Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today we are reheating in honor of Master's Week, one of my favorite podcasts. We did this over two parts. Last year I did it with Jeff Ogilvie down in Augusta and we went through We really he went through every single hole at Augusta National. He broke it down,
talked about the different shots, different insights. It was fascinating to hear him talk about things that I had never even thought of, one being laying up on fifteen how it's counterintuitive you want to lay up on the opposite side you think you should, especially when the pin's left, you know, And then you see it play out on Master Sunday with shots like Xanderschoffle. I remember last year he had that wed shot just as Jeff described that
caught the down slope and skipped over the green. So this is one of my favorite podcasts we've ever done. And if you missed it, I hope you enjoy it. If you didn't miss it, you know you can listen to it again. I think I've re listened to it and remembered a lot of things I'd forgotten. It is Master's Week. We will have a Frida Egg story up on Wednesday, so that'll be coming. That's Garrett Morrison production.
And we will have daily newsletters, so sign up for those at Thefrida Egg dot com and there's a newsletter sign up bar right there. Sign up for those there and you'll get daily newsletter into your inbox all week long. That's for free, and it'll keep you up to date on all the ins and outs of the Masters. But without further ado, here is Jeff Ogilvie and all eighteen holes at Augusta, Nashal.
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 Friday Friday Egg, the dreaded Friday Friday Frida Egg, bright Egg, frid Egg bright egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off with the course. So you're you're in contention on the weekend. What are you thinking about before your Saturday Sunday rounds? Like? Is there stuff that worries you early on?
Well, the first green might be the hardest green on the course maybe, and certainly the first the hardest first green in world tournament golf. I would say, man, Oakmont is a well renowned, ridiculous first hole and a really tough green to hit. But it feels like you're in the lap of the gods a little bit at Oakmond because you can land at the front right of the green and maybe it stays on, maybe it runs over the back. It's kind of you make bogie on the
first in Oakmond. You don't have to have done anything wrong. It's just part of Oakmont. You just hit you in the face on the first hole and then you move on. But the Masters, if you play the hole really sensibly, you can get a nice birdy part on the first, but if you hit it anywhere other than directly under the hole, you have the hardest part in the world. And sometimes if you miss it past the hole, it's even a hard bogie. It's a brutal, easy first tee
shot relatively. I mean, Tiger historically has struggled with it. But it's a gentle first tee shot and a simple looking iron shot until you realize what's up at the green, and the green is so savage, really hard to hit the ball under the hole too. The way the front half of the green is because if you land it. If you hit it short of a lot of pins, it rolls off the front, so it encourages you get
it to pin. It was always trying to get you to hit it to pin high, and if you get it to pin high just a bit past it, you get a lot of stress. So it's one of the most un talked about. I guess it's more talked about now because it's on the coverage more and people talk about the first green more. But it might be the hardest green on the course, especially because it's the first hole, and Ernie El's kind of showed that a few years ago.
Uh the false front he touched on it. I guess I's got a lot of vicious ones. Do you think false fronts are like one of the best ways to defend against the tour pro.
I think it's a great way to really encourage, not quite force, but really motivate a player to want to get it to pin high, especially in a situation where past pin high is going to ruin your day, Like you can't just just kind of go one club less and chunk it up to the front of the green on the first You can't because it's the chip could come back. You know the false front thing. So I think you're right. I think it's a really good way
to do it. And if you look at standers, I mean every green's got one really close in the Valley of Sin. That's really what that is, right, It's a It's a good way to do it because it really really it rewards the player for being aggressive and hitting a quality shot.
Neathing too with it is for the lower ex trajectory player, you're like your regular guy. It's a way for it to slow down the ball into it.
I think it's like the perfect for me. I go, of course, the perfect mindset is how do I make it easier for the eighth, the ninety shooter, the alien handicapper, and how do I make it harder for the scratch player and the false front or at least the style I do it here at the Masters, that's exactly what it does. Because the guy can't spin is he's coming in with his hybrid or his four iron or five iron, he's running it up. It's actually a really nice screen
to run it up onto. But the guy who's flying it up there with spin with an eight iron, he really has three or four yards to landit it and that's it. So it's a super precise shot for the elite player and really quite a gentle easy shot for the avera player, which is ideal. It's bringing those two guys closer together as opposed to some modern stuff where
it's all carry and big long stuff. It just separates that scratch and eighteen handicappers so much that it kind of it's it's just super intimidating for the average guy.
Is that second shot on two like the most fun shot on the course? No, it was to Sunday pen.
Yes and no. The Sunday pin might be the funnest pin on the course or one of I mean there's a lot of fun pins on the course. I mean sixteen on Sundays pretty fun. And that pin on seven when they put it in that whole outspot and the bowl on the right hand side, that's a fun pin. But the one on two is hard. I kind of always laid it up onto a little bit. My mentality was if I could get it just in that front right bunker or around that front right bunker and two,
I was happy. You know, I missed the green left a couple of times. I missed it in that left bunk, or a couple of times on the green or short left of that left bunker, trying to get really aggressive a few times and worked out that that's not really what you want to be and had some kind of train wrecks on that hole. So I would always try to hit it next to the bunker, off the tee, next to the bunk, or on the second shot, and you can get it anywhere on the green close to
the hole. If you're next to that front right bunker on two. It is a super fun it's a fun shot to watch. It might be one of the fun of shots to watch on those guys at those long arms on the top of the hill and they land on the front of the green and they roll for about thirty seconds allay up the back and they roll right next to the hole. As a spectator, that would be a great place to stand on Sunday.
Yeah, there's a lot of holes right around there too. You could watch two, you could watch three, t you can watch I mean it's close to eighteen.
Yeah, eighteen seventeen, you're really not far from sixteen if that is the sweet spot of the course. Really, Yeah, you've got seven green two green, really kind of seventeen green, seventeen fair, you can kind of whip across to fifteen. That's kind of the heart of the course.
I would say, there's that hill that everything plays into, and it's similarly, you know, Mackenzie does that a lot of his places, that focal point, and that's it kind of is the folk that's like, it's such a neat routing how they play down to it and then he takes you away from it and he keeps bringing you back at different points in the round.
Yeah, it's a it's a great route. I mean, it's I think serendipitous. Really. I think they were fortunate how it worked. He was obviously a genius router and Jones might have been the best golf mind ever, like when it related to golf course and playing the course. I mean, he was truly genius, but there was serendipity involved in
how it all worked out. And mean, it just it is such a good golf course to watch golf, and you can pretty much from that point from the second green, seventh green, kind of eighth tea area, you can pretty much get to every hole with a five minute walk almost. You know, you're kind of really central and people keep you watch them come through two, and then you see that same group come through seven, and then later on
they come back through seventeen. It's like, yeah, it's all it's brilliant like that, because if it just went out, like the old course is the old course and it's brilliant, but it's been awful course to watch golf, great course to play golf, but to watch it's kind of awful. But this kind of matches all the creates, all the great golf and it makes it great to watch.
Yeah, it's incredible, almost like the Stadium course before the Stadium course.
Yeah, I mean everything about it is just I mean you say perfect, I mean there is no perfect, but relative to everything else. If you want to find for a great place to watch golf and a place that's going to create great attractive golf to watch, right, it's all right here. It's incredible.
It's an expansive property but intimate.
Yeah, it seems I don't think it's quite as big as you think, but it seems so big because if there's no real lines of trees, they're like copses of trees, right as cops is the word, right, like groupings of trees. But you stand at the clubhouse, you can pretty much see across the whole course, which makes it seem like this big kind of park. You know, it's so it seems massive, big scale, big wide fairways, big bunkers, but as you say, intimate, because everything kind of comes back
it's kind of near each other. But because it's so big scale, it seems big. But you realize that everything's kind of close, and that helps with the rules and the feel. And you see how you're constantly seeing other groups go up other holes and stuff from feeling that you just you're you're always kind of feel like you're part of the whole show. You're never separated on one spot way away from anywhere else. It's just brilliant.
That's gonna be one of the cool things compared to like your modern TPC choruses, the how close you are all the competitors when you're playing it.
Yeah, it's yeah. I mean you're teeing off on the first and you're watching the guys hit into the ninth and kind of sussing out the pin and where they're hitting it, and then and that happens kind of all the way around. You're playing down two and you're watching him pitch into three, and then on seven you're watching you're walking down six, say, and you're watching the shots into sixteen, and you're constantly kind of being reminded of what's coming and what's gone and who's doing what. It's
nice to feel a part of it. You know, there's a lot of courses where you're just way out there. Now modern routings seem to just go wherever they want and don't take that sort of thing into account. But it's great to be out there with all the competitors and playing partners and feel like you're part of the whole show. That's the whole thing. It's just a whole The whole thing is just one big show, right, and it's brilliant.
A Buddy Mane Sean Martin did this Strokes gained analysis of winners and the golf course where they picked up the most shots to the field, and the two holes that came out on top were number three and number fourteen.
Well, they're the two holes that you can have the most docile seeming holes, no bunkers. On fourteen. Three has bunkers, but they're really easy to miss. You just kind of hit some sort of well modern play. These guys all seem to hit driver up short left of the green, but it's just been a three or two or three on or a hybrid these days to the top of the hill wedge onto the green, and it's relatively simple. And fourteen is driver in a nine nine or something.
But they'd have two greens that if you miss them in the wrong spots you have almost zero chance to make par and a big chance to make six or seven or eight. You can just they turn you into idiots. That doesn't actually surprise me, Like I think everyone would have thought twelve or thirteen or eleven or fifteen, But it's the third I think is a genius hole because the only way to really make birdie or get it close is to really risk missing it short of the green.
And if you miss it short of the green, it's almost an impossible up and down. It comes all the way back and you're twelve feet below the level of the green to this crazy pitched green. And the only way to get that pitch close if you do miss
it short, is to risk leaving it short again. You know, So once you've missed it short, unless you say right, I'm just going to make five, and by the way, it's not an easy five because your little pitch will go twelve feet past the hole and a part that'll break six feet, and so it's if you want to have a good score, if you want to make three, you have to risk living it short. If you want to make four, once you leave it short, you have
to risk leaving it short again. And that just kind of follows the whole hole it's and fourteen is the miss on fourteen is long right, but you'd nen't want to miss like an eight or nine nine too, and they're usually.
It's really hard to miss long right for a good player too.
It is especially rady, especially alrighty. Yeah, it's not the thing you usually miss short right or along left right, which is the genius on twelve, but it's a there's the three of the four pins on fourteen. Generally, oh, I want to make birdie there. He's kind of one of your last birdie chances. You've got fifteen and sixteen, but seventeen and eighteen are really tough, so you kind
of want to get something going. On fourteen. You've got a nine, nine or eight iro into a pin that it's all going to roll towards, but you kind of have to risk landing it short of the green to get it really close sometimes, and if you miss it short of fourteen, you definitely I mean, that's a one N ten up and down, so an amazing green.
One of my favorite things I've heard you say, and I think you said it. I'm not sure if you said it on our pod or on the stay of the game, but you said, like, the greatest holes are the ones where if you want to make an easy par it's like, you know, if you want to make parts really easy, but if you want to make Birdie and it's really hard. So from what I'm hearing, like three and fourteen are holes where if you're in the hunt, your expectation almost changes. Where those are the holes you
feel like you got to get Birdie on right. Yeah, yeah, for sure, So all of a sudden it switches versus the tough holes coming in where you're like, par is a good score, So that expectation flip then brings bogie or worse into play.
Yeah, Like eleven is so obviously impossible, you're quite content to go two fours and two fives to the week. Probably that would be okay. You know, most winners of the Masters probably have a bogi or two and eleven, so you're quite happy you I am it away from the grain. Everyone aims at a the row ede the green and tries to hit it in the right spot and maybe on Sunday like these modern roars and dustins,
and they're super aggressive and they'll go for it. But generally you're quite content if you make five on eleven. Oh well, everyone's making five on eleven. But see three and fourteen. They are legitimate birdie holes. But the only way to make Bertie is to risk making bogie, which is the genius of the whole course really and all great courses in that they give the great player a par pretty much. If you want to make par, if
you give up, Bertie will give you a par. But as soon as you want to make Bertie, that's when you bring bogie in. If you want to make eagle, you're going to bring double in. To me. That is absolutely perfect because it's probably relatively easy for a good player playing well to cruise around here, have a decent week, finish top twenty, take no risks, put a nice check in his pocket, and just walk away and get invited back next year and happy days. But to win the tournament,
you have to go for everything. And when you go for everything, that's when it can all go wrong.
It almost too becomes enhanced when you're in the position too, So like if you were yeah, because like if you're coming down that back nine and you're in fifteenth, you know you have a shot if you play great nine, But if you're in fiftieth, like it is what it is.
Yeah, yeah, it's It just makes you so nervous this course, and the only way to make birdies and have do great shots is to take on shots you don't want to take on. Like on a normal week, you just wouldn't hit that second shot to fifteen. I mean, it looks like you're hitting a three on on the top of a Volkswagen Beetle. It just wow, this is a really,
really hard shot. But if you want to win, you've got to hit it, and you've got to get your head into that place where obviously guys like Phil and Tigers seem to get it into that fearless swing, that rory kind of that that free swing. It's like, you know what, the only way I can hit this shot is to be loose, but the difficulty of the shot and the potential train wrecks. The challenge is to get loose with that much trouble around. It's really that's that's
to me. The whole essence of the Masters is to swing loose with hyper aggressive, really risky plays, and that's a really difficult thing to do.
It's the counterintuitive of GoF Like it's a really scary shot and most people get cautious, and then when you get cautious, you're dead.
Yeah. Human nature is to like, well, this is risky, so I'm not sure about this. I'll just carefully, like just feed it up there so I don't get any trouble. Well, that's why you get into trouble, because you get careful about it.
It's funny. I always say I'm like a scuba I'm like a snorkeler when I play golf. Like if I get a little under the water, I'm fine. But as soon as I get a certain spot, that's when I start protecting and I start losing it. But that's what makes you, guys so great. You're nuclear subs. Like everybody that's playing in the Masters, for the most part, has the ability to get there but then this is a golf course that makes it even harder to get there because it's even scarier, right it is.
And I mean it's it's all part of it's so the whole picture. I mean, the build up to the Masters is outrageous. Every media official in the world is here, everybody's watching. It's the one everybody wants to win, at least in April. It's the one everyone wants to win because it's the first one for six or nine months. It sets up the whole year for everybody, and it sets up your career. It's just such a huge deal.
And it's a course that just and so your kind of anxious performance anxiety anyway, Like it's hard to be loose and free, but the only way to play it well is to be loose and free. So you've got that fight in yourself that you're desperate to win or you really want to win really badly, and that usually creates tension and tightness and being careful. But the only way to play it well is to be the other
way around. And if you look at historically, guys like Fred Kauple's play there every year, I mean, that's the pit of me of a loose Skulfer. You know, it's Phil, you know, it's win all. Oh well, it doesn't matter, like I just want to win. So that's really those sort of guys are going to play well. And I think that's why it's so hard for guys when it like Rory at the moment when it becomes their thing.
You know, it was Norman and Duval and Earliels and it was that they just every year it gets harder to be loose, because how do you that one thing you really want the world the most, you have to be looser than every other week. That's a really really hard thing to do, you know, I think.
I mean, you see with Tiger ever once once way Yang, like I think that's like a fundamental thing, like nobody had beaten them. He'd never lost in that moment, and he lost in that moment. It's like he actually decided he never had experienced it.
You know, it's like you don't know, Yeah, there'd be an argument to say, like a psychologist convention would sit down and like analyze the whole thing. But if he'd lost one or two early, yeah, he might actually still be winning more now he might have ended up with more. I mean he saw Nick Jack got comfortable with losing because I mean he won a lot, but he finished second a lot and third a lot. Tiger never lost.
What was he like fifty and oh when he started Sunday and the outrageous number and when he's there's some quite a lot of the magic was gone obviously when Yang beat him, because it had been going on for so someone. At some point he was going to lose, right, I mean, you can't win forever. It's it's interesting. I mean, obviously a lot of other stuff happened too, but it is interesting. Jack lost more than he won. Yea. So it's almost like the lost the losses were he was
a bit more teflon for the losses. It was a bit more like he didn't develop the scars because he was used to losing along with winning all the time.
It's crazy. It's like goth for mortals is a game of ninety nine percent failure. Like my buddy said this to me, like at one point he's like, so that one percent when you actually succeed is like it's the greatest feeling in the world. And but for Tiger it wasn't that way because and that's what makes you better is the failure. It makes you better a lot of times.
Right, Well, that's what they say. And you definitely learn a lot more from when you get it wrong than when you get it right. When you get it right, you walk away and say how easy is this? When you get it wrong? As all, I've got to do something better next time. You don't walk away from a success and think I've got to do something better next time. You know or you don't see what you did wrong because you won.
It's interesting through three usually were you thinking like I got to get off to a good start here because of the naxt few horse.
You certainly want to be under before you're over at the Masters. And if you've messed the first up, which is very easy to do, you bog you the first, it's not the end of your day because you've got two and three. And as I was talking about three, three is tricky, but it's still a birty whole. You still got a sandway or a wedge. But two. You want to make Bertie on two and hopefully be under power before you want to be one under on the fourth t Maybe two that would be great, because four's
incredibly difficult. Five is going to be even harder now, but it's always been tricky. Six, depending on the pin, that's a little tough, really tough stretch those three holes. So yeah, you want to be under before you You
want to under before you're over. Yeah, seven is a pin is a pin specific thing to like six, six with the pin low on the bottom tier, and seven with the pin in that bowl and the right legitimately decent birdy chances, but seven with that pin on the kind of the high one on the left just over the bunker where it crowns off both ways, hard to hit it close, and it's playing a little bit long, and it's early in the morning. You get a five on into there, it's like, wow, that's a really hard hole.
And six with the pin on the high tier, that crazy high thing on the right, that is one of the toughest seven or eight ims or six onnes you'll ever have. So they can flip six and seven can go from easy to difficult, but you can have that day where four, five, six and seven four of the hardest holes on the course. So yeah, you want to be under before you're over.
It's funny. I got this book. This guy did a strokes gained analysis Joe Peter. He took all the trackers. He scraped it so he had stroke gains statistics from last year. One of the things he found there's only one double or worse on eight and then but then there's very few eagles. It's like one of the least varied.
Horse It's a tough eagle hole because I mean, you see everyone gets in and watches on Saturday and Sunday and Tiger or Phil or Rory or something and in there swinging it in. But it's a really big two hits for most players. Now there's no run on the fairway. That bunker on the right is really hard to avoid some reason. It's quite magnetic because the left trees are really rough. But there's no real train wreck on eight.
Even if you hit it in the left trees off the tee, you kind of punch it up the hill, hit whatever you can on the middle of the green. It's quite a receptive green to hit it within twenty five feet because it's high on both sides. It doesn't repel balls, it brings them back towards the hole. So it's relatively easy if you want it to make again, if you want to make par and eight every time, easy as just take a punch bowl. Yeah, it's kind of like a punch bowl. And the fairway is really
massively wide. If you just safe out to the left, safe up on top of you can lay it up as far right as you want. You can hit it one hundred yards right of the green. Long you've got a football field to hit it into right of the green. But then it gets difficult to hit it close for three, but hit it inside six feet for three or stuff. But did it inside thirty feet quite easy. So if there is it's a birdie in parhole really, I mean
the whole field. That's what your stats say too. I would have said, yeah, most of the half the field, make five. Half the field make four kind of.
I was looking at the old pictures and there's center line bunker is now the rate bunker. Do you think if they opened that right side up you'd see more eagles because you're actually heading from the proper angle line.
Yeah, a little bit. I mean they probably were ten years in front with the letter the depth. How far that bunker was from the tee. I mean it's a three ten carry or something uphill, which is turning out to probably be about right now, right, But when they did it, it's been there my whole career pretty much. I think it was I could sometimes not get it to the bunker right. I was forty yards from carrying it.
And it's a deep bunker and it's a tricky shot out of it, but it's not the worst, so people are willing to take it on because again, if you hit it in the bunker, then you just lay it up and hit a wedge on the green. And it's really it adds half a shot, like it's not adding three shots, like hitting it in the water on thirteen or something. Yeah, I don't know. I don't mind it. I don't. I think it's a pretty good balance for
how we're playing right now. I think there's room on the course for a part five that only the really strong guy I can get to and too. And it's a really brave shot. The second shot, it's you've got to hook quite solidly, like some sort of three wood or something up and to get it on the green
to anywhere close. And that's a really difficult shot off upslope, and whenever you try to do that off an upslope, you generally miss it right and that hole allows you to miss it right, so your brain says, okay, it's okay if I don't hook this, So everyone generally just flares it out to the right wedges it under the green. I think it's a good balance.
Actually, I like it because when you miss the rate and then you're tripping over those mounds, it's really hard to hit it close, which makes it hard to make birdie.
But it's still a relatively easy pa. Yeah, it does make it hard car it's.
But if you get the ball over the left, especially with those rate pins, it's easier. It's much easier to make it.
So if you breathe, yeah, I mean strategically, it ticks every box right, Like the more risk you take on the tea it's closer to the bunker, the easier, the less you have to hook your second shot on, the easier it is. The more that the less risk you take off the tee, then the harder it's hit it on the grain. And it's just exactly the same on the second show. If you take no risk, the further right you go, the hardier wedge. The further left you go,
the easier your wedge. But the further left you go you risk going down into all the flowers and the trees and the rubbish. I mean, this course does that all the way around. It ticks strategy one I one like and in an interesting different way all the way around. It's they just get it. It's just right names the easy driving hole right maybe statistically, but it's easy if
you can turn it over. And it's another one of those holes that coaxes you into trying to take more than you need to on like you really want to hit a big high draw because it goes further, like it has more of a forward bounce rather than a sideways bounce. It's a relatively easy ta shot to hit the fairway. But again it's a bit like the second
shot on eight. It kind of tries to suck you into taking on more than you need and because you don't want, if you kind of flare it a little bit, it's pretty easy to not hit in the right trees, but you end up with this downslope ball below your feet six iron into this green that really isn't fit
for that set up. So it encourages you to take on more than you want, and you'll see a lot of guys hit in the left trees because they're trying to kind of get those big bounces and get it down the bottom of the hill and hit like a wedge in which makes it relatively easy, but it's hard to get it to that spot. So easy to hit the fairway, but again it dangles the carrot like it kind of sucks you when you're trying to take on more than you should.
It's this guy said that approach shot, that front ball is the easiest approach shot.
Joe with a stat on the whole court, do you just say name, Oh yeah, yeah, the front pin definitely one hundred percent, because it's almost impossible to hit it over the ninth green, like it doesn't matter. It plays quite long because it's depending on how far you hit it. It's kind of uphill, and it effectively plays uphill because you're hitting it off such an extreme. People always end up short. Always end up short because you're nine on or go five or five. It's you're off such a downslope.
It's hard to get it in the air the second shot, so nine one goes really flat, so it hits the ground before it normally would, and it's ain't bouncing forward unless it lands up top so you can really take quite a lot more club. Missing the green to the right isn't a problem, so that front and anything really that goes twenty or thirty feet past it will generally
come back towards the pin. So yeah, that's certainly the easiest pin on the green, but it's also the one that you can if you don't know what you're doing, you can get it wrong too.
So you turn, you're making the turn, and then that back nine, Like, what are you thinking about early in that back night?
Well, ten and eleven and twelve get your attention that you certainly think about where you shouldn't, but it's in your head. You really want to get through twelve. Like, if you're in twelve, in good shape, you're having a good day. You know, good things can happen after that. Ten is arguably, I think the second shot on ten, unless you really smashed one down there long and down there and left and got a short one in, is
maybe the hardest swing on the course for me. Downslope, ball above your feet, five iron to a green that looks minuscule from up there. You're going down a pretty steep hill and it's such a beautiful environment. It's such a ten is one of my favorite holes to play. It's a fun t shot. You're really trying to hit a really big draw, but if you don't, it's not the end of the world. You just get a really hard second shot. Every time I part ten, I was happy.
And that's another swing. You have to swing free on that second shot on ten because it makes you be careful but plays a little bit longer than it looks. The green looks tiny, the right bunkers definitely no guarantee, and left anything can happen when it bounces down left under them Amelia bushes. So nine you get the downslope feed lie to slightly alvi green. Then ten you get
the downslope hook lie. Yeah. Nine you're get to a downslope fade lie to a green that really it encourages a low fade the lie, but the shot requires a high draw. And ten you get the low draw lie and the shot really requires a high fade. And that's two two holes in a row. You've got that.
Yeah, the way that green sits and the bunker that eats up that rate. It's brilliant because you got to hit something that way, yeah, or else it goes further away. See that every year the ball running away from the hall that looks like it's going to be close and then it ends up thirty feet away.
And I love that idea of really to play ten great, you know, have to faded into tent. It just presents like kind of want to and it lands a bit softer and it's more receptive where you have to draw it off the tee and then to fade on the second shot. Yeah, ten is brilliant and ten is a I mean, it's obviously it's been talked about the green I guess a sphair bit, but that is a really
really hard green to read. It does some mysterious things, and it's always in the shade, Yeah, the shade with the odd little patch of sun, and it's a it's a really intimate spot with the crowd the patrons too. It's like it's a it's a brilliant place. I mean, ten is one of my favorite sort of environments to hit golf shots in it and play in the world. It's just just a great feeling hole. But you're very happy to make part on ten and eleven clearly is it's the.
Most exec shouan oriented all right.
Yeah, the te shot. It got a lot narrow when they put the trees in on the right, But the first year they put the trees in it on the right, it was narrower and the trees were a bit denser. They I don't think they ever actually said that they made it wider, but I think they did. Maybe they made it wider on the left, I'm not sure, but it is a very wide fair way even still with the trees on the right.
It's fifty yards wide. I think they posted on Instagram. I'd never seen it before. I hadn't seen it in that Gough digest right up where they have all the gain. It used to have a principal no center line bunker.
The tea used to be behind the tenth green. Yeah, and it was almost a dog leg to the right with a center bunker, so the narrow side being on the right to get the good angle to not have to come over the water, and then most people would end up going left of the bunker and then having to go across the water. I mean that would probably be more interesting, but the scale and space isn't there
for that. Now you use too short. Guys would drive it on green from behind the tenth group now, so now it encourages you still to kind of drive it up the right, but really eleven, everyone's just trying to hit on the fairway because everyone just kind of wants to go thirty forty feet right of the pin two part and get out of there. Eleven and twelve are really you would take four to three there every day and run to the thirteenth seat. Hope when you hit it.
You know, we see every bait bell short rate. What's that pitchhake?
Really tough? So larry my shot? Yeah, oh my goodness. I mean if you go over watch practice rounds at the Masters, every group that comes through, everybody's hitting the toun of those because you know you're going to be there twice and three times, four times in a bad week, once in a good week. It's chipping. At the Masters. The grass is so short and it's generally cut towards like where you are, so you're hitting into the grain.
I mean it's not really grainy, but it's enough to make you pay attention, and it's incredibly quick from that's the low point of the course when everybody talks about like the grain or the slope or the pitch or everything breaks towards the red dot, and there's all these theories about everything everything breaks towards eleventh green and the Telk green that's the low point. So that whole green
is savage towards the pond on the left. So you're chipping uphill a little bit, not a lot, but enough too, a really steep down slope. And the real tricky thing at the Masters, and that's probably the spot where it's most evident, is the fringes are quite slow and the greens are very fast, so you really the best way to play is to just get you sixty out of fifty six and just get some spin on a little pitch and land it on the green and have it
grab and bribble down. But that's a really scary shot, especially with the thin kind of grass or the short grass and the water past it.
And when you see like the greens against you on the chip, it just means like if you don't get to hit that like little fat and have it go through and be okay, right, it just.
Has to be more precise. Yeah, it's not out and out. A good shot will be good off any lie, but it just is less room for error. You can't catch that blade of grass before you catch the ball, or it's going to go shorter than it would if there wasn't. The grain is shue, and again it's not super grainy, and it's a little bit over blown that sort of thing, the grass towards the tee, but it's just enough to make you pay attention. But so you end up maybe
doing that one skip like Larry Mais. I mean, I think it looked a little different thre his bounce two or three times on that thing. It's harder to do that now, I think, especially in a wet week. Love this. It's one of those things you want to the safe players to bump it along the ground, but you can get that wrong because the fringe catches really fast. It's
a bit like over the back of fifteen too. The fringe catches the ball really quick, and if you force that just a little bit and it takes you want three bounces, it only takes two. Well, it's going to go straight in the pond. So that that and the shots from over the back of the fifteenth are the two wed shots that will get your attention. They're really really tricky. The whole forces you to hit it there almost it encourages you to hit it there, so because
it kind of bail out, that's the bailout. I mean, you don't want hit it in the pond because then you've got the drop zone over it. You've got to go over the pond again.
And it's like eventually you got to take the pandam on both those shots. Like if you if you bail right on eleven, you got to take the pand down on your third chat, And if you bail long on fifteen, say with your second chat, you've got to take the pandawn with the chip back.
Yeah, and eleven. I guess it's prob maybe a little untalked about. You can't shit it short of the green because anything short of the green there's the big mounds, the just mint, they're just perfect. They're like, oh forty thirty forty twenty hours short of the green on the right. So anything in that lands short right like where you really want to hit it.
It just it can.
It doesn't always, but it can bounce thirty hours to left and go in the water. So you can't go five yards short of the front edge right, which is really where you want to hit it, and it's like this course has got that everywhere that oh, this is where you want to go, but you can't. We're going to make you take this on. You have to take this on in some respect. Even missing the green to the right, you have to hit it deeper than you want,
You have to hit it further than you want. It's there's so many little suddle things like that out there that's incredible, and so that's the probably hit in the right trees. There's some gaps through there, and you can get it on the green, but you have to take it over those mounds that are short right of the green, and if it goes over the mound the wrong way,
it just runs into the water. So you wind up you hit those guys who get it all the way out of the twelfth teet like they're just way out there and people must be watching, what are they doing? But you can't risk that front right short of the green because it can go in the water.
So then twelve's got to be scariest shot. Yeah, it's other than the fifteen to second chat.
Twelve is, Yeah, fifteen is a harder shot. Yeah, twelve is. I wouldn't. It's all mostly in your head. The wind can get really weird the kind of middle pin and the left pin, and that day they have a minute can be a pitching wedge, and if it's not too windy, it really isn't too difficult. But once the pin gets over on that right half of the green and maybe there's a little bit there's a one club wind. That's and it's true, you have absolutely no clue where it's
going from. Like the wind can whistle if it's coming from the right way, it can pump down the thirteenth fairway, and there's a massive wall of trees behind twelve, so it seems to come down thirteenth fairway, it kind of around the bend and hit the trees and almost bounce
back towards the tee. So all day, if you look at your your wind map or your compass in your yardish book, you know it's supposed to be down off the left or down off the right or whatever, but it actually one minute out of every three it can play into the wind because it's bouncing off that big wall of trees and it kind of holds up the ball.
So you know that.
So everyone has a theory about looking at the flag on eleven or wait till this does that and then hit it then. And I haven't. I've said two or three days there two or three situations that were just like, oh my god, I just what do I do? Because it's very easy to hit it in the bank over the back too, and the water is the ultimate miss because then you have to do it again like we saw Jordan and historically lives a lot of people do that.
So the right pin is tough, and taking the wind out of the wind is an element that has really made the whole famous probably, but without that the genius, especially because most golf is the right handed in that short riders in the water and long left is over the green, and a right hander, when they miss it left, it goes long, and they miss it right, it goes short.
And those are the misses when you're a little unsure, that cut pop up because your tempo gets a little off.
And if you want to eat the Nicholas has just go over the bunk and go left to the pin and put it over. And that's a great theory. But the middle of the green is shorter than where the pin is, so if you pick that line and hit it right of that line, you're going to go in the water. So I guess a lot of people would see guys hit it, and some big names. It's the
big moments have hit it in the water. And the right on twelve, Well, if they're trying to play the smart play and push it, it's guaranteed to be in the water. But if you're trying to go to the pin somewhere near the pin and you pull it, you're going to be on that hill or over the back. And for a left hander, I think it's fifty percent easier a half shut at least. Yeah, because their pool goes long, so ams at them, Philip barbarraim at the middle of the green. They pull it, it gets there
and they push it. It doesn't go long. So if there was no angle, if the t was twenty yards further the ride or thirty yars further the right, it wouldn't be much of a it wouldn't be the hole it was. It'd be beautiful and famous and it'll be tricky, but it wouldn't have that kind of edge of Wow.
It's like the importance of an angle, yeah, because you're hitting from essentially they put it in a disadvantage angle for a right hand.
Yeah, I mean it's genius. The front left edge would be I don't have the book in front of me, but it's probably fifteen yards short of the front right edge, and the back left edge is probably close to the front edge on the right pin, so if you go to the left hand side of the green, back edge will only just carry on the right. So it's you've got to pick your spot, pick your club. I hope you get the club right, pick your spot and hit it within your five yards either side of your target,
and you're pretty much at the grain every time. But if you don't, you've got long left, which is stressful, less stressful than the water, but it's and it just makes you nervous, Like it's a beautiful as I said ten eleven twelve, you just want to get to the thirteenth team at that point, like, just get me there, no carnage. Maybe you're feeling it good, you maybe you make a birdie through ten eleven twelve. Whatever it's happened,
you know you can do it. But it's definitely the part of the course that can ruin your.
Day the most Wednesday's Pad. You said that the thirteenth tevas is the best tavacent golf like that.
It's the best place in professional golf by a long way. On one about playing fields at least, I don't know. It's just your two hundred yards probably one hundred and eighty yards at least from the nearest spectator. There's maybe a Master's official back there hiding back there, and there's a CBS guy, I think, just to make sure the camera's on a tripod. I think. I don't think he actually mans the camera, but just to make sure it's all working. And otherwise it's completely silent and you've come
off twelve. Where there's the most beautiful noise in golf is when you make a putt on twelve and there's that speed of sound gap, right, You've got that three seconds until you hear the cheers and the collapse. It's just fantastic. I mean, I don't know, there's something about it that's just really rare in golf. And it's just a nice feeling. So you're back on thirteen, you're tucked away, nobody can see you, and you're looking at the most beautiful T shirt in the world. So it's like it's
just a nice you're always on show. You're a goldfish at something like the Masters, Right. The appeal to golf, I guess from a spectator a lot of times is that they're so close to us. And I guess that's why that's just such a nice change for us, because we're two hundred yards really from the nearest fan. It's just a nice place, and it's just such a good hole. We're just excited. We've just come off the toughest stretch on the course and we're about to play the funnest stretch on the course.
When you're playing in front of a crowd, how I mean do different events like is there like a a point where you just start noticing them? Yeah, for sure.
Usually for me it's odd. But I've always found the bigger the crowd, the easier it is, because it all kind of blends in. I've always found the toughest crowd the three people, four people, because it's a bit more intimate and personal and they almost feel like they can talk to you, and it's a there's something kind of unnerving about two or three guys standing right near you. It's kind of I don't know. I've always found that harder than or that one guy who stands behind your put.
There's one guy at the Pudding Green and he walks around to stand right behind the line of your put to watch your put. And it's a perfectly fair thing for him to do, and that's a great way to watch your put. But it's you notice that one guy. But you get to the Phoenix Open, and I mean that would be a little different. But you're in the Masters and there's five thousand people on every hole. It's just a bit of a blur. It blends in and it's almost it's white noise. So it's like the noise
canceling headphones. It's almost you don't notice them as much.
It's like there's constant noise. Like I was playing a tournament at Beverly in Chicago, which is like over it's like you know, in the city of Chicago, major streets, and then right over Midway is flying over like all day and it's it's gotta be the loudest course in America. And but then like it's so funny, you don't even notice it after a couple of horse.
Yeah, it is. It's like there's a few there's there's a few famous courses around the world to have the airports and Sernander is, to be fair, it's kind of one of them. There's Lucas the RIF base, and there's jets all day and that kind of helps a little bit sometimes. And Tory Pines is renowned for f eighteens and hornets and all sorts of stuff. They're flying absolutely all day and it does create this kind of noise canceling headphones effect. It's just you don't even notice it after a bit.
So then when you go back to thirteen, it's kind of weird.
It's really really quiet, and yeah, you can hear each other talk and it's just a it's a very odd place. When you play The Masters is such an assault on your senses. There's people everywhere, there's noise, and it's such a massive week that you've got this spot on the course that's just totally silent. It's it's actually really nice.
What do you What are you thinking about with that thirteenth T shirt?
Well, I'm for me. I've always kind of struggled to hit a big drawer with a driver, so I I kind of initially initially was trying to hit Threewood because a lot of guys the longer guys would hit three woods because it's much easier hit a hawk. And I played with Freddie early days a couple of times, and he hit this great sweeping drawer with the three wood that was kind of I was very envious about. But
it looked like the sensible way to play it. And the the trouble because it's once you've gone left once or twice, it spooks you for a long time about going left again. So your problem really is hitting it through the fairway because that really takes out woll unless you get lucky in the pine straw. It brings in
the risk. So I would try to hit kind of three woods with a decent draw, but give the trees a lot of air, like the trees are very penal, and everything seems to bounce in the water from the trees every single time, or left of the water even
and that's just terrible. So I generally hit three wood, and I think I ended up hitting a few more drivers, trying to get a little bit more aggressive, but I I wasn't really that great, or haven't been that great in big draws of drivers, so I kind of was willing to accept like a three or four one under
the green. I didn't really ever try to get much closer than that, because, as I said, you hit one left one time and you get so burnt by being left, and you just feel like you've wasted a shot or two and you've missed out on maybe the funner shot on the course, which is the second shot. I used to give it a bit of air and I used to block a few and then you'd be way out and you'd have to lay it up. But at least
that way you don't go left. So I would just try to sort of almost back for the three would and hit kind of a low, screaming hook.
That was my plan. So messing that fair away you would be really mad because you didn't get to hit the second shot.
There's a funner shot on the course. For me, it's just incredible, and what people don't it's such a genius hole. It's almost the perfect golf hole. And if it isn't the perfect golf hole, it's probably as close as you can get to a perfect golf hole. It's strategically, the further let the closer to the water you get, you get like a threefold advantage. You get a flatter lie, you get closer to the green and you have a better angle if you the further away from the creek
you are. The further from the green, the more the ball is above your feet, and the worse your angle into the green. And it's incredible how steeply or how much the ball is above your feet on that second shot. I think it surprises everyone for the first time when
they hit the second shot and to thirteen. They hit a nice drive up to the middle of fairway, maybe around the corner a little bit, and they've got this four or five iron, three iron, four iron, five iron with the ball legitimately six or eight inches above your feet, and that's really quite difficult.
It's gonna be so hard to hit it high off that lay right.
It's hard hit at high. And it's also because the trouble is short left and it goes to long right the way they again, it's another angle. It's another great angle. If you had a flat lie and everything else was being was kind of different, you would want to hit a fade into that green because you could hit a shot that was basically never really going to be in
the water. You could start it left with the green and kind of the shortest carry I mean, the carry to the front edge is probably thirty yards shorter than the car carry to kind of the right edge of that back right pin. So you could that safe one where you always fell a well, if I hit it straight, then I'll just miss the green left. But I can kind of make birdie over there, but you have to with the ball above your feet kind of hit a draw.
And so you're hanging it over the long carrier and you're hanging it over the water, and yeah, it's hard to hit it high. And that shot is actually it doesn't even look at when you're standing there, but the water in the creek runs quite significantly and quite fast from the green towards rays creek, it runs back towards
the teeth, so it's obviously quite uphill. A second shot, I actually can't remember we've got slopes in our books now but what it plays, but it would definitely play five ten yards longer than it measures just because of the hill. So you've got it's again, like it is all the way around the course. You've got this shot that all you want to do is hit a high fade, and all the all of the stances trying to give you as a low drawer.
And the scale of that fair a way is what created the deception of the uphill on the second shot.
I guess, yeah, it just doesn't seem you feel like you kind of because you come down off the thirteenth tee, you cross the creek and you walk all the way up. You walk up to your ball quite significantly really, so I guess it feels like you'll come back. It kind of seems like the corner is the high point. The way it all looks, and the way the trees are and trees on the right are so much higher than
the trees the creek on the left. It's the second shot, Yeah, that it just feels like you should be going down to the green, but you're actually still going quite significantly up to the green.
That's really interesting, and that makes that shot even harder.
Yeah, it plays longer the carry it gets every yard you go to the right, it gets two yards further to carry. You know. It's one of those kind of deals. It's but it's such a good fun shot to pull off. I mean, it's really a massive green. It might be the biggest green on the course, but it looks tiny from back there on the fairway and yeah, never that sad when you miss the green left. But it's a really tricky chip from left. I mean it's a crazy slope green and it's got that same thing as ten.
It's it's always in the shadows. Well, it's in the shadows from lunchtime onwards probably, So if.
You're where you want to be, if you're playing well and you're where you want to be on the weekend, it's in the shadow.
Yeah, it's in the shadows. If you're telling off anywhere remotely close to the lead, you are, and it's shadows. It's not definitively all in the shade. There's like light patches and dark patches, and like there's that ultimate hard kind of light.
To read a green in that little back run off area is really tricky, spart.
Right, It's yeah, it's super tricky. It's kind of quite a significant kind of dip and the bunkers are actually quite high. The bunkers are almost above the heart of the green. But the I mean it's probably only a foot or two that little kind of dip between the back edge of the green or the left edge and the back edge of the green and those bunkers and
up towards the flower. It's quite a significant dip, and it's enough that it's extremely slow to put up because it's quite a steep little hill, and it's like putting up a steep, little slow hill through the fringe and then just ultra fast all the way to the water.
It's not where you want to be. It's clearly better than being in the water, and it's better than generally it's probably better than laying up even close to the creek, but it's still not really your favorite shot, especially if you're anywhere near the mix, because it's a Again, it's that that speed differential between fringe and green is so great that you want to run it through the fringe
to the safety of the putter. But it's a really hard one to get right with the putter, so you kind of end up going with the wedge and if you don't get any spin on it, you don't clip it right, you catch the slope wrong. You can be thirty feet below the hole, or you can hitch itp it in the water pretty easy, or leave it down where your feet are, so it's you don't want to be down there. It's better than being right, but you don't want to be down there.
It gives you the ultimate and if you take it on and pull it off the second chart, really it does.
And again it's that perfect situation that if you wanted to make five four days in a row, you would make five for the rest of your life. A professional golfer playing in the Masters would never not make five if his goal was to make a five. Because there's a thousand hours of fairway to the right. You could just something way out to the right, lay it up into the biggest fairway on the court because it's really
fourteen and thirteen fairway. You can lay it up as close to the creek as you want, left, right, anywhere, and it's really quite easy to hit the middle of that green in three shots. But you're never going to
make four. So as soon as you try to make four or three, you're bringing the creek off the tee because the only the easier that it's relatively easy second shot if you're down near the creek around the corner, as I said, because it's flat lie the angle is better and you're closer to the green.
The dynamics of like of where it is and knowing the back and with where people can just make up ground like crazy on there. It even if you have a four shot lead, you kind of have to go for it.
Right, Well, that's it if that's the first year or two was the fourth hole, right.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this.
It would be completely different. Well, it would still be a great hole and it be amazing, but people would play it differently as the fourth hole because they'd probably be more willing to accept not making birdie. But when it's thirteen, especially late on Saturday or Sunday, you know,
there's a few guys in contention. You're going to make three or four, or everybody's going to make four, it feels like, and a bunch of guys are going to make three, so you have to kind of try to make three and it's three or four, And as soon as you try to do that, that's when you bring in all the stress, and that's when it's a really anxiety building hole, right because you have to hit two of the most high quality shots you have to hit anywhere to get that eagle part with all sorts of
risk involved. When you really could just go bail out to the right, bail out to the right, have a relatively easy wedge with a big back stop to that Sunday pin. You can get it within twenty feet every time, but you can't really do that when you were in the mix and the six in front of something. I mean even three or four in front isn't enough. Really, the situation in the tournament being six holes to play,
you really have to take on again. It makes you, It encourages you to take on shots that you might not necessarily want to take on.
I'm going to table my question about the flip till later because I want to go through the last few before we I ask you fourteen. We talked about it on the front nine and three a little bit. How they are the holes where leaders pick up the most shots. So fourteen no bunkers. Everybody always talks about no bunkers. But it has some of the most severe contours.
Right. It's probably the if anyone's never been there, which most people probably haven't, it's probably the green that freaks people out the most when they see how dramatic and crazy it is. I mean, it is a massive green left to right or right to left wide. It's not necessarily that deep, it's quite I mean it's deep enough. But the first fifteen out of the green is completely unusable because it's one of those big kind of Sinnandrews,
like kind of false fronts, if you like. It's really big and severe, and it's super high on the left and it's almost like a three tier green from left to right. So it's really high on the left, really small little level on the left, the medium kind of level in the middle, and then quite a big level down the bottom.
Right. Have you played past the temper I haven't played. You've seen that sixteenth green, right, Yeah, so it's kind of like that on the side.
Yeah.
I've never heard anybody describe it like that, but that's what it clicked them.
Yeah, so it's a green that you the T shirt. I think actually when they made that longer, they moved the tea back twenty or thirty when was it either ninety eight or two thousand and five or whatever. They
did those two changes, it got longer. I think the T shot got a little bit easier with that, and the fact when they started cut the fairways back to the teeth, because I think in the old days, from what I hear is you had to hit a drawer to keep it on the fairway because the fairway camps very it's quite high on the left and low on the right, So anything with anything where it's straight or fade is going to hit and bounce and run to the right.
So now there's a little seame ridge that moves down thirteen.
Yeah, it's the same hill higher up the hill, but the same sort of slope, and you have to hit it. It's quite a big fairway now, I think it's bigger than it was before. The length actually made it a little bit easier to hit, I think, because it's quite hard to hit in the trees now. I mean you can run it out into the right raf, which is not ideal because it's a green you want a lot
to spin into. But it went from like a hook three would I think in the old days, to like just smash the driver and if you can draw it, it's definitely an advantage because again the higher on the left you get the flatter of stances. So again it's a bit like thirteen. In the closer on the inside of the dog leg you are the flatterer stance, and the higher up you are, so the shorter the second shot plays. But there's trees on the left that you, I think dust and carry them yesterday, but generally no
one can get them. Massive trees and you kind of have to go around them. Have you hit them. They again, Augusta trees, they always bounce towards the trouble. Right Augusta trees somehow make balls bounce into the trouble, not back onto the fairway. But it's I felt, a relatively simple t shot. If you as long as you were hitting a big fade for a right hander and get it up there to eight nine, nine weirds, you've hit a
good one. And then the second shot is it changes every day with where the pin is, that famous kind of pin in the middle that they have on Sundays where anything within twenty or thirty feet left of it just goes at it just rolls towards it. That's a really fun pin to hit at when you're in the middle of the fairway, but you can get it wrong because if you miss it two feet to the right of the pin, you're going to have a sixty foot from the bottom right of the green. And that's a
part that might be the slowest part of Augusta. You got to smash it, so you don't want to do that. You can't gen short. If you miss the green shorts, it's a one in five up and down, maybe even more. And again it's a hole you want to hit a draw into because you want the drawer to be holding you on the slope when it lands. But the ball is so far below your feet on the second shot, it's really difficult to hit a draw, so you end up.
I usually ended up having a ball that was moving left to right, so the first bounce or the spin that's kind of checking to the right, which accentuates all the slope on the green. So it's it is certainly a birdie hole with a good drive, but it's certainly a second shot that requires as much attention as any other second shot because if you can't, if you don't get it on the right level, you're going to have
a really long part or a really fast part. One O yell, and you can have puts on that green that break twenty five feet from twenty five feet.
The way that green sits in that ridge is perfect to make it that way too, because that whole thing kind of cascades, latten and rate, and the green just sits there kind of carved out of it, and then you know, built up to get that little front ray part cascades is a great word. It does look like it's water falling down the hill a little bit. That green's it's.
An incredible green. Ben crenshaw Is said at a bunch of times, it's the most three partable green in the world, right, I mean it's it's a crazy green. And you just you are so conscious of not missing it short short The first time you see it seems the miss because it's under the hole. But it's under the hole. You go up this massive false front, the biggest one Augusta by a long way, I mean heights. I mean it's probably only three feet, but it seems twelve feet above you.
Right when you're short of that green and you have to smash the puts so hard and so far left of the hole because of all the break that it's as I said, it's probably a one in five, one in ten up and down from short of the green. So everybody knows that. And when the balls below your feet and you end up kind of carving up a bit of a fade, it's very easy to miss short of the green. So you're conscious of that.
So and that's a hard light to hit that draw that you want to hit, And.
Yeah, for me it always was. I mean, I think for everyone it's the hardest. For the For the comfortable drawers like like Rory and guys like that, then it's probably not that big a deal. But for most people it certainly makes the shape you want to hit. The slope is exactly wrong for the shape you want to hit.
Long is the mess right, long long and.
Right of the pin is the miss. And if you want to miss it right of the pin, but not by very much generally, I mean that pin in the middle. To get it close, you have to land it left of the pin and it's sweeps down, but you'd still prefer it to sweep down and break and end up below the whole. To the right, long right is you can get up and down to any pin from long right.
How do you miss long rate though as a rady.
It's difficult because you're you're missed. To the right is generally short right. So if you can miss it to the long ride, if you actually hit it straight or hit a draw pull one, it's going to go long right, long left and long left is a disaster. So again it's just a very clever use of slope. Serendipitous, I think a little bit because you couldn't have built a different green there that you could only build a green that went high left to low right because the severity
of the hill. But it just it just worked. And there's some incredibly impossible pins that where you have maybe there's this kind of frontish left pin which isn't really front left, but it's front left of the usable green. It's probably twenty five on the green, but it's in the first eight feet of usable green on that high left side, and if it's maybe a six foot circle that you could get it close, and if you don't, you're going to be potentially one hundred feet from the hole.
If you miss at one foot right of that pin, you can potentially be not all the time, it can hang on that middle tier, but if it gets a bit of momentum of the very top tier, it goes down the middle tier and then down all the under the lower tier and you can have one hundred foot And as I said, that's the slowest part of the masters. And I think sometimes the slow puts are the masters are the hard ones because you're so fearful of the one back.
If you smash it and you've been hitting themselves soft, are there.
You're so I wouldn't tentative isn't the word, but conscious of not hitting it too hard, and that one it's
a little bit untalked about. I think a lot of the old experienced guys talk about how slow the upper parts are of the masters, and to me, they're always the difficult ones because again, it's always in your head to not hit a six week pass and you hitting it's so hard, I mean, one hundred and sixty eighty foot ninety foot up, two tiers up, I don't even know w to know, ten percent kind of slow grade.
It's incredible how hard you have to hit it. And it's really really hard to get yourself to hit it that hard because you just don't want that six foot on the way back, because the six foot on the way back you could potentially go back all the way down again.
So it's a whole that really really rewards great charts rewards because it's really hard to make par if you're not in the rate. It's really hard to make par even if you're in the RONKSPA.
Just half yeah, it rewards a nice T shot. Again, it's not the most demanding T shot on the course. You're gotta pay a little bit of attention, but it's a very very precise second shot to hit it close. And if you don't hit that precise second shot, you're going to have some difficulty in making power for sure.
Then you go to fifteen, which is infamous. Hall I feel like just surviving it for four rounds is it's.
Kind of like that. It depends. It generally plays slightly into the wind. Historically in all the tournaments I played, it doesn't really ever seem to get down wind. I mean, it can swirl a bit, and it can, but it's generally probably slightly into the wind, and the T shot is relatively easy. It's just bombs away. It's not really about accuracy. It's a little bit because down the left side,
obviously those trees get into the mix. But it's that one of those free is the free hit at it really you can just tee off because if you don't smash it, it's the hole you on the tee. You do everything you can to be able to go for it too. Because as hard as that second shot is and as much trouble as there with a second shot. Getting it over the water in two on dry land is preferable to anything short of the water. There is
nothing good short of the water. It is the hardest wedge in golf, so by a long stretch, I would say with the most train wrecks happen on the third shot generally, not the second shot or the drop after the second one goes in the water. That wedge is just beyond brutal. So you are very motivated to hit a good T shirt and it was always never on
the edge for me, but it was funny. It's one of those holes that in practice you're maybe not quite in tournament speed yet because you're not the adrenaline isn't going and stuff. I always felt like I had two forty to the pin in practice. It's like, how do people go for this is ridiculous, and like you would go for it in practice because it doesn't matter and hitting two irons and three irons and three woods even and it's just like not the target for a three wood.
But as the tournament comes on, usually by the fourteenth you've kind of pretty you're swinging it pretty hard and if you're feeling decent. You can't seem if I get it up there to two twenty like three four five iron kind of when you're playing really well, so you really really really want to The most important thing of the day on fifteen is being able to get it on dry land for two over the pond, because it's, as I said, just the complete nightmare of a pit shut.
And then when you get it on, it's a super fun second shot to pull off. Though it's similar to thirteen, and there's a lot of history involved in that because we've seen so many people hit the shot. And the pins on the right depends on the right are the easy pins that Sunday pin on the right, it's the eagle pin that the I mean they've moved it. They've kind of dabbled around with the Sunday pins. It's been a bit more in the middle of the green and Sergio's was in the middle of the green a couple
of years ago and that unbelievable shotting hit. But that back right pin is certain the green light pin, and you would go at that back right pin with almost any club if you could get it there. I think.
The slope, which you know makes that ray pin easier. It is so hard to tell on TV because it's propped up and you can't see it. But if you think about where the green's positioned, like three hundred yards the left, it's thirteen green, which is you know, just running right down that slope, so it's got a light of pitch to it right to last.
It's the same kind of hill. It's the general same hill. Once when you're at twelve, the way back to the clubhouse with the routing was traversing the hill. Yeah, so thirteen that's right to left. It's high on the right, lower on the left, fourteen it's high on the left, low on the right, and fifteen high on the right and loan it's it's traversing the hill kind of. That's
the way to get up the hill. So the fairway on fifteen is relatively flat, but the green is really a lot very very fast from right to left, and it's progressively shallower left you go on the green to like the back left hand side of the green seems to slope towards the back of the green a little bit down towards the water on sixteen, where if the right hand side of the green seems a bit more receptive and a bit kind of into you. You can kind of stop a three on on the right hand
side of the green. On the left hands tide of the green. It seems like you can't stop a wedge. So it's kind of I don't know how to describe that in words, but it's it's an uphill kind of it lands on an up slope on the right hand.
Take a potato chip.
Yeah, it's got a little bit of a twist in't it. Yeah, It's like it's it's an uphill part from the front right to the back right pin, and it's a downhill part from the front left to the back left pin. You know, So it's.
Hitting wedges into greens that run a little away. Yeah. Do you think that's one of the hardest shots.
Yeah. The shot of the wedge shot, which is why you don't want to miss the fail your neck, you t shot, is the instinct when the pin is on the left and I got burnt by this in two thousand and seven, but the instinct is to lay it up down the right because the pin's on the left and you feel like you're going to kind of create
a bit more room on the green. But the further right, you are on the fairway with that wedge shot from one hundred yards or eighty yards, you are landing it on that pretty significant downslope of the green from right to left, and the first bounce is so big that if you land it anywhere near pin high, it's just one bounce over the back. And we've all seen that shot a lot, that wedge that lands next to the pin and just goes bounce over the back. So you're off a downslope on that As I said that that
fairway grass that demands precision. I mean it's not difficult, but it demands precision like it's unforgiving. It's an unforgiving light, especially with the wedge. So I initially was trying to lay it up on the right, and in two thousand
and seven I laid it. It was that crazy, ridiculous Saturday when it was thirty four degrees and the year of Zach Johnson one and we're all shooting over par I think I was somewhat in the mix, two or three behind, I think, with four holes to play on Saturday, and I wedged two in the water and I laid it up down the right and landed my sixty like on the front engine. It just spun off the greend of the water and then I got stubborn and dropped it in the same spot. Or maybe I walked up
two yards or no, I didn't do that. I think the Tiger Woods thing. I can't remember whatever I did, but I just did it again because the fear of that one bounce over the back is really there. And it's such a downslope, so your wedge comes out low, so doesn't carry, doesn't perry got as far, and that first bounce is going to be such a big long bounce because it's coming in fast. You know that downslope
wedge with a lot of spin. It's landing fast. It's like skidding on like it's almost like its skids a lot when.
It grabs on like the second or even third bounce.
Yeah, first bounce, it grabs on like the third bounce. So eventually, if you lay it up, I think the true experience lays it up as far left as they can.
And so that was the second time you'd played it, So this is something. This is an example like the course hadn't fully revealed itself, and.
I learned it early my second Masters and I always if I had to lay it up, then I would go out of my way to lay it up as deep to the left as I could, even in the semi ralf. On the left is the first cut is better than anywhere on the right, because again it's a bit like thirteen. The further left, you either flatter your stance, and if you go way left and have a distance where you can get some spin, you can even to
that back left pin or that left pin. You can hit a pitch that lands twenty or thirty feet kind of right of it and kind of spins left because it comes back down the hill and you can get it, and it's a very receptive type. It's a safe way to play the shot. But from the right, it's it's really difficult. I mean, it's really difficult to describe unless
you've been there. But every yard you go to the left, the more the more receptive the green gets because the more it kind of you're turning, it becomes a up slope.
It's like when you have like a really fast downhelp that moves, how you can slow it down by hitting it into the slope.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, you're hitting it into this, So it's like starting the ball into the wind, it just slows it down like it's the first bounce is now going to be a sensible distance. And again, the further left you are, the flatter your stance, so now you can
hit a pitch with a bit more flight. The green is quite deep on the right and really shallow on the left, so if you're at the left, you can kind of create more green depth by hitting it quite a lot right of the pin with all the depth and maybe use a bit of backspin to get it so you don't really have to risk landing it near
the water when you're pitching it from the left. But still it is I think if you asked guys in the field, if it wasn't the t shot on twelve, if they had to pitch into fifteen, would be most guys least favorite shot on the course of the one they're most trying to avoid. I mean, it's inevitable. Usually once in a week you're going to have to do it. In some weeks four times. I mean Zach Johnson did
it four times a year, which is outrageously good. In some years, it gets long and it's into the wind and guys are laying it up a lot, and that's when you see cartage. You guys back and the balls off the green all the time, and I guess people watching you're like, well, why these guys, Why don't these guys just hit it past the hole? But over the back is the toughest up and down of the masters probably,
So it's you're damn if you do down. If you don't like it's neither option with shorts clearly terminal and long is. I mean, Film's got that shop, but not many others. Right, it's a really from one or two yards over the back of fifteen, it's doable, but it never stops one or two years over. It just keeps running down and ten yards over the green. You've got that thing that I've been kind of describing the whole time.
Is that really really slow fringe because it's quite steep, and the way they cut the grass and how fast the greens are, there's some massive speed differential between the fringe and the green. So is it a one bouncer and check because if you go for two or three bounces, it generally doesn't get to the green, or you've got to hit it so hard to skip it through for three bounces that you're risking it very easy to just blow it back into the water.
Yeah, because Bermuda's got a little sticky as if it was fascue, you'd just be able to bump it right now.
If it was fascual, it would be completely different, Yeah, because the speed difference would be less. It's the speed differential between green and fringe in shots like that, Plus it's quite a significant like slope you end up going down, like those trees where guys end up down when they their fore irons they catch the swirly wind. And that's another one where the wind really plays tricks that second
shot of fifteen. For whatever reason, maybe it's the ponds of the water or quite a lot of open space around there, the wind is very hard to get right or to trust.
Chipping from back to the right side of the green, is that easier.
Than Yeah, everything on that side of the green, there's really hard. Everything on the right hand side of the green.
As you play the hole from the tee is it's easier to go to that side from everywhere because even from behind it, even from behind it the ones on the left, those pins on the left, from behind it, it's as I said, it seems to slope from front to back over there, but it's such a shallower part of the green, and you generally when you're chipping from over the green, if the pin is left, you're right of the pin. No one really misses that left of the pin on fifteen when the pin's on the left
because everyone's giving it air to the right. So if you're twenty feet right of the pin and ten yards over the green for that left pin, you've got to pitch. You've got that pitch where you've got to get the bounces right or do the fill super flop thing, and it's going to hit and break straight to the rights. It's a it's just a really hard shot.
I mean, we've seen you're not the only guy that's had that whole bitum with like Sergio last year, Cabrera, couple of years Cabrera played it like I say, ten over the whole week, and you made the cut somehow. But then you got sixteen. He's sixteen. You said that that hole may have been your favorite Masters's moment ever. In twenty eleven eleven fasts most sick.
There's two days where it's the funnest tile on the course, and there's two days when it's the least fun hole right. Just the pins, the two low pins generally, Thursday and Sunday are really fun. I mean, historically everybody knows the shot on Sunday and Thursdays really is similar to anywhere thirty or forty feet right of the pin, it's going to go towards.
It's kind of where a lot of balls end up on Sunday is Thursday Thursday's pin.
Yeah, and it's really fun and it's a famous shot, and it legitimately feels like if I can throw this out in that twenty thirty foot area somewhere out in the right, I'm a hold in one chance for a real chance to get it close here. Because it's one of those funnel pins, it just all seems to go towards that Sunday pin. And Thursdays, like you said, the Sunday when they guys just kind of maybe come out of it a little bit and hit that kind of weak high thing, it still rolls back down the slope
and it ends up where Thursday's pin is. So those days are really fun. Friday and Saturday pins generally that front right on Friday and the back rode on Saturday, excruciatingly difficult one the front right one on both areas again maybe six twelve foot circles, maybe six foot from the hole on Friday to stay up there in a good spot, and if you don't, you're either down the hill or you miss the green in the right and just off the right edge is okay for that Friday pin.
That front right one and that front right bunk is not too bad. It's not great, it's not too bad, but generally you end up with that thirty forty foot or up the hill. And if the front right pin, if you're you've got to be careful not to miss it very much past pin high. If you're shorter pin high, that front right pin, it's a pretty much just a
straight bang up the hill. It's not incredibly difficult, but as every yard you get past the pin left down the bottom tier, putting to that front right one, the putt can break fifteen twenty feet. You've got to. It's really kind of severe because now you're putting across the tier a little bit and the tier just sweeps it to the right, and it's really easy to just have it, leave it back down and put it down to the front.
Edge and if you miss left, it usually goes long.
If you miss left it goes along right. So again this is a genius and Augusta it's it's really difficult to miss that one where you miss it, so you really can't where you want to miss it, so you really can't try to miss it. You really just have to like try to hit the great shot. You really do. It's always with the always with it in your mind. You don't want to be twenty five feet past the hole in the bottom tier because if you put it from from Sunday's pin to Friday's pin would be a
one in ten two part. I would say it's it's a part that would break twenty or thirty feet and the last fifteen twenty feet of it is straight down the hill. Yeah, really really tough, but you manage it because it's usually the front tier on Friday and it's like the nine nine or something, and if you're playing well, it sounds crazy to people, but if you're playing well in the masses and you're contending getting it within six or ten feet of the hole with a nine nine,
isn't that outrageous? Like a prospect, Now, the pin on the the Saturday pin that Nicholas and seventy five pin. It is an incredibly small area. I mean anything left of the pin, anything is going down the hill to Sunday's pin. I don't know how many balls can land left of that and stay up. It's it's an amazingly slopey green and it's a really really small area. You can hit it right of the pin and then it'll stay there. But if you're hitting that right bunker, you're
not going to make path. You're going to have to two part from forty feet for bogie and rate of it.
It's a nervy shot because you know, anything past it's gone.
Anything past it's gone. Yeah, it's just an incredibly small area. It's just one of those Augusta on every green, really not every green, but at least half twelve of the greens have some incredibly tiny areas that them in the high pin on six is the same, and four fourteen have these really really small it's like a blank a picnic blanket to hit it into it. If you don't, you're going to have a long two part. So that's pressure on shot and against that same sort of feeling.
The only way you can really hit a great shot there onto those really small pins. To hit those really precise shots is to swing it free and loose. And it's hard to get into a free and loose mindset when you know all the bad things that can happen. You get protective, and the protective swing usually goes short and it dribbles down the tier and then you've got this again, an incredibly slow part that Nicholas up the hill,
and then the seventy five part. You've got to hit it really, really hard, with the idea that you don't want to hit anywhere past the.
Whole Yeah, and you don't want to coming back to your feet.
Which we've seen a lot. Yeah. I mean, I don't show that sort of stuff on TV that much, but it happens during the tournament. Quite a lot of guys will part up to that pin and it it'll just roll back to your feet. It's incredible. And then Sunday and then it's the funnest pin in golf. It's brilliant fun with.
The way they sat it up. Sunday it's ingenius too, because twelve it's in the toughest location on the green, and sixteen they give you a chance to score it coming out.
Yeah, it's easy location. I mean, coming in thirteen is in probably one of the easiest spots on the green. But you've got to hit an incredibly two incredibly high quality shots to have that ego part. And if you do, you earn it. You know, you really earn it. Fifteen you earn your ego part, you really do. You've got to. If you're hanging on on your nervous and you hit fifteen green into you, you deserve everything. I mean, that
is a really tough thing to do. Sixteen. It gives you a chance to make up for something you might have done on fifteen, and it gives you a chance to kind of solidify your advantage or continue your good stuff. And that's what a spectator hole. I mean that there couldn't be many better places to watch golf than sixteen on Sunday at the Masters, I mean, you're going to have twenty five balls when they land you think might go in. Quite often, it seems the last ten years
there's been one or two hole in ones. I've been quite regularly. Every couple of years. It seems like we have a couple that's another one of those holes. It feel like they have that pin so dialed in that if they want hole in ones, they can almost orchestrate them almost. They can move it four inches one four inches one way, or are the four inch one it doesn't go in four inches the other way. That's the
one where it might go in. It's incredible. And then again, if you hit the smart shot and you can somewhat get it under the hole, it's a relatively easy part. But if you hit it past the hole, it's just a part again. I mean, you can make the put break as much as you want. I mean Tiger's chip, so if you're on the back left edge of the green, you could hit it kind of straight with a bit of speed, or you can make the put break thirty feet if you wanted to. You know, it's just one
of those crazy situations. But what a hole and what an environment and the whole setting there. It's just and that's the meat end of the business, end of the tournament. There's usually when there's it's quite close to the fifteenth green, so you're very aware of what the people are doing on fifteen when you're playing sixteen and vice versa, and there's always action and activity.
I wonder whether if there's like a correlation between the guy that hits the great shout on fifteen coming right into six because I always feel like the run comes fifteen sixteen. I think it's really hard for a guy to in very I don't think a lot of guys have ever done it where they've you know, there are guys that have done it. But you get on those runs in golf, like you run through twelve, thirteen, fourteen, then fifteen you might stall, but then then there's the fifteen sixteen run.
Yeah, you can go three to two. H've seen that, and you can go three one seven, four, three to one. I mean, it's a It's an incredible place in tournament golf. Maybe kind of the coolest spot because again sixteen, if you sat on sixteen on Sunday, you can see fifteen. Generally for mostly it's probably so you're you're very aware of two of maybe the most pivotal holes on the course they run in front of you. It's incredible.
Yeah, I keep thinking about Sergio where to be that great part in thirteen and then fifteen hit a close sixteen sixteen here really close speed. It didn't make the put. That's a tough put if you're past it.
If your past is it incredibly difficult. If you're four feet yeah, four feet it breaks a lot. I mean, no one likes to four foot as much outside the hole, but you really have to just trust that it's going to break and you've got to hit it a foot outside of the hole, almost even more. Maybe sometimes it's a and again it's in the shadows. It's in the shade.
You can't quite see it as clearly. You're very aware that if you let it go low, it's going to go six or eight feet past, even at no speed, very very to make the hole in one to hit it really really close, you have to almost get it past the hole, off the tee to the right and have it come back towards it. But again, if you pull that a little bit, you're going to be long down where Tiger was or even at the back edge of the green, and you've got your you've got your work cut out just two punting.
Did you play seventeen with Ayes in Horrortory?
Yes? Yes, what was the fact of losing that, Ah, it looks quite a lot wider, but effectively I don't think it changed it for us too much because we
were generally flying eyes and hoow tree. By the time I played it, we were hitting the one after the one that said now or the There was a one after it that I think they planted thirty years after the eyes now tree, But that became the problem for us because it was the eyes now tree was quite short, not quite short, but we could mostly fly it, but it was visually less intimidating when it was gone again relatively, I mean the trees on the right they got introduced
at some point ninety eight was it or two thousand and five. Yeah, one of those five relatively easy T shirt, but it's a T shirt that gets your attention, and again it's another one on us. You really want to hit it hard and hit a good one because uphill, it's uphill. Ball's not going to run anywhere, and you get a big advantage for getting it to a certain distance because it's on the flat and the ball runs
out a bit. But if it flies ten yards short, or it just hits and stops, you can have a semi blind six sign into a green that's from an up slope, from an up slope that, Yeah, seventeen might be my favorite. Green on the course just because I like the green. But yeah, if you don't want to six sign, that's semi blind. And again the wind is kind of whistling. There's no trees anywhere to the right of the green. Say, the trees on the right of the fairway kind of end one hundred yards short of
the green. So it feels like one of those spots where the wind can kind of whistle through and over the back. Again, it's an interesting green. Over the back of the right hand side is completely terrible. So when the pins are on the right half of the green, you have to miss it short of the green or short of the pine. And if the pins are on the left, you want to miss it past the hole.
It's a front to back green on the right, and it's a back to front green on the right, and it's a front to back green on the left.
It's actually one of the rare holes that worked works against the lefty the green. Yeah, and so you can't really tell the wind when Rose was coming down that Sergio Masters I remember Rose ended up in that front bunker to that back pin. On Sunday, there's death. This such a hard shot to hit all the way.
There it is tough because again you are so conscious of over the back. Yeah, Scott Hokee that incredible shot ninety nine from over the back to four or five feet that is that's again it's a one in ten up and down from mine, and that's really high the back right hand side of the green and it runs down to the eighteenth tee, so it can really go a long way below the level of the surface of the green again up one of those really slow hills
onto a really fast down slope. So a lot of people hit in that front right bunker because they're just if you're between clubs, you have to pick the shorter one. You can't cruise on the longer one. You just can't because you just you can get it up and down from the front right. It's really difficult, but you can,
but you just basically can't from long right. So you see a lot of balls either in that front bunker for those right side pins or like running off that kind of falsey front on the extreme right of the green, and that's a relatively easy up and down, so it's all relative on the seventeenth hold the masters, but you can do it from there and you don't really want to be on the left hand side of the green because that's one of the greens where the whole raised
creek is the low part of the course. Phenomenon is very evident. The put from the left hand side of seventeen to the right, it seems like an uphill part, but it's actually quite downhill. But at least it plays downhill because of the grain or the slope or raised creek or whatever it is. So you've got that twenty foot of from thirty foot to forty foot of from left that you feel like you have to bash, but you actually have to hit it quite a lot softer
than you think. And that's when it looks uphill. Your brain gets confused when it's downhill. It looks uphill, but it isn't really. It might be flat, it might not be downhill, but it's certainly not uphill as it looks.
That's where that having, like the contour books, is so big now because that would.
Just tell you it's that way, That would tell you that's way. But I still think there's an element that the green books that they just you can like logically see that it's not uphill, that it's downhill, but your brain still sees what it sees, and it sees uphill. You know, that's topic a little bit of an optical illusion. That green sometimes so it's a seven, is a really
incredibly difficult, difficult green. I mean that back left pin I think they did it on Friday is a really fun pin because you can kind of filter things down in towards it, and you can miss it just over the green. You see a lot of guys will chip it in from just over the back. The whole shots
from just over the back. So the left pin short is bad, long as good, the right pin short is good, long as bad again, completely changing the way you approach the second shot just by moving the pin, which is again it happens all the way around the court.
That's it's neat. Is variety two with how it with the other holes on the back where you know long life is mostly dead.
Yeah, long generally is dead. But augusta and four or five spots is kind of sneaky, and that it doesn't look like long would be decent. But in some situations long is actually pretty good and short is actually awful, and fourteen is fourteen is definitely like that, and seventeen on the left hand side is definitely like that too. I mean short on seventeen isn't on the left isn't awful, but it's markedly easier from past the pin on that left pin.
If you didn't hit any of the greens, but we're in all the right spots, it would be pretty easy to shoot around part right.
Yeah, if you're a nice chipper and you've got a decent short game, it doesn't present anything other than just a relatively normal challenge from the right miss on every hole. For every pin, there is a correct miss for every hole in every pin. It's just really difficult to work out what that miss is because it's not often what you think, and it's their difficult spots to hit it into. It's it's often difficult to work out where the miss is at the Masters, and it's always difficult to miss
it there. It's always difficult to miss it in the right spot.
Hard to figure out, and then even harder to get to.
Yeah, I mean not always they If you put the easy pin on every green, there's eight or nine pins that if you're hitting it well, you're going to have lots of short birdy parts, but there is five or six really hard pins on every single green that you could if they really wanted to, they could get the whole field shoot over par in a day. I think really, if they really like went to the hardest pin on every green, it'd be incredibly difficult to shoot underpath.
Yeah, hard Pende. Battle of Attrition is the eighteenth T shirt. As claustrophobic as it looks.
It's very narrow, and I've seen Jordan's at last yeary caught that tree right and it kind of stopped his great round, a bit of a black, a little bit of a I don't know, sad finish to an incredible run race shots. Did shoot sixty four, sixty four, shot sixty four with bog line and he caught that tree. Now, I've seen guys do in practice, and I think I've done a couple of guys doing the tournament, but generally it's probably wider than it appears. It's a very narrow
kind of corridor and it's a tough T shot. But for me, it was always one of my more comfortable T shirts on the course because my miss is right, not left. My miss was always a kind of a weak kind of drift to the right. If I didn't like really smash it. It would be not right but drifting just kind of right.
Yeah, feeders eat hookers, eat hamburger.
There you go. So and after they made it longer, I struggled to get it to the bunkers. It's two ninety or three hundred uphill to that bunker and a fairway that really it rolls about three yards because it's well, it's really steep uphill. He saw and bounced a bit more on the old days, but when they kind of started cutting every fairway back towards the tea like that, it just took it just took enough off the first bounce, so it just pretty much hits and stops on eighteen.
So for me, I just aimed at the bunkers and smashed it as as I could, and generally if I missed it, that would just drift off to the right middle of the fairway, and if I had it straight then it probably didn't get to the bunker. And I was fine. But the second shot I found really difficult because again, so.
That's a really hard driving hall for a gay that hiss the draft.
Yeah for fleetwood on MACAROI that's a tough shot like these big drawers who struggle to move the ball left right. Jason Day, he's three wood. He doesn't really love moving the ball left right as much as he does the other way. These guys, it's quite tricky. And again the longer you get, the harder it gets. The really long guys really have to be wary of those bunkers because they're deep and no fun. You can hit it on the green out of them, but you just much prefer not to be in them.
Seventeen is better for a fader too right to certain excent probably yeah, I mean no, especially.
Well eyes and how's tree kind of makes you want hit a draw? Yeah, And there's again a bit of overhang on the left off the tee on seventeen to someone who hit in the big fade. So, I don't know, I mean, it looks like you want to draw it off to seventeenth tee. It doesn't really. You don't need to hit it either way or seven. You can hit whichever T shirt you want, but it's your eye gets drawn to hitting a draw. Eighteen is definitely not a draw T shirt. And the second shot I was found
difficult because it's a really extreme upside. You're hitting it off and hitting it up a long hill. I mean, if it's one sixty you get to the pin, it's playing one seventy five like, it's playing a lot longer than a measures, and it's off up slopes. Again, my miss, particularly off upslopes. If I missed it, I missed it right. And so you miss it in that right bunker, which
is very rarely a good spot. I mean, it's okay to the back right pin, oh, that kind of the back pins, but to that sunday pin, that right bunker, it seems like it would be the miss. But it's a really, really tough shot.
Do you think that upslopes the up slopes the hardest one to manage your distance?
Yeah? Again, because it wants you to go short right. The ball goes up in the air and ends up short, and that's one of them. You don't want to be short there either. I mean it's again, there isn't a good miss on eighteen on the green, maybe over the back on the back tier. You know, the guys just dribble the puts out of the fringe and roll it
down to the hole. You see most guys get it up and down from over the back On eighteen they're into that back pen, but left of the green on eighteen runs down into the patrons, and that's an awful kind of spot to be And that right bunker, as I said, it's no guarantee you look off a good lie. If you could find a bit of an upslope and a good lie, it would be relatively simple bunker shot for most two guys to get it up and down
from that right bunker. But you generally don't end up on upside, but a really perfect loe, you end up on the flat or a down slope. And it's the last hole we've been around at the Masters, and you really just want to get in, and there's a bunch of people around, and that's not really the shot you love.
But again, that that front pin on eighteen that we've historically sent a lot of people make birdie where people hold that put from the Marco mirror part in the all those parts from twenty feet right of the pin, you've got probably a thirty foot circle to hit it like depth and width, and you'll have that part. It'll run up the tier, run back, or it'll just land and roll in that spot will generally end up there. But if you miss that thirty foot circle. You're going to have some problems.
Yeah, that it is like anything, it's the whole theme of the place. If you hit it in the race spart, you've got a good look.
Yeah. And some days, the birdie days or the days they set up for people to go low, or the whole specific holes when they're set up to go low, you've got massive circles of areas to hit it into and the ball will go towards a hole, and then the very next day they move the pin twenty feet across theales. How they're green, and you've got absolutely minuscule targets to keep it near the hole, and if it doesn't, it repels fifty feet away from the hole all day.
So it's it really is a course that just purely by the pin positions, they can completely change the way you feel about your swing, the way you score, the putch you're going to have. It's it's every hole can play difficult, and generally most holes, not all holes, but most holes could play somewhat easy with simple pins or the fun funnel pins and the repelling pins. I mean,
every hole complain is so brutally difficult. And again, the genius again usually is it makes you tight and scared to miss it, and that's when you don't hit precise shots, hit in precise shots when you do that, and that's where it catches you out. That's why you see guys like Phil and Phil when tournament a lot, because they've got that cavalier win or it doesn't matter kind of attitude. And that really is the only way to kind of truly contend that the masses consistently is to be a
little bit cavalier about it. You've got to play well, you can't miss it, but it rewards free swinging aggression.
Is a great way to put it. It's that close. It kind of tightens up after sixteen, where it's a little tough clothes.
Yeah, you got thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. With the traditional Sunday pins, you have every chance to have four birdies in a row there or twenty eleven. I birdied twelve through sixteen. Actually you got every chance. Then you stand on the seventeen and you are earning your two pass. Like if you have to pay the last two holes to win the Masters, and you do, every golfer's ever played there is going to take their hat off and
go well done. They are not easy passed. Seventeen is not around not that long, and guys have relatively short shots in there. But it's one of those repel pins where you really don't have a very big area to hit it into, and if you don't hit it in that area, you're gonna have a really tough tom Miking paw. And iten is kind of similar to that front pin. It's a very variable pin butt. If you miss that area, you're gonna have an awful Tommiking paw.
My question, you know, I have tabled if you flip the flip the nines when they were originally done the way the first two tournaments were played would have been the front nine to the back nine, and you'd almost have the reverse effect of the nine where you're really tough. Holes would be the middle of the back nine. But then the last three with seven being a short part four par five short part four would be almost a different dynamic, right it would.
I think it would be completely different. And again, whether this was the genius of Robertson Jones kind of just seeing that, or they liked the logistics of it, or they liked the feel of the first hole rather than the tenth as a first hole, you know, I mean the tenth would be a beautiful first t shirt. You know, everyone gets it running it down the hill and.
It's really wide.
Yeah, it's they're both nice first holes, right, Actually they're both tricky holes, but nice te shots to get the field away again, either serendipitous or genius or a bit of both, you know, just this kind of sense and feeling that, you know what, there's more drama on this back nine as we know it than there is on the other one. I mean, seven eight nine, there's there's drama, but there's no water. There's probably no doubles. There's no real double bogies. You know, the score the thirteen is
legitimately four to seven, the score three to seven. Scoring RTE fourteen is three four and five. Maybe even a six fifteen is three four five six seven sixteen is two to five. You know, as much more dramatic swings you're going to get in the scores through those holes, and seven eight nine you could get par birdie par really really regularly. You probably won't see many doubles on seven. You'll see no doubles on.
Won the whole nine you.
Can mess up. But it's a pretty wide fair way, and really, if you had to make par, you can find a way to just kind of miss it long right of the pin and just find a way to make par right. But there's thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. You can be six under or six over with a few bad swings. Are a few good swings. I guess the drama that's what makes the Masters is the swings and the drama, like the you're never too far back. Really, with five or six holes to play on the front, you would be.
The only other course that's got that kind of three whole dynamic on the back, as Sagrass with sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.
Sagrass does it well too. I mean that was again the genius peak die. It was sixteen. It's three to seven, right, I mean it's but it's eagle to double. Seventeen is two to whatever you want, and eighteen is maybe the hardest stadium hole anywhere in the world. So you you get a chance to kind of solidify your score on sixteen, and then it's just you can maybe make a bartie on seventeen with a good shot, but you can have a train wre because the most nervous where John nine one,
you're ever going to have an eighteen. It's just two of the best shots you've ever hit, or even a misgreen.
Yeah. And then it with like US Open where you have the long rough, it just mutes the dispersion of scores.
I think you you end up the US Opens at least in my lifetime have been hang on for dear life and my one. I was the only one to part of the last four holes in the last eight groups or something like. It's so the guy who made the most pars is the guy who won the tournament. The mass is that's never going to be the case.
That dynamic of seventeen, eighteen and Augusta is like the last sex it USLF.
Yeah, it's the first, it's the last eighteen.
That's a good point.
It's just I don't know. It's just the perfect golf course, along with a perfect venue and conditioning and history and tradition and everything else. It's the perfect kind of in the middle of the back nine. You start the back nine like you pay attention and then it's like, well, here's your chance. And then it's like, well, now you've taken your chance. Now you to You're got to prove it. You've got to like reconcile your score or solidify your score or you know you're not. You don't get away
that easy. You know you've got to You can't just go five under from thirteen to sixteen and then just like fake your way in. I mean, you're going to four real golf shots in the last two holes in sixteen.
Is the one place on the entire back nine really where you can you can hit a shot that might be average and have it turnout really good.
Yes, yeah, And there's a few again those big, those big bucket pins or those kind of you would say not repelling pins, the ones that are the balls. The pin seems to attract the ball. There's that low one on seven that they use. There's the bottom one on six, there's the low one on sixteen, there's that middle one on fourteen. There's there's a bunch of holes out there nine that kind of front pin. Guys can hit it pretty close from anywhere around it. The ball just seems
to get attracted towards the pin. There's a lot of opportunity if you're hitting good shots to hit it inside ten feet eight times in a day, but with shots that aren't really normally wouldn't be inside ten feet anywhere else, But you have a lot of times that week where you could hit shots that would normally be ten feet that they're fifty feet.
Yeah, this is the contour. Is what's the amazing thing? Is it? Dog talked about it, and in a part of Tom dok about the how he wishes as some of us cross, he cout signs and bumps that said, like, if you're reading this, you are on the wrong side of this contour. Yeah, and that's like what you were talking about with fifteen when you're coming from the rate totally on the rong side of that versus the left if you're coming in on the third chat.
And there's so much counterintuitive, like almost for the guy who understands strategy at first, August is almost harder.
It tricks you.
It tricks you because the common logic on fifteen for the left pin would be the layer up down the right, which is what I did, and it's just completely awful over there. You want to actually be almost down on the left rough so and that happens all the way around the course like long right on fourteen it's the same. It's kind of counterintuitive. Long left on seventeen long is generally bad everywhere in the world, right on fast green courses, but the third long is doable sort is not. It's
and again the slow hopes, the use of slope. The course is on quite a hill. The clubhouse is quite a long way above the twelfth Green. I don't know how many feet, two hundred feet, it's documented. But it's the traversing the slopes. They didn't necessarily go straight up and down the hills.
Hill side courses is it gets really repetitive.
Up they go up and down, whereas Augusta goes across. And so the genius of Jones and Mackenzie were and everyone else who's had their kind of hands on it along the way. It's the slope on the fairway almost always is the opposite of the shot you want to hit. So they built greens that reward shots that the slope on the fairway is making you do the other one. And it's all the way around the course. It's, as I said, it's a bit fortunate, and it's great architecture,
great routing. It's just one of those kind of magic kind of coming togethers of things that just makes it really really work, and it provides an incredible golf course for the average person to play. I mean, it would be as fun as everybody thinks it really would, because the Adien handicapper once you kind of if he could get his nerves out of the way and get out of the fact that he's at the Masters, play it two or three times, sensibly he would be shooting his
handicap or under it every time. With a good caddy who told him where to hit it. You can keep it out of trouble all day if you want. There's almost no force carries really, I mean twelves a force carry, but it's a pretty short hole and fifteen you could even go around it if you wanted to. There's no
real forced carries. There's no rough off the tee. You can hit the ball along the ground all day except for probably twelve and fifteen, and you could play to your handicap pretty comfortably and have a really good day. But as soon as you start trying to break your handicap by much, that's when it all gets too hard. And that's the thing. Every day, it's you go on
these cycles. You you start conservative when you get there because you're scared to get it wrong, and you gradually realize you got to get more aggressive, more aggresive, more aggressive, and you start thinking, I've got this place, I've got this place. And then you get aggressive on how an average day and you hit a few bad shots and you have train wrecks everywhere, and then you get all the way back to the beginning and you get conservative again.
And then you go through that, you get more and more confident and more aggressive, and then you go back. It just it's just eventually, the more aggressive you get that you're just gonna get burnt.
At some point, a guy, a batting guy. I read, I can't remember who it was. I think it was Ben Coley started listing rounds in the sixties from guys. I think that's because from what I'm here, when you push it, if you feel it's got to be really hard after you get it one day, when you get the court, when you got it, you know, you walk off the course you got I really got that. The next day's got to be hard because if you don't, you never seem to have the same stuff after a really great round.
No, it's never quite the same as it when you have a mid sixties or relatively for everybody like that low round that four or five six under you annakeb ordyr level or whatever it is. The next day is really difficult, right, But.
Then you're trying to get it like you got it yesterday.
Uh huh's. And again, the holes can change so much. I mean a lot of them stay, I mean six or seven of them stay pretty much the same wayver the pin is. The first is always a tough hole. Whatever happens into the green. Ten is a tough to There's no real easy pins on ten. There's no easy way to play ten. Eleven is the same pretty much every day, I mean a little bit different. But then you'll get holes like two, which will have really crazy
tough pins and then really easy pins. And you'll get six with just the most outrageous pin high on the right and are really really the left hands tire of the green. You kind of take a breath, and everybody hits it close, you know. In sixteen. Again there's the two easiest pins of the week at other masters, and the two hardest pins of the week might all be
on sixteen, you know, And that's genius architecture. Really because you get a different challenge every day and you think you've got sixteen worked out, well, put the pin up the top. You're not gonna have it worked out, you know.
It's Yeah, it's brilliant, it's really good. And the variation that the variation in score from hold to hole in day to day is the sixty six on Thursday is completely different from how you have to do a sixty six on Friday because the holes that were EASi is show Thursday are probably going to be really tough on Friday and vice versa. So it's with the exception of thirteen and fifteen, I mean, they're traditionally the holes a
make birdies and the parthives. But you play one hole easy one day and then the next day that those those easy ones are hard and the hard ones yesterday are a little bit easier. And it's it's the drama, it's the fluctuat, it's the it's the range of scores that it makes you shoot on each hole that keeps it endlessly interesting.
Yeah, endlessly interesting the way. That's a great way to describe the masters. Yeah, it is.
And for the master's sake, they have there are such their advantage. One of their big advantages is they you play a tournament at the same course every year, and they pay attention to every single shot. There's people watching every part in every shot, and they understand their pins to within six inches, and they understand the weather and how soft or firm the fairways are, the pace of
the greens. They can get their subair system, the agronomy at that point, the humidity, the temperature, I mean, absolutely everything, and they can they can't dictate a score, but they seem to be able to create the drama that they need and the tournament to almost always ends up Sunday afternoon with unbelievable fun for the last two or three hours.
I mean, they're just it's an advantage of having the same course, but it's it's testament to them and hats off that they can actually they pay enough attention and they're clever enough and smart enough, and they know the game and they understand everything well enough that every year on Sunday, even if the first few days it's like, oh, this is going to be a weird master, sure enough, it's five of the top ten in the world making bodies and eagles on the back nine and doubles coming
down the stretch, and the sun always seems to come out, and it's like the great shadows, and it's.
They.
It's the attention to detail that they have and the understanding of what they've got and how to and how to. They can't, as I said, they can't dictate a score, but they seem to be able to dictate a style of play, or encourage a style of play, and encourage a score line and a level of drama that no other tournament, of course, seems to be able to do. It's a I mean, I say, I'm gushing like a fan, but like if the more times you come to the Masters,
the more you just appreciate what they do. It's just an incredible thing.
I mean, there's reason why everybody Casual Gore found Day Holish is a Master.
Yeah, and we're going, I mean, I'm going pretty deep into this. I mean, it's probably not as complicated or as fancy as that. It's just a really great golf course that just allows the great players, the great players in the world, when they're playing their best, to show their skills off and to show their like brave they are, as I said, that kind of care free aggression, you know, like and only the best playing their best can play like that, you know, care free aggression. So like Sergio's
aida on or whatever, it wasn't the fifteen Companies. I mean, you wouldn't take that shot on at any other course, that exact shot at any other tournament ever, because it's a ridiculous shot to try to hit like close to that pin on the front there. But the Masters, it just seems to bring that. They seem to be able to bring that out of the best in the world, that that kind of take it on like attitude. It's just brilliant.
Yes, that's it. We're going to cut it there. That was That was awesome. I so I help everybody enjoys this they go watch it. Hopefully we go a great weekend.
Well, I mean, I'm sure it will be. It usually is unless the weather gets kind of weird. But I could talk about Augusta all day obviously.
All right, thanks for coming on.