Fairway Rollin' - Ep. 12: Quicken Loans National and Olympic Golf With Henrik Stenson

Episode Date: June 28, 2016

Geoff Shackelford and Joe House recap the Quicken Loans National, including Billy Hurley’s incredible win and the resurgence of Vijay and Ernie at Congressional. Then, they discuss who's in and who���s out for Rio 2016 and the lingering bad taste from the U.S. Open. Finally, fifth-ranked player in the world Henrik Stenson drops by the ShackHouse to talk golf in his 40s, the Open Championship, and why he’s looking forward to the Olympics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shackhouse is brought to you by Calloway Golf, who asks you if you want to be the first to test new products. Head on over to CallawayGolf.com slash community and sign up for their Callaway community. House, you signed up, right? I signed up. I'm in there. Beautiful. So learn about new products. Chat with your fellow equipment junkies and house. There's even a thread going up about this podcast.

That's Callowaygolf.com slash community. As always, thanks to Calloway Golf for their support of Shackhouse. Let's go to the Shack House. House. Hey, Shack. You're back from the Quicken Loans, the Quickey. How was it? It was incredible.

Incredible because the result was such a cool story. The Billy Hurley story that's been now told here in the Washington, D.C. area a few times over. And I think it made some of the national news. I saw it on ESPN Sunday night. A local guy from Annapolis. here in Maryland who lost his dad last year and, you know, under some pretty trying circumstances. And, you know, has been kind of on the outer fringes, you know, all season long, not a lot of made cuts. And also, you know, even when he's made the cut, he hasn't played particularly well.

This week, timing-wise, starts to coincide with the timing for when he lost his dad. and he played a course here at Congressional. It is a place that's obviously very comfortable for him. He's performed well before. And, you know, he was locked in all week long. I went Thursday. I'm sorry, Saturday. I went all day Saturday and particularly walked the entire 18 holes

with a second-year player named Mark Hubbard. I'm close with Mark's family. So I walked the course, all 18 holes. with Mark and his family. And Mark happened to be paired with Ricky Fowler on Saturday, which I think was kind of the headline twosome for the day, at least by the size of the crowds. It was not an inside-the-rope's experience

because it was Saturday and TV was there and the crowds were good-sized. But I was along the ropes and had excellent sightlines for the entire 18. So in the first place, Congressional is a terrific place to go watch a golf tournament. It's a huge piece of property. You can with just a little bit of strategy,

get yourself, great sight lines. They have all of the sort of walkways, pathways, logistics, all mapped out. The only place there's any kind of traffic jam at all is at 10, where it's just a par three, and there's a single walkway there where folks tend to get congested. But they have charging stations.

they have, you know, all of the beverage and food stands. And they even did a cool thing in like the 11-12 area. They had some food trucks in there, which is, you know, a very big thing here in the DMV. But I walked the 18 watching Mark Hubbard. One thing that really stood out, Ricky Fowler hits the hell out of the golf ball. Now, he was all over the place on Saturday, and to his credit, he dropped a couple. I'm talking about Ricky and then battle all the way back to even on the day before he got to 16, and then he dropped a shot on 16 and a shot on 18.

But boy, oh boy, does a little guy like that. So he's not that big a guy stature-wise. I'm 6'3 around, let's say, 200 pounds. And Ricky is much smaller than me. But goodness gracious, does he annihilate the golf ball? So it was a wonderful day. Congressional is always up to the task for hosting a tournament. The local guy came through.

The gallery was excellent for the local guy and also excellent for the Ricky group. A lot of Ricky Fowler fans and a lot of Mark Hubbard fans out there too. Homeless Hub's at Homeless Hubbs on Twitter. A lot of homeless hubs cheers going up out there. So it was very cool. Nice. Nice. Yeah.

And of course, everybody wants to know. How many grown men were dressed like Ricky following Ricky? That's always one of the more disturbing sights at a golf tournament. I would say, I don't know that I would call anybody that went big on color. Grown men, they were sort of half-grown men. You know, some of the young fellows, some of the bros in like their late teens, early 20s, rocking a little bit of a Ricky look. But nobody went kind of full Ricky.

Okay. There was a lot of, nobody's afraid of color anymore or patterns. And there was a healthy amount of Pumaware out there. But, yeah, I'm referring to the perfectly scripted Ricky, all-orange outfit. I saw one on Thursday on the telecast. And I think that trend is dying finally. But it is always a little bit of a concern when you see a grown man dressed like Ricky and the full regalia, the flat brim, the white belt, the all-orange.

it's great when the kids do it but uh oh my late teens early 20s is kind of the cut off i would think anyway well i'm glad to hear it was a good experience you feel like the events well run that's the tiger woods foundation they're going to be taking over the la event here so we're anxious to see what they do with it and how they make it a a fun event to go do and how they promote it i mean do you feel like it was well promoted in the area because that's one of the things that the tour struggles with it so many of these events now I feel. They don't quite do the local promotion as well as you'd hope and get the word out that it's

sort of a community event. So the tour with the able and competent assistance of the Tiger Woods Foundation, do a very good job of promoting it because over the last handful of years, it has tended to fall around the same time on the calendar. And it has, you know, they're not rotating, they haven't been rotating, you know, they They played at RTJ last year, Robert Trent Jones out in Virginia. But it's mainly been at Congressional in the last handful of years. And so it was pretty well attended.

Saturday was, I've been to the open at Congressional, both 97 and 2011. And Saturday, it wasn't quite up to open level crowds, obviously. But still, it was, you know, you had to be strategic walking with the Ricky Fowler, Mark Hubbard group about where you were going to get your sight lines from. It was a healthy crowd. Well, that's good to hear because, yeah, I know I look great, came across great on TV. And like you said, I mean, the story is so unbelievable that if you tried to pitch it here in Hollywood, they just laugh at you. And I was just so impressed with how he handled himself down the stretch. And then, I mean, it was one of the best tour events of the year because not only do you have Billy Hurley, but dealing with what he's dealing with.

and his career is essentially on the line at this point, and he's been struggling. And then you throw in 53-year-old V.J. And Ernie Ells is back from the yips. And then John Rom, this young stud who's just, everybody's been expecting this to happen when he turns pro. And in the first event, he's just right there in the hunt. It was just, it was just, I mean, to me, that's why this week's event at Firestone

is the worst event on the tour, because you see last week what having a full field, having, by the way, two sponsors invites in Rahman and Billy Hurley, who now both contended and also will be going to the Open Championship as a result of their great play. But you see what having a full field can do when it all clicks. You know, it doesn't happen every week. It doesn't come to fruition the way you'd hope.

But there's this wild leaderboard of guys of all different ages and playing styles and points in the way. their career. And then we go to the WGC and Akron this week where it's 60, I believe, of the 76 who were exempt, $50,000 to show up essentially and finish four rounds. Actually, you don't even have to finish the four rounds. They usually pay the last place money even when people don't finish. It's just, it's a good contrast, I think, for people to see that what happens when you don't have a full field and you just kind of have this cash grab. and it falls in a bad spot on the schedule.

Other than that, I'm really excited about the WGC Bridgetown this week. How about you, House? So you, it sounds like your complaint in some respect runs to the concept of the World Golf Championship. What do you take issue with in terms of this kind of format? Well, the limited field means you have, we just always see in limited field events, you tend to have a few close finishes. There are a lot of runaways. And there's just the,

there's no cut. So there's this air of just show up, take your money, take your world ranking points. You know, there's this club essentially where once you get in the top 50, you just guarantee yourself about 350 grand and a set number of world ranking points

just for kind of having a pulse and showing up at those events. And that's why they are well attended. But they're just kind of a, to me, a drag on the schedule. when they don't have the match play being the exception because the match play has this great format. Dural, the WGC there at least worked because it was in the Florida swing and the buildup to the masters and it was an important way to get a lot of big names together. And the match plays, to me, just different because it has a different format.

This was just, it's just stroke play and show up and play four rounds at Firestone, which is not exactly the most thrilling course on television. It has produced some good finishes, but generally it's pretty dull. And it is a format. And I say this, of course, the Olympic golf format is essentially a WGC format as well, 60 players. Yeah, so that's funny. I was going to make the same point. In the set, we saw the news.

I saw the news today that Jason Day bowed out of the Olympics. The analogy to me between the WGC event like this one and the Olympics. and the Olympics, you know, both are kind of made for TV events that now have, to me, kind of a complete sort of corporate air, corporate governance aspect to them. What was your take on Jason Day dropping out? Howells before we talk about this debacle in Rio, let's talk about our sponsors this week. We have a couple of great friends, of course, at Calloway. They've always been so supportive here of the show.

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Also a word from our friends at Ministry of Supply House. Oh, wait, you had something to say before we left the king. Yeah, all I was going to say is I went ahead and went through. I watched that video. I can't believe how much stuff he's collected. What a, what a, he uses an original hoarder, I guess. There's a little hoarding. Golf parapherne.

That's a little hoarding. But it's totally proper. Yeah, it was hoarding in the search of perfection. That's all. He just wanted to, you know, try every driver and putter no demand. and that's why we love it. So anyway, our house, our friends of Ministry of Supply would also like to say a word this week, and they are really, really an impressive group.

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using code Shack House 15. That's Shack House 15 or visit one of their stores in Boston, San Francisco, and coming soon in Washington, D.C. We thank our friends at Ministry of Supply. Great stuff. Check it out. That's Shack House 15. All right, House, the Olympic golf, you touched on it.

We're going to get into it with our guest today, Henrik Stenson. But I just feel like this is becoming a dark day for men's golf, especially as none of the women have pulled out of the Olympics. and we've now lost Jason Day and Shane Lowry, who was a 54-hole leader at the U.S. Open. And I have this sense that this is going to really, really be an embarrassment for the sport now because athletes and other sports are not pulling out of the Olympic Games

because of the Zika virus. And female golfers who probably have more to lose than male golfers are sticking with the games. And it's just to me, it's a moment where we're, starting to have people look at golf and say, well, it doesn't belong in the Olympics. These guys are soft. They're rich. They're spoiled. And I'm not very happy about it. I'm going to try and defend them a little bit. I'm going to see how I'll see how I do. So we've, we each week now over the past, I would say three weeks at least, we've had a new pronouncement, a new news story from some person in the government.

down there in Rio, in Brazil, expressing consternation, frustration, alarm around the fitness of the city to host the games. They're expressing concern around logistics. They're expressing concern around safety. They're expressing concern around conditions. And the one thing I keep seeing is, you know, this water quality. issue. If I am a guy like many of the guys who have dropped out with this highly compressed schedule on tour this season to accommodate, you know, all the events that have been crammed in, and I have any concerns whatsoever as a, you know, relatively young guy, most of the guys

that have dropped out are guys either late, you know, in their 20s or I guess there's been a few in their early 30s, Schwartzel and Oosti are both early to mid-30s. Yep. What exactly is the incentive for me to go down there? And by the way, the format is a stroke play event. It's not a way for me to play with a fellow countrymen and really, you know, show some patriotism through a team concept. It's me playing in a stroke event, like all the stroke events that I play through the course of a year. So what exactly am I doing this for?

Yeah, and nobody when they created a format, which most of us didn't really like, could have seen this coming where a team format would have probably forced some players to play because they wouldn't want to be letting down their teammates if they were three-person teams or two-person teams. So that element of it, nobody could have seen coming. But the format now doesn't help also just because it doesn't inspire a whole lot. On the other hand, it should free them up as individuals to just go down there and worry about their own game and not be burdened. So there are a lot of different ways to look at it that way. I just, I don't, look, nobody working at the golf course has gotten the Zika virus. Yes, the security is not great. I had a very good chat with the

gentleman who handles the golf media for the Olympics. He was working at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, and he made me feel very good about it. He's from Denver and has been living down there now for a few months and has had no real issues and is very excited about the way the whole thing's going to work and the golf course and the look of it and the feel of it and getting to the course and all that. It's going to be pretty much like a normal tour event. So I guess I'm just more on the big picture view of here you have all the women ready to play and the men aren't. And ultimately, I just think they're using a lot of them, the Zika virus is an excuse because the schedule is too congested.

And they're about winning major championships and Olympic golf is just not a priority. And that's just not going to send a great message. That said, I think when they watch the games and they see it all. all play out, I think a lot of them are going to regret it, especially Rory McElroy. I don't know about Jason Day, but definitely Rory McElroy. Day seemed very conflicted today and his press conference were recording this on Tuesday, and he's just announced that he's not playing. And he certainly didn't act like somebody, he didn't act like a spoiled golf pro who just

has too many options for playing. He really did seem like somebody who was very torn by his decision. and does take his responsibility as a top player seriously. We're going to root for the very best tournament possible and root for a great outcome and real competition and drama. And hopefully what you're describing in terms of that effect of inspiring the guys who missed out to go make an appearance at 2020, will follow through.

The one thing I would say also in terms of the idea of whether or not, not it's going to have any effect on growing the game. You know, tennis has been in the Olympics since 1988. Other than Andy Murray, can you name any other gold medalist tennis player?

No, no. No, that was the only memorable finish, yeah. Yeah, because he was in his home country. So right, you know, not that golf and tennis are perfect equivalence, but I'm not so sure that

it will have a really dramatic impact in terms of a missed opportunity by not having the very tippy top guys. And maybe, you know, the batch of excellent guys we get, even if they're not top, top, top guys will be sufficient and we'll get good drama out of it. And the course will acquit itself the way that we're all expecting. It'll be very cool. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see. It's going to be an interesting week. I think we may get a few more names, and then they can only drop out for so much longer. That's the good news. It's not that far off. Anyway, we do have good news, though, in the forum of our guest today, Henrik Stenson, is absolutely all in on Olympic golf. And I think you'll enjoy the chat that we had just a little while ago. But before we get to Henrik, we have to say a little word for our friends at the,

the trunk club house. And I think you made a little trunk club visit to the, is there a D.C. Bureau? There is. There's a nice D.C. showroom. I had an awesome time. I made an appointment, went down there, sat on the fine leather couches, had my beverage of choice. I'm not going to tell you what it was, but it might have been brown. And had a nice discussion about what I like and, you know, sat with my stylist, list the ease with which this whole appointment was created. You go online, express a few preferences, and I wanted to go meet my stylist in person.

You don't have to do that, and I know that you'll say a few words about how easy the process is, but my experience was, you know, I had a great chat. We had a, it was like a, you know, sort of 45 minutes to an hour, saw lots of options, got sized up, and I'm going to have a couple shirts to add to my wardrobe here in a couple weeks. very, very fun experience. Nice, yeah. All right, well, so let's just explain how it works. With Trunk Club, you don't ever have a set foot in a store like House just did, but it is a pretty great thing if they have one of their locations in your city.

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Yeah, I used Seatkeek at PN-C Park in Pittsburgh House. Bought tickets about 45 minutes before the game. It just could not have been easier. We got great seats. And the whole thing just, you know, it's just amazing how well their app works and just scan those tickets at the door, and we had a great time, and saw the Pirates and the Cardinals

on a beautiful summer's night in Pittsburgh. So with that, we have to get to our interview with Henrik Stenson. Ten-time winner on the European tour, just won last week, the BMW International, setting himself up for another chance to win the Open Championship at Royal Trune. We talked to him about that. We talked about his win, the Olympics,

the Oakmont controversy. He's just one of the more eloquent, interesting guys on really on the planet in terms of professional golf. And we hope you enjoy this chat with Henrik Stensit. Henrik, thank you for joining us. Congratulations on your first win in three years, the BMW International, which I believe is your 10th European Tour title.

Where are you joining us from? Pheneguenagin. I just took the boat across with my family. and some friends and we're going to go for some dinner. Nice day here in Northern Europe. So why not enjoy it? Congratulations. That sounds like a nice time of year to be over there.

We know how it is. You've managed your schedule, I think, very well to center on this point in the season. Is that a fair assumption of looking at how you've done things and leading into the Open Championship? Yeah, I know, I knew it was going to be a really busy summer. So I try to pace myself a little bit towards the end of the spring. And yeah, from really the Swedish tournament, which was about three, four weeks ago, then it's non-stop up until the Rider Cup.

So it's going to be a lot of golf, a lot of traveling, a lot of big event. So we should stay in summer as well. And it was nice to get that win last week in Germany. It's been, I think, 18 months since the last time. Not quite three years. That sounded a little long, but I won at the end of 14. So yeah, it's been a while for sure.

Now that win, you've been dealing with some nagging injuries, and I'm kind of curious, as you get to your 40s, you've always been a very fit golfer. You've been somebody who's always been willing to try a lot of things to maximize your performance. Are you beginning to adjust because of your age, or are you ignoring the fact that you're a little bit older and continuing going ahead? with your normal... If I'm ignoring the fact that I'm old, yeah, is that what you're trying to say? I guess you're not older than what you feel and what you look, right? So, yeah, I still feel I'm in pretty good shape and hopefully got another, I don't know, four or five good years ahead of me on the tour.

But, of course, it's a very competitive motion we do and it takes its toll on the body and I've had a couple of knee operations and, you know, You know, everyone that plays a lot of golf and is out on tour a lot, they all, everyone kind of get some little issues of his neck or back or wrist or whatever it might be. And I mean, I'm no different. I got a few little issues, but all in all, I still consider myself pretty lucky in that sense. I haven't more than the two knee operations. I haven't had too many problems.

And you're still considering yourself a player who's playing schedules on both the European and PGA, Sure. Yeah, I've done that for a number of years. And even though I try and, you know, make a schedule that really suits, suits my calendar and where my family is at and everything else, it's still pretty tough to it to keep it up. And I had a couple of years where I played close to 30 tournaments, which is a little bit too much. And you can do it if you only play 30 in Europe or 30 in the U.S., but to play 30 on a worldwide schedule, it's a bit much. So you're off this week, then you play the Scottish at Castle Stewart and the Open Championship at Trune. Can you just take us through those two golf courses a little bit?

You've played Castle Stewart before. I don't know if you've played Trune. You did not play in the 2004 Open Championship there. No, that's correct. No, I've got a similar setup now of all kind of prep, as I had. in 13, which worked out really well for me. I go and play Scottish Open as a lead-up

to the Open Championship. And Costa Stewart is more of a resort link, so you get the feel of links, but it's not killing you in terms of hardness and the rough is kind of playable. It's not too much bunkering, and

you know, you get a good soft kind of start up to the links golf rather than take high rough and deep bunkers and all the rest of it that you expect at the open. So that works out well. I think that Phil is coming back doing the same setup again.

And Trune, I didn't play in 04. And I hear it's a pretty tough one. I'm going there. I'm on the Tuesday next week before I head to Castle Stewart, to have a look at Trune as well. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to. Think golf is fun. It's always a challenge.

And you can be quite creative with the game. So I'm looking forward to it. subscribed or did you subscribe and maybe you change your views on this idea that you can play too much links golf i think we saw a lot of players who believe that too many weeks in a row of playing on lynx would mess up their swing or mess up their mindset uh were you one of those players and then shifted after your your uh your castle stew um your field one two uh punch there in 2013 Well, I think it's hard to go from kind of regular target golf straight into links. That's definitely been the way I've looked at it in the past, and it's good to...

I mean, there's two ways to go by the year to probably play the Scottish Open then the week before, if it's at a Lynx course, which back in the day at Lofloma it wasn't, so it didn't really make as much sense back then. But now we're playing links courses, and that's... the option would be to go either to Ireland or Scotland and just play some rounds. Links golf practice get a feel for it in the lead-ups to the Open. I mean, that's about it. I don't feel like I can spend a month trying to prepare for the Open.

I think if you've got a good week before the tournament week, that's definitely enough. And like with anything too much or not enough, it's never going to be great. So I think a week is probably a problem. And you've had a lot of great finishes in the open. What do you love about that championship more than maybe any of the others? Well, I think, like I said, the possibility to be creative is not a right or a wrong on any shot. Really, you can play it along the ground. You can plop it.

You can play something halfway in between. There's always a lot of different ways to play a shot. And you just got to make up your mind and go with the one that you feel is. is the most, you know, efficient for the time being. So there's many different ways to do it. I think a lot of times it's been tough conditions. It's been windy and just tricky conditions. And I've made a lot of good results and played a lot of good tournaments during those conditions.

So it suits me pretty good. And the order it gets, I'm pretty short with my long errands. you know, hitting fine and fairways when I need to. So the tougher it gets, the more kind of plays into my hands as well. All right. You've been very supportive of the Olympic golf movement, or you've at least expressed your desire to play and continue going ahead with that. Are you still committed to the Olympics in Rio to represent Sweden?

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I've been looking forward to that all along since I knew I was qualified. and I think it's going to be a fun experience. I've never been to an Olympic Games and, you know, that whole part of it. And then, of course, if I can play well and hopefully bring at least a medal, but hopefully the best medal back, that would be huge for myself and for my country. And I think it's always a great honor to represent your country. And some good results for Sweden, one managed to win the World Cup,

together with Robert Carlson, back in 08. and, you know, it's just fun to represent a country. And, yeah, I'm really looking forward to Rio. I know there's been some concerns with the virus, the Sika virus and other things. So, you know, I can understand why some plays look at it differently, but I'm really looking forward to the experience, and I'm going to go ahead for sure. Do you think had the format been something different, that that might force more or may have forced more players to show up because they wouldn't be letting their team down? Or do you just think it's a one-off situation with the virus?

Yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, it's the first time it's back. If I recall it rightly, I think tennis struggled a little bit to get all the highest ranking. tennis players to go the first time around and then eventually it kind of grew and got bigger and stronger as it the time went on. So that might be

the case for us as well that you know you don't know what to expect the first time around and then it might be even a stronger field the second time around but you can always look at format and those kind of things but at the same time

it's a format that we know will work. I mean four days of stroke play individual. That's what we play most weeks. So you can't really go wrong with that. But I'm sure you can look at afterwards if there's some sort of a team aspect or a different format you can incorporate

to make it more interesting or better or better for the viewers or whatever it might be. So I'm sure it will be analyzed afterwards and see if there needs to be some tweaks going forward. But I think you can ever go wrong with 72 or stroke play. Are you going to attend the opening ceremony or is it too far in advance of the start of the golf? No, I want to do the whole thing. Like you rightfully mentioned earlier in our chat there that I've turned 40. I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I don't know how many chances

I'm going to have to go to the Olympic Games. So I'm doing the full experience. I'm after the PGA. I'm going back home home to Orlando for a few days and then traveling down on that Thursday night, get into re on the Friday morning and then being part of the opening ceremony on the Friday, get a few days to find my bearings and do some light practice and watch some other venues and then then it's a normal week at the office from there on. So I'm spending a good 10 days down there in total. Two other topics and then we'll let you go have your dinner. The Ryder Cup is another big part of your schedule this year,

are in your plans. You're in pretty good shape right now. Where does that event fall now for you as you get a little bit older and you've just, you've played in a few of them and you've been part of the team element? Is it comparable to the major championships when you look at your schedule this year? Well, it's definitely one of the highlights, both of the year and in my career, to, again, you represent your country, your continent and you're part of a team, you're trying so hard to play your best for your teammates, and it's just a wonderful experience. I love that week, the atmosphere, the fans, the camaraderie with your teammates, and the

and also, I mean, I got a lot of good friends on the US team. I'll play with, as most of the other European team members, we play. with the American players every week, year in a year out, in the majors, in the World Golf Championships on the PGA tour and other big events around the world. So, I mean, we're all good friends, and of course, you want to beat your opponent in matchplay that week. But it's a nice atmosphere between the players and with the fans. It's as much fun as I've had on a golf course playing in the Ryder Cup.

those matches are unbelievable and I'm really looking forward to being part of that team again this fall. So the Brexit news will not create strife between the rest of Europe and the English, British players on the team? Come on. It has to create a little tension, no? No, I think from that soccer result yesterday when Iceland beat England, once they left European or underway to leaving European Union, I think they're going to be a colony to Iceland in the few. here. They're all kind of island. And I guess

they're going to implement the Irish, sorry, the Icelandic currency. And so it's all good there, I think. Beautiful. Well, last thing, to end on a total downer, but I have to ask you, because everybody still here in the United States

is talking about it. You were gone by the events of the weekend at the U.S. Open. But did you get to see any of the Bruhaha that took place at Oakmont on Sunday with Dustin Johnson and knowing that you

played the golf course and knowing those greens the way you probably got to know them over a couple of days. Did you have a sense of how that all played out and if it was the green speeds that ultimately were the problem? Yeah, I mean it's

yeah, it is almost hard to explain how quick and slick those greens were the second round that I played was on the Friday afternoon when they were double cut and rolled. And I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say you could sneeze it in from 10 feet. You know, it was lightning. And of course, when it's that quick and, you know, slopey, then a ball can stop moving very easily. And, I mean, there's two things.

You can look at the rule and where do you draw the line for when the players, deemed to have made a ball move or not, when you're not making contact with the ball and it still moves, is that the player that had caused it and so on. But then I think, and if I understand it correctly,

the USDA apologized for the way they handled the matter. I would prefer it to be, if they review it, they should just come to a conclusion and then then you need to have a debate whether are you going to tell a player on the course that they get penalized or are you going to wait until afterwards and kind of set a precedent for how you're

going to handle those situations within all of golf really when you have those situations occur? So there were a few different angles to that and I'm just very pleased that it didn't affect the outcome in the end and that it's a win the championship regardless because we know the incident at the 2010 PGA and then the way he finished off last year Chambers Bay is from through on that one.

Was there much chatter last week at the BMW about the incident? With the players? No, it wasn't too much talking. I mean, I saw some of my colleagues put some tweets and post out there about it.

And like I said, the USGA probably didn't handle that. And you know, you can And if you feel like you make a mistake, you can only move forward on it. And then it's done and dusted. And then we're just got to try and make it better from there on. Well, Henry, thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy your week off. And then we'll see you at the Aberdeen Asset Management Open.

And beautiful Kassar Steward in Inverness and then the Open Championship at Trun. Yeah, perfect. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. We thank Henrik Stenson again for a lively chat on his week off. And we look forward to seeing what he does at Castle Stewart in the Scottish Open next week. And then the Open Championship Petruin, where he's got multiple top five finishes and where he will be getting some of my wagering dollars when I get over there.

And my dollars are going to go a little bit further this year, House. It's exciting. Oh, I didn't even think about that. Jeff Shackleford, you're going to be loaded up. Joe House is sending you some of his greenbacks. We're going to put a lot of money on Stenson. I love him as a top 10 play for the open. And baby, he's going to be inside the top five.

A couple top five performances by Henrik. Yeah, this is going to get exciting. You're going over with a big bag of greenbacks. Loving, loving this Brexit, baby. All right. Speed round today is brought to us, as always, by Calloway, who bringing the XR driver, the one that won not once this past weekend,

but three times with Henrik Stenson and Yerick. up, Ollie Snyderjans on the web.com tour, and as she always seems to like to do, Lydia Coe on the LPGA tour, another incredible win. She's just, she's just beyond. There are no words to describe what she's doing right now. That's really all of them. All we do is win, win, win, win, win, win. Stenson uses the XR-16 driver, 9 degree, also uses the three-wood, which of course he's become world-famous for how well he's hitting the three-wood. An expert three-woodsman. Yeah, Ali with the XR 16 driver, the 10.5 with the MRC Diamana Blueboard 70TX shaft. He's also got that in the three wood, the 16 degree.

And Lydia just uses the XR 16 Pro, which is a little smaller head, 10.5. And that's what I use and love it. It's just the right size, really cool looking clubhouse. All right, so you play a little golf on Friday. You sent us a scripted outfit. and your scripted bag is quite impressive. Your color coordinated apex black irons with the whole red and I don't even remember what the other color.

Gray. It was impressive, but those of us you sent the photo to have an issue with the white bell house. What's the issue? You're too old. Well, that's been going on for 20 years. been too old for a lot of things. Wait, wait, wait. What am I supposed to

wear? I have these wonderful white shoes. They're, they're, they're, I'm not going to name a brand, but they're, they're a gentleman's shoes. They're a nice wingtip style, all white, classic white golf shoes. What color belt am I supposed to wear with my

delicious white shoes? Well, I, I get the belt shoe coordination, but you do know the 34 rule, right? 34 way 34 years old. If you're over either one of them, you can't wear the white belt.

It's just, I just think, I think the white belt thing was a great trend. It was a fun, ironic playoff of the old Johnny Miller look, but come on, it's past its time, has it not? It has, and I have many outfits.

I will say the outfit that I sent to you guys was not scripted. That wasn't off the shelf as I'm walking out the door, thinking about what I want to wear. It was a hot June day in the DMV. So I wanted to be, you know, I only play in pants as much for style as for I know that I'm going to be tromping around in the high grass and I want to keep the critters off my legs. So I had a nice pants shirt combo.

But I knew I was wearing the white shoes. The white belt was the easiest thing to grab on the way out. The one thing I will say, my bag is not necessarily scripted. I chose, you know, the type of bag. really just based on the current Callaway color scheme. They're featuring a lot of red, you know, basically because of the big bertha stuff. And so I just went with something that was like a slight version of red is all I wanted for my bag. No, no, I was complimenting it.

It looked impressive. It just the, I would just, I'll just, the intervention didn't go well. So I'll just say this. Talk to your trunk club stylist about the white belt and see what she. Yeah, that's right. They do indeed do golf style clothes out there at trunk, trunk club. Maybe my style is Tasneem. I'm going to have to sit down with her and work something out.

But I do want to talk a little bit about the performance. This is going to sound like a complete, like, on the knees job for Callaway. And there's already enough of that, I think, in our podcast. But look, I was hitting the Apex Blacks a full club length longer than what I'm accustomed to. And there's two reasons for it. One, I was properly fit by our boy, Corey Newman, out at the Calloway Golf Performance Center in Carlsbad, California. So a proper fitting by any professional, absolutely positively. So I'm able to be a little bit more upright because the clubs are the proper length for me.

And I'm also kind of a one-degree upright type of dude. But the other reason is because the blacks are hot. Let me repeat, the blacks are hot. I mean, I'm hitting a little downwind seven iron on like a 160-yard hole. It's a little breeze. It's a little downhill. For me, that's a comfortable seven. It's a half of a seven.

I hit it 175 yards. I had to climb to the top of the hill behind the green to get out. to try a chopadopopopoulos down onto the green, which I pulled off, by the way, and then promptly missed a putt. But the apex blacks, it was the nice, smooth, easy swing that I like to put on it. I'm not a guy that likes to get up there and take a wild whack at it. I like to smooth it out, and these apex blacks were so hot. I mean, I went over the green four different times,

but I will tell you, I was not angry once with any of that kind of performance. So it was a very, very fun. day and in fact me and my partner won the day I don't want to discuss any of our winnings because I don't want the IRS to be calling over here to my to my residents but it was a wonderful day a wonderful experience and the apex blacks that's the first time I had them in in the bag and put them to use and I would say I put them to good use good now the other topic I want to hit with you while you were playing this golf is the continued discussion about the Dustin Johnson situation. And I'm curious when you were you were around a bunch of golfers, were people talking

about it? Because wherever I've gone since the U.S. Open, that's all people still want to talk about. They don't understand it. They want to complain about it. They're mad. It's fascinating to me to see this level of hostility and anger. Was it something that was kind of a while you guys were waiting for the Green Declare kind of discussion? It was more of like pre-round and post-round when folks were congregated and congregating. It definitely came up. There seems to be a continued unanimity around three themes. What is the point of that rule?

Why was it in, I mean, we get the technical aspects of why the rule exists. You know, any ball that moves must be accounted for. Everybody kind of gets that idea. But a slight oscillation like that remains confounding to us how that could lead to a penalty stroke. The application of the rule by way of the referee on the site coming to the green at Dustin Johnson's request and the two of them confabbing and resolving it seemingly there in the moment only for the U.S. USGA rules officials writ large to come and essentially overrule what the player and the referee in the moment came up with. There continues to be, at least on my side of the defense, continued unanimity that it was

bungled, it was clumsy, it was not resolved, it remains unresolved, and something that continues to leave a bad taste in folks' mouth. Yeah, yeah, and it's almost gotten worse than that the rules community now is kind of dug in really and the story got more interesting when two things happened. Slugger White mentioned he's the VP of Rules and Competitions on the tour along with Mark Russell. There's two of them and Slugger endorsed the decision and endorsed the idea to notify the players, which I thought was interesting in that. And then Lee Westwood gave his comments this week to John Hogan and then Jaime Diaz wrote about him. Westwood was his was playing with us and John

Johnson keeping his scorecard and he had pretty strong views on how the whole thing went down, really didn't feel good about it. He was never asked his opinion and he made very clear that he had a strong opinion because he witnessed the whole thing and saw no sign that Dustin had caused the ball to move. And that just added to me to, I think if people see that, their frustration level with the USGA and the rules of golf in general. It just is a, it could be a turning point for the rules and and not a good one that people see them as just bloated and silly and not able to take into account common sense. Things like, as Henrik Stenson mentioned in our interview, these greens

where you literally sneeze on the ball and it moves. And so it's, it's, I mean, I'm heartened that people are discussing it, House. I think that's fascinating that it's, but it's, it's, it's, It's not a positive conversation, but it is why we love the sport because it's one of those nuanced things that is interesting to debate, but I just don't even see much debate. Most people are really coming down very hard on the USGA and the folks who did this. And I think angry that Dustin's win was a little overshadowed by it. Yeah, I think if we get any kind of result out of it, something that everybody, at least that in my community would be satisfied with is more reasonable green speeds.

That's the thing that everybody thought was the primary culprit here, was the ridiculous green speed where, you know, and what's funny is we were sort of conjecturing. If Dustin had just said there was a breeze, it oscillated because there was a slight breeze, then nobody could have said anything. It seemed like he left himself susceptible by saying, I don't know what caused the ball to move.

It moved. I didn't cause it to move. And I don't know what could have caused. to move. But in any event, if this whole thing produces more reasonable green speeds, and we're going to be at the open next year is at a site that's untested for this level of player, I know that it's held a USGA men's am. And I think it's hosted a women's event as well. But it'll be really interesting to see what we get out of Aaron Hills next year. Well, and that was one of the comments of Slugger White that we just do need to throttle back on green speeds. Everybody's in a

agreement on that now, but whether anybody takes the lead is another topic. And I don't know if the USGA will be willing to do that. But it's, it's, it's great to see people discussing the game. I just wish it was something that was a little bit more positive. So, and house with that, we have to thank our friends at Odyssey Golf. The last few weeks, we've been talking about Odyssey, the number one putter in golf. And today we want to encourage you to check out the latest and greatest from Odyssey, the Mild Collection, RSX putters. These are beauties. you can check them out at odyssey golf.com. You know, Phil Mickelson, who uses Odyssey putters,

has always said that when he hits a five-foot putt, he wants it to look, feel, and sound like a five-foot putt. So by engineering sound chamber technology into these new putters, Odyssey is delivering a crisp sound at impact, giving great feedback that matches up perfectly with the speed and roll off the face. Check these and the great white-hot putters used by people like Henrik Stinson last week, winning the BMW International. out at OdysseyGolf.com, OdysseyGoff, the number one potter and golf.

And House, one last word. We have to thank our great hosts and friends at The Ringer. And, of course, the new HBO series, Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. The show this week will feature Bill Hader, Mark Cuban, and Malcolm Gladwell. So make sure to watch any given Wednesday with Bill. Yeah, nice lineup. 10 p.m. Wednesday on HBO. And, of course, check out theringer.com presented by Miller Light.

a lot of great articles on pop culture, sports, and tech at the ringer. House, you good? You got some golf lined up this week? I'm working on it. I had an invitation for this afternoon that I had to sadly turn down so that we could get on to the Shack House. But you know, it's worth it. It's the sacrifices we make. I promise I'm going to be out on the golf course, and I promise I won't wear a white belt. Thank you very much. And we thank you all for listening. We'll talk to you next week as we begin the big two-week run here with the Scottish and the Open Championships. I can't wait.

Links golf, my favorite time of year. We'll talk to you in a week. Again, we'd like to thank today's sponsor, Ministry of Supply. They're where-to-work men's clothes like dress shirts and slacks, combine performance technology and tailor-designed to do things like wick sweat, breathe and stretch with your movements because a job without sweat stains is a job well done. To get started, visit ministryof-supply.com slash shackhouse and get 15% off your first purchase using code Shackhouse 15 or visit one of their stores in Boston, San Francisco, and coming soon, Washington, D.C.