I miss the green. For example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida Egg, Frida egg, fried Egg, Frida egg, bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Arnold Palmer is the master of nine.
He has buddy the last two holes, two cats and that bog ahead, Oh cat?
That Jory?
What is the fatest lay a way?
His gold I have Anybody hasn't ever seen that?
Ain't play up the hill like that? And I think that's one of the greatest buddies I've ever seen him Friday Night. Maybe yes, sir, there can you believe it?
Now?
No? There? It is a wind for the ages?
Is it his time?
Here? It comes?
Oh my goodness, oh wow?
In your life? Have you seen anything like that? Hello? Friends, I'm Jim nansis my great pleasure to welcome you to the Master's Tournament. I've heard it said before.
It's a tradition unlike any other. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today we are joined by PGA Tour and Champions Tour star Craig Styler. Craig was a four time All American at USC and most notably won the nineteen eighty two Masters. Craig twenty fourteen was your last Masters. What do a typical Masters week look like for you? Now?
Obviously landscape has changed a bit, but you know, I'm all week. I get in Saturday and I play Sunday, and I've got dinner dinners during the week. I've got past champions there on Tuesday. Obviously, go to was tucked a party of my wife on Wednesday, and I just kind of hang out during the week, and I got in the range little bit of like watch the guys I haven't seen just a bit because I've been so moved from the j Tour for fifteen years now. One chance I can see him was occasional, I'll watch it
on TV. So I spent a mood time out of there and just kind of hang around the club and got a lot of friends and a lot of members that are friends and just kind of socialize more than anything. I guess it is kind of a work week as well, so I'm not busy all week.
Speaking of the Champions dinner. What's who's put together the best menu since you've attended.
The best menu over all the years?
Yeah?
Yeah, God, I don't remember half of them. Yeah, the combinations are pretty pretty bizarre. We've had from hagas steakes to monkey sausage to barbecue. Nobody has ever sent so. I think a couple of years after I won, they started the past champions to be able to pick the venue. As far as I ever had fish interesting was kind of interesting.
So you didn't get to pick the menu when you won.
No, No, I think that started in eighty five.
What what would be your menu if they say, let you have at it?
Oh, we had had you joyed to steak, spinner fish.
Any any of them stick out as the worst dinner.
None of them have been bad, okay, I mean the thing that people that half the people, half the guys probably.
Didn't like was the Hagis. I'm guessing that I thought it was fine, but now it's always been entertaining. I think was our one was lump meat, crabtail, cock crab cocktail with hot ressert and cheeseburger with Tiger's first win.
A little bit all across the board.
Yeah, it has been. It has been. It's always been good and wonderful.
I recently watched the nineteen eighty two final round when when you won, and I'm curious. You know, the seventeenth hole, you got one of the worst divot lies I've ever seen, and then you hit a great shot that spun off the front of the green that it looked like it was going to be really close. Have you ever gotten two worst consecutive breaks on a hole.
I'll I don't look all the breaks. I mean, there just matters where your ball goes. But you know, it wasn't exactly what I want to see after the tea shot, But you know the pen on the front right there from that giant it was I did. I hit a heck of a second shot. It almost went in, but uh yeah, anything on the anything on the right over there, if if you leave it, George's got to cut back off the ring, which I couldn't really too much about
that it was buried. Yeah, I chipped up about six inches or so many an easy park, so it was, but it was a trying back nine obviously. Yeah, I got forty by opening nine on Thursday, and I shot forty like closing nine on Sunday, So not very good games.
They usually say, you know, if you can avoid one bad eighteen hole, so you just you bookended it.
I did. I got seventy five the first time in the seventy three the last round. But the Thursday and Friday and Saturday, we're very decent in the Queens. Excuse me, that was the uh that was the second year they'd come back to that past. And the greens were were really fast, probably the fastest a couple of years ago. They were really quick, probably about the same bit. They were actually lightning fast, but they were really spiked it.
They're just a year old, and and we didn't have sauce spice back then, and they that's piped up pretty good. So which I mean, is any reason that the four apartment the.
Cur Yeah, yeah, it was. It seemed like the conditions were really tough the first two rounds too, with with the wind in the second round, and and then obviously the fast greens. It's in terms of playing at Augusta on like a normal week, say you know, a month or two before the tournament versus the practice rounds versus the actual tournament. How does the golf course change.
Uh, the greens are slower. You know. I never I never came in early and play practice founds. But the last oh eight or ten years, I've taken a couple of buddies once or maybe sometimes twice a year in a year, and the golf course of immaculate shape year round. The greens are definitely a bit slower than they are during the tournament. I tend to when I when I do bring somebody's friends that, uh, we play the overseas because it's pretty much the same as it was back
in the ages distance wise. Now that I'm sixty five and it's thirty years later, the golf part is not same for the members. He's maybe a little shorter, but I think for me it's a lot more time from me because I enjoyed that course a little shorter than the considers now. But the link that is now is for these guys is the place basically plays the same as it did for us thirty years ago. They're at nine irons when we're at porn.
Now that we're onto the course. Outside of obviously the distance, what I what would you say are kind of the biggest changes that have happened over the years.
Uh, you know, not much. They don't. They don't make major major changes. The only one they really made major, well, two of them may exactly did the green on thirteen and uh one kime ago. And then every year they see every other year they seem to slowly build the hill the exact same way and create that tea back on eleven to where from the bottom you go off
ten it looks the same. All of a sudden you get up there, and now it's what seventy eighty yards longer than they're seventy yards longer than it used to be eased three four or forty of sixty yards five o'h five I think. But most are the two major changes,
most of it, and moving the first tea back. Yeah, if you remember way back, remember back in the seventies and eighties, and naturally the nineties, early nineties or mid nineties, probably the back of the first T used to be in front about eight yards in front of the Magnol three, and now the front of the first T is about twenty yards be kind of Magnolia three. Yeah, they've moved that whole back sixty yards.
It's like a bunch of little changes. Obviously they've never never done anything significant with the routing of the course. But it always seems like there's a few tweaks every year.
Yeah, they usually tweak some greens. They haven't done really much of anything in the last two or three years. The last thing I remember them doing was building well. They they messed around a little bit with the front right of three, and then they added that little plateau on the right side of seven. I don't think anything major. They're not even really major, but something that catches try the first time you walk on a green or something.
I don't think anything like that at Second In five six years.
Now, you had a great deal of success at Augusta. Outside of your wind, you had a number of top tens. Was there something about the golf course that fit your eye or something about the golf course that really suited your game?
No, not really. I mean everybody says it's a hooker the ball golf course, but I never thought it was other than the obvious. On ten and fifteen and thirteen, and a little bit on fourteen, we really had somewhat of an entertaining to draw off the team. Other than that golf course never bothered me. Not being able to the ball very well, and uh, I just love playing that. I love the golf course I won early in my career, which gives you some you know, gives you a good
attitude going in every year. But I love putting in the greens as opposed to a lot of guys you know, being greens. I love paying And yeah, I just got along with the place well, which usually happened to go somewhere where you played well and you won or come close to winning, you afford to going back to the time.
Yeah, that I mean the positive attitude, I feel like is huge for anything when you go back to a place that you've won, having whereas other people have been burned by it. And I think about Rory a lot now with you know, some of the some of the troubles he's had out there, is almost becomes a mental thing.
Yeah, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that you get going good and if it's happened a lot in the past, back in the back of your mind, is I hope I'll do this again, you know, or something like that. So I'm sure it's a little bit of a factor.
People always talk about, you know, for first timers. The advice they get from different players. If you say one of the amateurs like Doug Gammer, Doc Redman came up to you and asked for a piece of advice, what would it be.
Oh, their games are so well. But you know, the talunting thing about it, Gus is you never in a year or a few or three can learn the greens and around the greens. I think that, of course, is a constant learning process forever. And you know you have to know where you miss where you can't sure decided obviously with the irons to the greens. But you can't
go everywhere in three days of practice. You can't go actually everywhere on the else you can try, but you can go out there for ten hours a day, and you know, the the live and learnt. It's pretty good there. When you miss a green and a couple spots for a pin is and you get down and see if they have those are the ones you don't forget, and yeah, those stick in your mind and you know it's times you be there to see that pin like you know what,
I can't just sit there. So it's a constant learning process, no doubt about it.
Yeah, everybody talks about you know, approach shots distance, and as you alluded to, that right to left shot, but it seems like the recovery shot is so important from around those greens there.
Well, it's just too short side yourself there. It's impossible.
In terms of the most underrated great hole out there, what's your favorite hole that might be a little less talked about than the obvious ones.
That's a good I'm not sure I have an answer for uh. I think, uh, my mind, number five used to be the hardest holes out there, but with the guys away as far as they those days hit now, you know, and every hole has its character. I think number nine is a lot harder are than people give it credit for us. It's not these you know, But then again, he's the guys out these days. If they get down there and they get somewhere, they miss the
trees going down, then they're gonna watch them. So, you know, it takes away a lot of a lot of the difficulty, that is if you're stuck way back in the side of the hill. But obviously there's some guys that don't hit it a mile still, but not many. But you know, duty that's the beauty of that golf course. Every hole has its own character. Every hole is different. The part three is all different. Uh, you've got one that's long and then really hard for the back edge of the sea,
top of the back tea. It's fifty at you Now on four, you've got one hundred and eighty yards one hundred and seventy sixty way put the pens right down, you know. Six we've got obviously twelve a little greenover raised creek. And then you've got sixteen, which is fairly the nine hole, except when they put the pins, if anywhere they put them, they put it front right for the top right, it's really hard. They put it back
after to get a good person. So every every hole is different, the parts are different, are different, and which which is my side of one of the classic golf course. I love the golf course. You play it once, you're every hole in the golf course, and I guess it's definitely one of those courses. Yeah.
I always think something else you will too, is how you said you learned something every time you go around it. And I think that's another thing about great golf courses is every single time you play it, it reveals itself a little bit.
More, especially with August I mean, because you know, au Gussa is for the most part, very easy driving golf course. It's not difficult to get the ball in the fairways. But then that's where the fun begins.
Obviously you talked about the distance a little bit. I mean I didn't I didn't know. I'm I'm a I'm thirty one, so I wasn't around it. When you know, Dan Pole was in his heyday, I didn't realize how such a prodigious driver of the golf ball he was, and and you know what a great athlete he was. And then in the playoff with you guys, I saw he was hitting a seven iron into the tenth green, which was pretty crazy.
Uh yeah, you could do it on I had to do over the hill, and you know it was starred and fast all the way when we drove it, probably three stemps apart. But he was he had he had a really short backsway he still does, and but just got a lot of strength in his legs and his arms, and it was very long hitter back in those days.
So everybody with the I don't know if you've seen, they put all the final rounds onto YouTube. The last fifty years of the Masters everybody's talking about their favorite years. What shots are in tournaments in years? Do you think don't get spoken enough or forgotten?
Well, they get fairly easy. He's forgotten because there's so many of them. These guys are so good these days, and you know you've got them from gosh, however far back you want to go back in the seventies, you've got Jerry Pate sticking at the foot of the Atlantic Athletic Club. You got early eighties, you get Watson chipping
in at seventeen at Tebble. All kinds of shots to choose from god knows how many Millan and Nicholas and rned Player and you know player that little kind of short shot he hid and there's something he's stuck in the foot on seventeen guests. I mean, all kinds of shots that uh, you know have room for all.
Yeah, yeah, to the game, to the games, to the games. Made an eighteen to beat Norman, the the bunker shot of the Twain may to beat Norman.
There's all kinds of choices out there, the shot and not to bring up Norman. But the second shot he had an eighteen to get me, which was probably one of the one of the worst golf shots on finishing home other than you know the guy at Memphis that made nine, or or versusly Van de Veld at Turnberry. But uh, you know, the get a perfecting a perfect they are and missed it right at the right bunker. It's kind of do you got the lies in that last hole? You don't? You wonder where the stuff come from,
you know, good batter and difference. There's a whole rash of eighteen hole shots to choose from.
It especially, I mean when you think about if you're leading a major championship, you're clearly pretty locked in. So that's you know, missing right of the the right bunker is even bigger, like outside the dispersion for a guy that week, because if you're leading, you're obviously hitting the ball really well.
Exactly and you know the mindset. You wonder what changes from the se from playing seven to one holes brilliant or to the last hole. I mean, it should be you know, it should be the mentality all the way through and well this is what got here. You know, I'm not going to hope I stay there. I'm just gonna get one. More So.
When I play amateur golf, like a mid am and state am stuff, and I'm usually more nervous on the first t than I am coming down the stretch at a tournament. Or is that the way you felt in your career or is it was there specific spots on golf courses you were most nervous.
No, I think I was fairly fortunate. I didn't. I didn't get real nervous. I kind of was when I started talking, Well, I loved it. I played better, which wasn't all that often, well that often, but but yeah, a difference. It's difference for everybody. But you know, some guys basking the fact that they're the three every week coming down the stretch and they played better like Tiger obviously when you got better almost almost one hundred percent
of the time. But so yeah, everybody's different than everybody handles whatever you want to call it, nerves pressure or why is being in the position they're in, not being in a position they're in they want to be. Everybody handles it different. You can't really pull out water or the other you know, talk about a lot of these nunchers talk about you know Gin that show by that show, Well, that's free plays, you know, that's what it does.
Everybody always likes to talk about Augusta using a Master's ball. That might be reduced distance if they put that into place. And on the first t they said, you have to play this ball or you don't play. Do you think all the players would play.
I don't think it will ever be a question. I don't see how they can do that. I don't see anyway. There's so many contracts, ball contracts, how many different companies balls are being you every week. It's that's what they sell golf ball with m that's their advertising, right there, Guys using the majors. And you know, a guy likes the softball like I like a hard ball. Guys a
little less, spend, little more than you tell everybody. If the select few they build the ball's exactly when they're playing, somehow change balls and after your career, in the middle of your career, and I just don't see. I don't see it happening. I don't know. The Masters is probably the only then you work happen because they're their their own event. They can just say, you know, that's the way it is. And if that will happen, I think it won't come. But if it were too I'm guessing
that everybody would still play. But when you're gonna share the ball, you're gonna give them a couple of months to play a new ball while you're playing an old ball and regular two events. Uh, it's just it's it's I don't think it's a viable concept. Sounds good, but the planning the same as the same as Nicholas wanting to, you know, make one ball for the tour. M Well, who's gonna make it? Are you're gonna say, is that
PJA tour gonna make it? The stamp it with everybody's all the different companies, all of those But even though it's the same ball, they don't make it. Uh, it's just it's not something that that can work. I don't think.
Yeah, it's it's tricky. It's uh like to see it.
I don't see it happening.
Most great ideas in executing them are are two different challenges and uh, but it's you know, with the fairways and how I guess had they started cutting them the different direction towards the end of your playing career there.
Uh, they've done various things over the years. I know, you know, one of my favorite stories the past champions. One year they we played on Expand on Tuesday, and they had about donald The moors are probably ten football and they went down home the creek towards the green. Next one came back towards the tee down and they went opposite directions every ten field going the fairway towards
the tee or towards the green. And after the dinner it was kind of a Q and A for the for the chairman and who was Hour Harden at the time. This is probably in the early nineties, and Arnold got on thirteen, you've blowed the fairways. If a direction every every width of the mower going down hole or going into the into the back towards the tu If you hit a drive and hit the down green, you roll around a quarter forty yards. You hit it six instance, right,
you get one more towards the tea. It's going to check roll five feet and have mud on the ball. The reason for that part just looked at Arnold and he said, well, we'll take that up in front of our board of experts, and I'll looked at him because, well, Hard, what, what exactly do you think you have this one? Good night? And Hard just looked at him. We'll take that from the front of the board of experts. So that was rather rather humorous and rather rather just unbelievable, just really
and he had a perfect point. M h. And come Thursday, they're all Mode, the Sanderson, all the fairways. So it did change it, we're saying because it took it took a fairly large amount of fairness out of the game on that whole. Especially.
Do they ever ask past champions or players for input.
Uh, there are a couple of past champions involved in the decision to way back when to tell you back in two thousand and eight, or to tell you that turned sixty five he could play anymore, Yeah, which is probably you'll come make him back to fite him in the butt. Is one of the worst decisions they ever made,
but they did fortunately reverse it like three four months later. Mh. You know you got you got Jack at sixty five, who still plays pretty good, and thousands and thousands of people want to come out and watch Nicholas and the same with partner. You're gonna tell them both a sixty five they can't play.
Anymore, Yeah, I mean, I mean Tom Watson.
Didn't take long that didn't take long. Drivers. Yeah, it took like a couple of months to reverse.
At the season, Tom Watson almost won a major championship at sixty.
So yep.
So the twelfth hole obviously gets talked a lot about. Is is that kind of the point of the golf course that is the toughest single shot out there? Or is there another one that makes you think a little bit more?
Uh No, I don't think there's a shot on that golf course that has the same the same scrambled news and winds and you know what, your thoughts are not news, but you know what, you what you think your head can change so often with the wind and and everything else. I don't think there's a there's a harder golf shot in golf twelve, possibly with a with a down wind forty mile on our wind, which it never happens. But if it was seventeen, the TPC might be as hard a shot. But you know, it's uh as good as
these guys are, it's still very very much. I guess the game on that tea every day you just caeh. You look at eleven and the pins and the flags blowing straight back at the tea. You look at all the flags blowing the right stand up blowing to the right, and you look over to the right on thirteen and the trees as low to the left, so you just never know what's going on with that hole.
So you don't have any any little tricks for the wind there.
No, you're just very happy to get it out. You're very happy to get it on the green if it's windy, and it's pretty much always windy down on that corner as well.
So we get last question, then we'll get you out of here with our we do this overrated, underrated segment. But who are you picking this week?
Picked anybody? I started? I thought about it last week we were doing a radio show and all about twenty five names popping in my head. So you've got a lot of guys playing really well right now. You got Phil playing well, Tiger's coming back, Murray's playing well, Dustin Thomas is playing great. Just a number of guys are playing really, really good. It'll be a good event, it always is. But I don't know if I want to pick one, well, I really don't know. You know, Rubble
one last week, he loves the place. So you just have a little players that could win.
Yeah, I was putting together a story lines piece, and I mean I was kept writing and I got to like sixteen hundred words, and I felt like I left some stuff out. I can't remember a Masters that has had so much interesting kind of build up with big name winners. Obviously Tiger coming back. It should be a great week this week.
Yeah, tire come back. Phil's playing great. I mean you can just you can go down and on ten hands you can cut him. Yeah.
Yeah. I think there's about twenty guys that you wouldn't be surprised if they won, which is which is pretty crazy.
Wow. So and you know you talked about those eight we just talked about and then you're leaving out you leave it out Jason Day and whoever else, whoever else, whoever else. There's just there's potential for a lot of peoples. Yeah.
I mean we didn't even bring up Speed or Rory.
Yeah, there you goes. I mean yeah, yep.
So overrated, underrated, you just uh you can just say you know one, or you can expand uh. Tomento cheese sandwiches. Uh, underrated, especially for the price there.
Definitely underrated.
Driving down Magnolia.
Lane extremely underrated.
The fourteenth hole, it's got.
A lot of it's got a lot of hype too, it's still underrated. What's that?
And then the fourteenth hole.
Uh yeah, I would say about either, it's probably you know, if you if you want to, it's in the middle somewhere. But as opposed to pastors, I would say probably Now it's a little overrated because they lost that big pine tree on the left side of the green made that second shot to the left hand a lot easier than it ever was.
Interesting, I didn't even think about that. All right. Well, Craig, thanks so much for your time, and we look forward to watching the Masters and appreciate your insights into AUGUSTA.
My pleasure would be a great week again as those is