Geoff Ogilvy - Part 1

of the game and much more. Part two the podcast will be released on Tuesday night. If you don't yet, please subscribe to the podcast and rate and review us in the app Store. Thanks, and without further ado, here's Jeff Ogilvie.

for the week off. A little different now I've married up, three kids at home and been at this for twenty odd years. It's kind of I don't really kind of my hands don't really touch the club glove doesn't get on zipped till about Thursday. Now. Probably if I've played two or three weeks in a row, three or four days off, and I take the kids to school on Monday, and I probably Monday I'll usually just sit on the couch.

I just not very much. Tuesday, Wednesday I might start getting around and running in little lens I need to do. And then Thursday, like Wednesday night, I'll start getting excited and I'll start going to the golf course on Thursday, penafew balls and playing any games of golf that are around and stuff like that. So it's less of a grindy kind of all all in approach to golf now more like a I really enjoy the kind of days away when I get them.

somewhere cool to go and do, something to do. And I used to do a lot of that, but the last of five or six years, it's much more get back to the room and find find a show to

binge watch on Netflix, and just go. That's getting to be a pretty popular afternoon sort of for the guys out here is find something to binge and just watch it because it feels the time and it's enjoyed and it gets your head out of your putting stroke or your golf swing or tell me about a golf and it's just that nice little kind of tune out and shut down and just watch TV. So I watch. I'm running out of shows to watch because I've done them

all the last four or five years. But that's the new thing.

expensive and you'd seen them all and it's great now. Yeah, I mean phones and computers and iPads and you can there's tons of guys. There's guys travel with xboxes and play video games together and like online stuff. And it's much easier to waste an afternoon now than it ever used to be. Yeah, it's quite funny.

but never really followed the story. I just kind of

enjoyed watching it. But when I binge that start to finish, I mean it was it's so much better when you can go back to back to back and you're really the story develops and you really start rooting for Tony and it's a really I really really enjoyed that, so then I kind of then someone recommended if you like the Sopranos, because I thought the soprano everyone said, this is like the best show I ever made, which people say about a lot of stuff, but someone so if

you like that, you got to watch The Wires. Incredible And I hadn't even heard of it, never even remembered it what was on TV. But it I've watched it all the way through twice. It's just I think it's just it's so real. I've never lived in Baltimore downtown, but it seems real. It's not all fluff for TV. It's like this is you know, this is what it is, and it's a brilliant show, fantastic.

You know, you couldn't miss an episode because so much happened in an episode, and it would just follow different characters and you'd have your favorites. I just thought it was and all kind of no name actors at the time, right, no one famous, brilliant own. It's just a brilliant show.

been happy. Hopefully I would have ended up building golf courses, but I think I probably would have ended up a club pro somewhere folding some shirts. But if my dream, if it wasn't that, that would be the reality of it. If I wasn't quite good enough, I would have been there. If the dream would have been a place to play music. I've always loved music. I always dabble on the guitar, and I remember listening to music from the youngest age possible. I mean, I think the Walkman. I got it when

I was about twelfth birthday or something. I got a Walkman and I did not have it off my head for like ten years. I just loved it. It was just amazing. I still love music. The fantasy would be like something involved in the music industry, not necessarily a rock star, but just involved in music. Favorite band, Well,

that's a tough question all in all. If you put it all in like, I'd probably say Zeppelin, like because they just they got a bit for they've got something for everyone, and they really kind of changed music a lot, and a lot of music kind of came out of kind of what Zeppelin were doing because they kind of mixed so many genres together. And it really was the first supergroup, you know, I mean four outrageous musicians getting

together and they actually stayed together for ten years. Prolific songwriters. I mean four albums in the first three years, and they were all just completely legendary, right, yeah, that would be the historic best, but probably current music and stuff like Black Keys, White Stripes, Nirvana was a big band for me when I was young, Like Cobaine, it's just a legend. Listen to stuff like Amy wine House and

a lot across the board everywhere. Really not a whole lot of like rap and hip hop, but I'll listen to a little bit of old school hip hop and rap every now and then. But well, just anything based with based in rock, punk, rock, classic rock, a little bit of metal every now and then. So that's kind of guitar based music mostly.

started introducing new concepts. It's it's pretty fascinating how music and architecture have a parallel there.

from the Southern US. I mean that was kind of the roots of it all, and Zeppelin just took that and did it the best, you know, and they took it to so many wild and wonderful places and so much variety. It was it really was. Yeah, the Pete Die kind of Robert Trent Jones kind of period that fifties, sixties, seventies, kind of even eighties really was more specific genres, you know, like it was, I mean Pete there was a little

heavy metal, right, It was a bit sadistic. It was all about kind of messing with the player's head, getting him to feel kind of confused and out and out difficult, you know, in a great way. I think Pete Pete was great, but yeah, really really difficult. And then you had the fluffy style that the pop music. There's been so much fluff in architecture, you know, like fountains and like white sand and stripy fairways. I mean that's the pop music, right, That's the Bay City rollers and with

no depth. And it's great the first listen when you're great, the first listen, or the first time you go play the course. But after a while you realize there's just nothing there. It's the parallels are great. I'm glad you brought that. I've been the only other person I've ever heard say that.

for it. But it is a little bit nickelback in that there's no there's not a whole lot of depth, and it really isn't going to inspire you. It doesn't inspire like you don't really want to go out and play it.

this interclub pennant stuff. And Australia and especially in Victoria, it's great. All the golf courses are in what they call pennance, which is there's about eight clubs in the division and each team every Sunday for about eight weeks in sort of March April May sends their best eight players to go play against the best eight players of another club and it creates these kind of cool little

rivalries between the clubs. And the sand Belt clubs in Melbourne have always had some of the best players in Australia coming through and we all wanted to play it.

So it was this kind of of many little kind of Ryder Cup style kind of team match play that we would play every week for eight weeks and it was a lot of pride at stake, I mean it was and if you were playing number one or number two, you were playing a top twenty amateur in Australia every single week, and we did that every year, and we did a lot of that, and that was a big deal for us. So I played a lot when I was young. It's also my favorite form of the game.

I just the only one of the only reasons I think people generally have long term like annoyances with golf is it's always attached to score. It's very rarely just attached with just playing gore a shot eighty eight today or whatever it is. The score really affects people's enjoyment of the game, and I think match play completely gets rid of that, and you just it's just a bare bones competition and it really doesn't matter what you shoot. If you beat your friend, you're happy, you know, or

your opponent, and it's a good thing. And I just think it's it brings out better levels of golfing people, or worse, it exposes weaknesses. And I just really enjoy the whole, the whole match play thing. It doesn't work commercially, obviously professionally, and that's kind of been proven for years that it doesn't really like we couldn't really do it every week. It just doesn't fit the kind of corporate model that we play under. But I love playing it.

And also I think if I've ever had issues when I play golf, it's because it's a common thing. It's pretty most golf is that. But my head gets a little bit too in my golf swing and a little bit too in technique and hit a bad shot and

I start messing with my swing. And match play I do that a lot less because it's so final, like your opponents had a decent shot, where you better hit a good shot, so you kind of get your hit out of your swing and more into the shot, And I think it gets my head in a better place to play. So I think it's kind of a there's a few reasons why I was decent. I think.

three four shots and that's done. Forget about that and go to the next It doesn't matter if you had throw balls out of bounds or you had spin one into the water, like Sergio at the Masters say like that, that's fine, Like you just you just go to the

next hole. It doesn't completely end your week. So you do you usually and you'll see that and the match playing in the Rider Cup and President's Cup, the level of golf player is always higher because because because of the team aspect, but also because of that aspect that it it's it's it's success or it doesn't matter, you know, it's there's no you don't carry any failures to the next hole.

cuts and just really not competing. Competing once a year and maybe winning once every two years. I mean, that's that's great, and historically that gets recognized higher than say a player like I'll pick on someone Charles Howe. Yes, I was thinking about who's a benchmark who every If you ask every player out here except that kind of handful of guys who have won piles and piles of tournaments, almost everyone would have enjoyed Charles Howes's career. I mean,

he's spent his career finishing between fifth and twentieth. He puts a massive check in the bank every week and he just plays what it's just got to be fun to play that well all the time. It's just he hits the ball great, he parts great, He's got zero no weaknesses as a The only weakness you would suggest is that his CV doesn't have enough wins for a guy that good. But he will historically go down as

like not that great. But anyone who's played with him or been out here for the period that he's been out here, I mean he would. A guy like him is held in very high regard by the players, but maybe by the media and stuff, maybe not so much. As I said, history likes wins and especially majors and big wins. I think it's probably Look, there's a balance. I think both. I think both is both as good signs.

I think the consistent guy like I don't know who, like a Jay Haass play six or seven hundred tournaments or whatever he did and kept his card pretty much every single year and was always putting checks in the bank and was always kind of there or thereabouts and contended a few times a year and just a really really quality player. I mean, that is much harder to do than to do that for thirty years than it is to just come up win twice in two years and then be offered to it. There's piles and piles

of those guys. I think we all aspire for consistency. We all dream about winning, but we aspire to consistency about that.

the fun. It's the playing and the stress and the pressure and the first team and the nerves and hitting shots when you're a bit unsure about it and coming up with what you've been working on in practice and it works in the tournament. That's the fun. I mean, that's the real joy of it. Like it's the it's the hitting the great shot when you're really really your hands are shaking and you're not really sure about it and you've been dreaming of that shot from your kill.

You hold that great part in the last hold, even if it's a great part to make the cut on Friday, then you've really been grinding and you hold that twelve foot left to right to make I mean, that's the moment. That's what makes it a great job. That to me, that's the fun and contention. You just get that sort of stuff way more often, and the win is just the is the cherry on top. You know, it's great and we all want to do it, and all the

stuff that comes with winning is brilliant. But if you just gave me the trophies and the money and didn't let me actually have the experience of it, I don't know if I would take it. The experience of it is what is the real kind of joy of the job.

done that. But I've never really had any regrets. I've never thank goodness, hit one out of bounds on seventeen, or like, missed a short part that really really mattered to me. I mean, I've missed plenty of short parts, don't get me wrong, but not one that I carried with me too much. There's plenty of tournaments that I wish I'd played a little better. I mean the Masters in twenty eleven, when Charlburdie the last five hole of were readd. I finished fourth and I ended up four

shots behind. But at the time I was tied for the lead on the seventeenth before he went nuts, and that was great and I really enjoyed it. But I'd had two parts in a three part that week, and I if I had any regrets and now early in the week, but I looked back and like, those four parts were just three parts, you know, But I didn't carry it with me for very long. I mean I don't. I haven't really had any that I've just taken a while to get over. No real heartbreak. I mean I

don't see the point pretty much every tournament. It's so difficult out here that when you actually have a good tournament, unless you really really just give it away on the last couple of holes, which thank goodness, I've never done. I usually leave after a good tournament excited about the next one because, oh I'm informed, like I've just finished third. Shit, I can win next week. Let's go next week. I get so excited about the next week because of how

my game is that I haven't really looked back. I haven't really carried any regrets really, So that's a nice thing.

I love the Open. They Opens such a beautiful, special tournament. But you can have bad experiences of the Open. If you get the bad drawer and you get the horrible weather, it's like you kind of wonder why you even play this bought sometimes and sideways reign in Scotland, you know, but you never have that at the Masters. You know, it's just all and that's not the Open fault. That's part of it, and that's and you've got to enjoy

that aspect of it. But getting bad draws and just getting basically getting a bad your number gets pulled out of the hat at the wrong time and you get your chance for the tournament basically gets taken away from you. There's that aspect. This is kind of a bit frustrating sometimes the Masters, just because of it's such an exclusive place, and it's such a hard place to get in the gate.

Even to basically have kind of the past, to go to Augusta whenever you wander for the rest of your life, that would be pretty special.

But the courses, the courses like strategically the most interesting we play outside of perhaps some of the open courses. It's there's no stone unturned, you know. They the food is incredibly good. The practice range now is just the best there is. I mean, it's there's the practice rounds for us, there's there's only players and caddies inside the ropes.

There's no one else there, so you don't get these like seventeen odd people entourages walking down the first fairway, you know, with with psychologists and trainers and stuff and the fairies, which just kind of makes the practice rounds a bit of a mess, you know, like the autograph policy and that they have this great setup where kids get kids have a little spot and we all signed to the kids and we're not really supposed to sign

on the golf course side of the clubhouse. So we have these great practice round where you actually start interacting with the fans a little bit because they're not throwing sharpies in your face, you know, so you have conversations their cell phone, chatting under the tree and stuff. It's just great.

sporting event there is in the world. From that, from a from a event kind of running perspective, there might be I mean the Olympics is great, and the World Cup soccer and ride a Cup and all that, but from a from how they run the tournament, like a from a management thing, it's just it's just amazing. And every year you go back, they've just kind of you didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but they've just kind of made it just a little bit better.

You know. It's it's an incredible production. And the golf

course they've got it so dialed in. They understand their golf course so well that they they don't they can't dictate who's going to play well, but they really can kind of decide by pimpositions and set up how how it's going to come down to the end, how it's going to come down to the end on Sunday, you know, I mean they kind of they can set up the course so it's difficult on Thursday and a little bit easier on Friday, and then if they don't, if it's

a little bit tough on Friday, then then and then they let guys have a few birdies on Saturday to create the excitement. I mean, it just got it so worked out. It's very hard to remember too many Masters that, with two hours to play weren't EDGBC compelling, you know, every single time. It just seems to be that way. Yeah, it's it's just I mean, I'm obviously like being maybe even over positive or about this, but it's just there is no other event that seems to get it right more often than they do.

of depressing that it happens in April. But how have you noticed that the professional game has changed over your career in the last fourteen years or so since you've been prevalent on the PGA Tour.

some and some of them were really different. And guys really didn't start hitting the ball well un till they're in their thirties, and didn't really start playing very well until really kind of getting into that top echelon until they were in their thirties and they had ten years under that belt and they'd kind of really learned how to play goal golf. It's different now, I mean, it's it's so well coached. The I think the video camera was the worst thing that ever happened for golf technique,

and I think track Man might be the best. It's it's just a guys swing it great. When they're young, they hit it miles, they've got their bodies under control. I mean, the fitness side of it is much more understood. They just the youngsters come out much more polished, much just just more experienced looking players like first year and

that never happened before, Like it was. It just it just it used to take such a long time to learn the craft that you really you just did your time for the first two or five or six years until you kind of worked it out. And every now and then there was an outlier like Tiger or Sergio that got it dumbs right away, but generally it was a tough game to learn quickly, and guys are learning it much quicker.

you know swing. But these young twenty year old kids have learned from the beginning how to swing it properly.

which was a complete reversal of what everybody thought. And for the non technical minor that probably doesn't mean that much, but it completely opened everyone's eyes about how to get the club on the ball. And then everybody started working out where you're going to have to arrange your body this way in order for impact to be this way. It's a game technically full of contradictions, and it's such a game of opposites all the way through which Hogan

references to his books. I mean, Hogan obviously had all this worked out, but it took him thirty years of banging balls on the range to get there. Right. Kids are getting there now and they're twenty because of things like track Man. But it from day one. I mean they tell you to hit it down to make the ball go up. I mean that is just against all instinct that we have to swing down to make the ball go up. If the ball goes low, all we

all want to just lift it up. But what happens is when you start trying to lift it up, is you either top of the ball and it goes really low, or if you're actually talented, you'll hit the club on the ball and the ball will start slicing to the right. So the ball goes to the right. So going to make the next one go right? So you start swinging really hard over the top. You swing it left because you don't want the club to the ball to go right. So what does that make it? It makes it go

further to the right. And the game is full of that, and we had to fight that, you know. But pre all this understanding, it was really was trial by error. And it's really hard to find something trial by error when all of your instincts are the opposite of what they need to be. It's a goal. So this this the track man and understanding really what does make a ball draw or make it fade or go a long way or whatever has kind of kind of opened the

door of this great coaching. When you said these guys like XEROFL they come out and their kids and they just swing. It's so technically pure, that they're so far in front of the curve from relative to where we were when we were twenty one twenty two, that it's it's almost not a fair fight anymore, you know. It's incredible.

it's very very sound. I mean, he hits the ball, smashes it as far as Rory does, and put's great and hits it well and his swing is perfect, and to me it only seems like a matter of time. But golf is a strange game, right, and if you spend too long kind of struggling and battling down on those smaller tours, that he can create a bit of scar tissue when they're in the head and it can take some time. But he looks the one on paper and when you play with him that he has all

the tools. But the Australian kid who won the US Amuter, Curtis Luck, he plays a different game. It's a really interesting game. Shapes the ball a lot. He plays a little bit like Bubba, I mean, a different golf and a bob. He doesn't hit it as far, but he loves it in big draws and big fade, low ones in the back pins and high ones in the front pins. He plays a really cool golf and he plays golf like someone who's a lot older than him. He plays

very sensible golf. And he's been doing quite well and he's on the web this year, and I think it won't take him too long, and I think he'll do really really well. I think, And there's a few others, but they're the two i'd pick out off the time. I mean, Ruffles looks on paper like, if he gets a all worked out, he's going to be he could be a world better. And Curtis Luck, he's one of those guys. He looks like he could be on tour

for a really long time. Smart guy plays, as I said, a really cool version of the game, and he's a cool character. He does it his own way, which I think is which is to be admired. I think in this current world of you've got to do it this way, You've got to do it this way. He says, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna do it Curtis Lock's way, and this is going to be fine. But they're the two old pick I mean, and they do different style of players, and I wouldn't want to I wouldn't bet on either one.

I'd put them each way, bet on both of them.

I mean, is there a better hold to watch professional golf play than tenet riv It's just fascinating. You can watch it all day and thirteen at the Masters, I mean, or you go to s Andrews. It doesn't translate on TV as well. But if you go to s Andrew's and you watch a few of those hold it and you'll watch one hundred prose come through, and they'll hit it in a hundred different places because they all have a little different theory or a little different feel about

how to play the whole. To me, that's more interesting, and you'll get a better type of winner. Not that the type of winners we have it bad, but you'll you'll see golfers will get better because they have to be better, and they have to have more variety and more thoughts. So I would go to more interesting golf courses. They'll be the first thing I would do. Outside of that,

I think some different formats would be interesting. I think seventy two holf stroke players got just a little bit kind of it's just a little bit too much of it. I mean, we have so much of it that the format might be getting a little bit older. I like the s I like the stable for the kind of format that kind of encourages aggression a little bit more. You know, two points for Bertie only minus one for a bogie. That that format I think is pretty interesting.

But I would get to know somehow. You've got to get to know the players. You know that you know the NFL sounds of the game, yeah, where it's like

it's the best my favorite part of the NFL. I mean, I love watching football, but the when you have that little show on the NFL network or whatever during the week and they have all the talk of the quarterbacks of their players, or the defensive leader on the side of the field yelling at his players, selling them the fire, and the little smart ass comments they make back and forth like kind of I'm going to get you this time, I'm going to get you this time, or you're not

going to catch me, all that stuff, and it just makes football more interesting because you just you're on the field for a minute. I would love to see responsible marking of players and caddies. And I say responsible in that I don't think we should be catching the social conversations of players at all. I don't think that's right at all. It's just part of the nice nice thing about playing golf is having little chats that no one

else can hear, right, That's part of the fun. But the golf specific talk, I think people would lap that up. I think it would just be amazing. I mean it's a very hard thing, as I said, to do, because everyone's got a record button and there's some guy in the truck who's going to have a tape of two guys talking about something that would be interesting to people if it came out public. But the golf talk, I

mean people want to hear that. I mean, what is Ricky saying that like scof like in those last couple of holes. What's he saying, I'm going to go at that pin on seventeen at Sawgrass? Or is he telling SCoV that he's going to hit at thirty feet left

but he's actually aiming at the pin. That stuff is that is interesting, And I think whenever you get inside, if you can feel inside the game a little bit more, it becomes you know the players a little bit better and you relate to them, and there'd be more people would have more kind of heroes and a few more favorite players, you know, because they'd really liked the way a guy kind of went about it and chatted about it and talk to his caddy, and caddies would be

a little bit more famous even because they'd begin everyone would see their level of involvement. I know the tour really kind of wants to do it, but it's really, as I said, loistic. It's a difficult thing in this day and age when everyone's got to you could post it to the whole world and inappropriate come in here or there. It would be it'd be around the world in thirty seconds. And that's a scary. That's a scary prospect, but I think it would make the product better.

the masters. I mean, we see the bombers these days hitting adines and stuff end on Sunday and it's but generally the whole field like you're standing there and like it's a shot that you you know you have to go for the green, but you really don't want to, you know, which is why it's such an interesting shot, and you'll get caddies trying to talk players out of staff from players trying to talk to caddy into saying no, this is a good idea, and you get there's a

little minute of real tension, you know, real kind of real stuff, you know, and like you say, it could be the next week, just like the sounds of the game in the NFL show, like midweek, this is kind of what happened last weekend, like this is what we thought was cool. Like that would be really fascinating, I think, and as you said on the tenth at Riviera, like the conversations you have would be fantastic. You know, I'm hitting driving, No, you're not. The three on We decided

that on Tuesday. Now I'm going to hit a driver. No, we decided three on out the left was the point. And you get those things. I mean that that's what we're privy to that you know, if we know that, so they're not interesting to the players inside the road, but we're the only people who've ever heard that stuff.

No one else has. And I think that that would a lot of appeal and the fans and the public and the viewers would just get a little bit more of a window into the job and what it involves and the personalities and everything going forward to be and the white I think about golf. I think it'd be great. Yeah.

you pull driver on a hole. You say you're never going to pull driver on but like why was that? And like just getting the inside look to that stuff would create a better and more engaged and more you know, passionate golf fan.

might have something that's not appropriate. I think the players kick back against it would be that, like they just don't want to get in trouble and they don't want to feel like they have to be a mute because everybody's recording every word they say. But if you could pull it off and make it work, it would be it'd be fascinating. I think people would, and I think

it would be on one level, an instructional. It'd be instructional for people too, because you would just you would learn so much about how different guys view the game, and you would learn how Phil I mean, Phil's conversations with Bones historically are just amazing. I mean they're brilliant. I mean you couldn't make them up. The best fiction

writer ever couldn't make those compass up. And like, it would be great if people got to hear some of those a little bit more than just when the guy comes over with the ferry microphone, Like if you actually heard the whole thing from start to finish, and it would have relativity to what they were talking about on the tea when they were going into the second shot, So it was just really really interesting stuff and how he would go about it versus Tiger and Stevie back

in the day, or like Ricky and Joe. It's like everybody's viewing golf a slightly different way. And I think the way we kind of talk, especially under the under pressure and under the real situation, you really exposed kind of people's weaknesses and strengths. And I think it would be just it'd be it'd be like a level of access that no one's ever had. I think it would be really interesting.