Fairway Rollin' - Irishman Shane Lowry Wins, Rory McIlroy Disappoints, and the Year of Brooks Koepka With Bill Simmons and Chris Vernon | Fairway Rollin’

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

Joe House is joined by The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Vernon to break down Shane Lowry’s dominance at Royal Portrush, Rory McIlroy’s letdown, the year of Brooks Koepka, and more. Host: Joe House Guest: Bill Simmons, Chris Vernon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, man, this very special Open Championship Recap Edition of Fairway Roll. And brought to you, as always, by our great friends at Calaway Golf and Odyssey putters. Odyssey dominated the Open championship putter count, the number one putter this week at the open with 65 in play. Nearly 42% of the field, no other brand had more than 38 putters in play. In fact, Odyssey had more putters in play than the number two and number three most played putter brands combined. And you know who had an Odyssey in his hands, none other than Open Championship winner, Shane Lowry played with a stroke lab shaft in his Odyssey EXO two ball putter. And did he miss a putt or what? He didn't miss the whole effing tournament.

Get yourself over to Callowagoff.com and click on putters. and you can see what I'm talking about amongst all of the beautiful offerings that Odyssey has, including that EXO 2 ball putter used by Shane Lowry. This episode of Fairway Rowland also brought to you by Destination Kohler in Kohler, Wisconsin, home of Whistling Straits, Black Wolf Run, and the 2020 Rider Cup. Golf Digest has ranked all four Kohler courses in the top 100 of America's public courses. those are courses that you can play, including Meadow Valleys, which is home to a golf hole number 14 called Nature's Course, arguably the most breathtaking hole at the entire resort.

Gather your birdie buddies for the ultimate tournament style summer golf experience. Get rolling to destinationcolar.com to book your package today. That's destinationcolor.com. All right, my eagle enthusiasts, we did not have a lot of those at today. Open Championship, although Brooks Kepka gave us one. This is the recap edition of Fairway Roll in the golf podcast on the Ringer podcast Network. I'm here, Starter Joe House. We're going to jump right into it.

The podfather Bill Simmons has a few thoughts. I'm down in Memphis, Tennessee with Chris Vernon, and we are going to break down all that we just watched, including some bets that we probably regret making. Well, let's jump right on into it. The first tee is open. All right, my birdie buddies. are assembled. Chris Vernon and I are together in Memphis, Tennessee. We're looking at each other. We're actually sitting at his club, Spring Creek Ranch, just outside of Memphis. I'm looking at the 18th green right now because we're going to play some golf today. On the line right now, the Podfather,

we are all together for this coronation of the forgotten Irishman. Bill Simmons, how you doing? Put me down. Well, it's funny. He was the so-called forgotten Irishman. because obviously all the attention leading into the week began and ended with Rory. And then there was a bunch of Graham McDowell love because he lives in Port Rush. He grew up in Port Rush. And Darren Clark also got a lot of attention. His son, he's belonged to Port Rush his whole life. But Shane Lowry lives like four hours away.

and maybe had the benefit of coming in under the radar. What do you think? 50 beers. We're Shane now. I'm just now getting up off the ground because I cannot believe that House brought up Rory's name already. Let me start with this. Bill, you have known him for over 30 years.

Yeah. What is the worst thing that House has ever talked to you out of? Because him on Fairway Rolling last week, talking me out of Brooks Kepka plus 115 over. over Rory McElroy is the worst thing that has ever happened in our young relationship. Too much pressure at home. He won't be able to do it. That was,

on that note, of the last 12 players to start, you know, the last six groupings featuring twosoms, the best score of those 12 players was even par by Tony Fee now. So the, and most guys were the next closest, Lowry shot one over, Kepka shot three over.

I mean, guys just got eight up in that amongst those last groups. How are you going to leave out J.B. Holmes, who was part of those, who shot 16 over, 16, and took fucking five hours to do it? So that's the point to make about Brooks. It was probably the very worst possible pairing for Brooks Kepka to mount a run because Brooks is on the record as, and he's talked about. it this year being a guy that can't stand slow play and already golf twitter is populated i'm looking at it right now with with images of brooks keppka walking away from the green with him pointing at his watch at an official and the very first thing that that uh our boy j b homes did he teed off first he pipe one out of bounds left so it took double the time for brooks to tee off and it was all

downhill from there. I mean, it was, it was the worst case scenario for Brooks to mount a charge. Yeah, too, about this. Like, him for Holmes in private. What was that, what was that old, like, William H. Macy movie of the cooler, right? Where they have, they have, like, employed by the casino to walk around with people that are winning while they're gambling. And that's, maybe that's what J.B. Holmes is. We just stick J.B. Holmes with, like, anybody that's doing really well. And he screws everything up. Well, remember that happened at the major last month. when Brooks was going on the run and then who was the one that...

Oh, that's right. Who was that house? Remember that? That was a month ago. Brooks had all the momentum at like the 11 through 12th hole. It was Louis Eustazen on number eight. Yeah.

He ended up taking forever. He hit one into the ocean and then they had the back. It was eight or nine. It just took forever. Yeah, and Brooks got knocked out of this little run he was about to go on. But it was great that he eventually open from a couple years ago.

But I didn't feel like he played well. Did you guys? Like he was complete by and he... That's the thing, too. because we look at this and we say, like, these last two, in the end, we talk ourselves into, oh, don't you feel great for Gary Woodland? Don't you feel great for Shane Lowry? But it's unsatisfying, you know, like the guy in the lead that, yes, he takes all the shots and he keeps on playing well, but he just kind of holds everybody off.

Because we do, look, if he hits it into the crap and he can't get out of it, Like now all of a sudden this becomes infinitely more interesting, but we've now had like these two majors in a row where I think we thought, hey, Woodland's going to choke this away and Kepka's going to be right there to take it. And same with today. It was like, is Shane Lowry really just going to keep playing out of his mind and hold everybody off? And like, the answer at least for these last two majors has been yes. Like they've just held guys off. And then we at the end say, oh, you feel good for Gary Woodland. Oh, you feel good for. Shane Lowry, but I mean, if I'm being honest, I don't really feel that great.

You know what I mean? Like, Xander, Zander Shuffling threw me in a river, my dead body in a river. And therefore, I don't really, honestly, I don't really feel great about anything, if I'm being honest. Because he's, because Zander set your wild on fire. Well, I do want to, uh, pick up on this idea of the, of this being the year of Brooks. His T4 today, he became the fourth player in the modern So that's the since the first masters in 1934 to finish in the top four in all majors in a season. The fourth player since 1934 to do that. So he joined Jack Nicholas, Tiger Woods, and Jordan Speath. If he had birdied 18, he would have completed the first season in modern golf history with top three finishes in all four majors.

Wow. So. And he just missed the put. Right. Like, it was a makeable putt and he blew it. The funny thing is, like, I didn't think he played well with the Masters, and I don't think he thought he played that well either. He finished second.

So, you know, that's the power of Brooks. Yeah, and we needed this badly because we all got teased on the Tiger stuff, right? Like, Tiger's back, and maybe this, maybe he's not going to be the old form, but he's going to be to be reckoned with when it comes to all this. And at least we've got something that we can cling to, like something that we know. This guy is going to be there because Rory's not. DJ's not. They tried to push Justin Rose on us.

He's not. Jordan Speath had that run and it looked like he was going to be, you know, the guy up there for the next five years. Justin Thomas, same way. But like there's one dude now at least since Tiger that like we can count on. Like at least we know that in all these big tournaments he's got to be reckoned with because the rest of these guys like, again, They might miss the cut or they might be there at the very end.

We don't know. Yeah, I think that's a crucial point because tennis has that too, right? Best golfer in the world by far. As always, my par saving pals, today's show brought to us by our pals of Calaway Golf makers of the Chrome Soft X golf ball, which you can now get with triple track technology for advanced alignment. Just last week, Dylan Fratelli used a ChromeSoft X golf ball with the triple track to win the John Deere. He brought himself on over here to the Open Championship to Northern Ireland.

He kept playing with the triple track. He was inside the top 50, the entirety of this tournament. I think he finished inside the top 35. Calloway has featured triple track lines on the ball for improved. putting accuracy. It uses Vernier hyperacuity. That's not Vernier hyperacuity. It's Verdiere hyperacuity to improve alignment

compared to a regular side stamp and it makes it very easy to line up putts with it. Callawaygolf.com. Check out the triple track technology on the ChromeSoft X golf balls. The interesting thing with Lowry I saw on Twitter this stat And we have to remember this next year.

We're just bet everybody that fits this category within two or three places. Over the last, since the inception of the official world golf ranking, the average place of the winner of the British Open has been number 33. The average age over the last 50 years of the British Open champion has been 34.2. So let me tell you what place on the official world golf ranking, Shane Lowry, was entering this event. He was 33rd. And let me tell you how old Shane Lowry is.

He's 34. So next year, we're going to sit down with the official world golf ranking and we're going to find what we'll do like who's, we're going to go 29 to 35. And we're going to look at all the guys that have the age range in there. And we just have to bet them. Why is this shit always so easy after we lose a ton? Like, why? Why is it like, oh, this is, all you had to do was look who, here's the average.

Like, why didn't we cover this last week? 66. 66. 56 to one. 66. No, no, we're not. No, no, we are. And it's a dude from Ireland who's played in shitty weather for his whole last.

Two, two thoughts on that. In the first place, we've been calling him three-round Tommy here on Fairway Rowland because this season he has not been able to string together four rounds. And he's had a couple rounds where, a couple tournaments where I was like, hey, this could be a Tommy Fleetwood breakthrough. And then he has one round that sabotages it. But the thing that today dissuaded me from getting excited about Tommy. And I was having a little exchange on the text with Brother Verno here.

We were like, hey, they're just getting underway. Should we live bet Tommy right now? And Fleetwood missed like, what was it, a 12 footer, a 10 footer? A very, very, very, very makeable put on number one. And he missed it in a way that I did not like one bit. He like waved at it. And it was a real sissy soft put that fell off on the wrong side. And I said, no, I can't do it.

If he's going to come out soft like that, if he had made that put and Lowry did indeed bogey the first hole, that changes the entire dynamic of how those guys feel about themselves and how they walk to the next tee. and it could change the tournament. But we didn't get enough, Tommy. Yeah, he left the door open. I'm going to tell you,

I am incredibly jealous of both of you guys for staying with your breakup of Tommy Fleetwood. Because you guys have ditched him and like, true to form, House tells the truth. I asked, I was like, hey, you know, if we don't believe that Shane Lowry is really going to hold everybody off, the other guy right behind him is Fleetwood,

and he stuck to his guns. He said, no. we are not taking Tommy Fleetwood whereas with me and I've been continuing this analogy so I said that like you know during whatever it was the PGA I had Xander Shafley 18th or better or it was roughly like that right and the guy bogeys the last four holes of the tournament and ends 19th and I said I'm done with them like an ex-girlfriend you know I'm done I've broken up with him and then we get back together for like a one-night stand that the U.S. open in the final round. He kills it. He ends up getting like third in the U.S. Open. I was like, you know what? We had one amazing night together and maybe me and her can work it out. And so I rolled back with her and I said, you know what, we're going to try. And now, like today,

she has, not only has she cheated on me again, she has Snapchated me pictures of her having sex with another man. Oh, no. Yeah. That's Andrews awfully. Which is plus seven? Seven? Plus seven. Think of the children. You know, House, maybe we should switch our affection and love for pheno. I hate to tell you, I've lived the phenow life, but I've lived it.

And even the problem is all the other tournaments. There's only four of these. So if you want to roll a phenow in the four, go ahead. But like this week-to-week stuff, if you got a friggin' off tournament in Arizona, don't bet on him. Yeah, well. Because I, every time I'm like, well, geez, man, there ain't like, like, you look at this field and he's clearly one of the best guys in this field that's playing this, you know, tournament in Wisconsin this weekend. And then he never does anything for me. And I love him. But he's a major bet. Like I, and again, that's why I got so caught up with the Shafley stuff, right? It's like, okay. You know, at least in all the majors, this guy. shows up. And in fairness, John Rom's been boomer bust too. I know you guys

had a little dally ants with him but he's either missing the cut or he's awesome. Like there's really no in between. I'm out on John Rom. I deleted his contact information for my phone. Can we talk about a couple of the start with Zander put? Did you send

Bill my bet sheet? Because you're naming off every single guy that I got my ass kicked with. Well, that's true of a lot of us. And I will say this would have been, if we were smart, we obviously aren't. But Bill, we've been talking about the F boys on the podcast all season long. We've been talking about Fienowell and Fowler in these big events, starting with the Players' Championship and then on through the majors.

And we speculate and we say, oh, is this the one? Are we going to do it in every big tournament they've let us down? We should have coming into this one that the F-boys, to their credit, if we had parlayed a top 10 finish for Fowler, Fienow and Fleetwood, that would have been cash money in the bank because the worst performer of those of those three was Ricky Fowler tied for six at five under. That is for sure. He was in there.

I even mentioned this. I mentioned this to us. I said, I don't think I've seen him hit a shot. It's like, this guy's going to end up in the top 10. I don't think I even saw him hit a shot the whole day. And regarding that Fleetwood, Fiener, you flipped out when A-Zinger first hole of the day, Fowler gets up there and hits it straight out of bounds off the T. And they're like, oh, what a bad break.

Well, he hit it up the right side and it hit a dude who was standing on the out-of-bound line. And Zinger's like, oh, what a bad break. That's so unfair to Ricky. And I was like, no, it wasn't. he hit the ball on the out of bound line. He hit a person. If you hit it on that line, there's a possibility that it's going to bounce out. And it hit a dude and bounced out.

So could have hit the dude and stayed in? Sure. But how about this? Don't hit the ball dead right. And how about if we're going to talk about who's unlucky? How about the frigging dude that's standing out there? You feel like you might be safe with Ricky Fowler peeing off. Surely he's not going to hit me with the ball.

Right. The, where you could. I think it played at 560 or something like that, 570, but, you know, the yardage is kind of irrelevant because the wind, you know, affects so much. But honestly, the big winner of this Open was the golf course. I mean, Northern Ireland showed out. It was spectacular. The first time in Open Championship history, they sold every single ticket to the entire thing, starting Thursday all the way through Sunday. and the difficulty that everybody forecasted,

if there was any bad weather at all, we sure did see that come home. They sure did deliver that. And imagine if they'd kept the tea times where they were today. They moved them up because they were really worried about the weather interrupting play. But still, the last 10 groups, I think, were over par.

It's just an incredible performance by the golf course. Yeah, I meant double eagle that old one. Yeah. That, you know, by six. Well, he did it. And then we had our boy, J.B. Holmes, shoot 16 over today. So it was at the beginning of the tournament and the end of the tournament. House.

At many people's golf courses, person that you are. How much of an advantage, TV, and I have no idea, like, how many times he played it. I'm sure there was information on that. But he just seemed like that guy in times and knows, you know, oh, I'm not going to hit a driver on this. That's stupid. I'm going to break out the old three. or I'm going to go short on this, or I'm going to hit this one low because I don't want the win to...

The two things that I totally agree with you, and the two things that he seemed to have working, he had this little cut, this low cut that he could hit off the T as kind of his fairway finder, his safety shot, the one that he knew would roll out so you would have yardage. And the other thing he was just impeccable at was his wedges. He was clearly getting the yardages that he was comfortable with. and then his wedge play.

I mean, the 63 that he shot on Saturday, one of the best rounds in the history of the British Open, but he was pin-seeking in a way that nobody else could even imagine yesterday. And it's because of how comfortable he clearly felt at those yardages and with the ball flight, he was getting the ball to stop on a dime on it. It felt like every single hole. So you think it's like when Verno wins the FedEx someday?

It'll just be like he had some advantage. He's down here in Memphis, take care of business. I know where not to hit it. That's the only thing I know. I know this. That course, I was, the weather made that thing impossible to predict. And I do think, in fairness to Lowry, it did make it all that much more impressive because even if you're thinking he knows the course, even if he knows where to hit it,

like the winds are like 20 miles an hour. It's pouring rain. The guy's got a, you know, an umbrella that's having to cover him the entire time. You know your hands are wet. And you've got all the pressure of holding everybody off for him to never screw up, for him to never like pull the, even the double, triple bogey down the stretch. It just never happens. So, I mean, I do get to give that guy a lot of credit. He held on tight. My biggest disappointment, and I can make this joke because when they cut to his face, have some more children. The Irish like to reproduce.

We may, we may, we mean, they may not have just been invited, you know? Oh, yeah, that's true. It's possible that they were all at home. Or the other option is the 200 beers tonight. There's a count on one in the oven. Oh, yeah. Shane's having a kid down. Shane Lowry Jr.

I wish we could bet on that. His daughter, Clara, Jugg, Lowry. What's your, what's your new bed? anything you're allowed to put in props. I want to put in that prop. Will Shane Lowry have a kid in 10 months? Shane Lowry have a kid within the next 11 months.

Yes. Can I bet that Xander Shafley won't? Those are two great ones. Put those in for us, Simmons. I have to go speaking for having me. Thanks, Podfather. All right, my thanks to the Podfather, as always, before Verno and I

break down a little bit more than nitty-gritty with this tournament and our thoughts on the season in review up to this minute. A couple words from friends of our ZipRecruiter. Hiring used to be hard. Multiple job sites, stacks of

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Time to get rolling! to destination coller.com to book your golf package today that's destination coaler dot com. All right, Verno, there are still a handful of topics that we have to conquer here. Let's talk about the broadcast. So we both had, you know, I'm down here in Memphis, Tennessee with you. We were on central time. We had to wake up early. And the prevailing experience, I'm in bed watching this, was, you know, little,

A little chunk of golf, little story commercials. Little chunk of golf. And it was the guys within kind of like 10 shots or so was about when I started to get interested, within 10 shots of the lead. Those are the guys that I was interested in seeing. And it just got to be a goddamn sludge because the commercials were killing it for me. What was your experience? I am at least not. I don't notice as much when they split the screen.

But it did feel like an excessive amount of time with the screen split. Like I'm, I think that is a happy medium, right? Okay, you're not going to make me miss tons of action in order to have the commercials. But I think it takes away from the fact that, all right, now I've been. cool with this. I'm cool with the split screen, but don't overdo the split screen on me. I don't want to watch the whole thing on a split screen. And it did feel excessive. It felt like an excessive amount of time in the split screen. So between 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock Eastern, which for us was 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock, which is really like when the tournament, you know,

when interesting stuff was happening, they had 14 minutes worth of commercial combined commercial. And the thing, I think the point that you're making, we have this experience now of being, I guess, spoiled except for this is the best way to deliver this product. With the U.S. Open and the Masters, we have extended uninterrupted play. We have a single sponsor, commercial sponsor, you know, some company, Rolex, I think does it for, I don't know, I don't want to give a shout out to the companies. I don't remember who does it anyway. But we don't have any commercials. We're able to just watch the leaders go play on interrupted golf. Well, and it needs to be for golf.

Like, could you imagine like, all right, so a weekend to go, I don't particularly watch a lot of tennis. I go out of my way to watch Wimbledon. What if we're splitting the screen on Federer and, you know, on the Federer match versus Jokovic, you know, that goes like five. And that thing went over five hours. But you're not splitting the screen the whole time. Like golf is one of those. Like, if football, we don't miss a. play. In baseball, we don't miss a play. And so, in basketball, we don't miss a play because of it.

But in these other sports, and yeah, we do get spoiled because that's the way it is when we're getting to see it in these other big tournaments. But now, like, that's what you kind of become used to. And so when you go from extreme to extreme, it feels like, right? Because I would rather, I'm not kidding. I would rather you take your two commercial breaks in the hour or whatever. Right. You know, take your two commercial breaks. I'll run out. I'll go take a piss. I'll come back. But like, now you're kind of bastardizing it because I'm like, I might miss something. I might not, but I can't even hear what they're talking about anyway. I don't even know what he's hitting. Exactly. Exactly. That's that's the point to all of it. If you are going to interrupt the broadcast with kind of a regular

tournament slate of commercials. If you're going to denigrate a major in that in that fashion, at least have the courtesy to tell us when the commercials are going to be so that we can get up and sort of plan around it. The problem that we had was there was no way to build like viewing momentum. Like I couldn't feel the possibility of anybody starting to get hot because they weren't showing me anybody within again, that 10 shot range with enough frequency for me to to get a feel for whether any of them had anything going. Like in the way that earlier in the chat with Simmons, I said to you, I really doubted Fleetwood's possibility today because I saw him miss a putt on number one in a way that I didn't like.

Like, you know, that. So I didn't get to see other guys like that. I didn't get to see. We talked about Patrick Reed. Was he hitting the ball well at the beginning? You know, he ended up having a pretty decent overall tournament. How about how little we saw Fee now? Right.

How many, how many shots? do you remember watching Tony Fienow hit off a T? Like ever? I saw him hit three shots. I saw him at the very beginning of his round and I took none of like, hey, that's a cool hoodie. He, kudos to Fee now for the Nike hoodie by the way. I've been getting on Nike lately, but that that hoodie was dope. I want to try and snag one of those from my eyes like. It's like a rain hoodie. Yeah, rain hoodie. I know. I'm that's like I think I can rock that. It was good. And so no, now we, and the other thing is like say even at Augusta, even at like Pebble B, I know the holes. I know when they're hit, right? I don't know Royal Port Rush. So like half this time,

unless you've got the number in the corner and they're teeing off, I don't even know what number these guys are on. Seriously. Like if you're going through a split screen and they got Charmin or whoever on the right and you got some dude hitting a shot on the left, I'm like, what old is he on? What stroke is he hitting? It does make it hard to keep up with. Whereas like these other tournaments, I'm aware of those courses and I know exactly what hole they're on. It's an awesome point. This tournament more than any other, it's important to your viewing audience, to your American viewing audience to keep them in the loop on what's happening

because most of us have not seen these courses with any kind of, you know, our muscle memory in our brains is not recalling. And obviously, Royal Port Rush, where they haven't been in 61 years, none of us have ever seen it. So Sunday, when all eyes are on you or on your broadcast, you need to be mindful of the education component. We need a lot more information as we watch this golf broadcast, this major golf broadcast than the other majors. We need a lot more. Well, and here's another hole with a lot of long grass on the outside of it and a bunch of sand.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the other problem. It's not like every hole head. I mean, the par three that they kept showing guys, the 190-yard part three, like that one became, I became familiar with that hole. Yeah, yeah. Because guys are just trying to sting the ball low and land it on there because it goes downhill. But at the end of the day, like, I couldn't tell you, even after watching this whole tournament,

I couldn't tell you like, oh, do you see what he did on number four, on number seven? Like in the same way that we have such a. recall about every hole. And then we even feel like we know how to play the holes. Like anybody that even played the video games growing up. Right. You know what I mean? You played Pebble Beach a thousand times. You played Augusta a thousand times, right? How many times you played Royal Port Rush on a video game? Not the same amount. No, not the same amount. All right. Well, not high grades for NBC on the broadcast. Verno, this I'm sad to say is the end of major season here on tour.

I want to make sure we get some closing thoughts. This is a very early end to the golf season, the major season, because of the change to the schedule. So. Well, it started off unbelievable. Yeah. We started off with the greatest moment. And it will, when all of a sudden, the book is closed on sports in 2019, that

tiger is going to be a top three moment. of the sports year. Wouldn't you agree? Oh, of course. It's going to be one of the top three sports moments of 2019. Yeah, we still have half the year to go, but I think it's the leading contender right now, right? Like, what surpasses Tiger winning the Masters again?

I mean, not the Patriots win in the Super Bowl again. Not Toronto, probably. Yeah, not Toronto winning the NBA. I suppose something crazy could happen for a World Series, but that's never going to resonate the same way. individuals doing, you know, like Federer winning Wimbled would have gotten up there real quick. But always individual sports, somebody doing the incredible.

Even that, even that like, look, even the Andy Ruiz thing, knocking out Anthony Joshua, you know, it's a moment. Right. For sure. Like it is something that we will remember happening even though, you know, what, 90 to 99% of sports fans weren't watching that when it happened. It's just an awareness of it felt like everybody, everybody was enjoying the masters together, right? Like that that was happening.

So I do think with the major season over, while the last two became, I would say, a little underwhelming, not as a slight to Woodland and Lowry, but simply, simply as it's always better to have a dominant figure in the individual sport. The same way he was talking about Serena, the same way as you want to see Usain Bolt race, the same way you wanted to see Mike Tyson fight or Anderson Silva when he was kicking, you know, no pun intended for the UFC. Like you want to see the dominant figure and especially after the PGA. It's like, damn, man, Brooks is going to be.

be the guy he's going to be the one to be reckoned with. And he was the guy to be reckoned with, but we had two game competitors in the last two majors where Woodland was in the lead. And then we're going into Sunday, we're going, really, is Gary Woodland going to hold everybody off? Like, there's a lot of pressure here. And the answer was yes. And with Shane Lowry, we did the exact same thing. Really, is Shane Lowry going to hold everybody off? And the answer was yes. Yeah, I distinguish the U.S. Open from the Open Championship that just ended in the following way. Brooks did come out and put pressure. I mean, he came out and strung together birdies and immediately put himself, you know,

it was clear what he had bad intentions on that Sunday. And he did have the sporting public, the sporting world, you know, it was prime time on Father's Day. Brooks kept going to making a charge. And it blasted all the way up till, you know, he missed the birdie putt on 18 because Woodland was so far right on 17 that he had to chip it. I, you still wonder what Woodland might have,

what might happen to him if he heard the roar of the crowd on 18 had Brooks got that birdie put in before he chipped before Woodland chipped on 17. So that one at least had drama up to, up to those holes. This, uh, open championship with Lowry, that was just a coronation. Nobody got within four shots. The closest Tommy Fleetwood got to him was four shots today.

So that's right. And he did have a chance. He did have a chance on the one that he, you know, he finally got a bogey out of Lowry. Problem is Fleetwood double bogies it. Yeah, that's right. On 14. Well, the guy that had statistically,

possibly the best season going certainly into this event. And then, you know, after this event, his stats probably took a little hit. was Roy McElroy because he started off the season with a whole string of top six finishes. And he showed up a couple times on Sundays with the chance of going out and winning tournaments. Then he went and won the players. You're really going to bring up this guy's name again. Anybody can go back to the last fairway roll.

The first subject I bring up was how saying how much money can we put on Brooks versus Rory in the U.S. Open. And that worked out famously. Great bet. I turn around and I say, Pous, you're never going to believe this. This guy is plus 115 against Rory McElroy. Allow me to remind you that there's only two. Now the list moves to three. Or I guess, well, I guess it grew bigger this weekend.

But going into this tournament, only two guys had beaten Brooks Kepka thus far. And those were Tiger Woods and Gary Woodland. That was it. and here I am looking plus 1 15 in the face and I ended up going with Brooks over DJ as the big one, which worked out great, but I may never forgive you for the,

I mean, that is, it's Brooks Kepko versus Rory McElroy. Well, here's the mistake. We should have done Brooks against everybody because there weren't any matchups of Brooks versus Shane Lowry or Brooks versus Fleetwood. All the Brooks bets were Brooks versus McElroy, Brooks versus Tiger, Brooks versus DJ.

I think there were five bets. He beat them all. I mean, and the only one that I was on was Brooks versus Tiger because I didn't like what we heard on the tiger at the beginning of the week. And this is what we need to cover because we have not spent a lot of time on this. We hoped that after the U.S. Open, we haven't seen him play since. We know that the record is bad for guys that have not played since the U.S. Open. By the way, Shawflay falls into that category. Thanks.

But anyways, I didn't listen to that stat regarding him. So we had hoped against hope that, like, okay, as the season goes on, like, we're on to something. This is going to be, is he back in the sense that he's going to be in contention? and his whole schedule, as he has said many times, is based around the majors. And so that's when we get our hopes up the most. Now, in fairness, you did not feel good about this at all going into the tournament. You stated this last week.

I was a wait and see, and it took us, what, an hour to wait and see? And then it's like, is he friggin' hurt? What's wrong with it? He feels like hell. He's hitting the ball. He's spraying the ball everywhere. It's like he doesn't look right. Is it because it's cold outside?

What's going on with him? And so, you know, as we're doing this like kind of, I don't know, short history of what happened with the majors this year, it started off with that amazing sports moment. Oh, by the way, on the side, I was trying to jog my memory as you were talking about. There's anyone that we missed. That women's soccer team is going to be up there too. Yeah, that's a great point. That'll be up there at the end of the year. Yes.

things that have already happened this season. Good point. That will be something that will be up there too. But the Tiger winning the Masters is right there to be reckoned with. And for it to start off with that much promise, you have the guy telling us, it's all about the majors with me. And then he goes out and he wins it. And it's like, all right.

And so I still was holding on to a shred of hope. My whole schedule, everything I'm doing is scheduled around the Masters. And then obviously Beth Page Black. was a disaster. The U.S. Open. He played great in that last nine holes, but he had already taken himself out of it.

When we felt good about him going into Pebble Beach, giving his history there. And then this one, much like Beth Page Black, was an abject disaster. So I think there's two considerations here. And some things that have come to light after he left, um,

uh, Northern Ireland here. In the first place, I think we can see. say now that while he will continue to point to the majors and focus all of his energy on trying to perform well at those, and he's played the fewest number of tournaments in a season when he's not been hurt, I think probably in his whole career. So he scheduled himself to be successful at the majors. But he, and this isn't a criticism, the compressed nature of the schedule now didn't really

permit him honestly to recover from winning the masters because he pointed to that as being the thing that got in the way of him having any chance at all at the PGA. He just didn't have the time to practice. And then between the PGA championship and the U.S. Open, I don't know, you know, it sounded like he was in pretty positive both physical and mental state entering that U.S. Open. so I'm not sure what to attribute the inconsistent play there. And then he took that full month off, but he filled it up. He was not practicing. He went to Thailand with his family.

He went and visited with his mom and his mom's family. He took his kids. He's exhausted. And then he was waking up. We saw on Instagram, waking up at one in the morning to start acclimating his body clock to the Northern Ireland time. I mean, he finished, missed the cut on Friday and said, I just want to go home and go to bed.

He was exhausted. And we look and say, what are you been doing? You just had a month off. What do you need to go home and go to bed for? You haven't played in five weeks. But he's out doing this other stuff. And I think it's the case he's got other life priorities now. Like his relationship with his kids.

The other thing, he's the President's Cup captain. He has obligations in connection with that. Like him being healthy again and winning the Masters creates this whole new set of opportunities that along with it comes a bunch of responsibility. And he's, I think, willing to go ahead and push that because it's the, the window on that's closing. And his golf suffers as a result. Well, and the crazy thing is we turned back the clock to last year. And it was, it wasn't the majors, but it was the last one, British Open.

He's right there. And in fact, he's got a lead. And then he ends up right there at Belreve. and he's got a chance. And then he wins the tournament to end the year. Then we turn around this year. He wins the Masters. And it's like, you know, there had been a trajectory.

And that felt like a culmination of rather than, you know, like that, all right, he's trending up, up, up, up. And then it has been swiftly down since that moment. And if you would have asked us, I think, you know, especially after the master, knowing the U.S. Open is at Pebble Beach, if that was even the only one that he was going to be highly successful at, for him to not be in the mix for any of the last three, and he was not in the mix, on any of the last three. He had that great last nine holes at Pebble Beach. We didn't see him. He wasn't even on TV. They showed him like on 18. That was the only time we saw him. You're right. And that was it. So, and then obviously, Beth Page. we don't see him, you know, on the weekend. And then at this one, British, we don't see him on the weekend.

And so it's interesting to see, you know, even he, it's weird how it's fluctuated. He was so great at the end of the season, right? And then the Ryder Cup, we just want to erase that. Well, because he, that was another one where he just needed to go to bed. Like him getting on a plane after winning Eastlake, winning the Tour Championship in Eastlake and then getting on a plane to fly into France, nothing could have been worse for him in that. So now he doesn't look like himself there. It does the Tiger versus Phil thing, which is a debacle. But then cranks it right back up and wins at Augusta.

And we're like, okay, you know, this is more like what we had seen. We saw him put together these unbelievable rounds like several times. Yeah. And the stats were all with him too. Like all the stats guys were saying like, look, he's playing this as well as, you know, there were some stats that he was doing as well. well as 2,000 Tiger. Like that's how good he had gotten.

Yeah. And, and then it all, like, number one, we're not seeing him play. Number two, when we do see him play, he's nothing like that guy that we saw at the end of last year or at Augusta. Well, you know why? Because he won the Masters. That was it. Like,

that was, it was just too much. He wasn't physically, psychologically, spiritually able to rebound from that. You talked about, you know, We saw Killer Tiger. We saw Killer Tiger from the British Open last year through to winning the Masters. And our expectation is, well, how about this?

Maybe it is. You know, now that you say that, you know what my mind immediately went to was that interview after where it was basically my kids have never seen this. And now they know, yeah, dad's pretty good. And it's like, I know that sounds, you know, kind of flippant. to say, I know maybe it doesn't sound flippant. You and I both have children. Yeah.

Like, what if, what if that's what really matter to him, right? It was really about, hey, I don't want this to be YouTube videos or old videos that my kids see. I want my kids to see that I can still do this. And so that becomes the most important thing to you. The most important thing to you is to prove to not only yourself, but now in front of your kids, who are old enough to remember that dad can do this and he can be the best golfer in the world. And you get to see him as the best golfer in the world.

And so when he did that, that there is, that's almost like, you know, when we talk about a basketball player having a contract year, right? Yeah. Like the contract. That's right. The contract to attain was this moment of,

I'm the man again. my kid saw me be the man again and he proved to himself he couldn't believe it himself and so now it's like all right i did it so there is this sense of accomplishment and i don't i don't say that that sense of accomplishment made him feel satisfied i just think that it created a level of of just opportunity and pressure to be to like he was restored as the face of golf as the public face of professional golf, that top of the very top of the mountain face of golf and the entire industry and every, although the whole sporting world is like, Tiger is back. And so it just created its own type of just pressure is the best word I can come up with on his

time, on his mind, on his body that he didn't have, you know, the ability to say, oh, no, let's not do this stuff. Let's ignore these opportunities. I'm sorry, kids. I'm going to have to have the girlfriend drop you at school. No, he didn't do any of that. He's like, let's hear what are the opportunities. He celebrated for two and a half weeks.

We know that. And then he just like, you know, live that public life as a restored champion. My birdie buddies, today's fairway rolling, brought to us as always by Callaway Golf. Calaway has its own podcast network. So in addition to listen into this great content, you can get yourself over to callagoff.com. They have a media button there, all kinds of great shows.

They have brand new ship shows, which is their insider marketing folks, breaking down all things Callaway and things going on in the golf world, a new fitting room podcast, which is their tech guys, talking all things with the fittings and so forth. putting podcast and girls and golf podcasts.

They have a lot of interesting stuff going on. The Callaway Golf Podcast Network. Check it out today at callagoff.com. You know, to piggyback on that, we moved to Memphis this week. And it wasn't until the end of the week. You know, he has never played in the tournament in Memphis. And Memphis now has a much greater significance than ever before

because it is a WGC event that is going to be here. Now, I believe 46 of the top 50 in the world, he is one of those four. He has never played. Obviously, they have tried through channels with St. Jude, which is one of the greatest places in the world for childhood cancer, which is based in Memphis. Yes. And they have tried every angle under the sun for the last, you know, 20 years to get Tiger. to play in the tournament. And so this was the year, it was like, okay, it's the WGC.

You know, there's big money on the line, right, for any of these guys. Well, guaranteed money. Everyone that shows up gets paid. And there is a minimum amount of tournaments that, you know, you are supposed to play in order to qualify for this and this. I suppose he is exempt from that. But anyway, it was like, hey, now this is one with the top 50 players of the world. You got all the setup in the world, you know,

FedEx will fly in a plane over here, the whole nine, whatever. And obviously, you know, for everybody that lives in the Memphis area like myself, it was about an hour into the round on Thursday, like, well, shit. Yeah. He ain't coming. You know what I mean? Like, he may just withdraw. Yeah, right.

Like, is he, something is a ride. Right. Like, is he going to even play this out? Yeah. You know, for the, is he even going to play the Friday round? Like, he looks like he needs to fly home now, much less. you know, commit because the deadline was Friday. And so it turns out it's going to be an amazing tournament.

Yeah. But because of his status and because of him becoming Tiger again at the Masters, it became a different deal. And so people got their hopes up regarding it. And so to see him flailing at the end. And I guess it would be, it would be worse if, He wasn't playing terribly. Like if he goes and we get to top five at the British Open and then says,

nah, he ain't playing in that. Right. That would have been worse. But he clearly is not in form. No, that's right. He's not informed. So who wants to go out there and see somebody limping around like he was? You know what I mean?

Like there is, I do take a bit of solace in that. That's not how we want to see our heroes. And you said the 46 of the 50. I mean, I'm down here in Memphis. We're just going to have to be satisfied, Verno. We're seeing DJ. and Brooks Kepka and Rory's supposed to be coming. And Justin Thomas just had a damn good tournament.

It's loaded. It's loaded. It's loaded. It's going to be an unbelievable time. And I will say, it looks like I'm looking at the hot wire right now. We have confirmation. A gentleman who just finished inside the top 10 at the Open Championship is lined up, potentially. Now, fingers crossed to come have some fried chicken with us.

Unfortunately, it does not seem like Kiridak Effie Barnrat, who hails from Thailand and his appetite precedes him. I don't think we're going to get Kiridak to come join us, but I do have a line. We will be hopefully eating some Gus's fried chicken with, you can look at the list and think about who you would like to see us eat with, but a guy who finished in the top 10 at the British Open is presently lined up. So I'm hoping that happens. Who? I'm not telling you. I'll tell you after we hang up.

Oh, okay. All right. Well, how about that? Listen, there, and you, it could be a myriad of names because, like I said, outside of Tiger, Ricky is not coming. But, I mean, generally, all the best of the best are going to be here for this tournament. And I encourage everybody out there, it's a golf fan, you know, it has always been a, tournament on the tour. FedEx and St. Jude have been a part of this for years and years and years.

And you will see the kids from St. Jude being very involved in that. You will see the houses around the 18th Green with the massive St. Jude posters. And it's a tournament where it always, not all tournaments do this, some golf tournaments are just golf tournaments. This one has an incredible cause. You will see people out there. Everybody that works there, is volunteers. They're holding up hush y'all signs. And it's a different experience to say the least. And everything is focused on this amazing children's hospital that we have here in Memphis, St. Jude, and draws attention and national attention to that.

And it becomes, for all the people that are here that visit, that come in contact with the kids that go out there, it becomes this life-altering experience. And what we have found is that many of the guys, that Phil Mickelson will tell you it's one of his favorite places to come and has had an involvement there. Dustin Johnson, who won it last year by holding out on 18.

Most of the guys that come, they don't come once, right? It becomes this. Once they come, they keep coming. Because they understand the importance of it and it's this life-altering deal for them. Right. Because when you see a child,

you start to think about, you know, you start to think about your own family, your own children, yourself and you're like, you know what, man, like there's nothing they did to deserve this. And here's this place that is honestly saving lives day in and day out. And so I'm very proud that I'm from a city that has a tournament like this. And it seems cliche to say or, you know, it seems caddy to say, oh, it's more than golf. But like, it truly is here a bigger deal.

And so the fact that you get the top 50 guys coming to a tournament here, it's all that much more attention that's drawn to it. And I think it's going to be unbelievable. I do. Yeah, I mean, I'll just give that shout out to FedEx, throwing its weight behind and making sure that this WGC, getting that WGC status for a tournament that's very, very deserving on the tour calendar to have that charity receive the prominent attention that it deserves. Now, all of the tour events have charitable affiliations and associations, and they're great.

And the tour raises a ton of money for charities across the year. but this one is always, you know, such a prominent and well-deserving charity and one where we're all familiar with it. It has, you know, properly achieved national acclaim for the work that it does on behalf of these kids. And so, you know, having, associating the very, very top of the Gulf world order with this event, it just feels right. And it also doesn't hurt that we're going to have some unbelievable barbecue fried chicken.

That is for sure. We've already had a little barbecue and hopefully, look, you know it's a big deal if I got Joe House here. You know it's a big deal. Like, I think you would have come for the food, but I knew if it's food and golf, it was 100%. It was a lock. Lock of the century. And if this thunderstorm we're looking at out here is Spring Creek Ranch, we'll calm down. We'll get on place on ourselves, Verno.

I promise to honor Zander Shaflight today. and be an epic disaster. Okay. We're not going to do any better than that. Verneau, thanks as always, my man. Thanks for going to Memphis, house. I love it here. All right, my part saving pals, there we go.

Thanks for listening to the Fairway Roll! And part of the Rigger podcast Network. We're off for a couple weeks. We're going to take a break just like Tiger. But we shall be back as the FedEx Cup gets rolling along here. Hopefully with a couple more winners. but certainly we'll be tracking our boy, Brooks Kepka, and all the young fellas as they get after it.

Until then, let's hit him straight out there.