Takeaways from the 2022 PGA Championship

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fell back. Tiger Woods made an incredible effort to sneak under the cut line on Friday, but by Saturday evening he had withdrawn from the tournament because if body simply didn't hold up. And on Sunday the top of the leader board was occupied by names like Mito Pereira, will Zalatoris and Cameron Young and Matt Fitzpatrick. It seemed like the stars of the game had pulled a no show. But then the leaders faltered and Justin Thomas took advantage.

He closed with a sixty seven and ultimately beat Zalatoris in a playoff. It's Thomas's second major and second PGA Championship. To cover all of that and more, I have three shortish interviews for you. The first is with Bendan Quinn, a senior writer at The Athletic who was on site at Southern Hills this week. Next up is the Friday Zone Andy Johnson to talk about the course. And finally you'll hear from Stephen Brittain, a golf course superintendent, about

the issue of sand. You may have heard that the pros were not big fans of the large, grained, somewhat heavily sand in Southern Hills bunkers, so I thought we'd get an experts perspective on that. All right, let's do it. Here are takeaways from the twenty twenty two PGA Championship.

All right, I am here with Brendan Quinn. He is a senior writer at The Athletic. He covers college hoops as well as golf, so those are two excellent beats. But we are here to talk about golf. You can you can also talk about college hoops if you'd like, I'm sure, but you have been. You have been at the PGA Championship this week on site covering the tournament, and so for you when you're thinking about Big ten takeaways this week, what comes to mind?

kind of waiting for something to happen. And then you know, Mito Perrero just comes out of nowhere, and everyone's kind of like, is this actually gonna go down this way? Where he basically if he had shot even parr, it would it's been fine today, and it would have kind of been a lifeless ending to a tournament that I

thought kind of overall was a little flat. And then instead, you know, ninety minutes to go in the tournament itself, kind of doors start opening and things start happening, and now I'm running around on the back nine and it's mate, wait, maybe there's this is gonna get really interesting really quick. And that's kind of how it went down, obviously, with with JT making that move. You know when he when he buried that that long birdie put on eleven, the

day really changed. And it was so early. I don't think anyone really realized in the moment what what that putt meant. But you know, he had shanked the shot what two holes earlier, and yeah, he came back with a with a beautiful five iron on ten that which was the same clubby shanked, but he missed that short BIRDI putt, and he was at that point still like kind of trying to just get going. But then you know, he dropped that whatever it was, sixty foot right off

the front of eleven and off and running. He was four under on his last eight holes of the day. To you know, I think a lot of people will be able to say that Praira lost his tournament, and he did, but you can also say JT went and won the tournament. Both things I think can be true.

But to his credit, he seized it. So all that happened kind of you're describing this tournament that there was there. There was a sort of lethargic feel to it for a while. The weather was kind of weird and slow. The greens were a bit slow because the wind was high. They didn't want to get out of control. You know, everything about the tournament just didn't quite have that fire. And then all of a sudden, in the last couple

of hours of the tournament, it just came alive. And so I W I guess the big question is it a good tournament? Now? Do we remember this as a good tournament?

anything else in the tournament. That's like an empty, hollow feeling that comes with I guess being a compassionate human being.

behind me. One of the women working the concession stands yelled last call one minute, and like, like JT was pretty far away, but like he definitely heard like a hair of it right, Like it was not close to him, but he heard it, and he backed away from his shot and he went all the way back through his preshot routine again. He went up and he stripped it. It was eighteen sorry, so it was definitely a teen and

we know how that how that ends. He hit a great approach, you know, he could have made a birdie in one outright, but made a great part in a clutch spot. And then in the playoff on seventeen, as Xalatorus is standing over the ball, a siren went off in the distance and it was loud. It was legit loud, and there's in my mind, I didn't get chance to

asking about it. I wasn't in his press conference, but I think there's zero chance he did not hear that siren and and he stayed put and he pulled the trigger and it was a poor T shot and that ended up being a birdie for j T, a par for

xala Taurus. And you know, I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that siren costs him, you know, a major, But I think it was also a guy in in this position for one of the first times in his career versus a guy in JT who's done this more years and has you know, more reps and maybe just a little I don't know, competitive and emotional maturity in that moment that like he backed off zal Taurus didn't.

And then you see a guy like Meido, who you know, he went up, rushed through his whole routine, took that swing and and lost the tournament. So, you know, three very different moments that I think kind of showed a guy who was ready to win the second major of his career, and that was Justin Thomas.

kind of that energy. When zal Torres came back onto the practice green as they were waiting for the finish, I am ninety nine percent sure I don't think JT looked at him at all. When he walked onto the practice green and they both went through their routines. They both went to you know, their bags were stacked or

standing right next to each other. After they went through their their putting or their practice putts and JT did not look at him once and then got on the back of a golf cart and drove off like he was very much just kind of tunneled off, and I think like that tournament ended, his round ended, but for him, the tournament had not ended yet, right, Like he was just still kind of totally in that competitive mode that you know. I mean, that's that was some alpha stuff there,

just the whole way that he carried himself. And then you know, I don't know if the broadcast picked up on it, but when he went back through the tunnel and got up toward eighteen Green to take a cart ride over to thirteen t for the first hole of the playoff, they drove by the fans and I mean it was like a parade, Like he's sitting on the back and people were just just going wild, and you know, he kind of flashed the thumbs up and it was like you could tell that the like this was sports,

you know, like it was kind of one of those moments that it was very much a like just high energy and to be able to keep your composure. Now, obviously he pumped his right a little bit, but you could feel a guy who was very much present in the moment.

that situation. And it's something that we've seen Tiger Woods do in many different scenarios in his career when he's trying to win majors. It's something that we saw Phil Mickelson do last year throughout the entire round. As Brendan Poorath chronicled for our site, he was so slow that it actually annoyed Brooks Koepka. And it seemed like today Justin Thomas was taking his time. He was very serious, very focused and intentional about what he was doing.

not be so hard on himself. And if they did like today was very much That back nine specifically, was I think kind of the culmination of like those types of thoughts where you can hit any shot in the book, man, like just kind of go out there and just just do your best and it'll it'll happen for you, right, and yeah, I mean talk about left, right, low high.

I mean he hit all of those on on on the back nine, and some of the other shots that he just kind of casually executed were just just ridiculous. Those back to back bunker shots he hit were insane. And that that the the bunker shot he hit on uh on six. After he hit that, just the shank dead right, then put his second one off a tree.

And now it's time where it's okay, other guys, that's the end of their tournament, right, They're gonna hit another poor shot they're gonna take They're gonna make a number that you can't make when you're trying to win a major in the fourth round. You can't take a double in that spot. It's over and it would have been over if he had taken a double, and instead he pulled pitching wedge from one hundred yards out in a bunker and hit this little cutty pitching wedge to eighteen feet.

He went up and he makes the putt right. That's that's how you do it, and not a lot of people can. So you know, he's got he's got the stuff two certainly be you know, the right at the top of the world rankings and and be a multi time winner. And I'm kind of curious to see what this does for him in terms of some juice momentum. You get freed up after me, he waited a long time. This is not low key. We all talk about Spieth and Rory and them waiting to win their next major.

Like he was getting into that conversation, like he was kind of there at that at this point, and now now it's off, and uh, you know, I think he's got the personality I think to be a real like fan favorite type of guy. You know, the way that he plays the Ryder Cup. He's by far the most fiery guy on the team. You know, he gets interacted

with fans. He's fist pump and he's slamming beers. He's he's in it in that type of stuff, and you know, maybe he could he can kind of carve his his place as a I think maybe a bigger kind of personality.

would put it on the Shotguns start. And maybe winning a second major will give him some more of that quiet confidence that tends to read a little bit better in public than this kind of eagerness that he's conveyed so far. But that's kind of a separate issue. What's really interesting about JT's playing career is that he has taken so much more of like a traditional route to success.

You know, it took him a while to break out, really because Speith was obviously his same, you know, I don't know if they're exactly the same age, but they're around that, and Speith broke out way earlier and had success way earlier. It took Justin Thomas a while to get established on the PGA Tour, then to win his first major, and then it took him a while five years. In fact, it was twenty seventeen when he won the PGA at Quail Hollow, five years to win his second major.

And what we're seeing from him is this kind of more traditional path to a great career that we've seen stars in the past take when careers were long, and they tended to peak in when players were in their thirds. What we've seen recently is players seeming to kind of peak in their twenties. Rory has done this, Speeth has done this, and then kind of drop off after that.

It seems like the path that JT is on is a little bit more traditional, and maybe it'll turn out to be more sustainable, that he'll win another major when he's thirty three, and he'll win another one when he's thirty five, and he'll have more of that kind of like Phil Mickelson type career. I guess that's the hope is that, you know, you know how Phil Micholson won more on the PGA two or I think than j T has to this.

like is different. It just seems like, you know, it's a little more old school.

out and won the Major. Like that's it, you know, when we go back and like think of h DJ winning the Masters in the fall a while ago, Like he won that in the window of being on just a ridiculous heater if you go back and look at like the FedEx playoffs on right, I mean, he was just killing it. He was the best player in the world for a six month window and then the other guys.

a way to win it. And like you could make a case, I mean, this is just totally narrative nonsense, but like you can make a case that that's kind of like more impressive way to win a major than when you're just kind of you're just feeling it and you everything though timing works out in your favor.

I don't quite know how he did that because for a lot of the round it didn't seem like he was playing that well. It seemed like there were a lot of missed opportunities. And so, yeah, as you're saying, this is a major win where he wasn't exactly lights out and he didn't get every good break going his way,

and that is impressive. You know, we've heard Tiger Woods talk about this before, being able to win when you don't have your best stuff, or you know, a corollary to that is when you don't get the best breaks. Being able to win in those situations is an indicator of somebody who has a kind of sustainable version of success in them, and so maybe we'll see that from JT. Who knows.

There's a kind of natural grace to it, and so it would be concerning if he suddenly went to another coach. I think that a lot of players get caught up in the Tiger Woods model of I've got to make a big spectacular swing change, you know, go hire Butch Harmon or Hank Haney or you know, the next coach to rebuild my swing and get myself to the next level. When players who are not Tiger Woods try that, they

don't tend to do very well. And so it seems like Justin Thomas is sticking with what he knows in a pretty radical way by literally sticking with the swing coach who raised him, and so who can question it at this point? I'm you know, I think for him it would be a concern if he went away from that. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, there's no one formula. It's a different things work for different people. Obviously.

but they just stuck with it, which is hard. That's almost as hard as changing it is believing that what you're doing is the right move, because you know, even without the majors he finished all of those years since twenty seventeen, still ranked in the top ten in the world at the end of every year. It was, uh, he finished third, fourth, fourth, third, seventh in the last at the at the year end since winning at Kuil Hollow, But he just forgot to raise a major championship, you know.

So there's kind of been this like weird dicotomy there of like, yeah, Jordan, Justin Thomas is elite, But is he elite? You know, like where's the big payoff that we all measure these things by. But he's never really changed five years. He hasn't won one of these that's it.

the end, at least for now. Maybe he'll go into the wilderness for the next five years and we'll be having an entirely different discussion about this. That's that's kind of how golf goes. But today Justin Thomas is riding high, as is Mike Thomas. So all right, Brendan, I've kept you for longer than I said I would. Thank you so much. I'll let you get back to your real journalistic work. People can find your work at the Athletic of course, and work about call troops as well as golf.

Excellent stuff about golf that you write. Brendan a true journalist and reporter out there, So keep doing what you're doing. I appreciate it.

things look kind of precise and sharp. I'm not exactly sure how it works anyway. Gooders are comfortable, style and lightweight, and they are one hundred percent UV protective and one hundred percent polarized in all styles. So try them out and treat yourself to a pair or to They are affordable. Gooder is going to give you fifteen percent off your entire order. Go to Gooder dot com. That's good R dot com slash TFE and get fifteen percent off when

you use code TFE at checkout. All orders over fifty dollars get free shipping in the US. Again, that's fifteen percent off with code TFE at goodr dot com slash tf E. Look good Golf, Gooder. All right, So what this podcast needs is some takeaways from Southern Hills Country

Club itself, the venue of the PGA Championship. And who better to offer some of those takeaways than Andy Johnson himself. Andy, could you tell me some of your main takeaways from what you saw out of the course this week.

an essential part. But when you're talking about a pure championship test, this golf course is right there at the top of American venues in terms of you know it. I thought it was very democratic. I thought it allowed a lot of different styles of play to thrive. But it also did a wonderful job of testing all the fastest fastest of the golf game, and I think it

exposed when players had weak points in their game. Really, what I thought was interesting was, you know, what we've seen recently is they obviously got great weather in terms of challenging weather with the wind, But I think that's kind of the norm in May and Tulsa, Like you're gonna get that kind of wind, unpredictable weather, So without narrowing fairways, without having the greens absurdly firm, without using the back tee on every single hole as far back

as they could go. You know, they moved teas around, They made seventeen driveable when they was into the wind. They moved sixteen t up when they you know, they moved thirteen tea ups so people could get home in two.

Shinnacock's the one that comes to mind. And you know, they obviously had pretty absurd conditions, like they pushed it to the brink at that US Open recently, but that this golf course really holds up.

And that's usually how courses like this can defend themselves is through keeping the greens ultra firm, so that a lot of the challenge comes around there. But it seemed like throughout the week with the elements shifting around, the holes that were hard also shifted around, and so that was like a big thing where you know, on the weekend, for instance, sixteen, the part four was really really hard because it was all of a sudden kind of into the wind. You know, it's really a crosswind, but it

was more or less into the wind. On the first couple of days, that hole wasn't nearly as difficult, but number eight, which travels in the other direction, was incredibly difficult on those days. And so because of the shifting elements and because the setup was kind of like smart enough to know where the edge was in terms of what was too challenging or what was too easy, we got to see different holes standing out as some of the more challenging on the course.

that south wind really fit their game. And and you know, everybody's been piling on Rory, but maybe he just the golf course fit his eye a little bit more with that south wind or you know, and obviously he played kind of a mediocre around at each of those wins. But that I think is one of the compelling things about the golf course was how how it changed and everything. And I think like if we go through every facet of the game, you could see why Southern Hills stood

up and provided such a wonderful full examination. So on the green, it has very undulating green and it has small targets, you know, at the green, and that that makes approach play really challenging, but it also gives a huge you know, it tests you're putting, you have to play a significant about a break you have to be

a really good lag putter. If you're if you have a forty footer it you know, it is a wonderful test at the green, you know, and you saw players like Cam Smith is one of the best putters in the world. He had an amazing ball striking week. He finished first in strokes game tee to green. I think he was second in strokes, gained approach, and his putter let him down and he finished like he putted really poorly and he finished fifteenth. He couldn't just get by

with a with one club holding him back. Now, if you look around the green, that short grass and it's impact, you know it sent balls further away. But where I really like one of my big takeaways was Mito Pereira on the final day. He missed a lot of greens. He was pretty spotty with the chipping. What I noticed was when he was in the rough he was very good. You know that extra cushion, that's an easier shot, it's a more comfortable shot. He was really nervous. He talked

about this in his press conference. He got more nervous every day, and you know where he was really really bad on Sunday all day on Sunday, chipping from short grass and having been nervous in golf situations when you have to hit that perfect, that short grass really separates mediocrity from greatness and insure like people will look at and be like, well, it makes that shot easier. It makes the shot easier if you hit it perfect. If you hit it perfect, you're going to end up two

feet away. But what Mito Perreira was doing all day was hitting really clunky chips and he was leaving himself fifteen feet regularly for par or fifteen for birdie on seventeen, Like everybody's gonna talk, Oh, that putt finished a half revolution short Well, it was a really bad chip, you know, given the situation, given you're leading a major championship, like your everything's clicking on all cylinders. But that was a

microcosm of the entire day. If he was on short grass, that chip, those chip shots were clunky all day and it started on the first hole, if I if I recall correctly, he ended up short of the bunker and he had a really bad chip to like fifteen feet. He might have been in the buck, but neither all those chips off of that short grass were really really shaky for Mito Pereira, and it's because the margin for error is so much smaller when it's short grass versus rough.

You can swing a little bit harder, you can put your club further under the ball and you're not gonna chunk it, and so you just have that margin to play with and we could see that with Mito Pereira on Sunday when he was just he seemed really uncomfortable with those chips on short grass and high pressure situations. And he that drive you you know, you mentioned seventeen, that poor chip you hit on seventeen. That was the decise moment of the tournament. I mean, we can't emphasize

this enough. He had a great drive there. He put himself in an excellent position on that hole, but he kind of duffed the chip and he ended up missing the putt. But he shouldn't have been expected to make that putt because it was like a fifteen footer. He's not going to make that putt most of the time. And so then he goes to the eighteenth tee, he has a one shot lead instead of a two shot lead, and of course he double Bogie's eighteen. Super challenging closing hole.

And so the short gass really played a significant role this week for sure.

up and down this week. The other thing was bunkers really captured a lot of balls. I felt like with the short grass and the bunkers, what you saw was balls rolling into the bunkers, which were and unadvantageous spots to play from. But then when you go back to approach, it was a challenging approach blay course because you're constantly hitting up or down from from side hill lies flat lies,

different lies. I thought sixteen on Sunday was great. Everybody hitting to that long iron into a green from an upslope. It's a really hard shot not to hang right, and we saw so many players hang it right end up in that right bunker. That's where Cameron Young made his double bogie from. It was rarely stock shots with the wind, so it challenged the approach play very, very significantly whether you were in the fairway, and then when you were in the rough, it was very unpredictable. You saw a

lot of flyer lies. You saw balls that came out dead when they thought they were flying. So the rough wasn't predictable and just hack it out rough it was I'm not sure how this ball is gonna come out again. A full examination of approach play. And then when you go back to the tee, thirty yard wide fairways allow people to hit good T shots and be rewarded for

TE shots. When you get down to what we'll see in three weeks, twenty yard wide fairways at the country club, you can hit a great T shot and hit it in the rough, and that's kind of silly in my opinion. You want to see these guys be able to hit. You know, you go down those faraway statistics, you saw guys that hit twelve thirteen fairaways and if you're driving the ball great, if you're having a great week with a driver, that seems to me like something that should

be achievable. You should be able to hit eighty percent of the fairways if you're driving the ball well. And that's I think one of the great things that this golf course did was it allowed people to excel. And that's why you saw some variety on the lead. Like you saw a B answer was in the mix because he's a very accurate driver the golf ball.

without making bogies. But it was feasible to go around that golf course and make five or six birdies because you were often approaching greens from short grass. It gave people the opportunity to hit great shots gate. It was achievable to score, but it was very, very very difficult to avoid mistakes.

I think of a piece with all of that is the way they have approached the trees at Southern Hills. They haven't gone for like whole a removal. They haven't gone with the Oakmont program or the Inverness program where most of the trees have been removed. Maybe most of them have been removed because there were a lot of them there before, but there are still a significant number of trees at Southern Hills along the fairways, but there

are gaps between them. And so what this means is that when guys miss the fairway by a substantial amount. They often have a route to recovery, but that route to recovery is frequently over under around They have to manufacture some kind of great recovery shot, but they can do it, and they see that little space where they can get to the green and they're like, you know what, I think I can pull that off. I'm going to go for that. And what that means is we get

to see exciting shots. We get to see guys fail to pull off those shots, and we get to see them success in pulling off those shots. Both of those are more exciting scenarios than just chipping out sideways from a forest, which is what happened at Southern Hills before.

Now we heard Brandal Chamblie complaining about this dynamic on the telecast, not on the telecast, but on Life from and that baffles me, because why do you want to watch players chipping out sideways just because it's more difficult when you get to see this wonderful array of escape shots. And that's what we saw this week because of the way they've approached tree removal. They haven't taken out all of them, but they've taken out enough so that there are significant playing gaps between them.

has a shot. You know, granted he's in the fairway, he's in the short grass, but he has trees in front of him. He had to hit a big cut. But by it being so many people would be like why is that short grass there? By it being short grass, it allowed him to try to hit a thirty yard cut. If he was in rough there, it would have been impossible to move the ball that much.

short grass not being trees. You know, if there were trees still there, there's a good chance that Mita Pereira's ball, if it's thick rough in trees, Mito Pereira's ball is stopped short of that creek, and he could still probably

have a good chance at making four. But because of that short grass and bringing the creek and how many shots did we just see that creek and the short grass really play an impact on that hole and on other holes where you know, it's just accentuated when you bring the short grass to the hazards, just like the bunkers, just like the creeks, bringing that short grass to them so that balls can get to it and not have them stop on the way in.

things well it. It was an astounding test, but it also illuminated just how awkward championship golf is at historic venues and the lengths that you have to go to make it relevant. You have to have, Like Southern Hills is a big ballpark, but they needed to make it bigger, and they found these places that made for really awkward green to tea transitions, awkward flow for spectators, all this stuff.

And you also saw holes where there isn't an option to go back, like the twelfth at Southern Hills, which is one of the course's most dramatic, most you know, historically great golf holes. You saw reduced to driver wedge, a four hundred and seventy yard par four that just has this great topography that just you know, it just drapes over this hill and it was reduced to nothing. It was reduced to a nothing burger.

it did so so many things so well. Where they could add the distance, where they could make the you know, thirteen played great because they could add the back tea. Sixteen played great because they turned a par five into a par four, you know, and they were able to have flexibility. But the reality is that if the game keeps going in the direction that it's going, holes become irrelevant. More and more holes become irrelevant. It's really easy to

go up, as we saw with sixteen and thirteen. When you have the hole built the way you need it to be, it's easy to move up, but it's impossible to move back in certain situations. And you see this with historic golf courses all over the place. And you know, I had my cousin who's a casual golf fan, who's a you know, he's coaches high school baseball. He's a baseball nut, and he texted me about how awkward that thirteenth Tea it was. He's like, it's just really strange.

And I go, yeah, like, where would you have to put home plate at Wrigley if you were using aluminum bats? And he goes, that's a great point. He goes that, and he this is somebody that's not a golf course architecture person. He said, you know, it would be really cool to see pros play with wooden clubs.

fair ways, it was inconceivable to me. And I think that there has been a change in the past five years in terms of the ceiling that players have, you know, the links that they can hit the ball, the you know, it seems like the governor has just been taken off, and in certain situations they can hit it almost as far as they want to, just hit a three hundred and seventy five yard drive in particular conditions without really breaking a sweat. And when you start to get to.

certain holes. And and you know, when when you're hitting the ball four hundred yards a par four, what is a par four anymore? Is a par four seven hundred yards all of a sudden?

helps curb scoring. They weren't auto birdies. You had to play them well. So you need six hundred and fifty issh yards and you can adjust up and back based off of weather. Now for par fours like a long

par four. I thought sixteen played really well as a long part four, but it was adjusted from five thirty and up and you start to do the math, and it's just inconceivable for any historic course to keep up with this, because if you wanted to do the same exercise with one, your tea box would be on the other side of the clubhouse effectively.

They're going to need to build new courses, a set of new courses that you only play professional tournaments on unless there's some kind of bifurcation. So you know, that's apparently what the USGA has its eye on right now, and let's hope they act quickly. All right, So we have gone twice as long as we intended to go. Andy, thank you for your course takeaways. This was really interesting. Appreciate it. Good luck with the move all right. I am here with Stephen Britton. Steven is the golf course

superintendent at the Chevy Chase Club and he also used to work at TPC Potomac. He has been on the podcast before. A friend and supporter of the pod. Thanks for being here, Steven. We were going to talk about bunker sand today because it was a big topic of discussion during the PGA Championship. There were quite a few players who were unhappy with the state of the bunker sand at Southern Hills. Now, having played Southern Hills, I can tell you that the bunker sand is just fine.

But I thought we would have a discussion about how superintendents go about choosing bunker sand, what goes into the preparation of bunkers for tournaments, and some of the expectations that players might bring to this when they come to play a course. So, first of all, Steven, what does go into choosing bunker stand, what different types are available, and how do you kind of come to a decision about what to use.

You know, if you're doing a million dollar plus project, you want to make sure you pick the right sand, because once it's in, that's challenging to remove and switch out and expensive. So there's several different tests without going into all of them, but some of the most important ones are obviously a particle science test. So in a nutshell,

for bunker sands, you want angular sub angular sand. So the way to think of that is almost like broken glass, because that sand locks together and bridges and binds together really well, which will make the sand firmer, as opposed to sand that's rounded. That might be like having a gazillion marbles and a bunker and that's never going to lock up, never going to bind together, and that will produce soft bunkers and then subsequently result in lots of

plug Friday g lies. Right, So sand tests are really important. Infiltration rate tests, so that's how much water the sand can take and drain away. So USGA guidelines are usually nothing lower than twenty inches an hour. It's kind of what they're looking for for a standard for bunker sands. But one of the most important one is the pentrometer test.

So a pentrometer is a handheld instrument with a golf ball on the end, and what you would do is you would take a sample of a sceand that you were thinking of using, and you would put it in a container or a tube, and then you press down with the penttrometer and it will compress the scene and push into the sand and test how firm that sand can be. Right, And there's lots of labs that have come up with guidelines and specs on what the ideal results are to have the least amount of Frida egg

lies as you can have. So that's measured in kilograms per centimeter squared. So for example, anything less than one point eight kilograms per centimeter squared fails, and anything kind of one point eight to two point four is acceptable, and then anything over two point four kilograms per centimeter squared that's desirable. That's that's a good scend, right, So that's going to be a firm stand that's going to give you the least amount of chance for plug balls

in your bunkers. So that's always a hot topic, right for bunker sands. So that's one that guys will look at a lot, is that.

that you can. And so you know, there's lots of other different ones that go into angle of repose, So that's where you have a flashed bunker face and the ability of the sand to stay up on the face and not slide down, and and so there's all kinds of different data and specs that labs are through lab testing that they've come up with that you need to meet to minimize sand sliding down a bunker face. So

there's a lot that goes into it. When when you're picking a sand, it's not just the cheapest, most readily available sand in your area, and some of these tests you can even do. It's not just for new sands.

If you're doing a project, you can do some of these tests on your existing sand and bunkers to kind of see where you're at today, right, because they evolve and sand gets dirty and organics get into sand as storms go through and destroy your bunkers, and different silts and fines get into the bunkers and so they change over time. So some of these tests you can also do to your existing sands to see what you need to do to maybe improve the bunkers that you currently have.

we were hosting tournaments, we did a lot. We were I mean, we were hand watering bunkers in the evening after play so that you would wet the bunker faces up and then they would kind of dry down through the night, and then in the morning they were almost that nice level of moisture or dampness where they raked up just not wet, but just not too dry and fluffy, right, And that's kind of when bunkers almost feel the best, right, everybody's played out of that kind of consistency of sand.

But that's you know, that was seven or eight staff members hand watering bunkers in the evening. We were smoothing the faces. Some clubs go around with a whack a plate and they'll whack a plate their faces to get the sand firm to mitigate Friday lines. A heck of a lot goes into it. And again when you're hosting a tour event, especially when you work at a TPC and they're owned by the PGA Tour and they haven't

a gronomy department. That sand testing that I was just talking about, they really analyze a lot, because if the bunkers aren't performing correctly and they get feedback from players that might be a little bit negative, they want to be able to have the data to go back and say, well, hey, look we've done our work. This is how the sand tested out. Here's the pentrometer meetings. They were within the guidelines, acceptable guidelines. Here's the infiltration rate, here's the particle size.

So it's almost like a bit of an insurance policy that Okay, you know, we did everything we could to get the best bonker sand in the bunkers. So they really analyze that data a lot. But yeah, it's a lot of work to get them perfect, and it just depends on how much stuff you have available.

easy as possible. Everybody knows that, and it's it would bother me when I was at TPC, I'll be honest, because we would try to make every bunker the same, whether it was down in a hole in the shade all day next to a pond where it's always wet, or up on a hill in full sun in the wind. We tried to get every bunker playing the same, which I think is kind of nonsense, right, Like some bunkers, you know, like little inconsistencies are kind of cool and make golf cooler. And I use the last time I

was on a podcast, I use this analogy. I won't go into it too much, but at the club I worked out Australia, there's a great path for there in the sixth West Hole, Melbourne, and the front bunker when I worked there in the nineties was always boggy and always really soft scened, and the back left bunker behind the green was always rock hard and you just knew and if you were playing in an event there, you would hope that a good caddy would say, we're in the middle of fair way, like, hey, if you hit

it in the short left one, that is probably going to plug and it's going to be a really boggy shot.

game's never been easier for professional golfers right now. The equipment is the easiest it's ever been to hit ball. The easiest they've ever been to play play with. But the grass is always is also the best it's been in the history of the game. The grass is the best today it's ever been. And the same goes for bunkers.

They're good probably almost everywhere they go and play. So for anyone to comment on bunker inconsistencies or them not being perfect in today's day and age, like, it's a it's a little far fett, right, It's.

working in. We just got two inches of rain last night, and my bunkers are full of water and totally destroyed this morning, and there's twelve workers out trying to put them all together now. And we might get another th thunderstorm on Wednesday and it happens all over again. I've got to go and fix them all again. So hard to put a dollar amount on, but definitely the most amount of most superintendents would tell you the most amount of man hours are going in the bunkers.

was really informative. I appreciate it.