I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a brid egg.
Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday fridagg brid egg Lie, I'm about ready to run.
Off of the.
Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I'm your host, Andy Johnson. Today. I'm excited.
Uh.
This marks the beginning of our our really kind of big tournament, big tournament season, championship season, you could say March's Major. The players is starting off now. Albeit you know their their claims that they're a major.
I do not.
I do not consider it a major. And thus instead of five things, we do four things for the players. I am joined as always, not as always, but hopefully as always for the players by Sean Martin from PGA tour dot com. He is a long time regular guest of this podcast, has been way back since since the beginning days, so always nice to chop it up with Sean, one of my favorite golf minds, favorite golf people, and
talk about the players his hometown event. So we will talk about the players, we'll dive into kind of the preview. It's obviously this week. Uh, we''ll be wrapping up with Bayhill. This is a Sunday release and we will be off and running.
Uh.
It kind of just signals that the Masters is really, really quickly approaching. On top of Sean, we have added in audio from a project that we did in twenty twenty. I thought it'd be fun to throw this in here for those that listen. Then thank you for all of our new listeners. You may not have seen this or heard this. Garrett Morrison, one of my great colleagues here at Friday Golf, put together an incredible documentary style podcast about the building of TPC Sawgrass. It includes interviews with
an interview with Dean Beeman. This is one of my favorite projects that we've ever done here, and I figured it was a time to re release it and add it to the end of this episode. Before we get to Sean, here is a word from Optim. Optim is making the healthcare system simpler, smarter, and more connected. Optims capabilities include patient care, pharmacy services, health intelligence, and AI. Optim is a proud partner of the Players Championship, and
Rory McElroy is an optim Health Ambassador. Thanks to optim for their support of our players coverage. All right, let's get to Sean Martin. Proud to welcome in, not proud, happy to welcome in. Sean Martin. It's been a while, a long time regular of this podcast. Uh, Smartin, how are we doing?
I'm good. This is like my annual appearance. I think it was this event last year that I was on last time. So I'm happy to be back, Happy to talk to players.
You know, cutting down to one one one episode a week has you know, limited guests appearances.
You know, it's a higher bar to clearer to get on the guest list.
It's a scarcity schedule, right, But excited to talk about your hometown event the players. Uh, you know, there's listen, there's there's not many people with the with the sheer amount of players expertise as you, and that's why this is the podcast that you out.
I like that, you know, I'm technically a TVC Sawgraphs member, so I feel like I know the course intimately. Maybe I can add some insight as well. But uh, big, big fan of the players, love the tournament, love having my backyard, love hosting all of my you know, frends from the golf media get to come like and show them Jacksonville's finals for the week. It's always it's a great week for all of those reasons.
Yeah, where are we going to beget in dinner this week?
That's a great question. Mann put me on the spot.
We're gonna have We're gonna have PJ and and Joseph Young the young iNTS with us.
Uh.
We'll have to go, you know, talk nineties sports. Uh and educate them.
Well, you might have to join us. PJ and Joseph and myself have to go back to bricks bar. I think on Wednesday for sports Trivia, I think we have to defend our second place finish it cost us they The final question was who was the first person say I'm going to Disneyland after winning a Super Bowl? And I think I into Phil Simms. But Phil Simms was the second one. I think he actually was correct. I think it was Doug Williams of the Washington Red Now Commanders.
I think I talked PJ out of it. I swore as Phil Simms. I think because I was older and closer to the time, he allowed it. But unfortunately I was wrong. We really need Brandon would have nailed it. Big commander's guy hometown team. He would have killed it. He would have gotten that answer for us.
Excited for my annual week in Jacksonville Beach Area. It's a delightful place this time of year. We've got the players in March. How are we feeling about the players at Marsh in general?
I mean, that's my first thing. I don't know if I want to spoil it yet.
We're doing four things I heard, so just four.
Sure, let's start. So my first one is just the winners in March. Right, there's been six players in March. The winners are Rory twice, Scotty twice, Justin Thomas, Cameron Smith, So twelve combined majors among the group, and everyone except camra Smith was a major winner before they became a Players Champion. Cameron obviously won his major later that year.
I had this as like a sub title to one of mine. My my mad story was the race for three players between Rory and Scottie. It's not maybe it's you know, that's I think like a fantastic story for the players. But also the sub was this incredible run of majors winner made or of players winners. God, I just tripped up a Freudian slipped there. Incredible run of players, winners, and you know, I for years it's been the storyline with with sawgrasses like it's fluky, we don't know who's
gonna win. Look at the look at the winner winner's list. You get a lot of flukes. And now you look at it and I don't know where the flukes are.
No has gone back to March. You know. I think obviously some people may criticize the overseed, some people may be on this podcast, but I do think that you know, Rory uh has said that in March it's more of a driver's golf course. It's a little softer, you have to driver more often, obviously plays longer. March it was very much I would say March was almost more like Harbor Town in a sense of like you're really plodding
your way around there. It's really firm and fast, a lot of irons off of teas and May now yeah May, sorry, yeah, May was firm and fast. March it's really I mean, it's a you've got to hit driver, and obviously you've got to hit it well. And so I think that's one reason for the strong winners we've had so far.
The other aspect of of I think the advantage that March has beyond just history. You know, it's just kind of like when you expect to watch the players is right now, and it's a great ramp up for the first major of the year. You know, is is the the wind. March is just a windier times. I think it's the windiest month. I might be wrong in Florida.
I don't know what that one, but I remember Paul Tasori told me the wind actually is different in March versus May. So in May seventeen and eighteen played downwind and in March usually seventeen and eighteen played into the wind. So like even when Ricky won, Ricky hit like three wood gap ledge to eighteen and now it's back to being that brute of a finishing hole.
Yeah, the so I just think the wind is more of a factor. I wish the golf course could play firmer, even just the greens. I think like we've seen numerous ball in hand situations over the last couple of years, which I just, you know, you wish that wasn't the case. But I do think May or March is a much better date and you know, I've talked to some superintendents in the area and it is like, really, it would
be really dicey to be Bermuda at that point. From what they've told me, is like it's not super ideal at that time of year.
I mean, it's the weather this time of year too, and I think maybe one why the champions have been so good. March you get such a wider variety of weather. Like May, it's either hot or thunderstorms, so it's either blazing hot or you're in a rain delay. March you get some rain here without lightnings, you're playing through that,
you can get some higher wins. We've seen it in a few of the March playing since it went back to March, Like, you just get a wider variety of weather that guys have to play through.
So let's talk a little bit about the race for three. It gives us an opportunity to talk about Rory and Scotty. You know, if you were handicapping this, who would you say has the better chance at earning their third Players Champion Chip this year?
I feel like Scotty, he's already got a win obviously, and then really two weeks where he won the last fifty four holes just had some sort of you know, fluky bad start, So I think I'd probably give an edge to Scotty for that one. I do think Rory is, you know, he showed some great form at the end of the year. He's had a good start to the year, and I think the good vibes of heading towards Augusta and his title defense are I'm in a good spot,
but I'm probably leaning Scotty here. Plus, i mean, Scotty's done well. We always said, you know, what would happen if he became one of the world's best putters, and now he's one of the world's best putters.
That's the crazy thing. I mean, you know, if you look at the stats, and I think it's it's too early to really dive into the stats on the year, but we're still going to do that. His iron play has been pedestrian this year, which is, you know, very Unscotty like and and you know, if I was another player on tour, I'd be absolutely terrified for it. I think one of the things that the other things, you know, Rory talked about this in his sit down interview with
Kevin Van Walkenberg that's on our YouTube channel. But he talked about how Scotty has like no ego, how he's he kind of like fits, you know, and this is me interpreting this, like he doesn't care, he said he didn't doesn't care about being the longest in our group.
But the way Scotty's able to tailor his his driver to the golf course where he kind of you know, looks at the golf course and what it's giving him and isn't afraid to hit you know, two hundred and ninety yard cuts or you know, if it's a place where it's bombs away, you know, tee it high and you start to see him hit. You know, he can get into those low one eighties to one eighty four
ball speed. It's he's a fascinating player because I feel like just so many guys on tour are are kind of a one speed player where this is my driver swing and I go, I go at it and you know, if I want to hit a fairway finder, I tee it down a little, and that's the way it works like Scotty. Scotty's like I don't even know what the right comp is, but it's like almost like a Pitcher that that doesn't throw the gas all the time that they have it's.
Like with the driver, what he's like a Greg Maddox with the driver.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's it's incredible. Obviously. I think this is like for both of them, a landmark achievement. You're talking about you get a third players, You're doing
something in the modern era that nobody's done. Jack Nicholas won three players, but that was before it moved to TPC Sawgrass Tiger Woods only having two players, Like, I mean, this is really, in a way, like the most detainable Tiger, Like okay, like Tiger's teed it up here his whole career and I'm going to pass him in and wins at a significant championship. That's a huge deal.
Yeah.
I was also thinking too, like we have grave if they were in a showdown for this, like this title, Like I don't remember a Rory Scotty showdown. They've impaired a bunch on Thursdays and Fridays. They've obviously been one and two for a long time, but I can't point back to like a Rory Scotty showdown where it's like Mono amano for a title. I think it'd be cool if this was when we got it.
Yeah, the they haven't had like an epic do a lotside of you know, the Tour Championship, right, but uh, you know one that comes to mind where they were playing together late on Sunday they they were paired together in the final group at LACC and that was a four player race. You know, you had Wyndham, Rickey in the final group, Scotty and Rory in the second to last group. You think about I mean Scotty. Scotty's had
some close calls at the US Open. I don't mean to change the subject here, but he had uh he had the country club obviously and uh la cec. Both of those. He was really in a position going into Sunday to win.
Well.
I think you or Brendan when he was dogging his US Open record for a bit, I feel like.
It wasn't me. I was dogging his Open championship record and he shoved in my face. He did, really really steamrolled steamrolled me.
This this year Scotty with the driver is crazy because I feel like he has distant control with it to
go out. You said, I don't remember last year, but like he wins as the CJ cop and there's a driver at part four there that's seventeen and it's like not a full send driver, and he was like hitting it pin high and almost I think he hit it stiff one day and the next week is quail Hollow and he almost holds out on fourteen when he's making that charge on Saturday to kind of separate, and it's just like, I mean, it's obviously a little bit of
luck involved, especially on fourteen you're kind of rolling it down the hill, but like there's like distance control of the driver, which is insane.
I think about. You know, billcore came on the pod and he talked about, you know, Trinity Forest Rip Trainy Forest is a tour set up, but he talked about the idea of like challenge great golf courses challenge players to hit a line off the tee he's and a distance they make you choose, you know, and he was like, that's what I'm trying to do with off the t
shots and how this relates to the players. I think that's one of the things that the players does so well well and hazards is you have to pick a line and a distance off the tee to to drive it really well. Uh as as we illuminated as we kind of talked about the players in March, it being more driver heavy, I think has restored it, you know, some of that that challenge the May May date. You just saw so many irons off the tea.
Yeah, definitely the diagonal hazards, Like that's the beauty of them is you got to do line and distance. We're talking about well rounded off the t though. I think that's what Rory showed last year when he won, and we talked about I think that stinger driver that he displayed at Pinehurst to use that's some like he hit
less than half his fairways last year to win. I mean it was a great scrambling comp and it was the beginning of the year when you want to Pebbly talk about emulating Scotty by improving his short game, maybe being more conservative off the tee, and like he really put it into practice at the players, like wasn't hitting it well, definitely wasn't driving it well, but really kind of scrambled his way to winning.
I you know, both of these guys kind of highlight you know, in the modern era and if you kind of look through. I guess like, I don't think you can be a great player without like a great short game.
Yeah, short game is cool again now. I think because of that.
It's you know, these these guys are such magicians, both of them around the Green and I think it gets your Scotty gets talked about some, but Rory, Rory kind of falls in that bucket of like Hideki Matsuyama, Sergio Garcia over the years, just like criminally under talked about. And you see it with you know, part five performance, how you eat up par fives is really like short game.
You know, if you you know, you're not gonna hit every part five and two, but you're gonna be you know, if you drive it moderately, well, you're gonna be around every green and two for the for the in the modern game. And that's where short game just takes over and creates, you know, incredible scoring opportunities. Yeah, what's your what's your second thing?
So since we only did four, I really jammed a lot of subtopics into these my value.
You're taking my second taking by my approach, it drives Trevor Mullman always nuts.
So my second thing is a combination of Chris Goddroup and Jacob Bridgeman both.
We're on the same page here, there we go, let's go.
But both have had amazing starts to the year, and I think, you know, they've both proven to be bona fide really good pg Tour players. They both made Eastlake last year, they've both won already this year, Chris has won twice, and they've won big events, and then that sort of so that the next step now is performing in big events, performing in the players, forming the majors, you know. I mean, both these guys are bona fide
PGA Tour winners. They've closed tournaments out and so now it's going to be how do they perform big events this year? Like how big is the step that they're going to take into twenty six and it's gonna be defined by some of these events.
Yeah, Chris got her up misscut last year. Uh in his first appearance. I think Bridgeman finished T fifty last year in his first appearance or T sixty the uh, I think it was T fifty. I might I wrote down in my notes T sixty though, like I'm I'm remembering what I saw and.
You can't remember if you closed the loop on five if it's a five or six.
Yeah, I've misrecorded it on my notes here.
Uh whatever was middle of the pack?
Middle of the pack? I you know what about other other things here? With those two is we've seen the player of the players at TPC Sawgrass kind of be a thorn in young player sides learning how to play the golf course and figuring out how to play it in particular, the one that would I think Bridgeman's kind of more of this, like well rounded, you know, does
everything pretty well. I don't think he wouldn't alarm me, but like Chris got her up, maybe there's a period of time where he needs the to learn how to attack TPC Sawgrass the restraint he has to show in places and you know, certain spots that he has to get to in order to attack. But I think that's that's an interesting subcard on this is like do we see both one of them they've been the stories of the spring. Do we see one or both of them
play play well here? Or do we see uh TPC Sawgrass claim like another young victim of oh this is this is a tricky place to figure out how to play around.
Yeah, I think Chris The one thing I like about him is he has that variety off the tea, kind of like we talked about with Rory. He has that stinger driver when he needs it. He uses a one iron off the tea at times. He did in Scotland at least, so I think that works to his favor and I kind of like that about him. But I
just I just like both guys I love. Got her up, Like after he won in Phoenix, he said, like he started Rutgers, obviously, I think he had like a seventy four scoring hourage his first year, like was not on the road to like one time becoming a top ten player in the world. And he said, I viewed myself as a work in progress, and I still do. So I got her up this offseason. He improved his wedge play, improved his putting. Like He's a guy who obviously had
a great foundation. He was a college player of the Year by the time he left Oklahoma after five years.
But he's just testament to kind of continually refining and Bridgeman sort of the same way he talked about working with Scott Hamilton to improve his iron play and really improve his distance control because of the way he was releasing the club like he wasn't delivering consistent loft and so I think both guys are just kind of a testament to young guys, Like they had great college careers, they come out, they're helped by PG two or you,
but there's still room for improvement. And there's guys that they were smart about how they improved, and they did it kind of gradually.
You know.
Neither of them was like twenty three, and so I think there's testament to like we have this obsession with really really young guys, but that kind of gradual improvement, finding your weaknesses, improving them getting better, and so I like that side of both of their stories as well.
I was, you know, I when I was putting together, I was trying to think about some other names that I could throw into this bucket, and I think, you know one name that would be intriguing to watch this year. There is Michael thorpe Jornson has played very well over the last i'd say eight eight to nine months and super promising young player. You know another guy that won last year that's super young and definitely don't think his
game's built first. TPC Sagress is aldriche Potkeater, but he missed the cut last year at his first players and and that would be another young name that I would look at. And one that I just feel like hasn't popped the way that a lot of people thought he would so far this year is is Johnny Keefer.
M Yeah, I think Thor especially like that one. He's a guy who obviously kills it, murders off the team, was kind of hurt by the occasional wild ball, and he's really rained that in. I mean, he's got the length,
but he's really jumped in stroscane off the tee. He was a guy who was one of the longest players on tour, but was really far down in stroskin off the t which means you're not driving accurately and you're probably racking up penalty strokes because it's really hard to not be high in that sat you're hitting as far as he was. But his accuracy is improved and you've
seen him a lot on like Friday leaderboards. He's had some weekend troubles, which I think some players need to learn and go through that, but like it's been on a lot of leaderboards through two rounds.
I think that there needs to be a stat that's like a number of holes spent on on the first page of the leader board. Yeah, I feel like that's actually like one of the most telling ways to figure out who's going to break out is you know, Jacob
Bridgeman is a great example. Last year just spent a ton of time on leaderboards where you know, he he didn't always have the finishes that you would like, oh, like he finished T twenty two, But it's like, but he was on the first page of the leaderboard for significant portions of Saturday and Sunday before he fell down, And I think there should be a stat Like to me, it's it's almost like the easiest way to predict breakouts to the next year is look for the guy that
spent you know, had a lot of disappointing finishes given how much time he was on the leaderboard on Saturday and Sunday, And that's the person that's going to take away like, Okay, I got in here, and what happened, Like did I lose my staying in the present, and how do we clean that up? And in the offseason have that time to reflect but also have like just the comfort of being there I think that's the thing when you when you see these young players kind of struggle.
I mean Thor you saw him it looked like Scottsdale was his tournament, and as soon as that moment hit, it was like he realized it was his turnament and sure enough, like the wheels kind of came off and
Chris Gottrup wins. But the you know the idea of getting just the reps in in the moment, and when you look at it year to year, I feel like there's there's some correlation as someone who's just followed the game for ten years now and they're no, there's no stat that really represents that that I'm aware of.
When in the week would you start that like midday Friday or.
I would start it on on Saturday? Okay, I think it's like I feel like the first two days of a golf tournament, they're just like playing and there's no
consciousness of of where I'm at. Something I'd be fascinated about is like, what's the percentage of of sub sixty six scoring on Thursday and Friday versus the percentage of sub sixty six scoring from anybody who who started, you know, within the top twenty five on Saturday and Sunday, and I think that that number would be a really I think it'd probably be you know, it'd probably be a
lot lower on Saturday and Sunday, the percentage. But you say, well, there's the number of players that could do it is last, but you'd also have the qualifier of like, but those are the guys that are playing their best golf.
Well that's what made it's so crazy that Scotty led the tour in first round, second round, third round, and fourth round scoring average last year because the third and fourth rounds he's teeing off last, and usually later in the day, it's always like a half stroke, harder, greens are chewed up, it's windier. But then also on Saturday and Sunday, now you've got like the pressure of contending and leading and even despite all that, he's still led in score hours on those days. Like that's insane.
That might be the best Scotty Scheffler stat. Yeah, he's cut the tour Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday last year.
Yeah, what do you have next? All right? Next is my who is this year's JJ spawn? You know, I think TBC Salgass kind of prides itself on that David vers Goliath sort of storyline. We get a lot of cinderellas. You get your Paulaguidos's your JJ last year. So who is that guy this year? And I think part of it's the golf course. The golf course is so variable, and then also you know the tournament in the course pride itself on the It doesn't favor a single style
of play. You have to work it both ways, and I think there's part of that. So I think guys get into contention there because you know, a short hitter is not automatically disqualified just by the golf course itself. There's a lot of ways to kind of skin a cat if you will. With the players. So again, trying to jam pack my things. I've got four names here. I can go one at a time or just list them off.
All four, let's let's go go just unload here, all right?
First one, Jake Knapp, Then we got Pearson Cootie, Ryan Gerard, and Min MOULEI are my four guys.
Uh.
Jake Napp incredible play this year, worst finishing five starts as T eleven. He has one tour win. Kind of like spawded and his last year's T twelve with the players. So again I think going back that you know, driving is really emphasized in a March players. That suits Jake NAP's game.
I you know, he w d'd late w d at at API this week. We're recording this on Friday of API, so you know, some of this might be you know, moot points. But the Jake Napp I've been I didn't really see this leap from him.
Coming.
I think, like, you look at him, he's a great putter, and the and the off the t talent was like really you look at it and it's like, wow, this is this makes you drool. But then some of the stuff approaching around the greens, you're like, oh man, that's right. It's a work in progress. But the way he's tightened that up in the last year and kind of has become much more of an all round player is fascinating.
It Like you know, you think about it is like TPC Sawgrass does not feel like a Jake Knap fit.
No, but he played well last year.
Yeah, Pierson Cuties I almost put through into that bucket with the other guys. He's often a great start and One of the things I like about Cootie is like he's someone who has kind of had to had to earn his spot out there where he's He's bounced back and forth. It has not been like a a perfectly clean ascension to where now he's a top fifty player
in the world. He'll be, I mean, without anything kind of crazy happening, the first grandchild of a Master champion to play the Masters, which is a cool little thing. But Cooty, you know, he obviously promising player, like incredible college career, but he had to bounce back and forth between the Core Ferry Tour, and I think that I think that does players well when they aren't when things aren't perfect yet early in their career.
It feels like early in his career he was highly volatile, Like he won quickly on the corn Ferry Tour, even his first tour season, like he was runner up at the ISCO, lost in the playoff, but like there was a lot of miscuts and then occasionally some high finishes and like last year he was the highest ranked player on the corn Ferry Tour without a win, like just consistently T three, T five, playing really well, popped a couple times on the PGA Tour as well, kind of
split time between the two. And I think kind of like Thor, like I said, I think the Bay thing was the driving, So he led the tour and tros gained off the tee last year after being eighty ninth the year before, and sort of like Thor, big long haitter who was just still losing strokes or not getting a lot off the tee because of penalty, lack of accuracy, etc. And so I think that was a big part of
his inconsistency. When it was off, it was off, and he's really improved that driving, and then you've seen it inconsistency this year with five top twenty fives and six starts.
You know, the young player who seemingly has everything you want off the tee that struggles off the tea. I I don't know if this could be it, but could it be simply that they're not comfortable playing PGA Tour events and there's just a slight, you know, body not firing all at the same time because you're a little nervous, and maybe your tempo gets a little bit quicker, your
transitions not as smooth. And because I think that's like one of the biggest things is that you hit bad t shots usually when you're uncomfortable, when you're nervous and part of me. When you eliminate thor you eliminate Coodie. Like these guys when you watch them hit a ball in college, you're like, oh my god, this guy is going to be a load on tour. Look at the way he drives it. But they have this initial struggles off the tee. Could it just be the ropes, the scoreboards and the people.
Yeah, definitely, could be. Definitely. I think that's actually I haven't thought about that. I always think about technique first there, but honestly, I could. I could definitely see that being a thing.
I mean, it's just like comfort and also like you don't I think like you go to these new courses and you're looking at new windows, windows you've never seen. There's doubt about is this the right play for me? Off this tee, even if you know, if you see everybody else hitting driver, you might be like, well, this doesn't fit my eye well, And then the second go around everything's more comfortable. You're Golf is such a game of comfort.
It is.
It's probably the most under talked about but being comfortable with where you're staying, being comfortable with where you're eating before rounds, what you your routine, what gym you're going to. For these guys, most of them go to the fitness t tent. But like the whole habit, the more times you visit a place, the more inevitably more comfortable you get. And anybody can relate to this. If you play as a guest at somebody's club, you go visit somebody, your
buddy's public golf course. The first time you play, you're a little bit blind, and that can be fine, But then the second you know, the more often you're there, the more often you see the shots, the more comfortable you get. You get more comfortable just getting there and being there. You know where things are. And I wonder if that could be why we've seen some young players that seemingly have all the tools to thrive off the tea struggle off the tea.
I think too, when you're that long and you become a PGA tour player, there's that maybe doubt about when to deploy the weapon. Like party is probably like, well, I'm on the tour, now we're going to play smart. I'm going to be a mature player. We're going to
hit less than driver. Then you're also like, well the analytics say hit driver everywhere and uses your advantage, and you're probably stuck a little bit in between when to press it and when to not because you probably feel like you need to change from college, need to be that smarter, more mature course manager. So that could be part of it as well.
Yeah, I mean there's so many things you could pull on so many threads here. Also, like the idea of the first time you're playing, you know, in thorpe Jornson's case, like the first time you're playing with like if I don't play well, I might lose my card.
And too's big on the caddy, Like I don't know Pearson's caddy situation to be honest, or who's on his bag and when they came. But thorpe Jornson started playing well right around when JJ Jacobac got on the bag. So there's a veteran experienced caddy. Even Chris godr Up we saw it last year. You know, he played really poorly the first half of the year and then he wins in Scotland, contends in the Open Makes Tour Championship, he's a potential Ryder cup pick and he had changed
caddies mid year. Also, I think to like a longer, more tenured caddy, So I mean the caddy is a big part of it as well. I think especially when guys get on tour. You know a lot of those seen friends that seeing their peers have friends on the bag, and that seems appealing. You don't want to travel the country alone. You're going to these new places, you'd like to have a friend with you. Some times when they switch from that friend to a professional caddy, you see a leap in performance.
Yeah, I you know all these things. I mean, frankly, having a regular caddy is something you have to get comfortable.
With, you know, and I with JJ like you gotta wait for the right time for a guy to go off of a bag so he's available for you.
You know. The other thing that you know, everybody who's always like talks about caddies with like how their financial performance is tied to the player. Nobody ever talks about the psychological aspect of a player and knowing the guy that you spend we'll call it probably forty hours a week with their their financial wellbeing being tied to you and that adjustment. Yeah, for sure, especially if it's the first time you've played for money.
Yeah.
All right. My next thing is the Brian roll app press conference. Obviously that's gonna be a big topic this week, but we've we've heard breadcrumbs about about the schedule, what it's going to look like. You know, there's a lot
of thoughts around that. I am I'm very interested to see what comes out of that press conference about because it seems like they really want to get a new schedule on board in twenty twenty seven and where they're at with that, how close they are, because you know, with with the way tour sponsors and all this stuff works like that, they've got to they've got to get
that thing out into the world pretty soon. And you know, and you know, a couple couple of big things from that is like how many how many exempt players are there? What what are the status of exemptions? I know they want to get rid of most of them, if not all of them, What does that look like? But but the schedule and you know, really just the first time we see the new Sea take over and do this big press conference that will be an annual thing going forward.
Yeah, I think obviously the big word that I think has kind of come out of its scarcity, and I think I don't know a lot, but I think sometimes people take that as like, oh, we're just gonna see less golf, and I don't necessarily know that's the case, but I think we've seen it with less cards, right, and I think sometimes we've even seen the start of the year with less cards means more urgency, less spots.
And actually my fourth thing was a little bit related to that of the players field just going from one forty four to one, it's a it's a big reduction in the field. And so for guys who or people have opinions on field reduction and what it should look like like, this is a good litmus test, like do you feel like something was lost this week because there's
only one hundred and twenty guys? I feel like something was gained because of the pace of play or darkness or flexibility with you know, when there's delays that kind of stuff.
So you know, what I'm worried about was that reduction the number of balls in the water graphics are it can be you know, you've lost you've lost forty eight chances for a ball in the water on seventeen.
That record might be just set in stone.
Now they need to statistically adjust for it.
I've always argued that you need to do those at a per player basis because also can do like total balls in the water since two thousand and three. It's like, well, automatically, you are narrowed down to the golf courses have been used every year since two thousand and three. You know, if you were ever like a playoff event where they only had fifty players in the field versus a full field event where they had one hundred and fifty six, like that affects it. Like there's so many variables and
we just need to what's the average per player? We need a rate basis, not a total sum number.
I think, you know, while we're here the I think the seventeenth hole is one of the best, you know, tournament holes in the world. And I don't think that's like an outlandish take. But when I say that, why I say that is I think the best moments and tournament golf on TV are are when when holes create an urgency for you sitting up in your in your chair, you know, like.
You're watching it and you feel nervous, like, man, imagine how the guy trying to wain the tournament feels.
Yes, yes, and it's it's amazing. The other aspect of like how you view sawgrass right and why I mean everybody talks about the finish. The finish should be studied. It is like a to me perfect finishing stretch. Even if you go back to fifteen challenging part four, gettable, par part five, super risky but gettable par three short part three and then hard part four to finish like that.
Honestly, the entire back nine has those kinds of that give and take of sort of like eleven and twelve or super birdy holes even thirteen if the pins in the right spot, and then fourteen is the most difficult hole on the golf course. Fifteen's another tough part five.
Attack, seeky, hard.
Yeah.
But anyways, the thing about seventeen is like it it actually create it. It is like part of your lens of how you view the tournament throughout every round and throughout the finish where somebody could be four up and it seems like in a lot of tournaments it's just like, Okay, he's just skating his way to the finish in this tournament. In the back of your head's always like, well, he has to get past seventeen.
Yeah, I think too. And one reason why I love the tournament and like having been to it so many times now is like you really don't until you're in person kind of see the proximity of like sixteen Faaraway and seventeen Green, and like y'all talked about it with Pinehurst with the proximity of teas and greens, and Rory admitting he was watching Bryson like sixteen Fairaway you look over seventeen Green feels like it's right there. The tea
as well. And if you're playing sixteen and a guy ahead of you hits in the water or hits it close, like you're hearing that. So if guys dump it in front of you, you're very aware that someone just dumped in the water. The walk from sixteen to seventeen is cool. It's like that little I mean it's an amphitheater. I guess that little amphitheater is a pretty cool spot and a pretty cool scene in tournament golf.
I would say, you know, I say this pretty confidently. I you know, a couple of years ago, I think it was the blog Cabin year. It was like twenty eighteen. On Saturday, I brought my brother. My brother in law was in the in the Navy at this point, and I brought him and his friend and they were stationed in Jacksonville. I brought him and his friend to the Players on Saturday and we basically just hung out on
seventeen the whole time, and they loved it. I was with him a couple of weeks ago and he was he was like, man, that that time we went to the Players was so fun. Like I say this pretty confidently, I think it's probably the best golf golf tournament experience in terms of viewer The stadium course is like legit it It's easy to watch golf. The the purpose built stadium really works. Garrett's done a bunch of podcasts on this. He did a podcast on his Designing Golf recently about this.
But like stadium golf does quantitatively work for the spectator. The only thing that's that's challenging about Stodgrass is like getting to and from it.
It's a disaster, But I mean you can't you can't widen that road unless you bulldozed the pond inning club, which you know has a historic golf course on its own, right, So.
It's that's the only issue is like it's a disaster getting in and out. But like for this is the one to me as just a regular spectator to go to.
It's a good It's also it's not if you get there early. Like, look, the Starbucks by the golf course opens at five. You're just south, you know, get there, read a paper, read a magazine, hang out for an hour, and then go watch guys worm for the first tea time. It's great.
I mean, are are you going to give that advice to someone with with a with a with kids?
Look, I have three kidsunderstand no that I want.
To be like kids were getting up at four thirty. We're going to hang out at the Starbucks for a while, and we're gonna make it at the golf tournament till ten am. That's when we're gonna preach our expiration point.
The thing actually that I wish we'd bring back on the mounds because the spectator mounds are awesome, Like you can just lay down and you can just watch golf. They used to have built in like stairs in there, so they had like the staircase. You could sit on the steps and it was a great look. I mean, honestly, around the first t was this big grass mound with rows of seats carved into it. It was kind of crazy.
It's uh, I love the old pictures of Soccrass. I they did they did some changes for this year.
Nothing this year that's major, But I do think there is some work coming to like bring some of that character back into the greens. And I mean you talk about these little plateaus and little portions of the greens that guys freaked out about back in nineteen eighty two. Those have been softened, but I think some we're coming back.
It's it's amazing to me when you look at the die legacy of like sagra the the what the ways Sagrass was portrayed by players and uh and also than Pja West his two big stadium courses, and then years later how it's just accepted and it's like a great reminder of initial reactions or often times the worst reactions. But now there's this this desire to go back to.
What it was.
Oh you know what that actually reminds me I left off. And this is for Joseph. I left off one of my cinderellas, my JJ spawns. I had two p die specialists. It was Ryan Gerrard. He finished runner by am actually tied with Matt McCarty, who Matt's kind of fit into that like more control player, not the longest, but a good ball striker, solid, you know, straight driver and has I mean played so well as Master's debut last year. But Matt McCarty also was on my list. I know Joseph's high on him.
I you know, I I have an affinity for Matt McCarty. Do you know why?
Because he's the Utah player, so he can handle golf courses, their penal off the tee.
He he calls Chicago's home, that's right, he's Amber right, lives in Chicago. Yeah so he I mean he's there in the winter.
That's so, he's full time Chicago.
He lives in the city of Chicago.
Do you know why? Just wants to experience.
I think it's his girlfriend or wife. I need to talk to him more. I got to have him on the podcast.
Maybe she's doing like a medical is she doing a medical residency or something?
I you know, all the way I found that out was when he was doing the Get a Grip with Bacon and I asked where to send a mic to and he sent me this address. It's like what you live in Chicago.
And he's a MEDNA member, right right, I believe.
Maybe maybe a MEDNA member. Maybe I'm not sure.
So he's he's looking hard at you know, President's Cup spot.
I'm exed I did about the President's Cup this year.
It's gonna be great.
This is gonna be a good time. The uh but yeah, I mean Matt McCarty, Girard Girard is uh, I loved I loved the tour. The tour did of his of his house.
In credit to him for letting letting the cameras in his place, and a lot of players would do that. Girard though, is I mean, he's like if you're a golf guy, like he is awesome. Like I've seen him out there with like titleists. He's just hitting one hundred hybrids trying to find the right hybrid. Like he just loved Like we always want our tour players to like love golf like he as a golf and you want the guy to feel the same way you do about golf.
And I guess Gerard like Girard is a golf like sicko golf nut, and it's awesome.
I think the vast majority of people that listened to this podcast followed the bucket of like golf nut. I do think, and I don't want to get you in any trouble. I do think one of the more depressing aspects of the PGA tours how many of the players would fall into like they just do this because they get paid a lot out of money. They don't really love the game.
But it's hard.
It happens like it happens when it becomes work. I think when you started the Friday you probably loved like writing and opening and getting to produce content. And then after like ten years and a family and all this, you're like, gosh, I got to bang out this, you know thing for the newsletter. Kvv's all over me like it it things become work. I remember I talked to
it was a multiple major champion. We asked I think we're doing like one of those survey things like what's your favorite you know, recreational golf round you played in the last five years or favorite golf course you played not on tour, And the guy was like, I don't play recreational golf, Like it's just it's become work, like things become work. So I understand it, but it is nice when you find a guy who just like loves golf.
I'll leave the name out of this, but I'll never forget. I was talking to a tour player who's an absolute golf nut. I'll leave all the names out of this, and was riding in a car and looked out the window and was like, oh my god, this that golf course looks sick. We should we should stop and play it. And the other player in his car in the car was like like exhaled and was like you you want
to just stop there and play? And he was like yeah, I mean it looks great and along the you know, this was years ago, and he was like, dude, you actually like playing recreational golf. And it's like it's kind of crazy how there is like an overriding belief of that, but that you're right. It is when things turn into your job, you know. I tell people this all the time. I love what I do. I love what I do.
I wouldn't trade it for anything. I don't feel like I work on a daily basis, no matter what part of the job that I'm doing, unless it's my taxes, I don't feel like I'm I'm working.
But the.
You know, the thing that I have lost is a little bit of my hobby, Like I don't I play so little golf for myself anymore. And that's the one thing I missed. But that's just I think it's more like the life situation I'm in. If I wasn't doing this, I would have lost a lot of my hobby of golf also because of where I am in life. But you know that that it's hard. It's hard, you know.
That's why I love hearing about like guys that go on golf trips, that play on the PJ Tour, or you get the tour of Ryan Gerard's whatever was house or apartment, and it's just literally golf clubs everywhere.
Yeah, orn't even the fact we went to Mauritius to you know, try to qualify for the Masters.
Yeah, I mean Xellaturus on this pod was saying he's he might go to like South Africa to try and qualify for the Masters.
Yeah. That Ogilby fits in that vein as well, so dj By House and I went to Chambers before or sorry, I went to Bandon before the US Open at Chambers and we get there and I think we were his
breakfast one morning. Everyone's like, oh, Jeff Ogolviy's here, and he was in the US Open, still exempt off his wing foot win and he was just like at breakfast with everyone else eating and he was gonna go play thirty six abandon and then he's gonna go play the US Open a couple of days later, and like it's just awesome to see because you're just you're so shocked to see someone doing that as well, because they're about to have a really long and stressful week of US
Open and they should most guys just be a home relaxing and he's playing Bandon with a bunch of randos.
Well, that's the thing that's been lost with this, like almost like load management of tour players where we only played nine hole practice rounds is like even the idea of going and playing somewhere the week of Alla. You think about Ben Crenshaw putting crystal downs on the map when he when he built or when he went went there the week of it was a Buick Open and played crystal downs the week he won the Buick Open
and you know it's four hours away. You know, he just couldn't not go see that golf course.
But you know it's probably it's a key to longevity in some way. It definitely helps. I think Keith burnout at Bay like you look at I mean, Scotty loves playing. I mean he mostly plays at Royal Oaks, but he loves playing with members there and you know, having handicapped games with like ten and fifteen handicaps, and like from all accounts, he's a maniac. Brodo E Miller wrote a great story on it that like he goes full board trying to beat these guys he's given twenty strokes to.
And you know Rory obviously, I think it feels like Rory's fallen back in love with the game. That there are maybe some years that he didn't love it, but then as he's gotten older, like he's fallen more in love with like going places and seeing courses and playing recreationally, and that might be one reason for his longevity and kind of this like second half success he's had in the last you know, five six years.
Yeah, it feels like you have to be just a complete competitive psycho mhm. Or you have to just love the game so much. Yeah, for a long career. My last thing is, uh, this is our our show me something checkpoint on the I've got some names to throw at you that you know. I would say that we expected some big things from and and just have not seen much of anything from uh this year. Relative basis h Victor Hovland.
Yeah, coaching change for Victor, so.
Teach the world turns and as Victor changes coaches.
Well, I mean we did a sit down interview with him. We do a kind of a car wash where guys coming from fifteen minutes of the time, and we were just asking general questions about the season. I'm like, oh, you're still working with Grant. He goes no, he goes TJ y Eaton. I go oh when that start. He's like, oh last week and he was there's a social post he was wins TJ at Dubai in twenty twenty five.
Then he went back to Grant Waite, who had been working with previously around I think bay Hill of last year and was with him until I guess last week, and then now he's back with with TJ, who also is the coach of ben Crane, who's you know, you've talked about about to go on a run on the Champions Tour. So he could. If he turns Victor around, he gets ben Crane into a world beater. I mean, could be a stock rising for TJ eaton.
Today's Today's the start of the ben Crane era on on the Champions Tour. We're recording this on Friday. Is everybody's looking at Zach Zach Johnson and what he's gonna do. I've been told by source of ben Crane is a problem. So we got Victor. I mean Victor. You know you talk about like having characters on tour, right, having someone who's perpetually unhappy with where their golf swing at is that is great for the tour, very relatable too well.
And Victor the funny thing is like he doesn't tire about talking about it like you would think that, I mean, because all people ask him about and it's almost it's got to the point now where really, I think for a while we thought he was on this journey to remake his swing, and you know, maybe he was unhappy with one thing and he went down a road. But like now it's just it's the new normal, Like it's
the normal for Victor. Like if he's ever been a point where he's not changing like coaches or trying new drills, like, then we're like, oh, something new has happened. But I think that I think honestly, it's just Victor's it's just Victor, like I at this point, I think it's the it's normal for him.
Yeah, it's uh, I mean, it's amazing, it's it's a great aspect to have. I just would like him to play better golf.
Yeah, no, one hundred percent.
It's fascinating to have somebody that gets to basically where everybody's like, maybe he's the number one player in the world. Yeah, and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, he just blew everything up.
Yeah.
Uh.
Well. The thing with him too, he's so smart that I think he like started pulling it one string, but then and then the you just start, the whole ball starts unraveling and you you know, you're dealing with matchups and things like that, And so I think that and he's not a guy who's gonna be intent with like hey, feel like you bow your risk little bit. More like he's not that's not going to do it for him.
I was.
I was telling somebody the other day, I haven't gotten a lesson in eight years, and you know, I feel like I play about as well as I played when I played. I mean, I'm not quite as good, but you know, but one of the things is, like I know my golf swing yep, and like one of my fears of if I went and got a lesson or did work on it is what you just said is that if you pull one string, something else on strings and there is like you look at what Scotty does.
Scotty's Scotty's got the most self awareness of his golf swing because they just work on the same stuff. Yeah, you know, they've never they've never pulled a string. That's undid three other things.
I think. So the coaches for like Scotty and even like got Her Up. Got Ups had the same coach, Jason Bernbaum, since he was a kid. Like those coaches to not change that stuff, but to make it better without like wholesale changing it deserves a lot of credit, first of all. But it's just I mean, that's that's the essence of great teaching, where you're working within someone's framework, you're not completely changing them, but you are making them better.
Like Scotty's swing has a lot of really unique things in it that you wouldn't teach. I'm not even really talking about the feet either, Like it's there's just a lot of it's very unique and his owns it and it's crazy. This week, though, he talked about when he came out of college. He's like, yeah, I wasn't a very good ballstriker coming out of college, Like that wasn't seven years ago. Like He's like, I think I could have been, but there was still too much wrong in
my swing. He's like, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, I became a better ball striker. And so you're talking about a guy who went from like twenty nineteen to really twenty twenty three, he really of established themselves as the best ball striker on tour and it was very obvious. Like so in four years he went from what he would call like not a good ball striker, obviously different standards than what we would have to the best one, unrivaled in the year. It's kind of crazy.
It's crazy.
But also if he looked at his swing, I don't think you would see like an insane difference. It's not like he you know, totally overhauled it. Yeah.
I that's the thing. I think it just a lot of it was like I think so much of it is just understanding your swing. Yeah, but if you're in a perpetual state of change, you can never get to a point where you actually understand the swing.
Yeah.
And I think in Victor's case, he might just understand too much of it and and be like I hate this right as opposed to like I think Scotty accepted this is.
What it is well, and like Mari Kawa talked about at Pebble, is like, you know, I was being too much of a perfectionist and trying to just like be this like Robot and I went back to just kind of playing golf. And I think Scotty is like the epitiom of just playing golf. But I think Victor is in that stage that Colin was talking about, like perfection, like he always talks about, you know, if it's not coming out of the right window, I don't like it.
I don't care where it shows up. And Colin did that last year.
Colin.
People will be like, oh, you led the field and strops gain approach and he's like, I don't care. I hate it. I missed left too many times, like I wasn't fading the way I wanted, Like I don't care what the stats say. And it's like, well, I get that, and you want to be You want it to look a certain way and to feel a certain way. But like if the stats say you're the best on tour at it, like you probably just maybe accept it so you don't drive yourself crazy.
It's you have to get to a state of comfort to play your best golf. And that that's where I have like a hard time with the constant changes. Are you ever getting comfortable enough to win a major championship is like a big question for me, And you know, hopefully for for golf's sake, I would love Victor Hovlin to win a major championship. I think he's one of
the best characters in the sport. I hope that it comes back and he ends up in his best self he's ever been because of all all these changes and and you know, and win something this year.
He'd probably benefit hugely from getting married and having a kid. Like some guys, they lose skill because then they used to practice all day and now they can't like that actually might be we might need to maybe need to find victorial wife.
It's that I like that take actually a lot. He needs less time to think about his golf swing. Next on the list, I got Xander. I think it's inconceivable, uh to think about, you know, two years ago, him being like a fringe top ten player in the world. But we're here, Uh you know, he's he's two bad weeks effectively away from being outside the top ten in the world golf rankings. Uh, you know, and obviously he had the injury last year. I just we got to get a run of good play from him because he
was on the level of you know, maybe not. I mean, god, in twenty four it was like is Xander as good as Scottie?
Yeah?
And now two years later it's like, is he I'm at the point where it's like, is he one of the twenty best players in the world.
Yeah. You know what's been really depressing is I texted PJ about, you know, big New York Golf Club matchup and he's like, we stink like this season's over, like lost cause. So, I mean it's had effect on NYGC as well. It's really brought PJ down.
I mean he doesn't even want to stander in the lineup.
Well, yeah, which I mean then to the problem then too, I think, is you know, then how does Steve Cohen's other team perform? You know, we don't know. That's I think that's what Pj's really worth.
Your team's ruining baseball. So I hope you enjoy the lockout in twenty twenty seven. That's that's fueled by your Dodgers, Xander.
I mean, luckily I'm looking at leaderboard because it is Friday. He did shoot sixty eight yesterday at bay Hill, which was a great score. He did win the Bay Current. You know, he won over in Japan. He did speak about what we just did with Victor like he did just have a child or his wife did so injury child. There's been a lot of adjustments. I don't know. I'm bullish. I think we'll get there. He probably spent a lot of off season with the kid.
And I don't know how we got to the place where people thought that like a kid, you know that I love. I don't know how. I'm not saying don't have kids. I'm not saying this, but I don't know how we got to spot where people at one point was like having a kid's good for pro golfers.
Well, we just said about Victor.
I think it's a very special case when it's good, Like like, you can't tell me that there are like attributes that are good for your pursuit of pro golf.
Well, I do think it is. I mean, what's better. Is it better you go back to otellrom when you play with your kid, or you go back to hotel room and you start like fiddling with your grip and looking at your takeaway, And like I mean, for some guys, some guy's probably the latter, some guy's the former. But so I think I think just getting your mind off of golf, if you have a tendency to go too much down that road, I think that's the good stuff.
It is is a case by case basis. You're right, you're right, You're absolutely right.
You know that.
Kevin KVVU interview with Rory, he talked about how it's like I just go play with my kid. Yeah, yeah, all right. Ben Griffin the delight the breakout of last year. He hasn't done much this year. And I think this is a guy that everybody was kind of like okay, like he's going to be a major competitor. It's obviously early in the year, and we saw Ben Griffin plays Best Golf like kind of like this point forward last year. But he's I mean, he's playing his.
First Masters this year, right, so so is Chris Goto.
Yeah, I it's fascinating.
You know.
We talked I think we talked about this with Ludwig, who's also on my list but who played really well yesterday at bay Hill. But Ludwig was like, it was like, is this the highest the most you know, highest ranked player to ever make a Master's debut. When Ludwig came through, I think it was like four or five, and then he contended but got her ups right there too. Yeah, you know, but Ben Griffin and Ludwig kind of round
out the players. I just want to see something from them, and Ludwig might be you know, as I said, we're recording this Friday at bay Hill. He's in second place right now at bay Hill going into today.
I think a couple of guys I was looking at JJ Spawn and I'd read something about some vertigo, which was kind of thing mentioned offhand. But that's obviously a terrifying affliction for a golfer. But I mean, JJ was like one of the great stories last year and I really enjoy like watching JJ play golf. JJ's a great personality.
I would like to see him play well, hopefully. And then Justin Thomas, who I mean obviously Bay Hills his first start of the year, but as we talk Friday afternoon, he's fourteen over through twelve holes of his second round and he's in last by seven. Now, you hope it's just rust and you just got to get some reps. But like he loves tc Sawgrass. I think it's his favorite course on tour. He's had a ton of success
at TPC. So you just hope that this player's week, you know, you see something definitely better than what we're seeing this week at bay Hill, and that it's just maybe he tried to shake off some rust.
Yeah. I was thinking about jt on here and I just you know, in good faith with a major back surgery. Yeah, I feel like we got to give them, yeah, two months to work things out, which unfortunately for him and just the way the schedule is constructed now it's just two months and the season's basically over. Yeah, that does it for me? You got an odds and ends?
No, those are my things.
That was it.
That's good. Who's your pick?
Who's my pick? Man? Honest, you know, think of that as a thing.
I know.
It's the problem with this, this this format. I like getting it out early, giving people a table setter for the week, but you know, making a pick, uh, this earliest heart.
Let's scroll down to the O w JR. A little bit.
Uh, I mean I kind of.
I mean, I'm Scottie.
You can't go wrong there, right, Maybe you can't. Yeah, I uh, you know, they all go Russell Henley said.
Name stood out to me. That's kind of your you know, your ball control guy and amazing like great driving accuracy. Actually, I'm gonna call him not also not like a crazy, you know, insane pick, but I'm gonna go call him.
I think he's he's uh, this is a redemption year for him. I was happy I was on that island. Despite the way Joseph Lamania looked at me on this podcast when I said the.
Name data boys, you know, he just they're not always right.
They aren't always right. You know, games games, the data the data is all data all comes after they play yeah, you know, data's all data takes are always reactive takes.
Well, you know what data can't measure great heart. I mean maybe it could if they're wearing like an Apple watch or whoop, but it can't measure heart.
Soon, soon it'll be able to tell us everything that's going to happen, and we'll just stop. We'll just start simulating everything.
True.
I hope Joseph listens, hope we get to this far in the podcast.
I've already already poked him for that, you know, all right, thanks Martin. Do you have anything coming out that we should watch out for.
No, we have some really exciting and like new and different stuff we're doing at the Players that I don't think people might see it right away. Someone's going to come out in Brian's press commence.
I think, but.
Some cool stuff. I'm definitely different than what I've been involved in my previous life as a writer and editor. But I can't quite say right now, but I think definitely exciting from a content standpoint.
Awesome. I'm looking forward to getting across the Moat for that press conference, seeing where the magic happened.
You might not be you know, you might be onto something to talk about them blocking you in a room.
All Right, thanks Sean. All Right, see y'all, let's talk about a new sponsor, Cobalt rangefinders. I just got my new Cobalt. It is awesome. I used it. I went out and played to use it before we had to start using the doing these reads using this Cobalt, I was amazed at some of the features that they've added on. In particular, they have an optical zoom which you can get up to twelve X. This is a particular pain point if you hit a tree behind a hole like
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All right, let's get over to Garrett's documentary podcast about the building of Tpcsawcrass.
Sailing out of Gravesend, England on the trade route, Captain William Hilton one August morning in sixteen sixty three came upon an island peaceful and serene.
What you're hearing is the telecast of the nineteen sixty nine Heritage Golf Classic. It was a new event held at a new golf course, Harbortown Golf Links had been built by a forty three year old architect named Pete Dye. Back then, Pete Dye wasn't well known in a mainstream way, but his collaborator had a more recognizable name.
Hello, I'm Jack Nicholas. This is Pete Dye.
The two men lean against the balustrade of an outdoor stairway, both looking a little flushed in their full suits.
Pete and I have worked together to design and build the Harbortown Golf Links here at Seapin's plantation. We're here on the eve of the first Heritage Golf Classic. He played over the Thanksgiving weekend. Having a golf tournament on the first year of operation, it's a dream come true for both of us.
And the golf course looks great.
Nispeech, that's beautiful, Jack, Really, it's been a lot of fun here and well, yes, that's a great contrast.
Today there were beauty grasses with a beheas centipede.
Pine Strong brings you back to Pinehurst and some of the.
Old British golf links looks great.
It was quite a coup for Pete Dye to be there on TV, side by side with the greatest golfer in the world. If you were a golf architect in nineteen sixty nine, he didn't get an awful lot of press unless your name was Robert Trent Jones. So the opening of Harbortown marked a turning point in Pete Dye's career. Here was a course to be discussed. It was quirky
and challenging, and it proved popular among the pros. One of those pros was Dean Beeman, who played his first Heritage in nineteen seventy one.
My favorite golf course was Harbortown, and Harbortown was today is many players' favorite golf course.
They really like it. Harbortown is a golf course.
That has just as many right to left as left to right holes. It has small and green, It demands accuracy. It doesn't favor a long hitter versus a shorter hitter. So I thought it had a great balance and it was a great test of golf and a fair test to golf.
By nineteen seventy eight, Beeman was commissioner of the PGA Tour and he had just negotiated the purchase of a wild, soggy property near Jacksonville, Florida. There he intended to build a new venue for the Tournament Players Championship. He wanted the course to tax the abilities of the world's best golfers while providing a better viewing experience for spectators. It would be a stadium golf course, and he knew the
man to build it was Pete Dye. Today, on Frida Egg Stories, we are going back four decades to the building of this stadium course at TPC Sawgrass in the nineteen eighty two Players Championship. This story has been told and retold over and over, and since it's Player's Week right now, you'll no doubt be reminded by various journalists, TV hosts, and podcasters of the usual bits of lore.
Dean Beeman purchasing the property for one dollar, Pete Dies sketching a routing on the back of a place mat, the creation of the island Green, the complaints of the pros, and Jerry Pate after his victory in eighty two hauling both Beman and Die into the pond next to the eighteenth Green. Don't get me wrong, we'll replay a few of those hits in this episode. We're not about that. But the real reason I'm curious about the TPC Sawgrass story has to do with the personalities involved in the
contrasts between them. On the one hand, you had Pete Dye. Golf architecture was a passion for him, not just to business enterprise, and as we know in the way he designed courses, he was intensely hands on and independent. He was an artist. On the other hand, you had the PGA tour under the leadership of Dean Beaman, thirteen years younger than Pete. Die Beeman was energetic and assertive, a deal maker. TPC Sawgrass was his venture, and he had
ideas of his own about what it should be. No less an authority than Alice Dye, Pete's wife and most trusted design consultant, had her own doubts about the partnership between Dean and Pete. Oh, Pete, you're crazy, she said, you can't build for Dean. He's particular, he's efficient, he's all the things you aren't. He'll have his hands in there trying to tell you what to do. Don't do it.
But he did, and oddly enough it worked. In this episode of Frida Egg Stories, we'll try to figure out how today the Tour is the eight hundred pound gorilla of the golf world. Back in the nineteen seventies, it was more like a newborn computi. The Tournament Player's Division as it was then known, had just separated from the PGA of America, and it was a scrappy operation.
Yeah, it was really a mom and pop shop back then.
Adam Schupak is a golf journalist and the author of Golf's Driving Force, a biography of Dean Beaman.
When the Tour moved its headquarters to Panaviter Beach, it was working out of a four bedroom home with Dean's office was the master bedroom. The garage had the copier and postage meter, and you know for an intercom, they just yelled at each other.
It was.
It was a really small staff and Beaman took over in nineteen seventy four and used to say that, you know, the largest capital ast that they had was an IBM Selectric typewriter. They had about twenty walkie talkies and.
They did it on.
They had three Budweisers and the Canna beans. I mean, it was a time period where bowling was still attracting higher ratings, golf and tennis was the sports surging of popularity. So you know, he had a lot of work cut out for him when he took over his commission.
It didn't take long for Beamon to start making aggressive moves. He was in his mid thirties and he had a background not only as an elite golfer who had won two US Amateurs, but also as an insurance broker. He knew his way around tax documents as well as boardroom negotiations.
You know, he was an intense man. He's got these piercing blue eyes, and you know, his friends used to say that, you know, he could deliver a look that could exterminate headlice. And it was a job that required toughness, because you know, he had this quest to kind of roll over the status quo in this traditional game, make
golf a bigger sport. And you know, he wanted to create a fan base that was much broader than just its own participants, and that meant doing things a little differently than they'd been done in the past.
In his first year, Beaman converted the tour into a nonprofit, exempting it from paying income taxes and changing its financial fortunes. Beamon's others nature project was the new tournament Players Championship, later known as the Players Championship and now apparently as just the Players Anyway. From the beginning, Beeman had big plans for the event. The USGA had the US Open, the PGA of America had the PGA Championship, and the RNA had the Open. Why shouldn't the PGA Tour have
its own major. Well, for one, it's not easy to manufacture prestige, but Beeman tried his best. After staging the first three tournament players Championships at three different courses, he decided to stick with one that it worked for the masters after all, So starting in nineteen seventy seven, the players absorbed the Greater Jacksonville Open and set up shop at Sawgrass Country Club, which was.
A very dynamic golf course that was played in March where the wind blew. It was as close to an ocean side course as you could get, and so it had all.
Those elements in it.
But while Beeman liked Sawgrass as a course, he thought it could be proved as a venue, there.
Was going to have to be a substantial investment made in the golf course and the facilities to accommodate both the players and the gallery.
And what we wanted to do.
So Beeman attempted to buy Sawgrass Country Club, but for a variety of reasons, the deal never happened. Instead, he set out to build a new course, a home course for the tour. Just across the road from Sawgrass Country Club was a huge tract of wilderness. The owners knew that being in business with the ascendant golf tour would raise the value of their land, so they sold four
hundred and fifteen acres to Beaman for one dollar. From there, the commissioner pieced together financing from a non recourse loan, a few dozen expensive founding memberships, and a few thousand cheap annual memberships. It was a tidy sum acquired at minimal risk.
As PG Tour commissiony, he's working for a board, he's working for the players, and they had a lot of and they pretty much said, you can't risk any of our assets. They didn't have a lot to day, but they didn't want to put put anything on the line, and if he failed, it was his neck. And so he went out and figured a way to do it where they just couldn't say no. And it was you know, that is one of the most brilliant deals ever in the game of golf.
After all that, though, Beeman found himself in possession of a piece of land that, to put it mildly, seemed ill suited to golf. Here's how Pete Dye described it in his autobiography Bury Me in a pop Bunker. When I first inspected the proposed site for the player's course, my only compatriots in the impenetrable swampy jungle were deer, alligators,
wild boar, and deadly snakes. In order to cut a path, I followed deer tracks that led me to dry areas in the swamp before I nearly drowned in the depths of the marshland well.
The property was. It was dead flat. It had a lot of standing water on it.
There's substantial rainfall here in Jacksonville following rainfall. Until to dried out. It was a pretty wet piece of property.
It hadn't always been that way. The array of oak, pine, sweetgum, and magnolia trees on the site indicated that it had once been an upland, But when the Intracoastal Waterway was built nearby in the early nineteen hundreds, water began to collect on the site. By the nineteen seventies it was a Florida forest mashed up with a Florida swamp. But Beeman didn't mind that the property was flat and would
need to be almost wholly re engineered. To him, it was a blank slate where he could realize his vision for a stadium golf course.
No golf course up to that point had been bought, had been built. That more interest was concentrated on the gallery than the players. Most golf courses are built for players. We needed to build one for the players, but we also had to we want eyewant to build a golf course that would be the first what I called a stadium golf course.
Well, I wanted. I wanted two things.
There were two elements that I thought were extremely important in making a stadium course as successful as it could be. One is that you did all you could to build the spectator areas in the highest places on the course and the golf courses in the playing services on the lowest point of the golf court, so that the spectators were actually walking with you, and they would be above the players, and so more people could see. And that's
the concept of a stadium. The second part of the concept that I thought was very important was the routing of the golf course should be in a way that
produced the most what I call areas of activity. Instead of spreading the golf course out, bringing the holes out, they should wind back and forth in a way that created us hubs of activities where a spectator could maybe walk two or three hundred yards and see four or five different shots close to a couple of tees, a couple of greens and maybe a fairway and not have to walk five miles to watch a lot of golf, Because there are some spectators that want to follow their
favorite player and others that just want to watch golf.
It's striking how these ideas, although novel at the time, call to mind the features of certain time tested tournament golf courses. As Pete Didye pointed out in his autobiography, the Links courses of Great Britain and Ireland have dunes that form natural spectator mounds along the fairways and around the greens, and Beeman's notion of hubs of activity reminded me of how Augusta National returns to certain landforms, creating gathering spots where spectators can see multiple greens and teas
at once. Perhaps in part because he appreciated these historical references, Pete Dye took beeman stadium concept and ran with it. Over dinner at the Homestead Restaurant in Jacksonville, Die sketched a back nine routing on that now famous place Mat and Beeman knew he had the right architect. Granted, a place Matt is a lot easier to work with than a four hundred and fifteen acre alligator pick.
We killed rattlesnakes and moccasins all the time, almost every day, also alligators and spatters and all kinds of stuff on at on the side, and you wore snake boots or you didn't really go out there.
Vernon Kelly was the project manager at TPC Sawgrass.
There was something out there we called blue gumbo clay. What it was was almost a plastic kind of play It was like quicksand and when you were digging sand out of the pits, because wherever you found sand, we excavated it for the golf holds, and that's how we created seventeen. Of course, almost anyway you see a lake out there, it's because there was sand in that area
and we didn't have the money to buy sand. And once you excavated the sand, sometimes you would hit this gushy kind of play material and it didn't seem to be any bottom to it, and out I think it was number seven. One night we went a back over and we were digging building the green and he got into that stuff, and I mean literally, without a couple of hours, it completely covered the tracks of the back though, and was up to the cab, which is about five feet.
We were able to pull it out with a dozer, but it just showed how treacherous the sight was.
Early on, it could seem like the land itself was rejecting the golf course.
The first thing we had to do was to find the property, so we had the boundary surveyed, and the surveyors actually went out there and cut the survey line with machetes, and then you know, went from point to point and marked the points with the survey steaks and survey tape. Well, the vegetation grew so fast out there, literally within a couple of days, you could barely find the cut lines, which were the pass from stake straight and you couldn't find the steaks at all.
And then there was the wildlife.
So one day we were walking along it was hot as could be, and the bugs were about to carry off with skews and the rest. And I was talking to David, that.
Would be David post Away, Pete Dye's construction superintendent.
He said, do you think there are any alligators out here? I said, oh, yeah, they're all over the place because they can travel in this water. It's about knee high, and they can move from place to place, and he said, those step on one.
It's all.
We won't do that, but you can find them because there'll be a n alligator pit. And what they do is they'll be in an area of saw grass and they'll root around and make an alligator pit that's probably twenty feet square around where if they ripped up the vegetation and kind of dug them but a little bit deeper, and that's where they live, and that's where they sleep in the water. And all they're scavengers. They don't eat
live meat. They kill things and they put it in that pit to rot, and when it's real gamey, then they'll eat it. So when you come to one of those pits, you can tell what it is because it stinks to high heaven. And he said, boy, I hate to be in something like that, and I said, yeah, me too. So in the meantime, we're pushing through. We're pushing through the saw grass and it's about five that and so thick. I mean, you can't. It just wears you out to push against it, sort of leaning leaning
into it. I was in front and Dave was following me, and all of a sudden I was leaning All of a sudden it just parted and I fell in this hole and I knew immediately what it was because it's stunk to high have and I'd fallen into an alligator.
Kid.
Fortunately the alligator went home, but you know, said, I'm laying of this thing, and my full concentration is on keeping my balf of water. All of a sudden, David comes and pops right through the grass and falls right on top of me. He looks around. He says, oh my god, He says, the stinks that I have, And what is this? I said, it's what we were talking about. It's an alligator. Bit He's gone. He just disappeared. He was he took off so fast.
How did you get out?
Oh?
I got out.
I was.
I was right behy.
But nothing happened to us.
Kelly, who hadn't worked on a pet dye project before, quickly got a taste of Die's creative process.
When we first started working with him, we had to get upset of plans for the bank in order to just stit the loan. It was the hardest thing to get a set of plants. Pete resisted and just didn't want to give us a set of plants, and finally we were able to secure a set of plans from him.
We gave them to the bank and everything's ready to go.
So we're on the site. The first day we were walking out to the first t I said, oh, wait, man, I forgot something. And I went running back to the truck and got the plans, and son come running, come running back, and Pete says to me, what's that And I said, oh, these are the plants. And he said, put up back of the truck, and I don't want to see them again. That was the last time we had the plants on the job, and.
That, it seems to me, is exactly where Pete die and the tour could have found themselves at loggerheads, the craftsmen versus the corporation, the improviser versus the plan followers. But as it turned out, Dean Beeman himself had a healthy regard for Dye's methods.
That's Pete. Pete wants to be hands on, boots on the ground. I want to see it. I don't want to see it on a piece of paper. I want to see it with my own eye and my boots on the ground.
Get wet and from Vernon Kelly's point of view. While there was a contrast in styles between Die and Beman, there was also a crucial element that kept the peace.
There was a tremendous amount of respect between Dean and deep In both ways and Alice both ways.
Years later, Alice I admitted that her initial fears about the partnership had been unfounded. Dean was wonderful, she said. He let Pete do his thing, and both of them let Alice do her thing. She too was on site, and she too had a knack for boots on the improvisation. According to plans, the par three seventeenth would have water just on the right but around the seventeenth green, as it happened, was some of the best sand on a
generally mucky property. So the crew kept digging that sand out and using it as foundation for turf elsewhere on the course. Eventually there was an enormous pit where the seventeenth hole was supposed to be. Here's how Pete Dye recounted what happened.
Next.
I called Alice over to discuss with her where we could find a new place for the green. She said, put the green back where it was and fill the hole with water. Simple enough. This sort of husband wife collaboration was common on dye projects. One summer when he was in college, Tom Doak worked on the crew at Die's Long Cove Club on Hilton Head Island.
They were renting a house three miles away and Sea Pine's plantation, and p would be there six or seven days a week at six thirty in the morning with the crew, and Alice would come out two or three times a week, you know, at lunch time or in the afternoon, and she'd just come check on progress and see, you know, see what what had been done since the last time she was out there, which you know, even that would be more visits than most architects would make
to their own construction sites. And it was actually a guy on our crew that would have been a college roommate of PD's, you know, Pete was shaping on the golf course and Steve, his roommate, was out there working on the labor crew. And I get to know Steve a little bit, and at one point Steve just sort of said, really casually, well, you know, nothing's really done
out here until miss Sally says it's okay. And I thought that was funny at the time, but but I really did get the impression by the time I was done working for Pete and Alice that Alice had a lot to say about you know, maybe not the final say, but she was certainly going to tell Pe if she didn't think, you know, he thought golf course is too hard or too easy, or if that feature didn't look right, and you know, hers was the most important opinion to Pete.
So while Pte Die was firm in his own convictions, he was also eager to gather input from others.
I can stay as an architect. The hardest one of the hardest things to do when you're in the middle of a construction project is half perspective on you've sort of you've gotten away from playing golf on graft and you get to lose perspective of this is too hard, this is too easy, And it really helps to have somebody out there you trust just this. You know, it's okay, it's fine, or it's a wait, are you sure you want to be doing that? You know, And most architects don't have that.
The Stadium course opened in nineteen eighty, but as the eighty two Players Championship approached, the first players to be held at TPC Sawgrass the pressure on both Pete Dye and Dean Beaman ratcheted up.
It was definitely a move forward for the PGA Tour because they were opening their own golf course.
Sean Martin is a senior editor for PGA Tour dot com, and in twenty seventeen he wrote a feature called Leap of Faith behind the Stadium Course's wild debut at the nineteen eighty two Players Championship. It's really great and a major inspiration for this episode.
So now they were getting into the golf course business, and there was debate among the players whether or not the PGA Tour should be getting into the golf course business, whether or not that was a wise business decision. You know, you look at Adam Schupack's book about Dean Beaman, and the early tour was run out of basically, I believe it was a town homer, a condo at the Sawgrass
Country Club. So it was a very modest organization. So to now all of a sudden get into the golf course business was a risky venture.
And the heat on Beeman and Die got turned up when the pros started to visit the new course.
So Sagress Club, which hosted the players. Was literally across the street, so when guys were in town for the players, they could go over and see TPC. It was carved out of a swamp. It was much more severe than what you see today. I think some of that is just when you build slopes and you shape them, they never look quite as severe as when they get grass on them, and so just I think, of course, is always going to be severe when it's new. And then also you know, combine some of that with just the
wild surrounds off the fairway. If you strayed from the corridors and hit it into that stuff, I mean you're looking at lost balls. You're having trouble hacking out. It was very raw and very very penal.
The players began to make their opinions known, and not long after the grand opening, Dean Beaman oversaw some significant changes.
It was difficult for me to envision what the final product would be based on looking at dirt when the grass.
Was on it. It was far different than I had imagined.
And clearly as soon as it opened, even before tour players came in and wanted to play it, I determined it was much too severe. The greens themselves were much too severe. So during the course of that year, before the first tournament, a lot of work was done to take some of the severity out of the greens.
But when the eighty two Players Championship arrived, the course was still very rugged and very difficult. Tom Doak headed down from Cornell during his spring break to watch the tournament. When Doak remembers that era of TPC sagrass, the image of a relatively bare bones golf course comes to his mind.
But you know, one of the things about the TPC that most people don't realize is, you know, in nineteen seventy ninety eighty was terrible recession time in America, and the TPC was really built to be a low meetance golf course in a fairly low budge golf course to build. And of course once it was opened for three or four years, they all of a sudden it was like, well, this is the headquarters of the tour. We've got to spruce it up and we've got to make it look
pretty imperfect. But that was not Pete's idea going into it. One of the quotes I remember him saying it that the original tournament in nineteen eighty two was everything here is the dead opposite of Augusta on purpose.
When Dope got to the tournament, he went out and found Pete Dye on the course.
I think it was on like the eleventh or twelfth hole. Basically, he was just going around to one hole at a time and watching players come through and you know, watching shots and seeing how they reacted. He wanted to see how they played him. He didn't want to hear how what they said. He didn't care so much what they said about it. You know, he just wanted to see if the shots work the way he intended them to.
And you know, so we just go to one hole at a time and watched three or four groups play through, and Pete did see somebody hid a good shot and go, oh, that whole works. We can go to the next call now.
But the pros were coming to their own conclusions, you know.
Going in, people knew, I think that it was going to be a high tension week. This was a players were facing something that was new, something that was very penal. Players had an opportunity to voice their opinions and voice them strongly and loudly, and the press obviously was very willing to write them and so you had some great quotes that you know, I think players had probably spent some time thinking about. And so you had Ben Crenshaw, of all people, referring to it as Star Wars golf
designed by Darth Vader. Jack Nicholas after missing the cuts that I've never been very good at stopping a five iron on the hood of a car.
At least one player, however, was in his element.
As far as a.
Pete Die golf course, I was fortunate enough to play in nineteen seventy four, I played the Teeth of the Dog at Casa de Campo.
Jerry Pate was a twenty eight year old US amateur and US Open champion. He had a silky, powerful swing and a fearless attitude, and he felt that he had a bead on Pete Die designs.
So I kind of understood Pete strategies. I had to feel for how he liked to strategize holes. And there were just certain places you couldn't hit the ball.
You just if you'd hit it there, you were in trouble.
And when I saw the Stadium course for the first time, a lot of people complained about it because the greens were sort of perched up off of the grade, so you had a lot of areas that had I would call them false fronts in the front, and the green ran off on the left side and the right side, and there were very very small pinnable areas that were little target areas, and if you didn't hit it there, the ball would gather some fifteen to thirty forty feet
away from there into a low depression either on the green or off the green.
So you had to be extremely.
Accurate with your iron. You had to be a good driver of the ball, which I was, and you had to be a really good iron player, which I was. So his designs sort of played right into my hand.
Still, like everyone else, Jerry Pate was struck by the rawness and difficulty of the new TPC.
And you know, the golf course was wild and willy then. It wasn't naturally managed and manacured light. I mean, it wasn't as manicure today. It was natural with pal meadows and just you know, basically bobcats and rattlesnakes twenty foot off the fairway and Armadilla's and you name it. So that day there was nothing on earth, and I mean that not with it, not with exaggeration. There was no other course on the earth more difficult and diabolical than that golf course.
But unlike almost everyone else, Pete wasn't much bothered by the stadium course's severity. This was at least in part because he just wasn't the worrying type.
Yeah, so he was this gregarious bass riker, just fun loving flagging shots and I guess maybe kind of cavalier in that way, aiming at flags and playing I think kind of care free, because when you're that good of a bass riker, you can kind of do that because the ball's going to go where you aim.
Peate also had the advantage of having played at the grand opening of TPC Sawgrass nineteen eighty and being paired with Dean Beaman himself. Beaman had shown him where he could be aggressive off the tee and taught him not to be intimidated by Die's visuals.
Look, the fairways are much wider than they appear. They're classic Pete Die deception. You know, who build up bunkers or slopes that will make the fairway look smaller than they are. But the problem is, is really the fairways or wider than you think? And if you lay back off the tee, the second shot you're going to face into the greens is harder than the shot that you
just avoided off the tee. So by playing safe off the tee, you're not really avoiding as much trouble as you think you are, and you're just bringing that much more into play around the greens. And so it is very visually intimidating, but you're also going to be best suited if you take the challenge on.
So Pete was even more confident than usual going into the eighty two players. Not only did he like Pete die courses and do well at them, not only did he have the right skill set and disposition. Not only did he have intel on tpc's sawgrass, but he also had deep family connections to Jacksonville. His father had been born and raised there, and his mother had moved there in high school. Added all up, and Jerry Pate felt that he had destiny on his side.
I just knew I was going to win it. It wasn't even a thought in my head, you know, I knew it all along.
Well, he didn't exactly jump out to the lead. He hung around shooting seventy seventy three seventy. After fifty four holes, he was tied for sixth, three shots behind his brother in law Bruce Letsky and co leader Brad Bryant. Meanwhile, Pate was very aware of the rumblings among veteran players about the course and the tour's new direction.
And there was talk in the locker room by the senior Hall of famers just before they were into Hall of Fame. And I won't mention names.
Some of them are dead now.
Somerseille lives in their eighties, and the talk was they were going to get, you know, have a coup and fired Dean because we had no business owning a golf course. And it was crazy, and it was competing against some of these famous golfers design careers. They had their own design careers going. So they're thinking, well, wait a minute, PGA Tours hiring some outside guy named Pete Died to design their golf course. Why didn't they hire a player.
It was victrial, It was anger. The players were mad, angry, I mean, you could use.
All those words.
It was a big deal politically for Dean and Pete Die, I can tell you. And there were some really top players in that As I said, Hall of Fame golfers that didn't like the golf course at all, in fact, missed the cut. And then once you get something that's negative in your mind you don't like the golf course, you're done. There's no way you're going to play well.
And I loved it.
On Sunday, after Burdiying twelve, Pate had closed the gap between himself and the leaders. The year prior, he had won in Memphis, and in celebration he had leapt into the lake by the eighteenth green. So rumors were already going around TPC Sagrass that if he pulled off the victory, he would do the same today.
Anyway, as I walked back to thirteen t Can, I heard somebody kind of running up behind me and they grabbed my arm. I turned around. It was Alice Die and she looked at me and she said, you've got to win this thing, and you got to throw Pete in the lake.
Alice's idea, it seems, was that a little playful public come up and might do some good. It might provide an outlet for the rising hostility toward her husband and their design business.
Of course, Pete had been catching ungodly amount of heat for this golf course, and Alice, I think was a little bit worried. Can I turn around? Looked at her just calm as can be. And everybody used to think, you know, when I played, I was cocky. I really wasn't cocky. I just you know, I knew in my heart I could pull it off, and I said, I'm gonna win.
Pete went on to par thirteen, Birdie fourteen, and Birdie the Island seventeenth hole. He drove it right up the god on eighteen and had a five iron into the green. Until that point, the most famous moment in Pet's career had involved another seventy second whole five iron, this one at the nineteen seventy six US Open. He hit it so close to a dangerous whole location that some accused him of pulling it. Today, the approach to the eighteenth that TPC sawgrass is still a scary shot. Even when
pros are hitting eight or nine irons. Almost no one goes directly at the pen. But Pate did with a five iron, and he knocked it to two feet.
For me to hit that shot like Ben Crenshaw hitting a you know, a six foot pot, he's not nervous. Jack Nicholas isn't nervous on a six foot, but Tom Watson wasn't nervous on a six foot, but Lee Trevino was never nervous on a nine yard wed shot, and Jerry Pate was never nervous hitting a long iron shot.
I mean, I nerves weren't even in my vocabulary. And when I hit the five iron, and I went to the press room, and I think Tom Place was running the interview for the PGA Tour, and he said, you have any opening statements, and I go, yeah, I guess, I guess I pulled another five iron.
But let's go back for a moment into the eighteenth fairway, just after Pate had stiffed his approach.
And the camera was on me, little Davy Finch, you worked for CBS and Trick Kenny and is in the truck. I knew that, and you know, all my buddies at CBS were there, and I have no idea what they've said. But as I walked up the eighteenth fairway, Davy Finch says, you're gonna jump in the lake, and I said, Pete, die will go for a swim.
As he waited for the groups behind him to finish. Pate saw Dean Beeman's wife Judy, who urged him to throw Dean in the water with Pete. As that was happening, CBS, with Vin Scully calling the action, was working a bit of TV magic.
There was a gator that had been seen in the pond at seventeen. So Frank Trickinny In the Great CBS producer put up a split screen and there's kind of waiting for Jerry to throw them in at the trophy ceremony on one side and the other side of this gator in the water. But what Vin said was that this gator is on the lake at seventeen. The lake on eighteen is not connected. And so the television you were thinking they're about to jump into this gator infested pond.
Now I didn't even think I was going to go in. I thought I would just throw them both in the lake and that would be it. And then they were out there and you know, in the lake. So I threw them both in the lake off the bulkhead, and then I jumped in behind them. But you know, I never realized how high it was. And when I jumped in, after the fact, I go back and look at those videos. Heck,
it was about an eight foot off the water. That bulkhead was about eight foot, so it's a pretty big racing dive, but to be eight foot in the air, but we didn't care. There was so much, so much adrenaline, the emotion of winning. It was an exciting time and it was, you know, a memory. I'll never forget it. It was as great as winning the US Open, I can tell you.
Dean Beeman that's his own way of remembering the experience. How did the water feel?
It was pretty ugly.
The jump in the lake, and it's theater of just desserts may have taken the edge off the player's outrage. Dean Beeman kept his job and Pete Die kept designing courses for the PGA Tour, but the pro's opinion of the stadium course at TPC Sawgrass didn't change. Right away.
After the tournament was over, Pete's in the locker room changing He's just been thrown in the lake. Ed Snead and Tom Weiscoff were waiting for him, and Pete knew both of them from Ohio, and they had a question about the thirteenth hole, which is a par three there's water left, and the green is bisected by a pretty severe swale, and so the whole locations down on the left. They're by the water, but you can use that swale
to funnel the tea shot towards the hole. However, if you miss on the wrong side of it, you're now putting down a very steep slope to the hole. Two putting is almost impossible. So Ed and Tom had played together. They said their t shots landed within two feet of each other. One of them funneled down towards the hole, the other stayed up top. And they were asking, how can we have a golf course where two shots that land within two feet of each other have such vastly
different results. That doesn't seem fair. Pete looks at them and he says, well, the only reason that happened is because you guys are chicken. If you were aiming at the hole, that two feet wouldn't have mattered at all. But you're afraid of the water on the left, so you're aiming for a slope in the green to try to save you, and that has too small of a margin for error, which you just told me you're not good enough to hit.
In spite of appearances. Though Pete Die was not unmoved by the criticism. He wrote in his autobiography, the verbal assault against our new creation hit like a steak in my heart. Still he saw no evidence that the course was too hard. After all, Jerry Pate had won at eight under. In order to make the top ten, you had to break par. In fact, Die said at the time, when they learn how to play the stadium course, we may have to put in some more obstacles to keep
them totally frustrated. But ultimately it wasn't Die's call. After the eighty three Tournament Players Championship, the pro revolted. According to Adam Shuepack's account, a group of top players sent a letter of complaint to Commissioner Beman. Among the signees were Ben Crenshaw, Taylor Win, Jack Nicholas Craig Stadler, Tom Watson and Tom Weiscough. Quickly, Beaman arranged a meeting a
TPC Sawgrass between Pete Dye and a player committee. They toured the course and the players grilled Die about the green contours. The commissioner saw their side well.
Some of the lowest areas on the greens that were pin positions were in places that the green surfaces at the higher.
Part of those greens were so severe that the ball.
Coming off the high side down to the low side wouldn't stay on the green at all. So it was literally impossible to not three part, many many times from one transition part.
Of a green to another. And the players were right. It was too severe. It was still too severe to be really a fair test to golf. Yeah, our were still hurt, but they were right.
Months later, Ben Crenshaw, the co chair of the Architectural Committee, presented a list of changes to be made to the stadium course. At that point, I almost certainly saw the writing on the wall. How do you think mister Dye reacted to or felt about the fact that he was modifying or had to modify the course.
The answer is he was very reluctant to make the changes that we wanted made. He wanted it as difficulty could because he wanted to challenge the best players in the world, and he didn't care. He didn't think golf was fair in the first place, so he was he was not. He was not happy with the continual modifications of it.
But the modifications were made, mostly carried out by Die's associate Bobby Weed between eighty three and eighty eight. Weed once said, one of my biggest regrets of being in the business is I was the one who had to make all the changes. Those changes did, however, mollify the pros and TPC sawgrass, which today boasts Augusta like conditions, complete with flower beds accenting the arena of the seventeenth hole,
is now highly regarded among PGA Tour members. In a way, it's become a symbol of the tour the Dean Beaman built, sturdy, impressive and efficiently run. Here's Adam Schuepeck.
Dean came along at a time where the PGA Tour was just this mom and pop shop, and he really, during his twenty years tenures assembled the building blocks that are the foundation of the modern PGA Tour. And I feel like the PGA Tour is still running the Dean Beaman playbook. It's worked all this time, and it continues to seem almost invincible and impenetrable to whatever comes along. It's just a well oiled machine.
Now.
Whether the alterations Tode's original design were for the best remains a topic of debate in the Golf World one that breaks down along familiar lines. If you're a competitive or score oriented golfer, if you prize fairness and course design whatever that means, you'll likely see the changes as positive, even necessary. Others may argue that fairness is an irrelevant concern, especially when everyone is competing on the same course. These people may wish that more of the rugged quirk of
Die's original design had been preserved. Tom Doak takes a fairly diplomatic view.
I don't know if he can say the changes made the course better or worse. You know, it's all it's all a matter of opinion, and it's all your perspective on what the objective of the course should try to be. To me, it just made it different than the original intension, you know, in terms of how much pressure it put on the players to hit good shots consistently through the golf course. But you know, the bottom line is, you know, pros don't like shooting seventy five when they have an
average to poor day. You know, they don't mind not shooting sixty seven all the time, but they don't they don't want the numbers to get up there and the TPC. When you were having a bad day. The darnwell reflected it on the scorecard.
In a sense, Alice Stye's prediction had come true. But it wasn't Dean Beeman specifically who came into conflict with her husband. It was the players, and they had the last word. At some point, perhaps during that walk around TPC Sagrass with the committee in nineteen eighty three, he must have recognized that fact. After his triumph at the eighty two Players, Jerry Pate was living large and.
I had a ten year exemption. It was a big deal. The most money anybody had ever won, ninety thousand dollars, a lot of endorsements, you know. Life was great. To have my own private plane, Jack and Arnold and I were the only three players had a private plane on the tour at that time. And I was twenty eight, you know, in pretty big tall cotton, I guess you could say for a Southern boy. And then in one swing in the first of June that was kind of into my golfing competitive career.
He was on the driving range Secola, preparing for the Open by practicing one iron stingers into the wind off of hard ground. On one swing, he felt his left shoulder pop, and that injury turned Jerry Pate into one of golf's great what if stories. He never won again on the PGA Tour, but he stayed in the golf business, eventually starting a course design firm of his own. Over the years, he became close with Pete and Alice Dye.
Their friendship had begun in nineteen seventy four when a twenty one year old Pate played the world amateur at Teeth of the Dog. Today, his firm looks after Teeth of the Dog and the other die courses at Cosa de.
Compo as we've sort of taken on the role to keep the integrity of the aesthetics of the architecture and agronomics there. I go to Kasa da Kamp.
I'm going next week down there.
In fact, I go.
You go down there a lot. And so it's a great honor to have met Pete Dye as a twenty one year old kid, and now I'm sort of stepped in his place at one of his favorite places, and that's where he died.
If you listen to the Frida Egg podcast, you already know that Pete and Alice I are no longer with us. Pete passed away in January at the age of ninety five after a battle with Alzheimer's. Alice was ninety one when she died in February of last year. They're longtime friends. Like Dean Beaman, Vernon Kelly, and Jerry Pate, tend to speak about Pete and Alice in terms of both personal
and historical. Their generosity, their accomplishments, their eccentric nomadic lifestyle, their influence on a generation of architects, their commitment to the game and to the craft.
They didn't build golf courses for the money. They built golf coursecuse because Alice was.
A great amateur player in her own right.
Her husband was really a fine amateur player, and they gave so much to the game. I guess Alice was the first woman to sit on the PGA of America board that I remember, and I know she was head of the Architects Society. I mean they were for a woman. She did on incredible things in a man's world. And of course Pete was a legend. Oh my god, you know the stories Pete used to tell me about how he got fired by Augy Bush.
You're fired by Herb Kohler and then they'd.
Hire him back, and I'm sure Dean wanted to fire ms. He was quite a character, you know, and you couldn't help belove Pete Dye and Alice was just gosh, she was assault of the earth. She was like a mother to me, I'll tell you. And so I dearly miss him both, dearly missing both.
This was the fourth episode of Frida Egg Stories. It was created and hosted by me Garrett Morrison, with mixing and engineering from Jay Eric. Our executive producer is Andy Johnson.
Thanks for listening, all right, thanks for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf podcast asked and big thanks to Sean Martin for joining us, as well as p J. Clark for editing and producing this podcast.