Vince India Talks Korn Ferry Tour Adventures and Q-School Exploits

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by us the frieda Egg. I would venture over to the print shop. If you go to proshop dot Thefrida Egg dot com, you can visit our shop full of prints and other merchandise. But we have photography or photography that's featured on Instagram and Twitter is for sale there. So we have dozens of courses available in both paper just paper prints. If you want to get your own frame, we have frame paper prints and then we also have metal prints, so check that out at proshop dot thefridagg dot com. It's a great way to brighten up your office and support us. Today's episode is with Corn Ferry tour player Vince India. Vince's from the Chicago Land area. He was one of the early podcasts episodes of The Friday Egg, maybe the first six or seven. But then at that point I don't recommend going back and listening. It was a very poor audio quality and Vince called in from what sounded like a hurricane in Miami before a Latin American event that that week. Uh, but this one we we recorded in person and U should be good audio quality. We talk about kind of his progression through professional golf, his improvement on the corn Ferry Tour, and much more.

00:01:24
Speaker 2: I missed the 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.

00:01:31
Speaker 1: In a frid Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Frida egg Brian egg Frida egg Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course. Hey, let me ask you a question. How much better or is it better to be at Southern Plantation in second stage at Q school or taking somebody else's private jet and going to play Crystal Downs.

00:02:17
Speaker 2: Well, to be fair, I played for more money at Crystal Downs yesterday than I ever have a Southern Hills Plantation. So if you look at it from a financial perspective, Crystal Downs all the way. But I think you have a little bit more on the line, a little bit more to play for at Southern Hills, and I think the long term benefits of playing Southern Hills Plantation are are a lot more than playing Crystal Downs.

00:02:45
Speaker 1: You made it through every stage of Q school six years in a row, seven six.

00:02:50
Speaker 2: I think it was six it's like a record, I truly. Yeah. I try to remember each year by year, and I get confused because they all kind of blend together. And I feel like I spent half of my adult life at Southern Hills Plantation for like the entire month of November, every you know, ever November, for like seventh straight year or so, I was at Southern Hills Plantation for at least two weeks at a time, hanging out with this cool host family that I got set up with in twenty thirteen and we're still really good friends. Is there today?

00:03:20
Speaker 1: So did you pass that on to anybody who's staying with the host family?

00:03:25
Speaker 2: Just your host family? Yeah? It is mine, it is Yeah, it's my territory. No one, no one else gets to sleep in the Vince India suite on top of Preserve Drive.

00:03:35
Speaker 1: Do you miss Is there anything about Q School you miss? Outs how your host?

00:03:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, the neuroticism of other players, like watching other people do stuff at Q School like completely blow it out of proportion. And obviously it's a it's a big time thing and a huge deal for a lot of people. But you know, the more the like, the more you build it up, the more it's probably gonna adversely affect you, if you know what I mean. Like I try to I tried to treat it like almost of a lesser event. I went in there with a pretty open mind, and luckily I had some nice families I stayed with and they kept the mood very light, and I luckily didn't have to think about golf a whole lot when I went back to the house. And uh, and I think that's certainly helped along the way. But yeah, watching people do their drills and like hit shots from every imaginable place on par fives and it's just not the way to go to prepare for a tournament. Yeah.

00:04:32
Speaker 1: Is the more you care, almost the worse it goes with golf.

00:04:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. Like or you just have to mentally psych yourself out, right, mm hmm, exactly. One. There's got to be like.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: A personality thing with with you in it. In a way, it's like a qualifier, right. You don't need to win, you just need to get And when there's when there's a target, it becomes harder.

00:04:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like this arbitr cut line which you don't know where it's going to be at the end of the day. There's no leaderboards out there, which he's even more confusing, so you kind of have to play your way through the round guessing like, oh, well, you know it's windy today, the greens are a little bit firmer. Oh the pins are tuck. So is it gonna continue to lower by two strokes every round or is I'm out? Am I okay shooting one under today? It's it's pretty goofy. And then the worst part about the place is is that rounds are guaranteed six hours because people are just on edge marking two footers, like every stroke obviously counts a little bit more on the final day. So it's just kind of a it's a march out there, and you're gonna be out there for half the day, it seems like, and then you're just physically and emotionally exhausted when it's all done.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: I had this qualifier one time. It was at Kemper Lakes and it was like breezy, firm, fast, and that they had the rough up and I'll never forget it because I got I was I was playing like, well, for me, this is a an AM qualifier for everybody listening. It's not like a you know, it's like the CDGM and I was like four over and I thought, I was like nothing had gone great, like I'd made mistakes, but I didn't think I was playing bad. And the yoyos in my group, and the yo yos know who they are or were number guy, like they were, oh, this is this is going to be the number. Four is going to be the number four is going to be the number. So on eighteen, I, you know, it's like this hole that wraps around and I'm I'm four over and I'm in the like the right half of the fairway, one hundred and seventy out maybe just in the rough, and I think I have to like hit it at the at the flag, so at the green, when I could have just like I could have just sent it over the green and just chip back up, you know. So I hit in the water. I make a triple, and I was like fuming. I left the place. I'm so mad, And then seventy nine got in, which I shot.

00:06:53
Speaker 2: So I got in on the number.

00:06:55
Speaker 1: But like I thought to myself, it's so dumb. Numbers are so stupid to ever think about it when you're in that kind of setting, because like it's like, hey, like, if I'm playing, well, that's going to take care of everything.

00:07:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. The more you think about the number, the closer you are going to be at the end of the day to that number. It seems like it's like a self fulfilling prophecy, like, well, I can I can make a couple bogies coming in and I'll be okay, and all of a sudden, you make one or two, You're like, oh God, I gotta buggle down and actually like get back to the president all of a sudden.

00:07:26
Speaker 1: Do you think that happens with the cut two.

00:07:30
Speaker 2: In Q school or just no general events in general events? Yeah, I think so. And it's weird because there's I lived with the majority of my first couple of years on web dot com on the cut line, like literally not even sniffing top twenty fives or top ten, So I know what that's all about. And I don't want to say I've like grown immune to thinking about the cut, but it's like so far in the back of my mind, like you kind of have to just grow out of it because you're going to be there and then for no reason that you shouldn't be nervous though, but you are because it's two more days on the line or you know, going to final stage, and it's just very hard at some moments to separate yourself from thinking about stuff in the future. And it's and I think it's a learned task and something you can definitely get better at throughout your career.

00:08:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine that's like the heart is, because that's when you always get in trouble, is when you start thinking ahead.

00:08:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, as soon as you as soon as you get ahead of like your next step. Like sometimes I just like to bring myself back to you know, feeling my footsteps in front of me, looking around, you know, here and there, like the wind blow through the trees, like you know, if there's any nature out there, see what's going on with nature, Just to get myself out of any potential tailspin I have going on, because you know, there's a there was definitely a little bit of a time where I wasn't very good at managing my mind and my emotions and staying in the presence. So I've learned some techniques to just bring myself back to staying in the moment. And it's one of my mantras is like sometimes you just got to put one foot in front of the other, and I'll be damned if that doesn't work every now and then.

00:09:19
Speaker 1: I imagine some of it too, is like I think I recognize this just watching stuff. It seems like players are really good at at their level, and then when they go up, their struggles, and then after time they get better at that level, and then they go up and it's like the same thing.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: Is there something?

00:09:41
Speaker 1: Is it like the old mantra of like being a big fish in a small pond. Is that kind of what it is? And you go to a pond and it's a bigger pond, and it takes while to get like that, and it's like relearning stuff that you learned.

00:09:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. That's kind of like. That was like an existential thought I had going on in the last couple events of the year where I certainly needed a victory to get my PGA Tour card, and I was playing really well in the regular season finale in Omaha, had the lead through two rounds, and it's just something you think about, like, my game's nice right now, I'm playing arguably the best golf of my career. You know, could I win this event? Absolutely? Am I ready? For the PGA Tour. Gosh, I think so. But like, man, I'm just gonna be like a small fish in an enormous pond. I'm gonna be a nobody again. Like the thought of that, it's like kind of terrifying in all honestly, Like, you know, I could use one more year around the Web or the Cornferry Tour. Now, after I hopefully put on ten pounds in the off season, I think I'll be ready to go. And as long as I steep, I keep making games on my golf swing and everything else. But yeah, just little things like that, like unknown territory is pretty frightening to golfers, and the key to that is usually managing expectations because there's no difference between your game before you got onto the PGA Tour and then when you are there right now in the falseries. Like just the settings a little bit different. The atmosphere is obviously different. Maybe expectations are there and you kind of have to just dumb it down a little bit and just remember you're playing golf and you got to get that ball in the hole as quickly as possible, and that's it.

00:11:17
Speaker 1: It's like that I can't remember I think it was Phil that said, you either have to be like incredibly smart or incredibly stupid.

00:11:24
Speaker 2: Yes, there's one hundred percent of spectrum, and I always thought that I needed to lean toward like the smarter end of the spectrum when I first got out here, like you know, have my own way of doing things like overprep overthink everything, like I got to be like a true professional in all sense of the world, and I've learned to go the other way. I've literally dumbed myself down into playing better golf and it works. Like you know, first of all, I accepted the fact that I'm probably not good enough to differentiate between sixty seven and sixty eight year, So I operated in numbers of five, like I'm going to hit it to you know, I know what my sixty five yard swings look like. I hit, I bring it up to like, you know, just blow my rib cage, and then the seventies up to you know, your sternum, and eighty five was up near the clavigal. So I can er. I can operate in fives, but I'm not sure I can really differentiate between a yard or even two or three for that matter. But I can hit those five yard gaps and fifteen feet for me, it's pretty good.

00:12:26
Speaker 1: The caddy for Luke Donald when I right before he turned pro and one time I walked off the yard this it might have been before Rangefinder. I think it was, because it was like two thousand and three or two thousand and two.

00:12:40
Speaker 2: I was in. I said one fifty two.

00:12:42
Speaker 1: It was the fifth I think it was the fifteenth whole Conway and he's like, one fifty two, are you sure?

00:12:48
Speaker 2: And I was like yeah, and he.

00:12:49
Speaker 1: He hit a shot and we got up to the green and it's like it was one fifty four.

00:12:54
Speaker 2: Whoa.

00:12:56
Speaker 1: But he was like, you know, top five player in approach, which is interesting.

00:13:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good for him. I'm he's clearly talented enough and just the amount of a narcissist you need to be to play successful golf.

00:13:08
Speaker 1: So's it's really something though, that's the elite skills like they have, Like there are certain players with elite skills. I bet you've seen it. You've seen it on Cornfairy web dot com. I always call it web. I wanted to say the web there me too, but it's hard to switch.

00:13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still haven't really figured it out. Doesn't roll off the tongue very well. People get mad at me that I can't figure it out. Yeah, I get people get mad at me and I'm on the pack like how am I doing? You're not being a good ambassador for corns Ferry. I apologize, Alex, but uh, you know, like do you see is it?

00:13:44
Speaker 1: Are there different skills that thrive on corn Fairy Tour than than what you then on the like PGA Tour. Do you think they're like the courses are a big deal.

00:13:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a big difference in between the golf course set up and the difficult do of the golf courses and what the golf courses require of you in your skill set. And you know, to give the to give the corn Ferry staff credit, they do as much as they can with what's presented to them the week of with weather and you know, conditions of the golf course. They set it up very well each week, but sometimes like they're just not dealt a very good card with some of the courses we go to, like you know we've been going to We've been going to Wichita for thirty years.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: I mean the air Capital, the best trophy and golf.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the Beachcraft Air Air Capitol Classic, right, like that the trophy outweighs everything else. That's pretty cool. Yeah, Like, if you're going to win a trophy, I want it to be a giant propeller. Yeah, but that golf course was really hard back then day when you're playing with per Simon woods and the driver was three hundred CC's and the ball was spinning off the planet and it's always blowing twenty five miles an hour, They're like, I imagine single ditches won at some point. I mean it's getting up to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and you know you're just hitting driver over dog legs and over ponds that you're not supposed to anymore. And so like we've kind of outgrown the golf courses we play on. And besides that, we go to places where it's super hot all the time and we can't get golf courses very firm, and it's advitatious to actually hit it shorter out there where really Yeah, I mean, for me, I've always found it is.

00:15:30
Speaker 1: It because like the holes are a certain yardage where thirty yards versus eighty doesn't make it huge.

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of holes where I'll find myself. You just hit to a spot. You know, there's nowhere you can hit a driver or three, and so it's you know, three iron here and other guys are hitting driver. But sometimes the conditions of the greens present itself that you need to take a lot of spin off shots off your iron shots. So, you know, guys who come in super shallow and maybe don't have high swing speeds, they can control the spin of in the trajectories of their irons, and their wedge is much better than I can. I've never been good at that, and that's, you know something I've always been trying to work on and get better because I know I need to. Uh, I know I need those skills to succeed at the higher level. But man, if if you're a sweeper, you can you can definitely get by on the two. I know. I think you do okay. You might be able to make a cut or two out there if you get hot with the butter.

00:16:27
Speaker 1: I don't know, most of my followers think I'm a thirty handicap.

00:16:31
Speaker 2: Yeah there's I that's just my opinion. Like I don't think it requires a lot of course management to some of the places we go to I've always thought.

00:16:42
Speaker 1: What's interesting is like the one USGA event I played, my takeaway was like, I need to hit it higher. Oh yeah, I need to like I need to be able to hit it left to right on command because I need to be able to stop it faster, essentially the opposite where I need to take more.

00:17:04
Speaker 2: Who never spins stuff back? It's like ideal, yeah, exactly, yeah, And usually the I guess sometimes the key to playing a golf out on the corn Ferry Tours you need to take let's club, choke down, take off all the spins so it doesn't rip back fifteen feet. And you know, some guys just can do that naturally, just by you know, they're not swinging hard and smite their paradise. I know it truly is. So it's not my cup of tea. I'm trying to get better at it. I'm I'm still maybe a little bit of farther than I thought it'd be from really good wetch play. But right pins are like off limits right now for me. I'm pretty far underneath the ball, but I can get to a left pin like no one else.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: You and Pat Reid, oh yeah, that's right. In the six years on corn Ferry Tour. Where do you think you've made the most leaps and bounds? Like obviously you're, like you said before, you're you're going from you know, hoping to make the cut to now where you this last year especially you contended the last two years. Really you contended to win a lot of tournaments.

00:18:10
Speaker 2: I just think over the years, like I've matured physically and emotionally in the last couple more so than I have in my first half a decade out there. And I've said this to a few people. It just takes a little bit of time for you to undo the nonsense that's been going on in your body for a decade or even through college. Like I was never like a of a well built young man. I'm still not a well built young man. I'm like one hundred and fifty seven pounds, and you know, I don't have a whole lot going on. But I'm a lot stronger than than where I was when I first came out here. And you know, I look back at myself when I first got my car, I'm like, this puny little guy didn't stand a chance, Like there's no way, like you knows, he can't support the golf club. His hips don't move, they don't have the mobility. You know, He's just clearly not strong enough to be able to succeed on on the on the corn for a tour, even the PGA tour is the biggest thing.

00:19:08
Speaker 1: Strength does create consistency.

00:19:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, like absolutely, that's kind of like my goal with strength training, Like, uh, it creates stabuilding in my golf swing. And that's kind of something that I've I've pinpointed, especially as the weeks start rolling into each other, like I'll be I'll need to be stronger through those stretches and especially toward the weekend where you do get fatigued, and then you know, you lose your legs every now and then. And if I lose my legs, I mean I don't really have legs to begin with. That I'm done, Like I'll get so underneath it, the ball is going right, and then it's just a matter of if I could flip it at the last minute.

00:19:46
Speaker 1: I think that's what people never understand, is like when your legs go, you're done.

00:19:50
Speaker 2: You're totally done. Yeah, you know, I mean I kind of realized this once I started going down to Ponavidra and started to practice at TPC and and just hung around with some people who had some really successful careers and just observed and just took some mental notes. And everyone has enormous legs, like Jim Furick's legs are like are freaking stumps. It's unbelievable. Like, ah, well that makes sense. You've won eighty million on tour and that makes a lot of sense. And Vj's a big dude, even like even little guys I'm impressed with, like Justin Thomas's calves are like the size of my thighs. I'm like, huh wow, there's probably something to that. And I I, uh, that's my little theory.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Ogilvy has a theory that it's like soft chest, big waist. Oh is longevity, No kidding, that's that's his theory. Well, I mean like a saw like a supple chest like bendy or no, like like dowe oh Dowie.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: I can do that. I can do dough.

00:20:59
Speaker 1: Dowie dowey chest like kind of soft like big waist.

00:21:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:05
Speaker 1: Like, And then you start to think about like if the way he described to me was like if you took silhouettes of players, the players with the most longevity would all have a very similar silhouette, Like he's like Hogan, Phil VJ. Yeah, all the guys that Furick would fall into that bucket too. Yeah, but big light all of them have big legs.

00:21:28
Speaker 2: Big legs, real stable bass is I think the key And I never realized that until about a couple of years ago. I'm like, well, what am I missing? Like, Oh, well, i have no ass I have no legs, and I'm trying to swing in one hundred and twenty mile an hour at one hundred and forty pounds. That doesn't seem like the balls are gonna go very straight, very consistently. It's a what are you doing to try?

00:21:48
Speaker 1: And like, you know, I think about like the best year I ever had playing golf was the year the winter before I played. I didn't play any golf, I didn't hit balls all, but I played basketball like three or four days a week then, And I think about it as like I was most explosive I've ever been with my legs.

00:22:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll do it for sure. What I've been doing lately is I've I've actually been very proactive in trying to gain weight. So I've started a creatine supplement, which all that does is saturate your muscles with water, so there's like an instant you know, mass gaining effect. And then on top of that, trying to eat an enormous amount of calories per day. You know, I'm yeah, yeah, don't yeah, I mean maybe one day I might get there. Right, he's probably got fifty or sixty on me. But I've been taking a mass skainer and that's I think it's it's near twelve hundred calories per serving, but I don't, I don't. I use three scoops instead of fourth like that just seems like a lot to me. Twelve hundred, I'll be I'll be out on the couch for three hours if I ate an entire shake like that. But that's number two. And then number three is I've been getting back in the gym in the last and the last month or two since we ended our season, and uh doing heavy lifting like deadlifting, box jumps, Bulgarians, some serious lifting, and you know, my joints are kind of hurting at the moment, but it'll it'll be worth that. Hopefully.

00:23:18
Speaker 1: There's nothing worse than when you lift legs and and like you're not in the habit of lifting legs and then like you can't do like simple daily like a turs in a chair. You can't even walk upstairs, Like the idea of going anywhere is painful. Getting out of bed is a really difficult task.

00:23:38
Speaker 2: Then it gets better, though, it does. Yeah, you're yeah, your muscles a dad. Then you start figuring it out.

00:23:43
Speaker 1: And do you guys have gyms on site like tour No, we don't have anything. Is is that like a weekly challenge? Like do you try and do that? Do you like daily? Like what's that like?

00:23:57
Speaker 2: Well, so my philosophy about going about phissicle activity on the road is anything I do on the road is for maintenance purposes. Like there's I don't have the time, and I don't think you can you can actively get stronger on the road, especially with you know, all the practice we're doing. It's I don't think. I mean some guys probably can. But the way my body's built, most of the stuff I like to address is for mobility purposes. And like, is it because you're burning so much during the week? I think so, Yeah, I mean walking the golf courses.

00:24:32
Speaker 1: It's like the opposite of muscle building.

00:24:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it'll probably keep your legs in shape. But you know, if I actually have a day offer to at some point, I will do some type of workout that resembles something I do with my trainer. But for the most part, I have like daily routines to decompress my joints, my spine and kind of like reset my nervous system as well, so that that takes up the bulk of my physical activity. How hard is it taking weeks off and what's the value of rest for me? The value of rest is extremely important. There's I have a pretty strict rule where if I don't if I'm not home for one week out of five, then I must go home on that sixth week because I start I don't know if it's like this with other people, but some guys can just go on the road knock out nine weeks in a row, and yeah, just that's their thing. They can do it.

00:25:33
Speaker 1: Well.

00:25:33
Speaker 2: I can't, Like I have four weeks on the road. Once that fifth week comes around, I start to go a little bit crazy, Like I'll start making really bad decisions on the golf course, like get real irritable, Like Bob can't do anything on the bag as a caddy to call me down. Like it starts, it starts going a little haywire and then you know, if you're playing good, it's great. But you start stringing together like twenty eight days in a row of playing golf and then traveling, and then you know, grinding and the mental and emotional fatigue like it it gets uh, it gets pretty taxing. And uh, I've always been one to love time off. Like, for me, time off is extremely important. What what you just feel like refreshed? Right? Yeah, Like I I just think it's necessary for me. I've always done it, uh in college, like shut it down for a little bit. And I think the importance of getting away from well your work is is extreme. It's it's it's necessary for me, and I think it's necessary for a lot of people. So and that kind of ties back to ah, just your your mental state. Like you know, I don't want to be happy. I don't want to have to think about golf. I know, I just want to I want to be a normal person. I want to get away from golf. I want to disassociate myself. Like a week off is like away, Oh it's a way, it's the clubs aren't coming out, I'm gonna I'm gonna go to the beach in Chicago. I'm gonna see people, see the family and friends. If I do play golf, it's going to be in a card and I'm going to be drinking beer and they were gonna be throwing dice afterwards and then probably making some decent decisions after that, hopefully. Yeah.

00:27:16
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting how people are because like I think I'm that way. Like if I play too much, I start playing really bad. Like I see it even now, Like if I play for like a week straight, like at the end of the week, and it's probably just like my legs are gone. Yeah, But like I they're like because I don't play very much, Like I play on when I travel and that's it.

00:27:36
Speaker 2: But like then I come back.

00:27:38
Speaker 1: Two weeks later and I'm way better than I was at the end of the last trip.

00:27:41
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:27:42
Speaker 1: And I think in general, when I played a lot, the same thing. Like, but then there are people that can't take days off right here, that's weird to me. I don't understand that at all.

00:27:51
Speaker 2: I don't either, Oh, I just some people are like wired a little bit differently. They operate unlike me and uh, and I I think that's really really respectable because I kind of look at like Sung Jay lived in a hotel, didn't he for he's the atl guy. Now he's from and he bought a house. Yeah, and TPC Sugar Love.

00:28:14
Speaker 1: He's hanging out at with Stewie. I think he's hanging out at Magic City with Lou Williams. WHOA, that's what I dream that he's doing.

00:28:22
Speaker 2: Going down to College Park. Yeah, i'd be sick. Yeah, Pubblis Sparks. Nice. That guy. I don't know how he does it. That's uh, that's the I'm the opposite of Sung Jay. I would rather take time off than play thirty weeks in a row and live out of the suitcase.

00:28:42
Speaker 1: Hey, you got any good Q school stories?

00:28:45
Speaker 2: Oh? I do have a couple of ones, the ones I like to really tell, and it's the most recent one from my most recent second stage was in Mobile, Alabama. I was I was somehow assigned to a site other than Southern Hills And when I got that email, you couldn't imagine the panic in my head, Like it's like opening It's like opening a letter from your boss saying you've been you've been fired, Like you're you're losing your job, Like, oh no, my whole life's been uprooted. I don't spot, Yeah, that's my spot, Like who am I going to stay with?

00:29:24
Speaker 1: Like?

00:29:25
Speaker 2: How am I? I can't go there early? It's like a public facility, it's an RTJ track, Like I don't have to pay greens fees and everything. Everything was going in circles for a little bit. And I got down there and I was playing some okay golf, just kind of scrape it around for a while. And I have Jj on the bag, who cas for ben Coals and we worked together the year before, and uh, I was really lucky to have him on the back that week because we get to the sixty ninth hole, I think, and uh, I'm I'm playing good on the last day, probably five under at this point, and I know what it's gonna be like it's been. It's been moving four every day and there's no wind. The conditions of a golf course haven't changed it all. I know it's going to be for and I know I'm one shot back and I got the blocks going, so I absolutely map one into the trees on the sixty ninth hole here and I'm up near this car path and it's just trees and there's a little creek by the green on the left side there, and I'm looking to kind of pitch out there and I look at JJ and he's kind of like looking down the car path where it runs through the trees and there's kind of like little feeder slot there short right of the green. And I go, JJ, I'm just gonna pitch it out and get it up and down with a wedge. That seems like the pragmatic thing to do. He's like, ah, but we're going through the trees. I'm like, oh, gosh, let me think about this. And I looked at it. I looked at him, and you know, he talked me into it, and I pulled off the punch out of my life and one hopped off the car path down through this collection area and rolled to thirty feet. I two putted, got out of there with a par somehow I birdied the next soult, which was a par five and part of my last two to get in on the number. And uh. That was I'll never forget that stretch of like thirty or forty minutes. I remember every shot and it was it was just frightening and exhilarating at the same time because everything was going right, but you were also on the fringe of just complete disaster.

00:31:29
Speaker 1: I mean it's amazing too because it's like he talked you out of the smart play, which is you know, a it's a great caddy, Yeah, get up and down for par man.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: But he knew the situation. He read it perfectly, he knew he knew me, and he had the balls enough to say no, but hit it through those goddang trees. We're making the forty easy way and get the hell out of here.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: Well, this is this isn't kind of like you know obviously, Like I think golf's gotten a little bit more statistical and everything, and like I think when you have common sense, you know how to play golf, and you know you need to play the middles of greens avoid getting short sighted. Like that's something you learn how to when you play a lot of golf. But one of the things is like sometimes when you need to do something, when you need to get it done, like and you see it it ends of majors, Like you need to make.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: Birdies, you have to push it.

00:32:23
Speaker 1: If you need to play you know, one under the last four holes and you're in the trees.

00:32:29
Speaker 2: You need to make something happen. You do, you truly do, and uh, I think it's pretty cool to find yourselves in situations like that. Like you don't want to find yourself in a situation on the other side of the cutline. But I always find it pretty cool to see what you're made of every now and then. And sometimes if.

00:32:46
Speaker 1: You're a procrastinator like me, if that's you, thrive when you're when you put yourself on the edge.

00:32:51
Speaker 2: You do. Speaking of finding yourself on the other edge, I got one more funny Cusico Low story. And this kind of goes back to like, you know, pre ration techniques and putting one foot in front of the other. There was a time I was playing Final Stage out in Arizona, and you know, going through a pretty rough stretch of golf. So like classic Vince tried to overthink my whole philosophy, like you know, we're gonna practice hard, we're gonna we're gonna stay sober, we're not drinking this week, we're gonna really do our drills, and we're gonna make this really important to my subconscious right. And it turns out I was nearly in dead last after two rounds at Whirlwind Golf Course and like the twenty eighteen Q School, And after that, I said, you know what, this clearly isn't working. And I got piss drunk that night off a bunch of Scotch and Mexican food and shot sixty three the next day and just completely vaulted up the leaderboard and then did the exact same thing that night, except just not as violently. And you know, I missed my card like full start statisfy one shot, but like I made up one hundred spots in two days by drinking. Well.

00:34:04
Speaker 1: I like, this is like the thing with golf is you always look at other people's games and you're envious of things that they do. You think like, oh, if I could just do that like him, or if I could and then you always think like, I don't know, I'm a self loath so I just walk around and tell myself I suck alf all.

00:34:21
Speaker 2: But like, you know, that's an issue. It works. It works for Curtis Thompson too.

00:34:26
Speaker 1: But the the reality is like your best golfer is yourself. Like I always think back, there's a there's this venture capitalist Neval. He's invested in like a ton of the you know, tech companies that are billion dollar tech companies now, and you have this great podcast and one of the lines that I'll never forget is authenticity outruns all your competition. So it's like, don't try and ever be anybody else. You be yourself and you're gonna do well. Yeah, like nobody else can be you. And it's you know, if you're really good at golf, you know, you should just be yourself. And I, you know, we I did a pod with Luke Donald where he talked about playing with Justin Rose in the final round of the thirteen US Open and how he walked away thinking, God, if I could just be hit the ball like Justin Rose, you know, I would be set. And that's what started the whole kind of And meanwhile, like two months earlier there was quotes from Justin Rose at Wentworth or you know, a year earlier, Justin Rose was like admiring Luke Donald's consistency. You know, it's just like it's crazy how the game of golf works, and it's like, don't be somebody else, just be yourself.

00:35:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly like that. To be fair, that took me a lot longer to figure out in my career, like figure out what you're good at, what makes you tick and how you play your best golf. And that might be grinding till the till dusk, or it might be you know, not touching the club after you get off the eighteenth green. But you got to figure out what makes you tick. And I think I've finally figured it out. I'm not entirely sure.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: But so there's these other things I'm curious about, like how do you go about fix it, like getting better at weaknesses? Because there's this like whole there's a theory in like the world, not golf world, but just general world. Like it says like, hey, I'm miserable at a lot of things because of my my brain. Like I'm really bad at them, and I should just ignore them and get better at what I'm good at. Do you see, how do you go about getting better at weaknesses and golf, like because you don't want to sacrifice what you're really good at or do you not even think about that?

00:36:43
Speaker 2: You know, Like I've heard of that before, and the more I think about it, the more the more just kind of confuses me because I don't address stuff in that regard, like if I need stuff to work on, like, I'll dabble on it. Like I'm a big believer like incremental change. Like you're not gonna You're not gonna work on stuff so hard where it's going to bleed over into the next week. That's just not how change works. That's not how your brain works. So what I do if I'm really working on stuff, and like specifically this year was it was. It was. It was putting. Like I made a very conscious effort to change the pacing of my stroke, and you know what, I had a fit faster back it lower faster, and the length of the backstroke was shorter, okay for just like shorter puts inside of ten feet, specifically uphill putts that are dead straight. So those gave me a trouble for a while. So we kind of came up with a plan like, Okay, well that's because you're kind of like you're taking a backstroke that looks like it should hit at six feet and it's hitting it three feet and you're kind of coming out in your whipping putts. So we shortened the backstroke a little bit. And the way I went about that is, uh, I saw Garrett one day my my my putting coat. Garrett Garrotustar at Skokie, the director of instruction at the esteemed Skokie Country Clove former University of Illinois. Oh that's great. Yeah, yeah, you didn't need to remind me of that. But but we talked about it and we came up with a plan. I hit some putts under his eye and like, okay, that feels good. So I got that felt like and then I developed just like a little bit of a drill system where I would do it more or less every day before I went to go play golf. If I was playing golf in a tournament or or had like a nine hole practice round, where I would pretty much just have twenty put putts around a three foot circle and I would just wait untilice saw the shell of a golf ball and make a confid cop concerted effort to make a shorter and more I guess to me quick stroke. And that way I would accomplish the fact of I would stay in the putt longer and and shoring up the stroke a little bit. So just by kind of slowly doing this drill over time, it's blood over into my putting stroke and I don't even even think about it anymore. But like I didn't. I didn't concentrate it on it so hard that I sacrifice other practice time. So you didn't, and you didn't.

00:39:23
Speaker 1: Like in the round, you're just hitting putts the way you naturally feel, right, Yeah. That See, that's interesting because everybody tries to take these like, you know, I need to do this, this and this and take it right to the golf course versus just swinging naturally or putting naturally, but doing the drill work a certain way so that that becomes the natural.

00:39:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, like if I ever go hit golf balls under range, I am. I'm doing drills like I'm doing I want feels. I'm trying to make mechanical change, and then once I get to the golf course, it's all gone. Like I'm trying to hit shots and like, granted, I haven't been doing a very good job of that. When I go onto the golf course these days, I'm thinking so much and I'm playing terrible. I'm shooting two over parkle on Flora, and I'm just like, what are you doing out here? But when I do want to make change, I'm not like overhauling and I'm not you know, rewriting the book. Although there's like some type of urgency and some people feel the need to like we need to just completely reinvent the wheel here, like we need to drop anchor and just sit on this for hours. In my opinion, you need to do the opposite. Yeah, you just kind of need to get your toes wet. Then you kind of get onto the kiddie pool area, and then slowly, at some point you'll find yourself an adult swim with all the cool kids. You know. It's like the most.

00:40:47
Speaker 1: Minute game because like even when you're overhauling your swing, you feel like you're making this huge change, but you're moving like millimeters, not even sometimes you're going backwards. And then it's like then you have these grand overreactions.

00:41:05
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're like I did it, Like no, you didn't. It look the exact same, and it's like the funniest thing is like the best of it.

00:41:13
Speaker 1: It's like just basically like this, it's the most emotional game, and it's like the if you just don't allow yourself to get it all goes back to like just staying in the moment and not freaking out.

00:41:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it don't don't make things a big old, being bigger than Yeah, be super dumb exactly, don't be smart. There's only a few people I've ever met where they excel at golf because they're very intelligent. Who Maverick Nearly is a very bright young man. I think Max Grazerman is very smart as well, but he's got like a little bit of a quirky side to him. And and but he established himself as a very intelligent young man. And what am I buddies Evan Harmeling, who is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met my entire life, absorbs anything like a sponge, is very well spoken, in articulate. But the bin the awesome thing about his is him is he knows how to dumb it down, Like he knows that, you know, being too smart is dis disadvantageous. Yeah, is not good for his game. And he knows how to separate himself from golf every now and then. And I find that very awesome because he could go the other way. He'd like, I'm literally the smartest person on the corn Ferry Tour, because he is, but he knows that won't get him any farther than where he is right now, so he uses that to his own advantage. He's like, I know, I know me, I know what makes me tick. And he's, uh, he's gotten a lot better, and I'm really proud of him.

00:42:51
Speaker 1: Hey, dumby it down, Like if you think too much. I used to sing comfortably Numb to myself before I hit shots because I wanted to get really relaxed. Yeah, that's all I thought about was singing that song. And you don't think about anything else, Like there's not a lot that can go wrong.

00:43:07
Speaker 2: No, I agree completely.

00:43:09
Speaker 1: Speaking of other players, like of the guys that graduated this year, I know this is probably hard to pick. You know, if you were gonna if it was a stock market, who would you buy shares?

00:43:19
Speaker 2: And on the PGA tour of the guys that went up, Chad Raimi the year. Yeah, And I got to hang out with Chad just a little bit here and there. We went floating down the Boise River. And he's just a cool customer, like nothing bothers him. He's got a great head on our shoulders. And uh, clearly his golf game is very good. And uh, I just I think it'll just take a little bit of time for him to maybe get acclimated. But he is. He's extremely good, he's super consistent, his short games superb, and uh yeah, I think he's got all the tools necessary. So from this class, I think, you know, if we were hypothetically betting on you know, the tour, although I just took my integrity program, so I know you got that. That's why I said shares.

00:44:05
Speaker 1: I didn't say betting if there was a hypothetical I knew about the integrity program.

00:44:10
Speaker 2: I didn't want to jeopardize you. Oh God, I'm gonna get an email from Andy Pasterer here shortly, aren't I good? God? Sorry? Andy? I just like Chad's game a lot. It's it's really good. It's it's very well rounded. And he's an iron man too. He played like everything right. Yeah, that's the incredible part too, Like he just happened at top twenty literally fifteen straight events, like it was. It was just from he never played bad, which I think it's the thing. Pretty is a pretty good indicator of future success With that Super season.

00:44:46
Speaker 1: Did you feel like having it be so long was easier or was it frustrating that it was so long that people weren't going up and then like it was hard to catch up?

00:44:56
Speaker 2: You know if you were in.

00:44:57
Speaker 1: A hole, like or was it nice that you knew that there was such a long season that it was you know, hey, I could play bad for eight weeks and I know that it's fine.

00:45:10
Speaker 2: You know, I kind of found myself in an awkward spot because I was I was like forty fourth after the first half of the season, which was the twenty twenty year, and you know, I didn't get my card at all. I wasn't going up or down, but like like, okay, I'm in a pretty good spot. But like also at the same time, you know, I couldn't just go in and coast throughout the year and back to what we were talking about, like Okay, well, you know, I'm very far inside the cut line here, and yeah, inside the seventy five cut line, but like all I you really need is like a couple of top tens. And then like I came out of the gates playing pretty poorly in the first half of the year, Like we went to Florida, played poorly, went to Savannah, played poorly. I'm like, okay, well, at some point it's going to turn around, and for me it worked out. I do like an off season because I like to address some weaknesses and it gives me some time to just decompress, get into the gym again. And I just have a lot of work to do on my body before I I can really compete on the PGA tour. I'd like, I need I need a solid ten pounds. I need to get to one sixty five otherwise I just don't stand a chance, I truly do. What a nice problem to have, Yeah, I mean it's not for everybody. I just hope. I mean I think I finally hit puberty and at some point my metabolism is gonna slow down and I'll be able to just not even think about gaining weight and I'll just go straight to my I wouldn't mind a tire on my belt as well. I would take that sill of what you were talking about, like the soft torso and the and the fat waist, right, I would take that in a hard husky boy. Husky boy.

00:46:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh what you're on the pack? What do you guys do on the pack for the corn ferry. Everybody knows about the pack for the for the PGA tour, But like I imagine, like the pack they people graduate, people get demoted, you know, you're actually in the real relegation part of the tour.

00:47:10
Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing about us is we don't really have a saying a whole lot. It's just I think there's a pack on the corn furry just to say there's some type of pack. Like, there's not a whole lot of judgments being made this year where there was nothing to talk about the bulk of our decision making was done last year in twenty twenty, when we were discussing the whole PGA tour university system, Like, I think that's a good system. I think it's wonderful. And I shouldn't like it because I would have gotten starts when I was in college and I was coming out, so like I'm a little bitter that it wasn't thought of earlier. But I think it's a great avenue and I think it's I think it's perfect because we can't be missing on these kids coming out of college. Like, you know, there's a lot of good talent coming from universities these days, and they should have access to our tour because it helps, it helps build our tour, and like that it gets eyeballs on the screen, like these canvas kids, Well, what are they going to do try to Monday qualify or get sponsors exemptions and then.

00:48:12
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine that's like an awkward thing when you turn pro.

00:48:15
Speaker 2: It's like what do you do? Yeah? Okay, I turned pro? Great?

00:48:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's next? State opens? Yeah, Codis Tour.

00:48:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's a wonderful avenue and it makes a lot of sense. Like I played with one of the kids from Arizona State Avenue. That guy is extremely talented. Well that was the thing I remember.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: You know, I'll leave the guy out of it. But one of your cohorts and they're talked about duce paying and it's like the kids came out and like like showed out right off.

00:48:51
Speaker 2: How could you hit the kids because they I mean they came out swinging it like top fives like every week literally ready, Like one guy couldn't get out of the final group for like two weeks. Kevin couldn't. Like Yeah, So I don't know that it's a weird meritocracy that we were operating in, but I think it's certainly warranted. Those kids are definitely good enough, and I'm just mad that it wasn't there when I was in school because I think I would have got to start. I might have got like Latin American status, but that would have definitely beat what I had going on for my first summer.

00:49:23
Speaker 1: You know, kind of a bummer with the Latin American Canada that sucks.

00:49:28
Speaker 2: I'm I saw that. I'm like, I saw the email. I'm like, oh, oh, I have a feeling. I know what this is about, but I don't want to open it and have my heart sink. And then I read the first line. I was like, you have got to be kidding me. Like, I know friends who moved upon a Vidra to just for that purpose, to use the facilities there, and they signed leases, like they uprooted their entire lives just to go practice sawgrass, and like they're getting like they've gotten better, like they're great players.

00:49:55
Speaker 1: In case anybody missed it, the tour because of basically the way it's worded, the popularity of golf. You know, anybody in Scottsdale, Pana, Vidra or Vegas, the three most popular places for you know, developing tour players to go lost their practice privileges at the TPC courses, which which is a huge I mean that stinks. They should be at least able to like pay a small fee.

00:50:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes me really mad. It's it's I've been really lucky and I've had places to go throughout my career where I've never been asked to pay any type of Greens fee membership fee like that would have been a huge barrier to my success. I'm not even sure if I would be where I am if I didn't have help like that along the way.

00:50:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have like a huge financial backing.

00:50:47
Speaker 2: No, I guess it's it's just it just blows my mind. And and even those guys on on those international tours, it's it's got to be even tougher than what we're doing on the corn fororry tour to make ends meet, Like you can't. I just don't know if you can afford whatever they ask for a membership at clubs in Jacksonville or Scott Sale like that doesn't exist.

00:51:09
Speaker 1: I think the Jupiter Jupiter has got a few that are affordable. But at the same time, like the problem is these kids by you know, get an apartment, sign a lease, it's like you can't. So then you get stuck at a public course and you know, no offense, but like it's not the facility to get not the same.

00:51:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't understand. Like you're in the umbrella, like you're in the brotherhood, like you have status on these tours, but you don't get the benefits. It's like it's it's.

00:51:39
Speaker 1: So the least amount of benefits because you don't actually make any money when you play.

00:51:44
Speaker 2: Well, no you don't. Yeah, you like barely pay your bills on those tours, not even sometimes don't even pay your bills.

00:51:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's always the golf adage to play better, but you know, like the my my issue is like if that, if if you're going to say that, then there's to.

00:52:00
Speaker 2: Be true relegation from the PGA Tour. Which so.

00:52:07
Speaker 1: Last last question I got to ask, how's the how's the Puna Vidra cafeteria the PGA tour cafeteria here, it's there's there's frustration from to our employees sometimes because you know, the players are taking hogging all the spots.

00:52:25
Speaker 2: It's pretty wonderful. It's probably everything you imagined even better. It's cheap too, write it's yeah, it doesn't even make sense how cheap it is. Actually it's it's a nonprofit. Oh well that makes sense. Well, when I think of that, but still it's it's I mean, you have every type of meal option, and you know, I think Thursdays are like a tuna Thursdays, and you got plant based, you got paleo and you know keto, you got to you got everything you could possibly imagine. And we haven't got to this smoothie bar yet either. That's what I'm most interested in. Like, yeah, the smoothie and juice bar, even like the little like the little snacks that the chef makes too, are just out of this world. Perks, perks to work and yeah, perks are being a member. Yeah, you can come to the cafeteria, but you can't hit balls on our range.

00:53:16
Speaker 1: They're still allowed in the cafeteria.

00:53:18
Speaker 2: I think, so, Yeah, they haven't. They haven't made a statement about Latin American and Canada members not coming to eat.

00:53:25
Speaker 1: They've had it the worst of the last couple of years because they had their tour just canceled exactly.

00:53:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, no movement at all.

00:53:33
Speaker 1: It's all right, Well, Vince, it's it's been fun and uh, well, you got a couple couple of months till till you got You're in bulk season.

00:53:43
Speaker 2: I'm in bulking season. I'm in Scramble season more importantly, Oh yeah, you got the Chicago Lands Scrambled. Yeah, Chicago Land Scrambled. Who's on your team? Well, not necessarily the Chicago Land Scramble, but national, it's a it's just scrambled season in general. Like I was City, we played one for the alumni event last Friday and at my alma mater, and it seems like every Saturday wherever I go, we somehow play an emergency night Scramble. I feel like I'm a bad Scramble player. I'm a horrible Scramble player.

00:54:15
Speaker 1: It's really it's not. I feel like it's a format that rewards volatility.

00:54:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, all I do is fat sighted to thirty feet and two pt Yeah, Like, that's not what you want in scramble. You don't want somebody that makes a lot of pars. No, that's literally my job. So no one called me for a scramble team unless it's four pros. You need one more bro. But if you're an amateur looking for a pro, I'm not your guy. Are you you excited about the Hawkeyes? I am. I'm also cautiously optimistic. You're ready to get hurt? Oh? Yeah, like an enormous letdown at the hands of Purdue this weekend at two thirty in Iowa City.

00:54:56
Speaker 1: Well, well, this will probably air on Monday, so people will know whether your letdown or not by that. Oh gosh, I'm already I'm mentally prepared for a letdown, but I just hope it doesn't come just yet. All right, we will. We'll talk to you soon and good luck next year.

00:55:11
Speaker 2: Thanks Andy, good being with you.

00:55:23
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins. As a quick reminder, we have a three day week newsletter. It's written by Will Knights. It's a wonderful companion to your golf viewing, whether you're a regular watcher or irregular watcher. It takes two to four minutes to read about roughly in the morning, and it's a easy way to stay up to date and.

00:55:52
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