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 fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Friday Egg, Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg, Bride egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Welcome to the Friday Egg at Golf podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today I'm bringing on Shane Ryan of Golf Digest to talk about the state of Rory McElroy. As well know, Rory just came runner up in the US Open at Pinehurst, losing to bryceon de Shambau by one stroke and heartbreaking fashion. So I thought it would be a good time to assess the broader arc of R's career. And I can't think of any media member I'd rather discuss this with
than Shane Ryan. Shane has been covering Rory in depth for the better part of Rory's career in the professional limelight, starting with Shane's excellent book Slaying the Tiger, which was about the twenty fourteen season of Majors and PGA Tour events, and Shane also wrote an outstanding story on Rory's final round at Pinehurst, which we'll talk about in depth in this episode, in which you can read at golfdigest dot com. Shane is always such a delight to talk to one
of my favorite writers and people in golf journalism. But before we get to that, let's talk briefly about Golf Forever. You may have been noticing recently that you don't feel as loose on the course as you used to. If that's the case for you, your body may be holding your
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I'm already feeling muscles lighting up that I haven't used in a while. And you know, recently, like all of us, i'm getting older, and recently something that's been holding me back is that I've been having some recurring upper back and neck pain. Now I've been cleared by my doctor to exercise and all of that, so it's not like a medical emergency, but it's just something that's been bothering me and something that I've kind of been avoiding dealing with.
So I'm very, very eager to get started on the Golf Forever program. As I said, already, I'm starting to feel like I'm stronger, I've got better posture, and so the early results are very very promising. So get started now at golferever dot com and use the code egg to save one hundred dollars on a swing trainer with one year of the app. That's golf Forever dot com code egg egg. All right, let's get to Shane. All right, I'm here with Shane Ryan, Shane, how are you doing today, Garret?
I am so good.
Just to see your face again is lifting my spirits on this Thursday morning.
Absolutely Likewise, the feelings are mutual. You're back home after covering the US Open at Pinehurst. This is kind of a home game for you, right, Yeah.
Pinehurst is about an hour fifteen away, just long enough that I came home like one night I wasn't going to commute. Stayed with Luke and Joel Luke Virginian Joel Biale, my good buddies from Digest. But yeah, it was nice and nice and close. And I love Pinehurst. Man. Pinehurst is like, you know, the way people feel about Augusta is how I feel about Pinehurst. It's sort of magical to me. I'm not a very like romantic person around golf courses, but Pinehurst, I'll kind of I'll get there.
I'll get there.
Do you get out to Pinehurst a fair amount?
I So it's one of those funny things where I know the social the media relations guy Alex is a wonderful guy, and so sometimes I go golf there very job oh Man insanely good at his job, and I like, you know, I said on Twitter and everything, just because he was so helpful this week on like four or five different projects I did and he was having I assume it incredibly busy week, but would always DM me back anyway. I try not to take advantage of that
by going too much, do you know what I mean? Like, I try to go once in a while, and I don't have to play number two because number two kicks the kicks my teeth in, so I'm happy. Like once a year I'll go down and play number eight or something, you know, and I'm like, that's great. So no, I don't get down there is that much, but when I do,
it's just I don't know, just kind of like. So I grew up in Upstate New York where they used to send tuberculosis patients because the mountain air was supposed to clear back before they had a cure for tuberculosis. They're like, the best thing we can do is send you to a place with good air. And that's what they did with pineers in the beginning, because there was this idea that somehow the pine trees created this atmosphere. It ended up not being true, but it feels like
it's true. It won't cure your consumption like Sarenac Lake, New York will if you get consumption. I'm sorry for you. Don't go to pinehers, go to Upstate New York. But it feels like it would cure your consumption.
And so that's my.
Pitch for it ended up not being the best idea to build a resort around the idea of come here if you have tuberculosis. And so I think they abandoned that idea pretty early on, but that is kind of a funny origin story for the resort, and you.
Know, it's nuts. So quickly they pivoted to golf. As we pivot to video, they pivoted to golf. But we were looking I did a piece on the history of putter Boy, the little putter Boy statue, and we were looking at the original flyers that they made back in like nineteen oh five. Would they call it like the golf flat which became putter Boy. But on the flyers in the fine print below, it's like the only county in the South that doesn't allow consumptives. So they didn't
just pivot away from it. They went from being a resort for people at tuberculosis and consumption to advertising the things like if you come here, you don't have to worry about those filthy tuberculosis patients. Seriously, it was like it was on all other things, like no consumptives, you're safe here, because apparently that was a real concern. Then you want so it's like a great thing, like, hey, if we go here, we don't have to have people coughing on our face and killing us.
That's what we call a hard rebranding there. That's that's interesting. I didn't know that part.
It's the Rory of its time where he was anti live and now he wants to merger.
They were doing that way before.
Hey, look at that segue. Our topic today is actually Rory McElroy. I thought i'd bring you on for this kind of later week episode after the US Opened, because now we've had a little bit of time to process what happened and to kind of get used to the idea that what happened on those last several holes at Pinehurst actually occurred, and I thought it would be a good moment to dive deep into Rory McElroy. Maybe we could just start by talking about your Sunday at the
US Open. As you were going out to cover the tournament, you were on site for the week, obviously, what was your basic plan for the day.
So, yeah, basic plan for Sunday. First of all, I was healthy for the first time all week. I was sick for the first five days, which sucked, but so finally I was like feeling good about going out, Like, you know, I wasn't going to be tired after twenty minutes.
I think originally the plan was to walk within the entire round, but we sort of didn't have a broader plan about who was writing what early on in the day, so we walked with them the first seven holes, which is, you know, very good, like a perfect appetizer.
Things were kind of tightening up. It was it was you. Rory looked really really good.
Bryson looked okay, but like there was evidence of the shakiness that would kind of emerge later.
So he came in after seven holes, got some lunch.
And the way Pineers works, like the seventh hole is actually closest to the clubhouse instead of the ninth. So anyway, Joel and I, Joel Biel and I were like, well, who's gonna write Rory and who's gonna write Bryson?
Because those are the two big stories today.
It already looked like Cantley probably wouldn't factor, even though he did hang in and Joel it.
Just so happened.
Joel had written Rory the day before and he said, okay, you write Rory, which was really generous of him because it looked at that time talking about ten to eleventh hole now like Rory was going to break his major drought, and so it was kind of like a benevolent Joel. You know, it's been there longer, and he could choose
whatever he wanted. So he's like, no, you get him, You take Rory, which is really nice and I'm glad he did because the story that ended up happening was even better in some ways than if he had one. I mean in terms of like being able to like write the story.
Yeah.
So anyways, this, by the way, is the first nice thing that Joel Beale has ever done.
Right. He's not a good guy. He's a mean, mean, cruel person.
Just reach over and slap me randomly. I brought it up with HR char I brought it up with HR Golf Digest. They say, there's our hands are tied. He's too good a writer. If we can't do anything, you're just gonna have to accept. You're gonna have to accept the physical blows. But yeah, so he did. It was a first nice thing. I don't know what he was thinking. But we caught up with him again on fourteen, and it's kind of funny when I remember it because while
I was gone, Rory went on a tear right. So from eight to thirteen he made five birdies.
Or something like that.
Then the minute I caught him on fourteen, I'd literally got there right for his drive.
It was back. It was back to best. It was my fault in.
Other words, that Rory lost any time I was there, he didn't play that well. But yeah, so we got him on fourteen. You know, he cranked that drive to the left. I will shay the mindset. Everybody like has a mindset, right, everybody's kind of you. You're making predictions
and you're trying to read the tea leaves. Very much felt like Rory was going to win this tournament to me, and that was being fully cognizant of the fact that I have been a sucker to that same thought for a decade over and over at major championships.
And Joel.
Joel would do this thing this is actually true, where every time I would be like, you know, I honestly think this is as weak I think it's gonna happen, he would start casting a casting like a fake fishing line as I was, and like reeling it in as if I was, you know, biting at the big fish again. And so I would but yeah, down fourteen, like he drove it left. But he then he made part from there I think his Yeah, his approach shot went a little bit left of the green, but he went up
and down. At that point, I believe Bryson was making birdie really on the just on the previous hole. Which that's another crazy thing about Pinehurst. These holes are right next to each other all through the end, so they saw each other over and over, which added a certain amount of drama and aura to the whole thing. So Bryson was one shot back. Rory makes bogie on fifteen. Then you're like, oh God, they're tired. I guess, you know, it still felt like he was gonna win, but it's like, okay, okay.
Then the big, the big moment, the last good moment for Rory in terms of how everybody was feeling the perception, came after that bogie on fifteen. He hits a good drive on sixteen, right before he hit his approach. Adam Schupack from Golf wereek who I was with. He had the head piece where he was listening to the radio feed, so I was kind of just begging him for news,
and that was when Bryson three putted to fifteenth. So Bryson goes down one and I'm telling you a split second after he told me it was just like boom, boom. Rory hits his approach onto the green, a good approach on sixteen, So you're like, this is it. I mean, this is like he's gonna make par here at worst, and you're gonna go this.
You know.
Then he's just got to survive these last two holes trying to make par. Even if he makes bogie, he's got a great chance because Bryson is all over the place right now. And then yeah, then things turned. The big turn, the dramatic turn that I still think is the most confounding thing maybe I've ever seen on a golf course came at sixteen when he hit a good first putt to two feet six inches.
And then you're the way I was.
Thinking of it is like you're kind of plotting out the rest, like what are the big moments to come? Well, Rory's t shawan sevent is gonna be really big if he gets on the green. Bryson's approach on sixteen is really big. You're thinking in the future of what the big moments are going to be, and you don't realize the big moment is just about to happen and he misses that putt and you're like, holy shit, are you kidding me? Like like genuinely, like are you fucking kidding me?
Is like the only words that in thoughts that come into your head. Everybody's just staring at each other. The crowd is gasping. All the media people are looking at each other like this can't be real life, because, as you allude to earlier, you're like, it's like some Sikkah was writing the script, you know what I mean, it's like some it's like Joel Bale, the real sicko real say this, like Bale is writing the script of this of this round, and you're and I knew, I mean,
I say, I knew. I didn't know anything. But in my head, I'm like, he's done. There's no way you can win after that, Like you can't win after this, it's now a tie ball game. Right after he misses that, forget it, he's just not gonna do it. Then he goes to seventeen. Of course, you know, and stop stop me at any point if I'm being too detailed, But it's just like it's so vivid in my head.
No, no, let's do it. Yeah, this is yes. So he goes to seventeen.
He hits a bad t shot, but he makes an incredible up and down, which didn't seem likely at all. You know, Bryson's doing his thing, but I think Bryson had a good shot on seventeen. So now you're like, boy,
the moment it was really changed. Rory gets to eighteen, hits that drive, has to kind of bump it over the wire ground like he couldn't take really, he couldn't get a full swing on it, but he did a pretty good job from there, and then hits a splendid ship from the front of the green and then Bryson yanks his his ball so far left where My first thought was, he's gonna get relief and people are gonna be so pissed. I was like, he's gonna take some he's gonna get some weird relief from the stands and
people are gonna be furious. And he did try and to his crib who wouldn't, but that didn't happen. But yeah, then Rory misses that putt and you're thinking, this is just unbelievable. And because I was on the Rory beat, I followed him into the clubhouse, followed him into scoring. You know, the door shut behind him, So we're just
kind of standing there. And at this point it's like, as a fan, you're almost there's almost the thought like should I just go back and watch suit Bryson does, But I'm like, no, I'm gonna sta with Rory.
That's the job.
And we're kind of watching on YouTube TV on our phones, but everything. Obviously we're right underneath the grandstand, so you can hear everything happened ten seconds before it does and Bryson, Yeah, Bryson went up and down from that bunker obviously. And Rory once he hit it, you could see on the TV feed like he leaves the room right away. He goes down the hallway to the locker room. The Netflix crew is there following him. Mike Wand comes up at one point and is like, do we want them there?
Do we want them there? I think I think talking about the Netflix crew, like maybe we should kick them out or whatever, or maybe like we're not doing a good job protecting Rory from them or something. Then Rory comes out after a few minutes. The other funny detail that I think people would enjoy is that after that point Bryson had finished and come into scoring and someone from his team had to bring his bag to the locker room.
And he walked by us and I don't know who it was.
It wasn't his cad or anything, but he looked at us before he goes in, and he goes is Rory in there, like pointing to the locker room, and we're like yeah, and the guy his face just felt like, you tell, the last thing in the world this guy wanted to do is to bring Bryson Toto Shamba's bag into the locker room where Rory.
Was, you know, experiencing the pain of his life.
Just like the word ashen when you describe somebody's face was made for that moment.
It just fell over him. So he went in.
Rory comes out eventually the next Netflix cruise following him. All of a sudden, there's a bunch of people following him, one of whom is Sergio Garcia, who I don't even think got to him, but was kind of like smiling and talking to people. Yeah, and then Rory just from a short walk there out into the parking lot loaded
up the bags. None of us were obviously going to go up and talk to him, and we were just kind of watching and then yeah, then pulled out and was gone and that was the end of the story right there.
That's it, man, that's it. Yeah.
It was truly one of them, I think, the most acutely painful thing I've ever personally seen on a golf course.
No, definitely, it definitely was.
All right, So what is so sick about what happened on those last few holes, I think is that there was a push in a poll with each shot that Rory hit. He hit his approach into sixteen, the thought is he has won the tournament. He misses that shorty on the sixteenth green and the thought is he can't possibly win this tournament. He misses the green on seventeen and you think, all right, this is over. And then he hits a great recovery from the bunker and your
thought is, oh, he could actually do this. And then he misses the fairway on eighteen and kind of draws a funky lie and you think, Okay, nope, this isn't happening. And then he hits a pretty good approach from there and a pretty good chip and you're like, he could get to a playoff. He could win it outright if Bryson makes a mistake. Yeah, and then he misses that putt, and at that point Bryson just has to make par on the last hole, which was by no means a
foregone conclusion. But there was a kind of cruel, you know, back and forth with each of those shots, and I think that's part of what made it so painful. Yeah, we've seen other meltdowns, other major losses, Jean van Derveld. You know Adam Scott at that one open that Ernie El's won. There have been obviously Greg Norman at the ninety six Masters, but there was something about this sequence of events that was specifically agonizing. So that's one theory
as to why it was so painful. Yeah, what are some of your other thoughts as to why this had such an impact seeing Rory go through this.
Yeah, the sort of.
Yo yo of hope that was dangled in front of us is you're one hundred percent right. The other thing I thought about I didn't see it spoken about as much in the app math, but if Rory makes that putt on eighteen, that up and down is so much harder for Bryson because you're talking about, yeah, okay, he's got to make a par to win. That's not easy, and he did a wonderful job. But he also had the security of knowing if I two Putt were going
to a playoff, it's not it's not dead. What about what about that same situation where if you don't make par you lose, you know what I mean? Like, that's a completely different can of worms. So yes, I like your theory. Certainly, the the idea of and this works into the idea of, you know, should he stayed for the media, should he not have? The fact that there's ten years building up to this is another thing of
what makes it so painful. John van Develt, you know, I watched the Netflix show with him yesterday, which, by the way, John Van Develt is awesome, Like he really seems like a cool guy. Really, he really liked him both at the time the way he spoke and in the present the way he spoke about it. I'm like, nobody in the world could have handled that better than he did.
He came out really well in that documentary.
Oh yeah, And like I guess I didn't the memory of what he was like contemporaneously at the time, and even then he seemed like very cool, but yeah, so I forget who it was. Oh, Jimmy Roberts was saying, I covered Golfer a living and I honestly hadn't heard of Jean van Devilt before that Open Championship, so that like something like that, it's over and done. You don't hear this guy like all a sudden. He's a tragic
figure and then it's over with Rory. We've had ten years of build up for this, So then you compare him to I don't know Adam Scott or you know, Greg Norman or things like that, but he does exist, even since Adam Scott does exist in a different media world where there's like more discourse around it and just more attention all the time, and the fact of the Yo Yo of Hope, combined with the expectations of ten years and the letdowns before it create this completely novel
situation that we've never seen before. The Again, the closest comparison is Norman, but it doesn't it doesn't really compare even still, I think.
The yo Yo of hope that is the phrase that I was searching for as I was describing.
I needed you.
I just thought of it now, I needed you to kind of likes ham an egg moment.
So as you were out on the course watching this, were you formulating the story that you ended up writing. Obviously, you didn't know what the outcome would be and and that would determine what the story would be obviously, But how did you come up with the idea for that story in the end?
Yeah, that was I think I'm a big one for always formulating the story no matter.
What I'm doing.
Sometimes it's I think there's like people like this you might be one two where you're always kind of there's the part of you that's experiencing life and then the part of you that's narrating that experience.
Absolutely, and it's the anxious mindset, right, the constant future orientation, and when your job is to be out there to write a story about these events, I think it's almost inevitable to think, wow, you're having those experiences, what the story might be and how it could be good exactly.
Yeah, yeah, And sometimes like it's a storyteller's mindset too. But you're right that it's it's good in some cases like this one. In other cases you're like, I will show us in doing this, But yeah, I mean, but yeah, so I was thinking about it, but I do think a lot of you idly think about it. But a lot of it is like I've been in enough situations where you form narratives and then dispatch them and then start to like you know, be based on things changing
that you almost treat it like a game. It's not like you're really playing the story. It's more like you're just entertaining. You know, you're like a debutante entertaining quarters that are coming out party, and the.
Quarters are the stories.
So yeah, no, it's like I'm trying to so I'm trying to think of this particular instance when I thought, for example, of like the first little scene, probably not until I sat down and was like, oh, that's interesting, like what happened at sixteen?
That seems to me.
That's like my only philosophy as a storyteller now is start with the most interesting thing.
Like that.
It's all boiled down to that, Like I've read books and or people, you know, seen people talk about it. To me, it's like, just find the most interesting thing and start with it instantly. And like when you're doing a podcast or whether you're writing a story, it's like period, that's it. That's the only and then everything else will kind of follow from that hopefully. So that yeah, that I thought was when I boiled it down, it's like, that's the most interesting that put on sixteen, because the
put on eighteen is sort of understandable. That's a difficult, like downhill put under pressure, It's one I would never make under those circumstances. But the putt on sixteen, it's like I hadn't even seen the stat at that point
until after I with the story. But the thing where he was four hundred and ninety six for four hundred and ninety six on those it's unthinkable that he would miss that putt, And so that to me, you hone in and you go, this is the point where if you're like, if you think he's a choker, you're gonna like really seize on that.
If you think he's you're gonna seize on that, you know what I mean, or whatever your thing is.
If you just think he's unlucky, you're gonna be like, how unlucky is it to miss that putt?
There? How do you do it? It doesn't make sense, It doesn't compute right.
If you're a computer program, you're breaking down at that point because he can't miss that putt.
He can't miss that putt.
And he did, so that I just decided to start from there.
And then I think with that story.
A lot of people have said what you said earlier is just like like it was written really quickly, and I was very happy with it how quickly it came together. But what I would say to that is I've always been a fast writer, but the emotion of that moment kind of carries you when you're writing. The emotion and the pain was so strong that.
It was like fuel for the writing.
So if you had given me people like, oh, it's amazing you wrote that so quickly, if you had given me three days to write it, I think it would have been worse, you know what I mean. It's like it could only be done in ninety minutes or whatever it took me. And so again not to pat myself on the back, but it's very happy with that story. When I wrote it, I was like, fuck, I this is really good. And I was like a very like very happy when you feel that way, very happy when
people respond that way, and so it was cool. But yeah, it was just it was the emotion of the moment really it was just like like you feel like you're tapped in almost into some greater thing, and you just got all you gotta do. You're like transcribing as quickly as you can.
And part of what you do at the beginning of the story to narrate the mist putt is to kind of focus on this flower that's right near you and figure out what that flower is. And then the mist putt happens, and it you know, your your attention obviously moves away from the flower, and so there it's you know, I'm describing it right now, and people need to read it as it's written, because it's not going to come
across the way it does in the article. But I wanted to mention that because there's another moment in the article when you look away from Rory as he's passing by you and clearly in agony, and it strikes me that this article is in a way about looking away from pain or keeping a distance from pain.
Yeah, and yeah.
And the and the pain at the center of it, Rory's pain is is kind of like, uh, I don't know if politely is the word, but it's at it it's at a remove from us. It's something we can't quite know, and so is that how you were processing it in the moment there's this kind of awkwardness or this hesitation to even go to the core of what he must be feeling.
I think so, and I think yeah, and I think as I was writing it, the thought with the flower especially was the idea that now when I see this flower, I'm going to associate it with Rory McElroy because just because of the random thing of like, I didn't think anything big was happening here, so I just used my picture this app to figure out what this flower was.
But now that thing is forever tied to Rory the same way that you know, if you ask, like our parents' generation, like where were you when JFK was assassinated, It's like, well, I was getting a you know, a hamburger at McDonald's, And now every time you get a hamburger McDonald's, you think of JFK being shot.
In doubts or where were you for nine to eleven?
Right, not comparing what Rory did to nine to eleven, but no, the idea of association of something big being attached to something like almost ridiculous or something completely different. But now they live together forever in your head. But I thought of that in the broader thing. You're right, the concept of looking away from pain with Rory is partly because it's so intense, but also you don't know what his associations are. The great question is how is
Rory going to deal with this? What is he going to feel? It's so unknowable. It's the best question and it's the one you can't answer. And the idea is like, just like I'm associating with a flower or other painful moments in my life, you're associating with things that you know nobody would understand because you're not me. Same with Rory, it's like what it feels to him and what it means to him are so tied up in his experience as a human and his associations and everything like that
that we can't know it. And so I wanted that level of ambiguity. I think tied into the looking away from the pain because that's another human phenomenon of when someone's in intense pain. There's a couple of ways to react, but kind of a human way to react is to sort of like back away from it because it makes us think of our own pain, and sometimes people don't do it.
Like if you have a friend.
We've all had this phenomena where a friend who's just like, bad things are happening to them, and you kind of if you're a good friend, you stick with them, but there's part of you that's like, God, I don't want to deal with this, you know what I mean? I just like cause I'm my things are going fine in my own life, and then it's like, and things are not going fine in my life. I'm cognizant of not wanting to flood my friends with it, right, because who
wants to hear that all the time? So I guess it's all that's a big word salad to say that, yes, you're exactly right, look away from the pain, and then the bigger unknowability of what it would mean to rory and not even worth prognosticating except to say, we can't know, but it's got to be pretty intense.
And I think golfers know the feeling or no aversion of that feeling where your body just doesn't do the right thing. It's like a glitch. You compared it to a computer program malfunctioning earlier. It is like a glitch where just there's something weird happening in the matrix and you just miss a six inch put or something like that,
and it's almost unavoidable or something. But even an amateur golfer has had this experience of making a mistake like that or experiencing a glitch like that, and there's this kind of feeling of, you know, like you're everything swirling around you and you get this ache in your gut. We've all felt that, except that now we've seen Rory experience it, and he did it on a massively bigger stage, and so I think golfers look at that and think like, well,
I've gone through that and it was pretty hard. I can't even imagine what that was like to do that in this kind of context, and that might be part of why it's so kind of hard to relate to. But at the same time, you are relating to it.
And that's the thing. It's like when you can kind of relate to something and then you can start to imagine the scope of it that's different from what you did. So earlier this year, we did a thing for Digest where it was the concept was we're going to send Shane down to Florida to play a round of golf with Paul Tasri as his caddy, and the idea is like, how does a really great caddy who's won majors and everything help an average golfer?
And I had this like pretty okay start.
Then they kind of blew up a little on the end of the back nine, but then I had a really good back nine and we were close to like, I'm a very average golfer, but I was going to had a chance to break ninety, and leading into seventeen, I was just starting to hit a lot of good
shots and all that stuff. We get to eighteen, which is a par five, probably the easiest hole on the course, and it was I think I needed a six maybe, or maybe I needed a par but very doable, you know, like if I long story short, I hit the ball like I'd been driving beautifully. I drove it so far right that it almost seems absurd. It's like, physically, how could I do that? And it went out of bounds
by about a yard. You know. It went on with the stakes and we didn't see it, and we had like our film grew up ahead radio and back being like a ton of bounds like.
And it was so devastating. It was so fucking devastating.
And that's to break an eighty nine on a video where nobody's gonna care or judge me because I'm not a good golfer, and where actually it makes the story kind of better to have that moment, but it did it. Like I was like whoa, And I had that thought in the moment of am I gonna think about this forever? You know, just like you had this like because you're on camera and this is the only time I've ever
played golf on camera. And then you're like quickly because the stakes are so low, you're like, yeah, well I probably will think about it forever, but it's gonna be fine. It's not gonna torture me. But yeah, but that moment when you're like in that sense of god, I just I just had a lot of pressure on me. I had a moment where it was all me and I blew it and it's so it's like personally devastating. Then you look at Rory like to do that like the put On sixteen, I think I wrote this in the piece.
He immediately like puts his hand out as in like a stop like.
Slow down, slow down that it's sort of like, yeah, it's kind of a funny gesture because it's the gesture that golfers make when a downhill putt is running past the hole too far, exactly. And it was an interesting gesture at the time because that putt was not running past the hole too far. It wasn't that kind of situation. It was just a missed shorty and he would have a tap in next. But he made that gesture.
He did, and it almost like I felt like it doubled as a calm down, like calm down gesture because I think in that moment, I'm mind meeting a little bit here, but I probably you would think it would be accurate. He's probably running away in his head like all of his future thinkers, going this is this is the you know, this is devastating what I did, having all the thoughts like I not only did I maybe blow the US Open, but people are gonna talk about
this forever. I can't believe I did it. How is it possible to miss this putt?
You know what I mean?
Like I almost felt like he was trying to slow down his own brain and stay in the moment because the tournament wasn't over.
Yeah, all this talk makes me think it's like.
Everything that we're talking about now, and a lot of the coverage is based on the pain of one lonely human being out on a golf.
Course, and.
It speaks to like he's gonna come back and play the Open. I mean, he's got to be a pretty You gotta be a pretty resilient person to keep putting yourself in those positions, because this was not the first time that happened to him, right, It's happened a bunch before, and he's gonna keep coming back. Norman kept coming back.
There's you gotta admire it. You have to say, like you admire the strength, because there's always that part of you that's like I wonder if I would just quit golf after that, just.
Just go full time into gardening or something.
That's that's the first thought you have, especially when you remember that Roy McElroy is rich and doesn't have to do any of this. He could just you know, buy an island in the Caribbean and live there for the rest of his life if he wanted. But I think pretty clearly he's not going to do that. So one more question about the story you know, in a way, it is a rite around, right. It's like one of those stories that a journalist writes when they don't have
access to the central subject of the story. Frank Sinatra has a call by Gaytalise, Right, that's the famous example of that kind of story, where Gaytalise wasn't able to interview Frank Sinatra, and so he had to write this story where he basically talked to everybody around Frank Sinatra and ended up with this really rich portrait of who he was. This story is kind of like that because
you didn't get an interview with the main subject of it. Afterwards, you didn't get his answers to those questions that we have about how it felt to miss the put On sixteen, to miss the put On eighteen, and to kick away a chance at winning his first major in ten years. Those are the questions. Those are the main questions that would have been asked and that he would have addressed had he spoken to the media. You say in the story that you understand why he got out of there.
Why don't we unpack that a little bit? What did you make of Rory leaving without talking to the media.
It's funny because it's in the moment you're like, I understand it because it's so intense and you just want to escape.
I'm sure.
Then afterward you're a little bit like, well, all the other people who did this stuck around, and if it were me, you can only judge by yourself. And it's very It's almost silly to say if it were me, because how can you put yourself in that person's position. You no, you're nothing like them. But what I would hope is that I would have done it, as painful as it was. I would have hoped, especially the biggest thing for me was I would have hoped for him
that he would have congratulated Bryson. It almost makes me like old fashion because people will say to that and they have said in response, well, what does it matter. Bryson doesn't need it, He'll just say it the next day. But for something, for me, there's something about the ceremony and the ritual of showing sportsmanship in that moment, even though it hurts like crazy, that I find valuable. Maybe I'm a sentimentalist or something, but it seemed beneath him not to do it.
I'd like That's the thing.
The media is the secondary thing, not as big a deal as that, but still there's again, there's something like dignified and noble about understanding what your job is and understanding what the rituals are even when you're really hurting and stepping up and doing those that. I think, so the two things are. I understand why he didn't, but I think in a perfect world he would have. But I also don't feel like lecturing him over it, do
you know what I mean? Like it's yeah, it's like he should have done it, probably, and I wish he would have, and I wonder if.
He wishes he would have.
He didn't, but that's also understandable, and I don't think anybody should really judge him too harshly for it.
I love the way you put that, because if we get too self righteous about it, specifically about the media thing, you know, greeting and congratulating Bryce, and he ended up doing that in a statement later, but obviously it would have been nice if he had done it in the moment and then skipped out and not talked to the media. I think this story probably would have been different after that.
But if we lecture him about it, then we're sort of attributing to ourselves a kind of importance that maybe we don't really have anymore in these situations, because we're always going to have a lot of venues and a lot of opportunities to talk about this experience in the future that don't involve a traditional press conference. And I'm of two minds about that. As somebody who makes podcasts, I'm glad that we have access to players to talk to them in this kind of long form format and
get to know them in that way. At the same time, the press conference is a pretty important institution and it's there for a reason. And if we let players off relatively easy for skipping the press conference, then you know, in the future, what does the press conference mean?
I suppose totally. Yeah, And so a couple thoughts on that.
The thing you said about it being a rite around, I think is a sign of the times a little bit in the sense that even if he had done a press conference, I don't know how much we were going to get he would have been would have been like very quick. The thing he probably would have done if he stayed for the media was like I'm going to talk to TV for two questions that I'm out of here, and that would have changed the narrative too, would have been that easy, but he wouldn't have done
much anyway. And so for me the whole time it was like, and not just at the uscus open, but broadly, it's like, when you're writing, what is the unique way that you're going to do it? And the answer not just for writing his voice, right. So this is why podcasts are thriving, because you can bring your voice to it and your personality and people like listening to videos or you know, YouTube content or whatever, and with writing it's the same thing of how am I going to
distinguish this? And so even going into that, I didn't even have to tell myself it's just on conscious at this point, if you're counting on good quotes and the presser to write a good story, you're dead.
You know you're not going to get them.
Like, so your story has to be good, and in this case, like you want it to rise to the emotional occasion because the emotions are so strong. And so so that's probably like a little bit about the right round of why it seems like that, because even with the press conference, it was always going to be like that a little bit, and maybe it would be different with the with the winner with Bryson, where you get a bunch of quotes and you can watch him and follow him.
But with a loser like.
That, it's like you better have something unique to bring to the table, and then yeah, oh yeah. So with the media thing, the only point I would emphasize because this is a common thing where people are like, oh, the media is whining because he didn't like, he didn't pay his respects. But like, we don't like the media, you know, I mean people you know exactly who I'm talking about, the kind of people who are like that.
But oh yeah, yeah, I mean, well they're they're they're on they're all on Twitter, right.
They're all on Twitter, they all blue checks.
They But no, I think, uh, I think the point is it's not for me anyway. It's not about like my feelings are hurt as a media member that he wouldn't talk to me, right, Like we know who we are, Like we're not like that's that's not the issue.
The issue is.
It's hard to say this to that sounding high and mighty, but the issue is there are ways to conduct yourself in these situations that pay respect, not just to the media, but to the whole infrastructure of the game as entertainment, and these things you go through, and it's almost more important to observe these rituals and these and these acts of respect when you're when it's hard to do so, because if you only observe them when it's easy, then
it's not really even a thing, right. It's just like it's like if you're in a relationship with someone and you're like, yeah, ninety percent of the time he's loving and kind, but when he's mad, he's horrible, You're like, well, then it's he's not really loving.
And god, you're right.
I mean, it's like I'm speaking in weird metaphors here, But the idea is there's something meaningful about doing that in that moment and going through it as painful as it is, because it shows what kind of human being you are. It shows that you have an ability to absorb pain and to understand the bigger picture, and and it makes you a good role model as well. And
we go back to van Derveldt. He just like sat there talking, you know, and that he just sat there talking to the media in intense pain, probably but keeping in perspective, and there's just something about it.
That makes me like people who do that.
And that doesn't mean I don't like Rory because he's done it forever and he just had one bad moment that's entirely forgivable.
I'm just making the point of why I wish he had done it.
Yeah, Yeah, And you know what do we think of when we think of the nineteen ninety six Masters. Greg Norman had the advantage of having played with Nick Faldough and so he was able to stand there and congratulate him in the moment. But when I think of that tournament, I think of those two men embracing afterwards and kind of starting the healing process.
Right.
There was something really fulfilling about seeing that after what was a part hard to watch day of golf.
And yeah, and we.
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In any case, I want to go back ten years now to twenty fourteen when you were out on tour writing articles and preparing for your books Slaying the Tiger, which I go back to all the time and steal from all the time. So thank you for writing it, because such a great document of the state of men's professional golf at that moment in history. Rory was clearly a huge part of that book and the story of
that season. What was your first impression of Rory when you started covering the tour in person day to day in twenty fourteen. Do you remember how you first kind of responded to him.
Yeah, I think always like a lot of people respond to him, where he is very charming, very smart. It's really fun to watch press conferences with him. Always has a thoughtful answer. And one thing, as you know, as we develop our long long theory of Rory, as we as the years pass and we and we get our you know, our consummate idea of what this man is. One thing I keep going back to recently, but which I didn't have in my mind then, is.
I think he's a very good actor.
And that that makes it sound like I'm saying he's insincere in some way, And I don't mean that. I think he's very sincere. But I think he's got a face that people like and a voice that people like, just naturally gifted with that in the way some people aren't. And he is good at projecting sincerity, and he is good at sort of seeming like a very nice guy. Uh, and that, and again I'm not saying he's not any
of those things. But let's be real about how much the image matters and how much somebody's face matters, right, I mean some things that are superficial, that are baked into us from years of evolution for some reason. As human beings, we look at a face and a voice like Rory's and we're like, bumbs up, you pass the smell test or whatever. So I think like that when I think back now, it's like you fall under Rory's spell.
As a journalist, I think pretty pretty easily. And it didn't mean I didn't cover him fairly or anything like that, but it's just that that human impulse of this. I really like this guy, and I really like the way he carries himself. I like everything about him, and you know, that's why he has so much attention on him. That and the fact that he's a great golfer, obviously, But there's a combination of elements there.
What's the Rory win in twenty fourteen that you find yourself thinking about the most?
Definitely Valhalla the most.
It's that was the day where and it paints a perfect contrast to to what it is now. That's a day where he started in the lead. You know, he had won the British Open that year, he had won the Firestone WGC in Akron a week before. Comes in and he has a bad start to Sunday and it's this brutally hot, humid day in the Ohio River Valley in Louisville, and he, yeah, has a bad He falls behind. Ricky and Phil are a group ahead, high fiving, having the time of their lives, like they're both playing well.
They go in the lead.
He's with Burn Wisberger who's kind of just frittering it away, and Rory is. It gets to a point on the sixth tee, I think, where everything's backed up because there had been rained earlier in the day, and so backed up that he he and burn Visberg get on the tee with Ricky and Phil. Ricky and Phil haven't teed off either, so they're just standing there and Ricky and Phil are attempting this awkward conversation and with Berne Weisberger
and all that stuff. Rory just goes and sits by himself and stares ahead with the most fierce look I've ever seen. Doesn't say word one for them, including hello. And I wrote about this in the book, and he later Paul Kimmaged, the Irish writer later asked him about it in an interview and he was like, yeah, that's exactly right. So it wasn't just me. It wasn't just me mind reading or anything. So we have independent confirmation.
But it was just such a fierce competitive look and you're like, man, this guy is like this guy is intense. And so it goes on, and you know, things that continue to go. So so he gets to the tenth hole, and this is an other thing I think about a lot. Tenth hole is a par five that nobody has reached in two all day.
It's very long.
He has a great drive and he's gonna go for it because Ricky Birdie's ahead. So now he's down three or something like that, or two, I think down three, so he's like, I gotta go for it. Takes out a three wood, and what he's trying to do.
Is draw it.
But he yanks the ball left, and there's a road on the left, and so if you draw the ball after you yank it left, obviously that's going right into the road. Instead, the ball cuts and it fades and it comes to rest whatever ten feet from the hole, and he makes.
The eagle putt.
And I think about that now because it's like, those are the days when the gods were on your side, do you know what I mean?
And there were.
You can think of a billion examples, and everybody, unless you're Tiger winning by fifteen strokes or Rory, you know, winning at his US Open, unless you're that, you need
luck on your side. But sometimes it seems like that, like there's an active decision, like it's actively accruing to one person where it's like the gods were on his side in that moment, and he made that eagle putt and then he did the rest himself, you know, or like he had a great back nine and he goes and he wills his way into eight, that whole story where it's going to be dark, and he forces his way and everybody has to bow to his will because he's going to hit up and he wins his major
and he's like the dominant force, like he's just bent this place to his will. He's crushed his competitors, He's Genghis Khan, He's everything. And then you fast forward to yesterday and it's like every time Bryson hit in the wiregrass he got a perfect lie. Every time Roy did, or at least the last time Roy did, he gets that, you know, he misses the two foot pot, which is kind of unlucky.
There has to be a little bit unlucky. It's just like it's like something changed in twenty fourteen. Man.
The gods were with him in Valhalla and then they kind of then they abandoned him or something.
Do you see it.
As something outside him has changed, or do you think that that edge that he had in twenty fourteen mentally has not necessarily gone away, but just changed. I'm curious about the evolution of Rory's personality, not just you know, luck, which is part of it, but ultimately you can't know
anything about it. Is there something about that that fierceness that you saw on the six t at Valhalla and that alpha dog mentality to use the horrible cliched term, that he demonstrated on the eighteenth hole, playing playing up, making sure that he finished that night. Is there something in there that's shifted in him in the past ten years.
You'd have to think so, because while on one hand, you can say this guy, you know all winning, Clark just had to have one double bogie, Bryson Deshambo just had to have one double bogie and he's winning. You know, while you could say that, and that's true. So there's that luck element involved. We also have seen I feel like a ton of classic more classic Roory things that so I felt the USO Miners wasn't a classic Roy thing that was a brand new thing that we've ever seen.
The classic Roory thing is you fade on an earlier day, or you fade on an earlier day, or you can't make a putt all Sunday right like St. Andrew's, or you fade and then on Sunday you shoot a sixty three.
But it's never really like a threat, you know what I mean.
Those are the kind of like the prototypical. These are like the patterns that you see, and those, to some degree they have to speak of losing your edge a little bit. But even then I'm cautious because nobody else is winning a ton of majors in a row, you know what I mean. Like it's it's not easy to win a major, and so like we're so hyper focused on Rory that we're like, oh, look how many bad
Saturday rounds he's had. Well, if we're hyper focused on anyone else, we probably say the same thing if we really drill down. It's just that we notice more about Rory because he's such a you know, magnetic kind of figure. So it's hard to answer that question. I guess I'm being wobbly here, but surely the proof is in the pudding to some extent, Like he won a bunch, now he hasn't. I mean, you can't find a way to win that has to overtime and over the larger and
larger sample size. That has to mean something, I think.
Sure you know.
And there's also a possibly less romantic story to tell here about Rory's game, what his edge was in twenty fourteen, just in terms of driving off the tea performance, and your colleague Luke Herdnien probably would have some kind of smart answer to this. But watching Valhalla in twenty fourteen, or even Hoylake in twenty fourteen where Rory won the Open as well, you know, it jumps out how much of an advantage he had off the tea. He was longer than pretty much everybody else, and anybody that he
wasn't longer than he was straighter than yep. And it seems like that advantage has evaporated over the past ten years, probably because of a combination of equipment changes and instruction track man stuff. Everybody's being hot to hit their driver like Rory was hitting his driver when he came on the scene and the early twenty tens, and so obviously
that advantage isn't there as much anymore. Do you think there's something there that has that has changed as well, where his competition has caught up a little bit and he hasn't found an extra thing to differentiate himself.
No, I think you're right.
It's funny about it, though, is that if you look at him, if you look at the stats, he is still always really high.
And like strokes gained off the tee. That's really point to.
The point of that he was still like super dominant and super like he's always at the top of the leaderboard.
But I think your point is right of like you can still be number one, but the gap can be has has shrunk, right, so the difference I think your point is exactly right of like what would be like the gap between one and number ten back in twenty fourteen would be profound and worth a couple of strokes a tournament, where now it's a matter of you know, it's a matter of smaller margins and that reduces your advantage.
We just had a conversation today and I think we might do a piece about it where it's like Rory says, he's a better player now than he was then, and so it's like, let's check it out, like let's look at the numbers, and I think the conclusion was he was better off the tee then, but he's actually better now in close inside one hundred and twenty yards or something like that. So it's but again, even then, I think the margins are really small and it's hard to draw like a definite conclusion.
So yeah, I don't.
I think there's there's probably stuff about his game, but my god, when you look at his Wikipedia right, the Wikipedia yellow, he's always there. It's like, it's not like the guy has fallen off the map, right, It's not like he's Keith and Bradley, where you win a major and then you're not quite the same after that. He's he's been elite. He's continued to be elite. The only comparison point is like Tony Final, except without majors. You
remember Tony Final. For the longest time, couldn't win, but he kept coming back and coming back, and he's always finishing top ten and then he broke through. It's like that's the only thing you can look at where it's like the sheer consistency of continuing to be good despite having really traumatic is too strong a word, but really tough situations where you can't close.
Yeah, I mean, maybe one way to put it is that he's giving himself just as many chances to win as he used to, but those like six seven shot victories that he used to get where he would just run away and hide, those don't seem to happen as much anymore. Those weeks where he's just in totally dominant form off the tee, there's usually somebody else or a couple of other people who are in kind of similar
form with their driving. And so, you know, ten years ago, some of these majors that he has been close to winning, maybe those would have been situations where nobody would have been in his area on the leaderboard.
See.
But it's so funny because I think it was Friday or Saturday night. I was watching the Golf Channel. McGinley and Page McKenzie were talking and it was I think it might have been Page McKenzie who said, I feel like we haven't seen a Rory final round that's felt perfect, or a major round that's felt perfect.
And I mean it's high standard.
But I took her point and McGinley then said, he's you're right, and he's got to do what he did at the Wells.
Fargo this year where he was just perfect, you know what I mean.
It was like any blew Sanders Shoffley out of the water and what's nuts is that through thirteen holes, that was Sunday at Pinehurst, he was making potts, right, he remember the puts he couldn't make at lacc or at St.
Andrews. He was making those potts. He was biden. You know, nothing's perfect.
We know we use that word with quotes around it, but he was perfect through thirteen holes and then it unraveled. And that the thing is the unraveling, you know, right, that's the difference, and that's where you have to say, there's something tangible there that didn't used to be there.
Looking at this historically, obviously, just looking at majors is a limited way to look at a player's career and to assess their place in the pantheon of golfers. But it is interesting to look at other four time major winners in the modern era. You've got Raymond Floyd and Ernie Els Okay, five time major winners, Sevy Biastero's Brooks Koepka.
Six time major winners would be Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo, Phil Nicholson, yep Is there a group there that feels right for Rory Will Will it just kind of feel wrong if he finishes out his career with four majors in the way that it kind of felt wrong for Greg Norman to finish out his career with with two.
Yeah, right, doesn't it doesn't the sixth group feel more correct to you?
I mean it does, Nick Faldo, Phil Nicholson, Lee Trevina. Yeah, it seems almost almost like he's better than them, but not that much better. But but but yeah, I mean no, that that's the one that feels right, and it is contextually it's important keep in mind a lot of those guys want a lot of majors after thirty five, which is where Rory is now, so he's not done or
anything like that. But yeah, yeah, to end up four, I mean, it's funny where you're like, you're justin Rose, Adam Scott, maybe Sergio.
You know, it's weird to finish it one.
It feels like you now four is a It's like, it's funny to be like four doesn't feel like enough because four is a lot, right, But it doesn't. But you're right, it doesn't feel like enough for him and it's not enough frankly, and he would agree with that. I think, Yeah, that's so that six group feels he definitely feels better than Brooks and who is the other guy?
Five? Oh Sevy? I mean, yea.
Sevy maybe didn't win as many as uh yeah and such people might recall given his stature.
Totally and he and he was you know, he had a share of heartbreaks as well, a couple of augusta but yeah, so yeah, yeah, I think that that sixth group makes the most sense. There's time left, but it's been It's funny to keep saying it year after year.
It's been. It's been a while. So is it is it over dramatic at this point to to ask how he can move forward from here? Like what he what he can do? Or is he just going to come back and it's going to feel like you know, we were we were just being too melodramatic after that loss. People come back, people forget, memories fade and we can move on. Or is there do you think there's like harder work to be done on his part to get back into major championship contending form.
That gets yeah, and that gets into like the boy it's so tough to say, right, I mean, it gets into where it's very difficult to know because a lot depends on him, and you know, I think In his statement, he talked about how resilient he is and he's gonna he'll probably need some of that.
The only thing I would.
Say is that I think I do think as you get older and things like this happen among professional golfers, I think scar tissue builds up a little bit.
And so.
Just like there would have been Scar's issue for him to overcome had he won at Pinehurst and he didn't overcome it, there's going to be the same thing at the next time he has to do this.
It's never going to be easy, and he can do it. All it takes is a good shot.
All it takes is some luck, right, Like you know the guy, the guy that you're competing with makes a quad or something, you know, just just a little break from the universe, which he doesn't seem to get anymore. Yeah, but he'll there's it's just not it's just never gonna be easy after this. He's gonna have to work really hard for it. And yeah, but I yeah, it's his willpower, right, It's it comes down to Will.
Shane.
Thank you for coming on the podcast. It's always fun to talk to you, and let's do it again sometime maybe in another year or so.
Awesome. Thank you Garrett, it's been great.
This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by PJ Clark. Thank you, PJ. If you could do something real quick, big favor for me, Go to wherever you're listening to this and leave a rating or review. If you're listening to this and Spotify, go there Apple Podcasts. That's great. Just give us a little bit of feedback and a rating. It helps us find new listeners and it also gives us some useful feedback, some things to think about as we try to make this podcast better
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