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 in a brid.
Speaker 2: Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Fridagg brid.
Speaker 3: Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host,
Speaker 3: Andy Johnson. Today I'm excited to, I would say, kind
Speaker 3: of kick off our Master's coverage. This was a fun
Speaker 3: interview I was. I interviewed dra Cooper, who's the director
Speaker 3: of the new Amazon Prime documentary which debuts on March thirtieth,
Speaker 3: Rory McElroy The Master's Weight. It's like a very inside
Speaker 3: look at Rory's career and particularly the final round of
Speaker 3: at Augusta National. I was able to watch it, enjoyed
Speaker 3: it a lot. I think people that are really into
Speaker 3: golf will will enjoy it. And there's some some really
Speaker 3: cool moments.
Speaker 1: And interviews that you probably haven't heard before about about
Speaker 1: the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It's it's one of those rounds where I feel like
Speaker 3: the more and more you watch it, the you still
Speaker 3: are just as excited to see, you know, footage and
Speaker 3: shots from it. It was such an unbelievable round. So
Speaker 3: big thanks to Dre for coming on and talking about
Speaker 3: his film that he created, and and a lot about
Speaker 3: Rory twenty twenty five Masters Champion. So also at the
Speaker 3: back end, PJ and I producer PJ Clark and I
Speaker 3: are going to chop it up with our ten favorites
Speaker 3: for the Here's Masters. It's kind of a crazy Master's
Speaker 3: going into this where you know, Scotty and Rory haven't
Speaker 3: been I would say their best, they haven't. You know,
Speaker 3: Rory was really dominant going into last year's Masters. Scotty
Speaker 3: has after the win at PGA West, has been very
Speaker 3: mediocre by Scotty's standards, you know. I want to be clear,
Speaker 3: I don't want to get in Scotty's crosshairs, you know,
Speaker 3: but by by the standards he's set the last couple
Speaker 3: of years, he's been pretty mediocre. And then every other
Speaker 3: like really great player around them, you know, has played
Speaker 3: really well to the point where like Xander Schoffley has
Speaker 3: looked as good as he's looked in the last eighteen months.
Speaker 3: But you're looking at all the other guys, it's like,
Speaker 3: how do you even get Xander Shoffley into the top ten,
Speaker 3: so that that's a fun exercise. After the Drake Cooper
Speaker 3: interview that will round out this episode before we get
Speaker 3: to dre. This podcast is supported by Cobalt Rangefinders. This
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Speaker 3: And now let's get to Drake Cooper. Everybody's got like
Speaker 3: a different bar to clear. I feel like when I
Speaker 3: make a YouTube video about golf, I if it captures
Speaker 3: my wife's attention, I feel particularly good. Unfortunately, a lot
Speaker 3: of our stuff's a little too nitty gritty for my wife.
Speaker 3: Off it doesn't clear that bar. But like I'm particularly
Speaker 3: smitten when it does. Do you have a bar? Is
Speaker 3: there something that you feel like when you clear it,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh that was good.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's always the mom test. I'm like,
Speaker 4: if mom can understand this and track this, and if
Speaker 4: she's in, then we've done our job. So that's that's
Speaker 4: usually who I'm referencing. My wife, like, you know, she's
Speaker 4: my toughest critic. She'll tell me all the things that
Speaker 4: are wrong with it, but she'll understand it all, regardless
Speaker 4: of the complexity or how dense it is or what
Speaker 4: have you. Where's my Mom's just like, honey, what's going
Speaker 4: on here again? So we gotta gotta figure out how
Speaker 4: to you know, hit that hit that sweet spot. So yeah,
Speaker 4: Mom's usually the litmus test we did.
Speaker 3: We did a live pod years ago and I'd been
Speaker 3: podcasting at this point as my as my job for
Speaker 3: four plus years, and my wife had never listened to
Speaker 3: an episode, and she came to the live show and
Speaker 3: she came we came off the stage and she's like,
Speaker 3: you know, that was really good, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: thank you, thank thank you for for the first time
Speaker 3: in four years under you know, knowing what I actually
Speaker 3: do for my job.
Speaker 1: It was it was a humorous moment.
Speaker 3: Dre get you. You've worked on so many projects in
Speaker 3: your career, and I'm sure you get pitched a lot
Speaker 3: of projects. When this project came across your desk when
Speaker 3: you were when uh, it kind of came into your purview?
Speaker 3: What about it immediately appealed to you.
Speaker 4: I mean, Rory as far as elite athletes go, and
Speaker 4: and and you know guys that have been at their
Speaker 4: craft for a long time who've had incredible highs and
Speaker 4: incredible lows, I mean, Rory is that guy. And I
Speaker 4: was like immediately, I was like, oh my gosh, are
Speaker 4: you kidding me? I'm all in not to mention. You know,
Speaker 4: as most forty year olds do, you know, the door
Speaker 4: either opens to golf or back to golf. And so
Speaker 4: I was a kid. I grew up playing baseball. That
Speaker 4: was my thing. I played it every year, year round,
Speaker 4: you know, since I was like five years old. Mom
Speaker 4: was a single mom, and she was like, you're gonna
Speaker 4: do this, and I loved it. Fell in love with
Speaker 4: the game. And along the way, I'd pick up golf clubs,
Speaker 4: so you know, but then I put them down for
Speaker 4: some time, and so over the last couple of years,
Speaker 4: I've picked it back up, and you know, of course
Speaker 4: following Rory's story over these years and knowing how close
Speaker 4: he's come and how far he's been, and then obviously
Speaker 4: this year at the Masters was incredible, and I think
Speaker 4: Sunday goes down. I keep saying arguably the most exciting
Speaker 4: and dramatic round of golf, but I think it's I mean,
Speaker 4: you tell me you've you've seen a lot. I'm going
Speaker 4: to just go out on a limb and say the
Speaker 4: most dramatic and exciting round of golf in history.
Speaker 3: I've rewatched that final round like three or four times now,
Speaker 3: and you know, watching watching your film, I you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just as drawn into the story as as I was,
Speaker 3: like watching it live in person. In a way, I
Speaker 3: think it's it's got just such lasting power. There are
Speaker 3: certain moments in in uh time in sports. It's one
Speaker 3: of the great things that like just make lasting impression
Speaker 3: impressions on you and anytime you go back and watch it,
Speaker 3: you know, as a kid growing up in Chicago, the
Speaker 3: Last Dance documentary like brought back floods of like memories
Speaker 3: as a kid that were incredible, but this one being
Speaker 3: so fresh, it's still like you're still riveted by it,
Speaker 3: even though there's been so much talked about over the
Speaker 3: last you know year with as you dug into Rory's story,
Speaker 3: what were a couple of things that really stood out
Speaker 3: to you as someone who was kind of like a
Speaker 3: casual golf onlooker too diving really in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think first and foremost,
Speaker 4: there's you know, there's there's the reality that Rory has
Speaker 4: had this opportunity to achieve the rarest feed in golf
Speaker 4: with the career Grand Slam, you know, since since you know,
Speaker 4: going into the Masters in twenty fifteen, right, so you know,
Speaker 4: essentially eleven years, you know, with that sitting there, you know,
Speaker 4: as as the elephant in the room, so to speak.
Speaker 4: And so but you know, then he finally get gets
Speaker 4: it at this year's Masters. But it wasn't like a
Speaker 4: runaway round, or wasn't like a runaway tournament. It was
Speaker 4: so razor thin, I mean up until literally the last stroke,
Speaker 4: and so it became immediately clear that, you know, just
Speaker 4: given what Sunday represented, giving my own experience of having
Speaker 4: watched it live, that we wanted to make a film
Speaker 4: about a round of golf. And so I think from
Speaker 4: a filmmaking standpoint, it's like, well, you know, if you're
Speaker 4: a golf fan, you can watch a lot of golf.
Speaker 4: But if you don't sit there and watch a lot
Speaker 4: of golf, you're you're you know, if you're not a
Speaker 4: big golf fan. It's how are you going to do this? Right?
Speaker 4: How are you going to make a film about a
Speaker 4: round of golf? And I think, knowing how exciting and dramatic,
Speaker 4: it was inherently, you know, we had that going for us,
Speaker 4: but it was like it was inevitable. I knew we
Speaker 4: had to build the film around that as the through line.
Speaker 4: But then it was about how to build this parallel
Speaker 4: narrative of going back in time and understanding you know
Speaker 4: what led to that moment on the eighteenth Green when
Speaker 4: Rory finally sinks that putt and he drops to his
Speaker 4: knees and he has you know, one of the most
Speaker 4: dramatic and cathartic responses to that moment. And if you
Speaker 4: saw that yourself, whether in real time or saw it
Speaker 4: you know shortly thereafter, you know it was filled with
Speaker 4: so much emotion and power and a very very touching,
Speaker 4: but very intense moment. And I think, you know, we
Speaker 4: always talked about at the beginning of the project, if
Speaker 4: you could take that moment, bottle it up, and then
Speaker 4: unpack it over the course of ninety minutes to understand
Speaker 4: how he arrived at that moment, you know, then we'd
Speaker 4: have ourselves a compelling film. So I think right from
Speaker 4: the beginning it was about, you know, understanding you know
Speaker 4: what the challenge was, how to create this kind of
Speaker 4: parallel narrative of the Sunday Round, but also understanding you know,
Speaker 4: Rory's sort of story and journey to get there and
Speaker 4: not fall into the sort of typical, you know, a
Speaker 4: path of telling the cradle till now biopic.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We made a conscious decision to not do that and
Speaker 4: try to ground it in that Master's Round. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that was kind of where we started.
Speaker 3: You know, one thing you hit on it is an
Speaker 3: enormous story the you know, basically twenty eleven till last
Speaker 3: year's Masters and just that that kind of journey that
Speaker 3: that Rory went on.
Speaker 1: That is a huge, huge task.
Speaker 3: Of trying to figure out how to put this all
Speaker 3: together into an hour and a half. What were for
Speaker 3: you the most helpful pieces of putting it together or
Speaker 3: like the real big unlocks that you guys came across
Speaker 3: in the storytelling exploration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, when you look at Rory's
Speaker 4: relationship to Augusta, you know, and I think there's something
Speaker 4: really really fascinating about you know, Augusta is, you know,
Speaker 4: arguably the most storied course in all of golf, this
Speaker 4: rich history, but Rory himself has this incredibly you know,
Speaker 4: intimate and complicated relationship with this place. But it started
Speaker 4: out as a shangri la to Rory right as a
Speaker 4: young boy. You know, he loved the Knights of you know,
Speaker 4: watching the Masters with his dad. They'd catch it late
Speaker 4: on the BBC, you know, over the weekend, and so
Speaker 4: he grew up in awe of this place and of
Speaker 4: the players. To then have this place go from shangri
Speaker 4: law to haunted house over time, and then to figure
Speaker 4: out how he was going to sort of wrestle with
Speaker 4: this place. And so I think one of the biggest
Speaker 4: unlocks was looking at his experience in twenty eleven, arguably
Speaker 4: you know, one of the biggest chokes in Master's history.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe a case could be made for some
Speaker 4: others Norman, who Rory references as well, but I think
Speaker 4: Rory himself, when you see a guy with you know,
Speaker 4: a four shot lead going into Sunday, you know, to
Speaker 4: just watch him literally just you know, spiral. By the
Speaker 4: end of it was really really intense. I had known
Speaker 4: of it. I didn't recall, you know, how bad it
Speaker 4: went for him until we dug into the material and
Speaker 4: you just watch him, you watch the body language and
Speaker 4: you see the way he was responding. And so that
Speaker 4: twenty eleven experience, I think became a pretty big creative
Speaker 4: unlock because you really need to understand and that at
Speaker 4: just twenty one years old, he's got a chance to
Speaker 4: again make history, be one of the youngest guys since
Speaker 4: Tiger to win there, and he was doing it in
Speaker 4: just rare fashion, dominant fashion with that four shot lead.
Speaker 4: And then to watch it all crumble, you go, how
Speaker 4: do you come back from that? And you hear the punditsy, oh,
Speaker 4: Rory may never survive this, and then what's he do?
Speaker 4: Six weeks later? He just dusts off the shoulders and
Speaker 4: he breaks, you know, half a dozen records at the
Speaker 4: US Open to get his first major. And so you
Speaker 4: go ah, that's the guy everybody was talking about, and
Speaker 4: so that became a big, a big unlocked for us.
Speaker 3: How you know, obviously that A big piece of this,
Speaker 3: and you illuminated on it earlier, is the mental hurdles,
Speaker 3: which are how do you go about showcasing the mental
Speaker 3: side of something and what somebody might be going through
Speaker 3: between the ears in a visual story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, Andy, you asked me earlier,
Speaker 4: you know, when when the project first came my way,
Speaker 4: what excited me. Rory excited me for sure, But then
Speaker 4: the you know, the creative challenge of visually telling a
Speaker 4: story about golf, which is again, you know, it's one
Speaker 4: of the most if not I think it's the most
Speaker 4: mental sport there is. You know, as someone who played baseball,
Speaker 4: I would say baseball is like a cousin of golf,
Speaker 4: you know, in terms of kind of the mental fortitude required.
Speaker 4: But there's other sports where like, it's so much easier
Speaker 4: to get lost in the rhythm. Yes, you need to
Speaker 4: be an elite athlete, you need to have great skill
Speaker 4: to have success at the highest level, but basketball is
Speaker 4: a dance and when you're in the rhythm, you're in
Speaker 4: the rhythm. But golf, I mean, my god, you're standing
Speaker 4: there over this putt and it's right here and there's
Speaker 4: the cup, and it's like a million things can get
Speaker 4: in the way. And you think you're sitting back at
Speaker 4: home on the couch, You're like, oh, how hard is that?
Speaker 4: Even I could do that? And then when you watch
Speaker 4: a myss, you go, oh my god, and you just
Speaker 4: know it's so hard to get it done at that
Speaker 4: the margins are so thin, and so the mental side
Speaker 4: is critical, right, And so visually in talking to Rory,
Speaker 4: you know, he talked a lot about his strategy for Sunday.
Speaker 4: You know, he said he felt good going into Sunday,
Speaker 4: but he was uncomfortable about his pairing with Bryson, and
Speaker 4: so you know, he talked to doctor Bob and some
Speaker 4: others and he was like, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 4: figure out how to kind of get into my own
Speaker 4: bubble and I'm going to try to like, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of drown out the noise. And you hear this
Speaker 4: all the time at this level, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: shut out the noise, focus on me. But when you're
Speaker 4: doing it in golf, it's even harder because just there's
Speaker 4: just a million things that can go through your head
Speaker 4: when you're over that ball. It's just it's so hard
Speaker 4: in that way. And so we started with that, and
Speaker 4: then as we got deeper with Rory and as he
Speaker 4: talked about his process, you know, swing thoughts are such
Speaker 4: a big deal, and so the idea was, well, how
Speaker 4: do we visualize this? And so that's where I came
Speaker 4: up with the idea of, you know, essentially, you know,
Speaker 4: let's film with Rory at Augusta without the crowd, you know,
Speaker 4: without the gallery and his own little world, just him
Speaker 4: and this place. And so we did all these kind
Speaker 4: of specific visual shots of him at key holes, at
Speaker 4: key points, so that we could in the telling of
Speaker 4: the story not simply see the broadcast just recut, but
Speaker 4: how to actually go deeper into you know, his experience
Speaker 4: of it and make the experience of the film you know,
Speaker 4: sort of immersive and kind of experiential. And so we
Speaker 4: came up with that sort of visual motif.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that plays out throughout it.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a neat little piece of it of
Speaker 3: it kind of ties together. I think I think you're
Speaker 3: right on about baseball. I've always said pitchers. Pitchers are
Speaker 3: the closest corollary because it's the only non reactionary kind
Speaker 3: of like you know, hitting sea the ball, hit the
Speaker 3: ball right, and you can go into slumps a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it's it's see the ball, hit the ball. Pitching
Speaker 3: you have to think, and you get the guys that
Speaker 3: can't throw to first base because they get the yips,
Speaker 3: you know. They you got guys that just bomb out
Speaker 3: because they can't throw strikes anymore. It's very similar with golf.
Speaker 3: It's it's super hard. I saw that you also directed
Speaker 3: a documentary about Clarissa Shields, the gold medalist boxer. And
Speaker 3: then I assume in your career, throughout it, you've you've
Speaker 3: been across a lot of high performers. Have you noticed
Speaker 3: anything about personalities of high performers and how so did
Speaker 3: Rory kind of stand out amongst the group of people
Speaker 3: that you've been around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, I'm sure they
Speaker 4: all share some personality traits. I mean call it, you know,
Speaker 4: some sort of version of you know, uh type A,
Speaker 4: you know, alpha, that sort of thing. But I think
Speaker 4: more than anything, what they share is this and it's interesting.
Speaker 4: It's it's there's a moment of it in the film
Speaker 4: an old Charlie Rose interview that he did with Rory
Speaker 4: where he asked him, you know, is there a common
Speaker 4: denominator with elite athletes? You know what what separates you
Speaker 4: guys from the rest?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Is it a will to win? And Rory said, it's belief,
Speaker 4: and he goes, okay, And then a moment later Rory
Speaker 4: corrects himself and he goes, no, no, No, it's knowing. It's
Speaker 4: knowing that you're going to win. And I think with
Speaker 4: every athlete I've worked with, it's this un like flappable
Speaker 4: knowing that they will achieve the goal, that they will
Speaker 4: achieve the thing they have in their mind and you
Speaker 4: can't shake it. But the biggest challenge is for all
Speaker 4: of them, and you see this in Rory's story in particular,
Speaker 4: is that when you want it so bad, there's diminishing returns,
Speaker 4: and you've got to figure out how to unlearn that obsessiveness, right,
Speaker 4: that obsession to win that competitive fire, you have to
Speaker 4: unlearn some of this stuff and figure out how to
Speaker 4: essentially let go and be in the moment, be present,
Speaker 4: trust yourself, trust the process, all the stuff that is
Speaker 4: so easy to say and incredibly difficult, if not the
Speaker 4: most difficult to actually put into practice, and that's why
Speaker 4: there's only so many people that do the things that
Speaker 4: people like Rory do.
Speaker 3: A sought through this process from twenty eleven, what was
Speaker 3: your particular favorite theory he had through the years on
Speaker 3: how he should prep for AUGUSTA?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean without a doubt. I mean, the
Speaker 4: hypnosis was pretty incredible. And that's when I was like,
Speaker 4: hold on, you see it in the interview. I'm like, wait, wait,
Speaker 4: hypnosis and he's like, no, no, no, no, it's not
Speaker 4: like that, like there's some more science to it. There's
Speaker 4: some science, you know. And again, look in his defense,
Speaker 4: he's like, I'll do anything to achieve my goal. At
Speaker 4: this point, you know, he was like, you know, when
Speaker 4: he went into the Masters in twenty fifteen, He's got
Speaker 4: the Grand Slam in front of him, and it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: this will pan out. I mean, look at how incredibly
Speaker 4: successful I've been. Okay, comes up short, comes up short again,
Speaker 4: then again, then again. And I think in twenty eighteen
Speaker 4: with Patrick Reid was when he was really like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, the clock is actually ticking, like what is
Speaker 4: happening here? And you start doubting and he starts searching.
Speaker 4: And this is what makes Rory's story so incredible. It
Speaker 4: makes Rory himself as a as an athlete, but as
Speaker 4: a as a guy who's a like he's a deep thinker,
Speaker 4: and he he he's willing to go there, not just
Speaker 4: you know, with us in the film, but with himself
Speaker 4: right on a personal level, like he's like, Okay, what
Speaker 4: could I do differently? And everybody's got to kind of
Speaker 4: chart their own path. And I think you know, there
Speaker 4: was a point where we called that scene in the
Speaker 4: kitchen sink, you know, because Rory was just like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to throw everything at it. And ultimately, you know,
Speaker 4: again it's no surprise he had to figure out how
Speaker 4: to just care less, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 4: sometimes you got to take It's like this in a
Speaker 4: quantum theory, right, It's like you got to take your
Speaker 4: eye off the thing, and the thing moves in space,
Speaker 4: and so you can't be so laser focused otherwise you
Speaker 4: sees up, you know, and so there's this real challenging
Speaker 4: practice and so you know, it's like just back to
Speaker 4: back to letting go. You know, it's very it's very
Speaker 4: zin in many ways.
Speaker 3: You know, something you said about the athletes and their
Speaker 3: belief Through the years that I've known Rory and preceding
Speaker 3: this win, in any conversation I ever had with him,
Speaker 3: you know, it always arrested my senses in conversation when
Speaker 3: the Masters came up, it was he. I never heard
Speaker 3: him say if I win the Masters. It always was
Speaker 3: when I win the Masters. And like me as a human,
Speaker 3: you know, like part of me sometimes was gonna be
Speaker 3: like buddy, I I don't know if that's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But he had that belief of when.
Speaker 3: In this round, you know, I I think it's like
Speaker 3: you guys described it well, and I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people kind of pointed to this as like any
Speaker 3: Bryson was the target and the challenge early on, and
Speaker 3: I think you included like a SoundBite of somebody saying,
Speaker 3: you know, then he had to beat himself.
Speaker 1: To a certain.
Speaker 3: Extent with all these huge moments and all like huge
Speaker 3: moments in the sense magical and tragic within one round
Speaker 3: of golf. How did you go about choosing which ones
Speaker 3: you wanted to amplify, you know, because you could show everything, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Yeah, I mean that was a ongoing conversation internally
Speaker 4: with our edit team, and you know, we went, you know,
Speaker 4: we went all in. You know, are we seeing every
Speaker 4: single hole? And then we went, oh no, we're going
Speaker 4: to pull out most of him and make it, make
Speaker 4: it more about his journey. And then it was like,
Speaker 4: oh no, no, no, no, no, Now we're coming back. And so
Speaker 4: we sort of landed in the middle. And look, it
Speaker 4: was this ongoing conversation with Rory with his team. They
Speaker 4: all have different holes that meant different things. There were
Speaker 4: some that had a level of nuance or I was like, man,
Speaker 4: that is so in the weeds, dude, I don't even
Speaker 4: know if I understand what you're talking about right now.
Speaker 4: So look, I think there's a roller coaster ride that
Speaker 4: is obvious in the sense that he starts with the
Speaker 4: lead and he immediately loses that thing right out the gate.
Speaker 4: You're just like, okay, so we're showing a whole one.
Speaker 4: He's tied after one, then he loses it after two,
Speaker 4: and you're like, oh my god, now what you know what,
Speaker 4: We're going to show you what happened in twenty eleven, right,
Speaker 4: this is just like that, right, So you know, for us,
Speaker 4: it was about finding to the extent that we could
Speaker 4: parallels between the twenty five round and his and his
Speaker 4: past and where he's been before, and sometimes those mirrored
Speaker 4: each other, and they rhymed and sometimes they didn't. But
Speaker 4: it was okay from a from a storytelling standpoint. And so,
Speaker 4: you know, once we come back to twenty five and
Speaker 4: by a whole three and four, you know, he's the
Speaker 4: Roary that we've seen before, who's just you know, sharp clean,
Speaker 4: And next thing, you know, he's got a bigger lead
Speaker 4: by the end of four than he did at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the day, and you're like, okay, Then we
Speaker 4: go back in time and we see, like, this is
Speaker 4: the young prodigy who went on this meteoric rise after
Speaker 4: the incident in twenty eleven. Three out of the four
Speaker 4: majors in his pocket in three years. That's who this
Speaker 4: guy was. And now here we are in twenty five
Speaker 4: and that's who this guy is, right, let's see it.
Speaker 4: And so then things start to unfold, and so you know,
Speaker 4: it was a constant conversation about how to use the
Speaker 4: holes in different ways. You know, Whole seven, well, whole
Speaker 4: five was sort of the first like recovery shots, and
Speaker 4: so you know, how deep do we go there? Do
Speaker 4: we not go too deep? Because Whole seven is even
Speaker 4: a better example of it because he has the conversation
Speaker 4: with Harry and Harry's like, dude, just chip it out,
Speaker 4: like what are you thinking? And when we went to
Speaker 4: Augusta and we were filming there with him, and we
Speaker 4: walked the course and he's like, yeah, so dre's here's
Speaker 4: where I was. And I'm like here and he's like yeah.
Speaker 4: And I looked up and I'm like, that's the gap
Speaker 4: you shot through. He's like yeah yeah. And I'm like, dude,
Speaker 4: if I'm in his position, all I see are like
Speaker 4: four huge trunks of trees and I'm just like, I'm
Speaker 4: literally just like moving that thing over the fairway. There's
Speaker 4: no version where you're taking that shot. And he's like,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, I totally have a shot. And Harry's like
Speaker 4: all right, dude, let's see what you got. And so
Speaker 4: that became an example of like that squash buckling, exciting,
Speaker 4: you know, approach that he has in his game, which
Speaker 4: makes watching Rory so fun because you're like, dude, he's
Speaker 4: not a robot out there. He's a painter, right, He's
Speaker 4: like an artist. He likes to move, and he likes
Speaker 4: to do things that are unexpected, and he takes he
Speaker 4: takes risks. Jack would say he's taken too much risk
Speaker 4: over the years, and so it was interesting to get
Speaker 4: Jack's perspective, Who's like, he's got to temper that a
Speaker 4: little bit. So, Look, it took Rory fourteen years to
Speaker 4: listen to Jack, and I think it ultimately paid off.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Harry, he famously never goes any interviews.
Speaker 1: Did you consider asking if he'd do one for this?
Speaker 4: Oh, come on, Andy. We we tried so hard and
Speaker 4: we were like, oh my god. We were like, we
Speaker 4: would not put it to bed, you know, and his
Speaker 4: team blessed their hearts. Everybody went to bat for us.
Speaker 4: I mean, as you see in the film. I mean,
Speaker 4: we had the honor and privilege of sitting down with
Speaker 4: Rory's mom and dad, who also don't do much press,
Speaker 4: haven't done much in years, and they were so kind
Speaker 4: and generous with their time and their inside and they
Speaker 4: were just I mean, you know, I think they really
Speaker 4: they really make the film if you ask me. So.
Speaker 4: You know, once, once mom and dad came into the fold,
Speaker 4: that really unlocked a lot of the film and yeah,
Speaker 4: we continue to try to put some pressure on Harry
Speaker 4: from different points, you know, vantage points. Ultimately he's like, guys,
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not one for the limelight. So he uh,
Speaker 4: he respectfully declined, but his presence is there.
Speaker 3: I was having a conversation the Sunday that Rory won
Speaker 3: with a journalist who was attempting to put together a
Speaker 3: story about Rory's caddy, and he was like.
Speaker 1: I can't pin him down.
Speaker 3: He won't give me an interview, you know, And he was,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of like the strife of you know,
Speaker 3: he never never gives us anything.
Speaker 1: And I go, well, doesn't that make him a perfect caddy?
Speaker 3: You know, because he he you know, cat, I you
Speaker 3: know this, it's an interesting dynamic every journalist and media
Speaker 3: member and thus fans love the cat that always have
Speaker 3: time for to talk about what's going on. But in
Speaker 3: a way, if you're a player, maybe you want your
Speaker 3: caddie to just not say anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just keep keep keep keep them guessing, keep them
Speaker 4: on their toes, you know.
Speaker 3: With regards to Jerry and Rosie in some respects that
Speaker 3: are kind of the stars of the film. Uh, and
Speaker 3: they obviously do not participate in media or interviews very
Speaker 3: often in terms of your work. What what is their contribution?
Speaker 3: Do you feel Ad added the most to the film?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, I think you know, what what
Speaker 4: makes Rory's story so interesting and inspirational ultimately is Rory's
Speaker 4: not unlike a lot of other boys and girls who
Speaker 4: you know, have a dream, right and and and and
Speaker 4: as crazy and naive as that dream may seem, Rory
Speaker 4: was fortunate enough to have parents who saw in him
Speaker 4: this crazy obsession but recognized that his obsession was actually
Speaker 4: was pretty good. And they decided, you know, against you know,
Speaker 4: probably better judgment, that they were going to make some
Speaker 4: big sacrifices on his behalf and see how things would
Speaker 4: play out. And so, you know, they came from modest
Speaker 4: means in Northern Ireland, and they decided to take on
Speaker 4: additional work and you know, work extra shifts at night
Speaker 4: to support Rory's Rory's dream. And you know, I think
Speaker 4: as an origin story, that's where things begin with him
Speaker 4: and his family and families everything to Rory. He was
Speaker 4: an only child and so mom and dad were the
Speaker 4: center of his universe. It was just mom, dad and golf.
Speaker 4: And so to have the opportunity to sit down with
Speaker 4: with his his mom and dad. Look, everything that they
Speaker 4: shared with us was instrumental and key to sort of
Speaker 4: understanding in a deeper way, you know, the kind of
Speaker 4: kid Rory was and just how this whole dream became
Speaker 4: a reality and they were able to shed some light
Speaker 4: on stuff. I mean, you know, it's it's no secret
Speaker 4: that Rory's you know, had challenges with putting. But to
Speaker 4: hear Mom just share, you know, the frustrations that Rory
Speaker 4: had as a young boy that you know, there's some
Speaker 4: stuff that didn't all make it in the film, but
Speaker 4: you know she was like, look, he'd say, Mom, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna go out and I'm gonna putt, and she went, okay, Rory.
Speaker 4: And then he'd he'd go out and he'd just pick
Speaker 4: up his chipper and he'd just start chipping and that's
Speaker 4: all he'd do. He'd just jip. He wouldn't put you know.
Speaker 4: So it's that kind of level of insight that was
Speaker 4: just like so great to hear and understand and you understand,
Speaker 4: like it just Pete paints this really like interesting and
Speaker 4: complex picture of you know, how Rory came to be.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of doc betaries have people uh
Speaker 3: doing voiceovers, and you guys chose some more traditional method
Speaker 3: of letting you know, the scenes and the stand up
Speaker 3: talking heads tell the story.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that benefited this narrative?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think the you know, again, going
Speaker 4: back to kind of how we structured the film, this
Speaker 4: sort of like dual timeline between the twenty five Sunday
Speaker 4: round and then sort of Rory's kind of backstory and experience.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of sort of threading that needed
Speaker 4: to be done. And along the way, you know, we
Speaker 4: were fortunate, you know, to be able to have this
Speaker 4: you know, great rapport with Rory and you know, he
Speaker 4: wanted the film to be good obviously, and so he
Speaker 4: was like, guys, I'm going to give you, I'm going
Speaker 4: to give you quite a bit of my time, don't
Speaker 4: you know, don't don't let me down. So the pressure
Speaker 4: was on to deliver, and and Rory was very very
Speaker 4: open with his time. And it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 4: rare to have someone in sport really be able to
Speaker 4: kind of like tell their story. I mean, I'm thinking
Speaker 4: of you know, the Tiger doc for example. I mean,
Speaker 4: Tiger doesn't even appear in the thing. You know, there's
Speaker 4: others out there where you're hearing from the guys, but
Speaker 4: he he really provided the backbone, right, So we just
Speaker 4: wanted to make this like here's Rory, He's guiding us
Speaker 4: through this thing, and then along the way, these are
Speaker 4: the people in his world. And so to hear from
Speaker 4: mom and dad, to hear from you know, his putting
Speaker 4: coach and golf analyst Brad Faxon was really insightful. You know. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: Rory enlisted the help of doctor Bob Rotella, so you know,
Speaker 4: hearing from from doctor Bob about the work that they
Speaker 4: do and seeing how all that kind of plays into
Speaker 4: you know, Rory's experience in twenty five. You know, I
Speaker 4: thought it was really the way to go in terms
Speaker 4: of just bringing the story to light. Sometimes you got
Speaker 4: to just do the thing, you know, you know, simple
Speaker 4: as simple can can be good, and so that's what
Speaker 4: we're we're shooting for.
Speaker 3: You mentioned a willingness like you know, hey, I want
Speaker 3: this to be good being open. How much did you
Speaker 3: have to push Rory to be honest about his failures
Speaker 3: in the interviews or was it an open book? And
Speaker 3: and how does that compare with other subjects in your
Speaker 3: in your career.
Speaker 4: Well back to your earlier question, Andy about like, you know,
Speaker 4: having worked with a handful of various elite athletes, you
Speaker 4: know there is there a common you know, uh kind
Speaker 4: of theme that you can draw between them, or personality traits.
Speaker 4: I will say, and maybe this is obvious to a
Speaker 4: lot of listeners, but they don't talk about the bad.
Speaker 4: They don't like to talk about the bad. They don't
Speaker 4: want to dwell on the bad. These guys thrive on
Speaker 4: positivity and short memories right and keeping things light. And
Speaker 4: so Rory's rare because he is willing to go there,
Speaker 4: but it's taken time. And when you do that at
Speaker 4: that level where he's still competing, you still have to
Speaker 4: be careful not to dwell on it or get too
Speaker 4: deep into it in some ways. And so I think
Speaker 4: for Rory and for other athletes, it's always this fine
Speaker 4: line between like, Okay, yes, let me spend some time
Speaker 4: kind of thinking about this, because we are trying to
Speaker 4: create and share a story versus I got a tournament
Speaker 4: in two days, and like, the last thing I want
Speaker 4: to do is be like bringing up all this stuff
Speaker 4: that's going to like maybe cloud me in some ways,
Speaker 4: and so I think there's this penchant to always keep
Speaker 4: things kind of light and positive. But look, to Rory's credit,
Speaker 4: he's been at this a long time. He's he's asked
Speaker 4: himself the hard questions. He's had some really really challenging
Speaker 4: stretches in his career, lots of doubt, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: to his credit, he was willing to go there at
Speaker 4: times and share with us, you know, when he was
Speaker 4: starting to lose a little bit of love for the game.
Speaker 4: And I think it was right around that kind of
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen twenty eighteen time when you know he was
Speaker 4: searching and needed to find a different way. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's no prescription, right if there was, all these guys
Speaker 4: would be you know, successful every time. There's no prescription,
Speaker 4: and so you got to find that process that works
Speaker 4: for you and trust, trust the outcome, but don't pay
Speaker 4: too much attention to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the other crazy thing about golf is, you
Speaker 3: know a lot of sports that's one you win or
Speaker 3: you lose, and golf it's you know, you have to
Speaker 3: beat In the case of the Masters, eighty nine ninety
Speaker 3: other guys who are all attempting to win like it
Speaker 3: is a It is a true winner takes all sport,
Speaker 3: which is the wild aspect of the margins that you're
Speaker 3: you're speaking of how razor thin they.
Speaker 4: Are, Yeah, I mean incredibly razor thin. And it's also
Speaker 4: the one sport. You know, again, you could dig into
Speaker 4: this in every sport, but to be leading with the
Speaker 4: lead and to be chasing that lead I think take
Speaker 4: on a completely different complexion in golf because it's so
Speaker 4: singular and so I mean you saw yesterday the LPGA
Speaker 4: here where you know, yeah, like Nellie Korda was like,
Speaker 4: you know what, four or five strokes back maybe at
Speaker 4: the beginning of the day, and next thing, you know,
Speaker 4: she's got an opportunity to take the lead, and she's
Speaker 4: been charging all day just like in that position to
Speaker 4: just get after it. And then when she has that
Speaker 4: opportunity on the on the back nine, she tightens up
Speaker 4: and she can't quite do it and she's like oh,
Speaker 4: and then it ends up getting away from her and
Speaker 4: Kim ends up winning. And so you know, golf is
Speaker 4: so tricky that way, and so you see with Rory,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, after the front or the first nine,
Speaker 4: I'm using good Augusta speak there, just just noting that
Speaker 4: that's from the shout out to.
Speaker 1: A guy Pat, I heard it, okay, all right.
Speaker 4: So after the first nine he's like, oh, Bryson was
Speaker 4: no longer in contention. I felt like I was. I was,
Speaker 4: you know, I was in control. And then here comes
Speaker 4: another shark and it's just and Rose and they end
Speaker 4: up trading the lead back and forth, you know, three
Speaker 4: four times practically before they get to the eighteenth hole,
Speaker 4: and it's just that like constant push and pull and uh,
Speaker 4: I think that part of the game is super fascinating.
Speaker 4: And just like man talk about razor thin margins at
Speaker 4: every step, it's a lot it's so hard to.
Speaker 1: Win outside of that.
Speaker 3: I you know, curious as a golfer, you know, you've
Speaker 3: you've made most of your career outside of golf. You
Speaker 3: you work on this project that's you know, so golf.
Speaker 3: Was there anything else that that like kind of crystallized
Speaker 3: to you about the sport or rory for that batter
Speaker 3: that you wouldn't have had this perspective had you not
Speaker 3: worked on this project.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean a lot of it comes back to again,
Speaker 4: I don't want to take anything away, you know from
Speaker 4: you know, all the time and energy that needs to
Speaker 4: go into perfecting a swing, you know, and Rory's got
Speaker 4: one of the prettiest swings in the game. But there
Speaker 4: really is and we've talked about this a little bit
Speaker 4: at different points, there really is something to be said
Speaker 4: about trusting where you're at, you know, and not over
Speaker 4: cooking it, overthinking it, you know, the instruction manual as
Speaker 4: Brad Faxon calls it. You know, we all fall into
Speaker 4: that trap of the how to, you know, how we're
Speaker 4: going to do this thing. And there was this great
Speaker 4: moment and again this is just like talk about the
Speaker 4: challenge of filmmaking and editing. I mean, some of the
Speaker 4: greatest moments don't make it into the movie because they
Speaker 4: just sometimes they get in the way. And there was
Speaker 4: this great moment with Jack in his interview and I
Speaker 4: said to him, I said, so, you know the best
Speaker 4: to ever do it? You know, you know the mass
Speaker 4: like the back of your hand. You played Augusta a
Speaker 4: million times, Like, what's the secret to the greens? How
Speaker 4: do you read greens? And he goes, he steps back
Speaker 4: and he goes, it's just feel that's it. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: come on, there's got to be there's more to it.
Speaker 4: You just don't want to share all the insight. And
Speaker 4: he's like, no, sometimes you got to just feel it.
Speaker 4: You got to trust where you've been, trust the work
Speaker 4: you've put in, and you've got to kind of feel
Speaker 4: your way around the greens sometimes. And so he's like,
Speaker 4: you'll see, guys, they spend too much time over the
Speaker 4: over the ball, you know, common mistake, right, You're just
Speaker 4: you're over it too long. The next thing, you know,
Speaker 4: one too many thoughts. So to answer your question, I
Speaker 4: think in the simplest terms, Andy, it's like, what's the
Speaker 4: big takeaway I had, which is just like hic be open,
Speaker 4: trust that process and like let go. Got it. We
Speaker 4: have to learn to let go. And it's like it's
Speaker 4: the one sport where you're like, oh, but you just
Speaker 4: got to let go. And Rory obviously is a testament
Speaker 4: to that, especially on Sunday when things could have gone
Speaker 4: south fast or even further south than they appeared to
Speaker 4: go on certain holes.
Speaker 1: You know, it's.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the assets of the sport. It's the
Speaker 3: hardest sport to let go. Yeah, it's the simplest advice.
Speaker 3: It's the best advice is to just let go because
Speaker 3: like you think about, like biomechanics just work better when
Speaker 3: you're relaxed, right, your body moves more freely, all these things.
Speaker 3: I was talking to somebody. It was more about life
Speaker 3: than about golf, but I heard it and it stuck
Speaker 3: with me for golf. And I've only played one round
Speaker 3: since this, and I played just an unbelievable round.
Speaker 1: But this person said to me, Andy, you can't go.
Speaker 3: Back and litigate how you got here, and you can't
Speaker 3: also consume yourself about thinking.
Speaker 1: About where you're going. You just have to be where
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 3: And I use this for golf, and it was transcendent
Speaker 3: for my mental approach. But it's you know, it's like
Speaker 3: these things. It's like a fleeting thing. That's the beauty
Speaker 3: of golf. It's inconquerable or unconquerable.
Speaker 1: It just candever.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And you watch these guys. I mean it's
Speaker 4: like that's why Rory talks so much about like it's
Speaker 4: like you got to string four good rounds together. You
Speaker 4: know how hard that is. And when you go back
Speaker 4: and look at his twenty five Masters run, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know some say it wasn't four, it was maybe
Speaker 4: two or two and a half, you know, and he
Speaker 4: got away with one and you know, or you know,
Speaker 4: maybe it was three. But to be that consistent at
Speaker 4: that level is the hardest thing you could possibly do.
Speaker 4: So for us, you know, just the guys that are
Speaker 4: out here trying to have a good time with some friends.
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to beat my buddies. I'm just trying
Speaker 4: to win the little stack of stack of dough. I'm
Speaker 4: just honestly, I'm just trying to hit the ball straight
Speaker 4: half the time, you know what i mean. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll go, oh, what did I do last time? Why
Speaker 4: I didn't it work this time? It's like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: no no. Just get up there, try to get in
Speaker 4: the moment, do your routine, and just try to feel
Speaker 4: your way through this a little bit more and not
Speaker 4: think your way through this.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, it's just like what Rotella said about
Speaker 3: in the in the piece, I thought that was an
Speaker 3: amazing Like I've made a career tell you know, everybody
Speaker 3: says you can't do this, you know, and win a tournament,
Speaker 3: and I've made a career telling people it's okay that
Speaker 3: people do these mistakes and still win all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, that was a really great retort when we
Speaker 4: found that little moment. We've kind of again, editing is
Speaker 4: editing is alchemy, right, and I think it's like filmmaking
Speaker 4: is funny. There's a lot of parallels to to golf.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, in filmmaking, I like to think
Speaker 4: about three movies are being made. You know, it's the
Speaker 4: one you plan and write and the one you shoot,
Speaker 4: and then there's the one you edit, you know, and
Speaker 4: all three they're all related, they're all cousins of each other,
Speaker 4: but they're all different. And the editing process itself is
Speaker 4: where these things all come together. And when we had
Speaker 4: that great biting line from one of the BBC commentators,
Speaker 4: it was just like, oh my god, how could Roy
Speaker 4: McElroy end up in the bunker on his approach shot
Speaker 4: on the eighteenth, Like you can't win like that, not
Speaker 4: if you're working with doctor Bob Sky's the limit.
Speaker 3: It's one day we'll have to have you come on
Speaker 3: and do a whole filmmaking golf comp you know podcast.
Speaker 3: But Drey, congratulations on your work. I'm sure you're excited
Speaker 3: for the world to see it, and hopefully we'll see
Speaker 3: you do a couple bore projects in golf before you're
Speaker 3: enter of your career.
Speaker 4: Man spread the word, Andy, I'm like, man, I got
Speaker 4: the bug. I'm all in. It was great, Rory's incredible
Speaker 4: to work with, his team was fantastic. So yeah, I
Speaker 4: had a great time. So yeah, excited, excited for the
Speaker 4: film to come out, and yeah, I'll see you guys around.
Speaker 3: I just a word of caution, don't make golf your
Speaker 3: full time thing because then, you know what you learn
Speaker 3: is golf golf goes away, your personal golf goes away.
Speaker 4: So totally right, You're like, I don't have time to
Speaker 4: do this. That's the thing. It's like everybody thinks golf
Speaker 4: is an expensive sport by all means it is not cheap,
Speaker 4: but it's it's expensive in time, right, It's like you
Speaker 4: need that more than anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, thanks Dray.
Speaker 4: Yeah I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: Before we get to PJ Clark and our ten Masters favorites,
Speaker 3: let's talk about our friends over at Perfect Practice, putting bat.
Speaker 3: You know what Rory needed when he was a kid,
Speaker 3: you know's Terrey's talking about how his mom mentions He
Speaker 3: never liked putting, never never liked practicing putting. A perfect
Speaker 3: practice putting bat would have been perfect for him for
Speaker 3: his house. I've got one that's set up. It's uh,
Speaker 3: it really helps me with putting. I don't go practice
Speaker 3: putting at putting greens anymore because frankly, I have a
Speaker 3: five year old and I don't have a lot of time.
Speaker 3: But like the things that I like to do when
Speaker 3: I go practice putting is I like to just sit
Speaker 3: and hit four footers that are dead straight because I
Speaker 3: feel like, hey, if I make all these putts that
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be have bad putting days. Like
Speaker 3: if I just make all the putts that I want
Speaker 3: to make that I need to make, which is four
Speaker 3: feet in, it's great for that. I used to always
Speaker 3: love to putt with a chalk line when I practice putting.
Speaker 3: It has basically a virtual chalk line. Makes sure you're
Speaker 3: getting your ball started on the right line, makes sure,
Speaker 3: you know, helps you visualize your st you know. I
Speaker 3: prefer to get my stroke going a little inside, so
Speaker 3: like I always like the chalk line seeing my putter
Speaker 3: kind of come inside and from there I could felt
Speaker 3: like I could really release the putter. So anyways, the
Speaker 3: perfect practice putting Matt is a great way to practice.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons you can just sit there and
Speaker 3: hammer four footer after four footer is they've got the
Speaker 3: autoball return.
Speaker 1: It is a great product. I really like it.
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Speaker 3: get to PJ and let's talk about our ten Masters favorites. PJ,
Speaker 3: Welcome on. It's been a minute since you've been on
Speaker 3: the pod.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm happy to be here. Well, I'm always here,
Speaker 2: but kind of just floating, floating above everything. But I'm
Speaker 2: happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Vocally, you're gonna be credentialed for your first Masters.
Speaker 2: It's uh, it's it's very grateful, very excited for the opportunity,
Speaker 2: very daunted by the task ahead of me. But I
Speaker 2: can't wait.
Speaker 1: Do you have one thing you're most excited about other
Speaker 1: than the snack stand?
Speaker 2: I was gonna say the peach ice cream sandwich. Has
Speaker 2: been calling my name since last year, so I think
Speaker 2: I think, you know, that's maybe poorly, but that's where
Speaker 2: my head went first when you when you asked that question.
Speaker 3: That's great, that's great. Anything from like the actual golf
Speaker 3: that you're excited about.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I think, as you said before, everybody except
Speaker 2: for Scotty and Rory has kind of been in rounding
Speaker 2: into form or at least has been informed at some
Speaker 2: point this year. So it uh for as wide open
Speaker 2: as the top end of this field feels. I think
Speaker 2: it'll be interesting seeing Scotty now with a second kid,
Speaker 2: some added perspective, maybe a little bit, but it seems
Speaker 2: like it's gonna be a good master, So the golf
Speaker 2: should be good at the very least.
Speaker 3: This was so hard it was figuring out ten to ten.
Speaker 3: I found myself wanting to spill into like fifteen. You know,
Speaker 3: I could get with some sleepers to twenty. You know,
Speaker 3: if I get if I extended, you know, to Corey Connors,
Speaker 3: he could maybe get me to like thirty.
Speaker 2: Well, Corey Connors is open for interpretation, but I think
Speaker 2: you can make a legit argument for a list of
Speaker 2: ten guys. You can make a legit argument for probably
Speaker 2: I had seventeen on my initial I got to cut
Speaker 2: seven guys off of this list. I think you can
Speaker 2: make a legit argument for fifteen seventeen ish guys to
Speaker 2: be in a top ten.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ten through one, or do you
Speaker 1: want to go one through ten?
Speaker 2: Oh, whichever way you want.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows there's gonna be one. Why don't we just
Speaker 3: start there. This doesn't have to be brief for me.
Speaker 3: He's in a slump, per se. He don't tell him
Speaker 3: he's in a slump. As we learned a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks ago. He's been a little grumpier than usual, but
Speaker 3: he's still, you know, operating. I'm going to take the
Speaker 3: body of work over the last three years, operating a
Speaker 3: completely different plane than everybody else. Scottie Scheffler, two time
Speaker 3: Masters winner, of course, is tailor made for him. There
Speaker 3: are some like alarming things. His iron play just hasn't
Speaker 3: been very good this year obviously. You know, Augusta Nashvial
Speaker 3: is a second shot golf course. It is super dependent
Speaker 3: on hitting precise second shots. That being said, if you're
Speaker 3: not hitting precise shots, you know what you want. You
Speaker 3: want Scotty Scheffler short game because it allows you and
Speaker 3: we've seen this time after time this year where he's
Speaker 3: like clearly visibly off and then you tally up the
Speaker 3: scores and it's like, oh, he shot sixty nine today.
Speaker 3: Scotty is Scotty's My number one is a year number one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's number one until he's not. In terms of
Speaker 2: the body of work, as you said, and the course
Speaker 2: history at Augusta, I am curious the current trends of
Speaker 2: Thursdays not being his best day. This might be the
Speaker 2: ultimate litmus test of how far back is too far
Speaker 2: back on Thursday? Where is the line if he shows
Speaker 2: up and does not have his best stuff on Thursday.
Speaker 2: He tends to get better throughout the tournaments that we've
Speaker 2: seen this year. But I'm sure somebody will have a
Speaker 2: power rankings list within the next couple of weeks without
Speaker 2: Scotty at the top. But that's a bridge too far
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just couldn't get there. Who did you guys
Speaker 3: have going number two?
Speaker 2: I have Bryson to Shambo number two right now. I
Speaker 2: think the live results are inarguable. At this point, he
Speaker 2: is won back to back events on live took down
Speaker 2: John in a playoff. Most recently has the course history
Speaker 2: at Augusta. Obviously, the the struggles with his iron game
Speaker 2: distance control have have shown in Sunday, especially last year
Speaker 2: in the final pair with Rory. I think his putting
Speaker 2: kind of got away from him. He's such a good
Speaker 2: putter with speed control, and on Sunday, watching back as
Speaker 2: watching the documentary from earlier and watching back the final round,
Speaker 2: his putting just completely got away from him on Sunday
Speaker 2: last year. And I am interested to see how he
Speaker 2: kind of responds after taking you know, Rory used the
Speaker 2: Mike Tyson quote in the documentary if everybody's got a
Speaker 2: plan until they get punched in the mouth. Brison got
Speaker 2: punched in the mouth pretty hard last year on Sunday
Speaker 2: at the Masters. So I'm excited to see how he
Speaker 2: comes back.
Speaker 3: You know, it's the second year that he struggled with
Speaker 3: distance control. He cited that in his press conference last
Speaker 3: year leading into the Masters. Is He's like I've been,
Speaker 3: I really struggled with with the speed of the greens
Speaker 3: and getting my pacing right. And I think that's like
Speaker 3: a bugaboo of his at Augusta.
Speaker 1: But I mean he's had a you know, short of Rory,
Speaker 1: his career at.
Speaker 3: The Masters has been fascinating, like he's had like the
Speaker 3: whole run of it and kind of out of nowhere
Speaker 3: the last two years he has been contending after years
Speaker 3: of struggles where you know, a fun bet every year
Speaker 3: was him versus Larry Meies to now where he's number
Speaker 3: two on your board, he's number three on my board.
Speaker 3: We'll just dispense the rest of it here. This is
Speaker 3: the best he's played coming into the Masters in recent memory,
Speaker 3: really since he went to Live. It's the best he's played.
Speaker 3: He hasn't been like a constant presence on the leader board.
Speaker 3: You know, you go back to Adelaide, he played in
Speaker 3: the final group. He played poorly in the final group,
Speaker 3: but he was in the final group where Anthony Kim won.
Speaker 3: And then he's won the last two, the last two events.
Speaker 3: He's teed it up in coming into it a lot
Speaker 3: of confidence at a golf course that he I think,
Speaker 3: he's like, really how to figure it out, how to
Speaker 3: play Tita Green, where to pick his spots. Understands like,
Speaker 3: you can't just overpower the golf course, but you can,
Speaker 3: you know, you can work your way around it and
Speaker 3: get the success that that you're looking for, you don't,
Speaker 3: you know, it's so I think Bryson for me is
Speaker 3: one of the big stories. I put Rory number two.
Speaker 3: I guess, you know, he he showed me a lot.
Speaker 3: I think like he contended obviously a genesis without like
Speaker 3: his a stuff. I think Bayhill, if he doesn't get
Speaker 3: hurt there, he is rounding into he. I think he
Speaker 3: probably would have been the favorite going into.
Speaker 1: The weekend at that tournament. You know, that's where I
Speaker 1: would have probably put him.
Speaker 3: I think that Rory, you know, despite you know the
Speaker 3: back issue that lingered through the players.
Speaker 1: We won't see him before the Masters.
Speaker 3: He's not going to play San Antonio, so this will
Speaker 3: be you know, he'll come in a little bit under
Speaker 3: the radar, but it's gonna be like I'm fascinated by it,
Speaker 3: Like it's a wild card putting him at number two.
Speaker 3: But I'm fascinated about the dynamic of like you've gone,
Speaker 3: you know, the last almost twenty years of your life,
Speaker 3: like this place has become you know, really since twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: like this haunted house for you, and you finally get
Speaker 3: it done in super dramatic fashion.
Speaker 1: Everything is flipped.
Speaker 3: Now, it's gone from a place he probably didn't want
Speaker 3: to spend a lot of time at, you know, and
Speaker 3: it was always questioning how he should arrive to a
Speaker 3: place that it is probably a pretty comfortable place.
Speaker 2: Now yeah, i'd feel pretty good.
Speaker 1: And I think that is you know.
Speaker 3: The question to me is like, is it just going
Speaker 3: to be too much to repeat with you know, the
Speaker 3: champions dinner and everything. But I mean this has got
Speaker 3: He's gonna be on the first tea on Thursday feeling
Speaker 3: of a relief that he's he's never really had there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I have him. So we could just
Speaker 2: keep going down the list. Right now we're matched up
Speaker 2: in the top three, albeit in a slightly different order here.
Speaker 2: I think grinding out the weekend at the Players, you
Speaker 2: can tell it it wasn't all there, but some of
Speaker 2: the shots he hit, especially on Sunday, like his drive
Speaker 2: on twelve for example, like the speed was still there.
Speaker 2: The ability to get the ball as far as possible
Speaker 2: was still there, no matter how much the back may
Speaker 2: be hurt or didn't. It wasn't all clicking. But I
Speaker 2: think with a couple weeks of rest off got to
Speaker 2: be riding high. I think the only thing that would
Speaker 2: truly surprise me Rory at the twenty twenty six Masters
Speaker 2: is if he won again. If he's contending at a
Speaker 2: top ten finish, not surprised at all. If it's just
Speaker 2: too much and he misses the cut or is kind
Speaker 2: of just loitering on the weekend out there early, not
Speaker 2: surprised at all. I would only be surprised in the
Speaker 2: range of outcomes if if somehow this goes back to
Speaker 2: back we listen.
Speaker 3: I think he's like, if anything understands because of last
Speaker 3: year that he doesn't have to be perfect and that
Speaker 3: if he just lets the golf course.
Speaker 1: Come to him and moments come to him.
Speaker 3: He's got enough horsepower to win there. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: a crazy you know, with last year and all the
Speaker 3: swings and the double bogies and the perseverance to win
Speaker 3: that event basically won it like three times on Sunday.
Speaker 3: You know it's it's it's crazy after you know, the
Speaker 3: resilience to win after what happened on Thursday. Yes, it's
Speaker 3: never talked isn't talked about as much as like he
Speaker 3: is cruising on Thursday and then he chips into the
Speaker 3: water on fifteen and it just falls apart and shoots
Speaker 3: even part. You know, I just think that last year
Speaker 3: is going to pay off, a payoff dividends. But this
Speaker 3: is the thing we often do. We always think the
Speaker 3: floodgates are going to open after a win. You know,
Speaker 3: remember after Sergio went getting on air and being like,
Speaker 3: this is the floodgates moment, It's gonna happen. Now he's
Speaker 3: gonna win three more Majors because you know, he finds
Speaker 3: freed up.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's a it's an.
Speaker 3: Amazing storyline going into this year's Masters. It's also very
Speaker 3: nice that we don't have to frame everything through Rory.
Speaker 3: Is Rory can finally get it done this year.
Speaker 2: Now it's got to be as much of a relief
Speaker 2: for him, it's probably a relief for everybody else because
Speaker 2: it's not the number one topic of convercation.
Speaker 3: Instead of that, we are going to have likely it
Speaker 3: seems likely that we're going to have that. Is Tiger
Speaker 3: going to make the cut occupy the first five days
Speaker 3: of Masters coverage.
Speaker 2: So Tiger is not on your top ten list, is
Speaker 2: what you're telling me.
Speaker 3: Didn't make my board, Peach didn't make my board. Models
Speaker 3: didn't didn't didn't like the the endurance. That's where they
Speaker 3: fell short.
Speaker 2: You know, understandable, understandable.
Speaker 1: Who's four for you?
Speaker 2: I have Cameron Young. This is the number three player
Speaker 2: in the world. Number three player in the world, Cameron Young.
Speaker 2: You know, I only thought we'd be here in my dreams.
Speaker 2: But on ironically, I think when you're you're making a
Speaker 2: list of the big game players in today's golf, I
Speaker 2: know this is something that Joseph harps on a lot.
Speaker 2: Camer Young has to be near the top of that list.
Speaker 2: This is a guy that routinely posts top ten, top
Speaker 2: five finishes in a very limited major run, had so
Speaker 2: much success early almost one that opened at Saint Andrews
Speaker 2: was in it until literally the final putt was trying
Speaker 2: to make a one on the eighteenth hole at Saint
Speaker 2: Andrews because that's what he knew he needed to win
Speaker 2: a major championship. But now is playing the best golf
Speaker 2: of his career, is a top flight putter, in a
Speaker 2: total reverse of every fate that has gotten him to
Speaker 2: this point. You want to talk about Rory's confidence, I
Speaker 2: would find it pretty hard to believe that Camera Young's
Speaker 2: confidence is not sky high right now.
Speaker 3: Either two top tens and four appearances two miss cuts
Speaker 3: hasn't contended deeply. Those would be by concerns. But I
Speaker 3: think this is a mark as you've you've hit on.
Speaker 3: He's a different player than he was two years ago,
Speaker 3: three years ago. The putter being a weapon is transformational.
Speaker 3: So I will go with number four, a guy that
Speaker 3: has appeared in Two Basterds and has had a chance
Speaker 3: to win two basters Deep on Sunday, Ludwig Obert, he
Speaker 3: will be number four on mine. I think he's gonna
Speaker 3: be a very popular bet. He had been a little
Speaker 3: bit in the wilderness in the last few months for
Speaker 3: his standards, I would say, but he is coming on strong.
Speaker 3: Played very well obviously at the Players, played played well
Speaker 3: at Bayhill and and something has clicked and now he's
Speaker 3: heading back to a happy hunting ground where I mean,
Speaker 3: last year he could have won.
Speaker 1: Or at least very much been in the playoff.
Speaker 2: He tried. I mean, that's that's the the TA last
Speaker 2: year is not not predicticative and not indicative of what
Speaker 2: actually happened there on Sunday, because he tried, he went
Speaker 2: for broke, pushed all the chips in and fell the eighth.
Speaker 3: The way you pick off one of these is if
Speaker 3: you get in the mix a lot. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 3: been in the mix two for two. I expect him
Speaker 3: to be in the mix. He's just got He's got
Speaker 3: the type of game that just makes you know. The
Speaker 3: way he drives the ball, if he's if he's clicking,
Speaker 3: just makes Augusta. It's a sneaky I mean, everything's important, Augusta,
Speaker 3: but it is a sneaky driving test. Like if you
Speaker 3: can get the ball to the right spots with a
Speaker 3: lot of power, I mean, you make the it's like
Speaker 3: anywhere anywhere this is the case, but it makes the
Speaker 3: approach shots so much easier. So Ludwig is my number four.
Speaker 3: Who's five for you?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: This is where I put John Raum. This was kind
Speaker 2: of my biggest question on where got him him? Feels
Speaker 2: like he has to be in the top ten just
Speaker 2: by giving all of the data is off the charts
Speaker 2: within the last three months. He's playing like arguably the
Speaker 2: best player in the world in these live fields for
Speaker 2: whatever value you want to place on that, but obviously
Speaker 2: has done it before. At Augusta knows his way around.
Speaker 2: I just I don't know how necessarily confident I am
Speaker 2: in John Ram showing up and being that top flight player.
Speaker 2: He popped at the PGA was kind of the first,
Speaker 2: you know, break back into the premiere flight of a game,
Speaker 2: an animjor championship, and then everybody was all in on
Speaker 2: the Open last year and he kind of fell right
Speaker 2: back flat on his face. The John Ram hype is building,
Speaker 2: and I think within the next ten days we're going
Speaker 2: to reach a crescendo where he becomes a very very
Speaker 2: popular pick and deservedly so. Five could be way too high,
Speaker 2: or five could be five spots too low. I feel
Speaker 2: like right in the middle of the top ten is
Speaker 2: where your eye slotted him.
Speaker 3: All right, I have him the same spot I you know,
Speaker 3: I I think him getting a win was actually important. Yes,
Speaker 3: getting the bunky off the back. It had been a
Speaker 3: long time since you have won. I think the you know,
Speaker 3: the live going to seventy two holes has helped him.
Speaker 3: It's just part of like the approach to golf, a
Speaker 3: fifty four hole approach, Like you're thinking slightly differently during
Speaker 3: a stroke play tournament than a seventy two hole stroke
Speaker 3: play tournament. Listen, I think he's kind of you know,
Speaker 3: he's a lot of people are going to talk about him,
Speaker 3: but in the in the vein of of of this,
Speaker 3: I think he's kind of undervalued at five in a way.
Speaker 1: Six.
Speaker 3: I've got Cameron Young, who've already talked about at length.
Speaker 1: Who's your six?
Speaker 2: I have Xander at six. I feel like it's the
Speaker 2: sneakiest possible two time major champion entering the Masters that
Speaker 2: was out in the wilderness last year was basically a
Speaker 2: lost year, uh, starting off with the injury wins. The
Speaker 2: Bay Current starts off slow this year, but has slowly
Speaker 2: but surely rounded back into peak form and is just
Speaker 2: kind of loitering for a guy again with an incredible
Speaker 2: major championship record that couldn't just could not figure out
Speaker 2: how to get off the snide wins twice in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. I think Xander's live. I think he's running,
Speaker 2: and I think this is the guy that should be
Speaker 2: receiving all of maybe the John rom hype that is
Speaker 2: slowly coming to form here.
Speaker 3: The iron play has been exceptional and that is the
Speaker 3: big the big thing here. I think, like we did
Speaker 3: pot a few few weeks ago, it was like we
Speaker 3: need to see something from Xander, and he shown in
Speaker 3: the last couple of weeks that he is he is
Speaker 3: back at the top level of golf. And we're only
Speaker 3: you know, a calendar year removed from him winning you know,
Speaker 3: two majors in a year. So I have him ten.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's low. It's low for him.
Speaker 2: Who knows, But the fact that he is still in
Speaker 2: the bottom half of both of our top tens, even
Speaker 2: with me having him at six, I feel like a
Speaker 2: fool already.
Speaker 3: Honestly, Up next, I've got I've got Justin Rose at seven.
Speaker 3: This is where, like when I started to look at
Speaker 3: the list, I'm like, this is insane. The guy, you know,
Speaker 3: has had an awesome year. He's since at seventh of
Speaker 3: the world. He has one of the best track records
Speaker 3: of any player, winners or losers or non winners at
Speaker 3: Augustin National ever, he won the Farmers Insurance at at Tory.
Speaker 3: You know, he's he's played played well at the Players.
Speaker 3: This guy clearly gets up. He's been just such a
Speaker 3: factor at major championships and particularly the Masters, Like I'd
Speaker 3: be shocked if he's not in the top twelve.
Speaker 1: Of this tournament at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: You know, so I got him at seven, Like I
Speaker 3: think this guy's a legitimate threat to win, and that's
Speaker 3: why I have him above Xander Like I just I
Speaker 3: believe in Justin Rose are the masters, like in insane
Speaker 3: amount because he's been there so often.
Speaker 2: It's hard to not I have him at ten. Uh,
Speaker 2: And I only have him at ten because after Tory
Speaker 2: he missed a couple of cuts in a row. I
Speaker 2: feel like Justin Rose is like he gets up for
Speaker 2: the big events. Now it's like it's kind of all
Speaker 2: or nothing where on a week to week basis, Justin
Speaker 2: Rose is not going to flip the switch. But if
Speaker 2: it's time to really get in contention, to really push
Speaker 2: the pedal to the floor, Justin Rose is still at
Speaker 2: four as good as anybody, But.
Speaker 1: He just won the playoffs. Talk about big moment he
Speaker 1: got up for.
Speaker 2: He did get up for that, that certainly is true.
Speaker 2: He's got a new hat that I'm excited to see
Speaker 2: if anybody debuts that on the grounds at Augusta.
Speaker 1: Who's your seven?
Speaker 2: This is where I had Ludwig. I just I you
Speaker 2: have to have him in the top ten. To question
Speaker 2: of how high the innocence your favorite Padrick Harrington quote,
Speaker 2: the innocence is now gone. I would say maybe after
Speaker 2: the players, and the scar tissue is building a little bit,
Speaker 2: but there is no sneak to your place.
Speaker 3: Sneaky scar tissue actually is like if you want to,
Speaker 3: if you want to short Ludwig, he has some scar tissue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, water is becoming a threat for him between Augusta
Speaker 2: and Sawgrass, so you have to have him in the
Speaker 2: top ten. It's a very comfy place, as you said,
Speaker 2: for him. He should feel in good spirits and ready
Speaker 2: to bounce back. But I am a little bit wary
Speaker 2: of the scar tissue beginning to build.
Speaker 3: All right, I've got number eight. I don't think he's
Speaker 3: gonna be on your board, and I think he just
Speaker 3: should not be underestimated. At Augusta National, I've got Hideki Matsiama.
Speaker 2: He is not on board.
Speaker 1: I think this is like.
Speaker 3: The least talked about great player who's playing really, really
Speaker 3: good golf on the in the lead up like this
Speaker 3: year started and I was like, whoa Hidekidki. He looks good,
Speaker 3: he's healthy, his finishes. You know, he won the Hero,
Speaker 3: which is like whatever, take whatever you want. But then
Speaker 3: he goes t thirteen T eleven two second eighth to
Speaker 3: start the year. Now he's made the last three cuts,
Speaker 3: they've been inconsequential results. But I'll tell you what he
Speaker 3: is a a great ball striker Ta Green and I
Speaker 3: don't you know people don't watch TGL normally, but an
Speaker 3: anecdote you you can take away, file away into your
Speaker 3: brains forever about Hideki Matsuyama is Roy McElroy talking to
Speaker 3: Tiger Woods about how he thinks Hideki Matsuyama has the
Speaker 3: best pitching motion there is like and he's always been
Speaker 3: criminally under talked about as the best short games in
Speaker 3: the world. And at a place where sometimes you just
Speaker 3: have to dump a ball off to the side. We
Speaker 3: were just talking about with this with Scotti. You know,
Speaker 3: if you have to dump yourself out, you have to
Speaker 3: save tough pars because you get out of position. The
Speaker 3: number one skill you want to have is a deaf touch.
Speaker 3: And that's why Hideki Matsiama and the next guy on
Speaker 3: my list are always threats at Augusta National.
Speaker 1: They are short game wizards.
Speaker 2: Well, we can just go right to the next guy
Speaker 2: on your list, because my number eighth. You want to
Speaker 2: talk about the best short game in the world. Patrick
Speaker 2: Reed ye is here, and I think it's just incredible
Speaker 2: to think back that Patrick Creed came in third at
Speaker 2: last year's Masters and was the first and out of
Speaker 2: the playoff. And yeah, it took a little bit of
Speaker 2: a maybe not a lucky journey, but some breaks had
Speaker 2: to go the right way for that to even happen
Speaker 2: on Sunday last year in the first place. But you
Speaker 2: have to respect everything that Patrick reed is doing to
Speaker 2: already earn his way back via the dp World Tour
Speaker 2: top ten to the PGA Tour next year. Has two
Speaker 2: wins already this year, hasn't played in a month, which
Speaker 2: you could convince me that's a good thing. You could
Speaker 2: convince me that's a bad thing. Should he be at
Speaker 2: DLF this week. Is it better to be in India
Speaker 2: versus not playing for a month. I don't know, but
Speaker 2: I'm never ruling Patrick Reid out, especially now that he's
Speaker 2: playing well entering the Masters this year.
Speaker 3: One of the best stories of the year from like
Speaker 3: a just a pure golf whatever you feel about Patrick Reid,
Speaker 3: it's like, here's the gauntlet laid down. This is you
Speaker 3: want to come back to the PGA Tour, go earn
Speaker 3: it on the DP World Tour and earn it.
Speaker 1: And he earned it and basically three weeks. And I
Speaker 1: mean he's a guy.
Speaker 3: This is you know, there are just people that are
Speaker 3: built for Augusta Dashal. He doesn't drive the ball particularly well.
Speaker 3: He his iron plays hot or cold. But when you
Speaker 3: can get up and down out of out of a
Speaker 3: telephone booth, that is an incredible skill to have there.
Speaker 3: And you know, if he gets cooking, there's certain people
Speaker 3: that just go win golf tournaments and he is one
Speaker 3: of those people. So I have him nine on my list.
Speaker 3: Who's your number nine?
Speaker 2: I have the leader on the PGA Tour and Strokes
Speaker 2: gained approach at number nine. Fellow fellow returning to the
Speaker 2: PGA Tour lugside Patrick gree Brooks Kopka is uh. I
Speaker 2: think there's some added motivation now that Rory has tied
Speaker 2: him in major championships. I think the game is rounding
Speaker 2: into form through the floor to swing. Obviously, this is
Speaker 2: a big week in Houston as a design consultant place
Speaker 2: at Memorial Park. He knows very well. But you mentioned
Speaker 2: the other day on Shotgun Start that maybe his driving
Speaker 2: advantage is not as big as it used to be.
Speaker 2: Maybe there is no driving advantage at all anymore, because
Speaker 2: everybody has gotten so much better and so much longer,
Speaker 2: and he's aging out. But the iron play has been
Speaker 2: just magnificent. The putter has left a lot to be desired.
Speaker 2: We're putting away a Scotti, Cameron, and now the Spider
Speaker 2: is in the bag alongside seemingly everybody else in the world.
Speaker 2: But can't rule him out. It's hard to given the
Speaker 2: recent major championship form since his win at the PGA
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, but especially now that he's playing
Speaker 2: on a week to week basis and the numbers are
Speaker 2: there and the iron play is there. Like you said,
Speaker 2: it's a second shot golf course. It's not like he's
Speaker 2: never contended at a Master's before, so he's got to
Speaker 2: make the top ten.
Speaker 3: For me, my number ten is Xander who we've already
Speaker 3: talked about. And rounding out the last spot, what's your
Speaker 3: what's your last spot?
Speaker 2: Justin Rose, it's uh, it's you have to put on
Speaker 2: the list. Hat tip to Justin Rose, Sorry to Matt
Speaker 2: Fitzpatrick and Tommy Fleetwood, but that's it all.
Speaker 3: Right, Peach. Thanks for thanks for jumping in. As always,
Speaker 3: thank you for producing this show. Hey, do you have
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