Speaker 1: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a brid Egg
Speaker 1: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, fridagg, Frida Egg,
Speaker 1: Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the
Speaker 1: golf course.
Speaker 2: Welcome back for another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 2: This week, we're happy to welcome on Aaron Oberholzer. Aaron
Speaker 2: is a former PGA Tour player who made his way
Speaker 2: into the top twenty five in the world rankings and
Speaker 2: won the two thousand and six Pebble Beach Pro Am.
Speaker 2: His career was cut short by injuries, so now he
Speaker 2: is a regular contributor on the Golf Channel. Aaron, thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Andy. I appreciate it. I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's It's always nice when you know you got
Speaker 2: a guy that can talk great golf courses and architecture
Speaker 2: and also can dive into the tour, so you know
Speaker 2: it should be a good golf nerd talk today.
Speaker 1: Well, you can put me on that list of a
Speaker 1: long list of golf nerds, that's for sure. I enjoy
Speaker 1: I enjoyed talking about the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so why don't you give us a little bit
Speaker 2: of a background on your golf career and how you
Speaker 2: got into golf and you know what you're doing now.
Speaker 1: I started playing when I was I started swinging a
Speaker 1: golf club when I was about one with a metal head,
Speaker 1: one with a metal head and a metal chef. When
Speaker 1: I was about eight years old, my grandparents, maternal grandparents,
Speaker 1: bought me my first set of golf clubs, and I
Speaker 1: used to go up to the range with my mom.
Speaker 1: My mom and dad divorced when I was six, so
Speaker 1: I was raised by my mom. I saw my dad
Speaker 1: on the weekends and my dad would take me out
Speaker 1: when we would go over to his place. My brother
Speaker 1: and I would go to his place. My dad would
Speaker 1: take us out to this little part three golf course
Speaker 1: in the East Bay, Oakland called Lake Chabaux, and we'd play.
Speaker 1: We'd play the little nine hole parts three. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if it's still there anymore, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was a great place to learn on And then
Speaker 1: other than that, when I when I got my dad said,
Speaker 1: I'm not taking you a big golf course until you
Speaker 1: can hit your driver two hundred yards in the air,
Speaker 1: and you know, he didn't want me to slow people down.
Speaker 1: And it's much more liberal now with kids on the
Speaker 1: golf course, but that's kind of the way it was
Speaker 1: back then. It was a it was an older gentleman's
Speaker 1: game to middle aged person's game, and there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of There wasn't a lot of openings for young
Speaker 1: people in the game unless you went out unless you
Speaker 1: remembered a club and you went out with your parents
Speaker 1: who remembers at that club late in the day, a
Speaker 1: three four, and you stayed away from the older members
Speaker 1: who were playing quote unquote serious golf out there. So
Speaker 1: that's how I kind of learned. I was a publics
Speaker 1: kid my whole life, and so I grown up in
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Bay area. We had a pleusora of
Speaker 1: courses to choose from a from a from a public
Speaker 1: standpoint that were great, you had hearting. I grew up
Speaker 1: at Salmateo Muni, I always called Samatalo Muni. It's called
Speaker 1: Poplar Creek now, but it's on the bay. You know,
Speaker 1: in the springtime, during high school matches and high school practice,
Speaker 1: they turned the fan on like clockwork at about one pm,
Speaker 1: and it had blown a steady twenty with potentially getting
Speaker 1: up to thirty miles an hour, and every afternoon. I've
Speaker 1: never played a day out at San Mateo Muni where
Speaker 1: the wind didn't blow. It always bleue. So it was
Speaker 1: a dead flat golf course. But it taught you how
Speaker 1: to control your ball flight. It taught you that it
Speaker 1: taught out to and putt really well because you didn't
Speaker 1: hit a ton of greens. Greens were small and you're
Speaker 1: always missing them because of the wind. So you became
Speaker 1: a good ball striker, and at the same time you
Speaker 1: became a good pitcher and putter of the ball as well,
Speaker 1: because putting on bumpy polana, you're gonna go one way
Speaker 1: or the other. You're either gonna get scared the death
Speaker 1: of it, or it's going to turn you into a
Speaker 1: beastly good putter. And then the other course that I
Speaker 1: grew up on that I give a lot of credit
Speaker 1: to was Crystal Springs, again very different than Uni. It
Speaker 1: was up in the hills in Berlin, game up on
Speaker 1: top by two to eighty. The big freeway that runs
Speaker 1: north and south in San Francisco from San Francisco to
Speaker 1: San Jose and it was cut literally cut into the
Speaker 1: side of a mountain, and I can count three flat
Speaker 1: lies on the entire golf course. Three. That's all you had.
Speaker 1: The ball was above your feet, below your feet, a
Speaker 1: combination of one or the other the whole way around.
Speaker 1: You never had a flat lie, and the wind blew
Speaker 1: twenty every day. So you learned how to play very
Speaker 1: feel oriented golf. You learn how to hit all the
Speaker 1: shots under all kinds of conditions. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the one of the ways my creativity with
Speaker 1: my ball straking came about is playing those two golf courses.
Speaker 1: It also it also real I also realized that when
Speaker 1: to score on those two golf courses, you had to
Speaker 1: play good golf. I mean, you're playing with the straight
Speaker 1: ballattas back in those days, and you had to have
Speaker 1: all the shots. You had to be able to hit
Speaker 1: a four iron from one hundred and fifty yards into
Speaker 1: a twenty five mile hour win and just bump it
Speaker 1: up there. You had to learn how to chip with
Speaker 1: a four and five iron with those big kitched greens
Speaker 1: from back to front, you know, at Crystal Springs and
Speaker 1: Muni where you're putting your those bumpy plans. You'd take
Speaker 1: a four iron and maybe you were a yard or
Speaker 1: two off the green and you just you literally hit
Speaker 1: it like a putter, but it was a forearm. You'd
Speaker 1: chip with it up those greens because when the greens
Speaker 1: were wet, you'd be if you didn't learn how to
Speaker 1: take spin off the ball, you'd rip that ball back
Speaker 1: off the green into the wind on that soft planta.
Speaker 1: So I learned a lot of different shops around there,
Speaker 1: and then when I got a little older, the guys
Speaker 1: I met some one of my best friends Dad joined
Speaker 1: cal Club and I got introduced to the California Golf
Speaker 1: Club at about fourteen or fifteen years old, and i'd
Speaker 1: go up with them once a month or so in
Speaker 1: high school and i'd play with them up there. So
Speaker 1: those were my three main places that I played. And
Speaker 1: I played harding every once in a while, and I
Speaker 1: played Palo Alto Muni every once in a while. We
Speaker 1: had high school matches at Green Hills and Menlo Country
Speaker 1: Club and all those places around there, and it was
Speaker 1: a great variety, great variety of golf courses to learn
Speaker 1: on to grow up on. But the one theme was
Speaker 1: bumpy three o'clock Polana when you played high school matches,
Speaker 1: so you had to turn yourself into a fearlessly good putter.
Speaker 1: And then that's what I think the bay area of
Speaker 1: the most war in my golf game coming up was
Speaker 1: that if you can put on Bumpy three o'clock Polanta,
Speaker 1: you can put on anything. You know.
Speaker 2: It's interesting people complain, you know, when the tour goes
Speaker 2: to the West Coast, and but it seems like the
Speaker 2: really great putters separate themselves when they get on that
Speaker 2: po Like you see Snedeker, you know, plays great on
Speaker 2: the West Coast. Speeth has always putted well out there,
Speaker 2: and you know, one of the one the Pebble Beach,
Speaker 2: you know, putting beautifully. So do you think Poe kind
Speaker 2: of you know, there's a lot of you know, rumblings
Speaker 2: about it, but do you think it's something that separates
Speaker 2: really great putters from like a mental side of things. Mostly?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, it's it's it's mainly mental. There's some technique
Speaker 1: I think that guys can use, but I think it's
Speaker 1: I agree, I think it's mainly mental. Guys see the
Speaker 1: ball bouncing all over the place, They're like, how am
Speaker 1: I supposed to make a putt on this stuff, and
Speaker 1: I think I had such a mental advantage over people
Speaker 1: on the West Coast, at least I always looked at it.
Speaker 1: When I got to the Green Tea Green, I wasn't
Speaker 1: the I wasn't going to dominate anybody by any stretch
Speaker 1: of the imagination. Tea Green. I was a I had.
Speaker 1: I was a four on the floor guy. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a fifth year or sixth year like a lot
Speaker 1: of the guys do today. I had to wedge it.
Speaker 1: I had to hit good mid irons to short irons.
Speaker 1: I didn't have that kind of game, so I had
Speaker 1: to learn how to do it more tactically. And I
Speaker 1: had to putt well. I had to wedge it well,
Speaker 1: and I had to putt well. And I felt like
Speaker 1: I did those things fairly well, and especially on the
Speaker 1: West Coast, where my brain would just flip the switch
Speaker 1: and go and I literally think, I own these guys.
Speaker 1: I own these guys on the West Coast. I'd think
Speaker 1: like that, and you have to think like that, I
Speaker 1: think to a certain extent. And it was just the
Speaker 1: reverse when I get to Florida and I'd put against
Speaker 1: those guys who grew up in Florida. I'm like, Jesus,
Speaker 1: how do you put these damn bermuda greens? Man? I
Speaker 1: have no idea what the ball is going to do.
Speaker 1: And for the first couple of years on tour, on
Speaker 1: the web tour, I'd get out there and i'd get
Speaker 1: to the southeast, I'd just pull my hair out because
Speaker 1: I didn't understand grain all that much, because we didn't
Speaker 1: play on a lot of it in California unless you
Speaker 1: went to the Central Valley around Presno area. There was
Speaker 1: some bermuda greens down there, but I didn't play on
Speaker 1: them hardly at all. And so I understand why guys
Speaker 1: from Florida would come out to the West Coast and
Speaker 1: they'd pitch a fit, and then US West Coasters would
Speaker 1: go to Florida and we pitched we pitch a fit
Speaker 1: out there well, because we just couldn't. A lot of
Speaker 1: us couldn't. Had a hard time with the grain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it is. I grew up playing bent greens,
Speaker 2: and but I would go to Florida a lot, so
Speaker 2: you know, I I'm pretty comfortable on bermuda, but when
Speaker 2: I lived out in La and put it on po
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a whole different experience because I was
Speaker 2: playing a lot of late afternoon rounds at Ramfield Park,
Speaker 2: which is you know, UNI in LA and like, you know,
Speaker 2: those are just bumpy greens, and you know that bumpy
Speaker 2: Poe is a different beasts. I'm curious you touched on
Speaker 2: it a little bit when you were talking about the
Speaker 2: Blattas and it's been in the news. A ton being
Speaker 2: somebody that's kind of lived through the you know, technology
Speaker 2: era and played at a high level through it. You know,
Speaker 2: you've played in the late nineties, and you know, how
Speaker 2: is technoloology really what do you think has it changed?
Speaker 2: How has changed the game the most in the last
Speaker 2: twenty years or so?
Speaker 1: Oh? The ball, I mean it's the ball, not even close.
Speaker 1: It's definitely the ball and the combination of the driver
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean someone would say, well, you can't
Speaker 1: have one without the other, and really you can't. The
Speaker 1: driver's changed and the ball's changed. Those are the two
Speaker 1: biggest changes in the game. And then a close third
Speaker 1: potentially is our hybrids after that iron technology at the
Speaker 1: professional level. Blades are blades. You know, a blade is
Speaker 1: a blade as a blade as a blade. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what blade you pick. You just got to like
Speaker 1: to look at it. They're all going to do the
Speaker 1: same thing as far as blades are concerned. But the ball,
Speaker 1: for sure, I'll never forget. When I first got a
Speaker 1: box of the of the original Provy ones from Titleist,
Speaker 1: I was I just turned professional in nineteen late nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. I was out at Stanford and I was
Speaker 1: and I was down there just playing, and I decided
Speaker 1: I had my I had my my regular professional nineties
Speaker 1: that I was very happy with. That was an excellent
Speaker 1: wound ball. Yeah, and one of my favorite balls of
Speaker 1: all time. Actually, uh, even to this day, it's still
Speaker 1: one of my favorite balls of all time. And then
Speaker 1: I had this box of these Probe ones and they
Speaker 1: were they were testing, they weren't even they weren't even
Speaker 1: coming out yet. But it was either nine I think
Speaker 1: it might have been ninety nine. Actually I don't think
Speaker 1: it was ninety eight. I think it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was early in the spring in ninety nine, and
Speaker 1: it was it was set to come out, you know,
Speaker 1: I think in two thousand, but they had for some reason,
Speaker 1: I had, uh, some of these balls. And now I'm
Speaker 1: losing track of time. It was ninety nine two thousand
Speaker 1: somewhere in there. I can't wrap it. But I was
Speaker 1: on the Canadian Whore I totally remember. And I'm playing
Speaker 1: with these balls, and I'm and I'm and i'm i'm
Speaker 1: I'm comparing them side by side. And I get to
Speaker 1: the second hole at Stanford and I decide, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try these things. And I'm and i'm
Speaker 1: I'm very reluctant. I'm a I'm a serial tinker. I'll
Speaker 1: tinker with anything, but it takes a lot for me
Speaker 1: to put it in my bag. A lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's got to be remarkably better for me to switch
Speaker 1: anything out if I know I'm comfortable with something and
Speaker 1: I like something. And so I took it out on
Speaker 1: the second hole. On the second shot, I ripped the
Speaker 1: driver around the corner, kind of played like a hard draw,
Speaker 1: and I had nine iron in And so I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there going, Okay, let me, I'll drop, I'll hit my
Speaker 1: I'll hit my my regular ball, and then I'll hit
Speaker 1: the provy one. So I hit my regular professional ninety
Speaker 1: and I hit this beautiful nine iron in the middle
Speaker 1: of my stands and I kind of flighted it really
Speaker 1: gorgeous in it, and it went like like a four
Speaker 1: iron or a five iron would go today. I mean,
Speaker 1: just this gorgeous little flighted night iron in there, about
Speaker 1: twelve fifteen feet. I remember the shot like it was yesterday.
Speaker 1: And then I dropped the pro v one and I
Speaker 1: hit it and the thing went freaking straight in the air,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's not a window I'm familiar with.
Speaker 1: And it went about five yards further, so I'm about
Speaker 1: a half a club longer, and I was about i'd
Speaker 1: say twenty five thirty feet behind the pin, and so
Speaker 1: the rest of the nine holes, I was just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how far this ball was going to
Speaker 1: go and what it did, and I wasn't comfortable with it,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. I didn't end up playing it on
Speaker 1: the Canadian tour. We didn't get him until I think
Speaker 1: late two thousand, but I remember testing and I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I just I didn't like the original trov one because
Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't have the same control. And
Speaker 1: then I'm down at Q School playing with Cameron Beckman
Speaker 1: in a practice round at the two thousand Q School
Speaker 1: in Lakinta, and we're at the Nicholas Private Course and
Speaker 1: Cameron could hit it, he could create some speed. And
Speaker 1: I hit a drive off one I can't remember which
Speaker 1: hole it was on the Nicholas Court Nicholas Private and
Speaker 1: I popped it out there pretty good. And then he
Speaker 1: gets up there with that new pro V one, uh
Speaker 1: and pops it and he's twenty five by me. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm usually I was shorter than Cameron normally back then,
Speaker 1: probably by but not by twenty five yards. And I'm
Speaker 1: like wow. And he was consistently twenty to twenty five
Speaker 1: yards passed me all day long. And I'm sitting here going, man,
Speaker 1: this is this, this is this might be a game
Speaker 1: changer here. Well, I ended up playing with my regular
Speaker 1: professional ninety when there was a few guys, more than
Speaker 1: a few guys. I believe it would switch to the
Speaker 1: pro V one that week, and I ended up missing
Speaker 1: my card by a shot in that Q school and
Speaker 1: was and had to go to the web Tour, which
Speaker 1: was a blessing in disguise quite honestly. But but that's
Speaker 1: when I knew that things were going were about to change,
Speaker 1: when I saw a guy hit it twenty five, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five thirty by me times when I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there going, oh man, you know, I'm roasting these and
Speaker 1: I'm not even coming close to him. So it was
Speaker 1: an eye opener for sure. And that's where the ball changed.
Speaker 1: But then again then it changed again in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three. And the funny thing is when the X
Speaker 1: came out. That's that, in my opinion, is the ball
Speaker 1: that changed the ball. And when the X came out
Speaker 1: and earning set records at Kapalua when the wind didn't
Speaker 1: blow that year and shot thirty or thirty one und
Speaker 1: or something crazy like that for four rounds, and that's
Speaker 1: when I knew. And I was on tour. I was
Speaker 1: a rookie on tour that year, and I'm thinking, I'm going,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what is going on here? And so
Speaker 1: when I do my research for certain tournaments, the Masters
Speaker 1: is one of those tournaments. I don't take records before
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. I don't even bother looking at it.
Speaker 1: If you want to talk about history and get the
Speaker 1: warm and fuzzies with history, that's fine. But I don't
Speaker 1: bother looking at any scoring or this or that or
Speaker 1: anything at Augusta prior to two thousand and three because
Speaker 1: the ball was when the ball was changed. There's a
Speaker 1: reason six lefties have won in Augusta since since the
Speaker 1: Prov one X came out, since titleist prov one X
Speaker 1: came out, because they could hit bomb cuts with it,
Speaker 1: and you could control a bomb cut, you can control
Speaker 1: a knuckle cut, and you could hit that shot with
Speaker 1: that ball, whereas it's harder to control a hard draw
Speaker 1: with that ball. So it gave the lefties. That ball
Speaker 1: gave lefties and a decent advantage like Bubba, like Weird
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and three. Now, Weird didn't win
Speaker 1: it with his ball striking, and he wanted to know
Speaker 1: three with his putting. But nonetheless, I've betually he felt
Speaker 1: more confident standing on holes like ten and thirteen and
Speaker 1: fourteen and two when you really got to slide a
Speaker 1: hard one around the corner to give yourself an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get to certain holes and to have to have
Speaker 1: the axium amount of distance and get yourself out there
Speaker 1: with a cut, whereas before the ball would spin a
Speaker 1: little bit more and you couldn't you didn't get the distance,
Speaker 1: whereas the guys who could turn one down with a
Speaker 1: spinier ball took just enough spin off of it, but
Speaker 1: could still control it. Yeah, and the game now, the
Speaker 1: game shifted right then and there in three So that's
Speaker 1: where I think it really changed. And then drivers has
Speaker 1: slowly caught up with the ball. But the ball, I mean,
Speaker 1: the ball has been ahead of a game for the
Speaker 1: better part of thirteen fourteen years now.
Speaker 2: So and then that same regards, do you think that's
Speaker 2: why the majority of the great players on tour an
Speaker 2: hour the right handers are hitting cuts like you see
Speaker 2: Dustin Johnson. What's happened to his game since he's moved
Speaker 2: from a right to left ball flight to a left
Speaker 2: to right.
Speaker 1: No question, no question. You have more control over the
Speaker 1: balls these days. It's really hard. I don't care unless
Speaker 1: you're going to go to a whipier shaft or a
Speaker 1: little more loft and create a little more spin. It's
Speaker 1: really difficult to control when you're creating speeds that those
Speaker 1: guys are creating. For me, it's not that big a deal.
Speaker 1: I'm one sixty one to one sixty three ball speed,
Speaker 1: you know, which is low end on the PGA tour.
Speaker 1: It's not even middle of the road anymore. I think
Speaker 1: one sixty five or one sixty six is and so,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not playing and I don't have
Speaker 1: my golf muscles and I'm missing bones in my hand.
Speaker 1: But still I'm you know, one sixty one to one
Speaker 1: sixty three is kind of low end for PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: So I can control the draw a little bit because
Speaker 1: I'm not creating the speed. But those guys, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: if those guys want to try to play a hard draw,
Speaker 1: it can get out of control, or it can get
Speaker 1: blocked in a heartbeat with no spin and not come around.
Speaker 1: I remember Rory McCrory when he switched to Nike equipment
Speaker 1: had that problem. I was looking at his numbers when
Speaker 1: he first went to Nike at Golf Channel doing something.
Speaker 1: We were talking about Dick. We were talking about either
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi when he made his debut. I believe it
Speaker 1: was Abudabby and I'm looking, I'm like, God, his draw
Speaker 1: is not gone now. He had something technical going on
Speaker 1: in his golf swing that wasn't good at the time.
Speaker 1: He gets some bad footwork going from what I remember
Speaker 1: looking at the video. But the one thing that I
Speaker 1: noticed is that that didn't lies. I'm looking at at
Speaker 1: at track man data or radar data, and I'm looking,
Speaker 1: I'm going he was spinning his his titleist ball and
Speaker 1: his titles driver at twenty seven hundred RPMs the year before.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, he goes to Nike and now he's
Speaker 1: spinning in at twenty one. That's a six hundred RPMs.
Speaker 1: Is a huge difference. And that's why h you know,
Speaker 1: and he liked to play that tight little draw out there,
Speaker 1: and that draw wasn't drawing yep. So that's something that
Speaker 1: he had to get used to and he did and
Speaker 1: he won, and he won two majors. So but but
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing that could happen. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's why a lot of the guys who
Speaker 1: were hitting, who hit, who have gone to the cut,
Speaker 1: like Dustin Johnson, And you can see what kind of
Speaker 1: a of a driver it's turned Dustin Johnson into going
Speaker 1: to that cut.
Speaker 2: So I've got a kind of a theory. And you know, everybody,
Speaker 2: so Patrick Reid is, you know, obviously a world class player,
Speaker 2: but he struggled in majors, and you know, I always
Speaker 2: contend that it's because he hits that hard draw and
Speaker 2: with the major championship setups, everything gets ratcheted up a little,
Speaker 2: and that draws. It's tougher to hold greens, it's tougher
Speaker 2: to hit to tough pin pins, especially when the greens
Speaker 2: are firm. Do you think that you know Patrick Reed
Speaker 2: is a player that you know kind of fits that
Speaker 2: right to left mold, that you know might not be
Speaker 2: a perfect fit for a tough setup.
Speaker 1: Yes, and no. I think that I think that just
Speaker 1: in general, he tends to struggle with his ball striking,
Speaker 1: and it more has to happens to do with Like
Speaker 1: you said, it is a right to left ball flight,
Speaker 1: for sure, but it's more about how he hits that
Speaker 1: right to left welf flight than the actual right to
Speaker 1: left ball flight. He's very handsy. He's got a lot
Speaker 1: of toe drop in the top of his back swing
Speaker 1: with his with his golf club, which means that when
Speaker 1: you look at his swing through impact, he's got to
Speaker 1: exit up, which I call exit up, which means the
Speaker 1: arms have to cross over really quick, and he's got
Speaker 1: to get that hard release, which means the club base
Speaker 1: isn't square very long in the hitting zone. That one
Speaker 1: foot behind a one foot in front of the ball,
Speaker 1: So when his timing's off it can go everywhere. He
Speaker 1: can hit snaps, he can hit blocks, And so I
Speaker 1: think if if he gets the club face square at
Speaker 1: the top and he doesn't have so much toe droop,
Speaker 1: which you know can say, and you know he's he's
Speaker 1: cuffed at the top with his left hand, and whenever
Speaker 1: you get cuffed at the top of your left hand
Speaker 1: versus a flat left wrist, you're gonna have to You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to make that extra move on the way
Speaker 1: down to square, keep the club to square, the club
Speaker 1: base up. I know it because that's exactly what I
Speaker 1: did in college and I had to change it. And
Speaker 1: it took me three or four years between the Canadian
Speaker 1: Tour and the Web Tour and then on in the
Speaker 1: PGA or to change it. It was It's very hard.
Speaker 1: It was very hard for me to change that. I
Speaker 1: had to change it slowly and incrementally over time, and
Speaker 1: it had to evolve rather than just blow it up
Speaker 1: and do a wholesale change. It was. It was very
Speaker 1: difficult for me. And he might not want to change it.
Speaker 1: He might figure out a way to control it. But uh,
Speaker 1: I think that that's one of the reasons why he
Speaker 1: gets he's inconsistent with his ball striking for sure.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. It's interesting. So, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: I had Michael Clayton on the podcast and he talked
Speaker 2: a lot about technology, and I'm curious, do you feel
Speaker 2: like that technology has kind of diminished the skill of
Speaker 2: the game, And uh, you know, you have great players
Speaker 2: aren't as great as they would be. The difference between
Speaker 2: a great player and a and an average tour pro
Speaker 2: is closer because of Is that? Is that what's leading
Speaker 2: this parody in the game we see now?
Speaker 1: I think so, you know, that's a hard one to answer.
Speaker 1: I still think there's a great amount of skill. I
Speaker 1: think what Dustin Johnson does with the driver is an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of skill. There's an incredible amount of skill involved,
Speaker 1: not only physical skill, but technical skill as well involved
Speaker 1: with what he does with the driver. But there's no doubt,
Speaker 1: and I'd be lying if I didn't if I didn't
Speaker 1: say that the technological advances in golf over the last
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen years have absolutely helped these guys in
Speaker 1: all facets, from track Man to this new quad Foresight
Speaker 1: that's now out. These launch monitors who are given these
Speaker 1: guys instant data on their club and their club that speed,
Speaker 1: and their launch angles and their attack angles and everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, they can diagnose what's going on from swing
Speaker 1: to swing to swing, and they can change from swing
Speaker 1: to swing to swing versus back in the day you
Speaker 1: might have to go through half a bucket before you
Speaker 1: figure out what's going wrong. You can get it. You
Speaker 1: can figure out what's going wrong and one golf swing
Speaker 1: these days, so that has a play in it. But
Speaker 1: there's definitely technology overall has helped these guys. And yes,
Speaker 1: I think it has created some parody in the game,
Speaker 1: no doubt. And I don't mind parody. That's another question.
Speaker 1: Do you do you like parody or do you like
Speaker 1: some guy dominating? You like that that Tiger Woods era dominance,
Speaker 1: And quite honestly, I kind of like the parody. I
Speaker 1: like I like knowing or not knowing who's gonna win
Speaker 1: every week. With Tiger in the field, it was one
Speaker 1: to three, you know, he's a one to three, one
Speaker 1: to four favorite every every week, or even better or
Speaker 1: even better more than that, or five, you know, seven
Speaker 1: to five or whatever you want to call it. He was.
Speaker 1: He was old, uber dominant. It was ridiculous what he did.
Speaker 1: But but I like it now where we're going into
Speaker 1: Augusta and no one's got a clue because you can
Speaker 1: point to anything in these guys games and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's got a hole here, he's got a hole here,
Speaker 1: he's got a tiny hole here in his game for
Speaker 1: this place, and you just like, you have no idea
Speaker 1: that this is one of the most wide open masters,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, in years, based on all kinds of
Speaker 1: different factors. But technology has definitely given these guys, has
Speaker 1: brought everybody closer together because now out there you're absolutely
Speaker 1: splitting hairs, absolutely splitting hairs. I've turned to a fairly
Speaker 1: keen cyclist over the last four or five years, and
Speaker 1: it's almost like what the guys do in the Tour
Speaker 1: de Front or the Giro do Italian and the big
Speaker 1: World Tour team is that when they go into testing
Speaker 1: and they're finehunting their bodies and their bikes, I mean
Speaker 1: it is, they're looking for absolute marginal gains, I mean
Speaker 1: two percent here to be, you know, a tenth of
Speaker 1: a second faster than the next guy, and that makes
Speaker 1: all the difference in the world. When you're riding the
Speaker 1: bike at thirty miles an hour, and it's the same
Speaker 1: thing goes in the golf world. It's the same exact
Speaker 1: thing in the golf world. These guys are looking for
Speaker 1: just marginal gains at the highest level and they're trying
Speaker 1: to find that through this equipment or this workout routine,
Speaker 1: or I ate that for dinner and that didn't sit
Speaker 1: well with me and I had a tough round, So
Speaker 1: I'm going to get that out of my diet. Literally.
Speaker 1: I think that that's what a lot of guys do,
Speaker 1: and it and it's all to fine tune the athlete.
Speaker 1: And that's the way all sports have gone to over
Speaker 1: the last ten or fifteen years. The evidence by the
Speaker 1: Golden State Warriors with all the stuff that they do
Speaker 1: off the basketball court. The guys do to keep their
Speaker 1: bodies in shape and so on and so forth, doing
Speaker 1: hyperbaric chambers and the cryotherapy and all that stuff for
Speaker 1: their body. It's it's it's it's all good stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's all leading to more parody in the game.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, Yeah, I think it's kind of GoF
Speaker 2: has shifted from an NBA like game where NBA is
Speaker 2: so dominated by superstars like you mentioned in the Warriors,
Speaker 2: and they're they're super team. You've got Lebron Like if
Speaker 2: you don't have a if you don't have one of
Speaker 2: the five best players in the league, you don't really
Speaker 2: have a shot at the title. And now GoF has
Speaker 2: shifted from you know, that superstar driven game with Tiger
Speaker 2: and VJ and Ernie and David Duvall and his heyday,
Speaker 2: but now it's much more like the NFL, where weekend,
Speaker 2: week out, anybody can win. You know, you're never surprised
Speaker 2: a three and you.
Speaker 1: Got a hundred. Yeah, you got one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: four guys in a field weekend and week out, one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six during the summertime and or starting
Speaker 1: up here pretty quick, and honestly, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: to one hundred and thirty of them have a chance
Speaker 1: to win legitimately. Legitimately, one hundred and twenty to one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty guys have a legitimate chance to win,
Speaker 1: you know, on any given week if they do, if
Speaker 1: one guy does a little bit of more of this
Speaker 1: or a little bit more of that, he can win
Speaker 1: the golf tournament. And it's not and it's not that much,
Speaker 1: it's very little that separates the guy who misses the
Speaker 1: cut to the guy who wins. Quite honestly, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, it's a putt here, a putt there, or
Speaker 1: getting hot at the right time on a Saturday, or
Speaker 1: you know, if simple as a warm up on the range,
Speaker 1: moving your ball position or this or that, it's just
Speaker 1: splitting hairs.
Speaker 2: So, you know, having having played in in three Masters,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: you know, playing a gusta maybe something that gets kind
Speaker 2: of shoot under the rug and doesn't get talked about
Speaker 2: a lot. That's you know, kind of important for success
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 1: Oh, important for success? Oh oh, you mean from a
Speaker 1: play standpoint around that place. You know, there's you know,
Speaker 1: over the years, we've talked so much about it on
Speaker 1: Golf Channel. I think we've we've talked about everything. We've
Speaker 1: talked it to death, and there's really nothing that I
Speaker 1: can think of that gets shoot under the rugs, so
Speaker 1: to speak, as far as what you need to do
Speaker 1: on that golf course as far as I'm concerned. But
Speaker 1: if I had to pick one, since the changes, the
Speaker 1: final changes in six when they added all the distance
Speaker 1: and planted the trees, you really have to drive your
Speaker 1: ball now whereas it was truly a second shot golf course.
Speaker 1: You know, back in the day when Tiger won by twelve,
Speaker 1: and Faldo came back and beat Norman in ninety six,
Speaker 1: and so on, it all the way back to well
Speaker 1: well before that and into the seventies, in eighties and
Speaker 1: even sixties, you know, you could spray it here, spray
Speaker 1: it there, and create angles for yourself to certain hole locations.
Speaker 1: Now those angles have been chopped in some cases chopped
Speaker 1: in half, especially eleven and seventeen and maybe even fifteen
Speaker 1: because of the tree plannings. You can't create the same
Speaker 1: angles that those guys used to create. So putting your
Speaker 1: being able to drive the ball in a certain section
Speaker 1: of the fairway and still create that angle, even though
Speaker 1: the angle might be not as acute, a little more obtuse.
Speaker 1: It's it's important to still drive your ball. It's important
Speaker 1: to drive your ball, and I don't think that's talked
Speaker 1: about because quite honestly, when you look at the statistics
Speaker 1: of the Masters winners over the last probably since like
Speaker 1: I said, since O three, which is where I like
Speaker 1: to go back to, you have to hit greens, you
Speaker 1: have to hit you have to hit at least fifty greens.
Speaker 1: That's that is the that is the gold standard number
Speaker 1: to win. To win the Masters, you have to hit
Speaker 1: fifty greens. Very few people in that span since so
Speaker 1: three have hit less than fifty greens and won the Masters.
Speaker 1: The highest is is uh Is Adam Scott in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: who hit fifty five greens. The lowest was Mike Weir,
Speaker 1: who hit thirty eight and won the Masters, which is
Speaker 1: amazing to me that he hit thirty eight greens and
Speaker 1: won the Masters in oh three because he putted and
Speaker 1: chipped his rear end off. But you got to hit
Speaker 1: fifty greens to have it, to have a chand deep
Speaker 1: or very close to fifty greens.
Speaker 2: Do you know offhand how many speech hit last year?
Speaker 1: I want to say last year. I'm I didn't know
Speaker 1: how many speech hit. I looked at the winners just recently.
Speaker 1: But when he won, I believe you get fifty four fifteen,
Speaker 1: he hit fifty four.
Speaker 2: I feel like that sounds Danny will Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Danny Willet only hit Danny Willet I think hit
Speaker 1: forty eight or forty nine last year and ended up winning.
Speaker 1: But it was a tough year. It was a windy,
Speaker 1: it was firm, it was fast. Yep, it was it
Speaker 1: was playing. It was playing difficult last year, a much
Speaker 1: more difficult than it had the year prior when it
Speaker 1: was a little softer and you could get it more pins. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of it has to deal with
Speaker 1: the weather. Like Zach Johnson didn't hit fifty greens and
Speaker 1: O seven. I played that year and it was a
Speaker 1: nightmare that year.
Speaker 2: It's uh, it's interesting with the weather forecast, it looks
Speaker 2: like it's going to be soft. I always say to
Speaker 2: people the you know, the number one thing that you
Speaker 2: can do to defend any golf course against these guys
Speaker 2: is it play firm and fast. And it's always a
Speaker 2: shame when they they the course kind of you know,
Speaker 2: it puts such a damper on on who's playing the
Speaker 2: best when it when a course plays softer, because you know,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, your misses aren't exaggerated. So with
Speaker 2: with the course conditions in mind, you know who are
Speaker 2: who are some guys you like? Next week?
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what. With the course conditions in mind.
Speaker 1: I like Rory McElroy. All four of his majors were
Speaker 1: one on soft golf. Courses can't deny that even even
Speaker 1: fourteen at Hoylake was a softer, less windy, less bouncy
Speaker 1: Hoylake than we saw in O six, which when it
Speaker 1: was completely brown and running. I mean you could put
Speaker 1: the ball from one hundred and fifty yards onto the green.
Speaker 1: And I think that when the golf course is soft,
Speaker 1: as we've seen before with Rory, his chest gets a
Speaker 1: little bit more puffed out because when the ball, when
Speaker 1: any big hitter, when the ball just hits and sticks,
Speaker 1: that makes the fairway that much wider, which means they
Speaker 1: can swing that much harder, which means they're going to
Speaker 1: be that much farther ahead of the next guy and
Speaker 1: hitting that much less club into the Now, they can
Speaker 1: turn the sub arizon on the greens, but you can't
Speaker 1: turn that they don't have sub airs in the fairways,
Speaker 1: so so the greens can get fairly firm, but the
Speaker 1: fairways can be soft. And I and I quite honestly,
Speaker 1: I think that plays into the longer hitter's hands. I
Speaker 1: mean most golf courses these days now do now anyway,
Speaker 1: But I think that from a from a from a
Speaker 1: standpoint of of the longer hit, the guys who drive
Speaker 1: it really well, and and and and in total driving
Speaker 1: Rom who's obviously playing fantastic and as one of the
Speaker 1: best drivers of the golf ball on the planet, Rom
Speaker 1: DJ Rory. I think Rom's going to surprise people next week.
Speaker 1: I know Augusta is not really kind to first timers,
Speaker 1: but I think Rom's going to surprise people next week.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't doubt if he's in the top five
Speaker 1: going into Sunday on the back nine with a chance.
Speaker 1: I think Rory is if if Rory can putt, if
Speaker 1: the putter shows up, Rory's going to be there. I
Speaker 1: think Dustin's going to be there. The weird thing about
Speaker 1: Dustin is is that the last number one to win
Speaker 1: the Masters was two Tiger. He was the last number
Speaker 1: one to win the Masters. He was number two going
Speaker 1: into the Masters, you know, five when he beat Christa
Speaker 1: Marco in the playoff. DJ was actually number one going
Speaker 1: into the Masters that year. So history's going a little
Speaker 1: against Dustin Johnson. And the average world rank who's won
Speaker 1: the Masters the last say, since twenty ten is twelve.
Speaker 1: That's the average world rank. And who's sitting at number
Speaker 1: twelve right in now? Patrick Reid funny enough, and right
Speaker 1: around there thirteen is Justin Rose, who's kind of starting
Speaker 1: to turn into a little bit of a chic pick
Speaker 1: for next week. And again with Justin, it's the putter.
Speaker 1: If the putter shows up, Justin's always got a chance
Speaker 1: at Augustin National. He's got a very good record there.
Speaker 1: As far as a sleeper pick for me, Paul Casey
Speaker 1: not a sleeper pick. I think Paul his game is
Speaker 1: starting to round into form, get better. He loves that place.
Speaker 1: You've got perfect ball flight again, a guy who bombs it.
Speaker 1: You can hit it both directions, right to left, left
Speaker 1: to right. I think Paul's gonna I think Paul's going
Speaker 1: to be there too, and he finished fourth last year
Speaker 1: and he's he's also had a tremendous record at Augusta National.
Speaker 1: But the sleeper pick I think for me is Mark Leishman,
Speaker 1: ye bend of my dark horse obviously One Bay Hill
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, has a T four. He's
Speaker 1: only played in four Masters, missed three or four cuts,
Speaker 1: but the T four was in thirteen. He knows how
Speaker 1: to play the place, and he's in good form right now,
Speaker 1: and maybe he can recapture some of those vibes from
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen and play well again next week. But I
Speaker 1: like him as a sleeper pick.
Speaker 2: Austin's tend to play well at Augusta too, and.
Speaker 1: I could, Yes, yes, they do.
Speaker 2: So, you know the usually the you know, the firm
Speaker 2: and fast greens. They have a big advantage coming from
Speaker 2: the sand belt. Yeah. I like Leishman's chance. I just
Speaker 2: did my sleepers. I had Fleetwood on there. Who's you know,
Speaker 2: he's gone from one hundredth and to thirty third in
Speaker 2: the world rankings. He's another rookie though. That's that It's interesting.
Speaker 2: I think I think the softer, the softer conditions will
Speaker 2: help rookies obviously.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of something that.
Speaker 1: That's why wrong, That's why I like rom Andy so
Speaker 1: much next week, because I do believe the softer conditions
Speaker 1: are gonna take the are gonna take the bounce away,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna take away. That's gonna take away the
Speaker 1: advantage the veterans have, who've seen that place under numerous conditions.
Speaker 1: They've seen it fiery, they've seen it slow, and when
Speaker 1: when when you haven't when you've seen the ball bounce
Speaker 1: I've played three years one year was fairly soft. I
Speaker 1: think it was six when Michelson won. That was my
Speaker 1: rookie year there and I finished fourteenth. I played, I
Speaker 1: played very well. The next year it was blowing twenty
Speaker 1: every day. It was like the windshield factor was like
Speaker 1: thirty eight. It was ridiculous. And the golf course was
Speaker 1: full of fire, I mean hard and fast, and it
Speaker 1: absolutely ruined me. And because I wasn't used to that,
Speaker 1: and O wait was kind of similar. It was kind
Speaker 1: of halfway in between. But when you haven't seen that
Speaker 1: golf course with fire in it, with that bounce, I
Speaker 1: mean when you see a ball bound in certain spots,
Speaker 1: that can be intimidating for certain guys. When you think
Speaker 1: you've get a perfect drive in a certain area and
Speaker 1: it's often too the pine straw and you're having to
Speaker 1: create something crazy around a pine tree and out of
Speaker 1: the pine straw that can get to that can get
Speaker 1: to a rookie. There's no doubt, you know.
Speaker 2: I've got a kind of a theory on why everybody
Speaker 2: loves Obviously it's a huge advantage playing there every year
Speaker 2: where the fan gets familiar. But I think Augusta does
Speaker 2: such a great job of you know, the course constantly
Speaker 2: asks players to hit the heroic shot, and when you
Speaker 2: pull it off, you've got, you know, unbelievable looks at
Speaker 2: birdie and the eagle. But when you don't, it's, you know,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden turns into a tough power bogie.
Speaker 2: Would you say that you know that it compared to
Speaker 2: most courses that the tour stats at has that more
Speaker 2: of a risk reward feel throughout the round than everywhere else.
Speaker 1: At Augusta National versus the rest of the golf versus
Speaker 1: the rest of the golf courses, I would say, I
Speaker 1: would say so, yeah, I would say Augusta nationals uh
Speaker 1: prime for that that I mean that. I think that's
Speaker 1: that's it. I think that's a hallmark of a lot
Speaker 1: of mackenzie golf courses in general. Quite honestly, I think
Speaker 1: he was ahead of his time in that in that regard.
Speaker 1: I think that, uh Mackenzie loved from what I you know,
Speaker 1: playing growing up playing in Santaate State, we got to
Speaker 1: play Posta Tiempo every every Monday for four years I did.
Speaker 1: So I got to know Mackenzie very well in that
Speaker 1: regard at Post Temple and kind of how he what
Speaker 1: His philosophy was, and you might have a pin that's
Speaker 1: located in one section of green, you're aiming thirty feet
Speaker 1: right or left of a pin and using that slope
Speaker 1: to bring it in. I think that that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff is awesome. That's that's why Mackenzie's my favorite architect,
Speaker 1: because he just used He used the land so well
Speaker 1: and used you had to use your imagination and understand
Speaker 1: the entire golf course and understand, you know, uh, where
Speaker 1: the ball could feed from, and you wouldn't you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to attack every flagstick. You could. You could use
Speaker 1: the banking and you could use different slopes to get
Speaker 1: the ball to gather the ball where you want. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the beauties of Augusta National in its
Speaker 1: risk reward. Sometimes you don't want it very rarely. You
Speaker 1: want to go right out of tin and Augusta National
Speaker 1: very rarely. You you you're constantly playing away from pins,
Speaker 1: even with wedges, to to use slopes to to kind
Speaker 1: of take the fire out of the out of the
Speaker 1: out of the bound and the and the ball and
Speaker 1: let the ball gather. And sometimes twenty feet is a
Speaker 1: phenomenal shot because if you go with that pin where
Speaker 1: twenty feet right or left is a dominal shot. You
Speaker 1: go out that pinning, don't pull it off like you said.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can make a double bull, you can
Speaker 1: make a double bogie and not have a penalty shot
Speaker 1: very easily. So just by messing around trying to get
Speaker 1: cute with a pitch shot. So it's very important to
Speaker 1: take your medicine. And that's another thing where rookies tend
Speaker 1: to struggle with, especially in today's in today's day and age,
Speaker 1: where everything is go go go right at pins, right
Speaker 1: at the pin, right at the pin, right at the pin,
Speaker 1: fire and go Augusta Nationals a throwback, and you can't.
Speaker 1: You really can't do that there.
Speaker 2: It's it's interesting, I call you know what a lot
Speaker 2: of the tour golf is is kind of robot golf
Speaker 2: where it's just hit it far and straight and then
Speaker 2: hit it right at the flag. And what we're what
Speaker 2: we're seeing this year is, you know, two of the
Speaker 2: most exciting tournaments have been like the match play where
Speaker 2: you're playing at Austin Country Club, which is you know,
Speaker 2: a shorter set up with you know a lot of
Speaker 2: risk reward, but you know that golf course was so
Speaker 2: firm and fast that it played, you know, so much
Speaker 2: differently than the usual one. And then they had the
Speaker 2: w GC Mexico, which you know was was very short
Speaker 2: but also very firm and fast. Like, do you think
Speaker 2: that the tour needs to look at at going to
Speaker 2: more unique and different setups, because you know, this tour
Speaker 2: schedule is kind of a slog of the same type
Speaker 2: of golf course weekend week out.
Speaker 1: Well in a lot of instances, honestly, in a lot
Speaker 1: of instances, the tour doesn't have They don't have that reach.
Speaker 1: I'd love to say, yes they need to, but the
Speaker 1: economics of it, in the business side of it, tell me,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got contracts with certain golf courses and
Speaker 1: certain places for X amount of years and we're not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. So in that regard, it's up to the
Speaker 1: tour officials in my opinion, to set the golf course
Speaker 1: up and Slugger and his crew and Mark Russell and
Speaker 1: his crew when they're out there, those guys, uh and
Speaker 1: all the guys who do set ups, and one guy
Speaker 1: sets up the front nine, usually one guy set up
Speaker 1: the back nine, and it's up to it's up to
Speaker 1: our tour tour officials at the regular tour stops to
Speaker 1: really make it interesting for the players, and they can
Speaker 1: only do so much. You can, Hey, listen, there's certain
Speaker 1: golf courses out there where you can put lipstick on
Speaker 1: a pig, but it's still a pig, you know. So so,
Speaker 1: I mean, they can do whatever they want, but they
Speaker 1: can't dress you know, you can, you can dress it
Speaker 1: up only so much, so you know it's it's uh Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harbor Town, you can put in the same vein Harbor
Speaker 1: Town is always exciting.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: It's a Harbortown is awesome for that same reason, same reason.
Speaker 1: W GC Mexico and the w GC del Mats play
Speaker 1: we were amazing, short, tight, different looks off of ts,
Speaker 1: put a little wind in there. I love those golf courses.
Speaker 1: Love those golf courses. Lots of options off the tees
Speaker 1: and you gotta you got to move the ball both directions.
Speaker 1: You gotta hit it high, hit it low. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would be a huge fan off every week we got
Speaker 1: to play a golf course like that. It's just unfortunately
Speaker 1: it's it's not the case. It's just not the case,
Speaker 1: just due to a lot of different factors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's also not easy to get a
Speaker 2: golf course if it's a private club, to give up
Speaker 2: the golf course for two weeks.
Speaker 1: You know, that's well, you know, we played a decent
Speaker 1: amount of tPCS too, and quite honestly, the tPCS, because
Speaker 1: we own them, they don't have a sighte fee attached
Speaker 1: to them. So that's good business for the tour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so they don't. You don't have to pay
Speaker 1: a site see at the tPCS, and you have to
Speaker 1: pay a site fee at other golf courses.
Speaker 2: Most tPCS were built from nineteen eighty through two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, you know, and that's not necessarily the uh,
Speaker 2: the era of when great golf was being built. So
Speaker 2: it's that's what i'd call.
Speaker 1: That the dark ages there maybe fifty sixties seventies in
Speaker 1: certain areas too, and so those are a little the
Speaker 1: dark ages and golf course architecture there too.
Speaker 2: So you know, you're it seems like, you know, from
Speaker 2: Twitter and everything, you're pretty interested in architecture, is it.
Speaker 2: You know, is this something that you got into after
Speaker 2: your career or were you really into it from early
Speaker 2: on because you got to you know, you got exposed
Speaker 2: to some great architecture out in California as a young kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think it's the form. I think
Speaker 1: it's the latter. I think. I just you know, I
Speaker 1: think to a certain extent as a golfer. This is
Speaker 1: going to sound really really flowery and and uh kind
Speaker 1: of corny, but I think that we're artists as golfers.
Speaker 1: That's how I look at golfers. I don't look I mean,
Speaker 1: some guys might be more tacticians or mechanics as I
Speaker 1: like to call them, and guys who you know, work
Speaker 1: on positions and all this. But quite honestly, I think
Speaker 1: in regards that the best players have always been artists,
Speaker 1: and golf courses are canvas. And I grew up and
Speaker 1: I have a good reason to think like that. My
Speaker 1: mom is by trade as an artist. She has a
Speaker 1: master's from San Jase State in graphic design. And when
Speaker 1: I was a kid growing up, our coffee table books
Speaker 1: were architectural digest, mone Mayonnai Dega, Rembrandt, all the greats
Speaker 1: of art, especially Impressionist work, and so had I have.
Speaker 1: I have a very fond memory of art. I have
Speaker 1: a very healthy respect for art, and because of my
Speaker 1: mom and so for me, the golf course and golf
Speaker 1: course architecture was just another extension of artwork, because much
Speaker 1: like artwork hanging on a wall in a gallery, you
Speaker 1: can have one person walk up to a dega and go,
Speaker 1: that is the most gorgeous looking thing I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in the world. And then you could go over to
Speaker 1: a Monet sitting right next to this diga, and you
Speaker 1: can go, and another person will go, this is the
Speaker 1: most gorgeous thing that I've ever seen, and they'd both
Speaker 1: be right. And that's how I look at golf course architecture.
Speaker 1: Are there some dogs out there? Yeah, there's there might
Speaker 1: be some stuff done by the greats that I don't like,
Speaker 1: but very few things. Much like the greats and golf
Speaker 1: course architecture, when you're talking about rainers, CEB McDonald, Tillinghast, Mackenzie, Ross,
Speaker 1: you know the greats of the Golden Age, you know
Speaker 1: the guys who were the greatest of all time at
Speaker 1: what they did, and the pioneers. I think that very
Speaker 1: few works from those guys were dogs. There are some
Speaker 1: you can go, wow, this is a this is a Ross,
Speaker 1: or this is a McKenzie. Like some people say that
Speaker 1: about Claremont country Club up in the East Bay Hill. Wow,
Speaker 1: this is a mckendie. It's a cute little six thousand
Speaker 1: yard golf course in the in the in the East
Speaker 1: State Hills that no one knows about that it's a McKenzie.
Speaker 1: Same with Green Hills Country Club right up the road
Speaker 1: from my front norm when I grew up in stan Mitfield, California,
Speaker 1: in sam Bruno or Millbray, it's a it's a McKenzie
Speaker 1: and no one hardly knows that it's there. But it's
Speaker 1: a cute little, I don't know, sixty two hundred yard
Speaker 1: golf course. That's the McKenzie that people either love or hate.
Speaker 1: So I just I've always looked at golf course architecture
Speaker 1: from the perspective of it being art. I've never tried
Speaker 1: to assign values, even though I probably have in the past,
Speaker 1: I've never tried to assign I've never purposely tried to
Speaker 1: assign values to rate a golf course on certain things.
Speaker 1: I think if I had to, the one thing would
Speaker 1: be shot values. I mean, what are the shot values? Like,
Speaker 1: do you do you play a lot of different clubs?
Speaker 1: Do you have to use it a lot of different clubs?
Speaker 1: Off the t's do you do?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 1: You go through your whole bag throughout the day. How
Speaker 1: much strategy. I'm a huge fan of of strategic golf.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of just brought force US
Speaker 1: Open style golf courses. Quite honestly, I like being able
Speaker 1: to create a so I love That's why I'm a
Speaker 1: huge McKenzie fan. I love being able to you know,
Speaker 1: why are you driving it way over here when the
Speaker 1: middle of the fairway's here? Well, the pins on the
Speaker 1: right today, and that's how you get to that tent.
Speaker 1: You've got to be way over here, and you might
Speaker 1: have a longer shot, but I've got a better angle
Speaker 1: than you sitting on the right, even though you're a
Speaker 1: club or two shorter than I am. In an agree.
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of stuff that I love about
Speaker 1: strategic golf courses and the old school golf courses. And
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll always be art to me. And it's
Speaker 1: in the eye of the beholder, quite honestly. You might
Speaker 1: not like dope. You might a certain dope stuff. You
Speaker 1: might not like certain crunshot course stuff or Hant stuff
Speaker 1: or Kyle Phillips, who's one of my favorite favorite architects,
Speaker 1: and the stuff that he's done over the last few years,
Speaker 1: I think is really good stuff. I think all those
Speaker 1: guys are are kind of a throwbacks of the old
Speaker 1: school guys, only in this modern era. And I'm glad
Speaker 1: to see that they're kind of taking some of the
Speaker 1: some of the things that that all the guys back
Speaker 1: in the twenties did and they're kind of trying to
Speaker 1: live it on their golf courses just a little bit
Speaker 1: with their own modern twist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd agree with you with the art thing wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you gave all of those architects that
Speaker 2: you just rattled off the same piece of land, they'd
Speaker 2: all come back with completely different routings and golf courses,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's the body of it, and they'd
Speaker 2: all be brilliant.
Speaker 1: Probably, they'd all be brilliant.
Speaker 2: Yep. And that's like, you know why, it's completely art.
Speaker 2: It's a complete form of art, and you know it.
Speaker 2: It's there's so many intricacies when you play a great
Speaker 2: golf course and you learn stuff over and over every
Speaker 2: time you play. I think that's one of the ways
Speaker 2: I think about golf courses is like, would I want
Speaker 2: to play here every day. You know, you hit on
Speaker 2: a lot of great things with shot values, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: does it Does it make me hit different shots? Do
Speaker 2: I use all my clubs in my bag? Is there
Speaker 2: a good variety in their par threes?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I think there's nothing worse than when you go to
Speaker 2: a golf course and every part three is between two
Speaker 2: hundred and two hundred and twenty yards. You know, psychic,
Speaker 2: You're gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I will literally, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I will literally change tea boxes. So if the guys say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're playing from the back, tief, No, I'm gonna play
Speaker 1: fifth par three from one hundred and fifty yards because
Speaker 1: that pins a dumb pin from two twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, seriously, it's a it's a golf
Speaker 2: course's job to test all aspects of your game, you know.
Speaker 2: And if you're just if a par three's or part
Speaker 2: three should have variety, they should test your wedge game,
Speaker 2: they should test your mid iron game, your long iron game.
Speaker 2: You know, it shouldn't just be a test of how
Speaker 2: good you can hit a five or four iron.
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, I'm of the mind that a golf course
Speaker 1: has I think a good golf course has three things
Speaker 1: to start with. And this is really my only, I
Speaker 1: guess rule, if you would say, if you want to
Speaker 1: call it a rule, it has to have a great
Speaker 1: short part three under one hundred and fifty yards okay,
Speaker 1: with trouble all over the place, or something that tests
Speaker 1: your way nine iron, eight iron okay, but no more
Speaker 1: than an eight iron from the back teas okay. And
Speaker 1: in some cases, you know, people hit different if you
Speaker 1: play the right teas. Let's say your eight iron only
Speaker 1: goes one hundred and twenty play one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: yard t box one hundred and ten yard te box
Speaker 1: at the same home. Okay. It has to have a
Speaker 1: great reachable risk reward par five all right, four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty five to five hundred and twenty five yards
Speaker 1: with all kinds of issues all over the place. But
Speaker 1: you can still hit driver if you want to. I
Speaker 1: don't like the ones that take driver out of your hand.
Speaker 1: But yet, if you want to hit driver, you've got
Speaker 1: to hit a good driver but leaves you a bail area.
Speaker 1: But it's going to be a tough out to get
Speaker 1: to make to make a three maybe or a four
Speaker 1: from that at bail area. But if you hit the
Speaker 1: drive right with your driver, you've got to you know,
Speaker 1: a mid iron to a long iron in your hand
Speaker 1: is from the back tees is a good as a
Speaker 1: good player, and you've got a chance to make a three.
Speaker 1: And usually the green's fairly difficult. And then the last
Speaker 1: and the least last, but not least is a little
Speaker 1: part four. Love the drivable part four. And again you
Speaker 1: got to make it tough. You gotta make I think
Speaker 1: in all honesty, you either got to make the layup
Speaker 1: tough and make the layup so tough with an iron
Speaker 1: that that guys don't want to do it, so that
Speaker 1: they're that are like, I don't want to lay up
Speaker 1: with a seven iron and and hit a sandwich in
Speaker 1: Why would I do that? So you, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that that I love. And then
Speaker 1: the green's got to be cautiously psychotic, as I like
Speaker 1: to say, to where it's not goofy, but it tests
Speaker 1: the player's patience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the that short part four is like
Speaker 2: in full renaissance. It's like the new thing to do,
Speaker 2: and you know, almost every golf course has them now
Speaker 2: and it is just so great. I love how those
Speaker 2: holes are ones where you can make it two, or
Speaker 2: you can make a you can make a seven, and
Speaker 2: it can just unred level so quickly without like you
Speaker 2: said about Gus, without taking a pen only shot.
Speaker 1: Or in the case or in the case of number
Speaker 1: ten at Riviera, you can make a four. You can
Speaker 1: make a seven. Yeah, that's par five in America at
Speaker 1: three hundred and ten yards.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I you know.
Speaker 2: The hole I love out at Riviera is seven. I
Speaker 2: think that that cross bunker, that that's such a good
Speaker 2: little little mid length Part four.
Speaker 1: I think I think that the probably the two most brilliant,
Speaker 1: but I'd say there's three brilliant par fours on that
Speaker 1: golf course. In my humble opinion, I think five is
Speaker 1: a brilliant par four down the hill. I think seven,
Speaker 1: agree with you, and I think eight. I love the
Speaker 1: idea of double fairways and creating angles based on where
Speaker 1: the pin is located. And I you know, I was
Speaker 1: I would be missed, be remiss if I didn't mention
Speaker 1: George Thomas with those other architects, because he's kind of
Speaker 1: the quiet one of the bunch back then, and I
Speaker 1: think did brilliant work that doesn't get as much recognized
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite golf courses. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would rivi here is one of my favorites. It's in
Speaker 1: my top ten of all time without a doubt. M h.
Speaker 2: That's it's a it's an awesome place. It's a the
Speaker 2: thing I find interesting about that, And you know, diving
Speaker 2: back a little bit into the PGA Tour, and I've
Speaker 2: said this on I think probably a couple of podcasts,
Speaker 2: but I can't the last time the winners there are
Speaker 2: historically above the age of twenty eight. I think it's
Speaker 2: been thirty or fourteen years where there's been a younger
Speaker 2: winner than twenty eight. And I think it's so much
Speaker 2: because of how you have to think, and it becomes
Speaker 2: so angle oriented that you have to think your way
Speaker 2: around the golf course. And it's not robot golf like
Speaker 2: these other places where it's just hit it close, because
Speaker 2: there's actual you know, there's you have to create the
Speaker 2: angles to make the birdies out there. And I bet
Speaker 2: you would know much more having played it in you know, competition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you do have to. You know, if it was
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for Willett and Speed the last two
Speaker 1: years that that was that average age was around thirty two,
Speaker 1: and those guys dropped it dramatically, obviously because they're obviously
Speaker 1: guys in there.
Speaker 2: Early in Midwelfes Well, I was talking about Riviera.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry. Oh oh, I thought you were talking
Speaker 1: about Augusta. I apologize. So, yeah, no, Rivier. Rivier is
Speaker 1: very similar, I think to a certain extent. You know,
Speaker 1: every year for the I was out there walking the
Speaker 1: golf course this year with Dustin Johnson watching him doing
Speaker 1: live golf, and you do you have to create angles
Speaker 1: on a lot of holes out there, uh And and
Speaker 1: George Thomas set up the greens at angles and angled
Speaker 1: the greens to where you know, if you don't get
Speaker 1: on a certain side of the fairway, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little bit more difficult attacking certain whole locations at
Speaker 1: that place. And and yet people consider it to be
Speaker 1: more of a US Open tract. But when you they
Speaker 1: didn't have hardly any rough there this year, I mean hardly,
Speaker 1: And it was spotty at best, and and there was
Speaker 1: some thick part of the golf course, but most of
Speaker 1: the golf course was extremely playable off the fairwe and
Speaker 1: and so you if you wanted to you know, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to blow it right on certain holes or
Speaker 1: left on certain holes, Uh, you had an opportunity to
Speaker 1: do so and and create yourself, give yourself proper angles
Speaker 1: into into the whole locations. But yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: I think that that golf course in and of itself
Speaker 1: does a does a fantastic job in in not only
Speaker 1: determining champions, but uh, creating really good some of the
Speaker 1: greatest shot values on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's that. I mean, it's one of the
Speaker 2: most probably the most architecturally sound golf course. Every year
Speaker 2: and year out and you see just such a diverse
Speaker 2: leader board. I wrote, like last year last year, this
Speaker 2: year was so soft and so much rain that it
Speaker 2: kind of diminished it. But the year before you had
Speaker 2: kJ Choy out there, hunt and drivers around two sixty
Speaker 2: and and in the lead on the back nine on Sunday.
Speaker 2: It's you know, and then you've got got you got
Speaker 2: Bubba who ended up winning hitting it. You know, it's
Speaker 2: some some spots eighty ninety yards past him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know, you had lots. That's the that's
Speaker 1: the wonderful thing about the golf course. You got there's
Speaker 1: lots of different ways to play it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to be a bomber to play that golf course. But
Speaker 1: the way DJ, the way DJ played that golf course
Speaker 1: because it was wet, the way he played that golf
Speaker 1: course this year, my goodness. I mean, I'm watching him
Speaker 1: go up nine, which is uphill, and there's a bunker
Speaker 1: out there at about two seventy and it's a i
Speaker 1: think two seventy to cover it or two seventy five
Speaker 1: to cover it, and he's playing with Perez and Trendall
Speaker 1: and Cameron's not long. He's one of the shorter hitters
Speaker 1: on tour, relatively short, you know, high two seventies, low
Speaker 1: two eighties. Perez is not short. Perez is above average
Speaker 1: to average average, above average on tour. And DJ Perez
Speaker 1: gets up there and bounces it, flies it in the
Speaker 1: bunker because.
Speaker 2: That plays, that plays traditionally into the wind too.
Speaker 1: You you yeah, at times, yeah, this today it was
Speaker 1: this day, it was calm, there was no win DJA,
Speaker 1: and DJ gets in Tangali bounces it into the bunker
Speaker 1: and then DJ gets up there, takes one look, one
Speaker 1: little swipe, and literally flies the bunker by thirty yards
Speaker 1: uphill two seventy five to cover it and didn't even
Speaker 1: I mean it waved at it on its way by.
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable. I get up there and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at it, going you, this is not a fair fight.
Speaker 1: This guy's hitting nine iron or a ledgeendo number nine
Speaker 1: at Riviera and these guys are laying up out of
Speaker 1: this bunker. Yeah, with no chance to get to that grain.
Speaker 1: So he just took the place apart. He did. It
Speaker 1: was it was, it was. It was interesting to watch
Speaker 1: him play that place and how how he worked himself
Speaker 1: around that golf course. But distance distance his king man,
Speaker 1: That's what he showed me there that day. He had
Speaker 1: all the shots. There's no doubt he played some beautiful,
Speaker 1: soft touchy type shots in the greens that uh, which
Speaker 1: is why I'm picking him. He's my pick to win Augusta,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I'm going out on a big win.
Speaker 1: There aren't I but the guy's just playing too good.
Speaker 1: But he showed me a lot at Riviera of what
Speaker 1: he could do with his soft touch shots from the
Speaker 1: eight iron, nine iron, seven iron type shots that you
Speaker 1: need those at Augusta National to feed it to certain
Speaker 1: whole locations so the guy is just in full control
Speaker 1: of his game right now. It's fun to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the people don't talk at the last
Speaker 2: two years. I mean, he hasn't made any putts at
Speaker 2: Augusta and he finished fourth and sixth. So it's not like,
Speaker 2: you know, like I think, if he if his putting
Speaker 2: is average, he's he's nearly impossible to beat because of
Speaker 2: just how dominating he is tea green and especially like
Speaker 2: you said, off the tea theres is so important and
Speaker 2: nobody drives it better than him.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's no doubt. And you know, people will say, well, Aaron,
Speaker 1: what about his cut. You can't cut it on thirteen.
Speaker 1: That's a key hole for him. You can't cut it
Speaker 1: on two, that's a key hole for him. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: he's got a three wood that goes two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty yards and if he turns that down, if he
Speaker 1: turns that down, which he can very easily, he's going
Speaker 1: to still be hitting iron into those holes after hitting
Speaker 1: three woods. So I'm not worried about Dustin Johnson on
Speaker 1: two or thirteen, which are two key holes that you
Speaker 1: do need to when you're his link, you do need
Speaker 1: to turn it down from right to left the rest
Speaker 1: of the holes. If he wants to hit an iron
Speaker 1: off a fourteen, he can. If he wants to hit
Speaker 1: a three wood off of fourteen and turn it down,
Speaker 1: he can. Fifteen, he can cut it. Seventeen, he can
Speaker 1: cut it. Eighteen. He has to cut it. One, he
Speaker 1: has to cut it. Three he can practice. We drive
Speaker 1: the green in the right conditions the rest of the
Speaker 1: golf course. He really doesn't have to sit up there
Speaker 1: to hit a big sling and draw. Quite honestly, he can,
Speaker 1: you know, nine. He might. He might have to finagle
Speaker 1: a straight ball or a slight draw just a little bit. Ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta sling it. But again, that's a three ord
Speaker 1: or a two iron down the hill for him, or
Speaker 1: a driving iron of some court, some some kind. Every
Speaker 1: other hole he can stand up there and hit a
Speaker 1: nice little, you know, nice little bleeder from left to
Speaker 1: right that goes through twenty. So I have no worries
Speaker 1: about DJ yeah next week, other than other than his putting.
Speaker 1: That's a good call. Yeah, he hasn't putted well at
Speaker 1: Augusta National traditionally, but he's got this new putter in
Speaker 1: the bag, and you know when speech's coming out and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, DJ's a favorite. I don't know why I'm
Speaker 1: the favorite, because there's no reason I should be the
Speaker 1: favorite based on the way Dustin's playing right now, you know.
Speaker 1: And I agree with Jordan one hundred percent, whether he's
Speaker 1: trying to take pressure off himself next week or not,
Speaker 1: he's right on any account that Dustin's the favorite next week.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, he's won three in a row and
Speaker 2: two of them have been WGCs, and you know Riviera
Speaker 2: isn't even close, so you gotta he is. He is
Speaker 2: a dominant force. So I'm kink I'm curious. I want
Speaker 2: to get into some Twitter questions. We got some good
Speaker 2: ones here, and you've mentioned some some of the courses
Speaker 2: you grew up playing in the Bay Area, and you've
Speaker 2: mentioned a few lesser known places like Green Hills and
Speaker 2: but what are you know some of your other favorites
Speaker 2: in the Bay Area that that everybody might not know about.
Speaker 1: Wow, Lincoln Park, Okay, uh, it's it's not in the greate,
Speaker 1: it's the shape. It's a muni up in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: But it might have one of the best part threes
Speaker 1: you'll ever play in number seventeen. Not only visually stunning,
Speaker 1: but just strategically. A cool hole sits downhill about two
Speaker 1: twenty hit downhill to a very small green, wide green,
Speaker 1: and often the distance to the left is the golden
Speaker 1: gate bridge that you can see clear as day. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's stunning. Actually, especially on a clear day,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely stunning. And I would, I would highly recommend
Speaker 1: people go play up there. You know, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of public golf. Go play all the muni's.
Speaker 1: Go play Palo Alto Muni, Go play San Jose Muni,
Speaker 1: go play, Go play Sunny Vale Muni, Go play San
Speaker 1: Mateo Meni now called Poplar Creek. Crystal Springs isn't a Muni,
Speaker 1: But go play Crystal Springs, a semi private golf club
Speaker 1: up on the hills there. Go play Crystal Springs. They're
Speaker 1: fun tracks. Some of them are pretty flat, as flat
Speaker 1: as pancakes. Uh, but it's just you know where I
Speaker 1: grew up. It's it's it's it's just a it's a
Speaker 1: they're fun tracks that aren't going to break your bank,
Speaker 1: and you'll have a nice day out there.
Speaker 2: Quite honestly, I gotta ask you with with the uh
Speaker 2: with Sharp Park, it sounds like that project is gonna be,
Speaker 2: you know, headed towards the restoration. You know what, what
Speaker 2: how good could that place be?
Speaker 1: That place could be the best public golf course, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, better than Harding Park if it's done right,
Speaker 1: that's serious. It could be better than Harding Park. If
Speaker 1: you take it back to what mackenzie had originally designed
Speaker 1: that place to be, it could be better. It could
Speaker 1: be the best. It could be the best public golf course.
Speaker 1: Maybe this might be a stretch, but maybe in the
Speaker 1: state of California, quite honestly, if it's done right, if
Speaker 1: it's done right, if you if you go back to
Speaker 1: a total, a true restoration, it could potentially be the
Speaker 1: best municipal golf course in in California. Yeah, in my opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot riding on it. You know, I'd
Speaker 1: want a guy who really understood McKenzie number one. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of guys that do but to do it
Speaker 1: and I've played Sharp obviously grown up, and that's another
Speaker 1: one you can add to the list. Although they've they've
Speaker 1: really let it go, quite honestly. But if that comes
Speaker 1: and pruishing, if they do it. It could be pretty magical.
Speaker 1: Actually that place, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean right for those of you that don't haven't
Speaker 2: heard about it, Sharp Parks, This municipal Mackenzie design that's
Speaker 2: right on the on the waterfront there and in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's been it's been overgrown. They've been
Speaker 2: in a big environmental fight for years, and it finally
Speaker 2: looks like the uh, the restoration plans are going to
Speaker 2: move forward. So that's something that we'll we'll have to
Speaker 2: keep an eye on. I I want to get out
Speaker 2: there and play it and see it before and you know,
Speaker 2: always it gives you a good mindset of what how
Speaker 2: it's changed over the years. But so, uh, Columbus Pete
Speaker 2: wants to know what your thoughts are on Pebble Beach
Speaker 2: being considered overrated.
Speaker 1: Laughable, absolutely laughable, no chance, no chance. You could make
Speaker 1: an argument that the first and second holes that overrated.
Speaker 1: But no, there's there's strategue. There's strategy around every corner
Speaker 1: at Coubble Beach if you know where to look for it.
Speaker 1: There's strategy on one through eighteen. Every hole it's a
Speaker 1: second shot golf course. There's nothing overrated about Coubble Beach.
Speaker 1: Not an ounce overrated about Pebble Beach, and anybody who
Speaker 1: says that, in my opinion, no, listen. I did say
Speaker 1: that golf is in the eye of the beholder. And
Speaker 1: there might be people out there who played it that
Speaker 1: went eh, and that's cool. That's there. That's their opinion.
Speaker 1: But you know, for me, there is absolutely zero overrated
Speaker 1: about Pebble Beach. And if I had one place to
Speaker 1: play the rest of my life every day, and I
Speaker 1: and I could play it every day, it would be
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach with out of doubt. Out of doubt not
Speaker 1: just because I won there, but just because of the
Speaker 1: variety of holes and the things that you have to
Speaker 1: do around that place, and that you change a pin
Speaker 1: from twenty feet over here to twenty feet over there,
Speaker 1: and the whole and the wind switches from this direction
Speaker 1: of that the golf course plays so different every day.
Speaker 1: You get a different golf course every day out there.
Speaker 1: It's brilliant. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It's uh. That's what I actually wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2: You get three places to play the rest of your life,
Speaker 2: so you got Pebble as one of them. One of
Speaker 2: the other two.
Speaker 1: Uh, they're they're all they're all in northern California, and
Speaker 1: they're all within two hour drives. They're all within a
Speaker 1: two hour drive Pebble past Epo and the California Golf Club.
Speaker 2: It's good. I mean, you cut down on any expenses
Speaker 2: of travel having you get to the only three golf course.
Speaker 1: You know, really really real, real simple people are like, no,
Speaker 1: Cypress Point, what like Cypress is good? Uh? But uh,
Speaker 1: for my money? If my favorite course on the peninsula
Speaker 1: is definitely on the Moneray Peninsula is Pebble Beach, all right.
Speaker 2: That's it. You know, it's a contrarian view. We love
Speaker 2: contrarian views at Friday.
Speaker 1: So you know there's no oh yeah, everybody kills me
Speaker 1: about that. Aaron, What is wrong with you? Why don't
Speaker 1: you like Cyprus Point? I like Cyprus Point. I do.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not it's not I'm not I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put it in my top ten of all time that
Speaker 1: I've played and I love, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: put it in my top five.
Speaker 2: And you know it just because you don't want to
Speaker 2: play it every day doesn't mean it's not a great golf.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a exactly exactly. This is where I
Speaker 1: have the beholder and golf courses being artwork come into play.
Speaker 1: It's for you know, if rem Brand's not your thing,
Speaker 1: then you got money right over here. I mean it's
Speaker 1: hard to it's hard to go wrong in Bonterey. You know,
Speaker 1: you got to dig all over here. Do you want
Speaker 1: you know, do you want a monet over here? Give me?
Speaker 1: Give me a break, you know? M hm?
Speaker 2: So I uh, let's get one more here from Holliday.
Speaker 2: Tacos wants to know who wins in a NASA today,
Speaker 2: You or Tiger.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, man. Well, if he can't it's an
Speaker 1: easy answer. If he's not, If he can't play because
Speaker 1: of his back, I think I get him pretty easily.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But if he's if he's well practiced, uh, and I
Speaker 1: get out there and I practice right now currently. If
Speaker 1: we were to go right now, absolutely, at this moment
Speaker 1: in time, I think it'd be a close match because
Speaker 1: my game's not all that great. But I don't think
Speaker 1: his is either.
Speaker 2: So you don't think he's he's playing the next week.
Speaker 1: Something tells me he's going to show up. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I just have a gut feeling he's going
Speaker 1: to show up, and I just think that the place
Speaker 1: means too much to him, I really do. Would I
Speaker 1: be surprised if he didn't. No, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if he didn't, because he's got plenty of reasons not
Speaker 1: to show up, quite honestly. But but but I really,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I just think he I think he's
Speaker 1: gonna to show up. I really do. So we'll see
Speaker 1: it all. In my opinion, it all depends on how
Speaker 1: his body's feeling, and then whether his whether his game
Speaker 1: is is he feels his games up to snuff, because
Speaker 1: that place can make if your game's not right, it
Speaker 1: can make you look real foolish. Yeah, real quick.
Speaker 2: It's I just don't know what happened from Jamaica or
Speaker 2: the Bahamas to Tory. It just just looked like it
Speaker 2: something changed he looks.
Speaker 1: I just I think it's one of those Well, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing that happened to me, quite honestly, And
Speaker 1: what I tried to explain on Gulf Central a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, and we talked about it when he
Speaker 1: said he wasn't going to play bay Hill, I think
Speaker 1: it was he came out announced that. I. I think
Speaker 1: what happened is is that whenever you've had multiple surgeries
Speaker 1: on one part of your body, you you don't know
Speaker 1: how that's going to react day to day, let alone
Speaker 1: week to week. And it happened in my hand. I'd
Speaker 1: wake up one day and my I'd get out to
Speaker 1: the range, hands perfect, and everything's going great. I'm striping
Speaker 1: it and I can hit all the shots. The next
Speaker 1: day I wake up and I and I can barely
Speaker 1: hold onto the golf club. I'm dead serious doing this
Speaker 1: weekend week ount. I think it's the same for his back.
Speaker 1: I don't. It's so up in the air. The back
Speaker 1: is compromise. His back is compromised, and it's compromised, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, fairly severely, based on the fact that he
Speaker 1: just when you've had three surgeries, Based on my knowledge,
Speaker 1: I've had four surgeries on one part of my body
Speaker 1: and I'm missing bones in my left hand. It's where
Speaker 1: I can't play anymore. He's had three microdissectomies on his back.
Speaker 1: He does it. I don't think he knows how that
Speaker 1: thing's going to react from day to day, and I
Speaker 1: think he's trying to learn how it's going to react.
Speaker 1: Is there a pattern? And I thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think he was being very aggressive with his scheduling
Speaker 1: in my opinion, going trying to go to the Middle
Speaker 1: East and all that. And I applaud him for thinking
Speaker 1: that he could do it, but I was a little
Speaker 1: skeptical about the the scheduling when I saw it, I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: you gotta pop on a plane for seventeen hours. That's
Speaker 1: not great for the backs.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, Tory was so damp and cold
Speaker 2: it couldn't have been good either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I was out there,
Speaker 1: and I was out there and followed him and watched him.
Speaker 1: They're doing line golf. Yeah, and it was it was uh,
Speaker 1: it was cold, it was damp, and uh, those conditions
Speaker 1: aren't great for a back either.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we we want to get out of
Speaker 2: here and not take up too much of your time.
Speaker 2: He's been more than generous. We we have a closing segment.
Speaker 2: We do uh overrated, underrated, and I'm just going to
Speaker 2: give you five rapid fire questions here. Good seminole, seminole,
Speaker 2: seminal golf club, YEP, underrated, underrated. Okay, so it's it's
Speaker 2: up into your top in my top ten. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: practice rounds.
Speaker 1: Overrated, overrated.
Speaker 2: I imagine as you've become a veteran on tour, they
Speaker 2: become less and less important.
Speaker 1: They're they're they're underrated as a rookie, and in every
Speaker 1: year after that, you're better off just taking a wedge
Speaker 1: and a putter and walking around and saving your body.
Speaker 1: Maybe hit some shots on the parts trees or in
Speaker 1: a tough driving hole here and there, but other than that,
Speaker 1: just pitching put around the greens Man.
Speaker 3: Okay, equipment, Uh, equipment's overrated, overrated, and yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Not gonna help. It's not gonna it's not gonna make
Speaker 1: your game that much better. If you don't practice. You
Speaker 1: gotta practice, you gotta. I'll tell you what's underrated. Lessons
Speaker 1: from a good teacher that's underrated. Equipment's overrated, Lessons from
Speaker 1: a good teacher underrated.
Speaker 2: I wholeheartedly agree with that. Phil Nicholson as a in
Speaker 2: a career sense.
Speaker 1: Underrated by a long shot. Underrated people don't understand the
Speaker 1: man's brilliant. You know, Phil is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: people in the world, and and you know I used
Speaker 1: to play practice rounds with him. Back in the day. Uh,
Speaker 1: in major championships. I played four or five with him
Speaker 1: between four and seven when I was playing in majors
Speaker 1: and we were at the same management company, so we
Speaker 1: played together. And Uh, the guy, I learned a lot
Speaker 1: from him. But but he's but he I think his
Speaker 1: career has been underrated to be to be quite awesome.
Speaker 1: I don't think people have have given him the do
Speaker 1: and it's it's mainly because of Tiger. What Tiger did.
Speaker 1: What Tiger did, Tiger made everybody look less than less
Speaker 1: than stellar. Uh, he made us all look foolish at times,
Speaker 1: There's no doubt because of his greatness. But but by
Speaker 1: no means do I think that that diminished Phil's career
Speaker 1: and in any way, shape or form. The guys the
Speaker 1: guy's underrated, I think for what he's done and who
Speaker 1: he is and what he's become. And a real quick
Speaker 1: side note because we were we were texting back and
Speaker 1: forth a little bit before here when in regards to
Speaker 1: a young gentleman on the tour by the name of
Speaker 1: Grayson Murray, who who's maze if who's made a name
Speaker 1: for himself a little bit maybe not such a great
Speaker 1: way on the tour with with some of the stuff
Speaker 1: he said in regards to the world rankings and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and maybe to some of the
Speaker 1: other tours Phil. I would remember playing a practice round
Speaker 1: with still back in I can't remember what I was
Speaker 1: I was, actually, I think I was a top fifty
Speaker 1: player in the world this time, and I was I
Speaker 1: was complaining about something I wasn't happy and about this
Speaker 1: that or the other thing, about access to this tournament
Speaker 1: of that tournament. And I'd been under my breath and
Speaker 1: quietly complaining to my caddy and this and that for
Speaker 1: about four or five holes, and Phil finally looks at
Speaker 1: me and goes, Oberholzer, shut up. I'm tired of listening
Speaker 1: to talk about that. I go, I've taken aback by it.
Speaker 1: I'm like what, And he's like, He's like, if you
Speaker 1: don't like your lot in life, just play better. Period.
Speaker 1: And I didn't talk to him for about two holes
Speaker 1: because I was so ticked off at him for saying that.
Speaker 1: But the fact is is he was dead on right,
Speaker 1: and that's that would be my advice, I guess to
Speaker 1: mister Grayson Murray, if you don't like your lot in life,
Speaker 1: play better.
Speaker 2: Golf.
Speaker 1: It's that simple. Yeah, that and that's what I learned
Speaker 1: from Phil. And that's what I'd like to impart on
Speaker 1: to Grayson Murray if you if this ever gets to Grayson.
Speaker 2: The That's the thing I think about a lot is
Speaker 2: you know when I you know, I play an amateur
Speaker 2: stuff and people come off the course and moan about
Speaker 2: different things, and it you know, something that I've you know,
Speaker 2: started to take hold of is like, you know what
Speaker 2: play better like? And I say it to myself all
Speaker 2: the time. It's like, you know, oh, I you know,
Speaker 2: I missed that that I had that putt lip out like.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, you shouldn't have been anywhere near the
Speaker 2: number anyway. It's just play better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. That's that's the thing. There's
Speaker 1: no use complaining. There's zero youth complaining. And I was
Speaker 1: I was a I was a plus ten complainer at
Speaker 1: times in my career. There's no doubt. I'll freely admit that.
Speaker 1: But the left complaining that the weeks I did, the
Speaker 1: less complaining, the better.
Speaker 2: I played periods.
Speaker 1: And Grayson will Grayson will figure that out, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: he will figure out that to let his clubs, do
Speaker 1: the talking, and to just just keep your keep your
Speaker 1: nose cleaning, keep your mouth shut, and go play golf.
Speaker 2: I you know, I watched him play in Columbus last
Speaker 2: year at a web dot com. I followed him for
Speaker 2: eighteen holes and walked away. I was blown away by
Speaker 2: his game. He drives it long, he putts well. You know,
Speaker 2: he's got so much potential. But in last year on
Speaker 2: the web dot com, he's not on Twitter at all.
Speaker 2: He's not doing anything. He's keeping his he's just playing golf,
Speaker 2: and he finishes, finish his second on their money list.
Speaker 2: You know, so I think he's got to keep his
Speaker 2: head down and play in golf.
Speaker 1: You know, I agree with you, uber talented. Uber talented.
Speaker 1: I mean, the sky's limit for the kid, as long
Speaker 1: as he, like I said, keeps his nose clean, keeps
Speaker 1: his mouth shut, learn the golf courses, and just concentrating
Speaker 1: your game. I mean, if I was his management team,
Speaker 1: I'd grab him by the back of the neck and
Speaker 1: I'd say, son off Twitter now. I mean literally get
Speaker 1: rid of the account. If you can't handle it, get
Speaker 1: rid of the account, cancel it and just focus on golf.
Speaker 1: This is this is going to be his livelihood if
Speaker 1: he wants to be, and he's got a choice he
Speaker 1: can make right now on how good he wants to be,
Speaker 1: and spending time getting into arguments, in my opinion online
Speaker 1: with guys about things that really don't matter in my opinion,
Speaker 1: aren't going to help him get to the goal that
Speaker 1: I believe he can reach, which is being a PGA
Speaker 1: Tour winner. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've walked away thinking like, this kid could be the
Speaker 2: rookie of the year. So you know, it's uh, he
Speaker 2: hopefully will. Uh, he'll kind of shape up here and
Speaker 2: and and get you know, you want you want the
Speaker 2: kid to succeed. Nobody wants anybody to fail.
Speaker 1: And and I think it, No, no, I don't like
Speaker 1: to see anybody failing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if he, if he can, he's got he's got
Speaker 2: so much game. So last overrated, underrated bucket hats.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Kirk will kill me for this. But overrated,
Speaker 1: all right, overrated. I'm not a big fan of the
Speaker 1: bucket hat.
Speaker 2: It's uh, yeah, I respect it that it's a bad it's.
Speaker 1: A bad look. Hey, look have you got some skin issues? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you gotta wear it, go for it. It's just it's
Speaker 1: that'll make it's a great look.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, Aaron, thanks so much for coming on,
Speaker 2: and uh, we'll look forward to I know you're you
Speaker 2: got anything to play. I know you're gonna be on
Speaker 2: Golf Channel a lot in the in the upcoming weeks,
Speaker 2: so you know, uh, anything you want to you want
Speaker 2: to put out there, No, I'll be.
Speaker 1: I'll be. People are gonna hear and see a lot
Speaker 1: of me over the next seven out of eight weeks.
Speaker 1: Is I only have one week off and those seven
Speaker 1: out of eight weeks, So come on over to the channel.
Speaker 1: I hope you and I hope people enjoy the coverage
Speaker 1: that we that we try to give him every week
Speaker 1: and the analysis that we try to give him every week. It's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun doing it, and I'm glad that,
Speaker 1: uh that we try to create healthy discussion with with
Speaker 1: the stuff that we say between what doesn't matter, no
Speaker 1: to Brandle, Frank David, do all myself, Trip Eisenhower, Jim Gallagher,
Speaker 1: all the guys, and and we're gonna try to do
Speaker 1: our best to do the same thing next week. I
Speaker 1: think we've got a good play to shows next week
Speaker 1: for for the Masters for Life from the Masters.
Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome, Well, we'll look forward to uh seeing you
Speaker 2: on on Golf Channel and then everybody's a great Twitter
Speaker 2: follow follow Aaron on Twitter and uh, you know he uh,
Speaker 2: we'll talk to you soon and yeah, hopefully it'll be
Speaker 2: a great week.
Speaker 1: It will be, there's no doubt. Thanks a lot, Andy,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, Thanks Aaron, but