Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Greater Than. Greater Than is one of our first sponsors, one of the first people that jumped on supporting the Fried Egg and they are back.
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comes in some new sizes, and great guys. They are big golf fans, so use the promo code fried Egg no spaces. Promo code is fried Egg for twenty percent of your order. We are back with Jeff Oogelvie to break down what happened at Wingfoot this year for the twenty twenty US Open. Obviously it was quite the tournament. Bryson Deshambeau just was spectacular. Obviously, everybody's going to focus in on the long drives, but all in all, he was clearly the best player in the field and he
put on quite a display. So I was really interested to talk to Jeff about this weekend. Obviously he had won the last time the US Open was at Wingfoot and it was a dramatically different style of golf. As a quick note, thank you all for those who entered the Victory Club giveaway of the tickets we have winners. Eric Cubulus, Sorry pronunciation is not my strong suit. You have won to set to tickets to next year's US Open,
and then Joseph Uran. So thanks to everybody that supported us and entered that and signed up for the Victory Club and mark that the Friday Eggs sent you there. So without further ado, here is Jeff Ogilvie.
I miss the green.
For example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my ball.
In a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Frida egg fried egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off of the hump course. How much of that did you watch with the time difference.
I watched probably the last couple of hours every day. I mean it kind of finishes about eight in the morning here, so I was kind of starting from about six in the morning. I've developed a bad call at you do you have it late at night? So I wasn't getting up to too early in the morning. So I watched the last couple of hours and off I watched the lastn holes on Monday morning, which was the
last round, and sure enough I watched the highlights. My we've got this good package here on the where we sign up to get the sport package.
Here's not actually on cable.
It's like a Netflix kind of thing here, so you pay a subscription, you get all the sport. So I can watch it delayed as well. I can just I've got the archive kind of So I watched the fevoritive it. Yeah, just interested to see the course looked awesome. I was jealous, but not jealous.
You know.
I got to ask if you run across Tiger and your call of duty late nights.
Oh well, he loves it.
You'd be surprised how many people do actually it's just lockdown thing. I mean, it's really it's a competitive outlet, right for someone who's not getting to go out there and be competitive. It's good fun and the boys and the bit of banter. It's all the banter really, you know, the trash talk.
It's that.
It's fantastic. I hear he's right into it though. He'd be competitive as.
Like super into it and haws for like years.
Yeah, it's one of those things if you're a military guy, it's kind of that you would for him. I imagine it's like kind of fulfilling that side of his dream, you know. Anyway, it's a competitive outlet. It's fun and it's banter with the boys, and it's trash talk and it's harmless. It's no different from a pick up basketball game or something. It's just on a screen, right. But anyway, Yeah, what.
Do you think of the course?
It looked really good, looked nice, I thought. I mean, I thought, again, they'd probably set it up a bit narrow and stuff.
But that's.
We can that's part of part of the discussion, I think. But yeah, it look great, looked really good. The green surfaces look better like late summer rather than early I think those they haven't really had a lot of sun and growth time by June, you know, a wing foot really three months or something right September. As a whole, there's a whole nother there's a whole the end of summer and courses in that area that it's so much better in the fall than they are in the spring.
So yeah, from that respect, it looked brilliant and gills stuff like, the looks so much that just pushed back out to those kind of odd shapes and stuff.
It was grouse. Yeah, they look so good.
I remember you describing the greens as like ropeye in the afternoon when you played it.
Yeah, O six, they were rough.
I mean, it wasn't anything other than it was probably too early in the year for the greens. They have one hundred and fifty six guys when they were rolling at fifteen on the stem, you know, like all the factors, and they just got to that point where the soft spikes of the spikes would leave those imprints and they wouldn't come back out, you know when they stay in. And so by the end of the day it was
like the surface of the moon. Like trying to hold three foot is but that was Thursday and Friday, and then the weekend they were okay, you know, because they had sixty guys on them, not one hundred and fifty six. That's less caddies unless everybody around the holes. So yeah, they were ropey. But that's the hallmark of the US Open, to be fair, like generally most of them that they push them that hard.
They look good from the.
Edge of the green, you know, but when you're actually down there like squatting and have a look and the shadows getting over the little bumps and stuff, so they're rough at the end often, But that's part of tournament golf. I think if people have played big tournaments have often got like that. You know that the greens look almost you know, he's kind of killed them this week to test us a much. You know, they get really dry and they just get all messed up by Sunday, and
good putters whole puts in those situations. You know that part of the tiger hold at Tory when you see the worms eye view of that, that gives you an idea of what they can be like at the end. There's just nuts that that ball went were later went in, you know, But.
That's the thing.
Great putters whole puts on greens like that. So I've always liked that side of championship golf. But saying that, when you turn back up in the morning and the green like Thursday afternoon, the greens are rubbish because they're just worn out. Friday morning, they're immaculate, like no one's been on them again. I mean, they can get them back. It's just too many people in twenty four hours.
You know.
Yeah, the first tea time early or second tea time off in the morning at a tournament is that you just are putting on glass.
Just unbelievable.
It's good.
It's so nice because especially the Friday morning, because you've had Thursday afternoon, the ball has been bouncing around. You're like, you're a nice skirl to go. I gotta go out and do that again. And in the morning it's just pristine. It's like, oh, how good is this?
It's nice. Such a difference, big difference.
What uh what did you think of the edges? Did you?
I was thinking about it because you know a lot of people were complaining about how you know, the rough didn't matter, but some of the back edges, the wings, which I think are really cool. Bring the ball back that would have when you guys played it, No. Six, that would have ended up.
In the rough.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean the greens looked, the shapes of the grains are so cool that you when you play it, you don't know that the drone footage is so good for that to like expose. There's like square fronts and like straight edges and like weird little shapes and stuff. And I think you only see that on courses that have either been untouched from that golden age or they've been restored right and it was they didn't have like Mickey mouse ear looking greens back then.
You know, big circles.
They actually just fit what they fit into the place, and sometimes they they're really odd shapes and they're just so beautiful to look at because they're all different, like if anything. At Wingfoot, you've got eighteen really different greens, but all within a theme, you know, which is why a big reason why everybody loves it. To be fair, there's probably lots of great courses, especially in Westchester County, that have similar sort of vegetation and holes and they're
really kind of really well designed. Great courses like Quaker and Westchester, and there's a bunch of others that I don't know, Like Wingfoot's got the greens, you know, and that's just what elevates any course above I mean the hallmark of the best course of the world. They all have really unique, really crazy, really fun greens, you know, be it Augusta Shin National Old Course, Ron Melbourne, Pine Valley. The greens are nuts and they're really fun and they're
really interesting. And wing Futs another one.
You know, I was thinking, like the truly iconic championship courses that have endured hundreds, you know, one hundred years all have pretty much great greens. You know, you think about like Pebble, Oakmont, Shenacock, you know Country Club.
Yeah, like PV.
Chicago, Chicago Go of Course's got outrageously cool greens. You know, all the McDonald Rainer courses are cool greens. I mean, Pinehurst has very unique greens and my favorite, but they're super unique.
Right.
Yeah, that would be another one that's in there.
That's that's really the whole courses about the greens and everything else is dictated by all those great courses. That's the harmark goverment, right, And then it's the really great ones up a great hole before that green as well, you know, but a great you can I mean the first whole wings for it's a perfect example of a nothing piece of land and a really great hole, you know, because of one great green that was actually basically man made at the end of a relatively flat piece of land.
Like it's outrageously good, cool, isn't it. So it shows you what a green can do because it's You've played plenty of first holes that look like the first time the West Coast at Wingfoot, but none as good as that as a first hole really because of the way the green goes. So I think it's just super important.
I mean everybody knows that. I think when they built a golf course, I just think those guys had such a gift, you know, maybe the gift of less information, you know, they hadn't they didn't have all these like potential things that they could do because of all the machines and the technology. They just kind of pushed it around until it kind of worked, you know, until the water rolled off and the boar would stay on slopes and we could put some pins there in there and
there and see what happens. And that looks like how they made it. You know, they didn't go in with a plan. They just pushed dir around until it worked. It looks like, you know, and that might be a bit more organic and interesting. It's why the greens the
last hurd years often look very similar. But back then they were all variety, right, because they didn't have a system like a USGA system to build a green, so they just kind of made it work in each spot, which might be a more interesting way to do it.
I don't know.
I think also they the speeds that they built it for help because they weren't. I feel like today everybody has to think about this. You know, this is a pin position here, this is a pin position there. And when they built them, they could be a little bit more random and bold because almost everywhere it was a pin position when the greens were rolling, you know six Yeah, you know, like you think about how many more pins
would be on every green. But now people are like, okay, this is a pinnable area, and they start to think about it that way rather than I'm just going to build a really cool green and we're going to find the pins.
Find out where the pins. We'll find the pins after Yeah.
That's true.
Yeah, they build tournament courses especially they build with four pins in mind. They build four pin into their greens, you know, which is exactly the opposite of, like you said, what they did. They just built greens and you guys will work out where the holes go. Just working out later on, you know what I mean, which is kind of really nice, you know, and that's really sad it does. I mean, the old course was effectively was built in
that fashion all the way through. It was just I will go hit off that direction and then we'll keep going until we want to turn around and come back.
And gradually it kind of evolved.
The bunkers were where the balls that all go down and muck all the divots and like everything kind of just evolved into the right place and the less humans try to manipulate kind of the cooler it ends up, which is, you know, which is interesting.
That's a deep thought that could be applied to the game.
Well that that actually, I think is a massive application at the moment, which I reckon i'd go into but if.
You want, yeah, go for it, go into it.
Well, the Bryson thing, right, I guess we're talking about the Bryson thing, and the world of golf is going to react. Already did react pre wing Foot, but they're going to max react after a major right.
At like the.
Change, and everyone's going to look at different sides of it. I think, you know, the players are a lot of players can start copying the method or the the genius, and is what he does is the further he does it with. I think it isn't actually what he works on per se he's maniacal, it's how he goes about it, and it actually keeps him present. Did you see him walking out the lart He was on the last hole winning the usaving by six, and he's hit the fairway,
hit the fairway, didn't he on eighteen? I think or wherever whatever he was doing, he was in the rough.
He was in the ruck.
He was in the rough, yeah, because he got up and down short of the green.
And got up and down from sort of not far from where I was. But he he was looking at his yards book for two hundred yards off the eighteenth fairway, like he's winning by five. He's not like gorging to his caddy or how nice is this We're gonna win the He's like obsessively looking in the Yards book and it got to me and it's like, this guy's doing this, whether it's on purpose, on it keeps him present. He's
not thinking about winning the US Open. He's thinking about the five point five percent whatever on the bounce stuff that side of that little hill. Will have to note that for next time I come to Wing for he's doing he's occupying his part of his mind that's usually worrying that normal people are worrying about winning or losing. You know, He's just so zoned in on his science that oh, that's the odd thing th we won, you
know what I mean, It's actually kind of genius. I mean there's some guys like Dustin or Freddie who just stand next to the ball and wait for their caddy to give him a club kind of I mean, not really. I mean they're obviously thinking about it. Or there's the extreme end like Bryson. And I think if you're a guy like Bryson who couldn't stop thinking, he has to do it the way he does it, you know, otherwise
he'd be off sideways crazy. But that's my take on him, and I think a lot of people will start sciencing up and like fat grips and like putting nets in their house and simulators and try to work on all the angles and numbers. And I think that'll be probably good for him. You know, it's fine, but it'll mess some guys up. I think doing the side its approach.
That's kind of the thing that I take away most from this is the stones on Bryson. I mean, he was the top fifteen player in the world. He's making millions of dollars a year, He's got millions in endorsements, and he was for the foreseeable future going to make millions of dollars a year. And I mean he completely overhauled his body in his golf game, went and then went crazy with it, and it could have not worked
and he could have been gone off the planet. Like how many guys have we seen go off the like you know, be never seen for five years if they go chase distance And he successfully did it. But you were in that same position, top ten player in the world, did you ever like think about doing something drastic to your game like he did.
There's a few moments I wanted to snap all my clubs in my bag, which would have been a drastic life.
No, not really it's amazing what he's doing.
And look, historically, basically everyone who's ever done and what he's just done has lost it, completely lost it, like never heard from again kind of thing. Anyone usually who chase distance, serious distance, as opposed to just letting distance
be a byproduct of swinging a little bit better. It's an outright chasing distance is almost one hundred percent of the time been a failure for people so well done, like exactly what he says him incredible, incredible, hats off, and he has he has truly worked out the formula to play that setup, that style setup, and you can't beat someone who hits it that far. Like that's the
I think the interesting thing out of this. If you go all the way back, it'll be the talk about the effect and what about the equipment and blah blah blah. But if you go all the way back to like Tiger winning the Masters is ninety seven, yes, and he comes out and he's off the old members teaz effectively. I mean they were just behind the It was way shorter than ninety seven.
It was ninety eight.
They put a bit of length on, but sitting wedges in the nine ninees in I remember they showed the comparison clubs of him and Nicholas, Nicholas and sixty five and him in ninety seven, and they were a little bit different, but it wasn't crazy different. And then the whole world reacted to that tournament. It's like, well, we've got a tigerproof courses. Now we're going to stop this guy.
He was the only guy in the field doing that, by the way, hitting wedges into fifteen and nine and no one else was doing and he won by twelve, Like there's always the best guy, right, fine, but the whole world reacted by, for one of a better word, tigerproofing.
And look, distance had been evolving, probably kind of in a linear fashion since the day of golf started right gradually, and I'm sure the guddy ball made a bit of a bump and the steel shafts and it was a bump, but generally from Bob Jones at least till ninety seven, it was kind of a linear, kind of gradual thing, right, Yeah, a few more people further, but it was pretty like every year you came out like the guy, the new guy who was long tiger. That was like, yeah, that's
that's a little bit longer than normans did it. That's nuts, But it wasn't like this, and.
They tigerproofed golf course.
So so now what pros do This is a long winded thing, but what pros do is every Sunday night or every Friday, they miss a carter. Every Sunday or every time they're going home. The hymn has caddy, his coach, the family are going home, kind of going through how do I get better next week?
What do I do? And in my life career on tour.
Generally at the start at least and everyone was the same, and you can pole players and caddies this from fifteen twenty years ago. All we did was it was g's I got a put better, she's I made a few bad decisions. My short game needs to sharpen up. It'd be really nice if I could hit a few of those phades with a short UNEs and those right pins whatever.
That was the thing that you would go home trying to work on.
Now ninety five percent across the board, everyone's going home on Sunday night, how do I hit it further?
That's all they do.
So the reaction to them lengthening all these effectively the tiger proofing thing where they just started throwing length everywhere, and the Beth Page Black and the Tory Pine South kind of syndrome that's everywhere. Now all the pro goes home is doing the only thing that makes a difference to your score, really, or the thing that makes the
biggest difference to your score is hitting it further. Because when you got bunkers from two eighty to three to twenty on every hole, and the guy who wins is hitting at three thirty, everyone in the field is going to try to work on that. No one tried to work on that twenty years ago. It was just a byproduct of swinging it well. But now everyone is so obsessive hitting it far. It's a disproportionate advantage by how
they set up the courses. If they'd made courses shorter and firmer and flukier kind of in ninety eight as opposed to longer and softer and more penal, this would not be happening. Guaranteed, Absolutely, we would work on what we needed if there was a course. If you there are courses out there, like I'll pick on the sand Belt because it's right here, the sand Belt courses. There is a particular distance on most holes, that's the right spot. It's firm, the ball is going to run through dog legs.
You could not if Bryson played for a year a tournament for a year around the sand belt, what he would work on would be completely different. It wouldn't be distance, it would be shape or sort of distance control and stuff around the greens and strategy, because there's a finite amount of improvement you can get at those shorter golf courses, older courses by distance, you know what I mean, there's
other way, there's more. Distances are proportionate. It's proportionate to the kind of having a good score, whereas it wing foot. When the rough is like that and the course is that long, he can hit wedge into every hole of its driver basically, so if he's in the rough, he can still hit the green or at least get it around the green. Most guys who are hitting at say two ninety or three hundred as opposed to three fifty, they're having to lay it up out of the rough,
so there's a mass. It's just completely disproportionate. So he's basically proving the USGA setup model. If we'll pick on them, the narrow long ruff model, it just gets beaten by distance. And the more they do it, and I see everybody's saying we're going to have narrower courses but longer rough, it's just going to happen more because.
Power will always beat rough.
So I just Augusta would be interesting because that's more of a position course. But again, if the courses were shorter, If they got shorter, we wouldn't have chased it. The longer you make the cause, and that's the human reaction getting in the way.
If we just sort of left it alone, it would have evolved differently.
But as soon as you start manipulating and trying to stop people hitting it further, the first thing you don't do is make the courses longer, because then everybody's going to want to need to hit it longer.
You don't.
If you make them shorter, nobody needs hit it long anymore. You won't even have to change an equipment rule, you know what I mean.
If you per se thought, if people thought that this.
Was an issue, there's courses in Melbourne that a shortened bouncy that two hundred and eighty is plenty, but two hundred and eighty hitting it like Hogan would be a massive advantage, but not three fifty. It would be in the trees all the time. There's just be no chance it would just run into the crap. The old course would be the same if Bryson, if we all played the old course every day, thirty tournaments a year.
No one is playing like ice in.
They're playing like Peter Thompson did, or like Rory at most, you know what I mean, like try and hit it far. But they're like, it's a different sort of approach because the question being asked is a different question.
Now.
The question being asked is the harder you hit it, the better you're going to do.
Go ay boys.
So it's having the opposite reaction of what they want. That's what I feel like anyway, And this is really magnified that I couldn't understand. How does he win the USA? Been playing like that? How does matth How do these guys shoot under par? Hitting hardly any fairlies? I I promise you if you poll the field, they'd be like, they don't know how he did that because they were in the rough and they had to lay it up.
But he's getting it to the green out of the ruff. So Yeah, amazing.
I just it was really interesting, just magnified that we're humans have actually we've actually the decisions to help.
Not help the direction. Just to why has this happened.
It isn't because the players are chasing distance just because, and it isn't because the manufacturers are making equipment just because. We're just doing it, because that's answering the question we're being asked. He's done it better than anyone's ever done.
I think that's like the thing that people miss so much, Like your job as a golf professional is to get the best at beating what's in front of you. And Bryson has figured out how to beat narrow, thick, and you know, like it's so golf though, that this whole thing everything in golf is counterintuitive, and people think, oh, we need to we need to beat the long hitters, like we got to penalize them. Let's make it narrow
and let's lengthen it. And all you're doing when you do that is you're just killing the short hitter, the short accurate hitter. Because out at wing foot, especially if you played great, you might hit sixty percent of your fairways as a short hitter, like an accurate. You hit sixty percent of the fairways forty percent of the time. You've got a long iron in a green from five inch rough, which is a half stroke penalty, you're dead, you know. So it's seven holes, you're dead, you know.
And and Bryson he didn't. It didn't matter as long as he hit it to the right side. That let him have an open shot into the green. He knew it was. So what I wrote after was that the setup was extremely predictable and the rough being so lush, not necessarily like you know, you think about the rough like if that was wispy, unpredictable fescue rough, or even that three or four inch rough, that's super unpredictable, especially for a high speed player where you're really worried is
this ball gonna jump? Is it coming out dead? Is it gonna knuckle like and you don't know it. Getting that unpredictability is the only way, in my opinion, you can really stop distance outside of going to something like you were talking about maybe six thousand yards no par wide.
Well, if you don't, I'm not saying all in all cases, but it's just an example of Yeah, like you said,
it's the counterintuitiveness, like why they're hitting it long. Now, we better challenger more well with length, And if you challenge with length, it's just we're just gonna hit it further, and the they're gonna make balls and clubs that go further, and the pros are gonna go home and find out devices and ways and eat more food or whatever it is, which is if that's the question being, if that's the
skill required, we're going to work it out. People are going to work it out, and they're going to do it better than you can imagine they do it, because that's always in athletics.
People just advance the sport, right, that's always going to happen.
I like you, right, Flyer Roff would make a massive difference, like true, true, fluky crazy Flyer Rauff. I mean, I'd like to see a bit more width so they get so narrow us opens the straight head just can't hit all the fairways, you know, and they lose their advantage because it's almost simple. Everybody's missing them anyway. You know, they're so narrow. But Flyer is very You couldn't hit greens out of Flyer rough at wing foot, there's no chance.
Well you would you could, but you couldn't consistently have a plan out of the raft because every lie would be different.
You know. It's so fluky that the variety that you were talking about, and.
It's and if you misjudged one or two, you get in there the next hole all of a sudden, now you got doubt, like it builds and that's just and I agree with you with the width thing. And you played at Chambers. If you drove it well out there, you could have very fairauway right.
Absolutely, yeah, you could every fair oak for the week without being outrageously straight either. But hitting it in the right places wasn't super easy. And the ball, I mean, look at the score that was only that was single digits under part, wasn't it? That was not far from power And the greens were really rapey. If the greens
were good there, they would have been quite low. But the flukiness, the irony is the fluky are kind of the courses, in other words, the variety and the kind of random bounces and different lives here and there, it actually ends up more fair, you know, which is again one of those counterintuitive things. If it's Snandrew's the old course to me is the fairest course there is, but the kick on it is it's the most unfair course
it is. But when you play it for really for a long time, you realize when you hit it in the right kind of areas with the right shots, you get good bounces almost all the time. But yeah, the wrong areas you get bad bounces all the time, you know, I mean, so it actually it's a more interesting ask when there's width and firmness, you know, it's a more interesting challenge. I mean, Wingfort it's a great mint course and set up like it was last week.
It's still a cool.
Challenge and it's fun to watch, but it's there's less dimensions to a challenge like that. If the deciding factor is going to be if you can edit three fifty and be really great out of the rough and you can complete the hole around it, if you're good enough around the greens, but three fifty you're gonna be fine. If that's the question asked, it just gets less interesting
to watch. It'd be more fun to see Zach Johnson come up the last few holes against Rory and Bryson and and him have a big advantage of being the player that he is versus the big advantage that they have. You know, each one gets their chance, but they're taking they're taking the ability to compete in tournaments like that away by just for guys like Zach, by just adding so much length and so much long grass that it just gets really hard unless you hit it that far.
I hadn't looked at stats.
Zach Johnson picked up I think ten point eight shots on the greens last I mean, like maybe putted the best he's ever put in his life and finished twelve shots back.
Yeah, I was. It was crazy. I mean, that's kind of where it's at.
And so you wonder why the two pro professional golf and the golf landscape will be less interesting if he can't if guys like him can't compete anymore. You know, the guys went at Snandra's and Augusta, and he was a really good weekend away from winning wing foot Scenandras and Augusta. Imagine, like what a career, but it's been
taken away from him a little bit. He could absolutely still win a wing foot but like he said, was he plus ten on the greens plus ten and he was twelve behind, like what like you know, so that's that's kind of explains the whole thing. That's a really interesting start. I didn't know that that's crazy, but that's ultimately frustrating for Zach.
You know, like there was a Web was plus eight.
Web's the same. I mean, what a player, you know what I mean.
Top five player in the world.
Had no chance and he had it one of his probably one of the best putting weeks of his career.
Yeah, I mean no chance. I think he's extreme.
I think they could have won, but it was obviously clearly very difficult in the end.
I mean six under.
Missing a butt and then hitting twenty low twenties in the fairways, like you just you look at the numbers and Rory's comments, well, I just don't understand how this is working, Like you can't compute it in his head, the numbers don't.
It's so impressive what he's done he work out.
No one can work out why it works because it's just completely different approach.
It's amazing given how far he hits it. The accuracy is actually astounding because he's gotten straighter and he's gained thirty yards.
Thirty yards is crazy. I mean, if you get fired, I know, there's all this this crack. Oh we've got the new ball, the new drive, and everyone comes over. We've got twenty yards this year. Then you driver is nuts, you know, but no one ever actually does because if they did, everyone hit it three hundred yards longer than they did twenty years ago. But he truly gained thirty yards,
which is just I've never seen anybody do that. And like I said, hit it straighter so he can he can't really probably definitely hit a twenty yard by the USABNT fairway, but he's good enough to hit it on the side of the fairway that he wants, like you say.
And his depth of preparation is so amazing that he's probably worked out the areas of the rough that he can be in that are where his drive is going to be, you know, all the right the rough on the right side's better because I can hit it out of that the one and that's really thick.
You know, he would have gone to that level of stuff.
And if you've got if you can edit three hundred and fifty and hit it within I don't know, ten yards of where you're aiming or something, that's just what a sort of an advantage, you know.
Yeah, I mean, he listened.
He said he heard that Phil and You talked about how good they how good you guys chipped it before, so he also like does his help work. That's the thing you can't take away is you know, frankly, he's outworked everybody else on tour.
Look fair play. I think he's awesome. I mean he's it's nuts. I think it's really really cool, and everyone's freaking out. But like, well a lot of people think I think he's awesome. What he's done is awesome. He is just as I've said, he is answering the question that's being asked, and he's doing it better than anyone's ever done it, you know, like and it looks different
from how it did for the last hundred years. So people have flipping out a little bit because Tiger and Rory and Dustin they're just kind of an evolution of Sneed and Jones and Hogan and Nicholas and I mean there's similar, but Bryce is completely different, right, He's He's like Dwayne the Rock Johnson and Maco Grady in one, you know, and it's like, what is going on here? If you had like twenty of them, it would be a it's like NBA level body difference from normal society.
Right, did you ever play with Marco Grady?
No?
No story, the stories. I went down a rabbit hole one night on that guy. It's just unbelievable.
Oh he's a legend, yeah, I mean, I he's Everyone who's ever spent.
A bit of time with him loves him, though.
They think he's an absolute legend of the game, you know, but just as nutty as Bryson, or more so really. I mean, he's got his left handed action, so he let he mastered his left handed swing so he could work on things so he could apply them to his right handed swing.
I mean, that's next level, right, But.
He hit it really well and he's still probably a lot of guys technical cool that Broughton and him, and I don't know have Broston's ever talked to him, but I probably have an interesting chat I reckon I too.
So here's something I pulled up because I was I just started thinking about the unpredictability and I feel like the Open that's unpredictability as best, right.
M h. So the last five.
Winners of the US Open their distance rank. Bryson won, Woodland thirteen, uh Brooks eight, Brooks seven twenty sixteen.
Who's twenty sixteen. That would have been Bustin Dustin Dustin second, Dustin.
Brooks, Brooks, Woodland Broston.
Yeah, and you so then you go to the Open. We got sixty third in distance, which would have been who was last year Lowry He can still move it. They got fifty second and Molinari forty fifth and that would have been Speed and twenty sixteen eighty second.
Yeah, it's not that that those guys.
Who are Bryson can't win the Open. It's just it asks different questions. You know.
The question isn't the further you get it, the better you'll be. The question is being in the right position and the better you'll be. And in some cases that's a really long way. In some cases it's not whereas wing foot or not picking a win foot because winfood it's amazing, but that long, narrow USGA style set up the traditional line. The further up the fur are you're going to be. The real question being asked is distance, whereas it the open. It's distance and other things as well,
you know. So it's just it's a bigger question which Bryson, by the way, would work out like I think Bryson would be the best, and any question being asked, it's just that. And I love the way he's going about it. He's advancing the sport and he's getting people to look at it different ways, and.
It's just nuts.
But I would just like the question asked to slightly start changing a little bit so the chase isn't just out and out power. It's better shapes and draws and fades and spin and flight and golf crast as opposed to just out there. I think distance is a great thing to chase, but I think it should be proportionately rewarded, not disproportionately rewarded. And I think it'd be a more balanced fun game to watch because it'll just be more balanced.
Augusta's held on to that two where it's not dominating. Everybody talks about it's being dominated by power players, but you look at the last five years and nobody that's like bona fide power players.
What.
Yeah, you can't hit it short and win there. It certainly is a required element, but it's not disproportionately rewarded. It might be interesting if he's at three fifteen, and mean, if you think thirteen he just goes whosh. You know, he's sitting under fourteenth fairway. Eleven, he'sitting wedge in ten. Ten, he's got to see ten. You're going to hit it where you need to hit At nine he's on the upslope. Eight he's over the bunker. Yeah, it's going to make
a difference. So if you can drive it, well, it's different though the question being asked after the drive AUGUSTA is very about being in the right position. You know, foots about being in the right position too, But they basically put grass over a lot of the good positions.
Yeah, they tell and they tell you where this is the position you're hitting from if you want, because like you can't hit it to side of the faraway when it's twenty yards.
Wide, No, there is no side right. You can kind of touch the rough on both sides almost. Yeah, it's August will be interesting. I mean he's got a massive advantage. I mean, if you think about one, he can hit it over the bunker. Two he can hit halfway down the hill. Three he's on the green with he's less than a driver.
You know.
Five, I don't know. Maybe the new fifthy can hit it all the way out there and have short. I mean, it's a big advantage. But there's a lot of guys who are really good at the Masters, who have played a lot more Masters than him, you know, and the masses august will always be that course where the twenty year Masters veterans will have just an advantage. I've played with Freddie there when he was in his fifties. It's just nuts how well he plays that course like it's
just crazy. No matter how he's hitting it, he's hitting it at the spots where he can have a chance, you know. And so Bryson, I don't know, you can probably science that a little bit, and I reckon he'll.
Do really well.
No green thinks, yeah.
No greens books, but that's fine. I think you can. He'll work it out. The old schoolweight Augusta is to know where the twelfth, eleventh and twelfth green are and everything kind of goes that direction, and he'll work it out. The he'll work fine, but you have to be elite around you have to be elite around the greens that week, and he is elite around the greens. But there's guys
who are better around the greens. You know, his massive advantages they're hitting it right, and look, he hits it long, but he is at Augusta. It's not like he's if he misses a fairway. At Wingfoot, he can hit a wedge on the green. Even Rory and Dustin maybe they're got an ad iron and maybe that's just a layup, you know what I mean, Or not hitting it on the green, they're missing the green and then trying to get them down Warries. He's hitting his wedge other off
on the green. Augusta ate under wages. And it's different because if they'll both be on short grass, you know, and if everyone's in the rough all week, the most powerful guy wins, period. That's always going to be true. I think as long as he's a good all other things being equal, like all other things.
Equals savvy, wanted courses all only rough, right.
Yeah, he would have won every week it was all rough because he was in there all week. But power, yeah, I mean Tiger was miraculous. I mean great players have always been powerful and great out of rough, and Bryce has just taken it to another level a little bit.
Plus he like hears it so straight.
It must be really interesting. Actually it asks a different question than Wingfoot does. But he'll be all high up and about and he's clearly the best player in the world when he like certain weeks when he turns up.
You know, what were you guys heading into sixteen? I know the wind might have been different.
Oh, I couldn't understand it.
He was like where he was driving it, like that's where I would be laying it up to if had him a rough like that was I think in O six that was four ninety six as well. I think that was the longest part five we'd had and he was open. Part four we'd had it, and he was open to that point sixteen and now there was three or four lots. There's been plenty of like five twenty and stuff, but it was really long.
I don't know.
I mean it would have been a six on after smashing it, you know, it would have been a two hundred yard six. It would have been three hundred yards that rolled out thirty and hit a six on in. But if you miss a fair way and you'd kind of neckted a bit, it would have been two twenty five out of the rough.
Yeah, that was a long hole. A nine hitting wages and nine and nine or what like what from a teeth for the back. I mean we were hitting five, We were.
Hitting five and six ons in for our second on when it was twenty thirty yard shorter.
That's the sixteenth and the fifth at Augusta National are like they're like the case studies for clubs that want to get longer. And then you know, like wing Foot, one of the members donated.
The property so they could get longer there.
But you know, with Augusta spending millions to get longer, you know, and then you know, within two years we might see Augusta's fifty completely irrelevant, made irrelevant by Bryce.
Yeah. And again the the distance thing. If people, if we start at if we continue to add distance, people are just going to continue to chase distance. If I if, I mean, it would be a really interesting experiment for them to shorten Augusta and firm it up. See what would happen shorten shorten of course, firm it up, have flyer rough, like you say, stop irrigating the raff, just make it. You can have it narrow if you want, I mean, it's better wide, but you can have it
narw if you want. But to have flyer rough like you say, and that would be Bryson, I think would work it out, but it would be a different looking game that he would play, you know. And I think that's really the question that everyone say. It's not Bryson per se or anything else, it's do we want? Is this the best? Is the best version of the game? People hitting it as hard as they can, eating as much food as they can, hitting it as far up they can, don't care about the raff, and then just
backfooting wedges out of the rough under the greens. Is that the game we want to play? Or do we want to see Corey paven like shaping forwards into the last hole to four feet?
Like what you know? Like which version of the game you want?
And I really think the playing field pro the more I think about it, the more the playing field we just evolved to perform as well as we can on the field that's presented to us. We're always going to get better. You cannot stop that. That's evolution. It's always going to get better. And it was in a very
linear fashion. But as soon as they started adding one thousand yards to all these courses, watering the fairways, more in the driving distance, and you know, really having carries of three twenty.
The thing that makes the difference is smashing it, Like I can't get past it.
Like if distance was basically not rewarded, or basically everybody could hit it far enough, it was all about how they hit it and where they hit it. I think that might be a more interesting question asked, and you might get more interesting variety of players. But I'm not saying that in a negative. I think Bryson's a legend. I love what he's doing is yeah. I think it's doing what we've all wished we could have been smart enough to do, or talented enough to do, or hard
working enough all three. He's ticking every box and he's doing it. It's really amazing, and he's doing it in such that he's always smiling, he's happy, he's having so much fun, and that's fun to watch when someone's having fun.
And I think that's it.
It's important because he's doing extraordinary stuff. And the important thing now is he's doing this and people are like, oh my god, Like I could only imagine being like the greens chair at a club that just did a restoration, that is planning on hosting a US Open, and watch what just happened at wingfoot, I'd be like, oh.
I mean, we did this all wrong.
Or thinking that way, But the important thing is to think like, and this is what I've really thought a lot about, is Okay, we did this all wrong when Tiger came along, and we did completely the opposite of what we should have done. If you want need to tigerproof courses. And his dad even said as much. I think there's a famous like quote of Earl saying, if you want to mess with Tiger, make it six thousand yard,
don't make it. I mean, have you ever played the ladies teas, like not the the forward teas at a course and tried to shoot really low?
It's great fun and it's weird.
It's hard.
Yeah, it's weird.
Yeah, it's it's extreme.
I think fits your clubs don't fit anymore, Like you've got to use different clubs and you don't know what lines to hit it.
And it's different.
It's interesting, right, it's different, Like it's brilliant. I just yeah, I think the irony is really if you actually the tigerproofing thing, there wasn't a problem. Then there was a perceived problem, and this tigerproof one of a better phrase. It's a ridiculous phrase. But the targetproofing is actually the problem, the reaction to a non problem actually created. If you want to say this is a problem, it probably is that it's the solution was the problem. That's the irony, Like,
that's the frustrating thing too. It's like, well, if you've just done nothing and just let Tiger be Tiger golf. I mean, Bryson might still be the best golfer in the world, but it would look different. He would be a different looking golfer. You know, if the courses were six thousy seven hundred yards our firm, there was flyer off. It was a difference. All Right, We're going to stop challenging on distance. We're going to find other ways to
challenge these guys. So if you can hit it up to because look, three hundred yards is elite at any level, right, like, well, well done. You shouldn't have to ask. The reason golf is so enduring is it asks a lot of different questions and there's a very broad skill set required. Now there's less, there's less of a more protectable yeah, and so you're just going to end up with golfers who Bryson has just absolutely mastered the number one skill that
gives you just a massive advantage. And he's done it completely as I said, like, hats off, awesome. I wish I could have done the same thing. But if the questions being asked were different questions, he would have answered those better than everyone else. And is that a better looking game? I don't know, you know, is that less scary for Green's committees and stuff? And look what another thing is too, is this golf mentality. Historically people have
cared about par, like what does par even mean? Like it's it's a line in the sand. You know, it's actually irrelevant. It's just a it's a it's a measuring stick. It's just makes it easy to measure other golfers against other golfers during a round. You know, you don't say he's had sixteen shots when he's walking down the fifth hole, like he's even right, that's that's easier, and that's a better and it's nice to have like a a benchmark.
But they didn't like make par in the one hundred meters at like ten seconds and keep making the one hundred meters a little bit longer, so they always ran ten seconds. So now it's one hundred and twenty seven, Like what.
Are you doing? It's just people get faster.
Like if people shoot lower scores and go, well that's cool, it's still something to everyone in golf is obsessed with shooting lower and lower and lower and low and lower, and yet at the top end of the game they've said, no, we're stopping scoring or right there, so they've just it just gets distorted and weird the setup at that level to try to dictate a score. And they can say they don't do it as much as they want, but
everybody does it in some ways. And I think that mentality again, it has the opposite effect, like it like Dustin. I mean, Boston's a mint course and a really fun course to play, but they piled all sorts of distance on that and it's thirty underpar. Like you can't do it by distance, you know.
It's just you can't.
It just doesn't work, and it's just a less interesting version of the game to watch if it's just a flog show.
That's my position.
Do you see that shot that Rory like duffed into the water at an east Lake?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Everyone who's played it is like everyone thinks he's topped it and stuff. Now that ruff is so deep and so thick. That is Gnali. Most guys in the field when they drive it to where he did, or they are in that rough on that hole, there's a massive decision to make you know, it's mele it.
It's just it looked pretty funny on.
One of the things that golf has. Every other sport, like what you were just talking about, they've gone through these innovations like NBA, they're shooting more threes than ever, but they have defenses that respond to what the offense is doing on a court that doesn't change. Or tennis, you know, or baseball, like everybody adjusts like the baseball's got the switch. Like soccer, you know, they've innovated different offenses and then the defense responds to it, but the court,
the field never changes. With golf, the weird thing is nobody's playing defense except for setup, and setups just been essentially aiding the offense.
It's like if you like the analogy with music, like at the moment, the best golfers the go hits it the hardest. Basically, it's like the band. The best band is the loudest band, you know, I mean, like the best concert I'll pay the most money to go the loudest concert.
What do you mean?
Like it's that though, right, It's like loud is really important in music, but it's proportionate to the quality to everything else. Like golf has just like it's just gone too loud where where I'm not going to that guy unless you can hit a three twenties, he's crap, unless you can hit three thirty.
You know, Like that's kind of what's happening.
And again, it's fine, and I understand why it's got there, And there is a fear. You don't want prose to just be flicking sixties into every hole, and I don't think you could evolve the game.
You've got to evolve the game.
Just let it evolve. Let's just let it shape out, and let's not covet power as the only thing. Like, let's how do we set up this game or drift this game in a direction where it's back to all that nuance and variety and short hitters and long hitters, and there's there's advantages to be gained all over the game. It's just you kind of you. You do it the best you can. It's not just out if you can't hit it miles. You can't do it. Hit the loudest band. Can you imagine.
I think golfers are starting to notice this stuff because we saw in December at the President's Cup. I mean, within ten minutes of the first T shirt, you realize, WHOA, distance.
This is the most important thing.
You just watched them play the first hole there and it was like, WHOA, you're not You don't want to drive it all the way up there?
Laying back is the right thing to do.
Well.
It's a bit like tenant rive tenant riv has become a better hole now that people can hit it past the green with a driver, you know what I mean? Now distance does about it. Now everybody can get it there? Now who plays the hole the best? So you can't have tenet Riviera everywhere, but you can kind of understand that the principles that that brings out would bring out a really cool game if you had that eighteen times,
you know. And Royal Melbourne really and a lot of the great courses Royal Melbourne and the sand Belt are very limited on land, so they can't really make it much longer and it's always fir and running.
But yeah, Royal.
Distance is a distinct advantage, but it's proportionate to all the other skills required. You know, you can't just out and out just sit driver and every hole because you're just going to run through corners and run it and run it into crappy rauff and trees and so've you.
Start hitting the clubs.
Look if the tour is around Royal Melbourne every week for thirty weeks, it'd be like the old course thing.
We would all start. I would drift back to titleists and say, hey, I want a ball.
I need to spin it a bit more from inside one hundred and fifty, you know, and I really want to be able to hold that shot up. I really want to be able to move it in the air to get it back to those right pins. And it over ten, fifteen, twenty years of that it would evolve back more into that direction. You can't just if they every rule change.
They make.
Is annoying and it doesn't work. Like the groove thing didn't work.
All you do isa thing You just drove drove braced arm.
Like, you know, like drove him to it forced him to find a different way because he didn't want to do It's a way, a better way. I like how your parts. I think it's a good way to part the I've lost the train of thought. Yeah, it's interesting, it's just the titleist. Would the equipment manufacturers like with the groove thing? They chase the grooves. All that makes them do is spend a lot of money on making better grooves, which they wouldn't have done if you had to change the rules, not as much.
So they all put all.
This deep research in and now we've got all these scored faces and all of these things that are within the new rules. But they actually spend more than they ever did. So stop stop trying to like stop this technology thing, and actually just ask a different question. So technology will chase different things, you know. I mean, you can obviously have rules in place you kind of crazy grooves and all that. But what I'm saying is we're only going to evolve and play and us answer the
questions that we get asked. Just ask a few different questions, I think for a long period of time, and.
There should be a place for events that that power is reward. There should be power events and maybe maybe the US Open is the power event because the Masters and the Open champion. But it's not about higging faraway SA anymore. That's very clear. What you just said reminded me. Garrett Morrison, our managing editor, did this documentary podcast series on the ball and John Lowe. You know, he was the big fighter of the of the gutty ball, not
the gutty ball, the Haskell. He because you know, dis an explosion, and he fought and fought and he got the manufacturers to agree on a certain spec and he thought he won because he said, oh, they're not going to design anything that goes further, because I've got him on the specs. And then I think like within a month of him them agreeing to these specs, they released a ball that went twenty yards further.
You can't do it that way. It just doesn't work, like you know, like people are spot of than that. People are good.
That's what people say is they oh, they've got restrictions.
They can't.
It's like every driver goes further because they figure something out. They activate it in a different little way.
Yeah, and they figure out and they say, oh, we're at the limit now or at the limit, and no we're not. They could just keep fine and away like they were, just find it different. But no one could have pictured what Bryson's doing, you know, and he's about to go to a forty eight inch shaft and he can work that out. He's gonna hit it at three eighty like it's gonna be It's.
Gonna be nuts, you know what I mean. So that's fine if someone can do that.
I like the long drive stuff and people hitting it far and Bryson and the whole thing.
It's awesome.
They're just all they're doing now, I'm convinced is they're answering the questions they're asked. And I think if you made it less important, did it that far, then it would be less important and you couldn't just purely win based on power. Now he's not winning based on power. It's giving him a monstrous advantage. He's still doing amazing other things, you know what I mean, to still shoot
six hundred in a week. It's not just about seventy two t shots, you know, but it's and again it's not what he's doing, it's the style that he's doing it. And it's just been more attractive to see, you know, like the odd three on every now and with a bit of shape or just like half shots and like just nuances and just just different stuff. Just not the same game plan on every whole.
Yeah, I think less formulaic.
And the only way you do that is the trick people ask different questions or ask more than one question on one whole or one course. That would be you know, I think you see, like Harbortown, he had to play a completely different style.
There.
Absolutely if we played Harbortown is a per exam. If we've played Harbortown every week and every tournament, there's no chance anyone who's playing golf like that, there's no chance because you just couldn't. You can't do it, you.
Know, we.
Done.
Yeah, So it's and good and the variety is good. You want to have your tory Pine South, whether I mean someone like Bryson and Tiger and Dust the that Tory Pine South. It's just just there's just mega advantage or Beth Page, you know, and I like that test, But if it's every test, is that Bethpage Black Tory Pine South style test really long, just a brutal grind of long irons and stuff for most of the field, or the golf is just going to get longer and longer.
People are just gonna hit it further and further. It's just all that's going to happen.
So you're setting up Tory next year and you don't want it to be a distance fast.
What do you do?
I turned the sprinkles off about two months for the tournament. But no, it's firmness is really really important. Tory in two thousand and eight, by the way, I think was one of the better setups I've ever played in the US Open. That was a brilliant US Open. The cocu rough, it's the graduated the cocue stuff. It kind of sits on top, like on a like it's floating on all this kind of thatch of grass. When I'd grown up with a bit of that in Melbourne, so I kind
of knew how to handle it. But if you go one groove high you got a little deep on that, the ball goes like Rory's did it east Lake, He goes nowhere. But I kind of liked it because it gave someone who worked out how to hit out it.
There was a skill. It wasn't a power question. It was a skill question. Out of the rough.
It's always a skill question, but you know what I mean, It was more about the art of hitting the hitting it out of that lie like you say, like a fly ali is the same than it was, just out and out. Whoever's the strongest can hack it out the most.
And I liked that. And it was brilliant weather.
Those West Coast opens, They're like seventy eight degrees every day and sunny. You know, you have the storms and you have crazy wind, and I would just go firm, the firmer, the better, really and unpredictable rough and just have at it. Boys, like if you go low, you go low, Like what's the difference, you know? And I don't think the score, I think is the one of the issues.
If we just.
Let people shoot what they wanted and just set up courses. How do I find the best player, who has the biggest toolkit, who's bringing more skills to this tournament?
How do I find that guy? You know? How I test him mentally?
How do I test his his accuracy, his shaping, his short game, his ability to make good decisions.
Hit it straight, hit it long.
I want to ask all those questions, you know, and find the best player there. And if it was that and whatever he shoots, he shoots, you know, then I think it's a bit easier way to set up, of course than trying to dictate a score and then working out how are you going to get them to do that?
What would a for what would be score winner at Royal Melbourne, Because I think everybody that watched the President's Cup, they watched it and they were like, oh my god, Tiger's the best player in the world.
Royal Melbourne. Yeah, well he clearly.
He had all the shots.
It was a question that only he could completely answer, you know, with twenty four of the best golfers in the world around he was heading older is above the rest, you know, because it was asking I mean it was tight, like, it was asking tough questions and he had the answers.
I don't know.
Look, if it was windy, it would be single digits. If it was dead still, I mean Ernie shot sixty there twenty years ago, so on a dead still day and he had a freaky day. Like it can be done. It's like the Masters. It's similar to the Mark. It's probably not quite as difficult as Augusta now, but it's similar.
You get you would spread the field, you might get fourteen or fifteen winning it on a normal Mourther week, and you would have ten under being third, you would have five under being twelve, you know what I mean, It would spread the field. It's just interesting. I just yeah, this is not a negative thing. Other than that, everything
about this Brighton thing is amazingly awesome. I just think it's interesting that it's a reaction of the reaction of golf in general, of lengthening and toughening and tigerproofing was to prevent this.
Day, and it actually sped it up and made it happen. That's what I thought.
So funny, it just actively promoted it.
You know. It's and obviously taker one of the things he did. He brought a ton of money in and anytime a ton of money comes into a sport, you're going to get more athletes and more interest in participation from young people because of the you know, the money that you can earn in it.
Yeah. That's yeah, absolutely, Tiger want to change. Yeah, I mean.
Yeah, yeah, he brought so much money and he made it cool too. Like when I was a kid, golf wasn't that cool. I didn't really tell all my mates at school I played golf. I kind of just played golf on the side. And then later on they said, oh, you play golf, that's cool, you know, But it was. But now it's like it's cool to be a golfer when you're seven.
You know, and where like.
To of golf shirts and titlist hats and stuff when you're seven, down in the engine hitting balls with the track man. I mean, that's like a normal thing now. And Tiger absolutely made it cool.
You know, do you think Brace is going to win at Augusta?
History probably says no, but uh, I wouldn't be surprised, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. But look, it's only two weeks since, I mean three weeks ago. Who's going to beat Dustin playing golf?
You know what I mean? Like it changes. I mean, this is just it's it's just one thing.
But DJ doesn't do as well at the Masters as he probably should. You know, he's not as you would expect. As you would expect Should's a ridiculous way to say as you would expect. Masters is a different animal, Like there's there's a there's a mental question asked at the Masters that's unique to the Masters. You're it makes you nervous the course and the tournament and everything much more than the other tournament.
And I think it's still still probably does the.
Best of all the big tournament venues, regular tournament venues of giving you a variety of leaderboard and interesting names across like generations and stuff. I always get a couple of young guys. You'd always get that forty seven year old guy hasn't like competed anywhere else for a while, but he like does well with the Masters. He's up there and stuff that wasn't going to happen at Wingfoot right,
like the but Augusta that can happen. So it's one of the harder tournaments to predict in the world, probably Masters.
Yeah, it's always a big name, but it's it is random, and I think people have been lured into thinking power is like the only thing that matters, and everybody's you know, and I think lately it's been it hasn't you know. They haven't all been power players, which is the interesting thing because everybody's.
Long, what's that power plan?
Exactly?
Like you know, your average the average PGA tour player averages two ninety six.
It's insane.
If you can if you can get it to two and fifteen, if you can get it to fifteen and two with a mid one or like a four or five iron year long enough, Augusta, you don't need to be much longer than that, you know what I mean. That's very long to be fair to be four or five on into fifteen. But if you need it that far you're all right. And anything above and beyond that.
It'll be interesting to see where Bryson hits it, because if he actually has a good driving week, the advantage he's going to have, he's gonna be outrageous, you know. It's he's gonna be so far down the hill on two, he's going to be up the hill on eight. It's gonna be nuts. So it'll be interesting to see. But
you can't be quite as cavalier. It's ironically or weirdly enough, it's wider, but you can't be probably quite as cavalier because the rough catches his ball too right at wing foot, like he can hit it as hard as he wants in a certain area. Well, it's only it's gonna it's got a backboard. The rough will stop it, Augusta. There's less of a bad board, you know, it'll keep rolling a bit like fourteen.
What's he gonna do.
It's just gonna go dow into the right trees and he's gonna have to shape one around the corner or there's a few other questions asked.
I don't know. We'll see.
It'd be fun to watch. It's gonna be a good tournament. I mean, what a golf season. Hey, Like, considering like when everything was getting canceled in March, it's like, what a disaster that's going Actually had a real golf season, A really cool.
It's been amazing.
Yeah, it was cool seeing Wingfoot without fans.
I know that the fans would have added something, especially on Sunday.
But that was the other thing.
The rough caught everything around the greens at Wingfoot, and I think I think that was something that if they had if it had been shorter or rough, even the ball rolls a little further away from those greens, or it would have been I mean, you imagine having to hit a fifteen yard shot left of some of those pins, like you short sighted yourself and you're down fifteen yards away, having to hit back to those greens, it'd be disaster.
Yeah, Like it would be really interesting to see short grass all over wing Foot and just see if you had everything else the same as last week, but no rough and just short grays everywhere, what would the school look like?
It would probably be lower, but I don't know, it would be interesting, you know.
If balls would like one bounce over the back of the green and go twenty yards as supposed to be a foot over the back. You know, like you said, there's there's some maybe some smelly chip shots and stuff in some of those greens. You know, you but one bounce it over the back of the first green and it's twenty yards over the back, or you're not getting that shot on the green ever, But in the rough, it's only one yard over the back and you can kind of just flop it out. You know.
I don't know. All that stuff's just interesting, just variety right on that sort of level.
I think I was talking to Zach Blair about fairness and how nobody would ever say wing foot's unfair, and his theory was that because there's rough everywhere, nobody will ever say it's unfair. But at Shinnakok people will say it's unfair because the ball hit a good shot, it misses, it goes over the green, that it rolls twenty five yards away, and while it's rolling there's this psychological thing that takes over that the player just starts to thank God, this is so unfair.
Do you think that's true?
Well, unfair in that context is a synonym for synonym for difficult. Right at some point players it's different and difficult, and people don't like that.
Yeah, I agree completely. I think.
You can't say enough about firmness, and shinikok always plays firm and until that time, right, firmness and the ball not being done once it lands on the ground. The more it does once it lands on the ground, the more interesting golf games, absolutely, because the shape matters, the flight matters. You can't just fly in the middle of the green and know you've got that kind of rough at the back to just catch it from going down the hill.
You've really got to it. Just it just kind of.
Amplifies it, amplifies mistakes, firmness, soft conditions and rough, dumb them down, turn them. What's the what's the what's the opposite of amplify, I'd say dull, soften, Yeah, it's I think, yeah, for sure, is completely fair. Shinty Cock's completely fair if you hit the good shot. I mean it's probably not when they rolling at sixteen on the Stimmta, but rolling the eleven and Steamnute. It's like the fairest course there is, you know, which is really hard.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I think they had the firmness last week if they're if the ball just roll, if they had more places to go, I think then you might have seen Bryson still probably wins. He did everything better than but I think you'd see you would have seen more guys with a shot, more styles with a shot. Really, and people will say, oh, Zach Johnson finished eighth, he had no chance.
No, it's not about the Broston. Broston wins around anywhere at the moment, probably, but it's the it's the style of golf that's required. Is maybe less interesting than if you have a setup that lets Zack Johnson compete with Bryson, you know and everyone in between.
Yeah, it's just a bit more interesting. It's just fun.
It's a fun period though, to see everyone's reactions because I think all the players are going to go home and like they're all going to be like starting to read physics books. You know, a golf machine might sell af your copy, you know what.
I mean, like I think all hit the gym.
They're all going to hit the gym, and they're all going to start eating, and it's gonna be interesting to see the reaction.
It could ruin some people.
Yeah, Like, as you were saying to, no one's ever done this and actually made it work, like and he's actually made it work, So it could be a recipe for disaster for a lot of people, you know, because his unique que human he's such an interesting guy. As I said, he talk about attention deficit disorder, I mean, and his mind is a million miles an hour. He needs to distract his mind kind of thing when he plays guys. I said, I was for one hundred yards
at the eight angh He's winning the USA. I couldn't understand. All he was doing was numbers in his book walking up the Last Fairway. This is now if you've ever got a time where you can actually put the book down as now, But he didn't.
But what it is, like.
It struck me is this is a way he keeps himself occupied so he doesn't think about all the bad stuff that most people think about that can happen in the situations on that He's like, Wow, the temperature is this, and the ball went this, and he'll note it down and he'll put it in his little thing. So he's distracting himself from the fact that he's actually has to win the US Open on this whole, you know.
I mean, it's genius or just it suits his personality. So I'm saying his approach.
I don't know if it would suit everybody's, but certainly it's perfect for him.
Hey tell me about I meaning's changed the subject. I've seen some videos on Twitter Sandy Lynx where he grew up playing.
Oh yeah, Mint, Yeah, Sandy's cool.
It's right next door to Royal Melbourne, so it's kind of Sandwich next to and in between Royal Melbourne and Victoria and Sandraham all Sandy, all next to each other. And it's the public meanis city owned course that I was playing at from seven or eight, you know, all
the time. In a fantastic place. But it's always been a proper muni in that they spent the bare minimum, not much staff, you know, but it was a great it Actually historically, way way back before there was like player dining and stuff at tournaments, which is not that longer. In the eighties and nineties when I was watching golf, and it's watching golf tournaments in Australia. The pros would
all come play at Roal Melwyn. They'd all just walk across the road in their foot joint classics and walk up the drive out Sandy because the food.
There was better than in the clubhouse.
So anyway, so it's kind of got a part of a history of Peter Fowler and Peter Senior and all these old school Australian pros and Norman used to go over for lunch at Sandy, you know, like it was the thing.
But anyway, Roy Melbourne got the least.
These things are operated by a leasehold of the city, doesn't the city gives somebody the tender or whatever, and they operated so Roll Melbourne got the lease for fifty years.
About ten or so years ago.
Them and the GUP, the PGA and the Golf Australia who's our USGA are kind of centralizing there. So they put this massive multimillion dollar project to build their headquarters there and a driving range and so the driving range, which would be the home of the elite.
Kis the goth Australia Kit.
Yeah, it's magic.
So they kind of lost two holes, and so they had all these ideas about they lost two holes. So they had to work out, do we want to have a twelve hole course in a past three or blah blah blah, But nah, they want an eighteen hole. So it's going to be eighteen sad Belt level holes. But I don't even know the distance, but it would be in the fives at the most. But fantastic, so much fun. I mean, want a place to learn how to play golf. Brilliant and Raw Melbourne looks after it. So the superintendent
start the ground staff at Raw Melbourne. They're going to maintain sandy same greens, Sutton's mixed bent greens, the same sharp pages, the proper sand belt bunkers is the whole thing. It's really really cool. It's it's going to be a forty dollars game for everybody. You know, it's going to be brilliant. Yeah we've done it. Yeah, Michael did it mostly. Yeah, it was his little baby. It's been brilliant.
Yeah, it's I mean, and it's so deat that the club. You imagine if if in every city, like the high of the Big Club in every city had had their Muny that they had the lease at and then the State Golf Association.
Worked out of there. How good, how good municipal golf would be.
Yeah, I mean, look it's it's showing. It's it's going to be good here too, because it's kind of showing. Muni golf has always been like low budget bad just come up and like pay a bare minimum and play around a golf around a crappy place. But it's all about just being with your boys, right in the dress codes,
being sensible and stuff. But there's no reason it can't be a great course right in great condition, especially in Melbourne like here, where it's relative to a lot of other plays, relatively easier to keep it in great condition than in some climates. You know, it's a perfect club. It's right next to a Royal Melbourne Victoria and it's like it just grass just grows nicely.
You know. It's just one of those areas.
There's no reason why it can't be at the same level as private courses, you know, for lower budgets and for access for everybody.
And if I was.
A beginning golfer, you're just more likely to continue the game if the courses that you play a nice you just are because it's just, oh, that was nice. It's gonna do these grasses level, isn't it? You know, all that stuff, and let you just get more into it and you become a and if the course asks you interesting questions and it's it's just a big fun field. It's not built for Bryson, you know. It's the opposite.
It's the anti it's the anti constructor. It's like, this is the course for all you know, And I'd go out there for me. It would be six clubs, five clubs. You know, it'd be so much fun.
It'd be the perfect place to test this theory of you know, what happens if it's five thousand yards.
It would be interesting. The first week you go to a five thousand of course, everyone would hit driver under the greens on every hole. But eventually if that wasn't working, they would just evolve the way that worked the best, you know, And what does that look like? Is it looking like this?
I don't know. That's what I think. It would be interesting, I think.
And those are the holes where you see the most changes and big changes and strategy are a lot of times like where if a pin changes, you might play it one way one day.
Pin changes you play a different way another day.
Yeah, you get those.
You get if you get really firm greens and bunkers that are like right up next to the greens, and you get some really tight pins. That left pin you don't want to be on the left side coming over that bunker because it's firm and you can't stop it. So the left pin you have to be up the right hand side, and then you've got this big opening on the ryan side of the green and a slope that helps you. If you drive it up the right, it's quite an easy shot. Everybody can handle it. You drive
it up the left, it's really tough. And the courses like that all the way around. So it's even at a basic level most people don't notice stuff like that. They notice it even if they're not noticing it, you know, like it gets into them a little bit. Well, you got the right on the fourth and you got the left on the fifth, and all the pins move, So I think I have for got the right today on this whole.
You know, I think the events figure it out too, you know that.
That's the thing is, even if they don't like they can't do it and dissect it the first time eventually if they put if you know, even a regular golfer,
you know, like I've I played. I played Pinehurst number two with these like regulars, and I watched him play and it was just unbelievable, you know, Like I was, I you know, like you get paired with two randoms and you were You're not sure, but like, you know, this guy, this guy would hit it short left on on on one hole, on eight, he would he would. He didn't even try and hit the green on eight. He hit it to short right, you know, so you could chip it right up the hill. Like it was
just unbelievable to wash. Yeah, And and the guy wouldn't have known if I said, hey, can you dissect this hole somewhere else?
He wouldn't have a clue. But he figured out how to play a golf hole for him.
And he was a twenty five handicap older guy that hit it low, and you know, but he figured out how to play Pineher's number two.
We're always going to gravitate to the path of laser resistance, right, whether we know when, we're always going to go to that gravitate to the the way that works for us the best, whether we know we're doing it or not, because it's just human nature, you know. We find the easy way. Yeah, and if you ask different questions on every whole, it takes longer for people to work that out. But I think it's it's fun to watch it get worked out, you know, in a variety of ways.
And that would be the way you tied.
Like everybody's complaining about, like it's unrelatable, But all Bryson did was he found the path of least resistance for himself.
He's found the line of charm, which is now not the line that used to be, you know, like the line of charm has changed, and he's found it.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So it's just it's just yeah, I can't say enough about how impressive it is. I mean, it's nuts, but yes, Andy's fun. Short little munis I think are a great accessible, good condition, high quality kind of approachable courses at a reasonable price. Every city should have multiple, you know. I think it's too much private golf in the world. Pro private grouse obviously, right, but some of the best courses in the world are effectively like public
access courses, you know. And it's but the trouble is they're either crappy condition and crappy or their pebble beach and they're five hundred bucks.
You know, there's no there's less middle ground, you know.
And I think that what a service to your citizens if you're like a city or a like a state, that you can provide public playing fields that are great for people to play the sport. What a great addition to a city, you know.
And Standy's is a sign of that.
You know, they're disappearing all around the world, and this one's actually improving, which is a nice side.
That's great.
All right, we're wrapping it there with exhausted the subject matter, so thanks for coming on. I'm sure it was pretty cool to watch us up and at wink Foot and well we'll hopefully talk to you soon here.
Yeah, yeah, I loved that. It was great. It was I wish I could have been there, but.
I wasn't gonna be able to compete with that at any level if I was playing, So it was fun to watch.
From here for sure.
All right, talk to you soon, I guess.
Cheers man,