A Look at High-Level Amateur Golf

and the women's side. And then we got the little cherry on top yesterday evening with Matt Coocher's debacle at the Window Championship, which I don't know how plugged you and you were to that situation, Garrett. But in case anyone missed it, every golfer got done with a marathon of play at Sedgefield after rains storms. They crammed everybody in except for one Matt Coocher, who returned to finish on Monday morning. If you somehow missed it, he was

completely out of contention. T twelve missed the FedEx Cup playoffs like just nothing. I mean there is still some fall positioning to play for, very little to play for, and decided that he was not going to finish the eighteenth hole due to darkness, despite the other guys in his group finishing, and he came out made a nice dramatic par this morning as we're recording this. So you never know what kind of weekends you're going to get

in August. It could have been sleepy, but between lydia Co and Matt Kucher, I love that windfall we got this past weekend.

it in a while. From from Cuture. He's he's been a little bit obscure lately, hasn't hasn't really been a factor. But man, when he gets back in the spotlight, he he really seems to make the most of it. So all credit to him.

when they tried it at the Australian Open. The Ausie seem to be going after this a bit like trying to make this happen, which is a great thing. But they did it at the Australian Open and the logistics seem to have not worked that well. So there are ways that these simultaneous tournaments can come off well and there are ways that they can fail, and so you

just have to execute it right. I also think it's interesting to see men's and women's fields playing back to back tournaments at the same venue as they did at the Olympics, at the Golf Nacional, as they did at those US Opens back in twenty fourteen at Pinehurst, and I believe a repeat of that structure of the US Opens, the Women's Open as well as the Men's Open, is coming up in a few years as well, and so

this is being tried. But whenever it happens, I love it as a golf nerd, seeing men's and women's fields playing the same course in very different ways, seeing different holes be set up in distinct ways is really interesting, something that I wish maybe the telecast made more of or showed more of. I do think people would be interested in that if they were delivered that kind of content,

So I'd just like to see more experimentation here. And obviously I think that this kind of this kind of mashing up of the men's and women's games could potentially really help the women's game reach a larger and more enthusiastic audience than the LPGA Tour seems to have so far this year. This season has been really interesting on the LPGA Tour for a number of reasons, Nellie Korda

being one big one. But it just doesn't seem to be gaining much public momentum, and so I'd like to see the powers that be try to figure out how to unlock some of that enthusiasm that surely would be there if women's golf tournaments were presented properly and given a stage to shine. So yeah, like this idea of the men's and women's fields being kind of in the same place at the same time and playing the same course.

play the Windom Championship. So this just gets into the scheduling and the lack of cooperation generally. But Garrett, I guess where do you land on some kind of mixed team event at the twenty twenty eight Olympics? Like that seems there are people of two minds on that one.

This version of the Olympics worked very well and the individual portion of this seem to motivate players both on the men's and the women's side, to where now the Olympics is an unbelievably compelling event, Like let's not do away with that, right, Like, let's not try something that gets away from a winning formula. But there are only two weeks to run these events, So do you think that doing a team mixed event in between is the winning formula? Like? How do you think this comes to fruition?

Because I think a team mixed event would be super compelling. I just don't want to jeopardize something that's already special.

But now that that's what we've settled on, this is the Olympics tournament.

out practically. And furthermore, I think that especially the men, are at their limit with the Olympics of what they're willing to do for free. They've got the President's Cup, I mean, none of this is They're not doing it for free. They're get they're getting paid in a number of different ways for these things, but you know, it's not not big prize money. They've got the Olympics, they've

got the President's Cup, they've got the right Cup. I fear that adding more Olympic events would just set up those events as well as the existing ones that we already have, for failure. I think there would be some attrition. I think there would be players who would balk at doing not just the seventy two hoole stroke play, but also the additional event. I think there would be players who wouldn't want to go that far with it, and that's unfortunate. I don't think that's the right thing or

the right attitude necessarily. I think that's just the reality.

some kind of little match play the next day. That's not a huge lift, it's a decent amount of golf for the teams that go all the way to the finals. But I think if you ask four days of them, they're much less likely to say yes. If it's two days and they get a little bit of time to play the golf course get ready for their own individual stroke play events, it could be a cool way to set the stage. So maybe they should experiment with an abbreviated format, some kind of sprint one or two day event.

I think would be pretty.

It's not included as part of the criterias as to how you get points, and it was part of their criteria in twenty twenty three that was how three of the spots were allocated was based on Official World Golf Ranking. I think the second order effects of what ranking systems

do there are benefits. It's cool to see that some players in the top ten for however many consecutive weeks, or it was in the top ten and twenty ten and then again in twenty twenty, and you see these You evaluate the players legacies and windows of their careers via the Official World Golf Ranking. So I think it

has its positives. But the way that it funnels players to one tour or as we may talk about on this podcast as a little teaser, the wagger the amateur golf rankings, some of the knock on effects that has if you're deterring players from showing up because it's going to impact their rankings, either as an amateur or as

a professional. That's just one of the cons to having a ranking system, and I do think the golf world should consider if potentially the golf world would be better off without having a ranking system that had some of these negative effects like preventing players from showing up because they're prioritizing their rankings, or funneling players into one location, in this case America on the men's side, it is a worthwhile conversation to consider some of the benefits of

going away from or making ranking systems less central to the golf ecosystem, so to speak.

already debates about that. And on the men's side, like Live Golf doesn't get a Fisher World golf rankings point. So people have already been saying, well, maybe Bryson's the best player in the world. It's not a great argument, but we already deal with that issue. So I think you'd have a lot of more of a qualifier based system into getting into certain golf tournaments, and I think

that would probably be a better version of golf. But and this is not to tease our upcoming interview too much, but I think this is probably more of a problem on the amateur side even than on the professional side. So yeah, people know, I think I'm going to be digging into the world to the world amateur golf rankings a little bit, and if people are super knowledgeable on that, feel free to reach out. But it does seem like it causes a lot more problems than it solves.

People shared the clip around social media. It was just a little little extra sideshow during the competition, something to chuckle about, nothing particularly offensive. We all know that she didn't really mean to say that that. Probably what she meant to say was she's fricking fired up or freaking fired up, and it just came out the wrong word. But she did say the F word. She said it. It's on air. We all heard it. Pressel statement the next day. I stumbled over my words, and unfortunately it

sounded as if I said something inappropriate. I am so sorry that it came across as such, because I would never say that on air in a broadcast. So I mean, listen, this isn't that serious, this isn't that bad. But she's not saying I said it, And it was just a slip, she said. I didn't say it. It it just it just came across like I You you may have thought that you heard that, but I would never I would never

I would never that was the tactic. And it's just this kind of gaslighting approach to pr cleanup that so many golfers seemed to think is the way to do things. But it's not the way to do things, because we all know that you're lying, you're not this is not the truth. You said what you said, and you might as well just own it and say, you know, listen, sorry about that. I don't even need her to apologize.

Maybe some people do, maybe she needs to, but I just I just don't accidentally said the wrong word and egg on my face, my bad. That's that's really all you need to do. And Zach Johnson the same thing at the Masters when he told the gallery in Amen corner to fuck off. We all heard it, we all saw it, saw it, we knew what he was doing, and he flat out denied it, said he was saying it to him self. It's not what happened. Guys, Just just admit it, Just just say I'm fallible, you know,

that's my bad, and laugh it off. But that's that's not what people seem to want to do and trying to clean up these messes. So so we're left with kind of being gaslighted. But in any case, just thought i'd point that out. I thought it was a fun part of the weekend. And by the way, they dmcad the clip almost immediately and so it's no longer really

available on on on Twitter or wherever else. And so that's just another thing that they do to try to memory hole certain things that happened during golf tournaments.

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and the subject dis amateur golf. The occasion is that the the US Women's Amateur just wrapped up yesterday at Southern Hills and the US Amateur is getting underway right now at Hazelteine. Those tournaments are just always a delight to watch. So first of all, I would definitely recommend tuning in this week and watching the golf. But Lawrence Donagan is the person we're talking to about amateur golf,

and you know, he's many things in golf media. He's a veteran journalist who has written for The Guardian and The Harold and other outlets. He's also the founder of mckeller magazine as well as the co host of the mckeller podcast along with Jeff Shackelford. But maybe most relevant to this episode, he is the father of an excellent young amateur golfer who is playing this week in the US Amateur at Hazelteine. So Lawrence has a lot of thoughts,

a lot of takes about amateur golf. Such an interesting guy to talk to, and so let's just go straight to that interview. Okay, So Joseph and I are here with Lawrence Donnagan. Lawrence, it's great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing right now?

of the joys of participating in amateur golf. You have a unique perspective on this, Lawrence, not only because you're a longtime golf journalist, but because your son, Nile is a very good player who has in fact qualified for the US Amateur. So, just briefly, to give people a sense of what your perspective is on the world, what was the US Amateur qualification experience like for you? Well, it was great for me because I ass my want,

I wasn't there. I act as a chauffeur. I teake young Now he's not that young as nineteen I took him. I always drop him off at the golf course, but pre round an hour and a half before then, I disappear. I go into town, I go find a coffee shop, I go and read a book. I go tour you. On that particular instance, I went into Bend for fight. He was qualifying at ben Golf Club for final qualifying for the amateur. And then I try my best not to look at my phone that the live scoring. I

know people love life scoring. It's a curse, it's an absolute curse. But if you look at live scoring, your entire day is ruined. So I do my best not to look at live scoring. Otherwise the whole day is ruined. You just that's all you can think about, because it is. We're all the same. You know, if you've got kids, you know you don't you don't want it to be hourt or to fail. You know, it's just like a

parent watching a kid do anything. You know, your kid comes home and says, I've got a D and an exam. You kind of so I see the kind of golf process is a little bit that that particular day I managed. I didn't see any live scoring. Drove back to the golf course, and it's really funny even when you come into the car park and if you can tell how your son walks. If I see him in the distance walking up, I look away because I don't know want

to know where he is. It was pathetic. Doesn't it sound so awful, But it was really funny in that particular day. So his mum was pulling his trolley that day, Baggie was, and so she doesn't really know much about golf. So I walked back into the car park round and he's at the tent, the scorer's tent. So I walk up and I said to mum, how do you do? I don't really know quite well, I think. And then now sitting at the desk and I go, well, how

did it go? And he did They usually just held the eight fingers down, which is really cool.

Took him to Olympic Club. He was first reserve and and five minutes before some guy never showed up, so he jumped on the first tea and off he went, and he.

so really look forward to that. He's actually his is a longtime little league coach. It's going to come over and caddy for him, so that that's pretty cool. In fact, his name is Tod mctaffy and Todd now qualified. He won his regional qualifier for the Open this year, and Todd flew over from her home where we live in Norland, California, over to caddy for him at Row Singport. So it's kind of cool. It kind of takes a village, doesn't it. Mom, little league caddy, dad drives. You know, it's it's a

really cool experience actually, especially for somebody like me. I just love golf. I love watching amateur golf. This is really really cool.

for him at the at the U s AM. But kind of backing up and zooming out a bit, what have you learned about parenting through this amateur golf process? Because you know, I mean, this is a serious amateur player. I'm sure you've seen some pretty intense parenting in in this area. I wonder if you've kind of adjusted your thoughts over time about how.

seen some horrendous stuff at golf tournaments. You know when when now I was really young, you didn't play a lot of tournament golf, but you see parents cheating and you know, and you know, you'd go and pick them up after a golf tournament and you say, how did it go? It was really good, but little Johnny's dad threw the ball back in the fairway, and you know.

really really well. So when I say I've evolved, I just what and now think? I just think it's it's just different ways of doing it. There's no right way or wrong way. I don't think. I used to think there was a right way and a wrong way, but now I'm really not so sure. I guess whatever works for a particular family, for a particular parent, for a

particular kid. You know, of course, you hear stories all the time of great players who are completely turned off by the pushy parents and the you know, the great junior players, but they just get ground down, they get you know, forc into doing it, you know, and they can't. Eventually they get to the stage where they're no longer under their parents' control and they just rebel and they kind of pack it in I think, you know, the pushy, very pushy, intense approach works with kids who love golf,

really really love golf. But for the kids who are kind of ambivalent, then I don't think the strong parent thing works.

The door opens and Errol's sitting in the barker lounger for his cigarettes, Sta stamped out in his soup dish, and the room was filled with all these trophies, everything just amazing and yeah, super intense. He took me to the garage. Heah, and he said the chair. You know, this house was prepared for the Smithsonian, he said, So, the door was buil out for the Smithsonian, the garage was preserved.

But just seeing your your kids just do something that he that he loves and you know, gets a certain amount of confidence from it and self respect but again in respect from others, I think that's a big deal because once you get into the kind of elite amateur golf level, get what you fight. I mean, it's like

a traveling circus. All these kids kind of know each other and they're all kind of looking at each other, and it's it's quite as a parent, speaking as a parent, it's really good to see your kid find a spot a place in that world, and it's a world that he absolutely adores. All he wants to do is play golf, which wasn't always a case. He was a multiple sport kid, and so from a parental perspective, it's it's that's that's wonderful to see your kid be in some in some

way be fulfilled. You know, as I say, who knows where it will take him, and it might be many. There's been many disappointments along the way, and I'm sure there'll be many in the future, and just to see how he gets through that, you know, will it build his character?

to people. You know, why would you go to a PGA Tour event and be roped off fifty yards to the side. You know, you can't see anything, you can't really hear anything. I went to the regional at Stanford this year, the NC two year Regional at Stanford, and I walked a few holes with right down the fair we would look Clanton. I mean, come on, I mean, look Clanton's I think it's playing his four PG Tour event this year coming up this week at the window.

Just one of the best players in the world, you know, walking down the fairway five yards behind. Mike Clayton wrote a piece a couple of years ago that you know, the best way to watch golf is to watch it down the line because you can you can really see the ball, you know, and elite amateur events that's what it's all about. It's you know, you can really see the guys who can play, the guys who can shape the ball, who can hit the shots. So there's that,

plus you get proximity. It's just, I mean, just awesome. Want that Stanford Regional. I walked with thorbe Jornsen, walked a few few holes with him ten yards away. Michael Thorbejorson. That's pretty cool. So I kind of get that, you know, I love it. The other thing is, and these kids are really lucky.

years ago. Royal sinkports for for final qualifying for the Open. My goodness, you know, that was so cool. And he went off and played. He missed by a couple of shots whatever, But I went followed Matthew Southgate and Gray mcd well, which was awesome, you know, down walking down the fairway. Really cool, great golf course. Will pass quickly over the Scandinavian for the European Amateur. That was an absolute shock. Great brilliantly conditioned golf course, but just such a terrible design.

I last year. I think he's number five and PG two U this year watch him player the old course. That was a real education of how to play golf.

little bit of a picture of amateur golf. I know it's different in America than in the rest of the world, but what are like does a junior golfer need to be playing in AJAGA American Junior Golf Association events, for example, and like what the costs are associated with those? Can you kind of paint a picture of how an amateur golfer navigates the landscape.

completely different paradigm over there. So in this country it's basically it's been an AGGA monopoly in this country for years and years and years, and they've really exploited it, really exploited it. I mean, you know, they'll listen to this and I'll go, yeah, but we have this player you know fund for whatever you know, and it'll be we give out three hundred thousands, one thousand dollars a

year in player support or whatever. The CEO of the AGGA gets paid a million dollars a year a million dollars a year, so the bureaucracy of the AGGA is propped up by these Either it's just scandalous entry fees. So that's one thing, right, the ludicrous entry fees relative to what goes on in Europe. But but the main point you touched on there, Joseph, the it's just what talent has been missed in this country. I mean, nobody can afford this. We're lucky, we have the financial means,

you know, to be able to afford it. We chose not to do the AGGA out for the reasons that I'm outlining to you. I just we just felt it was just ridiculous, outrageous. And the way it's designed is to kind of it's brilliantly designed to lure players and you know, you've got to get enough stars to get.

the talent missed, you go to an agent. In fact, this is true all over the world actually, because golf is expensive, pretty monochromatic, Joseph, you go to you look up down the range at any junior or amateur event is pretty monochromatic, which is, you know, the one good thing is this The USGA set up this development program which I think might break the monopoly the A G G A. I think it's you know, it's it's it's going to be like a ladder system as I understand it,

you know, feeding up from the local like the Northern California Junior Golf, Southern California Junior Golf will all feed into this USGA development system and it'll be like a pyramid and the best players will go to the top.

So what with that, what will happen, hopefully is that the best players at the bottom of the ladder, who can't afford to make the step up into the AGGA, they will be spotted and they will be elevated by the USGA, and hopefully so the kind of missing of talent that that will become less of an initial, you would hope, but the actual structure of it is, you know,

it's just sickening. It's honestly sickening. The Tiger Woods went Actually when he made his Hall of Fame speech, you know, he spoke about his parents taking out a second mortgage, a second mortgage so that he could play on a GGA. People never noticed that that's just a second mortgage to play junior golf. I mean, it's crazy.

and they're they're kind of pulling kids out. And you can see that now if you look at, well, who are the best player coming through from elite amateur golf and in the last few years, I mean, obviously you've got Sergeants or be Ornsen, but a lot of these guys are European you know Hoveland, especially Scandinavian's Hoveland Auburg. There's a kid in Sweden just now called Simon Hovall watch out for this kid. He's going to Texas Tech next year. This kid is unbelievable. There's a kid in

the Czech Republic, of all places, what's his name? I wrote it down at Louis Louis Klein. He's fifteen years old. I mean, this kid is unbelievable. Again, because of the national federations over there are a bit more proactive. The pyramid business are closed off. These guys are coming through. And I'll tell you what, when you say you're eventually golfing Mierica will feel it when you get to the Ryder Cup and the European start. I say this all

the time. The twenty thirty five European Ryder Cup team will all be continental players. But the continent development systems are so much better than anywhere else in the world. And PGA two and the USA and the USGA had better watch out. Which is why this development thing that they brought up is a really good development. If it stayed the way it was with the closed off pyramid, thea AGGA completely controlled golf of the United States would have been in trouble.

that mean for accessibility? Curious again for your perspective on the technology piece of this and how maybe that's raised the barriers to entry for golfers of little means.

The good thing about track Man, you can see, you know, they're not like used cars that don't depreciate to the extent, so track you could buy a track Man in three years later and sell it for a ten to fifteen percent appreciation. So as a family we rationalize it in that way. But it's but it's huge. It's really you know, you got to an elite amateur event now and you know a lot of guys, a lot of guys have got a track Man there, and I see foresight. You know,

they do the quad they're now running. They're pitching a program now for elite players, elite younger players. So they're obviously they see it as a huge market. I'm not saying you can't compete at that level without access to to launch monitors, but my goodness, it's a it's a hell of advantage.

He'll be doing the same thing. It's you know, it's huge. It's a huge thing. And if you're if you don't have access to to then you you are at a disadvantage because it's the same with you. You can see in professional golf, can't you. It's it's revolutionized the way that people play and think about golf, and it's the same at the elite amateur.

and it certainly. You know, Australia has its version of this that has existed for a long time and players like Adam Scott and others Aaron Battley came.

all sports, and golf was one of the sports. Because it's it's obviously a big deal over there, yeah, but maybe even less significant than the other Australian sports. And we're seeing that right now with the Olympics, where there are so many truly excellent Australian athletes and that's not a coincidence. There's some brilliant I've watched, you know, I've watched hours and hundreds of hours of development nonsense, you know, trying to you know, discern if there's a if there's

a correct way to do it. There's a great video of a former head of the Australian Institute of Sport going on about elite juniors. There's no such thing as an elite junior. So and he was saying this stuff ten fifteen years ago. So they were they had thought about it, and they were big into tapering, it's called tapering, big into multiple sports. So they would you know, you actually got penalized within the system if you just concentrated

on golf when you were aged thirteen or fourteen. You know, obviously Adamscott wouldn't get penalized.

So the point is the professional tours I've always reached down into the amateur game and plucked out a few, you know, the absolute best. Your Tiger played at Riviera when he was sixteen or whatever. He was fifteen, I can't remember. So it's always there's always been a little bit of that. But now the advent of live golf coming along, there is as like an arms race between the kind of establishment tours, a desperation we call it youth youth. What's the youth desperation syndrome? There seems to

be a real rush to promote younger players. Again, I don't want to highlight individuals and know what, I don't know the personal circumstances or what's going on with say the family. There's a kid called Miles Russell. I'm sure everybody if you're listening to this, you know, everybody know who Miles Russell is. You got an invite to the ever. I think it's a Rocket Morgan got more good.

He's a sophomore at Tennessee Boom. He's gone went to Live Golf. He's now part of the infamous or famous, whatever you want, Legion thirteen squad. I think he made about three and a half million in his first week, so I think he's pretty probably pretty happy. But you know, coming around at the end of this year, Live will be on the lookout for some fresh talent and mago.

You know, if they look at you know, you look at the likes of Thorby Arsen, you look at the likes of Luke Clanton, the rising junior at at Florida State. There's all I'm trying to think of other players Ben James at Virginia, Jackson Coyven at Auburn, really really good players who have already proved that they can kind of

cut it at the pro level. So there's there's that, there's that, and and you know all these players all have agents and you know they're not they're not immune to there are ignorant about what's out there for them if they want to go and take it.

card last year. You also obviously haven't got PT Tour University, which has proven itself to be a, if nothing else, a great identifier of talent. I have the first three guys I think have gone through your Ludvig Sergeant. I think the sergeant get it who got it last year, Luke thorbi Orsen got it, So you've got Ludvig, You've got thorbi Ornson this year. Luke Clanton's already miles ahead. So although I think he's still a junior, so he won't be able to get it for another couple of years.

But the point being that, well, for instance, the US Amateurs starts next Monday, Luke Clant's playing. This is this is how I impact that all of that impacts amateur golf. And you know, Luke Clant's playing at the window this week. What if he makes a cut? He's playing on Sunday? Is he going to fly over night and tea up in the US Amateur and Monday morning. I haven't seen the field yet for the US Amateur. I don't know if he's in. I don't know if he's out. But so,

you know, a lot of these set the Elite. I don't know if people know that there's something called the Elite Amateur Series, which is seven of the best amateur events. You know, you have the North and South and Northeastern and the Southern, the pak Coast, a lot of the Sunny Hannah, a lot of the fields. This year, I've kind of you know, he had the Western Amateur last week and three of the top five amateurs in the world didn't play.

the Rocket Mortgage. I mean there's a no brainer, isn't it. You would kind of think. So it's it's you know, there's also too many events, and I mean it's really crete. The top players now are really picking and choosing. I think when you look at the Amateur Championship this year at bally Lyiff, and that was a kind of a remote spot for the RNAH pick great venue, but it

was kind of remote. I mean, that was a pretty weak field this year relative to years gone by that used to be a pre eminent event with, by the way, a Master's invite, I think a US Open invite and an Open Championship invite, and still a lot of the best players in the world didn't bother And it's because of all this noise and what's going on, you know, in the pro games, it's kind of kicking down at the amateur game.

He's only a sophomore in college. Can you maybe offer your perspective on not necessarily Nick Dunlap specifically, but a player in that situation, an elite amitur who's navigating the landscape right now, how would you be charting out your trajectory given the options that might be available to you, returning to school, playing on live, playing on the PGA Tour. What are those considerations?

You know, he did, you know, he was They were all talking about he's ball speed and he's clubs, but the guy can It was he can't ship, he can, you know, and it was kind of obvious and obvious to him. So I think he's done something really really smart. Obviously he's further bit. You know, he's got that, he's probably got all sorts of nil deals got on so there's no huge rush but you know, to to turn pro and take the rewards that are there from you know,

in in the short term. But he's done a pretty smart thing going back and you know, understanding that his game isn't really quite ready for the pros. So again, as I say, you don't want to criticize somebody like doing that because he's subsequently won he wanted a Barracuda like last month or two or three weeks ago, so you know, who can blame him. But but who's winning major championships these days? You know, there's no twenty one

year olds winning majors these days. That just isn't who's winning on the PGA tour, you know, with with regularity these days, So guys in their late twenties, it's all these seasoned guys, guys you know, twenty nine to thirty one. There's nobody super young coming through a part from down lap super and yeah, just a different, Yeah, it's a different you know because obviously he's from you know, the other side of these from the other side.

bedrooms to ten people. That's not I'm sure that's not his living circus, not in the bunk beds right now. He's not in a he's not in a bunk bad situation, but it is us. It's a real tricky one.

in the pipeline, keep it away from live. You have that, and then you have the battling factor of just the trajectory of player development, which has changed in recent years because of changes in technology and instruction, but still in general, twenty year old's, twenty one year olds are not ready to go out and kill it on the PGA Tour.

And so it's almost like, you know, young players at this point are dealing with all these battling influences pulling them in a variety of different directions, and a lot of these influences might not necessarily be to the benefit of their development as players.

something at the US Open. But can you could a player like that to staying it over an entire season with the travel, the grind, the physical exertion. I'm not so sure about that. But what is certainly true was chanted about it with somebody this morning, is the you know, the difference between the elite amateur players and the kind of middle of the pack PG. I mean, it's it's Is there any difference whatsoever? I'm not so sure. I mean,

these guys are coming out of college. You've gone four or five years of college, Luke Big, you know, pretty pretty impressive, start Hoveland again, you know, really quite good. So these guys are showing that that there's not much different between you know, the elite amateurs and the kind of mid range PGA tour pros and in many cases, but I just wonder if they can do it. You have there was a four year college guy. The guys who've come out and really they're all four year college guys.

you know they're like some Miles Russell Blades Brown. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think people again, I better be careful here. You don't want to because you don't know the particular situations, but you know, people are pushing these kids really very very I'm not entirely sure about the motivations, you know what exactly is going on here. There's a great, great player. Actually he played on the PG Tour this year. He played in the CG Cup, made the Cup. Chris Kim,

wonderful kid. Now play with them, absolutely wonderful kid, great family. Now play with them at the Jack the Police Trophy, which is a kind of junior Walker Cup thing. We'll have to go into that. Great player won the Brittish Boys last year, but he's hardly played in any amateur events this year. He's this week, he's playing in a Challenge Tour and the European Tour. Is that really he's seventeen years old. Is that really what's best for him

at this stage? Again, I really, you know, viewed from the outside, you would probably say you probably say no, Lawrence.

golf courses and a lot of college golf courses. Yes, if you're dominating on those, you're probably more likely to be a great professional golfer. But the difference in the questions that it's asking you seemingly have never felt larger like I even think there's probably a case that an elite amateur like Patrick Rogers had a ton of success in college but it didn't necessarily translate to the professional golf. Well,

he's not a great long iron player. I'd be curious from your perspective, especially in the recruiting process with your child, is that a big focus on? Hey, when I get to this college program, how are they going to be able to prepare me? Not just for the college courses that I'm playing, but I want to make sure I can play major championship golf courses. I want to make sure I can play at bay Hill, And there's just so few of these opportunity needs to actually test your skills on.

I think it's pretty good preparation. There is enough for right, certainly at the kind of Power five conferences, they play a decent variety of golf courses. You know, I went down to the Wake Forest invitation was at Pinehers number two this year and the you know, you know one by Jackson Coyven, the great Jackson Coyvin.

major championship challenges. I really don't think. But so I think I think I've slightly take issue with you know, I mean I haven't been around the call seen long enough, it's only been a year. But I think it does a pretty good job of preparing kids. I know from our perspective. You know, the prepares kids for the grind. You know, you know, you're playing thirteen tournaments a year.

It's quite a lot. You're adding your academics and all these coaches and then every I think every serious program is the same. They're very big on nutrition, very big on strength and conditioning. So it's I think it's a pretty good preparation. But where I think it goes arise when when you when you go to the pros, and then I think it gets silly. I think the corn Very Tour is just really not fit for purpose. I really, I really don't think it is, certainly if your purpose

is to be challenging for major championships. Again, sure I can be proven wrong straight away, but I guess Xander didn't say very long in the He was in and out of the corn Fory to a quick cup of coffee, and he was on a BT tour. But I'm not sure many of the very very best players in recent years will probably be wrong. People give me about ten names.

absolutely incredible. Because again, I'm sure they played a few easy golf courses, but there's there's there's not a it's not there's a lot of events where it's where it's really hard. Wait for est Invitational.

Can you give me a sense of what kind of influence this ranking, which is the primary ranking the in the amateur game in the US, and what influence does it have on the game at the moment.

particularly important tournament. For as much as a junior golf tournament can be important, it's a particularly important tournament in the junior world. You think you're top five hundred, you're into the US Junior Ram. So it's a very you know, PGA Tour now uses Wagger in determining points. You know, if your career best finish and the Wagger is second. You get x number of points, So the pg TUR uses Wagger to dish out points in the accelerated program

and determine how guys do in PGA tour University. So it's Wagger's influence is huge, absolutely huge. So you have that on the one hand, but on the other hand you have Waggers. I'm going to use the word corruption, but I don't mean it, and it's true, you know, and it's your boldest sense of So Wager's not corrupt. You're not phoning somebody at the USG and saying, hey, give me a couple of extra Wagger points. I'll send you a put a poach salmon from Scotland or whatever,

you know. So it doesn't work like that. But there's all sorts of amazing stories. So when you get to the top ten and Wagger maybe the top fifty, you can basically say that that's quite good. I mean, there's you can argue about it.

Wager determines membership of teams. So GB and I team for the Walker Cup next year, as is currently constituted. The captain of the GB and ISAA guy called Dean roberts and a great good A better suck up here just in case you know, just the best.

they don't want to impact their wager. And I'm talking about the very very best players all around the world. Incidentally, talking about Walker Cup teams, I'm talking about Eisenhower Trophy teams, which is the World Amaster Got team championship, the best three guys and I can only speak for Scotland. I think two of the three guys are the best two guys picked off wager. How does it influence players where

they play? And once upon a time they would just go and play, and now they're nursing, and you can see it there. Now they're nursing, their wagger rankings are taking care not to play. I'll give you, for instance, if you go and play in the Welsh Amateur Championship. You're a top player and you're going to play in the Welsh Amateur Championship. Say you're fortieth on the rank the wager and if you stay in fortieth place, you will get picked for the Walker Cup team. So you're

incentive to skip your national championship. The Welsh Amateur National Championship is huge because in order to nurse your wager, you've really got to finish first or second in that tournament. You might have a bad week, you might have the flu and go and finish fiftieth. You'll get minimal points and that will take your wager ranking down. So players don't want that to happen. So you see it all over the place. Now it's a real I think there's a great guy on Twitter called Amateur Golf Bible, a

guy called Mark Haley. I think he mintained last week. Of the top twenty five English guys on wager, I think only ten of them played in the English National Amateur last week. Fifteen guys missed it. And I'm sure there are all sorts of different reasons for that, but I guarantee you somewhere in the mix of all of that will be guys looking to nurse their Wager ranking.

in the field or something like that. So you have I'm not sure this goes on, but it used to go on. National federations would set up I won't name a European country but it's a small European country that nobody's really ever heard, would set up tournaments and they would instructor they'd get their eleven best players and they would have like eleven events, and they would instruct each player to win an event. So this week is going to be your event, Joseph, and next week, Garrett, you're

going to win the event. The purpose of that is if you win a Wagger a Wagger event, the minimum number of points that the winner of a wagger event gets a seven point five huge So if you finish fiftieth in the Western Amateur, huge event, massive event, very important event. If you finish fiftieth in the Western Amateur, let's say you'll probably get six and a half points. Compared to Garrett Morrison winning the Lithuanian Something Tour you

get seven and a half. So can you see where the corruption comes into A use of the country Lithanian. I'm not saying it was Lithania, but so.

get automatic extension into the US Amateur. It's important because the British Boys Championship is taking off the wagon rankings. They go down the wagon rankings and you're selected based on your you know, for a place in the field based on your wagon rankings. So it's a you know, it's very hard to imagine there's a perfect system, but as currently constituted, it's a pretty imperfect situation for a very very important thing in amateur golf.

what is the first directive? What is the first big fix or simple thing that you either take away or implement to make the experience better for young golfers.

get murdered for this. I'd abolish the A G G A. I just think, and just go to a regional, you know, like now, it didn't play a lot as a junior golfer, but the gg J G A, NCA or whatever it's called, the junior golf A so season in northern California, it was a brilliant just a brilliant breeding ground. Last week, just very quickly last week at the at the Western.

At one point in the tournament, three the top four came through the j G G n C Coyven Gilligan, Zach Polo, a great player of Arizona, all came through, you know, the junior system. And these were three kids that really barely touch I mean, Jackson played a lot of agg later in his career, and that's fine. He was looking for a good competition. But the rankings are they they provoked all sorts of terribly bad behavior, you know, and you know, put too much pressure on kids at

the upper level. Oh my goodness, i'd get rid of agents. Get rid of agents there. I mean, they're I mean the US amateur next week are going to be crawling all over the place. I believe somebody told me yesterday again that there's I think there's two hundred and fifty kids playing college golf now who are making money. Yeah, yeah, And I'm not sure that that's I mean, great for them, and I'm sure that would it's a great help when you're because le amateur golf is an expensive business, believe

you me. And I'm sure the money helps. But you know, again, I think it might provoke alkins bad behavior.

amateur golf should be kid centric. That's that's my perspective on it. Maybe this is just the former teacher in me speaking, but when I think of junior athletics, it's it's got to be something that is more focused on the child. And it seems like a lot of aspects of junior golf and amateur amateur golf don't really have that motive. And so maybe that's just what we need to get back to somehow or another. Though I don't have much optimism that it will.

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That's the very simple URL where you can find your copy of this book, and you can use the promo code fried egg all one word for ten percent off your copy of McKenzie's original Golf Architecture edition. Really really great thing here in a wonderful book, all right, So Joseph, let's do let's do recommendations. What are you recommending this week?

how certain businesses got started. Specifically, I would recommend the episode about the NFL, which was released in January of twenty twenty three, not just because the NFL season is coming up, but I think it is pretty instructive and considering the golf world right now as it's being shaped, and some of the ingredients that made the NFL successful, and why they set things up the way that they did, how the business model they had the foresight to create

competitive parity and stress that and some of the media deals that they entered into. I do while I was listening to it, if you know a ton about the NFL, you might not learn a bunch. But considering some of the same problem sets that are faced by the professional golf world as everything is kind of getting shaken up and potentially some kind of deal gets put back together, I thought it was a useful exercise to listen to that pod and consider what the implications for golf. So

it's a big commitment. It might be like three hours.

in the room with them. Pretty awesome offering there. But when it's just the two hosts going through one of these company stories, it's a really really compelling podcast, very good storytelling. And yes the episodes can be three four hours long. Sometimes for some companies like Video for example, they'll do multi part episodes that are just kind of epic. But it's a very very engaging podcast and one that I would recommend as well. So the recommendation that I'm

going to make is actually another podcast. So we're just like directing people to other podcasts. But that's fine. We want people to listen to a lot of podcasts here in compositions. We want people coming back on the podcast app listening to us as well as these other great ones. The one that I've been kind of mainlining recently in addition to Acquired is the Big Picture podcast from The

Ringer hosted by Sean Fennessy and Amanda Dobbins. This is a chat show about movies essentially, but the specific genre of episode within this podcast that I've been listening to is the movie draft episodes where they bring in Chris Ryan, who's another kind of Ringer universe personality, and they draft

movies from certain years in different categories. So there's categories like blockbuster or comedy or drama or action slash horror slash thriller, and they look at movies from a specific year and they kind of do a snake draft of the movies to see who can come up with the best lineup of movies. And I've really enjoyed these. I

think a lot of people really enjoy these. I think they've been very successful episodes for the Big Picture because they keep doing them over and over, and in fact, they're running out of kind of like years in the past four decades to do at this point. But I've been basically listening to these from the beginning. Within the last few weeks, and I find them very, very fun.

There's a great dynamic between the hosts, and it's a good way to kind of remember movies that you saw at the time but haven't revisited since and just be like, yeah, I should go back and watch that again, Like The Mummy, for instance, that Brendan Fraser movie. It's such a great little action movie that Hollywood doesn't really make anymore, completely original, and it's just a fun watch. And it's basically available for free online. I think it's on two B or something.

But that's the kind of movie that I remember seeing in the theaters when it came out, but then forgetting about and not really going back to. And so these movie draft podcasts are kind of a great way to remember some of those things. So Big Picture Podcast, I think it's a really really high quality pod. All right, Joseph, I think that's it for today. Anything else, that's it, Okay, Thanks for coming on the pod.

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