Takeaways from the 2026 PGA Championship with Trevor Immelman

So apologies for the slightly delayed release. You know, but obviously coordinating post major with travel is it can be sometimes complicated. Before we get to Trevor, let's talk about our friends over at Friday Golf Club, which is us. Friday Golf Club is our membership. It is something that we have been spending a lot of hours lately discussing and working on things to take it into the next couple of years. So we do a lot of stuff with Friday Golf Club. We have content that is exclusive

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a busy week. You were at Ironomank. You know, a I would say from a broadcast standpoint, it had to be one of the more challenging weekends that you've ever encountered.

is it's an all out sprint man. And you know, because we cover so much of the golf at these major championship and you're on for you know, let's call it seven hours, you've got to have you know, we've got two trucks, one that handles the front nine one that handles the back nine, and they're you know, working together constantly trying to figure out which are the right shots that need to be shown. They do an incredible job. I don't I don't know how they do it, to

be honest. A lot of talented people back there that are working their way through it. So yeah, I mean it's a lot of fun because it's exciting. I mean,

anything could happen. It was. It was. It was a pretty interesting week from that standpoint with with so many players with a chance and so many different stories like you know, John Rahm trying to win his third major and get the third leg and McElroy trying to win back to back and Scheffler trying to win back to back PGAs, and you've got a bunch of guys that had never won majors before and guys that had never

even come close to contending in mages before. So there were there were so many different moving parts to it. But it was fun. It was fun, and we saw some some unbelievable golf.

To me, it's always felt like, you know, if you have like six to eight people in the mix, it's an ideal situation when you you know, obviously you could do stuff with like duels. You know, the blowout gets hard because it's like, okay, you have to talk about one person all over. And then this week was at the other end of the spectrum where there's so many people in the mix it's hard to follow all of them because you only have a certain amount of time

and so many shots are happening all at the same time. Yeah, and anybody that's complaining about like maybe these were live is like, well, like all these things are coinciding at the same time on different fields of play, where different cameras are and you know, so from your perspective, what is like, you know, if you if you had a dream scenario, what does that look like from a broadcast perspective of like number of players in the mix?

meaning of what this victory could be. But you know, it's like when we came on the air on Sunday in the on camera, I actually I actually said, you know, this is this is like an eighteen hole shootout thirty players to win a major championship. And that's really what it felt like. I mean, we had to keep our head on a swivel and follow all sorts of things.

I was actually texting with JT yesterday and we were kind of laughing at the fact that, you know, when he hold out that brilliant pass save at eighteen at three five pm. You know, for a little while it looked like this guy could win or get into a play or finishing, you know, as the leader were teeing off. And so that kind of just shows like the spectrum of golf that we had to cover throughout the afternoon, and I found that kind of funny that, you know,

that might have been the winning putt. We covered a three or three oh five, and we went off air at about seven fifteen pm, So it was it was a crazy day, but an exciting day.

of their life to close it out. If you were a player in the in the lead up to that final round in the mix, would you have approached Sunday differently than say, I, you know, a normal competit like in contention round where there's you know, let's just call it six to eight players that could win.

what a difficult part three. Even when they were moving the tea's way up and it was playing one seventy one eighty, it was still just kicking these guys butts. That green complex and the angle that it sits at with the wind blowing playing dramatically downhill, was just causing havoc all week long. But eight of the first nine were kind of gettable, and then you had to hang on from there. But I don't think that the strategy

would have changed because of that. I mean, this course could jump up and grab you the way that it was presented to the players. Everyone was talking about how wide the fairways were, but they played so much now arrower with the camber on the fairways. The camber always seemed to work opposite to the dog leg or many times, shall I say, for the most part. You know, you think about the second hole. These guys are trying to take it over the bunker. You've got two options, which

I love. You can lay short into a flat area and then have a longer second, or you can do what these players love to do nowadays, which is trying and vombit over the bunkers. But then you're landing on a side slope. Ninety five percent of them are kicking into the rough. There was no first cut. The ball would run straight from the fairway into the long stuff. I mean, you could be six inches off the fairway

and just be in total hack out rough. And so I don't think because of the golf ware the golf course was presented, I don't think you could get too far ahead of yourself. It wasn't like you could all get too aggressive. You had to just play each shot on its own merit. You know, let's call that Major Championship style strategy. And if I was one of those players on Sunday, I would have just been hoping that

I was going to get my putter hot. I mean, at the end of the day, that was probably what it was going to boil down to, who could get their putter hot and find a way to run the tables. And you start to look at Aaron Ray's last ten holes. I mean when he bogied the six and the eight, he was three back. Yeah, and then you know he goes six under his last ten, starting with the eagle at nine. And you know, I really hope that people in the coming weeks and months and years appreciate the

greatness of that stretch of golf. You know, if Tiger had done that, if Rory had done that, if Rahm or Scheffler you know, any of the guys that we love to root for, if any of them had done that, we would have been like fainting from excitement and talking about this is why these guys are so good, This is why they're the best players in the world, this is why they're multiple major champions. Like, these guys just

have another gear. They can get it done. And I rarely do hope that Aaron Rai gets the same respect because that stretch of golf and the shots that he hit rarely from the ninth hole all the way through finishing was such high quality, and many of them had

such a high degree of difficulty. You know, you zoom in on like the bunker shot on thirteen and the way he played fifteen and even sixteen, and he's one of the only players to hold the ball in the fairway being able to hit the tight drawer to kind of curve it against the slope and get it to hang in there. I mean, these shots were just like seriously elite level stuff. And that's what I really hope is is remembered about this PGA Championship.

I think, like golf is such a momentum sport. But you know, with Ray, like he absolutely just won out. He went out and took it. And I think your point about the other other players, you know, if Scotty had done this, you know, if Scotty had just played the back nine of Aaron Rye and Aaron Rye played immediate pedestrian back nine and Scotty wins the tournament, we would be just going insane about it, and especially the

manner in which he did. He did it with the shot making as you as you just alluded to, was there a point in that round where where you were like you kind of were like, I know, this guy's getting this done well.

You could try and go for the chunk and run and get it to run up that big slope onto the plateau where the hole was located, or you could fly it up there. You had eight steps to work with. Cam went for the chunk and run just because it's such a risky, difficult shot. I don't blame him for

one second. I'm just saying that Aaron Rye decided to go the other way, and he decided from you know, he called it forty yards on a slight upsloping lie to go ahead and just take a full rip at it and fly it up there with a ton of spin to stop it. I mean, that is just that's meeting the moment, is the way that I would describe it. But the whole back nine, you know, thirteen, we're getting to a point now to where like the choke factor

starts to come in. But you think about the up and down at ten, the wedge into eleven, the up and down on twelve where he chips instead of putting, which completely caught me off. God, then he gets it up and down on thirteen, and he just starts, you know, taking the tournament by the scruff of the neck. Really. But once he got it up and down on thirteen, I was like, gosh, this is this looks pretty good here right.

and he's a little deliberate out there. But when he hit the shot on thirteen, I like what I sat up in my chair and it was like that moment of like what they say is like I was not aware of, you know, of like the game that you possessed here and like really the stones, the idea and that because we want people all day to your point, using Campsmith as the example, all day, hit the chunk and run out of that bucker. It's just the safe shot.

It's the okay like if I hit it, really, if I execute it perfectly, it's going to run up there and I may have a good look. But if I don't, I'll get out of here with a four. And if you go for the go for the broke, the big shot, the high spinner, all of a sudden, you're bringing everything in.

We saw a couple other guys really struggle on this driveable part four. So yeah, that was that was That was like I said earlier, that was him meeting a massive moment. And I bet you you know as we start hearing from him and he starts processing how the day and that second nine unfolded. I bet you he talks about that shot because that I'm sure would have given him a ton of confidence and his belief level probably jumped up a few notches after getting that up and down.

you know, taking the longer approach. The thing that I find amazing is I mean that that approach shot he hid in there, which was really a long approach shot that was somewhere in there one trickle from being the iconic shot that we remember forever.

huge canber in the fairway. He took a lot of that risk out by playing to the wide part of the faaraway where the three wood would go. Yeah, I think like where people weren't solving necessarily, And I'm sure data would maybe refute some of this, but I mean, if you played from the fairway at irondom Ink, the greens were pretty easy to hit, you know, the greens,

and then from there you're you're gonna two putt. And I think this is what we saw play out was lots of pars and bogies, but the idea of if you could go out and hit a lot of fairways, you were going to be able to keep the momentum going through your round. And where we saw people kind of lose it was like, oh, they hit it in the rough, they had to hack it out short. It became a really hard up and down and and that where you lose the momentum. But you know, just kind

of coming down the stretch. He hit gutsy shots, but also extraordinarily smart shots into the right spots.

was standing around the twelfth green. For gosh, we saw him as we came over the hill at eleven. He was on the twelfth green and we finished playing eleven, and then we got to the twelfth tee and he was still around the green. He then waved us up, we hit our shots, we putted out. He was still standing on and around the twelfth green, just trying to unlock and figure out exactly how he was going to play to every whole location. And that's what he does.

That's what he does every golf course, on every hole, trying to figure out how he's going to fit his game in there. And we noticed that on fifteen. You know, like you touched on. He's not the longest hit of any stretch, but you had these wonderful cross bunkers that pinched into the fairway right at three hundred, and then right at that point the fairway sloped severely to the left.

So really they were challenging you to Okay, if you want a shorter club into this monster of a par four, go ahead, But it starts to get a little head, and you can be under the lip, you can be in thick ruff, you could have all sorts of issues. He just took all of that out, knowing that he was going to have a long iron inn, but also knowing that fifteen was the only green on the course

that to me accepted shots rather than spelling shots. So it was like a little bit of a ball, and it had a wonderful gap up the front that you could run the ball in. So he knew that. Look, he's so accurate, it doesn't really matter what he's got in. He's got probably fifteen to twenty yards of gap that

he can bounce something into that front hole location. But he was taking a big number out of play, and that to me shows a lot of self belief, soft confidence and understanding your game and understanding how he's going to take advantage of his skill set. I still have an impression on that hole and the golf course in general. And he got out of there with a pod, no problem, and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

a three iron. This three iron I loved hitting. I don't know why I ever took it out of the bag, but you know, and it's like in my head, it's like, okay, if I'm hitting from the fairway, even if I'm two hundred and twenty yards two thirty, whatever it may be. In this case, you know, he hits three wood and

he leaves himself two thirty. But if I'm playing a par three, like from a tee ground, I make a lot of pars on long par threes, and like likewise with these guys, they're so good, you know, I guess I like don't understand sometimes. And maybe this is where stats, because of week in, week out tour play get a little skewed versus when you go to a place like Aronomy, where there's really thick rough and the penalty for missing is way higher than it is on a normal tour week.

But like the idea of of I really wonder if we looked at that hole and play more players had chosen that strategy. I think what was fascinating was like that was like a head scratching move at that moment in the tournament. It's like you guys were calling, It's like, oh, he's hitting three wood. He's gonna leave a really long approach. But it was a flat lie. It was wide way wider functionally, like people will look at it on a satellite and be like, well, it only pinches X number

of yards. But when as you mentioned it. When you throw in the slope, it actually pinched like it was probably about the quarter a quarter of the width of the lay up the layback area. And these guys are so good. Hitting two hundred and thirty yard shot into a bowl is way way easier than a one hundred and seventy yard shot from really thick rough.

I take driver, I'm bringing the trouble in. But if I do pull it off, I'm gonna have a much shorter shot in and maybe I can get at that front hole location that was it was placed right over that huge downslope, And you know, to me, that's why, you know, at the end of the day, I enjoyed the golf course Throughout the week, because it was providing options for the players, and we saw a bunch of different ways to go ahead and and try and try and figure it out. It was, it was, It was fascinating.

It was a fascinating week. I mean, those greens were just so nuanced and intricate, some of the best I've ever seen anywhere in the world. And what a what a delight. I mean, it's probably easier for me to sit here and say that with without having to have compete had to compete in the tournament, you know, because I was there from the Monday and was just observing how players like were scratching their heads and trying to figure out how they were going to go about navigating

those green complexes. But for fans and for viewers and people on site, you know, it was it was just never over because even two and three footers were so challenging for these guys. It was a marvelous setup, I believe, And really, you know, you and I have this discussion regularly about technology and where that is and how all of that is playing out. This may be the only way to have a seventy one seventy two hundred yard

venue for players of this skill level. Is to have situations like this where this now first cut the balls rolling straight into the thick stuff, and then the green complexes are pretty severe.

some of ironom innks are softened to accommodate speed. And this week, if anybody takes anything from the golf architecture standpoint away, to me, this week was the perfect example of why slope is always harder than speed. If you think about the scariest putts, and I'd be curious from your perspective. To me, the scariest short puts are the

ones where you are looking significantly outside the hole. Oh yeah, and you're thinking like, okay, I have to play it here, and if I play it here, I have to have this pace on it. And if I don't hit it hard enough, if I don't commit to it, it's going low. If I overhit, if I over commit to it, it's going to miss high. And that psychological warfare only happens if there's significant slope in the greens. And I think the trend in pro golf has been speed less slope.

And what less slope does is that you rarely have those short putts where you're you're you're looking outside the hole.

And it's just it's so uncomfortable to have a putt that you believe you should make that you then have to start outside the hole, whether it be a ball or a cup and a half. And you know, we saw a bunch of that. You know, even you think back to John Rahm and he mentioned this after the tournament when when people were asking him about the week and if he felt like that, he kind of gave it away and he said that he was so happy with the way he played from tee to green, and

you know, in the moment, it's tough. He's just walked off the eighteenth green to have like a real clear thought process on it, But he immediately went back to the two four foot is that he missed on the back nine on Saturday. That jumped out to him like, Okay, maybe that I could have done differently. Maybe I could have made those putts. But the degree of difficulty is so high when you've got to just make these pots all day long to hang in there, it's so stressful

it wears on you and wears on your nerves. And so yeah, that played out in a big way this week, much the same way. I mean we see that at

Augusta too. You know, with the slope that they have there and the as fast as what the greens are that you know, you're always thinking to yourself, like, what is the highest line that I can possibly take to make this putt, Because if it's got any speed, if it catches the edge, it's probably gonna rom out and go just as far by, and like you say, if you power it through the break, it's just gonna keep

going and go four or five feet by again. So it's it's a tough thing for these players to have to deal with and it also shows how great they are because a majority of the time they pull it off.

and I let go and I was killing me. That can't just off the top of my head, remember this. But but like golf, in tournament golf, great tournament golf is when you keep the stress off you where you know, you get good looks and when you have lag putts, you you leave them dead and you can just go up and brush them in aronoc aronom Ink was maybe and I think this is where I think it resonated. I think, like people have a lot of opinions about ironomyk and what resonated with me it was this golf

course that was shorter. I think being shorter allowed a lot of guys the chance to compete on a thick rough setup. Yeah, by being shorter, the consequence of being in the rough for shorter players wasn't as great as a longer course would be. But anyways, the thing about that resonates with me to Rana Mink was it it just looked like a very stressful place to play golf.

kicked up. I mean we're talking about, you know, twenty miles an hour, like a proper, proper wind, And it was like whoa, you know, all of a sudden, now you're going to hit puts and you're having to read the wind on these puts on greens that are extremely challenging.

To begin with, the wind was blowing across the course and now you had these dog legs with the reverse camber, let's call it, and a cross wind to deal with as well, and that sort of wind, and particularly when it was out of the north northwest, and it brought cooler temperatures as well. You know, now the early starters were warming up and starting their rounds in you know, high forties to early fifty degree weather, so the ball's

not traveling as far. The rough is a little more damp and so more juicy and harder to play out of. And you got this wind blowing, and so you add that in to the way the course was set up and presented to these players, and it really caused a lot of havoc. And you go back to how long the rounds were taking. You know, all of that is part of the pie. You know, you've you've got to dial all of that stuff in to understand why it was taking so long, because the course just got so challenging.

You know, if I remember correctly, it's playing you know, let's call it two to two and a half shots over a part. The first couple of days, you've got one hundred and fifty six players. You know, you've got many shots that you need to back off because the wind either dies or gusts, and and you're standing over a five foot over a ton of break, and all of a sudden the wind gust comes, and so you

bail out of that and start again. You know, all of those things add up at the end of the day to two rounds, taking longer.

Start about tying this to gambling, where when people are surprised, they're upset because maybe their their money went the wrong places. But anyways, I think a lot of people were upset with with the discourse about the course leading up to the event versus you know what played out on the course,

And I would I would ask you. I think I've found this to be true in my relatively meager playing career years ago, but there were always certain courses where when you played them in practice rounds you felt one way, and then when the lights on, especially this week with the weather included in that, but when the tournament came all of a sudden, like I always think about one course at Chicago where there's like native grass, and when you play a casual round you don't see it, you

like it doesn't even you don't see it, and then when you play a tournament round the next day, you're like, oh man, all of a sudden, feeling claustrophobic here. Yeah, And I think there are courses and I think ironomic, this is the the premise of Ironomic was that I feel like people just overlooked it because they were playing care free practice rounds.

the low eighties. But all of a sudden, now you are putting the paper and you're in this tournament, and you know that that score is going to get posted up on the board at the end of the day, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, man, you can't hit it over there, and that bunk is dead, and oh this plut's going to be breaking a ton more. So, you know, it goes back to us talking about the

doubt earlier, but yeah, this week. You know, the players that I'd spoken to leading up to it, that had made trips up there, the general consensus was, Gosh, if you drive it well, you're going to have so many wedges and so many scoring opportunities to be able to attack. And I think part of that is the mental aspect of when you're going to on a scouting trip or you're playing a practice round, there's no consequence. Part of it is that the conditions were probably more but benign

when they went up there. And then also the whole locations that were being used during those practice rounds were softer. So now you start to add not just the pressure of competing in a major championship, but you know, all of a sudden, the whole location on ten on Sundays pushed a yard further right closer to the fall off, and you start to throw some wind in there, and everything just gets taken up a couple notches, and the

golf course really showed its teeth all week long. I mean it was I also think, you know, players that went a week or two before, because of the weather and the snow and the rain and the stuff that they have so late into the season up in the Northeast, maybe the players underestimated how much the rough would fill in and grow between those scouting trips a couple weeks before or a week before to when the tournament kicked off on Thursday. You know, I'm not sure what products

they used, but that stuff came in pretty thick. I mean it was dense, and they topped it off on Tuesday evening for the last time to get it nice and uniform. But by the time the weekend rolled around, it was it was pretty severe. It was really very punishing. Gnarlly is the right word, you know.

on the golf course. Just because you brought up in this triggered something in my mind about uh, you know, just technology and where the game's got something that I don't know if I've seen play out in a major as well, but showcasing, you know, what the way I think the way traditionalists want to see the game play out was really the fifteenth hole, and it required a five hundred and fifty yard part four, but it it presented the idea of what the way the way golf

is functionally supposed to work from a scale standpoint, where if I hit the fairway, I have a huge advantage in distance. Gives me a massive, massive advantage. You know. If I'm a long hitter and I hit something up there and I've got two hundred yards in and I'm hitting a six or seven iron in, I have a big advantage from the fairway. If I'm a shorter hitter, I better hit the fairway. I have to hit the fair away. I have to rely on my accuracy, and if I don't, I mean the four iron from the

rough is going to be impossible. The idea, though, where this works really well is if the long hitter missed on that hole, that six five iron maybe because it doesn't go as far in the rough into the green became impossible for the long hitter on a four hundred and fifty yard hole which used to be a long

par four. Sure the scale has gotten so out of place that the long hitter has a wedge in and the rough doesn't impact the wedge as much as the seven iron, that flatter, blade less loft more likely to get grabbed and turn over. So it illustrated to me the dynamic of what people want out of a long par four to play out where there is a you know, you stand on the tee on a long par four and it is not about like I really have to send this and get this way out there. It is

I have to hit this fairway. I got to hit my best drive of the day here if I'm a long hitter. Yeah, it actually played out that way, and I don't think i've seen a golf hole play out to that dynamic and that degree of that dynamic as well as the fifteenth had.

discourse online earlier. I mean, it's something it's great to see fans so passionate and take their positions and debate back and forth at times get a little mean, but you know, I guess that it comes with the territory. But when you think about that second nine, I mean, let's talk about the second nine at ARONO mean tense t shot. I'm going to run through this real quick, just to show the options, the variance and the brilliance of the golf course in the way set up tense

t shot. Further, you hit it down there, you got to then keep it up the right or the ball runs into the rough, or you can play to the top of the hill. But then you've got a long iron in. You've got a green that falls off behind and to the right, and you've got a pond in front. So you take your pick as the player, what do you want to do? Aaron right couldn't quite get it over the hill. He then favored the right hand side and rolled off. He got it up and down. Great.

Part eleven is a short little hole that you could hit, you know, downwind. Earlier in the week, there were some players that were hitting long irons off the tee to then have a longer shot in to be able to control the spin to back hole locations. Because to back hole locations you didn't want a lot of spin because it could spin off the front and to front hole locations.

Then they would try to push it down there because you needed the spin to be able to bring it back toward the hole, so you got more options there. Same thing on twelve, there's the cross bunkers. Players were deciding whether they wanted to try to carry them or stay short. Thirteen's driveable the path. Threes, fourteen, and seventeen at times were woods. On Sunday it was more of a short iron because they moved the tee up to the left hoole location, and then you got fifteen and sixteen.

I mean you rarely saw players being tested not just with strategy, but having to shape the ball both ways if they wanted to stay in the fair way, move their trajectories around, depending on if they wanted to land the ball short and bounce it up or try and fly it and stop it. And so it was a

pretty complete test in my mind. And to be able to do that nowadays with the technology that these players have at their disposal, I think really deserves to be applauded from the setup crew and carry aig and everybody involved at the PGA.

for majors. He goes, I started the greens and look back. Yes, you know, if you think about that from a design standpoint and testing the best, like I don't think in this era of golf you can you can really test these guys without a real exacting set of greens.

right side of the fairway. You know. Augusta National is kind of similar as well.

And we're also fortunate that we had a wind switch from the north to the south, and so you know, all of a sudden, these players were thrown off balance because the way they were playing the course earlier in the week had to flip once the wind switched to the south on the weekend, and so you had to reverse the engineer from the whole location and green complex back to Okay, now, what's my strategy going to be to give me the best opportunity? A lot of fun, A lot of fun.

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get back to Trevor Immelman. What do you peel back Aaron Raye? I think, uh, I think the there's a lot of aspects of him that kind of resonate with people. What resonates the most with you about Aaron Rye?

It's nice because you kind of wonder like in the last half decade or so, you know, the sport feels like it's changed a little bit. You know, so much of the discourses around money and prize funds and bonus structures and sign on bonuses and all sorts of stuff like that it's really nice to all of a sudden come across somebody who you feel just as a deep appreciation for the sport and the ability to play it for a living. You know, that's some thing that I really enjoyed just observing how.

I said this on social media. I think people are really going to get to know Aaron Ray here over the next few years, as as he gets more exposure, and you know, now week after week, whether he likes it or not, he's going to have media wanting to talk to him, and people are really going to get a feel for his thought process and his stance on certain topics. And so I go there first. You know, I remember, I hate talking about myself first of all,

but this is quite an interesting story. I remember playing the Irish Open many years ago and I played a practice round with him and he was telling me a story about watching me when I won the Masters using the Nike SQ driver and I had like the week of my life off of the tea right. I was driving it so well. Never ever drove it that well again in my career. But he actually got that driver after that and used it for a while, and I remember him telling me that story as we were playing

a practice round. I immediately got a sense of you know, this guy pays attention. You know, he's locked into the sport and is completely and utterly in love with that. And so I start. I start from that angle of really enjoying the person that he is, the work ethic, the dedication, the discipline, and how grounded he is, you know, you don't often see that in this day and age anymore. And then his understanding of what his strengths and weaknesses are.

You know, he knows how to enforce his strategy and his strengths on a particular golf course. And now that he has that belief structure, it's going to be interesting to see how he goes from here. With the extra attention he's about to receive.

every days is you know, is pretty reliable. I think something that I I guess didn't know about him was that he was married to Grika the a former European women's tour player, And like, something I would love to hear is like, you know, he mentioned this and after after winning, was like the conversations they had in the car to and from the course, and like, you know, I feel like so many there's so few people that

are extremely golf obsessed, you know. I think Aaron Raye just like kind of thinking about how he gets it done.

He has I would guess, and I haven't ever had a conversation uh with him, but I would guess that he has a very sophisticated golf brain and being married to a former tour player, I would just I think, like one of the great things with just being a be a fly on the wall of what they were talking about this week as he's you know, in the mix for the biggest tournament of his lifetime, what were

they talking about that? That's the stuff. Honestly, one of the things I the human element of him and his wife's relationship and in the conversations they must have over the dinner table was something I left this week fascinated about.

don't know the first thing about him. You know, when you when you you start to understand his upbringing and you know the sacrifices his parents made in order to help him live out his dream. You know, his dad being an ex tennis coach and not knowing anything about golf, but you know, being willing to really invest his life and his time in allowing his son to chase his

dreams and then becoming best friends. And if you've ever spent any time around the DP World Tour, you know, back before Aaron was starting to play here in the US, you would see his dad out, you know, on the range and on the chipping green and on the course with him practice rounds, and you've rarely got a feel for how close they are, and you start to understand about you know, his mom and her working and supporting

their family. You know, we we rarely are going to enjoy peeling back the layers, and I hope, I hope he allows allows us to learn more about him and understand what a cool journey this has been for him to get to this point. It's going to be great. You know, if Riot Scotty had won, would it have been a bigger story for sure, even John Rahm. But you know, we already know everything there is to know about these guys, you know, we we we still have so much to learn about Aaron. And you know, let

me just double check his age here. He's only thirty one years old. So hopefully we've got a long runway of getting to understand and what the journey has been, what his experience has been like, and also how he understands the game, you know, and why he's made these choices he's made, whether it be from the two Gloves to you know, this golf swing that him and his coaches have come up with, why they think it works, why they think it's the best way for him to

go about it. There's there's there's a lot of a lot of untapped stuff that we're going to be able to try and figure out here.

who made the cut. And then you got the flip side of Xander, who drove the ball and putted as well as anybody and hit his irons as badly as anybody who made the cut. And so those two guys left a lot out there from that standpoint. And then you think about John Rahm, who missed those couple of shorties on Saturday. He played extremely well as a whole, but just fell shy, and so I'm sure there's a few a few shots in there that he would love the opportunity to have back as well.

believe we didn't have a playoff. I mean I I arrived to the course on Sunday just being convinced that we were going to have a three hole aggregate playoff, which I was also quite looking forward to because it was going to be the tenth and then the seventeenth and the eighteenth. That would have been that would have been fun to watch how how those players went about that.

tee or one of the eighteenth t's. If you went long, if you were going to take it on from whatever, it was one seventy or one seventy five or so, you'd have to hit it so high to stop it in that little flat spot. And the wind was helping out of the left. So now the higher you hit it, you know, the more the wind's going to carry it.

So you need to then take less club. But in the back of your mind like, gosh, I'm taking less club, but I've got the shaved bank and the pond in front, and so it really mentally was providing such a stiff challenge for these guys. You know, he hit it in the water. It's an automatic double, and so they they're just much more comfortable dumping it out there to forty feet, which wasn't an easy two putt for a lot of guys. I mean, the fact that Aaron went ahead and made

that bomb there is was icing on the cake. I thought that was a really cool moment and once again a glimpse into his personality of the way of the way he handled that and the way he acted and his response.

more out of him. But it's still it's still been a great season with with a lot left to play for. I mean, would I be surprised if he won one or both of the remaining majors. No, I wouldn't be surprised at all. I mean, the guy is, he's still the player to beat week in and week out.

result that he should receive. And the only thing that I can see that throws him off is when he doesn't receive his respected result, and then he gets he gets annoyed by that, and that's when frustration starts to show for him. And it's kind of interesting because you get a little bit of a glimpse into his genius because he's it's like he's taken all the information in and he's factored what's supposed to happen, and when that

doesn't happen, uh, it gets under his skin. And so that's that's gonna be that's gonna be fun to watch him deal with that, you know, over the over the next decade or so. Uh. It's it's a really interesting trait that he has and Greally, you can only have it when you're that good at that level. That is, it's been untouched by the majority of golfers that have ever walked on the planet.

I struggled with that, to be honest with you. So Scotty has been able to find a way to maintain this level and keep winning at this clip whilst dealing with all the ancillary stuff. I mean, the guy every time he pitches up. I mean an ultimate example is Tiger, right, you know, when he goes to a tournament or does anything, it's news. And Scotty has had to deal with that over the last four or five years and still been able to maintain that high level and the focus and

the dedication. And that's been impressive. You got to you've got to appreciate that. I mean, it's a lot to ask of a person weekend and week out when he's competing. I mean like, for instance, he's going to arrive at the Byron Nelson this week and even though he didn't win last week, he's defending champion. He's gonna have to go into the media. He's gonna have to answer all sorts of questions about winning last year and then why

didn't you win the PGA, what happened? And it's just, you know, a lot of times the stuff starts to chip away at you, and look, as part of the program, you know, you want to be great, you get extra attention, but it doesn't mean that it's easy. And he's been able to maintain this level of greatness with a lot of stuff going on.

long for someone to complete the career Grand Slam. Wouldn't it be cool if you know, in two years we got Rory doing it, and then Scotty doing it, and then Jordan doing it in Uh, that'd be something.

I mean you're talking about, you know, I need to flight this down and hit this shape into this crosswind in order to you know, find the right spot of the green and if you play safe kind of similar to ronom inc where you see just the there is like a an element of death by angle because of the wind and the firmness of the golf course where oh I'm in the fairway, but like I my degree of difficulty on this shot is so high, you know, if I you know, it's like I'm taking on that

sucker pin, you know, just trying to hold the green. And I think, you know, I think the assessment that that golf course and this is where you know him kind of cracking the Lynx golf you know, uh, code last year. You know, the the when the more elements you throw at Scottie or the more elements you th row at a field and in firmness, the more that Scottie Scheffler is just going to be able to separate himself.