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 bried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Egg, Frida Egg, Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and my guest today is Shane Bacon. Shane is the host of the excellent podcast Get a Grip, a friend of the Friday Egg, and now a children's book author. Shane's new book is called The Golfer's Zoo. It was published by back nine Press and you can order it right now.
So Shane and I are going to talk about this book and about the occasionally fraught relationship between parenting and golf. But I also thought we'd discuss Shane's background in writing. He actually got his start in golf media as a blogger, and he has some interesting takes on how the media landscape has shifted in the past fifteen years or so. Now. Shane is the first of a few book authors we're planning to have on the podcast in November and December.
I figure it's getting cold outside in a lot of places, golf season is winding down, and it's a good time to bring some new books into your life. So we'll give you a few different options over the next couple of months. All right with that, let's go to Shane Bacon.
This is, you know, kind of middle of the book is when I get a little I get a little frisky with the book and I try to take a little digs. It's some of the moms and dads that are potentially reading to their kids that aren't the best golfers. Golf uses animal terms like eagle and birdie and holes that are dog legs, move left or right. On the seventh and eighth lives a family of owl's who ask who with some serious fright And you can see, uh, you can see the beautiful A V L illustration there
with the al He just crushed it. But yeah, I mean, you know, that's pretty surreal to continue to kind of look at it and see this thing actually in hand. I mean, I've only Garrett, I've only had this in hand for like four days. So to uh get an opportunity to like see it and actually read it out loud to you. You're the first person I've read this book to as I've opened it up. I just want you to know that.
Wait a minute, so you haven't read this to your kids yet.
So my my my wife did, uh my wife when we got the book.
Yes, I saw you tweeted about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my wife. My wife grabbed a copy and she went and laid on the bed and I went in there and sat with them. And I think it's, you know, I live in a in a in a world where I'm supposed to enjoy the spotlight being on me, you know. I mean, it's it's part of being you know, up front on TV and in the media and those types of things. And I don't believe I'm the most comfortable with the spotlight on me.
I mean, even in those kind of personal moments where you know, we have the book that I wrote and reading it to my son. So I don't know if my wife knew to be proactive and grab it and go read it to Henry for the first time. But that was that was one of those moments, you know, as a professional or as a journalist or whatever you want to call it, that I'm going to remember for a long time.
Yeah, I bet all right. So first of all, maybe just give me an overview of what the book is about. It's called The Golfer Zoo. What's the basic premise here?
Yeah, So wrote a children's golf book called The Golfer Zoo. As you mentioned, I've been working on it for about the past year with the Back Nine Press group. Jim and his team are awesome and they've done a great job of helping me, you know, navigate a world that I don't quite understand. You know, I'd never published a book before. I was, you know, I'm in the golf world. I get a lot of golf stuff sent to me. I was shocked at how little amount of golf books
there were for kids. And so when I would take Henry, who's my three and a half year old son, when I would take Henry to the golf course, and Henry's not into golf yet. He doesn't I cut down golf clubs for him. He doesn't care. I have a putting green in my backyard. He lays on it and plays on it, but he doesn't quite care about the golf part of it yet. When we would go to the
golf course, he was obsessed with the animals. And this actually all kind of derived from a conversation I had with Joel Klatt years ago about how Joel got his boys into golf. He's got three sons. He said, he would go to the golf course, they'd play a hole as golf, and then they would play a hole whatever the kids wanted to do. And a lot of the time it was go to the pond and look at the turtles, or go throw rocks in the water and
see if the fish moved. And so when those types of things were floating in my brain, I thought about the zoo that is the golf course. I mean, every region of the world, every region of our country has different animals that live on the golf course. You can see snakes if you're in Arizona, you can see alligators if you're in Florida. There are a lot of different types of animals. And we were in Montana a few weeks ago for a wedding, and I mean, i am
I'm head on a swivel looking for bear. I'm just like hoping to see a bear at some point in the golf course. So that's where it started from. The idea is mom and Dad go to the golf course. They leave the kids at home. What are they going to do? And the whole idea of the book is to open up this world that is the golfer Zoo, which is a golf course, but really it's a habitat for animals.
Yeah. I like to that emphasis. And you know there's a golf as an experience of nature. Is something that's kind of cool to introduce to kids. But also it fits with the genre of a children's book, right. Many children's books are kind of these taxonomies of animals, so there's sort of a fit there with the genre of the book. Kids are interested in hearing about animals.
They love animals. You asked me to kind of think about my three books, my favorite children's books. We'll get to in a bit, and it was interesting. I figured when you asked me that question, I would go animal heavy because I like reading about animals. My son loves animal books. You'll hear later that it is a different direction actually are the ones I picked. But it's an easy way to introduce people to things, especially kids. They love animals. They love all sorts of animals, they love
pictures of animals, and our illustrator Reviel. I mean the stuff he did with this book and some of the imagery he did. I mean, there's there's an image you'll see in the book if you buy it where they're reaching into a pond, and the illustration is from the pond up, so it's from basically in the water up seeing the hands come in with the fish in the water. I mean the golf course is I mean it literally
is a park, you know. I mean not the Malcolm Gladwell level of park where he wants to bulldoz every golf course and make it a park. But golf courses are parks. I mean they're animals that live there. You know, every superintendent, Garrett, have you ever met a superintendent that didn't have one or two dogs on the golf cart driving around like this is a part of the experience of going to a golf course. As you see birds, you see turtles, you see snakes, you see deer. That's
part of what you do. You take pictures of these things when I play golf. Now I am taking pictures more of the animals I see on the golf course to show Henry later on that I am actually the golf holes that I'm.
Playing, yeah, And we love animal content here at the Frida Egg. We talk about it all the time with the PGA Tour telecasts. You know, whenever there's an alligator on the golf course and a golfer interacts with it, that's golden content right there. So we've concentrated that in this book here. You mentioned that I asked you to think about books that you have enjoyed reading to your kids. Now, now you have two kids, right, yeah.
I have a three and a half year old son and a seven month daughter. Seven month old daughter.
Great, Okay, so you are in the thick of it right now. My friend, I have two kids as well, but they're a little bit older. They're eight and five, so we're out of the woods a bit. So all respect to what you're going through at the moment, But in any case, I asked you to think about books
that you have enjoyed reading to your kids. And I guess, in particular, your son at three and a half is going to be getting into different types of books at this point, So what what have you read to them that you've enjoyed.
So the one animal book that I picked was good Night Farm. I love good Night Farm, classic book, very easy to read, a lot of animals involved. Henry's a big fan, so good Night Farm kind of popped through my mind when you asked that question a couple of
days ago. They're okay. The one thing that I really enjoyed doing when I read books to Henry is we have a lot of Doctor Seuss books, kind of passed on from my sisters that you know that have older children now, and I find it almost like work practice to read Doctor Seuss books. I have like personal challenges of like no mistakes, you know, as I'm reading the entirety of a Doctor Seuss book, don't mess one thing up, because I feel like Doctor Seuss tried to mess you
up as you're reading it. And the one that's the hardest for me is there's a Walket in my pocket, and so I pull that book a lot. When Henry asks for Doctor Seuss, which he's been asking for more lately than if I go with Walking in my Pocket, I know it's going to be a real test for me to get through the entire book without screwing up something, because basically doctor Seuss was trying to get you tongue tied, right,
So that's number two. I love that book. I think doctor Seuss is an absolute genius, especially going through this process of trying to rhyme things and to see how unbelievably easy he made it seem not that easy, by the way. And then Goodnight, good Night Construction Site is third. Henry loves it one of our go tos. He's really into trucks, has been into trucks for the last couple of years and so that's an easy one because he likes to get into it. And then honorable mention is
The Big Book of Trucks. If you can see a theme here. Henry likes trucks a lot. The Big Book of Trucks simply because Henry now reads that book to me, which is a when you start to transition from me reading the book to him to him reading it to me. A little less work on dad's end.
That's always a delightful moment when the kid knows the book well enough to read it to you. But beware, at some point the kids are going to want to read on their own, and that is a that is a bit of a sad moment because you just feel like, well, you know, what's my purpose here?
We had a Garrett. Garrett, we had a moment. So so my mom, who is just the most lovely human that exists, comes out quite a bit to help out and to be around the kids. You know, we don't have any family up in Connecticut, so when we need somebody to come up and watch, we typically reach out to either my mom or Cindy's parents first and foremost. And my mom got Henry a bus not too long ago, probably a year ago, and Henry called it Nana bus, right, I mean, it's Nana and it's the bus that Nana
got her. And the other day he was playing with the bus. And now he's three and a half and he just called it a bus. And I heard. I'm listening to my wife and Henry interacted in another room and Cindy goes, no, no, that's Nana bus. And he goes, no, no, no, it's just a bus. And like my heart, you know, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no no. This is for the for the rest of eternity. This is supposed to be Nana bus. And when you start to hit those
moments as a parent, when you don't, they don't. It doesn't matter to the kid, right, I mean, it's not emotional for the kid, but to you, it's literally hearing your child grow up. Those are those are moments that I don't know if I love the moment or if it's just part of it. But I'm not gonna be excited, Garrett about the moment when they want to read the books alone.
Yeah, I love that. No, you know, listen, you fool, this is just a bus. I realize that this is a buss. There are Yeah, there are so many stages like that where the magic just kind of, you know, the innocence kind of gradually goes away. But it's a long process. So you've still you've still got got a lot of time from three and a half forward. So you've mentioned a couple of times the illustrations in the book.
The words are obviously yours, but the illustrations are by an artist named Avl basel Am I pronouncing.
That right, Yep, yep, that's good.
So what went into the process of creating those illustrations. Did you communicate with Avil and kind of come up with ideas and things like that. I've always wondered how that works.
Yeah, it was. That was probably the hardest process, Garrett, to be honest, with you was to find the right illustrator. I mean we reached out to a lot of people. We kind of first reached out to golf artists, you know, people in and around the golf space, and you know, some guys didn't and girls didn't have enough time or
they'd never done something like that. And as we were getting closer and closer, because we wanted to release the book before the holidays to give people an opportunity to buy it as a holiday gift for anybody in and around their family. And so as we were kind of getting closer and closer to crunch time, Jim and I basically went into a list of illustrators that have done stuff like this before. And you know, Eviel's international, I mean,
he's not an American illustrator. We weren't totally sure what we were going to get when he started to send. So what happens is you give notes on what you want, and you send the copy and then they send like sketches. I mean they're black and white sketches, basically penciled out sketches. And the first one we got it was like, okay, this is it, no brainer. He gets it. He knows what we want to do. He you know, I mean, these are beautiful. I can't wait to see what they're
gonna look like in color. And so it was a couple of two or three months of finding the right person. But like I said, the first basically one page back that we got was a win. And you know, I mean, listen, you write a children's book, and it's important, but the illustrations are way more important than the words on the page. And he, as I said, I mean to say, he knocked it out of the park. I mean, this is like shooting fifty two. I mean, it was perfection. It
looks so you know, it just looks so professional. You haven't I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know I really know what I'm doing in life in general. Right, It's basically doing a book is like being a parent. You start out and you have guides and you've seen people do it before. You're like, oh, this guy wrote a book, I can write a book. Or this girl wrote a book. I can do it. If they can
do it. This person's a parent, they have three kids, their kids are alive, Like, surely I can follow along and hammer out and make sure my kids aren't going to be too screwed up. But you know, once you start to get into the thick of it, you have to learn day by day and to try to figure it out yourself. And so to see it kind of come to life. And the way it did from his illustrations was, you know, a special a thing as I've done in my profession at this point.
What made you say to yourself? You know, I have this busy TV career, I have a popular podcast, active social media presence. You know, we know how much time goes into dealing with people on the internet. What made you say, what I really need right now is to write a children's book?
How did you?
How did you get to that point?
It was it was a kick in the ass for my wife, honestly. I mean, I'm one of those people, like so many out there, that have a lot of ideas, throw them out there, write them in a notes app, but don't always execute them. And it was kind of my wife saying, let's you've been talking about this for a while, why don't you do it right? And so yeah, I mean, you know, I mean I was doing it
over the last year. You know, our summers at Golf Channel are the busiest time of year with the major championships that we have and just basically the golf, you know, back to back to back, So it's very busy. I mean a lot of this stuff is notations on the
road or emails on flights. But I've realized in my life as I've gotten older, is if I'm not pushing myself to try new stuff that I get I don't know if it's depressed, but I definitely noticed that I get a little down, and so I'm always trying to kind of look at new things to do. I mean, it might be a new workout, you know, it might be going and doing something at the gym I've never done. Maybe I've been chipping a lot one handed lately. Shout
out Fred Couples. I've been shooting chipping one handed, just to try and see because I actually think I might be a better chiper one handed, especially in and around the greens. But it was just a push. It was trying out something different, to see how it would go, to see if it could make any sense, to see if I could actually execute it. I think that was one of the main reasons to try to get it kind of wedged in the schedule. As you mentioned.
Was there partly a desire here to use the book to explain golf to your own kids? Is something that you had kind of thought about before writing the book, like how do I describe to my children what I'm devoting my life to.
I think it was a hope of, you know, at least sparking some sort of interest. You know, I mentioned to you that Henry's not a big golfer. He hasn't gotten into it yet. He hadn't got hooked like my buddy Ashton. I mean his son Max, similar age. I think Max is three months older on the dot to Henry, and I mean Max has this beautiful swing and it looks great. And I mean Ashton was an incredible golfer. You know, he's my four back partner and played professional
golf for a while. But I see, you know Max, and of course, as you know, I mean, you always compare your kids to other kids, right, just like we compare ourselves to other people. And I just wanted some sort of hook. It's not that you have to be obsessed with golf, but to maybe show a little bit of interest in going back to the golf course. And I think that was my hope with the book was maybe there's a kid or two out there that their parents read him the book and then they asked to
go to the golf course with mom and dad. And if that's the hope, you know, we hear the term growth the game lot. I'm never really in the growth of game business. I mean, I hope people like golf, and I hope people find golf, and I hope people love golf the way I love golf. My hope with this book is that it sparks some imagination inside children to where maybe they'll want to go to the golf
course once or twice with mom and dad. And of those kids, if five of them take up the game, then I feel like it's a win.
I'm curious, you know, when your kids came along. So this book is about parents who go out to play golf and right sort of describing it to the child that they have left at home to go do this, And so I'm curious about whether when your kids came along, whether your relationship to playing golf changed absolutely.
I mean, I actually wrote about this in the Golfers Journal, you know about kind of navigating Garrett. You know this when you work and live in the golf space, and I've been doing golf media for quite a while and I know we're going to get into that in a bit. I've been in golf for a long time and I've seen so many iterations of golf, from caddy into playing, you know, to now working in it day to day, and your love can fade a little bit. I mean your love in terms of winning, go to the golf course,
wanting to go out and practice. I mean that's something that I'm really really lacking in in terms of dedicating my time to my actual golf game. Is I think there was a level of trying to get me back into it a little bit, and I think, you know,
my next iteration of golf. I mean I went from junior golfer that wanted to play collegiate golf to amateur golfer that wanted to play professional golf, to a professional golfer that didn't realize that he was good enough to do that for a living, to back to amateur golf. Right now, it's competing in mid AM's and trying to qualify for USGA Championships and things like that. You know, my future in golf is going to be golf with my kids, and if it's not Henry, I think it's
going to be Charlotte. Charlotte will sit on the putt and green and watch me putt. She'll watch the ball leave my putter and go in the hole or miss, and then she'll watch it come back. Right. I can tell that there's a little bit more interest in her eyes than I think there were was in Henry's eyes at that age. And so I think my whole future of golf is going to be golfing with my children. And so yeah, maybe this was the first step in that next chapter of what golf's going to look like to me.
Well, I mean for me, it was really useful to read the book and kind of imagine a conversation with kids about why I'm going to play golf, Why I'm leaving for five hours exactly to go play this game, right, because you know, one of the things that I dealt with when I had kids was the sense of guilt when I would leave to play golf totally, you know, and I still have not completely resolved this, and frankly it got worse during the pandemic when everybody else was
returning to the golf course. I played less than I I think I have ever played, because there was never a good moment for me. I felt like to stand up and say, all right, see you later, kids, I'm going to play a game for five hours. I'll be back after that. But you're you're on your own with mom in the meantime, or you know, I mean post pandemic. Maybe maybe mom will go with me and then we'll get a babysitter. But that's still like a tough thing
to communicate. Why am I doing this? But the way that golf is portrayed in this book is that it's a kind of healthy, regenerative visit to nature, right, and that is that is something that's useful. It's not just a selfish game that you're playing. There is there is something that you know golf does for people that is important, and communicating that to kids that you're leaving behind to go do this is important as well.
Well. First things first, Garrett, I got to say, I think this might be the first conversation I've ever had with somebody about that golf guilt that you talked about, because I feel it so much, you know, anytime I leave. I went to Southampton on Saturday this past Saturday. You know, in Long Island is a two hour drive each way for me. Right, So my buddy Ryan and I, you know, get in the car at eight in the morning or seven in the morning for a ten thirty tea time.
You know, we're driving over there. We're playing golf bucket list golf course. For me, I'd never played it before. Super excited to go over there and do that. You know, you sit around after then you drive home and I'm home and I barely saw my kids all day. I mean I got to see Henry as he was going to bed, right, And so I've basically lost an entire day as a dad, you know, in my That's kind of how I look at it at times. And it's such a hard balance for me because I want to
go play golf. I want to go experience these places. But at the same time, I don't like losing days with my kids, you know, I don't like I don't like having an entire day and entire Saturday where I don't see Charlotte and Henry. Right. And so I didn't know that was the thing everybody else felt. I didn't know that that guilt out there is like a thing that a lot of parents feel and it's the same
reason why. And I know it's like a joke, and it's a joke on social media, but the whole wives getting mad at their husbands for being obsessed and wanting to go play golf. But I understand it because it's not four hours. It's six hours, right, and if you've got to drive somewhere, it's eight hours. I mean it is an entire day for the most part, depending on when the tea time is. And so yeah, I mean I think in a way, you know, the whole idea behind the Golfer Zoo is reminding people that it's not
just golf, that it's a great walk, it's camaraderie. It's experiencing things with somebody that you love. You know, in terms of this book, it's a husband and wife going out to the golf course. But you know, even going out with a good group of friends, right, I mean, you know, getting a chance to be a part of the Friday eg event at S six a month and a half ago or something. I mean, play it an entire day with Andy, you know, Andy's a good buddy
of mine. I mean, playing an entire day at golf with Andy It's more than a round of golf, right, It's more than a day at golf. It's getting a chance to spend hours on the golf course or hours walk in a park with the friend of yours you don't get to catch up with much, So you know, in those instances, I feel less guilty. But to just go play in the money game on Friday, I feel the guilt. I feel that parental guilt.
Yeah, you've got to make it worth it somehow, but I guess that, you know, you just have to get to a point or speaking for myself, I have to get to a point where I say, you know, it's okay to do this. It's it's okay to go spend a big portion of the day doing something that is you know, healthy for me and and you know makes me kind of feel better and feel more ready to come back home and really be present and value my
time there. But I'm not sure I've totally worked through golf guilt myself, and so I was just curious to hear where you're at in this process. I mean, your kids are younger than mine, so you know, this is an even kind of fresher question for you. But do you feel like you've kind of gotten better over time of you know, sort of saying like, there's the golf part of my life, and there's the part of my life where I'm a parent and I don't have to be a parent all the time time, you know, every
single hour of the day. Sometimes I can go do something that's that's kind of more for myself.
I haven't gotten totally there yet, but I definitely understand the point of in a way, almost forgiving yourself for wanting to go have fun alone. Right, I'm going to go do something I want to go do. It's not selfish. I think a lot of the time that term floats around, you know. I mean, golf can feel very selfish when you go do it without anybody in your family or anybody involved in and around. You know, you're four or
five hours out on the golf course. But at the same time, it's something that I love and it's something that I want to go do. You know, for me, Garrett, the thing that I've noticed over the last couple of years is the most fun experiences I have on the golf course, It's not golf course, it's not my play, it's the three other people in the group, and so I've noticed that I'm way more interested in playing those rounds of golf when it's gonna be with like true
groups of friends of mine, you know. I mean this year, in twenty twenty, what is it, November three? I mean this year, some of the most fun rounds I've had were up in Montana. My buddy Russy got married a few weeks ago. I was playing with Rusty and my dad and then another good friend of ours and Rusty's, you know, my best friend in the world, and playing
golf with my dad. I mean, we're playing with rental clubs, like regular shafted whippie rental clubs, And those were some of the rounds I'll remember the most from the year because the people involved were the reason that I had so much fun out on the golf course. I didn't see a bear by the way, which is a bummer, but I mean Russy's beard was as gnarly enough to where it might have looked like a one, you know, But I I just that's when I don't feel as guilty.
I think is when I'm out there, you know, walking for four hours with people that I love, you know, with people that I want to be around and with people that I call my close community. I think that's when the guilt goes away the most.
Yeah, and I guess that that is part of how you can work towards a relationship with golf that is even better post kids than it was before, because you know, before I had kids, I could just go do anything with my day and not really think about it, not really think about the opportunity cost of going spending a day doing something completely useless.
Right.
I didn't even think about that when before I had kids. And you know, there's a way in which having kids in your life makes you value time a bit more and ask yourself, is what I'm doing today worth it? And if you can make the golf worth it through this social aspect that you're talking about or something else, if you can, if you can make those experiences really kind of intense and valuable, then your golfing life kind of improves even Yeah.
The sleeping the sleeping dragon here about this whole conversation is obviously what you and I are both hitting at is the fact that our golf games are not nearly as good as they used to be because we're not or never playing or never practicing listen, Hane, you had a golf game to lose.
I mean, like you, you were a really great golf and remain a very very good golfer. I have never been a particularly good golfer.
I played, uh, I mean, I played so bad at Southampton. I was so excited to go play golf and you know you it's it's interesting. I was. I was trying to explain this to to Cindy one day about when you're in the golf space and when you when you live in this world of like media and you know, I don't want to say being known, but you know,
being a notable human that does golf media. Right, Whoever you're playing with for the first time is expecting something out of your golf game, and so you're really never having a quote unquote casual round. And again, I think there's a level of those casual rounds being so exciting when you do play with your buddies that know you and know your golf game and play it like golf
with you. But when you're just going and playing with somebody that you might never play with again, there are expectations, even if you don't want them to exist, right, even if I want to show and go, Hey, I haven't played golf in a month. They're wanting to see long drives and birdies and a low score. And when you can't quite provide that, even if they don't mention it at all, you feel it internally. So I think lowering those expectations is something I'm still struggling with in golf, is,
you know, finding what is my golf game? Now? You know what am I expecting to get out of this when I go out on the golf course, Because for so long, and to your point, pre kids, the entirety of my happiness on the golf course before I had kids was what I shot, you know, I mean, was it a good round or a bad round? And that was all I thought about. I didn't really think about much else besides my selfishness and what I'm going out
there and executing an accomplishment as a golfer. And now a lot of that has flipped, and I'm still trying to understand what that is.
It's probably a loss of consistency when it comes to your playing ability, right, Shane, Because yeah, I would imagine that you still have days when you shoot in the sixties, but there are other days when it might go the other direction. And so there's it's it's hard to know what to expect when when you're not practicing and when you don't play very often, it's hard to know what
to expect from your golf game. And I guess that part of what you know, part of what we're trying to do at the Fried Egg is give people a way to enjoy golf when they're not focusing on their games, when they're not focusing on getting better, you know, go enjoy golf course architecture. I suppose that's that's where I get some of my purpose and writing about golf course architecture. Here's something to appreciate no matter how your golf round
is going. I guess that's an important aspect of this for me, because yeah, you just don't know how you're going to.
Play, You really don't, right, I mean that's something that from you guys like you and A and D and Will and the crew. I mean that's something that I've taken away from what you guys put out there is I pay more attention to that stuff now than I ever did before. And so for me to play as six right with Andy and just a list to Andy talk for a few hours about what makes this great
or not great. I mean, it really is like you're in a collegiate class, you know, It's like you're at a university listening to you know, professor lecture about journalism right or business. I mean, to be in that kind of dome, in and around a brain as good as Andy's about golf course architecture, and to just literally get to walk and talk with them about those types of
things is quite a special experience. And from you and from Andy, and from Will and from some of the other people and online, and to do such a great job with this type of stuff, it has opened up this whole other world of like playing Southampton the other day.
And I know I've gone back to this a few times, but playing Southampton and playing like a dog, I'm not as focused on the way I'm playing because I'm wanting to look at all the Seth Rayner stuff that I would have never thought about ten years ago.
Yes, And you know, to bring it back to your book. Part of what's happening in this book is that mom and mom and dad are enjoying nature, right they are. They are playing a game and and that's fun and funny in some ways, and sometimes it doesn't go very well, and even that sort of humorous. But the main thing that's happening is a is a visit with h with nature, which is you know, I think that's very similar to
appreciating the architecture. It's just another way of lifting your eyes up instead of kind of narrowly focusing on the on the game, you're looking around, right, You're seeing where you are, and you're kind of being present in that moment on the golf course. Appreciating nature, you don't even have to look at the architecture. You can just kind of look at the landscape and the animals and and that's that's fun you know that that kind of refills the tank a little bit.
Yeah, it's it's the new age. Stop and smell the roses, like stop and feed the fish. I mean, you know, just let's let's let's find something out there to take our mind away from the mass of frustrations that can happen when golf isn't going the way you hoped it would go. It's so funny that that score is such an obsession, especially Stateside, right, I mean, we have to
have a number, we have to post scores. I mean, now, if I play golf at my club and don't post my score, you get an email about it, you know, I mean, there is so much pressure now about making sure that number is posted. What did you shoot today? And a lot of the time now, especially you know, you go to the golf course and I don't want to think about my score, right, That's the last thing I would hope to think about, even if I'm never going to totally be able to detach from that.
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Also in the pro Shop, we have all the layers you need for fall in winter, from long sleeve polos to quarter zips and hoodies, all that and more at pro Shop Dotthfrida egg dot com. So, Shane, you have worn a lot of hats in the golf world now, including children's book author, but you've also been a caddy at Saint Andrew's. You've had this varied career in media, and for a couple of years you played professionally on
the mini tours. And I'm curious what I want to mostly kind of talk about your your career in media, but was there a particular moment in your competitive career when you said to yourself, you know what, I think I might have to figure out something else to do with my life.
Yeah. I think it was my first professional event first round. Well, okay, I'll tell I'll give you two stories, both firsts, by the way, my very very very first pro event, my first event that I was checked the professional box was a PEPSI Tour event out in Arizona, and my dad
came out to caddy for me. My dad flew out from Texas and you know, I mean, we don't know anything about many tours at the time, right, I mean, it's carts like this is so non serious, but of course it's a big deal to us, and I remember I was standing on seventeen tea and my dad said to me, you're the only guy in the group that's made of bogie today. So that was one of those kind of smack you in the face type of moments where you're like, oh, oh, that's probably not a great sign.
And then my first Gateway Tour event, I shot sixty eight and remember looking at the leaderboard and I think I was in like forty eighth place and I played great. I birdy my last two holes to shoot sixty eight, and that was a really good score for me. And when I realized literally in my first you know, you pay for the whole season, right, and I realized right away that sixty eight wasn't a very good score as a pro, that was really scary for me because I
was never excellent at going crazy low. I've shot crazy low scores before back and you know, my heyday, but I was never one of those guys that kind of just like blindly went out and shot sixty five, right. I mean I had to really have the putter going to do that, or had to close grade or something like that. And so to see where I stood after what I thought was a great round, was a bit of a reality check. So those were really the two moments A little a little, a little daunt team considering
they were both firsts. But I guess it's better to realize earlier than to realize too late. So tell me about going from struggling mini tour pro to og golf blogger.
A lot of listeners might not know that you were. You were one of those original golf bloggers from from the late two thousands self run blog you started with called Dogs that Chase Cars. What do you remember about getting that started? What made you think like, Okay, yeah, I can I can write.
I went to University of Arizona and I remember they had a they had a really good student newspaper there called the Daily Wildcat, and I read a few copies early into my freshman year, and I just went to the Basically, I went to their newsroom and said, I want to write, you know, sports for you guys. I think I could help out a little bit, and and so you know, I mean I spent four years doing that, right,
I mean, I was a journalism major. But as you know, Garrett, a lot of the stuff you really learn, like a lot of the life lessons come from outside of the classroom, and so I learned as much doing that as I did, you know, from my degree there at Arizona. And so you know, I think early into that I realized that I might have a little bit of a I might have a little bit of skill in the writing department.
And then when I went and tried to play. It was when I was done play and my buddy Andrew reached out to me and said, hey, you need to get back to writing, like You've got to find a place to do this, And so I started a blog. I was I was working kind of a nine to five job in Denver, Colorado, and most of my time spent doing my quote unquote job was just blogging for dogs at Chase Cars and my big break. There's a there's a fellow named Ryan Wilson that still writes in
fl and does a great job. But Ryan was was working at AOL at the time, uh for the FanHouse Capital H and he uh he would link remember blog roles, Remember when you would like link to stories and it would just be the blog would just be the like one line and a link to the story. Uh. I would get those Google alerts and he linked to me a few times from some of the goofy stuff I was doing, and uh, and basically reached out to Ryan and said, is there any chance I could write for
you guys you know golf? And that was when kind of the paying opportunity started.
Before that break happened, were there moments when you were writing the blog when you thought nobody is reading this, this is not.
Anywhere time all the time, or you know, I mean it was like Blogger days, right, like Blogger dot com.
Yes, and was literally on the on the platform Blogger. It was that that Yeah, it was the that was that was a Google company, right am I.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they bought it yep. And uh and you know, like I remember like teaching myself at h you know, like HML stuff like where I could co which was super basic stuff like how to bowld and how to strike through and yeah, you know, I mean this is this is when you had to like click into that to do those types of things with coding, how to link to your to your stories. Yeah all the time. I mean I would write all these stories and there'd be no comments, or there'd be one comment,
and I'd be all excited. I click on it to be a friend of mine, you know, and you're like, oh god, you know this, this is my idiot buddies that are reading this stuff. Nobody else is and uh and I think you know when it was when I started to see those types of links pop up, and then you know, I was really proactive, Garrett. I mean I reached out to Will Leach at dead Spin and I wrote major championship previews for dead Spin. Very early into the dead Spin days. I wrote some stuff for
with Leather. Do you remember with Leather? That was a very early blog, Sports by Brooks. I think I did a couple of posts for Sports by Brooks back in the day about golf. I mean, I was anybody and everybody that would take me, I would. I would write for them. Pay me or don't pay me. I didn't really care, So yeah, I was I was just trying to see interest. I was just trying to see somebody find my stuff, you know, worth the read or worth
the click. And of course, you know this was even pre Twitter days or like write when Twitter days were starting to gain a little bit of traction, So you didn't even see if people were reading it through that through that platform.
Right, yeah, you know, the early blogging space. I guess not early blogging space, but you know, when blogging was was really a big thing. There was kind of a freedom about it, right that there was there was a way for writers to break in without having to go through the usual process of establishing themselves as you know, official journalists going to JA school or whatever. You could just start writing a blog and you would sort of get to know other bloggers. Social media has I guess,
kind of replaced that. But I wonder if you ever miss the kind of blogging community, you know, when that was really active.
Well, I mean absolutely, and that was it, right, the blog in community was it? I mean, you know this was. I mean it's funny. I pulled up Safari the other day and I still on my because I don't use Safari, I still have on the like the blog bar, like all these links to these blogs, and I mean half of them probably don't even go to anything anymore, you know.
I mean, this was there was such that community of you know, thirty forty fifty websites that you would frequent that you would try to get the one of the RSS feeds on your on your outlooks, so that it would update you when a new when a new link was available. I mean I remember sitting in the back of journalism classes with my buddy Kevin Stamler at Arizona, refreshing page two on ESPN to see if Bill Simmons had posted something new. I mean, there was really that community.
I was covering the men's basketball team at Arizona, which, of course, the men's basketball team is always good, and I was covering it, reading a Simmons article, and I remember a guy walked by and goes, if you like Bill Simmons, you'll like this, this website called dead Spin, And that was how I was introduced to dead Spin,
you know. I mean there was a real small community of people that were sess with writing about golf, and the humor was there, and the freedom was there, and I mean I could post anything, Garrett, you know, you could write anything about anybody. You could take images from anywhere. Nobody cared. It was. It was a very strange world, but it was in a weird way. It was a very respectful world. You know, if you got an article from somebody, nine times out of ten they would add
the link at the bottom of the story. And that's not necessarily the case now in twenty twenty two.
Yeah, that's very true, And something that maybe people don't really remember is that blog posts could kind of, in a weird way, go viral through being shared by other blogs. That was kind of the way that things went viral. They didn't go viral on Twitter because Twitter was, you know, kind of in its infancy when you started blogging, and you know, the way it really happened was other bloggers
linking to a certain article and discussing it. And I guess the thing that I kind of miss about blogging. I did a little bit of blogging myself, not on golf actually, but you know, the thing that I miss about it is the kind of casualness of a blog post. It didn't have to be a masterpiece. It could just be like a link and a little bit of funny discussion or a joke or something, and you'd post that and people would read it and that would be it.
You know, I'm not sure that something like that exists any longer. I mean, there is Twitter, there is Instagram, but I feel like the way that people present themselves now, or kind of self fashion on the internet is more polished and a little bit less fun than it was in blogging. And maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but that's kind of the way it seems to me.
I feel you. I mean, I remember, Garrett, I wrote one of my most trafficked, you know, blogs on dogs that chase cars, was I noticed that Chris Berman had like one salmon shirt that he would wear every year at the Pebble Beach pro am, you know, And I was like, I remember one year, I'm watching the pro am and I'm like, I was like, dude, I feel like he's wear the shirt before, and so I go into Geddy and sure enough it's like the same shirt.
And so I just wrote, like a blog post was like Chris Berman only wears one golf shirt, you know, and it was I don't even know, there might have been thirty words written in the post. It was like eight pictures of him over the years in the different shirt. And I mean, you know, you talk about hitting the nine blogg A sphere right in the heartstrings with a Chris Berman post, it's you know, taking a slight dig
at them. I mean, dead's been posted to it and with leather posted to it, and all of a sudden you're getting thousands of clicks through to see your article, and it was such a win. It was such an honest victory back then when something was successful, because, like you said, the only way to know if it was successful was from traffic. If the traffic came in, you knew someone somewhere linked to what you did, which means someone somewhere liked what you did.
I love that the Chris I can actually picture that Chris Berman shirt. But that's like a classic blog post, right. I'm not sure people kind of do content like that anymore. It would be it would be condensed into a tweet or an Instagram post or I don't know, maybe there's something that the kids are doing on TikTok that would replicate it. But that that is that is sort of the perfect example of the of the blog genre. So you mentioned that you you kind of got a break
into paying work on mainstream websites. You worked at AOL I believe, Yahoo, CBS, bunch of places. What kind of work were you doing there so.
I would blog about all sports. When I got the full it was, it was interesting. I mean, you talk about you know, being very lucky and getting very very lucky breaks knowing the right people. I remember when AOL was like making it AOL fan house and it was going to be a sports website. They reach out to me the week I was thinking about quitting my day to day job in Denver. They reached out to me about a full time position. And so I went and
blogged about every sport you know. I mean the rule in journalism is if you don't know the sport, tell them it's your favorite, right, and then just figure it out on the way, you know, through throughout the process of it. And so I would blog about football and college basketball and college football and anything and everything. I mean, I did a lot of golf. But you know, you would see your name and it would have a link to all the sports that you were doing and how
many articles you'd done that month in that year. And I was pretty much willing to do any of that, and so I was writing. You know, you would get these emails. I mean, again kind of going back to how simplistic things were. You know, we had like a list serve, and when a hot thing was happening, you know, if some team was cutting a player, or some guy got arrested, or some golfer was was you know, w D and you know, I remember when Jerry Rice w
D with the rangefinder at that Cornferry event. You know, you'd get an email to the list serve of the sport and it was your job to grab the story. I got it, and then you would write it and get it up as quick as possible, because that was the key back then was you had to get it up as fast as possible for Google SEO. And so that was basically my job. I mean I was writing
eight to ten articles a day, maybe more times. It was really on your computer, you know, six seven eight hours a day, you know, really dialing into what was happening in real time and trying to get that up on the main page. And if it made the front page of Yahoo, for goodness sake, so the front page of AOL. It was a really really big deal. And I mean there were bonuses involved in the most trafficked
stories you could write. So it was really a kind of chase the carrot type of approach to the media world.
All right, so you were a an internet writer, you know, you were you were one of those people hunched behind the computer. How did you end up making the transition to TV work?
Yeah, it was it was crazy. I always I mean my dream job when I was a kid was to be on TV. I wanted to be on Sports Center, you know when I.
Was Yeah, you know, you wanted to be Dan Patrick, Keith Olberman, like one of the everybody of our age, Shane. I mean, I those are the coolest dudes, or were the coolest dudes in the universe. Uh, that that was the job you wanted.
Yeah, if you wanted to be a you wanted to be Rick Riley. And if you wanted to be on TV, you wanted to be Dan Patrick Olberman and or Stuart Scott, right. I mean that was the dreams as our kind of very late millennial world lived in. And and so you know, I went into journalism, you know in terms of like print and writing with the hope and the dream of eventually getting into TV. And really it was a break. I mean it was I think it was twenty fourteen.
Somebody reached out to me from the back nine network and they were going to try to take this idea and turn it into a TV network on Direct TV. Would I have any interest in doing it? And you know, i'd i'd kind of I'd kind of felt like i'd landed about where I was going to land in terms of writing, you know, I wasn't. I wasn't kind of going up in the space. I was pretty stagnant. And so I flew out to Connecticut. Connecticut is the state I keep returning too for some reason. And I interviewed
and they offered me a job. And I was dating Cindy at the time, and I was like, hey, I I've always wanted to be on TV. I'm probably gonna take this job at Connecticut. Do you have any interest in going? And She's just like, yeah, I'd love to. So we moved out to Connecticut and that was basically my break in the TV was a startup network, Channel two forty five on DirecTV, you know, and and from there it from there, I mean, more opportunities came. Really,
I mean, the opportunity to go with Fox. I would not have been able to accept the job with Fox in twenty fifteen if Back nine Network hadn't gone under. And so again kind of talking about you know, moments in your life and your career that kind of changed
the trajectory of what you're doing. I mean, I was gonna have to say no to an opportunity to go work with Fox Sports with that USGA contract because I was doing the back nine Network stuff and then back nine Network went under and that opportunity was still there with Fox.
Oh wow, when you started being on TV, what were some of the things that you had to learn, Like when I look at people and when I look at you on golf today, now I just get I can't imagine like doing that, and and and so what did you Yeah, what did you have to adjust about the way that you communicated with people with the camera and learning how to do that.
I mean all of it, honestly, Garrett, I mean all of it was new to me. You know. I hadn't had a lot of experience doing much of like teleprompter work, so there was a lot of you know, making sure that I was kind of hitting the right cadence with the teleprompter. It is addressing the camera when you're doing an interview, so you make sure you're bringing the people at home into it and it doesn't just feel like you're in you're kind of spying on two people talking,
you know. It was it was hosting. The show was called The Turn, and I had two co hosts with me and it was making sure I got Erk in here or got Lou in there, taking it to break the right way. I mean, it was it was learning it on. You know. It was literally real time class
for me day to day. You know. The one thing I did that I urge anybody and I tell people and they email me or DM on social about how do I get into this is you just kind of can't say no. And I early into my back nine network experience, said yes to all the other shows all time, anytime you need me to come on. If it was going on with John McGuinness and Jeff Rude, absolutely, if it was going on with Maddie Blake and his show, absolutely. I was willing to do anything to improve at the
craft because I had no craft. And so if there was anything I could do to be around people that had done TV more than I had, or just simply brought a new energy or new perspective to it, I was I was going to say yes. And so the question of what did I have to learn? The answer is all of it, And you know, just trying to find out what you're good at and what you're bad at, and then what you're bad at to get better at.
While you're not forgetting to continually to try to, you know, sharpen up the stuff that you're good at.
So basically, the overall picture here that I have had of you for a long time is that this is a man who has done just about literally every job in golf media. You know, and we haven't even talked about how you got into podcasting. And you know, you have a popular Twitter account and so you're in the social media so I think you're probably the best person to ask about this. How do you think, you know, since you started, how do you think the golf media
landscape has changed? And do you think it has changed for the better?
I mean, I think you could probably say sports media and not just go with golf, even though I know obviously we're very focused on golf. I mean, the media world has changed so much. I think a lot of it is a little bit of what you said about the old blogging days. Was the old blogging days, you know, the olden days, if you will, on the Internet. It was a lot about fun and the payout wasn't necessary. And to me now media feels like the payout is a must, like I've got to get something back for
this or it's not quite worth my time. I feel that personally at times, you know, where you know, maybe this week I don't want to do a podcast, but I know I have to, or I don't feel like I have the energy to go check track down this person or that person for comments or quotes or even off the record stuff. You know, it's such a the payoff is almost more necessary than the work that goes
into what you're trying to do. And when I first started doing this, it was all about just trying if I can get one person to smile, laugh, be entertained, you know, that's the goal. And for me, over the last couple of years, I've really tried to return to that mentality, is to go back to the way I
used to think about golf. Where I mean, if you look at my Twitter, it's pretty much entirely mebia and silly, right, because I feel like that's how I am normally is I'm just trying to have a little bit of fun with what I'm following or what I'm watching or what I'm covering. And it's not so easy to do that anymore, And so do I think it's changed for the better. I don't want to sit here and say it's changed
for the worse. I just think it's different. I mean, I think the media in the nineties versus the media when I was coming up was very, very different. And I'm sure the people in the nineties went, oh God, this sucks, this is this is way too irreverent. You know, this is way too loosey goosey. These people don't know what they're doing. And I would say, now, there's a
way smarter group of people doing this, you know. I mean I think about you know, I've mentioned you and Andy, and obviously you know I'm a big fan of you guys. I mean I consider you guys friends first and foremost before I consider yourself, you know, golf media people. But I mean I look at people like Dan Rappaport, who is a young guy in the business who I think is really smart and does a hell of a job
at what he's doing. I look at people like you know, Paige Sporanic, who has had to kind of navigate the golf landscape in so many different ways, and to look at what she's doing with it now, I find it very impressive. I mean, for her to to continually put herself out there and also understand that poking fun at yourself is a part of the job. Is not the easiest thing to do, and it could it could doom a lot of people. I mean, it could knock a
lot of people out of this profession. And so there are so many people I think day to day we see in the media landscape that maybe we don't appreciate how good they are at what they do. Think about no laying up and you know, think about that in nineteen ninety eight, Hey, we've got five buddies, We're gonna quit our jobs and go write about golf and video about golf. And to now look at where they are
and how big they are in this media landscape. You don't have to be an ex player, you know, you don't have to have played or caddied or coached or any of that stuff. If you're smart and you're honest about what you do, there is opportunity for you in that world. And for that, I think, in a way, you could almost argue it's better.
Returning to your earlier point about the entrance of money into all of this, that's really interesting because I agree that, you know, independent media outlets now have a path to kind of to success and to hire distribution and can kind of establish themselves in different ways. You know, I think that the way that I came into media wouldn't
have been possible in the nineteen nineties. I was a teacher, that was my career, and I just sort of, you know, got to know Andy by being on Twitter and writing some things on a personal blog that wouldn't have been available to me in the nineties at all. I would have had to if I had wanted to work in media, I would have had to do it in a very different way. And so I think that that, you know, way in which people can kind of carve out a
space for themselves is significant. But at the same time, once it becomes your full time job, once it's no longer kind of casual and like whatever anything goes, I'm doing this blog when I'm you know, sitting at work and supposed to be doing other things, that feeling of
kind of just like freely doing this for fun. Somehow we've got to like hang on to that feeling a little bit, because it's exactly what was great about early podcasts and early blogs, right that people weren't doing it for brand partnerships or for an income they were just doing it because they liked doing it and liked making people laugh, and liked building a community around their interest.
And so you know, once money enters into that equation, it becomes really hard to maintain that sense of the kind of wildness and free wheeling nature of what independent media was like fifteen years ago.
It's just a reminder. I mean, I think this is probably a life lesson is you know, when things aren't the easiest, or when things feel like work, or when things are stressful, it's reminding yourself why you're doing it. And normally it's because you loved it. I mean, you know, especially for us, right, I mean, we're in the golf space.
We're in the golf media. We love golf. You know, even if weeks feel like work, and you know you're on the road and you're staying at a hotel and your flight gets delayed and you're going to miss your connection, you're not gonna get home to see your kids. You've got to find a way to remind yourself of why you love it. And you mentioned the early podcast days. I mean I remember getting a sponsor on the Clubhouse,
like my first golf podcast. I mean, I would love to I will tell you offline how much they paid me. It is very little. At the time I was I couldn't believe that somebody was going to pay to sponsor this podcast. I remember how easy it used to be to get guests, you know, when I first started doing the Clubhouse. I mean I could get anybody. Justin Thomas
came on a couple times. I had Rory. I remember I broke news with Rory mcclroy on the Clubhouse and it was on the bottom ticker of ESPN and it said the Clubhouse was Shane Bacon and I'm like, this is so surreal to be seeing these types of things. And now to your point, there's so much that goes behind the scenes to get things to go the way
they go, and most of that is money. So for me, when the flights are long and they're delayed and the hotel's not great, I remind my self of the open this year, right, I was sitting on the live from set working for Golf Channel at Saint Andrew's. I mean, this is a place that I would loop for, you know,
anybody and everybody. When I got out of college in O six, I mean, this was a place I worked in one capacity, and fast forward to twenty twenty two and I'm sitting on a set with Mark Rowfin and Heimi Diaz, you know, two of my favorite people in the golf media world coming to millions of people's television screens. I mean, that is that's the that's the dream, right Like, That's why I did this. That's why I started dogs at Chase Cars. That's why I reached out to what
Ryan Wilson and said, can I write a FanHouse? That's why I was hitting will Leech up back in the day and said, can I write major championship previews for dead Spin that were probably getting one hundredth of the traffic that most of their articles were getting. All of that was to get to a point where maybe one day you could be on TV, or you could be writing for Sports Illustrated or Yahoo dot com or Golf Channel dot com and someone out there was interested in
what you had to say. And so I think for all of the bullshit that we go through in this business, I'm reminded a lot that it's such a dream that we get to do this and it's not work if you really think about it. And you know, for me, It's like I go back to the old course so much because that was one of the most fun work weeks I've had maybe in my career, was just being there on site getting to be a part of the Open Championship at Saint Andrews. And if you'd have told
me that No. Six, that I was going to get to do that at some point in my career, I wouldn't have cared what you'd asked me to do to get to that point. I would have done it.
Shane, Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Tell people where they can get your book.
Yeah, The Golfer Zoo is available back nine press dot com. That's the number nine, not written out back nine press dot com, backslash Bacon like my name, like the food. You can order it from there, and I appreciate it if you would. If you do it and you read it to your kids, please in a picture to me, because that's been the best part of doing the book is seeing literal pictures of parents reading it to their kids.
This episode of the Friday Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins. If you haven't already, i'd encourage you to rate and review our podcast on iTunes. Thank you so much for listening and supporting, and we'll be back again soon