Today's episode is powered by td Ameritrade. Every stroke counts on the scorecard and every penny counts in the market. That's why ted Ameritrade is committed to straightforward pricing with no surprises, so you're free to swing with confidence. Visit tedomritrade dot com. Backslash Friday Egg member SIPC, Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Podcast. Today, I
have a Master special. Jeff Ogilvy came by our house here in Augusta and we broke down the front nine of Augusta and just kind of his thoughts playing it the architecture. And we will have the front nine today and then tomorrow Friday of Masters week, we will put up the back nine. So enjoy, and without further ado, here's Jeff Ogilvy. 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 Frida Egg Friday Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg Friday Egg Bright Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf. So you're you're in contention on the weekend. What are you thinking about before your Saturday Sunday rounds like, is there stuff that worries you early on?
Well, the first green might be the hardest green on the course maybe, and certainly the first the hardest first green in world tournament golf. I would say man Oakmont is a well renowned, ridiculous first hole and a really tough green to hit. But it feels like you're in the lap of the gods a little bit at Oakmond because you can land at the front right of the green and maybe it stays on, maybe it runs over the back. It's kind of you make bogey on the
first at Oakmond. You don't have to have done anything wrong. It's just part of Oakmond. You just hit you in the face on the first hole and then you move on. But the Masters, if you play the hole really sensibly, you can get a nice birdy put on the first, but if you hit it anywhere other than directly under the hole, you have the hardest part in the world. And sometimes if you miss it past the hole, it's
even a hard bogie. It's a brutal, easy first tee shot relatively, I mean, Tiger historically has struggled with it. But it's a gentle first tee shot and a simple looking iron shot until you realize what's up at the green, and the green is so savage, really hard to hit the ball under the hole too. The way the front half of the green is because if you land it, if you hit it short of a lot of pins, it rolls off the front, so it encourages you get
it to pin. It was always trying to get you to hit it to pin high, and if you hit it to pin high just a bit past it, you get a lot of stress. So it's one of the most un talked about. I guess it's more talked about now because it's on the coverage more and people talk about the first green more. But it might be the hardest green on the course, especially because it's the first hole and Ernie El's kind of showed that a few years ago.
Uh the false front you touched on it. I guess there's got a lot of vicious ones. Do you think false fronts are like one of the best ways to defend against the tour pro I think.
It's a great way to really encourage, not quite force, but really motivate a player to want to get it to pin high, especially in a situation where past pin high is going to ruin your day, Like you can't just just kind of go one club less and chunk it up to the front of the green on the first You can't because it's the chip could come back, you know, the false front thing. So I think you're right. I think it's a really good way to do it. And if you look at standards, I mean, every green's
got one really goes in the valley of sin. That's really what that is, right, It's a It's a good way to do it because it really really it rewards the player for being aggressive and hitting a quality shot.
Neathing too with it is for the lower trajectory player, you like your regular guy. It's a way for it to slow down the ball into it.
I think it's like the perfect for me. I go, of course, the perfect mindset is how do I make it easier for the eighth the ninety shooter, the alien handicapper, and how do I make it harder for the scratch player and the false front or at least the style I do it here at the Masters, That's exactly what it does. Because the guy can't spin. Is he's coming in with his hybrid or his four iron or five iron, he's running it up. It's actually a really nice screen
to run it up onto. But the guy who's flowing it up there with spin with an eight iron, he really has three or four yards to landity then that's it. So it's a super precise shot for the elite player and really quite a gentle, easy shot for the average player, which is ideal. It's bringing those two guys closer together as opposed to some modern stuff where it's all carry
and big long stuff. It just separates that scratch and eighteen handicappers so much that it kind of it's a it's just super intimidating for the average guy.
Is that second shot on too, like the most fun shot on the course? No, it was to Sunday pen.
Yes, and no. The Sunday pin might be the funnest pin on the course or one of I mean there's a lot of fun pins on the course. I mean, sixteen on Sundays pretty fun. And that pin on seven when they put it in that whole outspot and the bowl on the right hand side, that's a fun pin. But the one on two is hard. I kind of always laid it up onto a little bit. My mentality was if I could get it just in that front right bunker or around that front right bunker, and two,
I was happy. You know, I missed the green left a couple of times. I missed it in that left bunk, or a couple of times on the green or short left of that left bunker, trying to get really aggressive a few times and worked out that that's not really what you want to be and had some kind of
train rex on that hole. So I would always try to hit it next to the bunker off the tee, next to the bunker on the second shot, and you can get it anywhere on the green close to the hole if you're next to that front right bunk on two. It is a super fun it's a fun shot to watch.
It might be one of the fun of shots to watch on those guys at those long arms on the top of the hill and they land on the front of the green and they roll for about thirty seconds all way up the back and they roll right next to the hole. As a spectator. That would be a great place to stand on Sunday.
Yeah, there's a lot of holes right around there too. You could watch two, you could watch three, t you can watch I mean it's cost to eighteen.
Yeah, eighteen seventeen, you're really not far from sixteen if that is the sweet spot of the course really, Yeah, you've got seven green, two green, really kind of seventeen green, seventeen fair. You can kind of whip across the fifteen. That's kind of the heart of the course.
I would say, there's that hill that everything plays into, and it's similarly, you know, Mackenzie does that a lot of his places that focal point, and that's like it kind of is the folk that's like it's such a routing how they play down to it and then he takes you away from it and he keeps bringing you back at different points in the round.
Yeah, it's a it's a great route. I mean, it's I think serendipitous. Really. I think they were fortunate how it worked. He was obviously a genius router, and Jones might have been the best golf mind ever, like when it related to golf course and playing the course. I mean, he was truly genius, but there was serendipity involved in
how it all worked out. I mean it just it is such a good golf course to watch golf, and you can pretty much from that point, from the second green, seventh green, kind of eighth tea area, you can pretty much get to every hole with a five minute walk almost. You know, you're kind of really central and people keep You watch them come through two, and then you see that same group come through seven, and then later on
they come back through seventeen. It's like, yeah, it's all it's brilliant like that, because if it just went out, like the old course is the old course and it's brilliant, but it's a been awful course to watch golf, great course to play golf, but to watch it's awful. But this kind of matches all the creates, all the great golf and it makes it great to watch.
Yeah, it's incredible, almost like the Stadium course before the Stadium course.
Yeah, I mean everything about it is just I mean your head to say say perfect, I mean there is no perfect, but relative to everything else. If you want to find for a great place to watch golf and a place that's going to create great attractive golf to watch, right, it's all right here. It's incredible.
It's an expansive property but intimate.
Yeah, it seems I don't think it's quite as big as you think, but it seems so big because of there's no real lines of trees. They're like cops of trees, right, there's cops is the word, right, like groupings of trees. But you stand at the clubhouse, you can pretty much see across the whole course, which makes it seem like this big kind of park. You know, it's like it seems massive, big scale, fairways, big bunkers, but as you say, intimate because everything kind of comes back, it's kind of
near each other. But because it's so big scale, it seems big. But you realize that everything's kind of close and that helps with the rules and the feel, and you see you're constantly seeing other groups go up other holes and stuff from feeling that you just you're you're always kind of feel like you're part of the whole show. You're never separated on one spot way away from anywhere else. It's just brilliant.
That's gonna be one of the cool things compared to like your modern TPC choruses, the how close you are to all the competitors when you're playing.
Yeah, it's yeah, I mean you're teeing off on the first and you're watching the guys hit into the ninth and kind of sussing out the pin and where they're hitting it. And then and that happens kind of all
the way around. You're playing down two and you're watching him pitch into three, and then on seven, you're watching you're walking down six, say, and you're watching the shots into sixteen, and you can You're constantly kind of being reminded of what's coming and what's gone and who's doing what.
It's nice to feel a part of it. You know, there's a lot of courses where you're just way out there now right, Modern routings seem to just go wherever they want and don't take that sort of thing into account. But it's great to be out there with all the competitors and playing partners and feel like you're part of the whole show. That's the whole thing. It's just a whole The whole thing is just one big show, right, and it's brilliant.
A Buddy Mane Sean Martin did this. Strokes gained analysis of winners and the golf course where they picked up the most shots to the field, and the two holes that came out on top were number three and number fourteen.
Well, they're the two holes that you can have the most docile seeming holes. No bunkers on fourteen three has bunkers, but they're really easy to miss. You just kind of hit some sort of well modern play. These guys all seem to hit driver up short left of the green, but it's just been a three or two or three on or a hybrid these days to the top of the hill and a wedge under the green, and it's relatively simple. And four teen is driver in a nine
to nine or something. But they'd have two greens that if you miss them in the wrong spots you have almost zero chance to make par and a big chance to make six or seven or eight. You can just they turn you into idiots. That doesn't actually surprise me, Like I think everyone would have thought twelve or thirteen or eleven or fifteen.
But it's.
The third I think is a genius hole because the only way to really make birdie or get it close is to really risk missing it short of the green. And if you miss it short of the green, it's almost an impossible up and down. It comes all the way back and you're twelve feet below the level of the green. To this crazy pitched green, and the only way to get that pitch close if you do miss it short is to risk leaving it short again. You know, So once you've missed it short, unless you say, right,
I'm just going to make five. And by the way, it's not an easy five because your little pitch will go twelve feet past the hole and at that'll break six feet. And so if you want to have a good score, if you want to make three, you have to risk living it short. If you want to make four, once you leave it short, you have to risk leaving it short again. And that just kind of follows the whole hole it's and fourteen is the miss on fourteen is long right, but you'd ever't want to miss like
an eight or nine. Iine too, and they're usually it's.
Really hard to miss long right for a good player too.
It is especially rady, especially a righty. Yeah, it's not the thing you usually miss short right orlong left right, which is the genius on twelve, but it's a there's the three of the four pins on fourteen generally are oh, I want to make birdie there. It's kind of one of your last birdie chances. You've got fifteen and sixteen, but seventeen and eighteen are really tough, so you kind
of wanted to get something going on fourteen. You've got a nine, nine or eight iro into a pin that it's all going to roll towards, but you kind of have to risk landing it short of the green to get it really close sometimes, and if you miss it short of fourteen, you definitely I mean, that's a one N ten up and down. So what fourteen is an amazing green?
One of my favorite things I've heard you say, and I think you said it. I'm not sure if you said it on our pod or on the stay of the game, but you said, like, the greatest holes are the ones where if you want to make an easy par it's like, you know, if you want to make parts really easy, but if you want to make Birdie, and it's really hard. So from what I'm hearing, like three and fourteen are holes where if you're in the hunt,
your expectation almost changes. Where those are holes you feel like you got to get Birdie right, Yeah, yeah, for sure, So all of a sudden it switches versus the tough holes coming in where you're like, par is a good score. So that expectation flip then brings bogie or worse into play.
Yeah, like eleven is so obviously impossible. You're quite content to go two fours and two fives to the week. Probably that would be okay. You know, most winners of the Masters probably have a bogie or two and eleven, So you're quite happy. I am it away from the grain. Everyone aims at the right edge of the grain and tries to hit it in the right spot. And maybe on Sunday these modern roars and dustens and they're super aggressive and they'll go for it. But generally you're quite
content if you make five on eleven. Oh well, everyone's making five on eleven. But see three and fourteen. They are legitimate birdie holes. But the only way to make Bertie is to risk making bogie, which is the genius of the whole course really and all great courses in that they give the great player a par pretty much. If you want to make par, if you give up, Bertie will give you a par. But as soon as you want to make Bertie, that's when you bring bogie.
And if you want to make eagle, you're going to bring double. In to me. That is absolutely perfect because it's probably relatively easy for a good player playing well to cruise around here, have a decent week, finish top twenty, take no risks, put a nice check in his pocket, and just walk away and get invited back next year and happy days. But to win the tournament you have to go for everything. And when you go for everything, that's when it can all go wrong.
It almost too, becomes enhanced when you're in position two. So like if you or because like if you're coming down on that back nine and you're in fifteenth, you know you have a shot if you play a great nine, but if you're in fiftieth, like it is what it.
Is, yeah, yeah, it's It just makes you so nervous this course, and the only way to make birdies and have do great shots is to take on shots you don't want to take on. Like on a normal week, you just wouldn't hit that second shot to fifteen. I mean, it looks like you're hitting a three on on the top of a Volkswagen Beetle. It just wow, this is
a really, really hard shot. But if you want to win, you've got to hit it, and you've got to get your head into that place where obviously guys like Phil and Tiger seem to get it into that fearless swing, that Rory kind of that that free swing. It's like, you know what, the only way I can hit this shot is to be loose. But the difficulty of the shot and the potential train wrecks the challenge is to
get loose with that much trouble around. It's really that's to me, the whole essence of the Masters is to swing loose with hyper aggressive, really risky plays, and that's a really difficult thing to do.
It's the counterintuitive of GoF Like it's a really scary shot and most people get cautious, and then when you get cautious, you're dead.
Yeah. Human nature is to like, well, this is risky, so I'm not sure about this. I'll just carefully, like just feed it up there so I don't get any trouble. Well, that's why you get into trouble, because you get careful about it.
It's funny. I always say I'm like a scuba I'm like a snorkeler when I play golf, Like if I get a little under the water, i'm fine. But as soon as I get certain spot, that's when I start protecting and I start losing it. But that's what makes you guys so great. You're nuclear subs. Like everybody that's playing in the Masters, for the most part, has the ability to get there. But then this is a golf course that makes it even harder to get there because it's even scarier.
Right it is, and I mean it's it's all part of it. So the whole picture, I mean, the build up to the Masters is outrageous. Every media official in the world is here, everybody's watching. It's the one everybody wants to win, at least in April. It's the one everyone wants to win because it's the first one for six or nine months. It sets up the whole year for everybody. I mean, it sets up your career. It's
just such a huge deal. And it's a course that just and so your kind of anxious performance anxiety anyway, Like it's hard to be loose and free, but the only way to play it well is to be loose and free. So you've got that fight in yourself that you're desperate to win or you really want to win really badly, and that usually creates tension and tightness and being careful. But the only way to play it well
is to be the other way around. And if you look at historically, guys like Fred Kapple's play there every year. I mean that's the pit of me of a loose skulfer. You know, it's phil you know it's win or oh well, it doesn't matter, like I just want to win. So that's really those sort of guys are going to play well. And I think that's why it's so hard for guys when it like Rory at the moment when it becomes
their thing. You know, it was Norman and Duval and Ernie Els and it was that they just every year it gets harder to be loose, because how do you that one thing you really want the world the most? You have to be looser than every other week. That's a really really hard thing to do, you know.
I mean you see with Tiger ever once once way Yang, like, I think that's like a fundamental thing, like nobody had beaten them. He'd never lost in that moment, and he lost in that moment. It's like he actually decided you never had experienced it, you know, it's like you.
Don't know, Yeah, there'd be an argument to say, like a psychologist convention would sit down and like analyze the whole thing. But if he'd lost one or two early, yeah, he might actually still be winning more. Now he might have ended up with more. I mean you saw Nick Jack got comfortable with losing because I mean he won a lot, but he finished second a lot and third
a lot. Tiger never lost. What was he like fifty and oh when he started Sunday and the leaders something outrageous number and when he's there's some Quite a lot of the magic was gone obviously when Yang beat him, because it had been going on for someone. At some point he was going to lose, right, I mean, you can't win forever. It's it's interesting. I mean obviously a lot of other stuff happened too, but it is interesting.
Jack lost more than he won. So it's almost like the loss the losses were he was a bit more teflon for the losses. It was a bit more like he didn't develop the scars because he was used to losing along with winning all the time.
It's crazy. It's like Goth for mortals is a game of ninety nine percent failure. Like my buddy said this to me, Like at one point he's like so that one percent when you actually succeed is like it's the greatest feeling in the world. And but for Tiger it wasn't that way because and that's what makes you better is the failure. It makes you better a lot of times.
Right, Well, that's what they say, and you definitely learn a lot more from when you get it wrong. Then when you get it right. When you get it right, you walk away and say how easy is this when you get it wrong? As all, I've got to do something better next time. You don't walk away from a success and think I've got to do something better next time. You know, or you don't see what you did wrong because you won.
It's interesting through three usually were you thinking like we I got to get off to a good start here because of the n X few.
Horse you certainly want to be under before you're over at the Masters. And if you've messed the first up, which is very easy to do, you bog you the first, it's not the end of your day because you've got two and three. And as I was talking about three, three is tricky, but it's still a BIRTI hole. You still got a sandwich or a wedge. But two you want to make bertie on two and hopefully be under power before. You want to be one under on the fourth t Maybe two that would be great because four's
incredibly difficult. Five he's going to be even harder now, but it's always been tricky. Six, depending on the pin, that's a little tough. That's a really tough stretch those three holes. So, yeah, you want to be under before you you want to be under before you're over.
Yeah.
Seven is a pin is a pin specific thing to like six. Six with the pin low on the bottom tier and seven with the pin in that bowl and the right are legitimately decent birdy chances. But seven with that pin on the kind of the high one on the left just over the bunker where it crowns off both ways, hard to hit it close, and it's playing a little bit long, and it's early in the morning. You get a five on into there, it's like, wow,
that's a really hard hole. And six with the pin on the high tier, that crazy high thing on the right, that is one of the toughest seven or eight onns or six onnes you'll ever have. So they can flip six and seven can go from easy to difficult, But you can have that day where four, five, six, and seven of four of the hardest holes on the course. So yeah, you want to be under before you're over.
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This guy did a strokes gained analysis Joe Peter. He took all the trackers, he scraped it so he had stroke gains statistics from last year. One of the things he found there's only one double or worse on eight and then but then there was very few eagles. It's like one of the least varied holes.
It's a tough eagle hole because I mean, you see everyone gets in and watches on Saturday and Sunday and doggrel phil or Rory or something and in this swinging it in, but it's a really big two hits for most players. Now there's no run on the fairway. That bunker on the rod is really hard to avoid some reason. It's quite magnetic because the left trees are really rough.
But there's no real train wreck on eight. Even if you hit it in the left trees off the tia, you kind of punch it up the hill, hit whatever you can on the middle of the grain. It's quite a receptive grain to hit it within twenty five feet because it's high on both sides. It doesn't repel balls, it brings them back towards the hole. So it's relatively easy if you want it to make again. If you want to make par and eight every time, easy as just take a punch bowl. Yeah, it's kind of like
a punch bowl. And the fairway is really massively wide. If you just safe out to the left, safe up on top of you can lay it up as far right as you want. You can hit it one hundred yards right of the green. Long you got a football field to hit it into right of the green. But then it gets difficult to hit it close for three, but hit it inside six feet for three or stuff, but hit it inside thirty feet quite easy. So if there is, it's a birdie and parhole. Really, I mean
the whole field. That's what your stats say too. I would have said, yeah, most of the half the field make five, half the field make four kind of.
I was looking at the old pictures and there's center line bunker is now the rate bunker. Do you think if they opened that right side up you'd see more eagles because you're actually heading from the proper angle line.
Yeah, a little bit. I mean they probably were ten years in front. With the depth. How far that bunker was from the tee. I mean it's a three ten carry or something uphill, which is turning out to probably be about right now. Right. But when they did it, it's been there my whole career pretty much. I think it was. I could sometimes not get it to the bunker right. I was forty yards from carrying it, and it's a deep bunker, and it's a tricky shot out
of it, but it's not the worst. So people are willing to take it on because again, if you hit it in the bunker, then you just lay it up and hit a wedge on the green and it's really it adds half a shot, like it's not adding three shots, like hitting it in the water on thirteen or something. Yeah, I don't know. I don't mind it. I don't. I think it's a pretty good balance for how we're playing
right now. I think there's room on the course for a par five that only the really strong guy I can get to and too, and it's a really brave shot. The second shot, it's you've got a hook quite solidly, like some sort of three wood or something up and to get it on the green to anywhere close, And that's a really difficult shot off upslope. And whenever you try to do that off an upslope, you generally miss
it right. And that hole allows you to miss it right, so your brain says, okay, it's okay if I don't hook this, So everyone generally just flares it out to the right wedges it onto the green. I think it's a good balance, Actually, I like it.
That's because when you miss the rate and then you're tripping over those mounds, it's really hard to hit it close, which makes it hard to make birdie.
But it's still a relatively easy path. Yeah, it don't make it hard.
To make car it's but if you get the ball over the left, especially with those rate pins, it's easier. It's much easier to make it. So if you.
Breathe, yeah, I mean strategically it ticks every box right, Like, the more risk you take on the tee it's closer to the bunker, the easier, the less you have to hook your second shot on. The easier it is. The more that the less risk you take off the tee, then the harder it is to hit it on the green. And it's just exactly the same on the second show. If you take no risk, the further right you go, the hardier wedge. The further left you go, the easier
your wedge. But the further left you go, you risk going down into all the flowers and the trees and the rubbish. I mean, this course does that all the way around. It ticks strategy one O one and in an interesting different way all the way around it. They just get it. It's just right.
Names the easiest driving hole right maybe statistically, but.
It's easy if you can turn it over. And it's another one of those holes. It coaxes you into trying to take more than you need to on like you really want to hit a big high draw because it goes further, like it has more of a forward bounce rather than a sideways bounce. It's a relatively easy tea shot to hit the fairway, but again it's a bit
like the second shot on eight. It kind of tries to suck you into taking on more than you need, and because you don't want, if you kind of flare it a little bit, it's pretty easy to not hit in the right trees, but you end up with this downslope ball below your feet six iron into this green that really isn't fit for that set up. So it
encourages you to take on more than you want. And you'll see a lot of guys hit it in the left trees because they're trying to kind of get those big bounces and get it down the bottom of the hill and like a wedge in which makes it relatively easy, but it's hard to get it to that spot. So easy to hit the fairway, but again it dangles the carrot like it kind of sucks you when you're trying to take on more than you should.
It's this guy said that approach shot that front ball is the easiest approach shot Joe with a stat on the whole court, do you just say name?
Oh yeah, Yeah, the front pin definitely one hundred percent, because it's almost impossible to hit it over the ninth green like it doesn't matter. It plays quite long because
it's depending on how far you hit it. It's kind of uphill, and it effectively plays uphill because you're hitting it off such an extreme people always end up sure, always end up short because you're nine on or go five or five, you're off such a downslope it's hard to get it in the air the second shot, So nine one goes really flat, so it hits the ground before it normally would, and it's ain't bouncing forward unless it lands up top, so you can really take quite
a lot more club. Missing the green to the ride isn't a problem, so that front and anything really that goes twenty or thirty feet past it will generally come back towards the pin. So yeah, that's certainly the easiest pin on the green, but it's also the one that you can if you don't know what you're doing, you can get it wrong too.