I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a.
Brid egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm.
About ready to run off of the hump.
And Joseph on Sunday morning, May twenty first, you tweeted and I quote brings me no joy to report that the media pendulum has swung way too far on Michael Block, hoping the broadcast focuses on players with a legitimate chance of winning. Less than six hours later, Michael Block made a hole in one on the par three fifteenth hole at the PGA Championship. Joseph, will you apologize.
You're starting this episode by turning the people against me. This is a tough jumping off point, the hill that I have to die on. But Garrett, when he made that hole in one, was that to.
Win to win our hearts?
Clearly.
I mean, if if you're reading any social media or listening to the broadcast, it's one of the greatest shots in the history of golf, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving individual. I mean, I was expecting them to say something like, Michael Blocks the type of guy that I want to marry my daughter. That was the level that we were at on Sunday. And to be honest, if there were enough cameras around, he'd probably think about doing it.
My goodness, I really have turned the people against you already in this episode. I didn't realize that your hatred went this deep. I thought that you were going to take this opportunity to back off, apologize and just let people enjoy it. But no, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Look, it's not really a Michael Block take, though he's very camera aware. This is more about how the runs every good story into the ground and just beats it over and over again until we're sick of it. So, yeah, I know a little little cynical here. So I apologize to people if they're already you know, turned against me now, but I do stand behind that. I think it was a little much.
Well, I have to admit I have to come clean in the company slack on Saturday, maybe it was, yeah, it was Saturday. It was Saturday. So there were some things going on on the golf course that were significant. When the broadcast went back to another walk and talk interview with Michael Block on the fourteenth hole, I was like, yeah, you know, I've had enough. I think this is enough. He seems like a really nice guy, and this is a great story. It really is a uniquely PGA championship story.
It's it's the thing that can happen at this major that can't happen at any other major. But they they really seized it. You could see the media apparatus kind of starting to gather momentum, and man, when he made that hole in one on fifteen, it extended the story a few beats longer than I thought it would, and it seemed to justify the focus on him earlier in the week. And so it's a tough hill to die
on right now. But I think that when we get four weeks from now and he's getting more and more exemptions into PGA Tour events, that there are going to be probably more people starting to side with you. But we'll see. It was a lovely, lovely moment on the fifteenth t I think even you would have to, I would have to admit that it was cool.
It was cool, right we're more on the Like I texted Andy and Brennan, He's going to start getting sponsors exemptions, and then he started getting sponsors exemptions like that. That is the part that it was a little bit much about the story. It's not really a Michael Block thing.
All Right. You're listening to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison. That is Joseph Lamannia, and today we are discussing takeaways from the twenty twenty three PGA Championship at Oak Hill. We're going to talk about the winner, Brooks Kopka, as well as the two other players who had a chance to win, Victor Hovlin and Scottie Scheffler. We're also going to give our final thoughts on the venue at Oak Hill Country Club. So let's start with Koepka. What was his edge this week?
I'm so impressed with Brooks Koepka, Like I think of any golfer that I've been trying to predict in my life, he's the one I've gotten wrong the most. I finally maybe got wise to it in twenty twenty three, where I've just been high brooks Kopka because I've learned my lesson in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. Brooks is so tactical, surgical with his iron play, powerful player, disciplined.
He's a gamer and he shows up like he just knows when he's going into the round what he's about to do. And there's something pretty mesmerizing about watching him pick a part of golf course. I know this is a point that's been emphasized probably on the Frida Egg Pod, definitely on the Shotgun Start pod. Like when a golfer makes something look really boring, that's about as high of a compliment as you can pay a golfer.
And Brooks does that. He's just surgical.
What do you think his key shot was in the final round?
I don't know. I mean I think was it just.
An accumulation, because that's what it is with Brooks kept gut, he doesn't it's not like he does things that are like super spectacular.
I think probably a couple moments. One that sticks out to me was saving bogie on number six. So after hitting that drive out right into the creek that the wheels could have come off there maybe a little bit, and it's just very Brooks to not let that happen. I think the other moment for me was stuffing the wedge on two, just kind of making it clear from the beginning that he was dialed in. And obviously the
Masters didn't quite go his way. He didn't bring anything in the final round, and I think starting off on a good foot this past Sunday stuff in that wedgend on two and making birdie kind of set the tone pretty early.
People would point to the bunker shot from the Friday lie on eleven. There is some argument as to whether it was really that hard of a shot, and he, uh, you know, he ended up making bogie. In any case, it's not like he he got it within inches, but you know, that was certainly a moment that people were impressed with. I also wrote down the bogie save on
number six. So he pushed his drive into Allen's Creek and ended up taking a drop on the other side of Allen's Creek from the green, and there's a tree blocking the green from that angle. So he was hitting out of pretty thick rough. It wasn't like super trampled down rough or anything. He was he was dropping his ball in legitimate Oak Hill PGA Championship rough and hitting a mid to long iron out of it over a tree from a bad angle, and he hit it to twenty five feet thirty feet or so it was.
It was forty five feet. I just pulled up the trail, but.
It was past the hole. It landed just in the right spot. And because he couldn't get any spin on the shot, obviously, and so it ran well past the hole. But that's within sort of the circle of lag putting friendship for Brooks Kopka. You know he's going to two putt from there. And that shot was just unbelievable. That's such a hard shot.
Crazy shot.
And if I remember correctly, when he hit it, he was like sit down a little bit, and it was forty five feet long. Like yeah, he's so dialed that he knew exactly where that ball was going. He's so much control over his irons, Like Brooks Kepka is a generational ball striker.
Do you have any Do you have any predictions? It's tricky with Brooks because obviously his his body is an issue. We forget that because he looks healthy right now. But a guy who has had knee pro problems, leg problems in the past is probably going to have them in the future, Do you see him reeling off multiple more majors?
Yeah, I think I think three more is pretty conceivable. He's thirty three, let's say another six years of really strong golf and picking off one every other year seems quite reasonable to me. So Fienz's career at eight or nine majors, I would not be surprised at the same time, right, we know how golf is. If he never wins one again, it shouldn't surprise anybody like that happens all the time. So I think eight majors is very well within reach.
Eight majors I'm looking this up right now, would put Brooks in the league of Tom Watson, Gary Player and Ben Hogan are at nine. That's the kind of rarefied
company the Brooks Kepka seems to be headed toward. And you know what makes him such a difficult player to understand and is that his form in regular events, which are for him live golf events, really doesn't mean anything when it comes to predicting how he's going to do in a major, because he is so outrageously better in major championships than he is in regular events.
Yeah, I think it's why I've gotten Brooks so wrong in like twenty seventeen twenty eighteen era, because I didn't really necessarily believe in players like that who can just turn it on in majors and show nothing leading up to it. But I actually think he probably gets bored with some of the standard PGA Tour setups now live setups, and when he gets to a major, he actually wants
to turn it on. He knows people are watching. He likes going to other sporting events, right, he likes going to big NBA games, like I think he likes the feeling of being a big game hunter, and at some point it becomes hard to deny that that's what's happening. So I think that's what's happening.
Do you think that's what it is? That it's really that kind of romantic narrative of the guy who can step up in big moments. Is there another explanation that we can look for for his sort of out performance in the four majors.
I think it's a couple things. I think major championship setups allow him to hit more demanding shots that separate himself more from some of the other players who, I mean, you're not gonna tpc's summer lends not really giving you the same opportunities to step up and hit some of these pure iron shots, and it doesn't demand the same quality of play. I also think those events probably get a little bit boring for Brooks, Like, why am I here? What does a win mean versus a major championship? We
all know what that means. So it's not unique to Brooks, right, Tigers talked about only carrying, only caring about major championship trophies. I just think we're in a championship oriented mindset, especially true for Brooks, not true for everybody, but I think it's true for a lot of fans.
Yeah yeah, but you know, Tiger played really well in regular PGA Tour events, so much so that he won the most of them ever, aside from Sam Snead, who's a lot of whose wins or maybe not ones that we should necessarily count as full PGA Tour events. But I don't want to open up that can of worms. Tiger was great no matter what the event was. His
competitiveness wasn't selective. It seemed to kick in whenever he was playing a golf event, whether it was a major or you know, I would imagine he was incredibly competitive in normal money games that he played at Medallist or whatever. Brooks seems to have a competitiveness that is selective or a focus that is selective, and he summons it at
these four majors. Now, I think I would also point out that his five majors have all come at the PGA Championship in the US Open, and those tournaments, especially recently, have had pretty similar setups. Shinnecock Hills, Aaron Hills. Okay, you know those were as US Opens. Those were maybe not typical US Open setups, and so maybe this take
isn't as ironclads as I wish it were. But the fact that he has won only PGA Championships in US Opens, do you think that's significant and do you think that tells us something about those tournaments?
Honestly, no, because I'm a huge core setup person. But Brooks had a very good chance of winning the twenty nineteen Masters, he had a very good chance of winning the twenty twenty three Masters. Yep, he's won at Scottsdale. A little bit of a different test, pretty significant iron test. He actually can't really spray it out there. You could spray it at Okill, so Brooks has shown that he
can do it on a variety of courses. Open championships, you got to be on the right side of a draw often, like there's just a little more variants involved, and that's maybe a little bit of a different style. But I wouldn't be surprised if Brooks is in contention at an Open Championship either. So for some players, I agree, and maybe we'll touch on this a little bit with somebody like Rory, But I think Rory's best chances are
going to be setups like this at o'kill. I don't feel that as much that way about somebody like Brooks.
Koepka, Why do you feel that way about Rory?
Rory really does spray the golf ball with driver, and a setup like this really allows him to free wheel a little bit.
Off of the tee.
Sure, I don't want to jump too far ahead.
Maybe we're getting into Oakhill in a little bit, But at oak Hill you could have wide misses and the fairways were so narrow that very rarely were you actually hitting the fairway. So it just allows you to bomb. As long as you're not blocking yourself out with trees, you're kind of just ripping driver. At Augusta, you can't do that. Like if you flare one way out right, you're getting deeper and deeper into the trees. Gets a little more tricky to save par Bogie Oak Hill was
a free wheel. See Bryson doing well, you see Rory doing well. I think Bryson and Rory will tend to do well at similar majors over the next couple of years. The Tory Pines type setups where again you have a lot of room off the tee and you don't have like these penalty hazards lining the fairways with the exception of whole six and sort of seven. It just allows you to be much more aggressive off of the tea, get a little more creative. I think dog legs right
like holes four, seventeen and eighteen. Those set up really well for players like Rory and Bryson. So I don't expect Rory to have a ton of success at Augusta LACC. I think he's got some course management issues and some shot selection issues that he's got to work through. Otherwise he'd be right there. But Brooks doesn't. I don't have that concern as much.
Well, let's get into that a little bit with Rory. You know, I want to jump quickly to Victor Hovelin and Scotti Scheffler, who were truly in contention where Rory wasn't. But what were Rory's issues with Corseman and shot selection this week, especially when you compare him to somebody who was playing like Brooks Kopka did.
Look.
People give a lot of different explanations for Rory. Maybe he's not mentally in it. Whatever, I'm gonna stay consistent, have the same conversation we had in twenty twenty two after the Open Championship. I think ninety plus percent of Rory's issues are shot selection. People are going to focus a lot on the layup iron shot on seven off the tea that went into the water. That was not good, right, That's reflective of some course management issues a little bit.
But I take much more issue with the web shot on whole two on Sunday, where he's got like one hundred and thirty yards from the middle of the fairway, tries to peel this little like sweepy fade into the front right location short sides himself, has no chance, doesn't really have that doesn't have a great look at par
makes bogie. Other players make birdies there. If you watch what Brooks, Keopka did there, what Victor Hoveland did, Scotti, Scheffler, they're not hitting these sweepy fades where they're trying to get it right next to the hole.
They're aiming a.
Little bit left, hitting their stock fade in there, and if it goes a little right and gets close to the whole, excellent. But this is the same conversation that we had I remember talking about at St.
Andrews.
I think this is Friday Round part three eleven. At Saint Andrews. He tried to hit Rory tried to hit this massive draw from about like one hundred and eighty yards, started at like thirty yards right of the flag, ends up flaring it out right, making bogie. So people can talk about like strokes gained approach, strokes gained putting there, but there's some strokes gained shot selection. And I think
that's what my biggest issue is. It always is with Rory is just being a little bit too clever, trying to strive for perfection too much, whereas other players like Scheffler, Hoveland, Kepka, they're taking those stock shots into conservative targets, and if it already did that, I'm very confident he'd start hoisting some major championship trophies.
That shot on the second hole killed me. I mean, he had just birdied one, stuck at two inches on his approach seemed to, you know, have that feeling of making a charge. Now, I'm not sure that he ever could have gotten to minus nine. You know, he started the day at minus one, I believe, and got to two with that birdy at one. But as soon as he you know, from the middle of the fairway after a perfect t shot on two, short sighted himself to that pin. I was like, this is this is not happening.
It just doesn't seem like he has the right mentality. Now, maybe there's a possibility that he was aiming at the fat side of the green and just hit an incredible push. I don't want to assume that I know what he intended to do there, but it just seems really unlikely.
I think that or right, that he was trying to feed a cute little fade into that front right pin and he just pushed it five ten yards and short sighted himself, And it was a shot that he should not have attempted, and that kind of stuff is really frustrating with Rory because this is an extremely intelligent individual and such a talented golfer, but he does seem to have a little bit of a weakness when it comes to shot selection in big moments where it's clear that
his mentality is win or go home. I'm going to attack pins and if I miss then it wasn't meant to be. But I think that he probably could back into a few more wins than he does.
Definitely, And for a little context here that when he went into the creak on number seven off of the tea, ends up making bogie there, loses about a half of a shot to the field, and not many guys are making birdies there. It's a mistake demanding tricky t shot. I kind of write that off as a little bit fluky, still not good. But when you make boge on number two, you're giving up over a shot to the field. You're giving two shots up to the leaders who all made
birdie there. So that's a costly one. And I think the misconception with some of this conservative conservatism, like be conservative on your targets, is that.
People who like me are arguing that you will.
It. I think people think you won't make as many birdies that way, but that's actually not true. You're gonna stumble into a lot of birdies that way. So it's not true that once you're down and you're chasing, you need to start attacking all of the pins. You can be conservative on your approach targets and you're still gonna make a lot of birdies and you're gonna avoid all
those sloppy bogies. So if I'm positive positive, if Rory adopted a little bit more of a modern philosophy around course management and shot selection, he'd be hanging with the guys that are beating him consistently. It's not a talent issue. It's a mindset like it is a course management shot selection issue.
All right, let's touch on Hoveland and Scheffler, maybe just a quick takeaway for each. So Hobland, he was part of the main story of Sunday for most of the day. The story was the duel between Kopka and Hoveland. Then the sixteenth hole came around and Hoveland got into an issue with the fairway bunker there double bogied that hole. When Koepka burdied it, ended up losing by two, but
he hung in there for a while on Sunday. It wasn't the same sort of fading away act that he did at Saint Andrews where he just wasn't a factor. He was a factor. And so what's your main takeaway for Hobland this week? Positive or negative?
Very positive? I follow Victor Hobland pretty closely. I'm pretty he and Scotti Scheffler tend to play some of the best course management, have the best approach to their games, so I always watch their targets and how they play golf courses very closely. I think with Victor Hovelin what I've noticed this year, the ball striking has been incredible like it normally is, and the challenges have been on these tight line chips. So at Augusta really this this year.
The firmest day was Sunday, and there were a couple of short game shots where Victor just can't clip it and spin it like some of the other players and have as much control versus somebody like Scottie Scheffler. So the thick rough kind of protected Victor from some of those touchy short game shots.
It's a different technique, it's it's a hack, and we saw him hit a couple of really good ones on Sunday with that tech.
Yeah, and I also give him credit. His sand game was much better than I expected it to be. He hit some brilliant bunker shots from around.
The gad Yeah, some hop hop stop kind of bunker shots for sure.
About he hit a couple of the best short game shots of anyone I saw this week, and I was watching a lot of the tournaments. So I think for Victor Hovland, he's gonna have a lot of major championships success. It's just gonna be a matter of can he even contend in some of the setups. They're gonna demand some of those tricky short game shots off tight lines like Lacc and Augusta when.
It's not soft.
But incredibly impressed with him, like he's he's such a good player, he's a top ten player in the world, and he's a gamer like he's now shown up for the last three majors. We'll see what his major championship career ends up looking like. I have some concerns about the short game, but overall very impressed he hung in there.
I don't think the shot on sixteen was a mental error, like at that point he's trying to win, probably caught it at a little bit thin three holes to go, like he hung in there and then stepped up in birdie eighteen to get into a tie for second. So very impressed with Victor Scotti. Scheffler shot sixty five on Sunday to get to T two. What's your takeaway from his week? I mean, it's it was just kind of a weird week for him.
With Scotty, I just expect him to play well everywhere. I really do.
He's got one of the best approaches mentally to the sport. Hits it long off of the tee, has a game plan, has a world class short game, good iron player that the question marks always the putter. He didn't make anything over fifteen feet this week and was still in it. He hasn't finished worse than twelfth this year. He's been
dominant in major championships, did well in the Ryder Cup. Like, you just need to expect Scotty Scheffler to play well everywhere for now, and it's incredibly impressive, Like who are you? There aren't many golfers you're taking ahead of Scotty Chefler. I'd probably make him the favorite at LACC. It'd be between him, Rom and Brooks. Frankly, Scotty's incredible. Like there's not a whole lot to say about Scotty, which I think is a testament to how good of a golfer
he is. There aren't these glaring weaknesses. And he was talking about whole six, which we've already talked about. The got a creak down the side, really hard hole, played almost strokeover par a couple of the rounds. Scotty talked about that hole, and he's like, yep, the target is just a little left of the center of the fairway, just kind of a little bit right of the left edge of the fairway. He's so tactical, he's got the
game plan, he's got the modern strategy. Not somebody you want to be betting against much for the rest.
Of his career. The putting was sort of the story
this week with him. He did make one. I looked at this, he did make one putt over fifteen feet and it was a fifteen foot nine inch putt on eighteen on Sunday, his seventy second hole, he made his longest putt of the week, which was fifteen feet nine inches for a birdie and no. You know, he made a couple of like fourteen thirteen foot range putts over the course of the week, but no bombs, and so the putts weren't falling from long range lipouts, which he
was talking about after the round. I lipped out a couple of putts that I thought were going to go in on the ninth hole. There was another one earlier in the round, and so he was a little frustrated with that. But I wonder with Scotty, considering how solid his total game is. I wonder if he's going to start to get in a place where he can win majors while putting at a fairly mediocre level. You know, he wasn't bad this week on the greens. He wasn't like one of the worst putters in the field. He
was thirty fifth strokes gained. But he had that nine holes on Saturday, the front nine, he was four over. He just had a bad nine holes, and I think that that was the tournament there for him. So I wonder if he's going to get to a place where he can start taking down majors without having some of those longer putts go in.
I don't think Scotty necessarily has like this jump that he has to make. In twenty twenty two, Scotty was incredible the first half of the year, not as good as second half of the year, and it was basically all his putter, So he might be subject to a little bit of a streaky putter who isn't right. I mean, Jordan Speith was the best putter in the world for a couple of years and then had this massive downswing like that happens, Putting comes and goes. But I will
take Scotty Scheffler. I would take him against anybody at LACC and a lot of golf courses like that. So yeah, extremely high on Scheffler. You're You're right, Like the putter wasn't exceptional this past week and he still had a chance to win. The same thing happened at Augusta. He couldn't make a putt this year and he still finished what was he t?
Seven?
So looking forward to LACC, you know you mentioned Scotty Brooks and who else? M rom those are those are you guys going into that week? Anybody else anywhere near the level of those three? For LACC specifically, I.
Think Xander Schaffey belongs in that conversation. I think Patrick Cantley long as in that conversation. I know that people will roll their eyes like Sander never gets it done, like just don't don't count either of those golfers out at LACC. So those would be my I wouldn't, Frank, I wouldn't put Rory in there for some of the reasons I've already kind of alluded to have some concerns about some of the shots selection, which can come back to by you if you shortside yourself in some of
these locations at LACC. But more than that, it's the way that that golf course will penalize some arrant t shots kind of around the perimeters of your dispersion pattern, So there are some holes out there you can't really spray it, and I think Rory will feel a little constrained by that.
Okay, a couple of players who played decently this week and maybe didn't get an awful lot of coverage. Cameron Smith was T. Nine. He had a great last day and that's why he was T. Nine, but he's still there in the top ten. Patrick can't Lay, whom he mentioned T nine, and xanderschoffle a T eighteen, you know, not a mile away. So a lot of these players are playing pretty well. Patrick Reid is also kind of lurking, and somebody that I don't know might be pretty effective
at LACC. We'll see. You know, We've got a lot of guys sort of in that tier that doesn't get a lot of attention on the telecast, but obviously elite players and could round into form in time for LACC.
It's interesting you brought up Patrick Reid because I was really impressed with what I saw from him this past week on a golf course that I didn't expect to sarticularly well, and he also finished top ten at AUGUSTA. I would not be surprised to see him in the mix at LACC, which is kind of Augusta like.
Same with Cameron Smith.
So if you're interested in seeing those characters at the highest level, I think LACC is going to be an opportunity for both of them to thrive. I will not say the same of Bryson for the same reasons as Rory. If Bryson makes that cut, i'd be surprised.
Okay, all right, some things to look forward to, for sure. All right. Let's take a quick break here, Joseph, and when we come back, we'll talk about what we made of Oak Hill this past week. This episode of the Fridagg Podcast is brought to you by Mizzen and Maine. Let's be honest, no one gets excited about wearing dress shirts. They're boring, uncomfortable, and stiff. Mizzen and Maine dress shirts are the exact opposite, though. They're as comfortable as your
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Egg listeners. If you use code fried Egg at Mizzenanmaine dot com, you can get thirty five dollars off any purchase of one hundred and twenty five dollars or more. That's code fried Egg all one word at Mizzenanmaine dot com. All right, Joseph, let's talk about the venue Okill Country Club. We discussed it pretty in depth in the run up to the PGA Championship, but now we've actually seen the
course in action. So first of all, what were some of the positives that you took away from Okill this week? Let's start there because I know that there are some critiques and we'll get to those. But what did you like?
I thought the approach shots played interestingly. I apparent it was an episode of The Shotguns Start maybe where Andy and Brennan were talking about how a staple of Andrew Green's restorations is going to be He believes that you need to hit like a hybrid or a super long iron into at least one part three.
I think they made some.
Reference to that mindset, and so I thought whole eleven was really fun.
To watch this past week.
I liked the idea of a player having a hybrid in his hands, some kind of wood, or a long iron, so that was really refreshing to watch. Thought holes six and seven had a lot of character. I don't have a ton of positive things to say about many of the other holes, but I was impressed with I guess both the fact that the approach shots were demanding but you could hit the greens, and then short sighting yourself
in some locations was a legitimate penalty. That was less true on the weekend once it got a little damp and saw. But I have some positive things to say. I guess one thing I'd tweeted, which I stand by is like, it's a pretty good version of a bad style of golf.
Is how the way I feel about it when it was firm, yeah, and then once it got soft a little bit less? So what did you think?
Well, I agree about the approach shots, and I think that the reason the approach shots were pretty interesting this week is because of the green expansions. These greens at Oak Hill had shrunk to circles, and there weren't the same kind of edge pin positions that would sort of float over hazards and be really close to runoffs and ledges and you know creaks in a couple of cases. And so I thought that the green expansions were incredibly successful.
I think it's the most important thing that Andrew Green does consistently at his renovated and restored courses. You'll also see this at Inverness right, and so I was I was very encouraged by that. I thought that it proved that enlarging greens actually increases the challenge for major championship golf, which is a huge realization that so many clubs have come to recently, and more clubs need to come to. Finding these little fingers of the greens allows you to
put pins in really hairy, challenging places. It rewards good ball striking, and it also gives you a little bit more green area for amateurs to work with. So it's one of those things that makes it more challenging for pros and less challenging for amateurs.
I think it would be interesting to drill in on this somebody I haven't thought a ton about until this week. When you have super tucked pins, it's important to think about how that interacts with players' dominant strategies being conservative and playing away from those targets. And the more you tuck a pin and make short sighted locations even more difficult,
the less players are going to attack them. So I think you had a dynamic this week where as long as you weren't blocked out by a tree, you were kind of fine in the rough. It was almost impossible to.
Hit the fairway. But even if you did hit the fairway, or if you.
Found the rough, no matter how wide it was, you weren't really attacking many of those pins. So it kind of led to a dynamic where everyone's playing into the same locations and you're just making a lot of pars. So I think that's one counterpoint sort of to consider
with tucking pins. I'm all for the green expansion and having more interesting pins, but if you had more with and you could actually allow players to play from appropriate lies and have a good line in the fairway right bait them into taking on some of those tricky pins. But if everyone's playing from the rough, they're not going to attack any of those tucked pins.
So it's something I.
Agree that in order to find the full potential of these green expansions and these new interesting pin positions, you have to widen the fairways. And it's a major missing element because if you're going to have these neat little areas that you can put a pin that's so interesting, then you've got to allow players or tempt players to
find an angle into them. Now, I would say that we just cited an example where a player did try to go at a tucked pin rory on the second hole on the last day, and so he was successfully baited into it. But I think you're right that in general players aren't going to be going after those pins necessarily. I think it's still interesting to have them, though, just to have them available.
Important to note that was one of the softest days, and I agree. Look, I'm with you on I thought the green expansions were awesome. We just have to expand the playing corridors a little bit, and you need to have the opportunity to hit the fairway to actually realize the the to be able to appreciate the benefits of some of that green expansion.
Yeah, I agree. A couple of other positives that I had were the bunker faces. You know, they're neat looking. I like them esthetically, and they also came into play consistently this week. They were pretty punishing. And I'm not saying that the bunkers were a terrible place to be this week, because you know, the sand is the same sand you see everywhere else, and the players know how to play out of it, and that's just the way
it is. But we did see a little bit of complexity with those bunker faces on a few occasions where players got stuck on them or really had to get the ball up quickly, and so avoiding the bunkers was pretty important this week, at least more so than it would be at most PGA tour venues. So you know, I appreciated how those came into play a couple of times. Now obviously that some.
Of the balls getting stopped in the steep grass faces of the bunkers, like Cameron Smith had a really tricky one on Saturday where it's like you're taking a baseball swing. That was a refreshing aesthetic and it's not something you see at every major Championshi venue.
So I agree with you. I thought that was awesome.
Yeah, and it's an Andrew Green staple. And so the more we see Andrew Green renovations, the more I think we're going to see this style of bunker edge shaping as well as those hummocks. Right, I didn't see as much of those this week, and you know, maybe because they're just sort of few and far between. All right, let's get to some of the critiques you've already indicated
hinted at some of your dissatisfactions with the course. Let's start with the strategic question of why the misses versus slight misses and how Oak Hill might not really reward accuracy off the tee.
Yeah, I think maybe trying to estimate some of the numbers here. I haven't had a chance to generate some of the data, but to give people a little bit of an inside look at that and why it's obvious what you need to do here. So I can already tell you, like with near certainty, what that data is going to look like when I.
Do generate it.
I think a slightly off target miss will be penalized somewhere in the neighborhood of zero point three to five two point four shots off of a shot that was in the fairway, and a much wider miss will be like another eight hundredths of a shot, something very small. It's going to be almost identical if you just barely missed the fairway to if you were way off. And that's including all shots, regardless of whether you're blocked out
by a tree. All shots just grouped together. So if you start to unpack that a little bit and understand, well, the fairways were nearly impossible to hit. Right if I'm a shot that's in the rough unimpeded by trees, probably a penalty of closer to two tenths of a shot versus one that found the fairway. And it's nearly impossible to hit the fairway. They were so bouncy, and you're coming.
You're hitting a three hundred yard bullet. It's not gonna stop until it goes into the rough, So why ever pull three wood or an iron off of the tea. And that's even further accentuated on dog legs, where you're hitting a shot on an angle like Holds four seventeen and eighteen, where you basically have to land the ball in the rough and let it trickle onto the fairway. That was one of the only ways that those balls were staying in the fairways, especially on Thursday and Friday.
So it just quickly becomes a dynamic of all right, if there's no penalty hazards out there, I can miss wide. I'm just gonna take an extremely aggressive swing with driver, try to get it in the fairway. And if not, let's make sure I have an unimpeded look at the green that's not blocked out by trees. That was the dominant strategy, and that's why you see Bryson doing as well as he did. So does that does that make sense? Scartt some of the maybe some of the numbers behind it, and.
Kind of want I mean, I definitely know what you're saying. I want you to explain one aspect of it, which is you talked about how players how the fairways were so firm that a driver would often just bounce through the fairway and not stop until it gets too rough because there's nothing to stop it. So why ever not hit driver? But somebody might argue, actually, if you hit a three iron or a three would maybe you'd have
a better chance of stopping it in the fairway. So why is that not a legitimate strategy.
In this case, because the fairways were so narrow and so firm that they were bouncing well into the air. I know, you guys put out the clip of Joel Damon's t shot on Thursday what stopping the golf ball, Like the rough was what was stopping the golf ball. So if you can hit a three iron, but you're gonna have to hit it like some kind of high fade or something that maybe lands soft enough on Thursday
and Friday to stay in the fairway. If you don't execute that, now you've got a long shot to the green from the rough, and that's where it becomes a massive problem. If you're bright, Let's say you're Brooks and you've got would you rather have a six iron out of the rough into a firm green that might be elevated or would you rather have a nine iron?
It makes a massive difference.
So you just can't pick apart a golf course like that with irons and three woods off the tea. Sometimes the exception to that is if it gets much narrower where the driver is, but it's much wider back where the iron shot would end up, or the three wood, but that's not how this golf course was shaped. It was pretty much uniform with throughout, so particularly on the dog legs, it's just you got a bash driver.
So the logic, as I understand it, is this, you're going to be in the rough a certain percentage of the time, no matter what, whether you had a three iron or a driver, so you might as well hit a driver. Furthermore, if you miss wide with a driver, you're often going to be in a place that's not
any more punitive than missing the fairway slightly. Say you have a wide miss with a driver, that doesn't really hurt you so much at Oak Hill because those wide misses aren't that much worse than the narrow misses than a more accurate driver of the golf ball might have. And so if you're hitting three wood because you're trying to be more accurate, you're just sort of missing the point of the golf course. And so what is it about Oak Hill that makes wide misses not that big of a deal?
The short answer is no penalties around the kind of the wide the outer bounds of your dispersion patterns.
So yeah, compared to like a Florida golf course or a tpc sawgrass where you know, wide misses or out of bounds or in a marsh or something.
Yeah, and there's gonna be some holes like that at Lacc where there's fescue and so maybe if you miss by a little bit, you're just in the rough, but if you miss wider, there's fescue there. Like there's sort of the gradients to the penalty that was not true at Oakill. I think another there are some subtle things to probably consider about a tree lined golf course with some sparse trees and not any additional features outside of those trees, Like whole six and seven are the counterpoints here.
There's like the only holes at Okill that actually provided a little bit more of an accuracy test, but on most of the holes it's just tree lined. And I think there are a couple small things that also aren't talked about that matter. For example, if you have a tree in front of you, the aerial option becomes much more feasible. The less yarded you have in the more
you can hoist the ball up right. Like if you have a tree, let's say twenty five yards ahead of you, you might be able to get a wedge over it. But you're not getting a seven iron over it. You're much less likely to get a seven iron over it. So there's just become fewer and fewer advantages to laying back, Like your driver might also fly over some trees, versus if you hit an iron three but a little bit off the mark, it might hit a tree and come straight down like.
They are just these.
Subtle things that also reward hitting a driver. So there's just become fewer and fewer reasons to ever elect to get conservative off of the tea. And also Andrew Putnam called out that a lot of these areas where we had wide misses were trampled down by fans, which is true, and that's another reason why some of these wide misses were rewarded.
I will say I know for a fact at.
The Ryder Cup in Paris in twenty eighteen, that was a consideration of Team Europe. They did not want the fans trampling down where Team USA was gonna hit. They pushed them way back. That is absolutely a key feature of why this didn't penalize wide misses very much. And get hospitality tents and stuff too. We don't need to get into a TiO discussion, but that's relevant as well.
Yeah, yeah, you get preserved from that as well. And so yeah, I mean there are a number of factors here conspiring to make wide misses, not that penal oak Kill, and another factor, this isn't true on every hole, but on a lot of holes, the tree removal strategy at oak Kill. They removed a lot of trees, right, It used to be very tree choked. They removed quite a few trees, and there were many reasons for that, aside from strategic The health of the golf course is better.
The health of the trees is better now that they have more room to grow. So I want to be clear about that. But the tree removal strategy that they pursued Oakill created a situation where the trees that they left were ones that presumably guard or define the hole and are therefore kind of close to the fairway. But if you get farther away from the fairway, they removed a lot of trees over there. Those are big open areas.
They look like lawns, right, because it's just rough. It's just green, lush, maintained rough, and they removed a ton of trees in those areas. Presumably the thinking was leave some of the trees that make the hole what it is and that have a immediate strategic influence on the whole corridor. But any trees that are back from the hole, we can just take those out.
Right.
Well, when you get to a PGA championship and guys are hitting the ball as far as they do and as far off line as they do, sometimes they're going to find those areas that are just so far off the hole that I think the club figured they could take away those trees and it wouldn't make a difference. But it does make a difference because suddenly a lot of those wide misses are in open areas, and so you have that dynamic that you're talking about where you can just bash driver.
That's where I think the Tory Pines comparison is appropriate here where if you've ever watched the grounds of Tory Pines, like, there's a lot of holes where just a lot of rough if you miss by a foot or if you miss by thirty yards. So I do think people were comparing this to Bethpage winged Foot appropriate, definitely appropriate comparisons, but had a little bit of Tory Pines in it too, And it's kind of what you're hitting on there, some of those open spaces if you just blast the ball.
And again that helps Bryson. He feels more comfortable when he can hit out into those areas and if hey, if I miss way out right, no, no big deal.
Yeah. Yeah, he seemed very very comfortable this week, very settled down, and so yeah, that was had had to have been a factor. All right, One more quick break and Joseph and I will be back with our storylines for the coming week in golf. Our next partner is Athletic Greens. I take AG one by Athletic Greens. Literally every day. I gave AG one a shot because I was just looking for a healthy way to start my day and get off on the right track. I take AG one first thing in the morning, and it just
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traveling recently. I brought my travel packs with me and they were super super convenient. Go to Athleticgreens dot com Slash the fried Egg. That's Athleticgreens dot com. Slash the fried Egg. Check it out. Storylines. Joseph, what are you tracking this week?
It's got to be Block Watch, right, I mean sponsors exemption into Charles Schwab Challenge. Michael Block will be playing, So you know, I was thinking about actually driving up.
It's only a few hour drive for me.
What's in your neighborhood?
Yeah, thinking about driving up to watch on Saturday or Sunday. But I'd like to see Michael Block play, so maybe I'll change those plans to Friday, you.
Can apologize in person. He's also going to be at the RBC Canadian Open. He's also gotten the sponsor exemption into that. I believe he can get seven right before he runs out.
Yeah, but you know, Garrett, sometimes these rules can be rewritten, so I wouldn't be surprised if they extend that number to nine just to get him a couple more starts and.
Mcs, little some mcs getting the dig in there. He is forty six years old. Michael Block is likely to be a menace on the Senior Tour. True, maybe not. Maybe, Maybe this week was just sort of a freak accident. He played out of his mind. But you know, forty years from now, Michael Block could be the new Steven Alker.
Do you think Steven Alker after he missed the cut this past weekend, was out watching Michael Block trying to scout.
And the thing. Maybe there'll be a team format on the Senior Tour in the coming years. That'll be what revives the Senior Tour and it can be Michael Block and Steven Alker versus the world. That'll be pretty good. Yeah, lots of storylines to track with Michael Block. I agree, it's it's very exciting. I want to see if he keeps the same hat, the hat that just says raw in capital letters. Do you know what that means?
By the way, I think anyone who buys a hat like that should basically go on a no fly list. So I don't know what it means, and I'm not gonna find out, all.
Right, My storyline for the week is load management. I wrote about this a bit a couple of weeks ago. I just saw that after the Masters, a bunch of top players we're talking about how tired they were, John Rahm, Scotty Scheffler, Roy McElroy all spoke about being exhausted. Right around that time. The schedule for the PGA Tour in the first few months of the year is really really packed, and so these guys started to wear down. Now by the time they got to the PGA Championship, it seemed
like at least Scheffler was fully back and form. I don't know, but you know who showed up looking really fresh and healthy was Bryson de Shambeau and Brooks Kopka. And they are obviously playing on live and so I wonder if their success in Majors is going to start to appeal a little bit to some players on the PGA Tour who were on the fence. I wonder if any of those players are going to start to say
there's something to this Live idea. If Bryson and Brooks were able to go on this tour, get healthy, come back looking happy, contend in majors, win majors, maybe there's really something to the Live Tour.
I think the rest that's absolutely a valid storyline. I feel the same way I've always felt, which is that the top players on the PGA Tour should only be playing the designated events. They really shouldn't be trying to get them to some of these other events. I know that's a little bit of a paradigm shift from the way the tour currently operates, but I do believe that's
the best model. I don't want to go too far down the look how well Live is doing, because I don't want to just cherry pick Brooks and Bryson also Live came from Orlando to the Masters. They're they're playing less, but they are also traveling all around the world. I don't think their schedule is necessarily perfect, but where I think this is going to be a huge issue for
the PGA Tour is at travelers. When these golfers are expected to go directly on the heels of a US Open completely across the country to the northeast, there will be grumblings, whether they're public or not. And I think you're absolutely right that those golfers will be thinking a little bit about schedule reform. So I don't know how much more attractive Live gets. I mean, they're playing in Jetta, They're playing in Australia.
You know, the travel component is tough, but it seems like Live has made that as easy as possible from with these chartered flights and stuff like that. And then it's just fifty four whole tournaments that have no impact on their psyche as far as competitiveness is concerned.
But I don't want to land on a world where we think the right solution is never playing competitive golf outside.
I agree, so bad for fans.
I think that's where the impetus needs to be.
The onnus needs to be on the PGA Tour to create a schedule where the golfers aren't playing as much as they are this year. So yeah, again, in my mind, that's just the designated events. There's like fourteen of them, and that's when we see the best golfers in the world, which is again consistent with like an NFL schedule where you play fifteen to twenty times a year.
And this is something that Rory said was caught saying in the False Swing documentary, like maybe we've gotten a little soft. Every other sport requires athletes to be there at particular times, but the problem is you've got this competitor off to the side offering what appears to be right now just kind of like a club med situation,
you know, an all inclusive resort. And you know, I wouldn't have entirely believed that characterization of Live until I saw Brooks and Bryce and come back and look just like they've got a second lease on life. And maybe that's not something that's going to continue consistently, but I think if these guys keep showing up at Majors, if Cameron Smith comes back at LACC and looks great and plays great, if Patrick Reid does the same thing, then there's going to be more and more evidence that the
Live guys are just a little better rested. And the PGA Tour is going to have to respond to.
I think it's very reasonable and hopefully the false swing will be not They're not being a false swing that the top players are expected to play and will.
Be a seven in the right direction there.
Yeah, all right, all right, Joseph, thank you for coming on the podcast. Talk to you again soon. Appreciate you having me here at This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was produced and edited by Matt Ruschis. Thank you, Matt. There are a couple of things that you can do to support the Frida Egg. One is to simply rate and review this podcast. We love hearing feedback from people, so please offer some of that if you can. Another thing that you can do is to join Club TFE.
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