Welcome back to the Frida Egg Podcast. I am excited to announce a new podcast series for the Frida Egg with former US Open champion Jeff Ogilvie. Really excited to kick this thing off today here, and we'll be talking on a regular basis. We haven't really figured out exactly how often. We've got two parts to this podcast, and we'll talk a little bit of pro golf, we'll talk a little bit of travel, a little bit of architecture,
kind of wherever the conversation goes. Jeff's obviously one of the great minds in golf, and really thank him for his time and wanting to do this. So we're looking for a name for this series, so if you have any ideas, feel free to shoot them off on Twitter or shoot us an email contact at thefridagg dot com. But hope you guys enjoy this series and really fun
always to talk with Jeff. He's a thoughtful guy. Here here's episode one, 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 bright egg Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida egg egg egg Frid egg brid egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Hey, what do you think about WILEI.
I like it, Wow, I love it. Grains. I think grains are really good. It's an awful pace of land, Like there's nothing to the land at all. You've been there, right, I haven't been there. It's dead. I mean it's dead flat and you know that kind of lat lines of arm trees. I mean that looks kind of awful. But the greens are great, really great. I mean I haven't seen the New seventeenth. I don't think they did a very good job with that one. But it's too small
than a crap piece of land. But it's got good grains, so it's kind of enjoyable. That's how I sum it up.
Really, this year was like I don't know if you watched it. I really enjoyed watching it. It was firm and fast and I felt like it. It kind of like allowed everybody to play it.
Definitely does. It's an angle. It's not that there's enough with for angles, but it's a position course rather than a flog it course. Definitely. I mean everybody can get to the part five, so I mean the whole field gets to like nine and eighteen, so it and eighteen is a shithole, but it gives everyone a chance because the longer you are you've got an advantage, but not necessarily still have to hit a great shot, no't matter how long you hit it because of the dog leg.
So I think it's everybody can play there. I mean Zach can win there either of these, and Brooks can win there. You know everyone and everyone has I mean long hit is short hitters. Everyone's won there. So I think it's not going in my top fifty or under it, but it's a good course to play a tournament, and it's a good it's a nice place to play, I'd say it.
How would What do you think about like tournament golf courses, like what are good tournament courses that are bad or average golf courses like Wiley.
Good tournament courses or venues, Because I think they're two different questions.
That's what I'm kind of curious about.
It's like, I think there's great courses and there's great venues. Riviera is a great course, and it's decent from a playing perspective. It's great from a playing perspective, it's a venue. It's pretty restricted, right, no parking in the middle of law. How does anybody get there? More property, He doesn't handle big crowds. But from a player, it's great, right, But it's got a crappy range and you're going to walk up and down that hill five times in a day,
and like there's some things about it that just slightly annoying. Right, it's good, and that might be the highest ranked course we play, that or Pebble, but doesn't necessarily make it's the best tournament course for some of the tournament courses, especially the tPCS. Not necessarily the tPCS, but some of them are so logistically well organized that it's such an easy week, yet architecturally or the course doesn't inspire you very much. So I guess there's both ways. I love
Riven Pebble. I think of the two best courses we play on a regular schedule, but they're not necessarily logistically. Pebble's a nightmen have played to Dornamentite, right, because you park at the polo fields and you get shuttles everywhere, and the guy half the field's heading off ten and
ten at Pebble at seven o'clock in the morning. It's not a level playing field with the guy who gets the two off at twelve on the first, you know, playing the different question they're getting asked for the day, Like if you tear off at seven o'clock on the tenth at Pebble Beach, you're going to be over par after one hole. It's just the way it is, right, Yeah, when he gets the guy tees for twelve off the first, he gets to ten, he's all warmed up and he's
ready to play. So I think some situations are that kind of mess tournaments up, if that makes sense. Yeah, huh, I'm getting overthinking it.
But what about what about the like so the three three course weeks, like like the Desert and Pebble where you got to play, Like, is it weird when when you play like the hard course first and you're you see even par and somebody shoots sixty two on one of the other courses.
Yeah, it's weird that I always found that weird, Like because your first when I first played, the start of the tour was January, right, was the West Coast Swing, and you would have people has three courses. Tori has two courses, The Hope had four courses, at that point, So you had three tournaments, you had eight courses or something,
and it was just nine courses. It was crazy. The hope and the hope generally, the original hope was great because all the courses were right next to each other, you know, Bermuda Dunes, Indian Wells, Lakinta, and you kind of get the same weather in the desert. But there was that one cup. There was a couple of years
they moved to the Classic Club. There was one course out near the freeways and that was blowing thirty now near all those windmills, and so that one was blowing thirty miles an hour every day, and the other three courses were dead still. So you'd have guys shooting even par on that course and guy's shooting ten under and all the other courses. That wasn't right. That was kind of done, ah, because then the next day of the Classic Club it is still it only blew every second
day out there. So if you kind of got unlucky in your rotation, you were kind of taken out of the tournament. But the above hope now is pretty good. I mean they're all at PGA West look into that's around the corner I've always really enjoyed it. It's a great early in the year tournament, be terrible in the summer, I think when you were kind of in the middle of the season, but it was a great early year.
Tory is tough because toy there was different. Now there was always such a discrepancy between South and North that if you could manage to everyone would have five or six hounder on the north and two or three over on the south. And now it's a bit more similar because they've made the North so hard. So it's an acquiet the multiple course tournament. But after you get used
to it, it's fun. But it takes a while to get used to, especially when you're young, because you don't know any of these courses and you're playing these guys have been playing for ten years. And I eventually hardly even played a practice around at Pebble the last few years because I know the courses so well on the and everyone wants to play pebble, the amateurs, and so the practice around out there at six and a half hours because they're all playing it, and that's fair enough.
So I might go play six hours at Spyglass or something, but that's about it, and go up on the Tuesday and just play quick because there's such a long week anyway, but you've year, you've got to play three practice runs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and rush them all around and say everything at three outage books and like it's scrambling.
Yeah crazy, Yeah, yeah, it's it would be. I mean, like it's hard playing like you know usg event. It was funny I played this U I played the mid Am in Philly and you know, we played each course once and like then you start to look through the scores and also like almost every guy in the field that was from Philly got through because he knew the courses.
So well, yeah, it's it's like that golfinent a little bit. Yeah, it's very I mean local knowledge is very underrated, all very powerful.
Have you played Have you ever played like an Australia Open at Victoria?
Yeah, we played one in two thousand and two.
Uh is it hard to play at your home course?
I found it difficult. I mean i'd be kind of like there was some state opens. The Victorian Open was a state Open, which has turned into a pretty big tournament now, but back then it was just a state open, like a two hundred thousand dollars prize money or something
total purse. And I played it when I was younger, and I kind of played really well, And it was at Victoria two or three times, and I played quite well, So I'd kind of laid tournaments at Victoria before by the time the US at the Strain Open turned up to it. But it's still weird. You've got all the members saying, oh, you're going to win this week. You're going to win this week. Why wouldn't you win this week? I think I finished about ten or twelve or something,
but yeah, it was. It's tough. Yeah, it's just put too much pressure on yourself. I mean the hardest part about golf expectation and living up to your own expectations. When you don't, you beat yourself up really fast. And I found local golf hard. I always found anonymous too. I find anonymous to a golf the easiest. You know, when you turn up in China and nobody's watching you play the or watching the local hero or something, and you just get to do your own thing, you know.
I find golf easiest that way.
Yeah, you should go play, you know, the Dakotas Tours.
Yeah, yeah, there's some cool stuff you hear about around. I mean, yeah, local stuff is difficult. I've always liked guys like Larry Miis winning the Masters from Augusta. I mean, that's an unbelievable effort. I can that must be something he was feeling that week. Yeah. Can you imagine being from Augusta and having all your school friends and that knowing that you were doing that would be incredible. Charles How's from Augusta too, You must feel it a little bit there.
Yeah, I mean Patrick Reid was wonder but his family was at home, so that's crazy. That's great.
Just there's that element of but knowing the course. It's funny when I first played Victoria and they're straight open or in tournaments, I didn't know whether to carry Yardist Book or not because I didn't use the Yardist Book every day. I know I knew what it like from from that bunk. From here, it's a seven isrom today, it's a six on tomorrow. It's like, you know, you know, all the clubs and the yadders book didn't match with
what I thought the club was. That's why I would get to the fourth and the spot what I'd always hit seven on and I'd get there and it's like, it's actually measures this should be a six on, but I've always hit seven from here, so you know, it confused me a little bit. And there was one the other way around, long and short. It was interesting. So I got confused about whether actually to play at how I would normally just on a Saturday camp, or to play it how I would in the tournament, in a
normal tournament. It was interesting.
It's I played a couple events at courses like I played, you know, as a home course, and I struggled at like two of them. But then like my childhood MUNI would have like a State Am every year qualifier and I'd go there and I'd always it's like you I knew I could shoot a good score, you know, like the back of my hand there, but like at the other courses, I don't know, for some reason, I struggled.
It's it's weird. But like that childhood Muni, which I would only play in the Steve Am qualifier once a year, was like it was like a cake walk. But the course that I play regularly, it would be a struggle. It was. It's an interesting thing playing at home.
It's funny too, like if we just talk about Hawaii, Like when I first went to Capelloua, I thought it was an unplayable golf course. I just think that it was. You couldn't play. It was ridiculous. It's like you're standing on the side of a hill everywhere, and if half the holes are five point fifty and they play three hundred and ten and the other holes of three hundred and ten and they play five fifty, the ones up the hill into the wind, I just couldn't understand it.
And your puts break thirty feet. You're got to land your wedges twenty yards short of some greens and have them roll break a long way. But after two years it became my favorite, the easiest cause on the tour for me, Like my second or third year, all of a sudden, I'm like, how easy this is a joke? How did I never understand this? And the Sony, which at first seems so simple. I missed my first six or seven cuts at the Sony. It just didn't even though I quite enjoyed it and I thought it looked
quite easy. I just couldn't make the cup there, whereas Capelleu or I hate it first and then after a few years that was my favorite. So you never know what you're going to where you're gonna play well, right, you just have there's no rhyme or reason. Sometimes you just play well at places. Sometimes you just can't play out of the places.
The Wiley seems like a course where it could just make you look stupid.
You know, you just feel it's tricky. It's like, just got enough of that bermuda ruff that takes all the control off your second shot, And it's narrow enough, and it's cross winds everywhere because Hawaii's never still, and it's it's that fifty sixties length course, right, so the dog legs are all too early for modern golf. So you're
running it through all the time. You're kind of having to cut the corners and running it through, and you've got these shots from behind palm trees out of fly a rough which and you can't bend the ball out of and so it frustrates you because you can see it like it seems so simple in front of you, but it does. It's very tricky and very frustrating can be. But then on the week when it doesn't blow too much,
those weeks where they just burdy every hole. Those guys out there, that's kind of fun too, But it's a tricky.
Course with Capua. It's got uneven lies. Like I feel like, there aren't a lot of courses with lies like that, but Augusta is one of them, and I always have I've always looked in the last couple of years when I'm looking at Augusta, I kind of look at a Cappellua. Guys that play well a Cappellua to play well Augusta because of those uneven lies. Do you do you think that is kind of true out there?
I do is an odd course. At first it seems to suit long hitters, but I actually think it's it's a wedge course Capellua. Certainly. The side hill lies are very obvious when you first get there. They're crazy. The first thing you notice about is like the ball is never on the level of your feet. Are ah extra downslopes, extreme up soaps, And that's what you find at the Masters. Like you say, it's like and that's we don't get
that every day. We don't get that as much as we used to, like or as maybe they did in the old days. And sidehill lies a same sort of golf would do well at both for sure, especially the imagination.
So Capellaua takes so much imagination. There are so many shots there where you could be fifty yards from the hole and you legitimately have to land the ball thirty yards short and twenty yards left of the pin to get it to go to the hole on like five, that par five or six, the short one on the front nine, eleven, Like there's a lot of holes eighteen. I mean you're hitting your shot fifty yards away from where the pin is to get it to go to
the pin. That takes imagination. It takes a lot of thought and imagination, and Augusta takes that all over the place too, and some of those shots, you know, so I think they are very similar. Yeah, sidehill lies and imagination would do ball at both. That's actually a pretty good form guy who plays well at capellau So just put some money on Zander the Masters maybe.
Yeah, Yeah, it's that's I think like kind of what I've started to think with the modern tour pro. It's like sidehill lies and interesting greens are kind of the recipe for testing today because it's really hard to hit good wedges from awkward lives.
And the thing is, we don't practice them anymore because elite level golf has become a range thing, right. We work on the range. We go the range to work on our techniques and get our numbers on track man, and ranges are flat, so we do a majority of our swinging, and we work on our driver a lot, and we never work on our driver of anything other than a flat light, you know, so we I think we're losing that ability to adapt a little bit from how like the golfers who grew up just playing golf
every single day. Certainly uneven lies, but that's what I think. Fairways need to be cut, maybe a little bit longer and sometimes and the same with grains too. I think if we could slow them down just a tiny bit, where you would get balls holding on slopes, not a lot, just a little bit, And it's always more interesting when the ball's in a slope, right, And with putting just a little bit. It's hard to hit puts when the balls above your feet are below your feet without kind
of feeling weird about it, you know. And it only needs to be half a percent.
I forgot what hole was a kapaloo? I saw a ton of guys missing and then like the center. I feel like architecture in the seventies, eighties, sixties became obsessed with the spines, the front tier, back tier, and I think the better is the middle tier, the center spine that goes left right.
Because it's certainly interesting.
Because you guys don't miss numbers as much as you miss left right, mm hmm right.
From certain distances. Remember Pelts did that studies, Like there was a from short range we get we hit it straight but the wrong distance, and from long range but at the right distance but not straight. There's like a formula there, you know, like a three iye we miss pinheivet wide and then wedge we miss straight deep or short,
but you're right. So like that, that kind of short on the bottom tier, back tier, like that straight tier across the green isn't as interesting as like angle right or like yeah, left and right stuff like seven at the Masters. You get high on the right and you get low, then you get high in the middle of it. Like there's sideways targets like twelve AUGUSTA two. It's it's not a it's a sideways target, right, rather than a accuracy target. That makes sense.
Yeah, it's and then it amplifies the angle too, because if you're hitting across, it makes the target so much smaller. And then if you're on the right side, you've got almost a backboard in there.
Yeah, A sixteen, the Masters too, five six. Yeah, a lot of them are that way, right that if you miss your line, it rolls off a lot lot further that way, which is interesting definitely, Like if you miss your line at Cappelora on though some of these shi you can be one hundred feet really and you can miss it by two feet, like that front right pin on eighteen, which everyone who's there watched the ornament has seen.
If you get six inches past the hole or wherever it's eighty feet, you don't have to miss it by march. It's and the Masters does that to you as well. Yeah, scares you, it is.
That's the thing is. That's what when you're when you're scared, It was when your fear, when you're got, when you're really thinking about stuff, is when the course is doing a good job.
For sure, it seems that way. Yeah, like the ones that make you nervous, you know.
Yeah, that's I think that's like it's now the design has to be. That's why I thought Shinnakock, you know, obviously, and we could talk about that. You know, Mike Davis is out the last Last Hurrah as uh, But Shinnikock, it was fascinating to watch the best players in the world just get absolutely ejected hitting wedges into these greens. You know. But like that's a place where when you play it, you're literally terrified to the hit a wedge.
You are. It's got that same Pinehurst Oakmont kind of thing. It's just like, I know I'm going to miss this, and I don't know how I missed this and not be dead. Like where do I hit this? I've got like a tabletop to land this way, John, And if I don't, where do? I kind of want to miss it? Because I all seem like bad choices, right, But it isn't as bad as it seems, you know, like these places that make you nervous if you just kind of
like a famous shot, we'll talk. Shinnakock is right, but like a famous shoveryone knows, like fifteen of the Masters is not really that hard a boor iron for us, really. I mean, it's difficult, but it's a relatively big target. If it lands anywhere on the right and cethegreend and it always stops right. We always see it stop, but it looks like you're trying to hit a four on under the top of a Volkswagen with the wind and you don't know where it is where. If it's short,
it's in the water. Long it's in the water, and anywhere else it's going to be in the water after that. Right, it's a relatively easy shot if you're confident in the practice ram. As soon as you get there in the tournament, you're so nervous and you're so it's so hard to put that solid swing on it, just because of all the bad things that can happen, so you end up putting a bad swing on it. That's the interesting way to test us, not with obvious hazards, but with that
mental turmoil. That's my favorite, and it's the hardest to play for sure. Is it drives your nuts.
What'd you I read your article about shinne Khak after the US Open. I was it's interesting, Like I had Roberto Castro on a couple like last week or two weeks ago, and he said it, you know, the setup was was great, The first two days and they kept the greens were really slow in comparison to week to week. But then obviously they got a little out of hand and they got a couple of bad pins. But I mean, do you do you think those are the types of greens?
And I think I actually think slower greens rewards better putters more.
I think so too. I mean, people kind of disagree with me. I don't think you will, because it sounds like you know where you're on the same kind of page as me. I kind of would like to see firm and slightly slower greens than what you would product. I mean, not I'm much slow greens, but slower than
the US open I think again slow. I think firmness is the real test of a ball striker speed, because the firmness that when the ball lands, the angles matters, and the heart that it's coming matters, and the spin matters, and everything just matters so much more when the ball bounces when it lands. But greens speed, when they're so fast and so perfect, it's actually easier to part in some ways if he talk to like someone like bransoneca like the best part an two it probably especially the
best part on slower bad greens. He makes everything on the West Coast whins Pebble holds everything at Tory. He likes bad greens because he slower greens. He thinks he has an advantage, a bigger advantage on slower greens than everyone else. The best, one of the best, maybe the best part on tour, or one of the best putters anyway, Sinoka, he completely agrees with you. It says slower greens are harder to part, so he likes them better.
You think about the tournaments that had greens like that, like Pebble every year, and you look, Jason Day and Speeth play well at Pebble seemingly every single year. They're two of the best putters. H And then you think about Chambers Bay, who was in the hunt there where everybody was complaining about the greens, like DJ turned himself into a good putter. And then you've got You've got Speeth Jason Day on that leader board. Like those greens
were bumpy. They took like half the field out of it before it even started because they convinced themselves they couldn't put on them.
See I didn't mind. I mean, it's not what we used to Chambers Bay having the I mean, it's just absolutely abominable surfaces. Right, They weren't even remotely close to greens. But instantly after on like Tuesday practice round. On Monday, whenever I've made my first practice round, you could tell straightaway that the best putters are going to do well here and the best part of the world's going to
win this tournament. It was just obvious because you had to have every aspect of your game and only people who were really really playing well would have putted well on those greens. You just had to be a good putter and you had to have a good head. And so it didn't surprise me, well when it didn't surprise me that someon mister Shortbart for it to be weird at the end, but two, because that was probably going
to happen on greens like that unfortunately. And you're right, dozen's a great pattern now, But Jordan, good putters win on bad greens, and so I don't necessarily think bad greens ruined a tournament per se. It actually it actually adds and it's not as fun to play. From a players perspective, you've got to rather perfect green. But from a from a result of the tournament and finding the
best player. It's not the worst thing ever sometimes to have some bumpy, dodgy greens because it finds the better putter. You know, it's no idea, but it just shows you there's more white. There's more than one more than It's not only fifteen on the stimp meter that challenges people. There's other ways to challenge great golfers.
It's way harder when you've got a four footer that you have to aim outside the whole than one that's really fast.
I think I think slow definitely. Yeah, that's because you can't put depends on slopes once it gets to certain speeds. If you're getting your pins down on one and two percent slopes, and the good old days were probably on three or four and that balls is breaking a lot more. And that's just a more challenging three foot than one that's inside right than one that's outside right right, I would think.
Yeah, way more. It's the I had. I've got in a spreadsheet all the variance data, so like the scoring variants of every tournament in the last like fifteen years, and Chambers Bay was number two in scoring variants of any tournament outside of scoring, so.
Low in the field to the high in the field.
Yeah, so essentially how it's variant in You know, I might be wrong, but I would look at variants saying this is this is a statistic that shows how well players separate from the field that are playing well.
You know.
So Chambers Bay and Shinnecock was number one from last year, but then number two was Chambers Bay. And actually what I was surprised by was Whistling Straights had really high high variance data. Interesting and and then like you could tell whenever something rained, like the lowest Augusta numbers were
the ones that were the wettest. So like firm conditions because like I think about Chambers Bay that year, and I'll never forget the guys like bouncing balls on the on the ground and that you know, you had to hit great shots, and it's like that firm conditions seems to be the key to really testing people.
I think certainly it makes it more interesting. It's a it's a broader test, there's more nuances, there's more to the test. It's not as it's a little bit more black and white when it's soft, because if it's soft, the ball just lands and it stops where it lands, so that the shape it was coming in on and the spin that it had and the flight, the height that it was at. It doesn't matter really if it just hits and stops, But if it hits and reacts
and bounces, it really matters. How the ball got to where it landed, like, really matters, And the firmer it is, the more it matters. So and then you actually have to start planning out where that ball has to land because it's not actually just going to stop there. So the one sixty five for the pin might turn into one forty six, and it has to be slightly left of the pin because there's a slope and it has
to have a fade. So it doesn't mean there's just so much more to it that every extra bit of bounce on the course that you have, you're just going to challenge the player a little bit more, and probably in a more interesting way than just pure length or pure speed of green or pure length of rough. For it's a more nuanced test, I guess, so you get more interesting golf to watch that way I would see it anyway.
Yeah, yeah, And then and then your t shot becomes more important.
What's That's the thing about the everyone's been Everyone is pointing fingers at why we're why the ball's going so far and all that. But really, if we played firmer fairways, ironically firmer fairways where the ball would actually go further, we would have chased length a little bit less, and we would have chased shape a little bit more. You know, the Bubba Watson style who it's a really long but generally never tries to flog it as far as he can.
He tries to fit the ball on the course. More players would play like that if the ball hit the fairway and rolled, because a thirty yard wide fairway effectively plays twenty yards wide when the ball hits and rolls a bit, you know, so or it plays narrower. Yeah, But the trouble is, initially it plays shorter, right, So we all kind of got reactive, everybody did by making stuff longer and softer, so it seemed longer. So we recreate the three irons and four irons that people had
into the greens in the old days. But yeah, it plays soft, it plays wide, and when it plays wide, you can hit it as hard as you want. When you can hit us out as you want. The talented people in the world are going to find a way to hit it a long way because they're allowed to, because the game is actually encouraging us to do that. It was a little bit firmer because I think length is great, that the Brooks and Rory and they have an advantage, and they should be able to show their advantage.
But it should be relative and it should be a real skill to hit the ball three hundred and twenty up the fairway and actually hit the fairway, like that should be a real skill, and it is, but maybe it should be more of a skill, you know, I don't know.
Yeah, that's the It's amazing Bubba where where he's had success in his career, Like he's won three or three times now at RIV, two times at Augusta, and it's like, but he shapes it. He moves it more than everybody else, So it kind of makes sense that he would play best at RIV.
It does. It's a shaping course, especially off the tee. But him back to kind of how we were talking about the like the range time and the unleveled lie thing. I mean, Bubba, he does not go to the range. His perspective on the range it's the best answer ever. Like it's it's so simple, it's almost annoying. It's like, Bubba, why don't you go hit balls? He goes, well, if I'm hitting it, well, why would I want to hit balls?
I don't need to. And if I'm hitting it badly, well I would I want to watch myself hit it badly.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I can't argue with that. How do you argue with that? It's like so simple, yet we don't want it to be true because it's too simple. But it's right and it so He's always just played golf. He'll play golf in the morning on tour and you'll get teddy he's caddy and they'll go play a local course somewhere and play nine holes. That's his practice. He's playing golf holes.
And I think when you do that all the time, you don't end up like Bubba completely, but you get more that way, more of a golfer rather than a hitter. Shape being and stuff like that. It's just it's vitt practice. It is right.
David Duvall was that way too. I remember reading about that. He like didn't didn't go to the range when he was hitting it. Bad and didn't go when he was hitting it good because he didn't want to lose it.
That funny, and then when he actually started hitting a lot of balls, he might have lost it a bit. It's a funny game golf to chase it, but it goes away. It's elusive.
But Bubba, my favorite thing was how he how everybody was worried that he was going to play in that All Star Game, that Celebrity All Star Game last year. It is like my favorite, one of my favorite golf stories of all time.
You know, what was the breakdown on the story he played?
You know, it was All Star weekend for the NBA last year and during RIV week and he and so he's in the lead and he played in the Celebrity All Star Game the night of and and golf analysts were like, well, he's gonna his legs are going to be shot tomorrow. He's not gonna be able to play. Like it's just funny. It's hey, do you what do you think about the new rules?
Look, I think a lot of them. I don't completely have my head around them yet because I haven't played a tournament yet and had any rulings and experienced it. I think I never read the rule book growing up. I don't think anybody ever did. You just learned the rules along the way. Right, every time you hit it next to a hazard, and you take that drop enough times, it just becomes this is what you do when you hit it in a red or a yellow hazard or
a plug lie or anything. But what I've seen that drop thing that was going on with Drys in a capaluris. I never understood the drop. What was wrong with dropping it from the shoulder. I thought that was there's nothing wrong with that, right. I get that they don't want the balls to like the situations for proceed there's two so there's two things for me. There's there's golf and
then there's tournament golf, and they're completely different. And there's two different There should be too sets of rules and the rules for gold the ninety nine point nine percent golfers should basically we can go back to the ten original rules at Sandia is basically, you know, play the balls, it lies too up behind the markers, you know, like
just basic simple stuff. Yeah, tournament golf is different, like we're dropping from temporary stuff all the time, and there's there's all sorts of craziness, and there's there's an absolute necessity to create a level playing field, right really, where there's too much at stake for too many people and too many entities for it to not be like completely level. But the average guys just want to go out and play golf. I mean, how many of your friends actually
played by the rules anyway? Two balls off the two balls off the first and we're rolling it in the like we're rolling it in the fairway today and all that sort of stuff. And as long as everyone in that group is playing by the same rules, it's fine, right. Yeah. I think the spirit of it should be goes play whatever, whatever golf you want to play, and then in tournaments we do this. But anyway, that's that's me. But the
drop thing, I think is completely bizarre. It's like, I see that you should be allowed to drop it from your knees, that's fine, But why can't you drop it from higher than that?
Yeah? Why can't you drop it from your waist?
You drop it from from above your head? What's the difference like that? One? I think is strange. I just think there's it's smacks of overthinking. It's like the the groove thing with the wedges the part of thing, and
then these ones. It just it's smacks of committees sitting around tables and just overthinking simple stuff, just finding more complicated and like the intention was simplicity with these rules, and they generally are simpler with an overview, so they kind of succeeded there, I think, But some of the things inside the smack of like, seriously, how did we end up there. It's like the cut rule on too,
you know, the Saturday cut the NBA that was overthought. Yeah, I was on the pack when we came up with that, and it was just we just ended up talking ourselves in circles and ending up coming out with really kind of an awkward situation because we overthought it too much. We tried to make it too fair, you know. And the rules are a bit like that. I think they'll evolve. I think we'll work it out. We can't have one of The Bryson situation was so bizarre that.
What about the pin in putting with it.
In look the spirit of that. I love to see the especially for the average guy. And again, by the rules, I think a lot of average guys have just like when their buddy's off raking the bunker and their other friends like getting the sandwich out of their bag and you've got a sixty foot you just hit the part right. You shouldn't have to walk up and grab the pin
or wait for someone. It makes complete sense in that situation, don't you think like this the completely Like if no one can grab a pin, let me just put yeah.
And like if I'm playing by myself, I'm putting with the pin in all the time anyways. Like it's like, yeah, myself exactly. So it's like that makes the last sense for it is everything what you said about the rule for everyday play rules for tournament play makes complete sense.
I think if we're struggling to like, I don't think we're struggling in golf as much as some of the media wants to say. I know, participation numbers aren't high, but I think across the board a lot of things that's probably true, you know, because from what I see, people are looking at screens a lot more than they're doing anything else. You know, participation on screen time, it's probably going up. But outside of that, with golf, we
just want people to play. It doesn't have to be eighteen holes of stroke play under the thirty nine rules of golf, whatever there is. Every time you play golf, you can go play six holes like with any rules you want. I don't care, just go play golf. Like that should be the encouragement. You can play whatever rules you want. Just go play. We just want you to play. If you want to play tournaments, yeah, this is how
we do it. You know. But if you go for a pickup game of basketball with your friends, you don't feel like you have to play like full rules. You know, you travel a little bit and like you're allowed to charge your friend a little bit. Like that's just kind of because that's how you like to play. Like golf, it should be encouraged that people can play whatever game you want. If you want to get into big tournament stuff, then if you do that, then this is the way we're going to go.
I think it's so I've been deep in the weeds this whole year on this architects Langford Moreau, right, and they built a ton of courses in the rural in rural towns in the Midwest, like small town Indiana, small town Illinois, Wisconsin. And like what I started to realize was, like there are all these places with nine holes of Langford Moreau and it makes sense, like these guys only built nine holes for this small town. They shouldn't have eighteen holes, they should just have nine goodes.
Great, nine holl is great. I mean, who says like I think golf has been just it's just caught itself up a little bit in this like it has to be golf is only golf if it's eighteen holes and it's seven thousand yards and there's like all that that comes with it. But that's not true. Mate. My favorite three or four golfing experiences in my life one the beach at s and Andrews with a wedge and two balls, just playing in and out of the tide pools up and down the night of the Cherios, the fire beach
Like that to me is golf? Does that make sense? Yeah? Like I used to play at this part at this park where I grew up. It's kind of right next to Royal Melbourne. It's actually a high school. It's a public high school. And when I was growing up, there's two big ovals like Australian rules football ovals, so they're massive joined with trees and three balls and a nine nine that was me for years from probably twelve to
sixteen or seventeen. Every night after school, if I didn't get to the golf course, I was hitting balls around there. That was and I would make little holes around the trees and there was the rubbish bin across the other side, or take three shops with a nine nine to get there around these trees. To me, that was as much golf as anything else, as adding holes at s Andrews. That it really is. I think that's the message that needs to get across.
I think kid I grew up one of my best friends growing up, he ended up being All state golfer, great golfer, you know, And we grew up playing wiffleball golf all through the front yards of our neighbors, hitting wiffleballs to trees and that was golf. If you hit it under the road, it was a water hazard.
So good. How much fun is that too? Right?
Unbelievable fun.
And we're golf tragics, right, so that's our thing. But and not everybody is going to do that. But I just think this, I would love to If you want to play golf and you only want to play for an hour every day, then three holes and you're allowed to do that. You know, if you want to just go to the drum range and just hit seven Fuji buckets of driver, that's golf for you. That's fine, that's golf, right Like I don't. You're still a golfer if you
ask me. I think the rule I think the opportunity with the rules changed was the idea to put that idea out there. You know. I think the rules changes are kind of fine, and they simplify it, and there's a couple of weird ones in there, but they'll all shape out. It'll work out in the wash, you know. Yeah, that's spirit of you know what, guys, No one plays by the rules anyway. As long as you don't trash the course and you use the etiquettes of golf, you find any game you want.
You know, I think, all right, so let's uh, let's wrap this up. We've got stuff to do. So, uh, we're going to do this more often?
Yes, sure, I like this.
Yeah maybe maybe monthly, maybe once every couple months, maybe more. Maybe we'll see. But uh, you're not social media. Nobody can get a hold of you.
You know what I was, I was a Twitter fend there for a little bit. And then I think Twitter is a beautiful, a great news feed to get information, but I think it's dangerous toe to put your ocean in when you're the ocean, to put your toe in when you're a public figure A little bit. Ah, it's tough, and I got a frustrated. I got really frustrated with
the negativity of your followers. You're a nice part on fifteen Today Jeff and all that, and I know it doesn't really mean anything that you should really listen to it, but it's just like I don't need that in my life. So I just just did. I kind of got off Twitter. I was an early I was early on Twitter. Then I go off. But I look at Instagram, but I don't really I should probably get a little bit more active, but they have it. I'm at school.
Take some pictures of Royal Melbourne. I'm sure that people would like that, you know, you.
Know what, I think that really I should do that because it's out of the back fence now and it looks pretty good at sunset. I'll tell you that.
Yeah, and you got you got. You could take pictures of coffee. You got your back to uh where coffee is like a cherished pastime.
They take coffee very seriously here in Melbourne. It's a coffee very good here. Yeah, six scups to day is probably too many, but it is very good.
All right, Well, we'll talk soon and uh look forward to doing more.
Of these good stuff. That was fun. I enjoy it.