Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over
Speaker 1: b Dratty. It's summer. Yeah, it's a Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 2: Well, what do you wear during the summer? What? What
Speaker 2: be drotty products? Do you do? You do you wear
Speaker 2: during the summer? Shorts be drotty shorts?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: They got these great the Big Daddy cools. I really
Speaker 1: like them. They got a nice modern fit to them.
Speaker 1: So they come in a bunch of different colors. Highly
Speaker 1: recommend them, and you're gonna need.
Speaker 3: To do shorts. It's summer. Summer's here.
Speaker 2: I would imagine that you could wear them on the
Speaker 2: boat as well as on the golf course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can. They're good.
Speaker 1: That's the really nice thing about them is like they
Speaker 1: aren't you're they're really lightweight. They're really i mean the
Speaker 1: name Big Daddy cool. They're really comfortable to wear golfing
Speaker 1: or two golf, you know, depending on where you fall
Speaker 1: on the grammatical you know forum.
Speaker 2: But I think both of those people will object to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then they look like you could wear them
Speaker 1: casually to something with you know, so and they aren't
Speaker 1: like that tech fabric so they're nice, they're versatile.
Speaker 3: Recommend them there.
Speaker 1: You can buy them on bdraddy dot com if you
Speaker 1: know people like people want them. We could get them
Speaker 1: with the Frida Egg logo on them too, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. We have a promo code. It's Frida Egg twenty.
Speaker 2: That's what it usually is. Yeah, I think Frida eggs.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure these are things that you should know. Hey,
Speaker 2: this is Garrett cutting in here. The promo code is
Speaker 2: actually Friday Egg twenty five. Friday Egg twenty five, so
Speaker 2: you get twenty five percent off. All right, back to
Speaker 2: the tape.
Speaker 1: So bdraddy dot com and now on to today's episode
Speaker 1: with h We're joined by Garrett Morrison, managing editor of
Speaker 1: The Friday Egg and uh Stephen Proctor.
Speaker 2: Yes, so Stephen Proctor is a golf historian. He wrote
Speaker 2: a book about the life of Young Tom Morris called
Speaker 2: Monarch of the Green that is very very good. I
Speaker 2: highly recommend it. And he's a fun guy to talk to.
Speaker 2: And today we are going to talk to him about
Speaker 2: challenge matches, about the history of challenge matches, of which,
Speaker 2: of course Young Tom Morris was a big part in
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, but This is intended to give some
Speaker 2: perspective to the matches that are happening right now during
Speaker 2: the pandemic, the match last week at Seminole, and of
Speaker 2: course the upcoming one at Metalist Golf Club featuring Tiger
Speaker 2: and Phil.
Speaker 3: So we're just kind of getting Peyton Manning of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, those guys too.
Speaker 1: I think they're going to bring some real human interest
Speaker 1: into it because they're going to be chopping it around
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be really relatable.
Speaker 2: Maybe, So, I don't know, I don't have a sense
Speaker 2: for how good these guys really are. And you know what,
Speaker 2: and if we're looking for relatability, Peyton Manning kind of
Speaker 2: exudes that Tom Brady doesn't as much. Who has ever
Speaker 2: in their lives related to Tom Brady. I mean, even
Speaker 2: if he's playing poorly, he's probably gonna look good doing it.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, there's one moment in Tom Brady's life
Speaker 1: that I can think is relatable as watching the replay
Speaker 1: of him running the forty yard dash.
Speaker 4: That's very true, Okay, I think that that's gonna be
Speaker 4: true the way most people would look running it, you know,
Speaker 4: you look, Yeah, but I think it'll be it'll be
Speaker 4: a fun match to watch.
Speaker 3: I'm excited.
Speaker 1: I think those two I think not necessarily, Tom Brady's
Speaker 1: not going to bring a lot of spice to it,
Speaker 1: but I think Peyton Manning could be the guy that's
Speaker 1: like that much needed relief, especially then you've got Barkley
Speaker 1: also doing the telecast. I hope they don't overproduce this
Speaker 1: one like we saw last week, where they just couldn't
Speaker 1: seem to get out of the way of showing golf,
Speaker 1: which which is essentially what people are turning turning the
Speaker 1: TV on to watch is golf, but you can't seem
Speaker 1: to show it. But this week, hopefully, I think this
Speaker 1: week will be much better, and I think they'll have
Speaker 1: learned a lot from the last match they did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think it's going to be a better
Speaker 2: product on TV?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 1: I can't foresee it getting worse than the last one, Right,
Speaker 1: you can't do something a second time and be worse
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you never know. It just seems like
Speaker 2: there's a momentum that happens with these things where somebody
Speaker 2: just says, oh, why don't we add this, Why don't
Speaker 2: we add this? Oh we should throw this in you know,
Speaker 2: and that's what you end up with. You end up
Speaker 2: with kind of a mess. I think that just sort
Speaker 2: of happens without people really knowing that it happens.
Speaker 1: So I think the more I've thought about it is
Speaker 1: golf is such a challenging sport normally to broadcast because
Speaker 1: there's not one central field of play that everything's happening
Speaker 1: on right, So they're always having to cut around, keep
Speaker 1: people updated as to what's going on, and almost we
Speaker 1: tell the story for the viewer because it's impossible to
Speaker 1: know the story without having that because you can't watch
Speaker 1: fifteen cameras at once to see everything going on in
Speaker 1: the course. So the struggle is if they had they
Speaker 1: probably have a golf producer for the most part doing
Speaker 1: the producing these shows, and the guy doesn't know anything
Speaker 1: except for this complicated, like very produced broadcast where you're
Speaker 1: telling people what they need to know. And I think
Speaker 1: if you had an NFL producer or an MBA producer
Speaker 1: produce these matches, they turn out so much better because
Speaker 1: they'd understand, Okay, all we have to do is put
Speaker 1: the camera here, turn their mics on, and tell the
Speaker 1: announcers just just add to this, do not talk over it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, allow the people to watch the game being played.
Speaker 2: You would, you would hope that would be the case.
Speaker 2: And you know, with the ad of aast, at least
Speaker 2: Peyton manning to the mix, and he's on the other
Speaker 2: team from Phil, so it seems like those two guys
Speaker 2: at least could have some back and forth and get
Speaker 2: a little bit of a nice vibe going between them.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe that'll happen. But in any case, I mean,
Speaker 2: beyond the kind of critiques of the broadcast that I'm
Speaker 2: sure will come, I mean, there's always going to be
Speaker 2: stuff to critique. I'm really looking forward to this match.
Speaker 2: You know, I really look forward to last week's match
Speaker 2: and thoroughly enjoyed watching it and kind of being in
Speaker 2: the golf community while it was happening. And I think
Speaker 2: the same thing is going to happen with the Tiger
Speaker 2: Film match. There will be a scene on Twitter, people
Speaker 2: will be excited about it. It'll be something different to do,
Speaker 2: and I just really appreciate that it's coming up. I
Speaker 2: think it's exciting and fun and it's great to see
Speaker 2: golf again.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The best case scenario, I think is like for this
Speaker 1: to be a smashing success and it lead to more
Speaker 1: of them, yeah, through the core of the year. Because
Speaker 1: I love this format of golf. I really do believe
Speaker 1: that there is an unbelievably great product in the idea
Speaker 1: of these smaller matches.
Speaker 2: And it's a format of golf that obviously has deep
Speaker 2: historical roots. It goes back to the beginning of the game,
Speaker 2: and that's what we're talking with Stephen Proctor about. Are
Speaker 2: you ready to get into it?
Speaker 1: Let's go I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 3: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 5: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a bright egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg
Speaker 2: Frida egg egg Frida egg, bride egg lie, I'm about
Speaker 2: ready to run off the golf course. Golf obviously existed
Speaker 2: for a long time before the Open Championship, Prior to
Speaker 2: that kind of major stroke play competition. How did golfers
Speaker 2: measure themselves against each other the way that.
Speaker 6: You measured yourself at the very beginning of golf. And
Speaker 6: we're talking here about the early eighteen hundreds, So around
Speaker 6: eighteen twenty nine, eighteen thirty, players start getting involved in
Speaker 6: what was known as a challenge match. So what would
Speaker 6: happen is a rich guy from your golf club would
Speaker 6: put up one hundred pounds and challenge a rich guy
Speaker 6: from a golf club in a rival town to put
Speaker 6: up his best guy, and we'll play thirty six holes
Speaker 6: a day over four different golf courses. You picked too,
Speaker 6: and I picked two. Winner takes the pot. And that
Speaker 6: was how it's started in the earliest days of golf.
Speaker 6: And so you made your bones by winning those challenge
Speaker 6: matches marathons, I mean marathons. Everyone you know you would
Speaker 6: play what they might call a friendly, you know, thirty
Speaker 6: six holes one day over a course for say ten
Speaker 6: or twenty pounds sterling. But if you were going to
Speaker 6: do a big match, it was always over multiple courses
Speaker 6: a really great match. So all of the legendary matches
Speaker 6: took place over at least three golf courses and sometimes four.
Speaker 1: And it was the idea behind that to test, like
Speaker 1: to see who the best better golfer was, because different
Speaker 1: courses might favor different players.
Speaker 5: There was certainly some of that in it.
Speaker 6: A lot of it was there was huge town from
Speaker 6: town rivalries, so Saint Andrews and Musselboro in particular were
Speaker 6: massive rivals and they you know, so the towns wanted
Speaker 6: to show off in front of their own people, so
Speaker 6: they wanted at least one of the matches to held
Speaker 6: on their links, and then they would be held on
Speaker 6: neighboring links. Like a typical lineup would be. You played
Speaker 6: at Saint Andrew's, Musselborough, North Berwick and Mirrorfield or someplace
Speaker 6: like that, depending on the time of the age of
Speaker 6: the match. But you would play three or four courses
Speaker 6: and thirty six holes a day.
Speaker 2: And so if you were to go out onto the
Speaker 2: links during one of these big challenge matches, what would
Speaker 2: you see.
Speaker 6: What you would see is the same thing you might
Speaker 6: see if you were out of prize fight. People in
Speaker 6: the modern age who listen to everybody speaking whispers on
Speaker 6: the golf broadcast have no idea what golf was like
Speaker 6: at the beginning. It was insane. So there would be
Speaker 6: a crowd depending on the match. Some of the matches
Speaker 6: would bring thousands out, but the majority would bring hundreds,
Speaker 6: you know, two or three hundred. But there were no
Speaker 6: gallery ropes the players would have. The fan would be
Speaker 6: crowded all around the players and circling them and in
Speaker 6: some towns they got rather close to the opponent, so
Speaker 6: much so that they tried purposely to constrict a swing
Speaker 6: by just hemming him in. And a match always had
Speaker 6: a referee, but they had a heck of a time
Speaker 6: controlling the crowd. A lot of the time balls would
Speaker 6: get kicked into gorse bushes, they would get stomped on,
Speaker 6: So I mean it was a rowdy scene. The other
Speaker 6: thing is gambling was a huge deal at these events.
Speaker 6: Gambling was the very reason that the events existed. The
Speaker 6: rich guys who put up the stakes, what they wanted
Speaker 6: to do was bet. These were sporting gentlemen who had
Speaker 6: land and property and big homes, and they didn't have
Speaker 6: anything to do but do sporting things, and gambling is
Speaker 6: one of their main things. They wanted to do on
Speaker 6: whatever it was. So they would be betting like crazy,
Speaker 6: and the townspeople would be betting like crazy. Players would
Speaker 6: be betting on them, caddies, everybody was betting. There were
Speaker 6: bookmakers walking up and down the side of the course,
Speaker 6: and you could get a new bet if, for instance,
Speaker 6: the match was really tilted heavily in one player's favor
Speaker 6: and you wanted to take the other player you could
Speaker 6: get twenty to one just from there to the end
Speaker 6: of the match right now, and so it was a
Speaker 6: pretty wild scene.
Speaker 2: What kind of money could a professional golfer himself make
Speaker 2: on one of these matches.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, obviously in those days, professionals were looked
Speaker 6: down upon by the people who ran the golfing establishment.
Speaker 6: They were, you know, I think Horace Hutchinson once referred
Speaker 6: to him as feckless, reckless creatures whose only loves are
Speaker 6: golf and whiskey, which they would never have denied actually,
Speaker 6: But in any case, they played for a tip. So
Speaker 6: if you won, you would typically get something on the
Speaker 6: order of ten percent of the steak. So let's say
Speaker 6: the steak was one hundred pounds sterling, you might get
Speaker 6: ten pounds if your guy.
Speaker 3: Won, almost what a caddy gets now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: If your guy lost, well, you know, you hope he's
Speaker 6: a bit generous, but you're not gonna get very much.
Speaker 6: And so that's how it was at the beginning.
Speaker 1: It's funny just listening to the description. It almost feels
Speaker 1: like the sport completely flipped in a way where the
Speaker 1: players were empowered. Everybody's quiet around them. There's ropes and
Speaker 1: and the almost the focus in the whole match was
Speaker 1: centered around the fans.
Speaker 6: Originally, yes, no, And you know there's so many famous
Speaker 6: quotes from even at the Open Championship there were no
Speaker 6: gallery ropes, So an Opening Championship that came down to
Speaker 6: a closely contested final round.
Speaker 5: Would be have a massive.
Speaker 6: Crowd out there. They'd be you know, they're be an
Speaker 6: umpire trying to keep them under control. And one of
Speaker 6: you know, there's famous quotes like the players, please the players,
Speaker 6: please respect the players.
Speaker 5: And the person in the.
Speaker 6: Crowd says, damn the players I've come to see and
Speaker 6: you know, they they It was a different time then
Speaker 6: and a lot a lot it's so much different than
Speaker 6: what we experience now and a lot of ways, I
Speaker 6: think better and more fun.
Speaker 1: But I read somewhere that the different areas, like different
Speaker 1: areas produced different types of players. Was that true, like
Speaker 1: different you know, the guys from Musselborough had different skill
Speaker 1: set than the guys from you know, East Lothian.
Speaker 6: You know that's not you know, it's probably true in
Speaker 6: some degree obviously, because really what was more true is
Speaker 6: the course you played your golf on at home would
Speaker 6: require different shots than the recourse that somebody else played
Speaker 6: their golf on.
Speaker 5: So, for instance, if you were.
Speaker 6: A player that played all their golf at North Barrick,
Speaker 6: you were a great approach shot player because that was
Speaker 6: pretty much what you were doing all the time, was approaching.
Speaker 5: You know, you didn't have the holes weren't especially long.
Speaker 6: It was a very tricky golf course, so you had
Speaker 6: to be great at run up shots and chips and
Speaker 6: all that. A player from there would be better at
Speaker 6: those kinds of shots probably than a player from Musselborough
Speaker 6: who had less of those to make. And St Andrew's player,
Speaker 6: you know, they were great at the run up shot
Speaker 6: also because they played on super fast greens. Those greens
Speaker 6: in those ages were very very quick compared to what
Speaker 6: players were experiencing, not so much today because the greenkeeping
Speaker 6: is so much better, but the ground would get baked
Speaker 6: out and it would be really hardly any grass on
Speaker 6: it and be rolling pretty quick. So it was kind
Speaker 6: of tough to stop a ball on it, and you
Speaker 6: had to become expert at the art of running the
Speaker 6: ball up at a certain speed and letting it die
Speaker 6: near the hole. And so they were they would come
Speaker 6: with different skills. They did definitely take different mental approaches.
Speaker 6: Like the Musclebirg players were way more aggressive than the
Speaker 6: Saint Andrews players, who would play a type of goss
Speaker 6: that was described and as palky, sort of cautious keeping away.
Speaker 5: From the hazards. The Musclebird players were half crazy.
Speaker 6: Like Willie Park he would bet people I can beat
Speaker 6: you with one club, I can beat you standing on
Speaker 6: one leg. I will play with your very expensive watch
Speaker 6: as my t on all nine holes. And if i'dn't,
Speaker 6: don't break it, its mine. That's the way, you know,
Speaker 6: things were approached there a little more sedate and upper
Speaker 6: crust at Saint Andrews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the sense that I get reading some of
Speaker 2: these historical accounts that the Saint Andrew's players were considered
Speaker 2: sort of you know, refined and boring in comparison to
Speaker 2: the rowdy Muscleborough players. Right there was there was almost
Speaker 2: like a like a class conflict there or something.
Speaker 6: Well, they were just different towns, you know. Saint Andrews
Speaker 6: had the university and most of the nobility were members
Speaker 6: at Saint Andrews. Musselboro was was a coal mining town
Speaker 6: and a lot more industrial, you know, with so as
Speaker 6: always in the case, you know, the the industrial town's
Speaker 6: probably going to be a little more loose around the
Speaker 6: edges than the university town, and that that was reflected
Speaker 6: in the golf for sure.
Speaker 1: It kind of reflects of us the way American team
Speaker 1: sports are, where different different stadiums have different dynas, especially
Speaker 1: like say in college football, you know, going to Notre
Speaker 1: Dames a lot different than going to LSU.
Speaker 6: That is a perfect analogy, and that's the way it was.
Speaker 6: Every course developed somewhat of a culture on its own,
Speaker 6: mostly based on its demographics and its membership, and so
Speaker 6: there were differences there and they were great rivalries, you know,
Speaker 6: particularly between St Andrews and Musselborough.
Speaker 2: Would you say, Steve that there was a kind of
Speaker 2: Golden age of challenge matches at some point in the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 6: Yes, the first really the Golden Age begins in eighteen
Speaker 6: forty nine. And in eighteen forty nine Alan Robertson, who
Speaker 6: was the great golfer of the age as far as
Speaker 6: most people were concerned, and his apprentice at the time,
Speaker 6: Tom morse Or, who had been his apprentice, Tom had
Speaker 6: just recently left to open his own shop. They play
Speaker 6: a match against Jamie and Willie Dunn from Musselboro for
Speaker 6: four hundred pounds sterling aside, which is an astronomical sum
Speaker 6: of money in that age. Just to give you an example,
Speaker 6: an average working man at that time earned less than
Speaker 6: thirty pounds a year, probably closer to twenty, so four
Speaker 6: hundred pounds sterling was quite a bit of money to
Speaker 6: have riding on a match. They played it over multiple greens,
Speaker 6: ending at North Barrick. I mean, excuse me, I'm forgetting
Speaker 6: where they ended it right now because I'm nervous on
Speaker 6: this podcast. But anyway, they played on multiple greens, and
Speaker 6: it was weird because at the time, the way they
Speaker 6: scored it is who won on the most golf courses,
Speaker 6: not who won the most holes. Interesting made on four
Speaker 6: links and the person who won on three of them
Speaker 6: was the winner of the match, and if two if
Speaker 6: you won on two links each, then the match was halved.
Speaker 6: And of course this match was the one that got
Speaker 6: rid of that scoring system because the Duns, I think
Speaker 6: they won by thirteen holes at one of the four events,
Speaker 6: but the Saint Andrew's guys squeaked by by a hole
Speaker 6: on their own green, and then they barely win the
Speaker 6: match at the end because the guys from Muscle Birr's
Speaker 6: ball get stuck under a rock, a big giant stone
Speaker 6: sort of Tiger Woods like, just off to the left
Speaker 6: of the fairway there, and they asked the umpire can
Speaker 6: we move the stone? And of course, you know, they
Speaker 6: were not going to haul out a crew like they
Speaker 6: did for Tiger and move the stone. They said, of course,
Speaker 6: you can't move the stone. It's an integral part of
Speaker 6: the golf course. You got to play your shot. So
Speaker 6: they're hacking away, hacking away, hacking away. They don't get
Speaker 6: it out. They lose the hole by a million miles,
Speaker 6: which they should have won pretty easily if they hadn't
Speaker 6: hit it under the stone. And then they lost that match,
Speaker 6: and that was the one that decided it. But they
Speaker 6: had won by multiple, multiple holes if you counted the
Speaker 6: holes over the four golf courses. So that changed that.
Speaker 6: But that was such a big deal at the time.
Speaker 6: It got written about for one hundred years afterwards, and
Speaker 6: every kid who grew up after that, you know, grew
Speaker 6: up with that as a legend of their lifetime. And
Speaker 6: so that was when it begins, and really it extends
Speaker 6: as a major major thing through about eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 6: I would say is sort of a turning point. Tommy
Speaker 6: Moose Junior by then is a big superstar. He and
Speaker 6: Davey Strath pay two one hundred and eight hole matches,
Speaker 6: one in July and one in August at Saint Andrews.
Speaker 6: Tommy hasn't been beaten in the Open Championship in four
Speaker 6: the last four seasons.
Speaker 5: Five.
Speaker 6: There wasn't an Open in eighteen seventy one, but he'd
Speaker 6: won the last four Opens in a row. He was
Speaker 6: pretty much invincible winning. You know, in eighteen seventy two
Speaker 6: he'd won eighty percent of his events that he entered,
Speaker 6: so he was winning at a clip that no one
Speaker 6: had ever even conceived of. Just giant crowds came out
Speaker 6: for that five or six thousand. The Ladies Home Journal
Speaker 6: covered it for Christ's Sake, and that was probably the
Speaker 6: heyday of it, and the thing that was, I would say,
Speaker 6: the biggest one that has ever occurred.
Speaker 5: After that.
Speaker 6: It still continues really up through the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 6: but less frequently, and other things become more popular, like
Speaker 6: tournaments and exhibitions and things like that.
Speaker 1: Listen, you talk about it It's almost like these are
Speaker 1: like playoff series, you know, with the with the multiple days,
Speaker 1: the multiple courses, and I imagine just like you see
Speaker 1: in a series of in the NBA, where you know,
Speaker 1: every game the relationship between the opposing parties gets a
Speaker 1: little bit more contentious and chippy. Is the same same
Speaker 1: thing that happened And is there any specific examples of
Speaker 1: this type of relationship evolving through a match?
Speaker 5: Oh, my gosh ya.
Speaker 6: So eighteen seventy there is the third in a series
Speaker 6: of great matches between Old Tom Morris and Willie Park
Speaker 6: senior guy. He was betting that he could play nine
Speaker 6: holes from their top.
Speaker 5: Of your watch.
Speaker 6: So the last last round of that match takes place
Speaker 6: in Mustleboro, Willy's hometown. That is a prescription obviously for disaster.
Speaker 6: Tom is winning too at the time, which is which
Speaker 6: is also stokes up the partisan pride quite a lot. Anyway,
Speaker 6: the match got so incredibly contentious that the umpire halted
Speaker 6: it because he said it was just impossible with the
Speaker 6: behavior of this crowd for fair play to continue. They
Speaker 6: were just really abusing Old Tom, physically crowding him around,
Speaker 6: not letting him have a free swing, kicking his ball
Speaker 6: into the bushes and everything I was mentioning before.
Speaker 5: So the umpire stops the match.
Speaker 6: And there's a bar there at Musselborough called Missus Foreman's
Speaker 6: that was right off the golf cour I believe it's
Speaker 6: off the fourth hole, but I'm not.
Speaker 5: I can't remember right at the moment. In any case,
Speaker 5: they go.
Speaker 6: Into the bar there and the umpire says, we're gonna
Speaker 6: cool off and we'll come back tomorrow and finish these
Speaker 6: last six holes. And Willie Parks says, there is no
Speaker 6: way that we are quitting, and he goes out and
Speaker 6: plays the last six holes. Uh so the uh He
Speaker 6: plays the last six holes and then he writes publicly
Speaker 6: in the newspaper demanding the purse, saying.
Speaker 5: That he'd won.
Speaker 6: Tom had quit, that he had refused to come out
Speaker 6: and play. Well, Tom was just doing what the umpire said.
Speaker 5: So then the ends up.
Speaker 6: The end result of this whole thing is Tom comes
Speaker 6: out the next day, he plays the final six holes
Speaker 6: with the umpire and has declared the winner. But he
Speaker 6: had played the last six holes in twenty eight as
Speaker 6: opposed to Willy's twenty two. So WILLI played far better
Speaker 6: golf that particular afternoon and probably would have won the
Speaker 6: match if it had been able to continue, if the
Speaker 6: crowd had allowed him to continue. Anyway, the result was
Speaker 6: that Willi sued and it ended up in court, and
Speaker 6: it was the whole process was vacated by a judge.
Speaker 6: So the match and everything that had happened was absolved. Nobody,
Speaker 6: everybody got their money.
Speaker 5: Back, and it was.
Speaker 6: They didn't rejoin that battle until eighteen eighty two, when
Speaker 6: Tom is sixty and Willy was twelve years younger than him.
Speaker 6: So Willi was not you know, forty eight, not quite fifty,
Speaker 6: and Tom crushed him then.
Speaker 1: So the referees were, you know, still the the you know,
Speaker 1: much controversial then as they are now.
Speaker 6: Well you know that that particular referee was a guy
Speaker 6: named Robert Chambers, and he, uh, he was a very
Speaker 6: famous publisher, and you know, he loved the Morris family.
Speaker 6: And when young Tommy died, it's he's the one that
Speaker 6: writes the elegy to a golfer that is like this
Speaker 6: really wonderfully overwrought poem in praise of young Tom. So
Speaker 6: he may have you know, I would assume he was
Speaker 6: an honorable man. But you know who certainly want Tom
Speaker 6: to get his fair treatment.
Speaker 2: So the Musclebirough crowd probably wasn't particularly kind toward his No,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 6: They were notorious and late. Probably the last one of
Speaker 6: the two or three last great matches ever takes place
Speaker 6: in eighteen ninety nine between Harry Varden and Willie Parks
Speaker 6: senior's son Willie Junior, and Willie wants the match to
Speaker 6: be played at Musselboro, his course in Ganton where Harry
Speaker 6: works at the time down in England, and Harry says,
Speaker 6: there is no force on earth that's getting me to
Speaker 6: play a match against you at Musselborough.
Speaker 5: Forget it.
Speaker 6: And they ended up doing it at North Berrick and Ganton,
Speaker 6: but that was the reputation of Musselburg by that time.
Speaker 6: Harry was like, that's not a not that's a non starter.
Speaker 6: We are not playing there.
Speaker 5: By then too.
Speaker 6: But I think Harry's main concern was the crowd. He
Speaker 6: feared no golf course.
Speaker 1: And it was it was a place where a lot
Speaker 1: of balls got kicked and stuff done.
Speaker 6: Yes, it was a lot of things of an unsavory
Speaker 6: natured when you were playing, and you if you were
Speaker 6: not the player from Musselborough, if you were from Musselboro.
Speaker 5: Well that was a different matter.
Speaker 1: So you got the Parks, the the Morrises, Harry Varden,
Speaker 1: who were some other formidable challenge match players.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, Tommy and Davy were two great ones,
Speaker 6: and they played a lot together and played as it
Speaker 6: they they had a standing offer that they kept in
Speaker 6: the paper. We'll take on any two for one hundred
Speaker 6: pounds sterling, and they're gonna.
Speaker 2: Worried.
Speaker 5: Pardon me, this would be Straf Davey Strath.
Speaker 6: Yes, so they would offer had a standing offers. But Willy,
Speaker 6: did anybody in the world who wants to take me
Speaker 6: for a hundred bucks?
Speaker 3: Here I am and the hey put it in a newspaper.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 6: They were published in Bell's Sporting Life for various places
Speaker 6: like that here by challenge Willie Park.
Speaker 5: You know this is a great little story.
Speaker 6: Willy Park in eighteen fifty four Senior he wants to
Speaker 6: play Alan Roberts because Alan has this reputation of invincibility
Speaker 6: and he doesn't believe it. He wants to play them
Speaker 6: one on one. So he puts an advertisement in Bell's
Speaker 6: Sporting Life saying I offer to play any player, and
Speaker 6: then he names them Old Tom Morris, Alan Roberts and
Speaker 6: names them and other for one hundred pounds aside, name
Speaker 6: your day and name your courses and uh. Then they
Speaker 6: don't answer the challenge. So he goes to the Royal
Speaker 6: and Ancient Golf Club meeting at Saint Andrews and challenges
Speaker 6: them in person. And Alan wouldn't take it up then either,
Speaker 6: he you know, allan my own view, and there would
Speaker 6: be a lot of horse storians who disagree, But my
Speaker 6: own view is Alan thought if he played Willi, he'd
Speaker 6: get killed and his reputation for invincibility would be destroyed.
Speaker 5: And that is that is my personal view.
Speaker 1: Is that something that happened regularly. Is where you know,
Speaker 1: a if some if a player just knew they were
Speaker 1: going to get beat, they just would decline the challenge.
Speaker 6: You know, yes, at the beginning, it would happen sometimes.
Speaker 6: You know, I think you might also take the view
Speaker 6: that Alan felt like I have. You know, I'm the
Speaker 6: King of the Hill. When you beat somebody, you can
Speaker 6: come and challenge the King of the Hill. Garden refused
Speaker 6: to accept the challenge from Willie Park initially, and then
Speaker 6: Golf Magazine just called him right out. You know, you
Speaker 6: can't be the champion and not accept the challenge. If
Speaker 6: you're going to be the champion and somebody challenges, you
Speaker 6: got to answer the challenge. The papers were more aggressive
Speaker 6: then too. You know, they would just call people right out,
Speaker 6: you know, every time an Englishman won the Open, for
Speaker 6: instance in eighteen nineties, they would have, you know, have
Speaker 6: like an admonition to Scotland they better look to their
Speaker 6: laurels at their own national game and this and that.
Speaker 6: So papers are a little tougher then too.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask about the newspapers. Actually, it
Speaker 2: seems to me that there was a kind of like
Speaker 2: symbiosis between the newspapers and these challenge match golfers in
Speaker 2: building up the popularity of the game, right because the
Speaker 2: matches made for such great content, as we would say today, Yeah,
Speaker 2: retelling the stories of the matches in the papers was
Speaker 2: great fun and also a great source of information for
Speaker 2: historians today. And so would you say there was that
Speaker 2: kind of relationship, this mutually beneficial relationship between the newspapers
Speaker 2: and the golfers all, you know, kind of with the
Speaker 2: result of making the game more popular.
Speaker 6: I would say that, yes there was a relationship, but
Speaker 6: it was between the newspaper and the landed gentlemen who
Speaker 6: put up the money for the match. You know, the
Speaker 6: professional golfers were pretty much nothing.
Speaker 5: Have you seen Shakespeare in Love.
Speaker 6: There's one where the guy comes into the middle of
Speaker 6: a theatrical performance sys who's out over there, and he says, oh, nobody,
Speaker 6: he's the author, And that was pretty much the way
Speaker 6: it was with professional golfers.
Speaker 5: He's nobody, He's just the golfer. So it was good
Speaker 5: for the.
Speaker 6: Gentlemen who put up the stakes if it generated a
Speaker 6: lot of interest, because then they could get a lot
Speaker 6: of action. That's what they were looking for, was betting action,
Speaker 6: gambling action. A lot of them would be involved in
Speaker 6: betting at multiple levels on these events. The newspapers was
Speaker 6: good for the newspapers just because for the same reason
Speaker 6: everything is good for a newspaper, which is it makes
Speaker 6: people pick it up.
Speaker 5: And read it.
Speaker 6: So they definitely But if they were doing anything for anybody,
Speaker 6: it was not for a professional golfer. I can tell
Speaker 6: you that they weren't even allowed in the clubhouse. They
Speaker 6: had to change their shoes in a shack somewhere. You know,
Speaker 6: they weren't They weren't getting any love from anybody except
Speaker 6: the person they won money for usually.
Speaker 2: So moving forward in time a little bit, right now,
Speaker 2: I know you're working on a book about the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2: By the eighteen nineties, obviously the Open Championship is very
Speaker 2: well established. It's been going on for three decades, I
Speaker 2: suppose it at that point, and that helps to usher
Speaker 2: in not exactly maybe a stroke play era, but more
Speaker 2: popularity and validity for this tournament's stroke play format. And
Speaker 2: so by the eighteen nineties, with the Open Championship happening,
Speaker 2: what is the importance of challenge matches at that point, Well,
Speaker 2: you got to.
Speaker 6: Keep in mind that the Open Championship was the only
Speaker 6: regular stroke play event that happened annually at that time
Speaker 6: for professional golfers for a while, but it didn't last forever.
Speaker 6: Saint Andrews had an annual tournament as well for professionals
Speaker 6: that was associated with one of their meetings. Almost all
Speaker 6: golf events were associated with the meeting of a club
Speaker 6: of the Royal and Ancient of the Honorable Company of
Speaker 6: North Berwick, of Mirrorfield, or of one of those, so
Speaker 6: almost all of it would be in association with that,
Speaker 6: and in fact, the Challenge matches were originally put on
Speaker 6: as entertainment for the rich gentleman and the people who
Speaker 6: attended the meaning and also an opportunity to gamble.
Speaker 5: Then when you.
Speaker 6: Get into the eighteen nineties, the thing that changes about
Speaker 6: challenge matches is that now you're in a period where
Speaker 6: golf courses are opening all over England and Scotland like
Speaker 6: never before, and so what really becomes the money making
Speaker 6: machine for professional golfers And that changed the equation for
Speaker 6: them financially. The most is that exhibition matches. One day,
Speaker 6: little exhibition that you put on a foursome of Harry
Speaker 6: Varden and John Henry Taylor against James Braid and Sandy Hurd,
Speaker 6: say to Scotsman, two englishmen to open the new course
Speaker 6: that's coming up here in Lancashire or whatever it is,
Speaker 6: and then you would get a paid to set fee
Speaker 6: or peer you know, and so like for instance, Harry
Speaker 6: Varden and John Henry Taylor and those guys, they were
Speaker 6: making sixteen pounds ten to fifteen pounds for every single
Speaker 6: exhibition they appeared in win loser draw. They might be
Speaker 6: able to do as many as twenty or thirty of
Speaker 6: those in a year, and so that was a big,
Speaker 6: big chunk, the majority chunk of their income at that time.
Speaker 6: They'd be working for a club that was paying them
Speaker 6: somewhere between fifty pounds and seventy five pounds, probably more
Speaker 6: for champions, but you know they weren't. Their base salary
Speaker 6: was low, and they were making their money in exhibition
Speaker 6: matches and tournaments. To the extent that they were good
Speaker 6: in tournaments, the tournaments only paid five places or six places,
Speaker 6: sometimes ten, so you weren't gonna make a lot of
Speaker 6: money in tournaments unless you were top of the leader,
Speaker 6: were guide, so there were fewer of them, but you
Speaker 6: still had to make your bones as a player by
Speaker 6: winning a challenge match against an established golfer. For instance,
Speaker 6: John Henry Taylor in eighteen ninety three, John Henry Taylor
Speaker 6: is just starting out in this profession career. He's been
Speaker 6: a professional for like two or three years now, and
Speaker 6: he needs to make a name for himself. And so
Speaker 6: happens that the Great Saint Andrew's golfer, Andrew Kircaudy, is
Speaker 6: temporarily filling in at a course a train ride away
Speaker 6: from him. So they set up a thirty six hole
Speaker 6: home and home match between him, and Andrew Kircaudy his
Speaker 6: the president of his golf club, does John Henry's and
Speaker 6: Taylor wins, and then all of a sudden he starts
Speaker 6: to get some recognition and some opportunities, and then the
Speaker 6: following year he wins an Open championship and is the
Speaker 6: first Englishman to win the Open. So that's how you
Speaker 6: would prove yourself, and some of it was your own
Speaker 6: self confidence. You know, you went into the Open with
Speaker 6: a lot more confidence if you could take down, one
Speaker 6: on one a player who was always a threat to
Speaker 6: win the Open and had been for many years.
Speaker 5: So that was how they fit in.
Speaker 6: Then there were fewer of them, but the big ones
Speaker 6: were still huge. What I would consider to be the
Speaker 6: finale happens in nineteen oh five when Scotland is just
Speaker 6: getting killed on the golf course year after year by
Speaker 6: the English, which you can imagine, nothing galls to scott
Speaker 6: more than losing to the damn English. So they decide,
Speaker 6: you know, that they're going to take them on it
Speaker 6: what they would consider the true game, and they get
Speaker 6: their two best players, James Heard and James Braid and
Speaker 6: Sandy Heard, and they play a long four four green
Speaker 6: thirty six holes a day match against Harry Varden and
Speaker 6: John Henry Taylor, the two principal antagonists from England.
Speaker 5: They just get annihilated.
Speaker 6: I forget what the final score is, but it's like
Speaker 6: thirteen and eleven, you know, thirteen soles up with eleven
Speaker 6: to play, so complete humiliation for the Scots and that,
Speaker 6: and then you know, after that they begin to really
Speaker 6: fade from the scene. And that's pretty much the tail
Speaker 6: end of that age.
Speaker 1: With the challenge matches, were they historically always two man
Speaker 1: best ball or do they have different formats within the
Speaker 1: you know, four rounds of thirty six holes at four
Speaker 1: different courses.
Speaker 6: They would always, in the beginning, always be played as
Speaker 6: a foursome alternate shot. That was the only form of
Speaker 6: golf really for the first three or three.
Speaker 5: Hundred and some years.
Speaker 6: Then they then occasionally they would have a single because
Speaker 6: they wanted Tom versus Willie, you know, but they only
Speaker 6: had singles or foursomes. I'm not aware of any challenge
Speaker 6: match of consequence that was conducted as a better ball
Speaker 6: that was a sort of an English. One of the
Speaker 6: things that Scott's hated about the English is they they
Speaker 6: hated the fact that the English loved handicap competitions far
Speaker 6: as they were concerned, a real medal, a real cup
Speaker 6: is won by the lowest score. This idea that you
Speaker 6: could win without shooting the lowest score, they thought of.
Speaker 5: Is insane.
Speaker 6: That's not golf. They also hated stroke play. Freddie Tat,
Speaker 6: who's probably one of the great Scott's golfers ever, would
Speaker 6: say that what score play is no more a game
Speaker 6: than rifle shooting. A game is when you play someone else, right,
Speaker 6: And they they didn't like the exception with stroke play
Speaker 6: in England. They particularly didn't like it with handicaps, and
Speaker 6: they really hated the thing the English invented called the
Speaker 6: bogie competition, where you played against par or you know
Speaker 6: what was conceived then as par as opposed to against
Speaker 6: an opponent at all, or even against a field. You
Speaker 6: just played against what they called the ground score of
Speaker 6: the course.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you know anything about it, But you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm just thinking about golf today and golf then,
Speaker 1: and with match play, and you had these rascius highly
Speaker 1: engaged crowds watching these challenge matches. How did crowds differ
Speaker 1: in like the Open, with the stroke play competition? Were
Speaker 1: they bigger or were they smaller? Were they more tamed?
Speaker 1: Do you know anything about that?
Speaker 6: Yes, the open crowds were tended to be not as
Speaker 6: big as a super powerful match like Tommy versus Davy,
Speaker 6: or Willie versus Old Tom or that one that I
Speaker 6: was just speaking of in nineteen oh five. Those might
Speaker 6: get ten thousand people there, and open will usually get
Speaker 6: somewhere closer to a thousand, maybe two thousand for a
Speaker 6: really big one, you know, and some of them, like
Speaker 6: when Tommy was in the position to win the belt
Speaker 6: in eighteen seventy, there was a very large crowd for
Speaker 6: that one. But on the rule, they would be smaller crowds,
Speaker 6: and they would also be a little better behaved because,
Speaker 6: especially in the early rounds, because there wasn't quite the
Speaker 6: partisan fervor that's involved in a match. A match almost
Speaker 6: always involved, like you were saying, Andy Town against Town,
Speaker 6: and that just creates a different level of, you know,
Speaker 6: fan fervor than watching somebody play good golf against the
Speaker 6: whole field. It would get rowdy in a final, though,
Speaker 6: if it was close, like eighteen ninety eight, you know,
Speaker 6: the final between Harry Varden and Willie Park Junior at
Speaker 6: Prestwick comes down to one stroke on the eighteenth toll
Speaker 6: from four feet away. You know that one would get
Speaker 6: loud and difficult for players, but most of the time
Speaker 6: was a little bit more sedate than a match.
Speaker 2: So I want to try out a theory here. It
Speaker 2: seems like the more the kind of center of power
Speaker 2: in the game of golf moved away from Scotland, the
Speaker 2: more the challenge match declined as the primary form of
Speaker 2: golf or the most important or prestigious form of golf.
Speaker 2: Right because by the early nineteen hundred's the game has
Speaker 2: obviously expanded to England and become very important there, and
Speaker 2: it's also beginning to become important in the US. And
Speaker 2: it seems like in England and the US there aren't
Speaker 2: these kind of rooted traditions of matches that right from
Speaker 2: the beginning, you know, stroke play seems to be the
Speaker 2: most prestigious way to play the game and to identify
Speaker 2: the best players. So is there some validity to that
Speaker 2: where you know, as golf moves away from Scotland, that
Speaker 2: the challenge match kind of you know, declines as the
Speaker 2: power moves elsewhere.
Speaker 6: That is completely true, Garrett, and it's true on a
Speaker 6: much broader scale than that. You know, the farther the
Speaker 6: game moves in St Andrew's and the center of the game,
Speaker 6: which was then in Fife and East Lothian, the farther
Speaker 6: it drifted from its traditions and the more different it became.
Speaker 6: And that really picked up speed in England, as I
Speaker 6: was mentioning a couple minutes ago, with the handicap competitions
Speaker 6: and the focus on stroke play. But the killer is
Speaker 6: when it moves and gets big in America, because Americans
Speaker 6: had a whole different point of view on the game
Speaker 6: than Scott's. For one thing, they practiced like crazy, and
Speaker 6: no Englishmen or Scotsmen ever practiced.
Speaker 5: They just played.
Speaker 6: They might practice in the sense of taking a club
Speaker 6: they were having trouble with somewhere out in the middle
Speaker 6: of the golf course and hitting a lot of strokes
Speaker 6: with it to see if they could figure it out,
Speaker 6: But they didn't practice the way Americans practiced. And Americans
Speaker 6: also were much more individualistic as a culture than any
Speaker 6: European culture that I know of, and so the focus
Speaker 6: on your score in America was quadruple even what it
Speaker 6: was in England. So yes, the more that it went
Speaker 6: away from sc the more different the game became. And
Speaker 6: that applied first to challenge matches and then to lots
Speaker 6: of other things.
Speaker 1: It seemed like in America the origins centered around exhibition
Speaker 1: matches that which you already alluded to, took away from
Speaker 1: some of the challenge matches and as well as tournament play.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was definitely in America.
Speaker 6: There was very regular scheduled tournaments from the outset, and
Speaker 6: by that time there were very regular scheduled tournaments in
Speaker 6: England too.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: At nineteen oh one is when the British Professional Golf
Speaker 6: Association is formed and they set up a whole qualifying
Speaker 6: system for their new championship, the PGA Championship, which in
Speaker 6: those days was sponsored by the News of the World
Speaker 6: newspaper and was known as the News of the World Championship.
Speaker 5: And so there was a whole series.
Speaker 6: Of tenor tournaments during the year that earned you quality,
Speaker 6: you know, points or whatever to get into their championship
Speaker 6: at the end of the year. So that's the beginning
Speaker 6: of what an actual schedule is. And that so America
Speaker 6: doesn't really start golf seriously till about eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 6: So by the time American golf gets really going in
Speaker 6: the early nineteen hundreds, after Harry Varden pays a visit
Speaker 6: there in nineteen hundred. They already have the benefit of
Speaker 6: seeing how the structure has been created over in Britain,
Speaker 6: and they just replicate it pretty much event for event,
Speaker 6: tournament for tournament.
Speaker 1: And in a way, that tournament schedule was created in
Speaker 1: order to create similar competitions across the country to get
Speaker 1: qualifiers for the big tournament.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't you.
Speaker 1: Know, it was a way to accurately measure, you know,
Speaker 1: who the rightful players were to be in the in
Speaker 1: the big tournament.
Speaker 6: Yes, that was a big part of it, Andy, And
Speaker 6: another part of it was what professionals needed was more
Speaker 6: opportunities to earn money, and so it created many, many
Speaker 6: more opportunities to earn money in tournaments. Honestly, in some
Speaker 6: ways it's like today's tour because it's kind of aimed
Speaker 6: more at the middling professional than at the John Henry
Speaker 6: Taylors and Harry Varden's of the world.
Speaker 1: Because they could still earn way more doing a challenge match.
Speaker 1: They could earn the most of anything doing a challenge match,
Speaker 1: just like you know, Phil and Tiger showed last year
Speaker 1: that they could just play for the same amount of
Speaker 1: money as the fed X Cup. Yes, the entire tournament,
Speaker 1: the entire year, competition one day.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well in that age, yes, But I think, really
Speaker 6: Andy is what happened is if you were a championship winner,
Speaker 6: you were the one that got invited to every exhibition match,
Speaker 6: So you just cashing just to ring it up the
Speaker 6: cash register, you know, twice a month, three times a month.
Speaker 6: Whereas if you were in fifty second, well then you
Speaker 6: probably didn't get invited. But when there was fifteen tournaments
Speaker 6: during the year instead of three, you know, you could
Speaker 6: put in your alger to participate in all of them.
Speaker 6: By virtue of your membership in the PGA. As a
Speaker 6: golf professional, you then had many more opportunities to earn
Speaker 6: money and to get yourself noticed that might get you
Speaker 6: invited to an exhibition match or a challenge match. So
Speaker 6: it was a multiple multipurpose thing. A lot of it
Speaker 6: was just to create more opportunity for the professional golfer.
Speaker 2: So the you know, the challenge match has morphed into
Speaker 2: something else. It morphed into something else in the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: maybe even by like the nineteen tens by the Warriors,
Speaker 2: when Bobby Jones was playing some of these exhibition matches,
Speaker 2: and then of course by the sixties we have Shell's
Speaker 2: Wonderful World of Golf and these different from that point on,
Speaker 2: these different permutations of a television product designed around a
Speaker 2: match between well known players, and so, you know, the
Speaker 2: role of matches between prominent players has completely changed has
Speaker 2: it has become something else? And that's what we have
Speaker 2: today with these matches during the pandemic. They're they're on
Speaker 2: that model of the kind of television product that has
Speaker 2: a charitable intention and that features the best known players
Speaker 2: of the day, but nobody really takes them seriously as
Speaker 2: a measure of who's the best player.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, no, I would think they are thought of really,
Speaker 6: as you know. I love the one that they did
Speaker 6: at last year between Tiger and Phil. I mean, there
Speaker 6: was a lot of things that were wrong with the broadcasting,
Speaker 6: this and that. But Andy, you talked about this on
Speaker 6: your podcast and I had the exact same observation. I
Speaker 6: live on a farm with my brother in law who's
Speaker 6: a rugby player. All of his friends are rugby players.
Speaker 6: I watched the event up in his game room with
Speaker 6: like twenty rugby players. You know, they play golf, but
Speaker 6: they play golf mainly to drink, you know what I mean, and.
Speaker 5: To hang around with their buddies.
Speaker 6: They're not golfers in the classical sense of the world,
Speaker 6: but they love that match.
Speaker 5: They were betting money on shots.
Speaker 6: They were just really interacting with golf in a way
Speaker 6: that you seldom see what I would consider to be
Speaker 6: the routine sports fan, which they all are. They live
Speaker 6: around sports, especially college football.
Speaker 5: Just loving golf like that.
Speaker 6: I don't know that we've never had an individual get
Speaker 6: together that was golf related, except a Masters with Scotty's friends.
Speaker 6: So it was kind of interesting in that way. But
Speaker 6: it's more of I don't think I think it has
Speaker 6: the same cachet as a challenge match anymore because it's
Speaker 6: not a serious competition. It's sort of a show that's
Speaker 6: being put on.
Speaker 1: I think there's also a lack of hometown pride, you know,
Speaker 1: where these these towns, and it's the same way with like,
Speaker 1: you know, I just finished watching The Last Dance, and
Speaker 1: I grew up a Bulls fan. I had, you know,
Speaker 1: I have tremendous Bulls pride, you know, no matter who's
Speaker 1: on the team.
Speaker 3: But obviously those years where you're you're you're rooting for
Speaker 3: your team and you're rooting for your player.
Speaker 1: One of the things that these head to head matches
Speaker 1: provide is an opportunity. It's like similar when you know,
Speaker 1: I get in the debate between Ernie and Phil all
Speaker 1: the time and you see the people that back Ernie
Speaker 1: and the people that act Phil. Because it's a one
Speaker 1: versus one, it's a much easier way. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the thing with the difference between the golf tournaments
Speaker 1: are better for the player, the whole group of professional players,
Speaker 1: but for the fan and for the general public, the
Speaker 1: challenge match is a much easier and approachable match to
Speaker 1: watch because you don't have to you're never missing anything
Speaker 1: in a tournament, you're missing ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 1: of the action because you're only watching one shot at
Speaker 1: a time or one group at a time.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 6: Andy, you're so right, And you know when they first
Speaker 6: put out that Premier Golf League thing, I was thinking,
Speaker 6: you know what they should do is they should resurrect
Speaker 6: the Challenge Match. Let's have Adam Scott play a match
Speaker 6: over four courses. Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath for Adam
Speaker 6: Scott versus two courses that you know, some great golfer
Speaker 6: in United States picks out as his courses that he
Speaker 6: wants to play on. That would be fun for fans
Speaker 6: to watch play two courses in Ireland with Rory against Brooks.
Speaker 6: Brooks plays whatever to lousy as larda courses he wants
Speaker 6: and Rory plays two great courses in Ireland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the possibilities are really tantalizing. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think something that was missing from the first Tiger
Speaker 2: film match and obviously you know I liked it too.
Speaker 2: I thought it was I thought it was a great
Speaker 2: idea in something that really generated unusual interests. So I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to bash that match, But the fans weren't
Speaker 2: really part of that match, right. We talked about how
Speaker 2: integral the galleries the fans were and their rowdiness their
Speaker 2: excitement were to the early Challenge matches, and the match
Speaker 2: at Shadow Creek really lacked that. Now, of course, at
Speaker 2: these matches during the pandemic, we can't have crowds, we
Speaker 2: can't have fans for obvious reasons. But at Shadow Creek
Speaker 2: I wish there had been a sense of that rowdiness.
Speaker 2: I almost wish that that match had been played a
Speaker 2: TPC Scottsdale or something to really see what was going
Speaker 2: on in people's homes during that match, because I think
Speaker 2: people were getting excited even if the level of the
Speaker 2: golf wasn't very high. But the potential for drama in
Speaker 2: a one versus one match like this is truly so high,
Speaker 2: and I would love to see an engaged, big gallery.
Speaker 3: I just thinking about this.
Speaker 1: To me, it seems like the closest thing today to
Speaker 1: challenge match is the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 6: That is exactly what I was going to say, Andy,
Speaker 6: I agree one hundred percent. The atmosphere, you know, the
Speaker 6: incredible intense pride that's on the line between countries. That
Speaker 6: is what a challenge match represented.
Speaker 1: What's ironic is everybody's searching for, like you know, there's
Speaker 1: a big power struggle. You know. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour might absorb the European Tour is just
Speaker 1: because of the Ryder Cup and the amount of money
Speaker 1: that's generated from it. So you have this uber profitable
Speaker 1: you know property golf property that's essentially based the most
Speaker 1: similar format of golf to the beginning of competition of golf,
Speaker 1: which was also extraordinarily popular, and not just among golfers.
Speaker 1: I mean, I imagine that this led a lot of
Speaker 1: people interest to get interested in the game. I know
Speaker 1: my friends love watching the Ryder Cup that aren't big golfers,
Speaker 1: and it's like, and yet we still don't ever look
Speaker 1: and say, why don't we do more of things like that?
Speaker 1: And instead of doing things like it, they just tried
Speaker 1: to copy it with the President's Cup.
Speaker 6: It's amazing to me, Andy that the PGA Tour and
Speaker 6: the European Tour jointly cannot realize the formula that makes
Speaker 6: their main event such a great success and completely ignore
Speaker 6: it in every other enterprise they undertake. You know, it's
Speaker 6: just like, I'm so baffled by that, and I just
Speaker 6: don't get it.
Speaker 5: I don't care what level you're at.
Speaker 6: If there are two good golfers playing and they both
Speaker 6: happen to have their game on that day, there's going
Speaker 6: to be amazing drama in the you know, thrust and
Speaker 6: perry of match compared to the kind of thing that
Speaker 6: you see weekly on the PGA Tour. Last year's Amateurs
Speaker 6: were both amazing matches. The one thing I would say
Speaker 6: about the match that happened last year's I think the
Speaker 6: fans would like it a lot more if they played
Speaker 6: for their own money and it's not like they don't
Speaker 6: have enough, then then you would get some stakes.
Speaker 5: Let's play for.
Speaker 6: Five million aside, and we're putting up the five million
Speaker 6: now now we're talking.
Speaker 1: Or even if it was just a part, even a portion,
Speaker 1: if it's you know, we know we're gonna make a
Speaker 1: bunch of money TV wise, and we can put money
Speaker 1: from the TV pot.
Speaker 3: In to make it bigger.
Speaker 1: But even if it's one hundred thousand, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think it's the general it's it's the idea
Speaker 1: that exchange of there's I have a really good buddy
Speaker 1: that you know, he's a really he's a good player,
Speaker 1: and we'd had we had a summer where we had
Speaker 1: matches and I just kept beating him. In one match
Speaker 1: he started, you know, he's he's three up or four
Speaker 1: up through five holes like just in, he starts John.
Speaker 1: He has and beating me in months and he's John
Speaker 1: and up. I end up coming back and it was
Speaker 1: just for twenty bucks. I end up coming back and
Speaker 1: beating him and I have. He was so distraught at
Speaker 1: the end of the round. He gave me the twenty
Speaker 1: bucks and I have a picture of the twenty dollars
Speaker 1: of a hand and him with his head in his hands,
Speaker 1: and it's just whatever he calls me, it comes up,
Speaker 1: and it's just like that. Exchange of money is like
Speaker 1: the worst Having to open your wallet and hand hand
Speaker 1: your opponent money is one of the worst feelings in golf.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and the rules should be that they have to
Speaker 6: hand over the hunter k on the final hole if
Speaker 6: you lose, hand it to him right there on eighteen.
Speaker 5: Have it in a statuel.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: I'd be fine with this the old rules, which is
Speaker 6: somebody puts up a big stake and winner gets this percent,
Speaker 6: loser gets no percent.
Speaker 2: And it would bring out a different dimension of the
Speaker 2: competition because something that I got the sense of, I
Speaker 2: don't have any proof of this, but something that I
Speaker 2: out the sense of in the first match was that
Speaker 2: neither Tiger nor Phil was playing particularly well and they
Speaker 2: didn't care.
Speaker 6: Still cared, and Tiger didn't you know, maybe still to
Speaker 6: win that match, at least, I think personally, and probably
Speaker 6: just to have at least one thing he can say
Speaker 6: about Tiger Woods, that's not he killed me. And but
Speaker 6: I don't think Tiger cared a wit about whether he
Speaker 6: won or didn't.
Speaker 1: What What of the disadvantages of matches are blowouts? You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's like one of the big fears is, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a snooze fest because one guy plays lousy and
Speaker 1: something I was. I went to the NBA All Star
Speaker 1: Game this year, and that's always been one of the
Speaker 1: big contentions of the All Star Game, was like, you know,
Speaker 1: these guys don't try. It's not really a competition. And
Speaker 1: they went with a new format this year, the Ela Mende,
Speaker 1: which essentially gave a player once they reached you know,
Speaker 1: the third quarter, they gave one team a certain amount
Speaker 1: of advantage and it was play until here, until you
Speaker 1: score this many points, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it was like one of the most incredible games of
Speaker 1: basketball I've ever seen, because you're seeing the best players
Speaker 1: in the world all on this on two teams, and
Speaker 1: they were playing it was like they were playing pickup basketball.
Speaker 2: It was like pickup that's how you play pickup basketball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, Mike, I'm wondering if, like, if there was
Speaker 1: a way you could do that, whereas almost you could
Speaker 1: create a new type of format that's match play based,
Speaker 1: but you know, after nine holes your lead transfers to
Speaker 1: a you win, you need to win this many more
Speaker 1: holes and it becomes almost sudden death.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think that would be fun. You know, I think
Speaker 6: it requires some thinking out, but I love that kind
Speaker 6: of thing. I think golf is not inventive enough. You know,
Speaker 6: we just have the same seventy two whole grind every week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's you just got an experiment. You know,
Speaker 2: how can we bring back some of the intensity of
Speaker 2: the early days of challenge matches? How can we reintroduce
Speaker 2: some of that drama and unpredictability and just playing insanity
Speaker 2: to the game.
Speaker 6: Alternate shot is a format that by its very nature
Speaker 6: introduces a lot of volatility and instability into it. And
Speaker 6: one of the things that I think is going to
Speaker 6: be fun about Sunday's match is that a portion of
Speaker 6: it is going to be played at alternate shot, and
Speaker 6: then you're gonna have Tiger hitting it.
Speaker 5: From wherever Brady, I mean, wherever Manning or whoever it is.
Speaker 5: I think it's is it Tiger with Manning? Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So you know, wherever he hits a tiger has
Speaker 6: to play from, and you know there could be some
Speaker 6: interesting adventures that go along with that. And that was
Speaker 6: part of what made the early matches great to bet on,
Speaker 6: because you never knew what would happen, because you know,
Speaker 6: one player could be off form frequently. For instance, Tommy
Speaker 6: played with his dad, and his dad's form was off
Speaker 6: and on. He had a lot to do in life.
Speaker 6: He was laying out golf courses, he was managing the
Speaker 6: green as Saint Andrew's.
Speaker 5: So his game came and went.
Speaker 6: And you know, Tommy could beat most people's best ball
Speaker 6: by himself, but a lot of days his father made
Speaker 6: it impossible for him, and that introduced an element of uncertainty,
Speaker 6: even against a great player like Tommy. That made it
Speaker 6: great for betting and for interest. And I think alternate
Speaker 6: shot is something that you know has really completely disappeared,
Speaker 6: except you know, the mornings of the Ryder Cup or whatever.
Speaker 6: And I think that's part of why match play was
Speaker 6: so interesting.
Speaker 1: Then it's so much more of a team game too,
Speaker 1: like you have to be there for your teammate, you
Speaker 1: can't let him get down, because it's a much more
Speaker 1: challenging format to play because there's more pressure on you.
Speaker 5: Challenging psychologically everywhere.
Speaker 6: You feel so horrible when you hit your ball into
Speaker 6: oblivion and you got to then turn around and look
Speaker 6: at your partner and say your go here. You feel
Speaker 6: so much pressure compared to when you're playing your own ball.
Speaker 6: Also have to consider, you know, when you're hitting a shot,
Speaker 6: that's an approach if you're not going to get it there,
Speaker 6: what does your partner want next?
Speaker 5: Does you want ninety? Does he want a hundred? What
Speaker 5: does he want?
Speaker 6: So there's so many different elements that enter into it,
Speaker 6: and I think it's the greatest.
Speaker 5: Form of golf myself personally that.
Speaker 6: I obviously I'm in an incredibly shrinking minority on that point.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that the key or alternate shot becomes the
Speaker 1: most fun format to play when your mindset shifts from
Speaker 1: oh shit, I shouldn't have put my partner there, to
Speaker 1: thank God, I don't have to hit that next shot.
Speaker 6: You know that's what you are thinking, but you have
Speaker 6: to pretend that you're not. You have to pretend that
Speaker 6: you're feeling remorse.
Speaker 3: But what's in your own head? You realize I got
Speaker 3: that one yeah, no, it's you.
Speaker 6: Know, it's so much fun to play, and you know,
Speaker 6: people's scores are so much higher. And I think, you know,
Speaker 6: Americans don't like it because they can't score that well
Speaker 6: at it, and plus they only play half the.
Speaker 2: Shots and yeah, and that and that can be a
Speaker 2: problem if you're playing a course where you really want
Speaker 2: to play all the shots or whatever. You want to
Speaker 2: say that you've played the course. But when you let
Speaker 2: go of that two yeah, exactly, Yeah, you're not going
Speaker 2: to do that. But when you when you're able to
Speaker 2: let go of that, it really you know, you're playing
Speaker 2: fewer shots. Also because it so it has less of
Speaker 2: a physical impact, even if the mental component is is
Speaker 2: a bit more complex.
Speaker 5: It was very much quicker as a game too.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah about for sure.
Speaker 6: Three hours to play an alternate shot match if you're
Speaker 6: moving as slow as an American.
Speaker 3: We did. We did.
Speaker 1: We had a tensome at loss Sonia playing five balls
Speaker 1: but sling shotting so that you're always one hundred yards
Speaker 1: ahead of your partner.
Speaker 3: And we we ended the we ended the round. We
Speaker 3: played just over three hours. It was incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all walkers, so Steve just to just to wrap
Speaker 2: up here. Do you have a pick for the Sunday's match?
Speaker 3: Do you think o rooting interest?
Speaker 6: What I'm rooting for is a close match, you know,
Speaker 6: something that's exciting. You know, I would say that I'm
Speaker 6: not a huge I'm more of a Tiger fan than
Speaker 6: a Phil fan. Phil kind of lost a little bit
Speaker 6: of luster for me when he's running around chasing his
Speaker 6: ball and knocking it backwards in the middle of the
Speaker 6: open while it's moving. Even though he's probably right, I
Speaker 6: don't think it's very good for him to throw Tom
Speaker 6: Watson under the bus publicly after the Ryder Cup. So,
Speaker 6: you know, some of the things Phil's done have made
Speaker 6: me feel not as well as attached to him as
Speaker 6: a lot of people do.
Speaker 2: So, so Tiger is the slight rooting interest.
Speaker 5: Well, obviously Tiger is the is.
Speaker 6: If he's not the greatest player ever, he certainly has
Speaker 6: had the greatest stretch of golf that's ever been played
Speaker 6: that I don't think there can be.
Speaker 5: Much dispute about.
Speaker 6: So, I mean, I have a lot of respect for
Speaker 6: that as a person who's looked back at the history
Speaker 6: of the game, just the accomplishments he's had or just
Speaker 6: bag of the mine
Speaker 2: Sh