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 Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Brian Egg Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the humps. Welcome to the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're doing takeaways from the twenty twenty four PGA
Championship won by Xander Schaffle. This is Schaffle's first major win after many many yellow Wikipedia squares in the past seven years, and he did it in very impressive fashion, posting a sixty five at Valhalla Golf Club on Sunday to edge Bryson to Shamba by one stroke. We're going to get into all of that and what it meant, but first I want to talk about Echo Golf shoes. So the latest shoe from Echo Golf is the LT one.
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because golf shoes really take a beating. But with that go you get real quality, real durability, and a shoe that's gonna hold up against all the walking and the weather you can throw at it. And that's why players like Lydia Coe, Eric Van Royan, and Henrik Stenson wear this shoe. So shop the Echo lt one and other Echo products at Echo dot com. All right, here to give some higher level takeaways on the PGA Championship are two people. First of all, we've got Andy Johnson. How's
it going, Andy, Oh, it's going great. Just excited to talk about another major. And also here with us is Joseph Lemania. What's up, Joseph?
How you doing, Garrett? Andy, I'm excited to do this. It was fun, all right.
So Joseph, when we start with your first takeaway from the twenty twenty four PGA, what do you got sure?
My overarching takeaway as I was reflecting on what we watched this past weekend, is kind of how quickly eras change and Scotty Scheffler and Xander Schaffley are pretty clearly, at a minimum, the two best Americans in the world right now and arguably the two best golfers in the world right now. I was just looking through some numbers.
At the end of twenty seventeen, Jordan Speith and Justin Thomas were the second and third ranked players in the world, and since the start of twenty eighteen, they have six top fives between the two of them in majors. Scotty Scheffler and Xander Schaffley have six top fives in major champions in major championships each since the start of twenty eighteen. They've both been incredible players in majors. And Xander Schoffley.
I know he hasn't won, and he's had a reputation for not closing, but this shouldn't it really shouldn't sneak up on anybody that he won. He's been an unbelievable golfer and now it's kind of solidified himself is arguably the second best player in the world. It's pretty remarkable how quickly things can change from six years ago when guys like Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth were young and at the top of the world rankings.
I think this is just like the way golf works, right, yeah.
At least in the modern era, at least in the twenty first century, right, this is how it's been.
Well. I think it's the idea of like you have these these groups of players that are roughly the same age like they are they are roughly you know, Scottie's a little bit younger, but Xander Speed jt are all in the same age range, and different people mature and hit their peak and golf at different ages. This is because it's not such an at it's not like a supreme athleticism sport like the NFL. You know, the you
are going to age out of the NFL. Some players are their best selves at age thirty five, Some are the best at twenty two, Some are the best they'll ever be at twenty eight. And I I think what we're seeing is this group of players. You know, when it's all said and done and they're maybe all forty, we'll be able to sit back and say who was the best of them? But right now I would agree with that. I mean, I think the thing that's amazing
with Xander he qualified into his first major. He qualified into the US Open at Aaron Hills, finished T. Five, and has since played twenty eight major championships and has finished in the top five and a quarter of them. I mean, he was a nobody at that US Open at Aaron Hills. That's when he burst onto the scene. He was struggling on the PGA Tour in his rookie year. He burst on the scene. And now we look back and it's like, Wow, this guy is one of the
best major championship players you know that we have. And one of the reasons is like, if you think about Scottie, if you think about Xander, if you think about the players that play great at a lot of different major championships. You know, there's one constant major championship post site, so that means you're playing three new courses every year in these four majors. What translates at every golf course in the world is if you are very good at everything,
every skill in golf. And Xander Schoffley, for his career, has been really good at everything, and he hasn't seen you know, like we see people have these performance dips. He hasn't really had these performance dips. He's sneaky, been like one of the most consistent players that we have in the game of golf. Like he's always been rock solid driver the golf ball, always been a rock solid approach player, always been a good good round and on the greens. And now he's taken that off the t
game to a whole new level. And that's what's pushed him into what, as Joseph eloquently said, this elite company in golf.
I've got an analogy for Xander. So when I was in college, I worked in the admissions office at my college. This was kind of like my job. When I was a student.
You were saying yes and no. You were the guy.
No, no, no. I did not have that responsibility though. Those are the admissions officers. I was just astudent. I was given tours, I was making spreadsheets, I was doing stuff in the office. Those are my.
Roles doing the backwards walk and talk exactly.
Yeah. I got really good at walking backwards through you know, city streets and stuff. But I spent a lot of time around admissions officers and got used to how they talked about applicants. And there were kind of two or maybe a few more, but two major categories of applicants that would get talked about. One would be the applicants who had like one extraordinary skill, like this person is a violin prodigy. This person is a you know, a
four star linebacker recruit. This person does one thing really really well, like won the national debate competition or something like that, and that gives them kind of a unique profile in the applicant pool. The other type of applicant that could be successful would just be the well rounded applicant.
Somebody who did everything really well, had pretty high SAT scores, pretty high grades, was involved in a nice array of activities, did some sports, just just had everything and you got a sense that this person would come to that college and provide some of that same steadiness, and I think that's Xander Schaffle. He is the well rounded applicant. He is I think, probably at this point, going to be top fifty just about every strokes gained category for his
entire career. But the thing is, and this is why I think it's hard for me to get invested in Xander Schaffley, and I wonder if you guys feel the same way. He's not like the best in any given skill set. Aside from being well rounded, he's not he's a great driver of the golf ball. He's not as great a driver of the golf ball as Rory and Bryson. He is a really really good approach player, a great approach player, but he's not Colin Morikawa or Scotti Scheffler
in that respect. And by the same token, he doesn't have any notable weakness. There's no vulnerability that helps you to kind of relate with him or or feel that there could be something unpredictable or exciting in the way that he plays golf. He's just gonna kind of bludgeon courses into submission with his well roundedness. And that's that's how I've come to understand Xanderschoffle.
At this point, well, the best, the best golfers are the most boring, right.
Well, Scotty Scheffler is the best golfer in the world. But to me and a lot of people might not agree with this, and people's reactions to Scotty Scheffler have been kind of funny in the past couple of years. But obviously he took on a new identity during during this tournament. Now he's now he's the felon, but or the alleged felon. But you know, Scotty I find really compelling to watch because he is prodigious in his approach
play and short game. He if he's not the best in the world at those things, he might be one of the two or three best in the world. So you're seeing something truly virtuosic when you see Scotty Scheffler hit an iron or hit a chip around the greens.
His putting is a vulnerability. You know, sometimes he's really good, but we've seen him truly struggle in that area, and I'm not sure we've seen anything similar from Xander where we have this, you know, kind of separation or divergence between different skill areas, which to me, makes a golfer fun to watch, you know, I think of Jordan Speed, think of Rory, I think, you know, think of the
golfers that are really fun to watch. It's they're great in a couple of things, and maybe they have a vulnerability or two.
Well, I guess the only the only area where I'd push back a little bit, Garrett, is that Xander's become a really good driver of the golf ball.
Well, is he the best? Is he? Now? Do you think he's like as good as Rory or Bryson?
He hits it straighter than those guys do. And I think a huge part of the Xander story that Andy kind of alluded to. He had one of the most consistent best years of any golfer in twenty twenty three. He was very good, rock solid all year. He then started working with Chris Como late near the end of twenty twenty three and picked up a lot of ball speed. He's now top ten in ball speed on the PGA Tour this year. He's gone from being a good driver of the golf ball to a great driver of the
golf ball. Why I agree with you, Garrett, He's not the best driver of the golf ball in the world. Scotty Scheffler is a better driver of the golf ball than Sander Shoffley is. He's now on that top tier and that's the most reliable skill in golf. So agree, he's not the best in the world at driving the golf ball, but he's right up there. Now.
I think that you're onto something, Garrett, and I think this plays into my big takeaway. One of my big takeaways. This has been the problem with Scotty Scheffler is like and I think people think he's boring. I think he you know, he kind of chuckles and shrugs off everything. But I think what happened to him on Friday, we now have a new superstar, a super duperstar in golf because he got arrested.
The crowds on Friday were unbelievable with him right.
Yes, there is an all new human interest in Scottie Scheffler because of what happened, the craziness of Friday morning in him being arrested. It sounds like reports by KVV at No Laying Up are that the charges are likely going to be dropped. But this was the moment he needed. It provided some relatability it gave I think the thing with golf people glomb on to people that give them something that they can say, I'm a fan of this
guy because of this. For Scottie Scheffler, the Friday round, like everything that went into it, him talking about stretching in the jail cell and then going out and shooting sixty six after being arrested, unsure of whether he was going to make the tea time, being the lead story of the morning Sports Center that came on early. Sports Center came on early because of this story. Like think
about that. It was a preposterous story and for anybody listening that doesn't know what happened, he got arrested on the way to the golf course and it was unsure of whether or not he was going to make his tea time. There was a delay because of the tragic death of a volunteer, John Mills. Very sad in that regard, but he made it. He ends up getting released from jail, makes it to the tea time, he got charged with a felony, makes it to the golf course and then
goes out and shoots sixty six. I mean, it was this is the moment I think, like everybody's been like, we have this like supremely talented, dominant star player, but nobody likes, nobody cares about him. Nobody cared about him.
Now people have reason to care about him, and Xander in that regard has not had anything near a moment like, if anything, Xander's had opposite moments where he's been contentious with media or he he was allegedly requesting money to play in the Ryder Cup, like he's had the opposite type of moments. You would think getting arrested would be a negative, but in this case it ended up being a positive.
Yeah, it really worked out for Scotty Scheffler. And by the way, if you are somebody who didn't know about Scotty Scheffler's arrest and are still listening to this podcast, send me an email Garrett at the Frida Egg dot com and I want to I want to hear about how that happens. I know.
Who I'm envious of them.
Yeah, exactly, I know you've got like a proper media diet, I guess, but yeah, I completely agree you know this, And I think that Scotti Scheffler's vulnerability with putting over the past year and a half or so registered less as an appealing vulnerability because he was kind of unwilling to talk about it in a real way, right, he wasn't He didn't want to go there when he was asked about it, And so I think that that's maybe one reason why it took this incident on Friday for
people to kind of see Scotty in a new light. And it was genuinely shocking. On Friday morning, I'm on the West coast, right, so I'm getting to stuff usually later than most people are getting to it. But to wake up in the morning and to open up my Twitter app and the first thing I see is a mug shot of Scotti Scheffler. That was unbelievable. I mean, it was just a complete shock. And then everything that happened after that was like as if it was in a dream. It was truly an incredible day.
I think it was crazy to me. I was out Saturday night in Austin. I didn't realize maybe this is night everyone knew about Scotty Scheffler, and including people who didn't follow golf at all. I know it was on CNN and on major news outlets. I didn't realize the extent to which it had broken out of the golf world and even out of the sports world, Like people who pay no attention to golf were texting me about Scotty Scheffler. A moment like this doesn't feel like it's
happened in a long time. Maybe since Tiger winning the Masters, where where golf really breaks out into the public consciousness.
Yeah, or or I mean Tiger's Tiger's car crash, but that that obviously was of a very different nature.
Partnering with the Saudis broke them out or allegedly allegedly.
We've had a few moments when golf has broken into the public consciousness recently, and weirdly, Scotty Scheffler getting getting arrested is almost the most uh, the most wholesome of of some of the ones that we've named.
Well we're talking Xander and Scottie. I do want to say I think that, like the discourse when we zoom out on the year is going to be Scotty would have won at Valhalla if if if he hadn't got arrested, And I like just really dislike that take. I think he played really bad on Saturday. Now, could it have been partially because he was emotionally and mentally exhausted from the day before. Absolutely, but like we don't get to like we don't get to live in this world right out.
He got out of jail, and I don't want to be harsh. He got out of jail. He played a great round on Friday, and he played like crap on Saturday, and like maybe something would have been different, but like a lot of other things could have happened differently too,
Like you cannot play that game. I think golfers are more susceptible than anybody to this where they love to be like, well, I shot seventy five, but let me tell you about the lipouts, let me tell you about that bad bounce, And they don't look at like any of like the good things that could have that happened from it, Like you know, Scotty could have missed his tea time, you know, and not to mention like Xander Schoffley, I mean, he played outstanding golf. He shot a sixty five,
a sixty five on Sunday. As the leader, that is extraordinarily hard to do. I feel like we've become so conditioned to seeing leaders shoot sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy and I know we'll get to probably Valhalla, but like to go out and shoot sixty sixty five as the leader on Sunday extraordinary and none of the discourse should be Scottie one would have won if because it's just he was too far back. I could get a little
behind it. If it was like he finished two shots back, he finished eight freaking shots back behind.
Yeah, well instead of seventy three on Saturday, he would have had to shoot sixty five right in order to be tied with Xander Schoffle. And you know, although Scott he played really well on Thursday, my perception of his game is that it was a little bit ragged in some respects, and so when he shot seventy three on Saturday, it didn't really come as a surprise, and not just because he had had kind of a harrowing experience the
day before. It was because, you know, certain aspects of his game just didn't totally seem sharp, which is the first that we've seen that from him in a while. But was always going to be coming. You know, he can't keep up what he's been doing for the first few months of this year forever, all right, why don't I do my takeaway here it is related to Valhalla, so we can get into that.
Here we go.
Now, most of what I'm going to do here actually is I'm going to try to play Devil's advocate with Valhalla, because I think the three of us broadly agree about this golf course and its status as a major championship test.
I don't think we need to worry. I don't think anything is coming back to Valhalla anytimes.
Well, yeah, exactly, it's there. Isn't like it's almost like punching down at this point. It almost feels too easy. But we have to be real about what we saw this this this past week because it was you know, it it affected the competition that took place. But in any case, my my broad takeaway about Valhalla is that this course is exactly what we thought it was. This
is this is what we were saying all week. And you know, I think that there's maybe this perception out there that were Valhalla haters, and that the fact that there were some compelling moments on Sunday at this championship is proof that we were wrong about Valhalla. But look at what we were actually saying about this course and the Rona run up. We were saying, this is not a super serious Major championship test, but it's going to produce a stacked leader board, a bunched leader board, and
probably an exciting Sunday. So yeah, this course is exactly what we thought it was and I do appreciate that, but I wish people would understand where that comes from and what that costs, because you know, the Thursday, Friday and Saturday weren't nearly as interesting, at least to me.
I mean my other takeaway and this isn't even changing. This is just playing off of what you're saying, Garrett. One of my big takeaways from watching this week, which is not a new thought. No golf course in the world can really test the best golfers in the world under the conditions that Valhalla was in this past week, where it's soft and there's no wind. So I do think that that is a relevant part of the conversation.
You can have tests that are more interesting than what we watched, but there's not a good test for professional golfers when there's no wind in greens or that receptive. Even the Masters in twenty twenty, the COVID year where Dustin Johnson ran away with it like that wasn't anywhere near the most compelling version of Augusta National when it was wet like that and soft. So I don't want to offer too strong of a defensive Valhalla because I was disappointed in what we saw this past weekend, even
though it's kind of what we expected going in. But I do think that is a relevant part of the conversation that if it had been firmer and faster, the course would have been much more demanding. Would it have been a good golf course? No, Like, I don't think it fundamentally changes shot value in a way that makes it a great Major championship test. But I do think it is at least relevant to call out that it rained all week and there was no wind.
Yeah, I think like you look at at Valhalla and it was a golf course devoid of any redeeming architectural features. There's not one thing that I looked at and I was like, huh, well that's pretty cool, And that's like a very low bar right where you're like you're struggling to find one neat aspect of the golf course. I think, like what I like the most about it is the big property. To me, there is a golf There could be a good golf course there, and that to me
is like the redeeming quality of Valhalla. There could be a good golf course and it's big enough to host championships, but no wind what And let's be clear, like I don't think you can take a major to Kentucky and expect anything to play firm and fast, like I don't. I don't think that in that part of the country, if you go in the summer it's too hot, you have to back off because it you know, it gets so hot and then it still rains a lot in the summer. I don't think it ever gets windy there.
So it's a it's a golf course. Like when I think about what bothers modern tour players, what tests modern tour player, it's the ball rolling on the grounds. So it's gonna be soft regardless of the time of year. You go to Kentucky and and wind and I don't think like I might. I'm not a meteorologists, but I think that Kentucky is relatively like not one of the windy It's not like it's on the ocean. It's not not a windy place. So you have those two things
working against it. So if you don't have natural conditions that can test players, then what's left. It's architectural features, and there are none none there the greens. The greens are I think the greens are are the fact that the golf course doesn't use the features, Like there aren't greens that are pushed up on on creeks very often. You know, the back nine you have a couple, but
the fairways never. It's never like hit it near the creek, like it it actually is twenty five yards away, and there's a bunch of rough that stops balls along the way.
And then I think the biggest indictments around the greens where like I just I can't remember watching a golf course where there was like less I I mean, like any miss around the green seemed like it was a really easy up and down, Like the announcer would be like, oh, this is a really really tough spot, and it was like, oh, the guy hit it to a foot and a half.
Like it seemed to me that around the Greens was maybe one of the most docile golf courses that I've seen the world's best players play at in my life.
I think on that Andy like a good example and kind of why you get some of the bunched leaderboard. We had a lot of talk of well, it makes everyone hit into the same spots with some of these forced labs. I think that point was way overblown as
to why this actually produces a bunched leaderboard. A great example like Justin Rose, one of the final pairings on Sunday Flares a t shot out right on number one, five hundred yard part four into the rough lie is not good enough to get to the green, so he just hits like a seven or eight iron and leaves himself about sixty yards in from the fairway. That shot
at Valhalla is so easy. Where you have a sixty yard shot off the fairway into a green with very little going on, with soft conditions, no wind, he makes an easy par. And unless you hit some kind of two hundred yard shot to like twelve feet and made the putt, that you're making par there. So that's that's kind of why it became such a putting contest, and you get a lot of bunched up long hitters at
the top. That's the problem. The greens like you're hitting on there weren't bad places to miss and it kind of made it almost felt like everything within within one hundred yards of the green was makeable. Like I feel like every time on between Thursday and Saturday that the telecast cut to a player, you knew that the shot was gonna be hit to like five feet or go in.
If they were showing the golfer and they were like, tif, yeah, it was a a bird, he was coming, and it kind of doles down the tele cast.
What if everything that you guys are saying is bad at Valhalla is actually good. What if all of these things are exactly what we want out of Championship golf because it gives us the Sunday that we got yesterday and the Sunday that we got in twenty fourteen and what we got in two thousand. What if all of these complaints about the architecture of Valhalla are misdirected because everything that we're talking about is exactly what produces the exciting finish.
I don't you know, listen, I appreciate that perspective, and I do think if you if you if you limit the ability for players to separate, which this golf course did, like, if you limit if you've produced, you can create a setup. And I think the PGA that's this better than I is like stifle skill. How do we stifle skill and create a bunch leader board to produce an entertainment product on Sunday? Now, Like, I want to be clear with the words I'm using. This tournament was an entertainment product.
It was not proper championship golf. The point I think the ethos of championship golf is to identify the best player in the world. Championship golf is you play against the golf course. You go out there and you are waging war on the golf course, and the golf course is punching back against you. If the golf course has no defense, if the golf course doesn't punch back, then it's not championship golf, right, And that's why when they when they as a kid, if you play tournament golf,
it's beaten into your brain. You don't play the field, you play the play the golf course. To me, this this was a week that you almost played the field, like Xander talked about in his post round. So I like, never look at leaderboards today. I was just I was. I was all over the leaderboard. I saw like and it wasn't he said, like I saw Victor, Victor jumped in front. I'm paraphrasing here. He's like, I had to hit the gas pedal. It's like, well, the golf course
provided no resistance back to hitting the gas pedal. Right, it wasn't like I was really afraid of that shot so I couldn't hit the gas pedal after I fell one down, Like, I just hit the gas pedal and I got going again.
Yeah, Like, I agree in the idea as an entertainment product that Championship Sunday with a bunch of people in the mix is a good thing. Like it's hard to argue against that. But I do think what Andy's saying about how it wasn't a proper championship level test like one ingredient that was missing, in my opinion from the entire Sunday, despite it being close, was the major championship
level stress over shots. There just weren't many opportunities when a golfer was standing over a ball that much, many bad things could really happen. And some of those weak shots that Xander did hit on Sunday, which he did, he hit some he was able to get away with making parr or Birdie, And I just think such a at least for hardcore golf fans, which is not everyone, right, it's a small subset of the population that watches golf. You want to see those really demanding, stressful situations, and
that was completely missing. So it's not like when you get a bunched up leaderboard on Sunday, it's all positives. Like I do, think you're missing a core part of what makes major championship golf compelling.
I think the only way they could have made it stressful was if they forced players to go for thirteen. It was a mandatory. It was banned. Oh you have to go.
Internal out of bounds the whole fair way. So that's something I haven't heard before.
I just I think that, Like I don't want to I want to expand on this a little bit, but like the push and pull of golf is the golf course against the player. That is what it is. It is.
That is what when you know it's between game five and game six, and you know in the in the NBA playoffs and Minnesota decides to tweak the way they're guarding the Nicola Jokic pick and roll with Jamal Murray, the golf course, like having a wrinkle, changing a t box that is going to you know, and moving a whole location to a different place that requires you to you want to be over here versus over here. That
is golf's version of defense. That is what like if if we watched the NFL and there was no defense and they could just it was just oh, drop back and complete a pass, it'd be extraordinarily boring. And I agree, like there was no variance. Their double bogies were not were not really available, Like you had to hit you had to do like a you had to have a catastrophic mistake to make a double bogie at this golf course.
And when you're talking about the best player, the best players in the world who are playing the best at a major championship, what you want to see is you want to see minor mistakes lead to stress, and minor mistakes led to easy two putts or up and downs. Xander shot like Xander on seventeen is a perfect example. He's like, I thought there was mud. I thought there
was mud on my ball, and I misjudged it. I misjudged that there was mud on the ball and it hung out right because he thought the mud would pull it left that that led to one of the most basic up and downs I've ever seen in my life life. And you know, I I I sympathize with the telecast. I thought Trevor and Nance were great, but they were like, that was a great up and down. Like it's like that's like where you throw your balls down when you're
warming up hitting pitch shots. Like it's like the most basic chip you could have, Like there was no there was no and I and I'm curious what you guys think, but like, is there is it possible to challenge the modern tour pro if there's no fear on or around the greens at this point?
Yeah, and no, I don't think there is. And I agree with the article that you wrote on for the Saturday newsletter I guess it was or the Sunday Newsletter that that this is the main differentiating factor for of course like Augusta National, that even if it's soft out there, obviously it's it's a little bit less exciting and a little bit less competitive if it's soft. But even if it is, Augusta's got those greens. And so there's still
some fear about bailing out away from a pen. I think that's a key point, and that's something that Valhalla doesn't have. But here is the difficulty for our side of this argument here, because I'm in agreement with you guys about Valhalla. I watched the tournament all week this week and really didn't see an interesting shot out there, at least as far as the golfer versus the golf course is concerned. I did see bryceon Deshamba playing defense on Sunday, and that was exciting, but the golf course
didn't put up much resistance in and of itself. The difficulty for this argument, though, is that a lot of people out there will really emphasize watching major championships on Sunday alone. And this is what I would do if I were still teaching, right because I'd be teaching Thursday and Friday, I'd probably be spending time with family on Saturday, and then I would watch the PGA Championship on Sunday.
And what I would see is stacked leaderboard, a bunch of names that I'm familiar with, close competition, exciting final nine holes, and then I hear that the course is no good. That might not make that much sense to me because I'd be like, how can the course not be good if this is what happened on it? And then I remember the twenty fourteen US Open at Pinehurst number two, a golf course that I am supposed to regard is really good, and that was just the most
boring Sunday imaginable. Is Martin Kimer running away with it? Or you know, how about how about Hoylake that was supposed to be a really good championship test. Brian Harmon just dominating on Sunday. That's what I supposed to think is a great championship golf course. That's what we're supposed to want. That's the true test of skill. Brian Harmon versus you know, Valhalla, Xander Bryson, Victor Hovland duking it out.
Isn't that an indication that this course was a true test of skill, whereas Hoylake was just a Mickey mouse course that Brian Harmon was able to run away on. I feel like that that's that's a perspective that I can kind of relate with if I were really just kind of watching these tournaments on Sunday and then so I can kind of get where people are coming from.
And that's I like I enjoyed watching Sunday I listen. I I think that's the thing. But I also I think we're at the state of golf where golf's gotten super homogenized in the way in the types of courses, Like there's like only certain types of courses can host these guys on a regular basis. If there was more variety in golf courses and golf course set up, I think the top ten in the world would look a lot different. And that and Brian Harmon at Hoylake is
a perfect example of that. That golf course really rewarded accuracy. It was you couldn't just bomb it up there and hid it in the rough and be okay. And when when you reward accuracy and Brian Harmon has a really strong putting week, you know what, Brian Harmon is going to be a factor, right, Like I think that's the thing is that I think people need to start to understand, like this is very similar to tracks in the way f one works, right, Like different tracks produce different results
and different drivers have different skill sets. And with with golf courses, there's just a lot of golf courses. There are a lot more golf courses that the PGA Tour players that are like Valhalla than are like Hoylake. And that's that's the thing. That's one of the things that's missing from the sport is the variety and the discourse about, Okay, this type of golf course like next week, this week
coming up Colonials like a great example. Colonial favors like a different skill set than most golf courses on tour, and it's a unique week where hitting fairways is super important and like hitting it two eighty, isn't it as big of a disadvantage?
Agree with what you said, Andy, I also think it is fair to call out like some of the principles that we'd be advocating for that allow separation are going to result in some sleepier Sundays than what we just watched of Ahalla. Like recent editions of the Masters have
not been super exciting coming down this stretch. But I think a distinction that's worth making is that when they are exciting coming down this stretch, those tournaments that have setups like Augusta National have such a higher ceiling for the entertainment value that you can have when there's a lot of shots that are stressful and trouble can happen, Like if a golfer has a two shot lead, it's still stressful to get it in the house because there's
trouble out there and there's demanding green complexes. We got a really exciting tournament at Valhalla, but if a golfer had been ahead by three going into the back nine or something like that, which would have been possible, it could have been really sleepy. Like we are just evaluating what we saw, and yes, this type of setup makes it more likely that you're going to get a bunched
up leaderboard, but it doesn't guarantee it. And I think that that is an important point with all of this discourse that if we easily could have had a sleepy Sunday.
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All right, let's get to some other takeaways. I've got one that I that I want to throw into the mix,
and that's the Bryson de Shambo thrives. This is mind in this current divided ecosystem, as as all of this is for golf, as bad as it is for us fans, for you know, all these different players to be on different tours on a week to week basis, I think Bryson to Shambo has really come into himself now that you know, for most of the year, frankly, the guy's on the CW and even if you are avidly following live, there aren't nearly as many live tournaments as there are
PGA Tour tournaments. All in all, Bryson to Shamba is not in the crosshairs of media and fan attention nearly as much as he was a few years ago. And I think that that has been enormously beneficial to him because now he can kind of control and craft his public persona through his YouTube channel, which he really seems to enjoy, and then he can show up to these majors four times a year and he can play the hero, which is always what he wanted to do. He was
never comfortable being the villain. We wanted him to be the villain. We liked him as the villain. That is not what Bryson De'shamba wanted. He wanted to be the big, burly superhero. And you know what, he's kind of pulling it off, right showing up to these majors after we haven't seen him for a while. People kind of seemed to be hungering for a little bit of Bryson in their lives, and when he plays well, obviously it works
all the better for him. But there was this video that came out yesterday afternoon, Sunday afternoon of him tossing a ball toward a kid on the other side of the ropes and some you know, some malicious adult reached over and took the ball from the kid and started to walk off, and Bryson stopped and called the guy back and had him give the ball back to the kid. I mean it's all just kind of an incredible show. And his play was really exciting, his celebrations were exciting,
his interview were funny and kind of charming. But I think all this works for us and for him in low doses this where every week it would be annoying, we would start to see some of the less appealing parts of his personality and the way that he thinks and the way that he acts coming through. But in these low doses, I think it works for fans, it works for me, and I think it also is manageable for Bryson mentally, energy wise and all that. What do you guys think of that?
Scott van Pelt after the NBA All Star Game this year, where there was no defense and teams were putting up a million points, he tweeted something like, it's simple. If you don't care, then neither do we, basically saying if the athletes don't care, like the fans aren't going to care.
And I think in this era of golf, there's been a message from a lot of players that they're not defined by their result, right, Like all this process driven Xander Schaffley saying winning a major is just just a result Scottie Scheffler's the same way, Like winning doesn't define me. I think something that defines Bryson to Shambeau is that he cares, and he cares about everything that he's doing. He cares about the YouTube content that he's creating, like
he cared about winning this golf tournament. He was ripping drivers on the driving range as Xander Schaffley finished up, like because he was just excited to get back out there and do the playoff whole apparently like bashing driver over and over again. The guy cares about everything he does, and I think it's extremely captivating as a golf fan. So I don't know if I one hundred percent agree with you that I need him in small doses, like I'd be fine he.
Loved this every week. To me, that'd be completely overbearing every week, and I think that was the problem in the past.
I'm not sure the extent to which he's he would be overbearing. Like maybe he's changed as a person. I think he probably has changed in some ways from his PGA tour days when his cat he was hiding the camera from him at Memorial and some of those antics. Maybe Bryson has changed a little bit. But I think what I gravitate towards is that there are fewer and fewer athletes who professional golfers who really seem to care about everything that they're doing and care about the result.
And I think Bryson is about as passionate in what he's doing as any other golfer.
I was gonna say one of my takeaways was that Bryson is one of the three most interesting professional golfers.
Okay, who are the other two?
Probably Rory and Speith.
We're we're not considering Tigers as one of these.
I mean that could be another take that I don't think Tiger's like a real golfer anymore.
I mean, certainly didn't seem like it this week.
Is Speed more interesting than Scheffler.
I think Scheffler has a chance now with this the situation to get up in there.
But he's getting up in there. But I think speF what we're hanging on to with speif is is five or six years ago, but right that's still there for me. That's still feel like recent history to me.
To expand on what Joseph said about Scott van Pelt, which I think is if you don't care, we don't care. I think like I spend a lot of time at the Master's following Bryson. I think he genuinely cares about his fans, Like you wouldn't put the dedication that he's put into YouTube if you didn't. I think like I think there's I think he struggled early in his career
with genuineness in general. I think a lot of that had to do with, like turn being twenty three years old, turning professional and having basically your entire life sponsored and the sponsorships all centered around him being different. It forced him into this, this role of being the innovator, which
wasn't This wasn't him and he was young. He is in like I couldn't imagine having to try and be like a brand's like five brands spokesperson for golf at age twenty three, and like under the context of like you need to be weird and different, like that was what was like tasks, tasks, but like the Scott van Pelt if if you don't care, we don't care. Here's the thing about Bryson. He engages with the fans. I
think this is so underrated. He talks, He does press conferences, he talks He tells you what he thinks about things, Like he steps in mud a lot when he does it. He gets you know, Twitter screenshotted with his response a lot. But he tells you what he thinks. He is somebody that is I wouldn't say a complete open book, but he he cares and you can see that he cares and fans respect that, and he cares about the fans.
Like what you said the story about the golf ball right after Xander, after he congratulated Xander, he put his glove back on, signed it, gave it to another fan. Like this guy talks to fans when he's in the heat of the moment. He said, he reacts back everybody else on tour, especially the ones that, if you consider them, are a little bit boring. Xander Schoffley wouldn't interact with a fan if like he would never He just stares straight ahead, acts like he doesn't hear him. Bryson turns
and answers questions. Some guy at the Masters asked him what was in his snack back on the eighth t He's near maybe in the lead, near the lead, and he goes and you could tell Bryson was thinking about what to say, and he goes the good stuff like he's he responded back to this guy, and I was sitting right there and I just was like, how many golfers would have responded to some yo yo being like, what's in the bag? Right soon?
That's that's Bryson and and he's he's a bit of a goofball, And when we get that side of his personality, it's great. I think the issue with Bryson is that he doesn't deal as well as some players do with scrutiny, and that's a consequence of caring. And I'm not saying that I'm better than Bryson in this respect. I think I would react the same way to being held up for scrutiny and criticism in the public eye in the
way that he is. I could definitely relate with those reactions that he has to negative feedback from media and from fans, but I just don't think he's going to get as much of that. With the current state of the golf schedule. Being on live, he's not going to be challenged in the way that he would be if he were playing week in, week out on the PGA Tour. He can come to these majors. He can be the hero for a bit and the scrutiny is limited, and that seems to be really good for him because he
likes the attention, he likes being liked. But as soon as that turns around a little bit, and it inevitably does for just about everybody, right, even for the most likable public figures, there's gonna be something that somebody picks up on and uses as a way to criticize you. And people who are who deal with this stuff, well, don't react poorly to that, just let it pass and proceed with their lives in the public eye. I don't
think Bryson is built that way. I still don't think he's built that way.
I agree to an extent Garrett, and I think he does probably struggle a little bit dealing with criticism. But I still think a huge craving Bryson had was to be able to craft his own image. And there was an incident maybe at Memorial, where he slammed a club and it was caught on camera, and he got mad at the cameraman and he was like saying something about there's a sposed to be building his image and not
tearing it down. So I agree like that he might deal with negative press in not the best way, but I do think like the media rights issue. Some people may roll their eyes at that, but how the PGA Tour didn't really let golfers create content around the events that they were at, and now Bryson gets to create all this YouTube content and he's very active with his
snapchat content. Like, I think that's the craving that deep down Bryson had was to be able to curate that image for himself and tell the story to his fans. So I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I think that there's a certain comfort level that Bryson now has since he has those platforms that he's built for himself.
Yeah, and he has the time to do that. He has the freedom to do that, sure, because he's not, to be frank about it, being subjected to journalism. And as somebody who likes journalism and values journalism, I am a little bit uncomfortable with that. I think that it's a lot more interesting for fans if players, you know, kind of work within some traditional modes of journalism. But but certainly not everybody out there, not every fan out there,
agrees with that. And Bryson's control over his image certainly has done a great deal of good for that image, which we saw on fully on display this week. All right, let's get to let's get to another takeaway, a last takeaway, or maybe a last two takeaways here, let's try to get to them quickly. Either of you have something that you want to jump to.
I just gave you too. Yeah, okay, I've already done.
You've done the assignment.
We don't need We don't need to dive into Tiger not being a real professional golfer anymore.
Any other takeaways, Joseph? Or do we cover years as well?
I think we mostly covered mind Garrett, like the softness and it's hard to test golfers. I think I had as a backup, like there are just so few venues where you can have reliable firmness and infrastruate, and like it is hard when in being critical of Valhalla, it's also considerable what the alternatives are. There aren't that many of them, and maybe if you expand it outside of the United States a little bit, there'd be more of them.
But I do think that's relevant to the discussion. Not we don't need to spend a ton of time on it, but there aren't that many venues that hold up to the modern game at modern distances, with space to have fans, hotel, accommodations like practice facilities that are big enough to have one hundred and fifty golfers. It's a difficult problem set.
I mean to be that's a great topic. I One of the things about the PGA is they aren't locked in. I mean they're locked in till twenty thirty. So just for the record, next year is at Quail Hollow, Charlotte, North Carolina. I think we're gonna have It's gonna be similar to Valhalla in terms of it's probably a little bit better. It's a better golf course, more of more of a I would say, more of a test. There's more penalty around there. But great, great market for golf,
great place to go in May for golf. Then they've got ironom Inc. In twenty twenty six. I'm a little worried about that. One.
Hope it's firm, That's that's all. I'm hoping. We've gotten a couple of a couple of tournaments at aronom Inc. A couple of PGA tour or tournaments or at least one at the renovated Ironom and Gil Hans did a kind of neoclassical renovation there.
I think it was like it was very restoration base like, it was very put the bunkers, put the bunkers back where they are. And I think the issue with that is that if you hit it, if you carry it three hundred yards, yeah, three hundred and ten yards, you're not going to be looking at a lot of bunkers. And we saw Bryson carry a three hundred and thirty yard bunker this week on seventeen Uphill, and that is that's two years away. So where are we going to be at two years before the rollback?
It might get shelled, but if it's firm, I mean, we we got a couple of really wet aronomic tournaments, that's my recollection. The one that Keegan won was just kind of soggy, and so let's hope it's it's different from that because it is obviously a very good golf.
Course, Major in Philly, that's awesome. Frisco. Then we go to Frisco. First look at Frisco, which I think is really an interesting uh could.
To a little more potential for firmness there.
Yeah, yeah, and uh, by then a lot of houses will be built up around around it, which is kind of a bummer. Uh. Then you got the Olympic Club, which is like an artificial rollback because you're gonna be playing in cold fog. So that's that's interesting, just from that sense that the ball won't be going three hundred
and fifty yards maybe maybe by then it will. Then then Balta Stral, new bal To Stral and Congressional, And I think Congressional, when you talk about val Congressional is a great example of a golf course that just completely blew it up and it is a completely different I think it Congressional had a lot of the the aspects of it were similar to what we just discussed with Valhalla,
and that's a golf course that is now. I'm excited about major championship golf being played at Congressional because I think it is an interesting golf course with some interesting features, some thought provoking features, and some things that wouldn't just be characterized as fair.
It's also going to be a kind of familiar PGA Championship set up at Congressional. I believe we're going to get a lot of rough. The emphasis is going to be on rough as a hazard. The bunkers are gnarly there. I think that's maybe one big difference, along with the greens being more heavily contoured. This isn't Valhalla that we're talking about. Yeah, but they took out a lot of trees at Congressional and so I just want again, you know,
we're projecting some years into the future here. Players are going to be longer at a course that's pretty open like that, and where rough is such a significant penalty. Not significant in terms of it's thick rough, it might be thick rough, but significant in terms of what the golf course is trying to do. One of the golf course's primary defenses is rough. I'm not sure how well it's going to work, but if it's firm, it should be a really.
Rolled back golf ball.
Maybe we'll be even more rolled back than we expect. Maybe maybe we'll get a bigger roll back than the one that has been proposed. That that would be. That would be lovely.
And then twenty thirty one is Kiwa Island and the Ocean Course, which I think like for we just did this big segment on golf course on like you know, you know this type of That was an example of a great golf course, separated the field and a great finish. Oh yeah, that was an example of windy a really good tournament from both an entertainment standpoint, and it was entertaining Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
That's the thing is it can happen. It can still happen that you have a great golf course in great conditions that tend to separate the field and that reward the players who are really on it. It can happen that those are exciting finishes. You just have the possibility or even probability of a winner who runs away. But when you get those tournaments where it's not just one player who's running away, but two or three who have separated themselves and battle it out on Sunday, those are
the most transcendent major championships. That's the good stuff, right Valhalla yesterday, I'm sorry, but if do you think that's the good stuff. I mean, it was entertaining, It was fine. I don't want to poopoo it. If you enjoyed it, I agree with you. I'm with you. But Kiwoh is the good stuff, right, trouon Phil versus Stenson. That was the good stuff. That's what we're looking for. And we might get a few duds along the way, but at
least you would have a good test of golf. You would know that the winner really earned it against a real golf course. And occasionally you get those tournaments that just blow your mind and are so great and that you'll remember forever. And that's the goal. We don't want just these kind of middling tournaments with a bunched leader board. It's like, okay, we get a fun back nine. No, we want the whole thing. Let's go after the whole thing.
Let's be ambitious here, and let's be willing to take a few runaways along the way.
I think it's an important point, Grett, because good architecture and exciting tournaments are not necessarily opposing forces. Like I think TPC Sawgrass is a good example of that. It might be kind of a high variance golf course and it might not be the most predictable, but you can get really exciting golf tournaments there with you know, interesting
strategic decisions and danger on the seventeenth hole. On the eighteenth hole, like there are a lot of examples out there of good architecture that also produce exciting golf tournaments.
One little question I had for you, guys, Garrett, and you're saying that Valhalla was a major that you're not going to look back on fondly when you're looking at Wikipedia top tens or you know, thinking about this major a couple of years from now, are you gonna kind of penalize in your head some of the oh, this player finished tied for eighth, but it was at Valhalla, Like, is kind of do that mental math in your head as you're looking at reflecting on these results.
No, I don't think I'm going to do that. And it's not that I don't want to do that or that I don't think that that would be a proper way to view history, But I just know that I don't do that with players past majors. A major is a major is a major. When I when I look at those Wikipedia squares or consider the number of a player's career majors, I don't really factor that much nuance
into it. For me. It's kind of it's kind of a you know, a one or a zero, and and that's just the way I think memory flattens things a little bit. I'm not saying that's the right thing. I just think that's the way it's going to be. Xanderschoffle definitely deserved a major title for what he did this past weekend. I don't want to minimize that at all.
But you know, if he if he had, if he had won a major at a really firm, tough golf course, it might have felt a little bit more significant, for sure.
I think the way that I will look at it a little bit differently is like when it comes to like kind of like fits in the sense of like the Bryson Deshambo thing right where it's like, Okay, let's look at the top fives that he's had in majors, and it's wing Foot, Valhalla, Harding Park. I think there's one other one, Okill, And it's like, okay, what are the ingredients for all four of those?
Place picture starts to emerge.
You know, And I think that's the context. I think like finishing top ten in a major, you're especially this one, there's one hundred and fifty six players. I was thinking about this on Fridays, just like how many people get cut from this event when you cut down to sixty five and ties, huge number of people get cut versus the Masters, where it's like a mad cut in the PGA versus may cut and the Masters completely different realm of accomplishments seventy ti.
Yes.
Yeah, So you know, like when you start to like look at that type of stuff, I think, like a top ten in a PGA, now, like I think it tells a story. Who finished in the top ten is like, you know, Calum mor Kawa played a really good tournament to finish in the top ten at a golf course that doesn't really fit his skill set. I think the same
probably for you know, Justin Rose and Billy Horschel. Like you know, I think so I don't really think like I will look back like you you're when you do the top five's top ten things, it's like an you're aggregating the career versus diving into really the minutia of the career. And I think a lot of analysis, sadly with golf and popular analysis with golf at this point, is all done in the aggregate and not in the minutia.
Yeah, and we can play the role of providing some of that perspective that is that is partly the role of media to craft those stories. But I think that one thing to bring this back to the PGA Championship and its identity and the venues that it's choosing the
setups that it's going for. I think one thing related to this discussion that's a risk for the PGA of America is that the PGA Championship more and more might feel like a less significant major than the other three if they keep kind of going to water down golf courses with a watered down setup and we get a tournament that feels like a PGA Tour event. I'm not going to put too much emphasis on score to par here because it's an unreliable metric of the success of
a tournament, but just look at it. Look at that. Look at the top of that leaderboard. It's twenty one under, it's twenty under, it's eighteen under. It's you know, guys were shelling this golf course, and it doesn't feel like a major if you do that over and over year
after year. And so I think that something that the PGA of America is going to think about that the setup czars at the PGA of America will think about need to think about is how do we do a version of this PGA Championship test that just feels a little bit fiercer. I think that's a big deal for the PGA Championship retaining its status and its.
Prestige without the answer just being adding rough in more places to.
Raise this right, And I'm afraid that that's kind of the direction they go. But I hope that eventually they realize that that is sort of wrongheaded and is really not going to scare these guys in the least. They they have they have answered that question, they have solved that problem, and we need to look for other ways to challenge them. All right, why don't we Why don't we wrap up there? Thank you guys for coming on this podcast. Delightful, It was great.
It was fun to chat Scar.
This episode of the Frida Egg Golf Podcast was produced by Meg Atkins. Thank you Meg. If you like deep dives into golf courses and golf course architecture, if you like the kind of more in depth perspective on professional golf, something that I think you'll really enjoy is the content
that we do in CLUBTFE On a weekly basis. We are offering members exclusive content that just provides a different, and we hope deeper perspective on some of these issues that we find so interesting about the game that we love. So check out CLUBTFE at the Frida egg dot com slash membership and see what we have to offer there. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.