Latest / Designing Golf / Golf Architecture 101: The Championship Setup Wars

Transcript

Golf Architecture 101: The Championship Setup Wars · Designing Golf

0:00
Speaker 1: What are we looking for in a championship golf course
0:03
Speaker 1: these days? And why can't we seem to discuss this
0:06
Speaker 1: question without wanting to kill each other. So in this
0:10
Speaker 1: episode of our Golf Architecture one on one series, we're
0:14
Speaker 1: talking about the championship set up wars. I'm Garrett Morrison
0:20
Speaker 1: and this is designing golf. As always in Golf Architecture
0:29
Speaker 1: one on one, I am joined by my Frida Egg colleague,
0:33
Speaker 1: PJ Clark.
0:34
Speaker 2: PJ, how you doing, Garrett? I'm doing great.
0:37
Speaker 3: Rare to go less than twenty four hours away from
0:40
Speaker 3: another major championship. I'm wearing my Donald Ross pine cone shirt.
0:44
Speaker 3: I figured it was topical given a Rono MinC in
0:47
Speaker 3: a little bit sense. I'm great, just just another great
0:51
Speaker 3: week of major championship golf. You only get four of these,
0:53
Speaker 3: even if you're angry about who won. I'm not, but
0:56
Speaker 3: you got to you gotta enjoy them as they come.
0:59
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, you would think that that would be a
1:01
Speaker 1: more common attitude, but it doesn't seem to me.
1:04
Speaker 3: You know. It's kind of like one of those things
1:05
Speaker 3: where yeah, it's uh, everybody always says, like late in
1:09
Speaker 3: the NFL season when there's a random like Jaguars Titans
1:12
Speaker 3: Thursday Night game. It's like, you're gonna be begging for
1:15
Speaker 3: this in July, and like, you know, when it's late
1:19
Speaker 3: August and we're talking about the three m it's like, oh,
1:21
Speaker 3: you want a PGA right now, even if Aaron Rye wins,
1:24
Speaker 3: right like you' that's what you want?
1:27
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:27
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not sure what gets into people's heads
1:31
Speaker 1: in major week, but they they want it all, you know,
1:34
Speaker 1: they want it to be perfect every single time, and
1:36
Speaker 1: it's it's just never perfect. So, you know, partly because
1:40
Speaker 1: of PGA Week and the discourse about it, we're talking
1:45
Speaker 1: about championship golf course design and set up in this
1:50
Speaker 1: golf architecture one on one episode, I feel like, you know,
1:53
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a topic where you're probably
1:55
Speaker 1: at least at a two to oh one level.
1:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would you agree with that.
2:00
Speaker 3: Feel decent about this, you know, I feel like I've
2:02
Speaker 3: learned a lot, have been very fortunate.
2:05
Speaker 2: You've been in these streets a bit.
2:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I you know, I've been very fortunate to attend, uh,
2:10
Speaker 3: you know, a handful of major championships at this point,
2:13
Speaker 3: and I've been very fortunate to use some of like
2:16
Speaker 3: one oh one teachings. I was lucky enough to play
2:19
Speaker 3: Yale a couple of weeks ago. I got a big
2:21
Speaker 3: heaping of of template holes there. I figured I at
2:24
Speaker 3: least knew kind of what I was talking about there.
2:27
Speaker 3: But this one, this topic, I feel at least okayon.
2:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so we'll try to advance the discussion
2:34
Speaker 1: a little bit. Maybe this is not a pure one
2:35
Speaker 1: o one episode, but you know, I think that most
2:39
Speaker 1: of the audience is probably there as well. You know
2:42
Speaker 1: that this is a common topic of discussion in mainstream
2:45
Speaker 1: golf podcasts, So it's not like I'm bringing out something
2:48
Speaker 1: that's that's really unique to golf architecture discourse here, but
2:53
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to get us at a deeper
2:56
Speaker 1: level with it. And I think it's it's worth talking
3:00
Speaker 1: about it in this format because the discussion of championship
3:06
Speaker 1: golf courses, especially major championship golf courses, is one of
3:10
Speaker 1: those rare moments when everyone in golf comes together to
3:13
Speaker 1: talk about golf course design. Right, It's not just architects
3:16
Speaker 1: and architecture nerds who are participating, it's the players, it's
3:20
Speaker 1: the representatives from golf governing bodies, it's the TV personalities,
3:24
Speaker 1: it's the journalists who might not cover this topic on
3:28
Speaker 1: a week to week basis, And it's also a lot
3:31
Speaker 1: of fans and a lot of social media users who
3:35
Speaker 1: have an opinion as well. So it might even be
3:38
Speaker 1: the way that a lot of people are introduced to
3:41
Speaker 1: the notion of golf architecture for the first time, and
3:45
Speaker 1: for that reason, I think it's a potentially very fruitful topic.
3:49
Speaker 1: So my goal here is to think through championship golf
3:54
Speaker 1: course design and set up with you from basically the
3:57
Speaker 1: ground up. What's the history of championship golf course design
4:02
Speaker 1: and set up? How did we get to the spot
4:05
Speaker 1: that we are today with it? And ultimately, what do
4:09
Speaker 1: we want out of a twenty first century championship course?
4:13
Speaker 2: Do we even know what we want?
4:14
Speaker 3: I was going to say that feels like the billion
4:16
Speaker 3: dollar question right now, and I don't know that anybody.
4:20
Speaker 2: There are a lot of different answers to that question.
4:22
Speaker 3: I'm curious to I think, I know, I think I
4:24
Speaker 3: might have an idea of what your answer might be,
4:27
Speaker 3: but I'm very excited to find out.
4:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got like a three part I was just
4:32
Speaker 1: working this out before we jumped on, because I'd never
4:34
Speaker 1: kind of written it down. I may do an article
4:37
Speaker 1: about this eventually, but I have my own idea and
4:40
Speaker 1: I'm curious to hear, you know, at the end of
4:43
Speaker 1: this episode where you are with it as well. But first,
4:47
Speaker 1: before we get into the history of it, into these
4:50
Speaker 1: interesting questions, we should probably talk a little bit about
4:53
Speaker 1: what happened last week, because I think in many ways
4:56
Speaker 1: it is representative. We're recording this, as you've alluded to
5:00
Speaker 1: on the Monday after the twenty twenty six PGA Championship
5:05
Speaker 1: at Ironomin Golf Club and throughout the week, the design
5:09
Speaker 1: and setup of Ironomink were big, big storylines. So let's
5:14
Speaker 1: start with what people were talking about before the tournament started,
5:18
Speaker 1: because that was different from what people were talking about
5:21
Speaker 1: during the tournament. What was it before the tournament? What
5:23
Speaker 1: was your recollection?
5:25
Speaker 2: Well, it was something kind of new.
5:27
Speaker 3: I mean, it hadn't been on the rota for the
5:30
Speaker 3: pros in eight years since a BMW, which is obviously
5:34
Speaker 3: a very different setup than a PGA Championship. Everybody's curious
5:39
Speaker 3: to see what Kerry Haig was going to do with this,
5:42
Speaker 3: given the recent run of PGAs that. I mean, Quel
5:47
Speaker 3: Hollow was not like a total birdie fest at the
5:49
Speaker 3: end of the day last year, but Valhalla was kind
5:52
Speaker 3: of a disaster, and I think people were probably scarred
5:55
Speaker 3: from that, and the PGA defenders would come back with, well, like,
6:00
Speaker 3: look at the leaderboards, look at the winners, like top
6:03
Speaker 3: players are separating themselves, which is in a sense a
6:07
Speaker 3: fair critique to me, even if it's not the It's
6:10
Speaker 3: kind of it's like that meme where like you did
6:12
Speaker 3: all the work wrong, but you got the right answer,
6:14
Speaker 3: so it's like, yeah, okay, I submit that the leaderboards
6:17
Speaker 3: have been generally pretty good in recent years, but everybody
6:21
Speaker 3: thought that that maybe it was not going to be
6:24
Speaker 3: long enough, that scores were going to be low, that
6:26
Speaker 3: weather would come in, and that I assume weather is
6:29
Speaker 3: going to be a big, at least kind of part
6:31
Speaker 3: of what we're talking about today, because not something you
6:34
Speaker 3: can control from an architecture standpoint, but something that plays
6:37
Speaker 3: a load bearing piece of a major championship.
6:41
Speaker 1: For sure, even more so in recent years. Right, I
6:44
Speaker 1: also heard a lot of people talking about trees on
6:47
Speaker 1: the right so much championship. I mean, the tree discourse was.
6:51
Speaker 2: The tree discourse I I have.
6:54
Speaker 3: I feel like I've lived like eight lives since the
6:56
Speaker 3: tree discourse, so I forgot about it until literally right now.
7:00
Speaker 1: I mean on Tuesday and Wednesday, this became sort of
7:03
Speaker 1: the flashpoint issue. Yeah, people were talking about all those
7:08
Speaker 1: other factors that you mentioned, as well, what is this
7:10
Speaker 1: PGA going to be? Are people going to just annihilate
7:14
Speaker 1: this golf course? It seemed like the consensus was that
7:17
Speaker 1: that would be the case, and I had my concerns
7:20
Speaker 1: about that as well, because I had watched the tournaments
7:23
Speaker 1: that had been held at this renovated ronom inc And
7:28
Speaker 1: I just didn't, you know, I didn't really trust the
7:30
Speaker 1: PGA to set this course up in a way that
7:33
Speaker 1: was significantly different from those PGA Tour events, because you know,
7:36
Speaker 1: in the past, a PGA Championship has typically been basically
7:41
Speaker 1: a PGA Tour event, which, by the way, is why
7:44
Speaker 1: the players who passed that test happened to be also
7:47
Speaker 1: dominant players on the PGA Tour. It's a similar test.
7:52
Speaker 1: Of course, all that turned out to be pretty inaccurate.
7:56
Speaker 1: Everybody was wrong, but trees were really a big, a
8:00
Speaker 1: big point of discussion. Now this is a common talking
8:03
Speaker 1: point among anti ball rollback people because tree lined fairways
8:10
Speaker 1: limit distance, right, they sometimes take driver out of players' hands.
8:15
Speaker 1: It's a way to roll back distance without touching the equipment,
8:19
Speaker 1: which is kind of the dream of the anti rollbacker
8:22
Speaker 1: right now. It's like, do anything anything at all, no
8:25
Speaker 1: matter how expensive it is, no matter how unreasonable, no
8:29
Speaker 1: matter how much it harms the golf course, as long
8:31
Speaker 1: as you're not going to, you know, touch the ball
8:34
Speaker 1: or touch the driver. And trees are a particularly hot
8:38
Speaker 1: button issue at Aronomic because one, many trees have been
8:41
Speaker 1: taken out over the past twenty five years at this
8:43
Speaker 1: golf course, and many trees also have died at the
8:46
Speaker 1: golf course. And two, the course itself, especially the front nine,
8:51
Speaker 1: is very short by modern Major championship standards. Yes it
8:55
Speaker 1: might be at that kind of over seven thousand yard mark,
8:57
Speaker 1: but man a lot of wedges on the front nine.
9:01
Speaker 1: And so, of course, you know, the prescription for this
9:04
Speaker 1: for some people is more trees. And we heard Rory
9:07
Speaker 1: McElroy talk about this, we heard Xander Schoffley talk about it,
9:10
Speaker 1: and what I thought was a pretty condescending but at
9:14
Speaker 1: the same time incoherent manner. So that was one factor
9:20
Speaker 1: of championship golf course design and set up that people
9:24
Speaker 1: sort of zeroed in on before the tournament began, But
9:29
Speaker 1: then once the tournament started, it became clear that the
9:32
Speaker 1: course was playing very tough, and player's complaints began to
9:36
Speaker 1: center on pin positions, or more precisely, the combination of ironomings,
9:43
Speaker 1: green designs, firmness, and pin positions, because all those things
9:48
Speaker 1: had to work together to create the dynamics we were seeing.
9:51
Speaker 2: So that was.
9:54
Speaker 1: The lead subject in the first two rounds, These pin positions,
10:00
Speaker 1: other factor of championship golf course design and setup became
10:05
Speaker 1: the primary subject. What did you make of the pin
10:07
Speaker 1: position discourse?
10:10
Speaker 3: It seemed more prevalent than it has been a lot
10:17
Speaker 3: of previous majors. I mean, at least in the two
10:19
Speaker 3: years that I've been doing this with you guys, Like,
10:21
Speaker 3: it seemed like it was the most prevalent in the
10:25
Speaker 3: discourse this week, more than any week house And the.
10:29
Speaker 1: Last time I remember it being this big of a
10:31
Speaker 1: deal pin position specifically was twenty eighteen at Shinnecock.
10:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I feel like it was really really out
10:39
Speaker 3: there in a way that you know, there was I know,
10:42
Speaker 3: there was like rough discourse and could you spray it?
10:45
Speaker 3: Could you not spray it? Like that's open for interpretation
10:48
Speaker 3: to a certain extent. But the pin position, Like immediately
10:52
Speaker 3: on Thursday, guys were coming off the course in the
10:55
Speaker 3: morning the easier wave, mind you that a lot of
10:59
Speaker 3: those guys did not cash in on and they were like,
11:02
Speaker 3: these these pins are out of control. The slope is
11:04
Speaker 3: more than we play on a week to week basis,
11:07
Speaker 3: And that is true as Andy hammered home throughout the week.
11:12
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, wouldn't that theoretically be true for
11:18
Speaker 3: the majority of majors that are just not at Obviously
11:22
Speaker 3: Quail Hollow is a PGA Tour course, but any of
11:24
Speaker 3: these that are not your standard tour courses, like inherently,
11:29
Speaker 3: wouldn't they just have harder greens or more slope on
11:32
Speaker 3: the greens than the PGA Tour's rules allow.
11:35
Speaker 1: I would say so, yes. I think it's something that
11:38
Speaker 1: differentiates a major championship venue of these days, because the
11:42
Speaker 1: PGA Tour has certain standards for its golf courses. Right,
11:45
Speaker 1: you can't put pins in really slopey locations on the
11:49
Speaker 1: PGA Tour. You need a certain sand in your bunkers.
11:52
Speaker 1: You know, all these things a PGA Tour course has
11:54
Speaker 1: become to an extent standardized in its presentation that doesn't
11:59
Speaker 1: apply to major championship courses, and so we get these
12:01
Speaker 1: things like you know, Southern Hills a few years ago,
12:04
Speaker 1: people were really surprised by the sand because it was different,
12:07
Speaker 1: you know, And I think that's part of what makes
12:10
Speaker 1: these courses special.
12:11
Speaker 3: Do you think, Uh, we just did like a little
12:15
Speaker 3: quick SGS Monday Monday scramble and I kind of alluded
12:18
Speaker 3: to this in a way. You're more of the expert
12:21
Speaker 3: that I am. That like, because we hadn't seen ironomynk
12:24
Speaker 3: and because it it hasn't come up in eight years,
12:27
Speaker 3: and this is kind of a way different context than
12:30
Speaker 3: where it came up last time that it is. All
12:34
Speaker 3: of this just allowed for way more latitude on the
12:36
Speaker 3: course set up discussion because it had never been seen
12:40
Speaker 3: before by a lot of these guys. So everybody who's
12:43
Speaker 3: just ripping off takes wherever whereas like you know, you
12:46
Speaker 3: know what you're getting at an Augusta or something on
12:49
Speaker 3: the US Open Rota because it comes up now and
12:52
Speaker 3: again every five years or whatever it is.
12:55
Speaker 1: Maybe so, but a lot of these guys had seen
12:57
Speaker 1: the course, a lot of these guys were at least
12:59
Speaker 1: familiar in a pass away with it. Yeah, and so
13:02
Speaker 1: I think that that same logic might apply to almost
13:05
Speaker 1: any major championship venue, aside from the ones that get
13:07
Speaker 1: visited very frequently, like the Old Course or Pinehurst or
13:12
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach. You know, most of the time it's ten
13:16
Speaker 1: years or something between visits to this type of course
13:21
Speaker 1: in a major championship, and so, yeah, there will be
13:24
Speaker 1: this element of a lack of familiarity. Guys are probably
13:27
Speaker 1: used to that crazy pin on the sixth hole at
13:30
Speaker 1: Augusta National to an extent, and so you know, if
13:33
Speaker 1: they had not seen Augusta National every year, would they
13:37
Speaker 1: complain about that pin position if it popped up in
13:39
Speaker 1: a random PGA Championship. I think that's an interesting question,
13:43
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure I know the answer, but certainly
13:46
Speaker 1: pin positions seem to be the thing that players are
13:49
Speaker 1: most concerned about. But then there was another set of
13:52
Speaker 1: complaints from another sector of the golf world at the
13:55
Speaker 1: same time, and this sector of the golf world was
13:58
Speaker 1: the data boys and the gamblers, and they were unhappy
14:02
Speaker 1: that Aronomick didn't seem to be rewarding what they interpret
14:06
Speaker 1: to be skill. Right, supposedly, the best ball strikers were
14:10
Speaker 1: not rising to the top, and instead the tournament was
14:14
Speaker 1: just a putting contest where anyone could win. And I
14:19
Speaker 1: will say probably the most sophisticated iteration of this complaint
14:25
Speaker 1: was that Ironomink did not differentiate slight inaccuracy off the
14:30
Speaker 1: tee from wild inaccuracy. Right Like a many tournaments, the
14:35
Speaker 1: rough just off the fairways was thicker and juicier than
14:39
Speaker 1: the rough way off the fairways, where it was often
14:42
Speaker 1: trampled down by galleries, and so slight misses were often
14:47
Speaker 1: penalized more harshly than wide misses. This is a problem
14:51
Speaker 1: also commonly noted at places like Oak Hill and Tory Pines.
14:55
Speaker 1: And this is where the tree the tree discourse comes
14:58
Speaker 1: back into play, because you know, if you have if
15:00
Speaker 1: you have rough and bunkers just off the fairway and
15:03
Speaker 1: then dense stance of dense stands of trees well off
15:06
Speaker 1: the fairways, then you have a kind of graduated penalty.
15:10
Speaker 2: Right.
15:11
Speaker 1: TPC Sawgrass is of course that does this kind of thing,
15:16
Speaker 1: where there's a less severe penalty for a slight miss
15:21
Speaker 1: and a more severe penalty for a big miss and
15:26
Speaker 1: TPC sawgrass uses trees to this purpose. It uses bunkers
15:29
Speaker 1: and rough it also uses penalty hazards, and so that
15:37
Speaker 1: specific genre of this general complaint struck me. As you know,
15:43
Speaker 1: when it comes to aeronomy, not totally off.
15:46
Speaker 3: Base, no, I mean when you have guys outwardly getting
15:52
Speaker 3: caught on a hot mic Justin Thomas hitting a horrendous
15:56
Speaker 3: drive and just yelling, oh, give me a good lie
15:58
Speaker 3: as it lands in a group of people, like, yeah,
16:02
Speaker 3: probably not not great. But again that's not a unique
16:08
Speaker 3: circumstance to ironomicc as you said, So, I do think
16:11
Speaker 3: it's fair, but like at the end of the day,
16:14
Speaker 3: kind of what are you gonna do about it? This
16:16
Speaker 3: comes up more more often than not, so I do
16:19
Speaker 3: think though, I know, like you got into a little
16:22
Speaker 3: bit of discourse about this recently on Twitter, Brian Schneider
16:25
Speaker 3: was tweeting about fairway speeds. Do you think maybe that
16:31
Speaker 3: is different at Aronomic that they were cut so fine
16:34
Speaker 3: that it was hard to hold a lot of these fairways.
16:36
Speaker 3: Also at Oakmont last year a good example, it was
16:38
Speaker 3: hard to hold a lot of the fairways that you
16:41
Speaker 3: would end up right in that first kind of cut,
16:45
Speaker 3: not a first cut, but in that first grouping of
16:48
Speaker 3: rough where if you hit the fairway, when if you
16:52
Speaker 3: were just blasting it all over the place, Cameron Smith,
16:54
Speaker 3: you could make par from anywhere because it didn't really matter.
16:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think the fairways were cut too short,
17:00
Speaker 1: but that's that's Ernomic and everywhere else, you know, except
17:05
Speaker 1: for maybe a couple of places, like even Augusta National,
17:09
Speaker 1: where they could cut it shorter, but they don't because
17:11
Speaker 1: they want balls to hang up on uneven lies. So yeah,
17:16
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have seen the fairway grass
17:19
Speaker 1: kept longer, and I'd love that at in fact, most
17:23
Speaker 1: tournament venues that we see. But yeah, I mean all
17:29
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're talking about, the uh you know,
17:32
Speaker 1: penalizing certain kinds of shots at a graduated level. I
17:38
Speaker 1: hear it, I get it. I appreciate courses like TPC Sawgrass,
17:43
Speaker 1: where you know, the design of the course was meant
17:47
Speaker 1: from the beginning to enforce that kind of graduated penalty.
17:51
Speaker 1: But I think when we bring that complaint to a
17:53
Speaker 1: particular course like Aronomy, we're very much at risk of
17:58
Speaker 1: saying every championship course or should basically be the same yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: and we might as well just kind of play the
18:04
Speaker 1: majors on a grid that doesn't yield any numbers that
18:07
Speaker 1: might offend people.
18:09
Speaker 3: Isn't that just like I mean it was when we
18:11
Speaker 3: were when we did the Fairness episode of this, It's like,
18:14
Speaker 3: this is an outdoor sport, guys, Like this is just
18:18
Speaker 3: this is the game, this is how it happens, and
18:21
Speaker 3: and you're not going to get the best break all
18:23
Speaker 3: the time, Like is it the most properly constructed thing
18:28
Speaker 3: in the world, Like maybe not, but at some point
18:31
Speaker 3: over the course of four rounds, you just play the
18:33
Speaker 3: hands you dealt. And I don't think a lot of
18:35
Speaker 3: I don't think a lot of people on Twitter. I
18:37
Speaker 3: don't think a lot of the discourse really acknowledged that
18:40
Speaker 3: or got that or accepted that. And I don't know
18:43
Speaker 3: that a lot of the players Necessarsari really did either.
18:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:47
Speaker 1: And you know what, we often hear this phrase a
18:51
Speaker 1: proper test, Yeah, and that the courses like Ironomke where
18:54
Speaker 1: we're driving inaccuracy is not particularly punished or not a
19:00
Speaker 1: proper test or a well balanced test. And I just
19:04
Speaker 1: think that's an oversimplification. I think it's okay for a
19:07
Speaker 1: course not to be a proper test. You know, it's
19:09
Speaker 1: okay for different courses to highlight different skill sets and
19:13
Speaker 1: to forgive certain weaknesses. It's okay for different courses to
19:18
Speaker 1: be different in these respects.
19:20
Speaker 3: This is, this is how, this is how not baseball
19:25
Speaker 3: is the only other comp really because it's not like
19:27
Speaker 3: you're building a football field in a different way. But
19:29
Speaker 3: you can play based on weather, or you could build
19:31
Speaker 3: a dome in a football field depending on the style
19:34
Speaker 3: of team you have, where you could build your offense around,
19:37
Speaker 3: whether you play outdoors in.
19:39
Speaker 2: January or not. Like this is.
19:41
Speaker 3: You know, some ballparks are bigger than others, like that
19:44
Speaker 3: is the way to go. Like TPC River Highlands is
19:47
Speaker 3: not going to give you the same leaderboard as a
19:50
Speaker 3: ginormous ballpark out there somewhere else, like you, Brian Harmon
19:53
Speaker 3: has a chance at TPC River Highlands where he wouldn't
19:55
Speaker 3: other places. Like that happens, and that's the sport. And
20:00
Speaker 3: again when it happens on a weekly basis, I don't
20:03
Speaker 3: understand how these that criticism comes up so frequently here.
20:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, major championships are big deals and people
20:12
Speaker 1: invest a lot in the results of major championships. They
20:15
Speaker 1: want to see the best players win and they want
20:18
Speaker 1: there to be something memorable about it. They you know,
20:21
Speaker 1: maybe think back to their childhoods when when Tiger was winning,
20:25
Speaker 1: you know, every major, or Jack Nichols was winning every major,
20:28
Speaker 1: and they and they want that feeling to come back.
20:31
Speaker 1: But you know what, that's not going to be every major.
20:35
Speaker 1: It has never been every major. If you were actually
20:37
Speaker 1: living through the seventies when Nicholas was so dominant, or
20:41
Speaker 1: the early two thousands when when Tiger was doing his thing,
20:44
Speaker 1: you would know that there were some random major winners
20:47
Speaker 1: during those stretches as well, you know. And Aaron Rai
20:51
Speaker 1: went out and earned it. Like if you look at
20:53
Speaker 1: his back nine, it was immaculate. He hit all the
20:57
Speaker 1: shots that everybody else wasn't hitting, and they're very, very
21:00
Speaker 1: difficult shots. He is the one who hit them. And
21:05
Speaker 1: the challenge at aeronom Ink this past week was basically
21:08
Speaker 1: the greens and getting your approaches in these little sections
21:11
Speaker 1: where you could actually make some putts and then making
21:14
Speaker 1: those puts on very slopey, tricky greens. And Aaron Rye
21:19
Speaker 1: did that, and he was also in the fairway most
21:21
Speaker 1: of the time. But you know, maybe maybe not to
21:24
Speaker 1: everybody's satisfaction over four rounds, but the chorus was posing.
21:30
Speaker 1: I thought a very interesting set of questions throughout the week,
21:34
Speaker 1: including on Sunday to the whole field and to Aaron Rye,
21:38
Speaker 1: and he had the answers in those last few holes.
21:41
Speaker 3: Well that's like, you know, you can step me straight here,
21:44
Speaker 3: please do if I'm wildly off base.
21:47
Speaker 2: I don't understand the putting contest.
21:50
Speaker 3: I understand it more in a place like Amex John Rahm,
21:54
Speaker 3: you know, Piece of s putting contest, the famous video,
21:58
Speaker 3: Like I get into a place like that where everybody
22:01
Speaker 3: is hitting the fairway, everybody is hitting the green, and like, yeah,
22:04
Speaker 3: you gotta when everybody is kind of on an equal
22:07
Speaker 3: playing field there to a certain extent, like yes, everybody
22:11
Speaker 3: has to make every putt because the final score is
22:14
Speaker 3: going to be twenty four under or whatever it is,
22:16
Speaker 3: and you have to make every put available to you.
22:18
Speaker 3: But in a major especially but really any week, like
22:22
Speaker 3: you have to make putts to win at the end
22:24
Speaker 3: of the day, Like is it everything kind of a
22:27
Speaker 3: putting contest? Like yes, you can get away with putting
22:32
Speaker 3: poorly if you're putting from you know, eight feet compared
22:36
Speaker 3: to twenty feet in proximity to.
22:37
Speaker 2: The whole on average or whatever.
22:39
Speaker 3: But to win anything, Winning is incredibly hard on any
22:44
Speaker 3: level of professional golf, especially when you're playing every week.
22:48
Speaker 3: You have to make putts to win every week. Every
22:50
Speaker 3: week is inherently a putting contest to some extent. So
22:53
Speaker 3: I don't understand how that is like a criticism that
22:57
Speaker 3: comes up all the time, because like, it's common sense
23:00
Speaker 3: you have to bike putts to win. I don't like,
23:01
Speaker 3: you're not going to win a major putting poorly.
23:04
Speaker 2: It doesn't. That never has made any sense to me.
23:06
Speaker 1: This is partly the nature of golf where we're putting
23:09
Speaker 1: is has such an outsize importance and score.
23:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, man, that's how you get the ball
23:14
Speaker 2: in the hole, like it exist right.
23:18
Speaker 1: If the hole were much bigger, then we would see
23:21
Speaker 1: less importance on putting. But it is very difficult to
23:23
Speaker 1: make a putt outside of five feet, so inevitably those
23:28
Speaker 1: strokes that you take on the green, you know, making
23:31
Speaker 1: those putts that that other people aren't making, has has
23:33
Speaker 1: a huge effect on the score. And that's any week.
23:37
Speaker 1: I think what people are saying when they say it's
23:40
Speaker 1: a stupid putting contest is that it doesn't matter what
23:43
Speaker 1: you do from tee to green, it's everybody ends up
23:46
Speaker 1: in the same place on the green and from there
23:48
Speaker 1: it's a quote unquote putting contest. That's not really what
23:51
Speaker 1: I saw this week. Uh, you know, I get I
23:54
Speaker 1: get it that guys are missing fair ways and over
23:58
Speaker 1: the course of four rounds weren't being penalized to the
24:02
Speaker 1: exact number that we prefer. But I thought I thought
24:07
Speaker 1: interesting shots were being hit from tee to green, and
24:10
Speaker 1: then interesting shots were being hit on the greens. And
24:14
Speaker 1: so sure, putting may have been very important this week,
24:18
Speaker 1: but I think we have to keep in mind that
24:21
Speaker 1: that watching the tournament is really critical and and for me,
24:27
Speaker 1: watching those golf shots at AERONOMYK was super, super compelling,
24:32
Speaker 1: And that's that's a lot of what I want out
24:34
Speaker 1: of a championship golf course.
24:37
Speaker 2: Totally.
24:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, sounds like we more or less agree
24:41
Speaker 1: on this. I didn't really have to convince you of anything.
24:44
Speaker 1: You didn't have to convince me of anything. But it
24:46
Speaker 1: would be interested to hear from from listeners about what
24:50
Speaker 1: they think on this subject. So that's that's what we
24:52
Speaker 1: got last week. But there is a whole history to
24:58
Speaker 1: championship design and set up that I think we need
25:00
Speaker 1: to be familiar with in order to fully understand what
25:02
Speaker 1: happened in aeronom ink, and also just to recognize that
25:05
Speaker 1: people have been having these discussions for one hundred years
25:09
Speaker 1: or more. And we'll get into all that in a second,
25:12
Speaker 1: but first let's talk about Mobjack. Mobjacked is a craft
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25:36
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25:42
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26:42
Speaker 1: That's code fried Egg at mobjack dot com. All right, so, PJ,
26:46
Speaker 1: this debate about championship golf courses goes back a long way.
26:51
Speaker 1: How far back is an open question. There are probably
26:55
Speaker 1: those who would take it all the way back to
26:58
Speaker 1: you know, the French and Indian War maybe, but no.
27:02
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, the Americans had like a real advantage
27:05
Speaker 3: in the Revolutionary War. They they kind of knew the
27:08
Speaker 3: terrain way better. I mean, that's championship management at the
27:11
Speaker 3: end of the day.
27:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say the Glorious Revolution was really
27:14
Speaker 1: the main turning point here. But you know, if we're
27:17
Speaker 1: talking about championship set up specifically, a lot of people
27:20
Speaker 1: might might point out the nineteen oh five Open Championship
27:23
Speaker 1: when a bunch of bunkers were added to the old
27:26
Speaker 1: course in response to the Haskell ball. It's a very
27:29
Speaker 1: interesting story. But for me, the modern notion of a
27:33
Speaker 1: major championship venue, especially a US Open or PGA championship venue,
27:37
Speaker 1: really began to form in the nineteen thirties when the
27:41
Speaker 1: USGA became concerned about low scoring at the US Open.
27:46
Speaker 1: So until nineteen thirty six, the US Open scoring record
27:50
Speaker 1: was two eighty six. But at the nineteen thirty six
27:53
Speaker 1: US Open, Tony Manero shot to eighty two at Baltasral
27:59
Speaker 1: Then the next year at Oakland Hills, which was thought
28:02
Speaker 1: to be a very difficult golf course, Ralph Goldall shot
28:07
Speaker 1: to eighty one. And by the way, I'm not totally
28:09
Speaker 1: sure how to pronounce Ralph Gildall, Ralph Goodall, Ralph Gouldal.
28:14
Speaker 1: I have a really hard time with his name. I'm
28:15
Speaker 1: just gonna admit it. He was a great player. Yeah,
28:19
Speaker 1: he was like the best player in the world in
28:21
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven.
28:22
Speaker 3: People are familiar that I can't pronounce anything, so I
28:24
Speaker 3: don't blame you.
28:25
Speaker 2: It's fine.
28:25
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a company characteristic at this point.
28:29
Speaker 1: By the way, the US Open scoring record is now
28:32
Speaker 1: two sixty eight. Rory shot at Congressional in two twenty
28:38
Speaker 1: fourteen I believe, so we're way out of the two
28:41
Speaker 1: eighties at this point. But man, were they concerned about
28:46
Speaker 1: about these scores in the nineteen thirties. This created a
28:49
Speaker 1: lot of consternation within those clubs, Baltisterrawl in Oakland Hills
28:54
Speaker 1: and the USGA. The USGA at the time had a
28:57
Speaker 1: new young executive director named Joe Dye who was inclined
29:02
Speaker 1: to do something like, you know, encourage these clubs to
29:06
Speaker 1: toughen up their courses. He wanted the US Open to
29:10
Speaker 1: remain the toughest test in golf, which meant that scoring
29:13
Speaker 1: needed to be higher. Around the same time, there was
29:17
Speaker 1: an ambitious, up and coming golf architect named Robert Trent
29:21
Speaker 1: Jones who saw an opportunity in all this. Jones started
29:27
Speaker 1: to show up at US Opens and compile data on
29:30
Speaker 1: t shots. He'd go out and find a relatively flat
29:33
Speaker 1: hole and draw a series of chalk lines through the
29:37
Speaker 1: fairway at different distances. Imagine this.
29:40
Speaker 2: This is what he.
29:42
Speaker 1: During the Open. There's a different vibe. Back in the day,
29:45
Speaker 1: Pj's was much more casual.
29:48
Speaker 2: Uh, you know.
29:49
Speaker 1: RTJ could just go out there and draw on the fairways.
29:53
Speaker 1: Then he'd recruit a couple of young caddies and have
29:57
Speaker 1: them mark where each ball landed and rolled out to
30:01
Speaker 1: so he was getting carried distance and total distance, and
30:04
Speaker 1: Jones would write down those numbers on a clipboard. So
30:08
Speaker 1: this was basically like a primitive version of shot Link.
30:12
Speaker 2: The original data boy.
30:14
Speaker 1: Robert Trent Jones an amazing story. This is a story
30:18
Speaker 1: that was told to me by Jim Hansen, who wrote
30:21
Speaker 1: the Robert Trent Jones' biography, A difficult part which everybody
30:25
Speaker 1: should read.
30:25
Speaker 2: It's full of fascinating stuff.
30:26
Speaker 1: But what Jones found out, of course, was that players
30:31
Speaker 1: were hitting the ball much farther than they used to,
30:34
Speaker 1: and much farther than anybody thought they had been. And
30:38
Speaker 1: a big reason for that was that in the nineteen thirties,
30:41
Speaker 1: steel shafts have basically replaced hickory shafts, and this made
30:47
Speaker 1: ball striking much more consistent and allowed players to swing
30:51
Speaker 1: harder and harder. Basically, players got these steel shafts in
30:54
Speaker 1: their clubs and they gradually realized, oh, I can go
30:57
Speaker 1: at this like I can really swing hard here and
31:01
Speaker 1: it's not going to break down because hickory shafts had
31:03
Speaker 1: it was all about tempo, right, it was all about
31:06
Speaker 1: the timing of the whip. But steel shafts were a
31:09
Speaker 1: much different deal.
31:11
Speaker 2: Now.
31:11
Speaker 1: In addition to that, the manufacturing standards for balls were
31:15
Speaker 1: getting better and better and more consistent. Titleist was founded
31:20
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, so the game was changing in
31:23
Speaker 1: a number of respects. Players are getting longer, and all
31:26
Speaker 1: this set a really important precedent. Technology was leading to
31:31
Speaker 1: distance gains and lower scoring and this put the governing
31:35
Speaker 1: bodies and golf architects on the back foot and forced
31:39
Speaker 1: them to react. So by the end of the nineteen thirties,
31:43
Speaker 1: Joe Dye, the executive director of the USGA, and Robert
31:47
Speaker 1: Trent Jones had gotten to know each other pretty well
31:50
Speaker 1: and they agreed that something had to be done, but
31:54
Speaker 1: because of World War Two, they couldn't do anything for
31:57
Speaker 1: a while. So that brings us to the nineteen fifty
32:00
Speaker 1: one US Open at Oakland Hills. Now, remember this is
32:04
Speaker 1: where Ralph Goldaal shot two eighty one seven under Imagine
32:10
Speaker 1: that being freaked out about seven under. In nineteen thirty seven,
32:15
Speaker 1: the USGA and Oakland Hills decided that this wasn't going
32:18
Speaker 1: to happen again, so they brought in Robert Trent Jones
32:21
Speaker 1: to renovate the golf course, and this renovation ended up
32:25
Speaker 1: setting the mold for championship golf course design and set
32:29
Speaker 1: up for the rest of the century. Essentially, he actually
32:32
Speaker 1: didn't lengthen the course that much. He would do that
32:35
Speaker 1: at other courses, but Oakland Hills was already pretty long
32:38
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. But he did make the fairways
32:43
Speaker 1: nearwor He added bunkers on both sides of the landing
32:48
Speaker 1: zones for drives, so that each fairway had a kind
32:51
Speaker 1: of bottleneck. He added bunkers around the greens to penalize
32:55
Speaker 1: wayward approach shots. He advised the club to grow up
32:59
Speaker 1: the rough very very high. And finally, and this was
33:04
Speaker 1: very clever, he reduced the par from seventy two to seventy.
33:09
Speaker 3: You know, that's an underrated the Summerlan model kind of
33:13
Speaker 3: just it.
33:14
Speaker 2: It really might be the way to go. It might
33:16
Speaker 2: be the way to fix everything.
33:17
Speaker 1: Just I mean it just like it solves all your problems.
33:20
Speaker 1: It might not have been ourtj who recommended this. It
33:22
Speaker 1: might have been the USGA that kind of was and
33:24
Speaker 1: Joe Die who are really behind this. But yeah, I
33:27
Speaker 1: mean this is this is so much of the story here,
33:30
Speaker 1: just like turn a couple of par fives into par
33:32
Speaker 1: fours and and we're good.
33:34
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you know that's two shots right there, right
33:37
Speaker 3: there in front of you. Three shots, Yeah, two shots
33:40
Speaker 3: over four rounds.
33:41
Speaker 2: You want to be seven under, psych.
33:45
Speaker 1: It's like, this is amazing, I mean, all of a
33:48
Speaker 1: sudden instead of instead of seven under, it would have
33:50
Speaker 1: been won over. Yeah in nineteen thirty seven, right, maybe.
33:54
Speaker 2: There's your seven shots right there, congrrect exactly.
33:58
Speaker 1: So anyway, the nineteen fifty one US Open plays out,
34:03
Speaker 1: Ben Hogan wins with a score of seven over with
34:08
Speaker 1: this new par so it really wasn't that. I mean,
34:12
Speaker 1: players were a lot better by then. Ben Hogan was
34:14
Speaker 1: an amazing I mean in the early fifties, like he
34:16
Speaker 1: was incredible, and so, yeah, the course was harder. In
34:20
Speaker 1: the locker room afterwards, he said something to the effect
34:23
Speaker 1: of I'm glad I brought this course, this monster to
34:27
Speaker 1: its knees, famous line, And this was just like catnip
34:31
Speaker 1: for the pus. Oh yeah, they love this. I mean
34:34
Speaker 1: it just adored, you know, this idea of the monster.
34:37
Speaker 3: Some could say that this is the original Augusta nashnal
34:41
Speaker 3: is a par sixty seven.
34:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, really set the mold.
34:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bryceon and Ben Hogan just it. They're forever linked
34:53
Speaker 3: in every way, shape and form.
34:55
Speaker 1: I really wish Bryson kept wearing the the Hogan cap.
34:58
Speaker 1: He shouldn't have given in on that, like that was
35:01
Speaker 1: that was his idea, you.
35:03
Speaker 3: Know there when you were when you're trying to be,
35:05
Speaker 3: when you're trying to be you know, net positive with
35:07
Speaker 3: the crushers, you got to think about can we sell
35:10
Speaker 3: those versus can we just sell a normal hat.
35:12
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of what it does. He needs
35:14
Speaker 2: he needs.
35:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need the the a bit, a bit whatever
35:18
Speaker 1: that is.
35:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to try.
35:21
Speaker 1: That's the good stars. So yeah, I don't know what
35:23
Speaker 1: it stands for. It's not my role at Frida Egg No,
35:26
Speaker 1: I don't.
35:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, we just talked County CLIs. Yeah, don't look at me.
35:34
Speaker 1: So the membership was very proud. This was a big
35:37
Speaker 1: success for them, and suddenly every other US open course
35:41
Speaker 1: wanted Robert Tramp Jones to come in and do the
35:43
Speaker 1: same thing, right, So he went to basically all the
35:48
Speaker 1: other US Open courses in the fifties and sixties and
35:51
Speaker 1: and did this, and that's how he became known as
35:54
Speaker 1: the Open Doctor. The problem with this style of renovation, though,
36:00
Speaker 1: is that it's pretty vulnerable to advances in technology. If
36:04
Speaker 1: players get a little bit longer and are able to
36:07
Speaker 1: carry those bottlenecks in the fair way, if they're able
36:11
Speaker 1: to hit the ball higher and land the ball softer
36:13
Speaker 1: on the greens, then the course kind of loses its
36:16
Speaker 1: teeth and you have to bring in the architect again
36:20
Speaker 1: to move the teas back, or move the bunkers farther
36:23
Speaker 1: down range, or make the fairways even narrower, and you
36:26
Speaker 1: put yourself in a position where you have to keep chasing.
36:30
Speaker 1: And that's what a lot of championship courses ended up doing,
36:33
Speaker 1: including Oakland Hills. A lot of championship courses did this
36:37
Speaker 1: through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties continued to pursue
36:43
Speaker 1: this style of golf course. They would call up Robert
36:47
Speaker 1: Trent Jones and either he would come back or he'd say, actually,
36:50
Speaker 1: why don't you get in touch with my son Reese,
36:53
Speaker 1: he can do it. So then from the late nineties forward,
36:59
Speaker 1: a couple of things happen. Things were primed to change.
37:02
Speaker 1: Right at, clubs were sort of dissatisfied after four decades
37:06
Speaker 1: of this at what was happening? Right, We're spending all
37:09
Speaker 1: this money and the course doesn't seem to be getting better,
37:12
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be getting harder. It seems to be
37:14
Speaker 1: getting worse.
37:15
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to interrupt this train of thought,
37:17
Speaker 3: go for it. But when when you're in Oakland Hills
37:22
Speaker 3: or any of these places and you're bringing in you know,
37:25
Speaker 3: we want to make the.
37:28
Speaker 2: US open, the Pro game.
37:30
Speaker 3: Be at or as close to par as possible, and
37:33
Speaker 3: that's you know, you know, ten days once every eight years.
37:40
Speaker 3: What are these members thinking when this course gets added,
37:44
Speaker 3: bunkering added, rough whatever, and the people that have to
37:47
Speaker 3: play this for the other fifty weeks out of the
37:51
Speaker 3: seven other years without a major.
37:53
Speaker 1: There, Well, I think at first they were thinking, great,
37:59
Speaker 1: my course is the big bully. You know, it's I
38:04
Speaker 1: play at a course that that made Ben Hogan. Yeah,
38:09
Speaker 1: call it a monster. And there's a kind of pride
38:12
Speaker 1: in that we're we're the we're the big boys in town.
38:14
Speaker 1: But then after after four decades, it starts to get
38:19
Speaker 1: a little bit old.
38:20
Speaker 2: How is that fun?
38:21
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I, you know, this kicked Ben Hogan's ass,
38:25
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna just go out there and spin around.
38:27
Speaker 3: And I don't know, at some point I would get
38:29
Speaker 3: sick of it too. I guess it would take me
38:31
Speaker 3: a lot quicker than forty years.
38:34
Speaker 2: You would think.
38:35
Speaker 1: But you know, these uh, you know, these buses take
38:39
Speaker 1: a while to turn around. And also, you know, toward
38:42
Speaker 1: the end of the twentieth century, dynamics within clubs like
38:45
Speaker 1: these are changing.
38:47
Speaker 2: Right.
38:47
Speaker 1: There are more women playing, there are more families playing,
38:50
Speaker 1: and uh, and just the general ideology around golf is
38:55
Speaker 1: becoming less kind of macho, I think, and uh, and
38:59
Speaker 1: taste in architecture are changing. And that's one of the
39:03
Speaker 1: things that's happening in the late nineties, right. So, you know,
39:06
Speaker 1: the first big thing that happens in the late nineties
39:09
Speaker 1: is that the earthing covered solid core golf ball in
39:13
Speaker 1: the titanium three hundred and sixty cc driver started to
39:17
Speaker 1: be developed, and the governing bodies basically decided not to
39:21
Speaker 1: do anything about it, and players started to hit the
39:24
Speaker 1: ball so far and so high and so accurately that
39:27
Speaker 1: the open doctor style of renovation was no longer cutting
39:30
Speaker 1: it at all. The other thing that happened was that
39:34
Speaker 1: Golden age golf architecture came back into fashion, and all
39:38
Speaker 1: these clubs that regularly hosted majors became interested in restoring
39:43
Speaker 1: their courses, or at least they recognized that if they
39:46
Speaker 1: didn't do restoration work, they might fall in the rankings
39:48
Speaker 1: right or they might feel like they're behind the other
39:52
Speaker 1: clubs that were doing this work. So this is when
39:55
Speaker 1: clubs began to remove trees and widen fairways and in
39:59
Speaker 1: large greens and basically reverse all the work that the
40:04
Speaker 1: Jones family had done over the past fifty to sixty years.
40:09
Speaker 1: So the question became, how do these courses now defend themselves?
40:14
Speaker 1: If they're wider, if the greens are bigger, if there
40:17
Speaker 1: aren't as many trees anymore, how do you produce a
40:21
Speaker 1: championship that feels like a major. Yes, you can build
40:25
Speaker 1: new bactees. You can grow up the rough four championship week.
40:29
Speaker 1: You can pass off a couple of par five's as
40:32
Speaker 1: par four's. You can try some of those ploys that
40:36
Speaker 1: Joe Die and Robert Sheen Jones used, But really the
40:40
Speaker 1: primary defense had to be the greens. They had to
40:45
Speaker 1: be firm and fast, and the pin positions needed to
40:48
Speaker 1: be very difficult, and on top of that you had
40:51
Speaker 1: to hope for the right weather. Wind and firmness are
40:55
Speaker 1: really the only things that bother modern pro golfers playing
41:00
Speaker 1: the equipment that they do. And this approach does work
41:04
Speaker 1: for controlling scoring, but one, it's hard to pull off.
41:09
Speaker 1: You need a lot of things to go right. And two,
41:14
Speaker 1: it puts a golf course on the edge. Yeah, if
41:17
Speaker 1: the greens get a little bit too firm, if the
41:20
Speaker 1: pins are a little too close to.
41:23
Speaker 2: Say it line, then you might lose the golf course. Yeah,
41:29
Speaker 2: come on, there it is.
41:35
Speaker 1: And uh and we've seen that maybe happen a couple
41:38
Speaker 1: of times. You know, Shinnecock Hills is the place. And
41:41
Speaker 1: I listen, I loved those championships, but a lot of
41:46
Speaker 1: key people didn't. We got a little bit of a
41:48
Speaker 1: taste of it at aernomic.
41:49
Speaker 2: But this is this is what.
41:50
Speaker 1: You're playing with in modern championship golf course setup. You
41:55
Speaker 1: can't defend these courses in any other way. And so
41:58
Speaker 1: basically it's a big balancing act. You have to consider
42:02
Speaker 1: the club's desire for a highly rated, historically faithful course,
42:07
Speaker 1: but you also have to respond to these massive leaps
42:09
Speaker 1: and technology and player skill level, and you have to
42:12
Speaker 1: satisfy the public's desire for a tough test and a
42:15
Speaker 1: winning score in single digits. Meanwhile, you have people like
42:18
Speaker 1: Brandal Shambly screaming for a return essentially to the Robert
42:22
Speaker 1: Trent Jones style of championship golf course design and setup,
42:25
Speaker 1: which would be, in my opinion, totally fruitless. But he
42:28
Speaker 1: thinks that it's the panacea. And then you have people
42:31
Speaker 1: like me and some of our colleagues at Frida egg
42:33
Speaker 1: saying the real problem is the equipment. So, in other words,
42:37
Speaker 1: there's no way for people to be happy.
42:41
Speaker 2: So is this a.
42:43
Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean contextually right. I feel like
42:46
Speaker 3: every major has its own the Master's notwithstanding, because it's
42:50
Speaker 3: at the same course every year, so it's a completely
42:52
Speaker 3: different fiece.
42:55
Speaker 2: The other three all have their.
42:57
Speaker 3: Own viewpoint, right, Like the US Open is supposed to
43:03
Speaker 3: punch you in the face.
43:04
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be as close to par as possible
43:06
Speaker 2: the Open, which.
43:06
Speaker 1: Makes which makes the US Open super tough to set
43:08
Speaker 1: up now because their identity is also great American golf courses,
43:12
Speaker 1: which means they're going to these primarily restored Golden Age
43:16
Speaker 1: golf courses. But you also need to to cling to
43:19
Speaker 1: this tournament around even par like talk about a balancing
43:22
Speaker 1: act that's really hard to pull off in a satisfying way.
43:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have that, then the Open you have
43:28
Speaker 3: conditions and these historical venues and I feel like.
43:32
Speaker 2: Like the Open has the easiest almost I was gonna
43:34
Speaker 2: say that.
43:35
Speaker 3: I feel like you just roll the ball out there
43:37
Speaker 3: and it's like, hey, this course hasn't been touched since
43:39
Speaker 3: eighteen whatever.
43:41
Speaker 2: Here you go, like.
43:41
Speaker 1: Except by Mackenzie and Ebert. Yeah, they've done some things,
43:45
Speaker 1: but the extent of the work on these courses and
43:48
Speaker 1: the effect that that work has on actual play is
43:51
Speaker 1: much lower because because like, really it's about the land
43:55
Speaker 1: and the location and the elements, you know, and that's
43:58
Speaker 1: that's what defines the Open. And it's okay with the
44:02
Speaker 1: RNA if the winning scorer is around twenty under, it
44:05
Speaker 1: doesn't really bother people because sometimes that's what you get,
44:08
Speaker 1: and so it really does. Yeah, it allows the where
44:12
Speaker 1: the Open, the Open road allows the Open to have
44:14
Speaker 1: such a clear identity, and yeah, as you're arguing, the
44:18
Speaker 1: US Open has a clear identity as well, even if
44:20
Speaker 1: it's very hard to maintain that identity.
44:22
Speaker 2: So then like it do you think.
44:26
Speaker 3: Is a lot of the are a lot of these
44:28
Speaker 3: issues with however, whatever side of the setup debate, if
44:32
Speaker 3: you want like the Brandle side or the rollback side
44:35
Speaker 3: or the third middle avenue of you just want a
44:39
Speaker 3: fair test or whatever it is, Like, I feel like
44:42
Speaker 3: a lot of that has to do within the context
44:44
Speaker 3: of the championship, right because the PGA, the identity list
44:47
Speaker 3: PGA another big conversation of the last ten days, Like
44:52
Speaker 3: some years it's in the twenties or the upper teams
44:55
Speaker 3: like hand Up, I expected it to be probably above
44:58
Speaker 3: fifteen given content clues, and then you know this year
45:02
Speaker 3: was nine. Quell Hollow I think was nine or eight.
45:05
Speaker 3: It was under ten. It was in single digits. So
45:08
Speaker 3: it's not.
45:09
Speaker 2: Is it is it better.
45:11
Speaker 3: Or worse to just not have the identity that you
45:14
Speaker 3: could essentially kind of do anything because you're not trying
45:17
Speaker 3: to protect par and you're not trying to protect the
45:20
Speaker 3: weather or whatever the Open is going to get from
45:23
Speaker 3: that luck of the draw aspect.
45:25
Speaker 1: There is a certain freedom in that, isn't there.
45:28
Speaker 3: Just like I don't know if it's good or bad,
45:30
Speaker 3: because not having identity, I would say is objectively bad.
45:34
Speaker 1: But yeah, from the perspective of the fan, yeah, I
45:38
Speaker 1: would agree with you that the PGA Championship doesn't really
45:42
Speaker 1: know what it is. But the fact that the PGA
45:45
Speaker 1: Championship is not wetted to a particular identity means that
45:48
Speaker 1: Carrie Haig, the setups are at the PGA of America,
45:51
Speaker 1: can be a little bit flexible in his setups, Like
45:54
Speaker 1: he's really just looking to set up what he thinks
45:57
Speaker 1: is going to be a good championship, and he's pretty
46:01
Speaker 1: good at that, you know, Like even if he gets
46:03
Speaker 1: some stinkers of courses, in general, it doesn't turn out
46:08
Speaker 1: too badly. This was the first PGA Championship that I
46:10
Speaker 1: can remember where so many people objected to the setup,
46:15
Speaker 1: and that's partly because it started to become started to
46:18
Speaker 1: feel like a US open to some degree. So yeah,
46:23
Speaker 1: I mean, the PGA Championship is unique among the majors
46:27
Speaker 1: in the sense that we don't really know what it is,
46:29
Speaker 1: so it's hard to know what we really want out
46:34
Speaker 1: of the setup.
46:36
Speaker 3: So is this I don't want to say this whole
46:38
Speaker 3: episode or this whole argument or whatever, but a lot
46:41
Speaker 3: of this, you would say the course set up discourse.
46:45
Speaker 3: And I would say, in my limited experience dealing with
46:48
Speaker 3: the course set up discourse, I feel like the majority
46:50
Speaker 3: of it is on the US Open because it is
46:53
Speaker 3: the hardest one to set up.
46:55
Speaker 1: Absolutely, That's when this is the hottest, you know, because
46:59
Speaker 1: the master is the masters. They always seem to set
47:02
Speaker 1: up the course perfectly. You know, they do it quietly. Yeah,
47:06
Speaker 1: and and and you know it's a great golf course,
47:09
Speaker 1: and they have the they have the ability to basically
47:11
Speaker 1: redesign their golf course every year, so that helps as well.
47:16
Speaker 1: The Open is the Open, as as we talked about,
47:19
Speaker 1: and conditions and uh, the seaside elements are really what
47:25
Speaker 1: define that championship. The US Open is really the one
47:32
Speaker 1: that people bring the most baggage to because the US
47:36
Speaker 1: Open is is means something to people, Right, There're people
47:40
Speaker 1: who remember the US Open being this big, badass championship
47:44
Speaker 1: and maybe there's something of you know, America is a
47:48
Speaker 1: fallen empire feeling about it.
47:51
Speaker 2: You know, we used to be a country. You know,
47:54
Speaker 2: we used to be a proper country, yere. I don't
47:56
Speaker 2: know if you've heard that before.
47:58
Speaker 1: In any case, there's a lot of pressure on US
48:00
Speaker 1: Open setups and you can expect that to be to
48:03
Speaker 1: be a big topic of discussion at Shinnecock. But you know,
48:06
Speaker 1: Shinnecock is a is a good one for the USGA.
48:11
Speaker 1: It takes a little bit of pressure off of them
48:13
Speaker 1: because again, like a like an Open championship, the elements,
48:17
Speaker 1: the land, you know that that's the There's.
48:19
Speaker 2: Only so much you can do down there.
48:21
Speaker 3: Ye win's winds coming in, whatever's going to happen, it's
48:24
Speaker 3: going to happen.
48:25
Speaker 2: Try heat.
48:26
Speaker 1: Even as I say that, you know, obviously twenty eighteen,
48:29
Speaker 1: which was such a disaster for the USGA, they felt
48:31
Speaker 1: that they had to completely change their change their approach.
48:34
Speaker 1: But maybe that's this is not the not the place
48:37
Speaker 1: to talk about it.
48:38
Speaker 2: But I think they there there will be time.
48:39
Speaker 3: There will be time for that within the next month.
48:41
Speaker 3: I'm quite sure.
48:42
Speaker 1: God. Yeah, I mean we're just starting to to, you know,
48:46
Speaker 1: enter the run up to our US Open content and
48:49
Speaker 1: there is there's a lot to do, there's a lot
48:51
Speaker 1: to discuss, but I yeah, at some point we need
48:54
Speaker 1: to have a discussion of how twenty eighteen changed US
48:58
Speaker 1: Open setup, because they have I have really dialed it
49:01
Speaker 1: back since then.
49:03
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just.
49:04
Speaker 1: Hope they let Shinnecock be Shinnecock. In any case, you.
49:07
Speaker 3: Know another thing, another thing in professional golf that has
49:10
Speaker 3: been permanently altered by Phil Nicholson.
49:12
Speaker 2: How about it? I mean, the list is pretty long.
49:15
Speaker 1: So was phill right? Was Phil right all along chasing
49:18
Speaker 1: after that putt?
49:19
Speaker 2: Was he right? You know?
49:21
Speaker 3: I wasn't there on Saturday, but I was there on
49:23
Speaker 3: Sunday and I followed Phil's Sunday round and then he
49:26
Speaker 3: signed my twenty eighteen US Open hat. So I have
49:28
Speaker 3: the perfect momento from from Scarbrooks.
49:32
Speaker 2: It was the Philly US Open. So Cherry, you just
49:35
Speaker 2: said Brooks. I thought Brooks was your guy.
49:37
Speaker 3: I love Brooks, But you know, when I don't think,
49:39
Speaker 3: I think people remember Phil hitting that ball more than
49:42
Speaker 3: maybe Brooks winning at the end of.
49:44
Speaker 1: The day, there's no doubt about that, And they remember
49:48
Speaker 1: Zach Johnson's well could not the things that enter the
49:52
Speaker 1: cultural firmament, you know, never expect what it is. So okay,
49:57
Speaker 1: we're basically up to date here. Let's wrap this up
50:02
Speaker 1: by talking about what we really want to see out
50:05
Speaker 1: of a championship golf course design and set up.
50:09
Speaker 2: What is that for you? I think.
50:14
Speaker 3: The more I've been paying attention to course set up
50:17
Speaker 3: and kind of you know, learning through osmosis and being
50:20
Speaker 3: more attentive and understanding what I'm watching more than maybe
50:23
Speaker 3: when I was just casually watching majors as a big
50:27
Speaker 3: fan or whatever, I think it's cooler to me when
50:31
Speaker 3: guys have to hit a variety of shots. I just
50:34
Speaker 3: think that's much better. When you have to I feel
50:37
Speaker 3: like you just earn it more. And honestly, Aaron Rai
50:39
Speaker 3: earned it. He was shaping shots left and right. And
50:41
Speaker 3: that's why, like for whatever he is as as a
50:45
Speaker 3: person or a marketable asset, like I've appreciated Patrick Reed
50:49
Speaker 3: because Patrick Reed is a shot shaper and goes out
50:52
Speaker 3: there and can do those types of things. And that's
50:54
Speaker 3: the type of golf that I really enjoy watching.
50:59
Speaker 2: So I think.
50:59
Speaker 3: A a pinehursty type area with short grass that you
51:06
Speaker 3: can put, you can chip, You're into the grain. You
51:11
Speaker 3: it's not just ah, you know, I missed the green
51:14
Speaker 3: and now I'm in a pile of rough. But I
51:16
Speaker 3: just got to hack this onto the green and whatever
51:18
Speaker 3: happens happens. I think, like at Oakmont last year, that
51:23
Speaker 3: introduces a level of variability and randomness, and you know,
51:30
Speaker 3: is my ball sitting up? Is it sitting down where?
51:33
Speaker 3: You know, in this pile of rough? Not that there's
51:36
Speaker 3: not variability or randomness at a Pinehurst or a Shinnacock,
51:40
Speaker 3: Like you could be in the fescue, you could be
51:42
Speaker 3: in the sand, you could be the chance.
51:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like, but that is that.
51:50
Speaker 3: I feel like there's more room for creativity in a
51:55
Speaker 3: setup like that versus an Oakmont where it or beth
52:00
Speaker 3: Page even where it's just like, ah, you're in the
52:03
Speaker 3: rough now. And I I'm just more entertained by that.
52:08
Speaker 3: I don't really like what I prefer if major championships
52:13
Speaker 3: were not twenty under Like yeah, and I understand like
52:16
Speaker 3: the old course is a kind of unique beast, but
52:20
Speaker 3: was that I vividly remember being like kind of upset
52:24
Speaker 3: by just seeing it bludgeoned and having it be twenty
52:28
Speaker 3: two or whatever.
52:29
Speaker 2: One.
52:29
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, this is out of control
52:31
Speaker 3: and that's an equipment thing and that is a weather thing,
52:34
Speaker 3: and like it does I am like offended by the
52:39
Speaker 3: number of twenty in a major, like totally hand up.
52:43
Speaker 2: I am. It just feels not right and I don't
52:45
Speaker 2: want anything to do with it.
52:47
Speaker 3: But I'm not like, you know, I don't know what
52:51
Speaker 3: Pebbler tories get like Pebble next year for the US Open,
52:54
Speaker 3: like so that could be close to par probably not.
52:57
Speaker 3: But if the US Open is like five six under
53:00
Speaker 3: at Pebble, I'm not gonna be like, oh, this is
53:03
Speaker 3: this is the worst thing that ever happened. Like, I
53:05
Speaker 3: know a lot of people are gonna be either.
53:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that makes you different from a lot of
53:09
Speaker 1: people who sort of demand much higher scores. But I
53:13
Speaker 1: don't think you're alone. And you know, seeing twenty and
53:17
Speaker 1: and kind of.
53:18
Speaker 2: Feeling the number, the number twenty deeply offends me.
53:21
Speaker 1: It just savors of the PGA Tour, right. I think
53:24
Speaker 1: it reminds us of every week on the PGA Tour.
53:27
Speaker 1: And the big thing is that we want majors to
53:29
Speaker 1: be special, and that's most of what I'm hearing for you.
53:32
Speaker 1: You want players to be challenged in ways that they're
53:35
Speaker 1: not normally challenged week in and week out on the
53:38
Speaker 1: PGA Tour, and that means hitting different kinds of shots,
53:44
Speaker 1: having different kinds of demands put on them, answering questions
53:48
Speaker 1: that they normally don't have to answer a PGA tour courses.
53:52
Speaker 1: So it's really about the shots primarily, but also, you know,
53:56
Speaker 1: it comes out in the score and h you know,
54:00
Speaker 1: and so there needs to be an element of scoring
54:03
Speaker 1: control as well, and I don't think anybody would deny that.
54:06
Speaker 2: All right, well, let me.
54:07
Speaker 1: Give you my three part test for a major championship setup.
54:14
Speaker 1: The first big thing I'm looking for is that each
54:18
Speaker 1: course's unique identity is highlighted, that the course and its
54:23
Speaker 1: history and its design matter to the person or the
54:28
Speaker 1: organization that's setting it up. And this is why I
54:31
Speaker 1: object so much to the Brandle argument about rough and
54:33
Speaker 1: trees everywhere. It's like he wants every championship course to
54:37
Speaker 1: be the same, and I would just find that terribly,
54:40
Speaker 1: terribly boring. It was a mistake when urtj did it
54:43
Speaker 1: to the US Open venues in the fifties and sixties,
54:46
Speaker 1: and it would be a mistake now. All right, So
54:51
Speaker 1: that's my first big criterion. You know, each course has
54:54
Speaker 1: a unique identity. I want the setup to highlight that.
54:58
Speaker 1: I don't want the setup to muffle that.
55:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
55:01
Speaker 3: No, I mean that makes sense, I think doubly so
55:04
Speaker 3: for rotating venues. Right when you go for the US
55:09
Speaker 3: Open or even the Open, when you go to these
55:11
Speaker 3: like iconic places, lean into it, make it different. Like
55:15
Speaker 3: I feel like that's kind of a no brainer I
55:17
Speaker 3: would agree with.
55:19
Speaker 1: And that's why I didn't. I wasn't offended by the
55:21
Speaker 1: Oakmont setup last year, even though it had really heavy rough,
55:25
Speaker 1: which I don't normally like, well, that's Oakmond, you know,
55:28
Speaker 1: that's kind of what Oakmont's been forever. Yeah, the fairways
55:32
Speaker 1: used to be wider, but you know, the founders and
55:35
Speaker 1: original designers of the club had a penal idea about
55:40
Speaker 1: what should be just off the fairways, and so you know,
55:44
Speaker 1: it was having that rough the way it was kind
55:47
Speaker 1: of highlighted the course's history and identity. The same rough
55:51
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as suitable at other courses, and so the
55:56
Speaker 1: setup needs to take into account what the courses. Okay,
56:00
Speaker 1: second big thing I'm looking for the ball does cool
56:03
Speaker 1: stuff on the ground. Yeah, and this is what this
56:07
Speaker 1: relates to your point about about short grass, and you know,
56:10
Speaker 1: I want majors to feel different than normal PGA Tour events.
56:14
Speaker 1: At normal PGA Tour events, the ball rarely does anything
56:17
Speaker 1: interesting on the ground. You know, approach shots don't run out,
56:21
Speaker 1: putts under ten feet don't break significantly. At majors, I
56:25
Speaker 1: want to see players have to reckon with the ground,
56:28
Speaker 1: and that means having firm conditions, interesting topography, significant tilt
56:33
Speaker 1: and contour in the greens in many cases, lots of
56:36
Speaker 1: short grass and pins that are not just in the
56:40
Speaker 1: flat areas. So I want to see the ball being
56:43
Speaker 1: dynamic on the ground because that's one of the most
56:46
Speaker 1: entertaining things to watch in golf. It's one of the
56:48
Speaker 1: most challenging things for players to confront and it's something
56:52
Speaker 1: we just don't get to.
56:52
Speaker 2: See on the PGA Tour.
56:55
Speaker 1: Absolutely third big thing I'm looking for and final big thing.
57:01
Speaker 1: Hitting a shot that gains an advantage on the field
57:05
Speaker 1: should be very difficult and scary. That doesn't mean that
57:09
Speaker 1: they're impossible. Yeah, doesn't mean that you're making bogie everywhere.
57:14
Speaker 1: It doesn't even make It doesn't even mean that you're
57:16
Speaker 1: you know that making par is that hard on every
57:19
Speaker 1: single hole. It just means that if you want to
57:23
Speaker 1: make an eagle on a hole where everybody else is
57:26
Speaker 1: making birdie or make a par on a hole where
57:28
Speaker 1: everybody else is making bogie or whatever that whole spectrum
57:32
Speaker 1: happens to be. Hitting the shot that gains the significant
57:36
Speaker 1: advantage on the field should be a tough task and
57:41
Speaker 1: something that comes with risk. So this basically means that
57:46
Speaker 1: I don't want great shots to feel easy or routine.
57:50
Speaker 1: I want them to feel like real accomplishments at major championships. Now,
57:54
Speaker 1: at aeronom Inc. Maybe it was just a bit too
57:59
Speaker 1: hard art to hit a shot that gained an advantage
58:02
Speaker 1: on the field, and this led to a very bunched
58:05
Speaker 1: leader board and a tournament stagnated a couple of times.
58:08
Speaker 1: But then at the end, Aaron Rye hit a series
58:11
Speaker 1: of shots that no one else was hitting on Sunday
58:14
Speaker 1: and that was amazing to watch and it made for
58:16
Speaker 1: a very satisfying end to the championship. So I would
58:19
Speaker 1: say that Aronomic, you know, met this criteria. Hitting a
58:23
Speaker 1: great shot was possible, but it was very difficult and scary,
58:28
Speaker 1: and nobody did it except for Aaron Rye. Now would
58:30
Speaker 1: I have preferred if maybe two or three other people
58:34
Speaker 1: had also done it. From that, you know, final group
58:37
Speaker 1: of players who were within five shots of the lead.
58:41
Speaker 1: Would I prefer if there had been a couple other
58:44
Speaker 1: players in the mix who were hitting those shots. Maybe,
58:48
Speaker 1: But that's just a little tiny turn of the dial
58:51
Speaker 1: in one direction. I think that in general, what we
58:56
Speaker 1: saw was a course where it was very, very difficult
58:59
Speaker 1: to hit a shot that got you an advantage, and
59:04
Speaker 1: that in general is a good thing. And then at
59:08
Speaker 1: the end of the tournament we reaped the rewards of
59:10
Speaker 1: that because there was one guy who was ready to
59:12
Speaker 1: hit those shots, yep. And it really feels like he
59:15
Speaker 1: deserved to win, and I enjoyed that a great deal.
59:19
Speaker 3: I mean, I think he took chances that other people didn't.
59:25
Speaker 3: I mean, specifically, I'm thirteen, like he tried to fly
59:28
Speaker 3: it up to the hole and everybody else was kind
59:30
Speaker 3: of just chunking it out of the bunker and letting
59:35
Speaker 3: it go. And I think that you need to, like
59:40
Speaker 3: Aaron Rai, elevated his game and took some shots and
59:45
Speaker 3: made strategic decisions. I think that is maybe like when
59:48
Speaker 3: I'm I'm just on the fly thinking of what I
59:51
Speaker 3: would want a major to be. I think the opportunity
59:55
Speaker 3: to make strategic decisions, whether they be mistakes or were
1:00:00
Speaker 3: work out correctly. You have to you have to force.
1:00:04
Speaker 3: I would want to force people into making a choice
1:00:08
Speaker 3: and giving them the option of making the bad one
1:00:11
Speaker 3: just as much as giving them the option to make
1:00:13
Speaker 3: a good one. Like you're saying, be rewarded with an
1:00:17
Speaker 3: exceptional shot, but if you fail to pull off the
1:00:22
Speaker 3: exceptional shot, I would watch you to be penalized just
1:00:25
Speaker 3: just as much. Like I want a real risk reward
1:00:27
Speaker 3: aspect to this. And I feel like Aaron Rai took
1:00:30
Speaker 3: a lot of those opportunities presented to them on the
1:00:32
Speaker 3: back round.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: He was playing close to slopes on those greens that
1:00:36
Speaker 1: nobody else wanted to take on. Yeah, and he executed
1:00:39
Speaker 1: the shots and succeeded. And look, I didn't see Rom
1:00:43
Speaker 1: doing that, and I didn't see Rory doing that. They
1:00:45
Speaker 1: played great, I mean, they had great tournaments, and I
1:00:48
Speaker 1: would have loved to have seen them hit the shots
1:00:50
Speaker 1: that Aaron Ry did down the stretch and end up
1:00:52
Speaker 1: in a playoff with him, but they didn't. You know,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: Aaron Ry was the guy, and so in that sense,
1:00:59
Speaker 1: I thought the course was very successful and it represented
1:01:03
Speaker 1: a lot of what I want to see in a
1:01:04
Speaker 1: major championship where you know, hitting that shot that gains
1:01:08
Speaker 1: you the advantage is pretty rare, is more rare than
1:01:12
Speaker 1: it is at normal tournaments, and normal tournaments, you know,
1:01:16
Speaker 1: we get the sense that these guys are gods and that,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of playing golf, like they kind
1:01:21
Speaker 1: of are. They're they're hitting incredible shots at courses that
1:01:25
Speaker 1: you and I would find extremely challenging. But I'm glad
1:01:31
Speaker 1: to see it at a major championship where the demand,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: the baseline demand for that really successful shot, the shot
1:01:38
Speaker 1: that leads to the birdier, that leads to the to
1:01:41
Speaker 1: the one up advantage on the field, must be truly exceptional.
1:01:46
Speaker 2: It can't just be good for these guys. It has
1:01:49
Speaker 2: to be really good for these guys. Yeah, I mean
1:01:54
Speaker 2: I think.
1:01:55
Speaker 3: That's just like you said before, I don't want to
1:02:00
Speaker 3: be like such a simpleton, but I guess I kind
1:02:02
Speaker 3: of am. Like I just want it to be special,
1:02:05
Speaker 3: Like I just want the feeling of like somebody went.
1:02:10
Speaker 2: Out and earned it.
1:02:11
Speaker 3: And I feel like in a tournament where you know,
1:02:15
Speaker 3: this winning score is twenty under and it's bunched up,
1:02:18
Speaker 3: like I don't know that that you're earning it the
1:02:22
Speaker 3: same way as grinding it out and separating late, like
1:02:27
Speaker 3: Aaron Ryan did. I feel like you need to give
1:02:31
Speaker 3: guys a chance to do something incredible that will be
1:02:36
Speaker 3: talked about for ten, twenty thirty years. And I think
1:02:40
Speaker 3: some majors have done a good job of that and
1:02:42
Speaker 3: some majors haven't.
1:02:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
1:02:46
Speaker 2: PJ.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to end. Thanks for
1:02:49
Speaker 1: joining me on Championship Setup Ors.
1:02:52
Speaker 2: Thanks.
1:02:52
Speaker 3: I feel like I had more, more, takes more to
1:02:55
Speaker 3: contribute here, so I'm happy to be moving up in
1:02:59
Speaker 3: the world.
1:02:59
Speaker 1: This was, as I said at the beginning, less a
1:03:03
Speaker 1: one on one session and more of a kind of uh.
1:03:06
Speaker 1: I don't know what you would call it. Yeah, it's
1:03:08
Speaker 1: not really even a tutorial, but it's one of the
1:03:10
Speaker 1: It's like what you do at Oxford and Cambridge where
1:03:12
Speaker 1: you're with like a graduate student or something and you're
1:03:16
Speaker 1: learning together.
1:03:16
Speaker 2: Wow, I mean graduate student. That's a big step for me.
1:03:19
Speaker 1: I don't know if well I'm saying I'm the graduate student,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: you might be the undergraduate and like we might we
1:03:23
Speaker 1: might I might be descending, you might be ascending.
1:03:26
Speaker 2: So you know, like a, yeah, we're both moving. Yeah,
1:03:31
Speaker 2: don't just stop making majors twenty under. It's fine. That's
1:03:34
Speaker 2: all I care about, all right.
1:03:36
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, PJ, thanks for having me. This
1:03:46
Speaker 1: episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsom. Thank
1:03:50
Speaker 1: you Will. If you've been enjoying Designing Golf, I can
1:03:54
Speaker 1: just about guarantee that you'll love what we're doing in
1:03:57
Speaker 1: Friday Golf Club. That's Friday a Golf's membership. Go to
1:04:01
Speaker 1: the Friday dot com slash membership to see what it's
1:04:05
Speaker 1: all about, but lots of fun stuff in there. We're
1:04:07
Speaker 1: building a community of avid golfers and golf nerds who
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1:04:15
Speaker 1: to these events that we put on and go see
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Speaker 1: great courses and and.
1:04:19
Speaker 2: Do all sorts of stuff.
1:04:20
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Speaker 1: back again soon with another episode.