No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 437: Bones Recaps the PGA Championship

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Bones joins the pod to share some Phil stories, what it was like to be on the bag for five major championships, why he believes Phil has longevity, Kiawah and what makes it tough, a Phil practical joke story, and a lot more from the 2021 PGA Championship.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast, Sully here. Couldn't put the 2021 PGA championship in the books without another recap. You heard us talk about it, but why not some perspective from somebody who catted for the champion for some two and a half decades.

A ton of just stories from bones about experiences he's had. And you're going to hear him talk, you're going to hear us talk some about Pinehurst in this, you know, the heartbreak of 99. And it just kind of dawned on me. This is great that they are Pinehurst is also a sponsor of this episode because it just speaks to the ability for people every day people like yourselves and I to go play a golf course that major championships are held at like Kioa and like Pinehurst. We are huge fans of the number two course, the number four course, the cradle.

We've had nothing but tremendous experiences there. Their arsenal goes so deep. They have so many offerings when it comes to the Pinehurst Brewing Company, a great place to go to, you know, wind down after around a golf. There's the doose. You can roll right in there after around number two or number four, one or three or five. It is endless golf options, endless options, you know, for hangouts with your buddies,

you get the villas, they have the newly renovated man or in. They got the Carolina hotel there. It is called the St. Andrews of golf for many reasons. So you can go to Pinehurst.com, book your trip to Pinehurst now as soon as you can. There's so many, I cannot wait for 2024. Just talking about, you know, major championship golf and in US opens and whatnot with bones coming up. I cannot wait for the US open going back there. But get there before the next major. And then you know, a lot of people that watch Kia with us past week said things like, I do a one, I want to go play it.

You have a chance to go play a place like Pinehurst too if you haven't been there before in the coming years before another major. So, without any further delay, let's get to our good friend, Bones, who's going to tell us a lot. A lot of stories about Cading out a key with us this past week and of course some perspective on Phil's win. Enjoy. All right, I'm going to start you off the softball and open in a question. What's it like to get back on the bag for a major championship?

I know you consider yourself more of a caddy than a broadcaster. I'm imagining that has to be at least, had to be pretty exciting. Yeah, it was great fun. I mean, I don't need to tell you what a really cool dude, Max Home is. I've got to know him a little bit in the last year or so. We played the same golf course here in Scottsdale,

but my goodness gracious. He's just an incredibly fun and interesting guy to be around a world class ball striker. It certainly didn't go the way we wanted it to last week, but I enjoyed it immensely. I thought that the Ocean course was incredible there at Kewa Island and just the fact that they moved it from August to May, you know, having been there in 2012 and it just wasn't relentlessly hot. Just made for that much of a better week.

So I had an absolute blast. Yeah, I'd imagine that that venue is maybe the one that makes the most sense for this new date on the calendar. But so just already I'm so intrigued by your perspective on something like you call Max a world class ball striker. Obviously know that, but you've seen some of the most amazing golf on this planet that's been played over the last 30 some years both with who you caddy for and who you played for.

So what do you mean when you say that? What impresses you about someone like Max? And I want to kind of understand what the learning, learning curve is like for going on a guy's bag and for a very short, short stint. Yeah, it's a great question. I'll answering this. The last part of what you mentioned there. I mean, this wasn't going to work for a guy in Palm Springs, you know?

Right. So, you know, getting out there and, you know, in the Tuesday practice round, there was a win that was so strong that there were players in the field having trouble getting to the 16th and 18th Fairways. So, it was, you know, quite the place to work for a guy, the first time around. I mean, it went really well and we had a great time, certainly, again, not, not, not the score we would have liked.. But I mean, the thing about, about Max is, as you saw it, for everybody that watched the golf last weekend, these guys are on the tee having these incredibly specific conversations about what you're aiming at because it was just that demanding. And of course, you had to win and you've got these Pete diangles. So

you were getting up on these holes and saying, okay, let's take it at that TV tower in the distance and the player knows they only literally have maybe, you know, 10 or 12 yards on either side of it. And if they don't pull that off, it's in the rough or one of these waste areas. So I was really impressed with Max's ability to hit, you know, a 31010 yard driver right at our target. I just, you know, certainly he's a young player, he's an up and coming player. I think his future potentially is through the roof. And I think that he's got this incredible asset in that, in my opinion, I think, at worst. He's a top 10 ball striker on the tour, but bordering on top five.

Wow. We were obviously close to Max and I put him almost more in the friend category than I do tour player. So it's kind of like when he when he's doing really well, it's hard for me to really grasp. Like, oh, yeah, he really is that because it's so wishful. It's so hopeful for me. I'm rooting for him.

I guess it's hard to take a step back and really appreciate actually how good he is. I don't know if that made sense. But so you said a lot of interesting stuff there already that I want to try to unpack with you. Pete, die angles. What does that mean to the best players in the world? What is it about something like Keehoa that makes them uncomfortable or maybe even makes your job harder as a caddy?

Yeah. So in walking the golf course this Saturday before I was thinking about what I was going to say to Max when he saw it for the first time on Monday and, you know, what I, the point I tried to make is a caddy. I'm sure a lot of guys did when you're talking about the course to your players as you're warming up is, you know, don't prejudge how big these fairways are. And so you get out there and you stand on them, you know, 300 yards off the tee or whatever it may be.

It's just one of those courses with the way he does things visually where you stand up there and you go, my goodness, where the heck am I supposed to hit this ball? You know, there's, you know, things are perched up, there's trees, there's dunes, there's this, there's that, it's very visually intimidating. I would liken it to the first time I ever saw Whistling Straits where again as a cat, you're walking it and you're going oh my goodness there's 10,000 bunkers on this golf course how in the world am I going to learn it and you realize after a while what's in play and what's not but I do think that it's part of the genius of Pete Dye in that he gets in your head a little bit certainly with a t-ball and to some degree every shot you play thereafter so it was one of those courses. It was an amazing test and I think it showed how fantastic a course it was and how things played out on Sunday. Well, I promise you, for the listeners at home, I put in the request to interview you

on Thursday of last week. It was as well before Phil Mikkelsen went on to win it. We're going to touch on a lot of that, but it's truly one of the great quints. And this is of our time. But so something interesting though paralleling what we saw out of Phil and his brother Tim on the on the bag this week talking through shots and conditions like Keowa with the win the way that it was and the preciseness of some of these shots that are required. And you can see the level of detail in those shots. He's talking about pells, this, whatever, all this, blah, blah, blah.

And between that, Tim's been on his bag for four years. Now, he's seen a lot out of Philly. You know, it's Philly's game. There is years and years of data that go into helping make a decision like that. You don't have years and years of data of knowing if Max is cutting a shot into a draw wind. How much that takes off of it? What his flight at Seven Iron goes versus a full one? What it it's got to be more demanding to caddy in an

environment like that for a player. You don't know that well when other than just stock shots, a lot of different shots are required. Is that all fair to say? Yeah, that's very fair to say. And again, another thing you don't know are the players tendencies. You know, what does he really like to do and what are those couple of things that he doesn't you know so again there's you're trying to learn anything you possibly can and when Max was on the range working with his teacher Mark I was trying to listen to everything that was said just trying to pick up you know how Max does things what he looks at and then certainly I was texting quite a lot with Joe griner his caddy in the days in which prior to the event but but you're exactly right I mean

you have to find you know I've caddy for players before that you know don't like to hook this club or don't like to cut that club I mean they've all got their little things and certainly it's stuff that you learn with time but you know it's kind of like cramming for a final, but again, the thing I had come for me again is that it's Max, and he just flushes the ball. He could also flight the ball very well, and I think I'm sure that's something that we'll talk about now as we get into last week's tournament

because it's something that Phil does. He's incredibly underrated at it in terms of, can you keep your ball down into a significant wind? When there's a lot of heat on him, anybody can play golf in a dome at that level. And the reality is on the PJ Tour, in my experience, is some guys can flight the ball far better than others.

And I think those are guys that certainly, at the end of the day, end up with more success. But in my opinion, they also tend to play better in majors. What is there anything you would have had from 2012 that would have been helpful nine years later? I mean, you know, anything at all or is it just kind of like, oh, I kind of remember this kind of remember this year, you need to see it for ash. Well, to be honest with you, it's funny. Max texted me a week or two prior to the term and said, you know, what couple of things would you throw at me? And I said, well, you know, when we played there last time, you had this hammering South Wind, Southwest Wind that basically made the t-shirts for a right-hander, very tough on 10, 11, 12, 13.

Again, getting back to the fill thing that we'll talk about later, that ended up on Sunday I would assume being an incredibly comfortable wind for fill as a left-hander. It's such a fascinating part of the game to me. I've said a couple times on the air and Phil and I used to joke about it. A fact that Augusta National is the greatest left handed golf course ever. I think there's a real reason why other than being great players, Phil's had so much success there, Bubba, Mike Weir. There's just certain shots there that really fit for lefties. Now I'm not saying that necessarily about Kiaw, but after all the amazing play that Phil

had and did the first three days there at QAWID to put himself in this amazing position leading going into the last day to wake up on Sunday and to feel that South, Southwest wind. He was going to have a very comfortable feel on these tee shots playing on the back nine. It had to be an amazing feeling. So I guess I'm getting a little bit lost here, but I told Max to expect that this, this wind I've just referenced and we didn't get it. We didn't really get it at all. In fact, we didn't get it in practice. We certainly didn't get it on Thursday and Friday, the two days that Max played, but it showed up on Sunday and I'm

sure it was a fantastic thing for Phil and Tim. I was trying to make this point on our Sunday recap about just thinking about being left handed at the highest level in the game and how there's three, maybe four guys, I forget how many exactly they were in the field. Maybe four left handers in the field, right? And if you chopped up all the golf courses in the world, I have no idea what the number would be and it would depend on the different wins like you're talking about. But even if it's at worst, 65, 35, that 65% of course is favor right handers, how much of an advantage you have on the 35%

when it's only you and three other guys that are playing from this side of the ball, and you're the best of those lefties, going up against everyone that's all kind of fighting it out together, all 19 other right handers that are in contention, how much advantage that might be. And that's really just starting to hammer in for me, even if it's just a wind direction like you talked about.

And my on to something there is that kind of like, kind of, I'm just wondering now that, and there's a lot of reasons, club availability, and just more people being right handed, but why more people at the highest level don't play left handed? It has such a great point you just made. I mean, you just brought it up at a level that is really, really interesting.

That's a fantastic point. You're right. I'm sure there's an amazing article out there somewhere, or some kind of mathematical breakdown and all this data that we deal with now where somebody could really come up with something that much more interesting about what you're talking about. some kind of mathematical breakdown and all this data that we deal with now where somebody could really come up with something that much more interesting about what you're talking about. I mean, I can remember the first two or three times I went with Phil to Capilua and the provisional

when was blowing and you're thinking, man, he's got no chance here. And I'll never forget, I think we played on Saturday or Sunday, one year there with Fred Funk and you get on the ATT there and it's right to left helping when Which you typically have there down that hill that we all know and Fred Funk's out driving Phil And he's like are you kidding me? He's pulling his hair out over there, and I don't think you ever played again

But it was funny because I'd said something on the air about it about how when that particular wind blows there at capilloua You know it basically ruins any chance that left hand or head and Mark Rolthing was doing the TV with us in the next commercial break he was like holy Toledo you're right I've never thought about that but you know and of course as you guys know he knows more about Hawaii in that place than just about anybody on the planet so it's interesting it's it's really quirky I, there are so many times when I carried Refill, he would drive the ball into a fairway bunker, and I would just look at what he had to deal with and said,

man, this isn't fair. This is whoever put this bunker here and how they did it. They obviously thought that a left hand who would never tee it up. It's just crazy. One year we played in the Masters and Phil, I'll never forget, got to the second hole there. Obviously, it's Augusta National.

This is before he ever won it. And he teases ball up to create something of an angle there. And number two, Augusta starts to take a practice swing. And there's a water cooler in the way. And again, just silly things like that. But at that point, whoever put out the water that day at Augusta National't thought at all, there might be a left hander in the field. And we spent half the day laying down water coolers on the ground prior to him being able to tee off.

I mean, it's a very interesting thing to me, probably more so because I cadded for a left hander, but it's really big some weeks. It's really annoying some other weeks. But again, the big payoff I always thought was when you get to the masters. Yeah, and for anyone that's listening to the majors, be saying, well, gosh, it must suck for the 65% of courses or whatever they don't work in your favor, but that's golf in general.

You're not at least 65% of the time, for other reasons you're eliminated, for whatever reason you go in into a week, but if you get a really good advantage, 35, 45% of the time, whatever that might be, you may end up with six majors in your closet. And like I said, so when you're talking about the wins, you know, even, I think I know what you mean,

but what is it about a particular win direction that a lefty would hate or something? What would you benefit from greatly, or what would a fill have benefited greatly? Maybe it's something like apple who like what you're talking about well i think that it's um... you know certainly i'm not an instructor but i have certainly listened to

these people that know way more than i do and i've always heard people say you know don't ever practice in a win that's blowing into your back on the driving range i mean i remember playing uh... playing in the l.a. open one year of course i'm not playing excuse me cattying for film we play with a guy that was leading after one round. And he went to the range after round their Riviera and hit balls for an hour with a wind blowing straight into his back. And his Cadi was just pulling his

hair like, what is my guy doing? And I'll never forget we got on that first tee the next day and the guy hit two balls out of bounds on number one and missed the cut. I mean, you know, there is just certain wins that certainly make you feel more comfortable when a win is basically blowing into your chest. It's much easier to deal with than the win coming from that other direction. And certainly, you know, we saw it with Brooks and to some degree with Louis when they got on that 10th hall on Sunday and it's into you hard and out of the left. You know, they're trying to, in a sense, pull the ball into that wind. If you hit something in the heel and it gets up in that left right wind, on that golf

course, it's going into some kind of swamp and you're never going to see the ball again. So we saw kind of time after time and all of us would do it that, you know, tendency to kind of pull the ball into that left right wind and Max's result was, excuse me, Brooks's result was missing some fairways in that direction and it's incredibly easy to do. It's just so hard to trust it when you have that wind that's uncomfortable. And again, it was just something that those guys fought on Sunday. It wasn't probably nearly as friendly a win to them as it was the first three days. A quick break to remind you that no-lang up is of course brought to you by our friends

at Precision Pro. There's a lot of talk about range finders this past week. But if you didn't hear the big news that we told you about last week Precision Pro Golf, proud to announce the launch of their new smartest, most personalized range finder ever, the R1 Smart Range Finder available for pre-order at PrecisionProGolf.com. I actually told somebody about this rangefinder ever. The R1 Smart Rangefinder available for pre-order at precisionprogolf.com. I actually told somebody about this rangefinder today, playing golf, and I told them GPS distance

to the front, center, and back of the green, and it's not joking, it's jaw literally dropped. I actually haven't really fully grasped all the capabilities of this rangefinder. We don't have ours yet, we're waiting for them. It is the rangefinder reinvented, combining the functions of laser GPS and cell phone all into one device and had its core.

The R1 Smart Rangefinder is a premium rangefinder. Once you pair it to the powerful precision pro app on your smartphone, the R1 helps call for see the course in a completely new way. It's got all the normal stuff, slow-pagested distances, but like I said, it's got the GPS to front center and back. It's got wind assist, which measures the effect the wind's gonna have on your shot Also to find my precision pro function. Neon. I both almost left our range fighters on the carts today It alerts you when your range finders been left behind. You'll never lose it again

But the most innovative feature on the R1 smart range finders precision pros game changing new my slope technology Gives you customized measurement that is specific to you in your environment by combining a golfer's unique ball data with real-time weather data. So we're talking launch angle, ball spin, spin rate, or combine with the temperature altitude, humidity, to create a distance that's tailored to you and no one else. Because if it's not personalized and it's not going to be worth much to and it's not precise. So the R1 Smart Rangefinder, the Rangefinder reinvented available for limited pre-order at precisionprogolf.com order day inventory is limited swing with confidence hit more greens with precision pro golf.

Let's get back to bones. Well, in an episode of one twenty nine of this podcast, you predicted that both Tiger and Phil would win a masters in their fifties. So I'm guessing if I ask you if you're surprised that Phil Mickelson won a major championship at age 50, you'll say that you're not. Is that fair to say? I would say that I certainly got part of it wrong. I don't know who I said it to.

I certainly said it some friends we were talking about at the golf course today that I thought that Phil would break the record for the oldest person to win a major. But I assumed it would be the masters, and he couldn't have been more wrong. I mean, certainly, guys like Phil and Tiger have, in my opinion, an incredible advantage at Augusta National, not just because they won it several times, but because they know the brakes on the golf course, they know everything about it. Of course, it's the one major that's played there every single year, and they've got these incredible memories and all this data, you know, in their brains about what and what not to do there. But for Phil to go to a golf course as penal as that one last week and

do what he did, I mean, it's incredible. In my opinion, it's one of the greatest feats in the history of the game. I'm not a golf historian. And I'm happy for him. For multiple reasons, and certainly one of them is that, you know, having been his caddy for 25 years, you know, you read these articles about, you know, where does Phil Mikkelson rank in the greatest golfers of all time? And I remember, you know, he's folks saying, well, he's 11 to 15. You know, there's this and that guy, and you've got Tiger Woods and Jack Nick Nicholas and all the other greats. But with what Phil did last week and the age that he did it at, I think it's not only

an amazing accomplishment, but it's also going to make it that much more likely that he's thought of as potentially down the road one of the 10 greatest golfers of all time. And I can certainly, from my little caddy vantage point, you know, having been there for a while with him, say that, you know, he's a mind-blowingly talented guy. And some of those shots that he hit last week, even early on, I saw him hit a shot. I was, Max was on the same side of the draws, so I didn't see much, but I was watching the highlights on Thursday. And he hit this flight at 6 or 7 iron into 15, and I was like, wow, at 50 to hit that shot, to get the club set, as well as he did, the width on the way down. It was really, really impressive.

And, you know, I kind of thought to myself, you know, he sure looks like he's on a something here. And again, we saw what Watson did at the Open Championship at age 59. I remember catting, I think, in 97 rated the Masters and Jack Nichols was in contention at like 57 or 8 years old. There is no question that Phil and hopefully can can win the Masters well into their fifties and and my goodness after what Phil did last week knows what he might do here in the coming years. When you guys teed it up there in 2012 was Kioa a place you had highlighted was it a place you were dreading in terms of how it matched up for his game. You know, even then when he was at a much higher phase in his career, I would say, because

Kio was tough. It's not adding up for me. Like I'm still kind of pinching myself, like really feel like Kio, like kind of thought you needed to drive it straight out there. I know he drove it great this past week, but what if you're looking around at all the major venues in the last 10, you know, in the next coming 10 years, would you have picked Kio as one for Phil to have, you know, won another PGA yet? Yeah, I appreciate your point and probably not.

And, you know, and again, I'm going to tip my hat. It's just incredible. I mean, again, certainly, you know, post-Bloch Harmon when Phil, you know, in my opinion, really learned how to flight the ball and Had almost one the open championship in 11 and then did in 13 and it just, you know, created this, you know This new weapon for him, you know Certainly, you know a lot gets made about Phil hitting foul balls and about that this and that but you know I was talking about it with a caddy friend of mine here recently. I mean, in my opinion, you get these players that have generational hands,

just hands that are a gift from God. And you know, it sure seemed to me that Sevy Balister has had it in his day. And it sure seems to me like Jordan Speave has it now. And my goodness Phil Mickelson has at least what those other two guys have. And that's an amazing thing because Phil's hands are so just wonderful for him that you know he can literally get off in terms of where his swing is and save it with his hands. I mean I catted for him at aenix open that he won and then again at

1999 when he lost the pain steward on the last hole in the US Open. Phil played that US Open in 1999 and hit one cut shot in 72 holes. Something was going on with his swing that he didn't like. He could draw it, but it's a US Open. You've got to work the ball. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. And Phil would just did it with his hands

and damn near, pulled it off in terms of winning it. I mean, it's just a gift from God and it's an amazing thing to have with all these other assets he has, he's so mentally tough, he handles the big stage. But I think it's a big part of what makes him this incredible golfer that he's been over the last 30 years or so Well, you have so much experience with him and big moments in so many different ways and this is what What is it? How different does it feel being in the final group of a major championship versus a normal event, right?

And I feel like you've you've also seen a whole arc of like you know He lived through this heartbreak period for so long and then has had six major champion chips is so many major champion chips. Yet at the same time, he's still kind of the heartbreak kid when it comes to these. And just the ups and downs of how to handle that pressure, it's got to be amazing for you to watch,

you know, somebody's progression through their sporting career and how they've handled that. Because as I'm watching on Sunday, I'm like, dude, this guy has been in everything. I think he's got this. Like, I don't think he's going to let this pressure get to him. He's been through this pressure so many times. He knows how to handle it.

What was that like for you to watch and kind of with all the background experience you have on the bag for him? Yeah, it's interesting. You're right. It's next level, obviously. And what was interesting, I think, for Phil, and certainly it was from, he was, you're right. It's next level, obviously. And what was interesting, I think, for Phil, and certainly it was from, he was, some of the first few times we got into that position

while you're in the last group of a major on Sunday, we were playing with Tiger Woods when he was winning the Tiger Slant. And he was swinging at it. You're trying to win the Masters or whatever the major is. And for Phil early on in his career, your plan against a guy that looks like he's virtually unbeatable

and certainly as competitive as Phil is and his want to win, whether it's the Masters or something else, you're giving it your absolute all. But it's also keep in mind that Phil's done what he's done, playing against arguably the greatest player of all time Basically throughout his entire career almost So you know the early tiger days were tough in that you know you're watching these guys hit these you know This skyrocket to iron and you know these pots under pressure and again tiger being tiger

So you know you learned a lot then but you certainly took it on the chin and then you just kind of hang in there, hang in there. And it's funny. I think I told the story on an earlier podcast I did with you, Chris, but, you know, in 04, when finally, things did work out for Phil and he made that run on the back down to the gust of the national. You know, earlier that week, we were playing the 13th hole and he had a four iron into that green and it over hooked and went down into race Creek. And it was a real, you hear the groans and you're like, oh boy, and you know, we walked up there to look for that golf ball. And there was a manhole cover size area of turf in the middle of the creek that had grown

up, you know, through it. It was never there before. I've never seen it since. And Phil's ball was on that piece of turf in the middle of this creek and he damn your chipped at him for eagle. And I remember just walking off that green with him, looking at him, we didn't say where, but we smiled, and we were just basically saying, Hey man, this is all going to work out. This could be our week. And you know, it's just, you get those breaks and majors on occasion and things fall into place. And

he went on to win and he's had this amazing career, but you're right. That progression through the majors in those last groups dealing with Tiger or the heartbreaking loss to paint store in 99 or David Thompson 2001 at the PGA. You learn a lot and it's something you can draw on later on. But obviously, his filash showed us over the weekend, I mean, he just looked incredible. I mean, certainly he had a couple of shots on Sunday that didn't work out, but even the shot on 13

that trickled in the water wasn't a bad shot at all. And when he made the bogeon 14, he didn't iron that you could tell in the air. He absolutely loved so, man, he absolutely studied it. There on Sunday. I thought it was impressive as all get out. What would you say of the heart breaks? What one comes to mind is being the most heartbreaking.

I know he has said, I think he has referenced 2013 at marrying being won and everyone assumes the answer is wing foot, but he really just didn't quite have it on that final day at wing foot. What do you get the sense in terms of what was the most heartbreaking? Well, you're absolutely right about Wingfoot, and certainly the question you get asked almost all the time when you're around and about talking to people about golf or if they bring up Phil's career. For me, Wingfoot was no fun, and when I went there last year for the US Open for NBC,

I had a stomach ache the whole week, but that loss was nothing for me like the losses that you have when your player plays incredibly well and it just doesn't work out at the end and you know, you say, Phil referenced 13 there at their Marion and that was a tough one. For me, it would be 99 at Pinehurst with Pain Stewart. Phil just was just tremendous that day and Pain Stewart just, you know, just rose above and made this, you know, incredibly difficult par put on 16 from like 25 or 30 feet that broke two ways right in the middle, hit a six iron to five for six feet on 17 and made it and ultimately the put on 18 win by one. And more power to him, it was amazing

golf. And the loss in 04 to a Riteef Goosnet Chinacock were again, fill plate just really, really well. And it didn't work out on greens that had basically died that day and must have been, I don't know, 15 on the stint meter. But that's golf, but it certainly also made those wins. And you mentioned the loss to at Marin in 2013 to Justin Rose. And that a month later, Phil goes over and wins the Scottish Open and the Open Championship back to back. And you know, five back going into Sunday there at Murafield and wins by three. And you know, for me personally, it made getting over that Marion loss quite a bit easier

and you know, it couldn't have been more prior to the guy. It's probably why I was so emotional in the last green. Yeah. Well, it's also that it didn't make sense that our last real strong memory of Phil and a major would be the 2016 British Open, which was just the most absurd performance. Maybe, you know, I think truly one of the greatest in major championship history for a non-winner,

like literally statistically. And, you know, it just didn't, it had to be such a hard pill to swallow. What do you, what do you remember about that? Um, it was crazy it is you know chris you circle is you certainly can get some luck at the open championship with t-times i mean that's just a fact

you you know you know and i'll never forget cutting for phil at the two thousand and ten open championship at saint andrews and we got the horrible and at the t-times i think we played late on thursday so the people in the morning were playing in four mile hour ones and we played in 24 in the afternoon. I think there was actually a window lay. And I remember Phil being really upset and all the guys were in that half. You go over there at St. Andrews, the draw comes out. You get the bad end. It's happened so many times and certainly as well as Stenson and Phil played there in 16,

you know, they were on the great end of the draw and then just, you know, basically separated themselves in the field. There was just so much going on. I just remember the crowd there on Sunday, just, you know, it was very black and white. You were either rooting for Stenson or you were rooting for Phil. There was no in between, so it was, it was very black and white. You were either rooting for Stenson or you were rooting for Phil. There was no in-between. So it was like an NFL game. It was, you know, in terms of how passionate the fans were

and certainly, and what they yelled out. And it was, you know, back and forth. And, you know, Henrik comes out on Sunday, I think, and hits his approach shot on the first hole. Very heavy and makes a five. Phil almost holds an eight iron. And you're thinking, you know, okay, let's see if we can kind of get out in front of this guy. And I think Henry Burdy attended the next 17 holes and that was that. But it was just one of those days as tough as it

was where it was an honor to be there and to witness it firsthand. There's a funny story about how we were on the 13th hole that day. And there was somebody somewhere in the clubhouse, monitoring pace of play from an RNA standpoint. So I went back to get a water and Henrik and Philip hurry walked off the tee. And this very nice gentleman who was our walking score came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and he said, hey, excuse me, would you please let Henrik

and Phil know that they need to speed up their pace of play? And I said, sir, I think these guys are putting on quite a show for you in the RNA. Let's leave them alone. I don't think this is the time where the place, but it was awesome, and Henrik's such a good guy, but yeah, it's stung. And I remember going back to the Open Championship not long after that, I think when I worked for NBC the following year, and somebody came up to me and he was like a professor of mathematics here or there. I want to say the guy who was from Finland, I'm not really sure. But he went on to tell me about how he'd broken it down in terms of where this ranked in terms of major championship golf, either in the modern era or in the last 100 years, I'm not really sure, but according to this gentleman,

fifths, Phil's performance there at Trum was the fifth greatest performance in the history of major championship golf and of course, ended up finishing second. But, you know, that's golf and you deal with it and try and do better the next time, but certainly an amazing week. Well, you know, we talked to you, you mentioned Phil's hands earlier,

and that may speak to how you're able to answer this question. But what gives Phil this longevity, right? I mean, obviously we know the talent, but talent is fleeting. You know, we've seen a lot of great players to have great five-year runs and not last forever. What would you say, and a lot of it, you know,

when we were looking at Phil's body, the way he treated his body for many years is not the same as he currently treats it. And so, I don't know if I personally thought he would have this crazy longevity, a lot of people have much more accurately predicted than I did. But in your mind, what would you say gives Phil this longevity? I would have to say that I think it's just this syrupy long swing that he has with a beautiful transition. I think it's a swing that puts very little pressure on his body. I think it's, if you look at Fred Couples, a big reason with that same kind of technique

that he's been able to play some really good golf with not the greatest back over the years. And again, those two are about the same in terms of just the tempo and how far back they get the club and how the club two are about the same in terms of just the tempo and how far back they get the club and how the club basically bounces from the takeaway to the forward swing in such a beautiful manner. And that would be my answer as to why I think he's just played virtually injury free his entire career.

Well, what did your guys work look like? What did his work look like in particular leading up into majors, right? I mean, when you're at that high of a level, you treat the majors especially as you're, you know, the four weeks of the year that you want to peak the most. Do you recall that would you guys meet up, you know, before events for any kind of practice together or would what do you know that he did in terms of prep to try to peak?

I think it's what every golfer, especially at the highest level, wants to do is peak at the right time. How does he do it? Well, I think he and Tiger did a really smart thing and they would go to these venues in the two or three weeks prior to the event and get a vast majority of their work done. And Phil took it next level. He would, you know, spend maybe an hour on one grain and keep these incredibly extensive notes that certainly he would be able to use tournament weekend as it turns out.

You know, as long as it's Brisbane, he's able to use those notes at major championships when you go back there several years down the road. So just get a lot of your work done. I mean, those major weeks, especially for those superstar players are incredibly difficult. Certainly, you're trying to cram 18-0s in there, here they're working with your teacher. But if you look at a place like Kiowa, a guy like, say, Jordan Spieth, he's coming in from Dallas. You've got to conserve energy.

That's just such a huge part of it. The one thing that you don't ever, I think, want to see your player deal with, come Thursday of a huge term is to look at him and think that he's tired. And I think that Phil and Tiger did a great job of that. I've heard young players on the tour now talk about visiting these sites and doing the same thing. So they can, again, save up in terms

of how they feel flared in the week, but between their media obligations and autographs, you've got people pulling at you and it's not easy. So if you can get 70 or 80% of your work done, I think before the turn-on week, I think you're way ahead of the game. I think you misspoke there because I know you didn't mean you didn't mean he spends an hour on one green, right? Something has to be wrong that that can't be accurate. An hour on one green. Yeah, absolutely. He's, we would go to some of these sites,

and we would be there for two or three days, and we'd get there at seven or eight o'clock in the morning and leave it dark, and he would just have these incredible notes. And it's what he did. And it's funny. I'm going to forget when he did it at Baltic draw in 2005. And the course was just incredibly hard. And he said after our first day of practice,

it's a man. You've got to play your hard out just to shoot even part here. We were having a sandwich after that first day of practice. And there was no doubt in how hard it got, of course, was, but he did all this work, got it done. Tournament, we didn't have to do too much. He was ready to roll and he shot 68-65. I think the first two rounds and just kind of hung on

from there on his way to his second major victory. And I thought that that preparation had a lot to do with him coming out on top. Wow. And I guess I don't follow swing stuff too know, stuff too closely, you know, who's working with who and what. Did your job ever as a caddy to keep an eye on how things work? And I'm wondering how maybe that relationship would change as Phil has transitioned to different

coaches and stuff throughout his career. Is that anything you ever got involved in or just listened in on to understand, you know, why things were going wrong at certain times? You know, you want to stay kind of staying your lane certainly as a caddy, but you have these relationships with players and they may ask you about this or that. And I think it's certainly obvious that the majority of these players it seems like, you know, they're going to go through a few coaches, you know, over the course of their career, certainly Tiger has, Phil has.

There's, it's a fun story for me in terms of how Phil came to work with the coach that he has now, Andrew Getson. So Phil had this amazing stretch run with Bush Harman, learned so much, but was a huge part of that open championship when in 13 and a lot of other events. And then they split up and Phil was kind of on his own. And around the time this was happening, I had a son named Oliver. He's 11 or 12 and he's thinking that he wants

to take some golf lessons. So I take him down to the local golf course here and there's this guy named Andrew Getson. And he's rumored to be the best teacher of juniors here in town. So we take him down there. Oliver takes his lesson and I just sit on the ground and watch. And I was very impressed by Andrews demeanor and how easy he made things sound. And so I'm like, well, geez, I want a lesson from this guy. I mean, I'm hooking it all over

the place. I'm not nearly as good a player as I want to be. I'm to go take a lesson from him. So I go and take a lesson from him and I'm out there and I'm hitting my bad shots here and there. And he's trying to explain to me what I'm doing wrong. So at one point I hit this horrible shot and he's telling me about how narrow I am. And he goes, that's what your boss does wrong too. And I said, say what? He goes, well, no, I watch a lot of golf on TV and I really love Phil. And I've noticed that when he gets off, that's where he gets off too. I'm like, okay, whatever. So we had a chocolate and I went about,

you know, my lesson and that was basically it. So literally a week or two later, I'm on the range with Phil at a tour event and Phil's, you know, trying to figure some things out on his own and he hits a Porsche on, he's just so frustrated and he says to me, gosh, you know, I hate it when that happens. I don't know what I'm doing. I think I'm you know, it might be this I might be bad and he says something to just trigger something in my head I said yeah, that's what Andrew told me you did that and then wrong last week, too And I'm like and he looked at me and he said what I said oh, no, no nothing nothing nothing goes no seriously What you just say I said no, no, it's not a big deal. Feel let's just let it go. He goes no, no, what you just say I said well I was taking a lesson at Greyhawk last week.

And this guy, Andrew, they took a lesson from, he was trying to let me know what I'm doing wrong. And he basically paralleled it with you and what he sees in your swing. And he said, well, what does he say I'm doing wrong? And I said, well, maybe a little, this, a little, that. And he's like, you got his number? I'm like, yeah, I got his number, Phil.

But you don't need to call this guy. Let's just leave him alone. Let him do his great off thing. He's fine. He's a really good guy. He goes, nope, I'm gonna call him. I wanna hear, if this guy's got something to say about my game, I wanna hear it from him.

I'm like, oh boy. So I give a man, Jews number. And I'm like, now I've got to call Andrew and prepare him for what's coming down the pike here. And so anyway, I let it go. And sure enough, Phil calls him at some point in the next few days and says, yeah, here you've got some opinions about my golf swing. And Andrew's like, yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. And so we rattled off a couple of things.

And, you know, next thing, you know, he's on a plane to San Diego and they've been together ever since. So it's fun for me because I have a tremendous amount of respect for Andrew. And I think he's done a fantastic job with Phil and, you know, kind of like got a lot of the attention. I feel like he deserves last week with Phil's one of the PJ, but the irony for me is that it all started with a golf lesson for my 12 year old son Oliver. Oh my goodness. What a story.

That ties in perfectly with how I ask that in terms of, do you ever feel that you're okay to speak up or say something when you're not a swing expert? That is tremendous. But I know it's gotta be hard for you to think of and remember stories you've told on this podcast or whatnot, but I know that you do a lot of speaking and I know you are a good storyteller. I'm just wondering if there's any other

filled major stories that are tip of the tongue and I can stop you if it's one that you've told on this one, but ones stories that are that are tip of the tongue and I can stop you If it's one that you've told on this one, but ones that you do that are some of your go-to's in favorites to tell There's so many. I mean, I don't know if we've gotten into the practical joke stuff I mean he he was playing in the US open to congressional it was the one that Ernie L's won and He asked me to pick him up in my little caddy rental car his wife must have been in town Maybe she was keeping the courtesy car so he said hey, can you pick me up?

And we'll go to the golf course from there So it's a sure so I go pick him up in my my junkie a little around a car and we drive over to congressional We pull in the parking lot for our you know 130 T time there on Thursday and there is no parking spots Anywhere and we're driving around driving around we can't find any and then finally we spot one So I basically have to stick it in reverse and drive back to the spot that he's seen and you know you're going a mile and a half an hour you know in reverse heading backwards and there's a guy walking parallel to the car and he's you know on his phone or he's doing this or doing that but he's not paying attention to what he's doing. So at some point this guy takes a left turn and walks

right into the side of the car that I'm driving as we're kind of driving by and he just kind of bumps off of it and says, oh, sorry, and goes about his business. I park the car and Phil goes into changes shoes. So, you know, I go to the range, you know, again, it's the first round of the US open at this point. Phil hadn't won a major. So, you know, you're that much more keyed up about what's going on and you're cleaning the grips and making sure there's food in the bag. And I've been there for about 10 minutes and it's a tap on the shoulder. I think it's filling. It's two state troopers. Oh my God. It's cool. Yeah. Excuse me, Sarah. We're under the, we've just been told that you were involved in a hit and run in the parking lot here. Like

hit and run. I was going to, I was going to mile an hour. Like I walked in the car. He goes, that's not what we hear. And you can you step over here and talk to us. Well, now the rain just coming to a complete standstill. And everyone's looking around at me getting arrested basically. And I just happened to glance over one of these state troopers shoulders. And I see Phil's head popping out from behind a tree, laughing his rear end off. And again, that's Phil.

I mean, it's Thursday of the US Open. You'd have thought he'd had better things to do with at that particular moment. But he wanted to have a little fun with me. And there was a lot of that. There was some good times. And that's certainly a story. There's a PGA story when he won in 2005 at Baltic Raw.

Phil's very specific about how he sets up his clubs. You've got this, you've got that for a long time there, there was a 64 degree wedge, so we had to make accommodations based on that. And that year in 2005, it was incredibly hot, it was a south wind, you set up your bag and everything's perfect, and he's trying to finish off the tournament there

on Sunday against a couple of guys. And we were on the 13th or 14th hole in this huge storm comes in, a lot of lightning. And they basically send everybody into the clubhouse and the storm's so significant. They're like, okay, everybody you're going to have to come back on Monday and finish. It was that famous event where Tiger flew home. And there was a lot of controversy about he came close to being in a playoff or whatever, but it was just that particular week. So we get up again on Monday morning and you're trying to again finish off this what would

be Phil's second major win. Because this storm was so significant, it completely changed the weather and it went from 100 degrees to 75 and that south wind that I had mentioned was completely changed the weather and it went from 100 degrees to 75 and that south wind that I had mentioned was completely out the door. It was now a north wind. Well, we had set up our bag for this weather. You know, that you now can't take the clubs out of your bag and change things. You know, for that Monday finish, you've got to have the 14 clubs, you teed off with there on Sunday morning and we were absolutely screwed on the 16th hole there, which is a very long hard part three. So there we are on the range talking about the holes We're gonna have to deal with is he tries to to win this tournament and we realized that we don't have a club

That he could hit off the 16th there at Balterstrawl He's got a four iron and he's got a forward and the yardage is going to basically land somewhere in between those two clubs and we've got nothing. So it was this incredibly almost like depressing feeling knowing that in about an hour when you get there you're going to play a hole that you can't make par on because we just can't get to the green. It was a back pin. There's no way he was gonna kind of tap a forward. So he had a smoke of four iron into the front bunker and try and get up and down for some 80 or 90 feet

which he wasn't able to do. And of course he made the bogey. But again, he's a resilient guy, part 17 and then played one of the best golf holes I ever saw and played there on 18 at Baldestroad. Just hit a huge drive down the middle, forward to the front right of the best golf holes I ever saw and played there on 18th at Baldestroad. Just hit a huge drive down the middle, forward to the front right of Green, shipped it to two feet and made it for the win.

And again, he's got this mind, he's got this championship DNA where he can compartmentalize things, deal with things, kind of brush it off. Okay, that's over now. I'm gonna go win the tournament on the last hole and he did. That's a great story. How often are you changing clubs out between rounds and

tournaments? Is that a common thing? Phil was, you know, Phil is a techie guy and he would do that. You know, one of the things that, you know, he knew and luckily I knew once was you can change a club after a 72nd hole before playoff. And he did that on his way to winning the Atlanta tournament one year. We figured out the way the win was blowing on the 18th hole there at T.P. Sugar Sugar Loaf, which is a very reachable par five that we didn't have a club given the way

the win was blowing at the time that we'd be able to hit on that green. So we asked an official, we right here, can we change equipment after the 72nd hole before playoff? in the guys, it says you absolutely can. So we went and got the forward, he drove it to hit the fairway, hit the forward on the green and won the playoff. Wow. Well, those are some amazing, just tremendous fill stories. And I've got a couple questions and we'll get you out of here. May or may not have been influenced from Max,

I asked him what to ask you. First, you wanted me to ask you about Cadi Karma. Can you tell us about Cadi Karma? Yeah, so I'm big. We were, we were, so of course, there was so many conversations, a Keewa about, you know, these aren't bunkers, you know, that there was a big, you know,

sign there on the first T-1. I walked the course on Saturday, and I took a picture with my phone, I sent it to Max, you know, there are no bunkers this-1, I walked the course on Saturday and I took a picture of it with my phone, I sent it to Max. You know, there are no bunkers this week, even though there are rakes. So as the folks at home saw, you could ground your club in the sand or the waste area or whatever you want to call it, the native area. But they weren't bunkers per se as these guys see the other 51 weeks of the year.

So then the conversation became, what are the caddies going to do? Are you going to rake them? If there is no rake, are you going to smooth it over with your foot and try and leave it as you found it? And I'm just a big believer. I mean golfers are superstitious. I'm not overly superstitious, but I believe that if you're good to the golf course, the golf course would be good back to you. So I had this thing when I was working for Phil, where like, if there was garbage blowing across the fairway, I was going to run over there and pick it up because you know I just want to be good to the golf course. I wanted to like Phil. I want it to like me too. And maybe it would be good

back to us in the long run. And so so Max, you know, I told Max, man, I'm raking everything this week because again, you want to doa island to like you in the long run. And then secondly, what was Gary Woodlands advice for you to make Max feel at home with you? Yeah, so everybody Joe Griner, Max is full time and real caddy is a beloved guy out there. And of course, there was a lot of teasing going on back and forth with Joe ultimately, goes and qualifies the USDA for ball. So he's out playing in Chambers Bay, you know, with Max his blessing. Max was so excited for him, but, you know, they were certainly teasing him because

he wasn't there to hear it. So Gary Willins suggestion was that I give Max a couple of bad yardages each day just to make him feel like, you know, Joe was maybe actually there, you know, suggesting that Joe actually did that. But of course, Gary was being funny. Joe is a fantastic caddy and a big part of all the success that Max has had in the last few years. Yeah, and they made the match play. I'd say it was a worthwhile, worthwhile trip for him. But anything I didn't ask you about from from Kioa from the 2021 PGA that you maybe

have had stored away that you to wrap this up. You know, no, I just thought that it was just it was an amazing venue. I went there in 1991 with Larry Mies. A lot of players went there the day after the Masters. Dave Stockton was like, hey, can you guys go down there and play and get used to the course? You guys that are in content should make that Ryder Cup team. Ultimately, Larry didn't make it, but I'll never forget, you know, Caddy, they're the first time.

This, of course, was before the, you know, the new equipment we have today, the ball didn't go nearly as far. And I was Caddy for Larry, you know, he was just playing by himself and we were cruising through, you know, the back nine there is really windy and incredibly hard.

And we knew that Tom Cite was ahead of us out there and, you know, we got to the 16th hole and we could see Tom Cite was ahead of us out there and we got to the 16th hole and we could see Tom Cite over there on the 17th. He just kind of hanging out. And so we finished 16 and again, Tom's not going anywhere. He's obviously waiting for us. We figured he just wanted to play last couple of holes with Larry. And so we finally caught up to him there on 17th.

He said, hey, Tom, what's going on? Everything good? He goes, yeah, he goes, everything's great. I'm just out of balls. And he wanted to wait for Larry to catch up. So he had a couple of golf balls to use there on 17 and 18. And you know, that was my first trip around that golf course. And obviously Tom Kite, who was amazing of ball striker this day as anybody could hit it on an absolute stirring. I mean, it speaks for certainly how hard that golf course has always been and how impossibly atop it was in 91 when it opened. So I've got so much respect

to the place. I thought it showcased so beautifully on TV. It was an amazing condition that past palom grass whoever invented that should be on a stamp. I mean, it was just, you know, just incredible to see and, you know, it was a joy to be there. Awesome. Thanks so much for your time. As always, man, I always greatly appreciate your contributions to our content. Thanks for helping us put this historic major in the books with some extra perspective. It's greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Bones. You back Chris. Thanks for having me. Let's get it right, club. Be the right club today. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Get the right club, be the right club today. Yeah. That is better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different.

Expect anything different.