PGA Championship Favorites and Oak Hill Insights

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Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. And welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at fat Core. Mother's Day is right around the corner, and everyone has a special woman in their life probably and uh, A great way to celebrate them, Uh this coming Mother's Day is with a you know some nice champagne from this is uh, I kind of liken this to the golf architecture, you know nut of champagne where you know, these grapes that are that Fat Cork uses. The champagnes that they get are from independent grower growers in in France, so they you know, have the relationships with the independent growers who who you know, keep the best grapes from their crops for you know, their own bottles. And that's what Fatcork does. They import those bottles of champagne. There are bottles of champagne you can't get anywhere else and they are delicious. So they have a number of Mother's Day packages available. They are golf nuts. They are big fans of of what we do at the Fridayke but just generally like big golf nuts. They have these mother days Mother's Day packages. They have a club, a champagne club. If you're a frequent fizzer, go check out their champagne clubs. Uh. Those are amazing. There's nothing better than regular shipments of champagne. But Mother's Day, this is a great, great gift for a special woman in your life that is a mother. So visit fatcork dot com and if you use the promo code golf, you will get free shipping. So that's fatcork dot com promo code golf and get some great champagne for someone special in your life. And uh yeah, thank you to fat cork for the uh for supporting what we do here. All right, we're gonna do something a little bit different today. I have been traveling, Garrett has been traveling. It's been kind of a hectic last few days. We had an event in in Ohi, but then we had back to back media days for the US Open and the US Women's Open. So we're at LACC on Monday and Pebble Beach on Tuesday, and I'm trying to pick up the pieces of a few days away here. So what we're gonna do here? The first off, we'll talk a little bit about the b D days. They were excellent. I l a CC is really really rounding into phenomenal shape. Every time I go back there, I'm just more enamored, more in love with that golf course. It is. Uh, it is truly a spectacular golf course. I I really I can't believe that we're finally getting to see a US Open there. I mean, it's been forever and it's just it's an amazing, amazing venue. I said this to a couple people. I really believe that it's the most beautiful of the US Open venues that we have. It's just the flora of the golf course, just the native vegetation there in the barancas, and and it's just it's gorgeous and just the natural topography the the canyons. It is. It is a spectacular place. It is going to be firm and fast, it is. I think it's really going to deliver I think one of the things that's going to be nice for the us GA there is that the weather at that time of year in LA is pretty predict predictable, So you're going to have kind of still mornings, a little wind in the afternoon, and you should have pretty even draws of assuming nothing freakish comes out of it, So that tournament is really going to be awesome. On the other end of the spectrum, the women going to Pebble Beach is going to be a historic occasion. It is. It's so cool for women's golf. I think, like, you know what, ideally we get beyond you know, this point of where it's so special that they get that the women get to go play Pebble Beach and it becomes just more of a you know, normal occurrence. I think that really the major bodies, you know, the the Open, the PGA and the US Women's Open, all the PGA, the USGA, and the RNA have really done an amazing job recently elevating the women's game with the venues, and you know, it is it's really special to see this taking shape. I would love to see it continue to take shape across women's golf where we see you know, purses that are more close to men's purses, but also the venues that are of equal par on the LPGA as the PGA Tour, obviously they have a lot more venues that they can go to. We're going to see it with Chicago Golf in the future as a women's open venue. That's a venue that you know, kick the can down the curb and just couldn't figure out how they could do a men's open, but they can easily host a women's open. So with the LPGA, it'd be great to see them begin to get better and better venues. So with the women at at Pebble, it's obviously going to be a historic year. It's it's going to be terrific to watch them play out there. And I'm really really thrilled and excited about those two championships. But the purpose of this podcast is to talk a little bit more about the PGA Championship in oak Hill. So I'm going to do my ten favorites. This is a list that I have kind of come up with today. I got thinking about the golf course even more. We obviously talked me and Garrett about it in great detail on the last episode, but today, I had a call and I started some people were asking me some questions and I started to, you know, really dial in on the course in a little bit different way. So this is more about the golf course and who might be a really good fit at oak Hill. And so I'll do my ten favorites. But first I just wanted to get into a few factors of why I'm picking these players. So we talked about this in the pod, the last podcast. But I think that there's going to be a level of distance that's important and I want to qualify that. Also. I don't think it's not just distance. I think there's a lot of ways to get a ball out there in golf. There are players that hit it high and have a long carry distance, and they generate their distance from carry. They also hit you know, these players tend to hit have a little higher trajectory on iron play. So for me, that is the type of long hitter that I'm looking for. I am not as as fascinated with the player that has optimized you know, their driver hits that kind of knuckler that lands and rolls far. Just given the weather, I think that that is going to it's going to be cold, you know that that ball doesn't work as well in the cold, and it could be a little wet with that, so you know, that's not the ideal ballflight for me out here. I want a higher ball flight, a particularly a higher ball flight into greens. There are going to be a lot of long and mid iron shots at Oak Hill, and many of them go to elevated greens. I want somebody that can hit the ball high. I think that's going to be important here, and I don't you know, I think that we're looking at that and mid iron and long iron play and I want a little distance. So one of the reasons I want mid and long iron play lots of long par fours. There are not a lot of wedges available. And one of the reasons that that's the case is two of the shorter part fours. I mean there's a lot of four sixty plus par fours the Major Championship, but the shorter part fours, and two of them, in particular the second hole and the tenth hole, they kind of require you to lay back. And because of bunkers on two and the fairway getting very very narrow, I think a lot of guys are gonna be laying back to one sixty ish and taking that eight iron in uphill one sixty is if you're playing the morning, it's early in the morning, the ball's not gonna go anywhere. There's gonna be a lot of cold mornings at Oak Hill. Even if it's getting up to seventy, it's gonna be cold in the morning. So those morning rounds they're gonna be cold. The ball. The course is gonna play long. So on two and ten, in particular, ten does it with a creek, some mounds, a bunker, some interesting topography. You might see these guys laid back and then all of a sudden it takes two wedge opportunities out of their hand. So really, you know where you're gonna see wedges. It's it's only a couple of places. The par fives are very long. It'll be fascinating to see how they set it up with especially with the club pros. I mean, they can make this place so long with the club pros. You know, they might keep it a little shorter rounds one and two, make it longer, you know, in the in the later rounds to lengthen it out, But the par fives are going to be hard to reach in two, and with that, those are gonna be wedge opportunities. But also the only other two wedge opportunities are really twelve a short part of mid length par four, and fifteen a short par three, So those are gonna be the spots to get wedges as those two holes and in the par five, so kind of like not your typical PGA tour setup or even like Augusta is an example of a place where where guys can they can hit it up there like a nine's a good example, right, you got the big downslope and it gets down there and you got a wedge in right at Oak Hill. Those holes that are like nine in length, they have hazards that prohibit you from pushing it way up there. The long par fours, there's a ton of them, and there's a couple long par threes. So eleven could play two forty five, three can play two thirty and if you're playing, these are gonna be holes that people play early in the morning with split teas. Those are gonna be so long. And then the par fours that are over four to sixty include one, six, seven, eight, nine, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Some of those are five hundred plus yards par fours. It's just gonna be a lot of long amid irons what we don't see a ton of on the PGA tour. One other thing that's relevant about Okill, it's gonna be really important for guys to avoid fairway bunkers off the tee. This is a place that some players will will try and hit into during majors because they want to avoid the rough. I think the rough's gonna be pretty inconsistent. It's gonna be patchy, it's it's not gonna have an ideal growth period here. I mean it's it's probably just getting to the the soil temperatures to grow grass and in Rochester at this time of year, so you're not going to see I think like that quintessential super thick rough. It should be actually pretty fun because it could be super inconsistent, could be tough to judge, It could be kind of a mixed bag when you hit it in there. But the bunkers are so deep that the deep faces present really a problem, and especially if your ball rolls up towards the front half of the bunker, you're not gonna be able to get home in uh in two like we talked about with with a lot of these long par fours or par fours that are forcing you to lay a little bit back. You're you're not hitting a wedge in. You're hitting you know, maybe a six iron if you're if you have that face in the way, you're you're all of a sudden having to recalibrate, you know, your expectations of where you're gonna get the ball to. Which makes one more point with that thinking. You know you have trees as the other thing you could get trees, you might be hitting punch shots punch shots from trees as well as the bunkers that you might not be able to get home. For one other skill I'm looking at is recovery pitch shots. I think we're gonna see a lot of a good amount of pitches from twenty to forty five yards guys that are are punching it up close to the green trying to set themselves up. I think, like one of the things with the Oak Hills, greens are gonna have these wings pushed out and they're gonna use those like back corners of greens or front corners, and it's gonna be about getting it over to the side, getting yourself green to work with, and it's gonna be that twenty to fifty yard pitch shot that's gonna be really important. So those are kind of the things that I'm thinking about when it comes to what players are going to play well at oak Hill. So with that in mind, here are my top ten players for oak Hill. At number ten, we've got Patrick Cantlay. Obviously, he's got a new man on the back, Joelkava. I think, you know, we see a lot of guys play well with h with new relationships, and obviously Joelkava is gonna give a lot of experience on the bag. He's played really well this year, in particular lately, he's been in the mix a lot, and uh, I think it's just a matter of time before he keeps knocking on the door. Obviously. One of the things with Patrick Cantley, he's just an all around very good golfer. So he's at ten. He's the number four player in the world, number ten on my list. He hasn't done that much in majors, but I think it's more of a when is it going to happen? Rather if Xander same boat here as can't lay just such an all around player. I think when you get watched Xander Cooking, he makes the game look really easy. He's obviously had a ton of success in major championships throughout his years. He's here because he's just a very good golfer, all right. Getting more into some maybe particular course fits. I got Shane Lowry at number eight. I think this is gonna be a very hard golf course. Shane Lowery plays very hard golf courses quite well. He hits it high. He plays just great when things are tough, when the weather might be cold, when it gets windy, when it's gnarly, the spring weather that we might see at Oak Hill. I really like Shane Lowry in that case. He's been a really strong major championship player. He's probably a guy that's gonna fly a little under the radar like he always does, because he's just he's not that high in the world rankings, and he's never seems to be just like a sexy pick. All right up to number six here, I think that's number six, No, it might be number seven, number seven. I got Rory here, and listen, I think this is a great fit for Rory's game. Everything we just talked about when it becomes a long iron mid iron contest. Is about as good of a fit as it can be for Rory. There's gonna be a lot to talk about his family in the area he's any remember. I don't know how often he's been back to play the golf course. I think one of the things about this golf course is nobody's really seen it. I don't think, you know, given the time of year, like last year this time, everybody was doing visits to Southern Hills. You know, there hasn't been a season leading into this that you could go visit Rochester and I don't think it was on the top of many players' minds last year in the fall to go visit. So Rory, I don't know how often he's been out there, but he's one of the few players that has been on this list that played in the last PGA. Here he knows a little bit about Okill that other players don't. There's obviously some new holes and new features this year at Oakhill, So it's a great fit. I think just comes down to like where his head's at. He has obviously took a little bit of a break here from golf and how is his form going to be. We saw him playing really great golf end of last year into the beginning of this year, and he hasn't been his best since really late January. So that leads us to six. A player in great form, a two time PGA champion, a guy who's who's won in the same state at probably a pretty similar setup that we'll see at a similar time of the year. Beth Page in May. Brooks Kepka obviously played great at the Masters, really was in it, didn't play well on Sunday. I think that's kind of the question about brooks Kepka at this point moving forward, is is what what's going on with the weekends. It's been It's been become kind of a trend. I don't want to be, you know, chasing. It's winning golf, teram. It's winning major championships is hard. But one of the things is like it wasn't hard for this guy, and all of a sudden he hasn't done it a lot. But that being said, he's playing great golf and this is a very good course fit for him. He kind of checks all those by boxes, right, you got. He hits it high, hits it far, enough. He's not like super far long anymore, but he's hits it plenty far high, great short game, the ability to make those tough major championship force keep the momentum going. Uh. Next up five, Cam Young, this course fits amazing. He's he's so long. I think, like, if you're we're talking about how hard it's going to be to get short irons in your hand, how hard it's going to be to get wedges in your hand, there's one guy in the field that might be able to manufacture a few extra short irons. Uh, it's Cam Young. He's so long. Just a matter of time before he wins. And and you know with the majors, it's been so impressive. The last uh you know he was he was kind of in the mix at at Augusta obviously last year with with Southern Hills and uh in the Open. He's been a terrific major championship player in his young career. And I think this is a really really great right fit for Cam Young. Up to number four. This is a little bit of an outlier, but it's Klin Morrikawa. Remember how we talked about high balls, So Klin Morikawa is average an average length hitter. But one of the things I think that if you watch Colin Morrikawa t shots, his T shots carry like He's not a guy that hits a knuckler out there and has it run. His T shots carry, and so he might be a relatively a little bit longer here if it's a little bit wet, if it's a little bit cold, he might have a little bit of an advantage. It might be longer than like a dry course where the ball's running. One of the things with Morikawa, if it becomes a mid to long iron test, there might not be anybody better in the world. So that's why I really really like Klin Morikawa. He's played really good golf this year. I think like one of the things that happens in golf is that all the m goes to winning, and you know, you lose sight of some guys that have played piled up some good finishes. You know. One of the other things is not many people have won outside of John Ram and Scottie Scheffler. So that's the other thing that's going on in golf is we have a lot of guys with high finishes that just haven't been able to overcome Scheffler and rom because they've been so dominant this year. Let's get to a guy that has overcome John Rahm. That's Tony Fenow. He's my number three right now. It feels really high. You're probably like, wow, Tony for now, number three hasn't won. He's won a ton in the last eighteen months, and and you're gonna it's easy to him in haw about the Mexico Open. I myself probably was guilty of it in the right after the Mexico Open. But let's not discount it too much. Tony fen Now one tournament where John Rahm shot sixty one on Saturday, you know John Ram came after him, Tony was better. So Tony Fee now is there. He's plenty long. His approach play continues to get better every year. He's a great pitcher of the golf ball. So I like Tony Fee now here it gets this. It's two and one and everybody probably can pick these out. Scotty Shuffler is number two. And it's pretty simple. When you're great at every aspect of golf. When you're a great driver of the golf ball, a great iron player, great short game, great putter, every golf course is a great fit for you. So Scotty Shufflers number two and John Rahm amidst a historic season. We haven't really seen anything like this since Tiger. He's he's kind of like one two wins away from uncharted territory. And and you know something I was really curious about with what's been going on with the PGA tours, like can a guy win seven times in a year anymore? He's answering that he's got five wins already. It's insane. That is just nuts. So he's the favorite. You can't not list him. I also think the course fits him pretty well. I think the trees, there's more trees here, but it's got some similarities to Tory pines, narrow fairways, a little bit unpredictable, rough, and you know greens that you have to hit shots up to. So I think John Rob obviously he has to be your favorite. And those are some thoughts for the PGA. I hope that helps you make some picks, start to think about Oak Hill in a little bit different way, and we'll be back next week with more pots. Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast. Today's episode was edited by Matt Rush's if you're interested in a little a few more Media Day nuggets. I think I'm gonna throw up a notes post in Club TF that is our membership. We have pretty much daily blogs Monday through Friday where we have new posts. We're building a community over there. It's really really been fun, and I'm probably gonna throw a couple of notes from Media Days up there, and we'll be continuing to post regular content there. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year and a great way to support what we do if you enjoy it, so thank you, and we'll be back next week with some more podcasts. Eighteen