Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a bright egg.
Speaker 2: Friday Egg and dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, Fridagg, Fridagg, Brian egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson, and today I'm really excited. I am joined
Speaker 1: by a couple guests here, all Friday Golf members. I
Speaker 1: At first, we will be joined by Joseph Lamanna. He
Speaker 1: does a ton of pro golf coverage. I wanted to
Speaker 1: just debrief on what's going on in the fall. Who
Speaker 1: are five UH players to watch from this fall? I
Speaker 1: think Joseph had had some great notes. Great it was
Speaker 1: a fun, fun chat, and we talk about that as
Speaker 1: well as the kind of new live rules and regulations.
Speaker 1: No more fifty four holes, they're just seventy two. So
Speaker 1: we talk with Joseph, and then I'm joined by our
Speaker 1: very own Garrett Morrison and Matt Rushes, both of whom
Speaker 1: do a lot of golf course and golf architecture content
Speaker 1: for us. Obviously, Garrett has his Designing Golf podcast. We
Speaker 1: talk about their recent trip to England, so kind of
Speaker 1: about golf in England, the highlights of their trip where
Speaker 1: they kind of hit the Surrey area as well as
Speaker 1: the southeastern coast of England. So it was a fun
Speaker 1: chat about their trip. And yeah, that's the podcast and
Speaker 1: we will we will get rolling. But first if you
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Speaker 1: your first order out of way. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: to Joseph leamania on the Fall.
Speaker 2: So far?
Speaker 1: All right, Joseph. You know Don Henley wrote a masterpiece,
Speaker 1: The Boys of Summer. Uh, today we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the less you know, hyped, the little diamonds in the rough,
Speaker 1: the Boys of Fall. We're gonna talk about the Fall
Speaker 1: slate here and just check in. I think this is
Speaker 1: a lot of time where a lot of people tune out,
Speaker 1: but you know, in a way, a lot of stars
Speaker 1: are born at this period. Maybe not stars, but good
Speaker 1: PGA tour players start to gain traction and you know,
Speaker 1: get their winning chops contention, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: a good fall leads to a breakout year on tour
Speaker 1: the following year. So you have been, you've had your
Speaker 1: eyes glued to the TV. You've been, you know, go
Speaker 1: just haven't missed a beat with the Bay Current. I
Speaker 1: was in Austin a couple of weeks ago and I said,
Speaker 1: do you want to go out to dinner? And he said, no,
Speaker 1: the Bag Current is coming on. I can't miss it.
Speaker 1: So anyways, I figured there's no better person to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the Fall and what's going on. I
Speaker 1: gave you the task. Let's talk about five players that
Speaker 1: you've been impressed with this fall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Don Henley Russell's father didn't realize that it could
Speaker 3: be so relevant to the golf in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Now this is sick oh hour, We're talking about fall golfers.
Speaker 3: The way I was thinking about this, Andy is like,
Speaker 3: if people haven't been watching any golf since the Open
Speaker 3: or you know, maybe the Ryder Cup, but largely probably
Speaker 3: unplugged since the Open, Like who are the players that
Speaker 3: they need to keep an eye on going into next year.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of the way I've been thinking about it.
Speaker 3: And most of these are going to be young names.
Speaker 1: Think about think about there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: that don't even know who Michael Brennan is. And you know,
Speaker 1: Michael Brennan just came into my life and I'm already thinking,
Speaker 1: is this life after Michael Brennan? Is this how we're
Speaker 1: gonna remember it? Life before and after?
Speaker 3: Are we going right into one of the names? Because
Speaker 3: Michael Brennan, in all seriousness like that is I think
Speaker 3: if we talked about nobody else today, that'd be the
Speaker 3: golfer we need to talk about.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about him, all right?
Speaker 3: So wins the Bank of Utah Championship, right, that is
Speaker 3: his He had went won three times in six PGA
Speaker 3: Tour America's starts came in really hot.
Speaker 1: The Pika Tour of Americas is what used to be
Speaker 1: Canada and Latin. They combined that tour a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, so it is a tour below the Corn
Speaker 1: Faery Tour, which obviously is like Triple A and Baseball
Speaker 1: for golf.
Speaker 3: And now he's skipping the corn Fairy Tour, right because
Speaker 3: he's won on the PGA Tour. And I think there's
Speaker 3: a lot to chew on with Michael Brennan. First of all,
Speaker 3: he's twenty three, he's young, he has the pedigree. He
Speaker 3: was a good, very good college player at wake Forest,
Speaker 3: went back to back ACC championships. I was texting a
Speaker 3: little bit with a Mini tour player asking if he'd
Speaker 3: ever played with Michael Brennan, and he was like, yes,
Speaker 3: that guy is a machine like he hits driver very well.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the part of the Bank of
Speaker 3: Utah Championship performance that will resonate and will stick with
Speaker 3: me the longest is that he didn't do it by
Speaker 3: gaining ten shots with his putter. He smashes the ball
Speaker 3: off the tee like high one eighties ball speed, elite speed,
Speaker 3: strong command, like he was changing up his trajectories. I
Speaker 3: don't know how much you watched at that tournament, Andy,
Speaker 3: but he was hitting the low bullets like some of
Speaker 3: the high launch drives. The guy has a lot of game,
Speaker 3: apparently has a really strong work ethic. Like I think
Speaker 3: this is somebody that we could be talking about as
Speaker 3: a top twenty player in the world this time next
Speaker 3: year potentially, right, it's hard to say, but he actually
Speaker 3: he has the game in the skill set that looks
Speaker 3: like it could translate to the next level.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's played in I think this was his
Speaker 1: third PGA Tour start, but you know, first since the
Speaker 1: Mayor because he's he's number forty two in the world
Speaker 1: now after this, like which shows how good he was
Speaker 1: in America's and I think, like in the world the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour, you we get like hyper fixated on the
Speaker 1: first three or four names on that PGA Tour list,
Speaker 1: every U list every year, and it's like, these are
Speaker 1: the guys. I think Michael Brennan was like twelve, but
Speaker 1: it is not inconceivable, like to see the twelfth player
Speaker 1: in an NBA Draft, be the best player in the
Speaker 1: NBA like Tyrese Haliburton I think went twelve, Giannis went
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen, nicolea Jokicic went in the second round.
Speaker 1: You talk about baseball, you look at the top one
Speaker 1: hundred prospects lists, it's not always the number one prospect
Speaker 1: that ends up the best player. I think if if
Speaker 1: I were going to make a comparison, not and this
Speaker 1: is not a meant to be like an Apple's apples
Speaker 1: compared if you were going to put Scotti Scheffler on
Speaker 1: a PGA tour U list when he was at Texas,
Speaker 1: he would have been in the eight to twelve range.
Speaker 1: He was a He was kind of one of the
Speaker 1: last players selected onto the Walker Cup team at LACC,
Speaker 1: which gives you an idea of like where he fell
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things. And this is like
Speaker 1: projecting prospects in any endeavor is almost is so difficult
Speaker 1: and so challenging. There's obviously can't miss people that come up,
Speaker 1: but there's there's no reason why Michael Brennan doesn't end
Speaker 1: up being the best young player in the game. That's
Speaker 1: it's conceivable and based off what he did in Latin America.
Speaker 1: I think it's like it's like he has real results
Speaker 1: on a real tour, which you know, not a lot
Speaker 1: of people have ever played on that tour as well
Speaker 1: as as he has. You know, he I think he
Speaker 1: played in fifteen events and had twelve top tens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's a great conversation around why certain
Speaker 3: players make it and others don't. But I do think
Speaker 3: a through line in professional golf is not getting bored
Speaker 3: is the players who are willing to just plot it
Speaker 3: out year after year, and from what I understand anecdotally,
Speaker 3: like Michael Brennan is a very very hard worker, so
Speaker 3: I'm excited about him. Who knows golf so hard to predict.
Speaker 3: I think it's really hard to say that Michael Brennan's
Speaker 3: going to be ex player in the world within the
Speaker 3: next two years. But he's twenty three, and we are
Speaker 3: seeing all of the best golfers in the world play
Speaker 3: their best golf between twenty seven and thirty five. He's
Speaker 3: got three four years to develop now has his PGA
Speaker 3: Tour card. I'm excited about what he could do next year,
Speaker 3: let alone three years from now, when he's had a
Speaker 3: little time to develop and he has that proven track
Speaker 3: record he won eight times in college. Andy like he's
Speaker 3: not coming out of note stud.
Speaker 1: I mean, back to back ACC Player of the Year
Speaker 1: is like pretty crazy. I think the you know, the
Speaker 1: other thing that I like about the Michael Brennan story
Speaker 1: is he wasn't. I think like one of the challenging
Speaker 1: things that the Leuke Clanton's of the world, the Gordon
Speaker 1: Sergeants of the world that are just handed a PGA
Speaker 1: Tour card are going to have to deal with is
Speaker 1: that they have faced zero adversity generally, and they get
Speaker 1: to the PGA Tour and all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 1: their entire life, they've been this big fish in a
Speaker 1: small pond type thing and they go there and it
Speaker 1: might take a couple of years to work out and
Speaker 1: that adjustment of not being necessarily the guy. We saw
Speaker 1: Clanton and I think, like I'm not selling Clanton stock
Speaker 1: or anything, but you saw he had this meteoric rise
Speaker 1: as an amateur where like expectations are low, like you
Speaker 1: you're playing in these events and it's like, well, whatever
Speaker 1: happens happens, and you know, since then, it's bet he's
Speaker 1: cooled off a bit. He's been a good not great
Speaker 1: player on the PGA Tour, and I think that is
Speaker 1: going to be some a normal cadence for this number
Speaker 1: one player on PGA Tour. You similarly, it feels like
Speaker 1: Michael Thorpjordson, after a year and a half on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour is starting to put it together. And that
Speaker 1: is like an example of that. Michael Brennan. He went
Speaker 1: from being the guy you know in the acc A
Speaker 1: Great Golf Conference, a one of the bona fide top
Speaker 1: players in college golf, and you get shipped off and
Speaker 1: you got to go figure out life in Latin America
Speaker 1: and Canada, and that is like that's work. That's a
Speaker 1: huge adjustment. And he went down there and just dominated.
Speaker 1: And I think that that experience will lend him a
Speaker 1: lot of benefits where he doesn't necessarily take things for
Speaker 1: granted like someone who has just handed a PGA Tour card.
Speaker 3: And another point on that, you don't get to hit
Speaker 3: driver everywhere on a lot of those golf courses and
Speaker 3: PGA Tour America's, which is one of Michael Brennan. It
Speaker 3: is his biggest strength. He tears the cover off the
Speaker 3: golf ball. So I think seeing the consistent results from
Speaker 3: him on the PGA Tour Americas is some indication that
Speaker 3: he's got more game than just bashing driver over and over.
Speaker 3: You reference somebody like Luke Clant, like I think what
Speaker 3: we're seeing andy a lot of these golfers who are
Speaker 3: struggling their first few years on tour, and even like
Speaker 3: Ludwig has not been as consistent as I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people expected him to be, myself included. I
Speaker 3: think often what happens there is when golfers aren't on
Speaker 3: they don't necessarily have the well rounded skill set and
Speaker 3: they haven't learned all of the other shots they can
Speaker 3: go to to produce consistent results. So when you're twenty
Speaker 3: four to twenty five, you're somebody like Luke Clinton, you're
Speaker 3: feeling a little bit off with your swing, you're suffering
Speaker 3: some adversity, you see some of those poor results. So
Speaker 3: I'm eager to see what Michael Brennan again, give him
Speaker 3: a couple of years, but I don't think we should
Speaker 3: expect much until he is twenty six or so anyway.
Speaker 3: So I'm just very optimistic about what we've seen from
Speaker 3: him so far.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. They're obviously playing this week. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to watch and see what he does this week.
Speaker 3: Good set up for him too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one last thing with Brennan. You talked about
Speaker 1: the driving prowess. What's extra I think impressive about what
Speaker 1: he did in Utah was that iss a golf course
Speaker 1: that it has heavy, heavy penalty for missus. He hits
Speaker 1: it really hard, which promotes, you know, kind of bigger
Speaker 1: foul balls. The harder you hit it, the more offline
Speaker 1: it can go. And what I was like so impressed
Speaker 1: with was it's like Sunday, he's leading by four or
Speaker 1: five basically all day and he is still just all
Speaker 1: out assault with the driver on that golf course where
Speaker 1: I think so many people would have put it in
Speaker 1: neutral and been like okay, like I'm just gonna avoid
Speaker 1: penalty strokes and try and like kind of plot my
Speaker 1: way around the golf course. He just kept doing what
Speaker 1: he was what he planned to do. It was hyper
Speaker 1: aggressive on a golf course that punishes over aggressiveness. I
Speaker 1: thought that was what impressed me the most was he
Speaker 1: dismantled a golf course that with with long drives, on
Speaker 1: a golf course that penalizes generally the bomb and gouge methodology.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Fair, I mean there's a lot of room out there.
Speaker 3: But yes, he continued to keep the throttle down basically
Speaker 3: until the last hole, and he led the field in strokes,
Speaker 3: gained off the tee, put up a huge number. So yeah,
Speaker 3: very optimistic about him. He's got a game that seems
Speaker 3: to translate. Do you want me to move to my
Speaker 3: second name here?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean we could just keep talking about Michael Brennan.
Speaker 3: I'm down to.
Speaker 1: The story of fall right now. What's the number? What's
Speaker 1: the number two? For you?
Speaker 3: You may know this in doing prep for this pod,
Speaker 3: but there's one golfer andy who has at least two
Speaker 3: starts on the PGA Tour this fall and has finished
Speaker 3: top ten in every PGA Tour event he's played. And
Speaker 3: do you know who that is?
Speaker 1: Wow? Wait, he's He's got at least two starts this fall, yep,
Speaker 1: and finished top ten and all top ten in every
Speaker 1: PGA Tour event he's played in.
Speaker 3: This fault Yeah, I mean it's a little bit of
Speaker 3: a sickoh stat, but I'll throw it rico. Ho that
Speaker 3: is close.
Speaker 1: I believe he missed the cut at one event.
Speaker 3: He's three of four that's another player we may get to.
Speaker 3: But no, there's a.
Speaker 1: Player because I was ready to talk Rico Hoey.
Speaker 3: We can talk Ricoh.
Speaker 1: I want this one though.
Speaker 3: Garrick Higgo.
Speaker 1: Hey, that Garrick Higgo.
Speaker 3: Is an interesting name. I think he's flying so far
Speaker 3: under the radar.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that's that he's going to cut
Speaker 1: his hair.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know the current length of his hair.
Speaker 3: I overlooked that, and.
Speaker 1: I think cut his hair, which could be could be
Speaker 1: part of it. You can't those beautiful locks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe that is part of it. But with Garrick,
Speaker 3: he's he's an interesting name. I'd be curious what you
Speaker 3: think of him. He's basically been struggling in obscurity the
Speaker 3: last couple of years after a pretty successful start to
Speaker 3: his professional career. He won I think three or four
Speaker 3: times in twenty twenty one, including on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 3: He won that Palmetto Championship yeah at Conngrey, yeah, back
Speaker 3: in June. And that wasn't a super strong field, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't a weak field either. I mean he won
Speaker 3: a legit PJ Tour event. Now he's put up three
Speaker 3: straight top tens hits the crap out of the ball
Speaker 3: like a high one eighties ball. Speed guy. I don't know.
Speaker 3: He has put together a pretty decently He won on
Speaker 3: the Challenge Tour, he won on the DP World Tour.
Speaker 3: I want to say he has something like eight wins worldwide.
Speaker 3: He's twenty six. Andy Like, I don't know that I
Speaker 3: expect this guy to be a top thirty player on
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour next year. But sometimes, like you're mentioning,
Speaker 3: stuff develops on its own timeline. Garrickkgo t seven at
Speaker 3: the Pro Corps, second at Sanderson, fourth at Bay Current,
Speaker 3: another good opportunity this week at al at El Cardinal.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's crazy that we see a leap
Speaker 3: from him and he's a pretty good PGA Tour player
Speaker 3: next year. Not a superstar, but he's somebody to keep
Speaker 3: an eye on.
Speaker 1: Obviously. I think like he has the ingredients of what
Speaker 1: you look for for somebody to play well. And along
Speaker 1: the lines of Brennan is a young player who had
Speaker 1: like tremendous success four years ago. You know, I mean
Speaker 1: it was you know, we joked about life after Michael Brennan.
Speaker 1: You could say the same thing what happened with Garret
Speaker 1: Kigo when he won that event, Like everybody is like,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just think again, adversity struggles. People
Speaker 1: paint them as bad things for golfers. I think if
Speaker 1: you look at like the longevity of a career, if
Speaker 1: you're able to come through where things don't go your way,
Speaker 1: it leads to a better, you know, career in the
Speaker 1: long run because you have handled that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just like an important aspect of golf.
Speaker 1: Like it you know, you'll you'll look at like Kyle
Speaker 1: Moore Kawer right now that's struggling right up into Bill
Speaker 1: this year. He's never had any of that in his life,
Speaker 1: and it I think it probably gets more difficult to
Speaker 1: deal with the longer you go without it. And I'm
Speaker 1: very you know, Higo. I remember, you know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of Ryder President's Cup buzz around, Higo, and
Speaker 1: I think like it's an interesting aspect of next year.
Speaker 1: And obviously the President's Cup is not the Ryder Cup,
Speaker 1: but these guys like the more there there's more international
Speaker 1: talent than ever before, and most of it's young, and
Speaker 1: it's like if some of these guys could take a step,
Speaker 1: it makes that competition a lot more interesting.
Speaker 3: He's twenty six, just to put that out there, right,
Speaker 3: So now you're talking about a golfer with a good
Speaker 3: track record in college and he turned probably after his
Speaker 3: sophomore year. Was a good college player. One Challenge Tour,
Speaker 3: DP World Tour. Now he's gone through some of those struggles,
Speaker 3: has traveled the world, probably has a lot of experience
Speaker 3: under his belt that he can draw up on finding
Speaker 3: his game again at twenty six, entering the sweet spot
Speaker 3: of his career. So yeah, I don't again don't think
Speaker 3: this is a top ten player in the world, but
Speaker 3: I'm keeping an eye on him. Anything else with Higo
Speaker 3: Andy or should we move?
Speaker 1: I you know, he's got to bring back the flow.
Speaker 3: Okay, I like that.
Speaker 1: Who's an act.
Speaker 3: Let's go, Let's go Rico Hoey. You touched on him,
Speaker 3: some great reporting from Sean Martin back at the NAPA Tournament.
Speaker 3: Appropriate when Rico put the broomstick in the bag. I
Speaker 3: don't I don't know if you can overstate how bad
Speaker 3: of a putter Rico Hoey is. He is like dead last, right,
Speaker 3: dead last, dead last and bad. And when you have
Speaker 3: a great ball striker, which Rico Hooey is. I believe
Speaker 3: he's second on tour strokes, haining off the T eighth
Speaker 3: strokes gained approach. Some of that is because he's not
Speaker 3: playing the strongest field, so you can, you know, lower
Speaker 3: those numbers a little bit. But he's a very good
Speaker 3: ball striker. When you have a great ball striker who
Speaker 3: stinks with the putter, you see a lot of you
Speaker 3: see some missed cuts, you see some T eights, some
Speaker 3: T fifteen's, they struggle to break through because obviously the
Speaker 3: putter is just you know, negative four for the week
Speaker 3: is really hard to recover from, especially under me, Like.
Speaker 1: It's more hard to recover mentally than the score ford all.
Speaker 3: Of those things. Yeah, so the broomstick. How good of
Speaker 3: a putter can Rico Hoey become with the broomstick? Like,
Speaker 3: I think expectations should be, uh there, I think he's
Speaker 3: but yeah, if he is average, all of a sudden
Speaker 3: he's in. He's probably winning PGA toward non signature events
Speaker 3: and you know, maybe getting into some of those signature
Speaker 3: events if he has a hot putting week, like, the
Speaker 3: guy can probably hang with just about anybody. So something
Speaker 3: to keep an eye on. Again, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: think he's still probably gonna stink with the putter even
Speaker 3: with the broomstick, but it's a notable equipment change for
Speaker 3: a player that's very talented.
Speaker 1: Uh Rico Hoy cult classic for me. When I started
Speaker 1: this this business, I did a lot of college, college
Speaker 1: and amateur golf coverage and this was this was prime
Speaker 1: Rico Hoy season. He was electric at usc When you
Speaker 1: talk about like driving the golf ball, there are there
Speaker 1: are so few people that can touch his level of
Speaker 1: power and accuracy. He would hit driver where a few
Speaker 1: few people would even consider it. He can just drop
Speaker 1: a ball under the tee. You want to talk about
Speaker 1: do D like I know there's an Instagram guy that's
Speaker 1: do D King. Rico Joey is do o D King forever.
Speaker 1: He would you know, He's played the National Championship and
Speaker 1: he would just drop the ball on the ground and
Speaker 1: hit it off the ground because it was like its
Speaker 1: fairway finder. I think Rico I saw him play witness
Speaker 1: one of the greatest like twelve whole stretches I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I think he was ten under through twelve at Rich
Speaker 1: Harvis Farms in the National Championship. Then it kind of
Speaker 1: fell apart, but it was like an unbelievable sensational t
Speaker 1: degree game. I think the big thing is, like, like
Speaker 1: so much stuff with golf, when you are so uber
Speaker 1: talented in one area, sometimes other other aspects of your
Speaker 1: game can can slip off. With Rico, it was always
Speaker 1: like the driver swing. What made the driver swing so
Speaker 1: good kind of made the wedge swing really bad, cleaning
Speaker 1: up wedges. And this is like so much the case
Speaker 1: of young players. Right, we just talked about Garrit Kigo.
Speaker 1: You come in and especially now with the game, the
Speaker 1: driver is such a you know, if you can drive
Speaker 1: it really great, you can get hot with other things
Speaker 1: and get up onto the PGA tour and then it
Speaker 1: becomes it's like wow, Like when you look at the
Speaker 1: guys that are thirty five and have been doing it
Speaker 1: for fifteen years. I think a lot of these kids
Speaker 1: look at it and as like, look at how good
Speaker 1: they are at every single aspect of the game. I
Speaker 1: might be able to, you know, hit the driver better
Speaker 1: than them. But like game manager, like course management, mistake management,
Speaker 1: dealing with like the bad stuff that happens to you
Speaker 1: on a golf course, wedge wedge proficiency, all of these
Speaker 1: things are generally I think think where younger players why
Speaker 1: you're seeing what you said at the top twenty eight
Speaker 1: to thirty five being the kind of golden years of
Speaker 1: a career. It's when you still have your speed speed
Speaker 1: and you really kind of just stop being an idiot,
Speaker 1: you know. I know there are like things with like
Speaker 1: Decade and other course management tools and course management coaches
Speaker 1: that are helping kids, but like the number one thing,
Speaker 1: just like your golf swing, when you can self correct,
Speaker 1: when you're able to diagnose a golf course and understand
Speaker 1: what you should do in a situation that's rooted in
Speaker 1: like the idea of like this is a good miss
Speaker 1: this is where I shouldn't miss it, you know, this
Speaker 1: is where I should be aiming. But being able to
Speaker 1: adjust on the fly and understand that that comes in
Speaker 1: your late twenties. That's when you figure out the game.
Speaker 1: It's also when you start to like have life moments
Speaker 1: that make you realize that like if I make a
Speaker 1: bogie and I three putt, it's not the end of
Speaker 1: the world. Like other stuff happens in life that's way
Speaker 1: worse than this, Like it's where her life kind of
Speaker 1: interjects into golf. So I think, like Rico Hoey, I
Speaker 1: am like the biggest supporter. I have golf swings on
Speaker 1: my phone still of him in college. I'm a Rico
Speaker 1: Hoey fanatic. So I'm hoping that the putter, you know,
Speaker 1: if he's a top question to you, if he becomes
Speaker 1: a top fifty putter in the world, where where does
Speaker 1: he go?
Speaker 3: He probably wins, he wins a non signature event. He's
Speaker 3: probably a top twenty five player on the PGA, toy
Speaker 3: makes it to east Lake. I don't know that he's
Speaker 3: he maybe pops his head out a major like he's
Speaker 3: a good player.
Speaker 1: He fringes a fringe rider copp okay, the very fringes
Speaker 1: like you know, names or could be thrown into the equation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's very reasonable.
Speaker 1: I you know, the other takeaway from Hoey and I
Speaker 1: think this is Akha Batilla is another player we've seen
Speaker 1: just completely change his career with the broom. Where another
Speaker 1: really strong ball striker who had major putting deficiencies, Adam Scott,
Speaker 1: Adams well, will z al Torres would be one where
Speaker 1: you know and you know where he went to the
Speaker 1: arm lock. But like to me, like I do not
Speaker 1: understand how any putter who's like in the bottom quartile
Speaker 1: of the PGA Tour, if you're not experimenting with with
Speaker 1: these other forms of putting, whether they're broom or or
Speaker 1: arm lock, I understand the sanctity of the game. I
Speaker 1: appreciate anybody that's like, I don't want to go to
Speaker 1: a lock putter because of you know this or that.
Speaker 1: But for the livelihood of your career, We've seen so
Speaker 1: many players just transform, and I think I don't want
Speaker 1: to say that it's just like is an ultimate remedy,
Speaker 1: because like putting at an average PGA Tour level means
Speaker 1: you're one, you know, one of the probably five hundred
Speaker 1: best putters in the entire world of golf. Like that,
Speaker 1: that's not an easy thing to become. And I think
Speaker 1: even the low end of the PGA Tour is exceptional
Speaker 1: at putting if you compare them to a great amateur player.
Speaker 1: But I think, like there everybody should be experimenting with
Speaker 1: this stuff. And we've seen, you know, like when when
Speaker 1: Sean said Hoe he's going to long putter, I immediately
Speaker 1: was like, watch out because he's so good.
Speaker 3: Te de Green, Yeah, and again this week I think
Speaker 3: he's like twenty or twenty five to one to win
Speaker 3: at El Cardin now, like the market is respecting Rico Hoey,
Speaker 3: like he's a legitimate threat to win golf tournaments now.
Speaker 3: But to your point, there's no guarantees. I still think
Speaker 3: he's gonna be a bad putter. See who Kim Broomstick
Speaker 3: still a bad putter. Like, I don't think you should
Speaker 3: have a lot of confidence in Rico Hoey's standing over
Speaker 3: a six footer late on Sunday with the broomstick. But again,
Speaker 3: his results should improve, and that immediately makes him a
Speaker 3: pretty formidable golfer on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: All right, who's up next? We got We've gone through three.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can get better than Hoey
Speaker 1: and Brennan on a pod in October.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we gotta think about Rico Hoey. Fans with the
Speaker 3: name of Hoey heads, we got to figure that out.
Speaker 3: I'm four, I'll go.
Speaker 4: I'll go.
Speaker 3: Michael thorpe Jornson. I think it's a name that he
Speaker 3: hasn't necessarily been incredible in the fall, but he finished
Speaker 3: third at the Bay Current Classic. But I think when
Speaker 3: you tell the career arc of Michael thorbe Jornson. So
Speaker 3: far to date, it's a pretty compelling story of a
Speaker 3: golfer that's probably going to have a good twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: He's dealt with some injuries since turning pro. He's twenty four.
Speaker 3: Was a great college player at Stanford. Smashes the ball,
Speaker 3: but it was long and wild for his first couple
Speaker 3: of years on the PGA Tour, and especially again, I
Speaker 3: think some the injuries played a role in that. Now
Speaker 3: he's eliminated the wide misses and he's hitting it much
Speaker 3: more straight and you're seeing consistent results. He has five
Speaker 3: straight made cuts. One of those is the Bay Current
Speaker 3: Classic No Cut EVM, but he finished third at it,
Speaker 3: so I think it's reasonable to just call that a
Speaker 3: maide cut. Far more consistent in twenty twenty five than
Speaker 3: he's been historically, and given his pedigree how good he
Speaker 3: was in college, I honestly don't know that there are
Speaker 3: many players twenty five or younger to be more excited about,
Speaker 3: Like I think there's a good case that you should
Speaker 3: be more excited even about thorbe Jornson than Brennan. But
Speaker 3: they're right there next to each other. Some of the
Speaker 3: best young talents in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love thorpe Jornsen. I think you're spot on here.
Speaker 1: The fall has been a big thorpe Jarnsen. Just since
Speaker 1: the Rocket mortgage, he has four top fifteens and eight
Speaker 1: starts that was after the Bay Current. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where he finished in Utah and how that factored in
Speaker 1: thirty seventh and thirty seventh, So he's got four top
Speaker 1: fifteens in his last night starts and I think like
Speaker 1: one of the big hallmarks of golf, like what you're
Speaker 1: trying to be is more consistent. Everybody's trying to be
Speaker 1: more consistent, and to see some of that consistency come
Speaker 1: through for a young player, I think, like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the thing, it's gonna be kind of the
Speaker 1: theme of this pod. Everybody gets these high expectations. Everybody
Speaker 1: loves to talk about prospects and the hope of prospects,
Speaker 1: and then so often it doesn't pan out in that
Speaker 1: you know, we live at this immediate, instant gratification world
Speaker 1: and golf is just not that. It takes time. And
Speaker 1: I think people will underrate how good seventy five on
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, who's been doing it for twelve years
Speaker 1: is and they might not have the most eye popping numbers,
Speaker 1: and it might not be the most impressive guy to
Speaker 1: watch on the range, but there's so much more that
Speaker 1: goes into being a tour pro than just track man numbers.
Speaker 3: I'm mean curious what you think of this theory. Andy,
Speaker 3: don't think I've run this one by you a bit.
Speaker 3: Interviewing Frank Novolo earlier this year, one thing he said
Speaker 3: it might have been we were even done recording, is
Speaker 3: that in periods of stable equipment regulation, which I'd say
Speaker 3: we're in one right now, like every golfer on the
Speaker 3: PGA tour is fluent in the language of track man played,
Speaker 3: has played with it for a while now, has hit
Speaker 3: modern drivers for a while, like there hasn't been a
Speaker 3: lot of technological change. So his argument was that you
Speaker 3: see more stability, probably a little harder to break in
Speaker 3: as a young player, and a run like the one
Speaker 3: that Scotti is on is probably more likely to persist
Speaker 3: in a period like the current one. We'll see what
Speaker 3: happens with the rollback, but it's not that significant of
Speaker 3: a change anyway. So I think I'm wondering if that
Speaker 3: is also I think that's a reasonable theory for right
Speaker 3: now why it's also hard for a young player to
Speaker 3: break onto tour, Like you have a bunch of guys
Speaker 3: who are twenty eight to thirty five used to the equipment,
Speaker 3: have been playing the same course as year and in
Speaker 3: year out, it's hard to break into that. What do
Speaker 3: you think of that theory?
Speaker 1: I think that's spot on. Years ago. I would say
Speaker 1: this was during maybe before COVID. I did podcasts with
Speaker 1: two economists I think they were from the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago who did a study in what technological change does
Speaker 1: to workplace. It was for labor and they looked at
Speaker 1: tennis in the evolution of tennis from you know, the
Speaker 1: wooden racket to the oversized racket and what it did
Speaker 1: and it causes like this U shaped curve and effectively,
Speaker 1: when technological change happens, younger generations are are are have
Speaker 1: a huge advantage over people that have learned how to
Speaker 1: do the profession with old equipment because they have to
Speaker 1: relearn skills like hitting a driver fundamentally changed with a
Speaker 1: solid core ball and four hundred and sixty c state
Speaker 1: heads and different players all of a sudden popped like
Speaker 1: I think this is a way that you might look
Speaker 1: at Kenny Perry and be like, why did Kenny Perry
Speaker 1: get great all of a sudden, Well, like there was
Speaker 1: this seismic technological change, and all of a sudden his
Speaker 1: skills and his his swing in his motion was more
Speaker 1: rewarded than say a Justin Leonard, who was a great
Speaker 1: player pre this technological boom. So the what this study
Speaker 1: proved out and why they did it was that when
Speaker 1: you introduce a seismic technology like say AI, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen is that younger generations are rewarded for effectively
Speaker 1: two two like work forces. So if you think about
Speaker 1: like in life, it's a lot longer, but in a
Speaker 1: tennis career that's like five to seven years. So if
Speaker 1: you think about golf, we have probably normalized. I think
Speaker 1: that's a great take. We've probably now normalized because the
Speaker 1: mass technological innovation, they are still getting better, they're getting
Speaker 1: more forgiving, you know, the technology is getting better, but
Speaker 1: not in a huge way. That seismic change probably ended
Speaker 1: about twenty twelve twenty ten is where those drivers all
Speaker 1: were four hundred and sixty ccs. The golf ball was
Speaker 1: the solid core ball and TrackMan had come in, and
Speaker 1: if you think about a golf career, it's probably about
Speaker 1: five to seven years, and we're right at the end
Speaker 1: of it where things would technically normalize and we would
Speaker 1: go back to a sport where you know, twenty seven
Speaker 1: to thirty five is like the golden years, and it's
Speaker 1: not weird to see somebody compete until they're forty two.
Speaker 3: And the other point, I would add the driver to TrackMan.
Speaker 3: Course management strategies changed a ton, and I would argue
Speaker 3: that that period was basically twenty fifteen to twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of mistakes being made in that
Speaker 3: period where golfers were way too conservative off the t.
Speaker 3: Those golfers have been weeded out, Like I think by
Speaker 3: now in twenty twenty five, golfers get it, and the
Speaker 3: up and comers I'll get it. So I think we
Speaker 3: are in a stable period of not just technical innovation
Speaker 3: but also strategy, and so we're probably seeing a pretty
Speaker 3: stable period of the top ten in the world rankings
Speaker 3: relative to history. Not there will still be a lot
Speaker 3: of turnover.
Speaker 1: I'll put that podcast that I talked about in the
Speaker 1: show notes for this it was still stands true. It
Speaker 1: was a fascinating study. I'll try and find the link
Speaker 1: to the study as well to put in there. I
Speaker 1: like remember just devouring that stuy. I read through it
Speaker 1: like three or four times. What is your who's your
Speaker 1: last player?
Speaker 3: Let's go a little crazier for the fifth one? Somebody
Speaker 3: not even a PGA Tour player, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Golfer is no buzz, it seems like, but I think
Speaker 3: should have a little as on hell Yora, the Spanish golfer.
Speaker 1: They're nodding. He's a DP World Tour grad right, he.
Speaker 3: Will not make the PGA Tour as of now, okay,
Speaker 3: so he's not in that top ten to get his
Speaker 3: PGA Tour card as things currently stand, which is a
Speaker 3: point that I had in my notes, Like, of all
Speaker 3: the golfers who are going to graduate next year to
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour, he's one that you would want. He's
Speaker 3: twenty one, his five top tens in his last eight
Speaker 3: starts on the DP World Tour. Probably a much better
Speaker 3: player than some of the other golfers who are, you know,
Speaker 3: in line to receive their PGA Tour card. Smokes smokes
Speaker 3: the golf ball like mid one eighties. Again, like a
Speaker 3: lot of these other young golfers.
Speaker 1: Common theme among everybody we've talked about. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know the driver. I think irons are the key. Iron
Speaker 1: play is the key to elite success. I think baseline
Speaker 1: PGA Tour success now is dependent on the driver.
Speaker 3: Driver is a I think pretty much a prerequisite for
Speaker 3: long term, consistent success. I don't know how many golfers
Speaker 3: you could give me that aren't consistently strong off the tee,
Speaker 3: who are good over a period of like ten to
Speaker 3: twenty years. So a lot of these guys have speed
Speaker 3: on Aliora Like again, five top tens in his last
Speaker 3: eight starts. He's starting to peak. I think this is
Speaker 3: the type of golfer where if you were Brian Rolapp
Speaker 3: on the PGA Tour, you'd want to say, like, hey,
Speaker 3: how do we get him on tour and make sure
Speaker 3: that he doesn't go sign somewhere like live when you
Speaker 3: have a very promising young talent like this. I don't
Speaker 3: know that there aren't many golfers. There's a basket of
Speaker 3: them who are let's say twenty one, twenty three. We've
Speaker 3: hit on a few of them, but guys showing a
Speaker 3: lot of promise. I don't know that we know exactly
Speaker 3: how his game stacks up in strong fields, but seeing
Speaker 3: the consistent results over the last couple of months from him,
Speaker 3: I think he's somebody you got to keep an eye
Speaker 3: on over the next six to twelve months.
Speaker 1: Good. That's a great, great coffee golf tip that now
Speaker 1: you've got a guy to watch on. I love that
Speaker 1: you didn't go just PGA Tour. You expanded your your
Speaker 1: bounds here to the DP World Tour. Do you know
Speaker 1: what it takes us? Takes us to our next topic
Speaker 1: I wanted to touch on briefly. Today was a lot
Speaker 1: of live news. They're going to seventy two holes, which
Speaker 1: is concerning for the name, but they also have pathways
Speaker 1: now with a Q school. To me, I would say
Speaker 1: the overriding thing here is they're trying to get world
Speaker 1: ranking points proving they have open pathways seventy two holes
Speaker 1: of stroke play. And the other thing it feels like
Speaker 1: is that they are trying to compete with the DP
Speaker 1: World Tour that has historically been Golf's world tour. What
Speaker 1: are your thoughts on live and their moves?
Speaker 3: A lot of you know, low hanging fruit, funny jokes
Speaker 3: to make about how they're just adopting, they're reinventing golf,
Speaker 3: and then they found their way to the seventy two
Speaker 3: whole format. I think there's probably a familiarity level that
Speaker 3: golfers like John Rahm have been clamoring for, like let's
Speaker 3: get back into a routine and have think.
Speaker 1: John Rom's going to win more tournaments because the longer
Speaker 1: a tournament goes, the better players have a better chance
Speaker 1: to win. This is like, you know, a marathon run,
Speaker 1: the Great marathon Runner being like, Hey, you know what, now,
Speaker 1: we're only going to run twenty miles, so we have
Speaker 1: less time to separate yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, getting into the cadence and getting ready for majors.
Speaker 3: Is it the biggest deal in the world. Maybe not,
Speaker 3: But I think it's helpful. Where what is what I
Speaker 3: keep coming back to in my head that I do
Speaker 3: not I think this is necessarily the direction you thought
Speaker 3: we were going to go on this particular point, Andy,
Speaker 3: But fifty four golfers getting OWGR points, I don't know
Speaker 3: that they're going to love the allotment of points that
Speaker 3: they get. Because larger fields, larger, deeper fields are more
Speaker 3: rewarded in the official World Golf ranking system. So even
Speaker 3: if liv does get OWGR accreditation, I don't know that
Speaker 3: they're going to be thrilled with the points that they're given.
Speaker 3: And then on top of that, the PGA Tour having
Speaker 3: all these seventy players signature events, they're getting OWGR points.
Speaker 3: It is a little bit of an own goal from
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour that if they had bigger fields like
Speaker 3: ninety even one hundred and twenty players, they'd be getting
Speaker 3: a significant a higher OWGR allocation. So just from the
Speaker 3: standpoint of trying to attract talent and saying, hey, we
Speaker 3: have OWGR points now too, the PGA Tour could make
Speaker 3: could shore up their sales pitch a little bit by
Speaker 3: expanding their own fields. I think the way that this
Speaker 3: is going to play out from an OWGR standpoint is
Speaker 3: going to be pretty fascinating. And I don't know that
Speaker 3: when the PGA Tour went to a seventy player field
Speaker 3: for their signature events, they necessarily considered this because it
Speaker 3: is a little bit of an own goal in reducing
Speaker 3: their own OWGR out allotment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, this is just kind of the next chapter.
Speaker 1: I think one of the one of the more compelling
Speaker 1: arcs and we've seen young players struggle on live for
Speaker 1: the most part or just like struggle to find their footing,
Speaker 1: which I think is like understandable. At the same time,
Speaker 1: while they're struggling to find their footing, they're patting their
Speaker 1: bank accounts, which you know, for a twenty something golfer,
Speaker 1: it's nice to secure your financial future within you know,
Speaker 1: just merely by being invited into the league. But I
Speaker 1: think the mckibbon success story is if you're awarded OWGR
Speaker 1: points and you have a real pathway to play your
Speaker 1: way into majors, I think you just hit on it
Speaker 1: with Anduel Ayora. Does this become a more a heeling
Speaker 1: proposition because of just how much they play for on
Speaker 1: a week to week basis, And listen, there's the quality
Speaker 1: players on the European Tour that would boost the bottom
Speaker 1: half of that league.
Speaker 3: I think it also andy fits into what we're talking
Speaker 3: about the best golfers playing their best golf between twenty
Speaker 3: eight and thirty five. I think the live sales pitch
Speaker 3: makes the most sense if you're below twenty eight. If
Speaker 3: you're twenty two and you want to cut your teeth
Speaker 3: for forty years and pad your bank account, have some
Speaker 3: financial security and learn the sport a little bit, or
Speaker 3: you're past that thirty five like your best days are
Speaker 3: kind of behind you. It is interesting to at least
Speaker 3: look at the complexion of the league that there aren't
Speaker 3: that many golfers or peaking between that twenty eight and
Speaker 3: thirty five range. I don't I don't think that's coincidental.
Speaker 3: Like there's a couple names obviously rom Niemann, Bryson, Patrick
Speaker 3: Reid's kind of at the tail end of that. But
Speaker 3: I think the sales pitch is most compelling for those
Speaker 3: guys like in Anhelliora a mckibbon, now that the pathways,
Speaker 3: now that they're getting OWGR points, potentially it's not a
Speaker 3: bad sales pitch, especially for an international players under twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I you know, listen, I I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of benefits to We just talked about this
Speaker 1: and it feels like you're talking a little bit outside
Speaker 1: both sides of your mouth with like the Michael Brennon path.
Speaker 1: I think there's like I think that is a real
Speaker 1: there are a lot of benefits to that path. One
Speaker 1: of the challenges of that path is is financial security,
Speaker 1: and like anything it's uh. But then on the other end,
Speaker 1: the idea of being able to to play golf without
Speaker 1: having to worry about so many of the things and
Speaker 1: also support yourself in the sense of I know where
Speaker 1: my home is, I don't have to worry about paying
Speaker 1: a physio, or I don't have to worry about like
Speaker 1: do I have enough money to to you know, set
Speaker 1: up the team that I want around me? Is is
Speaker 1: another is a better fit to that? But I think
Speaker 1: it does come with like it is slightly less competitive
Speaker 1: and serious tour. Not I think it's going to remain
Speaker 1: to be that. It is going to continue to be
Speaker 1: that until a lot of the mainstays who are just
Speaker 1: kind of winding down the ends of their careers and
Speaker 1: padding their bank accounts are gone. Like you know, it
Speaker 1: seems like Liv's going to be here to stay. All
Speaker 1: signs point to that, Like what does LIV look like
Speaker 1: in five years when Phil Micholson, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood,
Speaker 1: Henrik Stenson, Graham McDowell, those types aren't on the tour,
Speaker 1: Anthony Kim aren't on the tour and it's real golfers.
Speaker 3: It's a good point look to not talk out of
Speaker 3: both sides of my mouth. I think if you want
Speaker 3: to play the best golf you possibly can live is
Speaker 3: not an attractive option. Like the best golfers will come
Speaker 3: through the other pathway. But again, if you're an international
Speaker 3: player and playing around the world is more appealing to
Speaker 3: you than an America based tour, probably the best time
Speaker 3: to do that's when you're twenty two.
Speaker 1: All right, Joseph, big thanks for coming on. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that this is a big week for you.
Speaker 1: You got to lock in to Mexico and kick grass
Speaker 1: on the move. You're in a new place, a new
Speaker 1: recording setup, so we will talk to you soon. People
Speaker 1: can read your work in the newsletter. You've been doing
Speaker 1: great work in the newsletter. They can check out your
Speaker 1: design disasters and and your weekly column. So so thanks Joseph.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 5: Thanks Andy, all right, big thanks to Joseph.
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Speaker 1: Mali Nui. And let's get to Garrett and Matt about England.
Speaker 1: All right, Matt Garrett, welcome back from England. You guys
Speaker 1: are back from a long, lengthy, golf heavy trip abroad.
Speaker 1: I mean this is a marathon trip. So you guys
Speaker 1: went with a group of fried Egg golf club members
Speaker 1: to England and it really experienced both Surrey, the Heathland
Speaker 1: area of England near London, as well as the Southeast.
Speaker 1: I'd love you know. One of the things I find
Speaker 1: most interesting as American going abroad to different locales, whether
Speaker 1: it's Ireland or Scotland, those are the two that I've
Speaker 1: been to, is just the golf culture and how they're
Speaker 1: different across the how they're different across that different islands.
Speaker 1: How would you surmize and characterize English golf culture.
Speaker 4: Matt, you want to take that one, sure?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's like very starkly different than
Speaker 2: American golf culture. And it's so evident, like right when
Speaker 2: you show up to these clubs, there's not like a
Speaker 2: stack of carts lined up outside of the clubhouses. Everyone's walking,
Speaker 2: everyone's playing very quickly in a fast manner. I think
Speaker 2: the most noticeable and thing I almost envy the most
Speaker 2: about just walking around these golf courses because I didn't
Speaker 2: get to quite play as much as people on the trip.
Speaker 2: I was more so taking photos and documenting stuff. But
Speaker 2: there's just people roaming these golf courses like at all
Speaker 2: hours of the day walking their dogs. There's always signs
Speaker 2: saying like public footpath right through the middle of these
Speaker 2: golf courses, and I was honestly like a little nervous
Speaker 2: like going to like into these pro shops and having
Speaker 2: to ask like, hey, can I wander the course with
Speaker 2: like this group of golfers. Like I thought there would
Speaker 2: be like the American style thing. We're like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: you can't, that's a liability issue. But no, it's like
Speaker 2: welcome there where the golf course is just like an
Speaker 2: extension of the local communities and people are just roaming
Speaker 2: about with their dogs, enjoying the land for what it is,
Speaker 2: even if they're not playing golf. So I thought that
Speaker 2: was one of the coolest things that was immediately apparent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just to add to that, we went to some
Speaker 4: of the most private and exclusive clubs in England. Our
Speaker 4: trip took us from Huntercombe Golf Club to Sunningdale Golf
Speaker 4: Club and then down to the coast to see Royal
Speaker 4: Saint George's, Royal Sinkport's and Princes Golf Club. Then we
Speaker 4: went back into the Heathland area to see Saint George's
Speaker 4: Hill and Woking Golf Club. And you know, if you
Speaker 4: ask English people, they will say these are some of
Speaker 4: our most private institutions in the country, golf institutions in
Speaker 4: the country. But the feeling for an American used to
Speaker 4: American private club culture is that these clubs are very relaxed,
Speaker 4: that you show up feel comfortable, that there's a real
Speaker 4: walking culture, and the courses are part of their neighborhoods.
Speaker 4: They're an extension of the living spaces of the people
Speaker 4: who live around the courses, and so that that gives
Speaker 4: these clubs a very nice homey feel.
Speaker 1: I feel, you know, just obviously with the UK and Ireland,
Speaker 1: really the British Isles, one of my big takeaways is
Speaker 1: how much more intertwined with just overall culture golf is.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of reasons for that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you guys hit on is
Speaker 1: just like the proximity to people like they are you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're often like right abutting town obviously Scotland. There's
Speaker 1: you know, lots of great examples of courses that a
Speaker 1: butt into the town, where you start in the town,
Speaker 1: you play out of the town, and you come back
Speaker 1: to the town. In America, you could count like the
Speaker 1: number of courses that have that sort of feel on
Speaker 1: your hand on like one hand, where you start in town,
Speaker 1: play out and play back and the course is a
Speaker 1: functional part of societ. And I like my one lasting
Speaker 1: images whenever I go abroad is always like I love
Speaker 1: when I see kids like pushing a push cart to
Speaker 1: a golf course from a residential area, and it's like
Speaker 1: I as a kid, I went to a public golf
Speaker 1: course and I rode my bike with my back, with
Speaker 1: that on my back, but it was like a mile drive.
Speaker 1: It was a mile long bike ride. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: walking down the street to the golf course. And I
Speaker 1: just think that it. You know, you read so much
Speaker 1: about about like things that promote longevity in life, and
Speaker 1: so much of it is like you know there obviously
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things relationships healthy eating, but
Speaker 1: like one of the big determinants. Is is just walking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you think about golf, it promotes two of
Speaker 1: those things, like relationships, like friendships that through through golf.
Speaker 1: Like I think it's kind of crazy, like my wife
Speaker 1: doesn't play golf and you I end up with. I remember,
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. When we did our wedding wedding advice,
Speaker 1: she was like, who are these people? I've never met them,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I've played golf with them for like
Speaker 1: my whole life, like I've read a lot. I spend
Speaker 1: more time with them than most of my friends, Like
Speaker 1: they know everything about me. Like it promotes relationship, but
Speaker 1: also if the culture is walking like it is abroad,
Speaker 1: it also is a It's just an incredible longevity sport
Speaker 1: for your overarching health as you age in life.
Speaker 4: If you think about where these golf courses are located
Speaker 4: in England, the spots that we saw, we went to
Speaker 4: the heathlands around London and we went to Linksland down
Speaker 4: on the on the southeastern coast of England, the Kent Coast. Basically,
Speaker 4: the history of the heathlands in England is that it's
Speaker 4: land that is available to the public for recreation and exercise.
Speaker 4: This is the historical use of this kind of land
Speaker 4: for English people, and the golf courses are there as
Speaker 4: part of that history, but it's not the sole use
Speaker 4: of the land. I don't think the people who live
Speaker 4: around Woking Golf Club or Sunningdale Golf Club would accept
Speaker 4: a reality where the land of those golf courses would
Speaker 4: be inaccessible to them. And so you can see the
Speaker 4: people in these neighborhoods using the heathlands in the way
Speaker 4: that they've always been used to basically walk their dogs
Speaker 4: and to go out and get some light, exercise and
Speaker 4: fresh air. And that's so tremendously healthy. If you look
Speaker 4: into the history of Lynxland, it's the same thing. The
Speaker 4: Lynxland is really good for one thing, and that is recreation.
Speaker 4: It's not good for farming, it's not it's not really
Speaker 4: good for anything except for the uses that it's put
Speaker 4: to uh on in in these in these coastal areas
Speaker 4: in the UK. Golf and walking and so yeah, like
Speaker 4: Matt I was, I was really inspired by how these
Speaker 4: pieces of land still have multiple uses going on. It's
Speaker 4: not just golf, it's also a community recreation spot. And
Speaker 4: you have a sense that the people who live there,
Speaker 4: know how to use this land, and would not be
Speaker 4: persuaded to uh to to you know, fence it off
Speaker 4: and devote it only to golf.
Speaker 1: Matt, Why would you say to somebody that's looking at
Speaker 1: booking a trip, uh, why is England a great destination
Speaker 1: uh for a golf trip?
Speaker 2: I think, first and foremost, like with the trip that
Speaker 2: we did, we kind of saw two very different styles
Speaker 2: of golf between the lynxland on the coast with you know,
Speaker 2: the sea breeze fully exposed, and then the heathland courses
Speaker 2: kind of in the Surrey Hills. They're just like so
Speaker 2: starkly different from each other, but at the same time
Speaker 2: they're like incredibly world class, some of the best golf
Speaker 2: courses I've ever seen in my life in these two
Speaker 2: starkly different environments. So I feel like that just presents
Speaker 2: like such a great opportunity. I mean, and these courses
Speaker 2: are what two and a half two two and a
Speaker 2: half hours apart from each other at the most, So
Speaker 2: you could play in the Surrey Hills one day and
Speaker 2: then you're on the water on the coast the next day,
Speaker 2: and you get these two very different styles of golf.
Speaker 2: For the most part. I think the turf is pretty
Speaker 2: similar across the board. It's a little bit different when
Speaker 2: you get into the hills and the trees, but it's
Speaker 2: just like amazing the variety that you can get in
Speaker 2: such close proximity. I don't know if I could really
Speaker 2: compare it to much anything in the United States, like
Speaker 2: if you were to compare it to a trip of Bandon.
Speaker 2: Like Bandon, it's all fairly similar. Trails is the biggest outlier,
Speaker 2: but the variety in England, and then just the caliber
Speaker 2: of how good these golf courses are. I think it's
Speaker 2: honestly like probably nothing really else comes close to it
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: I would like think maybe if you did New York
Speaker 1: with Long Island and then Westchester, you get that huge
Speaker 1: variety different. But I think one of the unique things
Speaker 1: about England is it's all on sand where Westchester, like
Speaker 1: if you were going to say what limits it, it's
Speaker 1: like the soils and you know, you can't get it
Speaker 1: to play great all the time. And obviously one of
Speaker 1: the things that unique about about the Heathlands is is
Speaker 1: is you get that kind of parkland feel, but it's
Speaker 1: on a sand base, which is extraordinary, right.
Speaker 4: I think the closest comparison that I can come up
Speaker 4: with is the Melbourne sand Belt, where you can you
Speaker 4: can see some of these heathland courses. It's really heathland
Speaker 4: in the Melbourne sand Belt, inland courses that that sit
Speaker 4: on sand and have a varied vegetation around them. And
Speaker 4: then if you if you go on a Melbourne golf trip,
Speaker 4: you can travel to the Mornington Peninsula and see some
Speaker 4: modern links courses. Uh you know the course the links
Speaker 4: courses that you see on the English coast are are
Speaker 4: certainly of older vintage. But I think you can get
Speaker 4: a similar type of variety and and and array of
Speaker 4: interesting courses if you go to Melbourne. But there's there's
Speaker 4: really nowhere else that that aside from Melbourne that comes
Speaker 4: close to this trip that we just did. And so
Speaker 4: that's probably the main reason that I would recommend it
Speaker 4: to anybody. It's completely unique.
Speaker 1: A question along these lines. So obviously you have Engle,
Speaker 1: you fly into London. Yeah, the courses are mostly about
Speaker 1: an hour outside of of of London that are in
Speaker 1: the in in in like the Surrey in Surrey.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, roughly Huntercombe was like ninety minutes, which was
Speaker 2: the longest from.
Speaker 4: And we stayed in Windsor, which is basically a town
Speaker 4: that is, you know, south west of the main part
Speaker 4: of London, and that put us in a position to
Speaker 4: get to these courses more quickly.
Speaker 1: Would it be easy to get to London from there though,
Speaker 1: like train.
Speaker 4: From from Windsor or from yeah, from Windsor, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: we didn't really do that. Matt was in a car,
Speaker 4: and of course I was in the bus with all
Speaker 4: the people who were on the trip. But you know, historically,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how much these train lines are still
Speaker 4: in operation, but historically courses like Sunningdale and Woking Golf
Speaker 4: Club were established in their locations because there were railways
Speaker 4: that connected directly to them and people would travel from
Speaker 4: London on the train out to these locations. So they
Speaker 4: certainly are accessible by rail.
Speaker 1: And then the Southeast Coast, the other part of your
Speaker 1: trip is about two hours from London.
Speaker 4: Correct, yeah, two to two and a half.
Speaker 1: A question I have is the Southeast Coast where you
Speaker 1: get Prince's Royal Sinkport's Rye, Saint George's Royal State George's.
Speaker 1: Is that enough for its own trip or do you
Speaker 1: need the other stuff?
Speaker 2: I think, without a doubt, you could just go on
Speaker 2: your own trip to the coast. I think the quality
Speaker 2: of those courses like Royal Sinkports, and specifically I was
Speaker 2: like kind of sad we didn't get to like walk
Speaker 2: around and see it again because there's this middle stretch
Speaker 2: of the golf course where there's just stunning golf hole
Speaker 2: after stunning golf hole. So I think, without a doubt,
Speaker 2: you could go just to the coast there and like
Speaker 2: play thirty six even more at each of the courses.
Speaker 2: We had a thirty six whole day at Royal Saint George's,
Speaker 2: and I think that was likely the fan favorite from
Speaker 2: all the people on the trip, So you can definitely
Speaker 2: like just go there and play multiple courses multiple times.
Speaker 4: At Royal Saint George's, thirty six whole day was incredible,
Speaker 4: and I think people really appreciated the opportunity to play
Speaker 4: that course twice and really get to know it, and
Speaker 4: a lot of folks on the trip wished that they
Speaker 4: had a similar opportunity at Royal Sinkports, where we could
Speaker 4: have just spent an entire day exploring that golf course
Speaker 4: because it really deserves to be played twice and then
Speaker 4: you could go to Rye Golf Club, which isn't far away,
Speaker 4: also on the coast, also a links golf course, also
Speaker 4: one where you could definitely play thirty six holes and
Speaker 4: have a really good day. Then there are twenty seven
Speaker 4: holes at Prince's Golf Club. Now I would say that
Speaker 4: Prince's was the least of the golf courses that we
Speaker 4: saw in terms of quality, but still really enjoyable, still
Speaker 4: right on the ocean, still on a legitimate piece of
Speaker 4: links land, twenty seven holes. You could definitely devote a
Speaker 4: day to that, or even a day and a half,
Speaker 4: and so you could construct a fantastic trip out of
Speaker 4: just visiting that piece of coastline. Little Stone is also
Speaker 4: a really good Yeah, it's a I think, yeah exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a CB McDonald was inspired by one of the
Speaker 4: holes at Littlestone. I think it's a Harry Colt course
Speaker 4: and it has has kind of a heathling character. But
Speaker 4: it's close to the coast. So that's a terrific golf
Speaker 4: course that's roughly in this area that you could also visit.
Speaker 4: And then you know, above all, I think just traveling
Speaker 4: to this area is so fun because the towns of
Speaker 4: Sandwich and Deal and and the towns that are kind
Speaker 4: of up and down this stretch of coastline are so
Speaker 4: interesting in and of themselves have a lot of history.
Speaker 4: You know, one of these towns that we were close to,
Speaker 4: I forgot the name of it, but was the town
Speaker 4: where all the ships launched during the Dunkirk evacuation because
Speaker 4: it's one of the kind of shortest trips across the
Speaker 4: English Channel to get to to get to France on
Speaker 4: the other side, and so that's where that's where a
Speaker 4: lot of the boats that they sent out to evacuate
Speaker 4: people set off from. And I'm you know, there's there's
Speaker 4: so much interesting history to learn about there. Pretty nearby
Speaker 4: is where swimmers art when they swim across the channel.
Speaker 4: They do that they do the channel crossing, and you know,
Speaker 4: Matt and I literally had a moment where we were
Speaker 4: looking across the channel and could see France on the
Speaker 4: other side. It's it's it's very very close there.
Speaker 1: So it's a distinctive area attempted to swim.
Speaker 4: Not at this point in my life.
Speaker 2: That that time. That town is called Ramsgate and from
Speaker 2: Royal Saint George's you can see it. Uh, kind of
Speaker 2: across the sea there, and then also I wanted to
Speaker 2: point out just south of that is Dover and they
Speaker 2: have the the White Cliffs of Dover, which I learned
Speaker 2: about as I drove through the town and saw these enormous,
Speaker 2: like bright white cliffs, which are really cool. But another
Speaker 2: thing that's really cool about the three courses and Princes Royal,
Speaker 2: Saint George's and Royal Sinkports is they're all within like
Speaker 2: maybe two miles total of coastline, maybe three miles whatever
Speaker 2: it is. They're very very close in proximity, essentially all
Speaker 2: their property lines touch each other. But the formation of
Speaker 2: dunes between these three courses are like so vastly different.
Speaker 2: It's like when I was there, I was like scratching
Speaker 2: my head, like just in disbelief. I was like, how
Speaker 2: can these dunes be so different and so close to
Speaker 2: each other? Because each three course has like a very
Speaker 2: distinct kind of formation of dunes in size and the
Speaker 2: way they look and the way they kind of interact
Speaker 2: with the golf courses. So I think that in itself
Speaker 2: allows you to go there and it doesn't just feel
Speaker 2: like you're playing three really similar links golf courses. They're
Speaker 2: all very very different and right there where you can
Speaker 2: literally walk between them if you really had to.
Speaker 4: The Royal St George's dunes are huge, especially in those
Speaker 4: first few holes, kind of classic dune land that maybe
Speaker 4: would remind you of Ireland. And then the Prince's dunes
Speaker 4: are much lower and much more linear, and so the
Speaker 4: course is quite flat but has a lot of interesting
Speaker 4: micro contour through the fairways.
Speaker 1: And then that looks more like a Scotland, yeah, type
Speaker 1: of links Land, and I've always thought Royal Safe George
Speaker 1: just looks more like Ireland.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that was that was our impression as well.
Speaker 4: And then Royal Sinkports is something else entirely where the
Speaker 4: there's a variety. There are some big dune formations at
Speaker 4: Royal Sinkboats and some more subtle ones, but they have
Speaker 4: a different shape at Royal Sinkports, where they're more wavy
Speaker 4: and more ripply and kind of up and down, whereas
Speaker 4: at Royal Saint George's they're very rounded and kind of mountainous.
Speaker 4: And so it's it's just a completely different kind of terrain,
Speaker 4: even though it is the same stretch of Lynxland. You
Speaker 4: know that all these courses basically about each other.
Speaker 1: All right, let's let's get to kind of some of
Speaker 1: your favorite courses from the trip. I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from each of you your three favorite courses and why
Speaker 1: and if it's the same, feel free to discuss together.
Speaker 1: You know this is this is a good time for
Speaker 1: me to check out for a few minutes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, okay, So three favorite courses from the trip.
Speaker 4: I loved all the courses that we saw on the trip.
Speaker 4: I think that, you know, a consensus among everybody who
Speaker 4: went on the trip is that Royal Saint George's was
Speaker 4: probably the best course that we saw. A very complete
Speaker 4: golf course. You know, many great UK Links courses that
Speaker 4: you see maybe lack a little bit of complexity at
Speaker 4: the green complexes, but that's not something that you find
Speaker 4: at Royal Saint George's. These greens are incredibly sophisticated and
Speaker 4: natural and beautiful and interesting, and so it's it's one
Speaker 4: of the most complete golf courses from tee to green
Speaker 4: that I've ever seen. So so Royal Saint George's was
Speaker 4: sort of a cut above for me.
Speaker 1: Is it maybe a great Is it maybe a great
Speaker 1: marker that tour pros dislike Royal Saint George's is the
Speaker 1: least favorite of tour pros in the open ro to
Speaker 1: is that maybe the best monikers you can have.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that a great endorsement that like, regular golfers will
Speaker 1: love this golf course.
Speaker 4: It's a great indication. I think. I'm not sure how
Speaker 4: many of them get out to see Royal Sinkports too,
Speaker 4: but Royal Sinkports is in some ways similar to Royal
Speaker 4: Saint George's in the sense that it's a very complete
Speaker 4: golf course, has amazing land, and then the greens there
Speaker 4: are absolutely incredible. So those were probably that for me
Speaker 4: the top two courses, most most memorable and most compelling
Speaker 4: golf courses that we saw on the trip. And then
Speaker 4: you know Sunningdale Old absolutely brilliant golf course that Matt
Speaker 4: actually didn't get to see, but but such an interesting
Speaker 4: heath Lynd golf course that would probably come come in
Speaker 4: third for me on my on my list of favorites.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would tend to agree Royal Saint George's is
Speaker 2: certainly the top dog I was. I wasn't expecting like
Speaker 2: a ton like obviously I knew it's a very highly
Speaker 2: regarded golf course, but I was pretty definitive in thinking
Speaker 2: that Royal Port Rush was the best open venue in
Speaker 2: the in the rotation, and after seeing Royal Saint George's,
Speaker 2: I think there's a pretty like tough battle there between
Speaker 2: them of which one's the best. Like the set of
Speaker 2: greens at Royal Saint George's are almost mind blowing, Like
Speaker 2: there's not a single one that you wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: like skip over miss They're just absolutely incredible. And then
Speaker 2: out of the Surrey courses that I saw Garrett mentioned,
Speaker 2: I didn't get to go to Sunningdale, I made a
Speaker 2: little bit of a side quest to the Addington Club,
Speaker 2: which was really cool. It's kind of ongoing a lot
Speaker 2: of renovation restoration work under Clayton Devrees and Pond, so
Speaker 2: there's a lot of cool stuff happening there which was
Speaker 2: really fun to see.
Speaker 1: But some in the before and after images of the
Speaker 1: Addington and the tree removal and the restored greens are
Speaker 1: just shocking. I got to know Ryan when he was
Speaker 1: in the United States, like in you know, kind of
Speaker 1: early twenty seventeen maybe, and he gave me his master
Speaker 1: plan book and it's unbelievable to just see this work
Speaker 1: being carried out. I also appreciate the process that they're
Speaker 1: going through where they're kind of taking it piecemeal. They
Speaker 1: haven't done just a full shutdown. It seems like a
Speaker 1: very sensible project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool because right after, I guess Harry
Speaker 2: Colt came in and did some work I think in
Speaker 2: the late twenties early thirties, but they took a bunch
Speaker 2: of photos from all the tea's, like these incredibly high
Speaker 2: resolution photos of a lot of the holes right after
Speaker 2: he did a lot of work, So they have like
Speaker 2: these incredible kind of archives of what the course was
Speaker 2: and what they're looking to restore it back to. As
Speaker 2: well as the original architect, Abercrombie, that was like his
Speaker 2: home course and he was constantly revising it over his lifetime,
Speaker 2: kind of like the stories you hear of Mackenzie at
Speaker 2: pas Tiempo and Donald Rossett at Pinehurst Number two. So
Speaker 2: it's almost like this one architects like baby and child
Speaker 2: who he nurtured and was constantly evolving throughout his career.
Speaker 2: So it is really a cool golf course to go
Speaker 2: see and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking
Speaker 2: for a trip to this area. But the last course
Speaker 2: I wanted to touch on. I'd agree with Garrett and Royal.
Speaker 2: Saint George's and Saint Port's is kind of one and two,
Speaker 2: and then Saint George's Hill, which is a hairy Colt
Speaker 2: design in the heathlens. It's on a very like, pretty
Speaker 2: severe piece of land, a lot of hills, pretty good walk,
Speaker 2: but it's it's an incredible golf course, really cool golf
Speaker 2: holes throughout the front nine. I really enjoyed. Was was
Speaker 2: all I got to really walk and play, and then
Speaker 2: I had to to to skirt off and fly the
Speaker 2: drone to take some photos. But that one really sticks
Speaker 2: out in my memory and when I really hope to
Speaker 2: get back after they complete a lot of their restoration work.
Speaker 2: They have scheduled next summer.
Speaker 1: How you know, so they're they're working with Brian Schneider.
Speaker 1: I was curious that photos of Saint George's Hills that
Speaker 1: always struck me as this is a place I would
Speaker 1: really like to play golf. What do you think it's
Speaker 1: potential is with with some sensical work there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's already, Yeah, it's already an
Speaker 2: incredible golf course, Like it's only going to get better
Speaker 2: and better and better. Specifically, I know, like holes like
Speaker 2: the eighth has this huge landform it plays up on
Speaker 2: this hill. It's a world class par three, but I
Speaker 2: think there used to be a double green on that hole,
Speaker 2: so there was a green kind of on this lower
Speaker 2: tier where the land dips down severely. The bunkers in
Speaker 2: the hill short of the green used to be these massive,
Speaker 2: like blowout styled bunkers that were really dramatic looking. So
Speaker 2: we'reclaiming a lot of that stuff from back in the twenties,
Speaker 2: kind of this ruggedness of the site and then green expansions,
Speaker 2: maybe expanding some of the corridors just a little bit.
Speaker 2: The corridors are plenty wide for play and the trees
Speaker 2: don't really come into play, but I think opening it
Speaker 2: up a little regaining some of the heather kind of
Speaker 2: off the sides of the planing corridors is just gonna
Speaker 2: to send that golf course to like a very very
Speaker 2: high tier of golf course in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think what has happened at a lot of
Speaker 4: heathling courses over time is that they've been left alone
Speaker 4: for the most part, and they've evolved because of that.
Speaker 4: But they've never really been severely changed, severely altered. And
Speaker 4: so at Saint George's Hill you have a golf course
Speaker 4: that I think is really well preserved. It is a
Speaker 4: well preserved hairy cult design and it just needs a
Speaker 4: little bit of brightening up at the edges to be
Speaker 4: really really great. And I think the same could be
Speaker 4: said of the new course at Sunningdale Golf Club, which
Speaker 4: is another Hairy Colt design from the nineteen twenties. Gil
Speaker 4: Hants has a plan out there right now to remove
Speaker 4: quite a few trees, but aside from that, just to
Speaker 4: widen things out a bit, uh, you know, take the
Speaker 4: greens back to their former dimensions, recapture some intricacies of
Speaker 4: the bunkers. And if you do a little bit of
Speaker 4: that work at these golf courses then I think it's
Speaker 4: it's really gonna stun people what they what they look
Speaker 4: like afterwards. And so Saint George's Hill and Sunningdale New
Speaker 4: for me are in a similar category. They are these
Speaker 4: extremely well preserved Golden Age designs that just could use
Speaker 4: a little bit of TLC and then and then they'll
Speaker 4: really shine.
Speaker 1: If you guys were going to put one of the
Speaker 1: holes that you played in your backyard from the trip.
Speaker 1: What hole would it be?
Speaker 2: Go for it, Matt, Let me think the there's two
Speaker 2: that really stick out to me.
Speaker 1: You gotta pick one, all right.
Speaker 2: I'll pick the one on the coast. It's the sixth
Speaker 2: hole at Royal Sinkports. Unfortunately I did not get to
Speaker 2: play it, but I walked it and Part four and
Speaker 2: then I.
Speaker 1: Thought I was photography duty. So yeah, but golf had
Speaker 1: that guy.
Speaker 4: That worked in some golf when he could, but he
Speaker 4: he had a job to do and and he was
Speaker 4: he was very attentive to that job. Then there was
Speaker 4: good light at Royal Snport, so you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I actually parked up on a doune right
Speaker 2: above this golf hole to fly the drone. So I
Speaker 2: was just sitting there looking at the hole for about
Speaker 2: an hour and a half two hours. Saw a few
Speaker 2: groups come through. But it's this really cool short. Part
Speaker 2: four plays over some of the most dramatic land on
Speaker 2: the course, but the tea is kind of perched up
Speaker 2: against there's this sea wall that they built, kind of
Speaker 2: a natural sea wall. It's like a big burm essentially,
Speaker 2: with a walking path on top of it. But the
Speaker 2: course used to flood quite a bit, and I think
Speaker 2: in the eighties they built this this giant berm to
Speaker 2: help the course from flooding. But this pole plays right
Speaker 2: up along that and directly in line with you can
Speaker 2: see the green through these massive dunes. You'll see the
Speaker 2: flag sticking up. But the fairway goes down to the
Speaker 2: left kind of plays down into this hollow, and then
Speaker 2: if you go that route, you're just gonna hit a
Speaker 2: wedgshot up to this green. But the green is perched
Speaker 2: up on this like really high point and it falls
Speaker 2: off on all sides. So from the tee like if
Speaker 2: it's down when, which it was when we were there,
Speaker 2: the caddies are just saying, like send it, like everyone
Speaker 2: go for the green if you had the distance. So
Speaker 2: you just like see this flag poking up out of
Speaker 2: these wild, undulating dunes. So there's two ways of like
Speaker 2: go for it or play it safe. And then even
Speaker 2: if you play it safe, you're down in this fairway
Speaker 2: and you're just looking up with this green like probably
Speaker 2: fifteen twenty feet above you, and it's a pretty small green.
Speaker 2: Entire green pitches away from you, so you have to
Speaker 2: have like a very precise wedshot to get it close,
Speaker 2: but it's bunkerless, like it plays over this tumultuous land
Speaker 2: and it just looks like a hole that like you
Speaker 2: could just play one hundred times and never have a
Speaker 2: bad time planet.
Speaker 4: It would be a different outcome every time on the
Speaker 4: sixth hole Royal Sinkports, Yeah, because the land is so
Speaker 4: wild there and it just can deflect your ball in
Speaker 4: all sorts of different directions. Yeah, I love that hole
Speaker 4: as well. There are there are a few at Royal
Speaker 4: Snkports that that I would put in the in the
Speaker 4: same category. And those holes are all kind of clustered
Speaker 4: around that middle section of the golf course where the
Speaker 4: dune land gets gets really wild, and so so that's
Speaker 4: a lot of candidates there, you know. I think that
Speaker 4: you know, when I'm when I'm thinking of a hole
Speaker 4: that I want to put in my backyard or a
Speaker 4: green that I'd want to put in my backyard, I
Speaker 4: go more toward some of the heathland courses that we
Speaker 4: saw and the and the reason for that is that
Speaker 4: the architecture in the English heathlands is so interesting to
Speaker 4: me because it was really some of the first great
Speaker 4: inland golf architecture.
Speaker 1: It's when the practice became professionalized exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so Sunningdale Knew was built in nineteen oh
Speaker 4: one and really nothing had been built that was like
Speaker 4: it previously, because you know, a golf course that was
Speaker 4: that well worked out on an inland property was sort
Speaker 4: of foreign to the minds of golfers at the time.
Speaker 4: And so you know, architects who were working on these
Speaker 4: heathland properties were inventing the profession basically as they were
Speaker 4: going along, and that gives the architecture there a kind
Speaker 4: of freedom and spontaneity that you don't really see many places.
Speaker 4: And a great example of just the weirdness of golf
Speaker 4: course design and the heathlands is at Huntercombe Golf Club.
Speaker 4: The first golf course that we saw Willie Park Junior
Speaker 4: golf Course from the first decade of the twentieth century,
Speaker 4: and the greens there are incredibly inventive and you can
Speaker 4: tell that they were built by somebody who was just
Speaker 4: trying things and who didn't know what a golf course
Speaker 4: green should look like, and so they have this wonderful
Speaker 4: creativity to them. Specifically, the fourth green, the green on
Speaker 4: the fourth hole at Huntercombe Golf Club is absolutely incredible.
Speaker 4: I'm not exactly sure how to describe it, but it
Speaker 4: has a severe two tiered construction with a very low
Speaker 4: section on the right side, and it's just and the
Speaker 4: whole thing is a little bit sunken down into the ground.
Speaker 4: There are these sharp edges all around it. A couple
Speaker 4: of times recently, the American architect Andy Staples has built
Speaker 4: versions of this green at a couple of his courses,
Speaker 4: specifically at Meadowbrook Golf Club outside of Meadowook Country Club
Speaker 4: outside of Detroit. On one of the holes there, he
Speaker 4: built kind of a replica of the of the fourth
Speaker 4: green at at Huntercombe. And yeah, it's just so fun,
Speaker 4: so spontaneous, so creative. That's the kind of green that
Speaker 4: I would that I would want to have in my backyard.
Speaker 4: There are a couple of examples of of these types
Speaker 4: of greens, of these of these really eccentric greens at
Speaker 4: Huntercombe that would be equally equally fun to to try
Speaker 4: to replicate. And then at Woking Golf Club as well,
Speaker 4: there are some versions of like double plateau greens there
Speaker 4: that just kind of come out of nowhere and and
Speaker 4: you look at them and just say, you know, why,
Speaker 4: why can't architecture be this free and quirky anymore.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. It seems like that might be
Speaker 1: a trend of the future. If I had a guess,
Speaker 1: is that there will be more freedom a little bit
Speaker 1: less worry about fairness, which is kind of dominated golf
Speaker 1: architecture since stroke play became the dominant form of the
Speaker 1: game of golf. If you guys could do something differently
Speaker 1: about the trip, what would you have done other than
Speaker 1: matt yours can't be play more golf.
Speaker 2: One thing that I was really sad I didn't get
Speaker 2: to do was visit the castle in Windsor, where we
Speaker 2: were staying for about half the trip. I don't know
Speaker 2: all the history about it, but our hotel was directly
Speaker 2: across the street from it, so we're staring at it
Speaker 2: for three or four days and it's just an enormous castle.
Speaker 2: People are saying there's like two or three churches in
Speaker 2: there that are really architectural design pieces that are worth seeing.
Speaker 2: I think just like going there and spending the day
Speaker 2: like walking around this ancient castle would be really cool
Speaker 2: thing to do and kind of sad that I didn't
Speaker 2: have more time to do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think building in some time on this kind
Speaker 4: of trip to to go out and see attractions like
Speaker 4: that would be would be something I'd look to do
Speaker 4: because the the areas around, uh, these golf courses and
Speaker 4: the areas around where we are staying or were so
Speaker 4: interesting and I would have loved to explore them a
Speaker 4: little bit more. I mean, I think you know when
Speaker 4: you we we spent a week basically seeing Heathland golf
Speaker 4: courses and then and then going down to the to
Speaker 4: the Sandwich Coast to see the Links golf courses, and
Speaker 4: you just wonder what you could do with two weeks. Basically,
Speaker 4: you'd probably play Royal Sink Ports twice. You'd you'd probably
Speaker 4: check out Golf Club, you'd probably hit a couple more
Speaker 4: Heathland courses like Swinley Forest, and maybe go check out
Speaker 4: Walton heath to to really get a more complete sense
Speaker 4: of what Heathland golf is like. And and so those
Speaker 4: are the things that are kind of on my mind.
Speaker 4: But I'm not sure for a week long trip like
Speaker 4: we did that I would really do anything differently. I
Speaker 4: think it was basically a perfect trip for the amount
Speaker 4: of time that we had, and so for anybody who's
Speaker 4: looking to put together a week long itinerary in the
Speaker 4: Heathlands and in the southeast coast of England. I think
Speaker 4: we did a good itinerary and I think you should
Speaker 4: pretty much copy it if you do something similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you know, you went on a trip with
Speaker 1: was it sixteen or twenty?
Speaker 4: It was fifteen? Other fifteen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, fifteen other people in addition do us?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some people come as pairs, some people come as singles,
Speaker 1: some people come as you know, other denominations of small groups.
Speaker 1: What were your what were your takeaways from the trip
Speaker 1: of people beating and playing world class golf together.
Speaker 4: We had so much fun. You know. I think everybody
Speaker 4: was there for the right reasons. Everybody wanted to see
Speaker 4: some extremely historically interesting golf courses and learn about the
Speaker 4: architecture there, and and and so we just had an
Speaker 4: absolutely wonderful time. And I think everybody got to kind
Speaker 4: of play, uh and talk with everybody else, and so
Speaker 4: our group cohered pretty quickly. And and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: what can you say, We just had an absolutely wonderful time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's really cool to like just go on a
Speaker 2: trip like this with a bunch of strangers. Essentially, I
Speaker 2: think I knew one person on the trip outside of
Speaker 2: Garrett that I'd previously met, and then by the end
Speaker 2: of the trip, like everyone's exchanging phone numbers and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: if you're ever in this area, come check out my
Speaker 2: club and I'll host you, and all different kinds of
Speaker 2: things like that, Like people are already setting up future
Speaker 2: trips with each other just from you know, spending a
Speaker 2: quick week with a like minded kind of golf nut
Speaker 2: creates these kind of lasting relationships. So I think that
Speaker 2: was one really cool thing to kind of sit back
Speaker 2: and watch develop as the trip went on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I did pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did. Our trip to Scotland, and one of
Speaker 1: my favorite lasting memories is just thinking about we took
Speaker 1: buses places, but we stayed in Saint Andrew's and how
Speaker 1: disjointed the group was at the start of the trip,
Speaker 1: where you know, people didn't really know each other. They
Speaker 1: were you know, they would talk, but people stuck to
Speaker 1: their clans. And then by the end it was just like,
Speaker 1: what's everybody doing for dinner? You know, we're going here,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe one other group's going here, And it
Speaker 1: was like kind of like everybody melded together and you
Speaker 1: saw everybody getting along and everybody friends. It's it's a
Speaker 1: very it's an interesting, like just social experiment, these these trips,
Speaker 1: and it's fascinating to see obviously, like I think like
Speaker 1: when you share a passion like golf, it makes it
Speaker 1: really easy to make friends because you're starting from a
Speaker 1: ground of like, oh, we have a common interest that
Speaker 1: we can always fall back on talking about if there's
Speaker 1: a dead spot. And that's been my favorite experience about
Speaker 1: the trips is just watching watching the people and and
Speaker 1: them interact. And I think it I think like the
Speaker 1: thing that I didn't think going into it that I
Speaker 1: walk away with is like, this is like an exceptional
Speaker 1: way to go if you if you can go, but
Speaker 1: you like, these trips are really hard to do as
Speaker 1: a as a single or a twosome or even a foursome,
Speaker 1: and it's really hard to organize a time where eight
Speaker 1: people can get together to go somewhere for a week.
Speaker 1: And these trips, I think the value of them is like,
Speaker 1: if you want to go somewhere, this provides you a
Speaker 1: wonderful opportunity to go somewhere and have everything taken care
Speaker 1: of for you, and you know you're going to make
Speaker 1: friends along the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's there's time to make friends. There there's
Speaker 4: time to forge these connections with people because you aren't
Speaker 4: you aren't constantly running from one place to the next.
Speaker 4: You can you can sit down and have a meal
Speaker 4: with somebody, you can go out and play a round
Speaker 4: of golf with them and end up spending several hours
Speaker 4: with them, uh during during the day, and you aren't
Speaker 4: constantly pressed to to to go to the next thing.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, these it's it just feels very natural
Speaker 4: the way that these friendships and connections form over the
Speaker 4: course of a trip like this because you all start
Speaker 4: from a common basis of you love golf, You're you're
Speaker 4: passionate about travel and golf courses, and from that foundation,
Speaker 4: I personally find it very easy to build relationships with people.
Speaker 4: And I think that that's uh yeah, that's that's something
Speaker 4: both Matt and I really appreciated on this trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, on that are we have our trips
Speaker 1: are are filled for twenty six. We're doing three. I
Speaker 1: anticipate we'll do more in twenty seven, but just keep
Speaker 1: your eyes out for those and if you want to
Speaker 1: you want to book a trip, we do do uh
Speaker 1: trip planning for people now as well, so that you
Speaker 1: can find that on our website. Garrett and Matt, big
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on. I can't wait to see all
Speaker 1: the stuff that you guys will make from England. I
Speaker 1: know that there will be a guide, there will be
Speaker 1: a lot of social videos, there will be a lot
Speaker 1: of course profiles written on the website. So I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see all the stuff you guys produced from
Speaker 1: a once in a lifetime trip. Thanks for coming on,
Speaker 1: Thanks say thanks all right, thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. We will be
Speaker 1: back next week. I think we're going to do a
Speaker 1: podcast with Kevin van Welkenberg about some big topics in
Speaker 1: golf and look forward to doing that. And big thanks
Speaker 1: to p J. Clark always for producing and editing this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks