Fairway Rollin' - Ep. 9: Memorial Tournament Recap With Jim Furyk

Episode Date: June 7, 2016

Geoff Shackelford and Joe House on the weather-delayed weekend at Memorial, Tiger Woods's new book, and the Donald Trump-PGA Tour fallout at Doral. Then, 2003 U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk joins (23:00) to discuss his prep for this year's U.S. Open at Oakmont and his plans for the Ryder Cup this fall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's code Shackhouse 15. or just tell them you heard about it on Shackhouse. Let's head to the Shackhouse. Welcome to the Shack House. I think we got a great show for you this week. It was another wacky week in golf. We've got Jim Furek later in the show to talk about the upcoming U.S. Open at Oakmont where he finished second last time around,

and he's a Riter Cup assistant captain and big sports fan. House. How you doing? You're looking forward to chatting with Jim? I can't wait. I want to ask him about the Steelers. Well, you do that. That's all yours.

So you play a little golf this weekend and we had a little memorial tournament. How about that? Nice springtime golf. Yeah, I was lucky to be up in New England. This is exactly the six-week period when New England is in perfect shape. It goes sort of mid-April through kind of the first week of June, second week of June, and that's it. It was in exquisite shape. I was lucky to play a course designed by our mutual friend Gil Hans, the Boston Golf Club,

which is really right now an incredible shape. And what a design. Yeah, Rodney Hine, the superintendent, does a beautiful job there. And it's definitely Gil's highest rated in terms of rankings and all that. So that's very cool. You get to play there. Quite the experience. It's not the opulent over-the-top thing that a lot of people have come to expect

with a private place like that. No, no, not at all. Rustic. Rustic. Yeah, it is rustic. I mean, you know, everything's sort of low to the ground and, you know, properly modest. And it's just a great golf experience. It's a place where you play 18 and it's like, let's go get, we don't have a beer sponsor.

Let's go get a beer, unnamed beer, and then let's get right back out there. We got another nine. We got a couple bets to settle. Let's get going. Yeah, that's great. Places like that are pretty sweet. Well, we envy you, but you did get to see a little of the memorial, and it was a, I can't say it was one of the more memorable memorials of all time. In fact, it was pretty dreadful on a few levels in terms of tape-delayed golf and the usual weather stuff. But I felt like it was a good week in that nobody you saw show up there. You said, okay, he's taking himself out of U.S. Open contention. His game is in the toilet. I felt like, though, that, with all due respect to William McGirt and John Curran, who were in the playoff,

that this was a great, great week for Rory McElroy to kind of establish himself as either the favorite or one of the top two or three favorites along with Spieth and Day, depending on how you feel about their chances at Oakmont, just because he showed some life with the putter. He went back to the conventional grip, and he wasn't doing the left-hand low and that kind of pop stroke that he has going, and he was second in the field in strokes game punting. And coming into the week, he was 122nd on the tour in that number.

Yeah, so I'm not prepared to trust Rory because I kept waiting. I've been waiting all season long for that breakout victory. And the breakout victory, I guess, would be the Irish Open. But, you know, that's a Euro tour event under conditions that are not like the kind of conditions that you get over here in the U.S. at our, at the, majors here. So I was, you know, I have an eyebrow raised at that putting performance that he put on because it's been the single thing that has held him back. We've been talking about it, what feels like now for six months. I do want to give a quick shout out, though, to Dirt McGirt.

I mean, this is now the, he's the fourth guy that kind of fits this demo of journeymen guys. We had Brian Stewart a few weeks ago. we had Jim Herman earlier this season and even Vaughn Taylor, who's won on tour before. But, you know, shout out to the dudes in their, you know, 30s and 40s. Yeah, absolutely. It's a great place to win. And by no means is an easy place to win. One of the best fields they've had in a long time.

So, yeah, no, awesome performance. But, you know, it's just it's the week was, was rough with the weather, as it always is, at the memorial. Well, we're not going to move off the memorial until you explain Chief Leather Lips to me. Yeah. So the memorials played every year in May, and every year it rains. Of course, when they had the President's Cup in the fall, it also rained a lot.

And a lot of people don't know this, but the Muirfield Village Golf Club, a wonderful, wonderful club and beautiful facility was built on a Native American burial ground. And there are various legends related to this event. So many that I actually know of a few people who work for the tour who don't want to work this event because they just know it's going to rain every year. And Barbara and Jack Nicholas apparently have even gone so far to visit the grave of the great chief leather lips who was executed. in 1810 for apparently liking pale-faced people too much. And the curse goes back to his execution

in 1810 and his tribe and its love of pale-faced people. And what's the curse? How does it manifest itself? Is it the bad weather? That he was executed on this property. I know, but how is it manifests itself? In rain. House it rains. Every year. the memorial. Got it. And apparently, Barbara Nicholas has gone to visit his grave at the suggestion of Winnie Palmer. Jack, there is another story that Mr. Nicholas does not acknowledge, but I don't believe he's really very firmly denied, that he's driven her to the place wherever he is buried, but stayed

in the car. She apparently has made more than one trip to his burial site. One was in 1993. That's how far back this rain thing goes. with the memorial. And she's placed a glass of gin on his grave. Oh, my. His grave is somewhere beyond the far end of the practice area.

So I don't think they build homes or anything on it. But it's on the property. He's somewhere buried there. And so there's, and he needed some chapstick, apparently. His name is Chief Leather Lips. And so there you go. That's one of the more comical elements of the memorial every year and because it just rains on Q every time.

It's such a shame because they always do a great job getting the course in shape. Paul Lachaud Jr. is one of the best. They get the tournament in. You know, the second straight year ends on a playoff, and it just ends sort of later on Sunday than they might have hoped for. They did. They got in a little early even. They did.

Your friends at CBS just got hammered on social media because, now NBC's philosophy is to, if there's a delay, they still will show the telecast on tape delay, because the ratings really aren't much different than if they show it live. However, they do at least show it live now on their live streaming apps, and CBS and the tour made the decision not to show the PGA Tour live, or the golf tournament live on CBS and Golf Channel. So, as you can imagine with people getting the scores and updates from on site of what's going on

and then not being able to see what's going on on the screen, it led to quite a bit of negative reaction and then you get all the usual stuff where's the pro tracer why is there a half hour gap between the telecasts the usual things kind of come out and it was I think it's getting harder and harder for these networks to justify showing things on tape when they have the option to go with the live stream like they do yeah I it's funny I was I forgot that it had been tape delay. And I had enough going on the first part of my Sunday that I wasn't paying attention to the updates coming through my Twitter. So I didn't know who won. I was sitting on my couch

and watched it on the delay. But your point is right. We keep having these conversations about CBS broadcast. Maybe we should get Jim Nance on and see if he can explain to us what the hell's going on there. I don't think he makes these decisions, but we will definitely aspire to do that because he's a huge golf nut and I just think it'd be fun to hear from him. I think we need to go a little higher up the ladder on some of these calls. And that would include the commissioner, Mr. Tim Fincham, who had a rough week. He at the memorial, he showed up and gave a press conference on Wednesday because on Tuesday night on Hannity, Donald Trump revealed what we discussed on Shackhouse initially a few episodes, two episodes ago, that in fact, Dural is no longer going to be hosting

the PGA tour. Donald Trump told Sean Hannity kind of what happened. He had had a visit earlier in the day from Tim Fincham, Jay Monaghan, and Ty Votaw to his office. My sources say it was a very brief meeting in which the news was delivered and it was not good news. Durrell was losing its tourist stop and the explanation was that the corporate money was not there to sponsor the event at the price the PGA tour wants. And I think House that what was most interesting and I went through a bunch of these things on my blog and I have a couple more posts in me that I need to get to about this because I think it's a big picture issue. But what I think the real takeaway though is that Fincham showed up at the memorial and explained why this happened

and Cadillac very much wanted to continue sponsoring but at a certain price that is not close to what the commissioner wanted. And what I heard from people on Twitter and I got some emails and I don't usually get emails on sponsorship issues, is that it was the first time people had ever heard a commissioner be so blunt that this was all about the money and almost kind of brag about that, that he made no real acknowledgement how painful it is to lose this market or that the fans might be deprived of some golf in the United States. and he kind of played into Trump's hands in a certain way that way.

But I think it was just eye-opening for people to hear that. So I was pretty blown away. You may recall, I was skeptical when we talked about this on the pod a couple weeks ago, that the tour would move away from one of its iconic venues that fits perfectly in the schedule right in the middle of the Florida swing and has produced some pretty great champions the last handful of years. The course underwent a renovation that has been, mostly well-received.

And it's a really competitive tournament. It's one that I always look forward to in the spring. I think it's one of the best events on the tour schedule. One thing that jumped out at me when I read the news of the story, they have obviously been negotiating with Mexico, the sponsor down in Mexico, for some number of months because they announced a seven-year deal last week. So I wonder how genuine that.

the effort was to really try and find a replacement sponsor here in the U.S. or to negotiate, I'm not going to suggest in bad, you know, I was going to say negotiate in good faith, and I don't want to suggest anybody did anything in bad faith, but it didn't look like they were pulling out all stops to try and get Cadillac to stay and to try and stay at this venue. Oh, no, no, they were dying to get away from them and dying to get away from Donald Trump. And Fincham, you know, he gave a press conference and he, as usually talked too long. And so he eventually gave himself away, and there was a telling quote, that no brand wants to compete with Donald Trump. Well, that was just a bunch of baloney because Trump actually has a deal with Cadillac.

They provide the vehicles at his resorts, and they have some, you know, trade out, whatever it is. They have no problem with him. They love Miami. They love that stop, but they don't love the price tag of a WGC. And we did discuss this. I think I explained to you that the dollar figure on those WGC events is significantly higher than a regular tour event and very expensive. there's only about a dozen companies that can afford it. And I think they've run out of those dozen companies being able to go to them in the United States

or internationally that want to do this. And so they then have gone to the Salinas Brothers in Mexico. I mean, it just sounds like something out of a Brian De Palma movie. And it just feels wrong. And then, of course, you hear all these players scared of being fine coming and doing interviews and, oh, I think it'll be great. We'll grow the game. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Now, all these players, I've made a note of all the players who endorse this, and I guarantee you half of them will not show up in Mexico City. It's after the Honda, and it's right in the middle of the Florida swing. They're not going to leave the United States, and they're nice setups in Florida to go to Mexico City, no matter how much money is put forward. It's just total hogwash that they were endorsing it. And well, you know, there is a logic.

One of the things I read was Rory's comment that the World Golf Championship should be played in other parts of the world. Yeah. That has a logic. Absolutely. That does make sense. Where this particular event falls on the tour schedule next season is ridiculous. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see what field they get down there in Mexico City for all the reasons you're mentioning right now. I mean, what makes the most sense is to get a replacement event back at Doral right in the sloth.

that that event has held for years in the Florida swing and let this WGC event go ahead and have it be in Mexico City. I'm fine with that. I like the idea of having the World Golf Championships and somewhere other than the United States, but get it on the schedule somewhere that makes sense. No, he's absolutely right. They need to go international with them. The problem is this was an event they took that was a great tour event, a stalwart event that had helped build the tour. They converted it to a WGC and now they abandoned the place because they don't really like Donald Trump. And I think that's a, I think it's an odd precedent.

And remember, the last point I want to make, and then we want to get to Jim Fieric here in a minute. But the commissioner's bonus is built around purse growth. And so just making that event a purse number that Cadillac would have liked, by the way, Cadillac, another sponsor, and I'm, I usually could care less who sponsors the tour event. Cadillac has funneled a lot of money into the PGA tour, the Champions Tour, They kept that afloat for a long time as a key sponsor. And again, they just didn't want to meet that dollar figure. And the commissioner wants that dollar figure because he's all about, you know, ultimately

at the end of the year, there's a financial incentive for him. So that's the player's fault for allowing that to kind of go on. But there you go. That's a situation. So it's a bummer, I think it'll be an ugly one next year when a lot of guys don't want to go down there and play. But we'll see. Hey.

Well, look, if Cadillac is looking for a place to put some dollars, I could think of a podcast. Very subtle. Very nice. Hey, Father's Day's Day's coming up, house. Yeah. Big day. A lot of people trying to figure out what on earth to get Dad or, you know, what to get

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But don't worry, you know, if you're wondering, you know, House, I'm a big Harry's fan. I learned about him on podcasts. And don't worry, the packaging is so. cool too that it'll look like a great gift. But then what's inside actually works unbelievably well. And their prices are ridiculous. I mean, their blades last forever. All the stuff is cool. Love Harry's. All right. Joining us now on the shack houses, Jim Fierrick. He's 29th in the world. He's only started four times this year due to an injury. Last time the U.S. Open was at

Oakmont. Jim finished second at plus six. It was a brutal, brutal week. And played awesome that week in his native state of Pennsylvania. It was a big deal for him. There was a lot of hype around him as a 2003 U.S. Open champion, probably a future Hall of Famer. Still a hugely relevant player on the tour, which fascinates me because he's also an assistant writer cup captain, probably a future writer cup captain. We're going to touch on a few of those things, house, with Jim now and get into some of the cool stuff going out at Oakmont, because Jim got to play there recently. So here's our conversation with Jim Furrett. All right, Jim, thank you so much for joining us here on Shackhouse. We really appreciate it.

We hope you're doing well. Where are you talking to us from today? I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, in my hometown, and I'm called San Marco, just kind of south of the city. Nice, and you're getting ready for the U.S. Open at Oakmont, correct? Just got home late last night after the memorial, and had an outing yesterday for NetJet, so it would take a day or two homes. I got whipped a little bit up there in Muirfield, so I work on for the U.S. Open. Jim, you're 29th in the world, but you just had four starts this year. You've been a little bit hurt. What's the state of your game going into Oakmont?

You know, Rusty. I think for not really having a lot of time playing and being off so long, I was off for almost seven or eight months. I've hit the ball well. I'm not converting, not getting the ball in the hole. I feel I got putty pretty solid on my short-length butts, but I really haven't converted on my birdie puts from 10 to 20 feet. I haven't jumped started.

That really deals with knocking some putts in and making some more birdies. So you have good feelings about Oakmont, or at least good memories. Your performance of 2007 was excellent. What particular things we'd be working on over the next two weeks to get ready for Oakmont? Well, to play that course well, you really have to be in control of all aspects of your game. And more importantly, I think mentally you have to be prepared. It's a punishing golf course to drive the ball extremely. It's such that if you drive the ball off the Fairway in the Fairway bunkers, you rarely have a play at the Green.

Iron shots have to be very precise. You look at the first hole, and Ben Hogan was quoted over the green and chip back to the hole. If it's not over, it could be one of the three hardest putting courses that I've ever played in my life. You know, you just have to be a shot. And know that PARs a good score, you know had a chance to win the golf tournament. So you have to know that you're going to make some bogeys, it's going to be difficult to score and not really let it bother you. But it's just a lot easier said to done. Jim, how much when you go back to a place like Oakmont, obviously it's a little bit of,

different because you're a Pennsylvania guy and you played well there and so you have a lot of memories. But how much do you go back and kind of reevaluate how you played there last time, look at yardage books, talk to fluff, or is it pretty much you just kind of remember the key points and now you just kind of move forward and worry about your game? Some young guys on tour that, you know, they're more into the strategy. They hire us, figure out, you know, how they played the golf course in the past, what holes they did well on, what holes they did poorly on, maybe how to attack the golf course a little better. I think I'm maybe a little bit more old-school dealing with my age.

I play the practice round, so attack the golf course. And, you know, it's a catch-22. You want to kind of play conservative off the tee because you have to get the ball in the fairway, but you can't. You have to attack it off the tee with some good golf shots. If you lay the ball too far back in the fairways, the greens are too severe, you know, to go into with a longer iron. So you want to try to get as close to the green as you possibly can,

and it puts a lot of pressure on driving the ball well. So, you know, someone asks me if I'm excited, and my quote really is that it's like lining up at the principal's office knowing you're going to get paddled. That's kind of how I think I'm going to open on. It's brutal. So I don't know. I'm a home state.

You know, I'm excited to go play the golf course and see the challenge, but it's one of those courses. You kind of have to be careful what you ask for because it'll jump up and bite you pretty quick. Now, I know you have a little bit of a kind of some sensitivity about some of Mike Davis's set up stuff and the way he's gone direction-wise. You were at Oakmont last time, now you've been there Tuesday. Do you feel like that he's made some adjustments there that will improve the way it plays

this time around? Because I seem to remember last time there were a few fairways where balls weren't really kind of staying in the landing areas and kind of feeding into the rough. And it just seemed like there were a couple T-shots that were a little awkward. I haven't been very critical of Mike's set-ups. I think he's actually elevated the setup. You know, there's some times where I may not agree with, you know, like shaving the left side of 14 at Bell Beach or, you know, when Mike's moved T's up in the past on some of the

par fours or part-fives, he's given us an indication that he may move the T-air. So it's hard for us to be prepared or to have a yardage. And Mike likes to see us kind of think on a fly. So I think we've agreed to disagree, but we're friends. I think the role of Mike and think he's done a good job of setting the golf courses up. I think he was criticized a little bit at Oakmont from some players that the rough was too severe and too thick. And as you mentioned, a lot of the fairways do about a lot of slope to them. So you really need to work the ball off the tee into the slopes.

A player that just hits him because I think you need both shots. It's open. I mean, long rough, and it's really not going to do us any good. idea is it's not going to change. Oakmont's always going to have long, penal rough. It's the way that golf course. They've played nine U.S. Open there. It's been set up that way nine different times.

It's not going to change next week at all. So I want to ask you, Jim, real quick about the Ryder Cup. Your surgery and recovery happened to coincide with your taking on the role of an assistant captain.

And so I imagine you've had an opportunity to watch more golf, watching more than you'd prefer to be watching, but watch some guys here over the last four, five, six months. As we're approaching the open here, who have you been impressed by? Who are you kind of looking out for as guys that might show up and put on great performances in two weeks? Well, I'm impressed by a number of different people. I think, you know, the, say, Justin Thomas coming up, where young guys in the top 10, in the FedEx Cup.

He seems to rack up a top 10 every week. He's a little in person, but I'm impressed with the performances and how well he's players right now, both old and young. I think we need some of the younger players that maybe don't have the scars of past Ryder Cups. They can infuse a lot of excitement into the Ryder Cups, such as Patrick Reed and Jordan Speeth and the last Rada Cush, infused a lot of energy, even for young players, carried the team.

So I think it's important to have a good mix of players, both young and veterans. And right now the team seems to be shaping up for that. But, you know, I think as captain, as a captain right now, I'm not so worried about the players as much as I am, you know, just trying to help Davis out as much as I can to answer as many questions for him. As a group, we kind of get together. Davis sends out an email, tries to get our opinion on things. And really just so that one of us want to just be really prepared

so that we can give these guys the best opportunity to play as well as they can to be loose. Yeah, you mentioned that the Oakmont Open is a return for you to your hometown. You are a legendary Steelers fan. How are you feeling about the Steelers' chances this upcoming season? Offensively, if they can stay healthy, they'll be great. A lot of weapons on offense. We'll see how Levy on Bell looks. after the knee surgery.

I heard from the concussion he took in the playoffs, but there's a lot of weapons on offense. I think they've helped solidify the offensive line a lot in the offseason, which is nice. It seems to be where the Steelers have really put their stock in the draft, and it's drafted a lot of young DBs. And defensive line looks phenomenal. I think, you know, three, four, five years ago,

that was maybe definitely get some of the young DBs to come along and play with just like every other NFL. out there. You find a way to think your team is going to have a good year. Yeah, even me with the Redskins, which is a real stretch after the last 20 years. You know, there's been a lot of glory in Pittsburgh. I can't complain too much about a bad season or two. Right, right, that city of champions. I keep hearing that. So you also have a big hoops pack round. Growing up in Pittsburgh, you didn't have a professional team to root for. Who's your hoops team?

We lived in Pittsburgh until I was about seven years old, and then we moved back to Eastern P. From the 8 to 7 and older, so I was a Sixers fan growing up, watching an 83 and talk to Jay and Moses Belichs. And I know everyone forgets Mark Ivoroni. Number eight is the unsung hero. Well, what about the Sixers now? It's been a tough viewing.

We'll see. Sounds like they're clearing houses off season, and they're trying, you know, looking for trades. They've been building for a long of the University of Arizona. So the fellow's done a great job there. They've had a great recruiting class. And a bigger college basketball fan, that probably has a lot to do with going to Arizona and the history and the tradition we have there.

I'm a much bigger and being a diehard Steeler fan. Well, Jim, we really appreciate you taking the time. As we know, this is a big couple of weeks for you. You want to get ready for Oakmont, and we'll be pulling for you and look forward to watching you play there and try to rekindle what you did last time. only maybe a little bit better. And then, of course, on behalf of all media members,

we thank you as a former Jim Murray Award winner for all you do for taking the time to talk to us and enlighten us on this great game. Thanks for having me, guys. I enjoyed it. Thanks, Jim. All right, we thank Jim again for joining us for a few minutes here on the Shack House.

House, you know what it's time for. It's speed round time. Let's get into it, Jeff Shack. All right. Shack House Speed Round is presented. by Calloway Golf, the number one ironing golf. They've got that face built to change a game. You know what it is.

It's the 360 face cup technology. Nobody wants to play inferior technology. So don't. Play the 360 face cup technology irons because you're losing out on distance, and who wants that? If you want, head to Callowagoff.com right now to order a super limited edition. Joe House played Apex Black Irons. Wait, there's a house grind. Oh, dear.

Are you ready for that house? Nobody told me about this. I'm still waiting on my irons. The anticipation is so high. It's like a delicious cheeseburger. Staring me at the face from the window, I can't reach it. The Apex Blacks, I've been told they're on their way. Every day I come home and look at the front door for the UPS delivery.

And I just can't wait. They can't come soon enough. Yeah, that's what the tracking number is for, House. I'm not one of those people. I don't like to know exactly where. It's better as a surprise. Okay. All right. Well, they're the apex iron. They're all black. I can't wait to hear what you think of them. All right. Tiger Woods is back in the book business. My take on this, he's definitely retired now. If he's writing books, what do you think? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This, the backstory is he's been asked to write a book about the 97 Masters. Is that right? He's been asked. Oh, come on. Come on.

Yes, that is the theme of the book, the 1997 Masters. He's also going to discuss things. The things that excite me, he's going to write supposedly. Well, Lauren Rubenstein is going to write it. Tiger's going to tell him stories, and then Lauren will write it. But he's going to talk about changes in the game also since that 97 Masters. So what's wrong with a 20-year anniversary of that 97 Masters as the time for this book to come out and for him in his own words? as told to Warren, to give us some perspective on it.

I still hold that that master's moment as a real epicenter moment for the entire golf industry, right? Yeah, no, there's nothing wrong with it. It's a great master's. It's a great week to write about my problem is that it tells me he's toast. He's done. He's had enough because it's just not Tiger to look back. It's like the whole Kobe Bryant goodbye tour this year and all the reminiscing. And it was just, that wasn't Kobe.

When Kobe was in his prime, he could care less what happened the day before. It was all about moving forward. And Tiger's the same way. And so now when he's getting reflective and wanting to do books and that kind of thing, I'm thrilled. I want him to tell his stories. Well, some of the stories. And it's just that it tells me, though, that the fire's gone.

if he's agreeing to do a book. Because five, six years ago, if you'd asked him that, he would have said, you're out of your mind. I've got better things to do. Well, he's had a lot of time, a lot of downtime as part of this recovery. And we've been talking about him on this podcast saying, take your time. Don't rush back. Heimie was on last week and said you'd be surprised, you would not be surprised

if Tiger took this whole year off as part of this recovery. I'm fine with that. So fill up his time with, you know, a little bit of reminiscences. I'm fine with it. It doesn't mean anything in terms of his ability to come back out and drop 60 on him like Kobe did. All right, let's move this speed round along. What do you got? The USGA RNA distance report and a topic near to your heart, Jeff Schakelford. That's not speed round territory. That's a whole show. All I'll say is if you want to go, I have it on my website. A few people wrote about it. The USDA RNA issued this distance report letting us know that.

that the averages have really been flat since 2003. And just so you know, House, I used to be treated like a leper for pointing out the nonsense of this kind of spin from the governing bodies. And it was so enjoyable having social media to look at and to read all the people, just mocking them, laughing at this report, because they cherry-picked the data, and they didn't want to go back to certain times. And it was funny to me, none of the manufacturers pushed back, because you're making this claim.

Basically, you're saying that all the things that everybody's been making the last few years have done no good since 2003 for these pros, which is just laughable, as then you have Dustin Johnson at the Memorial hitting 750-some-odd yards worth of drives on the last two holes on a course that had gotten like an inch of rain over the weekend, at least. And so it was comforting to read how many people are not really taking them very seriously at this point. And I'll just, I'll leave it at that. There's several good rants. And the show notes on my site, jeffshacklever.com.

I'll have a couple of the links if you want to read more about this topic. Because I will say this, too. The people who did the report, I don't doubt that the data they used and the topics they selected, they were earnest in presenting what they did. They just ignored a lot of other things and some of, you know, House, here's the thing that just drives me the most nuts. The USGA and RNA, I thought I was going to wrap that up. They used to be obsessed with the correlation between.

somewhat having some driving accuracy and the money list. And now they've just completely ignored that. They just don't care about that anymore. Accuracy, they've just given up on that one. So we'll leave it at that. Yeah, we'll save that because, you know, there is, the metrics have grown a bit more sophisticated. So, I mean, there are a lot of ways we can slice and dice. They are.

We've talked about the advanced golf metrics. So let's tie both of those topics in on a future discussion. And yesterday was, for many people, I think you're included, the best day of U.S. golf, because it's sectional day. It's sectional qualifying day for the U.S. Open. The most democratic opportunity in perhaps all of sports, any person with a certain level of competence with a golf club can go to their regional site and attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open.

What was your favorite story from yesterday? I think I'm most heartened by Mike Van Sickle. He qualifying as an alternate, but he's at the site that will be the first alternate and a certain budding book author that we just discussed is most likely to withdraw. So I think he'll get in the U.S. Open. Mike is a son of Sports Illustrated's longtime great golf writer, Gary Van Sickle, who used to write for Golf World as well, one of my favorites and a great player, Gary. and Mike is a fantastic mini-tour player, web.com, all that kind of stuff.

And he's a Pittsburgh native, has played a lot of golf at Oakmont. And it obviously was a lot of pressure, and I'm just so thrilled that he's probably going to get in. He was a, you know, he's first alternate, and I love his chances. So, I mean, there were incredible stories, Ohio. So I got the breakdown, Golf Week, USGA, they both have awesome stories worth reading about just all sorts of names. You know, the NCAA individual champion qualified. Gosh, Bryce and Deschambeau gave up his exemption as an amateur and went back and re-qualified.

As a guy from the Philippines who just absolutely torched Lake Merset and Olympic Club yesterday. Just so many cool stories. And then just, you know, your journeyman, your Billy Hurleys, your, there's so much that goes on. And the people who put that day together, it's such a long day. It's just awesome. And so I'm really happy for everybody who qualified. And they got almost all of them done. They were coming back as we're recording this on Tuesday and finishing up at a couple locations.

So great day in American golf and a lot of great reporting out there worth reading. Yeah, you're Jeff Shackaford.com. Great place to go to get links to all these stories. Perfect aggregation I did it this morning. All right, House, that's enough speed round. We could go on forever. Like I said, a lot of great reading on my site. and you've got your Twitter account house from D.C.

And all sorts of cool stuff out there right now. Great time in golf. All right, that's it for this week's Shack House. Remember today's podcasts and all the podcasts on the Channel 33 Network are brought to you by the new HBO series, Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. The new show will feature intimate conversations with compelling guests from the worlds of pop culture, sports, entertainment,

the arts and technology. Can't wait for any given Wednesday with Bill Simmons starting June. June 22nd. It's going to include field segments, Bill's signature commentary on current events. I just can't wait. I hope there's a house appearance at some point. That's June 22 at 10 p.m. on HBO. And we're also brought to you by the new website, the ringer.com presented by Miller Light. Go now and check out the latest in pop culture sports and tech at the ringer. We thank them for this podcast. And we're going to talk to Brian Curtis of the Ringer next week in advance of the U.S. Open. He just wrote a beautiful piece up there worth reading on Joe Buck

and the lead announcer at Fox, who will be hosting the coverage once again from Oakmont, and we will be joining you Monday, hopefully late in the day from Oakmont. I'll have some insights from the golf course to talk all about the U.S. Open, go over the odds and all that good stuff. It's going to be an exciting week in Pritzburg. We thank you for subscribing, and we'll talk to you next week.

Hey, Jeff, another awesome show. I really enjoyed it. I only have one last thing to say, and that is this. Shackos! I said it a million times. You drive for show, putt for dough. Well, I haven't said it, but a lot of people have. But when it comes to making more putts, Odyssey is the number one putter in golf, and we thank them for also sponsoring today's podcast. Odyssey has the most putter wins on tour, including Danny Willits win at Augusta

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to again thank our good friends at Harry's. Go to harries.com right now and redeem a special offer for fans of Shack House. Harris will give you $5 off your first purchase with promo code House, H-O-U-S-E. Don't wait. Economy shipping for Father's Day ends in a couple days, Thursday, June 9th. So act now, peeps. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com. Enter code House, H-O-U-U-E-E-E. at checkout to get $5 off. Jeff and I talked about this a little bit earlier. Get us something that will actually use this Father's Day. We'll use the Harries. I love the aftershave. The cream comes in a beautiful tube. It's a great package. The website couldn't be easier to jump on and bang this out. My friends, get on harries.com right now.