No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 991: Exploring Argentine Golf

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

DJ checks in with Wolfie, TC, Cody and Ben to debrief on their trip to Argentina and the film we released a few weeks ago which you can watch on our YouTube channel here Support our sponsors: USGA - Get a Handicap Index Here If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining The Nest: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at nolayingup.com/join Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different? Better than most. Expect anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. My name is DJ. We've got a thrilling episode today. We've got these guys that went down to Argentina.

They've been talking about it nonstop. I have no idea what the hell they saw or did when they were down there. They got them so excited. So that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. Joining me, of course, one of the masterminds of this boondoggle, Mr. TC. Greetings. Viva, DJ Viva. Of course, we've got our guy Cody back out in front of the microphone

today rather than behind the microphones and the cameras and all the ones and twos. Code man. How are you? Very good. Happy to be here. Dej. Great. And of course we're going to have, uh, another one of the, I w it seems like the masterminds from afar, the big low beat. Oh, mr. Wolfie, Michael Wolf, Wolfie, you look great, man. Your, your hair looks awesome. You know, the light is great. Yeah. You look, you look great. You look youthful, man.

Everybody back in hair and makeup. And speaking of behind the scenes, we've got our guy, Ben is here as well. He's going to be running a couple of the ones and twos popping in every now and again. I know he was mostly behind the camera for this trip, but I'm sure he's got some observations as well. Guys, let's, I'm here to kind of play the role of the audience. Let's, let's get into a little bit of what you guys got into down in the Southern hemisphere a couple of weeks ago. TC, I want to throw it to you first. Just why Argentina and also what was the scope of this trip?

Yeah. Why Argentina? Quite simply, I'd never been to South America before and kind of a counter seasonal option for... I felt really bad a few years ago when we did, I guess beginning of last year, when we tricked everybody into thinking that we were going to years ago when we did, I guess, beginning of last year, when we tricked everybody into thinking that we were going to South America when we were really going to Australia. So our guy, Felipe, reached out via email and said, hey, when you do eventually come to Argentina, I would love to show you around and everything. So we ended up taking him up on that. And I'm really glad we did because it was a fantastic trip. Part of the world I'd never been to. Neil went there on his honeymoon a couple of years ago and raved about it. And then

Wolfie had been in my ear for years now talking about Argentina and just how it's kind of a snapshot or a kind of a time capsule when it comes to golf down there. So yeah, all that's to say, I like weird stuff and I feel like in Argentina, they haven't really had enough resources to mess up what are great historical golf courses. And then also just Buenos Aires and it's like a world city and just being able to check, you know, check places like that off, go eat, drink, do all that. It's a, you know, very much a worthwhile trip. So we'll get into that. Well, anyone who's listened to the office hours episodes that you and Wolfie do know

that Wolfie has traveled the world. He's gone to a lot of the, the weird and wacky places. He's gone to a lot of the top of the pops. He's got a good, a good perspective on the game at all levels. So Wolfie, what's your, what's your background in Argentina specifically, but also kind of golf in the Southern hemisphere, some of these places that don't really get, uh, booked by the, you know, the, the run of the mill golf traveler. Yeah. So, um, I was in Argentina last time was was I was actually down there the same week that Neil was down there. When Neil was down there on his honeymoon. That was a little bit awkward.

Unrelated. I hope. Yeah. We all got along fine. Yeah. That was my previous trip. 2022, 2021 that was. I had been to Patagonia, Cordoba, Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires. So kind of the four big regions a couple of days in each one. And I liked what I saw. As Tron just mentioned, I mean, it seemed a little bit like a time capsule. I mean, why go back? Several reasons.

One is it's easy. It's a pretty good fit as far as obviously you're going to the southern hemisphere. So it was middle of the summertime down there. Very little as far as time change, direct flights from Atlanta down to Buenos Aires. So when you combine them all, pretty easy trip actually. I mean, you can play on the day you land, you can play golf from the day you fly home. There's no jet lag and it's nice to go somewhere warm in the wintertime, add them all up and kind of why not? What, I guess maybe this gets to your first trip going down there, but what

what is it? What was the pull of Argentina's specifically from a golf perspective? I mean, we all are pretty, you know, golf sicko individuals. And so basically, like, why take a trip like this rather than just going and exploring Scotland over and over, going to Ireland over and over, going to Australia? I mean, what was kind of the pull to go see a place like this for you the first time, Wolfie? Probably it started pretty young, reading about in the World Atlas of golf, where they showed the little routing maps of the 50 top courses in the world.

The Jockey Club was always one of them that was in there. I've played a lot of Alistair McKenzie courses, and just knowing that there's this 36 holes of Alistair McKenzie courses and just knowing that there's this 36 holes of Alistair McKenzie in this kind of exotic place that nobody else has been to, that's got a lot of attraction to me for it. Plus, I think just a natural curiosity. I like to see new things. I've been to Scotland and Ireland and played lots and lots of golf courses around the UK and continental Europe and Canada and the United States. And so just something different.

I think also I really like golf. That's the motivator and that's usually what's behind all of my trips. But when I can combine them with something different culturally, that to me is kind of the sweet spot. You're there for golf four out of five days or five out of seven days or whatever, but you're also going to get to see something different, whether it's food, culture, monetary policy in the case of Argentina, whether you're going to Morocco or Japan. When you get the farther off the beaten track, I like that kind of exotic feel of, hey, I'm

seeing something different here too, versus you get abandoned dunes, it's great, you know, it's comfortable. You go to, you know, you go to St. Andrews and have dinner in the Dunvegan, it's comfortable, you know, they'll sell you a cold Miller Lite that tastes just like home. But when you get to, you know, Argentina, it's a little bit different in some ways, but in some ways, it's exactly the same. And I like that kind of juxtaposition of some things are, you know, completely different, new experience, and some things are still pretty much the same way we do them, you

know, at our local golf course. So we can get into some of that, you know, what's the same, what's different, but that's always a draw for me to seek out different places. Wolfie, you had the caddy connection too. Yeah. Yeah, so I belongdies at your club. Yeah. I belong to a private club down here in the deep South. We've experienced over the last 10 years an increasing amount of caddies from Argentina. Getting to know those guys, apparently there's always been a pretty strong contingent of tour players, both on the European tour, on the PGA, corn ferry tours of Argentine players. And naturally the caddies, you know, follow them, whether it's a brother or,

or a guy that grew up playing with them as a good player and didn't make it on tour. But, but you know, they, they, they end up caddying on one of their professional tours and caddying in the, in the shoulder seasons is pretty attractive. So my golf club is closed in the summertime. It's, it's too hot to play golf in Alabama in July and August. So, but we need a lot of caddies in the spring and the fall and we can't really have high school caddies

or grade school caddies because they're in school when the club's the busiest like in May and October. And so it kind of is a win-win for us and for these guys to, you know, on their way home or if they're, you know, they don't have a bag at the present time on one of the tours, they come to my club and they'll caddy for three or four weeks and make some money. Like I said, over the last decade with the growing imbalance of the exchange rate between

the official exchange rate in Argentina versus the black market exchange rate, if they can earn hard dollars by caddying in Europe or a resort in Florida or wherever, they can take it back home with them and change those US dollars for the peso at, it was $1,100 to $1,000 while we were there a couple of weeks ago. That's a real good, that's worth their while to do that. So just talking to them, they seem like good dudes and they started bugging me to come down and check it out. So that was a big draw as well. I have to imagine too, I mean, Argentina is obviously a massive country geographically, but I have to imagine the golf world is fairly small.

Right? I mean, I'm sure you get, you get kind of plugged in with the right people. It's probably pretty easy to put together a pretty, you know, all world trip, I would imagine. Yeah. Somewhere between 70 and a hundred thousand golfers. The golf capital was in Cordoba. That's where most of their good players have come from. Cordoba.

Cordoba. You know, for a country that size, that's nuts. That would make it like the 35th most golfers in the United States by comparison. And that's like Wyoming or Montana. Um, it's, you know, so, so how do they have, you know, three major champions and, or two major champions and four guys that have won BGH were events in the last 15 years. And you know, how have they been able to just do this with only 70,000 golfers the quality of play versus the number of participants in their

country is, is pretty dramatic. So one of the kind of see why you know, how does that happen? And in is it the courses that the instruction is the, is it the inspiration of Dave Vincenzo and the ones that followed him? What went into all that? And yeah, it's been fun to go down a couple of times now and just learn. I like to learn. Well, I have a million questions on just club culture and courses and all that. But before we get there, Cody, you've traveled a ton throughout your life

as well. What were your expectations of Argentina going in? Had you been there before and how did your expectations stack up against reality? Never made it that far South Beach, but had been in South America a couple different times for things. I love traveling the world. I love experiencing new cultures, meeting new people. And Argentina has always been on the list. I think this can go back, and I know we're very much massive fans of the late Anthony Bourdain.

And I remember the very first time that I really saw anything on Argentina on film was, I think when he did, No Reservations was in like 2007 or 2008. And I was struck by the colors, the vibrancy of Buenos Aires, the, you know, massive glaciers and lakes down in Patagonia. And I was like, wow, that's incredible. And then he went back on parts unknown later on in like 2016, 2017, and just focused on Buenos Aires and truly showed like what the city used

to be, which was a thriving, pretty much European, like headquarters in South America into what it currently was. And it was kind of the fall. And it was just something that had always like been there for me. We mentioned Alistair McKenzie and the Jockey Club just because I think it's truly just incredible the story of how McKenzie ended up down there and how a 36-hole routing still exists basically untouched, which is a good thing and a bad thing because we'll get into the actual bones of the golf course and what could be and what, you know, is currently now. And there's a lot of things that can improve, but I think it's just amazing that it's basically been untouched in time.

But part of that is due to like extreme struggle from a country that used to be the Paris of South America, like an incredible architecture and scenes and food and everything else. And to round it all off, I think I'm a big foodie and I've always been drawn to the food culture in Argentina. I like a lot of meats. You can miss me with some vegetables, but I think the biggest thing that always stuck out to me

and it was so exciting talking to Neil when he went on his honeymoon and anybody else who's ever gone down to Patagonia and really Argentina as a whole is the influence that Francis Maumans had on the food scene in all of Argentina. And I know that he's primarily based in Patagonia, But what he displayed on that chef's table episode is the same way that they go on serving and hosting people at golf courses, at restaurants, at coffee shops. They're just so excited to have people there and to share everything that they have in their amazing country with the world. You mentioned McKenzie and how he got there a little bit. I honestly don't really know the story. Wolfie, is there like in a bridge version ofenzie and how he got there a little bit. I honestly don't really know the story, Wolfie.

Is there like an abridged version of kind of how, how he wound up down there? Yeah, it's kind of an interesting point in his life. So McKenzie separated from his first wife, got married fairly young. They didn't have children. They actually, this is back in the England days. They adopted a child and then

gave the child back, decided they just couldn't do it after a couple of weeks. I think kind of after that, Mackenzie started traveling the world and the first wife just stayed at home and there was not a lot of contact there. This was in both their kind of hometowns or home bases. Fast forward a decade later and Mackenzie is in the United States and he's busy in California with some great projects there and everything. He gets the opportunity to go down to Argentina and he stops in, I believe it was Reno, on the way down and files a divorce, like a no-fault divorce judgment.

The first wife is still living back in England and hadn't seen him in years. It's a really interesting point in his life. And you wonder like, how much did that have to do with deciding to hop on a ship and sail all the way down to Argentina? As far as the actual golf and what he did down there, it was the same business model as he had done that he did in Australia, where the request came from the jockey club. He was recommended by, I think, I believe by some RNA folks that the Jockey Club had reached out to.

He went down and then he essentially while he was there farmed out his services to all the other clubs, either for consulting work or redesigns. There's a lot of colorful history around all these different courses that have a few holes that maybe look like Mackenzie might have had something to do with them. There's multiple holes. There's multiple routing maps that he drew for courses that were never built. Famously, most famously, I guess, is the one that is now going to be built over in in Georgia, I believe, or in South Carolina, right across the line over by Aiken, the 21 club. They're actually going to use one of the Mackenzie routing maps. So yeah, it's kind of an interesting, you know, the only really definitive courses that he built and had, you know, they're his,

were the ones at the jockey club. But there's also, you know, he had some influence on some other stuff down there. So it's real Alistair Mackenzie. I mean, it's when you play it, there's no doubt about that. I mean, the mounding and the green shapes and it's pretty great. I think another point here to make is if you look at McKenzie's overall timeline, we know and we learned last year that 1926 is when the Australia trip happened. And then if you look at 27, that's a lot of Ireland stuff.

That's when the hinge comes in, 28 We have Cyprus. We have Pasa Tiempo opening in the beginning of 29. 29 was also Crystal Downs. And at that same time, he's very profitable and things are ramping up in the United States. And then the Great Depression hits. And there's nothing for him to do. He's worried about the future. He had projects that were put on hold. And he's like, wait a second, I got to go somewhere. And again, just like Australia, you have these people in South America that are dangling a pot of gold here, come down. And that's how he ended up there. It's it's it's incredible. Really, if you just look at, you

know, the fact that he's traveling by boat, like rail to get to a port somewhere,, rail to get to a port somewhere, and then to get on a steamboat to go all the way to the southern tip of South America. Well, even just tracking everything you were just saying there based on Australia to the West Coast to Michigan, I'm like, God, how did he even get all that stuff done in that time, let alone get down to Argentina? But TC, speaking of itineraries, man, I mean, I feel like this is your, is this one of your

great passions in life, I feel like it's building, it seems to be building out these itineraries. So what was the process? What got left on the cutting room floor? I know there's always about 60 or 70 courses that are like, God, I just, we got it. I can't believe we weren't able to get here. Yeah. Talk me through what became the trip and what was almost the trip. Yeah.

I mean, there's always a, it kind of swells to, oh my God, like we're going three different countries and we're going 22 courses. And then you got to bring it back in. So I think at one point we were looking at going to Brazil on the way down, going to Gavea and the Olympic course there, go over to Montevideo to golf club to Uruguay there, which is another McKenzie, probably unrecognizable to what he laid out as far as the greens go. But I think the themes or the priorities were to get a sense of golf in Argentina without spreading ourselves too, too thin. And that said, like one of the reasons I wanted to go down, there's this, so in Tom Doak's confidential guide, there's a course El Pochorio de la Rita, which I'm,

you know, I'm going to mispronounce that over and over and over again. Okay. So I apologize. A different way each time. And maybe I'm like, I'm incapable of the proper pronunciation. My tongue just doesn't work like that. But it's basically a homemade course that as Wolfie told us hundreds of times while we were on the ground, uh, one bulldozer or one excavator. Bobcat. Bobcat. Yeah. And, you know, basically these two sons that, you know, grew up on this kind of Hacienda. Their grandfather had kind of consolidated into a large land holding in this cool valley kind of up, what was that, like Southwest of Cordoba.

They built this golf course kind of by hand and it's really, really, it's a fantastic course and the land is awesome. And so that place had always kind of occupied more like space in my brain than it probably should have. It was just this like, you know, weird golf course that almost shouldn't exist. So I really, really wanted to see that. So it made it like kind of made it a point of like, you know, weird golf course that almost shouldn't exist. So I really, really wanted to see that. So I made it like kind of made it a point of like, Hey, like I know it's

out of the way. We have to get up there. Wolfie incidentally had been there before and I said, Hey, this is worth seeing. And then jockey club was a mass, you know, that was probably the centerpiece of the trip and what we, what we planned around jockey club and Mardel Plata. So jockey club for me had been, again, going back to, whether it's confidential guide or just playing, like every other Alistair McKenzie course I've played, I've just walked away from that with such clarity, I guess, of, man, there's just something different about this

and there's something about this routing and the way that this is shaped. And it's just something different about this. And there's something about this routing and the way that this is shaped and just, it's just really unique, whether it's a green shapes or slopes or mounding or whatever. So Jockey Club was a centerpiece then we kind of worked back from there as well as Mardell Plata.

The more I talked to Wolfie about things, the more pictures he sent over, the more it was like, man, like this is not to be missed in this place. I would equate it to the North Barrack of our trip. If Jockey Club is St. Andrews or Muirfield, then I would say Mardell Plaza is like North Barrack.

Right there as far as soulfulness and just singularity there too. So kind of built the trip around those three things and then, you know, tried to add on stuff in each region that was, that was worth seeing. So, La Cumbria was actually the first course we played. It was up kind of in the foothills above Cordoba. Where'd you guys fly into? What's the actual like? I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport.

And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the airport. And then I was like, you know, only a couple inches of snow on the road, which is totally fine. Mic'd me way up to the airport, plenty of time remaining.

Get out there, get on the plane and do the whole boarding and de-boarding process about three different times before they ultimately ended up canceling the flight. So I was like, you know what? I'm not going to, I'm not going to roll this tomorrow because, you know, then we have connecting flights once we get into Buenos Aires and it was just a hassle. So I was like, you know what called Yara is like, I'm just going to drive to Houston and, and hope the United keeps my, you know, even though it's my second leg of this itinerary, hopefully they don't cancel the whole thing. And that's who had happened. I showed up and they're like, yeah, welcome aboard. Let's go.

Yeah. One K line. Got it done. There's some more travel hijinks we can get to later on. But yeah, we flew into BA and then we immediately, I shouldn't say immediately, we were hoping to get on like a little puddle jumper over to Cordoba and I couldn't book the flight. So then I finally booked the flight once I was on the ground there. And we just missed it with, you know, a little delay coming out of Houston. There were like Cody and Ben and I were on different flights coming out of Houston. There's two in a row. So we just missed that. We ended up just hanging out at the airport until about 3.40, four o'clock. Went up to Cordoba and then drove, it was about an hour up to Porto Rio from there. And then from there, yeah, basically just to take you through the trip, kind of the nuts and bolts of it, we drove to La Cumbria the next day, which

was about 75 minutes. Nice drive. There's cop stations like everywhere on the interstate. Like every 500 yards, there's like a police officer kiosk almost. They mean nothing. Just ignore it. And then La Cumbria too. We had a great meal after that, a place called Amelia. We drove back to El Pocho Rio, stayed there for the night again, and then played there the next day.

And then we flew where we drove back to Cordoba, connected in BA on the way down to Mardel Plata. We flew down there. That was kind of the biggest logistical hurdle of the trip was getting from Cordoba to Mardel Plata. And then out there, we had a great dinner that night. and then out there at a great dinner that night. And then, which in, you know, we can talk about Martell Plata. I was blown away at how much of an Italian influence there is much more so than kind of Latin or like,

it's like Italian and there's like almost a Scottish or, you know, like very English feel to the clubhouse and all of that stuff. And then from there we drove up to Buenos Aires and spent the rest of the trip in BA. And, you know, and then on the back end we went to the Latin America amateur as well. So yeah, it was kind of a whirlwind, like, you know, what six, six or seven days on the ground in three really distinct parts of the country. And I think we were just scratching the surface on all of it. Obviously we didn't get down to Patagonia. You know, there's some other other areas kind of up to the Northwest.

And then the late country kind of between there and Patagonia as well. So all sorts of stuff to go see next trip down. And then Buenos Aires just in general, like, you know, having three or four nights there was you could spend three or four weeks there and not scratch the surface. It's massive, massive city with a lot of layers to it. But you see, I want to give you know, this is a travel episode. We got a lot of Alpha planners that are out there saying, hey, TC, I want to do your itinerary dog. Don't expect there's no travel services that are going to put this package together for you. You need to be very comfortable booking inter-country flights. So you're going to have to deal with a lot of Google

translation and everything else. And then getting rental cars, which I think is probably the easiest thing. You drive on the right side of the road, you follow the speed limit, everything's totally normal there. TC mentioned the checkpoints that are, that are everywhere, but they, they're not doing anything. And, and even the people on the road are like extremely friendly. Like it's not, you're not in a rush to get anywhere, which is a good thing. The bad thing, but I think there's one thing you could do the adventurous itinerary that we did, which is very doable.

Uh, you just got to have all your ducks in a row, or really you could just do, you know, five, seven days in BA and still have a killer trip. And mix in a ton of culture and food and horse races and cricket and you know, you name it. You know, I think there's a bunch of different routes that people could go once they watch the video and definitely listen to this. Talk to me about about actually setting up the golf. I know you guys

probably had some sherpas you were working with, but that's probably one of the big takeaways from all of these trips is like, yeah, great. I don't know what the golf culture is like. Can you call these places up and get a tee time as an out of town traveler? Or is the golf pretty democratic and accessible there? Is it pretty exclusive and private? What's the balance? I think one limiting factor for us was the time of year that we were down there. It was kind of mid summer right when they're there. It sounds like it was very mid summer based on some of the sweaty boys I saw in photos.

Like God, some of the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot, the foot of the foot, the, the foot, Troy tempo series stuff, like the long sleeves I would have, like, I think my, I think my arms would have burned off that stuff on. Yeah. Um, I had this, I mean, you're pro several points. I need a pro server to come in. Yeah. There is a knockoff called pro serve here in Milwaukee that I see the trucks driving

around all the time. Yeah. It always makes me laugh. Maybe that's what you had there. But I do think like it was a little bit of a limiting factor in that some of the, you know, some of the courses were, were, were kind of going through their midsummer maintenance. As far as, you know, aeration and, and sanding and all of that stuff. And then just, you know, a couple of them, Mardell Plaza was getting ready for the Abierto del Sur, the open of the South. Jockey Club was getting ready for the- KFT.

Open to Argentina, the KFT event as well. So a little curve ball there on that front. Some courses like San Andreas were closed. So we just ended up popping by there and San Ysidro to see those. But I would say overall, like, they're definitely welcoming of visitors. It's just not an easy process to get that set up. You know, it's not dissimilar to what you would find in Scotland as far as just emailing a club secretary or, you know, an office there. But I just think they get a lot less inquiries. Like we were sitting out on the porch at Jockey Club

and there was a guy, he's like, oh my God, like I didn't expect to hear English here. And that was a pretty, like I think, the Cumbria, like they were pretty shocked to see some American tourists there. That was a pretty off the beaten path. I think we're the first gringos that were there since Wolfie was there. That was, that was a pretty off the, off the beaten path. I think we're the first gringos that were there since Wolfie was there. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I mean, the last time I accessed all of them, just via emails, it definitely helps. I think, you know,

it's going to cut through some red tape and speed up the process. If you get, if you can, so if you don't, if you don't, uh, if you don't know Spanish to have somebody send the email for you in Spanish. Um, but yeah, other than that, they're all accessible. Jockey Club, I know, has a service where, particularly if you're paying in American dollars, they'll send like a car to your hotel. They'll send a car to the hotel and pick you up. If you're there on business or you're there on a honeymoon or whatever and you're only playing one round of golf, I don't know what the number is, what the cost is, but they do offer a service where they'll rent you clubs for the day and they'll pick you

up and take you back to your hotel and everything. The pursuit of American dollars down there is not to be underestimated. We didn't get quite the experience because they've got a new president and so the black market rate for dollars has caught up to the other one. They're both 1100 to one. When I was there three years ago, it was already 300 to one, but, but yeah, everybody is, is still, um, very eager to accept, um, us dollars, um, just cause of the exchange rate. So, yeah, I think in our case too, as far as setting stuff up, we were really lucky. F lucky Felipe who, um,

I think you should like introduce who he is, what is, well, exactly. Yeah. So fully I was so Felipe is, uh, he runs, he's a banker by day and then he runs this El Prosop del Horacio podcast down there, which is essentially pretty similar to what we do here in the States, mainly focused upon, upon Argentinian golf and it's him and some buddies and they started this up a couple of years ago and like honestly the best like the best host we ever could have asked for anywhere.

He set up a lot of these places and it you know it like it really helps to have an on the ground fixer anywhere you go but I think especially Argentina with it being a cash economy and some of these places don't take foreign credit cards. They only take Argentine debit cards. And just generally speaking, I think there was not as many people speaking English as I thought there would be. And their version of Spanish is a little bit different. Obviously, they speak very quickly.

There's kind of an Italian element to it as well. So it's a little bit just not as easy to understand. So he was fantastic in all those regards and really took a lot off of our shoulders as far as it was like, hey, man, like here's where we really want to play. Is this tracking? Is there anywhere else that you would absolutely recommend? You recommended, you know, a few other places, but similar to like when we showed up in Scotland and said, we want to play, you know, a kill Spindy or a Cullen. When I said we wanted to play at La Cumbria, he was like, really, you want to play La Cumbra?

And I was like, is that wrong? He's like, no, that is absolutely awesome. I'm just shocked that you guys are traveling to the ends of the world and you even know what La Cumbra is, which we'll get to that. So from a cost perspective, I heard you talking about the conversion rate and stuff, but what does that mean? Did it end up being an extremely affordable trip? Is it normalized so that it's a little bit more what you would expect? And also if these places aren't taking credit cards, are

you guys just getting a backpack full of cash or what's the vibe there? Wolfie spooked me into thinking that if I guess last time he went down, they call them Arbolitos. They're like little, little back offices that you end up going into and they've, they've got to be like crisp new $100 bills. Yeah. So they know they're not counterfeit. Last time I was there, the official exchange rate.

So like if you put your, you put your card into the ATM, it gave you 100 pesos per American dollar. But if you went into these or if you knew somebody who could do it for you, go into one of these black market exchanges, you got 300 to one. So I mean, everybody was trying to you know, and like all of the clerks at the hotel reception and everybody working at the golf courses, they were all in the same thing. Like they wanted you to pay in your American dollars. So then they could do the same thing. So they could take the American dollars and get three times as many paces as if

you just, you know, paid them whatever the fee was in paces. That was definitely less this time. Um, and to be honest, it was a little bit more refreshing. Um, it, it, it's fun. The first like two days you do it. Yeah. That is kind of like like if you're there for seven days and you're like arguing about every single meal and like every single you know every

time you try to check out of a hotel and and if you for those that didn't listen to the podcast with with Neil it was even like at the Marriott like you go to check out of the Marriott in the morning and like you gotta it's like a you're like you know you're here it's like it's it's like uh you know you're negotiating the fee after you fee after you've already stayed there. So because for most of the last 60 years, what a peso is worth on Monday is different than what a peso is worth the next Friday. These people for 60 years have lived their experience. For the guys that are our age, their entire lives,

their experience is that if you get a paycheck on Friday, you spend all of it over the weekend on something that will hold its value better than the paper money. Because by the time you get to Monday, it's worth 10% less than it was on Friday. And that's like that for the last 60 years, it's been like that. And I think that permeates just the entire psyche and the entire psychology of everybody that we've met. How would it not? You know, where it's like, I think it's a really interesting time there right now, because like last month was the lowest, it was the lowest inflation they've had in what, like

30 years. It's starting to really level out in a good way. And so you can tell there's a certain sense of optimism and hope on that front. And I think that like when Neil came on the podcast, we did the trap draw on it. He was just talking about how, how draconian some of the import laws and the tariffs are as well of, it's just fascinating to see like there's just not like stuff is just not allowed to come into the country or you're paying dearly for it. So there's one or two track man things in the entire country.

It's tough to get irrigation supplies in like just, just on a very basic golf level. Right. But I think just going back to the psychology of people, like what I found was, and it, and it blended well with the Asado kind of hang like, like, you know, hanging out culture where they like to be with one another. They like to hang out with one another. They're very social. Uh felt like I was going back in time in a really good way of, you know, cell phones and devices weren't out on the table, they were in pockets or, you know, over somewhere else. And everybody was like present and kind of in the moment. And there's a really cool like there's just a kind of a lack of

anxiety, I found where people when when you've been fucked with constantly for the last 30, 40, 50 years between, you know, hyperinflation, political turmoil, they've had a government genocide essentially at, at, you know, at times, um, just all sorts of stuff, you know, societally that it just seems like there's a certain sense of, you know, endurance and just toughness and kind of unaffectedness that kind of rises to the top and just says, hey, like we're going to, you know, our social bonds or our friendships are the strongest thing here and warmth and hospitality

and all of that. So that was, I don't know, maybe I'm overgeneralizing, but it just felt like a truly, they were, you know, granted it's not the most efficient country in the world to do business in, I would say. It probably, that's probably the downside of that. But I don't know, I think in a cool way, it was like, it was very substantive, all the interactions that we had. They were very, it felt like a real bond with people. Their sense of community, I think,

is what is going to stick with me for a long, long time. And it's not like a national pride thing, like, you know, when us in the United States get all fired up about some, and then like a week later, we're like, oh yeah, remember when that like one thing happened? No, like they're all in it together. And I think that is evident by not just like the places that they have, but like also the people that we most know from Argentina, Messi and the Argentinian national team, like there's a reason why and people can go back and look at the drone footage

when they finally won the World Cup of people going absolutely crazy because that truly bonds them so close together because their entire lives they've had the government or someone else like constantly like, you know, putting their thumb down on them. And it's like, you know, just like TC said, it's, they's the most present people

because they've realized that outside of everything else that's going on in the world, it doesn't matter because the people that they have closest to them are what's going to get them through this life. And it's one of those things where, you know, we learned a lot in Australia about the tall poppy syndrome of, nobody really elevates above the rest. And that's kind of the way that it is in Argentina too. They're all, everybody's trying to pull everyone up together. And it's just, it was awesome to kind of be a part of it for two weeks. Yeah. I think on that front too, like it's just really isolated as well. too. Like it's just really isolated as well. You know, it's similar to that psyche of, of Australia of, Hey, we're kind of, you know, we got to fly a 10 hour flight to really get

out, you know, and see the rest of the world. There's, there's a little bit of that going on in Argentina. And I mean, it's, it's what a third the size of the continental United States. Like it'd be like, if you took west of Denver or something like that and just like, that's how big it is. I mean, you know, west of Denver out to Seattle and San Diego, it's a massive space and it's there's 50, 55 million people that live there in that space. Like that's a really pretty sparsely populated and half of those people live, live in and around BA. So kind of a frontier mentality of sorts too. I'd kind of forgotten the question, but yeah, email the club secretaries.

Cards always lead the way with cards. Take cash, take US dollars, but if you're looking, I would say this wherever you're going, make sure that you get some currency, local currency, and at the end of the day, they will accept whatever you can give them. So it doesn't matter if you don't have pesos, going, make sure that you get some currency, local currency, and at the end of the day, they will accept whatever you can give them. So it doesn't matter if you don't have pesos, they'll take dollars. But really, I mean, cards were surprisingly Amex led the way,

which is in every other country, like, oh no, Amex, we don't take that, we'll take everything else. Yeah, Amex was far more popular than, than, uh, visa, um, both, you know, restaurants, airlines, all that stuff. I would say also like, they just came out with a new bill. It's their highest, it's their highest denomination. It's a, it's 20,000 peso bill, which is equivalent to like a, you know, 18, $20 bill. Uh, so prior to that, I think they had a 10, a 10,000 was the highest.

So let's say you had a thousand bucks, you had to have 110. When I was there in 2021, the highest they had was 500. I had 300,000 pesos in 500 peso bills. I mean, it was literally a duffel bag full of cash. Wolfie, were you going to say something on kind of what they were getting at earlier about just cultural? I mean, just as it relates to golf, which is that, you know, the combination of how, you know, how, how remote it is plus the unfavorable exchange rate, they're

not very well traveled as far as, I mean, some of them have done schooling in the United States, at least the upper, you know, the upper crust. But there's no golf trips to Bannon Dunes. I mean, from a practical standpoint, that is completely out of the question of what it costs. I mean, Felipe had been to the Masters once for part of his podcasting and had played a couple courses around the Aiken area, but even that was a huge stretch for him financially. I mean, he was saying like, yeah, that's like, it's, you know, I mean, you think about the other way, those guys coming up here,

and it's just, you know, they're paying 50,000 paces for a hat, you know, you know, at the Masters gift shop. So it's tough. Yeah, for some other practical things, if you are going to go, so make sure you take teas, make sure you take balls. There's some pro shops, some clubs have pro shops, some don't. Pretty much a couple of them were closed in the middle of the day when we were there. Or they just store carts there, push carts there, but they're not actually selling anything. There's no logo merch at all there. Make sure you take all the supplies you need.

Make sure you're ready to carry your golf bag too. Because there's, I think we still have golf carts at one course we went to, which was the point of Zara's golf club was definitely the most modern of the courses we went to. But other than that, they pretty much all carried and not many of them even used trolleys. It was pretty much just, they slung it on their backs. We didn't use trolleys at all, I don't think. It's just, they all were tough. So they're all walkable. Which Wolfie, let's kind of chat about the caddy culture there too, because I think that was a surprise for me when planning the trip and just kind of how that's gone by the wayside over the last couple of years.

Yeah. So anybody that's, you know, it's a familiar story for anybody that's maybe paying attention or reading about what's going on in the Northeastern United States, I think in Long Island and a lot of clubs around New York. Now it's spreading down the Atlantic seaboard, which is some lawyers have gotten involved in legislating a question of whether caddies are club employees or whether they're independent contractors. There's been a number of lawsuits, both in the United States and in Argentina, on asking

for back pay. It essentially centers around, are you an employee if you have to be there by a certain time of the day? If you have to be there by 7 a.m. if you want to work that day, or if you are expected to do anything while you're waiting to get out, or if you just don't get paid on days it rains, does that in fact make you more of an employee than it does, should you be considered an employee rather than a contractor. They're suing for back wages.

In the United States, that's being litigated in a process of being litigated or settlements being reached at a lot of private clubs in the East. In Argentina, they reacted by firing everybody. They just got rid of all the caddies. The caddy programs are all pretty much gone. There's a few, I saw on the last trip one or two and I saw on this trip, I think one where it's pretty clearly like a caddy that's worked for the same person for a long time and they've probably worked out a deal with one particular guy to that be his full-time

caddy and whatever else he's doing for that guy on the side. But other than that, like his personal attendant almost, but other than that, the caddy yards in Argentina are gone. And I've brought up, we tried to kind of dig into the question is that, what happens to the future of Argentine golf? Because all the good players, Cabrera and Gomez and David, all of them started as caddies.

And that's, in its, and it's unique flavor, selfishly, I guess, you know, you, I liked one of the things I liked about following the European tour and I liked about the, you know, the early days of the rider cup or the Walker Cup or whatever, whereas like the different styles of players, you know, that you just, you expected like players from certain countries to have better short games and be a little wilder off the tee and you know, their homes swings to be a little more homemade. And what's happening in, in, in the negative in Argentina, I think is that's going away. Now that what positive is, is what we saw at

the very end of our trip, which is that colleges have discovered that there's good players down there that they can recruit and there's national development teams and there's take lessons online, obviously, and you can, you know, you can send a video of your golf swing to, you know, the Arkansas head coach and he can scout you from 6,000 miles away without ever having to meet you just by looking at videos of your swing and stuff.

So in some ways it's good. The romantic in me thinks is a little bit worried about that. But yeah, it's definitely, it's there. I mean, it's come, I think they've been gone for, I don't know, you guys know the number of five or six years, I think they've been gone and they're completely gone because of the legal issues. And it was, Cordoba Golf Club was kind of the epicenter of it, right? I don't know where it started, but- Or just for like caddy culture and a lot of those guys coming out.

Oh yes. Yeah, that's where Cabrera and yeah. Do you think- That's a greatrera and yeah. That's great. It's a great point Wolfie, and I think that lawsuit or when it happened was actually like 2018 or 2019. The one thing that I would note is that you're right

that they kind of have, the national program has kind of stepped in and said, hey, they have a developing pathway for kids to get better, to have access to equipment and facilities and potential to go play collegiate and everything else like that. But we can have this conversation without acknowledging the fact that you take away caddies away. You're basically created a class structure within golf, meaning that the lower employment kids who used to come in as caddies and would pick up the game that way, that's gone now.

So basically, unless you're upper middle class to the high end in Argentina, you're just not playing golf. And I think that's the biggest detriment that that decision has really made. So there's pros and cons to both sides of it, but if you look at it overall, and really like where we're at current day, post-Cabrera is, we can talk about toasting, we can talk about Grillo, and both of them come from the upper class.

And it's kind of interesting to see the development in everybody else who's coming next, where they're kind of gonna come from. Well, that's kind of what I was going to ask is just, you know, from a local perspective, what is golf down there? You know, what is it? I would imagine a lot of private clubs. I would imagine there's not a lot of like, you know, Buenos Aires municipal golf course type of stuff. But correct me if I'm wrong on any of that. There's some munis. I think there's some public courses. So when we say private club, we think private club, the United States private club, it's not necessarily, I would say they're very proud of joining a club.

More in the Scottish sense of community center type of place. A hundred percent. And they have a ton of club matches and pennant matches and everything else like that. And like there's pride in what club you belong to. There's also pride in like, you know, the facilities and everything else that that club comes with. We'll talk about Buenos Aires golf club, which is the modern club, the American club, as they would call it. And it has like everything that you would expect

kind of from any club in the United States. But you still have the availability to travel around and get on a lot easier, I would say, than even like locals in Australia. Locals in Australia struggle to get into these private clubs where in Argentina it's like, oh yeah, well, I'll go play there because we have a club match there in a month and whatever. One thing that shocked me, or not shocked me, but just I was jealous of,

I mean, everywhere that we played had the best post-round gallery, the best post-round patio that you've ever seen, whether it was La Cumbria, El Pochorio, Josh Jockey Club, Mardo Platos, Buenos Aires. Every single one of them had the, you could tell the focal point of the day was after you finished sitting down, having a drink, recounting the round and being social afterwards. Yeah. Which I was going to ask, any other kind of like fun, I don't know, customs or traditions probably sounds too serious, but I always think TC like, you know, when we went to Australia for the first time and you kind of realize like, Oh, nobody like, nobody drinks during

the round here. You know, in America, it's like, Oh, okay. I'll take a tea time and a sleeve of balls and a six pack and a cooler. And it's like, you go in some other countries and it's like, Oh, whoa, nobody, people don't really treat the game that way. Anything like that, that you're kind of like, Oh, that's, that's interesting or peculiar or unique. They drank a Felipe and his buddies. I think it's a wider thing. They drink, they call it, they call it finessa, which is Fanta and beer afterwards. It's like a shandy. Yeah. Yeah. So that I think, gosh, what else? I mean, not really a surprising thing. But and maybe it's just a matter of some of the clubs that we went

to are so old, but the water pressure, the shower pressure was, it was insane. I mean, a blue wolfies, tooth off. Took it right out. I mean, it's really everything. Once you step inside the gates, I mean, they're, they're, um, they're true clubs as far as, you know, there's, there's little girls plan and teenage boys and 75 year old guys that look like they've been playing in the same foursome you know for the last 60 years. It's all there and they're all on the porch together afterwards and in five of the six places we've

been or four of the six places we visited it was all taking place in club houses that look like a royal lithium. I mean you know if there's one place where you still see like the reminder like oh Yeah, this was the richest country in the world in 1925 It's the clubhouses. I mean, you know, you'll see them in the in the videos. I hope everybody watches but Some of the photos we can share but they are incredibly grand I mean, I mean the clubhouses are in the facilities, you know the showers in the in the the you know the drawing rooms in the in the drawing rooms, in the formal dining room, in the informal dining room. And they're all 100 years old now. They're

all pretty beat up. I mean, the floors and stuff and the roofs on these clubhouses are 100 years old. But there is this like, you do get a sense of what it was like at one time when you can imagine like, oh man, I could see like a band playing in this clubhouse and everybody wearing tuxedos and on a Saturday night and this being like, you know, the place to be. And now it's, you know, it's all a bit worn down and it's all a little bit rougher on the edges. But the flip side of that is it's 50 locals that are all just banging their

ball around for 18 holes on some pretty darn good golf courses that haven't been messed with and getting around in three hours and 45 minutes and then having some beers and fantas afterwards. And that's a, you know, what's better than that? I mean, that's, that's a pretty good life. You know, it's pretty good. Or some Fernet. Or some Fernet with a freshly squeezed lemon. God, that's such a good description that gets me so fired up to go see a place like that. I'm trying to, I'm searching for comps and it almost like,

you would love it, man. It sounds like straight up. It sounds like Detroit or something, right? Like a similar kind of like that's this was the center of the world for, for 40 years. And now it is very much not. And Jockey club. How do you hang on to that? How do you preserve it? How do you, you know, that's such an interesting dynamic. Jockey club felt like Detroit golf club, like the 36 hole Ross facility. Cool. It's a, it's a McKenzie facility, but very flat, but grand scale, massive

clubhouse kind of Tudor style. And you know, you're sitting out there and like thinking about, Oh my, like, look at these houses over here or there there's the massive racetrack that looks, you know, that's the size of Tersheel Downs or larger right next door. And Wolfie was saying there's a little bit of a defensive posture from a lot of these old school golf clubs because they've been chipped away at and it's a pretty socialist society. And so they've been, you know, especially in the Perron years, you know, back in the, in the sixties, you know, you know,

like 50, 60, seventies was like kind of bourgeois punching bag a little bit of, hey, let's, let's chip away at these golf clubs and bring them, you know, bring them down to size. Like, like I think jockey club has, they've got the in town club, they've got, you know, I think the closest comp would be like the Olympic club in San Francisco, where you've got a basketball team, you've got a swim team, you've

got, you know, probably a boxing league and like the golf course is just a part of a larger sporting club. The horse race track, which, which directly borders the golf course, it sees 30,000 people. 30,000 people for horse races. And they got taken from them because the government at some point seized it because they wanted the revenues from the wagering on the horse races. But it's still there. It's just a reminder of bygone times. But I think that, I don't know, Cody, how you felt about it,

but I definitely felt the same as Tron where there's that Not just on the not just related to golf But maybe like everything in society where there's a kind of a you know, you kind of keep to yourself and don't you know? There's not a lot of extravagance at least showy stuff because there's you know Sitting next to you, right? Yeah, And I think that's kind of the cool thing is that they were, you know, very diverse. I mean, definitely like different levels in society at each club that you saw. And it wasn't just kind of zoned out there.

And there's people that have been in the club for a very, very long time, might not be the richest guy in the world, but you know, he's been a member there for 30 years and still rocking it. DG hit the nail on the head. We went in the middle of summer. It was honestly like difficult at times to scare up a couple bottles of water.

So there's no real like snack bars. There's no grabbing goes. I think at the at the Cumbria, we were like, Oh, can we get like, you know, some water and cokes? And they're like, Yes, we'll set the table for you. Right? No, no, no. Like, we got to go to the tea. Everything is very much like you're playing golf, or you're taking part of this, you know, meal. And then just like we talked about the finesse and stuff like that. But traditionally, after golf, there's there's, you know, there's different levels of a Sado and, and what goes into that. And I think that is with your having

a golf day at the end, you cap off that golf day with a big grilling with, you know, friends that you played with and others that maybe weren't able to make it that day, but it's just kind of rounding the whole thing out. No beers during the round because you're carrying everything with you. And it's not like, you know, you're taking little cans or something like that. You know, there's majority of bottles everywhere. So it's just kind of golf and then everything else.

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USGA.org slash get a handicap back to the pod. Well, before we get into the golf specifics, Ben, I want to bring you in for a sec from just kind of like a behind the camera through the lens sort of perspective, what stuck out to you, whether it was the architecture, something about the golf courses, what did you notice? Yeah, I think the thing that I noticed most from the golf course specific side is there's so much opportunity. When these guys talk about it's stuck in time unchanged, that's true, but there's also some downside to that. It's not taken care of. The bunkers are hazards. It's not taken care of at the American level, which is great.

It's a totally different feeling, totally different experience in that sense. But the bones are definitely there. I think it's one of those things where this trip has so much opportunity. If you come in with that lens, if you don't, I think you could be pretty negative about the conditioning and the overgrowth of trees and

things like that pretty quickly. So that's what I noticed out there. I mean, these places are rustic and original and it's a lot of texture, you know, through the camera, a lot of things to shoot at. Almost felt a little bit like a, you know, antiques road show at times, which was really fun, you know, but I think it's the opportunity. If you come in very optimistic about what it could be, if there was some investment, if there was a different level of taking care of these locations, I think it could be up there with many different golf trips. But it's not quite there yet.

So I think that's what was really fun about it is looking around, seeing people being very optimistic, loving what they have, but also knowing, man, this is like a treasure trove of potentially freaking awesome golf courses. So that's, I think, my biggest takeaway from it. Also, those boys don't love to use water, man. Everything was burnt out in the best way,

like to play really, really well. A lot of different shades of brown and light greens mixed in there. So that was a fun thing to take away. Well, I guess then kind of question for everybody before we get into the specifics of the golf courses, people listening to this probably, you know, you can have kind of one big golf trip on People listening to this probably, you can have one big golf trip on the horizon at a time, whether that's a Scotland trip, an Australia trip,

an Ireland trip, whatever. Where does this fit for you guys for the wider golfing public? Is this somewhere where it's like, you should go to Scotland, Ireland, do all that stuff first? Is this like a, if you're an adventurer, you would absolutely love this. If this is this a, if you're a food person, this should go to the top of your list. TC, I'll start with you. What's the context do you think for a trip like this? Yeah, that's a good question. I think it probably depends on how deep you are into the golf scene. Like I think if you wanted to make this a golf only trip, you know, I'd probably want to go deeper on Scotland or England or Ireland or Bandon first. But if you're, I think if you've been to a lot of those places or you've been to some of those places and

you're tired of seeing the same club logos on shirts and like the same tour buses and all of that, and you, and you truly want to feel like, Hey, I want to go see something different. I would seek this out. I also think it's a really good like couples trip or, you know, go with a, you know, a couple of couples and couple of your buddies or whatever. I think there's like, you could go to BA and then take a side trip from there and cover a lot of the same stuff that we did, but then also do a lot of cultural stuff within the city. Great, you know, great dinners, that sort of thing. So I think there's, there's that, you know, it's kind of what you make of it, I think. But I think if you're choosing between this

and say Melbourne for a golf trip, like I, I'd go to Melbourne, like that's, it's a no brainer, like go to Melbourne. But I feel like if you're in that 300 or 400 level and you've been doing this for a few years, then this is a really, really cool, unique place to see that'll probably broaden your horizons a little bit. If you're looking for some electives, you got to get some new electives to get your degree. I think that's what this sounds like. Wolfie Cody, anything to add there? Good way to put it. Yeah. The only thing that I'd add is that in the United States is winter time.

There's only so many places that you can go to and we haven't explored South Africa yet, but we eventually will. So that really leaves South America and Australia. And if you ask me, do I want to get on? New Zealand. New Zealand. New Zealand. But it's same for that. So if you ask me, do you want to shift, have a one hour time change and get on a nine hour

flight or turn your world upside down and, you know, get on that 18 hour flight and, you know, have multiple days on the back end of it trying to readjust to normal society? I mean, I would say that, yeah, this trip fits in there. It doesn't have the highs. And I think, you know, Ben made a great point and we're always looking at what the maximum potential of courses and clubs can be. But really, it was amazing golf. And it's very cheap, realistically. Like, once you get past your flight and everything, like the hotels weren't crazy expensive. The food was incredibly cheap. The green fees are very reasonable.

And it's a ton of fun. And it's a sense of adventure where people are not speaking your language. And I think, yeah, it does fit in there. So, I mean, it's very hard to rack up against those other incredible destinations. But I look at it's very hard to rack up against those other incredible destinations, but I look at it versus like, you know, times of the year and seasons of the year, and not

everybody has the availability to take off some, you know, between April and September to go on a big golf trip. Well, this is another option in those other months. I think also, to the point too of like, like going back to Scotty Schaeffler's quote at Pebble about just, you know, I like, I like weird stuff or I like it when, when something's got a little bit of funk to it. You've got a lot of that too of, you know, and it's not all good,

right? Or it's not all like, Oh my God, that tree shouldn't be there. But, but like, it's so cool walking around with Wolfie being like, Oh, you know what? Like these are native trees. These aren't, or I mean, even just some of the flora and fauna. Like we saw some crazy ass shit from, from, from a wildlife perspective. What was that thing called that we saw it at Buenos Aires golf club. Cappie Bear. Chupacabra. Good call. You know that we had some of the trees at a jockey club are insane. People real quick. It's just a giant rat. That's what it is. It's this big. Gnarly looking. Yeah. Not really. It's kind of cute looking actually. Like it what it is. Gnarly looking. Yeah. Yeah, not really. It's kind of cute looking, actually.

Like it's fat enough. And like the tails, not like it's kind of cute looking. It's big enough and like a. It's kind of cute. Wolfie almost almost knocked off the population of capybaras at B.A. It was tough. It hit two in a, just right into a pack of them. Did I also hear tell of, of Wolfie hitting like maybe the most heroic shot in history, struggled from heat exhaustion and then just battling back. I just, I

wanted to sneak that in when you were talking about the water. I don't know. Well, I think this brings us to the point of like kind of how we, we did this trip TC and I think naturally we didn't really have a competition built into this but naturally over time. So our incredible Sherpa we mentioned Felipe already I ended up being his partner. Now he's a great player. I don't know exactly what he told us he was playing off of but you know he works a lot. So he was like he's like a three or four and And yeah, that's what I remember. Three. Yeah. Yeah. It was,

we teamed up for the entirety of the trip and took on TC and, and the Wolfman and you know, it's this is the first time I ever met Wolfie in real life, which, you know, maybe there's a separate podcast for that altogether. Just kidding. But it's, you know, Wolfie can move it and when you need somebody to show up and hit a shot and pull something off, I mean, he's your guy. Now you might take a couple of holes off in between, but now he just got to

recharge the batteries, baby. Right. It's match play. I'm a match play player. Yeah. I'm a, I'm old. I think everybody, uh, we re I think we realized that, uh, I think I realized that by the end of the trip.

I'm old and this is a long story that we won't get into, but I don't have a smaller large intestine thanks to some troubles in my youth with Crohn's disease. And so, and that's where you absorb all the water in your, you know, that's where your body absorbs water. And so it was 104 degrees, 103 degrees, six days in a row. And we carried our bags six days in a row and then flew at night and changed hotels and everything else. And we still got it done.

T.C. We just, you know, we got to go, which I'll say it was. That's an ask. Yeah. It was a pretty severe heat wave that they were having. Like, I don't think those were those were normal temps. It was a no breeze, no shade. Just it was just beaten on us. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, it was.

That's you're playing a real sport, man. That's that's that's real. You got to game it out there. Field temperatures is high down in the ring. You know, you sign up for small rounds. We're going to give you 12 rounds. Well, let's let's get into some of the specifics here. Let's go course by course. So first course you guys played was what?

Lacumbria. And we've kind of hinted at the quirk here and some of the off the beaten path-ness of it, but TC, I'll start with you. How would you sum it up for someone who's never been there? Yeah, it's sub 6,000 yards. It's up in this little kind of vacation town. So you've got kind of local element and then you've got some national members that come in for the weekends from BA. They used to have the, I think the Argentine open there. Di Vincenzo made a 12 on the 12th hole. We kept hearing about this 12th hole and we finally got to it. 66 yard par three. It's awesome. And it's like, you know, the first four or five holes are there's some, there's some really cool stuff in there. But then you get to six, seven,

and then the rest of the course from there and you feel like you're, Deidj, from something that you've seen, I would say it felt at times like I was in at Valley Club of Montecito or Ojai Valley, like very Southern California George Thomas stuff. You know, the back nine there is striking, but the, it was the eighth hole, a little short par four over this hillside. It had this little tiny little hotel behind you and these cool trees and a bunch of parakeets just singing away. And then you hit over the crest of this hill and there's this big reveal to this tiny little green over on the right.

And it's like a 330 yard hole. And so you can kind of pull, you can hit four iron off the tee. You could hit three wood, you get a driver, you play it a multitude of different ways. And then you're probably going to be left with this devilish 60 yard, little, you know, chip shot into the green. And, uh, and that was, that was where the course really, really started, in my opinion, and some spectacular par threes on the back and, uh, and that was, that was where the course really, really started in my opinion. And some spectacular par threes on the back. And, uh, and yeah, one of the best, best back patio scenes I've ever seen anywhere. So I loved it.

It was, I think like it wasn't the best course we played on the trip, but the more and more I think about it, I think it was my favorite course we played on the whole trip. And anything else to add on, on the Cumberay from you guys? Uh, 1924, it was my favorite course we played on the whole trip. And anything else to add on the cumbre from you guys? 1924, it was a one off. Juan Denton was the guy who built it. I don't know anything about him. Like I said, I think they just worked with what they had. When TC says it was like in a little resort town or a town that people just summer in or whatever, that would definitely, I mean, it reminded me kind of as something almost

like in Northern Michigan, like the biggest building in the town was the clubhouse. Um, they had two, two tennis courts out front that used to be grass tennis courts. Um, and they're now clay or they're brushed, uh, carpet, but, um, like the photos in the, in the clubhouse and stuff were just, um, amazing of how, you know, what this place was like a hundred years ago and it's built. And yeah, just a cool course. Ben's putting in the chat for me to ask you about the showers with benches. Yeah. So that's where I, I, uh, you guys got to see the video to believe it. So common thread.

So somebody can, uh, somebody can hit us up and tell us what the hell's going on here. Cause we never got a, we never got a a good Clean explanation to English in these locker rooms They've all got benches in the locker rooms like right next to the showers facing the showers and in some at Martell plot it was like double deckers. It was like an amphitheater like that was like like 15 guys It was almost like a steam room, but it wasn't a steam room It was like and they're all facing towards the showers. These showers are incredible. I mean, like TC said, I mean, we're talking three inch pipes. I mean, it would fill your bathtub in 15 seconds. Like that's how much it's incredible how much water I mean, forget about Marion.

I want to hear about Marion. I don't hear about Friar said this was twice as much water as at Marion. It's twice as much. It's like that. It can't even have drains They have to have just like an open like trough and you stand on it on a great above it because just to get the water Like away because it's coming out so fast. It's unbelievable One thing to call out just a kind of a very unique routing I think they use the land that they had available very, very well. Some really cool holes. We'll mention it. The fourth hole is going to come up in the video. One of the all-time bad walks from green backwards to T-box. But I understand when you're working with

the land that you got, you got to put the stuff somewhere. The day that we were there, really cool though. It was club championship day, so they just kind of filed our group right around in there. So we're part of the club championship stack. And then what I noticed from being out there is because, you know, it was all members and the amount of not only juniors, but female juniors, a ton of girls that were out there playing.

And then once we came around and finished, what we realized that they had their patio, they had removed the kind of the normal stands and tables and everything there. And they had like a really cool memorial, I don't want to say service, but memorial party celebration going on on their back patio of a long time female member. At one point in time, she was actually the club president, which I think she might have been like the first female president ever. And it was just kind of cool. And again, another case that showed us like, wow, okay.

You know, these not only are just clubs that are here for a bunch of dudes, like they're trying to push female and women's golf as much as they can. Yeah. So where, DJ, I had like, you uh, we're good DJ. I had like, you know, we'll do favorite holes later on, but I was just going

through like basically every hole we played on the trip and the par threes out there were awesome. I mean, just some spectacular stuff coming down the stretch, like 12, 12 and 16. I mean, 16 was all world. Um, don't forget about the little, little cafe set up on the right side of seven green too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really like all the charm you could ever ask for at this place.

So we would, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that TC in front of a full patio full of people on 18 hit a, I don't know, did you, did you get a distance on a 45 yard bunker shot 40 yard bunker shot? Yeah, probably around 40. Yeah. Not nine and 18 or the greens for nine and 18 are right next to each other. And they're both like right underneath the patio, you know, kind of elevated up on the Hill, up in the Hill and yeah, from long way away, uh, TC hit a spectacular bunker shot that just happened, drew a standing invasion from the crowd.

Oh, people are just tears of their own. Welcoming TC grown man, I mean grown man, beer besides themselves. Yeah, it was a, it was a tasteful smattering of applause. Uh, and then afterwards we went to this awesome restaurant, Amelia, which is kind of like when you, when you picture Argentina and Goucho's and stuff and wide open vistas, I think Cody felt like he was back in the game. He was like, I'm going to go to the game. I'm going to go to the game. I'm going to go to the game. I'm going to go to the game. I'm going to go to the game. which is kind of like when you, when you picture Argentina and Gauchos and stuff and wide open vistas, I think Cody felt like he was back in Montana. Um, it was, it was just a spectacular setting there. And then, uh, and then we popped, popped through a

town called Falda on the way home. And it's, it was rumored to be that they have a big Oktoberfest celebration and some large eagle sculptures and stuff. We were doing some Nazi hunting. Sure. Yeah. A little bit of a historical detour that people can dive into who found their way down there. All right.

Where do we head next after that, golf wise? We go to El Poterio de Loretta. Wolfie, what do you got next after that? Golf wise? We, we go to El Pote Rio de Loretta. Wolfie, what do you got on the, on the history of this place? So that's the one that was built by the brothers and their father. Um, it was one Bobcat, one Bobcat, one built by hand. Tom Doak says they did a great job with it. That's good enough for me. You stay in basic and you stay in there in the, you know, the house,

the manor house. And it's a true like, I mean, the, the hardwood floors and the ceilings and the doors. I mean, they're, they were telling me last time, like these doors are like five inches. This is like a castle door. And they're like, yeah, cause it's like the bag, if the bad guys come over the hill and you're like, you know, there's nobody coming to help you. Like you got to barricade yourself in there and like outlast them for a day or two. It's like a siege.

So the last time you were there, there was a there was a Puma. Last time was there was a Puma sighting like after I'd been told 10 times that like, oh, no, the Puma is like they're up in the hills, whatever. And then last time I stand there like, hey, don't come outside. There's like somebody just saw Puma. Like we got to check out the Puma situation. There you go. Fantastic. I was or Yeah, charming.

Definitely, I would say the spot if you are going to, like if you're thinking about a like a honeymoon type set of situation or just a anniversary trip down to Argentina and you're just looking for like a weekend away from Buenos Aires for three or four days or whatever, this would be a pretty romantic spot. I mean, pretty cool spot. It's pretty isolated, but just kind of charming and the little stream that weaves its way through the golf course they've built a series of dams and like a little waterfalls over it and stuff and The wildlife and the fauna and everything is just it's amazing

I mean last time I was there I got to eat dinner with one of the brothers that built the place and he was just Telling me stories of growing up there and it's like something out of a storybook, right? Where like they figured out how they wanted to route the golf course by like playing, playing, you know, with, you know, clubs as a kids when there wasn't a golf course there and like, you know, running all over the land and that's where they spent their summers. And and then, you know, when they were adults, they had an opportunity to do it. I was a little I'd been there before. I was a little bit concerned because they are starting to sell some real estate.

They're starting to let people build houses around the property. And they did expand the Hacienda. They expanded the manor house. But I thought both are done tastefully enough that it didn't take away from the experience from what I recall the last time versus this time. I, you know, I, I thought I didn't think it was, um, I didn't think it was any less charming, pretty, pretty cool place, you know, some like really cool holes that are wedged into spots that you didn't like, you wouldn't think that they could wedge a hole into great land. Like there,

some, some great par fives using the land and kind of some of these natural washes really well. By great land, I think he what we're referring to is usually using the natural terrain, correct? Because it's some of the rock is shit I've ever seen. Did you joke about the one bobcat thing? Because I truly don't know they must have needed truckloads of dynamite just to break through everything because it's all just solid rock. The fact that there's a golf course laid out there and the grass that they are able to grow on it is truly spectacular. But I thought that was the cool

part was I think you know because they couldn't know, use dynamite on 18 holes, how many holes they, they, they figured out ways to like route them through the low parts of what like TSA said they're almost like the washes that you would see in California, like a George Thomas course, like a Baranca type thing. Only, that's where the fairway is, is down in the low point. They pulled it off. I it's, it's, it's cool to see, you know, it's not a 10, but it's pretty cool in the setting itself makes it, you know, I was gonna say, you feel like you're away from the world. Like you feel like you're just,

it's like resort golf at its finest. I feel like it feels like you're on an adventure out there. And there's certain spots where, like I was telling Cody, man, I feel like I'm in southeastern Spain here, like, you know, Valderrama or where they had the Solheim Cup in spots., like, you know, Valderrama or, uh, w where they had the Solheim cup in spots and then you kind of play down like six, seven, eight, you kind of play down around the Hacienda and there's this idyllic little par three there. And, and, uh, we were, Cody had the drone up and these two black labs are just chasing the drone up and down the, uh, hole. It was great. A lot of like they love their dogs down in Argentina, both their pets and the

stray dogs out in the streets. A lot of, a lot of stray dogs. Love that. So there's another kick in the, in the positive column. DJ, you know, part of any NLU trip when you got a big travel day, but you're also trying to cram some golf in the morning, it's when, uh, you know, you got to stay on top of that timeline. So, uh, another very warm day, we got done playing 18 holes of golf.

We thought that we're going to have time available to get a quick shower in. Uh, we did not, we only had time available for really two people to jump in the shower. So the three of us, TC Wolfie and I, there's this little pond waterfall right outside of the main entrance that we noticed the locals congregate to, all times that we went in and out of that little entry point. So we're like, hey, you know, we're here, might as well do it. So that's where we went and took our post golf on our way to our airport wash at, which

is funny. I want to call out now I said it's like a normal fun watering hole. People jumping off the little waterfall and everything else like that. It's like a Sunday afternoon too. I mean, it's packed. Wolfie was going to roll up with a bottle of head and shoulders and just save some time. Ben, can you pop it for a sec? Ben said this is the most uncomfortable he was holding a camera on the whole trip. I'm curious why that is. Yeah, for sure. I mean, these are just like people enjoying their weekend, having a little barbecue and out there with their kids in the creek and then Wolfie and TC, Cody going,

towel over the back, just total gringo situation. And I'm rolling in with my camera gear and stuff and shooting all these people and the locals in there. Some guy had came up to me and started speaking in Spanish. I assume he was asking, what the hell are you doing? And I just kind of like nodded out. Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, it was, it was a little uncomfortable. I think it was an old mill. It was like an old mill that, you know, that was producing power there and they were, you know, doing something with it. So. All right. Where are we going? I appreciate the guys diving in though. That was good. It hit the spot. No, cooled me off, cleaned up. It's great.

Anything we can do to get that footage for you, Benny. But yeah, then we took the drive back down to the airport. Some really good airport beers along the way, but pretty smooth flight. We met somebody, one of Felipe's friends, all time guy. I'll make sure I send the pictures over here, but you know, he speaks decent English, knew exactly who we were, was like, oh, you guys are no laying up guys.

And we're like, whoa, this is kind of, this is kind of interesting, man. And then he started showing us his tattoos. So he's got the Hogan tattoo on one side. He's got a Pro V1 tattoo on his calf. It just truly unbelievable stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we flew on the way out there,

we flew JetSmart Airlines, which would be like their equivalent of a, you know, Allegiant or something like that. Yeah. And then on the way back, we flew Aerolinius Argentina. Okay, so there's two airports in BA, there's one, there's one kind of right downtown, which is mostly domestic stuff. And then the international airports out, out kind of south of town. And so we flew on the way through BA, we flew through the domestic airport and it's like jammed right

up hard against the river and the city. And yeah, great airport beers. We're drinking a lot of Patagonia cervezas and a big, big hard rock, spot, a lot of hard rock cafes in the airports down there. Oh, I don't know that I would have known that was a long time. And I was, I was really with you guys for most of this pod. That's the first sort of like, Oh, okay. I don't know. I don't know if that's a, yeah, actually they, they ended up, they didn't really tell us

this, but they weren't going to let us board the plane unless we paid for our luggage that they didn't tell us we had to pay for. Wolfies got, you know, really, really, really good status on Sky Team. And so, you know, a couple of us got through with with free luggage and then he like ripped the boarding pass in half and they were going to make. Yeah. Wolf is missing. Yeah, because they gave us the boarding pass and then we get up for security and like two of us get through. And all of a sudden I turn around and they're like ripping Tron's ticket in half.

I was like, whoa, like what happened back there? Needless to say, not the like I don't think one of the stronger Sky Team partners. Yeah. So but it was a it was a smooth, smooth two flights down to Mardell Plata and which is about four or five hours south of B.A., right along the coast. I will say Tron was the only one that was aware before the plane took off that it was not a...

We thought it was one flight to Mardau Plata. It was two flights, which was one flight too many. Wolfie, we won't hold that against him on some travel snafus, okay? Because I'm pretty sure our adventures out leaving Mardo Plata are gonna be right up there with your unexpected two flights that TC set us up with. Dej, we mentioned that we had a rental car up in Cordoba. When we landed in Mardo Plata, we were just taxis because we knew we were only there for basically 24 hours.

So taxi from the airport down to the hotel. And it was when we, this is I think when we realized, so there's, you know, there's six of us total. So we ended up in all the luggage and shit. We had to get three different taxis. This is when we realized there's no stop signs in Argentina, which was kind of new, none at all. So it's kind of a, you know, best of intentions,

but if you make it there first, you kind of got the right away situation. So people are just ripping through side streets, like almost getting clipped. It's, it's one of those things that would never ever be able to, to happen in America because people are so protective of their cars there. They'll just like, you know, Oh yeah, you go right ahead in America. There would be, you know, 15 people crashing into each other, but it was a very interesting trip down to the hotel. Yeah, whoever's on the right side, I guess has, you know, the right side or the busier street, like there's some streets where it's pretty clear who gets the right away. But yeah, it was, that

was kind of, I mean, M Martell Plaza is a pretty big city. It would be like what the equivalent of like Fort Lauderdale or something. Yeah. It's a beach town for sure. Yeah. Kind of a high rises right by the water. I think the, yeah, the according to Wikipedia, the urban population is 680,000 like within the city limits and yeah, big port city and that swells though.

It is their vacation destination. They were all at the beach the day we were there. All 680,000. I'm going to be it was it was incredible. It was like Bondi Beach, but for miles and miles, I mean, it just packed. You couldn't even see the sand. There were so many people standing. It was crazy.

How many people there were there? It looks like the beaches on the French Riviera or just justllas for tens of miles. And then yeah, you just, like Mardel Plata, AKA Playa Grande is the golf course. It's a little bit south of the casino and the urban core there. And there's a big Sheraton next door, like massive, one of the most unsightly hotels I think I've ever seen before. And so we stayed there right next to the course and walked over the next morning and we had a great dinner that night.

More of a seafood centric cuisine down in those parts. And then walked over the club and it was like, what a magical day we had out there. Just felt like, you know, at times it felt like you were in San Francisco with big Cypress trees on the back end of the property there. The big Argentinian Naval base is right there. Like their Annapolis is right there. Now granted, they don't really have, their Navy's had some problems over the years. Lack of equipment and resources. Yeah. But yeah, and this course is just hard up against

the city and the coast and it looks like it shouldn't exist. And it's kind of as close as you'll get to Scotland or England outside of it. I mean, true, true Lanksy. 10 of 10 spots. I don't even know what the value of the land that it sits on there. But Wolfie, I think this is one of the most interesting parts of just kind of the how Mardau Plata, the golf club,

got there and tying it back to the railroad development. Yeah. So Martell Plata, the city as a whole, definitely, I've been there a couple of times now and it's even more of a heavy Italian feel. My understanding is that in the boom years, from the turn of the century until the late 20s when it started to go downhill, hill. The English were the investing class. They were the managerial class and they were the ones that brought golf with them.

But the people that were actually doing all the work were Italians. That's where the labor came in to build the railroads that were, whether it was for the agriculture industry or whatever, it was the Italians that were doing it. That's where the soccer came from and the soccer teams and the whole culture around the big rivalries with different groups with the Boca Juniors and the River Plata and all that stuff. So you feel that overall in Martell Plata, Stronger Dang World. On the golf course though, I thought very English feel as far as it was, again, Juan

Denton is the name that's on the scorecard and stuff. But they had a couple different versions. They had original holes that were literally right on the sand dunes. They moved inland, I don't know, 200 yards or 150 yards or though, kind of up onto the bluff and looking down. Henry Cotton was there. He had a long time association with Argentine golf and he had come through Martell Plata and there were a number of pros, kind of turn of the century touring pros and exhibition matches and stuff

like that. Golf wise, as Tron said, the comparisons, I mean, it's kind of a, it's a short course. It's a quirky course. You're not going to lose a ball. You can play there all summer unless you hit a ball over the fence. You're not going to lose a golf ball. There's no water. Some riveted bunkers. That's pretty cool. Five par threes, I think. Pass Palom Greens. Yeah. Pass Palom Greens. Yeah, Pass Palom Greens. They were firm. They weren't as firm as they were the last time I was there. And they weren't as firm as they were going to be the following week. So the South of Argentine Open, which is like the second biggest tournament of the year that

they, you know, in the country was being played there the next week. We could kind of tell that they were, you know, they were a couple of days away from dialing them all the way up, but that's what they were prepping for. And it was it was plenty of challenge, all the challenges from 100 yards in. I mean, it is not a real long golf course. And as firm as it is the ball rolls forever, but plenty of opportunities to, you know, make bogey from 100 yards in the middle of fairway.

And a couple holes to like, they had to reroute a few of the holes on the far side of the property. This short par four especially that I think a city council member, a member of the Argentine congress got hit with a ball by I think a busy dude junior. So the course was closed for months and then and then basically they rerouted the hole and you can't hit more than like a seven iron and you got to stay left of this hole in the middle of the fairway and da da da da da. But yeah, kind of fascinating there.

And then the way it plays up and along and down and then back up this dune on like the low edge of the property there towards the, I guess that would be the east was really interesting but one of those places that squeezes more juice out of a small piece of land than just about anywhere you'll ever see. Yeah and then the clubhouse is just I mean one of the coolest buildings I've ever been in. That ceiling I don't know what you call that kind of not like a barrel ceiling but you know all sorts of kind of like a barrel ceiling, but you know, all sorts of kind of 3d stuff going on with the brickwork up there and the flags of all the founding clubs of the Argentine golf association or the AG when true craftsmanship that like you simply can't fathom these days.

Again, just all the, you know, all the little things they had like barber's chairs in the locker room where the guys used to get shaved in the morning and they had heaters down by the feet so your feet wouldn't get cold while you were in the locker room getting shaved in the morning or after you play golf. Just all these little things. You can just tell in 1925, this was the center of, this was as good as anywhere in 1925. This was the French Riviera. This was more Fontaine. This was as far as luxury and people in tuxedos

and mixing golf with just the best. The world at your feet. That's what Martell Plata was. I think it still retains some of that feel. It was described to us today as the seminal of Argentina where if you're a pretty good golfer and you're into golf and you know the right folks, whatever, at your local club, whether it's in Cordoba or down south or in Buenos Aires or whatever, everybody wants to be a member at Martell Plata for your second club because that's where you're going to go on the weekends, especially in the summertime to get down to the beach.

And everybody wants that as like their second membership. And that's the one that's kind of tough to get into is Martell Plata. So. membership. And that's the one that's kind of tough to get into is Mardo Plata. So DJ, do you remember the feeling when we were at Stockholm Golf Club, and you're like, Wow, the city is kind of coming in on you. That's how one side of Mardo Plata felt when you're up against a major road that borders it on the, I don't know what side that would be the west or south or maybe who knows, but and then the other side is just the ocean and the naval base. And it's kind of, the

way and where it sits is truly a special feeling. TC mentioned all time spot patio, and then they're a little, I actually think it might've been the members room where we actually had our lunch in that had the really cool ceilings and the flags and stuff like that. Massive wood bar. Yeah. All in all, it's an incredibly cool spot. It was a hectic 24 hours down there. And when we got done, this is part of the trip that Senior Wolf coordinated for us. So at Marta Plata, we had caddies.

And I don't actually think that they're caddies, but I also think that it was what Wolfie said earlier, that they've just been there for so long that they, when they have tourists or somebody else, they give them a call and they say, hey, come here, you know, carry for these gringos for- The Lobito's coming back. I also knew the caddy master. The caddy master, I knew the caddy master's son. He's a friend of mine. You know his son. I don't think you know the caddy master. We knew the caddy master's son. He's a friend of mine. Well, you know his son.

I don't think you know the caddy master. We'll have to check the tapes on that. I know him as well as I can for not speaking a word of English. He doesn't speak a word of English and I don't speak any Spanish. But Wolfie, of course, being the incredible host down there, gifted a set of golf clubs to the caddy master that he could provide to any of the juniors that are coming up around there, an incredible gesture. And then we also had one of the caddies that I think he's, who's he caddying for right now?

Jose Maria, Olifapo. So Jose Maria's current caddy stopped by for a little bit, who of course is from caddies in the winter time at Wolfie's Club in Alabama. But Wolfie also set up transportation for us. And this is a thing. He said it was about four or five hours from Mardoplatte to Buenos Aires. And my initial question is, why aren't we flying this? Okay. It seems like we can maximize our effort here, but nope, senior Wolf, we got everything under control. So I guess because we wanted to stop it at this supposed to meet this incredible meat stand on the side of the me

And and as I told you guys and as I was proven correct Martell Plaza one of those places you want to rush out of like to catch a flight like it's good enough post-round like you Want to savor it and I think we all agree it was a that part was correct. Yes, very much So, you know, I think we're, we were prepared for any kind of transportation, a car was mentioned or whatnot. But I think- Amanda. Is that, no, no, I might mute you here in a second.

What happened is that while we were sitting on the patio and we had a couple hours before our range transportation was supposed to get there, Wolfie said, oh gosh, guys, they have a sprinter coming for us. And I was like, damn, the boys we're going to drive and be comfortable on this five hour journey. You know, watch a movie. I don't know if I said, I said, Mercedes, I might have to bring

Benny in here because we're already, Benny's like, oh, I'm going to be able to get so much storage done. We're going to be able to get all the files and everything moved around. He was right. It was a Mercedes-Benz. It just happened to be probably like the Mercedes-Benz that the club uses to move shit like from, who knows? The local plumber uses it.

For sure. It was their work van. like from who knows the local plumber uses for sure it was their work van now we definitely appreciated it but I think that is where it started not just the van because it fit us all and fit all of our luggage which we needed to get but the driver that we coordinated for Wolfie coordinated for this drop it ended up taking us like seven hours to get to Buenos Aires. This guy was going six hours.

It took six, it took an extra hour. No way, no way. That's on me. My man Daniel let us down. Daniel was supposed to give us a ride. Daniel ended up getting a bag on the European tour that week and he had to come back to do a practice round for the for the Latino. Am no Daniel. Daniel sends his friend instead.

I think he had transmission is I think he was worried about burning out the transmission, and that's why he didn't go faster than 50 miles an hour. And people were going, I mean, they were flying. Yet he had West Coast Gang gangster rap playing the whole time. That he did. Now his music selection was unbelievable. I mean, it was straight out of, you know, and then we told him he wanted to go to this in 1993. I mean, it was this roadside meat stand. Yeah. Wolfie been talking about for months prior as we were playing this and the guy would not like, I think at one point

we've been looking at for like 45 minutes and he's stopping at all these places and we're like, Hey, just drive. Let's just go to the hotel. Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires. And he would not let it go. He was like, no, we're going to find this meat market. We never did. The visual of going 45 miles an hour for six seven hours It's just really really funny to me for some reason on Ben and Cody are just seething The decision to drive by the way was the correct one So if you go and you go to Mara Plata, just drive yourself. It's safe It's there the highway was almost the quality of you know, it's like a state route in America

It's separated highway two lanes on each in each direction. Just drive yourself. It's fine. It's, it's not dangerous at all. So what's next? Jockey club. So then, yeah. So then we get, we get into BA, went and got a bunch of pizza that night, checked into the hotel. Hotel was great. Uh, we stayed at the vein hotel and kind of in, uh, what is it? Palermo del Sur. Palermo is kind is a swanky, bougie neighborhood of BA. People have waited to like Hollywood or Beverly Hills in LA. So, ton of cool artwork on the side of buildings. All the buildings are really across town like diagonal, like kind of squared off to the street, which it feels very Parisian in that standpoint.

There's big boulevards and all that. But yeah, what do we do? Then we went to... Buenos Aires Golf Club. Yeah, B.A. Golf Club the next day. Which... Yeah, kind of, you know, was it Luther Coons? Him? Or was it von Hagi? I think it was one Hagi, right? Coons was

jockey. This was Mackenzie's Mackenzie's guy. Yeah. Yeah. So we ended up playing there. I think it was an interesting lot of containment mounting out there. Deidre our guy, our guy TBC Jed would have been, not involved by it. But yeah, certainly they had the, they had the, what was that? The world cup of golf.

Correct. Tiger played. The big one with Tiger in the ball. V Cabrero there, I think that was in 2000. And that's kind of like, you know, the only exposure they've ever had to Tiger Woods. But no, it's an incredible spot. So they got, I think they have 27 holes there, correct? Yeah, three nines. Yeah.

Yep. We only played the one 18. They had another nine that were, you know, I think it was the only course that we were at. Of course, we drove past a couple of days later, San Andres and San Ysidro that actually had like work going on. So they're resurfacing their greens or as they say in Argentina, Argentina, they're changing the carpets. All right. So that's a good phrase. I really like that. They're all getting, you know, relayed down there and it was cool. The golf course. Interesting powerline nash, shout out to, I can't even remember what that guy's

in hand anymore. Big powerlines. Big powerlines, some big houses, built to be a development, and that's exactly what they got. So mounds, a little bit of trickery, some good, some cool holes out there. Scenery on the houses that

neighbored some of the holes, but a ton of fun. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are we just gonna go right past this? Or are we gonna talk about the orgy? Oh, sorry. Hey, calm yourself, holy. It wasn't necessarily an orgy. I think we stumbled upon, as Ben just put it in the chat,

the Argentinian Dan Buzarian, so that was kind of his spot, but an all-time pool party going on. Luckily, we've been told to look out for it too. Like two holes ahead of time. He was like, hey, you may see something on the two holes up. And we did, boy, we did. I mean, what'd you see? Are you going to share with the class? I don't know. There's like seven know, very scantily clad females. One guy, he was swimming laps in this pool in his backyard and they were like cheering for him.

It was an interesting situation. We had heard all these stories about, you know, people playing in the club championship and being like 45, 50 degrees outside. And then there's girl, there's naked girls jumping on the bed upstairs with all the windows open. It's really outrageous. It's a guy that might have some, uh, some benches near showers maybe, but Impressive clubhouse. And I think it was the first time in, that was our first BA club that we kind of saw, you know, the first time we saw a clubhouse.

And then we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, we hours maybe. But good shower. Impressive clubhouse. And I think it was the first time in that was our first BA club that we kind of saw, you know, the whole country club thing. So they got tennis, they have, you know, some clay. It's kind of what you would expect from any American country club. But I think that was when we were first kind of the finesse thing really started because we were introduced to Felipe's,

the rest of his friend group. Yeah. Yeah, a bunch of legends. Yeah, and then trying to think where, what we did. Oh, then from there we went to the Asado that night. So for people that have no idea what this is, what do you keep saying Asado? What does that mean?

It's just like this whole hangout meal experience all predicated around this big grill, essentially. Barbecue. Yeah. I mean, it's like a backyard barbecue, but they take it extremely seriously. There's veal sweetbreads there as well. They'll have all sorts of massive blocks of provolone that they throw in the grill. And then just all manner of meats. I mean, so many freaking meats that-

Sausages and rib eyes and filets and it just keeps coming. Everyone get down with the sweet breads. That can be a tough sell. I'm a big sweet breads guy. Yeah. And the grilling method is they have like a, they have a sidecar where they get the, you know, they get the charcoal, like lump coal, you know, red hot. And then with the shovel, they move it over underneath the meats. And then it's like one of those shoe tracks with the wheel and you can like lower it or raise it or lower it with, with the wheel to, you know, so you don't have to keep flipping it back and forth and stuff like that. It's, uh, it's controlled by how high or low you make it. And this was a big

operation. I mean, this thing was holding, you know, it held meat for, for 15 guys or whatever, 12 guys. Um, yeah. And props to Matteo, who was our host, who was the, the Yasado master. And he, uh, you know, he just, he was a legend, uh, kind of wise beyond his years. And actually, DJ, that was where we were. When we FaceTimed you or texted you, we were watching TGL that night. Also, I was trying to take some uber cinematic drone footage as we were enjoying the backyard asado festivities and ran it straight into a tree, which is tough, but we- We're looking at casualties though. No, we're fine. Totally fine. Nothing injured and, uh, work

the rest of the trip. And, and, you know, Asado just being open fire cooking, but they'll say in this, hopefully this comes through in the video too. It's, it's about a lot more than just cooking meat. It's about the hang. It's about the people. It's about being incredibly present and dripping chimichurri on every possible animal product that you can, and drinking and washing it all down. Now, Matteo, he graciously invited us.

Him and his brother were running things, but it was his dad's house out of town. So an incredible home, incredible. Probably going to roll some pictures in here. But just the setup, everything going on there was like, wow, I can't believe this is where we're at in Argentina. And we're enjoying this evening with these people who are just excited and they're absolute NLU sickos and could call out all of the inside jokes of Solly's Bitcoin obsession to TC

and like what exactly is a monitoring list? How do you do that? Is Neil ever gonna figure out like how to control his ball flight? Like knew everything about it. So it was really cool, very, very special evening. And you know, we got some ice cream at the end of the day. So it capped it all off.

Perfect day. While I was digesting four and a half pounds of meat, it was also fascinating that when they say they're like, you know, they're essentially like the Espanol version of No Lying Up or that, you know, that's what they're shooting for. It was fascinating. Like there was their, you know,

so Felipe I would say was like, he he's I thought on you guys can chime in But or Ben and Cody can I thought he was like the the Solly of their operation? But we definitely met the Tron that night and we and I think we met the DJ and we met the Neil So it was kind of interesting like the different guys that we got introduced to and like their cast of characters and how it how it works for their show and You know just talking to them about how much European golf do you guys follow versus American and your take on things? It was just a nice night of like these guys said. I mean, nobody was looking at their phones. Nobody was talking about building

their brand or this or that. It was just golf. And it was like, how are these guys? These guys are sick as like we are. And how are they experiencing it? You know, like what are their what are their inputs and what are their takeaways from based on their experiences versus what ours are? And that was just I just thought it was a great night. Good guys. And, you know, same sport, same same love for the game, but just their inputs are different than ours. It's pretty cool to see. Ben, were you going to add something? Yeah, I just wanted to say like this was for me and I think the rest of the group, absolute highlight of the trip truly felt like a part of their friend group, like a cultural

experience unlike I've ever experienced. The closest thing I can think of is our night with Tron's family in Stockholm. I mean, it truly felt like we got to do it. They will want me to say that this was an Asado e-Fernet, which is different from a normal Asado. Basically, this means we're drinking and we're getting hammered while we're there, which is different because there's a big going out and club culture in BA specifically, where they would do just a standard of the night to drink the Furnet. Which they would go out to, to, to like 8 AM. Yes. Yeah.

So you can't, you know, you can't overdo it for that asado, but this was an asado eFurnet basically it started at eight o'clock. We didn't get out of there till one in the morning, which was all, all in something early by their standards. Yeah. All right. We're just, just a total highlight. Yeah.

So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, Basically it started at eight o'clock. We didn't get out of there until one in the morning, which was All in some scenarios. It was early by their standards. Yeah. All right. We're just just a total highlight. We're that whole whole experience. Where are we going to next? We winding it down? We're going to jockey. Yeah going over to jockey. We we get there pretty slow day at jockey. I think height of summer and trying to keep the course kind of fresh for the upcoming big tournaments. And yeah, kind of their slow season as far as recreational golf is concerned.

And I think a lot of people teed off early and then we were kind of towards the back end of that thing. But yeah, there's the red course, the blue course. We played the red course, the blue course is a little bit shorter. Wolfie, you've the red course, the blue course. We played the red course, the blue course a little bit shorter. Wolfie, you've played it, right? The blue? I have. Yeah, just kind of like Royal Melbourne where the blue course, there are five holes that are on an outer paddock where you could go across the street. It's a little bit shorter in total. We'd heard, so last time was there, it didn't exist, but we have heard that they've in the meantime fairly recently come up with a at least an alternative routing for the blue course where you only play the holes so you don't go across the street play kind of the better holes for nine hole loop so if you wanna play twenty seven holes i had heard before there you know a lot of people thought the back nine of the red and the back nine of the blue are the best eighteen

the back nine of the red and the back nine of the blue are the best 18. But I think that, you know, it's like a lot of McKenzie courses, it just depends on what you like because I, you know, there weren't any bad holes and it just kind of depended on what your flavor was. But there were, you know, they were favorite holes, but I don't think there were any like bad ones versus good ones. They were all pretty darn good. Some were just great. Some were good. Yeah. I think the, like our intention was to maybe play 36. I think with the heat and just where we were in the trip that night before wasn't gonna happen Yeah, so he said alright, let's let's just focus on 18 and man what an 18 it is So jockey club dead flat. It's a parkland course It's not sand based or anything

It was dead flat when Mackenzie got to it. And so his challenge was to drain it, to move the water off of it. He designed these ditches, just ingenious with, he would take the soil out of low areas to make a ditch to move water. And then he would use that soil to build up these mounds around the greens. And so all of the difficulty really is kind of, different holes where you have to trans up these mounds around the greens. And so all of the difficulty really is kind of, you know, different holes where you have to, you know, transverse these, these, these ditches at different angles or play around them or whatever they come into it.

And then the mounding is, you know, fairly wide open off the tee, most of the, most of the driving was, but if you're on the wrong side of the fairway and you get up, you know, you've got a 12 foot mound in between you and the green where you want to hit it. And almost every green had pretty severe mounding or mounds incorporated in the green itself. So the approach is a lot of them, typical McKenzie where if you play safe off the tee,

more difficult approach, vice versa. And just all manner of, like Wolfie said, flat golf course. And I think they planted a lot of exotic trees there in a good way. Like you see some of these trees that are just, man, I never seen anything like that before. There's just all sorts of different species. But I thought the strength, I mean, the par 3s were great. I think as a group, we birdied all the par 3s that day. Wolfie damn near made an ace on what's the third hole? I don't think it all got, got more than three inches off the ground. And then, uh, but I thought the strength

of the course was the variety of the par fours. There's some route like number two was just a spectacular short, you know, mid length par four, not drivable, but one of the bigger fairway bunkers or green side bunkers, you'll see, uh, just kind of guarding that right entrance to it. And then an awesome green, and it gets you out to the corners of the property pretty quickly. I thought that was a strength both there, uh, and also at, at LaCumbre, like, like it, it just gets you out to the corners of the property and then you kind of play amongst that or you play amongst, you really get to traverse the property multiple times I think.

But yeah, I mean, Jockey, I don't know. I felt like, like I said earlier with the whole McKenzie thing, I feel like every time I play one of his courses, I walk away just thinking, man, we've been cheated as golfers that there's only 20, 25, 30 of these in the world, that there's just such a level of depth and detail and substance to them that you so rarely get with at least modern golf courses. And I would even say a lot of his contemporaries as well. It's just

it's true brilliance. I mean, that closing stretch there, it was like just pure cocaine. It was like 15, 16, 17, 18. 16 is this wild par four kind of dogleg that's got all this mounding par four kind of dogleg that's got all this mounding around the green that I guess used to be mowed tight like green height. And then 17 is this diabolical little par three. Wolfie hit one of the most heroic shots I've ever seen there after puking his guts out, you know, the, uh, the, uh, proceeding four or five holes. And then 18 is like kind of a play on 18 at the old course. Uh, it's a, it's a fantastic short for you. You can drive it on, you can lay back, you can try to get it to the front edge, but you're going to have to deal with, uh, something that's even a little bit larger than the Valley

of sin. And then this massive mound that kind of takes on the whole first half of the green too. And, you know, backed by probably a couple hundred thousand square foot clubhouse that it's just kind of imposing. I loved it. I, you know, can remember like every hole very vividly even only haven't played it once. So Mackenzie, very, very proud of the routing and the work that he did at the Jockey Club. The spirit of St. Andrews, he talks about the engineer that he had. We talked about him a little bit earlier, Luther Koontz. And Koontz is really the one that came in and figured out the ultimate drainage plan

to get things routed around there because it is so flat. But from walking the land to flagging the property and laying the routing to floating the greens, Mackenzie got done in 21 days. 21 days to get this golf course where it's at. And when he got done, what he writes in the Spirit of St. Andrews, we completed the contouring of this golf course. I'm very proud of the humps and bumps, swallows

and hollows that we have created, which incidentally was done in 21 days. The captain of the golf club, a very able man and student of golf architecture asked me, what am I going to do about the bunkering? I replied, the undulations we've created have such varied, interesting, and pleasurable tests for golf that we do not require a single bunker. Nevertheless, for the sake of appearances and for purposing and creating more spectacular thrills, we will give you a few. And what is out there now is there's bunkers

all over the place. Some of them make sense with advances in technology and everything else, a lot of really cool cross bunkers in fairways that are very much needed, or else you could, it's so firm and fast or you could run driver a million miles, but others that you're like, I don't really know about that, that's kind of out of place.

But it literally has the best everything that McKenzie offers from the rest of his there laid out on a completely piece of ground that really shouldn't be that interesting, but somehow he made it. Yeah, it's truly something that like I like I love flag golf course because I feel like it's just the blank canvas for a guy to impose, hey, here's my design philosophy, words and all. And I think, you know, whether it's a lithium or like, I've never played garden city, but just courses that it's like, hey, you know, Kingston Heath, like you've got to kind of maximize or extract the maximum amount of value out of that little piece of land.

And so to see what McKenzie did, which it's not natural, right? It's artificial stuff that he did, but it feels, at no point does it feel unnatural. It's just, it's greater than some of its parts and its true brilliance to think that, like to marry up engineering and strategy and design in that way, like even on some of the shorter par fours on the front, there's mounds in the middle of the fairway that are kind of above ground hazards that you've kind of got to clear and yeah, just brilliant. Yeah.

A tough look for Buenos Aires Golf Club having to be on consecutive days with the jockey club back to back because one shows a guy who knows what he's doing with mounding and one shows a guy who didn't know what he was doing. The jockey club is just a reminder. It's dead flat. You could build that golf course anywhere, any public golf course. There's nothing that was built when we built that place that was expensive to do. They didn't build any ponds. Like Cody said, they didn't build but a handful of bunkers

originally. That golf course could be recreated at any municipal golf course in the United States for probably cheaper to build than it costs 90% of them and cheaper to maintain. I mean, you're just mowing grass at those places. There's not a lot that they got to maintain even. Yeah, it's a little frustrating, I think, it's you're just mowing grass at those places. There's not, you know, a lot to that they got to maintain even. Yes. It's a little frustrating. I think sometimes when you play them that it's like, why can't we have more of this? Because this is so good. You know, it's it's fun. Old people can play it. Little kids can play it.

Nobody's going to lose a ball. Everybody can play it in four hours. Extremely walkable, cheap to maintain, cheap to build. Like why, you know, why in the hell did we get away from this? Wolfie, We were devastated. We were devastated when we found out that the turnhouse or the, the, you know, the Sado shack behind that was a tough scene. We've been told best hot dog in the, in the country.

We needed it. It was, it was not on, it was on what 12, I think. Cause cause they use it. It was after 11 green, 12, blue course and the red course. Cody was kind of feeling himself at that point in the round. He was hitting some pretty strong long irons. The ball was staying in the air a long time for him. I think he was feeling like he was maybe going to come out of this trip with a 500 record at that point. Obviously, that was not to be, but that turnhouse being locked, that was a tough, that was a tough three or four minutes, I think, in my life.

That reality setting in that I'm not getting a hot dog here. And in fact, I'm not even going to get any water for the next hour. That was a tough, that was really tough. Was this, was this the last course you guys played? That was the last course. And then the next day, next day we went out, actually that, that night we went to a place called El Preferito for dinner with a friend Matteo, a tough table to get in town and kind of a modern spin on Argentine classics. We had a bunch of Fernet and sodas that night,

which kind of make there at the table with soda water. It was great. Dietsch big palm culture. What'd they call them, Cody? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don. That's kind of the other, I would say if you're, if you're looking for kind of the most historic places in the country, Mardell Plaza is up there, Jockey Club's up there, San Andres is up there.

So San Andres was the first golf course ever built in Argentina. Mungo Park, the great Mungo Park, I think like 1894, something like that. Don't quote me on that one, but pre-1900. It's the one with, you know, they've got a couple RNA members there and they've got their own stop on the train and they got a water tower with the club logo on it. It's definitely a real old school. I've played it before.

It's real tight, it's real short, and it's got ferocious Bermuda rough. That's what I remember about it the most is how thick, not real tall, but just thick, ferocious. You missed fairways there. But yeah, that's another one I think that was, kind of in that click of old school Argentine courses. Yeah, so we stopped there.

We stopped at San Ysidro, which is right there across the street from the Jockey Club as well. Another pretty well thought of course. And we drove out to- It's a good thing to point out about San Ysidro is that not only right next door to Jockey, but it's a Coots original. So when he got done with everything at the 36,

helping McKenzie, you literally just went right next door and they're like, hey, build it, build another course over here for the rival club. And he's like, sure, man, give me your money. Another one that I haven't seen, um, that, you know, is on my list, like for the next time is a place called Oli Bose, which a lot of people talk about too, which was the same thing. It was, it was a Luther Kuntz, um, right around that same time.

Everybody we talked to, you know, we talked to, uh, Gryllo about it out, out in Monterey last week, everybody was like, yeah, Livos is probably the to, you know, we talked to Grillo about it out in Monterey last week. Everybody was like, yeah, Olivos is probably the best, you know, their favorite course in Argentina. So leaves us something to go back and see and probably the best manicured conditioned course in the country as well. But we drove out that afternoon to Pilar Golf Club to go to the LAC, the Latino America Championship. That's kind of the home of Argentine developmental golf. Their offices are out there. They've

got a big hotel on site, driving range, all of that. And I think it's a Jack Nicklaus course, pretty American style test out in the suburbs. So stop by that. And it was cool. I mean, you walk out there and there's a kid from Haiti in one of the groups. There's a couple of kids from UNF. You've got Peruvians, Colombians, Chileans, and they're all wearing their team uniform or their country colors and everything, which was cool. So it's impressive to see what Augusta and RNA and the USGA have set up really in the last decade. I think it was the 10th iteration of it. I know we've covered a lot of ground here. We're north of the two hour mark. I'm sure we could go another two hours here. But, but before we wrap, I had a couple of little, uh,

superlative best of questions I wanted to ask you guys. Simple one, uh, is just favorite hole. What's the one hole? I know, I know you guys played a lot of holes, a lot of directions we could go. Cody, I'm going to start with you. So what's the hole you, somebody would have to go see. You can't stop thinking about it. Well, I got something that we built up because Wolfie told this story before we even took off and like, how is that possible that there's a par three that's 66 yards long, that one of the greatest golfers ever recorded a 12 on it.

And that was that, uh, the Cumbria, the 12th hole, Divicenzo recorded the 12 and literally there was no penalty strokes at all. That straight 12 times hitting your ball before you got in the hole. Truly unreal stuff. But Lucumbre blew my socks off. Where it was at, the sense of play is kind of sitting up in this valley and just the set of par threes that they have out there I think peaked at the 12th hole. But really everything else out there, that was the first exposure that we had.

And I was like, wow, golf that's this good that kind of shouldn't be here. And if this is how the rest of the trip is going to go, we're starting in a really good spot. It's whiffs of Ben Hogan making a 10 on our beloved Hyde Park TC. Yeah, honestly, there's some Hyde Park vibes out there. Well, Tron, what do you got? Favorite hole. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what just keeps punching way above its weight. Like I thought, you know, number 10 at jockey was all

world, you know, probably not a par five at this point, probably more of a long par four, which is you can tell your story out there. It's okay. We'll leave that for the, we'll leave that for the video. But, but no, I think, you know, jockey was very much like greater than the sum of its parts of just a lot of like sevens, eights, nines put together. Um, whereas I thought the Cumbria even like other holes at Lacumbria number, I think it was number 11 out there par four. That's, you know, you're just playing kind of between these dunes and blind tee shot up to blind green wild stuff. Wolfie? They picked two pretty good ones so I got to throw at least one in here from Mardo Plata

because that's my favorite course of the trip. I'm going to go with 13 at Mardo Plata. It's a long par 5. It's on the eastern side of the property right along the beach. You start real low. You start at the lowest point of the course, basically, and you hit up up on top of the... You hit back onto the plateau. Kind of a blind drive. You want to aim much farther left than you're comfortable doing. Is firm as a... Not kind of a blind drive. A blind...

It's a blind drive, yeah. You essentially got to pick out which hotel you want to aim at in the distance Yeah, second shot is you know, if you know to drive and you know to three one I think you can probably get there what I like about it. I'll just remember about it is there's this There's this just real small bunker Short right of the green maybe 40 yards short and it's not a very big bunker But it's like it's in the perfect place You know

it's not a very big bunker, but it's like it's in the perfect place. You know, it's just exactly like if you clear it, your ball can roll all the way down onto the front of the green and trundle in and give yourself a two putt for birdie. And if you go into that bunker, you know, you're not going to get it out onto the green. And now you're trying to get up and down for par on a pretty birdieable hole. So it just it takes a lot real advantage of the gentle slope from like 200 yards down, you know, towards that down corner is just visually kind of cool. And I don't know, there's something about it kind of reminds me to have St. Andrews where a lot of the courses in the UK that are out and back

where there's something cool about the last hole where you go out before you turn around and start heading back to the club house show, whether it's like 11 or 12 at St. Andrews or wherever, everybody's got a favorite one. But but something about that is just, I kind going to go to the house. You know, whether it's like 11 or 12 at St. Andrews or wherever, everybody's got a favorite one. But, but something about that is just, I kind of, I always liked that feeling. It gives me 13 at, 13 at Martell Potter, part five. Well, the other one I wanted to get on, I feel like this has to be a staple of any travel

pod we do going forward. This is, Randy did this on the trap draw from his honeymoon, but the five senses game, I feel like is, is just a no-brainer. So you do favorite smell, favorite sound, favorite touch, favorite site, favorite taste. And I might be kind of springing this on you guys. So apologies if you need a second to think about it, but I'll start with an easy one. TC, I'll go with you. Favorite taste has got to be one of the fastest ones to recall, I would imagine. I'll go with you. Favorite taste has got to be one of the fastest ones to recall, I would imagine.

Yeah. Favorite taste, gosh, probably the refreshing nature of the Fernet and soda. Fernet rules. Yeah. Just kind of both taste and feel of it, right? Like the kind of the tongue feel and just that fresh soda on your tongue, those bubbles. What do the other guys got? Favorite taste, Cody? I'm going to go to our asado night at Mateo's house. Not only the meats that we're rolling off there, but specifically, shout out to our friend, Zach Lee. He sat and told Benny and I like, hey, you got to get this, this chorizo sandwich. They put, I never feel is a chimichurri or some basil thing on it, but, uh, all time on some, some crunchy bread there. Just absolutely. Like if I could make that sandwich here today,

I would every single day. You just can't find the meat, man. Their chorizo's a lot different than the chorizo that we have available in the States. Choripan, right? Choripan, there you go. Wolfie? I think just the seafood, the seafood overall that we had down in Martell Plata at that restaurant that Tron found down there, just fresh.

Fuliboy found it. I didn't find it. Yeah, not overly seasoned or anything like that. Just good, clean seafood. It was right spot, not overly seasoned or anything like that. Just good, clean seafood. It was right spot, right spot the trip for that. We had had enough meat. We knew we were heading for more meat. The next day, it was a good time to just have a seafood dinner and that was a good one.

Shock of the century here, the Wolfie didn't go with any of the ice that he consumed because I've never seen a man hunt down ice at the level in which Wolfie does. That might've been touch. You get it in these little buckets that they would put on the table. That might've been a touch. Yellow? Yellow?

Yellow? Yellow? That might've been his favorite touch. I'm not drinking a whole joke, but it's 104 degrees. A runner up for me is the empanadas. Got to be a big empanada. The empanadas were seen insanely good. Empanadas are underrated just in general. Oh, sorry. I'm going to take a look at the You know, the mornings in El Portorillo, like, I think I woke up first two mornings, both mornings and just like you could walk around your back porch and look down on the seventh

green right there. The sounds and the smell both like fresh cut grass and the air is so clean and there was just a little chill in the air and just, you know, it was like a nice October morning in Alabama. It's just a nice, you know, just a nice way to wake up in the morning. That was, that was nice, peaceful almost. That was really almost all five senses at once. We're just, you know, just barefoot and having a glass of orange juice and sitting out on a little veranda there overlooking the seventh hole.

And that was, that was great. I've seen a lot of head nods. Any other nominees? Well, I'll meet you in the same leg of the trip there, but TC called out the restaurant, Amelia LeCoum Bray earlier, but I think that the smell of it, we're just getting fresh wind in the face. It's rolling off of some tall wheat grass from the prairie out there. The whole entire point of the restaurant. It is

a hundred percent farm to table. They're growing everything right there. They're cooking everything over an open fire and just the combination of all of that going on is just unbelievable. And lavender everywhere. There's just all sorts of succulents and lavender. I would say the, and lavender. I would say the just the smell of the locker room at jockey club and just walking around that building just you know it's kind of a unmistakable singular smell and they kind of get in those you know kinds of clubs that's just they've been around for I'm not sure if it's a good thing to do, but I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do.

And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do.

And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do.

And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to do. And I think it's a good thing to, famously, I didn't play a lot of golf last year. This is the first time that I've played golf. Of course, this year we got five rounds in the tanks, but I'll take the touch of any of the, the feeling of those 13 birdies that I made on the trip. That's a good, that's my god. I like that. That that's the easy one to work in. Favorite touch.

It's not, I thought the, it sounds like the Creek would have been a good one. I like that. That's the easy one to work in. Favorite touch. I thought the, it sounds like the Creek would have been the nominee. That's kind of where I would guess your heads were going. Boys and all of our friends. No, honestly, favorite. It's hits that under that waterfall. No, favorite. Favorite touch was, the touch of my feet hitting solid

pavement or solid ground after we, after we finally got to Buenos Aires, after the drive. We'll be anything else. I'm going to go to the, uh, the touch of the shower in the, uh, in the, uh, Delta lounge at the airport on my way home, That Latino, Latino am, I mean, no kidding. That was like legit as hot as I've been anywhere in the world ever. Like, I mean, that was like the worst day

in Birmingham in July. I mean, hats off to the, we saw, I don't know, there were like eight guys there from Augusta and they all had on their green jackets and they did not take those things off. And I mean, it had to be 105 degrees. I mean, it was one of those days where like, you couldn't walk from, you know, the clubhouse to the, you know, to the shade behind the first tee without breaking a sweat. That entire day was just brutal. And we headed on over to that was kind of a cramped ride

to the airport in a hurry. And then when we got there, was able to change clothes and get a shower before hopping on our red eye home. And that was a nice, that was a nice feeling to get out of the golf clothes and get into a t-shirt and some flip flops and a nice shower. All right. Two more of them. We'll wrap it up. We can do sight and sound, sight and sound together. There should be, I feel like those are probably a little closer to the tip of the tongue, but whoever wants to go first. Uh, I'll say sight and sound of, of seeing and hearing Cody, uh, in the star Alliance lounge on our way out, I thought he was going to get detained by the authorities.

I forgot about that. I don't know about this. So I got hung up. Uh, we made it through security at, uh at Buenos Aires on our way home, made it through security with TCN, Ben. And then all of a sudden, my phone just started getting blown up by somebody calling me via WhatsApp. And I was like, oh, this is interesting.

So finally they sent me, followed up after four missed calls with a text message. There's like Mr. McBride question mark. And I was like, you know, sent yes. And then I go, this is security at BA International. We need you to come to the police and inspect your luggage. And I was like, what, what's going on? Well, you know, we travel with the drone and all the excess drone batteries and stuff like that triggered the system.

They didn't like the fact that there's that many drones. I guess they thought that they're taped together or something like that. And I had to remove them and put them in my carry on. So in case there was a fire that, you know, you could put it out safely. But in order to do this, to get to security, I had to go back out through normal. And then I basically went through the bowels of the BA International Airport down to the sorting room, just like that crazy ass movie that's on Netflix now that's horrible.

Carry on. And go through with the police. So I guess it's illegal for them to open up anybody's luggage. So I had to go down there, open everything up, show them, pull the shit out, and then try to make my way through Security now we showed up to the airport with like two and a half three hours to spare. I Arrived about ten minutes before we started boarding So the nice relaxing lounge access that we're supposed to have to prepare, you know

Loving life. I'm just like stress the fuck out any other sights or sounds? Just walking around B.A. one morning. I one morning I, you know, got up. I just woke up at five thirty, whatever. And I knew I won't be able to go back to bed. So I walked around the city as the sun was coming up for, you know, just 10 blocks in each direction.

So I wouldn't get lost. And good people. You know, you travel all over the world and we're lucky, you know, that we get to do this kind of stuff. And it's nice that golf is the common thread throughout it, but the world today with everybody yelling at everybody else about everything, it's nice to see different cultures and people just trying to get the kids to school on time and waiting in line at their favorite bakery for coffee and a donut and just seeing how, you know, things go in other parts of the world. And at the end of the day, we're all just, you know, trying to make our way through it.

So that was, that was good. Well, if another highlight was, was getting the, getting the photo from you and then seeing you in person for the first time after your tooth came out. Yeah. This is a Dr. Wolfie wouldn't have felt the same. We had a pretty formal event to be at at 5pm or well, at 7pm, but we had to leave the house because it was down in Tuscaloosa. On the day I landed, I landed at 9am. And I had a good dentist, haircut,

dry cleaner. Yeah, a lot of things to check off in a in a in that afternoon when I landed. It was not a land and take a nap it was land but get a new to man that was nice if he sent I'll send you guys the screenshot of if he sent this just him smiling no tooth and it went my teeth with the auto. I do an automatic toothbrush and I do it in the shower and The thing it flew out and went down the drain like before I could even like I mean it's just gone And then it's like what do you do? You're in Argentina like I gotta go to a dentist in Argentina get a new tooth Fortunately, it was that one right there in the front Not only did he lose a tooth that was a couple days into the trip, but to start the trip off He also got robbed at the Atlanta Air Force And then and then arrived without his golf clubs days into the trip, but to start the trip off, he also got robbed at the Atlanta airport. Yeah, that was nice.

I know. And then and then arrived without his golf clubs. Right. Another couple of three million. I flew in three million miles. That's a lot, folks. That's a lot. Yeah. I was in line at. I purposely booked like a three hour layover in Atlanta coming from Birmingham and so because I could have taken one, it was like 54 minutes. It's like, no, I don't want to be the guy who shows up late to Argentina and screws up Tron's carefully laid plans. So I purposely booked like a three hour layover. I go to Shake Shack and literally like put my carry on down

to fill up my drink and turn back around and things gone like that quickly. And it got turned in or it got abandoned, I guess in a bathroom they found it, but somebody rightfully threw it and taken stuff out of it. What they say? Yeah. Your eye, your, uh, your shoes, brand new pair of shoes, foot choice. So I go to Atlanta police.

They're, they're closed for, uh, what is it? Bartlett King day? It's nobody at the airport. Yeah. Jimmy Carter's, uh, yeah. Oh, Jimmy Carter's. Yeah. Jimmy Carter's. Yeah. National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter's. Oh, Jimmy Carter's. Yeah, Jimmy Carter's. Yeah, national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter's burial. Yeah.

God. The police depot at the Atlanta airport was closed that day. Then you add in, you know, he's missing the tooth. We finally get his luggage caught up to us. And then, you know, Jockey Club, Wolfie, extremely dehydrated and probably like a little bit of heat exhaustion going on and it's just dry heaving all over the place. Honestly, good thing the trip wasn't a couple days longer because I don't know if Mrs. Wolfie

would have been too thrilled with us, the package, the unit that we sent home. Well, Wolfie, I was going to say, I thought you're- 3-1-1 by the way, 3-1-1 on the trip. Let's not lose out on the overall. Mission accomplished. I was going to say, you're beautiful. We're all in this together as human beings. Would have been a great place to end the episode, but I think you get robbed at the airport. It's probably more fitting.

There's no way to treat a diamond medallion. There's no way to treat a diamond medallion. Guys, this was a thrill, man. I know there's a, there's a big, big video project that we're working to go along with this. Hopefully you watched this podcast on YouTube as well. It's going to have a bunch of visuals along with it, but, uh, what do we got? Anything else before we wrap it up? Well, I just need to go back down and see a Levos jockey blue, uh, L does, L de Sophia Chappalco. So, you know, some of that stuff down, down there in, in the Patagonia area and, uh, yeah, L or Stina, if we were so lucky, I know some of the, some of the, some of the USDA RNA and Augusta folks were going over to

L or St. They were helicopter over here to, uh, L or Stina the day we saw them. So we'll get in the, get in with the right crowd and do it. You'll, you know, I didn't get on an airplane for the first time till I was like 19 years old. You know, my first trip to Scotland, I didn't know anything more than anybody else. And try it. You know, it's it's you know, take it from an old guy.

It's it's rewarding to do it. I've never been on one of these trips where I didn't come back feeling like it was worth my time, even if the golf doesn't turn out to be what I was hoping it was going to be. It's it's it's always worth it to stray off the beaten path. You can go to Bannon Dunes next year. It felt really safe. That was kind of a concern for me going in. I was like, oh, is this going to be unsafe? Obviously, just like anywhere in the States, you got to look where you're going and be cognizant of your surroundings. But

Especially at Atlanta airport. Yeah. But yeah, overall, like at no point did, you know, like it was just hospitable, warm, it was great. So. Well, appreciate you guys sharing the experience. And like I said, everybody look out for that video. That should be, I don't know the exact release date.

We're recording this quite a ways in advance, but be on the lookout for the video alongside with this podcast over on our YouTube channel. And boys, good to hear from you and hear some of the experience. You're making me very jealous. I need to book some passage on the next trip. TC, next time you're putting an itinerary together,

save me a spot. Gladly.