Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast. For Masters week, we have a special edition with Jeff Ogilvie, who's going to talk all things Masters. But first a word from our sponsor. Today's episode is powered by Tdammeritrade. Every stroke counts on the scorecard and every penny counts in the market. That's why td Ameritrade is committed to straightforward pricing with no surprises, so you're free to swing
with confidence. Visit tedomortrade dot com Backslash Frida Egg member Sbiic. This should be one of a couple podcasts with Jeff this week. Subscribe to the podcast if you don't already and sign up for the newsletter. Go to the fridagg dot com sign up for that and you'll never miss a beat with the Masters. So this is the first of a couple podcasts with Jeff this week where we talk mostly about his experience playing in the Masters.
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 Egg, bright Egg, Lie I'm about ready to run off the course. First, you're here not playing. What's the difference in playing versus attending that you've noticed so far?
Uh? Well, yesterday was my first day. Asked the golf course Monday and stood under the tree, like and you forever the thing that you miss when you play this torment. Every time you come, you have twelve friends, twelve guests because everyone takes your tickets and you're organizing the ticket drop offs and all that, and everybody is excited. And every night you get back to the house, everybody tells
you about how good a date the Masters is. And all you've been doing is worrying about how you're hitting it and trying to like kind of stay under the radar, if you like, Does that make sense? And every day you walk through the clubhouse. I don't mean anybody who's been to the Masters would work this out, but the locker room, you come out of the clubhouse, you walk under this big, famous old tree from the clubhouse, between the clubhouse and the first tea and you go to
the pudding green and then you're tee off. You're walking through that area trying to not catch anyone's attention because you're playing the tournament right head down. I don't want to talk to anyone, even though everybody I know in the golf world is here. I'm looking at my shoes and the way of the putting green. I'm going to play because I can't afford distraction, really, And so you miss the Masters in that respect, the Masters that everybody
who doesn't play the tournament. You miss that experience of catching up with everybody having a nice tea under the tree, having a permentation sandwich or whatever your thing is. Like, you don't get any of that when you play the tournament because you're just playing a tournament. I mean, yeah, it's the Masters and it's amazing, but you experience it completely from a different perspective because you're concerned about how
you're playing. Like yesterday it was amazing, and you see, I just watched the players walk under the tree head down and like try to get past all the journalists and the friends and stuff, and I'm like that used to be me, And it's kind of nice to just catch up with people that I hadn't seen for a long time. There's sort of people I would have liked to have hung out and talked with when I was
playing the tournament and I couldn't. Now I can, So it was from that respect it was interesting and seeing just a whole lot less. There's a level of anxiety when you play something like this good anxiety, like nervous tension or whatever it is. And the focus the whole week is sleep and diet and feeling good and getting
your game and thing. And now it's like, well, if someone's having an extra glass of wine at dinner or you have another one, right because you get as I said, I'm getting to enjoy the Master's week for what it is as opposed to having any concern about playing. So from that respect, it's fun, but it's still making me a bit jealous.
Yeah, that's what I noticed here is like when I come down here, if I it's hard because I have to write, It's it's similar. It's not similar at all, actually, but where I have to write and do all this stuff all week. But you could be out and talking to people and networking the whole time. But it's like, well, I still have to write stuff. I would love to hang out here all night, but I got stuff to
do at home. How would you say your routine changed from the first time you played two thousand and six till that till the last time you played twenty fifteen.
It evolved a little bit. I mean, I think the first time you play, you hear when they open the gates some Monday morning, like whatever it is. And actually one of the most incredible things for player the experience you can have you because we can get in the gate before the gates open, so you go into the locker room, you have your breakfast, and the locker room is where we have breakfast. It looks out over the first tee and down that old range and down the
eighteenth and across to the second green. You have that beautiful view across the golf course and you have your coffee and you have your eggs, and you kind of you can step out on the balcony as the gates open and you see the swarm of humans go across the golf course, not running doing that augusta not running thing right with all their chairs, and it's just one of the best experiences in golf. Like it's kind of maybe misty in the morning, and it's like it's like
it's out of a book, a novel. You get the whole course was full in about five minutes, even though they're not running right. So the first year I was here at that time every day like just get beat. I couldn't spend enough time with the golf course. And gradually, over the time you start realizing that, hey, look, you can't actually be a total Masters fan and play well
in it as well, you know. So I'd yeah, Monday, I'd come up at ten, and I would I ended up instead of playing eighteen eighteen eighteen in the practice rounds, I would play like nine on Monday, maybe eighteen on Tuesday, maybe a little nine on the back, nine on Wednesday.
And energy preservation became number one because you could very easy to just blow it all out of the water in the first two or three days because you're just so pumped to be here, and you spend all day on the range and all day on the punt and green. You just want to be at the Masters, right that. Gradually the shine never wears off this tournament, but it
does a little bit in the respect. After a few years you get to treat it just like a normal tournament again, and that's when you can start playing well. I guess. So that's what it changed. I just the golf fan. After you've been in the gates twenty or thirty times and you've played the course a lot and it's not new anymore, I started treating it a little bit more sensibly, I would guess.
Would you attribute some of that kind of nervous energy of that, treating it not like any other tournament to why typically first time or struggle here.
I would think, I mean, it's like Disneyland for a grown up, right, if you're a golf fan, I mean it's and you've waited your whole life. And there's a bit of a superstition amongst good golfers that golfers who think they're ever going to play well in the Masters or go to the Masters don't want to come here until they're in the Masters. Like it's kind of a thing, which is weird to me, but I would have been
a little bit the same. So you hold it in such a steam, such a high regard that it's hard to just not be like a kid at Disneyland that first couple of years. So it's what a tournament. It's just such a mystique about it, and you've actually you've got no sense of what the place is going to be like you think you know exactly what it's going to look like, but you're so excited to get in the gates, and you get in the gates and you're just looking at everything. First year, it's just an amazing
experience the first couple of times. Every time it's an amazing experience, but the first couple of times it's a completely mind blowing and incredible and everybody's happy. The spectators are happy, like everybody's having the best day of their life when they first go to the Master's right, and it's just incredible.
I mean, the people that work like the geates are the nicest people of any sworrying event I've ever been to. Like usually you're like walking through the gates of saying in a football game and everybody's barking at you. Here they're just like smiling, have a nice day, have a nice day. It is different than everything everything else. Did you have any superstitions about Masters playing?
Not really, No, I'm not ever been a superstitious guy. I think it's just learning the week and learning your way around the kind of the best way to manage yourself. And as I said, time, it's very easy to spend nine hours at a golf course, it's something like this, and it's way too long, right, because you come out and you spend a little bit too long on the range because all the manufacturers floating around and all that.
Anybody who's anybody in golf is here this week, and they all want to be associated and be standing next to the players and talk to them, and like everybody wants to kind of be on the inn in the masters, right, So it's really easy to get out here at seven or eight and leave it six every day because you just kind of want to be out here and you get kind of distracted and caught up in the whole thing.
No superstisions. I just had to get a bit more disciplined about doing my thing, you know, like, and that takes a couple of years, I think, to just do your thing. So first time, it's also the first time. I think. The course is very The course forces you. It makes you nervous one because of what it is.
But even if you just came here for a if it was a muni and you came and just dropped from balls, it's a nervous making course because there's trouble everywhere and there's some crazy places to miss it, and they're difficult shots that you can only play well if you're not nervous, but the course makes you nervous. It's kind of the genius of the course. So it does take quite a long time of hitting these shots to realize. Like the second shot to fifteen, then everybody knows it's
the most ridiculous shot. You would never take it on anywhere else in the world, but you have to take it on here. And it takes it ten times of hitting that shot to free up and put a real free swing on it, because when you're hitting it, you know you shouldn't be hitting it, but you just have to hit it anyway. That for the first time is
the hardest thing. I think putting proper swings on twelve and putting a proper swing on it on fifteen, and like really difficult shots, you know, four irons from downslopes into the tenth Green, which probably don't hit four irons very much anymore, but it's really not a very big green, like it really isn't from the ball way above your feet and way on a downslope. It's a hard shot anyway, and if you miss it left, you make a double and if you miss it right, you'll probably make a bogie.
And the only way you'll hit it on the green is if you put a free, not nervous, completely loose kind of swing on it. That's really difficult to do the first time.
I think that's a genius of the whole design. Though it's like a lot the downslope long iron into ten. It's a long par four. Your fifteen handicap isn't thinking about that. They're just like they can make an easy five there.
I think sure. The true genius of this course, like pretty much all the best causes in the world except for maybe like PV and Oakmont, is that the worst you are, the easier it is almost the better you are harder. It is like it brings the eighteen handicapper and the scratch handed cap a really close together. Augusta, Like an eightien handicap guy could break ninety every day, who's life here if he played it sensibly and smart once you kind of worked it out a little bit.
But the scratch handicap to break par that's tough because you've got to hit some really brave shots.
Yeah, the challenges get are subtle in the sense that the eighteen handicap doesn't even know how hard the shot they're looking at is. But the batter you are than the harder the shot is. Yeah.
Almost the more advanced the shot you want to hit, the harder it is. The second shot ND. Nine, it's complete genius, the night till right, negative canbers, reverse Cambers, I should say. So the ball is below your feet on a shot you want h a draw, and it's very hard to hit it in a good spot on the ninth green without hitting a draw. But the ball is significantly below your feet and a significant downslope.
Which is because of the pitch of the green, because of.
The pitch at the angle of the green and the pitch of the slope. The slope is making you want to hit a low fade. Yeah, and almost the only shot you can hit from the ninth fairway is a low fade. But the only way you can hit the green is hit a high draw. So and that is something you can't capture until you actually try to do that. And that's all over the course. Like thirteen, it's a drawer off the tee, But the only real sensible way
to hit the second shot is a fade. But you're trying to fade it with the ball significantly above your feet, like six inches above you a long way like surprise, people would be very surprised at how far aby your feet the ball is on thirteen and so it's for the average guy who's not going for the thirteenth green, it's actually an easy stance. The ball above your feet and carriages a drawer. You just aim it out to the right. You've got one hundred yards a fairway your
wedge on the green. You're like, I don't see what all the problem is. But for the guy who's trying to hit a four on the green with a ballway above his feet, you have to hang it out over the water because the stance is making you start the ballder the right and all you want to do is start the border to the left, but you can't. I mean, it's it's a really and fourteen. It's kind of you want to draw it, but the balls below your feet, it's all around.
The course's thirteen to two. With a long iron that lie typically draws less than you expect it to too. Always like you're always surprised at how little it druk because like it's the same thing with a lab wedge, it goes way left because the laft.
Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's it's ingenious in that sense. Do you think that's why form coming into the Masters is so important because you have to be so daled inn at you know, you go through these grooves where you're swinging really well or then you're a little off. And does that those uneven lies and those difficult shots really accentuate who's who's striking it well and who's you know, maybe in between swing thafts.
I think, And definitely it's a form course. You have to be and I said, i'd like mentally, so you have to be swinging it free. You have to believe in what you're doing. You don't have to. You shouldn't be trying to force a drawer down ten to eleven and thirteen off the tee because if you're forcing a drawer usually struggling to hit a draw right with that drawer to be coming out nicely off the tad like, so you can swing it free and not have to
worry about it. And those free swings, as I said, like second shots like ten and thirteen and nine and sixteen on that front right pin and fifteen the second shot. And I mean, all these shots out there, you can only hit them if you're loose. Yet the course and the atmosphere and the course with the trouble you can be, and the atmosphere of the tournament, and the whole mystique and the history and all of your history and the feelings,
it all makes you apprehensive and nervous. Yeah, the only way to play it well is to be loose and free. So the guy who's going to be the best at getting loose and free is the guy who's been playing the best up to that point. I would think, who feels the best about his game. And it was like a Phil Mickelson paradise, right, because he, if anything, has always played loose and free.
Irrational confidence almost.
Yeah, I mean you kind of have to be like irrationally confident. And we've seen them in some incredibly great players struggle out here just because they're either not in form or the shots just don't fit their eye. The thing is, the shots don't fit anybody's eye. A lot of them, as I said that, they're counter of the slopes are going the wrong way for the shape or it was very very cleverly laid out this course, probably with a little bit of luck involved too, that the
serender it as placement of everything. It just worked out. You have to be really confident, and the putting is I would go against what everybody says that here relatively easy if you're putting well once you learn the greens. The greens are so perfect if you get it online. It goes in once you work out the slopes, which are a little bit weird and extreme, like the slopes are extreme. Once you get realized that there's six foot it's actually not that hard a part. You just have
to start at two feet outside the left. But the thing does funnel into the hole if you do start in the right place. Once you work the putting it if you're confident with your putting, you can make a lot of parts. But if you're if you're not confident with your putting, you're going to get that Ernie El's thing on the first green. And I've had a couple of years where I've been off with my putting here and it's just get me off the course. I don't
want to hit these parts. It's just too scary because you can't guarantee the next one is going to go in because they're so.
Fast, they actually have the slope and the speed, which is rare because most of the time, if their speed, they're not going to put it in the spars that they put.
It in it no, And I think the advantage they've got is they've had this tournament for so long that they know their golf course so well that when the USGAS to pick on the USGA just for a second, their greens don't really get I mean, they probably get a little bit bumpy and beaten up because of the courses that they're playing on and the amount of play too, at amount of playing how much they've forcing them to get fast here, they're not force them to get faster.
It is naturally fast, and they've got all year with no traffic to do that. But they've had seventy or eighty years to realize that. You know what, when the greens are at fourteen or whatever, they are tournament speed. When we put the pin there, it's perfect, but you move at six inches the other way, it's not going to work. And almost every hole they have so wired that they have greens that are probably in a lot
of respects completely out just not playable. In some respects, but they know those little patches on the greens where they can play it, where they're actually playable, and so that that's the advantage of having the tournament at the same course every year. They've got it so dialed in and so worked out that they never get it wrong, and it would be so easy to get wrong. They set up of this course, the greens, at least the pimpositions,
but they never get it wrong. They've completely got it right, and no one walks off thinking those pins were outrageous ever. But if they were some in some cases a foot or six or twelve inches in a different spot, they would have been completely unplayable. But they just get it right. It's amazing.
Last year, it was amazing. I was out late one afternoon last year and I was watching the whole competition committee out there setting up pins, and it was it's unbelievable. I was thinking about, like, how the USGA and my mind does it. I don't know, but I mean, there was like twenty five guys out there, and all of them were hitting parts from all different directions to like
the spots that they were looking at. And I think that they, like you said, they know it so well, and then they they take so many precautions with like the setup, like they were looking at a cup like I saw them like moving the cup from four inches left to four inches right, and you could see them putting like. I mean, I sat there for they were on the second green for thirty minutes and I sat there. I was just watching them. I took like one hundred pictures.
I never used them because I was like, what am I going to use these for? But it was it was really interesting to watch them them put put together the course. So you never missed a cut at the Masters.
Nah, that's a pretty good little stat.
I mean, I can't be many guys that play made a significant amount of them and it suits.
Look, I was I always played well where I wanted to play well, if that makes sense now, That not just I mean like you enjoyed playing, enjoyed the big things. I always played better in the bigger ones. For some reason. I get little tournaments I'd play awful. I just whatever. For whatever reason, the course suited me. The putting here is very similar to putting at Roll Melbourne or on the sand Belt, big sweeping breaks and having six footers
at break from two feet outside of the hole. Is is not abnormal in Melbourne or at Royal Melbourne especially, that's kind of abnormal at a lot of places. You know, not a lot of people grow up with crazy fast bent greens that if you miss it low it goes twelve feet past. Like that's growing up in Melbourne, so you really naturally my misses would just I would put bad swings on it, but would always be a bad swing under the whole, Like it's just the way you
grow up. You don't short side yourself. You go under the hole in Melbourne, otherwise you just you're going to have a bad day and it becomes part of your instinct or you feel. So there was that the putting didn't take. It suited my feeling about putting, Like the way.
You look in vision as a putt was where when you have a big sloper you brought in it was fast when you probably understood how to use the slope to slow it down.
It just matched my eye. Whereas we go to the slow green flat place, flat green play, we go to the bob Hope and they're not slow, they're perfect right and the desert but they're dead flat and you've got these twenty foot is from right edge, Oh hopeless. I couldn't never, And a lot of other guys out there are making everything because they seem really easy, like straight puts from twenty feet, But for me, I needed a to when I got two feet break from twenty feet
like Capellura, I played great. That was the same big sweeping breaks.
So it's funny I grew up playing a course with like big breaks like the greens were very undulating, and I always struggle playing courses with really subtle breaks.
Yeah, I really to this day, I struggle with a straight twenty foot I'd much rather a twenty foot of that broke two feet. Yeah, it's funny, it's I guess it's just your natural eye. It's like I struggle with pitching on soft greens too. I struggle flying a pitch shot to the hole because I grew up having to land pitch shots twenty or thirty feet short to have them skip and roll up because of the firm greens.
As much as I practiced my pitching, I still still my brain could never fly a pitch shot to the whole, really have trouble with it unless there was a bunker short of the like unless I had to, but that I just wanted to play well. Here I happened to be playing well my first I was in a sweet spot of form, Like usually when you start getting in the Masters, you've been playing pretty well, you've been winning
two events, so you're top fifteen in the world. I was in form and leading up to like that was in the period that I was. I started well, won the US Over and some WG seas and stuff, so I was playing it in the right.
I noted in my career, I noticed that like a couple of years you were in unbelievable for him coming in one year you won the match play and then second at the Houston Open. I was surprised. I didn't remember if two thousand and six was your first one then you won your next major at the US Open. I was, you know, twenty eleven, you were in the
thick of it and the back nine. Is there another one where you were like were you think think back to maybe a stretch of four or five holes or a nine that you're like, God, if it hadn't been for this, it would have.
Been you know, Zack Johnson's year two thousand and seven, it was like the most horrific weather ever. And it's hard to imagine this week because it's kind of humid and stall me right, But it was in the thirties most of the week, especially Saturday, it was blowing forty and thirty four degreeses. I mean, I mean, it was just outrageously cold and windy and difficult. And I think Zach ended up winning what one under one over or something.
But that year I was I'd got about I think I was about two or three back on fifteen on Saturday, like a pretty good shape right, two or three back, with twenty two holes to play. I lay it up and this was one of my lessons that I had to learn the hard way. I laid it up on because it was straight into the wind and you couldn't get to fifteen, or I couldn't. I don't think anyone
did that day. I laid it up on the right with a pin on the left that left low pin on the left, because I figured, well, you laid it up to the right for a left pin, and I did that classic lands right on the front, skips up, spins into the water, drop again, skips up, drops in the water. I made nine, and then I think I had a couple of bogies coming in it at like seven or eight behind really with eighteen holes, and completely
ruined the tournament on that moment. And I don't know if I would have won, but I was in the mix with twenty two holes to play, and with twenty one holes to play, I was completely out of it. You know, that was a really I had an opportunity. I was playing really well on a tough day.
You came into that year really great for him too.
Yeah, I was playing really well, and that was kind of the period. I'd won the US Open the year before, and I was like feeling it in the majors and every major I'd played since, I felt more and more comfortable. And it was just one of those moments, and like
everybody has one of them at Augusta. Most people, if you play here for long enough, you have five of those moments, right, And it taught me that fifteen at least, you have to lay it up as far left as you can, because then your pitch shot, if from the right, you're landing it on a down slope because the Greeners really effectively slopes from front right to back left, if that makes sense. It's almost a doubt that makes sense. Almost.
So your wedge from the right is taking such a big first bounce that that's why we see all these wedges at land near the pin and just go one bounce over the back. But when you're on the very left edge of the fairway, you're landing it on quite an extreme upslope and you can just bail it out twenty feet right of the pin and actually spin it back towards the pin from left and it's a flat
of light. But anyway, that wasn't really because I just needed to be really conservative for my wedge and hit it to forty feet and realized that today's a good day to make five on fifteen, and I didn't. I tried to bite off more than I could chew and got stubborn on the second one and tried to do it again, made a nine and ruined the tournament. But that one left a bad taste in my mouth. Twenty eleven I left. I mean, I was tied for the
lead on seventeen. On Sunday seventeen ten and n burdied like a bunch of holes in a row playing with Freddy on Sunday, and we both hit at stiff on sixteen, and it was just outrageous, like it just the most amazing moment ever. Crowd didn't sit down from when Freddie and I hit it close on sixteen, both those cool ones up on the slope and they were rolling down
like looking like holing ones from the team. They didn't sit down until we got to the seventeenth t because it's Freddie, right, yeah, and we both made Bertie and Tiger had set the day up by making thirty, shooting thirty on the front and people were burning everywhere and Schwartzel was holding shots and I was time lad on seventeen part of the last two and lost by four. Adam made a couple of birdies and he was two in front with two to play part of the last
two and lost by two. Schwartzeor just went and birdie the last four holes. It was just the most outrageous tournament. And that was the Sunday with the most raws and the most noise that it was like, wow, this is a special, special tournament. Yeah, so that one I didn't leave with any regrets at all because I played great and whatever. But seven times you.
Played great and you yeah, that's like the goth you know, and.
There was ten guys who felt like they should have won that tournament, you know, when Schwartzell was probably one of the ones that no one He was just another one man. I think Adam and Jason Tiger and a bunch of guys were up there with.
A chance that back nine feel, especially you're playing with Freddy and the roars. Is there anything else in goth that's ever come close to that?
No, not even close. I mean there's some of those fun holes on tour, like Phoenix. Obviously if you hit one close and I've made some long puts on sixteen and that's louder probably that's kind of fun, but that's fun in a goofy kind of carnival way. You know. This is the build up to this tournament is so immense, and it goes for so long. It really goes from the PGA right traditionally. I mean, there's people are thinking about this for a really long time, and especially from
January onwards. It's Golf Channel and the magazines and the journalists. They're all talking about the Masters and the Masters and the Masters, and it's maybe the first golf tournament a lot of people in the country or the well watched for the year. It's just such a big deal. And Tiger goes out and shoots thirty on the front after he hadn't won for a while, and it was like kind of that period that was had been rough for Tiger, and that just set the crowd up and it was
so loud, and then it was you just heard. There's five or six significant leaderboards that the masters for anyone haven't been there, those old school ones where they pull it down and they flip the number up and everybody always reacts to it. But you hear theose little reactions here and there, and when you're putting on we're hitting off on the twelfth tee, sometimes you hear it the one on eleven get locked up and Phil's made a
birdie and everyone kind of, oh, that's cool. But this was like out and out raws every time the leaderboard got changed, and you could hear, oh, that's the one on eleven, just saw that Tiger made eagle. Oh that's the one on fifteen that just Tiger just made an eagle, And you could hear the reaction from his eagle. You heard the real eagle, and then you heard the echoes of his eagle three or four times across the course in the next two minutes. It was just I can't
even describe it. I mean, everybody in the gate that day, on that day would have just they had a good day. It was just unbelievable.
That's the cool thing with Augusta with the no phone, is that, especially now, it's a throwback. Where as a player, it's probably different too because there's not real time leader boards all over the place. Were you a leaderboard watcher when you were in the thick of it.
I didn't study leaderboards, but I always knew what was going on. I had to know what was going on. I didn't study names or scores, but I always thought it was valuable knowledge to know or look, everybody's bogied fourteen. There must be something weird about that, like just pay extra attention. So I always thought there was an advantage to knowing that, an advantage. Sometimes you feel like it's really tough and that everybody's making birdies on the leaderboards.
Well maybe I'm not playing for it. It was a measure about how you were playing too sometimes, so I watched leaderboards. But it's different here, but you still know what's going on. It separates the field a little bit.
It's usually not like a regulator, and there's twenty guys on Sundays sometimes that can win, and you really have to try to play well, and it's just a complete kind of shambles and it doesn't really take shape until the last few holes, right, because there's people playing well everywhere, but this one you've got a pretty good sense of who the major players were in the tournament. There's a guy two groups in front, and you know who's in it.
And there's a guy the group behind you. You know who's in it, and you can kind of hear the roars and feel how he's playing. And you know, I don't think you've missed out on information as a player here just because no digital leaderboards. But it's you're right, it's for everything annoying, Like we all come to the Masters and get annoyed about the old school policies with the no phones and it's frustrating. It's so much better. It's a throwback to a better period, right, Yeah, the
cheap food and the no phones. And I'll meet you at twelve o'clock under the tree over there on the second green, and so I mean it's just it's nice. It's just a nice kind of throwback to like probably a better time to watch the sporting event in some ways.
You know. Yeah, the I mean they have to instad now. You see everybody with their phones out and they aren't even watching. They're like getting a video to watch later. I always find it funny. It happens at concerts too. I said to it. I went to a concert the other day. I said to my wife, I was like, a take it to video. I'm like, this is a video I'll never watch again in my life, you know, yeah what.
Am I doing?
And the same thing happens at the events. And I think with like, there are some clubs that don't allow cell phones now and I'm always annoyed when I pull in, but then I leave my phone in the car and I like have the best day on the golf course that I have. You know, a few times a year that I go to those places. It's like that's unbelievable.
It's like those are I think they hit on something with that, with the tradition, and everybody gets annoyed by tradition if it inconveniences them, but then they realize, like Oh man, this is really good. How often would you come down to augusta non tournament weeks.
I always came once every time I played. I think every time I played. I came once before the tournament, usually bouncing out of the Florida Swing, the old school Florida Swing usually finished about three weeks before the Masters. We'd play like, yeah, wherever we finish Tampa or bay Hill or something, and I'd be going back to Scottsdale for a week, and it's three weeks before the tournament, and that would logistically geographically for me, I would just
come and stop by here, usually arrange with Scotty. I did it with a few times, and whoever was going back that direction. How you want to stop at August and play for a couple of days. I did it every single time. To me, that the best privilege about getting an invite to the Masters has been able to do that because it's the Masters is a special week and it's really amazing. But being in this, being having access and being allowed to play when there's nobody in
here is even better. No, It's really incredible.
Yeah, how much different is the course three weeks before than it is for the tournament?
Wow, there's all the stories about that, like on Wednesday night, all of a sudden, like Thursday morning, it's all faster and stuff, And that's kind of true. The fairways are a little bit longer. They're trying to make sure there's just plenty of grass and like it's not quite as sharpened up I would say, but it's still it's incredible. The greens are great. I mean, they might get two feet faster tournament week, you.
Know, pens are a little bit more accessible.
Pins are accessible, but it's still Augusta and it's very quiet.
There's always that's got to be weird, right, how quiet it is.
It's incredibly quiet. Yeah, it really is. And Magnolia Lane is really kind of special that week because it's when there's no tournament, because it's very frequent, you're the only person to drive. There's only a person drives up at once an hour or something, you know, and it's just a real kind of it's almost like your own golf club. It's a I don't know, it's just a really special thing.
And you have you have breakfast and they make you anything you want, and then you play eighteen and you have some lunch and maybe you go play another nine, you take an Augusta caddy. You kind of one of the dealers. You can come with your cat, but he just walks and kind of can take notes. You have to take an Augusta caddy outside of the Master this week, which is the best thing they do for us, because
those guys are great. I mean, some of them trying to tell you things that you probably already know, which is fine, but some of them have got wisdom about the course. It's just incredible, and you learn something new off them every time. And they've got all they tell all a lot of the stories and maybe some of the stories they're probably not supposed to tell about the Masters, and you kind of you learn a bit of the inside gossip from the caddies. And it's just a nice experience.
I mean, I've usually done it with another tour player or two the odd member here and there. It's just an incredible It's just a just one of the best privileges in golf. If you can get that invite to the Masters. You can come here pretty much from when you've got the invite. I don't think you could camp here, but you come here a couple of times and practice.
Just move in.
Yeah, you feel like you want to a little bit. It's just one of my favorite things in my career was coming here early, so I never missed it. I always did it.
Yeah, did you play your practice rounds typically with the same guys or same that you have, like a core guys that you did it with and then.
Yeah, not really here maybe on tour a little bit. It was the regular tournament. It was my peer group that the people my age which I would the names that everybody knows. It would be like Justin Rose, Trevor Ummerman, Adam Scott, I don't know, Carl Petterson, like all my age group that I grew up with all the way through amate A Golf, you would usually gravitate towards your
peer group like everybody else. Right, the Justin Thomas plays with Jordan's Beith because they've grown up together and that doesn't change in any age group. But the Masters, everyone has their own schedule at a major. You know, some guys want to play eighteen every day. Some guys want to play nine. Go hit balls, go play nine. Some guys want to chip and put around the greens for forty five minutes on every green. Everybody has a different program.
I would usually just get to the first tea and hope there was an older guy there to be honest with you, like someone who'd played here a lot. And I played with a lot of fun guys in practice rounds, you know, like Ian Wusnam and like Freddie and you'd play with Ben Crenchaw for nine holes or I mean,
it's just anyone who'd been here a lot. I felt was you could only just not only ask questions, just listen because usually when the experience plays at Augusta, they just start talking because it's fun to talk about the little stories I've had about I missed it here one time I made a seven, or I did this and did that. Little stories and you just gradually pick up stuff. And I really enjoyed getting to the first team and just seeing who was there.
Yeah, there is there like a story that one of the older guys told you that like clicked made you think differently about either a hole or shot or the course overall.
No, but when you come here, the caddies all talk about the grain, like and there isn't any grain on the greens per se. Wow, there's bent grass has a bit of grain, but it's not the grain. It's they When they say the word grain, they really mean everything breaks towards the twelfth green, really like they're always saying, oh, well, it break the grains that way, the grains that way,
the grains that way. And I didn't work it out forever, and then someone I can't remember who it was a time me, they said, twelve is the low point eleven Green, and twelve is the low point Rays Creek. If in doubt, the ball will go that way. And I'd never noticed it before that, and you kind of people talk about it the kind of the grain thing, and I never
really clicked for me. But then all of a sudden, I kind of went through it one day and I thought, right, I'm just gonna work out where twelve is in the book like in my head, and just just watch where the putt breaks. And it's actually true, like a straight a part that looks straight, and most of Augusta will
kind of want to go that way, doesn't. It's not obvious and it's not every part, and it's not so blatant that every partner the course breaks that way, but it's if in doubt or if it's a part that breaks away from twelve, it'll just break away just a little bit less than it looks, you know, there's just a natural slope that way. And gradually over the years of Caddy's drumming it into me and old school players, well,
of course it breaks that way. It always breaks that way, like it's just picking up little throwaway comments for me rather than actual out and out advice.
That makes sense, yeah, it does. So wrapping up, you gotta go to the course. I think we might do another one of these this week. What's something about Augusta or the Masters that so you just gay it on the couch watching, doesn't know? That's really cool, one little insider.
Oh, I don't know. Wha They just do everything perfectly well, like they do everything better than every other golf tournament, from driving in the gate to leaving. There is no stone unturned. There's a I don't know, it's just what do they not know? Everybody knows everything, don't they. The thirteenth tee is the coolest place in professional golf, without any doubt. There's not even a close second. It is
really a special place to be the thirteenth tee. There's a restroom on almost every tea at Augusta that you don't know is there for the players.
Yeah, you can't see you don't see anime, you know, and like.
When you first play it, you're like, there's nowhere to go to the toilet, there's too many people, and like and then you kind of learn all these there's all these little snecret little I mean, that's silly, but that's that no stone unturned for the players. There's a little hidden bathroom on almost every single tea that's pretty easy to access. It's like, wow, just they look after us, you know, it's just brilliant.
And then people looking for them all you won't see them.
It's a I don't know. And like every it's just that they just don't miss anything. They just don't miss a beat. I don't know how to every tournament, every organization, almost every in the world, they always get something wrong. Right, We've always got something to pick out. I can never find anything wrong with this place. It's just better and better every year. I'll come back this week and I'll see if I can come up with some secrets that
nobody knows. But there's some secrets that Augusta don't want people to know too, right, So it's a it's an incredible organization, and I believe unless the there's some players who probably just the course doesn't fit their eye and it rubs them the wrong way a little bit just because they don't play well here, so they're a bit jaded about the whole thing. But pretty much across the board, this is everybody's favorite tournament.
MC guy, Ernie just unloaded this year. Did you see those comments?
I think I saw.
I didn't read them specifically, but it's just he had so many great chances. I mean, I had a stack guy on my other podcast who's done like all the Strokes gain analysis, and Ernie like should have won like three or four based off of like how he's played like he just happened to be in a year where he got beat. He played the best final round from strokes game perspective of any player ever, and then he phil just happened to Yeah exactly.
So yeah, I mean I think him and Duval are the two players, and Greg Norman obviously West. Yeah, but Deval he was in the last group I think three years in a row and really didn't do much wrong and just didn't win. So someone played better and Ernie was the same someone just played better. You know that has to have a bad taste in your mouth, But I promise you Ernie loves his place and everything about it.
Yeah, because his nephew is playing this week, which is pretty cool.
Really.
Yeah, he won the he won the Cham British am Jovon Rabula. So but who's your pick?
Well, I would really love to see Rory win. I think he's said, regardless of the whole hype about the career Grand Slam, I just think he's a good guy and I just think it would it suits And if Rory doesn't win the Masters, the golf doesn't make sense at some point, right. He's just he's a special player and he just looks like he should play well here. I think Baba has to be right up there with
the favorites every time you play here. I think loose and free, and if he puts well, he's going to be in it because it's it's a long hitters left it's a left handed, long hitters golf course.
I heard so the stats guy, the same stass guy, said that last year Baba had the greatest driving performance ever in a tournament. He drove it as straight as longer and as long as Rory, Yeah, picked up like seven or eight shots on the field after tea, which is.
And he'll do that most years here because it's easy to fade a driver. Everybody can faded driver, right, I mean most people to stop fading their driver. Even pros are happy when they can just carve up a driver. And that suits here if you can hit it three hundred yards with a left handed fade, which is the right handed draw problem solved. But that's that's probably the long shot, I guess in the current state of affairs. I mean, Dustin's Dustin should be the favorite everywhere. He
plays as good as he is. Tommy Fleetwood, go, that's Tommy Fleetwood.
Thinking about it, how I like all week I've kind of been like Fleetwood, there's something.
And he's a great de He loves hooking it, loves in a drawer. It's a big drawer with his driver. And Rory is the only other one who hits a really big drawer with his driver. Fleetwood and he three or four majors. Whenever a guy wins a major, and when Danny Willett one here, people were like, well that was a bit out of the blue. But it wasn't
the two or three previous Majors. He'd been kind of putting his head in there, and he actually led Saint Andrews a lot the year before, two Majors before, he'd been in front for a lot of the tournament. Fleetwood's been that guy the last kind of two months. Yea, like up there in the Majors and they're deeper it on Sunday. Best player at the Rider Cup probably or one of the best players at the Rider Cup, yeah,
I think. And he looks like he's got the bottle to do it, you know, like the fire and if he gets in the mix, Look, he just plays well under that big pressure, right, So Fleetwood, that would be great.
Yeah, all right, Well, we'll talk to you again this week and uh excited to watch. Thanks for coming on.
Good stuff, No worries,