All right, we're back for another episode of the Friday Podcast. It's been a while since we last recorded one, but we are excited today to talk a little bit off the beaten mainstream PGA tour talk path and get into some college golf. And with us, we've got Justin Silverstein, the associate head coach of the Southern California Trojans so USC is one of the top teams in the country,
and Justin's been with the program. He started with the program as a women's associates coach and has moved over to the men's side this year.
So we're excited to have Justin on and thanks for coming.
On, Justin, no prop many thanks for having me. Excited to get on here and talk some college golf and hopefully get people fired up for the spring season that I'll be here before we know it.
Yeah, Yeah, we're excited. With the national championship here in Chicago, we're going to be doing a lot of coverage on the Frida Egg and we're happy to have you on as the first college.
You know guests, So you.
Know, first off, we'd love to hear a little bit about you, you know, to give a quick background. Justin was a great junior player down in San Diego, won a couple of state championships at Torrey Pines, playing with Jamie Lovemark for a couple of years there, and then he went on to Arizona to play there. So I'd love to hear about kind of your playing days and then how you got into coaching, and we'll take it from there.
Yeah. Absolutely, So I started playing junior golf in San Diego. Was really lucky to be on a great high school team. We had I think six guys on my junior year team ended up going to play Division one golf, one of which is Jamie Lovemark, who's making a big pilot dough playing on with the big boys out on tour. And from there went and played at the University of Arizona. I used to turn play very loosely. I practiced a lot and spent a lot of time in the training room.
I ended up having five wrist surgeries when I was at Universe Arizona, which was good and bad. Kind of let me see a whole different side of golf. Where about my junior year, my redshirt junior year, I was no longer cleared to play golf because of an injury I had, so I kind of make a decision of what I want to do with my life, whether it's hit the books a little harder or maybe try to
do something else in golf. And luckily I had a great college coach, Rick Larrose, who was at Universe Arizona for over thirty years, and a really good assistant coach in John Knauer who was there for ten and I really admired the work they did and kind of the difference they made in our lives. So at that point I kind of decided that I wanted to turn my attention to getting into college coaching and kind of learned
the business and I tried my hand at that. So I helped out with the team while I was still in school, went to practice every day, traveled to tournaments, kind of shadowed coach Larrose, and he was great and
let me do that. And that turned into a volunteer assistant job with the men's golf team at Arizona the year after I graduated, and then just by sheer luck, the women's assistant job opened up that next year, so as a twenty three year old, I kind of fell into the women's assistant coaching job at Arizona, which had just come off a PAC ten championship and was a top five program, and that kind of got me going.
And it was quite an eye opening experience being a twenty three year old coaching women's college golf and coaching kids that were about the same age I was, So I had to learn pretty quick on that job.
Yeah, I can imagine that's that's kind of one of those things where you had bad luck with the wrist. I mean, I've never even it is kind of crazy. Five surgeries in less than three years. So you have the bad luck there and then you have you know, kind of design intervention and you get the great walk of coming up on a job right in your backyard.
Yeah. I kind of look it back at it like it probably. I know, it saved me a bunch of money from going to try to play professionally because I know I've I've definitely was not good enough to compete with guys like Jamie and especially these guys we have on our roster now. So it's saved me money in that regard, and they kind of got me kickstarted on a career path that's turned out to be, you know, a lot of fun and I love it, wake up every day and get to come in and coach these
eighteen to twenty two year olds. It's really good stuff. So can you play.
Golf now or are you you know?
Do you do you get?
Do you play with the team much as do you have limitations with the wrists?
Yeah, I've still got pretty big time limitations. I need one more surgery and it's kind of a major one, so I'm really hesitant to do it and don't want to really go through the rehab, and I don't really know if it's worth it, so I don't play much at all, to be honest with you. The last time I played was I believe it'll be three years ago this January, and I played at Augusta National with our
women's golf team. We just come off a national championship and our athletics director Pat Hayden surprised us and took us down to Augusta for three days. So I ramped up all winter, practiced every day, taking a bunch of pain medication, fighting through it. Figured getting to walk the fairways of the gust it was probably worth it, and went down there and played in thirty six a day in about thirty two degree weather and it was maybe
the three greatest days of my life. So since then, my clubs are still in the travel case in a closet in my house, and I have not been on a golf course to play since.
You know, I guess that's probably one of the best ways that, you know, you could go out for a long period of time. Yeah, nothing, I'll compete with that.
No, I tell the team all the time because I always try to get me to play, and Coach Ambury plays with them all the time. I mean, Coach Ambrey was a phenomenal player. He played a Nike tour for I think over ten years. It was really really good player. So he plays with them all the time. The kids are always trying to get me to play, and I'm like, guys, it's one it wouldn't be very impressive right now, and two it would hurt too much. Is probably not even
worth it. So I let Coach Dembury deal with all the playing and kind of beating our guys into the ground when he has to.
So, you know, how does coaching at a college level. You know a lot of these kids have you know, strings, the swing instructors that they work with. You know what, what do you guys do in terms of coaching, is it is a lot of you know, course management stuff, practice thrills, you know, practicing the right way. How does it how does it kind of differ from that traditional teaching.
Yeah, this is kind of a It took me a long time to learn this. So when I got into coaching, I was really fired out to get you know, hands on with the kids, get to work with some really good players because I've always had a crazy interest in teaching. And I got there and I tried to dive in with all these kids, and in about two months they were all fed up with me, and I was like, what, you know, what is going on here? And it took me some time to realize that they've all got their
own theories on how things should be done. And not only do they have their theories, whether it swing theories or just how to play golf, their instructor has one, and their parents have one, and you know they're sports
psychologists that they have has one. So when I got to know Chris Dambury, who's our men's that coach really well, when I came over to USC five years ago to work on the women's side, he had this whole system of how to practice that he developed, and it's about and it's become now eleven tests that we do every Tuesday and Thursday when we practice on campus, and these tests are to find out where your strengths and weaknesses
are in your game. And what the tests do is they protect the players from us as coaches, the players from themselves, and the players from their instructors. Because what we found out after dealing with hundreds of really good college golfers is a lot of them don't know where they need work to get to the next level, and they kind of just go off of opinion and how they feel, and that's a really dangerous way to go
about it. And we've been lucky enough to have some advanced analytics coming to golf lately, which I'm sure you've you know all about, you know, with Mark Brody's book and Strokes Gain, and we've really dove into Strokes Gain and kind of now it's we do we take a different approach with every player. Some players need more help, more hands on help, some players need more course management stuff, and some players just need to be pointed in the
right direction as to what to approve. And they're pretty bright and they work with really good instructors and they can figure out a way to improve it. So I would tell you it's a lot more hands off than I originally thought it was. But we are constantly evaluating and re evaluating ranking their games based against each other to find out where everybody needs to improve.
Yeah, and that makes a ton of sense because you can essentially take the strokes gained, you know, you know, for people a little less known. Strokes gained isn't a statistic that a common golfer can really use because you need a field to have the strokes gained against statistic work. So do you guys use the team as the field or is it historical data as to create the field score so you can see who's for warming above.
So we've been doing strokes gain putting based on tour average for the year for about three or four years now. I was doing it with our women's team, and coach
Samery's been doing it with our men's team. So we've been keeping just a constant log of that for our players, and our incoming recruits are sending us data because they're kind of get diving into it, and we've really found that that's the one measurement in the strokeskin capacity to see if stroke skin driving, strokeskin approach, strokeskin short game,
and strokes skin putting. We figured out that if we can get the putting number, we can kind of we can pretty much figure out how you played that day. You know, if you shot seventy two, shot even par and you gained two and a half, well, you hit it like a dog. I mean, it's pretty obvious that you just didn't hit it very well. Well. If you lost you know, three and shot even par, you know,
we can then figure out how you hit it. So that was the big metric that we started collecting where we really thought we had an advantage because we could then kind of cipher what was going on with the rest of your game. So we're starting to dabble in strokes gain driving. That's another one that's becoming easier to collect, as long as you have the whole distance in your second shot distance and where you hit it from. It's been a little more difficult than we thought to collect,
and we've got a couple guys doing it. We're really trying to We're gonna try to ramp that up in
the spring. I know, there's a couple big time programs that are doing it full time, so we've got a little bit of catching up to do, but we feel like we're at the leading edge of our strokes gain putting data, and we've got some tests in our practice that can coincide with that data that have hopefully given us a way to improve our players putting, because what we've seen from the data we've collected is our kids
are not quite tour average putters. We've got a couple of players that are right on the edge, but right now we have no positive strokes gain putters on our roster. Sean Crocker was for most of the season, but we're hoving right around zero and losing strokes. So that's really a place where the tour players have a big advantage over really good college players.
That's very interesting.
So would Crocker be the guy that you would want with a ten foot pot on the eighteenth hole at Rich Harvest to win this year's national championship based off.
Of stats, Based off of the numbers so far, actually, he I probably have to go right now with Andrew Levitt, who's been in our lineup all semester. He's a fifth year senior, he's been our best putter. I'm actually looking our data right now he's losing about point three round trokes gain sean wo gaining most of the semester, and then kind of had a rough couple last tournaments. We've played some places with some gnarly greens. I mean, Cyprus
was otherworldly how difficult those greens were. But all of our guys I feel pretty confident with. And if you give me any of our guys with a ten footer win national championship, I'd be really happy because that means we've got a pretty good chance to win the national championship. But right now I'm probably gonna have to go with
Andrew Levitt. And you can see from our match play lineups in the past couple of tournaments, he's been our anchor, and that's as he's Uh, he's one of, if not our best putter.
So yeah, we've gotten a little bit into the team, but UH love to jump in a little further. So USC you guys this year entered uh with the you know you had the that preseason number one ranking from Golf Week.
Uh.
The last two years been really close to the National championship. Last year they uh, they lost in the semi finals to Texas and then the year before they lost in the finals to LSU. You guys took down my Aliini from the semis, which you know makes me a little bitter, but but.
They're doing just fine. I'm not worried about him. They're doing just fine.
So with that, you guys started this season a little bit slow, but you know, it really came on at the end. You guys won probably the.
Coolest event of the year, the Cyprus Point Classic, and that it was a match play tournament where these kids got to play three straight days at.
Cypress Point and then won the Gifford Correct as your last season event of the season. And then I saw that justin Sue, one of your players finished second in the Sun Bowl last week. So really strong finish to the year for USC. I'd love it here kind of about the team. You know, what you guys are looking
to improve on. You know, some highlights from the season, and you know, I don't think anybody, based off of the courses that you guys have to play this year, would you know, wouldn't want to be a college golfer.
Nowadays It's gotten pretty good, hasn't it. I mean the courses we got to play this fall. I don't know if we'll ever go through a stretch of playing that, starting an Olympia Fields and then go into Colonial and then Golf Club at George is a fantastic track, and then Cyprus and then Silver Or where they just hosted the Fries was that was better than we expected. That
was a really really cool golf course. I think every hole we stepped out in the practice on, Coach Denby's like, wow, this whole, this one are cool, slow as I've ever seen. So if you get a chance to go up there and play that track, I definitely would recommend it. But as far as the season goes, we got to a really slow start. No sugar coating it. Finishing eighth at the align I Invite and then six at the the Nike NCI event was a little rough. It's interesting our
scheduling worked out. I don't know most people probably don't know this, but the NCAA limits how many practice days were allowed in our playing season, and because Justin and Rico played in the All American, it extended our playing
season about another week into the into the fall. Because it just ended the other day so we weren't really able to practice as a team and probably started I think seven or eight days before our first event, so we had to jump right into qualifying with no practice time.
So it was a really interesting deal. We could do some individual stuff with our guys for two hours a week, but we hadn't had a full week of practice before our first event, so I think that might have played a little part, and our guys maybe being a little rusty, not quite as sharp as they normally are. And also we just went to a golf course where we got a lot of wind and it was really hard and just didn't play great. And then coming off that go go ahead.
I played out there the day before you guys did. It was a course was set up. I mean, that place is just such a bear if you're not right on your game.
Yeah, yeah, our guys were. It's kind of the pros and cons of having most kids from southern California. We don't see a ton of wind. We practice in the mornings, practice seven in the morning Monday to Friday, so we're not getting nearly any wind in southern California. So we're getting twenty to twenty five mile hour gusts you know,
first tournament out. It really affected a lot of our guys, especially a guy like Chang Jin who was playing in his first collegian event, so he had some nerves, and Rico and Sean I think struggled a little bit with the wind. All those show ended up finishing seventh. He put it great that week, so that really helped him. But we thought we'd rebound, you know, really well at Colonial, that to a golf course that stresses good driving. But we got there and it was windy again, the greens
were soft, and kind of had an interesting deal. We didn't have two of our top six players at that event. Cheng Jin was where was Ching he was at the World or the Asian Amateur who was defending his Asian amer title in Korea that week, so we didn't have him, And then we didn't have Jonah Tascher in our lineup, who was a semi finals at the USAM this past summer.
So we had just you know, Daniel Choa started for US and he's done some good things for US in the past, and we just really didn't play well that week either. So after that event, we kind of came back home and coach Amory and I took a couple of days and kind of tried to figure out what we needed to do and got back to work, and then things really started to pick up. After that event. We had a couple of individuals play in an event in Northward's event, and Jonah Tachero was able to play
in that event and got a win. And he shot sixty six, sixty eight, sixty eight, shot fourteen under that week and got a win, so that really kind of boosted his efforts for the fall season. And then right off of that, we went into the Georgia at the Golf Club at Georgia in that event, and we played really well that week. We finished third. We actually had a two or three shot lead going on the eighteenth hole.
I think we had a one shot lead in the eighteenth fairly, which is a reachable part five, and we had two guys with five irons in their hand into the green and another guy with a two iron and ended up playing the whole one over and losing that tournament by one. So that was a little painful, but we really were starting to show our good stuff then, and I think that kind of proof.
That tournament somebody made it just a ridiculous comeback on the last day.
Right, Virginia played great the last day and we shot two seventy nine the last day we shot. We had sixty six sixty nine, seventy two seventy two as our counters, so we we played really really well that last day. The last two days. Actually we shot two seventy nine the last two days. And for people who don't know, we play, five guys count the low four scores, so two seventy nine are really good score. If you shot that every round, you'd win every tournament by a lot.
But that was a good event for our guys. That kind of, you know, settled them down. I think there was a little bit of kind of looking around after the Nike event, kind of thinking what's going on here. We thought we were supposed to be the best team in the country type deal, so that kind of sells everyone down, and then going into two matchplay events, we really wanted to make an impression kind on the rest
of the country. It even proved ourselves that, you know, we're a really good match play team because I think are the best part of our rosters are depth. We are we are at least six deep, and we might be seven or eight deep of really good players. I mean, we have a guy sitting at home who's a freshman, Kyle Supa, who's from Honolulu, Hawaii, who's made a cut in a PGA tour eament. I mean, he's a really, really good player. He's going to do a lot of good things for us, but he hasn't even been able
to sniff our lineup yet. And he'll get in there eventually, but not yet. So our depth is really really key. So we paid play back to back six person match play events, so that really helped us.
That's I was gonna ask is that you know, you guys return to all five guys from your team that made it to the Semis last year, and then you added in Cheng Jin, who was you know, the Asian All American uh Asian Amateur Champion played in this year's Masters, you know, one of the highest profile recruits. What what's
qualifying like and how what's your qualifying process like? How you know, do certain guys like your veterans like Sean Crocker and Rico Joe and Jonahs Shara have like you know, is it how does it work?
So we wet asked this question a lot by every recruit that comes in asked us this question, and every place has a different system. The answer we give is our system fluctuates based on the group we have, So we're not a team that always qualifies for two spots and has three coaches picks. And there's a lot of programs that do that. That's a really really good system that's been used for a while, and actually we have used it twice this year, but we don't use it
all the time. So based on how guys are playing and kind of the pattern we've seen of play and how guys are doing in our tests in practice, we we develop a qualifying system for every tournament. And one thing Coach Zambria always kind of pounds on is, you know, we we're really the only sport that that qualifies. You know, our football team is not on the practice field with Sam Darnold, who's you know, come to be, you know,
a great quarterback for us the past few weeks. He's not on the field throwing a football to retire against our second and third string quarterbacks to see who gets to play. You know, he's he's proven over the past few weeks that he's gonna be our starter. So to answer your question, we we have guys that we are
probably never going to go to tournaments without. Guys like Rico who's been a three time All American, is going to be a four time All American, and Sean Crocker who's ranked fifteenth in the world, and even Chang who's got chan Jin, who's got en up to a rough start. If you ask him, he would say it's been, you know, pretty bad for his standards, but he's ranked ninth in
the world. You know, he's proven for two years on the Wagger's system, which is a two year cycle, that he's one of the ten best players in the world. So we take all that stuff into account to figure out our qualifying system. But one thing that we are dead set on doing is giving our guys who are at home working hard a chance to make the lineup.
So we got back from the Golf Club of Georgia where we played great, and we needed to add another guy to the lineup because we have to play six in this next event, and Jonah had just won the Northward event the week before, so we you know our mind, Jonah is probably going to be the one we plug in, and everybody played really well at Georgia, But we gave our guys a chance to go out and shoot a number, and if they shot a certain number at our course,
Hillcrest out here that we play on Wednesdays, they would have a chance to get into qualifier against a couple of the guys who maybe hadn't performed up to their expectations. So we're always trying to find ways to keep guys at the bottom of the roster or who are just outside of our lineup engage, because, like I said, those guys are going to play a big part in this program. Guys like Kyle Supa and guys like Danie Ochoa, who are I've been our you know seven and eight guys.
You know, if a guy goes down, guy gets hurt, those guys are next up and we got to keep them ready. So we're always trying to find ways to keep those guys engaged.
See so you mentioned Hillcraft. Obviously La has got a you know, earth of great golf courses. It's with lacc Riviera, bel Air, Surewood, what is it Lakeside? Also, where where do you guys play and practice? Do you have your own practice facility? How what's the day to day and week to week kind of look like for some of your players.
Yeah, this is always kind of an interesting one because I feel like recruits and even just people kind of who are golf fans think that when you go to play college golf, you're supposed to just you know, wake up in your dorm, you roll out of your bed, you walk like thirteen feet and you're on like this super insane driving range with like five track men and you know, hitting pro vs and there's nobody else there. Well, no place is really like that. You've got to kind
of manage your schedule to get these golf courses. And most people know USC is located, you know, right in the middle of downtown LA, so it'd be pretty hard for us to have an on course campus. Luckily for us, we're able to use our UC football practice field in USC Baseball Field to hit balls outdoors on campus, so that's huge for our kids, and we typically practice on campus on Tuesday and Thursday. And then along with that, three years ago we opened an indoor facility which is
located in the basement of Heritage Hall. We have two Foresight golf simulators, which quite honestly have been program changers. They've been maybe the best thing to happen to this
program in the last decade. These things are getting so much use, and they've enabled us to get so dialed in with our yardages, and like I said before, we are so big on iron play here, especially since Mark Brody's book Every Shot Counts came out and just stressed that if you want to be a great tour player, you better be good at strokes gain approach, and that's iron play, and that's something coach Danberry's always tried to kind of pound into a kid's head, and that's what
I've always tried to pound into my kid's head. And those simulators have given us the ability to get a lot done in a short time and given our kids the ability to go somewhere in between class or in between studying when we're not officially practicing, and get a great hour working in some yardage drills and line drills and do different things. So it's really been great for us. And then as far as country clubs go, this I think is probably our best best benefit of coming to
play golf at usc IS. We have three full memberships at Riviera Country Club, which means three of our guys every year are full members at riv So we kind of divide those up as however we see fit, and those kids for the semester or the year, or some kids for their four years are full blown Riviera members, which is I'm at Jordan's Beef brought it up when he was playing the Northern Trust last year. That is part of the deal at USC. If you play golf here,
you get one. If you're one of our good you know, one of our highest recruited players, you definitely get one. And I think that's a benefit that maybe not a lot of other programs can can match because that place is the tour has been there forever. The range is awesome, and just the name itself, you know, gives us a lot of it's spectacular.
I I played in the summer out there, and I mean there isn't a week golf hole on.
That golf course. No, it's so good, And come tournament time it gets so firm, the rough gets so gnarly, and it's so good. It's such a good test. So, you know, we have three kids who are there. And then our closest course to campus is Wilshire Country Club, which is a great, very high end country Club. We have full privileges there so our guys can show up whenever they want practice chip checking, when the starter go play.
So that's been a great addition for us, and we got full time usage there I think two years ago. Coach Demry negotiated a great deal for us there so our kids can show up on the weekend in the morning, go hit balls there, chip putt, hang around, try to sneak out and go play some holes. And that that's about fifteen minutes from campus and you don't have to get on a freeway, which if anyone's ever been to Los Angeles, that is a huge, huge plus. If you don't ever have to get on a freeway, that's a
life changer. So that those are kind of Wheelshairs are pretty much our home course, that's what I would say. But we use Hillcrest Country Club, which is another fifteen minutes from campus. On Friday mornings, we play at Annadale Country Club, which is a great club in Pasadena, and we use Trump National in Palace Verde is quite a bit and the good thing about Trump is it's right on the water. It's one of the most beautiful golf courses you've ever seen. In your entire life. But it
is a megabeast. It is long, it is mean. If you missed the fairway, it's like off a cliff, you can't even find it. And I think using Trump's really made us a great driving golf team. And that's something that coach Sanry myself is I've always I've always really been attracted to those guys who can drive the golf ball long and straight, and that's kind of where the game's gone almost almost you know, laughable now how far
these guys hit it. But it's been a great golf course for us to kind of stress the importance of that part of the game.
That's perfect lead in where I wanted to know kind of you know, what you guys look for beyond obviously you know looking at scores, is what do you what do you guys look for in kids? When you're saying, you know, we want this kid at USC.
Well, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Scores are the most important thing. Rankings are also really important to us. I know people probably don't want to hear that, and we say to parents all the time and they're like, well the rankings. I'm like, well, the rankings are a good comparison of you against your peers.
I mean, that's kind of what it is. But apart from those two things, we love ball strikers or sucker for really really good ball strikers, and the more specifically we both Coach Amry myself love unique ball strikers, kind of funky looking golf swings, weird grips. I mean, Coach Ambury likes nothing more than a kid with a super weird grip who just absolutely stripes it. Kind of homemade stuff,
not super manufactured. But our biggest deal is ball striking well, guys that hit it high and long, and then kind of in our mind, if you hit it solidly, we can kind of fill in the rest you need to put decently to some level and then it kind of
goes back in the strokes gain conversation. But if you put decently enough and you hit it long and solid and high and play well against your peers, you know we're we're going to focus in on you and we're gonna really want you, and we really have put a preference on guys who hit it long and high.
Yeah, I mean, the Tiger generation, nobody hit it longer or higher than him.
Yeah, exactly, especially some of these courses we played, I mean, going to Bradenton, a concession two years ago. I mean, if you were not a big boy with a ton of speed, it was really hard to get around that place. If you look at those teams who played in the you know, in the match play and the guys who finished high up on the individual leader board, and when it was a big boys game. That's kind of what
it's turned into. And all these postseason events are kind of trending howards really good high end, long hard golf courses, and we just think guys with speed have a big advantage. Now that being said, we do have we do have guys that don't have a ton of speed and they have to kind of manage their games differently, and that's that presents, you know, presents a different challenge for coach,
the memory myself when we get them in. But you know, it's a great mix to have, you know, three or four guys in your line up to kill it and then you've got you know another two or three guys who are you know, good good iron players, very accurate off the tee, and great chippers and putters. So you know, a mix is great. But I will tell you, first off, we're attracted to guys who hit it high and hard nice.
So you know, parlaying off that outside, you know, outside of your guys, what guys have you seen this year on other teams that you know have kind of major jaw drop in terms of the way they hit the ball and you know, could be the next Brooks kept guys of the of the PGA Tour.
You know, it's interesting. I mean there's the two guys kind of that have led our team, or Shaw, Crocker and Ricohoe, And it's hard to find guys that hit it harder and more solid than those two them, and they really really advanced ball strikers. But at the Gifford this, uh was it two weeks ago? Uh, Sean played Maverick McNeely in match play and I walked with that group and I was helping Sean and that was a good
chance to get to see Maverick up close. And it is It is more impressive than the resume up close, I'll tell you that much. There's enough speed, there's enough height, but the way he can get himself around the golf course is otherworldly. I mean, there there's no Fluke that he's won as many times as he has and has had the success at Stanford that he has, So I think the list starts with him. After him, Will's Alaturus at wake Forest. We spent a bunch of them playing
with wake this year. Crazy impressive ball striker. Kid's got a ton of pop, long, lanky, but he pounds it and he's a lot of fun to watch. Gavin Hall at Texas has a crazy amount of speed. I think Tron Carter would be all in on on Gavin the length he hits it. He's not a big dude, but it's moving. It's like it takes a lot for Sean and even Rico to admit that someone's got crazy, crazy speed compared to them. And I think Gavin might be the guy that they're like, he might. He might have us.
So he's had a great year. And then I think, Uh, Wyndham Clark at Oregon, who was formerly at Oklahoma State is the number one ranked player in golf sat right now. Wyndham's and very very impressive bass striker, really really good player, and.
That Eastlake it was incredible how far he was been met and just you know, he's beautiful.
Golfling, beautiful golf swing. I know he's I think he just switched instructors. He's working with Jeff Smith out in Vegas now Radar Golf Pro on Twitter, who's done great work with a bunch of tour players and a bunch of young guys. Teach's Aaron Wise, who if you don't know that name yet, you will soon for all the golf fans. But Wyndhams made some good changes there. And we saw him at the NIKE and he played with Sean as well, and I was with that group and
boy was impressive. He looks really really good right now and he's gonna be a tough one. And then Sam Burns from LSU just won the All American this past week. So there's another name. I know, it's a lot of names to give you, but now there's so.
Many good players, all really impressive players. I mean, it's I think the depth of talent and is just insane and it's only getting.
You know, deeper.
I mean you look at the PGA Tour, I mean there's there's just not enough spots for how many talented players there are now, and the professional ranks on lower tours that you know, that can't get a crack onto the PGA Tour and you're like, how's this guy not there yet? Well, it's because there's just more and more great college kids and every year there's you know, a bigger flood of them heading to the bros.
These guys are so polished now, I mean I didn't even mention Colin Morikawa, who almost want to, uh, you know, a professional event this summer. I mean, you guys, guy had a crazy, crazy good summer and I mean he's he's as good as they come too. So, like I said,
you can't even get to all these guys. I mean there's another ten guys I could rattle off that I'm so impressed with it, and they don't even play for me, but I you know, when I watch them play and even watch them on the range, it's it's crazy impressive. And these guys are getting so much more polished. They're playing golf all year round. I mean they're playing every week in the summer. They're just they're so skilled and it's really cool to see. And they're all those players
are listed are on really really good college teams. I mean those teams are all top ten twelve teams. So it makes the college game so much more attractive to outsiders when these really really good players like mav And win them and guys like that are on college teams that they're gonna see on TV, whether it be at EASTA Cup or at the National Championship.
So how much you know? And I'd love to hear from your perspective having played I you know, I see it at the amateur level where I think back to when I was a kid, and when I was like a high school senior, I hit it like you know, two forty right, and now these kids are hitting at you know, three hundred and twenty three thirty, three hundred and thirty yards as you know, seventeen sixteen, fifteen year old.
You know what, what have you noticed is the you know, real.
Game changers in terms of what's changed in just the last ten years that slied to this explosion.
Yeah, it's a distance. I mean, it's nothing other than the distance and the speed, and both those things give my higher flight and more spin, which is enabled these players to do things from the fairway from you know, two hundred and out that we would have never even thought of. But this the speed that these guys have
and not even the big guys. I mean Justin See was on our team, like you said, just finished second in the All American and I'll pass the last week he's five eight, one fifty five, one sixty and he won the long drive contest and he'll pass them. He hit three thirty eight or something like that. I mean, the speed these guys have and like a Gavin Hall, not that big of a guy, but just murders it. And it's across the board. It's a big boys game.
And we're seeing with recruits that are coming up and you know, thirteen fourteen year old fifteen year olds that we're watching. I mean, it's an over six foot game and all these guys have speed. And I don't know what the answer is because there's some people that don't like it. You know, they're probably gonna have to address the ball at some point because it's just getting to a point where golf courses aren't going to be able
to be big enough for these boys. I know we fight that problem in LA and that's why we're lucky. We have riv and Trump which are well over seven thousand yards and you know, huge golf courses. But we're losing the greatness of a lot of these smaller golf courses because the speed's just gotten to such an astronomical level.
Yeah yeah, I'm four rolling. That's the ball. But I think you've got to roll it back for everybody. If you're going to roll it back.
You know, Yeah, I don't think you can do it for one section and not for the other. And I don't know if that's you know, everyone wants to grow the game now, and you know, I would love to, but I don't know if that's going to help or hurt grow in the game. I don't even know if it'll affect it. But seeing what these boys can do, and I mean these three woods these guys have now are just I mean, you can't even describe what these
guys are doing with their three wood. They're hitting the three woods three hundred and ten, three fifteen, and a lot of guys won't. They can't hit their three wood because it goes too far. The technology has gotten so good, it's kind of gone from the driver now down to
the three wood that it's a really weird deal. And I'm kind of interested to see where it goes with the club manufacturers from now on, because the technology's gone down to that three wood and you know what's next and what is he going to get into the hybrids and the utility irons And it would be interesting to see where it goes. So I'm curious, you know.
I'm just doing some research on a piece that I never wrote, but I was looking at driver lengths and how for the common golfer they've gone up every year, you know, right, forty six drivers. You know, I personally use like forty four and a half. And then I saw that tour average in the last ten years went from forty three and a half just to forty four and a half. Right, what are what are the most of the year guys usings for you know lengths?
I would assume that they're all in forty four and a half if that's what the tour is that I'm assuming that that's what my guys are. I spent some time down at Taylor Made I think it was last year when I was I went down with one of my girls was coaching at the time, and I met I was talking to one of their engineers was hanging out on the range and they've experimented going back shorter. I guess he was heading a project of thinking maybe that short of the club that a high handicapper would
actually pick up some speed. So I know there's some some research being done on that now, which would I think would be good? I think it's gotten too long, and but you're not seeing any of the college players, I don't think really going over forty five maybe forty five and a half. But I think that's kind of hit a wall there at some point. You gotta you're losing control and the golf courses were playing with the rough we're playing on and it's going to come back to bite you.
Yeah, I mean the number one thing you got to be in a fair way to score, you know, Uh, make bogus from the rough. You know, it's hard to make bogus from the fairway.
For those guys. Yeah, exactly.
So, uh, you know, let's let's jump a little off topic here. I played in the US mid Am and uh it was won by USB grad Stuart hagis dad, and I'm curious if he's been back around campus.
You know what what?
Uh? I know, coach Danbury, coach Tammu's you know, only twenty five, so he's a recent grad of the program. Rare one not to turn pro, but what the if he's been back around and uh if any of the guys from your team know him.
And you know, uh yeah, so our guys know him pretty well from amateur golf. This summer. We hung out with him, uh for a bunch of time, a lot of time at the am UH this summer, and so he's been in kind of constant contact with a lot of our guys, especially Sean and Rico, because I know there's some Walker Cup hopes for the three of them.
It sounds to me like Stui's gonna have a really, really good chance to get on that Walker Cup team because they have to pick the two midams and him being twenty five and having the summer that he had, especially with that Midam title, I got to think he's almost a shoeing for that team. So I know Sean Rico have been in contact with him about that. But Stuie's a legend here at USC. He's got a bunch
of nicknames, Van Wilder, the Thin Beast. But with all the testing that we've done, Coach Zambri will always harp on the fact that stu might be his best iron player he's ever had, and that puts him in the category with love Mark and Tim Sluter, played the European Tour, and Rico Ho. He's been a three time American. So Stu's kind of a legend around here and all different walks of life, whether it be on in his fraternity or in the athletic department or even in our standards
of testing here. But he's a really good guy. He's got a really good family. His families all Trojans. I spent a lot of time around our fleg department, so we couldn't be happier for him. We were watching the playoffs on our phone on Coach Amby's phone during the practice round at Olympia Fields, and when he made that put to win, we went crazy and I think the whole golf course heard his scream, so it was we
were so happy for him. And he was telling Coach Amry and if the us An that he had aspirations of making this Walker Cup team and that's that's where his mind was, and he was gonna do everything he could to make that team. And winning that mid Am and getting in the Masters, that's that's definitely gonna help them. We're real for him.
I mean the two guys that got to the you know, and I mean has Dad Wang you know with yeah, that that kind of locked it up. I feel like, so it's Harvey is a great player too. They're still keeping two guys on the walk cup in two.
Mid AM's right too, Midam, that's that's as far as I know, that's what they're still doing and kind of going back to Stue and getting into the Masters. Our men's team took a trip to Augustus, Stue's senior year, I believe, and I think Rumor has to stew put up a pretty good round from the tournament teas his last run in Augusta, so it's a place he's comfortable. So I'm uh, we're really excited to see what he can do there if you gets the invite. I know, I guess has given that out.
Yet, if he can bottle up that the game he had the last five or six holes of that, Midham, I mean, that was unbelievable, all those birdies.
That was such good stuff, and like like kind of coach every said, he has some great iron shots down the stretch show to give him ten to fifteen footers to keep that thing alive and then to win it and it was good to see, you know, the testing it paid off, so it's good for us to see too.
Yeah, that's awesome. So let's jump into a couple reader questions and Twitter questions here. So in the in your college career, you know who, who's the best player that you've seen through come through the college ranks? This is from Ghosts of Hogan.
Oh, Ghost Love Ghosts This. I'm kind of torn on this one because both the guys I'm thinking of, I'm really good friends best friends with one of them, and I'm really good friends with the other one, Jamie love Mark. So first of one I'll give you is Jamie. What he did his freshman year was so dominant, and we previously talked about this him and Patrick Cantley. It was kind of back and forth of Southern California battle of who could do more on the amateur circuit. So Jamie's
stuff might be as good as I've ever seen. The way he hit his long irons and the way he drove the golf ball, and his hands. He's got very very underrated hands around the green. His high chipping game is world class. I adventure to say one of the best on tour. Going high from around the greens and he could always put. So I'm giving you two incredibly biased answers, by the way, so I've apologize for that. And the other one would be Chris Nalen, who's now
the assistant men's coach at Arizona. And I got to know Chris really well because I committed really early to Arizona, So I started hanging around the probe and going to some tournaments and when they were around the area that I was at, and got to know Chris really well and ended up living with him for three years towards the end of college and then into my coaching career. Chris's amateur record was stuff was like legend just I think it was a semifinalist in the am He won
the Northeastern and he won the Dogwood. He went on one of those crazy summer stretches, and he was such a good ball striker that it made up for I think what he would tell you was kind of his lower end putting skill, and he was good enough putter, he was serviceable, but his iron play was so good. It was something that always stuck out to me. Stuck out to me even as a young kid. It was something that I would just watch on the range and I would just my jaw would hit the floor. It
was so good. And I kind of spent all practice rounds of college tournaments when we see him trying to tell my kids how good he was, and they're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm like, oh, guys, this guy was so good. He shot sixty five, sixty four, sixty three, sixty two with the Dogwood one summer, and then they were like, what actually, And unfortunately he had a has a really bad back injury and it's not able to play anymore, which is
kind of similar to what Jamie had. Jamie broke his back and had surgery, but luckily he's kind of regained his health. But those two guys, in my eyes, guys, I spent a lot of time around kind of there's stuff with something that always stuck out to me, and I always admired.
That's that's great. I mean, it's love Mark. I always wonder what would have happened had that first back injury not happened, because it's you know, he was on like an unbelievable trajectory from you know, college to pro to dominating the web dot com and then he got.
Hurt, yeah, exactly, and he started, you know, he got hurt in college. Toward the end of his career, he had a rib issue that kind of held him out of a couple events. But you know what, he's done great work with Chris Como the past couple of years, and he's really driving the golf ball well, which was
a problem coming off his back injury. So I think now he's kind of focusing on tightening up his iron game, and if he can get his iron game a little better, I would look for him to do some big things, because he got himself in contention quite a bit last year, and that was pretty much on the back of his chipping ability. He's a good putter, and then you know, I think he was third or fourth all year of
strokes game driving. He's just so far and so high that Chris Como really tightened up his accuracy and he kept his distance in doing so. And he said he's been working hard on his iron game and he's he's come in a couple of times since I've been here to work with coach and on the testing, and you know, we're expecting big things from Jamie this year. And he just got married so he's you know, his life's in a good play. So hopefully he can get off to a good start and do some big things this year.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think what gets lost and you hit the nail on the head, It is like he's like a top fifteen player in the world around the greens. It gets lost because of how far he hits it. But when he hit it that far and you're that good around the greens, it's it's really hard not to be successful.
Yeah. I mean we watched, you know, we're we're in the office all the time watching you know, the guys on shot Link and it's like Jamie love Mark three twenty three to right fairway and it's like Jamie Lovemark one eighty three to right rough forty seven inches, you know,
forty seven ft from the hole. And then we're like, oh, he'll chip it to a foot and it's like Jamie Lovemark third shot to six inches and it's just like he's such a good shipper, but it totally gets lost because he he was dominating that Strokes game driving stat But like I said, if he can get that iron game just a little bit better and a little bit sharper, he's he's gonna do some great things, all right.
So the next two are from Tyler Goulding.
Our former assistant.
Yeah, so what you know the big controversy it actually happened when you guys played Texas is that you know? Bo Hostler hurt his shoulder, had to get surgery later on it, but he was unable to play in the finals. He heard his shoulder while playing the semi final match. Was he playing against Rico right?
Uh? Bo was playing against Andrew Levitt.
Okay, so he heard his shoulder. Unable to play then, and the NCAA doesn't allow substitutions, so Texas had to just forfeit one of the final match play matches in the finals of the NCAA Championship. So what are your thoughts on them upholding no substitutions rule.
It's if you ask one hundred people, you probab get one hundre different answers on this. So even coach Zamber, I think, might have a slightly different opinion of mine. I love substitutions for match play circumstances. I do not like substitutions for stroke play circumstances. And that's because the individual rankings are a big deal to these guys. I mean,
they really care about the rankings. It's how you know, companies make decisions on guys when they're turning pro and even agencies, you know, look at guys' rankings when they're trying to figure out who they want to represent. So it's a big deal to these guys. It's a big deal to us. We want guys that are highly ranked, and I just feel like if you have substitutions in
stroke play scenarios, we're gonna have guys. You know, if you pull a guy out to the finished last in the tournament, or did you just not get a ranking for the tournament so you'll have you could have you know, some room for some some funky stuff going on as far as pulling a guy out or when do you know if you get a highly ranked guy who's playing bad and you pull him out, you know, are you
pulling him out really to make your team better? You're pulling him out, you know, maybe to save his ranking, to make him feel a little bit better. So I just feel like there's a lot of scenarios there, But as far as match play is concerned, I think it's a great idea. I think it gives more guys a chance to travel, which also presents another problem for smaller programs. For bigger Power five programs, the expense is not that
big of a deal. It's another, you know, thousand dollars fifteen hundred dollars a trip, which just added on your budget. And you know, the bigger football schools can kind of kind of deal with it, but the mid majors, that's a lot of money that they probably have the fundraise. So you know, there's a there's something that a lot of people don't think about when they talk about substitutions, is to added expense. But as far as match play, I think it works, and the Bohasler situation just shined
the light on it. It's kind of been talked about for a long time. Actually, remember Tochal Rose bringing this up when I was playing back in two thousand and seven. I think even brought it up with the Coaches convention then. But it's kind of a funny story. At at Eugene obviously had the Bow situation, but our women's team at USC played Duke in the first round of match play
and Leon Maguire played with early stage of vertigo. It kind of wasn't really talked about because it was a quarterfinal match, but you know, trust me, they would have liked the substitution. They would have had to pull the number one amateur in the country, in the world to rest that day because k early stage vertigo. Now she fought through it and played and you know, actually actually
played decently well that day. But it's something that presented itself twice that week, and obviously the bow One being in the situation it was, and you know, the talent he is, you know, always being in the spotlight as good as his record was got more people to talk about it. But it's something that's been discussed for a while now.
Yeah, I think it's at that stage. I mean, it was just a shame. I mean that, Yeah, you just have to give away a point when it's you know, it's not like they're faking an injury or they're trying to get somebody out of there. I think if I think if there's a legitimate excuse, there should be you know, you should be allowed to switch.
Yeah, especially in the match plays. You know that was in a match play deal where it's you know, there are you get one head to head ranking win if you beat someone, it doesn't really affect the rankings much like it would in a regular season event. If you're pulling a guy from a stroke play event, that changes the rankings a lot of It also changes who everybody else is playing. But in a matchplay situation, I love it.
You know, bring bring seven guys if you want, you know who cares, bring the whole team, figure out who you want to play in the match play. I think it's a great way to get more guys involved, and it gets more strategy involved for the coaches, which which I think is great.
Yeah, I agree, So it just you know what you guys are expecting. Obviously, you still got to get through regionals to.
Get to.
Rich Harvest in the in the championship. But you know, where do you guys qualify for a regionals? And you know what? What are you guys looking forward to about rich Harvest as a course.
To be honest with you, I don't even know where the NCAA regionals are located this year, so I cannot answer that question. But as far as Riss Harvest is concerned, we are really excited to get there. Assuming we get there. I've never personally been there. Rico played there his freshman year. In regionals in twenty fourteen, US got through there. I believe they finished tied for fourth as a team. In the reviews we got back from those guys in coach
Ambry on that golf course, where they loved it. Kind of the words we I kept hearing are big, mean, long, a lot of marsh I guess from what I hear, But it's gonna be a really, really tough test. I think it's going to put a big mark on driving ability and long iron play, which our entire roster gets excited about when they hear that, probably from getting it pounded into their heads by coaching my self. But it's
something we're really looking forward to. And then all I keep hearing about it are these different team grounds and you know, a couple of hundred different ways to play the golf course. So when we get into match play, it could be a very interesting setup where they could change some stuff coming down the stretch, makes them holes drivable, makes some par fives reachable, where hopefully we can give the TV audience some some exciting stuff.
That's it. That's yeah, it's it's gonna be. Is it definitely a big golf course, definitely tough. I mean, if you if you don't bring your ball striking game, it's gonna kick your ass. So but anyways, Hey, thanks for spending you know, an hour with us. I can't say enough. Thank you for the time.
And you know, for.
Everybody that's looking to follow Justin, he's on Twitter, it's Justin s Underscore USC. So at Justin s Underscore USC. And Hey, thanks again for coming on and uh wishing you guys the best of block here in the spring season.
No proud Manny, Thanks for having me on. Appreciate the coverage you're giving college golf and look forward to seeing you out Rich Harvers Farms.
Definitely man looking forward to meet there.
Thanks again, it's awesome. Thanks Anny,
