What Do We Want Out of a Championship Golf Course?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in.

00:00:06
Speaker 1: A bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida eggg Egg Bride Egg Lie.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off the golf course.

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Speaker 1: And welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about what we want out of a championship golf course. Here to discuss that with me as Andy Johnson, who is fresh off a weekend at Pebble Beach for the US Women's Open, And in fact, just went to my old favorite coffee shop in Pacific Grove Bookworks. Andy, how's the coffee.

00:00:57
Speaker 2: It's pretty good. I was disappointed. I was a little too early for the bookstore to be open. I was thinking I was going to peruse and maybe pick up a new novel, but alas the bookstore was closed. And uh, you know, I will have to make do with the books that are currently piled up in my house waiting for me to read them.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: A new novel. Huh, You're you're gonna look in the fiction section and and you know, find some imaginative exploration at Bookworks.

00:01:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was gonna I was gonna step outside my comfort zone. I was gonna move, move past the pile of golf architecture books and maybe get something that I really you know, a real page turner.

00:01:38
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. They don't have a very extensive golf architecture section at Bookworks, so novels might be the way to go when you're there. But it's a great place. It actually a good recommendation for people who are in the Moderay area. If you play Pacific Grove, go to Bookworks afterwards and get some coffee. You got to get the poor Over. I'm not sure if that's what you did, but the poor Over is way to go.

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Speaker 2: I didn't want I was already gonna be late for this pod recording, so I went with a cold brew because I knew it would be fast and and get the job done.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the cold Brews is just okay there. So I have to go back for the for the pour over.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I said. Somebody, somebody in line ordered the pour over and I just I was like, man, missed out.

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Speaker 1: It's good stuff. It takes a it takes a few minutes though. All right, so we're talking about championship golf, we're talking about bookworks in this podcast. That's that's what we've that's certainly the path that we've gone down so far. But but it sort of activated my nostalogy, you know, as people know who listened to the podcast last week. I used to live in the area, and so it's it's good to hear about my old haunts being still being there, which is great to hear they survived the pandemic. So that's that's awesome. All right. So, championship golf courses and golf course setups. That was a big topic this week at the US Women's Open. It was a big topic at the US Open at LACC. I thought it was time just to have Maybe it's just a big topic for us at every major, it's something that we tend to focus on. But I feel like that discussion has gone outside of just the Frida Egg realm and that it's now really something that's commonly discussed in all sorts of media, and so I thought it would be a good idea to have a more general kind of philosophical discussion about championship golf courses and setups and what we're looking for out of those. But first, maybe we can just start by focusing on pebble a little bit. Get some of your reflections. You were obviously out at the golf course, so you had a view of the course that TV viewers didn't have. Starting with the positives, you know, these were the best women players tackling a core that they haven't gotten to play in a major championship before. So what were some of the shots out there that you thought were really good, that like, worked really well for this tournament.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: Overarching, and I'm sorry to take a big picture off the bat. Rather I'll get into some shots that I thought worked well. But overarching, one of the things that I came away from the week so so pleased and excited about for the future was how golf architect how relevant golf architecture is for the best women in the world. I think golf architecture matters in the men's game, but it is a it is kind of been overwhelmed a little bit with with the athletes along with four hundred and sixty CC heads and you know, solid core golf ball, so just go forever. But what I saw this week at pebble. I I just think it's the way the ball comes into greens, like there's a skip and a bounce that makes angles really important. It makes the slopes. You can't bypass the slopes. They you have to go either around them. You can't just go over them and stop them. Right if you try and go over the slopes of greens like that are bad, like slopes that would hurt you, right. You know, the men just fly over them and stop it really quickly. The women's ball skips a little and it prevents them from just you know, you need to be in the right spot to hit the ball close to a tough pin. That's something that has been lost a little bit in the men's game. And I think like that's the thing that I came away from the week. The real big takeaway was just how amazing the women's game. The amazing potential for the women's game in golf architecture. I think that you could get to a point where we look at men's and women's golf if the LPGA and the other governing bodies really really focus on setting up the golf course for women and venue selection being smart with venue selection, I think you could get to a point where we look at the women's game and think about how much more beautiful and interesting it is than the men's game. And this happened with tennis. Tennis got to a point before they slowed down the ball where the men's game got very, very boring.

00:06:40
Speaker 1: It was just the nineties, especially the late nineties.

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Speaker 2: It was just a serve valley like it was overpowering, like it was like if they got the serve in, it was over right, and the women's game was the far more. That's where you had rallies. And I think that golf is kind of heading in this direction. And what's what's needed for the women's game is a really fresh approach to setting up golf courses and thinking about setting up the golf course for women, not thinking about setting up the golf course the way that they have traditionally set it up for men. Championship set up for women is different than championship set up for men. And if we start, if we start there, then all of a sudden, I think we would get we can get to a place where we really highlight and accentuate the skills of the women women's game, which are incredible. Like that, I thought Like, one of the things that I thought was amazing about the women's game is like you watched I watched a lot of players, like, you know, frankly, like a lot of players struggle. Like a lot of the big names that I watched early in the week struggled. I watched a lot of the Charlie Hull and angel Y in group yesterday, along with the NASA and Alison Corpu's group, and you know, a player in each of those groups struggled. But like, one of the things that's interesting about their struggles, unlike the men's game, isn't like they don't start missing fairways. They hit tons of faaraways. It is a different type of struggle, Like the struggle happens after they hit the fairway. Hitting faaraways is almost a prerequisite for the women's game, And that was something that was like I'd seen this faraway stats, like you see the pharaoway stats, but then you're out at pebble. You see how narrow the faraways are, how small some of the pharaways play with the slopes, and you just don't see them missing fairaways. It's insane how accurate they are. I mean, the shot, the shot into eight was crazy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're limited as to how far you can go down that fairway, obviously, and so everyone's more or less playing from not the same position, but similar positions. And they were hitting lumber into that green, and that green is effectively impossible to hit with anything but a perfect shot when you have a hybrid or a fairway wood in your hands. I mean, it's such a small target. I'm not sure that I thought that was a good hole this week, but it was certainly a compelling one to watch because you knew that that shot that they were hitting into that green was harder than anything that the men have done in a major championship in recent memory.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: I mean, it was effectively like just a brutal long part three because the team shot, everybody hit it to the same spot and from there it was just like play in. And I think like one of the things that made that hole so tough on the weekend was the crosswind. It was coming off the left, you know, and and like just you don't know, like with the crosswind, it's always hard to get your distance right just because like how how am I launching the ball? Am I? Am I going to ride the wind? Am I? Playing it kind of into the wind. Am I hitting it into the wind and letting it kill it? Am I drawing it into the wind? Am I fading it with the wind? Like all these little factors come illuminated. And that's a hole and a shot where you just have no room for error, right, Like you were saying, you have to hit a perfect shot. It has to be perfect distance and that that shot just killed them. And I think like that's a good spot where you could talk about setup too. They decided to narrow the fairway there, and I think everybody that watched TV to give you an idea. I mean they took the fairway in about I feel like about twenty yards on the right and about twenty yards on the left. So it's just this. You know, everybody knows the eighth hole pebbles, this giant cliff. Effectively with that's usually just all fair away. Instead there was like twenty it maybe a sixty yard wide fairway turned into a twenty yard wide fairway thereabouts. You know, one thing that normally golfers contend with, like is the ocean. Not one ball found the ocean off the tee this week, and I think like one of the things that would have made that hole. I thought it was really compelling because of the second shot as is. I think one of the things that would have made the whole a lot more interesting is if it was all fairway and you would have seen players playing from drastically different places, right, if it was just a big open field where you got to choose where you went. It would have been fascinating to see if women decided to try and push it up the right to shorten the whole significantly, like hey.

00:11:57
Speaker 1: Because the distance of that shot was so meaningful for them. Yes, you know, it would be the difference between a five iron and a you know, a twenty degree hybrid in some cases.

00:12:10
Speaker 2: So if they push it up the right and shorten the whole, then all of a sudden they're contending with the water. It would have been also really interesting if when the pin the days where the pins were back right, if they had the option to hit it way left and make the whole longer but set up the ability to run the ball in and on the weekend. That would have also created more of a down wind shot and less of a cross wind shot. So this is the type of stuff, you know. The women were all hitting the fair away. It doesn't you know. I think like I was when I came in and check these stats. I couldn't believe Lazette Sallis missed one fairway a day, she hit thirteen a fairway and she's thirteen fourteen fairways on average a day. Like that's I mean, we're talking about one of the hardest golf courses to hit consistently hit fairways. Faraways have been narrowed. You know, you're dealing with wind, you're dealing with severe slopes in these fairways, and the women like if you hit seventy percent of the faraways, you were near the bottom of the players that made the cut. So that, you know, like the idea of trying to test can they hit fairways, you need like fifteen yard wide faraways to do that, and then you're just creating something where everybody's playing from the same spot. So I think this is counterintuitive, but like the tests should be testing them on where in the fairway they want to get to and providing supreme advantages. And that's the thing is is Pebble has the architectural chops to do this in certain places where you can create distinct advantages by just having it be fairway.

00:13:59
Speaker 1: Part of what Pebble is is this option to play away from the cliffs or play towards the cliffs. You have that choice on so many holes at Pebble Beach, and in a lot of instances this week that choice was more or less taken away from the players in this field. So aside from eight.

00:14:19
Speaker 2: So the places are four, six, eight and.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: Eleven.

00:14:25
Speaker 2: Eleven, Yeah, eleven big time.

00:14:27
Speaker 1: You wrote about eleven. In fact, that one was particularly galling because that's supposed to be a big wide fairway where you know, especially if there's a back right pin, you play out way to the left and you have a great angle into that green. So it really does reward that precision and that know how right. If you know where the pin is, then you know where to position yourself in the fairway. And that fairway was so narrow this week. You couldn't get to that back pin because you couldn't swing out to the left. It was all rough over there, so that was a bummer. There were also fairways fairway lines brought in on sixteen. I think if you look at wait many of the holes on the course that they were narrowed. I don't know if you had one hole out there that that you were that really bothered you. Aside from from eight.

00:15:19
Speaker 2: I mean eleven bothered me just because and I wrote about it because of this, Like I you know, I watched literally one shot on the eleventh hole. It was Lyddy Co. She had a great drive and she hit this great second shot. I mean it landed, It just caught the down slope by the hole, and I just it ended up thirty feet away. And I thought to myself, she was on the left half of the fairway. I thought, like, immediately thought to myself, this is an inaccessible pin. They can't get here. And I was like, and I, you know, you're looking back at this narrowed, artificially narrowed fairway. And I looked at it. I'm like, well, if it was out left where it usually is, you could get here, you know, if you hit it up the left. And I and at this point I had not looked at any of the data, and then I I like, I just made a note, and shortly after I took hopped on the shuttle, went back in, pulled up shot link and like, sure enough, there were three people that got within seven feet or eight feet of the hole the entire day, one hundred and fifty five players on a short part four. It was a completely inaccessible pin. I'm gott like the one. One of the players that did hit it close was Carlotis and Gatta. She's one of the longest players on that She's super long, and she played it just like the men play it. Where she she hit it. She hit it the almost exactly the field average from the at and t setting up a wedge and she was able to hit it to seven feet. But most of the women were back where she They didn't have the stopping power. And I just like that was like a great example of a hole.

00:16:59
Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: I think people like this is the thing too. It's like it's in a spot where people like kind of like are like, oh, this is where pebble turns bad. Right, But that hole is pretty fascinating, right. It's a great little hole in terms of like it's one of my favorite holes out there, non ocean holes. It's like this the shorter, shortest part four. After you just played this really really hard stretch of eight nine, ten, and it's like a birdy opportunity if you get into the right position and and they just took the way, it took the ability for it to be a right position out of it, and it's just like, you know, that one to me was like probably the most nonsensical, Like you have this hard, angled, narrow green that is just like screams golf architecture and strategy, and you took it away. So I just I a lot.

00:17:52
Speaker 1: Of what this setup philosophy that we saw at Pebble Beach is based on this philosoph that you bring in fairways to test accuracy and you grow out the rough. That philosophy is based on an idea that shots exist in isolation, that you just test one shot at a time, and that the relationships between shots are not significant. But I think that what we see in the women's game is that there is a significant relationship between the shots, as in the second shot on a whole like ten is very affected by the position of your drive in the tenth fairway. If you're a little bit closer to the cliffs, you have more of a level lie, you have a better angle, you're more likely to be successful.

00:18:47
Speaker 2: You're also hitting into the slope as opposed.

00:18:50
Speaker 1: To you you're hitting into the slope.

00:18:51
Speaker 2: Having the slope run away from you. I thought I thought nine to ten were great examples of what we were talking about.

00:18:58
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I am joid those holes maybe the most, and I thought they played brilliantly this week for the most part, you know, maybe partly because they didn't really significantly bring in those fairways. They gave the players a chance to position themselves and try to give themselves an advantage on the next shot. But what's frustrating here is that we still hear so much of this logic when people are setting up courses for women's championships, that shots exist in isolation, that if you hit an inaccurate drive, the consequence must be you're in the rough, and there's an immediate consequence. But of course the concept of delayed penalty really should have applied more this week. It does apply because those second shots are so much more challenging and so much more complex for a field like this, because they're hitting fairway woods and hybrids and they're not hitting the ball way up in the air with a short iron or a wedge. For the men, yeah, shots sort of do exist in isolation at a course like Pebble, and so looking for those immediate penalties is one way to kind of suppress scoring. But we could have seen and you know, we did see more of a relationship between shots at Pebble Beach, And so that's really how I think set up people should be thinking when it comes to women's championships, what are the relationships between the drive and the approach, the second shot and the third shot because you can have that kind of stuff at the women's level. Does that make sense how I'm what I'm talking about there?

00:20:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, like just to throw some data behind it, if you look at the ninth hole, players that found the right half of the fair away there had an infinitely better opportunity to make birdie, and it shows players that found the left side of the fair away, you know, they basically had no chance. I think one or two birdies was made were made from the left half of the fairway all week. Right, if you found the left rough there, which was you know, you were dead you It was either a par or bogey or worse for players that found that that area. And it's all people could say, like, well, it's all because of the angle, right, everything's working away from you there and with the and this is why architecture so relevant with the women's game is that you just can't stop the ball. You can't bypass the bad angle with with technology and swing speed.

00:21:44
Speaker 1: With height, you can't. You know, the angles become less significant the higher the ball is in the air and the more it's spinning.

00:21:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's just like this amazing opportunity in terms of especially with the Women's Open. You look at the venues that are only to uh the at the k PMG Women's PGA. There are these great opportunities because they they're going to great golf courses. It also requires a telecast to do some of the work with with this under with creating and understanding, and it could be as simple as a whole overlay with a like here's the ideal angle for today's pin, just reminding people like this is the best spot you can be and over here is going to be pretty difficult. But if you can hit it over here, you're gonna have a big advantage. And to hit it over here, you're gonna have to skirt this bunker, or in Pebble Beach's case, you're gonna have to you're gonna have to skirt the cliffs of the ocean like that. All of a sudden makes sense. There needs to be so much like framing of this in order for people to get it. And when that that's where the beauty, where the beautiful moment will click with viewers and be like, oh, this is really interesting what I'm watching.

00:23:01
Speaker 1: I think it's DJ Paiowski who likes to say that the networks are the keepers of the takes, and that really was brought home for me during US Open week at LACC when I was out on the course watching golf shots for three days of that championship and just having a great time, finding it so interesting to see how players negotiated that course and the different situations that they got themselves in depending on where their t shots ended up or their approaches. But then I went home and watched the championship on TV on Sunday, and I started to realize why the course wasn't particularly popular because it wasn't being put across in a way that was interesting. There was nothing. And that was a big moment for me to realize that, you know, in order for interesting courses to be relevant for televised championships, we need a little bit of buy in from the networks, and that seems like it's a long way away. Yeah.

00:24:07
Speaker 2: I think like an analogy would be, you know, when you're watching baseball, you have this fixed camera on the pitcher throwing a ball to the hitter, and all kinds of stuff can be happening in the background that you can't see and you need it explained. Like a perfect example would be, Hey, the runner is going. The announcer says the runner is going, and that will heighten while the pitch is happening. That heightens your interest in the in the game, in the game because you know the runners running. Maybe it's a hit and run, maybe he's just stealing a base, but you can't see that right, It requires a call out. And I think that's the thing that the telecasts so often falls short on, is like, hey, he she is especially in the women's game, Hey she hit it over here. That's going to be a really hard angle. And especially this week, I thought like one of the great things this week that the telcast had and women's the women's game hasn't had is stats the head shot link. It made a wonderful difference, but you like, they're very easily there could have been like a graphic on the ninth hole and I don't know if they showed this, but like, if you hit it in the left half of the fairway, you're scoring averages point whatever point three to five shots higher than if you hit it on the right half of the fairway. And if you tee that up off the tee, like while they're teeing off, people would be more interested in the te shot. Right. This is just the little stuff. It's just like saying the runner is going while the pitch is happening.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, it gives stakes and context for the moment. And so if the shot turns out well from a bad position, then that gives context for how good the shot was. I thought that, like so much more could have been done with the eighteenth hole this week, Right, What was the difference between drives that ended up left of the tree in the middle of the fairway and drives that ended up right of it? Right, Yeah, it's a three shot hole for almost everybody, But it is so much easier to get in a good position if you're between the ocean and the tree. If you're to the right of the tree or behind the tree, as Charlie hole was. It takes a really really good shot to then get in position for your third shot into the green and again, relationships between shots. Everything that you do in golf affects the future outcomes, affects the future decisions that you have to make. And so yeah, the telecast needs to discuss it, and the setup needs to bring that kind of stuff out because that kind of material is so there for a field like the US Women's Open. All right, this episode of the Frida Egg Podcast is brought to you by Gooder. Gooder makes twenty five dollars active sunglasses that don't slip, don't bounce at are one hundred percent polarized. I love my Goods. I've been wearing them for a couple of years now. My favorite pair is called Just Knock It On. They're in what Gooder calls the BFG style. Basically, this is for large noggins and they they really fit my head, fit my face. They're the perfect sunglasses for me. I wear them pretty much every day, really, every every time I go outside. Recently, I took them out for some lake activities. We went stand up paddle boarding, did some kayaking, and the Gooders were just great for that purpose. There. As I said before, one hundred percent polarized. They're very light and they just kind of sit in a comfortable way steadily on your face. There's a little bit of grip to them, and you don't have to be precious about them because they're just twenty five dollars. So if you're out doing things that are active, if you're doing sports, you don't have to, you know, worry about a couple hundred dollar pair of sunglasses on your head that could potentially fly away at any moment. So it really just frees you up to go out and do what you want to do. So if you want to support the show and pick up a pair, Gooder is giving Frida egg listeners free shipping on your first order. You can go to Gooder dot com slash TFE and use code TFE to get free shipping. Gooder offers a thirty day money back guarantee and one hundred percent satisfaction. So find your pair at g oo d r dot com slash TFE and use the code TFE to get free shipping. All right back to the episode, So you know, why don't we get a little bit more general here. I want to like sort out what the basic goals of a championship golf course should be because I don't think that we've thought this through very well as a golf world, Like what we're trying to achieve when we design a championship golf course, when we renovate or restore it, when we set it up, Like, what are we actually trying to do? Because it seems like often what some of these organizations are trying to do or tournament you know that the people who put on tournaments are trying to do is manufacture a certain winning score. And if you think about that for five seconds, it's just so dumb that you can't believe that you're spending money on it. But that's often what the purpose seems to be. So why don't we put that to the side and just say that's not a worthy goal? What should the goal be of a championship golf course designed and set up? Have you thought about this at all?

00:30:02
Speaker 2: Well? I think for a rotating championship, the very first goal should be to showcase the the difference and like the uniqueness of the host site, that should be the first goal. Like an example, and this is I think a good example I do not next year is KPMG Women's PGA is at Sahali I wouldn't want Sahali to be trying to attempt to present it like Aaron Hills. It's Sahali. So it's gonna be narrow trees.

00:30:38
Speaker 1: You can't you can't do much there. Yeah, you'd have to what it is you're playing in a forest? That is that? Yeah, that's the course.

00:30:44
Speaker 2: So that's the course, Like and I don't think they'll do much doctoring to that, which is fascinating. It's like, so, so that's the golf course. Like, I think the number one goal, especially of a rotating tournament, should be centered around we're rotating this. We've pick this course for a reason, and we're going to present this course as this course, not as a US Open or a US Women's Open. Right, that's the number one objective. The number number two objective is like it kind of like falls in line with that, Like what is the overriding nature of this golf course and how do we accentuate that? So with Pebble Beach, it's like play close to the cliff, play away from the cliff, Like how do we how do we do that? How do we set that up? And like we know that like approach is going to be a big thing. So it's approaching these these small greens, these tight targets from unlevel different level lies, like we want to accentuate that. If you think about that, like then all of a sudden it makes sense we don't want to narrow any fairaways, Yeah.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: Because I certainly don't want to bring in fairways from the cliff.

00:31:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:31:55
Speaker 1: I think I think a way to phrase what Pebble Beach is is it's about not hazards. It's about the land as a hazard. And that applies to the bluffs and it applies to the topography and if you narrow the fairways you dampen both of those. Yeah.

00:32:12
Speaker 2: So I think it all starts with the golf course and looking at the golf course holistically and not looking at this is what we typically do for this tournament, right, The way the tournament setup should be should vary based off the golf course, and.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: They kind of did that at LACC. So credit where credit is due to the USGA for more or less presenting LACC as that golf course specifically and taking criticism because of it. That's what was sort of frustrating about that week, about the response from some fans and some media to the scoring is that that course was presented pretty truly, and we've got to encourage that very ability and set up and not absolutely pummel them when they dare to go to a golf course and say, this is a pretty damn good golf course. We're just going to kind of present this to the field.

00:33:12
Speaker 2: And the irony of LACC was that it was like it was one of the best driving tests that we've ever seen. Like, in order to succeed at LACC, where it was wide, you needed to hit a lot of fair ways. You needed to be accurate and long. I thought it was interesting like a lot of players that we usually see thrive at narrow, thick, rough setups did not play well there.

00:33:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't stand out as much. And that that leads me to a couple of the points that I want to make about what the goal of a championship golf course should be. You've mentioned the uniqueness of each course, and that's something that I obviously buy into, especially as an architecture geek. That is incredibly important. You know, what is the golf course, and let's try to bring out that identity a bit. But there are some imperatives I think, or some necessities of what championship golf needs to do in arranging a proper game and a proper test for the field. And I think that the way that I'd phrase two goals here would be to separate great players from slightly less great players, and to challenge all facets of a player's skill set, including the strategic and mental, but also obviously testing driving, approach play, short game putting, and not putting a huge amount of the emphasis on one particular skill area or another. I think those things are important for a championship golf course to do. Now, the problem is our understanding of how golf courses go so about separating great players from slightly less great players, and how golf courses go about challenging all facets of a player's skill set. I think that the PGA of America and the USGA and the RNA do think about those things when they're setting up golf courses. But if they get to a point where they're saying that the only way to challenge accuracy, especially off the T, is to bring in the fairways, then I think they're misunderstanding how to challenge accuracy. Because, as you said, LACC was a great test of accuracy off the t and yet it was wide. So why is that. There are a number of reasons why that's the case, having to do with the design of the course, but one simple reason is that if you were off the fairway at LACC, you weren't just in maintained rough. You were in some shit, You were in hazards, you were in really really difficult, uneven kinds of grasses. You were in natural areas, and so if you were off those wide fairways, you were in big trouble. Compare that to Pebble Beach or Tory Pines especially, is the best example of this, where it's very rough dependent, where the philosophy is that in order to challenge players accuracy, we need to grow up as much rough as possible. Well, those courses aren't as good at testing accuracy off the tee as people think, and that's because if you miss way wide at Tory Pines, for instance, then a lot of times you're not in very big trouble. Sometimes you're in that trample down grass in the gallery, but you're not going to encounter much worse than just that rough that everybody thinks is the solution to testing accuracy.

00:36:56
Speaker 2: So if you widen the fairways in those situation, then all of a sudden, you're placing a bigger emphasis on being able to hit from short grass.

00:37:06
Speaker 1: And more players are going to be in the fairway, and so reasonably accurate players are going to thrive in that situation. Not everybody is going to be missing a ton of fairways, and the guys who are missing fairways are going to be relatively in more trouble because there are actually members of the field who are going to be hitting fairways. Once you narrow fairways to a certain degree, everybody's missing them, even very accurate players, and so you're punishing sort of reasonably accurate players just as much as wildly inaccurate players. If you widen the fairways, all of a sudden, you're giving a proper reward to those reasonably accurate drivers of the golf ball. That's one way to think it through, certainly, But the problem is the scores would be lower. They just would be because more guys are going to be playing out of the fairway more of a percentage of the time. The scores are going to be lower. But it's a better test.

00:38:06
Speaker 2: The other aspect of this that you talked about, it is how things relate and how it's not an isolation shot by shot. If there are more shots played from short grass, it becomes a better test of approach also skill, because when more shots are played from short grass and less are played, you know, then all of a sudden is going there's going to be more approach shots that are tested right and from varying degrees of difficulty. It's where the driving starts to matter even more. Is like where you can get the ball into the fairway. I'm not saying you're gonna hunt an angle in the men's game, but you might find yourself on the right edge of the fairway and you might be at a very advantage position to somebody in the left. All of a sudden, that matters more when you're there. The sample size is bigger. And I think that's the other thing is how all this stuff relates. If you have a better driving test, a more sound driving test in philosophy, then you're going to have a better approach test as well.

00:39:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a good example of this is what you talked about earlier, the eleventh hole of Pebble Beach. The problem with the fact that nobody in the field could access that pin. Isn't about fairness. You're not saying I didn't like that because it was unfair. You didn't like that because nobody was able to attack. Everybody played from the same spot. Even if you hit it in the rough on that hole, you basically ended up on the same spot on that green that people in the middle of the fairway did. Because the players in the middle of the fairway had a terrible angle, they couldn't attack the pin. Everybody ended up at the back of the green. And so it wasn't a very good test of driving accuracy because it didn't really matter where you were. And it also wasn't a good test of approach play because nobody could attack the hole. Now, if you widen the fairway, then all of a sudden, you're giving an advantage to the players who find the right portion of the fairway for that pin, and you're giving an advantage to players who can actually attack that pin from the fairway. You're not just shoving everybody to the back of the green and creating a situation where it's all pars. You're creating a situation where you have some birdies mixed in, and yes, a lower scoring average, but a better test.

00:40:25
Speaker 2: I think like the one of the ideas, one of the ways you can think about this is how do we maximize the potential outcomes of a hole, because that, to me is when you get the most compelling golf. And this is what the Masters in Augusta National does really, really well, is that the holes that everybody loves at Augusta have a really wide range of outcomes. And that is the most compelling golf. When you see holes where they are achievable with great shots, they are the scores can be had. But when you when there are miscues, there are steep penalties.

00:41:09
Speaker 1: And and that's and that's fun too to watch because there's a variety. That's what we like. We don't like seeing the same shots over and over again. We like seeing a variety of different outcomes. And yeah, that's one thing that absolutely should be sought out by a championship set up. Okay, so looking forward a little bit, we've got Royal Liverpool for the Open and we've got Walton Heath for the Women's Open. You know, in light of everything we're discussing here, what are you looking for out of these courses? What are like a couple of things for each of those courses that you're excited about or or think, might you know, give us something fun to watch. In terms of championship golf.

00:41:57
Speaker 2: I think with the men's game, you kind of get to this point where you're especially with the open, praying for conditions. So firmness and wind are the things that really that are kind of like the last remaining things that provide nuance to the game. And I think like one of the things if you look at the open category, like it favors more experience. In general, the average age of winners or is a lot higher than every other major and it's because of the bounces, the patience, the potential for wind, the firm conditions that are regularly presented there. So I think for me with Royal Liverpool, that's really the thing that I am hoping for is just some weather. I think that's what really spices up an Open championship. And then letting the course be the course. I think they do a pretty good job of kind of letting courses be themselves.

00:43:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, one thing they do have the freedom to do that because this is their identity is links golf, and they get those conditions that you're talking about fairly regularly. So the RNA, it has to be said. Yes, they've made smart decisions as to how they set up golf courses and how they've shaped expectations around what the scoring at their championships is going to look like. But they're also in a pretty fortunate position because they have the settings for golf that they have. All Right, were you going to say something about Walton Heath now, I actually, aside from some history of this course in terms of like hole by hole knowing the design, I don't think I know this course very well. I watched the British Masters there a number of years ago, but I'm very excited about it. But I'm not sure that I really, like, am intimately familiar with this course or could even like tell you about what my favorite holes are there.

00:44:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I don't know a ton about it either. I you know, ideally I would have gone over and seen it, but it's just been kind of a crazy year. I mean, I think like, when you get the women at the best course in the world, I think we're gonna see, you know, I think about like how great it was to watch them at Troon, you know, the last year at Mirfield it's like this this championship, you know, is gonna be kind of off the charts in future years. The old course is gonna be maybe one of the greatest term it's ever in terms of like if you're interested in golf strategy and architecture, it's gonna be everything that the men's game isn't there where, like we're going to see, you know. I think one of the other things that takeaways from this week, I hadn't talked about this, but like, you know, what's amazing about the women's game. They don't have to get like radical with the setup. The greens don't have to be like absolute rocks in order for for the for the art architecture to show or and or test the women. Like I think that was another big takeaway. It's like you don't have to like the golf course doesn't have to be pushed to the edge of the extreme. It's kind of you know. Another thing that talks about, you know, the distance you know, and what it's done to the to the maintenance is like if if a golf course isn't on the edge, then it's not doesn't have a chance to defend itself, right, So but anyways, with Walton Heath, I think the same thing. Like it's a you know, a Heathln's course. It's it's going to have some really cool holes that you're going to be able to watch different strategies play out.

00:45:39
Speaker 1: You know.

00:45:39
Speaker 2: The disappointing thing is that we won't have the data like one of the reasons that it shows that, you know, the women's game. Getting the data for one week, it was amazing to just be able to tell what happened, like tell stories about what happened.

00:45:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and we could actually see how the golf course was interacting with the shots that the women were hitting. You know, all week I was looking at the scatterplot on the tenth hole at Pebble Beach compared to the scatterplot that's generated by the Pebble Beach pro am and seeing the differences in how that hole was being played, and that was really fun. We won't have that for every women's championship going forward, but hopefully we'll have it more something to keep an eye on. One quick thing about Walton Heath to keep an eye on, aside from its really interesting history, which I do want to dig into at some point on the podcast, is you know, The thing that was really remarkable about that British Masters that they held at Walton Heath was how much the ball was running out. I didn't necessarily expect that from an inland course, but it really does play pretty linxy out there. So I think we'll see some I mean, as long as the weather cooperates, we'll see some fiery turf. We'll see that ball really kind of try to laying along the ground and doing some interesting things. So that's that's something I'm really looking forward to from those courses. And we're we're into links season now, so yeah, yeah, there's at least a couple of weeks here of stuff that you know, I look forward to every year.

00:47:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it should be should be super fun. Obviously you get the firm turf, which is such a big part of golf.

00:47:22
Speaker 1: All right, Andy, thank you. I'll talk to you again soon and we'll be back with another episode later this week.

00:47:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, Friday, all right, sounds good.

00:47:44
Speaker 1: This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was edited by Matt Rucius. Thank you, Matt. If you'd like to support the Frida Egg, the best thing that you can do is to subscribe to Club TFE. That's our membership go check it out at the Frida Egg dot com slash membership. We have all sorts of cool stuff in there, including extensive course profiles that we're posting at the pace of about one a week. The most recent one we've done is on Plainfield Country Club. I did one a couple of weeks ago on Sheep Ranch. We have one up there on Rustic Canyon Golf Course. I'm working on one right now on bel Air Country Club. These profiles have write ups, they have photography from us, they have analyses of individual holes. So if you're an architecture nut, this I think is really good content for you. I think you'll I think you'll like it a lot. So again, it's the Friday dot com slash membership. That's where you find out all the details of what we're offering in Club TFE. Thank you for listening, and as we said earlier, we'll be back again later this week.