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 brid egg, Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison. I'm here today with Andy Johnson. How are we doing, Andy.
Garrett, I'm wonderful. How are you doing?
I'm doing all right, busy day today. Just interviewed Amelia Emiliacho this morning for another podcast that's going to come out before this one. So an exciting couple of weeks coming up. We've got the Annua and the Show Around Championship on the LPGA Tour next week, and then the week after that is of course the Masters. You're gonna be on the road traveling a little bit. We've got a Friday event coming up as well.
Yeah, we got our first event.
We are also uh first time credentialed at the Masters, so that's exciting.
I'll be there.
Amazing and how did that happen?
Lots of years of rejection before.
You just keep trying and eventually they get in exactly.
It's like, uh, you know, I think a lot of people could relate to that with with various aspects of life. But yeah, if you if you say, if you ask enough time, so eventually they might say yes. You know, they can't say yes if you don't ask.
I don't know if that's good advice or not, but with with the Master's credential, I think probably it's a it's a solid bit of advice.
Yeah, really excited about that.
And I can't wait to get down there and and cover cover one of them from the ground and and it'll be it'll be fun.
I'm going to write a lot.
I've been writing some getting warmed up, you know, I've been getting ready with uh, getting the pen back out.
You've been flex the riding muscle quite a bit lately. Check out the website. Andy has been up there with some some really good articles, one on green speeds recently and you know the and one on the latest changes to Augusta National, which which we are going to talk about today. So at the Masters we are going to have you there credentialed. We're also going to have Brendan there and Will as well. There's going to be a little house. Is Cameron going to be there.
Yeah, for a couple of days, so he'll be there just early in the week and he's got a bunch of different things he's doing, but yeah, we'll be there. We'll be doing daily Shotgun Start podcasts and then obviously
we'll have the daily newsletters on the Frida Egg. You know, this is a you know, free advertisement for our own company, but sign up for those if you if you haven't yet, you go to the Frida egg dot com and we'll get those out daily during the week and then there'll be a ton of stuff going on on social media, so I'm excited. I'm going to bring my camera out for the first couple rounds, for the practice rounds, and we'll have some photo journals on on social on Instagram.
And I wish I could go to the ANWA but it coincides with the Charleston event.
It's kind of a bummer, but.
Hopefully hopefully we go back next year and I can go to that next year because that's that's I think one of the most fun days that Saturday. I'm not I have to I'm not crazy about the format, but that Saturday is really great at Augusta and Ashletal.
Do you wish there were more rounds at Augusta? Yeah, Well, is that the basic take?
Yeah, I think it's just kind of a cop out to not have more rounds at Augusta.
But it's it's great that they have it, you know.
And I think if you thought about this ten years ago, it seemed far fetched. And I think the Augusta's done a lot of things in the last you know, decade that has taken them from way behind the times to on the forefront of the times in golf, you know, with with their expansion with the Asian Pacific am you know, being kind of the first one of many steps. But you know, I think I think in terms of that tournament,
it's just a weird, weird kind of schedule. And it could be you know, I think meg Atkins was talking about writing something. I don't know if she'll write something. She might have written something by the time this podcasts out. But the break, the day break is awful. It's like, what type of tournament has a day break?
So the one thing that's cool about it, and you know,
the general schedule, I agree is a bit weird. But one thing that's cool about that Friday practice round is that the players who missed the cut on Thursday get to go play Augusta National, because that would just be watching them at Champions Retreat and seeing some players miss the cut in one of those huge like you know fifteen for two playoffs you know that happen on Thursday at the Annua and seeing players not get to go have that experience at Augusta National at all would be
pretty sad, Like that would that would to the edge of like I don't know if I want to watch that, but the fact that they all get to go and have a great day at Augusta National, that's pretty cool.
And also I want to I want to point out, like somebody might come to one of our events and say, this is a stupid format, and that's fine. This is just my opinion of theirs. It's their tournament, so not everybody's a fan of alt shot. Yeah, so this is this is their tournament, so they got to choose. But I think it I just I don't know. I think it's you could do the practice round before too, Like
why don't you have the practice round before? Why don't you have practice round at championship if you're gonna do it the way you do it, have consecutive days of a tournament, though it doesn't make any sense, have a pause.
It's yeah, it's unique.
It's really silly, actually, like you get out of your cadence of the tournament's like you almost feeling you got it.
I can only imagine.
I don't know if you asked Amelia about this, but you know, like getting out of the tournament mode, going back into a practice ground and getting back in it's got to be weird.
It's different. You never did.
I didn't ask her that. I didn't want to put her in the position of having to say something negative about it, because clearly she's very grateful for the opportunity and is not going to say anything critical as she should.
You know, you know, it's great, it's amazing they have this event. But just like anything the first edition, you know, to the tenth, there should be constant improvement with the event, and I think the format is one area where the event could be greatly improved.
Yeah, I agree. All right, Well, so let's get to the real subject, and that is the latest changes at Augusta National which you have written about and which I think are worth discussing in a little more depth because they indicate a possible kind of new direction for the architecture at Augusta National, and so they're really interesting in that sense. There are the ones that have been announced, and then there are some ones that haven't really been
announced but that you discussed in the article. I think that it may have been breaking news. I'm not exactly sure, but the ones that have been announced have been moving Te's back at holes eleven, fifteen, and eighteen, and then some larger changes at eleven, the par four that begins Amen corner, where trees along the right side of the
hole have been removed. There are a few trees that remain, but the hole has been widened quite a bit to that side, bringing it back a little bit to the hole that it was, not necessarily in nineteen thirty four, but more back to the hole that it was when like Tiger Woods was over there in nineteen ninety seven, you know, playing that shot from the right side of the fairway from about one hundred and fifty yards. I have that image of him on the right side of
the fairway there where there were no trees. In recent years that area would have been covered in trees. So eleven has been changed quite a bit. And then fifteen is the other kind of big change where that hole has been lengthened. So maybe we should start off by talking about eleven. What are some of your impressions, Andy about the changes at that hole and how they're going to affect play strategically.
Yeah, So, I mean, these are huge changes, and it's not all the way back to what it was, but it's a lot closer. And I think one of the big changes is that off the te players won't be playing to the poor angle. You want to be up the right side on that hole, and in the past recent years that side has been covered with trees, so there's going to be significantly less trees. They still have those like three trees there, but at least a side is open to where you feel like you can hit
a shot. What happens when everybody plays left, which is what the hole has been forcing everybody to do, is you're at a place where you have to play defense. And that's why you've seen so many shots over the years end up short right over there in that shipping area, and it's you know, you watch Jordan Speed's chip from there every year. I feel like that I just like
have that etched in my brain. But it's mainly because from the position they are in, that's the smart shot is to just kind of hit it over there, because that taking it on from that spot is really, really a hard shot. So now with that right side opened, you're gonna be able to see some players actually make an attempt at hitting it close to the hole and what I think the interesting dynamic. And we'll see if
the numbers bore this out. But I think you're gonna see more birdies this year, and that's great and people are gonna say, oh, you're making it easier. But with more birdies, I'm anticipating there's gonna be more balls to find the water, because the the thing that gets lost sometimes. I think you want golf courses to encourage aggressive play. If players are in a spot where they don't think it's a wise play to go at.
Something, they are going to play conservative.
They're very conservative, but you need to put them into opportunities for them to play aggressively and make mistakes. And that's one of the things that a lot of the rest of the course that Augusta does is that it forces you to play aggressive because you know how hard the two putt is if you don't hit it close to a pin. And on the eleventh it's become a hole where people are like, you know what, I'll take my chances trying to get up and down for four and if I walk away with five, it's not a
big deal. But if you give the players the opportunity to look and say, oh, I can make a three, you're probably going to also get a lot more sixes and sevens, And that, to me makes a much more interesting golf course. And it's really what makes Augusta for the most part, so exciting. What makes twelve at Augusta such an iconic championship hole is that literally anything can happen there.
A two is easily had.
It's a wedge or a sevens easily had if you if you just hit a bad shot.
And I you know, I think everybody remembers when that happened.
So one of the other subtle changes that I've heard, I haven't seen it, and that's why I kind of left out of the article a little bit. You know, I didn't I wanted to kind of focus on stuff that you know was very easibly discernible.
But I've heard that the chipping area on the right.
Is is a couple of foot to a couple feet lower, which makes those mounds, those amazing mounds on that right side of the green, which is a really cool feature.
And you see it.
You see these green side mounds at Pasta Tiempo too. You see them at Jockey Club in Argentina. You see Mackenzie loved using these mounds. They he used them on eight at Augusta, you see him there. But on eleven, if you bail right, if it's a little bit low, those mounds become even more of a factor and it makes it even harder to keep the ball from running
into that water because you're coming from lower. So it's gonna just incentivize people to not bail out this year, which I think is a really really great change, and it's them understanding the identity of the golf course and how the eleventh had turned into this hole that just it was It just didn't fit with the rest of the golf course.
It was just hard.
It's just one dimensional.
It leaves like the reality is now seven is that hole where it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb in its current state.
It's what eleven used to be. It's hit it here or else.
Yeah. Well, okay, so seven is a part four pretty much straight away, and the trees are really close on both sides, and the whole thing is just like hit it between the trees. You know, if you're between the trees, are fine. The bunker. The green is surrounded by bunkers, not necessarily any preference for one side of the fairway or the other. You just got to get in the fairway and then you can have a nice approach in
there to the green. So you know, going back to eleven, I remember this interpretation from an article of years a couple of years ago. But it seems like what the club did with that hole is what it did with a lot of different holes at the course, and that is to trade birdies and double bogies.
They wanted to make them harder.
They wanted the scoring average to be higher, and I think that that's a useful distinction between making something harder and making the scoring average higher. Just because the scoring average is higher doesn't necessarily mean it's more challenging. It just means that the range of scores. Sometimes the range of scores is really shrunk, and I think that the
scoring range. I'm not sure if the stats bear this out necessarily, but what it seems like they did was that they traded birdies and doubles for pars and bogies and just you know, more bogies, and so the scoring average was higher, but the hole became less dynamic.
Yeah, And I think the thing that you see across other holes that they didn't narrow, you know that they just lengthened. The lengthening kept that score distribution pretty consistent where and when I say score distribution, I mean eagles, birdies, pars, bogies, doubles, triples. If you just lengthen it keeps it retains that balance. But when you narrow and lengthen what it does is it it just shrinks the possible outcomes. And I think
this is it. I think the distinction that you hit on is everybody thinks, oh, we need to make the golf course harder, And I think the important thing is you should want to make the golf course challenging. And a whole like eleven, where you have this preferred line up, the right or bad line up, the left, and if you don't get it on the preferred line, then you're in a spot where you can't really attack in the In the spot you have to put it in is very undesirable. But if you play up the right and
you have the opportunity to attack, that's more challenging. That's you know, that's more of a game of chess. Right, Okay, I did this, but I didn't get it to where
I wanted. I didn't execute my shot. So I'm over here on the left, and now I have to figure out I either have to take those water on now or I'm going to take it on on the next shot, you know, Versus if I play up the right, I've got a really good shot, I've got helping contours with that hill, and I could feasibly hit a shot in here that goes close without taking on too much risk of the water.
And just imagine you're a player in contention on the last day of the Masters. What kind of hole would you rather face? A hole where you can fairly easily be assured of either a par or a bogie, or a hole where you could make a birdie but you might make a really big number and have a disaster
that can eject you from the tournament. I think pretty much every time somebody would say, yeah, give me that hole where I might make a bogie, but I'm not necessarily gonna do that much worse than that versus the hole where you know there's a real opportunity and you feel obligated to go for that opportunity. But if you go for too much, then then you might make that big number. Yeah, that's a big part of what makes
such a compelling tournament golf hole. And it's also something that is challenging, Right, even if you don't make a big score, even if you birdie the hole, even if most of the field birdies the hole, if that possibility looms of a catastrophe, I think that makes the whole challenging.
Yeah, and I think if you think about the entire golf course, especially if we just go down to the back nine, you know, ten birdies possible, a bogies possible.
It's you know, you don't see a lot of doubles.
There, right, you have tens of tough hole.
Two shot, there's a lot of two shot swing. There's potential for two shot swing. Eleven had become this hole where it was mostly just parers and bogies.
There were very rarely birdies.
So this it was just this hole that would like kind of like a the rare small distribution hole. Then you go to twelve, where literally anything's possible. Thirteen you've got, you know, really possible ranges of three to six.
You know, three to seven.
Fourteen is a three to five hole, right, fifteen you've got three to thirteen. You know, we've seen the same guys one year make a three, make a thirteen the next hole next year, but that one has a huge range. Sixteen has a huge range, and then seventeen to eighteen kind of like throttle down and back to that three to five range on both of those holes where it's
kind of hard to make a big mess. But eleven was the one that kind of stuck out as like you kind of got lucky if you made a birdie, and it was the one hole that didn't really fit with the rest. And now if you go down almost every hole there it has that swing potential.
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fried egg. All right back to the episode now I think that thirteen has started to become one of those holes where the range of possibilities has been narrowed, because, as you said, that hole has been literally physically narrowed, and I think that that has taken some of the
dynamism out of it. And so I wonder if if Agusta National kind of continues along this path of you know, expanding short grass areas and making certain holes wider, I wonder if some reversal of course at thirteen is possible.
I mean, it's super easy to figure out what holes are. The ones is like, you just look for the ones with the new trees, and thirteen to one with the new trees, they look kind of thirteen seventeen seven. Ye, they look you know, they look out of place. I think this is one of the things everybody marvels at the presentation of Augusta Nashell. But you go to thirteen
and those trees look just silly. There's dead trees in this really thick grove of trees over there, and it's just you know, they're young, and it just doesn't look right compared because the way they transition out of it too, it gets really wide in the lay up area, and it's like, well, this wasn't supposed to be this way, but I think they might be taken on a couple of these a year, if I had to guess, you know,
they did a few. And this is the way a lot of clubs go about making changes, and I think it's a smart way for them to go about making changes, is like, don't do it radically and do it small over time. I think, like, you know, if it wasn't the Masters, like if it was just a regular tour event, just a few people would notice, like you know that we're on the grounds like the week of.
But this is a great positive change.
And this coupled with the other really big change signals kind of a philosophical shift, which is the other big change. If you look last year's Ariel versus this year's. They have a course map aerial on their website and if you go look at that and go on Google Earth, they don't match up right now, so you can see exactly this expanded short grass and I think this is a huge, huge development. It's signaling the end of the rough era at Augusta National.
Maybe not the end, like the second cut isn't gone yet.
It's not all the way gone, but it's significantly reduced. And what you're gonna see is is fairway draped over the landforms out there. They have these big, beautiful land forms.
And one of my pet.
Peeves about course presentation is when you have these big beautiful land forms, get the short grass over all of it, you know, and that's what you're going to start to see. A few key ones that you'll see play out two, three, nine, ten. Obviously eleventh got a lot of expanded short grass, but those holes have significant contour in the fairways where the hills kind of come in to play, where you're hitting t shots, where you're gonna see balls bound down into
less desirable places than they previously were getting to. So in the case of nine, for example, this ball is gonna get into a worse and worse angle over on the right side, we're talking about hole that swings left. If you can't hit that draw, you're gonna be in a lot worse spot than you were before because that ball is going to bound right further into a worse angle to hit into that green with a severe false front.
And I think one of the things that was underrated about the second cut that was actually helpful was that it kept the spin off your golf ball. And how many times have we seen guys stand in the fairway and rip shots off the front of that green and watch it tumble down fifty yards. It's like one of my favorite shots to watch because that potential situation's there,
and now we're gonna get more of that. But the guys are going to be coming from worse angle and lower, so that spin is going to be even more pronounced, and they're going to have to spin it because they're coming over the bank a bunker from a bad angle into those front PINNs, So they're going to have to have some spin on it, but not too much spin because it'll be easy to rip it off the green from the from that fairway. So that's one big one.
Two is another big one where you're going to see maybe some balls bound on the right side when you miss right instead of getting hung up in the rough, it could bound into the pine trees there. Ten, it should bound into the pine straw on the right side. There another hole that you need to turn the ball right to left. And three should be actually pretty interesting because now every almost everybody hit driver there and there's going to be a lot more short grass left where
I think the ball. If you guys remember where Bryson lost his ball a few years ago and they had to take that cart ride back, remember that. I just remember Brett, I remember running twee. He lost this ball in the left front. It was the fall. It was the fall masters, I think, oh, okay, and then he had to take the cart ride back by himself, by himself,
and okay. I can't remember what song that Brendan put on it, but uh, but yeah, that should be more fun to watch because balls are going to get in a little bit further below the green and a further left of guys that you know, they've been just driving it up there and taking the chip up, which I think is kind of a smart play that webshots does not look fun at all.
The web shot from the fairway. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really dicey because the slope in the in the green is so strong with the movement of the land, and the land there moves to the left right, so when you're when you're left, you're you're well below, way below. And so that's kind of a theme with the short
grass expansions. Look at the low sides of the hole and where the short grass has been pushed out, where the second cut has been pushed back on the low sides of holes, that's where you're going to see more
balls running out. And that introduces a necessary dimension I think for nine to ten especially, but also it sounds like for three where if you're missing to the side where you're not supposed to miss, the hazard is now the land, which is how it should be, because the big defense at Augusta National, aside from the greens, is the topography of the property, and there it's working against you.
It's just removing the barriers, right, It's removing the things that stop balls from getting to worse places, which has been the short the rough.
It's not like menacing rough.
It just stops the ball from rolling to where it might end up being, which ends up you know, it gets to a worse and worse spot the more it rolls down the hill. Almost in every case at Augusta, because you're rolling to a worse angle. You know a lot of the angle, a lot of the ideal lines are where you have to hug, hug a side of the fairway that also has a contour if you think about ten, you need to hug the left side. Nine
you have to hug the left side. Three the best way to play it if you're going for that green is to hug the right side. And now if you the more you go left, the further you're gonna send, it's gonna send you left.
You know. Five, you have to hug the left side.
What that's the way Augusta was designed is there's ideal lines of charm, right.
There are these in.
If you're there, then your next shot is significantly easier. But to get there, you have to hit a very good shot, and sometimes you have to deal with a hazard to get there.
Yeah, And it's not just hazards that Augusta relies on to create those lines of charm. It's often land. The land, yeah, as we're saying, And that's that's part of what makes this golf course so great is that it uses its incredible endowment of land to create strategy. And that's what gets a little bit weakened when you start to put in this second cut, because it's really, as you indicated earlier, it's not a super punishing hazard in and of itself.
Hitting out of it is not hugely difficult for these pros. I mean, you saw how the likes of Bryson dealt with the rough at Wingfoot, which is far more penal. But what it does do is is it slows the course down and it works against this idea that the land is actually the hazard at Augusta, and so it should be cool to see that come back in. Now. The changes that you've mentioned, a lot of them are fairly subtle. You know, they're not going to be as
noticeable as the changes at eleven. I'm sure the telecast is going to cover the changes at eleven quite thoroughly because it's so visible what happened there. But these short grass expansions might end up being even more telling of what could happen in the future at Augusta. They could they could end up being more important. Yeah.
Yeah, And another huge shage they made was obviously the fifteenth at New Tea Box. I've heard that they reworked the area in the landing area too to kind of recreate a hill and and so you know what it's going to lead to on fifteen, which I think is really exciting. I think this has become I don't think like architecturally For the everyday player, this is a great
golf hole. But for the professionals it's a thrilling hole to watch because it really makes them do something they don't want to do, which is they have to play aggressively on their second shot because there's trouble short and there's trouble long. There's nowhere really to bail. The bunker on the right of the green is like the only bail.
And you don't and you don't want to lay up because the web shot is just as hell exactly, you know, arguably more so because of the because of the spin factor.
Yeah, so this has become a really great hole, and I think it's just going to be enhanced with longer clubs in And if you think about the fifteenth, I've said this on the Shotgun start a little bit, but like the fifteenth has become what thirteen I think used to be. It's become the iconic, go for it, monumental decision hole at Augustin National because thirteen it's just so short, and you know, they've kind of jerrymandered the hole so much that it's like a three wood seven iron. Now
if you hook it, you hook it. If you don't you don't and then you lay up, you know. But the fifteenth is the spot where you stand in the fairway and you have to hit the shot that you don't want to hit.
Yeah, I mean, the one I agree with that. The one revision that I'd make is that it's not really a decision so much as a moment of execution where you have to hit this shot right. Usually, if they're in the fairway, they're not deciding between laying up and going for it, unless they're sort of over to the left and behind those trees there, and you know, maybe they lay up because they don't want to hook it around and risk all that. But generally, if they're in
the fair way, they are going for the green. But the rare site here, I think is that they have to hit a super solid mid iron. Basically, maybe it's become a short iron for some guys. I don't exactly know what they're hitting in there, but I've seen some mid and long irons being hit there, and they have to hit that shot so well right. They have to hit it right on the button, And for me, that's where the tension comes from.
I think the thing too, is that the best golfers the best golfer, you know, whether you know it or not, is extremely conservative. Like the better the golfer, the more conservative they are. So what I mean by making a decision is it's more of a decision of all right, well I got to hit this shot. There's nowhere else I can aim and hopefully miss the shot right close, Like there's nowhere I can't aim here forty feet right
and be I mean in between clubs. I can't take the club this longer and just shoot it over the green and shoot it to the back of the green. That's the way really good players think a lot where there's a hazard in front of the green, Oh, I'll just hit it five yards long.
Here, you can't do that.
Like, this is the moment where they have to, like you said, execute, but they also have to make the mindful decision that they are hitting the golf shot.
They have nowhere to bail. Yeah, I'm not gonna I mean, I guess if we're going to bail anywhere, it's out to the bunker on the right. But even that, I mean, like, like you don't want to do that.
Well, you could hit a tree and you could bounce back into the water. You know, there's all kind of like there's no safe harbor on this hole, which I think is it's like I said, I don't think this is a good golf hole for like the everyday player necessarily, Like if you were looking at the golf holes at Augusta, it would be one of the weaker holes for like the everyday member play. But for professional golf, I find it really really compelling.
Well it is, and you know, and I don't know if I could make a great argument that it's that it's a good golf hole in general. I mean, there's not that many ways to play it, and you know, the pond in front of the green is just sort of like whatever. The green is ultra severe for its speed. But the fact of the matter is when the Masters comes down to that point on Sunday, one of the most memorable shots in the round, without fail, is that
approach into fifteen. You remember it every year. Every year, everybody holds their breath as whoever is in the lead is getting ready to hit that shot. And you remember that shot from the winners, Sergio Garcia.
That's unbelievable. I remember, I'll never forget.
I'll let out a visit an audible yelp, like a yelped right because of that that shot, I was like, you know, it is it's such is in what it should be even better longer because it's going to be longer irons.
That's right. Yeah, that's why I think that this is
where lengthening actually does get me excited. Usually I'm not that stoked about news that, you know, a five hundred and twenty yard hole has become a five hundred and forty yard hole, But in this case, yeah, instead of hitting an eight iron or whatever, it's going to be a six iron or a five iron, and that just ratchets up the tension even more because just hitting that kind of that club pure is a thing that pros can do that your normal player cannot do, and seeing
them truly execute that shot is just such a pleasure. And so yeah, I mean, that's that's the coolest shot pretty much on the entire course, maybe outside of the t shot at twelve, and maybe it has surpassed that in terms of just cheer tension because of where it is in the round. But in any case, that that should be really fun to watch now. As for like looking forward into the next several years, if you were to choose where the club would go next in making
some alterations to the course, where would you go? All right, So we talked about this in a podcast not not long ago. This was a question, right, Yeah, did that make it into the podcast?
I think it did, But like, okay.
So maybe we don't need to go I would I.
Would just say, like, I think the big decision to the bunker style, right, is whether you go back to that Mackenzie style or you keep these you know, kind of ice cream scoops that they have now that I'm not a fan of. I think a lot of people like them. But I would say, like, I don't think the club wants to move away.
From the ice cream scoops. That's just my general sense of It.
Would be stunning if they did, because then they'd change a bunch of other things along.
I mean, if they went back to like dirty or bunker sand, if they went away for the white and went to like a natural bunker sand, because they have an old golf course that, you know, it would be truly unbelievable.
But that's probably not.
Like.
What I would love to see is just the continued push in the direction of the seventh of Hey, let's look at the holes that we've altered that no longer fit really the rest of the character of the golf course. And it's really easy to single them out. You know, seven, it's seventeen is super narrow. Now those two are really the ones that I think have been changed the most in terms of their corridor and their intention.
Maybe five, but five is pretty pretty wide. Right now, they're just goofing around with where the tea.
Is good because that those bunkers are reinstated, right those bunkers are heroic carry and if you don't carry the bunkers, you want to be as close to those bunkers as possible, which is the effectively the road hole. Like that hole is the road hole. So imagine the old Course hotel being those bunkers. And that's the strategy of it is you want to be as close as possible to the old Course hotel. And then it opens up the green, I mean that green. If you have never been, there's
a couple of greens out there. If you've ever been, they're just you see them and you're just like, holy shit, I can't believe this is a real green. And the fifth green is one of those it's the front is so big.
Fourteen gets a lot of recognition. Five doesn't get as much recognition for having a crazy green.
But it's nuts. I mean, the false front is huge. I mean, like the photo.
You don't get photos with ground screw out there, but the photo is if or if a player is on that bottom front. If somebody ever got a good shot of a player in good light with the shadow coming down with the player at the base of the front, it's just unbelievable how vaga it is.
I mean, the sixth green also is nuts green.
Yeah, and seventeen We've talked about this off the microphone, but seventeen gets kind of short shrift by the telecast sometimes because the angles that you see of that whole
don't really do it justice. I'd love to see it from that approach angle in front of the green really showing kind of how cool that green site is, because I think it just gets flattened a little bit in the way that they show its angles usually behind Yeah, it's high behind the green, you just don't see quite what that what they're facing when they hit that shot.
I will say that like in this it'll be interesting, like CBS has been spectacular in terms of where their products come in the last year and a lot of their improvement has been camera angles. Yes, it's become so much more enjoyable to watch golf on CBS. And will it carry over into the in the Masters, hopefully we see some of those really new camera angles. Eighteen eighteen's another one that needs to.
You think, the shoot off the teeth. I think the bunkers on the left, Yeah, yeah, those are yeah.
I mean the story behind those or they didn't want it, they didn't want those to get built ever are what's it? I can't remember the recall the exact story, but Cliff Roberts like made somebody come put I think that was Cobb's first work there was putting those in. Nobody wanted to put them in there. The bunkers on the left are so silly there it goes against the entire ethos of the golf course.
You have to you have to either lay up short of them or hit like.
A slice or now people could just hit it over them.
Well, which is what I remember. They They have moved those bunkers and maybe added one in, uh, you know, in the twenty first century. But I remember when when Tiger was out there. He was hitting it over the bunker there. He was just blasting it way over and then then taking what he got on the other side. Yeah, I mean, clearly the uh that that whole needs needs a look. But in any case, exciting things. Uh. You know, Augusta is always going to move a little bit slowly
on these fronts. It's not a trend following place. It is a trend setting place. And so it's encouraging that some short grass expansions are happening and maybe then the influence of Augusta will start to rub off on other courses as well. That interesting storyline to track there. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins. All Right, so we have an exciting week coming up here. We have the final round of the ANNWA tomorrow and
of course the Chevron Championship this weekend. Major championship season has officially started, and then of course we're rolling into Masters week and we've got a lot planned for the Masters. At the Friday Egg. We should be coming out with a lot of written material on our website. We'll have at least two editions of the Frida Egg Podcast and daily installments of the Shotgun start with Brendan and Andy.
Lots of stuff to follow along with and to keep up to date on it, I would recommend following our social media accounts. So we are the Friday Egg on Twitter with underscores between each word, and we are Frida Egg Golf on Instagram, again with underscores between each word. So see you next week and thanks for listening.
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