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 bride egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida eg Frida Egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today We've got an awesome episode.
Uh.
This is really centers around the APGA Tour, which, for those that do not know, is a tour that's really focused on inclusivity and diversity in the game of golf at the highest level at professional golf. So the ap GA Tour has been around for over a decade. It was all started by Ken Bentley. He's the first of our two guests. We also have Aaron Beverly. Ken goes into just kind of starting a golf tour, what his
original goals were and what has become. It's become something really pretty incredible and you know, become a great place to play and a great place to develop diverse talent in the game of golf, which I think is super important. Our second guest is Aaron Beverly. Aaron Beverly played on PGA Tour Canada as well as the APGA Tour this year. Great guy lives in Sacramento, met him earlier in the year and wanted to get him on the pod to
just talk golf in his career. So I spent this week Sunday through Tuesday out at the APGA event down in Pebble Beach. It was the Cisco Invitational. It was It was a historic event in terms of the APGA. It was played at Spanish Bay and Spyglass and it was the first ever fifty four whole event for the APGA, and it had the biggest perse ever in APGA history, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars went to the winner, which was why at Worthington. You you've
probably recognized that name from the PGA Championship. He's qualified for a number of PGA Championships. He shot sixty four in the final round at Spanish Bay, which for anybody that's been out there, there are disasters waiting at every turn there. It is a really tricky golf course, a really uncomfortable golf course, and sixty four is a really great score there to win. He beat a slew of players. There's a lot of talent. I played. I played in the pro am, which was it was kind of cool.
It was during the round of golf. It was during the second round of the tournament, so I was playing with with a couple guys, Marcus Bird as well as Jared Garcia. I played with those guys and we it was during their second round of competition, and it was it was really neat. I mean, both guys were super impressive. Jared was three under through three ended up shooting I think one under on the round. And then Marcus Bird, who you might recognize that name. He was the Charlie
Sifford exemption to Riviera this year. He actually won the Lexus Cup, which is like the APGA Player of the Year race. That he won that and he'll get full status on the PGA Tour Americas, which is Canada Latin America next year. Definitely a name to watch. He hits the crap out of the ball and really really magnetic personality. But along with that, you know, they I spent a lot of time with the players. You know, it was
just fun. You know, you go to these PGA Tour events and and nobody wants to talk to you as a media member. And at the APGA event, it was just it was so nice to just talk with with players, hear their stories where they where they played college golf, at how they've been playing on the tour, and uh, it was super fun. So you know, that was a
it was a really great experience. Uh. And I think, you know, the companies like Cisco, Farmers other companies that have really put some financial backing behind this tour deserve to be applauded for what they're doing really advancing the game of golf. I plan to pay a lot closer attention to the APGA Tour moving forward, and I hope to see some of these guys make it to the highest level of the game. I think that, you know, I obviously go to the majors. I go to a
couple PGA Tour events a year. These guys hit the ball, you know, at a level that they can they can play. It's about putting it together and I think Ken talks about it, and I agree, it's about providing an opportunity for them to develop and play. And you know, I talked to Marcus Bird after his round and he was telling me about how after college he was working at UPS.
I mean, this guy was in the top one hundred of the world amateur golf rankings and he was he didn't because he couldn't put the money together to play professional golf. And it wasn't until COVID happened. He still had exemptions and he played some amateur events with the money he was making caddying and working at UPS, and he played a few amateur events the next summer and then he got some people to put some money behind him.
But like, you know, the thought of like a top one hundred amateur player not being able to even pursue a professional career. Think about that in like the context of any other sport. Think about it into the context of, like, hey, this is one of the one hundred best NFL prospects and he's not going to get a chance to play in the league because he can't, you know, afford to play you know, developmental and you know football, it doesn't work.
It's not Apple's Apples comparison, but it makes sense, like there needs to be places of play that support the players. And I know, like you don't want to make these tours, destination tours. You don't want, you know, it to be a place that you know, you can make a living here, like a great living here, Like you want the highest level of golf rewarded. But like just the nature of golf is it is very difficult unless you have financial
means or access to financial means. And I think that's one of the things that is great about what's happening with the APGA is that it is providing a bridge and an opportunity for people to get better without you know, fifty to one hundred thousand dollars expenses a year and allowing them to play for some cash. Like you know, I mean, why at Worthington making fifty thousand, that's going to really change his life. So, without further ado, let's get to Ken Bentley and Aaron Beverly and thank you
guys for listening. All right, Ken, I'd love to hear how you got into golf personally.
Well, I was working at Nestley, and I was an executive at Nestley, and I've been a tennis player all my life. I went to college on a tennis scholarship and I found that I was missing out on all the meetings, the guys were playing golf, and I swore, I was never gonna play golf. It's too slow, was it,
you know, my kind of game. But then I found I was missing all all those meetings, those four hours on a golf course, and so I decided I would just play and learn well enough so I could play in those just corporate out And the first time I played, I was so bad. You know. Again, I swore and never do it again. And then I went out again and took a lesson and I hit a couple of shots,
and then I was hooked. I just I just fell in love with the game, gave up tennis, just went to I mean, when I first started playing, I was single at the time, and so I would go to the driving range after work every night and I'd hit two hundred balls, and the guy who worked at the range, he would say, okay, you know, if you want to stay afterwards, you can hit balls till midnight if you wanted to. And I would actually hit balls until midnight. I chise, I just love the game, and I still do.
I mean, I still, you know, I think about it all the time. I'm one of those golf junkies. I buy all the latest clubs, and you know, I love talking about golf. And the funny thing is all the guys I grew up playing tennis with are now playing golf, and so uh, it's just been. It's just been. It's a sport of a lifetime. I hope to play for us as long as I live.
Were you living in LA when you were when you started playing? Yeah, it was it by chance. The Westchester Range. Yeah, I spent many a nights of that range. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, I used to go to Westchester and I used to play that which was crazy. It was like almost like a video game playing that course at night. Did you ever played at night?
I didn't ever play it at night. I was just I was just going there for the range.
Oh yeah, yeah, so I love that range. Actually, but when you play Westchester at night, they actually have the worst lights in the world and place balls are flying all over. So you take your life in your old hands.
And then you got the planes. The planes are going over. It's a yeah, that is a it's listen. That range is just if if you want to if you want quintessential l a golf, that range is is just you got every every type of every profile of Los Angeles golfer in in one place at that range is Uh, it's an incredible experience. I I I remember I've lived there in my twenties for a little bit and I was, you know, a golf junkie and that was the that was the range that I went to all the time during the week.
Oh yeah, I love that place. A great putting area, that big, big pudding green.
Yeah. Yeah. When you were described when you said the lights, and I was just like it had to be that range.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, the music going, it's a it's an awesome, awesome spot. It's a Hey. Speaking of tennis, you being a big tennis player already, did you watch bunch of the US Open and uh, you know a resurgence of American tennis this year?
Oh, big time. Yeah, I was glued to the TV. Uh. The Americans have really made a statement and as we as we talked earlier, I mean it's intentional. They have a great player development program. I mean they looked a few years ago and American tennis was down so far, especially on the men's side, that the USTA invested in a lot of money in player development and you've seen the results of it today.
Yeah, it's it's incredible to see just the young talent. I as somebody who recently moved to the West coast, the US Open unbelievable for anybody that lives on the West coast. Maybe not the best on the East coast, but those matches that especially you get in those quarterfinal matches, and there's nothing better than that light match that you're you're enjoyed, you know, it's under the lights and everything. So I want to talk about your your work at
golf and with you founding the APGA. Obviously, I think it's a tour that has gained a lot of momentum, a lot of exposure over the last few years. But I want to go back to the start. What made you want to start the APGA and can you tell us about, you know, kind of the early days of the APGA.
Well, I used to, as I said, I was a tennis player, but so once I got into golf. Twice a year I would get my friends together and maybe he would be thirty forty guys and we would go to different parts of the country and play golf. We would raise money for charity and those places where we would go and so at one of these we call
them gatherings. And one of these gatherings, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, Adrian Stills, who had played on the PGA Tour, and so we were just talking about why there weren't more African Americans on the PGA Tour, and he said, when he came along, there was a United Golf Association Tour, which was kind of the Negro leagues of golf, and he had a chance
to hone his game. He built camaraderie with players, and he felt like if we could start something where guys had a chance to play and develop their games, we could get some guys on tour. So I went to two companies I was associated with. I was at NESLEI at the time, so I got a grant from Nestle and I'm on the board of Farmers Insurance. I got a grant from them, and I put some of my own money in it. And we started in twenty ten
with three tournaments. And I'll never forget that first tournament at Rogers Park in Tampa, and we didn't know what to expect, right, it was just a whole new concept. We send notices out the guys, and here were sixty guys, mostly African Americans on the driving range, beautiful swings, you know, all fired up, excited about this opportunity, and we had no idea where this was going to lead. So we started with just three tournaments, four thousand dollars first prize.
I think we had. Our whole budget was like forty thousand dollars that first few years. And if you fast forward to today, we got eighteen tournaments, over a million dollars in prize money and bonus money. We're playing on iconic golf courses, places that host US Opens and PGA Tour events. So, yeah, we've come a long way. And I had a person one of our sponsors, asked me yesterday if this has been more than I envisioned back when we had that conversation, And yeah, it's been. I
never dreamed. I thought we'd just have some tournaments, right, we'd have a few tournaments on inner city golf courses. But I had no idea in fourteen years we'd be where we are today.
Yeah, I think that's the beautiful thing. I would say that this is entrepreneurship. About entrepreneurship is you start something and you kind of have an idea of where it could go. And I'm sure in your in the back of your head you might have believed it could be this.
But you you kind of go on this road and and a lot of things happened that you know that are you know, just big moments, and then you get to these places and you you say, I never imagined that this was going to get here with the early days. Are there any humorous stories from like the courses, or purses or or or players early early in the APGA that gives of kind of give kind of color of of what the tour was when you started up.
Well, I think, you know, it's a couple stories. One, we were out at Chester Washington, right is it's kind of a legendary golf course where they used to it's the road going into Chester now named after Charlie Sifferd because he played there. But we would we go out there, and again you just have no idea. But but those guys won't go to Riviera. The people that play at regularly at Chester, they don't go to Riviera to see
professional golf. So when you're sitting around there, they're talking about Tim O'Neill, you know, they're talking about Willie Mack. Those are the guys that they talk about that are, you know, professional golf. That's professional golf to them. Because they actually got a chance to see those guys, they follow them and I think, I think it's amazing how those guys, our players resonate with those guys. And another another story, I'll give you two one to show you
how important I think diversity is in golf. So we're at Tory Pines and Farmers had a clinic and so they had Willie Mack, they had Billy horschew Ricky Fowler, and one other player I can't bubble watch it. I think doing the clinic, and so they had fifty kids and there were three African American kids out of the fifty, and so they allowed the kids to self select what line they went into and what player they would actually get instructions from. And the black kids immediately went to
Willie Mack. Now they hadn't seen him on TV, but when they heard he was a professional golfer who looked like then they stayed in his line the whole time. They were so fired up, and I think it was just so great to see how excited these kids were to see a professional golfer. The other one is kind of a sad story. We're at We're in Texas, in Dallas at a tournament at Craig Ranch. We played the first We played the first round and then we noticed
that they're punching the greens in the fairways. So we go in the pro shop and we said, you know, we're having a pro tournament out there, and they said, oh, well, your guys won't notice the punch greens and the punch fairways. So it's crazy we had to play the second round with punch fairways and punch greens. But I think, you know, that would never happen today. I think there's a lot more respect for our guys. There's a you know, there's a general feeling that you know, our guys can play,
and they've proven it over time. So I think those early days too, I couldn't get phone calls returned. You know, I think it was just that that idea that people just didn't think we could be successful. Now just like a whole different world.
Did you ever have your own doubts about whether you could be successful at that point?
You know?
The thing I I well, I think we made a turning point for us. There's been a couple turning points, And you asked me if I had doubts.
I had doubts about whether I'd be able to get a whole bunch at corporate support. So we made a decision. Probably three or four years in, we were having trouble getting corporate sponsors, and so we I went to some of my friends and I just said, you know, if we if you guys believe in what we're doing, then we got to put our own money in and we got to get it to a point where people will believe in this. And I think that was a big turning point.
Souse.
I got a bunch of my friends together to put in money, and so we were able to add a little prize money. Also, the PGA tour came on in twenty twelve, and it was a it's a weird situation that we got a check in the mail from them for like six years in a row. Just know, we never met with them. They just sent us a check every year in January, but the check, but the fact that they believed in us enough to invest money was great.
A big turning point in that relationship was in I think twenty eighteen, I get a call from Alison Keller, who's the chief operating officer over at the PGA Tour, and she said, you know, I noticed that we've just been sending you this check every year and we don't know what we get for. We don't know a lot about the APGA. So either we're gonna stop get sent in a check, or we're gonna invest heavily in the APGA. So you got to come in. You got to talk
to all of our executives. You got to tell us what you're doing and what your vision is for the future.
You just been getting a check. Yeah, check it round and six years later we asked you to come in.
Right. It was crazy, but you know it was the reception once we went in and presented our vision was amazing.
Uh.
And they've been an unbelievable partner for us.
That's what I mean. What do you think initially drew them? Did you ever find out what initially got the check coming in and then what were what was the big thing that they they do? You think resonated about the APGA with the PGA Tour.
Well, Steve Mona, who was head of the World Golf Foundation, he had contacted.
Uh.
He came to one of our tournaments and uh, he was really impressed with what we do. So he called a friend of his at and I'm not sure who it was he contacted, but he contacted our friend somebody at the a P at the PGA tour and that's how we got to check and they just you know, we tried to make contact with somebody over there, but we just never did it and got to check in the mail. But I think what there are a few
things I think that resonated with them. One, we had sustained success over we had been in existence then for about six or seven years, and we had started the players had started to play better, you know. I think they saw the passion that we had. And by then, you know, we had a big vision for the APGA. After we had been in around for six or seven years. I saw this idea of where we could be, you know, I saw the I had the vision of where we
could take this organization. And I think they were they were impressed by by the passion that we had and also that the vision we had for the future.
What what was the I guess do you do you recall was there a moment where your vision became this grand vision for the APGA and from you know, just hey, we're trying to do a couple of tournaments as you mentioned, at some city courses. You know, when did that change?
You know, I think it started to develop when we got the opportunity to have a tournament at Tory Pines alongside of the PGA Tour event. When the Farmers Jeff Day, who was the CEO of Farmers at the time, and I had a conversation and I told him about the APGA and he thought it was a great idea. It took us a while to sell it to you know, the PGA Tour and to Century Club. But once we did, you know, once our guys got on site and there
the amazing thing was there. You know, Tory Pines has a north courtse in the south court, so our guys were on the north course while the PGA guys were on the south course at the same time. So you're walking the same fairways with Tiger Rory and you got the signs up. There's thousands of people there and to see and have all those people asking about the APGA and to see our guys in that environment, I think that's when I really started to say, hey, this thing
could be really unbelievable. And then when we got the final round televised live a few years later, I mean, that was another breakthrough moment to see our guys on national TV in a live tournament. So I think the I think getting to Tory Pines was a watershed moment for us.
Going back to the early days. I think anybody that started something generally longs for the some parts of the early days. Is there a specific aspect of the first couple of years of the APGA that you really miss now that you've become this you really developed tour, you know, nationally recognized tour, a tour with, as you said, over a million dollars in prize money. Is there something you missed from those early days where you're just kind of thrown together tournaments?
You know, I miss going to those inner city golf courses because, as I mentioned, you know, our guys were heroes out there. You know, we connected with the community. There was a different feel and I miss that. You know, you don't get the the same feeling at Chester Washington that you get at Valhalla, right, I mean, it's a different it's a whole different vibe. You don't get the
community as involved. But you know, you can't prepare guys for the PGA Tour if you're playing Chester Washington every week, so you have to have it. But I I really think we got to go back to some of that. I think we if we're going to help grow golf, we can't play all of our tournaments on you know, those so far away from the community. So I think you'll see us in the future bring some.
Of that back.
We still got to prepare the guys for the PGA Tour, so we'll still have those iconic golf courses, but I think we'll sprinkle back in the Chester, Washington's and the Rogers Park.
Yeah, I mean, and hopefully in the next few years, the you know golf movement of some of these city golf courses getting worked on and elevated continues. I know one course that's that's about to start a big renovation project. It's Cops Creek and Philadelphia, and that golf course, you know, if you read back to when it was built, was one of known as one of the best golf courses
in the world. Another project would be in Washington, d C. With their three courses with East Potomac lengths, and you know, those golf courses getting work done could elevate them to a spot where a hosting a tournament wouldn't be you know, we aren't taking a step down, you know. And I think that's something just in general with golf, is that
you know, inner city golf. It shouldn't be different as somebody who lived in a city and played at city golf courses in Chicago and in Los Angeles like you shouldn't. It shouldn't have to be as uh, you know, I'm playing city golf versus going out to the suburbs and playing suburb golf. Right, there shouldn't be a difference, just in general with the golf. I think that you know, these golf courses have enough play, enough support that they
should have, you know, better facilities in general. So what do you think about the the APGA and you think about just individual success stories, is there is there one or two that stand out to you?
Well?
I think the two big success stories for me. One is Willie Mac. I mean, Willie Mack is amazing, amazing story. Here's the guy who was homeless six or seven years ago, living in his car and you know, you talk to Willie Mack and he had to play tournaments every week because you know, for us when we stand over a four foot putt and we talk about the pressure of it, you know, for Willie Mack, it meant the difference of whether he had dinner that night if he made that
for a foot. But so that's real pressure. And to see Willie Mack now a full member of the corn Ferry Tour, you know, it just it really really does make me feel good and makes all this hard work worth it. And Io and Tim O'Neil is the other one. I mean, Tim O'Neil was with us when we first started, played in our first tournament. His disappointments and tour school to school has been well documented. He you know, he just was on this grind for twenty five years, a
good player but couldn't get to the next level. Played with us for thirteen years, and now he's a full member of the Champions Tour. He's one of almost four hundred thousand dollars on the Champions Tour. And it's great to see Tim just in those kind of lights, considering all what he's been through. And Tim was the great thing about Tim is that he was such a big mentor to our guys. They looked up to him because
Tim was a real professional. You know, he took every time he stepped on the golf course, he treated it like it was a US Open. You know, he was professional. He went about his craft with a professional attitude. And it's so great to see him now on the Champions Tour. I think another one, the last one for me, is one of the most inspirational guys I ever met is Kevin Hall. I mean, here's a guy who his parents
found out he was deaf. I think he had meningitis or some illness when as a kid at two years old, lost his hearing, and the parents made a decision right then that Kevin Hall would not be a kid that people would feel sorry for. It would be someone that would pursue his dreams and would be able to do something that everyone else did. And to watch him, you know, win twice this year, be our Player of the Year a few years ago, always has a smile on his face.
I mean, he's just a true inspiration. I remember playing he played in the Genesis the Charlie Sifferd Exemption, and Kevin was walking off the green I think it was the fourteenth green and this little kid came up to him and he handed him a ball and Kevin, you know, was making emotion like do you want me to sign it? And the kid said, no, read it and the ball said you are my hero and he handed it to Kevin.
I mean, you know, it's just moments like that that just give you chills when you see, you know, what the impact our players have had on golf.
Yeah, And I think I think the thing with with kind of the stories that you've you've brought up, the players you brought up, and it, I mean, professional golf.
So much of the coverage goes to the phenoms, the players that are immediately tour players, right, But one of the you know, wonderful aspects of professional golf is the grinders, the guys that you know that make it out to the tour for the first time at age thirty eight, age thirty nine in the in the you know, Tim O'Neill working his ass off until the Champions Tour is
a great example of somebody perseverance. And I think one of the hardest things about professional golf is finding places to play golf that you can you can turn a profit to keep the dream alive to you know, and Willie max case to to have a meal to eat, but also a place to play golf, to get ready for the corn Ferry Tour. And I think, like obviously, I think one of the challenges with professional golf for anybody that's even considered pursuing it is the monetary burden
that it presents. What have you guys done to try to you know, bridge that monetary gap that you know, the monetary kind of mountain that faces any aspiring professional golfer.
Well, four or five years ago, we surveyed our players and we found out that most hadn't been fitted for clubs, that they were practicing on first tea courses, that they weren't taking lessons from top name professionals. So we start did a player development program and we take the guys that we feel have the most potential to make it to the PGA Tour, and we pay for all that. We pay for lessons, We pay for them to join a club, we paid for make sure they have the
right equipment. We also pay for them to go to Q School. We pay for them to do five Monday qualifying and a PGA Tour corn Fair event. We've got a psychologist that works with them, and so we've been and we did a deal with full Swing. So each one of the guys in our program has a full Swing Launch monitor. So we're trying to fill those gaps that, you know, the the financial gaps that these guys have and through our player development program.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's obviously you think about other sports and this isn't necessarily a challenge that other sports or its face in terms of, you know, the financial burden. Is there any sport that you guys look at and try and draw from from what they're doing to support players and and use some of their tactics.
Well, I think tennis is a classic example because I think the the player demographics for tennis are similar to golf, and you know, the the equipment is not nearly as expensive, but the travel and the tournaments that you have to play and the lessons and everything are right are similar to golf. And so what tennis has done is they created a diversity program a number of years ago and they decided, look, we're gonna make tennis available to everyone.
We're going to take cost out of the equation. And so if the tennis player shows promise. The USDA paced for every thing for them, They pay for all the travel, their lessons. They have these performance centers around the country that kids can go and take free lessons, And I think that's why you see so many kids that grew up playing on public tennis courts now at the highest
ranking in tennis, and both men's and women's tennis. You don't see you don't necessarily in tennis have to come from a country club in order to make it to the top levels because the USTA has put so much of their resources into it. So that's what we use, and I look at that model and try and replicate what they're doing.
And just in general, when you get beyond the APGA and beyond your tour, what does you know, what are the big benefits of having greater diversity in the professional game. What will that do for golf in the long run?
Well, I think you know a couple of things that'll do for golf. I think, and again you see it in tennis. You just it brings more people into the game. You know, when you talk to our guys, they all and you say, well, why did you get into golf? And they say, I saw Tiger. I saw Tiger win the US Open, I saw Tiger win the Masters. I saw you know, I saw Tiger. And that's the kind of you bring more people into the game. You have on a business side, you have more consumers that will
buy the goods. I think America is changing. The demographics of America's changed, so you can't continue to survive if you have one demographic playing golf. And so I think we've got to reach out to everyone. I mean women, it's great to see more women playing. You know, you go out to a place like Westchester. We talked about Westchester. Westchester looks like America every day on the driving range,
and that's the beautiful thing about it. And that's what we're trying to get golf too, to look like Westchester all over the country.
Yeah, I uh, it's it's definitely as a different you know when you there's all these different spheres of golf in different ways that people experience golf, different places that people experienced golf. With the APGA, I think obviously you you've grown to an incredible place in recent years as you as you alluded to earlier in the podcast, what are your goals for the next five years, do you have any grand ambitions and where do you continue to see this tour grow, growing and getting to.
You know, it's a it's interesting to ask that we have a committee now that we call APGA twenty thirty. So we we uh, we got one of our board members, Keith Hulamard, who was the president of the Jordan Brand. He's heading that project up and we're looking at all aspects of our organization and to see where we want to be. You know, what if I had a crystal ball, you know, I look, one thing I think we have to do is we have to have a women's component
to our organization. You know, we can't bring greater diversity to the game if we're only focused on men. I went to the mac Champ Championship that Cameron Champ does for the top minority kids in the country, and so I went there and one of a father came up to me and he said, you know, I have a fifteen year old son, and my son all he talks about is one day playing the APGA Tour and he gets so excited. He follows the results and you know, he can't wait till he graduates from college and can
play the APGA Tour. He said, but my daughter is sixteen and she's an even better player, and she says, why isn't there an APGA Tour for me? What am I gonna do? You know? And how fair is that? And so the dad said, you know, you've got to think about that. And so since I had that conversation with him, I think about it all the time. I think the future's got to hold a women's tour for us. You know, I don't think we need more tournaments. We
certainly have eighteen. We don't need more tournaments. I think we need more development money. We need to have these guys play more tournaments outside the APGA Tour. We need to get to the younger kids. We started the Cisco Junior Series. We've got to put more resources into developing kids. So I see, the other thing that's a tough conversation
is I don't want the APGA Tour to be a destination. Now, that's the danger in the prize money that we have, that guys can make one hundred and fifty two hundred thousand on the APGA Tour. It's a blessing and a curse because you know, there's not many tours around the world that you could make one hundred and fifty two hundred thousand on.
So yeah, if you're doing that on the corn Ferry Tour, you're you're going to the PGA Tour. Yeah, you're going to the challenging. I have a friend that's been on the corn Ferry Tour for six years running and he barely makes a living. Is like, what do you do. You're you're one or two good weeks away from being on the best tour in the world, but you're not in a you know, as you put it, a destination tour.
And that's something that the PGA Tour has been very you know, reticent about, is keeping it the you know, prize money low in order to not make it that And.
I think that's what we've got to look at. We've got to make We've got to make the APGA Tour a past group. The guys play five to seven years, get their cards, go to the corn Ferry, do something else. But we've got to make the mindset. And I tell the young people that get on the APGA Tour, I don't want to see you here past five years. Take the APGA Tour, take advantage of all the resources we
have and then move on. And I think we've got to we've got to really hone that message and we've got to give the guys the resources to make sure that they're ready to make it to the next level. And that's the big challenge for me, is to give them all the resources they need and then get them to move on to the next level.
How do you guys go about identifying players that are fit for the APGA Tour.
Well, we have an application process that this year we turned away probably one hundred players that applied for membership on the APGA Tour. We feel like with our infrastructure that we could handle seventy members and then once you also, you know, we wea this year. A couple of years ago, we set a standard that you have to shoot a certain score in order to retain a membership. And you know, in the old days, we were fighting for people to
play our tournaments. So you know, we had guys shooting eighty five ninety and we cut all that out, so you have to shoot a minimum score in order to play the APGA Tour and that's up the quality of the play and it's also reduced the number of people we have playing and we're okay with that because we want the quality to be.
Where it is, I imagine. I mean you always see this, and with any sport where there's more money in the sport, you know, you get better athletes going there. I think that's something that's very true about golf in general with Tiger Woods. Have you seen a similar thing with the APGA and the quality of players interested in playing since you have had kind of a lot of success on the corporate and the perse side of things.
Oh, definitely. I mean we have a number of guys now that would probably be playing basketball or baseball or something like that that would there are really really special athletes, and I think you see it in the swings and how they approach the play. I mean, these guys are athletes. But I think the next thing for us is the mental aspect of it. Kirk Triple, who plays on the Champions Tour, came out and watched our guys play and
he said, they hit the ball. If you if you if person went out to a PGA Tour event and went to one of our events, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference in how guys hit balls. Because our guys can hit the ball. I think it's the The next evolution for us is did you know how you approach it? And we have a psychologist that works with our guys, and I think that's where we'll put a lot of resources, you know, getting top level coaching, talking to our guys about the mental aspect of it.
Yeah.
I mean, so much of golf as self belief, and so much of self belief just comes from being in big moments and achieving things, or not even achieving things, but being in the moment. And the only way you get there is with opportunities. Going back to we talked a little bit about junior golf and development. How how can the junior game and how we as a golf ecosystem develop and identify players improve and really I think
like fun players. We talked a little bit about tennis, the idea of when somebody shows promise and putting economic support behind them.
Yeah, I think we got to get to that point. I think we have to. We have to. We have to start the kids early when they start to show promise. The Cameron Chanp Foundation does a really good job at that. They they really do a great job of identifying the top minority talent in the country. Jeff Champ has a
database and he tracks all those kids. So I think, you know, the next step for us is, now that we've identified those kids, is to provide the resources for them again like tennis does, so a kid won't have to drop out of golf because they can't afford to play. You know that, that to me is one of the if you talk about one of the things that disappoints me most about golf, and in our time at the APGA,
I think of a guy like Josh Wooding. Josh Wooding was an All American at SC, did really well out on the Mini Tours initially and just ran out of money. You know, at twenty nine years old, just ran out of money. Couldn't He had to give the game up. And he's doing really well as a stockbroker. But if you ask him, I think he would still love to go back and play, and I would want to. I don't want in the future guys to say I had
to give up because I didn't have the money. I'd like for them to say I'm gonna leave the game knowing I had the resources, I had the opportunity, I just didn't make it and I'm gonna go to something else. I don't want him to say that money and resources were the reason why they left the game.
I think that applies to every level of golf, too, right. I think you think about anybody that watched the Netflix show The Full Swing. They talked in detail about Tony Finow and the sacrifices his family made just for him to be able to afford to play tournament golf. I mean, you think about, you know, what goes into tournament golf as a junior, and you know that that's where you get recognized and where you get the opportunity to move
in play at college a college program. And the better you play in these tournaments that are you know, terms you have to travel to that cost money to get into, costs money to travel to. The better you play at those tournaments, the better chance you have of playing at a better program that will continue to prepare you. I mean it's a stepping stone type of uh, you know, pursuit, you know, and the toughest thing about anything. And I
think it's becoming greater. The burden is the financial burden of junior and amateur and professional golf is just becoming more and more difficult as the tournaments get further away and bigger and have a bigger entry fee.
Right, No, I agree with you. I do think that there's there's a recognition that there is this barrier, and I think people are trying to knock the barrier down. It's just not coming down fast enough for us. You know, we're we're trying our best. But you know, you again, you got to go back to it's not only resources, financial resources, it's opportunity to I think you've got to get these guys have to have the top level coaching.
They have to have the opportunity to play on the great golf course, to practice on great golf course, because you can't. You can't expect somebody to make it to the PGA who are practicing a first t courses. You know, you can't if they don't have the proper equipment. Sean Foley was telling us that, you know, PGA tour guys, they changed their wedges almost every month, you know, because there's they've factored in that if you got new wedges,
you know, you could be so much more precise. And so our guys had had wedges five six years old, so you can't ask them to compete with guys that are that have brand new wedges. So I think all those things come into play.
Yeah, you know, you made a great point too about courses. I I remember as a kid, you know, qualifying for the state tournaments, Like qualifying for a State Am. One of the most exciting things was you knew it was going to be held at a big time course. And as somebody who grew up at Lake Bluff Golf Club, a UNI that didn't have like the best, it didn't have good dreams. You know, they were spongy, they were slow.
There was always like a shock when you went to these courses at the pace, at the speed of the game. I mean, I think, like we've talked a lot about tennis, I imagine when you move up a level in tennis, the biggest thing that's to struggle is the speed of the game, the athletes, the pace, the balls. Coming back with golf, it is it is a big step up when you go and play a State Am. It's a bigger step up when you go and play a US AM or US Midam. Just the pace, the setup of
the golf course. And it goes back to you know, these club like even at the State Golf Association level, these clubs opening their doors and providing opportunities to play at the venues that could host you know, big tournaments for kids like ajor, Oh, a junior am at a state level being held at a very good golf course is important because it gives you know, a kid an opportunity to go play high level golf and understand the difference that they're going to see it and if they
want to play a college at a college level, the difference in golf course they're going to see. Right. It allows them to go play, get their you know, they might get their ass kicked, but they come back and they go, oh, because this is the way golf works. You play a tournament, you get your ass kicked, and you're like, oh, I need to get better at X, Y and Z. But if you're never given an opportunity, then you don't get those learning experiences.
Oh no, I agree with you. I I you know, if you if you play Chester and practice every day at a place like Chester and then you go and play Baltish roll, yeah, you know, it's like a whole different world. And the thing that was interesting about our guys at Tory Pines, they didn't get a chance to play a practice round all the South course.
You're playing PGA Tour conditions too, which like people, I mean, it is it's insane what regular rough is for them.
And then it was rainy and cold and wendy, and you play in a golf course you've never seen before. It's so it was a it was an eye opener. And so you know, some people say, you know, what was it beneficial given that the guys couldn't play a practice around. I said, yeah, it's totally. So you know, you get that that experience, you'll play better. You just want more experiences just playing in those kind of conditions.
So let's uh kind of on the way out here. What who are a few players that you're you know, really excited about maybe from their just their personal story. You've talked about Tim and Kevin and uh Willie Mack. But you know a few players that are you know, on the tour now that you're either really excited about from their personal standpoint or from just the play the level of play you've seen.
Well, I think that the main guy this year who's kind of dominated play is Marcus Bird. I mean Marcus he is one of the most talented guys. You'll see he hits the ball long. He's got great hands. He became a YouTube sensation at Tory Pines on a par five he was too eighty out, had to go over water and hit a driver off the deck to ten feet. That's the kind of guy he is. He's I think he's got to tone some of that down because you don't want to hit a driver off the deck over
water too often. But he's just a really talented guy. He's won four times this year. Chase Johnson is another one. Chase was on the corn Ferry Tour for a couple of years, had some injuries and just lost his confidence. He's won a couple of times on our tour. Really talented guy, really really talented. He won the John Shipping as well. He's a guy that I think we will be back on the corn Ferry Tour next year. Just a really talented guy. And then you you look at
you know our a pg A collegiate guys. Uh Tory Taylor out of Michigan State. He was the number one guy in our a pg A Collegiate rankings. Really talented guy is His dad was a point four year starter at Point guard for Ohio State when Clark Kellogg was there. So he's from an athletic family. He's going to be a really good player, somebody you really need to keep an eye on. So they're there are a number of young guys out there, and I'm so impressed with the
young guys. Roman Solomon's a young kid who's actually Bobby Bernia's son. Yeah, so he's playing at Peple.
Bobby is still getting that uh that contract. I always.
Bobby will be there, Bobby, and you know, Bobby has is so invested in his son's golf career that Bobby goes to every single tournament that his kid plays in. And Bobby's right there. Doug walk as well as he used to from all those home run trots he had. But but your Roman Solomon is a good young player. You'll we'll see how he competes with the pros. But he's sixteen years old. He's going to be a really really good player. So you'll get a chance to see him mentor at Pebble.
Awesome. Awesome, that's great. And then last question, how can people help? What? What? What's the way just a regular guy can help? And how can somebody else help? The APGA in any way.
Well, I think there's a few ways. Of course, we always need money. You can go to APGA tour dot org and make a donation. We need we need financial resources, but we also need volunteers at all our tournaments. We need volunteer scores, We need people to come and help out in a variety of ways. And you can go to our website and find out the different ways you
can volunteer. And the other way that I think is equally as important as the financial resources and to volunteer is when you see one of our guys, just tell them that you believe in them. Just tell them that you know you're there supporting them, that you you want them to do well. All too often our guys don't hear that, you know. So what I do as often as I can, as I tell the guys I want to see you successful. I'm going to put all whatever resources I have to make you successful because I believe
in you. And if you can do that, if a person sees an APGA Tour player and they can just say something inspirational to them, that something's just as simple as I believe in you, I think that's as important to us as the money and the time spent volunteering.
Yeah, and I think a lot of people listen to this or just golf nuts. I imagine that just just following along and and and being a fan is a lot too. Just you know, every tour needs more fans.
Right, we could use more fans, that's for sure.
All Right, Thanks so much, Ken for coming on and uh and and I look forward to uh following along as as your as the APGA continues to grow and UH and become more and more household name in golf.
Well, thanks for having me on and thanks for what you're doing for golf. I think you know your podcast and and just the work you're doing helps to grow the game and helps all of us that are involved in this game.
All Right, that's it for Ken. Let's jump in with Aaron Beverly. All right, Aaron, I got to ask, you know, we when we met last year, we were talking about the hope of the Kings. It was it was kind of, uh, we weren't sure they were scratch of the surface. They obviously had an incredible season. I became kind of a fake Kings fan when I moved out to California, but
a fan nonetheless, tell me what are your expectations. Do you just feel an exuberant about the Kings that you haven't felt in a long time.
Yeah, I think the best part of last year I went to Game one against the Warriors in the playoffs, and I've never seen so many people just downtown around the arena and just the energy, like I don't think any of us sat down the whole first quarter. I mean, the introduction was great. So it's it's awesome to see. My expectations for him this season is to take another step,
you know, leap forward. I want to seize the bonus, play a little bit better in the playoffs, try to sert his dominance a little bit more.
So.
I don't want to go as far as Western Conference finals because that's that might be a stretch, but death playing into the second round of the playoffs at least.
Yeah. Yeah, I feel like they were the feel good story the NBA last year and they were just like I couldn't believe how fun they were to watch. And I think there's like an added level of as corny as the light the beam is, it adds this like level of fun and energy in the stadium. I mean that's the thing about that that I got to get out to a game this year. I was really kind of upset with myself that I didn't make it out
to a game this year or last year. But this year I'm going to remedy that and play a little golf in Sacramento while I'm out there there.
You go, just give me a call. We'll go golf and then go to a game afterwards. Because it is the light the Bean champs when they start in the fourth quarter. And whether it was at home or whether it was on the road, I mean, it just it was awesome to see just the whole city finally come around and just have something to cheer for, you know, and a winning team cheerfo because Sacramento fans have always been loyal, we just haven't always had the teams to you know, be proud of. So it's great to see.
One question, how far could you see the beam?
Like?
Could you see it?
Oh?
You like across the city on a clear night.
You can probably see if you're driving from Davis, which is about fifteen to twenty miles, Yeah, you can see it from a long way. Yeah, So it's you can see any part if you're in Sacramento. You can see it anywhere you're at, that's for sure.
Hey, I was reading some articles about you, and uh, I came. I stumbled across You're you're really into ballet as a kid.
Yeah, yeah, really into l.
A how'd you get into it? And and what you know? Like what's being into ballet mean?
Like?
What what does that mean?
Yeah?
So it started my mom was dancing, uh, And she ended up taking me to class when I was three. And the way she tells the story is, for like the first thirty minutes, I was doing really well, and then for the last thirty minutes I just sat there and cried. So bless her heart, she ended up taking me back to the next line, and I just end
up falling in love with just dancing in general. So I was dancing around the stores, dancing around the house, just kind of You couldn't like really stop me from dancing. So ballet was something I did from three to about seventeen. It was a lot of fun. I got made for made fun of for it in high school, which is, you know, it just makes you tougher. But I enjoyed it.
It taught me a lot about discipline, you know, gave me flexibility and just I think it translated perfectly into golf and kind of just athletics in general, because you have so much body awareness and body control, which is great. And yeah, I'm very thankful for my time doing it and still love to do it when I have time.
Yeah, you kind of answered my next question is I think like we've gotten into this space with athletics just in general, where everybody wants to specialize in things at a really young age. And when I read that, I was thinking, I was like, God, what a great activity, Like you never think about it, but like that's a great activity for golf because of the balance and as
you said, balance, flexibility, body control. I imagine that there are just so many your body has, just muscles and the ability to do things that other people can't.
Yeah.
I always say core strength is a big one, and obviously leg strength is huge. Obviously when you're jumping in ballet and you're trying to get as high as possible and you're doing pure wets and you're trying to turn as much as possible, you know, you're using muscles that like most athletes wouldn't think about, or most people wouldn't
think about. So it's one of those things that at the time when I was doing as a kid and as a teenager, really wasn't conscious about, oh, this is going to help me further down the line of my golf swing. I just did because I loved it. But looking back on it, it's definitely one of those things that's for sure has had its benefits.
Did you do Did you play any other sports growing up other than golf? In ballet or.
Yeah, played basketball, played baseball.
Do they consider a sport ballet?
It should be consider an art form art form because there's no so sports is always a competition. The ballet is no real competition. You're just performing. So I just got to just go to art form.
Okay, physical physically is.
By far the hardest thing I ever did. Like the summer intensives where you were dancing for six hours a day. That like that beats thirty six holes in one day in golf without question?
What what your you to golf from?
Uh?
Compared to other sports? What? What was the thing that made you want to play golf in college and pursue it as a profession.
I didn't have to rely on teammates for my success, and because When I played baseball, I was a pitcher and a shortstop, and you know, I'm not to brag of one of the better players on the team, and I could do all I could and we could still lose, and so that was always just frustrating, and so I didn't want to have to rely on my success being determined by other people. So that's what I love about golf is it's all on me and obviously caddy and coach, but at the end of the day, I'm the one
hitting the shots and you know, hitting putts. So I just love the individualism of it.
I feel like when you get more the more players are involved in a sport, the less an individual impact can have. Like, right, yeah, you know football, for example, you could have a really good football team and no real superstar you could have, But then you get into like the NBA, and and if you don't have one of the guys you got no. Yes, it's like the difference between five guys and a fifty three man roster, right,
Like it's just amazing. And then obviously golf is in tennis or the two real you know, big individual sports, and it's I always fight it humorous. When I was watching a lot of US Open tennis recently. How like, you know, they got their coach is in the box, you know, and this guy's like yelling at their coaches. Is like, what are they yelling about? They're the ones getting the shots, you know.
Yeah, And I like my example, I used this the other day, was I would hate to be show hey Otani and be by far the greatest player of a generation and we can't ever win. Like that would just really frustrate me. So I, yeah, golf is Mike Trout too, yep, and still can't We got two of the best players in the league, can't win.
I mean, like that's what everybody was saying about Mike Trout before Otani, was like this is this might be the best baseball player we see for decades, and then Otani comes along on the safe team and they still stick.
Yeah, still can't win. That reminds me I was a kid and we had Barry Bonds and Jeff Canton. We still I mean, we got to World Series, but we couldn't win. So it just, yeah, frustrating.
So you played golf at and Sacramento State. You had a really good career there. Your two time Conference Player of the year. What's your favorite colle golf story or one that you think when do you think about a lot?
Oh, I got two. I got too because this first one I brought up the other day. We replaced my sophomore year playing at Washington State's home tournament at Polose Ridge. And it's my seventy first hole and I think I'm like five or six underd a tournament like seeking in the top ten somewhere, and I had this downhill putt. It's like twenty feet and my parents are off watching, kind of like twenty thirty yards away. Hit the putt, race it by nine feet and my dad says it.
He says, doesn't he know it's downhill? And he didn't realize that. He said it loud enough to where I could hear it, and so I looked at him. I was like, yes, I know it's downhill. I just hit it too hard. And then I made the comebacker and I was like, hey, see that one is just as good, and so we walked to the next hole of him and I were just laughing. So that's always just a fun memory. And then my other one was winning conference
with my team's senior year. I ended up winning individual, and it was one of those rounds where I was leading going into it, and then a freshman from Northern Colorado, kolbe Welch, he couldn't miss a putt on the front nine, and I think he ended up taking like a three shot lead in every hole. I was just he'd make a twenty footer and he make a thirty footer and I looked at my dad. I'm like, is this going
to continue all day? He's like, I don't know, but you're gonna need to start making birdies at some point. And so we get to the last hole and I had one shot lead. He hits it to thirty feet and I hit it to like seven, and he hits his putt on watching it, I'm like, that's thinner cut again, and he'd hit the back of the cup and it popped out, and I was just like, oh my god,
this kid is unbelievable pudding. But thankfully, I think with just a two button win, we won as a team, and it was great because we had lost by two strokes the year before, so that that meant a lot.
There's uh, there's nothing worse than when you're playing with somebody and like and you just you just like expect every putt to go in and then hitting putts like it's rolling, especially what you get in match plight situations, like oh yeah, well you're just terrified.
I'm just sitting there because I kept hitting good shots and he ended up making birdies and I'm like, wow, this is incredible. But yeah, that was That was a lot of fun.
When did you decide that you wanted to pursue professional golf as a as a career.
Oh, it was probably about six or seven, somewhere in there. We watched Tiger. I mean every weekend, every Sunday, we'd played golf in the morning, played with nine holes and a little short course that was like twenty minutes away. Thankfully, Tiger always had usually an afternoon tea time on Sundays, so so we come back, we have breakfast, we do some chores, and then sit down and couch and watch
them for four or five hours. And just I remember being so captivated as a kid, just watching obviously the fist pumps and and everything about it, and I was like, Okay, I want to do that when I get older.
Yeah. It's uh. I think that most people in our our age range and probably fall into the same bucket with with Tiger Woods being a driving inspiration and any level of golf that you played, and or you're just general interest in the game of golf. Do you have a favorite Tiger moment from your childhood? Is there something that sticks with you. I get a couple, and I'm just curious what yours are.
Yeah, see, I got two again. So the first one. The first one is a lot like the corny story. But when he won the Masters in five and had the chip in on sixteen, we were watching it, and we watched the chip in and I was so excited watching that. And the way my home course, like Practice Green, was set up, had this huge slope, and so I went to the course, grabbed like five balls, and I sat trying to hit the same chip for probably three hours, and it wasn't good enough like rolled up the hill
and wins the whole. It had to try to stop. And there's for three hours of sitting there trying to get the ball to stop on the lip, and I think I maybe did it kind of once. So I just remember that. And then the one that's like really minuscule that no one would really think about he was playing. I want to say this is seven or oh nine. He's playing at Firestone in the final round. He has a match or he's battling with Padrick Harrington, and I
think it's either fifteen or sixteen Tiger. I think it's part five. Tiger's a good driving it's an eight irons to like two feet or a foot and a half, and Padrick's kind of some trouble. He hits a bad shot, then he hits it over the green, then he hits it into the water, then he's got to go take a drop and waved back in the fairway, and the whole time I'm thinking, oh, Tiger's just gonna tap him, but he's just standing on the edge of the green
waiting for project to finish. And I think Padrick ends up making a seven or eight on the whole, and I just remember thinking, I'm like, wow, he just the intimidation that he put on him by hitting shot to
two feet was incredible. And then I think I had a high school match, probably like a week later, two weeks later, and the same like type of situation happened where I hit a shot close and other kids off hitting it into the water and taking them drop and hitting it back and forth and he's like, man, you can go ahead and finish, and I said, no, I'll just wait, and so I just that's one of those things.
And I don't know why that one sticks out in my head so much, but it was just one of those moments where I was like, Okay, this guy is really intimating to everybody he plays with and that's pretty cool to watch.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's amazing. I'll never forget. I was
watching live from that. I think it was Saturday night of the of the Masters that he won in twenty nineteen, and David duval everybody was making their picks on who was going to win, and David Duvall was just like tigers winning and they're like why, and he was like I saw the look in his eye and I haven't seen that look in his eye in a long time, and he's winning the tournament and it was just like it's like wild, Like it's just a wild thing when like a guy that was in the in the arena
with them, Like I'll never forget that call because of like just the conviction and the way like everybody's got he is, like, you know, you're picking somebody to win you got these reasons just like I just saw it in his eye like I is you know, and I mean just intimidating, I dominant like there. It's just a crazy thing. It had to be a crazy experience, obviously, a crazy experience. Gave the Charlie Siffer exemption a few years ago into Genesis and then get to spend some
time with Tiger. What was that? What was that?
Like?
Was it was?
It? Was?
It like just I explained to me, like the lead up of that and and then in the moment how that was.
Yeah, So it was. It was interesting. So the week guys showed up. I got there on Sunday and then Monday I had to play in the Call of Jam in a group, and so I showed up to the course at like six o'clock and the guy kind of runs everything. Mike Antellini stopped me as I was walking to the range and he goes, hey, you know how we said you were going to do a little media
session or interview. I said, yeah on Wednesday, right. He goes, yeah, I said, well you're gonna do that with Tiger now, I said what He's like, Yeah, it'll be the two of you at a panel and it'll probably take about an hour. I said, I you have to tell you this right now, said now the rest of Monday and Tuesday, I'm screwed because I can't think of anything else other than having to sit in front of cameras and on
the stage next to Tiger. And then Wednesday comes along and they said, all right, we want you to have a chance, you know, to meet him beforehand and get
a chance to talk and everything. So they end up walking me up to the third story at Riviera, which I didn't even know it had three stories in the building, and he was doing an interview in the room and said, all right, please just wait, you know, right here, he'll be done the second I said, okay, so I'm making short conversation with everybody that was there.
Are you really nervous right now?
Oh?
My hands started sweating. I was like I can hear my heart beating and my neck, which was really weird. And all of a sudden, like I'm in like mid conversation with these people, and then you just feel I don't even know how to describe it. You just feel like a presence. And all of a sudden, he walks around the corner and I just remember looking I was like, wow, he has really broad shoulders. That was like my first thought. And then he walked up he said, Hey, I'm Tiger.
I'm like, yeah, I know, Mare. He didn't know, and so he kind of laughed, and then he asked a couple of questions about the course and how I was planned on playing it and stuff, and it was really just a normal conversation from which I thought was pretty neat. And then obviously we did the press conference, and I remember sitting first. I remember walking into the room. They opened up the doors and I said, oh Jesus Christ, there's way more people than I expected, and like eighty cameras.
And so we walked onto the stage and I was so happy that there was water on the stage because my mouth was dry and had no idea what was going on. And I just remember sitting there when they were asking a bunch of questions and I would look over and I just felt like, in a dream, Wow, that's really Tiger, just sitting right there.
So do you have any regrets? Is there something that you wish you had asked him, or or something you wish you had said in that moment?
Not really, I'd ask him a question on how to play the fifth holest part three because green sets up strange to me, right fourth Yeah, yeah, yeah, fourth A.
I don't think anybody that.
Well, yeah, green just sets up the wrong way for such a long iron shot. And because he had asked me what I like my ballflight normally is, I said it's usually kind of a draw, and he goes, oh, that's perfect. I was like, yeah, but on that whole it runs away with the draw, so like every time I hit it, it just keeps going to the back or over the green. And so we talked about hitting a high cut and everything.
So yeah, it was neat yeah yeah. With uh, with playing professional golf, what what's been the top this thing from going from a very good college player to playing professional golf. What's spend the biggest challenge in terms of just being a professional golfer.
I think it's just the self discipline you have to have because when you're in college, you know you're you know, the team's working out Monday, Wednesday, Friday at six am. That was always our schedule. Your tournament's already booked for you. You know, you have five in the fall of six or seven in the spring. Yeah, you're you know where you're practicing at every day, you know, like our coach and gives drills you qualifying. You know, you just have
a set schedule and you know what you're doing. And so in terms offessionally, it's now it's just all on me. I gotta be I got to schedule, you know when I'm playing and where I'm traveling to, and just have to be disciplined enough to say, Okay, I'm going to get up on a workout and these are the things I'm going to do. I'm gonna eat right. No one's you know, cooking my meals for me. Now, don't get
to just go to the the cafeteria. So I would just say that that self discipline is probably the hardest part, but it's one of those that's rewarding too. When you see everything work out the way you want it to, you're like, Okay, I know I'm doing the right things. I'm taking care of myself, and it's I'm good to go.
You've played on the APGA Tour since the early twenty ten pretty long time. What's been you know, I mean I imagine the growth how it's changed has been remarkable. What do you think is the big The biggest thing that you look back on is like, wow, I can't believe that's the same tour as it is today.
I just the courses, I think is the biggest thing. And the level of competition now is incredible. I mean every week someone's always going just group of guys is always going low. It's not like we just have one person that you know, predominantly shoots ten to twelve under. We got a whole gang of guys that can shoot,
you know, anywhere from sixty eight to sixty three. So the competition level and then obviously, I said, the courses and have the ability to play the TVCs, whether it's DC Sugar Loaf Louisiana Vegas, having the Farmers Invitational out at Tory Pines, and then obviously now the Cisco Invitational being at Spyglass in Spanish Base. Like you take where we were playing, you know, Chester, Washington in LA and a couple of other courses, and you look at where
it is now is truly remarkable. And I know that's something that we're all very thankful of that we get to play these championship courses and have the opportunity to say okay, this is where they play on tour, and this is how I stack up, and so it's neat.
What's been your favorite course that you guys have played.
Honestly, my favorite one was probably Balti Straw. It kicked my ass, but it was really a great test of golf and just mental fortitude because I never I never played a course where if you just hit am like just slightly bad shot, you screwed and it turned into double so fast. So it was neat to be put into that challenge in that atmosphere. And then TVC sawgrass because I've seen so much on TV, so that was cool just to play seventeen in the tournament.
It's so I think that's one of the great things about golf when you're developing or trying to get to the next level is those moments where you clearly take a step up. And a lot of times it happens that in the tournament sense, whether you're junior and you play in a stadium, or whether you're an amateur you play a USGA event. I imagine at the pro level it's like I'm playing in a PGA Tour event right
at Riviera, Like that's a huge step up. But when you do that, you walk away from those tournaments, whether you play well or play bad, you get such a nice barometer on where you're at. When you played that, you talked about Baltistrawl, you know, being just this level of golf course. What did you walk away from that? You know, you said it kicked your ass, but what did you walk away from that thinking about your game and what you needed to work.
On the first thing I thought of was mentally how I was able to just stay in it because I think the first round I shut forty one or forty two on the front, but had five verties in a row going on the back. So it was one of those things where I know my younger self after a bad front Nove would have just probably checked out and been frustrated and just wanted to get off the course. But I was able to stay in it and stay focused. So that was one of those moments I was like,
all right, good for me. I can you know I can still whether it's a bad start or I get off to a good start, I'm always in it. I don't mean I can't take myself out of it. So that was that was good, And then I was like I need to work on my wedges to make sure I can hit them a lot tighter, because if you do hit it in a bad spot and you have to bail out, you want to be able to, you know, hit a wedge in there, the inside ten feet and give yourself a flick a car.
I think that. Yeah. To me, that's one of the crazy things about really high leveled golf is just how when you get out of position, then you have to hit great shots to get into position to save a par Yeah, and it's extraordinar how easy the top tier players in the game of golf make this look, but
how challenging it is in real life. Right, It's just and the discipline, the discipline of understanding when you have to take your medicine or versus risk taking a risk is is just such a difficult thing to weigh.
Yeah, yeah, without a doubt. And it's one of those things. I remember seeing it as a coach when I helped out a sax State and you see these kids getting get into trouble, and you know, you play it in your mind as if you were a player, because you're kind of playing caddy at the same time, and you you know, you give them the safe option, just because that's like, this is the smart play. There's no no bad thing that will have worse case we make bogie. But you know, as a player, you look like I
see that gap in the tree. It's a little nine. I can get through there. And and you just have to have confidence in your player all the time. And so it's you weigh it and hopefully if you can execute it well, then then everything's great.
You were you just hit on this. You were assistant coach at Sacramento State. How many years did you do that?
Two and a half? COVID kind of cut it most short.
What were the biggest advantages for your personal game from that experience?
You just see different ways of playing golf. Like we had five kids, and all of them played five very distinct ways of playing golf. One kid could hit it really far like myself, and another kid was short but always hit a bunch of fairways and a bunch of greens and it was good with his wedges. And then one kid was super creative, could hit these low shots and these big swoopers, and so it was just interesting to see five different ways of how to try to
get it done. And so you try to take pieces of that and like, okay, well, I know, if I get nervous on a T shot, I can hit that low one like he hit, and it's you know, the driver might only fly to seventy, but it's two seventy and it's going to go down the middle of the fairway every time. And then there's advantages obviously to just hitting it far and maybe a slightly crooked, but if you can, you know, hit it far and have a
wedge end, that's an advantage. So it was it was neat to see where you could pick a piece and take something from everybody.
Yeah, what's uh, what's your favorite moment from the early days of the APG.
A favorite moment from the early this is this is a good ish bad story. So we're a tournament in Arizona and I show up and see all the guys and see one guy that I had seen in college and went to north Ridge and obviously I went to sax State. And I'm looking at him and I can't remember his name, and it's killing me. I'm just staring, like God, I don't know what his name is. I'm like,
hopefully he doesn't come say anything to me. Yeah, as soon as I grab my putter and I go to the hole, he walked over, Hey, Aaron, how you doing. I was like, oh, what's up, man, how you been? And goes, no, no, no, no, you gotta say my name. And I was like, oh no, and I'm like, I'm staring, I'm looking thinking, so I'm gonna be honest me. I don't remember. He goes, it's Aaron. I was like, oh god, I overthought the hell And now those Aaron Grimes And now him and I are pretty much best friends and
we travel all the time together. So it's just funny that we had seen each other in college. We'd always said Helow and for whatever reason, my mind went blank and I was overthinking it because he had the same name as me.
So there's nothing worse than that moment.
Oh, it was horrible.
It's like, you know, the name. I'm not good. I'm not good at names. I'm not good.
I'm pretty tried to get I've tried to get a lot better after that moment.
Specifically, it's uh, so you you had status on PGA tour Canada this year as well? What how was it balancing to tours? So you have the APGA schedule Yeah, the Canada schedule, I imagine it probably was difficult.
Yeah, It's one of those things you just try to weigh what is what's most important, like if I've play and how I figured it in my mind is that if I play really good golf on both tours, which one benefits me the most? And I looked at it as playing well on Canada, if you finished in the top five, you're automatically moved on to the Cornbier and ABG. If you finished and be the top player, then you get full status on what's now going to be PJ Tour Americas. So I waited and I decided Canada was
probably the better stretch, and that's what I did. This was last summer, and so I ended up playing seven tournaments up there, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it's four day tournaments are more of a challenge than two day tournaments obviously, because two day tournaments from like a sprint, and the four day tournaments are I mean, in Canada, they're pretty much like a sprint marathon because everybody scores
so low. But yeah, it's an interesting balance. But it was nice to play up there and travel up there and then with the times I could come back and play on the tour. It was really nice to come back and play on the APG because it felt like I was coming back on my family and it was really happy to see all the guys and everybody. So that was that was neat.
What were your big takeaways form the PGA Tour Canada.
You gotta make a lot of berries. I mean, we had one cut where it was six under par. Was the cutter seven under par? And so, I, you know, I play, I like to just play boring golf and not you know, if it's drivable, I'll weigh my options. But usually i'd take play up and hit a wedge and so I you know, I'd shoot a bunch of one under two under rounds and that just wasn't low enough. And so it taught me that you just have to
be aggressive. You got to keep the pedal to the metal at all times, and and really important to leave the ball below the hole. And so you can have uphill buds so you can be aggressive birdy budgs.
So it's a fascinating thing with all developmental tours, even down to the corn Fairy Tour, is we see you see this and you see players talk about this when they get up to the PGA Tour, just how drastically different the golf is on the PGA Tour because the golf courses demand more patients, demand more, you know, like understanding when to you know, versus you know, at the
corn Faery Tour level Canada. You know, some of the Latin American courses are really tough, actually, but they those courses are there's just not repercussions for aggressive play, and they're shorter and in different like it's just such a different style of golf and I don't know really what the fixes to get. You know, there's just only a finite number of golf courses in the country that are a willing to host and be, you know, willing to test the top tier players in the game of golf
at this point. But it is that is a challenging I think that resonates with like anybody that's been on those tours is just you know, and you see it like some some times the best better players on the corner ferry get to the PGA Tour and it just doesn't work and they're back down there and it's in some of the guys that aren't necessarily, you know, thought of as the best players on the corner ferry of the year before I get up to the PGA Tour and it's like, wow, these guys are studs, right, Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I looked at it as like a couple of courses up in Canada, I just I would hit a bunch of two irons because they're a little bit more narrow, And I was like, they're shorter courses. But when I look at who would win, oh, he's hitting driver there. And you know, if you hit a good drive, then you're pitching versus my two iron, I might have ninety yards out eighty yards down. Obviously, the closer yards of the whole there's more chances you'll probably
have to make birdie. So it rewards the aggressive straight player. And where I think on tour, a lot of the courses, like this week they're gonna be playing uh Silverado. You just you can't afford to be out of position if you're aggressive, so you're almost better off just laying back a few times iron and you know, taking middle of the green and two buddy.
Yeah. And then there's a lot of variety in courses, right, you know, it's like I'm friends with Zach Blair, and it's like, you know, there's you know, twelve twelve courses a year that he's got to he's got to play well on because he's a shorter hitter, right, and Silverado is one that he's historically played really well at because it it really rewards some some accuracy off the tee, right, And it's uh, it's it's a really Uh it's an
interesting aspect. You know, like what outside of the outside of the four rounds versus two rounds, were there any other big differences between the APGA and the PGA Canada. I mean, you're playing better courses on the APG A.
Yeah. Uh. The travel is a lot harder in Canada, I would say, I imagine, yeah, just because you know and out when you play APGA Tour here, you know, we're in Atlanta, or in Chicago, Vegas, San Diego, Orlando, and so it's it's kind of easier and obviously you
just know those places better. But when you're in Canada, you're in Victoria, and you're in Calgary, you're in Saskatchewan and places I never heard of, and so it's just it's harder to get to and I'm there with some issues with clubs and rental cars and just kind of just you don't know really what to expect, I would say all the time when you're traveling up there. So that part of it is can be challenging, but at the same time it can be a lot of fun.
Like we drove through Bamf. I'd never seen Bamf before, and it was a nine hour drive and it might have been the most gorgeous nine hours I think I've ever seen in my life. So it's I try to make the most out of everything, and so it just you kind of you take those those moments of frustration. It's just good times to be able to tell a cool.
Story, any crazy travel tales from from any any point of your your PGA, your your professional golf.
Yeah, buddy of mine. We were playing in Windsor, was right across the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit, and we rented an air or staying in Airbnb. We had the car. We played the first round and go to dinner, come to it's actually July fourth. We go to dinner, we see a couple of fireworks across the river, and then go back home, take some take our bags up to the car. But I had left my travel bag in the car, and you had left a couple of budges. Whatever,
So we walked down the next morning. Car had been broken into. One of his shoes was stolen, just one of them and just one one shoe show yeah, but joy he had. The left one was stolen, the right one stayed in the car.
They were right next to each other.
They were right next to each other, and so one shoe was stolen, two budges were stolen. My travel hard case was stolen, which so we were trying to figure out how like it just was a funny image of somebody walking down the street with this hard case. Oh yeah, And it was a hassle trying to get it everything, the insurance part of it and all taken care of. And I had to go play right after I played in the morning. He played in the afternoon, so he
dropped me off. We're driving cars. Got a window that's gone, and funny enough, I think I shot twenty nine on the front line or something, because I was like, I just I was really not worried about the golf. I was more concerned about the cars. So I wasn't like really too focused on just playing, but it was that was an interesting, frustrating time.
I feel like when your mind is extremely preoccupied, it can with other things. Golf goes into very different directions. It can either go extremely well or very poor, and there's no middle grounds.
There's definitely no middle ground. I completely agree with that, completely agree with that.
What do you look at your career thus far, what is what's the best stretch of golf that you've played, and what do you think was really really going well?
Then? Scoring wise, the best stretch of golf I've played this past like three months, I think when I was looking at my scores, I've had one round over par in the last twenty rounds in tournament play. So that's been in terms of just like scoring average, it's been the best, and it's been been the best. I've driven the ball, best of iron distance wise has been good, Wedge distances have been good, short games vastly improved from last year. Now it's just a matter of putts falling.
And my rounds of seventeen sixty nine turned into sixty six sixty five six before, So that's been a good stretch. I will say the best golf I've ever played for a week was my sophomore year at college. We had a match play tournament a Spyglass actually, the NCGA match Play tournament that's there every year, and I shot even on the first round and then four under on the second round qualify for the match play portion number one seed.
Won my first match seven to six, won the next match six and five, won the next match four and two, in the next match two and one, and then got to the final match on Friday and was four up after the first eighteen and then ended up losing on the last hole of the second match. But it was just like this incredible stretch of golf where nothing really seemed to go wrong, Like I mean, I probably shot sixteen to nineteen under, I think in that stretch of
all that golf. And my dad was caddying for me at the time, and we get done with the matches and we just smile and laugh. Becau's like everything we talked about in practice or whatever was just working for whatever reason, which was cool.
What what what's your plans for the upcoming year? What are you what are you trying to do? Are you trying to do any of the Q schools? What's the what's the plan for twenty twenty four?
Twenty twenty four bunch of Mondays is my strategy, play all of APGA tournaments, but do at least twelve to fifteen mondays because I look at my style and my way I'm hitting the ball now is I just need one or two good weeks of getting hot with the
putter and the rest can be you know, history. So I look forward to doing that and traveling that route and seeing you know, and making it, making it on to the tour that route, and my plan is to go Corey Connors with it and and money, qualify and win and just move on that way.
That'd be a good way to go, you know.
Uh.
I always thought there'd be a good business in like hosting tournaments in city like the city the tours in
for like Tuesday Wednesday tournaments after a Monday qualifier. So then somebody's like, you're not going there if you don't make it, since there's you know, it's a whatever five or four percent or two percent success rate, right then you have a place where people can recoup cash, right y, you know, and and keep playing and it's like okay, like this isn't that hard, Like if you're going to set up a mini tour, especially the way that things are set up now, everybody wants to play these mondays
and give themselves, you know, a chance. They've you know, there's so there's never been so much talent in the game of golf, and there's so little places to play. So it's like that would be a brilliant mini tour idea.
I feel like, yeah, definitely, definitely. And it's interesting because I remember when I was in high school the mini tour. See, we always had two or three tournaments I think it's a Pepsi Tour back then that would come through and
always play. And I know they had the Gateway Tour and the Hooters Tour and kind of just a whole bunch of a whole bunch of them, and now all of a sudden, there's like four, and it's it's weird that it's kind of is the most amount of golf ever being played, but the least amount of like opportunity to play, you know, a mini tour events and grind that way.
It's uh yeah, and then almost all of like a lot of them end up being shifty and shady, shadily run tours, right, like the horrors of horrors of many tours, or the stories are just you know sometimes like the latest is the big money classic, you know, but.
Oh yeah, yeah when no one gets paid. Yeah, that just is Yeah.
Hey, Aaron, I appreciate the time and look forward to continue to follow your career. And uh and and we'll see you next week and uh in miner Ray.
Yes, sir, I look forward to Andrews should be good and make sure you bring all good weather and not just you know, good vibes and we have a good time.
All right.
All right, that's it for another episode of the Friday Golf Podcast. I will be back next week early next week with the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup is here, so we will be doing a five Things about the Ryder Cup with a familiar, a friend of the program, Trevor Immulman will be on. He'll be you know, a captain, a captain of Ant, the most recent international team in the President's Cup. I just thought he would bring a
neat dimension. Obviously he's never participated in a Ryder Cup, but he has led a team into battle against the Americans, so I just thought he would be a great guest. And I thank you for him for coming on, and so he will be on Monday, well or maybe even Sunday. We might really said Sunday, so keep your ears out for that. Thank you to Matt Ruschis for editing and producing this podcast, putting this all together, and thank you
guys guys for listening. I appreciate it. And we are on the precipice of the last massive event on the golf calendar and I can't wait to get into the Ryder Cup week