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 3: And when I find my ball in a Bride egg,
Speaker 3: Friday Egg.
Speaker 1: The dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Brian Egg,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg, Bride Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run
Speaker 1: off of the hump. Hello, and welcome to the Frida
Speaker 1: Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison, and today we're
Speaker 1: talking about takeaways from the twenty twenty two Masters Tournament.
Speaker 1: So I have to be honest. From a competitive perspective,
Speaker 1: this wasn't the most compelling Masters in recent memory. Scotti
Speaker 1: Scheffler dominated the event from Friday through Sunday. Yes, Cameron
Speaker 1: Smith challenged him at various points in Roy McElroy a
Speaker 1: great run on Sunday, but Scheffler played so brilliantly that
Speaker 1: for most of the final round the outcome really wasn't
Speaker 1: in doubt. And Yet what this Masters may have lacked
Speaker 1: in competitive tension, I think it made up for in
Speaker 1: rich interesting storylines. First, there's Scotty Scheffler, who has won
Speaker 1: four of his past six tournaments, and this weekend fully
Speaker 1: confirmed his status as the number one golfer in the world.
Speaker 1: Now we can legitimately ask the question, is Scheffler Golf's
Speaker 1: next superstar or is this just an incredible hot streak.
Speaker 1: Then there's Rory McElroy, who did seem to exercise some
Speaker 1: of his Master's demons on Sunday as he shot sixty
Speaker 1: four and finished solo second. It was really thrilling to
Speaker 1: see him pull out from the bunker right of the
Speaker 1: eighteenth green and not quite know what to do with
Speaker 1: his body because he was so excited. But from another
Speaker 1: point of view, you could see Rory's performance yesterday as
Speaker 1: yet another example of him finding his game at Augustine
Speaker 1: exactly when he knows he doesn't have a chance to win.
Speaker 1: And of course we can't not talk about Tiger Wits.
Speaker 1: Fourteen months ago, he drove his car at a dangerous
Speaker 1: rate of speed into a ravine in Palos Verdays, California.
Speaker 1: His lower extremities were mangled and he was confined to
Speaker 1: a bed for months. This past weekend, he made the
Speaker 1: cut at the Masters and walked seventy two holes at
Speaker 1: Augusta National, which, in case you haven't heard, is hillier
Speaker 1: than it looks on TV. It was obvious that Tiger
Speaker 1: was in pain, but equally obvious that he was determined
Speaker 1: to prove that he could do it. Finally, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion of the course itself. Augusta National
Speaker 1: made substantial renovations to its eleventh and fifteenth holes and
Speaker 1: smaller tweaks to a few others. The quality of these
Speaker 1: changes and the effect they had on competition was a
Speaker 1: topic of discussion all week, and will wrap it up
Speaker 1: as best we can in this podcast. As will typically
Speaker 1: do for major championship recas this year, we talked to
Speaker 1: three different guests for this episode, all with unique perspectives
Speaker 1: on the game. First, we have Heimi Diaz, who talked
Speaker 1: to me from his hotel room after finishing up his
Speaker 1: work for Golf Channel's terrific show Live from the Masters.
Speaker 1: Heimi has written for The New York Times and Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 1: and he is one of my favorite golf writers of
Speaker 1: all time. In addition, we've got two voices that you'll
Speaker 1: recognize if you have listened to the Friday Podcast for
Speaker 1: a while, Bob Crosby, a golf historian, and Joseph Lamanna,
Speaker 1: an analytics expert. All right, let's get to it. Here
Speaker 1: are some takeaways from the twenty twenty two Masters. All right,
Speaker 1: so I have Jimi Diaz on the phone. Jimi has
Speaker 1: been out at Augusta National covering the tournament for Golf Channel.
Speaker 1: How you doing, himI, You've had a long day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a long day, but it's an hilarating day,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of nice to just I'm here in
Speaker 4: a guess the hotel room right now, very or of
Speaker 4: stated by the whole day, by the whole week. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for spending some time with
Speaker 1: me after your long day and making this part of
Speaker 1: your wind down. But I was just wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: if you could have one general takeaway from this tournament,
Speaker 1: what would that be?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the brilliance of Scottie Scheffler. Yes, he's
Speaker 4: sort of new on the scene in terms of being
Speaker 4: a force in the game, but you are seeing a
Speaker 4: very fast evolution of a player who's i think recognized
Speaker 4: that you know, maybe he's a little better than he
Speaker 4: even knew him himself to be, even though he's always
Speaker 4: been on a gradual upward track going way back to
Speaker 4: when he won in the US Senior Amateur. But he
Speaker 4: has the properties and the qualities of I think the
Speaker 4: best tools for the modern game. He hits the ball
Speaker 4: very high, hits the ball quite long. He's not the
Speaker 4: most accurate, but he's not He's not a wild driver
Speaker 4: by any means. Uh. He hits very authoritative, you know,
Speaker 4: high irons that can that can stop on major championship
Speaker 4: quality firmness, and he's shown that already. And uh, I
Speaker 4: think the six previous majors he finished top twenty, which
Speaker 4: for a young guy is impressive. Uh. And of course
Speaker 4: we see the not just the creativity, but the you know,
Speaker 4: the the real quality strike of his short game and
Speaker 4: how he how he can really recover again on really
Speaker 4: fast from greens because he he does strike it so
Speaker 4: so purely with a lot of spin, and he's really
Speaker 4: good at those shots with sixty degree wedges that you
Speaker 4: know Phil Michelson for example. I think that was his
Speaker 4: great advantage. Not that Scotty gets a lot of flop shots,
Speaker 4: but just has the uh, the craftiness and the hand
Speaker 4: eye and the awareness of the of the clubhead to
Speaker 4: really fashion shots and recover when he does make a mistake,
Speaker 4: which I think for a power hitter that's so important.
Speaker 4: You're going to be winning tournaments because power hitters just
Speaker 4: they have less margin for error and they're going to
Speaker 4: make mistakes and they're not going to be Although Scotty
Speaker 4: is a good iron player, it's just he's not, you know,
Speaker 4: this kind of point to point guy like Colin Morikawer
Speaker 4: or someone, and so you got to have the short game.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what Sev did, That's what Greg Norman did,
Speaker 4: That's what Tiger did to a large extent, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a way of being I think traditionally a dominant
Speaker 4: type player Phil you know, earning to some extent, they
Speaker 4: had both the power in the hand. But I think
Speaker 4: Scotty is showing real promise to be a guy with
Speaker 4: a very strong foundation who will last a long time.
Speaker 4: And this really wasn't a fluke.
Speaker 1: It seems like his game will age well. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, the reception of Scotty Shuffler has been
Speaker 1: interesting to me because I think people don't quite know
Speaker 1: what to make of him yet. I mean, he is
Speaker 1: a new name to a lot of people, to casual fans,
Speaker 1: to people who follow golf only occasionally. They sort of
Speaker 1: come back from the break from the last major and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this new guy is supposedly the
Speaker 1: best player in the world and people are trying to
Speaker 1: process that. But also, you know, unlike Rory, unlike even
Speaker 1: Colin Morrikawa, Scotty doesn't necessarily have one big skill that
Speaker 1: really stands out. You know, With Rory it's the driving
Speaker 1: of the golf ball. You know that that is so
Speaker 1: obvious that he's great at that, And then with Colin Morrikawa,
Speaker 1: it's the iron play. With Scheffler, it's it's a little
Speaker 1: hard to tell what that standout skill is. And maybe
Speaker 1: it is just as you're saying, the combination of a
Speaker 1: few different things, the ability to hit the ball high
Speaker 1: and the wonderful hands around the green. Would you kind
Speaker 1: of say that that's where where his you know, outstanding
Speaker 1: excellence comes from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's just the accumulation, you know, the
Speaker 4: well roundedness, you know, sort of the composite of it
Speaker 4: all right, and sort of lacks a weakness, or at
Speaker 4: least a really overt weakness, which I think Rory kind
Speaker 4: of still has. He you know, when we talk about Rory,
Speaker 4: I think that was one of the big real positives
Speaker 4: of what he did this week, was where he was
Speaker 4: putting his focus on, you know, kind of to plug
Speaker 4: up the holes in his game that I think he's
Speaker 4: ignored for a while because I think he was under
Speaker 4: the impression that if I just drive it great' you know,
Speaker 4: I have such an advantage, I'll beat people, which is
Speaker 4: not necessarily true. So you know, I think Scheffler has
Speaker 4: got a player's mentality as opposed of a ball striker's
Speaker 4: mentality or you know, a great swinger's mentality. He's about
Speaker 4: playing golf, and he's won in many different ways already,
Speaker 4: and it's it's just because he can access different tools
Speaker 4: at different times if he's not on with something else.
Speaker 4: The short games are to clean up a lot, and
Speaker 4: I don't know how long that lasts. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think Tom Watson played like that a lot. I remember,
Speaker 4: you know, he was a dominant player who was not
Speaker 4: the most stylished ball striker. I mean, beautiful, great athlete
Speaker 4: and a lot of rhythm and power, but he hit
Speaker 4: it a lot of different places and and he would recover.
Speaker 4: I meant, I didn't mention him before, but I and
Speaker 4: Sevie of course, you know, was just a clean up magician.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then when he was on he did make a
Speaker 4: lot of birdies, but when he wasn't, he kept his birdy.
Speaker 4: He kept his birdies because he saved Parcel. Well, I
Speaker 4: think that's where his ship. I think that's where Scotty,
Speaker 4: that's his He's part of that continuum.
Speaker 1: Tom Watson is a really interesting comparison. I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: of that one, and I was trying to come up
Speaker 1: with what a good historical comparison for Scotty Scheffler would be.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Sevy and Tom Watson. Are there any other
Speaker 1: players that you can think of, you know, going back
Speaker 1: through the years that resemble Scotty Scheffler to you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, I kind of went through my
Speaker 4: little list because I was thinking of number ones, and
Speaker 4: you know, Sandy Aisle was a little like that. It
Speaker 4: wasn't it wasn't that unusual, you know, against power and touch.
Speaker 4: That that was the thing that used to be considered rare.
Speaker 4: You know that if you had one, you probably didn't
Speaker 4: have the other. And those rare players that had the combination.
Speaker 4: Because Jack didn't really classically have a great short game.
Speaker 4: He was you know, he was a great manager and
Speaker 4: so he he usually you know, would and hit and
Speaker 4: hit a ton of greens of course, but he was
Speaker 4: not a real stylish scrambler, right and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: to be people with proficiency and.
Speaker 1: Power and great putting, right he was. He was a
Speaker 1: power player and he could putt well. That was his
Speaker 1: that was his mask.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So he didn't have the wedge, but he didn't
Speaker 4: need it that often. He just a side. You know.
Speaker 4: I asked him that once and I said, Jack, why
Speaker 4: weren't you a better wedge player, you know? And he says, oh,
Speaker 4: I should have gone to see you know, Uh, Paul
Speaker 4: runying Jack Route never taught short game, and I just
Speaker 4: kind of told myself I didn't need it. I could
Speaker 4: slop it up there and make the He put it
Speaker 4: for PARB. But I said, hey, you didn't win every tournament.
Speaker 4: He goes, You're right, you know, I probably got about
Speaker 4: I should have done it, and I just wasn't dedicated
Speaker 4: enough to do it. And and and I maybe, you know,
Speaker 4: was I was trying to save my energy because I
Speaker 4: knew if I obsessed about every shot and every every
Speaker 4: area of my game, I might go a little crazy.
Speaker 4: So it was just this kind of field thing that
Speaker 4: he chose to sacrifice. But to say, I think Tiger
Speaker 4: is the best example of having close to everything. But
Speaker 4: you know, Tiger was not the straightest driver, and so
Speaker 4: he had to recover a lot. And I think he
Speaker 4: was and and he goes back to his junior days
Speaker 4: when he had to be a good little wedge player
Speaker 4: to stay up with all the longer kids that he
Speaker 4: was playing with who were older than him. And and
Speaker 4: he developed a wedge early and liked it, like the
Speaker 4: creativity of it and the variety of it, and what
Speaker 4: he could make the ball do and dance and all
Speaker 4: those things. And it's you watch him in those warm ups,
Speaker 4: you know, if you watch a golf channel, in the
Speaker 4: show a shot that he is in practice that warming up.
Speaker 4: He loves hooking those little chips and hitting you know,
Speaker 4: all these little sort of almost like it's a playing
Speaker 4: table tennis or something. And that fascination makes him special
Speaker 4: along with all his other attributes. I think when he
Speaker 4: was off, he could always make a score. And I
Speaker 4: get that sense of Scotty he can always make a score.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of the ability to make a score when
Speaker 1: you're not on, that seems to be an issue with
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy or has been for the past few years.
Speaker 1: And maybe even before that, maybe he was just so
Speaker 1: brilliant in other aspects of the game that he was
Speaker 1: able to make up for his, you know, seeming lack
Speaker 1: of ability to kind of put things together when he's off.
Speaker 1: But today, Kimi, I think you noticed a few things
Speaker 1: that he was doing that were a little bit tighter
Speaker 1: around the greens, I guess, and where he was able
Speaker 1: to preserve scores in ways that maybe we haven't seen
Speaker 1: him do recently.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's more of a frame of mind
Speaker 4: and a focus, a new focus, and a final acknowledgment.
Speaker 4: You know that I am just letting too many shots
Speaker 4: leap away, and I don't no matter how well I
Speaker 4: hit it, especially off the tee, it's it's not going
Speaker 4: to make up for those for those lost, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of soft bogies that seem to undermine him, and
Speaker 4: I think they're discouraging too. I think they do something
Speaker 4: to his momentum and his state of mind. I think,
Speaker 4: you know, Rory, in some ways, maybe the worst thing
Speaker 4: that ever happened was winning two majors by age shot,
Speaker 4: because I think it created the illusion that I can
Speaker 4: just overwhelm golf courses and overwhelm my opponents with my
Speaker 4: great advantages, which are great advantages. But two things happen.
Speaker 4: Number One, people see that marker out there, that this
Speaker 4: is what this guy's doing, and they catch up, you know,
Speaker 4: just like in every other sport, you know, the other
Speaker 4: players adapt and get better. And I don't necessarily think
Speaker 4: Rory's the best driver of the ball anymore, not that
Speaker 4: he's not great at it, but there's a bunch of them,
Speaker 4: you know. I think DJ kind of took that mantle
Speaker 4: for a while, and maybe maybe John Rahm has it now.
Speaker 4: But so Rory doesn't have this five car length advantage
Speaker 4: over the field with the driver, and he's been exposed,
Speaker 4: in my opinion, for not having the other part of
Speaker 4: the game that we just talked about with Scotti Scheffler.
Speaker 4: But what I noticed recently is he's been talking about it.
Speaker 4: He never used to talk about it very much. He
Speaker 4: just say, you know, I just got to you know,
Speaker 4: get a nice groove and and think about, you know,
Speaker 4: getting my golf swing a nice He didn't talk about
Speaker 4: short game very much, and now he is. He's at Texas.
Speaker 4: He did miss the cut there, but he said, I've
Speaker 4: got to get more consistent getting the ball up and down.
Speaker 4: I've got to be better for May feeding in And
Speaker 4: I think that basically summarizes where he has in my
Speaker 4: opinion anyway, just watching and without quantifying it necessarily with stats,
Speaker 4: it just seems that's where he would undermine himself, especially
Speaker 4: in majors. And so that's where today was when he
Speaker 4: was asked what pleased him the most about his round?
Speaker 4: And it was such a beautiful round and it was
Speaker 4: so explosive and he hold out what four times from
Speaker 4: off the green and it was incredible. So that's kind
Speaker 4: of fluchy, and don't you don't expect that, But he
Speaker 4: said it was saving par saving putts and getting up
Speaker 4: and down on He specifically said the eleventh hole, the
Speaker 4: twelfth hole, and the fourteenth hole, and they were all
Speaker 4: examples of where he had to make like a tough
Speaker 4: six footer for par or. He had to get it
Speaker 4: up and down from a fairly tight line, and he
Speaker 4: did it and it kept him going it. You know,
Speaker 4: I was a Bogue list sixty four now, you know,
Speaker 4: I could have seen it easily be a sixty nine
Speaker 4: or a sixty eight if Rory had gotten into one
Speaker 4: of those bogey trains where he wasn't when he wasn't
Speaker 4: hitting it good making bogue because a couple of those
Speaker 4: verdies were places where he might have made bogey. He
Speaker 4: chipped in a couple of times too, so anyway, but
Speaker 4: the point is what the way he talked about, and
Speaker 4: I think Paul McGinley was talking about how he's working with.
Speaker 4: Paul has worked with Rotella and knows Rotelo well, and
Speaker 4: he thinks he sees Rotella's fingerprints on high excuse me,
Speaker 4: on Rory's sensibilities right now.
Speaker 1: And this is this is Bob Rotella, the author of
Speaker 1: many bucks, including golf is not a game of perfect
Speaker 1: and and he works with has worked with many PGA
Speaker 1: Tour pros on their mindset.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean he's sort of a pioneering the pioneering
Speaker 4: sports psychologist in golf right probably, And you know, not
Speaker 4: a real complicated message, but it's really about, hey, how
Speaker 4: do you shoot a number? And how do you, you know,
Speaker 4: prepare yourself to make the best of what you have
Speaker 4: that day? And as you were saying earlier, Rory when
Speaker 4: he's not on, has not He's not good at at
Speaker 4: squeezing out the best of himself every when he's not on.
Speaker 4: When he's on, he's he's an inspired player. And as
Speaker 4: we said, you know, he's won two majors by eight
Speaker 4: strokes and it's kind of his his legacy, but that's
Speaker 4: not going to happen anymore. I mean, he might win
Speaker 4: majors again, but it's not because there's too many people
Speaker 4: that play in a similar way to him for him
Speaker 4: to outstrip that unless he putched incredibly well and does
Speaker 4: the other things. But he's not going to do it
Speaker 4: just by a driving the ball perfectly and win by
Speaker 4: eight strokes.
Speaker 1: Well, something I was thinking about a lot this week
Speaker 1: is the idea of sustained greatness. Rory had a period
Speaker 1: of a few years where he was truly great and
Speaker 1: we all sort of assumed, because we were just coming
Speaker 1: out of Tiger's great era, that it would continue, but
Speaker 1: it didn't. And then since then we've also had great
Speaker 1: runs from Jordan Speith, from even Jason Day for a
Speaker 1: little bit there. We're currently in the midst of one
Speaker 1: with Scotti Scheffler, we had a great run from from
Speaker 1: Brooks kept gun in majors at least, Yes, And what
Speaker 1: does it take to sustain greatness? And I think that's
Speaker 1: such a complicated question, not one that we're going to
Speaker 1: get to answer here. But when you think of Tiger
Speaker 1: Woods and you think of how he sustained his greatness
Speaker 1: at various points in his career, people did seem to
Speaker 1: catch up to him, just as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: people have caught up to Rory in his driving of
Speaker 1: the ball. You know, people seem to kind of catch
Speaker 1: up to Tiger maybe by two thousand and two, two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, at least in terms of the equipment, right,
Speaker 1: he didn't have that advantage of the Eurethane Nike ball anymore.
Speaker 1: And there were a few years when when he wasn't
Speaker 1: winning as many majors, But then he kind of reworks
Speaker 1: his swing, figures a few things out, and goes on
Speaker 1: another amazing run from about two thousand and five to
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. And so Tiger has put together
Speaker 1: those different phases of his career, and now he's in
Speaker 1: yet another phase of his career where he's coming back
Speaker 1: from these injuries and doing things that just blow our
Speaker 1: minds in different ways. And it's all out of this
Speaker 1: It seems like this love of the game. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if that's the thing that Tiger had that these
Speaker 1: other guys just don't quite have in his grade of quantities.
Speaker 4: Well, you framed it very well. I agree with so
Speaker 4: many of the things that you're implying in your question,
Speaker 4: and I do think Tiger is special physically, very very gifted. Obviously,
Speaker 4: it's not his greate as quality in his opinion he
Speaker 4: always talks about, not always, but he has talked about,
Speaker 4: you know, wanting to be sure maybe the most talented,
Speaker 4: and maybe not the most talent, but certainly the hardest worker,
Speaker 4: and to be in his own mind, an overachiever. So
Speaker 4: there's this, but this is tremendous desire and burning ambition
Speaker 4: and determination that he has and who knows where that
Speaker 4: fuel comes from. That makes him special as well. And
Speaker 4: so I think to your point about, gee, we looked
Speaker 4: like there was a template being set there and Rory
Speaker 4: was going to follow it and you know, make the
Speaker 4: Rory era as good as a Tiger era. And you know,
Speaker 4: I guess that's recency buyings or whatever you want to
Speaker 4: call it, but he definitely was sort of looking like
Speaker 4: he was heading there because you know, again, those major
Speaker 4: victories would buy so many shots, and then having four
Speaker 4: at such a young age. But I think the separator
Speaker 4: is tigers just refusal to ever be satisfied and to
Speaker 4: rise to any challengers. He rose to David Duvall, I mean,
Speaker 4: he played his best golf when he was challenged. He
Speaker 4: rose to dj he rose to Ernie Els, and Jack
Speaker 4: did that to a large extent. I mean, he had
Speaker 4: a bunch of guys who came after him. He conquered Arnold,
Speaker 4: but then you know, there was Trevino, and there was
Speaker 4: Johnny Miller, and there was Weisskof, and there was Ray
Speaker 4: Floyd and probably missing some I mean, nobody really caught him.
Speaker 4: He answered every challenge until finally Age and Watson and
Speaker 4: watching sort of his own genius finally overcame Jack. So
Speaker 4: I think that's a quality of greatness, and if you're
Speaker 4: going to sustain, you have to be motivated every time
Speaker 4: somebody challenges you. And I don't know that everybody had that.
Speaker 4: But the other thing I think is that, in an
Speaker 4: inverse way, sort of Tiger becomes this cautionary tale because
Speaker 4: Tiger gave everything to the game in terms of his
Speaker 4: energy and his obsession towards perfection and improvement constantly, and
Speaker 4: you know, Tiger has lived a complicated life, and it
Speaker 4: may have taken a toll on him and his ability
Speaker 4: to balance life and have a good life because he
Speaker 4: made some mistakes that who knows where they came from.
Speaker 4: But I think there's a sense I don't know why
Speaker 4: I just used the phrase cautionary tale. I think, you know,
Speaker 4: there are people who are close to that position, whether
Speaker 4: it be whoever Jordan Speeds or Jason Day or anybody
Speaker 4: who's got or Rory himself feeling like is it worth it?
Speaker 4: Can you have balance? Can you have a good life?
Speaker 4: If you're that obsessed by golf, and with the greater
Speaker 4: rewards available in golf and the extra comfort that comes
Speaker 4: with success, you got to be extra motivated to even
Speaker 4: want it more than as much as Tiger to to
Speaker 4: stay at the top. You know, part of me thinks
Speaker 4: Tiger's just a generational talent, and part of me thinks
Speaker 4: that Tiger has created hesitancy to have the same kind
Speaker 4: of dedications among the guys who have followed him, who
Speaker 4: idolized him and want to be like him at least,
Speaker 4: you know, in terms of golf, But do they really
Speaker 4: want to be like him in terms of in terms
Speaker 4: of what it takes eternal.
Speaker 1: And the and the costs of that were on full
Speaker 1: display this this week, as as Tiger was in pain,
Speaker 1: you know, as as wonderful and inspirational as it was
Speaker 1: to see him come back in this manner, and it
Speaker 1: truly was. It was concerning, and it was it was
Speaker 1: tough to see him in so much pain, and and
Speaker 1: so that that is the cost of of you know,
Speaker 1: many years of his body going through what it has
Speaker 1: gone through.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, some of those some of
Speaker 4: those injuries were golf related, some of them were you know,
Speaker 4: certainly the psychic scars from the you know, from the
Speaker 4: scandal that he had I and said of those to
Speaker 4: be very significant, and overcoming them was without having any
Speaker 4: evidence other than just into intuition, were harder to overcome
Speaker 4: than the physical ones. And those you could say those
Speaker 4: scars were caused perhaps by getting his life out of
Speaker 4: balance with too much focus and not focus, but just
Speaker 4: just too much of himself in one thing. And you know,
Speaker 4: who knows, But you know, I go back to what
Speaker 4: Nicholas said, He goes, I could have been better, but
Speaker 4: I would have driven myself crazy, and you know, whatever
Speaker 4: crazy means in his mind, it would have perhaps, you know,
Speaker 4: infringed on his life and his family and all the
Speaker 4: things that he hoped to keep in balance. That and
Speaker 4: others have praised him for us like as good as
Speaker 4: Jack was, he was pretty darn normal and that's kind
Speaker 4: of the ideal. So I do think equipment is also
Speaker 4: maybe a category, is that it's brought players together in
Speaker 4: a way where it becomes ball striking is not as
Speaker 4: hard as it used to be, and so the putter,
Speaker 4: which is kind of probably the most capicious club in
Speaker 4: the bag, becomes a determiner of whether somebody stays at
Speaker 4: the top for however long they stay, and when that
Speaker 4: cool somebody else with a high putter comes up and
Speaker 4: does it. That's awfully simplistic, but I think there's something
Speaker 4: to it that, you know, the artist thry that it
Speaker 4: is not as the demand on artistry with the irons
Speaker 4: and different shots and moving the ball around is not
Speaker 4: as great as it used to be. In the clubs
Speaker 4: don't let you do it. The ball don't let you
Speaker 4: do it as easily, and so it becomes kind of
Speaker 4: a straight ahead, more monotonous game that a lot of
Speaker 4: guys can kind of play, and the margins between players
Speaker 4: are smaller. It seems like that has a big role
Speaker 4: in you know why there's so hard to dominate for
Speaker 4: a long time unless you have some clear advantage over everybody,
Speaker 4: and I don't. It's hard to find something. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think that's what Bryson was after, you know, as
Speaker 4: much as much as Bryson has you know, probably mismanaged it,
Speaker 4: especially recently, especially getting hurt. He was after he was
Speaker 4: he was after something that was going to separate it,
Speaker 4: which I admire and you know, but it's it just
Speaker 4: shows how hard it is to separate and and and
Speaker 4: Bryson didn't do the necessary work at least maybe he had,
Speaker 4: he was planning to, but he hadn't done the necessary
Speaker 4: work on the rest of the game that was going
Speaker 4: to take advantage of the advantage that he was building
Speaker 4: with the length. He had to have good wedges to
Speaker 4: capitalize on the on the length, and he never really
Speaker 4: got there in any event. You know, at least he
Speaker 4: was trying to do something. And even Tiger pull praise
Speaker 4: him for that. And I bet if Tiger was twenty
Speaker 4: two years old now, he'd be doing something like that.
Speaker 1: That is an interesting question. How would Tiger have pursued
Speaker 1: this kind of advantage in an era where there does
Speaker 1: seem to be, as you say, this leveling. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. So we'll see where Scotti Scheffler falls
Speaker 1: in this, whether he can maintain his you know, sort
Speaker 1: of extraordinary run. I mean, he's obviously not going to
Speaker 1: do it at this rate for uh forever. He's he's
Speaker 1: won four of his past six tournaments at this point,
Speaker 1: but he does seem a step ahead right now, and
Speaker 1: so the interesting question will be how long can he
Speaker 1: maintain that? And once he gets to a certain level
Speaker 1: of fame and greatness, is he going to really want
Speaker 1: it no matter the cost?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the one he does seem to have
Speaker 4: like a pure joy for playing and even the competition
Speaker 4: he likes it and and that's that's wonderful. And he
Speaker 4: has he has a nice humility about him that tells him,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm not there yet. I got to keep improving.
Speaker 4: So he's on that you know, kind of that improvement
Speaker 4: ethos that I think is the healthiest way to go
Speaker 4: about playing golf. It's like, you know, no matter what
Speaker 4: you achieve, to stay in the process, that keeps you improving,
Speaker 4: and that takes care of so many things because you
Speaker 4: get the joy of whether the result, whatever the result is,
Speaker 4: you know, you got better and and that's you know,
Speaker 4: as long as he's got the joy for the game,
Speaker 4: that that's gonna that's going to provide the energy. I
Speaker 4: think until that leaves us. Hope it doesn't leave him,
Speaker 4: but inevitably, you know, number one is wearing on people.
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody's worn it that well for a while.
Speaker 4: You know, it's it's it seems like it's taking its
Speaker 4: toll on most of the guys that get up there.
Speaker 4: Let's hope he doesn't, you know, he sometimes somehow becomes
Speaker 4: sort of an exception to that.
Speaker 1: Well, Haimi, it is always a pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for spending a portion of your
Speaker 1: evening with me. Hope to see you on Golf Channel
Speaker 1: again soon.
Speaker 4: Thanks Eric, it's very stimulating talking to you. Thanks a lot.
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Speaker 1: Elijah Craig reminds you to think wisely, drink wisely. All right,
Speaker 1: I am here with Bob Crosby. Bob is a golf
Speaker 1: historian and an authority on golf course architecture, as well
Speaker 1: as an Atlanta resident. And Bob, I understand that you
Speaker 1: were out at the Masters this past week for at
Speaker 1: least one day. What was your what was your general
Speaker 1: approach during that day? What did you see? What did
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: First of all, thanks, I'm delighted to be here with you.
Speaker 3: I wanted to see the changes to eleven, which everybody's
Speaker 3: been talking about, and some of the changes on three,
Speaker 3: more subtle changes there, and just generally to see the
Speaker 3: golf course. I've been there many many times, been lucky
Speaker 3: enough to play it several times. And then I visited
Speaker 3: with my father. Since nineteen fifty nine or sixty or something.
Speaker 3: It did a long, long, long time.
Speaker 1: What's the first Masters that you saw?
Speaker 3: First Masters I saw? I was in nineteen sixty with
Speaker 3: my father. We drove over. I grew up in Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 3: We drove over to Augusta one morning, as I recall,
Speaker 3: we went to the ticket office and bought a day pass,
Speaker 3: walked in and he wanted My father was a very
Speaker 3: good golfer and he wanted to see Bob Jones. So
Speaker 3: we went into the practice area and watched Bob ben
Speaker 3: Ben excuse me, Ben Hogan warming up. And it was
Speaker 3: just before they had bleachers there, and I think we
Speaker 3: were standing maybe ten yards away from him watching him
Speaker 3: hit balls to his shag boy, who didn't have to
Speaker 3: move at all. By the way, while we while we
Speaker 3: were standing there watching him, this old tricycle golf cart
Speaker 3: pulls up and it's Bob Jones with his with his
Speaker 3: arthritic fingers, with a cigarette holder threaded through his fingers,
Speaker 3: and he too stood there, sat there with and watch
Speaker 3: Ben Hogan hit golf balls for twenty thirty minutes. It
Speaker 3: was to this day a distinct memory, wonderful moment. We want.
Speaker 3: We followed him for several holes. I forget how the
Speaker 3: day ended. We had to get back home, but it
Speaker 3: was just a remarkable, remarkable visit.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is something else, all right. Well, as much
Speaker 1: as I'd love to keep talking about that, we should
Speaker 1: maybe focus on this latest experience out at Augusta National.
Speaker 1: You were starting to describe what you did during the day,
Speaker 1: so you wanted to see the changes to eleven, et cetera.
Speaker 1: What were some of the things that you saw out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I would like to give you my hot
Speaker 3: take on eleven, along with everybody else's hot.
Speaker 1: Take on We're all about hot takes here.
Speaker 3: But I also wanted to talk from a historian's point
Speaker 3: of view about Augusta National's architecture, and let me start
Speaker 3: with eleven. I think it's a bit of a mess.
Speaker 3: You can almost see the powers that be at Augusta
Speaker 3: National thinking through those changes. Somebody said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the up and downs when people bail out to the
Speaker 3: right of the green are just too darn easy, So
Speaker 3: let's build a swale in there make it more difficult
Speaker 3: for them to get up and down from that sort
Speaker 3: of a sort of little bail shot. And then you
Speaker 3: can hear somebody saying, well, yeah, but if we're going
Speaker 3: to make that harder, then we've got to sort of
Speaker 3: expand the fairway, take some of those trees out. And
Speaker 3: I think that's sort of what they did. A marker
Speaker 3: for me of a dubious golf architecture is when you
Speaker 3: see catch basins for drainage, and there's a new catch
Speaker 3: basin built in that swale on the right side of
Speaker 3: the green now, and there's also a catch basin built.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's more than one built for the new expanded
Speaker 3: fairway area over there by those sort of three orphan trees.
Speaker 1: Right along the right there. There's some recontouring and and
Speaker 1: it feeds down to a catch basin.
Speaker 3: If there are catch basins and something I don't think
Speaker 3: is quite right now. Maybe that's not always the case,
Speaker 3: but any rate, I think it's a mess. What's particularly
Speaker 3: infuriating to me is that you have a drawing for
Speaker 3: that hole done by the best golf architect ever to
Speaker 3: trod the face of the earth. Just use his drawing,
Speaker 3: put the center line bunkers back in, take the damn
Speaker 3: trees out. You need to push the te's back as
Speaker 3: they have done. That's great, and you could even push
Speaker 3: them farther back if you wanted to. But use McKenzie's
Speaker 3: drawing for the hole. Now you know, the original hole
Speaker 3: had a green on the other side of the tenth
Speaker 3: tenth green, so it was actually played as a slight
Speaker 3: dog leg right, But the same idea would work from
Speaker 3: the existing teas and just use them every time I
Speaker 3: come to Augusta. My thought is that they have spent
Speaker 3: so much time and effort trying to are meant to
Speaker 3: be scare quotes improving the golf course over the years
Speaker 3: from George Cobb to Robert Trent Jones to Perry Maxwell, etc.
Speaker 3: I don't you have a great, great golf course there?
Speaker 3: I do note it's an interesting paradox that one of
Speaker 3: at least to my knowledge, one of the earliest attempts
Speaker 3: to restore an original architect's work was conducted at Augustin
Speaker 3: National by Byron Nelson and Joe Finger when they restored
Speaker 3: the Eighth Green after that horrendous, horrendous mess that I
Speaker 3: guess it was cliff Roberts.
Speaker 1: Who was It was Clifford Roberts, Yes, yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: so just to give people a picture around the eighth Green,
Speaker 1: are those incredible mountains and those a version of those
Speaker 1: was originally there in nineteen thirty four, that was Mackenzie
Speaker 1: and Jones's idea for the whole and then in the
Speaker 1: fifties Clifford Roberts decided to completely eliminate those mounds, I
Speaker 1: guess to open up sightlines for spectators, and what ended
Speaker 1: up being produced just looks absolutely absurd. But it stayed
Speaker 1: there for about twenty years until the club decided to
Speaker 1: restore in nineteen seventy nine. I think it was. And
Speaker 1: you're making the great point that this is an early
Speaker 1: instance of restoration. Right.
Speaker 3: In fact, I'm having trouble. I'd love to anybody who
Speaker 3: watches this if they know of an earlier instance where
Speaker 3: somebody consciously restored an architectural feature of a golf course
Speaker 3: to take it back to the original design. I can't
Speaker 3: think of another instance earlier than this, but maybe they're
Speaker 3: out there. But it's a remarkable in and otherwise not
Speaker 3: so happy architectural history. This is a bright shining moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And as you're indicating, some of the best
Speaker 1: changes that Augustin National has made in the modern era
Speaker 1: have been to take the core back to what it was.
Speaker 1: You know that the changes to restore the mounding around
Speaker 1: the eighth Green have obviously completely improved that hole. It
Speaker 1: was ridiculous for a couple of decades, and the best
Speaker 1: move was to restore what was there before, and they
Speaker 1: did that now with eleven. I think that people were
Speaker 1: sort of excited. I was sort of excited about what
Speaker 1: was happening there because they were removing trees on the right.
Speaker 1: That hole had become very narrow, it had become just
Speaker 1: sort of like keep it out of the trees on
Speaker 1: the drive. That was the big challenge. Now it's one
Speaker 1: of the easiest fairways on the on the course to
Speaker 1: hit and and so it's a positive change in the
Speaker 1: sense that some trees have been eliminated. But as I
Speaker 1: heard you suggesting, there was a kind of there's there's
Speaker 1: a sort of design by committee feeling about what happened
Speaker 1: at the eleventh hole. Right, It's like, okay, let's remove trees,
Speaker 1: but now let's keep like three of them just standing
Speaker 1: there in the right half of the away, you know,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. It seems like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of compromises and a lot of different voices contributing
Speaker 1: to the work there. I don't have any information about
Speaker 1: how it actually happened. That's just the feeling I get
Speaker 1: from looking at it.
Speaker 3: I agree it has all the earmarks of a committee
Speaker 3: compromise of some sort. Log let's let's ground off this,
Speaker 3: this finished this meeting, let's agree to do this, and
Speaker 3: they that's what they do. And you know, the the
Speaker 3: the the maddening part to me about walking around the
Speaker 3: course a couple of days ago is that given the
Speaker 3: architectural the significant and a very important architectural history of
Speaker 3: this golf course. Why they haven't hired somebody with some
Speaker 3: understanding of that history to redo holes as necessary? And
Speaker 3: you know, there are any number of people out there
Speaker 3: that no McKenzie like the back of their hand, Tom Doak, Whore,
Speaker 3: Crenshaw would be wonderful. They are all sorts of people
Speaker 3: that could do this work. Crimshaw hell is a member
Speaker 3: on the tournament twice.
Speaker 1: I mean it would seem to be an obvious choice,
Speaker 1: like hit me on the head?
Speaker 3: What am I missing here? It just it's uh and
Speaker 3: a and a keen student of the game. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just it's remarkable. And that's the part I just
Speaker 3: don't get. I mean, they've been through now Fassio and
Speaker 3: I guess bo Welling and others who don't have a
Speaker 3: track record of doing a lot of restoration of Golden
Speaker 3: age golf courses use them. They're out there and if
Speaker 3: a course deserves them, it's this course. Augusta National is
Speaker 3: an incredibly important American golf course historically. I was rereading
Speaker 3: the other day The Spirit of Saint The Spirit of
Speaker 3: Saint Andrews, written at about the same time that the
Speaker 3: Mackenzie was designing Augusta. And it's a remarkable book when
Speaker 3: you read it in that context because Mackenzie, by the way,
Speaker 3: and just parenthetically, he mentions my man John Lowe about
Speaker 3: ten times. He's a big fan of John Lowe. But
Speaker 3: the interesting thing about the book as it relates to
Speaker 3: Augusta National is that, and this is my take on
Speaker 3: the book, and I'm happy to argue about it with
Speaker 3: somebody if they want to, is that he identifies an
Speaker 3: early stage of golf, strategic golf architecture, developed first by
Speaker 3: low and then taken on by Harry Colt, Tom Simpson,
Speaker 3: Fowler and others, and they woking and he talks all
Speaker 3: the sunny to all the famous newly designed or redesigned
Speaker 3: courses that pop up in the teens and then many
Speaker 3: many more in the nineteen twenties. The interesting thing about
Speaker 3: the book, though, is I think Mackenzie thought that there
Speaker 3: was another stage, and that Augustine National evidenced that second
Speaker 3: stage of strategic golf architecture. And that stage was basically
Speaker 3: that we are going to emphasize less bunker placement and
Speaker 3: more on contours and undulations of the natural terrain. Bob
Speaker 3: Jones was the perfect boss for that because he got it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to come back to that in a minute,
Speaker 3: but you know, if you've seen the story, Mackenzie's first
Speaker 3: plan for Augusta National was to He submitted it with
Speaker 3: thirty six bunkers. Jones said, no, too many, I want
Speaker 3: you to go back to twenty. They ended up on
Speaker 3: twenty two. I don't know how they got there, but
Speaker 3: twenty was ridiculously few bunkers. But the idea there was
Speaker 3: that by making the difficulties of the course linked to
Speaker 3: the contour and undulations of the land, I can do
Speaker 3: two things. That makes it much harder for really good
Speaker 3: players because it's lesstable, but the dreaded bunker shot for
Speaker 3: the weaker players is is less frequent, and it makes
Speaker 3: the course, and in fact it is a course it's
Speaker 3: a delight to play by. I'm a high single digit
Speaker 3: handicapped player. It's a delight for me to play from
Speaker 3: the regular immensities, but it just beats the hell out
Speaker 3: of the pros. And I think it has to do
Speaker 3: with that emphasis on contour and undulation and less emphasis
Speaker 3: on bunkers. And that was the second stage of golf
Speaker 3: architecture that I think Mackenzie envision. Now. He dies a
Speaker 3: couple of months before the first Masters, in the middle
Speaker 3: of the Great Depression. World War Two follows on. Nobody
Speaker 3: has any money, no golf courses are being built. But
Speaker 3: I think, but for those historical events, if the world
Speaker 3: had continued on as before, I think Augusta Nashville would
Speaker 3: have changed the face of golf architecture for the next
Speaker 3: couple of decades. That is the that is the heritage
Speaker 3: that the people at Augusta National I don't think quite get.
Speaker 3: They see it. I think as just a venue for
Speaker 3: a major championship, geared all in all sorts of ways
Speaker 3: to the to to the play of to the best
Speaker 3: players in the world. But the role the place of
Speaker 3: Augustin National in the hit in the history of American
Speaker 3: golf architecture is extraordinarily important. And as you start tweaking
Speaker 3: it and mucking around with it, you start deluding what
Speaker 3: is on the ground there and its significance for golf
Speaker 3: architecture going forward. One can I say one other thing. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: I was doing some research on this a couple of
Speaker 3: months ago, and to my pleasure and surprise, I discovered
Speaker 3: two things. First, in the late nineteen twenties and early
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties, Merefields, Sunningdale and all sorts of other courses
Speaker 3: over there were going through the same process. They were
Speaker 3: debunkering their courses. Mierfield went from three hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: bunkers in nineteen thirty one to something like one hundred.
Speaker 3: But all the courses were going through this debunkering on
Speaker 3: more or less the same grounds that let's just let
Speaker 3: the contours take over, and they are harder for good
Speaker 3: players to deal with, but easier for bad players to
Speaker 3: deal with, and it sort of squares the circle. The
Speaker 3: other interesting thing is that the unique features of Augusta
Speaker 3: National have a pedigree in America, and that pedigree is
Speaker 3: two courses. Maybe I'm missing some I'd love to hear
Speaker 3: about others. One is Max Bear's Lakeside in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Parts of that course were washed out by big floods
Speaker 3: and others will know more about the details of the
Speaker 3: course that But Mackenzie thought it was one of the
Speaker 3: great in the spirit of s Andrews thought it was
Speaker 3: one of the great courses in America, and he noted
Speaker 3: it had very very very few rough areas and relatively
Speaker 3: few bunkers. All of the ones he had were big.
Speaker 3: I mean, what does that sound like The other course
Speaker 3: that was an immediate predecessor, well, really two Crystal Downs.
Speaker 3: Arguab was one two. That's nineteen twenty nine. But the
Speaker 3: other course that no longer exists is Bayside.
Speaker 1: A lost course, a lost course.
Speaker 3: But I found some articles from New York journalists that
Speaker 3: were shocked, shocked at the paucity of bunkers there, and
Speaker 3: that so much of the interest and strategy of the
Speaker 3: course depended on mounding and land features. And it could
Speaker 3: read like early reviews of Augusta National, and it's Mackenzie's course.
Speaker 3: It may have been sort of a test run for
Speaker 3: Augusta National in some respects for Mackenzie. It was built
Speaker 3: as a public golf course, not as well finished probably
Speaker 3: as Augusta National. But that aspect of Augusta National needs
Speaker 3: to be retained. And I worry, in the name of
Speaker 3: more traditional concepts of how to make a course difficult,
Speaker 3: that those approaches to golf architecture are being overrun by
Speaker 3: those more traditional ideas that bunkers here, bunkers, They are
Speaker 3: bunkers everywhere, Augusta has a unique place in architectural histories
Speaker 3: and was not just the culmination of a golden age
Speaker 3: of golf architecture, it was also the beginning point for
Speaker 3: a new kind of golf architecture. It built on that
Speaker 3: and that's what to me, that's the debt Augustine national
Speaker 3: O's to golf history is keep that new window it
Speaker 3: was trying to open on golf architecture open somehow, you
Speaker 3: know them. Course Mackenzie designed was strategic golf architecture on LSD.
Speaker 3: It was wild boomerang greens, wild bunkering here and there,
Speaker 3: crazy contours. Look at the fifth green, look at the
Speaker 3: fourteenth green, the ninth green. I you could go on
Speaker 3: to the greens. I mean, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 3: make you play. If you're a good golfer, you're going
Speaker 3: to have to deal with unpredictable bumps, humps and rolls,
Speaker 3: not just in the fairways and they're plenty of the fairways,
Speaker 3: but especially on the greens. And you've got to put
Speaker 3: your ball in the right place or you're gonna three put.
Speaker 3: And I don't have any sympathy for it. I have
Speaker 3: no obligation to you to make sure you too, put
Speaker 3: from any point in the green. There may be places
Speaker 3: where you hit your ball where you have no chance
Speaker 3: to putting. And that's fine. That's fine, And that's the
Speaker 3: edgy nature of Augusta National is what they I hope
Speaker 3: they can keep and in some cases roll back to
Speaker 3: I think it'll hold up beautifully against the best golfers
Speaker 3: in the world. Just get the teas back. There's no
Speaker 3: choice about that. Just push the teas back. And that's
Speaker 3: what every time I get in the car after being
Speaker 3: an Augusta National, I turned to my wife and I say,
Speaker 3: you know this needs this is an important The building
Speaker 3: of this course was an important historical event and we
Speaker 3: need to recapture that moment. Where they need to recapture
Speaker 3: that moment somehow, and hiring somebody to come along and
Speaker 3: fix this tweak that in the name of holding scores
Speaker 3: down or keeping scores up for various holes is just
Speaker 3: the wrong approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people forget how radical Augusta National was
Speaker 1: when it first opened, and that's sort of the heritage
Speaker 1: that gets lost when the Masters and Augusta National Golf
Speaker 1: Club become as they have institutions.
Speaker 3: It was exactly it was intended as a radical extension
Speaker 3: of the ideas of strategic golf course architecture, unlike anything
Speaker 3: anybody had seen before. So when you're out there and
Speaker 3: you fire up that Caterpillar D six and start plowing
Speaker 3: away at stuff, you know, give pause to the history
Speaker 3: you're working on, because I think Mackenzie would be spinning
Speaker 3: in his grave. That edgy version of Augustin National is
Speaker 3: under threat of being lost forever. And the changes at
Speaker 3: eleven just it was like somebody hit me with a
Speaker 3: baseball bat said, oh god, this is worse than I thought.
Speaker 1: All Right, So I'm here with Joseph Lamanya, a regular
Speaker 1: guest on the Frida Egg podcast. Joseph is the founder
Speaker 1: of Optimal Approach Golf, and he has a great mind
Speaker 1: for statistics and for golf in general, so we thought
Speaker 1: we would add his perspective to the others we've gotten
Speaker 1: for this episode. Joseph, how you doing. I'm good.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: It's a good weekend. Yeah, did you take on the
Speaker 1: fire hose of content? Were you absorbing all weekend long?
Speaker 2: I was, that's I'm sure this this take is not
Speaker 2: unique to me. But the Master's website is so good
Speaker 2: that basically from sun up to sundown you can watch
Speaker 2: a bunch of golf shots. So I was taking advantage
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's incredible, like how many rabbit holes it
Speaker 1: provides you, Like you can spend effectively an unlimited amount
Speaker 1: of time exploring different, like specific things of interest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you even get some good audio until it
Speaker 2: gets scrubs off, scrubbed off the site, you know, if
Speaker 2: it gets particularly colorful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, all right, So Joseph, why don't we start
Speaker 1: with one big takeaway that you had from the weekend.
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, I was thinking about this a lot after
Speaker 2: watching Scottie win. Elite short game is not something that
Speaker 2: It's not to say that no players on tour have
Speaker 2: elite short game, but most of the players who have
Speaker 2: elite short game on tour have a gap in their
Speaker 2: games somewhere else. So somebody like Cam Smith, right, he
Speaker 2: wasn't the best driver of the golf ball, didn't hit
Speaker 2: it that far like a little bit errant elite short game, Well,
Speaker 2: he adds distance and he starts getting into contention all
Speaker 2: the time. Somebody like Patrick Reid, some of the best
Speaker 2: short game on tour not an elite ball Striker hasn't
Speaker 2: been driving it particularly well, but when he does, I mean,
Speaker 2: he's won a significant number of times on tour. And
Speaker 2: so we might have somebody in Scotti Scheffler who has
Speaker 2: elite short game, his chipping's been incredible and also checks
Speaker 2: a lot of those other boxes, hits it far, hits
Speaker 2: it relatively straight off the tee. It's exciting that we
Speaker 2: might have somebody who kind of is so well rounded
Speaker 2: in a way that very few other players on the
Speaker 2: planet are. So maybe I should have seen the Scotty
Speaker 2: Scheffler coming a little bit more than I did, And
Speaker 2: I think that's true of a lot of people in
Speaker 2: the golf world who, you know, obviously didn't see him
Speaker 2: ascending the world number one as quickly as he has.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this was a question I posed to Heimi,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what is it about Scotty Scheffler that
Speaker 1: really sticks out? Because usually when you have a player
Speaker 1: who goes on a run like this, you can identify
Speaker 1: a particular skill where they are ultra elite. You know,
Speaker 1: Rory and his driving, Brooks Koepka and his power, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. With Scotty, there does seem to be a
Speaker 1: particular well roundedness. But elite short game, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: does seem to be one thing that the rest of
Speaker 1: his game kind of revolves around or is built off of.
Speaker 2: Right And again you could get into like a sort
Speaker 2: of a random player. But Seewu Kim right, elite chip
Speaker 2: are the golf ball, one of the best in the world.
Speaker 2: Not a great putter, not particularly long off the tee,
Speaker 2: but he's won on tour, including a Players Championship. And
Speaker 2: when you have that elite short game, you just turn
Speaker 2: a lot of bogies into pars.
Speaker 1: If you don't have.
Speaker 2: Elite short game, when your ball striking is not quite there,
Speaker 2: you make some sloppy bogies. It's cool to watch Scotty
Speaker 2: Scheffler when he's hitting the ball really well. He might
Speaker 2: not even need to lean on it, but when he
Speaker 2: does need to lean on it, it's there. And I
Speaker 2: think that's what we'll see how much that persists into
Speaker 2: the future. But if he truly is an elite chipper,
Speaker 2: we could be looking at somebody who's a stalwart of
Speaker 2: the top five in the official World Golf rankings.
Speaker 1: Do you have any observations about Rory's performance this week.
Speaker 2: I hate to be a bit of a downer. I'm
Speaker 2: a little tired of the Rory Like what if Rory
Speaker 2: goes out in thirty takes? Like at some point he's
Speaker 2: got to win. He hasn't won in a decade. I
Speaker 2: was impressed he's been playing really well, but it feels like,
Speaker 2: in particular golf Twitter in the media is trying to
Speaker 2: will him to this win and he just hasn't done it.
Speaker 2: So like to be celebrating as much as he was
Speaker 2: when he hold out a bunker shot to finish and
Speaker 2: you know, runner up like that's Tiger Woods would never
Speaker 2: have been doing that in his prime, right, Like the
Speaker 2: expectation should be to win. So I don't want to
Speaker 2: hate on Rory. That's less of a Rory take and
Speaker 2: more of a the way we treat Rory take. But
Speaker 2: maybe I'm just a little tired of some of those
Speaker 2: the social media around Rory.
Speaker 1: Rory coming right right, Like I like.
Speaker 2: Him, but he's got to win at some point. And
Speaker 2: that's where I want to give the credit to Scotti Scheffler.
Speaker 1: He's doing it. Yeah, I mean, I would be as
Speaker 1: happy as anyone to see Rory put in a spectacular
Speaker 1: Sunday performance at the Masters and win. But the thing
Speaker 1: is he didn't really have much of a chance yesterday.
Speaker 1: That's that's sort of an underrated thing his at least
Speaker 1: on according to Data Golf's probabilities yesterday, he peaked at
Speaker 1: five percent. That was his peak, and that was after
Speaker 1: the fourteenth hole and he went on to go par
Speaker 1: par on fifteen and sixteen, which we're playing relatively easy
Speaker 1: that day, and so listen, like, it was great that
Speaker 1: he shot that score. It was an incredible round, but
Speaker 1: he really wasn't that close and people are acting like
Speaker 1: he was close, and so I'm with you on that.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, I'm just a little jaded by it, I guess.
Speaker 2: And when I think about major championships over the last
Speaker 2: five years and thinking about Rory McElroy, my main memories
Speaker 2: are like him trying to make the cut at an
Speaker 2: Open Championship and an impressive fourth round, where right, he
Speaker 2: never really had a chance to win, Like, I'd just
Speaker 2: like to see him do it. He has every skill
Speaker 2: that you need. He's another one of those really well
Speaker 2: rounded players. He's playing great right now, Like, just go
Speaker 2: do it, and then I'll be happy to celebrate when
Speaker 2: he does.
Speaker 1: All right, So golf course takes. We heard from Bob
Speaker 1: Crosby about some of the historical questions that Augusta National
Speaker 1: faces in considering whether to restore golf holes and you know,
Speaker 1: take things back to how they were, but there's a
Speaker 1: separate set of questions about how these holes play in competition.
Speaker 1: And so do you have any analysis in that arena
Speaker 1: that you came upon this this past week?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think similar to how players say every time
Speaker 2: they play at Augusta they learn something new. Just in
Speaker 2: watching Augusta every year, I've come to appreciate it more
Speaker 2: and more. I think it's as close to a perfect
Speaker 2: test as we get. That's not to say everything plays perfectly,
Speaker 2: but I think, especially off the tee, it is the
Speaker 2: best test we see all year. And what I really
Speaker 2: appreciate about it is how there are certain holes where
Speaker 2: a particular shot shape is required, and there are certain
Speaker 2: holes where a particular shot shape is rewarded not necessarily required.
Speaker 2: So I think my favorite example is whole thirteen. We're
Speaker 2: all familiar with that hole. You really do need to
Speaker 2: curve that ball right to left off of the tee,
Speaker 2: and especially in modern golf, almost all of the elite
Speaker 2: ball strikers hit a cut off the tee, and so
Speaker 2: to see them have to work the ball right to
Speaker 2: left is exciting. The best example I can give you
Speaker 2: is Justin Thomas really doesn't have that shot. It's been
Speaker 2: his worst hole at the Masters since he started. This year,
Speaker 2: he was the only player to finish in the top
Speaker 2: ten who didn't make a single birdie on that hole.
Speaker 2: He put one way left I believe three in the
Speaker 2: pine straw right. If you don't have that shot, it's limiting,
Speaker 2: and there aren't very many other places on tour where
Speaker 2: you see that. So I really appreciate that about Augusta.
Speaker 2: Even a hole like ten, if you can curve it
Speaker 2: right to left and take it down that left side,
Speaker 2: you get a pretty significant advantage because it rolls out
Speaker 2: a lot. More so, it's Augusta just demands so many
Speaker 2: shots of players that you don't see pretty much any
Speaker 2: other time through the whole year.
Speaker 1: And it's a complicated question, I feel, because some of
Speaker 1: those T shots that you're talking about thirteen and ten
Speaker 1: in particular, what makes those T shots exacting right now?
Speaker 1: What forces players to work the ball right to left
Speaker 1: on both of them in an uncomfortable way is when
Speaker 1: it comes down to it, trees right, I mean on ten,
Speaker 1: there's some influence of this. Yeah, if you get over
Speaker 1: to the left, you roll out a little bit. You
Speaker 1: also have like the green cants pretty significantly as well,
Speaker 1: and it's a little bit better to be down there
Speaker 1: and not be hitting down the slope of a green.
Speaker 1: But as you've observed a number of times, these kinds
Speaker 1: of angles matter a bit less when players are hitting
Speaker 1: it as high as they do now. But thirteen, certainly
Speaker 1: the influence on that shot is those trees out to
Speaker 1: the right. You've just got to avoid them. And in
Speaker 1: order to avoid them, you need to bend the ball
Speaker 1: around the trees to the left. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if you take out the trees, the holes are resemble
Speaker 1: quite a bit more their historical predecessors. But if you
Speaker 1: take out the trees, then this factor that you're talking
Speaker 1: about goes away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it brings me no pleasure as somebody who appreciates
Speaker 2: golf course architecture to say that angles don't make a
Speaker 2: huge difference on the PGA Tour. But the reality is,
Speaker 2: these guys just hit it so high so much spin
Speaker 2: that angles generally don't matter a whole lot on tour,
Speaker 2: and a huge part of Another part of the reason
Speaker 2: for that is scoring really starts to happen when you
Speaker 2: hit the ball inside ten feet, and so you're not
Speaker 2: hitting it inside ten feet that high of a percentage
Speaker 2: of the time anyway. So a lot of shots with
Speaker 2: a lot of spin that are high that go to
Speaker 2: twenty feet are ideal shots on tour, and you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily have to have a perfect angle.
Speaker 1: To do that.
Speaker 2: So I'm fine with width and trees as a way
Speaker 2: of making angles matter a little bit on tour, and
Speaker 2: Augusta does it so effectively.
Speaker 1: All Right, Joseph, thank you so much for these takes.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it and we'll definitely have you back on the
Speaker 1: podcast soon. Sounds good.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Garrett, Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Com