What We Enjoyed in 2022 and What We're Looking Forward to in 2023

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

00:00:02
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a fried Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course game. Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we are ringing in the new year of twenty twenty three. Andy Johnson is here with me. We're going to talk about some things that we appreciated in the golf world last year, moments that we loved, and we're also going to talk about things that we're looking forward to in this year. Andy.

00:00:57
Speaker 1: How's going, Garrett, It's going great. How are you doing.

00:01:01
Speaker 3: Do you got any New Year's resolutions? Any big things happen over the last few days since I last talked to you.

00:01:08
Speaker 2: Look, I've been on this earth for thirty eight years now. I've seen many many a New Year come and go, and I've seen resolutions come and go. And I stick to a given resolution for maybe three to four weeks on average, Like a really good one is five weeks. I don't know what's what's your experience. Maybe that's useful in and of itself, right, just that you know that short amount of time, it's a reset. Yeah, so I guess I guess in that sense, resolutions are good. I just didn't make one this year. It's the same as always. I've probably got to lose twenty pounds, I need to get more sleep, and you know thing basic health things like that that kind of go out the window when you have little kids.

00:01:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I did well last year. I've tried to be more more organized around the house. I feel like I did that. But did you know my wife might disagree, but you know.

00:02:01
Speaker 2: She expects on this podcast.

00:02:04
Speaker 3: She expects things out of me that I'm unable to you know, deliver.

00:02:09
Speaker 2: So the uh.

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Speaker 1: But in general, I think I think resolutions are good.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: They just get you in the uh. They get you in the habit of doing something. Life's so much about habits, right, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but they don't last more than if they don't last, than what good?

00:02:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you if you actually do it for a couple of weeks, then you're more likely to do it four months from.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: Now than return to it.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.

00:02:35
Speaker 3: And it's not like you're never going to change fully, like, oh, I'm going to do this, and some people might, but it's very difficult to completely change. But if you can start to shift your behavior, I think that's beneficial.

00:02:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm actually going to talk about some self improvement stuff in this podcast related to self improvement, and so I guess, I guess we're moving that direction. I'm looking at my notes and realizing that I am going to be more optimistic about the possibility for change that i'm being right now. You know, one thing that I've done in recent years is that I've kind of started a New Year's resolution a month early, just to prove to myself, like, I can do this. And so this year, for a couple of months, I used to be a swimmer, right, I used to swim competitively and play water polo, and I've gotten away from that since since kids came, and I started swimming twice a week in the past couple of months, and it's done amazing wonders for my health. You know, I had upper back problems, yeah this year, right, Well, once I started swimming, magically those problems kind of went away, and I was like, Oh, that's why my upper back hurt because I'm incredibly out of shape.

00:03:44
Speaker 3: The uh that's I always like there's something rewarding about doing the physical activity the months preceding the new year, and then you get the influx of people, whether it's in the pool or at the gym, Like you get that big influx of people and you just kind of laugh. You're like, I've been doing this before, you you know, like you're consistent. Yeah, it's like, well, these are like the new They're going to be out of here in a couple of weeks.

00:04:11
Speaker 1: I'm still gonna be here.

00:04:12
Speaker 2: I'm the lifer, yeah exactly. Yeah. And also the gym is less crowded in December, whereas in January, like all of a sudden.

00:04:19
Speaker 1: It's awful.

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Speaker 3: There's there's nothing nothing worse, it's uh than than the gym on like January.

00:04:25
Speaker 1: Second, that's one of the worst places in the world.

00:04:28
Speaker 3: Because the other thing is you get a lot of people that have bad gym etiquette that just like don't know what they're doing.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: For a while. Yeah, exactly, they're just clogging.

00:04:36
Speaker 1: Up, They're clogging up the whole process.

00:04:38
Speaker 3: They're you know, they're sitting on machines for unjust periods of time, you know, and just in general, they're just they're coming up the works.

00:04:48
Speaker 2: That's a message to all you people who are just gonna work out for two weeks. That's I think that's a message.

00:04:54
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's it's beneficial. If you do it for two weeks, you're more likely to do it more often in the year.

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Speaker 2: We encourage people to be healthy for Sure Health and Genuine Health.

00:05:04
Speaker 1: Podcast, self help and health podcast.

00:05:06
Speaker 2: There you go. That's what we're about, is that the resolution for this podcast. We've become a sell out. We better get some better get some different guests. All right, So we're going to be talking about twenty twenty two. First, looking back on twenty twenty two and reflecting on some of the golf moments that we really liked or thought were significant. I'm not sure we're necessarily going to talk about completely enjoyable moments, but just things that will stick with us. And so why don't we just start with your first one? We each have like three, why don't we start with your first one. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of twenty twenty two and like a great significant golf moment that you had in your experience.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: For sure. I think.

00:05:54
Speaker 3: I'll go a little bit out of the box. Something I haven't talked about on this podcast, but I had around in March at the Presidio that really stuck out to me.

00:06:06
Speaker 1: When I thought back.

00:06:07
Speaker 3: I tried to like go through my phone and look through pictures and remember different things, right and like especially because like there are big things that stick out, and I have a couple of those on this list, but this Presidio around, you know, I was, uh. I was out in San Francisco for a while in the spring before we moved, and you know, I kept putting off playing the Presidio and it was we were in the city, so it was super close to where I was staying, and I kept putting it off, and we got to like the last week I was in town, and I was like, well, I better get over to the Presidio.

00:06:44
Speaker 1: I have to go.

00:06:45
Speaker 3: So I booked the first tea time out of the gates. And you know, I I tend to like to just like zip around a course by myself, and that's like the thing that I like enjoy doing at public golf courses when I'm out, like working. You know, I was going to Presidio to see the golf course and you know, and I figure, I thought, you know, it looks cool. I need to go see it. A lot of people have told me about it, and I was just looking to zip around. But in this case, like they held me on the first tea, I was kind of like I was irritated, and I got paired with two Korean gentlemen that were just like from the neighborhood and it was like just one of the most enjoyable rounds of the year. And it was this two random guys who played every single morning, and like they were like the guy held me on the first tea because they knew he knew that these guys were coming, and they were like the first tea time off. They played really fast. They were local, like, you know.

00:07:46
Speaker 2: You're in that neighbor the surrounding neighborhood near Persidio. I used to actually live there and that is a traditionally a Korean American neighborhood too, so you got like a true local experience from you know, maybe a couple of who had lived there for a.

00:08:01
Speaker 3: Long time and like, yeah, and just like experiencing the golf course in the element of like, you know, these are the people that play it, and like I get hung up on like trying to get things done quickly, and sure like it probably cost me forty five minutes an hour of my.

00:08:17
Speaker 1: Day playing with these guys.

00:08:19
Speaker 3: But I think it also like added to the just experience of it and the local flavor of it. And I think like one of the things like you know, this might sound weird to listeners, but like this is part of this is like my job, and in like going to see new courses is whether or not like it's great work.

00:08:39
Speaker 1: I don't.

00:08:39
Speaker 3: I love it, like, but it is work, and you get hung up on like just trying to get stuff done and get you know, and like this was like at first an annoyance, like I was like I have to play with these guys, but at the end of the day, it was really fun. It was just like it was different than you know, the your normal experience that I go through at golf course is whether it's like you know, I go around with like you know, people that are on the greens committee, or I go around with a superintendent. This was like I went around with two random guys, like we didn't even talk about you know, we didn't talk about what would I do for a living. We just played golf and it was really enjoyable and I think, like one of the things I create, it was just like an extremely authentic experience, if that makes sense. And I thought that golf course like furthermore on it, like that's like one of the more under public golf courses in America, Like really yeah, Like and I get it's got issues, right, It's like I would hate to go.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: It's been raining a bunch here.

00:09:41
Speaker 3: I would hate to go play it right now, Like I'm sure it'd be like a soggy slog. But like most courses in the country are closed right now. The fact that you can even play golf, but you go there in the summer, you get an early morning tea time, and I get it gets slow in the afternoon. That's every public golf course that's in a meta for Politan area gets slow in the afternoon. That's just the nature of public golf in major cities in America now.

00:10:07
Speaker 1: It gets a little slow.

00:10:08
Speaker 3: But like that golf course has is super unique, has some really great holes.

00:10:14
Speaker 1: And I don't think they have that many bad holes.

00:10:17
Speaker 3: Like when I think about that golf course, Like it's really freaking good, and it's one hundred and twenty bucks and it's in a city like there's very it's actually kind of like you could make a case that it's affordable for what it is given its locale. It's like in you know, it borders Richmond and Pacific Heights. Like it's in like a ritzy part of town.

00:10:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well a lot of San Francisco is pretty ritzy now. Yeah, but uh, when I lived in the in the Richmond district, there was some there were some affordable places to be had as well, So there's like a mix up on the hill definitely, Like by the Presidio is Yeah, there's some there's some nice houses up there.

00:10:59
Speaker 3: When you drive to the Presidio from uh it would be east. You know, you're going through the nicest, one of the nicest neighborhoods in San Francisco.

00:11:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And it's on that hill there, super yeah.

00:11:12
Speaker 3: I mean, and I think about it, it's like, what would that golf course, how would people talk about it if it was a private club.

00:11:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think it would be well regarded. I think that also maybe people haven't necessarily seen the renovation work that has been done there recently. There's been some work done on the course that improved it definitely. I played it when I lived there a couple of times and it was really a great public course back then as well. But the renovation work I think has enhanced it.

00:11:42
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean the bunkers are beautiful. I think, you know, they're they're not. I think a lot of clubs like those bunkers are really good.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: They're beautiful, genuinely well executed. Yeah, you know, there are some of these kind of frilly edge things that are starting to not look so good or starting to look a little bit played out. But Presidio did a good job there.

00:12:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've said this to a few people.

00:12:05
Speaker 3: It's very like, if you can't play the Olympic Club the lake course, you're getting a lot of the same qualities of the Olympic Club. Like, what makes the Olympic Club a really cool place to play is the fact that, like you're always playing from uneven lies and you're hitting to different elevations, and that's the challenge of the Olympic Club. That's what kind of makes that's the championship quality of the Olympic Club is the uncomfortableness of playing from these severe lies to uphill or downhill targets small targets. And at Presidio you kind of get the same thing, like you're very rare, like there are very few instances of you hitting from a level lie to a level target. You're constantly playing up and down from side hills, and it is it is really really good. Like I think I'm excited to see what Gil does with the lake course and how it improves, but like I think before the work it would I would be hard pressed to say that I'd rather would have played more at the lake Course than Presidio. So that just gives you I hope that gives some context of like this place is really cool and it should be on your list of places to see on a visit to San Francisco.

00:13:26
Speaker 2: All Right, So my first memory from twenty twenty two is from the PGA Championship at Southern Hills. I on Friday ended up following Tiger Woods. On his back nine, he was on the cut line.

00:13:42
Speaker 1: That was a gutty back nine.

00:13:44
Speaker 2: He was hurting. He needed to do something on these last nine holes in order to make the cut, and he ended up withdrawing from the tournament afterwards. Actually, but I think he was really trying to prove something by by making this cut. I wrote something about it. You know, I'm the details of this aren't coming immediately to mind right now, so I might just like read a little bit of the article that I wrote here. I hope this isn't too self indulgent, But what I wrote was Tiger Woods did not look good. His post car crash limp is familiar now, his right leg hovering for a moment before moving into stride. He kind of has this hitch in his walk. Right later, after hitting his layup second shot on the thirteenth hole, he winced so hard that the crowd gasped. I remember that, right, He was like immediately after hitting the shot, he just sort of doubled over, and the crowd was like paying.

00:14:39
Speaker 1: Attention to that, like hand on the knees. Right, Yes, he goes like the kind.

00:14:43
Speaker 2: Of stuff that he ice to see him do. Yeah, like you know, ten years ago, right when he was really really hurting and on like sort of falling down to one knee and doing stuff like that after swinging, he kind of looked like that right, So he was hanging around the cut line. Looked like plus four would make the weekend, and he arrived at the tenth t plus four on the tournament. The wind was kind of dying down, but he needed to like be even par on that on those nine holes, he ended up making the cut. He ended up he ended up doing it right, and some great shots, some really bad shots. He was obviously rusty. I remember he stubbed a chip from around the green on the fourteenth hole, but he also hit just great shots in the moment, right. He after he stubbed that chip, he made the putt, after he missed those greens, he got up and down from the bunkers, and he was really really grinding, right. He had that kind of blank expression that he has when he's really locked in to a tournament. And you know, I had never really seen Tiger play live. I hadn't. I had been at tournaments that he was playing at, and I always made the choice not to follow him because the crowds were so crazy. Right, the opportunity at Southern Hills was to be inside the ropes, right, That was a huge privilege. I was covering the tournament and I got to follow Tiger woods and see him grind and grind and grind in order just to make a cut. And it was really an experience that I'll remember for the rest of my life. His greatness was showing through the rust in these really really clear ways where you could see the player that he is, the player that he was, even though he was hurting so bad, even though he was not striking every ball cleanly because he just doesn't have the reps right now, there was something of Tiger there, and I understood why people were in that huge gallery following him. It was the most exciting thing to watch at the PGA Championship that week for sure.

00:17:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that's it's a really cool thing. I had a similar experience of the Masters, right where you're watching them just kind of piece something together and it's not you know, we're at the stage with Tiger obviously like this that we don't really have to talk about this that much, but we're like, you know, you think about the great stages of the world's best athletes ever, and we're at the very very twilight of Tiger.

00:17:26
Speaker 1: But I think one of the beauties of of you know, and.

00:17:30
Speaker 3: I think I saw I think KVV tweeted this, or maybe he I think he tweeted this about athletes and like one of the one of the great, and we're about the same age, and Tiger's a little bit older than us. But like one of the great things about being a sports fan around our age is like watching these athletes, like you feel like you've been a part of them for their your entire life, like has been intertwined with their greatness. Like, and that's definitely how I feel about Tiger is that, you know, I started becoming a golf fan when he was winning US AM's and I think we're at the end of this, but you also, like you have this connection with him and while he doesn't do it all the time like he used to, like the shots, they aren't always there, like they aren't like there's Russ. There's there's things that prevent him from, you know, injuries that prevent him from being able to be who he once was. And then he's also fighting age, right, but there are moments and when you see those moments, there's something that reminds you of the past. And I think that's the beautiful thing about watching athletes as they kind of enter their twilight to their careers. Like you know, this past weekend, tom Brady had a you know, he's had an awful year, but he had a performance that and he made some throws that reminded you of years prior. And it's those things that you hold on to, and that's like, you know, there's always the case of like should he even be playing? You know, is this but he's going to deliver moments and right now it's making the cut at majors without playing any golf except for majors, like not playing any competitors, showing.

00:19:18
Speaker 2: Up and making a cut at a major. Ye mean, it's an incredible thing and part and what you're talking about is part of probably what drives him and athletes like him, like Tom Brady to keep coming back. Right, everybody's asking why hasn't tom Brady retired? Why didn't he retire after winning the Super Bowl? Right, that would have been the perfect moment. Well, he's still capable of those individual moments of brilliance, as is Tiger, and so maybe that's what brings them back.

00:19:45
Speaker 3: They also it's you're getting it's a glimpse into like what drives it's these are the guys, the athletes that love the grind, like you could throw Serena Williams, Like do you think about Serena Williams US Open run this the summer into this bucket like nobody expected her to win the US Open, And I don't think but like her, I forgot who she knocked off, like the two seed or the one seed in the tournament. She just put together on a singular night of performance that reminded you of her greatness. And Tiger on the back nine at Southern Hills put together nine holes that reminded you about how great he was in tough conditions, clearly hobbled, Like I, it's just Tiger's having him just play five.

00:20:37
Speaker 1: It's it's hard.

00:20:38
Speaker 3: It's not like fun to I don't think like a in a in a vacuum. I don't think it's fun to watch Tiger play now. No, but there like as in a totality. But then there are just moments he delivers that makes you feel something different than most players can can give you.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: That's exactly right of the time. It's awkward and worrisome, yes, frankly, to watch him walk and play golf right on a serious course like Southern Hills, you're like, this is not good. What I'm watching here is some kind of pathology that I shouldn't be using for entertainment. But then ten percent of the time, it's like, oh that that's bullshit, Like this is amazing, this is the best golfer ever, you know, and and he's and he's still that guy. And so it's a it's an interesting place to be as a fan where you're just going back and forth between these two ways of feeling about it. And I don't think that needs to be resolved. I think you know that that complexity is just there with Tiger now.

00:21:41
Speaker 3: So moving on to the next topic, it's it's tangible, gentally related to yours, is it is?

00:21:49
Speaker 2: So this is another moment from the past year.

00:21:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, major championships. I was lucky, really lucky. I mean I this year was incredible. And two of the you know, two of the final rounds, and really the two of the weekends would were just sensational that I was at. I was at the US Open and the Open Championship, and I think like those two Sundays and and really the US Open the Saturday, those two days are going to stick with me forever as like you know, getting to watch up close, you know, those final rounds unfold, you know, whether it be at the Open with Cam and Rory, you know, and and kind of toggling back and forth, you know, on the back line. I was half in the Campsmith group watching him kind of from behind and Rory I would look back, you know, because they was all jammed up, and it was able to watch both groups and then on on at the At the US Open, it was kind of like this mixture. You had Scottie get off to a hot start and you thought he might be the guy and so and then you dodge back to Xalatorus and and Fitzie on the back line was just it was a show. And I think like it was a really weird year obviously with live and everything, and that's something that probably will stick with me. It will be a year unlike any other. And I'm hoping that, you know, twenty twenty three I think will be a little bit more normal, just because we're more used to the schism in the sport. But those major championships came at moments of like the lead up to the Major was the most heightened live drama, Like that's what was the story and the lead up to these majors, and then once the once the golf started, it became like almost a sanctuary where for four days it was we were out of the live drama and just watching. You know what makes us love the sport of golf, right the highest stakes and watching some of the best players in the world play, you know, Rory and Camsmith and obviously xalators and Fitzpatrick put to get those two were two of the best major players of the year, you know, putting together like, you know, incredible performances. I mean cam Young in the in the Open gets forgotten. That was his back nine was out of this world. Yeah, I'll never forget him. Just like just those T shots he was hitting. That T shot he hit on seventeen was extraordinary, given the firmness, like it's just like those moments unfolding and I mean, like the I'm kind of jumping around here, but the Xalatorus fits the eighteenth hole at Brookline, that was unbelievable. I mean, Xalataurus, he thought was dead in the water after fifteen and sixteen, he hits it, hits it to four feet and nobody was hitting it close on sixteen.

00:24:44
Speaker 1: It's just those majors.

00:24:47
Speaker 3: Were amazing, and I'll never forget those two in particular.

00:24:51
Speaker 2: That's the thing that's going to get forgotten about twenty twenty two because the dominant story was Live versus the PGA two ur obviously, but it was the best set of majors for majors that I can remember. And one big reason for that, well two big reasons for that. One the courses were great. Let's never forget that. Part of the reason that these four majors were so good is that every course was interesting and great, and I.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: Think arguably the best set of major courses in the last probably probably probably without a doubt, the best four major venues as a whole in the last three decades.

00:25:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, Southern Hills, the country Club, the Old Course, and obviously Augusta incredible. And I think that that lesson just isn't I mean, it's been learned a little more. Like we're seeing some better courses come into the major rotation. So I think there's maybe there's.

00:25:51
Speaker 1: It's definitely elevating their courses and the yeah.

00:25:55
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, so so credit where credits due. They've chosen really good courses and it paid off this year and then The other factor that made the major so good is that there was like a consistent cast of characters. Right. There was camp Smith, Scottie Shuffler, Roy McElroy. They were big characters at pretty much every major. Matthew Fitzgerald. Yeah, and Matthew I called him, Matthew Fitzgerald, didn't I Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Northwestern.

00:26:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at that alum. That's alum on alum crime.

00:26:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to graduate school at Northwestern. It's not I'm not really.

00:26:37
Speaker 3: I don't think he could be. You guys are both fake alumps exactly.

00:26:41
Speaker 2: That's right. We both got run out of town. Matthew Fitzpatrick. My apologies. But in any case, the point is like these players were pretty much a factor in at least three of the four majors, right. I haven't tracked their presence at each one of them, but you know, on Sunday on the weekend, at these majors, there were players that you could go back to and say, oh, yeah, that guy was there at the Masters. He was there at the PGA Championship as well, And so there was a sense of kind of coherent drama and storyline across the majors. And that's something right now by the way, that the PGA Tour lacks right because the it just doesn't have that coherence as well.

00:27:26
Speaker 3: How can you possibly have coherence when there's forty five events a year.

00:27:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, forty five events, and you don't know which events the best players are going to show up at. You know, the best players are going to show up at the Majors. This year, there were this past year there were you know, four or five players who were really, really in good form for the Majors and that made the experience so much better.

00:27:48
Speaker 3: So is on your list elevated events? One of the things you're looking.

00:27:52
Speaker 2: For is one of the things I'm looking forward to. So we've each done two memories that this No, actually I haven't done my second memory. Maybe we should each just do because this is starting to Yeah, so I'll do my second one and then we can move on to what we're looking forward to. But I'm trying to choose my second one. I think I'll go with this. It's a little bit like your Presidio experience, where you went into a round with low expectations and your experience just completely exceeded those expectations. For me, it had more to do with the golf course I was playing. So the course that I played this past summer with my dad and then we were paired with somebody was Forest Hill's golf course in sort of. It's west of Portland Ways, and I live east of Portland, and so it was about an hour drive a little more than an hour drive to get out there. I've been meaning to get out and see this course. I've heard from some reliable sources that it's very good, and it was designed by Billy Bell senior and junior. It was a Billy Bell It was a Bell collaboration from the early fifties. And you know, while I heard that the course was worth seeing, what's that f and p FNP Bell squared? And So while I had heard that this course was was quite good was worth seeing, I didn't really have any expectations around it being great, right because I had played a lot of Bell courses in California growing up, especially f Bell courses, the Sun those Ones Range and quote course. Yeah, and this was sort of a nepotism course, right because it was the two Bells. It was post war. This was not Billie Bell Senior of the nineteen twenties and thirties. Who was doing you know, legitimately great courses. He and his son kind of, you know, for a while after the war did a lot of golf course projects and not all of them were great, and so didn't quite know what to expect affordable public golf course right basically out in farmland. There's really no houses around it. It's just out on a piece of farmland. And the clubhouse is kind of this kind of fifties sixties mod clubhouse probably hasn't been refurbished since it was originally built, really charming, and the golf course was just fantastic, like, extremely good piece of land, extremely good routing. There are definitely some issues out there, but the trees are cleared enough right, the corridors are nice and wide. I think they need to do some work on their greens. Those have shrunk over time. A lot of them are kind of circular in shape. The bunkers definitely need some attention. Again, I don't think that the bunkers have been redone since the fifties, and they probably have moved towards more kind of saucer like shapes. But this course was just you know, there's been some benign neglect there, and it just reminded me of how good a golf course could be when simply you had an excellent piece of land with some interesting undulation, and you had a rock solid routing with the greens in the right places, and you sort of left it alone from there, didn't plant too many trees, didn't have too much money to mess it up in the sixties, seventies and eighties, and you know, just what you have is such a delightful course to play.

00:31:44
Speaker 3: All right, what we're looking forward to. You want to go first, or you want me to go first.

00:31:48
Speaker 2: I'll go first, all right. The US Senior Women's Open is going to be at Waverley Country Club, right I just mentioned it. It's the best course in the Portland area, right next to the Willamette River, a Chandler Egan course that was restored slash renovated by Gil Hans a number of years ago before Gil or really while Gill was doing the Rio project, so he was sort of on his way to superstart him at that point. But he did this work at Waverley that was really successful. It's an extremely well presented vintage golf course. The US Senior Women's Open is going to be there in twenty twenty three, so I'm really looking forward to getting out there. It's actually the course that is closest to where I live of pretty much any golf course public or private, and so you know, I'm definitely going to try to you know, I hope i'm home at that point in late August. I guess I'll prioritize being home. But I haven't been to a Senior Women's Open before. This is a relatively new event, right. It kind of started to the Golf Club and a few years ago you went to the one at Chicago, and they've chosen some really good venues. They've been to Pine Needles and now they're coming Toland, which just doesn't get many really great golf tournaments. There's the yearly LPGA tournament, which is really an institution locally. There used to be a corn Ferry Tour event, but we're not getting that anymore. It seems like Live is not coming back to Pumpkin Ridge next year. That was sort of a that was sort of a pump and Dumpy by Live there. But you know, in terms of golf, again, for a city of this size, we don't get a lot and so the US Senior Women's Open at what I think is the best course in the Portland area is going to be really fun to watch, So I'm looking forward to that.

00:33:39
Speaker 3: That's a really fun event. I think the thing that I always will remember, I remember more shots from that event than them most because of the different the trajectory that the ball's coming out and you have such a you know, like you have Laura Davies who's bombing it right, but you also have some other other are women that are playing that are hitting it like two ten, you know, And I think that's the thing that I really appreciated, was seeing the shots and how that interacts with the architecture.

00:34:10
Speaker 2: So that should be really fun at Waverley too. The greens are too fast at Waverley, you know, it's you know, I gotta be you gotta be honest. Here there's some really big tilt in the greens which makes it interesting. But man, there are some greens that are that are on the edge out there, but there's a lot of places where you can kind of bounce things in and use the contours of the green to your advantage, so that that should definitely be a great place to see that kind of golf played.

00:34:37
Speaker 3: So for me, the thing that I'm I'm I'm excited and this can be you know, part ad read here, but like Club TFE has to be really excited. I uh.

00:34:49
Speaker 1: Well, I think that just in general.

00:34:51
Speaker 3: The the early days of of of the Fried Egg, a lot of my writing was architecture golf course based, and in recent years I think it's moved a little bit more mainstream. And one of the things I'm really excited about is that this roots me back into what I enjoy writing the most about. And also you know, so that's that's one of the things that I'm really excited about, is writing more about golf courses and architecture in twenty twenty three, and then also like the associated travel from it. I think one of the things that we can easily see when we started to plan out the year is areas of the country that we need to get to or areas of the world that we need to get to, and we can prioritize a little bit. So you know, some of the places that I'm excited to get to is a back to the UK. I made my first strip over obviously this year, and I can't wait to get back there. I don't know where we're going to go yet or when, but we are going, and I think that is one thing I'm super excited about. But also, like you know, I think some other areas of the country I'm particularly like keen to to get to. We haven't done a ton of stuff in Texas, and I think there is some good golf in Texas. It's just you know, it's kind of a big state and all over the place, and you know, I think that's an area I'm really excited about. And another area that I'm I'm eager to get back to. People probably don't know, but New York City's got great golf.

00:36:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

00:36:27
Speaker 3: And I've seen I saw a lot of New York City golf with the major championships in the late twenty ten's in the area. But I haven't really been back, and I haven't ever done like just like a golf trip to New York City. And I think that's yeah, like I've always always been tagged to a major championship.

00:36:47
Speaker 2: I mean there are separate trips to do, right there's the Long Island trip, there's the North of New York City.

00:36:54
Speaker 1: Trip west Chester.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's the New Jersey kind of around New York City exploration as well. There's so much stuff that it's it's kind of intimidating.

00:37:04
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.

00:37:05
Speaker 3: So that's something we not to. You know, we haven't announced our calendar yet, but we've got to. We've got back to back, We've got events in the same week in the in the in the met area and uh and I think that will be a time where I can I can get out there.

00:37:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would really like to get out there too. We also have to go to Arizona at some point.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: I think didn't talk about it. One of my pleasant surprises of the year was Scottsdale National. I had no clue what to expect with that golf course. The other the other course. That place is awesome. I mean, it's obviously very few people are.

00:37:41
Speaker 1: Ever going to see it.

00:37:42
Speaker 3: It's you know, it's a it's got a little bit of a funky culture with Bob Parsons own owning it and like just but like that play that golf course. If you're just talking about the golf course, that golf course is extraordinarily good. So that's that's something I'm any places in particular, you're excited to go to Well.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: So that was actually one of the looking forward to's that I had written down. I'm looking forward to exploring some golf in my region now, not my locality, right. I've seen a lot of kind of Portland, Oregon area golf. I've seen the courses in town, but the trips that I've done outside of you know, Portland have generally been to other places entirely, right. I've gone to Nebraska in the past year. I went to the East Coast in the past year. I haven't done an awful lot of trips to like Washington State or you know, to eastern Oregon or eastern Washington. And there's some really interesting golf, right So, I've been to Sylvie's Valley Ranch before in eastern Oregon. I need to write about it. I haven't really written about it, but that's a very interesting course and resort out there. But I need to go see Gamble Sands. I'd really like to go see Wine Valley in Walla Walla, Washington. These are courses that are a little bit hard to get to in terms of driving, but they are in my region. And now that we're doing this work with Club TFE, there's definitely a reason for me to take those trips right that. The thing that's been kind of preventing me from going out there is that when I'm home, i'm home. I'm with my kids and that is the priority. And I'm also doing the work that we do from home. A lot of the work that we do is just on our computers. We're writing, we're following the tours, we're following architecture, and we can do that from a home base. But now that we have this kind of requirement in Club TF to review courses, to profile courses, to go see new places, and a place to put our thoughts about those experiences, I'm certainly going to get out to more courses in the Pacific Northwest region, make some of these drives, do some of these of two three day trips, and I'm looking forward to that because I think there's some cool stuff that people don't often see.

00:40:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an area of the country that I want to get to as well. Personally, I just want to go to Seattle and Vancouver because I just want to go to those towns, so I have to.

00:40:20
Speaker 2: Get out there too. Yeah, Victoria Golf Club would be a great one to go see. And then some courses, some Stanley Thompson stuff around Vancouver would be incredible to see.

00:40:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my other exciting thing that I'm excited for just excited. I'm super amped up for LACC for the US Open. I am like, I have reservations and I think, like where I just like really don't understand the fairway narrowing.

00:40:55
Speaker 1: I just I'm sure we'll talk about this more.

00:40:58
Speaker 2: But like on eight, eighteen is the one I've seen that it's like, what's going on there. It's just like a big patch of rough between those holes that shouldn't be there.

00:41:08
Speaker 3: Fourteen is another egregious one, and I just I don't get I'm super excited because LACC is going to be a golf course that's so dramatically different than your typical US Open course, right, And That's what I'm excited about.

00:41:26
Speaker 1: And score should not be even like winning score shouldn't even be.

00:41:31
Speaker 3: In the discourse of this tournament because anybody that's played out there has seen the golf course understand that if you're golfing your ball, you can go get it out there. You can score out at LACC. But when it gets hard is when you're a little off, and that to me is like what championship golf should be is if if you there should be a go get it element, like okay, if you're playing great, you can go get it right. And to me, l ACC embodies that more so than most courses where you know there are preferred lines. The corridors are pretty wide off the tea. You're never on a tee feeling claustrophobic. You you feel the pressure to get it into places. And it's obviously going to be very firm because it's it's California in June. There's not going to be rain that you have to contend with. There might be some marine layer, although it's pretty far in from the coast there. But the thing to me is like it's just so counterintuitive, like we're going to this wildly unique venue, like so unique, so cool, but we're going to put our like stamp of narrow on this and we're going to homogenize this place by narrowing it in spots and it's just silly to me. So the eighteenth hole, for example, is one that just it. It's one of the cooler greens on the golf course. You kind of have this back right low area that's like a bowl, you have a higher left area, and you had traditionally a eighty yard wide fairway seventy yard wide, I don't know exactly the yardage, but now it's like a twenty yard fairway, twenty five yard fairway and the whole left side, which if you take on this bunker, you can hit it over the bunker, shorten the hole. But from there, like you're not it's not a good spot for half the pins, you know, half the pins you're you've got a bad angle. The tilt of the green is running away if the pin's on the left. But then on the right, it's like a glorious spot to hit into that back right bowl. And they just have kind of like now you have to hit it up the right side. And and to me it's just like what are what are we doing another? You know, they narrowed down the sixteenth hole. It's just like, what why are we going to these places? This is a great this is one of the greatest restorations and last you know, three decades. This is one of the restorations that has been like the gold standard for restorations going forward, Like this is a restoration people strive for and and we're coming in two non golf architects are coming in with or John Bodenhammer and I don't know who's replaced Jason Gore, but we've got people that come in that aren't architects. They're saying, we know better for championship golf. Why can't we just let the golf course be the golf course? And this is the place, Like, no matter what, you're gonna narrow five fairways, it's gonna have a minimal impact on scoring. We're talking like maybe what what are we gonna say half a shot around? Is that really worth it in the long run? Like, why don't you just let the golf course be the golf course. That's the unique thing about your tournament is that you go to a different golf course every year. Why are we making the golf courses the same when this place is just by far you know, along with I would say, along with like Chambers Bay, these are the two most unique golf course or is that the US Open has.

00:45:01
Speaker 1: Been to in the last twenty years.

00:45:04
Speaker 2: So you're not looking forward to this, I'm looking forward to You're dreading this.

00:45:08
Speaker 1: No, I'm not dreading it.

00:45:09
Speaker 3: I just's I have these I have what I'm looking forward to. Like I said, I think these things are gonna have minimal impact on scoring.

00:45:19
Speaker 1: It's just a bummer that they feel the even need.

00:45:22
Speaker 3: And this is like, this is just they care about scores if you wouldn't do this otherwise. For example, there's no mo line changes for the women's Open at Pebble Beach. You know when the men were at Pebble Beach there were significant mo line.

00:45:38
Speaker 2: They do it every time at Pebble Beach at US Open. You can see it on the satellite, a historical imagery. It moves in and then Pebble Beach moves it back out, and I hope that LACC moves it back out. We've been to courses before you and I where the USDA has come in and adjusted the mowing lines and the club has not gone back. The course has not gone back to the previous mulling lines. I think that they will at LACC. That's the indication that I've heard. But yeah, I mean, you're completely right that part of what makes these courses unique and great is the width, right. Part of what made that restoration at LACC great and distinctive was that the dimensions of the corridors and the greens were restored, and so to take that back is clearly taking a step back and clearly going against what was, by wide consensus one of the best and most kind of like important restoration projects in the past couple of decades.

00:46:43
Speaker 3: And I bring up the pebble thing because that's a perfect example. If you're doing it for the men but not the women, it's very clear why you're doing it.

00:46:52
Speaker 1: It's all score based.

00:46:53
Speaker 3: So you can't sit there and say you're not worried about scoring. We don't want to let people shoot whatever they shoot.

00:47:01
Speaker 1: And then narrow the fairways.

00:47:02
Speaker 3: You can't do that because if you're not worried about for the women, if you're not doing it like, there's no basis. If you're not doing it for the women and you did it for the men, there's zero basis for your your argument if that's the case, because in a way, you would be able to easily make the case that the women are who you should be narrowing fhaaraways for, not the men. I don't think you should, and I don't think you should narrow it for anybody. I want to be that to be clear. But if you are gonna narrow fairways for one of one of the men or women.

00:47:35
Speaker 2: The dispersion pattern of the women, would you make.

00:47:37
Speaker 1: The case that the women would be who you'd narrow fairaways for.

00:47:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, everything that the US Open has done since the Robert Trent Jones era has proven that they care deeply about the scores. They would have done everything differently if they didn't care about scoring, And so that just doesn't hold water. And there was an experience, a period of experimentation for a while with the US Open with Mike Davis at the Helm where they weren't disregarding scoring. They were just trying to suppress scoring in a different way through the firmness of the greens and through kind of different kinds of pin positions, And they were trying to find a different way to do it while keeping the corridors that courses like Shinnecock Hills and Aaron Hills wide. But they got a lot of criticism for that, and clearly they have gone back to kind of a formula that existed before they have it really dialed in. We saw it at the Country Club. Things were pretty predictable there in terms of the scoring conditions. And I think that they're trying to pull off the same thing at LACC. Now. The thing is that LACC is a very different course from the country Club, and I'm not sure that they're going to be able to control scoring in the same way that they did.

00:48:52
Speaker 1: I just don't.

00:48:53
Speaker 3: I don't foresee a way that this US Open isn't going to get into the double digits to par.

00:49:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the general point here is that part of what makes golf great, part of what makes this game different from pretty much any other, is that the venues are so different from each other. That's something that pretty much all of us love about golf.

00:49:16
Speaker 3: You know what sucked last year watching Cam Smith shoot thirty one on the back nine to win the Open. If that golf course, I mean, if they have done some stuff to bet, but if that golf course, just you know, if you had shot thirty five to win the Open, that would have been more interesting.

00:49:34
Speaker 1: No said nobody. Nobody said. Nobody would ever say that.

00:49:37
Speaker 2: Some people were complaining about how how the old course was had been outmoded, and there were some you know that there are some concerns about how how far the ball is flying. And insofar as the complaints were about that they were legitimate. But if you watched that tournament last year and thought that the old course is completely irrelevant and that the Open should never or go back there because the course has time has passed it by, I'm not sure what you were watching, because it was really exciting, right.

00:50:08
Speaker 1: Well, the same would go for Southern Hills.

00:50:11
Speaker 3: You know that playoff stunk between JT and Zalaturus because JT went birdie birdie parr. You know, it was too easy him playing sixteen, seventeen and eighteen, and if the fairways were fifteen, were twenty yards wide, it would have been better.

00:50:27
Speaker 2: No people were complaining about Southern Hills too. That's the thing is that there are people.

00:50:31
Speaker 1: Out there treeless wasteland.

00:50:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the quote of.

00:50:35
Speaker 3: A prominent Golf Channel analyst, treeless wasteland.

00:50:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was a real high point for live from this year. All right, let me end this on another note. So the last thing I'm looking forward to in twenty twenty three I want to try to get better at golf. Oh wow, And that might sound really bland, and it probably is because everybody's almost everybody's trying to get better at golf.

00:51:02
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm trying to get better at golf.

00:51:04
Speaker 2: And that's the thing is that I've been with you for a while where I'm like, I don't care. I'm going to get worse at this game. That's part of getting older and getting busier. And that's okay. That's not why I play. And it's still not why I play, right. I don't play golf to get better at it, because if that were the reason, it would be pretty pathetic, right, because I'm not that good, And so I'm out there to kind of appreciate other things, appreciate the company, appreciate the course, do all those things that we talk about more. But something that I kind of caught the bug of in the past year was really trying to find small ways to get better, right speed training not speed training. And he makes fun of me about this a lot. I joked one time. I joked one time that I was going to do speed training to try to catch up with him and Will and Cameron, and in terms of distance, because those guys out drive me by like thirty forty yards. If they that's not.

00:52:05
Speaker 1: True at all, You're like, you're not that, You're not that sure.

00:52:09
Speaker 2: Whatever, it's not gonna be speed training because I'll hurt myself. I know that. But something that I did this past year that I really enjoyed was that I just got a little bit better with my short game. I kind of worked on it more. I went to the driving range a couple of times and didn't go hit balls. I went to the practice screen and kind of hit some chips, and I got better at it, and all of a sudden, by the end of the year, like I felt like I had a pretty good short game. I was hitting some chips really close. I was getting up and down, and I kind of got addicted to that. That was like, this feels really good. I started to realize that it was just like the pursuit of that improvement itself is interesting and absorbing and kind of makes you reflect on other things in your life and other habits you have, and and other ways that you just are in the world. As you're improved at this kind of silly skill of trying to hit the ball close to the hole, you're doing all sorts of things in your mind and your body that are relevant to other areas of your life and make you think about how you live. And so I started to see that a little bit this past year, and something I'm looking forward to is just trying to get a little better at certain aspects of golf and seeing kind of where that leads me. Because it was fun and I think it was useful for me and good for my mental health to kind of be thinking in this way about the golf game. I want to get better at it. I don't need to. I'm not going to beat myself up if I play poorly, because that's inevitable, right. I don't work on it enough in order to expect myself to be perfect. But trying to get better, just that attitude of trying to improve is is it kind of a new thing for me in golf. I've never really thought about it consciously. I've never really pursued it consciously. That's something that I'd like to do in this coming year.

00:54:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:54:00
Speaker 3: I think about my life growing up and how if I, you know, if I had my mentality of now with how I would practice, you know, how much better I would have been growing up. And I think one of the things that happens, I don't know when it is for me. It happened at like age twenty eight, I just like got tired of hitting balls at the range and became like I fell in love with putting and shipping. Yeah, and that's when I saw the sharpest improvement. Like and I'm not saying like when I say sharpest improvement, I'm saying like from like you know, scratch to plus territory where I saw like the and the consistency. But what it was was I fell in love with practicing chipping and putting. Because listen, like to a certain extent, unless you're going to dedicate yourself to a let's just say fifty lessons and like you're not, it's very hard to rework your swing. Your swing's kind of what it is. And like for me, like personally, I feel like I kind of know what I'm gonna do every day, tea to green to certain like I'm relatively consistent. I'm gonna have good days and bad days, and on good days it's gonna be really good, and on bad days it's gonna be like it'll be a little bit of a struggle. But the thing that like you can control, like more so in my opinion, is you can control your your lag putting, your short putting, and your chipping. And if you do those things well, that's what's gonna yield the best consistency. And like, if I was going to invest time in practicing, that's what I would invest time in.

00:55:40
Speaker 1: Practicing. Is like, you know, I used to hit.

00:55:43
Speaker 3: I used to wouldn't leave a golf course until I made twenty straight three footers And that sounds silly, but there's it simulates pressure. It It like you in hit, making twenty straight is difficult, but when you're then in that money match with your buddies and you got the three footer to make par and to win the hole, you all of a sudden don't feel as nervous, like, And I think, like that's the fun thing about practicing is when you can create triggers that like really add pressure and gamify it. And I think that's so easy to do with the short game and putting. Short game and putting is like so easy to make fun, and hitting range balls is hard to make fun.

00:56:26
Speaker 1: It's like you can do.

00:56:27
Speaker 3: You can set up the posts and be like, I'm gonna hit this many fairways.

00:56:30
Speaker 1: But yeah, so.

00:56:31
Speaker 3: Anyways, that's uh, I think it's I'm jealous of your pursuit.

00:56:35
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and I'm not gonna like it's not going to be that ambitious, right, It's going to be little things. But this is sort of it's sort of something I talked about with Bob Collin, who was on the podcast about a month ago Why Golf, where yeah, he wrote the book Why Golf, And one of the big sort of insights from that conversation was that, you know, when people get to be in their thirties and forties, they stop improving stuff. They have fewer realms in their life where they're really working on improving. And so in my case, something that I worked on a lot when I was a teenager and when I was in my twenties was getting better at reading and writing, getting better with language, because that's what I wanted to do with my career, and I was very focused and intentional about improving in those areas well. It's not that I've mastered it now, but I'm in my thirties, my late thirties, and I've stopped kind of being in the mindset of improving at what I do for my job. I do it a lot, but I don't feel like i'm learning it anymore necessarily I'm doing it, and so that part of my life where I'm working on something that I'm not very good at, but that I feel that I could get better at. I'm confident that I could get better at it by devoting myself to a certain process. That that's golf right now. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins. If you're interested in our membership program Club TFE, go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership and find more information and a place to sign up right now. We have started plug TFE. It is going. We have some blog posts, we have some course profiles, and there are a bunch of people in the comment section having a good time. So if that sounds appealing to you, again the Frida egg dot com slash Membership and sign up right Thank you for listening and we'll see you again soon. S