Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a Friday Egg,
Speaker 1: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday Frida Egg, fridagg
Speaker 1: Bride Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run.
Speaker 2: Off of the Welcome back to another edition of the
Speaker 2: Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today
Speaker 2: I'm excited. This is like an immediate reaction podcast. I'm
Speaker 2: joined by Garrett Morrison, former co host of this podcast,
Speaker 2: now as his own pod, Design and Golf. We just
Speaker 2: got done, both of us playing Oakmont for the first time.
Speaker 2: We played in the USGA media day for the upcoming
Speaker 2: US Open, so I figured we could chat a little
Speaker 2: bit golf courses. We're going to talk about Oakman here
Speaker 2: at the top initial thoughts. We aren't gonna get like
Speaker 2: super nitty gritty. We're gonna give the high level kind
Speaker 2: of takeaways. Then we're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about my trip to Scotland on the back half of
Speaker 2: this which was an exciting, exciting trip. I've been on
Speaker 2: a kind of a marathon trip here, rolling from Scotland
Speaker 2: right into Oakmont and now and then I'll go home.
Speaker 2: So jet lagged fresh off a Links golf extravaganza is
Speaker 2: definitely the best way to experience Oakmont, especially because I
Speaker 2: had my Echo Bio H five. Echo is a partner
Speaker 2: of ours and they'll be sponsoring a lot of our
Speaker 2: US Open coverage. It was great to be out there.
Speaker 2: I got more weather at Oakmont. I dealt with like
Speaker 2: more weather at Oakmont in one day, and I did
Speaker 2: for a week and a half in Scotland. So my
Speaker 2: Echo Biome h fives were killing it. These shoes were
Speaker 2: actually inspired. Their design was inspired from the rugged Scottish
Speaker 2: Highlands and these are some of the most innovative and
Speaker 2: have some of the most technology in a golf shoe
Speaker 2: that you can find. So it features they're all new
Speaker 2: echo texts, waterproof membrane that's what kept my feet very
Speaker 2: dry today. And it also has the next generation biome
Speaker 2: golf shoe, which it's a sporty, modern aesthetic, but it's
Speaker 2: crafted from that premium Echo performance leather. They have a
Speaker 2: seam knit sock construction, so the way that works is
Speaker 2: it's not really like a tongue, it's more like a
Speaker 2: sock at the top. I found it pretty nice because
Speaker 2: sometimes like a tongue can move around cause you a
Speaker 2: little discomfort. This is more like just like having another
Speaker 2: sock and you tie it on it. So if you're
Speaker 2: interested in the biome h five, check out us dot
Speaker 2: Echo dot us dot Echo dot com slash golf. All right, Garrett,
Speaker 2: welcome on Oakmon. First uh, first time there, first time
Speaker 2: on the property? Like me, what was your initial I
Speaker 2: guess actually, like, what did you expect Oakmont to be like?
Speaker 2: And what what initially was different than you expected? Well?
Speaker 1: I expected it to be hard, right, because that's what
Speaker 1: you hear about Oakmont, that it's hard, And I suppose
Speaker 1: from reading a little bit about it, I expected the
Speaker 1: land to be kind of what it was just brownie impressive,
Speaker 1: heavily sloped, big, The whole course felt big. I expected
Speaker 1: to be able to see across the whole corridors because
Speaker 1: I've heard plenty about the tree removal at Oakmont, heard
Speaker 1: that story many times. So the course kind of looked
Speaker 1: how I expected. When we arrived. I wasn't surprised by
Speaker 1: anything I saw out of the windows in the clubhouse
Speaker 1: when we were in there listening to the USGA presentations
Speaker 1: during media day. We went during media day. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you mentioned that. When I actually got on
Speaker 1: the course and started playing the golf holes, a number
Speaker 1: of things surprised me, and we can get into all
Speaker 1: of them, but first and foremost, the greens shocked me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I had anything in particular that
Speaker 1: I was expecting from the greens, but they're different than
Speaker 1: any greens I've ever played on. They're different in construction,
Speaker 1: they're different in how they play. They're much harder than
Speaker 1: anyone could ever imagine to play with any precision whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So that was the thing that really jumped out at me.
Speaker 1: And some other things did too, but that was the
Speaker 1: big one.
Speaker 2: I had always heard that the greens were awesome, Like
Speaker 2: I'd always heard that they were, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the five best sets of greens in American golf.
Speaker 1: When people say it's a great set of greens, you
Speaker 1: know to expect something special, but it's not exactly clear
Speaker 1: what you should expect.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I thought they were like wildly unique too.
Speaker 2: Yeah they are not. They're not like your your template
Speaker 2: or like your you know. I think it benefits because
Speaker 2: phones the designer has only only designed one golf course. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you don't see any similarities to like other sets
Speaker 2: of greens really out there. They are very unique to Oakmont. Like,
Speaker 2: for me, one green that just like jumps to mind
Speaker 2: is the ninth that has this channel that kind of
Speaker 2: like is like an L shape through the green and
Speaker 2: it's incredible and it's like, Oh, that's really cool green.
Speaker 2: And it kind of goes through like the middle of
Speaker 2: the green and then it goes along the back that
Speaker 2: l like trough and and I'm like, God, that's so cool.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen anything like that anywhere else. And I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: that's because he hasn't designed anywhere else, you know, the
Speaker 2: guy that designed Oakmont. So I think that's like one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I think I was like pretty shocked
Speaker 2: at how much I liked the golf course. I think
Speaker 2: I just generally have an aversion to like contrived hard.
Speaker 2: I really dislike when golf courses are just trying to
Speaker 2: be hard, like their identity is that they're hard, and
Speaker 2: then they do almost gimmicky things to make it hard,
Speaker 2: such as.
Speaker 1: The reason that they're hard is gimmicks. Yes, not because
Speaker 1: the land and the and the bones of the design make.
Speaker 2: It so yeah. Yeah, And I just thought Oakmon's more
Speaker 2: just like, no, it's just really hard, yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: every SHOT's achievable. And I think that's where I like
Speaker 2: struggle with some courses that are hard, Like it's just like, well,
Speaker 2: like I probably would only hit that fairway like once
Speaker 2: out of like five balls anyways, so it's not a
Speaker 2: big surprise I missed the fairway here, But at Oakmont,
Speaker 2: I did feel like I could hit every fairaway. I
Speaker 2: did feel like if I executed the shot, I could
Speaker 2: hit a really good shot. I felt like I had
Speaker 2: good looks at birdies occasionally if I hit good shots.
Speaker 2: But I also like as soon as I hit a
Speaker 2: bad one, I was like, oh no, that's gonna go.
Speaker 2: And then in some cases the recovery was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun because of the greens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the course puts you in a blender super quickly.
Speaker 1: If you're in the wrong place off the tee, then
Speaker 1: you're super lucky if you can make bogie, you know,
Speaker 1: because I mean that's this is partly because of the rough,
Speaker 1: but even if the rough were lower, the way the
Speaker 1: course works against you once you get off of the
Speaker 1: garden path is something that comes from the slope and
Speaker 1: the design the slope of the property and the design
Speaker 1: of the course, which makes it feel like an honest challenge, right,
Speaker 1: because it's the property, because it's the way the holes
Speaker 1: are laid across the land. Because that's the primary reason
Speaker 1: that it's a hard course, and that the rough and
Speaker 1: the deep bunkers are sort of additions to that. Because
Speaker 1: it feels naturally tough. That's why maybe it's not bothersome
Speaker 1: that it is so hard, but it's I mean incredibly hard.
Speaker 2: It's it's very hard. It's very hard. But I agree
Speaker 2: with you, it's naturally hard. Ye. What the reason it's
Speaker 2: hard is because you are having to navigate this extremely
Speaker 2: rugged piece of ground. And I think like the way
Speaker 2: they're kind of broad, it's I think you could think
Speaker 2: of a rugged and you might think of like England
Speaker 2: where you have these like kind of rollly glacial like
Speaker 2: movements and that's like you know, you go up and down.
Speaker 2: Like one of course that would jump to mind would
Speaker 2: be like Shinnecock Hills where you have like some chop
Speaker 2: to the movement.
Speaker 1: It's almost doonesy. Yeah, it's like big versions of dunes.
Speaker 2: Oakmont is like very broad slopes that the property just navigates,
Speaker 2: and it's like you're not really ever playing over them.
Speaker 2: You're just playing along them or down them a lot.
Speaker 2: And it makes it very hard because you get these
Speaker 2: very uneven lies, and for the most part, the design
Speaker 2: counters the lies where you're on a down slope and
Speaker 2: then the green is screaming away, or you're on a
Speaker 2: side slope and the balls below your feet for a
Speaker 2: righty but you really want to keep it up the left,
Speaker 2: you know, or keep it toward to the left side
Speaker 2: of the green.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Those are the ways that the slopes kind of interact.
Speaker 2: I thought it was interesting. We had a chat with
Speaker 2: the club historian and he talked about how phones designed
Speaker 2: this golf course after a trip to Scotland to see Links,
Speaker 2: and I was like, huh, Like I never thought of
Speaker 2: Oakmont and Links golf in the same realm, But I
Speaker 2: think like maybe this uniqueness of this trip that I
Speaker 2: just went on. I came back and I was looking around.
Speaker 2: I was like, you know, the way that this golf
Speaker 2: course interacts with its natural ground is so similar to
Speaker 2: the way Links golf courses interact with the ground in
Speaker 2: the sense that like a lot of stuff was not built.
Speaker 2: It just was kind of like plopped on top of
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's my biggest take away actually from
Speaker 1: the course, the kind of overarching takeaway I had, which
Speaker 1: is that this really is a lay of the land
Speaker 1: golf course. This is, in a funny way, a highly
Speaker 1: minimalistic design, even though it doesn't look like that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't communicate that in its esthetics because the bunkers are
Speaker 1: so built up, and because they have these ditches running
Speaker 1: through the course that look somewhat constructed, and there's a
Speaker 1: slight Victorian flavor to the construction style of the golf features.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the course in its totality,
Speaker 1: take a bird's eye view of it, it's basically these
Speaker 1: two hillsides that feed toward the Pennsylvania Turnpike. At the
Speaker 1: bottom the Pennsylvania Turnpike behaves almost like a river in
Speaker 1: this property. It's the low point, and you have these
Speaker 1: two hillsides that are kind of facing that low point,
Speaker 1: and the course works down up across these hillsides on
Speaker 1: diagonals across it. And that's where its variety comes from,
Speaker 1: not from moving earth and making holes look different from
Speaker 1: each other because they're artificially constructed in different ways, but
Speaker 1: because the holes are using those hillsides differently, and it's
Speaker 1: a pretty simple piece of land, like it's not, as
Speaker 1: you said, like Shinnecock Hills is more of this rolling,
Speaker 1: tumbling piece of land that's more conventionally what a really
Speaker 1: good golf property would be. Hillside properties can be a
Speaker 1: problematic because they can be repetitive. If you don't have
Speaker 1: a good routing, you can just be going up and
Speaker 1: down all day. But here every hole is immediately distinctive
Speaker 1: because of its relationship to the land. There are some
Speaker 1: varieties of undulations out there, Like it's not just completely
Speaker 1: flat hillsides, you know, tilted toward one direction. You know
Speaker 1: when you get back into sixteen seventeen and there's sort
Speaker 1: of a dip there and some more variety in the landforms.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, it's a fairly straightforward property
Speaker 1: that the routing just manages to find infinite variety in.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the brilliance of the course. And
Speaker 1: then that extends even to the greens which are lay
Speaker 1: of the land, because you know, they didn't build up
Speaker 1: these greens very much. If you walk around them. You
Speaker 1: don't see these big ledges that the architects used to
Speaker 1: make the greens flatter. Right, If you go to Augusta National,
Speaker 1: for instance, this is maybe the best example. Augusta National
Speaker 1: represents a more modern way of building greens, I think
Speaker 1: on a hilly site where by nineteen the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Alistair McKenzie had figured out that he could use certain
Speaker 1: kinds of equipment to make routing a golf course easier
Speaker 1: and make his greens more And one way to do
Speaker 1: that would be to prop the greens up against the hillside.
Speaker 1: In other words, you have a high point and a
Speaker 1: low point. If the green is sitting on a high
Speaker 1: point and a low point, then you just lift the
Speaker 1: low point up with some dirt and you have a
Speaker 1: flatter surface to work with, and then you can contour
Speaker 1: that surface to make it interesting. That would be the
Speaker 1: method that architects in the nineteen twenties and thirties came
Speaker 1: up with to build greens, and that method is still
Speaker 1: used today at Oakmont. This was built in nineteen oh three.
Speaker 1: That's so early in American golf architecture. That's so early
Speaker 1: in golf architecture period like Sunningdale had basically just been
Speaker 1: built a couple of years earlier. This was in.
Speaker 2: National Golfleet's got built basically ten yeah, eight years later.
Speaker 1: Eight years later, nineteen eleven, I think is when it opened.
Speaker 1: Nineteen oh three is ancient days in America golf architecture.
Speaker 1: And you can see that because the greens are not
Speaker 1: constructed in the way that architects learned how to do later.
Speaker 1: They're very lay of the land. They sit flush with
Speaker 1: the land, and that's why some of them have such
Speaker 1: amazing slope. But the solutions that Phones came up with
Speaker 1: to make those greens lay of the land but also
Speaker 1: playable and interesting are fascinating. You know. He basically cut
Speaker 1: channels through them to drain them and also to create
Speaker 1: pinnable sections. He did a bunch of weird things out
Speaker 1: there that architects after nineteen twenty didn't really do at all.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, a very lay of the land course
Speaker 1: that just finds different solutions for its property than most
Speaker 1: courses built later would have.
Speaker 2: I think that the thing about the lay of the
Speaker 2: land aspect, there's obviously like great long views, especially from
Speaker 2: like the higher points in the property, whether you're up
Speaker 2: by the clubhouse on on the I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: directional that side is. It would be the south side
Speaker 2: of the turnpike.
Speaker 1: Or I mean on the other side from the clubhouse
Speaker 1: you're talking about.
Speaker 2: No, No, that'd be the north side on the other side,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So the same side as the clubhouse, the clubhouse side.
Speaker 2: So well like it whether I'm just saying, the long
Speaker 2: views from the clubhouse really area, right, and then the
Speaker 2: long views from up on like three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is on the other side of the property
Speaker 1: from the clubhouse.
Speaker 2: They're amazing, and I think like one of the things
Speaker 2: I was thinking about while I was out there was
Speaker 2: like if you just like if you if there were
Speaker 2: no fairway grass, if it was just rough, you would
Speaker 2: just look at it and be like, oh, it's just there.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't see any like construction, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it blends back in. Yeah, it really does, which
Speaker 1: again people might find weird because bunkers are not created
Speaker 1: in a way that looks naturalistic. Now, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, the golf course kind of if you take
Speaker 1: away all the agronomy and all the color contrasts from
Speaker 1: bunker sand and rough and fairway grass and green grass,
Speaker 1: the golf course kind of disappears back into the landscape
Speaker 1: because they just weren't able to move that much dirt.
Speaker 1: They just it was like little bits at a time
Speaker 1: that prop up a little section of the green there.
Speaker 1: Maybe dig a bunker here so we could lift this
Speaker 1: up here. But very simple moves. And when you look
Speaker 1: at it from a long view, as you're saying, it's
Speaker 1: just it's almost not there except for the agronomic presentation,
Speaker 1: which is very eye catching, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, with regards to the greens,
Speaker 2: I don't know of any golf course that I've ever
Speaker 2: played that has more greens that run away, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: like viciously run away.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, not not your you know, not your sort
Speaker 1: of kindergarten level runaway green. These ones run away with
Speaker 1: the slope of the hill that they're on.
Speaker 2: So I counted six run greens that run away, and
Speaker 2: that what I mean by that is they slope from
Speaker 2: the front of the green to the back of the green.
Speaker 2: And I think that's like super interesting when you start
Speaker 2: talking about championship golf, because the best players in the
Speaker 2: world at this point, particularly now, thrive by command of
Speaker 2: the ball and understanding. They love the predictability. They love
Speaker 2: when the ball's in the air because they know it's
Speaker 2: where it's going to land. Like when they get flustered
Speaker 2: is when the ball when they don't have control of
Speaker 2: the ball. And I think six fallway greens is a
Speaker 2: fascinating way to Like, a heavy amount of fall away
Speaker 2: greens is a fascinating way to challenge these players because
Speaker 2: to to hit into a fallaway green, you have to
Speaker 2: get the right trajectory, the right amount of spin, and
Speaker 2: you have to hit the shot solidly, like if you
Speaker 2: hit it off the toe, then the spin won't be right.
Speaker 2: If you hit a little thin, it'll skip a little
Speaker 2: bit further. Basically, fall away greens magnify the the great
Speaker 2: shots like it. It is a natural way to create
Speaker 2: a large like amplifies the dispersion of good or bad.
Speaker 1: It's like firmness, Yes, it's like it's the same similar
Speaker 1: effect to firmness, except it's just done with with slope.
Speaker 2: And it also has a way of getting in your
Speaker 2: head too, because you really start to think about like
Speaker 2: if you have one that runs through the green, then
Speaker 2: you're thinking, oh, I gotta be careful on the next one.
Speaker 2: And they're graded differently I just like I can't get
Speaker 2: over I read putts with my feet and I I
Speaker 2: cannot get over how like I'm not an ame pointer.
Speaker 2: I know on an ame point, but I just walk
Speaker 2: around and I feel what's going on in my feet
Speaker 2: and then I read the putt like I get behind
Speaker 2: and I could not get over how my feet felt today.
Speaker 2: There are a few greens at Augusta National that made
Speaker 2: my feet feel this way, but like form the most part,
Speaker 2: my feet were just they were. It was nuts all
Speaker 2: day because like you could just feel how much up
Speaker 2: certain puts were, how much down certain puts were, the
Speaker 2: immense side slopes. I think that's it. It just you
Speaker 2: have to be in the right spots. And I think
Speaker 2: we can get into kind of the the gill work
Speaker 2: that's been done. But I think adding a little bit
Speaker 2: of width has amplified these greens because there's a little
Speaker 2: bit more space and real estate to play and the
Speaker 2: and obviously recapturing also part of this restoration that happened
Speaker 2: last year. They recaptured really the last two years, recaptured
Speaker 2: a lot of green space that they didn't have, So
Speaker 2: the greens have gotten more interesting and there's also a
Speaker 2: little bit more space. There's not that. This is not
Speaker 2: like a really huge wide. It's not like we're playing
Speaker 2: at eighteen at LACC here. But there's just a little
Speaker 2: bit more space to operate in the fairway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just in spots where you might want to
Speaker 1: play toward the edge of the fairway to gain some
Speaker 1: kind of advantage. So it's not like an overall widening
Speaker 1: of the fairways. I think if people look at the
Speaker 1: aerials and compare them between you know, twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, that they won't see that much difference
Speaker 1: in the fairway wits. It's just in particular places where
Speaker 1: they've recaptured some fairway, often in the run ups to
Speaker 1: greens in cool ways, so that now you have short
Speaker 1: grass running up to a green side bunker instead of
Speaker 1: rough defending that bunker basically, So there's some of that.
Speaker 1: But then in the landing zones for drives, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some more width here and there, but it's just in
Speaker 1: spots where maybe you would want to find a new
Speaker 1: angle into the green. And then the green expansions are
Speaker 1: sort of done in the same spirit, where you push
Speaker 1: the green to the edge of the green pad, not
Speaker 1: with the intention of creating more forgiveness necessarily though it
Speaker 1: may do that for amateurs, but for pros who are
Speaker 1: going to be playing this course when they have the
Speaker 1: hardest pin positions, those pin positions are just going to
Speaker 1: become harder because now they're out toward the edge of
Speaker 1: the green pad like hanging over these bunkers. And so
Speaker 1: part of the reason that you then recapture some fairway
Speaker 1: with in certain areas is to allow good players to
Speaker 1: attack certain pins by trying to find these new sections
Speaker 1: the fair way. And so it doesn't necessarily make the
Speaker 1: course more forgiving, but it does make it slightly more
Speaker 1: dynamic and interesting. I think, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Loved some of the new pockets. I thought that, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things like us when we play these
Speaker 2: media days, like you never know what you're gonna get
Speaker 2: from the whole location standpoint. They were showing up. They
Speaker 2: were showing off the pockets today like sometimes you get
Speaker 2: just dead center of the green every hole. Today they
Speaker 2: were they were flashing some some whole locations. I thought, like,
Speaker 2: I got right out of the gate. The we teed
Speaker 2: off four, but the fifth hole had like some some
Speaker 2: left hole. They it was the back left hole location,
Speaker 2: and it was funny. I was like right down the
Speaker 2: middle and I was looking at it, and I was
Speaker 2: in just the short rough. I was in like the
Speaker 2: first cut, and I was looking at it. I was
Speaker 2: like and I had like a little wedge into the green,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, God, I like I needed to be
Speaker 2: on the right side to really like have a good
Speaker 2: go at this hole. Like I had to just like
Speaker 2: hope that I caught the slope to turn it in,
Speaker 2: but like I couldn't play at it. And it's just
Speaker 2: it's interesting because if you get into the right spot.
Speaker 2: This isn't, by no means a golf course where you're
Speaker 2: going to be often thinking about trying to hit it
Speaker 2: and do a different spot, but there are opportunities, especially,
Speaker 2: Like I think what's neat about this golf course is
Speaker 2: it does have some shorter par fours that are not
Speaker 2: necessarily driveable, but they have like three fairly short par
Speaker 2: fours that are like really interesting decisions off the tee.
Speaker 2: And I think that's like it is a big, tough
Speaker 2: golf course, but there are holes that like you can
Speaker 2: get it. You have three sub four hundred par fours
Speaker 2: and you also have two par fives, like where you're
Speaker 2: going to get wedges in your hands or you're gonna
Speaker 2: be able to push it up by the green, and
Speaker 2: how you decide to attack those holes, I think is
Speaker 2: going to be one of the more interesting aspects of
Speaker 2: the tournament.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point, because I think the green
Speaker 1: expansions on the short par flours in particular were very
Speaker 1: successful and notable, like notably different from what they were before,
Speaker 1: and I think part of the reason for that is
Speaker 1: to create that day to day variability where you can
Speaker 1: move the tee up, bring into play another section of
Speaker 1: the fairway, and then put the pin in a really
Speaker 1: tough place like way out on a tongue that has
Speaker 1: been recaptured and was formerly rough, and now you have
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting situation for a player who may
Speaker 1: have played the hole in a completely different way when
Speaker 1: the pin was in the middle of the green. And
Speaker 1: I think for short part fours in particular, where players
Speaker 1: can make a choice between hitting a three iron to
Speaker 1: the left side of the fairway and or hitting a
Speaker 1: d to the right side of the fairway, having those
Speaker 1: really distinct different pin positions is super.
Speaker 2: Helpful, and I think that's gonna be important because of
Speaker 2: the consideration of the rough. It's not just like aiming
Speaker 2: down the right side of the fairway. It's also understanding like, hey,
Speaker 2: and this is one of the one of the things
Speaker 2: that makes Oakmont different, I think than a lot of
Speaker 2: places is also the ditches. So you found one of
Speaker 2: these today, Yeah, it was awful. You're hanging off the
Speaker 2: edge of it. Yeah, it's an athletic feet what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I would not I would have been that. That was
Speaker 2: my best part of the day. This is great. The uh,
Speaker 2: but theh the ditches, I think you like, you really
Speaker 2: have to favor sides in the sense of like getting
Speaker 2: to a side because you're not gonna be able to
Speaker 2: hit all the faraways out here. Getting to a side
Speaker 2: that allows you the chance to run a shot in
Speaker 2: from the rough, and that that is an important thing.
Speaker 2: But then there are so many holes that have these
Speaker 2: ditches that run along one side of the fairway or
Speaker 2: cut across the fairway and some aspects. And these are multifunctional,
Speaker 2: one of the more cool features on a golf course.
Speaker 2: You know, they're multifunctional. They also drain the golf course
Speaker 2: really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all kind of running you see them running
Speaker 1: down toward the turnpike, basically, yeah.
Speaker 2: And they run and they run on low sides of
Speaker 2: fairways so that they capture the most water. But these
Speaker 2: ditches then like immediately shade you to the other side,
Speaker 2: and those are often that side is the bad side
Speaker 2: to miss in the rough, right it it is. It
Speaker 2: is such a difficult golf course because you just look
Speaker 2: around and you see all these places you don't want
Speaker 2: to go, and you just have to make really great swings.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was interesting to go around
Speaker 1: the course and try to figure out which holes were
Speaker 1: truly strategic in the sense that you had options and
Speaker 1: those options carried some kind of risk reward question with them,
Speaker 1: versus holes that were just purely penal, where there were hazards,
Speaker 1: bad stuff on both sides and you just wanted to
Speaker 1: be down the middle of history way. That was the
Speaker 1: only question. Yeah. Oakmon is known primarily as a penal
Speaker 1: golf course. That's even the line from the club itself.
Speaker 1: This is a this is the penal school of design,
Speaker 1: which I don't know, maybe people need some background on
Speaker 1: what penal school versus strategic school means.
Speaker 2: I didn't penal school means it's just hard. If you
Speaker 2: mishit the shot, then you will be penalized. If you
Speaker 2: hit a good one, you are rewarded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it doesn't always have to be hard necessarily.
Speaker 1: It's just that the hazards are on both sides of
Speaker 1: the target, and the idea is you need to be
Speaker 1: the only thing you're thinking about is I need to
Speaker 1: be not in those hazards. That's penal school strategic. There
Speaker 1: are more questions about risk and reward that enter the equation.
Speaker 1: Strategic holes tend to work on diagonals and maybe across
Speaker 1: side slopes. Penal holes tend to go up and down
Speaker 1: and work on linear concepts straight up and down. And
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting at Oakmont that the most
Speaker 1: penal holes, which I thought were basically one nine ten,
Speaker 1: the ones that really had those linear hazards down both
Speaker 1: sides of the fairway where all you were thinking about
Speaker 1: was okay, middle of the fairway, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: play any angles here. Those were the holes that ran
Speaker 1: most up and down the slopes, Whereas I thought the
Speaker 1: most strategic holes at Oakmont were the ones that ran
Speaker 1: along side slopes, that ran along diagonals and kind of
Speaker 1: had a high side of the fairway and a low
Speaker 1: side of the fairway. Those holes were were hazarded differently,
Speaker 1: they were bunkerd differently, they had more staggered bunkers, bunkers
Speaker 1: kind of eating into the fairway. They had diagonal running
Speaker 1: fairways in relation to the te and so something to
Speaker 1: look for when when people see the telecast of the
Speaker 1: US Open, is looking trying to see is this hole
Speaker 1: one of those that runs straight up a hill or
Speaker 1: straight down a hill or is it one that kind
Speaker 1: of goes across on a side slope, And usually the
Speaker 1: ones that are on side slopes are the kind of
Speaker 1: more strategic holes.
Speaker 2: I well, I think I found I was just sumbing
Speaker 2: through my yardage book here the eleventh might be one
Speaker 2: of the more strategic holes because the ditch cuts out.
Speaker 1: On a diagonal, ditches on a diagonal, and the green.
Speaker 2: Is also on a diagonal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have kind of like two fairways that
Speaker 1: are all so on diagonals where you can choose am
Speaker 1: I going to go to the short side on the
Speaker 1: right of this fairway or the long side on the.
Speaker 2: Left, and those all depending on where the t box is.
Speaker 2: You can also carry it onto you know, the the
Speaker 2: next you know part of the fairway, you have like
Speaker 2: decision of right versus left on the front fairway. Then
Speaker 2: the ditch cuts across and you have the option to
Speaker 2: maybe carry it past that and get yourself a shorter shot.
Speaker 2: I thought that might be like the most from a
Speaker 2: strategic from a t shot standpoint. The other ones, I
Speaker 2: thought twelve was a really interesting one.
Speaker 1: The par five classic example. This is a side slope
Speaker 1: hole with staggered bunkers. So you have these bunkers that
Speaker 1: are like high left side and bunkers low left side,
Speaker 1: and they're always offset from each other. So you're always
Speaker 1: thinking like how much do I want to challenge that
Speaker 1: high side bunker in order to prevent myself from running
Speaker 1: down to the bottom of the fairway. And if I
Speaker 1: if I don't challenge that high side, then I might
Speaker 1: end up in a bunker on you know, on the
Speaker 1: on the bottom side of the fairway, on the low
Speaker 1: side of the fairway. So that one's really interesting, and
Speaker 1: again it's has the staggered bunkering pattern as opposed to
Speaker 1: the kind of lineup of bunkers along the side of
Speaker 1: the fairway.
Speaker 2: I loved the second shot on twelve. That's one of
Speaker 2: the most severely most severe greens in terms of running
Speaker 2: away from play. And I thought what's interesting about that
Speaker 2: shot was that the worst place to be was to
Speaker 2: miss short in the rough, which is where I missed.
Speaker 2: It's it's one where you like feel like you have
Speaker 2: to get it passed, and if it's not going to
Speaker 2: be passed, you are praying for it to go into
Speaker 2: a bunker something that offers you some sort of spin control,
Speaker 2: because if you're in the rough, you have no you're
Speaker 2: you know, hitting a chip or a pitch or a
Speaker 2: thirty yard shot from thick rough, You're kind of variable
Speaker 2: is how far it's going to fly. You generally know
Speaker 2: it's going to release and everything, and on that green
Speaker 2: it is just so vitally important to fly it exactly
Speaker 2: where you want with the spin, otherwise it's going to
Speaker 2: run through the green. You will see so many players
Speaker 2: that don't get it to that green, chipping from the rough,
Speaker 2: chipping again for their fourth shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe missing also on the left side of the green,
Speaker 1: which is the high side, because the low side of
Speaker 1: the right side of the green lower looks bad like
Speaker 1: it looks like it kind of drops off a cliff there.
Speaker 1: Everybody in our group ended up on the left and
Speaker 1: that's a terrible, terrible place to be around the twelfth green.
Speaker 1: We said we weren't going to get too detailed in
Speaker 1: our analysis of the golf course, we've already gotten close
Speaker 1: with the eleven and twelve. Speaking of the rough, that
Speaker 1: is kind of where the golf course loses me a bit.
Speaker 1: I understand why they have it. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: solid four inch rough out there today. It is a
Speaker 1: true Oakmont experience. I'm not bitter about having the experience.
Speaker 1: It's good to have that experience, you know, somewhat similar
Speaker 1: to what they'll see in the US Open. Obviously it'll
Speaker 1: be harder at the US Open. But the reliance on rough,
Speaker 1: I understand it.
Speaker 2: It would be really fun to play it with like
Speaker 2: one inch rough.
Speaker 1: Be so fun to play if there were more short
Speaker 1: grass out there, more short grass around the greens. I
Speaker 1: know I'm a brooking record on this, but this is
Speaker 1: where I think Pinehurst number two's magic really becomes clear.
Speaker 1: Where that course is extremely hard, but it's a joyful
Speaker 1: kind of hard. It's the kind of hard that makes
Speaker 1: you want to go around again and play the course again.
Speaker 1: I can imagine playing Pinehurst Number two multiple times in
Speaker 1: one day, but Oakmont, I really can't imagine playing thirty
Speaker 1: six holes at Oakmont, partly partly because of this dependence
Speaker 1: on Rough for challenge.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna zig here, and I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 2: I think it's important for us opens to go to
Speaker 2: different venues that have different values and represent different cultures.
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I agree with that. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it's not my preference. It's not my personal preference.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, Oakmont, like I kind of appreciate
Speaker 2: a course with really cool greens, thick rough and immense topography.
Speaker 2: I think it's cool, it's unique. Like I like that
Speaker 2: this is wildly different than Pinehurst Number two what we
Speaker 2: saw last last year. I think in general, this championship
Speaker 2: should be wildly different year in, year out, you know,
Speaker 2: because it should reflect different areas of the country that
Speaker 2: have different types of you know, agronomy. And I think like, obviously,
Speaker 2: Oakmond is like the king of the Pittsburgh golf culture,
Speaker 2: and you are coming into Pittsburgh's golf culture and this
Speaker 2: is what we do in Pittsburgh, you know, And I
Speaker 2: kind of appreciate that. I kind of, you know, like
Speaker 2: I am. I think anybody that's listening to this podcast
Speaker 2: for a long time, like, I'm not a fan of
Speaker 2: just thick, rough, narrow fairways like and necessarily penal architecture,
Speaker 2: but I kind of appreciate this one. This one is
Speaker 2: like the og. This one is the They've always been
Speaker 2: kind of the outlier in the system in terms of
Speaker 2: like how they've pushed agronomy and set up and everything,
Speaker 2: and I think it kind of all works.
Speaker 1: It's baked into its identity. The rough is part of Oakmond.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they should get rid of it. I
Speaker 1: think that would be a little disappointing, even because it's
Speaker 1: so much a part of the core of this golf course.
Speaker 1: It's just not my personal favorite thing, and it is
Speaker 1: why I love certain courses and don't love other courses.
Speaker 1: And I think the US Open, as you say, should
Speaker 1: go to many different kinds of courses, some of which
Speaker 1: some people will really like and others won't like. And
Speaker 1: that's Good's that's where the National Championship should be.
Speaker 2: It's part of the charm of the championship. I wish
Speaker 2: they had more geographic and golf course architectural differentiation within it.
Speaker 2: I think like the one thing that the anchor site.
Speaker 2: The bummer about the anchor site is like how repetitive
Speaker 2: Pebble and Pinehurst are. I loved last year's Pinehurst one,
Speaker 2: but I'm not ready to see it again in four years.
Speaker 2: And I think, like I think once every ten years,
Speaker 2: this kind of like should be the cadence for an
Speaker 2: American US Open because it's just there's so many venues
Speaker 2: to go see.
Speaker 1: They're going to Oakmont a lot too. Oakmont's one of
Speaker 1: the top anchor sites as well, but any US Open
Speaker 1: rooda should be anchored on on Pinehurst number two in
Speaker 1: Oakmont Country Club. I think those are the two greatest
Speaker 1: US Open venues.
Speaker 2: Shinnakok I thinks pretty rate.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think I think Shinnakok
Speaker 1: Hills is I need to I need to actually go
Speaker 1: go play Shinecock Hills. I've never been there. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: just seen it on TV. I think it's a fairly
Speaker 1: recent entry in the in the canon of US Open.
Speaker 1: But so is Pinehurst number two for that matter. I
Speaker 1: don't know, for for one reason or another, maybe because
Speaker 1: they're so opposed to each other, maybe because they're opposites
Speaker 1: in many ways. Pinehurst Number two in Oakmont just kind
Speaker 1: of seem like the the patriarch and the matriarch of
Speaker 1: the US Open.
Speaker 2: At this point, I have to admit that walking around
Speaker 2: seeing Oakmont today with the with the with the greens restored,
Speaker 2: the fairway with widened in some parts, I was thinking
Speaker 2: about Pebble Beach a little bit and how it could
Speaker 2: have a similar look and feel to it when you
Speaker 2: like have those long views and thinking about how small
Speaker 2: it looks because of the presentation.
Speaker 1: Pokemont is a great example of meeting the scale of
Speaker 1: your property. Yeah, that course belongs to that property, and
Speaker 1: it's the greens are properly big. These are big greens, right,
Speaker 1: but they're not easy to navigate. Everything about the course,
Speaker 1: from its bunkers to its other golf features, is scaled
Speaker 1: up properly, and yeah, that's something that Pebble is missing
Speaker 1: a bit.
Speaker 2: Right now, let's end this discussion with what was your favorite?
Speaker 2: What hole are you most looking forward to for the tournament.
Speaker 1: We've already talked about twelve, really looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious about eight long par three running
Speaker 1: downhill with some ability to run the ball onto the green,
Speaker 1: and a green that tilts away from the player a
Speaker 1: significant amount at the front. Just at the front, it
Speaker 1: kind of there's a little of a rise at the back.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious to see whether players fly the ball
Speaker 1: to the green there or whether they actually try to
Speaker 1: run it up because it's going to play pretty long
Speaker 1: and the court and the whole design really invites that
Speaker 1: run up play.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I just just depend on how firm it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's firms, they'll have to they'll have to
Speaker 1: run it up on to one and ten too, if
Speaker 1: if those greens are firm. So, but yeah, eight is
Speaker 1: there's something about that hole that I'm just charmed by.
Speaker 1: I think it is really simple and it fits its
Speaker 1: piece of land in a very kind of low profile
Speaker 1: but interesting way. I like that whole lot, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I just want to I want to see pros tackle
Speaker 1: a long part three where a run up play might
Speaker 1: be might be beneficial to them.
Speaker 2: I'll do. I'll naminate one in ten just because I well,
Speaker 2: I love just.
Speaker 1: How how tilted away those greens are.
Speaker 2: And I love it from like Thursday and Friday of
Speaker 2: a tournament. Is that that's your first hole. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's my first iron shot and I and I'm having
Speaker 2: to like figure out where to land it there they
Speaker 2: both play way downhill.
Speaker 1: Just imagine imagine like finding finding out that you're that
Speaker 1: you're starting on ten and you're like, oh god, thank god,
Speaker 1: I don't have to start on one.
Speaker 2: But then you remember, so I think that's like my favorite.
Speaker 2: I just like, I love the idea of just hitting
Speaker 2: just this absurd shot right out of the gate that
Speaker 2: you don't see anywhere else in pro golf. They never
Speaker 2: see a green like that in pro golf on the
Speaker 2: first hole where it just screams.
Speaker 1: Away and twelve is insane as well.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I just I, you know, the Scotland trip.
Speaker 2: I I just realized how many how many courses have
Speaker 2: these like the first two holes or just nothing holes
Speaker 2: that were like built in you know there in like
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy because the little warm up holes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's intentional, there were warm up holes. And also
Speaker 1: they're usually sitting on the least interesting land because the
Speaker 1: most interesting land is what you were getting to know.
Speaker 2: But it's like the one in ten. In terms of
Speaker 2: starting a championship or like the complete antithesis of a
Speaker 2: warm up hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the opposite of a gentle handshake.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, seventeen's really cool. That green was way more
Speaker 2: interesting than I thought it was.
Speaker 1: Seventeen is going to be the cat and Itpy hole
Speaker 1: for sure, and for good reason. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: very very cool golf hole. I wonder, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wonder. I wonder if everybody's just gonna go for
Speaker 1: the green or what witch tees are going to invite
Speaker 1: that play most.
Speaker 2: I don't think you want to be around.
Speaker 1: I want to be around it, that's the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But we had three longer hitters in our group, all
Speaker 1: basically go for the green from the tea and turn
Speaker 1: out pretty well as I recall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they were outliars.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe, so you know.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about Scotland, but first let's talk
Speaker 2: about Maui Nui. Maui Nui makes this great venison and
Speaker 2: you might have heard a recent major champion talk about
Speaker 2: game meat. But one of the reasons that Maui nui
Speaker 2: is so popular is that venison is one of the
Speaker 2: healthiest meats that you can get, like the protein density
Speaker 2: and it is like through the roof. It is like
Speaker 2: the cleanest red meat you can eat. And Maui Nui
Speaker 2: they harvest the access deer on Maui, which is a
Speaker 2: like a sustainability kind of crisis on Maui uh and
Speaker 2: it is it is one wild harvested meat that is
Speaker 2: completely stress free and responsibly sourced. So this is a
Speaker 2: way that you can elevate your meals with delicious, high
Speaker 2: quality protein and that's very very good for you. I
Speaker 2: brought a bunch of the sticks they have like almost
Speaker 2: they're just like you know, great snack sticks. They are
Speaker 2: like ten ten grams of protein. Kept me going throughout Scotland,
Speaker 2: like I would just snap into those. It's that's not
Speaker 2: necessarily the easiest country to eat healthy, and it provided
Speaker 2: some healthy nutrition for me. You know. One of the
Speaker 2: things that the nature of Maui Nui is they have
Speaker 2: like limited supply of their stuff. So Maui Nui is
Speaker 2: offering Friday listeners a limited collection of their favorite cuts
Speaker 2: and products, but supplies limited by nature of their work.
Speaker 2: So don't wait, head over to Maui Nui Venison dot
Speaker 2: slash egg. That's Maui, like the place in Hawaii, m
Speaker 2: a u I n u I Venison v E n
Speaker 2: I s o n dot com slash egg. That's Maui
Speaker 2: Nui Venison dot com slash egg. Thanks to Maui Nui.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about Scotland.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Let's have you talk about Scotland. You
Speaker 1: just you just came back. So you mentioned this, but
Speaker 1: you went on a Friday golf club trip to Scotland.
Speaker 1: Have been away from home for a while now, a
Speaker 1: little more than a week, almost two weeks, almost two weeks. Yeah, God,
Speaker 1: and you flew back to the US, flew into Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and went and played Oakmont in a rainstorm.
Speaker 2: Well, I was presented. I had an interest. I was
Speaker 2: It was like, am I gonna fly back from Scotland?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I mean Stanford.
Speaker 2: It's going to fly all the way back to oakslond.
Speaker 1: The eternal question do I go home first? Yeah? Clearly
Speaker 1: this was the best choice, but.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was. I'm not sure it's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, people probably can't tell it because of our enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: but we're a little worse for the wear at the
Speaker 1: end of this day.
Speaker 2: Feed up by Yeah.
Speaker 1: In any case, Uh, your Scotland trip just like sounds awesome.
Speaker 1: You've been to some of these courses before, which course
Speaker 1: was the star this time on the itinerary and maybe
Speaker 1: let people know what the itinerary was first, just to
Speaker 1: give them.
Speaker 2: A sense of Yeah. So we went to Saint Andrew's area,
Speaker 2: Fife and for the trip, and then I spent a
Speaker 2: weekend in North Berwick which was great, uh and we
Speaker 2: can talk a little bit about that. But in Fife,
Speaker 2: what we wanted to do we did not do the
Speaker 2: guaranteed access to the old course. So we wanted to
Speaker 2: give everybody a chance to enter the ballot every day.
Speaker 2: So in fact what the itinerary was was outside of Thursday,
Speaker 2: the we we on Thursday we played Panmuir and Carnoustie.
Speaker 2: That was our only scheduled thirty six old day. What
Speaker 2: everybody had was an afternoon afternoon tea time at a
Speaker 2: golf course, so we played Crail Balconi Court Balcony Course,
Speaker 2: which is the old golf course, the old Tome golf course.
Speaker 2: There we played Ee twice uh and then we also
Speaker 2: played Kings Barns and then uh Pamir and Carnoustie. But
Speaker 2: the mornings were free so every day you could go
Speaker 2: enter the ballot. I also played the new course when
Speaker 2: I arrived, which was delightful if you didn't win the ballot.
Speaker 2: Like the the the point was like you can go
Speaker 2: play the new course, or you could go play Eden
Speaker 2: or Jubilee at the Lynx Trust or the Castle Course
Speaker 2: because you know, one of the great aspects of like
Speaker 2: new courses you can just walk up and get a
Speaker 2: tea time. It does not have tea times, right, you
Speaker 2: just walk up and they say, oh you're you're out
Speaker 2: in ten minutes.
Speaker 1: World class golf course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was kind of actually probably to me the
Speaker 2: most the star. You never hear anybody talk about the
Speaker 2: new because of the old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and whenever you hear somebody mention the new, it's
Speaker 1: to say something like you never hear anybody talking about
Speaker 1: this course, but it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's awesome. I mean it's basically on like very
Speaker 2: similar land to the old. And like I think part
Speaker 2: of the name is like this is an old golf course.
Speaker 1: The name is a problem. I'm just gonna say this.
Speaker 1: I think the name is a problem. I think people
Speaker 1: think that this is a new, modern golf course. This
Speaker 1: course was built in the eighteen nineties. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's old Tom Morris golf course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, veteran old Tom Morris designing.
Speaker 2: There's some incredible holes on it, and it gets out
Speaker 2: some of the best holes on a play right along
Speaker 2: where the loop is on on on the old course,
Speaker 2: so like seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven that they keep going,
Speaker 2: so like where you see you know the eden and
Speaker 2: the seventh green, so eleven and seven that double green there,
Speaker 2: like right on the other side, there's like an epic
Speaker 2: par five on new that has these two dunes like
Speaker 2: that you can run in and then and then a
Speaker 2: par three that plays right along the estuary to like
Speaker 2: this punch bowl green. It's like two hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: yard par three. It's really cool. The next hole is
Speaker 2: that eat too, but like so it is. That was
Speaker 2: like actually a revelation. So like the point of the
Speaker 2: trip was like everybody enter the ballot. So we had
Speaker 2: sixteen people. Twelve people won the ballot, which was incredible.
Speaker 2: I think we were like very lucky with that. I
Speaker 2: was very happy that I was not one of the
Speaker 2: twelve people that won it.
Speaker 1: Because you've already played the old course.
Speaker 2: I've already played the old course. But you know the
Speaker 2: so the you know, people went and played the Eden,
Speaker 2: people wouldn't played the New and stuff like that. But
Speaker 2: like for me, the New course stacked up like very
Speaker 2: high on my list of the courses I played, and
Speaker 2: that was the one that I hadn't I hadn't been
Speaker 2: on that. I was like, wow, Like nobody talks about this,
Speaker 2: and it's because it's like the classic like Big Brother
Speaker 2: with the old you know, Big Brother Little Brother. Other
Speaker 2: course that like kind of I had heard a lot
Speaker 2: about that I really enjoyed was was panmir the It's
Speaker 2: it's an interesting place. It's where it's most known for
Speaker 2: where it's where Hogan practiced before Carnousti. But six through
Speaker 2: fourteen or four through fourteen there is like one of
Speaker 2: the best runs of of golf holes of anywhere in
Speaker 2: the world. And you know, the first three holes that
Speaker 2: go out are pretty mellow. They're just flat, boring ground
Speaker 2: and pretty you know, they are not gonna win any
Speaker 2: architectural interest awards. But then you get auto to four
Speaker 2: and it's like, okay, this is pretty cool, and it
Speaker 2: just starts rashing up five's and awesome part three and
Speaker 2: then you get to the Hogan hole six, which you
Speaker 2: know is one of that you know that is one
Speaker 2: of the most vicious part fours in the world. And
Speaker 2: it's on like incredible links land and then you just
Speaker 2: start playing on this amazing links field for for a
Speaker 2: series of holes. So Panma a really great club too,
Speaker 2: like it was they had We had a big lunch
Speaker 2: there and that that is a great place that should
Speaker 2: be on more people's itineraries. I personally enjoyed it more
Speaker 2: than my trip to its more famous neighbor Carnousti. Carnousi
Speaker 2: is an interesting one to talk about in terms of
Speaker 2: like Oakmont mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Is Cornelisty the Oakmont of of the Roda.
Speaker 2: So like that's where like we talked, you know, I
Speaker 2: said this, like, you know, forty minutes ago. I get
Speaker 2: when when something just like contrived hard, I get very
Speaker 2: turned off by it.
Speaker 1: Oh so you're you're putting in an opposition to Oakmont.
Speaker 2: Then yes, yeah, Like to me, it just was like
Speaker 2: we're gonna do everything we can to make this hard
Speaker 2: and it and it comes to the detriment of the
Speaker 2: golf course where like I was looking around and you know,
Speaker 2: it was nice, we played it without the rough was
Speaker 2: down so that made it like at least like we
Speaker 2: could find golf balls. But I was just looking at us,
Speaker 2: like God in the middle of the summer when these
Speaker 2: fairways are humming, like I don't even know how you
Speaker 2: hit some of these fairways, like it's done, and if
Speaker 2: the rough's up, like we're just gonna look for balls.
Speaker 2: And I think it's just it's an interesting aspect of
Speaker 2: links golf is people run to play the places that
Speaker 2: host the rotos. Yeah, I think the other thing with
Speaker 2: Carnousti And like, I liked a lot of the greens.
Speaker 2: There are some really cool greens out there. There are
Speaker 2: some really cool holes. I love playing sixteen, seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 2: I love fifteen too, you know, like there's a really
Speaker 2: good three is a really cool hole. Two's a cool hole.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of cool holes. But I think
Speaker 2: like one of the things that you do lose when
Speaker 2: you go to a lot of the ROTA courses is
Speaker 2: you lose the authentic kind of experience of visiting like
Speaker 2: an old club and there are no like is especially
Speaker 2: juxtaposed with with Panmuir where they had like a traditional
Speaker 2: lunch set up for us, and you like kind of
Speaker 2: felt like you were experiencing what it might be like
Speaker 2: to be a member there, right, And then you go
Speaker 2: into Carnoustie and it's just the a line of buses
Speaker 2: that you know, you get off and you know it's
Speaker 2: a modern club house and and.
Speaker 1: The golf course maybe reflects that in some ways because
Speaker 1: under the RNA, over the past couple of decades, a
Speaker 1: lot of the road to courses have evolved away from
Speaker 1: their older forms and have become more modern themselves, which
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of cases is a shame.
Speaker 1: And I think it accounts for why courses like North
Speaker 1: Barrack have risen in people's estimation and started to go
Speaker 1: on bucket lists more often. I think that's because the
Speaker 1: Open doesn't go to North Barrack and it's not subject
Speaker 1: to the same pressures.
Speaker 2: That was an interesting, like little thing I was thinking
Speaker 2: about putting together like a notes article, and this was
Speaker 2: one of my notes. Is like, there's like a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, there's a lot of Scotts at various
Speaker 2: places that openly wonder why North Barrick is popular and
Speaker 2: like why it's surged up the list. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: think it's like because it's I think it's just like
Speaker 2: the changing tastes in in the golf culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more to quirk, more fun, more emphasis on those
Speaker 1: you know things that north Barrick has.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's like it's it's fascinating to
Speaker 2: me that that there's like I heard it from probably
Speaker 2: like five to ten people. Oh really that And I,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't I talk to like some people.
Speaker 2: I don't talk to a ton, but like, and these
Speaker 2: are all locals that are members at various clubs and
Speaker 2: really good clubs, like openly like, I don't think north
Speaker 2: Barrick's that good. Is like was there like general sentiment,
Speaker 2: like I think that there are a lot of other
Speaker 2: courses that are a lot better, But I kind of
Speaker 2: like think like it offers something so unique in the
Speaker 2: sense that it's so fun, it's got so many, you know,
Speaker 2: unique aspects of it, and it's like embraced just being
Speaker 2: kind of weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and it's relatively intact. That stuff hasn't been
Speaker 1: smoothed over by by modern methods or tastes. So I
Speaker 1: think that's why it's risen lately, and other courses like
Speaker 1: CARNUSTI maybe aren't maybe aren't as appealing to I'm sure
Speaker 1: many people still want to go play the place because
Speaker 1: it hosts the Open, but it's not surprising that Carnousti
Speaker 1: would would seem less appealing to you than Panmier. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Carnoussi is just like there's just rough everywhere,
Speaker 2: and then the bunkers and I get like that's the
Speaker 2: It's Carnasty right, like it's baked into the name, and
Speaker 2: the bunkers are just like insanely deep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, super narrow fairways, like you know, improperly
Speaker 1: narrowed fairways or that's not the right word. I guess
Speaker 1: fairways that feel narrower than they should be based on
Speaker 1: the landforms that they sit on. That's like a problem
Speaker 1: right now with road courses. You see it a lot.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, it's i you know, you see it roll Troon,
Speaker 1: you see it at Brokedale, you see it a lot.
Speaker 2: I mean the old course could be wider too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's two there's too much rough of the
Speaker 1: old course. Yeah. I think I think there's an issue
Speaker 1: there that people don't really talk about that often, but
Speaker 1: I've heard, I've certainly heard, uh you know, certain British
Speaker 1: or European golf architects discussed that issue, but mostly mostly
Speaker 1: behind closed stores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we we played Ee twice and that the
Speaker 2: reason we played Eely twice was that was like one
Speaker 2: of my favorite courses I've ever played.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had a great experience there a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and went back and yeah it was it was awesome.
Speaker 2: I love that golf course. One of my favorite golf
Speaker 2: courses in the world. And uh, it was fun going
Speaker 2: out there. We had we had like an absolute blue
Speaker 2: bird day. The weather we got was incredible.
Speaker 1: It seemed like you got a great run.
Speaker 2: I mean, we played we played Eely and Ely is
Speaker 2: like a like a beach town in five Uh. We
Speaker 2: played it on like a seventy degree sunny day with
Speaker 2: no wind and it was just idealic And uh, is.
Speaker 1: That where you would join if you were to join
Speaker 1: one of these clubs?
Speaker 2: I mean, I you know, I don't think you can
Speaker 2: ask to join, but I would.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just tying hympathetically. Fantasy is like if
Speaker 1: you if you were allowed to join one.
Speaker 2: I think I would love to. I would love I
Speaker 2: would love to joy Dally that would.
Speaker 1: Be your place. That's the place that that that fills
Speaker 1: your heart with joy. That's the yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's even like down to like they have. There's
Speaker 2: a pub off the off the seventeenth Green called the
Speaker 2: nineteenth Hole, and it's just like the we ate there
Speaker 2: one night. It was great. It was like, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: that place is amazing. I love that. You tee off
Speaker 2: and you look out, ah, you know, a periscope on
Speaker 2: the first hole to see if the next group's clear,
Speaker 2: and it's just like, oh, here's your first hole. Hit
Speaker 2: it over this giant hill and you don't know where
Speaker 2: where it's going to be when you get over the hill.
Speaker 1: Periscopes are underused. It's funny.
Speaker 2: I had, you know, someone on the trip was like
Speaker 2: through two holes, I was like, what where am I?
Speaker 2: Why am I playing this golf course? Like and then
Speaker 2: he and then he was like yeah, and then I
Speaker 2: hit that shot on three, which is this downhill, dramatic
Speaker 2: downhill part three that you see kind of the the
Speaker 2: Firth of Forth and where you're going, and he's like,
Speaker 2: and from that point on, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I love this place. So eally was you know, outside
Speaker 2: the old course. The resounding favor of the group.
Speaker 1: Was it was that partly because of your influence.
Speaker 2: I feel like I had some influence.
Speaker 1: At the host of the trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I think I might a poison the
Speaker 2: well at at King's Barnes too, because of a you know,
Speaker 2: ill timed joke on the on the bus. I uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we were driving in. I said, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: here's a little slice of America for everyone.
Speaker 1: So it's hosting one of one right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say, you know, Kingsbarns was not my favorite.
Speaker 2: You know, I just think it's like kind of stilly
Speaker 2: to go there and play a modern American golf course.
Speaker 1: This is the question there.
Speaker 2: It's got some really good golf holes on it, and
Speaker 2: it's got some holes that I could do without, and
Speaker 2: it's beautiful, like you just like stare at the water
Speaker 2: all day. It kind of feels like a Scottish whistling
Speaker 2: straits a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not hard to not hard to see the appeal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's interestingly it's like, I think
Speaker 2: it's like one of the most commercially successful, uh golf
Speaker 2: courses over there. It's always charged, you know, the highest
Speaker 2: amount which attracts. That's a fascinating topic. Is these clubs
Speaker 2: just realize like if we charge more money, more people come, right,
Speaker 2: it becomes more desirable. It's a wild thing going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's and and yeah, it explains why prices
Speaker 1: have gone gone up so much. You know, we occasionally
Speaker 1: see those tweets pop up on our timelines that give
Speaker 1: the latest reports on what the prices have become at
Speaker 1: various you know, Scottish clubs and Irish clubs. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they've definitely, especially since COVID, have have gone through the roof.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of sad. But also if they can
Speaker 1: charge that and get that, then you can't fault them
Speaker 1: for doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And and and if they charge it, if they charge more,
Speaker 2: they're getting more.
Speaker 1: Demand, which is insane. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing is
Speaker 1: that golf continues to to sort of kill it right
Speaker 1: now with with demand. We'll see if supply can keep up,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other big takeaway I had from the trip was
Speaker 2: it was just neat because, like, you know, there's there's
Speaker 2: a couple of people that came by themselves. There was
Speaker 2: a bunch of people that came with like a friend
Speaker 2: or two, and like it was neat to see like
Speaker 2: a group of like everybody really into golf, like become
Speaker 2: like a group of friends by the end of it.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, it was it was a neat.
Speaker 1: An adventure together. Yeah, that's the best way to make friends.
Speaker 1: It was an adventure and you know, either you're gonna
Speaker 1: gonna hate each other by the end of it or
Speaker 1: become close friends.
Speaker 2: I think I appreciated how this like setting made it
Speaker 2: feasible for like one or two, you know, groups of
Speaker 2: one and two people that like go do a cool
Speaker 2: Scotland trip without having to do a ton of planning.
Speaker 2: So it's like kind of a mini ad. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't meant to be a mini ad.
Speaker 1: Friday golf club events, yeah, trips, Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: have a mother or going to open up this week.
Speaker 2: So but but yeah, it was an awesome trip to Scotland.
Speaker 2: Everybody should go. I mean, the playing conditions are just amazing.
Speaker 2: I was I thought April was like, actually the end
Speaker 2: of all was like a great time to go. I
Speaker 2: think we got great weather, but I from what I
Speaker 2: had heard, it's actually like kind of a sneaky good
Speaker 2: time to go. So recommendation and then hanging out in St.
Speaker 2: Andrews is like just one of the best best places
Speaker 2: to hang out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we all wish we could go back in time
Speaker 1: and go to the University of St. Andrews. You don't what, okay,
Speaker 1: if we have the grades.
Speaker 2: I've started to have this, like, uh thought more and more.
Speaker 2: It's like one of my big regrets is like not
Speaker 2: knowing how big the world was when I was nineteen
Speaker 2: years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's like, oh, this this was an option. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this was I could have just been here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in the uh, in the in the odds too,
Speaker 1: when it was you know, really.
Speaker 2: Cheap, Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's still cheap for St. Andrew's students to play the links.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and that, like being able to hang out
Speaker 2: like that was one of the other aspects of the
Speaker 2: trip that we wanted to do, was like just be
Speaker 2: in one spot. And I think that was also like
Speaker 2: super beneficial. We've made it easy, like knew where we
Speaker 2: were getting picked up, knew where we were getting dropped off,
Speaker 2: and knew by the end of the week, knew everybody
Speaker 2: knew where they were going. You know.
Speaker 1: That's kind of one theory of the Scottish golf trip
Speaker 1: that you might do multiple trips in your lifetime. And
Speaker 1: one theory of it is that you go to one
Speaker 1: place and go deep as opposed to going to a
Speaker 1: bunch of places and going shallow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then I did a weekend in North Beric and
Speaker 2: similarly like it was, it was great. It was delaighted
Speaker 2: that that's a great trip. Also, the East Lothian trip
Speaker 2: is like very easy to do and a.
Speaker 1: Very good one. Everything's very close. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I went to I think one course that nobody really
Speaker 2: talks about with Lothian because I went to a place called.
Speaker 1: Gossick spelled g os w.
Speaker 2: I yeah, you would think it's Goswick.
Speaker 1: You would think it would be Goswick, which I did.
Speaker 2: In fact, the Gothic or maybe gossip go sick. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that golf course was really cool, incredible dunes that
Speaker 2: it plays in and maybe you know, like their fourteenth
Speaker 2: hole might have been the best hole I saw on
Speaker 2: the entire trip. Really it had. It had some of
Speaker 2: the best holes that I saw on the trip. So
Speaker 2: very good golf course that never is included in an
Speaker 2: East Lothian golf trip. But it's an hour from North Berwick,
Speaker 2: so completely feasible and it's absolutely beautiful drive like you're
Speaker 2: basically just driving down the coast the whole time, which, yeah, delightful.
Speaker 2: So to go to gossip it's worth it and relatively
Speaker 2: it like, yeah, it's really cool, So I would I
Speaker 2: would add that perfect. All right, that does it enough
Speaker 2: about Scotland.
Speaker 1: I can talk about Scotland.
Speaker 2: We've talked more throughout the year about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, hopefully this will this is the gift that
Speaker 1: will keep on giving. And you have a bunch of
Speaker 1: photos too that.
Speaker 2: I remember writing. Yeah, there will be a bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff on on on our new website.
Speaker 1: On our new website, yes, our refreshed website, the Frida
Speaker 1: egg dot com.
Speaker 2: What's one thing people should go look at on the
Speaker 2: website that they like. I think one of the things like,
Speaker 2: I have I exploreded a ton, I've explored a ton.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've got I've I've found everything on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's much more, it's much more navigable if you're
Speaker 1: interested in going down a rabbit hole. That was one
Speaker 1: of the big goals of redesigning the website, to make
Speaker 1: our content something that you could just continue to click
Speaker 1: through and go deeper and deeper, and I think a
Speaker 1: couple of great places to do that on the website
Speaker 1: right now are the course profiles. Go to the course
Speaker 1: profiles page where you get the list of course profiles
Speaker 1: that you.
Speaker 2: Can and now we go through whether you're a Friday
Speaker 2: Golf Club member or not. You can read the about sections,
Speaker 2: which is pretty substanti is in.
Speaker 1: Some cases very substantial. Yeah. So yeah, these course profiles
Speaker 1: were written originally for Friday Golf Club members and we're
Speaker 1: member content are still member content in their entirety, but
Speaker 1: if you're just a public browser of our site, you
Speaker 1: can see a section of them, and you can get
Speaker 1: some information about a golf course and some quick perspectives
Speaker 1: and some quick factoids and things like that, and pictures obviously,
Speaker 1: so that would be one section. I also think people
Speaker 1: should check out the architect profiles. Go see those. Those
Speaker 1: probably haven't gotten quite as much run as the course
Speaker 1: profiles because people will understandably immediately go for the courses.
Speaker 1: But the architect profiles we worked on, you know, producing
Speaker 1: a bunch of new content basically for the new site,
Speaker 1: and those architect profiles are new to the Friday So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about particular architects golf architects.
Speaker 1: Then that's a great place to go. And it's a
Speaker 1: nicely designed page that you can sort of click through
Speaker 1: and go deeper and deeper if you want. The fridagg
Speaker 1: dot com right there, the Frida egg dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, big thanks to PJ. Clark for editing and
Speaker 2: and Cameron Hurdis from Filming.
Speaker 1: For filming this. Yeah, we're getting lots of help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this podcast. We'll be back next week. I actually
Speaker 2: we'll be back on Sunday with five things about the PGA.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah, PGA Championships coming up.
Speaker 2: Barreling down, ready or not? Here he comes Coil. Yeah,
Speaker 2: any exciting things about Coil Hola, What are you excited about?
Speaker 1: No, no, that's the answer. You know what. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see major championship. I'm excited to see the best
Speaker 1: players in the world play a golf course and compete
Speaker 1: for a major championship title. So the storylines, you know,
Speaker 1: majors are always fun. I've I've never met a major
Speaker 1: that I genuinely disliked. Maybe they have been a couple,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that the golf courses is a known quantity
Speaker 1: and and we don't need to say that.
Speaker 2: Hu like this is the thing. These events should not
Speaker 2: be at courses that host tour events every year.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2: Kind of why like the Pebble US Open.
Speaker 1: SCE, this is a problem with Pebble and but but
Speaker 1: the at least it's it feels justified somewhat with Pebble
Speaker 1: because it is the course that it is. But when
Speaker 1: you're going to the you know, to the host of
Speaker 1: the Wells Fargo Championship or I guess now the truest truest, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a little disappointing obviously.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, on that note, No.
Speaker 1: This was supposed to be an outro. We're supposed to
Speaker 1: end on a high.
Speaker 2: We're out of here.