Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: of your order. We are back with Jeff Oogelvie to
Speaker 1: break down what happened at Wingfoot this year for the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty US Open. Obviously it was quite the tournament.
Speaker 1: Bryson Deshambeau just was spectacular. Obviously, everybody's going to focus
Speaker 1: in on the long drives, but all in all, he
Speaker 1: was clearly the best player in the field and he
Speaker 1: put on quite a display. So I was really interested
Speaker 1: to talk to Jeff about this weekend. Obviously he had
Speaker 1: won the last time the US Open was at Wingfoot
Speaker 1: and it was a dramatically different style of golf. As
Speaker 1: a quick note, thank you all for those who entered
Speaker 1: the Victory Club giveaway of the tickets we have winners.
Speaker 1: Eric Cubulus, Sorry pronunciation is not my strong suit. You
Speaker 1: have won to set to tickets to next year's US Open,
Speaker 1: and then Joseph Uran. So thanks to everybody that supported
Speaker 1: us and entered that and signed up for the Victory
Speaker 1: Club and mark that the Friday Eggs sent you there.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, here is Jeff Ogilvie.
Speaker 3: I miss the green.
Speaker 2: For example, I'm already upset when I find my ball
Speaker 2: in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 4: In a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg
Speaker 4: Frida egg Frida egg fried egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie.
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 2: How much of that did you watch with the time difference.
Speaker 4: I watched probably the last couple of hours every day.
Speaker 4: I mean it kind of finishes about eight in the
Speaker 4: morning here, so I was kind of starting from about
Speaker 4: six in the morning. I've developed a bad call at
Speaker 4: you do you have it late at night? So I
Speaker 4: wasn't getting up to too early in the morning. So
Speaker 4: I watched the last couple of hours and off I
Speaker 4: watched the lastn holes on Monday morning, which was the
Speaker 4: last round, and sure enough I watched the highlights. My
Speaker 4: we've got this good package here on the where we
Speaker 4: sign up to get the sport package.
Speaker 3: Here's not actually on cable.
Speaker 4: It's like a Netflix kind of thing here, so you
Speaker 4: pay a subscription, you get all the sport. So I
Speaker 4: can watch it delayed as well. I can just I've
Speaker 4: got the archive kind of So I watched the fevoritive it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just interested to see the course looked awesome. I was jealous,
Speaker 4: but not jealous.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I got to ask if you run across Tiger and
Speaker 1: your call of duty late nights.
Speaker 3: Oh well, he loves it.
Speaker 4: You'd be surprised how many people do actually it's just
Speaker 4: lockdown thing. I mean, it's really it's a competitive outlet,
Speaker 4: right for someone who's not getting to go out there
Speaker 4: and be competitive. It's good fun and the boys and
Speaker 4: the bit of banter. It's all the banter really, you know,
Speaker 4: the trash talk.
Speaker 3: It's that.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic. I hear he's right into it though. He'd
Speaker 4: be competitive as.
Speaker 2: Like super into it and haws for like years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's one of those things if you're a military guy,
Speaker 4: it's kind of that you would for him. I imagine
Speaker 4: it's like kind of fulfilling that side of his dream,
Speaker 4: you know. Anyway, it's a competitive outlet. It's fun and
Speaker 4: it's banter with the boys, and it's trash talk and
Speaker 4: it's harmless. It's no different from a pick up basketball
Speaker 4: game or something. It's just on a screen, right. But anyway, Yeah, what.
Speaker 2: Do you think of the course?
Speaker 4: It looked really good, looked nice, I thought. I mean,
Speaker 4: I thought, again, they'd probably set it up a bit
Speaker 4: narrow and stuff.
Speaker 3: But that's.
Speaker 4: We can that's part of part of the discussion, I think.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it look great, looked really good. The green
Speaker 4: surfaces look better like late summer rather than early I
Speaker 4: think those they haven't really had a lot of sun
Speaker 4: and growth time by June, you know, a wing foot
Speaker 4: really three months or something right September. As a whole,
Speaker 4: there's a whole nother there's a whole the end of
Speaker 4: summer and courses in that area that it's so much
Speaker 4: better in the fall than they are in the spring.
Speaker 4: So yeah, from that respect, it looked brilliant and gills
Speaker 4: stuff like, the looks so much that just pushed back
Speaker 4: out to those kind of odd shapes and stuff.
Speaker 3: It was grouse. Yeah, they look so good.
Speaker 1: I remember you describing the greens as like ropeye in
Speaker 1: the afternoon when you played it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, O six, they were rough.
Speaker 4: I mean, it wasn't anything other than it was probably
Speaker 4: too early in the year for the greens. They have
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty six guys when they were rolling
Speaker 4: at fifteen on the stem, you know, like all the factors,
Speaker 4: and they just got to that point where the soft
Speaker 4: spikes of the spikes would leave those imprints and they
Speaker 4: wouldn't come back out, you know when they stay in.
Speaker 4: And so by the end of the day it was
Speaker 4: like the surface of the moon. Like trying to hold
Speaker 4: three foot is but that was Thursday and Friday, and
Speaker 4: then the weekend they were okay, you know, because they
Speaker 4: had sixty guys on them, not one hundred and fifty six.
Speaker 4: That's less caddies unless everybody around the holes. So yeah,
Speaker 4: they were ropey. But that's the hallmark of the US Open,
Speaker 4: to be fair, like generally most of them that they
Speaker 4: push them that hard.
Speaker 3: They look good from the.
Speaker 4: Edge of the green, you know, but when you're actually
Speaker 4: down there like squatting and have a look and the
Speaker 4: shadows getting over the little bumps and stuff, so they're
Speaker 4: rough at the end often, But that's part of tournament golf.
Speaker 4: I think if people have played big tournaments have often
Speaker 4: got like that. You know that the greens look almost
Speaker 4: you know, he's kind of killed them this week to
Speaker 4: test us a much. You know, they get really dry
Speaker 4: and they just get all messed up by Sunday, and
Speaker 4: good putters whole puts in those situations. You know that
Speaker 4: part of the tiger hold at Tory when you see
Speaker 4: the worms eye view of that, that gives you an
Speaker 4: idea of what they can be like at the end.
Speaker 4: There's just nuts that that ball went were later went in,
Speaker 4: you know, But.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 4: Great putters whole puts on greens like that. So I've
Speaker 4: always liked that side of championship golf. But saying that,
Speaker 4: when you turn back up in the morning and the
Speaker 4: green like Thursday afternoon, the greens are rubbish because they're
Speaker 4: just worn out. Friday morning, they're immaculate, like no one's
Speaker 4: been on them again. I mean, they can get them back.
Speaker 4: It's just too many people in twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first tea time early or second tea time
Speaker 1: off in the morning at a tournament is that you
Speaker 1: just are putting on glass.
Speaker 2: Just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It's good.
Speaker 4: It's so nice because especially the Friday morning, because you've
Speaker 4: had Thursday afternoon, the ball has been bouncing around. You're like,
Speaker 4: you're a nice skirl to go. I gotta go out
Speaker 4: and do that again. And in the morning it's just pristine.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, how good is this?
Speaker 3: It's nice. Such a difference, big difference.
Speaker 2: What uh what did you think of the edges? Did you?
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it because you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people were complaining about how you know, the rough
Speaker 1: didn't matter, but some of the back edges, the wings,
Speaker 1: which I think are really cool. Bring the ball back
Speaker 1: that would have when you guys played it, No. Six,
Speaker 1: that would have ended up.
Speaker 2: In the rough.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I mean the greens looked, the shapes of the grains
Speaker 4: are so cool that you when you play it, you
Speaker 4: don't know that the drone footage is so good for
Speaker 4: that to like expose. There's like square fronts and like
Speaker 4: straight edges and like weird little shapes and stuff. And
Speaker 4: I think you only see that on courses that have
Speaker 4: either been untouched from that golden age or they've been
Speaker 4: restored right and it was they didn't have like Mickey
Speaker 4: mouse ear looking greens back then.
Speaker 3: You know, big circles.
Speaker 4: They actually just fit what they fit into the place,
Speaker 4: and sometimes they they're really odd shapes and they're just
Speaker 4: so beautiful to look at because they're all different, like
Speaker 4: if anything. At Wingfoot, you've got eighteen really different greens,
Speaker 4: but all within a theme, you know, which is why
Speaker 4: a big reason why everybody loves it. To be fair,
Speaker 4: there's probably lots of great courses, especially in Westchester County,
Speaker 4: that have similar sort of vegetation and holes and they're
Speaker 4: really kind of really well designed. Great courses like Quaker
Speaker 4: and Westchester, and there's a bunch of others that I
Speaker 4: don't know, Like Wingfoot's got the greens, you know, and
Speaker 4: that's just what elevates any course above I mean the
Speaker 4: hallmark of the best course of the world. They all
Speaker 4: have really unique, really crazy, really fun greens, you know,
Speaker 4: be it Augusta Shin National Old Course, Ron Melbourne, Pine Valley.
Speaker 4: The greens are nuts and they're really fun and they're
Speaker 4: really interesting. And wing Futs another one.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking, like the truly iconic championship
Speaker 1: courses that have endured hundreds, you know, one hundred years
Speaker 1: all have pretty much great greens. You know, you think
Speaker 1: about like Pebble, Oakmont, Shenacock, you know Country Club.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like PV.
Speaker 4: Chicago, Chicago Go of Course's got outrageously cool greens. You know,
Speaker 4: all the McDonald Rainer courses are cool greens. I mean,
Speaker 4: Pinehurst has very unique greens and my favorite, but they're
Speaker 4: super unique.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be another one that's in there.
Speaker 4: That's that's really the whole courses about the greens and
Speaker 4: everything else is dictated by all those great courses. That's
Speaker 4: the harmark goverment, right, And then it's the really great
Speaker 4: ones up a great hole before that green as well,
Speaker 4: you know, but a great you can I mean the
Speaker 4: first whole wings for it's a perfect example of a
Speaker 4: nothing piece of land and a really great hole, you know,
Speaker 4: because of one great green that was actually basically man
Speaker 4: made at the end of a relatively flat piece of land.
Speaker 4: Like it's outrageously good, cool, isn't it. So it shows
Speaker 4: you what a green can do because it's You've played
Speaker 4: plenty of first holes that look like the first time
Speaker 4: the West Coast at Wingfoot, but none as good as
Speaker 4: that as a first hole really because of the way
Speaker 4: the green goes. So I think it's just super important.
Speaker 4: I mean everybody knows that. I think when they built
Speaker 4: a golf course, I just think those guys had such
Speaker 4: a gift, you know, maybe the gift of less information,
Speaker 4: you know, they hadn't they didn't have all these like
Speaker 4: potential things that they could do because of all the
Speaker 4: machines and the technology. They just kind of pushed it
Speaker 4: around until it kind of worked, you know, until the
Speaker 4: water rolled off and the boar would stay on slopes
Speaker 4: and we could put some pins there in there and
Speaker 4: there and see what happens. And that looks like how
Speaker 4: they made it. You know, they didn't go in with
Speaker 4: a plan. They just pushed dir around until it worked.
Speaker 4: It looks like, you know, and that might be a
Speaker 4: bit more organic and interesting. It's why the greens the
Speaker 4: last hurd years often look very similar. But back then
Speaker 4: they were all variety, right, because they didn't have a
Speaker 4: system like a USGA system to build a green, so
Speaker 4: they just kind of made it work in each spot,
Speaker 4: which might be a more interesting way to do it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think also they the speeds that they built it
Speaker 1: for help because they weren't. I feel like today everybody
Speaker 1: has to think about this. You know, this is a
Speaker 1: pin position here, this is a pin position there. And
Speaker 1: when they built them, they could be a little bit
Speaker 1: more random and bold because almost everywhere it was a
Speaker 1: pin position when the greens were rolling, you know six Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like you think about how many more pins
Speaker 1: would be on every green. But now people are like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a pinnable area, and they start to think
Speaker 1: about it that way rather than I'm just going to
Speaker 1: build a really cool green and we're going to find
Speaker 1: the pins.
Speaker 2: Find out where the pins. We'll find the pins after Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they build tournament courses especially they build with four
Speaker 4: pins in mind. They build four pin into their greens,
Speaker 4: you know, which is exactly the opposite of, like you said,
Speaker 4: what they did. They just built greens and you guys
Speaker 4: will work out where the holes go. Just working out
Speaker 4: later on, you know what I mean, which is kind
Speaker 4: of really nice, you know, and that's really sad it does.
Speaker 4: I mean, the old course was effectively was built in
Speaker 4: that fashion all the way through. It was just I
Speaker 4: will go hit off that direction and then we'll keep
Speaker 4: going until we want to turn around and come back.
Speaker 3: And gradually it kind of evolved.
Speaker 4: The bunkers were where the balls that all go down
Speaker 4: and muck all the divots and like everything kind of
Speaker 4: just evolved into the right place and the less humans
Speaker 4: try to manipulate kind of the cooler it ends up,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, which is interesting.
Speaker 2: That's a deep thought that could be applied to the game.
Speaker 4: Well that that actually, I think is a massive application
Speaker 4: at the moment, which I reckon i'd go into but if.
Speaker 2: You want, yeah, go for it, go into it.
Speaker 4: Well, the Bryson thing, right, I guess we're talking about
Speaker 4: the Bryson thing, and the world of golf is going
Speaker 4: to react. Already did react pre wing Foot, but they're
Speaker 4: going to max react after a major right.
Speaker 3: At like the.
Speaker 4: Change, and everyone's going to look at different sides of it.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, the players are a lot of
Speaker 4: players can start copying the method or the the genius,
Speaker 4: and is what he does is the further he does
Speaker 4: it with. I think it isn't actually what he works
Speaker 4: on per se he's maniacal, it's how he goes about it,
Speaker 4: and it actually keeps him present. Did you see him
Speaker 4: walking out the lart He was on the last hole
Speaker 4: winning the usaving by six, and he's hit the fairway,
Speaker 4: hit the fairway, didn't he on eighteen? I think or
Speaker 4: wherever whatever he was doing, he was in the rough.
Speaker 3: He was in the ruck.
Speaker 2: He was in the rough, yeah, because he got up
Speaker 2: and down short of the green.
Speaker 4: And got up and down from sort of not far
Speaker 4: from where I was. But he he was looking at
Speaker 4: his yards book for two hundred yards off the eighteenth fairway,
Speaker 4: like he's winning by five. He's not like gorging to
Speaker 4: his caddy or how nice is this We're gonna win
Speaker 4: the He's like obsessively looking in the Yards book and
Speaker 4: it got to me and it's like, this guy's doing this,
Speaker 4: whether it's on purpose, on it keeps him present. He's
Speaker 4: not thinking about winning the US Open. He's thinking about
Speaker 4: the five point five percent whatever on the bounce stuff
Speaker 4: that side of that little hill. Will have to note
Speaker 4: that for next time I come to Wing for he's
Speaker 4: doing he's occupying his part of his mind that's usually
Speaker 4: worrying that normal people are worrying about winning or losing.
Speaker 4: You know, He's just so zoned in on his science
Speaker 4: that oh, that's the odd thing th we won, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, It's actually kind of genius. I
Speaker 4: mean there's some guys like Dustin or Freddie who just
Speaker 4: stand next to the ball and wait for their caddy
Speaker 4: to give him a club kind of I mean, not really.
Speaker 4: I mean they're obviously thinking about it. Or there's the
Speaker 4: extreme end like Bryson. And I think if you're a
Speaker 4: guy like Bryson who couldn't stop thinking, he has to
Speaker 4: do it the way he does it, you know, otherwise
Speaker 4: he'd be off sideways crazy. But that's my take on him,
Speaker 4: and I think a lot of people will start sciencing
Speaker 4: up and like fat grips and like putting nets in
Speaker 4: their house and simulators and try to work on all
Speaker 4: the angles and numbers. And I think that'll be probably
Speaker 4: good for him. You know, it's fine, but it'll mess
Speaker 4: some guys up. I think doing the side its approach.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the thing that I take away most
Speaker 1: from this is the stones on Bryson. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was the top fifteen player in the world. He's making
Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year, He's got millions in endorsements,
Speaker 1: and he was for the foreseeable future going to make
Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year. And I mean he completely
Speaker 1: overhauled his body in his golf game, went and then
Speaker 1: went crazy with it, and it could have not worked
Speaker 1: and he could have been gone off the planet. Like
Speaker 1: how many guys have we seen go off the like
Speaker 1: you know, be never seen for five years if they
Speaker 1: go chase distance And he successfully did it. But you
Speaker 1: were in that same position, top ten player in the world,
Speaker 1: did you ever like think about doing something drastic to
Speaker 1: your game like he did.
Speaker 4: There's a few moments I wanted to snap all my
Speaker 4: clubs in my bag, which would have been a drastic life.
Speaker 3: No, not really it's amazing what he's doing.
Speaker 4: And look, historically, basically everyone who's ever done and what
Speaker 4: he's just done has lost it, completely lost it, like
Speaker 4: never heard from again kind of thing. Anyone usually who
Speaker 4: chase distance, serious distance, as opposed to just letting distance
Speaker 4: be a byproduct of swinging a little bit better. It's
Speaker 4: an outright chasing distance is almost one hundred percent of
Speaker 4: the time been a failure for people so well done,
Speaker 4: like exactly what he says him incredible, incredible, hats off,
Speaker 4: and he has he has truly worked out the formula
Speaker 4: to play that setup, that style setup, and you can't
Speaker 4: beat someone who hits it that far. Like that's the
Speaker 4: I think the interesting thing out of this. If you
Speaker 4: go all the way back, it'll be the talk about
Speaker 4: the effect and what about the equipment and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But if you go all the way back to like
Speaker 4: Tiger winning the Masters is ninety seven, yes, and he
Speaker 4: comes out and he's off the old members teaz effectively.
Speaker 4: I mean they were just behind the It was way
Speaker 4: shorter than ninety seven.
Speaker 3: It was ninety eight.
Speaker 4: They put a bit of length on, but sitting wedges
Speaker 4: in the nine ninees in I remember they showed the
Speaker 4: comparison clubs of him and Nicholas, Nicholas and sixty five
Speaker 4: and him in ninety seven, and they were a little
Speaker 4: bit different, but it wasn't crazy different. And then the
Speaker 4: whole world reacted to that tournament. It's like, well, we've
Speaker 4: got a tigerproof courses. Now we're going to stop this guy.
Speaker 4: He was the only guy in the field doing that,
Speaker 4: by the way, hitting wedges into fifteen and nine and
Speaker 4: no one else was doing and he won by twelve,
Speaker 4: Like there's always the best guy, right, fine, but the
Speaker 4: whole world reacted by, for one of a better word, tigerproofing.
Speaker 4: And look, distance had been evolving, probably kind of in
Speaker 4: a linear fashion since the day of golf started right gradually,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure the guddy ball made a bit of
Speaker 4: a bump and the steel shafts and it was a bump,
Speaker 4: but generally from Bob Jones at least till ninety seven,
Speaker 4: it was kind of a linear, kind of gradual thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: a few more people further, but it was pretty like
Speaker 4: every year you came out like the guy, the new
Speaker 4: guy who was long tiger. That was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 4: that's a little bit longer than normans did it. That's nuts,
Speaker 4: But it wasn't like this, and.
Speaker 3: They tigerproofed golf course.
Speaker 4: So so now what pros do This is a long
Speaker 4: winded thing, but what pros do is every Sunday night
Speaker 4: or every Friday, they miss a carter. Every Sunday or
Speaker 4: every time they're going home. The hymn has caddy, his coach,
Speaker 4: the family are going home, kind of going through how
Speaker 4: do I get better next week?
Speaker 3: What do I do? And in my life career on tour.
Speaker 4: Generally at the start at least and everyone was the same,
Speaker 4: and you can pole players and caddies this from fifteen
Speaker 4: twenty years ago. All we did was it was g's
Speaker 4: I got a put better, she's I made a few
Speaker 4: bad decisions. My short game needs to sharpen up. It'd
Speaker 4: be really nice if I could hit a few of
Speaker 4: those phades with a short UNEs and those right pins whatever.
Speaker 3: That was the thing that you would go home trying
Speaker 3: to work on.
Speaker 4: Now ninety five percent across the board, everyone's going home
Speaker 4: on Sunday night, how do I hit it further?
Speaker 3: That's all they do.
Speaker 4: So the reaction to them lengthening all these effectively the
Speaker 4: tiger proofing thing where they just started throwing length everywhere,
Speaker 4: and the Beth Page Black and the Tory Pine South
Speaker 4: kind of syndrome that's everywhere. Now all the pro goes
Speaker 4: home is doing the only thing that makes a difference
Speaker 4: to your score, really, or the thing that makes the
Speaker 4: biggest difference to your score is hitting it further. Because
Speaker 4: when you got bunkers from two eighty to three to
Speaker 4: twenty on every hole, and the guy who wins is
Speaker 4: hitting at three thirty, everyone in the field is going
Speaker 4: to try to work on that. No one tried to
Speaker 4: work on that twenty years ago. It was just a
Speaker 4: byproduct of swinging it well. But now everyone is so
Speaker 4: obsessive hitting it far. It's a disproportionate advantage by how
Speaker 4: they set up the courses. If they'd made courses shorter
Speaker 4: and firmer and flukier kind of in ninety eight as
Speaker 4: opposed to longer and softer and more penal, this would
Speaker 4: not be happening. Guaranteed, Absolutely, we would work on what
Speaker 4: we needed if there was a course. If you there
Speaker 4: are courses out there, like I'll pick on the sand
Speaker 4: Belt because it's right here, the sand Belt courses. There
Speaker 4: is a particular distance on most holes, that's the right spot.
Speaker 4: It's firm, the ball is going to run through dog legs.
Speaker 4: You could not if Bryson played for a year a
Speaker 4: tournament for a year around the sand belt, what he
Speaker 4: would work on would be completely different. It wouldn't be distance,
Speaker 4: it would be shape or sort of distance control and
Speaker 4: stuff around the greens and strategy, because there's a finite
Speaker 4: amount of improvement you can get at those shorter golf courses,
Speaker 4: older courses by distance, you know what I mean, there's
Speaker 4: other way, there's more. Distances are proportionate. It's proportionate to
Speaker 4: the kind of having a good score, whereas it wing foot.
Speaker 4: When the rough is like that and the course is
Speaker 4: that long, he can hit wedge into every hole of
Speaker 4: its driver basically, so if he's in the rough, he
Speaker 4: can still hit the green or at least get it
Speaker 4: around the green. Most guys who are hitting at say
Speaker 4: two ninety or three hundred as opposed to three fifty,
Speaker 4: they're having to lay it up out of the rough,
Speaker 4: so there's a mass. It's just completely disproportionate. So he's
Speaker 4: basically proving the USGA setup model. If we'll pick on them,
Speaker 4: the narrow long ruff model, it just gets beaten by distance.
Speaker 4: And the more they do it, and I see everybody's
Speaker 4: saying we're going to have narrower courses but longer rough,
Speaker 4: it's just going to happen more because.
Speaker 3: Power will always beat rough.
Speaker 4: So I just Augusta would be interesting because that's more
Speaker 4: of a position course. But again, if the courses were shorter,
Speaker 4: If they got shorter, we wouldn't have chased it. The
Speaker 4: longer you make the cause, and that's the human reaction
Speaker 4: getting in the way.
Speaker 3: If we just sort of left it alone, it would
Speaker 3: have evolved differently.
Speaker 4: But as soon as you start manipulating and trying to
Speaker 4: stop people hitting it further, the first thing you don't
Speaker 4: do is make the courses longer, because then everybody's going
Speaker 4: to want to need to hit it longer.
Speaker 3: You don't.
Speaker 4: If you make them shorter, nobody needs hit it long anymore.
Speaker 4: You won't even have to change an equipment rule, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: If you per se thought, if people thought that this.
Speaker 4: Was an issue, there's courses in Melbourne that a shortened
Speaker 4: bouncy that two hundred and eighty is plenty, but two
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty hitting it like Hogan would be a
Speaker 4: massive advantage, but not three fifty. It would be in
Speaker 4: the trees all the time. There's just be no chance
Speaker 4: it would just run into the crap. The old course
Speaker 4: would be the same if Bryson, if we all played
Speaker 4: the old course every day, thirty tournaments a year.
Speaker 3: No one is playing like ice in.
Speaker 4: They're playing like Peter Thompson did, or like Rory at most,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, like try and hit it far.
Speaker 4: But they're like, it's a different sort of approach because
Speaker 4: the question being asked is a different question.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: The question being asked is the harder you hit it,
Speaker 4: the better you're going to do.
Speaker 3: Go ay boys.
Speaker 4: So it's having the opposite reaction of what they want.
Speaker 4: That's what I feel like anyway, And this is really
Speaker 4: magnified that I couldn't understand. How does he win the USA?
Speaker 4: Been playing like that? How does matth How do these
Speaker 4: guys shoot under par? Hitting hardly any fairlies? I I
Speaker 4: promise you if you poll the field, they'd be like,
Speaker 4: they don't know how he did that because they were
Speaker 4: in the rough and they had to lay it up.
Speaker 3: But he's getting it to the green out of the ruff.
Speaker 3: So Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 4: I just it was really interesting, just magnified that we're
Speaker 4: humans have actually we've actually the decisions to help.
Speaker 3: Not help the direction. Just to why has this happened.
Speaker 4: It isn't because the players are chasing distance just because,
Speaker 4: and it isn't because the manufacturers are making equipment just because.
Speaker 4: We're just doing it, because that's answering the question we're
Speaker 4: being asked. He's done it better than anyone's ever done.
Speaker 1: I think that's like the thing that people miss so much,
Speaker 1: Like your job as a golf professional is to get
Speaker 1: the best at beating what's in front of you. And
Speaker 1: Bryson has figured out how to beat narrow, thick, and
Speaker 1: you know, like it's so golf though, that this whole
Speaker 1: thing everything in golf is counterintuitive, and people think, oh,
Speaker 1: we need to we need to beat the long hitters,
Speaker 1: like we got to penalize them. Let's make it narrow
Speaker 1: and let's lengthen it. And all you're doing when you
Speaker 1: do that is you're just killing the short hitter, the
Speaker 1: short accurate hitter. Because out at wing foot, especially if
Speaker 1: you played great, you might hit sixty percent of your
Speaker 1: fairways as a short hitter, like an accurate. You hit
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the fairways forty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: You've got a long iron in a green from five
Speaker 1: inch rough, which is a half stroke penalty, you're dead,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's seven holes, you're dead, you know.
Speaker 1: And and Bryson he didn't. It didn't matter as long
Speaker 1: as he hit it to the right side. That let
Speaker 1: him have an open shot into the green. He knew
Speaker 1: it was. So what I wrote after was that the
Speaker 1: setup was extremely predictable and the rough being so lush,
Speaker 1: not necessarily like you know, you think about the rough
Speaker 1: like if that was wispy, unpredictable fescue rough, or even
Speaker 1: that three or four inch rough, that's super unpredictable, especially
Speaker 1: for a high speed player where you're really worried is
Speaker 1: this ball gonna jump? Is it coming out dead? Is
Speaker 1: it gonna knuckle like and you don't know it. Getting
Speaker 1: that unpredictability is the only way, in my opinion, you
Speaker 1: can really stop distance outside of going to something like
Speaker 1: you were talking about maybe six thousand yards no par wide.
Speaker 4: Well, if you don't, I'm not saying all in all cases,
Speaker 4: but it's just an example of Yeah, like you said,
Speaker 4: it's the counterintuitiveness, like why they're hitting it long. Now,
Speaker 4: we better challenger more well with length, And if you
Speaker 4: challenge with length, it's just we're just gonna hit it further,
Speaker 4: and the they're gonna make balls and clubs that go further,
Speaker 4: and the pros are gonna go home and find out
Speaker 4: devices and ways and eat more food or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: which is if that's the question being, if that's the
Speaker 4: skill required, we're going to work it out. People are
Speaker 4: going to work it out, and they're going to do
Speaker 4: it better than you can imagine they do it, because
Speaker 4: that's always in athletics.
Speaker 3: People just advance the sport, right, that's always going to happen.
Speaker 4: I like you, right, Flyer Roff would make a massive difference,
Speaker 4: like true, true, fluky crazy Flyer Rauff. I mean, I'd
Speaker 4: like to see a bit more width so they get
Speaker 4: so narrow us opens the straight head just can't hit
Speaker 4: all the fairways, you know, and they lose their advantage
Speaker 4: because it's almost simple. Everybody's missing them anyway. You know,
Speaker 4: they're so narrow. But Flyer is very You couldn't hit
Speaker 4: greens out of Flyer rough at wing foot, there's no chance.
Speaker 4: Well you would you could, but you couldn't consistently have
Speaker 4: a plan out of the raft because every lie would
Speaker 4: be different.
Speaker 3: You know. It's so fluky that the variety that you
Speaker 3: were talking about, and.
Speaker 1: It's and if you misjudged one or two, you get
Speaker 1: in there the next hole all of a sudden, now
Speaker 1: you got doubt, like it builds and that's just and
Speaker 1: I agree with you with the width thing. And you
Speaker 1: played at Chambers. If you drove it well out there,
Speaker 1: you could have very fairauway right.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yeah, you could every fair oak for the week
Speaker 4: without being outrageously straight either. But hitting it in the
Speaker 4: right places wasn't super easy. And the ball, I mean,
Speaker 4: look at the score that was only that was single
Speaker 4: digits under part, wasn't it? That was not far from
Speaker 4: power And the greens were really rapey. If the greens
Speaker 4: were good there, they would have been quite low. But
Speaker 4: the flukiness, the irony is the fluky are kind of
Speaker 4: the courses, in other words, the variety and the kind
Speaker 4: of random bounces and different lives here and there, it
Speaker 4: actually ends up more fair, you know, which is again
Speaker 4: one of those counterintuitive things. If it's Snandrew's the old
Speaker 4: course to me is the fairest course there is, but
Speaker 4: the kick on it is it's the most unfair course
Speaker 4: it is. But when you play it for really for
Speaker 4: a long time, you realize when you hit it in
Speaker 4: the right kind of areas with the right shots, you
Speaker 4: get good bounces almost all the time. But yeah, the
Speaker 4: wrong areas you get bad bounces all the time, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, so it actually it's a more interesting ask
Speaker 4: when there's width and firmness, you know, it's a more
Speaker 4: interesting challenge. I mean, Wingfort it's a great mint course
Speaker 4: and set up like it was last week.
Speaker 3: It's still a cool.
Speaker 4: Challenge and it's fun to watch, but it's there's less
Speaker 4: dimensions to a challenge like that. If the deciding factor
Speaker 4: is going to be if you can edit three fifty
Speaker 4: and be really great out of the rough and you
Speaker 4: can complete the hole around it, if you're good enough
Speaker 4: around the greens, but three fifty you're gonna be fine.
Speaker 4: If that's the question asked, it just gets less interesting
Speaker 4: to watch. It'd be more fun to see Zach Johnson
Speaker 4: come up the last few holes against Rory and Bryson
Speaker 4: and and him have a big advantage of being the
Speaker 4: player that he is versus the big advantage that they have.
Speaker 4: You know, each one gets their chance, but they're taking
Speaker 4: they're taking the ability to compete in tournaments like that
Speaker 4: away by just for guys like Zach, by just adding
Speaker 4: so much length and so much long grass that it
Speaker 4: just gets really hard unless you hit it that far.
Speaker 2: I hadn't looked at stats.
Speaker 1: Zach Johnson picked up I think ten point eight shots
Speaker 1: on the greens last I mean, like maybe putted the
Speaker 1: best he's ever put in his life and finished twelve
Speaker 1: shots back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was. It was crazy. I mean, that's kind
Speaker 3: of where it's at.
Speaker 4: And so you wonder why the two pro professional golf
Speaker 4: and the golf landscape will be less interesting if he
Speaker 4: can't if guys like him can't compete anymore. You know,
Speaker 4: the guys went at Snandra's and Augusta, and he was
Speaker 4: a really good weekend away from winning wing foot Scenandras
Speaker 4: and Augusta. Imagine, like what a career, but it's been
Speaker 4: taken away from him a little bit. He could absolutely
Speaker 4: still win a wing foot but like he said, was
Speaker 4: he plus ten on the greens plus ten and he
Speaker 4: was twelve behind, like what like you know, so that's
Speaker 4: that's kind of explains the whole thing. That's a really
Speaker 4: interesting start. I didn't know that that's crazy, but that's
Speaker 4: ultimately frustrating for Zach.
Speaker 2: You know, like there was a Web was plus eight.
Speaker 3: Web's the same. I mean, what a player, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 2: Top five player in the world.
Speaker 1: Had no chance and he had it one of his
Speaker 1: probably one of the best putting weeks of his career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean no chance. I think he's extreme.
Speaker 4: I think they could have won, but it was obviously
Speaker 4: clearly very difficult in the end.
Speaker 3: I mean six under.
Speaker 4: Missing a butt and then hitting twenty low twenties in
Speaker 4: the fairways, like you just you look at the numbers
Speaker 4: and Rory's comments, well, I just don't understand how this
Speaker 4: is working, Like you can't compute it in his head,
Speaker 4: the numbers don't.
Speaker 3: It's so impressive what he's done he work out.
Speaker 4: No one can work out why it works because it's
Speaker 4: just completely different approach.
Speaker 1: It's amazing given how far he hits it. The accuracy
Speaker 1: is actually astounding because he's gotten straighter and he's gained
Speaker 1: thirty yards.
Speaker 4: Thirty yards is crazy. I mean, if you get fired,
Speaker 4: I know, there's all this this crack. Oh we've got
Speaker 4: the new ball, the new drive, and everyone comes over.
Speaker 4: We've got twenty yards this year. Then you driver is nuts,
Speaker 4: you know, but no one ever actually does because if
Speaker 4: they did, everyone hit it three hundred yards longer than
Speaker 4: they did twenty years ago. But he truly gained thirty yards,
Speaker 4: which is just I've never seen anybody do that. And
Speaker 4: like I said, hit it straighter so he can he
Speaker 4: can't really probably definitely hit a twenty yard by the
Speaker 4: USABNT fairway, but he's good enough to hit it on
Speaker 4: the side of the fairway that he wants, like you say.
Speaker 4: And his depth of preparation is so amazing that he's
Speaker 4: probably worked out the areas of the rough that he
Speaker 4: can be in that are where his drive is going
Speaker 4: to be, you know, all the right the rough on
Speaker 4: the right side's better because I can hit it out
Speaker 4: of that the one and that's really thick.
Speaker 3: You know, he would have gone to that level of stuff.
Speaker 4: And if you've got if you can edit three hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty and hit it within I don't know, ten
Speaker 4: yards of where you're aiming or something, that's just what
Speaker 4: a sort of an advantage, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he listened.
Speaker 1: He said he heard that Phil and You talked about
Speaker 1: how good they how good you guys chipped it before,
Speaker 1: so he also like does his help work. That's the
Speaker 1: thing you can't take away is you know, frankly, he's
Speaker 1: outworked everybody else on tour.
Speaker 4: Look fair play. I think he's awesome. I mean he's
Speaker 4: it's nuts. I think it's really really cool, and everyone's
Speaker 4: freaking out. But like, well a lot of people think
Speaker 4: I think he's awesome. What he's done is awesome. He
Speaker 4: is just as I've said, he is answering the question
Speaker 4: that's being asked, and he's doing it better than anyone's
Speaker 4: ever done it, you know, like and it looks different
Speaker 4: from how it did for the last hundred years. So
Speaker 4: people have flipping out a little bit because Tiger and
Speaker 4: Rory and Dustin they're just kind of an evolution of
Speaker 4: Sneed and Jones and Hogan and Nicholas and I mean
Speaker 4: there's similar, but Bryce is completely different, right, He's He's
Speaker 4: like Dwayne the Rock Johnson and Maco Grady in one,
Speaker 4: you know, and it's like, what is going on here?
Speaker 4: If you had like twenty of them, it would be
Speaker 4: a it's like NBA level body difference from normal society.
Speaker 2: Right, did you ever play with Marco Grady?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No story, the stories. I went down a rabbit hole
Speaker 2: one night on that guy. It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Oh he's a legend, yeah, I mean, I he's Everyone
Speaker 4: who's ever spent.
Speaker 3: A bit of time with him loves him, though.
Speaker 4: They think he's an absolute legend of the game, you know,
Speaker 4: but just as nutty as Bryson, or more so really.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's got his left handed action, so he
Speaker 4: let he mastered his left handed swing so he could
Speaker 4: work on things so he could apply them to his
Speaker 4: right handed swing.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's next level, right, But.
Speaker 4: He hit it really well and he's still probably a
Speaker 4: lot of guys technical cool that Broughton and him, and
Speaker 4: I don't know have Broston's ever talked to him, but
Speaker 4: I probably have an interesting chat I reckon I too.
Speaker 1: So here's something I pulled up because I was I
Speaker 1: just started thinking about the unpredictability and I feel like
Speaker 1: the Open that's unpredictability as best, right.
Speaker 2: M h. So the last five.
Speaker 1: Winners of the US Open their distance rank. Bryson won,
Speaker 1: Woodland thirteen, uh Brooks eight, Brooks seven twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Who's twenty sixteen. That would have been Bustin Dustin Dustin second, Dustin.
Speaker 3: Brooks, Brooks, Woodland Broston.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you so then you go to the Open.
Speaker 1: We got sixty third in distance, which would have been
Speaker 1: who was last year Lowry He can still move it.
Speaker 1: They got fifty second and Molinari forty fifth and that
Speaker 1: would have been Speed and twenty sixteen eighty second.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not that that those guys.
Speaker 3: Who are Bryson can't win the Open. It's just it
Speaker 3: asks different questions. You know.
Speaker 4: The question isn't the further you get it, the better
Speaker 4: you'll be. The question is being in the right position
Speaker 4: and the better you'll be. And in some cases that's
Speaker 4: a really long way. In some cases it's not whereas
Speaker 4: wing foot or not picking a win foot because winfood
Speaker 4: it's amazing, but that long, narrow USGA style set up
Speaker 4: the traditional line. The further up the fur are you're
Speaker 4: going to be. The real question being asked is distance,
Speaker 4: whereas it the open. It's distance and other things as well,
Speaker 4: you know. So it's just it's a bigger question which Bryson,
Speaker 4: by the way, would work out like I think Bryson
Speaker 4: would be the best, and any question being asked, it's
Speaker 4: just that. And I love the way he's going about it.
Speaker 4: He's advancing the sport and he's getting people to look
Speaker 4: at it different ways, and.
Speaker 3: It's just nuts.
Speaker 4: But I would just like the question asked to slightly
Speaker 4: start changing a little bit so the chase isn't just
Speaker 4: out and out power. It's better shapes and draws and
Speaker 4: fades and spin and flight and golf crast as opposed
Speaker 4: to just out there. I think distance is a great
Speaker 4: thing to chase, but I think it should be proportionately rewarded,
Speaker 4: not disproportionately rewarded. And I think it'd be a more
Speaker 4: balanced fun game to watch because it'll just be more balanced.
Speaker 1: Augusta's held on to that two where it's not dominating.
Speaker 1: Everybody talks about it's being dominated by power players, but
Speaker 1: you look at the last five years and nobody that's
Speaker 1: like bona fide power players.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't hit it short and win there. It
Speaker 4: certainly is a required element, but it's not disproportionately rewarded.
Speaker 4: It might be interesting if he's at three fifteen, and mean,
Speaker 4: if you think thirteen he just goes whosh. You know,
Speaker 4: he's sitting under fourteenth fairway. Eleven, he'sitting wedge in ten. Ten,
Speaker 4: he's got to see ten. You're going to hit it
Speaker 4: where you need to hit At nine he's on the upslope.
Speaker 4: Eight he's over the bunker. Yeah, it's going to make
Speaker 4: a difference. So if you can drive it, well, it's
Speaker 4: different though the question being asked after the drive AUGUSTA
Speaker 4: is very about being in the right position. You know,
Speaker 4: foots about being in the right position too, But they
Speaker 4: basically put grass over a lot of the good positions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they tell and they tell you where this is
Speaker 1: the position you're hitting from if you want, because like
Speaker 1: you can't hit it to side of the faraway when
Speaker 1: it's twenty yards.
Speaker 4: Wide, No, there is no side right. You can kind
Speaker 4: of touch the rough on both sides almost. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: August will be interesting. I mean he's got a massive advantage.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you think about one, he can hit
Speaker 4: it over the bunker. Two he can hit halfway down
Speaker 4: the hill. Three he's on the green with he's less
Speaker 4: than a driver.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Five, I don't know. Maybe the new fifthy can hit
Speaker 4: it all the way out there and have short. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's a big advantage. But there's a lot of guys
Speaker 4: who are really good at the Masters, who have played
Speaker 4: a lot more Masters than him, you know, and the
Speaker 4: masses august will always be that course where the twenty
Speaker 4: year Masters veterans will have just an advantage. I've played
Speaker 4: with Freddie there when he was in his fifties. It's
Speaker 4: just nuts how well he plays that course like it's
Speaker 4: just crazy. No matter how he's hitting it, he's hitting
Speaker 4: it at the spots where he can have a chance,
Speaker 4: you know. And so Bryson, I don't know, you can
Speaker 4: probably science that a little bit, and I reckon he'll.
Speaker 3: Do really well.
Speaker 2: No green thinks, yeah.
Speaker 4: No greens books, but that's fine. I think you can.
Speaker 4: He'll work it out. The old schoolweight Augusta is to
Speaker 4: know where the twelfth, eleventh and twelfth green are and
Speaker 4: everything kind of goes that direction, and he'll work it out.
Speaker 4: The he'll work fine, but you have to be elite
Speaker 4: around you have to be elite around the greens that week,
Speaker 4: and he is elite around the greens. But there's guys
Speaker 4: who are better around the greens. You know, his massive
Speaker 4: advantages they're hitting it right, and look, he hits it long,
Speaker 4: but he is at Augusta. It's not like he's if
Speaker 4: he misses a fairway. At Wingfoot, he can hit a
Speaker 4: wedge on the green. Even Rory and Dustin maybe they're
Speaker 4: got an ad iron and maybe that's just a layup,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Or not hitting it on
Speaker 4: the green, they're missing the green and then trying to
Speaker 4: get them down Warries. He's hitting his wedge other off
Speaker 4: on the green. Augusta ate under wages. And it's different
Speaker 4: because if they'll both be on short grass, you know,
Speaker 4: and if everyone's in the rough all week, the most
Speaker 4: powerful guy wins, period. That's always going to be true.
Speaker 4: I think as long as he's a good all other
Speaker 4: things being equal, like all other things.
Speaker 2: Equals savvy, wanted courses all only rough, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he would have won every week it was all
Speaker 4: rough because he was in there all week. But power, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean Tiger was miraculous. I mean great players have
Speaker 4: always been powerful and great out of rough, and Bryce
Speaker 4: has just taken it to another level a little bit.
Speaker 3: Plus he like hears it so straight.
Speaker 4: It must be really interesting. Actually it asks a different
Speaker 4: question than Wingfoot does. But he'll be all high up
Speaker 4: and about and he's clearly the best player in the
Speaker 4: world when he like certain weeks when he turns up.
Speaker 1: You know, what were you guys heading into sixteen? I
Speaker 1: know the wind might have been different.
Speaker 3: Oh, I couldn't understand it.
Speaker 4: He was like where he was driving it, like that's
Speaker 4: where I would be laying it up to if had
Speaker 4: him a rough like that was I think in O
Speaker 4: six that was four ninety six as well. I think
Speaker 4: that was the longest part five we'd had and he
Speaker 4: was open. Part four we'd had it, and he was
Speaker 4: open to that point sixteen and now there was three
Speaker 4: or four lots. There's been plenty of like five twenty
Speaker 4: and stuff, but it was really long.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean it would have been a six on after
Speaker 4: smashing it, you know, it would have been a two
Speaker 4: hundred yard six. It would have been three hundred yards
Speaker 4: that rolled out thirty and hit a six on in.
Speaker 4: But if you miss a fair way and you'd kind
Speaker 4: of neckted a bit, it would have been two twenty
Speaker 4: five out of the rough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a long hole. A nine hitting wages
Speaker 3: and nine and nine or what like what from a
Speaker 3: teeth for the back. I mean we were hitting five,
Speaker 3: We were.
Speaker 4: Hitting five and six ons in for our second on
Speaker 4: when it was twenty thirty yard shorter.
Speaker 1: That's the sixteenth and the fifth at Augusta National are
Speaker 1: like they're like the case studies for clubs that want
Speaker 1: to get longer. And then you know, like wing Foot,
Speaker 1: one of the members donated.
Speaker 2: The property so they could get longer there.
Speaker 1: But you know, with Augusta spending millions to get longer,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you know, within two years we
Speaker 1: might see Augusta's fifty completely irrelevant, made irrelevant by Bryce.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And again the the distance thing. If people, if
Speaker 4: we start at if we continue to add distance, people
Speaker 4: are just going to continue to chase distance. If I if,
Speaker 4: I mean, it would be a really interesting experiment for
Speaker 4: them to shorten Augusta and firm it up. See what
Speaker 4: would happen shorten shorten of course, firm it up, have
Speaker 4: flyer rough, like you say, stop irrigating the raff, just
Speaker 4: make it. You can have it narrow if you want,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's better wide, but you can have it
Speaker 4: narw if you want. But to have flyer rough like
Speaker 4: you say, and that would be Bryson, I think would
Speaker 4: work it out, but it would be a different looking
Speaker 4: game that he would play, you know. And I think
Speaker 4: that's really the question that everyone say. It's not Bryson
Speaker 4: per se or anything else, it's do we want? Is
Speaker 4: this the best? Is the best version of the game?
Speaker 4: People hitting it as hard as they can, eating as
Speaker 4: much food as they can, hitting it as far up
Speaker 4: they can, don't care about the raff, and then just
Speaker 4: backfooting wedges out of the rough under the greens. Is
Speaker 4: that the game we want to play? Or do we
Speaker 4: want to see Corey paven like shaping forwards into the
Speaker 4: last hole to four feet?
Speaker 3: Like what you know? Like which version of the game
Speaker 3: you want?
Speaker 4: And I really think the playing field pro the more
Speaker 4: I think about it, the more the playing field we
Speaker 4: just evolved to perform as well as we can on
Speaker 4: the field that's presented to us. We're always going to
Speaker 4: get better. You cannot stop that. That's evolution. It's always
Speaker 4: going to get better. And it was in a very
Speaker 4: linear fashion. But as soon as they started adding one
Speaker 4: thousand yards to all these courses, watering the fairways, more
Speaker 4: in the driving distance, and you know, really having carries
Speaker 4: of three twenty.
Speaker 3: The thing that makes the difference is smashing it, Like
Speaker 3: I can't get past it.
Speaker 4: Like if distance was basically not rewarded, or basically everybody
Speaker 4: could hit it far enough, it was all about how
Speaker 4: they hit it and where they hit it. I think
Speaker 4: that might be a more interesting question asked, and you
Speaker 4: might get more interesting variety of players. But I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that in a negative. I think Bryson's a legend.
Speaker 4: I love what he's doing is yeah. I think it's
Speaker 4: doing what we've all wished we could have been smart
Speaker 4: enough to do, or talented enough to do, or hard
Speaker 4: working enough all three. He's ticking every box and he's
Speaker 4: doing it. It's really amazing, and he's doing it in
Speaker 4: such that he's always smiling, he's happy, he's having so
Speaker 4: much fun, and that's fun to watch when someone's having fun.
Speaker 2: And I think that's it.
Speaker 1: It's important because he's doing extraordinary stuff. And the important
Speaker 1: thing now is he's doing this and people are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Like I could only imagine being like
Speaker 1: the greens chair at a club that just did a restoration,
Speaker 1: that is planning on hosting a US Open, and watch
Speaker 1: what just happened at wingfoot, I'd be like, oh.
Speaker 2: I mean, we did this all wrong.
Speaker 1: Or thinking that way, But the important thing is to
Speaker 1: think like, and this is what I've really thought a
Speaker 1: lot about, is Okay, we did this all wrong when
Speaker 1: Tiger came along, and we did completely the opposite of
Speaker 1: what we should have done. If you want need to
Speaker 1: tigerproof courses. And his dad even said as much. I
Speaker 1: think there's a famous like quote of Earl saying, if
Speaker 1: you want to mess with Tiger, make it six thousand yard,
Speaker 1: don't make it. I mean, have you ever played the
Speaker 1: ladies teas, like not the the forward teas at a
Speaker 1: course and tried to shoot really low?
Speaker 3: It's great fun and it's weird.
Speaker 2: It's hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's extreme.
Speaker 4: I think fits your clubs don't fit anymore, Like you've
Speaker 4: got to use different clubs and you don't know what
Speaker 4: lines to hit it.
Speaker 3: And it's different.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, right, it's different, Like it's brilliant. I just yeah,
Speaker 4: I think the irony is really if you actually the
Speaker 4: tigerproofing thing, there wasn't a problem. Then there was a
Speaker 4: perceived problem, and this tigerproof one of a better phrase.
Speaker 4: It's a ridiculous phrase. But the targetproofing is actually the problem,
Speaker 4: the reaction to a non problem actually created. If you
Speaker 4: want to say this is a problem, it probably is
Speaker 4: that it's the solution was the problem. That's the irony, Like,
Speaker 4: that's the frustrating thing too. It's like, well, if you've
Speaker 4: just done nothing and just let Tiger be Tiger golf.
Speaker 4: I mean, Bryson might still be the best golfer in
Speaker 4: the world, but it would look different. He would be
Speaker 4: a different looking golfer. You know, if the courses were
Speaker 4: six thousy seven hundred yards our firm, there was flyer off.
Speaker 4: It was a difference. All Right, We're going to stop
Speaker 4: challenging on distance. We're going to find other ways to
Speaker 4: challenge these guys. So if you can hit it up
Speaker 4: to because look, three hundred yards is elite at any level, right, like, well,
Speaker 4: well done. You shouldn't have to ask. The reason golf
Speaker 4: is so enduring is it asks a lot of different
Speaker 4: questions and there's a very broad skill set required. Now
Speaker 4: there's less, there's less of a more protectable yeah, and
Speaker 4: so you're just going to end up with golfers who
Speaker 4: Bryson has just absolutely mastered the number one skill that
Speaker 4: gives you just a massive advantage. And he's done it
Speaker 4: completely as I said, like, hats off, awesome. I wish
Speaker 4: I could have done the same thing. But if the
Speaker 4: questions being asked were different questions, he would have answered
Speaker 4: those better than everyone else. And is that a better
Speaker 4: looking game? I don't know, you know, is that less
Speaker 4: scary for Green's committees and stuff? And look what another
Speaker 4: thing is too, is this golf mentality. Historically people have
Speaker 4: cared about par, like what does par even mean? Like
Speaker 4: it's it's a line in the sand. You know, it's
Speaker 4: actually irrelevant. It's just a it's a it's a measuring stick.
Speaker 4: It's just makes it easy to measure other golfers against
Speaker 4: other golfers during a round. You know, you don't say
Speaker 4: he's had sixteen shots when he's walking down the fifth hole,
Speaker 4: like he's even right, that's that's easier, and that's a
Speaker 4: better and it's nice to have like a a benchmark.
Speaker 4: But they didn't like make par in the one hundred
Speaker 4: meters at like ten seconds and keep making the one
Speaker 4: hundred meters a little bit longer, so they always ran
Speaker 4: ten seconds. So now it's one hundred and twenty seven,
Speaker 4: Like what.
Speaker 3: Are you doing? It's just people get faster.
Speaker 4: Like if people shoot lower scores and go, well that's cool,
Speaker 4: it's still something to everyone in golf is obsessed with
Speaker 4: shooting lower and lower and lower and low and lower,
Speaker 4: and yet at the top end of the game they've said, no,
Speaker 4: we're stopping scoring or right there, so they've just it
Speaker 4: just gets distorted and weird the setup at that level
Speaker 4: to try to dictate a score. And they can say
Speaker 4: they don't do it as much as they want, but
Speaker 4: everybody does it in some ways. And I think that
Speaker 4: mentality again, it has the opposite effect, like it like Dustin.
Speaker 4: I mean, Boston's a mint course and a really fun
Speaker 4: course to play, but they piled all sorts of distance
Speaker 4: on that and it's thirty underpar. Like you can't do
Speaker 4: it by distance, you know.
Speaker 3: It's just you can't.
Speaker 4: It just doesn't work, and it's just a less interesting
Speaker 4: version of the game to watch if it's just a
Speaker 4: flog show.
Speaker 3: That's my position.
Speaker 1: Do you see that shot that Rory like duffed into
Speaker 1: the water at an east Lake?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Everyone who's played it is like everyone thinks he's topped
Speaker 4: it and stuff. Now that ruff is so deep and
Speaker 4: so thick. That is Gnali. Most guys in the field
Speaker 4: when they drive it to where he did, or they
Speaker 4: are in that rough on that hole, there's a massive
Speaker 4: decision to make you know, it's mele it.
Speaker 3: It's just it looked pretty funny on.
Speaker 1: One of the things that golf has. Every other sport,
Speaker 1: like what you were just talking about, they've gone through
Speaker 1: these innovations like NBA, they're shooting more threes than ever,
Speaker 1: but they have defenses that respond to what the offense
Speaker 1: is doing on a court that doesn't change. Or tennis,
Speaker 1: you know, or baseball, like everybody adjusts like the baseball's
Speaker 1: got the switch. Like soccer, you know, they've innovated different
Speaker 1: offenses and then the defense responds to it, but the court,
Speaker 1: the field never changes. With golf, the weird thing is
Speaker 1: nobody's playing defense except for setup, and setups just been
Speaker 1: essentially aiding the offense.
Speaker 4: It's like if you like the analogy with music, like
Speaker 4: at the moment, the best golfers the go hits it
Speaker 4: the hardest. Basically, it's like the band. The best band
Speaker 4: is the loudest band, you know, I mean, like the
Speaker 4: best concert I'll pay the most money to go the
Speaker 4: loudest concert.
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
Speaker 4: Like it's that though, right, It's like loud is really
Speaker 4: important in music, but it's proportionate to the quality to
Speaker 4: everything else. Like golf has just like it's just gone
Speaker 4: too loud where where I'm not going to that guy
Speaker 4: unless you can hit a three twenties, he's crap, unless
Speaker 4: you can hit three thirty.
Speaker 3: You know, Like that's kind of what's happening.
Speaker 4: And again, it's fine, and I understand why it's got there,
Speaker 4: And there is a fear. You don't want prose to
Speaker 4: just be flicking sixties into every hole, and I don't
Speaker 4: think you could evolve the game.
Speaker 3: You've got to evolve the game.
Speaker 4: Just let it evolve. Let's just let it shape out,
Speaker 4: and let's not covet power as the only thing. Like,
Speaker 4: let's how do we set up this game or drift
Speaker 4: this game in a direction where it's back to all
Speaker 4: that nuance and variety and short hitters and long hitters,
Speaker 4: and there's there's advantages to be gained all over the game.
Speaker 4: It's just you kind of you. You do it the
Speaker 4: best you can. It's not just out if you can't
Speaker 4: hit it miles. You can't do it. Hit the loudest band.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine.
Speaker 1: I think golfers are starting to notice this stuff because
Speaker 1: we saw in December at the President's Cup. I mean,
Speaker 1: within ten minutes of the first T shirt, you realize, WHOA, distance.
Speaker 2: This is the most important thing.
Speaker 1: You just watched them play the first hole there and
Speaker 1: it was like, WHOA, you're not You don't want to
Speaker 1: drive it all the way up there?
Speaker 2: Laying back is the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: It's a bit like tenant rive tenant riv has become
Speaker 4: a better hole now that people can hit it past
Speaker 4: the green with a driver, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Now distance does about it. Now everybody can get it there?
Speaker 4: Now who plays the hole the best? So you can't
Speaker 4: have tenet Riviera everywhere, but you can kind of understand
Speaker 4: that the principles that that brings out would bring out
Speaker 4: a really cool game if you had that eighteen times,
Speaker 4: you know. And Royal Melbourne really and a lot of
Speaker 4: the great courses Royal Melbourne and the sand Belt are
Speaker 4: very limited on land, so they can't really make it
Speaker 4: much longer and it's always fir and running.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Royal.
Speaker 4: Distance is a distinct advantage, but it's proportionate to all
Speaker 4: the other skills required. You know, you can't just out
Speaker 4: and out just sit driver and every hole because you're
Speaker 4: just going to run through corners and run it and
Speaker 4: run it into crappy rauff and trees and so've you.
Speaker 3: Start hitting the clubs.
Speaker 4: Look if the tour is around Royal Melbourne every week
Speaker 4: for thirty weeks, it'd be like the old course thing.
Speaker 3: We would all start. I would drift back to titleists
Speaker 3: and say, hey, I want a ball.
Speaker 4: I need to spin it a bit more from inside
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty, you know, and I really want
Speaker 4: to be able to hold that shot up. I really
Speaker 4: want to be able to move it in the air
Speaker 4: to get it back to those right pins. And it
Speaker 4: over ten, fifteen, twenty years of that it would evolve
Speaker 4: back more into that direction. You can't just if they
Speaker 4: every rule change.
Speaker 3: They make.
Speaker 4: Is annoying and it doesn't work. Like the groove thing
Speaker 4: didn't work.
Speaker 2: All you do isa thing You just drove drove braced arm.
Speaker 4: Like, you know, like drove him to it forced him
Speaker 4: to find a different way because he didn't want to
Speaker 4: do It's a way, a better way. I like how
Speaker 4: your parts. I think it's a good way to part
Speaker 4: the I've lost the train of thought. Yeah, it's interesting,
Speaker 4: it's just the titleist. Would the equipment manufacturers like with
Speaker 4: the groove thing? They chase the grooves. All that makes
Speaker 4: them do is spend a lot of money on making
Speaker 4: better grooves, which they wouldn't have done if you had
Speaker 4: to change the rules, not as much.
Speaker 3: So they all put all.
Speaker 4: This deep research in and now we've got all these
Speaker 4: scored faces and all of these things that are within
Speaker 4: the new rules. But they actually spend more than they
Speaker 4: ever did. So stop stop trying to like stop this
Speaker 4: technology thing, and actually just ask a different question. So
Speaker 4: technology will chase different things, you know. I mean, you
Speaker 4: can obviously have rules in place you kind of crazy
Speaker 4: grooves and all that. But what I'm saying is we're
Speaker 4: only going to evolve and play and us answer the
Speaker 4: questions that we get asked. Just ask a few different questions,
Speaker 4: I think for a long period of time, and.
Speaker 1: There should be a place for events that that power
Speaker 1: is reward. There should be power events and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the US Open is the power event because the Masters
Speaker 1: and the Open champion. But it's not about higging faraway
Speaker 1: SA anymore. That's very clear. What you just said reminded me.
Speaker 1: Garrett Morrison, our managing editor, did this documentary podcast series
Speaker 1: on the ball and John Lowe. You know, he was
Speaker 1: the big fighter of the of the gutty ball, not
Speaker 1: the gutty ball, the Haskell. He because you know, dis
Speaker 1: an explosion, and he fought and fought and he got
Speaker 1: the manufacturers to agree on a certain spec and he
Speaker 1: thought he won because he said, oh, they're not going
Speaker 1: to design anything that goes further, because I've got him
Speaker 1: on the specs. And then I think like within a
Speaker 1: month of him them agreeing to these specs, they released
Speaker 1: a ball that went twenty yards further.
Speaker 4: You can't do it that way. It just doesn't work,
Speaker 4: like you know, like people are spot of than that.
Speaker 4: People are good.
Speaker 1: That's what people say is they oh, they've got restrictions.
Speaker 2: They can't.
Speaker 1: It's like every driver goes further because they figure something out.
Speaker 1: They activate it in a different little way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they figure out and they say, oh, we're
Speaker 4: at the limit now or at the limit, and no
Speaker 4: we're not. They could just keep fine and away like
Speaker 4: they were, just find it different. But no one could
Speaker 4: have pictured what Bryson's doing, you know, and he's about
Speaker 4: to go to a forty eight inch shaft and he
Speaker 4: can work that out. He's gonna hit it at three
Speaker 4: eighty like it's gonna be It's.
Speaker 3: Gonna be nuts, you know what I mean. So that's
Speaker 3: fine if someone can do that.
Speaker 4: I like the long drive stuff and people hitting it
Speaker 4: far and Bryson and the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 4: They're just all they're doing now, I'm convinced is they're
Speaker 4: answering the questions they're asked. And I think if you
Speaker 4: made it less important, did it that far, then it
Speaker 4: would be less important and you couldn't just purely win
Speaker 4: based on power. Now he's not winning based on power.
Speaker 4: It's giving him a monstrous advantage. He's still doing amazing
Speaker 4: other things, you know what I mean, to still shoot
Speaker 4: six hundred in a week. It's not just about seventy
Speaker 4: two t shots, you know, but it's and again it's
Speaker 4: not what he's doing, it's the style that he's doing it.
Speaker 4: And it's just been more attractive to see, you know,
Speaker 4: like the odd three on every now and with a
Speaker 4: bit of shape or just like half shots and like
Speaker 4: just nuances and just just different stuff. Just not the
Speaker 4: same game plan on every whole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think less formulaic.
Speaker 1: And the only way you do that is the trick
Speaker 1: people ask different questions or ask more than one question
Speaker 1: on one whole or one course. That would be you know,
Speaker 1: I think you see, like Harbortown, he had to play
Speaker 1: a completely different style.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 4: Absolutely if we played Harbortown is a per exam. If
Speaker 4: we've played Harbortown every week and every tournament, there's no
Speaker 4: chance anyone who's playing golf like that, there's no chance
Speaker 4: because you just couldn't. You can't do it, you.
Speaker 1: Know, we.
Speaker 3: Done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's and good and the variety is good.
Speaker 4: You want to have your tory Pine South, whether I
Speaker 4: mean someone like Bryson and Tiger and Dust the that
Speaker 4: Tory Pine South. It's just just there's just mega advantage
Speaker 4: or Beth Page, you know, and I like that test,
Speaker 4: But if it's every test, is that Bethpage Black Tory
Speaker 4: Pine South style test really long, just a brutal grind
Speaker 4: of long irons and stuff for most of the field,
Speaker 4: or the golf is just going to get longer and longer.
Speaker 4: People are just gonna hit it further and further. It's
Speaker 4: just all that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So you're setting up Tory next year and you don't
Speaker 1: want it to be a distance fast.
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 4: I turned the sprinkles off about two months for the tournament.
Speaker 4: But no, it's firmness is really really important. Tory in
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, by the way, I think was
Speaker 4: one of the better setups I've ever played in the
Speaker 4: US Open. That was a brilliant US Open. The cocu rough,
Speaker 4: it's the graduated the cocue stuff. It kind of sits
Speaker 4: on top, like on a like it's floating on all
Speaker 4: this kind of thatch of grass. When I'd grown up
Speaker 4: with a bit of that in Melbourne, so I kind
Speaker 4: of knew how to handle it. But if you go
Speaker 4: one groove high you got a little deep on that,
Speaker 4: the ball goes like Rory's did it east Lake, He
Speaker 4: goes nowhere. But I kind of liked it because it
Speaker 4: gave someone who worked out how to hit out it.
Speaker 3: There was a skill. It wasn't a power question. It
Speaker 3: was a skill question. Out of the rough.
Speaker 4: It's always a skill question, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: It was more about the art of hitting the hitting
Speaker 4: it out of that lie like you say, like a
Speaker 4: fly ali is the same than it was, just out
Speaker 4: and out. Whoever's the strongest can hack it out the most.
Speaker 3: And I liked that. And it was brilliant weather.
Speaker 4: Those West Coast opens, They're like seventy eight degrees every
Speaker 4: day and sunny. You know, you have the storms and
Speaker 4: you have crazy wind, and I would just go firm,
Speaker 4: the firmer, the better, really and unpredictable rough and just
Speaker 4: have at it. Boys, like if you go low, you
Speaker 4: go low, Like what's the difference, you know? And I
Speaker 4: don't think the score, I think is the one of
Speaker 4: the issues.
Speaker 3: If we just.
Speaker 4: Let people shoot what they wanted and just set up courses.
Speaker 4: How do I find the best player, who has the
Speaker 4: biggest toolkit, who's bringing more skills to this tournament?
Speaker 3: How do I find that guy? You know? How I
Speaker 3: test him mentally?
Speaker 4: How do I test his his accuracy, his shaping, his
Speaker 4: short game, his ability to make good decisions.
Speaker 3: Hit it straight, hit it long.
Speaker 4: I want to ask all those questions, you know, and
Speaker 4: find the best player there. And if it was that
Speaker 4: and whatever he shoots, he shoots, you know, then I
Speaker 4: think it's a bit easier way to set up, of
Speaker 4: course than trying to dictate a score and then working
Speaker 4: out how are you going to get them to do that?
Speaker 1: What would a for what would be score winner at
Speaker 1: Royal Melbourne, Because I think everybody that watched the President's Cup,
Speaker 1: they watched it and they were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Tiger's the best player in the world.
Speaker 3: Royal Melbourne. Yeah, well he clearly.
Speaker 2: He had all the shots.
Speaker 4: It was a question that only he could completely answer,
Speaker 4: you know, with twenty four of the best golfers in
Speaker 4: the world around he was heading older is above the rest,
Speaker 4: you know, because it was asking I mean it was tight, like,
Speaker 4: it was asking tough questions and he had the answers.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Look, if it was windy, it would be single digits.
Speaker 4: If it was dead still, I mean Ernie shot sixty
Speaker 4: there twenty years ago, so on a dead still day
Speaker 4: and he had a freaky day. Like it can be done.
Speaker 4: It's like the Masters. It's similar to the Mark. It's
Speaker 4: probably not quite as difficult as Augusta now, but it's similar.
Speaker 4: You get you would spread the field, you might get
Speaker 4: fourteen or fifteen winning it on a normal Mourther week,
Speaker 4: and you would have ten under being third, you would
Speaker 4: have five under being twelve, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: It would spread the field. It's just interesting. I just yeah,
Speaker 4: this is not a negative thing. Other than that, everything
Speaker 4: about this Brighton thing is amazingly awesome. I just think
Speaker 4: it's interesting that it's a reaction of the reaction of
Speaker 4: golf in general, of lengthening and toughening and tigerproofing was
Speaker 4: to prevent this.
Speaker 3: Day, and it actually sped it up and made it happen.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought.
Speaker 2: So funny, it just actively promoted it.
Speaker 1: You know. It's and obviously taker one of the things
Speaker 1: he did. He brought a ton of money in and
Speaker 1: anytime a ton of money comes into a sport, you're
Speaker 1: going to get more athletes and more interest in participation
Speaker 1: from young people because of the you know, the money
Speaker 1: that you can earn in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's yeah, absolutely, Tiger want to change. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he brought so much money and he made
Speaker 4: it cool too. Like when I was a kid, golf
Speaker 4: wasn't that cool. I didn't really tell all my mates
Speaker 4: at school I played golf. I kind of just played
Speaker 4: golf on the side. And then later on they said, oh,
Speaker 4: you play golf, that's cool, you know, But it was.
Speaker 4: But now it's like it's cool to be a golfer
Speaker 4: when you're seven.
Speaker 3: You know, and where like.
Speaker 4: To of golf shirts and titlist hats and stuff when
Speaker 4: you're seven, down in the engine hitting balls with the
Speaker 4: track man. I mean, that's like a normal thing now.
Speaker 4: And Tiger absolutely made it cool.
Speaker 2: You know, do you think Brace is going to win
Speaker 2: at Augusta?
Speaker 4: History probably says no, but uh, I wouldn't be surprised,
Speaker 4: you know, I wouldn't be surprised. But look, it's only
Speaker 4: two weeks since, I mean three weeks ago. Who's going
Speaker 4: to beat Dustin playing golf?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like it changes. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is just it's it's just one thing.
Speaker 4: But DJ doesn't do as well at the Masters as
Speaker 4: he probably should. You know, he's not as you would expect.
Speaker 4: As you would expect Should's a ridiculous way to say
Speaker 4: as you would expect. Masters is a different animal, Like
Speaker 4: there's there's a there's a mental question asked at the
Speaker 4: Masters that's unique to the Masters. You're it makes you
Speaker 4: nervous the course and the tournament and everything much more
Speaker 4: than the other tournament.
Speaker 3: And I think it's still still probably does the.
Speaker 4: Best of all the big tournament venues, regular tournament venues
Speaker 4: of giving you a variety of leaderboard and interesting names
Speaker 4: across like generations and stuff. I always get a couple
Speaker 4: of young guys. You'd always get that forty seven year
Speaker 4: old guy hasn't like competed anywhere else for a while,
Speaker 4: but he like does well with the Masters. He's up
Speaker 4: there and stuff that wasn't going to happen at Wingfoot right,
Speaker 4: like the but Augusta that can happen. So it's one
Speaker 4: of the harder tournaments to predict in the world, probably Masters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always a big name, but it's it is random,
Speaker 1: and I think people have been lured into thinking power
Speaker 1: is like the only thing that matters, and everybody's you know,
Speaker 1: and I think lately it's been it hasn't you know.
Speaker 1: They haven't all been power players, which is the interesting
Speaker 1: thing because everybody's.
Speaker 3: Long, what's that power plan?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 1: Like you know, your average the average PGA tour player
Speaker 1: averages two ninety six.
Speaker 2: It's insane.
Speaker 4: If you can if you can get it to two
Speaker 4: and fifteen, if you can get it to fifteen and
Speaker 4: two with a mid one or like a four or
Speaker 4: five iron year long enough, Augusta, you don't need to
Speaker 4: be much longer than that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's very long to be fair to be four or
Speaker 4: five on into fifteen. But if you need it that
Speaker 4: far you're all right. And anything above and beyond that.
Speaker 4: It'll be interesting to see where Bryson hits it, because
Speaker 4: if he actually has a good driving week, the advantage
Speaker 4: he's going to have, he's gonna be outrageous, you know.
Speaker 4: It's he's gonna be so far down the hill on two,
Speaker 4: he's going to be up the hill on eight. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be nuts. So it'll be interesting to see. But
Speaker 4: you can't be quite as cavalier. It's ironically or weirdly enough,
Speaker 4: it's wider, but you can't be probably quite as cavalier
Speaker 4: because the rough catches his ball too right at wing foot,
Speaker 4: like he can hit it as hard as he wants
Speaker 4: in a certain area. Well, it's only it's gonna it's
Speaker 4: got a backboard. The rough will stop it, Augusta. There's
Speaker 4: less of a bad board, you know, it'll keep rolling
Speaker 4: a bit like fourteen.
Speaker 3: What's he gonna do.
Speaker 4: It's just gonna go dow into the right trees and
Speaker 4: he's gonna have to shape one around the corner or
Speaker 4: there's a few other questions asked.
Speaker 3: I don't know. We'll see.
Speaker 4: It'd be fun to watch. It's gonna be a good tournament.
Speaker 4: I mean, what a golf season. Hey, Like, considering like
Speaker 4: when everything was getting canceled in March, it's like, what
Speaker 4: a disaster that's going Actually had a real golf season,
Speaker 4: A really cool.
Speaker 3: It's been amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was cool seeing Wingfoot without fans.
Speaker 1: I know that the fans would have added something, especially
Speaker 1: on Sunday.
Speaker 2: But that was the other thing.
Speaker 1: The rough caught everything around the greens at Wingfoot, and
Speaker 1: I think I think that was something that if they
Speaker 1: had if it had been shorter or rough, even the
Speaker 1: ball rolls a little further away from those greens, or
Speaker 1: it would have been I mean, you imagine having to
Speaker 1: hit a fifteen yard shot left of some of those pins,
Speaker 1: like you short sighted yourself and you're down fifteen yards away,
Speaker 1: having to hit back to those greens, it'd be disaster.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like it would be really interesting to see short
Speaker 4: grass all over wing Foot and just see if you
Speaker 4: had everything else the same as last week, but no
Speaker 4: rough and just short grays everywhere, what would the school
Speaker 4: look like?
Speaker 3: It would probably be lower, but I don't know, it
Speaker 3: would be interesting, you know.
Speaker 4: If balls would like one bounce over the back of
Speaker 4: the green and go twenty yards as supposed to be
Speaker 4: a foot over the back. You know, like you said,
Speaker 4: there's there's some maybe some smelly chip shots and stuff
Speaker 4: in some of those greens. You know, you but one
Speaker 4: bounce it over the back of the first green and
Speaker 4: it's twenty yards over the back, or you're not getting
Speaker 4: that shot on the green ever, But in the rough,
Speaker 4: it's only one yard over the back and you can
Speaker 4: kind of just flop it out. You know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. All that stuff's just interesting, just variety
Speaker 3: right on that sort of level.
Speaker 1: I think I was talking to Zach Blair about fairness
Speaker 1: and how nobody would ever say wing foot's unfair, and
Speaker 1: his theory was that because there's rough everywhere, nobody will
Speaker 1: ever say it's unfair. But at Shinnakok people will say
Speaker 1: it's unfair because the ball hit a good shot, it misses,
Speaker 1: it goes over the green, that it rolls twenty five
Speaker 1: yards away, and while it's rolling there's this psychological thing
Speaker 1: that takes over that the player just starts to thank God,
Speaker 1: this is so unfair.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's true?
Speaker 4: Well, unfair in that context is a synonym for synonym
Speaker 4: for difficult. Right at some point players it's different and difficult,
Speaker 4: and people don't like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree completely. I think.
Speaker 4: You can't say enough about firmness, and shinikok always plays
Speaker 4: firm and until that time, right, firmness and the ball
Speaker 4: not being done once it lands on the ground. The
Speaker 4: more it does once it lands on the ground, the
Speaker 4: more interesting golf games, absolutely, because the shape matters, the
Speaker 4: flight matters. You can't just fly in the middle of
Speaker 4: the green and know you've got that kind of rough
Speaker 4: at the back to just catch it from going down
Speaker 4: the hill.
Speaker 3: You've really got to it. Just it just kind of.
Speaker 4: Amplifies it, amplifies mistakes, firmness, soft conditions and rough, dumb
Speaker 4: them down, turn them. What's the what's the what's the
Speaker 4: opposite of amplify, I'd say dull, soften, Yeah, it's I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: for sure, is completely fair. Shinty Cock's completely fair if
Speaker 4: you hit the good shot. I mean it's probably not
Speaker 4: when they rolling at sixteen on the Stimmta, but rolling
Speaker 4: the eleven and Steamnute. It's like the fairest course there is,
Speaker 4: you know, which is really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I think they had the firmness last week if they're
Speaker 1: if the ball just roll, if they had more places
Speaker 1: to go, I think then you might have seen Bryson
Speaker 1: still probably wins. He did everything better than but I
Speaker 1: think you'd see you would have seen more guys with
Speaker 1: a shot, more styles with a shot. Really, and people
Speaker 1: will say, oh, Zach Johnson finished eighth, he had no chance.
Speaker 4: No, it's not about the Broston. Broston wins around anywhere
Speaker 4: at the moment, probably, but it's the it's the style
Speaker 4: of golf that's required. Is maybe less interesting than if
Speaker 4: you have a setup that lets Zack Johnson compete with Bryson,
Speaker 4: you know and everyone in between.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a bit more interesting. It's just fun.
Speaker 4: It's a fun period though, to see everyone's reactions because
Speaker 4: I think all the players are going to go home
Speaker 4: and like they're all going to be like starting to
Speaker 4: read physics books. You know, a golf machine might sell
Speaker 4: af your copy, you know what.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I think all hit the gym.
Speaker 4: They're all going to hit the gym, and they're all
Speaker 4: going to start eating, and it's gonna be interesting to
Speaker 4: see the reaction.
Speaker 2: It could ruin some people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, as you were saying to, no one's ever
Speaker 4: done this and actually made it work, like and he's
Speaker 4: actually made it work, So it could be a recipe
Speaker 4: for disaster for a lot of people, you know, because
Speaker 4: his unique que human he's such an interesting guy. As
Speaker 4: I said, he talk about attention deficit disorder, I mean,
Speaker 4: and his mind is a million miles an hour. He
Speaker 4: needs to distract his mind kind of thing when he
Speaker 4: plays guys. I said, I was for one hundred yards
Speaker 4: at the eight angh He's winning the USA. I couldn't understand.
Speaker 4: All he was doing was numbers in his book walking
Speaker 4: up the Last Fairway. This is now if you've ever
Speaker 4: got a time where you can actually put the book
Speaker 4: down as now, But he didn't.
Speaker 3: But what it is, like.
Speaker 4: It struck me is this is a way he keeps
Speaker 4: himself occupied so he doesn't think about all the bad
Speaker 4: stuff that most people think about that can happen in
Speaker 4: the situations on that He's like, Wow, the temperature is this,
Speaker 4: and the ball went this, and he'll note it down
Speaker 4: and he'll put it in his little thing. So he's
Speaker 4: distracting himself from the fact that he's actually has to
Speaker 4: win the US Open on this whole, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's genius or just it suits his personality.
Speaker 3: So I'm saying his approach.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it would suit everybody's, but certainly
Speaker 4: it's perfect for him.
Speaker 1: Hey tell me about I meaning's changed the subject. I've
Speaker 1: seen some videos on Twitter Sandy Lynx where he grew
Speaker 1: up playing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Mint, Yeah, Sandy's cool.
Speaker 4: It's right next door to Royal Melbourne, so it's kind
Speaker 4: of Sandwich next to and in between Royal Melbourne and
Speaker 4: Victoria and Sandraham all Sandy, all next to each other.
Speaker 4: And it's the public meanis city owned course that I
Speaker 4: was playing at from seven or eight, you know, all
Speaker 4: the time. In a fantastic place. But it's always been
Speaker 4: a proper muni in that they spent the bare minimum,
Speaker 4: not much staff, you know, but it was a great
Speaker 4: it Actually historically, way way back before there was like
Speaker 4: player dining and stuff at tournaments, which is not that longer.
Speaker 4: In the eighties and nineties when I was watching golf,
Speaker 4: and it's watching golf tournaments in Australia. The pros would
Speaker 4: all come play at Roal Melwyn. They'd all just walk
Speaker 4: across the road in their foot joint classics and walk
Speaker 4: up the drive out Sandy because the food.
Speaker 3: There was better than in the clubhouse.
Speaker 4: So anyway, so it's kind of got a part of
Speaker 4: a history of Peter Fowler and Peter Senior and all
Speaker 4: these old school Australian pros and Norman used to go
Speaker 4: over for lunch at Sandy, you know, like it was
Speaker 4: the thing.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Roy Melbourne got the least.
Speaker 4: These things are operated by a leasehold of the city,
Speaker 4: doesn't the city gives somebody the tender or whatever, and
Speaker 4: they operated so Roll Melbourne got the lease for fifty years.
Speaker 3: About ten or so years ago.
Speaker 4: Them and the GUP, the PGA and the Golf Australia
Speaker 4: who's our USGA are kind of centralizing there. So they
Speaker 4: put this massive multimillion dollar project to build their headquarters
Speaker 4: there and a driving range and so the driving range,
Speaker 4: which would be the home of the elite.
Speaker 2: Kis the goth Australia Kit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's magic.
Speaker 4: So they kind of lost two holes, and so they
Speaker 4: had all these ideas about they lost two holes. So
Speaker 4: they had to work out, do we want to have
Speaker 4: a twelve hole course in a past three or blah
Speaker 4: blah blah, But nah, they want an eighteen hole. So
Speaker 4: it's going to be eighteen sad Belt level holes. But
Speaker 4: I don't even know the distance, but it would be
Speaker 4: in the fives at the most. But fantastic, so much fun.
Speaker 4: I mean, want a place to learn how to play golf.
Speaker 4: Brilliant and Raw Melbourne looks after it. So the superintendent
Speaker 4: start the ground staff at Raw Melbourne. They're going to
Speaker 4: maintain sandy same greens, Sutton's mixed bent greens, the same
Speaker 4: sharp pages, the proper sand belt bunkers is the whole thing.
Speaker 4: It's really really cool. It's it's going to be a
Speaker 4: forty dollars game for everybody. You know, it's going to
Speaker 4: be brilliant. Yeah we've done it. Yeah, Michael did it mostly. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was his little baby. It's been brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I mean, and it's so deat that the club.
Speaker 1: You imagine if if in every city, like the high
Speaker 1: of the Big Club in every city had had their
Speaker 1: Muny that they had the lease at and then the
Speaker 1: State Golf Association.
Speaker 2: Worked out of there. How good, how good municipal golf
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look it's it's showing. It's it's going
Speaker 4: to be good here too, because it's kind of showing.
Speaker 4: Muni golf has always been like low budget bad just
Speaker 4: come up and like pay a bare minimum and play
Speaker 4: around a golf around a crappy place. But it's all
Speaker 4: about just being with your boys, right in the dress codes,
Speaker 4: being sensible and stuff. But there's no reason it can't
Speaker 4: be a great course right in great condition, especially in
Speaker 4: Melbourne like here, where it's relative to a lot of
Speaker 4: other plays, relatively easier to keep it in great condition
Speaker 4: than in some climates. You know, it's a perfect club.
Speaker 4: It's right next to a Royal Melbourne Victoria and it's
Speaker 4: like it just grass just grows nicely.
Speaker 3: You know. It's just one of those areas.
Speaker 4: There's no reason why it can't be at the same
Speaker 4: level as private courses, you know, for lower budgets and
Speaker 4: for access for everybody.
Speaker 3: And if I was.
Speaker 4: A beginning golfer, you're just more likely to continue the
Speaker 4: game if the courses that you play a nice you
Speaker 4: just are because it's just, oh, that was nice. It's
Speaker 4: gonna do these grasses level, isn't it? You know, all
Speaker 4: that stuff, and let you just get more into it
Speaker 4: and you become a and if the course asks you
Speaker 4: interesting questions and it's it's just a big fun field.
Speaker 4: It's not built for Bryson, you know. It's the opposite.
Speaker 4: It's the anti it's the anti constructor. It's like, this
Speaker 4: is the course for all you know, And I'd go
Speaker 4: out there for me. It would be six clubs, five clubs.
Speaker 4: You know, it'd be so much fun.
Speaker 1: It'd be the perfect place to test this theory of
Speaker 1: you know, what happens if it's five thousand yards.
Speaker 4: It would be interesting. The first week you go to
Speaker 4: a five thousand of course, everyone would hit driver under
Speaker 4: the greens on every hole. But eventually if that wasn't working,
Speaker 4: they would just evolve the way that worked the best,
Speaker 4: you know, And what does that look like? Is it
Speaker 4: looking like this?
Speaker 3: I don't know. That's what I think. It would be interesting,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: And those are the holes where you see the most
Speaker 1: changes and big changes and strategy are a lot of
Speaker 1: times like where if a pin changes, you might play
Speaker 1: it one way one day.
Speaker 2: Pin changes you play a different way another day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get those.
Speaker 4: You get if you get really firm greens and bunkers
Speaker 4: that are like right up next to the greens, and
Speaker 4: you get some really tight pins. That left pin you
Speaker 4: don't want to be on the left side coming over
Speaker 4: that bunker because it's firm and you can't stop it.
Speaker 4: So the left pin you have to be up the
Speaker 4: right hand side, and then you've got this big opening
Speaker 4: on the ryan side of the green and a slope that
Speaker 4: helps you. If you drive it up the right, it's
Speaker 4: quite an easy shot. Everybody can handle it. You drive
Speaker 4: it up the left, it's really tough. And the courses
Speaker 4: like that all the way around. So it's even at
Speaker 4: a basic level most people don't notice stuff like that.
Speaker 4: They notice it even if they're not noticing it, you know,
Speaker 4: like it gets into them a little bit. Well, you
Speaker 4: got the right on the fourth and you got the
Speaker 4: left on the fifth, and all the pins move, So
Speaker 4: I think I have for got the right today on
Speaker 4: this whole.
Speaker 2: You know, I think the events figure it out too,
Speaker 2: you know that.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is, even if they don't like they
Speaker 1: can't do it and dissect it the first time eventually
Speaker 1: if they put if you know, even a regular golfer,
Speaker 1: you know, like I've I played. I played Pinehurst number
Speaker 1: two with these like regulars, and I watched him play
Speaker 1: and it was just unbelievable, you know, Like I was,
Speaker 1: I you know, like you get paired with two randoms
Speaker 1: and you were You're not sure, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy, this guy would hit it short left on
Speaker 1: on on one hole, on eight, he would he would.
Speaker 1: He didn't even try and hit the green on eight.
Speaker 1: He hit it to short right, you know, so you
Speaker 1: could chip it right up the hill. Like it was
Speaker 1: just unbelievable to wash. Yeah, And and the guy wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known if I said, hey, can you dissect this
Speaker 1: hole somewhere else?
Speaker 2: He wouldn't have a clue. But he figured out how
Speaker 2: to play a golf hole for him.
Speaker 1: And he was a twenty five handicap older guy that
Speaker 1: hit it low, and you know, but he figured out
Speaker 1: how to play Pineher's number two.
Speaker 4: We're always going to gravitate to the path of laser resistance, right,
Speaker 4: whether we know when, we're always going to go to
Speaker 4: that gravitate to the the way that works for us
Speaker 4: the best, whether we know we're doing it or not,
Speaker 4: because it's just human nature, you know. We find the
Speaker 4: easy way. Yeah, and if you ask different questions on
Speaker 4: every whole, it takes longer for people to work that out.
Speaker 4: But I think it's it's fun to watch it get
Speaker 4: worked out, you know, in a variety of ways.
Speaker 2: And that would be the way you tied.
Speaker 1: Like everybody's complaining about, like it's unrelatable, But all Bryson
Speaker 1: did was he found the path of least resistance for himself.
Speaker 4: He's found the line of charm, which is now not
Speaker 4: the line that used to be, you know, like the
Speaker 4: line of charm has changed, and he's found it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So it's just it's just yeah, I can't say
Speaker 4: enough about how impressive it is. I mean, it's nuts,
Speaker 4: but yes, Andy's fun. Short little munis I think are
Speaker 4: a great accessible, good condition, high quality kind of approachable
Speaker 4: courses at a reasonable price. Every city should have multiple,
Speaker 4: you know. I think it's too much private golf in
Speaker 4: the world. Pro private grouse obviously, right, but some of
Speaker 4: the best courses in the world are effectively like public
Speaker 4: access courses, you know. And it's but the trouble is
Speaker 4: they're either crappy condition and crappy or their pebble beach
Speaker 4: and they're five hundred bucks.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no there's less middle ground, you know.
Speaker 4: And I think that what a service to your citizens
Speaker 4: if you're like a city or a like a state,
Speaker 4: that you can provide public playing fields that are great
Speaker 4: for people to play the sport. What a great addition
Speaker 4: to a city, you know.
Speaker 3: And Standy's is a sign of that.
Speaker 4: You know, they're disappearing all around the world, and this
Speaker 4: one's actually improving, which is a nice side.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: All right, we're wrapping it there with exhausted the subject matter,
Speaker 1: so thanks for coming on. I'm sure it was pretty
Speaker 1: cool to watch us up and at wink Foot and
Speaker 1: well we'll hopefully talk to you soon here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I loved that. It was great. It was
Speaker 3: I wish I could have been there, but.
Speaker 4: I wasn't gonna be able to compete with that at
Speaker 4: any level if I was playing, So it was fun
Speaker 4: to watch.
Speaker 3: From here for sure.
Speaker 2: All right, talk to you soon, I guess.
Speaker 3: Cheers man,