Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over
Speaker 1: at Zero Restriction.
Speaker 2: They are a long.
Speaker 1: Time sponsor of the show, The Frida Egg Podcast, and
Speaker 1: I want to thank them for being a part of
Speaker 1: this year and a special part of this year summer.
Speaker 2: School in Scotland.
Speaker 1: So they will be sponsoring our voyage across the Atlantic
Speaker 1: over to Scotland for the Open Championship and some golf
Speaker 1: as well. Really, when you go somewhere like Scotland or Abandon,
Speaker 1: which we work with them closely on our winter trip
Speaker 1: Tobandon to make sure we were weather proof.
Speaker 2: You know, they're the fifteenth club in your bag. You
Speaker 2: know you got to be.
Speaker 1: Prepared for all elements and Zero Restriction will get you there.
Speaker 1: So this year they will be over at the Old
Speaker 1: Course as well. They'll be in the merchandise tent at
Speaker 1: the Open Championship one hundred and fiftieth as well as
Speaker 1: they will be the official outerwear provider of the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two President's Cup. So we trust them, you should
Speaker 1: trust them to check out all their stuff at zero
Speaker 1: restriction dot com and thank you to them for the
Speaker 1: long standing support of this show.
Speaker 3: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 3: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball in a brid egg
Speaker 3: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg Frida egg
Speaker 3: egg Frida egg bride egg lie, I'm about ready to
Speaker 3: run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is with Tom Doak. It's another edition of
Speaker 1: the Yoke with Doak and this is a special one.
Speaker 1: This one is really a table setter to get you
Speaker 1: in the mood for the one hundred and fiftieth Open Championship,
Speaker 1: which will be hosted at the Old Course at Saint Andrews.
Speaker 1: So this episode really just goes into detail about the
Speaker 1: Old Course and Tom talks about a ton of stuff
Speaker 1: and yeah, thank you to him for the time, and
Speaker 1: we can't wait for the Open Championship. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here is Tom dough Hey with the Open coming up
Speaker 1: at Saint Andrews. I know that's a very special place
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, but it's a place that
Speaker 1: you love to talk about. I figured that'd be a
Speaker 1: good first jumping off point for this and I'm going
Speaker 1: to Saint Andrews and in the Old Course for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life, and I was curious. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be there for like a whole a whole week.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna play, but I'm gonna watch a lot
Speaker 1: of golf. I'm gonna walk a lot. What what would
Speaker 1: be your advice to a first timer like myself?
Speaker 3: You know, I've never been there for the open My
Speaker 3: advice for first timers generally is something you won't be
Speaker 3: able to do, which is go out there on Sunday
Speaker 3: and walk around.
Speaker 2: I think I'll be able to do. I got the credential, so.
Speaker 3: Okay, well maybe you can then that'd be great. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, Sundays, the Old Course is famously closed and
Speaker 3: it's a public park, and you don't there's more townfolk
Speaker 3: like out on those first two or three holes going
Speaker 3: out and coming back than there are further out as
Speaker 3: you go. But there's people like walking their dogs and
Speaker 3: walk you know, giving their kids a riding the stroller
Speaker 3: and stuff pretty much all over the golf course for
Speaker 3: most of Sunday, which is which is really fun, but
Speaker 3: it's about the only time that you can be out
Speaker 3: there and kind of linger and have a look at
Speaker 3: the contours and the features because you know, because the
Speaker 3: other six days of the week gets a factory and
Speaker 3: you know it's just one group after another. And you
Speaker 3: know at the old course too. Not only do you
Speaker 3: have to be aware of the people playing behind you,
Speaker 3: you have to be aware on several holes of the
Speaker 3: people come in the other direction coming back, because you
Speaker 3: know your fairway could be in play for the other
Speaker 3: from the other fairway. You know, on a significant number
Speaker 3: of holes, and so it's that you have to have
Speaker 3: your head on a swivel if you're out there trying
Speaker 3: to walk around and look at it, not actually playing golf,
Speaker 3: and you'd hate to, you know, ruin around a golf
Speaker 3: there by trying to look too much while you're playing.
Speaker 1: Do you think I've heard from so many people that
Speaker 1: they feel like they didn't get it the first time around,
Speaker 1: and then they feel like they get it more and more.
Speaker 1: Do you think part of it is like sensory overload
Speaker 1: or is it more like that's the nature of golf
Speaker 1: where you take yourself on a guided based off where
Speaker 1: you hit it.
Speaker 3: Uh, it's well a, it's it's by far more complicated
Speaker 3: than other golf courses because the hazards that are out
Speaker 3: there aren't placed in obvious spots, and a lot of
Speaker 3: them you can't even you can't see very well from
Speaker 3: the tee, so you know, you don't you don't see
Speaker 3: a hazard until you get up, buy it or past it,
Speaker 3: and you're like, ohh, I would have played different if
Speaker 3: I'd known that was there. So there's that part of it, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, just the lack of visibility making it hard.
Speaker 3: And then you know some of the things that are
Speaker 3: really that really make certain holes challenging, our little features
Speaker 3: and contours that you're just not likely to pick up
Speaker 3: the first time unless you're a shaper or somebody who
Speaker 3: does this for a living. There's no way that you're
Speaker 3: going to really get that. So to me, it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, people are excited to be there, but it's
Speaker 3: you know that they're having a hard time picking things
Speaker 3: out visually that they can remember, especially on the first
Speaker 3: few holes going out. I think that, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the reasons that the incoming holes are more famous
Speaker 3: two reasons. One because you're playing toward the town and
Speaker 3: you have something to aim at, and two you know
Speaker 3: you've got the out of bounds wall in play on fourteen,
Speaker 3: or you've got the fall fence line for the railway
Speaker 3: line on sixteen or the hotel on seventeen, whereas going out,
Speaker 3: you've just got some gorse and the new course over
Speaker 3: on the other side, and there's nothing there to really
Speaker 3: latch onto is Oh yeah, I remember that's the third
Speaker 3: hole because there's another gorse bush over there.
Speaker 1: So just you know, at a very rudimentary level, you
Speaker 1: know hazards, you know them being real hazards and almost
Speaker 1: strategic hazards where it's pretty easy if you avoid them,
Speaker 1: and playable if you avoid them, but if you find them,
Speaker 1: you're in for and for a tough day.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's what you know when you first get
Speaker 3: interested in golf course architecture. You know, especially if you're
Speaker 3: a kid, you know, you're drawing golf holes and and
Speaker 3: you're drawing these little bunkers and you think about them
Speaker 3: as hazards like that. But the truth is most golf courses,
Speaker 3: most of the world, those bunkers are not very hazardous
Speaker 3: for good players anymore. And you know at Saint Andrew's,
Speaker 3: at the courses on the Open Road to that's not true.
Speaker 3: They are real hazards, and even the best players in
Speaker 3: the world are really focused on plotting their way around
Speaker 3: that place too, so it's hazard free. Driving it in
Speaker 3: the bunker is a penalty, and there's not many places
Speaker 3: they deal with them in a way.
Speaker 2: This is kind of a bigger, open ended question that
Speaker 2: spawns from that.
Speaker 1: Obviously, the I think the construction of bunkers over there
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with it. The pot bunkers,
Speaker 1: you know, where you you know, you can just trickle
Speaker 1: in and you can be dead. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that in America bunkers have kind of gone the complete
Speaker 1: opposite direction in a way where where you hear people
Speaker 1: say good players especially get in the bunker and they've
Speaker 1: become they maybe aren't as penal.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a couple of things to go into that.
Speaker 3: I mean, one is we're way too focused in America
Speaker 3: on the bunkers being visual objects and making them pretty
Speaker 3: and making them dramatic. And when you build, you know,
Speaker 3: you hear you know, not just you know, not just
Speaker 3: people that are interested in golf course architecture, even the
Speaker 3: people in the business doing the work, they talk all
Speaker 3: the time about the visual scale of the bunkers, and
Speaker 3: none of that applies to Saint Andrews. You know, you know,
Speaker 3: my guys want to build a big bunker, so you know,
Speaker 3: so it's in proportion with other features in the lane
Speaker 3: landscape and in Scotland they're not at all. They're tiny
Speaker 3: little things, but you don't really you know, they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't look so ticky tack as people think, because
Speaker 3: you also don't see them very well. They sit down
Speaker 3: in the ground, so they're in visual scale by the
Speaker 3: time you get up there to see them, but they're
Speaker 3: not in visual scale from the tee.
Speaker 1: Do you think some of that has to do with
Speaker 1: the contours around them, where the bunkers are small in proportion,
Speaker 1: but they actually play really big, like the bunker you see.
Speaker 1: The sand is actually just the small part of the
Speaker 1: overarching bunker because of the way the ball seems to
Speaker 1: feed into them.
Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes not all the time. I mean, on a
Speaker 3: lot of golf courses the bunkers don't gather so much,
Speaker 3: so they are just you know, randomly. You know, if
Speaker 3: you hit one hundred drives, you're only going to wind
Speaker 3: up in a bunker at three or four times. But
Speaker 3: you know at Mirfield that's Saint Andrew's at Hoylake. At
Speaker 3: some of these places, Yeah, the ground around you know,
Speaker 3: the bunker is sort of in the face of a
Speaker 3: little hollow, and a lot of the hollow kind of
Speaker 3: gathers balls into the bunker and then sometimes two you know,
Speaker 3: like Mirfield is probably the best example. One of the
Speaker 3: reasons I love Mierfield so much is because they the
Speaker 3: shaping is so good at three D, like the actual
Speaker 3: side wall may not be you know, like the road
Speaker 3: bunker where it's six or seven feet straight up. You know,
Speaker 3: you may only have a little two foot wall at
Speaker 3: the base of the bunker, but then there's another two
Speaker 3: or three feet high and six or ten feet away
Speaker 3: from you. That's mode really tight, and if you don't
Speaker 3: get over that, it's just going to roll right back
Speaker 3: in the bunker. And that's something that's you know, we're
Speaker 3: kind of afraid to do that. In modern arch or
Speaker 3: all of us has had drilled into us drainage, drainage, drainage,
Speaker 3: and you don't you know, if you've got sand flared
Speaker 3: up the face, you can't afford to have that short
Speaker 3: grass rolling down from the top because every time it rains,
Speaker 3: it's going to wash out all the sand. That's flashed up.
Speaker 3: You can only really have the ball rolling into the
Speaker 3: bunker like that if the sand's just flat in the bottom,
Speaker 3: and if the drainage is so good underneath there that
Speaker 3: when water collects in the bunker, it goes away pretty fast. Now.
Speaker 3: I when I lived in Saint Andrew's, if they had
Speaker 3: a big rain, the bunkers would be full of water
Speaker 3: for a few hours. And they've put in a ton
Speaker 3: of drainage. You know, most people don't realize that place
Speaker 3: is really low lying. It's only like, you know, ten
Speaker 3: or fifteen feet above sea level, so you know, there
Speaker 3: wasn't much place for the water to go before. And
Speaker 3: they've put a lot of drainage under the thing now,
Speaker 3: so those bunkers do pump out quicker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a Those bunkers are a perfect example
Speaker 1: of what you're saying. Because they're flat on the bottom,
Speaker 1: the water goes in and then they they they obviously
Speaker 1: have installed more drainage to drain it out where they
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about washouts with the with the
Speaker 1: sod stacked faces, right, No, washouts.
Speaker 3: Have never been a problem there. You know. Wind erosion
Speaker 3: is a problem sometimes I'm bunkers in the UK, but
Speaker 3: washouts pretty much aren't.
Speaker 1: Uh what what are some of your favorite shots to
Speaker 1: hit and to watch? I assume when you were working
Speaker 1: grounds out there, you watched a lot of golf, you know, anecdotally.
Speaker 1: What what were some favorite spots of yours to watch
Speaker 1: or play?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, a lot of them are just a little
Speaker 3: short game kind of shots, you know. So so going
Speaker 3: out the you know, to me the two most underrated
Speaker 3: holes or the second and the fourth. The second if
Speaker 3: the flag's over and the left half of the green,
Speaker 3: you've got some pretty severe rolly nouns to go, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of rumble over. If you're gonna roll the ball
Speaker 3: up there, you could play it to the right of
Speaker 3: them and having you know, the ball just runs onto
Speaker 3: the green and you've got maybe a thirty forty foot
Speaker 3: pott over there behind the mounds. But if you if
Speaker 3: the pins and the ball behind the mounds, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't want to land it just short of the
Speaker 3: green because you might land you might land on the
Speaker 3: upslope and it stops, and you might land on a
Speaker 3: downslope and it goes all the way through and over
Speaker 3: the back. You know, so you've got it. You know,
Speaker 3: on a shot like that, you've either got to fly
Speaker 3: it over everything, which is hard. You can't do it
Speaker 3: downwind and stop it anywhere near or you got to
Speaker 3: land at like thirty forty yards short and let it
Speaker 3: roll over all that stuff if you if you land
Speaker 3: it short, you know, all those roles just kind of
Speaker 3: cancel each other out. You know, you're starting. You know,
Speaker 3: the ball lands at you know, say, elevation zero, and
Speaker 3: it goes up over a mound and it slows down,
Speaker 3: but it gets to the top of the mound and
Speaker 3: then it speeds up and it's kind of back to
Speaker 3: where it was by the time it gets on the green.
Speaker 3: But you know, but you can't fly and land it
Speaker 3: on that downslope, then you've got real trouble. The fourth
Speaker 3: hole instead of you know, kind of a big ridge
Speaker 3: that you're rolling over, it's just a little not quite
Speaker 3: pointy mound about four feet high that's right in front
Speaker 3: of the right in the middle of the approach to
Speaker 3: the green. And again, you know, that thing is just
Speaker 3: going to deflect your ball any direction if you hit it.
Speaker 3: So the one thing that you can't do is fly
Speaker 3: the ball and hit it. You know, and then you've
Speaker 3: only got between that there's some really devastating green side
Speaker 3: bunkers to the left of there. You've only got about
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe fifteen twenty yards between the mound
Speaker 3: and the bunkers to try to, you know, to play
Speaker 3: through that side. So you know, you tend to miss
Speaker 3: the green right, but if you you know, that's actually
Speaker 3: a hold that if you could drive it way left,
Speaker 3: it makes that opening feel a little bigger. It's you know,
Speaker 3: it's hard to get to a pin in the back.
Speaker 3: If you do that, you're kind of playing across the
Speaker 3: green to the right. But you know, at least you've
Speaker 3: got a little wider entrance. You know, you know, the
Speaker 3: ball not going to hit them ound and get deflected
Speaker 3: into the bunkers on the left.
Speaker 1: I think people think of strategy in golf architecture so
Speaker 1: much as hazards. Like we talked about avoiding hazards, and
Speaker 1: obviously that's a huge theme to the Old course. But
Speaker 1: something that's kind of illuminating with those those two holes
Speaker 1: and shots that you describe there, is that all a
Speaker 1: huge part of the old course is the ground contour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another one is the twelfth green. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a short part four. It's drivable for a lot of
Speaker 3: these guys. Now, you know, a lot of the commmentary
Speaker 3: used to focus on these hidden pot bunkers in the
Speaker 3: fairway that were really built for when you play the
Speaker 3: course the other way around, because you can't see them
Speaker 3: and you could drive over most of them pretty easily.
Speaker 3: But you know to me that you know, at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, that hole is about the green.
Speaker 3: You know, there's there's kind of a big hollow in front,
Speaker 3: and then there's a little shelf where they put the
Speaker 3: hole and then it slides back down pretty hard off
Speaker 3: the back, and that shelf from front to back is
Speaker 3: only like thirty five feet, so, you know, laying in
Speaker 3: a wedge on it and having it stay there and
Speaker 3: not jump off the back or spin back off the
Speaker 3: into the front, it's really really hard to do. You
Speaker 3: really don't want to be you know, you want to
Speaker 3: drive it up there close enough that you can ship
Speaker 3: or pot up the slope. You don't want to have
Speaker 3: to you know, you don't want to have to play
Speaker 3: an aerial shot to that you can possibly avoid it.
Speaker 3: Even as good as the pros are, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just it's too difficult of a shot, unless if the
Speaker 3: wind is in your face, maybe you have a chance
Speaker 3: to hit that shot. But it's really not the high
Speaker 3: percentage shot ever, which again that's not something you see
Speaker 3: pros deal with a lot. Usually they can take it
Speaker 3: in the air pretty close to the hole if they
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, did you you know that?
Speaker 1: I think some of the things that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: these smaller shelves, that's something.
Speaker 2: That you that you've used with Memorial Park as particular.
Speaker 3: If you said on every golf course I've ever built,
Speaker 3: I mean high Point had the seventh fall at high
Speaker 3: Point was a little short part four, and I had
Speaker 3: a little narrow shelf along the back of the green
Speaker 3: and a deep pop bunker behind it that came straight
Speaker 3: out of the old course.
Speaker 1: It's like the idea of being able having a wide
Speaker 1: range of pigs, you know, So that tiny shelf makes
Speaker 1: the golf hole excruciatingly difficult, you know, especially for somebody
Speaker 1: that's trying to make a three. And you expect on
Speaker 1: a short part four if you're a very if you're
Speaker 1: a pro playing an Open championship, to make a three,
Speaker 1: and when you put that pin, what it does is
Speaker 1: you know whether the pro the pro can tell themselves
Speaker 1: as much as they want that they need to play
Speaker 1: conservatively and avoid big numbers, but they get to certain
Speaker 1: points where they cannot resist.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And that's really you know, the.
Speaker 1: What golf architecture at at you know, when with the
Speaker 1: highest level of the game is is that you've got
Speaker 1: the most conservative players and the architect is really trying
Speaker 1: to tempt them to do something they don't want to do.
Speaker 1: And those small shelves on short shots are a good
Speaker 1: example of that. And but then also you could have
Speaker 1: pins on that whole that are extraordinarily easy and right.
Speaker 3: And you know, for the Open Championship, you know, the
Speaker 3: green is really wide, So for the Open Championship they'll
Speaker 3: put the pin along the different places along the shelf
Speaker 3: all four days. But you know, if you and I
Speaker 3: went there today and played the golf course, the pin's
Speaker 3: probably down in the bowl in front, and it's not
Speaker 3: nearly as heart as a whole, So it does That's
Speaker 3: one of the ways that Saint Andrews, you know, is
Speaker 3: playable for the average guy, and yet it's still a
Speaker 3: challenge for great players. Is there is a tremendous variety
Speaker 3: of things. And you know, I've had good friends. You know,
Speaker 3: one of my mentors in the business or not really
Speaker 3: in the business and golf is Bill Shehan from Chicago,
Speaker 3: great amateur player. I met him when I was in college,
Speaker 3: and you know, Bill won the Senior Amateur and then
Speaker 3: he won the British Senior Amateur. So they made him
Speaker 3: a member of the RNA. And he calls me after
Speaker 3: he's a member and he's like, I'm going to go
Speaker 3: play in that fall meeting and he's like, he don't.
Speaker 3: He'd only been to Saint Andrews once or twice before.
Speaker 3: He said, I'm gonna go play in the Fall Meeting
Speaker 3: and I'm looking at the scores that win it and
Speaker 3: I think, I, you know, I think I got a
Speaker 3: pretty good chance. And I laughed. He's like what. I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 3: they use the same whole locations for that that they
Speaker 3: use for the Open or the Amateur. It's like the
Speaker 3: course is six shots harder. He's like, oh, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: get an get a really good caddy, and maybe you
Speaker 3: can compete, but it's it's not the same golf course.
Speaker 2: That's uh.
Speaker 1: You know. Something that I always think about is something
Speaker 1: that you said to me when you were playing the
Speaker 1: Loop years ago, was about green shapes. And I think
Speaker 1: about this with like the seventeenth at at Saint Andrew's
Speaker 1: a long par four that you know, obviously it's a
Speaker 1: par five sometimes in part four for the tournament, and
Speaker 1: with it being a narrow green for really good players.
Speaker 1: That narrow green on long holes versus that shallow, wide
Speaker 1: green that you talk about with design on shorter holes.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear in a good example, the twelfth,
Speaker 1: which we just talked about, is a wider, shallower green
Speaker 1: with some shallow targets. Talk about that design feature in
Speaker 1: terms of what it does, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: perceived difficulty.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's not perceived difficulty as actual difficulty, so that
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, you'll see a lot in Britain
Speaker 3: that the the longest, some of the longest part fours
Speaker 3: have the smallest, tightest greens, which you know, the average
Speaker 3: golfer would think, well, that's unfair. You know, I'm hitting
Speaker 3: a long shot. This should be the big target that
Speaker 3: sort of evolved, you know when that you know the
Speaker 3: road hole is is one of the holes that hasn't
Speaker 3: the length hasn't changed in a very long time. So
Speaker 3: you know back in the day that you were hitting
Speaker 3: a short third shot into that green, not a long
Speaker 3: second shot when it was first started. And since then
Speaker 3: they really haven't been able to do anything about that.
Speaker 3: So that narrow target, you know, it wasn't really built
Speaker 3: for a foe iron or now they're back to hitting
Speaker 3: eight iron at it or whatever. But you know, so
Speaker 3: a lot of those holes just kind of evolved. But
Speaker 3: that's what makes them so compelling. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: this is kind of unfair by most people's standards, but
Speaker 3: guess what I got to decide what to do about that,
Speaker 3: because there it is. But you know, the one thing
Speaker 3: when I worked for Pete Dye was they the USGA
Speaker 3: just came out with the slope system that Dean Nuth
Speaker 3: had spent all this time. You know, they'd studied statistics.
Speaker 3: You know, it was like the earliest research on like
Speaker 3: where average bogie players miss it as opposed to scratch players.
Speaker 3: So they could try to come up with the data
Speaker 3: to do this slope system and how to rate golf courses.
Speaker 3: And Pete knew that, you know, I had a math
Speaker 3: oriented brain, so he asked me to spend a little
Speaker 3: time with Dean Nuth and also to study, you know,
Speaker 3: their findings really carefully and tell him, you know, if
Speaker 3: there was anything in there that we could use to
Speaker 3: make the golf course harder for really good players and
Speaker 3: comparatively not as hard for average players. And the one
Speaker 3: thing that I did find that I picked out pretty
Speaker 3: fast was on short shots. You know, the pro is
Speaker 3: going to hit it in a really tight circle, obviously,
Speaker 3: but he's going to miss short and long about as
Speaker 3: much as he's going to miss left or right because
Speaker 3: it's a short shot. And you know, a pro's not
Speaker 3: hitting a wedge ten yards offline or fifteen yards offline.
Speaker 1: I think I think any good player would would think
Speaker 1: of this and say, if I got to take a
Speaker 1: little off a wedge, that's when I get that little
Speaker 1: over the top pole that goes five yards long and
Speaker 1: a little left at or I I don't, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the brilliance of twelve that augusta long left,
Speaker 1: short right.
Speaker 3: Yes for right handed play, yeah for right hand. So
Speaker 3: you know, and the average guy with that short shot,
Speaker 3: you know, I could miss a wedge ten yards right
Speaker 3: every day and just fan it right. I do that
Speaker 3: every time. I play. It's fury, it's infuriating, But I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get you know, I'm gonna get the distance pretty close.
Speaker 3: You know, I know how far I hit. You know,
Speaker 3: I know what a hundred yard shot feels like. So
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get that. You know, I'm gonna get the
Speaker 3: distance pretty close. But I might miss wide. So that
Speaker 3: wide and shallow target, that's not so bad for me,
Speaker 3: whereas that you know, that little slope in front is
Speaker 3: going to bother a tour player as much as it's
Speaker 3: going to bother me. Now you go to the other extreme,
Speaker 3: you know, when when you've got a really long shot
Speaker 3: into a green and hit a three iron or whatever
Speaker 3: a green. Great players, tour pro level players are remarkably
Speaker 3: consistent on their distance control. You know, they don't miss
Speaker 3: that ten yard short. Ever. I was talking to we
Speaker 3: were working on the you know, we've been doing some
Speaker 3: work at the Renaissance Club, and I was talking Padrick
Speaker 3: Harrington is consulting on it now, and I was talking
Speaker 3: to him about it, and we were going through the
Speaker 3: course all by hole, actually looking at a laptop with
Speaker 3: the whole diagrams. We got to the seventeenth, which is
Speaker 3: kind of a two hundred dard Part three. There's a
Speaker 3: nasty deep bunker front left and you don't see it
Speaker 3: very well from the tee and Harrington said, oh, I
Speaker 3: forgot that bunker was even there. And I was like,
Speaker 3: it's one of the nastiest places to be on the
Speaker 3: golf course. How could you not think about that? And
Speaker 3: he's like, well, they can't put the pin right right
Speaker 3: behind it because there's a little slope away, so the
Speaker 3: pins always eight or nine yards back of the bunker.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm never gonna miss it that short, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, whoa, you know, because because because I'm going
Speaker 3: to miss twenty yards shorter long. You know, the tur
Speaker 3: pros are not going to miss shorter long, but because
Speaker 3: they're way further back, they're gonna miss wide. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just proportional for them. The farther you go back,
Speaker 3: the more. You know, instead of three yards left or
Speaker 3: right now, it's eight or ten yards left to right.
Speaker 3: So a skinny green is hard for them, or at
Speaker 3: least it's it's it's much harder for them than the
Speaker 3: the shallow target. The shallow target. They're never going to
Speaker 3: miss the shallow target.
Speaker 1: And you know this all came about, I think because
Speaker 1: I was I was looking at the scorecard and I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, why is the slope one twenty for
Speaker 1: this golf course. It's way harder than that, and and
Speaker 1: this was you know, the response, and it makes total sense.
Speaker 1: Is like, you know, having caddied basically my entire childhood,
Speaker 1: the chances of a fifteen handicap hitting a four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty yard part four and two are are so
Speaker 1: small to start with. By making it narrow, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a big impact. But transversely, a hole like
Speaker 1: the road hole, where you have this super narrow target,
Speaker 1: you've got a hazard behind it, and you've got a
Speaker 1: bunker in front of it, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it puts a good player. You could wrap yourself into
Speaker 1: a pretzel worrying about where where to miss, and you've
Speaker 1: got a longer shot in where you're going to naturally
Speaker 1: miss those directions more often.
Speaker 3: Right, and you know that the road hole. The one
Speaker 3: thing about it is it's not like Augusta. It's like
Speaker 3: it's turned the other way. So so the long you
Speaker 3: know the long pole, you might get away with it,
Speaker 3: except for there's a very deep bunker there. If you don't,
Speaker 3: and you're a little less likely to go on the
Speaker 3: road because if you're going right, it stays a little short.
Speaker 3: But even so, you know, to me, that's one of
Speaker 3: the most fastest. That'll be one of the most fascinating
Speaker 3: holes to watch this year, because you know, thirty years ago,
Speaker 3: forty years ago, even the best players in the world
Speaker 3: didn't really try to hit get it back to the
Speaker 3: hole there at all. You know, it was kind of
Speaker 3: on par with the right pin at twelve at Augusta
Speaker 3: or ten at Riviera. It's like everybody knows it's stupid
Speaker 3: to try this, so nobody did. But now they're driving
Speaker 3: it so far. You know, they can be hitting eight
Speaker 3: irons or nine irons and they don't want to lay
Speaker 3: up to the front of the green if they're hitting
Speaker 3: an eight iron and nine iron approach, and that brings
Speaker 3: everything else back into play.
Speaker 2: It's actually works.
Speaker 1: It's like that McDonald quote back when I think the
Speaker 1: Haskell ball came out where he talked about how certain
Speaker 1: holes get better with distance, certain holes get worse. This
Speaker 1: might be when you put a shorter and shorter club,
Speaker 1: it might force player's hand that psychological I'm going to
Speaker 1: deviate from my strategy, so to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's that's probably the best example of
Speaker 3: it because you see how it's evolved over one hundred years.
Speaker 3: Like you know, somebody might you know, somebody might say
Speaker 3: let's restore it to be in a par five and
Speaker 3: you know everybody having a short third shot to it.
Speaker 3: But it's held up really well, whether it was whether
Speaker 3: some people are playing it like a par five or
Speaker 3: people are playing it like a long per four or
Speaker 3: now it's it's kind of a short approach for the
Speaker 3: best players. It's still a compelling hole.
Speaker 1: Now for a quick break to talk about something going on.
Speaker 1: In the Frida Egg pro Shop pro shop dot thofridagg
Speaker 1: dot com, we have a wide selection of golf photography.
Speaker 1: I think we're up to fifty plus courses, maybe sixty
Speaker 1: courses that are listed in the pro shop. We now
Speaker 1: offer canvas prints as well as paper prints that are
Speaker 1: framed or unframed, and metal prints that people seem to
Speaker 1: really like. So if you go to proshop dot thefridag
Speaker 1: dot com, we're having a fourth of July sale. It'll
Speaker 1: be on all weekend long and it'll be fifteen percent
Speaker 1: automatically applied to your order at checkout.
Speaker 2: So go go.
Speaker 1: See if you if you're looking to spruce up your office,
Speaker 1: your basement, you're you know, one of the rooms in
Speaker 1: your house. This is a great opportunity the Prince in
Speaker 1: the photography.
Speaker 2: It's a great way to support us. Thank you guys,
Speaker 2: and it's fifteen percent off all weekend on the Prince.
Speaker 2: Now back to Tom Dough.
Speaker 1: I'm curious with you know, we're we're talking about this
Speaker 1: in distance in the Old Course. You know, obviously they've
Speaker 1: built a lot of new tea's and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: when the last time you were out there is, but
Speaker 1: they it seems like the rough has been encroaching. Do
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on on kind of the evolution
Speaker 1: of the Old Course and re years?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's been when did I walk it last?
Speaker 3: There's probably been. The last time I walked it was
Speaker 3: for that NBC documentary that's been on a million times
Speaker 3: in the lead up to the Open and which was
Speaker 3: really cool. We you know, we went out and walked
Speaker 3: on Sunday and talked about it a lot like we're
Speaker 3: talking now, except like point and at Features, which was
Speaker 3: which was really fun. You know, I do think you
Speaker 3: know the setup, you know this it's it's kind of
Speaker 3: like because they have the Open there every five years
Speaker 3: plus their mindus, you know, it's become like a lot
Speaker 3: of US Open courses have, you know, like Shinnecock, they
Speaker 3: narrowed up and then they never mowed it back out
Speaker 3: to the same wit to the width it used to be.
Speaker 3: And Pinehurst, you know that was a big failing of
Speaker 3: Pinehurst number two for a long time. They narrowed it
Speaker 3: up for the Open and then you know they just
Speaker 3: kept it narrow and took away a lot of the strategy.
Speaker 3: And they've done that at Saint Andrew to you know
Speaker 3: the for sure this you know, the sixteenth Hall, it's
Speaker 3: just shockingly like you know, used to be able to
Speaker 3: hit it left of the Principal's nose and it would
Speaker 3: just run forever out there in between sixteen and three
Speaker 3: and the farther it went, the worsen angle you had
Speaker 3: to the green and the harder it was. And now
Speaker 3: that's all rough and they're trying to make the rough
Speaker 3: as thick as they can. But you know you'd be
Speaker 3: worse off if the ball just kept on gut. You know,
Speaker 3: a good player would be worse off. The average player
Speaker 3: would be much better off if the ball is on
Speaker 3: short grass over there, because they're probably not hitting the
Speaker 3: green in two anyway. They just at least they find
Speaker 3: the ball. So there's four or five places around the
Speaker 3: golf course where they've taken away angles, you know, and
Speaker 3: sometimes they're taking away angles that are bad. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like the hard thing to you know, the hard
Speaker 3: thing for a lot of people to understand is sometimes
Speaker 3: sometimes the whole is harder if your ball keeps going
Speaker 3: off line instead of stop it. You know, the more
Speaker 3: the longer it goes, the more acute the angle is
Speaker 3: going back the other way. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sixteen at the old course. You're playing back towards
Speaker 3: out of bounds as the further you go left, you know,
Speaker 3: if the pin's kind of on that front right part,
Speaker 3: you're playing to a very narrow thing with with a
Speaker 3: big hollow in front of it and an out of
Speaker 3: bounds fence not that far behind it.
Speaker 1: I mean, in that fairway used to be it just
Speaker 1: was short grass all the way left and now it's
Speaker 1: thick rough.
Speaker 3: Yes, there was just there was a lot of there
Speaker 3: was a lot of you know, the the third fairway
Speaker 3: in the sixteenth were pretty much mowed together, and now
Speaker 3: there's a big, you know, band of rock coming back
Speaker 3: in from the sixteen green and three T side that
Speaker 3: didn't used to be there. You know, seven is another
Speaker 3: one that like it's not a problem for the pros,
Speaker 3: but you know, I'm shocked at like, it's a long
Speaker 3: carry from the team now to get it out in
Speaker 3: the fairway, and you know, the average player isn't playing
Speaker 3: it from nearly as long as the pros, but it's
Speaker 3: a pretty you know, it's a carry to get to
Speaker 3: the fairway now, and it used to be you know,
Speaker 3: the shortcrass came way back, and I just that one.
Speaker 3: I don't really understand why they changed it because it
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like, you know, it doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 3: adding any strategy, and it's it's not like the pros
Speaker 3: are gonna miss that short ever. So I haven't figured
Speaker 3: out what, you know, why they did that with this in.
Speaker 1: Mind, I think we got questions from a couple of people.
Speaker 1: There's somebody I'm that I work with who cause really
Speaker 1: he's been bagging this take and I'm curious your your
Speaker 1: thoughts on it, okay, he said. He says that that
Speaker 1: the old course just should be retired from the Open
Speaker 1: Rota and and and it should go you know, it
Speaker 1: should go the way of Prestwick and just go back
Speaker 1: to it's you know, be itself.
Speaker 3: Wow. I mean, obviously that's never going to happen because
Speaker 3: the RNA runs the Open, and the RNA's based in
Speaker 3: San Andrew's, so you know, I mean, I would say
Speaker 3: one of the things I like about that dynamic is
Speaker 3: that it does it puts more pressure on the RNA
Speaker 3: to do something about equipment instead of just doing something
Speaker 3: about the golf courses than it does the USGA because
Speaker 3: the RN because the RNA's home is one of those
Speaker 3: championship golf courses where all these problems show up. You know,
Speaker 3: the USCA doesn't have to worry about that. Oh that's
Speaker 3: Marian's problem, that's Oakland Hills problem. The RNA, it's our problem.
Speaker 3: So they have a little more skin in the game
Speaker 3: as far as what to do about equipment. Long term,
Speaker 3: they just they you know, they keep putting teeth back
Speaker 3: in and further and further back, but they don't have
Speaker 3: much room to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Half the half the round seemingly is spent walking back
Speaker 1: to tease on other courses.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you know I did play. I played the
Speaker 3: golf course once in tournament conditions. After after we finished
Speaker 3: working on Sabonic. H My client Michael Pascucci, who played
Speaker 3: in the dune Hill every year, and one of his
Speaker 3: founding members, Johann Ruper, who runs the you know, the
Speaker 3: chairman of Dunhill and runs the event, uh, invited me
Speaker 3: to come play in the tournament as part of you know,
Speaker 3: helping promote Sabonic a little bit. So so I played
Speaker 3: three days, you know, carnousde Saint Andrews Kingsbarns and uh uh,
Speaker 3: you know, played a couple of practice rounds of the
Speaker 3: old course too and seeing it set up with the
Speaker 3: pins and really hard places, and it's the only time
Speaker 3: I've ever really gotten to do that. So I played
Speaker 3: with Andrew Ogcorn, who played on the European Tour for years,
Speaker 3: probably on the senior tour now, but you know, Andrew
Speaker 3: is not a very long hitter. We were playing into
Speaker 3: the nasty prevailing wind to come you know, into your
Speaker 3: face off the left as you're going out is a
Speaker 3: hard wind, but that's that's not uncommon in Saint Andrew's
Speaker 3: and he was playing some of those bactees for the
Speaker 3: first time because he played the golf course for twenty
Speaker 3: years and the European Tour played it every year. But
Speaker 3: you know, there was a new tea way back on
Speaker 3: two where he could barely you know, he could barely
Speaker 3: get it to the fairway and the left rough had
Speaker 3: been pulled in and it was really nasty over there.
Speaker 3: He made a quick six there, and there were like
Speaker 3: two or three places that he really had to like,
Speaker 3: he struggled to figure out how he needed to play
Speaker 3: the hole now, because you know, thirty yards longer, it
Speaker 3: was much differ for a short hit. And again it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, you've got all these little wrinkles and you know,
Speaker 3: not quote unquote hazards out there, but things you have
Speaker 3: to take into account in playing the hole, and you're
Speaker 3: bringing some entirely different ones into play when you go
Speaker 3: further back. So, I mean, it is a golf course
Speaker 3: that changes around a lot. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: a shame that they don't, you know, there's they're so
Speaker 3: interested in what the winning score is that they don't
Speaker 3: you know, they're just on the back tee as far
Speaker 3: back as they can go all four days on every hole.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, like I don't think they they
Speaker 3: don't think they play eight way up one day like
Speaker 3: the USGA might do be a fascinating tournament if they
Speaker 3: did some of that, because guys would not know where
Speaker 3: to hit the ball or what clubs hit from the
Speaker 3: tee on some holes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's one of the things, right, is
Speaker 1: that it's a golf course. Like you know, everything that
Speaker 1: I've read and listen to and you know heard you
Speaker 1: talk about other people talk about is the effectively randomness
Speaker 1: that you feel with the bunkers. But then when the
Speaker 1: wind changes into different directions and that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it makes sense. And in theory, as a tournament
Speaker 1: set up organization, turnam step staff could create that randomness
Speaker 1: all four days of the tournament with them with the
Speaker 1: way they set it up. And also, you know, I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that people lament about distance
Speaker 1: is the idea that certain aspects of the game aren't
Speaker 1: aren't tested.
Speaker 2: If you throw score out of the out of the.
Speaker 1: Equation, you can effectively do that with just setting up
Speaker 1: the golf course making par fours. Oh, I want to
Speaker 1: see you want to see somebody hit a long iron.
Speaker 1: Why don't we turn this par four into two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty yard Part three for the day. You know,
Speaker 1: if you don't care about score, right right right?
Speaker 3: And then the other thing is and I don't think
Speaker 3: it's appreciated enough. I really picked up on it in
Speaker 3: Houston the last two years. Is you know, that big driver.
Speaker 3: It's not just that it enables people to hit it farther.
Speaker 3: They're so much more consistent with it. They know exactly
Speaker 3: how far they're carry distance is, and it's not like,
Speaker 3: you know, when I played golf with Ben crenshawt thirty
Speaker 3: years ago, there was a difference between hitting the ball
Speaker 3: and the screws and just hitting a normal drive and
Speaker 3: it was like twenty yards. Yeah, but that's not a
Speaker 3: factor for tour players anymore. It's like, I can carry
Speaker 3: a three h five and if the water's twine, I'm
Speaker 3: perfectly okay with that. I'm never gonna miss it six
Speaker 3: yards short from three hundred yards.
Speaker 2: That's that's the thing.
Speaker 3: And that's crazy that that that the equipment is that
Speaker 3: consistently good that they can just you know, I can
Speaker 3: play really close to something because I know I'm not
Speaker 3: going to lose distance.
Speaker 1: I did an experiment a few years ago with with
Speaker 1: modern equipment versus per Simon versus like Hickory. I never
Speaker 1: published the results, but like for me who's not a
Speaker 1: tour pro, the difference between a mishit and a good
Speaker 1: hit with a driver's like ten yards with the modern stuff.
Speaker 1: When you get the per Simon, it starts to become
Speaker 1: like thirty yards, huge, huge difference. You know, left that
Speaker 1: left miss is awful, It flies nowhere. The heel cut
Speaker 1: just just goes nowhere. And then you know with now
Speaker 1: with the current drivers, they go like effectively the same
Speaker 1: different distance. You know, like a lot of times you
Speaker 1: miss it and it just runs further. It might not
Speaker 1: carry quite as far, but it runs further. And I
Speaker 1: think that's like one of the obviously, I think that's
Speaker 1: it seems like that's an area it's been highlighted by
Speaker 1: the USGA and this very very long, arduous process, which
Speaker 1: I think that has to be that way for because
Speaker 1: the lawsuits potentially flying.
Speaker 2: But you know, that seems to be one of the
Speaker 2: areas of interest with.
Speaker 1: The high level game is removing some of the forgiveness
Speaker 1: that you know, the forgiveness was created for the eighteen handicap,
Speaker 1: but it helps the the tour pro more so than
Speaker 1: anybody else.
Speaker 3: Definitely, because you know the tour players, it's like they're
Speaker 3: pretty consistent anyway, but when you give them that equipment,
Speaker 3: their confidence level is just unbeatable. And that's the you know,
Speaker 3: that's that's what we go back to. That that we're
Speaker 3: trying to cut into a little bit an architecture is
Speaker 3: like give them some things that make them a little uncertain.
Speaker 3: But if they know exactly how far the ball goes
Speaker 3: and they know exactly how far that bunker is, they
Speaker 3: don't make any mistakes. I think, you know, actually in Britain,
Speaker 3: the mistake that they can make is the ball roll
Speaker 3: out too far into a bunker that they didn't think
Speaker 3: they could get to, like happened to Adam Scottman in
Speaker 3: the playoff for the Open. You know, adrenaline on a
Speaker 3: high down wind. He thought there's no way he's driving
Speaker 3: it into that bunker from the t and he did.
Speaker 3: You know, that wouldn't happen to him on the other
Speaker 3: end though, It's like if he's trying to carry something
Speaker 3: he's gonna carry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that's that's the thing, right, is that you know,
Speaker 1: and you could do that with setup. One of the
Speaker 1: most famous things, one of the most famous I think
Speaker 1: moments of of of great setup, and it's on a
Speaker 1: hole that I would not consider a great golf hole
Speaker 1: is the sixteenth at the Olympic Club.
Speaker 2: Furick. He didn't know what to do. He's leading the
Speaker 2: US Open.
Speaker 1: They moved the tea up and he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: to do and because of it, he hit, you know,
Speaker 1: a shot that you never see somebody that's leading a
Speaker 1: major championship hit because he was confused, uncommitted and did
Speaker 1: know what to do simply by moving teas. And I
Speaker 1: think that's like something like it's just if somebody went
Speaker 1: out and shot fifty seven, then you know, the public
Speaker 1: backlash would be, you know, so crazy. But in a way,
Speaker 1: somebody shooting fifty seven, you might provide a more well
Speaker 1: rounded test doing that with a varied setup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, when we started talking about Houston,
Speaker 3: one of the things that brooks Kepka asked for that
Speaker 3: we couldn't really put into Memorial Park so much because
Speaker 3: there were so many trees. Was to put teas on
Speaker 3: different angles and you know, make them play from different places.
Speaker 3: So they had to aim at something different because you know,
Speaker 3: now if if they're playing from the same tea all
Speaker 3: four days, usually you know, the old course is kind
Speaker 3: of maybe an exception to this, but usually you know
Speaker 3: they've got some landmark, a tree, a scoreboard, something that's
Speaker 3: the line and they're just going to aim at it
Speaker 3: four days in a row. And he was like, you know, no,
Speaker 3: make people think more about what the line is. And
Speaker 3: you know, just you know, if you move over fifteen yards,
Speaker 3: you can't aim at that thing anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with with the old course, obviously something that'll get
Speaker 1: brought up a ton is the roots of it being
Speaker 1: reversible in the beginning you've played it in reverse?
Speaker 3: Did I played it with Eric every sing and Don
Speaker 3: plays like one time, you know, back when we were
Speaker 3: it was actually just before we were starting Old McDonald
Speaker 3: and you know, but it was one of the first
Speaker 3: years they had it reversible. And you know I had
Speaker 3: walked it once reverse, you know, on a Sunday, just
Speaker 3: to try to figure out some of the things. So
Speaker 3: I was not flying blind for every you know, for
Speaker 3: the other guys, it was like where do we go?
Speaker 3: It was very hard to pick out what you were
Speaker 3: supposed to do on some of the holes. Now. One
Speaker 3: of that too is you know, in the early early days,
Speaker 3: the place was grazed and all of it. You know,
Speaker 3: the grass was short pretty much everywhere. Now they've got
Speaker 3: some mowing lines like we were talking about, and the
Speaker 3: mowing lines are all based on the way that they
Speaker 3: play it now. So I'm sure it was more playable
Speaker 3: when there wasn't rough right up to the back of
Speaker 3: the fourteenth green. So when you're playing the hole and
Speaker 3: reverse you have to carry it. You have to fly
Speaker 3: it onto the putting surface, you know. But that's you know,
Speaker 3: one of the big differences right off the bat is
Speaker 3: there were three or four halls. There's you have to
Speaker 3: carry rough in front of the green when you're playing backwards,
Speaker 3: and I don't think it was that way when they
Speaker 3: played it. You can reverse one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: I guess that it is. So it was all very patchy.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows what lie you're going to get
Speaker 1: everywhere kind of gone.
Speaker 3: Well. The weird part was, you know, when in doubt
Speaker 3: sometimes you would like, you know, drive it over to
Speaker 3: the other fairway. You know, even though you're coming from
Speaker 3: way over here, let's get over on the fairway that
Speaker 3: they're still maintaining the approach.
Speaker 1: For well, you know, maybe they'll eventually get back to
Speaker 1: that where it's just short grass everywhere with h what.
Speaker 2: What holes did you think?
Speaker 1: Did you Were there any holes that you thought were
Speaker 1: better holes playing reverse?
Speaker 3: No, there were no holes that were obviously better playing
Speaker 3: and reverse. And obviously there's you know, there's two or
Speaker 3: three really famous holes that you know, you're like you're
Speaker 3: at Saint Andrews and you don't get to play into
Speaker 3: the road green from from there. Actually that I mean
Speaker 3: that hole is a that is a good hole from backwards,
Speaker 3: playing down the first fairway and then into the narrow
Speaker 3: part of the green, the road bunker is kind of
Speaker 3: turned away from you just a little bit, so you
Speaker 3: don't you're not staring it in the face like you
Speaker 3: are the other way, but it's still it's a really
Speaker 3: hard little pitch shot going, you know, it's it's narrow
Speaker 3: between the road and the bunkers still, and you know,
Speaker 3: playing up the twelfth fairway where you are seeing all
Speaker 3: those little pot bunkers in the way and then hitting
Speaker 3: across the big bunker to the left of the eleventh
Speaker 3: green onto that green. That was a frightening shot, even
Speaker 3: though it was it's not a very long shot again,
Speaker 3: but that was still like that was definitely a wake
Speaker 3: up call. But but other than those not really, I
Speaker 3: mean and and those holes, you know, they're great holes
Speaker 3: the other way too, I can't say they're better, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, playing the first hole backwards is not the
Speaker 3: same as playing the road hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, one final question the whole course is
Speaker 1: you know, if you were I assume I think I
Speaker 1: know the answer to this, but like if you were
Speaker 1: in Scotland, you say, this is just I know you're
Speaker 1: going to hate this question all right now, you're gonna
Speaker 1: hate it. Say you're like, say, just live you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden your life's there and you could put
Speaker 1: in all the courses are in your backyard. Is it
Speaker 1: the course you're playing the most of any course of
Speaker 1: Scotland or is there is there somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Sat Andrews in North Berrick. You know, I've played North
Speaker 3: Barrick more than Saint Andrews because of working at the
Speaker 3: Renaissance Club and them being so nice to us while
Speaker 3: we were there. Just yeah, go out and play in
Speaker 3: the evenings, don't worry about it. And you know, and
Speaker 3: I've been going. I've been going back there for you know,
Speaker 3: almost every year the last few years. And if I play,
Speaker 3: if I play anywhere outside there, I'm going over to
Speaker 3: North Barrick and playing it again. It's just it's, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not it's it's more flattering to my game than
Speaker 3: the old courses. And you don't it's not as hard
Speaker 3: to access, you know. The old course is just busy,
Speaker 3: is the main problem. So I haven't really played it
Speaker 3: nearly as much. You know, I've played it maybe twenty times,
Speaker 3: but I haven't played it nearly as much as I
Speaker 3: would if access were easy. But it's a fascinating golf course.
Speaker 3: You would never get tired of playing there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, you know, the busy.
Speaker 1: I always know which resources are the busiest, because you know,
Speaker 1: people always are reaching out to me to go see
Speaker 1: their places and places that I've never gotten. A place
Speaker 1: that I've never gotten an inquiry about coming out to
Speaker 1: is the old course. I don't think they need any
Speaker 1: they don't need any help, so it should be a
Speaker 1: great Open. We're looking forward to that and and we'll
Speaker 1: thank you so much for talking about it with us
Speaker 1: this us. It should be a great table setter for
Speaker 1: everybody to get in the Open Championship.
Speaker 3: Bood have fun over there, ma'am.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of The Yoke
Speaker 1: with Dope. Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Meg, wonderful job.
Speaker 1: As always, as a quick reminder, we have a print sale.
Speaker 1: We are doing a big print sale in the pro Shop.
Speaker 1: It is fifteen percent off all prints through the fourth
Speaker 1: of July weekend, so go.
Speaker 2: In there check it out.
Speaker 1: If you want to spruce up your office, spruce up
Speaker 1: your basement, spruce up any room in your house, this
Speaker 1: is a great opportunity. We have over fifty courses. We
Speaker 1: have metal prints, paper prints as well as canvas prints.
Speaker 1: New offering, so you get fifteen percent automatically this weekend.
Speaker 2: Go check it out and maybe dress up your walls
Speaker 2: this weekend.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and we will be back on Tuesday. We'll
Speaker 1: talk with Garrett Morrison who was on the ground at
Speaker 1: the live event in Portland, and then Friday we will
Speaker 1: have more Open Championship preview content. Really trying to you know,
Speaker 1: just get you guys in the mood for the open.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening to another episode, and we will
Speaker 1: be back on Tuesday.