Fairway Rollin' - Ep. 24: The Return of ShackHOOUUUSE!

Episode Date: January 25, 2017

Geoff Shackelford and Joe House discuss the start of the golf season (01:18), Tiger at Torrey (02:30), the condition of the course (04:10), Costco's new golf ball (28:06), and the not-so-enticing odds for the Farmers Insurance Open (40:05). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's incredible, and it is soft. The face house, the jailbreak. It doesn't hurt. It's soft. It's amazing. beautiful feel. Anyway, visit callawaygolf.com to find out where you can demo the new epic driver today. Let's go to the shack house. How's greetings from Torrey Pines, beautiful La Jolla. It is a little soggy here. How are you today? I am spectacular, Jeff Shackleford. The Shackhouse is back. Tiger is

back and Tiger's back. Yeah. That's terrible. How about that? A corny pun to get things kicked off in 2017. Hey, it's kicking it off. That's all the manners. We're very happy that the tour season has kind of reached Torrey Pines. No offense to the first three events. But I think the combination of losing football games is competition and getting here with some big, big names, team it up, Dustin Johnson, Jason, Jason Day, Tiger, Phil.

Let's face it. It's just sort of the real start of the season. Yeah, we've got 11 of the world's top 25. in the field, many big names, not every big name, no Jordan Speath, and of course, no Rory, which is, you know, disappointing, but we want Rory healthy in time for a certain event in August. But yeah, this is the real, it gets real now, right? This is the weekend, it's just golf. There's nothing really else on TV this weekend.

So it's Tiger at Tori. It is. And a lot of people kind of pooh-poo the Hero World Challenge as a comeback event. you and I thought that was intriguing as can be, but this will be even more intriguing. I mean, look at this house. 1040 a.m. First tee on the south. He's playing with Dustin Johnson, Jason Day, plays the north course at 930 off the 10th tee on Friday.

I mean, how about that for just throwing him right into the mix? But on the other hand, it's a great pairing for him. He gets along really well with both of those guys. And not that Tiger at this point really cares a whole lot who he's paired with. But it's still, it's nice. It's comfortable. It's Torrey Pines where he's comfortable. Did you see yesterday where he corrected a writer at the press conference of Riviera

who said, you've won down there seven or eight times, eight? Yeah, eight. I mean, it's not seven or eight. I like the word comfort. I agree with you. This is obviously deliberate that he's kicking off his 2017 season at this event. Even though, you know, the reputation for these. tracks, especially the South, real challenge. And you told me, and you should share with the listening

audience, that the conditions, in particular, the rough, are likely to pose a real challenge to the dudes this week. You know, and they have us in the media center now out on the course again. They move it every year. And we're kind of almost where we were for the U.S. Open. So we're right between the first fairway of the South course and the first fairway of the north. So tomorrow pro-am day we will be wearing helmets but what it did afford me the opportunity to do is walk out quickly and this place house is absolutely drenched i can't believe how much rain they've got i mean we got a lot of rain in l.A and i know they got it here and we just got another drenching this morning some kind of passing thunderstorms there's still a couple that might

might hit us and so the rough is it's tough i but i i'm actually more fascinated now by the length of how especially the south course the north is is longer but the south is going to play a mile and and there is literally no role to give you an idea we have we have windows in the press center best view on the tour i look out you look down or you look up the coast but we've been watching guys go down the first fairway of the north and they're they're tiptoeing in parts of the fairway it's so wet and then they hit a wedge shot and it just explodes and they kind of look at their clothes and everything so it's going to be lifting clean in place, I would think, on Thursday and Friday.

But it's going to be good for the bombers. Well, that's fine. Look, I want to know if this is a widely held, you know, all the insiders know this. Is there a nickname for the South that you're aware of? No. No. Are you getting in one that I don't know? Tori North has a reputation as being the shorter and easier, although I know Weisskoff has

done some renovation. They flipped the nine, so it's a little bit longer. Tori South, long and hard. The South, I've been told, I've read, is called the Porn Star course. Wow. Long and hard, Jeff Shackleford, I don't know. To start the 27th season, I am, I am not familiar with that anecdote. Well, that's my boy Pat Mayo of Roto experts. I got to give the, you know, proper attribution for that. Maybe he made that up. Flesh this out, no pun intended. Why it's...

Okay. Let's be honest. The South is not beloved by the players since they renovated it. The lure of Torrey Pines is the San Diego culture, the vibe here, the fun of being at this place, and where a lot of guys have,

let's be honest, they played a lot of golf here. They played junior golf maybe in the junior worlds. But what Rees did to the South is really, it gets worse every year, the more you look at it. And it's, especially as the setting has just gets better and better every year. You know, they unfortunately had a disease. You'll see a lot fewer trees here this year. There's a disease because of the drought that's been kind of hitting all the courses. So the views just get better and better.

And the setting and the conditioning is really good now. But the players, nobody really, nobody really warms up to this course. It's just not something you go. yeah, I really want to go play that every day. It's the views kind of carry the day. Why is that? Well, I played here in college. I had my best ever finish, and I love the course.

And every green complex was different. And it had these cool little corner hole locations. And it had places where you could kind of feed the ball into those. And you could run up the ball on a couple holes. Now every green's the same. And it's got this weird, like, crown around, this little bump crown around each green. and they all kind of deflect balls. You know, you try to envision a shot and you can't.

It's just everything is awkward and it makes you feel awkward. And in course design, you do want a good player to feel uncomfortable, but maybe it's because they're in between or something. Here, they just feel awkward because there's really like no shot to envision other than high and straight and hope you get a good kind of landing on the green. So I think that's part of the reason. the players don't care for it. And then, you know, there are those who played it before and remember how it was.

So that's part of it as well. And it's just hard. It's just hard. This time of year, it plays so long. And, you know, that's, never discount how much that means to players. But that said, House, and I'm not a fan of the rough, but it's probably a good thing we're going to have a tough test this week, right? After the low scoring the last few weeks, it's good for variety's sake, isn't it?

Not just variety's sake, but, you know, it validates. It resets everybody's eyes and resets everybody's expectations. And you see all the big guns out here. You know, it makes it, it feels like a big time event. You know, shooting three or four under on the south is going to be, you know, a real achievement. And that's kind of what we're accustomed to out of the best when they're really challenged. And we know that this is a real challenge. So exactly the right time for this event, as you said, it's an unofficial kickoff to the season.

And I think it's going to be very cool. Now, I wanted to segue that into the discussion of the low scoring of late and some of the reactions to it. But before we do that, we kind of have to hit some of these tiger prop bets that, I don't know. What do you think? Is this European house just trying to get attention? But what are they going for with some of these? because I mean, and over under six and a half birdies for Tiger. If he plays four rounds, that's just laughable.

I don't know what. I didn't understand that one. I just thought it was interesting how sort of demeaning, really, these numbers were. A few of them anyway. I've seen. Or maybe not. Maybe the expectations are just that low. Yeah, I've seen this in a few different places now.

So I'm not sure who the original author of these props was. But these are the prevailing prices. if you check props on a whole variety of sites, the three that I like the best, and this is the way that I'm going to combo this, will Tiger make the cut? It's a minus 115 for both yes and no. I like yes,

because I gave Tiger straight A's at the hero. And I think, you know, you mentioned his comfort. I like him returning to this venue. You actually sat down with the man. You sent me a picture yesterday. of you sitting with him one-on-one with the Tigray and you commented on how relaxed he seemed, how prepared.

Why don't we talk for two seconds about your little chat with him and then I'll give you the rest of my thoughts on these props. But you had a nice little, would you have 10 minutes with them? Yeah. I had 15 and I only took 14. So I don't know if that was noted in the, if the AIDS noted that I didn't surpass my lot of time. But it was really cool. He's relaunching the LA Open at Riviera.

It's called the Genesis Open now, and his foundation will benefit from it, and the Tiger Woods business side will run the tournament. And they're very good at running tournaments. We're very happy to have them. They run the Quicken Loans in your home area, and they run the Hero World Challenge. And so he's very involved because of that.

He's very engaged. So they had a press junket type day where he gave a big press conference. It was on Golf Channel. and then he worked through local stations, and then my friends and new partners at the USA Today Sports Media Group asked for an interview with him, and we did it. And I went into some other topics.

I didn't really beat him up on his health or anything like that. I don't care about that. I wanted to talk golf course design and talk about this tournament and what he sees and how involved he gets and all that and find out a little bit. He hadn't been to Riviera. 10 years. So he had a bad experience the last time he was there. We'll talk about that when we get closer to a tournament week. So, but he went through a lot. And he's a little out of shape on the,

on the press session thing house. But man, he still gives you good answers and he, and he remained focused. And he did this for straight for about three hours, which is not easy. And he's, he looks good. He looks really good. He got rid of the thong bikini facial hair thing. You know, he's never won a major with facial hair. Key handicapping stat to keep in mind as we get close to the majors. But overall, he conveyed two things that I thought were fascinating. One, he admitted that four out of the next five weeks playing these golf courses and with his lack of playing the last 400 some odd days is a concern.

It's something he is ambitious. And he acknowledged that. And I wrote a column for Golf Week that that's amazing for him to acknowledge. at. In the past, the Navy SEAL and him would have said, oh, no problem. You know, I'm a man. I'm a manned it up. You know what? By admitting that, he won. It just shows he's just a little more realistic in his thinking. And I think that he knows with the cold mornings and all the things here that he is asking a lot. On the other hand, you know, he's going to fly Emirates first class to the Middle East. He'll be fine. The other thing that I think was interesting was he indicated it's time.

It's time. I'm ready to get back. And as you know, I believe he was a burnout. He had hit a wall and had no desire to play. And so to hear that, I think that's huge, that he has the itch again. And a lot of people were wondering if he'd even ever get that back. And now I think he's got that. So that's exciting if you're a fan of his and fan of the game and want to see him make another run.

Yeah, so all of that factored into my thinking. And I'm also just going to, you know, I'm betting what I want to happen. I'm betting what I'm rooting for. I want him to make the cut because I want the tournament into the weekend to be exciting. I want that buzz to build again. So I'm definitely taking him making the cut. You mentioned the birdies, how many birdies, six and a half is, it just feels. I mean, he might, I'm rooting for him to do that at all.

on the north on Friday, right? I mean, I want him to have seven-thirty. With lift-clean in place? He might do that with lift-clean. It's just, it's, it's, it was, I don't understand that one. But the, so that means if, since I'm, I'm anticipating him making the weekend, that means I also take the over eight and a half on bogeys. Because I think, you know, it's going to be the same kind of thing that we observed

down in the Bahamas. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The north, the south course is tough. And even if you're picking up your ball and cleaning it in the fairways, it's just tough. So that's fine.

Okay. I like that. Yeah. So that's my, I'm going to go yes on making the cut over six and a half on birdies and over eight and a half on bogeys. Because this is, you know, it's an entry point moment here. Sure, sure. Did you have any opinion on the top 10 and top five numbers they offered? For Tiger?

They're ridiculous. I wouldn't touch these. They need to put another zero behind both of them. Okay. If you want to give me 45-1 on him making a top 5, maybe I'll consider it. If you want to give me 35-to-1 on him and a top 10, maybe I'll consider it. But both of those are ridiculous. He belongs in like a, you know, he's 30-1 to win.

That's absurd. He should be 125 to 1 to win. Yeah, given the amount of time off. But he is Tiger Woods, and he has won at Tori Pines, but he has a 101. So now we, on the top. topic of scoring and what's happened with two fifty-nine's in the last two tournaments. I'm curious how it's just kind of as a fan what your reaction has been to that, because there are a lot of layers, as you can imagine, to this discussion. And we brought it up with

Jason Day today. I'm curious, though, just sort of your take, just watching it from afar or watching it on TV. So I continue to be completely thrilled by it. We now have. We now have have three scores under 60 in six months. So it feels like we're going to see 59 watch hashtag 59 watch on the golf channel.

It's like a real thing and something that pops up on Twitter now. And it showed up a few times at the Sony because not only did Justin Thomas do what he did, but Kevin Kisner got hot. My man

Chez Revy. Is it Brian Harmon? Oh, no, Ches Rievee. Yeah, Ches Rie at the Sony also had a stretch there. 59 watch made an appearance on the bottom right hand of the screen. But I still think it's thrilling because of the overtime. It's got the same vibe as like a no-hitter or a perfect game. It's always thrilling.

It's always exciting to see if the guy can get all the way across the goal line. These guys, and I've heard this some, I think you may have been the author of some of these comments, between the equipment, the fitness of the players, the technology that's available right now, and the course conditions, I expect that we're going to see this quite often. And I would not be shocked if we see 57, like, this season, because both Adam Hadwin, you know, he hit his, uh, um, he was 13 under with two to play. Yeah, 13 birdies. Yeah, that's it, 13 birdies. And I know Justin Thomas had to make Eagle to get his, but Furek also had a chance at 57 last summer.

He did. He had a great chance at it. Yeah, and that's part 70. So, yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a good chance. It's just fascinating how many people, and of course I'm around some jaded sports writers, here, but they just don't see 59 as magical anymore because of Fierrex 58.

And my counter to that is the day that you see somebody playing for 59 and people aren't all treating him like the pitcher who's throwing the no-hitter or the perfect game. And that's the day that maybe it has lost, it's magic. But when you think of the number of rounds played on the PGA tour and the number that have been under 60, it's still a magical number, especially on a part 72. I think it's even more amazing. And I love it. I think it's exciting that everybody cuts in and we get the 59 watch hashtag.

And it's a special achievement in somebody's career. And Ferrick did set a new bar. There's no question. But it's still, I think Ferrick threw the perfect game and the rest of these guys now. Although Al Geiberger, I got to tell you, his 59, when you know about the golf course he did it on and the clubs he was using. and Algeiberger didn't have trackman. He didn't have an instructor who he could email his trackman numbers to. The conditioning was nothing like today.

You just go down the list, the equipment. That round still, to everybody who knows about it, still that one feels like. And again, that's it to mean the other ones. The other ones are great. But Mr. 59 is Mr. 59 for a reason. That one was unreal. Do you know anybody in golf media? I mean, maybe there's a deep dive there.

Maybe all those factors you just described, we could, you know, do a little bit of a dive in there and compare it for us. Well, and it's, I think that you think you'll see some of that, although there isn't much golf media left. But I do, I don't think anybody wants to get into comparing the different ones to just say, well, Chip Bex wasn't as good as David DuBalls or this or that. But I just think the more fascinating topic is I wanted to ask Jason Day of this today because he was talking about he he, he changes his loft and his lie on his putter every week, he told us, which I put up the comments on my blog about that. I was that was just wild to hear that. But I almost wanted to ask him, but he wasn't really too interested in the 59 topic. He kept going, well, I'm about winning golf tournaments. And of course, I was about to follow up, have you ever shot 59?

but I decided not to be a total jerk in week one. But I want to start asking players, like if there was, if you had to give a percentage to what is the thing that's most influencing, and I'm going to guess most will say equipment, and then they'll say track man and instruction. And course conditioning tends to come kind of low on the list. I just don't think players,

a lot of the younger players, realize the difference in the consistency of the turf now versus even 10 years ago, or 12 years ago. The superintendents, what they can do is just, it's just incredible. And that's especially true of the Greens, right? I think the Greens, yeah, where you get it the most, although, you know, fairway lies are there.

I mean, I think of a course like Torrey Pines or, of course, like Riviera. These are courses I've been coming to quite a bit. And I just know the difference in what the players get in terms of consistent fairway lies is night and day compared to, let's say, 15 years ago. And, you know, this is wintertime. Generally, it used to be kind of tough here. You'd be at the mercy of the weather. And now what these superintendents can do is incredible. And you give a player a perfect line. We're going to see it the first two days, because they'll be able to touch their ball and clean it. And it just makes them very dangerous. You know, these guys, the slightest little imperfection in a line

really does make a difference. So they're good. They have great tools. And they're using them. and I think it's great. Of course, I also love it because it does get people riled up about the distance issue and it does shine a light on that. So I enjoyed that as well because that's an interesting debate to have. I just don't like it, though, when players are sort of demean or that people don't enjoy accomplishment in the sport. You have to enjoy it.

This is a hard game. Yeah, I haven't seen anything suggesting that any player is blasé about it. it. I think you're, you might hear something from, from your, your commentary, the commentariat, right? It's the, it's on the media side, the media old school. I wouldn't, yeah, but you'll, you'll hear, you'll hear golfers. Yeah, it's the same mentality that people have that they like to see players beat up at, at sometimes. And I've never liked that. And there's just some people who do like that. They like seeing the players forced to feel like the rest of us.

Well, they're going to enjoy this weekend. I get, I get, I just don't find that interesting to watch. And I like when the players struggle because they have to make a grueling decision. I don't like to see them struggle just because of fairways 12 yards wide and surrounded by 8 inch rough. Hey, house, uh, don't you have a little bit of news from the Callaway community to I do, I do, I do. Friends, do you listen to Shack House and think I love talking about golf as much as these

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What stood out to you is kind of something we didn't really kick around, maybe should have, had we been yapping these last few weeks. I think the most interesting. thing. You know, there was a bunch of interesting things. I continue to appreciate the innovation on the European tour on fan involvement and, you know, efforts at taking the game a little bit lighter. I saw the awkward golfer video this week that they did. It was really good where they planted, you know, they had some tour pros on the Euro tour using a guy in his ear to go ask awkward questions of other players very

clever, very smart. That was beautiful. But the one thing I really was intrigued by the way, the little Billy, you did watch the Little Billy videos, right? Oh, Little Billy is a hero. We'll have to... Yeah, the interview of Rory is

one of the best things that's been done in golf in 10 years. We might need to get some Little Billy on the Shack House. We might have to figure out how how to get that little Billy's busy, I think filming season two of the crown, but we might be able to try to talk to his agent to get him on the show. He's quite a talent.

But yeah, they are doing some good stuff. I'm glad you like the music on the driving range. The guy's hitting balls to the red hot chili peppers. I think we'll grow the game by leaps and bounds. I promise to not you say grow the game. So you're not going to, you can't walk me into it. But speaking of, you know, interesting developments in the offseason that, might have the effect of making the game more available to players.

Costco introduced a ball in the, right around the sort of Christmas time season, you know, Christmas season there, perfect gift giving time that got a review on My Golf Spy and it went through the roof in the sense that demand went, went crazy. The My Golf Spy,

I think it was Golf Works that did a review. view of it and actually found it to perform close to the point of V. Why don't you tell the story? Yeah, yeah. Golf Works was the first to mention it, kind of pointed out, suggest, hey, this is going nuts. People are loving it. And hey, we hear it's good. Then my golf spy did the testing. And the testing review, this was in late October, early November. And that's what kind of vaulted the thing to a craze level. and Costco brought the ball out kind of quietly like they do, and then people just started going nuts.

You know, $15 a dozen is kind of an incredible price for a good ball. Then, of course, you know, House, what it turned out, we found out that this was a probably a one-time purchase of the cores inside the ball that are pretty expensive to make, and there were a bunch of leftovers. and my understanding is they were tailor-made had a bunch and as you know their parent company Adidas is looking for well they're looking to sell them but they're also like any company or looking for money any way they could get it and so tailor-made sold these to they had them sitting around they were not intending to create any kind of it was just like a vineyard that had a lot of

extra wine from a certain year but didn't want to didn't have any use for it or whatever their reason was they didn't want to stick their label on it and Costco did what they do from time to time on products and it went it went berserk what made it intriguing of course was that it happened house as you know right as titleist slash a cushion it was having its IPO and the my gall spire review compared the ball to the pro v and so that that led to some tension there obviously it was a business story and and the ball you know i guess what house i went out and walked around a few holes here tory i found two balls today a pro v and a kirkland and i of course i compare them and it's laughable the way they didn't do a good job of knocking off the pro v1 arrow on the ball it's a little blatant

um it's obnoxiously blatant actually but i got i finally got to see the ball in person and i got to be honest with you i pulled out a chrome soft uh in my bag and then i pulled out the ProVee I picked up in the Kirkland and, you know, it looks very nice. I don't feel like it looks quite as good as the other two. The other two have a little more shine if you're into that kind of thing. But, you know, the big story to people was the price and they got excited and now they're upset, but people felt like this could be a disruptor for the golf equipment business. And I suppose Costco could keep trying to do this a few times. I just, I think there's two issues. I'd be curious what you think, but one is that they're going to need the help of big-time companies that have stuff to get rid of.

And I also don't think a lot of the companies are eager to do that or have many extra things like those cores to get rid of. And then the other thing, houses, and this is why I was always a little skeptical, golfers love their brands. I mean, you see kids wearing Calloway, tidalist, tailor-made, under armor. And you go to a golf tournament and you see the power of that. And then you see grown men wearing corporate stuff. It's just like guys who you see out biking dressed like they're in the Tour de France. People love their brands. They love their companies.

And I just never believe that I could see a three handicap at the local country club on the first tee on Saturday going. I got a Kirkland four. I would admire them for doing it. but I think there's kind of an ego thing that would have made that unlikely. Well, that may be the case, but they sold out of those balls. And they were for a while taking on sort of pre-orders for the next wave that it seems like is unlikely to come out. Yeah. Because of the flak, right, that the tailor-made took.

But, you know, for equipment manufacturers and ballmakers and everybody that's in the industry, there had to be a little bit of an eye-opening moment there where with the right kind of innovation and the right kind of placement, you could create a type of brand buzz. I mean, on the one hand, Titleist did not like at all, you know, having its IPO, I don't know if it was sullied, but, you know, having simultaneously this story that there's a ball out there that's a third of the price of the ProVee that, that, you know, was reviewed well and fared well. But on the other hand, we were talking about the title is ProVee in every one of those stories, right? So there's got to be a way for a thoughtful, smart, you know, manufacturer or ballmaker or what, what have you,

to maybe think of this as an opportunity, right? You know, I don't mean to sound cynical, but, you know, if you have some extra product and you want to, you know, push it out onto the market and create a type of buzz around something that otherwise is kind of a sunk cost, I could come up with a couple ways to make that work. Yeah, and that could happen again. I don't doubt that that it could happen. But that said, our friends of Calloway, makers of the Chromesoft,

the ball that we play and love. Artie kind of did this with the Chrome Soft. You know, it's a significantly lower price for a dozen. Although right now you can get ProVs at a similar price because they're discounted. I think they do that this time of year to get rid of them.

But, you know, 40 bucks for a dozen Chromesoft was less than the Provee. And that got people's attention because it's a great ball. But I just don't know if a company will go to that kind of trouble to disrupt the market. I just don't know. I think it's something to watch. I think it's fascinating. The other thing, I want to point out

in this issue that was really fascinating, the importance of internet reviews and the change from a golf digest or somebody like that influencing the market and the golf audience. and instead a golf works or my golf spy having this kind of influence on golfers with reviews is I think you know we've seen that in other areas probably of the world but golf's always like five years behind but we have seen something now where these independent or seemingly independent sites my golf spy has a few biases that they're not fans of some things and it's rather consistent but in general people are trusting them more than the kind of the big name brands to for insights into products. And I think that's a fascinating thing out of this story.

Yeah, that's right. We're always, you know, now in this internet age, the smart consumer is always looking, you know, for the best value and through whatever kind of source, credible source can provide it. And, you know, we now have available to us a whole variety of different ways of taking on information and processing it and thinking about how it might work for us. And we don't have to. And I'm only going to single out Golf Digest because their hot list just came out. And that used to be the way that I would each year kind of acquaint myself with, you know, what the manufacturers were delivering in the way of new product and looking at the reviews and then trying to distinguish between the reviews to see. what might work for me.

I don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to go get the magazine or go online and read Golf Digest. I can go to these other sites. I like to go to my boy Mark Crossfield and see what he's hitting. Right. Yeah, Crossfield's phenomenal. Yeah, exactly. And watch his experience with it.

And he, and, you know, he tells the truth, right? He doesn't seem to be wedded to any particular manufacturer. I don't have to doubt his motivation or his incentives. and, you know, that's helpful to me as a consumer as I'm trying to think about, you know, how might I upgrade this aspect of my equipment one way or the other. So I think, you know, the point you're making is absolutely right. And, you know, it ought to be, hopefully all the manufacturers are onboarding the experience of what happened with that ball

and thinking about how they might use it to their benefit. And I think that ultimately benefits the consumer. What we're really talking about here to me is accessibility. It's access to the game. And, you know, those balls sold out because, you know, people play balls and lose balls. And it's not fun to lose a $4 ball, you know, lose three or four, $4 balls every time you go out. And that's what, you know, a player like me at 13 handicapped, 14 handicapped, you know, mid to higher handicaps are kind of confronted with and buy. So, you know, that's kind of where I come down on it.

All right, one last point on this, and I don't want to sound like a total shill or get political. But one thing that I think a lot of people didn't realize in this whole debate when they were kind of slamming all the companies, Titleist, Calloway, Taylor, Taylor made for the price of their golf balls. Just a reminder, for those who don't see it on the packaging, the Titleist ProV-1, the Calloway Chrome Soft, are made in the United States. and I've been to the factories, and they have longtime loyal workers, American workers, and in this time when that is such a hot button issue, I got to be honest with the house, you know, I buy American cars. I like to buy things made in the United States. And so if that makes somebody feel a little bit better about paying an extra few cents a ball,

that is obviously part of this whole story. And I think there's a lot of research and development that goes into this and testing that something like the Kirkland ball didn't. In fact, I know some people who cut open balls and not all the cores were the same color. So, I mean, it was, I'm thrilled Costco did this. It's fascinating because it does keep these companies on their toes. But there's also, you know, I also know enough, as you know, we've seen enough of our friends' work. at Callaway and I know the people at Titleist and they do put a lot into their product and there's consistency and quality and so there are things you are paying for and you are getting some value

out of that. So that's enough shilling on that subject. But I do, I do mean that. And I think we more importantly, we have to cover two things now. There's a little breaking news as we're doing this pod. Tiger has tweeted that a big decision has been made and he will be announcing it here Wednesday at Torrey Pines. So we apologize to those of you listening to the show after this big decision has been made. I don't know what it is, but we'll find out tomorrow. But let's talk about who is going to win the Farmers Insurance Open this week. Our producer Jim Cunningham sent us some odds house. And I got to tell you, as always, they're not particularly enticing, are they if we were actually betting? And you might be on the, you might be on the,

the farmers, I don't know. But Jason Day and Dustin Johnson at 9 to 1 aren't too thrilling, but Dustin Johnson is playing very nice golf. Hezeki Matsuyama 12 to 1. And then it jumps to Ricky at 25, Patrick Reed, 25 to 1. Snedeker, the defending champion, 25 to 1 and Phil Mickelson at 30 to 1. Anybody

anybody you feel strongly about this week? I'm not going to bet it this week. I don't like any of those prices. I don't see anybody out of that, you know, that's not really on that list coming out. The only guy that I might sort of take a look at and think about a little bit is Kepka, Brooks Kepka, because of, you know, the power, you know, he has the ability to, you know, that the length is not a challenge for him. But out of all those guys, I like Day. I really do like Jason Day at this tournament. I think for him, what we observed out of his play in Hawaii, it looked like a tune-up.

It looked like he treated it like a tune-up. I think, you know, he will be inspired to be playing with Tiger. And, you know, we'll see him. This is going to be, you know, Jason Day at his, like, this is going to be serious. I'm playing, you know, to win Jason Day. And he has the pedigree and the history here at Tori. So that would be my horse if I was going to pick a horse. week. Okay. Well, I'm on the Hedekie and Dustin Johnson bandwagon just because of their ability,

well, one, the way they're both playing right now and then also just the power game and the ability to kind of diffuse the, I think, what's going to be the difficulty here this week, which is the South Course playing so, so long. I just don't really feel any long shots that stood out, you know, because there are, this is a great time of your house, as you know, West Coast Swing. It tends to be an area that favors the people who grew up playing around here, polar greens, cuckooia grass, all that kind of stuff. And so you always get a Pat Perez or a local that's, there is a kid from San Diego State. You know, and I'm feeling a little bad now.

I didn't look him up. Who's got his card this year? Anyway, well, oh, well, I'm not picking Bryce and Deschambeau. as much as I'm intrigued by him, house, he's down at the PGA show at demo day today. I don't know if that's how he wants to prepare for a PGA tour event. Maybe he got here early and played a couple rounds on the New North course.

But anyway, I thought that was a little strange today. Let me offer a quick word from our friends at Odyssey, and then we'll do a quick wrap on what's ahead for the next few weeks. Is that right, house? That's awesome. Do it. All right. Well, we know Odyssey Golf, the number one putter. and golf really is when it comes to putting, we know it's the putter that the best putters in the

world use to generate top spin at impact. And of course, that's the big differentiator between pros and amateur golfers on the green. Well, guess who is here to help you compensate for that lack of forward role? The new O-Works putters from Odyssey feature a micro-hinge insert that dynamically generates immediate top spin at impact, regardless of how terrible your putting stroke is. So it's already been played and put in the bag by Phil Mickelson during the Ryder Cup and now the new insert is already hot on the tour. There's a certain famous golfer who was recently using it. I won't mention his name. I house have gotten my hands on one and I got to tell you, I'm a blade putter. I'm a real snob with the putters and I cannot

believe how soft the face is and how beautifully the ball comes off the face. I have not tried it on super fast greens. I'm kind of curious there and super slow greens, but it is a different feel. I've never felt the butter quite like this. So anyway, the new old works microhand ginsert from Odyssey. It'll be in stores February 17th, Genesis Open Week at Riviera. So go to odysseygolf.com to check out how this new way to roll works. So this is our first shack house. house, we're going to be pretty consistent here on the West Coast swing so people know. And we're going to try to have a lot of good Monday post shows. And we're going to start getting some good guests lined up now that we're kind of in a flow.

I hope you're excited for the year. I'm starting to get excited. I got to be honest, I'm kind of glad we took a break. I see a lot of burnouts in golf. And I think that we did just the right thing. We do apologize, though, for stepping away, right? but we believe that golf has seasons. Tigers back and we're back.

All right, everybody. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody from Calaway and Harries and all our good partners at the Ringer. And, of course, you can find House from D.C. on Twitter. And I'm Jeff Shack on Twitter and Jeff Shackleford.com. House, anything else? Just one thing, Jeff, and that is Shack.