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 fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie.
I'm about ready to run off of the Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today I have a giant podcast for you. I have two parts, two interviews, one with Todd Dempsey that I conducted and another with Chris Millard, longtime golf media person who's written a book, new book. The Todd Dempsey podcast was done by me. The interview with Chris was done by Garrett Morrison. Garrett is out
of the country right now. He is frolicking about Melbourne, Australia. I'm very jealous. I'm envious of his trip. Right now, he's playing with some Australian golf legends at some of the best golf courses in the world. So today, who knows where he is today, but he just finished up Victoria, He's played Royal Melbourne East. I'm not sure where he's going today, but he is. He's on quite quite the little trip down there. Todd Dempsey will be up first then.
Chris Todd, for those that don't know, is a former PGA Tour player. He was a four time All American at Arizona State in the nineties, a walker cupper. What's interesting about his life now is that he makes Persimon woods. He plays Persimmon woods pretty much exclusively. He has played like PGA Tour Qualifiers, Champions Tour, Final Stage, Q School playing per Simmon. Just a very interesting person in golf.
Chris Millard, he just wrote a new book. The new book is called The Shot Watson Nicholas, Pebble Beach and the Chip That Changed Everything. So it's a look at the nineteen eighty two US Open and Pebble Beach. A lot of the book is actually about the architecture of Pebble Beach. So Garrett and Chris talk in depth about this book in Pebble Beach and that's the podcast. Before we get into the podcast, let's take a quick break
and talk about our partner, Stripe. Stripe's been a partner of the Egg for a really long time, really since we started to take payment. So we spend a couple of years not doing any monetization. But when we wanted to make money on the website, we turned to Stripe and Stripe's been an amazing partner honestly, like great partners are partners that you don't have to worry about. I've never really had to worry about Stripe. So Stripe works
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what Stripe can do for your business. Visit stripe dot com. Todd, I would love to hear you are becoming one of the foremost Persimmon officionados in the in the game of golf, I'd say you're on the on the forefront, nobody else is playing per Simon and Champions Tour Q school. What is the process for building a persimon would like you're doing right now?
Yeah, I start with pretty much a just a raw block of person. It's it's been eat it and and dry it out by by the middle Ground in Kentucky. Really good guys that are still still uh cutting per Simon and so yeah, I start with a pretty raw block and you know sole plate face, insert, bore out the hozzle, just in shape it to whatever whatever I
want to to create. So it's uh, it's fun. I I definitely in high school, I used to refinish woods, but but now it's being able to create it from pretty much nothing is is a lot of fun.
What type of tools are you using to like shape it down? Like how do you get it into that into the head design? I'm also curious, like do you play around with different designs? I know, like I have a few different sets of Percimmons with with different features, Like I have a the Ben Hogan one that as the little like speed slot on it. Like, are you messing around with aerodynamic designs and and trying to figure out, you know, how you can improve them?
Yeah, I mean I do. I try to. You know, most people that are into Persimmon are into the classic designs. But that speed slot that is a that is a good I love that that Hogan head. But I've messed around with some larger heads and some really small heads, and yeah, I mean I'm always kind of looking to see what works, but try to stick to pretty classic designs and keep it as simple as possible.
You mentioned so you're into refinishing Persimmons as a kid, I think like every kid really probably from my generation to back, was into it. Like I always remember as a kid, like playing around with lead tape ape and
seeing what I can do. I think like a lot of that's gone with the modern clubs and club fitting where it's gotten to, but I used to, you know, mess around with different setups, and you know, you would you would do different things to your clubs, Like when you finished playing professional golf around it was the you know, early twenty tens. How did you get back into the Persimmon world.
It was kind of by accident. I didn't play much golf at first. After after the game kind of beat me up a little bit and I didn't play much. But when I did go back out, I find myself just playing around with per Simmons. It's just for me fun to you know, the feel and the sound and in my opinion, the way the way the game was meant to be played. Yeah, it was kind of by accident.
I didn't didn't really go out with the intention of making per Simmons, but I started to start messing around with making some from scratch and got a lot of interest from from friends, so I started making for them and then just kind of kind of grew from there.
What have you seen is like, what what type of people, if you've thought about this, are kind of most drawn to the Persimon game? And and like what I see when I have mine in the bag is like golfers around me are just genuinely interested in hitting it. They love obviously love the sound. But is there is there a type of person that you come across more often than not that is particularly interested in playing per Semon.
Yeah, I'd say mostly people in my age range, you know, early fifties that kind of played per Simmon, kind of at the tail end of Persimmon, and then the start of metal woods, which which obviously really changed the game completely. So I think people that kind of appreciate how the
game was. How you know, golf courses were designed for Persimmon, they were not designed for the wood, the metal woods that are out today, So I think, but I have seen all ages, you know, you surprise I have been surprised how many younger people are drawn to the person and the game. The way when you look at old highlights of great players in the past and playing what they played.
I mean, it's it's amazing when you look back at like the shells wonderful world of golf, and just the how much stylistically the difference of the game is with you know, Persimmon would than in comparison to the metal like just how how dramatically different. Even the technique of
a golf swing is. What do you see from from your standpoint as someone who played on tour in the four hundred and sixty CC era, how is your golf swing and your approach to the game different when you play per simmon versus the modern technology.
Yeah, there's definitely a little more With today's equipment, you can kind of swing for the fences and just just let it go or then I mean you still it's still the same swing, but it's swing's a little a little less reckless than I see some of the swings today. And you know, misshits are we're an issue back then, where now you just kind of hit it anywhere on the face and it's going to get out there somewhere
in play. So it's taking a lot of the skill out of the game and has changed the way people swing the club. For sure. I'm not a super technical and I don't really analyze the golf swing, but but it looks different when I in the rare occasion when I watch a little on TV, it's swings are swings are a lot different than what I remember growing up.
So I think a lot of that is the equipment, which is kind of a shame, but it's not much not much we can do about it now, But I I just I just like to keep the game the way I the game I fell in love with growing up.
That the beauty of of of the game and the equipment and and you know, nobody was really trying to cheat the game with developing clubs that that make it easier, you know, they're I think the rules it's you know, once the Metal Woods came out, the hollow heads, it's kind of a turning point in the game, and it would have been nice to keep you know, solid heads, no,
no hollow heads. It seems like it could be a simple, simple rule, simple fixed to to what we got now, but it's definitely a little late for that.
You uh, you have played on the Champion and Champion Shore Q School also some Monday qualifiers with the person in Woods. What is the general reaction of of your your playing partners when they see what you're what you're rolling up with.
Yeah, it's definitely gets gets some interest. And I'm not really people that know me know, I'm not really into get into the spotlight or trying to get attention and kind of the opposite. So it's I kind of I play it just because I love playing it, and but yeah, well kind of wonder what I'm doing at times, but it's just I'd rather just not not play than than play with some of this modern stuff. That's that's really
It's made the game just so so much. You know, you go play Cyprus Point, great, great course, that's now. I mean people hitting sandwiches into into every hole and it's it's kind of a shame. But I just do it for my own enjoyment and try to try to avoid too much attention. I just like to do my thing. But but yeah, I understand where people wonder what I'm doing.
I you know, in my experience playing like Persimmon and seventies plays, I've gotta set up Wilson FG seventeens that I play with a fair amount to me, I don't think like if you play well, you still like you can't maybe quite bully the par fives as much, but like you still have the ability to shoot really good scores. I think this is like a misconception people think, like like turning it back to the Stone Agent turns the
game into impossible. Like if anything, I find like when I play per Simmon, I keep the ball in play a little bit more even on poor driving days because the ball just doesn't go as far off line. But like what I see is like by I still have
the ability to shoot really really good rounds. It's just when I don't have it, it's a little bit more clear that I don't have it, right, Like it creates almost a little bit, just a little bit wider variance of scoring, but like it doesn't prohibit you from shooting a low number.
Yeah, I agree. It's if you're swinging it well, it gets out there almost as far as the modern stuff. And like you're saying, it's a little straighter, so yeah, I agree, it's not. You're not giving up much when you when you're swinging it well, when you're a little off, it can it's it makes the game a little tougher, but that's just kind of the way it was designed to be played, So I yeah, it's it's especially with my woods, they're kind of designed for the modern ball.
The some of the older older per Simmons, if you try to you know, they were designed for ballattas, so they can be tough. But but mine are you know, a little more weight in the back, a little a little more loft, a little less bulge and roll, and they tend to work well with the modern ball. So I really don't feel like I give up much at all. And then you add in just the enjoyment of of enjoying the game, and that's worth worth a few shots in my opinion. So yeah, it's uh, I.
Think I think just generally, like I find my attitude when I play with with the older stuff is better as well. And I think like, and I have a friend that says that this is because you don't practice anymore and you know you're not as good as you used to be, and these clubs help you cope with that.
But I do think like just in general, like when you you you're I think like, I just find myself happier with the with the with the like there, the feel of it is just so much more rewarding, right, Like, you know you are swinging well, when you're driving it well, there are no you know, misconceptions about how you're playing.
Yeah, that's that's definitely true. You can't really fake it with with persimon and blades. You know, you either make a good swing or you don't, and you accept the consequences. And so yeah, that's it's I just feel like, again, classic golf courses were designed for for this type of equipment. So when people go out and say they shot sixty three at Cyprus Point, it's not really the same as Ben Hogan shooting sixty three in the in the match. You know, it's that was like a totally different game.
So it's it's kind of you really can't records have kind of gone out out the window. You know. It's uh with with you know, when the Hogan's hitting you know, mid irons into every hole out there and guys are hitting sandwiches. It's just it's not you can't compare those scores. So but it's again, it's more more about the enjoyment for me and just yeah, just enjoying playing golf. It's, uh, there's a much more satisfaction on a good good drive. And and it's just what I remember as a kid
growing up in the eighties playing golf. That's, you know, getting on the first tee and looking at everybody's driver, the gray and the stain in color. It's definitely different. Now you get on the first tee and it's, uh.
Was do you asked? You asked? Was your was your driver built with AI technology? Like mine? Was?
Yeah, exactly, I I know. Now you get on the tee and and and it's just whatever brand four hundred and sixty c C driver you've got where it was, it was a lot more you know, started conversation, you know, looking at somebody's McGregor or somebody's wood Brothers, and every every driver was unique, one of a kind. So it's
a I don't know, it's not not for everybody. I'm not trying to change anybody's mind about golf, but I for me, it's just, uh, I don't think i'd play if I if I if I stuck to what the way equipment is going.
I've told a lot of people that I've played golf with this the story this year, but we we did a we did a Hickory tournament and it was we played like seventy two holes of hickory golf. And I played, you know, the day or two before it with Hickory clubs and and it was it was awesome. It was super fun. But you know, the Hickory clubs are heavier, and obviously then you have the small sweet spot. And I played a couple of days after that, I played with modern clubs, and what I couldn't believe was I
had It was an effect. I felt like it effectively was like speed training. I came back, I was faster and because of the emphasis of hitting the club in
the center. I the next like two weeks, I drove the ball better as good as I've ever driven the ball because of like if you think about like the mechanics of of have hitting these Percimmons or Hickory drivers, well, like you have to you have to focus on center contact, and then the added weight is effectively like you know, it's like a donut in baseball right where So I think, like when I what I'm saying this for is like I think, like any like type of golfer, if you
play with this type of technology every once in a while, when you come out of it, I guarantee you're going to play better with the modern clubs because like you are going to like the folk you you cannot take a swing. I think, like that's the biggest thing, is Like I think, I like can space out. I'm somebody that has a short attention span, and modern equipment allows me to space out, whereas retro equipment does not allow
me that opportunity. I like, I find myself more focused over shots, and that is a good thing just to do because when you play the modern equipment and you bring that laser focus back, it is like you are, you are going to play a lot better than before
playing that stuff. So I think it's it's a I think like people do this like cross and I like, I thoroughly this is not why I play retro clubs, but people do cross training and all sorts of other sports, and I think that, like one thing that nobody's really explored is how cross training with old equipment can help
you play better golf with modern equipment. And I know that's not why you're doing it, but it is another avenue of appeal for the old equipment is that I guarantee by playing like what I found after playing I played like it probably a year and a half, two years of personmon and blades. What I found because I missed way more greens. My short game got way better over two years. Right, My putting got better because I had more lag putts because I was having longer approaches
into greens. You know, like it made me a way more complete player by playing this equipment. And sure, like I didn't shoot all like the lowest scores all the time, but I knew I was improving because of what the equipment was forcing me to get better at.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I used to coach some kids, some high school golfers trying to play college golf, and I would give them a per Simon would and I could see it with them. It helped their driving. It definitely has helped my driving when I reluctantly do play a modern driver. It just is so easy.
It's not even it doesn't even feel like off, but it, uh yeah, it's it's it's not really why I do it, but I agree that it can only help you know, it's, uh, if if you're hitting wedges into every hole, you're probably not missing many greens and you're not not really learning how to play the game. So I it's I would definitely recommend it, even for people that aren't interested in it for the nostalgic reasons, to to to play them and see what it does for your game, because it
definitely definitely makes you sharp. You can't you can't get away with a whole lot swinging for Simmons.
So you you had a great competitive career, I think, uh, you know, you might say, oh well, he might play downplay it, you downplay stuff, but you you were a four time All American at Arizona State. You played on the Walker Cup. You made one hundred and fifty cuts over one hundred and fifty cuts on the PGA Tour and corn Ferry Tour. When you look back on your your career, do you have like a singular event or experience that stands out above all all the other ones.
Yeah, I mean definitely playing the Walker Cup was one of the highlights, you know, representing the US, and that definitely stands out. As far as pro golf, it all kind of ran together. It was a way to make a living, and it kind of kind of squeaked by, but it was I got away from from why I played golf, and I was just out there trying to, you know, like make cuts and make some money, and completely got away from from why I started playing the game.
And it's kind of why when I was I didn't play at all, and then when I did come back and play, I was going to do it differently with persimmons and kind of the way the game when I was introduced to the game, the way it was played.
So what is it about golf that you love the most at its core? You like like the aspect of the game that the person brings out. What is it about golf that you fell in love with as a kid.
Yeah, I think it wasn't about the score. It was more about just being out out in the nature and the course, being one with the course and kind of I mean, obviously you're trying to shoot a low score, but it was kind of it was not in the top five of things that I was out there for. Again, when I turned pro, it became everything. So yeah, just is is a you know, as much more into into
golf courses. That's That's one thing I did find when I went from amateur to pro golf went from playing you know, really really good golf courses to still good courses, but not not historical. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I played for US Amateurs and and maybe they weren't the They were all good, but not It was kind of a kind of a low point in in in the U s Ams. But I the Champions Club in Houston was was a highlight. But you know, the Honors Course, TPC Sawgrass.
Do you have Mirefield Village around then too.
Airfield Village, which, yeah, that was good, but but you know, it was kind of an interesting stretch for for for Usam's.
But I well, it's an interesting stretch for golf architecture.
I think when you were growing up the the late eighties early nineties is probably when you would say that golf architecture completely had most lost its way, you know, nineteen ninety five that you know, you're talking about like at that point the very starts of the careers of Tom Doe, Core and Crenshaw, these people that have brought back that brought back a lot of the great classic golf courses with restorations and and then also brought a whole new era of golf design into kind of into vogue.
But that wasn't until you know, really the early two thousands that you were on the PGA tour at that point.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. And I mean, I think Pete Died puts a lot of a lot of thought, put a lot of thought into his designs, and I think he was a genius. But uh yeah, two of my usams were Pete die course, which is okay, amazing, But but yeah, I definitely drawn to the more classic designs, the more subtle, subtle features.
And if I was going to give you ten rounds of golf, how would you how would you break them out? You could bring whoever you want, so you can bring you know, assume you're flying private from course to course. You got ten rounds with three of your favorite people. How are you splitting up the ten rounds across courses?
I mean growing up in San Diego and my first five will probably be California courses.
I live in California and one of the things I love the most about here is the golf courses.
Yeah, no, I know, I miss I'm in Florida now. I really miss the Polanta and how bad they get in the afternoon and how I just I just this that you know, I'm I'm on this Bermuda here. That's I don't know. I'm still trying to find courses that inspire me out here. But I would you know, Cypress, Pebble.
Gosh, you could do multiple, multiple rounds courses too. This doesn't have to be ten. So you could say I'm gonna play five at Cypress and I you know, but you can. You can break up to your ten however you want. I saw your your your Walker Cup was supposed to be at Chicago Golf and it got canceled.
Yeah, bad break, Yeah exactly. I mean, interlocking was good.
It was Interlock, it's great.
But yeah, Chicago Golf and I was able to finally play out there a few years ago for the first time, and yeah, that would have been fun. And I love Seth Rayner and but yeah, Interlock in a lot of history there with Bobby Jones and but yeah that Yeah, going back to the courses i'd play, I recently played Pine Valley a friend of mine as a member and finally got to play out there. That that is an
amazing place. I wasn't It wasn't what I expected. I thought it was just going to be really impossible, and which it kind of was. But I it's pretty fair, you know, It's it's there. You can't lose a ball out there. It's pretty hard to lose a ball, which I expected it to be different, but they've they've got it trimmed up pretty good where you're not going to lose a ball and it's either hit good shots so you don't and it's it's relentless. But I definitely definitely want to play out there.
I think one of the interesting things about that that golf course is like way better with Persimmon than modern.
Yeah, the first day we play, I played all the way back, which I don't know the yardage and I don't know if those teas were there back back in the day or not. But it was a little bit of a stretch. But the second day we played one tee up and it was just perfect with percent and being able to work it off the tee and so yeah, that that was. That was a fun, fun couple of days. As far as East Coast courses, that would probably be
my favorite. But yeah, I'd rather I could just go up the California coast, you know, you could.
You could do you know, like if you just did California and you did you know, l a CC, Valley Club, Cyprus, San Francisco, Like in cal Club, it looks pretty you could do two in each of those five. I mean, you haven't even talked about Riviero bel Air. I mean it's like it's kind of crazy, like how in how different and unique all those courses are from each other.
You know, Yeah, that's that's the beauty of California. You got everything, you know, every every kind of weather, every topography, and yeah, the golf in California is it's what I grew up on and so I definitely miss it. I was able to go out there a couple of times this year and play and play some of those courses again. But it, yeah, I could. Yeah, you never get bored playing golf in California.
You played with Phil Mickelson in college. I believe you're a brief roommate of Phil. Do you have a favorite story from or tale of Phil from his from his early years.
I mean, I can't think of a specific story, but he was just you could tell he was going to do something great just being around him. His confidence and his Yeah, there's just something different there that and he was always very good to me. He he made my game better. I played played a lot with him and tried to compete with him, and and that that really, you know, did a lot for my game, my short game especially. I just I realized just how good people
can be putting and chipping. I mean, I'd never seen anything like it, So, yeah, it was it was a positive. I think it was just one year that that I played with him, but he yeah, he I mean, it's it's kind of a shame to see he's kind of I was hoping to watch him play some Champions Tour stuff, and I don't haven't seen much live stuff. But it's I was hoping he was gonna play more PG tour stuff for a while. He's you know, winning the PGA at fifty. He still still was competitive.
So but yeah, I think I was at that PGA, and I think that I think because of like what's happened over the last couple of years, that gets a little bit overshadowed and not talked about as like truly one of the great sporting moments of the last like I mean, maybe one of the greatest sporting moments of
like in the history of sports was that win. It was un I mean, he he had no form and then like to take down Brooks Kopka, who at the time was like the pre eminent major championship player and like completely like kind of like I it was walking inside the ropes that day. I was. I mean, it felt like he just like played a game on him, like he he he like kind of got him mentally, you know, he slow played him and kind of I
think he drove him nuts. And part of how Kopka kind of folded was that he was frustrated with Phil and how slow he was playing, Like it was like he was hustling him.
Yeah, yeah, he. I mean I saw a lot of that, you know, playing playing money games with him in college, and yeah, he just he's just such a competitor and he'll find a way to win. He it won, went forty five times on the PGA Tour. That's during the Tiger era too, so it would have been sixty probably at least if Tiger wasn't around. So he, Yeah, just
an amazing player. I've still probably never seen any I played a little with Tiger kind of before he took off, but Phil was is is his game is it's different than anything I've ever seen before or or since. You know. Again, it's kind of a shame that he's kind of you know, we don't get to see him play anymore. But he's an amazing player.
Your kids are competitive surfers, which I read. You know, you grew up surfing and and then you've gotten back into surfing because of that. What what is it about surfing that appeals to you? And do you think there's any any bit of golf? Uh? And and some of the aspects of golf that that that surfing shares.
Yeah, I think they're both pretty solitary sports. You know, you're kind of kind of out on your own, whether you're on the golf course or or in the water. So I do. I do like that where it's it's all on you, you know, there's no no team to bail you out. So it's I like that aspect. And physically it's definitely different. But a golf swing is a pretty explosive move, and so is surfing. You know, popping up on your board and making turns, it's pretty pretty
explosive moves. So they're they're they're similar in that way. But yeah, definitely a different, different, different culture. They're very different cultures. But I love the taking the kids to surf contests, a lot of a lot of good people, and it's definitely different than than the what I remember growing up playing playing golf turn and.
The competitive surce it's a little different than the competitive golf scene.
Yeah, it's I mean, there's definitely some with the judging. It's, uh, there's a lot of you know, with with with golf, you either shoot the number you don't. With surfing, it's there's unfortunately more more things that play into your results than your actual surfing. But it's I mean, it's hard. I I don't envy the judges that have to judge surfing. It's uh so that that part I'm not a huge fan of. But I love golf. It's it's all on you and you either shoot the number you don't.
What's one bucketless place that you want to surf and what's one golf course that you haven't played that you you really want to see.
My son recently went to Nicaragua and I've seen pictures that that looked like a like ideal ideal surf spot, so that would probably be my my place I'd want to go to surf. I've actually never been on a surf trip. I just surf at home with the kids, and so that that would be uh, I'd love to do. That's at some point. I've never played golf in Ireland. I played some in Scotland and I would probably I'd love to play some of those those courses in Ireland. So no of course in particular, but.
Just the surf culture in Ireland like pretty good.
That's that's what I hear. So yeah, it could be combined for sure.
I know like La Hinch is like a huge surf town. When we were I was in Northern Ireland this spring and Port Rush is like a huge surf town. So you like go out there and it's like you're on Royal Port Rush and you're playing and then there's people when you look down the dune, there's people surfing. You could do you could surf and play world class golf like all the way up in down the Irish coast.
Yeah, I didn't didn't think of that, but I have heard that. I read that book, that Ireland book. I forgot what it's called, but where he walks around Ireland.
But of course called Ireland. Yeah, yeah, Tom Coins book.
Right, So yeah, here about about the surf spots there. So yeah, that would be an ideal spot for sure.
Yeah, there was a when I was over there, we were I mean, it's like a pretty cool culture, like the surf there's I mean, it seems like pretty popular. My my sister in law the last few years has been just she's basically just taught yoga at surf camps all around the world, and one of them she taught yoga at was in Ireland. Now she's in Nicaragua at a surf camp there. But you know, she she's able to teach yoga and then go surfing every day good.
Life sounds pretty good there.
But the uh, the when I was in I there was this great map I wish I think I might have taken a picture on my phone. I'll have to try and find it. But there's this great map that like showed all like the surf spots along the coast and it was really cool. You could kind of layer it up. That'd be a great all time huh golf surf trip. But your your oversized luggage would be tough. Yeah, a lot of it.
That's a lot of luggage for sure. But yeah, it sounds like it'd be worth it for sure.
Yeah, for people interested in in in buying your clubs, how do they do that?
Yeah, I mean I've I've started a partnership with Power Built Golf, which I'm really excited about. So they I make woods for them and they put them on their website. So Power Built Golf is a good good place to look for him. I do occasionally do some some custom stuff still, but yeah, I just top Dempsey dot com.
But but yeah, the Power Built thing, you know, that's a a classic company that was big in the in the eighties when I started playing golf, and so it's kind of a dream to be working with a company like that and making woods for them.
Irons look awesome too.
Yeah, they're doing doing just real simple forged blades and great potters. I'm doing some putters for them to Persimon Potters, which I'm excited about. But they're just doing like a classic eighty EO two that looks looks so good, just the right amount of offset. And Paul bow and Travis Henderson there at David Martin at power Build are great guys that are that are really doing some exciting stuff, getting getting back to the to the classic roots of the company.
I feel like, you know, when we talk about all the things like pros pro should have to play blade irons, you know, like now that they've gotten into this cavvyback stuff, and it's just like, why can't the best players in the world play play blades?
You know? Yeah, I mean I agree. And now you're seeing tour players with their highest iron is a is a five iron. You know, I got got hybrid four irons, three irons. It's uh yeah, I I I don't understand it because I I can't hit a hybrid to save
my life. Guys, they'll have three hybrid I mean tour players three hybrids in their bags, and I don't know, they're obviously doing better than me, but they I agree that it's I just think that the game would be better if people played played equipment that that golf courses
were designed for. And yeah, keeping as much much of the you know, like you know, people get better by by improving their their their swinging and there and they're putting stroke and not not with a new a new piece of equipment that's that the scientists devised, you know. I just it's that when I grew up, it was just it was all on you. You know, there's no there wasn't this seemingly endless search to find the club
that will basically swing for you. And so yeah, it's just I guess it's just the things change and and maybe others are better and adapting to the change in me, but I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing.
What you just described reminds me of just standing over a long iron shot with a with a old school blade, where you're just standing over and all and it's you know, maybe there's a lot of trouble around the green and all you're thinking about is like you just got to put a really good move on this one, you know, and having that that that's what you feel right before you pull the trigger, is like, just make sure you make sure you move your body well you.
Know, Yeah, yeah exactly. It's uh, there's you're definitely on your own in that situation.
And that's the that's the beauty of golf, right there is that feeling where it's like, am I going to pull this off? Am I? I'm in this moment. It's a it's an extraordinarily difficult situation, and we're going to see if we pull it off, if we're going to be able to do it. And when you do it, there's nothing better, nothing feels better.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know. Now you're looking at a hybrid. It's a whole different, different shot. You can hit it anywhere on the face and it's going to get up there somewhere. But I I never never have been able to hit them. They go and I go left. Yeah, that's that's my tendency too.
I just like and now like I look at them and they're clothes and I'm and they look close to me, and I just it's I don't like them at all. I like the driving iron, the modern driving irons. They're basically the same thing, but they make those things are set up and look way better to me.
Yeah, but I definitely I agree, But those those are hollow heads they yeah, trampoline effect that that. Yeah, that's been a huge you know, guys are hitting those two eighty three hundred and what a difference. You know, if you can get it just changes the game so much. But yeah, I agree, they at least look kind of like golf clubs.
Yeah. All right, well Todd, thanks so much for coming on, and it was great chatting with you, and look forward to seeing Babell. We'll play for simon one day.
That was good. Thanks Andy.
All right, before we get to Chris Millard, let's talk about our friends at good Walk Coffee. You probably have heard about good Walk through this podcast. We partner with good Walk Coffee. We make our own blend. I am like a fried Egg coffee blend attic. I recently ran out. I had to get a coffee I used to drink and I was missing fried Egg Butlend. Luckily, I just got my monthly shipment yesterday, so I'm back on the fried Egg blend. You can buy our coffee at Goodwocoffee
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a nice little tumbler. I use it to walk around the block when I might have an adult beverage, when I'm walking the dog, or in the morning when I have a cup of coffee. It's a great little tumbler. So you can buy our holiday box on our website at proshop dot thefridagg dot com. Check out Goodwalk Coffee. They are a great partner. Really love their coffee. Can't recommend it enough. It is also like a great gift. People love coffee. The holiday box is a great gift,
but the coffee is also a great gift. So thanks good Walk and let's get over to Chris Millard to talk about Pebble Beach in his new book.
I am here with Chris Millard, the author of a new book called The Shot, Watson, Nicholas, Pebble Beach and the Chip That Changed Everything. It was published by Back nine Press. It's available for pre order now, I believe in shipping sometime in mid December. Chris, welcome back to the show.
Great to be with you, Garrett, Thanks for having me.
So your book is kind of centered around this shot by Tom Watson in the nineteen eighty two US Open, the famous chip in that everybody knows, but I thought we would take this book as a kind of excuse to dig into Pebble Beach's history a bit. A significant portion of the book is about that. It kind of doubles as a history of Pebble Beach as well as a history of this one shot. So let's talk about Pebble. What was your first experience out there? When did you first see the course?
Well, the first time I ever saw the golf course was probably in the early nineties when I was working for Golf World magazine and I was out there to cover something and I thought, you know what, I'm out near. I'm in the general area. I can't be even in California without finding my way down to Pebble, so I
just kind of wandered down there. I remember driving by fifteen t at Cyprus and thinking, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm here, and then follow seventeen mile drive down and so my first sighting of the whole place was really I wasn't playing. I was just trying to soak it in. So it was a visual treat for me, and that was probably in the early nineties.
It's very easy to see the courses when you're in you can just kind of drive by them.
I didn't expect that, you know, like coming from the northeast. You know, if let's just suppose you want to do a drive by and check in on Wing Foot.
Like right, this is not going to go out to Long Island and kind of guess you can kind of drive by some of those courses, like.
Shima Cock you can trying to drive right through it. But yeah, the idea that that it's so exposed and so at least visually accessible to the average Joe, just driving down seventeen mile drive was kind of staggering to me.
I always tell people that you can just ask for coastal access at the entrance of the Pebble Beach Resort essentially, and just drive in and kind of park next to the seventeenth hole. Yeah, and walk around and see the golf course. Nobody's going to stop you from doing that.
It is little store.
David Fay, you probably remember David. He was executive director of the USGA for years. He wrote an introduction to the book. Tom Watson wrote a forward, and David Fay contributed an introduction, and Fay starts off as introduction saying, you know, the first time I ever set foot on the Monterey Peninsula, I was, you know, a twenty year old kid in a friend's car, and I was just bombing down the road and I thought, wait a minute, that's fifteen T at Pebble Beach just to my right
right there. Holy cow. You pulled the car over, popped open the trunk, pulled out an old ball, used ball in a rusty club, and hit a shot on fifteen T. And he goes. I was back in the car and pulling away before the ball ever landed. But I could tell my friends I hit a shot at Cyprus.
Yeah, I got got to outrun the cops. After that, you know you can. There are hiking trails that kind of go through Pebble Beach, and I always tell people that there's a great hiking trail that essentially runs along the top of the big dune ridge that separates the dune holes at spy Glass Hill from the dune holes at Pebble Beach. There is a public hiking trail that you can There are maps of these trails that you can find online. But you can just walk right by
the inland portion of Cypress Point as well. I did many times when when I lived in the area and.
I didn't beautiful walk.
It's incredible. Yeah, it kind of dumps you out right by the fourth hole at at Spyglass Hill, right the third green fourth hole. It sort of takes a turn there and goes along the fourth hole. But as you're walking along that that high point, you can definitely see the ninth hole at Cypress Point and all the all those inland holes which are which are so wonderful and beautiful.
That's a mental note next trip out there. I got to do that one.
Yes, absolutely, So what made you want to delve into the history of Pebble Beach.
Chris independently Garrett. Both Golf Channel and ESPN at various times in their existence cited Watson's chip is the greatest shot in golf history. And so a few years back, a friend of mine said to me, you know, if those two organizations think it's the best shot in golf history, maybe there's something to it, like, maybe you should look
into it. So I started researching the main characters and the drama, and if you think about it, they're Tom Watson and his caddie, Bruce Edwards, Jack Nicholas, Pebble itself, the US Open itself, and you track basically end ABC and ESPN, which were in an interesting shadow dance at that time, which if you want to get into it later, we can. You track all these characters up to the moment when Watson chips in, and then you see how that moment refracted all their lives. What did that moment
do to them all? How did it change things? And the truth is what I discovered is that chip changed everything. It changed the future trajectory of Pebble Beach itself, It changed Washington Watson's standing in golf history. It marked the denw ma of Nicholas's career. It marked forever the rise of cable television and the extinction of the three network version of television we may have all grown up with.
So it really changed everything, and that's why I thought the book would be kind of interesting.
There are all these different threads that feed into this one shot.
Right.
The television angle of it was the most surprising to me, and what we'll talk about that later. But it's something I've been interested in for a long time as well. So I appreciated the history of the rise of golf television. I think that's a very interesting story that hasn't really been investigated.
I agree with you completely. We have most of us have viewed golf on television for decades in our lives, and so it is the way most of us ingest or consume the game on at least a weekly or daily basis. I think I've always thought it was worthwhile to look at golf through the lens of how television looks at golf and how television presents golf. It's always been an interest of mine anyway, so I'm glad to hear you you like that.
It's something I always think about when the Masters comes around because the history of the Master's telecast is such a rich history onto itself. But of course the Masters was not the first golf tournament to be televised in the US. That was really the US Open. The US Open was the one that was there kind of at the beginning being televised. But we'll get to that later. First I want to talk about some of the history
of Pebble Beach. I love the detail that you have on the history of Pebble Beach in this book because I think it's one of the more underappreciated or misunderstood histories among the great golf courses. It's also an unconventional history. You know, if you read it enough golf course in golf club histories, you start to become familiar with a
kind of common story structure about these courses. They were built by some great architect in the tens, twenties or thirties, and then they lost their way, and then they came back because Tom Doak or Gil Hans or Bill Corr visited and brought it back to its former glory. But that's just not the path that Pebble followed. This was a really strange kind of course with the strange early evolution, and you do such a great job of fleshing out the details of that evolution in this book. So first,
the history of the land itself. There's a lot to say here, but briefly, as briefly as you can, what was the history of the land at Pebble Beach before it was developed?
So, you know, the Mexican influence on that part of California began to recede, you know, roughly in the eighteen thirties, eighteen forties, and the property had actually changed hands several times sort of between the eighteen forties in the eighteen eighties. I guess the best place to tune in to keep this sort of you know short, is when David Jacks bought their property. And a lot of people may not know that David Jacks is the man who gave the
name to Monterey Jack cheese. It was a lot of the dairy required to produce that certain kind of cheese was produced on farms he owned in that area, and that's where Monterey Jack comes from. So the property changes hands a couple of times. I guess maybe the most important moment in the development of Pebble Beach really is the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory Point. You know, when we had rail travel that could essentially take you anywhere from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US.
That's when Pebble started. That's when their moment arrived. And of course the men involved in the driving that spike, a lot of them were San Francisco household names, you know, like Crocker and Huntington and Leland, you know, all these guys. And they also happened to be the guys who wanted to drive some traffic down to property they owned down at del Monte. And so the you know, long before field of dreams, these guys ascribed to the idea that
if you build it, they will come. If if you have a resort, and if you can build a railway, people will start coming. And that was sort of the beginning of people coming to Pebble Beach. Well actually it wasn't even really thought of as Pebble Beach, that it was thought of as del Monte. And there had been golf in del Monte starting in the late eighteen nineties, that beautiful little golf course, del Monte Golf Club.
Old del Monty as it's often called Yeah.
And designed by Charles Maud in eighteen ninety seven, great little beloved golf course in that area. So people had been coming to play golf in that region long before Pebble Beach was even a thought in anyone's mind. And the property continues to change hands a little bit and around let's see nineteen. Well, well the golf course. Really you talked earlier about how it's kind of a curious happenstance that Pebble Beach ever even came to be. It
really is. I mean, I've often thought that it's not a coincidence that a golf course that was birth not far from where the Grateful Dead came to be famous, traveled along a strange trip. It really was a circuitous route. And originally that property there was a group the Carmel Development Corp. Came to the people who owned that property and said, you know what, you'd probably be smart to develop homes here. So, as stunning as it sounds, the Pebble Beach we know in love today was almost obviated
by homes. And in fact, as you probably know, in any of the Pebble Beach historian devoteesno a lot was actually sold the William Batty lot, which really for people who've been to Pebble or watch it essentially occupied the old fifth Hole. And so when they retreated from this plan, fortunately you know, reason prevailed. They decided, you know what, if you build houses on this waterfront land, you're taking away the view of the houses that are up on
the ridge. And there were more lots up on the ridge. So they realized they were going to get more money if they preserved what became the golf course. So they sold all the life on the ridge. They all have since there were more lots. That means more waterfront views, that means more income. And for the longest time, as you know, I know, Garrett, the fifth Hole, that one lot. The family who did buy that one lot when they were thinking of developing it would not sell. And in fact,
I don't think they sold that lot. It's the William Beatty family. I think it was like lot lot three block something I can't remember. They wouldn't sell to Pebble until the nineteen nineties, and that's when Jack Nicholas was actually hired to When they did sell back to Pebble Beach, Necklace was hired to fashion a fifth hole. That was really the original intent of the desires to have a fifth hole that went more towards the water than away
from the water. And so that was like a kind of a thorn in the paw of golf purists a long long time. That ultimately did get resolved. I think you, I think you have a better fifth hole now than you did when you had to work around the baby property.
Well, there certainly was a It was evidence of the of the kind of chaotic genesis of the course that that that one house was sitting there on the coastline. It was the only real you know, it was the only property that was pressed right up against the coastline at Pebble Beach, and of course the course had to work around it for a long time, the fifth hole part three traveling inland and then finally coming out onto that sixth te where you then can get back to
the coastline. And so that that was that was sort of a funny little quirk of of the of the property for quite a while. But yeah, it was. It was as you say in the book, it was originally meant to be kind of a real estate development, but then the notion of a golf took hold Samuel Morse being a key driver behind it.
I can't believe I neglected to mention him, because he was really he was both the one of the problems and he was the problem solver, you know he was. He was basically brought in to do the liquidation when they decided they were going to start selling these properties that are now the golf course. He was the one brought in to sell those, and he was an eager, young yell graduate and he was gung ho. He's going to do whatever he had to do to get the
job done. And after he sold the baby property, he literally wrote, I forget where I found this, Maybe in a memoir or somewhere he wrote, I think I'm going to regret.
This wasn't wrong.
Then he is the one who flipped it around and said, you know what, guys, rather than sell the rather than sell these direct waterfront lots, let's preserve this the views
and sell lots up top. And then ultimately that gave the owners of the land the chance to build the golf course, which a preserved a lots the views, but also was going to be open to the public and would further enhance their ownership of the resorts down there, which they were big investors in, and so the tourist trap nature of Pebble just got even more so when the golf course got designed. Of course, the next step is all right, well, how do you get this golf
course built? Who designs it? And as you've read in the book, Garrett, that was a weird thing in and of itself. You know, you look at who would be on your roster of you know, your wish list of potential golf course designers in the mid nineteen nineteen, sixteen, seventeen eighteen.
Yeah, it'd be a fairly short list in America at the time.
That's right.
And there were some real, you know all stars. I mean, you had Donald Ross, you had Alistair mckenn, he had Charles Blair MacDonald to you and I have talked about before, and there's some evidence that he considered all three of those. There's actually a little bit of confusion. Maybe he may have confused mackenzie and MacDonald in his memoirs. But still he had a who's who of potential designers staring him
in the face for a great property. And he goes with the head scratching combo of Neville and Grant, who between them had never designed a single golf course in their lives, and the amateur amateur records they had. They were good players, they knew the game. But you know, like Jack Neville was a local guy, Walker Cupper, I mean, the guy was a real player, had never designed a golf course in his life, and neither had Grant. And
somehow these two gave us Pebble Beach. But even the pebble Beach they gave us isn't the Pebble Beach that we all know in Revere today. It had to go through quite a few mutations.
What were Jack Neville and Douglas Grant's respective roles on the project. Do we have a sense of, you know, who was sort of the head of it and who might have been in the tail of it, or do we not have that information.
I don't know if I have that in a concrete way, but I know that Neville, well here I don't know this. I sense from reading all this and researching it, that Morse who was doing the hiring, you know, Morse who had became really the undisputed king of Pebble Beach starting with saving this property in the nineteen eighteen or so all the way up until his death, he was really
the King. Morse had a real soft spot in his heart for Jack Neville, and Neville was over time, Neville became a bit of a head to Morse, and Morse was actually quite protective of Neville and of Neville's reputation visa v.
Pebble.
So even though, as we'll get into, Pebble took a lot of design twists and turns over its life, especially its life from conception in nineteen eighteen ish nineteen sixteen through the nineteen twenty nine AM a lot of stuff happened in there. Morse was always protective of Neville's authorship
and Neville's byline. And even when you know a lot of people knew the changes that were being affected on Pebble Beach in the nineteen twenties, Morse always stuck to this theme that you know it was it was done by Neville and Grant. It was done by Neville and Grant. He always protected Neville, even when the facts said, there's a lot of other people who deserve.
Some credit here.
So I'm gonna I'm going to offer a conjecture that Neville was more the lead than Grant was only because Morre said so much faith in Nebelle.
It's always been my sense as well. And there's also some kind of circumstantial evidence around the fact that Jack Neville went on to do some more design work in the future, whereas Douglas Grant kind of faded back into the searit he did of golf history.
Yeah, Donald Grant ended up, I mean, Grant ended up moving to Donald I made the same mistake Nicholas made one time he went Donald Grant. Yeah, Douglas Grant's golf courses. Nicholas made that same mistake in his book. But I think Grant ended up moving back to England and really kind of ended up turning his back on American golf.
But you so, you're right. Neville was much more front and center for his whole career, I mean whole life, even going way forward to when Sandy Tatum was asked to kind of redo the golf course, and he reached out quite emotionally. And a beautiful little piece of the book is when when Sandy Tatum and Jack Neville worked together to prep Pebble Beach for the eighty two US Open.
So, what are some of the big differences between the nineteen nineteen version of Pebble Beach and the one that we know time, Where would you go first, and kind of describing to people how this golf course originally looked.
Yeah, so I'm going to take your question you asked about nineteen nineteen. I'm going to go back one year earlier, in nineteen.
Eight nineteen eighteen. Yeah, because there's this is actually this was news to me in your book, the fact that the course had been played before nineteen.
So if you go into the pro shop there today and you buy something with a logo on it, it's got the beautiful trees and the rocky promontory, and it says nineteen nineteen. And of course that's the day that everybody believes that Pebble Beach had its opening. The true ruth of the matter is that the golf course was opened on March thirty first, and fittingly enough, April first, April Fool's Day of nineteen eighteen, and the baptism of
Pebble Beach was an absolute embarrassment that day. The conditioning was atrocious, there were rocks everywhere, there were sheeps still grazing the property. The golf course was just not ready for prime time, and Morse and everybody involved with Pebble Beach at that time really put the brakes on and said, you know, we're not ready, and they literally shut the golf course down. And Morse told his team, the golf course design team and the maintenance team, you know, we're
going to take a mulligan here, and they went. They spent a year, almost a year up until February of nineteen nineteen, February twenty second, nineteen nineteen, when they actually were now ready for the actual opening of Pebble Beach. And so that one little glitch, that year long glitch, gets back to your point where you're saying, of this strange trip and this strange like it's not a straight line story Pebble Beach. It's a very curvy up and
down story. So from a conditioning standpoint, and by the way, Pebble struggled with conditioning for a long long time. Even when they were starting to get big time tournaments like say the sixty one Amateur, even the seventy two Open, a lot of the great players were a little disappointed
with the quality of the conditioning. And I guess we got to remember that while Pebble is ostensibly rolling in money now when they're charging I don't know are they have they hit a thousand yet for what does it cost?
It's not quite a thousand yet they've virtuously kept it around, I believe the seven hundred to eight hundred dollars mark. But then there's the there's the resort stay that is usually involved exactly being able to play at Pebble Beach and all that. So it's not a it's not a cheap ticket.
So while where you know, now they certainly have these streams of revenue coming into help, and their their reputation is so lofty, they can they can levy those charges. If you go back to the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties even and into the seventies, that wasn't really the case. I mean, there was no the promotional machine was much more muted. It was harder to get to Pebble. The techniques for managing turf weren't very advanced really anywhere until
the nineteen sixties and seventies, and it was tough. In fact, at one point, I think in the nineteen seventy two US Open, of course Nicholas had won the am there in sixty one. He comes back eleven years later and he wins the us Open and he turned to the head of the USGA and he said, what did you do with all the grass? I mean, these are guys who had been playing Augusta National in these great places all these years, and they would come out to Pebble
and routinely be a little disappointed. So it's hard for us in our current day mindset to imagine that it would be anything but pristine. But for a long time, Pebble was anything but it.
Was kind of a working man's course for a while, you know. That's that's kind of how it felt. For a while. It was, yeah, I mean it and you know there were there were glitzy people who would who would hang around the resort and all that, but the course uh was was a bit ramshackle and uh and even rural feeling, maybe partly because it was kind of remote. That was one reason for it, for its slightly shaggy nature. But that's hard to conceive of now.
It really is.
And not only was the conditioning an issue, but there were aspects of the golf course itself that drew that were so looked down upon. You know, Morse's goal was when he finally got his golf course built, his goal was, all right, I need to land some attention. I need to get some people, some big names, to come out here and play here and create a little excitement. So he created this thing called the Pebble Beach Open with I think a five thousand dollars perse, which at the
time dwarfed most of the purses in professional golf. And he, with the scheduling skills of a boxing promoter, he scheduled his event to follow or proceed. It was right around either right before right after the LA opened. So all the big names in professional golf were in town or in California, and so he got them to zip down and play in this thing to create a little publicity. And the complaints with Pebble had been two. One was
the eighteenth hole. And this is for I mean, you may know this, Garrett, but for the average person who watches Pebble, you know, the eighteenth is almost a sack
a religious place. It's almost perfect. The eighteenth was the problem with Pebble Beach for much of its early life, and what Morse was trying to do was create enough interest in pebble that he could land the California Golf Association State Championship on that golf course, and that was his hole, like his true north was how am I going to get the California State championship on my golf course?
And people kept telling him, you can't get that event on this golf course until you fix up the eighteenth hole. And the problem with the hole at the time was that it was very short. Couple of solutions came about.
One was the first solution was offered by this guy named Arthur Bunker Vincent, and his idea was, hey, right behind seventeen Green, right where the beach is, let's pile up some rocks and sand and let's build a tea box right there, which would kind of require you to hit over a little piece of the bay, and you know, you'd have a dramatic tea shot. So they did that, and that's why we have that tea box where we do.
That's Arthur Bunker Vincent's tea box. But it did while it added an exciting tea shot, it didn't do much for the rest of the hole, which was extremely short. It was kind of a stubby little par for And then in another kind of circuitous happenstance of Pebble Beach's evolution. Hollins, who moved out from the East Coast out to Pebble
and was kind of a high society matron. She was very friendly with Herbert Fowler, who was a very prominent golf course designer, and Fowler had done some work on del Monte in recent years, and he and Marion were social friends, and that sort of led to Fowler being asked for his thoughts on eighteen. And Fowler basically says to Morse the same thing that the California Golf Association had said to Morris, which is, you're not going to get a golf our golf tournament on your golf course
until you fix eighteen. And it's got to be thorough going change. Vincent's tea box was a nice idea, but you need a dramatic change. And that's when Fowler stretched it one hundred and seventy yards further up the coast.
So he added one hundred and seventy yards to that hole, and that's really that what kind of put Pebble over the finish line for the California Golf Association, and that's what landed him the California State Amateur, which was held there for years and years, and that's when her Morse started thinking about bigger game, like, Okay, now I've got my attention getting golf course. Now I'm getting the great amateurs to come and play their championship every year. Now
I'm cooking with gas. So that it was really the combination of Arthur Vincent's tea box concept and then Herbert Fowler's one hundred and seventy yard addition to the end of the hole that helped Morse put pebble on the map.
Went from about a three hundred and thirty three hundred and forty par four to a pretty stern par five exactly right.
And can you imagine now, imagine, whether you've played pebble or not, you've seen it on TV a million times. Imagine if you walk off seventeen and like the tea box is immediately to your right. It's not like out towards the water. It's just right there and you're kind of bunting one. You're not even hitting over the water at all. It's hard to imagine, and it's easy to get in the California Golf Association's head and say, oh,
I get it. I get why they hated eighteen. And now when you look at what you have at eighteen, it's just incredible.
Does a good job of fitting with the rest of the course too. It doesn't feel like it was designed by somebody else, or somebody who had not routed or conceived of the other holes that run along the coast.
I mean, like, look at eight and nine and ten. Well, look at six and eight and nine and ten. It's easy, it would be easy for us to believe that the same person who laid those out is the same person who did eighteen, even though it's.
Right not Yeah, eighteen is sort of a mirror image in some ways of ten. Exactly right strategically, you know, conceptually as a golf hole, the way that it uses the coastline pretty similar.
I agree completely. And the other hurdle that Morse had is as the better players started to come to Pebble Beach for more California state championships, you had better quality of play, and you had more sophisticated judges of quality, and so they ultimately started to hone in on holes eight and thirteen. The green complexes at eight and thirteen and their concerns really were that those green complexes were not really designed to receive the kind of iron shot
the fairway was demanding. So, in what I'm sure he hoped was an audition for future work at Pebble Beach, Alistair Mackenzie weighed in through probably again through Marion Holland, and they were very close, as you know, and he came in to do redo eight and thirteen. What happened was he started on aid and thirteen and got called away to Australia for another design job.
Meanwhile, well Melbourne, that was Mackenzie's famous trip to Australia, happened kind of exactly right in mid nineteen twenties.
So he goes down to Australia and meanwhile eight and thirteen aren't finished. So all of a sudden people are playing, They're going, wait, we told you to fix eight and thirteen. These are atrocious And what they what they didn't appreciate was that Mackenzie was in mid it was kind of a work in progress, and that when he came back from Australia he finished eight and thirteen and then everyone went all right, well, now now we've got a legit
golf course. And that even put Pebble a little bit further on the map, a little higher on the map. And then, of course in the late twenties, in nineteen twenty seven, the USJA announces they're going to bring the amateur to Pebble, and of course Pebble goes through an entirely new evolution for that.
Well, before we get to that eight and thirteen Mackenzie's changes there. If you've seen the photographs of these holes, and I would suggest that anybody listening to this podcast who hasn't seen Mackenzie's versions of the greens at eight
and thirteen, there are great pictures of them. Go check out an article called Pebble Beach then and now if you just search for that and Google, something will come up on the Pebble Beach Resort website that will show you a bunch of photos of those holes through the years,
including Mackenzie's versions of those greens. They're very Mackenzie and greens, you know, recognizably his work similar in many ways to what he was doing at that very time just down seventeen mile drive at Cyprus Point, and so they were in his style in a way that they aren't anymore and also very different from what came before at Pebble Beach. You know, we talked about some of the rudimentary nature of jack Neville and Douglas Grant's original design at Pebble Beach.
One way in which it was rudimentary, I think is that the greens were very simply constructed. Yes, many of them pretty large and just kind of sitting on the land in very basic ways. Yeah, without these kind of stylish bunkers or anything of the kind that Mackenzie was famous for. And so that's what Mackenzie was working with. He really changed the style of those greens quite a bit.
Not only that, you're exactly right, Garrett, he changed eight and thirteen enormously. I do believe, just from the studying that I've done, the reading I've done, I do believe Mackenzie desperately wanted to get his hands on the whole golf course. I think he really and doing eight and thirteen was his way of saying, I'm available for these other sixteen holes.
This is kind of my this is my example. These are my paint switches here, right.
Yeah.
But then twenty seven rolls around and they announced the USAM is coming to Pebble which which really is like a that's a cultural moment for the USGA itself to have these sort of westward ambitions. That was quite a thing. To bring the most prestigious USGA title really at the time to California. That was like a moon launch, and the.
Tournament was much a much bigger deal back then than it is now. You know, it's a big deal now, but you know, this is a tournament that Bobby Jones was playing.
It exactly right. So that was a huge moment not only for the USGA and it's kind of westward or national lands, but also for Pebble Beach because now we've talked about a lot of these little evolutionary twists and turns.
It took.
Now they had to get the golf course ready for what the New York Times referred to as the onslaught And so how do you do that? You touched on something that I didn't really connect in the book. I I kind of wish I had when Mackenzie does eight and thirteen that I think may have a little bulb in the head of Chandler Egan, because that's who they ask,
you know, they bring in Hunter and Egan. The odd couple of Hunter and Egan to get the golf course ready for the nineteen twenty nine am Hunter being an avowed socialist who ran for the governor of Connecticut as a socialist and wrote some pretty heavyweight tomes on sociology and communism, politics, religion. And Chandler Eagan, who is arguably one of the first it boys of American amateur golf, you know, NCAA champion, multiple am champion, Olympian, you name it.
And the aristocratic sort of you know, kind of kind of an amateur in the Bobby Jones role. Contrasted with Robert Hunter, it is there is a you know, a bit of a mismatch there, but both men, of course worked had worked with Alistair mackenzie, Hunter assisting on some of Mackenzie's most famous California.
And then he goes on to write one of the probably top five greatest books ever written in the history of golf course architecture, you know, The Links, which is
just a must read. So this odd couple is brought in and you know, to their credit, you know, a lot, a lot of their quotes most and Chandler Eagan, I think had a slightly higher profile than hunter at that time anyway, and a lot of his quotes about this prep for the us M in twenty nine were things like God had done most of the work already, most of the heavy lifting was done already. There wasn't much
to do except really bunkers and greens. And to your point, that was kind of a weak spot of Pebble Beach where the non Mackenzie bunkers and greens the other sixteen And if you talk to Jeff Shackelford about this, who's really a real student of Pebble Beach golf course design history, we spent a good amount of time on the phone. He basically says, when you look at what Egan did for the twenty nine AM at Pebble and the results that Pebble got out of the work he did, may
be the most underappreciated golf course designer in history. And I think that's a pretty good argument, especially when you go back, if you look, you know, you recommended that article about Pebble Beach, you know, go back and look at the images. If you go back and you look at the images of Pebble Beach from the nineteen twenty
nine era, the bunkering is just spectacular. Now, there's one really important thing happened in nineteen twenty nine that we haven't touched on, and of course that's the crash and the ensuing depression. Most of the great clubs. I mean, you know this from having been out there so long. In California. You know, Cypress Point almost closed its doors during the depression. They were filling in bunkers in order
to reduce maintenance costs. And if Cypress Point was filling in these massive Pentagruleian bunkers to save costs, you can be sure that Pebble Beach which was doing the same thing, and these huge bunkers that he put in were also susceptible to the wind. You know, the bigger the bunker, the easier it is for the wind to get in there and suck all that stand out. So I think the bunkers that Egan and Hunter put in were absolutely beautiful. I wish they still existed, but I understand why they don't.
They just they couldn't but for a moment, for that moment in nineteen you know, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, during the m and until the depression hits and wipes it all out that may have been one of the really most beautifully bunkered golf courses in the world.
Well, for people who haven't seen photos of the course from this era, just envision a lot of the greens that you know now like seven or seventeen, being surrounded by these kind of duneescape style bunkers, completely surrounded in a lot of case says they aren't even really discreete bunkers. They're more like kind of island in this. Yeah, in this in this sandscape, it's almost like what you see at Mammoth Duns or something like that. At Sand Valleygan there's just a lot of exposed sand.
And Egan said somewhere I think I maybe in the book, Egan said somewhere that this was something that we cooked up. We hadn't really seen this anywhere before. It's just something that we thought would be kind of cool to use, you know, my vernacular, and we tried it, and of course it looks amazing. You know, it was it was ill fated, it wasn't going to last forever, but for that moment, it's sure was spectacular.
Yeah, you know, I'm of two minds about about this move by by Egan and I'm curious also about Hunter's involvement in it too, because Hunter is often known in his work with Mackenzie as sort of the artisan of the bunkers and the on site construction guy, and I wonder if he played a similar role in this project. But I'm of two minds about about this move by Egan's team to create these dunescapes, because on the one hand,
they're clearly very impressive. When you see these photos that they're stunning, you know, and especially in their difference from what exists there now, you almost can't believe that the course once looked like this. Yes, on the other hand, it's not natural to that to that terrain for there to be these donezy bunkers. It's kind of an odd fit.
And partly for that reason, they were remember maybe never going to last because of the the wind and because of the fact that there just isn't a base of sand there on Pebble Beach's property to keep this kind of const struction in existence. Once they blow away, you've just got heavy clay.
Basically, which, to your point on that service, that may be exactly the reason why they never existed before and never existed again.
Like that yeah, I think they just blew away.
Right.
I wonder if he can even had in his mind, you know, this lipstick is going to wear off, but boy, it sure does look it's going to look.
Good for good for the amateur.
Right.
Yeah, But as you mentioned, you know, the depression hit and I'm sure that the maintenance uh you know requirements of these doneesy bunkers were part of the reason that they that they didn't survive. You know that that they just took a lot of effort and funding to maintain. And that's something that Pebble Beach or many other courses in America had during the nineteen thirties and during World War.
Two, no doubt about that. And by the way, if you do, if any of your listeners or viewers do go look at old images. Is when you look at seventeen in those old twenty nine era images, look at the spot in the back left of the green where Watson plays this chip that spurred this whole book, that what is that slope where he was was sand back
in the twenty nine amateur era. And so just for a little sense of like connecting history, connecting the dots, that would have he would have likely been in sand if the Chandler Eagan design had survived, and that would have been a way easier shot for Tom Watson anyway than chipping out of you know, Shinhaigh rough.
Right.
So, Egan and Hunter's work I think is maybe primarily remembered for these dunescapes that they built, because that's the most visually striking part of what they did. But what are some other aspects, of course that that you would credit to that renovation? What are some other ways in which they altered the course in ways that proved to be kind of permanent.
Let's see that That's that's a tough question because I don't know if I can come up with something uh lasting that we could point to today and say, yeah, that's Egan.
Or it went away? I guess yeah. I mean, you know the old double ninth fair way if you play the ninth hole, now, you know you look to the right and you see a whole other expanse of now kind of rough that is right by the ocean cliff. Well, that that was once fairway, and that was an idea.
Well in the old chambers, remember didn't they they didn't they opened a wasn't there a tea box down closer to the water on nine, on ten, it was on ten, it's on tests.
Yeah, and they and they re established it if you walk to the right of the night train, but they don't. It's not very frequently in use. But it's a cool tea box.
But I can't that's a really good question. I guess it lends itself to the ephemeral nature of what Egan and Hunter did. They they put Pebble on the Big Time map, but with changes that were that you know, we're just going to fade away.
Yeah, it's wild. I think that's right. But you know, I think one thing though, and there's no particular evidence for this, but I think I think it's true that they established the greens of Pebble Beach. Yes, that sort of still exist now. They're smaller now than they were when when Egan and Hunter built them, but they still have some of the character, some of the design concept
that I think Egan and Hunter came up with. Basically the design concepts of the greens at Pebble Beach I believe to Egan and Hunters for the most part, and not Nevill and Graand Yeah, I.
Think that's fair to say that's the only area where I could visually point to and say, you know, before Egan and Hunter, this did not exist, and now it does. I think probably the green surfaces are the only the only thing you could point to.
Yeah, yeah, And I think the main difference now between you know, the greens as they exist now and as they existed in the nineteen twenty nine US amateur, I think the main difference would be that they were bigger back then, and probably some contours have been lost over time. But if you look at the seventeenth green, for instance, which you write an account of in your book, that idea of the green as this kind of hourglass shaped
thing with two different sections divided by a ridge. That was a Chandler Egan concept for a green, and that's still there.
Basically, Yeah, that's still basically there. I mean it's changed in some ways only because as the green, as the shape and size of the green has changed over time, the proportional space filled by the hump in the middle has changed a little bit over time.
But in.
A larger sense, you're right, that is the original Hunter Egan.
Look, the basic concept. Okay, so going forward in time a little bit, why didn't Pebble Beach get a US Open until nineteen seventy two.
Well, so I asked Frank Canigan about this once. And Frank is one of the great truth tellers and all of golfer was. He passed away years ago. But I asked Frank in his quote, he's actually in the book, California, while now a economic behemoth, really in the nineteen twenties and certainly during the depression in the thirties and really until after World War Two, didn't have that many people living in it, and particularly northern California was not as
populous as southern California. You know, La was growing a lot faster than the area around Pebble Beach. And if you look at the cities and the markets into which the USGA had taken the US Open, you know, these are big places. These are New York and Chicago. You know, there's they were worried. Frank Canagan tells me that even for the nineteen seventy two US Open, the USJA was worried that, you know, what would happen if you put on a US Open and nobody came.
There?
Just weren't the bodies. And plus it was the first time they were going to have the US Open at a public golf course quote unquote public golf course, and a public golf course didn't have the ready made volunteer base that a private club would have, and so there was some doubts about that. There were always doubts about conditioning,
as we talked before about Pebble Beach. So those were the big three strikes against Pebble, and they, you know, literally Frank Hannigan said to me, we were worried that nobody would come. In fact, the USGA's contract with Pebble had a stipulation that if a certain amount of people didn't show, there was going to be some kind of refund back to the USGA. Like the Pebble had to
get out and say there'll be bodies here. So it was that that's really why it took a long time for the US Open, which you know, you and I talked earlier about how the am was for the longest time, was the golden child of USGA championships. In my own mind, I've always thought that once Bobby Jones started routinely winning Opens, he added glamour, the the prestige that he lent to
the amateur that the amateur always had. It started to leach into the US Open and even onto the professional players who were playing golf at that time because Bobby Jones he raised all ships in a way, and so to bring their biggest what had now become their biggest title, the US Open, to Pebble Beach, seemed like a no brainer. But there, as I said, there were a lot of risks involved.
What was the relationship between television and Pebble Beach, And maybe you could take that story up to the nineteen seventy two US Open, where there was an important element of that tournament being televised.
So, as you mentioned earlier, the nineteen forty seven US Open was the first golf tournament ever telecast. And if you try to imagine where TV was in nineteen forty seven, it was extremely primitive. I mean, and this isn't even really an exaggeration, but like TV cameras were like as complicated as a car, you know what I mean. Like now now you could film a TV show with your iPhone and people might not know the difference.
And you can beam the image across the air right right, as opposed to having to you know, just imagine trying to trying to film a golf tournament. If you've got these massive cameras and you can't communicate, you know, the camera is and you have to figure out a way to connect everything.
It's insane. And the people who I've spoken to, there's a lot of people in this book in the TV industry that I talked to about the evolution of golf and TV, they'll tell you that, you know, the hardest sport to film for TV is golf because tennis or baseball or football all take place in a very predictable, confined area, and golf takes place over hundreds of acres with a small ball going hundreds of miles an hour.
You can't be everywhere. You can get every shot in a tennis match pretty easily, you cannot get every shot in a golf tournament. So it's it's maddening to try to do television to golf television. And these guys in nineteen forty seven in Saint Louis just figured they'd give it a go, you know, and it was very much like an entrepreneurial kind of a Jerry rigged concept. They literally the entire telecast consisted of approach shots into eighteen because you know, they didn't have mobiles.
What else could you do anheld.
Camera where you could walk with the guy up to eighteen green. So it literally it started and ended with the approach to eighteen. And to show you how naive this all was, one of the guys went up to Ben Hogan, who was playing in the tournament, and said, hey, Ben, you know, do you think you could do a little interview, you know, like stand here in front of our camera and chat with us. And he kind of had to
explain like what it was all about. You know, now, what player doesn't walk off eighteen in a tour event know that there's the media guy. So they had to say, well, we have a camera here and that's what we're going to do. And Ben Hogan said to the guy, well, you know, yeah, I think I've got time to chat with you guys, but you know, how about fifty bucks? And the guy says, you know, we don't. Really he set the standard really that.
Was very Yeah, he protected journalism in.
The exactly right Imagine the guy said, here's fifty bucks, where would we all be? Yeah, So the guy said to him, you know, no, we don't. We don't pay for that, and Ben said, great, I'm gone. So now go from literally the forty seven Open filming approach shots
into eighteen move ahead. Later in life, television has become a little more sophisticated, and Rune Ourledge is now overseeing ABC Sports, which had the contract to air the US Open up until the early nineties, and Terry Jastro, who went on to become unbelo believably successful and well regarded
television producer and director. They're all working at ABC Sports and they're working on preparing to broadcast the Pebble Beach US Open, And so they're doing site visits and where are we going to put our cameras and all this stuff, And they get this idea. They say to themselves, you know, golf has always started at, like in the old days at Saint Louis, the eighteenth hole. Even more recently in the in the seventies, we were only showing golf from
like the eleventh hole on. And they say to themselves, you know, would you really would you cover a baseball game starting in the third inning? And they're like, no, you wouldn't. And so they come to this idea that a great golf telecast of the US Open especially ought to have as much golf as possible, and if you're at a place like Pebble, even more so because you're
going to have such vistas. So they call Rune Oledge from their site visit at Pebble, and they say, and Rune has played in the Crosby but at this time Run is a regular in the Crosby Clambake playing with Tom Weiscoff. He loves Pebble as much as anybody. So they call Run and they say, hey, you know, we're out here doing the sight visit. We were thinking, maybe is this crazy? Maybe we ought to be showing more holes and more of Pebble and more of these views.
As I say in the book, you know, asking Run our OLiS if he wants more pebble is like asking Christopher Walking if he wants more cow bell. So he says, that's a great idea, absolutely great idea. He says, why don't we get as much as we can? In fact, instead of just doing like one hour, let's do like three hours. And then Run had to come up with the decision, well, where are those three hours going to
come from? And of course he was the godfather of why world of sports, which was just the it show in all sports television at that time, and so he said, great, we'll just make what we'll take two hours from why world of sports and make it golf coverage. And that's when they got that's the first time that golf ever got the big window, the big block of television time
to show early early holes. Going back, I think maybe in that open they might have started around the sixth hole something like that, and eventually at Southern Hills, I think in seventy seven might have been the first time that they ever were able to show all eighteen.
Did all eighteen and at Pebble Beach, surely part of the motive would be, we want to make sure to show the seventh hole at the very least, like get back far enough in the round so that they can see some of that four through ten stretch, which is so great, whereas if you start at eleven at Pebble Beach, you're not really showing right Pebble Beach. That's a way that would satisfy anybody exactly.
And speaking of motives, in their early discussions, Jastro had spoken with the general manager of Pebble Beach itself, and the general manager was complaining to Terry, this is all in the book that Hey, times at Pebble are tough. We're not selling out our rooms, we're not selling out the golf course. We're having a hard time. And so hey, Terry, when you air the USO, we need to do us a favor. Can you rather than just showing golf action, can you just sell the lodge a little bit? Can
you sell the experience a little bit? And so I went back and I looked at the footage of those all four days of the telecast, and every day the opening shot is a tight shot of the front door of the lodge, and you know, the announcer says, you know, you're looking live at the lodge at Pebble Beach, and he talks about what a fantastic place it is. And then they panned back and they turned fifty yards away as the first t of one of the great golf courses in the world, and the phones are lighting up,
people are reserving rooms again. And Jastro and the general manager Pebble said that that hosting that open airing that open is what kind of revived Pebble financially.
Yeah, so television and Pebble Beach have certainly been intertwined, very very intimately ever ever since very much. You know, to get to the kind of final beat of your story about TV and Pebble, the nineteen eighty two US Open represented yet another innovation in golf telecasts, right, yet another expansion of the coverage. Maybe you could say a few words about it, Yes, about that.
So, up until nineteen eighty two, golf in America had only been broadcast on weekends. You'd only been able to watch it on a Saturday or Sunday. So ABC has the rights the television package, and what they would do is they would bring their whole crew out to a venue and they would use the Thursday Friday rounds as practice for what would be the coverage on Saturday and Sunday.
So the cameras would literally try to train the kind of know the angles of the ballflight and kind of get all that down on Thursday and Friday so they'd
be ready on Saturday and Sunday. Well, this little teeny little cable contraption called ESPN, which was just starving for both programming and money approaches ABC Sports, which was the Leviathan and says, what would you think about us airing your Thursday and Friday rounds on our little cable net and then you guys can do your Saturday and Sunday rounds.
And of course this meant that the ABC sports cameramen and announcers and PA's the whole staff, we're going to be live on Thursday and Friday, meaning they would forfeit those practice days. So it meant more tension and more work and less practice. And so the ABC people were a little bit the staffers anywhere were a little bit cold to this idea. And the disdain that broadcast television had for cable television at that time cannot be overstated.
I mean, broadcast television was essentially Hollywood, and cable television was you know, the Des Moines affiliate, you know, you know what I mean, Like there was no there was no glamour attached to cable even though at that moment what was kind of bubbling up under the surface was we were about to go from a three network universe in television, ABC, NBC, and CBS into this dozens of channels, hundreds of channels cable universe, and that the cable companies
were going to be receiving money, not only subscriber fees, but also advertising dollars.
Yeah, and probably the greatest business model exactly right, ever invented, which is now collapsing, by the way, exactly right, but for about you know, forty years there it.
Was that's exactly right.
And so while ABC was in the catbird seat in terms of glamour and prestige, the future was clearly going to be a cable television And so this all unfolded that week at Pebble in nineteen eighty two, with this upstart cable network trying to work with and ultimately usurp the you know, the leader, the ABC Sports leader, and that moment happened, you know, they finally agreed to do it. And right before they went on air, Kurt Goudie, who was one of the announouncers for ABC, no, it's Jim McKay.
I'm sorry, it was Jim McKay. Jim McKay says to everybody over their earpieces before they're about to go on air on Thursday and Friday. He goes, hey, don't waste your good stuff today or tomorrow. It's only cable.
It's only cable that's good stuff. Well, you get to the end of that Tournament, seventy first hole, Watson chips and I rewatched this before our interview with an eye toward the telecast of it. Yeah, and what I noticed
was that it was a very well executed telecast. It represented kind of how far golf television had come since nineteen forty seven when they were just showing those approach chests, and how far it had come since those those Masters tournaments that they broadcast in the nineteen sixties when it was sort of similar. They would only cover a few holes at a time. It was black and white for at least a few years there. At the beginning, you get to Watson's Chipin' in nineteen eighty two, and the
crew knows exactly how to deliver that moment. Yes, you see the shot itself in a wide shot, you see
the ball go in. Then and then you have these different cameras, these different angles, the close up on Watson showing his run across the green, cutting to the crowd and showing the crowd going crazy, and then back to Watson as he continues to celebrate and points at his caddy, Bruce Edwards, And you know, says I told you so, basically because he told him before the shot that he was going to He wasn't just going to get it close,
he was going to hold it. And you know, looking at this, I was like, well, this is basically a modern golf telecast. They got there everything that's really important. I mean, there's a bunch of bells and whistles now that they have that they didn't have back then. But really that's all you need right there. The ability to show these shots from a number of different angles and to have the commentators following along live and delivering the moment. They were able to do that.
It was almost cinematic, like if you if you take footage from just your random event, to take the nineteen sixty five US Open, I don't even know bell Reeve, I don't even know where it was, take footage from that and compare it to the footage you just described, maybe two and the advances in golf television are almost undescribable. But a lot of that vision, a lot of that sort of intimacy and the warmth and the humanity is actually brought to the screen by Ruin Oarledge that that
was his thing. And I don't know, you may not be old enough. I don't know you. You might be.
Do you remember was two years before I was born. If that gives you an idea, well.
You might be.
You were probably a little to you, you remember. But Rune Oarlich brought this thing about in the nineteen seventies and probably it lasted into the eighties called up close and personal, and it's become almost a cliche in TV now, but up close and personally. The idea of up close and personal was that, particularly in the seventies when this thing really took off. Maybe it could have been the early eighties.
Rune had this belief that if I, if I knew you in some way, I would care more about what you're doing on the field, or on the golf course
or on the tennis court. And so if I could somehow get a little bit closer to you with my camera, and if I could see your eyes a little bit, eyes were huge, and if my announcers had something a little more about you than he's born in California, you know, like maybe that you played golf at this college, and that you had been a left hander and the switch to right, and so more personal detail, and so that the better I knew you, the more I would care
about what you were doing on TV. That was the essence of up close and personal, and Jastro talks about it in the book. In the chapter where we detail this TV moment and what went into these shots, Jastro talks about the importance of having the best cameramen in the business in position to get all the shots they wanted, close ups of the ball, like, for instance, you would not have seen a close up of a golf ball
in the nineteen sixty five US Open telegass. Yeah, but you got a real good look at the ball, and I am there since, and you had multiple guys with low angle cameras, multiple guys with high angle cameras. In fact, to get that balletic response by Watson is really a tribute to the cameramen because that just didn't happen a lot in golf, and it certainly didn't happen a lot with Watson. He was a very reserved guy. Ironic really that his greatest shot is marked by the most Unwatson
like celebration you've ever seen in your life. And the fact that they were able to record all that live is a testament to the evolution of golf television. But it's really a credit to Ruin Oarledge and Terry Jastrow and to Chuck Howard who really learned nailed down how to do golf TV.
And then beyond that, it's in color and it's showing Pebble Beach. You can see the ocean, you can see the course, and I think that probably changed a lot of things for Pebble Beach, being able to be beamed into people's living rooms in color so that people could actually see what this golf course looked like.
Yeah, I think it did. I think really almost starting in seventy two when people got to watch Nicholas hit the one iron the seventeen stretching through and really even to when they went there in ninety two, the best ad you could ever have for Pebble Beach is a US Open at Pebble Beach. And from the time that Golf di just started ranking courses, you see a huge rise in Pebble Beach's stature the more it's been on
television in US Opens. So, you know, to Jastro and the GM's earlier point about you know, now they were selling rooms like the US Open and the ABC put Pebble back on the financial map. I think it's also carved out for Pebble Beach a permanent place in golf course lore. I mean it's it's just spectacular and it loves the camera.
Well, Chris, it was great to have you back on the podcast again. The book is called The Shot Watson Nicholas, Pebble Beach and the Chip That Changed Everything available for order now. Maybe by the time this podcast comes out. In fact, copies of the book will be getting shipped out to people. So congratulations on the book and thanks for coming on.
Thank you so much, Garrett, thanks for having me, and happy holidays to you and all your viewers.
Yeah to you as well.
All right, thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast. I hope you liked this monster episode here. Gotten a ton of feedback about the Bob Crosby episode earlier this week. Thank you, that was really fun. I'm sad that Bob had a hard stop. That conversation probably would have kept going. We will definitely get him back on in the near future to have a part two of that discussion. But thanks the PJA for editing producing
this podcast. He has been a busy boy. We've got year review going on on shotgun start and he is churning out the audio content. We've got two more weeks of pods and then a little break. We're going to take a holiday break, but we've got some goodies in store for the holidays. Thanks to everybody for their ongoing support, And if you're looking for another type of holiday gift, check out Club TFE our membership. That's a great gift
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