Really enjoyable hour listening to BC talking all things golf, Twitter, his own career, equipment, instruction and more. Part 1 is up. Get to it.
Kudos @Soly for some great prep and pro work behind the mic.
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Wow, just as things started heating up the first podcast ended!
Echoing the props to Soly, he came into the pod well versed and dialed up some hard hitting questions - nothing like an educated respectful debate, can’t wait for part 2 tomorrow!
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Looking forward to this. Will cruise through it during my cross country flight to LA while doing some light emailing.
I’m on board as a Brandel fan. Doesn’t mean I agree with all his takes, but more often than not I do and I think the game and media coverage is better because of him.
Nobody better than @Soly to have a legit conversation with him.
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Part 1 ends with an AGREEMENT?! You can’t do this to us haha!
Great debate - the insights and arguments on both sides are really good. Nice work as always!
Really looking forward to this. Nothing like a little friendly debate to get the week started.
I’ve never agreed with the “Merion was tricked out” take regarding it’s setup for the most its U.S. Open. After hearing Soly make the calim on this pod I thought maybe I’d give it a further look. After watching highlights from all 4 rounds, I have no clue how the argument is thrown around that the greens were so firm they were unfair and shots couldn’t hold greens. Guess I’m on team Chamblee for that particular argument.
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As I understand it, it wasn’t the firmness or the speed that people refer to when they say “they tricked up Merion.” It rained pretty hard that Thursday(?) after all. They are talking about how they made the fairways half as wide as they normally are to defend the course since it’s relatively short for the modern game. It’s a weird look when the bunkers are a few yards in the rough on a few of the holes. It took a few years for them to fix the mow lines if I recall correctly
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it’s also tough to discuss Merion as an example as it played host to a major in an isolated incident, not as a regular tour event. That, in addition to said major being the one that is ALWAYS “tricked up” by the USGA.
I get the example, but I never find it a good one. But I loved Soly’s comparison to how the R&A tackles the same issue with their championship in which courses are generally around that distance…and the fact that par isn’t sacred. It was a good conversation with Brandel.
Tee boxes and length allowed by the property without changing the course seem to be the best compromise. Otherwise, we’re bastardizing the original vision of the course.
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I agree 100%
Not to throw gas on the fire but rumor around GAP is that the US Open or Am is coming back to merion in 2030 for the 100th Anniversary of Bobby Jones’s 1930 Grand Slam sealing win there. He won the US Am so that makes more sense but I have heard more murmurs of the Open being the tournament of choice…
I hope you ask him about wooden bats ruining baseball, which would run in direct opposition to his take on bifurcation.
Yeah they have a great approach but it can’t be applied across most of the U.S. unfortunately. We can’t count on the wind to show up like it does over there most of the time.
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I think the thing that makes baseball different from golf is that the professionals have always used wooden bats. Babe Ruth and the 1927 Yankees never had the technology we have in today’s aluminum bats. Not to say there hasn’t been technology advancement with wood bats either. If you hold a wood bat today compared to one from 100 years ago or even 25 years ago it’s obvious the bat is a product of technology. As an aside, a while back the NCAA had to dial back the ROC in aluminum bats because the exit velocity of a batted ball was too high and was frankly dangerous. It went from hitting a ball off the handle in to the gap for a double to hitting a ball with what felt like a wet newspaper.
There’s undoubtedly a safety reason that Giancarlo Stanton isn’t allowed to use an aluminum bat. Someone would die. Just imagine trying to learn how to hit a baseball as a child and breaking every single wood bat you own over and over again. It would be terribly expensive, not to mention completely demoralizing. Baseball and golf are honestly just incomparable when it comes to the equipment debate.
Nice straw man argument.
In the podcast, Brandel said we cannot have a bifurcated “pro” ball because it will “muddy the waters” of amateur golf. He says all kids want to grow up to be pros, and would therefore play the “pro” ball, which would damage the handicapping system and put them at a disadvantage over players that play the regular ball.
To me, there is a direct parallel here with baseball. The bifurcated ball is the wooden bat and the regular ball is the aluminum bat. Youth baseball players surely also dream of becoming pro, yet few, if any, use a wooden bat. You don’t use the wooden bat until you are forced to. The same decision making would apply to the bifurcated ball. Players would play a regular ball until they reach the professional level.
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It’s very tough to prepare for an interview where you know you’re going to spar a bit, but I thought there was a missed opportunity in the pod to challenge Brandel when he claimed that very few holes had been made worse by the golf ball.
#11 at Augusta is an abomination, and was changed in direct response to Payne seeing guys hit wedge in from the right. In 2013, #18 at Merion was 530 yards, and Rose hit a 4 iron into the green (it played 458 when Hogan hit 1 iron in 1950). Players are hitting sand wedge into #18 at Shinnecock - Corey Pavin hit 4 wood.
Then there’s just the general sense among tour pros that they shouldn’t be forced to hit difficult shots: when Jason Day was asked about restricting the golf ball, he responded that “Players will be hitting 4 irons into greens!” Oh, the horror.
Then, there’s this:
Woof.
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I love this post.
Except about 11 at Augusta. Big fan of that hole. Requires a great drive and a ballsy long iron. What’s wrong with that?
But totally agree on what is required to continue testing today’s players. It’s gone too far.
To add to your point, baseballs also use different balls for the level of competition. Imagine 6 or 7 year olds using a hard ball…
I think it would muddy the waters with regards to the handicapping, since the purpose of a handicap is to allow people to universally compete on an equitable basis.
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Yeah I kinda froze on that one. I was not prepared for him to say such a preposterous thing and too many things were rushing to mind all at once.
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I had an aneurysm when he made that point, but to be fair to you, a question requesting an answer that patently obvious isn’t really fair.
Most thinking people seem to agree that there’s a distance problem, whether from the COR, or the ball, and that something has to be done to re-calibrate the balance between the golfer and the course. Brandel has convinced himself that it’s more reasonable to require golf courses and clubs to tear up and re-build every 5-10 years than it is to require a multi-billion dollar industry to produce a limited tour ball, which is a position so stupid that I struggle to accept it as sincere argument.
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what is the aversion to releasing an hour and 50 minute long pod instead of breaking it into two? do people really not listen to the whole thing? i get frustrated when i was enjoying the pod and boom it cuts out and i have to wait for part two.
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