No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 997: 2000 Majors Deep Dive

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Our calendar year majors pods have crossed into the current millennium with the year 2000. Join Soly and KVV for this Y2K deep dive as we look back at Vijay's win at Augusta followed by a trio of Tiger wins with his dominance at Pebble and the Old Course and the duel with Bob May at Valhalla. Time Stamps: 00:00 - Intro and 2000 Masters  1:03:30 - US Open  1:43:00 - Open Championship  2:15:30 - PGA Championship  Support our sponsors: Rhoback Oars & Alps The Stack 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. Yes! Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different? better than most expect anything different ladies and gentlemen welcome back to another episode deep dive with my guy kvv coming here shortly we have finished the 90s well we skipped a couple years in the 90s there but we did most of the fun years of the 90s now we are on to the year 2000 probably know a

lot of what happened in this year, but it was of course very fun to relive and find some nuggets that you probably don't remember and some storylines from that year as well. I want to give a shout out to our friends at Roeback. You guys know Roeback. Best fit, best feel, home of our favorite polos, hoodies, shorts, pants, you name it. It's the hardest spring. They are dialing up some of their incredible polo designs. They got some great florals on their site that are really really good. If you're not a floral guy, their fairway fusion polo is fantastic. Like the classics,

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Without any further delay, let's get to the 2000 majors. Kev, we have made it to the new millennium. I'm not going to lie. I'm feeling pressure on the 2000 majors, man. I've got two Tiger ones. I hope I didn't collapse under the weight of this one. I think I read three different books just to get ready for this one in particular. How are you feeling about 2000 majors? It's not like pressure is a privilege and I think we are privileged to be here doing another deep dive.

If this is your first time listening to one of these, we usually do a deep dive into, we almost completed all of the 90s. The years that we found the most interesting of the 90s, we did a deep dive into each individual major. We go and read a bunch of old articles just to see what people were talking about at the time, do a little bit of research of what's happening in between some of these events, pick out some funny outfits, funniest moments of it, things you remember probably, things you

don't remember, great stories from these majors and relive them as best as possible. And I feel pretty good about what I've got. How do you feel? Pretty decent. I think, you know, again, the pressure is there to deliver on this one. Obviously, very memorable thing 25 years ago, Sully. I've been in my head a bunch about 25 years since I moved to Baltimore, since I started my career. So this is like right on the cusp of like, this is my last year of

college. This was right before I sort of became a man. So I'm feeling some nostalgia here too. But as always, we do not apologize for the bad accents, the bad impressions that are just part of the deal. If this is, if you're, if you're coming to this one and you're whining about my bad South African accent, man, you are, you've lost the plot. This is what we, you bought a ticket for this long ago. I've got some really good quotes from some foreign folks that I don't have your talent for like having a funny, bad accent. My accent is just bad, not funny. Talent is such a loose term. No, it's a talent. It is a talent. You, you thread the line of like, it's not too on the

nose that it's, you know, Frank Caliendo-esque, but it's, it's good enough that you, you capture the hints of, of what somebody's getting at really well. But, uh, so how it's, you know, Frank Caliendo ask, uh, but it's, it's good enough that you, you capture the hints of, of what somebody's getting at really well. But, uh, so how it's going to work, you're going to do 2000 masters. I'm going to do 2000 us open. You're going to do 2000 open championship, which was definitely the British open back then, uh, heavily branded as such. I'm sure you will have plenty of on that. And I will handle the 2000 PGA. Obviously this is Tiger Woods winning three out of four on his way to the Tiger Slam. He did not win the 2000 Masters. And I hate to spoil your first segment, but please go ahead, take us to the

2000 Masters. Well, so I feel like we should before we get to 2000 Masters, we should set the stage a little bit for like what favorite Tiger mania was all about, like how much kind of just buzz was going around. As we said, Tiger had won the PGA. He was back. He was in the midst of sort of everything clicking for a swing change.

He had finally sort of been working with Butch all this time and things had finally clicked for him. And he had ended the year in 1999 with four straight victories. And so he won his fifth start to ended the year in 1999 with four straight victories. And so he won his fifth start to start the year in the epic sudden death playoff against Ernie Els, Kapalua. One of the great rewatches, if you want to go, the whole final round is on YouTube. And it is super fun to watch some of the, you know, this is again, different ball,

different equipment, super small driver heads heads and the two of them just throwing darts and rolling in putts. It is, you know, it is almost kind of a bummer to think of about Ernie Els' perspective back then because he was just, you know, playing unbelievable golf. He will finish second in three of the majors this year and just still feel like he's getting steamrolled. Tiger goes down, beats him in sudden death playoff in Kapalua. Ernie sort of says, almost kind of exasperated to the media, I think he's a legend in the making. He's 24 and he's probably going to be bigger than Elvis when he gets into his 40s.

That's my first attempt at an Elvis. We'll get warmed up through this. Tiger then follows that up by winning the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. So how many times did Tiger win the Pebble Beach Pro-Am? Just this one time. Just this one time. Yeah. People often think about Tiger kicking ass at Pebble. Really only happened this year, really.

In fact, instead of, you know, he wins the U.S. Open as you'll get to eventually, but then wins the Pro-Am. So do you remember who he tracked down? He was seven shots down with seven holes deployed. Do you remember who was Matt Gogol? Not a household name by any means. There's a great clip in the 2000 tiger documentary that PGA tour recently put out where go go comes up to him after the, the round in the sort of like press room and it was like, what, how the hell, like what, what's going on? And tiger kind of, so, well, I aegled 15 and he was like, you aegled 15 and he sort of like smacks tiger in the arm and stuff. It was like even the guys who he was kicking butt were, were kind of in awe of him.

Tiger's win streak finally ended at the Buick the following week. That playoff, if you remember in Pebble was a Monday finish. So Tiger was kind of weary, kind of tired. Finally people saw that he was getting worn down. Yeah, just overrated. What'd he finish? He finished second to Phil. Phil ended up winning by three shots.

One of the first times that Phil ever really stood up to Tiger in a final round. As I said, Tiger May has massive at this point. He is on the cover of just about every magazine in the universe, including the cover of Sports Illustrated. Here is Tiger looking, you know, kind of completely over-fitting suit here, just completely swimming in that suit. This is probably taken on the dock at Isleworth

or whatever, just kind of, I love some of the like photo shoots that Tiger was involved in back in the day. We'll get to a second one in a sec, but this was back when magazines still had the juice to sort of make guys sit around for two, three hours and do a photo shoot, get dressed up and all that stuff. As always, if you are not watching this on YouTube, sorry, I have lots of slides that we will present

screenshots of things at the time. So this might be worth it. This is a YouTube product. This is best consumed on YouTube because we will be laughing about a lot of imagery on this one. So I'm gonna read some sort of clips from this Sports Illustrator article

because this is back, as I said, when magazines had enough juice to basically convince Tiger Woods to sit for interviews, which is not something that will happen much going forward if at all. In fact, I don't think he does a major sit down interview for, I want to say almost like another, you know, I know he did one when he was turned 40, it was like the most significant interview, but he basically is just doing press conference hits for the next decade or so. And you'll see some pretty, this is still when we're learning a little bit

about the Tiger Woods universe, right? We've had the sort of like the legend and the myth of the buildup or whatever, but the kind of some of the realities are setting into here. He's not just a kid anymore, he's not a phenom, and we're still sort of getting glimpses into his world. This is a great opener in this SI piece that I'm just going to go ahead and read. It says last fall during a Ryder Cup practice round, Woods and Tom Layman were playing alternate shot one teed off on the odd holes, one on the even and Woods stood waiting for Layman

to tee it up on the sticks. A fan with a thick Boston accent raps, come on tiger hit one. Tiger stared into space, hit the ball. Tiger. Come on. Tiger waited for layman to drive and then strolled away. Hit one for me. Tiger target didn't turn wave or shrug. Nothing. Finally here it came. Tiger, you suck. Layman turned to the tiger and said, do you get that a lot? Tiger was said every day. Like it said, most guys, it would bother them or piss them off. But Tiger is just water

off a duck's back. It didn't match that happened to Monte. A lot of talk with about Tiger's parents and how what role they played in this big si article is particularly the influence of his mother, who had not been documented quite as much as Earl's influence. There's an anecdote in there where Olin Brown goes up to Tita's hand and shakes her hand and says, you know, I want you to know, as good as your son is at golf, you really raised a good man. Tita says, that's what a mother loves to hear. This again, Tiger Woods' mother is giving an interview to SI. She went on to say about how she was the law in the house when

Tiger was growing up in the suburb, LA suburb of Cyprus. She told him, you will never, never ruin my reputation as a parent because I will beat you. She said that she gets, Tiger gets his fierce intensity and his cutthroat approach to the game from her. I told him, you go after them, kill them, she said, and her English weighted with a heavy Thai accent. When you are finished, now it's sportsmanship, but before that, go for that throat. Do not let your opponent up. Earl was kind of pulling away from a little bit

of Tiger Tiger, Earl was kind of wanting, you know, remember he wanted Tiger to be a global icon and influence, and he said that he would hope that Tiger would evolve into be sort of more friendly and jovial on the course. And Tita said, hmm, that's dad. Dad wants him to be more compassionate. He's a green beret and all, but he's more compassionate than I am.

Tiger's personality is more like mine than dad's. When Tiger says, no, you don't ever ask him again. That's it. When he moves along, he won't come back. He's more like mom. When I say enough, don't ever come ask me again. I cut and I move on. Tiger is more like me. So this is again, like we're starting to sort of really understand the psyche of a big part of Tiger.

Tiger's kind of cutthroat attitude comes from, comes from his mom. And this is where the pros are really starting to like, they've gotten over like a little bit of like, why you guys like asking tiger and more, they're more now they're like, dude, like this dude is unreal. Like he's unbelievable. And it is, it's permeates through the whole year of just like a couple of quotes of like, you guys want to ask me about my game or anything else you guys want to ask me about? Cause it was, I'll be, I'm sure so many people in media just flocked to golf just because of tiger literally. And they're writing tiger every single day. And so they just wanted quotes about tiger and they probably

pissed a lot of players off in the process. A quote from Rocco mediate. He is not human. Cut them open and I'll tell you what you'll find a bunch of wires and levers and a big ass heart. Even Nicholas is sort of getting into it. He's better than the other players by a greater margin than I was, Nicholas said. He can get on a run and win three or four of these things in a row and all of a sudden that major record isn't far away.

A lot of sort of interest in Tiger's private life too, which didn't exactly exist a couple years ago. He's been dating a University of UCLA law student named Joanna Jagoda for a couple years at this point. And she's, you know, flying to tournaments on the PJ. And she's very, very private, refusing to give any interviews as often as with the woods omerta. The circle do not talk or you were kicked out of the circle essentially. When one British paper printed a story about woods being engaged to her, Woods was furious and had denied the story publicly.

A lot of things they write are fabrications, he said. Sensationalism sells. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. You have to understand that going in. There's also signs he's kind of pulling away from his parents a little bit. Earl doesn't travel much with the gang anymore. He kind of just hangs out at home and if he does, he doesn't ever walk the course because he's not in great health.

But Earl doesn't feel like this means anything other than that Tiger is sort of growing up. And he said, I've raised Tiger to leave me. He said, we don't have to communicate to each other to validate our relationship, Earl said. I don't have to say, oh, Tiger, I love you. Are you kidding me? I haven't talked to Tiger in two weeks. when he was in Los Angeles and San Diego.

No big deal. All this rumor crap that came up about him being engaged. I didn't have to talk to tiger. I know him. I trust him to come talk to me before making a decision like that. I laughed when I heard the whole damn thing. Earl was again, Earl is like one of my favorite quotes in the history of golf. And I would love to do an entire podcast about all the crazy things that Earl

said. Earl says that, um, Tiger is bringing about radical change. Uh, yet he wants people to know that he's quite boiled down and conservative in the way he dresses and his demeanor and his language. And Earl wants to warn people that golf won't be like this for long. God forbid Tiger was like Dennis Rodman or John McEnroe. The tour couldn't handle him. They couldn't discipline him. Think of the crowds that he would bring.

Earl said, I got news for you. It's gonna get worse, not better. Tiger is the lead tip of a new breed of golfer coming to the PGA Tour. And some of these kids are coming from the ghettos. They're not privy to the woods finishing school. Mark my words. I've seen them. You're going to get a Rodman, a Mackenroe bitch like hell at everything

and have no respect for the traditions of the game. He'll have qualified through qualifying school and gotten his card. So he won't be able to sit that guy on the bench. What is golf going to do then? Oh, my God, is that Patrick Reed's music? Tiger started again starting to feel a little bit of uh I would say resentment towards the press uh you know the famous incident that we discussed in the 97 where he felt like Charlie Pierce of GQ sort of betrayed his trust by essentially using quotes about Tiger making dirty dick jokes and dumb puns

inside of a limo ride. Again, I contend the entire thing was on the record and Tiger just didn't think that anyone would print those kind of things about him. It's a new sort of style essentially of dealing with the media and golf riders are kind of like a little bit annoyed at this. It's different than what the previous icons are. There's a passion for sports illustrators. This is a far cry from what the golf public and press are used to from their superstars. When Arnold Palmer single-handedly dragged the game to the mass market of the 60s, he did so in a new frontier style, chatting up people in the gallery and cultivating golf writers with a Kennedy-esque feel for what they needed, care and feeding.

Palmer always had time to talk to writers. he would sit in the locker room for hours buying drinks and in return he earned their undying love and protection Nicholas to massage egos he learned every writer's name and repeated it in front of the writers peers to this day he holds similarly regular State of the Bear press conferences to make everyone happy woods will have none of that. He rarely gives one-on on one interviews and he talks often about how everyone wants a piece of me. And although he's correct on that score, his remoteness leaves the golf media outside the tent waiting

for the first opportunity to piss inside it. This is Tiger's father, as I said, is kind of not doing great in his health wise or whatever. Uh, there's no prognosis, but Earl has had three open heart surgeries and he won't stop eating bad food or smoking cigarettes. His energy drains away so easily that he tends to doze off or shortness of breath and his refusal to change his old habits hits his family like a suicide note. This is Tita. She says this, he says, this is the way I want to live, but I want to see my son's future. I want to see my grandkids. Dad wants to check out first. Fine with me.

But I want to stay longer. Tita's a badass. She doesn't fucking care about any of it. This is a Tita and Earl are apparently living apart at this point. But Tiger has a his bachelor home as T he calls it a place that she doesn't dare visit. Do you want mom to be around to see the things that you don't want her to see? She says, I understand him. I don't bother him. I leave him alone. But his rat pack his rat pack goes down there and enjoys

their time. Tiger just in general, like he kind of he's the only kind of introspective and I don't know, like a little bit when he does open up, he's kind of like, interesting and dark. There's a great scene in the sports literature piece where he's sort of like sitting on the edge of a dock, watching a spider weave a spider web. And he says, How does the spider get from here to there? He stares out some more talks about the prey and how a spider weaves a trap thicker in the middle, sticky on some strands and dry on the others.

Two different web secretions, Wood says. It just knows what to use. It's hereditary, which just talks about how much Tiger loves watching like nature shows. He doesn't think about much life after golf. He says, this is a sport I could play literally for a lifetime. Earl often declares that his son will be an agent of social change, but Tiger feels at

home in the world of the rich and powerful. Sports Illustrated asked him for his views on gun control, which he says, it's up to every person to do what he or she wants. They asked him about the shootings at Columbine, and he says, what we've forgotten is our values and our morals and understanding proper respect. A lot of kids aren't taught that. I asked him about race relations. And he said, we're making progress slowly, but surely. And the South Carolina Confederate flag

thing, if you remember the Serena Williams and the tennis tournament, this was kind of going on. And he says, I'm a golfer. That's their deal. You know, it said it's si joke that he seemed make him seem fit for the Republican nomination. So again, not only did, um, do we get a, a big, big piece in sports illustrator that comes out, uh, at this time, but we also get this completely awesome golf digest, uh, deep dive here, which again, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see, uh, tiger in the, uh, the really is kind of sharp olive suit here with the Tantai.

I love that. Like again, the photo shoots of this aerosol, they would ask athletes to, to get dressed up and to do some sort of like fashion style pose as opposed to just like, all right, what do you got like four minutes to snap a quick shot as you're coming off the range? So this is a pretty, like like if you've seen this on YouTube, like so many pleats, like I can't even count how many pleats are in that.

More pleats than majors that he will end up with over this course of time. Is there one, one single picture of Tiger Woods off course and just like a well tailored fit, like a nice, nice look, a really solid look. And how was that possible? It's amazing how good this man at golf was and just how truly bad his fashion sense was

like over and over and over again. And kind of remains to this day, like the only time he ever really looked sharp was kind of on the golf course. Like anything off the course, we was like, just, you know, very Tiger Jammies, strange looking. So in golf digest, Tiger, there's a lot of fun and it goes about like, you know, it's basically like getting to know Tiger a little bit better.

You know, this is about to be like the greatest icon of this century. Tiger talks about how in the off season, he went bungee jumping off a bridge. He said it was a couple hundred feet to the water. I did a backwards swan dive because I didn't want to see anything, at least not all the way down. And I stopped about five or 10 feet short of the water. Some of the heavier adults were actually hitting the water.

I wouldn't try it with a bad back though. It snaps you pretty good. Can you imagine Tiger like, you know, with all the surgeries and shit that he had like him, just one diving off the back of a bridge. This is a, there's lots of like really kind of silly shit in this article. Basically they, they painted as like a 10 things that you should know about tiger.

And so one of them is that when tiger was in high school, he had a taco eating contest with his friends. He said, uh, it was a $5 bet right before a high school match with one of his high school teammates and the high school teammate ate 12 tacos. And then so tiger ate 14 to defeat him. I assume this is a Taco Bell, maybe some sort of version of it. Tiger says, Oh, it was back when tacos were like 39 cents. Anyway, they were really cheap. What? This is just like an intro into, all right. This is all right. Tiger's here.

He's incredible golfer. The interest is expanding outside of the golf world. Like what's he like as a person? What is he? And like the answers aren't like really amazing. Like there's not like more to him. It's amazing for us because we know like looking back like nerd shit about Tiger eating 14 tacos at Taco bell and then going out and winning a high school golf match. That's like red meat to us. But none of this is like particularly, you know, revelatory.

This is not like Michael Jordan punching Steve Kerr in the face or, you know, gambling all night at a casino to, and then avoiding scoring 40 in a playoff game. Well, which also like the expectations that Earl put on him as far as social change and do having a bigger impact than Gandhi. I think the media was, was okay to start digging into like, okay, what is this humanitarian like? And then it's like, now he's just a really good golfer and that's kind of it. Yeah. And a massive nerd. This is clear, which we celebrate tiger. We go for sure. We celebrate the entire catalog. We learned that Tiger makes his bed every morning, whether he's home or on the road,

which his mother teases him about doing, making his bed in hotels a little bit. Tiger, at this point, also his goal was to bench press one and a half times his weight. He says, oh, my max was like 240 pounds, but that was a while ago. I'm not telling you how much I can do now. I gotta have some secrets, you know? Tiger says that he's so flexible still that he can reach one hand over his shoulder and touch his hand in the back,

which would probably cause me to have a heart attack if I tried to do that. He says, I can't touch my elbows together behind my back anymore because I've built up my lats so much. He says that he has a couple of times taken batting practice with his buddy, Ken Griffey Jr., who also lives in the Isleworth community. I saw, I took BP twice last year in Minneapolis. I'll hit two to the warning track. I've got warning track power, baby. Are there images of that?

I wish. There are a couple images of him wearing like, I feel like he took batting matches with the Braves at some point, but I don't know there's any images of him like that time in Minneapolis. I know there's, I've seen Tiger wearing a batting helmet in some point. Yeah, this is one, here he is with junior. He's got

his hat on backwards. Just like, just like junior wears it. It looks a little bit, it's a little too on the nose. It's like the younger brother of the JV junior. Sweet. Tiger also says that he can still run a hundred yard dash in 11th in 11 seconds. Easy, but 100 meters is another story. Tiger's dad says that Tiger could have been a track star. Earl says that he had the perfect body for track and he really enjoyed it. Earl once put it considering what might have happened if Tiger had constated on track instead of golf. Earl says he could have kicked Michael Johnson's ass. Johnson world record holder in the 200 in the 400. As we build up to the Masters here, everyone is sort of Tiger is a massive favorite, even though he's only one one Masters at this point. And what

I love this quote, there's still some like sentiment about could Greg Norman still win a Masters, you know, he's he's 40 at this point. He says, you know, essentially I've got like, not that many years left. Excuse me, I don't think he's older than 40. He's 43, I think, 43 or 44. Tiger says about Greg Norman, it's a shame he hasn't won it.

It's tough to imagine going through something like that and keep coming back again and again. It's a credit to what kind of person he is. Love to see old quotes of Kat praising Greg Norman. He's such a good person. Sir David Duvall also says about Greg Norman, I view him as a great player. Everyone looks at him and thinks he should have won 10 to 12 majors. Put himself in there so many times, he's almost made it look routine. But again, like everyone is sort of being asked to talk about Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, which is, you know, some of the players are annoyed. Some of the players are accepting

it. Aizinger at this point says, I don't care about Tiger Woods or Willie Wood or Natalie Wood. I can't control anybody else. I can only control what I do on the golf course. Tiger's asked in the presser if he can ever remember being intimidated on the golf course. He said yes when he was 11 years old because how Tiger intimidates other people is sort of a big storyline at this point. He says another boy drove a green on a 290-yard par 4 as an 11-year-old and Tiger got super intimidated but he ended up beating the kid anyway. He says, I talked to my dad about it and from then on, no, I didn't fear anyone. The writer's asking, what would intimidate you?

Tiger says, oh, well, maybe if I had stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson, I don't think my chances would be too good for that. Again, so Jack Nicholas is back at the master's salary after not competing last year, getting his hip replaced. And he says, you know what? I think I can contend. He says, I always thought this golf course would be the best one for me to win another major. But the way it's set up now, I'm not so sure. Remember, we have the first cut

that was introduced last year. Some changes to the golf course have come about. Jack says, I felt like Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, and Augusta will be the best places for me to compete. Pebble will probably be the easiest for me to be competitive. Realistically, probably not. I can't compete on the senior tour right now.

How can I compete with these guys? There's a lot of talk already now about whether Tiger will break Jack's record. Remember, he only got two majors at this point, so it's kind of a... But people are really starting to already see the writing on the wall. This is a piece from the LA Times.

Most golf observers believe that Woods plans to set the bar impossibly high so that no one could presume to touch his records. If Nicholas won six green jackets, Woods wants 10. If Nicholas won 18 majors, Woods wants 25. Nicholas won every major at least three times. Woods wants to win each at least four times. If Sam Snead won 81 PGA tour events, Woods wants a hundred at his current rate of 5.1 victories a year. Woods will surpass Snead by the time he is 36. We're at 49, not quite there yet. Woods won't

even discount the possibility that he can win the unattainable grand slam sweeping all four professional majors in one year. Oddsmakers share his enthusiasm with British bookmaker William Hill setting the odds at Woods winning this year at Augusta, Pebble Beach, St. Andrews and Valhalla at an absurd 33 to one. Jesus. So I guess who is a member of Augusta National in 2000 for the first time? Is it a female for the first time? It is not.

It is when Arnold Palmer officially becomes a member in 2000. You know, we talk a lot about Jack's decade-long run of success at the Masters. I feel like sometimes Arnie's record in the Masters gets kind of overlooked. From 1958 to 1964, Arnie finished 1, 391 at the Masters, which is kind of fucking remarkable. Arnie joked that now that since he's a member, he was petitioning the club to let him play

from the member tees in the tournament. He actually played in their member member or whatever earlier in the year and did not win which is kind of a he sort of is 70 at this point so you know he's a little bit perturbed that but he's still got that dog in him he's still you know trying to to win you know where he can he doesn't feel like he's actually competitive the Masters but he kind of is asked to recall what it was like the first time he remembers coming to the Masters. He remembers he and Winnie pulled up in there and his wife Winnie pulled up in her trailer and they parked it down by the railroad tracks in the Daniel Field trailer park. He said, when I got to the club, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Arnie's just like, you can tell like reading some of these old things, like kind of just how charming he was. Cause even at 70, like he's sharp enough to kind of make some, you know, some charming jokes for the first time. Sully the master is going to use threesomes for pairings here. They were previously in twosomes, but they have people tee off in threesomes this year. And one of the big reasons is they wanted to pair Jack and Arnie and Gary together for the first time this happens. And so just look this up just of note. Arnold played the Masters all the way through 2004

and he did not make it. I'm not making fun just like he just kept playing this event. He did not make a cut from 1984 to 2004. Didn't miss a single year and did not make one cut in that time period. Like 21 straight years to finish out his career there without making the cut there. It's just remarkable that he kept, he's like, I'm coming back, I'm going again. As you'll see in what's coming up a little bit, there is some feeling of this time of like,

yeah, you just play until you're dead. Like there is no like shame at all in like shooting big high scores for some of these older guys. And it was just kind of seen as like that's part of the masters, man. Like you can play forever. Just wow that he never top 10 at Augusta after 1967 and played every single year up to 2004. That's so long. We'll get to another similar story of someone of less renowned than Arnie in a sec. So they have a, on Thursday, Arnie and Jack and Gary have a 121 tee time. And Arnie says, well, I go to bed at 5pm.

So I guess we're going to have to play fast. For the first time, Sully Sally in 27 years, winners are not automatically granted winners on the PGA tour not automatically granted a spot in the Masters. Seven winners of the during the past 12 months do not get invited to the Masters. Chairman Hootie Johnson said I'm sorry those boys didn't make it. But if they keep playing well, they will make it. Olin Brown, Brad Faxon, Brian Henninger, Rich Beam, JL Lewis, Jim Carter, and Tom Pernice Jr. all do not make it despite wins on the PGA tour. They changed the rules so that the

top 50, uh, were essentially, um, only given sort of automatic. They wanted to make sure that they had the, you know, a better field, the best people. Poor Jim Carter, distant relative of our friend and colleague Tron Carter, I'm sure, never got to play in the Masters. All the other guys did eventually or had played it previously. Jim Carter won the Touchstone Energy Tucson Open over Chris DiMarco and John Vandeveld, but had not impressed the Masters enough to earn a spot since it came during the same time as the World Match Play. So this is our second year with a second cut.

Players Jack and a lot of people are not thrilled about it, say it's sort of like desecrating what made Augusta special. But Hootie Johnson says, "'We felt we could no longer let him swing from the heels. "'We had to require more accuracy off the tee "'and that is the reason.'" Jack says that at the Champions Dinner, all we said was a different course, different tournament.

It's not what we used to play at the Masters. Tom Fazio is sort of the person who did the kind of redesign and kind of redesigned the 15th green. Nicholas was not shy about shitting on Fazio. He basically said that the changes to the 15th hole look like they were done by someone who does not play golf or understand golf. I've never said that about Augusta National before. Fazio said he did not consider them changes, but instead refinements. So Rick Riley, a guy among the other people who sort of shit on the Fazio

redesign said, I guess it's progress, but this is a column. I don't go to Augusta for progress. I go to see as young Sergio Garcia roamed the same courses as a young Gene Sarazen. I go to see the Greenkeepers pruning history. I go to Augusta to stop time, not worry about keeping up with it. They say it's progress. Well, hey, why not stop there? Let's put railroad tides on 12, a Starbucks on the veranda. Why not gobble up some land across town and build a TPC Augusta Springs and move the masters there. He quotes Nicholas is saying, did they do things here that I wouldn't do? Yes. Is this the Augusta that we played? No. Is this the Augusta that we won on? No, it's not even close. Does it

take away the flavor of Augusta? Yes. Is that what Bobby Jones had in mind? No way. Not even close. But does it matter what I think? No, it doesn't. Well, cause in the prior year they had him out to like look at the new changes and he's like, yeah, I like them all. These are great. I like them. One thing I was okay about though, Jag does not exactly have a consistency of some of his takes. You can grab him like 20 minutes later. And, and you know, especially Riley, I like a relationship with him. And you just be like, yeah, I'm gonna just go all over. Tom Weisskopf, who famously never won the masters. I was doing some TV and stuff at

this point. I just thought this is not related to the masters, but I enjoyed this quote so much. He's playing a little bit of the senior tour at this point, but he's not really like loving it. He says, excluding about a dozen guys, they're the most unhappy group of individuals I've ever been around in my life. It's just pathetic. There are all these guys you see at the end of the day, taking their plastic bag that you're supposed to put your golf shoes in and filling it up with beer or soft drinks

to take to their room or out with their buddies. They dress in the dark. You see their polyester and their Western pockets all over the place and they're cheap. I've watched some of them tip the locker room attended the guy who shines all their shoes all week long, like 20 bucks. I mean, they drink $30 worth of soft drinks and beer alone. I just couldn't believe it. I get tired of hitting three wood off every tee and a wedge into every hole. The senior tour is boring. Tom Weiskopf was like truly one of the OGs when it came to just like talking shit. Paul Laurie, his first

master. So I just wanted to put this in here. He won the open championship. Of course, last year when the Vanderbilt collapsed, I asked him for his first impression. Somebody he said, I thought it was very hilly. It's much hillier than you realize when you see it on TV. TV doesn't do it justice. It does not to a much hilly-er than you realize when you see it on TV. TV doesn't do it justice. It does not do it justice. I bet in 100 years you cannot guess the first round leader of the Masters in 2000, Sully.

JP Hayes. Good guess. Dennis Paulson. Dennis Paulson shoots a 68, 37 year old from California who at this point had never won on tour but was ranked in the top 50 that's how he got in he did power previously win the nationwide long drive championship first round leader could have been Tom layman but he made a double bogey on 18 when he tried to hit his approach from the woods onto the green and it ricocheted back over his head deeper

into the woods he said it was back there in a deep, dark, dungy place, layman said. Our first look at Tiger Woods, he shoots 75, Solly, on the opening round. Shocking. What could have been? Oh, I just wanted to mention here, I missed over this in my slides. The par three contest used to be such a big deal

that they would put like news stories about it. The Associated Press would write like a whole write up of who won the par three contest. I feel like now it's just like a hit and giggle with your kids or whatever. But, you know, back then, like it was serious business. Tiger, I want to show you since, you know, he, he did not play particularly well in the first round, but when he met with the media, it was all smiles. This is like, you know, back in the day, you dealt with the media, you know, you just, you didn't, you weren't a dick, you know, whatever.

Tiger made a triple on 12, hit it in the water, splash it out of the bunker, and after it hit a second shot of the bunker, splashed it out of the bunker, three putt, it just was kind of a mess. But he's not stressed, only four guys broke 70 on the first day, or I mean, broke par. So it's not like a huge deal. He feels like, okay, I'm going gonna be okay. Vijay Singh opens with an even par 72. Our guy Arnie shoots 78. Gary player shoots 75 and Jack shoots 74, which is better than Tiger Woods. Again,

Jack is 60 years old. Tiger Woods is the overwhelming favorite to win the Masters will win three majors this year. And Jack Nicklaus beats him in the opening round of the Masters. Golf is truly the best sport. Jack is still in, you know, Jack wants to freaking win the Masters. So he sees, there's a little shot here of our guys,

Arnie and Jack and Gary hugging each other on the first tee. Are they asked, Arnie, it sounded like you guys were having a fun conversation. Looked like you guys were having a fun conversation there on the first tee. Do you remember what you were talking about? And Arnie said, I don't know, probably how old we were. And Gary said, of course you don't remember. Arnie. Gary looks the same. He does not look like he's changed in 25 years. So Jack is still like, he's not quite really ready to concede that like he's not like a cont to concede that like, he's not

like a contender in this tournament. He says, I didn't pay much attention to the galleries. They were very nice, but I'm a funny duck. I come here to play golf. I was walking around to myself saying, get realistic, Jack. It wouldn't have paired you together with these three if they thought you still had a chance. still, I can't relax and play. I have to compete. The press asked Arnie and, and Gary, does Jack still have it in him to win? And Gary says, I don't think so. Arnie says, ah, very tough, very tough. There's something about a few years that makes all the difference. So I will say Arnie 78. I mean, we just mentioned that he didn't make a cut better than Paul

Laurie, Greg Norman, Corey Pavin and John Daly. So you know, the old dog could still slap it around a little bit. It's a tough year for John Daly. Just a little good. I'll get ahead of that part of my research. This was back when they didn't kick the old guys out of the tournament. They just kind of let them play until they had to drag them off stage. A 77-year-old Doug Ford teed it up in the first round and shot in 94. Ford had not had

a round below 80 since 1993 and hadn't made a cut since 1977. He won the Masters in 1957 and didn't make a cut since after 71. And this is 2000. So we're talking about 19 straight missed cuts and no rounds in the eighties for the last in the seventies for the last seven years. We don't know what he would have shot in round two because he wd'd, which he had taken to do in recent years. I asked often why he continues to play. Ford said, because I won the damn thing. Fuck yeah, Doug Ford, stick to the people. True, technically true. Guess what, Solace, Doug Ford is back in 2001,

by the way, spoiler. You know what, I like that. Just, you know what, you're gonna have to drag me off the stage. I'm obsessed with DJ's idea of when you win the Masters, you get to play in it forever from the T's you won from. Yes. You should not have to play from 7,000 yards

or whatever this course was set up at. In the second round, Tom Lehman again probably should be the leader, but he makes a double on the 15th. I'm laughing at this quote because I'm hard to imagine a quote like this appearing today in a newspaper. He said that his caddy, he's sharing this story with the press afterwards. And he said his caddy Andy Martinez said to him afterwards, you know, at some point you're going to have to take it up the rear at Augusta.

He might as well grin and bear it. He was right. So I'm grinning and bearing it. He shoots 72 to sort of tumble down the board. David Duvall shoots 65 to jump in the lead in around two. Jesus. I don't remember. El's shoots 67. Mickelson is also in the lead in round two. Jesus, I don't remember that. Ernie Els shoots a 67.

Mickelson is also in the mix with a 68. Vijay has a 67 as well. Els was actually leading the Masters at one point, but then was told that his group was behind the pace in the middle of 15 fairway. And so he rushed hitting a wedge and he dumped it in the pond and made a double. He was furious. You're in the lead of the Masters and you've got some idiot telling you that you're out of position.

It's ridiculous. My Ernie Ellis is so bad. I'm sorry. Reporter asked a question for Tiger because Tiger at this point, I think he shot a 72, shot even par. He asked Tiger, did it ever get into your head that there was a guy out there, Jack Nicholas, who was 60 years old, who would beat you. Jack shot a 70 in the second round. He said, well, Tiger got a big laugh in the press. He said, yeah, well, there's another guy out there. She was 63 years old to beat

me too. So Tiger's like kind of just like laughing it up, whatever. Like that and that 63 old Tommy Aaron made the cut. Tommy Aaron shot a 63. I'm going to show you a picture of Tommy Aaron. This is what Tommy Aaron looked like. This is peak athleticism. Yes. Some, some old guys, they look super athletic. You know, they look like Gary player, you know, Jack even kind of looks, you know, no, Tommy Aaron looks like he could be like 80 years old. And he got it around shot 68, which is just remarkable. Holy shit. Yeah. He shot 72 74 in the first two rounds. I'm getting ahead of my notes here. Tommy Aaron is actually the person who let Rick Riley caddy for him in the book. Who's your caddy? He fired his caddy after the first round and Riley kept bugging him.

Like, is there any way I can caddy in the Masters? And Aaron said, fine, let's do it. Great fun quotes in there. In that book, he hits like a seven iron as it's in the air and Riley says like, be right, be right. And Aaron turns to Riley and says, get your mouth off my ball. I think that's a sick quote. Aaron says, I may break two records this week after he shoots an 86 in the third round.

The oldest guy to make the cut and the guy who shoots the highest score. Round three was rough, a lot of wind, which we'll get to in a sec. But Jack Nicholas shoots 70 in the second round. He becomes the first player to break over 60 to break par since Sam Snead in 1975. Jack did not have a great go round in the third round, which

we'll get to in a sec. Tiger, he gets back in it a little bit. I think he's plus three. He says, I watched TV last night. A lot of people were saying I was completely out of it and I didn't appreciate it very much. That's for sure. In the second round, Arnie and Jack get a standing ovation when they come out of the bathroom in the middle of the round, which, uh, their Jack is sort of embarrassed about and Arnie's just kind of like charmed up. No big deal. Uh, as we said, some of the sports writing of this era started to get a little bit, a little bit less corny, but there's still occasionally like some signs of it, you know, since Arnie's army was on its last legs, a couple columnists

in the press were trying to get the phrase tiger's Platoon going to sort of talk about his supporters. Really? Yeah, really. It didn't quite ever take off. I'm sure Tiger must have loved it. Jean Vanneveld becomes the first Frenchman to ever make the cut at the Masters. So Jack, as you know, the roars of Jack are reverberating around the property. Everybody remembers, you know, just a couple years ago when he finished sixth and was actually in contention. And the players are like, I cannot believe this dude

is still awesome. And he said, the press asked him, how bad are you back, Jack? Is it actually enough to contend? And Jack says, he asked me that on Thursday. And I say, this old geezer doesn't have a chance of doing anything. He asked me that on Friday and I said I'm gonna go out there and shoot a good round of golf because I feel pretty young. He thinks he could be leading right now if he'd been a little more fortunate on some putts. Can he win? Probably not but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna try. Does it mean I'm not gonna give it my best shot? Heck yeah. So I don't know when Gary players alleged streak of 3,000 cuts or shooting his age, uh, began,

but I can tell you it did not begin in 2000 as the 64 year old shot 74, 76, uh, to miss the cut. The third round, the weather is getting bad, but not in the morning. It's still nice and tranquil in the morning and tiger goes out early like 10 AM and shoots 68. Uh, and he goes from 39th place to fourth place in one day before the wind kicks up and the players have to sort of fight the elements. I just want to do like a quick detour here. So I'll just show you like what the

technology was like in the Masters for keeping scores. Since we were just at the Masters. This is how they used to do hand with dry erase markers, and then it would be fed into these, you know, old Commodore 64 type computers. And then of course, the dot matrix printer would print out the scores. And then it would be fed into this, you know, pixelated leaderboard, which I would have guessed this is 1986, the way they kept it on a computer there. Well, you know, the masters probably back then was like,

ah, you know what? It's still 1986 in our minds. Like we don't really have to update things that much. David Duvall was tied for the lead going into the 12th in the third round, but dumped his ball into Ray's Creek when he feels like he got gusted. VJ hits a little punch draw, eight iron in there to six feet, makes birdie and takes the lead at six under. Jack has a kind of a miserable day in round three shoots 81 and he looks like it coming up 18. I mean, it's his

worst round in 155 rounds at the Masters. Play is called for the day when Vijay and Duval are on 15. We got Vijay at seven under, Duval at 4 under, Ernie Els at 3 under, Lauren Roberts at 1 under, Tiger at 1 under, and Phil at 1 under. When we resume play, this is really where David Deval starts to sort of let things. And so Deval has a putt on 15 here that I would describe as not that difficult. Like, you know, it's a good six feet. You can't really tell in here, but Deval's putting is going to let him down immensely. As we can see here, he starts this ball,

it could like six inches and it never even like, we're talking about a six footer that misses the hole by a foot. Putting is starting to kind of, you know, kind of let him down. Misses the makeable birdie on 15 and said, hits it to three feet on 17. Vijay dumps into the bunker on 17 and you're thinking, okay, like,

it's going to flip here. Vijay rolls in like a downhill 10 footer. Devald misses his short putt, lips it out and Vijay takes a three shot lead into the last round. They had to complete this round on Sunday morning because of the weather stuff. And Vijay made four pars in what was like some pretty miserable weather to start. And so that kind of essentially what put him in the driver's seat. Golf Digest said, it's been a rough 24 hours in Augusta. The Sunday was gorgeous. The weather was terrible on Saturday with rain and high winds. Play was delayed enough that some of the golfers had to return early Sunday morning to compete. Singh played four holes in the morning, making all pars to finish with an impressive 70 considering the nasty conditions.

In fact, it's probably the round that won him the tournament considering Ernie Els was four shots worse in the third round and ends up losing by three. Spoiler, we'll get there. But as we start out our final round here, this is like it's not a cakewalk for Vijay in any way shape or form. We start out, you know, as Vijay is leading by three, but Duval Burde a cakewalk for Vijay in any way, shape or form. We start out, you know, as Vijay is leading by three, but Duval birdies the second and Vijay does not. And then Vijay bogeys the third. So suddenly we are at a one stroke lead and we got Tiger at Ernie at three under, only

three back. Tiger actually bogeys the six, but he birdies the seventh. So he's still hanging around. On six, we have the pin in the upper right corner here. Deval hits a beautiful, beautiful shot that it's like kind of right up against the collar and Vijay actually hits it inside of him. We're talking Deval has probably like 10 feet. Vijay's got about eight feet. Deval rolls in the putt and where we briefly tied for the

lead for six under, but Vijay like 90 seconds later just pours in a birdie right on top of him to take the lead back. Lauren Roberts makes, I wish I had a footage of this, like a 50 foot curling putt on nine that has at least 10 feet of break to get to six under. So he's kind of hanging around to on nine VJ hits it stiff, maybe has like two feet for birdie, but Duval also hits it pretty stiff. So he's sticking around.

Duvall like was up for the fight for a lot of this. It seems like in retrospect that, you know, VJ kind of dusted him, but Duvall was right there until a moment that we will discuss coming up. As we head to the LeBac nine, Jim Nance tells a story about how back in South Africa, a regular driver for Ernie Els has just won the lottery. He's run like 13 million rand, which is like the equivalent of like $2 million. And Els was telling Nance this story.

And he says, great day for my friend. Maybe the stars are aligned for me as well. On 10, Deval hits a shot that comes up maybe like a yard short and funnels all the way back down the hill. Up ahead, Tiger's starting to make some noise. He just barely misses a putt at 10 and 11 and for two great iron shots. So I just couldn't make any putts. Devala hits a really good pitch, but hits a terrible, terrible putt and just misses completely. At 11, though, Vijay opens the door again and puts essentially like the Bryson shot from this year, dunks it right into the water on 11 from Milva Farrell.

Really, really bad iron swing. And we're kind of like forever like waiting around. I would say Vijay takes a good three minutes to figure out where he's going to drop. Because the ball hit on the bank and trickled back, you know, it did clear the hazard initially, he's able to take line of play relief in line with the flag. And so he's able to have a much easier pitch than he would have been had the ball been a yard short and just plopped straight into the water and never cleared the hazard line.

So he's able to hit like a, you know, he's again, Vigis is a shitty putter at this point in his career and he will talk about this at some point, but from here he chips it to like three feet and he's able to make a par. He's able to make a bow, he's able to make bow, you avoid double. And so again, we are one shot difference going into 12. Deval is hitting first, it's a great shot to 20 feet. Venturi says, what a beautiful golf shot at the time. And Vijay guns it long of 12, up into the azaleas.

Oh, but it comes down like a plinko. It could plink, plink, plink, gets down, trundles into the bunker. VJ, as you've had this bunker shot before, saw he splashes it out right towards the hole, gets it about a foot, makes an unlikely par, could have easily been a double if it stays up in those flowers.

Although you know what? It never does stay up in those flowers. Like unless it's Max. Not only if you're Norman. That's right. Jesus. Tiger is in the pine straw on 13 and decides, oh, you know what?

Fuck it. I'm going for this. Hits an awesome shot. What is this shirt from Tiger? This is barely even Sunday red. There's just a hint of it. This is, I think, truly the reason why Tiger did not win all four majors this year,

so I guess this is back in the era before, excuse me, the last of the era of before he was really full red. It's just the tiniest little sliver around the belt line of red at this point. Don't love it. Just not, no, he did him dirty. Maybe his mother, that was before she was like, enough. I will have only my son wearing red. So Deval just barely like misses his birdie putt on 12. VJ makes a par. Ernie stripes a long iron right into the middle of the green on 13. I mean, textbook awesome. Just missed, I mean, he's got probably 15 feet for Eagle, just misses it. Like an Eagle would have gotten him to seven under, would have been,

you know, a shot off the lead. Can't quite do it. VJ's got again, 13 is playing 465 at this point. I'd forgotten how late it still was playing like under 500 yards back when they've just basically got no like there's if you hit in the fairway, you are going for this green. It's not like with 96 with Faldo like having indecision. Is he going to hit two iron? VJ is hitting like eight iron into like this into 13 green. I mean, it's, it's, it doesn't feel like it's much of a decision. Uh, so VJ hits it in the middle of the green, got the advantage, devolves a little bit further down. The wind kind of keeps picking up every time devol gets over the ball,

the wind, he feels like the wind to he steps back. Uh, and he rechecks his yardage with his caddy. He gets over the ball again a The second time wins picks up. You can see he's got that Mossimo shirt on. You can see it kind of rippling a little bit in the sleeves as we talked about. The sleeves are enormous in this era. You can see his pants kind of rippling checks his yardage again, and he's got 196 in, uh, changes clubs.

He's thinking about it again, again, gets over the ball again, backs off again for a third time. Geez. Takes a swing, balls in the air. We know immediately from the look here is David DeVille checking his yardage with his caddy over and over again. As soon as the ball's in the air, this is the hang dog look that David gives a truly horrible golf shot.

It bounces before it gets to Race Creek. I mean, he's got a five iron. It's on the, so it goes in on the wrong side. Venturi just rips him. You can be aggressive, but you can't fire at that flag. The indecision is what caused it all. Deval says, I just hit a bad golf shot and it was the wrong time to do that. Pitches behind the hole, runs at three feet by, you know, is they can't make it. But Ernie is like, truly like, all right, Ernie's is going to be the challenger hits it on 14 hits it to 10 feet. We're like, fuck yeah. Ernie's Ernie's going to be the guy who's going to give VJ run. Just grazes the edge of the pot. He falls to his knees like an anguish. VJ two, but being

well two puts for birdie on 13. He's at nine under, he's up by three shots. Tiger, again, birdie's 15. We got full putter raise in the air. He says he thinks afterwards if he can birdie the last three, anything can happen. Ernie does get a birdie on 15 to get to seven under, and he hits it stiff on 16, like five feet behind the hole. What happens, Sal? You can't be behind the hole

or above the hole on 16. Just you'd rather have a 20 footer, 18 footer from an up the hill, cannot make the putt. Deval almost makes an 80 foot eagle putt on 15, leaves it about six inches short. Doesn't matter though, because Vijay two putts for Birdie. Before that happens though, I wanna just highlight one shot here, very similar to what happened with Rory this year. This is the angle that Vijay had on 15.

This year, again, no like, I don't know whether it's the greens were soft or just like guys who are unbelievable like long iron players at this point, but no decision about like whether to lay up here with a two stroke, three stroke lead at the Masters hits an, this is one of the few shots that I actually remember from this Masters because Deval hits it, has a similar shot, but hits it like on the right side of the green. As I said, he had 90 feet for birdie. BJ hits an unbelievable like high ropey draw that just goes several right behind this pin. It's such a good shot. You know, I think I can't remember who it's a fair to whoever says like that might be the shot of the tournament. Wow. That is unbelievable. You can see it.

I would encourage you to go back and watch it because you can see we don't have Tracer back then, but you can just see how he has to start at 50 feet right of those trees and shape it in there. Weirdly, like so VJ two two putts, easy birdie there, because he's a terrible putter at this point, get to in a sec. And on 17, like, you know, Deval hits another great shot in there, but leaves it like six feet short. Again, a terrible, terrible putt. The putting just like let him down over and over again. VJ for some reason, like guns is pretty putt on 17, like three feet by it has to make like a nervy putter putt coming back. Up on 18, Ells hits another great shot into 18 but misses again. Just to sort of recount here, Ells just barely misses an eagle on 13 and then misses makeable

birdies on 14, 16, 17 and 18. Vijay kind of makes it for conclusion on 18 by rolling in his first like actual putt of the day rolls in like an 18 footer. He says afterwards, you know, this week gives a lot of hope to a lot of players who can't really putt that well. Because if you believe in your stroke, there's always going to be a lot of light there. L says I felt like I was going to win. I felt like I was going to win the tournament when I stepped on the first tee. I knew the back nine was key and I had my chances, but it wasn't meant to be. Tiger ends up finishing fourth. I believe, uh, you might need to double check that. Uh, but VJ at this point, you know, everyone wanted a five, sorry.

Tiger one, you know, everyone wanted Tiger to, to be the dude in this. And so it's like a little bit like, ah, I kind of let down the VJ one, uh, won this one. He also kind of gives the press very little to work with in his Victor press conference, kind of give short answers, not really like expanding much on his time, you know, in Borneo. He's already won a major at this point. So he's, you know, he's had the story of his past kind of recounted. If you missed the deep dive narrative that we did about VJ, I would highly encourage you to go back and listen to that because some of this is kind of recounted in that. But as he gets up from the press conference when it's over, he sort of mumbles and the mics can pick it up. He says, kiss my ass everybody. It's awesome. I never do that. Oh, yeah. One of the great VJ walk off lines. Kiss my ass, everybody.

So a big chunk of the Masters game story in Sports Illustrated focuses on VJ's past cheating allegations. I know where he allegedly fudged a scorecard in, I believe, Jakarta. Again, go check out the deep dive that we did on it. And Alan Shipnuck, the writer of the story, quotes an anonymous American Ryder Cupper as saying, once a cheater, always a cheater, when referring to Vijay. So this is interesting enough, this story, again, especially a lot of clout in this day, like they sort of set the tone for how people felt about golf a lot of ways. This pisses Ernie Ells off immensely. And Ernie Ells writes a letter to the editor of SI, which SI runs in full. And Ernie says, Why would someone say that about Vijay as he triumphed in the Masters? Why would SI's article on the first major of the 21st

century not confine itself to Vijay's magnificent victory? Why instead did the writer dredge up an unsubstantiated allegation about an event that may or may not have occurred 15 years ago. Why paint an unflattering picture of Vijay and say that he is thought to have as much personality as an iron Byron and calling him unapproachable and the worst interview in the sport. There's a lot more to letter, but that's kind of the sort of gist of it that Ernie writes. I just thought that was kind of cool and kind of funny

how like, the letters to the editor were still a thing that Ernie writes. I just thought that was kind of cool and kind of funny how like the letters to the editor were still a thing. Ernie felt compelled to like stick up for his guy VJ because they'd played all over the world together. So I don't know if you how much you know this but the putter that VJ Singh won, I mean changes putters like as much as just people change their socks. He was using a putter called the Dandy putter. It was designed by a former piano, nightclub piano player named Alan Strand, who was the son of a physicist. He just kind of made these putters like kind of on a whim and Gil Morgan decided that he wanted to try one and won a couple of times on the senior tour and Vijay, because he can like never stop tinkering, was like, I'll try one of those. I think it was like at the Nissan Open.

This guy Strand handed him one and Vijay potted well enough with it. And he, it's, it was the kind of putter that's makes me laugh. I would love to hear what our friends at Titus would say about this, but you know how most putters have an offset. This was a putter that had what's called an onset. The head was actually ahead of the shaft, which strand said that helped you load the putter better. You did not exactly seem poised to capture on the success of VJ's thing because he said, I could have had 20,000 orders filled from pro shops after seeing one of the masters with the putter, but I don't want to do that. I think our path is different. We're focusing

on changing the game of golf. This isn't about making cash. It's about sharing a knowledge of why a putter and a putting stroke is important to a golfer and a good instrument. There is no manipulation required with this putter. It is designed to reflect our natural tendencies with the putter. Sorry, the website for the dandy putter still exists. I did not take a screenshot of this, but you can go look it up. It's hard to tell if it's operational. It looks like it was made with like 2001 era Adobe flash technology.

It says that the, this putter was used by the 2000 masters winner, but it does not mention VJ's name in part, I think because VJ stopped using the putter like three weeks after he won the master. So wish we had putting numbers from it. Like I bet he had a negative strokes, skate putting. Oh, sure. It was like one of those things where, you know, watching the film or whatever the Masters,

which is like narrated by Pat Summerall, weirdly, you can see like he doesn't make a lot of putts, but he just like hits it close enough on a bunch of holes to just make, you know, he was okay at lagging and he didn't like miss, you know, he had one like miss in that final round that like, I think it was on 16 maybe that was like, Oh, maybe he's going to cost him, but no, Garza didn't. So one of the great ball striking performances of all time. And, oh, and I did want to say here, didn't realize, did not remember this at all. After VJ walked off 18 green,

uh, here's his wife and he did with the original, uh, like sort of thing. They had a big embrace right behind 18 green and Cass even wore the red shirt. Uh, this, you know, it could have been a super heartfelt moment if people felt the same way about VJ as they do about charler and Charlie and tiger. Are you saying Charlie stolen valor? It could be good. I mean, we know Charlie watches like YouTube and stuff. And you know, so maybe he was like going back through this one and was like, Oh, I'm going to, my dad, everyone's a major, I'm going to, I'm going to do this one. So, uh, just kind of surprised me. I felt like I was looking at like a black mirror episode of like, Whoa, like what's going on here. This is, I've seen this one. So just kind of surprised me. I felt like I was looking at like a black mirror episode of like, Whoa, like

what's going on here? This is I've seen this before. This Masters is such a black box for me. Like it just is for how vivid the 2000 US Open is and all the majors after it this year. This is like such a I don't know if I've ever gone back and watch that replay in any capacity. But you've encouraged me to want to do that. I mean, Deval, you just say like what a great ball striker was. And again, since we don't have, we wouldn't have strokes game putting at the Masters anyway.

But like just the putting really let David down. Like when he was hitting so many great iron shots. And other than that terrible swing on 15, like he, this could have been either he or Ells's Masters very easily. And they just couldn't make any putts. 13, the terrible swing on 15, like he, this could have been either he or else's masters very easily. And they just couldn't make any pots. 13, the terrible swing on 13. 13, excuse me.

13, yep. That is it. I have plenty more when it comes to the way up to the open, but that is it. The number one thing you can do for your skin's health is protect it from the sun. Orzen Alps makes sunscreen that you'll actually want to use from clean ingredients you can feel good about putting on your skin. You're not going to smell like a piña colada. It's lightweight. It's not sticky or greasy. It doesn't leave the white cast and residue on there. It's simple. It's fast. It's easy to use. Most of their products are travel-friendly,

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the sun. Trust me, take the skin quiz build your own kid and you can check them out at oresandalps.com. They make so many great products and I especially recommend that sunscreen spray. I've got it in 50. I've got it in 70. I've got the travel size in 50. They have many, many great products. oresandalps.com. Let's get back to the pod. All right, Kev, it's time to get into to the fun stuff. I'm going to ask you a couple questions

here. And actually, just one question. One of the most significant events in golf history took place between the 2000 Masters and the US Open. What and what is that? One of the most significant events. Oh my God. This isn't like a punny question. This isn't a real question. Off shoot, this is a real development here.

Which like, before I went to like read about this and do the research, I don't think I would have, I know I would not have said this out loud, like and I'm about to connect the dots here for what is to happen for the rest of this year, but. Oh, is this, I actually, you know what? I think I might be able to guess. Is this the ball change for Tiger? Yes, that is exactly right. Exactly right. So a big source for a lot of the content in this episode and this research comes from Kevin Cook's book, The Tiger Slam, which I have here

that I listened to the audio book actually while we were driving. And then I'm gonna be reading some parts of this great chronicle of history of this time period. Would recommend adding it to your golf bookshelf if you cannot get enough Tiger content because it's great. Anyways, one morning Tiger was chipping around

with Marco Mira and Tiger's watching O'Meara hit these nippers that are checking up right at the hole. And he's curious how he's doing it. And he gives Tiger a smart aleck answer like about the skill required until Tiger hits a ball with Marco Mira's Strata. And the Strata tour had a solid core and a polyurethane cover. And the Strata tour had a solid core and

a polyurethane cover. And Tiger quickly comes to the realization like it's the golf ball. Like and O'Meara tells him like you are playing an archaic golf ball. Like do you get it? Like you your golf ball is is obsolete. And he said Bridgestone could build a ball specifically for you a ball that goes farther. It'll pierce the wind better. It'll be softer around the greens. And it's noted in the book. I had never heard this tiger love going to Cape Canaveral to watch the space

shuttles. So like an engineer. So he's like way ideal and way in on the idea of like an engineering project related to his golf ball. So after Augusta, Tiger took a quote, quiet month off, which in reality was some of the most intense practice sessions of his life testing a brand new golf ball. And compared to the liquid core ball of the time wrapped in rubber bands, this prototype, which was made by Bridgestone funded by Nike transferred more energy from the

club to the ball. It made it spin less and flew farther and the urethane coating had next to no effect on shots struck at driver speeds but felt soft and added grab on short iron and wedge shots. So all the benefits of the titles professional who's playing at the time around the greens but way farther off the tee pierces the win much better. Problem, the titleist was paying Tiger $4 million a year to play their ball. But there was also, I've read the titleist sued Nike for false advertising. I read that they contemplated suing and didn't. So I don't know exactly what happened there, but the false advertising for the commercial,

the famous commercial where Tiger's juggling the golf ball on his club, but that the false advertising for the commercial, the famous commercial where Tigers juggling the golf ball on his club, but they flashed to the Nike swoosh at the end. That did not sit well with while you line. Yeah. But this this gave Phil Knight the opportunity to double like they're in renegotiations with with Nike at the time. And it gave Knight the opportunity to double Tigers deal up to $17 million a year plus a percentage of earnings for Nike if he would eventually switch over to this Nike ball. So we'll get there. So Tiger takes the time off to test the ball, but he shows up

at the Byron Nelson after the Masters before US Open, still playing the titles professional. And he calls after that, he calls Ken Devlin, I may have talked about that, Ken Devlin, I believe, who's Bruce Devlin's son. He was Nike's point person on the project. And he says, after the buyer announced him, I would have won by five with the new ball. So all the testing he'd done,

but didn't take in the competition yet, I would have won by five. Can you meet me in Germany on Tuesday? Is the question. So Devlin books a flight because Tiger's going over to play the Deutsche Bank appearance fee event that he was going to play in Germany. And he calls a Hedeyuki Rock, a she who was the chief scientist at Bridgestone and told him to pack up a suitcase of prototypes from Japan and meet them in Germany where Tiger is set to, was set to play the European tour event. They walk up to the range. Tiger didn't tell

Stevie about this. Stevie sees Devlin and Rock and says, what the fuck are you two idiots doing here? So Tiger's grinding on the range in Germany and he's banging both professionals and the Nike ball on the range and determines like the Nike prototype moves about half as much in the wind as the professional. So like bottom line, the professionals out of date, it spun similarly on drivers as it did wedges, but the prototype spun way less with the driver and the same with wedges. So Tiger puts it into play right away in Germany. And while he didn't win, he immediately wanted to keep the ball in play and asked them to make a couple hundred of the new balls as fast as they can make

them. So a few weeks later, the Nike tour accuracy made its debut at the 2000 Memorial. If you remember at that Memorial, he hits a shot into the back left pin on Saturday and watches as the ball slowly, slowly, slowly rolls back and stops just inches from the hole with the Nike Loco pointing up at the sky. Uh, that would immediately be a commercial for Nike. He shot 63 that day and he called it his best round as a pro. Um, at Sunday, he blew the doors off the field. He won by six. Harrison Frazier said he's hitting shots.

No other humans can hit. Ernie said, what do you want me to say? It's over. I don't know what point of the week he's talking about. I don't know if he means going forward it's over. I laughed at this part of the book. Jack Nicklaus paid the winner a compliment by comparing Tiger to himself. Yes.

So after Memorial, Tiger goes back on the grind, hits thousands of balls with Butch and played a round of golf with Adam Scott in Vegas. And that time Adam Scott was a budding amateur. Adam Scott shot 72 on that day with Tiger while cat shot 63 and it let it say Adam Scott left wondering if he should pursue a career in golf. And that night Butch Harmon drove down to the strip and placed a bet on Tiger woods to win the U S open. So went back to read as much of the re the newspaper articles at the time around this ball change. I think the significance of the, of the, of the change was a bit unknown. My

guy Jerry Dulac from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Oh, yeah. Do you know him? I don't know him. I know of him. I remember the name for sure. Coming up in the he would say, does anyone actually care whether he's using the titles professional or the Nike Tour accuracy? We'll let you in on a secret. It doesn't matter. Well, it does. How Sutton would describe the change by saying, it could have a very dramatic change in a person's life, almost as a word of caution. Doug Ferguson reported that Tiger had an escape clause

that would allow him to terminate his Titleist Ball deal on short notice. And also Ferguson reported that titles had contemplated a lawsuit, but ended up reworking the deal so that he was only paid only when he used titleless equipment in tournaments and titles gave up the right to have its logo on its bag and to use woods in their advertisements. So kind of essentially dialed that deal back. Obviously he eventually goes full Nike here eventually with Bridgestone making the Nike ball. But anyways, massive, massive development, because Tiger Woods has beaten a lot of people to two piece ball. And it was just a pretty monumentous occasion here, which I think is going to make a massive difference here coming up very soon.

So tournament week 2000 us open. This is played in mid June, of course, at June 15th through 18th, Pebble 6,800 yards prize fund 4.5 million, which is up from 3.5 million the year before up from 3 million the year before and up from 2.6 and 97 tiger effect is coming into play. This is still only $8.3 million in today's dollars for this tournament. So golf still has some growing to do shortly after this. What would you say the purse for the US Open is now? 25?

It's like 20 something. Yeah. I think the winner gets basically what the purse is now for it. So as you would expect in the US Open, the rough was thick. Pebble was set to be a very stern test. The second hole was turned into a par four instead of a par five. People did not like that.

Um, the pundits were projecting that even par may be good enough to win. I don't want to spoil it. Good jump ahead to the end. It was not, it was not good enough to win. It was a good enough to finish second. Uh, it was, it was still not quite good enough to win. So the week starts on a bit of a somber note and one with a little bit of controversy. Payne Stewart, of course, the defending champion of the night, the champion of the 99 US open

at Pinehurst died in a plane crash the previous fall. And they honored him with a ceremony where 21 golfers hit shots out into the ocean. Among them is not Tiger Woods. Tiger, he would say he would not allow himself to be put in that mental state heading into the tournament. He and Stuart were fishing buddies and golf travel buddies taking trips to Ireland ahead of the open. He said, I, you know, basically summarizing like I've, I've, I've mourned, I spent a lot of time mourning the loss of my friend, Payne. Every time I think of him,

I think of being in pubs with him in Ireland. And I did not want to do that. I could not allow myself to get in that mental state the night before an open. I was like, that was a little unfair that he got criticized for that. Like, you know, like not everybody wants to, I mean, he was the big name in golf.

So everybody was wanting to him to sort of be front and center, but like, that's just not his sort of personality. Everybody should be able to grieve in their own way. And I mean, in your read about that ceremony and everything like Sergio, which I don't, I did not know Sergio to have a relationship with Payne Stewart, but Sergio was one of the golfers and he like was weeping uncontrollably

when they went to hit the shot. And I have no idea why the writers noted this, but it was noted that his shot was the worst of all of them. Like, I don't know if he topped it or hooked it or what, like it, it, it, I don't, I don't mean to laugh at the emotion that I met the last that it was noted that he hit a whole shot laughing at the missing of the point of like, it gives a shit about you. He topped the shot into the ocean. Like unless it's killed a seal, like I think we're probably don't need to note like what happened here.

So the Jack Nicklaus tour is about to begin. This is gonna be a summer long thing. This is his last US Open. Johnny Miller would note going in, he said, I did the US amateur last summer. I'm not necessarily bragging about this, but it's the first time I didn't go out and look at the pin placements.

I went four days of announcing and never miss read a putt. That's how well I know this course. Johnny and Jack have an ego off would be sick. So again, back to my guy, Jerry Dulac from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Gotta give a shot. Maybe the original Beluga's Big Board. Beluga's Big Board, yeah.

He's got a power rankings on the PGA Tour LPGA tour senior PGA tour, as well as the state PGA. But we should just thought this interesting. He also power rankings, just a few, but he's got a little one liners with everybody. Tiger woods already won a pebble this year. How sudden best chance to cage a tiger. Phil Mickelson been playing very well. They look like Neil's

notes in the blue. It's even like any Excel sheet format. Essentially this is prior to Excel sheets, but man, love this David Duvall, putter costume again in the Buick playoff. Anyways, also just a couple pages later, I couldn't figure this out. Also handicaps the field, which I kind of thought that first thing was the power rankings was handicapping the field, but also just as little one-liner, Tiger's four to one. Kenny harnesses game for open layout question mark. Phil Mickelson lost last year on 72nd hole.

I just, I greatly enjoyed that one. Tiger played spy glass on Tuesday of this week, I think just to kind of get away from the hysteria of things. And then on Wednesday night, Stevie got a call in his hotel room and it was Tiger asking to meet him on the putting green with Butch. Tiger felt his hands were a bit too low standing over the ball causing him to pull putts left and so they grinded into the night on that. Spoiler alert, towards the end, Tiger Woods would go on to not miss a single putt inside of 10 feet for the entire week of the US Open. So not happy with his putting as of the night before,

but would of course go on to set unbelievable records. Johnny Miller, I forget if I have this in here, it might be spoiled a little bit later, but Johnny Miller comes up to Marco Mira during this in here, I might be spoiling a little bit later, but Johnny Miller comes up to Mark O'Meara during a practice round, they're playing with Tiger and tugs on his shirt and says, how's the kid doing? And he's like, Mark's like, best I've ever seen. Like he's gonna break every record,

he's like the greatest player I've ever seen. It's remarkable. And Johnny says, well, can he not control his spin with wedges? And O'Meara says, he could hit a ball down to an inch of where you want him to right now. And so this leads to Johnny Miller going on the air and saying, I think he's going to break, break records this week. And Mark's like, all right, man, I come, I kind of gave

you this one. You know, you were doubting his wedge play when you came up in our practice route and now you're, you're, you're, you're making this claim. Johnny, I've always known he was a great player. I never, I did any doubts whatsoever. So do you remember what like the, the feel good story was before tiger goes off on that Thursday, 2000 us open? I don't, I don't know. I it's Bobby clamp it. He's a local favorite, a Monterey kid and a current at the time, CBS commentator. He was playing his first event in 21 months. He shot an opening round 68 to be in a tie for fourth with Hale Irwin and Lauren Roberts. Monterey resident Jim Nance walked every step of the way. It was calling Bobby's friends around the country from the course saying, you're not going to believe

this as Bobby, I think he shot 500 on the front nine. Like I remember tuning into the, I remember watching this and turning in like they were making this massive deal out of Bobby clamp at which I did not understand at the time why it was a big deal. But imagine like, you know, is coming out of the booth and having a bacon chicken bacon as always going to document tigers fits in this era. We're fully buttoned up. I forgot about this shirt. It looks like, like when you're, when you turn off your television back in the day, you get those like little lines that go across.

So we've still got the yin yang logo on the side of the hat, black Nike hat, black shirt with, with a yellow and red stripes on it, fully buttoned up of course the sleeves past the elbow. He cruised out to a first round 65 with no bogeys. Furek was playing with him raved about his ball striking. Parnovic was also in the group and said he putted like a god and there's not really like a crazy highlight or anything that jumps off the page from this round. It's just like methodical and textbook. Honestly like modern comparison. It looks like what a lot of Scottie's great rounds look like. There's not one moment where you're like in all you're just like that was no mistakes in the right spot on every hole made a few putts. And so yeah, this is where Johnny Miller on Thursday said I really do is the quote, I really do believe I got this hunch that

tiger is going to break every US open record this week and win by a big margin. Uh, so that that's the quote that Mark would say. I have a very specific memory. So I have my dad calling me, uh, and being like, what do you think about the US open this week? I was like, ah, I just don't, I get, I still have a feeling that Tiger's going to win. I think it's going to be somebody else. And then I remember I played a ground. I remember coming into the clubhouse and seeing,

I didn't watch any of the first round and seeing the tiger shot 65. I was like, Whoa, shit. Well, I got that one wrong. Count me among the opposite of Johnny Miller's out there that I did not see this one coming at the time. Speaker 2. John Daly would make a 14 on the 18th hole on Thursday and withdraw. This was an especially tough stretch for Daley. Callaway had recently dropped him as he had resumed drinking and gambling and they tore up his contract when he actually refused help. Yeah. Don't think I wrote this down, but I do remember in the research for the reading a quote where he was like, you know what? Like I'm just going to drink whatever.

Like I, I'm, I can, I can be mature enough to handle it. Uh, you know, what does it matter? And it was like, Oh man, that's kind of sad. Daily, not a fan of the USGA, of course, from going back to last year, Pinehurst, when he also walked off the golf course. Sergio actually wore knickers on this day to honor Payne Stewart as well on that Thursday. So we get to Friday, get into some of the more fun stuff. Conditions are tougher, but they're not really affecting Tiger. There's been a big fog delay. And so his round is starting really late.

And when he reaches the sixth hole, he hits a drive off to the right of the fairway. And there's a gnarly line in the rough. We've all seen this clip. We've heard the story a million times. Steve Williams sees the lie, can't figure out what Tiger wants to do, but he reaches for seven iron.

It's got to, there's a Cypress tree there that's not there anymore as well that he's got to hit it over. He's got 200 yards up the hill. Tiger reached for seven iron hacks it and it rolls up onto the green and Roger Maltby delivers his now famous line. It's not a fair fight. It's not a fair fight. It was not what it is.

And it that's almost exactly right. And it is, this is where I want to pause to just be like, this is such a good line from multi Maltby on multiple levels. And I don't know how to cover this without sounding like I'm diminishing Tiger's accomplishment, like he's the best player. But giving this guy this much of a technological advantage was truly not fair.

Like this is we're in an outlier time period. If you wonder why Tiger doesn't go on to win majors by 15 shots ever again is like he's playing with with future equipment. While most of the field and I tried to get info on like who's playing the two piece ball or three piece at this time, like almost nobody was I don't think and he is and he's already the best like he was beating people with an archaic golf ball and now you've given this advantage

and it's honestly unfair. Like nobody should win a golf tournament by 15 shots. Like there's just nobody that's that much better than the second best player. Which would probably, I mean, unless there's with the way that things are, I mean, there was enough room, right? In like how they regulated things back then,

like the driver heads could be bigger, but they weren't back then. So I don't know that we'll ever see like this kind of gap exist again. I mean, maybe that sounds naive. Somebody's listened to this in 20 40 and be like, Oh, these guys could have never seen like, you know, rocket whatever. Yeah. With golf bought the USGA and allows Alice allows cannons to send it 800 yards.

You know, we'll forget 30 million likes. I'll do a trail use the tributary bucket launcher here on this 13th hole. But I just, you know, no one was going to be able to like until the everyone now is going to use like kind of the cutting edge edge equipment because there isn't like enough wiggle room left in the rules. Right. Right.

To have that on it's just on everybody's radar. Like if there's a massive like leap again, but with something like that's going to get regulated a lot more quickly than things have over the last 25 years, that's for sure. So Tiger would later say that shot on six wasn't as hard as people thought it was. Just open up a seven iron, hit as hard as I can. Which I kind of agree with him on. Like I know it's, he might've been one of the only guys that could do it, but it wasn't that hard of a shot for him. It's just like he was the only one that had the strength to be able to do that. But you're never, I think about just opening up a seven iron hitting at 225 yards.

It just works for me. Tiger birdied six, seven and 11. Um, and the horn blows at the 12th, but, uh, they've already hit their tee shots on the 12th tiger hits his hits his, this is late Friday night. I remember watching this. Maybe I do. Kind of one of those weird memory things where I think I was watching this live, but he hits a well past the hole and it is dark.

I don't need to tell you it's much darker than the cameras make it look here. And the horn has blown, but they have the option to finish the hole. And Tiger said he had the speed of the greens down wanted to hit the putt before you know, and didn't want to come out and have to hit this putt the first thing in the morning hits the putt drains it right in the center massive uppercut fist pump Mike to Rico great line. Good night. And the front they go off the air at a peak you know it's like late night on the East Coast it's probably close to 11 on the East coast.

And they go off the air and whatnot. This is of course, Jack, as we mentioned, Jack Nicholson's last round at the US Open. This is the iconic shot of him sitting and waiting on the 18th tee. Jack would knock it on the green and two, but would unfortunately three putt for par. This might've been Saturday when he finished round two. I could be wrong on the timing here, but.

Either way, when he finished. No, I think this was Friday. I think this was Friday because Tiger's teeing off late in the day to start his day right as this happening. Tiger can hear kind of the ovation going over there. So anyways, where it gets pretty fun here, again, a well told story and well told story very recently on this podcast, but the next morning, so Tigers got to be up early to finish the final six holes from round two on this Saturday. They show them on the range 507 am like they were up early to get this get this round at NBC actually preempted cartoons to

show the end of Tigers round live, which was a big deal at the time. Said, uh, an executive would say something along the lines of Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Tiger woods are the three athletes you reschedule programming for. So I remember, uh, Dan Patrick, or maybe I think it was Ben Patrick could have been van Pelt, but that would have been too early in Van Pelt's career saying that like they got their kid up out of bed and to like watch this. And were like, you know, kid was like, why is it? Cause you'll remember like this forever. Like that this is Tiger Woods. Like you only get a certain

amount of chances to see stuff like this. And so you're getting up to this to watch with me. Well, if you remember, this was a big deal as well. What's supposed to be cartoons and parents getting their kids up? Tiger hooks a ball to the ocean on 18 says, God damn it, you fucking prick. And the microphones picked it up. So no seven second delay at this point was a massive deal at the time. Oh, my God. Everybody was all over this one.

But the real fun from that moment comes from a story that Stevie Williams would tell later on, which we have a little snippet of the story. This is from a recent podcast we did with Stevie Williams, recapping what happened there. He took three balls out of his bag and put it on the carpet in his room and didn't put them back in the bag.

So at this stage, I'm a little nervous, that you know, with the 18th and Pebble Beach, but I can't say anything to him. At this point, he's leading by nine. He's playing absolutely fantastic golf. Anyway, that's the first really poor shot he hits. He hooks it down into the water, lost ball, and now he's got a hit again.

So, you know, the club goes back in the bag with a certain amount of anger in it. And so I put the head cover back on, and my hands glued to the head cover. And I said, Tiger, hey, hey, you know, Tiger, maybe just hit an iron off the tee here. You're leading by nine. Let's get down the field. Give me that fucking driver. And my hand, my hand still clasps on this thing.

And I said, look, Tiger, just think, you know, just think of it. Give me that fucking driver. OK, got to let him hit driver. Now, you know, people say, do you get nervous cadding? Well, you don't really get nervous because you're not actually hitting the shots. You're only giving advice and I've never found nerve wracking to be a catty.

But on this time, I'm absolutely shitting myself and there's a certain saying that your ass is puckering. Well, I know what that's about now. I'm standing there and every bit of me, my toes, my ass, everything's just shaking. So anyway, here's down the fairway. Well, that's good. That I'm standing there and every bit of me, my toes, my ass, everything's just shaking. So anyway, here's down the field. Well, that's good. That's taking a lot of stress off.

And I'm walking down there, thinking, oh, it's right behind that tree. And as I'm walking to the ball, I'm saying to myself, you know what? I know what shot he's going to hit. He's going to take a three-wood. He's going to aim it left over the bay and cut it back. It's like, oh, no, here we go again.

Which I do have to call into question Stevie's memory on this item, because he did the driver way past the tree. 25 years of, of, of, of, you know, you know, played an impact on, on Stevie's memory of this situation. So that was the only ball that he had in the bag. So was the one that was in play or six balls in his bag. And he took three out to, because he didn't putt on the putting green that

morning, cause they had the early morning wake up they had to get out there. So he put it on his hotel room carpet floor took three balls out and put it and didn't put them back in the bag. Stevie picks up the bag in the morning like he just dropped it off late the night before didn't think to check the bag. When he reached down in there when they were on 13 t he like quickly realized there's only three balls in the bag. No big deal. Three balls six holes best player in the world. But he hits a opening tee shot into the left rough

and he hits this like whacking. You've probably seen the clip of him just like one handing a wedge out of this rough and it like scuffed the ball. Like the hitting it that hard out of the rough scuffed the ball. So he walks off 13 and hands the ball to a kid. And Stevie sits there thinking like, do I go ask this kid for the ball? Like, this is going to be a scene. If I do, it's going to cause negative attention on tiger is not going to be a good thing. So he lets it go. And they get all the way to 18 with the same ball, but then we, it's that in the water. Now they're down to the last ball. And that's when he had to sweat it out. So it was, so there's some discussion afterwards afterwards whether Stevie was like.

You I don't know if you can. You can't borrow another ball from competitor, but Steve could have like run into the clubhouse and you can't so so Tiger was staying at the lodge and so like what they could have done is gone and Tiger could have gone and look down in the ocean. Because if you watch the ball, they couldn't have known this, but the ball like ricochets and plops into a little cutlet of water that like they could have found that ball if they really searched for it. That's one. So they could go down there. Tiger could have looked for it for five minutes and Stevie could have sprinted to the lodge. He would have had to

ask Tiger for the hotel room key, sprint to the lodge and try to sprint back to go back to the tee. Or give you a hotel key. So, but if he hadn't changed to the tour accuracy, he could have just borrowed a professional from either of his two playing partners that is Jesper and, and Furek, uh, that were undoubtedly one of, at least one of them was probably playing a professional at that time. No penalty there. So he would, if he would have borrowed it, he could have borrowed a ball from them and had taken two shot penalty.

So then he would have been hitting, if he'll hit his, you know, his last one out, then he would have been hitting five, two shot penalty, he's hitting seven off the tee with that ball. I know that story has been told a lot, but it's just still an amazing story. But Tiger would go make bogey on 18 and he holds a six shot lead heading into the weekend. Thomas Bjorn, Miguel Angel Jimenez are at minus two, Jose Maria and Kirk Triplett minus one, John Houston, Hal Sutton, Lee Westwood at even, Vijay Singh and Nick Faldo in the top 10 after two rounds at the 2000 US Open. Cut was at plus seven, only 17 players are within 10 shots of Tiger after 36 holes, so they did not need to use the U S open, uh, within 10 shots rule.

Greg Norman, Davis love, yes, for part of it, Corey Pavin all missed the cut. Yes, for part of it, hurt his hip in a practice round and considered not finishing his round on Saturday, but he couldn't get a flight back to Europe. So he hung around to go finish the round and ended up completing his 80. And so then tiger has a seven hour wait to start round three on Saturday. So probably went back, got a nice nap in and then heads to the first tee on Saturday. Sun's out. It's a totally different vibe out there. Tiger's got kind of a little tannable top thing going brown on, brown on black, black shoes, black hat. But this was a pretty, pretty vivid little

Saturday afternoon and conditions were brutal on this Saturday. The wind is absolutely whipping, as you can see with the flag here. So we're off to a par par start, but he runs into trouble on the third hole. He has a ball balloon in the wind and come up way short of the third green. A truly awful shot, but he gets unlucky that the ball stops in this thick grass around the bunker. And the lie is so bad that he's thinking about taking an unplayable, but then tries to pitch it out sideways to the left and the ball barely moves.

The next one he's got a little bit better lies and now he's trying to play this towards the hole. But this one doesn't get out of the rough. Now he's chipping green side for five got to get up and down for double. Chips it to about 10 feet and hits a horrible putt and walks off with triple. And what happens next is again, striped shirt, with the, with the sleeves past the elbows, but he like laughs it off. He's like smiling, walking off the green. Like he's in that much control of his golf ball that he makes triple. So skinny then too. This is before he's really gotten. So it was noted in the book

that he hated tight clothing in this time period because he was so skinny. So like he, uh, uh, you know, he's working on his muscle, but he's still skinny, uh, at this time. But anyways, he still leads by five over him and as and Bjorn. So he's really not sweating it out too much. So, but it's a second shot. He goes in the right rough again on six and it's a second shot into the same edge of the bunker on on six up on the top plateau. It's on the top edge of the bunker. He's got to put one foot in the bunker and it's kind of on a bald spot in there and it's kind of like, okay, this could be a spot of bother.

No, he hits an incredible shot out of this lie. It goes to about eight feet. Then he would pour in the putt. You can't really quite see in this image. But he is doing a pre pre hole ball going in the whole point, which there are a lot of in this. I mean, this putts inside 10 feet. So you know, it goes in. But he gets that up and down from like 60 yards on top of the bunker on a bald spot. And all

to say like, now, he's gonna be just fine. He ends up shooting even on the day, which increased his lead from six to 10 shots over Ernie L's who shot, it was sat at plus two. The Saturday carnage was ridiculous. Vijay shot 80, Furek shot 84, Darren Clark, 83, Monty shot 79. When Monty was informed that he was leading the field in fairways hit, he replied, that's great. They should put the holes in the fairways.

What if they put the holes in the fairways then? This is Tiger draining a par putt on the 17th hole. Gim walks this one in and still just don't do justice for how aggressive he was walking all these putts in. This is a little mean, but the Oakland Tribune had a little column called Duffer of the Day, in and still just don't do justice for how aggressive he was walking all these putts in. This is a little mean, but the Oakland Tribune had a little column called Duffer of the Day, which is a great, Jim Furek, the man with the loopy backswing is now the man with the loopy US Open scorecard.

Furek started the third round just fine, but with a bird on number one, then the fun began, bogey on two, double bogey on three. Furek found par on the fourth hole, then staggered through eight straight bogeys until finally discovering par again on 13. On the bright side, he only bogeyed two of the last six holes, but still wound up signing for a 13 over 84 and tying Robert Dameron for the worst third round score among the 63 golfers who made the cut. Not sure that was really necessary, but you know.

The Oakland Tribune readers, they have high standards. They want their golf to be played at an elite level, duffer of the day. So now we're, we're, we're advancing here to Sunday. Tiger arrives. Don't remember this part, but for the warmup tan vest over the red polo, the vivid red polo, again, this is fully committed to the red polo once he gets out on the golf course. but I think this is a rewear. He wore this tan vest earlier in the week as well.

He's very fully vested in this era, Sally. You would be proud. Very much so. The lead is so big that Paul Aizinger is 18 shots back. Joke that we might need a Tanya Harding. So Tiger's big thing on this Sunday is that he did not want to make a bogey. That was that was the massive thing. He makes

a really nice par save on six to keep that alive after a couple chips. He opens the day with nine straight pars. But then he starts going apeshit. He birdies 10. He birdies 12. He birdies 13. He almost made a two on 13. Actually, turns over birdies 14 the par five. He's now at 12 under par and leads by five. He catches a flyer though, out of the right rough on 16 that he would describe as a nuker real hater real here. Uh, sometimes I feel like we're not getting tiger's voice right in this era.

I don't know why it's not got dark. Like this is deeper. It's so the like Michael Jackson. Oh yeah. Wow. I got a nuker. Like I was real real real. We're doing the, uh, the Connor Moore impression of him. That's, that's the whole tiger voice that we do is the impression of her, which is way funnier than the actual voice, but, uh, he chips it like 15 feet past on 16. And this is the big moment of his Sunday. He's winning by 15 shots. He's got this putt to keep this streak alive, of not making a bogey.

And Johnny Miller would say, not a lot of fear in this guy. It's been rumored that the only fear he has is marriage and kids. Johnny. Anyways, Tiger of course, drained that puttt gives a big stare off into the gallery. Everybody's like, dude, chill the fuck out. You're up by 15 shots, man.

He hits iron off 18 lays it up, hits a wedge onto the green and he finally has his walk, you know, coming down. Finally lets his guard down, takes the hat off. Hairline starting to betray him a little bit at this point, but you know, gives, gives a smile, gives kind of a, you know, lets the steely facade down. He has a putt to break the score, you know, to win by 16 and to break a I forget what's even like the low, like the low total record or something,

whatever it was, but misses and it runs four feet past. He would later say, I was so pissed. I fought so hard all day. Now I'm thinking I could three putt and end my US Open with a bogey and it would ruin the day. A little different than Scotty's mentality of four putting the masters.

It would ruin the day, ruin the day if he three putted the last hole. 15 shot win eclipsed Willie Smith's 11 shot margin at the net 1899 us open. It surpassed the 13 shot major championship record that old Tom Morris set at the 1862 open championship. I'm not going to even list off all the records lowest round at Pebble in us open history. Lowest record for lowest 36 holes, largest lead after 36 holes, largest lead after 36 holes, largest lead after 54 holes, obviously all the margin of victory records. Some of the quotes, Ernie Els, it was

a privilege to play with him. Whatever I say is going to be an understatement. If I played out of my mind, I probably would have lost by five, six or seven shots. He's the Michael Jordan of golf. I considered tackling him, but that wouldn't work because on top of everything else, he gets stronger every day. Tiger would say, from Steve William and Evan Priestbook, together we roared. I said, Stevie, best get your ass to St. Andrews and learn every blade of grass at the old course. I'm going to play even better at the British Hope. So, final board, Tigers at minus 12, Miguel and Ernie at plus three, John Houston at plus four, Lee Westwood, Padraig Harrington plus five, Faldo top 10 plus six, VJ, Stewart Sink, David Duvall,

Lauren Roberts at plus seven. Tiger could have shot 81 on that Sunday and still won the US Open. Wow. I bet that was probably one of Faldo's last top 10s, I imagine. I would not say to look it up, but I would think this is very much in the last gas, but Faldo is a great player. So the USGA Epic film on YouTube has this event has nine and a half million views.

I mean, this tournament transcended the sport, right? Everybody was watching this. It was on in prime time on the East coast. It's one of the most significant events and achievements in modern day golf. Data golf of course has the greatest major championship performance since 1983 with plus 7.8 strokes gained per round. Peak Tiger was plus 0.388 strokes. So like he was double peak Tiger for this performance. Like, uh, it's, it's really that back to the not a fair fight, like him playing with this equipment in this event

was truly not fair. And this event would be what would get Mickelson and Wally Uline's ear about golf ball technology. It would help spark the birth of the Pro V1 later that year. How about that? I'm sure like they had to have been in development at that point, like the time cycles. It wasn't like they were like,

oh, we should try a two piece ball. I'm sure it was in development. You think Phil was accidentally taking credit for something that was already set in motion? Sorry. Couple other notes that kept, I kept seeing in old newspapers around the world of sports. John rocker got called up back to the bigs in this week.

Raphael for call got a DUI and also found out that he's 22 and not 19. That happened during this week in the year 2000. But thank you, Soi. What a lovely trip down memory lane. That is it for one of the wildest US Opens in history. Tiger, of course, had a massive advantage over the field in the year 2000 and many other years after that because he was hitting the ball so darn far. You can

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of their offerings in the coming months as well. Back to the pod. All right, Solly, before we get to the Open Championship, I want you to know that Jack Nicklaus dropped a banger of an interview with Golf Digest in the lead up to the Open Championship. There's a lot of Jack's career that we have, you know, I don't know if we were like super,

we were just young enough that we didn't live through any of it. And so it's fun to get like little windows of things. This is the age, you know, Jack is 60. He's still, he's competing in his last kind of majors, though he will play again in 2005 in the Open Championship. He'll keep playing in the Masters for a little bit longer. But these are the last kind of ones where, you know, he's eligible for being in them as a result of his senior Open victories or whatever it is. And so this kind of, we're getting like a state of Jack Nicklaus things. He's sitting down for kind of the, you know, the retirement tours, the kind of what's the

state of your life, what do you meant to the game sort of stuff. And Golf Digest for many years, they still do them, but they did these like really extensive Q&As that would just go on for, you know, pages and pages and pages. And Jack doesn't have the, and the archives doesn't list who it was with, so I can't give credit to the author. But there's some really delightful anecdotes in here, some of which you will have recognized because they've been told sort of many times moving forward. But I think this is like some of the first evidence of them maybe that exists outside

of books or whatever. Jack is sitting at, he's having lunch with the writer as he sits down to this thing and he's talking about how he's feeling a little fat these days and he's eating some potato soup. He says, I shouldn't be eating this potato soup. I'm about 200 pounds, but I should be like 190. But exercise a lot and I'm still on the go, so I should be able to get this off. Speaking of which, there's an old story about how Barbara used to prepare dough for the cookies and some of that cookie dough never made it into the oven. Well, that's true. Or at least it was

last year. I've really developed a bit of a sweet tooth. This is my favorite part. He says, I rarely drink alcohol, but in college I drank enough beer to sink 10 battleships. Man, thinking about Jack is just like fucking hammering beers at Ohio state was not something that I saw coming. I says, if I have a weakness, it's probably ice cream where I get lax and I get sloppy. I sneak into the refrigerator late at night and I take two or three bites and I put it back. Butter pecan only two or three bites, but it shows. He sort of pats his tummy. Jack is sort of talking about Barbara throughout the Q&A and he tells the story of their honeymoon, which is somewhat famous, you probably recognize when, what's

coming up here. But he says, Barbara always wanted to go to New York City. So our plan was to spend two weeks there in the middle of the summer. They got married when they were juniors at Ohio State. He said, we went all around the city and that meant five shoe stores. Barbara is a bit of a shoe freak. You should look at her closet. She didn't come from an affluent background by any means, but that didn't matter when she was younger. She still had enough shoes to start her own store. Jack and Barbara walking down the street in Manhattan,

he's carrying all kinds of shoe boxes because Barbara's gonna cash in on her first trip to New York. Says the next day we went to Wing Foot. It's a Wednesday, it is pouring buckets. Not a soul on the course except for me playing and Barbara walking. After two days in the pouring rain she said,

let's get out of here. That was our honeymoon in New York. One round of golf at Wingfoot in the rain and five shoe stores and some jazz at night. They leave New York City and they decide they wanna go down to Atlantic City, which neither of them have ever been. And of course, on the way down through Clementon, New Jersey is what we now think of as a splash

world. Pine Valley. This is evidence of like, I think it was in 1958 this occurred. This is evidence of how different the world was back then. Jack has won the, I think the USAM at this point, but he hasn't won any majors or anything. He hasn't even been a PGA tour member at all. He pulls right into pine Valley, pulls up to the club and he has no idea. Like he sees somebody out there, a fellow named Dave new bold and he says, Hey, do you think I can get around here? And Dave says, well, this is a stag club, meaning women are not allowed. So I'm afraid your wife won't be allowed to, to join you, but we can get you out." And he says, oh, okay. And so Jack plays Pine Valley while his wife and this guy, Dave, like drive around the property so that she can occasionally like glance through the bushes and get a look at Jack.

On their honeymoon. On their honeymoon. So after he gets done, he says, I shot 74, but I did not think it was a fair test. So after he gets done, he says, I shot 74, but I did not think it was a fair test. On their way out of Pine Valley, Jack picks up five, a cherry stone, five dozen cherry stone clams, puts them on ice, and then they drive all the way back to Zanesville, Ohio, where the ice had melted. The clams are starting to smell.

And he says, that was our honeymoon in New York. One round of golf at Wingfoot in the rain, one at Pine Valley, five shoe stores and some jazz at night. When they finally reached the Nicholas's parents' house, it was one in the morning. Jack's like, well, I could use a midnight snack. And so he starts to steam these clams and his mother wakes up and the smell is like horrendous. And she's like, what are you doing? And he says, I'm fixing a late night snack. And she says, if you eat those kinds of clams, you'll kill yourself.

Those are not the kinds of clams that you steam. So she threw them in the garbage can. Jack says, that was the end of my honeymoon. Jack also tells a story about how he and Barbara went duck hunting. They were playing at like the TPC Louisiana and some hunter asked him to come out. After a while, he took a few shots

and couldn't get any ducks. And Barbara out after a while. They, they, he took a few shots and couldn't, couldn't, he couldn't get any ducks. And Barbara also had a shotgun as well. But he said, you know, honey, why aren't you afraid to take a shot? She said, well, I'm waiting for you to shoot one. And he said, okay, well, let's shoot one next time together. The ducks flew by and like three ducks,

like fell from the sky. And Barbara said to Jack, well, good shot, honey. And he says, I didn't shoot Barbara. That was all you. And she kind of got the thirst for like being a, you know, like gunplay. So another time they were, they were hunting in Wyoming and a friend of theirs was basically like,

or they were out in Wyoming for some reason, maybe a vacation and a friend wanted to get rid of some prairie dogs. And so he handed Barbara and Jack a gun and Barbara just started gunning down prairie dogs. Jack says, the next thing I know, like like 200 yards away, boom, Barbara just takes out a prairie dog, goes flying four feet in the air, boom, shoots again. Another prairie

dog, four feet in the air. It said it took her almost an hour to get the gun back from her. Just fucking murdering prairie dogs right and left. Barbara, it's dinner time. Come on. This is more insight into their marriage. And this is like a sign of the times. So in 1967, Jack tells a story about how he was playing, I think in Las Vegas, and he shoots a 62 in the third round. And Barbara is pregnant. This was between their sons, Nan and Gary, Jack says.

And so in the middle of the night, Barbara has a miscarriage. And Jack says, she has a difficult pregnancy. So in the middle of the night, she had a miscarriage. Well, she didn't wake me up until eight in the morning because she wanted me to sleep. Finally, I got up and she says, Jack, I think I need to see a doctor. She explained why I couldn't believe it. I took her right to the hospital and made sure she was okay. I went back to play golf, won the tournament and came back from the hospital. And the next day we went back home. That's when she started calling me dish pan Jack, because I did all the chores

while she rested. But yeah, she absolutely should have woken me up in the middle of the night. No question about it. She put herself at risk. Like, fuck me. Are you kidding? Like what a, what a Testament to the Arab and like women just like, I'll just, I'll just kind of like ride out this miscarriage. How Jack just makes things revolve around himself. It's just remarkable. Yeah. I won the tournament. Yeah. Well, that's important note this week. So we talked about how Jack said in college, he drank, we drank enough beer to sink 10 battleships. So he tells the story. This is probably in the seventies. He didn't quite

get specific on the timeline. It's a long time ago. A college friend of mine came to a tournament and we went out to dinner and my friend asked if it was okay to smoke. I said, of course. He said, no, no, no, Jack, you don't understand. I mean, smoke what we used to smoke. What I always used to smoke. I mean, marijuana. So he did. And I asked him if I could have a puff to see what it tasted like. The golf right digest writers says, what did you inhale? And Jack says, I did. And by eight o'clock that night, I was done. I was ready for bed. I never tried marijuana again.

And I wouldn't know what cocaine looked like if you brought it in front of me. That's my drug story. Did you inhale? Yeah, exactly. It's kind of the very Clinton Clintonian sort of thing of like, of course you're going to fricking inhale marijuana. You're going to, what'd he just, anyway, Jack is just like, so they gets on there and the golf writer asked Dolphin, I just asked, you know, what does tiger do better than you did at that age? Chuck says, tiger doesn't have any weaknesses. I did. My short game was a weakness, but that was because I felt I didn't need it. I won without it. If I had needed it, I would have worked at it. I didn't work at it though, because I could reach all the par fives I wanted to. I could hit the

ball out of the rough whenever I hit it straight or not. If I did miss a green, I usually didn't miss it by much. So I would just chip on and I used to make everything inside of 10 feet anyway. So why did I need a short game? Which is an unbelievable flex. Which for having 57 top threes at majors, like he might have won more if he just worked on a short game just a little bit more. So this is one thing that we've always kind of talked about, but we have never really dug deeply into, in part because there's just not a lot of talk.

The idea that Jack Nicklaus's business empire was completely collapsing. So they asked him about this, is it true that by winning the 1986 Masters, you saved your business? Jack says, no, I can't really say that financially. I don't think winning then made that much of a difference. Now, did winning come at an opportune time for somebody to not shut the door on Jack Nicholas? Perhaps. It's not like on Monday morning in 1986, the cash register

started ringing. But McGregor did sell a lot of putters. They said, Well, you did take a couple of hits right around that time. And he says, yeah, yeah, a project in New York and one in California, a couple of developments where I shouldn't have signed my name to paper. They both cost me a lot of money. And there was a potential of me owing even more. Was I in trouble? Sure, I was. I could have owed a lot more than I was worth. Let's put it that way. Right now, I'm still working because I think I have to. Probably I don't want to work, but I've made the decisions for the I've made the wrong decisions for the right reasons. We're taking our company back privately. I feel

terrible about it. I lost a fortune myself. And those who had faith in me also lost a lot of money. hindsight is always 2020. I should have stayed our core business and invested with money managers in the proper places I would have no headaches. I'd be very wealthy and so on my kids. Am I okay financially? Yes, and so are my kids, but I could be a lot wealthier and things could be a lot easier." They asked him, did you trust too many people? He said, always have. I feel bad for the people who trusted me, who saw Jack Nicklaus as the chairman of the board of a company and lost money because of it.

Again, we've always heard certain rumors, there's stories in the 1986 gamer that Sports Illustrated wrote about how like, he was kind of on the verge of like, I don't know, like Arnie was the guy who made so much money. Jack had so much success in the course, but he did not have Arnie's deft business touch. They did say at the end, asked him,

which I think is a pretty cool quote here, is it important to you to be remembered as the greatest golfer ever? And Jack says, in my lifetime, if people choose to remember me that way, that's probably what I'll be. But it's like a golf tournament. If you try your best and somebody plays better, you tip your hat to them, which is what I would do to Tiger or anybody else if they break my records. Besides, and this is the quote I like, I had my century. Tiger can have the 21st. I know I won't be the greatest golfer of this century." So the Open Championship at St. Andrews, this is that story that piece ran in Golf Digest in July

and so sort of the table setter for this. Tiger, of course, is everywhere at this point. He's on the cover of SI, the cover of People, the cover of GQ, the cover of Dolph Digest, the cover of ESPN, the magazine. Shout out to my old stomping grounds. Night Ritter, which is a big news service at the time, did a big story about Tiger trying to explain how he had inherited Michael Jordan's mantle for not only superstardom, but the need for privacy. Beginning the article lists all the people who turned down interviews or lest they be ejected from his inner circle. That includes his parents, Butch Harmon, his girlfriend, Joanna Jagoda, his buddy, Jerry

Chang, basically anybody who, you know, who wasn't Marco Mira was, you know, was not giving it. We did find out from this Tiger something about ball knower back in the day, his time at Stanford apparently used to wander into Bill Walsh's office on slow days of golf and talk ball because Walsh was the coach of Stanford back then. One of his friends does reveal that Tiger plays a lot of Mortal Combat. That was his favorite video game back in the day. One of my favorite anecdotes from the Together Reward book was the first time Stevie goes

to meet Tiger at his house. Tiger's like, yeah, come on in. I'm just finishing up again. He goes right back and he's got to finish up a video game before he and Stevie started talking. Hope Stevie got a popsicle. I'm like, hey, Katie. I remember this issue.

ESP in the magazine put him on the cover and said that he could be estimated to be worth $6 billion someday. I believe he's fallen a little bit short of that, but they didn't anticipate him having to give half of his wealth to his spouse at some point along the way. He invested, at this point, Tiger has invested in the All-Star Cafe. The other people investing in this are Kengar Viginer, Monica Sellers and Luke Perry of 90210 fame. At the opening of one of these things, Luke Perry said, it's like being with Elvis. No, actually it's more like being with Moses. So Butch in the lead up to St. Andrews basically says,

he wants to be the greatest player the planet has ever seen. His desire is unlike anything anyone has ever seen. And he is the most gifted player the planet has ever seen. And guess what? He's better right now than he was before Pebble Beach. We talked a little bit about technology in your last segment here. Uh, during the practice rounds on the 352 yard ninth hole, Tiger drove the green. And so Butch tossed him one of the old gutter perchables that had been used in the old Tom Morris days to see if Woods could do it again.

Tiger drove it 239 yards and then had to hit a five iron from 120 yards just to hit it onto the green. So if you'd like to have evidence that the game has not always been the same, there's a good window into it. Calcavecchia played a couple practice rounds at St. Andrews with Tiger and said that Tiger made 18 birdies and 36 holes during their practice rounds. Oh my God. Gary Player says he would be thrilled to welcome Tiger into the Grand Slam club. However, he said, I think any else is going to win the tournament. There's a little bit of testiness for some of the players here. We're starting to get tired.

Sergio says, you know, he's not the only one who knows how to make birdies, but asked about their rivalry. David Duvall said, let's be realistic. It hasn't been much of a rivalry. Lee Westwood says he's so much better than anyone else to every, at every aspect of the game that it's possible he could win this tournament by 15 shots Just coming off one Defending champ Paul Lurie almost has to pull out before the start because he's giving a clinic

With some young children and a kid took a wild swing and hit Paul Lurie on the wrist Which his wrists swelled up sounds like something like One of the young Schuster boys would do or or perhaps young Patrick someday, I saw it. He says, it was painful, but I'm not in doubt for Thursday. I just got a bit of swelling, it'll go down tonight. It's not like it'll do me that much damage. In the same Golf Digest edition that Jack was in, Tiger actually penned his own column, you know,

he used to write these things back for Golf Digest in the day where he talks about Jack Nicklaus. He talks about the first time that he ever met Jack Nicklaus and he says, you can imagine my surprise when I first met Jack Nicklaus and discovered that I was taller than him because he had loomed over me my entire life. Apparently when Tiger was 15 and Jack came to watch him hit balls at like a clinic or something and Tiger

hit a bunch of shots and Jack said, Tiger, when I grow up, I want to have a swing as beautiful as yours. They stood and took a picture together, which I've never seen. I would like to see that picture of someone as a Tiger 15, and Jack probably would have been 35, 40, somewhere in there. This is my dad first told me about Jack

when I was six or seven. He wanted to make sure that I knew the history. He proclaimed Jack to be the greatest ever, and Jack immediately became the standard against which I measured myself. I saw a clipping in the LA Times noting some of his accomplishments, including the first time he broke 80 and 70, the time he won the state am in Ohio and the US amateur. I was pretty young but I understood that if I was going to become the best, Jack's

records were a pretty good place to start. So I cut out that paper and tacked it just above the headboard of my bed, figured it was a nice little barometer to see what someone else had done. If I could do that, well, great. If not, that would be fine too, but at least I had something to shoot for. He tries to downplay at a certain point later on that 18 was the goal. It's never actually, never the goal. 15. It's bullshit. There's evidence that he was telling people this right from the jump. He changes the legend of it a little bit here and there. At some point he's like, oh, 14 was always my goal. I never thought about, you know, whatever.

And back then we're still counting Jack's amateurs here. So it's like 20 was the actual goal. Tiger said he struggled a little bit with some of the attention even back in the day when he was winning the US AMS, but the Jack sort of pulled him aside and he said, he put in tiger, tiger, tiger writing, I'm quoting us, he put in perspective how to handle the media said it was my responsibility to talk to them as long as I was the focal point of the tournament, no matter how well or how badly I played, which I thought was like kind of

interesting. You know, I mentioned his girlfriend, Joanna Jagode at the time, she's a law student at UCLA, introduced to each other by mutual friends. They've been dating for a couple years, and she would come to tournaments and such not but refused to give interviews, which was sort of essential thing. Earl, there's rumors, of course, of them getting engaged, which Tiger denied publicly. Earl will later give an interview to TV Guide, TV Guide giving interviews to Earl Woods. It's like a window in time.

Earl, what a line that is. But Earl says, when asked about rumors, it says, a wife can be a detriment to a good game of golf. The level a tiger's at, the finite little problems that come with a marriage would destroy him. Oh my God. Well, Earl, you weren't wrong on some things. As john vandeveld was asked in the lead up how his react was reaction was when he they replayed the British open on television

recently, his collapse. He says it wasn't much of a reaction. I was there if you remember I did it. So I remember people have asked me if I dreamed about it. I have some better things to do than dream about that. That will be in my nightmares, not my dreams. Tigers on the cover of Time, as I said, big long interview sort of digging into him. This is the first Open at St. Andrews

that Sam Snead has been to since 1946 when he won the tournament. Back then, the guys did not come over very often. Snead told this story in the official open championship video about how he was walking along the streets of St. Andrews and someone called out to him, hey, Hogan. Snead kept walking and they said, hey, Hogan.

Kept walking and a kid ran around in front of him, I'm sure it was a British kid, so I should really do the Scottish British accent. He said, hey, and Snead said, I'm not Hogan. And then the kid said, well, you're somebody. And he said, you're damn right. I am. They won the open championship by four, did not play again in the open period until 1962. That's why it's like hard, I think, to sort of gauge, you know, the total slams for them. These people, right. Cause like wins in 46

doesn't even play in it until 62. And Samseid ended up winning seven slams. All right, so the first round kicks off Sully and Tiger begins the tournament by making eight straight pars. But he turns and makes five birdies from the ninth on and posts 67, which has already got the field kind of like a little bit nervous. Ernie says, when you see Tiger at five under

and you haven't even started your round, you know you've got your work cut out for you. But Ernie is up to the challenge. He shoots a 66, including birdieing the road hole. And when he comes into the tent afterwards, he's able to talk around his round for all of 45 seconds before the press asks about tiger. Or he says, come on, that's not fair. I just shot a 66. If you want to talk to tiger, call him on the telephone. Oh, I did forget to mention this. I got to go back and show this before the tournament. I didn't have this in my notes. So I did have it in the pictures. Our, our boy, Seve and Colin Montgomery were honored

with a doctorate from the university of St. Andrews. So I feel like we should call him Dr. Monte and Dr. Seve, as you can see here in this picture of them wearing their fancy clothes. This is Seve is still competing, but not much of a factor. Stuff that is completely out of sorts with the driver and such. Also, this is what Bernard Langer looked like back in the day. Very much like a Hogwarts professor. It does.

At one point in round one, this is crazy, where would you say this is not to be gay? And he is hitting, where would you guess this is on what hole, Salih? You know the old course fairly well, I think. Is he hitting out of the burn on the first hole? Well, it is technically the same burn, but this is 17. He's hitting into 17 green.

Oh gosh. Do you know how far left you have to hit it over 17 green to hit it into essentially, like the Swilligan Bridge would basically be like a hundred feet to his left. Just, I was shocked when I saw how far this was in the open championship official video. Like I don't know how the shot wasn't included in there, but that must that sucker must have ran forever. In round two and the morning wave, we have Sergio and David Toms get out

and they make a bunch of birdies and they are leading at eight under before Tiger tees off. Jack misses the cut. It says, chances are I've probably played my last hole in the British Open. It's always been my favorite event and I'll miss it. Spoiler, Jack does not play his last British Open. He comes back in 2005 for another victory lap. So Tiger goes out this time. He doesn't make pars at the beginning.

So he birdies the first, the fourth, lips out an eagle on five, then he birdies the ninth, the 12th, and the 14th, just an absolute clinic. He actually, uh, hits it to where like in a weird spot on 17, but it ends up in this little patch here over the gravel road, but not onto the actual road hole or is able to chip that up. He chips it up onto the, like the, the mound that makes up the back of the road hole or he's able to chip that up. He chips it up onto the mound that makes up the back of the road hole bunker,

uses the slope, lets it sort of come back down the slope. Just an absolute like beautiful shot. He shoots 66 after making a par on 18. He's 11 under. You're just sort of like, man, like what a dude. This is just a brief thing. 70 is not even cut, but I want you to say, uh, he gets this fucking ball up and down. Oh my God. Of course.

Yeah. Just said he still had some magic back in the day, but he, you know, hits that to like eight feet and then makes the pot. Just a minor note here, somebody named Manny Zermin made an Albatross on the fifth, only the fourth in the history of, uh, the open championship Open Championship. So in round three, people are kind of already starting to feel resigned to what is happening. Tom Lehman says, I looked at the board and I'm just getting lapped. It's not fun. Faldo, whose record of 18 under is almost certain to fall, says, I don't like it one bit. I'm just going to have to go play in Tigerless tournaments. But he says that everyone with a record should get ready to hand them over to Tiger 2.

He's just going to go and blitz them all. Faldo also said, I think he's mentally stronger than Jack was when you think about all the attention that Tiger had to deal with. Jack, you know, he's starting to come to grips with this series. The fact that Tiger is coming along doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, I was rooting for someone to come along or else someone else to come along. If someone challenges my record of 18, I think it would be good for the game of golf. In round three, Tiger finally makes his first bogey in 63 holes at a major. According to Steve Williams notes, this is Tiger's first three putt and ended up on the ninth in 248

holes. Went seven weeks dating back to the Memorial without a three putt. David DeValle though is struggling a little bit with a injured back, but he shoots a 32 on the front, sort of get into the mix, ends up turning in 66, gets into the final group with Tiger at 10 under. Bernie Langer shoots a 66, so he's kind of in the mix, but Tiger, you know, he comes back and he's, you know, he just keeps fucking making birdies birdies, the 12th, the 13th, the 14th. You, I don't have a, this, I don't think I have this in the slides, but this is the third round where he makes hits, probably one of the purest shots of all time. One of your favorites of all time where Stevie

basically says, Hey, pick out a building in the distance. And he just roasts it right on that line. And he turns to Stevie and he says, uh, into the par five, uh, he says, this, is this the one that the one you're talking about right there? So he says, that's the one I'm talking about right there. Two puts for birdie to get to 16 under, uh, he does bogey 17, but makes a birdie on 18 and he's leading by six going into the final round. So it's over, right? So it's done, right? For sure. David Duvall, he's up for the fight. You know what they're, they're laughing and goofing around

at the start of the thing with it. You know, these, these two guys, unlike most of the people that tiger competed with, he did have a pretty good relationship with the ball. They're yucking it up on the first tee. You know, Duvall's like, I'm going to go out and push him. I'm going to do whatever I can. He's trying to win the career grand slam. I'm trying to win my first major. I'm sure there'll be a little bit of nerves either way. So Deval goes out, he birdies number two, he birdies number three, and he gets the lead down to four.

But just, you can't linger. Tiger just keeps making birdies. By the 13th hole, Tiger has swelled the lead back to seven shots, almost makes an eagle on 14. And he has to settle for birdieing 14 every day of the championship. By the time he came to the road hole, he had a nine shot lead. Poor David Duvall hits it into the road hole bunker, takes two hacks at it, cannot get it out from the wall, has to hit it backwards with a little sort of like slap thing and

then try to get, makes an eight on the road hole bunker. Tiger gets to 20 under after birding the 16th. He's the first man to ever reach 20 under in a major before he bogeys the 17th to get back to. But he still pars the last to break Faldo's record of 19 under par. Sorry, I do actually have footage of this shot that he hit into 14 to par five, where he just absolutely smokes this one. That's the shot you're talking about? That's the one right there, Seca.

That's the one right there, Seca. Just an awesome, awesome display. Tiger did not make it into a single bunker the entire week. Each person is assigned a person to officially rake the bunkers. So the press kind of joked that the guy who was in their group had the easiest job of a week to just carry a rake around with Tiger the entire week. As he's coming up 18, he's looking like he's Moses. Shout out to Luke Perry for that quote.

He's leading the masses up 18. It's always one of the best things about the Open Championship. I don't know if you remember this. I even sure it made it on the television, but a streaker ran out onto the green on 18, in full display here. And this was, of course, delighted the tablets that the streaker was there. You know, a little quotable action after here. Tom Watson says, he's raised the bar to a level that only he can jump.

I think someone is gonna have to put some flubber on the bottom of their shoes to jump over that bar. He is supernatural flubber. Flubber is such a Tom Watson reference. Talk about a piece of art that I've never thought of ever once again, since the year 2000, probably what year was that movie? I mean, there's an old version. It's like from the sixties. I think they've remade it somewhere. And I'm sure Tom Watson's referencing the one from the sixties. Mark Calcaveghi says, if Jack Nichols was in his prime today, I don't think he could keep up with tiger. He is the chosen one. Ernie L's on finished eight strokes back. He says, I played in a different tournament. I played in the regular tournament and tiger played

in his own event. In one way, it's incredible to watch a guy play so much better than the rest of the world. In another way, it's tough to talk about him every time, but I guess I might have to get used to it. Steve Ruschen, one of my favorite writers of the era, he gets the gamer for SI. He writes in his lead about woods emerging from the sort of hotel there. He says, under one arm was a symbol of his old soul experience. The other of his unfathomable youth. In his right hand was a Claret jug, awarded to the open championship.

On his left was his carry-on bag, bearing the faded sticker of the cartoon character Cartman from South Park. There's a line here, you talked a little bit privately about how the old timey sports writing has already gone away, but there's a line in. You talked a little bit privately about how the old timey sports writing has gone away, but there's a line in the Sports Illustrated line that I still remember reading it and it makes me laugh now.

It says golf has gone strictly black tie, T-H-A-I, and it is no longer optional. His mom is quoted in this, talking about how Tiger is still a kid in a lot of ways, even if this is adult. She says, if he tried to boil water, he would burn the pot. She's not quite convinced that he's like ready to grow up, but an unbelievable, like Nicholas has sort of, it's funny. Cause like we just talked about Jack, like in one minute he's like, Oh, I'm all for it. And the next minute he's like, man, why don't you know, you got, why don't you guys step up? He Nicholas says, everybody has thrown up the white flag and has surrendered. It's a bad

story for you guys if there aren't any challengers. You guys won't have anything to write about. It's just like people are kind of like, kind of at awe. They don't really know what to sort of say. The closing of the Sports Illustrated article says, one only hopes that Wood can enjoy his feats as much as others do. When Justin Leonard briefly contended Tiger's generational supremacy won the British Open at Trune in 97, he sneaked back onto the course at midnight and drank champagne on the 18th green. When Woods left St. Andrews in a jet wash well before the clock struck 12 on Sunday, he did celebrate in a small way that suggests he might one day loosen up, maybe even undo the top button of his polo shirt. Before leaving town, he ducked into a building on the grounds of the old course and said thank you to the

tournament committee. He posed for pictures while flustered staffers struggled to work their instamatics. Finally, a claret jug in his left hand, he raised a glass of champagne with his right. So tiger, I'd like to make a toast to St. Andrews. The new and future champion took a small sip and grimaced small smile and then another and politely began to make his exit. But his girlfriend wouldn't have it. Keep drinking, she shouted. Tiger Woods dutifully emptied the flute.

So I'll revisit this at the end of your thing, but Tiger eventually ends up being the first ever Sports Illustrated athlete to be named Sportsman of the Year twice, which we can get to in a second. I'll show you the cover of that. But, uh, it's, there was really no other honor that could have, you know, no other person who could have given him the honor after guy, you know, one three majors this year, but I will pass the baton back to you now. Uh, as he has captured the second to grand slam of the season. One of my favorite nuggets again, I had from the Steve Williams and Evan priest

book was just like tiger and David Duvall flew home together on the, on a PJ after that one. And then Duvall would go on to win, win the open championship the very next year, but just like Duvall riding back with the Claret jug, you know, the year before, you know, going to, I mean, we'll probably, we'll get there in 2001 with Trume, but I love that little, that little nugget as well. But I also loved that he would, this was like, he was doing, I mean, it's the widest fairway in the world. He was hitting irons off the tee on one and just letting loose.

I remember these massive club twirls. He was just doing these ridiculous, like, almost like president's cup style, that, you know, when he walks after it, club twirls off that opening tee. And he just was operating at a different level of swagger back then. And so much, I mean, like, look at the joy. I mean, like there's, you know,

this is really kind of like, I think this one he really managed to enjoy maybe a little bit more than Pebble because he wasn't, I don't know, like he just was like, ah, you know what, like I'm feeling myself. My game is about as good as it could possibly be. One by 23 shots and back to back majors. It's just, it's insane. But speaking of challengers, he needed a challenger and he would get one at the very next major, which was held at Valhalla. Let me holla at you. August 17th through 20th year, 2007, thousand 167 yards. The PGA was just here four years prior.

I don't know what the hell was going on in the year 2000 that we let Valhalla enter our lives the way it did. It gets described in a bunch of articles as rising the list of top golf courses in the world. When in reality, it was just that the PGA of America had an interest in the club. That interest grew from 25% to 50%, and I believe all the way up to 100% at a certain point, but they kept kept wanting to have it there because it was a massive

moneymaker for them and they didn't have to share the profits with the home club. The 2004 PGA was also supposed to be at Valhalla and it was unexpectedly moved to Whistling Straits but it was going to have three PGA's in less than 10 years. Wow. And listen, it was not well received in the year 2000 either. We'll get to some of that, but Jack Nicklaus will be playing of course his last PGA on a course that he designed. Of course be paired with Tiger Woods on days one and two. The PGA of America traditionally paired up the three major winners,

but since Tiger was hoovering up the prior two, they needed to find a third. I don't know when Glory's last shot came into our lives, but I just love the graphics from the, the PGA America does have a video up on YouTube to recap this one. Do you think they did that because we've hackedered them so much?

I think this is because of Tiger. I think that's exactly why this one's up. I would like to just pause here though and to shame Sports Illustrated for their fucking archives are so bad at this point. Like I, you know, I pay for us to be able to have access to the SI Vault and it is so hard to like get working links. Anyway, so if you're listening to this Sports Illustrated, please take whatever money you have left.

Clean up the vault. Clean up the vault. This is a random image of just like Nick Faldo and Ernie L signing autographs, but like this was golf in this time period to Faudo and Ernie Ells signing autographs. But like this was golf in this time period to me. These guys spent so much time signing autographs. They're probably just sweating their asses off in these massive cotton shirts.

But they're just like, they're not rushing through this at all. They're really taking their time signing for everybody after 18. I just saw this image and I was like, man, that's seared in my memory in terms of what golf looked like for an impressionable teenager. I mean, I see the bag behind them. This is probably even before they get to scoring their signing autographs. You would never see that. I think this is a practice round. This is a practice. This is, uh, you know, leading up into the week and into the hype and everything. But

Michael Wilbon has a column titled is too much Tiger bad for golf? Oh, which what isn't there like an old headline journalism rule, like anytime that there's a question mark in a headline, the answer's always no. Cause like I peaked up, I perked up when I saw that headline, I'm like, ooh, ooh. The conclusion he reaches is definitely no. Like it's, you know, people like dynasties, like domination and all that stuff.

But some of the pre-tournament hypes about Sergio, about him losing his form in 2000, after bursting onto the scene at Medina that year. The AP notes that he's quote, more mature and reflective at the age of 20, which, you know, probably begged to differ for the way, you know, a lot of his career played out, but love, you know, the media loves Sereta. You're more mature. Sure.

Sergio story. I think there's even one of mine, I think at Oakmont, please don't go look it up because it's did not prove to be true. So Jack is on the call of practicing on Wednesday and he finds out on the fourth hole that his mother Helen has passed away. It was expected and his mother had told him to keep playing. He said her biggest fear was that she would pass away during a major. Jack does decide to play on with the tournament starting the next day. And the the playoff for the 2000 PJ has been changed to a three hole aggregate, which of course would come into play a little bit with the PJ Tech championship tagline in their video. It just

is very cheesy video this time. It's called the Louisville slugger. That's that's tiger goes for three scoops bit solid. The whole Louisville slugger is going to come out and try to win the third straight major. I just got Jim dance here with this massive suit there on the 18th hole doing this video that's up on YouTube. Can I this may be easy, but may not. Do you know who this is? Oh, that looks like the Westwood.

But I do do a double take. I'm like, that's Lee Westwood. But I do do a double take. I'm like, that's Lee Westwood in the year 2000. You know, little glow up for Lee, you know, he's living his best life in his late 40s. Some people do get more handsome as they get older. That's true. Fuzzy Zeller did obviously did not get a special exemption into the event. He lived just 30 minutes away. John Daly did not like that. He would. They said there's 37 people got exemptions. Uh,

Daly was very upset about this. This is not that long after the Kmart dropping incident and, uh, it's a couple only a couple of years after. I mean, it's fuzzy. It has to be like 50 years old at this point. Like, why, why would the VGA have any interest in having him? Before, uh, probably withdrawing. I remember if he withdrew from this one as well, but big news, Monty is down 20 pounds and said, quote, I don't want to be overweight anymore.

And he would say, it's the first time in a couple of years, I enjoyed playing over here. I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody yelled, you look good, Monty. It was a big change in the way the American crowd accepted me. I'd like to thank the American public for accepting me and respecting me." Which just a year after Brookline, which the Americans still had not apologized for, that's

a surprising turn of events. Be nice to Skinny Monte. The temperature is a massive theme for the week. Ottawa Citizen writes, what's green and flat and hotter than a toaster set on burn. Why it's the PGA championship at Valhalla golf club here in rural Kentucky, where if it gets any warmer, they're going to use thermometers for flag sticks. Oh man. If I turned in a story like that and had you a DJ read it, you'd be like, uh, let's, let's punch up this lead a little bit. Superintendent Mark Wilson. I don't think it's the PGA tour player said they had to give some of the greens ice baths to keep

them looking green. I never heard of that. You giving, giving greens ice baths at night, but some sources had Tiger at even money to win this. Some had them as a seven to four favorite. He can join Ben Hogan is the only players to win three of the modern majors in one year and the first to defend a PGA title since 1937. Ernie has finished runner-up in each of the three majors this year. David Duvall would not play this week due to a back injury. So the Tiger-Jack VJ pairing is all the buzz and I'm sorry, but it makes me laugh at the most accomplished player of all time putts like this. Like, but it's just like, it's such a jarring cut that this is how Jack Nichols putted his whole career. And like, Jack is like hyping himself up to like compete in this thing. And Barbara would whisper in Jack's ear on the first tee, she would say, remember bears eat tigers.

she would say, remember, bears eat tigers. Also, I just fucking murdered a bunch of prairie dogs outside our hotel. I'm wiping the blood off my face this morning and I'm ready for the kill. Sorry. I just love that she's trying to hype up down to like literal peaks tigers. She's trying to hype up like the 60 year old bear to go chase him down. Anyways, tiger would started slowly, but he birdied seven, eight, nine, 10 and 12. All of a sudden he's five under par. You'll never guess this one.

Even if I showed you a picture of this guy, can you tell me who is tied for the lead with Tiger Woods after one day? Oh God, this fellow looks familiar, but I cannot pull the name. I'm gonna be bummed when you tell me, but go ahead. This is Scott Dunlap. Uh, he shot 66 as well. He's got it. I just love the lever 2000, the soap sponsorship on the left chest there, uh,

plays a lot of, uh, international tours, not a big PGA tour, uh, player at this time. Nance, the video describes him as a 37 year old bachelor, Scott Dunlap, which I don't know why we needed to put marital status. Ladies, if you're interested, Scott Dunlap is available. He would also say, and Darren Clark, a husky lad who disdains the game's physical fitness craze. Wow. Don't cancel dance. So yeah, Darren Clark and DL three are a couple back at four under Stephen Ames, Ed Friatt,

Fred Funk and JP Hayes are at three under par, which this is a picture of JP Hayes. I was going to quiz you on that one. You were not going to get that one. I would not have gotten that one as well. A lot of names in this one. Like not, not, not big names, just a lot of random names at this one. Stuart Appleby, Brian Henninger, Miguel Angel, and then as Jonathan K Tom Kite, Phil Mickelson, and John Vandeveld. John Vandeveld in the top 10 after round one. John played some pretty good golf.

You see his name keeps popping up. He keeps like he was contended in a lot of tournaments. He's kind of a joke, but people forget that he could actually play. Jack would fly back up to Ohio for the night to be with his family and make it back in plenty of time for the 125 tee time the next day on that Friday. So some writing after Thursday, Joe Poznanski would declare it's official PGA championship belongs to Woods. This is the first time in

golf history that a man has won a major championship on the first day. The column, it's very well done. He mentioned Scott Dunlap, who is again tied tied for the lead the PGA championship and he has absolutely no chance to win. That's a quote. Dunlap's quote says, Hey, you know, when your first win, you never know when your first win is going to happen. Jeff Sloomans was at a PGA. Why can't mine? End quote. And then Poznanski continues. Well, because Slooman won his PGA when Tiger Woods was getting ready to start the eighth grade. That's why those were different days. Everybody want a major championship sooner or later back then. Heck. All you had to do was wait around and eventually Greg Norman would hand you one.

Oh, this is a flame throwing column. St. Louis pro Robert Goss. Uh, he had a tough week with his caddies. First of all, his first caddy from St. Louis couldn't get there on time. So he had to hire a Valhalla caddy, John Tackett. Tackett had to go to the hospital after Monday's practice round for heat exhaustion, and then Tackett buckled in nine fairway on Thursday and had to be rushed to the hospital because of dehydration. Goss had to finish the caddy, the round with, with caddy Craig Chaney was another

caddy at Valhalla who was watching the tournament at home on TV and had to drive to the course 20 minutes going about 80 miles an hour to go caddie the back nine for Robert Goss. A lot of things sticking out that this place should not host a major, it's definitely not in August, but should not be hosting major championships. But Monty would decline media after the round because he was not feeling good after playing in the heat. Greens were doused with water once play was suspended.

Jack would quote on Tiger's play, he would say, he's playing a game I'm not familiar with. Of course, I'm playing a game I'm not familiar with. The pace was atrocious. Ernie arrived at the second tee and three groups were waiting on the par five second. Ernie Els. How do you get stacked up on two tee? This was not a well run tournament logistically.

Ernie Els would say, I'm not criticizing the PGA, but maybe you have to rethink playing this golf course. His group teed off at one 34 and barely finished. He said, maybe we should change venues. Wow. Good for earn. So there was a storm overnight and the hollow just becomes pretty toothless. Balls are stopping right next to pins with long irons. And I mean, but the real beauty of the grounds are on display here. You see Davis love with this putt

and just the majesty of that water behind him, that natural fall. Oh, fuck. If you're listening on the podcast, it's dirty brown sewage ditch water. It's so horrendous. Augusta pebble, St. Andrews and Valhalla where the four major championship sites of this year.

It's just ridiculous. So as, as the, as the Friday round moves along, again, this Jack and tiger thing was a big, big moment. They're walking up the 18th hole together and Mike's pick up their combo. Jack says how great it's been to play with him and he helps they do it again. Sometime Tiger says, let's finish it out the right way. Nicholas needs to hole out for Eagle to make the cut. He had a much better second day and by God, he almost did it. This is the ball spinning right in front of the hole, missing by a cup and a half, maybe two cups in front of the hole. It would stop a foot away. He would make the tap in birdie.

The ovation shadow made it scholarly, but not the actual ball. The shadow is in the cup. Good sports writer analogy trick or whatever. And I mean, the ovation for him was epic. Like considering the emotion of the week with his mom and like the setting with tiger and the past passing the torch. Like this was catnip for golf fans. Like this was, I remember this being a big ass moment. Well, people think it's the last major maybe that is, I mean, maybe they'll still play

in the masters, but the Phil think, you know, it's the last non-masters that he'll ever play in. Yep. So Dickles after playing a couple of rounds with Tiger would say like, he's better than I thought, like way better than I even thought he was. I mean, it's just truly majestic shot shaping and everything he's doing. And he pulled Stevie aside at one point and said, make sure you stick with this guy. Which was, I mean, I think Stevie knew that at that point, but- Yeah, yeah.

Interesting. No, Jack, I was thinking about looking at some other bags. Tiger shoot 67, he's got a one shot lead over Dunlap, who did not go away. Hung Tub shoot 68. Fred Funk, JP Hayes, and DL3 are at minus 7. Noda and Bob May are at minus 6 after both shooting 66. So Bob May shot 72 when it was firm, then shoot 66 as soon as it softens up.

Stewart Appleby is at 5 under. Steven Ames, Thomas Bjorn, Greg Chalmers, Darren Clark, Phil Mickelson, and David Thoms at minus four. Of note, Bob May is playing on a special exemption from the PGA. Daley continued his tough year, shooting 74-82. This is from Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press. This is more Valhalla hate.

But the first two rounds did nothing to heighten the PGA championship standing as the poor stepchild of the four majors. Many players criticize Valhalla suggesting the PGA owned course wasn't worthy of major status, primarily because of its rather lightweight par fives. This was from an old espngolf.com article. It says, big bird, the Harvey Pinnock of the Rugrat generation often says, one of these things is not like the other.

What should we make of the following foursome?a national Pebble beach, St. Andrew's Valhalla, which one doesn't belong? Even Regis would be embarrassed to ask this question. David Duvall said, I think Valhalla is a perfectly nice golf course for a Nike tour event. Oh, Zinger, Justin Leonard would say, I'm not going to tell you it's my favorite golf course in the world, but we're all playing it this week. So that's where we are. Yeah. I think that we got some hate for shitting on Valhalla 10, 15, 20 years later. 25% I guess. 25. Yeah. For the articles say few pros will openly attack Valhalla at least publicly privately. They say it's nothing more than the kind of TPC course the PGA tour sees frequently. It has too few memorable holes, too many

trumped up ones and too many too few ways to separate the great from the not so great. Fucking spot on. I got still the same 24 years later when like, it just was really, really hard to make a mistake and make a bogey because it was just a turkey shoot in 2024. Rocco immediate story. Rocco had to withdraw from the tournament because before the tournament started, he was sitting in a chair outside the clubhouse and the chair collapsed. I don't know the full story of why, why this happened, but he would hurt his

right wrist, right shoulder, neck, and lower back as the chair collapsed that he was sitting in. Steve Loy, his agent was pissed as Rocco was on the cusp of making the president's cup team and they were deciding on the captain's picks right after the PGA. His quote is at a time when we all knew Rocco was at a career high at the healthiest, he could possibly be both physically and mentally. We find it incredible that a major championship run by the PGA of America would be the setting for something like this to happen.

He's blaming the PGA for the chair collapses, shitty chairs. Several other withdrawals Ben Crenshaw, Tom Lehman after poor opening rounds, Lehman was rushing back from injury. This was a tough week to be an alternate because a lot of people were withdrawing after poor starts. Ernie yells his second round was clocked at 4 56, which he said felt like three hours compared to the day before because that was six hours the day before into Saturday, Tom Watson would tie the course record with a 65 on this day makes a massive charge. But Jose Maria shortly after would have a put for 62. Just a few hours later,

he would miss it to shoot, but he would shoot 63 to get to nine under par tying the major championship record, of course, with 63. You don't see this often. This is Tiger on Saturday. It's not a fit you see often from him. I don't see this in any highlight compilations ever just the brown shoes. I just I don't ever recall. Tiger looking like this. He was plugging away along away and nobody ever remembers this Saturday at all. But he makes

double on the 12th hole. He's playing with Scott Dunlap. Again, he's been written off. Dunlap birdies 12 and Tiger doubles it all of a sudden they're tied at 13 under par. But Bob May is going ape shit again just pouring in birdies. I mean, just looking like an absolute predator out there. I mean, I don't know. Tiger says he's never been intimidated by anybody. I don't know how you're not intimidated by this five foot seven dude, these baggy ass pants and sleeves all the way past his elbow. Sharp looking for mirrors he's got on his feet.

I mean, he is just absolutely stunting on people. He's walking after seven irons and he fires his second straight 66 to get to 12 under par. Tiger ends up finishing at 13 under par. He shoots 72 under par, which is just not that good of a round on this day. Dunlap hung tough. He's also at 12 under, but Bob May gets into the final pairing by finishing early and Dunlap falls back to the one before. Tiger's birdied 11 of the 12 par fives on his way to being this 1300 par score through 54 holes. So here is the leaderboard heading into that final day. Tiger one shot ahead of Bob May and Scott Dunlap. JP Hayes at 11 under, Greg Chalmers at 10.

Jose Maria is at nine along with Thomas Bjorn and Stuart Appleby. What a leaderboard. Okay, so historically, I didn't know that a JMO was in this mix a little bit. Yeah, that's that 63 shot them all the way up, but Franklin Langham and Noda Begay are eight under just outside this graphic as well. So Saturday pulled a 5.8 rating, which was a record going back to 1986. So I mean, people were, were on the on the Tiger Woods theme, of course. So I just found this article right before we about started recording, but I saw this image. There's this massive hole in the second green. And I just found an article in there.

a six inch deep hole formed on the second green on Sunday, about 40 feet from the pin when a drainage tile under the soil shifted. So it's just massive eyesore in the middle of the second green. At least it wasn't prairie dogs. I know who they could have called if there was. Sorry. I'm going to keep going back to that well as many times as I can. Tiger and May are of course paired together. May's trailing by one. May was a star in the Southern California golf scene. Won a bunch of AJGA events, Walker-Cupper. Tiger closely tracked Bob May's records in Southern California. He was determined to beat him. Seven years older than Tiger. Early in his career, May was funded by Joe Pesci. I assume it was a Vegas connection there of some way, but in some way, Joe Pesci had funded his career in some way.

He was the 48th ranked player in the world, which I thought he was 348th at the time. I mean, it was such an unknown, but of course was not following golf the same way we currently do. But look, Davis Thompson's like the 48th ranked player in the world as of recording this. It would be quite surprising if Davis Thompson was, you know, hanging with Scotty or Rory down the stretch. But so early part around made birdies the fourth hole from the right rough. I may is just

hitting miraculous shots all over the place. And he leads by two like Tiger makes a bogey early in the round as well. He bogies the second hole par five. Like he just like makes a mess chipping, chipping back and forth on that one chips one way past. And so yeah, big two shot lead for Bob May. And then May would bogey the six, but Tiger did as well. Tiger gets a birdie back on the par five, seventh hole. And then also birdies the eighth with like one of the most demonstrative like walk-ins. Love it. Putter raise, big fist pump from about 15 feet.

Like let's get the crowd feeling, like Bob May needs to feel my presence right now. Like it's a little over the top kind of this. Front foot is off the ground fully. Yeah. That's a walk-in for sure. That's a really, really, really good walk-in, but it's pretty vintage tiger. So they're tied at 13 going into the back night. And I got

to the dual is maybe even better than I remember. Honestly, they both birdie 10 may hits it to 25 feet on the 11th hole, but drains the putt to take the lead back. And then may on the 12th hole hits a shot from one1 and somebody else in the crowd yells, get all over it. And it absolutely did. He stuffs the pinata in there inside six feet, but Tiger rolls in like an 18 footer on the 12th to match it. And Tiger plays the first three holes in two under par and loses a shot to Bob May because

May would go into roll in that birdie. Tiger walked off 12 and said to Stevie, this guy will not back down. Trust me. I know him. We need to go hard. And Steve would note in the, in the book that he thought that was very unusual for tiger in the heat of a battle. So well, they both part of our new junior golf scene that earns tiger's respect. If you've been in the heat of that, you are here. This shit may hits four iron into 14 stuffs. It absolutely flags it. Tiger hits a great shot uses a slope, brings it in there, but he's outside of May and

tiger makes the putt, but it may steps up and drains the pot as well. So may has birdied on the back nine. Just he's birdie for the first five holes on the back nine, like staring down tiger woods may is 17 on her tiger 1600. May was 17 under part in his last 50 holes. So like, yeah, he's about to cool off eventually at some point. Nope. Stuff's the pinata again on 15. I mean, the guy did not leave the flag stick. He's ready for the fourth, first five, and he's got this putt, maybe six feet for birdie on 15. Tiger like kind of makes a mess

here. He runs his first putt on 15 way past and has this putt to save par while May is looking at a good chance for Birdie. Like it looked like Tiger might be down three walking off 15. Tiger pours in this par putt and then May would step up and hit this putt and it would not touch the hole.

Missed it way left. Like this was kind of the first crack in the armor for Bob May. That putt all of a sudden did look a lot longer once Tiger had made his putt but Tigers lucky to walk off the green only down one at the very testing 17th hole here at Valhalla Tiger has lob wedge in from 98 yards. And Steve Williams had to lie to him about the yards yardage because he knew he was pumped up and he and Stevie really wanted him to hit lob wedge and he stuffs it. He stuffs it in there and makes

birdie to tie, to tie May going to the 18th hole. May hits 18 and two, but has a long putt over a mountain. He runs it off the green to that, that back top tier. He's got this putt for birdie. Tigers down in the, in the front right. And he runs his putt about six feet by and May has got this putt and the putt looks awful.. Tiger's down in the front right and he runs his putt about six feet by and May has got this putt and the putt looks awful. Like it's veering off to the right and Ventura, I couldn't find the Ventura call anywhere. It's not on YouTube, but Ventura famously blows the call and he's like, Nope, not today. And it just keeps going straight. It looks

like Bugs Bunny's underneath the earth, you know, the space jam scene. It's either one of the great reads of all time by may or like you just can't, I don't know. I mean, it's unbelievable that that putt went in. I remember being like just speechless when that happened. It really was. And, uh, his third 66 in a row for me now all of a sudden tiger's got like, he's got a putt from, it looks a lot longer now to go into the playoff. Great picture in picture view here as tiger just nails the putt, massive celebration. Tiger played the last 12 holes in seven under just to get into a playoff with Bob May at the PGA.

So I just want to say Rocco mediate got so much mileage out of like playing kind of like even par golf with tiger. And obviously us hope was different, but like, man, Bob may feels like he should've got a better run out of like just throwing darts down the stretch with tiger over and over again. And he just, he kind of just disappeared. He just awesome that whole day, not to diminish may like he was the only one that challenged him, but like soft conditions, let somebody hang with him. Whereas like Pebble and St. Andrew's like, nobody can hang in any way. So the playoff does not go well for May. He pulls into the rough off the tee on 16. He's got a case of the lefts going now. Um, Tiger, it's two iron, seven iron,

leaves it about, you know, 25, 30 feet right at the pin. May hits like a completely absurd recovery shot from like 60 yards and hits it to like six inches. Like it was an awesome shot from the right. He just like keeps battling, but you all know what happens next for Tiger. Tiger hits the putt on 16 and Gary McChord famously on the call, oh, he's running after it. He's running after it. He almost got there before the ball did. Gives it a big point. My favorite screen grab from this one, not only the point, but the security guard in the background up off the ground, fist up in the air celebrating.

Another security guard back there. The woman has two arms raised up in the air. Like it was just a monumental occasion. 17, may goes left, you know, on the bank of the fairway bunker, then hits it in the green side bunker. Tiger went way right. He punches it over the green and has to scramble. And they, but tiger makes it about a seven footer for par may about a five footer for par there on the playoff. They both made it though. They go to 18. We also know what happens next. Tiger pulls it way left. Great mystery. Big controversy. Maybe one of the dumbest arguments that we do. I it's a volunteer there in the white shirt running down the path. Yeah. As you can see with the hand raised here as the ball gets there, like the people, the guy that people thought kicked the ball out of play was a volunteer. I don't think we ever fully connected the dots there.

Also, the marshals, his name is Tim Gilpin. Okay. Like, and there's articles at the time that were like that interviewed him. I was like, no, the ball hit, hit the tree right there came down, hit the path, bounced up and hit the tree again. And then like worked its way backwards down the path. And if you watch that replay, like there's no possible conclusion you could reach that any, there's nobody there, like up underneath the tree up on the Hill and shrubs that could have like, known that it was tiger hitting and new to through the, throw the ball back and play and not be seen by cameras. It's Venturi who's like, is the one who kind of starts the controversy by saying like, Oh, some kid did not catch.

Yeah. I hope that nobody kicked it back into play, but it made no sense. It made absolutely no sense. And I will die on this Hill. I, Joel Beale wrote a pretty good article, like digging into what happened and talk to someone who was like, you know, there's no way the ball, like I was there and the ball did not get kicked. It just rattled around and came back down. May is in the left rough again has the lefts going on but advances it too far into the right rough. Tiger comes up short because he punched off this hard pan and into the rough and then tries to judge a flyer and it comes up way short in the bunker. May's

third ends up on the right tier. He's got 35 feet. Tiger pitches out of the bunker to a foot like a really freaking awesome bunker shot that we don't talk about enough. And May gave his putt, like it looks like May's putts going in. It was such an unbelievable putt from like an impossible make and he actually gives it a chance. A great, great run. Barely missed low. Tiger taps in and wins. He hugs Stevie. Tiger and Stevie are hugging after the final putt. And like Bob May pretty much bombs the celebration. Like he's like tugging on Steve's shirt, like to get in to congratulate Tiger and hug him.

So I was kind of like, man, just maybe let them have their moment for a second here. It's a funny rewatch because he does get in really, really quickly. But there's the final board. They were five shots clear. Bob May should have won this major if not for the biggest freak of any generation.

And Thomas Bjorn third, Applebee Ch Chalmers and Jose Maria type four. Obviously like easy course, but 66, 66, 66. Always like struck me as like that, that was the three scores that he put up and didn't win over the weekend. Just wild. He said, you should, you do that on a major championship. You should win, but I was up against the best player in the world. Like he's truly one of the great what ifs of all time. Nance would tell the story of on their flight out, he's sitting in first

class, just getting stopped by people to everybody recognizes Jim. This time, how great the PGA was. And Bob may just casually strolls right past him to the back of the bus with nobody recognized at all. Like it was just a pretty insane moment. That's pretty much all I have other than in an old newspaper, I saw a TV programming alert for a highlight show or like a look back at the 1974 PGA that Lee Trevino won, like in the TV guy. I was like, man, it's a pretty ancient like look back all the way back to 1974. That was a 26 year look back at the time. And we're doing a 25 year look back. Holy shit. We getting old. We getting old. We are. I hate to bring this pod to an abrupt ending.

I am nine minutes late for a meeting because we went for almost three hours talking about the 2000 majors, but this was a blast to dig into as they always are. Kev, thank you for your research. Thank you everyone for listening. We'll complete the tiger slam. I'm sure that'll be the next one that we get into. And this was a true gem to look back on.