🏌️♂️ Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Cover 1 Golf Podcast! Join hosts Aaron Quinn, David Tilton, Nate Geary, and Chris Kepner as they tee off on their journey through the exciting world of golf. In this introductory episode, get to know the dynamic crew as they share their backgrounds, experiences, and passion for the game.
From discussing their personal goals for the upcoming golf season to delving into the latest trends and news in the golfing world, this podcast promises to be your go-to destination for all things golf-related. Plus, don’t miss out as the team provides an insightful preview of the highly anticipated PGA Championship, offering expert analysis and predictions you won’t want to miss.
Whether you’re a seasoned golfer or just getting into the swing of things, Cover 1 Golf Podcast has something for everyone. Subscribe now to stay updated on future episodes packed with tips, interviews, and lively discussions. Fore! ⛳️
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0:00 Intro / Scottie Scheffler arrested and facing multiple charges
11:18 Is Scottie Scheffler being arrested good for golf?
14:20 How will his arrest affect Scottie Scheffler’s performance in the PGA Championship?
19:48 Ted Scott’s impact on Scottie Scheffler’s game
23:16 2024 PGA Championship: Is Valhalla too easy for the field?
27:29 2024 PGA Championship leaderboard update
37:25 Who has the most pressure to win the PGA Championship? (Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Michael Block)
47:10 PGA Championship sleeper picks (Collin Morikawa, Robert MacIntyre, Mark Hubbard, Maverick McNealy, Thomas Detry, Taylor Moore)
50:05 Cover 1 Golf crew personal golf histories, clubs, and approaches to the game
good morning Golf World welcome to the inaugural episode of the cover one golf podcast uh I am Aaron Quinn I’m one of your hosts and with me is Dave Tilton you might know him from the air8 hour bills guys uh and Chris Kepner producer of the cover one Buffalo podcast I’m sure you’ve seen him around from Twitter spaces and uh helping greag and I out we good morning gentlemen what a what a morning in the golf world how’s it going what a what a morning to wake up to some of this news I thought it was a joke at first like my I before I even like got on the Twitter I had a text that was like oh Scotty sheffler might be late for his round today I’m like what are you talking about like to one of my friends I’m like and then I go online and I see like all this stuff happening and I’m like they give us a nice little piece of information here to talk about on our first show yeah man Chris uh good morning how are you Budd I’m doing all right I’m doing all right just uh like I was saying before we went live here I was got a little caught off guard by all the Scotty sheffler news and almost forgot that we were supposed to jump on here right at night so yeah it’s just crazy man I don’t know yeah go ahead Aon I was gonna say I did not expect uh you know I thought we were just going to come on we had a bit of a plan for how the show was going to roll here today um and we’re going to bump it around a little bit um but I same as tilt like mornings for us is our kids get up super early and we let them just kind of go downstairs and hang out my wife and I just read and hang out and my phone was just showing off these reports and I was the same as you tell I was like there’s no way this is this got to be a fake Jeff Darlington account or something like Scotty sheffler there’s no way he’s like he’s like the nicest guy in the world there’s no way he’s getting arrested what is going on and then I started seeing more and more I was like oh my God this is this is we’re assuming that everyone watching knows what’s going on maybe you want to like catch everyone up they don’t know yeah uh real quick here uh this morning at Valhalla first of all there was a an actual incident at Valhalla this morning there was a pedestrian struck um I believe it was by a bus and it was a fatal injury and so there was a heavy police force at Valhalla this morning uh for those that don’t know um when you attend these types of events there’s always quite a bit of force uh out but it’s usually security rental cops some police presence in terms of helping people get in and out um they’re they’re golf clubs so it’s not used to heavy amounts of traffic like this and so they were there was a police force but probably more than normal uh and it seems like Scotty Maybe went tried to go around what he thought was security this morning he had an early tea time with Windam Clark and Brian Harman I think they were like the second or third tea time off this morning so he was trying to get there uh went around didn’t realize he was supposed to stop didn’t realize it was a real police officer he probably did not know there was a fatal incident this morning as well um and the police pulled him out of his vehicle and detained him and arrested him and he uh has been booked at the Louisville one of the Louisville police departments and I do at at this time at 9 03 a.m. he has been released and has a tea time set for later in the afternoon uh the USGA rules do allow for um exceptional circumstances to shift tea times usually if you miss a tea time that’s it like you’re you’re disqualified but the USGA does have exemptions for this stuff so that’s pretty much what we know and where it’s at is the number one golfer in the world this morning was handcuffed uh and processed by police he has multiple charges I think is four different charges second degree uh the police felony assault yeah that’s if I’m you know if the thing that I saw was was legit like that’s that’s that’s no joke right there yeah no it’s there are serious charges um I think because of the Fatal incident the officers were taking it seriously uh you know there’s a lot of memes and jokes and I participated in it too it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out I expect a lot of lawyers to get involved in this and work it out but Scotty Sheffer is going to play golf today um and that is really ultimately all that matters is they cleared it up in time nobody got hurt nothing serious happened from this incident he’ll hopefully get back here um although he’s gonna be a lot like the rest of us who are like running late for your tea time and don’t have the time to warm up as much as he but we we we don’t have the USGA to uh move our key times for us that’s right that’s right um we get to see what Scotty looks like an orange sh on the course maybe oh yeah it’ll be Mal gear he’s got to call Ricky up for some of that Puma orange Puma orange and uh some Jason day malabon baggie pants there um real quick before we dig into what is going on here this weekend and the PGA Championship for those who don’t know what we are up to and what we’re doing we have been this is something that behind the scenes we had a group text going for a while of we’re all golfers um not all good but some of us are good some of us aren’t great uh but we love the game of golf and we love Pro Golf and we love talking about our own games and we love talking golf philosophy and for a while every time we would be talking about it and engaging on Twitter there was a few people would be like you guys should there should be a cover one golf there should be like you guys should make this a thing and I know David tillon had talked about wanting to make golf content in his past and wanting to get this done and I’ve talked about it and Nate’s talked about it and Chris you and I have talked about it and so I was finally kind of just like let’s do it guys what do we have to lose we have the platform we have the capabilities this is something we do every week um as everybody that follows cover one and so we’re giving this a try this is a a podcast that is going to be talking about professional golf the world of professional golf we all follow it pretty close and that’s mostly what our DMS are are all about and then our own golf games which is something I think the best thing that’s come out of our DMS is the sharing our golf game sharing our own Journeys sharing our practice and I believe I don’t know about you guys I think that might be the most relatable content that we have to there’s tons of podcasts where you can hear about the PGA and there’s even tons of podcasts where you can hear about golf games but I listen to a lot of them and it’s a lot of really really good golfers talking about playing scratch Golf and uh how to get to that type of golf where we run the gamut of single index to high index players here and we all have different parts of our journey we all have different time to invest into our game we all have different things that we’re working on and I think that’s going to make for some relatable content because I I think we connect probably more with the gamut of golfers that are actually out there consuming this stuff so what do you guys think on what we’re trying to do here yeah I think it’s super interesting also like the the path we’ve kind of taken as far as like me moving out of the New York area now being in North Carolina kind of not knowing what was going to happen as far as like when I was growing up in the area like look North Carolina maybe one of the and the Carolinas in general probably one of the best areas in the country for golf so yeah for me it was like a lot of I was around it lot um my dad lives in Pinehurst so I definitely around golf a lot growing up and um for me it was like the most interesting thing I think like as I was like kind of growing into where I got to now was like going from sort of being you know just kind of out there hacking it around and like just sort of doing whatever to really kind of focusing on like the rules and like making sure that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do and like having like a real handicap been going from like more more or less just like that type of casual type game to not that it’s not casual anymore but really kind of looking at like analytics and stats and like making sure I’m doing things the right way so like I’m honest with myself right and I think that’s the big thing that we can probably take into this podcast too with a lot of the golfers out there is like being honest with yourself about what your game is like and like about how you post your scores or how you score your game is like really the thing I think we kind of talked about this in the beginning was like there’s no there’s no benefit to lying to yourself about like what you’re doing on the course if you really trying to get better and I think there’s a lot of people out there that probably share that mindset with us like you you know none of us are that great so it’s like you might as well be honest with yourself about what you want to work on and like the things that you want to do so I’m I’m excited about this like it’s a new it’s a new piece of or type of content that we get to talk about because it’s obviously been about everything I do on otherwise is all bills related my entire Twitter handle is centered around bills stuff I really don’t post anything else other than Bill stuff but starting to do more of the golf stuff which is cool and so yeah I’m I’m psyched about this whole thing yeah Chris yeah I mean you know kind of like talking about this for as long as we did kind of thinking you know strategizing thinking about what it might be uh and then just talking about our own personal games like you mentioned has been a huge help for me I think in sort of like refocusing around the game and um it’s just been a huge benefit and I’m hoping that that’s part of what we can kind of bring to the community here is you know not only this podcast but also our presence on social media like at cover one golf on Twitter um just to be able to uh just share the the highlights and the lowlights from our rounds and from our you know our development over the season you know goals uh benchmarks that sort of thing that uh can you know help you if you want to improve like it’s helped me you know I I want to get better I’m not a great golfer but I I did make a good amount of improvement in the last year I think just from having that sort of uh Community atmosphere around it and having those conversations about the game um so anyone who’s here for this first show thank you for being here we hope you stick around and certainly like get at us with what you’re what you’re doing in your own games because we want to hear about we want to talk about it yeah no absolutely and you talk about community and that is sort of what we’re trying to build here so um if you’re tuning in here and you haven’t followed along with any of this one if you’re here on YouTube please hit that subscribe button we are a new channel under the cover one brand so we need to build up that subscription base so every time we are going live you know also follow us on Twitter at cover onegolf uh we are trying to build that up a little bit as well and then if you are a member of our our cover one one pass uh we have a Golf Channel within slack that has been a lot of fun and uh we ran a fantasy PGA thing through that we’re just trying to connect uh we’re you know copied something that I love from the golfers Journal which is called the index experiment where they’re all trying to get their indexes down and just building that community of talking about our rounds and talking about our deficiencies and getting encouragement from other golfers because you do go on Twitter and you do listen to these podcasts and stuff and you see nothing but scratch golfers or people maybe OV exaggerating their everyone drives 300 yards and everybody gets under the Green from 150 and we’re trying to have real conversations about this stuff and encourage people to get out and practice and participate because it is a fun healthy hobby that’s a really difficult game to play and so we’ll get more a little bit into our games we’re going to introduce our games a little bit and our goals and some of the off season stuff we did but we’re going to switch it up a little bit and get right back into PGA Championship here this morning because the the hottest news in golf right now is one we had a we have a major championship going on with some low scores it was a great day of golf yesterday but now you have the number one golfer in the world being detained by police this morning Twitter is going nuts the memes are just rolling in it is a crazy day for golf and Tyler and saying I think this was good for golf and I don’t just in a way like the old saying no news is bad news right all publicity is good publicity and while it stinks for Scotty and I feel bad for him and Meredith with at home with her new baby this is probably a very chaotic morning for the sheffler family I’m sure and those charges are serious and so I’m sure there’s that is weighing heavy on him but golf has had a very difficult year and a half two years in terms of the conversation surrounding this Sport and it seems like at least on Twitter and I know Twitter’s not real life but at least on Twitter there I’ve never there’s people that I don’t even know that talk about golf right now this morning that are discussing golf in the golf world uh and so is this good is this going to draw some attention to the major maybe bump up some of the the eyes on golf that we’ve been looking for well I think for one right you talk about Scotty Sheffer who’s been on this run and and the fact is that personality-wise he’s not the biggest personality right so in a way this kind of like maybe this kind of maybe gives him a little bit of a legend around him now right Stewart moment like it’s like it’s like every like it’s been it’s been very one decided at least from what I’ve seen on Twitter around the support for Scotty versus like the other way around in a lot of these things you kind kind of get like pretty split opinion but it seems like everyone’s getting behind Scotty here and like this could be this the moment where like yeah it kind of makes him a little bit more okay like we’re going to get behind him it’s not necessarily part of his personality but it’s going to be something now he carries with him going forward that this is going to be something along his golf career that we look back on and maybe we say like remember what happened to Scott the the Friday morning at Valhalla and then all of a sudden like he comes back and like just tears it up today and shoot 59 today just like shoot something wild but like I do think it’s good for golf because it’s a tension on the game one way or another and people are probably now like if you weren’t interested in tuning in to Scotty sheffler because you thought maybe he was like boring to watch which to me it’s like if you’re if you’re an avid golfer he’s not but if you’re maybe like more of a casual fan and you don’t find like his game super interesting you might tune in now today to see like what happens with him later in the day and I do think it’s again public all publicity is good when it comes to this type of thing golf you’re right has gone through some weird times over the last year year plus and I think ultimately this will help this will help today at least for this weekend it will help yeah what do you think on that Chris so I’m thinking more about Scotty personally and how this is going to affect him because I mean talk about a guy who’s on just this crazy run I mean beyond the last five tournaments he’s been playing great but you know he won four out of the last five starts and placed second in the fifth one um so just someone who’s just at the top of his game possibly even getting better which is crazy to think um how does something like this affect him I mean I like to you know I’d like to believe that he could go out there and shoot a 59 but something tells me that he’s going to be a little distracted to say the least and uh I’m I’m just really curious to see you know what happens when he’s actually out on the course today yeah so we know they bumped his tea time back so he should be able to get there and get some type of traditional warm-up form it was going to be a weird week for Scotty Sheffer anyway this week um coming off of the birth of his son uh that was big news at the Masters about you know if he’s going to withdraw when if Meredith gets pregnant and then RBC sort of the same thing and then obviously he took a break after the RBC RBC Heritage um and the birth of his son happened over the last week so then he came back and in his first hole for those that didn’t see in his first hole from the first hole he dunked an approach shot uh for an eagle which is the most Scotty sheffler thing ever to come back from a couple weeks absence and dunk an approach shot um and kind of to your point till I think that is probably the thing that the Casual fan doesn’t appreciate necessarily about Scotty because we were so spoiled with the Charisma and the energy of Tiger Woods for 20 plus years of dominating Golf and high energy and excitement and tons of emotion and we’ll never get that again most golfers are much more stoic and Scotty represents that stoicism of golf and like he dunked that and he just gave Ted Scott a little dap and continued on down walking to get his ball um also was gonna be a weird week for him on Saturday it was already announced he’s going to have a guest caddy because Ted Scott’s son’s graduation is happening this weekend and Ted Scott’s very much a man of his family and faith and he is going to attend his son’s graduation so that was a little bit of a kink uh coming into Scotty’s weekend as well but the kind of to your point Chris I think the thing that I find Most Fascinating about Scotty sheffler is his mental approach to the game right we talk about his skills his ball striking all this ability uh for a year and a half he struggled in putting and that was a constant conversation he was dominating the and strokes gained off the te from approach green side and was like 140th in putting and he was still finishing top 10 almost guaranteed weekly tilt you and I joke about it every it was like automatic top 10 for Scotty every time he he took the field but that mental approach he’s the guy like even last night after he posts around he’s on the Range Until Dark like he is the grindi golfer the most mentally focused you saw him at the Masters like he just locks in that mental focus is unbreakable and this is probably going to be the biggest test to that of getting arrested in the morning having to deal with this you have charges hanging over your head you just had a baby like life is just a roller coaster going into this week for Scotty Sheffer and we’ve never we’ve only seen stoic calm cool collected on the golf course Scotty if if he continues that today is he like totally unbreakable mentally and everyone should figure out what it is that Scotty does to get into that mental state well I would say this right you talk about like tiger and the Charisma like we heard a little bit from Scotty after the Masters is like he he doesn’t like to lose right he said I don’t like losing but he is very good at internalizing that whereas I think we see it we saw a lot more outward emotion from tiger on the course right but I think mentally their their approach and the grind and all that is is pretty similar honestly when it comes to that but you just don’t see it outly as much from Scotty the one thing I don’t want to happen is if like he has like an average day today for people to just like assume that like okay yes there might be some correlation right between what’s happened this morning and everything with that but like like I can already see the overreaction be like oh like Scotty’s run is over because like he didn’t like like let’s not go there right if he has like an average dayto day and he’s like right around even par a little bit under like I’m not like that’s not going to be a big surprise to me um even if he struggles a bit because I think we saw yesterday like there are some holes on this course if you don’t if you don’t end up in the right spot you can make a big number right we saw freaking what’s his name block make a quadruple bogey on until the end yeah and ROM came back and battled back at the end so like look I think Xander at Round yesterday was an outlier everyone else was pretty much around you know around that sort of similar type of style there were some good scores but like to me Scotty like I think he’s still going to play well today I just think like with everything we’ve seen from him over the last year year and a half the outward like maybe internally he’s got something going on but I don’t think we’re going to see anything outwardly that will like clue Us in he’s just really good at kind of protecting that yeah now one thing I think that gets lost in the conversation about Scotty and that is prior to Ted Scott’s arrival on his bag he was a little bit more emotional you would see him throwing fits on the course when things weren’t going well and that was one of the concerns I think Ted Scott had before joining Scotty’s bag was like this is a young kid he kind of throws fits around the golf course like does he really want that again he bagged for Bubba Watson who’s got a notorious personality uh for years and I don’t know that he wanted to go through that again and I think that is probably the you know outside of the conversation of Scotty Sheffer this morning with the arrest and stuff and how great he’s been playing I think the one thing that’s been lost is the combo of Scotty sheffler and Ted Scott Ted Scott does not get enough credit for Scotty sheffler’s success as he should I mean Ted Scott in terms of money earning on tour right now I think he’d be in the top 20 of tour earners in money just from the success Scotty sheffer’s had and second at one point he’s up there he’s he’s made more money than Rory up until Rory probably made more here uh with his win last week but uh Ted Scott is a multiple Masters champion on multiple bags like this guy is going to go down he might go down as one of the greatest caddies of all time and I think you know we don’t talk enough about those pairings probably because the golfer gets all the credit but I do think Ted and his calmness and his you know um being sort of that senior person kind of brings that into Scotty’s game and you saw the respect uh after the Masters when Scotty was walking up to go do all the winner stuff at the clubhouse he had Ted Scott He waited for Ted and made Ted go up ahead of him and that type of respect I think shows that we should maybe talk about the pairing more than we just talk about just the physical ability of what Scotty does on the golf course because everybody talks about his course management every talk everybody talks about his mental game the caddy plays a huge role in how and how that all plays out on the course I mean it really does and like what I like appreciate about Ted Scott is that he he kind of like is a little bit in the background right some of these other sort of I guess more prominent like caddy pairings we’ve had we’ve seen bones with JT and Phil we’ve seen gr with spe like that duo like there’s always been a little bit of like more I guess flare between between those guys and like you know they’ve gone through some ups and downs but Ted Scott just kind of is that calm guy he’s like pretty steady in the background like we appreciate what he does for Scotty and all these other guys but he’s never really been the type to like not that I’m not saying like gr and these other guys make it about themselves but he’s never been like the type to like even like want to be in the Limelight right he’s just does his thing and and it is a great pairing right and that’s such a huge piece of it and we talk about like guys who change their caddies and then like it changes their whole game Right For Better or For Worse so like it definitely is important to have that caddy because he’s the one that’s with you like these guys have swing coaches now they have psych psychiatrists y swing like they have like a whole team around them but the guy that’s on the course with you for those four rounds is the caddy so like that’s going to be the guy that you need like more than anyone to kind of have that effect on you and that pairing it’s pretty it’s pretty awesome right now yeah yeah for sure uh let’s switch it to sort of overall here PGA Championship because I don’t know about you guys uh obviously the Masters gets the most hype the way they run it the Master app like the prestige the it’s almost Disney of golf like it’s like Perfection it’s probably major number one but in my opinion the PGA Championship is Major number two in in my rankings of Majors uh I know there’s been a lot of talk on golf Twitter about Valhalla not being um a good enough course for the majors and that the projections of scoring being too low and uh maybe the winner being minus 20 real quick before we get into where the leaderboards ad and what we expect going into the weekend I have a thought on this guys I want to get your kind of opinion I know like um people want especially at a PJ Championship they want incredibly thick rough right that’s just a challenge to get out they want lowc scoring uh or they want you know um two Wonder rounds at the top my take on this is I don’t really care if it’s low or high scoring or what what the scoring is as long as it’s bunched up I want going into Sunday multiple guys in contention going down to the final round like I think that was probably the downside for the masters with Scotty was so dominating that um you know through that front nine at the final of the Masters there was a little bit tight and like maybe if he slipped up there could be somebody could make a run but he pretty much dominated and put it away after like the 13th hole and it was just kind of a matter of time watching him play it out I want more like we saw at TPC uh the PLAYERS Championship where it was he’s waiting on the Range and doesn’t know how things are going to play out uh at the end of the the round and those are the kind of golf events that I want so I don’t care necessarily if every body’s at 16 under on Sunday as long as it’s bunched up with some of the top golfers in the world should we even care about what the score is versus what the level of competition is at the top Chris I’ll let you lead off yeah I don’t I don’t I’m with you I don’t think it matters it’s you know everybody’s playing the same course so you know we’re really looking to see these golfers match up with each other not so much with the course you know I mean it’s interesting sure when the course is particularly difficult you get those you know two under final round you know scores after four rounds but it’s also I think just as interesting when guys are out there making birdies and um you know that’s it’s a different sort of a tournament but it’s a I don’t see why that would be any less valuable to be honest with you yeah how about you tail what what’s your thoughts on scoring in Majors I mean the the US open’s kind of been that traditionally the one that’s associated with like the the even par type yeah might win it um I don’t really care too much I I think I’m with you I think that the fact that it’s bunched um it makes it makes things more interesting I think that when you have it bunched and then you have also the leaderboard the way it looks like right now with FAL Rory Scotty morawa um and obviously you’ve got Xander at the top like it is a nice looking leaderboard other guys are within Striking Distance big names Brooks is you know Brooks is out there um Rah is out there and you have some others you know Vic Vick’s minus three so like it’s good it’s a good Bunch because you have a lot of the biggest names and what’s cool about the PGA Championship right is it’s the only one where it’s only professionals the qualifications are cool because like the Masters if you’ve ever won a PGA Championship ever you get to come back and play so you get to see guys like John Daly come back um and and play in in this event and and also Valhalla has hosted the p Championship numerous times and is probably home to one of the most iconic sort of shots when tiger chasing the ball Down in the Hole uh you know in back from 2000 so I don’t mind it and I think Valhalla is a pretty good course there’s plenty enough challenges out there for it and so the scoring again yeah it you’re playing against the others like kep said it’s not necessarily that I care so much what the total is at the end yeah and so let’s talk about the leaderboard real quick you kind of ran through it it’s a Xander obviously posting a crazy round yesterday really running away from the pack I think you nailed it till that this was an outlier of the day I think everybody leading up to the round expected scoring to be like this and that we would have multiple people at eight under or more but it was just Xander uh playing great again from the start this is his second 62 in a major uh which is kind of insane I I said it I put a tweet yesterday I’m sure a lot of our followers here at cover one golf will also be Bills fans I I hate to say it because I’m a Bills fan but he’s kind of like the Buffalo Bills right now of golf where he’s incredible uh and he’s post like he’s the second best player in the world in I in my opinion right now uh to Scotty sheffler and but he just can’t win right he can’t get over the hump he can’t beat the Chiefs uh I hate that analogy so much it’s true though and he’s got to get one this might be his week to do it uh I loved his attitude in the press conference though talking about you know he came right back out after a tough loss to L Rory uh this past weekend and that’s type that’s the type of thing like Scotty’s putting was where the media is not going to leave Xander alone if he continues to be in contention and just not be able to close out victories and he was like Hey first of all it’s just Thursday I shot a good round but losing last week just drives me to be better here this week and I love that from him um and losing in Gulf he’s still making a lot of money he’s Xander’s having a really good year and he’s doing pretty well for himself but he’s at the leaderboard minus N9 alone at the top and then yeah I love to see it you got Tony Fe feno theala right there at six under with markk hubard Rory coming in with a five under yesterday uh I think Rory was one of my picks uh for this weekend I think that he might be able to break the Valhalla curse we haven’t seen him win a major since his last time in Valhalla years ago um Robert McIntyre right there 5 under Haj uh Tom Kim as well dri morawa who uh we talked about this in one of our cover one uh he had a great back nine yesterday yeah we talked talked about him on Spaces of being one of those guys like a Justin Thomas like a Jordan spe who was really seemingly not finding his game over the last couple of years but since we talked about it man he has been right there in the top 10 almost every time we see him so he’s really starting to find his game again uh Maverick mcney right in there Brooks ke kka at 4 under Moore eart um skot Sheffer at 4 under um and then it goes into a bunch of guys stacked up here at three under havin hadwin Hom deshambo OR some names that you guys will all know here uh but this is interesting scoring interesting leaderboard to your point um we talk a lot about the state of golf everybody’s saying golf’s not as competitive because of the Liv split and we’re not seeing great golf but every week almost except for the ones you know that aren’t necessarily Signature Events or some of the ones guys takes weeks off these are the leaderboards week in and week out and I just listed probably 10 15 names of like high class worldclass golfers they’re almost in that top 10 every single week is the state of golf that bad or are we just seeing this because it’s a major no I think the state of golf I mean look ultimately we want to see everyone like we love these Majors now especially we’ve always loved the majors but we love them now more so in the last year because we get to see Rah Kea Phil like we get to see these guys all play together and like that’s great but this the week to week state of the PGA Tour I’m still obviously quite interested in it you’ve got the history of the events youve got guys like you saw malady several weeks ago about how he just like how much that winning meant to him and just like how much a win on the PGA tour can like change these guys lives in the sense that they get their tour card for three years they get to play in the majors and like you can tell there’s a lot more on the line week to week when it comes to the competition on the PGA tour than live now I still want to see these live guys play in the majors and I still want to ultimately at the end of the day see all these guys come back and play together more regularly but the state of the the PGA like if you watch full swing I’m sure most of the people watching this have watched it like there are guys that are young guys coming up that are are interesting Tom Kim tagala like you’ve got guys that younger guys that are going to make the future of the PGA pretty good Maverick mless your dad’s ability hey he’s a really good putter too so always leading putting yeah yeah um but you’ve got like Victor hlin and you’ve got tagala you’ve got Tom Kim you’ve got these guys that are like the younger Young Guns on the PGA tour that are that have personalities right and they’re interesting and I think full swing has done a really good job highlighting some of these guys as well but if you’re a real if you if you love golf you’re GNA watch you’re GNA watch the PGA every week regardless of what you think of the field so that’s kind of where I land with it yeah how about you Chris uh just I mean pulled up this comment from MST you think I think golf is struggling from what tennis experienced lots of great players but no one that really moves the the viewer need needle I think is what he means there yeah um there’s no Borg Connors or Mack Andro that moves people to turn it on like you were talking about tiger earlier versus kind of the demeanor that that Scotty sheffler shows on the course and um yeah I mean what a bigger personality at the Forefront of the PGA Tour bring more people to the game maybe but golf has also been growing quite a bit over over the recent years and people people are coming to the game in different ways I think and it’s almost um interesting to me seeing that you know maybe the game itself drawing people in um as opposed to the personalities playing it and you’re getting more people watching um and you’re seeing good golf I mean a lot of these guys if you watch full swing you know a lot of these guys are easy to root for um so you know obviously there’s all this sort of drama going on with Liv and everything which I don’t really want to dive into but like they like you know David said the uh it would be nice to see more of a resolution there and see those guys playing together more but um regardless of the the lack of those big personalities I do think there are a lot of really um likable guys on tour that makes it watching it enjoyable for me even outside of the you know you’re seeing Great Golf week in and week out yeah for sure I mean we’ll definitely have conversations about Liv because you can’t talk golf without talking live golf right now that is exactly what they wanted to do was be disruptors in the industry I agree with you Chris that you know um I think one of the biggest issues I have with the conversation of Round Golf is the way it’s framed I don’t think is totally accurate to actually what’s happening uh the media the way they talk about it so we hear a lot about um interest in golf lacking but then we see statistics from the golf industry where it’s everything’s up uh golf rounds are up simulator Round Golf is up everything’s up and then we’ll see TV data that shows interest in golf is down because the ratings of us TV is lower that doesn’t account for international ratings it also doesn’t count for streaming which I don’t know about you guys but I pay for a stupid amount of services because the way golf is is you have to have ESPN plus you have to have peacock at certain times you have to have some type of cable service to get the channels like yesterday I watched on ESPN plus I watched on the Golf Channel I watched on whatever it was CBS ESPN like you had to move around to watch golf and so I don’t know that the TV statistics are necessarily accurate we saw with the Masters that was a huge conversation that Masters viewing was down 20% and from the Tiger Woods 2004 it was down a huge amount from when Tiger Woods and that’s also part of the problem is we’re grading interest in watching golf on a curve of Peak Tiger Woods like we all knew the entire Golf World knew post Tiger golf was going to take a hit I mean we’re talking about a player that impacted his sport more than any athlete has impacted a sport in the history of sports like Jordan is probably the next comparable in terms of like Global Outreach and interest in a sport tiger blew that away because golf started at a much lower Point than the NBA was like NBA had STS you had Bird magic the 80s and then Jordan came along and just elevated everything to astronomical level where tiger took a game that was kind of boring very elitist only for old white guys and brought an entire generation this whole new generation of golfers you see is a Tiger Woods generation of golfers uh till you and I talk about it all the time like that’s where we were raised into the game of golf I played in high school in the late 90s I started getting into it and it wasn’t cool like it was just starting to get cool for young kids to be involved in the game oflf now when I go to the course I see young kid my kid is 8 years old and he’s participating in golf instructional stuff and first te Western New York like uh that didn’t exist 20 years ago and a lot of that’s just because of Tiger Woods and so we knew there was going to be a shift in who the needle movers were and the interest and stuff like that but the Masters so there was a 20% decrease I know the Math’s not accurate but then there was a huge increase in the use of the Masters app the use of ESPN plus golf is the number one thing uh on the ESPN Plus app of what is streamed on that app and so I think it’s a little bit insincere in the way that is framed because you’ll see a bunch of articles that come out it’s like oh interest in golf is down this is nothing you know this is a huge issue but then they’re not always saying like well but all the app streaming is up and all this other stuff about attendance at events and things like that and so I do I think the state of golf is interesting I do think it’s influx with the Liv stuff um and and sort of in that vein as we get get into I want to get some sleeper picks and what you guys think about going into the weekend here uh as the major ramps up who we talked about this on the Twitter uh spaces when we did the masters of like pressure to win in these situations because majors are Legacy Builders right like this was the conversation around Scotty here when he was dominating the field and everyone’s like we haven’t seen this type of domination since tiger and since Peak tiger in terms of Strokes gained against the field but those top 10 finishes weren’t result and wins and he wasn’t winning Majors which is that’s where the legacy is we hear all about you know Jordan spe trying to chase that grand slam we hear about guys like Ricky Fowler um hom Max hom this is a big one right like he’s got to get a major victory at some point to ensure his legacy right he’s a fun golfer he’s a good personality he doesn’t have that major success the the constant pressure for Rory mroy of not having that additional major and uh stuff like that and I even um Buffalo Golf and social over at Buffalo Golf and social I hit him this weekend with or this week with a question of you know if like Brooks keco wins again this weekend does he overtake Rory for the best golfer since the post tiger era in terms of Legacy because that’s how big majors are right if you start winning these Majors you get that Legacy so we’ll kind of send it around the horn here tilt who do you think has the most pressure right now this weekend to post a victory and get a major here on the board well I mean I would say based on the leaderboard has it stands right on Friday morning I think there are two names that stand out the first is the guy who’s at the top right now in Xander shley right because he’s had so many he’s had so much success in his career he’s a FedEx Champion right he’s had a lot of he’s had wins um he’s been part of Ryder cups but he just hasn’t had that major victory I mean you could kind of almost say the same about Tony fow though I think um you know he his biggest thing the last couple years was that he just couldn’t win at all but he obviously won twice last year and so kind of there and so maybe there’s not as much pressure on Tony to win the major because he’s got just the wins but to me it’s Xander and Rory because Rory last major he won was at Valhalla back in 2014 and he’s been kind of sitting on that number now for 10 years right and there was the when he won that Us open at Congressional when he won um those Majors early on in his career and he’s that one Masters away from the Grand Slam there’s been a lot of pressure on him to perform in the majors and now he’s in the face of the PGA right and now he’s the face of the PGA and now he’s going also through his own sort of offc course stuff with the divorce of his wife so it’s like there’s pressure on Rory to win um and he’s right up there and like he’s had success in major so I don’t want to take that away from him he’s had a lot of top fives top 10 over the past several years in these Majors but he hasn’t gotten that other one over the hump so I think there is some pressure on him to kind of win win another um probably less pressure on him to win a PGA Championship than there is to win The Masters because that would obviously complete the Grand Slam but there is still pressure on him I don’t think there’s a ton of pressure on Scotty sheffler because he just won the Masters and he’s still kind of yeah and so to me the two names that stand out are Xander who’s at the top looking for that first major and then Rory who’s just right there in his sights and before I toss it to Chris what are your thoughts on that like if Say Brooks comes out and puts up a couple we know Brooks shows up in majors and he’s still within Striking Distance here if he comes out and puts out a couple rounds gets himself into contention like in my opinion I think that might be the best thing for golf right now if it was like Xander Rory Brooks final day final Sunday everybody’s in contention for the major if Brooks overtakes that run of Rory and wins one is his legacy is he the best golfer of the post Tiger Woods era in terms of Legacy or will Rory still hold that title I think Rory is Rory’s going to have more wins right overall but Brooks is going to have the majors and that’s kind of how these these conversations end end up happening when you talk about professional golf it was like you know Sam Sneed had the most wins of all time but didn’t have the most majors and it’s like you have all these guys like uh with tons of wins on the PGA tour but maybe not a ton of a ton of Majors right or like maybe only one or two so nor right been hit he’s what he won what one major I think maybe two um the Open champ I ship but yeah like he was known for falling apart you know on the final day in Majors whereas Brooks is known for elevating his game in the major so I do think like that the conversation probably comes down to those two guys for a while you might have been able to put spe in that conversation although I think he’s dropped out now from that um because he’s gone through some stuff but I think that it would come down to that conversation of Brooks versus Rory and there’s a lot of people that don’t like Brooks’s personality and there’s a lot and Rory’s kind of like this likable like I can see that being you know a factor in people’s opinions on this but there is no there’s absolutely no denying Brooks’s ability and his ability to get up for the majors like that guy has like another level for the majors that really we can’t ignore it would be a fun debate I don’t know I’d probably still give the edge to Rory just for the overall broader success but that all came in a major success came in a pretty early concentrated period of his career so it’s it would make for an interesting discussion yeah for sure and Chris what do you think on that like who’s who’s got the pressure on him here going into the weekend uh so to me the guy with the most pressure is probably Justin Thomas um he’s won this tournament twice he’s playing in his hometown you just know what getting a win like this would mean in terms of getting him back to that place where he was before he missed four out of five cuts and major events um he’s seven back right now after the first 18 um but when he won the PTA championship in 2022 he was seven back going into the final round so Meo sorry Meo Pereira so you can’t count him out yeah part of that was Meo falling apart more than Justin catching him but it was a little bit of Justin just yeah you still got to catch him no he caught him man he came down to the last hole so yeah right right um so yeah I mean Justin and then you know to a much lesser extent I do think that you know um it’s going to be tough for Michael block to uh tune out the noise from all of the magic from last year and um you know hearing him talk like he doesn’t seem like the type of guy that lets pressure get to him too much but there’s got to be some sort of uh pressure to have a good showing after uh after you know what he did in this tournament last year yeah you gotta give Michael credit for on quadruple bogging the second hole yesterday and kind of getting it together after that right I mean he had a pretty decent round after that second hole that one hole just kind of derailed him but I’ll give him credit for for bouncing back pretty decently after that because that happened super early in his uh real quick on Michael blockman I feel like Twitter is just I I know Twitter’s full of haters but the way the conversation about Michael block this week on Twitter was wild to me like people are so sick of it and all that stuff but we haven’t heard a ton about the block party and Michael block but you should have expected it coming into this weekend like a fantastic story that riveted the golf world we were all supporting him at a super hard course he got himself an exemption into this tournament like the way he played and the the pardon my friend like the balls that he showed to make that chip shot and Putt to get the exemption playing with Rory like big stage being a club pro that goes into a major and plays the way that he did that should we should celebrate that I think it was great for the game of golf it was a super cool moment and I don’t G give him his additional 15 minutes of fame this week because we should remember it it’s a cool moment in golf that again sort of like this Scotty sheffler thing there was people that don’t even understand golf or follow it or know and everybody a year ago was talking about Michael block like it was a huge thing and so the people that are tired of hearing about it like I get it he’s not gonna come out and post a under commercials now yeah he’s got his own commercials um but this is great for the PGA of America like those guys there this wasn’t like drawing from a lottery to get in like you earn your way these Pros that play in this event earn their way through qualifiers to play in this event and it’s huge they’re not on the PGA tour they’re not dealing with this type of pressure like um I I’ve never played as an adult tournament golf but in high school there’s a huge difference of like playing rounds with your buddies versus playing competitive rounds like for something and I froze up in competitive rounds like we only had maybe 15 20 people watching our like big tournament at the end of the year and I remember being off the t- box and my hands like literally shaking because I wasn’t used to that type of pressure I couldn’t imagine being a club pro who’s teaching old dudes at a really nice country club you know a month before this than having to go to a major championship where a crowd is surrounding you at a chip shot to get your exemption like it’s a cool moment just let the guy have his moment there um all right let’s transition out of PGA talk and I think the most relatable part of what our podcast is GNA be about again is our person we want to do sleepers first sure yeah we could do sleeper although I will say I don’t have any sleepers because I honestly think that this major and the way the course is playing is going to benefit the guys at the top of this uh leaderboard and the best golfers in the world so I actually don’t have any sleeper picks uh for this I think for me it’s going to come down to Xander Rory if Scotty can keep his mental game attached through this and then I think Brooks will find himself in contention here too so I don’t have any sleeper picks though coming out of nowhere for this do you guys have some sleepers I don’t necessarily have a sleeper but uh the way morawa finished yesterday I’m I’m having a hard time ignoring that if he can get that putter going he’s one of the better iron players he’s got that nice little like fade that seems to work well on this course there’s a lot of left to right holes for rties on this course I mean I I just feel like if he and he looked like mentally dialed in yesterday coming down that back nine so I know he’s he’s minus5 and it’s not a sleeper he’s four back but like there’s a lot of guys bunched up there in that minus5 minus 6 minus four range I would not surprise me morawa came out of this thing yeah um I did have a a few sleepers real quick the uh so tied for fifth right now Robert McIntyre who hasn’t won on the PGA tour before but he has three international wins uh he made a name for himself at the Ryder Cup last fall when he went undefeated for the European team um he’s at plus 8,000 right now uh Mark Hubbert is another guy he’s tied for second after the first round plus 6600 um he’s had 13 top 10 finishes still and six top five finishes but no wins the thing is with him is he’s in the bottom 25% on tour in terms of driving distance which is an issue um with Valhalla being the third longest course on tour this season and like stock says here if if it continues to get wet which they’re anticipating it should favor some long hitters yeah the ball’s not going to roll out on the fairways yeah um so over six 7600 yards for vajal that’s a pretty long course um so my actually my favorite sleeper is Maverick mcney we were talking about him earlier um he’s plus 12,500 in betting right now but he’s in the 71st percentile in driving distance so if you like the idea of someone who um you know sort of had a good first round and also maybe has the driving distance to keep up with the front of the pack as we get into the weekend here Mavericks had 14 top 10 finishes since he joined the tour in 2020 and uh he’s currently in that seven-way tie for fifth a couple other guys you know who drive well and are have shown well in the first round Thomas dri and Taylor Moore um they’re both long shot on as terms in terms of odds um but they’re both also in the top 12 also in the top um 67 percentile or 70th percentile in terms of driving I like that um all right let’s transition over I think uh this is one I’m most excited about is to discuss our games uh where we’re at I know you know we this was really why this podcast started uh our DM groups of sharing those Adventures as we go and the encouragement that we give each other so uh till I’ll let you here start a little bit um before we get to too deep into it tell us a little bit about you started uh the show talking about it your background into golf how many years you’ve been playing um you know how often you get out you live right on a country club we talk about that all the time and sort of where your game is currently at and and where you’re what you’ve been working on and where you’re looking to grow here this golf season you have a little bit of a longer golf season than we do up here in Buffalo so you got a bit of advantage on us which I’m always jealous about yeah so I mean I grew up I started playing at the age of seven uh was in Upstate New York played at a course called Densmore Golf Club it was like a state-owned course um right off the Hudson River my dad would take me out we’d walk um got my first hole in one when I was 10 years old which was pretty sweet yeah me too uh got three total uh so uh so I I played a lot when I was like from age 7 to 10 to 12 and it was 13 I moved down to North Carolina from New York and I kind of stopped playing for a couple years and then picked it back up um maybe when I was like 15 16 and kind of had been pretty consistent um there but then like college I stopped playing like almost all together I would only play a couple times a year and then when I finally kind of like settled into like the the Life After College and like wanted to really um you know get back back into the game more we decided to join the club that we’re at now which is basically the club that all my friends in high school were part of when I was in high school and I wasn’t right and that was our home course for our high school team and all this stuff and so I was I was just so tired of like trying to find things on golf now and like finding tea time so we’re like let’s just do this be good for our family it’s like family membership whatever my wife plays so that I was also a big um consideration as part of like getting this membership but yep I would say the biggest thing that’s improved for me from being like a I would say realistically again this gets back to my point about like being real and honest about your scores and on the surface doesn’t look like a whole lot’s change but I was probably a lot more loose with my scoring back before I had a handicap um right now I’m a 10 index um I’ve been pretty much floating around between like an eight and a 10 index for the last four or five years I would say what I’m working on right now is is being a little bit more consistent in hitting greens I’m pretty good about pretty good with driver pretty good at getting the ball in play off the te and I’m pretty good at putting my biggest issue my biggest thing right now is that I don’t hit a lot of greens I’m that classic guy who hits a good drive and then up the second shot kills all of us yeah but it’s also helped my short game right and so I’ve had a lot of practice like chipping and and shots around the green CU I don’t hit a lot of green so that my short game has definitely improved over the last couple years being able go out and work on that has definitely that’s definitely been the area of my game that has improved most over the past five years but the one thing that I still really need to work on is hitting more greens that’s my number one goal for this season hit more greens I’m confident enough in my putting I have a good putting stats I’m pretty good off the te I would like to get my index down to like six7 would be my goal um but that is a little ambitious I know but I think if I can hit some more greens I can I can get there on that what do so um in the off seon are you putting in the work to specifically work on that is it maintaining your game maintaining your swing things like that um and when you talk about hitting greens what are the practices and things that you’re doing or is it just going out and playing more and getting ball striking down playing where where you at with the work to get there so a couple things I do right so like you said we have a longer season down here so I get to pretty much go to the range year round now in the winter months here we still hit off mats it’s not like ideal but the one there’s a couple things I’m doing number one is when I’m at the range I’m not just like blasting balls right like one after the other I’m actually like picking out targets and like going through my routine are you a launch monitor guy do you I don’t have a launch monitor at the range but I’ll bring my Rangefinder and shoot the flags at the range and be like okay like I’m going to try to hit like four or five shots at this flag this distance and like see how close I can yet to that so that’s one thing uh that I work on and then the other thing when I’m out on the course that I’m really trying to work on is looking at where pin positions are um on the greens and like not letting that affect my decision making because it’s really easy to be like oh that pin’s on the right side of the green let me be a little bit more conservative and aim left in case I miss then I have like maybe an easier up and down when in reality what I really want to do is maybe just think about aiming more for the center of the green every time and that way if I do aim left on a right pin position and I hit it left I’m like well I could have just aimed straight at the center of the green and been fine like and stop keeping that cone of dispersion in mind yeah and just like not being so afraid of like of missing left or right it’s the like distance I’m not too that’s that’s not so much like distance control like I’m pretty good at Club selection but like left and right I need to stop I need to not be as afraid to miss the green and just more or less aim for the center of the green stop worrying so much about pin position and then relying on my putting that okay if I hit the center of the green or even the left side of the green if the pin’s on the right I’ll still be able to get down and two from there gotcha and before we get over to Chris and uh get his take on where his his game is at what’s in your back right now going into this year yep so I’ve had I’ve gotten fitted so I couple years ago I got fitted for Titus ap3 iron um so that’s what I’m gaming right now from as far as irons I’ve got the four through pitching wedge in the bag for the ap3s I’ve got a Sim 2 Max uh driver in the bag love that thing love that thing and I actually just recently put my old fivewood back in the bag I recently bought okay put my old one back in it’s an R9 it’s an old tailor made R9 but I hit that thing so consistently I don’t have any other Woods in the bag so I have my driver and my fivewood I don’t really find the need to have a three-wood all that often and then I got I just got as you guys know a wedge fitting I got three new sm10 boki wedges in the bag right now and I’m Still rocking my Nike method converge putter that I bought at PGA Superstore like 10 years ago it’s like you get a good putter you just I I mean like putting to me like and we’ll talk about this more in future shows it’s it’s up here man like you just gota so that’s what I’ve got in the bag right now and typically I historically had always used a pro1 ball but I’m now recent in the last year or two started using the AVX yeah it’s a good ball uh Chris give us a little bit of rundown background on your game sort of give us the what tilt just described where he’s at yeah I mean so similarly I I wasn’t as Avid a golfer as as uh David was when he was a kid but I did play quite a bit up through high school or at least through the first like half of high school um and got pretty decent I I did some Junior PGA stuff for like one year and I hated it and it turned me off to the game because we were talking about a little while ago tournament golf is a lot different than going out and playing with your friends and it just didn’t uh it didn’t work for me it didn’t make me feel good about the game and um I got away from it for quite a bit I mean I played a little bit here and there um but you know for years like nothing to write home about um I I got into it started getting back into it a couple more years a couple years ago um there’s a nine-hole course around the corner from me basically and just like started going and started to ReDiscover what I loved about playing and um then sort of dipped for a little bit and last year for the first time in a long time I played like a ton of golf um at least by my standards it’s not a ton of golf by a lot of people’s standards but I think I played like 30 rounds last year which you know a lot that’s a lot that’s a lot of rounds yeah I mean it it certainly felt like a lot to me and it definitely had a huge difference in terms of um improving because I think I was playing somewhere around like a 34 or 35 handicap when I started to get back into it and just having all of that time on the course last year um now I’m around a 27 which still quite High I mean um you know obviously I can’t compete with you guys and get you know guys who have had a lot more time out there but um it’s certainly helped me to sort of reframe my goals around the game and you know just thinking about it from a perspective of time on the course as opposed to um the scores uh because I think that the more time you have out there the scores are going to drop um so you know if we’re talking about goals for the season what I’m looking to do is just try to play more I mean I think um I did the math and I played somewhere a little over 10 holes a week last year if you over the course of the year and obviously you know in the summertime there’s getting more rounds in but um I like golf too so I’ll I’ll do it but if by the end of the calendar year I’ve played you know 12 15 holes a week maybe then I’ll feel like you I’m getting that time in to and the to get the scores down and the the handicap will kind of Dr continue to drop and um you know if I don’t see progress there I’m not going to worry about it too much but I kind of feel like I will just by you know time on task what are you doing uh in the offseason to hit goal but outside of the goal of playing more obviously in terms of trying to you know one do you have an index goal for this year or is it just play more and if you do have an index goal is there certain things you’ve been working on to try to decrease it yeah I don’t have an index goal um because I’m don’t I think that if I start to think that way it’s going to affect the mental side of the game a little bit for me um more than I wanted to um and in the offseason it’s just you know trying to find those moments to work on the short game um you know get to the range uh I don’t have a range that’s like super convenient so that’s a little tougher but um I found ways to you know just kind of mess around even at home with with putting and chipping practice um when I can and that it just kind of getting you know hitting hitting more balls I think you know something that tiger said to someone on camera at one point like you just got to hit a lot of balls and uh it’s so true I mean you just got to be comfortable feeling what the ball feels like coming off the club and you know um yeah event eventually like yeah speaking of clubs what’s in your bag right now so I had I started with a pretty mixed sort of hand me- down bag because I was just you know coming back to the game I’ve been slowly evolving as I kind of figure out what I need um and what is going to help so I’m playing with uh some a Titleist driver uh TS ts1 I’ve got a Titleist 3-wood um I’ve got some off-brand irons that’s kind of like the next thing I think is to get some nice irons um and uh I did upgrade the putter I got a putter fitting towards the end of last season um I got the new um ai1 Odyssey Putter which um it’s pretty cool I mean you know it was there’s more to Putters than I ever really thought about with in terms of the the way that the shafts are constructed and how much weight you have behind the ball and um so the putter fitting I think helped to sort of find the the style of shaft that worked best for my uh my swing path and um it feels great so um that’s been certainly a nice upgrade um and I have some kind of random old school GL I’ve got a I’ve got a legit wood like a hickory wood rescue club it’s like a seven wood uh with like a an iron plate on the bottom of it and it’s uh for cutting through the rough and it’s something that uh that my grandma used to carry in her bag and she you know I used to play golf with my grandparents when I was a kid so a little bit of nostalgia but also it I mean I I feel like I hit it pretty well um and I’ve got this little this uh chipper Club too which you yeah yeah I it’s got a putter grip um and you know some some people are like what the hell is that thing but uh and I sort of got away from it for a while and I was struggling to you know I I I got a couple of vogi wedges which was uh a huge um help I think for my like 50 to 100 yard um shots but around the green I was trying to use these wedges and just not really getting the right feel for it so um I had a less with a club pro around here and he was like you’ve got this chipper like what you know why aren’t you using this and he like yeah I have had this chipper it’s like literally only Club I’ve got from when I played as a kid it’s been in the bag the longest and I do have a great uh feel for you know uh for different types of shots with that club so my short game is slowly coming around just by kind of re-embracing this random club that you know is probably worthless to most people but you know it feels right for for my game I guess play the only play the clubs that you’re confident with that’s my thing that I learned here over the last year so um my game uh I took up golf around the age of 13 maybe uh I had a friend who we lived on a road that uh was budded up against a private Country Club New London Country Club actually uh which one of our one pass members actually works at uh which is kind of fun and uh his grandparents lived literally they had a stone wall separating them from the country club so we would his grandfather had a bunch of old wooden clubs like the seven wood you use Chris he had them just laying around the garage and so we would sneak those and top the fence and go out and play one of the holes that went along their property until ground screw chased us off uh and that was sort of my introduction into the game of golf was just being kind of punks on a private Country Club there uh and then later at night we would sneak on and dig balls out of the water and then go sell them like the next day to the guys and they knew they were their own balls and they loved it and so that was our introduction to the game of golf and then uh that was when I lived in Connecticut and then I moved to Maine and uh my first friend that I met in Maine also happened to be a golfer and so we both uh saved up we were working at the time as as young kids and we saved up and bought ourselves membership to a golf club that was a few miles up the road it was bath Country Club um and we were actually just reconnected uh pretty recently after 20 years of not talking and we were talking about riding to the club in our bikes with our clubs on our back and just it was like a three mile ride uphill to get to our country club and go play all day long and absolutely obsessed with the game loved it through high school we both lettered uh in golf for our team uh and it wasn’t cool uh we got made fun of a lot for showing up for golf matches and we had to have our stupid looking golf polos and hats that our school provided for us uh and lot lots of those people that made fun of us are probably maybe a little bit jealous that they didn’t get into golf earlier now because I see them on Facebook and Instagram they are golfers now uh even though they made fun of us at the time um and then after high school though golf disappeared from my life I started working in the kitchen industry I didn’t I worked all weekends and holidays and summer we I lived in a tourist town so Summers were just 80 hours of work a week there was just no time for golf and none of my friends really participated in golf which made it hard um it was all dis golf if anybody’s familiar with dis golf it was a lot of that um and so sometimes yeah and I think you guys know how life can get it was honestly I blinked in like 17 years went and I just didn’t even I no range no golf at all in my life and then uh my wife’s job a lot of guys have come in that work with her and they were starting they had a golf group and they were all going out and golfing all the time and she’s like why don’t you go and and join these guys and and so I put together a terrible set of clubs uh I had a fire Soul tailor made fire Soul driver from back when I actually played 17 years AO ago um it was about a 20-year-old club and then I found some 1986 Ben Hogan Magnums for like 25 bucks at a yard sale uh and a and a random putter I did end up actually upgrading the putter real instantly um I got myself a stroke laab and odyssey stroke clab I figured if I was gonna make an investment it was going to be into the putter originally um and my ramp up was real slow though because I understood that I’d been out of the game for so long I understood how frustrating the game can be uh there was part of me that maybe thought it was going to be like riding a bike where I would just get back on and and be as good of a golfer as I was when I was 17 years old and that was not the case at all um it almost was like I’d never swung a club at all so if you’ve had taken a break I encourage you to really start swinging and and get out there and hit uh the first so it’s I ramped up slowly range sessions hitting clubs going out and my wife was like dude just go play this is ridiculous why are you so adamant about not playing and I’ll tell you why the first time I went I went out to Sheridan Golf Course here in town of tananda which is a difficult municipal course and I posted like a plus 40 or something like that like I the course ripped me apart I had no feel for the game I was super frustrating I hated everything about it and I was so mad at myself and I didn’t play any more rounds for the rest of that year and I took the entire offseason I went back to the drawing board got lessons really grinded at my game and figured all right next season it was going to be about posting as many rounds as I could and getting out as often as I could and I think I put up 50 rounds last year um and really was trying to grind at my game uh I got myself down to I think I started this year at a 18 index uh and over the offseason here this year my wife uh surprised me on my 40th birthday by driving me over to club champion and getting me a driver fitting so I got to get out of my fire soul from 20 years ago uh 30 years ago and get myself into a g430 uh fit to me really um incredible gamechanging the technology jump that I was able to make uh from 20 30 year old clubs to a driver that has modern technology is unbelievable my by Swing necessarily hasn’t gotten any better but the Forgiveness on these new clubs is incredible uh and because of that and that itch that I got from that driver I also went ahead and got rid of my Ben Hogans and and got myself fitted for some irons and so I’m playing the Ping g430 irons as well which are also incredibly forgiving uh I’m currently waiting on I got fitted for wedges and they’re they haven’t come in yet but they’re on their way I’ve got some uh Cleveland RTX wedges coming in uh that should fix some gapping issues that I’m currently having in my game and uh so I started the year right about a 18 index uh my goal is to get sub5 there’s three guys that are in my golf group so I have a golf group that ranges we got about 16 dudes we text all the time they go out almost every weekend here different courses around Western New York which is another topic that we’re going to get into uh is the Great Golf and the accessible golf that is available to us at West in here in Western New York um and we go around to different places and not that I’m my golf game isn’t necessarily I want to beat everybody right like I’m only competing against myself but I do have some friends that I would like to be playing with and that I think my abilities are on par with but my index wasn’t where their was a year ago and I was you know a shot or you know a stroke or two behind him almost every time but I didn’t feel like my ability was and so I went out invested in new clubs uh I I did a couple different lessons spoke to a couple different guys this winter I was at we have a indoor uh Dome here in the town of tananda uh great facilities if you are a Northtown in in the town of tananda we have an indoor Dome I was there two to three times a week working on different things to tilts Point really my goal this year besides the index movement is more consistent ball striking right like I I think that I can when I get good contact I can play with even 10 index players I I I believe it’s a matter of being able to do that consistently and eliminating you know last year my game would have a really nice drive and I’d hit the Fairway and then I’d Duff a shot on approach and then that would turn into a different stff and I would you know compound bad shots and that’s where you get sevens that’s where you get eights Plus on the scorecard and I’m not a guy and most average golfers are not a guy that’s going to make up for an eight by birdie in a couple holes right like I’m trying to play bogey golf which doesn’t eliminate the bad golf and so for me it’s ball striking consistency trying to build that up so that was really where I was grinding this winner on the Range and so far I’ve been posting quite a bit of rounds I think I’ve already got 15 20 rounds into the year uh so far here and my index is dropping uh I I’ve already about hit my goal so I’m down to 15.1 I think I’m trending in the right direction to maybe even get go sub 15 here this year I know I’ll have some rounds that go back up into the 50s and push my index up and down a little bit this year um but the ball striking for the most part feels like I’m getting there and getting good uh and so yeah I’m I’m happy where the direction I’m heading I do we were talking a little bit offline the one thing I probably got to do is not play as much as I am right now and work on some practice uh and break up the desire to go out and play and post rounds and move my index and break it up a little bit more with some practice and getting to the greens and working on some of the short game stuff uh I will say Chris to your point of the chipper and I’m waiting on my wedges I think the thing that has been unlocked the most for me this year has been course management and decision Mak I talked to you about this till a lot I’ve unlocked instead of pulling out my 58 and trying to make like a nice spinny shot onto the green and attacking greens like that pulling out my pitching wedge and I’m just small chips and bumping runs and playing Green side and that has been putting me in position my Strokes gained putting uh I was looking at it today I’m like a I’m almost a scratch golfer in putting Strokes gain uh because I’m putting the ball within five feet within 10 feet of the hole with this bump and run and it feels like I’ve unlocked a cheat code like once I get within 40 yards 50 yards of the pin I’m pulling out that pitching wedge I’m not even really using my 58 that much unless I have to get over something or get out of sand and I think a lot of golfers would scoff at that play with a lot of guys that just want to have a nice high lofted and place it right on the pin and I’m bump and running and sometimes it’s just hitting The Fringe and running up to the green and getting myself as close as I possibly can because I know I can’t hit plus 10 foot putts right I’m gonna two putt possibly three putt and that’s what kills my score if I can just keep it to the two putts I should be able to Bogey every hole and and and maybe once in a while get my chance to look at a birdie but if I’m playing bogy golf I’m going to hit my goals my index is going to keep dropping and that’s about where I’m at uh and then ball last year I was playing whatever I could get my hands on and still a little bit today like I’ve had people buy me and give me balls but something I’ve fallen in love with is the maxfly Tour ball it’s uh it tested at my golf spy on levels with titlis uh but the price is about $20 less $15 less per dozen uh and that seems to be a sweet spot for me is that Max Fly so I encourage anyone that is real snobby about their ball they just give it a try go buy yourself a box of Max flies and and give it a go you’re not going to get the consistency that Titleist offers from ball to ball but I would argue none of us are that good where we’re gonna know like we’re not tour players and so if you can save yourself 15 20 bucks someone with a handicap up in the 20s like me like the ball doesn’t matter all that much like I have been trying to pay attention to the type of ball and see like what what difference it makes and um I’ve been enjoying playing the T the tailor made distance plus balls which are not as expensive as as Prov ons and but you know they I’ve got some in my bag a buddy gave me some of those denance plus they’re great ball that’s a great ball um I’m happy for it this is going to be Lauren I’m not calling you out here I love you I think you’re fantastic we’re gonna have to have a full episode about this because the drive for show put forough uh I personally don’t agree with and I get blasted on Twitter for I’ve never been ratioed harder uh on TW than when I say that this is a fallacy and it’s not accurate and that the data show so I’m going to we’re going to have to do a a show all about this and discuss the philosophy and that’ll be another topic is that’s probably the conversation about golf that I love the most is philosophy surrounding course management philosophy surrounding the analytics and data that we’re now being able to get that that stuff didn’t exist back when I was in high school and getting into golf like Strokes gain I think was just coming out we didn’t know some of the things we know about golf now um and so so I love those conversations about golf Lauren will fight me I will lose a fight Lauren for sure I don’t want that smoke um but I do I think that’s going to be an interesting conversation we have and sort of wrap this up those are the things you know talking PGA you know growing our game here as we go through the summer uh the highs and the lows and being honest about it you know I’m not a scratch golfer and even though I feel good right now and I’m trending in the right way like there’s going to be rounds here where we come on and talk and it’s like guys it blew up on me and I’m I’m posting snowmen all over the place like I know that’s going to happen and those are the I think it’s a relatable conversation about golf now I’m excited to get into with you guys yeah yeah and I think uh I think the the fact is is that I think most people are going to be able to relate to that right I think that uh I’m sure there’s going to be some people in here that are scratch golfers or whatever but like this is a good we’re gonna have a good range of of conversation around like skill sets and what you’re doing for your game and shots and things like that so I’m I’m really looking forward to it yeah for sure well it’s interesting to me as someone who like again is above 20 like a lot of the golf content that’s out there is geared towards people who are sub20 indexes um and I mean there’s people who are who aren’t quite that good yet but are trying to get better and um you know there’s there a lot of interesting conversations to be had around um playing I think for the For the Love of the Game you know prior like where do you prioritize um the things like being outside being social um versus uh improving your scores and um you know hitting good shots versus um you know well what’s so this scoring does not always equate to how you’re hitting the ball we talk about that a lot yeah yeah so scoring is not the best measure in my opinion of like where your game is headed it’s more about like how you’re hitting the ball feel the mental state of your game confidence like you could hit you could get some unlucky bounces one day you can get when you’re when you’re hitting the ball well you can get some lucky bounces when you’re not hitting it well so last week the score at the end is just like okay well last week I had the most like quintessential golf experience right so I posted two record lows on nines for me back to back they were both 43s that for me was as low as I’ve gone uh trying to break n is kind of my thing in terms of that scoring goal but one day felt like I should have shot like so another goal of mine is to not look at my score while I’m playing right like I used to last year I would go into the ninth or 18th hole check where I was that’s the worst and then like triple bogey whatever hole it was and just blow up whatever my goal was so now I’m not even I’m not looking at score I’m not checking it and so it’s it’s feel right like and at the end of the round I look at my stuff and the one the first 43 I shot I honestly felt like I was going to be plus 50 on the round like I just everything didn’t feel good I wasn’t making good contact I didn’t feel like I was a good golfer in the next round I felt like I could Bend space and time and that I was going to shoot like sub 40 even and then both of them ended up being identical scores at the same course and that’s just golf in a nutshell like you can play and feel like you’re playing like crap and score well or you can feel like you’re the best golfer you’ve ever been and still score the exact same thing that you did uh that that to me was quintessential of how this game is and how it just messes with your mental it’s yeah anything else uh for the people here before we get out of here and go hopefully watch golf for the rest of the day here uh good first episode we’re strong hour 20 uh definitely feel like um this is going to be something that yeah we’re going to we’re going to have a fun time doing this I can tell yeah how about you Chris um you know like you like we got on the banner here for anyone who’s just listening please like And subscribe cover one golf on YouTube and Twitter and Instagram it’s the same handle um yeah as we try to build the channel it really helps if you you know engage give us comments we’ll be we’ll check the comment section and interact with you guys there um same thing on Twitter uh we want this to have that Community feel like we were talking about before so share your stories from the course where you’re at in terms of your own game um what you know even if you’re not really like thinking about things like your index if you’re just getting out there and uh playing for the first time in a while you know what was your score what was the highlight was the lowl light of your round that I think sharing that stuff really helps and kind of makes it a more engaging um sport so we want to kind of share that with with all you guys and and thank you again for coming yeah thank you guys for taking time out of your day here to talk uh Nate I hope if Nate listens here I hope that he feels better he’s got some injuries he’s battling through and it’s keeping him off the golf course uh and so we’re hoping that he heals up and gets back out there and then yeah I’m I’m really looking forward to continuing to talk we had a lot of good viewership here today for our first episode so I appreciate people giving us a look giving us a try hopefully those turns into likes and subscribes and all that good stuff and show support for what we’re doing here uh until the next time that’s about it we are out [Music]
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Tilt called it with Morikawa today!