Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 1: In a bried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Egg, Frida Egg, Bride egg Lie,
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and my
Speaker 1: guest today is Shane Bacon. Shane is the host of
Speaker 1: the excellent podcast Get a Grip, a friend of the
Speaker 1: Friday Egg, and now a children's book author. Shane's new
Speaker 1: book is called The Golfer's Zoo. It was published by
Speaker 1: back nine Press and you can order it right now.
Speaker 1: So Shane and I are going to talk about this
Speaker 1: book and about the occasionally fraught relationship between parenting and golf.
Speaker 1: But I also thought we'd discuss Shane's background in writing.
Speaker 1: He actually got his start in golf media as a blogger,
Speaker 1: and he has some interesting takes on how the media
Speaker 1: landscape has shifted in the past fifteen years or so. Now.
Speaker 1: Shane is the first of a few book authors we're
Speaker 1: planning to have on the podcast in November and December.
Speaker 1: I figure it's getting cold outside in a lot of places,
Speaker 1: golf season is winding down, and it's a good time
Speaker 1: to bring some new books into your life. So we'll
Speaker 1: give you a few different options over the next couple
Speaker 1: of months. All right with that, let's go to Shane Bacon.
Speaker 2: This is, you know, kind of middle of the book
Speaker 2: is when I get a little I get a little
Speaker 2: frisky with the book and I try to take a
Speaker 2: little digs. It's some of the moms and dads that
Speaker 2: are potentially reading to their kids that aren't the best golfers.
Speaker 2: Golf uses animal terms like eagle and birdie and holes
Speaker 2: that are dog legs, move left or right. On the
Speaker 2: seventh and eighth lives a family of owl's who ask
Speaker 2: who with some serious fright And you can see, uh,
Speaker 2: you can see the beautiful A V L illustration there
Speaker 2: with the al He just crushed it. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, that's pretty surreal to continue to kind of
Speaker 2: look at it and see this thing actually in hand.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've only Garrett, I've only had this in
Speaker 2: hand for like four days. So to uh get an
Speaker 2: opportunity to like see it and actually read it out
Speaker 2: loud to you. You're the first person I've read this
Speaker 2: book to as I've opened it up. I just want
Speaker 2: you to know that.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, so you haven't read this to your
Speaker 1: kids yet.
Speaker 2: So my my my wife did, uh my wife when
Speaker 2: we got the book.
Speaker 1: Yes, I saw you tweeted about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my wife. My wife grabbed a
Speaker 2: copy and she went and laid on the bed and
Speaker 2: I went in there and sat with them. And I
Speaker 2: think it's, you know, I live in a in a
Speaker 2: in a world where I'm supposed to enjoy the spotlight
Speaker 2: being on me, you know. I mean, it's it's part
Speaker 2: of being you know, up front on TV and in
Speaker 2: the media and those types of things. And I don't
Speaker 2: believe I'm the most comfortable with the spotlight on me.
Speaker 2: I mean, even in those kind of personal moments where
Speaker 2: you know, we have the book that I wrote and
Speaker 2: reading it to my son. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: my wife knew to be proactive and grab it and
Speaker 2: go read it to Henry for the first time. But
Speaker 2: that was that was one of those moments, you know,
Speaker 2: as a professional or as a journalist or whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it, that I'm going to remember for
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet all right. So first of all, maybe
Speaker 1: just give me an overview of what the book is about.
Speaker 1: It's called The Golfer Zoo. What's the basic premise here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So wrote a children's golf book called The Golfer Zoo.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned, I've been working on it for about
Speaker 2: the past year with the Back Nine Press group. Jim
Speaker 2: and his team are awesome and they've done a great
Speaker 2: job of helping me, you know, navigate a world that
Speaker 2: I don't quite understand. You know, I'd never published a
Speaker 2: book before. I was, you know, I'm in the golf world.
Speaker 2: I get a lot of golf stuff sent to me.
Speaker 2: I was shocked at how little amount of golf books
Speaker 2: there were for kids. And so when I would take Henry,
Speaker 2: who's my three and a half year old son, when
Speaker 2: I would take Henry to the golf course, and Henry's
Speaker 2: not into golf yet. He doesn't I cut down golf
Speaker 2: clubs for him. He doesn't care. I have a putting
Speaker 2: green in my backyard. He lays on it and plays
Speaker 2: on it, but he doesn't quite care about the golf
Speaker 2: part of it yet. When we would go to the
Speaker 2: golf course, he was obsessed with the animals. And this
Speaker 2: actually all kind of derived from a conversation I had
Speaker 2: with Joel Klatt years ago about how Joel got his
Speaker 2: boys into golf. He's got three sons. He said, he
Speaker 2: would go to the golf course, they'd play a hole
Speaker 2: as golf, and then they would play a hole whatever
Speaker 2: the kids wanted to do. And a lot of the
Speaker 2: time it was go to the pond and look at
Speaker 2: the turtles, or go throw rocks in the water and
Speaker 2: see if the fish moved. And so when those types
Speaker 2: of things were floating in my brain, I thought about
Speaker 2: the zoo that is the golf course. I mean, every
Speaker 2: region of the world, every region of our country has
Speaker 2: different animals that live on the golf course. You can
Speaker 2: see snakes if you're in Arizona, you can see alligators
Speaker 2: if you're in Florida. There are a lot of different
Speaker 2: types of animals. And we were in Montana a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago for a wedding, and I mean, i am
Speaker 2: I'm head on a swivel looking for bear. I'm just
Speaker 2: like hoping to see a bear at some point in
Speaker 2: the golf course. So that's where it started from. The
Speaker 2: idea is mom and Dad go to the golf course.
Speaker 2: They leave the kids at home. What are they going
Speaker 2: to do? And the whole idea of the book is
Speaker 2: to open up this world that is the golfer Zoo,
Speaker 2: which is a golf course, but really it's a habitat
Speaker 2: for animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like to that emphasis. And you know there's
Speaker 1: a golf as an experience of nature. Is something that's
Speaker 1: kind of cool to introduce to kids. But also it
Speaker 1: fits with the genre of a children's book, right. Many
Speaker 1: children's books are kind of these taxonomies of animals, so
Speaker 1: there's sort of a fit there with the genre of
Speaker 1: the book. Kids are interested in hearing about animals.
Speaker 2: They love animals. You asked me to kind of think
Speaker 2: about my three books, my favorite children's books. We'll get
Speaker 2: to in a bit, and it was interesting. I figured
Speaker 2: when you asked me that question, I would go animal
Speaker 2: heavy because I like reading about animals. My son loves
Speaker 2: animal books. You'll hear later that it is a different
Speaker 2: direction actually are the ones I picked. But it's an
Speaker 2: easy way to introduce people to things, especially kids. They
Speaker 2: love animals. They love all sorts of animals, they love
Speaker 2: pictures of animals, and our illustrator Reviel. I mean the
Speaker 2: stuff he did with this book and some of the
Speaker 2: imagery he did. I mean, there's there's an image you'll
Speaker 2: see in the book if you buy it where they're
Speaker 2: reaching into a pond, and the illustration is from the
Speaker 2: pond up, so it's from basically in the water up
Speaker 2: seeing the hands come in with the fish in the water.
Speaker 2: I mean the golf course is I mean it literally
Speaker 2: is a park, you know. I mean not the Malcolm
Speaker 2: Gladwell level of park where he wants to bulldoz every
Speaker 2: golf course and make it a park. But golf courses
Speaker 2: are parks. I mean they're animals that live there. You know,
Speaker 2: every superintendent, Garrett, have you ever met a superintendent that
Speaker 2: didn't have one or two dogs on the golf cart
Speaker 2: driving around like this is a part of the experience
Speaker 2: of going to a golf course. As you see birds,
Speaker 2: you see turtles, you see snakes, you see deer. That's
Speaker 2: part of what you do. You take pictures of these
Speaker 2: things when I play golf. Now I am taking pictures
Speaker 2: more of the animals I see on the golf course
Speaker 2: to show Henry later on that I am actually the
Speaker 2: golf holes that I'm.
Speaker 1: Playing, yeah, And we love animal content here at the
Speaker 1: Frida Egg. We talk about it all the time with
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour telecasts. You know, whenever there's an alligator
Speaker 1: on the golf course and a golfer interacts with it,
Speaker 1: that's golden content right there. So we've concentrated that in
Speaker 1: this book here. You mentioned that I asked you to
Speaker 1: think about books that you have enjoyed reading to your kids. Now,
Speaker 1: now you have two kids, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: I have a three and a half year old son
Speaker 2: and a seven month daughter. Seven month old daughter.
Speaker 1: Great, Okay, so you are in the thick of it
Speaker 1: right now. My friend, I have two kids as well,
Speaker 1: but they're a little bit older. They're eight and five,
Speaker 1: so we're out of the woods a bit. So all
Speaker 1: respect to what you're going through at the moment, But
Speaker 1: in any case, I asked you to think about books
Speaker 1: that you have enjoyed reading to your kids. And I guess,
Speaker 1: in particular, your son at three and a half is
Speaker 1: going to be getting into different types of books at
Speaker 1: this point, So what what have you read to them
Speaker 1: that you've enjoyed.
Speaker 2: So the one animal book that I picked was good
Speaker 2: Night Farm. I love good Night Farm, classic book, very
Speaker 2: easy to read, a lot of animals involved. Henry's a
Speaker 2: big fan, so good Night Farm kind of popped through
Speaker 2: my mind when you asked that question a couple of
Speaker 2: days ago. They're okay. The one thing that I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed doing when I read books to Henry is we
Speaker 2: have a lot of Doctor Seuss books, kind of passed
Speaker 2: on from my sisters that you know that have older
Speaker 2: children now, and I find it almost like work practice
Speaker 2: to read Doctor Seuss books. I have like personal challenges
Speaker 2: of like no mistakes, you know, as I'm reading the
Speaker 2: entirety of a Doctor Seuss book, don't mess one thing up,
Speaker 2: because I feel like Doctor Seuss tried to mess you
Speaker 2: up as you're reading it. And the one that's the
Speaker 2: hardest for me is there's a Walket in my pocket,
Speaker 2: and so I pull that book a lot. When Henry
Speaker 2: asks for Doctor Seuss, which he's been asking for more
Speaker 2: lately than if I go with Walking in my Pocket,
Speaker 2: I know it's going to be a real test for
Speaker 2: me to get through the entire book without screwing up something,
Speaker 2: because basically doctor Seuss was trying to get you tongue tied, right,
Speaker 2: So that's number two. I love that book. I think
Speaker 2: doctor Seuss is an absolute genius, especially going through this
Speaker 2: process of trying to rhyme things and to see how
Speaker 2: unbelievably easy he made it seem not that easy, by
Speaker 2: the way. And then Goodnight, good Night Construction Site is third.
Speaker 2: Henry loves it one of our go tos. He's really
Speaker 2: into trucks, has been into trucks for the last couple
Speaker 2: of years and so that's an easy one because he
Speaker 2: likes to get into it. And then honorable mention is
Speaker 2: The Big Book of Trucks. If you can see a
Speaker 2: theme here. Henry likes trucks a lot. The Big Book
Speaker 2: of Trucks simply because Henry now reads that book to me,
Speaker 2: which is a when you start to transition from me
Speaker 2: reading the book to him to him reading it to me.
Speaker 2: A little less work on dad's end.
Speaker 1: That's always a delightful moment when the kid knows the
Speaker 1: book well enough to read it to you. But beware,
Speaker 1: at some point the kids are going to want to
Speaker 1: read on their own, and that is a that is
Speaker 1: a bit of a sad moment because you just feel like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what's my purpose here?
Speaker 2: We had a Garrett. Garrett, we had a moment. So
Speaker 2: so my mom, who is just the most lovely human
Speaker 2: that exists, comes out quite a bit to help out
Speaker 2: and to be around the kids. You know, we don't
Speaker 2: have any family up in Connecticut, so when we need
Speaker 2: somebody to come up and watch, we typically reach out
Speaker 2: to either my mom or Cindy's parents first and foremost.
Speaker 2: And my mom got Henry a bus not too long ago,
Speaker 2: probably a year ago, and Henry called it Nana bus, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's Nana and it's the bus that Nana
Speaker 2: got her. And the other day he was playing with
Speaker 2: the bus. And now he's three and a half and
Speaker 2: he just called it a bus. And I heard. I'm
Speaker 2: listening to my wife and Henry interacted in another room
Speaker 2: and Cindy goes, no, no, that's Nana bus. And he goes, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's just a bus. And like my heart, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no no. This is for
Speaker 2: the for the rest of eternity. This is supposed to
Speaker 2: be Nana bus. And when you start to hit those
Speaker 2: moments as a parent, when you don't, they don't. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter to the kid, right, I mean, it's not
Speaker 2: emotional for the kid, but to you, it's literally hearing
Speaker 2: your child grow up. Those are those are moments that
Speaker 2: I don't know if I love the moment or if
Speaker 2: it's just part of it. But I'm not gonna be excited,
Speaker 2: Garrett about the moment when they want to read the
Speaker 2: books alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. No, you know, listen, you fool,
Speaker 1: this is just a bus. I realize that this is
Speaker 1: a buss. There are Yeah, there are so many stages
Speaker 1: like that where the magic just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: the innocence kind of gradually goes away. But it's a
Speaker 1: long process. So you've still you've still got got a
Speaker 1: lot of time from three and a half forward. So
Speaker 1: you've mentioned a couple of times the illustrations in the book.
Speaker 1: The words are obviously yours, but the illustrations are by
Speaker 1: an artist named Avl basel Am I pronouncing.
Speaker 2: That right, Yep, yep, that's good.
Speaker 1: So what went into the process of creating those illustrations.
Speaker 1: Did you communicate with Avil and kind of come up
Speaker 1: with ideas and things like that. I've always wondered how
Speaker 1: that works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. That was probably the hardest process, Garrett,
Speaker 2: to be honest, with you was to find the right illustrator.
Speaker 2: I mean we reached out to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: We kind of first reached out to golf artists, you know,
Speaker 2: people in and around the golf space, and you know,
Speaker 2: some guys didn't and girls didn't have enough time or
Speaker 2: they'd never done something like that. And as we were
Speaker 2: getting closer and closer, because we wanted to release the
Speaker 2: book before the holidays to give people an opportunity to
Speaker 2: buy it as a holiday gift for anybody in and
Speaker 2: around their family. And so as we were kind of
Speaker 2: getting closer and closer to crunch time, Jim and I
Speaker 2: basically went into a list of illustrators that have done
Speaker 2: stuff like this before. And you know, Eviel's international, I mean,
Speaker 2: he's not an American illustrator. We weren't totally sure what
Speaker 2: we were going to get when he started to send.
Speaker 2: So what happens is you give notes on what you want,
Speaker 2: and you send the copy and then they send like sketches.
Speaker 2: I mean they're black and white sketches, basically penciled out sketches.
Speaker 2: And the first one we got it was like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is it, no brainer. He gets it. He knows
Speaker 2: what we want to do. He you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: these are beautiful. I can't wait to see what they're
Speaker 2: gonna look like in color. And so it was a
Speaker 2: couple of two or three months of finding the right person.
Speaker 2: But like I said, the first basically one page back
Speaker 2: that we got was a win. And you know, I mean, listen,
Speaker 2: you write a children's book, and it's important, but the
Speaker 2: illustrations are way more important than the words on the page.
Speaker 2: And he, as I said, I mean to say, he
Speaker 2: knocked it out of the park. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: like shooting fifty two. I mean, it was perfection. It
Speaker 2: looks so you know, it just looks so professional. You
Speaker 2: haven't I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know
Speaker 2: I really know what I'm doing in life in general. Right,
Speaker 2: It's basically doing a book is like being a parent.
Speaker 2: You start out and you have guides and you've seen
Speaker 2: people do it before. You're like, oh, this guy wrote
Speaker 2: a book, I can write a book. Or this girl
Speaker 2: wrote a book. I can do it. If they can
Speaker 2: do it. This person's a parent, they have three kids,
Speaker 2: their kids are alive, Like, surely I can follow along
Speaker 2: and hammer out and make sure my kids aren't going
Speaker 2: to be too screwed up. But you know, once you
Speaker 2: start to get into the thick of it, you have
Speaker 2: to learn day by day and to try to figure
Speaker 2: it out yourself. And so to see it kind of
Speaker 2: come to life. And the way it did from his
Speaker 2: illustrations was, you know, a special a thing as I've
Speaker 2: done in my profession at this point.
Speaker 1: What made you say to yourself? You know, I have
Speaker 1: this busy TV career, I have a popular podcast, active
Speaker 1: social media presence. You know, we know how much time
Speaker 1: goes into dealing with people on the internet. What made
Speaker 1: you say, what I really need right now is to
Speaker 1: write a children's book?
Speaker 2: How did you?
Speaker 1: How did you get to that point?
Speaker 2: It was it was a kick in the ass for
Speaker 2: my wife, honestly. I mean, I'm one of those people,
Speaker 2: like so many out there, that have a lot of ideas,
Speaker 2: throw them out there, write them in a notes app,
Speaker 2: but don't always execute them. And it was kind of
Speaker 2: my wife saying, let's you've been talking about this for
Speaker 2: a while, why don't you do it right? And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I mean I was doing it
Speaker 2: over the last year. You know, our summers at Golf
Speaker 2: Channel are the busiest time of year with the major
Speaker 2: championships that we have and just basically the golf, you know,
Speaker 2: back to back to back, So it's very busy. I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of this stuff is notations on the
Speaker 2: road or emails on flights. But I've realized in my
Speaker 2: life as I've gotten older, is if I'm not pushing
Speaker 2: myself to try new stuff that I get I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's depressed, but I definitely noticed that I
Speaker 2: get a little down, and so I'm always trying to
Speaker 2: kind of look at new things to do. I mean,
Speaker 2: it might be a new workout, you know, it might
Speaker 2: be going and doing something at the gym I've never done.
Speaker 2: Maybe I've been chipping a lot one handed lately. Shout
Speaker 2: out Fred Couples. I've been shooting chipping one handed, just
Speaker 2: to try and see because I actually think I might
Speaker 2: be a better chiper one handed, especially in and around
Speaker 2: the greens. But it was just a push. It was
Speaker 2: trying out something different, to see how it would go,
Speaker 2: to see if it could make any sense, to see
Speaker 2: if I could actually execute it. I think that was
Speaker 2: one of the main reasons to try to get it
Speaker 2: kind of wedged in the schedule. As you mentioned.
Speaker 1: Was there partly a desire here to use the book
Speaker 1: to explain golf to your own kids? Is something that
Speaker 1: you had kind of thought about before writing the book,
Speaker 1: like how do I describe to my children what I'm
Speaker 1: devoting my life to.
Speaker 2: I think it was a hope of, you know, at
Speaker 2: least sparking some sort of interest. You know, I mentioned
Speaker 2: to you that Henry's not a big golfer. He hasn't
Speaker 2: gotten into it yet. He hadn't got hooked like my
Speaker 2: buddy Ashton. I mean his son Max, similar age. I
Speaker 2: think Max is three months older on the dot to Henry,
Speaker 2: and I mean Max has this beautiful swing and it
Speaker 2: looks great. And I mean Ashton was an incredible golfer.
Speaker 2: You know, he's my four back partner and played professional
Speaker 2: golf for a while. But I see, you know Max,
Speaker 2: and of course, as you know, I mean, you always
Speaker 2: compare your kids to other kids, right, just like we
Speaker 2: compare ourselves to other people. And I just wanted some
Speaker 2: sort of hook. It's not that you have to be
Speaker 2: obsessed with golf, but to maybe show a little bit
Speaker 2: of interest in going back to the golf course. And
Speaker 2: I think that was my hope with the book was
Speaker 2: maybe there's a kid or two out there that their
Speaker 2: parents read him the book and then they asked to
Speaker 2: go to the golf course with mom and dad. And
Speaker 2: if that's the hope, you know, we hear the term
Speaker 2: growth the game lot. I'm never really in the growth
Speaker 2: of game business. I mean, I hope people like golf,
Speaker 2: and I hope people find golf, and I hope people
Speaker 2: love golf the way I love golf. My hope with
Speaker 2: this book is that it sparks some imagination inside children
Speaker 2: to where maybe they'll want to go to the golf
Speaker 2: course once or twice with mom and dad. And of
Speaker 2: those kids, if five of them take up the game,
Speaker 2: then I feel like it's a win.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, when your kids came along. So
Speaker 1: this book is about parents who go out to play
Speaker 1: golf and right sort of describing it to the child
Speaker 1: that they have left at home to go do this,
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious about whether when your kids came along,
Speaker 1: whether your relationship to playing golf changed absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, I actually wrote about this in the Golfers Journal,
Speaker 2: you know about kind of navigating Garrett. You know this
Speaker 2: when you work and live in the golf space, and
Speaker 2: I've been doing golf media for quite a while and
Speaker 2: I know we're going to get into that in a bit.
Speaker 2: I've been in golf for a long time and I've
Speaker 2: seen so many iterations of golf, from caddy into playing,
Speaker 2: you know, to now working in it day to day,
Speaker 2: and your love can fade a little bit. I mean
Speaker 2: your love in terms of winning, go to the golf course,
Speaker 2: wanting to go out and practice. I mean that's something
Speaker 2: that I'm really really lacking in in terms of dedicating
Speaker 2: my time to my actual golf game. Is I think
Speaker 2: there was a level of trying to get me back
Speaker 2: into it a little bit, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: my next iteration of golf. I mean I went from
Speaker 2: junior golfer that wanted to play collegiate golf to amateur
Speaker 2: golfer that wanted to play professional golf, to a professional
Speaker 2: golfer that didn't realize that he was good enough to
Speaker 2: do that for a living, to back to amateur golf.
Speaker 2: Right now, it's competing in mid AM's and trying to
Speaker 2: qualify for USGA Championships and things like that. You know,
Speaker 2: my future in golf is going to be golf with
Speaker 2: my kids, and if it's not Henry, I think it's
Speaker 2: going to be Charlotte. Charlotte will sit on the putt
Speaker 2: and green and watch me putt. She'll watch the ball
Speaker 2: leave my putter and go in the hole or miss,
Speaker 2: and then she'll watch it come back. Right. I can
Speaker 2: tell that there's a little bit more interest in her
Speaker 2: eyes than I think there were was in Henry's eyes
Speaker 2: at that age. And so I think my whole future
Speaker 2: of golf is going to be golfing with my children.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, maybe this was the first step in
Speaker 2: that next chapter of what golf's going to look like
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean for me, it was really useful to
Speaker 1: read the book and kind of imagine a conversation with
Speaker 1: kids about why I'm going to play golf, Why I'm
Speaker 1: leaving for five hours exactly to go play this game, right,
Speaker 1: because you know, one of the things that I dealt
Speaker 1: with when I had kids was the sense of guilt
Speaker 1: when I would leave to play golf totally, you know,
Speaker 1: and I still have not completely resolved this, and frankly
Speaker 1: it got worse during the pandemic when everybody else was
Speaker 1: returning to the golf course. I played less than I
Speaker 1: I think I have ever played, because there was never
Speaker 1: a good moment for me. I felt like to stand
Speaker 1: up and say, all right, see you later, kids, I'm
Speaker 1: going to play a game for five hours. I'll be
Speaker 1: back after that. But you're you're on your own with
Speaker 1: mom in the meantime, or you know, I mean post pandemic.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe mom will go with me and then we'll
Speaker 1: get a babysitter. But that's still like a tough thing
Speaker 1: to communicate. Why am I doing this? But the way
Speaker 1: that golf is portrayed in this book is that it's
Speaker 1: a kind of healthy, regenerative visit to nature, right, and
Speaker 1: that is that is something that's useful. It's not just
Speaker 1: a selfish game that you're playing. There is there is
Speaker 1: something that you know golf does for people that is important,
Speaker 1: and communicating that to kids that you're leaving behind to
Speaker 1: go do this is important as well.
Speaker 2: Well. First things first, Garrett, I got to say, I
Speaker 2: think this might be the first conversation I've ever had
Speaker 2: with somebody about that golf guilt that you talked about,
Speaker 2: because I feel it so much, you know, anytime I leave.
Speaker 2: I went to Southampton on Saturday this past Saturday. You know,
Speaker 2: in Long Island is a two hour drive each way
Speaker 2: for me. Right, So my buddy Ryan and I, you know,
Speaker 2: get in the car at eight in the morning or
Speaker 2: seven in the morning for a ten thirty tea time.
Speaker 2: You know, we're driving over there. We're playing golf bucket
Speaker 2: list golf course. For me, I'd never played it before.
Speaker 2: Super excited to go over there and do that. You know,
Speaker 2: you sit around after then you drive home and I'm
Speaker 2: home and I barely saw my kids all day. I
Speaker 2: mean I got to see Henry as he was going
Speaker 2: to bed, right, And so I've basically lost an entire
Speaker 2: day as a dad, you know, in my That's kind
Speaker 2: of how I look at it at times. And it's
Speaker 2: such a hard balance for me because I want to
Speaker 2: go play golf. I want to go experience these places.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I don't like losing days
Speaker 2: with my kids, you know, I don't like I don't
Speaker 2: like having an entire day and entire Saturday where I
Speaker 2: don't see Charlotte and Henry. Right. And so I didn't
Speaker 2: know that was the thing everybody else felt. I didn't
Speaker 2: know that that guilt out there is like a thing
Speaker 2: that a lot of parents feel and it's the same
Speaker 2: reason why. And I know it's like a joke, and
Speaker 2: it's a joke on social media, but the whole wives
Speaker 2: getting mad at their husbands for being obsessed and wanting
Speaker 2: to go play golf. But I understand it because it's
Speaker 2: not four hours. It's six hours, right, and if you've
Speaker 2: got to drive somewhere, it's eight hours. I mean it
Speaker 2: is an entire day for the most part, depending on
Speaker 2: when the tea time is. And so yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I think in a way, you know, the whole idea
Speaker 2: behind the Golfer Zoo is reminding people that it's not
Speaker 2: just golf, that it's a great walk, it's camaraderie. It's
Speaker 2: experiencing things with somebody that you love. You know, in
Speaker 2: terms of this book, it's a husband and wife going
Speaker 2: out to the golf course. But you know, even going
Speaker 2: out with a good group of friends, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, getting a chance to be a part of
Speaker 2: the Friday eg event at S six a month and
Speaker 2: a half ago or something. I mean, play it an
Speaker 2: entire day with Andy, you know, Andy's a good buddy
Speaker 2: of mine. I mean, playing an entire day at golf
Speaker 2: with Andy It's more than a round of golf, right,
Speaker 2: It's more than a day at golf. It's getting a
Speaker 2: chance to spend hours on the golf course or hours
Speaker 2: walk in a park with the friend of yours you
Speaker 2: don't get to catch up with much, So you know,
Speaker 2: in those instances, I feel less guilty. But to just
Speaker 2: go play in the money game on Friday, I feel
Speaker 2: the guilt. I feel that parental guilt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got to make it worth it somehow, but
Speaker 1: I guess that, you know, you just have to get
Speaker 1: to a point or speaking for myself, I have to
Speaker 1: get to a point where I say, you know, it's
Speaker 1: okay to do this. It's it's okay to go spend
Speaker 1: a big portion of the day doing something that is
Speaker 1: you know, healthy for me and and you know makes
Speaker 1: me kind of feel better and feel more ready to
Speaker 1: come back home and really be present and value my
Speaker 1: time there. But I'm not sure I've totally worked through
Speaker 1: golf guilt myself, and so I was just curious to
Speaker 1: hear where you're at in this process. I mean, your
Speaker 1: kids are younger than mine, so you know, this is
Speaker 1: an even kind of fresher question for you. But do
Speaker 1: you feel like you've kind of gotten better over time
Speaker 1: of you know, sort of saying like, there's the golf
Speaker 1: part of my life, and there's the part of my
Speaker 1: life where I'm a parent and I don't have to
Speaker 1: be a parent all the time time, you know, every
Speaker 1: single hour of the day. Sometimes I can go do
Speaker 1: something that's that's kind of more for myself.
Speaker 2: I haven't gotten totally there yet, but I definitely understand
Speaker 2: the point of in a way, almost forgiving yourself for
Speaker 2: wanting to go have fun alone. Right, I'm going to
Speaker 2: go do something I want to go do. It's not selfish.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the time that term floats around,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, golf can feel very selfish when
Speaker 2: you go do it without anybody in your family or
Speaker 2: anybody involved in and around. You know, you're four or
Speaker 2: five hours out on the golf course. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, it's something that I love and it's something
Speaker 2: that I want to go do. You know, for me, Garrett,
Speaker 2: the thing that I've noticed over the last couple of
Speaker 2: years is the most fun experiences I have on the
Speaker 2: golf course, It's not golf course, it's not my play,
Speaker 2: it's the three other people in the group, and so
Speaker 2: I've noticed that I'm way more interested in playing those
Speaker 2: rounds of golf when it's gonna be with like true
Speaker 2: groups of friends of mine, you know. I mean this year,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, what is it, November three? I mean
Speaker 2: this year, some of the most fun rounds I've had
Speaker 2: were up in Montana. My buddy Russy got married a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago. I was playing with Rusty and my
Speaker 2: dad and then another good friend of ours and Rusty's,
Speaker 2: you know, my best friend in the world, and playing
Speaker 2: golf with my dad. I mean, we're playing with rental clubs,
Speaker 2: like regular shafted whippie rental clubs, And those were some
Speaker 2: of the rounds I'll remember the most from the year
Speaker 2: because the people involved were the reason that I had
Speaker 2: so much fun out on the golf course. I didn't
Speaker 2: see a bear by the way, which is a bummer,
Speaker 2: but I mean Russy's beard was as gnarly enough to
Speaker 2: where it might have looked like a one, you know,
Speaker 2: But I I just that's when I don't feel as guilty.
Speaker 2: I think is when I'm out there, you know, walking
Speaker 2: for four hours with people that I love, you know,
Speaker 2: with people that I want to be around and with
Speaker 2: people that I call my close community. I think that's
Speaker 2: when the guilt goes away the most.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess that that is part of how
Speaker 1: you can work towards a relationship with golf that is
Speaker 1: even better post kids than it was before, because you know,
Speaker 1: before I had kids, I could just go do anything
Speaker 1: with my day and not really think about it, not
Speaker 1: really think about the opportunity cost of going spending a
Speaker 1: day doing something completely useless.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about that when before I had kids.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a way in which having kids
Speaker 1: in your life makes you value time a bit more
Speaker 1: and ask yourself, is what I'm doing today worth it?
Speaker 1: And if you can make the golf worth it through
Speaker 1: this social aspect that you're talking about or something else,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can make those experiences really
Speaker 1: kind of intense and valuable, then your golfing life kind
Speaker 1: of improves even Yeah.
Speaker 2: The sleeping the sleeping dragon here about this whole conversation
Speaker 2: is obviously what you and I are both hitting at
Speaker 2: is the fact that our golf games are not nearly
Speaker 2: as good as they used to be because we're not
Speaker 2: or never playing or never practicing listen, Hane, you had
Speaker 2: a golf game to lose.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you, you were a really great golf
Speaker 1: and remain a very very good golfer. I have never
Speaker 1: been a particularly good golfer.
Speaker 2: I played, uh, I mean, I played so bad at Southampton.
Speaker 2: I was so excited to go play golf and you
Speaker 2: know you it's it's interesting. I was. I was trying
Speaker 2: to explain this to to Cindy one day about when
Speaker 2: you're in the golf space and when you when you
Speaker 2: live in this world of like media and you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say being known, but you know,
Speaker 2: being a notable human that does golf media. Right, Whoever
Speaker 2: you're playing with for the first time is expecting something
Speaker 2: out of your golf game, and so you're really never
Speaker 2: having a quote unquote casual round. And again, I think
Speaker 2: there's a level of those casual rounds being so exciting
Speaker 2: when you do play with your buddies that know you
Speaker 2: and know your golf game and play it like golf
Speaker 2: with you. But when you're just going and playing with
Speaker 2: somebody that you might never play with again, there are expectations,
Speaker 2: even if you don't want them to exist, right, even
Speaker 2: if I want to show and go, Hey, I haven't
Speaker 2: played golf in a month. They're wanting to see long
Speaker 2: drives and birdies and a low score. And when you
Speaker 2: can't quite provide that, even if they don't mention it
Speaker 2: at all, you feel it internally. So I think lowering
Speaker 2: those expectations is something I'm still struggling with in golf, is,
Speaker 2: you know, finding what is my golf game? Now? You
Speaker 2: know what am I expecting to get out of this
Speaker 2: when I go out on the golf course, Because for
Speaker 2: so long, and to your point, pre kids, the entirety
Speaker 2: of my happiness on the golf course before I had
Speaker 2: kids was what I shot, you know, I mean, was
Speaker 2: it a good round or a bad round? And that
Speaker 2: was all I thought about. I didn't really think about
Speaker 2: much else besides my selfishness and what I'm going out
Speaker 2: there and executing an accomplishment as a golfer. And now
Speaker 2: a lot of that has flipped, and I'm still trying
Speaker 2: to understand what that is.
Speaker 1: It's probably a loss of consistency when it comes to
Speaker 1: your playing ability, right, Shane, Because yeah, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that you still have days when you shoot in the sixties,
Speaker 1: but there are other days when it might go the
Speaker 1: other direction. And so there's it's it's hard to know
Speaker 1: what to expect when when you're not practicing and when
Speaker 1: you don't play very often, it's hard to know what
Speaker 1: to expect from your golf game. And I guess that
Speaker 1: part of what you know, part of what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do at the Fried Egg is give people a
Speaker 1: way to enjoy golf when they're not focusing on their games,
Speaker 1: when they're not focusing on getting better, you know, go
Speaker 1: enjoy golf course architecture. I suppose that's that's where I
Speaker 1: get some of my purpose and writing about golf course architecture.
Speaker 1: Here's something to appreciate no matter how your golf round
Speaker 1: is going. I guess that's an important aspect of this
Speaker 1: for me, because yeah, you just don't know how you're
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 2: Play, You really don't, right, I mean that's something that
Speaker 2: from you guys like you and A and D and
Speaker 2: Will and the crew. I mean that's something that I've
Speaker 2: taken away from what you guys put out there is
Speaker 2: I pay more attention to that stuff now than I
Speaker 2: ever did before. And so for me to play as
Speaker 2: six right with Andy and just a list to Andy
Speaker 2: talk for a few hours about what makes this great
Speaker 2: or not great. I mean, it really is like you're
Speaker 2: in a collegiate class, you know, It's like you're at
Speaker 2: a university listening to you know, professor lecture about journalism
Speaker 2: right or business. I mean, to be in that kind
Speaker 2: of dome, in and around a brain as good as
Speaker 2: Andy's about golf course architecture, and to just literally get
Speaker 2: to walk and talk with them about those types of
Speaker 2: things is quite a special experience. And from you and
Speaker 2: from Andy, and from Will and from some of the
Speaker 2: other people and online, and to do such a great
Speaker 2: job with this type of stuff, it has opened up
Speaker 2: this whole other world of like playing Southampton the other day.
Speaker 2: And I know I've gone back to this a few times,
Speaker 2: but playing Southampton and playing like a dog, I'm not
Speaker 2: as focused on the way I'm playing because I'm wanting
Speaker 2: to look at all the Seth Rayner stuff that I
Speaker 2: would have never thought about ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Yes, And you know, to bring it back to your book.
Speaker 1: Part of what's happening in this book is that mom
Speaker 1: and mom and dad are enjoying nature, right they are.
Speaker 1: They are playing a game and and that's fun and
Speaker 1: funny in some ways, and sometimes it doesn't go very well,
Speaker 1: and even that sort of humorous. But the main thing
Speaker 1: that's happening is a is a visit with h with nature,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I think that's very similar to
Speaker 1: appreciating the architecture. It's just another way of lifting your
Speaker 1: eyes up instead of kind of narrowly focusing on the
Speaker 1: on the game, you're looking around, right, You're seeing where
Speaker 1: you are, and you're kind of being present in that
Speaker 1: moment on the golf course. Appreciating nature, you don't even
Speaker 1: have to look at the architecture. You can just kind
Speaker 1: of look at the landscape and the animals and and
Speaker 1: that's that's fun you know that that kind of refills
Speaker 1: the tank a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's the new age. Stop and smell the roses,
Speaker 2: like stop and feed the fish. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: just let's let's let's find something out there to take
Speaker 2: our mind away from the mass of frustrations that can
Speaker 2: happen when golf isn't going the way you hoped it
Speaker 2: would go. It's so funny that that score is such
Speaker 2: an obsession, especially Stateside, right, I mean, we have to
Speaker 2: have a number, we have to post scores. I mean, now,
Speaker 2: if I play golf at my club and don't post
Speaker 2: my score, you get an email about it, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, there is so much pressure now about making
Speaker 2: sure that number is posted. What did you shoot today?
Speaker 2: And a lot of the time now, especially you know,
Speaker 2: you go to the golf course and I don't want
Speaker 2: to think about my score, right, That's the last thing
Speaker 2: I would hope to think about, even if I'm never
Speaker 2: going to totally be able to detach from that.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast is brought to
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Speaker 1: you need for fall in winter, from long sleeve polos
Speaker 1: to quarter zips and hoodies, all that and more at
Speaker 1: pro Shop Dotthfrida egg dot com. So, Shane, you have
Speaker 1: worn a lot of hats in the golf world now,
Speaker 1: including children's book author, but you've also been a caddy
Speaker 1: at Saint Andrew's. You've had this varied career in media,
Speaker 1: and for a couple of years you played professionally on
Speaker 1: the mini tours. And I'm curious what I want to
Speaker 1: mostly kind of talk about your your career in media,
Speaker 1: but was there a particular moment in your competitive career
Speaker 1: when you said to yourself, you know what, I think
Speaker 1: I might have to figure out something else to do
Speaker 1: with my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it was my first professional event first round. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll tell I'll give you two stories, both firsts, by
Speaker 2: the way, my very very very first pro event, my
Speaker 2: first event that I was checked the professional box was
Speaker 2: a PEPSI Tour event out in Arizona, and my dad
Speaker 2: came out to caddy for me. My dad flew out
Speaker 2: from Texas and you know, I mean, we don't know
Speaker 2: anything about many tours at the time, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's carts like this is so non serious, but of
Speaker 2: course it's a big deal to us, and I remember
Speaker 2: I was standing on seventeen tea and my dad said
Speaker 2: to me, you're the only guy in the group that's
Speaker 2: made of bogie today. So that was one of those
Speaker 2: kind of smack you in the face type of moments
Speaker 2: where you're like, oh, oh, that's probably not a great sign.
Speaker 2: And then my first Gateway Tour event, I shot sixty
Speaker 2: eight and remember looking at the leaderboard and I think
Speaker 2: I was in like forty eighth place and I played great.
Speaker 2: I birdy my last two holes to shoot sixty eight,
Speaker 2: and that was a really good score for me. And
Speaker 2: when I realized literally in my first you know, you
Speaker 2: pay for the whole season, right, and I realized right
Speaker 2: away that sixty eight wasn't a very good score as
Speaker 2: a pro, that was really scary for me because I
Speaker 2: was never excellent at going crazy low. I've shot crazy
Speaker 2: low scores before back and you know, my heyday, but
Speaker 2: I was never one of those guys that kind of
Speaker 2: just like blindly went out and shot sixty five, right.
Speaker 2: I mean I had to really have the putter going
Speaker 2: to do that, or had to close grade or something
Speaker 2: like that. And so to see where I stood after
Speaker 2: what I thought was a great round, was a bit
Speaker 2: of a reality check. So those were really the two
Speaker 2: moments A little a little, a little daunt team considering
Speaker 2: they were both firsts. But I guess it's better to
Speaker 2: realize earlier than to realize too late. So tell me
Speaker 2: about going from struggling mini tour pro to og golf blogger.
Speaker 1: A lot of listeners might not know that you were.
Speaker 1: You were one of those original golf bloggers from from
Speaker 1: the late two thousands self run blog you started with
Speaker 1: called Dogs that Chase Cars. What do you remember about
Speaker 1: getting that started? What made you think like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can I can write.
Speaker 2: I went to University of Arizona and I remember they
Speaker 2: had a they had a really good student newspaper there
Speaker 2: called the Daily Wildcat, and I read a few copies
Speaker 2: early into my freshman year, and I just went to
Speaker 2: the Basically, I went to their newsroom and said, I
Speaker 2: want to write, you know, sports for you guys. I
Speaker 2: think I could help out a little bit, and and
Speaker 2: so you know, I mean I spent four years doing that, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, I was a journalism major. But as you know, Garrett,
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff you really learn, like a
Speaker 2: lot of the life lessons come from outside of the classroom,
Speaker 2: and so I learned as much doing that as I did,
Speaker 2: you know, from my degree there at Arizona. And so
Speaker 2: you know, I think early into that I realized that
Speaker 2: I might have a little bit of a I might
Speaker 2: have a little bit of skill in the writing department.
Speaker 2: And then when I went and tried to play. It
Speaker 2: was when I was done play and my buddy Andrew
Speaker 2: reached out to me and said, hey, you need to
Speaker 2: get back to writing, like You've got to find a
Speaker 2: place to do this, And so I started a blog.
Speaker 2: I was I was working kind of a nine to
Speaker 2: five job in Denver, Colorado, and most of my time
Speaker 2: spent doing my quote unquote job was just blogging for
Speaker 2: dogs at Chase Cars and my big break. There's a
Speaker 2: there's a fellow named Ryan Wilson that still writes in
Speaker 2: fl and does a great job. But Ryan was was
Speaker 2: working at AOL at the time, uh for the FanHouse
Speaker 2: Capital H and he uh he would link remember blog roles,
Speaker 2: Remember when you would like link to stories and it
Speaker 2: would just be the blog would just be the like
Speaker 2: one line and a link to the story. Uh. I
Speaker 2: would get those Google alerts and he linked to me
Speaker 2: a few times from some of the goofy stuff I
Speaker 2: was doing, and uh, and basically reached out to Ryan
Speaker 2: and said, is there any chance I could write for
Speaker 2: you guys you know golf? And that was when kind
Speaker 2: of the paying opportunity started.
Speaker 1: Before that break happened, were there moments when you were
Speaker 1: writing the blog when you thought nobody is reading this,
Speaker 1: this is not.
Speaker 2: Anywhere time all the time, or you know, I mean
Speaker 2: it was like Blogger days, right, like Blogger dot com.
Speaker 1: Yes, and was literally on the on the platform Blogger.
Speaker 1: It was that that Yeah, it was the that was
Speaker 1: that was a Google company, right am I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they bought it yep. And uh and
Speaker 2: you know, like I remember like teaching myself at h
Speaker 2: you know, like HML stuff like where I could co
Speaker 2: which was super basic stuff like how to bowld and
Speaker 2: how to strike through and yeah, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: this is this is when you had to like click
Speaker 2: into that to do those types of things with coding,
Speaker 2: how to link to your to your stories. Yeah all
Speaker 2: the time. I mean I would write all these stories
Speaker 2: and there'd be no comments, or there'd be one comment,
Speaker 2: and I'd be all excited. I click on it to
Speaker 2: be a friend of mine, you know, and you're like,
Speaker 2: oh god, you know this, this is my idiot buddies
Speaker 2: that are reading this stuff. Nobody else is and uh
Speaker 2: and I think you know when it was when I
Speaker 2: started to see those types of links pop up, and
Speaker 2: then you know, I was really proactive, Garrett. I mean
Speaker 2: I reached out to Will Leach at dead Spin and
Speaker 2: I wrote major championship previews for dead Spin. Very early
Speaker 2: into the dead Spin days. I wrote some stuff for
Speaker 2: with Leather. Do you remember with Leather? That was a
Speaker 2: very early blog, Sports by Brooks. I think I did
Speaker 2: a couple of posts for Sports by Brooks back in
Speaker 2: the day about golf. I mean, I was anybody and
Speaker 2: everybody that would take me, I would. I would write
Speaker 2: for them. Pay me or don't pay me. I didn't
Speaker 2: really care, So yeah, I was I was just trying
Speaker 2: to see interest. I was just trying to see somebody
Speaker 2: find my stuff, you know, worth the read or worth
Speaker 2: the click. And of course, you know this was even
Speaker 2: pre Twitter days or like write when Twitter days were
Speaker 2: starting to gain a little bit of traction, So you
Speaker 2: didn't even see if people were reading it through that
Speaker 2: through that platform.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, you know, the early blogging space. I guess
Speaker 1: not early blogging space, but you know, when blogging was
Speaker 1: was really a big thing. There was kind of a
Speaker 1: freedom about it, right that there was there was a
Speaker 1: way for writers to break in without having to go
Speaker 1: through the usual process of establishing themselves as you know,
Speaker 1: official journalists going to JA school or whatever. You could
Speaker 1: just start writing a blog and you would sort of
Speaker 1: get to know other bloggers. Social media has I guess,
Speaker 1: kind of replaced that. But I wonder if you ever
Speaker 1: miss the kind of blogging community, you know, when that
Speaker 1: was really active.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean absolutely, and that was it, right, the
Speaker 2: blog in community was it? I mean, you know this was.
Speaker 2: I mean it's funny. I pulled up Safari the other
Speaker 2: day and I still on my because I don't use Safari,
Speaker 2: I still have on the like the blog bar, like
Speaker 2: all these links to these blogs, and I mean half
Speaker 2: of them probably don't even go to anything anymore, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, this was there was such that community of
Speaker 2: you know, thirty forty fifty websites that you would frequent
Speaker 2: that you would try to get the one of the
Speaker 2: RSS feeds on your on your outlooks, so that it
Speaker 2: would update you when a new when a new link
Speaker 2: was available. I mean I remember sitting in the back
Speaker 2: of journalism classes with my buddy Kevin Stamler at Arizona,
Speaker 2: refreshing page two on ESPN to see if Bill Simmons
Speaker 2: had posted something new. I mean, there was really that community.
Speaker 2: I was covering the men's basketball team at Arizona, which,
Speaker 2: of course, the men's basketball team is always good, and
Speaker 2: I was covering it, reading a Simmons article, and I
Speaker 2: remember a guy walked by and goes, if you like
Speaker 2: Bill Simmons, you'll like this, this website called dead Spin,
Speaker 2: And that was how I was introduced to dead Spin,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean there was a real small community
Speaker 2: of people that were sess with writing about golf, and
Speaker 2: the humor was there, and the freedom was there, and
Speaker 2: I mean I could post anything, Garrett, you know, you
Speaker 2: could write anything about anybody. You could take images from anywhere.
Speaker 2: Nobody cared. It was. It was a very strange world,
Speaker 2: but it was in a weird way. It was a
Speaker 2: very respectful world. You know, if you got an article
Speaker 2: from somebody, nine times out of ten they would add
Speaker 2: the link at the bottom of the story. And that's
Speaker 2: not necessarily the case now in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very true, And something that maybe people don't
Speaker 1: really remember is that blog posts could kind of, in
Speaker 1: a weird way, go viral through being shared by other blogs.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the way that things went viral.
Speaker 1: They didn't go viral on Twitter because Twitter was, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of in its infancy when you started blogging, and
Speaker 1: you know, the way it really happened was other bloggers
Speaker 1: linking to a certain article and discussing it. And I
Speaker 1: guess the thing that I kind of miss about blogging.
Speaker 1: I did a little bit of blogging myself, not on
Speaker 1: golf actually, but you know, the thing that I miss
Speaker 1: about it is the kind of casualness of a blog post.
Speaker 1: It didn't have to be a masterpiece. It could just
Speaker 1: be like a link and a little bit of funny
Speaker 1: discussion or a joke or something, and you'd post that
Speaker 1: and people would read it and that would be it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sure that something like that exists
Speaker 1: any longer. I mean, there is Twitter, there is Instagram,
Speaker 1: but I feel like the way that people present themselves now,
Speaker 1: or kind of self fashion on the internet is more
Speaker 1: polished and a little bit less fun than it was
Speaker 1: in blogging. And maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but that's
Speaker 1: kind of the way it seems to me.
Speaker 2: I feel you. I mean, I remember, Garrett, I wrote
Speaker 2: one of my most trafficked, you know, blogs on dogs
Speaker 2: that chase cars, was I noticed that Chris Berman had
Speaker 2: like one salmon shirt that he would wear every year
Speaker 2: at the Pebble Beach pro am, you know, And I
Speaker 2: was like, I remember one year, I'm watching the pro
Speaker 2: am and I'm like, I was like, dude, I feel
Speaker 2: like he's wear the shirt before, and so I go
Speaker 2: into Geddy and sure enough it's like the same shirt.
Speaker 2: And so I just wrote, like a blog post was
Speaker 2: like Chris Berman only wears one golf shirt, you know,
Speaker 2: and it was I don't even know, there might have
Speaker 2: been thirty words written in the post. It was like
Speaker 2: eight pictures of him over the years in the different shirt.
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, you talk about hitting the
Speaker 2: nine blogg A sphere right in the heartstrings with a
Speaker 2: Chris Berman post, it's you know, taking a slight dig
Speaker 2: at them. I mean, dead's been posted to it and
Speaker 2: with leather posted to it, and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: you're getting thousands of clicks through to see your article,
Speaker 2: and it was such a win. It was such an
Speaker 2: honest victory back then when something was successful, because, like
Speaker 2: you said, the only way to know if it was
Speaker 2: successful was from traffic. If the traffic came in, you
Speaker 2: knew someone somewhere linked to what you did, which means
Speaker 2: someone somewhere liked what you did.
Speaker 1: I love that the Chris I can actually picture that
Speaker 1: Chris Berman shirt. But that's like a classic blog post, right.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure people kind of do content like that anymore.
Speaker 1: It would be it would be condensed into a tweet
Speaker 1: or an Instagram post or I don't know, maybe there's
Speaker 1: something that the kids are doing on TikTok that would
Speaker 1: replicate it. But that that is that is sort of
Speaker 1: the perfect example of the of the blog genre. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned that you you kind of got a break
Speaker 1: into paying work on mainstream websites. You worked at AOL
Speaker 1: I believe, Yahoo, CBS, bunch of places. What kind of
Speaker 1: work were you doing there so.
Speaker 2: I would blog about all sports. When I got the
Speaker 2: full it was, it was interesting. I mean, you talk
Speaker 2: about you know, being very lucky and getting very very
Speaker 2: lucky breaks knowing the right people. I remember when AOL
Speaker 2: was like making it AOL fan house and it was
Speaker 2: going to be a sports website. They reach out to
Speaker 2: me the week I was thinking about quitting my day
Speaker 2: to day job in Denver. They reached out to me
Speaker 2: about a full time position. And so I went and
Speaker 2: blogged about every sport you know. I mean the rule
Speaker 2: in journalism is if you don't know the sport, tell
Speaker 2: them it's your favorite, right, and then just figure it
Speaker 2: out on the way, you know, through throughout the process
Speaker 2: of it. And so I would blog about football and
Speaker 2: college basketball and college football and anything and everything. I mean,
Speaker 2: I did a lot of golf. But you know, you
Speaker 2: would see your name and it would have a link
Speaker 2: to all the sports that you were doing and how
Speaker 2: many articles you'd done that month in that year. And
Speaker 2: I was pretty much willing to do any of that,
Speaker 2: and so I was writing. You know, you would get
Speaker 2: these emails. I mean, again kind of going back to
Speaker 2: how simplistic things were. You know, we had like a
Speaker 2: list serve, and when a hot thing was happening, you know,
Speaker 2: if some team was cutting a player, or some guy
Speaker 2: got arrested, or some golfer was was you know, w
Speaker 2: D and you know, I remember when Jerry Rice w
Speaker 2: D with the rangefinder at that Cornferry event. You know,
Speaker 2: you'd get an email to the list serve of the
Speaker 2: sport and it was your job to grab the story.
Speaker 2: I got it, and then you would write it and
Speaker 2: get it up as quick as possible, because that was
Speaker 2: the key back then was you had to get it
Speaker 2: up as fast as possible for Google SEO. And so
Speaker 2: that was basically my job. I mean I was writing
Speaker 2: eight to ten articles a day, maybe more times. It
Speaker 2: was really on your computer, you know, six seven eight
Speaker 2: hours a day, you know, really dialing into what was
Speaker 2: happening in real time and trying to get that up
Speaker 2: on the main page. And if it made the front
Speaker 2: page of Yahoo, for goodness sake, so the front page
Speaker 2: of AOL. It was a really really big deal. And
Speaker 2: I mean there were bonuses involved in the most trafficked
Speaker 2: stories you could write. So it was really a kind
Speaker 2: of chase the carrot type of approach to the media world.
Speaker 1: All right, so you were a an internet writer, you know,
Speaker 1: you were you were one of those people hunched behind
Speaker 1: the computer. How did you end up making the transition
Speaker 1: to TV work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was crazy. I always I mean
Speaker 2: my dream job when I was a kid was to
Speaker 2: be on TV. I wanted to be on Sports Center,
Speaker 2: you know when I.
Speaker 1: Was Yeah, you know, you wanted to be Dan Patrick,
Speaker 1: Keith Olberman, like one of the everybody of our age, Shane.
Speaker 1: I mean, I those are the coolest dudes, or were
Speaker 1: the coolest dudes in the universe. Uh, that that was
Speaker 1: the job you wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you wanted to be a you wanted to
Speaker 2: be Rick Riley. And if you wanted to be on TV,
Speaker 2: you wanted to be Dan Patrick Olberman and or Stuart Scott, right.
Speaker 2: I mean that was the dreams as our kind of
Speaker 2: very late millennial world lived in. And and so you know,
Speaker 2: I went into journalism, you know in terms of like
Speaker 2: print and writing with the hope and the dream of
Speaker 2: eventually getting into TV. And really it was a break.
Speaker 2: I mean it was I think it was twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Somebody reached out to me from the back nine network
Speaker 2: and they were going to try to take this idea
Speaker 2: and turn it into a TV network on Direct TV.
Speaker 2: Would I have any interest in doing it? And you know,
Speaker 2: i'd i'd kind of I'd kind of felt like i'd
Speaker 2: landed about where I was going to land in terms
Speaker 2: of writing, you know, I wasn't. I wasn't kind of
Speaker 2: going up in the space. I was pretty stagnant. And
Speaker 2: so I flew out to Connecticut. Connecticut is the state
Speaker 2: I keep returning too for some reason. And I interviewed
Speaker 2: and they offered me a job. And I was dating
Speaker 2: Cindy at the time, and I was like, hey, I
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to be on TV. I'm probably gonna
Speaker 2: take this job at Connecticut. Do you have any interest
Speaker 2: in going? And She's just like, yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker 2: So we moved out to Connecticut and that was basically
Speaker 2: my break in the TV was a startup network, Channel
Speaker 2: two forty five on DirecTV, you know, and and from
Speaker 2: there it from there, I mean, more opportunities came. Really,
Speaker 2: I mean, the opportunity to go with Fox. I would
Speaker 2: not have been able to accept the job with Fox
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen if Back nine Network hadn't gone under.
Speaker 2: And so again kind of talking about you know, moments
Speaker 2: in your life and your career that kind of changed
Speaker 2: the trajectory of what you're doing. I mean, I was
Speaker 2: gonna have to say no to an opportunity to go
Speaker 2: work with Fox Sports with that USGA contract because I
Speaker 2: was doing the back nine Network stuff and then back
Speaker 2: nine Network went under and that opportunity was still there
Speaker 2: with Fox.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, when you started being on TV, what were
Speaker 1: some of the things that you had to learn, Like
Speaker 1: when I look at people and when I look at
Speaker 1: you on golf today, now I just get I can't
Speaker 1: imagine like doing that, and and and so what did
Speaker 1: you Yeah, what did you have to adjust about the
Speaker 1: way that you communicated with people with the camera and
Speaker 1: learning how to do that.
Speaker 2: I mean all of it, honestly, Garrett, I mean all
Speaker 2: of it was new to me. You know. I hadn't
Speaker 2: had a lot of experience doing much of like teleprompter work,
Speaker 2: so there was a lot of you know, making sure
Speaker 2: that I was kind of hitting the right cadence with
Speaker 2: the teleprompter. It is addressing the camera when you're doing
Speaker 2: an interview, so you make sure you're bringing the people
Speaker 2: at home into it and it doesn't just feel like
Speaker 2: you're in you're kind of spying on two people talking,
Speaker 2: you know. It was it was hosting. The show was
Speaker 2: called The Turn, and I had two co hosts with
Speaker 2: me and it was making sure I got Erk in
Speaker 2: here or got Lou in there, taking it to break
Speaker 2: the right way. I mean, it was it was learning
Speaker 2: it on. You know. It was literally real time class
Speaker 2: for me day to day. You know. The one thing
Speaker 2: I did that I urge anybody and I tell people
Speaker 2: and they email me or DM on social about how
Speaker 2: do I get into this is you just kind of
Speaker 2: can't say no. And I early into my back nine
Speaker 2: network experience, said yes to all the other shows all time,
Speaker 2: anytime you need me to come on. If it was
Speaker 2: going on with John McGuinness and Jeff Rude, absolutely, if
Speaker 2: it was going on with Maddie Blake and his show, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I was willing to do anything to improve at the
Speaker 2: craft because I had no craft. And so if there
Speaker 2: was anything I could do to be around people that
Speaker 2: had done TV more than I had, or just simply
Speaker 2: brought a new energy or new perspective to it, I
Speaker 2: was I was going to say yes. And so the
Speaker 2: question of what did I have to learn? The answer
Speaker 2: is all of it, And you know, just trying to
Speaker 2: find out what you're good at and what you're bad at,
Speaker 2: and then what you're bad at to get better at.
Speaker 2: While you're not forgetting to continually to try to, you know,
Speaker 2: sharpen up the stuff that you're good at.
Speaker 1: So basically, the overall picture here that I have had
Speaker 1: of you for a long time is that this is
Speaker 1: a man who has done just about literally every job
Speaker 1: in golf media. You know, and we haven't even talked
Speaker 1: about how you got into podcasting. And you know, you
Speaker 1: have a popular Twitter account and so you're in the
Speaker 1: social media so I think you're probably the best person
Speaker 1: to ask about this. How do you think, you know,
Speaker 1: since you started, how do you think the golf media
Speaker 1: landscape has changed? And do you think it has changed
Speaker 1: for the better?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you could probably say sports media
Speaker 2: and not just go with golf, even though I know
Speaker 2: obviously we're very focused on golf. I mean, the media
Speaker 2: world has changed so much. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: it is a little bit of what you said about
Speaker 2: the old blogging days. Was the old blogging days, you know,
Speaker 2: the olden days, if you will, on the Internet. It
Speaker 2: was a lot about fun and the payout wasn't necessary.
Speaker 2: And to me now media feels like the payout is
Speaker 2: a must, like I've got to get something back for
Speaker 2: this or it's not quite worth my time. I feel
Speaker 2: that personally at times, you know, where you know, maybe
Speaker 2: this week I don't want to do a podcast, but
Speaker 2: I know I have to, or I don't feel like
Speaker 2: I have the energy to go check track down this
Speaker 2: person or that person for comments or quotes or even
Speaker 2: off the record stuff. You know, it's such a the
Speaker 2: payoff is almost more necessary than the work that goes
Speaker 2: into what you're trying to do. And when I first
Speaker 2: started doing this, it was all about just trying if
Speaker 2: I can get one person to smile, laugh, be entertained,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the goal. And for me, over the
Speaker 2: last couple of years, I've really tried to return to
Speaker 2: that mentality, is to go back to the way I
Speaker 2: used to think about golf. Where I mean, if you
Speaker 2: look at my Twitter, it's pretty much entirely mebia and silly, right,
Speaker 2: because I feel like that's how I am normally is
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to have a little bit of fun
Speaker 2: with what I'm following or what I'm watching or what
Speaker 2: I'm covering. And it's not so easy to do that anymore,
Speaker 2: And so do I think it's changed for the better.
Speaker 2: I don't want to sit here and say it's changed
Speaker 2: for the worse. I just think it's different. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think the media in the nineties versus the media
Speaker 2: when I was coming up was very, very different. And
Speaker 2: I'm sure the people in the nineties went, oh God,
Speaker 2: this sucks, this is this is way too irreverent. You know,
Speaker 2: this is way too loosey goosey. These people don't know
Speaker 2: what they're doing. And I would say, now, there's a
Speaker 2: way smarter group of people doing this, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean I think about you know, I've mentioned you and Andy,
Speaker 2: and obviously you know I'm a big fan of you guys.
Speaker 2: I mean I consider you guys friends first and foremost
Speaker 2: before I consider yourself, you know, golf media people. But
Speaker 2: I mean I look at people like Dan Rappaport, who
Speaker 2: is a young guy in the business who I think
Speaker 2: is really smart and does a hell of a job
Speaker 2: at what he's doing. I look at people like you know,
Speaker 2: Paige Sporanic, who has had to kind of navigate the
Speaker 2: golf landscape in so many different ways, and to look
Speaker 2: at what she's doing with it now, I find it
Speaker 2: very impressive. I mean, for her to to continually put
Speaker 2: herself out there and also understand that poking fun at
Speaker 2: yourself is a part of the job. Is not the
Speaker 2: easiest thing to do, and it could it could doom
Speaker 2: a lot of people. I mean, it could knock a
Speaker 2: lot of people out of this profession. And so there
Speaker 2: are so many people I think day to day we
Speaker 2: see in the media landscape that maybe we don't appreciate
Speaker 2: how good they are at what they do. Think about
Speaker 2: no laying up and you know, think about that in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, Hey, we've got five buddies, We're gonna
Speaker 2: quit our jobs and go write about golf and video
Speaker 2: about golf. And to now look at where they are
Speaker 2: and how big they are in this media landscape. You
Speaker 2: don't have to be an ex player, you know, you
Speaker 2: don't have to have played or caddied or coached or
Speaker 2: any of that stuff. If you're smart and you're honest
Speaker 2: about what you do, there is opportunity for you in
Speaker 2: that world. And for that, I think, in a way,
Speaker 2: you could almost argue it's better.
Speaker 1: Returning to your earlier point about the entrance of money
Speaker 1: into all of this, that's really interesting because I agree that,
Speaker 1: you know, independent media outlets now have a path to
Speaker 1: kind of to success and to hire distribution and can
Speaker 1: kind of establish themselves in different ways. You know, I
Speaker 1: think that the way that I came into media wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been possible in the nineteen nineties. I was a teacher,
Speaker 1: that was my career, and I just sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: got to know Andy by being on Twitter and writing
Speaker 1: some things on a personal blog that wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: available to me in the nineties at all. I would
Speaker 1: have had to if I had wanted to work in media,
Speaker 1: I would have had to do it in a very
Speaker 1: different way. And so I think that that, you know,
Speaker 1: way in which people can kind of carve out a
Speaker 1: space for themselves is significant. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: once it becomes your full time job, once it's no
Speaker 1: longer kind of casual and like whatever anything goes, I'm
Speaker 1: doing this blog when I'm you know, sitting at work
Speaker 1: and supposed to be doing other things, that feeling of
Speaker 1: kind of just like freely doing this for fun. Somehow
Speaker 1: we've got to like hang on to that feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit, because it's exactly what was great about early
Speaker 1: podcasts and early blogs, right that people weren't doing it
Speaker 1: for brand partnerships or for an income they were just
Speaker 1: doing it because they liked doing it and liked making
Speaker 1: people laugh, and liked building a community around their interest.
Speaker 1: And so you know, once money enters into that equation,
Speaker 1: it becomes really hard to maintain that sense of the
Speaker 1: kind of wildness and free wheeling nature of what independent
Speaker 1: media was like fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2: It's just a reminder. I mean, I think this is
Speaker 2: probably a life lesson is you know, when things aren't
Speaker 2: the easiest, or when things feel like work, or when
Speaker 2: things are stressful, it's reminding yourself why you're doing it.
Speaker 2: And normally it's because you loved it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: especially for us, right, I mean, we're in the golf space.
Speaker 2: We're in the golf media. We love golf. You know,
Speaker 2: even if weeks feel like work, and you know you're
Speaker 2: on the road and you're staying at a hotel and
Speaker 2: your flight gets delayed and you're going to miss your connection,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna get home to see your kids. You've
Speaker 2: got to find a way to remind yourself of why
Speaker 2: you love it. And you mentioned the early podcast days.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember getting a sponsor on the Clubhouse,
Speaker 2: like my first golf podcast. I mean, I would love
Speaker 2: to I will tell you offline how much they paid me.
Speaker 2: It is very little. At the time I was I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe that somebody was going to pay to sponsor
Speaker 2: this podcast. I remember how easy it used to be
Speaker 2: to get guests, you know, when I first started doing
Speaker 2: the Clubhouse. I mean I could get anybody. Justin Thomas
Speaker 2: came on a couple times. I had Rory. I remember
Speaker 2: I broke news with Rory mcclroy on the Clubhouse and
Speaker 2: it was on the bottom ticker of ESPN and it
Speaker 2: said the Clubhouse was Shane Bacon and I'm like, this
Speaker 2: is so surreal to be seeing these types of things.
Speaker 2: And now to your point, there's so much that goes
Speaker 2: behind the scenes to get things to go the way
Speaker 2: they go, and most of that is money. So for me,
Speaker 2: when the flights are long and they're delayed and the
Speaker 2: hotel's not great, I remind my self of the open
Speaker 2: this year, right, I was sitting on the live from
Speaker 2: set working for Golf Channel at Saint Andrew's. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a place that I would loop for, you know,
Speaker 2: anybody and everybody. When I got out of college in
Speaker 2: O six, I mean, this was a place I worked
Speaker 2: in one capacity, and fast forward to twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: and I'm sitting on a set with Mark Rowfin and
Speaker 2: Heimi Diaz, you know, two of my favorite people in
Speaker 2: the golf media world coming to millions of people's television screens.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is that's the that's the dream, right Like,
Speaker 2: That's why I did this. That's why I started dogs
Speaker 2: at Chase Cars. That's why I reached out to what
Speaker 2: Ryan Wilson and said, can I write a FanHouse? That's
Speaker 2: why I was hitting will Leech up back in the
Speaker 2: day and said, can I write major championship previews for
Speaker 2: dead Spin that were probably getting one hundredth of the
Speaker 2: traffic that most of their articles were getting. All of
Speaker 2: that was to get to a point where maybe one
Speaker 2: day you could be on TV, or you could be
Speaker 2: writing for Sports Illustrated or Yahoo dot com or Golf
Speaker 2: Channel dot com and someone out there was interested in
Speaker 2: what you had to say. And so I think for
Speaker 2: all of the bullshit that we go through in this business,
Speaker 2: I'm reminded a lot that it's such a dream that
Speaker 2: we get to do this and it's not work if
Speaker 2: you really think about it. And you know, for me,
Speaker 2: It's like I go back to the old course so
Speaker 2: much because that was one of the most fun work
Speaker 2: weeks I've had maybe in my career, was just being
Speaker 2: there on site getting to be a part of the
Speaker 2: Open Championship at Saint Andrews. And if you'd have told
Speaker 2: me that No. Six, that I was going to get
Speaker 2: to do that at some point in my career, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have cared what you'd asked me to do to
Speaker 2: get to that point. I would have done it.
Speaker 1: Shane, Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Tell people where they can get your book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, The Golfer Zoo is available back nine press dot com.
Speaker 2: That's the number nine, not written out back nine press
Speaker 2: dot com, backslash Bacon like my name, like the food.
Speaker 2: You can order it from there, and I appreciate it
Speaker 2: if you would. If you do it and you read
Speaker 2: it to your kids, please in a picture to me,
Speaker 2: because that's been the best part of doing the book
Speaker 2: is seeing literal pictures of parents reading it to their kids.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, i'd encourage you to rate and
Speaker 1: review our podcast on iTunes. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: listening and supporting, and we'll be back again soon