Shane Ryan on the Ryder Cup and the State of Golf Media

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison, and this episode is brought to you by B Dratty. Listen, if you're living in the US right now, it's probably really hot where you are. I live in the Portland area and it has been just like absolutely brutal. I'm talking about one hundred and fifteen degrees and above. And to be honest, I haven't been going outside, but if it were fifteen degrees cooler, I probably would. And I know what I'd wear. I would wear my B Dratty Sport Jimmy Polo. This is the perfect warm weather shirt. It's so light, so breathable, made of a proprietary blend of polyyester and stretch, and yet it's not overly sheer. It's just really good looking. The entire Dratty Sport line takes the fit, weight and comfort you love from signature Dratty polos and combines it with the benefits of technical fabrics. Check it out at bdratty dot com and use the code TFE twenty five for twenty five percent off. That's b Dradty dot com TFE twenty five. All right, So my guest today is Shane Ryan, who is an outstanding golf journalist. He's currently a contributor for Golf Digest, and in that capacity he covered last week's KPMG Women's PGA Championship. He's also working on a book right now about the Ryder Cup, and as part of that project, he started a narrative podcast series called The Ryder Cup Run. The first episode about the twenty fourteen Ryder Cup at Glenn Eagles, is out right now. Shane's first book, which was published six years ago, is called Slaying the Tiger, and it's one of the best accounts, probably the best account of the modern PGA tour. It's just really great. So Shane and I had a lot to talk about. We got into the Women's PGA, we got into the Ryder Cup, we got into Slaying the Tiger a little bit. Looking back on that book, let's get right to it.

00:01:52
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bumper, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in.

00:01:59
Speaker 1: A fried egg Friday egg, the dread Frida egg, Frida fridagg egg, bride egg Lie, I'm about ready.

00:02:05
Speaker 2: To run off the.

00:02:29
Speaker 1: Last week, Shane, you covered the Women's PGA Championship at Atlanta Atlanta Athletic Club, which is weirdly hard to say Atlanta Athletic Club. You've reported on a lot of PGA Tour events, but I believe this is the first time you've been on site for a women's tournament. How is it different as an experience from the from the journalist's perspective to to be covering, you know, a women's major as opposed to covering you know, a men's major, which you've done several times.

00:02:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is hard to say. I had that same problem. And it's also in John's Creek, Georgia, And so when I wrote stories for Digest, you have to write in the location at the top, you know, like John's Creek, and for some reason I kept putting Saint John's Creek and really really annoying my editor. There's like a weird mental quirk. There's something about the naming of this place that's very difficult. But yeah, as you said, I mean I never covered a women's tournament before. I don't really follow the sport, so it was very new for me. So it was a it was a huge crash course different you know, it's I think different, you would say, different from a normal tournament. The galleries were a little smaller, but that's actually, you know, not true for the past year, because the galleries have been small by force over the PGA Tour. But yeah, if you look back, there's there's like a little there's just less buzz in a way, you know, in in certain ways because it's a sport that fewer people follow, but there's like kind of an intimatimacy to it that is pretty cool. There's certain things like when you talk to the players, you're like, oh, these players are much smarter than the men. Just when they're when they're doing press conferences, you know, like they're like, oh, they're thoughtful, and they you know, they really have some thoughts, not just about golf but about life. And even the way they converse, you're kind of like, oh, this would be more like talking to like somebody I would choose as a friend, you know. And pretty much across the board I found with the women and the one exception maybe and not that I don't think they're intelligent. I think they're very intelligent. But the people who spoke like athletes were the Cortas funnily enough, and it makes sense because their dad is a tennis champion and their mom is an athlete, and they come from a family and you know, they probably have been schooled to some degree, either purposely or by observation in the media department for a very long time. But no, it was really cool. I really really enjoyed myself, and like I said, I gave myself a crash course on the sport of women's golf in general. And you know, I'm somebody who likes if there's a blowout. I kind of like it sometimes because it's somebody being so excellent, so much better than everybody else that it's kind of thrilling to watch. And so what Nelly courtA did was, especially in the last two days, I was just like, oh my goodness, Like it was almost like you were seeing somebody twenty two discover their own Even though she knows she's great and we all know she's great, she's kind of discovering that she can execute it in these really spectacular ways under extreme pressure, and you kind of wonder, like, is this going to be the moment, Like, you know, is she one day has ten majors or something like that. This is the one where she broke out and said, oh boy, like this guy's the limit. I'm sort of feeling exactly what I can do on the course. And that was pretty cool.

00:05:26
Speaker 1: Having seen it in person. What's her golf game?

00:05:28
Speaker 2: Like, Well, she just hits so far. I mean it's you know, Lyzette Sallis. I thought was pretty heroic in what she did because she was doing like hitting hybrids for second shots on par four's and you know, not coming close really to reaching on par fives and two and just basically the only person sticking with Nelly Corda and doing it on the virtue of making thirty five foot potts like it for like five straight holes. You know, these kind of feats where you're like, I had the feeling watching them Saturday and Salas of course started so hot, I think made five straight or something on the front nine, and then they all cooled off on the second nine, and you just had that feeling that this is not sustainable for her because Nelly Korda is so much more just obviously talented. It's like watching like a if it's a horse race, like a horse with a ton of gumption and heart racing against Secretariat and you just know in the home stretch Secretary is gonna run away and win by fifty leanths or whatever. And yeah, that was Nelly Korda hitting so much farther, very cool and composed, a very serious person. Really doesn't seem like she's twenty two years old. Yeah, just playing every hole fifty yards farther on than Sallas. And maybe if there was a knock on her before this, it was that she hadn't produced under pressure at the Major's and then she completely you know, blew that out of the water this time.

00:06:44
Speaker 1: Earlier on you mentioned the Qorda's kind of athletic, typical athletic mindset, living in the moment, one shot at a time, all those cliches, which you know for many top flight athletes are not just cliches that they are a kind of truth. But that was a big theme of your articles from the Women's PGA this week. You know, the sort of difficulty or tension that crops up when a journalist wants to get at some greater significances of things and the athlete being interviewed is just like, you know, I'm not thinking about that stuff. That's not important to me. I'm just in the moment you ran up against that, particularly with Nelly Corda's sister, Jessica Korda. It seems like you may have gotten on her nerves even a little bit, and you were aware of this. It was part of your article. But could you tell me about that, Yeah, yeah, no problem.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So the other sub drama of this major, the PGA Championship, is that it's the last week of qualifying for the Olympics, and the Americans had four spots as long as they kept four people in the top fifteen, and so three of them were secure. It was Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson, and Daniel Kang. But the fourth one was Jessica Korda, and she was the one who potentially could be caught by a couple different players, you know, if she had a really bad PGA or something like that. And so somebody asked her earlier in the week about it on Tuesday, and it was, you know the kind of thing, Hey, I'm just focusing this is a major, I'm not thinking about the Olympics at all, et cetera, et cetera. Like I said, there are some of the few players on the women's tour that I encountered that speak like they're on the men's tour, where it's very cut and dry, you know, stick to the talking points. And that's not to imply that it's phony at all, because, like you said, there is a lot of value for an athlete and having that one shot at a time mentality. It doesn't necessarily help to be like, oh my god, if I screw up this week, I'm not gonna make the Olympics and my brother and sister are going to be there, and you know, that doesn't help. So I got that. So anyway, Friday comes and you know, she was I think four under at the end of that round safely well, you know, very safely inside the cut line. I think in the top ten at that point. And basically there were not the projections, we didn't have the exact projections, but it made it pretty abundantly clear that by doing that she had made the Olympic team. And so that was gonna be the focus of my article. My editor suggested it to me, and it seemed like, Yeah, what a better story are you gonna have on a Friday than the fact that somebody made the Olympics. You know, it's a great but at the same time, I knew you can just tell it like by a personality like this is going to annoy her intensely, and of course, which always happens, she's having a great round that then puts it in the water on seventeen makes double bogie, and so you're kind of how good she's gonna be in a bad mood too coming in because of this double bogie that kind of took her from you know, being top five back into top ten. So anyway, I approached her and I said, you know, I did my usually disclaimer thing that you try to sort of soften the question a little bit so they don't get mad. And I was like, well, you know, look, I know you're focused on on the major and et cetera, et cetera, but you took a huge step toward Olympic qualifying today, and so you know, are you happy about that? And she's like, I don't know why you keep asking me that question. And this is the first time I've ever spoken with her, but I know, you know, Jessica kind of doesn't know any but I guess referring to all media, I looked in the transcripts and it was only the second time that week. She'd been asked the first time was the question on the Tuesday. This is the second time, and she was really really annoyed, and it kind of annoyed me that she was annoyed. You know. I'm like, look, you just made the Olympics, like you can you can spare a comment about it, you know, And so I said, uh, I'm focused on the major. I'm focused on the PGA. And so I said, yeah, but we're humans. We can you know, we can hold two thoughts in our head at the same time, like don't don't you think about it a little and that, you know. Of course it was stupid to say. She only annoyed her more, and uh yeah, I just we resolved quickly after that. She said, no, I've been trained since the time I was young to only think about one thing. That's what I'm doing. End of story, go away. So yeah, so that's the court is and I mean, yeah, I get it. I totally get it. It's just not the same experience I had talking with everybody else on the on that tour over the last weekend, but very much in line with what a PGA tour experience would be.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, either either that is the absolute truth and they are always living in the moment and they or or they think that that's what they're supposed to do, which is also a possibility. It seems like at least part of Nelly Corda's story is that she has struggled.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: With nerves, right yeah, yeah, and that was kind of like what made her like a little bit better of an interview is that she had gone through this, And I think there's a certain intelligence there for her to have come out the week before and just spoken out about it with Amy Rodgers at the Golf Channel, saying like, this is something that really made golf not fun for me. It was really taking its toll on me, these nerves I felt, you know, twenty two years old, turning it into a job rather than something I really enjoy. And I feel like just you know, she had seen Bubba Watson and Matthew Wolf talk a little bit about the same thing at the US Open, and that had inspired her a little bit, and you know, by doing that, it takes the burden off her a little bit. I think just to admit it, first of all, I think a lot of times just admitting something like that is good because you know, you're I think athletes are expected to be kind of like stoic and indifferent in the face of pressure. And when they can admit to themselves that they don't have to be and that they're not and that they do feel nerves, I think paradoxically, it almost makes it easier for them to perform under pressure later. So kind of clever of her to figure that out, you know, so early. Yeah, I mean there's been a kind of theme I guess at these last two majors that we've seen, the Men's Major, the US Open at Tory Pines and the Women's PGA, with players speaking out on mental health issues, whether they range from something that's a relatively light mental health issue like nerves during a golf tournament, to something more profound, which is what Lyzette Sallas was talking about this year, and you wrote about this, I believe, and you could probably speak to it better than I could. But you know, that seems to be something that players are picking up from each other. You know it's okay to kind of talk about this and show a little bit of show a little bit of vulnerability, I suppose, Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, Lisette Salas, she spoke about what a terrible year she had. She didn't get ultra specific, but it sounded like depression and anxiety. It was kind of the pretty heavy implication there. And yeah, you know, there's something about the time we live in now. And this may be wrong. I only know the time we live in now. Maybe mental health issues have always been around to this extent and people just suppress them more. But there's some kind of stress to to modern life. And I don't know how to explain it, but I mean, you know, I've had mental health issues, everybody I know has, all my friends. It just seems like so widespread that I do think it's becoming more common and people are realizing, especially you know, a lifelike professional golf can be incredibly isolating, which is something you might, you know, take for granted watching them, but really they're kind of on their own or with a very set group of people who they may or may not, you know, be great friends with or have that kind of intimate relationship where they can talk about it, and so you know, they probably realize that. You know, the truism of mental health is that one of the things that helps a lot is having a community and talking about it and sort of not feeling like you're living some secret, burdened life where you can't open up. And yeah, more and more people are doing that, and I think it's you know, every person that opens up makes it easier for someone else to do. As we saw it, you know, Bubba and Matthew Woolf speaking out gave Nelly Quarter the courage to speak out about what you said. You know, nerves is not you know, your your top line mental health centre. But still it's a but still, you know, it's a big thing and it can carry over and create real life anxiety and all that. So yeah, I think it's a good thing, you know, and it's it's certainly a trend of our times or something that we're all kind of going through it. I think we can. I think we can all sense the world ending is what it is. That's what I'm tiptoeing around. I think we all know this is coming to an end, and we're all and we're all just constantly scared, and so this kind of stuff happens.

00:14:29
Speaker 1: I mean, it was one hundred and sixteen degrees in the Portland area yesterday, so I can relate with this apocalyptic mindset you do, and.

00:14:37
Speaker 2: You hear that news and you're like you file it away, like, well, too bad for them. But then you file it away and it's just one more thing, isn't it. That kind of contributes this narrative of oh boy, like you know, these subtle things that you hit with every single day of oh here we go, this is we are. We're in unprecedented waters right now.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: And and you know, obviously COVID last year was a big trigger for a lot of people. And you know, I think that the internet plays its role here where the Internet is terrible at sorting out what's important from what's not important. It's all just kind of coming at you, and that can certainly contribute to anxiety. It's something that many famous people, including famous golfers, talk about like this. You know, existing online is really really difficult as a as a well known person. It's a really nuanced trend. I mean, like you, I am really heartened by Bubba Watson's and Matthew Wolf's Wolfe's honesty and vulnerability in their interactions with the press last week. But at the same time, these mental health issues that athletes have started to talk about have become bound up in a larger discussion about athletes relationship with the media, where you're saying, I've had some struggles mentally and emotionally, and that is a courageous thing to say. But then sometimes the addition, the additional observation is and interacting with you guys, the media is making it worse. And so, you know, I feel like there's a complexity here. I'm not exactly sure what to think about it, and I'm certainly not criticizing anybody for being honest in that way, but there's a there there. There's a kind of tentativeness that I feel, even as a member of the media who's not really live at tournaments or at these press conferences or worried about athlete access, there's a kind of tentativeness I feel about those moments where where athletes are kind of turning it around and saying, you guys need to do better by me too. Do you kind of know what I mean about that?

00:16:32
Speaker 2: Totally? I totally know what you mean. And yeah, obviously the Naomi Osakka stuff is front and center in that, and it's one of those interesting things where you go, it's yeah, because mental health is something like when once you come it's a very courageous thing to talk about, and you know, the last thing anybody would want to do is go, wait a second, like can mental health be used opportunistically to get out of obligations? And you know that that is like something you would you hesitate to even think, much less say aloud, because the option, which is this is really like sincerely bad for people to talk to the media is something that should be you know, of course taken seriously. And you start to wonder, is like, what are the key facets of sports? And one thing I was thinking about is if somebody came out and said, you know, I have serious anxiety and performing in front of crowds is something that's really bad for my mental health, and so I don't want to play in front of crowds anymore. Somebody in the ruling bodies would say, I'm sorry, we can't tell people not to come watch. You can. If you can't perform in crowds, you should shouldn't be playing. So you know what I mean, you might have to make a choice that you're not going to play the sport anymore. But this is something that's integral to what athletics is and we're not going to let you play in front of nobody if you're playing at the highest level. So then you kind of scale down from that and go, Okay, yeah, obviously that's an absurd situation. But what is talking to the media. Is that something that like goes under that or is it something that should be completely dismissed where Hey, if anybody says that they have mental health issues and that they are exacerbated, as you said, by speaking to the press, especially after matches or whatever, then they maybe should not have to do it. And look at a lot of people, a lot of athletes don't like talking to the press, and most of them don't it's not for mental health reasons. It's because they don't like the obligation. So if you did create this window, it is also very true to say that it's a slippery slope where a lot of people, I guarantee you would immediately say, yeah, it's bad for my mental health, I don't want to talk to the press. Whether it was true or not, you know, you would have a rush, you would have an onslaught, which is why you know in tennis, which is why the friend Show open at Wimbledon were very strict in saying, no, you have to talk to Osaka, you have to talk to the press, because they kind of, i think intuitively understood that the minute you give somebody permission not to do this, you're opening the floodgates. And it's an incredibly tough discussion. And you know, I hate what's happening to Osaka. She's such an unbelievably talented player. I hope this conflict doesn't go on. I hope she's back playing soon because she's so much fun to watch. I'm a huge tennis fan and a huge Dynamio Socca fan, and I hope she gets better. But I don't have an answer to the situation of the media. Of course I'm bias, but I think we're an important part of sports and everything else. I think I think writing the stories about these sports it makes it a richer experience. I think the media is part of why it's so popular, and you know, I think if we had if we cut that out and let the athletes and their agents be their own propagandists, I think we would have a shallower sort of experience. In general, that's my particular bias. People will disagree with me, but I hope it doesn't come to that.

00:19:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, And I think you know, like most things that are truly complex, there are no easy answers there, and you have to take two things seriously. You have to take athletes mental health very seriously, and you also have to take seriously the notion that the press is important, and you know, when covering big events like this, access is important as well. So you know, moving on to what you're going to be working on between now and September, I'm sure there are other things that you're going to do for Golf Digest, other tournaments that you're going to go to, but I would assume that a big part of your focus is going to be this new project that you're working on, which is about the Ryder Cup. And you have a podcast series and narrative podcast series that you've released one episode of and are going to do occasionally in the run up to this year's Ryder Cup at Wistling Straits, and then I believe your plan is to go to Whistling Straits and then write a book about the Ryder Cup afterwards. So tell me about that project. And did I get anything wrong in my description? Of it.

00:20:27
Speaker 2: No, you nailed it. You know. The book is the main thing that's you know, this is my second golf book. First one, of course, Slaying the Tiger, which was published in twenty fifteen, so it's been a while, but I yeah, so I signed this book deal in twenty nineteen. It was supposed to be about the twenty twenty Ryder Cup. Obviously that got delayed, which was a good thing once COVID hit. If they had held it last year, like they held a lot of tournaments, it would have been really bad for me because I wouldn't be able to talk to anybody or go to the Ryder Cup. So the fact that it's delayed makes it, like I guess a little bit easier. Yeah. So I've been working on that book for two years now and it's I've always loved the Ryder Cup. I think it's this really wonderful sporting event that makes me more excited, I think than almost any sporting event. And I love all sports. It's like this in the Olympics and March Madness for me are like my things, but I think the Ryder Cup is above the mall. And you know, as part of this book, I'm obviously covering, you know, the specific event at Whistling Straits in September, but I'm also looking at the history of the event and how it came to the point we are at now, where you know, the Americans really get beat by the Europeans more than they should in a way that's in a way that's a little baffling if you're looking at it from an outside perspective. And so I, you know, while this is all happening, while I'm traveling and covering all this stuff, I started listening to a podcast called Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. I don't know if you're familiar at all with that.

00:21:46
Speaker 1: For sure, it has a very distinctive esthetic where Dan it's no music, is just Dan Carlin like kind of relaying these intensely written narratives about history. And the episodes go on for fifty hours, and you know, it's it's fantastic. It's a truly unique product in the podcast space.

00:22:05
Speaker 2: It really is. And it's funny because if you had described that to me without me listening, I've kind of been like, this doesn't sound very good at all, just a guy talking at me about something he's written. But you know, You're right the way Dan Carlin, the way he presents it, and like his skill at narration and storytelling is so good that it was I remember like going to Hilton Head this year and listening to the World War One and just be like, oh my god, this is like really generally one of the most entertaining products I've ever encountered. And yeah, so I was like, I like podcasts a lot. I've done a million different podcasts. I never stick with him for longer than like a year, because I'm I mean, that's just my personality. But yeah, I was like, you know, the history of the Ryder Cup is so interesting to me. And I had spoken with Tony Jacqueline, you know, the guy who originally turned it around for Europe. And I'd spoken with Paul McGinley, and I'd spoken with all these people and read all these books, and I was like, you know, this is in general a very good, sweeping, forty year story broken up by very good one off stories that last for three days, you know, And so it's kind of a cool like thing in that sense. And so I kind of was like, what if I tried my own, you know, mini version of a Dan Carlon podcast about Ryder Cup history, and I just to start, I wrote about the twenty fourteen Cup in Glenn Eagles because I was there number one, and so, I, you know, a lot of the research has already done. I wrote about it in the book and everything. But the other thing being I found it kind of this It was a blowout, but I found it to be kind of a profound Ryder Cup in how it took everything we thought we knew the stereotypes of the American and European teams since you know, the early eighties, all the reasons we thought the Americans were bad and incompetent, all the reasons we thought the Europeans were brilliant, and blew them out, not only proved them all true, but blew them out to such insane degrees that even the people who would say, oh, you know, it's stupid to talk about the captains, are about the historical trajectory. It's just three days. It's about who makes the potts or whatever. Even the people who would say that at the end of this Ryder Cup are like, oh, yeah, something's really wrong, something's really wrong here and so and it changed things. Of course, it spawned the American you know, the Ryder Cup Task Force and all that stuff. But so I started there because I thought that was a cool story, and I wrote a script for it, and yeah, it's a ninety minute pot. They're not all going to be ninety minutes. This one happens to be. And I put it out there. It was just sort of curious, like I had my friends just listen to it, and they're all very very honest people, and I knew they would tell me it sucked if it did, but people seem to like it, and so that was kind of encouraging. And so I'm working on the next one. Now. I'm going back to when Tony Jacqueline took over in nineteen eighty three, and that's kind of when everything changed. It became this you know, fifty year tournament that the Americans had won. I think the record was like nineteen and two or something absurd, where the biggest surprise is that even kept being played that they did. At some point, oh this is stupid, We're not playing this anymore. And Tony Jaqueline took over and then this was the start of the European era and Sebi Biasteros and all that, and within six years had completely transformed the Ryder Cup and started something which is a period of European success that Americans haven't been able to figure out how to stop since. And so I love that. I just love the history of the Ryder Cup. I love the stories behind it. I love the intelligence and the strategy and everything that goes into it. And on both sides you've had guys like Paul Aisinger for the Americans who've been really brilliant, and so yeah, I thought, you know, I want to do a podcast about the Ryder Cup. But I'm like, right now, I don't. I've got so much work. I don't want to deal with a headache of booking guests and everything like that and having conversations and some of them are good and some of them are terrible, and you you know, you leave the hour the terrible hour long conversations going why am I doing this? So I was like, a why don't I just try a Dan Carlin and do it myself and see how boring it is and see if people like it.

00:25:34
Speaker 1: So a craft question, what differences have you found between writing for a listening audience and writing for a reading audience?

00:25:41
Speaker 2: The biggest difference and some writers say they do this. I don't. Some writers say that they speak everything out loud when they're writing to kind of hear if it sounds conversational. I don't really do that because I don't always want it to sound conversational when i'm writing, Whereas when I'm writing a podcast, I'm saying every single thing out loud and I'm doing the intonations. I'm basic. You know, I've been Nanny who's here during the day, and I know she's like listening to me, being like and you wouldn't believe what happened next or whatever, you know, whatever the case is, hearing me just practice this stuff that I'm writing and probably thinks I'm an insane person. But yeah, that's the biggest thing. And when I started writing it, I kind of wrote it like I would write a normal article and then read certain things and you're like, oh, that doesn't sound right. It just doesn't sound like if I were trying to tell you what happened. It doesn't sound compelling, or it sounds forced, or it sounds too written. Really, really, it sounds too like wordy, where you're like, if you're reading in your head, you like that sometimes for something to you know to have a little flourish, and you can have flourishes in this, but they're kind of different. So it's really just an instinctual thing. But yeah, completely based on me just reading it aloud and seeing if it sounds phony basically. Yeah.

00:26:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've kind of gone through the same process with trying to write for voiceover, where part of what I found is I had to take my writerly ego and put it to the side sometimes and phrase things inelegantly because that's how I would say them if I were just speaking them in conversation. And so it's been it's been a kind of ego check where I'm like, I'm I'm maybe proud of that sentence or proud of that exotic word that I found, but trying to put that aside and just and just say it how it would actually be said.

00:27:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've enjoyed how easy it is to tell sometimes, like when you read it out loud, it's just I almost like instantly and like that sounds completely wrong and it's going to sound weird to people listening to it, and you know, it just sounds And the funny thing is, I was about to say it sounds artificial, but This is all artificial, isn't it. I mean, you're writing something to be performed on microphone, and it is a performance in its own way, and so it's all artificial. But it has to be artificial in the right way. And that's I guess that's that's the trick and how that's kind of been fun.

00:27:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, So going back to the to the subject of the podcast series, which is the Ryder Cup. You know, when you went into your project about the PGA Tour seven years ago, Slaying the Tiger, which became Slaying the Tiger published in twenty fifteen, you had a kind of working thesis before you even went out on tour. I believe basically you were saying, you know, I think this is the year that Tiger is going to kind of recede from the being the face of golf, and this new generation of golfers is going to come up and slay the Tiger, and you know, you know, one or maybe a couple of them is going to become the new one. I was wondering if you have a kind of working thesis going into the Whistling Straits Ryder Cup, whether there's anything that you're testing out by you know, events yet to happen.

00:28:33
Speaker 2: You know. It's funny because that thesis you talk about for Slaying the Tiger exists largely to sell the book in the first place. And so my agent, you know, he got in touch with me in twenty thirteen when I was writing a few stories for Grantlin, who I wrote for at the time, about golf, and I had my first thing I ever covered was in twenty twelve at the Ryder Cup and Madina, and so my agent was like, you know, we should do a golf book. And I was like, that sounds awesome. I would love to do a golf book. And he's like, what are your ideas? Do is send me out for a year and I'll write about golf. You know, We'll do like like good Walk Spoil. I'll write about the people, I'll write about the events. It'll be great. I'm a good enough writer, I know.

00:29:07
Speaker 1: I mean there's a precedent here, John Feinstein, A Good Walk Spoiled. That is that is what that book is exactly.

00:29:12
Speaker 2: And it's like, yeah, that book is I think the second best selling sports book ever beyond his own Season on the Brink.

00:29:17
Speaker 1: And not to mention it's a sensational book, like it's a it's really good.

00:29:20
Speaker 2: In my arrogance at the time, I'm like, yeah, I can do that, and so you know, I was like, yeah, just send me out for a year and that's where I'll write a great book and be awesome. And he, you know, my agent's like, that's not how it works. You have to have a thesis, you have to have a sense of what you think is going to happen. And so together we worked on that. But I think always in my heart, I was like, you know, I'll just go write about golf, and it's kind of what I did. But you know, it was it look a certain things worked out kind of well, like Jordan Speith was coming up. Roy McElroy played extremely well that year, but then you know, other things didn't. You had Bubba Watson win the Masters, Martin Kaimer won the players in the US Open. So it wasn't all like these young guns, you know, but it did allow me to profile people like McElroy, Speaf, Jason Day, Ricky Fowler, whoever else was in that book. Do Weis on, Victor de Buis on, Yeah, just you know, Patrick Red of course, and players like that. But then there were other you know, I also profiled Bubba Watson, you know, And so anyway, this is the that's the kind of version of the story that we told, and certain details of it worked out, but I never felt like that attached to it, you know what I mean, Like the idea of like, oh, yeah, these guys are going to eclipse Tiger. It's like, well, even at the time, I was like, that's a good angle, I suppose, but I don't know if I ever really quite believed it. And then I did start to believe it after like twenty fifteen, when he really did seem like he was or even during twenty fourteen when he had some injuries and seemed to be on the decline a little bit, and then yeah, and then you know, he won the Masters, and some people were like, oh, this refuture book. Yeah, okay, whatever, My book is a series of stories. If you think it refutes stories, then you're that's fine. And also sometimes when you look at it and you go, what was like when you boil that thesis down. The thesis is that a group of players in their young twenties are going to start succeeding in a professional sport. Well, yeah, that's a no brainer, isn't it That happens. You can say that today, you could say that next year, you could say in literally every sport. That's how time and professional athletics work.

00:31:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a pretty solid bed at the beginning of the season that like Rory McElroy and Jordan Speed were gonna be pretty good players.

00:31:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this group, a group of twenty somethings is going to be the next best players in ex sport is something that has been true since time immemorial, except in tennis right now and men's tennis, where they all stink.

00:31:26
Speaker 1: Well, Tennis is an interesting comparison, and what we'll we'll get to that. Like, you know, I think there there there are some parallels between tennis and golf, you know, not as extreme where you know, Tiger and Phil are still winning every single tournament like you know, Djokovic and Nandals seem to be. But yeah, I mean there's a there's a there's a kind of reluctance right now to let go a little bit of of the past generation of stars for whatever reason in both sports.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think part of it for sure is that in all cases, in both cases, but talk about golf, you have two incredibly personalities. You know, Tiger Wood's the biggest of all, but Phil Micholson really is a larger than life character who You're not going to run across a Phil Mickelson very often, you know what I mean. He's one of the most insane, big, huge, charismatic, controversial, funny people you know, will really I think we'll really miss Phil when he's gone. And it's a gift for him to have won the PGA, to kind of stay relevant for a little bit longer, you know, a gift to who I don't know, but it's it's definitely a gift to the content gods at least, because I think who's the Phil Michelson of the younger generation personality wise? I mean, who comes even close? You know? And so if you were a writer, if you were, if you were, let's say, you could embody the golf media enterprise writ large and put it into a human brain, wouldn't you also hold on to Tigri and Phil as the longer you can have them, the longer you avoid whatever comes next, which is not going to be quite as entertaining, I think.

00:32:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they keep serving up content, you know, I mean Tyer won the twenty nineteen Masters. It's still kind of incredible, and it might be even more incredible that Phil Mickelson won the twenty twenty one PGA Championship. And now, of course a big storyline heading into Whistling Straits is that Phil Mickolson might be on that team again.

00:33:15
Speaker 2: Oh he will, don't doubt Don't doubt it for a second. There's absolutely no way they're keeping Phil off that team. There's no way he won the PGA Championship.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: It's really hard to argue against that now, even though he's not playing that well once again, like he just has returned to Earth really quickly.

00:33:29
Speaker 2: He's gonna make the team. He's gonna stink. And this this is what's gonna happen. I mean, like it's so it's so funny too, because it's so classically American in the bad luck of it, the fact that you know they could avoid it, but they're not going to you it's inevitable, Like there is a choice they could make, they could choose not they could choose to make Phil a vice captain. They're not going to. He's gonna be on the team. It's gonna play out in exact certain way. And I'm not saying they're gonna lose the Ryder Cup, because they win one out of every two Ryder Cups at home, so they may. But it's just, yeah, it's just such a perfect, perfect little up for just kind of like your palm a forehead thing going. Of course, this is working out exactly the way it's working out.

00:34:08
Speaker 1: What are some other big storylines you see heading into the twenty twenty one Ryder Cup.

00:34:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of uncertainty about Patrick Harrington as a European captain. I think nobody kind of knows exactly what kind of captain he'll be. He's definitely going to follow in the line of succession of guys like McGinley and Thomas Bjorn, and he's going to stick to a certain tactic, but he's also an individual, you know, in a interesting way. It's funny when you look back at the history of European captains, it's I'm not comparing their personalities necessarily, but you know, Patrick Harringon is a guy who won a bunch of majors and the last person we had. I think, if my memory serves that was kind of fitting that profile was Nick Faldo, who completely broke with tradition and was one of the not one of he was the worst captain Europe has ever had. And then there's a certain arrogance to Faldo that Harrington doesn't have. And I think Harrington's a really good guy, but I think there is a little bit of a question mark there of what kind of captain he's gonna be. On the American side, yeah, you've got Brooks and Bryce and of course definitely both seem like they're gonna make the team. And again another another just like American dysfunction thing waiting to happen. You'll probably have Patrick Reid on the team. And then you have and you have a personality and stricker who everybody loves and respects. But is you wonder you wonder if he's got like the fortitude to kind of do what he needs to do to sort of bring that team in line, or if anybody could you know what I mean? Like Tom Watson they thought was gonna be that guy in twenty fourteen, and he was completely rejected by the players and Phil completely like turned him on his head. So yeah, it's uh, I don't know, I really don't know what's gonna happen. I think it's gonna be very very interesting.

00:35:43
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got a good laugh out of Steve Stricker's response when he was asked at KIO do you think Phil Mickelson's gonna be on the team, And Stricker's response was essentially, oh god, I don't know, like he could. He was signed with his words like oh Jesus Christ, you know like this is and so h yeah, I mean he is, like Steve Stricker is a nice guy, and so we'll we'll see if that works, right, if that's what's needed.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe, I mean, you know, and you look at the history, like Furick was a nice guy, and you know they got killed at in Paris and Davids the third is a nice guy and had two really good captaincies. One of them he was very unlucky to lose, and then the other one they won by a ton in Minnesota. So it could work, you know. I mean, I don't think it works the other way. I don't think a disciplinarian works with this with these guys. I think they just say screw you, you know. I mean, if somebody takes that approach, it's just a matter of trying to get them to believe they're a team. And can you do that with this collection of guys? I don't, I don't know. I don't know who could do that.

00:36:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so you're somebody who who believes that captains matter, and the and the team dynamics matter, and the Writer Cup it's not just random, you know that. There certainly is an argument that these tournaments only happen once every two years. The outcomes of them are very hard to predict, simply because this is golf and it's match play. Match play is the most random form of golf, right. It's just two players playing against each other, and whoever happens to be playing better for those eighteen holes or or for those twelve holes, if that's the case, then that that person wins. And so that accounts for some of the seeming randomness of the outcomes. But it seems like the contention that you're developing in you know, in that first podcast about Glenn Eagles in twenty fourteen, is that, Yeah, captaincies do matter, The personalities and the skills of the captain do matter, and the team dynamics really have a big role in shaping the outcome of the events. So I wonder if you could make that argument and refute the argument that none of that stuff matters.

00:37:43
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I would push back on your You just said it's you know, it's unpredictable. The Ryder Cup. Let's say no, it's not. I would say, no, it's not. For the last thirty years, you can predict with one hundred percent certainty that you're able to win all of their home matches and they will win fifty percent of the of the matches on US soil, you know, And it's you know, I know it's glod to say that, but generally, I genuinely I do think, you know, I think, let's see, eighty five at the Belfry was the first time. It was when the first time the Europeans won on their own soil in the European era, and so then they won in eighty nine, they lost in ninety three, and they've won every single one since then. And so you're looking at that's like a long that's like forty year sample size almost at this point, by the time we get to Italy, it'd almost be forty years where they've lost only one Ryder Cup. And there's some you know, so there's inevitably a piece of randomness just to an event that short. But I think when you look at broader historical trends, you becomes really really difficult to say, oh, yeah, this is just an accident that europe keeps winning. You know, this is America's players are better almost every time, not every single time, but the large majority of the time. America has the higher ranked, better players. They've done well in majors, they play better under pressure all the time. We see that the Americans do, and then it comes to the Ryder Cup and everything is just reversed, and you go, what is different about that? And yeah, if it were one or two Ryder Cups, you'd go, well, just luck of the draw, just a weird week. But when you have forty years of evidence for it, and it's not just that you have the results, you have the Europeans telling you this is what we do, these are our tactics, this is how our players interact, this is what we do to make them comfortable, and this is what it means to us. And you contrast that with the Americans who are kind of like a giant shoulder shrug every time, where they're like, yeah, We're just gonna put our best players out together, you know. I as part of the Glen Eagles podcast, I went back and looked at Tom Watson's press conferences before their Ryder Cup when he after he was named captain, but before they actually played in Glen Eagles, and it's just remarkable how little strategy there is, you know. It's just like he really believes that you are just gonna put your best players together and good things will happen. Meanwhile, Paul McGinley is manipulating the European Tour tournament lineups pairings so that you have people like Graham mcdowllan, Victor Deuison playing with each other over and over again without them knowing why or knowing it's just thinking them thinking it's an accident. Jamie Donaldson and Lee Less were playing with each other all the time because he's plotting like a year a year and a half in advance, getting these guys on the same page, or learning that they don't like each other if that were the case, but if they do like each other, making them comfortable with each other, coming up with these incredibly long range plans. McGinley having like themes like oh, he's gonna invite Alec Guinness, the Manchester United manager, in to talk to the room, because why well, this is a guy who constantly had to win at home as a favorite, just like Europe was trying to do that year, one of the few years they were favorites. Everything thematically and strategically is geared toward one purpose. And it's not like the Europeans are all best friends or something. I don't think that's true. But they come in United and with a singular purpose and just playing together and that team spirit does I think matter, and of course tactics matter, and so that would be my argument that the Americans just don't just don't have that, and they don't even know that they need.

00:40:54
Speaker 1: It, right, So tell me more about that contrast between Paul McGinley and Tom Watson, because it strikes me that it it's kind of a classic contrast between the American or maybe the old American approach to the Ryder Cup and the modern European approach. You know, you mentioned that McGinley was in a very simple way, just way more prepared and way more meticulous in his in his approach to the captaincy. But is there something else about those two personalities that kind of represents some of these larger dynamics about the contrasts between the two teams.

00:41:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there was a funny thing with the with the twenty fourteen American side of things, where Ted Bishop was the PGA of America president and basically had unilateral power to pick the captain, and you know, and he did and he used it, and he kind of went outside the box, like, you know, somebody like David Tom's might have been if you were going by the normal sort of like pick a guy who's kind of at the end of his playing career but it's connected to the players, and also he's won the PGA Championship. Maybe David Toms was somebody like that, but instead he went outside the box. Picked Tom Watson, largely because I think Tom Watson on the last European the last American victory on European soil back in ninety three in a very very close Ryder Cup. So he picks him, and then they have their press conference and they're both very satisfied with themselves for having made this choice, as though it was kind of like a victory in its own right. And then Tom Watson's language very often is kind of like, I'm gonna go with my gut, I'm gonna go with my intuition, I'm gonna be a leader, and thinks that by his stature in the game, which is significant because Tom Watson obviously a great player, He's a hero in Scotland and everything like that, he thinks that by the force of his reputation and the status, the players are gonna look up to him with something like awe, and that they're going to kind of fall in line. He's gonna be this John Wayne figure that's gonna lead with grit an example, and they're gonna be his soldiers. And what he finds is that he doesn't really make an effort to sort of get close to these guys. He makes several blunders along the way, like letting Web Simpson Texas way onto the team in a way that's like like basically like by flattering him kind of it seems like. And and it turns out that he's hugely disconnected from this generation of players. He doesn't know how they operate. He severely overestimates the amount of respect they're going to have for him, or at least how quickly that respect is going to vanish the minute he starts screwing things up. He makes some very weird choices early on in the Ryder Cup, like not playing you know, read and speed in that second session after they play so well in the first one, despite saying that whoever plays the best is going to play, and he didn't do that. And then he alienates Phil Nicholson, which politically is the dumbest thing you can do, because Phil Nicholson is that older generation who is beloved by people beneath him because he's made those connections and all those young guys love him. He'sn't their idol, He's nice to them. He kind of has reared them and everything, and so when he turns against you, the whole team room is against you. And there's this crazy thing that happens on a Saturday night where Tom Watson gets this present and he insults the present that he's given and everybody's just pissed off at him because they know the Ryder Cup is basically lost. And then he starts going and insulting the European players to try to pump people up in this weird way, and Phil Nicholson takes his chair sticks in front of Tom want and faces the team and talks to them, not just addressing the team and pumping them all up one by one by telling stories about them, but physically blocking Tom Watson from the rest of his team. And so yeah, I mean, just from the Watson angle, it was just complete, complete lack of preparation, not knowing your team and losing everybody profoundly. And on the flip side, you have a guy in Paul McGinley who doesn't have much of an ego because he was never a major champion. You know, he was somebody who's always a grinder. He understands people a lot better than Tom Watson does. He's more of their generation, so he knows the player's personalities and the ones he doesn't know he gets to know. He makes sure they're all comfortable. He knows their teams, and so when he has his plan to come together, this plan is like a synthesis of all this knowledge he has, and it's designed to make everyone feel good. Has nothing to do with Paul McGinley and his own ego. And so of course, when you like, you know, when you put these two philosophies on the ground and battle them against each other. It's already over. The Ryder Cup is already over before it started because of the preparation.

00:44:57
Speaker 1: In my opinion, do you think it's too simplistic or too pop psych pop sociology. I suppose it would be to say that the Europeans are just better at collectivism than Americans are.

00:45:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think maybe I don't know. It is tempting for me to be like, yeah, they come from more socialist cultures and so they're less selfish, and that's that's it, right, But I mean, come on, the US is plenty good at team sports and other in other sports, you know what I mean. It's not you know, yeah, it's not. It's not like golf is the only one. And you know, you could argue that golf is an extreme you're taking it from an extremely conservative demographic in the US, where you do get like individualists in an individual sport, people usually who come from money and come from conservative backgrounds, and so maybe it's an exaggerated form of these stereotypes of America that we have. But guess what, in Europe, the people are exactly the same. They're people who move out of their home countries to be in tax savings. They're people who are conservative by European standards. You know, it's not like it's the you know, French Revolution on the golf course that, you know what I mean. These aren't like communists over there. These are these are rich individuals who kind of have similar philosophies. So there may be you're maybe right that there is that dynamic of just the cultural differences. I don't know. I just I think, like a lot of explanations, there's probably a million different things that go into it, and that might be one of them in some small way, But I don't think it explains it completely.

00:46:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that the European team in recent decades has just kind of marshall that's underdog status to great success in many ways. You know, no matter how good the European team is, and no matter how many previous Ryder Cups they've won, it seems like most of the time we all go into the Ryder Cup expecting the American team to win because what they have the yeah, all of the top five players in the world or whatever, and then it just, you know, it's the same thing over and over. It seems like, you know, it seems like with a twenty fourteen Ryder Cup that Paul mcginley's kind of under the radar competence was a big story there, and he couldn't have been as under the radar if he were the captain of the American team.

00:47:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're completely right, and I do think like twenty eighteen was so funny in that respect if you were talking about where pretty much everyone I knew who covered golf and was American was like, oh, we're gonna kill them. They're like you're like if you paid attention to what's happened, like that's where you're not, you know, yeah, yeah, And well and that's another great thing too, is like al so Alan Shipnuk wrote this very tongue in cheek piece being like the Ryder Cup is not going to be competitive anymore. The Americans are gonna dominate because look at all the good players we have, look at all this and like, you know, like you and I are people who create content for the web. We we knew what Alan was going through. Sometimes you just dash off to me like that and it's fun and you don't really your heart may not be behind it, but it's just a funny thing. To write and like to kind of have that philosophy, and then the Europeans took huge offense to it. Even when I talked to Paul McGinley, he was like, he was like, no, no, no, Alan says, he's joking, but he wasn't joking. Like we took that very seriously. So, yeah, to your point about the Yeah, the collective was versus the individualism. That may be it, but there is a deeper truth that Europeans just love beating Americans and that's a really big thing for them because America is the great, big country and that we really couldn't care about beating them, right, It doesn't work the other way, even like Europe could win one hundred straight Ryder Cups and we'd still be arrogant and go into everyone thinking we were going to win, and Europe would still every single one go, oh my god, just dying to beat the Americans, dying to like, you know, prick their bubble a little bit. And that's that's a funny like dynamic that I don't know if you can ever change.

00:48:30
Speaker 1: So your your last big project, as we mentioned earlier, was slaying the Tiger. You know, you've already described it. In basic terms, you spent a year out on tour and wrote a book about it essentially, but you know, the thesis being that this younger generation was on the cusp of taking over. You know. Part of the experience of that book obviously was being out there with the media, you know, being part of the traveling circus that is the PGA tour, going from stop to stop, and so I wonder, you know, having that really intense crash course in golf media in twenty fourteen, how do you think things have changed for golf media since then?

00:49:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's funny. There's like, if I go out now there and I'm not talking about a major, if I go out to you know, usual tour stop somewhere, it feels like there are fewer and fewer media they're covering it. There's always people like Doug Ferguson from the AP who's there and you know, who's always been really nice to me and I We walk around sometimes and we'll have a conversation, and even in the middle of it, I kind of feel nostalgic because I feel like I'm watching this world that I would like, to be fair, I've only been a part of for a short time or you know, an intense burst. But it's not like I'm a twenty year veteran where I've been out on tour forever. But I feel like I'm watching this world sort of diminish and watch it kind of fade away a little bit with the people who actually travel and cover the tour, and at every stop you have local people and stuff like that writing for the local paper, and they're writing they're local stories. It's you know, it's not like they're all good writers, but it's not the same as people who know are around golf constantly. And yeah, I just remember like the first majors I went to, you'd you know all these people that these these hotels were. It's just filled with media and there's all these rivalries and who likes who and who doesn't like who, and who's gonna cover and who's gonna write the best story, and it's just I don't know, it doesn't feel like it's there anymore. And you know, maybe I'm just getting old and nostalgic. But now when I go out, it's kind of like, yeah, it just feels like fading away. It just feels like it's an ecosystem in a world that is very much on the wayne.

00:50:32
Speaker 1: Do you think there's anything that's gonna fill that void? Hm?

00:50:37
Speaker 2: It's almost like asking the predict like if the world will recover, you know what I mean, because it's based on larger forces. It's not just golf, you know what I mean, It's not just golf where this is happening. Yeah, Like what will fill the void? I mean you could, yeah, you could argue like guys like you fill the void or no laying up and stuff like that. That this is the kind of the new model of media is like people who maybe aren't like covering it day to day but are bringing these new fresh angles and I love all that stuff. I do wish it could coexist also with the old way, like with people who are traveling it and doing that. And it's yeah, I don't know about filling the void. Coverage will be new and always, you know, people will always be trying to find the angle to cover it in interesting and intelligent ways with what is available to them at the time. But I don't know necessarily that we're ever going to increase the number of people covering it. Again, I think it's going to keep decreasing, you know, what I mean, And I think or you know, people who do cover it are not gonna be people who necessarily are making money from an independent body to go cover it. They're gonna be people who have to make their own money, like you guys, do you know what I mean? Like like or like yeah, like you have to have enough subscribers who love what you do to keep following it, and otherwise I think maybe numbers will diminish.

00:51:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm worried about that too, because I'm really clear that what we do at the Fried Egg is certainly not mend as a replacement for day to day PGA tour journalism, where you know, we we're doing something really different where you know, we do these podcasts, We have a newsletter which is basically we look at the reporting and try to summarize it, and we cover architecture, which is a completely separate realm. But yeah, I mean I'm concerned about it as well. You know, it's kind of like Death by a Thousand Cuts, where you know, suddenly Randall Mell isn't out there on tour anymore, and it's like, oh, well that's you know, is Doug Ferguson next? But looking back at your book, looking at the two thousand and the twenty fourteen season, it seemed like a time when you know, maybe the maybe the golf media that was in the media tent at PGA Tour events wasn't as robust as it was twenty years earlier, but there is still a lot of activity out there. At the same time, you had some of these other outlets like No Laying Up emerging, You had Twitter becoming more and more important, and you yourself were in fact, I think you were publishing pieces with Golf Digest, but you were also publishing with Grantland and with dead Spin and so it. You know, it seems like twenty fourteen was was kind of this crossing moment or this that it's like were.

00:53:16
Speaker 2: One problem goes up and the other one's coming down type deal. Yeah, yeah, no, I think you're right. I think you know, And it's having people out there covering on a daily basis enriches everything else and enriches the other kind of continued where it's whether it's me writing a book or you guys, you know, covering it from from wherever. It's like that, and you know it could work both ways. You know what I mean, like me writing a book and you guys doing you do could also enrich the daily coverage by bringing more eyes nears to the sport. That's in a perfect world now, Like a lot of things in American life, these there is a kind of an artificial division where when I first came out, there were some old school veteran reporters who didn't really like me. But it wasn't because they knew me or anything. It was just because they didn't like, you know, the fact that I represented to them the younger generation, I guess, which is kind funny because I'm writing a book, which is the oldest kind of like I'm not out there doing a podcast, like I'm literally writing a book. But but you know, eventually, I think a lot of them eventually became really good friends of mine because they, you know, because of just seeing me often. But they may never see you, you know what I mean, and they may consider you a quiet enemy, whereas like if they knew you, they would know what kind of person you were and what you're all about, or if they took the time to listen to the content that you guys produce or whatever. And the bigger enemy is not each other. The bigger enemy is the economic influences that are making it harder and harder to cover this stuff, and that you know, it is always a shame in that way because they're going back, like you said, they're going back in their memories long before I was ever on there the heyday. You know, I talked to Ron Syrac this past week, who's the you know, an older AP guy who knew Dan Jenkins and who knew things. You know, this is like back when you know, it was thriving in ways that were unbelievable to us to even hear about now. And so yeah, it's like to them, to them, we kind of maybe maybe I shouldn't sassify myself. I'm almost forty years old. I'm not young anymore. But you know that younger generation and digital kind of generation represents something that they feel maybe ushering them out or making their life more difficult. If they are then crusty and angry in response, then it produces a defensive reaction in people like us to react against them, and it creates this divide where you go, you look step back and looking, that's too bad because everybody's kind of on the same page that we would all love more coverage out there, and we would all love that this was big and thriving like it used to be.

00:55:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it might be good for some greater power that we're all pitted against each other, you know.

00:55:28
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, But that that's the American story, isn't it. That's the American story.

00:55:32
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like my worry I suppose is that eventually a lot of the reporting from the ground at PGA Tour events is going to be player pr driven or PGA Tour driven.

00:55:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what I would say is that, you know, I find it highly unlikely that you're going to have more outlets send people to travel on the PGA Tour, even ten times a week. Like think about what that would be. Who would be that's not out there now? Who would in five years or two years or whatever. You can see, Oh, yeah, they're going to be sending a correspondent to the tour for like for like ten events or twenty events.

00:56:09
Speaker 1: Maybe the athletic but probably not.

00:56:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like if the athletic hasn't done it by now, I mean by the way the athletic has, the athletic has tried, the athletic has tried golf coverage and it didn't work for them. So I mean that just gives you a sense like they, like you're saying, they have a lot of in theory, at least a lot of money and clout behind them and legitimacy, and if it doesn't work for them, like who would it work for? You? Know?

00:56:29
Speaker 1: Right? So looking back on your book, it's been six six years since Slaying the Tiger has published, been seven years since you were out on tour for that twenty fourteen season. What are the parts of the book that people bring up with you the most often? You know, so sometimes this happens. I'm sure it's frustrating with books where where it gets reduced down to a couple of different aspects of it. What for you have been those aspects that people bring up the most often.

00:56:54
Speaker 2: Kind of funny story that that sort of gets at this point is that you know, I wrote about we talked earlier about websims and then the texting onto the ryder Cup thing, and so I had written about that in the book and it was published and then all of a sudden, I hear I think it was a text of friends said, oh, Webb Simpson had some negative comments on the book, and I thought, yeah, well of course, and so I went online and found out what it was, and it was the Bubba Watson excerpt that had gone up on espidation, and I go, I go, wait, only reads the rest of the book.

00:57:22
Speaker 1: The Bubba Watson thing is one of the early chapters. It's the early chapters. But yeah, I was like, oh, well, he's he's in for a ride. But the funny thing is, I'm sure he never read the book and he's only going to read the online excerpt. So to answer your question, the stuff that went online is the stuff that is by far most commonly brought up, and also contributes to the perception that this is a book about controversy because the things that people remember, maybe they remember the Bubba thing or that gets brought up now and again. If he's you know, when he comes into the news, Patrick read that was you know that, I think overwhelmingly that's the biggest thing. And it just so happened that Patrick Reid went on to win the Masters and have a ton of success, and every time he did that, the story of him and his family came up again, Like the Masters was so crazy where it was like a bigger story that his family was watching somewhere else in Augusta then, you know, than him actually winning on the court, you know, in the town where he went to college and all that stuff. And so when that happens, like all of a sudden, you know, you get every radio station in America from like Lafayette, Louisiana to like Albuquerque, like, hey, you want to come on and talk about you know, because everybody finds the excerpt and everybody reads this background.

00:58:24
Speaker 2: Because I was the first one to publish a really thorough look at what this guy had been through with his parents and with college and all that. All that stuff, So that's a big one that gets brought up a lot. Adjason Day profile went up on Grantlin, which I'm still pretty proud of, but that was more positive, so now you know, you know you're about that. Ever, it's the negative stuff that kind of is sticky. People really are complimentary about the Ryder Cup chapter. I think, by and large that's people's favorite part of the book. The people who have read the whole book, I think they really like the Ryder Cup chapter, which hopefully that's a good sign for the fact that I'm writing a whole book about the Ryder Cup. Yeah, maybe just a you pro The Rory stuff kind of gets brought in up sometimes. Paul Kimmage, who's a writer at an Irish news paper and a really good interviewer, brought it up in a few of the passages, brought it up in an interview with Rory, which is kind of cool to see, especially because I've never gotten an interview with Rory and I'm sure I never will. So it was cool to have him interact with the book in that way by another reporter foreseeing to listen to.

00:59:22
Speaker 1: Maybe ask some of the questions that you wanted to.

00:59:24
Speaker 2: Ask, Yeah, yeah, and be like, listen to this paragraph from Sheene Ryan's book. When I saw that, I was like, oh yeah, hell yeah. So yeah, maybe maybe those things are the most But of course always like the controversy sticks the most, and it just so happens that Patrick Reid is going on to be very successful and so that kind of comes up a lot. Yeah.

00:59:38
Speaker 1: So, you know the way the book is structured, obviously, in one sense it's a chronological account of a year on tour, but really the best way to understand it is as a series of deep dive player profiles. You know some of the most in depth profiles that had been published about these players to that point or since then. And so it's a really interesting resource to go back when when a player from your book does something new in the golf world today, to go back and refer to what you wrote about that player back in twenty fourteen and see maybe how that player has changed or how the narrative around him has changed. And so I wonder you know, of these profiles from your book, well, which one do you think would be the most different if you were to write it today?

01:00:22
Speaker 2: That's interesting, how would it be very Do you know a lot of things that you know? Okay, well, here here's one obvious example, which is that when I covered Rory McElroy that year he was on top of the world. He won, you know, the two majors in WGC successively. Then he was stud in the Ryder Cup, and you go, this guy is unbelievable. I mean, like, what a swagger, what a champion, what a pressure performer. To have told me that he wouldn't have won any major since then is astounding. I mean, that's you know that watching him transform, And it's a good lesson for me because it furthers it cements the lesson that Tiger Woods is an anomaly in terms of human beings and in terms of professional golfers, especially fact that he could sustain that success for so long and so reliably win and be so dominant. That's not normal. And we've seen that over and over again with Speath. You know, speak the year after the twenty fifteen seasons when he had his greatest season when he won his two majors. Then of course he won the British later, but he's somebody too who in that twenty fifteen year, you go, this guy's on top of the world, he falls off. Brooks Koepka I kind of think we're seeing that now. He's still is successful, but he's not the indomitable winner that we thought he was a couple of years ago. Now we've seen him have some struggles on Sundays and Majors when he's in contention, and it just it just proves the point that you know this, your time on the top is probably not going to be for very long in this sport, even though it seems like sometimes with some players it will be for a long time. And Tiger Tiger is the exception to that, but yes, so maybe Rory. You know, Speith, you and I were talking, I think before we started recording about a big thing I noticed was a kind of petulant streak in him that year, and that's something that you know, maybe you can see it once in a while still, and I think you can once in a while, but maybe that's been a raised a little bit and how successful he's been and then yeah, other than that, you know, it's it's just funny how certain people have gone on, like, you know, your two most controversial young figures are Victor Buisson and Patrick Reed, and Reid's gone on to have this brilliant career and Victor Blissan hasn't been heard from since. So there's little things like that that are kind of interesting.

01:02:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Rory stuff is so interesting to read now because you know, in twenty fourteen, your portrait of him as a thoughtful, affable guy off the course and somebody who is able to turn on the kind of cold blooded killer affect on the course was very correct. You know, That's the Rory that we saw at the twenty fourteen PGA Championship when he was like I'm gonna win this. I'm gonna win it now. I'm gonna play through the group ahead of me, and you know, we're finishing this. That has gone away somehow. I don't know if it's gone away completely. It's certainly the affability and the intelligence and the thoughtfulness off the course has become maybe his primary kind of public image. But on the course he doesn't seem to have access to whatever he had access to in twenty fourteen, and I just kind of wonder where it went sometime, or you know, how to make sense of that.

01:03:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, if you asked Paul mc gillley, he would say that, you know, Rory maybe had a choice of the two things, and like the affability and the personality, Like Paul mc gilly thinks he shouldn't be like talking to the media as honestly as he does, which was interesting to hear from Paul mcgillley because he's somebody who's very honest with the media, but he's also somebody who never was at Rory's level and he knows this, so, you know, so he can afford to be and he's got a great personality. In his opinion, Rory should be kind of business like with the media. Give them what they want and continue to try to cement his legacy as one of the greatest players of all time and that, you know, but maybe Rory's too human for that. Maybe maybe the stress of what he did in twenty fourteen is difficult to, you know, to bear for very long without cracking just a little. And you know, we're not saying he had this huge psychological crack and disappeared from the face of the earth. He's continued to be very good, but you're right that he'd lost that thing that made him a force of nature that we saw in twenty fourteen. And it is funny to think about, yeah, just screw you guys. I'm gonna finish this hole, like I don't care if Phil Micholson gets mad at me or whatever. We're gonna finish this hole. I'm gonna win this tournament like that whole thing. And that just the way he played that final round, and the way he played at the British the way he demolished Sergio Garcia and Akron at the WGC in between those two events, that person doesn't quite exist anymore. And you know, it's a little different with speed. I would say Speth was always neurotic, and so that's part of his charm and part of how he wins. So I can see Speed getting there easier than I can see Rory, because I think Rory has to discover something that he's lost that's not easy to get back, where Speed just has to be himself and find his game in a way. I don't know if that's true, but that's kind of how it feels.

01:04:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there has to be some accounting for the psychological toll that it takes to be a quote unquote cold blooded killer. One of the things that made Rory seem so tantalizing in twenty fourteen or just in the early twenty tens in general, was that that thing that he had on the golf course us of what Tiger had on the golf course. But of course there's a good argument to make that Tiger's cold blooded assassin persona was a big part of his downfall and that eventually it cracked and really hurt him. And it's perfectly possible that Rory even made a conscious choice and said that's not the path I'm going down.

01:05:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like, what kind of pressure release do you want? What kind of crack do you want the gradual kind that you release a little bit, or do you want to win eighteen majors and build it all up and then have a really spectacular meltdown?

01:05:32
Speaker 1: You know?

01:05:32
Speaker 2: And yes, and maybe you're right. Maybe Rory he's always been smart. Maybe subconsciously he took his foot off the pedal a little bit in ways that preserved his sanity in some way. And certainly if that's the case, it would probably be subconscious. He wouldn't even explain it that way. But if that is the case, you would say, you know, tip your cap.

01:05:48
Speaker 1: Well, Shane, it's been really fun talking to you. Can you tell everyone what to expect from you and what they where they can find your podcast and your other work.

01:05:57
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, I'm on Golf Digest every week. You know, just google Shane Ryan. Go I just Shane Ryan here on Twitter you can find. That's where I'd link my podcast, which is called The Ryder Cup Run, which is now on you know, iTunes and Spotify and all the all the big ones. Of course, I'm working on the book, as we've talked about. And another thing is I run a sports trivia league with six hundred people now called Apocalypse Sports trivia that a few people in the golf world have joined, and that people seem to link. So yeah, get in touch if you want to join that and otherwise just slip from my writing.

01:06:29
Speaker 1: All right, thanks a lot, thank you. If you've been enjoying the Frida Egg Podcast, please consider leaving a rating and review in iTunes or wherever you're listening to us. I just wanted to let you know also that sign ups are currently open for a couple of Fridagg events. We've got the Big Money at Davenport Country Club on July twenty sixth, and we've got the Regatta at White Bear Yacht Club on September thirteenth. Those are two really great, unique courses, so go to proshop dot the Friday dot com if you're interested, click on events and sign up. Hope to see you out there, and thanks for listening.