Less than halfway through this podcast, Andy asks the assembled group if this will be the “longest episode ever.” As you could probably imagine, he was right. Per usual, he’s joined by Brendan!, KVV, and PJ as they finally get through the first major of 2025 for the annual Year in Review. KVV, or more accurately known as “K-J Hawk,” starts off the show with a recap of the Valspar Championship. He closes out the Florida Swing with notes from Viktor Hovland’s improbable win in a Sunday duel against Justin Thomas before Andy and Brendan run through the two Texas events preceding the Masters. At the Texas Children’s Houston Open, Dr. Chipinski didn’t make any calls late on Sunday but was able to secure a big win over Gary Woodland, Scottie Scheffler, and Alejandro Tosti. Andy also has the honor of recapping the first-ever TGL Finals during Houston week, which leads to a debate about re-naming the SoFi Dome after Billy Horschel. Brendan is tasked with detailing Brian Harman’s runaway win at the Valero Texas Open, but is also sure to note that the Cleeks were “trying to become the Yankees” and plenty of other LIV news from the tour’s week in Miami. The last two hours of this episode are spent recapping “the tournament of a lifetime,” the 2025 Masters. Andy, Brendan, and Kevin each share the biggest moments and memories from different parts of the week, resulting in a comprehensive recap of Rory McIlroy’s triumphant completion of the career grand slam. Using their on-the-ground insights and usual research findings, the three provide a detailed picture of one of the great moments in golf history. The 2025 Year in Review will return on Monday as the dawn on Don Rea inches closer and closer.
0:00-41:11 – Valspar Championship
41:12-1:18:29 – Texas Children’s Houston Open
1:18:30-1:40:34 – Valero Texas Open
1:40:35-3:42:20 – The Masters
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Greetings and welcome to a Friday edition of the Shotgun Start. It is December 12th. Andy, how we doing, Brendan? I’m doing fantastic. I uh I didn’t see think I’d see the day where, you know, a high school football coach would be called up into action, but it sounds like Phil Rivers has a real chance of playing and that delights my heart. Phil Rivers discourse. Uh I’m glad. Thought he was going to talk about the Michigan situation for his hail to the Victors. Hail to the Valiant. We’re joined again by AJ Hawk uh in Baltimore, Maryland. Uh thank you for joining us for round two. AJ, we hopefully get you to talk. I’m sure you’re delighted at the chaos in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a former actually have a cigar here played a role completely. Love it. Love it. Oh yeah. The moral compasses in Southbend, Indiana, and Ann Arbor, Michigan of college football are a drift right now. a drift and recrimination scandal um and and sort of lost. Just wait until Marcus Freeman coaches the Giants though. Then we’re really gonna have to unpack a lot. I think Kevin Stfansky might coach the Giants. We’ll see. Um go ahead, Andy. What do you say? You know, I heard from you that there’s there was a book a book signing a book event that was uh that was cancelled. They walked it back. Yeah. Yeah. They cancelled the book event because the guy’s on a CF on the CFP committee yeah still in with book we could go I don’t know if they appreciate our stances on on you know their their sort of whiny campaign of the last three days but yeah we’re we’re available to sign Friday golf book is out in you know when we started this podcast we did the 10ear thing everybody go listen to Friday I Andy’s incredible achievement. He’s made it 10 years here. Like really truly remarkable. Uh shotgun start is not nearly that old. Uh it’s old, but not nearly that old. But when we started this podcast, remember there was this clamoring for merch and we said we were going to just do brick and mortar. It’s going to be one day there’ll be a brickandmortar store with some merch. Remember? Well, now by the grace of God and hard work, we have an actual product in brickandmortar Dicks Golf Galaxy stores. The fried egg volume on one. It’s kind of incredible. PJ went out to find him. I did. There’s one golf galaxy on Long Island. Took a drive out today. It’s not close to where I live. So, so made made the trek, pulled up, uh guy there was like, “Yeah, we have three books left.” Took pictures of it for like a half hour and then left it on the shelf. So, three books left. So, there were some purchased already. That’s great. I I’m wondering what the two fellas at Golf Galaxy who I interacted with had to say after they were like, “This guy just took pictures of this book on the shelf for a half hour and then left.” Um, but that’s what we did. You didn’t buy a putter or a head cover or some anything? No. No. Uh, Pete Alonzo jerseys were not on sale yet. So, Okay. Okay. What What time of day was this that you were This was at probably like 4:00ish. 3:45. Did you get any snacks on the way? No, did not get any snacks. No snacks. All right. I I’m I’m a big fan of dicks. I love going to to I should mind my mind my language or Dick Sporting Goods, I should be clear. Um I was there. I was there on Monday. Let’s not How dare our enemies take this out of context? PJ PJ I had a friend that recently played with one of your dad’s best friends and uh and he got some PJ stories but I’m going to save him for a rainy day. I like that. Okay, this is already daunting. I heard a story about a baseball camp. We’ll leave it at that. Where your where your mom got mad at you about something. I think I know the story you’re referring to here. Oh, that’s good. You got some You got some uh arrows in your quiver now, Andy. This is not a good spot for me. I don’t like being in this spot. Blackmail. Um All right. We have a We’re going to get to We’re going to get to your review. We’re doing this peace meal. We’re going to get to Kevin uh Kevin F Hawk here in a minute to finally talk and speak up about the vows part. That was awful. We made you sit through like an hour. I’m like, “Oh god, we got to go.” Um the last episode, we’re going to get through the bastards, I think. We’ll see. We’ll see. Any news? Sunjm rumors to going to the Iron Heads. Sew Kim rumors going to the Iron Heads. The Seiw Kim rumor still seems to be a live one. The Sunj was denounced, denied, and repudiated immediately or or not. It’s short order. Um but yeah, it’s hot stove season, I guess, for Liv. I think the um the oshay diance has ended and and didn’t is not going to be consummated from what I understand. But yeah, they’re poking around. I got a press release that uh he was a big commitment to the AMX. Oh, really? They’re getting puffy with their chest about ash committing going to the American Express. Yeah. Any any do you have any reaction to Sei Woo potentially leaving? Sunj his name being mentioned but but definitely well denied so far. Sanjay honestly would make me a little sadder just cuz I like watching Sanjay more. I’ve never really vibed with seaw I’ve been the only Seawoo defender for years. The players pluggers when every journalist in the press press center was exale like I was triumphantly cheering happy that happy that Seeu won with excellence that week. Was there like a famous free agent signing went to like honestly like the most decrepit store decrepit franchise was like I’m gonna be the guy to turn around the Clippers or I’m going to be the guy that can finally get a so and so on the right path for some amount of because the iron Chris Bryant Chris Bryant’s a big one just toiling away with jeder of back issues in Colorado when Reggie White signed with the Packers it was like a huge like seismic shift in the NFL. It was like why would anyone sign with the Packers? Packers never had signed a free agent in their whole life. What about when uh the Bulls sent Benny the Bull to greet uh to greet I think it was Tracy McGrady or Gran Hill at the He didn’t sign and they got Ron Mercer instead of the Bull didn’t get it done. Imagine sending the mascot like all right there we go. They sent him to the airport to greet I think it was Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady. That’s one of these weird rituals of these college football. And they all do the same thing. Now when you sign the new coach, they get off the private jet and there’s like the cheerleaders, you know, doing the pompom tunnel in the band. The first person they greet is this like big furry animal mascot and they’re like in their coat and tie like here I’m making $10 million a year now. Let me hug this tiger animal, you know, tiger or whatever. Florida gator Al the gator. It’s so ridiculous that the the sort of uh this pompid circumstance. Anyways, Benny the Bull didn’t get it done. Uh yeah, Iron Heads. We’ll see. They’re they’re trying to poke around. They’re a disaster. They’re just so so bad. Embarrassing. Kevin uh just wandering in the wilderness. Um let’s get to your review. Should we jump in? Anybody have any other news? Any other news? Okay. Uh by the time this gets released, who knows what will happen? Maybe a third Michigan coach will be fired. I I think it’s kind of amazing that Ryan Day has outlasted now multiple Michigan. Yeah. When he was like, you know, one foot or, you know, one he was on the chopping block. Kind of amazing. So this is the kind of thing where though if he if Moore was like a better more successful like they would have figured out a way to make this go away. That’s just how Oh yeah. Cause it’s a four cause uh kind of from the from the four cause fairy sprinkled some like all right bye. We’re not on the hook. See you. Uh and he wasn’t good enough to keep to to try and hide it. So, um all right, let’s go to Valpar. The the paint the paint classic. The paint can classic in the Tampa Bay area. Um Kevin, we’re we’re seing the floor to you. Let us know what we need to know about this. It’s time for AJ Hawk to cook. Some people were telling me that I was like the closer who didn’t get brought in. Like I warmed up last time and the game got out of hand and I just got the night off. So, it was great. It was great. Uh yes, Valspar week. Uh just like some minor cleanup. Uh I I did see I listened uh this morning to the where I had to step away and uh and PE brought up the Devil Wears Prada stuff which was delightful. I did just the one other thing I wanted to add to that is that uh when Roy revealed that on Monday in his press afterwards, Gabby Herszig was in such a blender that she forgot her follow-up question which prompted Rory to say, “You’re still thinking about the Devil Wars Prada, aren’t you?” Uh which got a good laugh from the room. Uh Rory did a little um sort of thing with Johnson Wagner where he kind of went out and then recreated the shot in the 17 at uh like a pretty good We didn’t have audio of this, but a pretty good moment where Roy said he was just trying to hit a nice calm little eight iron calm little nine iron and and John Sagner was like, “Wait, wait, did you say calm calam over and over again?” I didn’t understand the Irish accent. Okay. No. Uh but into Valspar week uh the second trailer for Happy Gilmore drops earlier in this week uh prompting a bunch of questions about uh Will Zour’s acting. So he he does a little thing where he puts on the caddy bib uh and you know the sort of prom Valbar says I was born to play this role. Uh you know just some thirsty uh content there for the the Happy Gilmore people. Forgot about Happy Gilmore. didn’t didn’t stick in my brain like he thought it might. You know, making it its imprint on the cultural zeitgeist. Truly could not tell you the plot. Will Knight is here to defend it. I’m going to defend it for Will. I enjoyed it. I just thought it was like kind of forgettable, but I enjoyed it while I was watching it. It’s fine. Yeah. Yeah, it was a big buildup. Yep. Uh guys, Neil Shipley shows up to Valpar and he has lost a ton of weight since we’ve seen him last. Uh he sort of he does a little interview uh this week where the person’s like, “Oh, what’s your go-to Waffle House order?” And he says, “Yeah, you know, it’s it’s changed actually a lot since Full Swing was filming at Augusta. I’ve since gotten on a nutri nutritionist and we’re cutting out a lot of things in our diet.” Uh but the OG order was an all-star special with a chocolate chip waffle. I would go hash browns, scrambled eggs, usually sausage, and white toast. And I would use the toast, eggs, and sausage. I would cut the sausage in half because you get two and it would kind of make eggs turn into a little sandwich. So, like a little breakfast sandwich and then the chocolate chip waffle. That was my big go-to reason. I That’s a lot. That is a lot. You know, we used to have uh kind of heavy golfers before woke happened and then we’re getting all skinny. So, I’ll say this though, it’s child’s plate compared to our own PJ Clark. He scoffs at this order from Neil Shipley. He put ice cream on top of that whole. I was gonna say, I mean, that order is probably more food than I eat in like a week, but when I have the opportunity to have a waffle with ice cream on it, I will not go deep into it. I he was in college. He if you’re if you’re eating like really responsible in college, you’re I mean versions. I used to hit up the Denny’s pretty hard in Missoula, Montana. That was uh you know, grilled cheese. You get like a grilled cheese for $2 and a hot dog corn dog for $2. So, you get a really good meal for four bucks. Uh was a steal. So, I feel you meal. Uh just a few shotgun start notes here. Um you guys spent the first 12 minutes talking about which actor would play Blocky in the Blocky Biopic. Uh if you ever wonder why Pods occasionally go along, that was a delightful relist. Uh, also in in light of last week’s uh, you know, Andy having a a you know, I guess a confrontation confrontation as Trevor would call it with the uh, the PJ tour people about the AI setup tool. Uh, Andy asked Chad GBT to explain and defend the rough around the 17th hole at Sawrass. forgot about uh which I won’t go into uh in detail, but it was made for a delightful uh bit of listening hearing that the rough was a strategic uh thing that the players had to avoid standing on 17T. We got to do more more playing with AI. Just know how preposterous it can be. Uh live Singapore was watched by 30. Go ahead. I think you should upload your swing to chat GPT and see what it suggests. How would you fix this swing? Listen, that sounds like great content. We’re going to have to figure out uh the best way to go about that. I didn’t Can you Will Chad GBT study an image and like uh give I didn’t know I don’t know enough about it to like what it here. Let me let me tell you a little bit about how I’ve been using it lately. We have a we have a mold problem in my house, okay? And I’ve been sending it pictures and asking about what’s going on in this picture is this mold. And it’s been pretty amazing. It’s like it’s pretty dialed in. I’ll tell you what. Well, you wouldn’t know. You’re none the wiser. It could tell you anything. You’re not a mold expert. It’s probably like I’ll tell you what, it’s it’s worked. It’s worked out pretty well. Okay. It’s given you like good recommendations about what you should do. It doesn’t just say like pack up and move Andy. Like get out of there now. I mean, you’re talking about like remediation and like I don’t know [ __ ] about remediating mold. Yeah. And it’s like these are the the this is what you need to do to remediate mold. So the and I don’t I’m not reading from some like mold mold remediators website who has inherent bias into getting me to do like ridiculous [ __ ] to remediate the mold. Interesting. I did see where Sam Alman said that he could not imagine raising children without Brennon. I don’t is a our resident. Yeah. He said that he just could not he has a newborn and he could not imagine uh basically parenting without being able to ask Chad GBT lots of questions. God, I haven’t asked chat GBT one thing about parenting. Well, that we just opened up a a big box for you there. You could really dig in on this stuff’s stuff’s Yeah, some of it’s pretty weird. If you’re getting Yeah. Anyway, we just about the 17th rough, so I think I’m dubious of its opinion on anything else. I’m out maybe. All right, go ahead. Uh, live Singapore was watched by 34,000 people. Uh, Josh Carpenter continued to tag Porath in these ratings tweets. He did not love brings about all the Yeah. brings about all the the morons who want to fight about live things. I might start doing that is just sending some preposterous like B put some just ridiculous stuff up on Twitter that I know people will go nuts about but tag other people into it so they just get dragged into the mentions as well that I don’t pay attention to. Um 1.5 million people watch the players on Monday. Uh which is pretty darn good for a Monday morning. A couple three holes there. Uh and then Atlanta advanced to face New York uh in the first ever TGL uh championship match. Uh I did have just one sort of fun visual here from uh the semi-final match. Uh Justin Thomas hit sort of a wild shot that looked like it was going into the hazard. It took an absurd kick that defied all physics and gravity and bounced back. And then this was Rory’s reaction uh to it there. Uh PG, you mentioned he’s he’s wearing a little slacket here. Is that what that’s called? He’s got a shet on. He he drive he drives up to to the uh drives over to to the Sofi Dome after winning the players and he’s he’s wearing his shet. He makes he’s got gold boy on the table talking to Matt Barry and Marty and he’s wearing his wearing his shacket on Monday night. Uh, the results of this these matches prompted Andy to refer to Billy Horchel as the Tom Brady of TGL, a true leader of men. Just just wait till the final leader of men. Just just here as an observer. Can’t comment one way or another about Tom Brady. I was going to save this, but I I think I don’t know if you’ll be here when we do the memorial breakdown. Mhm. Is Billy the best available American Rder Cup captain? That’s a great question. It’s a pod for another day, but it’s a good question. Um, best available. Best available. He’s never played in the RDER Cup. I don’t care. You know, there there are a lot of great coaches. Eric Spolster didn’t play in the NBA. It’s true. McVey didn’t play in the NFL. It’s not my rationale for why they can or can’t. It just that’s generally how Don’t you think Billy would potentially walk himself into some verbal gaffs though that that you’re I mean Euros like took one little snippet of what Keegan said and basically made it their whole little mantra. I think Billy would be throwing out a lot of takes and potentially get him in trouble. He would call him all buddy. He was out there the whole soften it with the buddy. He was there all weekend and I mean he was there. He wasn’t just coming to shake some hands in the Ralph Lauren booth. He was walking with all the matches. I think he’s like made for team sports. I agree. I I would love it. Look, they don’t have a lot to lose going to Europe. They’re going to lose. So, they might as well like take a flyer again. Although, that is probably what’s kind of gone wrong with the Americans. They have no plan. So, they just keep throwing Hail Mary balls over and over hoping that one of them will connect. The problem is Billy should play on the team. Yeah, he should. He would have played on this year’s team if he hadn’t gotten hurt. Um, yeah. Could be Tiger. We’ll see. Uh, guys, fresh off a pretty garbage performance at the players, uh, Victor Havland as breaks up with another coach, uh, and announces that he’s working with Grant Weight. Uh, this is just a a very good sort of Havlin quote that sort of setups sets up the week. He says, “I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we discovered something. Not to get super technical, but I’ve been looking for a transition that I’ve always had my whole life and never had to think about it. Now it’s not occurring. It’s because my wrist angles have changed. I always had a bode less left wrist. I’m doing less of that and it affects how I’m torquing the club in the down swing and in transition. Now, we’ve discovered something. As soon as I set into more flexion and off the ball and maintain it there, a lot of the same movements are coming back. It feels super foreign because I haven’t done it in a long time. I’ve seen a lot of good shots on the range. Old video confirms that movement. So, I just need to stay on top of it. Perhaps a little bit of foreshadowing here for the week to come. And as we’ve said many times, nobody’s more fun to listen to to talk about the golf swing than Victor Hoffen at this point. just no filter. Basically, it’s just going to tell you all the weird [ __ ] that he’s he’s working on. Yeah. Uh Scotty does his Zoom presser uh sort of in prep for the Masters. His Masters menu comes out. Uh and he says he’s serving meatballs and ravioli. A little bit of an Easter egg there for you. He does not apparently hold a grudge against ravioli for nearly ending his career earlier this year. How did How did they roll it? Did they did they go horizontally or did they use the stem of the wine glass? That’s a good question. I They probably have a whole team of special ravioli makers at Augusta to uh I think they probably go this way. So anyway, uh everyone noticed that the menu is essentially the same uh as previous but except for he has dropped the tortilla soup uh from the menu after too many players complained about how spicy it was the previous year. A lot of the old god could not handle the tortilla soup. These guys just want like tuna salad on a salty is what the like sp tortilla soup too spicy. They were complaining about rams, right? Uh yes. Not nearly as much. The the honestly the most complaints I ever got was uh VJ’s uh very spicy dinner. That was like where uh people were, you know, like ordering off the main menu, off the like red man because they didn’t want to do Everyone see Rom seemed to got like rave reviews. Uh everyone thought it was delightful. Yeah. So, wonder what Rory’s going with. It’s a good question. That’s a great question. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of catnip. There’ll be content. There will be content. We know that. You know, he owes me carrot cake. Remember that long thread I had about carrot cake and him all those years ago as he said that that was what he was going to serve. We’ll see if that holds up. Oh, okay. Carrot cake’s bomb. Carrot cake is bomb. We might have to. If you’re listening, Rory, better live up to that carrot cake. Carrot cake. What if Roy rolls up outside the masters with a couple slices of carrot cake for us? Come by. Come by the house. You know, it’s true. Jeff Ogle’s come by our house before. Uh Scotty replaces the tortilla soup with Texas chili in case. Uh guys, during this week, uh a little bit of interesting podcast production here. Um PJ produced the podcast from a boat uh where he was definitively not looking like a boat guy, but uh you know he was sailing sailing to watch the Johnny’s uh and so he was working on that uh at the at the game. He apparently also caught the Geico Gecko parachute. Is that correct piece? I did. I did. They were launching Geico geckos during the during the Arkansas Kansas game and I caught one. Thought it was a a good uh good luck sign. That was wrong. the wrongest that anybody has ever been about anything arguably. I just I appreciate that you can you can podcast produce from anywhere. That’s it’s an incredible skill. Listen, that picture looks like when I asked one of my kids like force them you got to smile for this picture and then they like stare at you don’t look comfortable. You’re not a boat boy. I furthest thing from a boat boy. Negative boat. Uh guys, also in this uh Scotty sort of discussion uh you know sort of previewing the Masters, talking about his menu and all that, Scotty gets increasingly uh I think a little bit pointed is the way to describe it about the fracture in golf because people keep asking like when things will come back together and uh and Scotty says a version of what he already said uh at the players last week, but it gets a little bit more pointed. He said they did what they wanted to do. I can’t control their life. I’m not going to sit here and say they should have done something differently. They made their choice. If we want to figure out why the game of golf is back together, go ask those guys. Go wherever they’re playing this week and figure out when the game is going to come back. Uh the go wherever playing this week was I thought was a nice uh little uh not even I don’t think Scotty even has like a a mean bone in his body about that, but he but it’s just the way that it kind of reads on the page uh feels a lot more pointed probably. Yes. Yeah. Uh, in other Yeah. In other woke news, Charlie Hall announces she has quit smoking. Uh, you know, today she says, “I made a decision to stop smoking, and I’m going to do a 10 grand bet if I pick up a cigarette in the next two months. I’m going to owe you 10 grand. I don’t know who this was exactly intended to or, nor do I care that much.” Uh, you guys got a lot of good mileage about Bobby Mack flying from Jacksonville to Singapore uh to compete in some tournament over there. I didn’t follow exact the thread exactly but a lot of discussion about you know how many direct flights there were from Jacksonville to Singapore. Uh but let’s kick off like what the actual which direction would fly in. Yes, that was what uh and I actually you know what I looked this up. They don’t fly over the South Pole. Uh you know the flights do fall over the South Pole but there’s so far away from airports that uh and the the potential for like rescue is like zero if anything goes wrong over the South Pole. And so there’s some flights that go along the edges of Antarctica but not actually like fly over the top like they do over the the north. Educational trying my best. I So are you saying they fly they don’t fly south but they might fly north. They might fly north. Yeah. There’s you know you can like you can land in Reikuic or something or Oslo if things go bad. But there’s nothing down there like out, you know, past like Buenos Aries or like you know Patagonia. Yeah. Uh guys, there’s Chile. Well, there is Chile, but the Masters. We got to get through the Masters. Let’s keep going, guys. Uh in one of the best uh visuals of the year once the tournament starts, Patton Kazire goes full Ray Guy and punts his putter into the sky. I forgot. missing a short par putt. It is one of those things where like the physics of it had to align up exactly perfectly because if you kick the putter like on the end of the putter, the putter is just going to go forward. If you kick the putter, you know, on the the end that’s further away from you, it’s going to kind of go backwards. But he manages to catch the putter right in the sort of like apex point where the the weight is equally distributed. And the putter goes maybe 50 feet in the air. I mean it it is an incredible act of athleticism just to be able to do this. Uh and the the fine people of Scratch are the only ones who are allowed to sort of post this keep it up because everything gets uh sort of DMCA. Uh he’s a three time winner on the PGA tour and a little bit earlier today fellas time. You don’t want to see that auditioning maybe for his NFL like again if you try that would have been the field goal does make this looking for a kicker. No, I I think they’re comfortable with who they have. Keip wins in October 25 for the Auburn Tigers. Sometimes when you don’t have field, you know, you just try to get field position back. You try to just, you know, get your team in a in a spot to rally. Maybe that was what it was. and regroup. Ray Guy, it’s always the go-to punter. It’s kind of fun. It is the go-to punter. I mean, he’s a whole time great punter. What? Name another punter that Roby was good. Yeah, obviously Shane Leeler. Okay, we could just sit here and name punters. Oh, we could name anybody but Pat. That’s He’s the most famous punter and probably the richest brothers. There’s four of them or whatever from coming out of the hills of Tennessee just booting balls. Um, all right. Go ahead. Sorry. This is notable because in these episodes that I relistened to about this week, you guys named like college basketball players like uh for just random college basketball players forever. Y uh guys, Xander uh is is comes out and shoots 70 in the first round, which is notable because he he shot 7781 at the players over the weekend. Uh he’s describing his golf as really bad and pretty gross to be honest at this point. Uh interesting. We s actually have a pretty good week. Will have the low the highest strokes gained approach number of his entire career this week. So he also uh found a little something. Uh JJ Spawn goes off goes on foreplay and talks about hitting it into the water over 17 green in the playoff. Says he was hitting warm-ups 8 iron and it was going 128 yards into the wind. Uh that’s I can relate to that baby. eight irons that go 130. That’s sick. The pin was 130. He said, “I already knew what I was hitting. I didn’t care what Rory was hitting.” But I looked just to gauge the kind of shot that I hit was going to determine whether it was right distance. Rory’s two clubs longer than me. He’s one of the longest guys on tour. And everybody knows that. People are like, “Oh, he hit nine iron. You hit an eight iron.” You know what? You don’t know [ __ ] I’m happy with the swing I put on it. I executed how I wanted to. I was one down. I had to hit a good shot. I wanted to go for the win. It just didn’t work out how I expected it to. Candid. Guess who’s charging up the leaderboard? Victor Havland. What a surprise. Uh, in fact, even a surprise to Havland because he said when they asked him about it, “I hit a lot of bad shots in the proamp.” So, this is a surprise. Uh, early in the week, uh, Jeremy Paul, the lost Paul brother of is high on the leaderboard. Jake’s brother, Jake’s Jake and Logan’s brother, uh, you know, was it the lesser known of the Paul’s. Uh, guys, an interesting situation unfolds uh on the cut line on Friday. This is again why cuts are fun. Uh, Neil Shipley, as previously mentioned, the skinny Neil Shipley is sitting at plus one uh when he’s playing the ninth hole and he drives it into a fairway bunker and has to pitch out. He hits it onto the green and it’s getting pretty dark cuz it’s like 7:46 at this point. He has a chance to get up and down. Uh, and if he does, 12 guys who are sitting at plus two will go home and don’t make the cut. But if he misses, those 12 guys get to play the weekend. Uh, Michael Kim is at the airport and he’s sitting in the rental car line refreshing his phone over and over to see if Shipley will make this putt. Uh and he’s hoping that he decides to putt it either way because if he goes into the morning all these guys will have to sit around at the Valbar and wait to see if they are going and he get Neil Shep misses and so Kim turns around and drives back to his hotel. Turns out after two rounds Victor Hoblin is winning. He is tied for the lead. Uh and he talks about losing his swing and what it is like to go through sort of the mental demons. It sucks. You have an ability that you can almost sometimes take for granted. You just wake up every day and you stand over the ball and you just expect the ball to start in that direction and go that direction and end up somewhere close to the hole and then it starts not to do that and it’s pretty frustrating. You start thinking things you’ve never thought before and this game becomes infinitely more challenging and it’s already challenging. So, it’s really humbling and you know just kind of handling these moments. I mean there’s a lot of reason lessons to be learned there. I still don’t know exactly where the ball’s going to start and curve and all that stuff, but if you’re hitting solid shots, I guess that’s a good start, especially out here when the wind is starting to blow. Guys, this week was a great thing for yet another uh really fun social video moment. Adam Hadwin uh is walking in frustration green after a bad chip, smashes his club down and a sprinkler explodes and water goes everywhere, which I believe AJ has. Uh the really the best part about that is like the the moment of like I’ve [ __ ] this up really bad. Like can what can I do? Can I stand on the sprinkler? Can I get down here and try to [ __ ] it and fix it? Uh this prompts a lot of funny tweets from his wife uh who sort of posts a tweet about it has been zero days since we’ve had any incidents of rage uh at our house which is quite good. Uh Shane Ryan had a very funny tweet. He said getting tackled by the security guard was Adam Hadwin’s okay computer but this is going to be his kid a just speaking of radio hood albums if you’re not familiar it will get less praise but with time we might come to see it as his greater work. That was sweet. uh Jesse, you know, between Mike Kim at the airport and uh Adam Hadwin making hijinks. Good good week for tour tweeters. Adam Hadwin’s life and Michael Kim. Very prolific week. She’s a member of the media. That’s true. She is. Uh Jessica will later point out uh the week that uh the the various tweets about this thing that she’d retweeted got something like you know 5 million impressions or whatever and it added a total of $7 into her verified uh Twitter funds. So if you’re looking uh out there to make big bucks by hustling on Twitter and getting people to do uh views, uh Jessica was kind of like it’s not the best way to uh scrape a dollar together. Uh just randomly guys, I don’t know why this picture was posted during this week, but uh John Gruden posted a picture of he and Craig Stadler hanging out with some Hooters girls. Uh literally don’t even know if this is at the Valpar, but I think he was it. Yep. Yep. Uh so it turns out Havlin wins the Valpar. Uh if you recall, he is uh he’s down like what is it here? He’s down basically like three with five to play and Justin Thomas is leading. It looks like Justin Thomas going to snap his long streak down uh excuse me, three shots with five to play and he rallies with three birdies to pass JT and close with a four under 67 for a one-shot victory. Uh it’s it’s hard to even blame JT though. He did hit a couple bad drives late, but just Victor kind of had one of the shots of the year on 16. Uh hit hit a seven iron from 185 yards to 5t. Uh, and he said, “I hit a lot of disgusting shots out there today, but they also happen to go where I looked. It’s been quite a struggle for the year and a half, so for me to come back and win this tournament is quite incredible. I was not very hopeful with my game leading into the week, which just shows that the game is pretty crazy. I wasn’t even sure I was going to show up, but I’m glad I did.” Uh the Havin later told um Dan Rapaort that his thought on the 16 on the seven iron that he hit on the hardest hole on the copperhead course was I was going to I tried to stall my body, time up my hands and just hope that it goes straight and he hit that to 5T which is awesome. Uh he was asked in the afterwards if you know people thought you know that he kind of got lost in trying to be a perfectionist and if that was a bad thing and and Victor said I just view it as if you put your heart and soul into doing something you might as well do it right. I kind of feel like it’s weird it’s a kind of feels weird that we’re professional athletes and people are wanting to improve and sometimes they look at it like oh he’s a perfectionist. He’s out on the perimeter searching too much. Well he’s said it’s like that’s what we do. We’re here trying to get better and we’re here to try to win tournaments. So, if you’re not trying to get better, what are we doing? Good quote by Victor, I thought there. Y uh in other news, uh Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz holds off Patrick Reed to win the international series in Macau, uh presented by Win, of course, on a closely fought battle of live golf stars. Uh in addition to this, uh three guys qualify for the open championship at Royal Port Rush. uh uh excuse me, I I dropped their names in my uh summary in front of I think it was Korak and uh one of the other ones. Anyway, the the kind of part of the news here is that Sergio Garcia finishes one stroke out. Uh he even though he shot a 65, he missed a three-footer for birdie on the last hole, which would have tied him with Korak uh Kok and for third place and gotten him into the open. Uh so he doesn’t get to get a birth in the open that way. Uh, a few other losses ends from the Valbar. Uh, Billy Hoe hits a left-handed shot uh on the par five here that has everyone raving. He kind of hit it behind a a tree. I remember this hole and he just turned the club over and and took a swing with uh with the toe of the club that is truly better than any wed shot I’ve ever hit in my life. Uh left-handed, hit it to feet and then made the birdie. So good. He’s way left in some trees, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Uh, also during this week, uh, Jordan Spe was up against the grandstand, uh, trying to hit a flop shot, uh, and lets out an all time of [ __ ] Oh, yeah. When, uh, it doesn’t go well. Uh, and a fan captures it. Uh, the the best part of the video, if you go back and find it, is he kind of shouts it at the ground like he was furious at the grass for sort of wronging him somehow. Uh, as I said before, uh, Xander Schoffley gained 11.2 11.276 276 strokes approach the highest total he ever has had in his career on the PGA tour. Uh and the really though the biggest news of the week guys uh comes late late Sunday night uh when everyone is kind of done talking about golf. Uh it is Tiger Woods goes Instagram official uh with his girlfriend Vanessa Trump. Uh love is in the air as it says and life is better with you by my side. We look forward to our journey through life together. At this time, we would appreciate privacy for all those close to our hearts. Weirdly, he never even names her. It doesn’t even say like who Vanessa is. You just have the assumption. I guess she’s so famous she doesn’t need an introduction. Uh, one of my favorite things about this tweet though is uh you have uh Ivanka Trump saying, “I’m so happy for you.” Uh, and then you have Snoop Dogg replying to the thing saying, “Yo, check your DMs, Tiger.” How about Roland Martin, the former Roland Martin also saying, “Yeah, what you if you didn’t Why’d you post it if you wanted to act?” Uh, whatever. I can’t read quite as we asked for privacy. Post a photo. Just keep that [ __ ] to yourself. Roland Martin, former CNN contributor. Uh, love is in the air with you by my side. Like, who’s the poet that came up with that? Uh, yeah. I got to think this. Do you think Tiger posted this himself? Like I you don’t the syntax is so bad and like the the combination of like switching point of views like you know is saying with you by my side talking to Vanessa from what I remember the audience. This dropped at exactly 700 p.m. on Sunday night which means it was scheduled ahead of time. Yes. So it could have been written by Tiger and the social media people just picked the time to do it. But I remember we were about to record and it landed exactly on the zero and we were like, “Oh my god.” And then quickly put it together that it was definitely scheduled well in advance. Uh the Daily Mail had a little more information about this. Uh apparently he called Elen uh shortly before um shortly after they started dating so that some of this stuff would not become as a surprise. The Daily Mail says Tiger and Elen are supportive of each other. Uh but her response at first was like seriously a Trump for real. Uh the Daily Mail says she was more amused than anything but she quickly accepted it. They’re not the type to give each other their blessing per se, but they keep each other in the loop with anyone who is going to spend any amount of time around the kids, you know, in case carpool situations or whatever is necessary there at the uh the Benjamin school. Uh just this is my own commentary here, guys. Like Tiger just loves like ladies of convenience, right? like he married his friend’s nanny. He hooked up with waitresses like the the server at Denny’s. Lindsy Vaughn he met at his charity event. He dated his restaurant manager for many years. And now like you and Vanessa, their kids go to school together. Like love you Tiger, but like it seems like like just kind of whatever the ladies are around. Like that’s the most easy way for Tiger to fall in love. Uh and then lastly, uh just to sort of wrap up the week, this this news breaks right as you guys are wrapping up recording. Noah Khan has replaced Ray Charles as ESPN’s uh Georgia on my mind singer for their Masters coverage. PJ’s a happy boy. I mean, even Peach was a little conflicted about this. Uh yeah, I mean like Peach, no one’s a Vermont guy. Like part of the thing with like, you know, Ray Charles is like from Georgia. Like there was sort of spoke to something deeper about, you know, that the Masters was all of our thing. And even and from my recollection, I don’t think I fought you in March on this, and I’m certainly not fighting you now. I mean, listen, listen, I I would do my No Con impression of him singing George on my mind, but nobody wants that. Maybe that’ll be behind the payw wall. But that wraps up Valbar week. Uh I’m sure I missed some stuff here and there, but uh you know, we need to get on to the M. Congrats to Victor Havlin. Incomprehensible Havlin win almost, so don’t expected that. And gets it done. That was a good event. That was like a quality quality golf shots between JT and JT spoke to the media too. That was a big deal. Oh, that was the one thing you missed because it came right after the Marawa stuff. And he got and he’s like, “It’s really hard to be up here right now.” Yeah. I’m really mad. I’m really upset. But he talks to the media and everybody’s like, “What a great pro. What a great guy.” Oh god. talking to the media even after a disappointing loss. Like the courage everybody dunking on Morau. A true courage courageous act. All right, we’re going to swing out of Florida to Texas. Let’s get going in Texas. All right, we’re done with the Florida swing for now. Uh I think for a year for the year. I don’t think we go back to Florida. We’re not gonna get to the Grant Thornton Invitational in the year and review. I know that much. Uh, so no more Florida golf, but we’re going to go out to Texas. Uh, do a little Texas twostep, come back to the Masters. But first, let’s talk about our friends at Batty. And, and we don’t say the word friends lightly. They are actual friends of the program. Have been, you know, we’re celebrating our 10-year anniversary. Andy is here with Friday is 10 years since the first email went out December 9th of 2020 2015. Um, and they gave us a nice little shout out. Congrats to our friends. We are we go way back with them. We were doing, you know, podcasts with them before the shotgun start existed, right? In in your first original master’s house. What What year was that? We went 18 was it? I didn’t It wasn’t my master’s house. I stayed on the couch of their house. That’s right. That’s right. So, we go I was couch surfing. Surfing in Augusta. I think that was 2017. 17. Might have been Sergio year. I think that might be right. Um, so we go way back with uh Billy, Jack, the whole group at uh Batty. Uh, promo code goes way back. SGS30, you get 30% off. There’s still time, plenty of time to get it shipped and delivered before Christmas. I’m wearing a Proctor hoodie right now. It’s part of their Elijah Craig uh comp or collaboration. It’s got a little like I don’t know cocktail glass, highball glass logo kind of cool on the chest, but that you can peruse the whole section. Get get them. Like the can’t misses are the Liam polo, the Andy hoodie, the everyday vest. But they’ve got a lot of cool new like fall and layering gear that would go well. They got the Eli vest. I think it is the Eli vest. I’ve had my eyes on that, you know. I think it’s named after Eli Manning. I’m not sure. Imagine. I imagine. Could be. Giants. Great. Could be. Um, is he in the Hall of Fame yet? I know that’s going to be a hot subject of debate. We don’t This year, I believe his first year. Uh, so where would Eli rank among Jets QBs first? What? He’d be behind Neamoth, right? Really? What? He’s He’s got two rings. Nameoth has one. Joe Nameoth stats are actually terrible. Like, well, come on. Come on with the stats. This is complet This is so different errors, but it’s such a Z thing to do. It’s like, oh, a lot of interceptions. It’s like different time. Say Bryson’s a better golfer than Jack cuz he hits No, I I never said that. I never said that. I said Joe threw a lot of interceptions, which is a fact. It’s a factual statement. Well, regard this is epidemic with with the Z’s. Regardless of where Eli may fall in the Jets, he’s got two rigs. Nameoth has one. Like that’s the end of the conversation. Hypothetical. Nameth has one with the Jets, though. That’s that is and could possibly be the reason why that’s the only one in franchise history. Some have said not a conspiracy. Did Nameoth get a a Lucas Bureugard comp? Wasn’t he part of that whole essay? I mean, Eli doesn’t have that going for him. Uh, but either way, go to batty.com, use the promo code SGS30, whether you get the Eli vest or any other item. Great, great gift option, high quality, and supporting good people. All right, let’s get to let’s get to Houston. Silent H. We’re not in Umble anymore. We’re we’re not in Umble, Texas. We’re in Houston, the Memorial Park, as is the theme with this early year in review. And what I’m blaming the the the slow pace at which we’re going at. We’re not going to Houston. You know where we’re going? We’re going to the Sofi Dome. Oh god. You know, when we started this, we didn’t have Liv like there’s a Liv smores board every week it feels like. And now we have TGL just completely jamming us here in Q1. All right. Go ahead. We’re going to the It was TGL finals. The drive squared off against P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P PJ’s New York uh golf club, the Cinderella story of the TGL. But they ran they ran into the greatest TGL player of all time, Billy Horchel in his arena and and guess what didn’t go well for New York. Uh Billy delivers the moment of TGL to win the hole in two points. Just holds up to throws this punter. Just a man in the arena. Look, he was galloping a horse like two two feet hot step across the green. Amazing. Billy boy throws the putter in the hat. They should just build build build the whole boat out of Billy. There’s nobody else. What else are we gonna do here? I I think it should be Billy Hors Horell Arena presented by South Kai at this point. I mean, he’s got to get a statue at the very least. Put a name up in the I Oh, rumors. Unsubstantiate. Like there might be like a rafter ceremony to start season two. Yes. Yes. Yes. Unsubstanti. Yes. Incredible. I cannot wait to for the rafter ceremony. We’ll see. Unsubstantiated. All right. Um BP, you had a great tweet right after right after um Billy does this. Can’t lay with a dead pan. Billy, well done. After he after he’s done dancing around and chest bumping JT, right, you said it absolutely killed me. just can’t like going Billy, well done. Well done, Billy. As he’s hopping around like a madman. That’s good. Billy’s quotes after were were just sensational. Uh the question, Billy, you said you blacked out, but is there anything you remember that you yelled in that moment? And where does it rank as far as you going crazy on a golf course? Where does that rank in your career? Yeah, I yelled this is my effing house multiple times. I didn’t say effing. So just JT goes they picked up on that. Billy, I think Billy, I just want to make sure hopefully Jeff hit that little delay button a little bit. My effing. It was fun. That moment was awesome. Walking off the green, Ricky goes to me. He’s like, “That was like the ‘ 07 Walker Cup. We played together in forsomes matches. There were a couple moments where I was pretty boisterous. And one of them was on Sunday. I hit a great bunker shot 30 yards away and I was looking up and going out and I came out like a gazelle running down the hill thinking it was going in and yelling and everything. Yeah, I’ve done some crazy. These guys are laughing at it. Listen, blackout moments. I don’t ever plan it. It just sort of happens. I’ll just stop talking now. Um, after uh the live show we did after, are we going live after TGL? This TBD. We’ll see. We’ll see. Just things that like ruin your life at home. TGL Tuesday Night Lives. I deemed him uh I deemed him of the live show after a lock at Beth Page because of his TGL performance. I teased this out just the previous, but I I just think he’d be the best captain. He was a galvanizing force. I was going to say, you want people to rally around a single human being. I think Billy might be the best optional. Um Brenley had a great tweet uh right after this um where during the during it he Marty Smith called it a football crowd tonight at the sofi and then Matt Barry added think Baton Rouge at night. Come on. I’m serious. Come on. That’s just not remotely accurate. Okay. I think like we’re we’re far enough we’re we’re far enough removed that we forget just how awful the commentary was for Baton Rouge at night. Just how preposterous they almost made Arlo White seem grounded. Can you believe that? Yeah. Like it was over the top ridiculously bad. Um I have great news. 17 days from this very moment, we’ll be back. We’re far enough removed, but we’re coming all the way back around now. We are. Um, yeah, it’s just around the corner. Is Marty Smith back presumably. Presumably. Yeah, I think that’s Did they add a second voice for Matt Barry or does he have to sit there and I think they were I don’t know deliberating different different combos. You know, it feels like Kirk Herbstreet could get in there. Oh god. You know, just needs another job. The dog the dog all over the turf. Do we want that? Really? Who’ be the worst case scenario for the second chair? Ah, I mean I’ve got one just go ahead TJ Khaled. TJ available I think. Not be a good option. No. No. All right. Um, there’s this story that goes nuts. You know, everybody breaks it as breaking news. Nance announces he’ll retire from calling the Masters in 2036, which would be his 51st tournament uh calling the Masters and the 100th edition of the Masters and everybody’s like, “Breaking news, breaking news.” And Josh Josh Carpenter reveals it’s a 10-year-old story. It was like a Guy Yokum interview or something from like 10 years ago. Ridiculous. Um, we covered this in the last one, but the Sticks Boy is, you know, the George on the Vine. Yeah. BP, you said they got a guy from New England wearing chunky flannels making sad boy music to sink Georgia on the Mine for the Masters. People like that worked up. Um, big surprise here. Ratings, ratings for the Valar. NBC draws a 2.187, this is Josh Carper, 2.187 million viewers for uh Victor Hava’s win at the Valpar on Sunday. No streaming included in that number, which is up 15% from 1.886 last year. Do you know who the champion of the Val before was? Yeah. I think I know doesn’t write Liv announces uh the duels that will uh live amazing Grant Horvette’s channel um it’s a combination of a creator with a pro. Most of the creators are the creators that that were playing just a couple weeks earlier in the creator classic. Yep. This would eventually lead to West Bryan’s uh suspension from the PJ tour for playing in DS. Um, and just a side note that the DS absolutely uh, you know, this comes a couple weeks later, the Duel absolutely puts the Creator Classic in a body bag. Just zips it up. Yeah. I Yeah. It’s it’s like they were shocked that live like you know dained to do this and of course like yeah what do you have you have full authority over you know creator classic style tournaments and then you know I had no better format a better delivery method and uh just frankly a way better product in terms of what they did and uh the PJ tour though they’re going to keep trotting out the same tired old model. We’ll see. We’ll see. Who knows? 26 could be a different year. Maybe there’s something else. I wonder what Brian Rolap thinks of the Creator Classic. That’s a fair That’s an interesting question. We’ll have to get him on the record. First question. I mean, could golf do one of these like uh Monsters Inc. broadcasts like they had going for Monday Night Football? My My buddy’s kids were watching it. Yes. Yes. That’s all my son. It was his birthday Monday and that’s what he wanted to do was stay up late and watch the end of M&F, the Monsters, Inc. broadcast. Yeah. Like I, you know, I’m not going to tell the tour how to do their business, but doing something like that would be so much more worth the time than doing these creator classics. I mean, they’re pretty heavy lifts from what I understand, you know, and but like you kind of know when the golf is going to be. you you know the schedule for the whole year, you know, Saturday or Friday or whatever, you know, barring some weather catastrophe, you can do it. So, anyways, uh Rory goes on a scouting trip to Augusta National. Uh he says, “Nice to play a practice round without people around. Just makes him feel a little bit more comfortable. Lets him get in later.” He I think his caddyy bib number uh Harry’s caddyy bib number was 87. uh effectively the last person to show up at Augusta National. Uh but he goes on the scouting trip ahead of time, kind of scouts it out. Uh Tony Feno on Memorial Park. I don’t think there’s a better prep golf course leading up to the Masters than Memorial Park. It’s a big golf course and I think they try and set it up uh where it’s similar to Augusta National, maybe to have guys play. Um, Brooksie Brookxie has an interview with Joe Pampoliano. Joe Pomp Pompiano. Whatever. Brook says Liv is behind where it should be, where we should be. Oh, yeah. Look, we’re four years in. It’s just getting its feet wet and figuring out what direction they want to go. Obviously, there’s been a lot of change and hires of people within Liv and now having Scott. I think Scott’s a great guy and he can lead Liv to where it needs to be but and where I think it should be because we are behind to be quite fair behind where we should be from bringing sponsors in to hitting the international market and the US market. The new TV deal definitely helps, but we need to take that and expand it and grow it. We’re not on uh on Fox every time we play, so we’ve still got room to grow. Uh but we’ve got the right people in charge now, and I’m excited to see where it goes. Not a huge ring ringing. I’ll spoil it like the next week that I have. I think it’s live Miami. And he and he and Bryson are up there together and like they ask like for the whole the whole Deas and I think Ortiz or Neman in between them like where what do you think of live now four years in? And Bryson’s like, “Oh, it’s just momentum is incredible.” Like just getting better every year. We got it all figured out. It’s going well. And then Bryce and Brook’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, we’ve made some progress, but I think we’re behind.” You’d like to see it be better. Just like the contrast of like back to back of Bryson going boom boom boom boom and Brooks essentially what you just said, repeating it. I don’t know. We’re behind. Um, in other live news, one of our great long-standing podcast bits comes to fruition. Do you remember what this is, Brandon? No. What are we talking about here? What are we going Garcia officially becomes an honorary Texan this week by the state of Texas legislature. How did you find this? I totally forgot. Big text. Big text is official years. I believe that the big text nickname came on this podcast due to scripting for the Masters one year for Sergio. And you said something along the lines of I mean, did he did because he lives in Texas, do we have to dress him like a Texan? Big T. He’s big text. Yeah. So, you know, playing the long game, I think that’s probably seven, six, seven years later. Yeah. Honorary Texan. He becomes an honorary Texan. It’s just great. Great father for this podcast. That was good. Um, it’s DF week. All right. Jakara Jakara. Oh my god. you tweet White Lotus season 4 should be at DLS. This was I assume when White Lotus was on this I found out Oh, you know why it was? Because you know the Duke meme when the dad is contemplating, you know, ending it all in his Duke shirt and like Duke ends loses in the final four. That’s like all through Twitter and my research that meme. Duke got very mad. I forgot White Lotus was hot this time of year. Duke was so mad. They were not happy about him wearing a Duke shirt. I’m not happy. Okay. God, what a tough year for Duke. They they win the ACC, don’t get a bid. All right. All right. And they’re they don’t they don’t, you know, win the win the NCAA basketball tournament with Cooper Flag. All their games got preempted by TGL on ESPN properties. And uh and then they they have, you know, a guy putting a Gund’s head on on on the hit TV show and wearing a big boisterous Duke shirt. Well, he’s a crook. You know, accused of being a crook. So maybe 2025 was the year that society teamed up against Duke. Duke and Notre Dame. If anything, if recent, you know, news is to be believe. Yeah, Notre Dame thinks they had it bad. Let’s show him Duke’s year. Uh, Chakara wins at DLF. Uh, shoots five under. Next closest is minus two. I didn’t I didn’t go all the way. I apologize. This is me issuing an apology. You had a great voice memo that you played on the shotgun start from a caddy. Okay. Talking about how preposterous DLF was. Okay. As a golf course. Yeah. Yeah. Um, excuse me. Sorry, I didn’t I didn’t go that far. We don’t need to go. It’s It’s Houston Memorial Week. We don’t have to go. Didn’t Bryson Was this the week Bryson play? He was He talked about God, I have it. So, maybe it’s unorganized here. No, you’re fine. Um I might have it. He talked about just like how demanding it is. I swear I had it in 17. Yeah. Maybe I Maybe I deleted it somehow. Uh Dave Dave Pel died. That was sad. Let’s get to Houston. Uh Dave Pel’s obviously legendary short game instructor. Yep. Maybe one of the reasons Phil Mickelson went on to win as many majors as he did. Um uh Houston Scotty is leading going into the weekend. It’s kind of like the first time we’re we’re seeing Scotty be Scotty, but he uh he gets he gets taken over. He doesn’t play great on the weekend, which maybe is a harpinger of what’s going to what’s to come at at the Masters. Uh, and who wins but none other than the chef. Chapinsky. Chapinsky gets called during the week. Minwins. He is, you know, he wins by one. He has like a just a a preposterously awful T-shot on 16 into the water that makes it close. Okay. But he’s uh he’s very aware of social media. It’s part of what makes him, you know, Generation Z’s favorite golfer. He’s always looking for the engagement. What does he do on the 72nd hole with his short putt? Uh but he does he he’s got about a one foot putt. That’s right. And he goes up there and he fake aim points. That’s right. That was funny. That was funny. There’s a little showmanship. That was good. And he puts it putts. He makes the one-footer. Obviously, one of the things was that Toasty in the final group. Toasty was in the final group. Toasty and Gary Woodland. I remember Woody Woodland biggest events or biggest showing since his the surgery. Yeah, Woodland shot 62 in the final round. Um it, you know, he had the the brain surgery, birdied 18. and he hit like a ridiculous shot into 18 and uh and comes comes up one short. Um one of the things though, Midwoo, he’s just off the green on 18 over the back. Uh does not chip it. Goes to the putter. Does not call in Trapinsky. Ike did the same on 17. He puted from off the green. They were sitting to honorary degrees for that, you know. They’re say maybe he’s an honorary doctorate like Dr. Munjal. Do they rescend it? Do you think what school of short game do you think Chapinsky or Minwes? The the mayo or the Feels like more of a chef guy. I feel like he would be a chef guy. Feels like more of a chef guy. God, how about that war? We were We were ahead on that. I don’t think it’s a cold war anymore. I think No, it’s hot. It’s hot. We were picking up on the undertones a couple years ago. Now it’s just just blown up. We’re never wrong. Just early here. Never wrong. Um Toasty is in the mix and you tweeted Toasty is an artist trying to operate in a world not ready for him. I mean, God, he’s falling off. Too bad. He should get an exemption into Houston because he is a horse for a course here. just rip rip away. Michael Kim played with him and apparently had a new caddy new one every week. A new one every day about this is great. Michael Kim tweeted after a round. He said that uh his only request of his new caddy was when I ask if you like Driver, tell me you love Driver. That’s Toasty’s request of his new caddy. Great. What a great loop. That’s great. That’s all he got. Basic, straight to the point. That’s what you want as a caddy is just a yes man. Yeah. Yeah. Can’t get blamed if you’re just following orders. Speaking of Michael Kim, this is the last event to get into the top 50. Um, one of the big stories. We haven’t mentioned him because I don’t think he he didn’t win anything uh in in this time, but he played sensational golf week in week out. It was incredible. He played his way this week into the top 50. He was 52 going into the week, ended up 50th uh in the OGR, got into the Masters on the He started the year. So, he started January 152nd in the OGR, played into the top 50 uh without a win. sensational playing. Uh, another footnote as I was looking at at the top 50 bubble. Fascinating. Guess who was 53rd in the rankings did not play his way into the Masters this year? BG, I think. Ben Griffin, you’re right. PJ, those two were like the two that had a chance to play their way in. So, this is preBG taking over golf. I think he played every start essentially just for the Masters. like he played every week. He played all of Florida for sure and got like super hot. You think about So this it’s just like one of those weird things. Ben Griffin. Mhm. Widely considered at this point like kind of fringe world class player has never played a Masters. 2026 will be his first Masters. He will be You know what? I catnip call of the call of the day. Hot hot. Could Ben Griffin become the first rookie, Masters rookie since Fuzzy and the the year we mourned Fuzzy. Fuzzy’s f you know be like how apppropo would it be? You know, Fuzzy’s no longer with the pieces are going to be everyone. There we go. There we go. I mean, they might start asking BG about it this week. You know, there could be an enterprising young journalist that that hears this. And this could go this could go places right now. People are writing it into their notes as reminders. Get BG talking first time at the Masters. That is a story as soon as the year flips. It’s going to be January. It’s gonna be S Sony Open. Actually, it’ll be before Sony Open. People are not going to know what to do January 5th when we have no golf. Kind of sad. It’s going to be Yeah, it is. I’m contemplating taking the week off. Just busting. I don’t know if I want to be alive for what golf media produces that week. So, I’m like the guy on White Lotus. Jesus. Take me somewhere where I have no service. Can’t can’t see the complete dril and [ __ ] that’s produced by golf media. I mean, we talk about scarcity, you know, that’d be dark. We got nothing till midFebruary. Anyways, go ahead. Um, so anyways, Beck Griffin Cup call of the week. That’s going to be that’s going to be all the buzz like top five storyline going into the 26 Masters. Um, Tony Feno, speaking of Tony Feno, we talked about him earlier tw uh you know, the uh the PGA Tour is really gung-ho about not DMCAing stuff and letting people get their takes off. Feno had like the worst three putt of all time. It was from three feet. It was disgust. It was hard to watch and it was really hard to watch. But thankfully, you know, it’s like one of those awful injuries in football. Yeah. Thankfully, you can’t watch it. You can’t find it anywhere because the tour has gone out of its way to scrub it from the internet. So ridiculous. Like Like come on. It’s not like you’re it’s not like you’re invading his privacy personal life or or you know it’s over like what are we talking about? You’re in the field of play. You know what doesn’t happen when a newscaster has just one of those awful bloopers, right? That gets replayed for the rest of the the person’s life. You think boom goes the dynamite guy wants that DMCA? The boom goes the dynamite guy that’s going to follow him around the rest of his life. Tony Fo has made like $50 million playing golf and we can’t just have video footage of his awful three putty. Yeah, that’s too much. You know, I got news for all these soft professional golfers that have their agents request things taken down. It is. That’s where it’s coming from. And ear muffs. That’s what the [ __ ] money’s for. Speaking of golf media, I’m fired up now. You are. This is This is This the most typical golf media thing in the world. I completely forgot about this. Do you know what Rory mentions in his post round on Sunday? Elbow. That’s bothering him. I came into blended into uh the Texas Open week. I did research. He says his elbow is bugging him. He has to get treatment with treatment on it. We talk about how this is going to be the most ridiculous non-story elbow gate. Yeah, elbow gate. I saw Dan Rapaort said that uh said that he thought that Rory was doing this to throw everybody off his scent for the Masters. Reaction to the reaction of the elbow comment. Pretty good. This is this is like so quintessential golf media of like blowing up something that he just literally is telling you that his his elbow is a little not not a big I think he even says it’s not a big deal. I just have to get a little treatment on it and it becomes this like cloud. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the punters the gamblers were like a gas like, “Oh, here we go. Take him down. Fade fade fade Rory right now.” Yeah. Became a big thing. I forgot. The thing that’s crazy is he says this about the elbow. Do you know what he shot on the weekend? Yeah, he was in it, right? Yeah. Didn’t he play his way like back in kind of with this bad elbow that everybody’s worried about? He shot 6564 on the weekend. Yeah, he would, I think, if I recall, win the Masters with his elbow. With his one arm. He did win. Did he? I don’t I don’t remember that. just one nittygritty golf nerd thing. And this this would like be telling if you look back, you know, I just I did research for Thursday, Friday of the Masters. Rory drove the [ __ ] out of the ball at the Masters. Drove it great. Yeah. Um he made a tweak midweek here to his driver settings. Loft, right? Yeah. And that tweak led to this great weekend. Okay. And that, you know, you think about these little things that that end up, you know, pushing you over the edge at at at golf tournaments. Why, you know, you want to talk about the live schedule, why it might put players at a disadvantage, not being able to prepare the way you want to prepare. Rory under the gun in tournament settings at, you know, makes a tweak to his equipment, playing a golf course that played, you know, has the same grass types as Augusta National. Mhm. Um for the week. I think this week. Go ahead. I think Feno at the start of the week said this is literally you could not up a better. You said that. Oh, sorry. Sorry. You know, you This is usually my role where I I’m blanking out. Dude, my brain is mush. Whether I read that and researched that overlap or I heard it in the last 10 minutes, my brain’s mush. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Um anyways, I cut it off. I didn’t expect to go that into Great observation. V via li versus lib. Yeah. Uh Kyle Porter with a Masters lead in tweet. Um first time Masters winners by attempt. You know, he basically lists out there’s a bunch of Masters winners that happen in the first 10. No, nobody wins their first Masters really except for Sergio uh outside after the 15th attempt. Okay. And Rory’s making his 17th attempt at the Masters. Interesting. Um, without one. So, you know, just a little, you know, what people were talking about. Um, some fun stuff here as we as we finish out the the week. Not fun. Bernie Longer confirms this is last Masters. Um, one of the big things that big news hits the Champions Tour, Peach, do you remember what the big news revealed this week was? I don’t know if I do actually. Uh PJ, you revealed that Maroon 5 playing at the Dick Open this year. Dick Open. If you want to go support the Dick Open, go buy a book. You also pointed out all the great musical acts that the Dick Open historically gets. Well, they’ve they’ve already announced 2026. It’s Kelsey Ballerini, so they’re way ahead of the game. I don’t know who that is. Country singer. I’m familiar with Marine Five. Not work. Okay. They’re going back to the country. Well, you had me mentioned that there was a lot of country acts that played there. Yeah. What a big match. Dicks up in Champions Tour Golf in Maroon 5. All right. Big week for Jack Nicholas. BP, do you know what happened for Jack Nicholas this week? Um, did he win a lawsuit? The lawsuit stuff. What happened? Yeah. A judge ruled on Wednesday that Jack Nicholas is free to use his own name, image, and likeness after a case brought by the Nicholas Company’s owner, Howard Milstein. So, for those that have been living under a rock, Jack Nicholas sold Nicholas Companies to Howard Milstein of 8 a.m. Golf. Uh, they had a a falling out and a lawsuit. occurred over the ability of Jack for Jack Nicholas to use his own name. We don’t yet know who got the rights to digital the Jack, do we? We’ll need to look into that. That’s a separate lawsuit. I suppose Judge Joel Conn granted Nicholas summary judgement on grounds that the 85year-old never granted exclusive licensing authority. Wow. And this is separate from the damages he he got for like them allegedly in the suit dragging his name through the mud on like Saudi connections and stuff. Yeah. God, good good year in the courtroom for Jack. Um a low point Fitzy obviously had fired Billy Foster a couple weeks ago and just this is I think just an interesting career year arc. Uh, you know, looking at this then Fitzy is just in the wilderness at this point. Billy Foster on getting fired by Matt Fitzpatrick. Um, who he looped for obviously in the 2022 US Open. It’s a results driven business and if things aren’t going well, it’s always nice to have a bit of a change that normally starts with the coach and the caddy or the manager or the psychologist or the wife. That’s the way players work and you just have to accept it for what it is. kind of a great quote from a legend in the game who’s been around the block and seen everything. Sevy, he’d be cing for more kawa by the summer in Port Rush. Remember that little dallions? Yeah. And uh yeah, Westy. I mean, it it just like kind of crazy, you know, the coach, the caddy, the manager, the psychologist, the wife, the wife. The wife all on the chopping block when things aren’t going good for a pro golfer. Uh that does it. All right, let’s let’s jump from Houston. Before Before we move, do we have one more toasty tail that Brendan sent me that I was wondering you were going to bring up? That’s right. Bones and Toasty. Get into it. That’s right. I forgot about on Toasty is tweeting at Brenley like the next day. So, this is a Brenley tweet that has a quote from Bones uh who is criticizing Toasty for playing at his own pace. Uh at times it’s glacially slow, at times it’s normal, but he’s decided on this particular hole to really take his time and he’s holding up play in this last group. He’s in the final threesome with Minule and Gary Woodland. Earlier in the round, Toast is having a discussion with a rule official after it took over 30 minutes for his group to play the eighth hole cuz Minui took a took a drop for a while. So Toast is just in the cauldron. Bones is not happy with him on the telecast. Everybody is tweeting about this. Toasty gets on Twitter and tweets at Brenley the next day that like basically immediately gets deleted if I recall correctly. It was only up for like a couple hours, but this is like peak toasty of the year here. Yeah. I mean, he’s 250 yards behind whoever Woodland or Minw like I remember he was just like kind of walking inching his way along like a snail. They thought it was deliberate. Then he got really mad about Bones’s framing of it. Yes. God, I forgot about that. That was a big thing. All right, let’s hop. I think that’s probably the last toasty mention we’ll get. So, I That might be God, he’s in the final group. All right, let’s bounce from Houston over to San Antonio. Uh, Monday morning cleanup. Justin Bieber facetimes Minw Lee. Justin Bieber, you know, one of the most famous people on planet Earth. Somehow, uh, is buddies with Dr. Chapinsky aka Woozy aka the chef aka Min Woo Lee, the man with many nicknames. Uh we also have Rory flight tracking again. He apparently stops at Augusta on his way back from Houston. So people are all worked up about that. What’s the elbow? Can he play? Is he just walking the grounds with the elbow issue? Is he, you know, what’s going on? He’s scouting Augusta again on the way home from Houston. Tiger Woods tweets an April Fool’s joke. I don’t know why. He’s getting cheeky. This is, you know, just after the love is in the air announcement. He said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but a few weeks after rupturing my left Achilles, the sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, plus the explosive lifts, my doctors and trainers have me ready to play the Masters next week. Can’t wait. See y’all on the course.” Everybody’s like, “Oh, this is definitely fake. Is it a fool’s joke?” It It was not a particularly deceptive one. I think people picked up on it quickly. And he had to do a PS. April fools. My Achilles is still a mess. So, you know, just Tiger hamming it up. me and a kid get kid out there. Uh this was MLB opening day or opening week. The torpedo bat discourse and how it how it uh applied to golf equipment regulation was really hot. Torpedo bat discourse. People freaking out about the Yankees and their torpedo bats and whether it needed to be regulated and the scrutiny applied to it versus lack thereof to golf equipment. This was a hot subject. Uh kind of faded though. I wouldn’t say that persisted into the summer in Major League Baseball. Um, there’s a report, I believe, from Doug Ferguson that a Dallas TGL team may be uh valued at $77 million. And this could be a future TGL. 77 million for a TBD Dallas TGL team. Um, I found this in research. I don’t recall it. Bryson did a break 50 with Matthew Stafford, maybe your MVP of the NFL this, and he had this clip of Stafford throwing a ball to him on a cross and Stafford say put some pep on it, put some juice on it, but wasn’t like full 100%. And it just bounces off. Bounces off Bryson like a good in the NFL. Bouncy ball. It’s pretty good clip. You don’t even need the visuals. The sound effects it bounces up. I mean, that’s amazing. Forgot about this. It’s probably I would say 70%. He does. He does rip it, but it’s not definitely not all the way. PJ’s PJ’s a man that’s seen it up close and personal. Yeah, I’m familiar with Matthew’s. That’s That’s not Caleb’s speed, though. Uh, I mean, I think you need to relax. Not many people have the Caleb Caleb arm down. He’s got a pretty good arm. If if one person on the planet does, I’m very confident it’s Matthew Stafford. Yes. Yes. Uh, I got a question. Uh, who do you think on on tour would have had the best chance of catching that? Do you have someone in mind? I I Well, who was Shane Lowry compared to in TGL? A random Brendon. Wasn’t he wearing an IU jersey? He’s wearing a Jawan jersey. Jawan Jennings. Jawan Jennings jersey. Yeah, it was 15, which is that I remember tweeting like, damn, that’s a real ballnower. Jawan jersey. You remember this? I love I love Jawan. That’s That’s not a That’s Who do you have in mind? I mean, that’s not an easy catch from a honestly. Yeah. And I think this probably goes a bit under talked about. I think Scotty Sheffler, I think he might be the best athlete on tour, basketball player, pitcher. Woodland may be a choice chance. Gary Woodland, you know, Woodland uh feed out. The interesting thing is the Euros like honestly look like with a lot of ball sports, but I I know not soccer, it’s like foreign to them, right? So So even if they’re exceptional athletes, um yeah, Woodland’s not a bad choice. Feno’s decent choice. Um, all right. Elsewhere, we have the Live Miami this week, but we started with the Clicks Golf Club in an article in, I believe it was content machine. Bloomberg that says Minecraft CEO seeks to make lives clicks into a Yankees like brand. We had just a field day with this article. The clicks are a Yankees like brand. Now, far be it for me to quibble with the Minecraft CEO who’s done and knows much more than I will ever, but there’s an article. It was in all the business pubs, here’s a a snippet. The Clicks Golf Club is his first time working on a sports team. This is a Minecraft CEO. He has a specific inspiration in the field for what he envisions with the Click Clicks. In Europe, there are a lot of people running around with New York Yankees caps. They don’t really know it’s a baseball team, but they like the brand and the lifestyle vibe and they have built into that brand. While Clicks is arguably top of the leaderboard in branding in the Liv circuit, is it is it the top brand the Clicks in Liv? The results on the course probably aren’t of the level that Martinson wants to see long term. Really, you think the Yankees aren’t a ubiquitous fashion item on the strength of a cool logo alone. No [ __ ] Winning matters. Clicks golf club’s best finish in four tournaments this year is sixth after finishing eighth overall in the 13 tournament uh 13 tournament 24 season. Still early results are transitory. The only thing that is going to be forever is the brand. We did it with Minecraft and I’m hoping to do it with the clicks now. So the clicks are compared to the Yankees uh ubiquitous branding. Who do you think uh Jack Black plays in the Clicks movie in like 15 years? Blanding. Freddy Ketchup. Freddy ketchup. One and done. Freddy ketchup. The clicks then have a big art exhibit, an art show. Just bonkers stuff. This is a This is Adrien Marunk. Rich Dick Bland. You got to zoom in on Dick Bland’s face. Art show. Yeah. With all these fancymancy uh Miami folks and you’ve got the clicks and Dick Bland’s there like, “How did I get here? What am I doing this art installation in Miami?” and the Clicks just bizarre stuff. Can we at least give the Clicks credit for trying different They’re trying They’re trying to become the luxury brand of Live. They really are. I mean, that’s what Yeah. The the $5,000 weekend bag, the art show in Miami, the Minecraft CEO. They are now they just need some players. Look at Dick Bland. Look at that face. Like, I’m at this art show. What am I doing? All right. Um PJ this week debuses gambling picks for the Masters. The official Masters website leans on PJ to be a a fantasy expert. We said we’ve been a gambling pot all along and the foremost tournament in the uh professional golf has recognized it finally. I will say of the of PJ picking the Packers here. I will say the only media member to correctly pick the winner of the Masters uh on this on this website. I’ll just throw that out there. Picked Rory. Go out on a limb. I was go out on a limb. Pick went way out on a limb as top European Rory B. Um there’s a just a guy hat makes its way onto television via Gary Williams uh wearing a just This was a fun little Oh god. Oh god. Uh this was a good one. Uh Andy, I know you love this moment in time. Live golfs. This is Josh Carpenter. Range Goats Golf Club has a new partnership with Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steak Burgers through the end of 2025 season. Bubba Watson will wear the Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steak Bers logo at the Masters next week. So, Range Goats and Freddy’s Frozen Custard. What a moment. This is uh this is a competitor for Bubba. Does he have an ice cream shop? Do we know? I mean, he had a candy shop, but who knows what’s go what’s still open down there in Pensacola or wherever it is. Panhandle. The the best is I was sitting having a very serious discussion at at the Masters and and that discussion got on to Freddy’s and everybody was talking about where they thought Freddy’s ranked in in fast food in the middle of the discussion. I don’t know that I I’ve ever seen one. Where is it? Like Okay. All right. All right. Uh, Ana, happy boys. Happy happy boys. Look at that. Peter Uli. What am I doing here with this frozen custard cup? Uh, Mega Gan shoots 63 at Anwa and we start, you know, could she be the first drive, chip, and putt competitor to win Anoa. You know, you make a good point about how like doing anything at Champions Retreat is like just it’s like playing a different sport when you have to go to Augusta. Like you you had a long thread about how different it is. It’s kind of ridiculous. like this penal se ball hit ball uh setup and then and then you go to the big chorus Augusta it’s just like a different sport. Um Scott O’Neal claims 2.5 million watch to live Riad. We of course had numbers in the 12,000 range 34,000 range. He says 2.5 million. Yeah. Just even nuclear golf was like do you believe his claim? Um Nick Faldo for reasons unclear just goes nuts on live. They should just go and do their own thing. It’s caused a ruckus. Players have done well to double bloom and prize money. They’re making a fortune. Uh good luck to them. Go do your own thing. It’s not a good sport. It’s bloody tough. I think when you’re on fall a failree tour, you can’t fail. It makes you go soft. I think some of those players have gone soft. So Faldo with some high heat going into the Masters. Westy calls out the DP World Tour. Turns the guns on the DP World Tour. The tour have not treated everyone the same way. They have not treated Ramen Hatton the same way they treated me, PZ, and Stenson and the like. They’ve manipulated the situation. They haven’t paid their fines either, but their appeal appeal dates have been pushed back until after the Ryder Cup. They’ve basically kicked the can down the road for those two players, Rahm Manhattan, and they keep finding them, but they will they will be eligible for the team. You know what? He’s right. He’s right. and they won the RDER Cup and the Olds weren’t given the same treatment despite what they might have contributed to the tour and or RDER Cup. Uh, first bucket moment of the year maybe. Ryan McCormack on the Deep KFT tour tapes his mouth shut because he’s prone to being angry. I knew you this is a total random find. He’s playing the round. It’s on camera. He’s got tape over his mouth because apparently he’s a hotthead. He he self, you know, flagagillate, self admonishes himself and he tapes his mouth. He’s available for the cameras and talk. It’s just kind of a ridiculous moment. Uh CBS announces Frank Nabolo will be replacing Vern Lungquist at the tower at 16. This is of course first year without Vern at the Masters and Nabo gets the call to do 16. Everybody’s very excited and and happy about that. Uh Brooksie, there’s been, you know, a lot of lot of drama around Brooksie and is he coming back and Fred Couple’s radio interview. He said, “I still have a good relationship with everybody there being the tour. There’s a lot of whatifs, but I’d be open to playing certain PGA tour events. Like, I love Phoenix, the Cognizant Classic because it’s my hometown. I’d love to play Dunhill, but if we can’t, that’s okay. I’ve made my decision. I think each year at Liv has gotten better, and that should be the goal, right?” So, he’s like open, wants to maybe come back. He’s got a good relationship with everyone there. Uh this is Texas Open. I don’t know if you remember this. We had a big we big finding on alternate on the alternate list at the Texas Open where the alternates could not get off the list unless the field went from 156 to 144. So the field ended up at like 149. And nobody Zack Blair was number one. We had Hayden Sprinter was like 131st in the world, 78th in the FedEx Cup, but could not get in 156man field because some weird provision. So guys kept WD in, but they needed 12 to WD for any of the alternates to get in. Bizarre, bizarre bylaw there and we were like freaking out about that. Um, and the same happened for Valpar where they’re trying to get more rookie starts, but then you know you can’t get off an alternate list unless it becomes 144man field. Uh Jim Nance, you know, his first year or first couple years without doing the final four of the Masters says, “I was prepared for this to be a new approach to Augusta this year and the plan was to be there on Sunday before. Then all of a sudden, my University of Houston basketball team won a roll and found its way to San Antonio and I have to be there.” That has brought an abrupt change to the current itinerary. Houston, of course, would go all the way to the finals, lose to Florida. Nance is in the crowd like there’s these emotional memes and gifts of Nance like you know like almost the Vince McMahon crying gift of of him just just you know really emotional in the stands. The Masters announces a new concession item tomato pie which I never tried that PJ. Did you try it when you were on Grub? That was Catnip Carnival. You tried it right? Yeah. Not good. I’m also not a tomato guy but it was like it was like a czone without the cheese. Yeah. It was like, “What are we doing here?” You tried everything, right? I did. I did. Everything on the on the menu. Just give me one of everything. I think we next year I think for a preview item, we need a power rank PJ’s power rankings of every every masters. I can do that. You did write a little bit about it in the newsletter. I I when I found that you’re like peach I think the peach ice cream was up there for you and Yeah. Yeah. Where was the brownie? The brownie was good. The brownie was high. Did you really get everything? I think I did. Ridiculous. Who knows? I might even have a beer this year. I didn’t do anything. Oh, wow. That would be nest. Maybe I’ll have the beer this year. Would you go crow’s nest or crow? You tell you tell you’re a crow’s nest guy. I think I get the blue moon. It’s a blue moon. I like the fruit. Yeah, comes with the orange. It’s a fruit podcast. We have uh a week to go for the Masters and Max Homa announces he and Joe Grryer are splitting up, parting ways. This at the moment was earthshattering news. Max, you know, says it wasn’t necessarily my call. I it wasn’t my decision. You know, Joe was like when this starts to like affect our friendship or could possibly like we’re parting ways. So, this was a big shock. Um the PJ tour rejects a letter. This is a big report I think in the Guardian. you and Murray rejected a 1.5 billion reunification offer from Saudi’s PIF. Um, of course, the offer was like, here’s 1.5 billion, we get to stay. Liv still exists. We’re doing team golf. Uh, Yaser is chairman or whatever title. And they’re like, no, no, thank you. This was obviously after the fallout of uh the White House meeting. Um, we get the Masters lineup and Fred Ridley is announced as first in the line order of the press conferences which prompts a bunch of speculation of, oh, why would he start Monday morning or Monday afternoon? What is this all about? Uh, are they something roll back so everybody’s freaking out about that for a week? Uh, we have a great clip. We catch Andrew Novak caddyy conversation with Andrew Novak who is playing well on Valero and uh discussing an aiming strategy in the fairway. This is pretty if I cut it against me. I’d like I like that a lot. You know kind of fat guy out there. That was pretty good. Just aim it at the fat guy out there uh from Andrew. That was a fun moment from the Texas. Um, this week there were concerns about at tour, we got this tip from the global home that there were real concerns about Liv Miami Dural potentially outrating or at least approximating PGA Tour in Texas because it was on Fox. It was at Liv Deral one on Big Fox, I think. Yeah, Valero was kind of a hoham Field. Stinky Stinky Harmon was running away with it. Up four at the, you know, 5 36 mark, three at the 54 mark. So tour was kind of freaking out that Liv Derell on Fox could approach like Texas Open ratings. They got blown out again. It didn’t didn’t matter. Uh Deral did have a great leaderboard. It was awesome. It was like Phil Rahm. Uh Sergio was in the mix. I think uh Bryson was in the mix. Who wins it? Big Leash. Mark Leechman. There’s a great photo of Yaser who just loves stationtostation baseball. Loves batsman. just just embracing uh Mark Leechman over the uh over the railing there. That was a fun one. Um PJ on the Champions Tour at a comprehensive preview of the James Hardy Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational. I think that was just like these random pro football players who retired in a while. Completely. You had a comprehensive preview. Anybody come to mind who was in that? Oh yeah. Taylor, people like that. It was like a bunch of I I remember like Jon Stenerude I think had to withdraw and that became a and Cody Parky got in which we all loved because Cody Parky of course there was a lot going on our our uh our team. Yeah. Yep. He conspired against both of our both recent chances of of having some marginal amount of success in that National Football League. Justin Rose had a world class shank that everybody jumped on at the uh Valero. This was just right off the hle week before he’s in the playoff at the Masters. Uh people went nuts about that. It almost like hits the camera into the into the whatever those mangroves or whatever those trees are they have in Texas. The Kevin N memorial. You know, PJ’s gonna be upset. We’re not going to be able to monetize this on on YouTube because of because you just played that. Too bad. that and the fat guy from Andrew that clip our $3 we’d make from that. Sergio plays well at the rally becomes like a trendy a trendy pick. He’s like he’s doing well this this first quarter. Liv he’s trendy pick. He did not do well at the Masters. Uh at Ana Carla Bernat Escuar wins shoots 68 at Anoa beats Astress Thally 16year-old at the time uh who comes on the way comes on big. She had already played Anoa, but this was a real uh second major coming out. Uh goes nuts at Augusta. Um but uh Escodar the the Spaniard wins. Uh Jose Maria Olaf the ballal is there to kind of give her this big big hug and greeter as she walks off a winner. You know, JMO, sort of the the statesman of of of Mast’s week. Um, we get to Augusta the Sunday before Gary Player is talking to us about like all my friends are dead, giving us a big sermon, smacking himself in the belly. So, we’re getting ready for Masters Week with a a chance encounter with Gary Player off the 18th green. The bees too. We had thick bees. There’s reports of thick bees at Augusta. So, these are just the early Masters Nuggets we’re getting. Uh on the Champions Tour, none other than Anel Cabrera, fresh out of prison, wins the James Hardy Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational, and he’s due back at the Masters in a week. And he trending literally. Sergio is trending, is trending. Um Liv has the DS publication issues. You remember this grand hor? And uh and then it’s like, wait, nope. We’re we’re not on. We got to push it another day. People are freaking out about that. Does great numbers though. Uh but but initial production and publication issues that has people clamoring for duels content. The tour, you know, as Andy alluded to threatens suspension and like people are freaking out the Live Boys, you know, are you going to I just I just throw my hands up. I’m I’m almost done with the player suspension stuff talk. I can’t deal with, you know, Fat Perez potentially being banned from the Creator Classic. It’s just like live suspect that the creator suspected stuff. There’s no time for that. Um, Canada claims Rory is Canadian in a Canadian open tweet with all Canadians. It’s Nick Taylor, Mackenzie Hughes, and then Rory as well in front of the Canada flag. I don’t know if if the Northern Irish were were bothered by this, but that’s incredible. It’s five Canadians and Rory. It’s kind of ridiculous. So, this is our open, too. It’s not like these are some guys playing in it’s our open. Um, so that was funny. And then Josh Carpenter publishes an inside look at Burkeman’s place which goes a lot of people, you know, you don’t see too many inside looks at that. That was catnip as well. And that does your Texas Open. Brian Harmon wins. Oh, Harman won with a 75 on Sunday, I believe. And uh, like the scoring average was like 74. It’s kind of incredible. It It was not very good. uh golf tournament in terms of drama. He led by a lot at the at the midpoint and just hung on. But he shot 75 and the average field average was 74.8. Um and uh yeah, he he’s he gets he’s he’s moving on to the Masters. So that’s your Valero Texas Open week. Should we move on to the first men’s major of the year? The Masters. I think I have uh we’ve got AJ Hawk has re-entered the studio. AJ Hawk is joining. Welcome back, AJ. AJ AJ Hawk fresh of an interview with I won’t spoil it but a uh just a legend of the game that will hopefully become I don’t think your mic’s on AJ Friday platforms here momentarily. Thank you. Is that any better shuffling in? We don’t need to hear AJ. How would you know if AJ Hawk’s mic was on or not? I we this seems like a step down based on who you were just talking to. Absolute idol of SGS. But um hey can I do a uh a unplanned ad read here before we get into the masters which is seems like a you know a highly anticipated moment of your review every year is the masters. Yep. You know we are uh we are procrastinators. That’s why, you know, KV on a on a recent call suggested that we we write notes throughout the year so that we don’t have to do all of this this research at the end of the year for year review. And I said, how dare you? Well, you’re the first person that’s told us that, you know, eight years in. You’re the first person that’s told us that. Um, but felt a little pointed last night. I was lying in bed. I was like, was Andy mad at me or was he just like, no. Is that just Andy? I think I think you’re getting used to uh some of the SGS ways of the world. From what I understand, you’re texting PJ about, well, what time what’s the schedule? It’s like, dude, for seven years, it’s like, all right, you want to go in 5 minutes? Let’s go. Like, we go. Kevin’s just like a moving target. It’s like there are no plans. Yeah. Not good. But anyways, just like this ad read unplanned. Mhm. If you’re looking for a lastminute gift, join the hottest club around. It’s not club TF anymore. It’s Friday Egg Golf Club. There’s a great community there. There’s all kinds of content that comes your way there. You get discounts in the pro shop. You get early access to events and it’s an exorbitant amount of money. You know, it’s $120 a year. So, say please be facitious. All right. Yeah, being facitious. I think the first time I did an ad read, I said $120 a month. Um, funny didn’t get a lot of signups that way. People are like, “Wait, you know, oddly though, places like the Burnerverse, if I char if we charge $120 a month, it might be more popular.” You know, maybe. Wait, are you saying that most people can’t join this? I want to join it. You know, the way of the golf world. We Yeah. No, it’s we bust our ass on the premium content with the pro course course profiles, chocolate drops, uh design notebook, you get 10% extra 10% off standing in in the shop. Um we are about you get, you know, early access to events. You get member only events, exclusive events at some pretty premium places. We really bust our ass to try to make sure this $120 goes a long way. Maybe even against business pets best insights like god you guys are giving away a lot for maybe we should jack up the price. No. Uh, we it’s a it’s a very good membership that we work very hard to deliver value from. And we’re about to hit I I got the fire marshall to up the uh permitted bodies in the hottest club in town. We’re about to hit a a nice important threshold I think for the club. But but fire marshall has expanded uh expanded capacity at the hottest club in town. One of the things great great way to to do it uh we have if you haven’t bought our book which no [ __ ] taking Brendan’s line you have it in hand now legitimately almost out of there are not many left um so there’s only so many of these memberships you can get get the bundle you get the book and you get the membership at a little discount if you do the bumb b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b bundle. Um, there aren’t many uh of the first edition of the fried egg books left and that’s a nice way to do it. You get the membership and you get the book. Um, you know, who knows who knows what, you know, how many first editions will be rolling around in 70 years when Michael Wolf will take, you know, some sort of uh interest in the book just when nobody can get it. Love you, Michael. by the way. Uh, all right. Check out Friday golf club. Google it and sign up. Just like Kurt Signetti. Google it and sign up. Friday Google me. Uh, it supports our work. Honestly, it gets us out there, gets us to places like the master supports our work. Also, hopefully adding a lot of new cool bells and whistles. I think like I think one thing I would uh reiterate about what the way we’re approaching what we’re doing, we have a a staff member who’s great who literally is thinking about how do we improve and iterate and and evolve the digital experience every day. Um so what you see now it it will be a lot better by the end of of next year. uh what you see today is so leaps and bounds better than it was last year. Um so we’re going to our our pledge to kind of members, anybody really listeners, readers, even if you’re not a member, is that we are going to effortless like tirelessly try to improve your digital experience with us. Um and uh the membership’s a big way that we go about, you know, continuing to improve that, continue continuing to deliver better stuff uh in our opinion, you know. Uh but but anyways, thanks to everybody who is a member, thanks to everybody who’s purchased book, thanks to everybody who’s who listens. That’s, you know, we aren’t asking, you know, it it’s but it’s a nice thing if you’re looking for a last minute gift and looking to kind of uh get more from us. Got it. Yep. Reinvest it back in the company. Reinvest it. Um, if you ever feel like you’re not getting your value, I’ll call you personally and do the worst Le Lucas Glover impression. Uh, you know, listen, KBV, I’m glad you’re here. I got I got some good Lucas Glover quotes that I wanted you to do the impression for that I’m I’m gonna put up on the on the screen when we get to my section of the Masters here. That sounds lovely. Is this going to be the longest episode in the history? No, I doubt it. We’ve We’re crossing the Rubicon of three hours on this episode. No way. No way we don’t. Um, okay. Let’s start the week with a bit of SGS minutia. Andy absolutely jams PJ to start. You know, there’s so much stress and anxiety and we’re at the the the Datty House in Augusta and Andy like we’re we’re PJ’s constant anxiety about the Wi-Fi for the show. And we got this text from business business Pete Andy JM PJ this morning. He texted me in a panic that there was no Wi-Fi at the house. After 10 minutes on the phone and research, it turns out Andy just unplugged the router in the master bedroom to put his phone charger in. We’re back online now. This led to a couple hours of of PJ just scrambling around the drain. I cannot reiterate enough my panic waking up and being like, “Oh my god, it’s out. We can’t do anything.” And then two, finding the router like buried upstairs under a bed and trying to figure out how the hell Andy could have possibly even unplugged it. Well, you know, from everything you hear, that router shouldn’t be underneath. No, no, I I’m not disputing that. Not disputing that. I was just looking out for my long-term health and limiting my my cancer risk, and then you told me I needed to keep it plugged in. Think about what I went through that week. Waking up with one eye open all week. Mhm. PJ starts the week with a mild heart attack for a couple hours all around Andy’s brain. Um Monday was supposed to be a total wash out. Just a total just cancel the whole day rain. But then like by 8 a.m. they’re like, “Get to the course. We’re open. Let’s go. Come play.” Uh, and everybody came and they opened the opened by 8 am. Um, that didn’t stop the Daily Mail from suggesting there was a rain delay at some point that Augusta National was all caps evacuated just three days before. Of course, it was just the weather siren, the weather, but the British tabs daily mail evacuated. Uh, says Augusta evacuated. We get an update that Ridley press conference. We’re all What could this be about? Are they roll back? Are they, you know, breaking off from professional? What’s happening? Uh, it’s the patch. So, we have a patch update. Bo Welling and Tom Fosio are doing the patch and Tiger Woods is going to do the loop, a nine uh a nine-hole short course. Um, a nine-hole short course at the patch. So, we got that. That was the big Monday announcement. We sat behind uh Mr. Fazio and Bo and and others in this big press conference and Tiger uh zoomed in or had a had a quick, you know, pre-recorded message for for the assembled press from his, you know, his his seat with his torn Achilles back home. Um I remember this week there was of course Augusta is just this meeting of business titans and and wellto-do and and people who are running various business. ton of anxiety about tariffs and the stock market like tanking at the time and is tailor made gonna be able to make drivers because we can’t get equipment from or anything all these it was just sort of this early in the week sense of of unease all across not all but it pervaded the author but the the property there um never thought the leopards would even my face MercedesBenz that that great automobile company automaker gift Vernhard Langer a special personalized S-Class car uh with the uh Mast’s green paint job logos and Loner’s signature uh just a just a great gesture from a great company to a great champion if I do say so myself. Listen, there’s those driver assist systems in there that probably helped him get to and from the golf course safely. Great, great automobiles. But more importantly, or as importantly, I should say, this was Bernie’s last Masters. He’s confirms it. He talks about how he wore red before Tiger wore red and they, you know, he did the whole the monochromatic rag when he fought his first masters. So, a lot of Bernie content at the start of the week. We do get live viewership numbers from Dural versus Valero when and you know the tour was all anxious about could big Fox take Dell over the top of Valero Hoham Valero. No, it was 1.75 million for Harmon’s win in Valero. 484,000 for Mark Leeman’s Live Miami. So that that did not prove to be much of a matchup. Um we have a Rory Rory talks to the press as as you would imagine uh before the uh Masters. He says elbow is good to go. That elbow gate the elbow anxiety from Houston if you can believe it or not. Elbow’s good. Elbow’s good. Got a little bit of treatment on last week. It’s all good. So fears assuaged immediate immediately. He also talked about Colin Morawa which not talking this persisted into this week. He he spoke about it again. And I’ll get to here in a minute. Well, he’s right. Not that I think he could have worded it a little better. This is Rory Bach column. Look, every other athlete, whether it be NBA, NFL, they’re obligated to speak to you guys after a game. We’re not. Or that’s something the tour looks to put into the rules, but as long as that’s not the case, we have the option to opt out whenever we want. Expect guys to do that from time to time. Rory, of course, would exercise that right this season. Uh well, through through right the PGA and then portions of the US Open, he would he would go down that path. Um, also Rory on getting his heart broken. Uh, they talked about this after the players championship about, you know, you got to be willing to get your heart broken after he just won it. I think he was talking in in the chairs to Brandle there and and and live from and asked about it before the Masters. Um, it’s a self-preservation mechanism. You don’t want it’s just more of a thing where you’re trying not to put 100% of yourself out there because of that. It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone’s life, someone doesn’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to get their heart broken. People, I think instinctually, as human beings, we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt. Well, that’s a conscious decision or subconscious decision. And I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years. But I think once you go through that, once you go through those heartbreaks, as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you’re like, “Yeah, life goes on. It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.” And so this talks about just another perspective as he goes into the Masters. Now, you know, had he not come back on Sunday? I don’t know. I don’t know if he gets up Monday. So, life goes on. That was It’s just heartbreak is part of life. Everyone needs to go through it. No, I think when I’ve become more a little more comfortable in laying out everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times, but uh more Rory perspective as as he goes into, you know, at this point like kind of a a a torture chamber of him, right, for him, right? his 17th year at Augusta National. Uh we learned about trees. I mean, we knew there’d be fewer trees from the hurricane in the off season. Um and we’re trying to figure out how how will it impact it. Rom speaks and says someone, he won’t say who, told him you can now hit a high cut over the cabins left of uh 10 that they lost so many trees left of 10, which of course is usually a big sweeping draw or hook down the hill. You could get a high cut up and over the trees now. There’s so fewer up and over the cabins now. there’s they’ve lost so many trees left of right uh left of of 10. Um that does not prove to be a strategy but but it’s an early chatter. Of course we we learn about trees lost behind 12 and there’s some like anxiety or uncertainty of like how will that impact the winds? Does it come over the trees through the trees? Is it different? The trees behind 15 we lost. Andy remember some real golf nerd stuff about this about how it frames 15 and the depth perception. They lost the trees behind there and it’s more open into 16 behind it. So, there was like a lot of like golf nerd uh getting in the weeds on the tree loss on how that might impact. I think’s better because those trees are down more visually. Yeah. More visually intimidating. There’s no scale um uh you know the like the scale representation and depth perception created by the trees. It’s just like that green looks so much more ominous staring at it. the water. You know, Faw might put him back when he gets tapped to do the redesign. So, you can the worst part of all of it is, you know, I mean, the trees you lose on 12 and you have to see Augusta Country Club now, you know, it’s nonoverseated. The horror the horror of the of the whole situation. That was a big talking point before the week. I mean, all the way down. You see Augusta Country Club now. Oh, you can see it all the way from the top of 10. Yeah. Um, uh, Bryson had amusing social strategy to start the week. It’s just candid, very po, not candid, very posed pictures of himself all around town. He’s just in a rocking chair on his porch. Said, “Enjoying this Tuesday morning in Augusta.” Then there’s one on the circle. It just looks like he’s going to school for the first time. First day of school, just like his hands in his pockets. I found that amusing. Bryson’s social stro strat. There’s grave concern about too many uh big letter adjacent hats like skip it hats were just all over the property. PJ was at his first visit was like very confused about how there were hats that just said pimento in semi big letters not all the way big letters but skip it hats were were very popular. Well in my part of the research when people got got eyes on the egg salad hat that’s when it broke broke contain. Do you have a picture of that? because I have a picture of that in my research if need be. Those are not official hats though. The egg salad ones. The pimentos are, but they like you can’t get an egg salad hat inside the actual master’s merch tent. That’s like bogus discount knockoff the folding table outside the gates or something. Yeah. Okay. Um, Victor Havlin speaks to the press. He talks about UFOs. There’s like a fun digression on UFOs. Like, I don’t know. Do you know anything? Are they really out there? He talks about that. But more importantly, he would um sort of preview our year in 8 mile discourse in golf. He cites eight mile and B rabbit as a source of inspiration when B rabbit goes on to stage how he talks about how he sucks and there’s like this self flagagillation, self-admonishment. And uh he compared him inner demons on the golf course to Eminem’s final rap battle in eight mile where he disses himself to take the pressure off before going into battle. So this between this and Don Rya doing losers by the end of your end of the what a year for eight mile in golf. Um Colin Morawa just keeps talking about the press situation and not talking to the press and now got to say he can’t he it was sort of incoherent this week. I don’t know if it’s coherent before but it’s really he basically challenges the press to come and talk to him after every single round everywhere all the time. There you love this. You were talking with the phone when it this came out. Can I just point out Yeah. There was one enterprising journalist who attempted to do this. You did. You took it personally, right? And that journalist got in trouble for trying to ask Kora questions in different scenarios. Yeah. You weren’t Yeah. Yeah. We still got to work. Yeah. You don’t get your name called on enough there. We’re working on it. Um No, no. I’m saying uh Adam Shoeack later this year. Oh yeah. Oh no. Yeah. Got caught for for trying to ask Morow a question during a prom. I was just about to say Brandon, I’m so proud to have Andy referring to himself as a journalist, but it was just a pivot there. He refuses to embrace that moniker. Um laid down the gauntlet and then a journalist attempted to to to do it and they got popped by the PG. Oh, so maybe the follow me everywhere was a little bit later. That might have been later in the year, but this one was like, you guys don’t ask me after every round. Like, why? You know, I’ve been a top five. I was going to play the whole clip, but I just for the sake of of um Yeah, brevity. We need to keep going. So, there needs to be a balance in Eb and flow. You just can’t you can’t just ask me what I’m playing. Well, well, like the the the whole subject at hand was when he had just lost and like it wasn’t about a win and he he blew them off. And I don’t really like I’ve been a top five player in the world and and people just don’t ask me questions. Come ask me then now. and and you can’t just ask me when I’m playing well. He was kind of contradiction throughout about you gotta ask me when I’m playing well. You didn’t ask me when I was top five player. Well, well, that it just contradicts himself. Um Max said, you know, Joe Grinder essentially told me to get lo or that’s why we split up. Uh Andy has a tussle with the PGA Tour radio uh reach personality uh because he he quoted Se Straka on Augusta National versus your regular PJ tour stop. This is sick. Oh. Uh, what’s his name? We don’t have to go into Yeah, uh, yeah, anytime you can play here competitively, it helps, especially with strategy on this course. So many intricacies here because the greens are so slope that just angles matter a lot more than a regular PGA Tour events. I would say Andes adds, “It’s humorous that PJ Tour limits how much slope architects are able to put in greens, thus limiting how interesting golf can be.” Good news. I’m sure the new AI course setup tool will fix this. So you’re still having a body bag in the AI course. We kind of gave up on the AI course setup tool. I got we could bring that back. This is a good good memory that’s in the that’s in the tool tool chest, you know. Yeah, that was good. I mean, Straa, great stuff about how like angles matter because slope on the green. What was humorous about that back and forth is that, you know, McGinness was telling me that I was making that up. Yeah, that was when I literally had podcasts recorded by an architect, Tom Do talking about how the PGA Tour wouldn’t let him put excess slope in greeds beyond a certain amount. But it must have been that fake news that people are talking about, you know. I just remember trying to I think prep for our Masters preview show. You were just going you’re you’re going to the mattresses with the with the bring out the big guns. John come at me, you know, come at me whenever I I criticize the PGA Tour, but you know what? I don’t get paychecks from the PGA Tour like he does. So, you know, I get it. Um, the Hoygard Twins, I don’t know if there have ever been twins, identical twins. They go to matching outfits and that’s in the Friday Night Golf tweets when mob makes you get different haircuts because, uh, I actually don’t know. I guess Rasmus had been a little of a a mop, a flop, and one of them shaved a little tighter. Uh, so that was funny. I I it’s insane when you think about it. Identical twins, both top 50 players in the world playing the Masters. This is like the evolution of every ’90s boy band. They start out like, you know, with on the right and then they move transition towards the left. So they’re trying to get harder, you know, get a little tighter cut. This is like Timberlake, right? In miniature, right? Uh Bryson plays like almost till dusk on Tuesday night by himself. He was doing skip it with basically no fans around anymore because he was out there so late but still just skipping balls like a madman. Uh Arizona State golf coach Matt Thurman gets kicked off the practice range the tournament practice area on Monday for a violation of the tournament dress code. He was wearing shorts so he saw I think it was Kevin U that just ran out there to say hi to him and he has shorts on. He gets this is big you know it was kind of not much to do about nothing but became a story that people pounced on. Um, let’s go to our newsletter. God, in addition to joining the club, subscribe to the newsletter there. It’s free. I just we my own writing notwithstanding, we kicked ass in the newsletter. It’s just very high quality stuff. Uh, going back, I’m very proud of it. Going back and reading the newsletters throughout the year. Um, you talk about uh this is this was a a I think a Lmana insight, the Sheffler and Shoffley shaped holes in 2025. Remember Sheffller is still kind of scratching it together. Shoffley is nowhere to be found. Largely filled by Roy Moy with two wins and no finish worse than T7 on the year. Data Golf says Mroy is one of the strongest statistical profiles of his entire career. You also have these like live boys playing well and Phil played decent and Dell got like top five. Sergio and Patrick Reed are like could one of those guys come off the shelf. Remember P Reid did an interview with Joseph Amana that was awesome going into the Masters about you know the grain and chipping at Augusta National People using dinner plates for drivers. Really good to get Pere Reed on the record with Lmana. Um I am going to call myself out here on this one. This is what I wrote about Rory in our preview newsletter. Just going to read it quickly. Golf is hard enough. Then there’s golf at Augusta National in the Masters. Then there’s golf at Augusta National and the Masters. Having never won it before despite all indications you should. Then there’s golf at Augusta National Masters. A tournament suited to your best in a generation talent needing a win to complete the career slam. This is all supposed to be a blast, a thrill show. It’s supposed to be fun for the players and us. But you can see how it can get tedious talking about quote this is the year to feel good about Rory Mroy. Like I was done with like this is the year he’s won twice. Like I’ve done that my entire career. It felt like this could be Rory’s year. It is too. He’s the favorite. He should be. He’s been the best golfer in the world this year with wins already. A pebble in the players. He’s on the most consistent performer in majors of the last few years. His golf brain and natural talents have never been more aligned. I could throw the stats at you. It’s hard not to start giggling each time a pundit, including this idiot, tiptoes into a saliloquia about why they’re bullish to win the Masters. Of course they are. The vibes, the stats, the narrative. He is a heavy favorite with Scotty. Remember, he and Scotty had just totally separated themselves, which is kind of rare. Um, it’s the primary story going into this 2025 edition. And yet it provokes giggles and eye rolls because we’ve done this so many damn times. That’s not a critique of Rory nor the prognosticators or the narrative setters, but how many other players in the field do we know about what show they’re watching, Bridgetgerton, or about what book they’re reading, John and Gisham’s The Reckoning? These are the minute details of the Rory Augusta appraisal as we start his 17th Masters. No one is under this examination from the press fans and maybe even himself at this point. Including the guy under this much scrutiny, including the guy making his return fresh out of prison on Helero. Uh this is not scrutiny with the negative lens. It’s just the prominence of Rory his accomplishments in this tournament. Only one player has ever completed the slam at the Masters and that was Jean Sarah back when we didn’t even know if the Masters would be a major. History is littered with generational talents who could not get over the line here. Golf is already hard and then you add in this mental weight to the physical demands of Augusta. You know, the slope, the different, you know, uneven lies. It’s such a precise test of skill before you even get into the brain. It’s an incredibly brilliant, strained test. This is why we love the Masters and what has to make it extra daunting, but fantasizing thinking about a Rory win. But how could he not be the pick this week? Anyways, just whatever happened the next week, that was awesome. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s like I picked him and he won. But I I thought like I was so done with Rory writing about Rory and the Masters and you know obviously that was the year to write about Rory and the Masters. He proved it right four years later. He VP is done with Rory at the Masters at this point. But you know he’s never done with Phil. Phil never will be done. Never be done with Phil. Never. I can’t wait this year to to nudge him and be like, “What do you think about Phil?” He’s Birdie Birdie two. He’s He’s in top 10 in leaderboard. Go out. He grabs He sits there and he thinks about it. He kind of rocks in his chair a little and then he and he starts to shuffle around with his notebook and he puts it in his back pocket and then he’ll look at you and he he’ll say, “I think I’m going to go right, Phil.” Hell yeah. I was on the same boat, Brenon. I was like, I’m not I will not believe it until it happens. Like I I’m tired of predicting it. I’ve got some receipts show Thursday. Yeah, I think I receipts you with every other member of golf media. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, um Andy wrote about Xander. You were so impressed with Xander about how he talked about how he let go of the ropes. Like Xander has so much personality and life now. Talking about how he could let go of the rope sometimes when he’s in contention and then like discovering inner peace and calm. Like he impressed you a lot during the practice days. Justin Thomas, we’re literally about to start the Masters announces that Joe Grinder is cattying for him. So, we have the breakup and then he’s on JT’s bag. It’s just like caddyy caddy uh carousel big um big hot topic is the range tracker and who was because they had the number of balls hit. Max Hom hit six rounds worth of balls on the range in one day. Obviously, Bryson would be your leader. Brenley had a practice ball count going like Bryson had 393 by midday Tuesday. Uh Mike Weir I loved was at 21. Just like goes takes a couple cuts and off and running. So that was fun. Um Brooks plays a practice round with Freddy couples. So there’s all this drama, you know. Uh Phil tweets that Freddy’s a low class jerk move. And then there they are, Brooks and Freddy, you know, hamming it up playing together. Uh John Rom got a little testy about uh whether it’s hard to tell nowadays whether he’s a top 10 player in the world. Uh he also said, “I think last year the state of my game was unfairly judged based on how I played at Augusta in the PGA compared to how I really played throughout the whole year.” While I understand why it’s hard to assess Liv, I don’t think it was the most fair state of my game. So he’s like complaining that he got purely based on on sort of his his major underwhelming. That’s what the money is for, right? It was kind of a little world’s smallest violin. Like, you know, he didn’t have a good major year. That’s how we, you know, judge a lot of these guys. Um PJ goes to Augusta for the first time ever. Uh had a great write up in our Tuesday news. Tuesday was his first time ever. Just fun to read that back. His his appraisal of all the food and uh you would go again. You’d also go to Hooters. You PJ’s first time. Just always fun reading. PJ was a man about town. Yep. Cover covered a lot of ground that week. Yep. Uh Bobby McIntyre has to ask rules officials about the greens reading books. He’s like, “Can I use aim point?” Because they don’t put you can’t use the official greens reading books that they do for the PGA Tour event. Um he uses a point which takes the slope percentages into account. Wanted to confirm that he could make notes in his yardage book about slopes by reading and measuring by using his feet going through his aimoint process. The rules officials were saying this is okay as long as you’re not using any kind of device to measure the slope. So you can kind of prance around and write your notes. And yeah, just think about like these guys being thrown for a loop. I mean, if Augusta does it, why can’t the tour just do this? Like why not take a like Augusta feels like they know what they’re doing maybe a little bit with creating compelling golf. Anyways, it’s just crazy. I have to ask the rules officials. Um Bryson had some funny chat about how tedious it was to find a driver head that works. said he would hold it in his hands and cradle the driver heads in his hands like a little baby. It’s tedious. Talking about the micron level analysis. Um Scott O’Neal is seen on site spending time with Trevor Immelman maybe about OWGr stuff. Uh I met Scott O’Neal at that masters. I introduced myself was there right? He came out under the tree for a little bit. Um uh Augusta shows off renderings of its new locker room facility. Everybody’s worked up about this. The Pampered Fs will have a nice facility next time. Uh, and maybe the worst timing ever to announce something. Uh, the Olympics announces mixed team golf will be approved for Riviera. Like it’s just like an interesting nugget, but nobody’s on that. Um, Fred Ridley has asked the most rambling question ever. A guy just wanted to get off his slow play. I think this is John Hopkins of England. I said, I’m wondering what your reaction was on Sunday afternoon. This is drive, chip, and putt. when you saw the little might of a golfer use the aim point aim and take some time to do it and then having lined up the par putt like that she then went on a tour of the putt calling in it at every compass point on the way around and taking perhaps as much as 2 minutes I’m wondering what your reaction to that was secondly in view of your comments now about pace of play I’m wondering whether in the spirit of the great founder who said so much about etiquette and so on and so forth there’s even the thought that you might lead the way in trying to encourage these young mites these young players to get a bloody move on and a lot of laughter just a siloquy. Ridley says, “Well, I think that example really illustrates the problem.” And unfortunately, he he adds, “They might put timing in for drive, chip, and putt.” Just what the world needs now is we need a play clock for drive, chip, and putt. Yank these kids off the course. Just get out there with a you know, take it to you’re done. So, that’s coming apparently at 26. But a great question, I think, from John’s Hopkins, John Hopkins. Um, that was not a lot from Ridley Presser other than that. But perhaps the catnip moment of the practice rounds is Cameron Smith on the driving range in a blazer, a blue blazer. This goes mega viral nuts. He’s wearing a blazer on Wednesday uh and warming up. Everybody just has a field day with that. And that was your moment of the practice round. You know, Phil paved the way um for this generation of antics with his missing and Maine. Then followed was of the night and now Cam Smith. That’s right. That does it for your practice days going into Augusta. I think I’m throwing it to Andy for tournament tournament days here. All right, we got we’re we’re on the clock here. We got a hard stop. We got to get through this in an hour. We’re We’ve crossed the twohour Rubicon. Let’s see if we can do it. Let’s do it. First round leader Justin Rose shoots a 65 in the course was fiery. It was hard. Uh particularly the 15th green. The new 15th green was causing players fits. So Justin Rose leads by three. Uh he is uh he shoots 65. Cory Connors is Sheffller are behind him at 68. And Levig uh who you know arrived in style we’ll say or Levik. Yeah, he had a nice scripting. That’s right. A bunch of Adidas fancy boy and and he was driving in comfort down the down the down Magnolia Lane, you know, most importantly, uh, Hatton and Bryson are in T5. So, this is the fifth time in his career that he led after 18th holes. Extraordinary feat. I mean, kind of a crazy masters for Justin Rose. Um, Crazy Master’s career and you just kind of hope he gets one. Yep. I forgot about 65. I did. Havland who shoots 71 on Justin Rose’s opening 65. Ridiculous. That’s nuts. Those greens are so firm. I think this is probably a little bit more impressive because out of all the Masters I’ve played, this is probably the firmst it’s been since I’ve played on a Thursday. It’s definitely no joke out there. Uh, as always, the Masters honorary starters just deliver. The press conference is KVB’s favorite pastime going to that. You never know how long it’s going to be. Um, but you know, they had a great prognosis. Brenley, uh, this was a tweet from Brentley. Uh, it’s just kind of like excerpt excerpted from each of their responses of who they believe would win the Masters. They all three pick Rory Mroy. Crazy. Uh Tom Watson, that’s my gut feeling. Gary Player, he has the he has the best swing in golf without question. He’s the fittest golfer. He does a deadlift of 400 lb. Oh my god. That’s why uh Jack Nicholas perhaps the best idea having had lunch with Barroy with uh just last week in Jupiter, Florida. We were talking and I said, “Rory, I know you prepared for Augusta. Tell me how you’re going to play the golf course. We went through it shot for shot and he got done with the round and I didn’t open my mouth and I said, “Well, I wouldn’t change a thing. That’s exactly the way I would play the golf course.” That sounds completely made up. That sounds completely so that sounds just completely made up, but I love it. I love the romance of it. Well, so what he said, you know, following up, which I think is probably if you talk I think one of the things that Rory has become, you you think about just last week at Royal Melbourne who’s who played with him that had the quote like I’ve never seen somebody play so conservative and so controlled and disciplined effectively. This is what Jack said. The discipline to do that is what Rory has lacked in my opinion. He’s got all the shots. He’s got all the game. He certainly is as talented as anybody in the game. And I think if you look at Rory and you look at his maturation as a major championship player, you know, from, you know, 2016, 2017 when he had his kind of period of downturn in the majors to what he is now, the discipline is just at a a absurd level. the intelligence of how to play, you know, even going back to like Oak Hill where I think he made some tactical errors that kept him out of that championship with his probably Came that week. Yeah, the maturation of him in the recent years and the understanding of golf courses and how to play them is at an all-time high. I would say like LACC was really like kind of the Rubicon maybe for that like over it’s like God this even though we missed Cal that was more sort of a missed club on 14 but felt like God this guy’s strategizing. Yeah. Yeah. Uh KVB in this press conference just just lay throws a meatball over the middle for Gary Player. PJ hit it in 1997 when Tiger Woods won the Masters. He revealed that he famously ate at Arby’s every single night. Uh, I was wondering when the last time you had any fast food was. Well, you don’t reach 90 as I do if you eat a bunch of crap. I can tell you that. But that’s your choice. You know, everybody has a choice. I I want to live to 100 because I love people. I love golf. I just love life. I got a young girlfriend of changed my life. What? How about that? At 90 fighting a girlfriend. Tom’s not as old as me, but he’s also found a new one. And it’s my favorite part. I’ll tell you what, guys. You all, one of you, you or your wife are going to die. One of you going to die. One of the spouse is going to die. And it’s not the end of life. And so many people that does happen and they get so disart disheartened that they don’t think they should continue life. The greatest gift bestowed upon a man or woman is life. And so my ambition is to leap lead 100. So I went to India and I met a gerontologist and he gave me 11 things to work on which I adhere to and so I might drop dead tomorrow but I’m giving it a hell of a try. Just incredible. I forgot about Tom Watson. He’s got another new girlfriend. Tom I was looking at Tom there near that and Tom was like, “Oh, Gary.” Unbelievable Gary. Just just an incredible incredible question. Thank you. Thank you. Um Sergio dresses like Ronald McDonald pants, red top, fireball gear. Wow, that really is on the nose. Very close. Incredible. You know, I got to say Sergio has had some all time outfits when when Tiger shipped Tweety Bird off. Yeah. you know, when he dressed all yellow for Sunday. He’s just had some incredible out outfits through the years. Um, you you touched on the hat. This is the hat discourse on the opening round when we got shots like this uh with with egg salad in the background on 16T. This is where, you know, people are like, “What are we doing? What what are we doing with these hats?” God, people suggested that was a doppelganger for me. I didn’t like that. Oh, you had you got you had the short haircut that everybody was I got people commentary about my hat. You got the this be carny haircut. Yeah, butcher got butchered. But well, now it seems like you’re uh you’re reluctant to get the haircut. Oh, I I’m going this week. I just got to find the time. Your view is jamming me. Sometimes it’s hard to find time to get a haircut. I haven’t gotten a haircut since before Rush. Kind of insane. Wow. All right. Also from that champions uh press conference, Jack on Phil still competing at high level. Well, you know, I don’t know what level Phil is competing at. I guess he’s still playing. He’s playing the lift tour. I forgot about he’s playing the lift tour. Is he? I don’t know if he’s playing or not. I don’t know. You never see that anymore. He could be anything. Can we playing? Can we not playing? Who’s Who’s to say? It’s not on TV. I don’t know. All right, let’s get to the golf a little. Uh Fred couple holes out uh from inside 200 yards with a yellow ball and a hybrid. That was a fun moment. That’s funny. Uh Nick Dunlop shoots a 90. Yeah, in the opening round. Just awful round. Feel for him. Uh the story comes out the next day about him hitting drivers in the dark at his Airbnb. Two buck two buckets of balls into the woods. That sounds and he shoots 71 on Friday and it was like the alltime comeback. Still finishes DFL, but it was like a feel-good story. I believe he hit 3-wood uh everywhere. Did not I never related to something more than like panic hitting drivers off the back deck of your thing. You’re on a golf trip, things are not going well. You’re just like, “All right, how can I find this?” Brandon knows the story. So, one day I brought a net to a golf trip. I’ll tell that story someday, but it’s probably the low point of my entire golf life. A net at a resort, famous resort, just hitting balls into a net in the middle of all. Um, of course, maybe the biggest story of the day. It’s not Rory. It’s not not Justin Rose. Do you know what it is? What? Bryson? What? What happened? Uh Bernie, it’s uh Jose Baser who uh the USAM champ decides to take a pee in Race Creek. Um well, I completely forgot that we had those restrooms on the left of the T- box. Oh, okay. Uh 13th T. Yes, correct. And then I’m like, I really need to pay just grilling him. Um didn’t really know where to go. And since JD had an issue around the green, I’m like, okay, I’m just going to sneak here. uh in the river. Probably the people would not see me that much and then they caught for me. Probably one of the uh clubs that I really got today like real loud. So that was that was kind of funny. Can I do it again? There might be any blowback from that at all or I mean obviously they did see you, right? Yeah, they they saw me this song. I mean it was not embarrassing at all for me. So if I had to do it again, I would do it again. Don’t do it again. Oh, the agent got their hooks in him by the next hour, I think. Right. So, of course, you know, before he takes the pee, everybody’s talking about the upside down Sun Sundevil’s hat. Like, what’s going on here? Her who’s who’s the one grilling him. He writes he writes this up and the the headline in Sports Illustrated is amateur urinates in creek near 13th screen in opening round. I mean, technically that’s all true. That’s That is what happened. Amateur urinates when the facts are funnier than the they could possibly convey. Yeah, just strip all context out. That is what happened. kissing in Raith Creek. Um, Jack Milco on Twitter. While I was in the grandstands overlooking the 13th green and 14th T, Joseé Luis Bayister had to take relief, but not for what you think. Immediately after playing his third shot, he sprinted toward the tributary and urinated about 60 yards short of the green and into the creek. I have never seen a golfer do that. What? I still like the thought process of like, oh, it’d be better to piss in the creek than just like over by a tree. Water in the woods. Yeah. Truly, you could go pretty deep into those woods and there’s like a path behind it that only people working the tournament are using. Safe safe place. Of course, as he’s alluded to, there is like that’s one the one place on the course where there’s like a permanent bathroom structure just left of the tea box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so anyways, that was Pate. That was fun. That’ll live in infamy for for a long time among the uh great tales of amateur uh, you know, Augusta. There’ll be, you know, when who was the amateur drink out on on the roof of Augusta National and the Crow’s Nest in the 70s? What was that from? Do you remember that? Shanahan obviously was the amateur. Got kicked out. Uh, Frank I don’t know. I don’t remember who was up on the roof. God, I can’t remember. You think about like how much the tournaments changed. Like it was I think it was in like 78 or 79. I just can’t remember who it was. But like they talked about taking a bunch of beers from from the restaurant, putting them in the crow’s nest and and crawling out the window to drink beer, you know, in between rounds at Augusta on the roof of the roof uh of of the clubhouse. And uh you know, now we’re gonna talk about a guy urinating in the in the race creek. Um Nick Taylor said it uh said had a great thing on Thursday pro post round. If you hang in there mentally mentally as long as you can, hopefully good things happen. But if you start pressing out here, that’s when things start going a little sideways. It’s kind of reminiscent of what Jeffy said on Fred Eggpod once where it’s like the it’s a really simple course to shoot 72. If you if you go out and say I’m just going to make par every hole, but the second you try start trying to make birdies, that’s when you open the door to to bogeies and doubles. Um Rory has it going just he’s flying high. And this kind of the first round was like kind of a microcosm of the week. It’s just so clear he has it in the in the week. And he’s four under going into 15. Pumps it right down the middle. Great drive. Hits it over the green. Just three groups earlier. You know, there was there’s a lot of fodder cuz you know, everybody’s favorite golfer, Patrick Canipped it from over the green. Yeah. Into the into the water. I think I tweeted something like that’s a distressing place to chip from after he chipped where he hits a almost identical spot and you know of course he hasn’t watched Klay chip. Yep. Um and everybody is like uhoh like what’s he going to do with this? Uh I think he caught it a little thin. Mhm. Um and it ends up going in the water. He ends up taking the drop on the other side of the of the creek of the pond which was like people were like whoa what’s he doing to get the wedge that just shows how hard that chip shot was you know rather than replay the chip shot which is you know 10 yards off the green he goes and hits like the most feared wedge shot in golf from the drop area. uh two putts, makes a double, doubles, uh 17. Also, the wheels come off. He shoots 72 and everybody is disheartened. Um you know, Kevin, you’re here. I love you. I’m I’m I’m your tweet. Here’s your tweet after after this. I would love it if Liv stands would hold Rahm to the same standard we hold Rory. This is a shitty back nine for Rory and we’ve seen this movie too many times. I can’t believe you all fell for it again, but at least he was in it for a second. Rahm going, “Am I here? I here again. Stinks.” Um, Dylan, good point. Tweeted, “Man, what a dark scene following that Rory group on the way in. Just hundreds of 30some men riding high and then watching things unravel in slow motion. Horror show.” Well, this was just the start of of that that that emotional roller coaster. That’s true. I think my point about the the live thing just was that ROM the all those people we we’ve always been hard on Rory. Like it’s like so frustrating sometimes when you’re like ah you know it’s fell for it again. But the everyone’s always making excuses for ROM and I was just like you know just let’s hold them to the same if they’re similarly caliber players hold them to the same same standard. But I I fully admit that I I even wrote about this in our week of Rory recently. My doubts were immense. Like I was like, I don’t think this is ever going to happen for this place. Has too many demons for him. Yeah. I mean like NLU pronounced him dead with Randy coming on the on the the the pod to tap dance on his grave. I you know, I’d like to say one podcast said this is not over. He played great and you need to look at, hey, he played he’s got the game right now. He just had a couple things go go go wrong. Um, now he would, you know, everybody was doing the no, you know, I love I love data. I’m, you know, every Oh, big data guy. No, nobody’s ever done this. Like you, you know, statistically, you can’t come back from seven down after the one, you know, one round. Everybody did this. Well, like that’s why we play the [ __ ] game. We could just thing in a computer. So, let’s just stop playing cuz the data says anyways, let’s move on. Uh Lucas Glover, she’s 78. Has some some great I loved uh loved Brenley calling it an efficient press conference. Would you like to ask the questions and I’ll I’ll read the answers here. Uh Lucas, how would you assess the overall conditions? The course was perfect. How would you describe your first round here? Awful. What’s the key to turning that around? Not doing anything I did today. End of press conference. You good? All right, guys. Thanks. Appreciate y’all. Um, one of the most amusing uh, opening rounds is Bernie Longer is playing with uh, long-hitting Noah Kent, USAM runnerup speed demon, promising young player. And you just see the the difference. I wrote in the newsletter about this, but the difference in in styles of play and and Bernie just just puts him in a in a body bag. just just shows the youngster where to play to, where not to play to. You know, Noah Kent just drove it right over the the bunker on the first green. Bernie’s hit Bernie’s pulling out lumber to hit into the first hole and Noah Kent’s flipping a lob wedge. And it’s like nobody in no other sport would these two be matched up and possibly convert our longer win. Well, we’ll see you. Who’s going to who’s going to set the edge against Phil Rivers this weekend? Come for him. You know, it could be amusing. Anyway, um, at what point in the first round, uh, Zack Johnson led? Uh, Cory Connor is in the mix. I get the Canadians riled up early and often this week. I basically just say he has no chance. I forgot about this. I mean, you were just incessant. You were you were unrelenting. There was a Twitter poll like every six hours. Does Cory Connors have any chance? is Cory. He was in like solo third going into Sunday and it was Cory Connor’s contender pretender and you immediately said pretender. He has no chance. There was like a leaderboard that was like the real leader board of the Andy leader board that didn’t include Cory Connor. Cory Connors was never on the Andy leaderboard at any point. The Canadians are already upset about the tariffs as we learned earlier in this thing and you just got to go at them further. I mean, come on. I just want to point out the easiest take to have and a lot of people do this is to be negative and to say this person’s not going to win because in a golf tournament the masters there’s 87 or 88 contestants and only one winner. The easiest take to do is to be like hey he’s not going to win. Yeah, chances are good that you’re right. Yeah. Um, Patrick Reed close out Thursday. Incredible, incredible press conference. Peach, play it. Did I send it to you? I don’t think I have it. Oh, all right. Well, I’m sorry. I’ll I’ll just uh piss poor. God, we’ll get we’ll get I’m going to send it over to you. Send it to me and you get it you get it back. You we’ll come back to this. We can’t miss this one. Okay. Send it to me. Um we’ll get we’ll go to Friday and we’ll come back. So, Friday at Ambassadors. Um, incredible, incredible day. Um, speed uh is is got a hot mic situation. Uh, oh, he says or not hot mic, but he’s on he hits the trees on 18 again right off the Yeah. And he’s and the mic picks up him talking to Greller and he goes, “I’m so frustrated, Matt.” And Kreller just goes, “Well, get over it.” Good job, Michael. We We have P if we want to do P. All right, let’s do P. All right, let’s do P. Putted like a blind man. Just kept leaving them a little short and just when I finally got the ball to hole, didn’t have the right read. So, uh, putted horridly. Not going to win golf tournaments, not going to, you know, putting the way I puted today. You got to give putts a chance. Leaving them short there. There’s just not no need for that. You want to break it. You want to break the putter. That’s what you want to do. You didn’t. No. Should have. So, I mean, I was hitting it fine. Ball striking wasn’t the problem. The flat stick’s on vacation. It needs to kind of show up. Needs to get on a flight and meet me here. That last one was my favorite one. The flat stick’s on vacation. It’s got to get on a flight to meet me here. A little line. Putted like a blind man. Like a blind man. I miss. So, Scotty was like dialed on on Thursday and the you know, I think we do this with Scotty. Scotty is pretty I mean pretty you know the word’s always inevitable and people are quick to be like this is over. I you know it feels like it when he gets in the mix and it felt like it on Thursday. Friday is a little bit more of a challenge and the writing was on the wall that he probably didn’t have it even though he posted a good score and he was right there like he’s right in the mix going into the weekend. Um, he hits it in the bushes on 12 in the back bushes and it not that not there yet. Not there yet, Pete. That’s 18. That’s 18. So, he hits it in the bushes the bushes on 12 and it spits out uh to the back of the green and he chips in. I can I do like a minute long story here? I don’t mean to make this go further. This is right as I am going to meet you guys at the media center. I We don’t have phones. Whatever. You tell me be here at 4:00. I stay an extra 2 minutes to watch Scotty hit this ball into the trees and I go, “Oh my god, finally a bad break for Scotty. It’s over.” I turn around, I leave. By the time I get to you, I go, “Oh my god, did you see that?” You go, “What? That he made a three?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” And I I was like, “He went in the trees.” And you were like, “No, it came back out and spit back out.” And I could not fathom what had happened. So he chips in there on 13. He hits it inside the hazard inside the hazard line and I I believe he chips in there. I think I think so. So he plays this stretch of holes where he’s hit very bad shots, gotten incredible breaks, three underpar. Then on 18, he hits it again into his like bush corner on 18, which he seems he seems to have like the yips on 18t at he does. It’s because he has that like fade is like a little uncomfortable with the trees on the left and he’s worried about it, you know. So he’s in there and he’s like gets pretty pretty bossy about how he deserves a drop. Hit the siren. I mean, he’s under a big Aelia tree, you know, and he’s trying to get a drop from like some cord, and it’s like I I it was like if he had gotten a drop, I think I would have like just been I would have said this tournament’s a farce. Yeah, a farce. A he doesn’t get the drop and he I think he bogeied that hole. Um, so anyways, Rory is the story of the day. He shoots 66 through two rounds at the Masters, he has yet to make a bogey. He shoots a bogey free 66. He pars the first eight holes and it feels like he’s just kind of stuck and it’s and then he just explodes on the back nine. Um, a huge shot, a shot that kind of gets forgotten because of Sunday is a shot on 13 um from the pine straw. God, so good. I love the no bogeies quirk. He had two doubles, but no bogeies. That’s a That’s a good shot. He has gone thermonuclear. Wasn’t this like he thought it was going in, didn’t he think it was going in the creek here or something? So, here’s the quote. So, can you take us through 13th and your kind in your decision for the pine straw and what you were thinking when the ball was sailing through the air? Yeah, I only had I think it was 189 to the front. So, I was I didn’t think I it was really a decision to go for it or not, but it was it was between a four and a five iron. And usually the ball comes out spinnier out of this pine straw. So, I hit four iron. Uh and the follow through definitely I saved it and I was glad that I hit the 4 iron. It co I covered that little corner there. But yeah, when the ball was in the air, I was like, you idiot. What did you do? It’s one of those as well. It’s a pin that uh even if you do hit it in the hazard, it’s a pretty not routine up and down. It’s a little easier. Say where the pin was yesterday in the front. Yeah, I rode my luck a little bit with that second shot, but it was a nice take advantage of it. And it, you know, I think I I remember this is just recall. Uh it was about time that Rory got a got a good break at Augusta National. You’re talking about a guy who’s basically gets gotten just terrible breaks after terrible break. Um, so Garrett had a great tweet uh about about Rory after watching 36 holes of Rory golf at Augusta. It’s woozy sitting on a bench just little did he know 36 this is child’s play by the end of the week. Here’s uh here’s uh you know after 66 put her firmly in the top five in contention. Rory said he was excited about the opportunity ahead for the next two days given the names around him on the leaderboard. We all should be. It was a hell of a of a weekend for golf and narratives at the Masters. Um on him regrouping after the last holes Thursday I had a good conversation with Bob Rotella in the morning mostly around not pushing too hard early trying to get those shots back straight away. And you can sort of see how I played with eight pars and a birdie on the front nine. I just ti tried to stay really, really patient. I feel like that patience was rewarded with a nice little stretch there in the middle of the round. Um, all right, on to others. Brooks makes a quad on 18 to miss the cut. Ooh, sorry, Peach. This is This is another great story. This is This is when like people I I you know, I tell people I went to Nash. I go, “What’s your favorite thing?” Pete and I are in the grand stand on 15. Brooks makes an eagle. I’m out of my mind. He’s in contention. He hits a good shot on 16. I think he’s going to make birdie, but we can’t see it. Whatever. We leave. I go call my friend like 2 hours later. I was like, “Hey, how about BK? Like, where are we?” He’s like, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “Well, I saw him make an eagle on 15. Like, we got to be in it.” And he was like, “Oh no, he quaded to 18 and missed the cut.” I was like, “What? Like, how is that even possible?” That was like I think that’s going to be my all-time favorite Masters memory no matter how many more I go to. It was a disaster. The 18th he it was like an alltime quad, you know, without a penalty stroke. Like very hard to make an eight on that hole for for a pro. Um shortly after a couple groups later, his good lifting pal DJ makes a double there to miss the cut. Will uh just this had to hurt PJ in the newsletter. Following the lead of Jose Luis Bisterair, Kepka soiled himself on the final making a quadruple bogey to miss the cut and make it seven straight majors in which he has not been a factor. Uh Bryson said in a in a post round, somebody asked him about um about the driving range. She said, “I can go through a hundred swing thoughts a week pretty easily.” Forgot about this. And he was quite happy to learn that he had hit more balls on the range than any other player. So excited. He like wanted the green jacket for it. He’s playing phenomenally. Um like the best we’ve ever seen him play at Augusta. And someone is unhappy about his lack of coverage on the television. Guess who it is. I’ll give you each a guess. PJ doesn’t get one. Yeah, I know the answer, but I didn’t remember this at all and I was dying laughing when I saw this. Trump Greg Norman. Who? LeBron. Juggern Jr. No, no, no. Lil Wayne F, baby. The Masters blew it with this lack of coverage on Bryson. They got to stop hating on the live [ __ ] This man is killing it out there and I can’t watch. Hell yeah. Um, this is Garrett on the newsletter. I’m Bryson and he becomes a big story on the weekend. Known for his aggressive game uh game plans at majors, the big golfer has adopted a notably cautious strategy at Augusta National in recent years. Today, he kept his driver on the in the bag on seven of the course’s 14 non-par threes. He laid up from the pine straw on the 15 uh on the 13th hole par five. He even hit iron off the third TE, leaving himself nearly a full wedge to a left pin on the short par4. A tactic parentally poo pooed by spreadsheet wielding course management gurus. At his post round press conference, Dshambo explained why he took his approach. Hitting driver up there, I would have had a 70 yard shot into the wind, which is fine. I wouldn’t have been able to get the right spin on it to get it close. It would have bounced by the flag and gone 15 20 ft by. So, I felt like laying up gave me a better chance to land a soft and spin it next to the hole, which I did. He went on to acknowledge that his thoughts on the third hole had changed over time. I learned from past experience, hitting it up there, having a tight 75 yd shot that I really can’t control. I’d rather have a 1039 iron in for me. And then Garrett signs off on this little thing with avert your eyes, data boys. Amazing. It’s just not, you know, exactly how uh you could play is based off of a a satellite image of a hole. Uh Bernie Langer bogeies 18 to miss the cup by one. Uh it was just incredible watching him play. It was a cool scene. Ridley was there. Um it was a bummer. He he he bogeied 18. Um uh Yaser meets Condisa Rice and Ridley at Augusta per Aiman. And the day ends with the leaderboard. Justin Rose minus 8. Bryson minus 7. Rory minus 6. Cory Connors was on this leaderboard, not on mine at minus 6. Matt Mccardi at minus 5. I don’t think he was on my leaderboard either. Uh Shane Lowry, uh Sheffller and Hatton, all at five. Uh just real quick, last thing before we kick to to KV, who’s on the clock, Shaq newsletter, must readad as always. Um, the old school feeling of this Masters is in sharp contrast to the recent tendency to have only a few players with a shot going into Sunday. Despite the obvious advantages of hitting at least 320 yards, it’s not a coincidence that the more egalitarian blend of hole locations and gradual restoration of landing area width might be bringing back uh playing angles that reward all types of players. This freeing up just a bit more room to attack has meant opportunity for a geyser set to plot their way around even if some of the recent track records suggest a few have no business making it to the weekend. Barring a frequency low score by one of the top four on Saturday will have players from all demos nationalities experience levels in 2025 in the 2025 mix. So, let’s start by addressing their staggering play by a number of washed up former champions, giving this one a distinctly 80s masters vibe. Then, we’ll get a robust collection of quotes, some more merch, and a weekend of for uh and the weekend forcast. Just awesome uh first two days of the Masters. Take it away, Kab. Bringing in the closer for the one of the greatest rounds of all time. We’re on the clock on a 29minute hard stop. Well, we you honestly you guys can just sign off. We may have to go. We’ll see. Let’s get through it. Go ahead. All right. So, uh this doesn’t come out until Sunday, but this happens Friday night. Uh this guy Paul Pearlman, a local uh Augusta resident. He is This is an ESPN story. Paul Pearlman is used to a non-stop party of Masters Week. The 64year-old lifelong resident of Augusta has seen it all. He’s an eclectic artist whose home is more or less a museum on Lake Mstead and is often the center of festivities during Masters Week. He knows his history, particularly when it comes to local lord at Augusta. As an avid golfer, he’s even built a worldass putting green in his backyard, which is with an impressive lighting array. Why am I reading it about some artist who had a a putting green? Well, Bryson Dambo is walking through the neighborhoods of Augusta late at night on Friday. And this is after hitting balls until they turn the lights off at Augusta. That’s right. And he just rolls up. He’s walking across a bridge next to this guy’s home. And the guy says, “Hey, do you guys play golf?” And Bryson walks over and says, “Hi, I’m Bryson Dambo.” And the guy, this guy says, “Yeah, and I’m Jack Nicholas.” And when Bryson then steps into the light, Pearlman realizes it wasn’t a lookalike. Oh, I’m not really Jack Nicholas. So Bryson just starts like goofing around, putting with this guy. His guy’s got like a 72 degree wedge and so Bryson’s hitting like ridiculous high flops into the sky with it. Uh he said it was like like the Goodyear blimp was flying over dropping balls onto flags. Uh they goofed around putting whatever and he tells his wife Bryson’s in the backyard. His wife says you’re full of [ __ ] and he says no. They go and they chat with him and just like have a great time. Uh it really quite strange uh to to have that as you know always the Masters is fun Saturday morning because it’s like uh you know the memes kind of get to come out. Uh so we’re still making jokes about things here. There was a a great Antifo tweet here uh about the uh the pissing in Rays Creek incident here uh pretending uh a picture of Johnson Wagner and it says uh are you sure? And the answer is yes, Johnson. We’re gonna need you to piss in Ray Creek. Produce perfect picture. Create it. Go Johnson. Um, all right. So, the things are we’re starting to kind of wrestle with history here. Uh, Kyle Porter had a a pretty good question. He sort of put out there said, “A question I’ve been grappling with over the last day or so. What is it, especially about Rory, that you love? Or convincingly, what is it about Rory that you hate? It’s clear that nobody the non-tiger division engenders as much emotion from fans as Rory does. Obviously, a part of it is he’s great at golf. He hits outrageous shots. He wins a ton, but it also seems to go beyond that. I’ve always struggled to understand why. What is it about him that elicits very real, strong feelings both and against him. I would love to hear from you. This is the only writing that Kevin Mogberg got to do during the Masters. Uh so, I’m including this my own tweet here. Uh, it’s like Obama pitting the metal on himself here. I said in response to Kyle’s tweet, “Flaws are more interesting than perfection when it comes to transcendent athletes. Rory’s talent is prodigious. The fact that he’s also made mistakes, said or done things he’s regretted, cried and strutdded, laughed and lashed out makes it feel like an actual human was blessed with unreal golf talent.” Like in stories when a god would fall from the sky uh for excuse me what stories when a god would fall for a human and the result would be a child with remarkable gifts but the same flaws and emotions as a normal person wrestling with that conflict is a story as old as storytelling that was my gamer essentially from the masters too good stuff uh at the start of the day Justin Rose is our solo leader Bryson is a shot back Rory and the aforementioned Cory Connors are two shots back Rory starts the day. Was he really though? Not to everybody. Yeah, not not Yeah, it might have been a green screen. Cory, actually wasn’t. It didn’t even play the weekend. Rory starts the day three, three, three, three, three, three. First time that has ever happened. Uh he’ll go on to make nine threes on the day, but no one uh according to Justin Ray going back 40 years of research, had ever started a round with six straight threes. Uh after he birdied the fifth hole, Nance Nance skip the full. He’s out of his mind right now. That was a great call. That was a great call. Nance was so good all week. It just was coming up over and over. Uh Roy, you would think that Roy played like flawless during this round. Uh but you know that the Gusta sort of proves that it’s impossible to play flawless. He did bogey the eighth and the 10th hole. Uh and he taken the lead but then sort of you know regressed and gave it back. But then he birdies 13 and when he gets to 15, it’s the perfect drive in the middle of the in the fairway. Uh this in some ways could go down as like one of the great shots of the history of uh this tournament if it wasn’t uh sort of I guess topped in some ways by the shot that comes tomorrow, but hits an unbelievable seven iron. It’s just launched into the air. It is high as can be. And Nance says a rainbow maker down. uh rolls out to four feet. Uh and Rory makes the eagle shoots 66. Uh does not have the low round of the day. Actually ties the low round of the day with former Masters winner Zach Johnson. Kind of unbelievable. I forgot about that. Yes. God. Uh after Royy’s Eagle putt dropped on 15, Bryson Shambo was five shots behind. Uh, so it seems like, oh man, like, you know, if if anybody’s going to catch him, it’s not going to be like, you know, it’s going to be Justin Rose, whatever. But then, uh, Bryson birdies 15 and then he birdies 16. And when he birdies 16, he turns to the crowd and just does like this mean mug like professional wrestling. It’s like one of the I was right there. It was one of the loudest roars I think I’ve ever heard. He’s gritting his teeth and he’s like menacing with his putter. Uh, they asked him, the press asked him afterwards, “What was you know, what was your message you’re trying to send?” And Bryson said, “I’m still here and I’m not going to back down.” Uh, he truly didn’t. He made a ridiculous 48 foot birdie on 18. Uh, it was already in the final group if he two putted, but it was sort of like a clear message of like, oh, I remember thinking like, oh crap, like Bryson’s going to do this all over again to Pinehurst. This is this is bad. If you if you’re cheering for Rory in this situation, like Bryson just threw down the gauntlet. Uh so they asked him sort of impressed you know talk about he said when I when I see it through this is Bryson when I see it 3 ft from the hole and it looks like going it’s going in my body just starts immediately walking. I don’t know why it just kind of happens and I’m walking over to the side to see if it was going in and sure enough it did. And I mean it was great. It was just electric. You can get chills all over your body. You feel like almost euphoria in a sense. It just feels really cool. Great quote from Bryson there. Yeah. Uh, so Justin Rose actually like kind of regressed in this moment. You know, he’s been leading off, you know, the first couple rounds, but he just kind of his putting is really bad on 16 when Bryson made that birdie. Rose actually hit it inside of Bryson on that TE and just brutally three putts. Uh, so it looks like he’s going to make a two. Bryson does make his two and Rory makes Rose makes a four. He’s, you know, he’s five down now. It just looks like we’re we’re, you know, we’re no good. some of the uh the discourse afterwards about oh you know what what are you watching uh Rory you know we got got to know like what’s going on Rory’s uh you know social media life uh he says I watched a little bit of Premier League football this morning and I actually watched a little of Zootopia with Poppy very very good movie if anyone is interested I wonder if he if they were uh they they got into Zootopia 2 yeah that’s hot right now movie theaters I feel like maybe he should save it for this coming masters you know this He’s got a long time after Zootopia had come out, too. So, maybe, you know, just save it on a schedule for big moments for him. Was a 5-year-old likes to rewatch movies. So true. My kids were so freaked out by Zootopia. I think I took them to Zootopia as like 5-year-old in the theater. And the very end scene where like it looks like the the Jason Bam Fox character is going to eat the bunny, they were like sobbing in the theaters. I was like, “Oh.” So, Poppy has a little bit more uh little bit more emotional self-control, I guess, than my kids uh that age. Okay, so Bryson says, “It is going to be the grandest stage we’ve had in a long time.” Talking about playing with Rory tomorrow. Uh not everyone though is thrilled to talk about uh Rory and Bryson. Uh Shane Lowry makes a couple bogeies coming in. Uh and I I think we might have this video with Peach. Uh gets up to the mic and gets a couple uh questions about Rory. Uh, and then Shane says, “I’m not going to stand here and talk about Rory for 10 minutes. I’m trying to win the tournament as well, so I know that’s what you all want me to talk about, but I’ve just had a finish. I’ve got a chance to win the Masters tomorrow. I’m going to hit hit some balls.” I enjoyed every every bit of today and then I hit that point in 17 and I couldn’t believe it. I thought I did great holding the one back. Um, and then I just hit a very poor T- shot on 18. Um, you know, I’m going to go and it it, you know, we talked about Colin Marau a few weeks ago. I think we need time. I think I need a half an hour now to sit there and gather my thoughts. I can’t be coming to talk to you guys straight away. It shouldn’t be happening. I I don’t agree with it. Tennis players have to talk to the media, but they have an hour, half an hour, an hour before they have to do it. I feel like we should have the same thing. And that’s how I feel. Like I’m I’m probably going to say something stupid. I probably already have said something stupid because I’m pissed off right now. So, I’m just going to leave. Okay. No, Shane. Thank you. Uh, I just like to point out that NFL players have 10 minutes to cool down and the most violent game in the world are punching each other in the face and and then they were able to stay over the talk. Uh, golfers need a half an hour. Uh, a lot of good tweets just kind of setting up uh, what’s to come on Sunday. Uh, you know, Kyle Porter was really in his bag all week. Uh, he said, “We have arrived. There are only two options now. This will either be one of the great victories in sports history or one of the most bitter defeats. There is no in between. Uh Kyle again, we might have found the in between. Uh Kyle also on Sunday morning found the the um the John Gisham book that Rory mentioned that he was reading. Uh and this is the the opening of the John Gisham of this book. On a cold morning in early October of 1946, Peter Banning awoke before sunrise and had no thoughts of going back to sleep. For a long time, he lay in the center of his bed, stared at the dark ceiling, and asked himself for the thousandth time if he had the courage. Finally, as the first trace of dawn peaked through a window, he accepted the solemn reality that it was time for the killing. Uh what a like a like I I doubt Rory like read that and thought like, “Oh, this relates to my life.” But as a literary device, like pretty good uh for things. Uh before we get to the action here, I just want to run through some of the celebrity sightings uh this week. Glad glad he wasn’t reading the Pelican brief for the firm. He ended up with the right Gisham novel. There you go. All right. Uh Kaitlin Clark is here at the Masters. Uh she’s, you know, a lot of her hang her hanging with Nans and Noah. This picture I don’t know. I don’t know how some I probably had like a NetJets event like in the evening of some kind. One of the houses that rents for lots of money. Kaylin had her whole family there. This is Kaylin Clark, you know, mania. she could, you know, not have been more of a sort of a celeb at this moment. Uh, and then this next one I I kind of forgot, but I remember people talking about this. Caroline Wyaki, uh, at the Masters, uh, here I, you know, David Lee, too. David Lee. Well, that’s how she is married to David Lee. I don’t know if PJ has that picture. Yeah. Like just making the rounds, you know, like just normal like bewitching of our guy Rory. Like [ __ ] Uh, definitely strange. I mean, hey, you know, all power to him. Uh D David Lee, great Nick. Once Nick, always Nick. Fantastic player. Don’t want to. No. David Lee Slanders allowed on my watch here. Too bad he didn’t play for the Jazz. Too bad he didn’t play for the Could have would have fit right in with the Jazz. Yeah. A lot of talk speaking of famous athletes who uh uh sort of, you know, pivoted to something else. Uh that there’s a a famous photographer going around this week uh this great picture. Turns out it’s Ken Griffy Jr. is a credentialed masters photographer. If you could have told like, you know, 14-year-old me that I would be like washing my hands in the media bathroom next to Ken Griffy Jr., uh, I would have, my mind would have melted, uh, somehow. But that did happen earlier in the week. Uh, Rory has asked, you know, again, uh, you know, how are you going to spend, uh, your, you know, your time, whatever, and he says, oh, you know, I watch episode of Bridgetgerton, whatever. And somebody says, how did you spend, uh, last time in 2011 when you held the 54 hole lead? I says that was 14 years ago. I have no idea. I guess I’m glad I have a short memory. Uh I don’t know if you guys remember this, but uh Jordan Spith caused I don’t know if it right, but uh said got a little bit frustrated uh basically football. You spoke of the unspoken at August. put it all uh gets up to the the podium and says, “My iron play killed me the last days.” And be to be brutally honest with you, it was primarily mudballs. And it’s so frustrating because you can’t talk about them here. You’re not supposed to talk about them. Mudballs can affect this tournament significantly, especially when you get them a lot on 11 and 13. They’re just daggers on those two holes. But every person has to deal with it. The fact that you’re not supposed to talk about it is a bit frustrating because it’s a differencemaker. Uh I just wanted to point out I don’t know if Peach I hope you have this picture of of Marty’s outfit uh here uh that this is an incredible Oh yes I do. Look here the the Jordan uh low cuts here with the uh with the suit. Uh that’s you know you got to love that. Uh and so again going back to Kyle Porter here he had a pretty good tweet but the the response this is even better. Kyle said, “In the last 55 years, 12 humans have walked on the moon. In that same period of time, one human has all won all four major championships in his career. That club could grow to two tomorrow.” And Dylan Deser of.com said, “And in five years, Victor Havlin will have done both.” That was awesome. So, we go into Sunday. Uh Rory sits at 12 under. Bryson is at 10 under. Uh some Canadian is at 8 under, allegedly. Levig is at six. Patrick Reed is a six. And Justin Rose is at minus five. Rose had just an insanely bad putting day on Saturday. It’s like, you know, if you play this Masters, like I I think it’s the what if of the Masters is what if Justin Rose doesn’t have one of the worst rounds on the greens of his career Saturday. Yep. I think also probably Rory doesn’t have the back nine he has if there’s a closer contender. Yeah. let’s say a little bit more focused like anything I mean who knows but it all a lot of things have to align up for an all-time great masters and and because of all those things happen we got one uh the leaders don’t go off for a bit but before they do uh Mr. Just a guy. Jordan Spe is out here fist bumping patrons on their way to his first tea. He’s carrying his putter upside down and uh boom, he accidentally hits someone right in the nuts. Oh, I don’t think it’s an accident. I think he did it on purpose. He did it on purpose. Okay. Uh you can see the guy bends over in pain. Uh does seem to be smiling pretty good there. So, probably a little nut check uh moment here. I don’t know. Uh yeah, I think you’re right. I think it is. It’s a legit He does it on purpose. I’m pretty sure. I mean, this is just a classic. I I Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think he doesn’t have purpose. Uh, great couple tweets from our our uh Shock and Star boys here. Brendan says, “The opportunity is so much greater and the pressure is way more intense than just one of the final two at the Masters. You have to wonder how it is all weighing on Rory Mroy playing for 750 FedEx Cup points today.” To which Andy responds, “Does he get the full 750 if Bryson wins and he finishes second? Always a good retort. That’s good. Uh Peach, do we have this Claire Rogers uh video here? That’s uh the little mashup here. I thought she did an awesome job of contrasting how the two of them were preparing for their final round. And one thing I’ve tried to do a good job of this week is just not being on the phone and just trying to um stay clear of that and do other things. Yeah, I mean for me it’s it’s going to be practicing a little bit, eating, looking at my phone. I don’t have a problem with that. Please watch Zootopia with Poppy. We’re watching a movie probably tonight. Uh, fun movie. Be a James Bond movie. Very good. Very good movie if anyone’s interested. Uh, love James Bond movies. Somebody clarified. It’s the It’s the Pierce Brosman era of James Bond, which is apparently Bryson’s preferred uh thing. All right, so it’s Sunday morning and we are off. I’m gonna I got to walk through some of this play by play because it is truly one of the great rounds of all time, but I’ll try to be expedient about it. Murray drives it in the bunker on the first TE. The bunker he’s been carrying all week. He says he’s super nervous later. He just couldn’t get generate the speed that he was. Has to pitch out. Hits a bad chip kind of to the back of the green. Hits a pretty bad putt that goes way by and then misses that putt. A double on one. Ryson gets uh makes a a pretty good par and all of a sudden we are freaking tied after all that. He’s just sort of given up uh his uh you know advantage. Roy drives it in the bunker again on two has to lay up. Hits a poor wedge. Has to make par. Bryson makes a birdie. All of a sudden Bryson is up by one. And this dear listener is the point where Kevin Vogerberg decides I’ve seen this car crash too many times and I head into the media center and decide I just can’t stomach watching this all over again. I’m going to watch it on television. But on three, Rory hits a great drive down up by the green. Hits an incredible chip. Maybe the most underrated shot that he had all year. Sort of a one hop chip that stops still above the hole, but enough to where he’s got maybe a four or five footer. Makes that birdie. Bryson on the other hand laying back as we talked about here hits a wedge that goes way above the hole and he cannot two putt bogeies. And all of a sudden we have flipped now again. Rory leads now 11 to 10. Uh, if you think Justin Rose played a flawless round, he actually kind of didn’t. He bogeied four and five and he’s five underpar walking to 7T. Six shots behind Rory, but he makes a great birdie on seven, even though nobody’s really thinking about uh what’s going on because Rory makes another birdie at number four. Like a really sweet slider putt that’s it gets him back to 12 under. Uh we’re about to begin though the true like cocaine train of like Rory roller coasters. Hits a a wild drive on the right that ends up kind of in the trees. Flies it skies it high over the trees. Somehow gets it up around Greenside. Gets up and down makes par. Able to stay at at 12. All of a sudden Rose though he’s he’s makes a heck of a five on and Nance utters the words for the first time. This is a heck of a five on number nine on number eight. And Nance says, “Who knows? Rose is only five back. He’s got a chance.” Uh Rory gets through six fine, but he goes way left on seven. And Harry is telling him, “Let’s not hit it up above the trees.” And Rory says later, “I probably shouldn’t have taken it on.” It was like, “No, no, no, no, no. I can do this.” Uh he hits a shot and it clips just a little bit of a pine tree and then almost holes out. Uh he doesn’t make the putt, but as he’s walking up this he tips his cap to Doy and he’s laughing as he’s kind of walking up the fairway and you’re thinking like, man, Rory’s kind of loose. He’s light. Like he’s enjoying himself. Like it’s not uh who knows. Meanwhile, on 11, Justin Rose makes a 57footer for birdie on the 11th hole. Just like clearly like all you should be doing is trying to put there and he just throats it. Uh on 12, Rose makes a 20-footer to tie Bryson for second place. So all of a sudden Justin Rose is at minus 9. He’s only three shots back of Rory at this point. Uh Victor Havland almost makes an albatross on 15. I mean hits an unbelievable shot that lands, hops forward and lips out of the cup. Uh it is the Nance is excited to point out it’s the 90year anniversary of Sarah’s double eagle. Uh Rory comes up and hits a great wedge shot into nine and he he plays okay on eight, but makes a birdie on nine and now he’s four up on Rose and Levig. Rose misses an eagle by maybe an inch on 13. All this is bang bang kind of happening right all at the same time. You can feel the drama kind of building. Uh and then Rory Birdy’s 10 after hitting a shot that you think is going like a complete shank. He drops his club it, you know, thumps off the ground. You’re like, what happens? Ball goes to 10 ft and he makes that putt. At that point, I was actually came back out, saw the birdie at nine, saw the birdie at 10. I was like, “Okay, like I’m I’m in for this. Whatever. It’s going like this is he’s he’s learning from Hideki, you know, just throwing clubs everywhere. It’s a ball frog mentality right there.” So Rory was one down to Bryson after two holes. He’s now five up on Bryson after 10. Uh I’d forgotten in rewatching this how close to disaster he came on 11. Was really bad after the second hole. He was bad. Yeah. Yeah, you know, sometimes you you it’s you start thinking about winning and I think that probably is what happened to Bryson early in the round and cuz like I don’t think he I don’t think he expected to overtake Rory so quickly and it was almost like a shock of like I didn’t expect this to happen so fast. Kev, you hit on like the the three the third hole. Everybody’s going to talk about so many things. The third hole to me was the most pivotal point in the whole tournament because Rory punched back and it it if he doesn’t do that it doesn’t you know they I just like I believe that that tournament goes completely different way. Bryson probably wins. It felt like a tipping point of like is this going to go like the Reed final round in whatever that was 18 where it was kind of just really sad and slow and then like yeah that was like the punch back. So Royy’s shot on 11 is basically the beginning of the knife’s edge that we are going to walk for the rest of the day. Uh he hits a a drive right. It’s kind of around the trees and he has to hit a low punch uh to get it up around the green. The ball hits the mound in the middle of the fairway and kicks left and starts to basically run along the ridge where it looks like it’s going to go in the water and somehow it doesn’t. It holds up and everyone’s like, “Holy [ __ ] holy [ __ ] Oh shit.” Oh god. like we’re going to fight. Bryson meanwhile kind of ejects himself from the tournament, hits it into the water, makes double here. Like his tournament is essentially over. Roy Chips doesn’t make doesn’t get up and down, makes a bogey, but we’re kind of like, okay, fine. Like through 11, that’s tough. That 11th hole when you’re by the green, you can’t really see. There’s only a small subset of the fans and it’s a huge or ga patrons. It’s a huge gallery right there. And there’s only a very small subset that can see up the fairway and see what happens. And I was there. And what it’s one of the coolest I I guess like you could say it’s cool. You could say it sucks. But at that moment in time, there was a huge gasp. Whose ball went in the water? Whose ball hung on the edge? And there was this uncertainty being there where you just didn’t know whether it was Rory in the water. And I’ll never forget like Bryson comes up and it becomes clear that Bryson hid it in the water and there was this big roar of excitement that Bryson hit it in the water and not Rory. Rory rode the ridge though. It was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, we have blown through our our time limit, but we have come back. This is the third session. You might notice if you’re watching on YouTube different clothes from early in the podcast from us, but this is the third session to get this done. We’ve we’ve over extended. This could go to four hours. Who knows? KBV, you’re on 12. I’m on 12. That’s right. The the the biggest obstacle right in Rory’s round. Like, if he can just get through 12, he’s going to win the Masters. Everybody will feel this like grown men will be calling their children in tears from the phone bank behind uh 12 green. Uh it was great. And you know what what happens? Hits the sensible tiger shot right over to the skinny part of the green in the middle. Ball kind of settles in the back. Easy way to two putt from there. Uh we’re in great shape. Rose up ahead has just left the 14th green. Uh can you guess what his win probability is at this point? Uh, I believe Chris Solomon of no laying up uh, looked this up. I love win probability. I was going to say data. That’s why they play the f in games. We’ve already had this for go down this road. What did the data boys say? Data boys say 6% chance of winning. Uh, at this point as Rose is walking off 14 green. Uh, so we get to 13. Go ahead, Nanny. Here we go. I have to say this. I I’m sorry. Blair again personal data drive here from being no no not data drive by okay sir one of the lasting memories I will have is I you know when you’re out on the ground as media not inside you nobody’s inside the ropes at this event except for players and caddies you you have your routes and one of the things I do on Sunday the final round is I watch 11 and 12. And I watch the T-shot on 12 and I just generally beat it from there and I I zip to 13 grandstand. That’s my kind of way I do Sunday. And so it’s always just like a a power walk from 12 to 13 grand stand. Get in there, you know, watch the group ahead, watch the final group. And that walk I was, you know, you’re supposed to be partial. I wanted Rory to win. The walk from 12 to 13 was just like pure joy. Yeah. I’ll never forget it. I’m just like, he did it. He won. He did it. Like I can’t believe he did it. Like 13. He’s probably going to make a birdie. He’ll probably go even more up in the in the tournament. Was he five up at this point? Yeah. four or five up. You know, he got through the one shot that could have derailed him. Mhm. And uh that’s what I was thinking about the whole way there and it was just like a breeze to there. I had the biggest smile on my face. Just a happy boy. I would I would I mean we could go we could make this four hours. So I think we did make it four hours. I would say it’s similarly just I sim I felt similarly probably at the similar point in time and then I’ll never forget at 14 green just being like frozen like he lost like he lost for sure lost he definitely lost he might never play professional golf again I don’t know why you would and like all these things and that’s where I was similarly at like 123 and 14 green when he bogeied it like no way we were there for Pinter we were there for LA we were there like no way he lost for sure lost and I I wonder if like how do you even come back? Anyways, too much personal stuff for interrupt. Just a fan asked me if I was okay at one point. I’ve never said this before. No, it was I was right of 17 and the person was like this guy was like, “Are you okay?” Did he know that you were you or did he just ask you in general? Just asking in general. I think you could just see that I was like carrying a lot like I just had a lot of like a lot of things that I was thinking about going on in my head. Incredible. Oh, it’s incredible. All because of this roller coaster that is about to become I just remember at at you know right around the 14 green point thinking this will define him forever. They’ll never ever be able to escape this collapse uh after what happens. uh coming up here. So, we get to 13. We’re we’re through the troubled spots. Tech, he could he could make two more birdies. We could turn this into a route. Uh hits a good drive on 13 right down the middle. Uh probably has 200 or so. Yeah, laid back a little, but still hit I just looked it up. Just hit did hit driver. Uh and decides that he’s going to lay up instead of going for the green. Totally understandable. You have, you know, what feels like a four shot lead at this point. Although Justin is about to birdie 15 kind of as this is unfolding. So he hits I think like a sixiron or seven it’s like a seven iron or an eight iron. Ball trickles down to the left side ends up in the flat part of 13 fairway. Like could not really ask for much of a better spot uh to hit your third in there. All you really have to do is be a little bit left of this pin anywhere. Two putt. Go on to 14. You’re in good shape. Uh I al I kind of remember I was just right of uh I wasn’t up the by the grand stand but I was just right of the fairway here. It was kind of a little bit tough to see but I just remember the absolute groan and Neil who I was standing with in Schustster saying holy [ __ ] he hit in the water. Oh [ __ ] and like the the kind of like paw of of death that just sort of washed over all of 13 gallery there was like what is happening? This cannot be happening at this moment. Uh and I do I think uh Chris Solomon sent out a good tweet I think at this moment and I have here all things considered I do not think an it’s an exaggeration to say that this was one of the worst golf shots in history. Uh, and I think that’s actually a fair assessment considering what the weight of everything that was going on in the moment. It’s a wedge. It’s not like it was a tricky shot. It’s not like he had to make a swing that was like he just kind of, you know, Rory said later he explained that the ball was sitting in like a little bit of a valley and his ass. Yeah. When when that happens because there’s a catch basin. Okay. Goddamn catch basins. We had a was a catch basin and he was on the ups slope which ups slope with a high lofted wedge is pull it very tricky shot actually. So he said when that happens he the ball usually goes two or three yards left of where he wants it. So he actually kind of aimed at the pin uh thinking like well the ball’s going to come a little bit left and it just came out weak right and bounced uh you know into the creek. The one thing that happens with UPS slopes, if you don’t swing with full commitment, you hang it right. A great way to practice if you’re struggling trying to like release the club is trying to hit draws off of ups slopes. Like if you’re struggling with like really committing through the swing, it’s a great drill because it it accentuates, you know, bad shots. And I think that’s what happened here. Uh so Roy makes double on 13. And while this is happening, Justin Rose flags it on 16 to the top shelf. Now remember, this is not the traditional Sunday pin. This is a uh they put it up top to sort of a commemorate Jack Nicholas’s win in 75. Uh and so a pretty hard pin to go at. Rose makes birdie. Uh and all of a sudden he now leads by one stroke. the the horror of it all uh is just uh so excuse me we’re so rose when Rosebury’s we’re tied at this point and then Rory bogeies 14 and loses the lead. Uh and also that 13th grandstand watching that wedge I still vividly can remember that wedge was like slow motion. Mhm. I remember that whole scene in my brain like a picture the audible sounds of the of the patrons and the ball just like seemingly hanging and you’re like you don’t have the best angle on it and I’m like oh my oh my god. and you see his reaction right after impact and it’s just like you’re watching this it’s like and it just it’s just one of those sports moments that like the slow motion effect of a situation. Yeah. Levig also makes birdie on 15 at this point and now Levig is one shot back. He is very much in this championship. Uh if also when you Sorry I’m hijacking this. No, please do. At this moment in time, Bryson, I think, kind of gave up and he might be the one that kicks himself the most. Yeah. Because he was still so in it, but he he totally let go of the rope. And it’s like something that happens in tournament golf all the time where you feel like you are out of it and you just let off and it’s like, well, what does it matter anymore? and the shot on 11 the you know like he just he kind of gave up. He got punched and he never got back off off the mat. And if he had gotten back up off the mat, he could have won this golf tournament. Yep. Maybe he was unnerved by Rory not talking to him all day. Just turtleled up as we’ll get to that in a little bit. Uh all right. So, uh Brendan, you were one of the few people who made the trek out to 14. You kind of have to choose at this moment. Where do you want to go? Do you want to be uh because you can’t get to can’t basically follow everything as it going with the the ropes and the traffic where it is. Uh do you what do you remember about 14 cuz I did not go back there. I set up to 50 kind of what we what we just talked about. Um you know just being frozen as soon as it was a bogey and the lead was was fully gone. I was down at 13 obviously between there like looking down a similar view watching the ball fall into the water then hight tail across 14 and just book up to a essentially a dead end left of 14 green kind of you just got to go you might get close I it’s a little taller could see through and and he hit a great recovery shot um he was right in the trees right right in the pine right he hit a good shot to get like get back in play and then you know I just remember him honestly. like the lead was I know there’s so many more roller coasters to come like 15 shot the shot into 17 that I’ll never ever forget being there when that that drop from the sky but I truly think like the swing from what Ady talked about like it is over between birdie 10 11 avoiding the water like it’s over and we thought it was just Bryson kind of I I I think like I don’t want to be reductive here but it was like a mono mono there for for the first couple hours. Mhm. That it felt final. Honestly, 14 felt final. Like once you went from four up to one down, that was it. And this is what we’ve seen this movie before. Not with this amount of gore or this amount of uh beauty in it. But we’ve seen this movie before. He is now one down and it’s over. The previous ones were like uh a David Fincher film and and this was like a slasher film like true. Yeah, it’s like Friday the 13th blood everywhere. Psychological thrillers previous but this was uh more intense than that. All right. So, uh he played it great. He played 14 really well besides the drive. Like he played it like using that, you know, maybe the best green on the property. Like he played it great. It’s just a really freaking hard butt. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. No, it’s there’s so much happening at this point that it’s like your senses are overloading. Uh Justin Rose bogey 17, which I had sort of forgotten about. Uh just, you know, so we have a three-way tie at 10 under at this point. And Rory comes to the 15th T, tugs his drive a little bit left, and he’s got the equivalent of a seven iron into 15. And it’s just the tension is in the air for a while. To be honest, Roy plays pretty fast for what will honestly be the most iconic shot of this final round in some ways. Although could argue that 17 uh should be there with it. Uh and hits an unbelievable like big draw. Seven iron curves up around the tree. And Nance has a call here. This is Cameron’s uh picture. I love that you can see the ball in this picture. It’s framed so perfectly. I mean, this is like A+ A+ uh sports photography right here. So, kudos to our to our own Cameron Curtis for that. Uh but Nance’s call is one that we’ll probably be here for our entire life. Uh and this is why Nance is so good. Not just because of what he says, which isn’t anything special, but I think because of the pauses in it. He says, “Is it enough?” It is. Here it comes. The shot of a lifetime. It’s just so the cadence of it is so so good. I know that it’s a simple thing. Uh and of course, you know, you’re thinking, “Oh, Roy’s gonna make this eagle putt like then now he’s going to waltz in. This will be forever.” No. Pretty feeble eagle putt. In fact, feeble is the word that Nance and Trevor both use. Uh kind of comes out of it, leaves it low. He does have the lead back though, but he kind of looks like he’s pretty despondent. Uh walking to 16, like Jesus, like I cannot believe I hit this amazing shot. Uh, and then I didn’t cash it in. It’s a good shot on 16. I think this is the point where the the the moment and at all the events are clear like it’s just clear as day that it’s taken a toll on him. Mhm. You can see in the official Masters video, uh, which is quite good, him as he’s walking off 15 green, he looks over his shoulder and takes a long look at the scoreboard there, and you can see him processing all the information. Uh, that is and what has to be done. Uh, as uh, we read from the John Gisham thing, the killing had still to be done. uh this moment. Uh hits a good shot on 16, but it is kind of up there on the shelf kind of right along the fringe, but not the best putt. Uh just makes a par there. And Rose, meanwhile, is up on 18. He makes an unbelievable stone cold killer of a putt. I mean, it is so so good. He immediately takes his hat off and does the Justin Rose thing of like just, you know, stoic. Yeah. Very, you know, royally staring down the crowd and giving the fist pump and you’re just like, how in the world did Justin Rose do this? Uh how is it he now tied uh for the lead yet again? Levik bogeied 17. So uh he kind of missed out a chance that could have had him in there. Got a while this [ __ ] is going on. Patrick Reed holes out for Eagle on 17 just crazy one. Another guy who could have been in it with with that first round putting or the putting. Yeah, that only got Patrick to nine under which isn’t going to be good enough. Uh, but it was an unbelievable like shot and and I remember thinking as that roar unfolded like like there’s only like so many good cool moments that ever happened on 17 like Patrick Reed just stole whatever Rory’s uh thing but Rory hits the drive nobody knew what happened around 17 and because nobody clapped nobody nobody saw it go in Reed was like what happened back in the fairway I was standing right there. It’s like like nobody knew what happened. Yeah, that’s right. Lvig Lvig on 17 is one of like my maybe one of my favorite things that happened all year cuz he was so clearly pressing like he knew that he had a chance and three putted I believe right and tried to make the birdie putt so bad that it led to a three putt and tried to just smash the gas pedal through the floor. And like that’s another one of those like we’ll get to Rahm that like Levig’s T8 or whatever he ended up at like I he was one of like four guys that actually had a chance at the end that I don’t think the T8 is is really reflective of what actually happened at the end. Uh in any other Masters what happened on 17 would be the shot of a career. Like it is hard to birdie 17. It is really hard to hit it close. Uh there really aren’t that many like iconic moments that have happened on 17 over the years. Uh Rory is in the middle of the fairway. He’s got an eight iron in. Uh takes a lash at it and immediately he’s saying go. I counted it. I was watching the video back. He says go 10 times. Go go go go go go. So either like he felt like it was uh coming up a little short or like he was just putting every bit of emotion into encouraging what it is. But it, you know, it lands, rolls out to I think four feet. Uh makes that putt and now once again he has a one-stroke lead. His destiny is all entirely in his hands. He can win the Masters uh with a par on 18. Hits the ball in the middle of the fairway. You’re thinking, man, everything’s fine. Got a wedge into 18. All we got to do is put it in the middle of the green. Flares it a little bit right. Goes in the bunker. Uh, and so he gets down in the bunker, hits it honestly like a pretty good shot. Uh, Faldo at this point says he’s putting us all through the ring. I can’t imagine what he feels like on the radio. Fo. Yeah, I think was uh on Yeah, I got it from the Masters film. must have been from radio. He was on I think he was on Sky. He might have been. Yeah. Uh so hits a pretty good bunker shot and rolls out to I don’t know maybe five feet and Nance says that putt for the world. Doesn’t hit a great putt. Comes out of it a little little bit. Uh and it’s it’s an absolute like oh my god how are we still like back here? How is this horror film still continuing over and over? Uh Rory said that Harry and he were walking to the 18th TE and Harry said, “Well, pal, you would have given your right arm at the start of the week to be in a playoff.” And Rory said, “Yeah, I absolutely would have.” He said, “So that was an easy reset.” Uh Justin Rose, the last playoff at the Masters, Justin Rose was in uh with Sergio Garcia. Justin Rose hits a much better drive than he did in that playoff. Stripes it right down the right side. Rory puts it right in the middle. has essentially the same shot with gap wedge. Uh Rose puts his ball and Rose’s shot basically lands at right at pin high and it bounces forward and so it doesn’t get the roll that Rory’s is going to get in a second. Uh and it sits kind of a little bit up above not quite totally on the ridge but he’s got maybe 10 feet or so. Rory’s honestly I think this is the best wedge of Rory’s life. We talked about the wedge on 13, probably the the worst shot in golf history in some ways. This is the exact controlled distance that you have to hit it to be able to not go further than the ridge, but to hit it right on the ridge and for it to suck back down to give him, you know, essentially a three-footer for the win. Justin Rose’s putt comes very, very close. I mean, it’s it’s a good putt. It’s, you know, it’s not the greatest putt, but it’s probably, you know, a ball out to the right. And then Rory finally steps up and you’re thinking in your head, I don’t know about you guys, but I was like, “Oh my god, if he misses this, I think I might [ __ ] explode.” Just not even like because of like I want him to win, but like I don’t know that I can see one person suffer this badly like if this putt lips out. Uh but it does not. It goes down, falls to his knees. Uh you know, a decade plus of catharsis comes out. CBS does an incredible job of just letting the moment speak for itself. Uh Nance doesn’t say anything for nearly like four minutes I believe. Uh Trevor as well. They just let the scene kind of unfold. Uh Joel Beal I think had an excellent sort of summary here in his gamer for Golf Digest. Rory Mroy knew there was no stopping the tears that had waited 10 years to fall. The demon he had chased for so long was finally caught. The relief buckling his knees and driving him to the ground. He grabbed his head, running his hands through his salt and pepper curls. A man utterly exhausted and completely humbled by a pursuit whose toll we will never truly know. Tears as he embraced his caddy, Harry Diamond, before they left the green. Arms draped over each other’s shoulders. Tears when he reunited with his wife and daughter as he walked to the clubhouse through the patrons, chanting his name. Tears that extinguished the fire he’d faced about who he was as a player and a person. tears that can only be conjured by the countless hours of pain and doubt wondering if this moment would ever come. Pretty good lead there. Uh at some point think Jack Nicholas is on Golf Channel Live and it’s like I’ve never seen a tournament where so many good shots and so many bad shots and so many changes of this and that. But I’m delighted for Rory and I know he’s had a lot of pressure on him. He’s had the world on his shoulders and that was wonderful for him to win. Uh Bur comes into the uh press conference afterwards and the uh the moderator says, “Congrats on winning the 89th Masters in a dramatic playoff fashion. You’ve now completed the career grand slam. Please share with us your thoughts at this moment.” And Rory says, “I’d like to start this press conference with a question myself. What are we going to talk about next year?” Uh which gets a good laugh in the uh playoff. Uh Roy reveals that uh do you remember who left him a note in his locker uh before? Anal Cabrera. Uh there was it said, “I got to my locker this morning and I opened it up and there was a note there from Anel Cabrera just wishing me luck.” And Anal was the player that I played with on the final day in 2011. It was a nice touch and a little bit ironic at the same time. It’s been 14 long years. Uh it’s nice of the Argentine government to let Anhal out so that he could set this in motion. this. Who knows? The butterfly effect. If Annel’s case stays in prison, Raven Rory never gets out. No, it doesn’t work out this way. Uh, do you know how many threes Rory made for the week? 18. 30 30 30 [ __ ] threes. That’s I did not realize that until I was doing the research. Uh, yes. Uh, in one of my favorite moments, uh, probably my favorite moment from the press conference, uh, Aean Lynch, uh, gets the mic and says, “Uh, Rora, you and Harry grew up together in a tiny town playing childhood games together. What does it feel like to have him standing beside you today when you have achieved that childhood dream?” Aiman’s going to [ __ ] kill me when he hears me doing an impression of him. Rory, this is the first thing that really kind of breaks Rory a little bit. He says, “Aean,” and he’s like like happy, but like can’t believe you did this to me. He says, “Yeah, I’ve known Harry since I was 7 years old. I met him on the putting green at Hollywood Golf Club. We’ve had so many good times together. He’s been like a big brother to me and the whole way through my life.” And then he starts to essentially cry. Says, “To be able to share this with him after all the close calls that we’ve had, all the crap that he’s had to take from people that don’t know anything about the game.” Yeah, this one is just as much his it is as mine. He’s a massive part of what I do and I don’t think anyone there would be anyone better could share it with than him. Uh I will close with a really nice piece of writing here. As I said many times I’m jealous that I didn’t get to write about this tournament. Uh even though I’m super proud of the podcast that I worked on during it. Uh this is from Shane Ryan and talked about we’ve just seen the last great golf story. And this is the kind of the ending kicker. He says whoever is writing the Rory saga seemed to get it. A decade of losses got us to where we are today when more than one loss would paradoxically undermine the carefully built tension. The win that transpired on the other hand unleashed a staggering catharsis emphasizing the incredible competitive resilience of the eternal optimist whose greatness was a static fact and whose ultimate triumph came from a heroic refusable refusal to stop trying. He was Odysius, hellbent on getting home, no matter how the gods tried to break him, until even the gods began to love him again. Maroy became great with the early winds, but he became heroic through his failures. He became larger than life through his suffering. If you wanted him to win on Sunday, as I did, it wasn’t because of his real life personal qualities or the deficiencies of his opponents, but because you couldn’t bear to see this kind of extended suffering go unrewarded. Whatever you think of him, whatever complications you see in his actions, hadn’t he earned this? Didn’t he deserve it? There was no better ending than Augusta. No better ending than a thousand obstacles at the threshold convincing you he might be eternally cursed. No better ending than the unbearable tension and agonizing delays right until the very end until he finally, can you [ __ ] believe it? Victory. He is the greatest story in sports and I am in awe of the author who stuck this landing. It’s pretty good. Pretty good writing. Very good writing this on deadline too. Those guys he’s good with that. Well done. Um that’s a wrap. Tournament. I got tournament of a lifetime. Maybe it Yeah, it’s it’s I mean we could talk about it for another three hours. We don’t need to. But it just uh Yeah, I mean we did talked about it all that week. It was kind of ridiculous how intense it was before a shot was ever hit, right? And it’s like Roy vers Bryson and Rory for the slam. And then what happened over the next four hours could not even could not even conceive of it. And it just kept building and building building, escalating, escalating all the way from the harp. It was just it was incredible. Oh, I did miss one thing that I wanted to revisit. I I teased it earlier. Uh Bryson was talking at the flash zone uh and said someone asked you know what what did you guys talk about throughout the round or what was going through his mind? How would he prepare? And Bryson said uh no idea. He didn’t talk to me at all. Uh he didn’t they didn’t say basically anything to him uh the whole day. And so um you know it was kind of like it became a weird thing just impartially because it’s Bryson. Uh and you know Rory was basically like you know I don’t we’re both trying to win the championship. I don’t really know what exactly he expected uh you know why that he wanted to talk uh but you know it did seem let me see if I find his quote here basically just said you know why why why would he expect that we were like going to talk it wasn’t personal but I just didn’t really you know think it was uh and I think that honestly kind of maybe unnerved Bryson a little bit and maybe did exactly like it didn’t have anything to do with Bryson but it did unnerve him a little bit like just the silence what does Bryson want more than anything in life to be loved. Love and acceptance. Be loved and accepted. And you know, I don’t know if this was strategy, but if you wanted one way to mess with Bryson more than anything would be not talking to him at all. And listen, golf is a gentleman’s game, but there is a lot of gentlemanly ways to to have a lot of gamesmanship, you know. Yeah. It wasn’t an extreme move. It wasn’t over the line. And it got painted as sort of like this was beyond the pale. I mean, it’s what Tiger would have done. Tiger wouldn’t have said a word to I don’t even think Bryson really paint painted it as I think people who like Bryson painted it more as like this shitty thing that Rory did. Bryson was like, “Oh, we just didn’t he didn’t talk to me at all.” Like it wasn’t like he was angry about it, but not a shitty thing to do at all. It’s fine. As long as you’re not rude and all that. I mean, yeah, you’re not getting in his way. I mean, God. Um, all right. I think that does it. That was a good one. That was a beefy boy, but it’s deserving of its beefiness. I think most importantly from Sunday was that Zach Johnson played his way into a potential RDER Cup spot with his top 10. I think that was the biggest takeaway. No. Uh this was great. This was really well done. Kevin Andy uh up to the task. I think uh not all year in reviews years in review will be like this. So you don’t think we’ll spend uh this kind of time on the PGA. Well, you know, Don comes into our life. We think you’re underrated in the PGA. I think uh maybe not the tournament, but the practice round days I think might be the most impactful thing that occur uh for the rest of the time. Uh okay, I think that does it. Thank you. As Andy said, join Friday golf club, subscribe to the newsletter, go to be Dr. SGS30 is the promo code. Thank you guys for your continued support. This uh your review is a labor, but it’s a labor of love and hopefully it’s uh worthwhile and entertaining enough for you guys uh during the holiday time. So, uh, where are we going to get this done? I feel like we are. We’re over a big hump with this one. Uh, PJ and I I’ve been very unmotivated. PJ got me a little motivated yesterday. Like, we’re going to grind this out. Come on. We’ll see. We’ll see what next. I got a tough week ahead. I know. Yes, you do. We’ll see what next week brings. Um, I know. I may I may get called in from the bullpen. Everybody, keep warming up that arm. Everybody, enjoy your weekends. We will back with you on Monday.
3 Comments
Hope I can finish this by the time the next episode drops…
I like Dick’s as well, Brandon. Great Walter Hagen clothing line!
Billy Horschel is without question the PGA Pro most likely to catch a Matthew Stafford pass. He is a Florida Gator, can play left handed, and is an absolute athlete.