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.
Speaker 2: In a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg
Speaker 2: Friday Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg Bride Egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Andy Johnson, and uh I am joined
Speaker 3: today by Joseph Lamania. Joseph, you're you're actually kind of
Speaker 3: the host of this podcast today.
Speaker 2: No, this is all you. I just got to interview Dodo,
Speaker 2: which I hope people like.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this is a uh this is Joseph took
Speaker 3: the reins on the interview front interview Dodo Molinari. Molinari
Speaker 3: obviously a long time European tour player but now kind
Speaker 3: of one of the people on the forefront of golf analytics. Joseph,
Speaker 3: you are on the forefront of golf analytics too, So
Speaker 3: this is going to get deep in the weeds on
Speaker 3: golf analytics and many other topics. But big thanks to
Speaker 3: Dodo for coming on and chatting with you. Let's do
Speaker 3: in out and we'll do recommendations at the end of
Speaker 3: this podcast. Joseph, what are you in on?
Speaker 2: My in and my out are kind of related, but
Speaker 2: what I'm in on is Braden Thornberry and seeing him
Speaker 2: get it done in the corn Ferry Tour finals yesterday.
Speaker 2: He's had a rocky year, and he's also just had
Speaker 2: generally a pretty up and down start to his professional
Speaker 2: career after an unbelievable amateur career. He was a Haskins winner,
Speaker 2: won the NC Douaa, was a walker cupper on the
Speaker 2: same team as Morikawa and Scheffler and Will's al Taurus.
Speaker 2: He struggled to find his footing and came into yesterday
Speaker 2: with a very outside chance of getting his PGA Tour card,
Speaker 2: and he got it done. It was cool to see
Speaker 2: him get choked up and talk about basically, things haven't
Speaker 2: gone his way the last couple of years, and it's
Speaker 2: nice to finally have something go his way. Seems like
Speaker 2: a cool down to earth dude who now has his
Speaker 2: PGA Tour status locked up for next year. Was extremely
Speaker 2: satisfying watching him win.
Speaker 3: This is a guy that if you had changed the
Speaker 3: way that the golf, the PGA Tour used PGA Tour.
Speaker 3: You like, he's a couple of years may a year
Speaker 3: or two before the start of PGA Tour. You but
Speaker 3: if you went back and redid that, he would have
Speaker 3: had like a PGA Tour card. He was sensational his
Speaker 3: senior year. He was the best player in college golf
Speaker 3: and it wasn't even close. So this is a guy
Speaker 3: that it just shows how hard it can be to
Speaker 3: make the tour. It can be a matter of you
Speaker 3: have a bad week at the wrong time, you fall
Speaker 3: under rut, you play your best golf at inopportune times,
Speaker 3: like we saw that with Hideki Matsiama. This is what
Speaker 3: I always think about this, Like when you rattle off
Speaker 3: what four of six wins in twenty sixteen, I believe
Speaker 3: the winter it was like, oh, like, this guy is
Speaker 3: the best player in the world, but he's playing at
Speaker 3: his best golf of his career at the wrong time.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, just there's no nothing consequential brain Thornberry.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's played everywhere. I think he was playing
Speaker 3: on like the All Pro Tour at one point. This
Speaker 3: is not something you usually see of a Haskins Award
Speaker 3: winner of a the best player in college golf, especially
Speaker 3: in this era. I think long term these types of
Speaker 3: things can be a blessing in disguise. It could give
Speaker 3: them a little bit more juice, a little more I
Speaker 3: guess motivation, because you can. I'm sure he had some
Speaker 3: moments where he felt the bottom where he's watching guys
Speaker 3: that he used to compete, probably beat a lot, have
Speaker 3: huge success on television on the PGA Tour. Congress to
Speaker 3: Brain Thornberry, great, great moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's twenty seven, Andy, so it's not like
Speaker 2: he can get polished, and this could be the next
Speaker 2: five years could be a really good period of golfer.
Speaker 2: Brain Thornberry so excited for him. What are you in on?
Speaker 3: I'm in on golf courses mattering. I think we talk
Speaker 3: about this a decent amount on this podcast. But I
Speaker 3: found it to be just like a fascinating juxtaposition between
Speaker 3: the end of the Dunhill and the end of the Sanderson.
Speaker 3: I want to be clear, both of them were really
Speaker 3: good finishes, but one had just an extra dimension then
Speaker 3: the other. The weather was gnarly in Scotland. The weather
Speaker 3: was gnarley and players were playing down one of the
Speaker 3: most historic back nines in all of golf. They were
Speaker 3: battling and it was very much of a kind of
Speaker 3: just hang on for dear life situation because the wind
Speaker 3: and everything that went into it. We saw Bob McIntyre
Speaker 3: just go off about the seventeenth hole at St. Andrews,
Speaker 3: a player that was in the mix, saying it should
Speaker 3: be blown up redone. There's this preposterous that I had
Speaker 3: to hit a four iron into the green. This is
Speaker 3: what we want, this is what we want from pro golf.
Speaker 3: We want the golf course to be holding up. And
Speaker 3: I think, like you know, the Old course was a
Speaker 3: great example the day before in pretty benign conditions. Players
Speaker 3: were just going nuts and beating it up and then
Speaker 3: the wind comes out and the rain comes and it's
Speaker 3: as much as they can handle. But like them hitting
Speaker 3: a foe iron. This is this is a quarterback in
Speaker 3: the NFL going against a great defense. The golf course matters.
Speaker 3: It adds an additional layer. The finish to the Sanderson
Speaker 3: was great, but it was more of here are a
Speaker 3: couple players that don't usually win trying to get it done.
Speaker 3: There was no added element of the golf course is
Speaker 3: presenting a really tough test and standing in the way
Speaker 3: of them getting it done. And I think that's the
Speaker 3: thing that you had with Terrell Hatton cole Starts going
Speaker 3: back and forth down the stretch. It was, you know,
Speaker 3: Hatton opened up a lead, but then you know, you
Speaker 3: turned and went back into the wind. On the back nine,
Speaker 3: it was really hard and cole Starts was hitting great
Speaker 3: golf shots and then it comes down to eighteen. Hatton
Speaker 3: gets up and down for the birdie. Cole Starts doesn't.
Speaker 3: He wins. It was just a It was a sensational
Speaker 3: finish to the Dunhill, and the golf course amplified it.
Speaker 3: So this is not necessarily a shot at Country Colby Jackson,
Speaker 3: which is maybe one of the most bland golf courses
Speaker 3: I've ever seen on TV, but not a shit there.
Speaker 3: They shouldn't be hosting PGA Tour events at courses like this,
Speaker 3: and I understand there might not be a better host
Speaker 3: in Jackson, Mississippi, But if you're going to take in
Speaker 3: a couple billion dollars from house side investors, this is
Speaker 3: something to look at.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 3: There is a another added layer of interest when these
Speaker 3: players play at really great golf courses. So when you
Speaker 3: have three billion dollars in the bank or whatever they're
Speaker 3: going to have if this PIF deal comes in. I
Speaker 3: think something they should really genuinely kick the can down
Speaker 3: the curb on is how do we play?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Or you know, I think this isn't a something that'd
Speaker 3: be worthwhile to look at create worthwhile venues, And if
Speaker 3: they're going to do that, I don't think the TPC
Speaker 3: network can be involved. So that I loved, loved the
Speaker 3: finish of the Dunhill links.
Speaker 2: The only as well said, the only thing I'll add
Speaker 2: is Country Club of Jackson's a pretty good example of
Speaker 2: a golf course that has narrow fairways and doesn't test
Speaker 2: accuracy at all. Kind of to your point, right, like
Speaker 2: Bo Hostler and Kevin, you are some players with firepower
Speaker 2: who do not hit the ball particularly straight, and this
Speaker 2: is one of those that I think if you're into
Speaker 2: numbers and stuff, it comes up frequently, right like you
Speaker 2: can kind of hit it anywhere out there. So good
Speaker 2: one for people to look at that. We kind of
Speaker 2: talked about this in the pod of ODO a little bit,
Speaker 2: But that's a good template of a golf course that
Speaker 2: maybe looks on paper like a test accuracy, but doesn't
Speaker 2: at all, and kind of goes to your point that
Speaker 2: that's just not a great PGA Tour test.
Speaker 3: Andy, Yeah, I mean all this stuff matters. It goes
Speaker 3: down to to like the corn Ferry Tour, where courses
Speaker 3: are not really indicative of skill. It's it's mostly just
Speaker 3: driver wedge fest there. It's not you know, they don't
Speaker 3: play a lot of golf courses where you got to
Speaker 3: hit a high towering seven iron and this used to
Speaker 3: be a four iron, by the way, but a high
Speaker 3: towering cuts seven iron into a tuckpin. Like, it's mostly
Speaker 3: just bash the driver up there and hit your sixty
Speaker 3: degree And all this stuff matters and how it relates
Speaker 3: to competition at the highest level and when everything gets
Speaker 3: ratcheted up. So what are you out on?
Speaker 2: I'm coming after a shotgun start some of you guys.
Speaker 2: Are you guys enjoy? So I apologize in a Champion
Speaker 2: I'm coming after the Champions Tour.
Speaker 3: God, you're doing it well. Pj's in producer mode. He
Speaker 3: can't even come on and defend it.
Speaker 2: The Champions Tour has gotta go watching corn Fairy Tour
Speaker 2: guys who are trying to make their living, and you
Speaker 2: have the International Series on the Asian Tour Challenge Tour,
Speaker 2: like these young golfers are having trouble making a living
Speaker 2: and watching rock O mediate cash a three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand dollars check from Furick and Friends yesterday. It
Speaker 2: just cannot be an efficient use of the PGA Tours resources.
Speaker 2: Not even to mention, I think the golf world has
Speaker 2: a little bit of a star building issue that some
Speaker 2: of these young guys come out on tour and people
Speaker 2: don't know who they are. There's probably an opportunity to
Speaker 2: divert some of those Champions Tour resources into building the
Speaker 2: corn Ferry Tour and building college golf, Like college golf
Speaker 2: isn't even really on people's radar, and I think that's
Speaker 2: something that could be an engaging avenue for the golf
Speaker 2: world to go down, is to put some money into
Speaker 2: that and maybe not into this. I don't know. It
Speaker 2: basically feels like televising adult rec league softball at this point.
Speaker 2: For me, I can't believe that the purses are as
Speaker 2: big as they are for a Champions Tour events. That
Speaker 2: whole operation needs to go away.
Speaker 3: I I agree with uh with what you're saying. Sorry, PJ.
Speaker 3: I've got I've been watching more champions to a golf
Speaker 3: lately just because of our stupid bit on the shotgun start.
Speaker 3: But I would I would totally agree with the idea
Speaker 3: of the star building. I think this is something that
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour really really has to think about. The
Speaker 3: sport's getting young and athletic, uh in, younger and younger
Speaker 3: every year. One of the tough things about that is,
Speaker 3: like the awareness of young golfers is extraordinarily low. So
Speaker 3: if that's the case, if if you're having trouble with
Speaker 3: with awareness of like who is Kevin You, for example,
Speaker 3: a great young player who was a great player at
Speaker 3: Arizona State and has basically breezed up to the highest
Speaker 3: level of go He took his PGA Tour you an
Speaker 3: exemption on the Corn Faery Tour, turned it into a
Speaker 3: PGA Tour card and one year and then has won
Speaker 3: on the PGA Tour in his first year on the
Speaker 3: PGA Tour. Ninety nine percent of golf fans have no
Speaker 3: clue who Kevin You is, and that would be he
Speaker 3: would have been a absolute superstar in college golf. He
Speaker 3: was a superstar in college golf. The problem is two
Speaker 3: thousand people in the world might care about college golf.
Speaker 3: So that is the real issue, and the tour has
Speaker 3: to address that. The Champions Tour is effectively a roughly
Speaker 3: sixty five million dollar subsidy. They just subsidize the tour.
Speaker 3: If you took sixty five million dollars and put it
Speaker 3: into the corn Faery, you'd have every single event would
Speaker 3: be televised and broadcast alive. You'd have enough money to
Speaker 3: pour down into televising maybe a handful of elite amateur
Speaker 3: events and more college events, which to your point, are
Speaker 3: you're building your stars. You are just building the awareness
Speaker 3: up so that when Kevin You wins at age, what
Speaker 3: is he twenty five?
Speaker 2: Who is twenty six?
Speaker 3: Who is not? Who is Kevin You? It is? You
Speaker 3: know what, We've watched this kid, uh from when he
Speaker 3: was one of the best players in college golf to
Speaker 3: when he was one of the best players in cornery
Speaker 3: on the corn Ferry Tour. We have The other aspect
Speaker 3: of this is we have a a trove of assets,
Speaker 3: like footage of them playing at all these stages, and
Speaker 3: we can show you how good of a player like
Speaker 3: this is. It is not just a you know, we're
Speaker 3: putting this on. It is gathering the requisite assets and
Speaker 3: having your people, you know, be ingrained. Like they have
Speaker 3: this huge organization, but you know, outside of Sean Martin
Speaker 3: and maybe a handful of others, nobody pays attention to
Speaker 3: what's going on in college golf because it's not their job.
Speaker 3: This would make it part of their job and they
Speaker 3: would just get better at covering the young players in
Speaker 3: the sport. There'd be more context, There'll just be more understanding.
Speaker 2: And the whole point of competitive sports, right is you
Speaker 2: want to be watching the best or people who are
Speaker 2: on track to be the best. Like I can't think
Speaker 2: of another league that people watch where everyone is clearly
Speaker 2: past their primes and is not going to be competing again.
Speaker 2: So it just feels like an obvious waste of money
Speaker 2: that the PGA Tour should be looking into. All right,
Speaker 2: what are you out on, Andy.
Speaker 3: I'm out on the I guess the treatment this is
Speaker 3: similar to the treatment of the Corn Fairy Tour. The
Speaker 3: Corn Fairy Tour Championship is that was played this week.
Speaker 3: Can is one of the best days in golf, the
Speaker 3: best weekends in golf. I think when pro golf really
Speaker 3: thrives when it's at its best besides the mat besides
Speaker 3: the majors, if you take out the major championships, the
Speaker 3: most compelling aspect of pro golf is relegation and promotion,
Speaker 3: and it goes to vying for Ryder Cup spots. I
Speaker 3: would consider that kind of relegation and pro in promotion.
Speaker 3: That's more of a promotion like, hey, you've been put
Speaker 3: on this pedestal down to relegation promotion from the PGA Tour,
Speaker 3: corn Ferry Tour, and you could even go down to
Speaker 3: the America's Tour. We don't ever, we're not gonna, We're
Speaker 3: not anywhere close to seeing that. But that's another fascinating aspect.
Speaker 3: So the Corn Ferry Tour, thirty cards are handed out.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: I would say probably a top for you know, listen,
Speaker 3: like passerbys aren't watching golf outside of the top five
Speaker 3: or six events outside of like the Ryder Cup, the Majors,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe the Players President's Cup. So once you get
Speaker 3: to like event, I don't know, thirteen twelve thirteen, this
Speaker 3: is probably in like the top fifteen golf events on
Speaker 3: the men's golf events on the calendar. This is a
Speaker 3: top fifteen event. Please please find a better find a
Speaker 3: better slot for it. You just cannot run it up.
Speaker 3: You know, at noon on a Sunday against the NFL,
Speaker 3: you cannot the television broadcast calendar like this is finishing.
Speaker 3: The most compelling event comes at the end of the
Speaker 3: afternoon of the first slate of football games, the most
Speaker 3: football games. Give this a chance. I thought the venue
Speaker 3: was really great. French Lick, the Pete Die Course is
Speaker 3: a really interesting golf course. It's a big boy golf course.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a golf course that you would type
Speaker 3: of shots you would see high level tour events, high
Speaker 3: level tour course. It just needs to you know, this course,
Speaker 3: this this tournament should be covered. It should have its
Speaker 3: own week. It shouldn't go opposite Sanderson. It should have
Speaker 3: its own week and really be put up front for
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour because it is one of their best events.
Speaker 3: So I just like, I think that the tour really
Speaker 3: needs to like look at their assets, look at what
Speaker 3: events they have, and construct a calendar based off of like, Hey,
Speaker 3: I know this isn't a PGA Tour event, but this
Speaker 3: is one of the best things we have going and
Speaker 3: if we prioritize it it's another potential, you know, one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollar plus franchise if we if we can
Speaker 3: do this right. And this goes back to like kind
Speaker 3: of what you talked about, but like this would make
Speaker 3: the corn Faery the more compelling. The final event is
Speaker 3: the more compelling every other Corn Faery Tour event is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the sneaky best golf days
Speaker 2: of the year, Andy is US Open Final qualifying, which
Speaker 2: has a similar vibe where it's the golfers are getting
Speaker 2: a life changing result that day, right and battling down
Speaker 2: to the wire. That usually wraps up on on Monday night.
Speaker 2: I think there's probably an opportunity for the corn Faery
Speaker 2: Tour to maybe explore not finishing their events on Sundays.
Speaker 2: I'd be I would think that if the corn Ferry
Speaker 2: Tours wrapped up like on a Monday evening, there'd be
Speaker 2: a lot more interest or a Tuesday evening. So I
Speaker 2: think that could be something to explore. But I agree
Speaker 2: with you it should be highlighted way more than it is.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty special closing stretch to just nobody was
Speaker 2: watching it.
Speaker 3: I really like the course, But that being said, I
Speaker 3: think like this we talked about this a lot. I
Speaker 3: think the PGA Tours actually exploring the potential of getting
Speaker 3: some West Coast playoff events like we've talked about for years.
Speaker 3: But the the idea of being able to get this
Speaker 3: on the West Coast and maybe finishing on you do
Speaker 3: Saturday through Tuesday in primetime. You know, you know that
Speaker 3: nobody's there's no football on Tuesday night this time of year,
Speaker 3: and you go, you know, it's like that would be great.
Speaker 3: You get the primetime slot on a Tuesday. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know that the I know golfers didn't really like
Speaker 3: TPC Stonebree. I was thinking that would be a solution,
Speaker 3: but I know a lot of the lot of the
Speaker 3: Corn Ferry Tour players didn't love it. But find find
Speaker 3: a good venue and have it there. I mean, I
Speaker 3: know chamber Spay is like actively looking for things to host.
Speaker 2: That'd be so sick. Cornfair Tour finals at Chambers Day
Speaker 2: would be sweet.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're talking to Live. I think they would
Speaker 3: love to have the corn Ferry Tour finals if they're
Speaker 3: talking to Live. All right, let's get to Dodo Molinari first.
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Speaker 3: to Dodo Molnarm.
Speaker 2: Okay, we are joined by Eduardo Molinari, a man of
Speaker 2: many tight, active member of the DP World Tour, currently
Speaker 2: playing a full schedule, chief data strategist and vice captain
Speaker 2: for Ryder Cup Team Europe. And you founded a stats business.
Speaker 2: Now I believe you are partnered with our Coast Golf,
Speaker 2: which we'll try to get to a little bit of
Speaker 2: all of that. Thanks for joining amidst a busy DP
Speaker 2: World Tour schedule. How you doing, Eduardo, Yeah, I'm doing great.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. It's always fun to speak
Speaker 1: about these things and I'm looking forward to this.
Speaker 2: So the golden source of golf information. I was reading
Speaker 2: on Wikipedia that you are considered one of the most
Speaker 2: emotional players on the European Tour and one of the
Speaker 2: most attractive players on the on the DP World Tour.
Speaker 2: I have to ask, are you editing your own Wikipedia page?
Speaker 1: I am not. There's a lot of lies in Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: fake news.
Speaker 2: So I want to get into some of the data
Speaker 2: and some of the Ryder Cup stuff a little bit
Speaker 2: towards the end, But first I wanted to start with
Speaker 2: your background. How did you get started playing golf, and
Speaker 2: you grew up in Turin, Italy. What did the youth
Speaker 2: golf landscape look like there and what was your introduction
Speaker 2: to the game.
Speaker 1: Well, basically, my parents used to play golf. They were
Speaker 1: members at the local golf club, one of the best
Speaker 1: in town, which was more like a which is more
Speaker 1: like a counter club. So when Francesco and I were
Speaker 1: about seven eight years old, we started to go to
Speaker 1: the golf course with them. We would play some golf
Speaker 1: with other kids. We spend some time in swimming pool,
Speaker 1: we would play some soccer, just you know, basically spend
Speaker 1: the weekend outdoor rather than in front of a PlayStation.
Speaker 1: And that's how we started. I mean mom and dad
Speaker 1: were both at the time like single digit handicaps, so
Speaker 1: we just you know went with them. And but for them,
Speaker 1: like it was always school came first and then if
Speaker 1: you could play good golf grade but if not, you know,
Speaker 1: it had to be successful in school.
Speaker 2: When did you know that professional golf was a realistic
Speaker 2: outcome for you versus I'm sure you're always focusing on
Speaker 2: your studies, but when did that attention turn to professional golf?
Speaker 1: Quite late, I would say probably my second or third
Speaker 1: year in university. I went to college in Torino and
Speaker 1: I studied engineering, and when I started, I had no
Speaker 1: intention at all of turning pro. I was a good amateur,
Speaker 1: but there was nothing, nothing extremely good. The thing is
Speaker 1: I was only playing a couple of times a week
Speaker 1: at the time, and then when I started college, I
Speaker 1: started to play three or four times a week, and
Speaker 1: then I started to get better pretty quickly. So towards
Speaker 1: the end of my it was between the middle and
Speaker 1: the end of my college career, I said, well, I
Speaker 1: want to finish this first and then I want to
Speaker 1: give it a try at golf. But it wasn't something
Speaker 1: that you know, I wasn't like one of those is
Speaker 1: that when they're like sixteen or seventeen every I think, so,
Speaker 1: this is going to be unbelievable. So then my very
Speaker 1: last year in college, I was playing good golf. I
Speaker 1: qualified for the Open Championship and then I made the
Speaker 1: cut as an anders and then straight after that it
Speaker 1: was a US Amater qualifier. At the time, there was
Speaker 1: no World Amateur rankings or anything, so I just flew across,
Speaker 1: won the qualifier, back on for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: back to Marion, to play the USUM and then won
Speaker 1: the USUM, which obviously opened the one thousand doors and
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities, and it was the best thing
Speaker 1: that could happen to my golfing career. So then I
Speaker 1: had to wait another nine month because obviously you don't
Speaker 1: want to turn down the opportunity to play in the Masters,
Speaker 1: in the US Open, in the Open Championship again, and
Speaker 1: then I turned for the following year after the Open Championship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you might be being humble here with
Speaker 2: with your response and downplaying your career. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk a lot about data and analytics, but I didn't
Speaker 2: want to overlook the success of your amateur and professional career.
Speaker 2: Had the two thousand and five US Amateur at Marion
Speaker 2: noted you were the first golfer from Continental Europe to
Speaker 2: win that event, and like you mentioned, that got you
Speaker 2: into the two thousand and six Masters, where you were
Speaker 2: paired in the first two rounds with Tiger Woods and
Speaker 2: Robert Allenby. And I believe your brother Francesco, who you'd mentioned,
Speaker 2: obviously a great professional golfer and major championship winner, was
Speaker 2: on the bag for you that week. Pretty incredible set
Speaker 2: of circumstances for your first Masters. Wanted to ask what
Speaker 2: you remember about that week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an incredible week. The thing is when
Speaker 1: you win the US I didn't know this until I
Speaker 1: won the US Samatur, but when you win the US Amatur,
Speaker 1: you play the following year the Masters with the defending champion,
Speaker 1: and Tiger happened to win in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: So basically I was waiting for this tea time with
Speaker 1: Tiger the Masters for like six seven months, and I
Speaker 1: just remember obviously, you know, I remember taking a lot
Speaker 1: of notes from the week. A friend of mine st
Speaker 1: you should write them down, and I think it was
Speaker 1: a great idea because I still had this like small
Speaker 1: diary with some thoughts and things that happened that, you know,
Speaker 1: almost twenty years down the line, you're starting to forget.
Speaker 1: The feeling was very weird, to be honest, I remember
Speaker 1: not even being nervous on the first tee. It was
Speaker 1: like something between a dream a movie set. It was
Speaker 1: just very very weird. Like a lot of people around
Speaker 1: the tee obviously on the first all playing with Tiger,
Speaker 1: and he introduces himself like every other golfer high you know,
Speaker 1: Tiger was nice to meet you. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was weird. Francesco was cadding and I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: anytime Tiger went into a greenside banker, he was the
Speaker 1: first one to be right next to him, trying to
Speaker 1: clean his ball and trying to It was just, you know,
Speaker 1: an experience for both of us which made me realize
Speaker 1: a that obvious even if I won USUM, I was
Speaker 1: still far far away from you know, being able to
Speaker 1: compete in a major championship. But also you just you know,
Speaker 1: you just see other people play, You see those kinds
Speaker 1: of courses that you know, as an amateur you don't
Speaker 1: even dream about playing in the Masters, and it was
Speaker 1: it was an unbelievable experience.
Speaker 2: You know, people talk a lot about the pressure of
Speaker 2: making your master's debut. Obviously the fashion in which you
Speaker 2: made your debut was heightened playing with Tiger Woods. Do
Speaker 2: you think it's possible for a golfer to play well
Speaker 2: in a circumstance like that or are you so out
Speaker 2: of your own body that it's not even a realistic
Speaker 2: expectation for you to put on a good performance that week.
Speaker 1: I think it is possible, but I think that's going
Speaker 1: well above and beyond your expectations again as an amateur,
Speaker 1: especially if you think about twenty years ago. You know,
Speaker 1: the biggest tournament I played was the Tidian Open, which
Speaker 1: is like a you know, middle tier event on the
Speaker 1: on the DP war Tour. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're playing agasta on greens. The you know, probably the
Speaker 1: quickest green that I've seen was ten and a half
Speaker 1: at the time, and all of a sudden, it's like
Speaker 1: twelve and a half to thirteen. So, I mean, everything
Speaker 1: is so difficult to I tried to play quite a
Speaker 1: few practice rounds in the in the weeks before, in
Speaker 1: the days before, but the problem with the Gasa is
Speaker 1: that the course tend to change a lot from even
Speaker 1: from Wednesday to Thursday. I remember on Wednesday playing with
Speaker 1: Sergio Alazabal and maybe Caderrera at the time, and I felt, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the golf course is not too difficult. The
Speaker 1: greens are still receptive enough. And then you show up
Speaker 1: on the parting on Thursday morning and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the greens became brown and it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve hours ago it was fine, and now it's just
Speaker 1: completely out of control. So it was you know, it's
Speaker 1: always an experience, and it's something that you know, some
Speaker 1: people might tell you tomorrow is going to be firmer, faster,
Speaker 1: but until you see how much of a difference they
Speaker 1: can make in twenty four hours, it's really difficult to believe.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of the reason why anyone
Speaker 1: playing the first Masters has a massive disadvantage, because it's
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine how the golf is going to play
Speaker 1: until you actually see it with your own eyes.
Speaker 2: Generally speaking, Eduardo, and we'll get into some data related
Speaker 2: concepts and strategy here in a bit, But when a
Speaker 2: golf course changes that much, how much do you think
Speaker 2: that should change the way that a golfer attacks that
Speaker 2: golf course, right, whether it's being aggressive on approach, shots,
Speaker 2: off the tea strategy, or in your opinion, like, yes,
Speaker 2: the golf course is playing quite differently, but you're still
Speaker 2: adhering a lot of those same principles.
Speaker 1: I would say, you apply the same principles, but everything
Speaker 1: is just more extreme. So obviously, a short sighted miss
Speaker 1: that you know on the Wednesday of the Tuesday wasn't
Speaker 1: too bad all of a sudden on Thursday is basically
Speaker 1: a full shot gone so I would say in Jenna,
Speaker 1: and you have to play a little bit more conservative.
Speaker 1: When it becomes so firm and fast, you get exposed,
Speaker 1: like bad shots get exposed a lot more. You just
Speaker 1: have to be in full control of your of your game.
Speaker 1: And I think it's you know, it's a great way
Speaker 1: to separate the you know, the best players in the
Speaker 1: field to someone that is playing other golf. I would
Speaker 1: say it's much more difficult to separate players on a
Speaker 1: soft golf course or a slow golf course, for sure.
Speaker 2: All right, let's shift gears a little bit towards some
Speaker 2: of those data related concepts, something that you've established a
Speaker 2: strong reputation for, not just with your own statistics business,
Speaker 2: but your involvement in the Ryder Cup, which we'll get
Speaker 2: to at the end. You have a technical background with
Speaker 2: a PhD in engineering. Can you give us some background
Speaker 2: on how you became interested in golf data and when
Speaker 2: that passion turned into a formal business.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, as I said, I was engineering in college,
Speaker 1: so I was always into numbers, starts, and you know,
Speaker 1: all those things. Towards the end of my engineering career,
Speaker 1: I thought that it would be a good idea to
Speaker 1: start tracking starts about my own game. So I started
Speaker 1: developing a very simple Excel spreadsheet at the time where
Speaker 1: I could record fairways gaining his number of parts. It
Speaker 1: was extremely simple in the beginning, and then like everything
Speaker 1: I do, I try to make it a little bit better,
Speaker 1: you know, each week, each month, and it became quite
Speaker 1: quite a big thing in you know, after a few years.
Speaker 1: Then I met Mark Brady at the beginning of twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: and that's when he starts gaining patting came out on
Speaker 1: the PG tour for the first time. So I just
Speaker 1: read the article, I you know, looked for the for
Speaker 1: the you know, the guy behind it. I sent him
Speaker 1: an email. We met a few weeks later in Florida
Speaker 1: and since then we've been good friends. We spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time together. We tried to shot, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as we can. So fast forward twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: So I started collecting my own data in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three. So then about sixteen seventeen years later, there
Speaker 1: were a few guys in Europe that we're looking for
Speaker 1: some sort of system to collect their starts. There was
Speaker 1: one company at the time working in Europe, which you
Speaker 1: might know. And then the thing with me is everything
Speaker 1: I had done until then was written in Excel. It
Speaker 1: was all in Italian. It was very clumsy to enter
Speaker 1: the data, so it was difficult for anyone else to
Speaker 1: use it. And then COVID happened. So during COVID, I
Speaker 1: basically had three four months at home, no tournaments, nothing
Speaker 1: to do where you know, in the beginning, I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to beat this ago and I'm going to
Speaker 1: start building something that more players can use, and you know,
Speaker 1: we can do reports and we can make it easier
Speaker 1: to analyze and to read and to use. And then
Speaker 1: during COVID, I remember speaking to Phil Kenyon and Phil
Speaker 1: obviously is a great patting coach and he has a
Speaker 1: bunch of top players, and I said to Phil, I said, look,
Speaker 1: i'm building this a If you have any ideas, any
Speaker 1: feedback that you would like to add, I'm very happy
Speaker 1: to because I'm, you know, literally building it from scratch.
Speaker 1: And then, b if you think about any of your
Speaker 1: players that might be interested, then I like to talk
Speaker 1: to them. And a few days later he put me
Speaker 1: in touch with Met Fitzpatrick. And when I showed what
Speaker 1: I was doing to Matt, he was immediately blown away.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, he wasn't even finished at the time,
Speaker 1: but he said, you know this is going to be
Speaker 1: so good, and I trust you so much that I
Speaker 1: don't care how much this caused, how much you charged me,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to I just want to use it perfect.
Speaker 1: So then he was my first client when players started
Speaker 1: after COVID, and I thought, you know, once I get
Speaker 1: to do ten players in a couple of years, that's it,
Speaker 1: you know, that's I won't be managing more than ten players,
Speaker 1: and as simple as that. And then Matt started to
Speaker 1: play really well. He had a few interviews where he
Speaker 1: talked about me, and then within I want to say,
Speaker 1: eight or nine weeks, I was up at ten players
Speaker 1: and there were more and more coming in. So then
Speaker 1: I had to hire one person, then a second person
Speaker 1: to help me with some day to day stuff so
Speaker 1: I could still Basically what I'm doing now is I
Speaker 1: have three people helping with the basic stuff, and I
Speaker 1: like to spend my time still, you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: new ideas or new stuff you can do with the data.
Speaker 1: So I split my time between still developing some things
Speaker 1: and helping players with the analytics. And as you said,
Speaker 1: it's become quite a big business because he started as
Speaker 1: a hobby. Then I said it was my retirement plan,
Speaker 1: and now it's pretty much my major job.
Speaker 2: So this is a huge and broad question that might
Speaker 2: be difficult to answer. But if you had to distill
Speaker 2: the insights from looking at that data into one or
Speaker 2: two key insights from this period of data advancement and
Speaker 2: the evolution of course management, what would you say that
Speaker 2: those insights might be. And based on your answer, I
Speaker 2: might have a couple follow up questions there, but not
Speaker 2: to lead the witness here right, like disaster avoidance and
Speaker 2: aiming away from hazards. Like how would you describe those
Speaker 2: key insights that players have internalized to shoot better scores?
Speaker 1: There's a lot, I would say the most common one,
Speaker 1: especially for tour players, is being way too conservative of
Speaker 1: the team, Like a lot of guys like to lay
Speaker 1: up with a three or two ile on some holes,
Speaker 1: and it just when you actually look at the numbers
Speaker 1: and you show them the numbers, it just doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. And I think as probably that that's the
Speaker 1: most common mistake. The other common one that I found
Speaker 1: in many many cases is the opposite one is being
Speaker 1: overly aggressive with approach shots like taking on some pins
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense to take on. I would
Speaker 1: say for the elite players, that's the two most common ones.
Speaker 1: And then there's a very strange one, which is it's
Speaker 1: not really a mistake, but it's like, as a player,
Speaker 1: you have no idea about your missus, about what you're
Speaker 1: good at, what you're not so good at. You might
Speaker 1: have a rough idea, but once you know, if I
Speaker 1: start asking you, are you better on left to right
Speaker 1: pass or right to left paths, I can bet pretty
Speaker 1: much all the money I have that most players don't
Speaker 1: really have a clue. And sometimes I was the same
Speaker 1: myself before collecting all this data. I was just, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I was looking at it and I remember one
Speaker 1: time going to for a patting lesson to fil Kenyon
Speaker 1: and he says to me, what's your you know, what's
Speaker 1: your common mistake in patting? And I said, well, Phil,
Speaker 1: I'm missing everything to the right, Like any bad path
Speaker 1: is always to the right, and whether it's a left
Speaker 1: to right or right to left, it's always to the right.
Speaker 1: And it was like very early days in my you
Speaker 1: know stats thing, so I didn't really have good starts
Speaker 1: about my putting so I started to back trace, and
Speaker 1: I had a look at the last six months prior
Speaker 1: to that lesson if I was missing more to the
Speaker 1: left or more to the right, and on any break
Speaker 1: from any distance, it doesn't matter the type of grass,
Speaker 1: the speed of degreen is anything. I was missing two
Speaker 1: times more often to the left than to the right,
Speaker 1: and I was convinced as a player that it was
Speaker 1: the opposite, probably because I missed a couple of short
Speaker 1: pass to the right or a path that you know
Speaker 1: to make the cut or to win a tournament to
Speaker 1: the right, and then in your mind you just create
Speaker 1: these stories that it's very difficult to eradicate from a
Speaker 1: player's mind. But when you actually look at the data,
Speaker 1: it's like, hang on a minute, I missed two pass
Speaker 1: to the right, but you know in the three rounds
Speaker 1: prior to that, I miss eight pass to the left,
Speaker 1: So I'm actually missing more left and right. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something that again without collecting data, it might
Speaker 1: be on your putting, it might be a long game,
Speaker 1: it might be whatever. There might be a player that
Speaker 1: is convinced that is three would is fantastic. And then
Speaker 1: you look at the numbers and the dispersion is actually
Speaker 1: worse than the driver. It's just very difficult as a
Speaker 1: player to have, you know, a neutral eye and an
Speaker 1: opinion on your game.
Speaker 2: I want to get into a hot button topic here,
Speaker 2: especially for our audience which is very architecturally interested. And
Speaker 2: do you have a guess. Do you have a guess
Speaker 2: where I'm going with this angle? It's data related. There
Speaker 2: we go, there we go? Angles? Right, So before we
Speaker 2: even I will just open the floor to you when
Speaker 2: you hear the discussion around angles. I think there's kind
Speaker 2: of two different topics here. One is too ang matter
Speaker 2: at all? And one is are they worth pursuing? Right?
Speaker 2: Can you just offer your perspective maybe on both of those. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's pretty related topics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the two are very linked. I would
Speaker 1: say on ninety nine percent of courses and golf holes,
Speaker 1: angles don't matter at all, simply because there's various ways
Speaker 1: to look at it. But if you look at scoring
Speaker 1: average on certain holes of shot link you've got millions
Speaker 1: of shots, and then look at the scoring average from
Speaker 1: the middle of the fair way, the right side, the
Speaker 1: left side, into right pins, left pins, middle pins, basically
Speaker 1: doesn't change. There's no because I think the thing is
Speaker 1: what you gain a little bit being on the right
Speaker 1: angle of the whole, on the right side of the hole,
Speaker 1: as most people think, or when you when you see
Speaker 1: on TV look you hear about angles a lot. I
Speaker 1: feel like what you gain being on the good side
Speaker 1: of the of the hole, you lose it because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden the hazard becomes more on the side.
Speaker 1: And again, as golf professional, is much easier to go
Speaker 1: over water than to go on a hole with water
Speaker 1: on the side of the green. So obviously we're talking small,
Speaker 1: small margins. But what you gain on one side, you
Speaker 1: lose it on the other. So it's at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, angles don't matter one bit now. The
Speaker 1: only I would say, the only time where they do
Speaker 1: matter a bit is that if you're in the rafugh
Speaker 1: sometimes you're in the left raff and you have a
Speaker 1: slightly better way into the green or angle, if you
Speaker 1: want to say, then the right side. But again, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense to chase an angle because you think, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have an easier second shot, because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, being on the fairway, even
Speaker 1: if if it's on the wrong side of the fairway.
Speaker 1: It's always better than being on the you know, in
Speaker 1: the raf on on the right side of the hole.
Speaker 1: Now there's a few Yeah.
Speaker 2: Go ahead. I was just gonna say I had looked
Speaker 2: at I don't know, it might have been fifty to
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand shots and basically found that if you
Speaker 2: have a lot of green to work with with a
Speaker 2: long iron from the fair way, it was worth about
Speaker 2: a tenth of a shot of an advantage versus if
Speaker 2: you didn't have a lot of green to work with,
Speaker 2: which is one way of thinking about the angle question there, right,
Speaker 2: And so if you think about the typical penalty associated
Speaker 2: but the rough, it's much higher than a tenth of
Speaker 2: a shot generally, So the more you try to gain
Speaker 2: that tenth of a shot of an advantage, you bring
Speaker 2: in more risk of finding the rough. Therefore it's not
Speaker 2: worth it. Is that a reasonable way to summarize some
Speaker 2: of those findings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I think, as you said, the penalty for
Speaker 1: being in the rough on pretty much every golf holl
Speaker 1: in the war is higher than the penalty or the
Speaker 1: advantage you gain by having a slightly better angle. And again,
Speaker 1: as you said, like slightly better angles only matter in
Speaker 1: a small percentage of golfl like it needs to be
Speaker 1: a long haul, you need to have green to work with,
Speaker 1: It needs to be probably a firm green as well,
Speaker 1: it needs to be a very wide farewell. Like the
Speaker 1: only course I can think of where the angle matter
Speaker 1: a little bit is the Old Course of Sanders. But
Speaker 1: there you have like ninety yards white fairway in some cases.
Speaker 1: So obviously from being fifty yards right of center or
Speaker 1: forty yards left of center, the second shot changes dramatically
Speaker 1: up to the point where from the left side you
Speaker 1: might have to go over a banker to a firm
Speaker 1: green to a short pin, so it's unstoppable, while from
Speaker 1: the right side the bunker is not even in play.
Speaker 1: But again, how many courses there are in the world
Speaker 1: like the Old course, Probably you know less than five.
Speaker 1: So I think at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: as we said, in most most cases, they don't really
Speaker 1: they don't really matter.
Speaker 2: So I think that is a very unsatisfying answer for
Speaker 2: a lot of people who have a passion for golf
Speaker 2: course architecture, and so part of what you're hitting on
Speaker 2: is it is part of the function of the golf
Speaker 2: course as they play right and if every golf course
Speaker 2: looked like Saint Andrews, and we would probably talk about
Speaker 2: angles a little bit differently. My question to you would be,
Speaker 2: if you were tasked with building a golf course to
Speaker 2: test the modern professional golfer that maximized strategy, it also
Speaker 2: was a demanding test. It maximized shot value. What would
Speaker 2: that golf course look like. What are some of those
Speaker 2: architectural features that you found to be a strong test
Speaker 2: for professionals that are engaging mentally? Right, It's not just
Speaker 2: this rip it down the center of the fairway with
Speaker 2: the stock fade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, first of all, give you options
Speaker 1: of the tea, So make you think a lot of
Speaker 1: the tea. I think a lot of courses we play
Speaker 1: these days just you stand on the tee, you diver
Speaker 1: it down the middle, you go there, you find where
Speaker 1: it is, and you keep going. And I think to
Speaker 1: test the golfers of the tea, you have to have
Speaker 1: increasing penalties as you move further away from the fairway.
Speaker 1: So if I missed the fairwey by five yards, I
Speaker 1: should be penalized a little bit. If I miss the
Speaker 1: ferry by thirty yards, I should be penalized a lot
Speaker 1: more and if I miss it by sixty yards. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it should be automatic, ob but it should
Speaker 1: be like something similar. And I think of, you know,
Speaker 1: of all the courses on the PGA Tour Agasta National,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a great golf as of the
Speaker 1: Tea because it's kind of designed in that way. Like
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you hit a good t show,
Speaker 1: if you're a good driver the golf but Agasta National
Speaker 1: and you have a great chance to win. If you
Speaker 1: don't drive the golf ward, well, you don't stand the chance.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. I think what I don't
Speaker 1: like about Augusta I think sometimes the second shots are
Speaker 1: built in a way where there's too much of a
Speaker 1: fine line between a great shot and a and a
Speaker 1: poor result, Like if you think about especially whole SAYHULD thirteen,
Speaker 1: I think that's a bit extreme sometimes where you're hitting
Speaker 1: like a long iron of a side slope into a
Speaker 1: green and then you know, the difference between pitching it
Speaker 1: on the green or two yards short is like between
Speaker 1: a three and a six. I think that sometimes it's
Speaker 1: fifteen as well. I think sometimes that's a little bit
Speaker 1: too much. But I think of the Tea Agasta nationally
Speaker 1: is as good as a test of a modern golfer
Speaker 1: as they can. Like, I hate when you see a
Speaker 1: golf course where everyone is just bombing driver and there's
Speaker 1: not much consequence whether you're on the fairway, whether you're
Speaker 1: in the rough. Yes, you lose a little bit if
Speaker 1: you're in the rough, but not so much. And I
Speaker 1: think the way Augusta is built is you know, you
Speaker 1: need to be in position of the tea in order
Speaker 1: to have a chance to hit the second shot close.
Speaker 1: And the more you move away from the middle of
Speaker 1: the fairway, the more trouble you're going to encounter. And
Speaker 1: I think that's okay.
Speaker 2: Two things there, Yeah, two things there. One, A lot
Speaker 2: of people would say that at Augusta you can spray
Speaker 2: the ball off of the tea. It's wide fair ways,
Speaker 2: you don't need to be accurate. Eduardo, what is your
Speaker 2: response to that? And I agree with you. You're you're
Speaker 2: already nod in your head.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean yeah, I played a gasta a
Speaker 1: few times and the very first feeling I got the
Speaker 1: first time I played was wow, this is this is
Speaker 1: difficult of the t Everyone was saying, oh, you can
Speaker 1: spray it everywhere. It's not. There are some T shirts
Speaker 1: that are quite generous, I give you that, but most
Speaker 1: of them, I mean, the first T shirt is very difficult.
Speaker 1: Is as difficult as a T shirts as they come
Speaker 1: in opening T shirts in major championship. I think because
Speaker 1: again it's like the difference between a good T shirt
Speaker 1: and a bad T shirt is it could be a lot.
Speaker 1: If you hit a good T shirt on the first
Speaker 1: it's you're looking at, it's almost a birdihole like it.
Speaker 1: It becomes it plays under part. As soon as you
Speaker 1: miss that fairway, you'll do you'll do very well to
Speaker 1: make it four. And if you miss it by twenty
Speaker 1: yards each side, then do very well to make a five.
Speaker 1: And I think that's, you know, that's the typical characteristic
Speaker 1: of a good golf old. I think so. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's you know, some of the lending areas, yes,
Speaker 1: are wide, but also the penalties around those landing areas
Speaker 1: are quite heavy, and so if you spread around the gasta,
Speaker 1: maybe again I think that people are a bit I
Speaker 1: think biased by When Tiger first came out, the golf
Speaker 1: course was much shorter, it was a lot wider, and
Speaker 1: the distance he was hitting the ball, you could hit
Speaker 1: it pretty much anywhere, like on eighteen he was flying
Speaker 1: it over the bankers and then yes, you have, you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years to play with there, but
Speaker 1: now you can't do it anymore now. The landing area
Speaker 1: on the eighteenth it's probably twenty five years wide, the
Speaker 1: actual landing area because the right half of the fairway
Speaker 1: you can't see the green. So I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a difficult course of the team, or at least
Speaker 1: I would say it's difficult, but it's a course that
Speaker 1: separates a lot of the good drivers from the poor ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'd love to get your reaction to this.
Speaker 2: Rory McElroy has had mixed results at Augusta National. Obviously
Speaker 2: a player who hits the ball extremely long off the tee.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes he's described as more accurate off the
Speaker 2: t than he should be. At least that's what I
Speaker 2: have seen. And so I think there's a story to
Speaker 2: tell here that Rory early in his career Augusta National
Speaker 2: fit his game better. Like you are mentioning with how
Speaker 2: the course used to play for professional golfers versus now
Speaker 2: with this speed revolution in golfer's hitting it a lot farther.
Speaker 2: Rory himself included that his dispersion pattern doesn't fit on
Speaker 2: Augusta National as well as it would have at the
Speaker 2: beginning of his career. Is what is your reaction to
Speaker 2: that theory?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of agree with it. I think the
Speaker 1: issue with Roory Augusta, I think it's nearly being solved now.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I think in the last in the
Speaker 1: last few years, excluding say the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: I would always seeing him play way to aggress him
Speaker 1: into the greens like it would often Shore sight himself
Speaker 1: way like if you if you look at Tiger around Agasta,
Speaker 1: I mean he can make the cut one leg and
Speaker 1: with the you know, no back, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: simply because he just plays in a way where he
Speaker 1: always lives. If he misses a shot, he always leaves
Speaker 1: himself a chance to get up and down, which is
Speaker 1: the same thing that Scott did so well this year
Speaker 1: when he was windy. I think it was the Saturday
Speaker 1: that was very windy. I can't remember exact there was
Speaker 1: one round where he was very windy and it was
Speaker 1: difficult for everyone, but Scotty was missing greens, and he
Speaker 1: would always miss it on a side where he would
Speaker 1: have an up and down, and I think in previous
Speaker 1: years I would obviously, you know, I was hoping for
Speaker 1: Rory to win, and I'm still and I think it will,
Speaker 1: but I think he was just missing two often in
Speaker 1: places where you know there's no there's no tomorrow, there's
Speaker 1: no you're starting to make. You can't make a power,
Speaker 1: you're starting to make a bogie. So I think one
Speaker 1: issue is that, And I think the other issue with
Speaker 1: Rory Agasta, as you kind of mentioned before, is that
Speaker 1: he hits it very, very long. But I think compared
Speaker 1: to other players, even when he's playing well, he might
Speaker 1: still hit a bad shot that obviously gets punished at Agasta.
Speaker 1: Like if I see, you know, the players of those
Speaker 1: caliber like John and Scotti and Brooks and DJ, when
Speaker 1: they're on and they're playing really well, I don't see
Speaker 1: many bad shots, while you know, with Rory as good
Speaker 1: as he is, and you know, he's every bit as
Speaker 1: good as any one of these players, sometimes even within't
Speaker 1: easy in contention, he still hits one shot that is like,
Speaker 1: you know, forty years off line and a Gasta you
Speaker 1: pay a big price for it. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a combination of things. I think I really like the way.
Speaker 1: I think it was not this year, but last year
Speaker 1: that he started really to talk in his you know,
Speaker 1: pre Masters press conference about trying to be more patient
Speaker 1: and how he not to you know, play himself out
Speaker 1: of the tournament on day one, which happened before, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to accept that sometimes he just needs to work
Speaker 1: for the middle of the green and tupat and keep going.
Speaker 1: And I think that's ther mindset and the attitude to
Speaker 1: win a Master's and I'm pretty confident that he's going
Speaker 1: to win one soon.
Speaker 2: Sticking on the Rory subject just for a minute, and
Speaker 2: a high profile scenario that he had earlier this year,
Speaker 2: there's sort of a debate that often happens when somebody fails,
Speaker 2: so to speak, in his position, which was a missed
Speaker 2: put on the seventy second hole at the US Open
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst. Right, he has a four foot downhill slider, Eduardo,
Speaker 2: you played in this tournament, so you're pretty familiar with
Speaker 2: those greens. When something like that happens, maybe you know
Speaker 2: where I'm going with this. Often people will start to say, like, well,
Speaker 2: he should have left himself below the hole. Now, what
Speaker 2: is your reaction immediately when when you hear that.
Speaker 1: No below the whole? Well, obviously it would have been easier, yes,
Speaker 1: But then if he tries to leave himself below the
Speaker 1: hole on the chip shot, he might be ten foot
Speaker 1: away and all of a sudden, you know, the make
Speaker 1: percentage from ten foot even from six feet or seven
Speaker 1: feet versus a four footer down hill across the slope,
Speaker 1: the fore footer is much easier, So you should always
Speaker 1: try to, you know, be as close to the hole
Speaker 1: as possible. I think the again with the Oral Pioneers.
Speaker 1: I think the big mistake was on sixteen the three
Speaker 1: but the bogie on sixteen from basically the middle of
Speaker 1: the fairway with a short iron in hand. That second
Speaker 1: part was again a three four footer, but it was
Speaker 1: much easier than the one on eighteen. That's probably what
Speaker 1: cost him the US Open, I would say. And the
Speaker 1: other thing as well is that, you know, you can
Speaker 1: talk as much as you want about that last round,
Speaker 1: but you cannot say that or Patti Pole on that
Speaker 1: last round because up until the fifteenth hole he made
Speaker 1: basically every part he could make in that round. He
Speaker 1: was very unlucky on the part five on the the
Speaker 1: fifth hole where he had a good second shot and
Speaker 1: ended up making a sixth. I mean there was probably
Speaker 1: a foot away from being an easy four. And again
Speaker 1: it's I think people underestimate how difficult it is to
Speaker 1: win golf tournaments, especially majors, especially those big events. I mean,
Speaker 1: he hasn't won in ten years now, but there's only
Speaker 1: four years. There's a lot of you know, good players
Speaker 1: that are trying to win them. It's it's extremely difficult.
Speaker 1: Then sometimes you need to know, you need to be
Speaker 1: lucky at one point. And obviously he's always been on
Speaker 1: the on the bad side recently. But you know, I
Speaker 1: saw him last week at Wentworth and I said, two,
Speaker 1: you know, it was before if finished second again. It
Speaker 1: just you know, I finished second at the Irish Open
Speaker 1: and I said to him, I said, eventually, if you
Speaker 1: keep playing like this, eventually the wheel is going to
Speaker 1: turn and you're gonna be on the good side and
Speaker 1: you're gonna start winning, you know, five, six and seven
Speaker 1: times in a year, like like Scotty does. And he
Speaker 1: just laugh and he said, yeah, I know. I just
Speaker 1: you know, have to be patient and it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: So I know what's going on in some people's heads
Speaker 2: when they hear your explanation right there, and then what
Speaker 2: they will say, Dodo, is you're basing your analysis off
Speaker 2: of the average four footer, and that the four footer
Speaker 2: that Rory hit from above the hole on the seventy
Speaker 2: second green at Pinehurst, excuse me, is way harder than
Speaker 2: the average four footer. And actually you'd rather have a
Speaker 2: seven footer uphill to win than to have that four
Speaker 2: foot slider. What is your advice your reaction to that,
Speaker 2: but also your advice to junior golfers or anybody that's
Speaker 2: trying to play at a highlight. Are you always trying
Speaker 2: to chip it as close to the hole as possible
Speaker 2: or would you can see that, hey, in extreme situations
Speaker 2: when you play glassy, extremely undulating greens somewhere like Augusta,
Speaker 2: somewhere like Pinehurst. You know what, there actually might be
Speaker 2: some situations where I'd rather have a six foot uphill
Speaker 2: put than a three and a half foot downhill slider.
Speaker 2: What's your perspective there.
Speaker 1: Well, there are situations where you you would obviously you
Speaker 1: would like to have or it's easier to have. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say six footer versus a three footer like it
Speaker 1: could be like a I'll give you like a five
Speaker 1: footer at Agasta on what's the slowest green there, say,
Speaker 1: on fifteen across the slope, and you know, down towards
Speaker 1: the water, that five footer is probably more difficult than
Speaker 1: the six footer straight up hill. Maybe, But again we're
Speaker 1: talking extreme situations where the average golfer would never encounter,
Speaker 1: like on your golf course, as fast as the greens
Speaker 1: may be, as sloppy as they may be, I think
Speaker 1: from short range at least, it doesn't. It's just the
Speaker 1: closest you are, the better it is. Now, if you
Speaker 1: know from further away, obviously a ten footer downhill on
Speaker 1: a super quick green it's going to be probably more
Speaker 1: difficult than a twelve footer straight uphill or a thirteen
Speaker 1: footer even. But then the thing is if you're starting
Speaker 1: to if you're trying too much to leave yourself the
Speaker 1: uphill pass, then all of a sudden you'll be putting
Speaker 1: all day from further away, and then you're gonna it's
Speaker 1: not an effective strategy in the end. It's almost like
Speaker 1: you have to accept that sometimes you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: four footer, you know, across the slope downhill, and you
Speaker 1: just have to hope that it's not on the last
Speaker 1: all of us open to make the playoffs.
Speaker 2: Two more questions for you before we get to a
Speaker 2: little bit of a Ryder Cup section, which I'm sure
Speaker 2: people are eager to hear your thoughts on the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 2: So you work not only with men's professional golf, but
Speaker 2: with women as well, and I believe Nelly Korda is
Speaker 2: a player who you ever working relationship with. Obviously, she's
Speaker 2: had a phenomenal season, a breakout year. I would be
Speaker 2: interested as you look at women's golf data compared to
Speaker 2: the men's golf data. Do most of these same concepts apply.
Speaker 2: My intuition would be that they do right, that they're
Speaker 2: too conservative off of the tea's as well. But some
Speaker 2: people might argue, well, the women's game is different and
Speaker 2: they hit it more accurately off the tea, so they
Speaker 2: should hit driver less often. What's your overall impression for
Speaker 2: analyzing both of those sets of data.
Speaker 1: I would say very very similar. Obviously, the women, like
Speaker 1: someone like Nelly, is incredibly accurate off the tea with driver,
Speaker 1: and obviously she hits it longer than her competitors, but
Speaker 1: she is straighter than anything I've ever seen. Like I
Speaker 1: remember the first you know, after the first few events,
Speaker 1: you know, I got all the data and I created
Speaker 1: the report, and I had to check the report a
Speaker 1: couple of times because I thought, there's no way she's
Speaker 1: hitting these many fairways. There's something wrong. But it's just
Speaker 1: it's a driving machine. She's very, very good. Also with
Speaker 1: a prose play. You know, she was a bit like
Speaker 1: I remember last year talking to his Caddy as well,
Speaker 1: and she was a bit like Scotty, Like you could
Speaker 1: see the potential in Scotty and you know, the pattern
Speaker 1: was letting him down. And Nellie was kind of similar,
Speaker 1: like as soon as she has and others were good
Speaker 1: patting week, it's almost impossible for her to finish outside
Speaker 1: top three. So she's an unbelievable golfer. But going back
Speaker 1: to your question, I think pretty much the same concept applies.
Speaker 1: Like even with them, you can see them sometimes they're
Speaker 1: two conservative of the tea. Same as demands they should
Speaker 1: hit driver way more often. And sometimes you know, even
Speaker 1: someone like Nelly that she has the approach shots incredibly good.
Speaker 1: She sometimes can be a little, you know, to a
Speaker 1: girl see into the greens. I think as golf professional,
Speaker 1: as you almost overestimate your ability with approach play with
Speaker 1: you know, being able to you know, there's a flag
Speaker 1: on the left side with water left, or just going
Speaker 1: to aim two years eight of it with a seven iron.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you know, it's almost impily. I put it this way,
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to be too conservative into the grease
Speaker 1: with your approach shots, like you would have to be
Speaker 1: seriously aiming away from the pin way more than you think,
Speaker 1: and it's just very easy to become too aggressive. And
Speaker 1: if you're too aggressive, you usually pay a big price
Speaker 1: for it, especially in the beginnings.
Speaker 2: So I read in a twenty ten John Garrity golf
Speaker 2: dot Com article that you were accustomed to hitting a
Speaker 2: draw off of the tea and then put in a
Speaker 2: significant amount of work to change over to hitting a
Speaker 2: fade with the driver. And I think something we've seen
Speaker 2: in the modern era is a lot of players having
Speaker 2: more success with a fade. My question to you is
Speaker 2: is that actually just a realization of the best way
Speaker 2: to play golf or is that also technology driven that
Speaker 2: the modern driver you're the right person to ask, because
Speaker 2: when you started playing golf and playing professionally in the
Speaker 2: early to mid two thousands, the driver technology has changed
Speaker 2: a lot to now. So is that was that inevitable
Speaker 2: that everyone's going to end up hitting a fade or
Speaker 2: is that a byproduct of driver technology advancement?
Speaker 1: I would say I would say it's a byproduct of
Speaker 1: how the drivers are built these days. Obviously, the cog
Speaker 1: is very close to the face to reduce spin, maximize spin,
Speaker 1: maximize speed. And I think for some reason it's so
Speaker 1: difficult to hit the draw with you know, the modern clubs,
Speaker 1: especially with the driver. I remember, again going back to
Speaker 1: Rory when when he first came out, everything was like,
Speaker 1: it's linging twenty five yard raw even off the tea,
Speaker 1: and then in time like even now, when you see
Speaker 1: him hitting a driver on a good day or when
Speaker 1: he's playing well, it's a pretty neutral shape. And he
Speaker 1: was someone that he again he would, you know, sling
Speaker 1: it twenty twenty five yards right to left, and his
Speaker 1: swing hasn't really changed much. Maybe a little bit, but
Speaker 1: not that much. And when you look at you know,
Speaker 1: all the top drivers of the ball, I would say
Speaker 1: at least eighty percent he did left to right, and
Speaker 1: they don't even try to hit it right to left
Speaker 1: Like the most consistent of them, they all he did
Speaker 1: left to right. And I think again it's something to
Speaker 1: do with how the driver is built, and also I
Speaker 1: think swing wise, it's probably a fade is a little
Speaker 1: bit more reliable than at all.
Speaker 2: Last part on this we've had We've heard from a
Speaker 2: number of professional golfers, especially who have played over the
Speaker 2: similar period of time that you have, whether it's Adam Scott,
Speaker 2: Billy Horseell Rory, that the driver has gone from being
Speaker 2: one of the hardest clubs to hit to one of
Speaker 2: the easiest clubs in the bag to hit. And I
Speaker 2: think we've been pretty adamant on this podcast that we'd
Speaker 2: love to see the driver head shrunk or become less
Speaker 2: forgiving so that off center hits find some more of
Speaker 2: those penalties. Similar to how you're describing with the kind
Speaker 2: of architecture that you like to see. What is your react?
Speaker 2: Would you be in support of regulation change that shrunk
Speaker 2: the size of the driver head.
Speaker 1: I think that will be way more effective than what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do with the golf ball. I think again,
Speaker 1: as you said, it would bring a lot more penalties
Speaker 1: of the team play. It would bring more skill to
Speaker 1: you know, driving the golf ball straight and long. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if I were to, you know, to make
Speaker 1: the rules, I would definitely go down that path. I
Speaker 1: think it's something that amateur golfers won't probably enjoy because
Speaker 1: for them it's easy with you know, these days, with
Speaker 1: the big club heads and just swing it and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter where you hit it, it goes somewhere straight.
Speaker 1: But I think for professional golf, I think that would
Speaker 1: be the way to go again. It will bring a
Speaker 1: lot more skill back into the game for sure.
Speaker 2: I think we need to see it desperately. I think
Speaker 2: it's a very under the radar issue that would significantly
Speaker 2: increase the entertainment value of the sport.
Speaker 1: And it would solve as well a lot of issues.
Speaker 1: To be honest, it would solve the courses being too
Speaker 1: long or like too short for the modern player, because
Speaker 1: you won't be able to swing it at one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty miles per hour and keep it on the planet.
Speaker 1: You would have to swing it a bit more like
Speaker 1: you know, a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, all right, let's get into the Ryder
Speaker 2: Cup section. This is the section of the pod that
Speaker 2: I believe Eduardo is going to dodge some of the
Speaker 2: questions as he is the an integral part of the
Speaker 2: brains of Team Europe. What was the first Ryder Cup
Speaker 2: that you were involved from an analytics side.
Speaker 1: Eduardo was the one in Italy. He was the one
Speaker 1: in Italy. I never did anything before then, just when
Speaker 1: even before Luke. So when Hendrik Stenson, he was captain,
Speaker 1: he knew I was working with some of the players
Speaker 1: and we met a couple of times. He asked me.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a job interview. He asked me
Speaker 1: what I was doing, what I could provide to the team,
Speaker 1: and I guess he liked what I could do for them,
Speaker 1: and then he hired me and he named me vice captain.
Speaker 1: And then when Luke became captain, he called me the
Speaker 1: very next day. And I've known Luke for like twenty
Speaker 1: five years, probably because we played amateur golf together, and
Speaker 1: the same thing. He asked me, you know what I
Speaker 1: could do, and obviously he Luke was vice captain before
Speaker 1: in Whistling Straits and in Paris as well, so he
Speaker 1: knew what was going on there and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would like to, you know, get your help and
Speaker 1: keep working with you. So you know, yeah, I did
Speaker 1: the last one in Rome and of when when Luke
Speaker 1: was named captain again, I remember the very the day
Speaker 1: before he was named captain, he sent me a very
Speaker 1: nice text saying, you know tomorrow i'd be announced as captain.
Speaker 1: But you know I need I need you to be
Speaker 1: at my side from day one pretty much. So please
Speaker 1: you know, I would like you to to be vice
Speaker 1: captain again and said, yeah, of course, fantastic.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. So you will be a part of the
Speaker 2: team at beth Page for Team Europe. I have a
Speaker 2: couple of questions here and again feel free to disclose
Speaker 2: as much or as little as you'd like. Obviously we're
Speaker 2: going for as much as possible, but we'll see what
Speaker 2: we can get. You know, one view, when you're making
Speaker 2: optimal pairings, it would be, hey, we're going to put
Speaker 2: together the best analytically the best data driven pairings, and
Speaker 2: we're going to tell you who to play with, and
Speaker 2: you're gonna be fine with that, and you're gonna go
Speaker 2: out and play well, right like, that's probably in your
Speaker 2: head the ideal scenario, but like, let's say, for example,
Speaker 2: there are two golfers who really want to play well together,
Speaker 2: think they have extremely strong chemistry, but you might evaluate
Speaker 2: that they're a quarter of a shot, for example, disadvantage
Speaker 2: compared to the optimal pairing. I mean, is there does
Speaker 2: that chemistry matter to where it could actually when you
Speaker 2: factor it in outweigh that quarter of a shot? Like,
Speaker 2: how do you think about quantifying the chemistry and who
Speaker 2: people sort of on a subjective basis, want to play with.
Speaker 1: I think we find the chemistry that works a bit
Speaker 1: better with the data. Like I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: great thing with Luke was that we well, he was
Speaker 1: able to make decisions, and we made decisions altogether as
Speaker 1: vice captains with him taking into accounts all different bits
Speaker 1: and pieces. Obviously we knew, you know, which players wanted
Speaker 1: to play with who, We knew what the data was suggesting.
Speaker 1: But then there's a you know, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: things that go into it that it's not only the data,
Speaker 1: it's not only the players. Then you have to look
Speaker 1: at what balls they use, what you know, do they
Speaker 1: play well together? Do they you know, are they friends?
Speaker 1: Are the wives getting along well? I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that goes on in there. It's not
Speaker 1: only obviously, the data is a big part of it,
Speaker 1: and I felt like Luke was going very much with
Speaker 1: the data. Then you know, there were some pairings that
Speaker 1: we had in mind that for one reason or the other,
Speaker 1: we couldn't we couldn't bring out. But again it's I
Speaker 1: think you need to find the right balance between the data,
Speaker 1: what the data says, what the players tell you. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you might have a player or a pairing that looks unbelievable,
Speaker 1: but then they're not playing well, so all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you can't really use them together. It's a combination
Speaker 1: of things. I think that the big thing for us
Speaker 1: with the data was that we had a good plan,
Speaker 1: stuck to the plan because obviously we got off to
Speaker 1: a great start, but it was avoiding some big mistakes
Speaker 1: or some you know, yeah, basically avoiding some big mistakes
Speaker 1: that were done before that might have you know, been
Speaker 1: repeated in Rome. We just stayed away from, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of pairings that you know, sometimes the players
Speaker 1: want to play together, but you just explained to them, look,
Speaker 1: this is it's not gonna work. So if it's not
Speaker 1: gonna work, you're not gonna look good. We're not going
Speaker 1: to look good. It's gonna hinder the whole team. So
Speaker 1: you need to find again, it's it's a fine balance,
Speaker 1: and I think Luke's one of Luke's best skills that
Speaker 1: we was just to find. You know, everything he did
Speaker 1: was you know, from the communication to the players to
Speaker 1: you know, these little things. He was absolutely unbelievable out
Speaker 1: of ten.
Speaker 2: So if somebody said, hey, team chemistry and partner chemistry
Speaker 2: is a massive factor, would you be more inclined to
Speaker 2: roll your eyes at that a little bit? Or no, that, hey,
Speaker 2: there is some real credence to the chemistry that those
Speaker 2: two players had.
Speaker 1: No. Definitely, definitely. If you like to play with a
Speaker 1: certain player and you're friends with him and you feel
Speaker 1: like he brings out the best of you, great, But
Speaker 1: then again, I want to also see that the data
Speaker 1: doesn't say that or you're you know, out of one
Speaker 1: handle and twenty possible pairings, or so that you're not
Speaker 1: the one hundred and fifteenth possible pairing. So you know,
Speaker 1: within certain limits, Yes, you try and accommodate the players,
Speaker 1: you speak to them. But I think what we did
Speaker 1: is we tried we started to look at the pairings
Speaker 1: very very early. We started look, started to talk with
Speaker 1: the players extremely early. So when we got to Rome,
Speaker 1: everyone knew exactly what was going to happen, and there
Speaker 1: was no you know, no last minute guessing or no improvisation.
Speaker 1: I mean it took us every day. It took us
Speaker 1: literally five minutes to hand in the pairings simply because
Speaker 1: we knew exactly what we were doing and it was
Speaker 1: pretty simple and straightforward. There was a lot of preparation.
Speaker 1: I mean, the weeks before we're very easy. I think
Speaker 1: I couldn't make a cup for like a month before.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, trying to do this, try
Speaker 1: to solve the pay it's time to speak with the players,
Speaker 1: trying to speak with Luke. You know, we were going
Speaker 1: to dinner with Luke pretty much every night. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of hard work before and then once you
Speaker 1: once you get to the weekend of the Ryder Cup,
Speaker 1: hopefully most of your work is done and you just
Speaker 1: you know, see the players play and play. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to drill down just into that a
Speaker 2: little bit, on the subject of sticking to the game
Speaker 2: plan versus taking in some of the information that you're seeing.
Speaker 2: So something I think both sides tend to do is
Speaker 2: play everybody on the first day. Maybe not a requirement,
Speaker 2: but tends to happen. How much information do you think
Speaker 2: is contained in what you see from a player in
Speaker 2: one of those first opening sessions versus your priors, and hey,
Speaker 2: even if this golfer that we evaluated is probably our
Speaker 2: weakest link, Like if he goes out and crushes it,
Speaker 2: are you saying to yourself, you know what, maybe he
Speaker 2: needs to get a little bit of more run the
Speaker 2: next two days? Are you sticking to that evaluation that
Speaker 2: you had coming in again.
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a bit of a balance
Speaker 1: between the two. But I think golf is a sport
Speaker 1: where when you have a good week, anyone can beat anybody.
Speaker 1: So I tend to say that if someone is playing
Speaker 1: really well and it's confident in that environment, then you
Speaker 1: probably have to keep playing with him and find him
Speaker 1: a spot in the you know, in the lineup every day.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I think why everyone wants to
Speaker 1: play everyone the first day and we'd usually do it,
Speaker 1: the American usually do it, is because the Ryder Cup
Speaker 1: itself is a very different environment to your day to
Speaker 1: day tournament. And you want to see how the player
Speaker 1: reacting that if you know, someone might not be playing
Speaker 1: very well coming in, but then you know, if you
Speaker 1: think about someone like Poulter or Sergio, they loved that
Speaker 1: environment and it didn't really matter how they played before.
Speaker 1: As soon as they got you know, somewhat of a
Speaker 1: decent start on day one, then they were incredible for
Speaker 1: the whole week. Other players might be opposite. You might
Speaker 1: have a player who is playing great coming in and
Speaker 1: then it just doesn't feel comfortable in that environment where
Speaker 1: everyone shouts and every you know, basically every golf every
Speaker 1: golf shot feels like it's the Sunday of a Major
Speaker 1: down the last hole, so you get players are reacting
Speaker 1: a bit differently, and if there's no history in it,
Speaker 1: you want to see how they play. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the biggest reason why you try and play everyone
Speaker 1: on day one and you know, and then you go
Speaker 1: from there a little bit.
Speaker 2: Multiple different directions you can go with this question, but
Speaker 2: does team Does experience in past team events matter? Right?
Speaker 2: Because I think you often hear, hey, well this player
Speaker 2: has a good record or solid strokes gained, right, that
Speaker 2: would be a better way to look at it. In
Speaker 2: a Ryder Cup environment or in a President's Cup environment.
Speaker 2: But like let's say you have player A who has
Speaker 2: a little bit of experience there is maybe the same age,
Speaker 2: but confers are twenty seven. One is never played in
Speaker 2: that environment, so it's an unknown one has played before.
Speaker 2: How do you think about how that could break the
Speaker 2: tire or work in one's favorite versus the other, Because
Speaker 2: then if you don't take the guy who's never played before,
Speaker 2: two years later you might have the same situation again
Speaker 2: where you might be holding against him that he hasn't
Speaker 2: had any team success.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good question. Again, it's it's
Speaker 1: a fine line with these things. You have sometimes go
Speaker 1: a little bit with your gut instinct. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a big believer in you know, someone that
Speaker 1: has a great Raither Cappa record or a great President's
Speaker 1: Caupa record or whatever, because of that, he's going to
Speaker 1: play well in the next one. Because again, mesh play
Speaker 1: golf is a fickle sport. Mesh play is a bit
Speaker 1: of a I'm not saying a lottery, but it's like
Speaker 1: it's even it's different to seventy two hole stock play.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult I mean, the data semple is so small,
Speaker 1: and you might have a great record because you know,
Speaker 1: you play against someone that you know was just having
Speaker 1: a bad day and all of a sudden you get
Speaker 1: a point. But you might have been the second worldst
Speaker 1: player on your team and you still you get a point.
Speaker 1: So I'm not a big believer in you know, your
Speaker 1: your previous record. I'm more a believer on how you've
Speaker 1: been playing recently and how you've been playing on that
Speaker 1: single week, to be honest without mentioning it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one question I had for you. That's one
Speaker 2: question I have for you. We talk about this cocktail
Speaker 2: of all the optimal pairings and who do they get
Speaker 2: along with. Do you think that a player's current form
Speaker 2: at this point is an underrated part of the puzzle
Speaker 2: from the way that people talk about it, just straight
Speaker 2: up how they're playing.
Speaker 1: Yes and no. Yes, it's undrelated for sure, because people think, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, player A has an unbelievable President's Cup record,
Speaker 1: and you know this pairing has been you know, almost unbeatable,
Speaker 1: so we should play them no matter what. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't really work that way. I think.
Speaker 2: Jordan speaks and Justin Thomas, you don't have to react
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, not necessarily. Justin Thomas. I mean he
Speaker 1: he didn't play in the first morning in Rome, and
Speaker 1: so you know, we still won four matches. So maybe
Speaker 1: if he had played, we wouldn't we wouldn't have one
Speaker 1: for I don't know, so yeah, I think again it's
Speaker 1: it's a very fine balance between all these things, and
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes again you have to be lucky, because
Speaker 1: I mean, everything looked it looked like we were geniuses
Speaker 1: in Rome because we decided to start with four songs,
Speaker 1: because we set up the golf force in a certain way.
Speaker 1: But then again, maybe Victor doesn't chip in at the
Speaker 1: first and then we lose that foursome, we lose another one.
Speaker 1: It's too old after the first the first morning, and
Speaker 1: it's a completely different Rider Cup. So you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: again it's it's fine lines. It's you try and shift
Speaker 1: the odds as much as you can in your favor,
Speaker 1: but there's only so much you can do. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you know, a player having
Speaker 1: a good day or a bad day can turn the
Speaker 1: tables pretty easily.
Speaker 2: This is a complete hypothetical and definitely not happening in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, Eduardo, if a player was the captain
Speaker 2: and playing well enough to be on the team, do
Speaker 2: you think it is possible to succeed in both roles
Speaker 2: at the same time, that you could be both a
Speaker 2: captain making the decisions and a successful member playing on
Speaker 2: the ryder cut not that that's the scenario this upcoming.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think it would be a fantastic
Speaker 1: It would be a fantastic way to go about the week.
Speaker 2: Are you saying that from the perspective of somebody who
Speaker 2: wants team you're up to win or do you mean
Speaker 2: that sincerely.
Speaker 1: A bit of both. I think it would be something
Speaker 1: unheard of, and you know, it'd be a first and
Speaker 1: that never happened before, I think in an Eider Cup.
Speaker 1: So I would be very keen to see Keigan, you know,
Speaker 1: playing and being a captain. I think he could. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think he could do. He could do a good job.
Speaker 1: It's just it's probably more difficult, yes, but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, deep down I'm hoping he makes
Speaker 1: the team and you know, see what happens.
Speaker 2: All I want to ask you two more questions. One
Speaker 2: is abstract. If you were tasked with building a Ryder
Speaker 2: Cup venue for the twenty forty one Ryder Cup. Yeah,
Speaker 2: none of probably none of the active players or very
Speaker 2: few of them would also be who we know of
Speaker 2: now would be playing fifteen twenty years right now? What
Speaker 2: would that golf course look like? Do you think there
Speaker 2: are reasons to believe that people who grow up in
Speaker 2: Europe might be more accurate, so you'd set it up
Speaker 2: that way? I mean, how do you think about a
Speaker 2: problem like that?
Speaker 1: No, I would, honestly, I will set it up in
Speaker 1: a way that he is as neutral as possible and
Speaker 1: you cannot really change it too much. Like I would
Speaker 1: love to see on a course where home advantage is
Speaker 1: not well, I think home advantage is big enough because
Speaker 1: of the crowds, and I think they should take away
Speaker 1: the course set up from the home team, to be honest,
Speaker 1: it's something that it can make quite a big difference,
Speaker 1: as it proved in the last few Rither Cups. And
Speaker 1: again I think you know, it's difficult enough to play
Speaker 1: in front of an away crowd that you don't also
Speaker 1: need the golfers to be set up in favor of
Speaker 1: the of the home team. I think they've taken away
Speaker 1: quite a few things already. Like in previous years, like
Speaker 1: if I'm talking ten or fifteen years ago, the home
Speaker 1: team could decide which teas they could set the pins.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they were the only one to know the pins
Speaker 1: that they were going to be used. So there was
Speaker 1: obviously too much of an advantage. So now they've taken
Speaker 1: away the t boxes, you cannot choose which one to use,
Speaker 1: whether you want to move up a tea or not.
Speaker 1: You can't do it. You cannot side on the pins.
Speaker 1: We are given the five pins at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the week that they're going to use in the you know,
Speaker 1: in all the sessions, but you're not even told this
Speaker 1: is the Sunday pin, this is the Friday morning pin.
Speaker 1: You just know the five pins. That's it. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a very good way to do it. And
Speaker 1: I would try and do pretty much the same on
Speaker 1: the golf So I would build the golf course where
Speaker 1: you know, ideally there's only one tea, so that's it.
Speaker 1: You can't can't move it, and I would make it,
Speaker 1: you know, a good match play courses in a lot
Speaker 1: of holes where there's like either reachable power fours with
Speaker 1: water or you know, reachable part five. You know with
Speaker 1: some penalty involved. I think I think Marcos Simono, I
Speaker 1: think it was a great venue because of the back nine,
Speaker 1: the front line was so and so, and we knew
Speaker 1: that we had a lot of data from the Italian
Speaker 1: opening previous years, and there were not a lot of
Speaker 1: birdies and bogies made on the first eight holes, seven holes,
Speaker 1: and then from the eight all onwards. If you look
Speaker 1: at it, it was either extremely difficult holes or birdie holes,
Speaker 1: but you could easily make a bogie on the same hole.
Speaker 1: There were holes where you could decide to go for
Speaker 1: it or to lay up like there was a lot
Speaker 1: of things happening from the eighth all onwards, and I
Speaker 1: think that's a very good trait to have in a
Speaker 1: radical course.
Speaker 2: Well there that would be one that somebody involved in
Speaker 2: informing Team Europe on the course setup, advocating to make
Speaker 2: it more of a neutral setup. I think that's something
Speaker 2: that will catch people's attention. Is I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people think that that's gone too far in that direction,
Speaker 2: that maybe the home crowd is enough of an advantage
Speaker 2: in and of its own right.
Speaker 1: So the only thing I would add is that compared
Speaker 1: to again ten or fifteen years ago, the players now
Speaker 1: are much more similar, Like there's no there's basically no
Speaker 1: difference in diving distance. There's hardly any difference in diving accuracy.
Speaker 1: You just try and find very small ages and very
Speaker 1: small areas where to make gains, So it doesn't make
Speaker 1: as much of a difference as many years ago. But
Speaker 1: also you have a lot more tools now than twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. Like twenty years ago you just knew how
Speaker 1: many failures we're hitting, how many games are we hitting,
Speaker 1: how many paths are we taking. Now we have you
Speaker 1: know a lot more information about your own players, the
Speaker 1: opposition players, so you make more informed decision for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to keep you too long. I
Speaker 2: guess what I was kind of getting at with it.
Speaker 2: Do you think Europeans will be more accurate twenty years
Speaker 2: from now? Is the way the European courses are configured
Speaker 2: that the golfers are growing up on and maybe the
Speaker 2: air it being a little windier that you'd expect them
Speaker 2: to play a different style of game, do you you're saying,
Speaker 2: I don't think that's probably going to be true. Like
Speaker 2: you have the Hoyguards, long hitters coming in Ludvig, like
Speaker 2: we're probably going to see pretty similar skill sets that
Speaker 2: your opinion.
Speaker 1: I would say, I think it's going to get more
Speaker 1: and more closer together. And the thing is, most great
Speaker 1: European players, when they grow up, they immediately go to
Speaker 1: college when they're eighty in the US and they learn
Speaker 1: to play the game that is played in the US, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: I take it, it's very different to what we play here.
Speaker 1: Like when I grew up, I played ninety percent of
Speaker 1: my goal from links courses. Well, basically, you have to
Speaker 1: hit it low, hit it straight, doesn't matter how far
Speaker 1: you hit it, and you have to cheapen pat Well,
Speaker 1: and that's like the typical English player. My age is
Speaker 1: still you know, it's not long, hits it low and
Speaker 1: chips and Partwell. I think now the good English players
Speaker 1: that are coming on tour, because they've been in college
Speaker 1: in the US and because they you know, they understand
Speaker 1: that it's a different game as a pearl, they all bombed,
Speaker 1: they all hit it high. It's completely different to how
Speaker 1: it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: Well, Eduardo, I'm sure we could talk about a lot
Speaker 2: of these topics all day. I'll get you out of
Speaker 2: here with this and your unbiased opinion. What is the
Speaker 2: final result to the point value of the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm not going to tell you. I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this before the twenty twenty three Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: I remember Luke asked me, what's your prediction? And I
Speaker 1: said to him, I think I might still have it
Speaker 1: in my pocket money. I said to him, I'm going
Speaker 1: to write it in a small piece of paper. I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep it in my pocket money, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to show it to you on the Sunday night
Speaker 1: when we finish and I'm missed by half a point. No,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a prediction for twenty five, but
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you. I can write it down
Speaker 1: if you want, or I can send you. I can
Speaker 1: send you a text and then you keep the text
Speaker 1: and then September twenty five you can reveal the text.
Speaker 2: Sounds great. I'm going to hold you to that. Let's
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Bye, I'll send you a text as weuch perfect.
Speaker 2: Well, Thank you, Eduardo, it's delightful chatting with you. Appreciate
Speaker 2: you coming on the Friday Golf Podcast and love to
Speaker 2: do it again.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Joe, thank you for having me and yeah,
Speaker 1: anytime we can do this again.
Speaker 3: All right, Joseph, great job with that Dodo Mulmari interview.
Speaker 3: That was fascinating stuff. Let's get to recommendations.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna recommend the music of Stgel Simpson, who I've
Speaker 2: kind of gotten into recently, and he's got to for me.
Speaker 2: I didn't get to go to his performance at acl
Speaker 2: Austin City Limits, but I heard not only was that amazing,
Speaker 2: but this tour that he's been on, I'm seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of clips from it on social media. Looks absolutely
Speaker 2: incredible and jealous of anybody who goes. And that's a
Speaker 2: great car road trip soundtrack his new album. I would
Speaker 2: recommend it for a setting like that. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: recommend Sturgil Simpson. Andy I'm doing a music wreck too, Okay.
Speaker 3: So I had known of this band just through their
Speaker 3: collaborations with Leon Bridges. It's called Krungbin, It's kai Are.
Speaker 3: Let me just spell it for everybody.
Speaker 2: I believe there are Houston, Texas band.
Speaker 3: Yeah, khr U A N G B I N. If
Speaker 3: you're like really into guitar, in like like people that
Speaker 3: play the guitar, there's very limited vocals and like you
Speaker 3: know that from like Texas Sun, the the kind of
Speaker 3: like hit with Leon Bridges. It's a lot different than
Speaker 3: their other music, which is just like it's like super
Speaker 3: guitar having music heavy. I didn't I hadn't listened to
Speaker 3: a ton of them, but then I saw them play
Speaker 3: show and I was like, WHOA really into their music?
Speaker 3: Super talented and excited to see them again and start
Speaker 3: to really dive in. But if you're like into just
Speaker 3: like guitar limited vocals, this is a band to check out.
Speaker 2: All Right.
Speaker 3: That does it for this episode of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 3: Big thanks to our producer PJ Clark. Thanks PJ for
Speaker 3: putting this together. If you haven't yet, check out Club TF.
Speaker 3: We have a just a ton of stuff going up there.
Speaker 3: We've been adding some more member events, a lot more
Speaker 3: member events, small gathering. I think we'll do a lot
Speaker 3: of those next year. We are not going to be
Speaker 3: we don't really publicize these publicly. They have very few spots,
Speaker 3: so you know, it doesn't make sense to publicly put
Speaker 3: them out there on like an event calendar. But we
Speaker 3: are going to have a lot more of those next year.
Speaker 3: If you're a member you just get emailed hey, we're
Speaker 3: we have this setup. So we did some last week
Speaker 3: in northern Michigan. We'll have a couple in the southeast
Speaker 3: around our Old Barnwall event. But we will continue to
Speaker 3: add more and more of these as we go, so
Speaker 3: check those out and check out Club TF if you're
Speaker 3: not already a member. Big thanks to everybody for supporting us.
Speaker 3: The you joined CLUBTFE at the Frida egg dot com
Speaker 3: slash membership, it's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year,
Speaker 3: ten dollars a month and it really helps support us
Speaker 3: and helps us grow. So we will be back on Thursday.
Speaker 3: I think Garrett and I are going to do an
Speaker 3: architecture mail bag and then we also have an interview
Speaker 3: with Jason meersman a one of the one of the
Speaker 3: biggest characters I've met in the Superintendent world. So that'll
Speaker 3: be fun and thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: N