I miss a 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 bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, brigg Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off the.
Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we are debriefing our own Andy Johnson's media lottery round at Augusta National. Here to discuss that with me is Jeff shackle No, it's Andy himself. Andy. It's now a couple of days since you played Augusta. Have you snapped back to reality at this point? Have you had any sort of humbling experiences that have brought you back down to a sort of regular level.
Well, I think that would have been the case if I had returned immediately to my my wife and daughter and been you know, just as anytime you're gone for a while, as you and Shane talked about on Tuesday, you kind of you kind of assume assume heavy duties right away on the home front. And I have yet to return, so I'm still.
Kind of living. I'm still buzzing.
I saw the park, a new Gil Hanson design here in West Palm Beach, which was really cool. I'm excited to talk to about that at a future date, but like definitely saw some stuff out there that you know, you maybe maybe the first green there had a little bit of Augusta National flare to it, So it is, uh, I'm still kind of buzzing on it.
You know.
The amazing thing I think, like, I obviously I never expected to be playing Augusta National. You know, if you said at twenty seven year old me would pretty much the dream of playing Augusta Nashville was gone. But you know, getting getting to play it was amazing. And I think the thing that I'm shocked by is like how many people from my my life have reached out about about like wanting to talk about the round. And it just shows like how much of a special place Augusta National holds.
And everybody's like, you know, golf life, right, it's a uh And I think, you know, for me being a kid that like grew up watching the Masters and and grew up going to the putting green at my local Muni and hitting putts to win the Masters and different things like it's it's super understandable why it is. It is a golf it is a golf course in a tournament. That really is one of the big things that makes
people love the sport more, you know. And I think that's the thing that the couple of days after I've kind of picked up on just from people reaching out spent it's spent kind of nuts.
Ay.
Uh, so many text messages and phone calls. Uh, and you know, everybody wanted.
To hear you know.
It's like I wrote twice seven hundred words that people still have more questions.
You know, Well, maybe we can get to some of those questions in this episode. You know, you can bring up stuff that people have asked you. I'll bring in some stuff from Twitter.
Well, I wanted to talk to you. It was your first time there. I think that we're burying the lead here.
This is you.
This is your first time seeing it in person. I wanted to hear about.
You, you know, I try to keep it under wraps a little bit that I had not been to Augusta National before because it's just one of those things that gave me ongoing imposter syndrome. You know, I had studied the course so much, but never actually set foot on the property. I had read everything I could about it, watched every Masters for a few decades, right just as you have, and done as much as I could to
learn about the course without actually going there. So I got to cover the Augusta National Women's Amateur a couple of weeks ago, and for the first time actually, you know, have Augusta National grass under my feet and go walk the golf course, and so that was an amazing privilege, really fun, enlightening. And so I can talk a little bit about that, but you know, people really want to hear about your round, and I can kind of chip in my own observations here and there.
Before we get into to something that I don't really like talking about my golf round.
We won't focus too much on your golf shots themselves. We can talk about the course. We're in a safe space here the Friday Podcast. I mean, I think people expect you to talk about the architecture as opposed to your birdies and bogies.
What was your like if you had one big takeaway? What would be like one big takeaway from you know, obviously studying, watching and then being there.
You know, you can go hills.
This is no, no, no, I mean well because I expected that, right everybody says the hills are bigger in person than they are on TV. That's become a cliche. It's become a joke at this point, right.
Well, I mean it's insane, though it is, it is really impressive. That was something for me, well, being out there when no people were around.
I was looking at two and I'm like, that looks like a fricking ski run right down the hill and ten and.
Then how amazingly uphill eighteen is. But the thing is people have heard other people say these things before, and so I think that they've lost impact. So saying just saying like, no, really the hills are really big, I'm not sure is going to convince people any further. One thing that I did pick up on related to the topography was how many shots have obscured sightlines. I think that that's something that people maybe don't appreciate enough because the land is so dramatic. There are a lot of
not necessarily blind shots, but partially blind shots. There are a lot of t shots where if you hit the ideal landing zone, you don't see your ball come to rest and that's something that is the result of the topography. You can't build a course on land that dramatic and have every shot be kind of perfectly visible from beginning to end. Really, the eighth hole is the only tea shot on the entire course where you can completely see
your tea shot come to rest. Otherwise, you know, there's a situation on every hole where you can kind of be blind as to where your ball ends up. And so you know, that's that's a little thing about the land that really struck me. But you asked for a big takeaway, I really don't have one. I just have a lot of details, right. That's the big thing for me is that I you know little details about each hole, about each green that I didn't really appreciate until I.
Saw them, to be completely honest, I think like your takeaway about the obscured site lines off the tee that makes a huge impact on.
The T shot.
I like, I was shocked at how hard and uncomfort the T shots are. Yeah, like I hit a fade so that like that doesn't go well there. I mean you think about the T shots like two, five, seven, even you kind of want to draw the ball in seven because of the slope of the fairway and it's narrow, like you don't have a lot of space.
Nine ten.
All of the t shots are uncomfortable in some way or another. They really are.
But all those are draw holes.
But the thing about it is the obscurity of the sight lines also makes it because there are these big cascading slopes and it makes you feel like you need to do more than you actually do need to do. Right, but like sometimes like you feel like you're hitting especially it was pretty gusty wind the day I played, and the wind out there it's nuts. It's just you hear the South of telcasts and I like, I know people give tell broadcasters a lot of shit about talking about things,
but the wind out there is crazy. Like you you stand one place and it feels one way, and then you're in a different place and you're like, well, it was down on two. It can't be, you know, it can't be a like down on four.
But you know, you get.
Into these little tunnels and you're it's like, no, it actually might be. And then you hit shots and it all leads to this like obscured sight lines.
The wind thing.
What it does is it creates doubt and that's the thing out there that you cannot have, Like uncommitted swings are just like the death. Like I was like very uncomfortable.
I wrote this in the article, but I it's been a long time since I played a tournament, like probably like four or five years since I played my last tournament round, and I kind of felt like I felt it would feel on like the first hole of a tournament, like a say like a state qualifier, USGA qualifier, where you have this like nervous energy about you, and you know, I think the thing about it, and this is what happens to so many inexperienced tournament players, Like it's always
like I always found a humorous like people like, oh, he's the best player at this club, and then they go out and shoot eighty and every qualifier, right, and
it's like it's different golf than club golf, right. And that's the thing out there that I noticed is like it puts you on tilt because of like you really want to play well, Like it's around you want to play well, and you put a little bit more pressure on yourself to play well, but you're also nervous because of the place, the reputation of the place and all the golf shots that you've watched out there over the years, right, it's impossible to not be nervous.
I think out it's sort of like what happened to Gordon Sargent at the Masters. All this type leading in. This guy has unbelievable skills, he's so long's his practice rounds have been unbelievable. He gets in the tournament and things go sideways really really quickly, And I think that that's something that this type of course does. I don't know if there's a type of course that Augusta National and bodies, but there are just a lot of variables
out there. It's not one of these courses where you can ever get into a groove and feel like you're hitting driving range shots. It's just one where when you're hitting a shot, and I would I'm asking for confirmation here because I haven't actually hit shots there. When you're hitting a shot, it just seems like you have so many different variables to go through and you end up focusing on a couple and forgetting about one or two.
And those one or two variables that you forget, whether it's the wind or the lie that you have or whatever, those end up coming back to bite you.
Yeah, exactly.
Like the only it's the only time you get like relief is on part threes when.
You're on flat tea ground.
Yeah, Like they're actually kind of like your sanctuary where you get to hit the driving range shot, right, Yeah, and those happen to be they're tough, like they aren't easy, Like twelve is twelve you can't figure out the wind's that's totally a thing. But yeah, you know, like a couple examples of that, right, and these are things that you just don't like you can't pick up even watching, Like I think the other thing to preface this with is like I've gone the last two years as media,
I've walked the course probably twenty plus times. I'm very familiar with the golf course, but you don't really know. Like we got a mailbag question about this in Club TFE our membership that I did a mailbag for is like, you know, what are the advantages disadvantages of walking versus playing when you're kind of like seeing a golf course.
And one of the things I said is like when you walk a golf course, one of the tough things is you can't feel the shots, like you don't feel what it's like to stand on the tee and like you're addressed to the ball looking out and the stuff that's going to go through your mind. Yes, and likewise,
like that's I think that's the big thing. The difference between walking Augusta National twenty times and playing it is that when you're playing it, you get these weird feels and you you just like that's that's the stuff that I took away the most. You know, example, the second hole, I was playing the members teas. I played person a person driver and uh in seventies blades. So like one of the nice things with that is I I can hit the ball pretty far. Is that it brought a
lot of hazards back into play. It didn't bring all of them into play that the pros content with with the with the back teas, it made some T shots harder, Like five, I found it to be a really hard T shot for me from the Members ta's because like I had like a a diagonal right hazard with those trees. But like the second hole, for example, I hit it over the bunker. I think that bunker shouldn't be there.
It wasn't an original bunker, and I've always said that it stops balls from running into the pine straw on the right. My ball ran into the pine straw on the right.
Yeah, which is where John Rum was in the in the final round actually, because he carried the bunker and he kind of ran down there.
And it's not it's like a it's a cool place.
It's like if it was just fair way grass, it would be like a delightful place to hit a shot from. I would I would really enjoy hitting a shot from there because you've got like you kind of have this way. You get a really nice angle to swing it into
that back right pin, you know, with the contour. But I'm standing over the shot and the ball's like, you know, five or six inches below my feet, you know, and then it's on a downslope and I was like standing over the shot and I'm like, I'm really worried about just hitting the ball right now because like if my foot slips, like I might shank this because like you're it's just like you're on this lie. And then it's like, you know, I hit a pretty good shot, but like,
what what didn't happen? Why I didn't hit it perfectly flushed and hit a great shot was like I didn't engage my lower body the right way like so in that case, like one of the things I was so uncomfortable, I forgot to move the right way right and when you so, I caught.
It just a little thin. It tailed a little bit on the right.
I had a left to right wind there a down left to right wind, and it got in the wind.
A little because it just wasn't hit as crisp as it should.
Have been, and it ends up in the bunker, you know. And then from that bunker, it's not an easy shot. It's deep, you know, the back right pin, you're in the right bunker, Like you have no green to work with. I try to use the slope, hit a little too hard, end up on the back edge of the green, and I have that downhill putt and it's like you can't keep that putt, Like a great putt is six feet away.
So then all of a sudden you got six.
So I three putt, I make a six, and I had two hundred and twenty yards in you know, And it's just that's the way that golf course works. It's just like, you know, you get out of position and it doesn't feel like you did anything that wrong, but it gets you and it's like funny because like you think about Augusta National As, it's like fun court, Like there's space right, you can make a lot of birdies. It is like if you hit great shots, you you
will make birdies out there. But the thing about it is it's really freaking hard if you if you just get a little out of position. And I think that's the thing. It's like it's super fun. It's super fun to play. But one of my big takeaways is like, god, it's freaking hard. And obviously I played in the Sunday Masters Pins and with the way the weather was, the course had firmed up from Sunday because it was really cool, crisp and windy. So like I you know, like I
hit a wedgend of three. I couldn't believe I barely made a ball mark. Like it was like you know, it's got it got kind of firm, and you know that's that you just have to be so precise. So like that's the case on on two and I don't I hope, but this isn't a long winded But then the one I wrote about in the article is ten so ten I had a really good three wood down there and I had I think it was one ninety uh and I.
Were you on the right side or the left side.
So there's a there's a ridge in the middle of the fairway. I don't know if you've seen that.
Yeah, I mean there's sort of a plateau.
Yeah.
And and that used to be a really good place to approach where the green was to the right of the famous bunker. Right, it's kind of you're sort of on on on high ground there. And the trick was on the old hole that if your ball kicked down to the left, then you had a really hard shot over that bunker. But if you managed to keep it up to the right, you you know, you could go straight into the green.
But now it's the opposite, yeah, exactly. So my ball ended up like right on the edge of the ridge. So I had a really severe side hill. Yes, So it was like not on the top on the right side, It wasn't on the left side.
It was kind of in the middle.
And it was right by that tree that a few people got caught behind Morikawa and Kopka, and maybe the third round it was they got caught back there.
Maybe this maybe the final round. I can't remember.
It's kind of all running together the way the tournament worked. But anyways, so I'm there. So I got one ninety. It's downhill, it's downwind, and I hit what what would be like a modern six iron. I think maybe it might have been two hundred. I'm not sure. I can't.
I can't remember exactly.
But I had the side hill downhill lie, very severe sidehill lie, downhill lie.
You know I got. I got comfortable over the shot. I was ready to hit it.
You know, one of the things with that lie, with the down with a downhill lie, my tendency is to miss right. It kind of squeezes out right and fades on me.
Yeah, you might hit it thin sort of healing.
So that the tendency now of the side lie is the for the ball to go left right. So you're thinking about both of these things, right, And I'm choking up to make sure I hit it solid because I like to choke up when I'm on a side hill and take a little extra club because I'm choking up four inches. So anyways, I hit the shot and like the last thing I thought versus two, like my body didn't move right when you get this awkward lie. My body didn't move and it's an easy thing to forget.
To do right.
And when you have these lies, if your body doesn't move, it extent accentuates your miss is way more than a flat lie. Like you can get away with not having great body movement from a flat lie.
When it's an uneven lie.
Usually if your body doesn't move right, it's going to be a pretty poor shot. So anyways, I really focus on that and I just flushed it like hit it perfect. It was one of the best iron shots I hit of the day. And I just one of the things I didn't consider enough was the wind. You know, I just it wasn't in my thought process as I got
up to the shot. And that's the tough thing is that you have the physical nature of the golf course where you know, i'mlike, by like the eighth hole, I was kind of like, wow, this place is a beast walking wise, and I know that from walking around it, but it's just like you know, like you really feel
it in your body. But then on the you know the other part of it is it will mentally exhaust you as well because of how engaged and how many things that you have to consider on every shot that that shot landed pin high five feet left of the flag.
It was a great iron, bounces over the green, and you know, I hit a great pitch, but I still had eight feet and it's just like, you know, you hit that shot, and it's like, Wow, I hit a great drive, a great second shot, and I'm and I'm walking up and it's like, well, I'm probably going to make another bogey, you know.
Yeah, and you missed, you missed a variable. And that's the concept.
It is like that shot though, at almost every golf course in the world, especially like even like if you compare it to like Cyper's point, you probably get away with that shot a little bit more there, right, Like, it just doesn't so few places have such a seismic impact when you when you miss by so such small margins.
You know. I saw Roseng hit an approach into ten from basically the same position on Saturday at the Annwha. This was the first time that she played ten, because she played it again in the playoff and sort of corrected some of the mistakes that she made the first time, but she ended up in that position that you're talking about. She had the ball above her feet, but also a downhill lie, and it was clear that she was just
really uncomfortable with it. And if you look at that green, it just totally accentuates the discomfort of hitting off of an uneven lie, because this green is just sort of awkward perched on a knoll. There's a really severe drop off to the left, like huge plummeting drop off to the left, and then to the right there's this bunker and the land is high, and so you're looking at either side of this green and you're saying to yourself, I don't want to be on either side of this green.
I can't be anywhere except for down the middle on this green because if I'm left, I'm way down below the green. I have a really tough chip back up. If I'm on the right, then I might end up running across the green down the slope to the other side and going down that big drop off and being in even more trouble. And so it just gets into your head. You're like, I don't really have a good place to miss here, right or left. I don't have
a side of the green really to prefer. And also I'm on this weird lie that's kind of pushing me in different directions, and it messed roseing up up and she ended up hitting you know, pulling and kind of hooking her approach into the green and she is way down on the left. But you know, she would never hit that shot from an even lie into one of
the greens that champions retreat. She just didn't hit that shot at all, but she was influenced into doing it by the topography because she was a little bit out of position on her t shot.
I think the other aspect of this that we haven't talked about is with Augusta in general, is like at most courses, twenty five feet is a really nice like shot, like it allows you to play super conservative, and a lot of golf courses like the thing about golf is like the very best players in the world are generally the most conservative players in the world. They refuse to give up shots and they do that by being conservative.
At Augusta, you know, here's the thing, is like twenty five feet away on almost every hole is a really you don't want to be there because then you're like, I have, like I have a lot of work to do to get this down in two and it's going to be very difficult.
It's not a put I want.
So what happens is that those understanding the two putt aspect of it, like being somewhere and having to contend with all this slope sometimes a lot of speed is that.
You know you put it.
It makes you play more aggressive because you do not like the other option as much as you do at a let's just say TPC Louisiana, Right, I don't want to pick on on that, but like, you.
Know, we know what you mean.
Yeah, yeah, or even like.
Beth Page, Beth Page would be a great comp Like those greens are so flat and and like they have this amazing topography and everything. But the greens, once you get to them, it's like, oh, I'll take thirty feet because I know I've got a decent chance at running one in every once in a while, and I'm not
going to three put at Augusta. When you're thirty feet pin high, it's like, man, I got to hit like a great leg putt to get it to four feet, like you know, like that, and then like four feet is not fun, Like it's not like I I struggled mightily with short putting, and I think it was a combination of just being a little nervy and uncomfortable with like what what's going on on the greens.
They're kind of tricky to read.
And and you know, this gets to another point with the land is that the greens are really hard to read because they're very deceptive. A lot of greens are benched into big slopes, and your eye sees the big slopes and then the big slopes on the green and it you know, you really have to read.
Greens with your feet out there. It's the only way to read them.
Oh, no, with you have you have to do aim point.
Huh I I mean a little bit.
I don't use aim point, but I like to walk around a putt like that's kind of how I figure out uphill downhill. And then I read with my eyes. I struggled reading with my eyes because they're tricked by like a good example, and I wrote about this is the seventeenth the seventeenth hole, like it's benched into a
really big side hill there that green. But you know, you think about the Sunday pin with it back right, it looks like it's up on a plateau, right, But if you hit a putt from the left side, to the right side of that green. It's insanely fast, and you would never think that because you're like, wait, it's up on a plateau. But like you're that the bigger hill is the hill that it's benched into where the
green sits is the big hill. But that plateau, because you're looking at it, looks like it's a big hill, if that makes sense.
It looks like, well, this is one of the things that really surprised me when I was out there. I was walking the course backwards basically as you have recommended before, and so I walked backwards with meg Atkins down the eighteenth hole and so we got past the eighteenth tee and saw the back of the seventeenth green and it is hugely built up back there. The backside of that green and the right side of it are just really really pushed up, and I think artificially, I think it
moved a lot of dirt things to raise up. Yeah, I mean it would be weird if that were a natural landform, that would be that would be an odd little part of the property. But but it's it's not the kind of build that you associate with Alistair mackenzie.
It's more the kind of build up that you would associate with Langford and Moreau or Seth Rayner, where they would just like you know, lift up a side of the green to situate a green on a hillside right in order to make the green flat enough to be puttable.
And that's what they did at the seventeenth Green hugely, but it's still it tells you how severe that side slope is that it's on, that the green is still very very severely cantid down the hillside, even though one side of it is pushed up as much as it is.
I was talking with an architecture nut yesterday who's who's been to Augusta a few times, and he was actually talking about the support structure of the fourteenth Green, and there's like a mound, there's a mound like twenty yards in front of the green, but that that right side is really built up similarly to seventeen. Very And I had a putt from the right side up fourteen from like the pin high right of that back pin, and
it was insanely slow. I hit it so hard. It was a great I hit a great putt, but I hit it so hard because it was just so uphill and like people talk about this Rays Creek thing. Yeah, like, and a lot of people love to give announcer shit about the mountain.
Every putt breaks toward rays Creek. Yeah yeah, but it's not if I can jump in here, it's not that Ray's Creek has like a mis stickle pull. No, the land all moves that way, and so you know, you're accustomed to that, and so you don't think that the greens are tilted, but actually most of them really do move with the.
Land exactly exactly like the greens are all set into that hill. And so even if your eyes see the slopes that are close to you, there's a really big other slope, right if that makes sense.
Yes, absolutely, there's the hidden slope is the overall slope of the property. Augusta National is built on a hillside. You know, eleven and twelve and thirteen t are at the bottom, but the clubhouse is at the top and everything else is on a hillside. And it's I think a testament to the artistry of the routing that you don't feel like it's repetitive or dull that you're just on this hillside and it's basically one dominant slope throughout
the golf course. The routing does a really good job of kind of hiding that and making it feel more varied than actually that piece of land maybe naturally is. And so I think that that's one sort of underrated under the radar thing about Augusta National. It's built on a hillside, and a lot of hillside courses are kind of dull because it's just one basic landform. But through some genius and routing, this course doesn't feel like that.
All right, So let's do a quick ad read for our partner, Athletic Greens, and then we'll get to your We have to hear some more details about your round there. I think people are tuning into this podcast they want to hear about some some of the birdies and bogies. We can hit on some highlights, so we'll get to that in the in the second part of the episode. Here, so Athletic Greens. I take AG one by Athletic Greens.
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Yeah, this has been I travel a ton. I mean clearly, I spend a lot of time on the road, and like one of the things that's plagued me the last few years, it's just really hard to be healthy on the road, especially I'm up early, I'm shooting golf courses. I'm out late shooting golf courses. Like there's not a lot of time in between, especially if you're seeing the course in the middle of the day to do things
like for yourself and eat healthy and different things. I'm on a three week trip and I'm at the very end of it. I brought enough of the travel packs for the three weeks, and like, I can't tell you, like how much better and more energized I've been this trip, because like, I just feel better in the morning. And I think a lot of it has to do with taking this ag one, Like it just get it covers a base layer of what my body needs, and I'm not like just avoiding I'm not like depriving it of that.
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a shot by shot summary of year round. You know that that's not the type of content that we like to do really ever, even in this case when you got to play Augusta National on the media day, So maybe just give me from the front nine. One big highlight and one big low light.
Okay, highlight, I'll give you two highlights. I got two that are actually yeah, I'll give you two I got yeah.
Go ahead.
There's like three clear highlights, but I'm not going to do all three. But all right, So the the third hole I hit, I hit a driver.
I saw.
I you know, I didn't have my phone much this week. I saw this was a big controversy. But I hit my drive by percubit. It was into the wind and I hit it right to the shelf. It was great. I couldn't believe how nice that shelf is. On three, you have basically a full wedge from a dead flat lie to a a level green that like happens never out there.
Yeah, but look, Google Earth tells me that I need to hit driver up into the terrible lie down left of the green. You know, that's what Google Earth and data say. Listen, we're not gonna we don't have to get into it. It's a really nice lie up there. It's a nice full way.
It's hard to get to it, though, like I get it. It's like I got to I was thinking that I was going to get down, but it was into the wind. One other thing just really quick. I've never been I've never been to a golf course that it is nice to chip off of the lies. It's really truly like what Mike Clayton always says is like impossible chip shots from perfect lies Augusta National that tert that ry overseen. The way the ball sits up and the way your
club reacts with the grass is unbelievable. It's like it's really like, if you know what you're doing around the greens, it's really hard to hit, like have a poorly struck chip shot right, you might misjudge where to hit it the but like the way the ball and club interact with the grass is amazing. It's it's unbelievable. So anyways, three that I was like, I've looked at that green so many times, so many times. I understand it. And the web shot I kind of was just like, oh,
I can hit this. It was like I think the yard is was like ninety two yards into the into the wind. I hit my sandwich about one hundred and five. It's just like the it was just a perfect number for me, and I hit this great wedge like it you know, you you always want those wedges to come out with kind of kind of lower trajectory, and they you can just you can kind of feel the spin on your cut when you hit it off the off the face.
Yes, and I just say a sign that it's spinning a lot if it's coming out kind of low.
And it it just like it was just a beautiful wed shot and and it was probably in the running of the best shots that I hit all day. And it landed like five feet left of the flag and it ended up like fifteen feet away. I got up there and I couldn't believe how far away it was. Like when I hit it, I kind of was like, oh, I got like a four footer, like you know, because you can't see you can't see the around the cup
from there. It's because because of that front of the green and why you can't see it getting on the green and feeling it on your feet. The green runs away like it's like very severely running away, and I so I have like fifteen feet I couldn't believe that
it ran out that far. But then the other thing that like I just started to think about was like, how fricking good some of the shots that I've seen in my life into that green are the guys that are hitting it and zipping it back against that slope, Like just how much spin they are putting on the
ball to do that. The chip shot from down to me seems like the worst thing in the world and the especially as somebody who doesn't practice, Like, no, I don't want a forty forty yard chip up to like a green, Yeah yeah, twenty feet above me that's pitched away like crazy, Like no, no, I don't want anything to do with that, especially with like sticky grass going up.
It's not a shot that I could hit a bumper and just have it like I can't hit that shot, like and I might be able to like I might be able to hit it, like at that point i'd be playing defense. I'd be like, okay, where could I throw this onto the green? And then like every green out there when you play defense and you're like trying to hit it to twenty feet all of a sudden, then it's like, okay, I've introduced a very hard two putt. So that was that web shot was a high, and
then another high which I didn't like. Get to see it. I hit a great drive on eight. I was in a great spot and I got kind of bit up by. I heard Phil talk or Phil I think Phil talk about it how like bad left is on eighth and I kind of I that upslope. Your tendency is to hit like a hook. I hooked a three wood into the tree and it came straight down. So I was in the tree and I hit like I had some
tree trouble. I like hit a kind of basically like a massive flop from like fifty yards like and I hit it up through the tree, got through the tree, and it landed like right and caught the slope and rolled down to.
Like three feet.
Oh wow, So that was That was an amazing I wish I would have seen it on the green. So that was those were two two highs. The other high real quick. I hit it like pin high twenty feet or fifteen eighteen feet right of six.
Oh nice.
Where was I was just in the fringe. It was the back right pin, the Sunday pin.
Oh okay.
So I was like I was in like the garden spot. I mean like I had.
I was a yard off the green, and but putting through that stuff is really hard. I think that's one of the things when you think about, like I heard you and Joseph talking about how like Victor Hovelin will
notch a bunch of like six to twentieth finishes. Yes, I think Joseph said, because you just can't ship, like think about like the some of the best players, like the best masters, the most consistent master players who haven't like won there like Westy and and I think Ernie Els is a different conversation, but like Westy and Paul
Casey are like effectively that player. They can't ship. And the thing about think about Augusta is when you're a yard and half with that rye overseed off the green, you really don't want to put it because you have to hit it so hard to get it through the rye and then it gets on the green and it's lightning fast, right, Like, the difference in speed from fringe
to to green is insanely different. So you have to chip, Yes, like you can't pull out your putter and put it from around the greens at like at maybe Pinehurst number two.
Right, Yeah, and west Paul Casey and Victor Hoveland are all exceptional ball strikers, yes, And so you can coast for a while at Augusta National if you're hitting every green, which essentially Victor Hoveland was doing for a while this past weekend. But eventually things do go sideways. You're forced to scramble, and the guys who can't scramble just don't seem to be able to hang around the top of the leaderboard.
Right, Yeah, And they can fit, they can have exceptionally high finishes because they meet the demand's tea to green, But the difference between winning and finishing eighth is literally like four or five up and downs in a tournament, right, that's the difference, right, and those guys just aren't as good.
And that's one of the beauties of Augusta, I think, is like it really puts a premium on every skill, right, Like I talked about the driving, how surprised I was, how tough it was to drive out there, Like it's uncomfortable. It gives you enough space though that if you drive it really well, you're gonna get rewarded for driving it really well, right, Like, It's not like a narrow US Open venue where it's like, okay, like if I drive
a grade, I'm gonna hit eight fairways. If I drive a grade out there, I might hit every fair away, right, And versus you know, and that's I think the thing is like, and the same thing around the greens is like it really rewards you because like guys could hit a ton of greens out there, but then when they miss, they have to chip it. You're not putting, you know, it's very hard to put out there. So my low light, I've got a few. I did not get off to a great start. I was very uncomfortable.
Little nervy.
Yeah, and my low light would have to be nine. I hit a great drive.
It was like one of the few drives that I turned over and I was really happy about it. I've turned it over right to left. It was amazing, bounded down. I was down in the flat. It was a great place. Like I was really nervous about kind of fanning it out right and having that really awkward downhill Lie.
And side hill Lie, and I hit. I had a great number.
But then I had watched guys just zip it off the front of the green all day when you know, yes, the day before, right, you know, everybody was kind of like struggling and spinning it off the front, and I'm like, at that point, few over par I made a boat Bertie on eight I'm starting to think, all right, let's get this thing going, you know. And I tried to
hit like this, like chippy. I tried to hit a cute shot, like a chippy little nine iron that had no spin, that came out low, and uh, I just came over it, which is what you do when you don't play a lot of golf, and I, you know, close it down, ended up on the back of the green and it was like very close to where Tiger hit his putt from and I.
I thought I had a good read.
I thought when I hit it, I was like, it's it's not going to be that bad, Like it's it's I think this is good. I think like the first ten feet of it were really encouraging, but then it just kept picking up speed like it just and wanted to just right off the front. And I was like, but then you get down there and you're like, oh, this is why guys are fine zipping it off the front.
Is the chips pretty reasonable?
But I did what a lot of guys do is I hit a really good chip shot almost went in and then ended up four feet past it. And that puts awful. It's like you're playing it outside the hole. You're barely but and it's really hard to play putts outside the hole when you can't hit the ball, like you can't hit it because it's so fast and you're aiming it outside the hole. So I I like, I
missed that I made double there. That was It was a low point i'd right when I started to think I like was starting to cook.
I played.
I played really good, six, really good, seven, really good, eight, and I was like, I'm start to feel really good. And then nine I make a double and it's like, I didn't you know, if I had just accepted that I'm probably going to end up off the green, I would have, you know, saved a shot there.
You know, something just clicked for me about that putt on nine, which I've seen a lot of players miss.
Right.
We see a lot of short misses on the ninth green. I feel like among even leaders in the tournament, right, we saw brooks Kopka and John Rown both miss like makeable length putts on the ninth green in the in the final round of this Masters, something just clicked for me. When you're way downhill on a putt, as you are, if you're above the hole and it's breaking a lot. You almost feel like you can't hit the putt hard enough to get it high enough, yes, to get on
the right line, because you're just tapping it. And so at what angle do you need to tap it for it to even find the right place to break into the hole. And so it's that that is an extremely uncomfortable putt. But it also raises a question that Jay Yarrow asked on Twitter. I looked at some of the questions that Brendan Porath gathered from Twitter users and picked out a few that were interesting. What do you make
of green speeds at Augusta National? Because you have railed against green speeds high green speeds a classic courses before, would you put Augusta National in that same bucket of courses?
I mean, it's a golf course that's been altering their greens to fit the green speed, right, yep. I don't
think that's a great thing. It's extreme. But I will say one of the things I think I took away is that Augusta Nationals where they put flags, Like if it was a PGA tour where they put the holes, If it was a PGA tour set up, players would be bitching like crazy, like if the PGA Tour did this, or the USGA, if the USGA trotted out a whole locations like Augusta Nationals, they be irate because, like, like you said, the hardest thing on those short putts is
like is figuring out how to get the ball on the right start line without like hammering the ball. You know, what you have to do is you have to hit putts and not be thinking about what happens if I miss. And that's what I thought. My mentality was wrong all day. And it's like the best putters in the world do that, is they are not concerned about the next putt on anything inside twenty feet or so.
They are.
They are trying to make the putt and if it misses, that's their next problem. It's not something that they consider. And where I went wrong was I was so afraid of the next putt that I didn't I didn't try and make the Does that make sense?
Oh? Absolutely, yeah, You're putting defensively. This is how I put all the time. Actually, so I mean, even if I'm not an Augusta National, this is how I putt. I'm afraid of the comebacker because I just don't want a three put and end up leaving it short. And this, by the way, is the magic of a putter like
Cameron Smith. Cameron Smith has confidence in making that comebacker and so he has really nice, strong speed on his lag putts and his ten to fifteen footers, and that's something that probably helps tremendously at Augusta National because especially where they put pins to tie back to that point, the balls often going to run quickly away from the hole.
If you miss on the low side, or if you hit it a little bit too firm, it's going to get farther away from the hole than it would at a regular PGA tour setup where they have a certain area of flatness around the pin that they have to have. They don't do that with the pin positions at the Masters at all. And so when you miss your fifteen footers, it's not going three feet by, it's going sometimes eight nine feet by, and you can't really stop it.
Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. If you can't be concerned about the next put out, there is definitely a takeaway from there.
So all right, let's talk about a little about the back nine. You've told this story in the article that we posted on the Friday dot Com. That's gotten a good bit of reading. People have been people have been going to our little website and reading your article in numbers that I think surprised all of us and delighted us. And so I would say that a lot of people listening to this podcast have probably read that story and they know that you really started to pick up steam
on the eleventh and twelfth holes on Amen Corner. You birdied eleven, chipped in for a birdie on twelve. Now you described your birdie on twelve in the article, right, you went a little long between those two bunkers and you hold the chip coming back, and that's unbelievable. I don't know yet how you birdied eleven. What shots did you hit on eleven that allowed you to birdy that kind of beast of a hole?
Well, I mean from the members is.
Not as much of a beast, Yeah, I guess that's true.
It's so much shorter, yeah, and it's the fairway super wide, Like I mean, like that was like the one t shot where I like just stood up and I was like, oh, I could just hammer this thing.
Yeah, So you.
Know, I think like that's one of the things of one just like observation playing the Vemberte's.
It's a delightful walk. It's just like green.
Right right from there to the tee. That's yes, yes, Well, one thing I noticed Meg and I when we were walking the course, we made sure to look at where the number tee is and at where the championship tee is. Obviously they're very far apart. Everybody knows that it's seventy five hundred yards from the championship teas and it's what sixty nine from the numbers two?
Oh, it's like sixty four?
Oh man, How wrong was I about that? Why did I think it was sixty nine. Maybe that's because the championship te's were sixty nine back in the in the nineties. That's that's where I got that from. Yeah, okay, unbelievable, of course, yeah, sixty four brain fart, it's.
Like sixty three seventy or something.
I mean, that's not believable. A thousand yards difference, So yes, the space is huge. But the other thing I noticed is that the championship tees are really elevated compared to the members teas in most places.
Well, it's because they they're going back up hills they're.
Going back up hill now exactly. And yes, so you go into.
The green in fifteenth case, you're going down the hill and it's further low, it's lower.
It is lower, yes, because that's yeah, because you're going down towards sort of eleven or fourteen.
Fourteen would be the same, seventeen would be the same. They're down lower, they sit down lower because you're not.
You know, So it's one.
One is higher, five is higher, eleven is way way high. It's like the championship tee is up in the sky, the member tee is nice and down low, and it's just like a really different hole. There's nothing more to say about it. Like it's such a different hole from not only that much farther forward, but also from that
much lower. Your sight line is so much different. It's more of an up and over tee shot almost eleven, yeah, from from the member tee, as opposed to just a pure downhill ski slope type shot, which makes eleven sort of similar to ten in some ways. From the championship tease.
Yeah, I hit it down and I had like a wedge in yeah, So I mean it's a way easier shot to what these guys but I was on the left side of the fairway, so like I had the bad angle. I will say, like one of the things, like I saw some old pictures of the eleventh and and the green is so much better than it is now. Like the green looks like I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but it looks like like a like a very it's a very ordinary green. And it lost those mounds that kind of came into the
front of the green. Yeah, and like were integrated into the front of the green. They have those big mounds, but they used to run into the green.
And is that because the green came farther forward or because the mounds were structured.
Down the mounds the mounds went into it, and now it's like a valley. It looks like really silly, to be completely honest. And it's like it was hard to decipher that from where they have the ropes. But then when I was looking at it from like the left side of the faraway, which is way over there where you don't have the mound obscurity, like I kind of was looking at it, and I was like, this doesn't look quite right, you know. But anyway, so I had
to wedge in there. This is just a side from the from the round, but I had a wedge in there and I hit a wet I hit a great shot. I mean it landed like probably like seven feet pin high, right. But one of the things that I took away the greens down there and that part of the course are way softer. It's zipped back. It like really grabbed and zipped back. I had a big ball mark and it just because it's in the low part of the property and then you have the trees all around, there's not
a lot of airflow. It doesn't matter how good your subare is down there, like how much subare you have, Like it's got to be really hard comparatively, like from three and to eleven to have similar green.
Firmness. And this isn't a knock.
I think that greens should be different firmness like that we shouldn't be artificially doctoring greens to to try and have some consistency bar like it's this is just like the way it works, Like the eleventh green isn't gonna dry out as well as a third green on a plateau up in the wind, like it's down in a valley with very little airflow, so like that thing spun back, I had like twenty five feet. I remembered Brooks hitting
a putt that I think he came up short. Somebody I watched on eleven on Sunday came up way short on the similar putt.
Brooks was sort of on the left side, left side of the I was left side and so near the water. I think that was Brooks.
Yeah, yeah, So I made a note like this put's really a lot slower than you think, and I hit it firm and it went in and unbelievable.
You did a little bit of scouting that. That's got to be cool to like do some scouting about what a player did in the Masters and then apply it to a round that you played the next day. I mean, that's that's just cool.
It was like the first putt so like I you know, this was like a good moment for me because it was the first putt where I was just like, let go and just hit it, you know, and wasn't wasn't worried about the next one, and and I made it. It was great, and it was it was awesome, awesome birdie to make. And then uh, then I went to twelve and twelve twelve. Well, there's a little backup. Lots of people were taking photos. As you can imagine, I could take photos by share them, you know, So a
ton of people were taking photos. So there's a little backup. So we stood on the eleventh t. The wind change direction four times in like the fifteen minutes we were there.
Yeah, twelfth t.
Everything they say about the wind down on the twelfth t eleventh green is true. And something that really registered for me on Saturday at the Annwah was that it's a really strange, uncanny, uncomfortable sensory experience down there because in general, you can't feel the wind unless it's like really strong. You can't necessarily feel a consistent wind, even if it's a fairly windy day, which it was on
Saturday at the Anha. And so you're down there in this little valley, the wind is being blocked by the trees and by the slopes on every side of you. But you're aware that there is wind because you can hear it in the trees. It's very very loud in the trees, the wind is and that's just going on constantly. You're constantly aware of that, and so It's this weird thing where the primary sense that you use to notice wind, which is you know, feel right your body, you can't
use that. You have to use your ears to know that there's wind up in the air, and that, to me just it's just sort of threw me off. It disoriented me, and so I understood why being on that twelfth t is so uncomfortable for people, why we see so many bad shots. It's not just because they miscalculate the wind, which is easy to do obviously, but it's also because you're just thrown off completely. The usual way that you experience wind is not working well.
It's doubt too, right, Like the best it's that Pete die quote, like if I get them thinking, then I win. Yeah, right, Like if I get the best players in the world thinking about a shot, then I win.
And that's like totally it.
Like, you know, it's funny because I talked with the caddies in our group a ton on the twelfth tee about like what should I do?
What should I do?
And they all were like, hit it, hit it over the bunker, hit it over the center of the bunker, hit it over the center of the bunker, And like we settled on one sixty and and and over the center of the bunker, and I hit it just like perfect. I hit it a great iron and it just carried. It was downwind. We weren't sure how much, you know, like it kind of was swirling. We thought it was downwind.
But I hit it.
I hit it great, and it ended up in between those two bunkers, which was lucky because the bunkers are not a good spot. Like that's really really hard, and the in between them is not great because you get like that. You I had like a downhill I and you know it was I hit I hit just such. I'll never forget that chip because I just hit it exactly how I wanted to, just landed dead on that green and rolled right. I mean like three feed out. I knew it was in and uh it was. So
that was really cool. It was I mean, Bertie, Bernie and eleven at twelve was was great.
I assume that that was really the highlight of the back nine. Also there was a highlight on fifteen. Yeah. Yeah, And so you had a great drive on fifteen take me in from there.
Yeah.
So I missed the fairway on thirteen and fourteen and those were probably the two approach shots that I wanted to hit the most. So I was super bummed about that. I may par on both the holes. And and you know, one thing I'll say, just like a really so the wind we had was coming off our right, and I think something that goes like that gets just like a little bit under talked about. With that right pin on thirteen is how freaking hard it is to get the
ball to the right pin from the thirteenth fairway. Yeah, like because because making the ball, yeah yes, and everything is making the ball go left, especially with I had the the wind and we saw on Sunday it was the same wind as Sunday, it was just a little stronger, and we saw so many balls end up left.
Everybody.
Everybody was left in the final few groups, and like it's impossible.
To get the ball right.
It's so you have to like you have to start it out over the creek almost to get it to be into that bowl area. So that was one kind of huge takeaway. So fifteen on fifteen te like, I kind of gave myself like a self pep talk because I just had hit like two big wipes right like right they started right and faded right and I kind.
Of like was like you got it.
Hit hit a frick a good T shot here, like it just you have to hit a good T shot here. And I hit the best T shot I hit all day, and uh, I mean it was it was bombed and.
Uh and I went I was down. It's like two hundred yards out. What a cool, cool.
Spot to hit an approach, Like you've watched all these guys over the years hit shots in there, and like I was super nervous. I was like I was standing over the shot. It's a slight down slope and like you're just like you see all the places that are bad. Like I kind of had my eye on the right bunker as like okay, like if this is if this doesn't, like where where am I missing? Like right bunker was looking really good. It looked like great, Like the right bunker.
You're standing over the shot. I always feel like you know, when you're standing over shot, you're looking places that are you know where you.
Might want to miss.
And and again like I you know, I think back and like where I like when I really focused on my body and how my body moved, I hit my best shots. That is what I was thinking about on the Tee's what I thought about on ten. It's what I thought about, you know, on three. You know, it's like when I thought about really thought about like swinging the club the right way with my lower body and then my shoulders. Making sure that you know, I tend to get when I hit bad shots, my shoulder turn.
I don't turn, like I'm trying to explain, like my plane on my shoulders goes down. My left shoulder kind of turns down a little, and it creates an angle and I get steep. Like That's that's when I struggle, is when I do that and I don't use my
lower body. So like all I was thinking about on that shot was like using my body, and I hit just this amazing iron like it was a it was a five iron, and it started like the winds off my right and it started five yards left of the flag with a little cut and it just held right there and ended up pin high fifteen feet.
I was I haven't tried on a putt like.
Those, honestly, Like since I stopped playing competitive golf, I would say that those two shots, the three shots in a row, were probably the most focus of expended on the golf course was where the tea Like I.
Really wanted to hit a good drive. It was super fun.
Unfortunately, my I just didn't quite hit my putt hard enough. Again, it was going away from the creek, like you're on that green. You have this putt, like the last thing you want to do with an eagle putt, you know, everybody I always think like people like, oh, you got to give it an eagle putt. It a great chance. It's like, so I've got to hit it six feet
harder than I usually hit it. Like, you know, it doesn't make a sense like if I haven't if I have a good, makeable eagle putt, yeah, I'm trying to make it, but like I also like want.
To have like a tap in birdie, you know.
Yeah, And the principle of what makes a good putt doesn't change just because it's an eagle putt. That's that's people make, right. It's just because it's an egle just because it happens to be for eagle doesn't mean that the fundamentals of what makes a good putt are suddenly different. All right. So anyway, you were trying hard on this putt, but you weren't you weren't looking to put it into the pond. It wasn't like pond or.
Make it's yeah, I just like I didn't. I didn't judge the that I was putting away again up the hill, up the slope. This is the things that trick you out there, right, and that you would learn over time. Right, It's like one thing I learned is putting from the left side to the right side, there is slower. Even though it doesn't look slower, you know it it felt like it kind of looked like I was put on a flat putt.
And when I went around to the other side of.
The I usually like read uphill downhill with my feet, but then I go to the behind the hole to see uphill downhill. And it's funny because on from one side I was reading it one way from behind when I was when I was like down reading it, it looked like it was downhill, but it wasn't. And and so anyways, I left it it just it. I didn't leave it short. It just ran out of steam like it if I hit it with six more inches of pace,
it's in. So anyways, then I went to maybe my when I think back about the nine so I'm too wonder at this point, and I was like, I mean, I'm like you for extensive mind.
Yeah, you're you're walking on air right now.
I'm I was like, and I just like, you know, you get into these golf you know, I always think you play golf and waves right, you know, like when you don't think you're ever going to get out of a bad funk, when you're on the course and you need to hit like a couple of good shots to get out of it.
Well, well, I would say, especially you, this isn't unique to you, but you are somebody who who rides on momentum, whether it's positive momentum or negative moment Oh yeah, you are kind of You're kind of the microwave man in one way or another. You can you can be pretty low and you can do things that kind of keep you there, and you can be pretty high and you can really like get hot and shoot very low scores. So I would say that this is a a characteristic of you as a player.
Yeah.
So I was feeling great and like usually when I get into this, I get like, I get really cooking.
And sixteen we had the number everything.
Matt McCatty was awesome, and we had the number and everything, and like so one of the things with my blades, with my seventies blades.
And by the way, I should mention for people who haven't listened to past podcasts where you've mentioned this or read the articles where you've talked about this, you aren't playing these clubs because you're like, look at how hardcore I am. I'm playing Augusta National with my vintage set, and then you go home and you know, bring out
your modern equipment and you play that every day. This is actually the set that you have been playing full time for a while now, at least since you broke your modern driver in Nebraska last year.
So what happened.
What happened was my old set of clubs that were fit by Club Champion, my irons, my six iron broke, the POxy just ran out. I'm for people that don't know me, like this is like, you know, for people, for normal a normal person, this is like, oh, I'm gonna go get it fixed. And I would go like me going to get it fixed is like the herculean task of the century. Like me, if somebody left their hat at my house, like getting me to get it to the ups store and ship. It is like that's
an act of God to get me there. So like when things like this happened, it's just like I like am like, okay, you know, and I have to go get fit a club champion. I've been putting it off for a year just because of the time commitment. I'm gonna go do it. But anyways, so I my six iron broke and at that point I went to half set.
I went to all all odds yes, and it was great. I loved it. And then my eight iron broke.
I didn't know that.
No, not my eight arm seven.
Eyes, so you couldn't do either or evens figure yes.
So I went from five. I went from five to eight, and I was like, I can't do this.
I didn't know this part of the story. That's so funny.
So a guy Elliott Ross, who used to work for Tom Doak. He runs a company called Tworld Clubs. Now, yeah, he had sent me these clubs. He's like, I think you'd really love playing with these clubs. He's right, I love playing with them. And my one thing was like, can you put the shafts that I have in my clubs in these clubs?
So they're blades.
They're seventies blades, but they have like the shaft, the same shaft that I had in my old club championship.
It's like a Project X moderate shaft. Yes.
Yeah, so like so anyways, he sent them to me and I've bet so. I then at that point I was like, well, I'm gonna use these because I don't have another option. Well, my old miszouos. I gotta throw my buddy under a bus. I had some beautiful Mizuno MP thirty threes and sixties. He was getting into back into playing golf. He hadn't played since he was a kid, and we were roommates at the time, and uh, He's like, do you have clubs that I could use?
I was like, yeah, you could use these irons.
And they're like they're the maybe my five favorite irons I've ever had in my life.
He gave them away.
Oh my god, some MP thirty three's. That's that's a really it's a really nice set of golf clubs.
I'm like, I'm still mad about it. Yeah, I'm still still pissed off about it.
All right. Anyway, anyway, so long story short, this is this is your permanent set. You're not, You're not doing this as some sort of performative.
Like well, then my driver, my modern driver, which I used to carry a modern and a persummer around with me. Yeah, and my modern driver broke at sand Hills last year and I almost cried because I loved it. I like loved it, and I like it was like a very bad day when it broke, you know. So anyways, that broke, so like at that point, I didn't have a driver, So it's like I have this persum and driver and
that's what I use. I use a precimit driver. I use the blades, and it's because all my other clubs broke. So anyways, I'm sixteen. One of the tricky things with these irons, right is I get yardages and like I still remember what I used to hit from yardages, and I have to add one club.
Yep, there's a number that feels right you associated with a certain club. But now that's different because these loss are like like the pitching wedge that you have in your set is like fifty degrees.
Yes, so like I have to add a club to every every club. So so the number we set on was one seventy, and I could hit a seven at my old seven iron. My modern seven iron was one seventy five, so it's like a nice smooth seven iron, and I just like didn't think that's a six iron.
I just pulled seven.
You didn't convert, Yeah, And I think it.
Was because I was rolling, you know, because like I wasn't think. I was like I had and I hit
this thing. The line to that Sunday Pin is the left TV tower if you if you're watching, so it's the left TV tower, and I just I hit one of my best irons of the day, pured it and it came up like fifteen yards short, ten fifteen yards short, and it was like that it ended up on the front part of the green I and I like, I didn't realize I hit the wrong club until eighteen when I pulled seven iron, and I like thought back and I was like, wait a second, I hit seven iron
on sixteen, not six, you know. Yeah, And that's what I realized that I just pulled the wrong club out.
And so you three putted there.
Yeah, that's a super slow putt again. You're putting away, that's right, you're putting toward the clubhouse. It was I hit what I thought was a really good putt, and I tried to swing it in off the slope and it just died. It didn't have enough speed to catch the slope all the way. And then I missed the next one. That was a really hard putt. The putt from like pin high right, it's really really hard. So yeah, then I got to seventeen. I made it double there.
I told that story of the shotgun start. It was I hit it into the grand stand, which was intentionally.
I hit it left off the tee. You never hit good putt.
You never hit good t shots after three putts unless you really like take your time and concentrate. And I was kind of pissed off, and I was I was bad, but I wanted to make a par because I was still under par. And that's why I wanted to get into the house at with the on the back nine, and I hit it into there, and then I had the optical illusion on seventeen that we talked about at the top. I hit what I thought was a perfect
chip from left to the green. I like it was one of those chips where you're just like, Okay, that's gonna be super close. It rolled off the back hit another chip up missed another short putt. There's a theme of the day with short putt missus.
Yeah.
I mean I've probably missed like five putts inside five feet it was it was hard, and then eighteen eighteen so narrow.
Yeah, that T shot is crazy. I mean those bunkers that well, the bunkers are like the whole thing is weird looking. But I see the point of it. I see why it is the way that it is because it's just very challenging and intimidating. But when you're looking through that shoot, all you see is those bunkers. They fill your field of vision and that's that's really all that you have to focus on. So it's hard to
imagine hitting a successful T shot there. It would be hard for me to stand on that tee and see where I needed to hit it in order to be successful because all I'm seeing is those bunkers and the trees on either side. But it sounds like you hit a good T shot there.
Yeah.
Well, you know what I did is I switched to my three would I hit three wood twice off the tee and I hit it right, like dead nuts straight. I like one of my regrets I should have hit that more because I I hit it really good. I'm like, just I very I love that club. It's a pt three wood. I love it, And like I think there's always something if you like just love a club, like you swing better with it.
And I love hitting that club.
And and I didn't drive it great with the with the per simmon and uh, and I hit it just like my my caddy was kind of surprising.
It's like you're hitting three wood and I just I hit it perfect. I had.
I mean that that second shot so uphill, it's it's plus fifteen.
It's crazy hill.
It's crazy.
You can't see anything like you just it's just it's wild. It doesn't to an extent like this might be a weird thing to say, but it almost doesn't even look like a golf hole. It looks like they put a golf hole like almost in the wrong place on the property.
Yeah, it's it's nuts.
And then you're hitting from the upslope, and like we tell talked about on eight, like one of the things when you're hitting from that, you miss left. You don't want to miss left. So I think a lot of guys miss right because of that, like they're conscious of like I'm hitting from an upslope. The tendency's go left, so you hit right. And I think that's just like an interesting thing about the shot. I hit a great iron I had. I was like probably fifteen feet pin
high right, and I hit a really bad putt. Never had a chance. It was left left from the start. So that was a bubber not making I not make a birdie. There was a bubber. But it was fun. I mean, it was a super fun putt because like you've seen that putt so many times. Oh yeah, like I know it looks like it breaks a lot, but it doesn't break as much as you think, you know type thing, and it's like it's the Marco Beerra putt effectively right.
Right, all right, So that that wraps up your round at Augusta National. What are what are some closing thoughts here?
I think like just my general thought is, like I I kind of put this in the article, but like, you know, life's funny, right, It's it's a long journey, and when you're a kid, you think it's gonna you just are naive, right, and it's like, oh, I'll play Augusta National someday, right Yeah, But then like you know in my twenties, Like you know, I just didn't think it was ever gonna happen, Like you know what, you know, I was just a normal guy working in working in Chicago,
and and you know, to get this opportunity was so cool. So one of the coolest traditions to play it right after the right after the Masters was it's just unbelievable. And uh, I think, like I think that's the thing is I'm just extremely extremely grateful for the uh, the chance and and like I mean it's something like I don't you know, I I have a weird golf mine.
My wife drives my wife nuts.
I like can remember a shot from you know, I can tell you every shot I hit in the twenty fourteen State am you know, if we wanted to go back to it, and uh and I have this weird memory, but this one like you create these like vivid golf memories, and these are gonna be probably the most vivid.
Golf memories I have. And and I think, you know, listen, like a lot of people have been like is it your number one? Would you play?
Like I think the thing about it is like I don't I think it's all the memories of watching the tournament over the years, and like, you know, there's something about the Masters where it's just I mean, I'm still thinking about it because of you know, covering it now.
It's it's a completely different experience and a little bit I heard it you should you asked Shane about this and like I do I do miss like being a fan, Like I don't, I don't get Master Sunday, and like it's funny because like the memories I had were like of like back to like the the early Masters. Yeah,
that's the stuff I was thinking about. Was like the Masters I watched when I was a kid was what I was remembering, almost more so than the you know, I mean, like I remember a little bit of Crenshaw. My dad was a golfer and my mom picked up golf when I was when I was when I started playing, and it's like I remember watching Crenshaw. I wasn't a golfer at that point, and and you know, but Faldo
was my first big memory. It's just I don't know that was it was so cool and obviously just a you know, lifelong dream.
Yeah, you know a lot of what you're saying there really resonates with me. Too. I didn't get to play the place, but this was the first time that I visited it, and so I had a lot of the same thoughts. You know, I have been a golf fan who has watched the Masters every year since I was probably nine or ten years old. Those are at least the ones that I remember. The Crenshaw Masters actually is the earliest one that I remember really vividly, because I
was a big fan of Ben Crenshawe. I related with him. I wanted to be like him. I had a putter sort of like his. I didn't have the eighty eight oh two, but I had a ping Sedona, you know, is sort of similar shaped, and I tried to putt like him, really kind of risty and flowy, but I just couldn't. I couldn't do it. And I just thought he was so cool and sort of handsome and well spoken and gentlemanly, and seeing him win the Masters and break down afterwards and talk about his mentor just had
a huge impact on me. And so those are the kinds of memories that came back to me when I visited the place. It wasn't the sort of nuts and bolts architecture that we talk about now. I don't want to dismiss that. I think that what we focus on as journalists or as you know, whatever you want to call us, as architecture writers, when we go to Augusta National, we want to describe to people, what is it beyond
the mystique that makes this course great? What are the actual things that that you know have have formed this course's reputation in the first place. Why is this a great golf course beyond all the other stuff that's around it, beyond all the pomp and circumstance. That's kind of what we focus on as the fried Egg. Right when we're writing about the architecture of Augusta National, we're almost like mythbusting.
We're kind of getting to the getting to the real core of what this golf course is, how it was designed, how it's presented, and we see things that are both really good and other things that could be improved, other things that we would like to see changed. And so to say that Augusta National is my favorite golf course or your favorite golf course kind of misses it because you know, obviously we've we've given both praise and critique to the golf course, and I think it deserves that.
When you strip away all the other stuff, you know, what you have is a really really strong golf course
that does have some weaknesses. But I was struck by how little of that really mattered to me on my first visit there, and how much I thought of my childhood, how much I thought of the really deep past Masters, the ninety seven Masters, which I sort of the final round of which I kind of know shot by shot, even shots that Tiger Woods didn't hit, even if it was like Tom Kite hitting a chip with his little
lob wedge. You know, I remember those kinds of shots, and that all came rushing back to me, and I think that that's not something to shy away from that. This course really means something to us as lifelong golf nuts. It really it really has an impact being there in person that goes beyond the architecture. And I think that it's it's fine to just say that I was wowed by it. I was overwhelmed by it. It brought back wonderful memories, and I have enormous gratitude forgetting to go
out there and walk around the place. And again, like you, it's something that I didn't expect from my life. You know what, five years ago, six years ago, I was a high school teacher with no designs whatsoever on becoming a golf writer or being on a podcast or doing anything of the sort. And now here I find myself. You know, I'm not young. People don't usually change careers
in their mid thirties. I did. And all of a sudden, I'm in a position where I get to be a member of the press and go walk around Augusta National and that is really cool.
Yeah, it was such a cool thing.
I you know, one like like last thing just about kind of along the same lines as that is, Like, you know, I played a ton of golf with my dad and my mom growing up, right Like that's you know, we would go to the municipal golf course and like a lot of times, you know it was with my
dad on a Saturday afternoon and everything. But one of the things, like as I played tournament golf, like the first person I'd call after every tournament was my dad and we just like talk about what happened, like you know, you go through the round and everything, and you know, the last few years, I haven't played any tournament golf. I haven't played a lot of golf with my dad or my mom. And you know it's funny because like,
I'll go to sand Hill. We went to sand Hills last year twice and then called my dad after that round. You know, I play a lot of great places. I don't call my dad after I play. Like I got in the car, I pulled out of the gate and the first person I called was my dad, just like.
You know, it's just like it was.
That's like the level of what you know that that it meant to me.
All right, that's a good place to wrap up. Thank you Andy. This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was produced and edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. One more note, if you would like to support the Frida Egg in the best way possible, join CLUBTFE. Go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership and see what we have to offer there. It's a content offering, it's a perks offering. You get perks in the pro shop,
you get early entry into TFE events. You also get access to the CLUBTFE blog and our weekly course profiles. It's been a lot of fun to get to know CLUBTFE members in the comment section, there and I feel that we have a really cool community forming, so we would love for you to join us there. It's one hundred and twenty dollars a year. Go to the fridagg dot com slash membership and check it out. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon