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 Frida egg egg, fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am here today. I've got a great episode today. I've got a interview with Kevin Cook about his book Tiger Slam, which goes into detail about the two thousand, two thousand and one seasons of Tiger Woods and his remarkable I think sometimes, honestly, I think sometimes we forget
about all the remarkable Tiger feeds. But winning four majors in a row is when you just start to think about like the feasibility of doing this completely ridiculous, like this would not happen today. I don't think it will. And there are so many Tiger records that are seemingly untouchable and unfathomable in today's modern era of golf. So we talk with Kevin Cook about that. Also, this is a big episode. Garrett Morrison, former co host of this podcast.
His new podcast, Designing Golf launches this week.
So Garrett put.
Together three episodes, so if you go over check out his feed Designing Golf, there are three episodes to make it easy to give you guys a little bit of a flavor of what Garrett's podcast is going to be. Like, we have his episode with Jeff Ogilvie in this podcast today, so that'll be the lead segment of this podcast is Garrett's interview with Jeff Ogilvey. It happened while he was in Australia this winter and they talk about the four
courses that most influenced Jeff Ogilvy. So really fun conversation and gives you a little flavor of his podcast. So there are three episodes in there. I'm on one of them. Pj our producer is on the other, and that podcast will roll out once every two weeks. So that's Garrett's feed. Go subscribe on Apple or Spotify wherever you get your podcasts, so you never missed one of those episodes and you'll get a flavor of that in a few minutes. First, I was going to talk a little bit about my
on the ground TGL thoughts, just some general TGL thoughts. Brendan, myself and PJ were there. We're going to have a full breakdown on the shot on start of going just a couple thoughts on TGL. We're four weeks in and I think we've got we've seen. I think it's been a mixed bag. I think it's really hard to just launch a product, a brand new version of a sport to an audience of a million plus people on ESPN.
You know, usually the way things get on ESPN is that there they build a fan base over time and then ESPN looks at it and it's like, wow, that's really interesting.
Let's let's try that.
Obviously, you have the basis of golf, and the reason that this is on ESPN really is you have Rory McElroy and Tiger Woods behind this, the two biggest names in sport. So you have this kind of new concept and there have been kinks. It's not been perfect, but this is like any new product, like you have to work out the kinks, and they have the toughs of working this out in front of a million people. So I was in attendance last night, which was Monday. That
was the Jupiter Links versus Boston common match. I kind of went in as a fan. I did not go and do the media the typical media thing. I wanted to see what it was like to be a fan. Honestly, I had a good time. I had a good time. I know the ticket prices are really expensive. I don't necessarily think it's like a great ticket value, but I
thought it was actually easier to follow. It made more sense on in person than on television, and I thought I kind of thought it was going to be the opposite because in the arena, you don't get the banter, you don't get the miked up players. You can't hear them, like it's not like they're on a speaker in there.
But I could see everything and it just, you know, I think, like overarching my big thought, my big takeaway from going to see it person, the broadcast is really doing this product no help, Like I don't know what's going on.
Like, there were a lot of cool features.
There's a lot of data that you can see when you're in person. One of the things I liked the most about it is they have like the hole laid out on a big screen next to the simulator and you can see exactly the line of players taking and it's like little things like this the broadcast isn't showing,
and it just helps you understand what's going on. It's something that you don't really get in regular golf, right, Like, there's no other version of golf where I can actually see exactly where Tiger Woods is aiming and where the ball goes. Like, I think that's a really interesting thing even for a common fan. And it's really cool when they hit it a little offline or you can see exactly where they're aiming on a shot into the green. So anyways, I think, like just in general, my big
overarching thought is the broadcast really needs to improve. And again this has never been done before. This is a hard, a tall task. You have to figure it out. To me, it just seems like there's way too much stuff in the broadcast and too little emphasis and attention on making
sure that we cover the sport. In this case, I do it's maybe a little bit of a leap to call this a sport, but there's too little emphasis on explaining what's happening in the game, which is why somebody's going to tune in to watch this thing.
Is the game?
I don't think anybody's going to tune in to hear some corny banter between Tom Kim and Cam Young. You know, when when NYGC squares off against Juweplanes, I don't think anybody's tuning.
In for that.
At the end of the day, people are tuning in to watch these superstars play golf, to hit golf shots. So that's got to be the focus of the broadcast. And I rewatched the broadcast when I got home. It's just a night and day difference, and I thought, like, you know, watching it there really and obviously it was a competitive match. I think that's one of the other things that's another big takeaway that we can get to right now, is like when the matches are competitive, it's
obviously a lot better. And this is with any sport. Nobody likes watching the clock run out on a thirty point deficit. In college basketball, that's a painful last ten minutes of a college basketball game. And the TJL, frankly, for the first three weeks was uncompetitive. They were just blowouts. Now are we going to see more blowouts and more
close matches? I think, you know, Jupe Blinks clearly played much better than they did when they got like completely blown out to water in the second week, and that close match made it really exciting. I think there is like a genuine excitement of watching Tiger and Rory play one hole against each other. That's we don't get to
see super scar stars square off. And that's one of the things I'm wondering about with this is you know, what are like when we look at this at the end of this year, what are the best things about the league? To me, one of the best things about
the league is you can see these superstars match up. Now, my question would be would be better as like, you know, if the back half of it is like a three hole match with two players and then you know, two man alternate shot for three holes or something, you know, thinking about a little outside the box of just singles, because I think the single section has been a little dragging And the biggest appeal of this I think would be seeing a three hole match between Rory McElroy and
Tiger Woods after they play their triples format that alternate hut format. I think people would be super into that. And could you imagine like a three hole match with Rory and Tiger the last three holes are between the top players and that's what's settling last night's match not you know, the way the formatting worked out. It was Kegan Bradley versus Tom Kim on the last hole. So I think there's just some small things in terms of
like the gameplay that the golf holes. I've been pleasantly surprised with some of the ways the golf holes have played out. I'm not like a huge fan of many of them. I think we had Augie pisa on here a couple of weeks ago. I think he really understood what the idea of virtual golf holes can be. But I mean Adam Scott talked about it. There are some hard approaches that this is one of the things that this league can do that frankly real golf courses can't
do anymore because of equipment. Is these golf courses can put long irons into players hands. I think the biggest thing that they from the golf course and gameplay standpoint, outside of like formatting, that they really need to hone in on is that the green is whack. I mean, it is not good. I think it's the undulations need to be reworked for the next year. It's very, very severe.
If you were playing this this green in real life, you'd be like, holy shit, this is completely overcooked, and so that just you know, the fixed nature of it with the bunkers, like it can't move right or left. For those that haven't watched this, they have like a fixed green and you play into the green from inside.
Like forty yards.
You're basically just chipping around this green. But like the green is so severe it doesn't allow for differentiation. I think if the green and they have like movable jacks that can change slopes, but the sections are so severe they Watching it in person, I was like, wait, is
this green even moving? On the telecast you can't see it, but like, apparently it is so like from my perspective, I actually think that if you went way flatter on the green, it would very much improve the gameplay because you could use those jacks to make really varied contours. Right now, there are like three really distinct sections because
the slope is so big. But if you flattened it a little, then you could get that kind of ripley potato chippy contours where you could make waves and contours in all different spots. So that's another takeaway. I think that Week four was a big Like after week three, it kind of was like, where's this going? I think the biggest question in the room is how long vleish
does this have? I think if we have more nights like last night where it was really exciting came down to the wire, I think there is a real potential here. I think the last thing to hit on is that it is appealing to a younger generation, which is something that golf has tried to do for years, you know, But the leash question, you know, how long does ESPN have patients? How long will they continue to put it
on primetime television? Because that that's the big win here for golf is that it's it's primetime television during the week in the winter, a time when people are home and sitting inside and are looking for something to watch.
So I think this is overall, like I there are a lot it's a divisive topic TGL. I think there's a lot.
Of things that you can criticize about what they're doing, but there are also a lot of things that we should be hoping for workout because it is a great platform opportunity for golf to appeal to new demographic and reach new fans. So yeah, I think you know. The big thing for me is the broadcast has to get better. But where it's being broadcasted and the time is being broadcasted is the probably the best placement golf's ever had. That's enough on TGL. Let's get over to Garrett's interview
with Jeff Ogilvie. As a reminder, this is the new Designing Golf podcast. We decided we wanted to launch it over here, give you guys a little flavor of what's going on. If you want to listen to the other ones, just look up Designing Golf on wherever you get your podcasts and you'll be able to find this.
Subscribe.
Big thanks to Jeff for coming on the podcast, and congrats to Garrett Morrison on launching his new podcast. On the back half of this will be Kevin Cook with just some astonishing Tiger anecdotes from his book Tiger Slam.
Jeff, I gave you an assignment for this podcast. I asked you to think about four courses that have shaped you or influenced you in some significant way. They don't have to be architecturally great courses or anything like that, but I had do you think about that subject before we talked. Was that kind of a fun assignment or was it a pain that I asked you to do this?
No, it was It was interesting actually because I mean you would instantly go to childhood and growing up and obviously grew up in this area, and then other stuff. I've played overseas, But does it really influence you if you haven't played at a lot of times, you know? So, I've got one from over season three from rod here.
Actually, oh interesting, Okay. I was wondering what percentage might be in the Melbourne area, which is where we are right now. We're actually filming this at Victoria Golf Club. We've just played around out there. Absolutely delightful course and one of many really really good courses in the Australian sand belt. So you have kind of a rich array
to choose from among childhood courses. I would imagine a lot of people their childhood courses might not be good courses, but for you like it, there might be some some of the world's greatest courses among those that you played when you were pretty young.
I mean, I was so lucky I grew up I don't know, two miles from this spot, probably just over the other side.
Of Royal Melbourne.
I was about probably a drive of five on from the fence at Royal Melbourne. So and I was playing golf at a very young age. And when I got my first little golf clubs, I was chipping around in the back garden with Dad following around, and then I think he saw that I was really interested, so I got the little half cut down set out of the mixed barrel, you know, like back in the old days when the pro shops had the loose clubs and the
mixed barrels of clubs. Dad made me up a little half set of those, and he used to take me to Sandy which is now Sandy Lynx, but it was Centeringham Golf Gold Golf Club, I guess public golf course most Sundays, I seem to remember. He'd go and play his club golf on Saturday. He was a member at Yariara at first, and he ended up being a member at Victoria, so he would go play on Saturdays, and then Sunday was dad n Iday. And this was from probably seven or eight. We were doing this what felt
like to me every weekend. I'm sure it wasn't. When you're a kid, your memories are a bit I think so Sandy, I would have said, I think I told you today.
I think.
Eighty of my first one hundred rounds of golf were probably at Sandy at that age. Because that age, public golf is the only access you could.
Back then.
It's a little different now, but accessing these sand belts and the private golf clubs in Melbourne was pretty much impossible until you were sort of fourteen fifteen sixteen. So the first course that I ever really sort of played a lot and fell in love with it was my home course with Sandy, which is right next door to Roal Melbourne. And at the same time while that was happening, there was tournaments. This is in the eighties. Sort of from early eighties through to sort of early nineties, there
was a tournament at Royal Melbourne. It felt like every year. There was Austrain Open. In eighty four, there was I think the Train Open in eighty five, this Train Open in eighty seven. There was a tournament called the bar Centennial Classic in nineteen eighty eight, which was half a million dollars to win in nineteen eighty eight, so it was a mega tournament. It was the biggest tournament in the world. I think that year Nicholas came Norman game.
Fred Kupeles ended up losing in a playoff to a guy called Roger Davis.
In Australian.
Crenshaw was there, Payne Stewart was there, Tom Watson like everybody. Watson won the Australian Open in eighty four. Like the who's who of golf were here in the eighties, at right next door to where I grew up. So I used to sneak up the side of the fence at Royal Melbourne and jump over the fence to get into these golf tournaments to watch these guys play. So I would play golf at Sandy, but I would watch the best players in the world player Royal Melbourne. So those
two sort of go hand in hand. One and I was playing a lot and the other one I was watching the best from the world all play. And then eventually I became a caddy at Royal Melbourne where they still had They don't really have caddy programs here anymore.
There's caddies that you can get if you.
Sort of order them in then they will caddy at all the courses around. But back then they were the last Melbourne Course to have a caddy program, and I was, I think thirteen. You could start becoming a caddy and you would caddy on the weekends. You would turn up and you would sit out the back of the pro shop and be beckoned when you were required and.
Go caddy for one of the members.
And we've got ten dollars I remember, which I thought was all the money in the world, but maybe not as much money as I felt like five hours out dragging someone's clubs around.
And.
So I cardyed a little bit.
But the best deal about being a caddy was they let us play the East Course at Royal Melbourne after four thirty full access. You could do whatever you want because the course was empty. None of the members went out there after four thirty. So at four twenty nine Mon would drop me off at Roll Melbourne and I would go play the East Course every day in summer.
For years.
Were anywhere we went anywhere it allowed, anywhere near the West Course, because that was sort of the deal with caddies, which which at the time everybody kind of has always given it. Well, the West Course is better than the East,
but it's really not that different. They're really great. The best part about the East Course for me was six of the composite holes, and the composite course is the one that they played the tournaments on were on the East Course, so I got to play these holes that I'd seen Nicholas and Norman and Tom Watson and all.
These guys play.
So those two courses especially were the beginning of my golf I had the local municipal public course and I had one of the best golf courses of the world.
It's right next door to each other. For the experience, it was pretty amazing.
So your first two of four would be Sandy Golf Links or Sandringham.
It was Sandringham Golf Club golf course at that point. Yeah, and then it evolved in the Sandy Lynx Yeah, and.
The East Course at Royal Melbourne. Well, let's talk about Sandy a little bit more for people who aren't familiar with this area or that course. What is kind of the role of that course in this area. What's the course like, what are some of the basics about Sandy Golfling.
Yeah, well, I guess it's a city course owned by the council or it's it's government land, so it's it's a public access golf course always been pretty cheap. It had the best pro shop in Melbourne at the time, back when pro shops were really, really exciting. Now we've got Taylor Made, Titlist, Galloway stricks On and a few little bits and hangers on, But back then you'd have all the it had sort of there was fifty different companies that made golf clubs.
Back you'd have Links and like Honmar was in.
There, and the Mazino stuff, and we'd have exotic Japanese stuff and all the different Ballada balls, like the rec Stars and all the different stuff, and all the gloves, and they'd have foot Joy Classics in there, and all the pink putters which we used to bore over and the pink wedges were really cool in the day. And they'd have Walter Hagen Crenshaw grinds, you know, remember those, the blades and Persimmon woods, and it had everything.
So we'd hang out in the pro shop after the round.
Dad loved to pro shop well as well, so it had a great shop that was sort of the we're here at the Ray Drummonds, which is the big golf superstore America's like Nevada Bab's or something like that. That was one of those, that was one of the original, one of those where you would go to buy golf clubs.
So it was a great club from that respect.
So it was sort of a public golf shop, but it was also a public access golf course.
That was very busy.
You'd get on the phone seven o'clock in the morning on Monday to try to get a tea time, a good tea time on Saturday morning, like all the great busy public courses around the world.
And it was.
Not sand belt level golf at that point. It's sort of become that way now and I'll get to that point, get there. But it was sort of where everybody could go play golf because surrounded with all these great sand belt courses, they were all super.
Private and if you didn't know a member, you couldn't get on.
That was a way to play golf on the sand Belt for everybody, you know, and pretty cheap. I think I used to I used to be able to play nine holes. I remember when I was really young, we could nine holes during the week was two dollars, which is pretty accessible for anybody. I mean, it's it is two dollars isn't what two dollars used to be, but it was probably the equivalent of four or five dollars now.
Thirty or so years ago, we could go out and play nine holes with our friends after school and it would cost us two dollars.
It was amazing.
And when you say that it's next door to Royal Melbourne, it's not like down the street or you know, a little ways away. It's right in there. There's a part of the West Course that's kind of kind of pokes into the property at Sandy a little bit, so it's really yeah. Yeah, it's part of the same kind of land that all these great courses are part of, which is kind of amazing for it.
It's kind of the same.
Like I like I said, if you could if you look at the Google Maps, especially when you do it on the satellite version, and you just see all the green and all the golf course around here with Victoria Sandy and Royal Melbourne, and Royal Melbourne has thirty six holls. There's seventy two holes of golf right in the middle
of suburbia, all touching each other. It's pretty incredible. Yeah, So the gates of Sandy are directly opposite the gates of Royal Melbourne and I used to have a great cafe too, and it was used to be we'd watch all the pros like normand and these guys hit balls on the range and they would go and have lunch. This is pre when this is pre pros didn't get
looked after at that point. They would all walk across to Sandy to the cafe to have lunch while they were playing the Australian Open and then come back and play there round at the Australian Open. So Norman would be walking down the drive at Roll Melbourne, across the road up the driveway at Sandy to go have his lunch before his round. So this is sort of how I grew up. With Sandy being the public access version of the sand Belt. It was just sort of your
introduction to the game. Really, if you want to get interested in golf, come play Sandy for a while, and if you really get into it, you'll meet a bunch of people and you'll end up knowing a few people who are members at one of these places, and then you can come play you can join one of these clubs. So it's been a really important part of the landscape because golf can be quite exclusive and in Melbourne aspects of golf is very exclusive and sort of closed door
and hard to get in. But right next door is an open arms policy. Everybody can come in, from little kids to old people to in time you've ever played golf, to beginners. Everybody can go there and play pretty reasonably high quality golf course for the price, right in the heart of some.
Of the best golf court golf in the world. It's incredible.
Now your firm OCM has had an opportunity to do a bit of work at Sandy. Can you tell me a little bit about what you did there.
Yeah, So it was a very it was a big project on sort of master planning sort of sense in the Golf Australia. Who's our version of the USGA and the PGA of Australia sort of got together with the state government of Victoria and wanted to create sort of a head office for those guys, a center point for the high performance golfers in the state, so great training facilities and they wanted to build it all in the heart of the sand Belt, which is right across there from Royal Melbourne.
Role Melbourne was.
Involved because they now sort of have they operate Sandy Lynx, so they help maintain the course, look after the greens, look after the fairways, so there's an efficiency there with all the machines and stuff, and it's right there across the road, so it's kind of Ron Melbourne's kind of looking after fifty four holes. So we got a chance. And part of the development is they wanted to build a driving range, one end for public driving range and the other end for the elite golfers.
Like I said, so we lost the first and.
The ninth holes at the traditional golf course and that became the new driving range aslong with a big old clubhouse they built with all the gyms and then all the admin officers for basically golf is run in Australia from that building at Sandy Lynx. So we had to
now fit eighteen holes. We thought, maybe could we bid twelve holes, do we do nine holes and a little path three course or there was lots of sort of options on the table and it seemed like the appetite was really for let's have an eighteen hole golf course. So we then had to fit eighteen holes into the spot where sixteen holes were just in, so we had to make it a bit shorter.
There's lots of path threes. It's quite a short course.
But we built sand belt greens, especially sand belt greens, Raw Melbourne like greens, with Rawal Melbourne bunkers and the same turf, the same construction and turf as Royal Melbourne because they were going to be looking after it, and so there was an efficiency and having the same eighteen greens over the road. So now it's even better than
what I grew up with. I grew up with typical municipal conditions as you imagined in the eighties, as anyone who did that can probably remember to Now you've got eighteen Royal Melbourne level greens that are firm, that bunkers cut right up to the edge like you'll get on the sand belt. So you have a true sand belt experience for forty dollars on a weekend probably for a round of golf and quite short, lots of path threes and a really really fun golf course to play it.
It's the most it's an even better entry to the game, entry and exit from golf beginning place to learn how to play. There's enough there for all the elite players who like playing there. There there's sand belt type green so you can have some really tough pins and a lot of slopes and if you want to get good at playing sand belt golf, that is a really good place to sort of learn your craft. It's like a
small version of the Biggert sand Belt courses. So it's it was a great place when I was a kid, but it's evolved and there's a great driving range, and I said, all the great players will hang out there every morning and stuff and get better. And as I said, it's sort of the heartbeat of Australian golf all in the one spot, which is very appropriate. That's right across from Roal Melbourne and right in the heart of the sand belt. So it's evolved into a really special place.
And it was a really fun project for us because all three of us spent a lot of time there when we were kids and sort of we knew how important a place and sort of the Melbourne golf landscape.
Sandy took and it.
It came out and it's the finished product is better than we could have imagined to have. All the potties that were involved would usually turn into a bit of a mess, but it actually worked out amazingly well and with Roll Melbourne sort of the custodians of Sandy, it's sort of preserved, you want to think for a really long time because they're going to look after it like it's their own, you know.
Yeah.
I think everybody fantasized is about going back to their childhood course and being able to improve it. So it's pretty cool that you got an opportunity to do that basically, you know.
The amazing it was a dream job. Really. Yeah. Cool.
So the second course you mentioned is the East Course at Royal Melbourne. This is the first course I actually played when I came to the sand Belt. I mean this kind of second day of my trip right now. The East Course was my first exposure to to sand Belt golf. Remarkable golf course. Obviously you got to play it a good bit as a as a caddy. This was sort of the accessible, more accessible course of the
two at Royal Melbourne. What are some things about the I mean we're getting in now getting into extremely advanced golf course architecture and talking about real Melbourne East. What were some of the things that you noticed about that course when you were playing it in your early days that helped you learn about what a good golf course is.
It wasn't really, and I think we chatted about this out in the golf course when we were talking about something else, but I think it wasn't really I played it. I thought that was normal because I'd grown up next door to this. Everyone would tell us, Oh, Jeff, you're very lucky you live next door to one of the best courses in the world. But Australians don't really ever believe that sort of thing. We're just like, oh, yeah,
it's good. But like you look at the courses in America, they're all green, and the sand is white, the big pine trees and you sort of the grass is always greener, so you aspire to go out of places.
Yeah.
Literally, in this sense, It wasn't really until so I grew up playing that course, and then obviously later on I got to play the West Course a lot, but it wasn't until I went away that the longer I've played, and the more different courses I've playing the longer.
The further I get from the beginning experience.
The more I see the genius and the amazing thing that Roll Melbourne actually is to me. It was just amazing fair ways and incredibly fast greens and really tough bunker shots. And as a kid you're a little bit sort of sadistic about it. You're always going to try to find the hardest shot you can, and I'd always take my dad's blade one iron out there, and I always wanted it to be hard. It was less about
the golf course, and it's just stuff. I knew I was getting spoilt having access out there and playing it because it was better than all the other public courses that I'd got to see. But I didn't have any sense of how can you know that it's so special until you go everywhere else, and everywhere else isn't quite as special. You don't know until you've seen the other, you know. So I just thought, well, this is the
great course that I livix door too. I didn't appreciate how well it would stack up against the old courses or the Shinnecock's or Augusta National or Cyprus Point or whatever it's like. Genuinely, after I twenty years into my traveling golf career and I'd got to all those sorts of places that I sort of realized, Wow, all the things I'm seeing at these top ten, top fifty golf courses in the world. That's what I saw at the beginning, but I haven't seen it in the middle, you know.
So it was really seeing the other stuff which made me appreciate what I grew up on, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Absolutely. I mean when you're a kid, you kind of take things for granted. Whatever you're exposed to early on becomes the norm, and it's hard to convince anybody that what they grew up with is particularly great or even particularly bad, because that's just the standard by which you judge everything else.
Yeah, but I guess underneath all that I was learning the lessons, you know, and the sand Belt and especially Roal Melbourne, I think teaches you so much sort of deep newance to golf, like you're sort of getting right down to sort of.
Very high IQ golf.
Is the wrong way to say it, but that's sort of deeply nuanced sort of strategy and all those shades of gray that golf. The better golf is the more it exposes all those little shades of gray that was there at the beginning. For me, I didn't know that was all the shades of gray. But the first hole at the east was the third hole on the composite now and they've changed the order so many times, but I'd seen it played a lot. It's a big, wide fairway, typical of a sand belt course, but you just had
to be left. If you weren't left, you only had fifty yards of the green, but you couldn't hit the green from the right hand side.
You had to be left.
So growing up, I didn't know I was learning that, but I learned that some holes you have to be on the left hand side of the fairway, some holes you have to be on the right hand side of the.
Fairway, and when.
The pin's over there that day, you really want to be on this part of the fairway. And that just became the way I looked at golf. Without me knowing, I was looking at go like that, and so many golf courses I ended up playing on tour were if you're on short grass, you're good, and if you're in rough you're bad, or if you're in a bunki you're bad, whereas Royal Melbourne. Sometimes the rough, if you're on the correct side of the fairway, is better than the fairway on the other side, and.
I just grew up. That was just the way it was.
So I didn't know that that was right or wrong. It was just my most efficient path around this course isn't straight at the hole. Sometimes it's over there and sometimes it's over there. And I think that that I didn't learn that lesson until later on. But the DNA was put in there, like the at the beginning of my golf, that was a part of the course that was presented in front of me, that there was questions being asked of these holes, and I have to learn
how to answer these questions. Whether I knew I was answering questions or not, I just I was, you know. And I think you could play your whole life and not get to courses like Royal Melbourne or the Old Course or Augusta or any of these sort of those amazing courses and not even know that those questions exist in the sport.
They were the first questions ever presented to me. When I played golf.
It became more about playing the hole than it did swinging the club in a way, which there's probably advantages to both, but for me working out golf courses, I think was right there at the beginning.
How would you compare the East Course to the West Course, and I'll give you actually a take that I heard from Lucas Michelle about this. I played with Lucas at Royal Melbourney's and I told him I was going to steal this take, but I'm crediting it to him now. What he said, basically is that the East Course has very good land and amazing greens. The West Course has
amazing land and very good greens. Do you think there's something in that the greens at the the East Course might be even better in some ways, or even more interesting than the ones at the West Course.
Yes, and no, I don't think it's a fair I don't think it's fair to split the two courses.
They're a little bit like wing Foot, where the East and the West you could kind of play thirty six of any of them and it would all be great, right the East Course, I feel the East Course is a bit of a journey. It feels a little bit more like a sort of Scottish Links where you disappear off and you cross the road, then you cross another road and you end up so far away from the clubhouse you're in the whole nother neighborhood, and then you play all the way back and you see the clubhouse
at the start and at the end. I feel more about the East Course without I don't really think of it as like a in aer which greens are the good grains and which are the less so good greens and the holes. I feel like the East Course is a journey, whereas the West Course is just pure golf hole challenges. You know, you stay around more around the clubhouse. The routing's a bit more sort of around the one spot. I think that the land on the West Coas is
definitely better for drama. There's a bit more that's greens up tops of hills, and you hit through valleys and you've got some hero carries that you don't have on the East Course. I would say the West course everyone, if you played them both. If you play them, you play the East Course yesterday, you may say you played the West Coast tomorrow. You would initially say, all the West Course is way better. But I think the longer you played there, the more the East would start to
level itself out with the West. I just and it might be a hallmark of I just used to lovingly look over at the West because I wasn't allowed to go out there, you know.
But there's a few.
Runs of holes on the West. I mean four, five, six, seven, ten, eleven, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. There's just no run like that in golf anywhere, and the East doesn't have a run like that. The best hole they they stick the best hole you've ever seen, like four or five, six of the three best holes you've ever seen, and they're all next to each other. And then seven, I think is better than those, you know,
and then ten. You look at ten from the back of the seventh and it's like it's just an unbelievable hole.
It's like it's just a hole that you just cannot imagine anywhere else.
But it's so perfect. So I lean towards the West because of the drama of the land, and I think it's thirty six amazing greens and it's thirty six amazing holes. I think the routings tell the stories, and the journey you take on the East course is such a different style of journey.
The West.
You sort of leave the clubhouse, come back past the clubhouse, You leave the clubhouse, you come back past the clubhouse, you leave, you know what I mean.
So it's a it's intertwined, interlocking, It's yeah, the West course is that style of routing, whereas the East course is almost out and back.
It's kind of an out and back feeling and it definitely has a different When you get way out the back there on nine and ten on the East course, you feel like you're a long way away from where you stay, which is nice. You're on your own, you're out there and there are a cool holes that you've taken a journey. There's some incredible holes out there, so I don't like to compare them against each other. And when we are at the start and you said we picked three courses, I'm going to put all of Royal
Melbourne into one. I see one course because I grew up watching the composite course, which has six of the East and twelve on the West.
And that isn't a preference thing.
That's more of a we don't want to cross roads when we play a golf tournament thing for all the logistical reasons. So there's two different sixteenth holes I've used over the years, so it's almost nineteen holes in the commers of course, I would put Royal Melbourne into just one big basket because I think it's thirty six incredible holes and I grew up watching a combo of both. So when you ask me, what do you think of when you think of Royal Melbourne, I think of Royal Melbourne.
I don't think of I don't separate the Eastern, I.
Don't think of East West. Yeah, it's just all It's almost like there are all those holes out there and there, and the East and West courses are ways to play those holes. You could do it in a bunch of different ways, including the composite course obviously, but I'd imagine you could come up with any number of eighteen hole routings that would be highly interesting.
Yes, you could come up with all sorts of different all sorts of different ways around it, which I'm sure now golf is getting more popular and there's more people out there, it's probably harder to do. But I'm sure there's a bunch of members over the years who have started on the East, jumped onto the West, jump back onto the East.
Like gone around.
Because it's really is thirty six incredible holes, and I would put any of them on either of the courses, you know, what I mean, like, they're all great. I feel Wingfoot's very similar in that you lovingly look over at the east holes when you're playing the West, but you lovingly look across at the west holes when you play the East. You know they're clearly so closely related that it's really the same entity in a way. Everybody
always plays them the same way. But I just think Raw Melbourne is a whole property and a club and everything that sort of represents and sort of shows you when you play golf. There isn't a bad hole to play there, and I.
Enjoy playing them all.
But if you said where do you want to play tomorrow, I'd choose the West Coase just because I think that hallmark of that was the one I wasn't allowed to play when I was a kid.
So we have Sandy Golf Links, we have Royal Melbourne the Fall thirty six. As opposed to one course or the other, what would be your third course.
Well here has to be arguably as influential. So Victoria Golf Club as influential as those two, because I was a member here from just before sixteen until current day. Still remember so I've probably played the most rounds I've played in Melbourne around here, and Victoria is it's an incredibly great golf course.
I'm deeply sort of.
Moved by Royal Melbourne in such a way that that to me is an outlier and that just sits on its own.
And this will been so spoilt around here.
But Victoria as far as the course that I know every blade of grass on it, intimately, I've seen it sort of evolve, stay the same but totally evolve with sort of trees coming out and bunkers getting reinstated from what I grew up with, and the turf changing, the turf conditions just getting better and better better over the years. And we sort of redid the first hole ten fifteen years ago now and now it just feels like the first hole. I can't even remember the old first hole
and little bits and bobs. I just that development period between sort of sixteen and twenty one. I was here every single day, So this has to be a big part of the whole thing.
How do you think this course has has shaped your views on golf architecture?
Has it?
I mean, you've been a member here for a tremendously long time. Any course that you play as much as you've played, you know, over as many years as you have has to have, you know, shaped your thoughts on golf courses and golf course architecture in some ways. Is there a way that it influences you that's different from what Roll Melbourne does.
No.
I think the sand belt just in general, the use of short the firm ground, I think is the number one thing which all golf, at least in my experience, golf is just a more interesting game when the ground is firm, when the ball does something when it lands and it keeps going or it stops as the player might have struck the shot. Because it matters now how you strike the shot. It matters the flight, it matters the spin, it matters the shape it's coming in. There's
it doesn't just end when the ball lands. I think if the ball stops when it lands, it doesn't really matter how you hit it, as long as you land it in the right spot. But when it's firm, and we grow up with ultra firm conditions here pretty much even in winter when it's soft, it's firm here relatively speaking to everywhere else, it matters how you strike the ball. Like the strike if you get at one groove low, Well, it's going to be a bit flat. It's going to
take a bigger bounce. If you just you just flub it a little bit and there's no spin on it, Well, now you're going to be in the back bunker. If you cannot fade it to a right pin, you just cannot hit the green. If you cannot draw it to the left side, you just cannot hit the green. I think that aspect of sand belt golf is the most important. It's a great development tool because you have to strike and quality of shot, shot shape and flight and strikes so important here.
You cannot conquer these.
You cannot improve your score and get your handicapped down and improve as a golfer unless that's a big part of it. It's not just hitting it straight and high or long or low, or whatever the case may be. It's you've got to it all if you want to actually start shooting lower and lower scores. So there's that aspect, and that's it's sand belt in general. I think Victoria the bunkers. I think it's a bit of a hallmark of Victoria that people seem to be in bunkers all
the time, and sam belt bunkers. People talk about them on tour. We have very uniform bunkers. It feels like we play out of the same sand, of the same depth, of the same rake everywhere. And it's generally speaking, you've got a pretty good lie and if you get good at that sand, you get good at bunkers. But here that's a very sort of narrow band of skill, and it's not necessarily an easy skill, but once you learn it, you've kind of learned it.
Yeah, there's a variety.
But here there's the bunkers here have firm bits, soft bits. There's sometimes it can be firm under your feet but soft under your ball. Your ball is always sort of on a downslope or upslope.
Or above your feet.
You get the we call them gum trees, but eucalyptus trees in the US would they dropping they're dropping sticks, and they're dropping leaves, and there's like little nuts that.
Fall out of them.
And there's always sort of a bit of junk in the bunkers and learning how to read lies and play variety. You'll get up slopes with the sand wet in the morning and you'll get all the spin in the world. But then it'll get dusty in the afternoon off a downslope and the ball sits down and all you can do is the ball's going to roll out twenty feet. There's nothing you can do. And learning how to navigate that and read lies and understand it teaches you how
wedge works. It teaches you really how to understand the bottom of a wedge and the bounce and sometimes you got to have a square stance and square the face up. Otherwise you're just going to bounce the club and it's going to go across the other side of the green. And sometimes, wow, I really have to open this one up, otherwise there's too much sand for my normal act. It teaches you variety out of bunkers, and as I said, the real golden thing is learning how to read lies.
I remember as I first started drifting away from Melbourne and playing high level am of a goal from pro golf. You'd get the pro every now and then would blade a bunker shot and start complaining of it. I couldn't see that there was no sand under there, and to me it never made any sense because it's easy to see there wasn't any sand under there. I could have seen it from the other side of the green, but
only because we had to learn that here. You know, I'm not saying that that guy did anything wrong, it's just that he never had the experience of learning it with all that variety. So I think those two things from a playing point of view, I think are great, and just architecturally, the holes just make sense, which I didn't know again until I.
Went to other places. When you play holes, it don't make sense.
But uh, the bunker, usually the fairway has it is exactly where you want to be coming in from. It's usually on the inside corner of a dog leg, which you have on the second and the third and the fifth um And usually the best line into the green was from somewhere near that bunker, so you had to go just short of it, just next to it, or try to go over it. And if you went the wide side of the fairway, you'd hit the fairway all day.
But it took you a while to work out, well, if I'm on the wide side of the fairway with the easy t shot, now I can't really get the.
Ball close to the hole. So it taught us too.
From an architectural strategy point of view, it was just it's a great example of hazards where they should be and hazards that relate to the green that's at the end of the hall. And it's a great set of grains, and so you learn how to put fast grains and read big breaks. And it's a detriment later on to put on slower grains because we just grew up on crazy fast grains all the time. But when we get to crazy fast grains, we get to an or a Pondhurst,
it feels like we're at home. So there's advantages and disadvantages, but it's an incredibly amazing place to learn how to play golf Melbourne in general, but Victoria was a great example of it.
Yeah, Victoria, you know, there's it's very playable for average players like me. You can get around out there. You might end up in a few bunkers with shots to greens sloping away from you that you would have a hard time with, but it's not like you're getting punished over and over and there's usually some space to play on holes. So if you know your way around then you can then you can have a fairly pleasant time of it. But if you're a good player and you're
trying to score out there. It seems like one of those relentlessly intense tests of golf. You can score low out there. You can shoot in the mid sixties or low sixties if you're a great player, but you really have to focus the entire round and kind of walk the tightrope constantly because there's no kind of mental letup out there. If you're looking to make birdies.
Yeah, if you're looking to shoot a low score, the better you get. The scarier these courses get, I think because if you're looking to challenge pins, hit it close to the tournament pins if you like, or the challenging pins. You really have to take on like you have to kind of take on the fairway hazards a little bit, but you also have to take on those short sided situations.
You have to make decisions. It's like, well, like we talked abouten out there, which is this great little uphill par three that just disappears off over the back and it's just terrible. We all end up hitting it way short there because of the fear of hitting it over the back. So the firm conditions and all the short grass, it asks a really tough question is that you have to be really brave to shoot low scores out here.
When it's set up tough, you have to be brave, and it's it's a learnt brave by getting burnt so many times, by getting it wrong.
You know, it's not that obvious.
Seventeenth that saw Grass hit it and you're good. Miss it and you're bad, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a great question. Sometimes they ask them the seventy first whole of a tournament. It's like, well, you better hit a good nine one, you know. That's and the eighteenth of saw Grass, for example, it's like, left is bad, hit a good shot, whereas here is You kind of
have to learn what's good and what's bad. You know, it's not always obvious, and you'll be getting not necessarily long, they're not long in the big scheme of things, but you'll get seven eyes and eight irons and even wed shots that you know, you know what, I'm happy with twenty f here because if I get this wrong, I'm going to make a five. And if I make a five with a wedge in my hand, I'm going to
be annoyed for the next three holes. And so you end up playing really nervous even though it sort of presents beautiful and it doesn't really look that scary, you get burn a couple of times and you end up playing nervous, and that's one of the great so I feel like sort of signs of a great golf courses. It makes the good players a bit nervous because they
don't want to get it wrong. You know, you think the Masters and the second shot in to thirteen or something is like, guys, get all twisted about that shot, and really, on a Tuesday with nothing on, it's really not that.
Scary a shot.
But let you getting the Masters all of a sudden, it makes you nervous and it makes you make a bad swing.
These courses do that a lot.
Yeah, and the and there's no there's no letting your guard down after a miss. On some courses. If you miss the fair way, then the test is sort of over in a way. You've failed the test and now you're going to have a fairly predictable recovery. It's not going to be pleasant, but you know what you need
to do. If you miss out here at Victoria, then there are any number of things that could happen, any number of scenarios that you could be facing and shots that you could be hitting, and so the test is just beginning after a.
Minute, absolutely, so it can be exponential. So I mean, there's good misses out here and there's bad misses out here. And if you make a good miss, it's like, well, maybe I don't make bertie or par, but I can get myself a reasonable par partner if I make it. Great If I miss it, oh well I made a mistake. But sometimes if you can miss in some spots, it's like you go from wanting to make birdie on your second shot, but all of a sudden, how do I
not make double? Like how do I get this third shot somewhere where I can get the ball up and down from?
And you can.
It's a compounding error place if you follow an error where a sensible shot generally are okay. But if you follow ERA with another era, you can rack up a big number with no water, no lost balls, no nothing, really really fast.
It can expose your sort of.
Bad decisions and bad execution really really quickly. So it can get scary. And because you know that you're playing like that and it ends up making you play, you have to be brave, you know, And if there's a couple of guys in the field who are running away with it and making lots of birdies as well.
You've just got to do it. I've got to be brave.
But like it's it's a risky thing. Now, it's a fascinating way. It's sort of a delayed penalty.
Yep.
You know you don't necessarily get penalized on your first on the first bad shot, but the penalty is now coming and you don't know it yet. But you've got to kind of know you've made the mistake before you carry on, because if you just keep making them, you're just going to rack up some really big numbers and be pingponging like bunker shots across greens or living yourself in spots where how do I get this into a
spot that I could actually toop it from? Because it only feels like I can hit this into a spot where I'm probably going to three part Now it's fascinating and it sounds really really scary. It's not always like that. That's when it's set up really really tough, but it's
kind of a hallmark of these places. It's the firmness and the way the bunkers are and the way the rough is sort of unpredictable that if you start going off, if you start going wrong, if you don't realize you've gone wrong, which is not always obvious at the start, and you don't sort of right the ship or be smart from that point, yeah, you can rack up big scores really quick.
So what's course number four? We're going outside of Australia now, I.
Gather, Yeah, it has to be the Old Course. And I hate to be predictable, but.
I think everybody, if I do this interview with a range of people, I think everybody is going to talk about the Old Course at some point. But it's the particular ways that people relate to the Old Course that are interesting, because I think it's different for everybody.
So I mean, I think it's fair to say I kind of wanted to love it before I ever got there.
I mean, I was.
A bit of a golf nerd, I guess, growing up, and I'd read a lot of the books so Jones who tore up his scorecard the first time he went there and thought it was ridiculous and then ended up loving it, And like that, there was always this story that people hated it at first and then ended up love. The ones who loved it the most are the ones who hated it the most at the start. So I kind of loved that whole narrative that this place could
grow on you so much, you know. But I was very fortunate Dad's my father was from the UK, and his mum was getting a bit sick, and in nineteen ninety three I was sixteen. He wanted to go over and see her because he hadn't seen her for fifteen years, so and he took me. Fortunately, whatever happened, he wanted to have a travel mate. My sister had a trip with mum somewhere that year, but I got to go over with Dad and we had a batter week of him catching up with his mom. But in the meantime
he's like, oh wow, we're here. I was a probably bit of golf and we ended up at the old course and we drove up into town, and I was already in love just driving up into Snatas for anyone who's ever done it, you get closer and closer, and then you see all the signs and then finally you start seeing glimpses of the town and it's just it's almost a religious experience just going to the town itself, especially when I'd read so much about it already and it was clearly sort of the it's the genesis of
the sport really.
In a lot of ways, so I already kind of wanted it.
We got up there. We got in there late, about five pm. Obviously it's in summer and it still feels like the middle of the day at five pm and we go up to the start. It's like, well, we're going to be here for the next two days. Is there a chance that we can play the old courses? Like, oh, well, you've got to enter the ballot every night, but you're too late to enter the ballot for tomorrow. So of
course I'm devastated. But he's like, well, if you like, you can come here straight away in the morning and you can stand around and if there's a two ball they and I ask, I'll ask if they don't mind if two people join, but they're like to say no. But if they say no, we'd be happy to play with two more.
You can go on.
And we've got there at six thirty in the morning or whenever we could get there and sat around that little putting green next to the first tea, and eventually the Swedish couple came along at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning and see, yeah, we'll play with these two. So we got on. So the first morning in s Andrew's and I loved every moment of it. Shot seventy four. I remember being disappointed because I had a double buggy late on sixteen, but shot seventy.
Four, and I was just blown away.
The experience of a bit like I talked about with the East Course, sort of starting in the town and disappearing out into the middle of nowhere, and then gradually you see the town get bigger and bigger and bigger you get back in. But I just loved I loved everything Sonandrew's when I first got there, so I played it. I was very lucky and then I played So I played it when I was sixteen, and I got back
three years in a row. I played the Snandra's Lynx Trophy, which was the greatest amateur tournament in the world as far as I was concerned, and I think it still happens. It was seventy two holes and Andrews. You would for forty pounds you would enter and it was hard to get in. You were getting ballided out off scratch. But I got lucky at sort of eighteen nineteen twenty. I played it three times. You'd get a practice round around
the old. You would have eighteen on the new and eighteen on the old the first two rounds, and then you made the cut and you got thirty six on the old, so you would get seventy hours on the old course and one on the new, which I just thought was miraculous for forty pounds. And it was competitive, and that was in the fields where Sergio, Justin Rose, Trevor Immlman like guys who all had great careers.
So it was that era.
So the highest level British amateur tournament you could play two weeks before the British Amana, we would play at the Old Course and I played that three times, so by the time I even turned pro, I was well versed with the Old Course. And it was playing those tournaments that started showing me the genius of it, because if you play it once, you know it in those conditions, but it's different every single day. It changes multiple times during the day as all the stories. Everyone's hot, everyone's
til the tide change in the wind, changes direction. You play the front nine into the wind, and then you play the back nine into the wind, or you play the front nine down wind and then you get the back nine down wind. And I've had all I had all those experiences quite early, and I just I started. It helped connect some of the dots that Royal Melwan
and Victoria had taught me about. Well, bunkers are there because that's where you want to be coming in from and it doesn't really matter today, but what's that bunker doing there? But it's not until you come back on the back nine that all of a sudden, it's that bunk is exactly where you want to be.
And it just.
Showed me how good you needed to be a golf to answer all the questions that a golf course could ask. And I've eventually I sort of I regarded as sort of like the it's almost the Rosetta Stone of golf. I mean, you can't replicate it, and you probably wouldn't want to replicate it. But if you want to build golf courses or understand architecture, just spend a bit of
time there. And I think a whole lot of stuff that might have been a bit fuzzy starts coming into focus because I just think all the examples are there. And the coolest part about it, I think was that it basically was just an evolution. It evolved how they were playing the game. So it was almost like humans and nature. Nature taught golfers how to play golf, and golfers taught the old course what it needed to be.
You know, it was kind of a both.
It's sort of a collaboration between nature and humanity to come up with the sport that we love. And I just think it's it plays a bit too short for the way we hit it now, but it's such as it's why the sport is such a great sport, because it started off in such a great place.
You know, It's just to me, it's perfect. I think if.
Everybody, I think it's the greatest teacher in the game, I think the golf course, the golf coaches and stuff along the way might disagree with me.
Hopefully some of them agree.
I think the golf course is the best teacher of the game because that's the questioner the golf course is
asking you questions. I think the old Course is the best teacher of golf, and I think if everybody played their first hundred rounds of golf ever at the old course, the level of golf in the world will be a lot higher because it teaches you how to play golf the correct way, unlevel lies and understanding angles and shooting for pins when when you're supposed to shooting away from pins, when you're supposed to give you any choice of loft
or no loft, or it's very democratic. It lets anybody play any way they want, but it begins to teach you how to play the game if you played enough times.
I mean, I just I could speak about it all day.
Do you think knowledge of golf architecture does make somebody a better golfer? I kind of go back and forth about this myself sometimes I wonder if that can be overstated a bit. But do you think it should be part of a golfer's education beyond just giving people the pleasure of knowing about golf courses and allowing them to appreciate them, do you think it actually helps them develops as players?
I don't know. I don't think.
Yeah. I go back and forward a little bit too, because I think there's disadvantages for knowing too. I think I think playing great courses is great for people's golf. As I said, I think to me these lists of course rankings, and we talked about this a bit earlier today, like we all have. Some people like them to look great, some people want them to play great. Some people are in the middle. Some people like warm weather, some people
like cold weather, wind, whatever it is. Everybody has different ways of measuring how they make their lists of what the best courses are. To me, I view them like their teachers. It's eighteen sets of questions or challenges or puzzles, and I think the better the golf course for me is the one that asks the most interesting set of questions. And so I think from that respect, everyone would get better if they had the opportunity to play the great
golf courses, because you see more depth in golf. It's like if you go to a to a if you're lucky enough to go to a really high level restaurant or a Missilin Star restaurant or one of those things, you think you've had a steak until you've had one of those guys make you a stake and it's like, oh my goodness.
I had no idea it could taste like this.
You know, I don't know if you need to know how to do that to a stake, but it's nice to have had the experience to understand how good food can actually get.
I think golf is the same.
I think you don't need to understand sort of basic strategy of a golf course, an understanding while bunkers are better on the inside of dog legs and the outside or whatever the golf snobbery nerdery that we can get into, which really isn't that important for people who aren't that interested. But I think you need to play the examples of them because they'll teach you a better version of golf. They'll make you a better player because you're they're presenting
you with more difficult questions or more interesting questions. I guess it's better. So I think they're great teachers. So I rate golf courses on how how good a player do I think I would be if I played this every day? How good would golfers get to play this golf course?
Because it would have to make you.
It makes you better in the mind, It gives you more shots. It teaches you that you have to move the ball left to right, or you have to hit the ball low, or you have to learn how to land this one short of the green. If you never get asked those questions, you never learned the answers. So I think the important thing about the architecture is it deepens people's sort of golf IQ if you like, you
don't necessarily have to understand why. But I think it's a really great advantage to have access to play them every now and then.
So we've got Sandy Golf Links, Royal Melbourne, Victoria Golf Club and the old course at St Andrews. Yeah, pretty stout quartet there.
Yeah, it's a bit of golf snobbery there, but like Sandy's a new one that probably most people haven't heard of, which was probably arguably and a lot of ways the most influential because I probably if that wasn't there, maybe I didn't end up playing golf.
Right, you know, So in a way it's the most important one, the most important border. Yeah, all right, well thank you for coming on the show, Jeff.
Please all right, As a reminder, that was designing golf. Garrett Morrison's new podcast, go check it out wherever you get your podcasts real quick. Before we get to Kevin Cook. Let's talk about our friends at Club TFE. That is that is us. So anyways, we are humming. If you're into designing golf and golf architecture, this is a no brainer for you. We're producing a ton of content. We're producing international content. We just had Hinch Up as a course profile last week. I think in the next two
weeks we'll have Victoria from Australia. On top of that, we're doing a ton of domestic golf courses, so we have just about one hundred profiles in there to date. On top of that, you get early access to our event discounts every day in the Friday Pro Shop. I think we're working on some members only merch I think that'll be out later this year, so you'll have your
own little membershop too. But yeah, this is the best way you can support this podcast is to sign up for Club tf It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year, and we are really excited. We're in the midst of a website redesign. It's looking like we're gonna be kind of towards the end of Q one releasing this new website, and we're excited about some of the new features we're building in for the membership there, So jump on the bandwagon. If you've been a member, big
thank you. We really appreciate and love the community we're building over there. But yeah, if you haven't joined and you're thinking about it, jump on in the water's warm. You can find information about this at the fridegg dot com slash membership and we're we're really looking for or to the rest of twenty twenty five and club TF. All right, let's kick it over to Kevin Cook on his Tiger Woods book. All right, Kevin, thanks for joining
us to talk about your newish book. It's new, it's within six months of coming out.
It's very new. Six weeks, six weeks, six weeks.
The Tiger Slam, the inside story of the greatest golf ever played. It focuses on the Tiger Slam, which was two thousand to two thousand and one.
I as someone who was.
I guess am I falling in love with golf stage of life at this period of time, I was shocked to think about, how was twenty five years ago?
This summer me too.
That it's been that long, And I think partly because it was so vivid at the time.
Yeah, in so many of these memories.
As I read through the book, and you know, you do a great job of like hitting all the all the high points in there, so many of them are still such vivid memories. Because you know, as the title suggests, it might have been the greatest golf ever played.
I really think that it was before or since. I mean, and I think you know, as you well remember, there was talk when Tiger was playing, well, well, he didn't have the competition that Jack Nicholas had. He didn't have Travino and Watts and Weis's golf and everyone else chasing him. And I never bought that. I believe that the fields were deeper when Tiger was playing than when Jack Nicholas was playing, and I think it must be true that the fields are deeper today than they were twenty five
years ago. At the same time, I still don't think that we've seen the game of golf played back better than Tiger did it in two thousand and two thousand and one.
Yeah, it's it's so hard to compare generations, and it's you know, every single sport has this this struggle. You know, a lot of people would say this is the deepest golf that golf has ever been right now, and you're seeing it with young kids. But I think, like the other fascinating thing, and I was really really pleased to see this be an early chapter in the book. The kind of fascinating aspect of this moment in time was that we began to see this was really the start
of a massive technological shift in the game. And and you know, I think like an interesting topic and I think we could talk about that later, you know, but is the solid core golf ball and and Tiger switched to the solid corp golf ball the beginning of two
thousand is a fascinating thing. And then where the solid core golf ball and the driver heads have gotten us to this point is that is that part of why golf is so deep now is that the equipment might not you know, throw out the the less skilled as much.
You know, Yes, that's a that's a that's a good point. That it made even things at the very highest level of the game. And of course we could talk about per Simmon and Gotta Purchase in the in the same terms, but that's a long conversation.
I would love to understand.
You know, obviously, anytime someone goes into the pursuit of writing a book, uh, there needs to be a why. So obviously, one of the wise is that this was an epic, unrivaled run of golf that that the world has never seen.
But what were the otherwise of writing this book? Now?
I think the first why for me was the surprise that it had been twenty five years in this transformative time that really, I think brought so many millions of new golfers to the game because of the celebrity the charisma of this player who dominated the game in two thousand and two thousand and one. But the other, and to me, the biggest why, is that I think it's underappreciated even by golf people. We can get into good discussions of well, is this the greatest feat in golf history?
I believe it is. I believe it's ahead of Bobby Jones in nineteen thirty the Byron Nelson's streak. Hogan in nineteen fifty three was an astounding performance Jack Nicholas's whole career. But I think the Tiger Slam is the best feed in golf history. And the more that I thought about it, the more I think that it's the best feed in sports history. And I've talked to some Joe DiMaggio fans and we butted heads about that. But I can go
into that as well. I think there are a couple of asterisks to Joe DiMaggio, to Wilt Chamberlain's hundred point game. I think Tiger Tiger Slam surpasses them all.
Yeah, I mean, I think, like, when you boil it down golf, Golf such a unique sport, right, and to win those four tournaments in a row, now, like the technicality of it not being in the same year, the fact they finished fifth in the Masters in two thousand, But when you boil it down to beating you know, a field of ninety ish at the at the Masters, a field of one hundred and fifty six at the US Open, one hundred and fifty six at the Open, and one hundred and fifty or one hundred and fifty
six or whatever at the PGA. When you boil it down of like, what is that statistical number is insane when you contemplate like four events of beating you know, ninety to one hundred and fifty six of the other the best players in the world and doing it so often in such dominant fashion.
That's totally right. And Justin Ray, whom I see is that as the best stats guru in the game, calls it incomprehensible, and I really think it's true, and I think we can we can flip coins. Wonder about will there ever be another player to win four Majors in a row. I be surprised, but I could bet you that there's never going to be anybody who wins another
US Open by fifteen shots. That that is just beyond what's capable even before that point or since that point in the game, and then to follow up with three more. I think it was really interesting that Earl Woods himself Tiger's dad, when this was going on, said well, I'm a purist to me, you got to win them all in a calendar year. Reporters ran to Tiger, of course, and Tiger said, you know, I think if you can put them all on your coffee table at the same time,
that's a slam. I'm with him, and I think that too. At the Masters in two thousand and one, when he makes a long put, because he always ended properly, he always ended tremendously with some supreme effort that jim Nance addressed that by saying as grand as it gets. He called it as grand as it gets, and I think he was right about that.
Yeah, you know, what you hit on is like his sense of the moment. And I think like when you talk about the greatest athletes ever, I can't think of one that didn't seem to have that sense of the moment when when the chips are down any sport, you know, you think about you think about what's happening right now.
With Patrick Mahomes, you know, if you are it feels like if you are a team that's going against Patrick Mahomes, the if you hold a lead in a you know, one score lead with six minutes ago, the only way you are winning that game is if you can hold onto the ball for six minutes, because if you give
the ball back, it's over. And with Tiger, I think, like you hear this from from players that played in the in the in the his generation is that if he was around on the weekend, there was an era of inevitability and you watched some of the greatest players of generations just crumble around him. And but then the part of how that happened was the ability to rise to the occasion, and really the book starts. You start at the beginning of two thousand with Kappaalua, one of
the all time great duels between two great players. You know of this, we'll call it a modern generation. Everybody that was a golf fan in that time remembers Ernie Els and Tiger going back and forth at Kapeloua. And sure enough, it was one of the many times that Tiger just seemingly crushed Ernie El's spirits.
And everybody else's. Yes, And I think I mean, suppose Tiger had not taken up the game, Suppose Arrow Woods had not been stationed in Brooklyn, right across the street from Dyker Beach golf Course, and then we'd be talking about the era of Michelson and El's. But I think it's absolutely true that like Mahons, who has a potential three pet coming up, like Brady was the same way, you better not let him touch the ball with a minute left or you're going to lose the game. Like Jordan,
and what motivates them is very significant to me. And at Pebble on the last day the tournament is over in two thousand, Tiger is is lapping the field, and he motiv invaded himself on Sunday by saying, I'm not making a bogie today, and he comes all the way around. He's almost three puts at eighteen, and he's so annoyed at himself because, as he put it later, I'm going
to ruin the day. Oh. He might only win the US Opened by fourteen shots, but what drives him is to do something that is as near perfection as he can do. And that's one thing. I do believe that the Tiger Slam is underappreciated. I also think that in some ways even Tiger Woods is underappreciated because we remember his talent, we remember the fitness that he brought to the game. But I think he's the best grinder who ever lived.
Yeah, I mean you think about just the mad cut streak.
Yes, I mean there's so many, so many things that you can talk about with Tiger. I think like one of the stats that illuminated and I wish I had a handy now that we have this Strokes gained data, was there's you know, Justin Ray I think is the
one that found this originally. There's some absurd amount of rounds in a row that he had positive strokes gained, which means like and I know, like strokes gain can make them make some people's eyes glaze over, But strokes gained means that he is performing at an above average you know where when you're positive, you are better than half the field on a day, and just the sheer number of days. Like, golf is such a fickle game.
And I think this is like the thing about the Tiger Slam and just Tiger in general, what you illuminated underappreciated for being a grinder, the maid cut streak, the strokes gained streak, the Tiger Slam, all of these things, and anybody that plays golf can understand this can be undone so easily with just sheerly a bad bounce. Yes, we see this on Sunday of tournaments all the time.
I'm always amazed by, like, if you're watching the golf closely, how one leader, one person around the lead might get a bad break, another person around the lead might get like bounce off a fan as opposed to going in a hazard, and and you like just write it down. It's like, oh, and the guy won by one, and the guy that went into the water or got a
bad bounce loss. And I think, like, when you talk about this successive nature of winning all four of those majors in a row, the sheer fact that he played a level of golf where you know, there had to be untimely breaks in that there were untimely breaks, but he still won. And one of the reasons is just he had this capability. I mean, five of I believe five of the of his wins in majors, or maybe six of his wins in majors, he entered Sunday with a three shot lead or more. And in this streak,
like how you do this streak? And I think, like, you couldn't do the four majors in a row with four close majors, one of the things that he had the supreme skill of, and you hit on it like I'm not gonna make a bogie on the last day, like this will to continue. He never took his foot off the gas, you know, And by blowing two fields out, it makes this so much more feasible because it limits your risk of a bad break here or bad break there costing you one tournament.
You know, you look back on like Jordan.
Spieth probably was the closest person to do this since Tiger and he had the open and the whistling straight, you know, like he's probably the closest person since and but you know he had one blowout, one close one they and they lost two other close ones. You know, I think it's just I guess you've done all this research.
You've looked into it.
What's a couple one or a couple things that like your favorite things that you uncovered about Tiger during this period of writing this book.
There are so many the fact, I mean, we talk about his dominance at Pebble, he made a triple at Pebble, and what did he do immediately afterward? Okay, now I have a new mission today. I'm going to get back to even and that's the first step to what becomes a fifteen shot win.
But while I was working on the book, I mean, I mean not only the utter dominance and dominance to a degree that, as you alluded to, it almost insulates you from getting beat.
You are so much better than everybody else. Accept at Valhalla, where Bob May is going to take him right into a playoff, is going to give Tiger all he wants, more than anybody else in this period, this guy comes out of nowhere, but not nowhere to Tiger because he
was a junior star before Tiger and Phil. But there were also personal things I was I was very surprised to find out that three days after Tiger wraps up the US Open at Pebble, his third major, that Wednesday, he shows up in Henderson, Nevada at a qualifier for the PUBLNX, for the US Amateur PUBLNX. Why to caddy for his buddy Jerry Chang. And now he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to make everybody's all autograph seekers racing after him, So he doesn't meet Jerry Chang on the
first tee. He goes to the second hole, waits around where he can just kind of slip out its blazing heat, and Jerry Chang has the best golfer in the world of all time as he caddy for the rest of the day. He didn't even make the the public links that year, but for that day he had Tiger Woods as his caddy. And that's that's a heck of a distinction.
It's like, it does make you lament social media because that type of thing would never be able to happen.
We would all know about it, Yes.
It's like Charlie Woods can't even go play a qualifier. He's entering tournaments as as under pseudonyms because of because of this, you know, Tony Tony Romo enters tournaments under fair names sometimes because of this. And it's you know, one of the proliferations of the Internet and social media is like, this couldn't happen anymore.
You know, that's right, It's too bad. We need we need a social media jammer that you could carry around so that so that nobody could see you from hundreds of miles around.
I would have loved I would have loved to hear about the the other players in the group that day, and like.
I imagine that this get done, you get done with the first all. I'd be so nervous if I was one of the other players. It's like, also the Tiger was shut out.
Yes, and yeah, yeah, Tiger's raking the bunker. Not bad, not bad.
What you know in the research was there was there a particular outside of the PGA. Was there a particular tournament that really stood out to you as an impressive win?
It maybe not even a major.
Uh. Actually, I was so focused on the majors because to me, that is his goal. And and while he never really admitted it publicly, he admitted it privately from from before the Tiger Slam that his the number in his head was eighteen and he was going for more than that. That he's looking for more majors than Jack one. Uh but yeah, I mean the the Valhalla PGA was
was an astounding remarkable drama. But of the of the tournaments that I really focused on on the last the two thousand and one Masters was a fabulous drama too. To have him if it just happens that day, Oh, he's gonna go up against his two best rivals, two guys who could beat Tiger, who can foil the Tiger slam, two guys that he thinks are capable of beating him, although he thought that more of David Duval than he
did of Phil Nicholson. And it does wind up with a very dramatic moment with Phil where Tiger slams the three wood around the corner at thirteen and has a moment in which Phil Nicholson, who was pointedly not watching his swing, and this makes sense to me, you're playing with Tiger woods on Sunday, don't watch him swing? It's gonna make you think bad thoughts. So so Philis looking
away the whole day, but the crowd goes nuts. Phil has bopped a driver with a nice, nice big fade around the corner, and then Tiger hits his three wood past him, and Tiger Wood practice that shot all winter, you know, again and again and again. This is this is the drive. At thirteen, Tiger knocks a three wood past Phil's drive and you know, Phil, here's the crowd go crazy, looks where the ball is and says, do
you always hit your three wood that far? And then that Tiger is going to lay it on thick at that point and he says, no, sometimes farther.
Amazing moment.
It doesn't mean it just goes on and on, and there were so many dramatic moments in these Majors.
I think that that two thousand and one Masters has to be one of the most popular of the YouTube
final rounds. And I mean you want, I think like you could probably make an argument that that was the most thrilling in terms of big time story lines of any of the Tiger wins in majors, maybe outside twenty nineteen, you know, just the Saar comeback right aspect of that, you know, but when you look at you know, on the back of NYE on Sunday, you've got Woods Duval, Phil, you know, Ernie never really factor, but he was only
three back going into the day. But you know where you have you know, Tiger and David duvall deadlocked at fifteen under on you know, through fifteen holes, right like a neck and neck and at a time where you kind of felt like this thing could go anyway. And you know, so many, you know, so many of Tiger's great moments of agers are the Bob May, the Rich Beam, you know, the the you know, those those most against
these these smaller names. This one was really the showdown of the giants with Phil Duval and Tiger going at it.
It truly was. And then Duval hits the ball at sixteen that he thought was perfect. He thought that ball might be an ace. But even at that level, striking to me, even at that level, because because I'll hit a seven iron and if I get it like eighty percent, okay, oh that's a pretty good shot. And then every once in a while you hit one just right in your twenty yards over the green. Even at that level, David Duval could hit one too pure and it carries over
the flag to a horrendous spot. And then David Duval heroically it's a magnificent, incredibly delicate little chip, but he doesn't make a put And what that masters came down to has often happened. Phil didn't make a puts down the stretch that day either, Tiger did.
H Yeah.
I mean that's the thing is that it's that kind of quality we talked to talked about like always knowing what you have to do in the moment. I thought, you know, an interesting undertone of all the season. And I think one of the stories is that that story you hit on with Marco era the strata and Tiger Woods chipping, you know, Marco mirror chipping and what it led to may maybe go a little bit into detail about the golf ball and what that kind of how that changed the way Tiger could play golf.
It really changes everything. And and that's another thing that I think it's easy to forget twenty five years later, that we used to play golf balls that we've got a little cover over a whole bunch of wound up rubber bands. That sounds fairly primitive. Mark o'meira happened to be playing got top flight strata and they're knocking balls around and ome Omera's balls performing on just checking up
just right, like it's on a string. And Tiger says to him, because they're always practicing together, Tiger says, how are you making a ball do that? And o'meira, who is one of the people who can needle him, says, don't worry about it, Tea. It's something that takes maturity and practice and uh. And then pretty soon Tiger hits one of those stratus and it behaves just the way that del Amira's balls were, and he says, it's not you, it's the ball. Now he is he is determined enough.
One thing I've said about Tiger and truly believe that this is a guy who who took an engineer's approach to his game. He wants to put it together like a NASA mission, so that every component is correct. He is willing, and he's been practicing developing this ball that was we saw the Nike ball. It's just got the nice swoosh on it, but it's made by Bridge Stone uh and and it is similar to that strata a
little bit better. He tried dozens and dozens of prototypes, and Rock Ishi, who was who was the designer for bridge Stone, said he had never met anyone with such touch, with such feel, who could evaluate contact by the sound of it. Uh that you'd slip in, You'd slip in a different kind of ball just to see, just to test him. And he's saying, what that one? It fell
like a rock. He developed the ball that worked for him and was daring enough to put it in play in competition at a time when nobody, none of the other top players were using a ball like that. He then, of course starts to win with it by enormous margins. And it's only a little bit later that year when Phil Nicholson, who was a titleist player, and other players are saying, well, jeez, this is a miracle ball that
this guy is using. It's not solely talent. Maybe it's maybe the ball is useful and ask titleists, Hey, titleist, have you got anything in the works that might be similar to that ball? Oh? Well, in fact, titleists had been developing a ball for months and months, even years. But if you're titleist, you don't need to hurry up to develop to bring out a new ball. Everybody's already playing your ball, but that led them to ramp up development of the ball that comes out that very same year,
And this is often forgotten. The very same fall, the pro v one is introduced. Pretty soon everybody is playing that ball, and the whole game of golf has changed forever.
Yeah, I you know, I think that's like kind of a underpin of this whole of the whole thing, is that, like it's just the sort of Tiger is a Titleist athlete, he's a Titleist ball players.
He's a Nike apparel wearer.
Yeah, but he's a Titleist sponsored player at the start of the two thousand season and he's playing a professional ninety and every I love to how you you know, the lead of the book really you know, he's teeing off a caapolo with a professional ninety, right, And and you know one of the things that you know, one of the reasons that Nike got Tiger on the ball contract that you alluded to is that titleists like to spread the money around.
They still do.
They're you know, one of their big metrics as a marketing thing is to have the highest number of players playing Titleist balls. So in order to do that, you cannot focus on like you know, backing up the Brinks truck for one athlete, right, like you need to have the capital spread around and you know the amount of dollars.
But anyways, you know, for for nine months of this run of golf, Tiger is playing a far superior golf ball then the vast majority of the tour, who are all sponsored by the company he left.
Yes, and that plays into the biggest The funniest thing that happened during the Tiger Slam is when he's almost runs out of balls and Pebble after the Friday round is called on account of weather, and Steve Williams neglects to check how many balls, and Tiger was putting balls
in the lodge at Pebble and they didn't have very many. Well, once once he bangs won halfway to Hawaii at eighteen, Steve realizes there are only so many of these balls that were called a Nike Tour accuracy in the whole world generally im you and you can take a penalty, you can get it. If it's the same ball from another player, you could you could run off to the pro shop and buy some new titles can't do that with this ball that's not even available to the public yet.
So it leads it leads to the crazy moment in which Tiger finishes his his his weather postponed round with the last ball in his bag. And uh, and that was something that he didn't even realize at the time.
I think like one of the interesting things you you touched on was what Tiger gained from the the tour accuracy from the professional particularly with the with the driver.
Yes, and it doesn't balloon in the in the wind as as players say. Uh, the wind affects this ball less. And this is pure technology that the ball still behaves, spins properly at at wedge velocities, but you hit it with a driver and it moves and it's just purely it has an awful lot to do with the wind. It moves only about half as much in the wind as the previous ball. Well, that's a big advantage if
you're as technically proficient as this player is. And to give him that advantage when he's already better than everybody else. The next thing you're going to see is is sheer dominance by the player who has has made every facet of his game the best that had ever been seen to that point.
Yeah, it was.
It was fascinating how the tournaments leading up to the ball switch were like close. They were the termits that actually went against Tiger. What what was the what was his first result with the ball? Where did he put it in play?
He played at the Byron Nelson and uh no, he didn't play it. He actually played the last tournament with the other balls at the Byron Nelson thought he would have won by five. He's got he's got the new ball, and before before he wants to play it, he's going to hit shots that Butch Harmon described as inappropriate to the situation because he's playing the Western Open in your hometown and and he's hitting balls as if he were
on the old course at St. Andrews. Why Well, because as he put it in, I thought this was quite revealing. He says, you could hit ten million balls on the range. It's never the same as in competition. So he's hitting stingers that have nothing to do with the hole he's playing in the Western Open because he's imagining what he's going to do once he gets to the old course, where is real preparation will be as furious as can
possibly be. But now this new ball is he gains confidence in it as as he prepares to win majors.
Yeah, well, everybody should check out your book. What's the best way to what's the best way to buy it for you?
Well, it's it's an Amazon, uh and and your neighborhood independent bookstore is always a good place to go.
Okay, how can people uh find you? You're you're on Twitter.
And find me on LinkedIn, or or let me a letter h or stone stone tablets work too, but uh uh, or or they can watch the frieda Egg and and uh and maybe maybe we'll get together again one of these days.
All right, Thanks Kevin, congratulations on the book.
Really really fun read and just amazing memories that documenting me the greatest run of golf will ever see ever.
So thank you.
That's right, Thanks.
Andy, Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ. Clark for editing and producing this. Pj's working hard down here in the swamp. He's down in Jupiter, just played a round of golf. He's having to produce two podcasts tonight.
You know.
Oh, to have the spirit of a mid twenty something. You know, spirit and energy of a mid twenty something.
So we will be back next week with a new edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Thank you guys for listening, and hope you guys go check out the rest of Garrets Designing Golf Podcasts.