Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode on Pebble Beach in the US Open is brought to you by our friends over at b dratty. They've got an exciting new program. It's a monogram program, so they it's a campaign and you can go on the website and you can add any you know, any type of monogram to your two classic b dratty polo.
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a custom shirt. So all you have to do is go to bdradty dot com and use the promo code fried Egg and you'll get twenty per sent off your order. So I would definitely check that out at bratty dot com. And exciting week they are in the merchandise tent, So if you're coming on the grounds, go go say hi to the b Dratty boys in the merchandise tent. So today's episode we sit down with Garrett Morrison, who is
the news hire the Fried Egg. So Garrett is a now our managing editor and will be starting He just started in June, so expect to see a lot more content from Garrett. He will be writing, he will be editing my hack words, and he will be kind of building out more editorial for The Fried Egg. So should have a lot more new stuff coming on the fried egg dot com and enhance a lot of the stuff that we're already doing with the newsletter and podcast and
content in general. So very excited to have Garrett on and excite for you guys to hear his thoughts on Pebble He's lived out here for the last couple of years, teaching at the Stevenson School, which is actually inside the gates of Pebble Beach. So without further ado, here is Garrett Morrison and our first of our pods from Pebble Beach.
I miss the 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 brid egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run.
Off of the course. So you're moving to Oregon?
Yeah? Yeah, it's exciting.
Portland area.
Portland area just outside of Portland, in a town called Happy Valley. And we could afford to buy a house there, which was the main motive to move away from Pebble Beach, which is not a place where we can buy a house. And so we are packing up all our stuff and going north.
That's exciting. What have you ever been? Have you ever heard of that mcmhimon's pub course, Edgefield?
Yeah? I have.
I went on a bachelor party there, like my best friends bachelor party group of like college buddies that aren't real golfers, and we had like the best time, Like you know, we had guys that never played golf that were like having a great time and it was so neat. It was like one of the coolest places I've ever bet.
What's the course?
Like, I mean, it's not anything great, but it's just like so approachable. You you walk in and the you know, the bar is like the clubhouse, and I think it costs a dollar to rend a golf ball, but then they give you, you know, just a putter and a wedge and the longest hole is like seventy yards and it plays like straight up hills and straight down hills. There's some blind shots and this little par three and
you know, you hit off mats. But it was it was so easy to play, you know, and so fun because like I think we spent spend like three hours there, and you get any non golfer out somewhere for three hours on golf course. It's kind of a big success, right.
I like incidental golf. That's sort of incidental golf. Like you you go to a place to to drink some beer and oh, hey there's a golf course there, maybe maybe we should play, and people are into it, right, who wouldn't normally be into playing golf.
They have an eleven hole course and a twenty two hole course. Really yeah, and then it's like they do like mcmenumons, I think, like a distillery brewery right type place.
Yes it is. Yeah, there are other locations in Portland. They're like city locations of mcmentimon's it's a whole thing.
I think this one's edge shield. Okay, you gotta check that out.
Yeah, definitely for sure. Yeah, there are some good places in Portland. It's an interesting golf town because there's like a variety of courses. There are the kind of serious eighteen hole courses that you would expect to be there, but then there are a few places here and there that are just kind of funky. In Oregon in general, there's a lot of pasture golf. There's a lot of backyard golf, just families, random people who have built golf
courses on their land. And there's the Portland Children's course that Seamus is working on right now that might be pretty cool eventually. And so it is a really interesting like golf area because of the different options available, and it's a little bit undiscovered up there, even though Bandon is in the same state.
I feel like the whole Pacific Northwest is undiscovered. Yeah, outside of like the places that have had a budget to pay for marketing and pr Like, you know, everybody knows about Sylvie's because they did it massive PR thing when they opened Gamble Sands. You know, they they push hard. But then there's all kinds of places like that, you know, Wine Valley, that all the Dan Hickson stuff, you know, and then you have all that Chandler Egan. You're gonna be You're gonna be deep in Chandler Egan.
I'm gonna it's is gonna grow, Yeah, because I you know, Chandler Egan did the the first nine at Pacific Grove, and so I've I've always sort of been interested in him. Obviously, he did the work at Pebble Beach that everybody's obsessed with. But yeah, he was located in Oregon for a lot of his you know, kind of golf architecture career. There's just a ton of Chandler Eagan courses around and he did some interesting work. For sure.
He's from Chicago, you know, Chicago neks.
It always goes back to Chicago.
Yeah. So you know, everybody tries to move into these gates here at seventeen mile Drive. You're moving out, I know.
Yeah, Well, you know, the reason I'm here is complicated. I'm a I'm a teacher at a boarding school, or I was a teacher at a boarding school, I suppose I should say. And so we moved here because I got this job, and because we decided to live on campus and I was a member of the residential faculty, and so we live here for free essentially, which sounds like a really good deal, and it definitely is a really good deal. But it's the only reason that we're
able to live here. And so, yeah, it's it's been a lot of fun. But I'm also excited about about the new adventure.
Yeah. So you know, a lot of listeners probably don't know, you know that if they don't, if they're not on Twitter, if they aren't you know, reading the website all the time. Garrett is our new managing editor of The Friday eg. We're growing, It's got them from one to two. Got a tall task o. We're doubling cleaning up my my garbage writing it's not garbage any so, uh, Garrett, I'm
excited to have him come on here. And uh so that's why he's moving from from Pebble Beach, which is uh, I almost feel for you.
Yeah, you know, it's it is kind of a golf mecca, obviously, it's and and people have pointed out that irony, You're you're you're going off to be a golf writer, a golf journalist or whatever, and you're moving away from Pebble Beach. That doesn't seem quite right. But it's obviously a great place to go on a vacation and to have like a once in a lifetime experience. There are a few
better places for that. But to be a local golfer in this area is a little bit weird because there are basically two golf courses that you can play on a regular basis affordably.
They don't have a good local right at Pebble.
Beach, the local rate sucks. It's like six hundred dollars. Oh yeah, it's not a local rate. Yeah. So I've played a lot of Pacific Grove Muni, which obviously is one of my favorite places in the world, and that's great. I play at Monterey Pines a good bit, and those are essentially the two courses that you can play on a regular basis. You can the local rate at Poppy Hills. The NCGA rate is pretty good, but it's not like I'm going out to Spyglass every Thursday and playing a
round of golf. You know, this is this is a spot for vacationers. It's not really it's not really a golf spot for locals.
Yeah, it's it's ironic, how like you know, if you're if you're not a resort guest, like and just the whole area, because then once you get out there isn't you know, there's a lot of golf, but there's not a lot of golf that's like built for everyday play.
No.
And you know, like if you're not a member at.
NPCC, which is one of the most expensive places in the world, if you remember right, then you know there's there's not much or Cypher's point, there's not much for the you know, everyday golf.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah, the places here are built to be destinations, which is really cool. But it makes the dynamic of being here and being an obsessive golfer as I am, a little bit odd. So I'm actually looking forward to the options in Oregon and being able to go a number of different places, have places to go with my kids. That'll be fun.
What got you back? You know, I know you kind of stopped playing golf when you were in grad school and you you know, fell kind of away from golf. What got you back into golf?
I got back into golf after moving here and just sort of taking walks around the area with my son, who was a baby at the time, so I'd have them in the stroller and i'd be taking these walks around the Pebble Beach area, which is where the school I work at is located. Basically, this school is between Spyglass Hill and Poppy Hills and Pebble Beaches just down
the road. So when i'd go out in the stroller and take these walks, I'd see these awesome golf courses and they seemed a little bit unattainable, but I of course knew about them because I had been into golf when I was younger, and I had specifically been into golf course architecture, and so I had studied these courses in a way and kind of knew them, and it was cool to see them in person, just walking around
the neighborhood. Then one day I was down in Pacific Grove again taking a walk with my son in the stroller, and I was at a Silmar State beach, which has a great stretch of paths along the ocean, and I was pushing him along one of these paths, and Pacific Grove Golf Links came into view the back nine at Pacific Grove Golf Links, which is routed through these natural dunes,
and I just thought that it looked amazing. It looked accessible, it looked like a place that I'd feel comfortable walking up to and playing, even though I hadn't been out on a golf course for a while. And so I got interested in playing again. I played a little bit
at Pacific Grove. There are members of the faculty here at this school who are really into golf, and they started inviting me out for rounds, and so I got my game a little bit back into shape, and pretty soon I was completely obsessed with the game again, just like I had been when I was twelve years old, you know. And so that's essentially how I got back
into playing. And you know, around late twenty sixteen, started a golf Twitter account and began writing about the game, and that has snowballed from there.
It's yeah, it's get back into it, and everybody, I feel like, ever, I think that your story is a common because I think so many people once they graduate college or go to college, graduate college, there's there's a lot of people that you know, the obviously there's golf nuts that never fall out of it, but like there are a lot of golf nuts that fall out of it because like early on in life, it becomes if you live in a city very difficult, or if you're
in grad school like or once you're in college, like college was probably the time I played the least amount of golf, yes, and and right after college because like it's just it's expensive and it's hard to find the time at that time in your life.
Yeah, yeah, no, I basically didn't play at all between ages twenty and thirty two, and I never even have the impulse to go play. And yeah, I think part of it was the cost, and also part of it was just none of my friends played golf, right, Nobody I knew who is my age, who was in their twenties played golf. And that definitely changed once I started working here and a lot of my friends were in their thirties and forties, and part of what they would do on the weekends sometimes is go out, find a
group and play golf. Uh, And so that gets you back into it. But yeah, when I was in graduate school, I was in graduate school at Northwestern so in Evanston, which is just north of Chicago, and and there's that's where Canal Shores is, and you know there's some cool, affordable options around there. Obviously, you know the golf well in the area, but nobody I knew was going out to those golf courses except for a couple of professors here and there, and so I think that's a big reason why.
Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's it's hard to go play by yourself.
Yeah, exactly.
So with uh, with you've been you're the local here, mm hmm. We got this week, we got a big tournament going on here. You know, I know you're moving, but there's an influx of people in Monterey.
There seemed to be. The population seems to have increased recently. Traffic's a little worse, right right, traffic has become a nightmare.
So what uh, what are your impressions? I know, you know you've you've been out at Pebble you you covered, you were out there for the at and T you played a media day, and then you've lived here obviously, so you've lived on grounds or what, uh, what are you expecting this week at the US Open?
Well, I think we're going to see a classic Pebble Beach US Open basically If there's not a whole lot of weather, the golf course will still be challenging, but relatively benign compared to say, Shinnecock Hills last year. And if we do get a little bit of wind, it'll get nasty really quickly. You know. The golf course is hard. It's obviously narrow. They've been working on making the rough thicker. The greens are presumably going to be going to firm
out as the as the week goes on. So yeah, I mean, essentially it'll be a hard golf course, but I think it'll be really familiar to people who have seen a lot of Pebble Beach tournaments. You know, they haven't done anything radical out there.
Yeah, that's I think one of the things with Pebble is that it's the venue that requires like the least almost work from the USGA, because they know how it is. They you know, they've come here so many times that it's like, you know, they do this, and they do this, and then they're kind of set and ready to go. What what are your kind of general thoughts with how they present the course for this week.
So they have obviously brought in the mowing lines a lot, you know, that's the main difference that you'll see see between how pebble beach is presented normally during the pro am and how pebble beach is presenting during the during the US Open. And so it's a couple of the holes look a little awkward as a result, and you'll see bunkers kind of lost in the rough. You'll see holes that just seem like they should be wider, using rough as a as a penalty. And so that's the
main setup move that I've seen out there. It was just like this during the pro am, right, So they they the USGA came in and started doing its work a while ago. I believe we saw it during the US Amateur like this as well.
Right, that's when, right when they had started, you could start to see where they were, yeah, narrowing up, like specifically, I remember eleven, which I think that's that's like one of the downfalls of it is like I think eleven would be, especially with the modern game, the way it is one of the most compelling holes. If the you know, when people watch pebble this week, you can look at eleven and you can say, wow, that fairway should be double the size at least maybe maybe two and a
half times the size. And you look at this and it's a you know, it's kind of one of those three those shortish par fource, which it's not a short par force, not driveable, but it's one of those driving pitch holes that have become really fascinating. And you know, I think, like what's going to happen is people just are going to hit iron up the left and you know then or you know, fairway would up the left, and that's that everybody's going to do the same thing.
Whereas that green, the way it sits, the angle of it and the slopes of it, you have an opportunity where driver up the right would leave you a really weird shot. But people might pull driver to try and get that you know, fifty yards shot because the mentality of pros has been banged into their head. Get closer whenever you can, and that would be that's like one of those holes where it has the counterintuitive ability to challenge somebody that that does the status quo.
Right. Yeah, So eleven, just to just to describe it, obviously, it's a hole that plays uphill. It's about three hundred and ninety yards. The green receives shots best from the left. There's the green is angled that way, it runs uphill that way, and there's a bunker up hill very much. So, yeah, so it's a very small grain. I believe the small right.
To left right over that that's bunker. So if you're over on the right, which is now, like you know, from where the right edge of the faraway is, there should be forty more yards of fairaway exactly, but like nobody's going to be over there, and that's where you have this really weird shot with the green running away right.
Well, so the thing that has happened in the setup is that they've moved the fairway over to the left, as you've suggested right there. So they they've moved it to the good angle into the green. Right now, you don't really have a choice.
You have to play a whole They hit it right correct, right.
Lights here you go. Yeah, and for the twenty ten US open, I believe that they did the opposite. They moved it over to the right, which is which is just sort of subistic. Yeah, exactly, I would. I would. You could argue that that's worse, and so maybe it's a good move that if they were going to narrow that fairway by half that they move it over the other direction. But it's a good example of how the
course becomes slightly less interesting. You know, the eleventh hole is not necessarily the most brilliant hole in the world, even as it is, but the width of that fairway and the way that the green receives from a particular angle does introduce at least some sense of lateral strategy.
See. That's the thing though I think about it, is like that's a that hole. And this is something about golf courses, like you know, you just get done with a six hole stretcher, eight hole stretch on the ocean. Yeah, really nine if you count three. So you just go through like probably the most brilliant stretching golf and everybody will bag on that hole, but I think it's a
brilliant hole. It plays uphill, it gets it's a connector hole, but it's got like you know, you just played like you know, you just had you know, if you wanted to compare it to a song, you just had Jimmy Hendrix wailing away on the guitar for like, you know, three minutes and it's time to just you know, bridge something to our next, our next interval, and it provides like a really different hole than what you've seen the last you know six, where you're playing up a hill,
you're you know, and you feel like you can get one after eight, nine, ten, which is among the hardest you know, three hole stretches in golf.
Right, yeah, And so it's gettable, but you can also have a hard time on that hole. Don't you think it would be would it be more interesting or would it be just cliched if there were something actually guarding the left side of that hole? So is to make the play over to the left less attractive because there's currently no reason not to go there.
Right to me, it seems like so there's there's like seventy yards about of width that you could have.
Right, yes, yeah, it's huge.
So for maybe sense like that would be like a great place for a center line bunker that skews left.
Yeah, right, that's that's what I can And this is a great example of the Pebble Beach discussion that a lot of people interested in golf course architecture have. It's a great course, like to be clear, Pebble Beach is amazing, but there's this impulse that I have, and I try to fight against it a little bit, not to nitpick everything that I think is wrong with the course because it's so brilliant and because it's in such a great setting, and because it also falls short in its presentation in
a lot of ways. You at least I have this tendency to go around thinking about what could be and to ignore what's actually there. The eleventh is a good example, because I just said a couple of minutes ago, I don't think it's that brilliant of a hole, and maybe it's not fully what it could be, but it's a good hole, yeah, well placed in the.
Round, yeah. Like and for the land that it goes, you know, probably it jounts across some of the least interesting land on the golf course, and it's very you know, simple. It's like, you know, two would be an example of some of the least interesting land on the golf course. And they have one of the boldest you know, they have some of the boldest stuff there with that, surely Sahara Bunker And what do you what do you think
about in general? So like a lot of people will be like, oh, the inland holes aren't that great?
Yeah, Well, I think that just saying in a blanket way the inland holes aren't great is an impoverished take like that that's not If you play those holes, you see that at least some of them are obviously really good. Some of my favorites would be three. I mean, if we're considering that an inland hole, but that's a really good hole. Thirteen is one of my favorites uphill par four with you know, a fair way and a green that used the slopes of the land in really good ways.
Sixteen is a fun hole to play. You know, there are a lot of interesting inland holes that if you just take them for what they are and don't try to compare them to what's on the cliffs, are great holes. At the same time, I do think that there are some weak inland holes right now and some just okay ones, and maybe that's a little bit disappointing, but it also serves as a contrast for what's out on the cliffs. So I don't think twelve is a great hole. I
don't think fifteen is a great hole. In fact, fifteen really could use some work right now.
But they've got a couple of pop bunkers out there. That just like it's like, what where, where did this come from?
Arnold Palmer believe, I think is more of a rhetorical question.
But you know, I'm glad that you gave any the exact answer. But like you know, they just pop up and you're like, wait, this doesn't really fit here. It doesn't fit the style. It's like the stylistic and that's like the one of the crazy things to me is that of you know, a place like this should have, if anything, it should have eye candy. It should be like the most eye candy spot in the world, right But from a from a golf architecture standpoint, it couldn't
be further from eye candy. It's like I I source all the way around with like there's mismatched bunkers, there's you know, it's.
Just a field of bunkers out there, and those all appeared in the first decade of the two thousands. In the first decade of the twenty first century, that whole used to have very minimalistic bunkering. In fact, it didn't really have any fairway bunkers. There was maybe one about thirty yards short of the green and a couple of green side but of course Pebble Beach started getting anxious about how it was being played by the pros by one pro by one pro in particular, crazy thing one
pro Yeah, yeah, initials t W Yeah. It's the way that he was playing the course freaked him out, and all of a sudden, all these bunkers appeared. The reaction was to add bunkers rather than add length, because there's not much more length to be added out there. A lot of bunkers appeared in the first decade of the two thousands, and not just on that hole, but other holes. If you just look at the Google Earth historical imagery, you'll see the response to the distance explosion and to Tiger.
It's interesting because I think it kind of changed the ethos of the course in the sense of like it went from a course that was challenging in a very subtle and nuanced form, where the challenge came from these small greens. That those small greens really freak out really good players more so than the average player, because the average players only going to hit a handful means every round, and then you throw in uneven lives, which a lot of times, you know, if I'm playing with a twenty handicap.
I'll be like, hey, you know you chunk that because the ball was like three inches above your feet, so you should just joke up, you know, because the club was way too long, And they're like, oh, I didn't even realize that, And like I think about it because like if I have a wedge from from like a side hill lie with the three inches above, I'm like freaking out. I'm like thinking, like how far right am I aiming? Because the ball goes way left off this
lie with a high lofted club, you know. And this is like the type of challenge that pebble presents is you never have a flat lie and you're hitting into these little tiny targets, and by by narrowing and adding bunkers, it just removes some of the thought from it because it just started to become more of a uniform. This is hit it here, hit it here, hit it here, test right.
I think that's true. And covering some of the fit faway and rough covers up some of the most severe lies that you might have in the fairway.
That's a great point.
Adding bunkers in addition to that, on both sides of the green and both sides of the fairways removes some of the places where you might play your ball and get in trouble. You know, a common move in the first decade of the twenty first century at Pebble Beach was to add a bunker on the other side of the green, or add a bunker on the other side of the fairway when there was already a bunker just
on one side of the fairway. At a lot of holes at Pebble Beach, there would be that bunker on one side of the fairway and a bunker on one side of the green. That would dictate the strategy of the hole. You know, play close to the bunkers and you'll have better angles. By adding bunkers on both sides. Your vision is directed at the middle of the fairway. A lot of the times you're not trying to play
to the edges so much. And when you don't play to the edges, you're not getting some of those crazy bad angles that you might have found previously.
It's something that it like narrows your focus. Like it's like, you know, I think one of the things that and you see it when you play say a Tom Doak or like a Billcourr course, and I remember you know, it's like when you leave, when they leave a side of the green open your view, your eye gets drawn there because really good golfers think about where they can miss, and if you have less places you can miss, it narrows your focus in a way, if that makes sense totally.
And a good example is the fourth hole, Yeah, Kevin Moore has talked about this on Twitter, where that fairway is normally very wide. It extends out to the left away from the cliffs, and when the fairway is that wide, you're thinking, maybe I should go left here, Maybe I should play an iron toward that bunker out to the left instead of risking the cliffs and on that whole,
I don't think that's that good of a play. I think you should probably just hit it up the gut and let the slope of the fairway take your ball a little bit to the right. And it's really not that risky of a shot. You'd have to hit a really bad shot to end up on the beach. So when they take that left portion of the fairway away, you're just thinking, that's my option. I better just put
it up that part of the fairway. I don't have the option to play left and so now everybody's going to be approaching the hole in what's probably the strategically or the tactically correct.
Way, and its homogenizes the product of the golf.
I agree with that at the same time, so we're saying all these things that could be better, So we've fallen.
Into the track exactly. I know.
I know that. I know that. So I want to ask you. I know that the take that Pebble Beach is overrated annoys.
You a little bit, right, yeah, it does, so expand on that a little bit. Well, I think it's in terms of when I think about overrated golf, Like, you know, I don't think Pebble Beach falls into the category of necessarily overrated. Maybe it's a little high for where it should be in the rankings, right, I guess that's in
terms overrated. But that's with we're talking about rankings, you know, like and that's talking about rankings, which is like, you know, the worst thing to be talking about, because like I think it's just completely trivial to rank. Of course, it's like, oh, you know, well, like my ranking is going to change every day of the week. Like if you ask me tomorrow, like I'll have a different favorite course in Chicago, you know, and then you ask me the next day, I might
go with somebody else. It just depends on what mood. But anyways, like with Pebble, Like I mean, it's it's unbelievable. It's a it's an unbelievable golf course with an unbelieving like the the assets the golf course has, which we've already touched on, like the incredible land movement and the routing the way it uses it, you know that and the greens you know, are diabolical, like the golf course at its core. And and this is maybe part of why I think this way, is that I'm always a dreamer.
I like I dream and I think past like I'm able to be like, well, they can just scrooce that up, They'll fix that. And I think about what a golf course could be a lot of times rather than what
it is in this current state. But but Pebble Beach is a just I think, like a masterclass in like the why you know, the inability to move dirt has yielded the best you know, the inability to move dirt at a massive scale yielded the best golf courses because the lay of the land like and so many had Pebble Beach gotten built fifty years later like one of its neighbors, we would see a lot of flat fairways, like we would see this incredible topography on these sand
dunes flattened now, Like there are a lot of things that they could do. And but like at the end of the day, like the I always think back to the business side of it. It's like they are jammed and filled every every day regardless of what they do, which is crazy.
Why would they change anything?
Like what so like why would you change if this is that that being said? Like why you know, my pitch to him to change would be like listen, like your golf course, the architecture, the look of it doesn't fit the vibe of what you're trying to do, like you know, like anybody that has an eye for golf architecture. I mean it would be like if you put like a nineteen seventies you know, if you replace the lodge with like nineteen seventies like you know, architecture, you know,
cookie cutter architecture. You know, if you put that building there, like and maybe that's the way you would have to pitch them is that superimposed, you know, nineteen seventies, designed like urban building in the lodge's position, and say this is what your golf course is. To anybody that has a clue about golf course architecture, you know, this is the way it's being presented, but from like the idea of the of the golf course, the decisions, the way
it makes golfers feel. And the one thing I will say is I played in this I played in this event this spring with a group of skill level players and we played all three resort courses, Spanish Bay, Spyglass, and Pebble. We had a fifteen handicap in the group. And the place that the fifteen handicap had clearly the best chance and clearly like played the best, you know, was Pebble Beach. And I thought about it. I've thought about it a ton. You know, there was the least
like obvious hazards out there. You know, he could run the ball up onto greens, missing short, which is where you know, a fifteen handicap misses more than long almost never gets you in trouble, you know, like, and then he could pitch up and make putts, and he gets on the green, he could make putts and to me that's something he played by far the best at Pebble Beach and compared to the other two. And then you know,
we played Cypress the next day. He played really well at Cypress, but at Spanish Bay he played very well for a little stretch, but then like the wind picked up and you could tell he had no hope. And at Spyglass he had no hope all day. You know, it was just beating him over the head with the same you know, asking him to hit the ball further than he could and higher and longer than he could
all day. And to me, that's the brilliant of Pebble Beach because at Pebble Beach I was the most uncomfortable I was at any of the courses because I was always like fidgety about oh this lie, I don't really like this webshot, like this just seems like and you I just like you're thinking about all the places you can miss it because of that lie, like you know, you when you when you if you make it more simulation,
which is I think what we see. We can week out on tour a lot, not necessarily like last week. We were actually a good stretch of tour golf lately like a sneaky good stretch between Colonial we had Byron, we have Hamilton.
It's a good time of year.
Yeah, like we've had a good stretch. But like for the most part, we see like if you just took these guys from the range and put them on a golf course, that's what we're seeing. And like Pebble Beach is like the complete antithesis of that. Like if I was getting ready for Pebble Beach, like I'd be hitting a lot of sidehill lie shots, right and like getting in Like that's like the complete opposite of what you do on a driving range.
Yes, right, Well, if you're if you spend most of your time on a drive range, you'll find yourself really frustrated at Pebble Beach. And to return to your point earlier about how if Pebble Beach were built fifty years later, everything would be flattened. I think that's really true because Pebble Beach is built on this slope, right, everything slopes toward the ocean, and it's really consistent, and so probably the thought of a modern architect would be, well, this
is not ideal. There's not much variety inherent in this movement of the land. There might be some unfair lies in the fairway. We better flatten at least a few of these, and then the golf course would have suffered as a result. But because they couldn't do that, in nineteen nineteen, Jack Neville and Douglas Grant just found ways to use that slope in many, many different ways. If you go through the golf holes at Pebble Beach, you'll see a pretty balanced variety of ball below your feet
lies and ball above your feet lies. You'll get just about as many of one as the other. Some holes go uphill, some holes go downhill, and.
That is kind of like that speaks to the brilliant, the unseen brilliance of the inland holes in a way, because they balance the the on the water holes that mostly play in one direction with the left to right ball below your feet.
Lies, Yeah, you have fade lies on or for a right hand or you have fade lies on six, eight, nine, and ten. And then when you go back the other direction, it's playing across the slope in another direction, and you have a lot of for a right hand or draw lies. Yeah, it's balanced out there, and so the routing. You know, the routing of Pebble Beach gets a lot of attention.
I think it's it's widely regarded as a great routing, but it's thought of as a great routing primarily because of how many holes it's able to get out on the water. But that's not at all why it it's a great routing. It's because of how the holes play and how the slopes, the slope of the property is incorporated into the strategy of the whole.
Yeah. I think that that idea with the the movement of the land is in the in the small targets is prevalent at the majority of the golf courses that we would consider the great championship golf courses in America. Right, So, Augusta, Everybody's going to be like, oh, well, those greens are huge, but the targets are tiny, Right, So you.
Have to hit the right section of the green.
Yeah, or else you're it's basically like chipping because it's going to be very, very very difficult to Tupat Shinnecock, the same thing. Tremendous land movement and the greens are big, but the targets become smaller, and that not all the greens out there are huge, but they're you know, like you know, one is like you know you're hitting from you know, pretty flat, and one's actually one of the flat.
But that's a tiny target. Ten you know, you've got a a tremendous slope and then that that that green just sits there and it's like a tiny little perch that you're like, how do I hit it onto this tabletop? But with with that, you know that land movement and small targets and and what's amazing is like Shinnacock's one of the most playable courses for ladies in the world, and it's from the beginning one of the most difficult golf courses you can put a professional male golfer out onto.
Right, these courses have stood the test of time, and there's a reason why. And so there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from Pebble Beach. And I think that when you're watching the telecast this weekend, what one thing to look at would be how the players are addressing the ball, because it doesn't always register immediately. You don't always notice that the b is way below the feet of a player when you're just watching a telecast, but I think you'll be able to tell.
I was just thinking about Pinehurst number two too. It does the same thing where you have those tiny little targets and the Santels of Carolina has a really nice movement to it. So you're hit and you're rarely hitting from that flat lie and you're hitting these small, tiny targets and that's like and that's another course where people are like, why is it, Why can't why can't more courses?
Why can't we have more championship courses like Pinehurst number two And it's like, well, you have to have a combination of really great land that people don't, you know, try and fiddle with and make fair and then you and then have greens that Now for a quick word from our sponsors. Today's episode is powered by ted am ror Trade. Whether on the course or in the market, it helps to have a second set of eyes to
keep you on your game. That's why ted Ameritrades Trade Desk is here to help you gut check your strategies so you always feel confident teeing up a trade. Visit ted amritage trade dot com slash fried Egg to learn more about what their trade desk can do for you, Member SIPC. Now back to Garrett Morrison. So why why this is a bigger question is like why don't we have more golf courses built like that?
I don't know. Well, the concern with fairness came came in in a big way at the same time that the ability to move a lot of land came in, right. I guess that's it because when when you see these fairways that are tilted extremely one direction or the other, a lot of people will think, well, I hit it in the middle of the fairway and it's not fair that I've got the ball way above my feet. And so maybe that's one reason. I don't know, do you
do you? Do you have any theories? Because there are only a few of them, right, These big browny championship golf courses that have existed for one hundred years and somehow are just as challenge for the best players as they were years ago.
I think maybe also not only just fair and I bang on fair a lot, but also the I think maybe less time and thought went into routing when you could move dirt because you weren't thinking about like, okay, this is a really you know, tough portion to navigate.
We could just dynamite and blow this up and reshape it is what people thought then, you know, it's like we can change the land, so like, you know, we can route this however we want, because we can change the land versus like, you know, the ability not to change the land forces you to, you know, route in a certain way.
It forces you to use some ingenuity. It's the old old maxim that restrictions enhance creativity, you know, not not the other way around. And there are some restrictions at Pebble Beach, right It might seem like they're there, aren't because the courses set has such a huge scale. But the course doesn't just wander wherever it wants. It basically
stays in this footprint. And if it were built in the modern era, one maybe land would have been moved, but also maybe the golf course would have gone just wherever it wanted to. And that's what a lot of modern golf courses do. They just kind of wander out into these places, going wherever they want to go. You know, we can make it work. But some of these older golf courses that we're talking about had more limited property.
You had to work with the same set of topographical features and use them in a bunch of different ways, and that's where their beauty and challenge comes from. You know, we've talked before about focal points on golf courses, places where holes return to the same portion of the property over and over again. You don't get that on golf courses that wander off into parts unknown, right you and
you and Jeff Oglvie talked about this. You only get that feeling of returning to the same place and getting it to know it again when you have a limited property, because you have to do that. And so there are just so many ways in which the restrictions that were imposed on golf courses built one hundred years ago actually created forms of challenge and beauty that you can't just manufacture.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I was, yeah, I mean in Pebble has that where we have some focal points and you know, you've got that section where three, fourteen six are all kind of like that little point there where there's you know, a nice little ravine, and then you've got you've got the stretch back where you know ten t and twelve like you know, you had that certain way and obviously it's a little bit different.
It's it's got a little bit of an out and back like a links land, right, which is which it
is different. But like obviously they really wanted to maximize that coast and and also they had restrictions in terms of like the plan because they had to fight for it not to be all houses in the first place, so they didn't they weren't afforded like you know, the ability to play up into the forest or down and not that they would wanted to, but you know, that's that's it was a great point you just made about like the restrictions, because I start to think about it
because then you you know, we had an era and j Blozi told me once and that it was a really good comparison. Is like is that in a way it almost like followed like how interior design where like in the fifties, sixties, seventies, like what was in vogue is like houses with very like defined room spaces and very closed off like treed like corridored holes would be like to find room spaces like this is the kitchen, this is the living room, this is the family room.
But like today, you know, we've gone back to this like the most comfortable houses are the kitchen that flows into the great room and living room, and that I think is a really good But Pebble's always been that because like you get out, you know, once you play one and two, you hit three, you make the turn to four and then four, you're like, all of a sudden, everything opens up and you're like, whoa, here it is.
Yeah, it opens up and you see it for the first time when you play those holes along the cliffs, and then you see it again when you.
Come back right, come back on top of.
You get to review what you have experienced in holes twelve, thirteen, fourteen. That view from the fourteenth green is just a great way to close out that portion of the golf course, and then you're taken over to another part of the property to finish up right.
Yeah, And I can't even now that I think about it, Like That's another aspect of it being such a great championship course is that the intimacy of it, you know, like whereas I can't think of a like somewhere I love watching championship golf that is like a corridored off, like it's very siloed, you know, where like you know, somebody's over here, and like it's there's something about where when somebody's making a surge in they're five holes ahead
of the leader who's playing you know, nine and there on fourteen, like them them being like in the same vicinity. There's something about that. It's like the energy within the tournament.
If you just stand near the sixth fairway, eighth fairway, ninth t that area, and fourteen is kind of running by those holes a little bit up the slope, you'll see a ton of stuff. It's it's a hub of activity, right, And that's of course where they at the patron tent and all that all that stuff, But aside from that, you'll just see a lot of golf. Right.
One thing that drove me nuts was the twelfth hole. All those trees they.
Have there along the left side.
Yeah, yeah, I was looking at it. I was like, God, they're just blocking an unbelievable view of the ocean. Like it. And this goes back to what I was saying about, like how like you know, from an architecture standpoint, like almost everything they do is so against their like culture as a company, right, Like, yeah, it's unbelievable.
It's the same thing behind the third green, right, and maybe those are necessary plantings there. There are just these hedges that block the first view that you get of the ocean coming down that fairway. Yeah, you know, you've just got buildings and hedges where they're just used to be an open vista. And just imagine teeing off on the third hole, right, it's a severe dog leg left and it's and you can't really see the ocean yet. When you're standing on the third tee, you've just come
across the road from the second green. You hit your te shot and it's kind of a blind tea shot because you're going around some trees and you walk out onto the fairway and then boom, you look down the fairway and you can see all the way to the ocean. You can see the seventeenth green out there. Unbelievable part of the round, really amazing, adventurous part of the routing, and it's a little bit blunted now because of the things that block it. And that that that's just presentation.
That third hole is a great hole.
It's a really good hole. Yeah, and it's it's all about that green orientation. Right. It's a fun drive. You know, you can kind of sling it down there and if you if you're willing to launch it into the to the unknown, you'll definitely get an advantage. And then you've got the ball above your feet and you've got a green that receives shots best from you know, from a fade, you know shape for a right hander. So you've got this draw lie and a green that seems to beg for a fade.
What are some other holes other than three that you're keen to watch?
And we've already talked about four. It's one of my favorite holes on the golf course and players can approach that hole in a number of different ways. During the pro am earlier this year, in the final round, Paul Casey and Phil Mickelson showed up on that tee. Paul Casey, I believe, was leading by two or three and they had just kind of, you know, fought to a draw on the first three holes, and then they came to
the fourth tee. Paul Casey played out left conservatively. Phil Mickelson pulled out a three wood hit at about three hundred yards up the fairway and had a fifty yard pitch into the green. He birdied that hole. Paul Casey parted and it was off to the races. Phil Micholson ended up shooting sixty five and winning the tournament. But I thought that that moment on the fourth tee was a hinge point in the tournament. You know. It was you know a place where.
That's a hole that you're looking to make a birdie.
Yes, yeah, if you want to win the golf tournament.
Yeah, it's like that. You know, probably plays the three seven or something and it's one of those holes like it's not quite a three and a half like where you it's it, but like the three seven in like you know, and the other thing, when you don't make a birdie, there's a there's all of a sudden a stress, like your stress level, your pulse almost goes up a little because you know, you just you didn't get one where you could get one.
And it's the first hole on the cliffs, right, and and so there's already that heightened sense of here comes the reds.
Like the psychological thing. Yeah, it gives you, like it discomforts you a little when you don't make birdie there and then you're on that you're in that exposed cliff area where you know, any myth any big myths, right, is disastrous. There's something about the psychological aspect of the cliff. Mm hmm. You know whether or not you want to. It's not the same as like a creek.
Oh no, of course not. Yeah, And this is why it's silly when people say, well, if Pebble Beach weren't on the ocean, it wouldn't be considered that great of a course. Well, it's the whole thing, right, is those cliffs and how raw and intimidating they look.
Yeah, like you just don't want to go anywhere near them.
No.
I think it might also be something about like human nature, like how you get uncomfortable by cliff side.
Yeah, yeah, because you feel like you could fall off. Yeah, and it and it becomes a mental thing in your swing. As much as you might be telling yourself to play the right shot in the middle of your swing, your body is gonna do something that that you don't want it to do. And and for me, the response is to hit a lot of balls to the left, away from the cliffs.
That's how. Yeah, I hit it into the my second shot, I hit it in to the short on aid like short right, and I had to hit the drop from the cliff from like just right in front of the cliff, and I was like, God, this is really I don't like hitting a shot from here. Like I felt like, like you're nervous about the club flying out of your hands, And you're like, why would I be nervous about a club flying out of my hands?
When has that happened?
Never happened in my life? Right, But all of a sudden, I'm like two feet from a cliff and I feel this sensation that you don't. And I that's what made me think about like the subliminal thing. And it would be interesting to ask, like a mental guy that if
there's anything to that, sure that's it? This you know we've got in two years, we've got Tory pines, which like one could say that pebble uses the cliffs so well, like because of the way, so you know a lot of and I think this is something that would happen today if somebody came in a re routed pebble, they'd figure out way more ways to get greens on cliffs. But we have less playing area on the cliffs. We might have more holes on the cliffs if you rerouted it,
but there'd be less significant playing area on the cliffs. Sure, Yeah, where like I know, I've to talked to some people where they've said, like, I don't think the routings that good because like you're done with they don't They don't have as many holes as they could on.
The cliffs, right, Yeah, because nine and ten are long holes that just stretch out and use that whole stretch of coastline. But the way they use it is so brilliant. Yeah, the priority, another architects priority might be I want to maximize the views, the number that people could take. Yeah, And Pebble does maximize the cliff side playing area for sure, and that's part of it. Is the is the vistas and the impact of being up there, which can't be discounted.
That's part of what makes it a great golf course. But the way it uses the cliffs, it'd.
Be interesting to look at like say band and Dunes. Yeah, amount of cliffs and like amount of of of legitimate playing area on the on the.
Cliffs, Pebble Beach uses way more. And it's also it's a different the coastline is different in its nature. Yeah, you get such variety of coastline at Pebble Beach. At Bandon, you're up in the stratosphere, right. Those cliffs are huge and and there are holes that play along the edges of them and and use them brilliantly and everything. But at Pebble Beach, what you have is, uh, you know, four or five different phases of cliff side playing area Four and five are along still Water Cove, which is
just so beautiful and peaceful. It's like this marine sanctuary. There would never be a golf course built there now, and and the cliffs are kind of medium sized. And then on six you climb up to this the famous peninsula out there where you're just way up in the air and you're on this spectacular bluff. And then you know, from the sixth green you play down to the ocean on the seventh and you go across a huge chasm on the eighth. So six, seven, and eight have have
this natural feature of enormous size. Then you get to nine and ten and it goes back to kind of medium sized cliffs where you're playing along Carmel Beach and you see people walking their dogs and you kind of get a view of what that town is like out there, Okay, and then you go back and then eighteen is right on the sea wall, right on the ocean. Yeah, there's variety of cliff side locations. It's not just all one thing.
And that's I think what makes Pebble Beach so beautiful and interesting is it's not just that it's on the ocean. It's that the particular ocean side property that it has is more varied, I think than any golf landscape on the ocean that I've ever seen.
Yeah, that's in Tory Pines is pretty uniform.
How high way up high. Yeah, you can't really get to the edges in a lot of places at Tory Pines.
Yeah, that's a that's a great point. I never thought about how the the and that plays into the the
unbelieving this is what you know? That take of like Pebble is overrated is like that that plays into like that well, that's a that's a kind of a lazy take because there's so much like once you get out there, Like that's Pebble is overrated is almost a take of somebody who hasn't really been to Pebble and like and seen what and you know, have a full grasp of like what you know is out there, because like you've got up and down, you've got side hills, and then
you have the varied settings of the cliffs and with that like still Watercove, it's called still Watercove for a
for a reason. Right like within you know, just six hundred yards that the weather conditions can be like significantly different, like the type of wind you're facing, like it, because like that is what's really cool is like you get out to that point on six and it's just so it can be so raw out there, very exposed, yeah and versus four and three where it's much more docile and yeah and uh, and then you hit that that scape.
That's it. That's also like an interesting aspect of of pebble, which is like how it paces itself in the round with the with the component of weather, like where off the bat you're you're you're kind of protected, and then in the middle of the round it's gonna throw everything it's got at you. But then it allows the clothes to be less about the weather and more about the
guy that can survive that. Really you know that that when they throw everything in the kitchen sink at you, and then it gives you some opportunities coming down the stretch to score and finish with you know, some great shots that separate you.
Yeah, that's a really good point. When the wind kicks up six, seven, eight, nine, ten, Yeah, it doesn't get much harder than that. When the wind is blowing in the prevailing direction. Wow, those holes become really really hard and really intimidating.
And I like how it's right in the middle.
Yeah, you go through this trial and you come out the other side and you have an opportunity for some heroism.
Yeah exactly. I mean that's it's it's got that that feel. Like I think that like Yale has this feel and it's it's like it's an adventure in a way. And I think the setting of it and the way the scale of the land and this is you know scale
I think gets thrown around way too much. But like when we say, when I say scale, like I'm saying the enormity of it is that it makes you feel like and there's no better depiction of the normandy of it than like the picture that you see of a guy walking up that six, you know, walking up six up the big hill to the green, where like it's an adventure to hit a long iron from an uneven lie up over that.
Right, You're not thinking the sixth hole is not necessarily about lateral strategy. It's not about the analysis of how the architecture is is promoting certain angles. It's just about get your ball on the short grass and then have the guts to get up that natural landform.
Yes, And that's like the and that that hole is a microcosm of the course where it's an adventure, like and you have this start where it's you know, you're it's easing you into this and then all of a sudden it just like goes full octane and then you know, eighteen's almost like a perfect perfect way to close, because then it becomes like, do you have the guts you We're gonna we're gonna ask you one last time to pull this off, Like you got to take this on
and you can't bail, right, you have to commit and hit this shot. And uh. And that's I think that's the thing that's really neat about Pebble Beach is like the idea of the journey, right, and that's what golf courses that go out and in I think have that ability to be a little bit more like that than
a golf course that has returning nines. There's something about like when you go out like, it's not like nine, it's not time for a break, Like you're out there like and you're you're continuing to go on, you.
Know, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I don't know.
That's that's Pebble Who do so what what do you? Uh? What are you watching for? From a player perspective.
Well, at Pebble Beach, I think a lot of different players have a chants. You know, at the PGA Championship, we talked about how only a few guys could win that tournament or really had any chance. I think what we'll see here is a setup that will look to people in a lot of ways superficially as similar, but it's a completely different kind of golf course. And so I think that honestly, so many different players could do well at Pebble Beach. It just depends on who's striking the ball.
Well.
The reason it's so different from beth Page is I think pretty simple, it's just a shorter golf course, right, and.
Are more severe and smaller. Yeah, so where like you could be less precise at beth Page and get away with it on your approaches.
That's true. Yeah, No, you can't get away with any kind of leaking shot at Pebble, right if you're hitting off one of those hanging lies and you let the ball move to much or you don't account for the wind enough, then yeah you're dead. So you have to be super precise. But you know, Pebble is just going to be a touch over seven thousand yards. So this is an incredibly small ballpark for these guys. I think where where the action might be is not just the
usual sub suspects. You know, Brooks kept guys probably going to do well, you know, I mean, like we're probably going to keep picking him until he stops winning every other major.
It's important to like note that, like the the guys that hit it really far and really straight are also the best players in the world.
They still have the advance. Dustin Johnson plays well at Pebble Beach. Everybody did you know that?
So I think there we need to like reclassify DJ Rory JT. Brooks, Like they shouldn't be termed bombers. They should be just termed like they need a different term.
They're the best players in the world.
Yeah, So, like like when you think bomber, think like guys who hits it really far, who's ranked fortieth in the world.
Yeah. Yeah, So these and and all of those guys that you named. It's been said over and over, but it bears repeating that they're incredibly accurate relative to.
Their length and incredibly skilled in other facets of the game.
They have complete games.
Yeah, Like Brooks is one of the best players around the greens and one of the best players on the greens to go along with his immense power, and he's a top ten strokes gained approach guy.
So yeah, And I think there's a tendency when you come to a course like Pebble that's a little bit shorter and where precision players have a real chance. I think there's a tendency to forget about the fact that those four or five players that we just mentioned are still the best players in the world. DJ and are still favorite.
Hears so little about DJ and he was like a final round collapse away from running away from with.
Yeah. Yeah, And the weather turned that day on Sunday in twenty ten, and DJ was was three up going into the final round. This is a different Dustin Johnson coming into this tournament, and he he has a really really good chance. So you know, before getting into some of the some of the the sexy picks, obviously, I'm I'm thinking that one of those guys is probably gonna win the golf tournament. But uh, you know, some interesting players to look at, players who might do well at
this course would be Web Simpson, Matt Kucher. Is chess Revy in the field, yeah, yeah, reve yeah, oh of course he is. But he could do well, right, He's.
Played well in the last two opens. I was talking with Polly on the Shotguns start last night and I kept bringing up chez Revy and he he wasn't buying it, but I chess Rev he plays well at the AT and T. But he said, one thing is overrating at and T peronerformance because there's only half the rounds are at Pebble. But at the same time, like, chess Revy to me, fits this golf course. But he's not really good around the greens, but he's so good tea too green.
Yes, yeah, and he seems to do well in majors, right. He always seems to pop up on the leaderboard and everybody acts surprise, but he's been there a few times. But yeah, I mean, so the twenty nineteen pro Am
so the pro Aram earlier this year. As as you mentioned, there are just two rounds at Pebble Beach, but the golf course was set up as narrow at the pro Am as it will be in the open, and so looking at the players who did well isn't necessarily going to determine who you think is going to win, but
it's still kind of interesting. So the players who played best at the twenty nineteen pro Am were at Pebble Beach were Seawou Kim, who shot ten under over his two rounds at Pebble Beach, Phil Mickelson obviously, who won the golf the big Woo Woo could do well. Ball striker Phil Mickelson at minus nine he obviously won the tournament shot sixty five on Sunday. And then some interesting names come up. Kevin Streelman, your favorite.
Kevin Streelman has to beat He's not in the field this week, but he has an unbelievable record at at and t he does well.
Yeah, and so it's just like players of this type keep popping up doing well at a Pebble Beach. Scott Scott Stallings did well, Lucas Glover, Michael Thompson, Jim Feerick and then Cameron Champ and so it's a.
Mixture, unbelievable Cameron Champ in there, and that's one of the I think that's one of the cool things, is like pebble Beach doesn't discriminate against a type of player.
That's exactly the point, Yeah, for sure. And so somebody like Cameron Champ, although he hasn't played well recently, someone like that, I don't think he's Yeah. Yeah, in any case, players like that could do well. But also Jim Feurick could could do well. So you know, the door is open for a number of different players to win this Open. I think that it will be a really interesting tournament as a result.
Yeah, I agree. I think there's there's why range of players. I like him really compelled to pick Web Simpson, but I whimped out last minute and picked DJ.
Well, that's not a bad choice though.
Polly said something. He's like, you know, keep in mind US Opens, you know usually don't yield fluke winners, Like usually the winner of a US Open is a very high profile player, and that's what made me flip it at the last minute. Even though Web Simpson's one web Us might be the least fluky player of all fluky players.
He won at Olympic Club, which has some of the features that we've been talking about. It's built on the side of a hill, it's got fairly small targets. I'm not saying web Simpson is going to win. It's just that this is a really good chance for him. It's also a really good chance for Matt Coucher, and that would be fascinating to see him win, and people's reactions to that at this point in that Couture's career.
Especially like the juxtaposition of people's reactions when he came so close at Birkdale, where everybody's like, oh, man, look at.
The family man. You know where you feel that for him. Things have changed for mac Houture's public image since since Birkdale. But if he's not thinking right now, this is probably my best chance to win a major, maybe for the rest of my career. I don't know what he's thinking, you know, because it's just it would be.
It would be perfect, A good juxtaposition of Northern California golf courses would be it's going to be this open at Pebble and Harding Park, right.
Yeah. Do you think Harding Park is going to be a little Bethpage.
I don't think even Bethpage, because Beth Page had like the tremendous topography.
Yeah, that's true.
I think it's going to be like, it's gonna be like TPC, you know, I mean it is a TPC.
Well, it's TPC Harding Park. Yeah right, I mean that Harding Park could be set up in so many different ways, right, because it's for daily play, it's it's it's super playable. But I'm sure they're gonna do some do some nonsense to it.
Yeah, and it just doesn't have like it. The challenges presented are the complete opposite ones where they're actually very simple challenges versus the Pebble challenges, which we've you know, talked for forty minutes about. So the yeah, so so you know Web Web also like you know, when you look at his major record heading in you know, he's he's finished in the top twenty in the last six majors. If you throw in the players, he has a win in another top five.
I mean it's the signs are promising. Yeah for Web definitely top five.
And then I was talking to Roberto Castro yesterday on the range and he was saying that Hamilton was like almost the best course you could couldn't play a better course in prep for the for Pebble than Hamilton. You hit a lot of different uh you know, the variety of shots you hit off the tee is not like there's some x amount of iron holes, x amount of fairway. It would be like you hit driver, then he hit iron,
then he hit fairway. Would you know there was movement in the fairways like thick rough, like in pretty narrow. It was pretty fascinating to hear him talk about it and you the same exact characteristics. And Web almost won last week, right.
So yeah, yeah, he would be a really smart pick. It's almost starting to seem too smart.
Yeah, I know that's the problem him and like pop off the page. And with the US Open, like you know, you can just have one hole that completely derails everything. So that's like the crazy I think that's one of the cool things with the US Open is like in major golf in general, you see where like that that line is so thin where And I think this is what maybe some of the issue with Beth Page was was there was no there was no opportunity for like, you never felt like there was going to be a
triple there was a triple bogie lurking. And that's something that at Pebble can happen in a split second.
Right, especially if the wind kicks up. Anything could happen, you know. I think that you'll see places on the course that are a little bit softened. You know, in previous US opens, the fourteenth Green has been the site of some misery. You know, players just going back and forth, back and forth, and it's still really severe. It's still really hard that false front if you're you know, I landed an approach shot ten feet short of that pin and it came back off the and so I got
the full experience there. But they did extend the back of that green. I believe there's more pinnable area. The same is true of the seventeenth hole. The seventeenth Green in twenty ten was basically impossible to hit, and they rebuilt the thirteenth green. There are the places on the golf course where you really saw hard ejections, guys just
going back and forth and making quadruple bogie. I don't think you'll see as many of those but at the same time, if the wind picks up at all, and the forecast does not seem to suggest that it really will, But if there's any weather whatsoever, things can turn in an instant and it will get really interesting. And I hope it does because it will highlight some of the
precision play. Is the person who has the golfer, who has the best control over his golf ball, if the wind picks up, will immediately become apparent.
Yeah. One of the things that's tough is that we're seeing the same wind almost every day. Like it looks like it's just going to be a west or west southwest.
Ten to fifteen miles per hour. It'll be I think it'll be fairly predictable conditions, but it'll be beautiful, you know.
I think the television will be a television product will pop, It'll look awesome. Yeah, So all right, this will be the first of many pods, so I hope so yeah, it we'll chop it up some more. But it was good talking. Everybody followed Garrett. It's still g Ford right, g Ford Golf, g Ford Golf at g Ford Golf on Twitter and on Instagram, same thing, and uh, excited to have him on. He'll have some a lot of
written content on the website. Go up there with the Frida egg dot com and sign up if you haven't. But we'll have a good championship. We'll have a few more pods this week and look forward to Pebble Beach. Hope this one. Hope this adds some color to people that haven't been out here.
Absolutely thanks Andy,