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 1: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a bride egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg Egg, Fridagg Bride Egg Lie.
Speaker 3: I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name
Speaker 2: is Garrett Morrison, and today we have takeaways from the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two Open Championship. So by the weekend at St.
Speaker 2: Andrews it was pretty much the Cameron's versus the Rory's.
Speaker 2: On Saturday, Cameron Smith and Cameron Young started in the
Speaker 2: final group of the day and right in front of
Speaker 2: them were Rory McElroy and his smiley Rwegian doppelganger, Victor Hovelin.
Speaker 2: By the end of the third round, the two pairs
Speaker 2: were flipped McElroy and Hobland at sixteen under and the
Speaker 2: Cameron's four shots back. The phrase match play situation may
Speaker 2: have come up in the Friday newsletter and I may
Speaker 2: have put it there. Look, I thought that the odds
Speaker 2: were that either Rory or Victor would shoot sixty nine
Speaker 2: or better on Sunday. That would mean that Smith or
Speaker 2: Young would need to post sixty five or better. I
Speaker 2: didn't think that either of them would do it, and
Speaker 2: I definitely did not imagine that they both would. Cameron Young,
Speaker 2: who's a twenty five year old PGA Tour rookie, deserves
Speaker 2: more treaded for what he did in that fourth round
Speaker 2: than he'll ever get. He shot a seven under sixty
Speaker 2: five that included a three put, a drop from a
Speaker 2: gorse bush, and an eagle tooth on the eighteenth hole.
Speaker 2: Young now has a runner up in the Open to
Speaker 2: go with his T three at this year's PGA Championship.
Speaker 2: It's been quite the rookie campaign. Stretch at the Old Course,
Speaker 2: all eyes were on two players, four time major winner
Speaker 2: Rory McElroy in Australian short game virtuoso Cameron Smith. The
Speaker 2: decisive stretch was the first half of the back nine.
Speaker 2: Rory wasn't making many mistakes, but he also wasn't making
Speaker 2: any putts. After a two putt birdie on the tenth hole,
Speaker 2: he basically stalled out, recording one boring par after another. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Cameron Smith reeled off five birdies in a row. He
Speaker 2: hold putts from five feet sixteen feet, eleven feet eighteen
Speaker 2: feet and five feet again en route to a back
Speaker 2: nine thirty. About an hour later, he was the Open champion,
Speaker 2: one stroke ahead of Cameron Young and too clear of
Speaker 2: Rory McElroy. So those are the basic facts to talk
Speaker 2: about the deeper storylines of the twenty twenty two Open.
Speaker 2: I have three interviews for you. The first is with
Speaker 2: Jamie Weir of Sky Sports to describe that remarkable final
Speaker 2: round up as Joseph Lamannia to discuss what Smith did
Speaker 2: well from a course management perspective and how McElroy fell
Speaker 2: short in the same area. And last up is the
Speaker 2: Friday Egg Zone Andy Johnson to reflect on the old
Speaker 2: course itself. Right, it was a great championship. So let's
Speaker 2: get to it, all right. I am here with Jamie Weir,
Speaker 2: Sky Sports golf correspondent and somebody who has been known
Speaker 2: to root a little bit in a very classy way
Speaker 2: for Rory McElroy. So first of all, how are you doing, Jamie?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also great.
Speaker 3: It's a hard one to take that, and you know,
Speaker 3: I've got to remind myself that, however inconsolable I'm feeling
Speaker 3: at the moment. Rory mclury is probably feeling one hundred
Speaker 3: times worse, but Luke A just felt as if this
Speaker 3: was the one. It was kind of almost written in
Speaker 3: the stars. It was his destiny to win this historic
Speaker 3: one hundred and fiftieth Open at the Home of Golf
Speaker 3: on the week that perhaps Tiger played the Old Course
Speaker 3: for the final time. It just it all seemed too
Speaker 3: perfect and it ended up, you know, it was too
Speaker 3: perfect to be the case because he just got.
Speaker 1: Run doing today by an absolute machine in cam Smith.
Speaker 3: But you know, Rory macur will be back, but this
Speaker 3: one will be a hard one to take, and it's
Speaker 3: going to leave a bit of scar tissue.
Speaker 1: Who died. I WoT the full eighth with with Rory
Speaker 1: and with Victor today.
Speaker 3: And you know he hit eighteen greens in regulation and
Speaker 3: had no bobies in a scorecard and had thirty six.
Speaker 1: Pots and that's kind of the story of the round.
Speaker 1: So a hard one to take.
Speaker 3: But my goodness, hats off when you shit sixty four
Speaker 3: on the Old Course, when you shit thirty on the
Speaker 3: back nine on a Sunday to win an Open championship,
Speaker 3: you've got to say that you deserve that Claret jug.
Speaker 2: So before we get too deep into the Rory stuff,
Speaker 2: I'd like to give Cam and Smith his due credit
Speaker 2: for what was one of the great final rounds in
Speaker 2: major championship history. No doubt what. I know you're following
Speaker 2: the final group, but yeah, what what what would be
Speaker 2: your characterization of the way that Cam Smith played the
Speaker 2: Old Course this week?
Speaker 3: Well, it's just obviously for those that have watched the
Speaker 3: coverage this week that you'll be aware of the loop
Speaker 3: at the Old Course where you've got sort of seven, eight, nine, ten,
Speaker 3: eleven all crossing each other and then twelve et off
Speaker 3: and head back towards the town. And I was walking
Speaker 3: across the seventh fairwee, well, actually across the sort of
Speaker 3: eleventh just as Rory was putting out in seven. And
Speaker 3: at that point we were thinking, this is Rory's for
Speaker 3: the taking. Surely, you know, Victor looks like a rabbit
Speaker 3: in the headlights. It's just not going to happen for him.
Speaker 3: And it felt like a two horse race and we're
Speaker 3: looking at the leaderboard. I was with a few of
Speaker 3: the other boys.
Speaker 1: With Cale Porter and with Andy and a few.
Speaker 3: Of the other guys, and we're just looking at leaderboard,
Speaker 3: thinking yeah, I can't really see anyone making a run
Speaker 3: from that pack. And then as we were on the
Speaker 3: tenth and Rory had that incredible live plot to leave
Speaker 3: himself a tap in birdie at the tenth, there was
Speaker 3: a huge cheer to my left and it was calm
Speaker 3: holding for a birdie at the eleventh, and at that
Speaker 3: point you just kind of thought, hang on a second,
Speaker 3: cam Smith really isn't not far that far back, and
Speaker 3: if he gets on a heater with his puster, which
Speaker 3: he's prone to do.
Speaker 1: We saw it saw Grass.
Speaker 3: Back in March, then he's still a threat. And that
Speaker 3: proved to be the case. I mean, the rattle up
Speaker 3: Birdi's at ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, Then to hold
Speaker 3: that huge power saving pot at the seventeenth, and you know,
Speaker 3: a simple tap in birdie at the eighteenth as well.
Speaker 1: I mean it's some performance.
Speaker 3: And you know, I honestly thought when he had when
Speaker 3: he got sixty four and Friday here and hold what
Speaker 3: it was, a two hundred and fifty three feet of pots,
Speaker 3: I thought, that's unsustainable, that's not going to carry on.
Speaker 3: That proved to be the case because yesterday had an
Speaker 3: absolute stinker with the butter, it just went stone cold.
Speaker 3: He had that aberration of the thirteenth where watching him
Speaker 3: play that like watching like looking in a merrit That's
Speaker 3: the way I play golf, and I just thought, right, well,
Speaker 3: that's his race run. But to have two sixty fours
Speaker 3: during the Open Championship, one on Friday and one and
Speaker 3: Sunday having fair play to the guy twenty under par, yeah,
Speaker 3: some players and me and that when that totter gets hot,
Speaker 3: it is red hot.
Speaker 2: Now, what most of us see on TV when we
Speaker 2: watch Cameron Smith is the incredible putting and the ability
Speaker 2: to just make puts from all over. It's almost like
Speaker 2: Jordan Spieth in twenty fifteen, where if he's outside of
Speaker 2: twenty feet it doesn't matter. You think the ball is
Speaker 2: going in the hole when he gets going. And he
Speaker 2: just seems to be mentally bulletproof with the short puts,
Speaker 2: with any puts that he needs to make, and he
Speaker 2: seems to have some magic with those longer puts. Now,
Speaker 2: that's obvious, right, We can all see that on TV
Speaker 2: pretty easily. We can also see the creativity with the
Speaker 2: short game. Is there anything about Cameron Smith's game that
Speaker 2: you think people don't understand as well having not seen
Speaker 2: him in person. Assuming they haven't seen him in person.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good question.
Speaker 3: I mean I was the indefinable quality about cam Smith,
Speaker 3: and I think this probably is still pretty obvious to
Speaker 3: be honest, if you watch him on Telly, is just
Speaker 3: how gritty a competitor he is and how he just
Speaker 3: never knows when he's beaten.
Speaker 1: He refuses to lie down.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's had some pretty rough moments in his
Speaker 3: young careers in the twenty eight, but he's at moments
Speaker 3: where he's throwing tournaments away with I remember what tournament was, right,
Speaker 3: went out of bonds on the seventy second hole to
Speaker 3: lose a tournament, and you know those are body blows
Speaker 3: to take, but to win the players and the fashion
Speaker 3: he did back in March with how many greens did
Speaker 3: he want put in that final round like thirteen or
Speaker 3: something ridiculous, and then to go out and do pretty
Speaker 3: much the same today. I mean the final round of
Speaker 3: an open at Saint Andrews. To shoot thirty in your
Speaker 3: back nine, you have to be so mentally strong to
Speaker 3: do that, such inner belief, especially when you've got the
Speaker 3: crowd favorite ninety nine point nine percent of the crowd
Speaker 3: all pulling for the guy in the group behind you.
Speaker 3: I mean, it just it takes some serious stones to
Speaker 3: do that. And there are a few Aussie fans around
Speaker 3: today cheering for cam Smith. There were definitely a few
Speaker 3: cheers I heard from from up ahead when those pots
Speaker 3: were ruling in. But I mean the mental resilience of
Speaker 3: the guy after the disappointment you would have had yesterday
Speaker 3: in his Saturday round is something else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, one of the great WTF moments that I
Speaker 2: had today was looking at the scoreboard after the second
Speaker 2: to last group had finished and seeing that Cameron Young
Speaker 2: was all of a sudden in solo second at eighteen
Speaker 2: sorry at nineteen under, and ahead of Rory McElroy, who
Speaker 2: went on to par the eighteenth hall and finish in third.
Speaker 2: And so Cameron Young's round almost seems destined to be forgotten.
Speaker 2: But he shot sixty five today. I know, how did
Speaker 2: he know? Again, I know you were following the final group,
Speaker 2: but how did he do that? What happened?
Speaker 1: I know?
Speaker 3: Well, I again, I'm just having real information relayed to
Speaker 3: me as I'm in the group behind. But I understand
Speaker 3: that he missed a he made a bogie at nine, right,
Speaker 3: which almost feels like a double bogie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he has a very.
Speaker 3: Short pot at which all was it thirteen or fifteen maybe.
Speaker 2: One of them? Yeah, there was. And also there was
Speaker 2: a three put on the first hole that didn't look good.
Speaker 3: You'll be thinking, You'll probably be thinking this is the
Speaker 3: one that good way because you're right to go and
Speaker 3: shot sixty five in the final round of an open. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's still not the best score of the day, and
Speaker 3: you lose by one is a bitter pill to swallow.
Speaker 3: But my words nineteen hunder part are on the old
Speaker 3: course in his very first experience of an open. You know,
Speaker 3: links golf takes getting used to for some players, and
Speaker 3: Cam Young has absolutely taken it in his stride and Yeah,
Speaker 3: to shoot a sixty five and it gets the clips
Speaker 3: while you're playing partner, that's.
Speaker 1: Going to be a kick in the teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean maya Kolpa sort of. I wrote yesterday
Speaker 2: in the Friday newsletter that I just didn't see this
Speaker 2: being anything other than a Rory versus Victor show, and
Speaker 2: maybe one of them would drop off and the other
Speaker 2: would stick with it. I did not have both of
Speaker 2: the camerons shooting under a sixty five or under it.
Speaker 2: I just didn't see that in the cards at all,
Speaker 2: and I did.
Speaker 1: I also did see Saturday, not after what they both
Speaker 1: did on Saturday. I thought on Saturday they just looked
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 3: Stuffing knocked out of them, and you know, a pair
Speaker 3: of sixty six is from Rory and Victor. It felt like, right, well,
Speaker 3: you know it's going to be We're going to be
Speaker 3: destined for another sort of jewel like we saw in
Speaker 3: seventy seven with Watson and Nicholas, or six years ago
Speaker 3: at true with Michelson and Stenson. It just felt like
Speaker 3: this is going to be Macro and Hoveland going toe
Speaker 3: to toe, blow for blow, Bertie for Bertie. But Victor
Speaker 3: just looked like, I said, a rabbit in the headlights.
Speaker 1: He just looked so.
Speaker 3: Uncomfortable basically out there, I thought for the front nine,
Speaker 3: just looked so in control, and to be honest, looked
Speaker 3: in control for eighteen holes, but just could not get.
Speaker 1: A single pot to drop.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I saw Justin Ray just tweet
Speaker 3: something like he had thirty nine potts in his second
Speaker 3: round at s and Andrews in twenty ten and he
Speaker 3: had thirty six pots today and those are the two
Speaker 3: rounds in his entire major career he's had the most potts. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously the greens here are absolutely massive, but
Speaker 3: it's very rare that you have eighteen greens in a
Speaker 3: regulation in your final round boogie free and you still
Speaker 3: end up not winning.
Speaker 2: And you started the day for ahead of the two
Speaker 2: guys who ended up beating guy. I mean, that is
Speaker 2: just that I don't know, Justin Ray can probably dig
Speaker 2: it up, but that's gonna be visual occurrence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the record bicks.
Speaker 3: We was sure that Rory finished third and the shot
Speaker 3: behind Camy, and I think he would have already the
Speaker 3: eighteenth if he wasn't trying to go for it with
Speaker 3: that hit. You knew he had to hold that chip
Speaker 3: for two to get into a playoff. Where is if
Speaker 3: you need a birdy to get into the playoff, you
Speaker 3: lag it up and leave yourself a little tap in,
Speaker 3: don't you.
Speaker 1: So it probably could.
Speaker 3: Have been, you know, a sixty nine for Rory and
Speaker 3: nineteen under par, but that still wouldn't have been That
Speaker 3: was still have been one shot too many.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's talk about that final game of the day,
Speaker 2: Rory and Victor you followed it. What do you think
Speaker 2: will be a moment or image from that group on
Speaker 2: this day that will stick with you.
Speaker 3: I think the moment when, which was a huge sliding
Speaker 3: doors moment, was when Rory had a bite and then
Speaker 3: he put it around eight to nine feet perhaps for
Speaker 3: Birdie at the ninth and it just slid by. And
Speaker 3: that was the first moment where I kind of thought, ah, okay,
Speaker 3: he doesn't have his potting boots, and in recent weeks
Speaker 3: that has been the strength of his game.
Speaker 1: He's potted so well well did he' pot of Brookline?
Speaker 3: And when that one slid by, I was just like, oh, man,
Speaker 3: he really needs a part to drop here. And you know,
Speaker 3: if he'd hold that, and I think you would have
Speaker 3: given him a three shot buffer, I think that would
Speaker 3: have just sent the message to the group in front
Speaker 3: of the cams if they looked up at one of
Speaker 3: those yellow scoreboards and saw, okay, Rory McRoy suddenly eighteen
Speaker 3: under Parnoi, then that would have been a real killer
Speaker 3: blow And that could be the moment that Royl maybe
Speaker 3: look back and think, ah, man, that that was the
Speaker 3: moment I just let it slip through my fingers. But
Speaker 3: I you know, I don't know how much scar tissue
Speaker 3: this one's going to leave. He's spoke on Tuesday about
Speaker 3: this being the holy grail to win and open at
Speaker 3: Saint Andrews. Everything this week, the fact that he missed
Speaker 3: the last open here in twenty fifteen when he would
Speaker 3: have been the defending champion because of his injury, the
Speaker 3: fact that he spent the week, you know that he looks.
Speaker 3: He was smiling from ear to ear at the Champions
Speaker 3: dinner and the other night. He spent the week talking
Speaker 3: to the greats like Jack Nicholas, Tiger, obviously Gary Player.
Speaker 3: It just felt, as I said earlier, like written in
Speaker 3: the Stars, that this was gonna be Rory's week. We
Speaker 3: were going to see him standing on that eighteenth green
Speaker 3: at the Old Course, the Clark jug with the whole
Speaker 3: of Andrews hanging from their balconies, the crowds packed in
Speaker 3: the grandstands just screaming for Rory, and it just wasn't
Speaker 3: to be. And it's a hollow feeling, and I think
Speaker 3: it's a hollow feeling for many golf fans.
Speaker 1: And we've got to address the elephant in the room.
Speaker 1: As well. It's kind of a hollow feeling for the
Speaker 1: game of golf.
Speaker 3: Because the rumors, if they're to be believed, are that
Speaker 3: Cam Smith is heading to live, if not next week,
Speaker 3: then imminently or perhaps after the President's Cup. So to
Speaker 3: have the champion golf for the year playing, you know,
Speaker 3: on the exhibition tour is going to be a bitter
Speaker 3: pill for the RNA to swallow.
Speaker 1: And for a lot of golf fans as well.
Speaker 3: And it would have been a warm, fuzzy, cozy feeling
Speaker 3: inside if it had been Rory. But you know what,
Speaker 3: sport can be cruel, and today was a cruel, cruel
Speaker 3: day and I think a lot of us are feeling it.
Speaker 2: On a scale of one to ten. How strong do
Speaker 2: you think the rumors are of Cameron Smith going to live?
Speaker 2: Because I've heard those rumors too. We've heard a lot
Speaker 2: of rumors lately about a lot of different players, and
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of smoke and in some cases
Speaker 2: there hasn't been much fire. Smoke do you think there
Speaker 2: is around Cam Smith and Live and do you think
Speaker 2: it's safe to assume that there's at least something of
Speaker 2: a blaze there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, you know, rumors start for a reason, don't
Speaker 3: they end. All the signs are that Henry Stenson is
Speaker 3: going to be going soon, which will obviously create a
Speaker 3: huge storm for Ryder Cup Europe to have to deal with.
Speaker 3: He'll be stripped to the cap and see they'll have
Speaker 3: to find a new man. It will be a huge
Speaker 3: feather in the cap for Greg Norman to get him.
Speaker 3: And then the rumors that I'm hearing from speaking to
Speaker 3: people on the ground here that the Aussie trio of
Speaker 3: Adam Scott, Martin Leishman cam Smith are all potentially going
Speaker 3: to jump.
Speaker 1: After this year's President's Cup with quil Olough. So those
Speaker 1: rumors are around for a reason.
Speaker 3: Now, what we don't know, we've seen in so in
Speaker 3: recent weeks, so many players just do huge unexpected u turn,
Speaker 3: usually in the up direction. Bryce saying I'm happy in
Speaker 3: the PGA tour. A week later he joins Live DJ
Speaker 3: saying I'm happy in the PGA to a few months
Speaker 3: later he joins Live Now there could be reverse few
Speaker 3: turns as well.
Speaker 1: All this stuff.
Speaker 3: Cam Smith could have a contract sitting on the table
Speaker 3: to Live Golf and he could suddenly decide, do you
Speaker 3: know what I've just won the Claric Jug at s Andrews.
Speaker 1: This is what it's all about.
Speaker 3: Looking at that Clark jug and seeing Nicholas Palmer player
Speaker 3: woulds Foald bias Steros seeing those names in the Clark
Speaker 3: Jug as he fits this evening in his bedroom before
Speaker 3: he drifts off the sleep, probably hugging that Clark jug,
Speaker 3: Perhaps that changes his mind again and he thinks, this
Speaker 3: is what golf's all about, and I want to stay
Speaker 3: and win more majors and create a legacy and put
Speaker 3: my name in the history books rather than just go
Speaker 3: and accept a squillion dollars to play exhibition golf. So
Speaker 3: who knows what's going on between cam Smith's two years
Speaker 3: at the moment, but it would be a massive blow,
Speaker 3: I think, just for golf in general if the Open
Speaker 3: champion was to join live and let's hope that if
Speaker 3: it is the case that that offers on the table
Speaker 3: that Sobey's reconsidering it right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know you described a thought process there
Speaker 2: that we might hope cam Smith might go through. But
Speaker 2: the other side of that is that he could equally
Speaker 2: go through the thought process of well, look, I have
Speaker 2: a bunch of exemptions into majors now totally, and I
Speaker 2: don't have to really worry as much as some other
Speaker 2: people do about being able to play in the majors
Speaker 2: if my world ranking kind of goes off a cliff.
Speaker 2: And so that's present as well. And I think that
Speaker 2: this has been hanging over the entire week. You know
Speaker 2: a lot of us haven't wanted to admit that live
Speaker 2: is a factor at this championship because it just seems,
Speaker 2: you know, to kind of disrespect this open at St.
Speaker 2: Andrew's to be talking about live. But guess what, that's
Speaker 2: part of what made it feel significant for Rory to
Speaker 2: potentially win, because he has been the main anti live
Speaker 2: voice in golf, and if he won, then that would
Speaker 2: have been bigger than just Rory winning his fifth major.
Speaker 2: It would have meant something for this kind of existential
Speaker 2: battle over men's professional golf. Did you feel that in
Speaker 2: the air today at St.
Speaker 1: Andrews.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've I've definitely made a conscious effort
Speaker 3: this week to try not to talk about it because
Speaker 3: I don't want it to overshadow you know, this historic
Speaker 3: moment for the sport at this historic venue. But the
Speaker 3: final part of the tournament drops it.
Speaker 1: Six to fifty five.
Speaker 3: Pm our time over here in the UK this evening
Speaker 3: and at six fifty six pm its seeds. We're talking
Speaker 3: about Live again because this is a fractious moment in
Speaker 3: the game of golf. We don't know what's going to
Speaker 3: happen next. We don't know what decision all of the
Speaker 3: majors are going to take regarding the tour that Live
Speaker 3: Golf and whether players on that can participate Peyton Majors.
Speaker 3: That's still a huge unknown factor. There's still a huge
Speaker 3: question mark. It would be very difficult to imagine Open
Speaker 3: champions getting banned from returning to the Open. So, as
Speaker 3: you said, Tom Smith, he's got thirty two more Opens
Speaker 3: to play until he's sixty years of age as things done.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it looks who really knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I certainly felt you're right that sort of that feeling
Speaker 3: of good versus evil is perhaps over egging the pudding,
Speaker 3: but it would have felt it if Rory had won today.
Speaker 3: Everything was good with the world, you know, everything was
Speaker 3: left a warm, fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Feeling for the entire game of golf.
Speaker 3: And as it is, it's a champion, a very deserving champion.
Speaker 3: He played the best golf of the week, but a
Speaker 3: champion with this huge question mark lingering over his future.
Speaker 2: For sure. Now from a pure golf perspective, it was
Speaker 2: a great championship. The old course was wonderful all week,
Speaker 2: so a lot of positives to take away, but equally
Speaker 2: a lot of questions to ask about the future of
Speaker 2: golf coming off of this. So thank you so much
Speaker 2: for discussing all this with me, jamieciate it and go
Speaker 2: have some fun in St Andrew's.
Speaker 1: Will dry my very best.
Speaker 3: As things stand the moment, I'm sitting in the grand
Speaker 3: stand by the second tea box. I'm looking out over
Speaker 3: the eighteenth fairway on the seventeenth Green and it's like
Speaker 3: a music festival.
Speaker 1: There's just people sitting.
Speaker 3: Down a cross legged, having picnics and drinking a few
Speaker 3: beers everywhere. So I'm sure the party would have been
Speaker 3: a lot rightier had Rory mclroy been the Champion Golfer
Speaker 3: of the year.
Speaker 1: But it's Camps Meth.
Speaker 3: Congratulations Australia on this occasion your vote on Northern Ireland,
Speaker 3: but our fellow will be back.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Jamie. This episode of the Fridagg
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Speaker 2: All right, back to the episode. All right, I am
Speaker 2: here with Joseph Lemanya, who is a regular guest on
Speaker 2: our Takeaways podcasts. I always like to check in with you, Joseph,
Speaker 2: because on days like this, you kind of cut through
Speaker 2: this sentimentality nicely. And there's going to be a lot
Speaker 2: of sentimentality out there today. And it's not that I
Speaker 2: don't endorse that in this case, it's just that it's
Speaker 2: useful to find another perspective. But Joseph, you are the
Speaker 2: founder of Optimal Approach Golf. You write the Finding the
Speaker 2: Edge newsletter, which is excellent, and that's who you are.
Speaker 2: So thank you for being here.
Speaker 4: Appreciate you having me. That was quite the eventful day
Speaker 4: of golf. So I was excited when you had asked
Speaker 4: me to come on the pods so we can flesh
Speaker 4: out some of our thoughts.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I sensed on Twitter that had that you had
Speaker 2: some ideas brewing, and so I'm really excited to get
Speaker 2: into those. The first question I want to ask you,
Speaker 2: I mean, I want to give you some freedom to
Speaker 2: go where you want to go here and tell me
Speaker 2: your ideas. But the first thing that I'm wondering is
Speaker 2: is there a story to tell about this day that
Speaker 2: doesn't just have to do with Rory missed putts and
Speaker 2: Cameron Smith made putts, because that's going to be the narrative.
Speaker 2: But I think there's probably I looked at the stats
Speaker 2: here a little bit, not the advanced stats, but just
Speaker 2: the normal stats, and I feel like there might be
Speaker 2: something else going on here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm very analytically driven. I always am looking
Speaker 4: at the stats, it's also worth being cognizant of what
Speaker 4: the stats do not reflect. And one concept or important
Speaker 4: theme I think, especially with regards Rory McElroy, is that
Speaker 4: stats don't tell you a lot about shot selection. And
Speaker 4: that is where I take my biggest issue with Rory
Speaker 4: in particular, and especially how much he tries to curve
Speaker 4: the ball at times. Now, I want to preface this
Speaker 4: with saying that I know a lot of golf purists
Speaker 4: will not be happy to hear that curving the ball
Speaker 4: a lot is not advantageous.
Speaker 2: Wait, who are you calling a golf purist here? Let's
Speaker 2: be clear about it. Are you calling me a golf purist?
Speaker 4: Joseph, I'm calling you a golf purist. I'm calling a
Speaker 4: lot of the listeners of the Friday eg a golf purist.
Speaker 4: I myself consider I consider myself a golf purist.
Speaker 2: You're coming after everybody, including yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it brings me no joy to say that, but
Speaker 4: I do. I am high conviction that the amount Rory
Speaker 4: curves his ball at times comes back to bite them.
Speaker 4: So to give you one, I have many examples, but
Speaker 4: to just go through a couple of them on his
Speaker 4: Friday round holds eight and eleven. The par three's Rory
Speaker 4: tries to hit this massive sweeping draw into number eight
Speaker 4: and he ends up leaving himself like one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty feet on the putt. It doesn't curve, leaves it
Speaker 4: way out right. That whole plate to a three point
Speaker 4: zero eight stroke average for the day. So it depends
Speaker 4: what number you want to put on his chances of
Speaker 4: two putting from there. But I would feel very confident
Speaker 4: saying it's less than fifty percent of the time he's
Speaker 4: two putting that. I think it's probably closer to like
Speaker 4: seventy five percent of the time he's not two putting it.
Speaker 4: But okay, he's giving up a significant amount of strokes
Speaker 4: on the field with that t shot. Now I've had
Speaker 4: a lot of people then text me and say, well
Speaker 4: what about hole eleven? Talk about whole eleven, the other
Speaker 4: part three where he hits that draw in again and
Speaker 4: he makes birdie. He makes a sixteen footer on number eleven,
Speaker 4: and I will concede like he hit the draw, he
Speaker 4: made birdie. That whole played to an average of three
Speaker 4: point two two. And not to bore people too much
Speaker 4: with the numbers, but he doesn't. He's not gonna make
Speaker 4: that put every time. He's probably gonna make that put
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five percent of the time. And the extent
Speaker 4: of my argument here is that when you zoom out
Speaker 4: and you try to hit those sweeping draws, over the
Speaker 4: long run, the big misses are going to eat into
Speaker 4: the returns of when you actually execute that shot. And
Speaker 4: so between those two holes, Rory McElroy, one of the
Speaker 4: best players in the world, loses strokes on the field
Speaker 4: tee to green, and that includes the averages of a
Speaker 4: lot of players who are much worse than him. Rory
Speaker 4: should not be losing strokes tea to green.
Speaker 2: Did you see him working the ball both ways today?
Speaker 2: And would you rather see him kind of sticking with
Speaker 2: a shot shape.
Speaker 4: It is absolutely an advantage to be able to work
Speaker 4: the ball both ways, I want to be clear about that.
Speaker 4: But when there's no wind, especially today, you don't need
Speaker 4: to curve it very much. If Rory's going to curve it,
Speaker 4: I'd like him just to see him do it just
Speaker 4: a little bit, not these sweeping draws sweeping fades. And
Speaker 4: so there were three very clear examples where it was
Speaker 4: like my eyes were bleeding watching the tournament today. His
Speaker 4: tee shot on hole nine, right drivable par four, he
Speaker 4: tries to go for this big draw off the tee.
Speaker 4: He hits it to I think he leaves himself fifty
Speaker 4: five yards. Just for some quick math here, it's a
Speaker 4: three hundred and fifty yard hole. He hit his drive
Speaker 4: three hundred and twenty two yards and he left himself
Speaker 4: almost sixty yards in. If you're a math buff, you'll
Speaker 4: know that that's pretty far from a straight line. And
Speaker 4: I'm not arguing that he should just be going directly
Speaker 4: at the flag, But when you try to hit these,
Speaker 4: you know, significantly sweeping draws and fades, you're taking on
Speaker 4: a lot of risk with those misses. And I think
Speaker 4: with a much flatter shot shape there, Rory could easily
Speaker 4: have been putting for eagle. So sure, it could have
Speaker 4: only been a couple of yards here and there. Maybe
Speaker 4: he'd with a strategy I'm advocating, he ends up forty
Speaker 4: five yards from the hole instead of fifty five. And
Speaker 4: that's the difference between winning the golf tournament.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, So okay, let me lay out what the
Speaker 2: easy narrative is going to be based on kind of
Speaker 2: the traditional numbers that get cited most often on traditional coverage,
Speaker 2: which is which has to do with you know, greens
Speaker 2: hitting regulation right, which maybe doesn't mean too much of
Speaker 2: st andrews because of the sheer size of the greens.
Speaker 2: We need to talk about how close the ball is
Speaker 2: to the hole and a number of puts, you know,
Speaker 2: the length of the puts made, things like that. When
Speaker 2: you look at those kind of traditional numbers, you see
Speaker 2: big differences between what Cameron Smith and Rory McElroy did today.
Speaker 2: And this is what I think what is going to
Speaker 2: be the dominant story about this tournament is going to
Speaker 2: be built on is these numbers about the putts that
Speaker 2: they made. So Rory, the longest put that he made
Speaker 2: today was five feet on eleven. I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: long the putt he made for that two put on
Speaker 2: three was because it seems like the shot tracker kind
Speaker 2: of went screwy on that one. But he just made
Speaker 2: a five footer like that's it. He made no putts
Speaker 2: of note today. Cameron Smith made a nine footer, a
Speaker 2: seven footer, a six footer, a fifteen footer, an eleven footer,
Speaker 2: a ten footer. He had a handful of sensational lag puts.
Speaker 2: Rory had a couple of really good lag puts too,
Speaker 2: But I'm talking about Cameron Smith. You know, from one
Speaker 2: hundred feet getting it to two feet or one foot.
Speaker 2: It was a great putting performance. Today. Cameron Smith beat
Speaker 2: Rory by two shots, and so what is the argument
Speaker 2: that you would lay out that that's not what the
Speaker 2: real difference was between them today.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't disagree that. A huge part of the
Speaker 4: story here is that cam Smith put very well and
Speaker 4: he's one of the best putters in the world. But
Speaker 4: the point I would make is that it's not about
Speaker 4: turning this thing into a putting contest. There are other
Speaker 4: shots that you get to hit, and Rory didn't convert
Speaker 4: on holes nine, twelve or fourteen, which are some of
Speaker 4: the holes where he should have been in the best
Speaker 4: position too. So, like I'm saying, with the big sweeping
Speaker 4: draw on number nine, on number twelve, he tried to
Speaker 4: hit this huge sweeping cut off of the tea, ended
Speaker 4: up having I don't remember exactly how far he had
Speaker 4: for his birdie, but twelve feet or so. Like, look
Speaker 4: where Cameron Smith was on that hole. I'm not gonna
Speaker 4: argue that it was perfect where cam Smith hit his
Speaker 4: te shot. But the argument I would make in reference
Speaker 4: to well, what was the difference between them? You don't
Speaker 4: want to be in a putting contest if you're Rory
Speaker 4: McElroy versus Cam Smith, so it's not effective to only
Speaker 4: talk about the putting numbers. A lot of other stuff
Speaker 4: happened there too. Rory could have won the tournament by
Speaker 4: five throughout the course of seventy two holes if he's
Speaker 4: making smarter decisions. So I fully believe that Rory McElroy
Speaker 4: is one of the most talented players in the world,
Speaker 4: if not the most talented player in the world. People
Speaker 4: always say that, like, why doesn't he win more often?
Speaker 4: I'm offering a suggestion here that his shot selection is
Speaker 4: not always smart. And this is not a new idea
Speaker 4: for me. I've been calling this out for a while now,
Speaker 4: and I'd be happy to produce more examples, but it
Speaker 4: comes back to bite them. So I don't disagree with
Speaker 4: the putting argument today, But I mean Rory had a
Speaker 4: huge lead coming in. He actually didn't gain strokes on
Speaker 4: the field today total, So there's a little bit more
Speaker 4: to this story than just cam Smith made some long putts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I agree with you. And one big
Speaker 2: reason why is that, you know, going back to these
Speaker 2: kind of traditional numbers. If you look at the opportunities
Speaker 2: that Rory had to make birdie today, aside from the
Speaker 2: greens that he was driving on par four's and the
Speaker 2: greens that he was reaching in two on par fives,
Speaker 2: he really didn't have any opportunities for bertie inside ten
Speaker 2: feet aside from on the third hole a six foot
Speaker 2: putt that he missed. He was not sticking his irons
Speaker 2: with in that really kind of super makeable birdie putt range.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't just because his irons were bad, not necessarily.
Speaker 2: It could also mean that there was just there was
Speaker 2: there was stuff going on from tee to green where
Speaker 2: he was not able to give himself a lot of
Speaker 2: birdie chances from short range. And I think that that's
Speaker 2: going to be an underrated part of the story today.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I'm glad you're contextualizing his round a little bit
Speaker 4: more because stats are great. I'm a proponent of strokes gained,
Speaker 4: but you have to call out the shortcomings of strokes
Speaker 4: gained it These are a system of expected values based
Speaker 4: on aggregate numbers. So for example, Rory leaves himself in
Speaker 4: a pretty bad spot on number fourteen the par five
Speaker 4: today after his second shot.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, right, he can't. He can't get that chip
Speaker 2: within four feet.
Speaker 4: That's going to show up as poor strokes gained around
Speaker 4: the green for that shot, which may be true that
Speaker 4: you know, from thirteen yards in the fair way there
Speaker 4: should be a particular expected value. That's not going to
Speaker 4: be true with Saint Andrews in particular, where you have
Speaker 4: significant undulations like these are PGA Tour average numbers, so
Speaker 4: at almost no course more so than like Saint Andrews
Speaker 4: or Augusta. These aggregated numbers and a really small sample
Speaker 4: like one round can be misleading. All seven footers are
Speaker 4: going to be given the same expected value and so yeah,
Speaker 4: cam Smith easily part of the reason he put well
Speaker 4: could have been that he was leaving himself some easier putts.
Speaker 4: So people need to be very careful when interpreting strokes
Speaker 4: gained in a small sample because as you're adding context
Speaker 4: to it, it's worth examining that a little bit further
Speaker 4: and calling out some of the shortcomings of those numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's worth looking into why Rory was in the
Speaker 2: places that he was in today basically, and that's a
Speaker 2: complex question because it has to do with what he
Speaker 2: did off the tee, with what tactics he was using overall.
Speaker 2: You know, you've mentioned the shot shaping and how he
Speaker 2: did on approach. Generally think of Rory being impeccable in
Speaker 2: those areas, and often he is, but you know, today
Speaker 2: he was just I felt like he was a little
Speaker 2: bit off Teita Green and that the putting was off too.
Speaker 2: But man, there were a lot of ways that he
Speaker 2: could have shot sixty eight today and gotten to twenty
Speaker 2: under and been in a playoff, and he just really
Speaker 2: didn't do any of them. Now, on the other side
Speaker 2: of it, you've pointed out some of the tactical shortcomings
Speaker 2: as you see them of Rory kind of overshaping the ball.
Speaker 2: Often people say like, you have to shape the ball,
Speaker 2: and links golf, this is you know, having a nuanced
Speaker 2: game is really what you need. And in fact, that's
Speaker 2: a reason that people kind of endorse Cameron Smith when
Speaker 2: it comes to these firmer and more complex courses, you know,
Speaker 2: because he kind of has that reputation as an artist.
Speaker 2: But what did you see from Cameron Smith tactically or
Speaker 2: did you see him, you know, sort of performing at
Speaker 2: a superior level tactically than Rory this week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So generally a lot of modern golf analytics kind of
Speaker 4: gets boiled down or at least distilled down for public
Speaker 4: discourse as be aggressive off the tee and conservative on
Speaker 4: the approach. So just to tie a couple ideas together here,
Speaker 4: when I was watching St Andrews getting ready for this week,
Speaker 4: if it was going to be very windy, the need
Speaker 4: to shape your shots a little bit more and to
Speaker 4: get crafty was going to be of much more importance.
Speaker 4: As soon as I saw, like, this is not going
Speaker 4: to be windy. It's a bomb fest, and that's what
Speaker 4: this was, right Cam Smith, with the exception of I
Speaker 4: would criticize his laying back on eighteen, especially on his
Speaker 4: second round, which I.
Speaker 2: Saw was an anomaly too. The other days he pushed
Speaker 2: it up near the green. I don't know why I
Speaker 2: did that.
Speaker 4: It didn't make any sense. But Cam Smith is a
Speaker 4: very aggressive player and he liked Rory, so I would
Speaker 4: give Rory a lot of credit. Rory recognized I need
Speaker 4: to hit driver over and over again.
Speaker 1: He did it.
Speaker 4: I'm not being critical of Rory's entire course management here.
Speaker 4: I picked him to win. I picked Rory to win
Speaker 4: before the week. Cam Smith knows like he knows to
Speaker 4: be aggressive, sometimes to a fault, but at Saint Andrews
Speaker 4: when he missed with some of his aggressive approach shots,
Speaker 4: he has the short game to get himself out of
Speaker 4: some of those situations. And if you're playing at Brookline
Speaker 4: and you shortside yourself, you may not have the opportunity,
Speaker 4: even if you're Cam Smith, to flop some kind of
Speaker 4: shot that ends up, you know, converting that into an
Speaker 4: up and down. So I think Saint Andrews was perfect
Speaker 4: for Cam and that he could pretty much just rip
Speaker 4: Driver off the tee all day and despite not being
Speaker 4: the most accurate player, put himself into positions to score.
Speaker 4: So this is a testament to a lot of the
Speaker 4: players in the field. I think pretty much everyone understood, like,
Speaker 4: I just got to go out there and bash Driver,
Speaker 4: and if you look at the leaderboard, it was a
Speaker 4: distance fest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And let's not underestimate the fact that Cameron
Speaker 2: Smith had two extraordinary putting days round two and round four.
Speaker 2: But as you're saying, he put himself in position to
Speaker 2: have have those extraordinary putting days, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: his game, you know, That's that's why there maybe why
Speaker 2: there's some some range in how he performs day to
Speaker 2: day because sometimes the aggression is going to get the
Speaker 2: best of him. But when he's hot with his putter,
Speaker 2: he just can go super super low, and that that
Speaker 2: worked in his favor this week. So Saint Andrew's there
Speaker 2: was some talk this week about whether it's it's obsolete
Speaker 2: for the modern game, right Matt Fitzpatrick weighed in on
Speaker 2: that and he said, yeah, I kind of is right.
Speaker 2: If fitz Patrick's a bright guy. What do you make
Speaker 2: of that? What did you make of Saint Andrews as
Speaker 2: a test for the modern championship men's game this week?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, I think in general a lot of courses
Speaker 4: could be rendered obsolete under the same principles that Matt
Speaker 4: Fitzpatrick would would probably describe here, I will say, I
Speaker 4: think with a lot of wind, Saint Andrews is not obsolete.
Speaker 4: And whether you have wind or not, it's still interesting.
Speaker 4: I think it's an interesting test even if it becomes
Speaker 4: a distance fest. Let's rip driver and then you have
Speaker 4: to hit these creative short game shots. So do I
Speaker 4: think it's become obsolete a little bit. I think the
Speaker 4: strategic value of Saint Andrews was certainly not on display
Speaker 4: today or really the rest of the week. You need wind,
Speaker 4: and it's tough to schedule a championship knowing that you
Speaker 4: need wind for the course to have teeth. So I
Speaker 4: would agree with him to a point, but that doesn't
Speaker 4: that doesn't make me think that we need to stop
Speaker 4: going to Saint Andrews. I think it's still an interesting
Speaker 4: test even if you're not going to watch guys hit
Speaker 4: five irons, you know, from two hundred and thirty yards
Speaker 4: and watch it roll out. Where do we see that anyway?
Speaker 4: Where do we see that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really don't see it anymore. And one thing
Speaker 2: that I was sort of impressed with this week when
Speaker 2: it came to the course and its test, was that
Speaker 2: I felt like it was a pretty good test of driving.
Speaker 2: I mean, the line on St. Andrews is that you
Speaker 2: can spray at and you'll be all right, And to
Speaker 2: an extent that's true, some holds more than others. But man,
Speaker 2: if you missed in the wrong place, then the punishment
Speaker 2: was really really severe. And that factored in to the
Speaker 2: shots that guys were playing off the tee, and I
Speaker 2: think that that made it a more interesting test of
Speaker 2: driving than maybe people give it credit for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I will say I had tweeted this out there,
Speaker 4: but just to reiterate, I do think some holes at
Speaker 4: Saint Andrews are almost like if you were to say,
Speaker 4: what if we designed a hole where there's zero reason
Speaker 4: to hit less than driver just to see if some
Speaker 4: people still will, And you'd still have commentators saying, hey,
Speaker 4: he's taking the conservative smart play here, like right, No
Speaker 4: matter if you designed a three hundred and fifty yard
Speaker 4: completely flat hole, no bunkers, there would probably be some
Speaker 4: players who talk themselves into an iron off the tee.
Speaker 4: I actually think whole one at Saint Andrews is kind
Speaker 4: of like that. I think the next time they go
Speaker 4: there you will see players get way more aggressive. I
Speaker 4: have no doubt interesting players are being too conservative and
Speaker 4: not pushing it up there closer to the burn. But
Speaker 4: to your point about it being a interesting driving test, seventeen,
Speaker 4: when that pin is on the left side, angles matter
Speaker 4: on that shot. You cannot just bail out left and
Speaker 4: expect to make part.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 4: Those left pins are not accessible, so it's a bit
Speaker 4: of a dramatic way to create that angle and make
Speaker 4: players take it close to out of bounds, kind of
Speaker 4: like fourteen at Royal Saint George's. But that works, So
Speaker 4: I'm with you. It's an interesting driving test, but that's
Speaker 4: pretty much what it is, a driving and short game contest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why Rory was a decent choice this week.
Speaker 2: And you know why. It's somewhat remarkable in fact, that
Speaker 2: Cameron Smith came out on top. You know, Cameron Smith
Speaker 2: can maybe win anywhere. I think that can be said
Speaker 2: about him. But Cameron Smith is not knowing and not
Speaker 2: known for being, you know, a great, great driver of
Speaker 2: the golf ball. But you wrote an article about him
Speaker 2: a while back for the Friday Egg website where you
Speaker 2: noted that he had added some distance. Do you think
Speaker 2: that came into play this week?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? You look at the leaderboard that they're all bombers
Speaker 4: pretty much without exception, they're all bombers. So absolutely. And
Speaker 4: one point that I would like to make that I
Speaker 4: think is maybe subtle, but I've seen some people say
Speaker 4: that Cam Smith can do well at both Augusta and
Speaker 4: at Saint Andrews because they're wide while I would agree,
Speaker 4: I would take it just one step a little bit further,
Speaker 4: which is to say that wide misses you're still playable.
Speaker 4: So when they're short grass like that, Cam Smith can
Speaker 4: still hit himself out of those situations. If a course
Speaker 4: is really wide but the rough is super thick, that's
Speaker 4: not going to be as good for Cam Smith as
Speaker 4: somewhere like Augusta or Saint Andrew's where that rough was playable.
Speaker 4: So I think any course where cam can just go
Speaker 4: out and bomb it and get away with being a
Speaker 4: little bit inaccurate, he's going to have a chance to win.
Speaker 4: But that's not Sawgrass, and he won there too, So
Speaker 4: Cam Smith is a very well rounded player. Especially with
Speaker 4: this added distance. He's dangerous anytime he tease it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now he's exactly for a bunch of majors.
Speaker 2: So get used to his presence at the top of
Speaker 2: leaderboards if he maintains his current form, because yeah, he can.
Speaker 2: He can compete a lot of places.
Speaker 4: He's not going anywhere. Yeah, when you watch his short game,
Speaker 4: you know that if he's hitting the ball well off
Speaker 4: the tea, he's going to be in contention. So definitely
Speaker 4: pretty bullish on Cam Smith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Always interesting to talk to you, Joseph.
Speaker 2: Thank you. We'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 4: Sounds great. Appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 2: Thanks Garrett. All right, I am here with Andy Johnson
Speaker 2: of the Frida Egg. Are you in your dorm room
Speaker 2: right now? Andy?
Speaker 5: I am, I am. I just the sun just went down.
Speaker 5: It's been kind of a really cool night as Saint Andrew's. Obviously,
Speaker 5: the old course turns back into park on Sunday night,
Speaker 5: and like there have been you know, my my dorm
Speaker 5: room overlooks the road Hole Green and the Swolking Bridge,
Speaker 5: and I've been looking out and there's been like fifty
Speaker 5: or sixty people on the seventeenth Green having putting competitions,
Speaker 5: and you know there's like, well you were walking back
Speaker 5: after the tournament, there's you know, probably about a two
Speaker 5: year old out hitting balls and people taking pictures in
Speaker 5: the road Hole bunker. I mean just you know, one
Speaker 5: of the neatest, maybe the thing that sticks with me
Speaker 5: the most is how I just I can't get over
Speaker 5: the fact that all this happens right after the tournament,
Speaker 5: and after thinking about all the other major championships that
Speaker 5: I've been to, like the idea of people just loitering
Speaker 5: around on the golf course until dark is absolutely crazy
Speaker 5: after a major championship, but that's what happens here, and
Speaker 5: it's just a magical place because of that. It makes
Speaker 5: you think some you know, after spending a week out
Speaker 5: here and seeing specifically that you know, and how intertwined
Speaker 5: golf is with this community and how this golf course
Speaker 5: is the town's golf course, Like how is this where
Speaker 5: we started and how we got to some of the
Speaker 5: places that we are with golf.
Speaker 2: That is a huge story about how, yeah, how this
Speaker 2: game started with a course like this that is being
Speaker 2: treated in this way. I'm not saying it's treated badly,
Speaker 2: but it's being you know, it's sort of like golf
Speaker 2: courses we regard as being so sensitive and so fragile
Speaker 2: that we can't have people walking around them. They're going
Speaker 2: to ruin the golf course. And here's the old course, sturdy,
Speaker 2: old burly, old course, just sitting there being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: come on, two year olds, you can you can take
Speaker 2: swings here, you can have a picnic and a bunker.
Speaker 2: Come on, I'm I'm fine, you know, I'm.
Speaker 5: Here, and a chance and cartwheels on the seventeenth green, Like,
Speaker 5: think about incredible, Think about that happening at the country
Speaker 5: club moments after the concluded.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, they would send the cops to shoot you
Speaker 2: down if you did that on the eighteenth green at Augusta. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I wish I were there. These are the moments when
Speaker 2: I when I saw the tournament going on. I don't
Speaker 2: think I ever really felt like, oh, I wish I
Speaker 2: was there in that huge crowd, like trying to see
Speaker 2: what's happening. The moments that I wish I was there are.
Speaker 2: It's like right now, when people are just walking around
Speaker 2: the course on a beautiful evening having a fun time,
Speaker 2: that's so appealing. That's such a that's such an idyllic scene,
Speaker 2: and that that is the image of golf that I
Speaker 2: wish were out there more.
Speaker 5: Well, maybe that's you know, we got it that beans,
Speaker 5: We got a rebby that by getting you out here,
Speaker 5: like getting you into town on a Saturday night so
Speaker 5: you can spend an entire Sunday having a picnic out there.
Speaker 2: That would be the plan. That would be the best
Speaker 2: way to experience the old course for the time. But
Speaker 2: speaking of first times, this was your first time at
Speaker 2: the Old Course. A lot of people are stunned by this.
Speaker 2: They like to get the digs in afterwards, you know, like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I've been to the Old Course, and
Speaker 2: when you're there, even when you yeah, you can't do
Speaker 2: that bit anymore where you say you're a fraud. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, I mean it's yeah, okay, we haven't been.
Speaker 5: You know, Augusta might have heard and they might have
Speaker 5: caught radioed in a policeman.
Speaker 2: Wait, what what happened? Are there that just went oh
Speaker 2: I didn't, I didn't Okay, Yeah, they're tracking our Actually
Speaker 2: they don't want people doing cartwheels on the green in
Speaker 2: any case, Uh, this is your first time out there.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to get your impressions of the course,
Speaker 2: whether they be general or specific. We've started talking sort
Speaker 2: of about the spirit of the place and how it
Speaker 2: is so woven into the town and how people just
Speaker 2: sort of walk all over it and have done for
Speaker 2: hundreds of years. But you know, architecturally speaking, what were
Speaker 2: some of the things that that really jumped out at you.
Speaker 5: God, there's so many. I it's it's almost organize this somehow.
Speaker 5: I think. I think the number one thing that sticks
Speaker 5: with me from the tournament standpoint is the how it's
Speaker 5: got this elasticity about it with scoring about you know nothing.
Speaker 5: And it's very similar in a way to Augusta. How
Speaker 5: we feel about Augusta National. But nothing, no shot out
Speaker 5: at the Old Course is unattainable. No, you know, there
Speaker 5: are plenty of opportunities to go get red numbers. It's
Speaker 5: very easy to make birdies at the Old Course. Maybe
Speaker 5: not very easy all the time, but there are very
Speaker 5: Every hole effectively is a birdie opportunity, and that makes
Speaker 5: low scoring extraordinarily attainable. However, as we saw all tournament law,
Speaker 5: you know, low scores are available when you're in the
Speaker 5: right positions. In the second you get out of the position,
Speaker 5: that's when year round often gets derailed. And while there
Speaker 5: were sixty fours, was there sixty four every day?
Speaker 2: I believe maybe, I don't know. Was there a sixty
Speaker 2: four on Saturday? I think so there might have been.
Speaker 5: I think sixty four was the low score every day.
Speaker 5: But it was very very rare for anybody to shoot
Speaker 5: below with sixty six, So it wasn't like, oh, there
Speaker 5: was a flurry of sixty fours. It was no. This
Speaker 5: Playerson played extraordinarily well, and very few people played extraordinarily
Speaker 5: well every day, which is what led to such a
Speaker 5: great tournament with three players coming down the stretch with
Speaker 5: a chance to win. One on the outside with Cam
Speaker 5: Young who had an unbelievable finish, but three players who
Speaker 5: had clearly separated themselves from everybody else. Now we could
Speaker 5: get into some nitty gritty other things that I noticed,
Speaker 5: but I think the big overriding point about the old
Speaker 5: course and the architecture is that it allows you to
Speaker 5: attain scoring, but the second that you miss, you play
Speaker 5: the wrong place, it takes away your chance to score.
Speaker 5: And at that point it becomes about I need to
Speaker 5: play really well. I have to hit usually a great
Speaker 5: shot to make a par and I think that's uh,
Speaker 5: you know, when you look at the tournament, I was
Speaker 5: kind of bummed out. I requested will Zel Taurus on
Speaker 5: Saturday because I you know, obviously he's somebody that's a
Speaker 5: disciple of decade and very strict with how he plays
Speaker 5: golf courses, because I wanted to talk to him about,
Speaker 5: you know, how his strategy had been going and it
Speaker 5: had to change because there were places that you had
Speaker 5: to play to certain spots to have chances, especially with
Speaker 5: the way the RNA tuck pinned, and it just like
Speaker 5: it really exhibited lines of charm and strategy. If you're
Speaker 5: into strategy, this was the week if you understood the
Speaker 5: golf course. And this is a tough thing with the
Speaker 5: television is it's so hard to see in the middle
Speaker 5: of the day with cameras that are thirty feet off
Speaker 5: the ground, the contours and what makes these shots so hard?
Speaker 2: Well, what makes one side of the fairway harder than another,
Speaker 2: Because often it has to do with sight lines, you know,
Speaker 2: and you can say as much as you want that
Speaker 2: the guys know their distances, but when they've got a
Speaker 2: big dune in front of them or a big ridge
Speaker 2: in front of them from their angle in the fairway,
Speaker 2: then it makes the shot harder. It just does. So, Okay,
Speaker 2: you've said that one of the special things about the
Speaker 2: Old course, at least as a championship test, is that
Speaker 2: you can attain scoring if you're in the right positions,
Speaker 2: But if you're in the wrong positions, then things can
Speaker 2: go south quickly. What's a hole that you think exemplifies that?
Speaker 5: So I think like obviously the sixteenth today and the
Speaker 5: I think most people will watch. The final round was
Speaker 5: a really great example. And we saw a play out
Speaker 5: down the stretch early in the day. I was watching
Speaker 5: and I saw Justin Thomas hammered to drive and a
Speaker 5: lot of guys were hitting driver, and that was a
Speaker 5: really smart play when the pin was on the right side.
Speaker 5: This week the pin was on the left side twice
Speaker 5: and on the right side twice. And the days that
Speaker 5: is on the right side, you could hit it over
Speaker 5: on the left side of the fairway and just In
Speaker 5: or in the left rough and dump it over to
Speaker 5: the right side of the green because there's no bunker
Speaker 5: in there. And again, like you know, this is a
Speaker 5: simple golf strategy. Right pin on the right, hit it left,
Speaker 5: it opens up the green right. And then but then
Speaker 5: today with the pin on the left, you know, players
Speaker 5: that hit driver were put into a really precarious situation.
Speaker 5: Even Cam Young from the fairway he had like seventy yards.
Speaker 5: It was an unbelievable T shot. Watching that up close
Speaker 5: him hitting T shots, he.
Speaker 2: Could be an extraordinary smash.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but but from there, you know, in camp Smith,
Speaker 5: I want to say he hit like a five iron
Speaker 5: off the tee. It was not It was not a
Speaker 5: three iron based off the loft, and it was an iron,
Speaker 5: it was like a five or six iron, and he
Speaker 5: laid back. But what that allowed him to do was
Speaker 5: to have a shot that run ran up the hill,
Speaker 5: up the slope to get there, even though he was
Speaker 5: on the left half. And I saw something similar on
Speaker 5: the fourth hole with Scheffler yesterday where he laid back
Speaker 5: and he was a lot he was able to climb
Speaker 5: the slope. But anyways, on sixteen Jt in the morning,
Speaker 5: hits it to the right and hits this wedge. He's
Speaker 5: in the perfect spot up there to kick in range,
Speaker 5: and it was like a simple birdie. But then we
Speaker 5: saw every leader come through. Outside of camp Smith, who
Speaker 5: had the makeable birdie chance, he had about twenty feet.
Speaker 5: Everybody else came through, hit driver and hit a lot.
Speaker 5: There were a lot of great drives that were hit,
Speaker 5: but none of them had actual chances at Bertie because
Speaker 5: they were in the wrong position. You know, that was
Speaker 5: a position at that point you're playing for par like
Speaker 5: or giving yourself a long putt at Bertie. And Rory
Speaker 5: obviously almost made his birdie putt, but he was forty
Speaker 5: five feet away, you know, And that was about as
Speaker 5: good as he could have done from his position. So
Speaker 5: I think that's like that was a really good example
Speaker 5: late on Sunday that exemplified that where laying back actually
Speaker 5: gave you and having a long eye I mean Smith,
Speaker 5: I think he said he hit a six iron in there,
Speaker 5: like that's not something you want to do, but that's
Speaker 5: that gave him the best chance to hit it close
Speaker 5: if he'd and nobody would take nobody'd be crazy enough
Speaker 5: to take on the right side on purpose with the
Speaker 5: driver because it's right, you know, off the fair away,
Speaker 5: But with that iron, laying back was the other option
Speaker 5: to give yourself a chance to get to that pin
Speaker 5: by using the slope right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just to clarify, the whole moves to the
Speaker 2: right right. So the longer you hit it, even if
Speaker 2: it's on the same line that Cameron Smith hit his iron,
Speaker 2: the longer you hit it, the more left you are
Speaker 2: in relation to the green, because the hole is moving
Speaker 2: more and more away from you right, and so that
Speaker 2: angle into the green becomes kind of more and more
Speaker 2: toward the road over the green. The road's not as obviously,
Speaker 2: not as close as it is on the seventeenth hole,
Speaker 2: but it's there and you have the bunkering along there.
Speaker 2: It just makes the angle tough. And this is not
Speaker 2: a new strategy thought about sixteen. Literally, this is what
Speaker 2: Alistair mackenzie was talking about in his book Golf Architecture
Speaker 2: Slash Spar of Saint Andrew's about what the strategy is
Speaker 2: for the sixteenth hole that has been there for like
Speaker 2: you know, probably a couple hundred years at this point,
Speaker 2: which is amazing to me that still this kind of
Speaker 2: quandary is being presented to players at this course in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and it was all over the
Speaker 5: place like you saw it in. One of the other
Speaker 5: things that the old course has and was working against
Speaker 5: players was that wind. It was coming off the left today,
Speaker 5: so it made it even more difficult in that case,
Speaker 5: like a lot of times. That's the other neat thing
Speaker 5: about the old course is how the wind. It comes
Speaker 5: at a crosswind right for most of the course. The
Speaker 5: only holes that typically play into the wind are one
Speaker 5: or into or down or one eighteen and then at
Speaker 5: the loop eight, nine, ten eleven are the ones that
Speaker 5: kind of go into But all those other holes play
Speaker 5: per dominantly in the crosswind, which just makes it.
Speaker 1: It makes it harder.
Speaker 5: You need to be on the right, in the right
Speaker 5: spot because of those crosswinds make it so hard to
Speaker 5: get at tuck pins like they were this week. That
Speaker 5: That's another thing that I think is just kind of
Speaker 5: neat about it, is how when when your predominant wind
Speaker 5: is crosswind, the holes have to move in different directions
Speaker 5: far less if that makes sense for them to change significantly,
Speaker 5: because when you have a crosswind and you just the
Speaker 5: hole can go in the same direction, but it can
Speaker 5: just jog a little differently than the last hole, and
Speaker 5: the wind plays so drastically different.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also crosswinds are just sort of more fun
Speaker 2: hard wins, Yeah, I mean harder, easier, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like you're into the wind, your your down wind, the
Speaker 2: into the wind holes become harder and the down wind
Speaker 2: holes might become easier, depending on how the green is designed.
Speaker 2: But if you're talking right left strategy, if you're talking
Speaker 2: later strategy, which is what the old course has always
Speaker 2: tried to do, and which is the thing that is
Speaker 2: sort of going away from today's pro game, because it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter right left where you are so much. It
Speaker 2: just matters if you can you flip a wedge into
Speaker 2: the green. On the old course, it's right left strategy
Speaker 2: and that crosswind will accentuate it one way or the
Speaker 2: other and give you the opportunity to make some strategic
Speaker 2: plays off the tee. Now, the thing this week is
Speaker 2: that we didn't have much wind, and so that was
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit less of a factor. But in
Speaker 2: any case, a big part of the court part of
Speaker 2: the course I want to hear you talk about, and
Speaker 2: that jumped out at me this week in terms of
Speaker 2: just the entertainment value and the importance to the round
Speaker 2: in a way that I didn't expect was the loop.
Speaker 2: You mentioned it earlier. It's basically holes seven through eleven,
Speaker 2: but i'd include twelve also in that sequence of holes
Speaker 2: because twelve is is sort of like nine and ten,
Speaker 2: a short par four that's really dynamic and it's scoring profile,
Speaker 2: if you want to call it that. But the other
Speaker 2: holes in the loop include short par four, seventh, You
Speaker 2: have the eighth hole, which is a par three, the
Speaker 2: short hole, you have eleven, the edenhole, really hard par three,
Speaker 2: and then you have those two very short par fours
Speaker 2: nine and ten, which were drivable for most of the week.
Speaker 2: This week.
Speaker 1: So what did you.
Speaker 2: Notice that at the loop? Did you enjoy that part
Speaker 2: of the course as much as I did?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's super cool. One of the things
Speaker 5: that's funny. The first I haven't played the course yet.
Speaker 5: I think I might be playing it shortly after recording this, okay,
Speaker 5: but I think fingers crossed. But the thing about it
Speaker 5: when you walk, like the first time I watched it,
Speaker 5: I got out to nine and you walk on this
Speaker 5: you see these just like extra i mean mind melting
Speaker 5: greens the way out and obviously they're all double greens
Speaker 5: and I kind of was trying to just look at
Speaker 5: them in the vein of the hole that I was walking. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and you see this like wide array of crazy greens.
Speaker 5: And at the start of the loop is maybe the
Speaker 5: craziest one is the eleventh and the seventh greens and
Speaker 5: then you get eight is kind of like you're kind
Speaker 5: of like, okay, it's a little boring, you know, it's
Speaker 5: like this is like huge part three and this huge
Speaker 5: like pretty flat green. Yeah, and then you go to
Speaker 5: nine and you're just like, well, this hole is like
Speaker 5: this hole you could put on any course like this
Speaker 5: is just this revides me of like a beauty hole, right,
Speaker 5: except for there's like centralized buckers. It just like reminds
Speaker 5: you of like a pasture course hole.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's got this huge green, it's super flat, and
Speaker 5: you're just like, well, I mean, I guess it's kind
Speaker 5: of and you think about it in your head, it's like,
Speaker 5: I guess it's kind of nice to have a break.
Speaker 5: Like That's the way I kind of thought about it.
Speaker 1: And and the tenth.
Speaker 5: The only thing that it saves the tenth from having
Speaker 5: a similar faith if fate is the ninth is like
Speaker 5: it's got this really audacious false front, which we saw
Speaker 5: with Rory's hole out. You know, it's a really neat
Speaker 5: front part of the green. So it's kind of like
Speaker 5: this lull. But if you think about it from like
Speaker 5: a song perspective, it's like kind of like a the
Speaker 5: chilled out part of the song before you get rocket again.
Speaker 4: Solo.
Speaker 2: It's like a piano solo and like a bass solo. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or it just drops away and it's just the bass
Speaker 2: and the drums and.
Speaker 5: Uh and then and then it ramps back up with
Speaker 5: like the heart maybe the most like taxing shot on
Speaker 5: the golf course with the eleventh, so you come in
Speaker 5: in the seventh green is like out of the control,
Speaker 5: crazy stuff happens. We saw it like Cam Cam Young
Speaker 5: and on Saturday, chunk that wedge.
Speaker 1: You know, Rory's ball is literally like what is it? Like?
Speaker 5: I couldn't see it land but like a foot or
Speaker 5: two from being perfect. Instead it runs over to the
Speaker 5: left and instead of a birdy opportunities trying to scrambling
Speaker 5: to make par, it's just this like chaos spot and
Speaker 5: there's that you're criss crossing there and that that nine
Speaker 5: to ten is kind of like okay, we just we
Speaker 5: need to like kind of chill holes after this nuts part,
Speaker 5: and then eleven comes back. It's just wild, and then
Speaker 5: twelve is another scoring opportunity. I think what makes it
Speaker 5: is that little center section in terms of tournament golf,
Speaker 5: provides this opportunity for people to go on crazy runs.
Speaker 5: You know, you can go through there and make you
Speaker 5: could you know, seven is like you you kind of
Speaker 5: think you should make a birdie eight if you hit
Speaker 5: a good shot in the pinzon and the crazy you
Speaker 5: can make a birdie nine. You feel like you should
Speaker 5: make a two or three. Most dates ten you feel
Speaker 5: like you should make a birdie, and then eleven's obviously
Speaker 5: gonna be hard, you're gonna take a par every time.
Speaker 5: But then twelve at the end of it, when you leave,
Speaker 5: it's it's really neat. It's like another birdy opportunity, so
Speaker 5: you get this flurry of scoring. The other thing about
Speaker 5: it is there's this communal feel. It's like an amphitheater
Speaker 5: right the every you can see everything going on. I
Speaker 5: was standing for most of it. I walked down to
Speaker 5: near like ten T nine green to see Rory and
Speaker 5: Cam play there. But I sat for a while on
Speaker 5: eleven t and I could see everything going on from
Speaker 5: that spot, and all the spectators there saw it. And
Speaker 5: then the last part is the most exposed part of
Speaker 5: the course and we didn't see this on Sunday because
Speaker 5: the wind wasn't blowing. But out there that's where like
Speaker 5: the conditions it gets. It's colder and it's it's windy
Speaker 5: because of the estuary, the Eden estuary behind the eleventh Green.
Speaker 5: So it's just listen like the hole is to me
Speaker 5: like it's it doesn't it doesn't fit the golf course.
Speaker 5: It's really weird.
Speaker 2: It's the least good hole at St. Andrews. Everybody says, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: nine and ten, maybe even throw eight in. There might
Speaker 2: be the architecturally least interesting holes at Saint Andrews, especially
Speaker 2: if you can can find some more features on one.
Speaker 2: But uh but yeah. And knowing that going in, I
Speaker 2: was fascinated how big of a role that stretch played
Speaker 2: in the championship because it was such an opportunity. And
Speaker 2: not only that, but if you got through there and
Speaker 2: you didn't go a couple under, then you missed it.
Speaker 2: And Rory today he played those holes one under. Basically
Speaker 2: he made a birdie on ten, Yes, and he easily
Speaker 2: could have gotten to twenty under by hold twelve. Easily
Speaker 2: he should have, and then he could play the way
Speaker 2: he played coming in, which was clearly his intention in
Speaker 2: the final round was kind of to play this somewhat
Speaker 2: conservative form of golf where he was really avoiding big
Speaker 2: trouble and he was too putting a lot. But he
Speaker 2: had to make those birdies. He had to birdie nine,
Speaker 2: he had to birdie twelve. He just had to get
Speaker 2: it done, and he didn't.
Speaker 5: And one of the things about it is like it
Speaker 5: puts a little pressure when you expect to score well
Speaker 5: on a hole there is like a psychological thing like
Speaker 5: you know, you have to get it done. But I
Speaker 5: think you know is in the way Camp Smith came
Speaker 5: out of there with ten birding ten eleven twelve, you
Speaker 5: know for sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well, we've spent a good amount of
Speaker 2: time on what might be the least interesting holes on
Speaker 2: the course, which is which is funny. But you know
Speaker 2: you'll have plenty of other thoughts about Saint Andrew's coming
Speaker 2: up soon. You're writing something for Tonight's newsletter, I believe,
Speaker 2: or what will be. I don't know when this podcast
Speaker 2: is coming out, but it's going to be Monday's newsletter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure we'll get some more thoughts in the
Speaker 2: coming days about what you saw out there. But thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on the pod obviously, Andy, and enjoy the
Speaker 2: rest of your time in Scotland.
Speaker 5: Thanks Garrett.
Speaker 2: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by
Speaker 2: me Garrett Morrison. If you've enjoyed the Fridagg's Major Championship
Speaker 2: coverage this here, consider leaving a rating and review in iTunes.
Speaker 2: That's one of the simplest and most effective ways of
Speaker 2: supporting what we do here. All right, that's it for
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty two men's Majors, but there's a lot
Speaker 2: of golf still to be played this summer, from the
Speaker 2: US Amateurs for men and women to the Women's Open
Speaker 2: at Mirfield. So make sure you're subscribed and we'll see
Speaker 2: you soon.