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 2: And when I find my ball in a brid egg
Speaker 2: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: bride egg.
Speaker 3: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 3: Today's episode is a little different one. I'm pretty excited
Speaker 3: about this one. I had a lot of fun putting
Speaker 3: it together. I am making my first trip over to Scotland.
Speaker 3: It will be the first time that I see the
Speaker 3: old Course and I can't couldn't be more excited. I
Speaker 3: as we get closer and closer one day out, I
Speaker 3: can't wait to get on the plane and get over there.
Speaker 3: And you know the open should be a ton of fun.
Speaker 3: But for this podcast, we over the last few months
Speaker 3: and you know, a lot in the last week I
Speaker 3: have I've called up some people or when I've been
Speaker 3: with them, I've asked them, you know a question. You know,
Speaker 3: what brought you to the old course the first time
Speaker 3: and what were your impressions the first time you played
Speaker 3: the old course? Or we're at the Old Course so
Speaker 3: in this podcast there will be a collection of short
Speaker 3: stories centered around those questions and they the participants. Thank
Speaker 3: you to all of them for giving me a little
Speaker 3: slice of their day. Tom Doak, Gil Hans, Michael Clayton,
Speaker 3: the Australian golf architect, former European Tour player and golf writer.
Speaker 3: Also Zach Blair PGA Tour, Shane Bacon the Great Golf
Speaker 3: Channel announcer and host, so he also caddied at the
Speaker 3: Old Course for a part portion of his life, which
Speaker 3: is pretty neat. And then James Duncan, who is who
Speaker 3: worked a long time associate with Core and Crenshaw. He
Speaker 3: is a really great guy. We've got a future podcast
Speaker 3: coming out after the Open Championship with James, so that'll
Speaker 3: be the first time you hear his voice on this podcast.
Speaker 3: But a wonderful golf architecture and golf mind in general.
Speaker 3: So those are the guests. This is all about the
Speaker 3: Old Course. I hope you guys enjoy and we will
Speaker 3: see you this week. I've got we've got some really
Speaker 3: neat stuff planned for the Open Championship, so be on
Speaker 3: the lookout for more pods and articles on the Friday
Speaker 3: dot Com I'll post a post something with my first
Speaker 3: impressions of the Old Course on on Monday or Tuesday
Speaker 3: on the website after I get out there walk. I
Speaker 3: can't wait, And without further ado, here is golf course
Speaker 3: architect Tom Dough.
Speaker 1: The first time I saw the Old Course was when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen. I went over with my parents and
Speaker 1: my brother. My dad worked for Unilever Lever Brothers in
Speaker 1: the States, which was part of Unilever, which is a
Speaker 1: Dutch and England based company, and the job he did
Speaker 1: was important enough that he would go over to the
Speaker 1: European headquarters like once a year to just discuss strategy
Speaker 1: and discuss what the US Office was doing on buying commodities. So,
Speaker 1: you know, by then we'd you know, we'd gone to
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach and Pinehurst and places like that on family vacations.
Speaker 1: But you know, my parents thought, oh, let's you know,
Speaker 1: let's go to your So we spent three days in Scotland,
Speaker 1: we spent two or three days in London on business,
Speaker 1: and then we went to Holland for three or four days.
Speaker 1: So I played the Old Course as a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old with my parents and my brother, and at that
Speaker 1: time you know, I mean I you know, I knew
Speaker 1: about the road hole. I knew about this the same
Speaker 1: sort of basic knowledge of it that everyone would have.
Speaker 1: And you know, probably the two most memorable things were,
Speaker 1: you know, one if you get in Bunkers, you're really screwed.
Speaker 1: And two if you don't get in bunkers. It's a
Speaker 1: very open golf course and you can get around it
Speaker 1: just fine. You know, there's there's kind of some tricky contours,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the little up and over type
Speaker 1: shots you might play on some of the holes that
Speaker 1: are almost like mini golf in terms of just up
Speaker 1: over something and then the ball is going to keep
Speaker 1: going past the whole no matter you do. But you know,
Speaker 1: not enough to you know, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a super busy place, was the other thing. But you know,
Speaker 1: it was hard not to fall in love with the
Speaker 1: town and just everything about the town, even though the
Speaker 1: town experience is really very different. You know, when I
Speaker 1: lived there. The two months i lived there was also
Speaker 1: the middle of the summer, and the town's very different
Speaker 1: in the summer when it's mostly tourists and the university
Speaker 1: is not in session, and you know, if you go
Speaker 1: there in the fall or early spring and the universities,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of it's very different.
Speaker 3: How is it different? Is it just like it? Would
Speaker 3: you compare it a little bit to Traverse City in
Speaker 3: the in the off season versus the in season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose, yes. I mean in the summer, you know,
Speaker 1: you just hear a lot. It's not only Americans that
Speaker 1: are going there. You get people from all over the world,
Speaker 1: but you can't help but bump into other Americans, and
Speaker 1: you tend to chat up other Americans and generally you
Speaker 1: meet mostly Americans instead of except for your caddie, whereas
Speaker 1: in the rest of the year you're typically going to
Speaker 1: interact more with the locals and the people from the UK,
Speaker 1: and you know, so just entirely different conversations.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. It's uh, maybe that's a that's a sneaky
Speaker 3: piece of advice. Is for a more authentic experience, go
Speaker 3: go off season?
Speaker 1: Yep, it's yeah. And you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: the ballot so much either. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to book a tea time in the old
Speaker 1: course in the middle of the summer. Now you either
Speaker 1: have to pay a lot of money to somebody that
Speaker 1: hasn't in, or just go there for several days and
Speaker 1: hang around, you know, and play other courses around and
Speaker 1: take your chances in the lottery every day until.
Speaker 4: Maybe you get on.
Speaker 3: And here is James Duncan, who works for Cork Crnshaw
Speaker 3: has worked for core Crnshaw for a long time. Is
Speaker 3: Danish and Scottish and spent a substantial time in Scotland himself.
Speaker 5: The first time I went, I was a student living
Speaker 5: in Copenhagen and I had arranged somehow to go to
Speaker 5: Scotland for a few months to do an internship at
Speaker 5: a company that consulted on golf courses. And somehow I
Speaker 5: my professor had signed off on the paperwork to say
Speaker 5: I'm not quite sure what it is you're doing or
Speaker 5: why you want to do it, but you seem to
Speaker 5: be pretty keen, so go ahead. We'll call it project
Speaker 5: management one oh one, some class that you could get
Speaker 5: credits for to go and do an internship in Scotland.
Speaker 5: And this company consulted with golf courses. They were a
Speaker 5: branch of the Scottish Agricultural College, and they when I arrived,
Speaker 5: they said, here's what we'd like you to do. See
Speaker 5: that green Fort Taurus in the parking lot. Here's a
Speaker 5: diesel card, go fill it up, drive around and visit
Speaker 5: as many golf courses, meet as many superintendents, secretaries, people
Speaker 5: in golf in Scotland as you have time for, find
Speaker 5: out what kind of problems they have with golf course
Speaker 5: maintenance operations, and write a report and come back to us.
Speaker 5: I mean, so that was such an opportunity to go around,
Speaker 5: crash around Scotland and see as many golf courses as
Speaker 5: I could. Of course St Andrews was high on that list.
Speaker 5: And a friend of mine from Copenhagen was in a
Speaker 5: petrochemical engineer. We were both engineering students. Was chemical, I
Speaker 5: was civil and structural. He had come to Dundee right
Speaker 5: by Karnusti and he wasn't a golfer, but I was
Speaker 5: going to show him s Andrews. Let's go to s
Speaker 5: Andrews together. And we went down there and we picked
Speaker 5: the week where they had the Jubilee Vaz Tournament, which
Speaker 5: is one of the big amateur events they had, and
Speaker 5: it was such a neat way to see the old
Speaker 5: course for the first time. I read about it and
Speaker 5: all the books and all that stuff, but to see
Speaker 5: it firsthand while top amateurs were playing. It was just
Speaker 5: a very special occasion. And since then I haven't missed
Speaker 5: a chance to go back.
Speaker 6: With Saint Andrews the first time. So you're watching these
Speaker 6: amateurs play it in the Jubilee and what was the
Speaker 6: one thing that stuck with you the most from that
Speaker 6: first visit to the old course?
Speaker 5: The old writers will talk about the keenness of the turf,
Speaker 5: the burnt out fescue turf. I think that to me
Speaker 5: was the most striking, Like this is the firmness of
Speaker 5: the ground, the way the ball would run on the ground,
Speaker 5: just the look the true links conditions. And mind you,
Speaker 5: this is in ninety two or three or something like that,
Speaker 5: so you know it was it was just authentic golf
Speaker 5: and as I had imagined it, and you finally had
Speaker 5: a chance to see it and to watch these guys.
Speaker 5: Yeah again just like you see it today. I mean,
Speaker 5: how do you have to work your way around the
Speaker 5: course and make up shots and deal with the conditions,
Speaker 5: deal with the different bounces and situations you get in
Speaker 5: It was just it was magical.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: Here is Golf Channels. Shane Bacon and former caddy at
Speaker 3: the Old Course Shane Bacon.
Speaker 2: I was actually studying abroad in London my junior year
Speaker 2: at college a University of Arizona. I was studied at
Speaker 2: a school called University of Westminster, and I didn't have
Speaker 2: my golf clubs. My mom actually flew over with my
Speaker 2: golf club Shout out to Eliza Bee. She came over
Speaker 2: to see, you know, in experienced London. Her and my
Speaker 2: aunt came over. We went to Bath, we went to Stonehenge,
Speaker 2: but she traveled with my golf clubs. Also maybe the
Speaker 2: only time in the history at golf where she did
Speaker 2: she put iron headcovers on their irons because they were
Speaker 2: brand new irons, and I was actually happy to see
Speaker 2: iron head covers. But she brought the clubs over in
Speaker 2: about three four weeks later, my uncle Doug, who is
Speaker 2: one of my best friends, you know, my dad's brother.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable guy, one of the people I've probably played the
Speaker 2: most golf with in my life. He flew over and
Speaker 2: we did the whole London experience. Then we both went
Speaker 2: up to Saint Andrew's and we had a tea time
Speaker 2: at the Old Course. We stayed at a little bed
Speaker 2: and breakfast in town The guy that had owned its
Speaker 2: name was James Yule, and he took us out. He
Speaker 2: was a member at the new club there that's kind
Speaker 2: of you know, borders the eighteenth fairway, and we had
Speaker 2: a great day. We played obviously, played all eighteen beautiful weather,
Speaker 2: and I was instantly in love with the place. You know,
Speaker 2: I was still in college. I didn't know anything about architecture,
Speaker 2: anything about golf courses, and not a ton about golf
Speaker 2: history outside just what i'd read in my you know,
Speaker 2: youthful days. But I was hooked. Actually, a funny part
Speaker 2: of it was, I think two or three days later
Speaker 2: we played Kings Barnes. One day we played the new course.
Speaker 2: We had Carnoustie on the schedule. We woke up and
Speaker 2: it was awful outside, raining, sideways, cold, windy, and my
Speaker 2: uncle's like, I'm not playing golf in this. You know,
Speaker 2: you're going to Scotland, right, You're you're playing weather, You're
Speaker 2: playing in all weather. And he wanted a bail on Carnoussie.
Speaker 2: So I went over and snuck out on the old
Speaker 2: course again and I ended up playing with uh with
Speaker 2: three guys from from Denmark. I chipped in for eagle
Speaker 2: on ten, which is like the highlight of my trip.
Speaker 2: So my first experience in the old course is actually
Speaker 2: two rounds around the old course, unexpectedly since I thought
Speaker 2: I'd be playing around at Carnoustie.
Speaker 3: If you know, if you can think back to that
Speaker 3: first trip after year round, was there anything in particular
Speaker 3: about the place that resonated with you, that stuck with you.
Speaker 2: I thought I was shocked at how flat it was.
Speaker 2: And then what's interesting is now kind of going back
Speaker 2: a few times and seeing the sunset over all the mounding,
Speaker 2: you know, on those fairways, you realize it's not flat
Speaker 2: at all, but relative to a lot of kind of
Speaker 2: the championship golf and the places we know Stateside. I
Speaker 2: mean you think about the Masters, which as a young person,
Speaker 2: right the Masters is kind of the end all be
Speaker 2: all what you watch and what you love and all
Speaker 2: the mounding and movement. I just remember walking off thinking, man,
Speaker 2: this place was flat. I fell I remember I fell
Speaker 2: in love with the par fives. You know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: the par fives kind of stuck with me. I just
Speaker 2: thought they were so cool and so unique and so different.
Speaker 2: They required so many different types of golf shots. You know,
Speaker 2: you think about fourteen. Now, especially with modern equipment from
Speaker 2: the te's that were the old open tees, you probably
Speaker 2: couldn't even hit driver, you know, with any helping wind
Speaker 2: at all, but you could take it down another hole.
Speaker 2: I just thought it was like a controlled chaos in
Speaker 2: a way. The whole golf course was so controlled in
Speaker 2: terms of the chaos. But I just remember I walked
Speaker 2: off and we were sitting up there having like a
Speaker 2: tenants beer after with James, and I remember, you know,
Speaker 2: looking out in the fairway, just thinking it's pretty flat
Speaker 2: from one to eighteen. Like you don't go up and
Speaker 2: down you much, you know, your stair step around, your
Speaker 2: Apple Watch isn't telling you climb any flights.
Speaker 3: Hey, you caddied out there and you probably shepherded a
Speaker 3: lot of first timers around. Is there something that you remember,
Speaker 3: you know, is there something that seemed to be a
Speaker 3: consistent theme from first timers out there was you know,
Speaker 3: I've heard from a lot of people. You know, if
Speaker 3: you don't have a caddy, you have no clue where
Speaker 3: the hell you're going, just.
Speaker 2: Zero clues starting on about three. You know, if you
Speaker 2: don't know what you're doing, I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things that was hard to sell to
Speaker 2: the player, but they would almost all buy into and
Speaker 2: then eventually love doing is the putting from well off
Speaker 2: the green and the bumping runs from well off the green.
Speaker 2: I mean, you get a lot of American players that
Speaker 2: were obsessed in love with their sixty degree and from
Speaker 2: the jump right after the first hole, because you can't
Speaker 2: really hit a bump and run on one because of
Speaker 2: the bird. But after the first hole, you know, all
Speaker 2: day it's it's let's use putter, you know, let's use
Speaker 2: six iron, let's use hybrid, those types of things. And
Speaker 2: it normally took till about eight or nine until the
Speaker 2: player really bought in. But when they'd eventually buy in,
Speaker 2: the misses and the bad shots were so much better.
Speaker 2: So I would say that was probably the number one
Speaker 2: thing to try to sell to the player, and everybody
Speaker 2: was first of all, I mean I was twenty three,
Speaker 2: so they're looking at this twenty three old American thinking
Speaker 2: what the hell does this guy know? And so I
Speaker 2: was trying to minimize the doubles. That was always my plan.
Speaker 2: Let's not make six, we can put this and make five.
Speaker 3: It's amazing if more people, just if you have a
Speaker 3: good caddy that could get you around a golf course.
Speaker 3: You end up doing a lot of things you don't
Speaker 3: want to do. But then you look at your scorecard
Speaker 3: at that end of the day and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: they knew what they were doing.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: It's you know, for the higher handicap, it's just like
Speaker 3: just let's just minimize the disasters.
Speaker 2: And the bunker. And i'd say one other thing, Andy,
Speaker 2: was when you hit it in a bunker, which is
Speaker 2: inevitable obviously around the old course unless you're Tiger in
Speaker 2: two thousand. I mean, you're gonna find yourself in sand
Speaker 2: talking people out of trying to be a hero. And
Speaker 2: the funny thing is it's not, you know, not right
Speaker 2: against a lip, you know, on a really layered bunker.
Speaker 2: It's the sands different. The feel of what you're having
Speaker 2: to do to get out of it is different, the
Speaker 2: amount of swing you must put into a short shot
Speaker 2: is different. And a lot of people mid handicaps, high
Speaker 2: handicaps try to be heroes out of there, and I
Speaker 2: would just consist and consistently tell them, if we just
Speaker 2: get it back in grass, we can play from here.
Speaker 2: But let's not try to be a hero, and again
Speaker 2: that would typically start to happen about nine or ten
Speaker 2: when they go Okay, fine, I'm sick of hitting three
Speaker 2: shots out of the bunker. I'll start to believe you.
Speaker 3: Today's episode is brought to you by the Fried Egg
Speaker 3: and the Fried Egg Pro Shop. We have long sleeve
Speaker 3: T shirts, regular T shirts, and then we have some
Speaker 3: head covers, all sorts of goodies from Seamus Golf, all
Speaker 3: with the Open Championship in mind. We have a logo
Speaker 3: a little play on the road Hall Bunker. So check
Speaker 3: those out at Proshop dot Theofriday dot com. They're really neat.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get my T shirt and headcover.
Speaker 3: And now here's former European tour player, golf commentator, writer
Speaker 3: and golf architect Mike Clayton.
Speaker 8: I qualified for the nineteen eighty four Open there, so
Speaker 8: Steve Williams was cutting for me. I had a a burtie.
Speaker 8: I think I buried five in the last seven holes
Speaker 8: that leave and to make it so, I turned up
Speaker 8: at Sonata's Wayne Grady, Ian Bakervench and I was sharing
Speaker 8: a house, so grades and I missed the cut, but
Speaker 8: we went to bed on Saturday night thinking that this
Speaker 8: guy in the next bedrooms might win they open tomorrow,
Speaker 8: which of course you didn't. But it was a pretty
Speaker 8: amazing week. So I you know, I loved hit the
Speaker 8: history of the game, but it didn't strike anything with
Speaker 8: me at all. I just went there and I didn't
Speaker 8: understand the course. I made thirty two pars, tripled the
Speaker 8: second hole, and made three bogies, missed the cup by
Speaker 8: about three. You know, I just I didn't get it
Speaker 8: at all. I didn't think it was a bad course
Speaker 8: or a great course, or I was just a typically
Speaker 8: dumb you know, mid twenties golf bro who just played golf.
Speaker 3: Do you think do you think you thought that way
Speaker 3: because of your because you were playing it in a
Speaker 3: professional setting?
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I the only times I've played three opens there,
Speaker 8: and I think you kind of missed the fun of
Speaker 8: it because you're playing. I mean I would I much
Speaker 8: more enjoyed the opens when I went there when I
Speaker 8: wasn't playing.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 8: Of course I wish I would would have been playing,
Speaker 8: But you know, it's great fun to go to an
Speaker 8: open and enjoy the week without having the stress of
Speaker 8: playing in it because playing and it's the older ones,
Speaker 8: so you want to play, and I really enjoyed laying
Speaker 8: in it. But I didn't really get to understand the
Speaker 8: golf course until well, not that anyone ever really fully
Speaker 8: understands it, but when I started to walk around it
Speaker 8: and read about it and write about it and think
Speaker 8: about it and realize how great the holes were, because
Speaker 8: when you're playing, you're just trying to play. You're trying
Speaker 8: to get the ball in the hole, and you're not
Speaker 8: standing on the fillith hole thinking this is one of
Speaker 8: the greatest long part fours in golf. We're just trying
Speaker 8: to avoid the bunkers and get on the green and
Speaker 8: get out of there. So, you know, I remember going
Speaker 8: there with Peter Fowler, Simon Owen and I were playing
Speaker 8: the senior tournament Famine up the road. We had we
Speaker 8: had we finished dinner early one night at the house
Speaker 8: and we we said, Sid, take us down there and
Speaker 8: show us what happened in nine to seventy eight. So
Speaker 8: he took us down to the sixteenth tee and he
Speaker 8: walked through he and Nicholas play the sixteenth hole and
Speaker 8: where he drove it and where Jack drove it, and
Speaker 8: you know what happened on seventeen because simone was a
Speaker 8: shot in the lead. He chipped in at fifteen to
Speaker 8: go a shot ahead, and he said, we walked onder
Speaker 8: the sixteenth tee and Jack just stared me in the
Speaker 8: eyes and basically he said to me, you can have
Speaker 8: this thing if you're good enough, but you're gonna have
Speaker 8: to play me the last three hours. Good luck, son,
Speaker 8: And he said, I just completely fell apart. He said,
Speaker 8: I was just there was no way he was always
Speaker 8: going to beat me. But so, you know, that was
Speaker 8: kind of a cool experience. But just walking those holes
Speaker 8: and thinking about why they're great and the questions they
Speaker 8: ask and the multiple ways of playing them, and how
Speaker 8: they change in the wind, and how much different the
Speaker 8: shot is from one side of the fairway versus a
Speaker 8: shot from the other side, and you know, it's the
Speaker 8: model for every course, really, I think. Yeah, And it
Speaker 8: shows It shows why bunkers in the middle of the
Speaker 8: fairways work so well, shows way out of bounds is
Speaker 8: a great hazard, shows why bunkers are great when they're
Speaker 8: at one shot penalty and to be avoided at all costs. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and they're just great holes all in one place. It's incredible.
Speaker 8: And then eighteen is the best place to It's not
Speaker 8: the best hole, but it's the best place to finish
Speaker 8: around the golf, and I think you miss all those
Speaker 8: things when you're playing. As Tom said in that You
Speaker 8: Know the podcast with Tom, the best way to see
Speaker 8: the Old Course is to walk it on Sunday when
Speaker 8: there's no one out there, and I've often done that,
Speaker 8: and go on there late at night, go out there
Speaker 8: at eight o'clock at or nine o'clock at night, and
Speaker 8: walk around it when there's well, there's always people out there,
Speaker 8: but when you're not worried about balls flying around your head.
Speaker 8: So that's you know, the great lesson of the Old
Speaker 8: Course is it's probably the best course in the world,
Speaker 8: but you could never build it now. There's no chance
Speaker 8: that you could. One if you built the seven and
Speaker 8: told they think you were crazy. Build bunkers where you've
Speaker 8: got to play out of backwards, they think you were mad.
Speaker 8: Built holes with out of bounds hazards all the way
Speaker 8: down the right, you know, holes where you play, you know,
Speaker 8: the seventh hole blaze over the well, the eleventh plays
Speaker 8: over the seventh. You know, it's just you know, the
Speaker 8: legitimate second shot at the fourteenth holes straight down the
Speaker 8: fifth fairway, and there's so much stuff that you could
Speaker 8: never get away with. Now, there's no chance that would
Speaker 8: be playing the eighteenth hole in Australia right now. The
Speaker 8: whole that hole would have been shut years ago by
Speaker 8: shop owners complaining about balls going through their windows. Yet
Speaker 8: that is what it is, and they're going to be
Speaker 8: playing the hole, you know, two of years now, they're
Speaker 8: going to be playing well, as long as the sea
Speaker 8: doesn't go over the over the golf course. They're going
Speaker 8: to be playing that hole for twenty years from now,
Speaker 8: and the shops will still be there, and the road
Speaker 8: is still going to be there, and there won't be
Speaker 8: a fence there, and the green will still be where
Speaker 8: it is, and golf just interacts with the town.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you you illuminated something that you know with
Speaker 3: your answer. I didn't even get to ask the question
Speaker 3: because you went right into it, like you know, what
Speaker 3: did you take away? You took away nothing, which I
Speaker 3: think I feel like for some people that happens for
Speaker 3: some golfers that are and I think it. You know,
Speaker 3: you when you're playing competitively, you're playing and open, like
Speaker 3: all you're worried about is like golfing your ball and
Speaker 3: I think that's you know, what most golfers worry about
Speaker 3: is they are just thinking about scoring and getting the
Speaker 3: ball in the hall.
Speaker 8: Well, I think Gerald Micklem the oh great r and
Speaker 8: a guy gave Fouldo, you know, a long dissertation written
Speaker 8: of how to play the golf course and what to
Speaker 8: study and what to think about. And Felder I probably
Speaker 8: knew that course in relation to his contemporaries better than
Speaker 8: any of them, and I understood how to play it
Speaker 8: better than any of them. And Tiger, you know, I
Speaker 8: think understood it aside from the fact that he was
Speaker 8: the best player, understood how to properly play that golf course.
Speaker 3: Now here's PGA Tour player Zach Blair.
Speaker 7: The BYU golf team and some of the boosters kind
Speaker 7: of take an international trip every four years, I think,
Speaker 7: and that year they were going to Scotland. So we
Speaker 7: rolled over there and saw a bunch of cool places.
Speaker 3: That's so it's like your once, everybody, it's like your
Speaker 3: once every four years. So everybody that plays on the
Speaker 3: program for four years gets to go on like a
Speaker 3: cool international trip.
Speaker 7: Kind of missions sometimes kind of throw it off so
Speaker 7: someone could maybe get to or maybe not go on
Speaker 7: any but yeah, yeah, theoretically it's kind of once once
Speaker 7: a you know, one time each for when you're in college.
Speaker 3: What other courses did you see other than the Old Course?
Speaker 7: Played in North Berwick a couple of times. Trying to
Speaker 7: think where else we played. We've played like the Castle Course,
Speaker 7: and we played the Renaissance Club where they have the
Speaker 7: Scottish Open. Are you sure the Renaissance It might be
Speaker 7: that for sure, Yeah, trying to think. We played the
Speaker 7: New you know, at the New at Saint Andrew's, played
Speaker 7: Carnoustie right off the plane and got you know, got killed.
Speaker 7: Basically I've never played good there ever since then. And
Speaker 7: then I actually didn't play the Old Course. A couple
Speaker 7: of the guys on the team, like you know, went
Speaker 7: out and did the whole lottery and waited all night,
Speaker 7: and I think at that point in my life I
Speaker 7: was kind of like.
Speaker 3: So you didn't play the first time you were there.
Speaker 7: Now we went around and you know, I don't know
Speaker 7: if you've seen the pictures of like me and Ryan
Speaker 7: Smith relay racing on eighteen, jumping over this, you know,
Speaker 7: the burn and everything like that. Yeah, but I didn't
Speaker 7: play WHOA So second time. Like, so the first time
Speaker 7: I went to play the old course was during the Dunhill.
Speaker 3: So that so your first time playing was in a competition. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what what you know, what were your what were your
Speaker 3: did you have any takeaways from the time that you
Speaker 3: were out there you didn't play, and then what were
Speaker 3: your takeaways after the first time you played? Like, what
Speaker 3: was the one thing that kind of stuck with you
Speaker 3: the first time you played it? And was there something
Speaker 3: that stuck with you when you were in town but
Speaker 3: didn't play it.
Speaker 7: I mean the first time that I was there, you know,
Speaker 7: it's a park on Sundays, you know, so you're just
Speaker 7: like walking around and people were having like a picnic
Speaker 7: in the road hole bunker on seventeen, like in the bunker, yeah,
Speaker 7: like dogs everywhere, you know. So it was cool to
Speaker 7: just see all that stuff. And I think this was
Speaker 7: you know, pre understanding or having any sort of you know,
Speaker 7: ideas about golf course architecture. You know, you obviously knew
Speaker 7: that it was a cool place, and you know, you
Speaker 7: understood the history and it had a lot of you know,
Speaker 7: big golf tournaments and you know it was the home
Speaker 7: of golf. But you know, I didn't understand it from
Speaker 7: an architecture standpoint that first time, and then the first
Speaker 7: time I played it during the Dunhill, I mean it
Speaker 7: was just like, you know, I think we played like
Speaker 7: a bunch of practice rounds and we just kind of
Speaker 7: kept looping around and just seeing cool stuff and walking around. So,
Speaker 7: you know, obviously a pretty neat place and kind of
Speaker 7: one of those places that it seems like the more
Speaker 7: you go around it and the more you see it,
Speaker 7: the more you play it, the more you kind of
Speaker 7: understand and learn and see new things, and it's kind
Speaker 7: of that endless journey of you know, finding new stuff
Speaker 7: every time you go.
Speaker 3: So the first time you played at what what? What
Speaker 3: is there anything that's kind of etched in your brain
Speaker 3: from that that experience, I.
Speaker 7: Would say the first so I missed the cut both
Speaker 7: times I played the Dunhill, so I only played it once,
Speaker 7: I think, each time during you know, during the actual tournament.
Speaker 7: And I'll just never forget the first year I played it,
Speaker 7: it was like straight down, you know, going out, and
Speaker 7: then straight in you know, coming home, and it was
Speaker 7: just like, you know, there are certain holes and bunkers
Speaker 7: and you're just like, I don't even understand like why
Speaker 7: they would have that there, and then playing it the
Speaker 7: next time and being like straight in going out and
Speaker 7: straight down coming home, and then being like, okay, that's why,
Speaker 7: that's why that bunker is there. I'm talking like hitting
Speaker 7: drives like two hundred yards into the wind and hitting
Speaker 7: drives like four fifty downwind. You know, it's just like
Speaker 7: it never never ever stops. So it was pretty neat,
Speaker 7: you know, getting both sides of that, and you know,
Speaker 7: just seeing how much the course can change and how
Speaker 7: different it is whether you're playing in or you know,
Speaker 7: in or down, so that that'll kind of always stick
Speaker 7: with me.
Speaker 3: Now here's golf course architect Gil Hants.
Speaker 4: I was really kind of surprised. I thought it was
Speaker 4: going to have a lot more undulation, big ups and downs,
Speaker 4: and the contours and the undulations are on much more
Speaker 4: human scale instead of a big scale, so that surprised me.
Speaker 4: And then secondly how many blind t shots there were,
Speaker 4: which I actually kind of like and that has We've
Speaker 4: been criticized occasionally for having a lot of blind stuff
Speaker 4: in our golf courses, but I think having seen that
Speaker 4: the first go round and also just not really knowing
Speaker 4: where to hit it. You know you've got two fair
Speaker 4: ways wide and you're just sor right what's the best angle?
Speaker 4: And having had the opportunity to play there more frequently,
Speaker 4: you learn there are different ways to play each holes
Speaker 4: depending on the weather. But yeah, it's a little bit
Speaker 4: of not really knowing where to go. And then the
Speaker 4: scale of the contours.
Speaker 1: What's good about humans scale undulations as opposed to like
Speaker 1: bigger landforms and land movements.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's nice to have a variety of both,
Speaker 4: But I think it's one of those things where you
Speaker 4: just feel more comfortable, like the contours feel more manageable
Speaker 4: and maybe more conducive to shop making because you feel like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I might be able to manage the scale or howl
Speaker 4: ball is going to react off of that slope versus
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what it's going to do off of
Speaker 4: something that's fifteen feet above my head and how much
Speaker 4: that's going to come off. So I think it in
Speaker 4: my mind it opens up a lot more possibilities and
Speaker 4: a lot more creativity when it's at a human scale
Speaker 4: versus the much bigger stuff. More manageable law too. Definitely, Yeah,
Speaker 4: great walk unless you're playing the back teas. I think
Speaker 4: it's spend half your round walking back for your fifty yards.
Speaker 1: Let see other courses exactly, see a lot of the
Speaker 1: new courses.
Speaker 4: Thankfully I never have to worry about playing those states.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to another edition of the FRIDAYGG podcast.
Speaker 3: This one was edited by Meg Atkins. She had to
Speaker 3: do a little bit more than my usual episodes, but Meg,
Speaker 3: thank you for all the hard work and putting this
Speaker 3: episode together, and thank you guys for listening. As a
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Speaker 3: hundred and fiftieth Open Championship. So thanks, and we will
Speaker 3: talk to you soon. And we've got a really really
Speaker 3: cool Open Championship week planned out, so look for another
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Speaker 3: fun one.