The Year of Scottie and Garrett Goes to Australia

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Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

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Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a brid egg.

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Speaker 3: Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday eg Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today we have a big episode for you. We have a two parter. We are joined by Sean Martin of the PGA Tour to discuss his role as a producer of a Scottie Scheffler documentary that is coming out on Monday. It figured it was a great time to talk to Sean and talk about Sky Scheffler after the hero win just kind of put a bow on his outstanding year, historic year, all time great year and the documentary that they have put together. I've watched part of it. It was really really well done. Sean is one of the most obsessed golf obsessive people and in the weeds people, a person I know. I think it really shows to see something that was made by someone who's really interested in golf. So I would urge people that listen to this podcast, you're pretty deep in the weeds on golf. To listen to that or to watch that documentary, it is really well put together. The second part of this podcast, our own Garrett Morrison is in Australia. He's winding down his two week trip to the sand Belt, so we had him come in check in talk a little bit about his trip so far to Melbourne. I am very jealous of Garrett. He's going on a trip of a lifetime right now and it was fun to catch up about his kind of early takeaways in the moment, takeaways from spending a long time in the Melbourne sand Belt and the golf courses he's seen. So let's get to this podcast, but first let's talk about Club tf We're getting down to the nitty gritty that time, that late minute shopping window. A great gift is to join Club TFE or give the gift of Club TFE to a golf obsessive person that you love. We do a ton of content in there. We write a lot about golf courses, a lot of garretts, a lot of deep thoughts about Australian golf will be in CLUBTFE. We usually produce two to three pieces a week in CLUBTFE. We've got a really highly engaged and really awesome community in there that the conversation about golf. We CLUBTFE members have early access to our events and overall it is a great way to support what we're doing here, and you get a lot from it. You get a discount in the pro shop. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year. And if you guys are interested, I mean that we are going to be pouring a lot of investment into the membership, making it really vibrant community in twenty twenty five. If you're interested, go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership to check it out. That's the fridagg dot com slash membership. Thank you, guys. Let's get to Sean Martin on Scotti Scheffler. All right, twenty twenty four. I think when we look back at this year five years ago, a five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now, this year is always going to be the year of Scotti Scheffler. Sean, I think you hold this sentiment, and I would say you might be leading the charge around this sentiment. You are the producer of a Scottie Scheffler documentary that was produced by the PGA Tour that will be coming out on Monday twelve, twenty three, that's the twenty third of December on the PGA Tour YouTube page. So I thought it would be great to have you on to talk a little bit about the documentary but also the year of Scottie Shuffler. From your standpoint, Sean, you cover the PGA Tour weekend, week out, day in, day out. You are as well versed in golf history and facts and stats and the ongoings of PGA Tour golf. Is anybody I know when was a point in the year where you kind of were like, Wow, this is getting pretty ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: The idea for the documentary, I mean it got ridiculous early, right, he won four out of five stars, then he got arrested and had the birth of his first child. I think that was pretty ridiculous. I think the idea for the documentary came about after he won the Olympics, because that's one where you only can win it once every four years, and so you know masters and players in the same year. Tiger had done that. But I mean, are you going to see someone win a Masters of Players and I'm a gold medal in the same year. Probably not, because there's so few chances at that. So I think that was when, all, right, now we've got seven worldwide wins, we've got probably the biggest title in the sport, you know, we've got several other huge titles, and then we've got the biggest title in sports period, and so I think that's when it's like, Man, this needs to be memorialized.

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Speaker 2: What were I if you were going to sit the size this down. You've been kind of living and breathing Skyty Scheffler the last few months of your life. If you were going to size this down to three big moments across the year, what would you kind of point to as the three big moments of sky Scheffler this year.

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Speaker 1: I think Riviera is the first. I think going back through his season as we were putting this together, I forgot how bad the putting was and how it had gotten even worse in twenty twenty four. So he had the thirty six hole lead in two of his first three starts. He had the thirty six hole lead at the century, lost strokes on the greens on the final two rounds. He had the thirty six hole lead at Pebble and lost strokes in the third and final round because it was shortened by rain and finished I think fifth or sixth, and then Phoenix was especially bad so they had weather delays there. He goes back Sunday morning to finish his third round. He has like a thirty footer from the middle of the green on eighteen and he puts it into a bunker and I totally had forgot about that shot. But then he's still in contention in the final round and he misses putts from inside five feet on thirteen through fifteen, finishes three shots out of the playoff between Nick Taylor and Charlie Hoffman, and then he goes to riv and he he finishes second in stroscantea green behind my guy Hideki and dead lass and putting, and you see him like he chucks his ball into the woods, he's dropping his putter. It's really eating him up. And I think it's one of the cool parts where we were able to get some stuff for this that I hadn't heard before. You get Sam Byrne talking about how like that their wives would go to bed and they'd pull out the putting match, and they'd start experimenting with putters because they're trying to figure it out for Scotty. You get Scotty's mentor, Brad Payne, talking about how after Genesis they kind of had to sit down and Scotty's like, I am not doing well and Brad's like, you know what, being honest about it, like is the first step to this getting better. And then you have Scotty even talking about kind of how it was wearing on him. And so I thought that was really cool to get some further depth on his frustrations. And then of course the next after.

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Speaker 2: I think one of the things if we zero in on this a little bit more, the putting. I mean this, this putting thing was not just this year, right, it went back to last year where he was hitting. I'll never forget in this, like, you know when you think about this period of time when like he was really lost on the greens, because I don't, like he never was like the world's greatest putter, but he wasn't this bad. No, Like he was a very He was a serviceable putter throughout his youth and amateur days and into the early part of his career and then all of a sudden, it was just like kind of gone, but I'll never forget. I went, you know, at LACC this it was really bubbling it up, bubbling up. Last year at the US Open, I mean this was a big storyline where you just see Scottie Shuffler leading the field strokes gain. Oh you finished third again, He finished fourth again, and like that was the thing. It was just like, oh, he's not winning, He's finishing third and fourth over and over and over again. And I remember I went out. It was either Tuesday or one today. I went out. He was on the putting green with Ted Scott when I left the range, and I went out and watched golf watch practice round for two or three hours, and I came back and he was still on the putting green. And I think like one of the things with this is like he was pouring so much mental energy into it. And I think, like almost every golfer can relate to a certain extent, Golf's one of those sports where almost when you pour all the resources in, sometimes it has the complete opposite effect of what you want to get out of it, right, like it being acutely aware that you're putting is costing you. Winning tournament after tournament has to make putting more and more difficult.

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Speaker 1: And I think to the hard part for twenty twenty four is it looked a might get better at the end of twenty twenty three, hired Phil Kenyon, and then he wins the Hero World Challenge, so like, oh, maybe he's figured it out. He's had a few months with Phil and they got it sorted out, and then he comes out in twenty twenty four and it's just as bad, if not worse than ever. And I think that was especially daring.

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Speaker 2: And that Riviera Week. I mean it had gotten to the point, like it happened for so long that it was almost like a joke. It was like, oh, he can't putt. He had gotten to that point where it's like, well, like he can't putt, he just can't make anything. He would win all the time if he could putt. And then sure enough, like as you allude to, it kind of like starts this is the low point and things things change, and then guess what happened. He won a lot.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: I mean, if he had putted the way he did for the rest of twenty twenty four before Bayhill. He could have won four of those events.

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Speaker 2: All right, So that's your moment number one. What's your next moment? Is it Bayhill?

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Speaker 1: It's probably Bayhill. I think it's just the turnaround there. I don't want to give away too much. I think one of the great soundbites we get is Shane Lowry, who played in that final group. He says, I walked off the golf course that day not thinking I could beat him, unified my best stuff, which is rare for another tour player say about a fellow tour player. And I think that one too. It's really cool. We have a great like field logistics staff led by Sam Davis and Jeff Garrison, and they're always shooting and making sure people are always shooting. And there's some really cool behind the scenes moments there that I think are great. I think overall with this documentary, we did the interview with Scotty the night that he was given Player of the Year last week or you know, December tenth. I think, and I think you just see I think you just see Scotty. Maybe I don't want to say a different side. I think we see it, but you see the like funny self deprecating charismatic Scotty that you know, maybe we didn't see as much in twenty twenty three when the putting was going awry, and maybe you don't see because I think he does have a slightly guarded image when he's doing press conferences because it's just such a kind of chaotic environment. And I think that you know, Scotty when he gets to a tournament is really focused on competing. He wants to make sure I think that he doesn't say anything controversial because he doesn't want to have to think about it or answer about it again, or hear about it again, because he just wants to compete that week. And so I think getting him, like away from the tournament season, away from the chaos of a tournament, he's not trying to compete, I think you see a little clearer view of kind of the Scotty that we you like hear about, of yeah, being funny and having a good character.

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Speaker 2: I guess I think that personality and I think this is something that doesn't get talked about enough with the way pro golf has gotten really young, is that you have these guys like you think about Scotty Scheffler's careers like Okay, he turns pro and he goes down to the corn ferry and he thrives, he wins. Ever, he went to Bonchiet, number one player on the money list, he comes up and then he immediately becomes like a very good player on tour. But like you know, when when Scotty Scheffler's doing press conferences, it's just like did he shoot a really good score? And then like all of a sudden, it's Scotty Scheffler is going to do a press conference or have people talk to him at this point in his life every single day that he's on site at a tournament. And that is like, for somebody in their mid twenties, is like a crazy thing to have. Like you go from basically talking to no one ever about your golf to having to talk about your golf every day. And I think like our natural reaction is like, okay, like these guys don't have like none of these new guys have personality. But I think what we've seen over the last two years, and I think that the Rest helped a lot with this, is we've seen Scotti's personality and humor and that laid back, like self deprecation has kind of cupped bubble up as he's gotten more and more comfortable with this life of being in front of the camera all the time. You know, one of the issues is like, we just don't have many guys that get that treatment for a long period of time, because the sport has gotten to the point where there's an influx of these almost interchangeable young stars, and you know, very few outside of Rory and Scotty and Rom and like have had this staying power at the top of the game.

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Speaker 1: And I think, I know you're a paying subscriber to the normal sport newsletter. Shane Ryan did a Q and A in there, and he actually advocated for players having less access, which you would never hear a journalist say, but honestly, with Scotty this year, it was a great point, I think, and you can almost make a case for it because I mean, I remember by the playoffs, I'm like, I am out of questions to ask Scotty Shuffler. He has done a press he does every term he shows up, he does a preterm press conference and pretty much every here's maybe five press conferences a week every time he plays, and it gets difficult. You just run out of things to ask about and I think late twenty twenty three and even early twenty twenty four, the putting, I think it helped him. It was the first time he really faced scrutiny as the number one player in the world. Like twenty twenty two, he comes on so fast, wins those four times and six starts. He never was number two, three, or four in the world. He went straight from number five to number one in the world when he won match plays, and then he wins the Masters, and you know, he's just this media darling, kind of nice story of this guy that came out of nowhere. You're kind of in your introductory phase with the media. And then twenty twenty three even starts off the year, well, wins Phoenix again, wins the Players, and so really, when the putting struggles happen, that's the first time he's facing media scrutiny. And I think that getting through the putting struggles helped him better deal with media scrutiny. And just that will come when you're the number one player in the world, no matter what you're doing, because frankly, people have so many questions for you that you're just gonna asked about stuff. And so I think he's gotten better with the media in general, but I think, yeah, like I said, I think he still also wants to leave a press conference not worrying. Did I say something that's going to add stress to my week because I'm just here to win this golf tournament.

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Speaker 2: The ironic thing is during those struggles, I think there was a point in time where he said the putting was was kind of he did the classic Obedia narrative that is not that bad.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's why I think the Genesis scene where he talks is a mentor Brad Paine talks about like that's where he really just said, like I am not doing well, Like this is wearing on me, this is getting to me. And I mean the next event was bay Hill, and you can make a very strong case to like the spy the spider was the key to turning around the putting. But even Sam Burns, his good friend who played with a bay Hill, said the other big thing was that at bay Hill because he misses like a six footer on the first hole of the tournament. This is like an eight footer on the third hole. He was less reactive and he talks in his winners press conference that week of like, my big thing this week was that I was not going to react to the misses, like I was just going to stay pop to do and trust the process, which we say a lot, but I think you know, when you're strumming, you're putting, and you missed two short pots in the first three hole, it's easy to not trust the process. And so I think that, Yeah, the spider was a huge asset, but I think also that mentality change was a huge asset as well. At bay Hill.

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Speaker 2: The Rory, the Rory in the press. You know this, this will could forever be a moment in the history of golf. Is Rory in the booth doing Riviera, you know, Sunday coverage talking about Scottie's putter and saying he should go to the mallet. The next week next event, goes to the mallet and then sets off effectively a super nova of winds.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think unfortunately he was already testing the spider.

00:17:47
Speaker 2: It wasn't Rory, it's it's just a it'll always be linked there and whether you know, he might it might have been the final thing that pushed him over that, because.

00:17:58
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's a great it's a great narrative. I think it was my best tweet of the year was I took the screenshot from the Ryder Cup where Shane Lowry's trying to pull Rory back into the car, and I was like, we got footage of Shane trying to stop Rory from telling Scotty to use a mallet.

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Speaker 2: Well, then last night of that match, he was telling Scotty about creating.

00:18:17
Speaker 1: You know, I heard it's good for the brain as well as the muscles.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: I mean, what if Scotty picked up twenty more yards because of Rory's creating comment?

00:18:28
Speaker 1: He could? I think he has more in the tank. He just doesn't choose to air it out very often.

00:18:33
Speaker 2: I mean that's the thing about Scotty's game that's like, I mean, it's just unbelievable when you when you watch him over Like I think, like one of the favorite things about my job and kind of how I like to go about major championships is I just like pick players and I watched their whole round and I just and you see, and it's just like the Scotty. Scott's game is just relentless. I mean, the driver is such a weapon. It is so accurate, you know, and like you think about like the biggest weapons in golf, Like when you think about drivers, you generally think Rory, and I think if I was going one or the other, I might go Rory. But Scotty's driver is like, sure, it's not the long he's not the longest guy, but the accuracy of it and what it does to compliment the iron play is he just put it does exactly its job, and he's got this sublime ability to hit iron shots. It's just watching him hit iron shots is just it's one of the greatest things. You know, if you're into golf, it's one of the greatest things you can do because they just come out of the perfect window and you just they're just beautiful. But like, the driver is such a weapon because it just puts him in posi position to hit iron shots picking up twenty yards but costing accuracy. It's an intro like you see him sometimes hit the gas and hit it a little bit further. But the biggest weapon is just putting himself in a position to hit approach shots from fairways.

00:20:18
Speaker 1: The best example is Travelers actually, and I found it going back through a season. I had kind of forgotten about it, but he's in the playoff with Tom Kim, and he could obviously blow it past Tom Kim if he chose but instead, in the playoff he hits three wood because he hits threw it off that tea every time. And he gives this great explanation in his post round pressor of why he hits three wood, that the fairway narrows where he hits driver, the bunker that I think we saw saw hit hit the lip that one year comes into play if he hits driver. So, going back to your point of giving himself opportunities, says, why am I gonna risk going to this bunker that can be dead? Why don't it through and find the faaraway? And sure enough he finds he hits three, but he's forty yards back of Tom Kim and he stiff an iron and Tom hits in the bunker and the playoffs over and Trevor Immilman, who's involved pretty heavily in this, it makes a lot of appearances, kind of do an analysis for this documentary. You know, we do a lot of the Tiger comparisons. But he says he's the best player with strategy since Tiger, and it was a very tigress move of I'm going to lay back forty yards and I'm still going to stiff the iron shot. I have enough confidence in my iron play that I can give up forty yards to my opponent and still win the playoff.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I you know, it's funny, I.

00:21:32
Speaker 1: I, which is also very anithetical to how the game's played today, right exactly, push it up, push it up, push it up, hit driver, hit driver.

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Speaker 2: It's you know, when I think back, the best most successful time of my mid am career is when I reached this point in my life and like, you know, I hit it plenty far for a mid am, but I reached this point where anytime I felt any discomfort on a tee it could be like a four hundred any yard part four, I would just pull out a three iron and it's like, well, I'll hit it into the fairway and from there, I'm hitting an iron on a fairway. And you think about like Scotty, just like if he can just set himself up where holes are just part thre's where you're hitting shots from short grass into a green. It is it makes his life so stress free because of how prodigious his iron play is, and then also the short game, which always you know, I think it's at a point where it's like almost his iron play is so good that the short game doesn't get talked about enough that he might be the best player with a wedge around the green in the world too.

00:22:45
Speaker 1: So I saw it a hero. We did a lot of our interviews with players about Scotty at the Hero World Challenge.

00:22:50
Speaker 2: He gets to go to the Bahamas.

00:22:52
Speaker 1: It was I'd never been. The resort was great. I got a little tan in December, it was fantastic.

00:22:58
Speaker 2: Did he wear all black? Did you go all no name?

00:23:02
Speaker 1: No? I did not. But there's two chipping greens there and there's kind of a desert sandy cutout between them, and you know, guys are chipping at both. And the only player that I saw chip from like the Sandy waste area was Scotty Scheffler, which is ironic because he's also the player least likely to end up in the sandy waste area. But I think he was having Ted Scott throw balls down and wherever Ted threw it, he had the chip from. But I just thought that was you know, we can obviously overread this anecdote. I don't know. Maybe occ Shavtia came by fifteen minutes later and hit one from the yeah, and I was in the bathroom. But you can definitely overread it. But I just thought it was really telling of like because Scotty talks all about preparation. How on the first te he gives himself a little talk and says, I've done everything I can to repair this week. Now I just need to go kind of execute. The result aren't up to me. I've done my part, I've done the preparation, and it takes pressure off of him, and like, that's the epitome of the preparation, is hitting chip shots out of the sandy area when you're the player that's least likely to find it.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: All right, we got off subject here. What was your third kind of moment of the year.

00:24:13
Speaker 1: The Olympics was big the not just the twenty nine We don't get into it as much in the documentary, but on a different podcast, I think it was Colton Nohos podcast. Ted Scott was on there and he says that it was the best job he had done, I think in his twenty five year career of turning a player around from where they were on Thursday Friday to Saturday Sunday in terms of attitude, which is saying a lot because his previous boss was Bubba Watson. But the thing with Scotty, you saw it with the putting and then you're probably gonna dog me for this. But then you did start to see it with the FedEx cup of like you just get the same questions over and over again, of like you're number one, you're number one, you're leading, you're leading, You're gonna have the two stroke lead, and it starts to kind of wear on Scotty. Plus all the stuff I think of the year you've dealt with again, like the five press conferences a week, you've had your first child, you've been arrested, like you've been doing this for seven eight months now. You're probably little burned out. And Scotty was missing Putts the Olympics, hitting it great, and he's not in a good headspace and Ted kind of gives him a talk of like, hey, you're the one player in the world, like they're going to go in. You just got to be patient. And but even on Sunday at the halfway point, like Scotty so fed up with his putting, he threatens to break his putters. They're making the turn on Sunday, which is crazy because hes about to play the best nine holes of the season, of his career of golf history might be a lot, but man, it was a good nine.

00:25:39
Speaker 2: Holes back great back nine. And also it also makes Cam Young breaking as driver at Rocket Mortgage one back with four holes ago even more crazy.

00:25:53
Speaker 1: But then there's a great anecdote. I've given way too much, but he's a great anecdote about stiffing it on sixteen, and I Brandal really just put it best. We had Brandal talk on the pot as well, and Brando was like, man, it was the pinnacle of sport. Now, maybe not for golf. Golf has the majors, but the Olympics are the pinnacle of sport. And you had the pinnacle of sport coming down the stretch. The best player in the world is on like full display of all his powers. Like if you remember he chipped in on the third hole in the final round, and then both of his playing partners unprompted, they were Thomas Detree and Tom Kim. When I asked him the best shot he hit on that back nine, it was this chip shot on fourteen. They both agreed. I didn't tell either one what the other one had said. He's in kind of this thickish rough. He short sighted five. Yeah, he's got to run it up a bank. Yeah, and he kind of hoods something to get it. You've got to hit it hard enough to not fluff it out of the rough. But you've then got to get it running up the slope, but then not with too much speed because the flag is only six paces on and he hits it close and makes the pott. And you also mean you saw Scotty flag iron shots. You saw Scotty hit chips. He also had a great down the previous hole, like you really did just see like if you want to look at like, okay, what is Scotty? What makes sky shuffer great? Like that back nine of the Olympics like shows all of it.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, that's that's incredible. It was an incredible, incredible round of golf. And I think it's like fitting. I mean we look back now, like I think like the the the Olympics this year really cemented itself in the golf calendar, like in in like the place of golf, especially when you start to look back at at like who's won it Justin Rose at the time, world class, top top of the bucket player, Xanderschoffley and now Scottie Shuffler. And I think, like you saw like that, there is like a weight to that Olympic Olympic gold that that you see on that back nine on Sunday, on not Sunday, but in round four where you see guys kind of melt away, whether it's even or the bronze, you know, it is a is a heavy, heavy thing. And and I think when when you boil down great athletes and why we invest so much time and energy of our lives into sport is to see those moments where the chips are down, the gravity of the moment is very heavy, and then you see the the supreme talents in the game rise to a different level. And I think that's what made that Olympics when such I you know, in some ways as memorable. And I think some people might disagree with this as memorable, maybe more memorable than his master's win this year.

00:28:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he chased down John Romin, Zander Softley too.

00:28:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, was in the mix too. Yeah, is I mean credible win.

00:29:01
Speaker 1: She was pretty similar because he got off to kind of a slow start. In the fun round, Bertie's eight, nine and ten, Homo makes a double on twelve, Ludvig hits in the water and eleven. Colin makes a couple of doubles, and Scotty knocks a long iron onto the thirteenth, three knocks a stiff on fourteen, and that pretty much cements it. Then he Birdi's sixteen, which is really the last dangerous shot after thirteen, and I mean it turned into it was a close battle at the turn and it was an easy walk up eighteen by the time he was done, like everyone else kind of folded around him, and he just kept going and was, like you said earlier, relent was.

00:29:36
Speaker 2: I think it's it's kind of it's alarming to think about where he goes from here, especially after the hero.

00:29:47
Speaker 1: The hero was insane. The heroes like, oh, you should have been offered two months relaxing. And then he beat him my six like I changed my putting grip a little bit, and I just waxed everyone.

00:29:57
Speaker 2: He looked really good with the potter. I thought he had like a a confidence level that I hadn't seen from him in forever. But like the other effect of this is like I saw this this Ben Coley twee tweet list of players who didn't win this year is pretty mad funny. What happens when Scheffler wins most weeks? All right, this is the list of players that didn't win in twenty twenty four. Ludwig Sam Burns, Patrick Cantley, Jason Day, Tony Finow, Matt Fitzpatrick, Ricky Fowler, Brian Harmon, Russell Henley, Nikolai hog, Hoygard, Max Homa, Victor Hovland, Sung JM Tom Kim, Colin Morikawa, Justin Rose, Adam Scott, Jordan Speed, Sepstraka Sahasagala, Justin Thomas, Cameron Young, and Will z al Tours. And we're one year. This is the first year of the pro and we'll see how many there are of prolific winning thick totals. But I think something that people forgot about the Tiger era was what Tiger's accomplishments. When you have a player like this, what it does to the accomplishments of the players around them. And this has the you know, I don't want to get hyperbolic, and I might have gotten a little hyperbolic, and in the moment after he won the hero on the shotgun start.

00:31:24
Speaker 1: But I you never gallic on the shotgun start. I'm surprised to hear this thought PJ would reined you in.

00:31:31
Speaker 2: Never get out over my skis.

00:31:33
Speaker 1: A soundboard of this podcast doing.

00:31:35
Speaker 2: No, don't use the soundboard, but the uh, the like, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for double digit wins.

00:31:49
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, like, if he had put in the way he did all of twenty twenty four, he could have reached double digits. It just feels I mean, that feels it's still really hard.

00:32:04
Speaker 2: That's it's like I feel caught. But like I just I guess like what I like, we've seen when the putter doesn't work and it's every week. It's just like it's kind of like, is he gonna lose a step off the tier approach play? Could he get in a bad swing spot? And I don't know, I don't know if that's in the cards.

00:32:29
Speaker 1: Really, the interesting thing is gonna be if he like doesn't win one of his first four starts, because then he's gonna face and it used to bristle Tiger. I love like looking at old transcripts. You're gonna get asked, hey, why aren't you winning? Like, why aren't you winning? And it gets really annoying for a professional golfer because and Scotty says it a lie, he goes, Golf's a really difficult game. And so I think kind of like the putting, where the questions get war on him. And I think he'll have learned from it from the putting, but it still can get annoying. Is he's gonna have to face in twenty twenty five, hey why didn't you win? You know, why didn't you win? What's wrong? You have a one in three starts? And which I mean on the paper, really is a ridiculous question if you haven't won in three starts. But he's gonna get asked those all the time, and he's gonna have to learn to deal with it, which I think he learned. I think he has learned, but it's still going to be a hindrance to It's just gonna be noise around him and chatter, which is kind of what we talked about when he won bay Hill. All the noise and chatter he had to kind of deal with.

00:33:25
Speaker 2: All Right, let's talk a little bit about the process of putting together this documentary. It's an hour long. You're the producer? Is it executive producer? Are you executive?

00:33:38
Speaker 1: We have a producer Michael Richman and Laura Neil are executive producer.

00:33:41
Speaker 2: Okay, you're the producer.

00:33:42
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:33:44
Speaker 2: Is this the biggest, uh documentary video project that you've put together thus far in your career?

00:33:51
Speaker 1: I mean video, by far is the biggest project of my career I've been living in. I mean, we have it's like and we have a ton of like amazing people helping, like Michael Richman And if he didn't green light this after I kind of texted him with the idea after he won the gold medal, this never would have happened. We have an amazing editor, Mark Linnenberry. We've been amazing director in Skyler Morton, who's been huge. We've been working side by side on this because I mean, I'm not a video guy, right, Like, I think I know how to tell stories, That's what I've done for a living for a long time now, but like to actually put it together in a video and piece together sound and make sure it moves cause we don't have a narrator, so there's no voice over here as far as one single narrator, it's all sound from interviews, and it's all original. It's not all, it's the vast majority of it is original interviews. There's some sound bites from press conferences, but it's a lot of interviews. And so Skyler has been huge and like helping organize this thing and making it make sense and piecing it all together. But you think the biggest project of my career for sure, for.

00:34:49
Speaker 2: The stuff of it you've shared with me, I think I was like most impressed with the vast array of interviews that we're done. It does there's so much.

00:34:59
Speaker 1: I feel bad. There's so much on the cutting and floor, Like there are people who gave us thirty minutes of their time and they might be in it for like thirty seconds. And part of that is because of the way it came together. We interviewed Scotty. Our final Scotty interview was December tenth, and we got a lot of the players at the Hero So we were kind of interviewing people like, hey, you know, an announcer, for example, might be a big voice in this. We might need him to kind of piece it together for us and bring the story together, and then we went to the Hero We got some great stuff there, and then Scotty was so good and our ereay with him in Dallas, We're like, man like, now we've got to fill it in with Scotty. So we're kind of in the process of tearing apart a lot of what we did and putting Scotty in there. But that's yeah, that was one of the challenges.

00:35:41
Speaker 2: But during the kind of interview process, what was it? Was there a do you have one moment anecdote that really stands out above above the rest.

00:35:54
Speaker 1: Scotty's horrible memory has always impressed me. So I first saw I was at the Houston Open one year and he shot at the course record of Memorial Park. I was like, how many other course records do you have? He's like I don't know, and he's like, probably that place I shot fifty nine. I'm like, oh, we're you shoot fifty nine. He goes, I don't know that first playoff event or whatever it's called. And then I'm like, wait, do you mean the fifty nine you shot last year at TBC Boston like playing with DJ. He's like, oh, yeah, that one. I'm like, how do you not remember that. And then so he did his Player of the Year press conference before our interview and he gets asked about the Olympics. He goes, yeah, that was a great round. I shot like sixty three or sixty four. It's like, dude, you shot sixty two like four months ago to win the Olympics and you don't remember the exact number of it. Like and but that's his gift, right of like he is very present. He talks about compartmentalizing, like he's not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future. That's his gift that everyone talks about. So that was funny and honestly just like the self deprecating, you know, I think going into it, there was some stress. I'm like, all right, how do we handle the arrest? Right? Because for a long time it was a touchy subject. He didn't want to talk about it. I mean for a while he couldn't legally talk about it. And he said in a podcast recently, I think it was also cool noosed that during the year, like when people were asking about it, like he would start shaking because you're still traumatized by it, and so like heart the.

00:37:11
Speaker 2: Rest of my crazy situation when you just think about like when you look back now, is like you're driving into a tournament thing you do every four days a week, twenty weeks a year. Yeah, and like everybody's been that'smented interests of a golf tournament knows it's chaotic and like you have to kind of like you could you if you're going somewhere, Like I think about this every I when this happened, I think about, like how we get to the Masters the media, because we have like a media parking that's on site at the Masters, and like there's a middle lane that I usually go into because the traffic backs up, and I kind of and it's like basically what Scotty did. And the next thing that happens. You're playing turret, you're number one rank player in the world, you're in contention, You're being pulled out of your car.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. Honestly, interviewing Tiger was one of the highlights. We also interviewed Tiger as part of another project and it was literally so my Michael Risman, he there was like a huge accident in Jacksonville and he couldn't make his flight. He was gonna do the Tiger interview, and so I get the text at like eight o'clock, Like, Hey, you're doing the Tiger interview. And I think I've reached the point my career. Tiger's less intimidating than I think he was, and I think that's the way he wants it. And so I wasn't nervous about like talking to Tiger. That's fine, but there's just a lot that goes in an interview with Tiger, Like you can't just rock up and ask whatever you want. There's been preparation, there's been you know, things discussed of what's gonna be asked and how much time you have, and there's just a lot of moving parts with Tiger because he's on a tight schedule. And so I was like nervous about that part. But that's where we got that SoundBite of like about comparing him to Scotti and doing that interview. He sat for a long time, said other news to do. First, he did press conference and he's remember he's had back surgery like two months ago, and he's kind of uncomfortable and he's kind of moving in the chair and I'm like, man, he's gonna not want to do this interview. And we were also asking about his two thousand season and so we start asking questions and like the second you start talking golf with him, like he just gets locked in, like there's no more squirming, there's notice comfort, like and you can see I think the enthusiasm in that clip of like he just loves talking golf and he gets deep into the Scotty stuff in the comparisons. So there was that, and then honestly, just the couple like little anecdotes I hadn't heard before that Scotty gave about the season, Like there's one about the Masters, like after the first round he's like, I am not hitting it good and kind of get into the little swing change that he and Randy made, and talk about the Olympics memorial kind of Ted goes through the details of that final hole and what went into that. And I think just those little anecdotes, I think are what makes it. Like, you know, we didn't want to do something where we're just packaging together the highlights from the year into like a single hour like that, Like sure there's some value in seeing it all in one place, but like you want to The thing when you watch the documentary is like, man, I didn't know that, and like that's a cool story, Like the two things that you're going to tell your friends after of like that was a cool story. Like people just love little antikos and stories. I think we got enough of those in there to like kind of carry it and keep it going and keep it interesting where you're not like, man, I'm just watching repackage highlights.

00:40:13
Speaker 2: You know that there is something you hit on. There is like a real art to crafting an interview, especially with what you were doing with the sky Scheffler thing. Like I always think it's like good to get somebody talking for a while before you ask the questions you really want to ask, you know, like you want to get you want to get somebody talking for ten fifteen minutes because that's when generally they open up and getting them going and saving your you know, you don't want to burn those those the questions about sky Shuffler that you really want Tiger to answer right out of the gate, right It's like you need to to warm them up. What what was was there? Was there a person that you didn't expect a ton from that you got a lot out of.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: I think JT. We just released the clip on the Players and JT played with Scotty at the Players and it's not that I didn't expect a lot from JT. I like talking to JT, but he just he gave a couple of details that I had no idea. And then he does this great impression that shows up in the in the clip of an injured Scotty, like when he asked Scotty a question like his net cart, so he did like this and like it's just pretty funny. And then I think Randy Smith, his swing coach, is like he has this great Texas drawl where like you feel like you're talking to like I don't know, Johnny Cash or someone, and so he's like talking golf swing but like it's like if you're talking golf swing and Johnny Cash sort of. And so that was sweet. I mean, he carried a lot of it. He was He was great. I think Ted, Scott, Brad Payne, they gave a lot of just a lot of like inside stuff that adds to it. I think that maybe either they remember more than Scotty or just yeah, they added depth to And it's great too, because when you're close to like the number one player in the world, you can be concerned, like man if I say this, like you know they might be mad, I might be out of the circle, I might be in trouble. And I think it's a testament to Scotty of like, I know a couple of them went to him like, Hey, we're gonna do this interview with this documentary, like is it okay if I talk about this or is anything you don't really talk about it? And he goes, I don't care. I trust you. Like that's pretty open for a number one player in the world, who like, if they say some crazy stuff on here, like they're gonna be asked about it a ton, right, So that's a testament to Scotty, I think in the way he treats the people around him and kind of just does put that trust in them where he's not like, don't say anything that you know happened in private, because people did open about that.

00:42:42
Speaker 2: Just in general, just seems like a pretty normal person.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: He really is. And I think so the way this happened is the interview itself, Like they came, Scotty came and Meredith came to It was a PD tour superstores in Plano, and the first thing they did was like this he did that we did in the back room. It was it was wild. And the first thing that happened was Scotty and Meredith did a charity thing with this charity they're very involved with in Dallas called Behind Every Doors, Behind Every Door, and like especially like they both loved it, like they're super involved with this charity. I think they knew some of the people they really loved, like being involved with the kids, and especially like Meredith you could tell like was really into it. And I think like because Meredith is really excited, and Bennett was in a great mood, like Scotty was in a great mood, like I mean, you know, your wife and kid are in great mood, like you're doing well. So then he got Player of the Year, which I mean, I'm sure he knew he was gonna Yeah, it was no surprise. And then after that we did a photo shoot with the Player of the Year trophy, and I think some of the videos and photos would come out of like Scotty and Meredith and Bennett with the trophy, Bennet's trying to eat Jack Nicholas's head, Scotty puts down the trophy, Bennet's crawling to it, and so I think like all of that happening like was it just puts I think Scotty at ease, like because it was not like it's not like we were at his house where like he can control the entire environment. Where we were at Royal Oaks Country Club, like we were at a PG two or Superstowes, like people like just the general public were in there and we were in the back and made the door close. But like some guys would probably a little closed awful defensive, like who's around you know someone gonna come in this door. But like he was super at ease, and so I think that kind of talks like the normalness there were, like he knew Meredith loved just being out in the store with the kids, like helping them shop for Christmas presents, and so it went great. Whereas some guys would be like I did not want to be on like the public right now, you know what's going on. He handled it really well.

00:44:43
Speaker 2: I love the visual of Skye Scheffler and family milling about a PGA to her superstar looking for a Christmas present.

00:44:52
Speaker 1: Well they were because the reason was like FedEx had given these kids a gift card. They're helping the kids shop for Christmas presents for family and stuff like that.

00:45:02
Speaker 4: So yeah, I'd love to see him in like the headcover section, picking out a head cover that might be the best what what's what portion of the PGA to our superstar would you most like to see a one of the top ten players in the world perducing about.

00:45:26
Speaker 1: So? I mean I could see and I think there's been stories about it, like the stories when a guy's at a tournament is putting horrible.

00:45:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he goes right, didn't really do it?

00:45:35
Speaker 1: I think Furic did it. Faric No, Fioric got out of like a bargain bin, like the trash can of like the ten dollars putters like they just I think it was actually a yes with the sea groups. That's a throwback to go to his second swing. Yeah, but so I think the putting, you'd be most likely to find them on a putting green, like.

00:45:53
Speaker 2: I think it would be the most humorous if they were in like the nick Knack section, like Locke looking at like a new practice ball tube or something.

00:46:04
Speaker 1: The stroke counter with the beads.

00:46:08
Speaker 2: All right, so people can watch this on YouTube.

00:46:13
Speaker 1: What time December twenty third, which is Monday at nine am on the PGA Tours YouTube channel. It'll also be on Golf Channel on January first and second, but that will be cut down a little bit. So the full if you got one of them streaming televisions you want to watch on YouTube, that's the full cut.

00:46:30
Speaker 2: I love this. I've watched. I've watched a good chunk of it. I really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to watching the full thing, and I have to say I would genuinely love more of this from the PGA Tour content team. So I'm really excited that they dove in with this and super excited for you to get to get to produce this. This is a really cool project.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: It was awesome. I think the thing I love about it too, is like we're just telling the story of his years, so we're not like trying to go to his house and stage scenes and try to show, like, you know, what day to day life looks like. It's really just tell us all the inside stuff about your season that doesn't come up, you know, when you're in the heat of battle and you're doing post round press conferences. And I think we got some of those really good anecdotes, And I mean, I've been living Scotty Scheffler. We've been in this since, like we did our first interviews at the Memphis at the FedEx Saint Jude, and so I'm excited for it to come out. It's been an awesome team. I mentioned all those people before, you know, Laura Neil, Michael Richman, Scoytler Morton, Mark Linnenberry all are like the thing too. Like, honestly, there are so enough behind the scene shots that, Like, the interviews are great. I love doing the interviews. I love hearing guys talk about their season, but there are cool behind the scene shots which are credit to like our camera people and our producers who are like just always be rolling. So like we got good stuff in the locker room after Scotty one. We got actually the scene on the first before the fun round with Shane Lowry is just kind of a funny little moment that we got, and so that's credit to those people. Like the interviews are cool, but some of that behind the scenes stuff is just a credit to people like making sure they always have the camera on and are shooting.

00:48:12
Speaker 2: All right, Sean, have a great holidays and thanks for coming on. And what a nice little look gift for golf nuts to watch over the break cool.

00:48:21
Speaker 1: No, I appreciate you having me. It means a lot of The support means a lot, just because it's been a labor of love and it's been a little stressful here the last couple of weeks, so definitely appreciate the sport from everyone and trying to get.

00:48:30
Speaker 2: Us out so all over on Monday, then you get to just pick back and enjoy.

00:48:36
Speaker 1: Yep.

00:48:45
Speaker 2: All right, let's kick it over to Garrett for the discussion about the Australian sad Belt. But first let's talk about our partner, Stripe. This is one of our longest time partners forever. We've used Stripe really since we start art. Trying to generate revenue as a business, we turned to Stripe and they've been one of the best partners you can ask for. When it comes down to money, you want a partner that gives you very few headaches. I can attest in all, in the seven years I think that I've been using Stripe, I've not had one headache. They are the global payments leader. Stripe serves more than two million businesses of all sizes, including global giants like Alaska Airlines, Hertz and the PGA and it powers one percent of the total global GDP. That's a big staggering number. They have your standard checkout options like where you know you want to buy something online, you go and you check out. One of the things that they do is they learn from trillions of transactions and put those revenue growing insights to work for businesses. Companies that use stripes opt checkout Suite saw a revenue uplift of eleven point nine percent on average by intelligently serving up the right payment method to the right customer, converting to their local currency, and adapting the perfect experience to any device they want to shop on. They also have Stripe Billing, which allows you to do subscriptions, a monthly subscription, usage based billing, a lot of complex billing systems they can accommodate that. More than three hundred thousand businesses use Stripe billing. We are one of those three hundred thousand plus businesses, and that's more than any other provider. So if you want to learn what Stripe could do for your business, go to stripe dot com. Thanks to Stripe, Let's get to Garrett Morrison about his Australian trip here Garrett, greetings from down Under.

00:51:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, Australia, You're.

00:51:04
Speaker 2: What's the band the down Under song men at Work? Men at Work? You're you are a man at work down there.

00:51:14
Speaker 3: It's an appropriate band name for what I've been doing. Yeah, that's kind of the most of the most cliched song to go with, but it is. It is the one that's been playing in my head admittedly.

00:51:25
Speaker 2: So you you are on a two week excursion to Melbourne. You have played almost all the great golf courses in the Melbourne area. You are also covering the sand Belt Invitational, which is a really cool golf tournament hosted by Jeff Ogilvie. That that is across four unique golf courses. We'll talk a little bit about that. How's Melbourne been just in general, you know, golf plus life in the trip to that city.

00:52:02
Speaker 3: Well, it's been incredible. I sort of expected that, but it's met and exceeded expectations. I've mainly seen the golf, you know, To be clear, I haven't had a lot of time to explore this city, at least in a way that this city would deserve. But it is a big, bustling, very interesting city and you know, you could just come here and take a trip here and not play golf and have obviously a lot to do, But the reason a golfer would come here would be to play the sand Belt golf courses, which are totally unique. Each one is a one of one golf course, and I don't think there's golf anywhere in the world that comes close to resembling what they have here. So if you want to seek out an experience that you can't have elsewhere in terms of golf, Melbury is one of the best places to come. But yeah, the city has been great. I mean from what I've seen, basically finding coffee shops that's a lot of what I've done. A couple of takeout restaurants' I've gone on little adventures for those have been great. I mean, the coffee is so good here, it's the the basic you know, standard of coffee is so much higher in Melbourne than it is anywhere in the US. I've been pretty impressed by that.

00:53:19
Speaker 2: What do you what drink? Have you been drinking? It's a big, flat white culture, right.

00:53:24
Speaker 3: This is a flat white right here that I have from two Bob Snob shout out to Bob Snob. They give you like a little cookie with it too, that they place on top of the on top of the cup when they when they give you the coffee, which is, you know, a generosity that I haven't experienced elsewhere. But yeah, I've been doing flat whites, and they also call what we call an Americano they call a long black, So I've occasionally been doing that. But it's really like a milk in coffee, a milk and espresso kind of coffee culture.

00:53:52
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, they don't do like the like the Yeah, it doesn't seem like anywhere does drip coffee really except for us.

00:54:01
Speaker 3: I feel like I was a little embarrassed because I didn't do any research on Melbourne coffee before I came here, and the first time I walked into a coffee shop, I was kind of disoriented and I was looking around. I was a dumb American and I was like, do you guys have any drip coffee? And they kind of looked at me and they're like, no, you don't have drip coffee. But yeah, it's pretty much all espresso drinks.

00:54:22
Speaker 2: That's that's that's great. That's so the coffee scene's been good. Have you had any vegamite?

00:54:28
Speaker 3: I haven't had any vegeamite. I've been told that I need to do this, even by Australians. I came in here thinking I'm not going to do this. It's like the most cliche thing to do. I'd be embarrassed, like buying it at a grocery store, you know, because I know the checkout person would look at me and be like, oh, you're doing the thing, aren't you. But I guess I got to do it right. I've got a couple more days here, All fine, I'll go to a market and I'll get some vegemite. Apparently, what I've heard is that people put way too much of it on whatever carrier they're using for the vegemie, and that's why people think it's disgusting. It's really one of those things that if you do a light coding, then that's what the intended delivery is.

00:55:10
Speaker 2: Let's get into the golf. This is probably what people are most interested in. I do want to hear a little bit about jet lag and how that was, but let's talk about golf. I'd love to hear kind of like some of your first Listen, what courses have you played so far? And then we'll go from there.

00:55:35
Speaker 3: Okay, so longish list here, but bear with me. Tuesday afternoon, the day I arrived, I played Royal Melbourne East Course. That is the basically the other course right. The West Course is the more famous one, but the East Course also very highly rated. Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday, I played Victoria Golf Club in the morning and then I drove around the courses at the National. The National is on the Mornington peninsul a little ways outside Melbourne and the sand Belt. I drove around the three courses at the National. Those are the Old Course, the Guanomata Course or Gunnnata I'm still not sure how to pronounce that, and the Muna course. That was Wednesday. Thursday, I walked port Sea Golf Club way out on the tip of the Mornington Peninsula and I played Saint Andrew's Beach, another course on the Mornington Peninsula, tom Doak Course that was Thursday. Friday was my Peninsula Kingswood Day. This is a sad Belt club but about thirty minutes outside of the city of Melbourne, so kind of like on the edge of what you would consider the sand belt. There are two courses like Kingswood thirty six. Well it wasn't I didn't play all thirty six holes. I played the North Course in the morning and walked the South Course in the afternoon. Spent the whole day with Mike Cocking, who is the one of the architects with ocm Ogilvie Cocking in Mead and they designed those courses there, so that was a great opportunity to see those courses with one of the architects. Saturday, I played the West Course at Royal Melbourne. Sunday I played Kingston Heath the short Course Furrows in the morning, Newish short Course and played the Championship Course at Kingston Heath in the afternoon. That was Sunday. Now we're into the sand Belt Invitational and yesterday, which was Monday. You guys are still experiencing Monday over in the US, but for me it's Tuesday right now.

00:57:36
Speaker 2: Walked around to start topic.

00:57:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, it's like we're.

00:57:39
Speaker 2: Going to start. We spent ten minutes on.

00:57:40
Speaker 3: That trying to figure it out. Yeah, it's a little hard. Well, when I fly back, I'm going to arrive before I left. That just kind of makes your head spind doesn't it. In any case, The venues for the sand Belt Invitational, which is a Monday through Thursday event. Here are going to be Commonwealth Golf Club, Yara Yarra Golf Club, Woodlands Golf Club and then finally Royal Melbourne West. So that's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and on each of those days I'm going to go to the tournament and walk the course. Yesterday I got to walk Commonwealth. These are all sand Belt clubs that people maybe don't know as much about, but they're really really solid. Commonwealth was recently restored Slash renovated by Brian Slanik, whose longtime associate of Tom Doak, and that course looks really good right now. You know, it's a It's an excellent, excellent golf course that maybe people in the States don't don't know that much about. So it's going to be really cool to see some of these places that are perhaps a little bit underrated before.

00:58:41
Speaker 2: I feel this way with like Scotland is like people are like, oh, you have to go play North Barrick and Merefield when you're you know, but then it's like, well, Dunbar's really good, right He talks about Dunbar and the Golden Courses one, two, and three are all wonderful golf courses. Kill Spindy's amazing. It's like and it's.

00:59:06
Speaker 3: Like if you've got yeah, you know, I mean like it's such these places that have such deep, deep rosters of golf courses. You've just got to see as many as possible.

00:59:19
Speaker 2: But it means so much of it, so much of it in these areas go to the a the golf culture that's ingrained in the in the general area, but be the conditioning that they can provide because of their natural advantages of sand.

00:59:35
Speaker 3: Yes, it's land plus culture that's what produces these great, great golf areas. There are also, you know, a couple of other factors because that you know, a lot of other places have have land plus a great golf culture, but haven't necessarily produced this this depth of great classic courses like Melbourne has. I mean, it is really stunning how much good golf is just this area. And then also outside of Melbourne you've got the Mornington Peninsula and then you've got the peninsula on the other side, which I didn't even go to, that has some good courses that you know, Lonsdale Links and Barwin Heads very well regarded. I didn't get to see those and so it's really hard to hit everything that you want to hit in one trip. I should mention that before I leave. I'm also going to walk Metropolitan Golf Club. It's probably the most famous course that I haven't mentioned so far that I haven't seen so far. Metropolitan going to walk that course, and I will also make a point to get out to Sandy Golf Links, which is kind of the local public course. So the muni of the area, which happens to be on kind of elite land and has really good design, literally directly adjacent to Royal Melbourne and is maintained by Royal Melbourne's ground staff. So imagine living in a city where that's your municipal course. Pretty awesome.

01:00:53
Speaker 2: It's a great, great deal where you get the Royal Belburne maintenance program at the at the local municipal golf course and it's effectively connected.

01:01:04
Speaker 3: To it might be the greatest golf club in the world. And this is this is where you're where the course that's the starter course for kids in the area.

01:01:11
Speaker 2: Basically, all right, let's get to some big takeaways. What are a couple of your big takeaways and we'll kind of jump from there. So far in the middle of the trip, there's gonna be a lot more time to unpack this trip. Talk about some minute things, but would have been while you're there, sitting there mid trip, would have been a couple of things that have really occupied your brain.

01:01:38
Speaker 3: First takeaway might be a little bit obvious, but it would have to be the firmness of the turf here. That is the thing that provides the basis for the greatness of all of these golf courses. How wonderfully bouncy this turf is now I'm here in the summer. I'm sure that it's not exactly like this all year round, but consistently every golf course I've played there has been that big first bounce where a shot lands and it takes a leap forward, and that just changes everything about how you play a golf course, even if you have a really good player like I've played with Lucas Michelle. I played with Lucas Michelle at Royal Melbourne East. Lucas Michelle is a US mid Am winner. This guy is a very very good golfer. Hits the ball, high, spins a lot. He's somebody who can stop a ball on a green where he wants to. Typically I played Royal Melbourne East with him, even his ball was taking a big bounce forward after it landed, even after he hit well struck shots, and so that sort of shifts your perspective back to the tee because you want to be in places where you have a little bit of runway going into the pin, and angles come into play quite a bit more so that you have this architecture, this great strategic architecture, and you're not just looking at it. You're not just thinking of it theoretically, you're thinking of it practically. This stuff actually functions because of how firm the turff is here. Now it's mostly bermuda grass in the fairways, but the clubs that have chosen to go with fescue surrounds on the greens, and typically they're bent grass greens. Royal Melbourne for instance, has fescue surrounds that puts kind of gunpowder into that first bounce. It's unbelievable how fiery the runout is when you have those fescue surrounds to the greens. Even the bermuda is pretty firm, but you know when they experiment with different types of grasses going into the greens. It makes it all the more fun, I think, and all the more you know, it's kind of intimidating going into these greens because you know you need to position your shot correctly.

01:03:53
Speaker 2: I think like one of the things that doesn't get talked about enough. I think it is starting to bubble up. But like the maintenance, especially in America, if you want to tie this back to America, the maintenance discussion with golf architecture, like they don't They're codependent on each other. And this is why a lot of the golf that you you hear people talk about, you know, when they romanticize and for the for the topic of this, like they romanticize the the golf they play in Scotland or Bandon Dunes for example in the summer, or they romanticize about Australia. In America, you get to like the whoopies, the the long island courses and what these what these golf courses do and and you know, if you wanted to go non sand based, people talk about Chicago golf and short acres and in places like this what the Sand Valley is a great example of this where people often romanticize these places and what they have emphatic you know, emphatically across the board firmness, you know, because that amplifies what the designs are. And they talk about the golf courses and the situations that they put you in, but they oftentimes don't talk about the conditions that allow that to happen. And I think the and what it does from a design standpoint in my mind is it makes designing golf a lot more simple.

01:05:41
Speaker 1: Yes.

01:05:41
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you can have sort of a run of the mill strategic design, not anything particularly inventive, but if you have firm turf, then all of a sudden it becomes fascinating.

01:05:53
Speaker 1: Right.

01:05:55
Speaker 3: You can just have sort of a basic dog leg hole with a bunker on the inside the dog leg and then the green guarded on the other side. Is a basic strategic hole strategy one oh one, strategic design one o one. But if you make the turf firm, then all of a sudden that hole becomes fascinating, even if the architecture is kind of like just right out of the textbook. And that's that's what's so great about the sand belt is that just you don't have to have an absolutely brilliant, mind blowing hole in order for it to present a wonderful strategic dilemma.

01:06:35
Speaker 2: You were talking about this on your Instagram story and I thought it was interesting and it made me think about like, you know, you you highlighted a whole commonwealth, but you just you highlighted the tilt of the green. Yes, And that's like the amazing thing. When you have firmness, just simply a green that tilts is fairly severely one direction and promote really interesting strategy. You could have no bunkers and just a tilted green and it works when you have firmness, and it's a compelling hole.

01:07:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, that hole that I highlighted too, was playing downwind on that day. And so you know, you might hear from the strategy gurus out there, the course management analytics gurus that you can be any just avoid the hazards, be anywhere on the fairway, approach the green from anywhere. And I'm sure that works for a lot of players. But you know, just come here and play one of those holes. Be on the disadvantageous side of the fairway, have one of those little shots into a green that's running away from you, guarded by a bunker that's in front of you. From that angle downwind and try to tell me that you're not going to try to play that hole differently next time. It just gets in your head when it's so firm, and when the tilts of the of the land and the strategic design are all all work together to affect your decision making. It just makes golf more interesting and puts an emphasis on really great ball striking and having a good plan for approaching a course. And by the way, second takeaway, So first takeaway would be the firmness of the turf, but the second takeaway would be just how rock solid the strategic designs of these courses are. They all make sense. I think that they're obviously. Alistair Mackenzie had a big influence on this area. It's a unique situation where a lot of these golf courses were laid out by members and greenkeepers, not necessarily professional designers. But then Alistair Mackenzie blew through town in nineteen twenty six, was here for a little while, not very long, but just had a bunch of dinners, a bunch of drinks with the local golf people, passed around copies of his book Golf Architecture, and you can see his fingerprints all over these golf courses, even if he didn't necessarily visit them or design a bunkering pattern, or you know, have any direct influence on them whatsoever. You can see what Mackenzie talks about when it comes to strategy at all of the good courses in this area, the strategic holes really work. The hazards are really guarding those parts of the hole that provide the best approaches into the green, and often strategy is influenced by tilts. Right, it's said, yes, the hazards are in the right places. You can kind of see the sense of the strategic design from the aerial photos and see the geometry of the hole and how it all works. But when you get on the ground that the big thing is how these greens tilt in certain directions. And again, given the conditions, you really do want to be approaching these greens into the slope as opposed to hitting shots that land and then run out with the slope going away from you.

01:09:55
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, because that firmness and pace of the of the terf really amplifies that.

01:10:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:10:03
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think it's an interesting I think about this with Royal Port Rush, for example, you know they had Harry Colet, you know in nineteen I think it was nineteen twenty six, and you just think about like how much more refined golf architecture was at that point. Yeah, and it created this like revolution, you know, but it was so much later than all these other golf Like for Australia, this moment in time with mackenzie was so late. I mean golf architecture was so refined. I mean you're talking about the nineteen twenties.

01:10:42
Speaker 1: You know.

01:10:42
Speaker 2: CB McDonald like really changed American golf architecture in nineteen nine or nineteen ten, you know, and it led to this progressive moment and it was you know, really this most advanced period of golf architecture comes to Australia and just completely changes the golf culture. Really.

01:11:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:11:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge transformational moment.

01:11:07
Speaker 3: Absolutely in Australia was in a great position to sort of receive this knowledge and implement it in their golf courses. Because what happened I mean I say Australia, I really mean Melbourne. Mike Clayton keeps reminding me whenever I see him on this trip, The great Mike Clayton, right, the guru of Australian golf. He keeps reminding me frequent podcast. I mean, he's the best, and he kind of arranged the field for the Sandbeldt Invitational, and I've played a couple of rounds with him while here and that's just been a life experience that I'll remember forever. Really privileged to get to talk to him. But he keeps reminding me Melbourne samd Bell golf is not Australian golf, you know, Australian golf in general has a lot of the issues that American golf has and so it's not all like it is here. But Melbourne was in a great position to receive mckenn these knowledge and implement it because all these clubs kind of started closer to the city. But as Melbourne developed and expanded in the twenties, these clubs moved outside of the city, or what at the time was outside of the city is now kind of in a suburban urban mixture, moved south of the city to the Sandy area, and they were all kind of re establishing their golf courses in the mid twenties approximately in this area, and that's when Alistair mackenzie happened to show up. He was hired by Royal Melbourne to come and design that West course, but Royal Melbourne couldn't afford to pay his full freight, and so they kind of rented him out to all these other clubs in the area and he ended up kind of Johnny appleseeding around this area. But they were all in a great position to take in what Mackenzie was saying, because they were all newly establishing golf courses in this in this setting. So it was just this great kind of confluence of historical factors, great terrain, and one of history's greatest golf architects and golf architecture theorists showing up and delivering this insight to people who were ready to take it in and do something with it. So yeah, kind of a magical place. And the way these courses have been maintained and preserved is pretty exceptional as well. They do have some work to do with vegetation management. That's I think the big next step for sand belt golf taking out some of these non indigenous trees and plants that have taken over certain areas of courses. But a lot of the courses are starting to work that direction and in the places where you see the natural heath of the Melbourne sand belt starting to take back over. So the natural heath would be kind of like low lying scrubby vegetation with a sandbase wedding bush. I can't name all the all the other plants that people.

01:14:01
Speaker 2: What does it look like for people? You know, this is a non visual platform.

01:14:06
Speaker 3: I'm trying to come up with the right words. It's not a million miles away from like the English heathland, but maybe people don't know what the English and.

01:14:12
Speaker 2: It's kind of like playable stuff. It's easy to find your ball relative.

01:14:16
Speaker 3: It's it's a little more sparse then. You know certainly that a tea tree is a kind of an invasive tree that has taken over a lot of courses that that is really thick and you can't find your ball if you if you hit it into there. But with this kind of more more ground level scrubby vegetation that really should be on this terrain, it is a bit more playable, though you're certain you certainly can get in positions where you would have an unplayable ball. But yeah, just just imagine, you know, it's not it's not that dissimilar from the Nebraska Sandhills. So think of you know, sand Hills Golf Club, the vegetation that's around the fairways there. It's different stuff that's here, but it's kind of in that same general area, and so some clubs are working toward reintroducing that because you know, a while back, decades back, when they planted trees, a lot of these clubs did plant, you know, bring in trees to plant that drove out what the natural keys should have been. But the great thing about it is that if you just clear out those trees, often the seed bed of the natural plants is still there. And so once you clear out the trees, sometimes the good stuff just revegetates just kind of volunteers because the underlying stuff is still there. So that's that's kind of the next step for Sandal Golf. I think there are some clubs that have some work to do, including Royal Melbourne. You know, the East course has has a good deal of has some tree problems and they're working to rectify those. But it's a long process because people in this area love love their trees and it's a little hard to take some out. And there are people within the clubs who who are devoted to the trees as well, so that's something that's being worked on.

01:16:10
Speaker 2: I see it seems like to be the culture of the area is very very deep with competition. Competition. I think this is like one of the things that probably sets like Ireland's this way too, is like is it more stroke play or match play?

01:16:27
Speaker 3: Stableford is a lot of what I've heard they play Stableford quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the things that's been mentioned to me, sometimes as a negative, sometimes as a positive that Melbourne golfers, especially club golfers, like competition. They like something to be at stake when they're playing, and so there are relatively few just kind of casual hit rounds.

01:16:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:16:52
Speaker 3: I've been playing casual rounds with pretty much everybody I've been playing with, and at the beginning of the round there's always a funny moment where they sort of ask me that everybody's been so hospitable. They want to find out what I want to do, and I usually just suggest, why don't we just have a casual hit And you can see that the wheels turning in their head. Oh okay, well we'll kind of do it that way. It's almost a little bit unfamiliar for them to do things that way, but often they will be playing stable for There's a lot of different kinds of club competitions. And one thing that Mike Clayton has suggested, and that I've heard from from others that I've played with, is that they wish there would be a bit more of a culture of the casual match. So still competitive, but you just put five dollars on the line and have a little match with your playing partner. And that's something that has always been done quite a bit, I guess in Scotland right where a casual round is just like, hey, let's have a match. Let's let's you know, whoever loses buys the drinks after the round. We don't really do that in America either. Match play is not part of the golf culture there. I hear some desire among the knowledgeable golfers that I've talked with here to reintroduce that a bit to Australian golf culture and to get away from the kind of constant stableford or various other kinds of stroke play competitions that they often find themselves doing.

01:18:16
Speaker 2: I think that I think just in general, I experience my thoughts as I've thought about it is that to me, golf cultures that center around stroke play, there is a deep rooted fascination with penal golf, which is where tree that love of trees generally fills in the love of trees or in the case of Ireland, thick thick rough.

01:18:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, really like pursuing the difficulty. The argument needs to be made in Melbourne and in many other places and in America.

01:18:50
Speaker 2: In America, harder.

01:18:53
Speaker 3: Is not necessarily better, right, A lot of people still associate difficulty with quality and that's just not necessary really the case. I also think that there might be some environmental misinformation out there that people just think trees good. Sometimes that's the case, other times it's not. In Melbourne specifically, preserving the natural heath that should be here would be a great priority environmentally because these are you know, around these courses, it's pretty stunning. It's really dense development around these courses, very busy streets, dense urban slash suburban development. And so these golf courses are functioning partly as nature preserves and one way they could do that really effectively is by being these little biomes that preserve the native heath.

01:19:40
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I was recently at Sand Valley and I was I drove around the back side of the property and I saw there. You know, one of the things probably a lot of people don't know is they have like a giant conservation piece of the resort where they have like preserved and basically restored this habitat there. And I looked at it and I was like, oh my god, like I just see golf everywhere, and it was like the most stunning natural looking landscape. I was like, that looks like we're the next but it's all conservation land. And I think like that's like the misconception is like when you talk about cutting down trees. There are different degrees of it. But I think a lot of the conversation should center around restoring the original landscape, restoring and I think that's something that actually ocm the architects at the Australian architects at at Medina. One of the things that's unique about that project was the idea of restoring that that aesthetic of the area, which is like these oak meadows, you know, where you have these tall oaks and and and then longer native grasses under on. It's like that if you go to a forest preserve in the area. That's what it looks like. And now Madina looks a lot more like that. You know, it still has this grand, beautiful oak trees. We aren't saying You're not saying cut down the oak trees. It's more about the entire picture of the landscape. Yeah. And I think like a lot of the most beautiful, best golf courses really fit the landscape. There's this, there's the ability to capture a sense of place with that.

01:21:31
Speaker 3: At some point we've got a shift from praising courses that just have trees to praising courses that take seriously what the indigenous landscape is and work to preserve that. And I think that shift would be really meaningful for Melbourne. And you know, uh, speaking of OCM, their work at Peninsula Kingswood, the club just outside of town considered a sand belt club. They redesigned those courses, that thirty six hole club, and one of the things they did really really well was to bring back some of the native vegetation, remove a lot of the non indigenous trees. And now Peninsula Kingswood is sort of an example of what other clubs in the area can strive for. They probably do it the best overall, right now, So the PK is really advanced.

01:22:23
Speaker 1: In that regard.

01:22:25
Speaker 2: That's that's great. Do you have a third takeaway?

01:22:29
Speaker 3: Oh geez, were to get through one quick thing before we move on to specific golf courses. I will say a lot of the land here in the classic sand belt clubs is not what you would normally consider great or perfect land, because quite a bit of it is pretty flat. You know, at Victoria Golf Club, the front nine there's not that much topographical movement. The back nine gets more dramatic. At at Kingston Heath, a lot of that course is fairly flat. Again, the back nine starts to get some more movement, but not what you'd normally consider world class golfing land. And I think that what this proves is that great design and great turf can make up for a deficit in absolutely elite land, because I'd consider Kingston Heath still probably a top twenty course in the world. But if you look at the land there, you're like, I can't I kind of can't believe that a course of this quality is on this land. Yeah, it's sandy, it's beautiful, it's great, but it doesn't have that rumple or that dramatic movement that you'd normally associate with one of the world's very greatest golf courses. And so I think that golf here really shows that a lot of the best golf courses show how much can be done with fairly subtle land. Now with Royal Melbourne West, the extra element that course does have is the more dramatic land, and that's why it kind of stands out.

01:24:00
Speaker 2: I think that in general, when I think about golf courses I most want to play regularly, they generally on the scale of land, are very subtle.

01:24:11
Speaker 3: It's the easy walk, you know. I mean that's of all the golf courses I played, the one that I would I would want to play every day, it would be Kingston Heath and that partly because you know, it's a manageable walk.

01:24:26
Speaker 2: All right, Let's get to the individual golf courses. What has so far been the course that maybe blew away your expectations the most?

01:24:35
Speaker 3: I would say Victoria Golf Club. I didn't know as much about Victoria as I knew about Kingston Heath and Royal Melbourne before I came, and it's really exceptional golf course. I would say world class. I love how this course kind of starts on the more subtle land as I mentioned before, and it gets your attention with great strategic holes and our chitecture, and you're playing the front nine and you're thinking, yeah, this is fairly flat land, but I really like this course. This is cool. You know, I could roll with this for eighteen holes. This is great. And then you get to the back nine and that starts to get into more of the rolling land. You're like, oh, yeah, this is better, you know, and so the course kind of builds to a crescendo. It really gets to its peak at the fifteenth hole. I played with Jeff Ogilvie. You know, no big deal that it was a big deal for We filmed a little bit of the round and he and I kind of talked through the fifteenth hole in details, so that would be coming up maybe in a future video or something. But short par four that kind of sits on top of a ridge and it's really pretty sad.

01:25:40
Speaker 2: I remember watching this in the Australian Open a couple of weeks ago. It was really interesting to launch.

01:25:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, short par four and it just kind of tightens its grip the closer you get to the green, so if you get aggressive with it, you can get into a lot of trouble. Big drop off behind the green, there's some scary stuff at that hole. So it builds to that right, it doesn't start there, and ebb and flow. It kind of has this really coherent narrative arc throughout the round where you start kind of subtle, but you're happy with it because the holes are so interesting and you think, Okay, this is what the course is about. But then it adds another ingredient into the mixture with great terrain on the back nine. There's just so many good golf holes out here.

01:26:23
Speaker 1: You know.

01:26:23
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say that it's on the same level as Royal Melbourne West, but for sure it's up toward the top of the heap in the sand belt for me. And I think that when you talk about Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath, Peninsula, Kingswood, that the Victoria Golf Club should be very much in that mix of top tier sand bell golf courses that you really need to play if you come here. If you come here you have five days, say to play golf courses. Victoria Golf Club really needs to be part of it, And I may be a bit biased because I've actually been staying in the clubhouse during my stay here and that's been really thicking that. Yeah, I'm looking out on on the eighteenth hole basically at Victoria Golf Club right now, So it's it's been really fun.

01:27:06
Speaker 2: What what what's been your favorite course?

01:27:10
Speaker 3: I would probably Kingston Heath.

01:27:14
Speaker 2: It blew me away. Yeah, I guess, like, what's one broad aspect of what makes it such a phenomenal place?

01:27:26
Speaker 3: Incredibly inventive strategic architecture. Before you know, I sort of talked about the standard strategic strategy one on one hole. You know, say you have a dog leg hole bunker on the inside of the dog leg bunker on the other side of the green. Kingston Heath has a couple of those holes, but it finds so many different variations of strategic golf holes through the round that you never get bored of how Kingston Heath is approaching its land. There are some holes there on relatively flat land that I've just ever seen before, Like whole concepts, architectural concepts that I was not previously familiar with, ways in which risk reward architecture can be made to feel fresh. I think that's what Kingston Heath does really really well. And like Victoria Golf Club, it does sort of build to this crescendo where the land gets more interesting as you go along. But I would say the thing that makes Kingston Heath even better than Victoria is this sheer inventiveness of the whole concepts. So love that golf course. Now, okay, favorite golf course, favorite investor, A little hard to differentiate. Played Royal Melbourne West. I think that's probably the greatest golf course in the world. I don't know. I haven't seen every candidate for the greatest golf course in the world that I should see in order to make that statement, but it's hard to imagine that any place does it better than Royal Melbourne West. It's unbelievable. I just didn't have quite as much affection for it as I did Kingston Heath because Kingston Heath just sort of it's my It's my type of golf course, right like I have a type of golf course that I really love in Kingston Heath fits that super well. But Royal Melbourne West is unbelievable, just like a master stroke of architecture that uses the land to its full potential and the land is great. So yeah, those those would be the two candidates. It will surprise nobody that I come to Melbourne. Sam Belt and Stay of Kingston Heath and Royal Melbourne West are really good. Breaking news, Yeah, breaking news. There's a reason those courses are so highly rated. They're they're really exceptional.

01:29:30
Speaker 2: All right, let's chat a little bit about the sam Belt Invitational, the event you're covering. What were your what are your early takeaways from the event? I think like just in general, it's a it's a neat event because like that one of the you know, ideas was give Australians in event to play in at the some of the best golf course in the world. I think there's like a issue in the country with like just tournament reps for particularly young amateurs. The wagger, which has come under fire on this podcast before as really I think come under fire. They're like the Wagger disincentivizes top Australians from playing in a lot of tournaments because they could go out and win the event and see their ranking go down, which is an insane situation. This is happening at a smaller level, at the state level, in America, where like you might not want to play in something because your your ranking could go down. It happens all over the world. But for Australians and young players in Australia in particular, this is a crisis because like to play events for the most part, they have to leave the country which is very far away from all these other places. So I believe in I'm my memory could serve me, but I remember this being part of the founding of the event. This is the fourth edition of the event, but is to give young Australians a great event to play against. You know, they're playing against some of the best pros in the country.

01:31:14
Speaker 3: Playing with them, you know, because they play in these different divisions, men and women, amateurs and pros. So there's a women's amateur division, there's a men's pro division, et cetera. Right, so there's basically four different competitions happening simultaneously. And yes, absolutely, part of the purpose is to give young Australians a reason to play a homegrown event. Another reason is that you can pair these up and coming amateurs, these kids like teenagers in many cases or a preteen is actually participating in the event. Really talented kid. You pair these young players with experienced pros, with golfers who have played for money and made money on golf. And so yesterday I followed around Commonwealth Golf Club. Richard Green, a shotgun Start favorite guy is a unit. By the way, he's a really good shape. There's a reason why he's showed up on the on the Champions Tour and and and dominated because he's he's like kept it together.

01:32:18
Speaker 2: You know. I don't know how much of the of the audience that is going to be excited about this, but Producer PJ his interest level in this conversation just.

01:32:27
Speaker 3: Pet exactly PJS. PJ is locked back in. We were talking about golf architecture. PJ was like doing doing some other stuff. But now now we we're bringing up Dick Green.

01:32:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:32:38
Speaker 3: Sorry for those who listened to Frida egg Pot and and don't listen as much to the Shotguns Start. I don't know if there are any people who do that, but it's Dick Green has become a definitely a celebrity of that podcast. World great guy. I mean, he was so nice. He was we were talking a little bit during the round and he was he was very fun but Uh. In any case, it's a great thing for you know, a couple of teenagers to be paired with this extremely experienced golfer who has seen everything, done everything now finding success, substantial success in his fifties on the Champions Tour. I think that that's an experience that these young players will really get a lot out of seeing just seeing how he goes about things, how he plays the course, he was so smart and finding his way around Commonwealth Golf Club yesterday green was you know, is super windy, hot, really tough conditions. And just seeing how somebody like that makes his way around a challenging golf course is a valuable experience for a young player. So that's part of it as well.

01:33:41
Speaker 2: And then even like a guy like Matthew Griffin, he's played in multiple major championships, you know, like that's a great person to get for a young kid to get to play golf with.

01:33:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, and highly capable amateurs as well, So you have some elite amateur competition, you have high level amateurs going against each other and competing for a prize. And then and then the final element of course is the golf courses, right, you know, revolutionary concept if you have a tournament on great golf courses, you're probably gonna have a great tournament. And of course, part of the intention of this tournament is to utilize the wonderful golf courses that the Melbourne sand Belt has to offer and provide a great tournament venue for both up and coming and experienced players. So that's the idea of the tournament, and it's I think it works really well. It's very fun to watch and super laid back. You just kind of show up and of course there are no gallery ropes. You're just walking these golf courses with these players. It's a it's a great viewing experience.

01:34:46
Speaker 2: I think like this event unfortunately sat on TV, but when you zoom out of this event, it it is a Replicaal Bowl event for a lot of places. I think, particularly if you were gonna you know, this is an American podcast, but if you were going to look at the structure of this event, I think this would be extraordinarily effective at a state level.

01:35:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you could do that. You could do this in California, and hell, you could do this in Monterey, right, or you could do this in San Francisco. You could do this.

01:35:24
Speaker 2: If you did Yeah. If you think about like California, like you're probably not every year going to get the Maxhoma's or the Colin Morricawa's coming back and play and donating time. But every once in a while they might come back and play.

01:35:41
Speaker 1: You know.

01:35:42
Speaker 2: One of the things that I always think about is that if he doesn't have an event, Zech Blair will play the Utah Open, right, Yes, And like that's another example of a state that could do something similar to this and have it be very effective. Of like, this is a great opportunity and it's it's giving back because I think like one of the things that kids learn the most from is when they have the opportunity to play with a very high level player. There are things that you glean from that experience where you see them the way they approach shots, the way they approach the tournament, the way they approach bad breaks that are just invaluable moments in your personal development. Just the way they carry things and the ability like it puts these kids out of their comfort zone, which is also an important thing. Like if you're teeing it up with a quote unquote national hero or one of the greatest golfers to come out of a certain town, you are, you are probably a little bit more nervous than you're accustomed to being on the tee of an event. And those are great, great moments for young golfers. And I think that's the thing that I respect them about this event and the thing that I think that should be taken away. And it is absolutely replicable between. Like, it's a great opportunity for in America for local PGA chapters and local state golf associations to collaborate on the men's and women's side of things. And I think like it's important for golfers to build their network with the with the golf golfers they can glean things from, especially young golfers.

01:37:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, yes, this would be a great thing for state golf associations, local golf associations, even the USGA to promote right because their purpose is to promote golf and young golfers development. But if you think about how the sand Belt Invitational came about, it's essentially a collaboration between the Jeff Ogilvie Foundation foundation represented by a well known great golfer, and the kind of you know, local tourism board visit Victoria, you know, and so that's the confluence of factors that allows this event to happen. And if you think about how that business model could be replicated elsewhere, Think of all the state and local tourism boards in the US that might be interested in showing off their great golf courses and proposing their area as a golf destination. I think an event like this can really function to boost up an area and represent it as a as a trip that people could take. Come play our great golf courses. Look at these wonderful golfers playing these wonderful places. It seems like it seems like something that could be done a lot of places with a lot of different sources of money. You need the money to put on this event, but I think that money is there in various ways.

01:38:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. All right, So you got a couple more days out watching that event. People could follow your Instagram. Uh, you'll be writing in the Fridagg newsletter h and then uh, yeah, we'll look forward to you getting home and hear more about this trip.

01:39:16
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to talking about it. We'll have all sorts of sam Belt content coming out. We're making some stuff while we're here. So yeah, We'll definitely be talking about the Sam Belt Invitational and the newsletter and and on, you know, basically through my Instagram stories. I kind of am talking about the courses as I go along, you know, bear with me as I figure out how to use Instagram. I am. I am kind of an old guy, but but it's been a really good device to kind of like go around these golf courses and just show, hey, this is an interesting bunker, you know, like it's they're great golf courses to do that at. So I'm about to go out to Yerra Year Golf Club where the event is today and and do some of that kind of stuff, and then Woodland's Golf Club is after that. So yeah, I'm doing that kind of stuff. We'll write in the newsletter, but then you know, stay tuned in January February of next year, will be following up with some with some writing and hopefully videos at about sam Bell Golf. I think people will will find that stuff interesting. Hopefully they will. It's these golf courses have blown me away, and I expected to like them, but those expectations have have have kind of been exceeded. So yeah, it's a great experience and you know, thank you to everybody who has allowed me to come out here, including people in Friday Golf. I'm very grateful for my colleagues that our company is in a position where I can come and do something like this. Very grateful for that. So yeah, thanks to everybody.

01:40:47
Speaker 2: All right, Garrett, enjoy the rest of your trip and safe travels home. Thanks Andy, Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed that one. Big thanks to PJ. He's been putting in double time. He's been helping help him with these year and review episodes on the Shotgun Start, and we've been very busy on this feed the last month. I hope you guys have enjoyed the content. We have one more episode coming to you next week. We will release it on Monday or Tuesday. We just want to give you a little bit more content for the holiday season. I hope everybody has a safe and happy holidays, and really thank you, thank you guys for another great year here. We'll be back next week. But if you don't tune into that one and I don't hear, I don't talk to you before the new year. Have a great New Year,