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 dread and Frida Egg Frida Egg, Frida egg Egg Frida Egg, Bride egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and we are in a fun spot in the PGA Tour schedule. The Arnold Palmer Invitational at bay Hill just wrapped up with a dominant win by Scotti Scheffler finally, and we are now onto the Players Championship at TPC Sagras.
These are two very different types of tournament golf venues, so we thought it would be a good time to talk about what we want and don't want out of a tour golf course, what makes a great test of golf, and how that's different from what makes a great golf course in general. Here to discuss that with me is Joseph Lamannia, And before getting into the meat of the pod, we're gonna do our usual in and out segment where we talk about what we're in on and what we're
out on in the golf world this week. So Joseph, what are you in on?
Garrett?
I am in on the legacy of Arnold Palmer. And I know that this is something that sometimes we enjoy poking fun of a little bit, like when Justin Rose didn't make an equipment announcement because he did it out of respect for Arnold Palmer, and that can be all a little bit overblown. But last week was my first
time in Orlando at this event. Seeing the pictures affixed to the exterior of people's houses of Arnold Paul Elmer, seeing the umbrella logos everywhere, not just on site, but throughout the city, you can tell that Arnold Palmer himself means a lot to a lot of people, especially in the Orlando area, and with what the PGA Tour is trying to do have legacy, have that lineage between some of their all time greats. As much fun as it is to kind of joke about, I gained a lot
of respect for it a lot of people. He means a lot to a lot of people, and I think that it elevates the event in a unique way. So I'm in on what Arnold Palmer means to the golf world and specifically to that tournament. The umbrella got to you the umbrella. The umbrella didn't get to me to where I'm gonna be wearing it around, But I can appreciate that it means a lot to a lot of people.
Absolutely. I mean, obviously it's hard to describe how big of a deal, how big of a celebrity Arnold Palmer was in the late fifties and early sixties and really throughout his life. But if you talk to people who were young back then, who are golf fans back then, like my dad, you can just tell how much Arnold Palmer means. And so, yeah, that's a that's a very real thing. Do people get overly sentimental and mawkish about it? Sometimes? Do they?
Do?
They use the legacy of Arnold Palmer to justify poor design at bay Hill? Sometimes? Yeah, occasionally that happens, But all in all, it's it's probably for the best that we keep that legacy alive a bit, at least in the form of this event on the tour schedule.
Agree, what are you in on? Garrett?
All right? So I am in on saw him Figauless season so far? Okay, I really like what he's doing. Now, does he need to get to another level for me to be really really excited about him? Sure, but he was t six at Bayhill, three top tens so far this year, solo second at the Century, and solo fifth at the Phoenix Open. His problem historically, as far as I understand it, you can correct me here, has been wild driving, right, I mean, he just misses a lot
of fairways. Typically he's he's long enough, but he just hasn't been accurate enough to be toward the top of the you know, ball striking strokes gained standings on the PGA Tour, he has been a little tighter with that this season. He's twenty ninth and strokes gained off the tee. I think his DNA is always going to be a players who's a little bit loose off the tee, but it seems like there's been some improvement there, at least based on the small sample size we have so far.
And just you know, the reason I'm excited about Sahith is the reason that everybody is excited about Sahith. He's just a fun player to watch. He's charismatic, he's likable, cool swing, great touch, around the greens, has been a great putter for the past couple of seasons. The profile of his game is just fun to watch. For me. That's a player that you know, when when a player like that is on TV, I'm like, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen here. It's not super predictable
how this player is going to score. He profiles. I think that's a pretty good fit for augusta National solo ninth last year at the Masters, that was his first Master's appearance, and so I'm going to be keeping an eye on what he's doing and the lead up to the Masters, what he does this coming week at TPC Sawgrass and you know, potentially maybe a contender this year at the Masters.
I love it, Garrett.
When we did our Master's kind of early preview pot, I had just thrown his name out as a mid you know, forty to fifty to one type odds. That's where he is on the odds she at least at the time, and I think he's somebody that has a lot of upside.
Not the most.
Consistent game, as you're alluding to with some of the sprang it off of the tea a little bit, but he has rained it in a little and he's exciting to watch. I completely agree with you. There are a lot of robot type Maybe we overuse the term robots when we're describing PJ Tour players and their swings and their demeanor, but I have quite different than that. He plays a different style. There's some flair with his personality and with his game. He's fun to watch in person.
So I agree, somebody to look for. Maybe not at the players this week. I'm not sure if I love how his cloud for him, but yeah, yeah, as we get to Augusta, he's somebody to keep an eye on for sure.
So I like that call.
Yeah, I just I just smile whenever he shows up on TV. And I don't have that reaction to every player of his you know, skill level of his ability. I light up a little bit. You know, the energy ticks up a bit when he's on the screen, and and you know, we we have to notice that when it comes along because we've been talking about the lack of juice so far in the PGA Tour season. It's players like this guy who are going to bring us
out of that, out of those dol drums. So all right, what are you out on this week, Garrett?
I am out on graphic hats, the kind of hat that it's almost.
Like the graphic what do you mean by graphic images or like explicit content?
Oh no, no, no, no, not explicit content, like the images in the text, especially the ones where we're either flipping the text upside down, which I don't know why we do that, or the ones where we're removing the vowels. Like I saw some guy walking around at Bayhill. I mean I saw a ton of these hats at Bayhill. One guy walking around with one that must have been Eagle Creek, but a lot of the vowels had been removed, so it was just EGL space CRK. It's like, what
are we doing with these hats? Another woman had this hat that said golf nerd. It was like a black hat with his gold cursive writing golf nerd. It's like it the don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee shirts put onto a hat, and I don't know why we can't just have the simple, clean, sharp hats. I don't know what we're doing this hat phenomenon, especially they're removing the vowels and some of the funky messages that we're trying to use to express our personalities via our hats.
I'm out on all of that.
I live in a town called Happy Valley, and at the at the local food truck spot, they sell sweatshirts and hats and everything with Happy Valley on them, except that all the valels have been removed, and it doesn't make any sense, and it just it just delights me.
Do they leave the why?
Yeah, they leave the Why, but every other valelve is taken out. It is like you don't even know when you first look at it, You're like, what is even going on here? Yeah? It is, no doubt, it's an epidemic, all right. So as for what I am out on, I'm so tired of people misinterpreting what certain players say about the structure of the PGA Tour and the future
of the PGA Tour. The latest example this past week was first Roy McElroy and then Wyndham Clark saying that they wanted to see the PGA Tour get a little smaller and more cutthroat. That's what they were saying, but people immediately jumped on them for being self interested protecting
their position. Basically, people thought that Rory and Wyndham were saying, shrink the PGA Tour so that I can stay on it indefinitely and protect the guys who are on the tour, which is really what the is the opposite of what they were saying. They were saying, make it more competitive. Rory was saying, take away the exemption categories that are, you know, keeping guys on tour or in the big events from things that they did five or ten years ago.
Wyndham was saying, let's have aggressive relegation. You know, twenty guys out of one hundred every season. Doesn't matter who you are, you're out if you're not playing well enough. And so that was their message, and you can disagree with it if you want or say that this is the wrong direction for the PGA Tour, but at least characterize what they're saying accurately. They were not saying saying
protect the top players more. They were saying, make this more competitive, make it more brutal, And that was their message. But it just totally got lost because I think people were assuming that they had said something that they didn't say, and that was just a bummer.
There was a prevailing sentiment, especially with Wyndham Clark's comments like, don't forget where you came from Windham two years ago, you wouldn't have been saying this and you wouldn't have been in these events, and I totally agree with you, Garrett, to be honest, it pissed me off because I feel like people were just trying to take a shot at Wyndham here and really dig out his character a little bit when he's not saying that fewer golfers should make a living playing professional golf.
I think my.
Interpretation of this model and I might not fully agree with exactly what they're talking about in the strict relegation and locking spots up for a full year, but directionally I'm kind of fine with it, and maybe we tweaked that a little bit. But Wyndham isn't saying fewer golfers should make a life. He's saying, if we elevate the product that should add value in more golfers should make a living. Maybe there are going to be fewer spots playing in some of the biggest events on the PGA Tour.
But you're right, he also is subject to that same relegation, so it's not it was not a fair characterization of their comments. I completely agree with you. This is the direction that golf needs to go, and not everyone's going to be happy with it.
All right, we'll get into Bayhill takeaways and a little bit of players talk in a minute, but first a quick word about golf in Ireland. Irish professional golf is in pretty good shape right now. Shane Lowry solo third at Bayhill, impressive performance obviously, Rory McElroy is a superstar and Shamous Power and Leona Maguire are both very exciting players.
But beyond that, Ireland is a golfer's paradise with over four hundred courses one third of the world's true links courses, including a pair of legendary places in Northern Ireland, Royal County Down and Royal Port Rush. County Down is actually going to host the amjin Irish Open later this year. That's going to be premium coffee golf is that. That's the good stuff there, and of course Port Rush is going to host the Open Championship in twenty twenty five,
so things to look forward to there. The Friday Golf Team, or at least four of us, are in Northern Ireland right now. Visiting these two great courses, along with a handful of other amazing spots and hidden gems in the area. You can hear more about that on the explorations feed. Highly recommend subscribing to that. It's been really good stuff so far. Just one of the best places in the world for golf. The definition of a bucket list destination.
You have to go there before you die, So visit Ireland dot com slash golf to start planning your trip today. All right, Joseph, we wanted to talk about Bayhill and Tpcsagras. We just saw these, you know, these two weeks back to back. It raises the possibility of a comparison and contrast and a lot of discuss about what we want out of tournament golf venues. They represent two very different kinds of tests. You were in person on site at Bayhill this week, so let's do some takeaways from your
experience there. Talk to me about your expectations for the course going in and then your reactions once you saw it in person.
Yeah, big goal for me it was to see this course in person because I haven't, but I'm super familiar with it right obviously watching a ton of professional golf and looking at shot data like I've had a pretty good idea of what I was going to see. I will tell you, Garrett in person, like with my architecture hat on, it was a much worse golf course in person than I expected it to be.
Within the same breadth.
I have some more positive takeaways about Bayhill as a professional golf venue than I did entering the week, and I think the sept the two can sometimes be where people get upset, like when I had written for the Friday newsletter about how Bayhill is much worse in person. It always angers a certain subset of people, but we're not calling for Bayhill to be removed from the rotation
as a professional golf venue. In fact, after this week, I'm more excited about it as a professional golf venue and we'll probably have more anticipation, you know, when the twenty twenty five Arnold Palmer Invitational rolls around. Is it a great golf course?
No thought.
I think it's an eyesore and it's really flat. When you've seen one or two holes, you've seen them all. But there are much worse versions of professional golf than the Test. That's the questions that are asked by Bayhill, even if it is quite repetitive. So those are my overarching takeaways, but I kind of came away with some appreciation for it and how it identifies a certain type of talent.
Okay, well, let's talk about it as a test. Two separate things you're talking about here. There's the there's the professional golf test, and then there is the golf course that you can assess with an eye to how it might be played by an amateur or any type of player. And so you know, first as a professional golf test, your reaction was positive. What did you see in it that you like out of a PGA Tour course.
I'm always gonna appreciate when there's a lot of long irons because we just don't see that very often on the PGA Tour, and it's a great way to separate the guys who can really strike the ball. So probably first and foremost, the combination of long irons with big,
firm greens. That is a strong recipe for identifying talent at the highest level, not just because there's you can actually hit the green with a long iron if it's big enough, and if there's a little bit of softness, like I think Bayhill gets too baked out sometimes to where you can't even hold the green, and that's not as good of a test. But this year it kind of had the right firmness level to where a lot of long irons were asked of players, but they could
still hold some of the greens. And when you don't hit the green and it's a big firm green, it presents you with some interesting short game shots, whether it's from a bunker or some of the thick rough. Again, maybe prefer to see some shots off of tight lies versus this constant open up the face and hit an aggressive, smashed shot out of some thick rough. But it is interesting to watch. There's consequence to hitting shots in the
bad locations, pretty demanding overall. You can't miss off the tee in certain spots like it does a good job of identifying some skill sets that are important. It's not a wedge pot in contest by any stretch.
Okay, all right? And so then contrast that with your reaction to it as a golf course. What were you looking at when you looked at bay Hill through the lens of is it a good golf course or not? And how is that different from assessing it as a test of professional golf.
It's shockingly flat, if that's If that's not an oxymoron. I was surprised at how flat the golf course is. And it doesn't it.
Sort of welcome to Florida in that way, like this is a lot of this is a lot of Florida golf.
Yeah.
Sure.
And the prevalence of water hazards everywhere. I mean, I think people know that, but to see thin, pretty thin fairways in a lot of spots where there's water on one side and just rough on the other and some trees, it lends itself to, hey, there's water on the left, I'm gonna favor the right side of the fairway and just blast driver and I'm gonna be kind of fine as long as it doesn't go left and into that water. People will counter with, no, you're not fine if you
go right into the rough. That's super penal and you're gonna have to hack it out, which I agree with. But you can't really shift your target too much left of that because you're introducing too much water. So you're gonna be fine if you end up in the rough at a certain percentage of the time, like that's kind of the way viewing shots as a range of outcomes versus Bayhill doesn't really give you the opportunity to try and challenge certain hazards. It's basically water or bust, and
a lot of it turns into water avoidance. So I just thought it was quite one dimensional out there. Flat water hazards, bunkers, thick rough You're gonna see a lot of mashing, right, a lot of aggressive moves at the ball out of a thick lie. You're not gonna see a lot of clever recovery shots where you have to control your ball flight and control where the ball ends up, spin, control that kind of stuff. Like, you're not going to see any of those clever recovery shots. It's pretty one dimensional.
Aerial hit it as high and straight as possible, and then thrash it out of thick rough, which some people appreciate, but that might not be There's certainly not a lot of variety out there.
There's not a lot of complex decision making. And yeah, as you say, in terms of variety, you're not making different kinds of decisions on different tees. And so that is a characteristic of Bayhill's design that you can certainly criticize from an architectural perspective, I believe it makes the course less fun to play. It would make any course less fun to play if you take the factor of decision making and the factor of variety away from it.
But at the same time, these characteristics are exactly what make it an exacting test of elite golf, or at least the type of course where a Scotty Scheffler can
really show what makes him different from everybody else. And so, you know, if somebody's kind of looking at this PGA Tour season and saying, if one of the problems with the PGA Tour this year so far has been that we haven't seen superstars able to differentiate themselves, whether that's because they just haven't been playing very well or because they've been playing courses that don't allow them to separate themselves properly from the pack, then it would seem that
Bayhill would be the cure to that, because we saw Scotti Scheffler very clearly show why he is the best player on tour right now, and I guess, I guess we want courses that can do that. Would you I went through that logic, I'm not sure, I myself totally agree with it, But would you follow along with that basically?
Yeah, But I do think it's the long irons and big greens, big firm greens that you have to control shots into. You'll get really good leaderboards if you have a lot of that. We haven't seen much of that on the PGA Tour so far this year, So I agree with you that venues are part of why the stars haven't shown out. You're not going to be able to at AMX. Even though that PGA West used to be a course that kind of kicked professional golfers butts a little bit, it's not anymore. It's driver wedge and
that brings in a lot of putting variants. But when you have a golf course like bay Hill, where you can separate yourself more tea green, you're more likely to get that Scottie Scheffler clinical dominant performance and showing what makes him such a special player. Is there a place for that on the PGA Tour? Like, Yeah, I think so, and I feel even more that way after this week. So how redundant Some of the questions that are asked are like, I don't it doesn't matter to that many
people out there. Do I think you can have great professional golf that doesn't compromise on that. Yeah, but what venues are those? Like a lot of them have been compromised by technology. It requires a lot of space to have a golf course that produces long irons and big demanding greens and has the infrastructure to host bunch of fans. So all these things work together.
Technology is a big part of the equation, and I want to dig into that. But I also wanted to note that this is not a new thing on the PGA Tour, where there are these certain courses, including bay Hill, that tend to differentiate stars from merely very good PGA Tour players. Tiger Woods obviously won many many times at bay Hill, Firestone and Tory Pines, and they were all these kinds of courses, and there's a reason he thrived at those courses. They really suited that dominant style of
ball striking that Tiger had mastered better than anyone. And this dominant, high straight ball striking is a shared characteristic among many of the greatest players who have played the game, and so courses like these they are going to stand out. And so this is this has been a discovery of
mine recently. Maybe I should have realized it before, but the kind of architecture that I find myself most interested in as a player, there is a reverse correlation between that kind of architecture and the kind of architecture that allows a great ball striker like Tiger or Scottie to really separate themselves from the pack. And and that's that. You know, that's unfortunate, but maybe it just means we
need a few of these courses on the schedule. Not every not every PGA Tour course should be this, but maybe we need a few.
I would push back on that, not not to push back on your personal preferences, but I don't think that there's there has to be a reverse correlation with some of the things that you look for and what produces talent. Like Augusta National produces an exceptional leaderboard every year, and that adheres to many of the principles that you probably
appreciate in architecture. I think what length is a big part of the equation here, and those golf courses you mentioned with Firestone, Tory Pines, Bayhill, those are.
Long golf courses.
Length it's not the narrowness and the thick rough and the trees that's producing that high quality like Tiger Woods like performances. Because even within your description and how you said, it's how high and straight like Torty Pines is not a golf course you have to hit the ball straight. So I think that there are better versions of architecture that can still produce an exceptional leader board. It doesn't have to be the thick rough thrash it out.
But I hear what you're saying.
I mean, there's no doubt about that. I think that a lot of the elements that make Augusta National currently a great test of professional golf or kind of on this tier of golf courses where the superstars can show that they're superstars. A lot of those factors at Augusta National are things that are set up, factors that have emerged over the years and not necessarily inherent architectural characteristics
of the course. The use of trees at Augusta National is something that has been added on to the course that wasn't really part of Alistair mackenzie and Bobby Jones's plan, but they're there primarily for that professional golf test. And so yeah, absolutely, you don't have to go the Bayhill or Tory Pines direction to create a great test of
professional golf. I wouldn't want to imply that. I just think that, you know, what I see from these courses year after year is yeah, they allow the John Rams and the Scottie Shufflers and the Tiger Woods is to shine. And I find myself getting frustrated with stretches of the PGA Tour schedule where those guys are playing great golf but just struggling to get out of the pack. Right. I know they're better, they are better just about every week than almost everybody else, but it's only at a
few courses where they can truly show that. And so these are two different sides of my desire as a viewer of professional golf. I want to see great architecture on the screen, but I also want to see great players be able to show what they can do. Does that make sense?
It does?
I think the only distinction I would draw is that I think you can get that with I'd focus on the long irons and the big firm greens being what produces that versus the thick rough and the narrowness being what produces that.
Because you can have a.
Narrow, a short, narrow, thick, rough golf course, and you're not going to see the Scottie Scheffler excel in the way that you would see him like bay Hill.
So I would draw that distinction.
You're preaching to the choir. I obviously agree with you there. So all right the technology piece of this, Let me lay out another questionable take for you and see what your response is. I think professional golf has a variance problem right now. I think the issue that we're having with professional golf is that equipment has made it so
hard for great ball strikers to truly be identified. Equipment has made more people great ball strikers, and so a truly great ball striker like Scotti Scheffler has more difficulty standing out because of the nature of the equipment. Now, there are other factors at play here. I think there are probably more talented players out there than there were twenty five years ago. Maybe this is in part the Tiger effect. More talented athletes have come into the fold.
I think that instruction has improved. Track Man has affected a revolution and instruction so that what's going on in the golf swing is no longer nearly as much of a mystery as it used to be. But the effect of all of it is that golf has a variance problem. Week to week. The people who are winning, the players who are winning, are the ones who happen to put well. And you know, when a sport starts to drift more
towards randomness like this, it becomes a bit less compelling. Now, the luck factor and the dynamism of golf is part of its appeal, but if it is completely fluky and random, then it no longer becomes a fun game to watch,
like it kind of becomes poker, where poker players. There are certain poker players who are very skilled, but you know, nobody's reeling off like five or six World Series of Poker's poker titles in a row, even if they're by far the greatest poker player, because of that element of variance in poker, right, if you just get good cards,
then most of the time you're going to win. And so, you know, we want skill to be the thing that differentiates players, and we want a little element of randomness and luck, but we don't want too much randomness and luck. And my sense is right now, golf has an issue with too much variance and so in order to create tournaments where that element of variance is reduced, we have to start going to the Bay Hills so that great
ball strikers can really differentiate themselves. We've been put into this position, in other words, by equipment.
I agree with almost everything you said. I think, in particular, driver heads are a massive problem because you can swing with almost complete impunity and no concern that the ball is gonna fly way offline. And there's also an element of you're not having to you're pretty there's not like the what's the I don't know the right word that I'm looking for, but there's not the distance variance in
your drives either. So if you can cover a hazard almost no matter where you hit it on the face, you're gonna be able to fly that hazard, and that finding the center of the club face. It's not just making players hit shots straighter, but it's also eliminating some of that variance and how far they're hitting the ball. It's just making it much easier to be a great
driver of the golf ball. You also have some of the other advancements that you reference track Man, I think the experimentation with putting some players putting broomsticks in their bag like that's also contributing to more variants. But the main thing that I would harp on is the driver
heads the ball. With things going farther, you then bring more putting variants into play because you're hitting it into ranges that players are hitting shots close to the hole, which is going to bring more putting variants into play in the outcome of tournaments. So that's the main thing I would hit on.
The players are getting to all the same positions these days, and when they do that, it's just whoever manages to get the putts to fall, that's who's gonna be at the top of the leader board. And I think we want something more than that from professional golf, right.
Yeah, And I would always reference Augusta National as the indicator of what it looks like to preserve some of that shot value and the extents to which they've had to go to bring tea boxes back. It's not a complete coincidence. It's not a coincidence at all that they get some of the best leaderboards year in and year out, and it's not just because the field is good. That combination of hitting long shots into big demanding greens where there's tight runoffs, and even if you miss, you have
a shot right. If you have great short game off of a tight line into a demanding green, you can still make up some shots. On the field, They're constantly asking questions of players that enable the most talented players in the field to separate themselves.
And when you have.
One thing I've been thinking about, Garrett is the PGA Tour's emphasis on legacy and keeping history at courses, combined with technology, those are opposing forces because if you're not going to lengthen them, they're just getting narrower for players drivers. While it's been easier to hit it straighter, I mean, you're just reducing that ability for a top player to
separate themselves. So I agree a lot there, But what I would distill it down into is easier it is to swing really hard with driver and hit it anywhere on the face. You're hitting it closer to the hole. Right, one hundred and fifty seven yard shot just became a one hundred and forty eight yard shot. You're going to hit it closer from one forty eight than you are
from one fifty seven. That's going to bring more putting variants to determining the outcome versus your ability to hit a mid to long iron.
So this stuff all works together.
And maybe we're going a little overreacting a little to some flukiness in the results earlier this year, But this is the way professional golf is going to trend unless it's addressed.
Yeah, it's been going this way for years, where we're just seeing the players that we know to be the most talented winning less and doing less than the most talented players did back in the seventies, eighties and nineties, and I think that that's probably a dangerous direction for golf and it needs to be addressed by more than just golf courses.
One other you didn't quite go this direction.
But when you're talking about there being a variance problem, I think there's another side of that, which is there's less variance in scoring on holes. And I think a lot of that has to do with not only some of the equipment advances, but massive course management advances to where players are really taking hazards out and that does
us reduce excitement. People like seeing the shots into the water that players are hitting, and by addressing the driver head, you might get more of that, right, you might see some shots that are hit a little bit more offline
and don't travel the same distance as a stockyardage. What the PGA Tour needs to realize is that a pretty i would say significant rollback would elevate the product, even if it concerned some players who are worried that they might lose their tour cards because they're not sure how it would affect them. It's what's in the best interest of the product being more competitive and being more entertaining.
All right, let's get into some TPC Sawgrass discussion, unless there's anything else you wanted to mention about Bayhill, any other notes.
I mean, I have some notes on some shots I saw out there, but I think maybe we can weave it into some of the TPC sawgrass discussion.
Let's get into the players.
Sure the Players is coming up this week. You have previously said that you consider TPC Sawgrass a top tier test of PGA Tour Golf. In fact, I think you've put it on a tier along with Augusta National previously, at least in this little Twitter graphic that gets used and some people have had interesting responses to that. But maybe we could start there. Why do you consider TPC Sawgrass a top tier test of golf.
Yeah, it's my favorite test of professional golf.
If you remove i'd say on the PGA Tour right since Augusta is not a PGA Tour golf course, Riviera is the only course that I think really rivals it. And there are a couple holes at Riviera that with the grass in use in technology have compromised some of those holes out there to where I just put Sawgrass slightly ahead of it.
I would prefer to watch.
A professional golf tournament at Sawgrass than at Riviera, but not by a huge margin. I love TPC Sawgrass the penalty associated with wide misses. It's not quite the very top on the PGA Tour, but it's high. You can't spray the ball out there. The wind and the especially when conditions are firm, missing greens in the right spots is exciting about TPC Sawgrass. I think there's tremendous variety in the holes. I think the par fives are excellent, and I think especially nine, and I also love the
eleventh hole. I think it's a sneaky, awesome par five. I just love watching professional golf at Sawgrass. It brings out shot makers you got to contend with the wind and keep the ball out of trouble. A lot of different styles can win, as has been harped on, that's one thing that always gets thrown around with TPC saw Grass. Yeah, the variety, the cadence, the excitement down the stretch with the tournament not being over because you still have to
phase sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. I think it has a lot of ingredients of being arguably the best test on the PGA Tour.
You mentioned nine and eleven I have in my notes right here nine and eleven. Love those golf holes, and I love the par five's at TPC Sawgrass. In general, I think it's the strongest part of the course. I think it's the most underrated part of the course. But two, nine, eleven, sixteen, I could watch a feed just of those holes during
the Players Championship and be very very happy. Those are such interesting different golf holes, each of which poses a different question, a different problem to elite players, and so yeah, it's good stuff.
What do you love about watching those holes game?
Well, each shot matters, Every shot matters on those holes. On two the drive basically you have to hit a great draw in order to get in position to go for that green, and two, if you manage to hit
that shot, then the hole is very attackable. But if you end up on the right side of the fairway, you're gonna be blocked out and you're going to kind of be aiming at this really tricky landing zone, and you're having a hard time on that hole, and the green is intensely contoured and guarded, and so each shot matters. On nine, that water hazard the way it cuts in from the right and really makes playing aggressively off that
tee in a tricky and dangerous proposition. And if you play conservatively, then all of a sudden, your next shot, especially if you play over to the left, then you're going to have a really hard time manufacturing a shot up the rest of that hole. Eleven and sixteen, similarly, each shot has high stakes, and if you don't execute, if you don't play with strategic intelligence, you're going to
be out of position on those holes. And while you can make birdies even eagles on almost all of them, you can also make pretty big numbers if you compound your mistakes, and so just so fun to watch in general, though, like my understanding of TPC Sawgrass in the way that it influences dynamics of competition is that it introduces more chaos and more variants even than a venue like bay Hill. And so we've just said that the PGA Tour might
have a variance problem. If TPC Sawgrass is a high variance course doesn't represent that problem.
I would agree that it's a high variance golf course. And if your goal, as the PGA Tour was to produce standings at the end of the year that had the best players at the top, you wouldn't want just TPC Sawgrass over and over again. I don't think the goal of the standing should necessarily be to just elevate the absolutely best player week in and week out. Like I think having some variety and some compelling tests that
don't all look the same is a better entertainment product. Obviously, you want the best players to end up at the top of the leaderboard each week, but I think there's room for a little bit more of a chaotic golf course like TPC Sawgrass worth calling out some of those dynamics that make it high variants. Right, A lot of wind and water and small greens can do that because it doesn't give you some of the landing areas to separate yourself. Always you're subjected to split waves in a
massive way. Trying to cram that many golfers on the course at one time. In Florida wind that fluctuates quite a bit, you're going to see some massive disparities in the waves. You might get an early late tea time that ends up being a full shot and a half two shots two and a half shots easier than the other wave. So a lot of things kind of go into TPC sawgrass being high variants. But the wind, the water, the timing at which you play certain holes, those are
all contributing factors. I don't think that makes it a bad golf tournament. I don't think it compromises the golf tournament, but it will inject some variants into the outcomes.
So then when you see a player win the Players Championship, does that mean that they were just the luckiest player on the week. I assume no, because you consider TPC sawgrass a great test of golf. So what does it mean that they did well if they win the players.
They kept it in playoff the tee, they missed shots in smart locations and they more than likely had exceptional short game. And when I think about a player who embodies that particular profile about as well as anybody on the PGA Tour, it's Seawu Kim, who is the youngest winner of this golf tournament. He won and was it twenty seventeen. Twenty seventeen, I believe.
Yes, ages ago now so long ago.
Yeah, he was twenty one one.
Seawu Kim isn't the longest hitter on tour, hits it very straight off of the tea and has some of the best short game in the world. It's not an overstatement to call Seawoo Kim one of the best short game players in the world. And he's somebody that won here. Again, you wouldn't if you had TPC Sawgrass every week. You wouldn't see the Scottie Scheffler, Rory McElroy, John Rahm types, if John Ram are still on the PGA Tour necessarily winning as high of a clip as if you had.
Bay Hill.
But honestly, you could also have some really bad golf courses that are low variants too, that aren't good tests of professional golf, and we don't need to strive for those either, so I like variety. I think there's a place for tpawgrass, and if you had a smaller field, which I'm not advocating for, you could reduce some of that variance too, because the wave splits wouldn't be as big. So a lot goes into it being high variants. I don't think it's a problem.
Is there anything that you don't like about TPC sawgrass.
I've sort of gotten some arguments about the timing of the year that it's played and whether it's better in March or May. All I'll I think they're trade offs to each and I think where I've landed is it's not necessarily better in one time slot or the other. Firmness is, in my opinion, crucial to the test at TPC sawgrass and making sure that you're missing shots in the right locations around the green so that the approach shots are more demanding and that the short game shots
are demanding. You tend to get a little bit more rain in March than in May. I was just looking through weather reports this morning in preparation for the pot. It's not too different, but it's generally a little rainier, a little colder, and a little windier in March some of the I like the wind, but I think sometimes it being cold and wet, especially in the mornings, can reduce some of the strategic value of TPC saw grass.
So if I had to nitpick anything about it, I'd probably say that they should strive to max out the firmness and by having it in March. Sometimes it's a little wet, especially in the mornings, but I don't have a huge problem with it, especially because in May it's often really hot and sticky, and I think you can make a case for it being better in either location. How about you anything you don't like any about TPC saw grass.
Well, you're getting at some of the conditioning issues. Sure, you know, obviously I'd love for them to play on on dormant grass, but that's never going to happen. I mean, can you imagine how how cool that would be, But the visual aspect of it, the PGA tour would never accept. I think over the years, TPC saw grass has become more augustified, the presentation has become ultra manicured, ultra high end, and that's just not how it was at the beginning.
That was not the intent of Pete dye. The intent was to make it a wild and rugged golf course where you might get attacked by an alligator. You don't know. You're out there in the swampy wilderness and you're fighting against a badass, tough golf course. And now it's just become more domesticated. And the more they take the conditioning in that direction, the less interested I am in the
golf course. Now. The brilliant design does remain. The angles, the way the fairways move in the landing zones, the position of the hazards, the contouring of the greens, all of that stuff is still, in my opinion, really first rate, really brilliant tournament golf design. But I wish they backed off a little bit on the augustification. For one esthetic reasons, I think it looks a little more interesting when it's
a bit rougher, and two for some playability reasons. Maybe if they were less devoted to absolute bright, verdant green, then they could get the golf course to play a bit firmer. And yeah, that might create some chaos on really windy days, but that would bring some danger back to TPC sawgrass, and there's just a bit less danger now than there used to be around this course like sagrass struck fear into pro's hearts, and I'm not sure that it totally does that anymore.
That goes back a little bit to some of the equipment stuff too, right, and not being as concerned when you swing away because you know it's not gonna Those big misses are probably not as much within definitely not as much within the range of outcomes as they used to be.
Right.
I agree with you.
I think the PGA Tours, when you talk about focusing on visual presentation, usually that's having thick, lush, green rough and that does seem to be a point of emphasis for the PGA Tour, as was echoed on the pod we did with Gary Young of the PGA Tour, who talks about setup, and I think sometimes focusing on that can be a little bit of a cell phone from the PGA Tour where it feels more demanding sometimes and
having lush rough lining some of these fairways. But if the ball could actually bounce into more troubled areas, it would be more demanding in a lot of spots.
So I agree.
I think focusing on the visual presentation sometimes at the expense of shot value doesn't accomplish for the PGA Tour what they hope it would accomplish.
Any holes we haven't talked about that you think are underrated that people should pay attention to on the telecast.
I think the fourth hole at Augusta Sorry at TVC Sawgrasses among my favorite par fours and professional golf. I love the Yeah, it's a tight t shot bunker running down the right side. If you miss the bunker right, you can find yourself in a creek. That's pretty rare. Most golfers aren't hitting something that wild, but it happens. Keith Mitchell infamously in a clip that went viral last year.
If you miss left though, too, you're in a pretty hairy spot where you're trying to control some kind of short iron shot into a demanding green with severe contouring. That kind of sections that green in a way that being in the fair way is extremely advantageous. So that might be it's target golf, right, Garrett. I mean, it's very much hit it here and then hit it here, but it does it in a way that's clever, and
there's consequence to missing in the wrong spot. So it's a little bit different than Bayhill and that you're not just swinging away. There's more control required. I think the fourth hole is among the part fours and all professional golf, at least on the PGA Tour rotation.
Yeah, I love that whole too, And you know, is it target golf? I think laterally probably yes. The fairway is so narrow that you're not necessarily playing to one side of it or the other. I think probably the intention at the beginning was to give an advantage to players who played near the creek on the right side.
There's a slightly friendlier looking angle from over there. But really, if you're on the left edge of the fairway versus the right edge of the fairway these days, especially now that the fairways have become narrower, I'm not sure that you're seeing that much of a difference, especially considering it's
a wedge into the green. You're really trying to avoid both hazards, and that hazard along the left side is so cool because it's like a series of mounds right and so you're in the rough and you're probably hitting from a severe uphill, downhill or side hill lie and that just is a terrifying shot into that target. I think that the strategy for the hole and again, correct me if I'm wrong. Is more about what club you select off the tee, right, depends on It's about how
aggressive you are off the tea. It's about how far up the hole you want.
To get, absolutely and these days like that's not that much of a decision point, Like it's generally pretty easy to land on a decision there. But for me, a lot of the appeal is you started the green. I know this can be controversial, but when you started the green and think your way backwards a little bit, like where that pin is, it's not necessarily going to dictate your target off of the tea. But I just find
it very interesting to watch these guys attack. If you leave it in the wrong spot on your second shot, you might be three putting. Despite it being narrow, there's still a lot of strategic intrigue, at least in my opinion.
Joseph, how dare you suggest that we think from the green backwards? I'm going to have your data boy license revoked for that.
That that should not be controversial, Garrett.
Unfortunately, with again how far guys hit it, that doesn't matter as much. But it's it's absolutely valid to look at a golf course from the green backwards and to be thinking about strategy.
Well, and the pin positions on for TPC sawgrass are so different too, you know, like that that left pin is way different from the right pin, and it's it just becomes a different hole. And I think that that's that's part of what's fun about it. So even if players aren't making a super complex decision about their club selection off the tee, you can just look at the at the shot plot on that shot Link produces and see that players end up in different spots on that hole.
Different players are attacking it in a different way, Different players are playing the hole differently on different days. That's a lot of different but that's that's variety.
But also shout out Garrett. The eleventh hole we've already talked on. We've already talked about, but the point about different pin locations playing differently, how close how aggressive you
can be on that second shot into eleven. If you're having a green side bunker shot, that the difficulty changes a lot based on the pin location, Versus if you want to just play with something more conservative out left and have a shot from the fairway over there, pin position can pretty heavily dictate where you you know whether or not it's a good option to be out in that fairway to the lefter and the bunker that challenges the water a little bit. So sawgrass despite having small greens,
I mean they're not tiny, but they're small. The pin locations can dictate strategy quite a bit.
And since you mentioned eleven, the thing I really like about that hole is if you get out of position off the tee, then you know, watch from there right If you watch a if you see a player, you know, hit a wild drive off of eleven, then just make sure to watch the rest of the hole and see how they try to get back in the hole, because it's super interesting your options from after a miss off
the tee on eleven. You know, you can play to the right, and then your third shot is across the water and over a really tricky set of contours and hazards. But if you get over to the left, that wedge is a bit easier. In any case, I just think it's really fun to see how players try to try to scramble on that hole. Basically, it poses a bunch of different really complex scenarios depending on where you end up. Off the tee and and so that's that's really what
I like about that hole. All Right, who wins the Who wins the tournament this week? Are you? Are you going with see with Kim Well?
Scottie Scheffler, especially coming off of what we just saw for him this past weekend. And I don't want to get I don't want to overreact to the putting, but he put a mallet putter in the bag this past weekend and putt much better, especially on Sunday where he was led the field in strokes, gained putting on Sunday, didn't miss a putt inside fifteen feet. Whether or not that putter is going to be a consistent weapon of his lot of unknowns there, but any week on the
PGA Tour, you can predict Scotty Scheffler. Nobody has higher expectations Tito Green and if he's just I know everyone's saying this, but if he's just an average putter, he's extremely hard to beat. The main obstacle to Scotty Scheffler winning this week is the variance that the golf course produces.
And if he gets the bad.
End of a tea time or he hits a couple stray shots that find water hazards at the wrong time. He's really good at avoiding that, so I definitely give him the best chance of winning the golf tournament. But this isn't Augusta, where there's much lower variance, and I think you can you have more confidence in Scotty winning somewhere like Augusta than TPC Sawgrass right now, just from the variants alone, So I think Scotty Scheffler is most
likely to win. The name I would throw out there is Heideki mount Suyama, who has some of the best history at TPC Sawgrass. He's been consistent there on a golf course that's hard to have consistent success. Hedeki's played I'm calling it nine times at Sagrass I'm including twenty twenty despite that event being canceled because in the opening round he posted he tied for the course record. He was one of the guys that finished his round. He shot sixty three dominant round. It's one round, but he
played really well there. He's has six top twenty five finishes in the eight events he's played there that were actually completed. Solo fifth there last year, and Hadeki's kind of coming in with some form. He won Riviera in dominant fashion just a month ago, and then he was battling some back injury. As we know, Haideki kind of
struggles with some back and neck injuries. Apparently when he was warming up on the range this past weekend at Bayhill, really showing some pain in his back and was pretty expressing a lot of discomfort. Still finished T twelve. So Hideki sneaky, had a maybe not sneaky, but he's had a good year this year, comes into a golf course that should fit him pretty well, and he's done well on some similar golf courses, so I think he's somebody to keep in mind.
You know, it's funny. I wish you could see my notes right now, but literally, the two names that I have for this question are Scottie Scheffler and Hideki Matsuyama. You know, Scheffler obviously you got to ride Scotti Shuffler until he shows signs of slowing down. And you know, he's just clearly the best ball striker in the world right now by a mile, and so you can never bet against him. But yeah, Hideki has had a great year.
I've noticed that he was terrific really last week until he shot seventy six on Sunday and he was still T twelve and so he was there, he was playing high level golf. It would be concerning if he were hurt, but it wouldn't be the first time that Headecki's reactions to swings have been unreliable, so who knows. Maybe he is fine, but he's obviously been playing really well this year and has a good history at TPC Sagress. So yeah,
those are the two names I had as well. We're going to close out this episode with a recommendation segment, but first I wanted to quickly mention some of Friday Golf's recent content that people should keep an eye out for. One is the new Explorations podcast. The members of our team who are in Northern Ireland right now have been doing a great job filing these dispatches from Northern Ireland, really interesting stuff about their trip. Another podcast feed that
Friday Golf has is Full Swing Thoughts. This is where our own Joseph Lamangna and Brendan Poraf discussed the most recent series of Full Swing, So really good stuff from Joseph and Brendan there, and then Finally, there's Club TFE. That's Friday Golf's membership. It is one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and you can check out everything that comes with Club tf at the Frida egg dot com slash membership. All right, that's it for recent Frida Egg
Golf content. So let's get to recommendations, Joseph this week, what are you recommending?
We've had a nerdy discussion, Garrett, per usual, but the nerdiest thing that I might say is this recommendation. I'm gonna recommend Harry Potter World. I had one day last week that when I was in Orlando, I was able to take a one day hiatus from Bayhill and go to a place with a little more variety and swung by Harry Potter World in Universal Studios. I was a big Harry Potter kid, read all the books, went to the midnight premieres of the books in the movies. I
think it's had a profound impact on my life. I'm saying that joking around, but I really it's It was a big part of my childhood and going to Harry Potter World was a fun experience. You could knock it out in half a day, maybe a little more than half a day. So if you're in the area for spring break or maybe for bay Hill next year, consider swinging by. And if not, I would urge you to at least consider reading Harry Potter to your kids or having them read it, because I think it's had a
positive impact on my life. And I'm again joking about it, but I'm serious at the same time, So I'll recommend Harry Potter in case no one's heard of it before.
In all seriousness. Recently, my son who's nine and I had a little kind of Harry Potter reading binge where he read the first three books himself, and he got fascinated by them, and he was really into them, and it was a lovely experience. He decided after the third book that he was going to stop because things were starting to get a little bit scary and he doesn't like scary, and so the fourth book is going to
wait a bit as he gets older. But it was a wonderful few days there, a few weeks there where every night we would be on the couch reading different Harry Potter books. And so that's just one of those wonderful things that a really good book series that appeals to kids in the unique way that Harry Potter does can do. So yeah, second that one, all right, So my recommendation, it's gonna be a funny contrast for people.
I've been getting into wine a little bit lately. I used to be a guy who would drink one beer a night. I wouldn't do any more than that, but I also wouldn't do any less than that. And after a while I just noticed that if I didn't drink at all during the week, like on weekdays, I would feel a little bit better. And so we've made, you know, our nightly drink more of a weekend thing, and have switched to wine. But I don't like spending a lot of money on alcohol, and so I've been looking for
really good, cheap wines. And I don't still am not an expert by any means on wine, but I wanted to talk about it. Like a couple of ones that I've discovered that are generally very affordable and really really good. One is wins from the Southern Rhone so Coate Derone Wines and also Barbera Wine's made from the Great Barbera from Piedmont, specifically the parent family Coat Derone Reserve blanc a white wine twelve bucks or something and very very good.
And the Vietti Barbera Deasti. I'm butchering these pronunciations. Trey Vigne, a very very good red barbera wine from Italy. I thought those were really terrific. So if anybody is a cheap wine person out there like me, those are two recommendations for you. All right, Joseph, thanks for coming on the pod. As always, very fun. Talk to you against soon.
Thanks Garrett, this fun.
This episode of the Friday Golf podcast was produced by Meg Atkins. Thank you Meg. If you have a moment, give us a quick rating and review wherever you happen to be listening to this podcast. We love hearing feedback from listeners. Thank you very much, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.