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 brid egg.
Speaker 3: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg Bride Egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 2: I am your host, Andy Johnson, and today I have
Speaker 2: a podcast for you. It is about Jordan Speith. As
Speaker 2: the title may suggest, we've done a couple of these
Speaker 2: podcasts over the last few months. Garrett and Shane Ryan
Speaker 2: did one on Rory McElroy after the US Open. Where's
Speaker 2: you Go from Here? We did one, I did one
Speaker 2: with Joseph Lamanna on Justin Thomas. And today I am
Speaker 2: joined by founder of the of Normal Sport, the Normal
Speaker 2: Sport newsletter Something Worth subscribing to, Kyle Porter, as well
Speaker 2: as Joseph Lamania, and we're going to talk in detail
Speaker 2: about Jordan speed. It was fun going back and looking
Speaker 2: at this as his career, you kind of forget a
Speaker 2: little bit all of the success and the records how
Speaker 2: great his early career was, like historically great early career,
Speaker 2: and I think coming off this risk injury, we're kind
Speaker 2: of at a crossroads, so I'm excited to jump into that.
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Speaker 2: slash GS three dash ball. All right, let's get to
Speaker 2: our pod with Kyle Porter and Joseph Lamana. All Right,
Speaker 2: today's topic. I am joined by Kyle Porter and Joseph Lamonia.
Speaker 2: Today's topic is none other than Jordan Speith, the Golden Boy,
Speaker 2: who may have lost a little bit of his shine
Speaker 2: in recent years. Just he's not really a boy anymore too.
Speaker 2: What do they turn does he turn into the Golden Man.
Speaker 1: I gotta jump in. Is it? Is it the Is
Speaker 1: it the Golden Child or the Golden Boy. Because we
Speaker 1: have gold we also have gold Boy.
Speaker 2: Which is well gold boy. I don't know where a
Speaker 2: gold boy is these days.
Speaker 1: That's that's also true.
Speaker 2: He's somewhere buried in the basement of the Global.
Speaker 1: Home, maybe just like the Chosen One or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: It's anyways, I you know, open this up for discussion.
Speaker 2: This is one of the more wild career arcs we've
Speaker 2: had in modern professional golf. And I think he's thirty
Speaker 2: one years old. It's a fascinating time in the speek career. Obviously,
Speaker 2: at the end of this year he had a you know,
Speaker 2: and throughout the year a risk injury that greatly hampered
Speaker 2: his ability to play golf and with pain free and
Speaker 2: he is now reporting pain free in the wrist. And
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five is right on the corner. So, as
Speaker 2: you guys look through the career, was there a favorite
Speaker 2: moment that you pulled out?
Speaker 4: Go ahead, Kyle, I know you got It's probably hard
Speaker 4: for you to narrow down.
Speaker 2: To one, but go ahead.
Speaker 1: There's so many. I think that the You know, people
Speaker 1: always think about the Masters with Spieth, right, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's pretty obvious. He's competed or contended for
Speaker 1: four or five, like legitimately contended for four or five
Speaker 1: of them. The one that I go back to, though,
Speaker 1: always is is Burtdale. It is twenty seventeen at Burtdale,
Speaker 1: and I think that Spith has been an even better
Speaker 1: open player than he's been a Master's player. And his
Speaker 1: like the whole you know, thirty minute hole. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what number it was, twelve or thirteen or whatever
Speaker 1: it was, and then he falls back with Coucher, and
Speaker 1: then Coucher plays the rest of the way one under,
Speaker 1: like the last whatever it was six holes, I think
Speaker 1: he plays one under and he gets steamrolled by Speed.
Speaker 1: And I thought that year and that maybe even that
Speaker 1: event was really Speed at his kind of apex in
Speaker 1: terms of like all his skills working together. And we'll
Speaker 1: get more into that later on, but that to me
Speaker 1: really stands out if I look at the entire Jordan
Speaker 1: speed arc.
Speaker 4: It's funny you mentioned that one Kyle. I went back
Speaker 4: and rewatched the final round at Brickdale in preparation for
Speaker 4: this pod, and speaf so he hits that wild t
Speaker 4: shot on thirteen and honestly going back and rewatching it
Speaker 4: maybe a questionable drop on if it was actually back
Speaker 4: on a straight line, maybe range I think definitely, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just didn't remember it as much. It looked like
Speaker 4: it was really pushing it. He plays his last five
Speaker 4: holes five under, and that part I don't remember as much.
Speaker 4: Like he sticks the approach shot on fourteen a part
Speaker 4: three almost he almost made it. He almost made it.
Speaker 4: And then eagles fifteen, it's unbelievable boat racist couture coming in.
Speaker 4: That one really stands out to me. And then the
Speaker 4: other thing is twenty fifteen, how involved he was in
Speaker 4: every single major. It's just unbelievable at that age that
Speaker 4: we had a player who had a legitimate chance of
Speaker 4: winning all four. So that would any of those are
Speaker 4: the ones that stand out for me.
Speaker 2: I wrote down twenty fifteen, like, is this is the
Speaker 2: closest we've seen to the career or to the Grand
Speaker 2: Slam in a year? You know, one shot out of
Speaker 2: the playoff at Saint Andrews and then you had this
Speaker 2: epic duel with Jason Day at the PGA where it
Speaker 2: was like two guys could win the tournament. They were
Speaker 2: trading blows. That was a like underrated great tournament at
Speaker 2: Whistling Straight. With regards to Burkedale Kyle, I I completely agree,
Speaker 2: like in terms of like if you if you broke down,
Speaker 2: like the way Jordan Speith, the dominance of Jordan Speith
Speaker 2: in his early twenties was like this chaotic masterpiece, right,
Speaker 2: like everything was in question, like everything was in the
Speaker 2: realm of possibility, Like you could see just a complete
Speaker 2: foul ball off the tee, a walkie approach shot. But
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, like the thing that
Speaker 2: like you had to say about him was like and
Speaker 2: I think like this was like so evidently clear when
Speaker 2: he played with Rory McElroy at the Masters that one year,
Speaker 2: Like he he just knows how to get the ball
Speaker 2: in the hole. Yeah, Like he he just has this
Speaker 2: innate ability to to just like score.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For me, I go back to the to the at
Speaker 2: and Tu National in twenty thirteen, and this was a
Speaker 2: couple of years before I was in golf, and at
Speaker 2: the time I just was playing golf. I watched a
Speaker 2: lot of golf, and I remember watching golf on like
Speaker 2: Friday afternoon and Jordan Speith at the time was nineteen.
Speaker 2: He was playing on a sponsor's exemption, and like I
Speaker 2: remember he shot like I think he shot sixty six
Speaker 2: and he you know, and it's like you're watching this
Speaker 2: kid and it's just like, God, this kid is good.
Speaker 2: And at the time, like outside of Tiger, we hadn't
Speaker 2: seen like these like teen prodigies, you know, and this
Speaker 2: youth wave, like Jordan speak to me, is kind of
Speaker 2: at the forefront of this youth wave. He was really
Speaker 2: like the first one. Can't lay. You could argue before
Speaker 2: he had his injuries was what might have been the
Speaker 2: first one. But Jordan Speath is just this teen sensation
Speaker 2: and I remember watching it and just being like, God,
Speaker 2: this is so so different. And that tournament and that
Speaker 2: summer obviously he missed Q School, he missed he him
Speaker 2: and Brooks Kopka actually were at the same site. You
Speaker 2: guys know what site they missed at second stage? Did
Speaker 2: you find this?
Speaker 4: Did not find this?
Speaker 2: What course got him? Craig Ranch TPC Craig Ranch, Hey,
Speaker 2: I hate.
Speaker 4: That shoot twenty under and miss out.
Speaker 1: Yeah something.
Speaker 2: Both of them were like I couldn't putt into the ocean.
Speaker 2: I couldn't hit a putt in the ocean, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe that is like the that is like the ultimate
Speaker 2: side that the course is just putting contest and it's
Speaker 2: a bad test of golf. Is that in Q school?
Speaker 2: Both of the there's an article on PGA tour dot
Speaker 2: com where they talk about it, and both of their
Speaker 2: individual quotes were like, yeah, we couldn't. I couldn't hit
Speaker 2: a pot into nocean that week, and it's like these
Speaker 2: two generational talents missed out because they can't put it.
Speaker 2: It was like, I think Brooks was like, I hit
Speaker 2: it great, just but it's like if the course doesn't
Speaker 2: allow you just hit it great and put you know,
Speaker 2: average and get out. It's it might have a little
Speaker 2: bit of lack of teeth, but but to me that
Speaker 2: that that tournament. You watched it and it was like, God,
Speaker 2: this kid has got something different. And then sure enough
Speaker 2: he wins a couple of weeks later at the Deer
Speaker 2: Run at Deer Run and uh ends up making it
Speaker 2: deep into the FedEx Cup playoffs and gets a a
Speaker 2: spot on the President's Cup team and it's like kind
Speaker 2: of off to the races from there.
Speaker 1: I think what was so interesting about that that sort
Speaker 1: of time period. I remember talking to people that were
Speaker 1: kind of close to it that were like, gosh, is
Speaker 1: this guy is he good? Like you could cause you
Speaker 1: watch him, I mean, you're you're right, and he like
Speaker 1: you watch him in it in in this what is
Speaker 1: begad come what I kind of call like the track
Speaker 1: man era of guys who have just have these like
Speaker 1: manufactured swings out of a laboratory that are beautiful and
Speaker 1: like perfect and whatever. You watch him and it's like
Speaker 1: this chicken wing thing. It's just it does it never
Speaker 1: looks good. I don't know what the NBA, there's probably
Speaker 1: an NBA comp Joseph where you're like, this doesn't look good.
Speaker 1: But he's putting up like twenty seven a night, every
Speaker 1: night and it's pretty efficient, right, And.
Speaker 2: I feel like the early SGA, early SGA, everybody's like god,
Speaker 2: and it's just like the herky jerkiness.
Speaker 1: Of SGA, like Clippers ESGA, No.
Speaker 2: Like early Thunder when he when he started, everybody's like,
Speaker 2: is he really like one of the ten best players
Speaker 2: in the league.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, that's good. Do you have a do you
Speaker 1: have a different comp Joseph?
Speaker 4: No, I actually like that camp. But maybe I don't
Speaker 4: want to jump ahead too much, but I think what's
Speaker 4: interesting that since you're saying that, Kyle, one thing that
Speaker 4: really stands out to me with speech kind of a
Speaker 4: theory I've had about his entire career is that the
Speaker 4: game has changed an enormous amount since twenty thirteen, twenty
Speaker 4: fifteen to now, and I think Speed's game did not
Speaker 4: does not hold up to the track man era and
Speaker 4: the way that things have gotten so optimized. Jordan Speath
Speaker 4: was always a player who's been making mistakes, and that's
Speaker 4: largely been carved out of the game. Dude, a track man,
Speaker 4: course management, all of the above. So when you go
Speaker 4: back and think about, well other players were making mistakes too,
Speaker 4: Speith has some weird data anomalies happening. In that era,
Speaker 4: he was making twenty five percent of his putts from
Speaker 4: fifteen to twenty five feet, like far in away the
Speaker 4: best putter from that range. It was such a bizarre
Speaker 4: skill set that when I look at this, I think
Speaker 4: a lot of things are true, But it's almost like
Speaker 4: an NBA player who came into the league in like
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen sixteen was really good from the mid range.
Speaker 4: And then that kind of got carved out of the
Speaker 4: league over the next ten years. Like I kind of
Speaker 4: think Speed's game just doesn't suit the modern era, particular.
Speaker 2: To margin Rosen.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not unreasonable.
Speaker 1: So, Joseph, you said a couple of different things in
Speaker 1: there that I think you're saying like they play into
Speaker 1: the same thing, but they're they're very separate to me.
Speaker 1: One is Speed's swing and swing speed, which I think
Speaker 1: have always been kind of average to above average. And
Speaker 1: the other is this course management, which has obviously been
Speaker 1: pilloried on Twitter and elsewhere and has always been average
Speaker 1: to below average. So do you feel like one of
Speaker 1: those plays more into kind of what you're talking about
Speaker 1: with the what what I hear you saying is Speth
Speaker 1: has regressed to kind of his mean over the years.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like one of those has played more
Speaker 1: into that than the other?
Speaker 4: You know, I think it's both maybe a little bit
Speaker 4: of Speed regressing, but I think the overall baseline and
Speaker 4: professional golf has just gotten a lot higher around him
Speaker 4: to where he can't get away with those mistakes. But
Speaker 4: to your question, I think the course management and the
Speaker 4: big misses is largely responsible here. Like I was watching
Speaker 4: the twenty fourteen final round of the Masters for this,
Speaker 4: and he's in the final round with Bubba. I don't
Speaker 4: know if either of you went back and watched this.
Speaker 4: Like Jordan's hitting three would off the tee on number eight,
Speaker 4: and that's just something you don't see anybody doing. Now.
Speaker 4: He ends up bogeying number eight and that's where he
Speaker 4: gives up his lead to Bubba. Then he boge's number
Speaker 4: nine as well, and Bubba's up by two after Bubba
Speaker 4: Birdie's number nine and the rest is kind of history.
Speaker 4: In that event, I just think in general, you could
Speaker 4: get there was more of a margin for air in
Speaker 4: that era when a lot of golfers weren't optimized. You know,
Speaker 4: Jordan's trying to hit these different shots, trying to curve
Speaker 4: the ball and having these big misses, but other guys
Speaker 4: are kind of doing that too. Now that doesn't exist, right,
Speaker 4: Like you watch Scotti Scheffler in the way he plays.
Speaker 4: It's speef has to get so hot with the putter
Speaker 4: or be so much more talented than other golfers to
Speaker 4: overcome that, And I just don't think he is. He's
Speaker 4: not the ball striker he was back then. Plus other
Speaker 4: guys are like Scheffler and they're not making those mistakes.
Speaker 4: So I just think it's a really uphill battle for
Speaker 4: speed to get in the mix at the highest level
Speaker 4: of professional golf. In twenty twenty four, twenty five.
Speaker 2: Speaking to that, I mean, I kind of look at
Speaker 2: Jordan Speith and I think, like, we can't know, Like
Speaker 2: I think he had he had a hand injury that
Speaker 2: I forgot about, and now he had the risk injury,
Speaker 2: and we can't be sure exactly like how much of
Speaker 2: swing changes are caused by these things. But when I
Speaker 2: think about speed, and a question I would have is
Speaker 2: like I wonder if in twenty seventeen he felt the
Speaker 2: need to change because he looked at some young players
Speaker 2: and said, wow, like I need to get better at
Speaker 2: X y Z. And I think this is like the
Speaker 2: hard thing at being at the top of the game.
Speaker 2: We saw tiger Woods undergo I mean Tiger Woods like
Speaker 2: threw away years undergoing swing changes, and it's always wild
Speaker 2: to me. It's like, you're the best player in the world,
Speaker 2: And this is something I'm fascinated about with Scotti. Scheffler
Speaker 2: is like he seems just dedicated to his what he
Speaker 2: does and there seems to be no appetite for changing anything.
Speaker 2: He's like the most boring creature of habit and that's
Speaker 2: perhaps the best way to keep playing high level golf.
Speaker 2: But Speith and Cameron McCormick, they seem like they they're restless,
Speaker 2: and I think like this is part of what people
Speaker 2: like about Speth and what the magnetism of Speth is.
Speaker 2: Like you watch him play and the microphones on him
Speaker 2: and Greller, and there's like this restlessness to him. But
Speaker 2: that restlessness comes through with what he's done with his
Speaker 2: golf sway, and he went from being this great great
Speaker 2: tea to green player. He was a very good tee
Speaker 2: to green player, and now he is not a great
Speaker 2: tee to green player, but he's a lot faster. And
Speaker 2: I found this thing, this Brandle clip from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I watch this.
Speaker 2: He called this is what he said about speeces swing changes,
Speaker 2: one of the more baffling things I have seen in
Speaker 2: twenty plus years. Sitting in this chair. He then went
Speaker 2: and he did a detailed swing breakdown. I'd recommend everybody
Speaker 2: watch it. He's good, really good. Brandal thrown heat here
Speaker 2: and he says, when you look at the swing. You say,
Speaker 2: it's kind of the same, but it's not. Those little
Speaker 2: differences have changed his DNA. In twenty fifteen, he was
Speaker 2: riding the bullet train to one of the best players
Speaker 2: of all time. Now he's still a good player, but
Speaker 2: nowhere near as good of a player. He's not in
Speaker 2: the same league as he was in twenty fifteen. And
Speaker 2: I think like he's like I think, like the hardest
Speaker 2: thing about golf is an imperfectable game, and you feel,
Speaker 2: you feel, even when you're the best player in the world,
Speaker 2: you feel the pressure to perfect this game, and that
Speaker 2: pressure to perfect the game leads great players to make
Speaker 2: irrational decisions about how they play the game. And I think,
Speaker 2: like when I distilled down Jordan Speth's career, that's kind
Speaker 2: of what I see, is like the tinkering is eventually
Speaker 2: is what led to him losing his special sauce.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I don't think he's talked about
Speaker 1: like all the variables that went into some of those
Speaker 1: swing changes, like oh, well I saw these other guys
Speaker 1: getting faster, or I thought this was more repeatable, or
Speaker 1: I you know, there's there's a million reasons to make
Speaker 1: swing changes, and the brand O. The Brando video is
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating, like talking about how he's more shut
Speaker 1: than he used to be and how I mean if
Speaker 1: you look at the numbers, like he's a he was
Speaker 1: a better driver in twenty twenty four than he's been
Speaker 1: in a long time. Yeah, right, And I think, what,
Speaker 1: what's weird and what you don't what we don't know,
Speaker 1: and maybe what twenty twenty five will tell us is
Speaker 1: his approach play has gotten so bad and so mediocre
Speaker 1: like that. The thing for me was speed. People talk
Speaker 1: about the putter and like, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: stats that Joseph mentioned there he was the best iron
Speaker 1: player in the world and it wasn't really that close
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. I thought that was like the most
Speaker 1: repeatable version of speed, where it's like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: a sticky stat like you're the best iron player more
Speaker 1: so than like chipping in and making thirty footers and whatever.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that is just consistently since twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: falling off, falling off, falling off, and now he's like
Speaker 1: a bad iron player. Now you look at it and
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, how much of that I remember twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen he wins pebble, and there was another top ten
Speaker 1: player that was like, this is problematic because it's not
Speaker 1: him making twenty footers, it's him hitting it to ten
Speaker 1: feet every time or fifteen feet every time, and that
Speaker 1: is like, he's gotten really good at that, and that's
Speaker 1: a problem because if he's doing that, he's gonna make
Speaker 1: some of those fifteen footers inevitably. And you just wonder
Speaker 1: how much of the wrist was. He's blamed it on
Speaker 1: the rist some in twenty twenty four, but I wonder
Speaker 1: how much of the wrist was playing into his inability
Speaker 1: to hit some of those iron shots that he used
Speaker 1: to hit.
Speaker 4: One thing. I think we to zero in on a
Speaker 4: little little bit on this timeline. I feel very strong,
Speaker 4: strongly and confident that speeds like iron play and some
Speaker 4: of those issues are not tied to the pursuit of speed.
Speaker 4: Jordan's game drops off a lot in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 4: then really bottoms out in twenty nineteen, and that's not
Speaker 4: a period where Jordan's trying to pick up a bunch
Speaker 4: of speed. That's where I believe, in having talked to
Speaker 4: some people were somewhat close to Jordan like that's when
Speaker 4: I think they really tried to get to figure out
Speaker 4: what was going wrong versus Jordan thinking that speed was
Speaker 4: the difference between him winning and not chasing speed and
Speaker 4: then losing some of the iron play. I don't think
Speaker 4: that's really how the timeline went, So I would throw
Speaker 4: the challenge flag on that a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things I think with Speed is these
Speaker 2: kind of like for golfers, like I think the first
Speaker 2: modern modern golfer.
Speaker 1: And we talked.
Speaker 2: I talked about how he was on the on the
Speaker 2: front edge of the youth movement that we've seen over
Speaker 2: the last decade on the PGA Tour, but he also
Speaker 2: was like the first player on the kind of press handling.
Speaker 2: And I think that makes it hard because we've never
Speaker 2: you know, it's always been like this pre arranged appearance
Speaker 2: thing and he talks before you know, tournament rounds. But
Speaker 2: there are he I think like Rory like in his
Speaker 2: early career had a little bit more of that traditional
Speaker 2: golf media where it was like sit down interviews. He's
Speaker 2: done these Kimmage interviews forever and it's kind of part
Speaker 2: of his thing. Like the Speed thing is like sponsor
Speaker 2: shoots pre pre determined press, you know, handlings and like
Speaker 2: you know, with I don't want to say oversight, but
Speaker 2: like you know, it is. I just think he's like
Speaker 2: the most He's the first golfer we've seen in this
Speaker 2: modern era of media where it's really like cultivated. And
Speaker 2: part of that is like it leaves when the careers
Speaker 2: don't go exactly the way you it leaves a lot
Speaker 2: of questions that probably won't get answered until he's done playing.
Speaker 2: Until when he's done and he reflects back to and says,
Speaker 2: like the tell all of this is really what happened,
Speaker 2: you know, And it's a it's a fascinating aspect of
Speaker 2: his career. And I think it's what makes one of
Speaker 2: the things that makes him so compelling at this point
Speaker 2: is he's thirty one. Theoretically he should have years and
Speaker 2: opportunities to win major championships ahead of him. The driving
Speaker 2: is so so like encouraging from last year. And as
Speaker 2: you guys said, like the iron play from years ago.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. If he just remained a great iron player,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have fallen. He'd still be making national teams
Speaker 2: like the Ryder Cup and President's Cup on merit you know,
Speaker 2: like there are tons of streaky putters on that are
Speaker 2: in the top fifteen of the world. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just that he's it feels like he's lost the fabric
Speaker 2: of who he is. All right, let's take a quick
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Speaker 2: courses or improve your game year round. You could do
Speaker 2: all kinds of things. You could go to the range,
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Speaker 2: So I think this is a good time and to
Speaker 2: kind of run through the timeline of his career. When
Speaker 2: was the first time you guys heard about Jordan Spieth, Kyle?
Speaker 4: I mean mine was whenever he made his first what
Speaker 4: was the first professional start that he made as an amateur?
Speaker 4: The Byron Nelson. The Byron Nelson. Yeah, that's I believe
Speaker 4: that's when I heard about him for the first time.
Speaker 2: He was he was tied for seventh after the third
Speaker 2: round in that finished sixteenth, what about you, Kyle.
Speaker 1: Which I think was his best finish at the Byron Nelson.
Speaker 1: I think it might still be his best finish at
Speaker 1: the Baron Nelson.
Speaker 2: Sixteen now that he's at Craig Ranch. Now is that
Speaker 2: Craig Ranch as a speech stopper?
Speaker 1: That was my That was my first time also because
Speaker 1: I had just moved to Dallas. I moved to Dallas
Speaker 1: in twenty ten. So when was what year.
Speaker 2: Was that I would have been twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, it was like a big thing here.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's that's why he blew up. Was because you
Speaker 2: moved to the area.
Speaker 1: For sure, I was I would not be in golf
Speaker 1: for another two years. But it was definitely that was
Speaker 1: definitely the reason.
Speaker 2: All Right, let's provide like a little bit of context
Speaker 2: of his just I I kind of like forgot when
Speaker 2: I started to do this, like just running through the timeline,
Speaker 2: just how insane the early career was. And I know
Speaker 2: how insane it was, but when you like dig into it,
Speaker 2: you're just like, this is nuts. So he won the
Speaker 2: US Junior twice. He's the only player to do that
Speaker 2: to win multiple US Juniors other than Tiger who obviously
Speaker 2: won three times. He was number one of the AGGA
Speaker 2: rankings as a junior, so prolific junior golfer, like we
Speaker 2: talked about. Played in the Byron Nelson in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: finished sixteenth. Then he also made the cut again in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, So when he was sixteen seventeen, he's making
Speaker 2: PGA Tour cuts, finished thirty second. He went to Texas.
Speaker 2: He played one one year at Texas and he played
Speaker 2: on that twenty eleven Walker Cup team. So as a
Speaker 2: freshman at Texas, he won three events. He had the
Speaker 2: low scoring average as a freshman, the team won the
Speaker 2: national championship. He was All Big Twelve, Big Twelve, Freshman
Speaker 2: of the Year, Player of the Year, and first team
Speaker 2: All American twenty twelve. So he's still a freshman. He's
Speaker 2: the low am at the US Open. I mean, he's
Speaker 2: just piling up like every consequential accomplishment that you can
Speaker 2: have as an amateur. Then when Patrick Catley turned professional,
Speaker 2: he became the number one amateur in the world in
Speaker 2: the Wagger Amateur Golf rankings. So at this point he
Speaker 2: decides to turn professional, and it was actually like, I think,
Speaker 2: like this is I think one of the things with
Speaker 2: modern golf now in PGA tour U and I think
Speaker 2: this is one of the thing I don't. I think
Speaker 2: it's good that kids are staying at school, but I
Speaker 2: do think like Speith is actually an example of why
Speaker 2: PGA tour you could be not great. He turned pro
Speaker 2: after missing Q school and if he doesn't turn pro
Speaker 2: until his senior year, do we miss the best speak
Speaker 2: years of his career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's I think it's interesting to think
Speaker 1: about because he had that I think Sean Martin wrote
Speaker 1: about this, but he had that decision on KFT or
Speaker 1: should he go to the Puerto Rico event? Should he
Speaker 1: stay playing KFT They were going to like Columbia or
Speaker 1: somewhere like that. Yeah, And he goes to Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: and finishes second and then goes on to get his
Speaker 1: car to believe at Vos Bar and then wins John
Speaker 1: Deere and it just accelerates this timeline. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things we get so excited
Speaker 1: about in any sport, Andy is how how good are
Speaker 1: you at a at the youngest age possible. Whether it's
Speaker 1: basketball football, it's a little different because they have restrictions
Speaker 1: on when you can enter the league or whatever. But
Speaker 1: basketball base this is like a huge baseball thing, like
Speaker 1: Juan Soto when he was sixteen or whatever. And and
Speaker 1: so I do think, like I think net PG two
Speaker 1: or you is like PG two, You is a is
Speaker 1: a net win. But I do think it kind of
Speaker 1: prohibits your like twenty your Tom Kim type from getting
Speaker 1: out there and and figuring out like, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: who they, this is who this guy could be as
Speaker 1: a professional.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think like you're taking a huge,
Speaker 2: huge risk if you buy, like if you know you're
Speaker 2: really good. It's like, okay, like this is a guaranteed
Speaker 2: way for me to get a card. It is like
Speaker 2: a it's a it's an interesting moment because, like, you know,
Speaker 2: you see these guys like Ludvig. I always especially researching this.
Speaker 2: You think about like Ludvig, who gets this card at
Speaker 2: twenty three and he's been great. Think about what Jordan
Speaker 2: Spieth had done before he turned twenty three? Oksha Okshay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: ok Shay's you know, he would be a senior now,
Speaker 2: but instead he's won twice on the PGA Tour and
Speaker 2: probably right if you pick the Ryder Cups teams right now,
Speaker 2: he's a fringe Ryder Cupper.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like so it's just an interesting thing. So he doesn't
Speaker 2: make it through Q school. We talked about this. He
Speaker 2: falls at Craig Ranch, but he still turns pro and
Speaker 2: it's midway through sophomore year at Texas he leaves, Uh,
Speaker 2: he leaves the long Horns.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I can't wait until the speF documentary comes
Speaker 1: out and we get ten minutes of Andy talking TPC
Speaker 1: Craig Ranch and how it was like Spea's ultimate downfall.
Speaker 1: That's going to be incredible.
Speaker 2: He so he missed by three. He finished eight under,
Speaker 2: tied for twenty six. Brooks, Brooks and him both finished
Speaker 2: eight under. It's wild. I mean, like talk about like
Speaker 2: a so so Brooks goes.
Speaker 1: To Europe Challenge to your baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's how he he takes this and Speth goes,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna take sponsors exemptions because at this point,
Speaker 2: I mean, he's the golden boy. Brooks wasn't going to
Speaker 2: get sponsors exemptions, right, I think like it's a it's
Speaker 2: actually like a fascinating Brooks speF like this this moment
Speaker 2: in time, and like two completely different profile players and
Speaker 2: now when you look at their major careers, their resumes,
Speaker 2: it's like very similar. They got their completely roundabout ways.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a it's a great story. There's a
Speaker 2: PGA tour article that's that's you know, not super in depth,
Speaker 2: but it's it's it's a thought provoking article just because
Speaker 2: of where they are right now. So anyways, as Kyle illuminated,
Speaker 2: he goes to Puerto Rico bellspar gets conditional status like
Speaker 2: special temporary status, and then John Deere he wins the
Speaker 2: playoff famous shot that hits the flag and goes in.
Speaker 2: There's a sliding doors of like, what if that doesn't
Speaker 2: go in.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it kind of goes in the water.
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't go.
Speaker 2: It's just it's a very very is So then he
Speaker 2: goes to the President's Cup and uh, and then you know,
Speaker 2: you go into the next year and it's uh, it's
Speaker 2: it's just this is where it starts to go, right.
Speaker 2: He finished eleventh of the FedEx Cup after getting his
Speaker 2: card with no status, which is which is wild, got
Speaker 2: him into the Majors, and by the end of twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen he goes from no status to the twenty second
Speaker 2: ranked player in the world. I think, like when spieth
Speaker 2: Mania like kind of starts to take off. It's it's
Speaker 2: the It's the Masters twenty fourteen, he shares the fifty
Speaker 2: four hole lead with Bubba Watson and finish his second
Speaker 2: He's the youngest runner up in Master's history and he
Speaker 2: and he's now into the top ten in the world
Speaker 2: golf rankings. He's twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: And that Saturday night, You're like, I think he's going
Speaker 1: to win the Masters, Like that's how solidly he had
Speaker 1: been playing. It wasn't It wasn't like oh this guy
Speaker 1: like shot of third round sixty five and jumped to
Speaker 1: It was like, I No, I think he's going to win.
Speaker 2: And I think, well, the Masters in speek is is
Speaker 2: at this time he is just the perfect Masters player
Speaker 2: where enough distance to get over the hills, enough distance
Speaker 2: to take advantage of the par five, really good iron player,
Speaker 2: exceptional short game player, so you can, you can miss,
Speaker 2: you can you can avoid taking on some risks and
Speaker 2: know you can get up and down. And then at
Speaker 2: this time, also he's a great, great putter.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say specifically he's always kind of had
Speaker 4: short range putting issues, but unbelievable from outside of ten
Speaker 4: feet where if you're hitting a lot of smart approach
Speaker 4: shots to twenty five feet out of Gusta like he's
Speaker 4: giving these pots a run over and over again. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I agree with you, Andy, pretty much the ideal Augusta player.
Speaker 2: So you spoke about the short range putting issues that
Speaker 2: was the issue at Craig Ranch when he missed Q school.
Speaker 2: The quote is, so I remember hitting like sixty five
Speaker 2: of seventy two greens. Maybe not the hardest thing to
Speaker 2: do out there now that we've seen in a couple
Speaker 2: of years on tour, and I just couldn't put it
Speaker 2: in the ocean. And then I worked a lot on
Speaker 2: my putting that off season, and then I started to
Speaker 2: really make some and have good finishes in the next spring,
Speaker 2: and it got me status and running on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 2: Like something that I that just popped into my head
Speaker 2: when I read that, is like, do we just get
Speaker 2: like a super nova hot streak for three years on
Speaker 2: the putting green?
Speaker 4: I mean, I would say no, because what's bizarre about
Speaker 4: Speef's putting is he's always been bad from short range,
Speaker 4: even including during that stretch, he wasn't great. He's he's
Speaker 4: one good year from three to five feet and that's
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen. Other than that, he's always been basically
Speaker 4: outside the top one hundred. Where I think we get
Speaker 4: a pretty hot putting streak is that fifteen to twenty
Speaker 4: five foot range when he's making them five percent more
Speaker 4: often than anybody else in the world. So, but he's
Speaker 4: even been able to kind of maintain that over a
Speaker 4: decent period of time. So I agree, yeah, to an
Speaker 4: extent hot putting, but it's more just a weird dichotomy
Speaker 4: between the short range putting and the long range putting.
Speaker 4: It's really bizarre, and I don't think we've seen that
Speaker 4: with any other player, at least in the last ten
Speaker 4: to fifteen years.
Speaker 2: I think that quote kind of and this goes back
Speaker 2: to your point, Joseph, that quote kind of ties like
Speaker 2: it gives you a little bit of a lens into
Speaker 2: to speak, this is his really probably first failure as
Speaker 2: a golfer. And if you look at that, then then
Speaker 2: I worked a lot on my putting that offseason, So like,
Speaker 2: is that what happens? Is like when he feels threatened,
Speaker 2: he just goes to work on his weakness. And maybe
Speaker 2: that's where the swing change stuff with the with the
Speaker 2: iron play happened. Like the iron play slips and like
Speaker 2: alarm bells off, I need to work on my iron.
Speaker 1: Play, Yeah, I mean I want to know, Like I
Speaker 1: am desperate to know more about the swing changes, the
Speaker 1: iron play, all of that, because even I mean I
Speaker 1: remember twenty fourteen, fifteen at the Masters, he led after
Speaker 1: like seven of the eight rounds that were played something
Speaker 1: like that, or maybe it was fifteen sixteen. I mean
Speaker 1: he led after almost every round and it was because yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the long range putting, but he was also
Speaker 1: knocking down I mean he was like ripping at flagsticks
Speaker 1: all over the place. Like his iron play was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: His driving has always been like yeah, okay, like if
Speaker 1: he gets if he gets hot, like it can be repeatable.
Speaker 1: But I just I always, always, always go back to
Speaker 1: the iron play. Some of this is just pushing back
Speaker 1: against like this speek narrative of oh he made every
Speaker 1: thirty footer he looked at It's like, no, he didn't.
Speaker 1: He was an amazing iron player and he made like
Speaker 1: Joseph said, like he was really good from fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty five feet. But yeah, I just I constantly go
Speaker 1: back to the iron play and wanting to know, like
Speaker 1: why that's so different now than it was back in fourteen, fifteen,
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen.
Speaker 2: I think when you you have to think about like
Speaker 2: how everything interacts as with a player, I think like
Speaker 2: that's like an important thing to think about, is like
Speaker 2: how does every part of your game relate to the
Speaker 2: other part of the game. And when you think about Spith,
Speaker 2: the little bit crooked driver was fine, and why it
Speaker 2: was fine was because of the short game, Like you
Speaker 2: can afford to be a little bit crooked off the
Speaker 2: tee if you're really great around the greens. We see
Speaker 2: this with like cam Smith is a great example of this,
Speaker 2: where like you can afford to have a little bit
Speaker 2: of a crooked driver when you're a magician around the greens.
Speaker 2: And Speith was that like the the key though to
Speaker 2: that and what cam Smith for example, has, and maybe
Speaker 2: maybe it's not as prolific as when he was maybe
Speaker 2: the best player in the world, like what Spith had
Speaker 2: and cam Smith had magical short game, great iron play
Speaker 2: and solid putting like couldn't get really hot and cam
Speaker 2: I think that's a disservice one of the best putters
Speaker 2: in the world. But like you think about how those
Speaker 2: those inner play, right, you can't be a crooked driver
Speaker 2: and bad have a bad short game because that's going
Speaker 2: to lead to like a lot of bogies. So that
Speaker 2: iron play was fought, Like you know, you think about
Speaker 2: like the fabric of the player and that that whole
Speaker 2: whole picture works. And I think, like what happens is
Speaker 2: people get too maniacally focused on like fixing what's bad
Speaker 2: and lose sight of like, Okay, how does everything relate
Speaker 2: with me?
Speaker 1: Well, and think about think about the places where cam
Speaker 1: Smith and Speith have had a lot.
Speaker 2: Of success, like USA Open Championships.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chambers Bay.
Speaker 4: Chambers Bay. I was going to say, that was an
Speaker 4: interesting one to see cam Smith right in the I
Speaker 4: think he Cam Smith, Patrick Reid and Jordan's Speith are
Speaker 4: always going to kind of show up together.
Speaker 1: Because those are places where you can hit, you can
Speaker 1: miss and hit recovery shots that are either put you
Speaker 1: in position to score or to say, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I don't is speak ever gonna win a modern PGA.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like it doesn't seem like it, you know.
Speaker 1: I just think and we can get to that later on.
Speaker 1: But I think it's interesting to look at what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Andy, which is like, how does your skill
Speaker 1: set fit with not only how does it play, but
Speaker 1: how does it fit together when you're playing some of
Speaker 1: these major championships and big events. And there are certain
Speaker 1: courses that it fits together way better than some other courses.
Speaker 2: I mean, like you, for example, if you compare him
Speaker 2: to Jason Day that at this peak time when Jason
Speaker 2: Days and him are the two best players in the world.
Speaker 2: Jason Day is a great driver of the golf ball,
Speaker 2: great around the greens, great putter, pretty mediocre iron player. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but like you think about, like how does that relate? Right, Well,
Speaker 2: he puts himself into position where he's going to hit
Speaker 2: enough approaches that he's going to hit good ones that
Speaker 2: generate birdies. But is is iron play his forte No
Speaker 2: Speeth meanwhile, is the complete opposite, where he's not going
Speaker 2: to put himself in as many great positions to approach
Speaker 2: the green as Day, but he's going to convert on more.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's just like a fascinating thing. And Day's short game
Speaker 2: bails out mediocre approach play base short Day's short game
Speaker 2: and putting. Like when you start like that's I think
Speaker 2: like what gets missed sometimes with like the really data
Speaker 2: driven analysis is sometimes you miss like how these things
Speaker 2: like it just becomes like, look at how bad this
Speaker 2: person is at this. It's like, well, like all these
Speaker 2: other things work together to to mask that, right.
Speaker 4: I think, especially zeroing in on the relationship between approach
Speaker 4: play and around the greens and when you're very good
Speaker 4: in like Speth is Speth was almost every hole presents
Speaker 4: an interesting Okay, if you hit a good drive, then
Speaker 4: you're probably gonna you have a good chance of hitting
Speaker 4: it close. If you don't, you have a good chance
Speaker 4: of getting up and down. Like one example I think
Speaker 4: is always important to throw out is if you hit
Speaker 4: the green, your strokes gained around the green is gonna
Speaker 4: be zero. You're not even hitting a chip shot. So
Speaker 4: speF like have being elite in both of those categories.
Speaker 4: Like you're saying, Andy, it works incredibly well together on
Speaker 4: a course like Augusta.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and if your day in twenty fifteen, it
Speaker 2: works really well too, because it's like, Okay, I'm not
Speaker 2: the best approach player in the world, but I hit
Speaker 2: it really far, I hit it pretty relatively straight, and
Speaker 2: I am going to put myself in a lot of opportunities.
Speaker 2: And when I don't hit a great approach out, I'm
Speaker 2: getting up and down, you know.
Speaker 4: But now we have a player in Scotti Scheffler who
Speaker 4: does everything well, and more players are doing everything well.
Speaker 4: And I just even if Speth hadn't gotten worse, I
Speaker 4: think he was gonna run into this problem eventually.
Speaker 2: So I think like a speF were this is something
Speaker 2: that's speF unlocked at Augusta National and he might not
Speaker 2: have been like the first, but like when you think
Speaker 2: about like think about the eleventh hole and I think
Speaker 2: this is like I think about this with Jordan Spieth
Speaker 2: all the time, and now this is exactly how Scotty
Speaker 2: Schffler plays the eleventh hole. They just dump it right.
Speaker 2: There's just no need to even hit the ball anywhere
Speaker 2: near the water left because their short games are so
Speaker 2: good that if you just put them on short grass
Speaker 2: right of the green, they're gonna get up and down
Speaker 2: like almost every time. And it's like this is that
Speaker 2: exactly that inner play and how like these games, this
Speaker 2: this pairing of iron play and short game works so
Speaker 2: well at a lot of places. Is like, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna dump it. I'm Scheffler talks at it. He
Speaker 2: aims at like right at the right fringe. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it's just like that's where I hit it, and he
Speaker 2: just hits it right and then he just gets up
Speaker 2: and down and it's just like, okay, I'm taking what
Speaker 2: we saw happened to Ludwig off the board on Sunday
Speaker 2: when he hit it in the water this year. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just like, this isn't going to happen. I'm hitting
Speaker 2: it over here, and I'm just gonna get up and down.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna walk away with four most days. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: we're going back now. He gets picked for the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 2: He's the youngest American to play the matches since Horton
Speaker 2: Smith in nineteen twenty nine. Obviously, I mean, he's just like,
Speaker 2: there's so many of these when you go through his
Speaker 2: his bio. Twenty fifteen wins the Masters. He breaks the
Speaker 2: thirty six hole scoring record at fourteen under, broke the
Speaker 2: fifty four hole scoring record at sixty under, ends up
Speaker 2: tying the seventy two scoring record with Tiger, and he
Speaker 2: became the second youngest to Tiger to win the Masters,
Speaker 2: first wire to wire winner since Ray Floyd. That was
Speaker 2: such a dominant performance, it only gets better. Twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: wins the US Open. He beats DJ and Louiu Stason
Speaker 2: at Chambers Bay. Became the sixth player ever to win
Speaker 2: the Masters of the US Open in the same year,
Speaker 2: first since Tiger Woods, younger, youngest winner of the US
Speaker 2: of the US Open since Bobby Jones, the.
Speaker 4: Youngest to win two career majors since Gene Saizen. I
Speaker 4: think it's said I was watching this broadcast backs, Yeah,
Speaker 4: sixth player ever to win the Masters in the US
Speaker 4: Open in the same year. And that's another one of
Speaker 4: those great what ifs andy the Dustin Johnson three pot
Speaker 4: on eighteen, that a lot changes if he makes that potter,
Speaker 4: if it goes to a playoff, like that's one of
Speaker 4: the speef I think, probably one of the biggest what
Speaker 4: ifs well.
Speaker 1: And the way it finished, right where he burdies sixteen
Speaker 1: next to the train doubles seventeen and you're like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of the epitome of the of the
Speaker 1: speeth roller coaster, and then I believe he birdied eighteen, yeah,
Speaker 1: to eventually to end up winning it. That was actually
Speaker 1: the first major I covered in person, and I remember
Speaker 1: it was when the US Open was still eighteen hole,
Speaker 1: the Monday eighteen hole playoff, and I remember I was
Speaker 1: like so excited to be out there. I was like, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'll go eighteen holes with these guys. That'd be a blast.
Speaker 1: And all these other people that were in the media
Speaker 1: center were just just so excited that DJ missed the
Speaker 1: putt so that they didn't have to stay and cover
Speaker 1: it on Monday, and I was I was bummed. I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I want to watch another eighteen holes
Speaker 1: with these guys. That'd be amazing.
Speaker 2: Do you think the USJA, if that happens, gets rid
Speaker 2: of the eighteen hole playoff?
Speaker 4: Probably?
Speaker 1: If that, like, if if they play eighteen on Monday
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 2: You have, you could have had this like epic duel. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe it's still still in existence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: There was a camera McCormick quote after Chambers that I
Speaker 2: thought was interesting. So this is from Karen Krause's New
Speaker 2: York Times Space. Cameron McCormick, who's worked with Speed for
Speaker 2: nearly a decade, said SPIE's ability to perform in the
Speaker 2: clutch could be traced to his quote bulletproof self image.
Speaker 2: No matter what happened previously, he can will the outcome
Speaker 2: to his desire. That makes me think of the Harrington quote,
Speaker 2: the Padrick Harrington quote where it's experience paraphrasing here, it's
Speaker 2: not exactly this, but experience, isn't it? Everything is cracked
Speaker 2: up to be. With experience, you gain scars tissue wasn't
Speaker 2: what it was. And I think that's like an interesting
Speaker 2: aspect of golf. I like, when I am I long
Speaker 2: ago competitive career, I I had some trouble playing tournaments
Speaker 2: at my home course, which is so counterintuitive. You think
Speaker 2: it was it was easy, like you know the course,
Speaker 2: But what I found was in tournament pressure. I would
Speaker 2: think about all of the times that I struggled on
Speaker 2: the course where not to hit it. And I think
Speaker 2: like at this point in Speace career, he's never had
Speaker 2: any like his one moment of bother was the Q
Speaker 2: School thing. He's just been on this ascendant trajectory and
Speaker 2: I wonder if like part of this also mentally, he's
Speaker 2: lost that bulletproof self image. He's realized, especially at this
Speaker 2: point in his career, that there are players that are
Speaker 2: better than him. That's what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it's multiple things in one,
Speaker 4: Like the swing gets worse, he's hitting the ball worse,
Speaker 4: and he's I'm the twelfth hole of Augusta. You have
Speaker 4: to bring it up right, Like you want to talk
Speaker 4: about scar tissue. I don't think any golfer has as
Speaker 4: much scar tissue on one specific hole as speech does
Speaker 4: on twelve at August. He's hit it in the water
Speaker 4: there a bunch of times now, so I think there
Speaker 4: could be something to that. But also he's just not
Speaker 4: hitting the ball as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one thing with this Andy is is
Speaker 1: when you have somebody like that who has been generationally
Speaker 1: good at every age, it gets very difficult for that
Speaker 1: person to start to make these decisions out of humility.
Speaker 1: And so what I think Scottie Shuffer's superpower is is
Speaker 1: is his humility. He is willing to say, hey, I
Speaker 1: can hit this shot probably seven out of ten times,
Speaker 1: but because I can't hit it three out of ten times,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take it on. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lay up over here, I'm gonna hit over here
Speaker 1: away from trouble. I'm not going to short side myself.
Speaker 1: And I think so often speak whether it's because he
Speaker 1: wants to prove it to himself or prove it to
Speaker 1: other people, or because he's just done it for so long,
Speaker 1: I think he has a hard time making smart choices
Speaker 1: on the golf course. And yes, you can obviously like
Speaker 1: he's lost something with his tea green game, and so
Speaker 1: you combine those two things, and it results in a
Speaker 1: lot of like disastrous holes or disastrous nine hole stretches
Speaker 1: over the course of the last you know, since I
Speaker 1: would say since twenty over the last seven years. And
Speaker 1: I do wonder if that is rooted in the fact
Speaker 1: that he won the US Junior twice, he won the Masters,
Speaker 1: I mean, all these things first, since Tiger first, since
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. You know, it's been a hundred years, and
Speaker 1: you start to think like, oh, I like, it's hard
Speaker 1: because you want to have that self confidence, in that
Speaker 1: self belief, but you also have to pair it with
Speaker 1: like a wisdom and a humility on the golf course
Speaker 1: to not think take things on that you shouldn't and
Speaker 1: to hit places that you're like, that's boring. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. But the best players, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what Scotti Scheffler is doing over and over again,
Speaker 1: and that's why he's the that's part of the reason
Speaker 1: he's the best player in the world.
Speaker 4: I mean, Kyle, I think it's very smart to draw
Speaker 4: the comparison with Scheffler, and I think, like you're saying,
Speaker 4: Scotty's mind is okay, I can do this seven eight
Speaker 4: times out of ten, but what happens when it goes
Speaker 4: wrong and speed is very stubborn in the I see
Speaker 4: this shot, I don't care what happens when it goes wrong,
Speaker 4: Like I can get myself out of it. I'm hitting it,
Speaker 4: But it doesn't really work out that way for you
Speaker 4: in the long run if you keep making those mistakes.
Speaker 1: I do think also at this time in his career
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen fifteen sixteen, Speath emanated a maturity paired with
Speaker 1: an innocence of youth. And that's an unusual thing. You
Speaker 1: get guys that are nineteen twenty twenty one, they're they're
Speaker 1: usually pretty immature. And I think some of that is
Speaker 1: rooted in his upbringing, his family life, his sister having
Speaker 1: special needs and her getting the lion's share of the
Speaker 1: attention within their family. As he was growing up, he
Speaker 1: had to like and I guess what I'm getting at
Speaker 1: is there was this perfect balance of like personal maturity
Speaker 1: but also like innocence within golf and not having that
Speaker 1: scar tissue that I think really work to his advantage
Speaker 1: as a twenty one year old that not a lot
Speaker 1: of guys have. And obviously, when we talk about these things,
Speaker 1: there's like a million factors. There's a million variables. We're
Speaker 1: just sort of calling out the ones that are most
Speaker 1: prominent or that we see most prominently that I think
Speaker 1: played into some level of like generational success at that age.
Speaker 1: And that's one that it gets talked about in terms
Speaker 1: of like, oh, speak's a good guy, or like he's
Speaker 1: always like his family has shaped him or whatever. But
Speaker 1: I think not to make it too much about golf.
Speaker 1: I think it's really helped him, or it helps him
Speaker 1: at that age as a golfer as well, because he
Speaker 1: had a maturity that the Patrick quote maybe sometimes you
Speaker 1: lack a little bit of that maturity at twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and he had it, and it paired perfectly with where
Speaker 1: his talent and where his kind of innocence as a
Speaker 1: golfer was at as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you're hitting on what makes golf
Speaker 2: superstars so fascinating. I think when you talk about a
Speaker 2: lot of other sports, most other sports are reactionary. Your background,
Speaker 2: your upbringing can shape how you approach the preparation for
Speaker 2: the game, but then you get in the arena and
Speaker 2: it is very much a reactionary skill driven, athleticism driven sport.
Speaker 2: With golf, the interplay of mental eight and performance I
Speaker 2: think is more correlated than any other sport in the world.
Speaker 2: The one that would would jump to mind is like
Speaker 2: is like pitching in baseball, I think is like probably
Speaker 2: the closest comp to golf where you have like that
Speaker 2: interplay of mental like you have to think before every pitch,
Speaker 2: and I think like that that's the fascinating thing with
Speaker 2: Jordan Speith, especially because of the uniqueness of his personality
Speaker 2: that we see come out in the conversations with Michael Greller.
Speaker 2: So he closes out twenty fifteen T four at the Open,
Speaker 2: one shot out of the three way playoff second at
Speaker 2: the PGA to Jason Day. Absolutely, I think like one
Speaker 2: of the best tournaments that nobody talks about was that
Speaker 2: was that duel?
Speaker 1: It was it was a mini version of Phil Stenson. Yes,
Speaker 1: the fifteen Open, the seventieth hole he makes that long birdie,
Speaker 1: So sixteen he makes that long I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a it was a bomb, and you're like, this guy's
Speaker 1: gonna he's going to win the Grand Slam like it
Speaker 1: legitimately felt like he was going to win the Grand
Speaker 1: Slam at that moment. He he buggied the road hole
Speaker 1: and then he hits a ball. I it looked like
Speaker 1: it was headed for the first tea box on eighteen.
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was so left. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And he still has a chance to tie and get
Speaker 1: into into the playoff. But I just think taking you know,
Speaker 1: he took the he took the Grand Slam to the
Speaker 1: what was at the two hundred and thirteenth hole or
Speaker 1: whatever of the of the year. That's that's extraordinary, Like
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen very often in a golf year,
Speaker 1: and that was just it was a really special year
Speaker 1: like that was it was. It was just so much
Speaker 1: fun to cover that and to be like just to
Speaker 1: witness it, to experience it. It was it felt very
Speaker 1: very unique and like something that we're probably not going
Speaker 1: to see very many more times.
Speaker 2: I'm wonder I was wondering, like, legitimately, do you think
Speaker 2: anybody is going to be this close ever again?
Speaker 1: Well, you've got you know, now, the order of the
Speaker 1: majors is different, right, So in terms of like I
Speaker 1: think it's probably less rare to win the Masters and
Speaker 1: the PGA in the same year. I'd have to look
Speaker 1: that up. Off the top of my head, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: So I do think somebody could take it to the
Speaker 1: US Open.
Speaker 2: But but then that far into the US.
Speaker 1: Open, he lost to what four guys that year at
Speaker 1: the Majors, four guys I don't legitimate and back nine.
Speaker 2: You know, as you said, I mean he buggies the
Speaker 2: road hole and doesn't birdy eighteen. Yeah, at St. Andrews,
Speaker 2: like usually that's a you know, part four and a half,
Speaker 2: part three and a half. Yeah, and he doesn't get
Speaker 2: that done, and then the day thing, they're going back
Speaker 2: and forth all Sunday.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I don't think. I don't think anybody will
Speaker 1: get that close. I mean, what's my timeframe, like ever.
Speaker 2: Again, I mean in the next in your lifetime covering
Speaker 2: the sport, So we'll say thirty thirty more years, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, twenty years, twenty five years.
Speaker 1: I mean, Joseph's got like forty years left. But no,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I do not think that anybody will
Speaker 1: get that close. Again.
Speaker 4: I'll say somebody gets somebody wins the first two and
Speaker 4: is in the mix out of third in the next
Speaker 4: thirty to forty years. But I think there's almost no
Speaker 4: chance that they do it at that age, that they
Speaker 4: do it when they are twenty one years old, that's
Speaker 4: not happening.
Speaker 1: Well that's where like I and maybe I'm jumping ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit, but my I've really struggled for a
Speaker 1: comp with Speeth over the course of his career, and
Speaker 1: the one that I've finally landed on that I think
Speaker 1: I'm going with is uh is Sevy right, because it
Speaker 1: was the age thing. It's the Masters in Open Championship thing.
Speaker 1: It's the sort of like the sum of the parts
Speaker 1: or the I always mess this up. The sum is
Speaker 1: greater than the what am I trying to say, Joseph,
Speaker 1: you got it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sum is greater than the all the parts.
Speaker 1: Right exactly Like you don't look at and Joseph and
Speaker 1: I talked about this several years ago. I think we
Speaker 1: were talking about Shuffler, but he was like I always
Speaker 1: just said to me, I always trust guys that it
Speaker 1: doesn't look great necessarily because it means that they have
Speaker 1: done it like they have, Like because guys look at
Speaker 1: him and it looks great, like Gordon Sergent gets the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt at every Ram Davis, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you're like it looks amazing, and guys where it doesn't
Speaker 1: look great, you're like, this guy has probably not gotten
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt. He's had to actually do
Speaker 1: the work and actually accomplish what's in front of him,
Speaker 1: and you just trust it more. And that's where it
Speaker 1: was speed. It was like he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: he just he was so good at scoring, at winning,
Speaker 1: and I don't understand how that part. I don't think
Speaker 1: it has gone away, and I think he could win
Speaker 1: more major. I think he will win another major at
Speaker 1: some point. But yeah, it just is crazy that it
Speaker 1: has like dissipated this quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, were we ready to move on from twenty fifteen, Yeah,
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen Masters collapse. I don't think we need to
Speaker 2: really go into this that much. How many do you
Speaker 2: have a six shot lead at the turn five, at
Speaker 2: the turn five, at the turn obviously the twelfth hole
Speaker 2: is one of the most memorable scenes in Masters history,
Speaker 2: and Danny Willet wins, and then there's real talk about
Speaker 2: like can he come back from this? Is it possible
Speaker 2: for him to come back from this? Because it was
Speaker 2: such a i mean, historic collapse. There were a lot
Speaker 2: of Greg Norman comps I think the one that resonates
Speaker 2: the most with me is maybe Curtis Strange when he
Speaker 2: turned with a he opened I think he opened the
Speaker 2: Masters with a forty on the front nine, but he
Speaker 2: turned on the back on the back nine with a
Speaker 2: five shot lead or four shot lead and and lost,
Speaker 2: just just fell apart. But he quickly wins the Dean
Speaker 2: and DeLuca. Remember that sponsor, of course, the Denons. I
Speaker 2: love that, the Dean DeLuca, Dean and DeLuca. That year
Speaker 2: he has a good twenty sixteen, twenty seventeens. The next
Speaker 2: really good year won the AT and T. It was
Speaker 2: his one hundred start. He's the second man along with
Speaker 2: Tiger Woods, to win nine times before the age of
Speaker 2: twenty four. Keep in bind, like Rom. This is where
Speaker 2: this goes back to the PGA Tour. You thing Rom
Speaker 2: like Ludvigs, I think twenty five.
Speaker 5: Yeah, at age twenty four when Ludwigs like playing his
Speaker 5: first year on tour, Spith had won nine times and
Speaker 5: won two majors, finish runner up in two bastards like wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was crazy, I mean, especially when you with
Speaker 1: all the stuff he did in in junior golf too, right,
Speaker 1: like he was and he got a year of college.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was just he hit the he hit
Speaker 1: the check mark head of every apex that he could
Speaker 1: possibly hit.
Speaker 4: I think he was contended in six majors by now,
Speaker 4: like he could have had. He was within striking distance
Speaker 4: of six major championships.
Speaker 2: I think, Kyle, your Sevy comp I is like you know,
Speaker 2: I I always think about Sevey and Speeth and it's
Speaker 2: like sometimes with golf, your best golf comes when you're eighteen,
Speaker 2: nineteen years old, seventeen. Everybody always says Sev's best golf
Speaker 2: was when he was like sixteen. You know. It's the
Speaker 2: unique thing about golf, right where like the physicality in
Speaker 2: most sports is is centers around like when you reach
Speaker 2: your physical prime, like the NBA it's twenty seven, twenty eight, NFL,
Speaker 2: it's getting younger, but it's you know, very speed and
Speaker 2: strength driven. With golf like that that basic level of
Speaker 2: man's strength isn't necessarily a prerequisite, so you get these
Speaker 2: players that play their best golf at a young age.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think I think the other thing about that, Andy,
Speaker 1: and you you have turned me on to this idea
Speaker 1: over the years of just like the idea that it's
Speaker 1: very very difficult to remain at at a major winning
Speaker 1: level for a long time, right, Like what DJ and
Speaker 1: Rory have done to at least be at that level
Speaker 1: even if they haven't won majors for like a longer
Speaker 1: than five year window is very unusual. And if you
Speaker 1: look back, I was looking, I tweeted this out. I
Speaker 1: was looking this morning at like what's guy's major winning span?
Speaker 1: And it has this on you can go look at
Speaker 1: it on Wikipedia, and so like Arnold Palmer six years,
Speaker 1: Tom Watson's like six years. Tom Watson won eight majors.
Speaker 1: He did it in like six years. I think Hogan
Speaker 1: won like nine, he did it in seven years. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's very very unusual to extend that beyond eight, ten,
Speaker 1: twelve years. It just doesn't happen very often. Sevy, I think,
Speaker 1: won his five in a nine year span. And I
Speaker 1: do wonder if we'll like back on speed and say, well,
Speaker 1: I mean he just he won all of his majors
Speaker 1: between twenty fifteen and twenty seventeen. And that's just what
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: I mean Duval had like a similar hot burn, you know,
Speaker 2: at an older age. Right, Yeah, here it was like
Speaker 2: basically two, three years, and then it was he wasn't
Speaker 2: the you know, the best player in the world.
Speaker 1: That's why like Ernie and Phil doing what they've done
Speaker 1: has been I mean, Ernie was eighteen years I think
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four to twenty twelve. Phil was seventeen years,
Speaker 1: twenty and four to twenty twenty one. That's that's crazy,
Speaker 1: Like that does not happen. Obviously, Tiger in ninety seven
Speaker 1: to twenty nineteen, twenty two years, that's very very unusual.
Speaker 1: Nicholas was a long time, but it doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if we'll be back and say,
Speaker 1: like I always thought speed would get it back. But
Speaker 1: we're only saying that because we're kind of in the middle,
Speaker 1: Like we're kind of we're kind of growing up in
Speaker 1: our jobs with Speth, and he was like the guy
Speaker 1: that made us excited about writing and podcasting and covering golf.
Speaker 1: But if somebody in the future is like, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: like that's just how long you win majors for like,
Speaker 1: it would have been weirder if he did win a
Speaker 1: major at thirty four, then if he didn't, like that
Speaker 1: was just that's just kind of how golf. How professional
Speaker 1: golf is.
Speaker 4: Kyle completely and can I give you kind of a
Speaker 4: bad stat on that. This was the one that's probably
Speaker 4: the most least optimistic for Speed. But while we're here,
Speaker 4: so Jordan Speed's finished in the top ten four times
Speaker 4: since twenty twenty one, but a lot of those were
Speaker 4: not super competitive, like had a low final round, or
Speaker 4: like getting a bunch of strokes and putting in the
Speaker 4: last day or something. It wasn't really in the mix.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: Jordan Speith has been within three of the lead in
Speaker 4: ten major championships in his career. Nine of those were
Speaker 4: between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen. The tenth was in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one at Royal Saint George's. Since the start
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty two, Jordan has not been within seven
Speaker 4: shots of the lead after three days of a major
Speaker 4: or seven is the closest he's been. So we're going
Speaker 4: on three full years now of not being anywhere remotely
Speaker 4: in the mix at a major. Pretty it reinforces what
Speaker 4: you're saying about that window. But that's kind of a
Speaker 4: tough like not even being within seven.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is why we're having this discussion today, is
Speaker 2: that where it feels like with the wrist, we're at
Speaker 2: this crossroads.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, I agree. I looked up since
Speaker 1: he won that twenty seventeen Open Joseph Barkdale, most top
Speaker 1: tens majors since then, so August first, twenty seventeen, Rory's
Speaker 1: got fifteen's Andrews got fourteen, Ram has thirteen, Scotty and
Speaker 1: Brooks have twelve, DJ and Fenale have ten, more, Kawa
Speaker 1: has nine, camp Smith has eight. Keep going down the list. Salatorus, Reed, Fleetwood,
Speaker 1: Bryce and JT and Speeth all have seven. So he
Speaker 1: is not I mean, he's like kind of like relevant,
Speaker 1: but it's not within you know, there's ten guys ahead
Speaker 1: of him in terms of like competitiveness at majors. And
Speaker 1: what you're saying makes it even worse, which is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: those are like top tens, but it's like, I think
Speaker 1: he finished top ten at Saint Andrews in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: He did? Was he uncompetitive? Was he involved? Ever? Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a stat seven top fives in his
Speaker 2: first eighteen starts as a pro in majors. That has
Speaker 2: three wins in there. Yeah, since then, he's five of
Speaker 2: twenty eight for top five. One of those top fives
Speaker 2: was the best Page one where he had I think
Speaker 2: it was like the most strokes game putting of any
Speaker 2: major performance ever, but he was still like eight or
Speaker 2: nine back. It was a third of five.
Speaker 1: Rooks and dj I followed him that Saturday at beth Page.
Speaker 1: It was him and Brooks were in the final pairent
Speaker 1: and they looked like they were playing different sports. It
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think Spith found the center of
Speaker 1: the club face. It was unbelievable. It was unreal that
Speaker 1: he finished in the top five that week.
Speaker 2: So I think this is like the thing too, is
Speaker 2: like that illustrates how you could have a hot putter
Speaker 2: like maybe he could. The putting was unsustainable of his
Speaker 2: early career. It was, but it doesn't mean it wasn't
Speaker 2: sustainable for weeks and spurts. And I think that that
Speaker 2: the beth Page setup just in general was never going
Speaker 2: to fancy speed, right. I mean, I remember podcasting with
Speaker 2: Jeff Ogilvie in our preview and was just like, listen,
Speaker 2: if you don't carry it three hundred yards or three
Speaker 2: hundred and ten yards, you have no chance.
Speaker 1: This week.
Speaker 2: It is going to be someone who is at far
Speaker 2: and high and it just played out exactly that way.
Speaker 2: But the I think, so he wins the Open. We
Speaker 2: talked about that in pretty detail at the start. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to put this, put this the stat out there.
Speaker 2: So he wins the twenty seventeen Open. He beats Koocher
Speaker 2: by three. He has that incredible finish. As you guys highlighted,
Speaker 2: He's the second player in the history of golf since
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholas at this point to win three of the
Speaker 2: first three of the first four majors before twenty four.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. I almost feel like we underrated what he
Speaker 1: was doing.
Speaker 3: Right, Like I looked back at this and I'm like, God,
Speaker 3: like these there were Tiger comparisons, doing it in a
Speaker 3: completely different way than Tiger, but like we had never
Speaker 3: seen anything like this in this generation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was on the heels Andy of that
Speaker 1: weird like Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Martin Kaimer, like that
Speaker 1: whole deal at the beginning of twenty tens, and obviously
Speaker 1: he had Rory kind of emerged from that, but.
Speaker 2: This has like made us forget about Rory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was and this was kind of the first
Speaker 1: I'm gonna probably regret saying this, But in my mind,
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, this is the first American,
Speaker 1: like young American that it was like, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: you know, this could be amazing, like in the post
Speaker 1: Tiger scandal, knee injury all that. Obviously Tiger was amazing
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, but in terms of young Americans, I
Speaker 1: think he was kind of the first guy to emerge
Speaker 1: out of that era.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you hate it, you hate Anthony Kim.
Speaker 1: I already regret it. See I told you I would.
Speaker 2: Three times, three time winner Anthony Kim.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess would be the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ricky. Ricky had maybe this much buzz, but not
Speaker 2: quite the accomplishments.
Speaker 1: Peace never one of players.
Speaker 2: I think something that sticks with me. A media executive
Speaker 2: told me this, a broadcast media executive. He said, there
Speaker 2: are two players other than Tiger that moved the needle
Speaker 2: for ratings, Jordan Speith and Rory McElroy. And that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody else matters. No one else matters. And when you
Speaker 2: like look back at ratings, we're doing your review on
Speaker 2: the Shotgun start and it's it's so true. It's like
Speaker 2: the only thing that moved the ratings numbers last year
Speaker 2: on the PGA Tour, where was Rory McElroy. Jordan Speed
Speaker 2: didn't have any moments that move the ratings, you know,
Speaker 2: but those this guy's like, there are two players other
Speaker 2: than Tiger and that's it that move ratings.
Speaker 4: I forget exactly what I was watching it. I think
Speaker 4: it was some random PGA Tour live event, and the
Speaker 4: commentator is basically he's involved with junior golf in some way,
Speaker 4: and he said, if you ask junior golfer who their
Speaker 4: favorite player is, like half sixty seventy percent of them
Speaker 4: say Jordan Speed. And it'd be really interesting to see
Speaker 4: that over time now and if we're still there, if
Speaker 4: some of it, if that's shifting a little bit to
Speaker 4: somebody like Bryson, But I think Jordan Speed's griphold over
Speaker 4: people who are currently like fifteen, Like he's a lot
Speaker 4: of those golfer's favorite player. Well.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I've grappled with my entire career,
Speaker 1: because my career is basically coincided with the the Rory
Speaker 1: more honestly more so with the Speed era, but most
Speaker 1: of Rory's as well, is what what is it about Speed?
Speaker 1: Like he's just this kind of I think poor Ath
Speaker 1: called him a milk toast white guy, just normal looking
Speaker 1: guy from Dallas, Texas who's good at golf. And I
Speaker 1: think part of it, Andy is the like what you're
Speaker 1: just saying of like winning at that age is so
Speaker 1: so unique and unusual. But I think another part of
Speaker 1: it is like, and we've talked about this a bunch
Speaker 1: probably on Twitter or other podcast, is just the idea
Speaker 1: of like he he reminds you of yourself at times
Speaker 1: when he's playing, because you're like, yeah, this is I mean,
Speaker 1: like I think I can hit that shot legitimately and
Speaker 1: he but like the flip side of that is like
Speaker 1: some of that that is alluring and compelling about his
Speaker 1: play Joseph was saying, was saying this earlier. Everybody else
Speaker 1: is kind of caught up to it from a course
Speaker 1: management and from all these other perspectives. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: I don't know if that formula necessarily works anymore, but
Speaker 1: he definitely hit at a time where people were looking
Speaker 1: for somebody to love and to kind of latch onto
Speaker 1: in the golf world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so after Birkdale, I don't want this to sound harsh.
Speaker 1: Here we go. Wait, how many. Can we guess how
Speaker 1: many times he's won after Birkdale.
Speaker 2: Like just do you know?
Speaker 1: I don't know? Okay, gus uh, I'm gonna say twice correct.
Speaker 2: I mean, see, so twenty eighteen Birkeday or twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: Birkedale two wins since twenty twenty one Valero Voalera, that's right,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two RBC two wins one of a C
Speaker 2: level PGA Tour event in the Valero maybe d probably see.
Speaker 1: I bet you meant sea level, like the ocean. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't San Antonio, uh.
Speaker 2: Sure where it is. It'd be like a thousand feet
Speaker 2: And then RBC, which was that was a good field.
Speaker 4: I mean, how many other tournaments has he even been
Speaker 4: in the mix at?
Speaker 2: That's the crazy thing. And it's like and it's like
Speaker 2: he's in the mix on Saturday and then it's like,
Speaker 2: oh he finished ninth or he shoots sixty five on
Speaker 2: Sunday and everybody's like, wow, he's bad. He's about we're
Speaker 2: about to see a speed run, and I think like
Speaker 2: at this point he's kind of that that's even gone
Speaker 2: where the optimism for the speak run is gone. I
Speaker 2: know this is not like this. This is not the
Speaker 2: most you know, modern stat but I just found it,
Speaker 2: like jarring scoring ranks, So scoring average rank, this starts
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, ninth, fourteenth, first, fourth, first, twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: on eighteenth, thirty fifth, ninety third, twenty fourth, ninety fifth, thirtieth,
Speaker 2: and that it didn't have this year's in the Wikipedia
Speaker 2: on the Wikipedia page. I didn't look it up, but
Speaker 2: it's just like that. One's gonna be probably seventieth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he only had one top five this year and
Speaker 1: it was at Kapolu, all right, in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Does that even count as the top just like fifty
Speaker 2: players in the field. So that leaves us here where
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts for the future of Jordan speed.
Speaker 1: Well? I think, first of all, one of your one
Speaker 1: of your all time great calls was speak being just
Speaker 1: a guy, because that was not obviously a popular opinion
Speaker 1: at the time, but the numbers.
Speaker 2: Lots of people hate it on it.
Speaker 1: I mean I was probably among them, but the numbers
Speaker 1: have borne it out. I mean, I don't remember when
Speaker 1: you first said it, but it was it was very smart.
Speaker 2: It was like twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you had a little bit of data, but
Speaker 1: you know, look, I think that I think that twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and twenty twenty six will be very telling
Speaker 1: for what we get the rest of Speith's career. But
Speaker 1: here's my opinion is, like, you can exist as a
Speaker 1: one to one and a half strokes gain per round guy,
Speaker 1: which is like a top helped me out Joseph twenty
Speaker 1: five to forty type guy.
Speaker 4: It's a little different with the way the game structured now,
Speaker 4: but sure.
Speaker 1: And still go out and win a major too. I
Speaker 1: think I looked up since January one, twenty fourteen. Now
Speaker 1: I know we're taking it back to when he was
Speaker 1: like uber competitive his at the beginning of his career,
Speaker 1: so when his major career started, most top tens at
Speaker 1: the Open End Masters, Like if you only look at
Speaker 1: those two majors, the Open Championship and Augusta Rory has thirteen,
Speaker 1: Spith has eleven, nobody else has more than eight. John
Speaker 1: Rahm has eight. So I think he will definitely contend
Speaker 1: at one of those and potentially win one. But I
Speaker 1: don't think we're getting twenty fifteen or twenty seventeen speed ever. Again,
Speaker 1: in terms of a week in, week out top ten
Speaker 1: type guy, Like I just don't think that guy is
Speaker 1: going to exist. But I do still think even if
Speaker 1: that guy doesn't exist, you can still go win a
Speaker 1: major championship. You can get hot with the putter for
Speaker 1: a week, Andy and be I mean it's like Phil right,
Speaker 1: like Phil at Kiowa. You're like, oh, he just remembers
Speaker 1: like what it's like to win a major when you're
Speaker 1: in the mix. And I think we get one of
Speaker 1: those weeks, maybe a couple of those weeks from Jordan
Speaker 1: Speed over the next ten or so years.
Speaker 4: Kyle, I know you're not expressing like a ton of optimism,
Speaker 4: but I think you're I even think you're expressing too
Speaker 4: much optimism.
Speaker 1: Personally, I do optimism.
Speaker 4: I think when Jordan speF seeing that he has not
Speaker 4: been with it closer than seven shots of the fifty
Speaker 4: four hole lead in the last three years, and knowing
Speaker 4: the typical career arcs his approach play being bad, plus
Speaker 4: a firm belief that the way Jordan's spif won a
Speaker 4: lot of his majors doesn't work as much now, Like
Speaker 4: every single one of these majors we've talked about, none
Speaker 4: of them have been the like clean, mistake free like
Speaker 4: maybe the twenty fifteen Masters, but all of these have
Speaker 4: these wild shots that he then recovers by holding a
Speaker 4: twenty five footer. I don't think that's gonna work going forward,
Speaker 4: and he'd have to approve his improve his iron play
Speaker 4: a lot. I'll say, like small chance that he wins
Speaker 4: a major again, but I think it's very low, and
Speaker 4: the chances of two majors, like I would be willing
Speaker 4: to bet a lot of money that that does not happen.
Speaker 2: I I'm gonna go more with Kyle here, I think.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things and why I will
Speaker 2: I think I think Jordan Speith will have It's not
Speaker 2: the same circumstances, but kind of like a Ben Crenshaw
Speaker 2: type career where there's like one final sendoff and we
Speaker 2: we get that last major.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about him like he's like forty eight.
Speaker 2: I you know, I think one of the things that
Speaker 2: I think he loves the game, I think he's like
Speaker 2: hyper hyper competitive, and one of the things that that
Speaker 2: will do will like I think like there will be
Speaker 2: a lot of players that would be in his position,
Speaker 2: you know, with different mentalities and be like, you know what,
Speaker 2: it was a great run I think the guy's going
Speaker 2: to just keep working. He's he's crazy. He like I
Speaker 2: think he's crazy in a great way, like golf crazy.
Speaker 2: Where he's not going it is going to be a zero.
Speaker 2: Like he knows what he was and he is now
Speaker 2: on this quest whether he goes the right places. And
Speaker 2: I'm kind of in the camp of Brandle, like you
Speaker 2: completely screwed up your DNA and you know you kind
Speaker 2: of need to piece it back together. You've lost it.
Speaker 2: But I do believe that's there will be a no
Speaker 2: stone unturned approach to getting back to one he once had,
Speaker 2: because I think deep down he probably craves that more
Speaker 2: than anything in his life, to get back to that
Speaker 2: feeling of I am the best player in the world.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's ever going to get back to that,
Speaker 2: but I do think between the Open and the Masters
Speaker 2: that he will get one more and it'll be a
Speaker 2: kind of a blip on the radar. We'll look back
Speaker 2: be You know, there are a lot of these over
Speaker 2: the history of golf where it's just like, oh, he
Speaker 2: picked one off late in his career and it makes
Speaker 2: the career make more sense. It's like, really like a
Speaker 2: lot of guys with two majors, it's like, oh, he
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been one major player. That second major gives
Speaker 2: him something. With Speth, it's like he can't end as
Speaker 2: at where he's at now, Like he burned so bright
Speaker 2: that there is like he should have four, right, and
Speaker 2: that's what he's going to get out of it at
Speaker 2: the end of his career. I think, like can he
Speaker 2: get back to where he's consistently a top twenty player
Speaker 2: in the world would be a question, And I think
Speaker 2: Joseph you're probably know on that.
Speaker 4: I was just going to say the same thing. Can
Speaker 4: you ever get back to being a top ten consistent player?
Speaker 4: For sure? No? For me, I think top he could
Speaker 4: push like eighteenth, But I don't see Jordan Speed being
Speaker 4: a top twelve golfer in the world.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 4: I think that's very unlikely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I agree. I think he could be.
Speaker 1: I mean some of the guys in the well, it
Speaker 1: depends on what we're using as top twenty, as THISWGR,
Speaker 1: as a data golf you know, like there's a million
Speaker 1: different ways to view it. I think like his ceiling
Speaker 1: right now is like being a top like the twentieth
Speaker 1: best player in the world. Consistently over time. You look
Speaker 1: at some of the guys in the top twenty and
Speaker 1: you're like, I mean, it's not like, you know, rife
Speaker 1: with like superstars. So I definitely think he can get
Speaker 1: in there. But in terms of being a top ten guy,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I'm I think I'm I'm with Joseph.
Speaker 1: I think it would be more concerning in terms of
Speaker 1: like him winning another major if the way that he
Speaker 1: won his previous majors was not kind of like he's
Speaker 1: just a scorer, right, if like, if he did it
Speaker 1: because he was like a very track many perfect swing,
Speaker 1: like all all these types of things type golfer, and
Speaker 1: that was gone, you'd be like, that's a very difficult
Speaker 1: thing to get back. But because at every stage in
Speaker 1: your career you've just been a score and you've just
Speaker 1: figured out how to win, I think I can trust
Speaker 1: that he can figure out how to win one more
Speaker 1: of those. Do I think he's going to win the
Speaker 1: Career Slam? Probably not. Do I think he's going to
Speaker 1: get to five majors? Probably not? But I do think
Speaker 1: you can figure that out for one week, like Phil did,
Speaker 1: like Ernie Els did. I mean, you were just describing
Speaker 1: Ernie El Sandy where he picks off one at the
Speaker 1: end of his career, You're like, oh, it makes more
Speaker 1: sense that he has four than he has three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think. I think like the most encouraging thing
Speaker 2: if you're in the Speed camp is the driving of
Speaker 2: the golf ball. Last year it was a bad year.
Speaker 2: But if he's a top twenty driver of the golf
Speaker 2: ball and the top twenty approach player, that the thing
Speaker 2: about speed is that you will look at him at
Speaker 2: the Masters and you will like, if he can get
Speaker 2: to that level, you will he will be a top
Speaker 2: five favorite of the Masters, and you know, over time,
Speaker 2: if the stars aligned and he plays great, it's hard.
Speaker 2: It's he's a hard guy to beat. At Augusta National.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about the sixty four. That could have
Speaker 1: been a sixty one. And I guess when he hit
Speaker 1: the trees eighteen more likely to win another major? Rory
Speaker 1: or Spith Rory, Rory.
Speaker 4: Not close.
Speaker 2: Rory's got got four opportunities every year, no matter what.
Speaker 2: I don't think you could say that Spith has Spith
Speaker 2: is not going to win Quail Hollow. There's no chance
Speaker 2: of him winning quail Hollow zero.
Speaker 1: That's true, he also has five years on Rory, does he.
Speaker 2: I would say that Rory's game has aged way better
Speaker 2: than Speed. Yeah, I think Rory's got a longer like
Speaker 2: in pure years, he's got less time. But I think
Speaker 2: of an elite play Rory's got depending on how long
Speaker 2: he wants to play, six years.
Speaker 1: I mean, but like so much of Rory's is predicated
Speaker 1: on speed and like how far he hits it and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, doesn't that age worse than what speed does? Well?
Speaker 1: I don't know what speed does right now, but.
Speaker 4: I don't I think Rory's got a guarantee, almost a
Speaker 4: guaranteed three to five years of four attempts a year
Speaker 4: of cracking a major, So you might not have any more.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, I mean I think I'm with you guys,
Speaker 1: but I think I don't think it's like I think it's.
Speaker 4: A I don't think that one's close.
Speaker 2: What who do you think ends their career? Who do
Speaker 2: you think has more top fives and majors from this
Speaker 2: point forward? JT or Speed? Jt Uh.
Speaker 1: I'll say Speed.
Speaker 2: I think I'd go JT.
Speaker 1: So who in their career with more majors? Speth or Scotty.
Speaker 2: Are we serious, yes, s Scotty. Scotty, Well, that's a
Speaker 2: great question, because I think like you can be a
Speaker 2: prisoner of the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, if we did this podcast in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: we'd be saying the same things about Jordan that we
Speaker 2: were saying we would say right now about Scotty.
Speaker 1: Whenever we first got into this. Andy, Rory and Spieth
Speaker 1: held at the end of twenty fifteen, or I guess
Speaker 1: after the US Open twenty fifteen they held all four majors, right,
Speaker 1: because as Rory won the fourteen Open in PGA and
Speaker 1: then Speth won the fifteen Masters in US Open.
Speaker 4: I think speed plus one would be a pretty good speak.
Speaker 4: At four, I'd feel differently than Scotty at two.
Speaker 2: I'm not sold that Scotty's game translated outside of Augusta National.
Speaker 4: I'll take Scotty to win at least four majors in
Speaker 4: his career.
Speaker 2: I think that's like my best skip Bay list take
Speaker 2: right there.
Speaker 1: For sure, Ricky's too short. This is the whole thing, though,
Speaker 1: right is It always seems like yeah, obvious.
Speaker 4: Except that I'm giving Jordan a very low chance of
Speaker 4: winning one. Again, I think a realistic line for Scotty
Speaker 4: is more than one at this point, one more more
Speaker 4: than one more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's I think that's fair.
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing. I started covering golf in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, obviously a fan, but when you cover it
Speaker 2: as close as we do, I think the thing you
Speaker 2: learn with age is how how fleeting major championships are,
Speaker 2: like how hard it is.
Speaker 4: Just I agree, but you're not taking, you're not giving Scotty.
Speaker 4: You don't think the line is at least one and
Speaker 4: a half more.
Speaker 2: I think I put Scotty at at four and a half,
Speaker 2: right right, I think that's putting him past. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: speer question, but I think it's like it's not a
Speaker 2: foregone conclusion, Like getting getting to four is really fricking
Speaker 2: hard in it And as as Speeth JT. I mean,
Speaker 2: you go down the list, it's just you never know
Speaker 2: when the bottom is just going to drop out, and
Speaker 2: when it's almost like I just like sometimes think like
Speaker 2: it's like you get in the moments and the ball
Speaker 2: bounces the wrong way a couple of times and it's over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's what we're saying with the six
Speaker 1: year window, the seven year window, it's like and those
Speaker 1: are long windows. These are like the best players ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like Scotty if you go, Scotty's window starts
Speaker 2: at at Harding Park. Really yeah, which was twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: I think I think an interesting one is does Mark
Speaker 1: how ever, win another major? Right? Like you, You've got
Speaker 1: all these guys that it just and I think that's
Speaker 1: what it's. Yeah, I mean, this is what I love
Speaker 1: about the majors and about the speed conversation. Is it
Speaker 1: just you start dishing out your you add up. It's
Speaker 1: like doing NFL win totals at the beginning of the year.
Speaker 1: You start adding them up, right. I don't think the
Speaker 1: math on this works out right where it's there's only
Speaker 1: four of them a year, which is the kind of
Speaker 1: the beauty of it. And I don't know, it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see where which direction speed goes?
Speaker 2: All right? Any parting thoughts on the speed this course?
Speaker 2: Are we good to go? I want to give you
Speaker 2: guys your space final word style for the final word
Speaker 2: style for PTI, but I think we've an hour and
Speaker 2: thirty minutes. I think we've kind of hit on everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd just like to publicly apologize for my microphone
Speaker 1: issues that we had earlier at I don't.
Speaker 2: Think anybody's gonna know that's what Pj's here for.
Speaker 1: Well they're not going to know, but it threw off
Speaker 1: my rhythm and it took me a while to get
Speaker 1: into the flow of the game. So I'm I feel
Speaker 1: back point at Groller, good to go.
Speaker 4: I think we've been a little pessimistic towards the back
Speaker 4: end of this. But one of the most electric golfers
Speaker 4: that we've seen in the twenty first century, and like
Speaker 4: the beginning of his career, we may never see again.
Speaker 4: So I don't want to come across too negatively on speed.
Speaker 4: I would love to see him win again. It just
Speaker 4: seems like if we will come back to this moment
Speaker 4: in time in twenty twenty five and look at it
Speaker 4: ten years from now and realize, like all the signs
Speaker 4: were there that it was closer to the end than
Speaker 4: maybe we would have liked to admit.
Speaker 2: If he was an LPGA player, we might be talking
Speaker 2: about he doesn't have enough points to qualify for the
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame right now.
Speaker 1: What a take?
Speaker 2: Kyle, Kyle, do you what do you got going on
Speaker 2: with norbal sport? Over the next couple of weeks the
Speaker 2: holidays and into the new year. I just I was.
Speaker 2: I'm a paying member of Normal Sport. I recommend it
Speaker 2: to everybody. What do you have coming up?
Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that, Andy, We actually don't have
Speaker 1: a ton. We're gonna do a bunch this week. I
Speaker 1: don't know when this is being posted, but.
Speaker 2: We've been posted tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this week, but we're going to shut it
Speaker 1: down after that. We've been Jason and the team that
Speaker 1: we have over there has been working really really hard
Speaker 1: over the last three months since I went full time
Speaker 1: with it. So we're going to shut it down for
Speaker 1: the last two weeks and then get cranking again during
Speaker 1: during kapalou. So we don't have a lot. I would
Speaker 1: encourage people to go to normal sport dot com, become
Speaker 1: a paying member if you if you can, if you
Speaker 1: want to to support what we're doing. It's been a
Speaker 1: ton of fun. You guys have both been helpful and
Speaker 1: encouraging with it, so I couldn't imagine it being this
Speaker 1: much fun, but it has been, so it's been great.
Speaker 2: I think my one thing support independent journalism. You are
Speaker 2: doing your thing. Independence is a is a great thing.
Speaker 2: But it it The best way for you to to
Speaker 2: for anybody to remain independent, is for people to support
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Speaker 1: Appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Andy, all right, we'll be back later this week. Thank
Speaker 2: you to PJ for editing producing this podcast. We'll be
Speaker 2: back later this week with another pod. I think we're
Speaker 2: going to try and get two more in before Christmas.
Speaker 2: Get you loaded up for the holiday stretch, and and
Speaker 2: maybe we'll drop another Easter Egg or two in there
Speaker 2: over the over the holidays. But excited for the rest
Speaker 2: of this year and going into twenty twenty five. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening, and I have a great week.