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 fried Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida fridagg Bride.
Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson, and we're here final major of the year, The Open, a lot I think from a golf romantic standpoint, probably the most romantic major of the year. It is is a special major, returning to you know where golf started. And this year we've got a great tournament on on deck for Royal Troon. It is a It's hosted a lot of opens, a lot of great opens, and uh it's gonna be I'm
pretty excited to watch. The storylines are incredible. So it is uh is Sunday before the Open. I was lucky to be joined by a Trouon native, Andrew Cotter. Andrew Cotter, for those in America probably aren't familiar, he has a prominent broadcaster uh in in the UK. He works primarily for the BBC. He was he was kind enough to join me from Wimbledon, his brother's caddie and a number of opens. He was a a scratch player there growing up.
Uh so, a lot of knowledge of truon and you know, he has his own golf podcast called The Chipping Forecast, which he hosts with Eddie Pepperrell. It is a great listen as well, so well was checking that out. And of course he's the owner of Olivia Mabel for those that remember that book during COVID they he wrote and the fun he had there. So I was a big thanks to Andrew for joining on a busy week of his And we'll get to the five things, but first let's talk about our partner, good Walk Coffee.
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you'll save twenty percent on your entire order. I mean if you start a coffee subscription, so this is the way I do it. I get a couple bags a month, I never have to worry about running out. You'll save thirty percent on your first order and then ten percent on all future shipments. So sign up and never run out of your Frida Egg or Shotgun Start Blend. That really helps us. That's, you know, something we do collaboratively
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now let's get to Andrew Cotter. All right, I am excited here to welcome in Andrew Cotter, a truon native, a you know, a legendary broadcaster in his own right. For this five things episode about the Open Championship. We're heading to Royal Truon. This will be the tenth time that Truon hosts the Open. The last time we saw it was actually the Women's Open Sophia pop off when the Women's Open that year. It will always hold a
special place in my heart. Truon will because it was I was in a hospital room during COVID with my one to two day year old daughter watching Royal Truon at the wee hours with her sleeping on my chest. I will never forget Royal True because of that. I have warm and fuzzies even though I've never been there for Royal Truon because of the pop off Women's Open. But a pretty solid list of winners when you roll
through there, even underrated ones like weiss Cough. I think Stenson in twenty years will be an underrated winner at Truon to go along with some big big name winners at Truon such as Tom Watson and Arnold Palmer. And I mean Bobby Locke was a was a big time player as well, so I think Andrew starting off, I'd love to hear a little bit about the dynamic of growing up in Troon and and and what it's like there.
Yeah, so roll troun. I just call it true, I can't, you know, Yeah, it's it's where I grew up. And I grew up just a couple hundred yarms from the first tea, and so I was a junior member there. The junior section when I was a junior was absolutely terrible. I mean it was They had no time for juniors at all. Colman Gummery's father was the secretary at the time, and I got on famously with him. Now he's, you know, a really nice guy, but as a secretary, he was
just he was he was. He didn't like I don't think anyone liked juniors. It's like quite a lot of clubs. I don't know what it's like in the US, but they frown upon juniors. And so I was a decent player, not you know. I was playing off about one or two when I was sixteen seventeen, and I never got to play the Old Course. We weren't allowed to play
the Old Course. So we used to play the Portland Course, which is you like this, And it was originally well it was Redone by Aston Mackenzie, so it was and then it kind of got lost in the Second World War a little bit and became a bit of a corruption of that. But it's a really good course. But anyway, we weren't allowed to play the old course, so I went and joined clemar at Brassey, which had amazed. It's the other side of true an amazing junior section like
Gordon Sherry. Do you remember Gordon Sherry won the Amateur to huge guy six foot eight ginger hair. He won the Amateur Championship and playing the Masters, and Alan Reid won the Scottish Amateur. Anyway, I'm digressing a little bit. So all tune was it's kind of where I grew up and where I started the game, and so I've been a member pretty much for since the age of three or four. I think my parents joined me up when I was three or four. That's when I started playing.
And I've never really got any better than when I was five or six anyway, so I've plateaued at that that age. But Truon is, yeah, Trouon's home. I don't live in Scotland anymore. I've lived in England for twenty years, but I'll for the Open. I was staying in the house I grew up in two hundred yomps in the media center. It's just a dream.
That's amazing. That's amazing.
Do you have any good Colin Montgomery father stories? But to your point, I think there was like a seismic change in the way juniors were treated in American golf after Tiger Woods. But like there was, like I think that was one of the hurdles for the game. It's so funny when you think about like the evolution of the game of golf in America, because I think it was it was super welcoming early on, like it it became this people were worried it was gonna be America's
pastime over baseball. But then I think the World War, the Great Depression, everything stalled it and it came out. I think that's where American golf went wrong in nineteen fifty or whatever. It came out of this like hibernation, and it was a game that is so far away from I'll just call it your game, the Scots game. And that's where we got this warped as a Scottish, isn't it.
Yes, sports a big, big business and sponsorship, and that's when it became in America and certainly. You know, that's aside to it in Scotland. In the UK as well, it's for a lot of people. It's at aspirational sport, not as much as it would be in lots of other countries around the world. Like in Troun, for example, there are six golf courses. You know, it's a town still of only about fifteen thousand people, but there are six golf courses and three of those are munis. You know,
there's a there's a Darley Locker and Fullerton. So I grew up playing those courses as well. So golf is as much for the people playing in jeans and T shirt and just car you know, heading out to play in the muni as it is for the people who want to be the members of Royal Troon or whatever it might be as a sort of aspirational thing. You know, having been to Scotland, if you go to the East Coast as well, Sam Andrews, it's a sport for all. It's very different to sort of down around London the
Home Counties as we call them in the UK. Well, it is quite an aspirational sport. It's about being a member of a club as much as playing the sport. But I'd like to think that still in Scotland, it's about just people going knocking a ball around the field, you know, And that's what that's what I like about it. I mean, to be honest, I've never really been into being a member of a club. So I'll just go and change my shoes in the car park and head
out and hit some balls or whatever. I don't think you know how to change your shoes in the car park, but I do it away from the clubhouse. But yeah, that's what I think. That's probably what golf is for you. Isn't it just about the joy of hitting a golf ball?
It is?
It is.
I think that's when you think back to the roots of the game. I have a friend Kevin Moore, who says that he said this once and it sticks.
It sticks with me.
Is like when you think about the origins of golf, it was the whole point of golf was here are your sticks, here's the ball, that's where you're going go get there right Like there was none of this pomp and circumstance that a circumstances that we've we've filled the game with and all these like I just think, like It's interesting when I you know, this is.
An Open Championship preview and here we are discussing, uh, the origins of golf.
But you know, when I think about like where America golf is going, it's like every every day, seemingly every day it's about like the next new high end, lux private club in America golf. And it's like, you know, the vast majority of people grow up playing golf. Like I I just visited my the course.
I grew up playing.
I've been at home, and you know it is it's just so it's amazing to me, Like what what I I like, my memories are are amazing. From there, there's like a number of golf entrepreneurs that all that I played high school golf with that are all that all grew up playing this golf course. And what what what sticks with me is like, Wow, this place of provided me with a golf course to play for one hundred
and ninety dollars every year. It was one hundred and ninety dollars for a junior past and I could play all summer long.
And like I mean, like the.
One of my best friends growing up, he grew up up the street from me. He owns a golf bag company, and I you know, started this and we grew up riding our bikes to this public golf course every day in the summer and just shipping and putting and then waiting till three o'clock when we could go play golf. And and that was like my summer is like just and it's like would either of us be in golf without that? That is the version of golf like to me is like where Yeah, That's what golf is to me.
And I think everything else around it is a little bit trivial to a certain extents. Yeah.
Oh, And I mean in the last couple of years, it's gone so far away from what to what we think of as golf, you know. And but and again we've talked about this on own golf podcast and it's quite a lot. Is that is that, you know, whatever happens in the professional game with living, the separation and the nonsense that goes on. And you know, I was listening to the Shotguns Start today and what was Xander Schoffley talking about could we get you know, just a
couple fewer dinners at the Rider Cup? And I'm thinking this is so far from what I think of as golf. If you ask about me what golf means to me, it means the memories of summer evening playing just hitting the balls until dark, or playing with my uncle, whatever it is. So I think everybody's got that association with golf that is really detached from what the professional game
has become. But you're right here, we are previewing the Open Championship and how great the professional game is and how you know, just waxing lyrical about what golf means to us. But then when I go to Troun, I'll see where I was hitting. You know, we had a tiny patch of tough to hit balls on as juniors at Troun, and it's pretty much underneath where the where
the practice ground will be for the Open Championship. And I'll see these guys pounding balls three hundred and thirty yards and I think that's where I just spent ages trying to hit a you know, just a nine arm or something like that. But when you see how big the Open Championship is now as well, it's become it's become so vast, and I noticed it really for the first time properly at Hoylake last year. Which I didn't.
You know, I'm actually a big fan of the RNA, But I think the Open has become can something be too big or too commercial or something. I just think it's interesting because you know, you can't go back to the past and you can't get stranded in nostalgia. But I look at all the Open Championship I've been to as a fan and then as a broadcaster, and it seems quite a different beast now. It seems to be a sort of almost almost sort of a money making thing with golf attached to it, you know. But I'm
and again, my memory goes back a long way. My first opening I can really remember wasn't the first one
that I was at. The first one I can really remember properly was the nineteen eighty two Open at Troon when I was eight nine years old, and I just remember running here and there, and we used to have think called the Exhibition, and it was all these local golf traders, not local small golf traders would come and you know, they'd be people who'd sell headcovers, or people that would sell golf snacks, or people would sell a thing they'd invented themselves in a Garnet or that, but
it was just such good fun and then running out here, there and everywhere and watching Tom Tom Watson, Nick Price blow it with a dodgy mustache. But yeah, I hope that for youngsters watching it now it's still maintains that charm because it's a huge event and the machinery around it now and the infrastructure that's built. But I hope it still maintains that sort of charm that can drag in youngsters watching it to say, you know, this is quite special.
I mean, I think you hit on some interesting points and this wasn't you know, we traditionally do five things. But like, I think one of the most compelling aspects of the Open in general is like where it's going. And obviously in America, I think we have the opposite problem of like knowing exactly where the US Open's going for the next fifty years.
What was it Pinehurst in the year thirty three, twenty seven or something like that.
But meanwhile in the Open, it seems like we're at this stage where it's like how many venues can conceivably whole host this tournament? This becomes so big its size.
Well, Lithm's gone that's Lithm's gone for that reason. Turnbury, irrespective of the Trump thing, Turnberry had gone really before Trump took over because it wasn't getting the spectator numbers and it didn't have the accommodation around apart from the hotel there at Turnbery there's nothing. And it's the best course. It's in port Russia, probably the two best courses, but it won't host another Open Championship. And you're right, it's
become a thing where you've just got it right. What course has got the best roads coming in, the best rail, the best air access, and what has got the most space that we can put all these things on? So yeah, that those are the determining factors for venues.
Now, Yeah, and I think you hit an an awesome thing with the the idea of like just like a uh, someone who who has a gadget coming in like an exhibitor's tent, Like you know, they have all these tents, but they're all for very high purchase amounts. Right, it has conceivably lost, it has without a doubt, lost some
of that charm. I think, you know, I you know, I hope I I I just when I think about the Open, I think about being a kid on summer break in America and waking up way earlier than I ever would conceive in in the summer to run down and turn on golf and just laying on the couch all morning watching golf, and I think, I think, you know,
you see, you see like kind of that charm. Like I think about like the Saint Andrews Open, where while while the finish is happening, people are jumping over the over the burn, maybe breaking legs doing trying to do it.
But run up that.
I think there are moments of it, but it does, you know, And this is this is true about every major. I mean, this is this is one of the US opened conundrums. It's like they're you know, Pineher's a great venue because we can put tons of people out there, right and you know, other places maybe don't have the
infrastructure space. The Ryder Cup would be a perfect example of this where they have gone from you know, you look at the early Ryder Cup golf course hosts to what they where they host now and it's like what happened?
Oh no, The Ryder Cup is just extraordinary and they've got too many Dennos for the.
Players, right it's just you know, I've been in one of those.
I've been in one of those crushes, in one of these challenges down in the eighteenth I mean in a couple of them actually, but the one I really remember was eighty six at Tunbrey, which is obviously just you know, half an hour forty minutes south of trun And when when Greg Norman won and he was caught in that crush,
and I remember seeing him. He was just a sort of coming up just beside me in this us trying to push his way through to merge with his hands held up in his shock of white blonde hair and everything, and I just I just been so excited by it. It was incredible. Yeah, they don't really, I think so Andrews. You can get it, but you'd struggle to get the because everything's so barricaded off in the seventy second hole. Now they have barricades, I mean pretty much down the length of the hole.
It's like you don't have the right media credentials.
Seventy second whole accreditation in your armband that has done you for the whole tournament won't do you for the seventy second hole. So that's another thing. As well. That true because Trune is actually the course on the open Rota where you see the sea the most. It's the most you know, if you think of all the other courses in the Rota, you know, because Turnberry is not on anymore. Where you really are right by the sea,
you don't you hardly see the one. You buy the sea, but you don't see it, whereas in True in the first few holes you're right beside the beat. I mean, the first tier True now is is fantastic. It's right on top of the beach almost. But they have to build a fence all the way along the first six holes because otherwise people just wandering off the beach and say, I'm not gonna pay, I'm just gonna I'm just going to wander in and see if i can see some golf.
So yeah, it just becomes I think all courses that host big tournaments become so different to the courses you know, they become almost unrecognizable. I mean, I've been up there quite a lot over the last three months, and you've seen the stands going up and everything getting ready, and yeah, when I go back this week, it's going to be it's going to be quite something, But it's are you going, You're going over there that I'm not gone? You know, is Brendan going? Is anyone going from the now?
We are? We are now?
You know we're dropping the ball. It's been a busy year.
I had to get some well exactly, I suppose that is the case. But they usually get a house sponsored by someone. So I'm just filling the shoes.
Could you're remember, uh there's good a good little spots for plug there. But uh, the I think, like, you know, what's funny about what you said, getting at the core of this is that, ironically, like when I think about like my youth, I stuck my way into a fair amount of tournaments, like you find you find like there's a housing, a cult to sack and they don't fence there.
We can sneak in over here. You know.
What I think is is the people that are sneaking in on the beach or the exact people that you want at the tournament to invoke that local charm. You know, nobody's nobody's coming up from London, you know, or flying over from America without the tick and say it's okay, we're going to sneak in from the beach.
You know, it's it's like there's a couple.
Of weeks the railway line. That's the thing. Triuns protected on one side by the rule end, but other side by the sea. So you've got to be pretty committed to your felony. So oh, it's a shame you're not gonna be there. I was waiting for you to say, you know, describe how you're beside the Pacific Ocean or something like that, and just to say it's all one sea. It's all it's all the same sea. What what? What is the froth of Clyde? What are you talking about? This? Is that?
Is that not a good take though? That that all these seas don't really matter. They're they're just all one big ocean.
It is all one big ocean. Technically, yeah, it's all it's all joined up, I suppose. So just it's a sort of pangae or ocean that Yeah, No, absolutely, I think I think we should start that. It's just I have super ocean one, let's call it that.
My Pacific Ocean is the same as whatever sea truance next to.
We're all swimming in the same sea. He said, philosophically.
Yeah, so well, yeah, no, it's what's your favorite childhood memory from true.
I think it would be that eight to two open, just because it was such such good fun, you know, and again through the sort of haze of nostalgia, it was it was sort of always sunny. Well, I think it was quite sunny open seventy three y Skull was not. I think I was born on the day after Wi Scoff won that open, and that rained quite a lot. But at eighty nine as well, I had quite good met I worked in the pro shop. Troon's Pro had a pro shop set up, and I remember I remember
selling I was sixteen years old. I remember the excitement at selling a sweatshirt, a Troons sweatshirt to Brad Faxon. Oh my god, how exciting it was that I recognized, because you know when you saw American golfers come over. I remember seeing Bill Rogers in eighty two. He was a defending champion and you were just a very exotic species Americans to us in the UK. And so I saw Bill Rogers, I thought, my god, he looks amazing.
It did actually look amazing, Bill Rogers. That wasn't my thought when I saw Brad Faxon, but it was still nonetheless, I thought I was Brad Faxon. I think it was like his rookie year or something. He was quite a
young gun on two at the time. Brad Faxon and the playoff because it was the first four whole playoff with Calcavecia, Wayne Grady and Greg Norman, and I remember I remember in particular in that playoff they used to have in the tented village to the right of the seventeenth and eighteenth there was a huge screen playing out coverage for people who were in the tented village and Greg Norman when he went into the bunker and the playoff on the eighteenth and his chances were going he
had no shot at all, but the volume was turned up full on the screen and Peter Alice, the great BBC commentator, was saying, well, what he's going to try and do here is just getting his weight onto his
back foot and popping up. But this was booming out across the eighteenth fairway and Greg Norman's got and he's trying to tell me how to apply the bloody's shot and he that sounds nothing like Greg Norman, but it's my best attempt at Australian accent and then he just I think he ended up knifing it over the back or something like that after from a second bunk or so. It's had some unlikely winners as well, cal Quebec with these ping eye twos, and Todd Hamilton most of all just high redding.
His way around Tech Hybrid. Remember that I must that must have sold a lot for I mean, but I don't.
This was no Todd Hamilton gimmick, I will, I will hear, no Sonar Tech slander, Sarah Tech made the greatest three would maybe ever made, ever made?
Yeah, I never I never used it. Guy he well he he just basically took the premise that it was a little bit like Tiger Woods a Hoylake or live him when he tried to just stay short of the bunkers and so you know, the truon has a pretty well bunkered course and he was in one bunker and seventy two holes. Todd Hamilton, and everyone says, Todd Hamilton,
well you know what a duff winner. If you look at the leaderboard behind him, it was VJ saying it was Ratif whus, and it was Phil Micholson and obviously it was Ernie els In the playoffs, so he beat some Titans. That was the first year that that Phil Mickelson actually worked out that he could play links golf. Rick Smith was his coach at the time, and he got him to tighten up his swing a little bit.
And and Michelson said, even he didn't win that year, he realized that he could win the Open championship after that. So I enjoyed that that Open was good. I wasn't enamored by the Michelson Stenson. I thought it was fantastic from those two. But the weather wasn't great. It had been great on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then it kind of get soft and rainy. But you know, even in the even in the soft wet conditions, you know, yes,
Stenson was twenty under, Michaelson was seventeen under. But then you go back to third place, six under. Remember who's third place and that Open?
Oh god, we were.
Talking about this the other day and the team meeting pace Car Yeah, JB. I mean what was his more famous finish the third at Troon or when he was standing on the first tea at Port Rush can decide what what club to hit taking Remember the.
Famous one where they where they where they showed him. They cut him off in some big tournament and he was waggling and waggling and was backing off and back in, but eventually just cut away from went to another call enough.
They went to the they went to the flowers.
They went, let's just show some as alias instead of to be homes.
Oh god.
Yeah.
So anyway, true, Charlie and Trune is special to me because it's my hometown as much as anything else, and I just want it to be a good open because of that. It will always be my hometown always, you know, wherever I left. As I said, I've lived in England for twenty years, but trun is always home to me, and so I just wanted to be seen in the best light. And when you stand on the first team on a nice day and you're looking across the Isle of Harden and across the alls of Craig and you know,
the seas sparkling, I hope they have. The forecast isn't too bad. As far as I can see from this distance out, I think it's going to be breezy as well, which that's what you want in links golf, because that's the only defense links courses have is a bit of breeze.
Firmness and breeze, those are the only two things.
Yeah, and it's firm enough I think at the moment, even though it's very very green. I've been talking to my brother about it. Who's ended up he's carrying and again he's carrying in every open at Troon since eighty nine, I think amazing. And he always ends up steering a journeyman through, you know, to make the weekend. There's an American called John Kernan in nineteen ninety seven who played four rounds. Spike McRoy, Spike.
Spike, I don't know if you're a shatat start that's at that point. Spike mccroy is a is a big time shatas start.
He works in the city in New York. He works in finances.
No, I think he's a real estate real estate guy in Alabama or something.
Oh my god, Okay, that.
He was playing the barbersol a few years ago.
Of course he was. Everybody gets to play the barbersol. I've nearly played the barbersol, me and Jimmy Roy.
I can't believe he carried for Spike, right, Yeah.
And then a guy, a Korean suman Lee and he's got a Kazumi Kobori who is the outstanding amateur his bag this year. So he's on his bag. He's turned pro and he's he's finding it I think a bit more difficult. You know, it's amazing how great amateurs who don't necessarily find that transition to or suddenly applying for your living. So he's on his bag and he got asked he I'll tell you. He got asked, I don't
know if it's happened yet, A contact him. He said, he's just waiting for I don't think it will happen because these things seldom do. But you get contacted by someone who had been spoken to by Bryson De Shambo's team said would you walk the course with him to to get him used to So still Bryson and his caddy, but they asked my brother to walk of course and point out various things and say do the mathematics and everything, and so that's interesting. I think, you know, I that's
you know, have you come around to Bryson? Are you? Are you A don't know?
I think I think the latest Mike Shi drama has pushed me back back to you know this is this might have just been a good PR school from it.
Listen, I think he is a I haven't First of all, I haven't heard about the Mike shy things, so I've been lost in a world of tennis. So you're going to tell me about that in a minute. But he, you know, when you see him, you know, doing everything with the crowds and winning them over. Of course it's a pr thing, I suppose to the crowd. It doesn't really matter because it's a bit like Michelson. Michelson, you know, one over the crowd, but you know Micholson's not really
like that. But the crowd don't care because if they get a handshake from Micholson, a high five, a little thumbs up, thumbs up in a smile, then they go home happy. So but the thing about Bryce and the Shambo is, at least you know he is. He is interesting, he's he's fascinating to watch, and you need that. You need someone who's a bit different. You need someone who might people might think oh he's a bit of a tool, or he might think he's great. But at least people
are thinking about them. So that's what they you know, that people engaging with.
Them well, we're going to get into the five things now. I got Bryson as one of mine. He obviously, I think he's one of the most fascinating UH players in the sport, maybe the most fascinating in terms of everything. The way he's changed, the way he you know, the way his game has changed from when he was an amateur to now to the the YouTube presence, I think is a legitimate thing in today's era and with where
the game of golf is going. I think the so the Mike Schid trauma is that Bryson allegedly was supposed to fund this, uh, this golf tour for junior golf in the Central Valley of California that's called that was named after his father through Mike Shi's as his longtime his coach from childhood coach, and uh, Bryson didn't didn't write the check apparently, and then Mike Sha Mike Schaid took to Instagram with some very you know, he inflammatory
comments and then and then furthermore, Adam Shuepack from golf Leek called him up and he just let it rip.
And then Bryce is Bryce and let it rip back. So, now that we've got this big squabble between so.
Much on social media because there's some no I'm on it. But trouble is, when you stop doing tennis, you just get recommended. They'll go to them on Instagram just says, oh you like tennis, don't you, because you've clicked on one thing to watch it. So it's just been sending me endless things. Look at this Janick cinefourhan so no, I want to see Mike Shay and shut Bach and then Deshamble having a spot.
So it's a huge article. It's crazy.
There's all these quotes, you know, they you know, Mike schi has said something along the lines of you know, uh, he always says that I'm his second father and it's it's it's he treated his real father like shit and he treats me like shit. That's paraphrasing the quote, but effectively effectively that So anyways, there's that that that that going on. But with Bryson, I think we saw at Pinehurst we saw him conquer a type of setup that we never thought he would set up. Well, yeah, you know,
the firm fast rolling off all direction. You know, when the ball hit the ground, it was a little bit you know, dicey as to what's going to happen. And I think when you look at his Open Championship record, it's not good. T thirty three, cut cut T thirty three, T eight at the Old Course.
And T Canst where he was having his meltdown on the range. Those were the days that handletaining. Maybe it's the wind, Maybe it's windy conditions. So that is the variable that in the computations I'd love to I think that because Pinehurst wasn't you know, there wasn't really there.
Was a bit of snow, not real wind. It's no exactly.
So that's the thing because you've got you've got firm, linxy style conditions of Pinehurst, but you didn't have the wind and not that that's to me what it will be watching him trying to cope with if the wind gets up to twenty miles an now or whatever.
Yeah, So this is I think this is the last frontier for Bryson. We saw him like have some success at Augusta this year. That's always been a big question mark. And he played Augussa. He entered Sunday with a chance to win Pinehurst.
He winned.
You know, he nearly wins the PGA, and now this is the kind of the are we seeing. You know, Like I think if Bryson plays well, say he won this, Like there's a real question of like is he the best player in the world. Actually, even with all that Scott He's done this year, I think there's a lot of doubt as to who the best player in the world would be. So Bryson to be is just He's such a fascinating character. I think, like we we don't
have enough polarizing characters. We were talking before we started this recording about you know, tennis and men's tennis and what Novak Djokovic is. You know, the interest in him is that people feel very differently about him, and there's no many people in the middle.
You know, you better love them or you either hate them.
And and I think you need that, Yeah, you have to have that in sport, and I think Bryson fills that bucket so well for golf.
Well, the worst thing, yeah, because you cannot have in sport. The worst thing is people just going I don't care, really, I don't know. Yeah, well, yeah exactly. And you know it feels like I don't slight from quite a few golfers and it's not a slight really against them as people. It's not saying they're bad people. But all sport is entertainment and engagement. That's what it is. Really. You've got to invest in the players and want to want them to win or want them to do badly or want it.
But you can't have just and there are a few players who are just met. But the trouble is golf lends itself to me because being met and being on an even keel and being quiet and calm, that is that makes good golf quite often. But where what you really want is someone who's having history onics and just meltdowns or chatting to the crowd or whatever it might be.
But yeah, you just described Bryson.
Let's describe Bryson exactly. So now I might look at Bryson and go, this is one hundred percent phony, but it's good phony if it is because people are people care.
Yeah, what's what's something you're looking for or watching for?
I mean, I you know, it's a bit of a cliche to say Maceilroy, but he's fascinating in the majors because he one hundred percent and one hundred percent has a mental block on the majors, because you know he would not in the positions he has been at sin Andrew's, at LACC, at Pinehurst one hundred percent. If those were Travelers Championships or Quailhull or whatever it might be, of
course he would have finished those off. So that that's the fascinating thing for me is watching a guy Apple, the most talented physical player of a generation or the generation coming after Tiger Woods, unable to quite do it mentally and he'll go sail along happily for sixty five holes mentally. But then that's what sport is about. It's about people who sail through in tennis, sail through that every set and then come to serving it out and can't quite do it. That's that sports sport is is
the closure moments and the pressure moments. So I'm really looking for because he's obviously playing you know, he's often a good start, as we record at the Scottish Open, so he's obviously after his break is playing well again, so I'm very interesting to see how he goes it's and there's all there are always stories at the Open because it's such a big feel that it goes on all all day and the weather changes and just all the little stories developing.
But yeah, who is the kid from Liverpool that played well last year? The younger matt Jordan George.
Yeah, Matthew Jordan, Yeah exactly, imagine. I mean there isn't a local member unfortunately he was qualified for But yeah, stories like that. I think Jack McDonald, the guy from Brassier Jr. He was a very good amateur and he's I think he's qualified. So there are lots of little stories that you just follow and see how they get on this guy. So there's a guy that so I commented at Wimbledon with I do a bit of commentary with Liz Smiley, who is a very good doubles player
from Australia, mixed doubles. She won the mixed doubles title.
Does she spell it like Smiley Coffin?
She's spelled exactly like Smiley Kaufman. So Liz Smiley, So, but her son has been coming to Wimbledon since he was about ten years old. And she would introduce me to him and say, oh, this is his Name's Elvis, Elvis Smiley and says, oh he's yeah, so exactly, and she said, oh, this is Elvis. You know when he's
ten years old and he loves his golf. And I was a golf commentator with the BBC, and so he was he was excited to meet me, well, he said he was, and I was going, oh, you play golf to your little young fella, A lad, all, well done to you, sort of ruffling his hair or whatever. And then he just kept getting better and better, and every year he would come back and say, what are you playing on a play three? Now scratch? What you playing around plus four or five? Whatever? And then suddenly he
turned and he was he was winning stuff. He was winning alat events and he's he's winning as a young pro. And he qualified down at Deal, which is really near Saint George's. He qualified, so when he was hanging on, he was hanging on into second place behind Matthew Southgate. It was in six hundred and he was three under and then there was a group I think he was four under and there was a group and and like he was being chased down by Brandon Grace and you
know that, you know when they have the club. So Matthew Southgate from Southport and Elvis Smiley, I can't remember what called he plays out all now but and it says it says Brandon Grace stinger. He's a stinger. It's just ridiculous. There was a ridiculous things you've ever seen. It's a proper golf club, a proper ancient golf club. And I thought Brandon Grece will come through and to be again. But he didn't even have to go into the playoff. He came through his second place there. And
you imagine that. Imagine you know, qualifying just to you know, be a dream for you to qualify for the US Open and you're younger and me to qualify for the Open Chop. It's just it's the stuff of dreams just to get your badge to play in the Open Championship. And then he's got to find accommodation, and because you qualify so late, it's almost impossible to find anything. So you've been given a really sort of monkey hotel somewhere for about four hundred fifty dollars a night or something
like that. And so they've got an Airbnb. They're doing that old risky game of airbnb. But then you get a nice Mercedes Curtsey car to take in. Imagine that, Imagine playing the Open.
It's just one of my favorite stories from the Open Championship at St. Andrews was we found out that that Sahiz Sigala, who you know at the time, was it oh yea, the student you're staying in the student dorms like you meine you even volunteer, you're in the student dorms. And you see at the gala carry lug in his tour bag up the up the stepster's door, like, I mean, this amazing stuff with these these events.
And that's all. And I presume the US so well, when you go to a small town, it'll be similar, Like Augusta is entirely different. And you know in the USPGA obviously is different because it's it's it's the pros, but it's you have to really not rough it at an Open Championship. But you know, you're not going to have luxurious hotels ten or fifteen of them and everything's
going to be perfect. You're going to you say, being if you go to Carnousti, my god, you know, Carnusti is a week place and Tune's a little bit bigger, but you know you're going to have to not sleep in a tent. But yeah, you might end up sleeping in student accommodation. But it's just that's part of the
charm of it. And it comes back to that thing that there is charm and in sporting events, that it doesn't have to be this enormous, slick, corporate professional machine, that there is still these sort of smaller stories and all these quirky stories. It's all the little diary stories that I like throughout the week. You know, that's when I'm listening to the shotguns starting there saying he's a bit of scuttle buck for you. It's usually about Toasty
in these higher cars. He's rental cars scattered throughout America. I love that one.
That's just.
Stories from the open.
I had to sit on that one. Came across my desk a long time before it was able to be released.
It was a great one. I can absolutely believe it. With him, he just yeah, we like well. But that's but that's another thing. So if you're watching someone and someone said I'm going to this tournament, who should I go and watch? And Alejandro Toasty is playing, and I'll say, go watch this guy because he's going to go absolutely ape shit at something.
He's going to have highs and lows all packed within probably like an hour span.
And then that's why. So if you said who should I watch or this guy's highpened the rankings, should have go and watch him, and I'll say, no, that's Patrick Cantley. Don't what's the point and going to watch him, You'll see some really good efficient golf, but you're not going to be entertained. And it goes back to you know who. That's why Jordan Speth, you know, is not the player he was, but you know you're always going to be You're going to get something from him.
Yeah, yeah, you're to get a roller coaster. I think that I mean to tie this back to Rory what you talked about. I think this is a you.
Rory has been a fascinating basically for the last eight years. You know, once that major drought hit two years, it became a big storyline, when it became a thing when's he going to get the next one? And there have been some close calls, there have been some incontention moments, and there have.
Been some Wikipedia Top tens as.
Well, a lot lots of Wikipedia Top tens first round struggles. I think he he's like kind of gotten over the first round struggles he's gotten, you know, and now it's this is the most fascinating Major championships start for him since you know, can he go back to back from his last one? You know, this is you you've entered a position of you know it, it's it's going to be interesting how it goes from the first tea. But like golf, I mean, we invest so much time in
these golf tournaments from Thursday to Sunday. When you think about the ridiculousness of the sport that you invest, how much time you invest.
But but you know, here's the thing about maclroy is that, I mean the first time I really noticed how much pressure he felt at major championships was when he was playing at Port Rush because this was his you know, a major back in Northern Ireland and he then with an eye on in the first t puts it over bes first T shot and I thought, card that is a guy who who who feels it and true Ambout nineteen ninety seven Darren Clark was had his first real chance to win a major and the crowds that came
over in the ferry from Northern Ireland, because you come over in the ferry, you get it to strand Ark and Ryan, which is just again it's just sort of forty five minutes an hour down down the road from Truon.
He had huge crowds and huge support and then he shanked it onto the beach with an iron off the second tee and but the crowds that come over from Northern Island to support him were enormous and for a lot of people in Northern Ireland, you'll see macarroy com beating a major, You've got port Rush, but the next closest thing will be, oh, do you know what, I'm going to get the ferry over. I'm going to go
and watch maclroy play at Troon. So he's going to have you know, he gets big, big support in the States because he's so popular, but over at Troon it's going to be getting close Hall Rush levels.
Yeah, that's an interesting little undercard that you wouldn't even think of.
I think, like the thing about it is like.
If he plays well and he gets the whole story is going to just get more and more interesting as the tournament goes on because of the because of the way things unfolded at Pinehurst, you know, with the you know, he talked you probably business.
He talked this week at the Genesis about it.
Oh I saw it. I saw the qu I saw sort of quotes. And the other interesting thing is how he because he's always been the most open guy, honest guy, and you know, he just doesn't want to do media anymore, but he's still torn between. I mean, I thought it was at the end of Pinehurst, you know, And I know he said a renaissance. I know he said that the Scottish you know. The last thing in my mind
was worrying about upsetting you guys, I either media. I thought he could have taken the sting out of things a little bit. And I also wanted him to come out and just whatever he thinks of Bryce in the way. For yes, he'll been absolutely devastated. Of course he'll have been. That's that would have been the worst loss of his career.
But I kind of wanted to see him just saying to the Shambo, well done, because you can only you only go up in people's estimations and people just want to I just I kind of you know, I understand or I don't understand how he feels, but I understand how he must have felt after that but I just wish he'd he'd said, you know, frontier. I remember Norman after the ninety six Masters doing the press conference and you know, the ultimate choke and saying, you know, nobody
died here, life goes on kind of thing. And I, you know, I'm not never been a sort of Greg Norman fan, especially in recent years, but I thought, you know, I thought that that was pretty good at least, just the front up and say, you know what, it's just it's just it's just a game. So I I hope the mclroy carries on being as good with the media as he has been or historically has been. In recent years, he's got a little bit, you know, I don't really need to do that. I'm only going to do a
ten minute preview press conference. I understand it's a pain, but I think you've got to understand it. We play for the rewards. We do because you know, we we I think the issue is as well, though, that they can all do their own media now, though, can't they? So the need for the media, the medium between the players and the public isn't really there anymore because if I want.
To social media, yeah, and you have arguably more distribution than any of the media people you're talking to.
Yeah, I think.
I think the other aspect of his media hesitanty has been the live stuff where he felt like, you know what, everybody's just going to ask me about this stuff, and it's time that other people get asked this and it's not just like we'll just save all the live questions for Rory, you know.
Yeah, because he's the guy who give up honest answers on it exactly.
And I think that's part of it, is that like, hey, you know what, like I'm going to come I think if I think if the questions were about golf, he'd probably answer, you know, thirty minutes of questions in a presser before. But he knows that if he goes up there at the Open, there's gonna be half the half or more of the questions is gonna be about the Transaction subcommittee, you know, And it's a I don't know,
it's an interesting aspect. I think, like, I think there are two ways that an athlete can come out of this right, and I think it is it is an interesting dynamic in the sense of a short, short miss where you know, he admitted like he effectively got out of his mental process where he started thinking about other things. And and I think that anybody that's played competitive golf understands exactly how that happens. You start thinking about a short put too much. And I think there's two ways
this goes. Is that you start thinking about high leverage short short puts a lot in the future, or it becomes an event in your career where you go to a different level. There's almost a an fu aspect of this, and for me, I think that's the fascinating thing to watch with Rory going forward, is is which of these two paths is going to happen, because you know, without a doubt this is that that was a moment that he will remember.
For the rest of his golfing career and life.
Yeah you know, no, I mean, yeah, exactly, no. He well, he's always interesting to watch the majors, but I think this one in particular because that this is it again, you know, the major season and the men's majors. It's so short now, it's it's insane. It's just I can't I can't cope with the fact that you know, after next week, that's it until Augusta. I mean, I wish they'd flip it back a little bit, or do something with a calendar like.
A great broadcaster. You just led me right into my next thing, which is which is John Ram.
Yeah. Well, yeah, there's another guy who is is great to watch because he's so combustible, so talented, so combustible, and just seems to me so utterly bored with life on a frustrated with life on live. But there you go. You take the money, John, So you know, what do you want from us?
I don't think.
I don't know, like if there's ever been someone where we would like I can't think like of a So say he finishes like a non competitive thirtieth, we're gonna say, we're gonna say, hey, this is the worst major career or major year of his career. And it's right after he got this giant bag of money.
Yeah.
Now, if he went if he went out and win one, which is completely conceivable, if he goes out and wins this tournament, then we're sitting at he's one way away from the Grand Slam.
Yeah. Yeah.
It is a wild juxtaposition of in terms of like the way we could we we will think of this athlete for the next eight months based off of this tournament.
I just don't think Live prepared well. Bryson the shambug was against this well.
I think Bryson's the outlier here, is the.
Outlier totally because otherwise, you know, you think of so many players on live who it's just such a comfort zone and where is the real where are the real competitive juicies flowing? Now you might argue that that that they don't really flow on the PGA Tour anymore either, But I just think regular competition against bigger fields is a huge thing. You know, if you're John Ram was saying ahead of the US Open at Piners, well, look at my look at my finishes, I've not done too badly.
And against you know, you're finishing, what's what percentage of the field are you how many people are you beating? It's not Yeah, I just think it's it's a real shame because I mean, I think one of the great the greatest shame in professional golf of late was was John Ram going. You know, that was such a the o the day the music died, when he was sitting there in his black bomber jacket. Who live on just or end of saying whatever they wanted them to say,
for a huge bag of money. But again, that's another interesting story. It's you know, it's a very divisive time in golf, but it's also a very very interesting time in men's golf because you've got all these little subplots
coming together at the majors. The majors are these amazing outcrops now in golf, but everything else you might go about, well, not interested in that, not interest in that, and then suddenly the majors come on and go right, Okay, here are all these threads, all these narrative threads coming back together for this one week. And that's why it's just there's nothing like it.
Yeah, I you know, if the golf world comes back together, I think there's an argument that the majors get less interesting.
Yeah, there is an argument different they have got more interesting. Not that they weren't interesting before, but they've become even more firmed up in there in their importance since the division, because you know, everyone wants to see the best players play against the best players, and it just doesn't it just doesn't happen anymore. You know, the PGA Tour has been denuded by live and Live is just the most nonsensical piece of rubbish. It's just as a competition, you
just think because you don't care. And I don't think the players really care. Because you want to win the great titles in the game, and whether you win three or four million for winning, or whether you win one hundred and thirty thousand or whatever it is for finishing last, I don't think they really I'm sure they do care a bit about the extra money they can earn, but you know they've all they're also vastly wealthy now anyway, the top twenty players, certainly.
I think the thing too about Live is that all the for the most part I brought this up on our podcast last week with Joseph Lamania, is that of all the player to me, it seems like Bryson why he might be the outlier is he has taken the money and he's invested it back into itself, like he's he's producing one of one clubs, you know, he's developed.
Like that comes with a cost to me. Everybody else is taking the money and buying a bigger house, you know, buying a bigger boat in one player's case, And and for the most part, like that that takes away that that leads to more time and said house, more time on said boat, maybe a lot, maybe more time on said boat than the golf course. And and when you do that, you're you're at this. This bag of money
has deterred. I think Bryson is the only one that's taking the money and maybe gotten better, you know, and used it like a company would use an infusion of cash where they aren't, you know, they aren't taking it out and putting in their pockets. They're putting it back in the business and developing something. So I think that's
the difference. Is that. I for for from what I've heard is that john rom kind of like went away and came up for air and was like, you know, it was like, oh man, the Masters is coming up.
I first start working.
But the other thing about Bryce and the Shambo is he's a he's a he's a zealot. His enthusiasm for everything, whether it's you know, three D printing his clubs or YouTube or whatever, he is for you know, better or worse. He is enthusiastic about everything. He's got a real energy, and so that will drive him to you know, I think you contrast Bryce and de Shambo with Dustin Johnson and Dustin Johnson has always just wanted a nice, comfortable life,
and it's just wanted the nice things. And I actually, actually quite I applaud him for that. He's never pretended as anything else. Dustin Johnson so and I I kind of warmed him for that. It's just well, I just want to. I just want to. I don't even want to play golf anymore. I've got I think.
I think the thing is he saw this and he said, I'm gonna be done playing golf. I'm gonna be a dad and fit, you know, yeah.
I mean, and fair play to him, whereas Bryce and de Shambo has I can't work out if Bryce another matters either way, but I can't work out how really sort of bright he is or otherwise, because you know, we're pretending. We're told he's this great physician not physician physics major, which.
The biggest question.
Well, but it interests me. I don't know why. But anyway, he's got an it. I think he's got an inquiring mind. I don't know how much that mind answers those inquiries, but he's got something which he wants to try different things and do different things. And again that all adds to the engagement and the YouTube thing is interesting because that is the way that golf media is going. Like, I don't know what that you you're in the States,
I don't know what it's like. But in the UK, certainly sponsorship is going to are golfing YouTubers now rather than professionals, rather than touring players, because if you want eyes on a product, where are you going to go? You're going to the the guy with three million subscribers and YouTube rather than the person who's finishing fiftieth in a tournament, even though they are at a totally different level of as a goal for the two players, they're
just not getting the exposure. So I mean, you know, we were talking about it on the regional qualifying and again you can tell me if they did this at the US Open, but the amounts of YouTube are saying I'm going to try qualifying for the Open and making content out of it, knowing knowing that they're never going to qualify, but then then sort of sitting down after they've shot eighty four and going wow, the heart regnestly
I didn't quite didn't quite have it today. Put that out on YouTube and get the views.
I think it's kind of bullshit to do that.
As someone who performerly played amateur golf, I think it's bullshit that you're playing partners to do that, Like you're playing with guys and you're going to be running around with your with your cameras camera guys.
Like, I think that's a raw deal.
That's one thing that Yeah, that is one thing that I thought about it when I was watching it, because you know, god, they were really professionally filmed. There's sort of three in particular, and I thought, you know, these guys who are playing with you probably weren't entering genuinely hoping to make it through the final qualifying.
What's your next thing? Let's get let's what's what's your next thing? About that Open? What are you mostly looking forward to?
Is it?
Scotti Chef?
Yeah, I was Scotti Scheffler. I find very interesting because again, the thing I love about the Open is it is it because it throws something different into the mixed doors of these variables into the mixing. He saw a Pinehurst. He was not you know, how could you have someone coming in in that sort of form who suddenly wasn't really there at the US Open? And it was just
because it was different. You know, it's not it's not just splashing out the greenside rough and this needs a phenomenal player, but I like players to be sort of tested a little bit more in there. And he's got a fantastic short game. It's a great picture of the ball. But I don't know, it's just, yeah, I really enjoyed Pinehurst because it's it's created as that sort of lynx you feel to it and just that it's just something different.
And you know, a lot of the players will complain and say, oh, I mean scottis Cheffer, I just had it in his head that it wasn't really fair if he hit it offline, that you know that you might get a good lie, you might get a bad lie. Well, I'll tell you what. Some of the kicks you might get off the fairway at Troon. You can hit a D you know, you can hit a T shot down in the middle and you might get a kick off.
So it's actually a reasonably fair Links course. But in Links golf you are going to get some You're going to get some funky bouncies. So that's what golf is. It's not, you know, it's not in a sort of a perfect sterile environment. It's it's got the variables and there's a lot to deal with in the draw because people are teeing off at six thirteen finishing teeing off at four thirty. You know, the weather can entirely change, so you've got to have a bit of fortune as well.
At the Open Championship, I think, yeah, I think that's the thing is like there are there is some doubt with Scheffler going into this week, despite having one of the most dominant seasons we've ever seen, you know, in the in the modern era. He's been extraordinary, and he's been extraordinary against the best players in the world. But there is this question about the style of golf and the Open Championship.
He hasn't been great.
I mean by his standards, now, by anybody else's standards. If you went ta T twenty one, T twenty three in the Open, you'd be like, he's a great Open player. But it's not not that for Skyty Scheffler with the bar he set in major championships, and I think there is like this thing is, as you alluded to earlier, it's crazy that we're it's over that were you know, this is the last one I mean, if he doesn't win two majors with this year, like it it kind of like, I.
Mean, it seems like he needs relatively Yeah, he seems like he.
Needs two majors with everything else he's done. And I hate to say to say that, but like for it to rank in the in the upper upper echelons of outstanding seasons in the history of golf. If you look at it beyond you know, the data, people will say this is this is one of the great seasons data wise, but from the majors are what matters in getting to knocking too often in a year is such a small list, and and when you put two in a year plus
everything else, it becomes a historic year. And you know, like and and again it's similar to the Bryson thing. Can he conquer an effective playing service? I think it's interesting. Like I've been you know, you've been covering Wimbledon, but like I heard some of some analysts on the tennis channel I was watching the other night and they were talking about how, you know, a young player just like you know what, he didn't have the.
Reps on this surface to win that match. You know he might have.
He he was the better player but he lost because the other guy had more reps on the surface. And I apologize, I can't remember who they were talking about or who was talking, but like that's one of my questions with Scheffler, is is this just a he needs more reps on this surface?
So al Phil exactly. So all you think of the sort of so many of the great American players who have won Open Championships apros, but and Tom Watson springs to mind in that, you know, after well, one of the quirky things with Tom Watson is that he won seventy five and seventy seven Kenersti and Tunbury and still
didn't appreciate links golf. And he really sort of clicked after that and he got it, understood it, and then he would come over and he'd always play Dornoch or Bali Bunyan or something like that before the Open Championship. You know, Marcomedro is the saying they love links golf, Tiger Woods would awas play a bit of links golf. You've got to you can't just come into the Open Championship and that week and get into it is as you say, well, the grass court season, you know, you
can't come into Wimbledon. You know, having a last player on clay or last player on hard courts, you've got to have a proper build up when you've also got to embrace the surface and the and the vagaries and the difference of it. So Scottie Scheffler, I you know, I know we're supposed to on podcasts have hot takes. I don't think he's going to win this this Open Championship. I think he might struggle to the Open Championship. Might
be a mystery to him forever. I don't know. But I think he's too good a player to never challenge at an Open Championship. I wonder if it might take a calm, soft course at an Open Championship for him to sort of get into it and then you can, like you said from Micholson, it took a while, it took a long time. I mean I mentioned the opening true in two thousand and four where he first sort of understood how to how to do it, and he's been around a long time before that, so you know,
I think it'll take some time for Scottish Scheffler. But but he's too good of all striker with a swing that I just can't watch but he's too good of all striker to to not challenge it Open championships in the future.
Yeah, And I think, like what you just think about it, this might be one of the impacts of the youth era that we're in with golf. Is like, this is a kid that grew up in Dallas, Texas and the PGA Tour plays two weeks a year and in links like it's the Genesis, which the Scottish Open, which is like quasi links in the Open Championship.
Exactly that I mean, Renaissance. Isn't you have enough? You know, I watched the Renaissance in the Scottish Open. It doesn't It doesn't really strike me as a proper links course anyway. It's you know, it's pretty soft. It's just that little bit. Yeah, I don't. I mean, it's a listen, it's a lovely place, but it's not kind of links golf as I as I know it. But yeah, you're right, it's just it doesn't give They don't play enough links golf. There's no
doubt about apple. Why would you You don't you don't need it, you don't need you don't need to.
Like and I think this this ties into Like, one of the things that I love about this major championship is when you look down the list of winners over the last decade, it's the Major for the olds. This is the major where really like you can throw out I think you can kind of throw out the the the predictions a little bit because you you get a wide range of players, you get people that you know.
Brian Harmon won a major.
I don't think it's conceivable for Brian Harmon to win any other major other than the Open. You know, like that's he wasn't gonna win a PGA, he wasn't gonna win a US Open, he wasn't gonna win the Masters, right, he wasn't.
Any distance of an Open championship. You're getting forty fifty yards a run. There's a bit of an equalization in terms of yes, Macroy is still if he has the fair, we're going to be twenty yards past. But it's not a big dispersal. And it's about it's about so many differ from things, and it's.
About a shot. It's about who has shots.
You have to go deep in your bag because you're gonna have to hit that punch floor iron cut from one seventy that you you never hit in America and you need to just have the shots in the bag. And I think, like to a certain extent, this is this tournament. I think in this era of golf, it's so figured out. It's track Man, it's it's a modern,
modern technology, and I'll never forget. I used to host a podcast regularly with Jeff Ogilvie and he said, you know, the thing about before track Man is everybody walked around the range saying, you know, I think I figured it out. And after track Man, everybody knew the answer. Nobody was trying to figure it out. And I think with Links Golf we recapture a little bit of that old soul of golf, where you know what, it takes a long time to figure this out.
In some years you haven't figured out. In some years you don't.
And there's certain venues out here that are going to appeal to certain players and not to others. And I think for that this is the last This is maybe the last event where you know, outside of maybe the Masters with the greens and you know, the the quirks about about figuring out and getting comfortable with Augusta, this event experience matters.
It's a good thing.
There's that great Padrick Harrington quote from a few years ago where he talked about experiences and all cracked up to be you know, this is the event where experience matters. And you could see one of the older guys who you you're looking at and saying, God, it would be great if that guy could get another major jumping to mind, Adam Scott, Justin Rose, Jason Day, those types of players.
This this, this is the event that they should have circled on their calendar every year.
One hundred percent, absolutely, And it's dealing with the whole thing as to say, of you know things. You know, everyone's looking for this perfection in terms of the numbers and on the track man or whatever, and everyone's looking for on the PGA too. Well, you're not just sort of going to the same courses. You're going to the same hotels every week. You're going to say everything's the same.
Whereas you go to the Open Championship. It's not just the course that it's so different, but it's the whole experience and ambience and as to say, the combination, you know, so you've really got to embrace it and sort of warmt it now, I don't. I'm sure that. Yeah, everything is is pretty comfortable for the players at the Open Championship anyway. But it's just different. It's a different thing. And if you go in thinking, whoa, this is different.
I'm a bit spooked by it, then you're never going to even have a chance, no matter how good a player you are. But if you're going to just feeling, oh, this is different, this is novel, this is exciting, this is great, you know, this is fantastic. The crowds are big, the crowds are different, the crowd or whatever it is, then you know you're you're automatically going to be doing better than eighty percent of the field. It's I mean, that's what we want in sport, isn't it That variety.
I think if you ask me to say what the unique selling point of the the Open Championship is is that it is different to everything else, even you know, people say all the Scottish Open, Scottish Opens, different the Open Championship is the courses are Yeah, you don't just don't get it. You don't get it anywhere anyone else.
Well, I think that's the thing too.
It's like it's kind of a it's a it's probably an American take to say, you get this guy, like the Open Championship so drastically different, and I think like if you if you hosted, if you hosted the Open exclusively in Ireland, it would have a completely different feel, you know, if it was just iri. Irish golfs different than Scottish golf, which is different than English golf. Right there, they are drastically different. Royal Saint George's is so different than true.
You know or the Old course, right yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's different culture, it's a different philosophy. And I think that's one of the unique things that I appreciate about the Open, especially with the you know re the you know, Royal Port Rush coming back in the fold is another almost wrinkle of diversity in the style, the and the culture of golf. I think that's the thing that the
Open nails more so than anything. Is that I mean, and this is what makes an impression of me as an American when I go over over to Ireland or Scotland or England, is the idea of of this golf culture that's so drastically different than America and the you know, just the way that the towns are intertwined in the golf and that to me it seems like that's what Troon has in space. I mean it's fifteen thousand people on what six courses you said.
Yeah, six, well six and a half courses, so yeah, seven ghostes pretty much. So it's yeah, it's it's not quite it's it's similar to the Airshore coast is quite similar as suppose to the to the Fifth Coast or to the East Lothian Coast. We have this. Yeah, it's a it's a golf has never really been sort of detached from the the people. It's a it's you know, behind the country club wall, it's it's kind of just there.
It's just it's just on the land between the beach and the and the town you have a bit of a golf course as well. So yeah, it's it is unique and that's what that's what I'm looking forward to.
What who's your pick? Who's your pick to win?
My pick is terrible at this, I really am.
You know.
Actually the only bet I've ever had that worked was and I don't bet now on sport, but I did have money on Calcaveca in nineteen eighty nine and it should have started him on a road to too serious gambling throughout my adult career because it's a sixteen year old winning in Calcaveca. I think it was like sixty six to one at the start of the week. I
don't know why I put money at Calcaveca. It's an exotic name, but I I don't know as Shane Lowry maybe is as a decent pick, you know, because again he is just very very comfortable in order, almost a home environment for him. Again, he'll have lots and lots and lots of support. And if it is a little bit blow, you know, there's there's a shot maker, and there's a guy with a great short game and the
guy who more than embraces the links challenge. I mean, you know, I think he's good as good a chance and he you know, he hasn't he hasn't really really challenged it major since that Port rushwin. But you know, I think if he if he puts away, he's putting deserted him for a wee bit. But I think, yeah, there have been signs from Lowry, so why not Shane Lowry. I'm just throwing out any old name here.
I'll go with Tabby Fleetwood.
Tell me I do love Tommy Fleetwood and again as sort of ball strikers going, I'd love to have Tommy Fleetwood swing. But and he's here obviously, but actually no, I wouldn't. If I had the ability to have that hair, I wouldn't have that hair. But I yeah, I'm just not convinced by his putting. Although the thing is about the Open Championship business. If you're playing in a nine to nine and a half in a stintmeter ten at the fastest really green, that sometimes helps out the lesser putters.
And that like they aren't super intricate greens like I think Port Rush was the course that stood out to me so much because of how they almost have like a you know, they have like a very refined green. I think, you know a lot of a lot of Lynx golf is old in the greens or just in these great places and they're just on the ground.
Yeah that's what true. Yeah, true is just flat smart. The smallest greens on the open roads are very very small greens. They've extended Martinie but did a bit of work. Obviously Martini But did a bit of work, and so they extended the greens a little bit, but some of the greens, but they're still just really tiny greens. But also there's not much in them. They're quite flat greens.
They're not that interesting the greens at trun but also links greens, you know, they don't have like I didn't know what you know, I didn't know what grain was growing up. We didn't. We just everything's just uniform home on a link screen. Really, you don't you don't get really grainy greens. So maybe that was a feeling on my part of it, but we didn't. We didn't study the green. It's not like you know your Bermuda grass
where you can see it all. It's links. Screens are fairly much as you see them, and the ones that true are so they're so obvious. It's just there's nothing, there's nothing really to them. So yeah, you're right, Tommy Fleetwand now I'm coming around to your pick, are you wonder?
You know, I hadn't much started doing.
I just pulled up the O W g R and you know, I was looking around and and it just kind of stuck out to me as as someone you know, he said, so.
Many close calls.
I don't I don't necessarily this is almost a bet for a top five, not better to win, but but.
I can give people top five bits. Yeah, storming through the field.
Everybody should check out your podcast, The Chipping Forecast.
It is a it's a great Listen.
We got Eddie Pepple, so we have Eddie on it. And you know, Eddie, this is what golf is, you know, Eddie was Eddie was third at the Players Championship back in twenty eighteen. He finished sixth the Carnoustie in the Open, and you know the ups and downs that all golfers in their career have ups and downs. And Eddie's been grappling with his golf this season and grappling with you know. I think he thinks too much, Eddie about life in general, which.
Makes you he's too smart, too smart for you.
You're too honest to you know, just in all sports, not just golf, you just want to be simple minded. And sometimes that doesn't mean lack of intelligence, it just means lack of lateral thinking. You don't want to be a lateral thinker in golf, and Eddie is a lateral thinker. But he's too talented to be away for too long but he's quite engaging as well. So I say quite engaging. He's very engaging. We love them.
So thank you so much for coverat. This was a joy and hopefully will have you on again. But look forward to you seeing your hometown shine next week at the Open Championship.
Well, I hope it does. I'm sorry you're not going to be in a tiny little a tiny little bedsitting trough.
Well, you know this is what happens when when you get stuffed in the radio radio box your first open and then then shook down for a couple thousand dollars.
Oh god, yeah, it's a it's a pricey old business traveling. So I used to do it on the BBC ticket all the time, see do us opens, uspgs and Masters, and then the BBC stopped stop doing them so that the Masters this year. I saw you over there. It was my first time in like twenty three years where I was there on my own. My god, it it's an expensive business. I'll tell you I was. I was stealing as many free sandwiches as I could take home from a dinner.
You heard one of those guys.
I wasn't one of those guys. I just heard you talking about it today.
I wasn't. I was not.
I'm absolutely not a hoarder from the grab and go. No, I might have taken a salad one night.
Okay, okay, Yeah, Well we're gonna keep an eye out next year when you're.
Thank you so much, Jeers, thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Today's episode was edited by PJ Clark. Big thanks to PJ. We had a few technical issues in this one and he was able to piece it all together. So big thanks to PJ. And as a reminder, one of the things we got going is events. We have a few great events in the fall that have some spots in them. One of which that I would call out is our event at Kingsley.
Kingsley is one of the best modern golf courses in the country. It is an awesome, awesome golf course. We're playing it at the end of September and Traverse City, Michigan at Kingsley, Michigan, right next to Traverse City. What a delightful time of year to go to northern Michigan. So check that out if you're if you're looking to have a little fall excursion. Uh that is one that
should be high on everybody's list. The golf course plays awesome that time of year, and it should be really great weather up there.
Sweater weather.
Maybe last year it was like E three when we hosted there this time of year. Uh So, anyway, that that time of year, so hopefully you can. We'll see you there, but check that out at proshop dot theffride egg dot com and.
We will be back later this week with another episode. Thank you guys, and I hope everybody enjoys the Open