Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a fried.
Speaker 1: Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Frida Egg Egg,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run
Speaker 1: off of the hump.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday eg Golf Podcast.
Speaker 2: I am your host, Andy Johnson, and I am joined
Speaker 2: by one of our other esteemed co hosts, Garret Morrison.
Speaker 1: Garrett two co hosts. Hey, Andy, how's it going.
Speaker 2: I didn't call myself a co host. I call myself
Speaker 2: a host.
Speaker 1: Oh so, so I get the co Well that makes sense. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. You did found this company in this pot.
Speaker 2: How are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing pretty well. Yeah, just getting going here in
Speaker 1: the morning and thinking about Pinehurst. I've been taking notes
Speaker 1: all morning and getting ready to talk about it. I
Speaker 1: love this golf course and so very excited to kind
Speaker 1: of get into detail about it.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it is like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: obviously one of the great golf courses of America, and
Speaker 2: to me, it's like one of the great golf courses
Speaker 2: that I've played the most. I think I've played it
Speaker 2: six or seven times now, oh really, yeah, And it's
Speaker 2: just you know, it's a phenomenal golf course, and I
Speaker 2: think that it's one it's easy to get to, so
Speaker 2: a lot of people have played it. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: really super excited about this championship. So this podcast, we're
Speaker 2: going to go in depth on Pinehurst number two. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about the golf course, and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of I think in the lens of hosting this
Speaker 2: US Open and where I wanted to kick things off
Speaker 2: was I think just to set the stage like this
Speaker 2: golf course, whether you like Pinehurst number two or not,
Speaker 2: is going to be a prominent figure in the US
Speaker 2: Open moving forward. So five of the next twenty five
Speaker 2: US Opens, including that, so that's including this year, are
Speaker 2: going to be at Pinehurst number two. It is really
Speaker 2: a I think, like you could say never before frequency
Speaker 2: of a golf course in the US Open. ROTA. I
Speaker 2: know they don't like the term ROTA, but it's becoming
Speaker 2: very clearly a RODA. And and this golf course I
Speaker 2: think presents a unique challenge to golfers. And I think
Speaker 2: the big storyline because of how much it's going to
Speaker 2: be on the on the schedule, you know, it hosts
Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen. Twenty fourteen was kind of pre this
Speaker 2: modern golf. It was right at this inflection point in
Speaker 2: the game where the game was getting younger, but you
Speaker 2: still had a lot of holdovers from the previous era.
Speaker 2: And what I mean by previous era is golfers who
Speaker 2: grew up without track man, golfers who grew up playing
Speaker 2: heads that were smaller than four hundred and sixty ccs.
Speaker 2: And now we have entered this new era of golf
Speaker 2: that is extraordinarily youth driven, speed driven, and Pinehurst number
Speaker 2: two will be a prominent fixture of this era as
Speaker 2: a US Open course. And I'm very interested to see
Speaker 2: ten years later from twenty fourteen when Martin Kimer potted
Speaker 2: his way around the greens. But also, like you know,
Speaker 2: everybody talks about that Martin Kaimer, two time major winner,
Speaker 2: one of players at that time, I mean, this bonafide
Speaker 2: great golfer, hall player, and at that time, you know
Speaker 2: like he kind of it was just he blew away
Speaker 2: the field like he dominated. It wasn't you know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't It was a tour to force, and in terms
Speaker 2: of this year, I'm super I'm fascinated with, like what
Speaker 2: skill sets are going to be you know, like we're
Speaker 2: going to enter this data room, like this data world
Speaker 2: of golf, Like what skill sets are going to be super.
Speaker 1: Rewarded now that the game has changed.
Speaker 2: Game has changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think one of the things that's really
Speaker 1: interesting about the number two course is that it's not
Speaker 1: really clear which exact skill set will rise to the
Speaker 1: top because I think that, as Bill Corr put it
Speaker 1: in the video that we made about Pinehurst number two
Speaker 1: and released a couple of days ago, Pinehurst number two
Speaker 1: allows you to play your game, to try to thrive
Speaker 1: in the way that you thrive as a golfer. I
Speaker 1: could see a shorter hitter competing here. I could see
Speaker 1: somebody really making bank with their short game. I could
Speaker 1: see somebody having a great putting week and winning, maybe
Speaker 1: mostly for that reason. I could also see somebody getting
Speaker 1: hot with driver and just hitting it really long and
Speaker 1: straight all week, having shorter approaches into these very tricky
Speaker 1: greens and winning that way. So I think that one
Speaker 1: of the exciting things about Pinehurst number two hosting this
Speaker 1: major after the PGA Championship this year at Valhalla, where
Speaker 1: we all knew going in exactly what the dynamics of
Speaker 1: the tournament would be and which skill sets would rise
Speaker 1: to the top. One of the exciting things about this
Speaker 1: course in this US Open is that I'm not totally
Speaker 1: sure what the profile of player is going to be
Speaker 1: that ends up at the top of the leaderboard.
Speaker 2: On the weekend, Bill Corr did a tremendous renovation of
Speaker 2: Pineers number two. Restoration, renovation, whatever you want to do it.
Speaker 1: It was, I mean, the way I think I would
Speaker 1: like to put it would probably be historical renovation, taking
Speaker 1: the course back to its nineteen forties form, and I
Speaker 1: think it was pretty faithful along those lines. But there
Speaker 1: were also some modernizing moves that Corn Crenshaw made, But
Speaker 1: I should mention single row irrigation, real deal native. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of like old fashioned aspects of this
Speaker 1: golf course that a lot of the newly renovated championship
Speaker 1: courses don't have, and so in this case, restoration might
Speaker 1: actually be close to the proper term for what they did.
Speaker 2: In the lens of the Championship. I think the renovation
Speaker 2: thing that I would I you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: pretty fascinating. After I played it this fall, I just
Speaker 2: started think about, like, you know, it gets really narrow
Speaker 2: right where I want to hit the ball, Like right
Speaker 2: where I want to hit it. It gets narrow seemingly every hole,
Speaker 2: And I think this is what you're saying. It's like
Speaker 2: where you could see a shorter hitter thriving basically on
Speaker 2: every hole at Pinehurst number two, every par four and
Speaker 2: par five fairways narrow at about three hundred yards, they
Speaker 2: get narrow and the waste kind of comes in and
Speaker 2: they're able to do this narrowing. Very It takes a
Speaker 2: while to realize that this happened, like I've played a
Speaker 2: number of times before I started realized. Then I went
Speaker 2: on Google or started looking at it and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Like this kind of narrows down at
Speaker 2: every three hundred yard mark, and you know it's pretty wide.
Speaker 2: Then it gets really narrow at three hundred yards. So
Speaker 2: it's like it's an interesting golf course in that sense.
Speaker 2: I'm super excited to see. Strategically, are we going to
Speaker 2: see a lot of drivers And if you think about
Speaker 2: like even driving distance in twenty fourteen, the number of
Speaker 2: players who could hit the ball over three hundred yards
Speaker 2: and twenty fourteen or averaged over three hundred yards in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen pales in comparison to basically the entire tour
Speaker 2: averaging over three hundred yards in twenty twenty four So
Speaker 2: are we going to see a lot of drivers you
Speaker 2: take on a little bit more risk. The Native is
Speaker 2: really a cool aspect of the golf course because you
Speaker 2: can get good lies. You can be in spots where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, this is great, I can still hit
Speaker 2: it at the green and in some cases, like I
Speaker 2: like hitting it out of this because I'm going to
Speaker 2: get a little bit and get some zip on the ball,
Speaker 2: Like it's not a bad spot. You could get a
Speaker 2: better angle if you're into the Native on some of
Speaker 2: these holes where like you know, you get over and
Speaker 2: you have like a really nice way to pro a
Speaker 2: very difficult green to hit from the fair away. So
Speaker 2: with the Native, but then also you could get into
Speaker 2: spots where it's like unhittable, like and I'm chipping out
Speaker 2: sideways type stuff. So off the tee is going to
Speaker 2: be fascinating, Like I, you know, my friend's Zach Blair qualified,
Speaker 2: and I'm curious he's the shortest hitter on the PGA Tour,
Speaker 2: but like he's going to be hitting to wider spots
Speaker 2: in the faraway than everybody else. And how does that
Speaker 2: dynamic play out over the week. My hunch is that
Speaker 2: power is going to win, because it usually does. But
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised, as you said, to see a short,
Speaker 2: shorter hitter or a couple shorter hitters contending here.
Speaker 1: Some of this depends on how firm the course is,
Speaker 1: and I'm not quite sure how that's going to work
Speaker 1: out this time. You know, in the run up to
Speaker 1: the twenty fourteen US Open, it was pretty dry in
Speaker 1: Pinehurst and so the course was baked out in the
Speaker 1: week leading up to the US Open. They did end
Speaker 1: up having some rain on Thursday night of that US Open,
Speaker 1: and so the course was actually a little bit softer
Speaker 1: than expected. On Friday. Martin Kaimer shot sixty five sixty
Speaker 1: five on Thursday Friday. Some players actually went pretty low.
Speaker 1: We remember that Open as being brutal, but it was
Speaker 1: really only very brutal on the weekend when the course
Speaker 1: did dry out. And so I've looked at the forecast.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of rain in the forecast, and
Speaker 1: so we might get a softer version of Pinehurst number two,
Speaker 1: And I kind of wonder how the course would play
Speaker 1: for these players now ten years later, a little bit soft.
Speaker 1: I think some players could go low here and that
Speaker 1: we could see more of a power game start to
Speaker 1: dominate at the course, because that's just what happened when
Speaker 1: the conditions are a little bit softer. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what the course is now. I think that there would
Speaker 1: still be some really interesting dynamics to the course, some
Speaker 1: really interesting holes where power players might have to make
Speaker 1: decisions that they're uncomfortable making given the way that they're
Speaker 1: asked to strategize the game. Now. It's just hard to
Speaker 1: moneyball this course. I think it's not a simple solution
Speaker 1: using the methods that tour players now use to solve
Speaker 1: most courses. As you say, if you just wail away
Speaker 1: at driver, you're often going to find yourself in the
Speaker 1: worst position on the whole, and so that has to
Speaker 1: be on your mind in some way. So you're going
Speaker 1: to consider clubbing down, You're going to consider choosing some
Speaker 1: kind of weird line off the tee that might be
Speaker 1: a little bit uncomfortable. You have to do some different
Speaker 1: things at this course than you normally do at even
Speaker 1: major championship venues, and so the details of players' strategy
Speaker 1: should be very, very interesting, even if it is a
Speaker 1: little bit softer and slower out there this year than
Speaker 1: it was ten years ago.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to note, you know, there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot made Like the best draining golf courses
Speaker 2: are built on sand, and you're gonna hear about the
Speaker 2: North Carolina sand Hills a lot this year or in
Speaker 2: and around the tournament. And so pineher'st number two is
Speaker 2: built on sand, but it is not like the world's
Speaker 2: best sand, So you know there are different I don't
Speaker 2: want it's.
Speaker 1: Like sand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to get two in the weeds here,
Speaker 2: But like you know, a lot, a lot of golf
Speaker 2: courses before they're built measure percolating rates of water to
Speaker 2: understand how good the sand is. And I would say
Speaker 2: that Pineher's Number two is a lot better than a
Speaker 2: dirt or clay based golf course at draining, but it
Speaker 2: is not at like the at a Scottish Links level,
Speaker 2: like that sand has a lot higher percolation rate than
Speaker 2: Piners number two. So this golf course can recover from
Speaker 2: some rain and still present firm, but it is not
Speaker 2: like out of this world. And and I think the
Speaker 2: main and obviously we're we'll get to this, but the
Speaker 2: greens are the main defense of this golf course or not.
Speaker 2: I'd say probably the star defense of this golf course,
Speaker 2: especially for the modern game. Those targets and why they's
Speaker 2: the defense is that the targets are so small and
Speaker 2: they repel, often repel in all directions. And when those
Speaker 2: greens are soft, the targets just get bigger. And that
Speaker 2: if they if they let's just say, the softness creates
Speaker 2: a twenty percent bigger target. It just makes such a
Speaker 2: such a huge impact on how comfortable the best players
Speaker 2: in the world are going to be. And I think
Speaker 2: Jeff Ogilvie in the video that we get that you
Speaker 2: you and Cameron put together on this had just like
Speaker 2: a great quote about Pinehurst that I think is really
Speaker 2: really true. The more you play it, the more it
Speaker 2: scares you. The more times you play there, the more
Speaker 2: times you hit great shots that you think are like
Speaker 2: really good and end up in bad places. And what
Speaker 2: it does is it builds scar tissue. You start to
Speaker 2: think about that and that's when targets start to feel
Speaker 2: smaller and smaller because you think about, oh, I hit
Speaker 2: that shot so good the other day and it rolled
Speaker 2: off the right side here, like I need to move
Speaker 2: my target two yards left, And I think what you
Speaker 2: were saying about the modern game the strategy. This is
Speaker 2: where Pineher's number two kind of provides some anecdotes to that,
Speaker 2: is that the strategy is like very it's very simplistic
Speaker 2: how these guys plays like avoid hazards game towards fat
Speaker 2: sides of the green. But when the targets are smaller
Speaker 2: and there's repelling edges in all directions, it becomes harder
Speaker 2: and harder to do that. And there's no water. We
Speaker 2: aren't talking about a place that has water hazards that
Speaker 2: you're avoiding. So areas look okay, especially if you're looking
Speaker 2: at it from Google Earth. It's okay to bail right
Speaker 2: here and let it repel off. But with the way
Speaker 2: the greens are crowned and the short grass around them,
Speaker 2: and the way the short grass can run into waste areas,
Speaker 2: this is where you can get yourself in a lot
Speaker 2: of trouble because the ball that you're aiming six yards
Speaker 2: left of a or six yards left of a right pin.
Speaker 2: If you tug at ten yards left in my repel off.
Speaker 2: So you hit it four yards left of your target,
Speaker 2: it can repel off and then run another fifteen yards away.
Speaker 2: This is the beauty of the golf course is that
Speaker 2: it accentuates mediocre shots. It accentuates the penalty for mediocre shots.
Speaker 2: If you hit bad shots, you're going to be in
Speaker 2: like a world of hurt. And if you hit great shots,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have great looks a birdie like. That's the thing.
Speaker 2: I think this golf course similar to Augusta National with
Speaker 2: its greens. They're very different greens than Augustin National, but
Speaker 2: in a similar way, they accentuate the level the degrees
Speaker 2: of quality of shot really well.
Speaker 1: I think a good example of this is the first hole.
Speaker 1: So this is a three hundred and ninety eight. It's
Speaker 1: a scary hole, it is, but it doesn't appear that
Speaker 1: way no on the scorecard or even maybe when you
Speaker 1: play it the first couple of times. It's a three
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety eight yard par four, which is almost
Speaker 1: a driveable par four for the US Open field these days.
Speaker 1: It plays a little bit downhill and so most players
Speaker 1: are going to be actually hitting iron off this tee
Speaker 1: because there is a of that bottlenecking that you talked
Speaker 1: about earlier in the fairway, which by the way, is
Speaker 1: not a Ross design feature. It's not a BILLCRP design feature.
Speaker 1: That's a Mike Davis, former CEO of the USGA design feature.
Speaker 1: That's something that he requested from Billcore. In any case,
Speaker 1: this hole plays a little bit downhill, it's short. Players
Speaker 1: will hit an iron off the tee for the most part,
Speaker 1: and then a short iron or a wedge into the green.
Speaker 1: You can play this hole a couple of times and
Speaker 1: hit the fairway, hit the green, move on with a
Speaker 1: birdier par and say to yourself, that's a gentle handshake.
Speaker 1: That's an easy hole. That's a simple hole. But the
Speaker 1: first time you miss the green on that hole, that's
Speaker 1: when the game starts. Say you bail out to the
Speaker 1: right a little bit because you're scared of the bunker
Speaker 1: that's guarding the left side of the green. That bunker
Speaker 1: looks really scary, It eats into the green. It looks
Speaker 1: like the place that you don't want to be. So
Speaker 1: you bail out to the right a little bit. You
Speaker 1: try to hit the right portion of the green, but
Speaker 1: you miss and you end up in that little chipping swale.
Speaker 1: You discover that there are these little contours, these little
Speaker 1: mounds down at the bottom of the swale that give
Speaker 1: you these weird lies for your chips, and it's all
Speaker 1: short grass, and you try to hit that chip and
Speaker 1: you discover that it's really not easy. Maybe you end
Speaker 1: up hitting that chip over the green into the bunker
Speaker 1: on the other side, and you end up walking away
Speaker 1: with double bogie and you're like, okay, I can't do
Speaker 1: that again. I'm not going to bail out right again.
Speaker 1: So you come back the next time, and maybe you
Speaker 1: miss a little bit left and you end up in
Speaker 1: that bunker. And then then you just start thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: where do I play on this hole? Where do I
Speaker 1: miss on this hole? What do I really have to
Speaker 1: avoid on this hole? You have to avoid everywhere. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can miss short like, that's that's okay.
Speaker 2: So I played, I played this hole. We teach it.
Speaker 1: Really it's short though. Actually, come to think of it,
Speaker 1: that's bad too. Sorry, go on.
Speaker 2: So it's funny. I the last time we were there,
Speaker 2: we teed off on ten and it was in the fall,
Speaker 2: and so this was my tenth hole, and I started
Speaker 2: to play pretty well as I usually do, like you know,
Speaker 2: this is a working man's golf game. As you start
Speaker 2: to feel really good about the seventh or eighth hole.
Speaker 2: So I hit her great drive on one and I
Speaker 2: had like seventy yards sixty yards, like, I threaded it
Speaker 2: right through there and it was the easiest shot I
Speaker 2: had all day. With like a lobledge what I was
Speaker 2: looking at. I was like, God, that green's so small,
Speaker 2: it's so so tidy. And I ended up just dump.
Speaker 2: I didn't hit it far o. I had like a
Speaker 2: backpin and I was like, don't do not go long.
Speaker 2: Whatever you do, don't go long. And I landed like
Speaker 2: kind of like middle of the green and it spun
Speaker 2: back and spun off the front of the green. Like
Speaker 2: it's just like an interest. Like if you don't if
Speaker 2: you don't make committage swings, there are going to be
Speaker 2: chipping from all day long. Like the only way to
Speaker 2: succeed at Pinehurst is getting full commitment over your shots
Speaker 2: because like you cannot. I think, like this is the
Speaker 2: thing that's so interesting with modern golf. Modern golf is
Speaker 2: so much about bailing out like that's half the game.
Speaker 2: Half the game is just like understanding I can bail here,
Speaker 2: don't dump it over here like that, That's what the
Speaker 2: game is has become and hit good shots like and
Speaker 2: there's like a commitment level that that most golf courses
Speaker 2: allow players to get to understanding where to bail out
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst, Like, the interesting thing is it's like when
Speaker 2: you start to bail out, that's when you get in trouble.
Speaker 2: When you aren't committed to hitting a really great shot
Speaker 2: and you're thinking about what you're where, you're misses. That
Speaker 2: is that is like the biggest thing that can get
Speaker 2: you in trouble. There is not stand over the shot
Speaker 2: and saying to yourself, hit a great shot here, And
Speaker 2: I think, like what a golf course. And I don't
Speaker 2: want to dump on this golf course anymore. I think
Speaker 2: it's gotten enough abuse.
Speaker 1: But talk about golf course again.
Speaker 2: What Valhalla allowed was like bail out anywhere, bail out
Speaker 2: anywhere you want, and just to avoid and it created
Speaker 2: this this tournament where like you could it was like
Speaker 2: extremely hard to make double bogie because you could basically
Speaker 2: just like as long as you avoided like seven areas
Speaker 2: on the golf course, you were going to make pars
Speaker 2: and at worst bogie. If you hit a bad shot,
Speaker 2: bogie maybe maybe badge, maybe a bogey. At Pinehurst, I
Speaker 2: think like you can hit really good shots and walk
Speaker 2: away with like shaking your head, like how did I
Speaker 2: just make a bogie? And the answer usually is like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I was a little too cautious with
Speaker 2: my target.
Speaker 1: Right, And you know what happens when you bail out
Speaker 1: and miss at Pinehurst around the greens is that you're
Speaker 1: left with a variety of chip shots. Right. There's an
Speaker 1: infinite variety of chip shots around the greens at Pinehurst.
Speaker 1: They're so varied and that's part of what makes them interesting.
Speaker 1: But there is a certain brand of chip shot that
Speaker 1: you hit a lot at Pinehurst, and that is the
Speaker 1: up and over. You have to hit up to the
Speaker 1: level of the green pad, which is higher than you
Speaker 1: are generally when you're chipping at Pinehurst because the greens
Speaker 1: are crowned or turtle back and so you're below the
Speaker 1: surface of the green, so you got to hit your
Speaker 1: shot up that first slope. But then often, as Jeff
Speaker 1: Ogilvie mentioned in our video, a lot of the greens
Speaker 1: have kind of lower middle sections, and so that means
Speaker 1: that you have to then judge the rollout of your
Speaker 1: chip shot or your putt or whatever you're doing. You
Speaker 1: have to judge the rollout of it on a downslope,
Speaker 1: and so you're hitting up a contour and down a
Speaker 1: contour a lot when you bail out and miss at Pinehurst,
Speaker 1: because generally the bailouts are kind of like away from bunkers,
Speaker 1: away from hazards, So you're going to end up in
Speaker 1: a lot of short grass if you're playing conservatively. But
Speaker 1: then that chip shot that you hit is the one
Speaker 1: chip shot that I think pros really don't like where
Speaker 1: you're hitting up something and then down something because it's
Speaker 1: so hard to judge your distance and it's so hard
Speaker 1: to like figure out what club to hit. Sometimes maybe
Speaker 1: pros hit a lot of lob wedges, maybe they'll just
Speaker 1: go for a standard lob wedge shot, but I don't
Speaker 1: think that's always the best play on these chip shots.
Speaker 1: Sometimes keeping it along the ground is a lot more effective.
Speaker 1: Other times you do want to fly it a little
Speaker 1: bit farther, but it's hard to figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: shot to hit in those situations because you have the
Speaker 1: slow down pace going up and you have the speed
Speaker 1: up pace going back down, and that just introduces a
Speaker 1: kind of complexity that these guys don't see a whole
Speaker 1: lot at PGA Tour courses, standard PGA Tour courses or
Speaker 1: major championship venues like Valhalla.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another variable is it's bermuda grass. There's grain.
Speaker 2: There's just like an added layer of things that you
Speaker 2: have to calculate when you're hitting these shots. I think
Speaker 2: like in a way, Augustina National does this with lag putts.
Speaker 2: When you have long putts it Augusta National a lot
Speaker 2: of times it's up and over. At Pinehurst it's from
Speaker 2: off the green. Those those qualities come from off the
Speaker 2: green and they're up and over. And you know, this
Speaker 2: is what made Martin Kimer's performance so amazing was doing
Speaker 2: it with putter all week long is very hard. This
Speaker 2: was not an easy thing to just be putting balls
Speaker 2: from off the green to dead. If it was, everybody
Speaker 2: would have been doing it. It was an extraordinary lag
Speaker 2: putting week from off the green for Martin Kimer. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I it's it'll be I'm curious how players are gonna
Speaker 2: hit shots. Are we going to see a lot? Do
Speaker 2: you think we'll see a lot of people putting?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I don't think that most of
Speaker 1: the top pros are super comfortable with that kind of shot. Now.
Speaker 2: I think the guys that are really really strong around
Speaker 2: the greens are going to be chipping the like that
Speaker 2: have that have full confidence and technique. I think we'll
Speaker 2: see some of the weaker chippers and pitchers on tour
Speaker 2: lean on the putter. I will say, I think like
Speaker 2: some players from Florida like that play a lot of
Speaker 2: golf in Florida where they have like a lot of
Speaker 2: runoff Bermuda runoffs. Like you could see some of them
Speaker 2: play some bump and runs, especially like to short sided
Speaker 2: pins where you just kind of like hit it into
Speaker 2: the hill and let that kill it ye with like
Speaker 2: a six or seven.
Speaker 1: Iron, even a hybrid or something like that.
Speaker 2: Where it like kind of trundles over the slope.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good play. I think that's like,
Speaker 1: honestly a really good play in a lot of situations
Speaker 1: around the greens at Pinehurst. But I'm saying that more
Speaker 1: from the perspective of an amateur than a pro, because
Speaker 1: those are very different, you know, very different situations.
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a quick break to talk about
Speaker 2: our sponsor for this episode, which is ourselves, Club TFE.
Speaker 2: That is our membership option at the Fried Egg and
Speaker 2: it is we really like it. We produce a lot
Speaker 2: of content in there, a lot of stuff about golf
Speaker 2: courses in golf architecture. If you're into this golf course
Speaker 2: discussion that Garret and I are having, you'll probably like that.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we're going to be releasing
Speaker 2: US Open week is in every whole video like one
Speaker 2: thing about every hole at Pinehurst number two. So we
Speaker 2: usually do those for a couple majors a year, you know,
Speaker 2: with with this year the US Open, that was kind
Speaker 2: of the big one this year, but I think last
Speaker 2: year we did Okill and LACC. Those are fun videos
Speaker 2: and then you get a ton of other benefits. We
Speaker 2: have a Pinehurst number two profile on there that I wrote.
Speaker 2: I think it's like eighteen hundred words about Pineer's number two.
Speaker 2: So there's a ton of stuff. Those profiles come out
Speaker 2: just about every week of the year, so cover a
Speaker 2: wide range of courses, from hidden gems to the best
Speaker 2: courses in the world, So check that out Club TFF.
Speaker 2: If you're interested interested in joining, go to thefridagg dot
Speaker 2: com slash membership. Thanks, and let's get back to Pinehurst
Speaker 2: number two. Well, let's talk about some favorite aspects of
Speaker 2: the golf course. If what's kind of your let's just
Speaker 2: say a couple of your favorite things. We'll just start
Speaker 2: with one. I'll kind of chime in with one of
Speaker 2: mine and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1: Okay, one favorite thing would have to be what all
Speaker 1: the landing zones at Pinehurst number two are doing on
Speaker 1: the par four's and par fives. The landing zones and
Speaker 1: the fairways are so interesting on every single one of
Speaker 1: those holes. What those landing zones do forces you to
Speaker 1: choose a line from the t commit to that line,
Speaker 1: make a strategic decision, be specific, be committed, and play
Speaker 1: a good shot in order to end up in the
Speaker 1: position that you want to be, or even in order
Speaker 1: to hold the fairway. So what the fairways do in
Speaker 1: the landing zones is so consistently interesting because the fairways
Speaker 1: don't just go straight down the whole corridor, which by
Speaker 1: the way, they did by the time that Bill Kohrer
Speaker 1: and Ben Crenshaw were brought into the course in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: They had kind of straightened out and turned into these little,
Speaker 1: you know, very narrow strips leading up to the greens.
Speaker 1: And what they do now is they kind of snake,
Speaker 1: They jog, they slant, They run on diagonals in relation
Speaker 1: to the tea. And then you add to that kind
Speaker 1: of directional variety of the fairways the topographical variety. So
Speaker 1: they tilt right to left, they tilt left to right,
Speaker 1: They sometimes run downhill in the landing zone, they sometimes
Speaker 1: run uphill in other parts of the landing zone. There's
Speaker 1: always something going on topographically in the landing zones at
Speaker 1: Pinehurst that is then combined with some sort of directional
Speaker 1: trickery in the fairway. And so an example of this,
Speaker 1: a simple example of this would be on the eleventh hole. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a fairly subtle hole topographically, and there are
Speaker 1: other holes that might be a better example in terms
Speaker 1: of you know how big some of the movements of
Speaker 1: the land can be at Pinehurst, But the eleventh hole
Speaker 1: is a good elegant example of a fairway that runs
Speaker 1: on a left to right diagonal in relation to the
Speaker 1: te right, so the long carry is on the right
Speaker 1: and the short carry is on the left, So you
Speaker 1: have that factor from the tee, and then you also
Speaker 1: have a right to left tilt in that fairway. It's
Speaker 1: a fairly subtle tilt, but it's there. And so what
Speaker 1: this does is that if you play safely out to
Speaker 1: the left, if you bail out to the left, the
Speaker 1: safe side of the fairway that feels the most comfortable,
Speaker 1: that requires the least carry, the tilt of the fairway
Speaker 1: will push your ball farther to the left. And so
Speaker 1: what that causes you to do the next time you
Speaker 1: play the hole is say, okay, I got to bite
Speaker 1: off a little bit more of this right side in
Speaker 1: order to avoid running through the fairway on the other
Speaker 1: side and having a really bad angle into the green
Speaker 1: because the green is very hard to approach from that
Speaker 1: left side of the hole. So then you start playing
Speaker 1: more right on that hole. But then eventually maybe you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you miss right and then
Speaker 1: you're totally dead because you're in the you're in the
Speaker 1: waste area, you might be in the forest, and so
Speaker 1: you the the nature of the landing zone on that
Speaker 1: hole causes you to make calculations on the tee that
Speaker 1: are not just simple keep it down the middle of
Speaker 1: the fairway. You've got to pick an aiming point and
Speaker 1: you've got to execute it well. And that's on pretty
Speaker 1: much every long hole at Pinehurst. So just pay attention
Speaker 1: to what's happening in the landing zones. It's always interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is one of the best features
Speaker 2: of the golf course. It may it's what makes it
Speaker 2: such a difficult driving golf course. I think that really,
Speaker 2: like in the modern era of the best, the best
Speaker 2: golf courses use diagonals off the tee really well, and
Speaker 2: this is definitely one of them that that uses the
Speaker 2: diagonals really well as well as the land you know,
Speaker 2: and that it again, just like the greens, it goes
Speaker 2: against the kind of formulaic nature of golf. What has
Speaker 2: become with strategy where it's like, okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: just avoid this and hit it over here. What happens
Speaker 2: is that then you you get it yourself into more
Speaker 2: more trouble. The waste being the like the waste, it's
Speaker 2: just such a that I think professional golfers hate when
Speaker 2: they don't know what they're where their balls, what it's
Speaker 2: getting into. And that's what the waste presents is that
Speaker 2: it's not rough like irrigated rough, you know what it is.
Speaker 2: And it's like, Okay, I know the ball is going
Speaker 2: to stop, and it's going to be in this type
Speaker 2: of life. I get a really bad lie, I'll hit
Speaker 2: it to the front front of the green. If I
Speaker 2: get a good lie, I've got a shot at it.
Speaker 2: You know. The waste kind of accentuates both variables of it.
Speaker 2: It is like I could be perfect, I could be
Speaker 2: but that chance that I do have chance. It's not
Speaker 2: something that golfers like. So the fairways being surrounded by
Speaker 2: chance rather than you know, I know exactly what I'm
Speaker 2: getting into. It just presents another unique mental challenge of
Speaker 2: the golf course.
Speaker 1: You know something about the sand and wiregrass at Pinehurst,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is going to be a big
Speaker 1: talking point on the telecast at the US Open. You're
Speaker 1: gonna hear a lot about the wiregrass. You're gonna hear
Speaker 1: a lot about the native areas and the kind of
Speaker 1: you know, randomness that they introduce into the competition. And
Speaker 1: I like that too, Like it's so much better than
Speaker 1: the irrigated rough. It's it just makes the game so
Speaker 1: much more interesting and exciting, but a couple of things
Speaker 1: about it. So two points about it. One, I think
Speaker 1: an underappreciated aspect of the sand in wiregrass at Pinehurst
Speaker 1: is how the wiregrass can affect shots in a variety
Speaker 1: of ways. It's not just either you're in a tuft
Speaker 1: of wiregrass and you're screwed or you're in a sandy,
Speaker 1: scrubby lie and you're kind of okay. Often you will
Speaker 1: find yourself next to or directly up against a tuft
Speaker 1: of wiregrass. Right your ball will be somewhere in the
Speaker 1: vicinity of one of these little profusions of wiregrass, and
Speaker 1: you'll have to manufacture some kind of shot out of there,
Speaker 1: because you can get to the ball, the ball is
Speaker 1: in a good lie, but the wiregrass is getting in
Speaker 1: the way of your swing somehow, and so you have
Speaker 1: to hit some sort of creative shot. And that's what's
Speaker 1: so cool I think about this native and what makes
Speaker 1: it a good test of skill. It requires a variety
Speaker 1: of techniques. It requires flexibility on the part of the player.
Speaker 1: It requires players to manufact extra shots and hit different
Speaker 1: shapes and use different swing paths, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: hacking out and using their strength in that way. Another point,
Speaker 1: a little bit less positively, is that the USGA, along
Speaker 1: with Pinehurst, has introduced a lot more wiregrass this year
Speaker 1: for this year's us Open, Right, so we're going to
Speaker 1: see you just more coverage of wiregrass, more regular coverage
Speaker 1: of wiregrass at Pinehurst. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: Bill Corr really emphasized in his work at Pinehurst was
Speaker 1: randomizing the danger in the waste areas, putting those little
Speaker 1: tufts of wiregrass in a bunch of different kind of
Speaker 1: randomly scattered places, not having a regular idea of where
Speaker 1: you're really in trouble. And so I think that introducing
Speaker 1: more wiregrass and making the coverage kind of more complete
Speaker 1: in those waste areas has taken away some of the
Speaker 1: randomness that makes that hazard what it is.
Speaker 2: It makes it a little bit more execution heavy, which
Speaker 2: in the history of the USGA we know they love.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, It's just an example of something that the
Speaker 1: something that was done to a US Open venue that
Speaker 1: just didn't need to be done. There's no reason. What
Speaker 1: are we gaining by this. We're gaining, like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a tenth of a stroke more over par
Speaker 1: on certain holes, Like what is that really important enough
Speaker 1: to do this kind of thing. So that's that's especially
Speaker 1: It's not like that big. This is not such a
Speaker 1: huge deal. It's just it just struck me as totally unnecessary.
Speaker 2: To do it, especially considering the twenty nineteen USAM, where
Speaker 2: I thought the golf course shined. It was so extraordinary,
Speaker 2: It was very firm, and it provided it. It seemed
Speaker 2: to perplex And I think it's important to note these
Speaker 2: are college and high school players. These are you know,
Speaker 2: like very good amateur like the greatest amateur golfers in
Speaker 2: the world, but a little bit less experienced. The golf
Speaker 2: course seemed to perplex them, like it they were getting
Speaker 2: into positions where, you know, being the closer to the
Speaker 2: hole wasn't necessarily better because the lack of ability to
Speaker 2: generate spin on certain shots where you know, being a
Speaker 2: little bit further back sometimes with advantageous where like the
Speaker 2: chance of the wiregrass was was really shining. So I
Speaker 2: think the twenty nineteen us AM has been a tournament
Speaker 2: that's stuck with me for a long time, just in sense,
Speaker 2: in the sense of like that was like very good
Speaker 2: modern championship golf. So I think like one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things about Pioneer's number two, and it's just I
Speaker 2: think one of the best three hole stretches of golf
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world is three four five. This to me,
Speaker 2: there's a great Tom dok quote about you know, a
Speaker 2: great golf course makes an impression in the first five holes,
Speaker 2: I think is what he said. But then somebody that
Speaker 2: Blake Conant, who works for Tom told me he says
Speaker 2: to them, three holes, this golf course really hits its
Speaker 2: stride at three four five to one and two are
Speaker 2: on pretty subtle ground. They get you out to three
Speaker 2: four five, which you know is famously three Green is
Speaker 2: right where dal Ross's house they lived in at Piners was.
Speaker 2: But from that that stretch of holes, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: we probably won't see a ton of it on the
Speaker 2: telecast just because of its being early in the in
Speaker 2: the round. But if I was going to go watch
Speaker 2: golf at Pineers, that's that's an area I would camp
Speaker 2: out as three Green because you can kind of you
Speaker 2: watch shots into five, t shots on six, shots into
Speaker 2: three right there. So three is a short par four
Speaker 2: that you kind of you're gonna lay back off the tee,
Speaker 2: and then it's one of the most magnificent greens at
Speaker 2: Pinehurst number two. It is built way up in the air.
Speaker 2: The target is seemingly the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, it's a pretty easy hole to
Speaker 2: hit the ball into the fairway and get yourself a wedge,
Speaker 2: but an extraordinarily hard hoole to hit a wedge into.
Speaker 2: So it's just a great it's just a great little
Speaker 2: par four. There's so the green just has some neat
Speaker 2: little pockets in it. And then you go to uh
Speaker 2: four and five, which is you know, a classic par
Speaker 2: nine between the two of them, long par four, short
Speaker 2: par five. You know, if you get out of there
Speaker 2: at under nine, you feel really good about yourself. And
Speaker 2: it's got some of the dynamics that you talked about
Speaker 2: the variety off the tee. So you know on or
Speaker 2: the fairway kind of goes cut, it cuts kind of
Speaker 2: right to left. You're gonna be trying to hug the
Speaker 2: left side of the fairway to cut the distance of
Speaker 2: the hole down, but the fairway slope severely left or right.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a reverse camera hole, yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you can like you're trying to hug
Speaker 2: that left side, but up the left is wiregrass, and
Speaker 2: it's not where you want to be on a long part.
Speaker 2: Four that's like disaster. Like you're gonna see some balls
Speaker 2: like hit up there and run down through. So like
Speaker 2: there's this potential of hitting it up there and really
Speaker 2: like taking on a ton of a ton of risk
Speaker 2: and cutting off more of the hole. But if you
Speaker 2: play it down to the right, then you have this
Speaker 2: really long shot into a tough green that's got a
Speaker 2: pretty vicious false front. The front kind of cuts on
Speaker 2: a diagonal too, which makes the proch shot even harder.
Speaker 2: And then you come back with five, which that's it's
Speaker 2: an extraordinary golf hole. And unlike the other hole, which
Speaker 2: kind of it moves, you gotta just you want to
Speaker 2: play like a rope draw here like you want to
Speaker 2: just you could play it out to the right and
Speaker 2: turn it over and that's gonna get you the biggest
Speaker 2: drive because the hole kind of moves to the left.
Speaker 2: And and and then that green, I mean, that's about
Speaker 2: as tough of a green as you're gonna find in golf.
Speaker 2: It repels every way, vicious false front and then vicious
Speaker 2: false back. Yes, it's like that's the cool that green
Speaker 2: is unbelievable, like you're terrified of everything, and the green,
Speaker 2: the way it repels in the back, and it's just
Speaker 2: somewhere you don't want to be.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: It's a great short par part five. I think because
Speaker 2: of the green, it really works as a part five.
Speaker 2: And famously during the restoration Billcore flipped the pars of
Speaker 2: these holes. Four was the par five and five was
Speaker 2: the par four. Now it's flipped where and I think
Speaker 2: they did that just because there was way more space
Speaker 2: to build a back tee on five.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, it's it's where the old World Golf Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame used to be before it moved to Florida
Speaker 1: and became Gary Player's favorite place. Is back now, well
Speaker 1: they're they're bringing it back to Pinehurst. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where they're going to put it. They can't put it
Speaker 1: in its old place because now the fifty is there.
Speaker 2: I think they're opening it this week, the US Open week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I hope they record a new commercial with
Speaker 1: Gary Player because I miss having that in my life.
Speaker 2: But Slammer and the Squire.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Slamma and the Squire and the Beaya. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it's totally unrelated. Uh, the fifth hole I love as
Speaker 1: a par five. I think that was a great decision
Speaker 1: to make, you know, if you had to make one
Speaker 1: of those holes along part four. I think probably when
Speaker 1: Ross built them, he was more thinking, both of these
Speaker 1: are kind of par fives, right, Both of these are
Speaker 1: long holes. This is where we're going to find some
Speaker 1: some length on this course, some extra length. They were
Speaker 1: the latest holes that Ross added in the design of
Speaker 1: Pinehurst Number two. They were added in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 1: The course had started to be built in you know,
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen hundreds, the first decade of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and so the fourth and fifth holes were additions, and
Speaker 1: they were both long holes on the most dramatic topography
Speaker 1: on the course, so they immediately feel like something different
Speaker 1: on this golf course. But the reason I love five
Speaker 1: is a par five so much is that, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: there's that terrible, terrifying false front on that green, and
Speaker 1: the way that it's a false front is so clever
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like it doesn't just sort of
Speaker 1: slope off all at once, It just kind of gradually
Speaker 1: starts sloping, and then the volume on the steepness just
Speaker 1: gets turned up and turned up and turned up until
Speaker 1: finally it just falls off a cliff, and so that
Speaker 1: false front eats so far into the green. Because of that,
Speaker 1: the false front starts really far into the green and
Speaker 1: everything feeds down into that bunker short left of the green.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you go for that green and you
Speaker 1: don't get up and over that false front, if you
Speaker 1: don't get to the middle of the green, basically where
Speaker 1: the false front finally levels out and allows for some pins,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna probably run down into that bunker if
Speaker 1: it's firm enough. And so your calculation from the fairway,
Speaker 1: if you're going for that hole in two, is am
Speaker 1: I okay with being down in that left bunker? Because
Speaker 1: that's the likely outcome if I go for this green
Speaker 1: and two and don't hit it perfectly? Or am I
Speaker 1: just going to take my medicine and hit it out
Speaker 1: to the right to this little pocket on the high
Speaker 1: side of the hole that allows for a nice little
Speaker 1: wedge approach into this green that most pros can execute
Speaker 1: in their sleep. And so that's why I think it
Speaker 1: works so well. It's just everything everything about that hole
Speaker 1: makes you think that you should be going for it,
Speaker 1: that this should be a long part four. But then
Speaker 1: once you play it a few times and you're in
Speaker 1: that left bunker a few times, then you think, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe this really is a three shotthle.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that we've hit on
Speaker 2: a little bit so, but we talked about the angular
Speaker 2: nature of the t shots. I think one of the
Speaker 2: other things about the greens is they they're set on
Speaker 2: really hard angles like where they they're really like if
Speaker 2: you if you go on like Google Earth, it's really
Speaker 2: apparent to look at this is just how how strong
Speaker 2: of angles the greens kind of axises are on. And
Speaker 2: what happens with that is a lot of the false fronts,
Speaker 2: a lot of the runoff areas, they aren't straight lines.
Speaker 2: It's not a hit it one two and you're okay,
Speaker 2: hit it one fifty one and it's coming down the front.
Speaker 2: It's if you hit it one fifty two right on
Speaker 2: your line, it's perfect. If you push it like a yard,
Speaker 2: that line moves to one fifty two and a half.
Speaker 2: If you pull it, that line's one fifty one right.
Speaker 2: So like you start, that angular nature of the front
Speaker 2: is also like an important aspect of the golf course.
Speaker 2: This is, you know, kind of like when you talk
Speaker 2: about why it's such a frustrating golf course for the
Speaker 2: best players in the world is because of these little
Speaker 2: tiny features where like precision. You know, these guys live
Speaker 2: in you know, really like five yard windows, and within
Speaker 2: those five yard windows, the numbers that matter to them,
Speaker 2: what the front edge, what the carry number is oftentimes
Speaker 2: is very different from the left side to the right side,
Speaker 2: and that's where you hit these really good shots. Where
Speaker 2: any other golf course, like really, you know, almost any
Speaker 2: other golf course in the world. These are great shots.
Speaker 2: They're really great shots that yield fifteen foot birdie putts
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst number two, these really great shots that you'd
Speaker 2: be happy with everywhere they play on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 2: At Memorial this week, the week before, you'd be thrilled, thrilled,
Speaker 2: ecstatic with the shot end up twenty yards away in
Speaker 2: a hollow with a really hardship shot coming up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's the distance control is
Speaker 1: so so important.
Speaker 2: But distance control tied to accuracy, right, which is rare. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, the best iron players in the world rarely
Speaker 2: miss numbers, but they they'll push and pull shots. It's
Speaker 2: you know, I tug that a little, I push that
Speaker 2: a little, but you see them hit the same number
Speaker 2: at piner number two. Those small little pushes and pulls
Speaker 2: get penalized sometimes.
Speaker 1: So we've talked in detail about the front nine so far.
Speaker 1: We talked about the first hole and then three through five.
Speaker 1: I think the back nine here is basically one banger
Speaker 1: after another. I just love it from from basically eleven
Speaker 1: to the finish. I mean every single one of those holes.
Speaker 2: I said three through five, Yeah, three through nine is awesome,
Speaker 2: but then you get into the back nine, it's like
Speaker 2: three through eighteen to me, and I really like two
Speaker 2: and one. The thing about Piner's number two what makes
Speaker 2: it great is like I don't think like there's a
Speaker 2: few really like standout, world class holes. But what to me,
Speaker 2: the the greatness of Piner's number two is it to
Speaker 2: some of all parts golf course there are? There's nothing
Speaker 2: really I would I have like a hard time. Like
Speaker 2: I think that one of the best questions you can
Speaker 2: ask is what's the weakest hole at a golf course?
Speaker 2: And I don't know what the weakest hole at Piner's
Speaker 2: number two is.
Speaker 1: I would probably settle somewhere in the six to seven
Speaker 1: range for that.
Speaker 2: If I really like seven, I love seven. I think
Speaker 2: seven is one of the most fascinating holes there. Talk
Speaker 2: about pick your line, yeah, well yeah, and the super
Speaker 2: hard T shot. It's like it's the most uncomfortable T
Speaker 2: shot on the golf course, and then the green is
Speaker 2: really cool.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's the most uncomfortable T shot on
Speaker 1: the golf course, but it's really uncomfortable because of how
Speaker 1: your sight line is obscured by all that junk on
Speaker 1: the right.
Speaker 2: And it's got the angle. Yeah, it's got the I
Speaker 2: think that that fairway moves on the hardest angle of
Speaker 2: any of them. So it's of all the holes, like
Speaker 2: you have to hit it on the number of distance
Speaker 2: and line the most of any T shot on the
Speaker 2: golf course, and that can be hard to do even
Speaker 2: with like a hybrid, which I think you'll see a
Speaker 2: lot of most players are going to lay back on
Speaker 2: that hole. But it's not an easy it's not a
Speaker 2: gimme hybrid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: even the weakest holes at Pinehurst have a great argument
Speaker 1: for them, and so that is part of what makes
Speaker 1: the course so good.
Speaker 2: I think That's the thing is, like, of all the
Speaker 2: great great golf courses, Pinehurst might have the strongest, like
Speaker 2: might have the strongest weak holes.
Speaker 1: And it gives people the least excuse to talk about
Speaker 1: just one or two holes, you know, yeah, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's because it just has less
Speaker 1: great holes than other courses of its caliber. I think
Speaker 1: that there are just a good seven or eight holes
Speaker 1: that you could identify as the best hole on the course,
Speaker 1: and knowledgeable people who have played the course a lot
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to argue with you very much about
Speaker 1: designating that one as the best. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think eleven through eighteen is so brilliant at
Speaker 1: Pinehurst and that whole stretch that almost the entirety of
Speaker 1: that back nine. I love ten two, but for me,
Speaker 1: the course really kind of hits its stride with eleven
Speaker 1: through eighteen. Tens of brute just ten tens, a long
Speaker 1: par five, and it's got some interesting features to it,
Speaker 1: for sure, But eleven through eighteen are all basically intact
Speaker 1: from nineteen oh seven. Those holes have been in the
Speaker 1: routing of Pinehurst Number two from the very beginning. Obviously,
Speaker 1: some have been lengthened and changed sixteen plays as a
Speaker 1: par four for the pros instead of as a par five.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little more interesting as a par five.
Speaker 1: But that's okay, it's you know, it's part comes with
Speaker 1: the territory. But I just think those holes are so great,
Speaker 1: and you could talk about individual features of each hole,
Speaker 1: but I think what you really discover in that stretch
Speaker 1: of the golf course, if you're walking the golf course,
Speaker 1: is how clever and varied the routing is. Because for
Speaker 1: a lot of the back nine, you're kind of going
Speaker 1: back and forth. The courses is doubling back on itself
Speaker 1: a few times before finally wandering back to the clubhouse.
Speaker 1: So eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Basically, you know they zigzag,
Speaker 1: but there's this wandering feeling to the routing in that
Speaker 1: part of the course where they're not just doubling back
Speaker 1: straight with each other. It's not like they're playing side
Speaker 1: by side. There's a little angle change with each of
Speaker 1: those holes where they play in a slightly different direction
Speaker 1: and they form these kind of triangles instead of forming
Speaker 1: straight lines, and it gives you this feeling that you're
Speaker 1: kind of getting lost in this property, you're not exactly
Speaker 1: sure where you are. You don't have a strong sense
Speaker 1: of orientation into the clubhouse or the starting point, or
Speaker 1: even to a couple of holes ago. You're just kind
Speaker 1: of meandering through the property at that point, and that
Speaker 1: to me is where the course becomes really beautiful, where
Speaker 1: the prettiness of the pine forest and the sand and
Speaker 1: all the native vegetation really comes through. For me, that's
Speaker 1: where that happens. And you know, a lot of Pinehurst,
Speaker 1: the resort in general, is just it's very kind of developed.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of buildings, a lot of homes,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of golf. Right whenever you're playing
Speaker 1: golf on one course, you can almost always see golf
Speaker 1: on another course because there's just so many everywhere golf
Speaker 1: holes out there, like it's ridiculous. You know, Pinehurst number
Speaker 1: four is right next door to those holes that I'm
Speaker 1: talking about on the back nine, and in fact, parts
Speaker 1: of Pinehurst number four used to be part of Pinehurst
Speaker 1: number two. In any case, for me, though, because of
Speaker 1: the way the routing moves in the middle of the
Speaker 1: back nine, the property just shows off a little bit there,
Speaker 1: and that's what surprised me the most the first time
Speaker 1: I played the course, because I didn't expect Pinehurst number
Speaker 1: two to be really beautiful. That's not really its reputation.
Speaker 1: But during those holes, that's where that esthetic appreciation of
Speaker 1: the land that Donald Ross was able to use in
Speaker 1: this part of the country comes through the most. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's something that when people, if people
Speaker 1: go to the tournament or if they play the course,
Speaker 1: that's something they pay attention to, is just how good
Speaker 1: it feels to be out on that part of the property.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that, and it almost like I
Speaker 2: think that across the entire golf course. What it does
Speaker 2: well is it changes direction subtly a lot.
Speaker 1: Like you even when you're going out, even when you're one, two, three,
Speaker 1: kind of all play in the same direction, four even,
Speaker 1: but there's slight changes. There's a slight curve to that you.
Speaker 2: Know, and and the greens might orient, it might be
Speaker 2: in a little bit different position. That just change the
Speaker 2: way you're hitting into it. I don't think it doesn't
Speaker 2: get like, let's be real, it doesn't get particular. This
Speaker 2: is not like a windy part of the country. Pinehurst.
Speaker 2: I don't think like anybody's like there but we do
Speaker 2: see the recipe of a pine trees with some wind,
Speaker 2: So if you get some gusts, what happens. And with
Speaker 2: a golf course that changes directions a lot, it's really
Speaker 2: hard to understand where the wind's going. Tall pines wind,
Speaker 2: So that's another recipe of the golf course. If you
Speaker 2: get that ten plus mile in our wind, it can
Speaker 2: be hard to tell where exactly it's coming from. And
Speaker 2: when you couple in the penalty for really close to
Speaker 2: right shots but just off it magnifies that something I
Speaker 2: like about Pinehurst Number two. I don't think it would
Speaker 2: ever get brought up as like the greatest set of
Speaker 2: par threes in the world. I do really like the
Speaker 2: par threes though, I think they have like there's a
Speaker 2: nice little variety to them. They play. They're each pretty unique,
Speaker 2: I think probably if you want to make a you know,
Speaker 2: six and fifteen kind of kind of feel a little
Speaker 2: bit similar. But they're spaced out pretty well and they
Speaker 2: embody the characters of the golf course where it's like,
Speaker 2: here's a long iron, mid to long iron and it's
Speaker 2: really terrifying that it's gonna repel everywhere and hit the shot,
Speaker 2: which which I think fits the golf course really well,
Speaker 2: Like in they're very difficult shots. I think nine and
Speaker 2: seventeen are are extraordinarily great par threes. Nine might be
Speaker 2: the prettiest hole on the golf course. I think you're
Speaker 2: kind of playing back up into the corner of the property,
Speaker 2: great canopy of trees, beautiful bunkering, and you cannot miss long.
Speaker 2: You see all this trouble up front with the bunkers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: long is the thing that you cannot do. And it's
Speaker 2: a very it's a sneaky look shallow from the tea,
Speaker 2: but it's an extremely shallow green and it seems like
Speaker 2: it's just like an easy place to hit it long.
Speaker 2: And I think it's like a subliminal thing where you're
Speaker 2: you're looking at the trouble short and you're like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to I want to miss short, you miss long? Yes,
Speaker 2: And then seventeen. I think seventeen is a great penultimate
Speaker 2: hole where you know, if you can stand up there
Speaker 2: and hit a great mid iron into the green, you
Speaker 2: can earn yourself a really good look at Bertie And
Speaker 2: if you don't, then it's going to be a tough,
Speaker 2: tough track for par.
Speaker 1: If you think about each piece of land that an
Speaker 1: architect gets as a set of problems to solve. I
Speaker 1: think one of the problems that the Pinehurst Number two
Speaker 1: property presented to Donald Ross was that there aren't many
Speaker 1: obvious places to put par three's. There aren't these kind
Speaker 1: of severe pockets of land that are scaled to a
Speaker 1: par three and that provide kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: a topographical movement, yeah, and a drama and a distinctiveness
Speaker 1: in the land itself that lends itself to building par threes.
Speaker 1: And so he found a couple of those pockets on
Speaker 1: seventeen and especially nine, right. Nine is a classic stretch
Speaker 1: of land to put a par three on, and so
Speaker 1: he found that he gets the golf course to that
Speaker 1: point so that nine can play the way it does.
Speaker 1: And then seventeen is sort of similar. It's also a
Speaker 1: ridge to ridge par three and it fits nicely into
Speaker 1: that piece of land. On six and fifteen, he basically
Speaker 1: just had to manufacture interest on those part threes. They
Speaker 1: play on basically flat land, right, and so all of
Speaker 1: the interest comes from the green complexes. Both of them
Speaker 1: are very domed, very rejecting. But I think fifteen is
Speaker 1: especially scary because of the way that green just kind
Speaker 1: of rises up from the grade and almost has like
Speaker 1: not a complete infinity horizon. But there's not much behind
Speaker 1: that green that gives you a perspective or that makes
Speaker 1: the green seem smaller and less severe. It's just this
Speaker 1: kind of hump, you know, coming out of the coming
Speaker 1: out of the land. It's like a you know, it's
Speaker 1: like a whale coming out of the ocean, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I got to hit that from two hundred yards.
Speaker 2: I think it might be the hardest shot on the course.
Speaker 1: Not not easy at all, And six is similarly difficult.
Speaker 1: That green is a little more subtle in the way
Speaker 1: that it presents itself to the view of the player
Speaker 1: from the tee. But I think those those holes do
Speaker 1: stick in your memory, not just because of how severe
Speaker 1: they are, but because of the little details of the
Speaker 1: green complexes and the way they present themselves visually. They're
Speaker 1: very nicely differentiated from each other. And the other part
Speaker 1: three is on the course, so obviously like masterful, masterful
Speaker 1: design to summon those part three from this particular piece
Speaker 1: of land.
Speaker 2: Another one of my favorite spots of the property is
Speaker 2: twelve and fourteen are oh yeah, It's amazing those two
Speaker 2: greens sitting down right next to each other.
Speaker 1: You got, I love that part of the property.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thirteen t it's just.
Speaker 1: A great place to watch golf's. Yeah, so that's the
Speaker 1: other tip you mentioned the gathering point with was it
Speaker 1: five green, four t three green sixty earlier? That's a
Speaker 1: great spot if you're going to the back nine, twelve
Speaker 1: fourteen green would be a great spot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing about it is what would make it, I
Speaker 2: think a really good spectating area. I'll probably have more
Speaker 2: tips when I'm out on the ground, but is both
Speaker 2: those shots are kind of coming down at those greens,
Speaker 2: so you get the nice perspective of looking up at
Speaker 2: a player hitting down to you, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you can watch the shot on fifteen.
Speaker 1: You can see the outcome of the of the play.
Speaker 2: There and thirteen, which some days might be drivable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I wonder which I don't actually remember whether
Speaker 1: they ever set up thirteen is driveable in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: It is a really cool hole, you know. One last
Speaker 1: little poke at the USGA. Now, I'm not totally confirmed
Speaker 1: on who made this change to the golf course. It
Speaker 1: might have been Pinehurst. All I'm going to say is
Speaker 1: that this change happened in the twenty twenty two to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three range, so clearly was done in preparation
Speaker 1: for this US Open. They did bring in the fairway
Speaker 1: by about ten yards on the left on thirteen. Now
Speaker 1: thirteen is a short part four with a sharply elevated
Speaker 1: green where the whole idea of the golf hole is
Speaker 1: that if you challenge the right side, which is very
Speaker 1: heavily bunkered and has some nasty, gnarly waste area, if
Speaker 1: you challenge the right side on that hole, you have
Speaker 1: a better angle for your short pitch basically for most
Speaker 1: of these players into the green. So the more you
Speaker 1: can kind of push to that side, the better off
Speaker 1: you are with your angle there. If you bail out
Speaker 1: to the left, then you have a very tricky shot
Speaker 1: into that green. There used to be more fairway over there.
Speaker 1: They brought that in and by about ten yards, and
Speaker 1: it's just like, again, why are we doing this. It's
Speaker 1: just to make the scoring average of the hole slightly higher.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't seem to fit with the architecture of
Speaker 1: the hole because that's the bailout zone you want players
Speaker 1: to go out there and then try to deal with
Speaker 1: that pitch into the green. Now it's just these kind
Speaker 1: of regularly planted tufts of wiregrass, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, why are we doing this.
Speaker 2: The other aspect of that is if you make it,
Speaker 2: if it's a drivable hole, it makes the decision of
Speaker 2: whether I push up like the modern golf hit it
Speaker 2: as close as you can is like the theory. So
Speaker 2: one of the things I've always kicked around in my
Speaker 2: head about how how do you make how do you
Speaker 2: make choices more difficult? How do you potentially counter that perspective?
Speaker 2: My theory has always been make the layup like super appeally, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'm giving you a wedge from the fairway.
Speaker 2: I'm giving this to you, or you can push it
Speaker 2: up there like every every analytic is telling you to
Speaker 2: push it up there. I'm going to give you this
Speaker 2: wedge and I'm gonna give you plenty of space where
Speaker 2: you're not worried about my three iron missing the fairway.
Speaker 2: And this is where I just think like the USGA,
Speaker 2: I I don't know, I don't sometimes I don't think
Speaker 2: it's the USGA. I think it's like just tournament set
Speaker 2: up in general, Like do they do they not understand
Speaker 2: like the like the dynamics at play here, like where
Speaker 2: like the theory of why people hit drivers so much,
Speaker 2: the theory of it is is rooted in you might
Speaker 2: miss the fairway with a three iron.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, right, so if you make it more likely
Speaker 1: to miss the fairway with the three iron, what are
Speaker 1: they going to do?
Speaker 2: They're more likely to hit the driver, right, So it's
Speaker 2: if you want variability, which I think everybody wants. Everybody
Speaker 2: wants to see these, Like, I mean, like one of
Speaker 2: the things I've I've really loved. I've like grown to
Speaker 2: love tennis. I used to love it as a kid.
Speaker 2: But one of the things I love about tennis is
Speaker 2: the dynamic of different style players playing against each other.
Speaker 2: And it's like Medvedev, who's just like a human backboard, right,
Speaker 2: Like you just get to everything back playing against a
Speaker 2: super aggressive player. Like I love watching that. Like this
Speaker 2: guy's content just standing back. He's really big at the
Speaker 2: baseline and just returning stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So a guy who wants long points versus a
Speaker 1: guy who wants short points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So it's like I love watching like that
Speaker 2: kind of dynamic play out over a couple hours. Like
Speaker 2: if you're if you're trying to like present a golf
Speaker 2: course for championship, you need to play on some of
Speaker 2: these dynamics of like you know, like I want players
Speaker 2: to think about this, and if you make it narrow everywhere,
Speaker 2: you just they're just gonna hit driver everywhere because it's like,
Speaker 2: oh I might miss the paraweh if Like, nothing is
Speaker 2: worse than when you hit an iron and you miss
Speaker 2: the fairway with an iron, you feel like an idiot.
Speaker 2: And then that almost always the next time you play
Speaker 2: that hole, you're gonna be like, I'm just gonna hit driver.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean something that's really clicking for me right
Speaker 1: now based on what you're saying, is that fairway with
Speaker 1: variability is such a key to getting in elite players'
Speaker 1: heads and making their decision making processes more complex. And
Speaker 1: that's something that pinehursh number two generally does really does great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing across the golf course. This golf
Speaker 2: course does it awesome. I think there are spots where
Speaker 2: you could nitpick and be like you know what, like
Speaker 2: it gets a little too formulaic, but in general, there
Speaker 2: are places where you can play back, you can lay back,
Speaker 2: and what you're doing like it's like, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have like x percentage better chance to hit the fair away.
Speaker 2: But my approach shot in with a seven iron versus
Speaker 2: a nine iron is x percentage more difficult. So that's
Speaker 2: the beauty of this golf course is you're constantly weighing
Speaker 2: this versus that it caused an effect, and that's the
Speaker 2: best golf it's not. It's not just bludgeon.
Speaker 1: Totally agree. It's going to be a great US Open venue.
Speaker 1: I hope things turn out well in terms of the
Speaker 1: closeness of the competition down the stretch. Obviously in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen we got to run away, and that can sometimes
Speaker 1: be an effect of a course like this. We also
Speaker 1: might see a slightly different version of Pinehurst number two
Speaker 1: this year that's not quite as savage because we have
Speaker 1: different weather leading up to the tournament, and we also
Speaker 1: have a different USGA philosophy that has taken hold since
Speaker 1: the twenty fourteen US Open in terms of setup, where
Speaker 1: they have started to become more conservative with it. So
Speaker 1: those are the caveats. I'm not going to guarantee the
Speaker 1: greatest championship any of us has ever seen. But I
Speaker 1: love this golf course. I think it's a great tournament
Speaker 1: venue and I'm super excited to see how things play out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pumped too. I think we'll have more coverage
Speaker 2: throughout the week. If you don't subscribe to our newsletter,
Speaker 2: subscribe to that though. We'll be doing dailies. We'll have myself,
Speaker 2: Brendan Porreth, and Joseph Lamannia will all be on the ground, yeah,
Speaker 2: and as well as Cameron Hurtis or photographer. So follow
Speaker 2: our socials we'll have some photography and stuff and then
Speaker 2: new team member PJ Clark will be on the ground too.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, making it making it podcast official, Yeah right,
Speaker 1: PJ Clark. Yeah, very excited to have some some more
Speaker 1: help here.
Speaker 2: So so anyways, we're we're we're excited. Check out our socials.
Speaker 2: We'll have more stuff rolling and if you're if you
Speaker 2: haven't watched our video on Pineer's Number two yet on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Garrett did a awesome job scripting, and Cameron Hurtis, as always,
Speaker 2: did a wonderful job putting everything together visually in a
Speaker 2: in a very pleasing aesthetic manner. Feature.
Speaker 1: I just and yeah, and and Andy. Obviously you should
Speaker 1: get credit for shooting a lot of the footage and
Speaker 1: also helping with the the interview of Bill Corr. So
Speaker 1: it was a true team effort. But those videos are
Speaker 1: some of our favorite things that we do all year
Speaker 1: and some of the things that we put the most
Speaker 1: effort into, and a true showcase for the talents of
Speaker 1: Cameron hurt Us. You know, he's so brilliant at putting
Speaker 1: together the stories of of these videos, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: we're very proud of it and we encourage you to
Speaker 1: check it out. We'll also have some more content on
Speaker 1: Pinehurst number two coming in Pinehurst area courses coming in
Speaker 1: Club TFE, So if people go to the Friday dot
Speaker 1: com slash membership, you can see everything we're offering in
Speaker 1: Club TFE. But specifically for this coming week, we're going
Speaker 1: to do a nice little rollout of good writing we
Speaker 1: think on Pineherst number two, as well as an additional
Speaker 1: video that I'm narrating about some of the individual holes
Speaker 1: on the course. So that's coming from members awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, today's podcast was edited and produced by Matt Rush's
Speaker 2: big thanks to Matt or maybe no it's Meg.
Speaker 1: It's either Matt or Meg. Matt and Meg have been
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, sharing this responsibility late lately, so
Speaker 1: thank you to both of them.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you to both of them. And we'll be
Speaker 2: back next week. It's the US Open week, so we'll
Speaker 2: of our US Open preview podcasts up on Sunday as
Speaker 2: always for majors. And I hope this was a good
Speaker 2: golf course primer if you got any more questions about
Speaker 2: the golf course, Fire US, fire US, tweets at US,
Speaker 2: or whatever it may be. I can't wait to be
Speaker 2: on the ground and at Pinehurst.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to it.