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, fridagridagg bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. This afternoon. I have the distinct pleasure of being joined by Amon Lynch, contributor for Golf Week. Sometimes show up on Golf Channel. You're on there and what would you say that is a contributor on Golf Channel.
Mm hmm and recourring.
Irritant probably, but the best way to describe it.
It's always a pleasure.
To be in the air.
Constant.
Yeah, we're coming here from sand Valley. Just got done playing Man Dooms today, played with Sandbach yesterday, we played Sand Valley the day before. What do you think about this new Midwest destination?
The resort itself is fantastic.
It's you know, Mike Kaniser is by the only brand named developer in golf, and everyone knows what they're getting with Kaiser, which is a particularly elevated kind of golf.
It's an elevated experience to be here.
He attracts people who are doing passionate about the game, and he's done that at Bandon Dunes obviously, he's done it at camp At Links with Ben Callender.
And this place is a.
Lot easier to get to than either one of those. So my guess is it's probably going to have.
A very strong future.
I think they will announce the third course architect later this year. Really help to pretty durn good golf courses here right now on.
The sound books. So it's already a great destination.
Yeah.
The proximity to Chicago, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Madison, Yeah, it's by far the easiest of all the resources, I think. I think stream song people say it's remote, but it's like forty five minutes from Tampa, hour from Orlando. That's a pretty easy one to get to too. But it's this golf courses. It's a very cool place and it's been amazing to watch it grow over the last couple of years. Like I remember coming out here when they had nine holes open of the original Sand Valley course and it
was just a trailer. And now every time I come back, I feel like there's.
Two three new buildings and none of it actually did trucks from the golf, which you don't often see.
Reason work.
You can go to a lot of great courses early in their lifespan and then you see things get looked up around them in a lot of cases is to detract from the golf experience.
And as you see it found it.
I can't but here the golf re means primary and nothing else that they add to the experience, what it adds to the general experience.
Of being here. It does not in any way diminish or detract from the caliber of the golf. They don't land our ways with the lads or or get it in the way. It's not intrusive in anyway.
It's just interesting because I think with golf everybody is always trying to do more to like make the game more interesting with their grow the game movement. And this is the model here is just like pure golf, and nothing detracts or there's no add ons to the golf like it that are trendy or you know, different things like they aren't trying to do any gimmicks here. You know, they're just putting the golf out and you know, presenting the golf in a very elegant and enjoyable fashion.
But that in itself is growing the game.
When you look at what they're doing even abandon and they have the punch bowl, they have the preserved course here, they've got the sandbox. That is a template for what ought to grow the game around the country. The first tea has not grown the game, is not growing the game and will not grow the game. But if you have a time that has something like the winter Park nine or the sandbox here, or even a putting the course.
You drive through North Berwick and Scotland and you see the kids course there every night full until the sun goes back. And so what they're doing here is that kind of curiosity to a lot of golfers. But that's actually I believe the template for what could grow the game in this country is to have more kind of concentrated experiences, whether it's a nine hole course, a six hole loop and you're putting course. That is how you grow the game is to present the game with them.
Stop dressing up with this nonsense of teaching kids or and integrity and honesty. That's a parent's job.
It's not a golf job to teach them that, and it's.
A cop out to get behind these nonsense screw the game schemes that don't actually deliver anything.
The peg and juniorly screw the game because they're actually out, they're playing the game. That is.
The goal is to get kids out of play, and you just don't need eighteen home golf courses to subject kids to that. At the deep end, we need more ways to entice kids into the game early with a limited but can immersive experience. And what they're doing here is the tempt that she'll be taken for ruling the game in other times and resorts and municipalities.
Around the country. Yeah, I think so many golf courses should close across the country, but so many of them should look at and you have a list, I mean
you work them all the time. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of them, but there's a lot of them should close their eighteen holes and look at like how you could do like the sandbox, which is you could do that on what thirty acres, forty acres you could do There's a Mike Clayton, Mike Cocking, Jeff Ogilvie's group at Shady Oaks in Dallas I saw, or Fort Worth I saw they have this nine hole course. You could route it like nine different ways or seven different ways.
You could have a different little nine hole golf course every day of the week like and on that course you could hit driver around hold you can hit You know, to me, you don't need eighteen holes, you don't need one hundred and fifty acres anymore. Like you need just something that is that provides a variety, that's fun, that's interesting, that is you know, quality architecture, and that's going to get people back.
Because Winter Park is a perfect example. Is it's jam packed. They they've turned their business completely around.
They went from a golf course I was losing two hundred thousand dollars a year of one that makes money now.
And when you look at the actual cost to go and play winter Park, it's actually just a nominal fee, even if you're not a city resident. So you also have to look at the economics and what it costs to maintain a bad eighteen to whole golf course versus a pretty good nine hole course and maybe a public course or some other addendum to it.
It's a lot cheaper.
And I don't necessarily think it would have a huge impact on revenue if it's done correctly, because let's says, if who wants to play a losing eighteen whole golf course. But there are people out there, I think who are looking for a better alternative that takes less time, costs less money and where they actually feel welcome and their kids being welcome or were women be welcome. And that's not true of a lot of places in the country.
It's cool here they're doing that five dollars for kids at the Sandbocks, five dollars to go play their new six hole loop at sand Valley. It's like, you know, that's that's a good way, you know, to get kids out and play good golf. I grew up. I got to play good golf because I worked at a really good country club, like and I got playing privileges, so I got to understand what good golf was, and that
to me is so important. I think you play, the better golf you play, and the more you know good golf that's available as the mass public is so important because one of the problems with American golf is how private is and I mean, you got compared to where you're from Ireland, Northern Ireland. That I mean, it's a completely different model.
Yeah.
I grew up on a par three and I can hope par three course near my home and I really should have taken it as an omen back then. I'm horrible slice and was envied right and every hold. So I and most of my childhood trying to protect my goods and services as I planned over barbar offenses to retrieve the golf.
Ball I had from the fields.
But it cost the equivalent of about four dollars to go play, and this is going back twenty five thirty years. And my friends and then we go out there and we play four wrongs in a row. It took us nineteen minutes to go around. And that's what we did all day during the summer. And you know, those things aren't particularly common. But you know, every time in village in Scotland and in Ireland has a golf course, it's
not necessarily going to win architecture awards. But people go out, they can go out and playing jeans.
They're welcome to do.
So they're just going to go out and slap all around. The kids are going to go do the same. But at least it gets them into the game, and I don't feel as though that's necessarily as much of a culture trick within the golf Outside of the UK, I believe it is a Australia on pros that I've talked to over there in my own experiences there, I think
it's a much more open enron. But in the United States there's whether it's public or private, there is a tendency that with the great courses to build a wall around them and put up sign it restricts who was welcome at any particular time.
Of the day or night.
So that's a culture that has to change if you really want to grow the game. But in this economy, bad courses are going to continue to close. So why not looking for an alternative means why stick with the one model that has proven not to work. If your course is struggling, look for something else that might perhaps offer a chance that can remedy.
Remedy in the situation.
It's crazy that if you had a say, a donut shop that was I'd serve identical DNAs to the donut shop shop down the street, and the donut shop down the street just like got more traffic than you to keep doing the exact same thing, like that donut shop owner would change what he's doing, and some sort of they're doing in some sort of way, whether the change of recipe changes, but in America is doing jump.
In doesn't have the same baker and the problem you have in a lot of golf courses that certainly in the last thirty forty years, it's the same field architectural strategies that exist.
From one to the other.
They hire the same guys to go around making the same mistakes that they need somewhere else because they've never bothered to go back and see how their courses play in the field and whether or not and he will enjoy them. I had a conversation with David Kidd last week for a piece. I was riding Golf Week and he was flashing back ten years when he was at the probably the top of his craft, or why do
he consider to be there. He'd opened a bunch of golf courses of course in Scotland, teborow Stone, Bray Abrahamis Dunes, but he became very aware that his courses were winning much more in the way of awards than they were with fans. Because golfers kept telling him, you know what, he was beautiful and enjoy the experience, but it beat to help him, and I'm not going back.
So if you have an audience that would.
Even when paying your compliment with tell you they're not coming back, that should indicate there's a problem. And David eventually realized that he was off the path that he wanted to be on, and eventually, as we see here this week, a man of doings found his way back to it.
But that's a rarity among the architects. Most of them.
Continued building the same type of golf and offering the same kind of golf experience.
As they do everywhere else, regardless of the.
Demographic that they're trying to appeal to, the time they're in, the topography they're working with.
It really is the Xerox school of golf course architecture.
Yeah, municipal golf that always seems the one be the one that loses with golf course architecture because it ends up being born. I don't think the golf courses here are necessarily a model for municipal golf, but there's a lot of things that you could take away from what they do here and bring them you know that you're never going to find a municipality that has, like, you know, twenty thousand acres of sand, Like that's not going to happen.
And maybe not having you know, eighty yard wide fairways that you have to you know, maintain and cut is necessarily the best part. But having the corridors and a width that these places have is so important because I mean, you've already alluded to your slice. It keeps you in the ballpark for a little bit longer.
Yeah, I think the value here isn't so much the practical way you can move the sound volume model elsewhere.
It's kind of theophical underpinions of it.
And I think what Mammoth Doones does is blow out of the water this notion that there has to be an antagonistic relationship between playability and challenge, that a course that is challenging to skilled golfers has to be punishing to the rest of us, which is a nonsense, And Mammoth Dunes proves it's a nonsense because the conturs and the width and corridors that will keep someone like me in in the romand albeit not today, is those are not the contours or targets that a plus two like
you is going to look at You're looking at a very different targets to try to work your way to the pain.
And that I'm out there on the edge of just trying to.
Stay in the game with the same golf ball I started with. That's eminently possible. I don't think you found it an easy golf course out there today.
And that's the genius of this.
You can actually have quality god courses that don't need this kind of topography. But you also don't need the killer bunkers, the water.
Hazards scattered at every turn.
It doesn't have to be turned into some kind of medieval rack that you're going to stretch it off or on for five hours. That's the philosophical underpinning of Sound Valley as it is abounded, but particularly here at Mammoth Duns.
That's what's portable in this experience.
Yeah, I think that there's like a big disconnect and I saw at Trinity Forest and when you start to think about the idea of challenging golf versus hard golf, so like a single shot is challenging it, and especially at a course like Mammothun's that's out there, Like I look at that golf course and I think, like, go birdie every hole, Like that's why, that's what the challenge is out there. And this is where I think it all comes back to the illusion of par and how
people are obsessed with parr. It's you know, on one day, par should be completely different than the next day. If we play in a thirty mile on hour wind, the score of par is completely different than if you play on a dead call morning the day after a big rain, like the golf course is way easier one day, So like, why is par still the same? But the idea of challenging and asking different questions throughout the round of players.
And I think, you know, too many golf courses are too dependent on t ball, like and I'd say my strength of the players driving the golf ball. I like when they're tight when I play in.
Competition, And that's my absolute weakness right now, to the point where I might now that ought bay again. But this is the problem here, is that the challenge that it's asking of me, mean, is exactly the same as the challenge it's asking of you. And that's to me, the kooky coator is that you see in a lot of golf it will present its challenge off the tea and it's going to offer you the opportunity to hit a difficult shot, and it's going to offer me the
opportunity to hit an impossible one. And the cost to you of a slightness is a lot less than it's going to be for me with the slightness, because my margin for.
Error is much greater anyway. And that's the problem.
I see it in a lot of golf courses that if a golf course does not have options, it's not interesting.
And live or die are not options to me. And that's what you see in so many golf courses.
You see it in Greg Norman's, in Jack Nicholas's golf course in peat Dane in which Jones, you see it time and time again, is just the same absolute dearth of options that.
Are being.
Offered to guys. You can see the challenge it's being.
Presented, but they're presenting the exact same challenge and severity of challenge to wy be different ability levels and that just gets boring.
Well, it's the same question over and over again. It's hit straight. I think you know, my most fun shot today that I played, I missed a green and I had a really awkward lie on like this sandy native area off to the left of the green. I hit, you know, there was nothing in front of me on the way, and I could have hit a lob wedge, which was but I hit like a little pitching wedge, pitch like.
A chip and run out of it, and I kind of thought about it. It's like if that was a deep bunker. I thought about the shot though, for a while.
And that is the fun of golf, is figuring out what you're going to do, not being told what to do.
It's also the fun part.
It's figuring out what the ball is going to do after it hits the ground, which we saw that a trending forrest when you were out there at the.
Tournament and how often you actually get to watch your guys have to worry about what the ball is going to do when it hits the ground.
I mean, I remember this argument with chan Lee earlier this year when he said that drive of Dustin Johnson's at Kapalua, which was whatever four hundred and something the yards to kick in range, that it was the greatest shot ever hit to me.
The one and the really interesting thing.
About that shot was what happened when the ball hit the ground, which was probably ninety yards shy of where it ended up. And we just don't get to see that very often, where the elite golfers are forced to consider the conturers and what's going to happen to the ball. We see it unsure every week where the ball hits spins back to the hole. But it's basically hit can stop God, which is just tedious lunbelief to watch.
Do you think that the venues Pger Tour dow or is a venue to the golf tournament.
It's important to the golf tournament in the sense that they need to be able to accommodate the infrastructure that exists.
For a tour event.
It's important to all but about three or four pure players only in the sense of does it ask them to execute? They're not interested in the test of imagination. They are interested in the test of execution, and which is what separates this kind of golf here at Sam Valley from a lot of the other courses we see. But from a viewer perspective, I actually think it's quite important because you see this, it seems like the same
that they're playing every week. It's the same guys at the same golf course being offered the same test, but they're just going to head it as far as they can go to sandwich from They're rough onto the green and either make the pun or to public carry on to the next tone. And you know, the guys on CBS or whatever going to tell to you won't believe how difficult this shot is. Well, actually we willn't because we see everyone else playing all day long.
It's it's almost like you're stuck.
In the ground whole day of watching lousy golf courses with boring golf being played. And that was what was so refreshing about Trenedy Forrest is that it was a great break with the normal, and that was a tournament that needed to do something to kind of resurrect itself, and there are ways you can do that. Sure did
it by change in the format. And suddenly people have forgotten that your players voted that the worst course on tour a couple of years ago, and now another course that they voted as among the worst contrur was the at and t Oaks course that they used to play the Barron Nelson.
On which crews coins t that four season. Yeah, that was the wasn't the at and TAKS courses at sant Antony. That's that's your boy Normans as well. Again, that's they all together, Texas.
And the least to at least offensive thing about that is the fact that it's named for a corporation.
But you know, the Baron Nelson Tournament found a way to suddenly make itself.
They must talked about it then on tour this year outside of say the players and the Masters, because it found.
A way to move to an intriguing style of venue, and they.
Took the risk of going with Gror and Crenshaw on that golf course that draws in the tournament, and suddenly it's a very different experience from what we have been seeing in certainly on the Texas swing recently, but even on matur in general, there just aren't that many interesting golf courses out there.
I think it's one of the prive of three or four best venues that the tour goes to earn their ad already like, and that's not a.
Competitive category of trur venues.
Well, I think what you alluded to that is fascinating is the idea of variety. When I look at the PGA Tour. It whether it's the format that's seventy two hole stroke play week after week after week after week after week after week, or whether it's the golf courses that are you know, eerily similar in just different states. It putting having variety. I think is they should. They should love that idea and do everything they can to
go to different venues, experience, experiment with different formats. And I mean, if you were running the PGA Tour, what would be the first thing you do?
Probably done, Kevin n We're still play and anyone else who needs you know two three.
Minutes centurally that it's done the ball, and I actually think you can work with some of the venues that are right there. Part of the problem here is a significant point problem is not the course. It's the setup.
And the setup that the turer enforces every week is monotonous.
It's asking the same questions every week.
Of players on tour. So I think the trure itself for some responsibility. It's not just on the architects here or even the tournament's and their chrunt of venue.
A lot of it is on the trurer. So there is something they can do about that. I actually think they ought to.
I think they should change some of the formats out there. I think the team event was fine. There has to be a better alternative to the forty odd tournaments year where it is seven or two holes of struggling with a mediocre field. That might give a couple of decent names in there, but you have to get an extraordinary tournative events in Sunday afternoon to really get the viewing
audience interest. And you just can't have this kind of mediocre product as often as is actually presented under And that is not exclusively the problem of the course, nor even opposed an exclusive problem of the drawer, but it's something that they can and Sho'll address the.
Set up things interesting because something I know players were really excited about at Trinity was the variety and the part threes, you know, having a short little guy on a and how every tour course seemingly it is all two hundred plus yard part three. Just because there's a back to two hundred yards doesn't mean they have to set it up that way.
And Graham McDonald got ripped by one of the Twitter trolls at Trinity Forest for taking a little bit longer than Norman because he's actually a very speedy player to make an up and dine on the seventeenth hole, because there were opting options that Graham could have used to play that shot. And to me, the problem is not a guy who takes a little bit low to consider a white number of options to execute a show.
The problem is.
Every other week on durer Or, the guy who's been presented with one option still takes an eternity to play the shof I mean, you know that, to me is the biggest problem in the game actually is still playing.
That's really what the Duror could address. And you know, I could tolerate golf course is.
Being played quickly well, golf course has been paid played at an achingly slow a place.
Is just intolerable.
Is a problem. And if you think about like what he was thinking about there, to me, that's where the broadcast sometimes messes. The boat is Like the most compelling aspect of golf is listening to a player and a caddy talk about a decision where they're talking about where they're going to land the ball, what trajectory they're coming in at, you know, what type of spin they're going to have on it.
Because that and that requires the broadcast to just not say anything, I mean, and sit there and let the moment happen and then see what if the player.
Executes the shot, like getting more like allowing that to happen more would be so I mean, I think that's so compelling. I don't know if the regular viewer does. But that's how everybody can understand what they're talking about and see how good and how talented these guys are. Where they're talking about landing at one f or one eight at different trajrectories with different spin. I mean, that's the talent of these guys.
Yeah, But get in the announcers to actually know when science.
Is of more value than words, I think is a bit of a struggle because ultimately, they're paid to voice their opinions and nothing can be said until those guys and how they're saying it, it seems, but there are a lot of times, but it seems to try it from the moment of the broadcast. But again, I don't necessarily think you can legislate for the announcers. It would be nice if there was a little more awareness of
what the viewer experience is. And I think that's also lacking quite often in the coverage of the game these days.
So it's crazy. We're we only have a little over three months left in the PGA Tour season. What's been your kind of takeaways so far from from what we've seen, you know, Masters players and just the overall season. You know, we're about to hit the kind of the big, big events here coming up.
What's actually been surprising to me is how many of the biggest stars in the game have shown so much form this year, and yet we still haven't really had much in the way of those total shootout accidents we're all eighteen for, particularly in an event that matters. I mean, there was a certainly a dramatic finish shop at the Masters, but Reed wasn't particularly challenged. It wasn't go for the throat kind of experience there. But there are a lot
of guys being really good golf. And you know, we've seen Phil win, Rory wins Tigers, showing signs that he will win again. Which have you asked me that a year ago? I would have thought you were kind of crazy. I believe that, but I do think he's going to win again, and it's it's shaping up with so much promise. We just need one of those kind of y're o defining tournaments, which we haven't had in a very long time.
Because to me, what the tour is missing more than anything right now is a rival And yes, you can argue that it's great to have a dominant player, which we don't have, and we have a lot of great players, but not a lot of dominant players.
But go back look for rivalries in this game.
You have to go back to perhaps great Norman mcfondo twenty plus years ago, twenty five years ago. Before that, you go back forty years to Jack and Tom Watson. Obviously the Hanak and carry well in there as well, But this game hasn't had the kind of rivalry that is fought out in the tournaments that matter. Nobody remembers Jack and Arnie, or sorry Jack and Arnie, Jack and Tom Watson fighting it out in the Andy Williams San
Diego Upen. They've fought it out in the Open Championship and the Masters in the US and events that mattered, and that just doesn't seem to happen in this generation.
The best players are very seldom two going at.
Each other on Sunday afternoon in the beutest tournaments in the game, and that's what we need. More.
It seems like there's an on that never like the parody is at an all time high in the game. Where if I put the top twenty five players in the world in front of you for the Snekak, would you be surprised if any of them were No.
I think the pool of players, the pool of players who can win the biggest defense now is probably bigger than it's ever been. But in some ways the pool that does win seems smaller and less impressive. You know, it's a great career now to have one a major. Jordan has three, Rory's got four, and they are by some margin the.
Most dominant guys of that generation.
Well, Tiger had a lot more than three or four at that point in his career, obviously, And you just wish that we.
Could see someone stretch it out a little bit and see who comes with. Let's find somebody.
Who can add a couple of majors to their resume and see which of this generation has the stomach to make a fight out of it and elevate their own game, because ultimately, a dominant player will elevate other folks, and you can look at tennis over the last ten years and say, yes, Roger Federer's indisputably the biggest player who's ever played the game, but a lot of his career is defined by a rivalry against the dall or Djokovic.
He elevated them, they at times surpassed him, but it made it for a compelling year in tennis every single year. Those were the guys who were there in the terms that mattered.
And that's our big loss right now.
Basketball's got Lebron that's like, you know, the undisputed greatest of this generation. But there's guys like Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, you know, that are pushing them. You know, it's not it's not something that he automatic. And I agree, and part of me wonders, Tiger was the last dominant player? Will he be the last dominant player? No?
I think that kind of thing is cyclical.
I don't necessarily believe anyone will ever play the game again the Tiger did in around two thousand, perhaps even in the mid two thousands, when he.
Was just demonstrably way better than everyone else.
In the game.
He knew and name do it. But I do think we'll have another dominant player. It just seems once in a generation thing.
I don't know who that's going to be in this generation yet, nor what will constitute dominance. Because you also have to remember that Tiger thoroughly skewed the perception of what the best player in the world ought to do. Weekend we got because no one who held that dominant position before him ever did what he did week after week after week.
And clearly none of these guys right now can do that. It's considered a hot streak.
If they play well three or four weeks in a row, we'll do it fifty two weeks in a row Tigers did in his brind So we see dominance not at the level we did, but it would be a kind of.
A cheaper form of dominance, but somebody would get there.
Again, I go back to the dominance of Tigers diminished ever since probably one, and the real distance of explosion, And part of me believes that, I mean, technology has brought everybody closer, not necessarily the regular amateur player, but from a high level player perspective, there's no way you can't say that hybrids haven't allowed players to be better. And you know, then you know the greatest skill. Donald Ross said the greatest skill and golf is the ability
to hit towering long iron shots. And that was in nineteen hundred. If you talk to anybody about Sevvy or Jack or Arnold Palmer, what you know one of their greatest skills was hitting towering long irons. So beyond every think you know, the hybrid technology, track man, all this stuff has contributed, I believe to a homoginization of the game.
To slight bit.
Yeah, I think it's dragged It's not that it's dragged the best players down. I think they're still the best players. It's allowed a lot of mediocre durer players to have very nice careers where they can play and compete at a very nice level without ever ever hanching having to be great if not that much has been asked of them, and the shots that separate the people who win tournaments
and important tournaments are not demanded of players anymore. When you saw last year Tour, the longest iron DJ had into any Part four was the sixth hron So once yes, and I don't believe DJ.
Can't hit low matters. He obviously can.
He's among the two or three best players in the world right now. He's not being asked to and distance is such and it doesn't have to And I do think that's kind of created this pool of players that is miles wide but about a middle meter deep.
As there when it comes to the ability to separate themselves.
From the pack, I believe even if we have at some point in the future by vocation or ball roll back or anything like that, I still believe the best players will be the best players at that point. What it will do is separate the also rounds who are skating by with technology rather steal.
I believe, like the top fifteen to twenty players will still be the top you know, they will still be some of the top players in the game, like they will the top five will still be the five best players in the game. Where I think you'll see if shakeup is in the middle tier, where it goes back to what we're talking about with golf, Like I think
that the ability to the ball's way over it. I think and from like a from a viewer standpoint, a game with heroic recovery shots is way more interesting than a game where it's just a tactical, precision game where.
It's that challenge you to find a single golfound anywhere in the world you can remember a great drive seventy Bostero Center hit. Yeah, but they can kind of chapter and verse of some of the short game shots that the executed over the years.
Same with Tiger.
You know, people remember that shippen a Gusta, and they don't remember a lot of the three hundred and fifty yard drive because they all look the same, they all end up in the same place. So it's the challenge is Pookie color, whereas it's much more situational and involves many more options and a wider skill set to execute the closer to the business end of the hole you get. And I think that's where the real joy of watching this game and the great players.
Guys, what uh, what do you think of Aaron Hills last year?
That one I watched from Afar happily, So I just thought it looked like a faery, boring golf course.
I thought it was a a rather non descript major championship. You know, I've always associated.
With the us op the bone that makes these guys squeak in agony, and that one didn't except for Kevin No complaining about the referre in the week, which he had then got down. I just didn't feel as though it did not have the gun on the aura of a major championship. Brooks kept get thirdly deserving winner, wonderful player, but it did not strike me as being timber of the US Up when you've come to.
Expect why do we hold on to this idea of scoring with the US Open all the games clearly changed.
Well, that's the supposed question for Matt Davis.
I'm not on the USGA executive committee yet, although I keep up with somebody I get the call because you're why.
I do not own a blue blazer, so that might be a problem.
I don't necessarily think that challenge and scoring are one and the same, and perhaps the US Open folks do believe that.
But I think Brooks Ketkill will probably tell you that he found Aaron Hill's challenging in last year's Open.
But I'm I'm sure there's a.
Lot Moreganis are going to tell you that Chinico Kills is challenging when they get there in a couple of weeks, and it's a lot of that.
Concern comes down to the course set up.
I believe the USDA should move away from this idea of power and the defense of it. But again then you move into the idea of the equipment issues and the distance issues. It's a real Pandora's box when you just tried to define challenge versus scoring, because how do you rain in scoring or expand the challenge without getting into the way Guys are able to overpower virtually any golf course. So then do you have to grow in the fairways? Do you have to have rough that's waisted high?
You know, everything seems to be interconnected in that argument, but it does feel as though there's a Company Jesus movement coming in a debate within the game of golf.
Yeah, it should be a really interesting next couple of weeks with arguably like the two sternest tests in golf. I think you put Oakmand and Shanna Kaka probably the two venues in US Open rotation that you would say are the toughest tests of golf over time, and then you go for the Open Championship to Carnousti, which is long then considered the toughest test of golf. I'm fascinated to see, you know, what Shinnakok will look like. You know, the fairways are much wider than what they were before.
I don't think that's going to necessarily equate to better scoring. I think it will separate the field better. It will you know, the cream will rise more with the wider fairways there because those players that are really on, they're
hitting their spots, are going to gain the advantage. And you know when you get into these very very narrow fairways with really thick rough like I mean, he had a great drive and catch like the side of the sprinkler had to bounce it into the rough and he's like, well, that wasn't like a bad drive. And I think when there's more with like the bad drives are still gonna If you have a bad drive with a wide faraway,
you're going to still be terrible place. But I think it will be interesting to see if scoring is drastically different than two thousand and four.
Cock is also one of those places that.
It really gets exponentially more difficult the closer to the business end of the hope we get. And you know, it's got a pretty well countered greens there as fast as ice rinks typically, it's beautifully bonkery. And what's interesting this year I was talked to Brad Faxing about it last week keeping up there for media Day, and he said it was quite interesting as the cursed strange.
Actually, he said, how many of the areas around the greens. It used to be just the.
Gruff which allowed you one shot to play out of it, which is hack it out onto the green. So many of those ship down into chipping areas. So I actually think this is an up and that will separate guys who have that skill set close to the home because they're being presented with options and how to play it. And that's why I'm must looking forward to it. I just said, put everyone in the middle of every fairway and lit side it.
Out from there. You don't even need to hit your t shots. We'd like that absolutely. I think it will be much much more entertaining.
God, because that's what's going to separate the truly skilled players with nerves of steel than hitting drives into the furway or just into the first cup of the roughlan gunageing it on from there. Let's put them around the hole and then see who's standing on somebody.
Easy.
See, that'd be an interesting alternative of a bat if they did something where it was like a Part three tournament et centray to see who is the best from two hundred and twenty five yards and then from all.
Different kinds of places.
Yeah, I think that's actually the In a way, that's almost what the game has been reduced to at this point. Because they all hit it a long way, it's not become particularly relevant worthy hit it because it doesn't seem to diminish their ability to score if they're playing from the rough versus the furway, and it's the entire game has now become.
The second shot on on sport.
The problem is that in so many cases, what is presented to guys after they hit their second shot tends to be a very one noted challenge where the.
Setup is the same, most weights and they're.
Chipping from the roof and Peter costas the same you won't believe how fast this, but it's gonna be afterwards. But a chip cop if they have these shaved chipping areas and you're chipping onto the loose screens with those contours and that speed, I think that becomes an exponentially more interesting challenge than the idea of well let's see.
That's where the skill really I like last year watching Aaron Hill's had those shaved off areas. I'll never forget. I'm the biggest Lee Westwood fan in the world, and I saw west You just sat there with this putter, and.
I'm watching Patrick Reed chip in and like Lee Westwoods just praying for a too put from off the green, like just just praying for part. And Patrick Reed's in the short grass, He's thinking ship in every single time. And that the short grass really allows the short game skill to just be you know, the greatest short game players love short grass, and the guys that struggle, they can't stand short grass. They're just grabbing the potter. They're playing defensive.
Yeah, And it's I.
Think this is going to be the first Open really in a while that we see that Aaron Hills, I don't think offered as many options around the green or didn't demand as much of players around the green as as.
Jimnacock will in first to the USGA, that was.
The first Open to their credit where they were relying upon the vagaries of the weather to help out.
Now you see that in the Open Championship every year.
It may be the only defense those courses actually have any course when the Open broke up.
Its only defense is the.
Weather, and last year the USGA was expecting wind and ever came, so it just they've turned it into a pitching pot.
Of course those guys.
That's not going to happen at Chennikov because they don't need the weather to really fire up the challenge and aft off course, and nor does Carnelsty the gentleman. I mean, they'll probably get it at Carneusty, but they don't need it there. And I don't think they need the weather either at Chenneka.
Who's gonna win the US Open and who's gonna.
Win the Open Championship?
Oh boy?
Not to fill I don't think Phil Everyone's is open at this tage. We played one hundred and seventeen of these things and the number will have been won by forty seven year old men zero and I.
Keep hearing, especially once to have a propancior driver portly exactly, and that it doesn't really set up.
Now you could also argue doesn't balance out because Phil is pretty sharp around the greens with his creativity, that having no shape areas might actually cheap fill in the game a little bit longer.
If this driver is a little bit wayward.
I think he just had to look at guys who's got a really good short game. As odd as he's playing right now, I wouldn't rule out Jordan speak because he's got The US Open seems made for that kid, because he's got a way of somehow in that overstowed fashion getting the ball in the hole.
There's all kinds of ugly drama that goes along.
The way, whether he's on the driving range at Birkefield or he's just hitting it all over the shop at Augusta National and getting it done.
He figures out how to get the ball in the hole. Whereas you have a lot of.
Guys out there with a lot of prettier s rigning is a lot more confident, but when it comes crunch time on Sunday afternoon, their self belief seems to waiver quite a bit, and the US Open has a way of crunching guy's self belief out of them. I could see Stiff actually winning despite his playing issues because on Green's Land in a cup, everyone that's going to put early by by the standards.
Of what they do on any given week. So the US Open is almost kind of even off the field. Ethy get putting because it's such a challenge for everyone.
And at Karnasty as they call it Stotland, it's just a matter of you know, who's going to be the most patient guy there? It's you look at the the last two opens. There are two of the last three. You have Tom Watson in seventy five, Paul Laurie Flinty Scotsman in ninety nine and Potler Carrington in two thousand
and seven. It's not an excellent that those guys win at Carney Steam because when something goes wrong, they don't sit and put and have history onics like a lot of guys and to do so you're taking them Baba and.
I think Bubba Will should probably do this flight home.
But those guys, they're you know, stoicism is a great trick to have in and up and championship because they tend to put their head died and.
Just try to power alan through whatever the challenge of.
Disappointment is that just been hit with and that's the kind of character I would expect to come out on top again this time around.
Is justin rosa Hall of famer already.
No, Now, I don't think anyone in the one major championship, and I don't count of Monty's three senior majors as majors.
If you have a title sponsor, you're not a major championship.
All right, let's get into some overrated underrated Here. Overrated underrated the performance of the winner of the nineteen ninety eight Greater Vancouver Open, and this is from Lubron James.
It suppose it depends on what category we're rigging him over under As a TV analyst, I think he's peerless as a drinking companion, also peerless as a nurturing golf coach.
Already lovesy, but as a friend pretty good, So I think the balance is out of the positive side of the venture for mister Chumbley. Underrated, I think he's a Yeah, I would regard him as underrated, but it's also undersized.
So it's appropriate. Swing demons, which one just in general, our swing demons overrated or well, with.
Me, they are. They're more overwhelming than anything else because I made a mistake about five years ago involve attempting to get better on the point or I almost no longer play, and Chamblee has told me for years that I was uncoachable, and I think I'm on the cusp of finally admitting that the little guy might actually be right.
All right. Overrated underrated shipping six irons. This is from Joshul A Belt.
I think in general it's an underrated skin. But when you were doing it yesterday, when the breaking down the hole in the sandbox, I thought it was a little overrated. I would have felt a little bit better about it if you'd at least warned shoes while.
You were doing our golf is overrated or under it.
They were.
Essentially, they're neither underrated ruby, they just should be worn. No shoes, no service.
All right, mamon, it's been fun having me on. We'll have to do something around one of these majors, but thanks for coming on. People can read your writing. What you've got coming up on golf week.
I got to write something in the next couple of days. What it is, who knows. I'm literally used to visit. Maybe I'll write about my deans.
I'd like to know what they look like.
You've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
We do the digging for you.