Fairway Rollin' - Who Is Koepka’s Biggest Threat? Plus, Early Open Championship Picks | Fairway Rollin'

Episode Date: July 10, 2019

Joe House is joined by Kevin Clark to catch up on the happenings in the world of golf, including the John Deere Classic, Koepka’s current hot streak, and offer an early pick for the Open Championship (3:40). Then The Ringer’s Megan Schuster drops by to talk about Phil Mickelson’s continued dominance on Instagram and more (32:55). Host: Joe House Guest: Kevin Clark, Megan Schuster Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Golf gang, today's Fairway Roll and brought to you, as always, by our great pals at Callaway Golf. Makers of the Apex 19 irons, the number one irons in golf on the Golf Digest, hotless, a gold medal winner. Golf Digest put the previous iteration of Apex on the Mount Rushmore of irons. and this iron, they say, is an entirely worthy follow-up. The body forged from soft steel carbon and cup face where the face wraps around the sole and top line, extends to the eight iron. The pitching and gap wedges have beautiful shape and feel.

There is no surprise that Apex, the Apex 19 irons are their number one iron in golf. Golf, gang, this episode of Fairway Rolling, also brought to you by destination Kohler in Kohler, Wisconsin, home of Whistling Straits and Black Wolf Run. Golf Digest ranked all four of the Kohler courses in the top 100 of America's public courses. Kohler is home to the 2020 Rider Cup. Whistling Straits is going to be the venue, and it's one. one of Pete Dye's most intimidating par threes. I love where it shows up in the routing. Number 17, pinched nerve.

Gather your birdie buddies for the ultimate tournament-style summer golf experience. Get rolling to destinationcolar.com to book your package today. That's destinationcolar.com. Hello, friends, and welcome to this golf podcast. like any other. Oh yeah, here we go. We are back by Birdie Buddies. It is time for some fairway roll.

This is the golf podcast on the Ringer podcast Network. I am your starter, Joe House. Two terrific guests rounding out. This week it's a threesome, my birdie buddies. We have joining us, making his debut appearance on Fairway Rowland Tour, none other than Kevin Clark, the ringer's own. Clark is one of the ringers resident NFL experts. You enjoy him all year long as he covers the NFL. He also happens to be an occasional basketball rider.

He did a nice deep dive on Stan Van Gundy and the 2009 Orlando Magic. couple weeks ago. But he's a deep, deep golf head. And we've been threatening to have him on the show all year long. We're lucky enough to have him join us to give us his thoughts on the season to date and a possible selection for a winner in the upcoming Open Championship. And of course, Shusty is on. Megan Schuster joins us for a little bit of golf social to catch you up on the things that have been happening on the internet over the past two weeks. or so. My birdie buddies, I'm looking out the first tea appears to be open. Why don't we walk over there and let out a little shaft? All right, my par saving pals, we're back on the tea right now. And I'm just going to break it down for you.

We try and customize our on the tea announcements as we have these great players, these great guests in front of us. We are officially staring at the Open Championship, aka the British Open, which means none other than Ivo Robson's intonation. His famous way of describing players must be used here on Fairway Roll. And so now, now on the T, Kevin Clark. What am I supposed to say to that? Thank you.

Thank you for having me. That wasn't one of my best. Casey, we've been Jones, and to have you all season long, we talked about at the very inception of this golf podcast, that you are a deep golf head within the ringer universe here. And you've been footballing. I've been footballing. We just did a basketball podcast a couple hours ago.

But my true passion is losing money on betting John Rom. That's my true passion. This is why you and I get along so well. This is part of our commiseration. It's just for some reason we've gone all in like Thomas Peters. Sure. Throw some money on Thomas Peter. That was last year's wasted money.

Big European boppers. This year, this year, every, it's now a running joke. Every major Simmons and I bet on John Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood. And we just kissed that money goodbye. I'm so angry. Well, I've grown, angry is the wrong word, obviously, right? Because this is, we love the guys on tour. We root for them.

I angry, we grow frustrated with the talent that we see, especially out of those European players. I've grown to start calling the combination. of Tommy Fleetwood, Tony Fee now, and Ricky Fowler. Those are my F-boys. And we've been doing F-boy assessments for each of the majors. Now that I have you, we're going to do a few things, Kevin Clark. We're going to talk about we've been off for a few weeks, so we're going to update what we've seen on tour over the last handful of weeks.

I want your reaction, since this is your debut performance here on Fairway, Roland, to what you've seen over the course of the season, what's been jumping out at you and appealing to you. And I also want, you know, we're going to talk a little bit. We're going to make an epic flash pick of the week. We're going to do some early picking on the Open Championship. So I'll let you kind of stew on a little bit. If you have any thoughts on the F boys as we approach the Open Championship,

I'll let you think about it. Well, what I was going to say just generally with the season is we're coming off a week where Matthew Wolf wins a 3M open. And that excites because here's a guy who is young. You know, I saw a tweet, DJ Pi had this that, Basically, the John Deere favorites are all under 22, or at least a lot of them are. And you start thinking about it. Yeah, the John Deer is not exactly Augusta, but this is, there's a lot of young talent right now.

And I think that you're going to see alongside of obviously Brooks Keppka, who's going to run away with this thing here, I think you're going to see a lot more interesting young guys. And that's revealed itself over the course of the season. And that's really exciting to me. Well, let's look at this. Let's just name names. The leader, the odds to win, the Jandir classic, are Colin Morikawa. Yep. It's three rookies in Joaquin Neiman, who was a rookie last year. And then right behind him is Sung J.M. Another rookie. It's Colin Morikawa and Victor Hovlin together at 18 to 1. Matthew Wolfe at 22 to 1. Now, why is there Matthew Wolf not having the same odds as Hovelin and Morikawa? Just like the chances of winning back-to-back tournament.

as you're in two of your first four events. He was a sponsor exemption last week. He joined the tour like yesterday. Yeah. We got Morikawa, Hovlin, Wolf, Neiman, M, and then all the OG, Zach Johnson. That's how the odds rolled down. That is fantastic and hilarious.

The crazy thing is I had Matthew Wolf. I've been enjoying him. I watched him win the individual title in the Insta double A's. He's an incandescent talent as the season and progressed and Hovland his outstanding performances in the majors, both the Masters and the U.S. Open, the low am, I thought he was most likely to have a win. In fact, in my one and done pools that I participate in, a lot of folks took Hovlin to win this past week in in Minnesota. Wolf, this was his third event on tour, and I think he'd missed the cut at the two previous.

So all the talent in the world, not a surprise that he had a win in him, but he has immediately put himself an incredibly rarefied air. He's now one of seven players to have won on tour under the age of 21. The six guys who did it before him have all won at least three majors. It's an incredible list. that's always, you know, that's the tip of the hat to my boy Justin Ray. That's Justin Ray stat right there, of course. Between that, between Wolf's Win and the Women's World Cup,

I'm now accepting that athletes born in the late 90s are just here and professional and winning things. Like, I'm not, I haven't been okay with it, but now. Is this a segment on old guy radio? On old guy radio? He was born in 1999. He's just going to keep winning on the tour. We're all just going to deal with it. So this is, okay, so you've identified this young,

bumper crop. You know, Morikawa, by his second place finish at the 3M has now bought himself temporary status for the balance of the year

and I think it carries on a little bit into next year. I think he still has to do some kind of qualifying. But one of these themes is this super, super young bumper crop. What else have you seen

in the golf season this year? How would you define the season with what we've seen? Let me ask you a question. Go ahead. When, if Brooks Kepka, just flaps at the next

handful of majors, at what point will you stop betting on it? Because I think I've been scared straight to a point that maybe I go like the next five or six major, even if Bruce's next five cuts, I'm in on Brooks Keppka semi-permanently. Am I wrong about that?

No, I don't think you're wrong. My number is three, just because I'm a little more risk-averse, and I usually have a little more exposure out there, so I can't have guys who get on a minimum. cut train with the majors. I kept betting Sergio Garcia.

I'm going to call this my Sergio Garcia rule. I kept betting on him in both missed the cut parlays and sometimes the top 20. And he kept missing the cut. He missed the cut in like eight consecutive majors of recent. So that was all bye-bye money. And so I just have to take that lesson. I mean, I took all those Ls and at some point that it has to translate into a lesson. The amazing thing about Kepka to me, I remember watching it.

There's this really interesting Jack Nicholas documentary the golf channel made like two years ago. And they had a lot of great non-golf athletes talking about it. I don't know if you saw it. But they had Federer talking about it. And they gave Federer a sheet of paper with all his accomplishments. I did see this. That's right.

And he said the thing that stood out to Federer was not the championships. Although those were great. It was the number of times he finished second in a major. Yeah. Which was like 39. You know, like a million times. Yes. And when you look at Brooks Kepka,

the second place finishes are almost, just the fact that he hasn't finished beyond second this year is unbelievable to me. The consistency there. And as someone like Federer understands how hard it is to finish second all the time, but that sort of consistency is unbelievable to me. And I know we talk about Kepka a lot, but I just,

there's something absolutely incredible about that and the fact that you tell that all together. And number one of FedEx points right now is Matt Kucher. we're just never going to get rid of that. That's just a function of, you know, that artifice that the tour. And Matt Coocher, and Mac Coochard. Yeah, it says more about Couture than it does FedEx or, or Capca. Here's my Cepka question to you.

We have in recent enough memory seen crazy hot streaks like this. You know, these incandescent. And they seem to have kind of an 18-month shelf life. Yeah. If so, Jordan Speeds. run from 15 to about 17. The open championship that he won where he beat Matt Coacher was 2000 and I think it was 17.

17. 17. Yeah. Over the title was truck was 17. Yes. I mean, incredible. Jason Day had a run of seven wins that included the PGA championship. and included some other very prestigious tournaments.

Justin Rose went on a tear of, you know, wins that didn't include a major. So maybe Rose doesn't fit this conversation. But where we've seen this, what do you think if you were going to try and assess the likelihood of Kepka falling victim to this shelf life cycle? Do you think it's possible? Well, I mean, listen, I know that this sounds simplistic, but it depends on the other players.

I mean, one of the things, and let's not besmirch the good name of Prime Tiger Woods, but it's not like he had a murderer's row finishing second and third every single time. He had certainly some very worthy adversaries where that was Ernie L's VJ, whatever, but then he had some Bob Mace. And I think that if Kepka, if the young guns, like we just mentioned, if they're who we think they are, that could be a real immediate threat to him. If the F-boys start getting to their potential.

Meeting their potential? Meeting their potential. That's a real threat to him. And so I think Kepka is going to be in contention for the foreseeable future. Whether or not it's the one and two thing we've seen for the next three majors, that there are so many unknowns about the group right behind him that it's really hard to say. Well, who do you have in that group right behind him? Who's your guys right behind him?

Well, I mean, I would say Rory would be right behind him. If you're looking at just the entire group, you know, Rory would be one of those people. I would say that John Romm certainly has the potential to do it, Dustin Johnson. Okay. You know, I mean, I don't know if I have Rory in there because Rory really hasn't contended for a major. His best major showing so far was the U.S. Open at Pell.

And he was, you know, after coming off that performance, in Canada where he did the Rory thing was like, oh my God. And immediately got pushed himself all the way down to like insane odds to win the U.S. Open. So the British Open odds right now, Kepka and Rory are both 8 to 1. And obviously some of that is just the links part of it and the fact that it's a port rush. Then DJ Ram Woods, Rose, Molinari Fowler. Who of that group do you think is the biggest threat to Kepka?

Just in general. Um, me personally, I think it's DJ. Yeah. But the problem that I have is he keeps doing dumb things. And I've been critical of the, the, basically the composition of his team because I feel like they're reaching crucial decision-making moments. And it feels to me like they're missing a process. It isn't that- His team isn't maybe his caddy.

That's one of the, that's one of the members of the team. but he also recently stopped doing, you know, swing instruction with Claude Harmon. He's still sending videotape to Butch Harmon. He still has in his life as college coach, and that has become his primary coach. But he's doing things that suggest, you know, he's looking for something. And he's had within his grasp at each of the first three majors an opportunity. He could have won the Masters. he could have won the PGA Championship,

and he had a chance to at least make some noise at the U.S. Open, and at both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, he did something really, really stupid and basically snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Now, I don't begrudge him, you know, on 16 at the PGA Championship, misreading the wind, and hitting the ball over the green

and his chip onto the green was perfectly competent they misread the pot and that I can't forgive You know there's an amazing book by Bill Walsh called The Score takes care of itself and in it he talks about the concept

of clutch and rising to the occasion and all the things that someone like Joe Montana or Bill Walsh were branded with right and the point he makes over and over again and it's something I think about with Brooks Kepka all the time is there's no such thing as clutch

There's no such thing as being better than everybody else when the heat is on. What clutch is is being exactly the same when everybody else starts losing their heads. And executing as if it were a Tuesday and you're just playing a practice round and you're out there and you're winning the British Open or winning the U.S. Open or winning the PGA championship. And that to me is what Kepka does. So you start talking about DJ making these stupid mistakes. That's Kepka. The score takes care of itself because maybe it's an issue of, I'm not saying he doesn't care, but it's not, we've been, we've seen many times that Brooks Kepka has indicated that there's things he likes more than golf, you know, that maybe he's just not as, as maybe his hands don't shake in the same way somebody else does when he's on the 17th at the U.S. Open. It is a great point.

And it is like the distinguishing mark between him potentially winning the Masters or hitting it in the water on 12, which is what he did. And by contradistinction, Tiger did not hit the ball on 12. And Tiger let everybody on the 12th hole on Sunday of the Masters, four of the six guys that were, you know, around the lead that he was contending with, hit the ball in the water. And he let all of them make those mistakes. And he played his game all the way through and won the Masters. in a manner that permitted him to make bogey on the 18th hole and still win. Yeah, I mean, that's the amazing thing. And I would say, obviously, Woods has been a massive beneficiary of that as well,

just the head game part of it, that he's going to be completely normal when everybody else is just freaking the hell out. And, you know, Kepka said after the U.S. open, he was thrilled with how he played. Yeah. He thought he played great. Yeah. He didn't. I got frustrated on his back nine when he started missing fairways.

but that's just because, you know, I was rooting for the possibility of a playoff, you know. And he started off so hot. I wanted him to remain hot. I wanted the pressure to genuinely be visited upon Gary Woodland because Gary was playing such beautiful golf over both the Saturday and Sunday rounds. He really distinguished himself. But I wanted pressure to come into the mix. I mean, what Woodland did on 17, where he hit to the wrong side of the green,

the right side of the green, and put himself in a position where he could not putt. He had to chip. I would have loved it if he and Kepka were tied at that moment. If he'd looked at the leaderboard on the 17T and saw that he and Kepka had the exact same score. That would have been fun. Yeah, I mean, it would have been amazing.

And there are a lot of what-ifs with that tournament. Yeah, for sure. I think what's going to be amazing to see is I do think there's going to be pretty consistent contention with Kepka. going forward, as we said. And my curiosity is whether or not Kepka has the ability,

because he seems to make a less mistakes, whether he starts psyching guys out a little bit, almost at the Tiger effect 20 years ago. Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, so we got the young guns, and we got Kepka for this season. Anything else? Obviously, Tiger winning the Masters is its own narrative and its own thing.

What else has caught your eye? I kind of like these new courses. Yeah, interesting. So I go on a training camp, tour every year around the country. You're a football training camp. That the NFL training camp. That's right.

Midwest, during July, during August, it's a pretty nice place, my man. Like, that's the thing about, a good example is I have never been to Cleveland any other time except late July and early August. I think Cleveland's an amazing place. So you have the Twin Cities. You have what the Detroit?

Rocket mortgage was in Detroit. Yeah. I mean, I kind of like this little Midwest swing. You have Illinois, obviously, they've always had, you know, Midwestern golf tournaments, but I kind of like this little mini swing here with Michigan and Minnesota. It is nice to see just like the injection of some places, you know, our mind's eye is accustomed so much to seeing the traditional venues, even for, I'm going to call them second-tier tournaments just to distinguish them from majors and WGC events. I mean, no harm you second-tier tournaments.

But it is fun to just sort of see what other venues are all. about. We've seen, you know, incredible birdie fests, you know, the guys go out and crush these courses. That's how good they are. And so, you know, it is a reminder of, you know, what these guys are capable of when, you know, going into a event, that takes them very little time to acclimate. And if the course is not, you know, built to be 7,800 yards with rough up to their knees, you know, two feet off the fairway, you know, one foot off the fairway. They're just going to go out and put the hammer down and score all the way through. Yeah, and that's one of the things. And this gets to, I mean, you have the young big boppers who are coming up. Someone like Cameron

Champ who I think is leading the PGA in driving distance. Driving distance. Despite his youth, despite his youth. I love this new era we're going to where almost everything can be a birdie fest. And there's distance off the tea. The thing that I hate, I'm going to probably get a little bit of hate for this. Who cares if they hit the ball really far? Who cares if the equipment is good? I don't want this whole, every time there's a major and everybody's like two over, and there's all these, these bunch of stories are like, hey, they're just like us.

They're hacking. Why do we like that? Like, if Patrick Mahomes plays like shit, everybody is not like, thank God, he looks just like me out there. Why would you want to see that? These guys are so much better than us. Yes. And I like seeing that.

I like the. spectacle of it all. Let them hit it out of the park. Well, you know, the PGA of America shares your view on that. That's by the PGA championship. You know, now, interestingly, I believe it is the case that Beth Page has thus far played the most difficult of any of the major venues. And it's not supposed to be that way. That's not the character and tradition of the PGA championship. The PGA championship is to showcase the talents. But Beth Page was a bad mother effort because of the common of when they played it in the season and some wind came up on Sunday.

And really, we saw guys in the high 70s and 80s all day long at Bethpage. But your point is well taken. Let's pivot. We have the John Deere classic. We're all going to just root for the young guns. I don't have a view one way or the other as among these young guns. I've been riding Hovland. I'm going to ride Hovland again.

That would be my selection if I was forced to make one. why not, why aren't we still hungry like the wolf? Just run it back. Okay. Just run it back. Just there it is. Let's do the wolf pack. The wolf pack rides again.

The wolf pack rides again. But Kev, let's do our Epic Flash pick of the week. We're two weeks out from the commencement of the Open Championship. I feel very fortunate to have caught you at this moment in your busy football schedule. I don't know if you're going to be able to share with us your Epic Flash pick of the week. So Epic Flash created by Callaway with artificial intelligence and machine learning, the Flash face technology on the face of these drivers that has the ball going longer and straighter. The most wins on the tours, the professional tours worldwide.

Let me hear who you have in mind for your Epic Flash pick of the week for the Open Championship. The Open Championship. Okay, so it's tough because the last time Royal Port Rush had the U.S. Open was 1951. Oh, so you're saying we don't have a track. Max Faulkner won. Max Faulkner died in 2005. He's not around to help us with this one. He will not be entering.

Yeah. He also never played any other major but the Open Championship, which is more common, obviously, back then. That's right. But so we don't have a lot to go on. I just completely flood the Euro. gross. That's how I play sure. Link's golf when I'm betting.

Oh boy. I'm going to go, I'm sorry, this is so obvious, I'm going to go 25 to 1 Tommy Fleetwood. Yeah, you know, he's an F boy and we've been looking for four rounds out of Tommy all season long. Now,

he has some success on Link's courses. The two things that are attributes that I'm thinking about right now, we'll have the opportunity to fine-tunedness in our preview podcasts around the Open Championship. The week of the Open Championship, Justin Ray will come on, we'll have some other. We'll do some data and analytics. We have a surprise guest coming on next week who's got an interesting take, I'm sure, on some of these things. But we're going to do our fine-tuning of the attributes for success at courses like Royal Port Rush,

because we don't know how Royal Port Rush is going to play in this. major championship kind of condition. But the two things about the Open Championship that are sort of bright guideposts, guys with success on links courses and 30-somethings. The average age tends to be guys in their 30s for Open Championships, notwithstanding Jordan Speeith a couple years ago. But Frankie Molinari fit this to a T in terms of the age thing and a guy that had the reputation ball striking-wise of hitting balls, you know, down the middle and then hitting

the ball on the green in regulation. With those attributes, I'm going to pick somebody that, you know, has been overdue, I feel like, for a good performance. And I can't believe I'm saying this. He really, really, really, really let me down. That was three really. That was like three Tiger really, really, really let me down. He really let me down. And the Masters, and I'm taking a hard look at Justin Rose for the Open Championship. He putted so well at Pabble Beach, and that was the thing that had him in that tournament until Sunday when the putter turned against him.

He was not able to keep up the strokes gain putting. He was so far out ahead of the field, strokes gain putting, through the first three rounds. It was really not sustainable. And it's so different from his traditional skills. set. He is a terrific ball striker. That has been the thing that distinguishes him. So at this point, early in early days, we're still sort of formulating. We're going to have some information to share with everybody about what we think will really be the attributes that

carry them along. But I have an eye on Justin Rose. I feel like I'm going to talk myself into betting on Hatt and Lowry and maybe I might, Polter. I don't know. I mean, I feel I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Poulter is another one of these guys. Every time I decide to not, especially with DFS, every time I decide, Pulter's done, then all of a sudden he's T4. It's a nightmare.

I mean, that's where we end up. You're absolutely right about that. Yeah. So you have to bet them, just throw a top 20 on them. Throw a top 20. Just to cover yourself. Throw a top 20. I always flood the zone with European players when it comes here,

and it never pays off. It's one of my dumbest strategies. Well, we'll have an opportunity to compare notes on how dumb our strategies are. Kevin Clark, welcome to Fairway Rowling. It was great to have you, buddy. Delighted to be a part of it. All right. Birdie Buddies, as mentioned, earlier, this episode of Fairway Rolling brought to you by our good friends at Destination Kohler in Kohler, Wisconsin, home of Whistling Straits and Black Wolf Run. Golf Digest has all four Pete, die, design, Kohler courses ranked in the top 100.

of America's public courses. The Straits course at Whistling Straits will be home to the 2020 Rider Cup. It's back here on U.S. soil. It's the first public course in a generation to host the Ryder Cup. The Straits features one of Pete Dyes, most intimidating par three holes.

It's number 17. It's called Pinched Nerve. And it's guarded by sand dunes and borders. Lake Michigan. So if the bunker doesn't swallow your tea shot, the Great Lake certainly will. The best in the world are coming to take on the straits. You should, too.

Gather a group of 12 or more birdie buddies, and the PGA professionals at Destination Kohler can help you arrange a tournament-style experience complete with Ryder Cup add-ons. Eagle enthusiasts, rounds for this summer are still available, and 20-20 rounds are open as well. Time to get rolling to destinationcaller.com to book your golf package today. That's destination k-oh-h-l-e-r.com.

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Shustey, what's happening? House, back after a long break. Good to be back. It's terrific to have you back. The internet never sleep, Shusty. No, it does not. As you know, a lot of things have transpired. We're going to begin with our favorite internet character.

His name is Phil Mickelson. He does sometimes play golf also. Occasionally. But really, the thing that will make 2019, the kind of success story for Phil that you and I can sink our teeth into. It's his performance on the internet. He's been truly unmatched all year so far.

I don't know that anyone could really come from behind at this point and try to overtake him. He's invented multiple video series, multiple calf workout videos and others. And now he has developed a new series called Fireside with Phil. Yes. In the first video, which dropped a few weeks ago, there was really no fireplace in view.

They were just like a candle or two, lit near him. A candle is fire. Yeah, well, I guess so. A candle can be fire. You can have a fire chat with a candle, I feel like. Yeah, you can. But I sort of wonder if he got some notes because in video number two, he had his mom on as a guest. And they were in front of an actual fireplace in addition to a few candles.

Well, it did heighten the authenticity. Yes. I will say the quality of the story in the first one was such that I didn't care about, you know, the background. I got lost in his words and his eyes. So I... The twist on that one was like truly something to behold. And also, he is quite a good storyteller. We've been remarking on this all season.

Yeah, he held our suspense throughout the entire video. I don't know if you saw that twist coming at the... but I certainly did not. And I'm excited for him to have more guests on. Yeah, I don't want to botch the clinching line. But what was it? It was like, sir, there is a poop in the cup. I think that's, is that the way he put it?

Or did he say dump? There was something like that, yes. It made it clear that overnight at this venue where there was a PGA tour event being competed, somebody had relieved themselves in the cup and left it there. And so the players wanting to come compete. This was the unique circumstances of it were what they, course had to be played in the same condition as when they left because they had a weather interruption. Yes.

And so, so Phil is trying to stop them from recutting a new hole for the cup so that, you know, there was no issue, no penalties, no, you know, anything. like that. And it turns out that that cup was unplayable. It was an unplayable lie. That's exactly right. And I think, you know, Phil's decision to let him go go ahead and proceed. What did he say? Proceed as you will. It was very good. Yeah. Yes. It was top notch. Just go ahead and continue doing what you're doing. That's the ultimate message. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but he's rocking a great wardrobe in these videos, pretty consistent across the board. He's got his uniform all decked out,

his black hat, a nice black blazer with some pins and some, looks like some embroidery on there. It's quite nice. In the second installment, he gave us a little bit of a personal touch. He gave us a story with his mom. He had his mom join him. And they told the tale of him and his youth and the kind of golf rascal that he was. He managed to sneak out of the house, get himself to the golf course and was gone so long that he was in danger of missing the meal on Thanksgiving and his family went out after him and having pulled him off the course unceremoniously and at the end of a dead silent car ride he gave a clinching line that basically relieved him of getting in trouble what was that house he told his mom look every minute that I am

not practicing and improving is delaying me from being great. Wow. And his mom acknowledged that that was so well conceived and constructed and so unimpeachable of an observation that they didn't even punner. They waited in the house and he ate. That was it. Wow. Amazing.

The great Phil Mickleson. Yeah, truly, truly a great orator from his youth, I guess. A very learned practice for Phil. We had to cover that just because we're catching up. But this weekend we had an all-time terrific experience on the broadcast that turned into an even more brilliant internet reaction with the 3M event that was just competed in Minnesota featuring none other than the inimitable Rice and Deschambeau. Truly, truly an epic moment. So just to set the scene, Bryson was holding the clubhouse lead at last weekend's tournament. As Matthew Wolfe came up 18 in the final pairing, Wolf was down one with a 26-foot eagle putt coming up.

So Bryson started warming up again. He figured, you know, Wolf will probably party. They'll go to a playoff. And then, of course, in completely epic fashion, Matthew Wolf sunk the eagle put of his life, secured the win. and the camera, of course, panned over to poor Bryson DeShambeau live. And the initial shot of his face where his mouth gaped open like a fish was quickly made into a meme on the internet with captions like, quote, I'd like to speak to the manager. Bryson trying to calculate how he just lost. It was really wonderful.

Yeah, I mean, it is a rare, it's not rare that there are cameras on the leader in the clubhouse. to catch that reaction to whatever befalls the group behind him because he's, he's, you know, preparing himself for a playoff. He planned on a playoff. He assumed a playoff, clearly. What was unique was how the lack of composure that Bryce, he was so shocked that Wolf made Eagle. Now, the competitor, Morikawa was also.

also on the green with a chance at Eagle and could have tied Wolf. So it was kind of surprising to me that Bryson, you know, doing the math on this. Right, right. Wouldn't have been like at least countenanced the possibility that one of those two guys was going to make Eagle and snatch the tournament. And as a result, be processing like, okay, I know there's a camera on me. Let me go ahead and do my composed thing. Like, let me be gracious. Let me smile and say, oh, darn it.

You know, want to give off a golly shucks kind of reaction. Homie was not prepared for the moment. No. He was stunned by it. My counterpoint is that maybe his mathematical projections were so sure that this eagle boat was not coming in, that that is why he was quite stunned. But I will say it was very nice to add another addition to the relatable golfers thing that we've gotten this year from

Zach Johnson's practice swing at the Masters going haywire to any number of John Rom bad shot reaction shots. Yes. It's nice to add another photo to that list. To the collection. Yes. Well, this week, Shusty,

we're going to do this week in Tiger Woods because we have this terrific, recent entrant into the the internet content world from himself, Eldrick himself. We do, we do. In an Instagram story video for Nike on Monday, Tiger revealed that he has chosen to stay in the U.S. ahead of the British Open rather than heading over to Europe early, like many of his fellow pros.

So since he's doing that, he is trying to adjust his body to the time difference by apparently waking up at 1 a.m. Eastern time, which is 6 a.m. in Port Rush. So he sent out like a series of Instagram videos to explain sort of why he's doing this. There's a lot to break down in this video from his first shouting of wake up to the extremely dad advice he gives at the end about how you can only achieve your dreams and your goals if you wake up early and do that. But I first wanted to talk to you about this whole strategy and its entirety. So not to question him too much, but I'm wondering if this is really the most effective way to go about doing this. Like how early is he going to bed to actually get enough sleep to make waking up at 1 a.m. a possibility. Like he has kids, right?

So there's no way he's going to bed before 9 p.m., which would be four hours of sleep, right? Right. It's an awesome point. I would, because I'm always inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to posit that they've consulted with some sleep specialists. Okay. Some folks who deal with human biarrhythms who know how to, you know, prescribe an approach that is most likely to produce success. I would say, and maybe the answer is indeed his kids, it feels like one way to kind of conquer this is just to go over. Right.

Just to go over a few days early and catch the setting of the sun and the rising of the sun as it has. happens and let your body clock get acclimated to the way that the sun behaves in Northern Ireland or really anywhere in Ireland or Scotland or England that they're all basically on the same time mechanism. I mean, if he could bring the kids over, they could be in London. They're not in school right now. They are playing Wimbledon right now. Right.

There's some things he could do to keep himself entertained. and I'm sure he has a practice regimen going right now. The thing about this that struck me in, you know, just taking a look at it right away, is homie is puffy. Yes. Like, you know, the inflammation of the day that occurs to all of us. This isn't a unique thing to him. No, I'm puffy right now, House.

Shoestie, we're lucky enough to be in each other's company. I'll take you at your word for it. I'm not buying it. But, you know, that there is, you know, it's kind of this natural inflammation thing that occurs. You would think him knowing that he's going to get up and do a video, there's a cold compress. Like, there are a lot of ways to address, you know, natural effects of having sleep interrupted. Right.

And what that does to your look. But we've had this all season with him. He is not giving any Fs about, you know, sort of. how he's appearing in stuff because he walked in for that congratulatory cake thing was such a pronounced limp. He didn't have to walk with a limp. And it's set all of us on the internet, you know, a skew and askance trying to get to the bottom of what the hell's going on. Why is he walking with a limp? Is he hurt? So what do I know? Yeah. Another aesthetic piece about the video I wanted to ask you about was if you've ever seen someone's eyes open that wide and normal

conversation. My theory is that he's either had way too much coffee or he's insanely tired and is trying to prop his lids open so far that he doesn't look tired. But there's a lot to take away from that. And I am not so sure that this whole adjustment thing is going swimmingly. Well, I don't mind like it being a work in progress adjustment thing. We just didn't need to put it on Instagram. Right. And you can't say like this is the secret recipe. I'm giving you some secret sauce to success and then look shitty. Right. I mean, that's kind of, that's, that if I have a takeaway, now, and then believe me,

I'm never one to indulge in any tiger slander, but it feels like this lacking a little bit in execution, just a smitch. I would like to think that the good folks at Nike would position him a little bit better for success in a video like this, but I guess when it's Tiger Woods, he probably just gets the final say. Well, Schusty, speaking of positioning for success, I have to tell you about the stroke lab putters by Odyssey. Shoesty, Odyssey's stroke lab shafts continue to be an incredibly popular choice on the tours around the world, including for world top 10 players like Xander Shafle and Francisco Molinari,

both two homies getting ready for the Open Championship at Royal Port Rush, the multi-material shaft saves weight, and they redistribute it to the grip and clubhead of the putter, and these putters are created to help improve the consistency of a player's stroke, including the back swing length, the face angle and impact, and the head speed. Odyssey continues to be the number one putter across the major worldwide tours and number one in putter wins in 2019.

by far. It's not even close. On the LPGA tour just this past weekend, Shusty, there were 60 Odyssey putters in play, and no other brand had more than 24. That is getting the job done. Certainly is. Wow.

All right, my part saving pals, that does it for this week's installation of Fairway Rowland. Next week, we are looking at the final major of the season, which means we are going to have major league analysis and prognostication, including an extraordinary special guest that you are not going to believe until you hear his voice on these fairway rolling airwaves. We're going to do a Monday preview to set the stage with this special guests.

Then we're going to have a Wednesday show, as has been our way, doing a little bit of a deeper dive, some gambling priorities, some allocation of capital, maybe your fantasy lineups to get ready for the early. for the early morning, Thursday morning, T-off here domestically in the U.S. This is one of the glorious things about the Open Championship. We love waking up to championship golf. Justin Ray will be on, and I'm sure I can talk Harry Gaillon from the degenerate trifecta to come join us as well.

Until then, my part-saving pals, let's hit them straight out there.