Viral Stretching Routines and Hilarious Host-Family Stories with Brad Marek

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Smathers and Branson. What a great US Open, what a great final round we had with John Ron winning on his first Father's Day. You might not have gotten exactly what you wanted for Father's Day, So why don't you treat yourself to some of the best golf gear and accessories available Smathers and Branson. You know, one of the big recommendations I have is if you want to you know, get away from you know, the standard headcover, maybe you got a stock headcover driver, maybe you got too many logos of clubs on your bag you want to get rid of one of those. Smathers makes awesome leather headcovers with the needle point. Obviously. I actually gave one to my brother in law. He's a huge grateful dead fan, so I gave him a dancing bear one first birthday recently and he loved it. He was like, holy cow, this is really cool. It is an awesome gift. It's an awesome gift to give yourself outside of just you know, the belts that are they're made famous for. The accessories are really cool, including the performance hat. They have obviously all your you know, professional teams MLB, NFL, NHL, and then they also have universities, so you can get something that's you know, personal touch for anyone with Smathers and Branson. And if you use the code fried egg no spaces all capitalized at smathersand Branson dot com that's fried egg no Spaces, you will get fifteen percent off your entire order plus free shipping. You know, that's belts. They've got new loafers, accessories, everything on the site. Fifteen percent off plus free shipping. So use the code frieda egg and thank you for the support from Smathers and Branson. Today's episode is with you know, he became a social media sensation. He was the uh he made the cut at the PGA as a club pro. Brad Merrick. Brad and I've known each other for a long time. We played one round of junior golf together and then we were you know, we played a lot of golf about six years together, and it was really cool to see him resurface on the golf scene after numerous years of mini tour. Whip was really neat. So we talk about that PGA. We will have a recap podcast on the US Open with Shane Bacon early next week. It'll probably be out on Monday of next week, so you'll have that. But to keep everything going, keep the things moving, we got Brad today. He's got some incredible stories. This is really a riot of a podcast record and everybody can find Brad on social media Brad Merrick Golf and his website there.

00:02:50
Speaker 2: So, without further ado, here is Brad Merrick.

00:02:53
Speaker 1: I miss a.

00:02:53
Speaker 3: Green for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a riot egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg bright egg bright egg, Frida egg.

00:03:04
Speaker 2: Bright egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hum Well. We call him Tappi Peeter.

00:03:32
Speaker 3: That is the nicest human on the planet. Like that, dude, I've never seen someone as happy in my life as he was when I made the cut on Friday, Like genuinely happy.

00:03:44
Speaker 2: It seemed like he was like really rooting for you, like.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: As much as some of the people that were wearing bucket hats outside the ropes. It was insane, Yeah, you.

00:03:55
Speaker 2: Know, was it?

00:03:56
Speaker 1: Weird being really the only two guys wearing bucket hats and being in the same group.

00:04:01
Speaker 2: Do you think the PGA was trying to get cheeky with you?

00:04:05
Speaker 3: I it has to be right. I mean, there's one hundred and fifty six guys. I mean, I'm not a math wizard, but that just seems pretty odd that the two of us end up paired together and both wearing a buck hat. I feel like, yes, I feel like that was their plan. But who knows.

00:04:24
Speaker 1: You had played with Peter and the Nebraska stayed open years ago too, right.

00:04:31
Speaker 3: Yes, it was either twenty ten or twenty eleven, and you know I had been at Mini Tours for three four years then some success but nothing, nothing crazy. And I think I was up by a couple of shots going into the final round and played with Peter then and he's kind of the same super nice guy that he is today, just super chatty when he's on the golf course, and he went around I think bogie free and Chatty was sixty five or sixty six and ended up beating me by a few he won I finished. That wasn't his like springboard the success. But a few years later is when he you know, mondayed into corn Ferry, finished top twenty five, and I think won the next week, and he's basically been out on tour since then.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: Having played many tours for a long time, you know, and obviously you saw a ton of guys. You played probably with tons of guys that made it, other guys that didn't. Was that when you played with Peter, did you notice anything that he did that made you think he would get there? Or was he you know, do you think he was a guy that just you know, kept developing, got got hot at the right time. Like you know, I think the whole MANI tour gay gay there there. Things have to break right for you in certain aspects, and there's a lot of guys with great talent. But like I'm just curious from your perspective as somebody that plays at a high level.

00:05:54
Speaker 3: He I will say this. I mean, if you're in the many tours for years, you come across a lot of guys with pretty poor attitudes. And one thing that stood out about Peter could take anything and spend it positively. It's really unbelievable, And I think that comes in really handy in any level of golf, let alone the grind of Mini tour and professional golf. So with that attitude, I'm not totally shocked that he made it. Obviously a really good player. He told me a funny story. I came up to him on the putting green just to introduce myself because I know, no basically no one there other than just a couple of those guys that were part of the team. It's twenty. So I introduced, you know, went up to him, you know, just kind of told him the story in Brasco. He's like, oh, yeah, I remember you obviously, and he was just like, you have no idea how close I was to quitting. He's like, if I don't win that, I mean I was out of cash. I think he won maybe twelve thousand dollars for that Nebraska Open, and he said that kept him going. That put him through Q School and that fall. He didn't make it through Q school that year, but that kept him going the following year, and obviously, you know he had success shortly thereafter.

00:07:07
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the thing, right. It's like, I feel like so many guys are always looking for the next life raft when you're a mini tour player, like it's just like you know, you're you're hoping something ghosts right a lot of times, and it makes me it is in your experience playing it, like you know, are there things that you look back on it being really you know you miss a lot and are there what what would you say you miss the most? And then what would you say is the thing that you don't miss the most?

00:07:43
Speaker 3: The thing I missed the most is I mean, it's kind of what you hear from a lot of athletes. It's just I had a really good group of friends and guys that I would travel around with, Like when schedules would come out for stay open to mini tour things over the summer, we all kind of to do a you know, group FaceTime or a phone call in February or March and try to plot out what events we're going to go to together. Because if you're able to do it with the group, you got people to play practice rounds with, people to go to dinner with. It's kind of fun and you have kind of a group of guys that you're all rooting for that week. You become really close friends. You to share an airbnbs or hotels. So I miss that aspect and you're You're just around the game a lot. You know, you're spending You're in these small towns. You really don't have anything else to do other than golf. So you're doing chipping contest, putting contests, gambling on the putting green, practice rounds, you know, trying to help each other out with you know, with your swing. So that's that aspect of it, and just always trying to get better. Is that part of it for me was really fun. I don't miss the bad hotels and you know, random towns and the Southeast and the Dakota's like that, you know, eating the same takeout for three out of the five nights here in the town and that that gets a little old.

00:09:05
Speaker 1: Well, was the worst hotel that you ever said? It was the worst logic story?

00:09:11
Speaker 3: Oh man, there's a few. I mean at North Carolina. I think there was a hotel where the bathroom had a chain for the light in the bathroom. That was that was one of the lowest to the lowers. I think it was like thirty five dollars a night. And it wasn't because I found a good deal on Priceline. That was had a car breakdown on me in the middle of Georgia once and I was literally stranded. I had to take everything out, take everything that was in there and like just put it in a box ship at home, fly home, and then buy a new car when I got there.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: So are you determent? Did WD two Banksually?

00:09:57
Speaker 3: I was on my way home, so but it was There's always always some stuff like that. There was. There was one time I was on We were at host housing at an event and I'm allergic to cats, and I had no idea if these people had cats prior to this, and I flew in there, so I don't have my own car, so I can't like go get my own hotel. So I was on an air mattress, right, and these cats like to nestle in with you, and so that happened the first night to the second night. I put the air mattress on top of the pool table, and at four in the morning, the cat tries to jump up on top of the air mattress, which is already on top of the pool table, and I like it like wakes me up, and I like panic, and I hit the cat off and it falls to the floor and I felt really bad. Well, in that process, the cat had punctured the air mattress. So I wake up like three hours later and I'm in this air deflated air mattress where the ends are high. You know, my midsection is low. And that was that was probably the lowest applog.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: I mean, I gotta say, there's a bullshit host family, Like, if you're gonna host a player, you gotta have more than an air mattress.

00:11:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was, I was. I was not super happy. Uh. That took a little longer to get loosened up that next day, to say the least.

00:11:37
Speaker 1: I worked for the startup, and they were they were super frugal. They would send me places for months, and they were super frugal with the airbnbs. So you know, there'd be three of us in a two better places. We'd have to rotate who sucked on the air mattress. So I just sleep on this air mattress for a month once and uh the place was like of like a it was like two double whites put together in Santa Monica, Like, I mean it was like and uh, and you know get cold there at night and what because there's no insulation on the floor, the cold air would hit the bottom.

00:12:15
Speaker 2: Of the air mattress.

00:12:16
Speaker 3: It was just all I've been there. People that haven't slept out an air matter just don't understand. If you don't have good carpet underneath that air mattress is forty degrees by the.

00:12:27
Speaker 2: Middle of the night and it's going down, You're going down to the ground.

00:12:33
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, there's no way to live.

00:12:36
Speaker 1: So you played just phenomenal golf, in particular the first round, you know, but rather than your phenomenal golf, you took the Twitter world by storm for your your your stretching routine. I needed the world needs to know where it came from. How do you start doing it?

00:13:00
Speaker 3: So I'm going to preface all of this with I feel like if I was Peter Melnotty's size, this would not have gotten nearly the attention that it did. But unfortunately I'm six six with a bucket hat and had to be right in the middle.

00:13:17
Speaker 2: Of the range with all this is going on six and ninety pounds.

00:13:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, so soaking wet, soaking wet. So it came from I did a few years ago. I did some work with Jonathan Moore who involved with Oklahoma State. Meant golf is their like kind of strength and fitness guru. So it's a functional kind of dynamic warm up that I'm sure I'm not doing. It's been a few years since I've worked with him, so I'm sure I'm not doing it one hundred percent correct, But it's it's my hips and hamstrings get really tight, so just basically trying to loosen that up. And again, if I'm usually playing in front of either zero people or a handful of people, and either you know Northern California PGA Section events, or you got a few many two events that I play, so I've certainly never seen it on film. We caught by surprise when I finished that Friday and all of that stuff that happened during the round.

00:14:18
Speaker 1: Did you get more texts about your good play or the stretching routine?

00:14:23
Speaker 3: It's, thankfully, probably just by a little bit the good play, but it's definitely close.

00:14:30
Speaker 1: I have to say, we're gonna we'll probably post something about this, but I have to say, the stretching routine is incredible. After I saw it, I tried it out, and I I loved it. You know, I said at the time that I was incorporate it in my daily routine. But of course, you know, a couple of weeks later, it's fallen completely by the wayside because I can't seem to stretch. It's the easiest thing to do, is stretching every day, but I can't seem to get myself.

00:15:03
Speaker 3: To do it. You know, I do still have people. It seemed like every other day someone will randomly tagged me in some Instagram story of them warming up, you know, doing the routine at some random golf course. See.

00:15:18
Speaker 2: I think it's legitimately great.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: I used to do this thing with my like it looked I looked ridiculous on the range. But you know, I had a few buddies playing midam golf in Chicago that all swore by this, and it was like, I do this like leg kick thing, and it really worked well.

00:15:35
Speaker 2: But that thing works even better.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: I I think you're onto something, and I don't think that, you know, people should ridicule you for it, because it really does work.

00:15:47
Speaker 3: Some of the some of the comments were pretty funny. I didn't I didn't go too deep into them because I knew they'd get really bad, but a few of them were pretty funny.

00:15:56
Speaker 1: With the with the PGA, you you were there super early. I think you it seems like you made it part scouting for the golf course part, you know, little vacation with the wife and friends and family.

00:16:10
Speaker 2: Right.

00:16:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I knew nice thing about I mean, I run my own kind of golf academy instruction of business out here, so I was able to able to kind of set my own schedule within reason. So got out there I think eight days before wife came with me for the first For that first those first three days, she was working from the ocean course clubhouse, so there was nobody in there, so she basically had the whole clubhouse to herself other than some people setting up, So she was just working from that Ryder cup room which overlooks the ocean. So yeah, it wasn't too bad for her. And then she would if she didn't have a meeting, she'd come carry the bag. We were doing kind of nighthole the day. Did eighteen holes the first day I was there and realized just the size and scope of that property, and then that was the only time I played eighteen holes prior to the first round. We would just go around and play nine holes each day. Had all the pins from twenty twelve, so would lay those down and just hit a bunch of short game shots to them, a lot of lag putts, just kind of plan out where you could and couldn't beat a certain hole.

00:17:22
Speaker 1: With you playing golf for a long time, obviously, I think like the way players practice has changed so much with the you know, nine hole routines versus eighteen. Do you remember when that like kind of shift happened, because I feel like, you know, people our age it was always eighteen eighteen eighteen, or have you been doing the nine hole thing for a long time.

00:17:45
Speaker 3: I honestly, it depends on the course and just how much I know it. Like if I go to an event where I've played it five times, I feel like the need to play it, especially if the conditions are similar, like in terms of the firmness, speed of the core, things like that isn't necessarily that high. But if it's a place that I haven't seen, then I'm going to try to see it a bunch and I'd still probably play eighteen. But I feel like that shift has been it's been relatively recent. I feel like it's really been like kind of last I mean, Tiger Tiger was doing and I feel like even in his prime, but I feel like the mass. I think the masses haven't really started doing it until maybe five six years ago where it was man, it seemed like ninety percent of the guys thought they were only playing nine exactly.

00:18:31
Speaker 2: That's the thing is like, I feel like in the last I would agree with you.

00:18:35
Speaker 1: It's like, in the last five years, it used to be like everybody play eighteen every day. You know, that was the conventional wisdom, and the conventional wism's completely shifted.

00:18:44
Speaker 2: What were you what were you like?

00:18:45
Speaker 1: You know, what were the things that you worked on outside of the short game shots and around the greens that when you saw the ocean course, you said, hey, these are things that I need to sharpen up before we get to Thursday next Thursday.

00:19:01
Speaker 3: So I yeah, exactly. So I knew going in. I knew going in that you know, most most courses that I play in, like Mini Tour stayed open section events nuts. I mean, we're gonna play it around seven thousand, so it's if you hit a decent drive, you're probably not going to have other than a couple of holes more than eight or nine iron into a part four. But Q would being so long. I knew that those longer clubs were going to be huge, So put a new two three and four iron into the bag that paying built for me the ping crossovers which throw them up in the air a little bit easier, and spent a lot of time on that because I knew that. And there's I think there were four part fours over five hundred yards or three over five hundred yards, so I knew that that was going to be key. So that was the time, you know, spent a lot of time in the range working on those shots, trying to work in both directions, either against the wind or ride the wind.

00:19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about the wind, and obviously you know it was really blowing early in the in the week. Did you feel like you needed it was a situation where you had to work the ball both ways at different at different times, or was it you know, could you get away with just playing one shape?

00:20:20
Speaker 3: For me myself, it was really hard because I don't hit it super high, so there were times that my only chance to stop it quick enough was I had to work it against the wind. For some of the guys, for some of the higher hitters, I don't think it was as important, but you know, and I'm not super long either, so I've got a little bit longer club coming in and a little lower trajectory. So for me, you know, I was basically trying to work a lot of stuff off of the center of the greens and use a couple of the slopes there to try to funnel the ball closer to the hole. It's just such a you know, from from a strategy perspective. I mean, it's a course where you knew you're aiming, a lot of centers agree and you're gonna have a lot of lag putts for me, and you know, so it's focused a lot of time on lag putts as well and trying to get that. And what people don't understand out there is the wind played such a big role in the putting, both in the direction of it and then the speed. And if you had uphill into the wind, those puts were so slow, I mean you had to hammer those things to get them there. And then if you were downwind down hill very very fast.

00:21:31
Speaker 2: That's the uh.

00:21:32
Speaker 1: You know, when when wind gets tossed in, my putting is just ghost complete shit. I can't handle another variable. It's it's just a it's a it's an utter disaster. And like that The other thing is like the wind makes it so hard to hit it close that it just forces you into it. And I think that's a generally, and I don't know if you agree. Something I kind of thought more and more about is like how much better lag putting gets at every level of golf, Like every level you go up, the lag putting is maybe the easiest thing to see that's distinctly better.

00:22:10
Speaker 3: Yes, I would not disagree with that at all, because I think the you know, the lowest hanging fruit and you know, most of the juniors that I teach the first time I see them is is speed control. And it's not you know what, I think, It's not just the speed control from forty fifty feet. It's when you have this twelve foot or that breaks two feet. I mean, if you don't hit that, if you don't hit that within reason of what you expect for speed, the putt is no chance for going in. So it's you know, it's the speed control on those pots too, because it was, you know, you if you didn't hit him the right speed this week, if you hit him too hard, the wind wasn't in an effective If you hit him too soft, they just the wind would just grab him.

00:22:51
Speaker 1: At the end, You're you're You've got your academy at Karka? Is it Koreka? Is that how you somebody got about how I pronounced it during the week, and I am now I've got.

00:23:04
Speaker 3: The autocorrects on the iPhone to corsica. Most people end up calling it's corsica. There's a lot of different pronunciations.

00:23:11
Speaker 2: I think I call that very hard the right way Courica.

00:23:14
Speaker 1: So you got your academy at what do you think there's any ways that you've gotten better since you stopped playing competitively full time and you've been working with these, you know, high level juniors, Like do you think teaching in a way has made you better at any aspect of the game of golf?

00:23:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm certainly more efficient with what I do in practice. Obviously, I don't have all day to practice anymore, so the time that I do get during the week is certainly kind of forced to be a little bit more efficient and a little smarter about what I do. And then with with some of it, I mean, I do get to play maybe once a week I'll go out and play nine holes with some of the better juniors, which forces me to kind of lead by exams, So I'll take part. I'll do some of that, do some short game contests with them so cause I think it's really good for them for me to be able to back up what I talk about with them and teaching. So and I think we do a lot of drills and kind of performance benchmarking to track progress over time, So doing short game contests and seeing you know, well, this shot was really hard a couple of months ago. Now we're better at this shot. So now what's the next area that we can improve and get better from there?

00:24:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, how's your approach different to the teaching aspect of it than say, when you were growing up, Because like I think, obviously, I think teacher changed quite a bit since we were juniors, and and I'm interested to see here how how you've kind of blended different experiences into a methodology.

00:24:57
Speaker 3: I think that for there's something things like I think people underestimate how hard it is for anyone to actually make a swing change in a short period of time. And I think when I first started teaching, I think I thought that it was possible for really anyone to make a big change in a hurry. But I take a much more longer term approach that we're just going to try to blend, you know, wherever we are today. You know, let's try to get you know, if we're working on a position, let's try to get this position better a month or two from now, and and really understand that that aspect is going to take time. And there's things that I think can improve a little bit quicker, like decision making on a golf course, Like with the juniors, I'm you know, we're kind of more holistically approaching how to get better. So can we be better with our mental process? Can we be better with our target selection? Can we be better with you know, just how we go about practicing short like can we put more pressure on ourselves in practice with putting games and skills competitions, things like that that are going to more closely resemble tournament golf. You're obviously never going to be able to truly replicate it. But rather than sitting there hitting the same five foot or ten times in a row, Like, can we make this a more dynamic, changing environment which is going to change, which is going to challenge you more?

00:26:23
Speaker 1: The uh yeah, I feel like when I always think back is like if I could just have been less of an idiot as a junior, I would have been like three times better of a golfer. Like, it's so much of it is just like learning how to play golf.

00:26:39
Speaker 3: Oh, you hit the nail on the head. I talk about this with juniors all the time. It's like, you're going to have you know, you really well said you're going to have these stretches of good and bad golf. But you can't let these bad stretches of golf kill your score to where your good golf doesn't matter. If you're know, if you can get through your bad seven hole stretch at two over, your good stretch can overcome that, you can make four birdies in the next day holes, and all of a sudden you're two under. But if your bad stretches six over through seven holes, well you're too far behind already. So it's you know, it's the patience level of you know, understanding, Okay, I short sided myself here, Like I don't need to try to hit this perfect flop shot to two feet. Let's get this up to ten feet with a lower risk shot if we make the putt right. If not, like, let's move on and let's make some pars in the next couple.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I think like it with teaching, so much of it used to.

00:27:36
Speaker 2: Be just all technique based. Like you get a lesson and you just go to the t and you hit.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: Paulls for an hour, and it's like that's kind of the whole point, because like the worst thing you could almost do when you hit a bad shot is start thinking about technique.

00:27:55
Speaker 3: Yes, it does. I mean it is kind of funny, and I feel like it's changing to some degree, but I still feel like, you know, we need to flip the percentage of time that's spent, Like we need to be spending more time on the golf course or at the very least simular I mean now with track man and things like that, you can at least play golf courses on the driving range to where you have to, you know, try to do other things besides just hit the same wall at the same target. But I think if we flip the percentage of time between standing on a te teaching a lesson, and taking a student on the golf course, I think both students and teachers will be better off for it.

00:28:35
Speaker 1: What you talked earlier about having to get more efficient almost everybody that listens to this podcast works a nine to five.

00:28:45
Speaker 2: Or more than a nine to five.

00:28:47
Speaker 1: And it probably has hopes of playing slightly better at golf, whether.

00:28:52
Speaker 2: They care to admit it or not.

00:28:55
Speaker 1: What are what are a few things that you've done that you know, go from full time, Like, what are a few things that have worked really well in terms of hey, I've downsized, like the about a time I have like that, you know, prioritizing different things. Maybe like what are a few strategies that somebody could take home with them?

00:29:14
Speaker 3: So like for me, I break I'll break it down into kind of zones in terms of iron play, and I'll do some some basically training tests on track Man, so a web zone, kind of a one twenty five to one seventy five zone and a one seventy five to twenty five zone. I recognize that everybody is not going to have access to track Man, but yeah, so that's what I do there. But what I think you could do. What I think the easiest thing to do is kind of if you can find two points, like two flags on a driving range, you know, or say with a driver twenty five yards apart, and just work in either five or ten ball sets trying to get i'd say two thirds of those drivers in play right inside that fairway. And I think if you if you can figure out a go to shot off the tee that can help get one in play, I think that's really good. So I do a lot of stuff like that. Like on the the range where I practice, there's there's these light poles at the end, and I basically use you know, two light poles as my fairway. So you're trying to work the ball into those targets. And then with you can also do the same thing with you know, mid irons two. So you find two targets that are fifteen yards apart, right, and if you're hitting six irons in between those two targets, well, if you're missing the green, if your ball staying inside those targets, you're either not choosing the right target or you know, there's some other factor that's not letting that ball get on the green. Because once you once you get about seven iron in your hands, if you're aming a golfer, you better be aimed the pretty close to the center of the green. I mean, it's you know, you'd be shocked at the conversations you hear it, you know, to well, let's just work it off the center of the green, working off the center of the green, working off the center of the green. But I feel like a lot of amateurs feel like, oh I got a semini in the fairway, Like I can go right at the shim.

00:31:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:31:09
Speaker 1: That's how I say to people all the time, is like the better, the better the golfer, the more conservative the golfer is. Is like, you know, like the best golfers of the world in a way, or the most some of the most conservative golfers, like they just you know, the thing that they hate more than anything is making bogey So they, you know, to a certain extent, just absolutely terrified of bogeys on.

00:31:32
Speaker 3: And that's what I I mean, you're spot on there because it's you look at you look at high level golf. It's really not about making more birdies. It's about bogie avoidance and especially double bogie avoidance. Yeah, it's just good golf is pretty boring. I mean, if if you can just write cars down, it's it's a lot easier. And that was the thing that to you was just you're looking at this course and you're kind of thinking through the holes, and you're just like, where are the birdies coming from? Like where there was those two par five that were down win seven and eleven, and man, if you didn't get at least one of those, it was you were struggling to see where other birdies were going to come from.

00:32:14
Speaker 1: Yes, like sixteen playing into the wind, how how how hard was that layoff shot?

00:32:22
Speaker 3: I mean I hit driver off the deck three days there. It was if you're a bomber and could get it up top, it was slightly easier. But those fairways, the ball spun so much off the fairways that even trying to hit three wood off of that fairway into the wind, the ball was just going nowhere.

00:32:42
Speaker 1: Interesting So so that that grass just made the ball spin more.

00:32:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes I wind be more of a more of a factor.

00:32:51
Speaker 3: Yes, yes it was. You were seeing some numbers on on track man that were your average on my end, Like it was at least a thousand more RPMs with the average iron into the wind or not just into the wind. That just off those fairways and then into the wind just amplifies that effect. So it's just gonna balloon way more than it would off of a normal fairway.

00:33:17
Speaker 1: Now, for a quick word from our sponsor, Smathers and Branson. This is an awesome gift for anybody, whether they're a serious golfer or not. Like you could get somebody a belt is really neat that has nothing to do with golf. They've got all these music ones and you know, obviously the team stuff. But the really neat thing I think is the Life Belt, which allows you to pick from numerous different logos, so you could get that your favorite, you know, where you went to college, you could put it on the belt. But you could also have you know, Rolling Stones the Tongue, you know, or Pink Floyd logo or Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicholas, you know, whatever fits your fancy. You can mix and match this. You know, you can have a dog on there since if you're a dog lover, I don't know, you know anybody that doesn't like dogs.

00:34:05
Speaker 2: I don't trust anybody like that.

00:34:06
Speaker 1: But anyways, you can do the belt, the Life Belt on their website. It's really neat, really easy to do, and you get fifteen percent off plus free shipping on the Life Belt if you use the promo code Frida Egg. That's fifteen percent off plus shipping at Smathers and Branson dot com on the life belt and or anything else. Thanks to Smathers and Branson for the support. And now back to Brad Merrick. How how was the first round playing after that? Like where where'd you play? And how did it feel to go back to playing like a normal golf course.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: I ended up going up to I was up in Spokane last weekend for if there was a Mini Tour event up in Spokane, and then I had US Open qualifying on money Day and it was fortunately it blew about twenty five miles an hour, so that felt really familiar. But I think the golf course was like sixty six hundred yards long, so it was, you know, a thousand yards shorter, so it was yeah, it was certainly. I joked with some of my friends like I went to I went to Whole Foods on the Tuesday after the PGA and I got coffee and no one. No one cheered for me when I got the coffee. So that was kind of a rude adjustment.

00:35:29
Speaker 1: That's what I always fell that after you played like a vigor the day you go back to playing like just regular setup golf after big turbo, it's like, uh, thank god Avac to this.

00:35:42
Speaker 3: It Uh, it felt nice to play. It felt nice to play golf where you didn't where you could actually make birdies because I mean tea. It was just it was so hard, especially those you know, those first two days when the wind was, when the wind was whipping, it was, it was brutal.

00:36:00
Speaker 1: I got a question for you. How many times have you played like US Open qualifying?

00:36:08
Speaker 3: Many to count? Yeah, probably probably twenty years now from I mean, I think I probably started doing a junior senior year of high school, and maybe there was a year in there I missed because I had something else. But yeah, they're certainly not more than one or two years that I missed it.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: You just you missed out by a couple. Seems like you were, you were in it and in Washington. But then you see a guy like Andy Pope. You grew up playing with Andy Pope. You probably know him pretty well. He's qualified five of the last six years. Do you think there's something like, what what makes somebody great at qualifying?

00:36:46
Speaker 3: You know? It is it is remind I mean, it's unbelievable what he's done. I didn't know it was five of the last I knew it was a lot, but I didn't know it was five of the last six. That's incredible. And there's there's guys you see like Brian Stewart, who I think.

00:37:02
Speaker 2: Is Springfield every year.

00:37:04
Speaker 3: Yes, Hardy is the same way, and Hardy I think was inside the number until the last couple of holes this year. They're there's certainly something I mean, and I feel like I never played well there, so I would love to know what I would love to know what he what his approach is. But there are certain guys that I don't know a lot of these are hold held at the same course a lot. But even still, it's incredible because the talent that's in those qualifiers is it's pretty high. And to you know, it's not a high number of spots. I mean it's just four guys, eighty guys for four spots. I think it's those you know, the one that Andy was at this year. M H.

00:37:44
Speaker 2: Do you do you think junior golf?

00:37:46
Speaker 3: Like?

00:37:46
Speaker 1: How much better is junior You're obviously a very good junior player you played in Indiana? Like how much better is junior golf now than when we even played it?

00:37:58
Speaker 3: I think it's deeper than it used to be. I think it's kind of similar to what's going on like at a professional level. It seems like it's the high end golf is probably definitely a little bit better. But I mean there were there were studs even when we were playing that were just dominating junior golf. But I feel like the I definitely feel like the above average player is better at junior golf than when say, we were playing junior golf. I think the strategy has gotten a little bit better overall. Like I don't see the same you know, kind of silly mistakes. There are some, but I feel like the silly mistakes are a little bit less. Yeah, that's what I would say.

00:38:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when I was a freshman, I was just hoping to shoot like forty two.

00:38:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:38:53
Speaker 1: Now you see these kids like shooting like sixty five is fourteen year old.

00:38:57
Speaker 2: I'm like, what a different, different world?

00:39:01
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, Yeah, it's it is kind of wild.

00:39:05
Speaker 1: Do you you played a lot of you play a lot of different sports too growing up. Do you are you seeing most kids specialize early at a younger age or is it you know pretty much? Is it you know across the board, and do you think specialization at a young age is helpful or do you think like other stuff is good?

00:39:25
Speaker 2: You know, other sports are good.

00:39:27
Speaker 3: I think other stuff is really good. I think you do. See. I certainly see a lot more earlier specialization. And it's been tough because these kids don't have you know, for the last year and a half, they haven't been in school, so they don't have any kind of pe class or anything like that. So I just don't see with the people that don't early specialize, you generally see a better developed athlete for the for the kids that are specializing early if if there's no other athletic outlet. I just kind of on average, I feel like those kids have left speed. They're less dynamic, and it's a little bit harder for them to make some of the changes and ramp up the speed to where it needs to be versus the kids that are playing you know, basketball, volleyball, soccer, things like that.

00:40:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it's I think that's spot on because when I got when I had the most speed in my life, I was playing the most pickup basketball in my life, and it was something. It was about the quick twitch and the explosion that you get from like running and jumping all the time. And then it translated like I just like, you know, after playing you know, three day a week pick up hoops in leagues and stuff over entire winter. The next year I came back, I was like twenty yards longer, just doing for no you know, And I think that that's something I think with juniors, it's kind of because those other sports help with other things.

00:41:00
Speaker 3: I had one of my best juniors who's having a really good summer when a big amateur tournament around here, then followed it up with an Ajga winn finished second, and another a Jja has had a rock star summer and he this is two winters ago. He was swinging at about ninety seven miles an hour and he's in his sophomore year of high school. He doesn't plays basketball for his high school team. Comes back, and obviously he grows a little bit, gets a little bit stronger, but you know, i'd see him, like, you know, once a week in there, just kind of making sure that things were not falling too far out of line. And then he got back into golf, you know, full time that you know, once the basketball season ended, and he's swinging a one hundred and ten miles an hour and he really didn't play golf but a couple times a week, and it's just from you know, he was in the gym with basketball, but he was, you know, playing five six days a week, and it was it was unbelievable. Is the biggest jump I've ever seen in that short a time.

00:41:57
Speaker 1: I think, just in general, was golf like a people fall in the habit of you know, we're like thinking, if you're if you want to be great golf, you have to devote everything to golf. But like so many times I've found over the course of my life, like getting away from it almost helps me more than being in it.

00:42:17
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. And there's I mean, if you look at some of these top guys, I mean you put you know, Dustin, you put Brooks, you put you put those guys on a basketball court. I mean, that's gonna be a killer pick up basketball team. I mean, these guys would be good at any sport that has hand eye coordination and athleticism involved. And that's and I just I think that sometimes that get that gets a little lost is that you think that, oh, I need to sit there and just hit you know, hit these slapshots or hit these four footers repetitively, and like there's cross training matters too. In my opinion, it's not just all about golf.

00:42:53
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, I think there's a pretty it's a I don't think we've gotten to a point where at any certainty you could say that you're losing by not specializing quick right off the bat, because if you look at the top players in the world, a lot of them played different sports. Like obviously Tiger's the case and point to specialization. But then you know, you go down the list, like DJ played a lot of different sports. Justin Thomas probably a specialization guy. You know, I think John Ron played some other sports. But then you know there are guys like with Brooks, like Brooks played wanted to be a baseball player, he hates golf, right, you know, right, and Rory famously broke his ankle playing soccer. It's it's just, you know, I think it it gets lost, like you think you have to work so hard, and I think you're you're a case in point. I'm guessing that you probably feel in many ways you're better than you were when you decided to hang them up.

00:43:53
Speaker 2: Now.

00:43:55
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, honestly, some of my I think one of my best many tour seasons was twenty eighteen. Think I won twice, finished second twice, and I was teaching full time. I would just you know, I was just getting started, so I would still go out and play some MANI tour events to make some extra cash. And yeah, it was it was kind of funny. I mean it was you know, it was certainly practicing forty percent of what I used to practice, and the results were better.

00:44:24
Speaker 1: How do you even go about building up a book of business as a teaching pro.

00:44:28
Speaker 3: A lot of it's word of mouth. You know. I was fortunate, I kind of when I first started, I had a partner with what I was trying to do with the academy, and he had had a few higher level guys that he threw my way, and you know, those guys start having success, and the best, especially in junior golf, the absolute best marketing is going to be word of mouth. And so you have a few people that start having success, and then you know, these kids can't drive themselves when they're early on in their junior golf days, so the parents are following them around the golf course, and inevitably the parents get to tell who are you working with and it's it's just referrals. I mean, I've had probably one or two students that have got me probably two thirds of my you know, higher end junior students, like in terms of you know, best players.

00:45:19
Speaker 2: Did you get a lot of calls after the PGA.

00:45:22
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of a lot of calls, a lot of emails, a lot of questions about the bucket hat and where they could get that.

00:45:30
Speaker 2: What about calls for clients like new new juniors.

00:45:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, that's yeah, that's okay. A lot of yeah, a lot of calls, emails through my website, things like that. So it's been uh so that has been incredible. So trying to in the last couple of weeks has been you know, trying to fit these new people in into the schedule and and see if there's ways that I can help.

00:45:53
Speaker 1: See That's why I like playing matters, right, you know, playing the PGA, like the club proach stuff matters because it's like it's probably your best best, you know, make it you gotta make the cut every year?

00:46:04
Speaker 2: Is the best advertising yet?

00:46:06
Speaker 3: Yeah? I was. I mean, I honestly, I didn't really realize how much coverage there was until I kind of got back and sifted through all these messages and you know, realized how much I was on TV and just talked to some friends that were watching. Man, you were on TV a lot, so it's been Yeah, it's a good problem to have. Let's put it that way.

00:46:26
Speaker 1: How many how many Uber rides did you give in your career?

00:46:28
Speaker 2: How long did you U be.

00:46:30
Speaker 3: Before one winter? The first winter I started dating my now wife, Like, I didn't go down to Florida like I usually did, so I.

00:46:41
Speaker 2: Was because you met her pretty much.

00:46:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I think I was planning on going down to Florida and then I went. I went to Florida, but it was for a short amount of time, so I needed something to do. And this was like when Uber was first starting, when yeah, it was I would typically Uber from like six the morning till you know, rush hour was over, and then I'd go to the gym and then i'd go you know, hit some golf balls inside and that was that was kind of my day. It was. It was. It was interesting, let's put it that way.

00:47:14
Speaker 2: Was I the only person that recognized you?

00:47:17
Speaker 3: I think? So? Yeah, yeah, I did it for probably like six seven months, like that winter and then just in the spring and I was leading up to play in that summer, but yeah, maybe one other but yeah, I think you might have been it though.

00:47:36
Speaker 2: It was that was wild.

00:47:37
Speaker 1: It was funny, like because I hadn't thought of that until you get you were playing and I was like, you know what because I was like thinking about just like things that I remember.

00:47:45
Speaker 2: I was like, I think you've drove ober like but uh, but with the with the how does it work?

00:47:54
Speaker 1: So you make a cut, does that get you exempt into the Club Pro Championship?

00:47:59
Speaker 2: Like how does it all work with that? I don't know enough?

00:48:02
Speaker 1: Are you in the PGA Cup one of the best events in golf?

00:48:06
Speaker 2: Like what how does that all work?

00:48:08
Speaker 3: Like?

00:48:08
Speaker 1: What what is getting making the cut outside of a you know, probably one of the biggest paychecks of your life in terms of a pro golf career.

00:48:16
Speaker 2: What what else does it get you?

00:48:19
Speaker 3: So it gets it gets me out of pre qualifying and first stage of Q school.

00:48:25
Speaker 2: For this year for corners, Are you going to do that?

00:48:28
Speaker 3: So? Yeah, I going straight to the second stage. You kind of have to in my opinion if you can go right to there, so I will. I'll definitely do that.

00:48:35
Speaker 2: When was the last time that you'd you'd done Q school Q school.

00:48:41
Speaker 3: I went to Europe in like twenty fifteen. I went to Europe in twenty fifteen, had some like pretty bad conditional status. I'm like the Challenge Tour that I never really took advantage of. But yeah, that's the last time I've been to any Q school. So that's this will be that'll be good. It gets me exempt into the PGA Professional Championship for the next two years, so hopefully give me good opportunity to play hopefully in some more PGA Championships, and then it gets me out of the pre qualifying portion of Monday qualifiers for the PGA Tour for the rest of the year, so it can go right to the Monday qualifiers.

00:49:22
Speaker 2: Are you gonna do any of those?

00:49:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll go. The first on I'm gonna do is up in Minnesota in July. I'll do the Barracuda which is by Us in August, the event at Silverado, I don't know the sponsor anymore, the one that used to be Safeways here, and I'll probably go to six or seven i'd say over the course of twenty twenty.

00:49:42
Speaker 1: One, trying to get into the ben Cook Zone here. You know, you're going to make me eat all my words here.

00:49:51
Speaker 3: Well, if you go straight to the Mondays, it's easy because you can fly out on Sunday and then fly back on Monday. If you miss, if you have to do those pre qualifiers, you're sent really at that site for six seven days.

00:50:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that whole model if you do. If you can't, it's like a hopeless model. If you are trying to go to pre qualifiers the Mondays, it's like it's two ridiculous things, you know, and then a lot of days on site with uh with the you know, like, what would you do say say you got corn Fairy status, Like what do you do?

00:50:27
Speaker 3: Like I really like what I do? I don't think that I would would stop. I mean, one, even if you get status with the corn Fairy, And there's really not that many really good cards with Q School. I mean, you're really unless you get in that top forty at the finals, you're fighting to get in events. So I mean a lot would depends on how good the status would be. But you know, then i'd you know, I'd have to figure out a way if if that happened, I had probably to figure out a way in somebody else to help me teach so that I could focus a little bit more on on my game. But I don't know, I've just kind of approached, you know, all like once I started teaching, I just wanted to see, you know, keep practicing on my end and just see if I could keep getting better. There's obviously less pressure on my game now because it's not the primary source of income, but I just like the challenge of getting better and you know, spending some time, you know, trying to get better with some of the longer clubs that has typically been you know, my weakness, and you know, see how good I can get.

00:51:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it gave you a reason to get a track man.

00:51:37
Speaker 1: Right When you're a mini tour pro you can can't for but when you're teaching pro.

00:51:41
Speaker 2: You have to have one.

00:51:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, the conversation went a lot easier with my wife when I was telling her that we needed this, you know, this track man when I was actually teaching as opposed to playing, So that was for sure. That was nice.

00:51:53
Speaker 1: Do you think low club pro should be exempt the next year to the PGA.

00:52:01
Speaker 3: I don't maybe if maybe, if it comes with making the cut maybe you.

00:52:07
Speaker 2: Have to make that you have to make the cut.

00:52:12
Speaker 3: It's a really good question. I hadn't thought of that.

00:52:15
Speaker 2: It's something I thought I was thinking about.

00:52:17
Speaker 1: I almost I almost put it in a column, but I I'm on.

00:52:21
Speaker 2: I think you should if you're low club pro.

00:52:25
Speaker 1: It's such a it's such a deep part of the championship, like you should be back. Like we get to know the low club pro. We get to know the club pros to make the cut, and then like the next year rolls around and you don't know if they're going to be in it.

00:52:37
Speaker 3: Right. That is a good point, because it is it is interesting that, you know, I mean then and I still have to go play really well at you know, the PJ Professional Championship just to get back to the PGA. And it's yeah, that is an interesting point. It wouldn't be a.

00:52:54
Speaker 1: Bad Ben's not a low club pro. He's he's now back on it. He's got he's got it. He's got PGA tours claiming him as their own low club pro. You know, this is this is real. I've launched a full investigation. The findings are he was he was disqualified as a club pro. He had great finish as a you know, a Latin America and qualifier.

00:53:22
Speaker 3: Man, if you're doing that with Ben, what are you doing with Omar?

00:53:25
Speaker 1: Oh Omar? Omar might have a whole podcast, you know, dedicated to him. I advocate that he should have to wear a different uniform based off of what status he's playing off of, you know, because some weeks he's in as a PGA member and then other weeks he's in as a PGA tour remember, and it's just you know, I've got a I've got an associate. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name my source. He's a retired PGA professional living down in uh In uh the village down there, the PGA village, you know where the three courses are.

00:54:03
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he.

00:54:04
Speaker 1: Was telling me. He was like, oh, I was like, what have you been doing. He's like, well, uh, you know, been playing golf and watching golf. They have all these like section events down here and he and he was like, I was like, oh, you know those ones that Omar cleans up on. And he's like, oh yeah, you know, all just retired guys can't stand Omar.

00:54:28
Speaker 2: And he told me a story.

00:54:29
Speaker 1: Some guy bet him speed him in a playoff and there's like seventy old retired club bros just like we're going nuts when the other guy won.

00:54:38
Speaker 2: They're just jeering like crazy. They were.

00:54:41
Speaker 1: He was like, we were just so happy that that kid beat him.

00:54:46
Speaker 3: I will not name names either, but when we finished up at in Florida, so we had to do media stuff for uh we had to do media stuff for the PGA Championship, and the TV were on because it was obvious, you know, who was going to be inside the cut in the last few holes were going on, and it was very eye opening some things that were being said while the television coverage is I'll just say that.

00:55:14
Speaker 2: I think he played four hundred events or five hundred events on the PGA Tour.

00:55:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's made train half million dollars. I mean he played, He's played three hundred plus rounds just at those golf courses in Florida alone that are that Turnam was on.

00:55:29
Speaker 1: I just I feel the same way with like Midam golf, Like, you know, I played the Midam and I'm hitting ball sext to Jess Daily and.

00:55:37
Speaker 2: I'm like, we aren't the same person here.

00:55:40
Speaker 1: Like I I was twenty three, went and worked in an office like you were, you're on the PGA tour.

00:55:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have some of that stuff, especially with the Midam is incredible. Just to see the disparity in the backgrounds of some of these guys. I mean, like the re instate amateurs that just came off an eight year you know, professional career playing in the mid Am.

00:56:05
Speaker 2: Well, that's I saw. John Peterson's gonna get his his Midham. He's gonna have Midham status.

00:56:10
Speaker 3: And like Dady, he's waffled like eighteen times on that. He's gone from a business guy to uh, two Monday qualifiers to I'm getting diameter status back.

00:56:20
Speaker 2: I saw that. They said it was it would take two years.

00:56:23
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about guys he made like four million dollars.

00:56:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the guy almost won the US Open and you're gonna be going up against him in the Midham.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: Uh. I'm my dreams of that are are long gone until until this uh, this this part phase of my life is over.

00:56:42
Speaker 2: So the uh, I don't have to worry about that. That's for other people I have to worry about at this point.

00:56:48
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's just it's it's a wild thing. I think the question is like where does Omar go? Like, where do these guys go? There needs to be some purgatory that they're put into, Like you know, they shouldn't go down and beat up on club pros. I think that's like them, like you have to like have a full profession like Omar does not work.

00:57:09
Speaker 3: No, No, I don't know. It's I don't understand why the loophole was created to begin with. Like I just I don't really understand why, and I don't know much about it, but it just seems I don't know. I just don't know why that option was ever existed in the first place. I mean, Omar followed all the rules. I just I don't know why the rules were there.

00:57:33
Speaker 2: That's what I was I was thinking.

00:57:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, a funny bit if you ever did it would be like go to go to where Omar says he's a club of pro and then just sit there and ask ask members or local players that come in and be like, hey, you ever seen this guy around? Like you ever take a lesson from Omar?

00:57:53
Speaker 3: Uh?

00:57:54
Speaker 2: You see him?

00:57:54
Speaker 3: Full?

00:57:56
Speaker 2: You ever? Full? You ever see full? Insure some approach up? Where can the register?

00:58:05
Speaker 3: I love it? So?

00:58:08
Speaker 1: Where where are we going to see you? Next we're gonna see you at the Club Pro Championship. Maybe we'll see you at uh at uh you know, Monday, Monday, you know, qualified schools on TV.

00:58:18
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll see you Monday and something.

00:58:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the hope. No, nothing, I mean nothing as cool as you know, being on TV that much at the PGA Championship. We've got our Northern California PGA Section Championship coming up in July. Uh winter that gets into the event that's up the NAPA.

00:58:39
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a big one.

00:58:40
Speaker 1: There's gotta be a lot of good players in North California.

00:58:44
Speaker 3: Yeah. And our one of the parts of our sections that we have three exemptions into tour events based on you know, who wins our match play, who wins our stroke play, and who wins Player of the Year. So so that's good and just trying to just trying to get ready for you know, stuff in the fall.

00:59:02
Speaker 1: I imagine when you moved to California, that made playing actually like kind of harder full.

00:59:06
Speaker 3: Time, right, the travel aspect of it, Yeah, because you're there, aren't really you know, most of the mini tours are kind of in the South, Southeast and the Midwest over the summer, so traveling out of here became a little bit harder. You're just you're you're always flying, you know, back east somewhere to play in something.

00:59:28
Speaker 1: And then your website for where people can find you, what is it bradmerickolf dot com.

00:59:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, and America is m A R E K. And then on Instagram at Brad Merrick Golf. So pretty easy.

00:59:42
Speaker 1: Hey, one last question, is it really just the same lesson every time? Because I think that like I've never gotten a different lesson, it's just the same. I always am doing the same things.

00:59:57
Speaker 3: I think what separates really good teachers from teachers that aren't as good is that I think the really good teachers have a lot of different ways to say the same thing.

01:00:08
Speaker 1: Well that's the guy that's got dude, he says it differently every time.

01:00:12
Speaker 2: That what I think about it, it's the same thing.

01:00:16
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think, you know, some of the things is like understanding, like can you can you trick can you find a way to essentially trick your student into the right position, Like if it's physically hard for them to achieve, can you give them a drill or can you do something that's going to get them there? Where they might not have been able to get to by just consciously trying to think about it.

01:00:36
Speaker 1: I've aasgined that's so frustrated because you're trying to explain something and people just don't understand it, and then you could say it's something just like just a little bit different, then they're like.

01:00:47
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. At the end of the day, it's the student that have to come up with it on their own. Essentially, you're just as a teacher, You're just trying to lead them to the right thought that resonates with them. In my opinion, I agree with that, you're just trying to, you know, basically guide them. You know where you want them to get, but you're just trying to guide them to where you know they understand the solution and can kind of feel it and describe it and kind of own it on their own.

01:01:17
Speaker 1: One last thing, what's your pet peeve for student? What's the what's the thing that just grind your gears?

01:01:24
Speaker 3: Oh, when the student knows exactly when the student are in my case with the junior, is when the parent knows, you know, exactly what their kid needs to do and what the kid is doing wrong and what the fix is. And tells you, oh yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, so why are you here? Like why you mean? Just go? Just move down a few stalls and you guys can work on it and I can. I can hit some edges here myself. Yeah, that's always my favorite. Or the well he does, he does X, Y and Z, so he just needs to do this. Okay, great, Like that's fine, got that.

01:01:58
Speaker 2: That has to be. Time's too similar.

01:02:02
Speaker 1: Is like people will tell me stuff that they clearly read from bote my articles and I'm like, yeah, I wrote about that, that was that was by article.

01:02:16
Speaker 3: And you missed you missed a couple of those stats in there. You're not exacting, you didn't remember those perfectly there.

01:02:23
Speaker 1: All right, Brad, it's been awesome talking to you. Hopefully we'll see you again at Southern Hills.

01:02:29
Speaker 3: That would be a good plan. I would like that.

01:02:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, good luck. I'm sure you're in the pg A Cup. Gotta be.

01:02:36
Speaker 3: I don't know I have any idea on the point.

01:02:38
Speaker 2: You got research. You got to research that, get it?

01:02:41
Speaker 3: Yeah? That PGA cup is that this year? Is that next year?

01:02:44
Speaker 2: I don't know.

01:02:45
Speaker 3: I need them.

01:02:47
Speaker 2: It's great, I love it.

01:02:51
Speaker 3: Good catch it up, enjoyed it high, but.

01:03:02
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast. This episode was edited and produced by Meg Atkins. Just as a quick reminder, we've got some great events this summer and into the fall.

01:03:16
Speaker 2: We just released a couple new events.

01:03:19
Speaker 1: At White Bear Yacht Club the Regatta as well as Pine Hills, an incredible golf course up in Sheboygan. That's the day after the Ryder Cup, so we're going to do a big match play match up there. It's only an hour from Milwaukee, and really I think it's probably one of the best courses I've ever.

01:03:37
Speaker 2: Seen that nobody had ever talked about.

01:03:40
Speaker 1: So White Bear is obviously, you know, a top one hundred golf course, one of the best golf courses in Minneapolis.

01:03:45
Speaker 2: That's going to be an awesome event.

01:03:47
Speaker 1: We have that as well as we have some spots still at Davenport at the end of July. Davenport is amazing, amazing Allison golf course, the best Allison golf course that I've seen, and it's only about two hours from two and a half hours from the city of Chicago, So come out to an event.

01:04:03
Speaker 2: They're really fun. Everybody has a good time.

01:04:06
Speaker 1: It's a you know, friendly competition with some great prizes and great people. So thanks for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast.

01:04:14
Speaker 2: We will be back next week.