Scottie on golf’s divide, The most gutless layup ever, and SGS Golf Advice | The Shotgun Start

It’s a throwback episode, with PJ on a boat sailing to the St. John’s NCAA tournament game. There are some Wifi issues, technical difficulties, and just Andy and Brendan on their own like the old days. They discuss some quick news on Scottie Scheffler laying the blame squarely at the feet of one cohort for the current fracture in men’s pro golf. Then they get to some SGS Golf Advice on a member at a club frustrated by some notable rich and famous people jumping the line into full status privileges. Then Andy closes it with a fantastic mini spotlight or flashback, or a flashlight, on Chip Beck, who carded the second ever 59 on the PGA Tour, but not without some major controversy. The Mac O’Grady disciple is covered in some depth, including a few close majors calls and Ryder Cup run-ins with Woosie.

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Greetings and welcome to a Friday edition of the Shotgun Start. It is March 21st. Andy, how are we doing? Brendan, we’re doing great. You know, this is uh this is the best weekend of the year. Maybe up there. Up there. Masters is up there. Yeah, you know, Sanderson weekend, that’s a good one. Uh these next few weekends just hurdling hurdling towards the Masters. It’s It’s a beautiful time of year. Some people argue October when you have uh the playoff baseball plus football was fabulous and the return of it, but this is it. This is a great one. My kid’s home sick. He was all stressed. He was missing school. I was like, “Dude, what a great day to be sick. You’re legitimately homesick. This is the all time alltime day.” Um, so we’re not going to find school. We used to just watch basketball. I feel like I just watch basketball the days. They roll the TV and in the cart, right? if you had a good teacher sometimes, you know, you had a at least I had some nuns who had no idea that basketball existed. But yeah, it was great. It was fabulous starting at noon. Um, so we weren’t going to bog you down on this Friday episode with a bunch of talk about the Valpar. Andy, I’m starting the timer now. 40 minutes. We’ll see if we can stick to I will be despondent. I will be despondent if we go past 40 minutes. Uh, we we’re gonna do a flashback. Some golf advice. Go ahead. Muda Burns just right right away up to the top. Yeah. Yeah. Cashmere Keith current leader. Uh Keith Mitchell, Sam Burns. These these are Valspar merchants. Snake merchants. They’re snake They love snake snake charmers what they’ll call them. Uh I mean Sam Burns, I wouldn’t say he’s been trash, but he’s not been very good. has not has not been a elite player. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to rip through some news. We’ll get the golf advice. Then you are you are giddy, I would say. Uh bursting about a little chip flashback apparently. It’s this pen light. What were that? What is that? What we called him? Uh oh. Pen light. You there? Oh no. There he is. I lost it. Listen, we have no PJ today. No PJ to the Johnny’s. He’s taking a boat. He’s taking a ferry. I’m very curious about the whole the dynamic of taking a ferry from Island to Providence. He said he doesn’t like boats. Way out on boats, which I I I’d say generally I’m not a big fan of boats. I don’t really understand the whole boat boat life. I’m a fan of boats. I’m You are a fan. Yeah. I enjoy my time. I feel like I I reach full relaxation when I’m on a boat. Not worried about a wave coming and pow, taking you out out of nowhere. You know, just you’re kind of floating out there. Unlike you coastal elites, I my boat my boat culture happens on like wonderful, beautiful lakes, northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Michigan. I’m not I’m I’m not a Michigan lake guy. I’m a Wisconsin lake guy. Yeah. Or I’m not I’m not a Wisconsin lake guy. I’m a Michigan lake guy. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s where the where the best lakes are. Definitely the best lakes definitely aren’t in Ohio. We’ve we’ve we’ve covered that. I guess they’re debating people want there’s a movement to rename Lake Erie Lake Ohio apparently. I saw this who maybe just one guy on following in Trump’s uh footsteps. Huh. I guess. Um, so that’s so, so PJ’s, you know, setting sail right about now for Providence, uh, with Jason Scriber. Are we going to make get the YouTube episode up or No, I don’t know. Was he going to be in the arena just already anxious about the Johnny’s? Maybe going down to a 15 scene. We’re going to make him put YouTube up. I think he I think he wants to. I’ve been trying to say don’t do it. So, this might be an audio. This is a throwback episode. That early part’s definitely not getting edited out. the my internet went out trying to reconnect. That’s a real throwback. Um, happy Friday to everybody. Uh, so that that’s what’s going on. When you notice the diminished audio quality, understand the you know, besides the commentary and and analysis that PJ brings for the Champions Tour, he does uh he does elevate the show in other ways. He’s great. He’s has the highest Q rating of anybody at at Pride Egg Enterprises right now. He was a hit at the players championship. Everybody wanted a piece of PJ. Um, are we doing flashback or news? Let’s do news real quick. Um, speaking of Burns being a little bit lost, uh, Victor Havlin has a new coach or an old coach. He’s reconnected with Grant Weight, uh, apparently split from Denny Lucas. I got a tip about this, I don’t know, a couple days ago. I forgot to share it. I just went by the wayside. Now it’s official. Shoot is reporting this. So, I don’t know. He’s moving out of the mule category lately. He’s been he’s been big game hunting with his with his with his uh So, Havlin, new coach, little little lost. We’ll see. Uh Scotty Sheffller did his M’s uh press conference yesterday or or Zoom conference, I guess it would be. Uh maybe it was a Cisco WebEx with our friends from Who knows? But he did a he did a press conference ahead of the Masters, revealed his menu. I don’t have any. Do you have any menu takes? No, I forget what it was. The skillet some red fish. Yeah. Yeah. T-bone, I think, or cowboy ribeye, something like that. Uh, sure. It’s fine. I think I think the the the hoopla around the menus. How about the hoopla around the menu? It’s like kind of like the uh it’s reminiscent of the seminal pro member where there’s this hoopla around a dinner that nobody’s ever gonna play in. Nobody’s gonna ever eat ever eat. It’s Yeah, it’s interesting. Uh so Sheffler had a had a he teed off, I suppose, uh about the current fracture in golf. He says he you know um they did what they wanted to do and 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. But if we want to figure out why the game of golf is not back together, go ask those guys. Go to wherever they are playing this week and figure out when the game is going to come back together. Um grumpy boy. by grumpy boy. By Scotty’s standards, this is uh this is, you know, bombastic. Um he said a line of similar to this though at the players last year about 365 days ago. It’s like I don’t know, don’t ask me. Blame the like they’re the ones who left and broke it up. Uh well, it seems like not passing judgment but also saying like you know there’s a very clear cause and effect here and and someone to blame. though. Uh that Scotty Sheffler quote, I I could appreciate that if he’s number one in the world, top dog. Uh I don’t want a lot of uh just cliches and and boring answers. And he’s he’s got a little more uh zip on his fast ball. Uh other news, Angela Stanford is going to be the uh Soulheim Cup captain opposite Anna Nordfist. I believe that’s in the Netherlands. that uh that that Soulheim Cup coming up in 2026. You know where you could get some great analysis of that a year from now or even rolling into it at the Mixed Bag Podcast. Boy, Andy, we are delighted. We are spreading our wings. We’re becoming more professional. Not us, but the the overall company. We have a women’s golf podcast. Meg Atkins, who many of you are probably familiar with, uh has worked with Fried Egg for a while now, uh great voice on women’s golf, is teaming up with Matt Galloway, who uh we are giddy about. You and I are are our whole team is pumped. He’s a he’s former LPGA Caddy Caddy from Michelle Wi. Um as we know, Caddies have the best takes, the best intel, the best uh uh sort of sources, the best uh perspective. Uh, so Matt is is knows the game. He’s he’s removed enough, but still connected enough to be in the perfect position to precisely dispatch takes, gather information. Yep. And he’s been on Twitter, been on social media, kind of understands the whole the voice, the media game. Uh, and Meg has obviously been commenting on women’s golf. We are pumped about this. Add it, hit it, like, subscribe, swipe up, whatever the hell you do, smash the subscribe button. Smash it. add mix bag to your uh rotation. We’re pumped. It’s it’s another offering uh from the fried egg podcast universe. Maybe we’re getting maybe getting to universe. We’ll see. Um so so join that and you’ll hear about Angela Stanford becoming the Soulheim Cup captain. Maybe that’s possibly. We don’t know, but who knows what’s coming there. Um news or I’m sorry, new that’s it for news. Let’s do Masters fact of the day. The Masters is uh coming soon. This is from Bama Bearcat, our friend at Bama Bearcat. During the decade of the 1980s, Sevy Bisteros, Severino by Asteros, had seven top five finishes and two missed cuts at the Masters. He missed the cut in the years after both of his wins, 81 and 84, which makes me wonder, is hosting dinner just a just an immediate jinx, right? You got to do the dinner. So, Sevy basically finished top five every single year for an entire decade except two the years after he won and he missed the cut because he’s I don’t know. He’s just the reigning reigning champ. Too many Do you think Do you think he just got too tanked at the dinner? Maybe hosting duties. I don’t know. What do you think, Scotty? Scott, how about Phil just popping off saying Scotty’s not the number one player in the world when he’s got to go to dinner? could put some XLax in the in the soup or whatever he’s I don’t know. He’s gonna make that dinner. Phil doesn’t seem to care about about what people think of him before the master’s dinner. I mean, him and Freddy are going to be it’s going to be weird with those two. Call him a low class jerk, I believe, is what he called Freddy or a low class move. Low class jerk move. I don’t know. Um, yeah, could be interesting. Who’s going to make the cut? Who’s the Phil’s game against the game going to be with Freddy? Maybe Freddy Phil game against game within the game. That’s a good one. We could we have to ponder that. It could be Roberto Campos. Bobby Campos maybe with with Phil could be a good one. Be number one player in the world. Bobby Joeith. Yeah. Uh we could get come up with some good ones. That’s your M’s fact of the day. Let’s get to um let’s get to golf advice for golf advice. What do you want to do? What you Let’s Let’s do Let’s do golf advice. Flashback golf advice. Bookend it. Okay. All right. So, we’ll do a couple here on the on the front end. All right. I I pulled up like several. Keep sending these. Um All right. You said you askgmail.com. This is from someone who will remain anonymous and shared a lot of details that would probably out him and get him maybe tossed from his posh country club. So, I’m going to try to protect him here. Male, early 50s, only interested in fighting injustice. I count myself lucky to be a member of a top 100 golf club. I’m not very long tenur member of the club and like many people have joined clubs since the co golf boom, I find myself in an intermediate golf category where I cannot book tea times as far in advance as full status members, nor can I play on weekend or holiday mornings. I understood this to be the case when I joined and I’ve dutifully been in the queue waiting my turn. Well, I do look forward to climbing the ranks. It hasn’t been much of an issue until now. Then last year, we had a literal billionaire join the club and it is uh he provides detail. Boy has a lot of billions. Not one billion. He’s got multiple many billions. Join the club. He joined a few season. What? You’re gonna out this guy. I’m not letting it go. uh he joined a few seasons after I did, so I would assume that he took his place in the queue as well. I certainly thought this was the case until I was told by a member of the staff that he was hustled through and is already in the full membership category. This high net worth individual doesn’t even play golf at the club very much. Um he belongs to he added a detail many many clubs as you would imagine he belongs to 12 15 clubs. Um doesn’t even play call foot the club very much. So on the surface, being moved up and out of turn wouldn’t impact other members that greatly. However, when you take in account that him being moved up is keeping another member at a lower tier for another six months. Every six months it starts to feel a little more impactful. To add to this, I learned just this week that a professional athlete provides who it is. I will keep that anonymous. Uh very very popular professional athlete talk about this offline. Uh may have just signed a Yeah, he’s done big things this year. very notable athlete, done big things this year, um was in the process of joining our club and had just been seen playing with the club president a few days ago. Hearing that he’s joining, knowing that the billionaire was moved up out of turn made me all but certain that the athlete will also immediately be moved into full status, further slowing down the flow of us normal people into the higher statuses. Had to be Aaron Rogers, the athlete, right? No, it was it was a joke. Okay. Do you think people would slow him down and and the hold up, bro? Deshan Watson. Well, I’m aware of some places in Cleveland that he has not been able to get into. It’s been on the table. Uh, I feel a bit of outrage about this. I’ve considered penning letters to members of the board who honestly would have no idea who I am. Again, normal person, normal status. Before I do anything rash, I thought I’d check in with you guys to get your take. And it’s just I’m sorry it’s not a good idea. Don’t check in with with us on anything. We are well sabot you’re sabotaging the segment here Brendan. We’re the definition of rash as I can attest to with the conversation we had with PJ tour communications last week about the AI course setup tool. No, I’m just kidding. We like to pop off. Before I do anything rash, I thought I’d check in with you guys to get your take. Should I just accept the fact that this is the way the world works and that the billionaires and celebrity athletes will always get the special treatment? Do I just try to understand that the backroom deals and maneuvering of high-profile members are are part of a country club life? Maybe you can talk me off the cliff a little bit with one with one. Or maybe you’ll agree with me that I should make a stink about it. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Um he wants to write a letter to the board angry. Uh he a board he says would not know anybody know him from Adam. Um, I I I think there’s a way more uh um diplomatic and um per perhaps more effective way to go about this. I think you need you need to just befriend someone on the board, okay? And you need to work through them, okay? Cuz clearly these these people are being pushed through and and the board is behind it. But there has to be somebody in the board that stands up and says, “This is effed up. We can’t we can’t just have these people skipping the line.” Yeah. And you need that person to be not your champion, the collective holes champion that are in this membership category that you found yourself in. Yep. Yep. Uh don’t do not write the letter. I’m sorry. Like I don’t I’m sending you the details right now. It’s the uh the athlete, the club, the billionaires. Um uh don’t write the letter. Just there’s a lot of bill there’s a lot of billions. A lot of billions. The athlete is a is a very notable one at the moment. Um don’t write the letter. Bad idea. Um it’s just they don’t know who you like. What are you going to do? You’re gonna walk in and tell the guy who’s got a hundred billion dollars that like I I just I just in this circumstance too. Yeah. I think the context matters here. That place you’re you’re going to have to you got to navigate. You got to get a political ally, but you also have to realize that you’re, you know, there’s minimal inertia to to you member X, you know. Yes. Yes. Yes. And you presumably want to be there a long time. You you want to you just don’t I I I think you could make a note of it maybe when you have a little more standing or or a year from now or you just start working the phones and make a comment in the right way. The letter the letter is not getting you any effective. It’s not getting you anywhere. What’s done is done. There’s no effective uh impact to sending the letter. Also, like in term in terms of like clubs, like you and I I I’m not going to but like this is not just like your neighborhood club. It’s a top 100 golf course and it’s just it’s not like I it it’s not your I I don’t want to give away the club here. I don’t want to get this guy in trouble. But um yeah, like you you’ve got like you as an individual member at said club do not have a lot of like it’s not like your homie like Yeah. down at the end of the culde-sac in the neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. It’s you’re just you can’t We’ve seen on the tour how bad letters go over. You cannot do this. You cannot It’s just not going to come across well. All right. Don’t send the letter. That is our very like I’ve never been more sure of an advice. Don’t send the letter on that one. You got a back channel on this. Figure it out. All right. You want to jump to a flashback and then do another golf advice? I got a bunch more. Let’s do uh let’s do u a flashback on chip back. Chip back. I did this because uh I got a a piece of fried egg merch sent to me and we put uh we put trading cards. we have for years in in the package. Dumb dumb little quirk, but people love them. You get the 1980s and ‘9s trading. If you don’t if you didn’t get one, it’s because we ran out, you know, like we we get the boxes and wait like, you know, we don’t always have cards. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, check out proshop.thefried egg.com. You might get a card with your purchase. The no merch is flying off the shelves. my buddy uh a former roommate of mine in my from my 20s uh ordered some gear and I I think our shipping department knew who it was. Guess guess what card he got? Uh Jaydon Blake. Jack Nicholas. I said probably got some value. Might be worth something. Might be worth more than the the sweatshirt or the polo you got. Uh that’s good. So I got Chip back. Um, what do you know about Chip back? Uh, he’s got two syllables in his name. It’s a good one. Uh, believe he played the Kioa Rider Ryder Cup was notable there. Was not in that Ryder Cup team. We got He’s got some good tails from that Ryder Cup. He was just kind of in that like I want to say that Zinger cohort of of players like buddies with them kind of partnered up with Zinger in the cup. Okay. above average player like good steady solid tour pro in that like late 80s uh in the mid 90s. You didn’t say 59. He shot the second ever 59 tour after Al Gyberger, right? Okay. Which which came aligned. It’s kind of like a 59 today. There’s a lot of like Well, what happened? Well, we’ll get into it. We’re going to get we’re I So Chip back Chip back is near and dear to my heart. He grew he he didn’t grow up. He lived in the town next to me where I grew up and growing up a golfer. Um there was always like stuff. I remember my grandma who did not play golf, did not know much about golf told me that Chip was the number one player in the world, which was not true. But as a kid, I thought he was the number one player in the world. Yeah. And that he lived 15 minutes from me, you know, when I was impressable you. You know, Andy, little Andy, you got the number one player down the street. I’m going to do a couple bullet points here on Chip before we dive in. Just a few. This is a This is not a spotlight. This is Chip Beck’s not really worthy of a spotlight. You know, I don’t want to be mean, but SP we haven’t gotten to Lee Trovino part two. I wasn’t going to go full-blown spotlight on Chip back. So, we I’m just we’re just going to play some of the hits. So, a couple bullets just to wet your appetite here. He was the second player in PGA Tour in PGA Tour history to shoot 59. Um, it happened in Vegas. He won four times in his in his PGA Tour career, but he finished runner up 20 times. 20 runner up. What we said? I figured he had like nine somewhere in like the 8 to 12 wins range. just the amount of time I heard about Chip back as a kid. Not as much as you apparently, but I felt like he was just a a 10 time winner. So, okay. Four, but 20 runner ups. 20 runnerups. Okay. He’s runner up in three majors, two US Opens, and a Masters. And we’ll get into those runner-ups cuz one of them was very controversial. Bridesmaid Beck. That’s what I’ll call him. Bridesmaid Beck. Always on this on the number two. All right. Um, three RDER Cups. He was on three RDER Cups. Okay. He won the Varden He was the Varden Trophy winner for lowest scoring average in 1988. That used to be a big deal. Yeah. Three-time all-American in Georgia. And he also completely lost his game. He missed 46 cuts in a row. Oh wow. Of his career. That is that is that is dire. Let’s talk to fellow dog beat Todd about that. We’re going to get into all these highlights throughout the career. So, okay. All right. Let’s get into his first win. So, his first win came at the LA Open in 1988. Um, Beck went forever without winning. Uh he had been on tour for 10 years, but he hadn’t won at at this time. He had finished second seven times, including the US Open at Shikok in 86. Okay. He was the most he had the most runner-ups of anybody on tour without a win. So he breaks through in 88 with two wins in two months in the first one at the LA Open. Guess who finished second? What year did you say? 80. Yeah. 88. Who? Jaydon Blake. I guess it’s a favorite spot. Probably our favorite spotlight we’ve ever done. I love them all equally. Woozy. Macko Grady. Oh, Mac. Wacko Macko. All right. So, he beats Macko Grady. Love that. That was a good one. By four shots. Now, what made matters more interesting about this? It was the pupil taking on the teacher, defeating the teacher. So, he was a Mac. He was a huge Mac Grady disciple. Got it. Okay. So, Mac Grady, for those that haven’t listened to the spotlight. Yeah, you should go check it out. It was a couple years ago. I think it’s some of our best work ever. It’s good. I’m sure others will at some point get into the MacGrady rabbit hole, but honestly one of the best stories in golf. We did we did a a try probably two and a half hour episode on maco Grady was during co Hey, did you see he tried to Monday queue into the Hogue Classic? He popped up. Smart had a video of him. I think he walked off or something, but he was seen playing golf, I think, to get into the Champ store event in Southern California. this week. We gota we got to reshare that video with the with the episode. Yeah. Um big. So So he beats Macko Gray by four uh shots. Now Chip back in the in the leadup. So he’s been playing on tour for 10 years. Hasn’t won. Um he almost lost his game like or he almost quit. He almost stopped before anything and it was M. Ogrady. uh um the Morad system that pulled him out of the gutter. Here’s what he said after the after after the win. It was Mac said Beck who changed my golf swing and my career. Wow. So he just loves Mack O’Grady. Um okay. Also, it’s like if you look up Morad Disciples, Chip Beck’s like first page. Okay. Notable Morad disciples. All right. So then he wins he went to New Orleans a couple weeks later. Um, and he ends the season second on the money list to I mean it’s 88. Who do you think was sec first on the money list? Curtis Strange. You’re right. Another spotlight guy. Might not have gone over to the open that that year. Didn’t even but won the money list. Yeah. Like EJ. All right. Um, so he now I want you to also guess what is total. So second highest earning player on on tour. What’s his total for Chip Beck was number two in 1988. Um uh 225,000. No, that’s too low. Way too low. Way too low. Um uh 850 916. Okay. Okay. Shy of a million dollars. All right. Number two on my list. I think I think it moved him to like 18th or 19th on career money list. And he had like two I didn’t write this down but it was like 2 point something million. All right. He was like the 19th most most profitable player or not profitable but highest earner in uh in PJ tour history at the time at two 2 million and change. Um here’s an NY New York Times article. Beck had been 34 33rd and 34th on the money list in 1983 and 1984. his fifth and six seasons on tour, but in ‘ 85 he slipped back to 97th. His game he felt was simply falling apart on him. So this is the this is when he when he was going to Mac Grady. The other influence was Hogan though. So those were dreary days for Beck when as he said he was coming to the end of my rope. But then he’d summoned Ben Hogan in his mind’s eye when his wife Terry and young son Charles were asleep in their house in Fateville, North Carolina. back wearing a weighted gloves and taking a weighted golf club regularly go out to the garage turn on a small spare small bare bulb and hit hundreds of golf balls into a shadowy net and think of Hogan’s struggle a weighted gloss weighted gloves and weighted club think about this think about today’s modern tour pro like okay chip back three rider cups think about Sam Burns Yeah. Going out into putting his kid to sleep. Yeah. Going out and hitting into a net with like a in his garage with a bear bulb off a mat with weighted club and weighted gloves. Like think about how much the games change. Yeah. Number two player in the world essentially. He’s making just can’t get to a millie. You get that for a runner up these days in one week. All right. I was there one night three years ago when he was going through his routine, whacking ball after ball, he said with intermittent grunts. Hogan didn’t win a tournament until he was 27 years old. I’m only a little past that. He was then 29. Sometimes it just takes a while to get it all together. I think I have. I hope I have. He studied the technique of bashing a golf ball, contemplating the elements of the physics and the phys physiology and the psychology that went into conquering all those hills and deals and all those fairways and greens across the country. No one worked harder than I did, said Beck. He was going to be Ben Hogan. Hogan didn’t win till he was 27. Well, we’ll get into some stuff that Chip Beck did that Hogan probably didn’t do either. All right, so Beck’s wins. Beex wins. Incredible list of runner-ups. So, you got Mako Grady at his first win. Lanny Watkins at his second win. Yeah. Hail Irwin and Fuzzy Zeller at his third win. Wow. And fourth win, Greg Norman. Holy cow. Beat some whales there. Wales. Yeah. All right. So, he shoots 59. Uh, this was like, you know, Elg Guyberger was like, “Nobody’s going to shoot 59 forever, right?” Um, because they don’t have to conquer just like the golf course. They have to conquer the psychology of 59. Yep. So, he shoots 59 in Vegas and it was met with a lot a lot of criticism. This 59 pre Summerland model. Okay. All right. preland battle, but it came at a new golf course. A brand new golf course. Okay. What was it? We’ll get into it. It was called Sunrise. Okay. All right. So, uh there’s a there’s a great John Gity article in the in the Sports Illustrated vault uh about this. Here’s the here’s the intro. Let’s concede that Chip Beck should have shot his 59 in the final round of the Masters and Gale Force wins with someone else’s clubs with his wife in the hospital having a baby and with some jerk yelling, “You’re the man on every tea.” Now, that would have been a 59 that everyone could have respected. Oh my god. The 59 Beck did shoot. The course was less than a year old. The greens were perfect. The roughs weren’t rough. The wind didn’t blow. Nearly everybody else was inside watching the ClariS Thomas confirmation hearings. And besides, let’s face it, 500 grand, the golfer’s portion of the million-doll bonus for breaking 60 just isn’t enough to make a guy choke anymore. So, there’s a a million dollar bonus for breaking 60 on tour. Oh, half of it went to charity, half of it went to the player. This doesn’t exist anymore. a real game within the game there. They need that. They need to bring that back. It was like side games. Think about this. A couple years earlier, he led the He was second in the money list. He made $900,000. This like imagine if Scott if the breaking 60 bonus was like $10 million. Yeah. I think they’d have to make it like 58 at this point, you know? But yes. So, I love this just for all the the haters who say we’re just cranky on Twitter about 59 and people go at lemona. Well, look, this was happening in the 80s. Like, that’s discounting the 59. So, sorry. It’s always a little scrutiny and context are warranted. Go ahead. The asteris and professional min minimizers were up his pant leg in an instant. No way. They claimed, “Could the Beex 59 and a 10 and 1/2 month old at the 10 and 1/2month-old Sunrise Golf Club be compared with the only previous 59 in PGA Tour history, which was shot by Al Gyberger in the second round of this 1977 Memphis Classic on the mature treeline course at the Colonial Country Club. Beck’s 59 was tainted, they said, because he shot it on an easy course. Sunrise has no rough and no shade. The freshly planted saplings line lining the fairways are not much thicker than a flag stick. And when the PG when the tour sophomore Robert Gamz got a look at the place last week, he predicted someone would shoot 59. Wow. Robert Gamz Nostradamus. So anyways, everybody is talking about how bad the course is. Luckily for Chip Beck, none other than Jim Colbert, tour former tour player and ESPN golf commentator comes to the comes to his defense. Okay, how can you belittle that? Colbert said um big is what he said about the course. I don’t want to mess with him. Yeah. Now I want to I want to I left out some very important information about Colbert. Okay. He was the co-designer and co-owner of Sunrise. Oh, no. That’s so good. Colbert resented the implication that the soft course design and not Beck’s shot making was behind the score. Oh, Colbert, original bucket hat boy, I believe. That’s good. That’s good. Yes, the scores in Vegas were low. low enough to invite ridicule. All but one of the 75 players who made the cut finished 10 under par or better. That’s crazy. That’s not That’s because the Vegas Invitational is a 90 hole proam. The rough on the tournament’s three courses. So there’s three courses. Got it. There’s like Vegas Country Club this and and something else. The the rough was scalped to speed the play play of the amateurs. I’m I can’t believe they knew how to do that without the AI core setup tool. Morgan Stanley AI core setup tool. That’s right. That’s why bogeies were as rare as earmuffs in the desert. Bruce Litzky shot a second round 63 at Sunrise. Jim Gallagher Jr. and Dicky Thompson had the course record 61s at Las Vegas Country Club where the eventual winner Andrew McGee fired a 62. Steve Jones called it a turkey shoot after firing a 63 on Friday at Sunrise. Beck even Beck even with a 59 and three other rounds in the 60s finished two shots behind McGee and Da Wybring who had five round totals of 31 under par. before McGee prevailed in the in a playoff. Okay, so interesting note about his 59. This is this might be the most impressive part of the 59. He shot 59 with three amateur partners. The prom was that one pro, three amateurs for five rounds. Cow. Oh my [Music] god. That just chopping away. And you got to wait. Imagine playing at this tournament. That would not go over today. The entitled pampered Fs would not permit that. All right, that’s crazy. Insane. Insanity. Complete insanity. God, waiting 10 minutes in between each shot. Now, this might be the second most impressive part of this. The story within the story is that Beck hadn’t seen sunrise until sunset the day before on Thursday after shooting a 72 at the desert in and country club. So that’s the third course. It was Vegas Country Club, Desert in Country Club and Sunrise. He practiced putting at Sunrise while his caddy David Wooley walked the course to ascertain the yardage on each hole. Neither man had ever set foot on the course until then. That’s nuts. Wooley. Wooley says it’s a good course, but a young course. Visually, it lacks definition, which made it easier, but more difficult, too. I’d say to Chip, “You see that telephone pole half a mile down there? That’s your target.” Uh, the you point, I’ll shoot tactic proved significant. Beck has a tendency to look ahead to the next hole, which sometimes interferes with his ability to concentrate on the shot at hand. At sunrise, Beck Beck’s mind had nowhere to run to, Colbert’s words, because he never knew what was coming up. It probably helped me stay in the present tense, said Beck, delighted by the insight, Beck. So, he buried the last three holes to shoot 59. He hit it to three feet on his 18th hole. He said not until he reached the green. Beck claims did thoughts of the money or his place in golf floor make him wobbly. Um he asked his partners to putt out and then he went to the side of the green to practice his stroke. The putt got a little uh longer as I waited. Uh said Beck. Yep. So sure the AMS. All right. Now like let’s get to the next. This is this is a Beck. We got the Beck highlight. I’m going to give you the Beck low light. And it was his runner up at the 1993 Masters. He got cooked. I mean, crucified. Why? So, he was playing with Bernard Longer who won the 93 Masters. I was going to say that’s right. So, it’s Sunday. It’s Sunday. He’s three shots back of Longer on the 15th hole and he hits a drive and and he’s the only player within five shots of Longer. They’re on the 15th hole. Longer hits the fairway. Beck hits the fairway. Beck’s 10 yards ahead of him. Longer lays up. Beck has 236 to the front of the green. And what does he do? Uh, what’ you say? Sorry. He had how how long to the green? Front. So longer lays up. He’s 10 yards ahead of Longer. He’s 236. He’s three back. Nobody else is within five. He’s 236 to the front edge of the 15th green. I mean, I assume he hits it in the water. He lays up. Oh god. Oh my god. He’s the only guy within five. Protecting the points. Protects the points. And he I mean every if you Google Chip Chip Beck layup 93 Masters, every sports writer in America Oh god. Just just cooked. They just all right teed off on the guy. Come on. 236. So what do you did? Did he make a five? What do you end up doing? He made a five. They both made a five. Oh my god. He finished his second. Nobody within five except for him. Only guy that could catch him. So So important important data point here. That is so bad. So bad. What are you doing? David Woolley or whatever is the caddy. Okay, go ahead. He at the time this in 93 he was 97th on the PGA tour in driving distance. Guess what the number was? Um 247. 257. Okay, that’s crazy. This is a big carry. I mean, he had to nut a 3-wood. Sure. Like, I mean, he had to probably hit a perfect 3-wood to get there, but still still. Come on. Come on. Be a hero. You’re finishing runner up probably no matter what. Like, come on. You make a double, you’re still tied for second. Yeah. Oh, we hit the 40minute mark. We got to keep going. It’s fabulous. Yeah. So, I’m going to read one of the articles that just cooked. Not all the article, but I’m going to just read some excerpts from it. Jim Murray, LA Times. I mean, and I I have to say as a member of the golf media, where did this golf media go? If players think they had it bad now, have it bad now. Yeah. This is what anything say. Yeah. All right. Jim Murray, LA Times. Listen, when your corner pushes you out into the center of the ring in round 15 and says you have to knock the guy out to win, you don’t run out there and clinch. When N Ronkey calls the squad into the locker room to give them a pep talk and go out and beat Army, you don’t go out there and punt. You don’t fold three aces. You don’t go gently into the good night uh into that good night. You rage against the dying of the light. You echo John Paul Jones when your back is up against the wall. You say, “I have not yet begun to fight.” And then there’s Chip back. Lot of references. Chip more or less handed the 57th Masters to Burner Longer on Sunday. I don’t know about that. That seems like it seems like Bonner was going to win. But yeah, didn’t help matters. You might see in his in his corner. Longer might have won it anywhere, but Chip didn’t take any chances. He made sure. Here were the circumstances. Two golfers, Beck and Longer. All that was left of the competitive field come down to the final nine on Sunday. Longer had a three-shot lead going into the 15th hole. Can you imagine Arnold Palmer laying up in that situation? Ben Hogan. Look at that. Cuts to Ben Hogan. Can you picture Babe Ruth going up with the game on the line and the team needing a three-run homer and he bunts? Can you picture Dempsey with his back against the ropes, backing off and dancing around? Beck had to go for it in that situation. He has three shots to make up and three more holes to play. You get in the position once in a lifetime. You haul out the wood and go for an eagle or settle for a chicken. Beck laid an egg. Um, Beck is a kind of strange etheral young man who says golly and gee whiz a lot and sometimes seems to be playing the game just for a living. I mean, it beats driving a truck. He went 10 years on tour without winning a tournament and it didn’t seem to bother him greatly. He finished respectfully on the money list. He was steady, unspectacular, likable, but not very exciting. A lot of people thought he was the wrong guy to be chasing Germany’s Pride and Joy Saturday. You needed someone with more fire. Maybe they were right. In the press room later, Chip sought to explain his otherwise incomprehensible decision. I stood there, he said earnestly. I had a really good drive, but I stood there and thought it was just marginal whether I can make it or not. I had I had hit the ball so well all day, but I thought it was a little bit too much of a risk for me and I didn’t want to throw away the tournament the tournament on one shot. Good enough, Chipper. You threw away the tournament on that shot anyway because as a matter of fact, Chip undid whatever questionable strategy he had by hitting his subsequent approach shot over the green anyway while longer [ __ ] put his birdie uh his in birdie range. It was like deciding to punt and then getting it blocked. It’ll never make a Rocky movie. Stallone wouldn’t want any part of this casting. Rambo, it ain’t. All right. Later in the article. I mean, this is like these guys had nothing to write about, right? They’ve got this German machine winning for the second time. He’s up by a lot. Like, this is giving the media like, “Ah, we don’t really have a story.” And then boom, just like a red meat on a plate. They have something to just go in on decision. I mean, he cooks them for like another 500 words. And here’s the end of the story. He can tell his grandkids he finished second in the Masters. He won’t want to tell them how. Think about bringing the grandkids into it. Think about this. In 1935 in this tournament, Jean Sar trailing by three strokes with four holes to play. took out a four forwood out on this hole and sank it for a two to win the tournament. It was celebrated in a song and in a verse as the golf shot heard around the world. Beckshot will be heard around the world too. In Germany, they will hoist the the Becks and drink toast to it. Oh, so that’s so good. From the media perspective, this was just like they didn’t know what they was like, ah, this is boring. And then they had just absolute thing to punch at for 800 words. There you could read 20 versions of this story. Every headline, every headline. Yeah. Just eviscerates him. Yep. All right. Let’s get to a Daily Mail article from a couple years ago. Okay. So, after So, actually, real quick, it was speculated that this like led to Beck losing his game. Okay. Because he started to chase criticism. Yeah. Because he started to chase distance. Okay. All right. So, he played in these RDER Cups. This is a Daily Mail article, and these are just some great quotes about the RDER Cup. Things were different then. He says, “Man, there were parties every night. It was great, but it definitely taxed you. One time I came in from practicing, ran to the uh and ran the bath, but I was so tired that I fell asleep and the tub overfilled. Tom Watson’s first wife, Linda, was in the bathroom in the room below. She looks up and all this water is coming through. Now, now let’s talk a little bit about Wooie. Back then, all the Europeans liked a drink. In 1991 at Kio Island, I don’t think I saw Wooie without a drink in his hand. He always he always had a good time. I played him in the singles that year in ’91. He was the number one player in the world and had won the Masters and I remember thinking, “How is this guy going to beat me? He’s loaded every night of the week.” I had a hole out from the fairway and bunkers to pinch a win in that match. What a great player. Uh what a player he was, by the way. All right. Now, another flashback or spotlight you got to check out. Wooie was a big one. Yeah. All right. Now, Sevy. Sevy was a hotblooded stallion. What a guy. I played him and Jose Maria with Paul Azinger and the Rose uh the Rose Sevy and Zinger would have in 1991. It was a good one. We had changed our ball by mistake. Man, Zvie and Zinger argued for 15 minutes. Zinger then charged a putt past the hole because he was so was so angry. That’s the strength of feeling you get in the RDER Cup. Bickering and competing. I loved it. We argue we argued with him about chip clubs, balls, everything. One time he hooks this ball out of bounds and wants to drop in front of the T- box. No way he beats us from that spot, but Zinger wouldn’t allow it. Sevy also had this way of coughing at the top of your back swing. He later got it checked out uh medically, but that was a tickle in his throat. Sure happened at uh convenient times. So here’s a little uh so he loses his game in the mid mid to late 90s 96 and 97. Between those he he misses 46 straight cuts and misses what he gets in a slump. Where do you think he turns? [Music] Um where who’s going to be his savior? Who’s going to be his his swing savior? in the 90s in a slump. Yeah. Lead better. No. M Grady went back to the Morat. Okay. All right. At this point, there has been it hasn’t been a lot of good progress. This is from a Greensboro news and record article in like 93. Whacko Macka. At this point, there hasn’t been a lot of good progress back who who did not finish higher than a tie for 40th in his first nine events of this season. But there is promise for the future. So he he he talks about the rekindling with Mac. We ran into each other on the range. He’s a very generous and very kind man. When he sees someone struggling, he wants to help. We are just trying to get my best swing out more often. It’s too in-depth to try go into. It’s like learning to play the piano. It’s so much harder talking about it unless you reach a certain level of proficiency. A great penis starts early. Here you probably have 10,000 more practice hours than the ones who start at age 10 or 11. It’s like ballet. You have to go you have to have synchronized motion. I feel like where I want to uh I feel like I’m where I want to be. I just haven’t had a performance I want yet. Beck’s scoring average over his first 36 rounds of the year was a hefty 71.77. His lowest score has been a 68 and he’s just posted 16 rounds under par. My scoring has been really up and down. I’ve been chipping well, putting well. I’ve been driving it well for about two years, but there’s a tremendous amount of energy uh involved playing at a high level. Sometimes you do and sometimes you just don’t. My game has progressed steadily since the first of the year. It’s just going to take some good performances. I have to start hitting good shots at key times. That’s important. That would that would matter. Shortly, either during or shortly after this interview, he went on the 46 miss cut streak. Oh, no. It either coincided at the beginning of it or it was right after. So, Morad was of a time and place and that was not the ‘9s version of Chipback. So he retires to sell insurance. So this is the Lake Forest. This is the Lake Forest version of him. Was he was selling insurance? Property insurance. So he retired. Can you imagine having to do that? Being like this day and age basically play on tour for Victor Havlin starts selling insurance. 10 years you’re number two a Van winner, a trophy winner. Like incredible. Um I missed 46 cuts in a row. This is a quote that later like in life I 46 cuts in a row around 97 and at that point it was costing me around five grand to get to to get to the first tea. Yeah. Only to make nothing. He says that’s pain. I was going broke pretty much and I had six kids. I had to do something, didn’t I? Spit takes. Sorry. Six kids. Six kids. Two. So second marriage. First marriage two kids. Second marriage four kids. So he says he had the driver yips that narrowly forced him to give up the game and then but then when he turned 50 in 2006 he joined the champion store of course of course and had a resurgence of course little windfall post 50. So he played the champion store and kept selling insurance probably was a great gig for selling insurance. Yeah life insurance maybe. I think it was property property insurance. Right. Right. Property and casualty. Um change he so he changed his stronger grip and that revitalized his career for a solid run on the Champions Tour. He says the grip style dictates everything. He said if you can let the club go with all the fingers that’s a proper grip. If I had known this then I would have won a US Open. I was going to say you say this at like 52. Yeah. If I had known this then, I would have won a US Open. I came close as it was. And that’s chip back. There’s your There’s your There’s your chip back. Pen light. You got a card and your shipment. And then we went down the rabbit hole. I love this fun one. That was a good one. That was a really good one. The layup. The layup in the Masters. Just unbelievable. I’m trying to think of like I I just it doesn’t happen this day and age no matter what. I mean, think about a threetime RDER Cup player selling insurance. That’s Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. He played every two years in the Ryder Cup. He’s one of the top 12 Americans and he doesn’t, you know, have a pot to piss in when he retires. He’s got to got to sell insurance. How about Wooy? How’s this guy going to beat me? has never without a drink. Pretty good. Oh, that’s good. All right, I think that does it. Should we do another golf advice? No. No, we’ve got a bunch. We’ve got some great ones. We’ll uh keep sending those special guests advice episode gmail.com. I’ve got really good ones from our friends at the uh the John Deere Classic. Good one there. Uh so, we’ll get into that next time. All right, enjoy your weekends. Enjoy the NCAA tournament. Good. Best of luck to your fighting Eli and I. Good luck to PJ’s Johnny’s tonight as we record this. Um, enjoy your weekends. We’ll be back with you on Monday.