Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a.
Speaker 1: Brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride egg Lie.
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off the golf course game.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host,
Speaker 2: Andy Johnson, and today I am excited to talk about
Speaker 2: one of my favorite golf courses in the world, which
Speaker 2: also happens to be the twenty twenty six US Open
Speaker 2: host Shinnakak Hills, and I'm excited I haven't been joined
Speaker 2: by my colleague, my friend, employee number one, This staff
Speaker 2: member of Frida Egg UH, Garrett Morrison, who is UH
Speaker 2: is his own podcast, Designing Golf, which delves into the
Speaker 2: great subject of golf architecture every other week. I'm excited
Speaker 2: to chat with Garrett. It's been a little bit while
Speaker 2: since we've we've talked and it was great. We UH.
Speaker 2: We enjoyed media Day thanks to the us GA out
Speaker 2: there a couple of weeks ago, and UH it was
Speaker 2: Garrett's first time around the golf course, it was my
Speaker 2: I don't know what time. It was a few times
Speaker 2: and uh it was a blustery day. The course was
Speaker 2: fiery and uh, I you know, I think you know,
Speaker 2: for Garrett, he can speak for himself, but I think
Speaker 2: it was baptism by fire and it was, Uh it was.
Speaker 2: It was Shinnacock coming on all cylinders, which was fun
Speaker 2: to see. And we so we will dive into Shinnacock. Uh.
Speaker 2: This will be kind of the course preview portion of
Speaker 2: our Shinnecock coverage. I wanted to get it out early.
Speaker 2: We'll have a lot of coincide and coverage. Uh. Just
Speaker 2: last week, we we released our first piece of Shinnakok coverage,
Speaker 2: which was the Allgrasses Local Series, our series that documents
Speaker 2: turf operations. So it took a look at Shinnecock Hills,
Speaker 2: uh maintenance staff and crew in the you know, unique
Speaker 2: uh circumstances that they deal with being out on the
Speaker 2: east end of Long Island and preparing championship golf. So
Speaker 2: that uh that is coming. That came out. That's on
Speaker 2: our YouTube page. You can check that out in a
Speaker 2: couple in a in a couple of weeks, we'll have
Speaker 2: our formal UH YouTube video that that dives into the
Speaker 2: architecture of Shinnakok Hills. On top of that, Garrett, We'll
Speaker 2: be releasing a pod that is a lot about the
Speaker 2: history of Shinnakok Hills and the design UH that will
Speaker 2: be released next week, and then we will also have
Speaker 2: a written piece on Shinnakok Kill is a course profile
Speaker 2: that I'm touching up, and you know, it just depends
Speaker 2: on when my fingers decide they're way to finish that piece,
Speaker 2: but I would guess that's coming out this week or
Speaker 2: next week on the website. So hopefully, you know, by
Speaker 2: saying this, I will have committed myself to a deadline
Speaker 2: that my ADHD does not just bypass. And I have
Speaker 2: a firm deadline here, so I'm really excited. This is
Speaker 2: I think, you know, Irona makes surprise a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but Shinnakok has been kind of the bell of the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six ball in terms of schedules. You kind
Speaker 2: of look at every year and there's some sensational years
Speaker 2: and next year obviously we have Pebble Beach in the
Speaker 2: old course as well as Frisco. But I think you
Speaker 2: look at next year and it's like, well, the old course,
Speaker 2: the opening of the old course is going to be
Speaker 2: it to me, just with the history, the recent history
Speaker 2: at Acock, some of the drama that tends to company
Speaker 2: golf on the East end of Long Island, and just
Speaker 2: the conditions that you can get some fantastic recent championships there.
Speaker 2: This is this is the one, especially from a TV perspective. Obviously,
Speaker 2: you know it's a hard place to get to for
Speaker 2: fans and they'll have great attendance. But from a TV perspective,
Speaker 2: this one is grab your popcorn and watch, like you know, listen.
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna be someone that's like, this is the
Speaker 2: best golf course in the world, because I think a
Speaker 2: golf course a lot like like restaurants in the sense
Speaker 2: and if somebody says, Andy, what's the best golf course
Speaker 2: in the world, much like if they asked me what
Speaker 2: the best restaurant was that I've ever had, I'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: what kind of restaurant are you talking about? What kind
Speaker 2: of food are you in the mood for? And that
Speaker 2: dictates what the best restaurant is for somebody. Like golf courses,
Speaker 2: I think like one of the big things with golf
Speaker 2: courses that people miss, and the list miss is like
Speaker 2: what is the best golf course for the day I
Speaker 2: want to play? And you know, I might not be
Speaker 2: in the mood to get my ass kicked by Shittacock
Speaker 2: Hills on a given day, but on a day that
Speaker 2: I want to go see how sharp I am, see
Speaker 2: what I got, see what's in the in the in
Speaker 2: the quiver, what what what arrows I have these days?
Speaker 2: You know, I think Shittacock to me is at the
Speaker 2: top of the of the pyramid of American you know,
Speaker 2: championship golf courses where I'm going to go out and
Speaker 2: I'm going to see what game, what my game brings today.
Speaker 2: I feel that way when I go play there, I
Speaker 2: I probably tend to play a lot of like I
Speaker 2: play most of my golf is work golf, but like
Speaker 2: it's like in a casual setting when I go to Chittacock,
Speaker 2: I tend to lock in. I say, I'm going to
Speaker 2: spend my time focusing on these shots and I'm going
Speaker 2: to attempt to hit shots that I don't normally always
Speaker 2: hit because I want to take on this golf course.
Speaker 2: And I think there's different things like you go to
Speaker 2: Cyprus and you lock in on the experience and the
Speaker 2: journey in the walk, and that's what makes that place
Speaker 2: so special. So to me, this idea of, oh, like,
Speaker 2: this is the best golf course in the world is
Speaker 2: such a futile exercise. But I would just say about
Speaker 2: Shinnacock Hills and why I'm so hyped up for this
Speaker 2: US Open is that Shinnecock Hills would be on the
Speaker 2: short list of my recommendations of If you were going
Speaker 2: to say, what's the best golf course in the world,
Speaker 2: and I say back, well, what are you in the
Speaker 2: mood for? What type of golf do you want to play?
Speaker 2: If you said I want to test my game and
Speaker 2: see what I got, I would probably be like, well,
Speaker 2: you should go play Shinnecock Hills. Not that it's that easy.
Speaker 2: We can't just book a reservation like that with golf,
Speaker 2: and I identify that. But you know, the idea and
Speaker 2: the goal of our coverage in the lead up of
Speaker 2: this this major championship will be to give you the
Speaker 2: idea as much as we possibly can what it is
Speaker 2: like to play there and what it is these challenges
Speaker 2: that the best players in the world are going to
Speaker 2: confront on a shot by shot and round by round basis,
Speaker 2: depending on the elements and how the golf course is
Speaker 2: set up. So that's my little monologue here before this,
Speaker 2: I didn't anticipate talking that long before we get to it.
Speaker 2: You know something that would be valuable to practice before
Speaker 2: you got to Shittacock. I'd be working on my putting.
Speaker 2: The greens there are there are some diabolical greens, there's
Speaker 2: some docile greens. But one of the things about the
Speaker 2: greens is they are very difficult because they're exposed, they
Speaker 2: sit up, there's wind, there's a lot of tilt in them,
Speaker 2: a lot of tilt in them, similar to ronom inc
Speaker 2: which we just saw. But one of the things you're
Speaker 2: going to see a lot of over the course of
Speaker 2: the US Open is a lot of six to eight
Speaker 2: footers for pars that guys have to make. And the
Speaker 2: way I get ready to make my six or eight
Speaker 2: footers for par when I'm at home, an easy way
Speaker 2: to just kill twenty minutes at a time, fifteen minutes,
Speaker 2: ten minutes, two minutes. You get yourself a perfect practice putting. Matt.
Speaker 2: What I love about this, and particularly for those short
Speaker 2: putts that are kind of make or break round putts,
Speaker 2: like the days that you just don't give them away,
Speaker 2: the days you don't miss the three to five footers,
Speaker 2: the days you make you know a lot of eight footers,
Speaker 2: those are the days you score well. And what I
Speaker 2: love about the Perfect Practice Putting Matt to me is
Speaker 2: it teaches me how to hit a perfect straight putt.
Speaker 2: It's got effectively what I would describe as a chalk line,
Speaker 2: which is the I think one of the best ways
Speaker 2: to practice putting. It's a line that allows you to
Speaker 2: look at how your stroke's interacting. I tend to be
Speaker 2: iput best when my stroke goes inside and then I'm
Speaker 2: able to release the putter inside on the takeaway. But
Speaker 2: I can see that because they have the line on
Speaker 2: the Perfect probably Practice Putting Mat and I'm just hitting
Speaker 2: straight putts. And one of the things that I noticed
Speaker 2: with the Perfect Practice Putting Mat, it's really smooth, It's
Speaker 2: really true. It like simulates what a putting green's like.
Speaker 2: It has the ball return, which makes it really easy
Speaker 2: to just sit and practice for ten minutes without having
Speaker 2: to move. But what I see with putting when I
Speaker 2: put my best is I see my lines and I
Speaker 2: think about if I hit a straight putt on this line,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make it. And that's why I love about
Speaker 2: the time I spend on my Perfect Practice putting mat
Speaker 2: is it gets me ready to hit really challenging putts
Speaker 2: if I can visualize, this is my straight putt if
Speaker 2: I hit it at this spot. So the good news
Speaker 2: I have for you is that if you go to
Speaker 2: perfect Practice dot com, I can get you twenty percent
Speaker 2: off with the code SGS. You can also if you
Speaker 2: wanted to look at other things for Father's Day gifts,
Speaker 2: they have the chip shot, which is a really cool thing.
Speaker 2: It makes you, it helps you chip I'm excited. I'm
Speaker 2: moving a new place with a little bit more space
Speaker 2: to use the chip shot. I'm excited about that. But
Speaker 2: you can buy those all at perfect Practice dot com
Speaker 2: that are the perfect Father's Day gift, which is right
Speaker 2: around the corner. Or you know, if you don't want
Speaker 2: SGS for twenty percent off, you don't want to use
Speaker 2: that promo code, you want to go to Amazon or
Speaker 2: golf Galaxy. You can get those there too, and those
Speaker 2: you don't get SGS twenty or SGS for twenty percent off.
Speaker 2: So if you want twenty percent off. I'll say go
Speaker 2: to perfect practice dot com. If you want to get
Speaker 2: this like today when you're listening to this, go to
Speaker 2: your local golf galaxy and buy it. But anyways, these
Speaker 2: are great practice options and it would get your ready
Speaker 2: to play shitta cock or any hard course around you.
Speaker 2: If you just make a lot more short putts. I
Speaker 2: promise you you're going to get better at golf. Is
Speaker 2: proba The easiest way to get better at golf is
Speaker 2: to show up your short putting. All right, without further ado,
Speaker 2: let's talk to our friend Garrett Morrison. Garrett, welcome on,
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Andy, I'm doing great. Ready to
Speaker 1: talk about shinnacock. We don't have to go to in
Speaker 1: depth on our media day round there. We like don't
Speaker 1: have to, don't We don't have to tell people what
Speaker 1: happened or how I played or anything like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you alluded to it briefly in your little introductory spiel there,
Speaker 1: but I don't think people need to, you know, they're
Speaker 1: not interested in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you got it on a top.
Speaker 2: That was a tough introduction to shinnacock. It was blown
Speaker 2: about twenty five miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Look, Shinnacock was on top of me, the elements were
Speaker 1: on top of me, but most importantly, I was on
Speaker 1: top of myself. I did a lot of that to myself.
Speaker 1: And so you know, basically the media day round for
Speaker 1: me turned into I'm not gonna hold people up, going
Speaker 1: to do our little bits to the camera, uh, to
Speaker 1: to supplement our video, and we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: focus on that. But if I if I top it
Speaker 1: into the fescue, I'm I'm not going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: spending two minutes looking for it.
Speaker 2: I like how you did that? You know you you
Speaker 2: you know you just you just said. I wasn't there
Speaker 2: to play golf. I was there to make content.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah that was my responsibility, and yeah I could
Speaker 1: have done both, but I wasn't playing well enough to
Speaker 1: I wasn't I didn't have I didn't have things in
Speaker 1: order to do both.
Speaker 2: My takeaway is that if you didn't have the responsibilities
Speaker 2: of being you know, real uh a standout Friday golf
Speaker 2: uh uh, you know video personality on this on this
Speaker 2: video that we were shooting, you would have played great.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm taking away. But you know, it's hard
Speaker 2: to play good golf and work at the same time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, you know, we we we have things
Speaker 1: tough here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that was your first time around Shinnacock. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it's a course that I think you as a someone
Speaker 2: who's keen about golf history, the evolution of golf courses,
Speaker 2: the you know kind of how golf courses and architects, like,
Speaker 2: I know you had read and spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time looking at watching tournaments from Shinnacock, studying Shinnecock Hills
Speaker 2: before you got there. I wanted to start or start
Speaker 2: this kind of conversation pretty broad. I prepped a couple
Speaker 2: of things, but I was I was curious, let's talk
Speaker 2: about like three things each that just on the periphery
Speaker 2: stand out about Shinnacock. Whether this could be history, this
Speaker 2: could be design related, or it could be you know,
Speaker 2: just part of the place.
Speaker 1: Do you want to just go back and forth?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You start one.
Speaker 1: Each, Yeah cool. Yeah, I mean this was my first
Speaker 1: time seeing Shinnecock Hills in person. One of the great
Speaker 1: things that I got to do during media day was
Speaker 1: show up early in the morning and actually walk the
Speaker 1: golf course because at the same time that we were
Speaker 1: doing all the media day stuff. We were also putting
Speaker 1: together a video about the agronomy team at the club,
Speaker 1: which you mentioned. That's our All Grass Is Local video,
Speaker 1: which is out already. And so I actually did get
Speaker 1: to walk the course hole by hole in the early
Speaker 1: morning when the maintenance crew is out there, and that
Speaker 1: was a pretty magical experience. You know, I didn't didn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about my golf game or anything like that,
Speaker 1: just got to have to look at these golf holes
Speaker 1: and take some pictures and familiarize myself with the place,
Speaker 1: because you know, I felt like I knew this course
Speaker 1: from singing. I mean, I remember the nineteen ninety five
Speaker 1: US opened very well. That's right when I was starting
Speaker 1: to get into golf and when I was getting into
Speaker 1: watching golf. So I vividly remember watching that tournament and
Speaker 1: seeing this course and being like, whoa, you know, what
Speaker 1: is this place? Two thousand and four memorable tournament twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen as well. So I felt like I knew the course,
Speaker 1: but seeing it in person is a different thing. And
Speaker 1: that actually leads into my first remarkable thing or favorite
Speaker 1: thing about Shinnecak Hills. And that's just the simple fact
Speaker 1: that there are no gates around this golf course, and
Speaker 1: that a busy road just goes right through the middle
Speaker 1: of it, Tuckahoe Road. You know, at certain times of
Speaker 1: day it's actually kind of backed up through the golf course.
Speaker 1: And this might seem like just a silly thing, but
Speaker 1: we're talking about Shinnecock Hills here. You know, this is
Speaker 1: one of the most kind of aspirational and exclusive golf
Speaker 1: courses in the world. But you realize when you drive
Speaker 1: up to it that it's just kind of sitting there
Speaker 1: out in full view. It's almost like Cyprus Point, where
Speaker 1: you're driving along seventeen mile drive and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: there's the thirteenth green just sitting there for anybody to
Speaker 1: look at. But at Shinnakok Hills it's even more so
Speaker 1: because you can there's this public road going right through
Speaker 1: the course. And it just reminds you that the roots
Speaker 1: of golf in America and on Long Island specifically, were
Speaker 1: really pretty casual. It's like, yeah, there may have been
Speaker 1: Vanderbilts who were founding these clubs, but really what was
Speaker 1: happening is that these guys were going out to find
Speaker 1: a good piece of land and then they were just
Speaker 1: playing golf on it, and Shinnacock Hills has retained that
Speaker 1: feeling by not being behind gates, by just being a
Speaker 1: place that you can kind of drive up to and
Speaker 1: that you can see very very well from a busy
Speaker 1: highway and then and then turning off to go on
Speaker 1: to Tuckahoe Road. And so just the fact that it's
Speaker 1: this this piece of land in this golf course are
Speaker 1: are just sitting there out in public view kind of
Speaker 1: charmed me and made me feel like this place has
Speaker 1: still a strong connection to its past.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's a great point, and it's it's
Speaker 2: you know, certain times a day traffic gets fierce late
Speaker 2: mid afternoon, it gets you know, they they I think
Speaker 2: that it's referred to out there as the trade parade
Speaker 2: is you know, everybody that works on these very nice
Speaker 2: houses out there that commute from the middle of the
Speaker 2: island go out there in the morning, going out it's
Speaker 2: bad in the afternoon, coming backs bad to the central
Speaker 2: part of the island. But you know, one of the
Speaker 2: neat things about that, what you pointed out, Garrett, is like,
Speaker 2: you know, if it's not the US Open week and
Speaker 2: the roads closed, like one of the other neat aspects
Speaker 2: of that is if you're just in the area, you
Speaker 2: could drive and you could you know, park, you could
Speaker 2: stop your car for a second, throw on your flashers,
Speaker 2: and the way the road interacts with the golf course,
Speaker 2: you've got like an awesome view of basically the whole course.
Speaker 2: So from like a perspective of like listen, like I'm
Speaker 2: a nut job, I'll never forget when I told my
Speaker 2: wife we were driving back from Marquette, Michigan, that I
Speaker 2: needed to pull over because there's a golf course that
Speaker 2: I've heard is pretty cool and I need to see it.
Speaker 2: And she's like, what do you mean? And I parked
Speaker 2: the car at the entrance and got out and sprinted
Speaker 2: around the golf course. I ran like probably like six
Speaker 2: or seven holes. It was super late, it was like
Speaker 2: six pm in the afternoon, and I just like ran
Speaker 2: around the golf course because I just wanted to see
Speaker 2: some of the stuff that people have told me about
Speaker 2: from my own eyes.
Speaker 1: Was for a lifetime of suffering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know that that had to be a
Speaker 2: red flag. But I ran around the golf course then
Speaker 2: got back of the car, like, you know, ten minutes
Speaker 2: later and we drove, we got back on the road
Speaker 2: and drove that was Pine Hill's. But I was like
Speaker 2: immediately like okay, I have to get here from a
Speaker 2: perspective of like, okay, this place you you're it's hard
Speaker 2: place to go see because of the exclusivity factor of it,
Speaker 2: but it's not a hard place to just get a
Speaker 2: look to really understand, you know, when you talk like
Speaker 2: in real life seeing the landform and you're almost it's
Speaker 2: almost like you're up with a drone where the road
Speaker 2: is and you can see how the vast majority of
Speaker 2: the golf course interacts with each other. And I think
Speaker 2: that's neat. You know. I'm not saying go there and
Speaker 2: paint a picture and pull your car over, but you
Speaker 2: could throw your flashers on, get out of your car,
Speaker 2: look like almost like a vista point over the ocean
Speaker 2: on a highway, you know, So very cool aspect of it.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the things that I know you
Speaker 2: you've hit on a lot that I appreciate about. Uh
Speaker 2: Shinnakok Kills is obviously one of the founding five clubs
Speaker 2: of the U. S g A. So it, along with
Speaker 2: Chicago Golf Club, the Country Club in Massachusetts, Saint Andrews
Speaker 2: Golf Club and the fifth because I'm on the spot
Speaker 2: and didn't write it down Newport Newport. There you go.
Speaker 2: I knew you you'd picked me.
Speaker 1: We did a good job there See. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been able to rattle off the first four like you did,
Speaker 1: but but I did have Newport.
Speaker 2: You know what. Inevitably, whenever I tried rattle off those
Speaker 2: five clubs, I always forget one, and.
Speaker 1: It's Defally Andrews. Probably, yeah, but that.
Speaker 2: Was the one to be because it's the the you know,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't do it for sure. It's not Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not the it's it's less prominent than I mean, think
Speaker 1: about the prominence of the of the others. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Newport and Shinnacok kind of evolved in similar ways, had
Speaker 1: shared some personnel and and so there are some there
Speaker 1: are some links between those two courses.
Speaker 2: The thing I would say about Saint Andrews is I
Speaker 2: think that it's a lesson. It serves its purpose as
Speaker 2: a lesson to every other club in America that beware
Speaker 2: of who you let you know into your house to
Speaker 2: change things up. And I'll leave it at that. But anyways,
Speaker 2: it's a founding five member of the USBA, which means
Speaker 2: it's super old. And I think one of the neat
Speaker 2: things about about Hittcock is its design history. This golf
Speaker 2: course has been a lot of things through the years
Speaker 2: in the early years of of golf. So the original
Speaker 2: golf course was twelve holes, which was designed by Willie Davis.
Speaker 2: And this is just like rudimentary golf at this point.
Speaker 2: You know, this is eighteen ninety one, I believe is
Speaker 2: the year, and this is just like, hey, like if
Speaker 2: you look at Chicago Golf Club's early design from CEB McDonald,
Speaker 2: it's like super rudiment, Like it is not like there's
Speaker 2: no like they're just trying to like figure out what
Speaker 2: golf is and how it works in America.
Speaker 1: Right, This is how everybody was doing golf courses in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties and nineties, by the way, just very
Speaker 1: quick construction, rudimentary, as you say, without a clear idea
Speaker 1: of the kind of techniques or goals of inland golf
Speaker 1: course construction.
Speaker 2: So fast forward a few years and then Willy Dunn
Speaker 2: Junior comes in and this would be and I you know,
Speaker 2: I think you've researched this way more than me. But
Speaker 2: I would say this is a Victorian era of design
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would say the original Willie Davis course
Speaker 1: whatever that what I mean. We don't know like a
Speaker 1: huge amount about the specific iterations of the early courses
Speaker 1: at Shinnacock, but yeah, both both of them, I would
Speaker 1: say we're part of the Victorian era of design broadly.
Speaker 1: Willy Done certainly kind of classically Victorian.
Speaker 2: So Victorian is like you know, it would be I
Speaker 2: use this as myself, It would kind of be like
Speaker 2: the way a five year old might design golf holes
Speaker 2: which are like bunkers. You have to carry right bunkers
Speaker 2: right and left because like anything off center needs to
Speaker 2: be penalized. So this golf course hosts the first championships
Speaker 2: at Shittakok Hills, which included the US Open in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six in the US and that year. So anyways,
Speaker 2: then you fast forward and you know National Golf Links
Speaker 2: has been built, you know, in Sebe McDonald's rummaging around
Speaker 2: the area, and they bring in Sebe McDonald and Seth
Speaker 2: Rayner to redesign the golf course and they bring their
Speaker 2: style of early Golden Age golf architecture to Shinnecock Hills.
Speaker 2: So we've now hit on, you know, the very beginning
Speaker 2: basic golf design, the Victorian era of design. And then
Speaker 2: the final person that comes in is William Flynn in
Speaker 2: the in the nineteen twenties and like he's not as known,
Speaker 2: the late nineteen twenties, really they acquire some new land
Speaker 2: and they go out and build the Shinnecock Hills that
Speaker 2: we know today. And this is would be the late
Speaker 2: period of the Golden Age of golf design as we
Speaker 2: describe it, which ended at roughly the you know, there
Speaker 2: were some courses that were built after the Great Depression
Speaker 2: that would still fall in this, but pretty much halted
Speaker 2: at the Great Depression, and this, you know, I would
Speaker 2: make an argument would be the most refined era of
Speaker 2: golf design until really where we're at today. Now. Obviously
Speaker 2: people might take, you know, might say that I'm crazy
Speaker 2: for that comparison, and obviously I understand. Nobody ever thinks
Speaker 2: in the moment they're doing things wrong. You know, RTJ
Speaker 2: and all of the golf writers during that period thought
Speaker 2: that was the best era of design. So but this
Speaker 2: is widely where so many you know, the Golden Age
Speaker 2: in general, so many of the best golf courses in
Speaker 2: the world are are are built then. But this late
Speaker 2: Golden Age period, I think is just you know, it's
Speaker 2: when Mackenzie is building Ciper's point, Perry Maxwell is building
Speaker 2: golf courses all over the country. William Flynn, who's way
Speaker 2: way underregarded, which is insane because he built Shinnecock Hills,
Speaker 2: which is arguably one of the best courses in the world.
Speaker 2: He's he's cooking with gas.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: George Thomas is building Thomas courses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of his best work in the late twenties.
Speaker 2: So you did this period was just a you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a cornycopia of great golf courses being built.
Speaker 2: And what's neat about Shittacock is that this club kind
Speaker 2: of embraced each era and updated the golf course and
Speaker 2: you get this representation of this late Golden Age golf
Speaker 2: course that is spectacular.
Speaker 1: And then they froze it in time in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: which also happened to turn out to be smart, right,
Speaker 1: They didn't then keep following the changing trends of golf
Speaker 1: architecture through the fifties and sixties and eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: Instead they said, we did a good job here. Bill
Speaker 1: Flynn knew what he was doing, and we're gonna basically
Speaker 1: preserve that golf course. Yeah, they added some trees, they
Speaker 1: went a little bit too green in some in some
Speaker 1: ways in the turf presentation, but that stuff was relatively
Speaker 1: easy to dial back. They never rebuilt their greens, They
Speaker 1: never really changed the core of the golf course that
Speaker 1: William Flynn built in nineteen thirty one. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you nailed it. And this is something that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about in depth on the Designing Golf episode
Speaker 1: that I'm putting together about Shinnacock. But Shinnecock Hills really
Speaker 1: tells the story of American golf course design through its
Speaker 1: first forty years and the point that it got to
Speaker 1: this late Golden Age naturalism is so great, and it
Speaker 1: was so smart to get to that point and then
Speaker 1: to say we're done, because I'm not sure the golf
Speaker 1: course design really ever got better than what this group
Speaker 1: of architects was doing in the United States in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen twenties. At that point, they had fully absorbed
Speaker 1: the lessons of Harry Colt. They had figured out how
Speaker 1: to build natural seeming golf courses, golf courses that appeared
Speaker 1: to just be responding to the land but actually had
Speaker 1: intricate strategic ideas in them. And William Flynn was a
Speaker 1: master of that. Alistair mackenzie obviously a master of that,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot about Perry Maxwell's late nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties mid to late nineteen thirties work as well. I
Speaker 1: think Prairie Dunes and Old Town Club and Southern Hills
Speaker 1: also represent this kind of fully developed Golden Age strategic golf.
Speaker 1: Natural golf in Shinnecock Hills is one of the best
Speaker 1: examples of that. So I think that's yeah, you laid
Speaker 1: it laid it out really well there. Do you want
Speaker 1: to hear my second thing? Yeah, I love how Shinnecock
Speaker 1: Hills builds through the round. I think it's basically a
Speaker 1: perfectly sequenced routing. And since this course is responding to
Speaker 1: the land, that is the primary feeling that you get
Speaker 1: from Shinnecock Hills. This is a golf course that is
Speaker 1: about this piece of land rather than about the design
Speaker 1: ideas of William Flann or whoever else. It makes sense
Speaker 1: that the main narrative of the round is how dramatic
Speaker 1: the landforms are. So you start in a portion of
Speaker 1: the property that's kind of close to National Golf Links
Speaker 1: and is similar in many ways to that part of
Speaker 1: National Golf Links with the kind of broad slopes. Right,
Speaker 1: this is it's kind of its own section of the property. Really, one, two,
Speaker 1: and three. They all go out along a boundary of
Speaker 1: the property, slightly turning as they go along, so you
Speaker 1: get slightly new scenarios with the wind. But the land
Speaker 1: is not flat there by any means. But it's also
Speaker 1: not kind of chaotically heaving, which is what you see
Speaker 1: in other parts of the property. It is it is
Speaker 1: these broad, long slopes that are again similar to what
Speaker 1: you see in the nearby section of National Golf Links.
Speaker 1: Then with the fourth hole, you enter into a pretty
Speaker 1: flat section of the property. Right The land is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's good in the sense that it's sandy and that
Speaker 1: there's some nice tumble to it, especially in the fifth fairway,
Speaker 1: but it's not dramatic at all. It is really pretty
Speaker 1: quiet from the fourth hole basically through the eighth hole.
Speaker 1: Then you get to the ninth hole and you play
Speaker 1: into this big ridge that the clubhouse sits on. And
Speaker 1: the ninth hole is a preview of the coming attractions.
Speaker 1: On the back nine, the fairway is spectacularly tumbling. The
Speaker 1: green is perched way up on the top of the ridge.
Speaker 1: The topography of that hole is absolutely incredible, and that
Speaker 1: continues through holes ten eleven. It quiets down a little
Speaker 1: bit on twelve to twelve still has that kind of
Speaker 1: roller coaster feel to it. Thirteen as a tee perched
Speaker 1: way up on a dune. Fourteen plays along the side
Speaker 1: of the big dune ridge. Fifteen plays from on top
Speaker 1: of it down. When you look back from fifteen green
Speaker 1: up at the tea, you're like, whoa, we just descended
Speaker 1: a long way down this ridge. Then you're back in
Speaker 1: the lowlands, right, But sixteen occupies probably the most interesting
Speaker 1: section of that lowlands part of the property is it
Speaker 1: has some really nice movement to it. Seventeen and then
Speaker 1: eighteen plays back into the big ridge, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's a perfectly structured story about this piece of land.
Speaker 1: We start on the quieter stuff, and we gradually build
Speaker 1: to the most dramatic stuff in kind of the middle
Speaker 1: to late middle parts of the round, and then we
Speaker 1: go back to the quieter section for a brief period
Speaker 1: before the end, and then we finish with the good
Speaker 1: stuff again. So I think the routing is perfect. Then
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of odd that on some early
Speaker 1: routing maps that then were actually reversed. It's not clear
Speaker 1: to me that they ever really committed to playing the
Speaker 1: course in that way. But it's kind of like Augusta National,
Speaker 1: where you're like, it's obvious that the back nine should
Speaker 1: be the back nine, but maybe it wasn't totally obvious
Speaker 1: to them from the beginning of the design process. Well,
Speaker 1: the ravenines are now though, it's it's perfect.
Speaker 2: Well, your reason the back dine became the back dine
Speaker 2: was because of frost delays. Yeah, and Augusta and.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly right, ten ten Green was unplayable, so they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess we'd better reverse them. And and
Speaker 1: because we can't have these amazing holes on the back
Speaker 1: nine now, like instead of playing them in the first
Speaker 1: three holes of the day.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the uh, the thing I think that
Speaker 2: I I would I would say that if they had
Speaker 2: started with ten as one, there would have been a
Speaker 2: revolt because ten is the hardest one of the things
Speaker 2: I've for the US open. It's Thursday morning. I have
Speaker 2: a park myself on the tenth hole and just watch
Speaker 2: the garnage.
Speaker 1: And it's like a scorable hole because it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's maybe not that long for the you can make
Speaker 1: a birdie. These guys can make birdie here. But it's
Speaker 1: so disorienting, Like it's the way its relationship to the
Speaker 1: land is so awkward in a good way, uh, just
Speaker 1: like it's so blind from the tea. We really don't
Speaker 1: know where you're playing, and it's you know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of places in the fairway where it's blind
Speaker 1: to the green and the green is so perched up.
Speaker 1: It's ugh, yeah, I mean it's it's a point. It
Speaker 1: would be a horrible first hole of the day. Like
Speaker 1: the guys who have to who have to tee off there,
Speaker 1: that is really if they put Patrick Red there, you know,
Speaker 1: Lady j is going to be would be rightfully furious.
Speaker 2: I've I've heard everything I've heard. They're turning over a
Speaker 2: new page. The past is the past, and it's time
Speaker 2: for us to move forward and noting.
Speaker 1: Maybe we got to test that happened. Maybe the USG
Speaker 1: has got to test that by starting starting pee on
Speaker 1: the tenth.
Speaker 2: Hole, right pins and a early tea time off ten
Speaker 2: on Thursday. You know, we would know that that they're
Speaker 2: they're plotting against some you know. Uh. The the one
Speaker 2: thing I would say about the flip nine if they
Speaker 2: ever flipped the not if they had the ninth flip
Speaker 2: nine would be an absolute insane last hole.
Speaker 1: It's a yeah, well it's an epic last hole. It's
Speaker 1: a you know, and and it makes sense as the
Speaker 1: last hole because the green is like right right under
Speaker 1: the clubhouse. And so maybe that's kind of what what
Speaker 1: Flynn was thinking in that early routing plan. But in
Speaker 1: every other respect, it it doesn't make sense to have
Speaker 1: have the round plate in that sequence.
Speaker 2: Not just ten at the start, but having to hit
Speaker 2: eleven the shot on eleven. I'm we're going to go
Speaker 2: into the into holes later, but hitting this shot on
Speaker 2: eleven as your as your second, your second.
Speaker 1: Your first, like the iron off the tee of the day.
Speaker 2: Have fun Like if you get off start on ten,
Speaker 2: you hit a couple shaky shots so that you can
Speaker 2: go to eleven. Eleven's your next shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an insane way to start the round. Like
Speaker 1: I can't imagine.
Speaker 2: I do think like that there's like an element of
Speaker 2: golf which is kind of like an interesting thing to
Speaker 2: think about with design, is like where people's confidence is shakiest,
Speaker 2: and a golf round is the beginning without a doubt.
Speaker 2: No matter what happens. You have more your head is
Speaker 2: filled with more doubt early in the round than at
Speaker 2: any other point in the round.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I would say, actually that starting on today's
Speaker 1: first hole, does I mean, it's not. It's not the
Speaker 1: hardest hole in the world for these guys. It can
Speaker 1: turn into one if you go over the back of
Speaker 1: the green, obviously.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: The first hole the day elevated tea with the wind
Speaker 1: off the left, I mean, that's kind of a that's
Speaker 1: kind of a horrible scenario for a lot of us, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, with win just ripping in to accentuate a
Speaker 1: slice and a hole that is set on a left
Speaker 1: to right diagonal. Oof. Yeah, I mean it's it's it
Speaker 1: is not the it's not like a gentle handshake kind
Speaker 1: of scenario. It's like you better you better have your
Speaker 1: ball striking in order from the very first shot of
Speaker 1: the round.
Speaker 2: My second thing that I'll play off you with the routing.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite aspects of William Flynn. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if this was a formal nickname or if
Speaker 2: it was just dubbed this by Wayne Morrison, the great
Speaker 2: William Flynn historian who will be featured heavily in our
Speaker 2: preview video. But he he he wrote a book about
Speaker 2: William Flynn and he called him the nature Faker. And
Speaker 2: William Flynn was notorious for building these natural golf holes
Speaker 2: really like really putting an emphasis on using the ground
Speaker 2: as a hazard. And one of my other big favorite
Speaker 2: things about about William Flynn was that he believed that
Speaker 2: golf should be a physical test as well as you know,
Speaker 2: test of skill, a test of you know, overcoming elements
Speaker 2: all this stuff. He believed that it should be a
Speaker 2: physical test. And one of the things I love about
Speaker 2: Shinnecock Hills is the physicality of the golf course. The
Speaker 2: I mean, when you play Shitnacock Hills and you get
Speaker 2: done with a round, you you feel it. Your body
Speaker 2: feels it, your mind feels it, and you are tired
Speaker 2: because you are battling all these elements. But most notably
Speaker 2: it's this epic property, as you alluded to just when
Speaker 2: you were talking about the routing, and the story tells
Speaker 2: it's an epic property, but it's got a lot of
Speaker 2: elevation change. And and like he is, he was not
Speaker 2: afraid to build holes like the ninth where you are
Speaker 2: just climbing up this massive hill. You know it is
Speaker 2: it's got to be you know, fifty six defeat of elevation,
Speaker 2: uh maybe forty five to sixty feet of elevation on
Speaker 2: that single hole. And this idea of physicality, I think
Speaker 2: is a is a is an important piece of golf.
Speaker 2: And when you talk about the US Open, it is,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the hardest tests of golf year
Speaker 2: and year out. Shinnacock obviously elevates it probably to the
Speaker 2: top of the bucket of testing golf courses. But if
Speaker 2: you add in just the physical demands of midsummer days
Speaker 2: where it's hot, you're expending a ton of mental energy.
Speaker 2: And then the physical you know, challenges of hot days,
Speaker 2: big big walk and the sheer amount of time that
Speaker 2: guys are gonna be out there, They're gonna be five
Speaker 2: and a half hours rounds. This place takes a toll
Speaker 2: on you over the course of a week. And I
Speaker 2: think that's a great ingredient of the golf and the
Speaker 2: overall philosophy of the golf course. Like you're not out
Speaker 2: at Shittacock for a nice day walk in the park round.
Speaker 2: You are are participating in a sport.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And that really culminates with that walk from
Speaker 1: fourteen green to fifteen t. I'd like to actually look
Speaker 1: at some early routing plans and see where fifteen t
Speaker 1: maybe originally was. Maybe maybe it was a little closer
Speaker 1: to fourteen green, because it's kind of it's kind of
Speaker 1: not a great green to tea transition. If we're if
Speaker 1: we're being fair here, but if you're if you're seeing
Speaker 1: the round as a physical test, that physical test really
Speaker 1: comes to a head when you have to walk from
Speaker 1: the fourteenth green straight up a hill to the fifteenth tee.
Speaker 1: It's just like a final a final kick in the
Speaker 1: nuts and a very tough stretch of golf. And I
Speaker 1: remember standing up there, getting up there and then talking
Speaker 1: to cameras down below about the elevated tea's and getting
Speaker 1: a couple of sentences in and realizing I was out
Speaker 1: of breath. It's like I'm losing I can't I can't
Speaker 1: finish this right now. Yeah, Like I need to I
Speaker 1: need to take a moment to recover. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's Burley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is Burley. It is a uh that's why
Speaker 2: it's it's literally playing playing four tournament rounds there under
Speaker 2: the conditions of the US Open. I think, like, you know,
Speaker 2: like I'm not going to make any illusions of like
Speaker 2: my career getting to any point, but I used to
Speaker 2: play a lot of state ams, and the the repetition
Speaker 2: of playing for you know, our state Am format was
Speaker 2: thirty six holes the last day, but you know, even
Speaker 2: going into the the third the third day, you know,
Speaker 2: with the tea times, the way they work where your
Speaker 2: afternoon morning like you are, you are fatigued, and a
Speaker 2: lot of it's mental, you know, with tournament golf, but this,
Speaker 2: this place is not. They just don't. They don't play
Speaker 2: golf courses like this. And I know all these guys
Speaker 2: work out a ton, but there is a taxing element
Speaker 2: to to certain golf courses and this is one of them.
Speaker 2: And like you you're gonna see, like like it's challenging
Speaker 2: to just like maintain your golf swing physically for the
Speaker 2: four days, and especially at a place where the razor's
Speaker 2: edge is so.
Speaker 1: So narrow, Yeah, because then you have to hit these
Speaker 1: these tough, high leverage shots right if you if you
Speaker 1: if you don't get all the way through your swing
Speaker 1: and and you block it out to the right, then
Speaker 1: at Chinnacok you're you're going to be in some tall grass.
Speaker 1: So it's uh, yeah, it's physically physically unforgiving for sure.
Speaker 1: So my third thing, and this is kind of going
Speaker 1: back to the nature Faker nickname, which I believe William
Speaker 1: Flynn gave himself. So is is a little like a
Speaker 1: little like King James.
Speaker 2: Here and may I don't know if I like the
Speaker 2: nature fake or nickname anymore.
Speaker 1: I think he called himself that. I don't know. People
Speaker 1: can fact check me out there, but that's that's what
Speaker 1: at least what I had in my head. The thing
Speaker 1: about it. We've talked about this a little bit, so
Speaker 1: Alvey brief but unshowy naturalness is kind of for me
Speaker 1: the key term in describing what Shinnacok Hills feels like.
Speaker 1: It is not ostentatious about its architecture, about what it's
Speaker 1: doing strategically, about its greatness. It is very lay of
Speaker 1: the land, humble. It doesn't show you anything in bright lights,
Speaker 1: the strategic elements, and the key landforms you have to
Speaker 1: discover as you go along, because everything just appears to
Speaker 1: be sitting on the land, hugging that dune land. And
Speaker 1: I would say, of the American courses in its tier,
Speaker 1: and it really it's pretty easy to talk about which
Speaker 1: American golf courses are are in the tier of Shinnecock Hills,
Speaker 1: it's a small group, right, It's Pine Valley, It's Augusta National,
Speaker 1: Cypress Point, it's Oakmont, maybe it's you know, maybe you
Speaker 1: put National in that group, Marion. You wouldn't go much
Speaker 1: farther than that sand Hills for for some modern representation.
Speaker 1: I think among those courses, putting aside sand Hills, that
Speaker 1: Shinnecock is probably the least flashy. And I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean flashy in a negative way, Like you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying Cypress Point is is all flash and no
Speaker 1: substance or anything like that. But if you compare it
Speaker 1: to Shinnocock Hills, Shinnecock Hills is much quieter, I think,
Speaker 1: right that the bunkers are just kind of gouged out
Speaker 1: of the landforms, and you know, the greens, except for
Speaker 1: a few on the front nine are very much blended
Speaker 1: into the landscape and and don't seem to be standing
Speaker 1: up out of the landscape. Again, you know, seven is
Speaker 1: an exception here, but unshowing naturalness is really Shinnecock Hills's
Speaker 1: mode of operating. And I appreciate that so much because
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's not a course that is
Speaker 1: constantly arguing with you that it's great. It just is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I think that that there's like an
Speaker 2: unshowing there's a lot of like ritzy aspects of Shinnakok
Speaker 2: location based, you know, member.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's make no mistake, this is one of
Speaker 1: the most exclusive clubs in the country. It's not easy
Speaker 1: to play there where I think you and I are
Speaker 1: very cognizant of that.
Speaker 2: But like the the other aspect of it is like
Speaker 2: the clubhouse is what the clubhouse, This great Stanford White
Speaker 2: clubhouse design clubhouse, it's you see it all over the way.
Speaker 2: Is an iconic structure in the golf and in the
Speaker 2: golf world. There's no ac in it, you know, like
Speaker 2: there's like they're really basic.
Speaker 1: It really does feel preserved, like you know, there are
Speaker 1: all these old clubhouses in golf, but when you walk
Speaker 1: into them, it's like, oh, this is modern, but you
Speaker 1: walk into the Shinnacock Hills Clubhouse, you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this could kind of blow over and you know, in
Speaker 1: a strong wind.
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, I feel like Shinnacock and uh
Speaker 2: in Chicago golf are kind of like that together in
Speaker 2: the sense of like the way they just kind of
Speaker 2: the golf is just like presented and it's they know,
Speaker 2: there's like a confidence of like how good it is.
Speaker 2: And this kind of goes to the clubhouse too, where
Speaker 2: it's like it doesn't we don't need all the bells
Speaker 2: and whistles. We know what we got is awesome, and
Speaker 2: we just let it. Let it be it, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think that's like the one of the things
Speaker 2: I love about it too, is just like like they
Speaker 2: know what they know the course and the club. The
Speaker 2: course understands what the club understands what the course is,
Speaker 2: and there's there's never been an attempt to make the
Speaker 2: course like something that it isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And this extends as you're as you're implying
Speaker 1: to conditioning agronomy, right, the grasses at Shinnecock Hills are
Speaker 1: old weathered, seasoned grasses. The fairways are not a mono stand.
Speaker 1: The greens are are poa but sort of like Oakmont.
Speaker 1: It's it's Shinnecock po I mean, this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: its own version of poe Anua and uh so, yeah.
Speaker 1: It extends to the conditioning, to where where the maintenance
Speaker 1: crew is not trying to do anything to show you
Speaker 1: that this is one of the greatest golf courses in
Speaker 1: the world. It's just letting the land be the land
Speaker 1: and the turf be the turf, and and yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's just that. That's something I really crave out of
Speaker 1: golf courses because so many places have gone the modern
Speaker 1: high tech route at this point. In those respects, Shinnacock
Speaker 1: has resisted that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they it's it's it's it's a course that
Speaker 2: feels old, which is rare. You know. I think like
Speaker 2: you could look at other courses in the same breath
Speaker 2: as it, and very few of them feel the way
Speaker 2: that Shinnakock feels. And maybe some people don't like the
Speaker 2: old nature of it. My final thing just about the
Speaker 2: broad you know, kind of aspects of history, aspects of Shinnacock.
Speaker 2: It goes to the history is a little bit of
Speaker 2: on the design and a little bit of of Shinnacock.
Speaker 2: Like they were very progressive about women and golf in
Speaker 2: an era that wasn't progressive. They had female members from
Speaker 2: like basically the start of the club, which most clubs
Speaker 2: then did not. They hosted the nineteen hundred US Women's Amateur,
Speaker 2: which you know, it's cool that they have a US
Speaker 2: Women's Open coming back there for the first time and
Speaker 2: ever I think is the first ever US Women's Open
Speaker 2: in the coming years. But like the idea that women
Speaker 2: were an integral part of this club from the beginning,
Speaker 2: but you see it in the design. What I think
Speaker 2: is fascinating is like this is arguably the hardest golf
Speaker 2: course in the world for the best men golfers in
Speaker 2: the world. But if you took a low trajectory player,
Speaker 2: someone that doesn't have a lot of speed, maybe it's
Speaker 2: in an older, older person or a female golfer. You know,
Speaker 2: it's neighbor famous neighbor. National Golf Links is renowned for
Speaker 2: being this fun place to play. It's way more fun
Speaker 2: to play than Shinnakok because, like you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of these features, these bulls and you know, it's
Speaker 2: a little bit more friendly. It doesn't reject as much stuff. Now,
Speaker 2: if you took a low trajectory player, they would tell
Speaker 2: you Shinnacock is more playable than National Golf Links. So
Speaker 2: you have these two iconic golf courses right next to
Speaker 2: each other, and the interesting aspect of Shinnecock Hills. And
Speaker 2: this is not meant to be a slight at National
Speaker 2: Golf Links, but Shinnecock Hills achieves this high bar of
Speaker 2: being more playable for you know, someone who can't hit
Speaker 2: the ball more than one hundred and eighty yards. Let's
Speaker 2: just say then the next door neighbor, while also being
Speaker 2: the sternest test of men's high level men's golf in America.
Speaker 2: And to me, that is spectacular.
Speaker 1: There's some commonalities with Pinehurst number two.
Speaker 2: Here where open front appro Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lots of short grass, firm so you can kind of
Speaker 1: bounce your ball along the fairway as long as you're
Speaker 1: not as long as you're not getting off corridor on
Speaker 1: either of those courses Pinehurst number two or Shinnacock Hills,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to be in pretty good shape. And
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I mean, it's an the formula is there
Speaker 1: like we know what to do, no cross hazards, you know,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. It's there are courses where
Speaker 1: the biggest trouble you can get into is when you
Speaker 1: hit it too far on the wrong line, or you
Speaker 1: make too aggressive of a decision and you go after it.
Speaker 1: But you're not going to get in much trouble just
Speaker 1: dinking and along the ground. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's another thing that evolved. I mean, if we see
Speaker 1: Shinnecock as a representation of the evolution of American golf
Speaker 1: architecture that evolved in the thinking about golf course design
Speaker 1: from the eighteen nineties to the nineteen twenties, where the
Speaker 1: thinking early on was we want to punish the dinked
Speaker 1: shot the most. That is the worst shot, therefore it
Speaker 1: should receive the worst punishment. Well, by the time William
Speaker 1: Flynn comes along and designs today's Shinnecock Hills, the prevailing philosophy,
Speaker 1: or at least the smartest philosophy among the best architects,
Speaker 1: was that you don't worry about punishing those shots because
Speaker 1: there's no point. You know, people who play that way
Speaker 1: or are going to have it, you know, presumably they're
Speaker 1: they're not gonna set the course record anyway, and so
Speaker 1: we might as well focus on challenging the really good shot.
Speaker 1: And that's what both number two in Shinnacock do so well.
Speaker 2: All Right, we got the three things done. Before we
Speaker 2: get into more in depth on the golf course, Let's
Speaker 2: take a quick break for our partners on audio devices
Speaker 2: on YouTube, will keep rolling. What makes Hinnacock so beguiling
Speaker 2: to the world's best players.
Speaker 1: It's obviously a combination of factors. But the way I
Speaker 1: would sum it up sum it up is that everything
Speaker 1: about this place keeps a good player off kilter. So
Speaker 1: it's the elements. It's the firmness of the turf, the
Speaker 1: soils combined with the turf presentation. It's the exposure to
Speaker 1: the elements. When we were playing at Chinnakok, a number
Speaker 1: of times you were kind of looking around the surrounding
Speaker 1: area and saying, I think this is the highest point, right.
Speaker 1: I think there's no place immediately around the golf course
Speaker 1: that is higher than where you are on like thirteen
Speaker 1: T And that means that you catch the full brunt
Speaker 1: of the wind at Shinnacock, especially on the back nine.
Speaker 1: It's the volatility of the golf course, the fact that
Speaker 1: it can change so much from the beginning of the
Speaker 1: round to the end of the round. The course can
Speaker 1: turn on the kind of slightest provocation from dryness and wind.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, you go from a course that
Speaker 1: might be relatively docile to a great player to a
Speaker 1: course that absolutely doesn't give you anything, and the greens
Speaker 1: are browning out and every shot is battling the wind.
Speaker 1: And I think all of those kind of natural characteristics
Speaker 1: of Shinnacock that keep good players off kilter are matched
Speaker 1: with design elements that also keep good players off kilter.
Speaker 1: So nothing at Shinnacock is straightforward. Nothing is linear. It's
Speaker 1: always diagonal. You always have to match line with speed,
Speaker 1: both on your putts and on your full shots. You
Speaker 1: can't just bash it straight down a whole corridor and say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's okay if this goes two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five yards. Are three hundred and twenty five yards
Speaker 1: as long as I stay on this line. No, you
Speaker 1: have to be more specific about the distance that you're
Speaker 1: hitting your shots and the line that you're taking to
Speaker 1: hit that distance. The greens are always kind of tilted
Speaker 1: or angled, or doing something that is unexpected or destabilizing,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I think it's a course where
Speaker 1: everything about it is is slightly askew, and it just
Speaker 1: makes good players uncomfortable because they can't settle into a groove.
Speaker 2: There's definitely an element of where you play safe repeatedly
Speaker 2: puts you then in a very difficult next position because
Speaker 2: of angle and orientation of greens, even when you're in
Speaker 2: the fairway, but if you're on the wrong side, you know,
Speaker 2: inevitably that shot gets more challenging. And with the firmness
Speaker 2: and the wind, like you know, sometimes you get in
Speaker 2: these positions where it's like, okay, I need to shade,
Speaker 2: you know, especially with modern golf strategy, I need to
Speaker 2: shade over here the aspect of shinnakok. That is, you know,
Speaker 2: when you do that, you then put yourself where the
Speaker 2: degree of the next shot is inherently way more difficult.
Speaker 2: And it's like, Okay, I took the easy route here,
Speaker 2: but you don't. It's not you know, I think like
Speaker 2: you know, I I I believe a lot in the
Speaker 2: course management strategies that are employed by by PGA tour
Speaker 2: players on most weeks, but I think what the greatest
Speaker 2: golf courses do is that they they are outliers and
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily always fit exactly the way the data
Speaker 2: sets say that they fit because TPC Craig Ranch is
Speaker 2: not Shinnecock Hills and most of the data comes from
Speaker 2: golf courses of the ilk of TPC Craig Ranch that
Speaker 2: instructs players how to play. Now, I'm not saying like
Speaker 2: hug lines and do that, but it's just the sheer
Speaker 2: understanding of when I when I take the easy route,
Speaker 2: I'm now presented with a shot that is decimal points
Speaker 2: more difficult on the back end of it. So you know,
Speaker 2: there is a real cause and effect there. And I
Speaker 2: think like one of the things that you you brushed
Speaker 2: on the elements and and you live in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: I used to live out out there, buddy, of Iya.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: going to let that go by San Francisco, Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm trying to sneak it by you. But
Speaker 2: I met more on the coast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, I get what. Yeah, San Francisco weather
Speaker 1: is not too dissimilar from from Oregon. Weather just we
Speaker 1: get more rain up here.
Speaker 2: So I you know, my first year there, buddy of mine,
Speaker 2: I was like, I just can't believe these rainstorms out
Speaker 2: here that you get where it just torrentially range three
Speaker 2: days straight and you're just like, it's like kind of
Speaker 2: a ridiculous proposition for somebody who didn't who had never
Speaker 2: really experienced that. And a buddy of mine was like, well,
Speaker 2: that's what happens when there's nothing stopping weather for five
Speaker 2: thousand miles, you know, is you get these huge storms.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The ocean is a source of volatility, right, it is,
Speaker 1: and that's and that's where that's the that's the foundation
Speaker 1: of golf, right you know Scottish people, that is golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you look at Shittacock, it is this
Speaker 2: is golf when when a golf course is ninety miles
Speaker 2: out into an ocean and there's nothing around it that
Speaker 2: slows anything down because of the way it sits up,
Speaker 2: and it just is you're exposed. You're out in the
Speaker 2: in the ocean, and the golf course is just so
Speaker 2: that aspect of it is so different than everything else
Speaker 2: that these guys generally play. You know, I think it's
Speaker 2: always interesting the tournament. The tournament, the PGA to our
Speaker 2: hosts in bermudas always actually a really fun watch because
Speaker 2: it's golf in ocean and like sure enough, like you
Speaker 2: get these crazy weather days where the guys are just
Speaker 2: hitting like punch shots like last year. Shinnacock brings that
Speaker 2: to a US Open, which is the sternest test of golf.
Speaker 2: And it's this very refined, championship style golf course that
Speaker 2: is just it has the soils in terms of what
Speaker 2: we're saying is sand which creates bouncy environment, also a
Speaker 2: porous environment that dries really quickly. So you get the sand,
Speaker 2: you get the turf dialed in, you get the wind,
Speaker 2: and then you get the natural undulation of the golf
Speaker 2: course and they combine with that golf course design just
Speaker 2: create this beast that is that like every shot has
Speaker 2: an implication as you were you said, like he puts
Speaker 2: you off kilter. The only way to make your next
Speaker 2: shot in you know, golf, a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like setting up your next shot, similar to pool
Speaker 2: or stuff. The only way to get yourself an on
Speaker 2: kilter shot shot is to do something uncomfortable. Now, yeah, sometimes.
Speaker 1: You can or the lie. You have to earn those things.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you can get those. You can achieve those
Speaker 2: by missing, by taking a safe target line and missing,
Speaker 2: and you achieve that. But at Shittacock, if you answer
Speaker 2: the question, the very hard question they're asking off the t,
Speaker 2: you set yourself up for a much e easier road
Speaker 2: in the issue with golf in the way that you know,
Speaker 2: not the issue, but just the natural thinking of golf
Speaker 2: in generally speaking, the better the golfer, and this is
Speaker 2: I think what a lot of you know, uh, recreational
Speaker 2: players don't understand. The better the golfer, the more conservative
Speaker 2: the golfer is because they understand they run into Bertie's
Speaker 2: and they if they just do things that avoid bogies,
Speaker 2: you are going to play good rounds at Shinnacock. When
Speaker 2: you play very conservatively, you end up with a lot
Speaker 2: of high degree stressful situations from perfect lies that lead
Speaker 2: to eventual bogies. So it is a that's where I
Speaker 2: think this golf course, you know, it just has it
Speaker 2: presents and Augusta does this to a certain extent where
Speaker 2: if you're just in certain spots, you cannot go anywhere
Speaker 2: near whole locations at shittacock. It is just because of
Speaker 2: the elements of the wind. You're just presented with this
Speaker 2: all day long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really informative to look at how
Speaker 1: brooks Kopka played the course in twenty eighteen. You know,
Speaker 1: his Sunday round is available shot by shot on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I rewatched it recently, and the thing that struck me
Speaker 1: was how many irons he hit off the tee. He
Speaker 1: was just bludgeoning that Nike driving iron that he had
Speaker 1: in the bag for a long time. You just muscling
Speaker 1: that thing out into the fair way. And yeah, he
Speaker 1: was hitting it as long as a lot of guys
Speaker 1: hit their drivers, which I mean, it's a major advantage
Speaker 1: when you can do that, but that was his primary tactic.
Speaker 1: He really didn't hit that many drivers, at least not
Speaker 1: as many drivers as you would expect brooks Kepka to hit,
Speaker 1: but he obviously saw an advantage in clubbing down to
Speaker 1: that driving iron and just being able to determine a
Speaker 1: little more finally where he was in in the fairway.
Speaker 1: And uh, and that's that that's the advantage that I
Speaker 1: think one of the us opened because in other respects,
Speaker 1: you know, his final round was just kind of okay,
Speaker 1: mostly he missed some pot seat. You know, he wasn't
Speaker 1: lights out or anything like that, but he just had
Speaker 1: that incremental advantage every time he hit that driving iron
Speaker 1: and it found the fairway and and he was in
Speaker 1: a position that other guys, uh, you know, had to
Speaker 1: get to by by hitting driver and uh and that's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's kind of a formula at at
Speaker 1: Chinnacock for success. So I would yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I did choose John Ron for that John Ron for
Speaker 1: the PGA Championship. So people maybe should listen to my
Speaker 1: listen to my prognostications and and my touts and my
Speaker 1: you know whatever else. You know. I mean, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: maybe I'm gambling boy who knows, uh.
Speaker 2: Golf might be one of the preeminent gambling podcasts.
Speaker 1: Might be he might be supplanting shotguns start coming up here, guys,
Speaker 1: you better watch out.
Speaker 2: I think, like, yeah, I think a hole, uh you know,
Speaker 2: to the to the point of what we're talking about here,
Speaker 2: a hole that represents this well that like I saw
Speaker 2: on media day, really play out for me. It was
Speaker 2: playing into the wind, and the wind was off the
Speaker 2: left was the was the sixth hole, which is a longer,
Speaker 2: longer part for and I wanted to get into some
Speaker 2: like individual holes, and I think this might might be
Speaker 2: a good jumping off point here as well. So the
Speaker 2: sixth hole is a really it's on you know, some
Speaker 2: of the flatter land at at Shinnacok it's more docile land.
Speaker 2: But it's got a really unique t shot where it's
Speaker 2: half of it's blind. You can see the left half
Speaker 2: of the fairway. Uh, the right half of the fairway
Speaker 2: is over the sand dune and you have the sandy
Speaker 2: waste that cuts in and like you know, you don't
Speaker 2: want to be over there, So your natural inclination is
Speaker 2: always to play to the left, to the fairway that
Speaker 2: you can see, and particularly depending on how the wind is.
Speaker 2: But this green, the way it orients, the green accepts
Speaker 2: shots really well from the right side of the fairway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And because of this hole's length and just the way
Speaker 2: it fits in, you're gonna be hitting a lot of
Speaker 2: mid mid irons into this green depending on the wind
Speaker 2: and and you know, irons of somewhat consequence. If you're
Speaker 2: from the right side, the green is pretty big and
Speaker 2: it's a pretty big target. Now if you play safe
Speaker 2: to the left, all of a sudden you're hitting across
Speaker 2: this green axis and there's a you know, there's you know,
Speaker 2: people always talk about false fronts. They this I would
Speaker 2: call a false edge is on the right side of
Speaker 2: the green, and that false edge then comes into it
Speaker 2: when you're playing directionally across the axis of the green,
Speaker 2: which is from the safe side of the fairway. This
Speaker 2: you have to carry a bar bunker from that left side,
Speaker 2: and then the right side of the green falls off.
Speaker 2: If you're playing from the right side, the green is
Speaker 2: open in the front. The false edge is yeah there,
Speaker 2: it's on the right, but you don't have to navigate
Speaker 2: the bunker. So it presents the situation where like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the t shot is really uncomfortable to push right, but
Speaker 2: if I don't do that and I play safe, then
Speaker 2: I get the really uncomfortable second shot to navigate. So
Speaker 2: it's putting you constantly in this position of like yeah,
Speaker 2: I can play safe, but almost every time that you
Speaker 2: play safe, you are then given a shot. And they
Speaker 2: do this really with like simplistic slope, and it's similar
Speaker 2: like ironomic. I think everybody had this like awakening with
Speaker 2: the greens of like Wow, slope is really effective in
Speaker 2: particular firm slope and what Shinnacock always does to you,
Speaker 2: and in a great example of this as the sixth hole,
Speaker 2: is that firm slope, angles and angles in the green
Speaker 2: create all the hazards you need to make a very
Speaker 2: interesting hole. And like, yeah, you can make birdie, you
Speaker 2: can make par from the left, but it's much more
Speaker 2: difficult than if you if you place a ball on
Speaker 2: the right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think that when you're trying to unlock the
Speaker 1: strategic angles at Shinnecock Hills, understand those and how they
Speaker 1: relate to the green designs. Don't look at what's in
Speaker 1: front of the green, although that is interesting in itself,
Speaker 1: I think what's more relevant at Shinnecock Hills is what's
Speaker 1: behind the greens, where the big punitive runoffs are. And basically,
Speaker 1: the advantageous angle is where you're not hitting in to
Speaker 1: that big runoff or ledge that is in your line. Right,
Speaker 1: the advantageous angle is where you can play a shot
Speaker 1: that isn't traveling toward that feature. So if you just
Speaker 1: stand behind Shinnecock's greens and kind of look at where's
Speaker 1: the worst place to be, where's the most severe drop
Speaker 1: off here, then you can kind of line up from
Speaker 1: that drop off to what the disadvantageous part of the
Speaker 1: fairway is. And on the sixth hole, if you line
Speaker 1: up that drop off, you're going to be pointing at
Speaker 1: that left side of the fairway, which is the only
Speaker 1: visible portion of the fairway from the tee. So if
Speaker 1: you want to avoid that, then you have to play
Speaker 1: out to the right where there's all this, you know,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, all this sandy waste area and it's blind,
Speaker 1: so classic strategic stuff. But for me at Shinnecock it's
Speaker 1: less about I mean, the internal contours of the greens
Speaker 1: are there, but it's not like Augusta National, you know,
Speaker 1: it's mostly like broad slopes and tilts that are relevant
Speaker 1: where so much of the action is on Shinnecock Hills
Speaker 1: greens is on the exterior and especially in the back
Speaker 1: of the green. That for me is really what determines
Speaker 1: so many of the strategic angles. And it's the same
Speaker 1: case on the fifth hole right. For me, the fifth
Speaker 1: and sixth holes are connoisseur's corner at Shinnakok Hills.
Speaker 2: Before we get to five, something I want to point
Speaker 2: out and you brought up Brooks the way he played Shinnacock.
Speaker 2: Just an interesting ancdote with what you just said about
Speaker 2: like stand behind the green, look at the features. The
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three US Open at la CC, he had
Speaker 2: just won oak Hill and a reporter asked him about
Speaker 2: how does he break down a golf course? How does
Speaker 2: he figure out how to play a golf course? You
Speaker 2: know what he said, I stand on the back to
Speaker 2: the green and I work it out from there. The greens.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't have the exact quote up, but
Speaker 2: he effectively said, the greens tell me exactly where I
Speaker 2: want to be to approach the green, To approach the green,
Speaker 2: you know, he and he I think he went on
Speaker 2: to say something along the lines of like, at these
Speaker 2: really hard golf courses, angles really are important to like
Speaker 2: playing well. And you know this is contrary to a
Speaker 2: lot of statistfic statisticians.
Speaker 1: I mean that the data boys were down bad with
Speaker 1: that quote. I mean that was.
Speaker 2: But here it is at the at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: the you know, the guy that had just rantled off
Speaker 2: five majors in a really quick clip at some of
Speaker 2: the toughest golf courses in the world. Including Shittacok, like
Speaker 2: he gave a lens into how he how he understood
Speaker 2: these golf courses and it succeeded and ended up on top.
Speaker 2: And it's understanding from the back the back of the
Speaker 2: hole like when you and on shinnakock'screens. It's very simple,
Speaker 2: but it's just incredibly hard to achieve what they're asking
Speaker 2: you because you have to do something uncomfortable from the
Speaker 2: start of the hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, And you know, as far as holes
Speaker 1: to notice are concerned at Shinnakawk, I think that you know,
Speaker 1: you'll also see these dynamics that we're talking about on
Speaker 1: the tenth hole, which is probably going to get a
Speaker 1: lot of coverage on the telecast. You know, blind t
Speaker 1: shot and you basically have the choice to play up
Speaker 1: to a high section of the fair way where you
Speaker 1: have a chance to see the green, or you blast
Speaker 1: it through and you end up in this huge hollow
Speaker 1: in front of the green so that your approach is shorter,
Speaker 1: but you're hitting up blind to this kind of perched green.
Speaker 1: It's a very very difficult wedge from down there, and
Speaker 1: it's it's like, yeah, it's a tough decision, I think,
Speaker 1: but I think most guys are going to end up
Speaker 1: in that hollow because that's what they're trained to do.
Speaker 2: At this point, the we'll get to connoisseur's corner. I
Speaker 2: don't want to ruin your counter sit ye corner here.
Speaker 2: But the one thing about the tenth that's interesting and
Speaker 2: subtle about that decision. You know, we just we talked
Speaker 2: about the firmness, we talked about the wind, we talked
Speaker 2: about the you know, the the precision you need to
Speaker 2: attack these greens. And like, the interesting trade off with
Speaker 2: ten is if you stay up high, you have that
Speaker 2: longer shot in you can see it, and what you
Speaker 2: do is you retain a high angle of attack, a
Speaker 2: high angle of of of descent into the into the green,
Speaker 2: so stopping power. One of the aspects of when you
Speaker 2: go down low is you're sure you're hitting a wedge
Speaker 2: and you're closer, but you're trading that for because you're
Speaker 2: coming from so far below the green, you're you're you
Speaker 2: lose some of the typical stops the power of the
Speaker 2: wedge because the descent into the green is lessened by
Speaker 2: the elevated nature of it. So what happens is it's
Speaker 2: this tiny target that you have to hit in your
Speaker 2: shot skips with the wedge more than the traditional wedge
Speaker 2: that comes in and stops, so you're gonna get more skip.
Speaker 2: So it's also this trade off of the functional depth
Speaker 2: of the green. Actually when you get closer, gets narrower,
Speaker 2: and it's a fascinating trade off. Like I personally will
Speaker 2: always take the wedge from down low because I'm just
Speaker 2: like frankly, not very good with mid irons anymore.
Speaker 1: It's a tough shot from up above.
Speaker 2: It's a tough shot. But for these guys like I
Speaker 2: do think that there's an element of the descent that
Speaker 2: makes that shot a bit more predictable. I do expect
Speaker 2: most people to play down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they will, but you know, notable. Again, Brooks'
Speaker 1: final round, he played up top. He took he took
Speaker 1: the longer shot from the higher section of the fairway.
Speaker 1: So I mean the guy won the US Open, so
Speaker 1: maybe maybe he was onto something. Who knows. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean ten or eleven remarkable holes on the some
Speaker 1: of the best land on the property. I think those
Speaker 1: will get a lot of attention because they're such severe shots.
Speaker 1: Those approaches are so you know, the margins are so fine,
Speaker 1: there and eleven in particular is going to be very
Speaker 1: entertaining for watching on TV. So that's the you know,
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of attention is going to focus.
Speaker 1: But as I said, I do think five and six
Speaker 1: are are kind of connoisseur's corner down there. You know,
Speaker 1: this is where this is where the nerds are going
Speaker 1: to be really happy. And you know six we've already
Speaker 1: gone in depth with. There are similar dynamics on five
Speaker 1: where you have these big runoffs behind the green that
Speaker 1: then kind of determine strategy back to the te You know,
Speaker 1: five is screaming downwind and it's not that long of
Speaker 1: a part. So this is going to play as a
Speaker 1: as a as a glorified par four essentially, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a little bit like those par fives at
Speaker 1: Augusta National where yeah, almost everybody is gonna be able
Speaker 1: to reach in two, but the shots that you have
Speaker 1: to be able to hit in order to avoid disaster
Speaker 1: are tough shots. So you know, five is a double
Speaker 1: fairway hole. It would be a little bit cooler, you know,
Speaker 1: if everybody didn't just play to the left fairway, which
Speaker 1: they will. You know, back in the day, it would
Speaker 1: have been a legitimate choice. You can play it conservatively
Speaker 1: out to the right fairway, play it as a three
Speaker 1: shot hole, or go to the left fairway and have
Speaker 1: a chance of reaching in two. Well, today there's really
Speaker 1: no reason to play out to the right fairway for
Speaker 1: the pros, and so everybody's going to go to the
Speaker 1: left fairway. Kind of a bummer, but they can't move
Speaker 1: the tee back much more, and technology is what it is,
Speaker 1: but you still have that factor of the wind, and
Speaker 1: then the green is just wild. It is pushed up.
Speaker 1: It has this false front bunker on the right side
Speaker 1: and these huge runoffs behind. Back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: Tom Kite actually chipped from one runoff to another on
Speaker 1: this green. So it is very severe and those shots
Speaker 1: from behind the green are very very tough. But if
Speaker 1: you get in a certain spot on the left side
Speaker 1: of the fairway for your approach, and in the fairway
Speaker 1: runs out pretty quickly over there, you might end up
Speaker 1: in the rough. But if you manage to find the
Speaker 1: fairway on the left side from that angle, there's this
Speaker 1: little spine behind the green that's not bad to be on.
Speaker 1: So if you go long from that angle, there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of forgiveness. You're not going to go down
Speaker 1: into one of these deep hollows behind the green. There's
Speaker 1: this one spot where you might be saved a little bit,
Speaker 1: and the chip isn't nearly as hard, and you can
Speaker 1: only access that angle if you're on the left side
Speaker 1: of the fairway over there. If you're on the right,
Speaker 1: much much tougher shot to reach the green in two.
Speaker 1: But then if you look in front of the green,
Speaker 1: there's this nice little funneling contour along the left side,
Speaker 1: and so if you're conservative from the right side and
Speaker 1: you kind of play into this little kicker slope that
Speaker 1: feeds in from the left side, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of forgiveness there as well. It's really only when you
Speaker 1: go for the pin on your second shot from a
Speaker 1: you know, from not the most advantageous spot, that the
Speaker 1: fifth hole is really going to get on top of you.
Speaker 1: And since it's playing so directly downwind, it's going to
Speaker 1: be awfully taught tough to stop your ball on the green.
Speaker 1: Right the balls are going to be running through the
Speaker 1: green here, a lot of balls are going to end
Speaker 1: up in those swales behind, and it's not easy from
Speaker 1: back there.
Speaker 2: It's not easy. The one saving grace is if it
Speaker 2: is humbing down, you've got the wind to help you
Speaker 2: on the way back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, you're tripping back into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think like one of the things that green represents
Speaker 2: those like kind of like how Flynn used greens at Shinnecock.
Speaker 2: It's you know, there aren't that many greens that on
Speaker 2: first look will stop you in your tracks at Shinnacock,
Speaker 2: the way some greens at Augusta National will. The fifth
Speaker 2: green stops you in your tracks. You are like wow.
Speaker 2: But it also is at like one of the most
Speaker 2: docile pieces of the property where it's very like, you know,
Speaker 2: you kind of go through this stretch four, five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 2: that's probably the stretch of the the most adventurous greens,
Speaker 2: but also the intersection of probably the quietest part portion
Speaker 2: of the land. And then the rest of the round
Speaker 2: really from eight on is ramped up by really the
Speaker 2: you know, the the topography of the golf courts. In
Speaker 2: these natural green sites, now, like there are some really
Speaker 2: cool greens, like seventeen is a really neat green that's
Speaker 2: on flat land in there. So I'm not I'm speaking
Speaker 2: more in you know, generalities. But this stretch of golf,
Speaker 2: as you dubbed it, Connoisseur's Corner. The one issue with
Speaker 2: Connoisseur's Corner, which actually is is fitting. You know, there's
Speaker 2: not a lot there's not gonna be a lot of
Speaker 2: people at Connoisseur's Corner. It's also hard to watch. It
Speaker 2: feels like it's like an indie film, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're gonna there's a big barrier to entry, get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody's kind of mumbling their dialogue and sometimes a
Speaker 1: little hard to hard to tell what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Connoisseur's Corner. I'd love to be like, this
Speaker 2: is where you should park and watch golf. I actually
Speaker 2: I don't think it's the best vantage point because of
Speaker 2: the green, but it'd be hard to be close enough
Speaker 2: to like be able to see it. Maybe I like
Speaker 2: it maybe just short life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, behind six green you can of get up and
Speaker 1: see the six hole. I think that's a good spot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but you're right, I mean that's part of
Speaker 1: what's tough about those shots, especially the T shots. You're
Speaker 1: you're down low, you know, you're really flush with the
Speaker 1: ground on those T shots, and you're looking out and
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, you ain't see anything. You know, it's
Speaker 1: very it's very linksy in that portion of the property
Speaker 1: where the blindness comes not from having like a big
Speaker 1: thing in front of you. The blindness comes from just
Speaker 1: the fact that you're down low.
Speaker 2: There's there's some clever holes that I just quickly like
Speaker 2: to highlight that. Like we've talked a lot about, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, I think the most of the course works
Speaker 2: as like real strategic architecture. Play close to the bunker
Speaker 2: and you get the reward. There are a couple holes
Speaker 2: there's one on each side in particular that I've kind
Speaker 2: of learned over time that like it's actually the opposite
Speaker 2: of what you naturally think to do to me. Two
Speaker 2: holes that you know, eight is I think eight's going
Speaker 2: to be like kind of like the hipster cat nip
Speaker 2: hole cat nipole of the of the where like every
Speaker 2: every people are gonna you know, the hipster like katrarian
Speaker 2: you know viewpoint, And I guess i'd be katrarian saying
Speaker 2: that that fellow Katrarians are gonna come for this hole.
Speaker 2: So I want to just be on the record of
Speaker 2: saying it's probably gonna jump the shark a little bit
Speaker 2: this week. It's a nice hole, but it's not like
Speaker 2: one of the most spectacular holes. The eighth hole is
Speaker 2: a really cool mid length par four. It's a shorter
Speaker 2: par four, and the way the green operates is really neat.
Speaker 2: There's this like big front and right knob in your
Speaker 2: natural inclination. There's a faraway bunker up up the right side.
Speaker 2: Is to push it close to the faraway bunker, get
Speaker 2: the best angle. You actually want to play to the
Speaker 2: outside of the dog like on on eight, and that's
Speaker 2: gonna get you the access to the green, which is
Speaker 2: it's just a clever difference, like if that pins front right,
Speaker 2: there's you cannot get You're gonna have a hard time
Speaker 2: holding the green from the right side of the faraway
Speaker 2: The other one that kind of fits that bill a
Speaker 2: little bit, that is lost in a stretch like a
Speaker 2: really I think this one is probably the one that
Speaker 2: gets paid attention to the least in this epic closing
Speaker 2: stretch of the back nine is the fifteenth. The fifteenth
Speaker 2: is this mid length you tee off from a high
Speaker 2: ridge and this mid length par four that like kind
Speaker 2: of curves around this landform. There's like a big ridge
Speaker 2: in the fairway and it jogs to the right around it,
Speaker 2: and there's some bunkers in front of the green. The
Speaker 2: green subtly pitches away. I think this is like the
Speaker 2: tricky thing about this hole is the green. Really like you,
Speaker 2: it takes a couple of times before you realize, like
Speaker 2: how unreceptive that green is. Your natural inclination on this
Speaker 2: hole is just, oh, I'm just gonna bash it up
Speaker 2: there and get But the play is to just give
Speaker 2: yourself full spin control into this green. And like the
Speaker 2: play is that, like just play it out left and short.
Speaker 1: And it is not really a huge factor on fifteen.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say the green isn't like preferring one or
Speaker 1: the other. It is, as you say, mostly about the
Speaker 1: fact that it's kind of guarded in front, which itself
Speaker 1: is unusual at Shinnecock Hills. You don't see really that
Speaker 1: many bunkers right in front of greens, but there are
Speaker 1: in fifteen. And then the fact that it pitches away
Speaker 1: from there.
Speaker 2: And it often plays down wind, so like it just
Speaker 2: like becomes a very tricky golf shot if you don't
Speaker 2: have full control of your ball. So fair way and
Speaker 2: actually full wedge there to me, like what I think
Speaker 2: those two holes I think are interesting in the sense
Speaker 2: of like they go against like the misconception or the
Speaker 2: common perceptions of golf where I'm fascinated to watch people
Speaker 2: play fifteen. If the wind strong enough, like some of
Speaker 2: these guys might get like twenty yards away. Is that
Speaker 2: going to play out? Like with how talented these guys are,
Speaker 2: Like are they going to push it up? Does that
Speaker 2: yield the you know? Or do they keep it back
Speaker 2: to keep the spin on the ball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's funny you're talking about holes where
Speaker 1: the strategy that you would expect is actually reversed.
Speaker 2: Thirteen.
Speaker 1: That happens as well, where the advantageous angle is the
Speaker 1: outside of the dog leg. And this is just another
Speaker 1: element of Shinnecock Hills that is a little bit off kilter.
Speaker 1: Nothing is consistent at Shinnacock, and I think it would
Speaker 1: be disappointing if every dog leg hole preferred the inside
Speaker 1: of the dog leg, because that would be a kind
Speaker 1: of form of orientation or consistency at Shinnecock. But that's
Speaker 1: not what this place is about. It's about always keeping
Speaker 1: you off balance, and so it's appropriate that there are
Speaker 1: a couple of holes where you know, you really kind
Speaker 1: of want to play to the outside of the dog
Speaker 1: leg or just kind of play to the most generous
Speaker 1: portion of the fairway as opposed to gaining any particular
Speaker 1: kind of advantage by by taking a risk.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's that's Shinnakock thrown through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's amazing. What other holes do you have?
Speaker 2: Any holes that you want to spotlight? I didn't really
Speaker 2: plan on doing eight and fifteen, but I got I
Speaker 2: got there.
Speaker 1: We've covered most of the ones that that I wanted
Speaker 1: to touch on. I think, you know, every hole is
Speaker 1: good at Shinnakok. That's the thing about this whole. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have some critiques of seven, but it's
Speaker 1: a memorable, you know, version of of Aridan. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind you're not running the ball up there.
Speaker 1: It's not like a yeah, it's it's really an aerial exercise.
Speaker 1: And when the green gets i mean, the green is
Speaker 1: is so fast in relation to the slope there that
Speaker 1: that it kind of I think mutes the complexity the
Speaker 1: potential complexity of the whole. But that aside, you know,
Speaker 1: Shinnacock is a remarkably consistently great course, Like every hole
Speaker 1: is is really really good, and so we could talk
Speaker 1: about pretty much any hole, but we've covered most of
Speaker 1: the ones. I think ten and eleven are going to
Speaker 1: be the stars of the telecast. Five and six are
Speaker 1: going to be the fun ones for kind of geeking out.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I wrote down eighteen here just
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's a great golf hole. The reverse
Speaker 1: camera fair way leading to a green that I think
Speaker 1: is really beautifully sighted, Like it's a great green site,
Speaker 1: and the green is so well blended into it's it's
Speaker 1: just gorgeous and kind of a bit of a natural
Speaker 1: amphitheater effect around the green, and so it so it
Speaker 1: kind of feels appropriate for the ending of a championship.
Speaker 1: But what's that I've been rewatching old tournaments at Shinnecock.
Speaker 1: I've been kind of rewatching the old US Opens. Eighteen
Speaker 1: is always interesting at the end of the tournament. Eighteen
Speaker 1: has consistently produced memorable moments, memorable plays at the end
Speaker 1: of the US Open for the winner. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, Ray Floyd played an immaculate round at Shinnacock.
Speaker 1: He was just like, it's got to be one of
Speaker 1: the greatest rounds in major championship history what Raymond Floyd
Speaker 1: did at Shinnacock that day, and he played eighteen absolutely perfectly,
Speaker 1: amazing drive, kind of cutting the corner, taking the high
Speaker 1: side of the reverse camber, amazing iron and just it
Speaker 1: was representative of his full round. In a really satisfying
Speaker 1: summation of his tournament. Nineteen ninety five, Corey Paven just
Speaker 1: hits a poofball out to the right like they had us.
Speaker 1: You know, usually at these media days they have you
Speaker 1: hit a famous shot right, so you know the Tiger
Speaker 1: putt on eighteen at Tory or the Jack Nicholas one
Speaker 1: iron on seventeen at Pebble. They they of course marked
Speaker 1: the spot where Corey Pavin hit his forward from and
Speaker 1: and looking at that spot you almost laugh. It's like, really,
Speaker 1: that's where that's where he ended up. But yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: remembers that. Everybody remembers that forward. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: great moment in championship golf history. Then in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, Ratief Goosen plays the hole pretty well but
Speaker 1: kind of trickles a little bit off the fairway and
Speaker 1: his and his iron, you know, flew on him a
Speaker 1: little bit and went through the green. And when you're
Speaker 1: behind the hole on eighteen at Shinnecowk Hills, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: And so he had a very tense moment where he
Speaker 1: had to hit this very delicate lag putt and then
Speaker 1: he had a four footer to finish, and the history
Speaker 1: of Ratief Goosen and four footers at major championships, we
Speaker 1: know is a little bit fraught. And then finally Brooks
Speaker 1: Koepka kind of made a mess of eighteen and twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: He ended up kind of back left of the green
Speaker 1: and had to hit a really amazing chip in order
Speaker 1: to recover from that. I believe he ended up bogeying
Speaker 1: the hole, but it would have been it would have
Speaker 1: been really tense if he had had to par the hole.
Speaker 1: So I think eighteen has a way of really administering
Speaker 1: an interesting final test to the winner of the tournament,
Speaker 1: and I would expect that to be the case again
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 2: It's you know that what you were talking about reminding
Speaker 2: me of one other really big theme I think that
Speaker 2: will play out is you know, you talked about how
Speaker 2: being above the hole is such a tough spot to
Speaker 2: be on eighteen pretty much every green out there because
Speaker 2: of the slope, and then sometimes how the wind can
Speaker 2: also impact it. The wind just in gener role because
Speaker 2: of the greens are so exposed impacts putting a lot
Speaker 2: similar to what we saw at Ironomnk last week, or
Speaker 2: you know, is something that's going to be a factor
Speaker 2: with putting. But being above the hole, you know, it
Speaker 2: kind of plays to the same theme we're talking about.
Speaker 2: If you can put from below the hole at Shinnacock,
Speaker 2: it you could really rack up birdies because they are
Speaker 2: fairly simple uphill putts where you can you can you
Speaker 2: can really putt aggressively, and but to get to there
Speaker 2: is often the hardest shot. Like you have really achieved
Speaker 2: great greatness when you have these uphill putts at Shinnacock,
Speaker 2: because they are very hard to earn.
Speaker 1: You got to control your ball on the ground right well,
Speaker 1: you have to control it's so hard to do.
Speaker 2: You generally have to take on an edge to get them,
Speaker 2: like a false front or a and undulation in particular.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just the it's just a hard place
Speaker 2: to get uphill putts and the the safe shots to
Speaker 2: always yield these insanely delicate downhill or side hill putts
Speaker 2: where you're putting you're giving so much break and it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's you're trying to drop it in the
Speaker 2: high side on a on a dying putt, or you're
Speaker 2: putting downhill and you're really like in the back of
Speaker 2: your head thinking about, oh, like I really have to
Speaker 2: be careful of not leaving myself six feet coming back,
Speaker 2: which inevitably is a bad mindset to putt from. But
Speaker 2: like this, this it goes to that that play is
Speaker 2: again if you take on the risk, if you take
Speaker 2: which is hard to do over and over again, which
Speaker 2: is where like I think, like shitnacock is such a key.
Speaker 2: The key thing to shittacock is just managing your game
Speaker 2: and understanding like when are the opportunities where I can
Speaker 2: I can nudge a little bit more risk in and
Speaker 2: when are the opportunities where I have to back off
Speaker 2: and I'm going to have to grind my way to
Speaker 2: par But like understanding that delicate balance, because you cannot
Speaker 2: go out there and go you know, aggressive all day long.
Speaker 2: You have to you have to pick your spots of
Speaker 2: where you decide to take on the risk because if
Speaker 2: you don't take on any risk all day you're going
Speaker 2: to shoot a seventy four. But if you if you
Speaker 2: pick your few spots where you are willing to do it,
Speaker 2: that's how you achieve, and you shoot the scores and
Speaker 2: you can make I think the thing about Shinnakok overall
Speaker 2: thematically is it is extraordinarily hard as a golf course.
Speaker 2: But I've always found it very I wouldn't call it easy,
Speaker 2: but it's very achievable to make like five six birdies
Speaker 2: like it is. That is an achievable thing you play
Speaker 2: Shinnacock is to make birdies. If you hit great shots
Speaker 2: like you get really great opportunities. It is not one
Speaker 2: of those golf courses that like throttles down scoring. You
Speaker 2: know what we saw at aronom Ink of what we
Speaker 2: saw like complaints from players or not complaints, I would
Speaker 2: say critique. This is not a complaint. What Rory said
Speaker 2: about the variance and kind of holding, Shittacock's the opposite.
Speaker 2: You're going to see a wide range of scores at Shinnecock.
Speaker 1: Hills, especially if the elements show up. You know, I
Speaker 1: think if it's placid out there, we could see some
Speaker 1: low scoring. And I've gotten to a point where I
Speaker 1: fear the discourse. Yeah, I think I think we've gotten
Speaker 1: to a bad spot in the discussion of championship golf
Speaker 1: courses and set up. You know, Shinnecock Hills is a
Speaker 1: great golf course, but if if the elements don't show up,
Speaker 1: if the course is a little bit soft, if the
Speaker 1: USGA is a little bit shy of you know what
Speaker 1: happened in twenty eighteen or two thousand and four where
Speaker 1: you know, the competitors were complaining that they lost the
Speaker 1: golf course. They if they go a bit conservative and
Speaker 1: we don't get a lot of wind and dryness, then
Speaker 1: some guys could go low. And then we're just going
Speaker 1: to be hearing all week about how we hyped up
Speaker 1: Shinnecock Hills and it turns out that it sucks. And
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of like pre exhausted by that. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is is such a great golf course, and you know,
Speaker 1: for me, that's not attached to whatever scored a part
Speaker 1: it produces in the US Open or any particular week
Speaker 1: that the best players happen to show up there. We
Speaker 1: know what what Shinnakok can do when when it's windy
Speaker 1: and dry. We know that that's that hasn't changed. But
Speaker 1: you never know what you're going to get at any
Speaker 1: golf course, but especially at Shinnacok Hills. And so if
Speaker 1: anybody's listening this far into the pot, you're probably with
Speaker 1: us on a lot of this stuff anyway. But I
Speaker 1: just am begging people to chill begging, begging, begging people
Speaker 1: to chill out and just try to enjoy seeing golf
Speaker 1: on one of the world's greatest golf courses. And and
Speaker 1: I'll try my best to restrain myself from getting too
Speaker 1: deep in the muck with with people I disagree with
Speaker 1: on on US Open Week myself.
Speaker 2: But it's just the vocal minority, Garrett most I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we we all tend to amplify
Speaker 1: in our minds. Uh, some of these, some of these
Speaker 1: voices on social media that may not represent the the
Speaker 1: general opinion or view of a golf course. But I
Speaker 1: have become gun shy over the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: You know, there are still people who who come at
Speaker 1: me for saying that LACC was a great golf course.
Speaker 1: Guess what, I'm still LACC is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: golf courses in the world.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 1: I don't care what you thought of that US Open,
Speaker 1: like it clearly is. And and at this point they're
Speaker 1: they're th who are stating in his fact that that
Speaker 1: it's not a good golf course. And I'm like, We've
Speaker 1: just kind of got insane with this stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to the posts of the pinsheet round
Speaker 2: one of someone someone who's never been to Shinnacock looking
Speaker 2: at a US Open pinsheet, which inevitably is going to
Speaker 2: have all tucked pretty much like a lot of tuck pins.
Speaker 2: It's just the inevitability. That's what pro gomf.
Speaker 1: They have to do nowig golf course for these guys,
Speaker 1: make no mistake, Like the.
Speaker 2: Pins are gonna be tough, and they're gonna say John
Speaker 2: Bodhammer chose violence today. But but anyways, that's that's the fun.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think you just got a smile.
Speaker 2: I was. I was just enjoying. I just enjoy that
Speaker 2: the golf courses are getting talked about a lot.
Speaker 1: And you know, to an extent, I do too, And
Speaker 1: and I I sort of riding out the wave of
Speaker 1: the the aernomic discourse online was was at times very
Speaker 1: fun and I'm glad that people are kind of paying
Speaker 1: attention to this subject that I've personally been obsessed with
Speaker 1: for thirty years. But man, I feel like we're creeping
Speaker 1: up to an edge where it's not going to be
Speaker 1: fun anymore, and I hope it just I hope it
Speaker 1: stays fun because Shinnacock is so good and it's it's
Speaker 1: just such a such a boon for golf fans when
Speaker 1: a big tournament goes here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, this was great. I really can't wait
Speaker 2: for Shinnecock Hills. I'm excited for all of our coverage,
Speaker 2: and Garrett, thanks for putting in a lot of work
Speaker 2: on the coverage that we're going to be putting out
Speaker 2: the next couple of weeks. I hope everybody tunes into
Speaker 2: the YouTube's, your podcast, and our website will be humming
Speaker 2: with a lot of golf course architecture stuff around Shinnecock Hills.
Speaker 2: William Flynn and yeah, I can't wait for this week
Speaker 2: or not this week, a couple of weeks when Shinnecock
Speaker 2: Hills is on display. So thanks Garrett, and big thanks
Speaker 2: to PJ Clark for editing and producing today's podcast. PJ,
Speaker 2: We're all invading your island. You know we're talking about
Speaker 2: golf on Long Island, so thank you for listening. We'll
Speaker 2: be back next week with a new episode of the
Speaker 2: Friday Golf Podcast.