Speaker 1: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a bright egg
Speaker 2: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, fridagggrid egg brid egg lie,
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson. UH. Today I am joined by Joseph Lamanya.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a major championship kind of breakdown,
Speaker 1: a little debrief after major championship season and the men's
Speaker 1: calendar has wrapped up. So I'm joined by Joseph, who
Speaker 1: was on the ground for the last two Men's Majors
Speaker 1: and UH and obviously regularly for us on Friday Golf.
Speaker 1: I apologize for a slightly late release of this episode.
Speaker 1: I had a bunch of travel this week and a
Speaker 1: couple of things that led to a later release date.
Speaker 1: But we will be back next week with another pod,
Speaker 1: and you know we'll be back on the Wednesday schedule. Anyways,
Speaker 1: today's podcast is brought to you by our friends at
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get to Joseph Lamania and let's talk
Speaker 1: major season. Joseph, Let's let's get it kicked off. Do
Speaker 1: you want to start most recent or do you want
Speaker 1: to start at the start at the Masters or actually
Speaker 1: the players.
Speaker 2: We're not doing that. We're not doing that. I don't care.
Speaker 2: Maybe let's go in order. We want to start with
Speaker 2: the Masters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know you're you're the guests, so you get
Speaker 1: you get first pick.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the Masters. I think there's nothing Rory's win.
Speaker 2: Obviously one of the best tournaments of the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: I do think it's the best tournament that I've ever watched.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm just being a victim of
Speaker 2: recency bias, But that was one of the coolest tournaments,
Speaker 2: has to be of the last thirty years. I think
Speaker 2: the main thing I'll remember from it obviously the ups
Speaker 2: and downs, Rory dumping the wedge in the water on thirteen,
Speaker 2: But that iron shot into fifteen one of the coolest
Speaker 2: iron shots I've ever seen in my life with everything
Speaker 2: on the line, and I think when you go back
Speaker 2: to what are the best shots of all time or
Speaker 2: the best shots of the modern era, that's in the
Speaker 2: top five. So that iron shot into fifteen I'll remember forever.
Speaker 1: You just you know, the moment in time and the way,
Speaker 1: you know, I was on the ground, and just the
Speaker 1: way the energy and the atmosphere of the tournament had
Speaker 1: shifted from after he hits the after he hits the
Speaker 1: green on twelve, it was like a raucous, like celebratory
Speaker 1: like we're gett you know. It felt like that, like
Speaker 1: almost like it was a to turn into a winner's
Speaker 1: procession down the stretch where every green it was just
Speaker 1: going to be this huge applause and him just kind
Speaker 1: of waltzing to this career Grand Slam. That's what if
Speaker 1: after he hit the green on twelve, that's kind of
Speaker 1: what it felt like it was about to become. And
Speaker 1: obviously the shot on thirteen, the soft bogie on fourteen,
Speaker 1: and at that moment it was like the it was
Speaker 1: like shock in the crowd. It was it was dead,
Speaker 1: it was deflated, and everybody was watching the leaderboards and
Speaker 1: you know, reacting to the leader boards. And he obviously
Speaker 1: you saw him like there was a big weight on
Speaker 1: fifteen and you saw him in the trees and being
Speaker 1: there on the ground. It it was kind of what
Speaker 1: is he going to do. He's got to be laying up,
Speaker 1: and then he hits this all time shot and it
Speaker 1: pulls him back together. And obviously, you know, there were
Speaker 1: there were more ups and downs after that was seventeen eighteen,
Speaker 1: the web shot that was a really bad web shot,
Speaker 1: and then the shot in the playoff. But the I'll
Speaker 1: never forget that, the way the energy and the crowd
Speaker 1: shifted with all these different like kind of like ups
Speaker 1: and downs coming down the stretch. It was. It was
Speaker 1: a wild experience to be there. In terms of where
Speaker 1: it ranks, you know, I think it's gonna It's an
Speaker 1: interesting aspect of to talk about where it ranks because
Speaker 1: I think from like from my perspective, The Stenson Mickelson
Speaker 1: duel was like, I don't know if we're ever going
Speaker 1: to see it, Like, I don't know if in my
Speaker 1: lifetime I'm ever gonna see like the sheer level of
Speaker 1: play between two at the time elite elite players going
Speaker 1: at it, like clearly the best two players in a tournament,
Speaker 1: just duking it out. I don't think I don't think
Speaker 1: I will ever see a tournament like that in the
Speaker 1: next like twenty five years, where you just have these
Speaker 1: two guys that are just clearly playing on a different
Speaker 1: level and it was just like trading blows like that tournament,
Speaker 1: it gets underrated, like this tournament was kind of just
Speaker 1: like it was. Everything was around Rory in this accomplishment,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's an interesting question where it where
Speaker 1: it ranks, you know, because like twenty twenty four at
Speaker 1: Pinehurst would have to rank really high in that in
Speaker 1: that you know situation too, because we were saying the
Speaker 1: same things walking off that and that was more of
Speaker 1: a duel.
Speaker 2: I'm with you on the Stenson Michelson one. That's the
Speaker 2: other one that comes to mind for me, or the
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight US Open, like those for me,
Speaker 2: are the most memorable, but any earlier than that I
Speaker 2: was a little young, But I think the difference between Pinehurst,
Speaker 2: the back and forth nature of this one that existed
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst, but the way Rose shot up. I also
Speaker 2: think you got to tell the whole story of the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five Masters with Rory's two double bogies on
Speaker 2: Thursday afternoon and just the entire arc of that tournament.
Speaker 2: To me, it reached a ceiling much higher than the
Speaker 2: US Open at Pinehurst, even Rory starting the day shaky
Speaker 2: on Sunday, the shot on seven like it was just
Speaker 2: drama packed from start to finish, And I feel like
Speaker 2: Pinehurst really hit that in the last four holes, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't like that all tournament. It wasn't like that
Speaker 2: all day.
Speaker 1: I think I actually know why you're discrediting because this guy,
Speaker 1: Matthew Pavaugh was in the final group.
Speaker 2: I'm not discrediting Pinehurst. That was a great golf tournament,
Speaker 2: but I think the Masters a little higher.
Speaker 1: I think this is just because you're better that Pavon
Speaker 1: played well.
Speaker 2: I got nothing against Matthew Pavong, great player, good player.
Speaker 1: Uh what's your second thing about the Uh? About the Masters,
Speaker 1: I kind of just hit on it.
Speaker 2: But I think watching Rory's two double bogies on Thursday
Speaker 2: afternoon in the whiplash of feeling like the tournament not
Speaker 2: was over, but it was a massive gut punch to
Speaker 2: his chances and to then turn around recover the way
Speaker 2: that he did make another bad swing on thirteen. Resilience
Speaker 2: the word that got thrown around all week, but it
Speaker 2: really was a different side Rory than I think we've seen.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that we're gonna see too many
Speaker 2: players make two double bogies on a Thursday and win
Speaker 2: a major championship. Not many have the birdie making ability
Speaker 2: to get themselves back in. But I hope people remember
Speaker 2: the way that tournament started, not just that finish, because
Speaker 2: it was an incredible display of bouncing back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think like the thing you I remember talking
Speaker 1: about Rory's round on Thursday, and it was like he
Speaker 1: played such great golf outside of those two holes, and
Speaker 1: it was you know, a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of people put him, put them, buried them, you know,
Speaker 1: put the casket underground after that round, saying you know,
Speaker 1: he's out of it. But like the level of play
Speaker 1: he was he was so dialed in that week. You know,
Speaker 1: you think about like kind of like the the whole
Speaker 1: tournament and some of the catastrophic mistakes that he made,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen on Thursday, chipping from over the green
Speaker 1: from like a place that you're like, okay, he might
Speaker 1: make a verdie here, tipping that into the water and
Speaker 1: making a double from just over the crazy you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the the double vogie on thirteen in the final round
Speaker 1: from like a great layup position, you know, just like
Speaker 1: trying to take double out of play and making a double.
Speaker 1: And you think about that tournament, it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: he played so well that week. He probably should have
Speaker 1: won by like six or seven. You know, he was
Speaker 1: just by far and away the best player of that week.
Speaker 1: But he made some a couple, you know, huge mistakes
Speaker 1: that you just can't make, you know, I think, like,
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things you're going to
Speaker 1: walk away from. And I think I'm sure both of
Speaker 1: us will have like Scotty's dominance at the Open is
Speaker 1: one of our things. But you know that Master's performance,
Speaker 1: it was a playoff, but it was you could also
Speaker 1: say it was one of the more dominant performances because
Speaker 1: Rory won in spite of like some serious mistakes that
Speaker 1: you usually are unable to win golf tournaments with. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My second thing is also I guess influence from being
Speaker 1: on the ground at the US Open at Pinehurst and
Speaker 1: and that Masters is it's just kind of the the
Speaker 1: Bryson rivalry with Rory, and you know, it's set up
Speaker 1: this you know, Saturday afternoon, it sets up this this
Speaker 1: Bryson Rory you know, final pairing on Sunday, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know what's going to happen. The start that Rory
Speaker 1: got off on got off to with, you know, whole
Speaker 1: one was kind of a disaster. Uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: uh and you know the way that you know Bryson
Speaker 1: Birdie's two and it's like, oh my god, he just
Speaker 1: like flipped the whole thing. He's gonna win. And then
Speaker 1: it comes back Rory Bertie's three kind of gets back
Speaker 1: on on the horse. But but overall, I'll never forget
Speaker 1: watching the two on the practice screen and it's like
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy putting just like around the green like you
Speaker 1: would before you play around right like where he's like
Speaker 1: hitting putts and it's just like there's no devices out there.
Speaker 1: He's he's hitting putts like different different lengths and like
Speaker 1: a a really just like normal putting practice routine. And
Speaker 1: then you have Bryson out there with like his ruler
Speaker 1: and he's got like a track, he's got like he's
Speaker 1: measuring stuff, and he's hitting these putts based off of
Speaker 1: like how far back on the ruler he's going to
Speaker 1: like random places. And I just thought it was, like,
Speaker 1: it's these polar opposite personalities. Obviously, Bryson has been a
Speaker 1: you know, they play on different tours. Bryce has been
Speaker 1: a flat ship player for the Live tour. Rory's like,
Speaker 1: you know, flagship player for the PGA Tour. And they
Speaker 1: have just these two very drastically different approaches to the game.
Speaker 1: So different personalities, different tours, different approaches to the game,
Speaker 1: and I think like you could probably say they genuinely
Speaker 1: see the world differentely, right, So you have these just
Speaker 1: like two polar opposites, and it's, you know, honestly, you know,
Speaker 1: one of my hopes for twenty twenty six, can we
Speaker 1: continue to get this rivalry delivering more. Obviously the fallout,
Speaker 1: Bryson says Rory didn't talk to me all round, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's clear between some of the things that Bryson
Speaker 1: said he had that jab at Rory. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: Rory didn't appreciate during the match in Vegas last year,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure that Bryson didn't appreciate Rory kind
Speaker 1: of just iceing them all Master Sunday. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's what your job is, to go into the ring
Speaker 1: and win a golf tournament. And I think there's like
Speaker 1: this great kind of icy rivalry that I don't think
Speaker 1: they're sending each other Christmas cards, and it's like something
Speaker 1: we want. This is what we want in golf. And
Speaker 1: my hope is that we get more of this. And
Speaker 1: we've gotten it at a Major two years in a row.
Speaker 1: Could we get a thirty third of this?
Speaker 2: I feel like often in golf rivalries get overstated. Maybe
Speaker 2: there's not genuine disdain there, or they match up so
Speaker 2: infrequently that it's not even a true rivalry. I think
Speaker 2: Rory and Bryson is a legitimate rivalry and that there
Speaker 2: is a little bit of dislike there. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they're spending a ton of time thinking about each other,
Speaker 2: but I don't think they're pleased to be paired together,
Speaker 2: or maybe they are because they enjoy the rivalry of it,
Speaker 2: but I don't think they like each other. So the
Speaker 2: other part of it is that their skill sets are connected.
Speaker 2: They're two of the longest hitters in golf. So when
Speaker 2: you get a major championship setup that's favorable to distance,
Speaker 2: like we could actually see them matched up again, which
Speaker 2: you know, it's just increases the chances that that rivalry
Speaker 2: could come to a head versus if their skill sets
Speaker 2: were completely opposite. So I don't know that it's unlikely
Speaker 2: we'll ever see them in a final group in a
Speaker 2: Major again, but the chances aren't zero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, you know, like there is. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be. They aren't friends, yeah, fair, And I
Speaker 1: think like that's the thing is, like you they talked
Speaker 1: to Rory after the Open about Scotty and I couldn't
Speaker 1: be happier from He's he's a great person, you know,
Speaker 1: is what he said, And like that's not like the
Speaker 1: basis for a great rivalry is when there's like mutual
Speaker 1: admiration for the other one. From like a personal standpoint,
Speaker 1: I grew up a Bulls fan. The Bulls Nick's rivalry,
Speaker 1: the Bulls Pacers rivalries, and the nineties were and the
Speaker 1: you know, we're just like rooted in the Bulls and
Speaker 1: Pistons obviously in the earliest or early nineties they're rooted in.
Speaker 1: This is just general dislike for each other like that,
Speaker 1: you know, there there is like a level to that.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I don't think no matter who it is,
Speaker 1: there's going to be that like kind of contentious rivalry
Speaker 1: with Scotty because like Scott, he's just generally likable. He
Speaker 1: does doesn't do anything that's going to like upset people.
Speaker 1: But where Rory, you know, we'll we'll speak his mind
Speaker 1: in press conferences and you know, and and kind of
Speaker 1: tell you. You know, he's authentic, he'll tell you how
Speaker 1: he feels about things. And Bryson, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: being Bryson will will rub people certain ways. And I think,
Speaker 1: like you know, you think about it as like Bryson's
Speaker 1: ascendants and ability to play Augusta. Obviously that opens that
Speaker 1: up every year as a potential. I think next year,
Speaker 1: if you want to circle another one where it could
Speaker 1: happen ironom Innk I think will set up very well
Speaker 1: for for long hitters next year, So like a Bryson
Speaker 1: Rory ironom Innk duel could be something that you look.
Speaker 2: At that would be that would be incorrect just getting
Speaker 2: them in the final group again this year. You're right,
Speaker 2: like that that should be one of the lasting takeaways
Speaker 2: the excitement everyone had on Saturday night seeing them paired together.
Speaker 2: But if we get them again every time in the future,
Speaker 2: now that's going to be appointment viewing, even if it's not
Speaker 2: a major. But I don't know what other tournament you
Speaker 2: could get it at the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: But Ryder Cup. Yeah, yeah, that's you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I might put somebody else against against Rory. You know,
Speaker 1: I might put Andrew Novak. You think you know he
Speaker 1: went toe to toe with him on Oakman on Sunday,
Speaker 1: So see the Rory killer. All right, let's move on
Speaker 1: to the PGA. What is one of your takeaways from
Speaker 1: the PGA Championship.
Speaker 2: We've seen it with Scottie before the late Saturday afternoon
Speaker 2: charge where he finished eagle birdie, par birdie birdie to
Speaker 2: just completely grab the tournament. I can remember I was
Speaker 2: in a wedding that Saturday night, so I had to
Speaker 2: be like looking at my phone and tracking that Saturday
Speaker 2: evening and had it recorded, and that tournament was so
Speaker 2: wrap up for grabs. I could not believe looking back
Speaker 2: at my phone and then seeing how quickly the tournament
Speaker 2: had changed. And this is what Scotty does. He's done
Speaker 2: it at Players in the past, He's done it at
Speaker 2: the Masters, unlike anybody else in the modern era besides Tiger,
Speaker 2: taking a tournament that's in doubt and just grabbing it
Speaker 2: and showing that nobody else really has a chance and
Speaker 2: no one else really did have a chance from then
Speaker 2: on in. He stumbled a little on Sunday, but that
Speaker 2: Saturday afternoon charge, I think that's just something at this
Speaker 2: point that we've come to expect with Scotty. He did
Speaker 2: it at Memorial this year, like all right, the tournament
Speaker 2: kind of hanging in the balance late Saturday afternoon, it's Scotty's.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'll always remember from the PGA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, to that point with Scotty, I think
Speaker 1: like you could make a lot of cross sport references
Speaker 1: and just you know, if you're watching the NBA, it's that,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like third quarter run where a
Speaker 1: super duper star just you know, he'll he'll take over
Speaker 1: and score you know, twelve points in four minutes and
Speaker 1: it's just like whoa, Like what just happened? And the
Speaker 1: lead opens up and it feels like a golf you know,
Speaker 1: you see this all the time, and I think like
Speaker 1: with Scotty, it is a like it's a the ability
Speaker 1: to rise to a certain moment and right when that
Speaker 1: tournament is you know, is gettible, you know. And and
Speaker 1: the way he did it too on like the hardest
Speaker 1: holes on the golf course, you know, where like sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,
Speaker 1: we're brutal holes and you know, to to to do
Speaker 1: it where he just took took control. Obviously the fourteen,
Speaker 1: fourteen and fifteen were the gettible holes on that back nine,
Speaker 1: but like to just sees control and do it you
Speaker 1: know where. I think that's like one of the things
Speaker 1: you see from Scotty and maybe one of like the
Speaker 1: marks of greatness is you know, his ability to hit
Speaker 1: shots close on holes where nobody hits shots close all day.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, nobody said it close to this all
Speaker 1: day and it's like, oh, then Scotty hits it to
Speaker 1: twelve feet and rolls a putt in you know, it
Speaker 1: is he has just this knack to make extraordinarily difficult
Speaker 1: shots look routine, and he is he operates. I think,
Speaker 1: I think the irons are just I don't think enough
Speaker 1: gets talked about and I don't really love that expression,
Speaker 1: but like his iron dominance does not get talked about enough.
Speaker 1: How good the irons are, Like how generational the iron
Speaker 1: talent is. I mean, you think about five years ago
Speaker 1: before we were in the Scotty era, like the excitement
Speaker 1: about Colin Morikawa and how he was, you know, replicating Scotty,
Speaker 1: or the excitement about will Z l Trus's iron play,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, Scotty is just just in a
Speaker 1: different stratosphere. And when you hit great iron shots, great
Speaker 1: approach shots, it's it's like hard to play bad golf.
Speaker 2: He's also leading the tour this year. Strokes ginned off
Speaker 2: to Tea like you could make the argument that Scotty's
Speaker 2: driving ability is not talked about enough. Like so I
Speaker 2: think that again, two years ago, all anybody said, correctly
Speaker 2: was if Scotty ever learned how to put average, is
Speaker 2: gonna win everything. And to your point, now we are seeing,
Speaker 2: especially on the most demanding setups where he can separate himself.
Speaker 2: Tea to green, that's what's happening. He learned how to
Speaker 2: put a little bit. He's killing everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's I like the call out of that,
Speaker 1: that ability to just kind of like burst out right,
Speaker 1: like the ability to like in a blink of an
Speaker 1: eye put a tournament away. My big thing was was
Speaker 1: actually from Sunday. You know, I think that what he
Speaker 1: did on Saturday set him up to have this wonderful cushion.
Speaker 1: And we haven't really seen Scottie Scheffler out of sorts
Speaker 1: tea to green in a in a big moment, and
Speaker 1: we saw it for nine holes on Sunday, and I thought, like,
Speaker 1: you know, when we look back on his career, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I will always remember is that
Speaker 1: Sunday at Quail Hollow because that was a moment where
Speaker 1: he could have like given one away. And once you
Speaker 1: give one away, I think that winning them gets a
Speaker 1: lot more difficult because there's way more doubt in your head.
Speaker 1: Golf is a sport that it preys on your insecurities
Speaker 1: and your anxiety, and for Scotty Scheffler to to play
Speaker 1: the front nine he played to have John Ram catch
Speaker 1: him on the back nine and to have him go
Speaker 1: from hitting it just just horrendously. It was about as
Speaker 1: bad as I've ever seen him hit the ball, to
Speaker 1: clicking in finding something and then playing a nearly flawless
Speaker 1: back nine to win the tournament. Put pressure back on
Speaker 1: John Rahm, who you know. It's like these these majors
Speaker 1: are hinging on so many moments, and that major, like
Speaker 1: the major moment. One of them I will remember is
Speaker 1: that the lipout rom had on thirteen where he hit
Speaker 1: an incredibly great putt and an insanely great putt and
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, if that ball is going two
Speaker 1: percent slower, it goes in and then he doesn't burdy
Speaker 1: the short part four, doesn't burdy the part five, and
Speaker 1: so over again. But Scotty being able to gather himself,
Speaker 1: collect himself and fix the pro problem on the fly,
Speaker 1: that's another just sign of greatness, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: self reliance. Not you know, we see so many guys
Speaker 1: run to the range, and obviously Scotty works with Randy
Speaker 1: Smith all the time. But when you know, when you
Speaker 1: reach the level of being able to fix something on course,
Speaker 1: that is self reliance and self and that's just another
Speaker 1: aspect of just understanding and greatness.
Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy that you're talking about him having
Speaker 2: one of the most uncharacteristically poor nine hole stretches of
Speaker 2: his career and he won the tournament by five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it's I think that. I think the PGA
Speaker 1: at quil Hollow leaderboard is like more misrepresentative of the
Speaker 1: event than any like that's gonna be one where you
Speaker 1: look back on it and John Rahm, I think, what
Speaker 1: do he finished like seventh? It's like such such an
Speaker 1: absurd like he finished second in my mind, you know,
Speaker 1: give it because he came down the stretch and said,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to win this tournament and made some made
Speaker 1: some mistakes that that cost him, you know, finishing second
Speaker 1: fair fair.
Speaker 2: I think to your point about him on the range,
Speaker 2: I think one thing from this year and I'm curious
Speaker 2: if you agree. But Scotty seems to be we hear
Speaker 2: so often about players that they always need to be
Speaker 2: working on something like that they get bored and they
Speaker 2: almost have to fix their mind on some kind of change,
Speaker 2: And Scotty seems to fall in love with routine and simplicity.
Speaker 2: About as much as anybody to where that doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like as much of a risk that he's going to
Speaker 2: always need to be changing something like Tiger did. And
Speaker 2: I think even Rory has struggled with motivation at times.
Speaker 2: I don't really worry about Scotty struggling in that same way.
Speaker 2: And that kind of makes me think that his dominance
Speaker 2: could persist beyond a lot of players who maybe their
Speaker 2: attention spans are a little bit different, or they do
Speaker 2: want to they want to be making changes all the time.
Speaker 1: Do you agree with that, Andy, Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: simplicity of Golf Forum, I think, like you look at
Speaker 1: him and there is like there are other signs that
Speaker 1: point to this as well. It's the you know, he
Speaker 1: had that truck forever that Jim Dance bought, but he
Speaker 1: had that same truck forever when he's worth tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. It's the idea that, you know, I
Speaker 1: think his faith builds some consistency in his life like
Speaker 1: that he does, you know, you know, like he's very
Speaker 1: devoted to that and that builds consistency in his life.
Speaker 1: I I would I would agree with that. I think
Speaker 1: one of the harder things the more underrated hard thing
Speaker 1: about tour life is if you're a curious person, the
Speaker 1: routine of going to these same places, these same courses
Speaker 1: over like twelve to fifteen twenty years of your life
Speaker 1: becomes a little mundane. It's like, well, I'm in this
Speaker 1: suburb like and you have to come up with ways
Speaker 1: to retain your interest. And I think, where are you
Speaker 1: going with this?
Speaker 2: It seems like a backhanded compliment.
Speaker 1: It's not a backhanded compliment.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm just saying you Scotty's not curious.
Speaker 1: Well, I think he's still young in his career, right,
Speaker 1: I think like this is this is one of the
Speaker 1: things that the underrated aspects of golf and maybe why
Speaker 1: we don't see a lot of careers that are great
Speaker 1: for ten plus years is there has to be hyper competitiveness.
Speaker 1: There has to be extraordinary, very discipline. There has to
Speaker 1: be a drive to want to be great. There has
Speaker 1: to be you have to be in it for like
Speaker 1: the right reasons to have an extended career in golf,
Speaker 1: especially now with how much money they make, It's very easy.
Speaker 1: We've seen it. I mean, let's look at live Let's
Speaker 1: look at who lives spent a bunch of money on
Speaker 1: and most of them got their big check and have
Speaker 1: kind of checked out. And I think this is this
Speaker 1: is an interesting, uh you know, piece of golf that
Speaker 1: my maybe doesn't get discussed enough is the redundancy of
Speaker 1: the sport, going and working every day on your game
Speaker 1: to see like the most marginal gains. You're talking about
Speaker 1: devoting hundreds of hours in a year to chipping in
Speaker 1: an effort to gain a tenth of a shot, be
Speaker 1: tenth of a shot better this year than last year.
Speaker 1: It's a wild pursuit.
Speaker 2: And to your point, we know what next year's schedule
Speaker 2: looks like, and we're gonna know what the next year's
Speaker 2: schedule looks. It's the same golf courses, the same events,
Speaker 2: are going to be signature hotels, same hotels, and Scotty
Speaker 2: seems to be one of the few people who doesn't
Speaker 2: have any issue with that, just shows up, shows up
Speaker 2: to Craig Ranch and wins comfortably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a it's wild. What's your second thing?
Speaker 2: Mudballs? Mudballs at the PGA Championship. I feel like now
Speaker 2: that we're a little bit removed, it's easy to forget
Speaker 2: about that. But that was a big talking point for
Speaker 2: the first couple of days. Police were out the fair
Speaker 2: police were out, Scotty and Xander both having some trouble
Speaker 2: on sixteen attributed that to mudballs. You had some players
Speaker 2: coming out and saying you just got to learn how
Speaker 2: to deal with it. I think, especially older players or
Speaker 2: players who are no longer active, saying, hey, mudballs are
Speaker 2: part of the sport. Other guys complaining about it. Not
Speaker 2: throwing an asterisk on the championship necessarily, but having a
Speaker 2: real problem with having to navigate playing championship golf with
Speaker 2: some mud. Speith was really upset about it. Talked about
Speaker 2: how the Masters you're not allowed to talk about it.
Speaker 2: So it kind of brought mud balls to the forefront
Speaker 2: of the conversation and sort of signaled where people stand
Speaker 2: on that issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, water boys, sure in the fairway was a
Speaker 1: big theme of two major championships, obviously Oakmont.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: I think like one of the things that got stoked
Speaker 1: this fire too, is like Kevin Kissner's commentary at the
Speaker 1: US Open about like, you know, listen on the PGA Tour,
Speaker 1: we can just get the ball in our hand and
Speaker 1: move it to a dry spot and hit it from there.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the things that sets majors apart.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that's you know, in the
Speaker 1: identity the famous you know, Daniel Berger walking up to
Speaker 1: the score of the first t at the Asters and
Speaker 1: asking if they're playing ball, lift clean in place, and
Speaker 1: then'll be like no, I think, you know, golf is
Speaker 1: an is an unfair sport. It's inherently unfair and and
Speaker 1: I get I think the position of the pros and
Speaker 1: Scottie talked about this after one of the round, like
Speaker 1: we work our our entire lives incredibly hard to control
Speaker 1: the ball, and the mudball, you know, creates a situation
Speaker 1: where we have no control over it. That's part of golf. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, bunkers used to not be raked, you know,
Speaker 1: I think like the CB McDonald line was the you know,
Speaker 1: the best kind of bunker is like one that looks
Speaker 1: like a herd of elephants ran through it. And I
Speaker 1: think that you know, over time, this is this is
Speaker 1: you know, a tournament player perspective is like this idea
Speaker 1: of fairness should come through. The more I miss the
Speaker 1: the you know, more I'm penalized the you know, that
Speaker 1: type of concept which I can I can relate to
Speaker 1: I but like there is like a nature part of golf,
Speaker 1: just like life, is how you overcome the unexpected speed
Speaker 1: bumps in your round, and that was something that mudballs
Speaker 1: presented and it'll be hopefully. I mean, we don't want
Speaker 1: tournaments where mudballs happen, you know, everybody wants these to
Speaker 1: have great weather where you get that kind of firm
Speaker 1: playing surface and the ball bounces and the fairways are
Speaker 1: much much more you know, demanding. But when it does happen,
Speaker 1: it provides a nice little added element of chance and
Speaker 1: excitement to a telecast when when you know, the softness
Speaker 1: of a golf course makes it a little bit less unpredictable.
Speaker 2: Another thing I think you're hitting on. There's a clear
Speaker 2: difference in how players play in major championships than in
Speaker 2: regular tour golf, Like that is born out statistically, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of conversation about why does that exist,
Speaker 2: Like what what is the difference? Why do some players
Speaker 2: play awesome golf on the PGA Tour on live but
Speaker 2: then they can't their game doesn't translate to major championships.
Speaker 2: I think a part of it is comfort and just
Speaker 2: how routine oriented. All of these golfers are showing up
Speaker 2: to the same courses, like you've mentioned, showing up to
Speaker 2: the same hotels, their bodies being on the same clock
Speaker 2: every single week, and major championships just provide a level
Speaker 2: of discomfort between. Yes, obviously the pressure, but also other
Speaker 2: variables like mudballs that you wouldn't be playing in regular
Speaker 2: tour golf, harder setups, all of those things. I think
Speaker 2: it's being thrown out of the comfort of your routine.
Speaker 2: And that's a big lesson for me. Not necessarily specific
Speaker 2: to one of these majors, not one of a big
Speaker 2: two takeaway from one of these majors, but I think
Speaker 2: that's been more clear after watching all four of these
Speaker 2: this year and seeing some of those golfers, the usual
Speaker 2: suspects who show up week in and week out and
Speaker 2: tour golf and their game doesn't translate to a major.
Speaker 1: It is a piece of major where you hear these
Speaker 1: guys talk about majors and so many of them are
Speaker 1: trying to make them feel like just another week, and
Speaker 1: you see a lot of puzzling why doesn't this guy
Speaker 1: play well in majors? And it's different, but also the
Speaker 1: heightened expectations and weight of them, there's only four of them.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the end of the year,
Speaker 1: like we aren't going to talk about who won the
Speaker 1: Cognizant or who won the Byron Nelson, you know, but
Speaker 1: we are going to tell maybe we will talk about
Speaker 1: who won the Byron Nelson because of the dominance of
Speaker 1: on a course that's very hard to separate. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the year, what is going to be
Speaker 1: talked about are the are the majors, the Ryder Cup,
Speaker 1: maybe the player sneaks in, you know, even riv like
Speaker 1: this great event on the PGA Tour does not really
Speaker 1: have relevance after you know, at the end of the year,
Speaker 1: it's kind of, oh who won it? Riv like that,
Speaker 1: that's it's not talked about it, you know, nothing on
Speaker 1: tour really has talked about. And that's like maybe one
Speaker 1: of the tour's biggest problems is nothing at the end
Speaker 1: of the year feels like it is like a a
Speaker 1: seminal moment on on tour, you know, or on in
Speaker 1: the world of men's pro golf.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of that's routine.
Speaker 1: Is you ready for mine? Here go I have here,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got Ben Griffin. Wow, Okay, this was
Speaker 1: this was just like the the Ben Griffin season. This
Speaker 1: is the part of the Ben Griffin season. Him and
Speaker 1: Andrew Novak when when the Zurich a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: before this, he finishes t eight at the PGA. It
Speaker 1: was a super impressive performance from him. And then he
Speaker 1: goes and he wins the next week at Charles Schwab.
Speaker 1: He finished his second at Memorial. Should have probably won
Speaker 1: that golf tournament had it, could have put it away
Speaker 1: on Saturday, but you know, kind of got like a
Speaker 1: five or six shot lead and then and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Scotty comes up, you know, speaking of
Speaker 1: another Scotty kind of performance the way kind of put
Speaker 1: put that tournament to bad. But like it had a
Speaker 1: good duel with Scotty, genuinely good duel with Scotty. That
Speaker 1: was a good tournament. But and then finish his tenth
Speaker 1: at the at the US Open, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think, like we these are the types of runs
Speaker 1: for a young player that build confidence and and create
Speaker 1: you know, a I'm not saying a star, but how
Speaker 1: somebody becomes a household name. It's not one performance. It
Speaker 1: is stacking performances over a concentrated time period and him
Speaker 1: doing that, this might be the best he ever plays
Speaker 1: in his life, and that's that's fine. But he was
Speaker 1: a genuine, like big time story and one of the
Speaker 1: five best players in the world for a six to
Speaker 1: eight week period in golf, and I think like the
Speaker 1: PGA was where this this run really started to take hold.
Speaker 2: You're right. I mean when we got to Memorial and
Speaker 2: he was leading, you were making the joke and many
Speaker 2: others like, is Ben Griffin the best player in the world,
Speaker 2: And he kind of was not. He wasn't better than Scotti,
Speaker 2: but he kind of was like playing at a level
Speaker 2: over a short period of time, not sustained, but a
Speaker 2: short period of time that matched up with just about anybody.
Speaker 2: So I do think this is the year that Ben
Speaker 2: Griffin became a legitimate PGA Tour player, right, he became
Speaker 2: I'm not going to use the word star, but when
Speaker 2: we look at the Ryder Cup this year, he's one
Speaker 2: of the Americans you have the most confidence in, which
Speaker 2: is both at testament to his game and some of
Speaker 2: the weakness of the back end of Team USA. But
Speaker 2: Ben Griffin is not doing this in a fluky way.
Speaker 2: He's picked up a lot of speed. He's an excellent
Speaker 2: driver of the golf ball now. He gains shots with
Speaker 2: his irons basically every week. So the ball striking is stay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a story of a steady assent and a
Speaker 2: player who's twenty nine kind of peaking at the right time,
Speaker 2: and we could see a really good two to three
Speaker 2: year run. Maybe I'd be surprised if it lasts much
Speaker 2: longer than that, but.
Speaker 1: I think it's important. You know, the Ben Griffin ilk,
Speaker 1: the Ben Griffin run here feels very like Max homa
Speaker 1: E in terms of the age range. Sure, like how
Speaker 1: they got there like a slow burn. And and this
Speaker 1: is the thing about pro golfers and men's pro golf
Speaker 1: in particular, is there are these different buckets of players.
Speaker 1: You have your generational guys that are that are going
Speaker 1: to burn hot and for a long time. And that's
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy right now, Scott do you think I mean Scotty.
Speaker 1: We'll see what Scotty's in year five, right, Rory's in
Speaker 1: year He's approaching twenty years being like the top fifteen
Speaker 1: player in the world. It's wild, you know, and like
Speaker 1: golf thrives when you have the twenty year guys because
Speaker 1: we're where superstars are built in this sport is over
Speaker 1: because it's you know, what we're seeing from a dominant
Speaker 1: standpoint from Scotty is is building his star very rapidly.
Speaker 1: But what what where superstars are built is stacking three
Speaker 1: to four win seasons like to two to five win
Speaker 1: seasons over ten plus years, you know. And I think like,
Speaker 1: so you have those like twenty twenty year guys, you
Speaker 1: have like your ten year guys, five year guys, two
Speaker 1: to three year guys where they're top fifteen players, and
Speaker 1: they're different levels of players in that sphere. But being
Speaker 1: a top ten player for two to three years, it's
Speaker 1: like you are like a you know, top twenty player
Speaker 1: for two to three years. You are absolutely like a
Speaker 1: bona fide like great player. And there aren't many of those.
Speaker 1: And a great question is, like cam Ben Griffin be
Speaker 1: one of those guys.
Speaker 2: And I think the Ryder coup will be a strong
Speaker 2: whitmus test.
Speaker 1: He's assuming he make a team.
Speaker 2: Assuming he makes that team, he's in good position to
Speaker 2: make it as of now.
Speaker 1: It'll be I that's you know, undertone of the whole
Speaker 1: year and all these majors. Is the Ryder Cup. All right,
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Speaker 1: Let's move on to the US Open.
Speaker 2: Big takeaway for me was course setup and how far
Speaker 2: we've come to where players weren't even complaining that much
Speaker 2: about the setup despite it being a pretty gimmicky setup,
Speaker 2: and y I think that I'm always going to remember
Speaker 2: what that setup looked like, the length of the rough,
Speaker 2: how much better it was to be in bunkers than
Speaker 2: to be in the rough, and players not even really
Speaker 2: complaining about it, kind of accepting it as part of
Speaker 2: the Oakmont test. There was frustration, but I feel like
Speaker 2: we've come a long way from five to six years
Speaker 2: ago when players were very quick to skewer the USGA
Speaker 2: for any setup that they didn't love. There were a
Speaker 2: few complaints this year, but it was a ridiculous setup,
Speaker 2: and I think a point in time where hopefully most
Speaker 2: people can realize how far equipment has come that to
Speaker 2: protect a golf course, to protect the concept of par,
Speaker 2: you have to do something as ridiculous as the setup
Speaker 2: was at Oakmont this year. And if that golf course
Speaker 2: had stayed firm and fast for all four days, which
Speaker 2: it did not rained, it would have been completely out
Speaker 2: of control on the weekend and it would have been
Speaker 2: fun for people who like carnage, but it would not
Speaker 2: have been a particularly attractive golf tournament to watch. It
Speaker 2: still wasn't with the rain, but I really hope we
Speaker 2: can appreciate the lengths that golf course has to go
Speaker 2: to these days to even try and protect the concept
Speaker 2: of par, and that was on full display at Oakmont.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I and I ye know, I think like protecting
Speaker 1: par when you I think the other takeaway I had
Speaker 1: about setup that week was when when you when you
Speaker 1: try and protect par and that's your your core kind
Speaker 1: of goal, you then kind of restrict the ability for
Speaker 1: great players to play great agree And I think that's
Speaker 1: that's where I had a issue with the Oakmont setup
Speaker 1: was I didn't feel like if somebody played a great
Speaker 1: round that they could actually score, like have a great score,
Speaker 1: because it was impossible to keep balls on certain fairways.
Speaker 1: You know, you saw this with like the with the
Speaker 1: back nine, and I'm all for hard holes, I'm all
Speaker 1: for challenging the best players in the world. But you
Speaker 1: saw the back nine. You could see guys get going
Speaker 1: with ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and then you get to
Speaker 1: fourteen and you could get another one there, and then
Speaker 1: you get to fifteen and it's, oh, you just can't
Speaker 1: hit this fairway. And it's five hundred five hundred yard
Speaker 1: part four and the fairway's unhittable. So you're either in
Speaker 1: this like crazy thick rough just off the fairway on
Speaker 1: the right and you're making a bogey probably unless you
Speaker 1: unless you get up and down super good lie, or
Speaker 1: you hit it left in the bunker and you're gonna
Speaker 1: make a boge there. And it was just like a
Speaker 1: speed bump. It was just effectively like a restrictor plate
Speaker 1: versus you know what five hundred plus yard par fours
Speaker 1: are great at doing. Generally, if the fairway's hit, a
Speaker 1: ble is sussing out who's playing really well, because the
Speaker 1: player that's playing really well can hit the drive in
Speaker 1: the fairway and then they can separate themselves with a
Speaker 1: long iron from the fairway, you know, to a challenging green.
Speaker 1: Maybe they make a birdie there and and this is
Speaker 1: a hole that routine leaves bogie. But the way that
Speaker 1: hole was set up was I think if I remember
Speaker 1: correctly offhand, it was like the fairways getting being hit
Speaker 1: by like twenty five percent of the field.
Speaker 2: It was low.
Speaker 1: It was low, and it's like, okay, this is silly.
Speaker 1: This is the idea, the idea of a test that's
Speaker 1: not passable. You know, you're you're almost getting luck key,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know I do want to be
Speaker 1: you know clear here. The way you had to hit
Speaker 1: that Pharaweh was hitting a draw into the fairaway, which
Speaker 1: can'ts left or right for a righty. Now you had
Speaker 1: to hit a draw into like a five yard pocket,
Speaker 1: which just just not I so like to me, that
Speaker 1: was the other, you know, beyond like the technology takeaway,
Speaker 1: the other the other thing that was firmed up for me.
Speaker 1: And you saw this with like the pure chaos on Sunday.
Speaker 1: I'll do this one first. The Chaos on Sunday where
Speaker 1: you have basically twenty players that could win in the
Speaker 1: last hour. That is a product. It's great for television.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe not great for television because they couldn't
Speaker 1: even keep up with how many players. I mean, Bob
Speaker 1: mca tire head, Like no shots shown of him all
Speaker 1: day Sunday, and it's like all of a sudden, he's
Speaker 1: playing eighteen. It's like, wait, this guy might win.
Speaker 2: And his bawn was like dropped from coverage. Yes, made
Speaker 2: a few bogies early, but.
Speaker 1: But this is all product of Okay, we're trying to
Speaker 1: protect par and in by doing that, what we're doing
Speaker 1: is we are jeopardizing the merits of a championship because
Speaker 1: we're not allowing great players to to separate with with skill,
Speaker 1: you know, the you know, Scotty was in the mix.
Speaker 1: He obviously had a bad week on the greens which
Speaker 1: held him back. But the idea of of of what
Speaker 1: he did at quill Hollow I don't think was really
Speaker 1: available at what he did at quill Hollow and Port
Speaker 1: Rush wasn't really available at Oakmont. The ability for like
Speaker 1: just a dominant player to take over in a moment,
Speaker 1: you know, because the the golf course just did not
Speaker 1: allow you to consistently play well.
Speaker 2: And in defense of the USGA, that's what you had,
Speaker 2: that's the way you had to set the golf course up.
Speaker 2: If you cared about protecting par, maybe you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Right, they cared about it.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: All the entire media day was about it. The entire
Speaker 1: pre tournament chat that they had was about par.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, and you just can't both care about
Speaker 2: par and put on a golf tournament that is reasonable
Speaker 2: at Oakmont, right, And this is intuitive. This is a
Speaker 2: golf course that was built one hundred and twenty years
Speaker 2: ago that has been lengthened. The greens haven't been significantly expanded,
Speaker 2: and they've been turned way up, and the rough's been
Speaker 2: grown way up. Like we're just out of scale.
Speaker 1: So you know, one of the things that frustrated me
Speaker 1: is like the rhetoric of why it was set up
Speaker 1: that way was this is what phones would have won it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1: And like what I would say back to that is
Speaker 1: this guy built one of the greatest golf courses in
Speaker 1: the world in an era where the ball went like
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty yards, so a the fairways were
Speaker 1: wider when he built it than they are now. The
Speaker 1: ball went shorter, so misses were less wide, so fairways
Speaker 1: were very findable in this era. I just believe that
Speaker 1: that Phones would understand skill and want to present something
Speaker 1: that rewarded deeply rewarded skill. And to me, like one
Speaker 1: of my big takeaways with the weather and with the presentation,
Speaker 1: this tournament was a complete.
Speaker 2: Fluke, close to a fluke. I mean, Jada Spawn's a
Speaker 2: great player, but Sunday was complete chaos.
Speaker 1: It was it was complete like we don't really know
Speaker 1: like Jadaspawn won, and I want to be respectful, he
Speaker 1: won the tournament, he had an incredible finish, but we
Speaker 1: walk away from that week having no clue who played
Speaker 1: best that week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a tough way of framing. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I would fully go we don't know who played best,
Speaker 2: but I agree like some of the shots to hit
Speaker 2: on Sunday were horrendous and normally you cannot get away
Speaker 2: with doing that at a major championship unless you're doing
Speaker 2: something magical. The rest of the tournament, he wasn't really,
Speaker 2: it was just a lot of water between the club
Speaker 2: face and the ball. Yet, things coming down to what
Speaker 2: kind of lives you got in the rough Again to
Speaker 2: your point about what Phones have wanted this, Phones wouldn't
Speaker 2: have wanted players hoping their balls ended up in the
Speaker 2: bunker versus ending up in the rough, and that was
Speaker 2: a lot of the championship.
Speaker 1: He would have gone with furrowed rakes. Honestly, the setup
Speaker 1: would have been better with furrowed.
Speaker 2: Rakes would have been pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I would love it would be amazing is if they
Speaker 1: if they could go to that furrowed And for people
Speaker 1: that don't know what the furrowed rake are, Oakmont used
Speaker 1: to use these like large time rakes, So like the
Speaker 1: large time would create these like rivets in the bunkers.
Speaker 1: So your ball would maybe sit up on one of
Speaker 1: the high points and have like a lie that you
Speaker 1: would be accustomed to today in a bunker, or it
Speaker 1: might sit down and it would act as almost like
Speaker 1: a buried lie, and it was all chance. I would
Speaker 1: be fascinated with Oakmont go with very low rough that
Speaker 1: that not low rough, but like manageable rough that that
Speaker 1: entices players to take risks when they're out of position,
Speaker 1: hitting into these crazy greens that are well protected with bunkers,
Speaker 1: that are complete chants, and that they are desperately trying
Speaker 1: to stay out of bunkers. I think this is one
Speaker 1: of the underrated parts of the Open Championship is how
Speaker 1: much players fear the pop bunkers because of the penalty
Speaker 1: that they exact, and in American golf, one of the
Speaker 1: issues with the US Open, I think has become that
Speaker 1: bunkers are so routine, they're so matter of fact, easy,
Speaker 1: predictable places to dump balls for pros. I mean, they
Speaker 1: are so good out at bunkers and at Oakmont. If
Speaker 1: you reverse that dynamic where the rough was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I might have a good chance here, but I also
Speaker 1: could get in a lot of trouble. Coupled with the
Speaker 1: bunkers being completely terrifying, would be a fascinating golf tournament.
Speaker 2: The other part you could maybe restore would be that
Speaker 2: rough aprons aren't keeping balls out of bunkers, that there
Speaker 2: would be an element. I mean, it was crazy to
Speaker 2: look at bunkers arounds, fairway bunkers where there's these massive,
Speaker 2: massive tufts of rough preventing balls playing as buffers from
Speaker 2: balls going into bunkers. I think the counter argument to
Speaker 2: your point, Andy is if you cut the rough down
Speaker 2: not too I know you're not saying cut it all
Speaker 2: the way down, but like, if it's not firm then
Speaker 2: golfers are going to be able to kind of spray
Speaker 2: it just because it's going to play so wide versus
Speaker 2: an Open Championship, which is reliably firm. But that's just
Speaker 2: a difficulty of hosting a tournament in Pittsburgh. It's going
Speaker 2: to rain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's you know, an int it is
Speaker 1: going to rain. It's historically rain there, it's historically been soft.
Speaker 1: Would the Bunkers provide some of that fear of spring?
Speaker 2: And I think that'd be a cool set up.
Speaker 1: All right, I guess what's your second thing? At the
Speaker 1: US Open, we kind of hit on it.
Speaker 2: Just the chaos of Sunday and seeing Sam Burns shot
Speaker 2: on fifteen way left, Adam Scott playing poorly. That was
Speaker 2: a crapshoot, and JJ sponds putt on eighteen really salvage
Speaker 2: what was otherwise a really bad golf tournament. I feel
Speaker 2: like people are look going to look back on this
Speaker 2: somewhat favorably because how cool that moment was. If JJ
Speaker 2: spawn doesn't make that putt, that's like one of the
Speaker 2: most forgettable majors in the last fifteen years.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I mean the putt was amazing. I try
Speaker 1: not to cheer, and I like threw my hands up.
Speaker 1: I was like, I could not cheer when that putt.
Speaker 1: And I think that's like one of my other takeaways
Speaker 1: is I think watching somebody achieve something that is, you know,
Speaker 1: a true surprise is an amazing thing. I mean it
Speaker 1: just JJ Spawn's you know, career coming into this. He
Speaker 1: had played so few major championships, you know, and he
Speaker 1: had had such poor results in major championships. You're talking
Speaker 1: about playing five five PGA championships, missing two cuts in
Speaker 1: the best finish was T thirty five, only have played
Speaker 1: had played two mass you know, T twenty three and
Speaker 1: the fiftieth he had played. This was his second US Open,
Speaker 1: and then because he won this US Open, he played
Speaker 1: his first Open championship. You know, you're talking about a
Speaker 1: very inexperienced this. This was a win that came out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Where it ends up, like whether it's a
Speaker 1: complete flute where it like lands, is like totally dependent
Speaker 1: on what what does the next five years of JJ
Speaker 1: Spahn's career look like. And I think that that's like
Speaker 1: just a Kapelli aspect of this is, you know, the
Speaker 1: setup in the way the championship was approached if if
Speaker 1: we're at Oakmont in ten years and we look back
Speaker 1: and JJ Spawns won ten more times, they're going to
Speaker 1: be really confident in the setup and what the way
Speaker 1: they approached that tournament. Now, if in ten years we
Speaker 1: look back and JJ Spawn's won one more time, is
Speaker 1: does that like lead to questions about how we presented
Speaker 1: the golf course.
Speaker 2: Which is a little results oriented in that Victor Hovlin
Speaker 2: was right in that tournament too and could have won,
Speaker 2: and we wouldn't be talking about a flukey winner at all.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a lot of names. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of names, you know. I think if Bob
Speaker 1: McIntire JJ Spawn wins, it's you know, oh, that.
Speaker 2: Is that is pretty disrespectful to Bob McIntyre. Those are
Speaker 2: not and those golfers are not in the same class.
Speaker 2: Jjspawn's great, He's not on Bob McIntyre's.
Speaker 1: Level, all right. The Open last fature of the year.
Speaker 2: Biggest takeaway for me. Scotty Scheffler is so much better
Speaker 2: than everybody else right now, and that was clear before
Speaker 2: the Open Championship. But nobody's close to Scotty. If he
Speaker 2: has his B plus game, there's no one that can
Speaker 2: even really compete with his B plus game. I think
Speaker 2: can Bryson can, But we don't know how consistently they're
Speaker 2: necessarily going to show up and put in an A
Speaker 2: level performance at a major. If Scotty's got his A
Speaker 2: minus A game, nobody can keep up with him. And
Speaker 2: he was even a little shaky from he hit some
Speaker 2: uncharacteristically poor shots during this Open Championship, still blew the
Speaker 2: field out, and some of that's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a flukey putting week. He was second in putting for
Speaker 2: the week, which you can't always expect with Scotty. But
Speaker 2: if he has this potter figured out even a little bit,
Speaker 2: nobody can keep up with his A game.
Speaker 1: I would I would say that he he had his
Speaker 1: his A plus game or A game this week. And
Speaker 1: I think, like I think, what's interesting or what I
Speaker 1: think with Scotty the his floor is so high. I
Speaker 1: think we see his B game more than we see
Speaker 1: any other player's B game. And what's what really is
Speaker 1: the variable because of the consistency from Tea to Green,
Speaker 1: is the putter and the putter if he's at if
Speaker 1: he's at zero in terms of putting, if he's field
Speaker 1: average at putting. It's his B game. At Oakmont we
Speaker 1: saw probably a C plus game because the putter was cold,
Speaker 1: and and at at Port Rush his putter was hot.
Speaker 1: I mean I said this to somebody, but the reality
Speaker 1: of him at at Port Rush was he could have
Speaker 1: had his maybe the worst week we've seen him hit
Speaker 1: the ball te to green and he probably would have
Speaker 1: won because of how well he putt it.
Speaker 2: He one by four.
Speaker 1: He was he was dominant on the on the greens,
Speaker 1: which is just you know, I don't think you're obviously
Speaker 1: putting to the most variable skill you know, one week
Speaker 1: to the next. Is It's why you don't see the
Speaker 1: top putter at the top, you know, the top the
Speaker 1: ball striking steady, it's consistent, you can rely on it
Speaker 1: week in week out, which is why he's he's there
Speaker 1: plus like the short game. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: from from my standpoint with Scotty, the dominance really showed
Speaker 1: in his in his approach to the final round. He
Speaker 1: went out and was going to step on people's throats.
Speaker 1: Also tactically I thought it was it was brilliant. Where
Speaker 1: the one place he was getting in trouble that week
Speaker 1: was was when the wind was off his left with
Speaker 1: the driver. He's hitting three woods on those holes to
Speaker 1: just have a club that he can hold up against
Speaker 1: that wind, and and then you know, just not giving
Speaker 1: away shots. The saves on on on six or on
Speaker 1: seven or six and seven were.
Speaker 2: Remarkable, crazy and again with I felt like he was
Speaker 2: the potter didn't. It wasn't fluky. It's not like putts
Speaker 2: were banging the back of the cup and going in.
Speaker 2: Scotty looked really comfortable on those greens, and I do
Speaker 2: think it was a glimpse of essentially not I don't
Speaker 2: want to say invoke prime Tiger, but I think it
Speaker 2: was a look at like this is about as good
Speaker 2: as golf gets in twenty twenty five. I don't think
Speaker 2: you can play on I don't think anybody else can
Speaker 2: play on that level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he In the next couple of years, they are
Speaker 1: going to be It's it's must see TV. I think
Speaker 1: Scotty lacks a little bit of the jois, the suaveness,
Speaker 1: the presence that the gravitational pull of a lot of superstars,
Speaker 1: But the on play dominance or the en course dominance
Speaker 1: can make up for a lot of that over the
Speaker 1: next couple of years. If he stacks a few of these.
Speaker 1: I think gang to two multiple, well, multiple major season
Speaker 1: was a big hurdle. All the greats have had multiple
Speaker 1: major seasons and getting that second major, it's amazing. What
Speaker 1: you know, there's so few majors. What multi win seasons
Speaker 1: do to your legacy, because it's the difference between three
Speaker 1: and four is is huge. And now he's set up
Speaker 1: for the you know, potential career Grand Slam at Shinnakok.
Speaker 1: It's a golf course that if you made a golf
Speaker 1: course in the lab for Scotti Scheffler at Shinnecock Hills, Like.
Speaker 2: This was the year Scotty went from this guy's really good.
Speaker 2: Comparisons to Tiger seem reasonable. But who knows too this
Speaker 2: is going to be a top ten player of all time.
Speaker 2: And I do feel confident that it is much more
Speaker 2: likely than not Scotty Scheffler will be a top ten
Speaker 2: player of all time.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, like a footnote on the year is
Speaker 1: is what what does this year look like? If he
Speaker 1: doesn't have the hand injury.
Speaker 2: That probably wins another one.
Speaker 1: You think he wins the Masters.
Speaker 2: Oh, I just meant another tournament. I don't know about
Speaker 2: the Masters.
Speaker 1: It might win one or two more tournaments, and he
Speaker 1: got off to a slow start and and was just
Speaker 1: not what we were accustomed to seeing from Scotty on
Speaker 1: a stretch of tournaments that he usually dominates. You know,
Speaker 1: the Scottsdale you know that that swing there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got he's got multiple players championships in an
Speaker 2: Olympics and like multiple memorials. It's it's crazy what his
Speaker 2: resume looks.
Speaker 1: Like now, well that you know, there's one. You could
Speaker 1: also say this this era dominance, like you know, doctor,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit Devil's advocate. This has been
Speaker 1: very very pro Scotty podcast here, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: but if you're you know, and part of this is,
Speaker 1: you know, like I get Sean Martin, friend of the pod,
Speaker 1: was like you you got to stop mentioning the open
Speaker 1: like at this point, like you you're looking for reasons
Speaker 1: like why something might not happen because it feels like
Speaker 1: you're going there, like you know, part of the interest
Speaker 1: is is is what why it might not happen? You know,
Speaker 1: But Scotty's run has happened when you know, they went
Speaker 1: to these smaller field signature events in response to Live
Speaker 1: so the fields are small that he's beating. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying, but what this does is it reduces the
Speaker 1: number of players that could just have like an out
Speaker 1: of body experience for a week. You know, they're basically
Speaker 1: is half the size. And then you took substantial amount
Speaker 1: of stars from the tour that could, you know, when
Speaker 1: they're when they have their A game, be somebody that
Speaker 1: stands in and takes down Scotty. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: I don't listen, I don't think this is this is
Speaker 1: a factor that would prohibit Scotty from being an all timer, right,
Speaker 1: But I do think this is a factor that would say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe he wouldn't have as many wins here.
Speaker 2: I actually kind of disagree. My counter would be that's true.
Speaker 2: But also five years ago we didn't put all the
Speaker 2: best players in the world in signature events either, and
Speaker 2: Scotty's dominating those and when he goes to major championships,
Speaker 2: he's winning by four or five shots as well. You
Speaker 2: can throw go ahead, throw Bryson rom Nieman, throw some
Speaker 2: of those guys in signature event fields. Maybe they pick
Speaker 2: off one or two over the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: but Scotty's still an Olympian. I think he'd still have
Speaker 2: the same number of players, championships and memorials, Like I
Speaker 2: think his resume would look just about the same. So
Speaker 2: it's a good point. It's fair. Maybe Bryson he has
Speaker 2: that upside that he could pick off a win that
Speaker 2: Scotty grabbed, but I don't think his resume looks a
Speaker 2: whole lot different without these lift guys.
Speaker 1: My big question may be Rom.
Speaker 2: Everyone, but he doesn't want to He doesn't even want
Speaker 2: to live.
Speaker 1: I think he's I think there's the deterioration is the
Speaker 1: other piece of this with what's happened to so many
Speaker 1: of the big names that have gone over that's gone
Speaker 1: over there, and how they their games just really deteriorated.
Speaker 2: And the question I guess on Ram, which maybe we
Speaker 2: don't have time to get into, but is that a
Speaker 2: function of going to live or was he not one
Speaker 2: of these like what is the state of John Ram?
Speaker 2: He had a disappointing year this year in majors it
Speaker 2: was fine, he got in the mix of the PGA,
Speaker 2: but is John rom going to be somebody that two
Speaker 2: years from now has that staying power and he's racking
Speaker 2: up top fives in major championships right to what extent
Speaker 2: do you attribute the deterioration and performance to going to
Speaker 2: live versus John Rahm's overall quality as a golfer.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's get into we I had
Speaker 1: you pull up disappointing players. I have some disappointing players
Speaker 1: real quick. By second thing about the Open? Was Chris
Speaker 1: Godder up? Just the run he was on? What was
Speaker 1: your second thing? It's still fresh in everybody's mind.
Speaker 2: Just it's really hard to coordinate the global golf calendar,
Speaker 2: but getting big golf tournaments in somebody's home country is
Speaker 2: extremely important, and the scenes of Rory McElroy I will
Speaker 2: never ever forget. You know, maybe when Hindeki Matsuyama is
Speaker 2: a great player, like you, make an effort to get
Speaker 2: a strong field in Japan like we Maybe when John
Speaker 2: Rahm is a great player, you have to make some
Speaker 2: kind of effort to elevate the Spanish Open. But again,
Speaker 2: that requires a lot of coordination from different tours, from
Speaker 2: major from governing bodies. But I think there should be
Speaker 2: a concerted effort to recreate those kinds of scenes because
Speaker 2: it was something special and I think the legends of
Speaker 2: the game deserve to be celebrated that way.
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's an interesting point. And if
Speaker 1: you if you think about the new PGA Tour CEO
Speaker 1: Brian rollapp his experience with the NFL and making a
Speaker 1: global sport. You know, you could look at if if Ludwig,
Speaker 1: you know, ascends to an elite level, how do we
Speaker 1: get one event in Sweden? Because what that's going to
Speaker 1: do is it's going to attract a fan base of
Speaker 1: of PGA Tour viewers that you might not have gotten,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's it's I think like the level
Speaker 1: of player that that presents is so rare that you
Speaker 1: could make it an exception. I think that's that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. What let's do disappointing players, then we'll do impressive.
Speaker 1: We had. The other category I had was impressive non winners.
Speaker 1: Who is your most disappointing major championship? Season four?
Speaker 2: I gotta go with Brooks Kopka. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: we gotta somebody who's won a bunch of major championships,
Speaker 2: who for the first time in his career, missed cut
Speaker 2: in three or four majors, did finish T. Twelve at
Speaker 2: the US Open. It was kind of a factor early,
Speaker 2: but then that wasn't kind of bombed out, and not
Speaker 2: all missed cuts are equal. Brooks missed these cuts by
Speaker 2: a lot. He missed by six shots at the Open,
Speaker 2: eight shots at the PGA finished. I believe Bogie quad
Speaker 2: to miss the cut at the Masters. That's so cut
Speaker 2: to miss too, It's not yeah, not, it's pretty hard
Speaker 2: to miss. So at this point, Brooks is pretty far
Speaker 2: removed from any impressive performances in major championships. It's just
Speaker 2: tough to look at his body of work, some of
Speaker 2: the injuries he's been through. I don't know what his
Speaker 2: competitive career looks like. I never want to doubt Brooks Kopka,
Speaker 2: but there's a chance we're kind of done.
Speaker 1: Well. I believe the rumors are that his contracts up
Speaker 1: with Live. What does the next year look like for Brooks?
Speaker 2: It's a great question.
Speaker 1: He's obviously the twenty twenty three peach. He's exempt in
Speaker 1: majors for the foreseeable future. I would imagine if he
Speaker 1: does not, if he doesn't play on Live, there will
Speaker 1: be a return to the PGA Tour. I'm I'm very
Speaker 1: curious what that will look like. And you know how
Speaker 1: they could he be the player that they build the
Speaker 1: pathway back for in terms of this is what you
Speaker 1: you do Brooks. He's a fascinating character in the in
Speaker 1: the history of golf, just because of the dominance in
Speaker 1: majors and then the the mediocrity given his his level
Speaker 1: of talent and skill set in in regular events. We've
Speaker 1: really never seen anything like it. And I still think
Speaker 1: I still think he can pick off another one, but
Speaker 1: I think the the days of him being a consistent
Speaker 1: force or probably probably over, and I think like a
Speaker 1: lot of it goes to, you know, injuries and everything.
Speaker 1: Like when you think back to twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen time period, he was the top of the
Speaker 1: top in terms of driving a golf ball, and I
Speaker 1: don't think he's there anymore. And this is the difference
Speaker 1: between being a top ten driver of the golf ball
Speaker 1: and a top forty driver of the golf ball. If
Speaker 1: you slip down to thirty five, that's a huge difference.
Speaker 1: I think people don't value what being like an elite
Speaker 1: skill and how hard it is to keep yourself at
Speaker 1: that elite level, in particular with the driver, and.
Speaker 2: How strong of a signal good driving is right, you
Speaker 2: go look at Chris goddrupstats and when he started to
Speaker 2: win and what his driving performance looked like coming into
Speaker 2: those wins. Like that's generally going to tell you the
Speaker 2: state of a player swing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with that. I all right, Uh
Speaker 1: mine my most disappointings Calin Morikawa. Listen, like the year
Speaker 1: started and it was is more car Kawa A part
Speaker 1: of this discussion with Rory Scottie Bryson at the top
Speaker 1: of the game is in Xander obviously, and I think
Speaker 1: Xander Xander would be it just gets a pass because
Speaker 1: of the injury. He's just getting a pass from me.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not gonna grade this, but it this
Speaker 1: year it wasn't great though, Like never thought he was
Speaker 1: gonna win a tournament. Calin Markala. You just expected way
Speaker 1: more from him, and uh, you know he has one
Speaker 1: in a couple of years. You look at his majors
Speaker 1: and he won the PGA with like you talk about
Speaker 1: a tournament that it was completely up for grabs on
Speaker 1: Sunday and he hit You know, I was stuck at
Speaker 1: a golf architect and it got the discussion of the
Speaker 1: sixteenth or seventeenth at at Harding Park was its driving
Speaker 1: or seventeen the reachable, the reachable part four.
Speaker 2: I believe that's sixteen.
Speaker 1: I think it was sixty. Yeah, it came up and
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, Morcow hit this iconic shot, you know,
Speaker 1: the part four created it. And the architect said, I
Speaker 1: think that just was like a player. He was the
Speaker 1: one player that that shot fit perfectly. Everybody was in
Speaker 1: between driver three would and Morikawa. It was a perfect
Speaker 1: stock driver cut like perfect golf golf hole for him,
Speaker 1: and he hit it to like a couple of feet
Speaker 1: And you think about that, It's like it gives him
Speaker 1: two majors, Like how would we think about Kla Moricow
Speaker 1: if he had one major? How would we you know?
Speaker 1: And all this happened in a period of time when
Speaker 1: there really weren't many fans, and you think about it.
Speaker 1: It's just listen, I'm like the biggest column. More I was,
Speaker 1: you know, out of no out of college, out of college.
Speaker 1: I was. I thought, Mark, how you know, Matt wolf
Speaker 1: Holind and morcowa. I was always saying, more Cow is
Speaker 1: the best of the three of them. You know, we
Speaker 1: look back now, I think it's more Cow has had
Speaker 1: the best career by far Victor Holin, you know where
Speaker 1: they go the next five years and Wolf we I
Speaker 1: think we know where he's at. But you know that
Speaker 1: that markow Holin debate will be interesting the next five years.
Speaker 1: But for him, like you know, no wins in a
Speaker 1: couple of years, he was on like a crazy trajectory.
Speaker 2: His Open championship record is kind of ridiculous now win,
Speaker 2: miss cut, missed cut, T sixteen, missed cut, it's kind
Speaker 2: of crazy.
Speaker 1: I uh yeah, I I think he's a really good player,
Speaker 1: but he's not a superstar, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: And I will say that's one of my biggest scenes
Speaker 2: I will always remember from this year is watching him
Speaker 2: struggle on the range at Royal Port Rush after his
Speaker 2: first round. It is one of the biggest struggle sessions
Speaker 2: I've ever seen out of a professional golfer. And Colin
Speaker 2: looks like he's not in a good spot right now.
Speaker 2: So I'm with you. I think I would take Colins
Speaker 2: next five years over Collins, but we'll.
Speaker 1: See what who else do you have on your disappointing.
Speaker 2: Less similar within a similar vein actually to Colin Justin
Speaker 2: Thomas finished T thirty six, missed cut, miss cut t
Speaker 2: thirty four. He has one top thirty finish in a
Speaker 2: major championship in his last fourteen major starts, one top
Speaker 2: thirty finish. And I think similarly to what you're saying
Speaker 2: with Colin about the two majors, and how would we
Speaker 2: think about him differently if he didn't grab Harding Park,
Speaker 2: How would we think about Thomas differently if he didn't
Speaker 2: win that at Southern Hills. That was kind of a
Speaker 2: fluky golf tournament. He was way out of the tournament,
Speaker 2: comes roaring back like makes a bunch of birdies, Meadow
Speaker 2: has to melt down for Justin to win. And other
Speaker 2: than that, since then, it's been really stinky in major championships.
Speaker 2: So we've been talking about Justin Thomas return to form
Speaker 2: this year. Nothing to show for it in majors. He
Speaker 2: won at the RBC Heritage, which I don't know how
Speaker 2: much stock you put in that. I don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of confidence in Justin. At beth Page on a
Speaker 2: golf course, you got to keep driver in play. So
Speaker 2: sort of a successful year, I guess there's certain lens
Speaker 2: you could look at it being a successful year. But
Speaker 2: I think in terms of the things you and I
Speaker 2: would value most major championship performance very far from a
Speaker 2: successful year.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You look at JT's best performances too, and they
Speaker 1: aren't at golf courses where you would say it's the
Speaker 1: most demand. T de Green set up. He has the
Speaker 1: second place finish at the Amex, which is one of
Speaker 1: the least demanding setups. T six at Phoenix. He always
Speaker 1: plays well at Phoenix. That's a this golf course that's
Speaker 1: like a notorious horses for courses. T ten at riv
Speaker 1: or T nine at riv good good finish there to
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Tory, it was Tory good point. I forgot
Speaker 1: about that. And then and then you had Valspar second
Speaker 1: place finish at Valspar fairly fairly demand, but like it's
Speaker 1: like middle of the road. But if you look at where,
Speaker 1: like you know, golf courses that really demand a lot
Speaker 1: from you T to Green, You've got you know, Pebble
Speaker 1: Beach pro Am T forty eight and that's not, you know,
Speaker 1: super demanding, but that is a major championship golf course
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach. Obviously, you you need to be in the
Speaker 1: right positions the century where you have a lot of
Speaker 1: uneven lies and hitting to targets that are up and down.
Speaker 1: He finishes T twenty six at the Players, it's a
Speaker 1: T thirty three, Arnold Palmer T thirty six, the Masters,
Speaker 1: T thirty six. We go to you know, Philly Cricket
Speaker 1: Club was a little bit of a spray it fest
Speaker 1: and he finishes second there, like where it was okay
Speaker 1: to miss Fairways Memorial, a golf course in his peak,
Speaker 1: like when he was playing his best golf was great
Speaker 1: for him. This year is the T thirty one. You know,
Speaker 1: it's to me feels like when we get the more
Speaker 1: demanding setups, that's where he's really struggling. And it's a
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the driver.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say he can't. He can't really
Speaker 2: hit driver. I think that's the common denominator and all
Speaker 2: those right, you can hit a lot of less than driver.
Speaker 2: At the RBC Heritage where he won, somebody's p die
Speaker 2: golf courses, just in general, the way his designs have
Speaker 2: stood up, MX, Sawgrass, RBC Heritage, Hilton Head can kind
Speaker 2: of get away with hitting some irons off teas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, an effort to move a little bit
Speaker 1: quicker here. I've got Joaquin Neeman on my list. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you had him.
Speaker 2: I didn't only because I don't. I don't expect a
Speaker 2: ton from him in majors at this point. But it's
Speaker 2: a good pick.
Speaker 1: He's he won five times on live. He's been dominant.
Speaker 1: But you know, and obviously I think some of this
Speaker 1: is just expectations, but some of it's a game, and
Speaker 1: it's an indictment on live. You know, he's won five
Speaker 1: times on this tour. He's earned more money playing on
Speaker 1: live than Sky Scheffler's earned, you know, on the PGA.
Speaker 1: On the PGA Tour, you know, he's won five times.
Speaker 1: I don't want to like the wind is a win,
Speaker 1: you know, but you look at some of the people
Speaker 1: he's being, you know, one of the in Virginia, he
Speaker 1: beats uh Lahiri and McDowell, Graham McDowell was doing broadcasting
Speaker 1: at the Open last week. He beat Bubba Watson, you know,
Speaker 1: his runner up, and uh, you know, obviously he had
Speaker 1: some where. You know, he beat Brooks at in Singapore,
Speaker 1: and he beat Bryson in Mexico City. But then you
Speaker 1: go to the majors and it's just like, okay, so
Speaker 1: this guy's just dominating, dominating live and it's T twenty
Speaker 1: ninety eight miscut, miss cut, and I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: I it's just it's just such a juxtaposition in terms
Speaker 1: of what he's doing on the live tour and how
Speaker 1: and the performances in majors. And my last one was
Speaker 1: was Patrick Cantley three miss cuts the Sheerherd Majors. You know,
Speaker 1: he he was a top ten player for a very
Speaker 1: long time. And I just wonder if we're if we're
Speaker 1: in the era now of Patrick Cantley being the top thirty,
Speaker 1: top forty guy and that's just where we're at.
Speaker 2: That would be hard to believe. I just view him
Speaker 2: as two different golfers, Like he's a PGA Tour. He's
Speaker 2: a top eight player on the PGA Tour, and when
Speaker 2: we get to majors, he's kind of a pumpkin.
Speaker 1: But he has been a top eight player this year
Speaker 1: on tour.
Speaker 2: No, I think he'll probably get back there, but yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll see.
Speaker 1: My other playoffs point playoffs is Pete Pete can't lay time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good caves to Valley.
Speaker 2: Brings out his best. Uh. Yeah. My other disappoint was
Speaker 2: Tommy Fleetwood. I think you can make a case that
Speaker 2: Tommy Fleetwood's a top five to six player in the
Speaker 2: world right now, still has absolutely nothing to show for it,
Speaker 2: and having one of the best years of his career,
Speaker 2: still hasn't won. Choked away the Travelers there his major
Speaker 2: performance is T twenty one, T forty one, MC, and
Speaker 2: T sixteen. This is Tommy Fleetwood's first year without a
Speaker 2: top five in a major since twenty twenty one. All
Speaker 2: the way through the bag, Tommy Fleetwood's good. He flushes
Speaker 2: it like this is a player who should be in
Speaker 2: the mix at a major. I see you laughing. You're
Speaker 2: probably coming back with Tommy Fleetwood's just overrated, But this
Speaker 2: should be a golfer who's a top considered a top
Speaker 2: ten player, and I think it's kind of hard to
Speaker 2: consider him that right now.
Speaker 1: I was not going to come back with that. I
Speaker 1: was going to come back with I think that Travelers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is like lasting scar tissue.
Speaker 2: I think you're right.
Speaker 1: That is, when you see somebody of his talent that
Speaker 1: hasn't gotten it done on the PGA Tour, there's a
Speaker 1: level of doubt that has to be rattling around in
Speaker 1: that brain. And what happened at Travelers the way it
Speaker 1: happened has to have accentuated that doubt, and I just
Speaker 1: think it's going to be a minute until he gets back.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's just something that's going to shake
Speaker 1: him a lot.
Speaker 2: I'm worried if he'll ever get fully back from it.
Speaker 2: To be completely honest, that was bad.
Speaker 1: It was hard. It was hard to watch.
Speaker 2: It's thirty four like we'll see. But this year there
Speaker 2: should have been a little bit more hope he plays
Speaker 2: well at the Ryder Cup, because otherwise this is a
Speaker 2: sort of lost year when he was striping it.
Speaker 1: Most impressive non winners.
Speaker 2: Do me just list him off or go through them all?
Speaker 2: I don't know how uh I sump.
Speaker 1: We both have Harris English on or less.
Speaker 2: Have Harris English only player besides Scott. He'd have two
Speaker 2: top twos in a major this year, also has a
Speaker 2: win to his name earlier in the year at Tory Pines.
Speaker 2: I think of all the Americans we mentioned Ben Griffin
Speaker 2: potentially being a good Ryder Copper, I'd put Harris English
Speaker 2: very high on my list.
Speaker 1: He should play a lot too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, how many Americans would you feel better about?
Speaker 2: I would feel way better about Harris English than Justin
Speaker 2: Thomas right now. Not even close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, listen, he's he's been he's been awesome
Speaker 1: this year. And it's not just that he's been you know,
Speaker 1: not just the T twos and in the win he's
Speaker 1: been good. He's been consistently good all year, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, I just I Harris English and yeah, obviously,
Speaker 1: like he overcame like a pretty gnarly injury and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people thought that he was going
Speaker 1: to be involved with one one Ryder Cup and never back.
Speaker 1: And he's had like he's a sneaky had a really
Speaker 1: really good career on the PGA Tour, like a sneaky,
Speaker 1: like pretty pretty stout career. I mean, he's got six wins,
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of like he's been just he's
Speaker 1: been relevant for a long time.
Speaker 2: Feels almost a little Billy Horsell like like kind of
Speaker 2: that level of relevant for ten to twelve years, some
Speaker 2: legitimately big wins and a lot of consistent ball striking.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So another I had a shout out Matt Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 2: I think his recent resurgence. This was the sixth player
Speaker 2: in the world a couple of years ago major Champion
Speaker 2: won the US Opening.
Speaker 1: I think he predicted he got to he would get
Speaker 1: to number one. This feels like redemption for you coming.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I said number one, definitely said
Speaker 2: top five. I might have said number one. Matt Fitzpatrick
Speaker 2: was on an awesome trajectory and I kind of lost
Speaker 2: some faith over the last couple of years when the
Speaker 2: ball striking really plummeted. He's had some injuries, but to
Speaker 2: see him with two top tens in a major this year,
Speaker 2: legitimate chance of winning the Open Championship, a player who's
Speaker 2: been down in the dumps a little bit the last
Speaker 2: couple of years. Now I think, I mean he's the
Speaker 2: favorite this week at the Window. Not that that's the
Speaker 2: biggest tournament in the world, but met Fitzpatrick is close
Speaker 2: to being fully back now up to ranked fortieth in
Speaker 2: the world. Pretty exciting next twelve months for him if
Speaker 2: you can continue on this trajectory.
Speaker 1: I mean, he plummeted head bad. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes golf great is like you see,
Speaker 1: guys that it golf is fleeting, having it, having the formula,
Speaker 1: having the belief and having the right feel and your
Speaker 1: golf swing is a fleeting aspect. And it's I always
Speaker 1: think that that players get get more compelling when they
Speaker 1: go through something, and Matt Fitzpatrick to me, is a
Speaker 1: more interesting golfer for the you know, human interest piece
Speaker 1: because we saw him go from you know, top of
Speaker 1: top of his career in short in fairly short order
Speaker 1: to the to near the bottom of his career with
Speaker 1: like where he got to you know, he was he
Speaker 1: was baddy, I mean he went. It's hard to go
Speaker 1: from six in the world to eighty fifth in the
Speaker 1: world like he was. And you know, just now coming back,
Speaker 1: I just I love when players have kind of these
Speaker 1: these ups and downs. I think that you know, Justin
Speaker 1: Thomas has gotten way more compelling and I think like
Speaker 1: when he talks there's a lot more substance to it
Speaker 1: now that he's he's gone through some struggles in his
Speaker 1: career and just come back, Like, I think he's just
Speaker 1: more you know that It's it's great to see when
Speaker 1: these guys come back from from struggles.
Speaker 2: And all due respect to Matt Fitzpatrick, He's not Dustin Johnson.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have the physical talent that you know, he
Speaker 2: can just step back up out there. And like when
Speaker 2: you see Matt Fitzpatrick in person, it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: shocking that that's a top ten player in the world
Speaker 2: or top ten caliber player in the world. So I
Speaker 2: just think that's probably with a player like that a
Speaker 2: little bit more likely that when their game dips, they
Speaker 2: have a harder time recovering and they don't have the
Speaker 2: physical talent that some of these top guys in the
Speaker 2: world have. So to see him do it, that's that's
Speaker 2: just sheer hard work.
Speaker 1: I've got Aryl Hatton all right. I think, like a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, we wondered, is TERRYL. Hatton just
Speaker 1: like a PGA Tour player who or DP World Tour
Speaker 1: player who plays well. This year, I thought he had
Speaker 1: two pretty good chances to win majors. Obviously he was
Speaker 1: very in the mix of the US Open, could have
Speaker 1: won that. And then I think at the Open Championship
Speaker 1: through thirty six holes, he was one of the guys
Speaker 1: that you circled as like, this guy could win this tournament.
Speaker 1: A couple of things didn't go, you know, he didn't
Speaker 1: have the weekend he was looking at. But I think,
Speaker 1: like you know, Terrell Hatten's turned himself into from a
Speaker 1: guy that turned into pumpkin at major championships to a
Speaker 1: guy that is on your your kind of first page
Speaker 1: of favorites at every type of major venue. And he's
Speaker 1: done this. This is one of the few players that
Speaker 1: I think since going to Live has gotten better.
Speaker 2: He was in the mix of pinehers last year too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I just think he's been He's turned himself
Speaker 1: into a really nice major championship player and it was
Speaker 1: in you know, this is one of the hard things
Speaker 1: with the majors is the sample size. It's so small,
Speaker 1: but early in his career it just wasn't happening, and
Speaker 1: that can be some of it sometimes, Like I think,
Speaker 1: like we make so much of some of this stuff,
Speaker 1: but like sometimes you know, having everything clicking for an
Speaker 1: individual week is really hard to do with golf. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to get everything work and the right like
Speaker 1: the way you need it to work to contend deep
Speaker 1: into these majors for certain weeks. But Terrell hadden't I
Speaker 1: think found something in the majors. And then my last
Speaker 1: one is Ben Griffin, who we talked about earlier to
Speaker 1: top tens kind of out of nowhere, and I think,
Speaker 1: like from my standpoint, like what makes me most high
Speaker 1: on Ben Griffin is the fact that he has played
Speaker 1: well at the most some of the most demanding setups
Speaker 1: in golf.
Speaker 2: My last one is Bobby McIntyre. Two top tens this
Speaker 2: year and a real chance of winning the US Openly.
Speaker 2: I think he might be at the top of my
Speaker 2: list of this golfer could win a major and it
Speaker 2: would surprise people who don't pay that much attention to golf.
Speaker 2: But he's one of the most likely legit great player.
Speaker 2: Now he's won twice. You won the Scottish last year
Speaker 2: and the Canadian. Now he's taken his game to enough
Speaker 2: level with major championship performance. Really good driver of the
Speaker 2: golf ball. Twenty eight years old. I think that's somebody
Speaker 2: who next year is pretty primed to make a run
Speaker 2: in a major championship late. So really impressive step forward
Speaker 2: for Bobby this year.
Speaker 1: Another person in the vein of Harris English where you
Speaker 1: thought he might be a one and done Ryer cupper,
Speaker 1: and now it looks like he might be a fixture
Speaker 1: on the team for years to come.
Speaker 2: Could be one of their best players this year.
Speaker 1: All right, Joseph An any lasting major thoughts that you
Speaker 1: need to get out, get off I.
Speaker 2: Don't think so. I mean, it's pretty incredible to reflect
Speaker 2: on this year that Rory McElroy completed the career Grand Slam,
Speaker 2: Scotty Scheffler, potential all time great, won twice. Like, it
Speaker 2: was a pretty incredible major championship season. So I think
Speaker 2: just appreciation for getting to watch, especially Scotty in what
Speaker 2: feels like his prime and that it doesn't feel like
Speaker 2: it's going anywhere soon. I think, what would you put
Speaker 2: the odds that he wins a major at least one
Speaker 2: next year. I think it's very.
Speaker 1: High, probably even money at least. Yeah, I uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, next year sets up great for him.
Speaker 1: You know. Birkdale is is allouded for its fairness. Shinnecock Hills,
Speaker 1: I think is like pretty similar to port Rush, uh
Speaker 1: with with how you know the targets and the rejecting
Speaker 1: nature of a lot of the greens and just the
Speaker 1: you know, the conditions that you're going to play in
Speaker 1: the topography. And then obviously Augusta National is great and
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, you know, we could talk them
Speaker 1: blue in the face, like what are the best best
Speaker 1: teeter green player in the world and where it doesn't
Speaker 1: work for you. You know, yeah, I I I think
Speaker 1: going into next year. You know the Scottie, like, does
Speaker 1: he The list of players that have won BOLTI Majors
Speaker 1: in multiple seasons is very small. I think it's like
Speaker 1: Tiger Jack and Ben Hogan.
Speaker 2: That's a cool thing to keep an eye on. You know.
Speaker 1: If he went to multiple and he's at six, I mean,
Speaker 1: then it's like giddy up, you know, where are we going?
Speaker 1: I think he turns thirty on at the US Open
Speaker 1: next year, maybe Sunday. I think Sunday. I saw that
Speaker 1: the Sunday of the US Open next year is his
Speaker 1: thirtieth birthday and he could complete the Grand Slam that day.
Speaker 2: Oh early storyline. That is some catnep for next year,
Speaker 2: right there.
Speaker 1: Birthday career, Grand Slam, birthday, boy thirty birthday, third big
Speaker 1: birthday too, you know, Landmark Birthday. So all right, Joseph,
Speaker 1: thank you for all your on the ground coverage. You
Speaker 1: went to two majors this year, and everybody can read
Speaker 1: your stuff. On Wednesday, I think you've got you got
Speaker 1: a Q and a coming soon, got a Q.
Speaker 2: And a coming with a golfer who's involved in a
Speaker 2: big scene at last year's Windham Championship. So excited about that.
Speaker 1: Is that going up today or Thursday morning? Yeah, Thursday morning,
Speaker 1: so when most people will be listening to that, it
Speaker 1: will be available. Thank you and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having.
Speaker 1: Andy, Thank you for listening to another edition of Friday
Speaker 1: Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ. Clark for editing and
Speaker 1: producing this podcast, and we will be back next week