Welcome back to the NLU Mailbag. In this space, we’ll address topics big and small, smart and dumb, irreverent and serious.

A quick reminder: You need to be a member of The Nest to submit a question to the mailbag, but the mailbag itself will be free to read (as long as you behave yourselves). Most of our questions are submitted via our message board, The Refuge, but if you’re not a message board person, please send me an email at kvv@nolayingup.com with your Nest handle and your question. If your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free NLU towel.

Manhattan: You get to play an 18 hole pro-am with one professional golfer of your choice. It’s a true alt-shot format. The field is filled with other notable pros and capable amateurs, and if you don’t finish top 5 you both have to give up golfing for 5 years.

Who is your current active player pick? Who is your historical choice?

—2000 Tiger, hope he doesn’t rip your throat out after you spray one in your 6 hours together?

—2004 Phil, hope his creativity, positivity, and overall game keeps you close enough to in contention that he doesn’t mail it in for the last 4 holes?

—2014 Rory, and assume at minimum some sort of back-door top 5 will happen? Some historical version of Jack, Arnie, Seve? Or someone else?

This question has haunted me since I read it, particularly with the current state of my short game. The burden of having a great player’s career in my hands is a heavy one. Do I choose based on skill set? What about a personality fit? And what course are we playing? I have been wrestling with it for days. I would love to play golf for the next five years so I can’t even go full troll and pick a player I loathe just to potentially keep him from the game. This is true nightmare fuel.

Before I choose, I want to address your historical examples. I think peak-Tiger is an interesting answer because I suspect he’s the player most likely to overcome whatever garbage shots I threw at him. And as great as he was, no one has ever been better in the history of golf at turning what should be 5s into 4s. HOWEVER! — shoutout to my old colleague Stephen A. Smith — he’d also have the most to lose, and he’d likely stop speaking to me after the third time I skulled a chip across the green. Can you imagine the historical pressure I’d be under? Tiger won 8 majors between 2000 and 2005. If he and I couldn’t get it done, he’d spend five years of his athletic prime with little to do besides play NAVY S.E.A.L. I don’t think I want that on my conscience.

Phil would be interesting because, you’re right, he’d be the most encouraging. One underrated element of his career — and I suspect one of the reasons he’d felt underpaid for 30 years — is that no one has ever been better at ramping up the charm and enthusiasm when it comes to interacting with those who need to whip out their checkbooks. Watching Phil ham it up during various versions of The Match, cracking jokes, playing to the camera, hat-tipping the sponsors, but also encouraging and instructing Tom Brady when he was potentially unraveling, was a great window into this. He could make a 13-handicap feel like the next shot was going to be flush, even after three or four hosel shanks. Plus, his 2004 season is really underrated. I’d totally forgotten that he just barely missed the playoff between Ernie Els and Todd Hamilton in the Open Championship. He was in serious contention in four majors that year!

I’d love to pick Rory – can you imagine what I’d shoot from where he hits his drives? (Don’t hate, Randy. I’m just trying to project confidence.) Rory and I would also talk prestige television between shots to keep things light, and he would likely be more forgiving than some players when I left him in a brutal spot. Plus, if he had to sit out of golf for five years, it would not emotionally cripple him the way it would some players. I wouldn't be ruining his life. Hell, he could go to college or write a novel.

The correct answer here, however, is Jordan Spieth.

To paraphrase Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, I may think hitting nervy recovery shots from absurd places is my ally, but Spieth was born into that life. Molded by it. He didn’t see a green in regulation until he was already a man, and by then it was nothing to him!

I think Spieth has lived so much of his life in the golfing darkness, he would feel right at home with some of my misses. Plus, imagine our banter! We both talk a bit too much for our own good and could use a good editor.

It would be, at the very least, a spectacle.

Professorlefty: Which golf legends would definitely have gone to LIV?

It pains me a little to say this, but I think Seve would have 1000 percent gone to LIV. In a different lifetime, he probably would have played the Mickelson role. Remember, Seve spent the better part of his career extremely frustrated at the European Tour, 

 for the value he brought to events in Europe. (He was almost certainly correct.)

I think he would have also seen LIV as an opportunity for him to be a showman. The team concept likely also would have appealed to him. He wanted appearance fees, but the European Tour wouldn’t allow them (much like the PGA Tour) and that’s essentially what LIV’s financial model is. I suspect he also would have loved pushing back on reporters over the whole thing.

I haven’t heard it referenced much in this debate, but the issues surrounding LIV aren’t so different from the issues raised in the 1980s when South Africa was hosting lucrative golf tournaments despite the fact there was an international sporting boycott to protest Apartheid. In 1981, five of the world’s best golfers (Seve, Johnny Miller, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Lee Trevino) competed in a golf competition at Sun City, South Africa. Miller won the top prize of $500,000, which was an enormous sum considering Tom Watson got $60,000 that year for winning the Masters.

Some people's primary motivation is money. The suffering of others doesn’t factor much into their calculus. Gary Player’s argument — at least after he went woke, by today’s standards — was that he was trying to bring about change through dialogue and participation.

“I really don't understand how you can say that you must penalize an athlete for the policies of his country's government,” Player told the New York Times in 1979. “I mean, what would Americans have said if somebody had suggested keeping Jack [Nicklaus] or Arnold [Palmer] out of the British Open because of the war in Vietnam? Besides, if you're going to talk human rights, why stop at South Africa? What about the Russians, the Cubans, some of the black countries in Africa?”

As you can see, the WhatAbout Caucus has existed for many years, and will likely be around indefinitely. Their arguments would resonate more if they wanted to actually discuss human rights everywhere, but mostly what they want is for people to stop talking about any of it so they can count their blood money without being annoyed by criticism. They don’t actually care about what’s going on in China; the misdirection is the point.

So while I can’t say for sure who would have gone to LIV or their reasons for doing so, those trips to South Africa at the height of Apartheid offer at least a clue.

Dmcpherron: How many strokes is a good caddy worth to a pro? What about an amateur? Do we undervalue or overvalue caddies?

Your film room playing lesson really got me thinking about the true value of having a true pro be there for every shot. I’ve played with caddies a couple of times and always felt like I this value is way higher then we truly believe.

I think we overvalue certain things about them, but undervalue others. I think caddies often become an easy punching bag when players don’t play well. It allows us to call for change, deflecting some of the blame from the player. Rory experienced a lot of this with J.P. Fitzgerald early in his career. Everyone wanted Fitzgerald gone and assumed as soon as he was, McIlroy would win more majors. Six years later, McIlroy and Harry Diamond have had a lot of success, but no majors. It doesn’t mean it was the wrong move, it just means the caddie is only part of the equation.

Most people in golf believe that Steve Williams is the greatest caddie ever and that he truly did know how to save a shot per round. But how many majors would Tiger have won with a different caddie? The same is true of Bones. I think Jim “Bones” McKay is a truly great caddie, easily one of the best ever, and yet he was on the bag for some of the most memorable major collapses in history. Would any caddie have been able to talk Mickelson out of hitting driver on 18 at Winged Foot? Or convince him to hit his second shot way right of the green instead of trying to carve it around the tree, at least getting him into a playoff? I think Mickelson was likely going to make those decisions no matter what. That’s his nature.

I used to think Dustin Johnson could benefit from having someone other than his brother on the bag, but here is the reality: He won two majors with Austin, and zero with Joe LaCava, one of the best caddies in the game, who was on his bag for four years. Sometimes comfort is better than logic.

In the end, the caddie can be a therapist, a strategist, or a motivator, but if the player is someone who doesn’t listen or is stubborn, they might as well be a donkey who can schlep a bag. The relationship needs to be collaborative.

I do think caddies can definitely help marginally-talented players like you and me because it takes our dumbest decisions off the table. As someone who makes a couple of dumb decisions per round — as you’ll see in an upcoming film room — that’s crippling when you do it.

I do love having a caddie at a course I’ve never played before, but sometimes I also feel added pressure in not wanting to let them down.

Because I don’t play golf competitively, I decided to tap in Soly for his thoughts here on what makes a good caddie, and why I wasn’t one. I actually caddied for him last year in our Nest Invitational Tournament, and we came up a little short and finished 2nd. I probably suffered from “Trying to do too much” syndrome, but it was a fun experience that we both took too seriously when we probably should have been pounding High Noons and enjoying ourselves more.

When I caddied for Hueber in a Monday qualifier, I got yardages, carried the clubs, raked the bunkers, and held the pin. I didn’t even help him with wind direction. Was there when he asked any question, but gave up nothing unprovoked because there was nothing I was going to pick up on that he was not.

The dynamic of having a caddie that is not the same level player as you is always difficult. Like, I’m sorry to say it KVV, but there’s just no shot in golf that I feel like I need your golf advice on. When Hueber tells me to add 10 to a shot into the wind, I know he’s compensating for whatever he feels like I need to compensate for, and also he has a massive amount of experience in judging what wind does to a well-struck golf shot. If I’m approaching a shot, and not asking for input on the club/yardage, a player does not want to hear “165 playing 175.” In my head, I already may be thinking it’s actually playing 180, but I need the loft of my 190 club to get through the wind, blah blah blah. But now it’s been put into my head that the wind isn’t as strong as I think, and it didn’t come from someone that knows it better than me. When caddying, it’s hard not to give advice to feel like you’re doing something. And as a player, you never wanna tell a caddie to do less, because then you’re just an asshole.

Rapport is the most crucial thing with a caddie, and it’s more important than the actual “skill” of the caddie. I can have a relatively quiet caddie that I find super helpful because I know when to ask for help, and he knows when to just let me do my thing. I hate getting a read that’s unasked for. I’m always gonna see what I see, and if I’m told something different than what I see, I’m gonna marry the two thoughts together and hit an uncommitted putt. Yet if it’s with a caddie I trust, it can obviously be super helpful to be saved by the local knowledge. At times even at the Gasparilla, I was calling Hueber off putts because I was putting so poorly and we just weren’t speaking the same language. Absolutely zero fault of his (I’ve had my hottest putting round ever with him on the bag), but I needed to just see my own read, trust it, and hit it. (It did not help).

My advice for the situation in the future is to be as in touch as possible with what your player needs from you, and maybe even ask your player on the first hole what it is they want. Do they want to be pumped up when things are going bad? Do they want you to ask them questions? Do they want you to give you what the wind is doing and where you see the putts are breaking even without asking? Do they want you to step in only if you see something jumping out at them that’s going wrong (slow your tempo down!)? All things that a player should be responsible for but rarely takes responsibility for. (Hand up here.)

 now in the books, what are your favorite and least favorite series finales from your favorite all-time shows and why?

 is probably my top spot. Just beautiful and weird and ambiguous. If more people had watched, we’d still be arguing over it, which is essential for great art. 

 has maybe my favorite walk-off line of any series. And Coach Taylor coming down the escalator to find his wife and ask matter-of-factly 

“Will you take me with you to Philadelphia, please?”

 in the Friday Nights Lights finale absolutely gutted me. It’s such an earned moment in five seasons of observing their marriage. A great series finale gives you callbacks to earlier seasons or characters, but it also surprises you and leaves you feeling like the writers had a plan and they honored the journey and the audience.

 ending but have grown weary of debating it over the years. To me, it doesn’t matter if Tony lives or dies at that moment, only that the rest of his life is going to be full of dread and anxiety.

 are obvious ones, but just thinking about them gets me worked up all over again. I could write (and have written, on our message board) thousands of words about these shows and why they dropped the ball with the game on the line like Lee Evans in the AFC Championship. But essentially my frustration with LOST comes down to this: Every story in history could end with “...and then they died and went to heaven.” It’s truly weak shit. The writers kept upping the ante on the story and when it got too big, they bailed rather than find a satisfying exit. Designing an intricately-plotted show and then saying “Psyche! It’s actually about your feelings and the friends we made along the way” was absurd.

As for HIMYM, I don’t hate Ted and Robin ending up together as much as some people do, but the pacing of it was so poor, I still can’t believe it was actually greenlit by rooms full of people. Ted may have had a decade to grieve the death of his wife, but the audience gets all of 30 seconds to do it before his kids give him permission to chase their Aunt Robin. It’s among the most insane things ever put on television, erasing the investment the show asked you to make for 10 seasons in under a minute.

 was extremely dumb by the end, but by that point, my expectations were very low. I expected LOST and HIMYM to redeem themselves.

Duckhunter07: In your opinion, what is the best month for golf in Maryland?

I’ll go with October. The heat of the summer has broken and the leaves have changed but mostly haven’t started to fall. The gloom of November is looming, but my favorite kind of golf is when the weather is a little crisp in the morning and cool in the evening. If I lived somewhere else, I’d pick August because there is nothing I like more than golf at twilight, especially when it’s 9 p.m. But August can be like swimming in mushroom soup in Maryland.

Dmmcgaha: You can become a member at any US Open course, but that’s the only course you can play for the rest of your life. What course is it and why’s it the Myopia Hunt Club?

I’ve never been invited to play Myopia Hunt Club, but judging from the photos, my goodness, that would be an incredible pick. If we stick with places I’ve actually been, I’d probably land on Pinehurst No. 2. It’s a delightful walk in an area of the country you can (mostly) play year-round. It has a great porch to have a beer afterward. Pebble would be cool, but I don’t see how you play six-hour rounds for the rest of your life. I’d go insane. The contrarian in me wants to choose Chambers Bay because I think it’s a really cool course in a great city and it was unfairly maligned, but the walk up No. 8 and then to the No. 9 tee is a bear. I’m not sure I’d be able to make it when I’m 70. I’d probably stick with Pinehurst in keeping with my belief that all U.S. Opens should be held at public courses. (That’s a topic for another mailbag.)

Killoc: How do you (singular or plural) balance friendship with players (ie. Rory, Max et al) with your work as a sportswriter / content creator? I think there is 100% room for fan-dom in covering sports but I wonder how you approach it?

This is an interesting question and one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. When I worked at ESPN, the calculus was simple. I was a journalist. My job was to have detached objectivity about my subjects. I think true objectivity is kind of a myth, because every decision in reporting and writing is made by a person, and people are subjective, but oftentimes I was trying to let the reader decide what he or she wanted to think about a subject. The piece I did about Aaron Rodgers is probably the best example of that kind of journalism.

Moving into a different role at NLU (not only writing stories but appearing regularly on podcasts, offering my opinion on players, rule changes, courses) has admittedly been a bit of a change. Relationships with people like Rory and Max is probably part of that. I like them as people, they seem to like and respect me, and enjoy having occasional conversations that are not about golf. One thing I’ve always admired about Rory is he does not bristle at commentary about his golf game. He expects it, in fact. He wants people like me and my colleagues to hold him to a high standard, even if he’s willing to do stuff like join us on the Trap Draw to talk about Succession. I’ve written critical things about him in the past (observant readers will remember he was an equal part of my infamous Justin Thomas column at Southern Hills) and wouldn’t shy away from doing so in the future, because my loyalty has to be to the audience, not him. And he understands that. (I suspect Max is similar, although I haven’t had as much opportunity to write about him because his rise came at a time when ESPN didn’t have me writing about golf.) I’m also not ashamed to admit that I like him personally and would enjoy seeing him win more majors.

KVV Mailbag: Early U.S. Open Talk, Caddies and TV Finales

Dgolfman62281: Is Oak Hill CC the Torrey Pines of New York? I can’t even get one elevated pulse point for this course. I still have negative memories of the 95 Ryder Cup and I can’t remember a single thing about Jason Dufner’s win here. It’s a stinky bland generic east coast track and I might check in on the final 2 holes Sunday but that’s it.

Always love to begin a mailbag with a salty golf course review! I was probably in this camp before I did any research about Oak Hill, and then I watched 

this excellent video our friends at The Fried Egg produced

 about the Andrew Green redesign, and I totally flipped. I love interesting green complexes, and this course has them again. It’s almost unrecognizable from what it was before. When you see what Donald Ross greens used to look like, and what they became, it feels almost criminal they were allowed to become so bland and lacking in character. I think we’re in for a cool championship.

As for memories of Oak Hill, I have two from Dufner’s win. The first is, I’m not sure anyone 

has ever hit their irons better while putting worse than Dufner did that week

. It was surreal. He was hitting shots to kick-in distance, but even those putts didn’t feel like a sure thing. It was transcendent ball-striking and close-your-eyes-and-say-a-prayer putting. It was a tribute to Ben Hogan — whom Dufner modeled his swing after — in more ways than I think most people realized.

Hogan is widely regarded as the greatest iron player to ever live. His swing has been copied by generations of players. But Hogan grew to loathe putting so much late in his career, he actually suggested (perhaps in jest, perhaps not) it be eliminated from the sport. He grew anxious over the ball and was embarrassed to play in front of crowds.

"If I had my way, every golf green would be made into a huge funnel,” Hogan t

. “So that when you hit the funnel the ball would roll down a pipe into the hole. That way there would be no expensive upkeep of grass on the greens. And there would be much less misery among the golfers."

The second memory has to do with trees. Oak Hill was, at the time, nearly overwhelmed with trees. And from these trees, acorns were falling. Dufner’s wife, Amanda, one of the first social media stars connected to golf, picked up several of those acorns and 

declared she was going to plant them on the Dufners

’ land in Alabama. One day, from those Oak Hill acorns, majestic trees would grow. They would be strong and always serve as a reminder of that major championship. At the time, I thought: “That would make a beautiful lead to a story. I wish I was there to write it.”


That anecdote is an interesting window into how fragile some things can be, and how rare permanence is in golf and life. The Dufners are no longer married. Jason has gone from being the 6th-ranked player in the world to the 692nd-ranked player. Oak Hill has undergone a complete restoration. Many of those trees are gone.

It’s a sad story. But there is something moving about it too. You want to hold onto things but the world changes in ways you never expect. Someone could win the PGA Championship next week, and a decade later, they might feel lost with a putter in their hands. Sometimes heartbreak can lead to a better future. That’s one of the reasons why it’s a compelling sport to watch. You might be watching something beautiful unfold, but also quite fragile.

Wiganerlyon: Why does the run-up to the PGA feel less juicy from a grand slam perspective for Jordan Spieth than pre-Masters feels for Rory McIlroy? Both are very popular players in the game. Is it just the narrative with Rory and the amount of scar tissue now accrued at a single course?

I think needing just the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam is the biggest blessing/curse in professional golf. Jon Rahm will never have to answer questions for an entire offseason the way Rory has for 12 years about whether this might be his year. It’s always the first major, so the build-up feels enormous. It also feels like the more you want it, the more you hope it will fulfill something in you, and the more the tournament seems to delight in rejecting you. The fact that Rory came so close at such a young age, only to fail in such a spectacular and memorable way, plays into that narrative. Everyone has been saying for years that the Masters sets up so well for Rory, that he could win three or four of them, but that’s not how sports work. It’s possible his best chance was when he was 21.

The narrative for Spieth is different. For starters, the PGA doesn’t return to the same place every year so there isn’t the same psychological baggage surrounding the event. Will the baggage grow if he never wins a PGA? If he has a heartbreaking near-miss the way Tom Watson did in 1978, it’s possible. But at this point, it feels like a Spieth victory that completed the Grand Slam would almost come as a surprise. No one knows, at this point, if he can hold a Sunday lead in a major. His own scars are thick in that department, so I think he’d have to come from well off the lead (the way he’s almost done a couple times at the Masters) to make it a reality. He wouldn’t have to mull the gravity when his head hit the pillow or even talk about it. He’d just have to play a great round at the right time when no one expected it. With his recent wrist injury, I’d say the expectations for him will be fairly low, assuming he plays at all.

Even if Rory entered the final round of the Masters in 8th place, all eyes would be on him. For whatever reason, the way we view them is just going to be different. In 2015, it looked like they were poised to be rivals for a decade, the best players of the post-Tiger generation. Now it’s fair to wonder if either of them will end up completing the Grand Slam. As absurd as it sounds, Phil Mickelson winning the U.S. Open at LACC or Jon Rahm winning the PGA and the Open Championship might be our best chance at a Grand Slam.

Wnf08a: Who has a better week at the PGA — Rickie Fowler or Jason Day?

Regular listeners to the pod know that I’ve been predicting Jason Day will win this year (something he hasn’t done since 2018), all season. But his recent allergy issues — which seem to be contributing to the return of his vertigo — are a genuine cause for concern. As my colleague Chris Solomon recently pointed out to the world, Rickie Fowler has been so solid in 2023 (Data Golf has him as the 18th-ranked player in the world), he is a genuine candidate for one of the last two spots on the U.S. Ryder Cup team, something I definitely didn’t see coming a year ago. Oak Hill is definitely a course where I could see Fowler sneaking into contention.

Even if you agree with my colleague Big Randy and feel like Fowler's fame within the sport represents late-stage capitalism, you have to admire how he’s rebuilt his swing and salvaged his career. I’m sure it must have been tempting to join LIV when he was deep in the wilderness, but without a path into major championships, Fowler would have been trapped in a lucrative but substance-free existence, the exact space his critics accused him of occupying for years. It would be pretty rewarding if a major were the payoff for all that work.

Gottliebk12: What is your ideal food and drink option at the turn?

I think this depends on the season. In the summer, nothing beats a bratwurst with mustard and a cold beer, particularly a gose or a sour. That might seem blasphemous to those who feel passionate about the simplicity of Miller Lite, Coors, or Bud, but when you play most of your golf in the sweltering humidity of Maryland, it’s basically like living in the Devil’s armpit. There is something delightful about a crisp sour or gose with a hint of salt that makes the perfect golf course beer. I think a Transfusion runs a close second, but it needs to be a good one. If the grape juice is too strong, I’m dumping it out after a few zips. (They make an incredible Transfusion at the course I just joined.)

In the fall, I mostly just opt for beef jerky. It’s simple, it’s not messy, you don’t have to think too much about it. But a good Bloody Mary is undefeated on the golf course.

ThatDuffGuyPat: What’s something, other than golf, that you have struggled with to get to the point you’re at but still enjoy through the frustrations or difficulties?

My genuine answer would be writing. It’s such a subjective thing to believe you are good at writing. The standard you’re trying to reach exists mostly in your own head. It requires both hubris and vulnerability. One smart person can look at the words on the page and see brilliance and another smart person can look at the same words and dismiss them as pedestrian. There are days when many writers (myself occasionally among them) stare at the screen and feel miserable, like we’re trapped in a decades-long fraud of pretending we’re good at this stuff. Any day now, we fear, someone is going to tap us on the shoulder and say “You realize you’re no good at this, right?” And at the same time, we can look at writers who are commercially or critically successful and think “How can anyone think 

In golf, there is a score. We can measure each other and compete against each other and reach a conclusion about ability based on facts. We often joke about the Eye Test at NLU, but for the most part, we know the difference between someone who is great and someone who is fine. Every result is compounding evidence.

Writing — beyond objective standards for punctuation and grammar — has more to do with whether or not it speaks to the reader’s soul.

Few things in life are more satisfying to me than writing paragraphs that make a reader feel something, whether that is humor or anger or joy. And yet, sometimes the road to those sentences can be torture. Most writers, even the great ones, are chasing a standard they’ll probably never reach. But the striving becomes addictive. When you write a good sentence or a great scene in a story, it’s like a perfectly-struck long iron. All you want to do is chase that feeling, even if you know, deep down, how difficult it will be to repeat.

To borrow a lyric from the subject of our next question: It gets easier but it never gets easy.

Mathew823: Do you have any thoughts on the Jason Isbell “Running With Our Eyes Closed” documentary? I was, as ever, struck by his directness. There are plenty of musicians who can open a vein in their music but won’t talk much about it outside of that. Isbell has no pretense about that at all.

Regular readers of this mailbag know that I am something of an Isbell devotee — 

so much so that I was interviewed by The Ringer

, which produced the documentary, about the curious connection between Isbell and sportswriters — so it pains me to admit that I wanted to love the doc more than I actually did. I thought the film had so many themes it was trying to juggle, it lacked a cohesive narrative.

Was it about the anxiety of making an album where an artist feels like his reputation is at stake? Was it about Jason and Amanda’s marriage? Was it about Isbell’s sobriety? His childhood? Was it about the isolation of COVID? Is it about trying to outrun the ghosts of your past while still, somehow, honoring pieces of them?

In trying to touch on all these themes, I think it struggles to answer two fundamental questions: What is this documentary about and why are we telling this story?

I am certainly grateful the documentary exists. There are elements of it that moved me deeply. I understand Jason and Amanda better and appreciate their willingness to lay themselves bare for all the world to see in the name of art. That is the deal they’ve made with the audience throughout their careers, and it’s the reason they feel almost like family to me, even though I am just a faceless fan to them — one of millions. The hardest thing about being vulnerable is you hand someone the weapon they can use to destroy you. But writers and storytellers also owe each other the truth, and if I pretended I loved the documentary just because I love and admire the people involved, I’d be dishonoring that agreement.

But again, we return to the subjective evaluation of art. It’s possible the documentary is great, and I’m too close to its subject matter. Either way, I’m excited for Weathervanes, particularly after listening to 

, which already feels up there with some of his best work.

TTrentC: As a Girl-Dad-to-be this fall, what would you include in your “starter kit” mentioned on the pod for new dads?

If you missed our April Nest Pod with Soly, it contains a thoughtful discussion about what the anticipation is like when you’re about to become a father for the first time. I joked on another pod that there should be a starter kit for New Dads, but I didn’t get specific about what it would contain.


I’ve thought about it a bunch and I don’t think it would contain many physical items — although a good stroller and a good swaddle blanket are magic — as much as advice, so here goes, from the father of three:

There is no RIGHT way. You're gonna get a lot of advice, and you're going to get people who cannot resist giving it as you try to figure out what you're doing. This is especially tough when it's your parents. New babies can be tough on any relationship. It's important to trust your own judgment (yours and your partner’s) and be united on that front. There might be times when you have to referee a bit between all the people in your life. Always let your partner know you've got her back. 

Give each other grace, particularly after 8 pm. One of my friends told me he and and his wife had a pact to forgive anything said after 8 pm, because you're so tired after the adrenaline runs out, you can't help snapping at each other. Forgive quickly, just like golf.

Don't be afraid to take the kid places. In a car seat or stroller, they're actually super easy to cart around when they're little and just sleep all the time and it will make you feel a little slice of normal if you take the kid to a casual restaurant for a brunch or a lunch. The people who hide inside for months and then venture into the world end up feeling overwhelmed and scared when it's time to live a more normal life. Yes, you have to make your own calculation about COVID and such but get outside. Kids are super adaptable! When my daughter was a baby, I used to take her to the driving range and hit a bucket while she watched me from the stroller. Now she’s a genuine golf obsessive with a swing infinitely more graceful than mine. Who cares if you get funny looks from golf hardos. You’ll be grateful for the normalcy. 

There will be a moment when everything hits you, that you love this kid more than you've ever loved anything. It's powerful and surreal. Take a few moments and bask in that feeling, because you'll want to revisit it from time to time. Parenting can be hard, and your life is going to change a lot, but nothing is as fulfilling. 

You'll be great. Everyone doubts themselves. Everyone gets a little scared with the first one. You will too. But one day you'll tell yourself "Shit, I'm good at this." And it will be true.

: I get a lot of messages from NLU dads who want to know how I got my daughter interested in golf. They mention they would love something similar with their daughters, which I think is a great sign. The more welcoming we are to girls at a young age, the more interested they’ll be in making golf a lifelong sport. My friend Hally Leadbetter released 

 imagining what it would be like if men were treated the way women often are in golf. As funny as that skit is, there is an underlying message. It’s clear we have some work to do.

I decided to ask my 11-year-old how I should answer this question. Her answer was short but pretty poignant, I think.


“You’ve got to make it just you and your daughter,” she said. “Don’t invite other people. That’s important. Make it like a club. Also, watch women’s golf on TV with them. Not just the men."

KVV Mailbag: Early PGA Championship Talk, Parenting and Jason Isbell

Welcome back to the NLU Mailbag! This is a place where we answer questions that have a lot, a little, or nothing at all to do with the world of golf.

A quick reminder: You need to be a member of The Nest to submit a question to the mailbag, but the mailbag itself will be free to read (as long as you behave yourselves). Most of our questions are submitted via our message board, The Refuge, but if you’re not a message board person, please send me an email at 

 with your Nest handle and your question. If your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free NLU towel.

Scottyrp4: Given how close Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson were at Augusta, do you think any LIV players win a major this year? If so, who do you think it is, and where?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot during the last two weeks. A fascinating summer awaits us, doesn’t it? I’m hesitant to say I think that Phil will contend in majors the rest of the year (Augusta is a place he can think his way around until he’s 60) but I would be surprised if Brooks wasn’t in the mix at the PGA, a place that seems perfect for his game. Major championship golf is really more interesting when he’s in the mix, and as much as the LIV bros want you to think Brooks’ success at the Masters was supposed to upset LIV critics like myself, I loved every minute of it. I wish he’d played better on Sunday so we could have a true duel, but now that he’s gotten a taste of major pressure again, maybe he’ll be better for it. If anything, LIV has made the majors even more entertaining because it’s the only time we see all the best players together, and there is a natural tension as a result. I think a lot of the LIV players are washed, but obviously, many of them are not. Cam Smith seems like a great pick for the Open Championship, but I could also see Sergio or Lee Westwood or Paul Casey having a moment like Darren Clarke or Henrik Stenson did when they won an Open Championship after what was considered their prime.

The interesting question about Mickelson is: Does LACC represent his last genuine chance to win the career Grand Slam? Two months ago, when he couldn’t seem to break 70 on the LIV Tour, everyone would have laughed at the possibility he still had a major in him. But after that Masters performance? It doesn’t seem THAT crazy. We don’t know yet what the USGA setup will look like, but speculation seems to be it won’t have an abundance of thick rough. Recovery shots would favor players with creative minds. Can you imagine if it did happen? Phil would read off the name of everyone who’d ever so much as favorited a tweet talking shit about him. (Hey Phil, it’s pronounced VAN VAUL-KEN-BURG.) It would be a spectacle. I would love to witness it and write about it.

Tron: KVV, an earnest question to ponder for the next mailbag. Did Curt Schilling paint his sock?

This is a fascinating question because, while I think there is absolutely no chance Schilling painted his sock, Schilling is such an unlikeable, despicable person, people would love for this to be true, so the fantasy persists even 20 years after that game that he whipped out a marker to frame himself as the hero. I was actually working at the Baltimore Sun when columnist Laura Vescey wrote a column saying she thought Schilling’s sock was doctored, and of course, he went nuts, so it was interesting to see that battle waged from the inside of my own newspaper.

One thing I think I find interesting is that Schilling was one of the first athletes to realize they could punch back at reporters by blogging 

. He was basically longform tweeting before it was even a thing. It was kind of interesting when it was a post-modern rewriting of the power dynamic between journalists and subject, but then he turned into a genuine loon who was radicalized by being extremely online and clearly hated everyone and everything who didn’t share his own extreme views. It became much less interesting to me.

It does raise an interesting question though: Can you separate an athlete’s performance from his personal views? I think most people would say yes. I often feel the same. But I also don’t think you have to feel that way. You’re not required to be agnostic. There are plenty of people who dislike LeBron James because of his progressive worldview, and they have every right to root against him for those reasons.

I grew up a Red Sox fan, and the 2004 ALCS is one of my favorite sports memories. Even if Schilling had painted his sock, it wouldn’t change the way I felt about that performance in Game 6. It doesn’t inspire me to consume any of his current garbage takes, but I loved rooting for him at that moment.

TTrentC: What was the greatest sandwich you ever had?

What a great question. As someone who loves sandwiches, I wish I had a better answer to this, but I can’t pin it down to one specific meal. Maybe this is where the advice of Warren Zevon is apt: Enjoy every sandwich.

When I was in college, I got recruited by the Baltimore Sun in my senior year. Someone from the paper called my house in Montana as part of the recruiting process. They wanted to take me out to a fancy dinner in Baltimore and woo me into accepting the job, and they wanted to know what kind of food I liked so they could make reservations. I wasn’t there when the call came in, but one of my college roommates picked up the phone and answered a few of the recruiter’s questions. “Um, I know he likes turkey sandwiches,” my roommate said. It was an earnest answer, but no less true. I 

If forced to choose, I’d probably pick the Big Bad Wolf sandwich from Big Bad Wolf BBQ here in Baltimore. It’s so decadent that I only eat one every three or four months, but I always eat one on my birthday to celebrate the passage of time. It contains brisket, pulled pork and bacon, and it’s a little piece of heaven. If you ever come to Baltimore, skip the fancy bullshit and visit the little yellow shack on Hartford Road.

The truth is, every city has at least one amazing sandwich, and you usually need some local knowledge to help guide you there. I typically rely on my buddy Wright Thompson, who can tell you where to find the best food in just about any American city. But this is a good example of why you shouldn’t be obnoxious on Twitter. For all its ills, people can point you in the direction of a pretty good sandwich if you’re not a jerk.

I think in either a future mailbag or newsletter I’ll put this question to the NLU crew and make them share their pinnacle sandwich.

Jgolf1: Let’s say money IS a factor but you live anywhere in the US. You have to take your family to a sporting event and pay for everything out of your own pocket (tickets, parking, concessions etc…). This is purely a family night out, not doing anything for work. What are you choosing?

This question feels extremely relevant as I’m taking my daughter to the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble this summer and it is definitely not cheap. But if I was bringing the entire family, I think I’d ultimately choose tennis’ U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, particularly one of the early sessions. You know that line David Foster Wallace wrote about tennis on television vs. tennis in person is like the difference between video porn and the felt reality of human love? That is 100 percent true when you see tennis up close. Night matches at Arthur Ashe Stadium are among the coolest experiences we have in sports. Even from the upper deck, you still feel like you’re on top of the players. The food (while overpriced) is genuinely pretty good at the U.S. Open, and just walking around the grounds is great for people-watching. A couple of years ago, 

I wrote about watching Naomi Osaka closely at the U.S. Open

 and it ended up being one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, so I’d want my family to experience that energy at least once.

Dgolfman62281: Is golf the only sport where literally every media member that covers it is expected to at least be a recreational participant of said sport?

Did anyone have visions of Brent Musburger boxing out after a rebound?

First of all, I expect Brent Musburger to be able to box out because he’s one of the only famous media people from Montana, so I expect him to uphold a certain standard for people like me to aspire to. In all seriousness, you make an interesting point. There is some expectation that golf writers know how to golf, but I don’t think it’s as essential as you might think. My friend Steve Politi typically writes the best story every year from the Masters, and he’s been pretty open about the fact that doesn’t play golf. It made for a great column when he 

teed it up for the first time in 10 years

 after winning the media lottery at the Masters. Karen Crouse wasn’t a golfer, but she wrote 

For the most part, I think playing golf can help you understand the game better, and give you perspective on how thin the line is between good and terrible. But I also see writers and commentators sometimes who think they understand the game the pros are playing and have a casual arrogance about it because they’re a scratch handicap. I cannot express how ridiculous this looks to professional golfers who have been breaking 70 from 7,000 yards since they were a teenager. If you are a scratch golfer, you are probably the envy of all your friends. But in the eyes of a professional, you are 

like Professor Gerald Lambeau in Good Will Hunting

. What you think of as difficult is a joke from the perspective of a prodigy.

The kind of golf writing I love the most focuses on people and emotions, not the mechanics of the game. (Your mileage may vary, which is why there are many different outlets that focus on other areas like analytics or swing theory or architecture, and they’re all great.) Chuck Culpepper of the Washington Post doesn’t play golf, but few (if any) are better at 

MrCutHook: If the PGA Championship decided that they wanted to play at the same course every single year ala the Masters, what would be your top 3 picks for courses to be considered and why?

This course was unfairly maligned in 2015, and it deserves another chance to host a major now that they’ve fixed the greens. The USGA took it too close to the edge with the setup and when you combined that with some unexpected weather, it basically killed the greens. Fox Sports bumbling its way through its maiden broadcast didn’t help either, as everyone couldn’t help but associate the two. But the layout is cool, it gave us a great finish, and the Pacific Northwest deserves a piece of the major rotation.

The Genesis is already the best event on the schedule that’s not a major (and yes, I think that includes The Players Championship) so let’s make it a major in this fantasy scenario. Every player loves it, it’s hosted PGA Championships previously, and it both challenges the players and drives them a little mad.

 One of the biggest gripes of golfers outside the United States is that America shouldn’t get to hog three of the four majors. It seems like a fair complaint! Even though the name of the organization is the PGA of America, think of how great it would be to watch the best in the game strategize their way around a course that requires more thought than just about any course on earth? In this magical world where I’m named the World Golf Czar, I’d have Royal County Down and Royal Melbourne pass the PGA Championship back and forth from year to year.

Killoc: I'd be really interested in your top 5 “peak” golfers — as in the golfers which have hit the highest absolute ceiling … even if they didn't maintain it. For example, peak Duval was out of this world, peak Vijay was amazing, peak Day… the list is hard and surprisingly there is limited consensus so I’d be keen on your views.

we begin this exercise, let’s remove Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus from the discussion. I think we can agree their ceilings would be higher than anyone on this list. As good as some of these golfers were at their peak, even at their best, they weren’t winning the U.S. Open by 15 shots like Tiger did in 2000. They weren’t finishing in the Top 10 in 36 of 40 majors like Nicklaus did from 1970 to 1979. I also feel like we should limit this to the last 50 years, just out of fairness. I could sit here and tell you peak Byron Nelson was better than peak Ben Hogan, but I’d just be blowing smoke. There are historians better equipped to handle that argument.

Nicklaus has said he believes Miller is the greatest short-iron player who ever lived, and that seems like a pretty good endorsement. When he was on, it was hard to imagine anyone better. There are all kinds of anecdotes about how Miller would hold exhibitions where he’d repeatedly rattle the flagstick from 160 yards to the delight of crowds. Tiger and Louis Oosthuizen are the only players to win the Open Championship by a larger margin than the six strokes Miller won by in 1976. It’s fair to say (and he’s admitted as much) that Miller wasn’t obsessed with being great the way Nicklaus was. He enjoyed spending time on his ranch and with his family. But hand him a set of blades and put a balata ball down in front of him and he was a sniper.

 Is he a blowhard and a buffoon? Yes. Is he one of the most talented players to ever live? Absolutely. I supposed you could define “peak” by saying it can’t be limited to one round, it has to be defined in tournaments. But the man still won 88 times around the world! The fact that he was snakebit in majors can be held against him, but he is the guy who put himself in a position to have his heart broken repeatedly. Jack’s and Tiger’s peaks were still better, but it’s possible no one has ever driven the ball as well as Norman at the peak of his powers.

 It’s possible that Vijay’s 2004 season (in which he won 9 times!) is the most underappreciated season in the history of golf. Sounds like a great topic for a deep-dive podcast, frankly.

 One thing I feel like we don’t acknowledge often enough when it comes to Singh, Duval, Ernie Els and Mickelson is they all had runs during Tiger’s prime where they were arguably the best player in the world. They didn’t sustain it, but they came at the king and briefly held the throne. Golf is about consistency, but few players were more fun to watch attack pins than Duval.

 The two most dominant performances in a major that don’t belong to Tiger belong to this guy. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t sustainable, that version of Rory could make you believe you were watching one of the greatest players to ever do it.

 Jason Day when healthy; a newly-married John Daly with a steady supply of cigarettes, Diet Coke and Wilson Pickett CDs; Charley Hoffman during Round 1 of a major, Ken Duke on a windy day at The Players.

KVV Mailbag: LIV and the majors, all-timers and sandwiches

I want to begin this column with a statement of fact: Slow play in golf is not Patrick Cantlay’s fault.

The problem did not begin with him, nor would forcing him to play faster magically fix things. Cantlay is playing within an established set of norms, and obviously doing it well. If you told most professional golfers they could rise to No. 4 in the world by playing at tortoise speed, they would gladly take that trade off. Cantlay has found an approach that works for him, and used it to become one of the best golfers in the world.

From his perspective, I can see why he has no incentive to change. In fact, it seems clear Cantlay doesn’t believe slow play is an actual problem.

“One thing that's interesting sitting on the (player advisory council) is you get all the numbers and the data, and rounds have taken about the same length of time for the last 10 or 20 years that they currently take,” Cantlay told reporters this week at the RBC Heritage. “When you play a golf course like Augusta National where all the hole locations are on lots of slope and the greens are really fast, it's just going to take longer and longer to hole out.”

Is Cantlay wrong? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it the last few days. My initial reaction is of course he’s wrong. Professional golf has become so plodding and methodical, most tournaments this spring haven’t been able to finalize their cut on Friday, with the second round now regularly finishing on Saturday morning. But the complicated answer is more nuanced, which makes potential solutions hard to propose.

Let’s start with a thought experiment: Why does slow play matter?

It certainly matters to most weekend hackers. There is nothing more maddening than being jammed behind a foursome in carts that won’t wave you through and makes you wait on every tee while they take 15 practice swings in the fairway. But that’s not professional golf. Equating the two, which people frequently do, is unfair. Why should I care if Cantlay spends three minutes reading a putt, or dithering over club selection from the fairway, when a television producer can just cut to someone else while he goes through his meticulous routine?

It’s because playing fast ought to be a skill.

Andy Johnson of The Fried Egg made a great argument about slow play years ago that has always stuck with me: How quickly an athlete can process a situation and make a decision is part of what determines athletic greatness. Every quarterback who experienced success in college could likely experience it in the NFL if they had an unlimited amount of time to break down a defense. The best quarterbacks can process information almost immediately, then determine where they want to go with the football. That's the difference.

Similarly, being forced to make hard decisions in a window of time similar to your competitors should be part of professional golf.

Brooks Koepka certainly feels that way. I walked with Koepka and Jon Rahm on Sunday at the Masters, and watching Brooks stew as he was forced to wait on every shot inspired the most sympathy I’ve felt for him in years. Koepka, no shrinking violet when it comes to sharing his thoughts, did not shy away from making his displeasure clear in his post-round press conference.

“The group in front of us was brutally slow,” Koepka said. “Jon went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”

Asked about Koepka’s comments while he was prepping for the RBC Heritage on Tuesday, Cantlay suggested that everyone was slow, not just his group.

“We got on the second tee and the group in front of us was on the second tee when we got there,” Cantlay told Golf Channel’s Kira Dixon. “The final group was there when we were on the second tee. We waited all day. Our group waited in 15 fairway; our group waited in 18 fairway. I think it was slow for everyone.”

It’s true that Cantlay and Viktor Hovland had to wait at times during their final round. But I’m not sure Cantlay’s framing tells the full story. Hovland was clearly trying to pick up the pace of the group and seemed like he’d had enough of Cantlay late in the round. Cameras spotted 

 before Cantlay had even crossed Rae’s Creek, a minor violation of unspoken golf etiquette but a major indicator that even the jovial Hovland was fed up. On other holes, you could see Hovland walking down the left side of the fairway at the edge of the frame while Cantlay was still addressing the ball.

Slow players rarely think they’re slow, which is part of the problem. Even the fast players — like Koepka or Rory McIlroy — don’t want to rush to the next tee just to sit and wait. But they are held hostage by the slow players, who think everyone else is as deliberate as they are, so they have no incentive to change.

From a fan’s perspective, I feel like we’re ticking closer to an eruption, and Cantlay is the flash point for people’s frustrations. Check out 

 from Golf.com writer Claire Rodgers, who spotted the growing unrest in Cantlay’s mentions. That simmering criticism isn’t a media creation.

If you concede that slow play is a problem, then what’s the solution? That’s where it gets complicated. It’s not as simple as demanding Cantlay speed up. Players, for the most part, don’t agree with Koepka. Or if they do, they don't seem to be demanding change, either from their peers or from rules officials. Fast players mostly seem resigned to their fate.

It used to be standard that players in twosomes were expected to get around in under four hours, even in majors. When they didn’t, they were put on the clock, warned, and threatened with a penalty. Jack Nicklaus was a notoriously slow player when he joined the PGA Tour, regularly falling behind the group ahead of him. But in 1962, he was hit with a slow play penalty in the Portland Open, and the embarrassment of it forced him to play faster. He eventually called that penalty one of the best things to happen to him. 

“They wouldn’t give you a slow-play penalty if you weren’t slow,” Nicklaus said.

These days, twosomes regularly flirt with (and exceed) five-hour rounds. During the Open Championship at St. Andrews in 2022, 

 Some of that can be attributed to the Old Course, it's tricky hole locations and its long waits as players drive greens and reach par 5's. But not all of it. At The Players Championship, average rounds were between 4:55 and 5:30, and chief referee Gary Young said he didn’t think it was an issue, that it was in line with the Tour’s expectations.

“We're a membership organization,” Young said. “We try to maximize the starts for our members. That's always been a priority, and we just understand that we will, unfortunately, have to finish sometimes on Saturday morning. That's just the way it is. The numbers are the numbers. It's a mathematical equation. You can figure it out.”

Young’s comments have merit, but he was conflating field size with slow play. Even on the weekends, after the cut reduces the field in half, players are still glacially slow.

And therein lies the problem: Modern rules officials can only enforce the rules that are on the books. Players aren’t expected to complete their rounds in a certain amount of time, they’re expected to maintain their position on the golf course. When they fall out of position, they’re put on the clock, and have 40 seconds to hit their next shot once it is their turn to play. For the most part, they magically speed up and get back in position. As long as they’re in position, it doesn’t matter how slow they are.

Rules officials also seem reluctant to use the power they have to force players to change. In 2013, there were two slow-play penalties handed out in majors, one to 14-year-old Tianlang Guan at the Masters, and another to Hideki Matsuyama at the Open Championship. Since then, just one player — John Catlin at the 2021 PGA Championship — 

has been hit with a slow play penalty in the last 10 years

 at a major. That’s almost 20,000 rounds of golf played with ONE slow play penalty.

It’s hard, though, to come up with a solution, particularly with so much money at stake in every tournament. One player asking for a ruling, or one walk back to the tee after a ball finishes a foot out of bounds, has a domino effect that grinds the entire wave to a halt. As long as humans are involved, those slow downs are impossible to avoid. 

 does an excellent job of explaining the phenomenon.

Doing nothing because the issue is difficult isn’t a reasonable position either. Some of the objections raised in golf are similar to the resistance that baseball faced when it tried to speed up the game, and implementing the pitch clock this year has cut down tremendously on the fidgeting and histrionics between pitches. I don’t think a standard shot clock would work for golf, but players clearly aren’t interested in policing themselves, particularly on the PGA Tour. The majors ought to draw a clear line and not leave so much of it up to a vague interpretation that clearly favors a certain class of players.

Maybe golf should view the time allotted to a group the way it’s viewed in competitive chess. You have a finite amount of time, and you may use it as you choose. But if you take longer on some turns, you need to take less on others.

There would likely be a player revolt, but as Cantlay joked years ago on a hot mic in Hawaii: Players can sometimes be pampered. It might be time for some tough love.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up.

KVV: What do we do about slow play?

Welcome back to the No Laying Up mailbag! It’s a special Masters edition, which means we split it into two parts. This is Part 2. If you missed Part 1, 

TheKid33: Which Masters traditions/customs are the most underrated, overrated and properly rated?

A good question that is almost certain to cause some controversy, but let me start out by saying I think the Champion’s Dinner is a little overrated. It’s a little weird to me how much we obsess over a bunch of rich guys having dinner together, anticipating what kind of meal the winner from the previous year might serve. It would be one thing if Scottie Scheffler was actually in the kitchen whipping up Texas ribeyes and blackened redfish. But all he’s really doing is putting together a menu, and the previous champions don’t even have to eat it if they don’t want to. I like the aspect of past champions feeling like they’re still welcome in that room decades after they won, but I’m not sure why those of us who will never be invited treat what’s going to be served like such an important matter. It did, however, inspire one of my first Twitter threads, 

about Rory McIlroy and carrot cake if you’re so inclined.

Properly rated? I think skipping shots across the pond on 16 during practice rounds – a relatively new tradition – is properly rated. It’s a delight, and every few years when a player makes a hole-in-one like Jon Rahm did in 2020, it only adds to the joy of the tradition. Everyone should try it.

Underrated? The unspoken agreement is that you can set up your folding chair in just about any spot on the course as long as you get there first, but if you aren’t occupying it, it’s communal property. Anyone can sit there. That idea doesn’t really exist in other American sports. If you are at an NBA game and you get up to walk around and someone takes your sets for a few minutes, most fans are going to be annoyed when they return, as if something has been taken from them. There is a gentleman’s agreement at the Masters that this is not the way to behave. The people who violate that agreement and act huffy do not grasp the good elements of southern hospitality that are supposedly part of the tournament’s ethos. Thankfully, they are few and far between.

CKaneb: KVV, If you played in a match from the Master’s Tees in your current state vs 87 year old Gary Player from the Member’s tees do you think you would win the match?

I’m going to be brutally honest and say I think Gary would beat me handily. And it would be humiliating, but I’m fairly certain he’d clean my clock. It’s important to remember that, even though Gary Player is 87 years old and his antics have become comedy fodder for people like me who were not around for his prime, he really is one of the greatest players ever. The fact that it’s impossible to parody the man because some of his takes are so absurd shouldn’t diminish the fact that nothing about a match with me, a 10-handicap, would make him even a little nervous.

When I see how far back the Masters tees are on some holes compared to the Members’ tees, it makes me even more skeptical of my chances in this scenario.

Let’s say Gary hits the ball 200 yards. There are going to be holes where, even if I hit it 270, I’m going to be well behind him. He’s one of the greatest short game and bunker players of all time. On the flip side, there are a couple holes (No. 7 and No. 9 come to mind) where I’d be better off trying to hit my approach into a bunker than trying to hold the green because at least then the ball wouldn’t roll 100 yards away when I missed.

In summary, he’d destroy me. He would whip me even if we flipped tees.

I promise you, however, I would talk massive amounts of shit just to try and make it interesting. I would distract him by telling him Chambers Bay is my favorite U.S. Open course. (A lie, but I could sell it.) I would mention that it’s a shame his son couldn’t join us because of his lifetime ban. I would go down fighting, which I think Gary would respect. But I’d be lucky to shoot 100 from the Masters tees. He’d be sprinting up the hill on No. 8 while I huffed and puffed, and he’d let me know I make Harry Higgs look like Joaquin Neimann.

Waver82: How does (or does it) the no one behind the ropes rule help/hurt how you shape your stories/writing at Augusta?

Articles

KVV Mailbag: Early U.S. Open Talk, Caddies and TV Finales

KVV Mailbag: Early PGA Championship Talk, Parenting and Jason Isbell

KVV Mailbag: LIV and the majors, all-timers and sandwiches

KVV: What do we do about slow play?

KVV Mailbag: Masters Part Two

KVV Mailbag: Masters Part One

KVV Mailbag: The Rollback, Modern Journalism and The Wire

KVV Mailbag: The Swilcan Patio and The LIV Newsroom