Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. We are back with new episode here in the New Year with PGA tour player Roberto castro So. This will be a two part podcast, with the second half of this podcast posting later this week. Happy New Year. I hope everybody had a great holiday and enjoy Roberto castro 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 brid egg, Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, Frida Egg, fridagg bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the Yeah, well that's one of my questions. We can talk about it when whatever,
during the when it comes up. But like, is it possible to separate like the course from the club, you know, like that is like such a huge like thing in my opinion, you know that I don't think, you know, I'm not to get like all like Malcolm Gladwell, but like, you know, is it is it because of the membership and the club and the prestige or the history or the course or the you know, like the nostalgia I don't know, there's just so many pieces that I think,
like some of these clubs get you know, like I mean the list when you guys had this conversation the list you went down, it's like, oh, he was like Cyprus and Pine Valt and it's like yeah, but that's like walking into a church and when net g Illinoy and being like, I don't know, like Saint Patrick's Cathedral
just like gets it right in New York. You know, it's like yeah, okay, sure it does, but like not every you know, like there's just I don't know, it's just the you know, like when we talk about like golf or where it should go, it's like, well, look at these places like when you butt in the locker rooms are metal and it's like, yeah, but you could
get that an Alpharetta Georgia. People will be like this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, you know, Like there's it's just a hard like I think people get really nostalgic for things that are very unique, you know, that are now replicable.
You know it's funny. I uh so like col Club and San Francisco. Yeah, so San Francisco Golf is obviously like the the super exclusive one, the one where like nothing's changed, you know, you're like going back in time. You know. I've grown to appreciate the no cell phone rule. Like I love just putting it away, Like I like you leaving it in the car, and like, yeah, outside of like the fear of some crazy thing happening, you like for the most part, like you're you're gonna be fine,
and then you enjoy your day so much more. But like so like COL Club is like if so, I think San Francisco Golf Club is a much better golf of course, right, But Cal Club they did this big restoration or renovation really and they completely overhauled like the vibe and the the the membership of the club with this restorate. Like their their thought was like if if people are complaining about what we want to do and making it really golf centric, then like that's fine, let
them leave because those aren't the members we want. And they've completely overhauled the membership with this whole you know thing. And it's like that's a perfect example. Like so San Francisco Golf Club, at my point in my life, I'd rather be a member of Cal Club than San Francisco golf club because like cal Club would be I would fit in more there. You know, they have a vibe, they have they have more games, you know, you it'd
be way easier to find a game to play. You know, the people that I'd be playing with, I'd have more in common with. So I think that is like there's a lot of things that go into a club. Like and it's like when I was a member at a club in Chicago, it was you know, it was in the wrong part of town and so it had fallen on tough times they needed members. But like I was twenty eight when I joined, and I joined, and then like I got a bunch of my buddies that I
played midday I'm golf with to join. So you know, the golf course wasn't great. There's way too many trees, you know, it drove me insane. But I had like forty guys that were threes or less to play with, you know, and that that makes a huge difference. That makes a place, It makes a place special. I always tell people, like, you should join a club that you know you're going to have good games.
At, and there's so many I don't know. I think it's very like people and like the current you know, like social media, golf Twitter verse, like they want to ascribe like off to like one thing, you know, and it's like like people who really love golf, like it's because of good architecture or it's because of and it's like no, people like they're like ten different, Like I hear like yours the one you're talking about. You joined
your boes. It was a fine course. We had forty guys in the scratch game every day and you those were like scratched afore. And then the club I joined, We planned it in college. Could college really high end like suburban club. The course was in one of Doak's books as a zero on the Doak scale. Okay, a zero, but I'm telling you those members, we had such a good group of guys, and those guys have kind of
stay from that club of the year since. But like they're golf nuts, they're going to the UK every year. They joined other Like these guys are junkies, and we all were at a place with a dope zero but it didn't matter. Like the course was in pure shape and it was like fancy and the service was you know, like I'm just saying there's something different ways doing the came.
If you think it's just good golf architecture, why how does that explain the like bowels or millions of people that go to a driving range and golf balls after work every day, you know, like even play it, so like want to hit balls off a mat. So you know, there's just if there's no one solution for like either growing the game or like explaining why people like it or why.
I think golf course architecture is so important in the sense of like most people don't know why they like certain courses and everything. And if if people played better golf, if there was more better golf, people would play more golf and it would be less expensive. Because really good golf architecture is actually way more simple than the stuff that offends someone like dok or myself. Like you know, look at Augusta when it opened, it had twenty two bunkers.
You know, Brandon Is diverted a lot from it, but like twenty two bunkers is is the maintenance budget on that is a fraction, and it'd be It's the same thing as like letting courses be living organisms, letting them you know, kind of brown out, not having to have everything be lush and perfect like. That's I think the aspects of of golf that kind of gets swept under the rug, and in a lot of ways, I think where people people have unrealistic expectations because of what they
see on TV. It was like when the Tour when uh they were at Trinity Forst this year, and the and the Golf Channel like jacked up the saturation levels on the TV to make Triny Forrest look more green.
Oh really, that's interesting.
Did you play that? You're in the one you're gonna play You're gonna play that next year?
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
That's quoil Caddy.
Uh went work there and he said it was pretty sweet. He said it was cool.
Yeah, So what, uh, what's it? You know, You've you've had an interesting uh career where you're one of the rare guys that's gone Tour Championship to Web and then back and then back. But what do you think the biggest difference between the Web and the PGA tourists.
Man, it's totally different.
I mean I played Web in two thousand and eleven and then six years on tour, and then I played WEB last year and now much changed on the Web. Honestly, in my six or seven years, the tourist changed a lot.
But the Web really hasn't changed much.
I mean, the golf courses are totally different. You know, they're much shorter and they're much less penal. So literally anyone in the field can win a Web tournament. And you see that like this year, like ten guys won that did not finish in the top twenty five. You know, you can go like five miss cuts in a row and then win a Web tournament because if you can get it out there and have a really good putting
week and hit you know, you can win. You don't really see that on the tour, Like guys that went on tour are trending in that direction generally, or they're very very good players that have been through like a you know, a bad stretch or whatever. But there's not like the Web rookie that you know, has missed six of his first eight cuts and then like wins Byron Nelson,
Like that doesn't generally happen. But on the Web tour every year there's guys that just you know, they're one sixtieth on the money list, they've made one cut and then they peel off twenty five hunder, you know, somewhere in the Midwest in July and they win. So it's it's totally different. They'll play anywhere on the web, literally anywhere.
That's what I was looking at, Like Cameron Champ and I was, you know, he got off to such a good start in the fall, and I was thinking to myself, like, how come he wasn't more dominant on the web. And I started to think about it. I always thought that that that web courses might favor bombers more, but that made me kind of realize that it actually, like the shorter courses give every everybody a shot.
Totally yeah.
I mean, if everyone is hitting nine iron or down on a shorter, easier course, you know, being seventy yards is not that big of an advantage of being.
One hundred yards.
It's a much bigger difference when for seventy versus one twenty. It's a big difference when I'm two hundred and he's one fifty. That's a wedge and a five iron, you know. And look, it doesn't necessarily mean that like the wrong guys are having success out there. The golf course that he won in Utah was the most nothing course that I saw this year. Like it was though it was just an you know, not to be mean. It's a fine little country club, you know, neighborhood course, but it
was the most nothing course. And he won. And you know, the Web finals had a buddy from Tech who was there in Arizona, and the scores were just insanely low. The web dot com Q School Finals, Yeah, and the scores were insanely low. And I don't follow college golf that closely, but I know what the right, you know, the big names are. And it seemed like of the ten big names, nine of them finished in the top forty.
And then that Thornberry kid, you know, shot like ten under the first day and kind of got stuck and.
Didn't finish in the top forty.
But all the other kids that were all Americans at the big schools, and you know, the Norman Jong's and the you know, the kid from Texas, Scottie Scheff, all those kids, like, yeah, they all finished in the top forty.
And the course was obviously a nothing course where you know, just kind of a everyone said, if you kept it out of the desert, it was then the easiest course in the world, So you know, it's not necessarily like the best players are still the best players even if you go play a you know, kind of a rinky dent course, you know, and and they have their certain challenges.
To the Web Tour.
You know, I don't blame them. Some of the courses are pretty disappointing. But hey, if there's a sponsor and there's a town that wants to host the tour, you know, they're just going to play where they can play. It's that's I mean, on the list of five things that need to happen to put together a web course, you know, the courses pretty far down that list.
Yeah, I think I think the thing with the Web Tour that that frustrates me is that no other sporting league subsidizes the senior tour their senior circuit over their developmental tour, like you know, minor league baseball. The minor league teams are clearly supplemented by the by the big
league team. And to me, that's where it kind of falls short, is that this is the tour that's responsible for developing your next wave of stars, and you subsidize the aging stars that have already made their money, who are already in the pension program and you know, getting theirs like they've already gotten theirs.
Yeah, but that tour is not responsible for developing the next generation of the guys that end up in the top ten or twenty in the world, that become the next generation of tour stars. They either play one season there or they play zero seasons there. It's just not it's not a you know, they're not responsible for developing.
It's more of a way of identifying. It's more of like a season long qualifier in my opinion, And if you look at it that way, you know, I would do some things differently if you look at it as basically a season long qualifier. But you know, the tour they're smart. The persones haven't gone up. You know, I was gone for six years, and the purses are the same, but traveling is more expensive. Caddies are you know. I mean how ten twelve years ago they were playing for
almost the same thing they're playing now. The Web Tour is financially not very viable unless you finish in the top twenty five. You can break even or make a little money. But the tour knows that as the carrot gets bigger and the purses go up on the PGA Tour, they could play for zero money. They could announce today that there's zero purses for the web dot Com schedule next year, and they would fill the fields right now. Because if you get your card, you're playing for seven
million every week the following year. So the you know, I means the incentives to play for a million dollars a week on the tour, on the web tour, or subsidize it. From the tours business perspective, it's not really there, right.
So you said to you, if you were looking at it as a season long qualifier, you'd change some things. What would be a couple of things that you change.
Well, I'd make the schedule more travel. You know, I played when I turned probably played mini tours, and I drove to the tournaments and we played for one hundred and fifty grand or two hundred thousand dollars purses. But you drove and you carried your own back or you rode in a cart, and you could do it and
you could make some money. You know. Kisner and I always talk about how, you know, we were lucky when we were playing minis, like we made money, especially for being twenty one, twenty two years old, and that's those main tours have kind of gone away for whatever reason. I'm not sure if it's like PGA Tour Canada and
China or Latin America. I don't know, that's a different, you know topic, but I would you know, if you're looking at it as more of a qualifier, you maybe you have sixteen tournaments and there's four tournaments in Florida, and then when it's July, there's four tournaments around Chicago, and then you know, when it cools back down or whatever, you have to go out to California or to the desert in Arizona. But you make it to where maybe you're not playing for as much, but you're not spending
as much. I mean the amount of them. I mean to you know, this buddy of mine who played at Georgia Tech. He's a really good young player, Vince Waley. He went through the Q School. He finished in the top forty and lost money at Q School even with the you know, they give you a bit of a check for finishing the top forty. You know it's going to cost him fifteen twenty grand to go play the first five tournaments. You go to the Bahamas for two weeks, Colombia, Mexico, Panama,
you know, ten fifteen thousand bucks. And if he makes that money back, he's going to be like near the top twenty five of the money list, you know. And again, hey, you go have a good year out there. Another tech kid that finished like third or fourth on the money list, you know, he made three hundred something thousand dollars. That's it. You know, even if you spend one hundred or one hundred and fifty, that's a hell of a good year.
You know, coming out of college, there's definitely opportunity to make money out there. But if the purses continue to not in like simple inflation ten years from now, they're still playing for six hundred grand a week out there, and but you're flying all over the country, it's completely untenable, you know.
So yeah, I agree with that. I got a buddy who's now five straight years. He's so he's made through every stage of Q school for five straight years, but he's never you know, his he gets the web tour,
he hasn't played great on any year. And it's and I look at it him just like god like from a financial standpoint, like he you know, he's going to run out, you know, like he's going to run out of cash, and he's you know, clearly one of the best, you know, six hundred players in the world probably, right, And it's like, God, what a tough gig. If you're if you're one of the six hundred best basketball players, you're playing for millions of dollars in Europe at least.
Yeah, it's yeah. And you know, like some people are like, well, if you go get your MBA, you know, you pay one hundred grand or whatever, and you don't make any money, you're not earning in your job, and it's an investment in your future earnings and the web Tour you can look at it that way, and hey, that's one way
to look at it. But when you get your MBA, you're almost guaranteed to have future earnings as of in whatever your career is, you know, the Web tour or any developmental golf, you know, any kid turning pro, there's no guarantee you could do that for ten years and you never make the tour and then you're starting kind of from scratch. So I don't think that's you know, kind of a perfect analogy. But you know, if you
make it. It's like, well, you know, I've busted it on the web tour for a year or two and kind of broke even and whatever. But now I'm playing for big money. That works out, you know for those guys.
Well you could be like Omar, You're usty and just become like the sensation of the PGA circuit.
Just crush the section event.
So you've You've talked a little bit about your You went to Georgia Tech, and I think it's one of the things I find unique is you graduated with honors an industrial engineering degree from the you know, it's the top industrial engineering school in the country. Uh, what would you what would you be doing if you weren't golfing.
That's a good question.
I don't know, you know, I think just like people romanticize, you know, professional golf. I think, you know, I romanticize like my buddies of corporate jobs or you know, have done really well in that world. So you know, you'd like to think that, like you get the consulting job out of college and you go back in business school or or something like that. But it's just hard to say. You know, I also have friends that went that root for a while and then ejected because they, uh, you know,
that's not as glamorous as it sounds. It's hard to say, but you know, when I turned pro, it was too I had finished school in two thousand and seven. I mean, things were booming, like my you know, classmates were like taking multiple offers from big companies and you know, and I was like hauling off to you know, Connapolis, North Carolina to play for you know, fifty bucks in a mini tour event. So it was you know, I was kind of like, well, well, you know, we'll see how
this goes. And then you know, two thousand and eight happened. And then a couple you know, a Georgia tech guy older than me that had played for a couple of years and then was in the workforce, a real estate guy. I mean it was two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and he was like, man, I'm talking to like you know these guys, I'm like, I might as well just like play mini tours now, like the opportunity there's just no there's no business, there's no deals, there's
no you know everything. When every the bottom fell out of everything, he was like, maybe I should go back and play golf, Like there's nothing, you know, so it's kind of just timing of when things happened.
But it's hard to say exactly what i'd be doing.
Who knows.
Yeah, it's it's funny. I Uh, after I graduated college, I played some good AM stuff and I thought about playing and I had like a moment where I you know, I didn't play in college, and but I was, you know, I could have played some other places. And I was sitting in a hotel and I can't remember what part of Florida, and you know, it was around New Year's and I'd just seen all my friends and I was just like, what the fuck am I doing down here?
You know.
And it's like you got to have like a you got to have a deep burning desire is what I learned really quickly. And I was like, I don't really have this, and I don't know if I'm good enough to do this. It's uh, but it's it, you know, the dream is uh. In that time, I graduated in nine and so like that that time is you know, it was like the job market was so bad it didn't you know, going and checking it out for six months wasn't a big deal.
Sure, yeah, yeah, it's it's different though that I mean, I talk about it a lot with my brother and the coach at Tech. You know, when I finished. You know, it's about the same time as you. They were guys on my team obviously that played golf at Georgia Tech's. They were really good players and they did not turn pro. You know, it was kind of like, man, like I was kind of the five to six guy, or you know, maybe I was like the four guy and played most of my time here, but like, no, I'm not going
to play pro golf. And man, this generation now like across the board, I mean, like my brother's twenty six, like all those kids are turning pro, you know, and I it's I don't know if it's a millennial thing or or what, but I just want to be like guys like you know, like it is like if you're the you know, if you're the five or six guy on a college team, like, you know, you got a long you got a lot of long way to go
if you're going to make a living doing this. But you know, guys do it for either a short time or they you know, they.
Figure it out.
But it's definitely interesting to watch the kids, uh that are coming up now, you know, And I, like I said, I was very fortunate the many tour situation was so different for those couple of years after I turned pro, so different.
I was lucky in that regard.
It's so to me the you know, the tour has changed in the last yeah, kind of since like I would say Jordan Speed twenty twelve ish. You know, it's like when we first have seen this, it's like, what do you why do you what would you attribute to this like mass wave of youth talent that's coming into the game. And essentially unlike any time before you've talked about you and Kissner, I look at like Kissner is a perfect example of like he's like an all round guy.
He's you know, I think I don't think last year. I think the year before he finished top forty in every strokes gain category and it and you look at it, he's a three or four time All American. But it still took him five six years to get to the get to the PGA Tour. And it's like, you know, that guy now is there you know within two years.
Yeah, it's a good question. And I think for the guy that played golf in college for four years, like like Kisner myself or Cooch or Snedeker. You know, I think the prime of your career was kind of the traditional like call it thirty to thirty three, twenty eight to thirty two. You know, maybe that that was the prime, But I mean I don't think that's the case anymore. I think it's you know, it's honestly, it's twenty to twenty five and twenty to twenty eight, and this generation
that's now like reaching that. I mean, Jordan, I mean, you know, I mean those couple of years that Speed had, I mean that had twenty one twenty two, I mean some of the best years in the history of golf, and Justin Thomas did it super young. And even McElroy, right, I mean he's you know, his best years were in his early twenties. But I think the biggest difference is, like you nail it. I mean, if you play like kids or I play, you have to be really good
at all parts of the game. And for a week to have a good week, you have to hit it good. You have to drive it well, you have to chip and put it well. You have to have a good week on the greens. But if you hit it three hundred and thirty yards in the air and straight. Some weeks you really just need to have a good putting week or a really good driving week where you hit it super straight to have like an amazing week or to win. And there's less of like the learning how
to play. And I'm not saying these guys can't chip and putt, and they don't. They know how to chip and putt, that's you know, and they know how to play. But like you know, Ogilvie kind of talked about it when you spoke with him, like you had to learn how to play, and I think I fell in that category.
Maybe kids might have too, you know, but there's not that much of a learning curve when you can hit it three hundred and thirty yards dead straight and put well and you're polished and you you know, you played the ajaga, you played at a big time college, even if it was just for a year or two, you've just had way more experience and you're not you just
the expectation is totally different. Like when I turned pro, there was like one or two guys a year that would get maybe their PGA Tour card, and there was three or four guys a year that like were recently graduated, that would get on the Web Tour, that would make it through Q School to the finals and get on the Web Tour. But the expectation for most people, not
Anthony Kim and not Dustin Johnson. Those guys are my age, my year of college, and Dustin obviously just crushed the tour school and then he's the best player in the last ten or twelve years, him or Rory. But the expectation was like you had to get your legs under you, you know, get better and get out there. And you know, I mean, golf's all mental. If the expectation now is to do what Justin Thomas did, then there's a decent
chance that Cameron Champ is going to do it. You know, it's just what you believe is possible and what you believe you can do and what your expectation is.
It shifts everything.
You know, it may not be more than a mentality. I mean, Jordan was the you know, kind of the first one, right, So that's it.
I'd never thought about like the expectation and the mental side of it, but that's it's so spot on because now if you're a really highly regarded college player. You turn pro, you've seen all of your peers, guys that you've beaten, you know, guys you've competed against for you know, ten years of your life. Go do it. It's like it's not as tall as a task, it's not as intimidating.
Yeah, it's it isn't it's you know, it's expectation. It's mental where you see yourself and it had and it you know, that's fifty percent. And then it has to match up with a skill set. But the most important skill set on the tour is driving it eight hundred miles and putting really well. Yeah, and those these kids have that.
They have that skill set.
So you know, it's not just I believe in mine. There's a lot. You can believe in yourself all day. I can believe in myself. I'm not going to play in the NBA even if I think, you know, but these kids have the skill set to match. They have the two or three skills that are most important for playing in today's On today's.
Tour, distance has obviously always been a huge advantage. But I look back to like Hank Keeney and Hank Keeney hit it really far you know, he was you know, essentially camera Champ before Camera Champ, but that era he did not succeed, you know, in terms of you know, how he could you know, drive the ball, Like what's changed that? Now? You know these guys hit it that hit it far that don't you know that do almost every other aspect of the game at a below average
PGA Tour level. All of a sudden they make our top you know, thirty players.
I don't know, but I would guess two things. One day, hit it insanely straight. Dustin hits it so straight it makes your eyes water. I mean, it's incredible how straight he hits it. And Brooks I've never played with Brooks, but it seems like the same. I've played with Dustin the most of those guys that are like top five in the world. He hits it so straight. And I've played with McElroy a few times and he HiT's so
straight and just turning it on TV. Do you know how narrow the fairways are when you carry it three hundred and thirty yards and then if it rolls out well like I watched Rory flipped on like Riviera last year, so he gets to like ten eleven twelve, turns a little to the right and he drives it down there three hundred and fifty five yards in the fairway. He has to land that ball on the right side of the faraway so it can run to the left side
of the fairway at three hundred and fifty yards. It's an and he's doing it hole after hole after hole. It's unbelievable how straight they hit it. And then they chip and pot too. You know. Cameron Champ led the field and putting I think in Mississippi and then at rs M and Sea Island. I'm not sure if he did that for four days, but I think sitting around breakfast on Sunday, they were showing the stat that he was leading the field and putting for three days at RSM.
You know, the chip and putt like crazy, you know, and and they hit it long and straight. So I'm not sure what you know in the previous generation that those guys were either more crooked or more one dimensional, meaning that's like the only thing they could do was hit it far.
But that's not the case anymore.
It's you know, this is this is good. It's going to make give me a reason that I have to I have to finish writing this thing. I found a really interesting academic study the other day. I got on this rabbit hole about tennis, you know, and tennis is you know, changed over the years, and I've found this study that these two students looked at the change from wooden to composite rackets and tennis and how it how it changed the you know, skills that succeeded in tennis.
And it was a study to examine like workforce, right instead of because you can't study like what technological change can do to workforce because people's careers are fifty years, So they looked at tennis because it was six to fifteen years. And it was fascinating that, like when there's a major technological change in the in tennis, all of
a sudden, the skills that are rewarded are changed. So, you know, tennis used to be all about precision, all of a sudden, that composite racket allowed for top spin, so players with power and top spin all of sudden became extremely dominant in the sport, I believe it. So it's a fascinating thing. I think there's so many parallels and to my from what I can think of, like the only real sports that have you know, had this major technological change or golf and and in tennis, yeah.
Yeah, And I don't know if it was the pro v that flies straighter or if it's the drivers.
I think the combination of the head size, TrackMan and the ball, because like those are three major innovations.
Yeah, and it's I mean two anecdotal stories. I mean my college coach coached at Oklahoma State, gosh, and maybe the early nineties when they they went in C double a's and finished second a couple other times, like Alan Braddon who now coaches there. It's some really good players like Phil's era. Okay, when phills at Arizona State and coaches like, look, we're the best team in the country. Are one of the couple best teams in the country.
And I mean the night before a tournament, we got four out of five guys on the driving rings trying to find us, like find figure out how to get it on the golf course, Okay, and we were the best team in the country. Like we lose more balls in practice rounds. Coaches like, I mean, we don't. We don't hit a ball out of play anymore. And like Tech's still good and they're still a good team, but like you know, all of a sudden, in the practice rounds,
it's just five. I have two hundred and ninety yard bombs down the middle every single time, Like you know, it's it's totally different, totally different game. And then you know on Christmas Eve or whatever Golf channel had that Christmas Day that all those shells. Wonderful world of golf. So I watched the Pine Valley and Congressional just because I know those two courses, especially Congressional because I've played there so many times. And it was Di Vicenzo. Obviously,
the guy's a legend, like great player. He literally topped it off the first te He hit it one hundred and sixty yards and didn't get to the faraway. Could you imagine any tour player hitting anything. I mean, he may spray one on, but like hitting anything, but just like a high bomb off the first tee. And the Pine Valley match was the same thing. They would mishit these t shots and they would be like, ooh, didn't quite get to the fairway two thirty five off the tee.
That's impossible now, yeah, right, So to your point, huge technological change because those guys swing it unbelievable. You know, they had beautiful golf swings and they were spectacles players. So you can't tell me that like Jeene Littler or whoever it was, like, you know, was was a less pure striker than you know, Cameron Champ. But it's impossible to top it with today's equipment.
Yeah, that's it's I went to uh a track winter facility in Chicago the other day and I used their track man because I got sent uh this uh these old clubs that from a buddy who's one of his members at his club is a former tour player, uh from back in the day, and he just dropped off like six sets of clubs, so he sent me one of them, so I, you know, I went, I went
to this TrackMan and hit the Hickory driver. I have this Hogan driver that's like a Persimmon driver, and then my driver and I use ballattas and pro v ones and it was insane because with the you know, it's the middle of winter here and I'm not swinging great, but I literally like it would have been a complete shank with any other driver with my modern driver, and it's still went to ninety and then I get the you know, I get the Persimmons and the Hickory drivers,
and if I hit that shot, it would go nowhere. I mean it was it would be like a low, cold pull left and and you know, and what I saw was there was a wider dispersion of both the distance and direction with those with the old clubs because the file ball was possible.
Yeah, so very possible.
And it's fascinating because like, I'm sure you're the same way when I grew up, like you could still hit fallballs, like in high school golf, I remember like being able to like top it off the tee.
Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's different. And then you know, that might be part of the answer to the you know why in like the eighties or nineties, was the top you know, the whatever, the correlation between you know, driving distance and money list finish you.
Know, wasn't as high as this today.
And maybe maybe that's the reason. It was just so much harder, maybe to hit it long and straight. I mean obviously Norman and Nicholas and Tiger you know, before the pro v hit it longer and straighter than everyone. But it was maybe just that much of a unique you know, because there's as much as it's easy to say, like Dustin, I mean every year there's you know, there's twenty I mean rom hits it three thirty and straight, Justin Thomas hits a three thirty and straight. McElroy, does
you know there's in every year there's more. So it becomes a different skill set that's rewarded, just like your you know, research on the on the tennis.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the thing is Like I feel like I had like a realization a couple of years ago that if I swing as hard as I can at drivers, it's the best way I can swing a golf club. Yeah, because like it gets you athletically into it, it gets a better motion. But but the back flip side of it is like you're not focused on hitting the sweet spot because the head's so big you can't really miss.
I don't know, I don't know what the I don't know what the poll numbers would show. But if you were to pull the PGA Tour, if you had to hit a faaraway eighteenth hole, you have to hit the faaraway to win or save your life, would you rather hit a driver or a three wood driver, my guess would My guess would be people say driver eighty percent say driver.
No doubt to me, Like, I almost like, I'm thinking about taking the three wood out of the bag because I use it so little.
Yeah, it's true.
It's like and I used to have like that Sonar Tech three wood that I would just like back in the day, I would just hit that at any time I felt uncomfortable. It was like my favorite club in my bag. It's it's just fascinating. So you touched on this a little bit like with the with consistency on the web, and so from you, your standpoint as a tour pro is consistency underrated and winning overrated.
I think that winning is underrated, and I think that consistency is it's not overrated or underrated.
Properly awesome.
But yeah, it's properly rated. But I think I think, and this is coming from someone who has zero wins on the tour, I think winning.
Is what it's all about, you know.
And I think the guys that are most impressive for the guys that win when they get up there, and if you look at guys that have had success, they've won it every level Like this Bryson Deshambo. I mean, I like tweeted whatever it was two years ago. I mean when I was, you know, on tour obviously when he was coming out and playing on his sponsor spots, and it's like, what do you think? Because you know what you think about this guy or you know players
and the I'm like, what do I think? I think that he won the US Amateur and the NC Double A and the only guys that have done that, it made a hundred million dollars on tour. I think he's going to dominate, Like not dominate, but I think he's going to make a hundred million dollars on tour. That's what I think. And I don't care if he's you know,
hitting it with a shovel like he's a winner. The guy wins huge tournaments, and I think winning is underrated, you know, and it's it's been I mean, you know, my generation, Web Simpson won a lot of junior tournaments, he won a couple of colls. You know, he won an amateur golf and lo and behold. You know, I don't know how many majors he's contended in, but he won the one at Olympic Club and you know, the guy's got five six wins or whatever he has.
That's just a trend that.
Continues, and it's a it's I don't I think it's underrated.
Winning is underrated.
It's a tough, tough thing to do, and the people that do it a lot are it's those are some bad dudes.
Yeah, web Web had a great year. I mean won the players and contended and every other major, I think, a top twenty and every other major. I mean, yeah, he's he's a heck of a player. It's so from like a week to week standpoint on the PGA Tour versus majors, Like, what would you say is the biggest difference.
I think it's a big difference.
I've played a dozen majors, and I just think it's it's mean, it's rewards a really strong game the majors. You know, I think that it's a lot more difficult, the courses are a lot longer. It's you know, and
it's it's an interesting, interesting, uh difference. You know. I think, like I looked up I listened to you and Olivi's deal and y'all talked about something and I clicked on like Ryan Moore's page and like he actually hasn't had he has like three top tens and majors, and I would have guessed he had like sixteen because he's such a good player and he's always played well in such big tournaments. And then you have like guy like Bill Haas.
I remember he finished top ten somewhere and they were like, that's his first top ten in a major. And he's a spectacular player. But you know, I mean, well, one of the four majors in Augusta, where being you know, having a certain type of games obviously fits that course really well. But the majors are tough, and I mean the field are you know, there's so much deeper. But
I think that's why. You see, like we played at Birkdale two years ago and I just thought to myself, like, anybody can win this tournament the way the course is. Anyone can win this tournament and lo and behold it's Spee who's there at all? The majors and Cooch and I just think it's really hard for a guy like
Foots or someone like that. And Couch has contended Augusta a couple of times, but uh, and then the US opened, which has become like our best invitation of the some sort of weird British Open the last six years, eight years is the same thing. It's big, long, wide, so anyone can hit. It's it's very it rewards a certain certain.
Type of game.
But you know, the guys that play well consistently in the majors, you know, I know Ricky hasn't won one, but he's got what like ten top fives and majors. Like that's some serious playing, you know, I mean kept him before he started winning him and know he has like he's like sixteen of the last seventeen majors he's finished in the top twenty or something like. I mean, if you do that every time, you're gonna win a couple. And he's won three, which is amazing.
That's that's some serious golf.
It's like you're gonna fall into a few like Ernie L's is almost like a perfect example his last major win, like he fell into that, but like it was almost like his reward for finishing in the top five like thirty times in majors.
I couldn't agree more. I watched I watched him lose a couple that were heartbreakers, and when he won that one it just felt like, oh, that's about right. Like he you know, like he he should have you know he's doing he's doing another major because he's there all the time. You're one hundred percent right.
It's so, what do you think in terms of the with and at the professional level? Is it? Is it? Do you do you think it's over eight or under a? Do you think it has to be narrow? Do you think? Do you are you in the the Brandle's Chambolise school of thinking or are you more in the in the fried Egg school thinking not to you know, you can you can say the Brandle thinking. It's not going to offend me.
I I'm not in the Brandle school thinking when it comes to the with or the distance. I mean I heard him saying that, you know that the interview that he thinks they just need to build better golf courses, and I mean where who's going to build them? I don't I don't understand where we're supposed to go play now with the way how far the ball goes? And then you know they asked him in that interview like, well, what did you think about golf ne SNL for the
the Ryder Cup? Is that a good example of how to make it tough again, and he was like, well, something like that, but not like that, not like that exactly, but something like that. And I'm like, but what, like, what's what's the solution to? And scoring is not really the thing I have an issue with. I mean, scoring to me is very arbitrary. People get really hung up on scoring, and I think Aaron Hills and Shinnakok were
a perfect example of that. The greens at Aaron Hills were literally like a pool table and they had four par fives. If you change one of those par fives and then you make the greens bumpy like they were at Shinnakok, you get the scoring pretty similar. And the greens aren't bad at Shinnakock. They're just whatever eighty year old greens, you know, whereas Aaron Hills greens were so good that if you had a good putting week and you're a great potter like Brooks Koepka, you can hoop
so many putts. And Shinnikock is a great golf course and it's a hard golf course, but so is Aaron Hills. And they weren't sixteen shots difference as far as playability. But when the greens are bumpy or not perfect. You know, you make a couple less ten footers around, and a couple less ten footers is eight shots at the end
of the week. So it's not a scoring issue. It's just like when you watch Aaron Hills and Brooks Kopka didn't hit more than seven iron into a par four and they had to go into the middle of Wisconsin to build an eight thousand yard golf course and they still couldn't put anything longer than a seven iron in these guys hands. You're like, what are you supposed to do? I mean, what's the answer? Brandle? Like, where do you
go from there? You know? And if you don't want golf nacional, if you don't want eight inch rough and narrow fairways, like, how do you want to like challenge? How are we going to challenge the players? And this is strictly professional golf, Yeah, you know, we're not talking about recreational golf. And I don't you know that's I don't see how it's possible to challenge guys that hit it that long and straight anymore.
So that's it's a fascinating thing. So I thought, with like Aaron Hills, I think with the with unless you want a tour that is, you know, what I think about a lot is like the associated penalty of missing the fairway for a guy who hits it two eighty
versus Brooks or DJ. Like when Brooks are DJ business a fairway, they're gonna have wedge in their hand, and being in the rough with a wedge is not that big of a deal versus being in the rough with like a six or a five iron or seven iron even like all of a sudden, then that's a really hard shot if you're in the rough with a with
a you know, less lofted club. So the associated penalty of missing a fairway is so so much different for you know, the long hitter than the say the even the three hundred yard hitter, which has now become the average hitter on tour. Is and so like to me, like what Aaron The special thing about Aaron Hills or Shinnecock is it gave somebody the opportunity that's a shorter hitter to legitimately hit fourteen or fourteen fairways.
Yeah, I agree with that.
So in my mind it's like and I totally agree with the scoring thing. The score that's where everybody kind of is twisted, is like, you know, the game has changed, so why are we holding on to the same scores, Like why not just make the part at a at the PGA Tour, you know, say, say the players make the par par sixty eight. You know, sixteen isn't a par five anymore, right, Yeah.
I don't get hung up on the scoring. The thing that I think and this is just me as like a golf fan, and you know, I say, I get an inside the rules. Look to me, the issue is that golf is now a game on the professional level where you play with it's basically wedges and putter and like the rest of the bag doesn't really matter except for a couple of part threes around. And that's the part that that's the off, you know, just as a fan, like not as a player trying to make a living, like, dude,
go out there and make a living. Like there's no I don't have any like grudges or or any hard feelings about the way the game is played now.
From that standpoint, it's like killer be killed.
I understand what I signed up for, but I just I just wish that the game would get back to being more of a, you got to use all fourteen clubs because right now I tell the college kids, like the tech kids that I see, it's like, you either need to be prodigious with the driver or the putter to make a living. That is, those are the two clubs. If you're not prodigious with one of those two, you're going to have a really hard time. Guys that are prodigious with both.
And those guys are the top ten guys in the world, you know.
Yeah, it's like my buddy, for my buddy, Sean Martin, who writes for the Tour, he was like, you know, eight of the top ten strokes gained driving made it to the Tour Championship, and it was like thirteen or thirteen of the thirty, we're in the top twenty. It's like if you drive it far, so like if you're in the top tennis and of strokes gained off the tea, it's impossible to lose your card.
Yeah, and that's it's not just far. They hit it straight, yeah, you know, and like I agree with like, no one is knocking these guys, Like I'm not knocking them for like, oh, they just hit it far. It's like, no, they hit a start and stupid straight Yeah, so you know that's unbelievable.
Watch that'll do it for part one of the Roberto Castro podcast. I hope you enjoy it. UH. Part two will go into more detail into Roberto's background, how he got into the game, much more about life on tour, tour, golf, golf course architecture, just a lot of topics. It was a fun podcast and ford uh Part two later this week, and thanks for listening.