WHOOP Podcast - Brad Faxon, longtime PGA Tour golfer, discusses the mindset needed for success in golf and life

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Brad Faxon is one of the best putters the PGA Tour has ever seen. He led the PGA Tour in putting average three times, and set the single season putting record in 2000, edging out Tiger Woods in what was Tiger’s best season on Tour. He sits down with Will Ahmed to discuss his beginnings in sport (2:24), how he overcame his early career struggles (8:41), the difference between playing scared and playing nervous (12:12), using WHOOP (14:18), the mental side of golf (17:24), becoming a great putter and the mindset for success (20:09), learning to accept your misses (26:37), The Masters (32:40), Tiger Woods and his impact on golf (34:28), and his favorite courses (40:22).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top athletes, scientists, experts, and more. Learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak and what you can do to unlock your own best performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. It is Master's Week, and to celebrate, we welcome longtime PGA tour golfer Brad Faxon to the WOOP podcast. That's right. We've got a great golf podcast first. A reminder, you can get 15% off a WOOP membership if you use the code will. That's WILL. Check us out at whoop.com. Okay, Brad Faxson. Without a doubt, one of the best putters the PGA tour has ever seen. His consistency and precision is nearly unmatched in the history of golf.

He led the PGA tour and putting average three times and set the single-season putting record in 2000, edging out a somewhat well-known golfer, Tiger Woods, and what was Tiger's best season on tour. So imagine that. Brad Vaxson out-putted Tiger Woods and arguably Tiger's best season on tour. Brad has carved out an outstanding career for himself spanning four decades and is now one of the most sought after coaches in golf, including working directly with Rory McElroy, one of the world's best. Brad and I discussed the lessons he learned in golf at a young age, his eight-year winless drought after going pro and what he learned about self-doubt during the toughest stretch of his career, the mindset necessary to be a great putter, and how learning to accept the putts you miss is the key to

accomplishing your next goal, how he thinks about health and performance, and the role that Whoop plays in his life, and the upcoming Masters, just how challenging Augusta National truly is, and a rapid fire on all things, golf, favorite golf courses, etc. Without further ado, here is Brad Faxon. Brad, welcome to the Whoop podcast. Will, this is an honor. Thanks so much. I really admire a lot about your career and your life, and we're going to talk about the upcoming masters, and we're going to talk about Augusta National and all of that, but I want to start with you and your career. Growing up, did you know that you were going to be a professional golfer? Was that always the dream? Not really. I was lucky because I grew up in Rhode Island,

not far from where you are, but an hour south in a little town called Barrington. And I had a dad that was a college hockey player and a scratch golfer. So I got introduced to sport early. And as you know, when you live up there, nothing's year-round, right? You're never playing one sport year-round. So I think that well-roundedness that you get from exposure to different sports, you know, playing baseball. I played hockey, like I said, obviously golf. I played a lot of stuff with a racket, whether it was squash or table tennis.

So I got some good eye-hand coordination with skiing. I was playing some pretty good level hockey, you know, junior high, junior hockey, and then I got clocked pretty hard. And golf was our spring sport, and hockey kind of went into the spring, and I made a very smart decision very early on that hockey was not in the future for me. So I kind of went more golf, and it's turned out to be a pretty good move. You won the Rhode Island Junior Championship at the age of 14. Was that kind of the moment for you where you're like,

all right, this is pretty serious. I'm really good at this. A couple things happened that week. I had a great qualifying. I played against some better players that were much older. When you were 14 playing against 17-year-olds, that's a big deal at that age. Totally.

And I had a dad that didn't watch me play religiously, but he was out watching my semi-final match. And I had three putt of the 16th pole against this guy named George Madozian, who was still a friend of mine. and I went two down with two to go, and I acted like an idiot after three putting that hole, and I topped my T-shot on the 17th hole, and it went into some long, wispy grasses, and it took us almost five minutes to find it.

My dad, ironically, found it. But after I had topped that T-shot, I smashed my driver and broke it in half, and I ended up somehow winning that hole, winning the next hole, and then George, my friend, hit two shots out of bounds, in the first extra hole, and I won the hole to get into the finals. And my dad said, if I ever see you do anything like that again, this will be the last golf tournament you ever play in. So, I mean, it was good that my dad kind of laid down the law.

I don't know, it was good that I smashed my club, but it kind of helped me to realize, okay, you can't be a jerk. Don't act spoiled. I got lucky, and I played well in the final to win. But I never thought at that age that I was going to be good enough to play PJ Tour level. I think when I was 17, I started winning some more, a little bit bigger events, some of the New England stuff, and I got recruited to play in college, but it wasn't until my junior year in college that I thought I could make. You're a two-time All-American at Furman University. You win the

Haskins Award as the nation's best collegiate golfer, which is certainly a big deal. But you say you weren't sure until your junior year. So what happened between your freshman year and your junior year where you're like, okay, I can do this professionally? So Furman had a decent men's program. They were Division I, AA. We had a great schedule. We played against Florida, Georgia, Wake Forest, North Carolina. Duke, all the top teams.

Back men, it was very different. And I thought, hey, if I went to a small school because I wasn't really good enough to get in those teams, or I didn't think I was good enough, I wanted to play against the best players. And I had a good start to my freshman year, and I won a tournament. And in our pro shop at the Furman University Golf Course, we had two previous Furman alums that had made All-American. And in golf, there's a first, second, and third team All-American. Then they have honorable mentions.

Both of these guys have been honorable mentions from Furman. But every guy that I saw on these All-American plaques were big-name players that made it on the tour. And I said to myself, if I can be a first-team all-American, I can make it on the tour. And so I use that as kind of motivation. And funny enough that the golf coach at Wake Forest, and Wake Forest had one of the best teams in history of college golf. Jesse Haddock was the coach.

And he had written me, or actually it was a formal letter written back to me because I wanted to go to Wake Forest. And he said to me, you will never get a scholarship to Wake Forest. We've never had a walk on play. And I kept that letter, and I was always on the bottom bunk, and I had posted that underneath the bottom bunk, because it really made me angry. And I won a tournament my freshman year. I made honorable mention All-American, and then I got a real letter from Jesse Paddock, said, hey, would you like to come to Wake Forest to play? And I put that letter right next to the other one and said, oh, my God, I can't believe it.

And I never went anywhere but firm, and it was a great choice. You know, there's a theme here of you playing well, angry, which, you know, having spent some time with these, actually surprising. Because you seem like a pretty mellow dude. Is there anything to that? Or is it more just your mindset? You got me. I like being called a grinder, somebody that never gives up. I mean, I think there were so many successful players that were grinders. And there were a lot that weren't. There were a lot of players, and I would say Laney Watkins, Mark Calquecaveccia, come to mind immediately of players that John Dayland, that could easily throw in the towel with a bad start. I don't think I ever did that. I never quit. I was always a grit-your-teeth guy.

So maybe playing angry. I was proud of how many cuts I made on the number when it was grinding out on a Friday afternoon when you had to shoot a certain score. And I played a lot of tournaments. And so I don't know. I never thought about playing angry as an asset, but maybe I'll have to go back and think about that one. You joined the tour. You turn pro 1983, if I've got that correctly. And then it was eight years before you win your first PGA tour event, 1991, the Buick opened in a playoff.

What was that eight year period like? There was a couple dark periods in there. My second year on tour, I almost lost my card. I had a decent rookie year, finished 80 second on the money list, and comfortably kept my PJ tour card. And then at the end of my second year, my sophomore slump, I missed the last five cuts, and I finished 124th on the money list. I had the driver yips, Will, and I don't know if anybody's ever had driver yips like I did, but I would wake up in the morning. My arms would ache. They would be sore because I was thinking so much of my swing.

I was hitting so many balls. I was watching my swing all the time, calling all the different coaches. I went to a myriad of different golf coaches during that time frame. And I think the next year, the start of 86, my third year, I think I missed nine cuts in a row to start the year, something pretty bad. And the worst thing I wanted to be called was a journeyman, you know, like a guy that's been out there forever and never does anything. And I got a little glimpse of hope in 86. I got a lesson from Peter Costas, who's still teaching a lot of top players, even Paul Casey now. He gave me a lesson, and I still remember this lesson to this day, Will.

He stuck a tea in the butt into my club, and he said, you need to set your club faster on the back swing and set it faster on the through swing. And he had me hit seven irons off the tee, and it gave me some hope that I could hit a draw, and I'd love to draw it. And I won a tournament that year in 86 that was not counted as an official then. It was opposite to the U.S. Open where Ray Floyd won at Shinnecock. But it was still a big deal back now. It was official money. I beat a couple of good players. And even though that didn't count, it gave me some hope that I could play.

I also won the Rhode Island Open. I came home during a couple weeks off to win that. So I knew I could play. I knew I could win. But really, I was struggling because I was an 80th, 90th, on the moneyless guy for too long. And then Billy Andrade, another golfer from Rhode Island that was on the tour, he won two events in a row in 91, the Westchester tournament, Kemper.

And I'm like, I know I can play with this guy. I know I can beat him. How come this isn't happening? And it isn't fair. And I was, whoa, whoa, pitiful me. And then I won a month later in a playoff. And that was 1991, the Bewick Open. So that was, you know, big relief.

And then things seem to get better and better, a little bit easier after that. Let's talk about nerves for a second. I've had the pleasure of getting to interview and also, you know, befriend a lot of really great golfers. And it seems everyone's got a slightly different point of view on nerves. How have you felt being in contention or coming down the stretch when you need to make a put? You know, have you found that you've had different nerves in all those situations? Is it just consistently some level of nerves?

Talk a little bit about that and how you've overcome it. Well, that playoff at the Bureau of Goldberg was nerves, and I had a six-foot hut for par to win my first tournament. And back then, that was life-changing stuff. It was winning a tournament got you into Masters, winning a tournament got you exempt for two years, winning in the tournament got you enough money so you knew you'd have some kind of lifestyle

and accomplishing goals, maybe chance to make the invitational. It was back then finishing the top 70 in the money that's got you in tournaments like Bay Hill or the Memorial tournament. But there's also playing with fear and playing scared. And when I told you I had driver yips, I remember playing where I was so scared to hit a shot. I had no idea where the ball was going. I literally could have hit it 50 yards to the right or to the left. That's different than nerves.

You know, that was being consumed with the game and the swing with the concept. And I think everybody that's played this game has had at some point. they're scared of a shot or a chip or a put. That's different than nerves. I mean, I love the nerves you get on that first tee at Augusta. I love that nerves at a rider cup or a chance to win down the stretch where you're so heightened. And when your heart rate's bump, bump and adrenaline's pump. And that's, I think, what all of us want to play for.

That's what's been fun about doing Whoop Live, which I know you've seen on broadcast, but where we were showing live heart rates at the end of tournaments or for certain shots. And, you know, the thing that I think people underestimate is the fact that you do feel nerves. Like just because you're a professional athlete and a lot of people are watching you and you've done this before doesn't mean you don't feel nerves standing over that last put. I mean, Rory had a two and a half foot put to win a tournament last year and his heart rate was at like 135. beats per minute. This is a guy with a resting heart rate probably at 45.

I just think that's pretty fascinating. I think that's one of the great stats and every single spectator fan watching can appreciate that. And I have a trainer when I lived in Rhode Island, so I've been in Florida now for eight years. Doug Parenthood was his name. Doug, he knew an awful lot of stuff

that I didn't know about. But one of the things that he always said to me, you know, if we were doing a workout, if we might start with a little bit of cardio stuff to warm up for doing some interval training or some power sets when your heart rate was, you know, up and down. He would always ask me, what's your heart rate now? When we trained with a heart rate monitor, before that was even cool to do, you know, for golf. And I was always good at guessing what my heart rate was.

And now I loved having look on my wrist because I can check it at any time, whether it's when I'm doing a workout here. And, you know, this place where I am where you see these clubs is in my garage. and I've got weights here, I got a bench, I got a bunch of bands, I got a pull-up bar there, and I do, during COVID especially, doing all these workouts by myself or FaceTime with my trainer, and I could always check where I was, and that was always fun. And I like that sort of knowing where you are at all moments. And I tell a lot of the players that I teach, if they can get good, say, at guessing how far a flag stick is away

before they use their distance measuring device that that's a good sort of sense of feel and I think the best players in the world and mainly know where they are and I think knowing where you are can really help calm you down and when you see that whoop thing and see Rory at 130

I think I'd be at 180 for some of those positions it's awesome how long have you been on whoop now it's got to be well at least four years now, I think. Talk a little bit about sleep and recovery and lifestyle.

You can describe your own, but also how you think maybe it's changed on the tour over the years. So I think golf is one of the hardest sports to try and find a consistent sort of lifestyle on the road. It's not like the team sports where you know what time you're playing. any, you know, the closest we come to that is we get our tea times on a Tuesday morning for when we're going to play on Thursday and Friday. And I was never a person that wanted to have a late tea time and be up at 6 o'clock in the morning. You know, if I'm home, I know what my sleep habits are. I'm in bed between 11 and 11.30 and I'm up between 6.30 and 7. I mean, I can exist on 5 or 6 hours sleep, but it's a sloppy afternoon when I do that. When I was playing

golf. I was never a guy that could go to bed at 9 o'clock because I was playing early the next morning or go to bed at 1130 or 12 because I was playing late. So I had trouble with that while I was playing. And I think I didn't know enough about sleep, sleep habits and recovery in the prime of my career. I can't imagine how that could have improved some of the ways I might want to take care of myself. And I would give you an example, Will, when players go play at the British Open now, and I remember at Turnbury, I was playing well, and it was in the final group going into Sunday, and it's a 315 PMT time. And, you know, the sun doesn't go down until 10, 30, or 11, or later, but it comes out at four, and it was hard to get blackout shades there. So I

was with Davis-love and our wives, and we were at the Turnberry Hotel. We stayed up playing snooker and, you know, just tried to stay awake as long as we could so I could sleep in, because your brain starts working, you know, when you have all this time, and I think that's the fascinating part about golf, is this mental side, and you've dealt with it in every sport and all the athletes, but, you know, we're playing golf for in a four and a half hours, and there's, what, 12 to 15 minutes or that total time is hitting a shot. So there's a lot of free time for your mind to explore, and sometimes that can be dangerous. Yeah, for sure. So when you Think about the mindset of the game.

What kind of tricks or habits did you have? You know, were you someone who would meditate? Would you visualize before events? I spoke to Gary Player at length, and he talked about one year winning the Masters. He woke up every morning and just stared at the leaderboard for hours before he played and pictured his name at the top of the leaderboard. And that's obviously an extreme example. But I'm curious where you are on that spectrum.

That's interesting. I wonder, you know, players are so good at telling these stories after they've happened. And I'm wondering, did you really do that? Because I've never heard of any great golfer say they did that. But it sounds good now. And I get a kick out of listening to players interviews after they win a tournament, whether it's Tiger Woods or Jack Nicholas, saying, well, I knew if I shot 65 today, after they shot 65 that day, that I'd win. And I'm like, how did you know that?

How did you know somebody else would use to 65? But I was an early advocate of yoga for some reason. I got introduced in the early 80s by a golfer named Macle Grady, who I'm not sure you would have heard of Maco Grady, but he was kind of a fanatic yoga and conditioning. So conditioning was always a part of my life. Yoga had a meditative side to it, and doing all those poses was a challenge.

I thought it was good for golf because it was obviously the physical parts of the flexibility of the endurance, that one of the muscular strength you needed, but also the quieting of the mind and the breath. And the breath was always something I thought was important for us to control heart rate, control your thoughts, get you into that,

everybody's trying to get into that flow state of the zone and quieting your mind. And I worked a lot of times I'm trying to slow everything down and quieting my mind, but trying to quiet quickly, you know, when you had to. and I think that's a great asset to have in anything that you do in your life but if you can do it in sport it's a great way to get some success out of it

okay we got to talk about putting if you think about your own putting career what would you summarize about it that you feel like made you such a great putter was it the mindset going into it was it the stroke was it all the above it's a little bit of everything I grew up in this little town of Rhode Island happened to have a beautiful course called Rhode Island Country. Designed by Donald Ross, tiny little greens, like many of the old portions, and slope were from the back to the front. When I was a young kid, Caddian, we often had two on the greens where I could watch the ball, the path the ball took to the hole. And so I learned the greens, I could see that path the ball took. I think everybody's kind of

knows what I'm talking about. It kind of snowballs there through the, the wet grass you can see the line the ball took and I've kind of carried that picture in my mind and I've been complimented by some of the players I've played with about green reading and how good a green reader I've been that's valuable it's hard to teach you know it's kind of like when you have a young kid you're trying to teach them how to throw a ball the right distance the right height and the right speed that's a putting this isn't it's all those things you got to start it online you got to have a certain pace to it and have the right distance so That was something that obviously was learned.

And I think when you get out there, you have choices that you can like what you're doing or you can not like what you're doing. And I see technology with the different advancements we've seen just going from VHS tape to high eight to video cameras on a phone. And then slow motion, you know, check out all the technologies. and we have biomechanists now that look at risk graphs and they're looking at weight shifts for putting and some of it can be really helpful and some of it can be really, really hurtful.

And I think with most players, when they play well, their mind's quiet, their instinct of their athletic, and they're not thinking about everything that's out there. And sometimes they forget that it's still a game and that it should still be fun and we should still have putting context. And that's part of it.

And like, you need to know mechanics, but you also need to know how to let it go when you get out of the course. When you think about the best putters, one thing that fascinates me about golf and putting is just the fact that there's a bunch of great putters and they all look different standing over the ball. Now, when it comes to actually hitting the ball, do you find that there are some grates that have sort of violated some basics to what the right tempo might be, but they've just perfected it for themselves, much the way you can have your own posture? Or are there certain aspects to putting that just have to be in order for you to be great? I never like to use the word, never or always, when I talk about some players or techniques or fundamentals. But it seems to me like the best players in the world, they may have slightly different tempos when they putt. But they were really good at repeating those. And they kind of fell in love or were never obsessed with somebody else's way of doing it.

They loved their way of doing it. You know, when we talk about the best putters in the world, I got a little trouble this last year because I did a top 10 putting list, my favorite cutters. And I came up with Tiger and Jack. Right, I've got that printed out in front of me. You can maybe read it out

because I don't remember the order I put them in right now. Number one, Tiger Woods made every putt he had to. Ben Crenshaw. Sevee Bisteros. Four, Tom Watson. Five, Bobby Locke. Six. Jack Nicholas. Jose Maria, Ola Thabble, eight, Billy Casper, nine, Bobby Jones, and 10, Rory McElroy.

So there's so many, this would be a podcast in itself, but there's not one player on there that looks like another player putty, not one. And the Hall of Famers, it is fascinating. And Jack Nicholas bent over the ball so much, he was so bent over that when he was standing up over his putt, his head was lower than his upper back. And his eyes were so close to the ball, and his elbows were so far apart. And you had all the in-betweens. Ben Crenshaw stood much more upright and used much longer flowing stroke than Jack. Bobby Locke hooked putts. Tiger looked like a machine hitting putts.

Sevi Biosteros had the best-looking grip on a putter I'd ever seen. I mean, there were so many different things in there that made me think, how can you teach one way to do this when they're all different? and, you know, I threw Rory's name in there, and I think I had a lot of people tied for 10th, but a lot of people got mad that I put Rory down there. But I said, you know what, if Rory ever does see this, I like him to see his name on there because I've seen him have weeks where nobody putted better than him. And it was the first week we got together.

He had strokes game putting week that was one of his best, if not his best putting weeks ever. And lit him throughout last year he won twice. weeks that he won, he won the tournament by putting. And I think that was, I think that's going to help Rory in the later part of his career because most of the time he won from an unbelievably great ball striking. And I've been happy to see that consistency of his putting the last four years since we've been together, be maintained. And when we get together, we're not talking about technical parts of the stroke anymore. And I think that's a good place for a player. Well, he said something fascinating to me about how he thinks about 95% of whether the

puck goes in or not happens actually before he hits the ball. But describe what he was getting at. A lot of people wouldn't know what that means. What does that mean 95%? And it's the preparation that goes into, you know, reading the green, going through a pre-shot routine, that every player has to work to have a pre-shot routine that's not only is something repeatable that you can see that they do physically, but that's something they get in their mind in a better place. And we talk about pre-shot routine. How do you read a put, how do you walk into the ball? Where do you take your practice strokes?

Do you take practice strokes? What do you do differently on a short putt versus long put? Do you have an intermediate spot? Do you pick a spot to aim at that's somewhere halfway between the ball and the hole, like an intermediate spot? Do you pick a spot out by the hole? Emotion, acceptance, all those things are part of those things. I mean, acceptance isn't before the putt, but like a baseball player that's the Hall of Fame

with a bat in 300, so they only got three out of 10 hits. You're going to hit more putts in your life that miss than make. So that word acceptance is how do you deal with putts that don't go in? And I think that's as important in putting as any other part of it, more so than how your stroke is. And I think that's where Rurie's gotten better. That's where I feel like that gives you longevity. So when you have these frustrating weeks when you're hitting good putts

and they might not go in and there's no explanation for why they're not going in and you can live with that a lot better. So, Will, that's something that is another important part of putting that's really hard to deal with. It's the mental side.

And that would have been something that I think I did pretty well throughout my career and hopefully I'm passing on and I definitely see that with Rory now. Rory also said that essentially a putting lesson with you now could be going to get a couple coffee and just talking. And that to me was a fascinating image, and it spoke so much to how

you guys probably work together, but also just that it's about the preparation. It's about the mental discipline, you know, to reline it up, all those little things that we just talked about that ultimately make for the outcome. It's not necessarily always standing on the putting green and watching, you know, him take it back. And it just was a fascinating concept to me that a putting lesson could be over a cup of coffee. I can say, you know, we've had cups of coffee and talked about a lot. And we've gone to the Bears Club to practice out in the putting green and spent an hour or more over lunch or a cup of coffee in the locker room just talking about situations or talking about places you want to be with your mind. And, you know, a lot of the players, including Rory, went to play up at Augusta National in the last few days or weeks for preparation.

And going back to that Gary player quote, you said, about how he sat and stared at his name on a leaderboard while he was playing these tournaments. I think for, you know, these players know this course so well, right? They know every little inch of the golf course. They learn it over the time and the amount of rounds that they play there. But I think, too, for someone like Rory or any Justin Thomas, when Tiger even went, hopefully he plays, when they go back there for practice run them before the actual time, tournament. It gives them time to think about what it's going to feel like on each hole, where they might be on the time of the day. It's so different playing that course morning, midday and

later in the evening with big shadows. And the shadows come and flattens the light. It makes it harder to read. But you could go and really give yourself some lessons. Say, for example, when Warren was there and he said he played by himself as Caddy Harry was walking around. And they might be thinking about, you know, a shot in a situation that they're going to have on, let's take the holes on the start of the back nine, on 10, where you want to draw it around the trees. Is it a three? What is it a driver? Why? When? What if the wind's a certain situation? You know, maybe I don't need to curve it as much. Maybe I just hit it straight. Should I hit it low? Those are the things that I think make the players much more comfortable.

And you can think back to some of your practice days and said, oh, you know what? That ball kicks left there when that pins there. And you get to see stuff that, you know, when you're playing with other players or where there's a gallery around, you might not have the time to notice some of the subtleties, because every year, we're going to hear about it all week. There's been changes. So I think that's what they do. And that tournament means so much to so many of the players. It makes a lot of sense why they keep going, even though it's the only major that's played on the same course every year. I like the word subtleties, because that, from my experience of being there, as a fan and having the pleasure of playing there like the attention to detail at augustin national

is about as high as i've ever seen anywhere in my life golf aside and the other thing that's hard i found to appreciate just as being a fan versus walking the course or playing it is there's so many it's almost like you never hit a flat shot it's hard to tell that on television but there's just these little undulations speak a little bit to just how how it feels out there normally when you're playing flatter courses, the lie is always pretty leveled. Something you practice on, when you're warming up in the practice team. I don't think there's a shot at Augusta National

where you are level or you're not hitting a shot that it's a little bit up or a little bit downhill. And it's kind of a forest there when you're playing Augusta Nationally. There's trees everywhere. The wind swirl around. You can feel like you're playing a couple holes in a row downwind and all of a sudden the same direction.

It feels like it's against the wind. that's part of the subtleties and what makes the routing of Augusta National so good, so treacherous, so difficult when you finish it. You feel like it's a marathon, really, a mental marathon. And one of the caddies I had, I told you, I went in late January to play a couple days with a friend that's a member. And this caddy had a great line. He said, you don't read the Greens at Augustine National. You learn them.

And I think you can take that phrase and say, you do that. about every single hole. And, you know, Ben Crenshaw, who would probably be the greatest player architect alive, has always said that about the best courses in the world, Augustin National, St. Andrews, where every time you go there, you learn something about it. And as closely packed in as the talent level is right now, if you learn one thing that gives you an advantage, that gives you, you know, half a shot during a round or a turn. tournament for a full shot, that can come back and pay so many dividends.

And that's why the players keep going there. Okay, let's do a few, we'll do a few rapid-fire questions. Starting with the Masters, what are your predictions for who wins the Masters or who's going to have a great tournament? Notoriously the worst picker of all time. I did have a good streak in college where I picked in the back-to-back years, Sevi by Asteroos and Craig Stathler. But I will tell you emotionally, of course, I want Rory to win.

I think there are some players that seem to be in contention there every single year. Xander Shafley's done a good job at that, where you think he's got to break through, he's got to win a major championship. The beautiful play of the young players now, Morcala, Hovland, Sheffler, Sam Burns, how could you pick any of them and say they don't have a chance? They're all hitting the ball. Well, I look at Paul Casey every year, how well he played at the players championship at 44 years old,

and how well he's been, he's a rock on the tour. And then you have some surprising guys that, you know, play well at certain events. A guy like Kevin Kistner, how well he does in the match play, can he do it? He's an Augustineate.

He'd be great for the game to do. And then you see guys that have been champions like Bubba Watson. I mean, could he come back? and went a third green jacket. Jordan Spieth, I think he's one of the most captivating players in the world to watch when he goes. And he's gone through great putting stretches, right?

Yeah, then they need that. And will John Rom be able to hold it together mentally and we'll be able to get his putter going? And I think Justin Thomas is knocking on the door for another major. Big time. He seems to be getting the ball so well, Tee Green. I know he's a big,

whip advocate, close with glory. and then, I mean, dare we say, if Tiger could ever even, if he gets in the field, would you be able to be sharp enough to show something on the weekend? If there's ever been a moral of the Tigerwood story, it's dump bad against Tiger. I think he said in his own interview, an interview saying that he loves to prove himself wrong. He loves to prove others wrong. Oh, you can't do that, Tiger. That's the worst thing you could say.

But I think he's good at being able to prove the doubters, and he's a doubt. out or himself sometimes. And if he can show up and hit a tee shot there and walk down that first fairway, I can't imagine what that will do with the world to golf. I think I just can't help but think he's going to do it. I also can't help but think he's going to play well enough to make the cut or something and just shock all of us. I don't know.

That's Tiger Woods. So while we're on Tiger, what's been most impressive for you about his career? I met Tiger Woods when he was 14 years old, he got a spot to play. It was a Honda Classic down here, and I was certainly a veteran that would have been. been early 90s. I was playing pretty good golf and he wanted to join me and I think Dudley Hart played the back nine of a practice round. We all hit T shots and he had his own bag and had his own bag stand and we walked up to the ball and I walked past the first ball I saw walked up 30 yards and saw that it was tigers when I came 30 yards back and I got this 14-year-old

hit at 30 by me. But what was amazing to me was he knew I was a good putter, he knew I had a good short game, and he never stopped asking questions to want to have contests or learn stuff. And I love that about Tiger. You know, he's played great under three different coaches, maybe four, where he's been inquisitive. And he's played great for decades now. He's done it with length and power, like the great players did early in their career, like Jack Nicholas or Ben Hogan or Sam Sneed. and then he's been able to think himself array around the course

when he hasn't been able to hit it by everybody else in the field and that's how he's played now and Jack Nicholas always said that as well as he gets smarter he didn't have to hit it as far as he just had to know where to do and also along with all of the amazing things you described just an incredibly captivating person to watch which has just been so overwhelmingly good for the sport of golf and grown it in such an enormous one

way it was interesting i was listening to patrick can'tley talk about tiger and he said that because patrick can'tlay went through these crazy periods where he was making these pots under enormous pressure and i think the interviewer asked him something about you know you just made this 25 footer to go into a playoff and you looked like you were kind of still in the trance so to speak Patrick said something the effect of that that's how i do it like i've got sort of one speed so to speak and i'm just incredibly focused and i'm in that in that space and then you're he alluded to Tiger and he said what made Tiger, what has made Tiger so captivating is that he's able to be in this deeply, deeply focused state where it's like there's nothing else in the

world but whatever he's doing. And then the moment happens and he completely breaks out of it and becomes this larger than life personality for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and then all of a sudden he's back in the trance. I got to play with him in the 1997 Rider Cup. It was his first Ryder Cup, my second. We were the only two guys that weren't married on the teams that we rode together on the Concord over there, and I got a little bit of a taste of what was inside of him and how he thought and how he was obsessed with beating everyone. And he did it for a long time. And I think he offended some people early on by winning tournaments and saying, I don't even have my A game. And he said that a lot. And Davis Love and I tried to sit down with him and say,

I know you're really good, but you know how many people you're pissing off. When you say that, he goes, no, I'm not pissing people off. I'm just telling the truth. I'm winning, but certain parts of my game aren't right. And when I get them, then I'll be really good. And that's what happened. We saw that in that stretch of golf in 2000 and 2004, like, oh, crap, he was right. He had another gear.

And I think his 15 major championships, versus Jack's 18, I think it was harder to win. It was definitely harder to win now for a bunch of reasons. The depth of field is certainly strong in the depth of talent. And with the media now and the pressure from all different avenues, whether it's fans, the television, the money, it's harder and harder. It's going to be harder and harder for anybody to do what Jack did, what Tiger did. I mean, even what Rory is doing.

So you think going forwards it'll be hard for someone to eclipse 15? I do. And again, it's going to take a rare sort of person to do it. And you see some of these guys jump out of the gate like Colmar Kyle with won two majors already. Spee's early success in his three majors. And then how hard it becomes, the challenges afterwards is you're making all this money and you get some sort of stardom and you have to kind of say no a lot you have to learn how to say no in a nice way if you want to be loved and rory's been the best in the world at that i mean

we read a book together called essentialism and learning how to say no and you know you do that in a gracious way and only a few were good at that i would say arl palm was very good at that maybe Phil Mickelson, the people that had long careers have had huge followings. I see Hovland as a guy that's going to be like that. But I don't think, you know, Tiger said no a lot. Maybe he didn't do it in a gracious way, but he certainly did in a way that allowed him to continue to play great golf. Your three favorite golf courses, you only get to play three courses for the rest of your life. What three courses are you choosing?

Okay, this is really hard. This is like naming the top 10 best putters. You're always going to tick somebody off. But Pine Valley is my favorite place to play. I think it's one of the best courses I've been everywhere. It's had some of the greatest architects and architects in history. And I'm kind of learning more and more about architecture as we go. I might go to three different continents because I think St. Andrews deserves that.

Every time like Crencheson, you go there, something else is magical about it at the home of the game. I love that course. And then I went to a place in New Zealand. right before COVID start called Tara Eadie. You haven't been put it on your list because it is someplace you'll never want to leave once you get there.

Well, this has been a real pleasure and I'm excited to see you again at some point in person and thank you for coming on the WOOP podcast. Well, I've got to tell you, you're so prepared for this, is so good at it. I'm going to listen to more of your podcast.

Thanks to Brad for coming on the Woop Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating, a review. Don't forget to subscribe. Check us out on social. At Woop, at Will. Amid, use the code, Will, get 15% off.

And that's all for now, folks. Enjoy the Masters. Enjoy the week.