Speaker 1: what I've been hearing that, you know Bodenhammer was talking
Speaker 1: about yesterday. You know they've been surveying the players the
Speaker 1: last five or six years about you know, what they
Speaker 1: like to see at the US Open. And and what's
Speaker 1: important about the US Open, And one of the big
Speaker 1: reactions is it matters where you win, and winning at
Speaker 1: Shinnacock they feel defined you as a really good player.
Speaker 1: And so in many ways, for many players, Shinnecock's their
Speaker 1: favorite US Open site. And I'm not saying that because
Speaker 1: the players say that. I love it for its aesthetics,
Speaker 1: for the you know, it's on the best land, probably
Speaker 1: the best golf land America is on Long Island. It's
Speaker 1: the closest to the links, and the wind is blowing
Speaker 1: and in the summer it's not overly humid, and it's
Speaker 1: just and the colors of the grass are so beautiful,
Speaker 1: and the variations it just the most natural, you know,
Speaker 1: well designed golf courses too, without being overly elaborate, you know,
Speaker 1: the simplicity of them. It's just a great golf experience.
Speaker 1: To watch golf out there, and then to watch the
Speaker 1: players handle it and really go into their bag with
Speaker 1: everything they got with skill and imagination. You just feel
Speaker 1: like you're watching the very highest level of golf, and
Speaker 1: Shinnecock brings it out.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of courses used to but since
Speaker 1: this is you know, getting on a harangue. You know,
Speaker 1: since the ball has started going so far, at least
Speaker 1: being hit so far, don't want to blame the ball
Speaker 1: too much. You know, it's just changed the challenge. And
Speaker 1: it's to me, it's slightly cheap in the challenge and
Speaker 1: shinnik because it's not about length as much as just
Speaker 1: precise contact and beautifully conceived iron shots that that hasn't
Speaker 1: been lost because of the power. You'll be some wedges
Speaker 1: coming in, but you know, they still got to be
Speaker 1: perfectly hit to get close. And so that's what I
Speaker 1: love about Shinnacock. And I love the clubhouse, and I
Speaker 1: love the history of it, and in general, you feel
Speaker 1: like you're at a home of golf. I mean, Pinehers
Speaker 1: is the American home of golf, and and you know
Speaker 1: say it feels like Saint Andrew's. It feels like you're
Speaker 1: at a historic place, especially that clubhouse and the mood
Speaker 1: that sense at the top of the hill like that,
Speaker 1: that's that's the best set clubhouse in America, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean founding five Club two, which is you know,
Speaker 2: obviously one of the founders of the usgau. There's something
Speaker 2: to that. But I think, you know, an interesting aspect
Speaker 2: is like what can you learn from Shinnacock in terms
Speaker 2: of the spotter technology? I you know, frankly, I think
Speaker 2: the rollbacks kind of a mess right now. Well obviously, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, but the the what can we learn about
Speaker 2: like what makes players uncomfortable because Shittacock's one of the
Speaker 2: places that makes modern the modern golfer uncomfortable, and like, sadly,
Speaker 2: from what I can tell is like the vast majority
Speaker 2: of what Shittacock does to players is it's natural just
Speaker 2: sheer natural advantages to other golf courses, which is the
Speaker 2: ever present wind, the elevation changes, and the firm turf
Speaker 2: that is that is a byproduct of having sandy soil.
Speaker 2: Like those three things together, so wind, elevation, and firm turf.
Speaker 2: You know, Plus they're repelling edges, you know, the greens
Speaker 2: that repel away the ball if you miss your target
Speaker 2: or you miss strike your shot. So you know, the
Speaker 2: the best way to describe this is like when the
Speaker 2: greens are pretty soft, if I catch the ball a
Speaker 2: fraction on the toe and say I hit I'm playing
Speaker 2: to hit a two yard fade into a green that
Speaker 2: I know is going to stop if I hit catching
Speaker 2: it fraction on the toe and it turns over a
Speaker 2: yard or two. At most golf courses, that's not a
Speaker 2: big deal. You know, at Shinnacock Hills, that could lead
Speaker 2: to your ball just rolling thirty yards away. Sure, because
Speaker 2: of the firmness of the turf, and if you're not
Speaker 2: hitting the shape. Plus you know, like what the way
Speaker 2: a draw could be accentuated with the wind, or way
Speaker 2: of fade could be accentuated with the wind, all these
Speaker 2: things that the margin for error at Shinnacock Hills is
Speaker 2: shrunk more so than any other American course, and I
Speaker 2: would say more so than any other course maybe in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, well you could make I think you made
Speaker 1: a good argument, and that's very possibly true that it
Speaker 1: is the greatest. I think it's very much in the
Speaker 1: top three or four of the greatest tests for championship golf. Now,
Speaker 1: if you get it that way for everyday play or
Speaker 1: even every week play on PGA Tour, it might be
Speaker 1: a little much. I mean, it's a fine line. You
Speaker 1: can go over the line. They've gone over the line
Speaker 1: at Shinnacock, at least by their own admission. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're rolling, They're they're they're they're they're sort of backing
Speaker 1: off on going to the edge so much in terms
Speaker 1: of the whole I don't know about the whole positions,
Speaker 1: but certainly the front for the firmness and the fairway
Speaker 1: with and the rough they want Shinnacock to be quote
Speaker 1: unquote Shinnacock. But it's still championship golf, and you've got
Speaker 1: to ratchet it up. I think you're absolutely right. It's
Speaker 1: the natural environment at Shinnecock. That's the greatest challenge. But
Speaker 1: then when you start tweaking the setup, you know you
Speaker 1: can make it even better as far as really really
Speaker 1: testing these guys in a way that brings out inspired
Speaker 1: championship play. But you can also go over the line
Speaker 1: and and make it, you know, sort of random, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that either. So I think
Speaker 1: the setup now at all these majors, it's one of
Speaker 1: the greatest challenges in the game to get it right.
Speaker 1: For example, I thought it iron i mink. I thought
Speaker 1: they actually went too far and it wasn't terrible, it
Speaker 1: was interesting, but it got to the point where nobody
Speaker 1: could really hit it close because of the whole positions
Speaker 1: and because of the firmness, and yeah, they were hitting
Speaker 1: wedges a lot of the time because the course wasn't
Speaker 1: that long, but it still ended up with everybody having
Speaker 1: twenty footers for birdies or thirty footers, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was that's why the leaderboard got so bunched and
Speaker 1: it was so hard to separate. Having said that, Aaron
Speaker 1: Raye he played the best coming in and really was
Speaker 1: a definitive victory. But I'm just saying up to that point,
Speaker 1: it was really like, wow, how do you how do
Speaker 1: you show your superiority in this on this kind of setup?
Speaker 1: And you know, the PGA not to pick on them
Speaker 1: in the past, they've been the ones that were kind
Speaker 1: of us open light and might have been considered too
Speaker 1: acquiescent to the players. I thought they wanted to get
Speaker 1: away from that around me because it looked like earlily
Speaker 1: the week it was going to be wet, number one
Speaker 1: and number two. The golf course wasn't that long. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: we could have a you know, seventeen under deal here.
Speaker 1: Who knows. And so, you know, Carrie Hay has always
Speaker 1: been pretty conservative. He went he went kind of aggressively
Speaker 1: I only bring that up because that threat is president
Speaker 1: every major. Now, if you want to take it to
Speaker 1: the edge, it's harder to take it to the edge
Speaker 1: now because the edge is sharper than it's ever been
Speaker 1: because of the distance the ball is going. And and
Speaker 1: if it you know, if you allow with but you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't have enough severity on the green complexes. It's wedges, wedges, wedges,
Speaker 1: and Berti puts, Berty puts, Berty puts. You know that.
Speaker 1: So you then if you tied it up too much,
Speaker 1: and you put too much rough I say too much
Speaker 1: in the sense that it just becomes so narrow that
Speaker 1: everybody's having to hit irons or just getting punished from
Speaker 1: the rough in a way that they can't recover. Then
Speaker 1: you have kind of like Marian in twenty thirteen, which
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it was terrible, but it was over
Speaker 1: the edge. I thought. So that is a challenge that
Speaker 1: that's why I favor a rollback that would take that
Speaker 1: would open up you know, the parameters for the setup, guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, I think they you know, last
Speaker 2: year even was a you know, an interesting setup like
Speaker 2: the rough at Oakbant, you know, a foot off the
Speaker 2: fairway and and this happened at Ironomic two. I think
Speaker 2: this is something that my colleague Joseph Lamannia hits on
Speaker 2: all the time. Is the idea of like where narrow
Speaker 2: misses are penalized more than wide miss because you you
Speaker 2: hit it into the gallery, you get into the trample
Speaker 2: down rough. And I don't know what the answer to
Speaker 2: that is on on a golf course like ironom inc or.
Speaker 1: Let me interject, I you know, graduated rough has been
Speaker 1: you know, villainized.
Speaker 2: I don't get why.
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, it's it's I think it's
Speaker 1: a very honest, try to be equitable, and uh I
Speaker 1: think it works in general. Uh yeah, you know, Marco
Speaker 1: Mirro was a great player. He won two majors, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have a great US Open. Raguos. It would
Speaker 1: just drive me nuts to because before they had intermediate rough,
Speaker 1: it would just be high rough, right off the edge
Speaker 1: almost and you know I missed if everybody a yard,
Speaker 1: I might as well miss it by twenty yards. I
Speaker 1: was dead. So that was part of the challenge of
Speaker 1: the US Opening. Why you had to be so straight.
Speaker 1: It was more of a premium on driving accuracy in
Speaker 1: the past than there is now. Even so it's still
Speaker 1: kind of a distortion I think of the overall test,
Speaker 1: that's all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, I what I I think that
Speaker 2: one of the things that Shinnakak can do is it
Speaker 2: does provide a little bit more of equitable I think
Speaker 2: there's enough space where the crowd, the fans aren't like
Speaker 2: on top of the golf as much. And one of
Speaker 2: the things it has is it has the wider fairways.
Speaker 2: Then there's like a little bit of rough, which sounds
Speaker 2: like it's going to be pretty tough. It's it's unpredictable,
Speaker 2: and obviously the name of the game at Shinnacock, because
Speaker 2: of the greens and the firmness and the repelling nature
Speaker 2: of them and the severity of them. The name of
Speaker 2: the game is having control of your golf ball, and
Speaker 2: that's you have to play from the fairway to do that.
Speaker 2: And then they have the fescue, so it's like you
Speaker 2: kind of get a natural graduate or rough here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think you know, forty eight yards that's
Speaker 1: the average apparently of the fairway with that's a lot.
Speaker 1: So if you do hit in the rough, I think
Speaker 1: fair enough you should be punished, and you got to
Speaker 1: punish the modern player more than used to punish the
Speaker 1: older player, I mean the previous player, because he's hitting
Speaker 1: a shorter club in and the rough has to mean something.
Speaker 1: So I think as far as equitable, Shinnakock is going
Speaker 1: to be an equitable test.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, like everybody's going to run to the
Speaker 2: forty eight yard number. Those fairways play so much narrower
Speaker 2: than forty eight yards just so fast. Yeah, and they're fast,
Speaker 2: and then they go on diagonals all the time, so
Speaker 2: you're you have to pick I think what the you know,
Speaker 2: it's one of the brilliant aspects of Shinnakok is the diagonal,
Speaker 2: you know, And this is one of the things that
Speaker 2: Flynn a lot of Flynn. You know, if you look
Speaker 2: at the third hole, that's that's in the same that
Speaker 2: hole is the same hole as Ceb McDonald laid out
Speaker 2: in the you know, I think it was nineteen sixteen
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen version of Shinnakok. What Flynn did was it
Speaker 2: took he took the t box that was right of
Speaker 2: two green, and it set it straight and moved it
Speaker 2: to the left, and he moved it left we'll say
Speaker 2: forty fifty yards. And what that did is it puts
Speaker 2: that hole on a diagonal, so you're teeing off like this.
Speaker 2: And what it does is it makes you pick line.
Speaker 2: You have to pick line and distance.
Speaker 1: Okay, you also got to pick shape, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's I think it's really hard to work the
Speaker 1: ball with the modern driver and the modern golf ball.
Speaker 1: But you know, I just to go back to a
Speaker 1: random very quickly. I watched Rory some of the right
Speaker 1: to left sloping fairways. He was still hitting a draw.
Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked because he does have a
Speaker 1: fade in his in his back obviously, and you know,
Speaker 1: he needed to fade it against the hills so he
Speaker 1: could keep it in the fairway. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's just getting stubborn and going, you know, gosh,
Speaker 1: this draw. When I hit it straight, I can hold
Speaker 1: any fairway because it's so straight, so controlled when he's on,
Speaker 1: But he wasn't quite on the point being you know,
Speaker 1: the percentage is if you can hit shape it so
Speaker 1: it lands into the hills, uh, and not with the hill.
Speaker 1: And that's another you know, especially the back nine at
Speaker 1: Shinnecock has a lot more undulation, and so the driving
Speaker 1: becomes more artistic too. I think you know that's another way. Now,
Speaker 1: you got to pick a golf course that has that.
Speaker 1: Not every golf course has that, of course.
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a quick break and talk about
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Speaker 2: Thanks to T Mobile. Let's get back to him DS.
Speaker 2: You brought up Rory I we'll get back to the
Speaker 2: golf course. I think it'll be probably a through line
Speaker 2: through this whole conversation. One of the things that I'm
Speaker 2: kind of why watching is obvious as is Rory. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the interesting next things to talk
Speaker 2: about with Rory is like can he win all the
Speaker 2: majors twice? He obviously has two PGAs he has two masters.
Speaker 2: We did a little video with him talking about Shinnakak Hills,
Speaker 2: but he talked about the idea of winning a hard
Speaker 2: US Open, like a real hard, like one that goes
Speaker 2: down in the story books of like that was. That
Speaker 2: was a tough week, and he's talked about how that's
Speaker 2: the thing that gutted him the most about Pinehurst was
Speaker 2: like the idea of like, you know, that was the
Speaker 2: kind of US Open that I want to win. He
Speaker 2: obviously won Congressional. It was soft, It was a long
Speaker 2: time ago. But what I think is is fascinating about
Speaker 2: his career is that if you you know, if we
Speaker 2: had this discussion seven years ago, we would say, or
Speaker 2: even you know, ten years ago, Shinnecock is not a
Speaker 2: Rory golf course. He needs a soft golf course. And
Speaker 2: in this this this act of his career, I believe
Speaker 2: that soft golf courses are actually not Rory courses anymore.
Speaker 2: I think the firm, you know, fast golf course is
Speaker 2: the golf course with that activates his brain and gives him,
Speaker 2: at this point in his career, a big advantage over
Speaker 2: the field because of the way he can now think
Speaker 2: his way around a golf course, the work he's done
Speaker 2: with his wedge game, and just his general you know,
Speaker 2: experience level comes comes to the top. And we've seen
Speaker 2: him play. You know, to me, the harder the setup,
Speaker 2: the better it is for Rory.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if I go that far, Andy
Speaker 1: not to say I think he has dramatically improved those
Speaker 1: more subtle and nuanced areas of the game, the wedge play,
Speaker 1: flighting him lower, spinning him better. He changed his golf ball.
Speaker 1: That helped too. It's a spinner. It's a spinning your ball.
Speaker 1: I think it's made him value the control aspect of
Speaker 1: the game a little bit more, and he knows it's
Speaker 1: cost him in the past. He knows he could look
Speaker 1: at the you know, at the statistics and the analysis
Speaker 1: of that and know that he was an inconsistent wedge player.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about Greg Norman a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier off camera, and you know Rory suffered from you know,
Speaker 1: flighting his wedges high and hitting a lot of pulls
Speaker 1: long and not having the distance control. I mean Tiger
Speaker 1: suffered from that for about you know, seven months when
Speaker 1: he turned pro and made it a strength, and Rory
Speaker 1: has eventually made it I would say a strength now.
Speaker 1: So yes, any golf course is not beyond him any longer.
Speaker 1: That was a real thing that he won on wet
Speaker 1: golf courses before he even admitted it. He didn't love
Speaker 1: firm and fast. I'm not. I don't think it's necessarily
Speaker 1: his fort now at the exclusion of I mean, a
Speaker 1: soft golf course with Rory carrying at three twenty is man.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's a golf course that he
Speaker 1: should dominate. But he also has the other gear, the
Speaker 1: gear that, as you say, sort of brings historical achievements
Speaker 1: and historical performances and and how we really judge is
Speaker 1: this guy a really complete or close to a complete golfer?
Speaker 1: And Shinnecock would do that and he knew it, and
Speaker 1: he knew it at Pinehurst. And but he's gotten better
Speaker 1: in the US Open. I mean, you know seconds so
Speaker 1: many times now, and you know a bunch of top
Speaker 1: tens this this this decade, and you know he's he's
Speaker 1: better on the harder golf courses than he ever used
Speaker 1: to be. And Augusta too, Augusta Furman fast was something
Speaker 1: that he didn't handle that well, and now he does.
Speaker 2: Last two I would say, we're firm and fast assers.
Speaker 1: They Yeah, yeah, he's a better player. He's a better
Speaker 1: player now he's got some scar tissue. And you know
Speaker 1: that freedom when you watch those those old films of
Speaker 1: him at at Congressional or at key Oil. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so flowing and incredibly free and powerful, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't even built like he is now. But that was
Speaker 1: sort of the age of innocence in a way, and
Speaker 1: as hard as you get older when you know what
Speaker 1: can go wrong. And he's had some tough ones, and
Speaker 1: I think that the way he's recovered from those, it's
Speaker 1: really one of the inspiring things in the modern game
Speaker 1: right now is to watch Wrory have this chapter where
Speaker 1: he overcame the pain of what he went through and
Speaker 1: it didn't beat him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think obviously he's going to be I
Speaker 2: would say probably story B. Story. I think the golf
Speaker 2: course is probably story A. This week, Story b's the
Speaker 2: Scotty Scheffler obviously going for the career Grand Slam, and
Speaker 2: that's going to be the talk of the talk of
Speaker 2: the week. I think it's going to be Scotty Scheffler
Speaker 2: the career Grand Slam. And how is he in a
Speaker 2: slump right now?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think he's in the slump. You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny Tiger used to get occasionally, like in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, four oh, Tiger's in a slump. And man,
Speaker 1: he didn't like hearing that. He really rebelled against that word.
Speaker 1: But relative to his previous performance, he wasn't a slump.
Speaker 1: And to some extent or Scott he's in a bit
Speaker 1: of a slump, I think slightly with the irons which
Speaker 1: have been so supreme, and I think he's one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty fifth in proximity this year. You know that's
Speaker 1: a small sample, just to take it for half a year,
Speaker 1: but still it's it's dramatic when you consider he's led
Speaker 1: proximity I think the last three years. So you know,
Speaker 1: he's or at least strokes gained approach, I should say.
Speaker 1: I mean, he is the supreme iron player. That's his
Speaker 1: greatest of all the strengths that he has, that's his
Speaker 1: greatest strength and he'll need it the most at Shinnecock
Speaker 1: And so I'm thinking, Okay, let's see if he can
Speaker 1: pull like a Nicholas where he goes away for a
Speaker 1: week and he figures it out and he comes to
Speaker 1: the Major just prepared and you know, and having a
Speaker 1: clear mind about whatever struggle he has had, he's figured
Speaker 1: it out, and then it'll be an incredible week for him. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that's a big ask. We don't know if that
Speaker 1: can happen. At the moment. He could still win even
Speaker 1: with his B game, because he's that good throughout the
Speaker 1: throughout the bag. Uh, it's gonna be a lot of pressure,
Speaker 1: a lot of expectation. You know. I know how iron
Speaker 1: clad he is mentally, but I don't think he loves
Speaker 1: all the demands of the public position that he has.
Speaker 1: And he handles it, but it's I won't say it's grudging,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of in a way that he wants
Speaker 1: to compartmentalize it and put it to the side. He
Speaker 1: knows he doesn't want to really want to live it. Uh,
Speaker 1: golf has got to be separate for him. When that
Speaker 1: comes to that stuff, that's a distraction and it'll be
Speaker 1: harder not to get distracted next week. I think if
Speaker 1: he wins, it'll be his greatest win, not just because
Speaker 1: it achieved the Grand Slam, but because of everything that
Speaker 1: you know, has been laid upon him, as far as
Speaker 1: the burden of sort of carrying the game right now
Speaker 1: and not being at his best by a little bit
Speaker 1: of a margin anyway this year, and to recover right
Speaker 1: in time for this moment would be really, I think,
Speaker 1: really an exceptional moment for him.
Speaker 2: He hit the nail on the head. Obviously, the iron
Speaker 2: play hasn't been where it's at. I do think, you know,
Speaker 2: I think we take for granted and maybe this is
Speaker 2: the first time we've really like kind of seen it.
Speaker 2: Just because of the dominance and how long he's been
Speaker 2: put up on the stage of the number one player
Speaker 2: in the world. I mean, it's exhausting. You get you're
Speaker 2: gonna get requested to talk every single every single time.
Speaker 2: And I think what's different about Scotty than You're Rory,
Speaker 2: than your Tiger, like other players that have been in
Speaker 2: this position, is that the way Scotty ascended to number
Speaker 2: one was he was not the young phenom that from
Speaker 2: age eighteen, you know, nineteen, Like if he's at a tournament,
Speaker 2: people want to talk to him, and it just it
Speaker 2: becomes part of his life. He ascended to this stature
Speaker 2: at age twenty five twenty six, where he lived life
Speaker 2: out of the limelight and now he then he got
Speaker 2: thrust into like, no, you you need to be you
Speaker 2: were you were going to get asked questions. You are
Speaker 2: going to be you know, requested every single time after
Speaker 2: he had grown accustomed to a different life, right, which
Speaker 2: I think is hard. It is an adjustment period and
Speaker 2: it's something like you know, like yeah, like it's hard
Speaker 2: that Rory and and Tiger and you could go down
Speaker 2: the list of of you know, Jack and Arnie had
Speaker 2: to deal with this all the time, every time they
Speaker 2: showed up anywhere, all the time. But it became that
Speaker 2: for them it was just like part of life. And
Speaker 2: for Scotty, he you know, he he played on the
Speaker 2: corn Ferry Tour. None of those guys played on the
Speaker 2: corn Fairy Tour where you just play golf and yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody's around, nobody's asking you anything, you know, and then
Speaker 2: he plays on the tour and he you know, he
Speaker 2: it's like, oh this he's in the mix a lot.
Speaker 2: But he can't get it done, you know, like that's
Speaker 2: not like a life that people you know, where they
Speaker 2: people are dying to write that story all the time,
Speaker 2: you know, and now it's he's just always there. I
Speaker 2: think what if Scotty, as you said, figures it out,
Speaker 2: this could play out a lot like port Rush. This
Speaker 2: is a golf course that, like when you look at
Speaker 2: it on paper, if Scotty Scheffler is got his a game,
Speaker 2: it is going to be exceptionally hard for anybody to
Speaker 2: stay near him because of the demand that the golf
Speaker 2: course presents it. I think port Rush is as good
Speaker 2: of a links golf course as we have in the world.
Speaker 2: And I said this last year and port Rush is
Speaker 2: as good as it gets. And I think Shittacock and
Speaker 2: port Rush are right at the top for me of
Speaker 2: just golf course tests for the modern game. And the
Speaker 2: way Scotty just dismantled the field in Northern Ireland. If
Speaker 2: if if Scotty has the iron play and it's up
Speaker 2: to snuff and he's putting well, I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that has been kind of illuminating this year.
Speaker 2: Also is the putter seems to have regressed a little
Speaker 2: bit which is natural. I mean, you know, that's the
Speaker 2: way golf works and statistics work. Like he had a
Speaker 2: great couple of year run and maybe he's regressed a
Speaker 2: little bit with the putter, but if you if he
Speaker 2: get if he comes in with his a game, it
Speaker 2: could be a blowout.
Speaker 1: Well what's cool is I think the greatest golf courses
Speaker 1: allow the greatest players to separate it by the largest margin.
Speaker 1: Uh And you know, because they test something that most
Speaker 1: players don't quite have, but the greatest do have, and
Speaker 1: it's the advantage becomes more pronounced and then suddenly you
Speaker 1: see these you know, these runaways would like Tiger at
Speaker 1: that at Pebble to some extent. I remember when Jack
Speaker 1: in seventy two at Pebble was really windy and he
Speaker 1: and he separated. And you know, Jack wasn't always known
Speaker 1: as a great win player early in his career, but
Speaker 1: he became one. But as far as you know, all
Speaker 1: these things we're talking about with Scotty, I think you
Speaker 1: make some great points about his early career not really
Speaker 1: being one in which he was engulfed by media and
Speaker 1: not you know, kind of growing up with it. Now
Speaker 1: there's a flip side of that which is you become.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, Rory is an amiable person. I
Speaker 1: think he enjoyed most media growing up. It was mostly favorable.
Speaker 1: He was kind of the you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: fair haired, very likable kid. For Tiger, it was a
Speaker 1: burden right from the start, and he got it before
Speaker 1: anybody got it, so he knew how to handle it.
Speaker 1: But he handled it in a way that was I
Speaker 1: would say, almost cynical. You know. It's like, man, just
Speaker 1: avoid anything that's gonna, you know, be blown up into
Speaker 1: anything else. And he got very good at not saying
Speaker 1: very much. I think Scotty is, you know, he's an
Speaker 1: intelligent guy. Tiger is too. He kind of outsmarted the
Speaker 1: media for a long time. But I think Scotty likes having,
Speaker 1: you know, conversations in normal life. He's engaging, he's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: But he also knows from watching and studying number one
Speaker 1: players over these last decades especially, that demand on the
Speaker 1: number one players just getting greater and it's getting to
Speaker 1: be more of a distraction and a harder thing to
Speaker 1: stay up there than ever. And I think he studied
Speaker 1: it in a way is going, okay, how do I
Speaker 1: survive up here? How do I do it best, And
Speaker 1: to some extent, he's got to suppress his normal personality
Speaker 1: and not really engage every question and try to, you know,
Speaker 1: get through it with you know, a decent, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of honest answer that's not too in depth. And
Speaker 1: so I think he struggles when a question that he
Speaker 1: knows is going to lead him into an area that
Speaker 1: would open up a lot of interesting kind of writing
Speaker 1: about about it, whether it was the Putter or whatever
Speaker 1: it happens to be, he puts the brakes on it,
Speaker 1: and so it makes him look like he's not enjoying it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not, you know, I kind of said that earlier,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really enjoy I think he doesn't enjoy the
Speaker 1: obligation of it when it can encroach on his concentration
Speaker 1: on the game. And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that Scotty does best of all is just get into
Speaker 1: a really ironclad mindset for four days. And that's something
Speaker 1: that he's matured into, and he did it at Port Rush,
Speaker 1: and he even talked about that after Port Rush was like, man,
Speaker 1: I was intense on every shot. And I did a
Speaker 1: story on him last month in which he kind of
Speaker 1: learned that from Tiger. He played with Tiger when Tiger
Speaker 1: made ten on the twelfth hole at Augusta and then
Speaker 1: birdied the last five, five on the last six, and
Speaker 1: he'd already gotten the impression. It was the first time
Speaker 1: he played with Tiger, and he said, man, it was
Speaker 1: the other world intensity for every golf shot. And that's
Speaker 1: such a you know, how do you even measure that?
Speaker 1: But he felt it. And maybe it was partly because
Speaker 1: of who Tiger was, but also because of but he
Speaker 1: was just seeing in that moment in terms of the
Speaker 1: intensity that it took to be that good. And I
Speaker 1: think he's tried to replicate that intensity and and doing
Speaker 1: interviews and stuff. It's fine, it can be interesting if
Speaker 1: you're an off day, but during the tournament, it's going
Speaker 1: to be something that he wants to, you know, as
Speaker 1: I say, compartmentalize, put aside and not carry into the round.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, we'll see that. I think
Speaker 1: we'll see that that Scotty next week, a very focused
Speaker 1: Scotty in spite of the New York media asking all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff about the Grand Slam. I think he'll
Speaker 1: keep him at arm's length.
Speaker 2: Your point about the every shot intensity is an underrated
Speaker 2: one about you know, golf and the challenge of golf
Speaker 2: is you know, I don't think many people would look
Speaker 2: at it, but like the it's so hard to keep
Speaker 2: that level of urgency over seven two holes. I feel
Speaker 2: like you get it at the start and then there's
Speaker 2: a lull in rounds and then there's like you're you're
Speaker 2: trying to close that around and that's that is, you know,
Speaker 2: the difference between I think like at any level, even
Speaker 2: like a club level, all the way to separate up
Speaker 2: in the game is the people that can that can
Speaker 2: just and this is you know, you think about Brooks
Speaker 2: in his heyday of major championship years was like unrelenting
Speaker 2: when to give away a shot, like just does not
Speaker 2: give away shots. And that's the thing that Scotty does
Speaker 2: so well, especially with that other worldly short game he has,
Speaker 2: you know, and when the putter behaves it. You know,
Speaker 2: I think there is something about Scotty where he just
Speaker 2: seems to make a ton of fifteen footers in big moments.
Speaker 2: You know, like in a way sometimes I think I
Speaker 2: when I watch him, I'm more sure he's going to
Speaker 2: make a fifteen footer then he's going to make a
Speaker 2: six footer, you know, and I think, you know, he
Speaker 2: just he just there obviously that all the talent that
Speaker 2: goes into it, you know, it is one thing, but
Speaker 2: there is a mindset thing. And the in the in
Speaker 2: the Port Rush major was it, you know where only
Speaker 2: two majors removed from it, but it feels so far
Speaker 2: by the way the calendar works, but you know, three
Speaker 2: majors go is like, I mean this guy can like,
Speaker 2: how are we ever going to beat him?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, that effort to do that, it's exhausting.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And and one of the things I thought last year,
Speaker 1: I mean, Scotty played so well. He didn't get enough rest,
Speaker 1: I thought, And you know, and I think that that
Speaker 1: intensity shot after shot at or shot so hard to
Speaker 1: summon if you're not fully you know, fully rested physically
Speaker 1: and and your mind has been you know, kind of
Speaker 1: allowed to relax. Uh. And it's as the pressure grows,
Speaker 1: I you're number one, the long longer, it gets harder
Speaker 1: to make that effort over and over because it takes more.
Speaker 1: I remember his Tiger when he won I guess when
Speaker 1: he won the what the last one of the Tiger
Speaker 1: Slam in two thousand and one, he said on eighteen,
Speaker 1: he goes he finally realized, hey, there's no more shots.
Speaker 1: Every shot was the same. In other words, you know,
Speaker 1: for seventy two holes, and then I'm out of shots.
Speaker 1: I'm done, you know, But I gave every one of them.
Speaker 1: I think it was implied I gave everyone the same
Speaker 1: amount of effort and that, as you're saying, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not really a human things. It's a robotic almost
Speaker 1: you know, cyborg type thing. Not very few can do it.
Speaker 1: And it's a separator at the highest level, no question,
Speaker 1: it's a separator, I guess said. Even just playing with
Speaker 1: your friends, some guys have better than others. And they
Speaker 1: don't have lapses, they don't have lulls. They're able to focus.
Speaker 1: I mean even in our tab writing. I see guys
Speaker 1: in the press room. They're so good at just sitting
Speaker 1: down and finishing and getting up and walking around like
Speaker 1: an idiot, you know, just I'm distractable to procrastinating all
Speaker 1: these things. Yeah, well I'm not proud of it, believe me.
Speaker 1: But you know, to have that ability to really just
Speaker 1: focus is it's it's an athletic gift and it's a
Speaker 1: life gift. Uh. And anyway, I think you're onto something that.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons it's hard to stay on top of the
Speaker 1: game is because it's hard to say, sustain that over years.
Speaker 1: And Scotty's been up there a while, and he looks like,
Speaker 1: what's what's really cool is I think he's able. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to stay long a long time, which
Speaker 1: very few have done, because I think he's got a
Speaker 1: good handle on on the on the burden of it
Speaker 1: and what it takes, and and uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: can pull away and say, you know, I got to
Speaker 1: go back and live a regular life so I can
Speaker 1: be ready to play again. You Nicholas used to just
Speaker 1: he disappear after August September and not not really even
Speaker 1: practiced that much until the last couple of weeks of December,
Speaker 1: and be ready and fresh when the season started. And
Speaker 1: he said that that kept me going. My longevity was
Speaker 1: in large part thanks to that. And the way that
Speaker 1: season is getting compressed and there's just so many majors quickly.
Speaker 1: Now I know there's going to be more time off,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the mental the mental strains getting
Speaker 1: a little higher again.
Speaker 2: I the the comment about you know he played too
Speaker 2: much last year. You know, one of the aspects of
Speaker 2: Scotty just with how good he is is he's in
Speaker 2: contention every week, and when you're in contention, it takes four.
Speaker 1: Hours more tiring, there's no doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then when you finish T twenty four and you
Speaker 2: know you never really are in it. I think what
Speaker 2: one really big picture story this doesn't pertain to the US.
Speaker 2: Open about that is like, I think that we're going
Speaker 2: to see players, the very best players continue to throttle down.
Speaker 2: They're the amount of events they play because the way
Speaker 2: the schedules set up with the majors, and we're starting
Speaker 2: to see it where we see, you know, between these majors,
Speaker 2: there's a month between all these majors, and we're lucky
Speaker 2: to see a player once, you know, if it's a Rory,
Speaker 2: a Scottie, and obviously with liv you know you have
Speaker 2: rom somewhere else. But you know, we haven't seen Cam
Speaker 2: Young play. You know, Cam Young played Memorial. It's like
Speaker 2: that you see these players and they they they are
Speaker 2: they're shrinking their schedule down in major season and I
Speaker 2: don't you know, like I think that's only going to
Speaker 2: continue it's like it feels like it's like the precipice
Speaker 2: of the practice round thing, where like some guys start
Speaker 2: to limit their play before a tournament to get the rest,
Speaker 2: to say my body's fresh, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: everybody did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think there's a moment people are trying
Speaker 1: to optimize everything now, you know, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: clubhead speed or spin raiates, and you can optimize your
Speaker 1: readiness to play. And you know, in the older days,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody had to play. They had to make money,
Speaker 1: and they played a lot of times with their ce
Speaker 1: game and got through it and kept going and played
Speaker 1: thirty tournaments a year, and that was part of being
Speaker 1: a pro. And now there's so much money that you
Speaker 1: don't have to play every week. Number one, I think
Speaker 1: live creating all that disruption and for a moment that
Speaker 1: the tour being in chaos elevated the majors, and I
Speaker 1: think that that has endured as a lasting kind of
Speaker 1: value on the majors, that it's actually increased and as
Speaker 1: a result, the tour has to be careful now that
Speaker 1: they don't become too subordinate to the majors, and that's
Speaker 1: a challenge, because really, if you're talking about being a
Speaker 1: tour player, now, who's going to be demanding the most commanding,
Speaker 1: the most endorsements and the most recognition and branding and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. You win majors and more so than ever.
Speaker 1: And as a result, you know, the the the week
Speaker 1: to week has been to some extent diminished, and that's
Speaker 1: a dangerous trend. I don't want that to happen. I
Speaker 1: want the tour to be premier, you know, spectacle every week,
Speaker 1: just like the NFL is. You know, that's one of
Speaker 1: the great strengths of the NFL is those Sundays all
Speaker 1: matter and you wait a week for him, and but
Speaker 1: that that caravan the tour has. You don't want to
Speaker 1: start looking monotonous in any way, not important, and the
Speaker 1: majors can do that. Jack gets blamed for that, like
Speaker 1: you made the Major so important, but the tour was
Speaker 1: still players had to play, they had to play to
Speaker 1: make money, and the tour was still a week to
Speaker 1: week really important deal. And that is right now to
Speaker 1: some extent. I'm not saying it's going away. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying there's a shift. And to your point, you know,
Speaker 1: now with the major's being so compressed. People really want
Speaker 1: to be ready for those four and in the tournaments
Speaker 1: around it are are getting to be you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a sense of man, you're waning. Do you really
Speaker 1: do you really want to play and get tired and
Speaker 1: not be optimal for that major. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's an exact science and they really know what's optimal
Speaker 1: or not. Golf so random. Sometimes the tire player comes
Speaker 1: in and shoots the lights out and somebody thinks they
Speaker 1: got it right loses it on Thursday morning. You just
Speaker 1: don't know in golf that'll always be there. But there
Speaker 1: is a pattern now where guys are going, No, this
Speaker 1: is how you get ready, and it's not always playing
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Another player that was at the top of the game
Speaker 2: that I wanted to talk about who hasn't been playing
Speaker 2: a lot is John Rahm. We saw, you know, we
Speaker 2: saw him. I think like in a way, this live
Speaker 2: the Lift thing's been rough for him in a way
Speaker 2: I don't think he anticipated obviously. I think it was
Speaker 2: really clear that he thought when he went that everything
Speaker 2: was going to come together and he was gonna like
Speaker 2: effectively get a payday and then bring everything together and
Speaker 2: in it's I think it's gone. It's been a nightmare
Speaker 2: for him the last couple of years. I think the
Speaker 2: the added burden of coming to majors and and having
Speaker 2: to deal with the are you going to be the
Speaker 2: player you were before you left or Live has been
Speaker 2: bad in a way. I think this uh this year
Speaker 2: with the you know, the piff pulling the plug on
Speaker 2: Live in terms of funding, I think he's actually in
Speaker 2: a great situation now in the sense of like he
Speaker 2: has some closure, this is this is going to be
Speaker 2: over soon for me, And I think it sets him up,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm I think it sets him up to
Speaker 2: be a obviously with his talent, a real threat. But
Speaker 2: I think it's going to lead to a comeback of
Speaker 2: sorts of John Rahm as the you know, elite major. Okay,
Speaker 2: if it's not, if it's not Rory or Scottie, John
Speaker 2: Rahm is, like, you know, is right there with him
Speaker 2: as a major player, and we haven't had that for
Speaker 2: a couple of years in terms of where he's been.
Speaker 2: But I think we've seen some signs of it this year.
Speaker 1: He played great at the PGA. I thought he and
Speaker 1: that was impressive. Man, he was driving it so aggressively
Speaker 1: and so consistently. I mean it was really that was
Speaker 1: a weapon, man, and you start realizing this guy, this
Speaker 1: guy's got a lot of a lot of firepower, a
Speaker 1: lot of tools, and he's a great player. However, you know,
Speaker 1: he made a decision that had real consequences, and you know,
Speaker 1: I hope he overcomes, you know, the toll that took.
Speaker 1: But part of me feels like, man, you made a
Speaker 1: big mistake and you should have seen that coming. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's almost like, you know, it sounds so
Speaker 1: crazy going into a ran. You know, it's like, didn't
Speaker 1: you see that coming? They're gonna close the straight to
Speaker 1: core moves. Then you see that coming, You're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to play with the best players and you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose your edge. And also you did something that
Speaker 1: was really dangerously harmful to the tour. A tour survived,
Speaker 1: but man, it was touch and go there because the
Speaker 1: other guys could have followed at that moment and that
Speaker 1: could have been a breaking point. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: a hard thing to forget. And you know, look, I
Speaker 1: root for his talent, I root for him having a
Speaker 1: good career, but I also say, what's happened to him
Speaker 1: was predictable. He should have seen it coming and shouldn't
Speaker 1: have done it as a result. Now I'm sounding judgmental there,
Speaker 1: but and that's not hindsight. I mean I felt it
Speaker 1: at the time. I felt like, this is a mistake. Man,
Speaker 1: You're too good a player. You talk about playing for history.
Speaker 1: How is this playing for history? Now he's back to
Speaker 1: plane for history. He had a cessation there that he'll
Speaker 1: never get back. That's a gap in his life, a
Speaker 1: gap in his career.
Speaker 2: And he comes out.
Speaker 1: If he comes out with the right attitude, he can
Speaker 1: regain what he had. But those are lost years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, when when we look back
Speaker 2: and we'll see where where he gets to in terms
Speaker 2: of majors, Like you know, he's somebody that you know,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be surprised to see four or five majors
Speaker 2: next to his name when he's all of a sudden done,
Speaker 2: of course, but a piece of his legacy will always
Speaker 2: be him in that Letterman that lived Letterman jacket and
Speaker 2: that was a.
Speaker 1: Bad campaign, bad campaign and there, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's always going to follow him everywhere. But
Speaker 2: I do think we're probably on the I would say
Speaker 2: the backside of the.
Speaker 1: I'll just interjact really quickly. I think he's handled it
Speaker 1: very well. Recently he wasn't handling it too well, but
Speaker 1: he's handled it very well as far as like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, there was there's a certain humilities, just a
Speaker 1: nice kind of restraint to the way that he answered
Speaker 1: questions at the PGA, an evenness, an equanimity, you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of a wisdom to like, Okay, I went
Speaker 1: through this, I made a mistake. I want to pick
Speaker 1: up my life in my career and without being angry
Speaker 1: about it or arrogant about it or defiant about it.
Speaker 1: I think that was not just good to hear. I
Speaker 1: think it was good for him.
Speaker 2: So, you know, obviously we saw ron burst on the scene.
Speaker 2: He was one of the great college players. Something that
Speaker 2: I'm very excited about this this week is two young
Speaker 2: players just announced Jackson Coyven's turning pro after the US Open.
Speaker 2: Seeing Jackson Coven and Miles Russell, who who qualified out
Speaker 2: of out of Florida, who's still in high school, I
Speaker 2: think these are two the you know, I think we've
Speaker 2: been void of we have been void of a great
Speaker 2: young American star in a while. Uh, and these two
Speaker 2: are our people that I think have the you know,
Speaker 2: the the personalities, the games to potentially fill that. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Coyven's been a absolute dominant force in college. He's won
Speaker 2: the SEC Championship three years in a row. Number one
Speaker 2: ranked amateur. He basically earned his card through the PGA
Speaker 2: Tour You Points system a year ago. He is, he is,
Speaker 2: He's done basically everything at the amateur level. He has
Speaker 2: won the USAM he has won Nancy A Championship, but
Speaker 2: he has been a a absolute force on the amateur
Speaker 2: circuit and I'm I'm fascinated to see him begin to
Speaker 2: kind of take the next step to the highest threshold
Speaker 2: of pro golf. And I'm fascinated to watch. I think
Speaker 2: that is a kind of a fun thing to follow
Speaker 2: early next week and we'll see where he gets to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think two things have happened and are
Speaker 1: true right now. These young players are getting better, faster,
Speaker 1: and getting at a higher level than they've ever gotten.
Speaker 1: But there's so many of them that it's harder to separate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we don't know who's going to emerge out of this.
Speaker 1: Miles Russell looks like he's just a prodigy, incredible talent,
Speaker 1: just you know, looks like he's Togan hitting the ball.
Speaker 1: Every swing looks the same. I don't know, I'm amazed
Speaker 1: at how proficient these guys are young. But the irony
Speaker 1: isn't It doesn't predict stardom necessarily because there's so many
Speaker 1: guys to beat and there's so many other elements to
Speaker 1: be in a good touring professional. I mean, do you
Speaker 1: like the life? Can you handle the disappointment? You know,
Speaker 1: all the all the things between the ears that happened
Speaker 1: that we can't see, the invisible things. But as far
Speaker 1: as the visible things, wow, they're just also good.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Brings me back to equipment and things. Not the blame
Speaker 1: equipment for how good they are, but it's like you
Speaker 1: see these kids who have been hitting the ball and
Speaker 1: on a track man since they were nine years old,
Speaker 1: and they perfected it almost and it's like, man, the
Speaker 1: game is almost too easy for these guys, and golf
Speaker 1: will never be too easy, but they just give that
Speaker 1: illusion of it. But then all the other intangibles come
Speaker 1: in and you don't know who's going to emerge. I mean, Tiger,
Speaker 1: you know, I watched Charlie Woods swing and I and
Speaker 1: I and I thought, God, he's actually his swing. Not
Speaker 1: that I came the best judged necessarily at all, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of better than Tiger's was looking, at least
Speaker 1: when he was fourteen. But Tiger had something else and
Speaker 1: I don't even know how you even define it to
Speaker 1: this day, but it was an intensity and it was
Speaker 1: a focus that was on other you know, off the charts.
Speaker 1: So who's going to have that and whether it's you know, Covid,
Speaker 1: I haven't watched him play. You're a good student of
Speaker 1: these young guys, and I should watch more college golf
Speaker 1: because really you're you're watching an incredible level. But again,
Speaker 1: it's sort I sort of feel like, let's wait and
Speaker 1: see because it's just too early. But yeah, maybe somebody
Speaker 1: emerges and listen. I honestly think one of these young
Speaker 1: guys could like win a tournament, like we've seen that before,
Speaker 1: amateurs winning tournaments. Fill One one when I think he
Speaker 1: was twenty, and Scott Ford Plank and others have won.
Speaker 1: But there's it seems like there's four or five who
Speaker 1: could actually get into the arena and not be odd
Speaker 1: by it because they've been playing competitive golf so long
Speaker 1: and such a high level and probably play at home
Speaker 1: at some of these clubs that have a million tour
Speaker 1: pros around. I mean, I think one of Scotty's great, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of developmental advantages was he was around a bunch
Speaker 1: of pros when he was like seven years old at
Speaker 1: Royal Oaks and just picking up stuff that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: normally pick up until you got on the tour in
Speaker 1: the old days. And and they're so precocious, but again,
Speaker 1: we don't know. There's still a mystery to what it
Speaker 1: really takes to be great, and things have to break
Speaker 1: right sometimes and the prodigies sometimes come through and sometimes
Speaker 1: they disappear completely. So but I think the odds are
Speaker 1: that we'll see younger and younger winners going forward here
Speaker 1: because they're just better at a younger age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I feel like we've had a run of
Speaker 2: players where it's like, oh, like they play, they come
Speaker 2: up and they play really well, but then they they
Speaker 2: actually make the leap to the full time tour pro
Speaker 2: and they regressed in a way like we saw this
Speaker 2: with Luke Clanton. You obviously have like everybody's kind of
Speaker 2: waiting for Michael Thorpe Jornsen to have to kind of
Speaker 2: get out and win everybody after the year Johnny Keefer
Speaker 2: had on the Court Ferry tour was Johnny, you got
Speaker 2: to watch out for this guy, Johnny Keefer. And the
Speaker 2: reality is are is it's it's hard. There are so
Speaker 2: many good players. It is hard to separate. And that's why,
Speaker 2: you know, like, what's one of the things that's been
Speaker 2: a I think like a revelatory And you know, you
Speaker 2: go back to the twenty twenty one you Ryder Cup
Speaker 2: at Whistling straight. Do you think the US is going
Speaker 2: to dominate forever? Look at all this young talent in
Speaker 2: a way that Europeans have more young talent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, maybe their developmental period, their their developmental
Speaker 1: programs is is more healthy and better in some ways,
Speaker 1: it's not quite as intensive. They're not on the AJJ
Speaker 1: tour as much in the same way, but they eventually
Speaker 1: all come to America and that's the place where you
Speaker 1: really prove it. So, you know, I was going to
Speaker 1: say something about some of the young guys. Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I wonder if the unorthodox guy, I mean Michael, I'm
Speaker 1: going to pronounce his name wrong, or Thorpe Jordtson. I mean, man,
Speaker 1: he's impressive looking. And then I look at Scott gotter Up,
Speaker 1: Chris Gottrup, Excuse me, I mean, I mean he you know,
Speaker 1: he's an athlete number one. But that is an unorthodox swing.
Speaker 1: That's a really personal golf swing with a lot of
Speaker 1: actually different kind of shots that he hits too. He
Speaker 1: can do all kinds of things with the golf ball,
Speaker 1: and part of it is because he's not really programmed
Speaker 1: technically in this perfect way. And so sometimes you wonder, man,
Speaker 1: maybe something's lost when everybody looks so uniform, and in
Speaker 1: Europe you see a little bit more variation. I think.
Speaker 1: Although they're in golf camps just like Americans are and
Speaker 1: the national teams and everything, they're teaching a lot of
Speaker 1: uniform things, but individuality is something that sometimes is the
Speaker 1: thing that ends up being the separator. Are you true
Speaker 1: to yourself? Are you not trying to be something else
Speaker 1: but just what you are and only know yourself so
Speaker 1: well that you know yourself better than the guys who
Speaker 1: have actually tried to fit into a mold, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And that's a very general statement. I think Abubba Watson,
Speaker 1: like the most talented player I ever saw in some
Speaker 1: ways didn't have it. Uh, in the intangibles didn't have it.
Speaker 2: I mean you think about like the mental makeup of
Speaker 2: Bubba would not be what.
Speaker 1: You never and it never would be. It never would
Speaker 1: what you said.
Speaker 2: The physical attributes. I mean it's still you know, this
Speaker 2: is is he's I think he's forty eight now.
Speaker 1: He could still do it if he wanted, if he
Speaker 1: had it the head for it, he could still do it.
Speaker 1: He's that talented. But you know, it's there's it just
Speaker 1: teaches us. There's a lot more than that. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more than not just talent, but just physical you know,
Speaker 1: creativity and all those things that we talk about. You
Speaker 1: still got to have it between the ears when you're
Speaker 1: walking from one shot to the next shot, and god,
Speaker 1: that is no one's figured it out completely. You know,
Speaker 1: you got you know, uh, sports psychologists are taking more
Speaker 1: of a prominent role again with Gosha here. Now, I've
Speaker 1: been talking too long in my minds.
Speaker 2: U Julie, Julia, and.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of the players. She's you know,
Speaker 1: we know Wyndham Clark. Wyndam Clark's amazing physical talent, amazing
Speaker 1: physical so strong, so graceful, athletic as hell, and yet
Speaker 1: you know he's had to battle his his internal life,
Speaker 1: his internal game. And as that improves, I still feel
Speaker 1: like that's the next frontier, that's where everybody will really
Speaker 1: start to optimize, because that's still there's more unknowns about
Speaker 1: that than anything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wrote down a bunch of names here. Obviously
Speaker 2: this is always a major discourse item best players without
Speaker 2: a major, and I feel like we've we've stacked up
Speaker 2: that nobody I don't think on this list stands out
Speaker 2: as like wow, like look at this. You know, there's
Speaker 2: no Lee Westward, there's no Phil Mickelson at you know,
Speaker 2: age thirty two on this list, but it's you know,
Speaker 2: you got Russell, Henley, cam Young, Tommy Fleetwood, Chris got
Speaker 2: her up, Ludwig are the names kind of wrote down
Speaker 2: as like right now, the best players without without a major?
Speaker 2: Who of those would you be most most interested in
Speaker 2: this week? Potentially breaking through this week?
Speaker 1: You know, Victor Hoblin's another name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had I had him on PJ. PJ was
Speaker 2: shaming me with Victor Holin, which well, you.
Speaker 1: Know Victor, Victor, he's an explorer, you know, and he's
Speaker 1: taken a couple of wrong turns, but I still have
Speaker 1: faith he he'll no, no, no, I I didn't mean.
Speaker 1: I just thought of him because you know, his his
Speaker 1: great golf has been tremendous. You know, Oberg is kind
Speaker 1: of the most intriguing because it just looks so natural
Speaker 1: and easy for him, and he's so gifted physically, his size,
Speaker 1: his effortlessness. You know, it looks like he's good at everything.
Speaker 1: It turns out statistically he's not the greatest around and
Speaker 1: on the greens, but those things can be improved. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think he'll have a breakout. I think
Speaker 1: that the Players was a scarring moment and that you know,
Speaker 1: it may be lingering, who knows, but in the end
Speaker 1: it's going to be a good lesson that he'll I think,
Speaker 1: grow from. But you know, you hate to see the
Speaker 1: delay from it, but that's golf. Nobody gets out unscarred.
Speaker 1: I think size and power is still the advantage we
Speaker 1: used to talk about. You know, hey, the optimal size
Speaker 1: for a golfer should be like five ten, you know,
Speaker 1: one sixty one seventy because once you get really long limbs,
Speaker 1: you got all these angles and all these variables and
Speaker 1: it's harder to repeat, you know. I think that that's
Speaker 1: been debunks probably. And also we're seeing really tall guys
Speaker 1: be great putters, and that was true all through history.
Speaker 1: Actually a few guys, who knows why, So I think.
Speaker 2: It's about how they see the line maybe, yeah, or just.
Speaker 1: The pendulum action of standing that tall who knows, I
Speaker 1: don't know. George Archer was maybe the greatest, and a
Speaker 1: few other guys who were that. Tom Siekman was a
Speaker 1: great putter and the best part of his game. He's
Speaker 1: a big guy, six five sixty six. Anyway, Uh, I
Speaker 1: just think that now, I see I lost my train again. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Well with Ludwig, yeah, yeah, no, I think is to
Speaker 1: me he's shown the most the most potential and h
Speaker 1: he's been through a couple of wars now, so maybe
Speaker 1: next time he gets in one he'll be more ready
Speaker 1: for it. So I guess I pick him.
Speaker 2: That's I. You know, I think there's a you know,
Speaker 2: an online discourses, as we learn with the with the
Speaker 2: NBA Playoffs is just a treacherous place where where players
Speaker 2: could go from the love to to hate it in
Speaker 2: three days. With the with the New York fans going
Speaker 2: at him. But the but the I would say, the
Speaker 2: the thing about Ludwig, which I am. You know, people
Speaker 2: are now like, oh, he can't get it done, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, what the game is to get
Speaker 2: yourself in the mix so you can get it done
Speaker 2: on Sunday. And I think like, of this list, why
Speaker 2: you buy Ludwig, I would say cam Young, I would put.
Speaker 1: Absolute, he showed so much. Yeah, you know that Sunday thing.
Speaker 1: It's still the greatest challenge in the game, you know,
Speaker 1: it is to close it out. That's such a hard
Speaker 1: thing now.
Speaker 2: I used to think it was you can't close it
Speaker 2: out if you're not there.
Speaker 1: Well, no, true, but a lot of guys get there
Speaker 1: in fade, you know, kind of repeatedly and makes you
Speaker 1: think sometimes it's innate, and maybe to some extent it is.
Speaker 1: But I also think it can be a learned behavior
Speaker 1: to handle it. And you know, Watson was a guy
Speaker 1: who you know, threw a couple away pretty pretty traumatically,
Speaker 1: Tom Watson and then became an incredible closer. Even Jack
Speaker 1: threw a couple away early, you know, So can you
Speaker 1: learn from it? I guess that's that's the separator. Can
Speaker 1: I think I think you have to.
Speaker 2: It gets easier every time, even if you go through
Speaker 2: the pain.
Speaker 1: Well, it can get harder too, if you do it
Speaker 1: too much. You know, it's a delicate balance. It's a
Speaker 1: tight rope. There's a lot at stake when a guy
Speaker 1: gets into contention. I think that's one reason unconsciously he's
Speaker 1: talking sports psychologists about this. Some guys don't want to
Speaker 1: be number one. It's too much to always have your
Speaker 1: game being judged and on the brink of a really
Speaker 1: disappointing result. It hurts more when you're on top, and
Speaker 1: it hurts when you're in the middle of the pack
Speaker 1: living a decent, you know, kind of consistent life as
Speaker 1: long as you're not losing your card in that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And some guys settle into that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's going to happen more, and if that
Speaker 1: it's actually a real thing, But it was theorizable a
Speaker 1: lot it used to be. And I think it's easier
Speaker 1: now to make a great living without being a big winner.
Speaker 1: I think you might see guys pulling back from that
Speaker 1: cauldron because it is a painful one. I mean, Rory've
Speaker 1: been through hell, and I think that's why he pulled
Speaker 1: for him so hard to get out of it because
Speaker 1: you knew, man, he's overcoming a lot now, and it
Speaker 1: was really pretty heroic to win that first Masters. Really was.
Speaker 1: He had every reason to be you know, kind of
Speaker 1: permanently disabled, and he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's I mean, the burden. It's one of
Speaker 2: the best parts about a major. You know, you have
Speaker 2: this week, you have weeks of speculation and talking like
Speaker 2: this podcast about who might get it done. Then you
Speaker 2: have the days setting up, and then it gets to Sunday,
Speaker 2: and it gets to that point on Sunday where players
Speaker 2: go or they fade. I think it's one of the
Speaker 2: things that resonated with me the most about Aaron Rye
Speaker 2: was you had this, he did not a lot of
Speaker 2: spectacular players on the leader board, and Aaron Raie goes
Speaker 2: and he just beats the crap out of everybody.
Speaker 1: And takes it. You know, he just shot coming in
Speaker 1: did not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just took the major. He just took it
Speaker 2: in like no matter what, like people are going to
Speaker 2: go back in time and like, I don't expect this
Speaker 2: to be a flurry of Aaron Rye wins in there,
Speaker 2: and you know, twenty years from now, with the context
Speaker 2: ripped away, people will be like Aaron Rye one won
Speaker 2: the PGA. Aaron Raie took that championship away from the
Speaker 2: best players in the world.
Speaker 1: He did the thing that everybody dreams of doing at
Speaker 1: the biggest moment. He played his best golf. I mean
Speaker 1: literally his best golf. That is so rare for anybody.
Speaker 1: So he's going to have that forever, and you know,
Speaker 1: he might get studied. He's maybe a model because I
Speaker 1: know how meticulous he is, and you know, and also
Speaker 1: the humility he carries himself with. All those things are
Speaker 1: things that are going to go. Hey, there's a lesson
Speaker 1: with that guy. That was not an accident. He did
Speaker 1: it and he's paid his dues and when the moment came,
Speaker 1: he was ready. Why let's find out why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that you make a lot
Speaker 2: of money if you can figure out why. I think
Speaker 2: you can make a lot of money across Yeah, recreation,
Speaker 2: you're thinking about making you're thinking about making money.
Speaker 1: You're not going about it the right way. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to have your mind in the
Speaker 1: right Are you playing for the right reasons? You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's another sports psychologist question, what are the why
Speaker 1: do you? Why do you play? And if it's for
Speaker 1: the money, you're probably not going to be as great
Speaker 1: as you could have been.
Speaker 2: We're going to close this out with a with with
Speaker 2: a topic that could be this whole old podcast. You know,
Speaker 2: I think there the USGA obviously is pushing the roll back,
Speaker 2: the RNA obviously very behind it, the idea of you know,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't call it a rollback, We're just honestly trying
Speaker 2: to set stand still, stand still. I think there was
Speaker 2: a terrible snag that was hit recently when it came
Speaker 2: out that Cameron Young, who hit a three hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty yard you know, t shot on the eighteenth hole
Speaker 2: at the Players this year, it came out that Cameron
Speaker 2: Young's ball is conforming under the rollback, and I think
Speaker 2: it hit a little bit of a snag and I'm
Speaker 2: very you know, I think this is something that you
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about as well. It could be just
Speaker 2: a fascinating week in terms of like what is the
Speaker 2: USGA going to say about rollback?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think unfortunately the process has been corrupted, not
Speaker 1: in an unlawful way, but for what was intended, which was,
Speaker 1: let's bring everybody in, let's have a consensus about what
Speaker 1: we should do. Let's make sure every quote unquote stakeholder
Speaker 1: gets a voice, and so then when there's a decision,
Speaker 1: there will be consensus, there will be an agreement that
Speaker 1: we all got a fair shot and this was the
Speaker 1: best decision. And instead what you have is more more fragmentation.
Speaker 1: And to me, the key moment was when the USGA
Speaker 1: got off their original proposal of bifer king of two
Speaker 1: sets of rules basically and uh, you know, the model
Speaker 1: local rule being enforced at the elite events, and gave
Speaker 1: in to the idea that we can never get off,
Speaker 1: you know, the unified rule and everybody playing by the
Speaker 1: same equipment rules and everything the same. And that allowed
Speaker 1: the opponents of a rollback to basically mitigate what the
Speaker 1: USGA couldn't could ask because you once you start taking
Speaker 1: distance away from the recreational player, you're you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're stepping on the third rail. That's poison. You can't
Speaker 1: do that, and they're doing it now in very small increments,
Speaker 1: and there's still all these pushback because everybody wants to
Speaker 1: get longer. But I would just say the threshold has
Speaker 1: been met at the elite level. Getting longer is becoming
Speaker 1: now counterproductive. And you can judge any way you want.
Speaker 1: The game will survive. This is a matter of taste.
Speaker 1: What kind of game do you want to see? I
Speaker 1: want to see the skill game. I want to see
Speaker 1: the game where everybody hits all kind of shots with
Speaker 1: different clubs.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: That game is leaving us because the shots coming into
Speaker 1: the greens are so short now in general, and the
Speaker 1: clubs being hit are lofted. And that doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: a bad game. It just means that there's a part
Speaker 1: of the game that we're not seeing that actually was
Speaker 1: the most challenging part of the game. And I'm not
Speaker 1: on a soapbox now, so I don't mean to be.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that, you know, I would
Speaker 1: say that if the USGA could, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if they can, because what we don't know at this
Speaker 1: moment who's going to follow it anyway. The tour has
Speaker 1: not bought in yet, the pH of America has not
Speaker 1: bought in yet. The manufacturer certainly have not bought in yet.
Speaker 1: You know, we got we got a major gridlock here,
Speaker 1: and there is the reality that there is nothing legally
Speaker 1: compelling anyone from following what the USGA and the RNA decide.
Speaker 1: That's always been, you know, this just kind of gentlemen's
Speaker 1: agreement that, you know, we should follow those guys because
Speaker 1: they know best. And now people are saying, no, they
Speaker 1: don't know best, and we're not. We think it's unfair
Speaker 1: and we don't want to Well, they're threatening to say
Speaker 1: we are not going to follow it. If that happens,
Speaker 1: what happens to the game. As far as you know,
Speaker 1: there's anarchy, there's there's chaos. So I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot riding on all this, and I think cooler heads
Speaker 1: will prevail, wiser heads will prevail eventually. But it's been
Speaker 1: a very long and unnecessary detour. I just wish if
Speaker 1: the USJA could be a little autocratic and go, we
Speaker 1: decree this, this is what it's going to be. Like
Speaker 1: the NFL would do, like the NBA would do, like
Speaker 1: the MLB would do, Like every major sport does they
Speaker 1: set their own rules and the players follow them. Golf,
Speaker 1: because of all kinds of variables, does not do that.
Speaker 1: And I think it's been to the detriment. We've reached
Speaker 1: a point where it's now become to a head and
Speaker 1: we you know, are at a crossroads. And I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope something at this open gets clarified a little bit,
Speaker 1: because I think right now it's very murky what's going forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's I you know, I think it's obviously
Speaker 2: so easy to go play you know, Monday more and
Speaker 2: in quarterback. But if you look at the decision making,
Speaker 2: and this was always you know, by not putting a
Speaker 2: firm line and an aggressive line in the sand, you
Speaker 2: remove all your negotiation power which was bound to happen.
Speaker 1: And is any really quick. It turns out that behind
Speaker 1: the scenes they understand now the USJA and the r
Speaker 1: any kind of understand we don't have as much leverage
Speaker 1: as people thought we had.
Speaker 2: You know, I think there is leverage, though the masters
Speaker 2: are behind them. It used to.
Speaker 1: Be basically I hate the USA, but I gotta do
Speaker 1: what they say. You know, even guys who were opponents
Speaker 1: of it, now it's like, hey, I don't like the USA,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do it. Wow, you know that's
Speaker 1: a big lead.
Speaker 2: It's uh so, you know, this is this is anecdotal,
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's wild, it's you know, I played.
Speaker 2: I'm on a recreational golf journey here where I'm I'm
Speaker 2: at banded dudes playing thirty six sols a day with
Speaker 2: Hickory Clubs. Oh cool, Now abandon from the regular teas.
Speaker 2: I can overwhelm bandon with abandoned dude's courses with power where.
Speaker 1: You can overwhelm them. Wow, I'll.
Speaker 2: I'll hit regis in all day long from the regular piece.
Speaker 1: And that's the modern game. You're just playing the modern game.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm playing Hickory Clubs coming down the stretch. And
Speaker 2: I was playing a match yesterday afternoon, coming down the stretch.
Speaker 2: I had a par five. I hit a five iron
Speaker 2: into the green for my third shot. It was into
Speaker 2: the wind. I was abandoned traills on the seventeenth, Oh,
Speaker 2: I had a three iron. On eighteen, I hit a
Speaker 2: three iron into the green. Like that is different. It's
Speaker 2: just insane to me that people. The best thing in
Speaker 2: sports is a wide range of outcomes, like anything could happen.
Speaker 2: That is what is exciting about sports is the range
Speaker 2: of outcomes. The shorter the club in, the less outcomes
Speaker 2: are are feasible.
Speaker 1: I guess, or at least the process. The process is
Speaker 1: less variable, there's no question you can still have incredibly incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible finishing. Let me just say real quick, the best
Speaker 1: advertisement to me for a rollback was Matt Fitzpatrick's four
Speaker 1: iron into eighteen at Hilton Head into the wind and
Speaker 1: a big hard into a crosswind with a four iron
Speaker 1: that he flushed with a draw against that wind. It
Speaker 1: was a classic golf shot. You don't see that shot
Speaker 1: anymore except on par fives. To see it on a
Speaker 1: par four, to me, brought that tournament alive. It just
Speaker 1: raised not just the drama, it raised the admiration for
Speaker 1: how good they are, and some of that is being lost.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: So that's what I would say if I if I
Speaker 1: was running a campaign for a rollback, I'd run a
Speaker 1: video of that shot and try to, you know, put
Speaker 1: people in that moment and what it meant. And you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to lose that in golf. In my opinion.
Speaker 2: You see it with the with this week. You're gonna
Speaker 2: see the paving shot over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: his forward on eighteen and that just does not happen.
Speaker 1: But you know, neither one is those who's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: You know, if there is a rollback. Even if there's
Speaker 1: one that's the best case scenario, we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about six and seven irons, not four irons and four woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's okay. That that still to me will improve
Speaker 1: the game at the highest level. Only everybody else play
Speaker 1: with everything you got kidded, as far as you can
Speaker 1: play not conforming equipment, I'm okay with it. You know, honestly,
Speaker 1: the game is hard. But when you're that good and
Speaker 1: you want to see the best separate themselves from the
Speaker 1: rest of the best, I think the game needs an adjustment.
Speaker 2: I completely agree. I think I don't think you know,
Speaker 2: the best are still going to be the best. And
Speaker 2: and I think there's like I get, I completely understand
Speaker 2: if I'm a tour player. Why like tour players can't
Speaker 2: you can't go to them. You're you're literally threatening their
Speaker 2: their jobs here, they're alway to change the game. Different
Speaker 2: players might rise. I think the best are always going
Speaker 2: to be the best.
Speaker 1: Like, look at all these changes that are been andy
Speaker 1: all through, I mean from Hickory to steal from you know,
Speaker 1: the little ball to the big ball, you know, the
Speaker 1: British ball of the one point one point six I
Speaker 1: mean that was a huge change, and everybody made it.
Speaker 1: You know, Nicholas just talking about going over to play
Speaker 1: in the Open and on Tuesday start playing a little
Speaker 1: ball and you know, after about eight holes he was Okay,
Speaker 1: I got it. I mean, it's not that big a change.
Speaker 1: These guys act like it's such science. It's never been scienced.
Speaker 1: I know, there's all kinds of you know, everything is
Speaker 1: for analytics, everything track man, there's all kinds of actual
Speaker 1: science being applied to the game. But hitting a golf
Speaker 1: ball perfectly every time is not attainable. So there's variables
Speaker 1: and everything. And if the equipment changes, players will adapt.
Speaker 1: They'll adapt imperfectly, like they would adapt, not just adapt,
Speaker 1: but as they would continue on imperfectly with what they have.
Speaker 1: It's just an imperfect game. So equipment changes should not
Speaker 1: be looked at as you know, apocalyptic, like I just
Speaker 1: think that's propaganda.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of propaganda out there. But it'll be
Speaker 2: that'll be a Wednesday, I believe, maybe. I think it's
Speaker 2: usually Wednesday when the USGA talks. Hi may last question here,
Speaker 2: who's your winner this week? I know you're having to
Speaker 2: pick early. Who would you be your pick? On Friday,
Speaker 2: the week before the US I'm.
Speaker 1: Always biased wards, you know, history and the great and
Speaker 1: the great player, and I want to see Scotty win
Speaker 1: the Grand Slam. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pick Scotty
Speaker 1: on the basis of thinking he's right now this moment,
Speaker 1: he's getting it together. And I'm not saying he's that
Speaker 1: far off. It's a small he's gonna tweak it positively,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna bring that ultra intensity and and he's
Speaker 1: always up there and he's and he's gonna get it
Speaker 1: done on Sunday like he did at the Olympics, like
Speaker 1: he did at Port Rush. He's gonna be in that
Speaker 1: zone again. So that's my that's my wish, but it's
Speaker 1: also my prediction.
Speaker 2: I'm uh, I'm gonna go. I'd be remiss to not
Speaker 2: get him. You know, it could be me just trying
Speaker 2: to crowbarrow this name into the podcast, but I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go with uh. You know, maybe I you know, we
Speaker 2: keep he's becoming an ageless wonder, but we keep. You know,
Speaker 2: this could be the last year of really great chances
Speaker 2: of succeeding. I think this sets up very well for him,
Speaker 2: this type of type of golf. Uh, I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go with Justin Rose.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, he is a very complete player. He's yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Sunday is the problem. I'm not saying he's
Speaker 1: not capable, but Sunday afternoon. Yeah, as you get older,
Speaker 1: it's just harder to summon your very best at the
Speaker 1: very end.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to be this year. This year's Masters had
Speaker 2: to hurt a lot.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, he played great though again with just the
Speaker 1: last six holes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that's permanent. I mean, look at Phil,
Speaker 1: Phil did it at Kia. Incredible. It can be done. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that's not a bad pick. I mean I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say it be a very popular win.
Speaker 2: It would be it would be you know, it's this
Speaker 2: in Brokedale and uh, you know, another another trip around
Speaker 2: the sun, and and it's like you don't know, you
Speaker 2: don't know when it's when it's going to really go.
Speaker 2: But it feels like this is this is a great
Speaker 2: opportunity for him given the elements. I think there is
Speaker 2: like an aspect of Shinnakok that rewards words really high
Speaker 2: Q high IQ golf, and I think Justin Rose has
Speaker 2: played so much golf through the years, you think about
Speaker 2: you know, he's you know, I think like one thing
Speaker 2: that Gil told me candidly is you know, is like
Speaker 2: when the Olympics came around, Justin Rose was all over
Speaker 2: him about getting information about how to play the Olympic
Speaker 2: golf course at Rio. Like he is a someone who prepares,
Speaker 2: He's someone who understands the game of the highest level,
Speaker 2: understands himself maybe better than any player in the field.
Speaker 2: And I think this is a golf course that those
Speaker 2: types of traits rise to the top.
Speaker 1: So you want to Marion similar, similar, Testy.
Speaker 2: Hi may look forward to seeing you next week, look
Speaker 2: forward to reading your work at Golf Digest, and always
Speaker 2: a great pleasure to have you on this podcast.
Speaker 1: A pleasure to be with you. Andy, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: All right, Big thanks for listening to another edition of
Speaker 2: the Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to him for joining
Speaker 2: m PJ for managing to produce this episode while while
Speaker 2: the city is in absolute Knicks frenzy. Maybe maybe Nick,
Speaker 2: by the time you're listening to this, they are the
Speaker 2: NBA champions. We'll see what happens here in game five.
Speaker 2: We'll be back after the US Open to break everything
Speaker 2: down with Trevor Immulman. All right, we'll talk to you soon.