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.
Speaker 2: Ball in a brid egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday,
Speaker 2: Frida fridagg bride.
Speaker 1: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 2: Today's episode, I'm very excited. I am joined by Steve Williams,
Speaker 2: longtime caddie for Tiger Woods, and Evan Priest Uh. They
Speaker 2: together put uh put together a book that is on
Speaker 2: sale on April first, called Together We Roared. You can
Speaker 2: pre order this book. Really they they went into painstaking
Speaker 2: detail to recount and sit down and rehash Steve Williams'
Speaker 2: career catting for Tiger Woods, which was quite the run,
Speaker 2: one of the best runs we've ever seen in pro golf,
Speaker 2: probably the best run that we've ever seen in pro golf.
Speaker 2: So today I'm joined by Steve Williams and Evan Priest
Speaker 2: UH to talk about some of the stories, tales and
Speaker 2: UH and just talk about catting for Tiger Woods in
Speaker 2: in really his heyday. This was really a fun episode
Speaker 2: UH to speak with with Steve and Evan obviously worlds
Speaker 2: of insight, and I mean I think you could, as
Speaker 2: Evan got to do, Uh, you could probably talk to
Speaker 2: Steve for days about about his time catting.
Speaker 3: For Tiger Woods. So we will we will get into that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: We are barreling down on the Master So the next
Speaker 2: couple episodes will probably be Masters themed. I think we're
Speaker 2: going to do an Augusta National Course podcast next week
Speaker 2: and then we will have our our Master's pod coming up.
Speaker 2: But this was a This was an awesome episode. I
Speaker 2: was it was really pumped after we finished this interview,
Speaker 2: and it was fun reading the book. Check out the book.
Speaker 2: You can pre order it on Amazon. Together we roared.
Speaker 2: Before we get to Steve and Evan, let's talk about
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Speaker 2: get to Steve Williams and Evan Priest. All right, Steve,
Speaker 2: I got to ask, how did you get Tiger to
Speaker 2: play in the New Zealand Open.
Speaker 4: It was quite simple. When I made the arrangement to
Speaker 4: start working with him, I said, he's only I only
Speaker 4: asked for one thing, and he said, what's that? I said,
Speaker 4: when you win a major championship, I'd like you to
Speaker 4: come down and play in the New Zealand Open. It
Speaker 4: was as simple as that, and I have to you know,
Speaker 4: I took great pride, and then he took that he
Speaker 4: was seriously and he came down and played. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that's pretty exciting.
Speaker 2: What was it like getting that on his schedule, because obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, I think like probably one of the things
Speaker 2: that with a global superstar liked Tiger time and figuring
Speaker 2: out when someone can do something is one of the
Speaker 2: trickiest things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was very fortunate when he agreed that he
Speaker 4: was going to plan it and he inquired about how soon,
Speaker 4: what year could we plan it. The organizers of the event,
Speaker 4: you know, were willing to make the event the date
Speaker 4: that suited him basically, so, and it was it's normally
Speaker 4: played back then was played in February, so we played
Speaker 4: it in January after the toramented Capelous. So it worked
Speaker 4: very convenient. Capella is, you know, halfway to New Zealand
Speaker 4: as it is, so you know, instead of being a
Speaker 4: thirteen hour flight Mala, it's only an eight our flight
Speaker 4: from Honolulu, so that worked out really good.
Speaker 2: You know, I saw that I didn't know before this
Speaker 2: as a you know, a Tiger fan, really someone that
Speaker 2: got into golf because of Tiger. So obviously you know,
Speaker 2: Steve Williams fan. I didn't really you were from Paraparauma
Speaker 2: Beach and that's a golf course that I've dreamed of
Speaker 2: going to see for years. I didn't realize that that
Speaker 2: New Zealand Open was played at the course that you
Speaker 2: grew up on. What was it like seeing and and
Speaker 2: you know, seeing Tiger Woods come play the golf course
Speaker 2: that you grew up on in the New Zealand Open.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was kind of surreal. And on the Tuesday
Speaker 4: afternoon when we went and played nine holes practice, we
Speaker 4: stood on the tenth tee and these you know, I
Speaker 4: don't know how many thousands of people there were. I've
Speaker 4: never seen that many people at UMU, So I had
Speaker 4: to get my head around it for a little bit,
Speaker 4: you know, because as a golf course so I started
Speaker 4: cutting out when I'm five years old, and every day
Speaker 4: after school I looked for golf balls and all the
Speaker 4: water hazards and so forth. Though, you know, to be
Speaker 4: then walking the fairways with at the time the best
Speaker 4: player in the world, it was. It was remarkable. It
Speaker 4: was actually was It was a dream come true. And
Speaker 4: actually as a child, when I used to watch all
Speaker 4: these taunts on TV from America, I had this idea that,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe one day I might be getting one
Speaker 4: of those guys and maybe one day he might play
Speaker 4: my course. I mean, it was ar fit extreme, but
Speaker 4: it was one of those dreams that came to reality,
Speaker 4: and you know, it was exciting times.
Speaker 2: So Evan, you and Steve put together this book together,
Speaker 2: we wrote and it's it's really Steve's recounting of his
Speaker 2: career with Tiger Woods, which arguably the greatest run of
Speaker 2: a player in a caddy together in the history of golf.
Speaker 2: What was your favorite part of putting this book together
Speaker 2: with Steve.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's I mean, it's hard. It's a hard question
Speaker 5: and an easy question at the same time. But I
Speaker 5: think I've told a few people now and I've decided
Speaker 5: that when Steve and I were researching, and I was
Speaker 5: researching and writing, and we were doing twice weekly interviews,
Speaker 5: my favorite moment is when Steve would interrupt himself because
Speaker 5: he would recall it question I'd asked in the previous interview,
Speaker 5: and he'd be like, Evan, I just had a thought,
Speaker 5: and I'd scrambled for the notepad and be like, go ahead,
Speaker 5: because they were the most raw, like organic kind of
Speaker 5: like they've they've laid dormant in Steve's memory for decades
Speaker 5: and he's just remembered it until now. So I knew
Speaker 5: those were and those ended up being like basically the
Speaker 5: best anecdotes in the book where Steve just accidentally his
Speaker 5: memory just that you know, machine was rolling and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden he recalled something and that was to
Speaker 5: me the most organic memories that he had, because some
Speaker 5: of the best anecdotes in the book, like the fact
Speaker 5: that Tiger and Steve hand wrote letters to each other,
Speaker 5: that was that answer came from a totally unrelated question
Speaker 5: and he just remembered on that in that moment that
Speaker 5: he and Tiger hand wrote letters to each other. And
Speaker 5: I thought, well, that's no, no one knows that. That's
Speaker 5: a totally new, you know, revealing sort of tale about
Speaker 5: him and Tiger.
Speaker 1: And I suppose that was my favorite moments.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when when Steve would interrupt himself and just bring
Speaker 5: up absolute gold from the bowels of his memory.
Speaker 4: That was the great beauty of the book and not
Speaker 4: been in a rush to do it when we had
Speaker 4: the time, and then we did it twice a week,
Speaker 4: and that was actually amazing some of the things that
Speaker 4: you know, it's been a number of years since I've
Speaker 4: actually worked with Tiger, and that was the beauty of
Speaker 4: the book. That actually rekindled some of my own memories,
Speaker 4: and that was a lot of fun to beout it
Speaker 4: not only rekindle them, but actually write them down and
Speaker 4: remember those memories so that you know, like the book
Speaker 4: will be a great read for me as well, you know,
Speaker 4: to keep myself up to date with what happened a
Speaker 4: number of years ago.
Speaker 5: And and the one for the gearheads out there, I'll
Speaker 5: only tease this, you know, so that it's not ruined
Speaker 5: when you go to read the book, but so it's
Speaker 5: quite famous amongst gearheads that Tiger eschewed the Nike driver
Speaker 5: for about a week back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 5: And yes, if you are some of the great golf
Speaker 5: journalists like equipment journalist John Wall and Mike Johnson, those
Speaker 5: sorts of guys, they know about that period, but they
Speaker 5: don't know why. And there's actually a really just kind
Speaker 5: of silly reason that Tiger got rid the Nike driver
Speaker 5: for a week tried a tailor made driver and the
Speaker 5: story behind that was one of my favorite memories that
Speaker 5: Steve came up with. And again that was that was
Speaker 5: a memory where we were just talking about some event
Speaker 5: in two thousand and three and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: Steve goes, you know what, I remember there was this
Speaker 5: one moment and it was this one golf with a
Speaker 5: triggered Tiger to want more distance, and that was one
Speaker 5: of my favorite moments in the book. And I just thought,
Speaker 5: I don't think anyone in the world knows that. I'm
Speaker 5: pretty sure that's brand new. And that was I think
Speaker 5: that was my favorite moment in the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was. I was amazing.
Speaker 2: There are so many little nitty gritty things I grew
Speaker 2: up caddying and I always have enjoy, like, just love
Speaker 2: the psychology of player and caddy. Steve you in the book,
Speaker 2: there are multiple references to these detailed stats that you
Speaker 2: would keep in a notebook about taker's rounds, and then
Speaker 2: you would go and analyze them, you know, like I
Speaker 2: think now the tour is so far, you know, they've
Speaker 2: been such leaps and strides in terms of stat keeping.
Speaker 2: At the time, you know, in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: was keeping stats like was this a common thing that
Speaker 2: caddies did, and what type of advantage did you feel
Speaker 2: that these stats get brought you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it certainly wasn't a common thing about
Speaker 4: caddes because everyone used to when you're standing with a
Speaker 4: bunch of other caddes on a path three T and
Speaker 4: they look at your had you know, I would write
Speaker 4: down the pin platements on a piece of a four
Speaker 4: paper from one to eighteen and I have a lot
Speaker 4: of notes on every hole and what those notes were,
Speaker 4: you know, I would write the distance down that Tiger had,
Speaker 4: what club would he hit, and did he hit it
Speaker 4: right or left? And so at the end of the week,
Speaker 4: I could look at all these stats and you know,
Speaker 4: say he hit you know, he hit a driver, you know,
Speaker 4: twenty five times this week, he hit nine left and
Speaker 4: X amount of shots to write, and I would be
Speaker 4: able to compound not only stats of obviously the ones
Speaker 4: that are like hitting a fairway, noting in a fairway,
Speaker 4: but I would do my own way of doing that.
Speaker 4: So you know, there was a lot of holes that say,
Speaker 4: for instance, you had a hole that like, let's just
Speaker 4: stay for instance, the eighteenth pole at the TPC at Sawgrass,
Speaker 4: there's trouble on the left. You just can't go left.
Speaker 4: It's a penalty. So if you hit it into the
Speaker 4: first cutter right rough on the right, essentially that for
Speaker 4: me was a fairway hit because you were trying to
Speaker 4: hit it down the right side and you've only missed
Speaker 4: it by a couple of yards. So I put that
Speaker 4: down as a fairway hit to give me more accuracy
Speaker 4: for what I needed to know. But at the end
Speaker 4: of the week. I was about to go and tell Tiger, hey, look, Tiger,
Speaker 4: last week, you know you hit this many seven nines
Speaker 4: and it was a glaring fact that you hit this
Speaker 4: many of them to the right, or you missed the
Speaker 4: green with this many seven nines, but you didn't do
Speaker 4: it with an apel nine on them, and that would
Speaker 4: possibly mean there was this chance of maybe the lye
Speaker 4: or the loft angle was off in that club. And
Speaker 4: also it enabled me to give Tiger something to work
Speaker 4: on all the time. You know, last week, this part
Speaker 4: of your game was no good. So in between that
Speaker 4: tournament and the next moment, if there was a break,
Speaker 4: that gave them something to work on it. At the
Speaker 4: end of the year, when I compiled a year statistics,
Speaker 4: there would be something that would be below par for
Speaker 4: what he would expect, and I would give him that
Speaker 4: and that's something you could work on it. It was
Speaker 4: very advantageous to be able to keep all those statistics
Speaker 4: and then you know, compile them year after year. When
Speaker 4: he made swing changes. You know, you know, there's always
Speaker 4: a great debate between or not between us, but in
Speaker 4: the media as the you know, did Tiger play better
Speaker 4: under this swing?
Speaker 1: Coach?
Speaker 4: For this swing coach. I mean, I had all my
Speaker 4: information that would tell me exactly that, you know, whether
Speaker 4: which one was better or if in fact one coach
Speaker 4: was better than the other statistically wise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sorry, I was going to add Steve.
Speaker 5: Steve worked out a glaring weakness from a specific club,
Speaker 5: specific distance, and specific shot shape that you could Steve.
Speaker 5: You probably agree it had a big impact on the
Speaker 5: Tiger Slam before the two thousand season, and he kind
Speaker 5: of went from you know, a below average to elite
Speaker 5: at that distance to the point where you know, there
Speaker 5: was a of a myth on too with the Tiger
Speaker 5: wasn't good from this particular distance?
Speaker 1: And was it?
Speaker 5: Someone came up to Ameror and Tiger and yourself, Steve
Speaker 5: during a practice round a people beach at the US Open.
Speaker 5: It's Johnny Miller. And Miller said, yeah, but he can't
Speaker 5: really hit wedges, can he can't? And he said no,
Speaker 5: you watch like he's been working on it in the
Speaker 5: off season with Steve. And that was all based on
Speaker 5: Steve's starts from ninety ninety nine.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, Look, statistics. For some unknown reason, no one
Speaker 4: told me to start taking statistics when I first started
Speaker 4: catting it wasn't just Tiger that the statistics was doing
Speaker 4: it with Ray Floyd, and it just was a great
Speaker 4: way of being able to sit down and analyze.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Of course nowadays they have all the shot linked data
Speaker 4: and everything, but you know what that doesn't records, like
Speaker 4: I said, is the clubs that were hit and where
Speaker 4: and where those shots had. If there was a tendency,
Speaker 4: what was that tendancy and you know what was the
Speaker 4: reason for that tendancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like the way you talked about like giving a
Speaker 2: fairway hit if you hit it up the right side
Speaker 2: and it ends up in say the short rough instead
Speaker 2: of the fairway.
Speaker 3: You know, like you achieved the shot you wanted to hit.
Speaker 2: I've always thought it was silly, like if I'm like
Speaker 2: four inches on the fringe that it doesn't count as
Speaker 2: a green. In my head, I counted as a green
Speaker 2: and I counted as a putt, you know, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: You know, you think about sometimes playing Let's just say
Speaker 4: you're playing in the Open Championship and it's horrendously windy
Speaker 4: and you're going into a par four from well over
Speaker 4: two hundred yards with a you know, three or four
Speaker 4: in or something like that and you miss the green
Speaker 4: by a foot, but it might be twelve. The flag
Speaker 4: might be located four off the right of the green,
Speaker 4: and you're five off the right of the green. Well,
Speaker 4: it's a great shot, that was, it's in the proximity
Speaker 4: of where the flag's located. I count that as a
Speaker 4: green hit, so it gave us a little bit more accuracy.
Speaker 4: And you know, the one stat that I love the
Speaker 4: most is that I worked out that if Tiger hit
Speaker 4: sixty five percent of the fairways or greater and didn't
Speaker 4: three part in an event, you couldn't beat him. And
Speaker 4: it was you know, so it was all you know,
Speaker 4: he worked ferociously on never having a three pup and
Speaker 4: because you know, that was a stat with that he
Speaker 4: knew as well. So that was one that was a
Speaker 4: very very good stat and you know, a decent driving
Speaker 4: week those three puts, he was going to be standing
Speaker 4: on the podium.
Speaker 2: So you worked for Greg Norman and then also Ray Floyd,
Speaker 2: two great all time great players. When you got the
Speaker 2: call from Tiger, you know what you're working for? Raef Floyd?
Speaker 2: What excited you so much about Tiger Woods at that time?
Speaker 4: Well, it actually it wasn't it was. It was an
Speaker 4: odd situation. It was a nineteen ninety nine and in fact,
Speaker 4: yesterday I was just reminded yesterday it was twenty six
Speaker 4: years to the day to the first time I put
Speaker 4: his bag on my shoulder Tuesday, the March the seventeenth,
Speaker 4: was in nineteen ninety nine. So anyway, in two thousand
Speaker 4: I had in ninety ninety nine, I thought, I thought
Speaker 4: to myself, in two thousands might be my last year counting.
Speaker 4: I was interested in going back to New Zealand and
Speaker 4: maybe starting some kind of junior academy and taking all
Speaker 4: the information I've learned from all the years on tour
Speaker 4: canting for Greg and Raymond Floyd, that perhaps I could
Speaker 4: use that information to really help junior golf in New Zealand.
Speaker 4: I've done an extensive amount of travel, and it was
Speaker 4: satisfied with the career that I had. And then I,
Speaker 4: you know, I got the call from Tiger. I didn't
Speaker 4: take the job immediately. I talked to a few friends
Speaker 4: about it because I knew it was going to be demanding.
Speaker 4: And then I even you know, when I went up
Speaker 4: and met Tiger at his place in Orlando and discussed
Speaker 4: the job, and he explained pretty clearly what his mode,
Speaker 4: what his goals were, and what he was striving to do.
Speaker 4: I knew it was going to be an intense job,
Speaker 4: but you know it was something I took on and
Speaker 4: I relished the challenge, and yeah, the rest is history.
Speaker 4: I guess you could say what.
Speaker 2: Made Tiger just different from from other great players like that?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you know a lot of players are
Speaker 4: just happy some weeks just to make the cup, finish
Speaker 4: in the top ten, wherever it might be. You know,
Speaker 4: Tiger's a successful week is only a win, So if
Speaker 4: it wasn't a win, it wasn't a successful week. And
Speaker 4: his his drive and determination to reach such lofty goals
Speaker 4: whether he got there or not, but he set himself
Speaker 4: some incredibly lofty goals and the way that he worked
Speaker 4: to get to those goals and the way that he's
Speaker 4: able to peak for major championships, and I think that
Speaker 4: was the catalyst to Tiger's successes. He worked out a
Speaker 4: way and had a schedule, and you know, when he
Speaker 4: sat down and did a schedule, he never deviated off
Speaker 4: a schedule. That's one thing I loved with him a
Speaker 4: post any player that I've worked for, he would sit
Speaker 4: down at the end of a season and he would
Speaker 4: work out a schedule that he thought were best enabled
Speaker 4: him to peak for those four major championships. And he
Speaker 4: wouldn't deviate from that schedule, which made it very easy
Speaker 4: for myself living in New Zealand traveling back and forth.
Speaker 4: But he just the way he went about things, he
Speaker 4: just you know, he he didn't get caught up. And
Speaker 4: all the money he got made, he didn't get caught
Speaker 4: up and all the fame that he had. He just
Speaker 4: had some goals and and he just works his tail
Speaker 4: off to achieve those goals. And you know, it's very
Speaker 4: easy to get comfortable in life. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: great players on the tour that should have major championships
Speaker 4: and multiple championships behind their names, and Evan, you've seen
Speaker 4: that year in year out. You know, you wonder how
Speaker 4: some of these guys don't win majors, But when you
Speaker 4: make the sort of money some of these guys do,
Speaker 4: some of them get comfortable and they lead a very
Speaker 4: luxurious life if you like. But you know, Tiger was
Speaker 4: just he had a goal and that was obviously the
Speaker 4: clip Jacks record of eighteen majors, and he was never
Speaker 4: going to start working hard. Even to this day, even
Speaker 4: as we speak right now, you know, you know that
Speaker 4: he believes in himself that at some point he can
Speaker 4: stand on the first tee of a major championship and
Speaker 4: feel that he is fully fit, fit to compete seventy
Speaker 4: two holes, and that he's done the practice to do that. So,
Speaker 4: you know, I guess last week's announcement a lot of
Speaker 4: people were thinking, oh, that might be the end of them,
Speaker 4: but online there is no way that's the end of them.
Speaker 2: I you know, as you know, as someone who covered
Speaker 2: the twenty nineteen Masters, and Evan you were there also.
Speaker 2: I mean it kind of like we had, you know,
Speaker 2: in the mid two thousands, this period of time where
Speaker 2: you were like, well, it may never happen again, and
Speaker 2: then it happens and you're like, this is astonishing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Now at this point, I'm I'm it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: He's not even playing and going you know it, he'll
Speaker 2: play just the Masters and make the cut, and he
Speaker 2: has this made cut streak that's still going at Augusta National.
Speaker 3: It's it's just astonishing.
Speaker 1: He is.
Speaker 2: I think, like the hyper competitiveness is something that you know,
Speaker 2: we've you know, the greatest athletes ever and I you know,
Speaker 2: I grew up a fan of Michael Jordan. It's something
Speaker 2: you see that, like where that drive to be the
Speaker 2: best was just out of this world. Evan, do you
Speaker 2: have a favorite story from the book that maybe didn't
Speaker 2: make it.
Speaker 5: In Oh, it's a great question. Wow, there wasn't much
Speaker 5: in the cutting room floor, to be honest, but oh god,
Speaker 5: you've absolutely got me a beauty there. Favorite story that
Speaker 5: didn't make the book, I think, to be honest with you,
Speaker 5: there were a few moments from two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: like actually non major tournaments during that season, like he
Speaker 5: was really at the height of his powers and Steve
Speaker 5: and Tiger witnessed such incredible things. But two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: there are a few regular tournaments, I suppose moments like
Speaker 5: Steve told me off camera about the chip in I
Speaker 5: think it was a birdie at Tahyo Club in Japan
Speaker 5: where they played the Asia Pacific Amateur last year, and
Speaker 5: just the moments surrounding that, and how Tiger told Steve
Speaker 5: like this is absolutely going in. This is the way
Speaker 5: it's going to break once it hits the green. It
Speaker 5: was completely identical to the two thousand and five Masters
Speaker 5: chip in. It just gets less airtime because I believe
Speaker 5: it was a WGC World Cup and just moments like
Speaker 5: that where there's such geeky goal stories, but you know,
Speaker 5: when you're working to ninety thousand words, ninety five thousand words,
Speaker 5: it's just like something has to give and that unfortunately
Speaker 5: it was one of them, but I think, yeah that
Speaker 5: two thousand and when was that stew thousand and one, Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was something like that. Was it was
Speaker 4: the World Cup? And it was I wrong that Tiger
Speaker 4: tipped them to beat New Zealand.
Speaker 3: Was that Craig Perks and Craig Perry on that.
Speaker 4: Tim No, it was.
Speaker 3: Michael Campbell and Campbell.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't actually recall the other player, but
Speaker 4: he chipped them to beat us on. Yeah, so it
Speaker 4: was it was like a bit of sweet chipping. I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was moments like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was just like it's honestly, there were hundreds
Speaker 5: of them, and you just like felt like you were
Speaker 5: maybe choosing one of your children over the other when
Speaker 5: you when you made the call delete that story from
Speaker 5: the manuscript, But you just thought, man, ninety five thousand
Speaker 5: words to work with There's so much more I could
Speaker 5: go into, but yeah, that was one of them. Those
Speaker 5: cool off the beaten path, non major stories were my favorite.
Speaker 2: Steve, you brought up the swing change a little bit,
Speaker 2: and I think I reading reading the book, I think
Speaker 2: you have some opinions probably around this. It seemed like
Speaker 2: you were a big fan of the way Hank Haney taught.
Speaker 2: When you look back, do you ever question whether he
Speaker 2: should have reset the swing kind of after that slump
Speaker 2: with Bush Harmon. I think this is something that all
Speaker 2: golf nerds think about a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, it's a great question, and you know there's
Speaker 4: so many people got an opinion on it, but no, no,
Speaker 4: I can give an accurate answer because you know, he
Speaker 4: actually made the swing change. But Tiger's a very very
Speaker 4: that he's a big student of the game, has a
Speaker 4: great understanding of the fundamentals and the technique and what's
Speaker 4: required to be able to swing the best for your
Speaker 4: sort of physical limitations of you like, And he wouldn't
Speaker 4: make a swing change of that magnitude unless he thought
Speaker 4: he could get better. And that's the great thing about
Speaker 4: strife that Tiger is the continuation to strive to get better.
Speaker 4: He never got comfortable. He always believed there was a
Speaker 4: way to get better. And I describe that quite clearly
Speaker 4: in the book about his you know, his process around that.
Speaker 4: But you know, he just believed that he could get better.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's not something that was a rash decision.
Speaker 4: He put a lot of thought into it. And he
Speaker 4: you know, he had he had one sort of floor
Speaker 4: in a swing that you know, he found difficult to
Speaker 4: get to remove that floor in a swing when he
Speaker 4: was working with Botch, and he felt that going on
Speaker 4: another route with Hank would possibly end that floor that
Speaker 4: he had. Tiger could continuously say, you know, when someone
Speaker 4: asked him about a particture, I got stuck. And he
Speaker 4: hated that feeling of what he would call get stuck
Speaker 4: basically in Layman's terms of getting the club behind your
Speaker 4: bodies ahead of the club and so forth, and you know,
Speaker 4: you either get stuck or you flip it with the hands.
Speaker 4: But he believed, you know, that he could find a
Speaker 4: way that he could swing the best that he could
Speaker 4: and he was striving to find that. And you know
Speaker 4: he made that change from Butsch to Hank, and my
Speaker 4: statistics will tell you that he played equally as well
Speaker 4: under both of those coaches.
Speaker 5: And just to add to that, Steve analyzed that particular
Speaker 5: sort of phenomenon in a way that I've never thought about,
Speaker 5: and it's actually one of my favorite sort of parts
Speaker 5: of the book. There's not really an anecdote, it's more
Speaker 5: analysis in that Tiger actually needed that challenge, as like
Speaker 5: he needed to give himself an obstacle to be able
Speaker 5: to move forward. It was almost like, you know, be
Speaker 5: where the injured golfer be, where the golfer going through
Speaker 5: a swing change, and he needed to constantly take one
Speaker 5: step backwards to be able to go two steps forward because.
Speaker 1: He enjoyed the media.
Speaker 5: You know, Steve told me this, and I don't mean
Speaker 5: to put words in Tiger's mouth, but Tiger really enjoyed
Speaker 5: media criticizing him and for why he would make a
Speaker 5: swing change when it had just won the ninety ninety
Speaker 5: seven Masters or it had just completed the Tiger Slam,
Speaker 5: and he enjoyed that having that chip on the shoulder
Speaker 5: to wear around as like, well, not only do I
Speaker 5: have an excuse for playing poorly, but I actually had
Speaker 5: something that's driving me to succeed because everyone thinks that
Speaker 5: I can't win, you know, more majors with a swing change,
Speaker 5: But I'm going to go out there and prove them
Speaker 5: that even with a B plus swing, while I'm perfecting
Speaker 5: it to A plus, I'm still going to go out
Speaker 5: there and beat everyone with my B and C game.
Speaker 5: And it actually gave him this kind of challenge that
Speaker 5: it was almost like he had reached a level of
Speaker 5: perfection after the Tiger Slam. I would never accuse him
Speaker 5: of being bored of golf given the level that he achieved,
Speaker 5: but he kind of needed something else to take his
Speaker 5: mind off the pursuit of majors. And Steve describes it
Speaker 5: beautifully in the book and that it gave him like
Speaker 5: a second and a third win. You know that the
Speaker 5: change under boardsch after ninety seven, the change under Haype
Speaker 5: after sort of during the slum, it gave him extra motivation,
Speaker 5: almost like Mike wod Jordan taking you know, perceived slides
Speaker 5: in the NBA and using them as fuel. It was
Speaker 5: a lot like that with the swing changes. Wouldn't you
Speaker 5: agree with Steve.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent? I mean, there's no person I know
Speaker 4: that's played golf that likes the challenge like he does.
Speaker 4: And that was. You know, when you present yourself with
Speaker 4: a challenge of making a major swing game, what that
Speaker 4: does is keep you one hundred percent focused on working
Speaker 4: as hard as you can to be the best player
Speaker 4: you can. And it's very easy to get comfortable in golf.
Speaker 4: We see it all the time with players, and you
Speaker 4: wonder they get to a certain level and then they just,
Speaker 4: you know, they don't they don't continue that trajectory upwards.
Speaker 4: They just stay flat for a long period of time.
Speaker 4: And that and he one of his ways for him
Speaker 4: to continue that unbelievable upward trajectory was by making a
Speaker 4: swing change and then working ultimately as hard as he
Speaker 4: possibly could to get that swing change into position where
Speaker 4: he could win major championships. It wasn't you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's amazing. His mind is so different to anybody else.
Speaker 2: You know, that constant us to continue to improve. Would
Speaker 2: you say that's you know, in all your years on tour,
Speaker 2: is that one of the big separators with Tiger to
Speaker 2: everybody else besides just the sublime talent?
Speaker 4: Look, yeah, I mean there are an enormous amount of
Speaker 4: players that have talent just like Tiger's got a lot
Speaker 4: of natural talent. And a lot of talent that these
Speaker 4: derived from incredibly hard work. But you know, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just that that's just the way the
Speaker 4: man is, and that's Harry. You know, that's Harry went
Speaker 4: on to be such a great player, you know, that
Speaker 4: drive to get better and work and put a new
Speaker 4: swing on the table and make it work.
Speaker 2: Has there been a player that's come along since Tiger
Speaker 2: that most reminds you of Tiger Woods?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I think when I look at Rory,
Speaker 4: I find him to be a very very gifted athlete,
Speaker 4: a guy that works extremely hard on his game, and
Speaker 4: he strives to get better all the time as well.
Speaker 4: And he works very, very hard, and he's physically very
Speaker 4: you know, he's like Tiger from when he came on
Speaker 4: the tour to now. His body formation, in his physical
Speaker 4: you know, presence is right up there. And yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I just admire him as a player, and you know,
Speaker 4: like everybody, we just hope that he can get over
Speaker 4: the line at augusta join that exclusive Grand Slam club
Speaker 4: and then perhaps he can make a significant run to
Speaker 4: add to his major tally. But you know, when you
Speaker 4: take the time to write a book like this with Evan,
Speaker 4: and you see how successful Tiger was in the record
Speaker 4: that he had in the major champ So, you know,
Speaker 4: and you see someone like Rory who hasn't won a
Speaker 4: major since twenty fourteen, he's an unbelievable player. It just
Speaker 4: shows you how difficult it is to win major championships.
Speaker 4: And I think during that time, you know, Evan's a journalist,
Speaker 4: and you know, and all the people that me and
Speaker 4: or even that they got to the point where they
Speaker 4: just expected it to be him to be in contention
Speaker 4: and major championships with a chance to win. But it
Speaker 4: certainly wasn't as easy as that. You know, it's not
Speaker 4: as easy as he made a look, and you know,
Speaker 4: you've got guys, like I said, like Rory has in
Speaker 4: one month since twenty fourteen, and that proves how difficult
Speaker 4: it is to win those major championships.
Speaker 3: I thought. I mean, it was just kind of fascinating.
Speaker 3: When you're reading the book.
Speaker 2: You know, you guys got off to a little bit
Speaker 2: of a slow start by Tiger standards, and you know,
Speaker 2: you you expressed some level of worry about, you know,
Speaker 2: how getting out of the blocks, and then next thing,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like you're reading the book and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they've won seven of the last eleven Mabors. Do you
Speaker 2: is there a particular part of the run that you
Speaker 2: go back and think of? And Evan was, They're a
Speaker 2: particular part of the run that you most enjoyed hearing about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've got to say, Sonandrews, like it's just a
Speaker 5: special place in all of our hearts really, but like
Speaker 5: I was just blown away by what Steve remembered twenty
Speaker 5: five years later, the fact that you know, a little
Speaker 5: bit of a swallower, but he, like Steve, Steve cadded
Speaker 5: for maybe the greatest golf it's ever been played, complete
Speaker 5: the career Grand Slam, using a yardage book that he
Speaker 5: drew by hand, because he didn't like that, you know,
Speaker 5: like the kind of stock you know, mass distributed, which
Speaker 5: was probably a very good yardage book, but that all
Speaker 5: the caddies he's onto it.
Speaker 1: He didn't like that.
Speaker 5: A lot of the foreign caddies didn't like the way
Speaker 5: that was mapped out because they had their own preference.
Speaker 5: The fact that Steve went there a week early while
Speaker 5: Tiger was off playing the most incredible golf courses in
Speaker 5: remote parts of Ireland just their history and you know
Speaker 5: the fact that sonandrew is and the way that Tiger
Speaker 5: dissected that it was truly I don't know if anyone's
Speaker 5: played a golf course the way it was designed to
Speaker 5: be played then Tiger Woods the Sandrew's in two thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 5: So I think that's the favorite part of the Slam
Speaker 5: for me. I don't know about you, Steve, but and
Speaker 5: Andrews is always different. And also for the fact that
Speaker 5: you finally were a major championship winning caddy at Saint Andrews,
Speaker 5: and it was something you had dreamed about since you
Speaker 5: walked up that eighteenth that s Andrew's with Fanny Simison
Speaker 5: as she carded Faldo and so for you that was
Speaker 5: a personal goal.
Speaker 1: So I enjoyed hearing.
Speaker 5: That that side of the career Grand Slam as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Open Championship is, you know, I view it
Speaker 4: as the greatest championship with the greatest golfing event there is.
Speaker 4: And to be able to walk up that eightyenth hole
Speaker 4: twice with Tiger, you know, and both times, you know,
Speaker 4: he's not like he's not needing to make a power
Speaker 4: or Bertie to win the tournament. He's got the tournament
Speaker 4: under control. It's a pretty special walk and the way
Speaker 4: that he played around there in two thousand was, you know,
Speaker 4: was incredible. But you know, if you go back to
Speaker 4: the US Open and the you know, the first discussion
Speaker 4: we have following his signing a scorecard at the US
Speaker 4: before the presentation, that is, you know, obviously the little
Speaker 4: bit of banter about what happened with the golf war situation.
Speaker 4: And then the next thing he said to me, Steve,
Speaker 4: I want you to get your ass over to St. Andrews.
Speaker 4: I want you to know that golf course like the
Speaker 4: back of the hand, because I'm going to play even
Speaker 4: better than I did here at Pebble. And if you
Speaker 4: were to asked me, Andy, which tournament was the greatest
Speaker 4: taunt Tiger played? Was at St. Andrews in two thousand.
Speaker 4: You know, at Pebble Beach there was a triple bogie
Speaker 4: on the third hole there, and there was a couple
Speaker 4: of shots that you know weren't as good. But at
Speaker 4: San Andrews, just as Evans said, he just dissected that
Speaker 4: course and played unbelievable. And another fond memory of the
Speaker 4: Open Championship was actually at Hoylake Tiger not played the
Speaker 4: course before, and we arrived there on Saturday afternoon. We
Speaker 4: hadn't got to the house for two minutes and Tiger's
Speaker 4: pushed me out the door. Get down the road, get
Speaker 4: to the golf course, Steve, go and have a walk
Speaker 4: around before I'm going to play about you know, four o'clock.
Speaker 4: It's like, man, you get to go and have a sleep.
Speaker 4: How come I don't? So, you know, I go to
Speaker 4: the golf course and I walk around, you know, pretty
Speaker 4: pretty at a pretty quick pace, and then have a
Speaker 4: get a good feel for it. Come back to the house.
Speaker 4: We have lunch, and I sit down and I said,
Speaker 4: you know what, Tiger, I reckon. If you don't hit
Speaker 4: the drive around there, you're going to have a very
Speaker 4: good chance. The bunker's a penal. Your iron play, my
Speaker 4: statistics will tell me at the moment that your mid
Speaker 4: to long iron play is better than it's ever been,
Speaker 4: which it was, but by my statistics. And for him
Speaker 4: to take that on board and play a major championship
Speaker 4: without hitting a driver and win the tournament, that was
Speaker 4: a pretty special week. And you know, I think other
Speaker 4: players were just like, Wow, this guy's not hitting a driver,
Speaker 4: and look where he's hitting it and he's still beating us.
Speaker 2: I feel like when you look back at one of
Speaker 2: the biggest things that Tiger and the way he played
Speaker 2: golf has left an imprint on the game was the
Speaker 2: way the way he strategized and the way you guys
Speaker 2: strategize getting around a golf course. And I think so
Speaker 2: thing that's been popularized in golf has been the idea
Speaker 2: of avoiding hazards at all costs. And at the Open,
Speaker 2: you guys went out of your way to avoid bunkers
Speaker 2: at all costs. There it's the most penal bunker. It's
Speaker 2: effectively a shot penalty. The idea of aiming down sides
Speaker 2: of fairways as opposed to right down the middle. Steve,
Speaker 2: what was the was that a team kind of building
Speaker 2: into that or did Tiger have some of that before
Speaker 2: you got on the bag?
Speaker 3: What was the strategy?
Speaker 2: And kind of take us behind dissecting a golf course
Speaker 2: with you guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, I mean when I first out killing the Tiger,
Speaker 4: you know, right at the beginning of ninety ninety nine,
Speaker 4: he certainly wasn't in love with his driver. He was
Speaker 4: he was not driving the ball good enough to win
Speaker 4: major Championships right at the start of ninety nine to nine.
Speaker 4: So you know, there was a lot of thought when
Speaker 4: I'd go out and measure a golf course and I'd
Speaker 4: just start looking, you know, on a hole in that okay,
Speaker 4: so you know, you can't hit it on this side
Speaker 4: and that, and you've got to favor the side. And
Speaker 4: so when when we play courses, I always would say
Speaker 4: to Tiger, you know, you know, when you got on
Speaker 4: the tea, you just favor a little right here, or
Speaker 4: just favor a little left here. And he would know
Speaker 4: exactly why I was saying that, because obviously there's trouble
Speaker 4: on the left and that. And you know, when you
Speaker 4: go around these Open Championship courses, if you take the
Speaker 4: bunkers out of play, you eliminate the double bogie generally.
Speaker 4: You know, there's so many double bogies made during the
Speaker 4: Open Championship because you drive it in one of these
Speaker 4: fairway bunkers and sometimes you've got to come out backwards
Speaker 4: or you can't even advance the ball sometimes, and you know,
Speaker 4: it brings that double bogie factor on the play. And
Speaker 4: you know, the less double bogies you have on your card,
Speaker 4: and a major better chance you got a winning But
Speaker 4: it was just the thing that we you know, the
Speaker 4: strategy thing to developed very quickly because I was very
Speaker 4: aware that, you know, whilst he was you know, obviously
Speaker 4: very long off the tee, he could be very wild
Speaker 4: off the tea as well. You know, as as a
Speaker 4: swinging proven its confidence improven, and also as the equipment
Speaker 4: improved and so forth, he got better and better at
Speaker 4: driving the ball. But you know, when you hit the ball,
Speaker 4: you know when he was playing, and you know through
Speaker 4: that Tiger Slam, and that he was the longest, not
Speaker 4: the longest player tour, but he was the longest of
Speaker 4: the best players on tour, and he had a distinct
Speaker 4: advantage and one of the biggest attributes that gets overlooked
Speaker 4: a Tiger's game. He's the best player out of rough ever,
Speaker 4: there's just no question in my mind. No player has
Speaker 4: had the skill and the strength and the ability to
Speaker 4: control the ball out of the rough like Tiger did,
Speaker 4: and that's something that gets overlooked. He's got many, many
Speaker 4: great attributes of the way he's played the game better
Speaker 4: than others, but that's the one that stands out to
Speaker 4: me is just his ability, you know, and the iconic
Speaker 4: shots that everybody will remember is obviously a pebble beats
Speaker 4: and you know on the path up and over the
Speaker 4: cliff on of the green, and the famous statement that
Speaker 4: was heard around the world which became renowned was, you know,
Speaker 4: Roger Malby said, you know, it's just not a fair game.
Speaker 4: You know, like that was I think it was one
Speaker 4: of the all time great statements by a commentator. But
Speaker 4: you know, when you look at that shot there, there's
Speaker 4: no other player can dig that ball out of that ruff,
Speaker 4: get it up.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: The strength and ability to play out of the rough
Speaker 4: was extraordinary, you know, whether it be from two hundred
Speaker 4: yards out of eighty yards out there. I mean he
Speaker 4: could hit short shots out of the rough around the greens,
Speaker 4: pitch shots, you know, from forty sixty eighty yards around
Speaker 4: the greens, and the control on them was just you know,
Speaker 4: he was amazing how he could He had the strength
Speaker 4: and ability to hold that club face square. You know,
Speaker 4: we all know when you're playing the long ruff, I
Speaker 4: twists very quickly the hands that the ruff just wrapped
Speaker 4: around the club face and't it. But his ability to
Speaker 4: play out of the roff is something that was hugely
Speaker 4: to ranges.
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2: We have a new podcast on the Frida Egg Golf
Speaker 2: podcast network. It's called The mix Bag. It is our
Speaker 2: own Meg Atkins and Matthew Galloway and they talk about
Speaker 2: women's golf. This is a I think, a great new
Speaker 2: addition to our network. If you're into l the LPGA,
Speaker 2: you're into women's golf, check this out. It's on Spotify,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts from. They do
Speaker 2: a great job so far of covering the sport. They've
Speaker 2: had some great interviews and it is on you know,
Speaker 2: second episode, so you can go check that out. If
Speaker 2: you are into LPGA golf, this is going to be
Speaker 2: the podcast to listen to.
Speaker 3: We were really excited.
Speaker 2: It will be a weekly podcast and we are really
Speaker 2: excited to see where it goes. So Meg covers women's
Speaker 2: game for us and Matthew Gallaway is a former LPGA caddy,
Speaker 2: most notably caddy for Michelle Wee so very connected to
Speaker 2: the game. He's I feel like he's just got enough
Speaker 2: distance from from caddying where he you know, he can
Speaker 2: He's still connected but can provide takes and insights. So
Speaker 2: check that out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get
Speaker 2: your your podcast, it's called the Mixed Bag. All right,
Speaker 2: let's get back to Steve Williams and Evan Priest. When
Speaker 2: you talk about I'm always fascinated about like golf IQ
Speaker 2: and I think Tiger has you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: him personally, but from all you know reports like this
Speaker 2: extraordinary golf IQ. And you've been on the bag for
Speaker 2: a number of great players, whether it was like reading
Speaker 2: the lie, understand understanding the wind, understanding like what little
Speaker 2: nuanced aspect of Tiger Wood's golf brain do you think
Speaker 2: about the most.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the one thing that I thought was amazing that
Speaker 4: he did so when he's playing with other players and
Speaker 4: you'd get onto the green or you get around the green,
Speaker 4: he would play out in his head that that player
Speaker 4: is going to make that part, so that when that
Speaker 4: player made the part, it's not like, oh wow, I'm
Speaker 4: two shots behind, now no I'm one shot behind, all wow,
Speaker 4: how did he make that? Or you lucky mother? He
Speaker 4: played this out in his head so there was never
Speaker 4: any surprises, you know, Like you know, you often watch
Speaker 4: a player and that two guys going head to head
Speaker 4: down the streets and that and one guy makes a
Speaker 4: bomb from fifty feet and you see the other players reaction.
Speaker 4: You know, it's just it's that slight moment of well, wow,
Speaker 4: how did that just happen? But you never ever saw
Speaker 4: any change in emotion when Tiger was playing with an
Speaker 4: opponent and he chipped in holder shot that because he
Speaker 4: played that out in his mind and that's the way
Speaker 4: he thought. A great way to analyze that was when
Speaker 4: Tiger was playing in the Canadian Opening, and I believe
Speaker 4: that was in two thousand as well. During that street
Speaker 4: he faced that bunker shot from the eighteenth hole out
Speaker 4: of the fairway bunker over the water in that and
Speaker 4: Grant Waite was on the green, so in his mind,
Speaker 4: he Grant's on the green for two, cutting for three.
Speaker 4: In his mind, he's played out that he's making three,
Speaker 4: so I have to hit this ball on the green
Speaker 4: and make no worse than four. So it was his
Speaker 4: thinking was absolutely incredible, or not incredible, but different to
Speaker 4: other players.
Speaker 3: Avid, was there anything that like from like the little
Speaker 3: things that stood out to you as somebody who's covered
Speaker 3: the game for so long.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, first of all, from a personal standpoint
Speaker 5: kind of like we all have built up Tiger in
Speaker 5: our minds to be this winning robot, and you know,
Speaker 5: he just achieved things that we don't think are humanly possible,
Speaker 5: mentally possible. And he was actually a really caring, kind
Speaker 5: of thoughtful guy behind the scenes. And probably of all
Speaker 5: the players that Steve caddy for, he can recall no
Speaker 5: other player really shaking his hand and saying thank you
Speaker 5: after a round like repetitively four times a week, fifteen
Speaker 5: twenty times a year, and never faulted, you know, just
Speaker 5: by how bad or good he was playing. And the
Speaker 5: second thing was I loved learning about that kind of
Speaker 5: like body language and the dynamics between Steve and Tiger,
Speaker 5: which really.
Speaker 1: Comes through in this book.
Speaker 5: Apart from revealing new anecdotes have never been heard before,
Speaker 5: it's more analyzing Steve twenty years later, like why did
Speaker 5: you guys work? And Steve referenced the famous seven nine
Speaker 5: out of the rough at the six hole Peple Beach.
Speaker 5: But what Steve told me that kind of blew in
Speaker 5: my mind was after about a year together, he realized
Speaker 5: that Tiger was a quick player.
Speaker 1: Which would go a long way today's game.
Speaker 5: And so Steve, that's actually why Steve marched thirty yards
Speaker 5: ahead of I always wanted that as a kid. Go
Speaker 5: was a big fantasy is at Ozzie Key where, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of like an idol, And I was like, why
Speaker 5: why does he walk so far ahead of Tiger? What
Speaker 5: is the reason behind that? And in the book, Steve
Speaker 5: reveals that he was like just trying to get It
Speaker 5: was quite stressful cutting to Tiger, as you can imagine,
Speaker 5: and he just wanted that extra you know, ten to
Speaker 5: fifteen seconds to think and process what Tiger's about to do,
Speaker 5: predict what Tiger's about to do. And just before he
Speaker 5: hit the seven eye and at Pebble Beach, Steve looked
Speaker 5: at He said he would always look at Tiger's eyes
Speaker 5: because that would tell Steve his intent. And he just
Speaker 5: would pick and choose the moments where is it worth
Speaker 5: an argument? Is it not worth an argument? And Tiger
Speaker 5: has just had eyes for the green over the hill.
Speaker 5: Steve knew he was going to try. There was no
Speaker 5: point arguing, so he quickly thought, Okay, well, if that's
Speaker 5: what Steve Tiger's going to do, how do I give
Speaker 5: Tiger the information he needs to execute that shot the
Speaker 5: best visibility? So he looked at the lie and he
Speaker 5: knew that, all right, it's going to be a seven
Speaker 5: eye to get over the hill. And the fact that
Speaker 5: Steve was so intuitive it kind of like ends the
Speaker 5: argument who's the greatest caddy of all the time. I
Speaker 5: don't know if anyone had better caddy instincts than Steve.
Speaker 5: You know, I just to look at Tiger's eye contact
Speaker 5: and he's intent.
Speaker 1: Where is he aiming? Is it a fifty to fifty?
Speaker 5: Is he going to lay up? Could he be convinced
Speaker 5: to lay up? And the fact that Steve was onto
Speaker 5: that after less than twelve months together, it blows my mind.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that stood out to
Speaker 2: me was the prep the idea of knowing, Like I
Speaker 2: think it came through in the Saint Andrews part, where
Speaker 2: like if Tiger's going to ask me where I need
Speaker 2: to hit it, I need to say, without without a
Speaker 2: moment's hesitation, this is where you're going that hill right there,
Speaker 2: if the winds this way, I need to know this
Speaker 2: is where it's going. And I think that's like, that's
Speaker 2: what you want from a you know, a caddy. Is
Speaker 2: that confidence that like if.
Speaker 4: You can, if you can answer every question that comes
Speaker 4: your way with a certain amount of confidence that it's
Speaker 4: very you know, that's confidence building for the player, absolutely,
Speaker 4: and that's what makes good caddy is someone that's incredibly
Speaker 4: confident in their ability and and there you know, their
Speaker 4: willingness to put their own cells on the line and that.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's very easy when you're canting for a
Speaker 4: guy and you're coming down the stretch in a major
Speaker 4: and it's getting very tense in that and the guy says, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm going to hit this club here, And
Speaker 4: even if in some caves won't agree with that, but
Speaker 4: they'll say yes because in the moment they don't want
Speaker 4: to be wrong either. They don't feel like they want
Speaker 4: to be the reason that at the end of the tornent,
Speaker 4: you could look back and say, well, you know, if
Speaker 4: he had spoken up, that could have cost me the
Speaker 4: torment that. But yeah, just been able to read you
Speaker 4: know type just readers, or like Evan said, just the
Speaker 4: eye contact would tell me. You know, I didn't have
Speaker 4: to ask them. I just looked at his eyes. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was quite a remarkable thing. But once again, you know,
Speaker 4: I go back to you know, the statistics and that
Speaker 4: and I'd write all these things down now, every sort
Speaker 4: of thing. What mood was he in today? How is
Speaker 4: he walking? While he was in that mood? Was he fidgeted?
Speaker 4: Just I wrote so many things down, and that every
Speaker 4: time a situation arose after a period of time, I
Speaker 4: knew exactly how he would react, what he would do,
Speaker 4: and just you know, it's continuation of writing things down.
Speaker 2: Was there a particular player that Tiger would get up
Speaker 2: a little bit more for if you guys were around
Speaker 2: the same spot and the leaderboard going in a weekend,
Speaker 2: and what's a good example of that playing out?
Speaker 4: I mean, there's no question of who that person was.
Speaker 4: Left he mister Phil Michers said, there's no player that
Speaker 4: he would get up for more. And look, whilst they
Speaker 4: weren't the gravest of mace, he had unbelievable admiration for
Speaker 4: Phil's game, and he knew competing with Phil at the
Speaker 4: same time, when Phil got over the line and won
Speaker 4: his first major championship, it wasn't going to be the
Speaker 4: last one. And if he could be the guy there
Speaker 4: in contention every time when Phil's trying to win one
Speaker 4: of them and possibly prevent him from his first and
Speaker 4: keep that one win as lot away as long as
Speaker 4: he could, you know. So yeah, there was he absolutely
Speaker 4: every time when that you know, when he was playing
Speaker 4: with Phild, there was going to be there was going
Speaker 4: to be the utmost concentration.
Speaker 2: Was there a particular when when Phil was there that
Speaker 2: you think he took the most satisfaction from?
Speaker 4: Well, there were there were surprisingly how few times over
Speaker 4: Tiger's career they were appeared in the last round of
Speaker 4: a major.
Speaker 2: But as as an Ernie fan, I like to point
Speaker 2: that out very often as a big ernie.
Speaker 4: Guy, Yep, yep, absolutely, But look I mean look as
Speaker 4: a as a funny or not a funny thing. But
Speaker 4: Tiger won the Darrell Open, which was the Ford Drell
Speaker 4: Open in two thousand.
Speaker 3: So when you got your car, and.
Speaker 4: You know Ford was a film Phil was with Ford
Speaker 4: at the time. And yeah, I had a great pleasure
Speaker 4: in a bit of a laugh when Tiger gave me
Speaker 4: the keys of that forty g And some time after
Speaker 4: getting delivery of the car, and the next time I
Speaker 4: saw Phil after I've taking delivery of the car, said
Speaker 4: oh Phil, it's no good. You wouldn't have fit in
Speaker 4: it anyway.
Speaker 3: I just had heard that.
Speaker 2: I heard this last week actually and I you know,
Speaker 2: like as the caddy inside the ropes and somebody that
Speaker 2: caddy for other great players. You had to see what
Speaker 2: Tiger's presence did to other players. I heard just last
Speaker 2: week that during rounds of golf the only time ever
Speaker 2: Ernie Els chewed gum was when he was paired with
Speaker 2: Ernie Els. As someone who was on tour before, did
Speaker 2: you is there memories of guys seeing someone just do
Speaker 2: something that you would normally never see just because of
Speaker 2: Tiger's presence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, I mean, you know, one of the things
Speaker 4: about becoming such an accompliss player and such a fierce,
Speaker 4: fearless player and a fierce competitor like Jack Nicholas. You know,
Speaker 4: just the mere presence of a guy having his name
Speaker 4: on the leaderboard would make make players you know, Okay,
Speaker 4: here he comes again. It's going to be difficult to
Speaker 4: beat him, and sort of thing. Look, you know, you
Speaker 4: wouldn't know and ever would know. And any time you
Speaker 4: go to a tournament and there was a roar and
Speaker 4: it was for Tiger, it just had a different sound
Speaker 4: to it. And obviously he obviously attracted the biggest galleries.
Speaker 4: But even when you go to somewhere like Augusta and
Speaker 4: there's the same amount of people on every hole watching
Speaker 4: and that. But when he hold apart, the raw was different,
Speaker 4: and that was you know, that was a huge thing
Speaker 4: in your artillery to know that, you know, every player
Speaker 4: on the course knows that's another birdie I've made. That's
Speaker 4: another bird I've made. Here he comes again, you know that.
Speaker 4: But you know, other players, it's very difficult playing with Tiger.
Speaker 4: You know, he attracts a lot more media, there's a
Speaker 4: lot more people inside the ropes. It was a lot
Speaker 4: more chaotic, but he became so adjusted to it that
Speaker 4: it was just the Norman and there's no player more
Speaker 4: focused than he is. And he didn't even see a
Speaker 4: lot of things going on around him, you know. And
Speaker 4: I did my best job as I could, and somewhat,
Speaker 4: I guess, you know, I feel somewhat unfairly got a
Speaker 4: reputation probably that was not you know, Warrenton, But you
Speaker 4: know I tried to give him and the people that
Speaker 4: he were playing with, his playing partners, you know, a
Speaker 4: very fair and level playing field. Yeah, if I.
Speaker 5: Could just jump in there to the previous question, I
Speaker 5: think what really stood out to me, which you know,
Speaker 5: like it just glazed over at the time, we didn't
Speaker 5: realize the significance of the first and second round rings
Speaker 5: and some of these iconic major wins. That whether Tiger
Speaker 5: was always going to use a slide in any playing part,
Speaker 5: or whether it was just like a Cinderella story that
Speaker 5: was meant to be, it was just destiny. But Tiger
Speaker 5: paired with Valdo in the first two rounds at Hoylake
Speaker 5: after you know, they hadn't spoken for a year because
Speaker 5: Faldo criticized his swing. Getting paired with Jack Nicholas at
Speaker 5: Valhalla for the first two rounds and the only time
Speaker 5: ever during a major, and then there was there was
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight getting paired with Phil first time
Speaker 5: the USGA had done the one, two and three in
Speaker 5: the world as the Marquis perring. That couldn't have been
Speaker 5: a better fit for Tiger to use that as a
Speaker 5: source of inspiration. And you know, often what was left
Speaker 5: in the end on the Sunday was a difference of
Speaker 5: one or two strokes and steves that describes beautifully in
Speaker 5: the book how maybe one or two of those shots
Speaker 5: had come from the first two rounds. You know, where
Speaker 5: Tiger had had played well in front of Jack Nicholas
Speaker 5: because he had never played in a major with Jack Nicholas,
Speaker 5: or he was about to prove to Nick FOWLO, this
Speaker 5: swing is just fine the way it is. You know
Speaker 5: that he was gifted almost from above these pairings that.
Speaker 1: Helped him get into contention, let alone with you.
Speaker 4: Know, oh, you know, we covered that off very nicely
Speaker 4: in the book, and people will be very amazed to
Speaker 4: think that some of these little things made a huge difference,
Speaker 4: and they did. There's absolutely no question in my mind
Speaker 4: that some of the pairings given for the first two
Speaker 4: rounds of some of these major championships provided extra motivation.
Speaker 4: And like we all know, this is a guy that
Speaker 4: doesn't need any extra motivation and if you're going to
Speaker 4: give him a little X motivation and the explanation point
Speaker 4: on that would be Stephen Ames and the World Golf
Speaker 4: Championship match play thing. So that's covered off in the book.
Speaker 4: You give guy, you give someone like him, but a
Speaker 4: little bit of extra motivation. That's not something you need
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: Is there is there an event that kind of sticks
Speaker 2: with you as the biggest, the biggest missed opportunity. Obviously,
Speaker 2: most most situations you got in you came out on
Speaker 2: the right side of it. Is there one moment it
Speaker 2: could be, even a non obvious one where you kind
Speaker 2: of it feels like the one that got away that
Speaker 2: occasionally slips into your thoughts again.
Speaker 4: Yea, look, that's a great question, Andy, But yeah, I
Speaker 4: can honestly tell you, in all my years of canting
Speaker 4: to Tiger, there wasn't one time where I thought, you know,
Speaker 4: he should have came up on top and he didn't.
Speaker 4: I mean I never felt that amazingly, you know, it
Speaker 4: was incredible. I mean, if you went over a highlight
Speaker 4: reel of all the puts he made on the eighteenth
Speaker 4: hole that he needed to make either the win, to tire,
Speaker 4: whatever it might be. I mean, it was almost freaky
Speaker 4: that he hardly ever missed a part on the eighteenth hole.
Speaker 4: I mean, you look at that putty made the presents
Speaker 4: come and south after in the dark to tie the
Speaker 4: President's Cup. I mean, come on, no one's going to
Speaker 4: make that part and some of those pluts he made
Speaker 4: on the eighteenth pole at bay Hill, you know, to
Speaker 4: win the tournament. I mean there's that one big part
Speaker 4: that he made at bay Hill, that big forty five
Speaker 4: foot of left to right that he made hold out,
Speaker 4: and I believe that was to beat phil On even.
Speaker 4: I think that was. But you know that part there
Speaker 4: he wins the tournament bay Hill, incredible part, forty five
Speaker 4: foot part with about six to eight feet to break
Speaker 4: left to right, incredible part the hole. Immediately following the
Speaker 4: presentation at Bayhill, he lived at Ireworth, ten minutes down
Speaker 4: the road. He went back there and he hit like
Speaker 4: two hundred five irons, so I think it was one
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty. I counted because he hit a five
Speaker 4: iron for a second shot and he hated the way
Speaker 4: he hit that shot and where he left the board.
Speaker 4: He went home to Ireworth and we Australia in the
Speaker 4: range and I'm pretty sure I counted it was one
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty five lines he hit because he just
Speaker 4: he wasn't going to go to bed on the thought
Speaker 4: that the last swing that I made today was ratchet.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to have
Speaker 4: as many five eyes I can because I can replicate
Speaker 4: the shot. I mean, which player in the world would
Speaker 4: do that, none other than Tiger Woods.
Speaker 5: Steve does describe in the book like a few final rounds,
Speaker 5: not necessarily shots but fine rounds that got away. And
Speaker 5: if we're thinking about that obsession to Egal or beat
Speaker 5: Jack Nicholas's record, you obviously think about three major championships,
Speaker 5: and you know two of those were at Hale's team
Speaker 5: where Tiger just didn't have his best stuff in the
Speaker 5: final round I think against Rich beaming Birdie the Last
Speaker 5: Boar and told Steve he was going to Birdie the.
Speaker 1: Last war but it was just wasn't good enough.
Speaker 5: Pinehurst in two thousand and five, it was a pretty
Speaker 5: pivotal moment where Tiger hit a really shitty pitchhot on.
Speaker 5: I believe it was the sixteenth hole, and he could
Speaker 5: have really put some pressure on Michael Campbell at the time,
Speaker 5: but didn't. And then Oakmont in two thousand and seven, Steve,
Speaker 5: you sort of told me those were the final rounds
Speaker 5: that got away from him and the ones where there
Speaker 5: was maybe if you had just played as good as
Speaker 5: you know he was capable of, we could be sitting
Speaker 5: here saying that they're equal on eighteen majors each.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like there's always going to be those tournaments, and
Speaker 4: it's not like in those tournaments that you know there are,
Speaker 4: there's probably three of them that got away from him,
Speaker 4: but not got away, but ones he certainly felt he
Speaker 4: could have, you know, either got him to a playoff
Speaker 4: or one of those three that we mentioned. There was
Speaker 4: only one where at Pineus where we actually hit a
Speaker 4: poor shot. They were they were there were some opportunities
Speaker 4: like at Oakmon't there you know, you can drive it
Speaker 4: on that seventeenth hole there. And you know on Sunday
Speaker 4: going head to head with Cabera that you know, you
Speaker 4: obviously needed to put the ball in a position there
Speaker 4: where where if you didn't drive it on the green
Speaker 4: you could get it up and down. He didn't. But
Speaker 4: they weren't you know, poor shots or they weren't likely.
Speaker 4: You know that there was never I never came off
Speaker 4: the golf because and say, man, that was you know,
Speaker 4: a golden opportunity to loss. He gave that one away,
Speaker 4: you know, he never gave it away. He was like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, either beaten by someone down the stretch or
Speaker 4: just didn't execute some of the shots, you know, as
Speaker 4: good as good as you'd hope. But you know I
Speaker 4: never walked off a major championships. Well that you know,
Speaker 4: we should have won that. I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 4: you could have. But there's a big difference you could
Speaker 4: have and should.
Speaker 3: Have right now.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious if you've ever thought about how catting
Speaker 2: would be in this generation for tiger like Tiger Mania,
Speaker 2: in this generation with the cell phones, Like, how much
Speaker 2: harder has it become for a caddy? I mean, I
Speaker 2: know you occasionally your moonlight is a caddy. Now, how
Speaker 2: much harder is it with the phones then it was,
Speaker 2: you know years ago with the cameras in the Hoopla
Speaker 2: that was presented.
Speaker 4: That well, I mean, you know, there's been a lot
Speaker 4: of talk about the art of cadding. You know, it
Speaker 4: has been greatly diminished because caddies used to used to
Speaker 4: have to compile yardage books on their own and so
Speaker 4: forth and that. But everything's given to you now and
Speaker 4: then all the players have the access to shot link
Speaker 4: and to track man and all this so that they
Speaker 4: know how farther ball goes. I mean, so the actual
Speaker 4: skill of a caddy has been greatly diminished. And as
Speaker 4: far as you know, cadding these days compared to you know,
Speaker 4: with the say of the Tiger Mania was now, well,
Speaker 4: you know, it would be an extraordinary difficult task, you know,
Speaker 4: to give them the way you know, golf's evolved in
Speaker 4: the last you know, ten to fifteen years where there's
Speaker 4: a lot more younger people attend golf tourments. And now
Speaker 4: you go back twenty years ago and look at the galleries.
Speaker 4: You know, well, prior to Tiger coming into the game,
Speaker 4: you know, the galleries were you know, an older generation
Speaker 4: and a more quiet reserve sort of scene. But you know,
Speaker 4: you bring players into the game like you know, John Day,
Speaker 4: Tiger Woods, Bryce and to Shamba who bring a whole
Speaker 4: different follow into the game. And I think it's great.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, whether it be whether you attend
Speaker 4: a baseball game or golf tournent, that you want some
Speaker 4: kind of atmosphere and some excitement, and the younger generation
Speaker 4: bring the excitement and okay, it might get a bit
Speaker 4: loud and now of control sometimes, but you know that's exciting.
Speaker 4: It brings a bit of enthusiasm and pumps up the
Speaker 4: torn I think it's great.
Speaker 2: Last question, I want to be conscious of your time here.
Speaker 2: Is there something when you look back that you miss
Speaker 2: about catting for Tiger Woods?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean you know that the pasting an ultimate
Speaker 4: goal gave you something to get up every day and
Speaker 4: be motivated to, you know, and every time Tiger took
Speaker 4: one of those steps, it was just one step up
Speaker 4: the ladder, one more, one more wrung up the ladder,
Speaker 4: trying to get to perhaps break Jack's record of eighteen
Speaker 4: majors and get to nineteen. So you know, every time
Speaker 4: when you got on a plane, there was you know,
Speaker 4: there was a purpose. Everything was a purpose. But you know,
Speaker 4: when that dream was sort of shattered, something that you'd
Speaker 4: something you dreamt about, or put it this way that
Speaker 4: you know, I envisioned that moment when Tiger got to
Speaker 4: eighteen majors and nine and then eclipse jack record of
Speaker 4: nineteen majors. I could picture that in my head clearly.
Speaker 4: I thought about every day. Wasn't a day go by
Speaker 4: what I didn't think about that, whether it was winning
Speaker 4: majors not winning them. I fully believed in my mind
Speaker 4: that he would get to that record and it was
Speaker 4: going to be not only, you know, arguably the greatest
Speaker 4: moment in golf, but probably one of the greatest moments
Speaker 4: in sports to eclipse a record that no one would
Speaker 4: ever going to break. And it's a shame that it
Speaker 4: got derailed because I don't think anyone's ever going to be.
Speaker 4: We're never going to talk about another player that caposso
Speaker 4: break Jacks record. It's just too difficult now. And you
Speaker 4: know there's this you know, not that there wasn't a
Speaker 4: lot of great players when Tiger was playing, but through
Speaker 4: the modernization of equipment and so forth in the way
Speaker 4: everything is, the players have just got better and better
Speaker 4: and more confident because the equipment's allowed them get more confident,
Speaker 4: they hit the ball further, and it's just a whole
Speaker 4: different ballgame. You know. I grew up getting in the
Speaker 4: late seventies and eighties and just absolutely marveled at players
Speaker 4: like Gary Player and Lee Trevino how they got around
Speaker 4: a golf course. When I got the opportunity to get
Speaker 4: paired with Lee Trevino and watch him play, you know,
Speaker 4: he's an absolute legend. Now he must sit back now
Speaker 4: and watch and just think, well, that's not even the
Speaker 4: same gay. You know, I'm one of the best players ever,
Speaker 4: it's not even the same game they play, and it's
Speaker 4: not so Yeah, I think we looking for Tiger. In
Speaker 4: the air that Tiger played, not only was it fun,
Speaker 4: but it was very satisfying. In the air that they played.
Speaker 4: You know, if he had to come along. Now, the
Speaker 4: same guy came along now hit the ball equally as
Speaker 4: far and compared to his competitors, you know, it might
Speaker 4: might not have been as exciting as it was back then.
Speaker 4: So you know, he left a great stamp on the game,
Speaker 4: and you know he enabled the game to grow, which
Speaker 4: is a huge thing to be able to say you've
Speaker 4: been able to do and for me to be part
Speaker 4: of that and say it was pretty special.
Speaker 2: I was, I said last question, but I got to
Speaker 2: ask one of the things I've always wondered about is,
Speaker 2: you know, if technology didn't didn't advance, where would Tiger
Speaker 2: have gotten to Can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: what happened with technology and his peers and did they
Speaker 2: diminish anything, did it amplify anything about Tiger? And did
Speaker 2: it diminish any of his advances.
Speaker 4: That's a great question, Andy. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 4: feel like the continue improvement and equipment probably hurt, you know,
Speaker 4: like it took away some of his advantage. You know,
Speaker 4: for sure, the guys that were incredibly schooled at being
Speaker 4: able to move the ball, to be able to shape
Speaker 4: the ball. You know, Tiger played you know, like one
Speaker 4: of the two the biggest common thing between Jack Nicholas
Speaker 4: and Tiger Woods, the two greatest players have ever played
Speaker 4: the game, is that they when they looked at a shot,
Speaker 4: they played the shot as it's supposed to be played.
Speaker 4: If the pinners on the back right side of the green,
Speaker 4: they're going to booth the ball and left to right.
Speaker 4: If it's on the left side of the green, they're
Speaker 4: going to move the ball and right to left. If
Speaker 4: it requires a tiger hit every shot the way it
Speaker 4: was supposed to be hit and played. The golf course
Speaker 4: of like was supposed to be playing, and that's what
Speaker 4: made it easy to dissect the course. But with the
Speaker 4: advent of the of the golf ball and the equipment
Speaker 4: became more difficult to be able to shake the ball.
Speaker 4: And guys don't even need to shake the ball now
Speaker 4: even when it's you know, the balls are so good
Speaker 4: in the wind. They just stand up and they just
Speaker 4: blasted and they go straight. I mean, you look at
Speaker 4: how high some of these guys hit it in the wind,
Speaker 4: and you think, how can you kin have control over
Speaker 4: the ball hitting that high in the wind. But the
Speaker 4: equipment's just made it so good. So as he went
Speaker 4: along and as the improvement in the equipment came along,
Speaker 4: it took away some of as advartas no two ways
Speaker 4: about it. Would you agree with that.
Speaker 5: Evan, Oh, yeah, absolutely, I think I think you actually
Speaker 5: raised this maybe. I mean, going back to what Andy said,
Speaker 5: one of my favorite stories that didn't make the book
Speaker 5: was I don't think we had room for the time
Speaker 5: that you said. Sergio was probably one of the most
Speaker 5: the biggest victims of modern equipment. He came out ninety
Speaker 5: nine swing and obviously challenged Tiger at Madona, could work
Speaker 5: the ball in ways that weren't imaginable, and all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, you know that the ball was going so
Speaker 5: much straighter, the equipment was so much more forgiving and
Speaker 5: shot making that there was less of a sort of
Speaker 5: owners on that. And Steve, you said that Sergio might
Speaker 5: have won more than one or multiple majors had the
Speaker 5: equipment not advanced to the point where he lost a
Speaker 5: lot of his balls striking advantage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I no question about it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: he obviously modeled himself around Savriana Bellistaos, and he was
Speaker 4: able to move the ball left to right, right. You know,
Speaker 4: he was a shot maker, and you know he's a
Speaker 4: guy that the equipment absolutely hurt. I mean, if the
Speaker 4: equipment hadn't made such traumatic changes through you know, the
Speaker 4: two thousand era, the twentieth century, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: he would absolutely I believe he would have had a
Speaker 4: better major Telly than he has currently.
Speaker 2: There's Adam Scott quote, another guy that you carry for
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, where he was talking about
Speaker 2: modern strategy and he was like, I'm still trying to
Speaker 2: sort out this idea of me just hitting a driver
Speaker 2: as hard as I can is the best strategy on
Speaker 2: most holes. And if it's in the rough or if
Speaker 2: it's in the fairway, it doesn't it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: And I just think about, you know, I feel like
Speaker 2: an old person. I'm thirty eight, but I think about
Speaker 2: when I grew up with a smaller head and the
Speaker 2: wound balls.
Speaker 3: How much more it was just you had to hit
Speaker 3: the ball in the sweet spot.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean, you know, I look back for
Speaker 4: the very first time I came in a professional toron
Speaker 4: for Peter Thompson, you know, the great Australian player that was.
Speaker 2: That was your first first professional termament UK for Peter Thompson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nineteen seventy six and when I think back in
Speaker 4: the way he played golf and the way he moved
Speaker 4: the ball around a golf course to what it does now,
Speaker 4: it's not the same game. There's no question. It's not
Speaker 4: the same game. So, you know, the modernization of the
Speaker 4: equipment and so forth, it's just and that's what they do.
Speaker 4: Guys just they stand up on every team and they
Speaker 4: just hit it as far. Not every hole, but for
Speaker 4: the most part, they hit it as hard and as
Speaker 4: far as they can. And you know, you look, you
Speaker 4: look at a course like Saint Andrews, it's an absolute architecture.
Speaker 4: You know, it's as good as a guess. But last
Speaker 4: year at the Dunhill Links tourn on the last day,
Speaker 4: if you didn't shoot sixty six you lost places. Now,
Speaker 4: twenty years ago, to shoot sixty six round there was
Speaker 4: unbelievable because you know every bunk isn't play. But now
Speaker 4: you know nine percent of the bunkers don't even play.
Speaker 4: The guys go over them. You know, the course is
Speaker 4: just so short by modern standards. It's truly a shame
Speaker 4: how the game has got to where it is where
Speaker 4: a lot of these absolute masterpieces of golf course architecture
Speaker 4: are no longer relevant because of the distance of guys
Speaker 4: at the ball.
Speaker 3: I you know, it was what I was reading.
Speaker 2: I can't remember which tournament it was that Tiger averaged
Speaker 2: like three to eleven off the tee that you guys
Speaker 2: talked about. I was like three eleven in two thousand,
Speaker 2: was like, I think that was probably ahead of everybody else,
Speaker 2: and it's like, now it's like middle of the road.
Speaker 1: I think that was Madonna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nine, it's it was an awesome read as someone
Speaker 2: who came of a it like came my golf love
Speaker 2: was wrapped up so much in so many of these tournaments,
Speaker 2: like where I've developed my love of golf. I can't
Speaker 2: recommend the book enough. Congratulations guys. That was a fun,
Speaker 2: fun read and it's amazing to see the stories. And
Speaker 2: thank you for joining the show to talk about this.
Speaker 4: Well, Thanks Andy, thanks for having a song. We're delighted
Speaker 4: to be on the show. And yeah, great pleasure to
Speaker 4: be honor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, big fans of the podcast, so it was an
Speaker 5: honor to be on and thank.
Speaker 1: You for the kind words about in the book.
Speaker 5: It really is kind of like a good time to
Speaker 5: reflect on Tiger at the moment, and if I may
Speaker 5: say so myself.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I agree, it's a really fun read. So
Speaker 1: to just taking Steve stories.
Speaker 5: And package them for the golf world, for the sporting world,
Speaker 5: it's it was a lot of fun to write and
Speaker 5: and I hope it's as much fun for all the
Speaker 5: readers out there to be government read.
Speaker 2: All Right, thanks again for listening to another edition of
Speaker 2: the Friday Golf Podcast. We will be back next week,
Speaker 2: as I said at the top, with some master's content.
Speaker 2: We're going to do something on augusta National I'm gonna
Speaker 2: start gathering guests for that. Big thanks to PJ Clark
Speaker 2: for editing and producing this podcast. Sorry PJ for the Johnnies,
Speaker 2: and we will be back next week.
Speaker 3: Thanks everybody for listening.