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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 brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Today's episode is with Tom Doak. It's another edition of the Yoke with Doak and this is a special one. This one is really a table setter to get you in the mood for the one hundred and fiftieth Open Championship, which will be hosted at the Old Course at Saint Andrews. So this episode really just goes into detail about the Old Course and Tom talks about a ton of stuff and yeah, thank you to him for the time, and
we can't wait for the Open Championship. So, without further ado, here is Tom dough Hey with the Open coming up at Saint Andrews. I know that's a very special place to a lot of people, but it's a place that you love to talk about. I figured that'd be a good first jumping off point for this and I'm going to Saint Andrews and in the Old Course for the first time in my life, and I was curious. You know, I'm gonna be there for like a whole a whole week. I'm not gonna play, but I'm gonna watch a lot
of golf. I'm gonna walk a lot. What what would be your advice to a first timer like myself?
You know, I've never been there for the open My advice for first timers generally is something you won't be able to do, which is go out there on Sunday and walk around.
I think I'll be able to do. I got the credential, so.
Okay, well maybe you can then that'd be great. I mean, you know, Sundays, the Old Course is famously closed and it's a public park, and you don't there's more townfolk like out on those first two or three holes going out and coming back than there are further out as
you go. But there's people like walking their dogs and walk you know, giving their kids a riding the stroller and stuff pretty much all over the golf course for most of Sunday, which is which is really fun, but it's about the only time that you can be out there and kind of linger and have a look at the contours and the features because you know, because the other six days of the week gets a factory and you know it's just one group after another. And you
know at the old course too. Not only do you have to be aware of the people playing behind you, you have to be aware on several holes of the people come in the other direction coming back, because you know your fairway could be in play for the other
from the other fairway. You know, on a significant number of holes, and so it's that you have to have your head on a swivel if you're out there trying to walk around and look at it, not actually playing golf, and you'd hate to, you know, ruin around a golf there by trying to look too much while you're playing.
Do you think I've heard from so many people that they feel like they didn't get it the first time around, and then they feel like they get it more and more. Do you think part of it is like sensory overload or is it more like that's the nature of golf where you take yourself on a guided based off where you hit it.
Uh, it's well a, it's it's by far more complicated than other golf courses because the hazards that are out there aren't placed in obvious spots, and a lot of them you can't even you can't see very well from the tee, so you know, you don't you don't see a hazard until you get up, buy it or past it, and you're like, ohh, I would have played different if I'd known that was there. So there's that part of it, uh, you know, just the lack of visibility making it hard.
And then you know some of the things that are really that really make certain holes challenging, our little features and contours that you're just not likely to pick up the first time unless you're a shaper or somebody who does this for a living. There's no way that you're going to really get that. So to me, it's like, you know, people are excited to be there, but it's you know that they're having a hard time picking things out visually that they can remember, especially on the first
few holes going out. I think that, you know, one of the reasons that the incoming holes are more famous
two reasons. One because you're playing toward the town and you have something to aim at, and two you know you've got the out of bounds wall in play on fourteen, or you've got the fall fence line for the railway line on sixteen or the hotel on seventeen, whereas going out, you've just got some gorse and the new course over on the other side, and there's nothing there to really latch onto is Oh yeah, I remember that's the third hole because there's another gorse bush over there.
So just you know, at a very rudimentary level, you know hazards, you know them being real hazards and almost strategic hazards where it's pretty easy if you avoid them, and playable if you avoid them, but if you find them, you're in for and for a tough day.
Yes, And that's what you know when you first get interested in golf course architecture. You know, especially if you're a kid, you know, you're drawing golf holes and and you're drawing these little bunkers and you think about them as hazards like that. But the truth is most golf courses, most of the world, those bunkers are not very hazardous for good players anymore. And you know at Saint Andrew's, at the courses on the Open Road to that's not true.
They are real hazards, and even the best players in the world are really focused on plotting their way around that place too, so it's hazard free. Driving it in the bunker is a penalty, and there's not many places they deal with them in a way.
This is kind of a bigger, open ended question that spawns from that.
Obviously, the I think the construction of bunkers over there has a lot to do with it. The pot bunkers, you know, where you you know, you can just trickle in and you can be dead. Why do you think that in America bunkers have kind of gone the complete opposite direction in a way where where you hear people say good players especially get in the bunker and they've become they maybe aren't as penal.
Well, there's a couple of things to go into that. I mean, one is we're way too focused in America on the bunkers being visual objects and making them pretty and making them dramatic. And when you build, you know, you hear you know, not just you know, not just people that are interested in golf course architecture, even the people in the business doing the work, they talk all the time about the visual scale of the bunkers, and
none of that applies to Saint Andrews. You know, you know, my guys want to build a big bunker, so you know, so it's in proportion with other features in the lane landscape and in Scotland they're not at all. They're tiny little things, but you don't really you know, they don't. They don't look so ticky tack as people think, because
you also don't see them very well. They sit down in the ground, so they're in visual scale by the time you get up there to see them, but they're not in visual scale from the tee.
Do you think some of that has to do with the contours around them, where the bunkers are small in proportion, but they actually play really big, like the bunker you see. The sand is actually just the small part of the overarching bunker because of the way the ball seems to feed into them.
Yes, sometimes not all the time. I mean, on a lot of golf courses the bunkers don't gather so much, so they are just you know, randomly. You know, if you hit one hundred drives, you're only going to wind up in a bunker at three or four times. But
you know at Mirfield that's Saint Andrew's at Hoylake. At some of these places, Yeah, the ground around you know, the bunker is sort of in the face of a little hollow, and a lot of the hollow kind of gathers balls into the bunker and then sometimes two you know, like Mirfield is probably the best example. One of the reasons I love Mierfield so much is because they the shaping is so good at three D, like the actual side wall may not be you know, like the road
bunker where it's six or seven feet straight up. You know, you may only have a little two foot wall at the base of the bunker, but then there's another two or three feet high and six or ten feet away from you. That's mode really tight, and if you don't get over that, it's just going to roll right back in the bunker. And that's something that's you know, we're
kind of afraid to do that. In modern arch or all of us has had drilled into us drainage, drainage, drainage, and you don't you know, if you've got sand flared up the face, you can't afford to have that short grass rolling down from the top because every time it rains, it's going to wash out all the sand. That's flashed up. You can only really have the ball rolling into the bunker like that if the sand's just flat in the bottom, and if the drainage is so good underneath there that
when water collects in the bunker, it goes away pretty fast. Now. I when I lived in Saint Andrew's, if they had a big rain, the bunkers would be full of water for a few hours. And they've put in a ton of drainage. You know, most people don't realize that place is really low lying. It's only like, you know, ten or fifteen feet above sea level, so you know, there
wasn't much place for the water to go before. And they've put a lot of drainage under the thing now, so those bunkers do pump out quicker.
Yeah, and that's a Those bunkers are a perfect example of what you're saying. Because they're flat on the bottom, the water goes in and then they they they obviously have installed more drainage to drain it out where they don't have to worry about washouts with the with the sod stacked faces, right, No, washouts.
Have never been a problem there. You know. Wind erosion is a problem sometimes I'm bunkers in the UK, but washouts pretty much aren't.
Uh what what are some of your favorite shots to hit and to watch? I assume when you were working grounds out there, you watched a lot of golf, you know, anecdotally. What what were some favorite spots of yours to watch or play?
Oh? Well, a lot of them are just a little short game kind of shots, you know. So so going out the you know, to me the two most underrated holes or the second and the fourth. The second if the flag's over and the left half of the green, you've got some pretty severe rolly nouns to go, you know, kind of rumble over. If you're gonna roll the ball up there, you could play it to the right of them and having you know, the ball just runs onto the green and you've got maybe a thirty forty foot
pott over there behind the mounds. But if you if the pins and the ball behind the mounds, you know, you don't want to land it just short of the green because you might land you might land on the upslope and it stops, and you might land on a downslope and it goes all the way through and over the back. You know, so you've got it. You know, on a shot like that, you've either got to fly
it over everything, which is hard. You can't do it downwind and stop it anywhere near or you got to land at like thirty forty yards short and let it roll over all that stuff if you if you land it short, you know, all those roles just kind of
cancel each other out. You know, you're starting. You know, the ball lands at you know, say, elevation zero, and it goes up over a mound and it slows down, but it gets to the top of the mound and then it speeds up and it's kind of back to where it was by the time it gets on the green. But you know, but you can't fly and land it
on that downslope, then you've got real trouble. The fourth hole instead of you know, kind of a big ridge that you're rolling over, it's just a little not quite pointy mound about four feet high that's right in front of the right in the middle of the approach to the green. And again, you know, that thing is just going to deflect your ball any direction if you hit it. So the one thing that you can't do is fly
the ball and hit it. You know, and then you've only got between that there's some really devastating green side bunkers to the left of there. You've only got about I don't know, maybe fifteen twenty yards between the mound and the bunkers to try to, you know, to play through that side. So you know, you tend to miss the green right, but if you you know, that's actually a hold that if you could drive it way left,
it makes that opening feel a little bigger. It's you know, it's hard to get to a pin in the back. If you do that, you're kind of playing across the green to the right. But you know, at least you've got a little wider entrance. You know, you know, the ball not going to hit them ound and get deflected into the bunkers on the left.
I think people think of strategy in golf architecture so much as hazards. Like we talked about avoiding hazards, and obviously that's a huge theme to the Old course. But something that's kind of illuminating with those those two holes and shots that you describe there, is that all a huge part of the old course is the ground contour.
Yeah, another one is the twelfth green. You know, it's a short part four. It's drivable for a lot of these guys. Now, you know, a lot of the commmentary used to focus on these hidden pot bunkers in the fairway that were really built for when you play the course the other way around, because you can't see them and you could drive over most of them pretty easily. But you know to me that you know, at the end of the day, that hole is about the green.
You know, there's there's kind of a big hollow in front, and then there's a little shelf where they put the hole and then it slides back down pretty hard off the back, and that shelf from front to back is only like thirty five feet, so, you know, laying in a wedge on it and having it stay there and not jump off the back or spin back off the into the front, it's really really hard to do. You really don't want to be you know, you want to drive it up there close enough that you can ship
or pot up the slope. You don't want to have to you know, you don't want to have to play an aerial shot to that you can possibly avoid it. Even as good as the pros are, you know, it's just it's too difficult of a shot, unless if the wind is in your face, maybe you have a chance to hit that shot. But it's really not the high percentage shot ever, which again that's not something you see pros deal with a lot. Usually they can take it in the air pretty close to the hole if they want to.
Yeah, I mean, did you you know that?
I think some of the things that you're talking about, these smaller shelves, that's something.
That you that you've used with Memorial Park as particular.
If you said on every golf course I've ever built, I mean high Point had the seventh fall at high Point was a little short part four, and I had a little narrow shelf along the back of the green and a deep pop bunker behind it that came straight out of the old course.
It's like the idea of being able having a wide range of pigs, you know, So that tiny shelf makes the golf hole excruciatingly difficult, you know, especially for somebody
that's trying to make a three. And you expect on a short part four if you're a very if you're a pro playing an Open championship, to make a three, and when you put that pin, what it does is you know whether the pro the pro can tell themselves as much as they want that they need to play conservatively and avoid big numbers, but they get to certain points where they cannot resist.
Uh.
And that's really you know, the.
What golf architecture at at you know, when with the highest level of the game is is that you've got the most conservative players and the architect is really trying to tempt them to do something they don't want to do. And those small shelves on short shots are a good example of that. And but then also you could have pins on that whole that are extraordinarily easy and right.
And you know, for the Open Championship, you know, the green is really wide, So for the Open Championship they'll put the pin along the different places along the shelf all four days. But you know, if you and I went there today and played the golf course, the pin's probably down in the bowl in front, and it's not nearly as heart as a whole, So it does That's one of the ways that Saint Andrews, you know, is playable for the average guy, and yet it's still a
challenge for great players. Is there is a tremendous variety of things. And you know, I've had good friends. You know, one of my mentors in the business or not really in the business and golf is Bill Shehan from Chicago, great amateur player. I met him when I was in college, and you know, Bill won the Senior Amateur and then he won the British Senior Amateur. So they made him
a member of the RNA. And he calls me after he's a member and he's like, I'm going to go play in that fall meeting and he's like, he don't. He'd only been to Saint Andrews once or twice before. He said, I'm gonna go play in the Fall Meeting and I'm looking at the scores that win it and I think, I, you know, I think I got a pretty good chance. And I laughed. He's like what. I'm like, Wow, they use the same whole locations for that that they use for the Open or the Amateur. It's like the
course is six shots harder. He's like, oh, It's like, yeah, get an get a really good caddy, and maybe you can compete, but it's it's not the same golf course.
That's uh.
You know. Something that I always think about is something that you said to me when you were playing the Loop years ago, was about green shapes. And I think about this with like the seventeenth at at Saint Andrew's a long par four that you know, obviously it's a par five sometimes in part four for the tournament, and with it being a narrow green for really good players. That narrow green on long holes versus that shallow, wide green that you talk about with design on shorter holes.
I'd love to hear in a good example, the twelfth, which we just talked about, is a wider, shallower green with some shallow targets. Talk about that design feature in terms of what it does, you know, in terms of perceived difficulty.
Maybe it's not perceived difficulty as actual difficulty, so that you know, I mean, you'll see a lot in Britain that the the longest, some of the longest part fours have the smallest, tightest greens, which you know, the average golfer would think, well, that's unfair. You know, I'm hitting a long shot. This should be the big target that sort of evolved, you know when that you know the road hole is is one of the holes that hasn't
the length hasn't changed in a very long time. So you know back in the day that you were hitting a short third shot into that green, not a long second shot when it was first started. And since then they really haven't been able to do anything about that. So that narrow target, you know, it wasn't really built for a foe iron or now they're back to hitting eight iron at it or whatever. But you know, so a lot of those holes just kind of evolved. But
that's what makes them so compelling. It's like, you know, this is kind of unfair by most people's standards, but guess what I got to decide what to do about that, because there it is. But you know, the one thing when I worked for Pete Dye was they the USGA just came out with the slope system that Dean Nuth had spent all this time. You know, they'd studied statistics. You know, it was like the earliest research on like where average bogie players miss it as opposed to scratch players.
So they could try to come up with the data to do this slope system and how to rate golf courses. And Pete knew that, you know, I had a math oriented brain, so he asked me to spend a little time with Dean Nuth and also to study, you know, their findings really carefully and tell him, you know, if there was anything in there that we could use to make the golf course harder for really good players and
comparatively not as hard for average players. And the one thing that I did find that I picked out pretty fast was on short shots. You know, the pro is going to hit it in a really tight circle, obviously, but he's going to miss short and long about as much as he's going to miss left or right because it's a short shot. And you know, a pro's not hitting a wedge ten yards offline or fifteen yards offline.
I think I think any good player would would think of this and say, if I got to take a little off a wedge, that's when I get that little over the top pole that goes five yards long and a little left at or I I don't, you know, it's like the brilliance of twelve that augusta long left, short right.
Yes for right handed play, yeah for right hand. So you know, and the average guy with that short shot, you know, I could miss a wedge ten yards right every day and just fan it right. I do that every time. I play. It's fury, it's infuriating, But I'm gonna get you know, I'm gonna get the distance pretty close. You know, I know how far I hit. You know, I know what a hundred yard shot feels like. So I'm gonna get that. You know, I'm gonna get the
distance pretty close. But I might miss wide. So that wide and shallow target, that's not so bad for me, whereas that you know, that little slope in front is going to bother a tour player as much as it's going to bother me. Now you go to the other extreme, you know, when when you've got a really long shot into a green and hit a three iron or whatever a green. Great players, tour pro level players are remarkably consistent on their distance control. You know, they don't miss
that ten yard short. Ever. I was talking to we were working on the you know, we've been doing some work at the Renaissance Club, and I was talking Padrick Harrington is consulting on it now, and I was talking to him about it, and we were going through the course all by hole, actually looking at a laptop with the whole diagrams. We got to the seventeenth, which is
kind of a two hundred dard Part three. There's a nasty deep bunker front left and you don't see it very well from the tee and Harrington said, oh, I forgot that bunker was even there. And I was like, it's one of the nastiest places to be on the golf course. How could you not think about that? And he's like, well, they can't put the pin right right behind it because there's a little slope away, so the pins always eight or nine yards back of the bunker.
He's like, I'm never gonna miss it that short, and I'm like, whoa, you know, because because because I'm going to miss twenty yards shorter long. You know, the tur pros are not going to miss shorter long, but because they're way further back, they're gonna miss wide. You know, it's just proportional for them. The farther you go back, the more. You know, instead of three yards left or right now, it's eight or ten yards left to right.
So a skinny green is hard for them, or at least it's it's it's much harder for them than the the shallow target. The shallow target. They're never going to miss the shallow target.
And you know this all came about, I think because I was I was looking at the scorecard and I was like, wait, why is the slope one twenty for this golf course. It's way harder than that, and and this was you know, the response, and it makes total sense. Is like, you know, having caddied basically my entire childhood, the chances of a fifteen handicap hitting a four hundred and thirty yard part four and two are are so small to start with. By making it narrow, it doesn't
really have a big impact. But transversely, a hole like the road hole, where you have this super narrow target, you've got a hazard behind it, and you've got a bunker in front of it, and all of a sudden it puts a good player. You could wrap yourself into a pretzel worrying about where where to miss, and you've got a longer shot in where you're going to naturally miss those directions more often.
Right, and you know that the road hole. The one thing about it is it's not like Augusta. It's like it's turned the other way. So so the long you know the long pole, you might get away with it, except for there's a very deep bunker there. If you don't, and you're a little less likely to go on the road because if you're going right, it stays a little short. But even so, you know, to me, that's one of
the most fastest. That'll be one of the most fascinating holes to watch this year, because you know, thirty years ago, forty years ago, even the best players in the world didn't really try to hit get it back to the hole there at all. You know, it was kind of on par with the right pin at twelve at Augusta or ten at Riviera. It's like everybody knows it's stupid to try this, so nobody did. But now they're driving
it so far. You know, they can be hitting eight irons or nine irons and they don't want to lay up to the front of the green if they're hitting an eight iron and nine iron approach, and that brings everything else back into play.
It's actually works.
It's like that McDonald quote back when I think the Haskell ball came out where he talked about how certain holes get better with distance, certain holes get worse. This might be when you put a shorter and shorter club, it might force player's hand that psychological I'm going to deviate from my strategy, so to say.
Yeah, I mean that's that's probably the best example of it because you see how it's evolved over one hundred years. Like you know, somebody might you know, somebody might say let's restore it to be in a par five and you know everybody having a short third shot to it. But it's held up really well, whether it was whether some people are playing it like a par five or people are playing it like a long per four or now it's it's kind of a short approach for the
best players. It's still a compelling hole.
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I'm curious with you know, we're we're talking about this in distance in the Old Course. You know, obviously they've built a lot of new tea's and I'm not sure when the last time you were out there is, but they it seems like the rough has been encroaching. Do you have any thoughts on on kind of the evolution of the Old Course and re years?
Yeah, I mean it's been when did I walk it last? There's probably been. The last time I walked it was for that NBC documentary that's been on a million times in the lead up to the Open and which was really cool. We you know, we went out and walked on Sunday and talked about it a lot like we're talking now, except like point and at Features, which was
which was really fun. You know, I do think you know the setup, you know this it's it's kind of like because they have the Open there every five years plus their mindus, you know, it's become like a lot of US Open courses have, you know, like Shinnecock, they narrowed up and then they never mowed it back out to the same wit to the width it used to be. And Pinehurst, you know that was a big failing of
Pinehurst number two for a long time. They narrowed it up for the Open and then you know they just kept it narrow and took away a lot of the strategy. And they've done that at Saint Andrew to you know the for sure this you know, the sixteenth Hall, it's just shockingly like you know, used to be able to hit it left of the Principal's nose and it would just run forever out there in between sixteen and three and the farther it went, the worsen angle you had
to the green and the harder it was. And now that's all rough and they're trying to make the rough as thick as they can. But you know you'd be worse off if the ball just kept on gut. You know, a good player would be worse off. The average player would be much better off if the ball is on short grass over there, because they're probably not hitting the green in two anyway. They just at least they find
the ball. So there's four or five places around the golf course where they've taken away angles, you know, and sometimes they're taking away angles that are bad. You know, it's like the hard thing to you know, the hard thing for a lot of people to understand is sometimes sometimes the whole is harder if your ball keeps going off line instead of stop it. You know, the more the longer it goes, the more acute the angle is going back the other way. And you know, I mean,
I'm sixteen at the old course. You're playing back towards out of bounds as the further you go left, you know, if the pin's kind of on that front right part, you're playing to a very narrow thing with with a big hollow in front of it and an out of bounds fence not that far behind it.
I mean, in that fairway used to be it just was short grass all the way left and now it's thick rough.
Yes, there was just there was a lot of there was a lot of you know, the the third fairway in the sixteenth were pretty much mowed together, and now there's a big, you know, band of rock coming back in from the sixteen green and three T side that
didn't used to be there. You know, seven is another one that like it's not a problem for the pros, but you know, I'm shocked at like, it's a long carry from the team now to get it out in the fairway, and you know, the average player isn't playing it from nearly as long as the pros, but it's a pretty you know, it's a carry to get to the fairway now, and it used to be you know, the shortcrass came way back, and I just that one.
I don't really understand why they changed it because it doesn't seem like, you know, it doesn't seem like it's adding any strategy, and it's it's not like the pros are gonna miss that short ever. So I haven't figured out what, you know, why they did that with this in.
Mind, I think we got questions from a couple of people. There's somebody I'm that I work with who cause really he's been bagging this take and I'm curious your your thoughts on it, okay, he said. He says that that the old course just should be retired from the Open Rota and and and it should go you know, it should go the way of Prestwick and just go back to it's you know, be itself.
Wow. I mean, obviously that's never going to happen because the RNA runs the Open, and the RNA's based in San Andrew's, so you know, I mean, I would say one of the things I like about that dynamic is that it does it puts more pressure on the RNA to do something about equipment instead of just doing something about the golf courses than it does the USGA because the RN because the RNA's home is one of those championship golf courses where all these problems show up. You know,
the USCA doesn't have to worry about that. Oh that's Marian's problem, that's Oakland Hills problem. The RNA, it's our problem. So they have a little more skin in the game as far as what to do about equipment. Long term, they just they you know, they keep putting teeth back in and further and further back, but they don't have much room to do that.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the thing.
Half the half the round seemingly is spent walking back to tease on other courses.
Yes, and you know I did play. I played the golf course once in tournament conditions. After after we finished working on Sabonic. H My client Michael Pascucci, who played in the dune Hill every year, and one of his founding members, Johann Ruper, who runs the you know, the chairman of Dunhill and runs the event, uh, invited me to come play in the tournament as part of you know,
helping promote Sabonic a little bit. So so I played three days, you know, carnousde Saint Andrews Kingsbarns and uh uh, you know, played a couple of practice rounds of the old course too and seeing it set up with the pins and really hard places, and it's the only time I've ever really gotten to do that. So I played with Andrew Ogcorn, who played on the European Tour for years, probably on the senior tour now, but you know, Andrew
is not a very long hitter. We were playing into the nasty prevailing wind to come you know, into your face off the left as you're going out is a hard wind, but that's that's not uncommon in Saint Andrew's and he was playing some of those bactees for the first time because he played the golf course for twenty
years and the European Tour played it every year. But you know, there was a new tea way back on two where he could barely you know, he could barely get it to the fairway and the left rough had been pulled in and it was really nasty over there. He made a quick six there, and there were like two or three places that he really had to like, he struggled to figure out how he needed to play the hole now, because you know, thirty yards longer, it
was much differ for a short hit. And again it's like, you know, you've got all these little wrinkles and you know, not quote unquote hazards out there, but things you have to take into account in playing the hole, and you're bringing some entirely different ones into play when you go further back. So, I mean, it is a golf course
that changes around a lot. You know, it's kind of a shame that they don't, you know, there's they're so interested in what the winning score is that they don't you know, they're just on the back tee as far back as they can go all four days on every hole.
I think, you know, like I don't think they they don't think they play eight way up one day like the USGA might do be a fascinating tournament if they did some of that, because guys would not know where to hit the ball or what clubs hit from the tee on some holes.
Yeah, I think that's one of the things, right, is that it's a golf course. Like you know, everything that I've read and listen to and you know heard you talk about other people talk about is the effectively randomness that you feel with the bunkers. But then when the wind changes into different directions and that all of a sudden it makes sense. And in theory, as a tournament set up organization, turnam step staff could create that randomness all four days of the tournament with them with the
way they set it up. And also, you know, I think one of the things that people lament about distance is the idea that certain aspects of the game aren't aren't tested.
If you throw score out of the out of the.
Equation, you can effectively do that with just setting up the golf course making par fours. Oh, I want to see you want to see somebody hit a long iron. Why don't we turn this par four into two hundred and fifty yard Part three for the day. You know, if you don't care about score, right right right?
And then the other thing is and I don't think it's appreciated enough. I really picked up on it in Houston the last two years. Is you know, that big driver. It's not just that it enables people to hit it farther. They're so much more consistent with it. They know exactly how far they're carry distance is, and it's not like, you know, when I played golf with Ben crenshawt thirty years ago, there was a difference between hitting the ball and the screws and just hitting a normal drive and
it was like twenty yards. Yeah, but that's not a factor for tour players anymore. It's like, I can carry a three h five and if the water's twine, I'm perfectly okay with that. I'm never gonna miss it six yards short from three hundred yards.
That's that's the thing.
And that's crazy that that that the equipment is that consistently good that they can just you know, I can play really close to something because I know I'm not going to lose distance.
I did an experiment a few years ago with with modern equipment versus per Simon versus like Hickory. I never published the results, but like for me who's not a tour pro, the difference between a mishit and a good hit with a driver's like ten yards with the modern stuff. When you get the per Simon, it starts to become like thirty yards, huge, huge difference. You know, left that left miss is awful, It flies nowhere. The heel cut
just just goes nowhere. And then you know with now with the current drivers, they go like effectively the same different distance. You know, like a lot of times you miss it and it just runs further. It might not
carry quite as far, but it runs further. And I think that's like one of the obviously, I think that's it seems like that's an area it's been highlighted by the USGA and this very very long, arduous process, which I think that has to be that way for because the lawsuits potentially flying.
But you know, that seems to be one of the areas of interest with.
The high level game is removing some of the forgiveness that you know, the forgiveness was created for the eighteen handicap, but it helps the the tour pro more so than anybody else.
Definitely, because you know the tour players, it's like they're pretty consistent anyway, but when you give them that equipment, their confidence level is just unbeatable. And that's the you know, that's that's what we go back to. That that we're trying to cut into a little bit an architecture is like give them some things that make them a little uncertain. But if they know exactly how far the ball goes and they know exactly how far that bunker is, they
don't make any mistakes. I think, you know, actually in Britain, the mistake that they can make is the ball roll out too far into a bunker that they didn't think they could get to, like happened to Adam Scottman in the playoff for the Open. You know, adrenaline on a high down wind. He thought there's no way he's driving it into that bunker from the t and he did. You know, that wouldn't happen to him on the other end though, It's like if he's trying to carry something he's gonna carry.
Yeah, it's that's that's the thing, right, is that you know, and you could do that with setup. One of the most famous things, one of the most famous I think moments of of of great setup, and it's on a hole that I would not consider a great golf hole is the sixteenth at the Olympic Club.
Furick. He didn't know what to do. He's leading the US Open.
They moved the tea up and he doesn't know what to do and because of it, he hit, you know, a shot that you never see somebody that's leading a major championship hit because he was confused, uncommitted and did know what to do simply by moving teas. And I think that's like something like it's just if somebody went out and shot fifty seven, then you know, the public
backlash would be, you know, so crazy. But in a way, somebody shooting fifty seven, you might provide a more well rounded test doing that with a varied setup.
Yeah, I mean, you know, when we started talking about Houston, one of the things that brooks Kepka asked for that we couldn't really put into Memorial Park so much because there were so many trees. Was to put teas on different angles and you know, make them play from different places.
So they had to aim at something different because you know, now if if they're playing from the same tea all four days, usually you know, the old course is kind of maybe an exception to this, but usually you know they've got some landmark, a tree, a scoreboard, something that's the line and they're just going to aim at it four days in a row. And he was like, you know, no,
make people think more about what the line is. And you know, just you know, if you move over fifteen yards, you can't aim at that thing anymore.
Yeah, with with the old course, obviously something that'll get brought up a ton is the roots of it being reversible in the beginning you've played it in reverse?
Did I played it with Eric every sing and Don plays like one time, you know, back when we were it was actually just before we were starting Old McDonald and you know, but it was one of the first years they had it reversible. And you know I had walked it once reverse, you know, on a Sunday, just to try to figure out some of the things. So I was not flying blind for every you know, for the other guys, it was like where do we go? It was very hard to pick out what you were
supposed to do on some of the holes. Now. One of that too is you know, in the early early days, the place was grazed and all of it. You know, the grass was short pretty much everywhere. Now they've got some mowing lines like we were talking about, and the mowing lines are all based on the way that they play it now. So I'm sure it was more playable when there wasn't rough right up to the back of the fourteenth green. So when you're playing the hole and
reverse you have to carry it. You have to fly it onto the putting surface, you know. But that's you know, one of the big differences right off the bat is there were three or four halls. There's you have to carry rough in front of the green when you're playing backwards, and I don't think it was that way when they played it. You can reverse one hundred years ago.
I guess that it is. So it was all very patchy.
You know, who knows what lie you're going to get everywhere kind of gone.
Well. The weird part was, you know, when in doubt sometimes you would like, you know, drive it over to the other fairway. You know, even though you're coming from way over here, let's get over on the fairway that they're still maintaining the approach.
For well, you know, maybe they'll eventually get back to that where it's just short grass everywhere with h what.
What holes did you think?
Did you Were there any holes that you thought were better holes playing reverse?
No, there were no holes that were obviously better playing and reverse. And obviously there's you know, there's two or three really famous holes that you know, you're like you're at Saint Andrews and you don't get to play into
the road green from from there. Actually that I mean that hole is a that is a good hole from backwards, playing down the first fairway and then into the narrow part of the green, the road bunker is kind of turned away from you just a little bit, so you don't you're not staring it in the face like you are the other way, but it's still it's a really hard little pitch shot going, you know, it's it's narrow between the road and the bunkers still, and you know,
playing up the twelfth fairway where you are seeing all those little pot bunkers in the way and then hitting across the big bunker to the left of the eleventh green onto that green. That was a frightening shot, even though it was it's not a very long shot again, but that was still like that was definitely a wake
up call. But but other than those not really, I mean and and those holes, you know, they're great holes the other way too, I can't say they're better, you know, you know, playing the first hole backwards is not the same as playing the road hole.
Yeah, you know, one final question the whole course is you know, if you were I assume I think I know the answer to this, but like if you were in Scotland, you say, this is just I know you're going to hate this question all right now, you're gonna hate it. Say you're like, say, just live you all of a sudden your life's there and you could put in all the courses are in your backyard. Is it the course you're playing the most of any course of Scotland or is there is there somewhere else.
Sat Andrews in North Berrick. You know, I've played North Barrick more than Saint Andrews because of working at the Renaissance Club and them being so nice to us while we were there. Just yeah, go out and play in the evenings, don't worry about it. And you know, and I've been going. I've been going back there for you know, almost every year the last few years. And if I play, if I play anywhere outside there, I'm going over to
North Barrick and playing it again. It's just it's, you know, it's not it's it's more flattering to my game than the old courses. And you don't it's not as hard to access, you know. The old course is just busy, is the main problem. So I haven't really played it nearly as much. You know, I've played it maybe twenty times, but I haven't played it nearly as much as I would if access were easy. But it's a fascinating golf course. You would never get tired of playing there.
Yeah, it's uh, you know, the busy.
I always know which resources are the busiest, because you know, people always are reaching out to me to go see their places and places that I've never gotten. A place that I've never gotten an inquiry about coming out to is the old course. I don't think they need any they don't need any help, so it should be a great Open. We're looking forward to that and and we'll thank you so much for talking about it with us
this us. It should be a great table setter for everybody to get in the Open Championship.
Bood have fun over there, ma'am.
Thank you for listening to another edition of The Yoke with Dope. Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins.
Thank you, Meg, wonderful job.
As always, as a quick reminder, we have a print sale. We are doing a big print sale in the pro Shop. It is fifteen percent off all prints through the fourth of July weekend, so go.
In there check it out.
If you want to spruce up your office, spruce up your basement, spruce up any room in your house, this is a great opportunity. We have over fifty courses. We have metal prints, paper prints as well as canvas prints. New offering, so you get fifteen percent automatically this weekend.
Go check it out and maybe dress up your walls this weekend.
Thank you, and we will be back on Tuesday. We'll talk with Garrett Morrison who was on the ground at the live event in Portland, and then Friday we will have more Open Championship preview content. Really trying to you know, just get you guys in the mood for the open. Thanks again for listening to another episode, and we will be back on Tuesday.