Scottie Scheffler Dominates, Amsterdam Muni Delivers | Ep. 13

I don't tend to watch a ton of golf. Basically because I don't have Golf Channel, I don't tend to watch a lot of golf. But man, when I saw what was going on and I saw where Scheffler was, I had to watch. Well, I said last week, if you recall, that Scheffler was going to win it, if he had a decent if he opened decently, he opened with a pretty decent round. He was in the top 20, I believe, after the first round and he finished it off with a flurry. Rough last day was rough for almost everybody out on the course. There was only a couple guys that went under par the entire day out of the entire 29 guys. Unfortunately for those of you who don't know. JJ spawned, ended up having to withdraw from the tournament due to an injury.

So instead of there being 30 guys in the championship day, there was only 29, but still, it was a barn burner type of week. Leading into Sunday. And then, Scheffler just kind of walked away with it by playing like Scottie Scheffler. Yes, yes. So hobbling actually went in with a very decent like 2 or 3 stroke lead after the first three rounds and everybody thought he was going to walk away with it.

But it never can count Scottie out because Scottie just plays consistent golf like we talked about before. He knows what he needs to bring to the game. He knows he has to be an intense player, and he did exactly that. And he played really, really well. He obviously had some shots that I'm sure he wished he could have gotten back, but he just kept moving up the leaderboard. And when he got to the top, he didn't surrender it. Never looked back once he got his name on the top. He he had one bogey, I think, in the second nine. But aside from that, he played super steady. Anytime he got himself in trouble, he recovered for pars. Again. I've mentioned before bogey avoidance, which is a tour stat that they keep the PGA keeps.

He's number one in that I think every year that he's been on tour just about he's the leader in bogey avoidance. So he finds a way to get par whether it's getting it up and down or, you know, just making a nice long Tupac or whatever it might be. He he always finds a way. And I said last week that I'm a, you know, Scottie Scheffler fanboy, always will be because of the type of human being he is. I think, you know, unless that suddenly changes, which I don't anticipate happening. I'm looking forward to seeing a long career out of him, and I think it's going to rival some of the greats of all time. Absolutely. And I think it's great that he was able to come back from the illness that he had last tournament, and he was able to keep himself in the game.

He was able to keep himself relevant so he could go into this week. And he even said he wasn't 100%. The first couple of days, he was still dealing with a sore throat and some sores that were in his throat because of the sickness he had. It's amazing to see him walk away with another Fedex Cup. It's his second one in what, three years? Second time in three years. Yeah. So it's impressive. Now he did move to the top of the money list. So there's this whole thing going around about the fact that he is now the biggest person to win the most money. He took over Tiger, but he is the first one to tell you. And we talked about this in previous podcast to tell you that, hey, we would not have the purses that we have in golf if it wasn't for Tiger.

And so he knows he's on the top of the list. But he also knows with inflation, he is nowhere close to what Tiger made and how quickly he made it. Yeah, it's it was good to see him top that list. I think he's you know, like I said, he's a deserving guy. Rory McIlroy is number two. There's a significant age gap between the two. Yeah. So I don't anticipate Rory's going to, you know, ever surpass him and stay, you know, pass Scheffler. Because I think Rory be playing senior tour long before. Scheffler, you know, ever has to think about stopping golf. But I again, I, you know, I've said it before that I there at this point when you're at that, you know top echelon of golf, they're not playing for the money.

They're playing for trophies. They want the status they want. You know, the money is great, I'm sure, for them. But they don't need it. They never will. Their whole families are set for many generations. But for them, it's about maintaining where they're at. Whether it's Scottie or Rory or whomever, you know, they want to stay amongst the talking points, you know, at the top of the tour for years and years to come.

And they want the longevity. So here's a big question that is, and I was just looking up to make sure they haven't made the decision yet. Is Scottie player of the year. There's a lot of back and forth about that Wyndham Clark. You know, won two majors this year. Rory won the Masters. You know, he won him back to back. So a lot of people are giving him, you know, a little bit of a chance. But outside of the Masters, he didn't do well enough. I don't think the rest of the year to worn it with the last tournament win in the Fedex Cup. Not only did Scottie win the, you know, title, Fedex Cup title for the year, but that also gave him his third overall title for the year.

And he won two out of the last three weeks when it was the top players and only the top players in the world that were qualified to play those tournaments. And on top of that, I believe he had a total of ten top five finishes, which is, you know, ridiculously good. And he finished. I can keep going on with ends here with Scheffler, but and he finished with scoring average of less than 68 strokes per round.

Yeah. Only the second time that has ever happened in history. And if you're guessing that Tiger Woods was the other person that did it, you'd be wrong. Scottie Scheffler did it last year, so he's done it two years back to back with a sub 68 scoring average for the year which is you know just absurd. And a crazy thing is this would be his fifth player of the year. So you can't tell me that that man isn't topping the leaderboards as far as history. So it is amazing because he is the most humble person. And when you see him play and when you see him do interviews, and I was saying to Brett that I'm really enjoying watching some of the interviews because he's gotten into like ribbing some of the press and having a good time with them, because when they ask him ridiculous questions, he no longer sits back.

And like, I got to answer this question. He's like, that's a dumb question. Why are you asking me that question? And and it's funny watching some of the videos because the guys ramble on this really long question and be like, yeah, I'm not sure that made sense. And Scotty will really say to him, well, no, it didn't. So I'm not going to answer that question and he'll move on to something else. Perfect example is when they were talking about the fans this year, about some of the stuff that was going on and some of the things that were being said. He actually looked at the press and he said, I'm not here to talk about the fans. I'm here to talk about how I play golf and and the golf course.

So I love that about him. I love the fact that he's not afraid to kind of push back, but also have a little bit of fun now with with the press, because he is definitely a straight shooter. And when you see him on the golf course, you don't want to mess around. Yeah, I was I was great though. In his post-match interview while he was, you know, still out there alongside the 18th green and she was interviewing him. I did love the fact that he mentioned. And it's something that I think oftentimes did not have. Well. Most times it didn't happen with some of the top players in the world. Scheffler mentioned the fact that he's pretty stoic and focused and concentrated when he's walking around the golf course, and he said he wanted almost sent out kind of a mini apology, saying, I'm sorry to the fans that might think that I'm kind of ignoring them type of thing, he said.

But I'm really locked in and focused, and I and I try to stay in my lane that way. He goes, but he goes. I really do appreciate the cheers I hear them on despite, you know, not, you know, not answering to them. I do hear them and I feel them. It makes me play, you know better I it encourages me and so on and so forth. And he sent a big thank you out in a kind of an apology at the same time, because I know he has a lot of little kids that run up and want to give him a high five. He's walking up through and he just can't because that's how he stays locked in. But he actually made mention of the fans of how important they were to him.

And I don't think often enough, you see some of the top level players do that. The other thing that I thought was really great was there's a video out there of him sitting at the table signing a scorecard for the round, and his wife and his two kids come in and he gets super excited. That shows what kind of man he is. Like he said last week, he's a fanboy. I'm a fanboy. We love Scottie Scheffler, and we appreciate the fact that he brings not only great golf to the game, but he brings an integrity as a person to the game that is absolutely spectacular. The other thing that was pretty funny is there was a moment later on where he was with his family and he saw the camera and he literally took his hat off and he put it over the camera, and it was because he wanted time with his family without it being on camera.

And I have a lot of respect for somebody that not only plays amazing golf and has that stoic behavior, but understands that there are times not everything has to be on camera. And so it's really cool to see him put his hat over the camera, do some stuff with his kids, have a good time with his wife, and then go back and take that off and be on camera. It reminded me of a story and it just separates him from the pack. As far as celebrities in general. As we've all talked about Scotty and how good of a person he is. That is who he is at his core as a human being. You talk to people that have golf to him just as friends, you know, on the course, and you read interviews about him and stuff, and I'll say, no, that's that's how he is all the time.

He's that nice and he's that good of a guy, and so on and so forth. Versus I read a long article about Russell Wilson. Former Seattle Seahawks. Then he bounced around to a bunch of other places. Super Bowl winning quarterback put up some fantastic numbers over the course of his career. Her probably finished his career as a Hall of Famer. But I read a story about him. His public persona was that of a Scottie Scheffler. Everybody thought he was such a great guy. You know, the fans behind the scenes thought he was a great guy and so on and so forth. But come to find out, as he bounced around to these other teams, they found out he this guy's got an entourage and he wanted special treatment and all of the things that are the antithesis of what Scottie Scheffler wants.

Scottie Scheffler just wants to fit in just like everybody else. He doesn't want special treatment. He wants his play to show who he is as a person and so on and so forth. And I thought, what a remarkable, stark contrast between the two, because after reading about, you know, Russell Wilson and how the public persona is kind of a fake one, it's kind of a shell of who he really is. It was refreshing to see somebody like Scott a year after year. You know, come out. And Jake had mentioned, you know, this will be his fifth win if he wins player of the year. He busted out of the scene by winning the Byron Nelson classic, which I believe is in his hometown of Houston, if I'm not mistaken.

Anyway. But he won that in 2022 when he's won the player of the year every year since he won that tournament. He got out. That's an early in the season. Tournament early in the year. Tournament, I should say. And he just got off to once he got that first win and broke the broke the tide. He, he just kept rolling from there. And he hasn't looked back since. So an interesting fact that actually, I don't know if you know this, but Russell Wilson was actually at the Saratoga Race Track, which is literally only about 30 minutes from here, where I actually grew up. It's a huge racetrack. It's it's something that happens every summer.

But he would actually at the racetrack because he had a horse running, and that horse won its debut race. So much as you're talking about his entourage and stuff like that. I just thought that was a cool fact that he was actually at Saratoga, had his first horse race and his horse one, so that was kind of cool. But yeah, when you've got an entourage and you have all the stuff that you need and you have to do all these things, I think it's a totally different personality than what Scotty is so awesome to see that he won the Fedex Cup. I don't see how they don't give him player of the year. If they don't, I'm going to be very disappointed.

I know you will be as well. I just don't see how it it doesn't happen. I, I can't possibly the only person I could possibly see them giving it to his Windham Clark. Because he won the two majors and he did finish well in the Fedex himself. And and, you know, he had, you know, some other really good finishes throughout the course of the year. He was very consistent over the course of the year, but not the not to the level that Scotty was. No. And so another fun thing that I want to share from the Fedex Cup, if you didn't see it, was Justin Rose not only got a hole in one, but he freaking drilled that thing. And it was funny because we were talking about the fact that if you didn't hear it, you wouldn't have known that that thing hit the stick.

It was that much of a swish of a golf shot. It was unbelievable. He was super excited. But man, that thing was unbelievable to see. Like it just drilled into the cup. There was an amateur. I want to make mention of it. That I, I don't know if I've mentioned this on a previous podcast, but it happened a few weeks ago. There was a guy. I believe he was 20 something years old. He had back to back hole ones on a par three and a par four. And they said that the odds of that happening. Were 1 in 67,000,000,000. So for all of you out there who are hoping someday, you know, you can get a hole in one, just imagine what that guy is going through.

He might as well quit golf because he's never going to match that ever again. Yeah. And I'll I'll have to see if I can find that article, because that's crazy to do that back to back. And that's it was witnessed by other, you know, another group of people. So they, you know, they got to see it. They didn't know on the par four obviously, because he was hitting driver. They didn't know that, he had hit a hole in one until they got up to the hole. He thought maybe he hit it a little long. So they were looking off the back of the green originally. And then as they were backtracking towards the front of the green, one of them walked across the flagstick and saw that his ball, sure enough, was sitting in the cup.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. All right, so let's talk about where we played last weekend. So we had the opportunity to play a new course, Amsterdam Municipal Golf Course. And I'm still absolutely amazed at how nice that place was. That is one we've talked about Frear Park. We haven't yet been to, Schenectady Municipal Golf Course in the Capital Region. Amsterdam's just west of the Capital Region. By about an hour, roughly 45 minutes to an hour west of the Albany region. It's it's a it was a beautifully kept golf course. I guess the only bad thing I can say about it, and I mentioned it that day. They had a couple of roughed up tee boxes. I don't know if they're. They're normal tee boxes.

It is late in the season. So some sometimes you get where they're stretching. They're trying to stretch it out a little bit using far, far back area of the tee box or far forward, and they might not be perfectly manicured. Aside from that, their rough was perfect. To me it was a playable thickness. It wasn't punishing, like, you know, like a PGA to a type, of course would be, but it was it was a beautiful course over all the greens rolled nice and true.

The greens weren't all pitted, which was really nice. That morning, I saw lady checking. The moisture levels on the green with a, hydrometer, I believe it's called. And me being a landscaper. I thought that was pretty cool, that I saw her first thing in the morning doing that, and she said, yeah, because if we have to spot water, certain parts of greens or certain greens, she goes, we will. We'll come out with the, the fire hoses and we'll, we'll water certain sections. You don't typically see that level of detail on a municipal course. So it's pretty cool to see. And she did she actually I, I saw you over and talked to her. And then after he were done talking to her, she actually got the hose out and was watering that green.

So apparently that green needed to be watered. And it was a beautiful course that the layout is is awesome. I love, I love any course where you could stand at the restaurant or the pro shop or whatever, and see a bunch of holes out in front of you. And that's very much how this was like one you could see go out. They had a whole nine coming back and ten was kind of off to the side, but it's like you could see these back and forth holes and it was just an absolutely gorgeous. And I'll, I'll post a photo that I took. Absolutely gorgeous layout and just great. Like I said, great greens, great rough great fairways. And it's funny because people here municipal and they think, oh, it's owned by the town.

Is it really going to be taken care of? And I'll be honest with you. We've played a bunch of different ones like Fair Park, Don needs to get a sun Schenectady Don, you still got to do that. And we want to see what that's like. But we play all these different ones and we're amazed at how well they're taken care of. Yeah, I think more courses. I'm sorry. More municipalities are realizing that if they do own a golf course, that it benefits them, especially like if you're in a high populous area like the Capital Region, whether it's, you know, Freer Park being down there in Troy, you know, Amsterdam is right along the Thruway. So it's a hop, skip and a jump from a bunch of, you know, decent sized towns.

So, you know, the availability of a high number of people getting to that course is really good. I think it pays off in the long run. Literally, monetarily, the town can make a nice chunk of change. Amsterdam. Just so we don't forget, Amsterdam tore down their old restaurant, I guess area that they had built a brand new facility there for a restaurant bar, and they have a big outdoor seating area.

And when we left, they had a really good live band going. I think it was just a guy and his wife maybe, or something. She was singing, he was playing regardless. It was a it was a lady and a gentleman doing it. And they were very good. And it was, it was a nice, you know, they kept it at a decent volume so you could still have a conversation while you're sitting out in the open air. It was a covered patio. But really big barn. Been type of building. That they had for the patio so you could sit out there and stay out of the weather and stay out of the sun, but at the same time enjoy the fresh air, which was kind of cool. And so we played around with Don and a couple other friends that we went there with.

And then we went to the bar, had a meal, talked to Don. Don let us know that and I'll spoil this that we're going there next year as part of the U.S. amateur. So we're super excited to hear that. So that's part of why Don is going to these different spots is because he's trying to grow the tour. He's trying to get these new spots so that he can grow the tour. So we're super excited about that. But then we were sitting there and he turned to me and he goes, you want to do another round? And of course, his wife sitting next to me, and she didn't hear him. And I was like, are you kidding me?

Like, absolutely. It's an absolute gorgeous course. And he's like, well, if I convince Aaron, do you definitely want to play it? I'm like, good luck, I'll talk to you in a few minutes. And I laughed at how you were trying to justify it to Aaron and convincing Aaron to do it. And she said yes, and we ended up playing a second round after Don left. And I don't even think Don knows that we did that, but we ended up playing a second round. Now I didn't shoot as well as I shot the first round, but I will say I absolutely enjoyed playing that second round. Yeah, I got to give a shout out to my wife because for the last 2 or 3, well, probably three years, we've been doing a lot of double rounds, Jake and I.

Yeah. And a lot of times she's along for the first round and more often than not, she sticks around for the second and guts her way through it. Sometimes she golfs better the second round, but most often times it's her first round that she golfs the most. But I don't know very many people who like to do two rounds. To be truthful, we've asked an awful lot of people in the past and they're like, oh, I'm burnt after one. Jake and I have. We've actually maxed out at three rounds before. So in a single day, that's that can be a little that can be a little tough, especially at our advancing ages. But, we always make, you know, have a good time with it.

And it was it was nice that it was such a beautiful course to be able to go out and do it again. I actually announced before I just want to, you know, make mention of this. I announced I shot in 86 on the on the first 18, I announced that I was going to go low 80s on the second one, and sure enough, I shot in 82. I, you know, corrected some of the mistakes. And it's it's a gettable course for sure if you hit. Well, but boy, it's, it's a very fair and, I think it's a great learner's course too, because it's not super punishing. If you're a little wide with your drive, there's punch out areas that you can. I say punch out.

You can take full swings because you can be on another fairway or whatever. Have clear line of sight back onto your onto your fairway or even onto the green. So another thing that was really interesting. Now I will preface this with their scorecard is extremely confusing to deal with. Definitely talk to the pro shop, get an idea of like how to play this course because they have some really strange like upper lower things, but they actually have a part three that they had two greens.

And I remember looking at that when I was looking at 18 birdies and I'm like, they seem like they're awful close together, like somebody's going to get hit if they're hitting into that second green. And then we got there and we're like, well, we don't understand the upper, lower part and that stuff. And and we got to that. We went, oh there's two greens. You have a choice which one you shoot to. And the one was what, less than 100. And the other one was like 120. The lower one was 96 yards. And the upper one that day was 161 yards. Yeah. Us here talking, you know you know, almost a 70 yard difference. Yeah. So it was just very interesting to see that.

And what got me is I was like oh. So it was one of the early holes. I was like, oh okay. So this might be a thing we see further down the road and some other holes. Now that was the only one that had to tell. Yeah, it was a I will say that's my, my knock on the course if you're listening. Amsterdam. Your scorecard was too convoluted. It wasn't plain and drawn out. And they had different gold levels and different, you know, this and that. And it was just very, very that part of it was very, very confusing. We use an app. We like the app to correlate with the scorecard, the colors that were on the app they're showing for T boxes did not match the colors that were on the course.

So we didn't know what we were doing half the time. Yeah. And we played like I played the same tees the whole way. Jake played a mixed bag on the first round. I think he was I, I played. So part of what I'm trying to do is I've been trying to be better about playing where I should with my handicap. And so with Don's help, the director of the U.S. amateur, I'm like, okay, if we were playing this for tour, what should I play? And so he had me. I think he played white front and blue back. And so I don't really like that because blue was longer on the back, even though he was like, it's a shorter back nine.

Didn't feel like it because he put me back to blue. But the idea is he put me about 55,600 yards, and that's about where he would typically put us if we were going there for a tour stop. So I think that's something that we'll talk about in a podcast coming up that, hey, like play your handicap played at your yardage because that's important. So obviously you played what all I play blue sky blue. And then Aaron played all white. And so that gave us like it was a better a competitive thing. And I think that's the thing that we learned to do is we've learned to think about that because yeah, I like playing the longer yardage at times. But man, it sucks when you're doing triple and quadruple bogey because you're trying to hit a 550 yard par five.

Like it just sucks. And so you're like, I'd rather play up. And I know and actually we have a friend of ours at our previous course that we were at last year that used to play the upper tee box. Now I'm not going to say women's tee box. I think that's a misnomer. And we'll talk again. We'll talk about that in another podcast. Just because it's up closer, it doesn't mean it's women's, doesn't mean it's seniors. There's a misnomer that people call it that. He would actually go up and play the women's tees, and I'm going to use that because it's easier for you guys to understand because he wanted to work on his irons. And I thought that was awesome. So I think that's something we definitely should talk about.

Like, how do you figure out where you should be playing? Because there's some courses that try to help you with that, but most courses don't. The easiest way, folks, is if the USGA has a program, they start a few years ago called the Tee It Forward program. And the idea of it is they they use a seven iron as a baseline. And what you do is you tell them, you know, you go on the app and you look up, how far do you hit your seven on your on average. Because most people know, you know, it's one of those clubs that most everybody pulls out pretty frequently. So they know it's a great baseline off. If you ever get tested or I'm sorry, fitted for clubs.

Almost every fitter I know goes by seven iron is what they test you on for your irons. I don't know why that is the iron they picked, but I'm going to guess because it comes up pretty frequently. It's not quite as forgiving as a pitching wedge, but it's more forgiving than a four iron. So the fact that it's sitting right in the middle might be part of it too. But regardless, the steel forward program, they just you look up your seven iron distance, you know, if you know your seven iron distance, you look that up, they'll tell you this is the range you should be hitting in for me. I'm not supposed to be hitting whites on a lot of courses. And I realized why after I read that because I hit my seven iron, typically around 170 yards.

That's about 20 yards further than what they say the average amateur hits it. Most. Seven onions for a lot of guys are 150 yards. So they tell me I should be playing blues at a lot of courses, which puts me at like 63 to 6400 yards. I believe in that range. On tour, that's the range I'm typically playing at somewhere around there. 62 to 64, I think is my handicap group range is supposed to be. So it works out pretty well. And I think it makes it really fair. There's no point for guys that, you know, aren't scratch golfers to be playing way back at the tips. You know what, the black tees or something like that. It's kind of silly.

Yeah. And it as fun as golf can be, why make it harder on yourself than it really needs to be as your handicap gets better, or as you get better with your seven iron, you can move and you. And it's the same thing as being on tour. If I start playing better and I need to jump up to the next group, then that's how that works. But for now, I'm like, and this is why I asked on this all the time. I'm like, hey, like, we're going to this new course. What do you recommend? And he's great because he's not like where we sat down and figured out, okay, he could do this hole, this, this one, this hole, this one and mix it up.

He's like front this, back this. And I love that about him because it just makes it that much easier to do. Yeah. So yeah. So Amsterdam. Great. Course there'll be a link in the description to check out that course. Please do, because I think you'll be surprised how nice it is. And the restaurant is beautiful. Food was awesome. I really enjoyed the food and I really enjoyed doing a second round there because we haven't done a lot of double rounds this year. Not as many, not as many. So that was good.

One of our sponsors is Blueprint Leadership Development. Rob was nice enough to sponsor us and I really appreciate him doing that. If you're curious about working with a coach, if you're looking for a business coach, Rob is awesome. I've worked with him for many years. I'll have a link to his information in the description. So go down there and check that out and find out more about what blueprint leadership development is all about and what Rob can do for you and your business.

So let's go into our rule today. What do you got real quickly before we get to that, I want my golfer gripe of the day. I mentioned this to Jake on the golf course. Yeah, we had great. This will be a short one, folks. I just want to tell you something I heard on the golf course that I got to mention because it's my gripe of the day. My golfer gripe of the day is I yelled ready golf to somebody in front of us on the golf course a little while back, a few rounds ago, and when we got up close, then the guys let us pass and one of them murmured, we don't like to play fast, and I just want to explain to somebody.

I want to explain to everybody. If I could send this message out to the world and they all get it at once, that'd be fantastic. There is a humongous difference between playing fast and playing ready golf. Playing ready golf means don't be afraid to get out of your cart and walk over to your ball and get your yardage and select your club and all that. While you're playing, partner is hitting. If you're in a foursome, that foursome can be exceptionally slow, which is why I yelled it to the group in front of us before. When three guys are watching one guy hit and they're making no preparations to hit their next shot. So I don't want anybody to get the impression that I want somebody to play outside their own pace, as far as, you know, trying to run around and hit faster and blah, blah, blah.

You don't have to do that. Common sense dictates that if you separate and you walk up to your ball, you can at least get your yardage and figure out what club you're going to need and all that. While your buddies hitting there is absolutely zero point in three people watching one person hit. Now, I don't know very many people who all four golfers, you know, walk up and you know or and hit a drive that they all land in the same general area.

If you watch PGA tour golfers, they are slow, but they always play ready golf. They walk up to their ball, they're with their caddy, they're getting their yardage, they're selecting their club, all that. They're ready to hit. By the time the guy behind them hits, the guy in front of them, walks off to the side a little bit or whatever. But he's already gotten his yardage and he's already gone over it with the caddy where they want to hit. I know we don't have caddies out there as amateurs. 99% of the time, but you can still go through those same machinations. You can still go through those same preparations to get ready for your shot while your buddies hitting.

If you're directly in line of them, that's fine. Drive up next to, you know, alongside your ball, parallel to it or whatever, but way off to the side so you don't have to worry about getting, you know, hit in the back of the skull with a, you know, a skull shot, but you can be ready to hit. So that's my golfer gripe of the day. Be ready. Play ready golf. All right. Apparently I need to find a new logo because we're not doing real today. Right now we're doing Brett's gripe of the day, so we're gonna have to find a new logo. With that said, now, are you going to go into your rule today? We're going to do rule of the day. Okay.

We're doing rule. I got a great one for you folks. So Royal and Andrews, which is that's the governing body of Europe, is essentially the same as our USGA. It's it's their how they determine rules and so on and so forth. For the most part, across the board, they align with each other nearly perfect, because you're talking hundreds of years of this sport being played where they've been able to refine rules in every situation possible.

Can can come up has come up over the years and they've been able to make a rule for it. A lot of times, you know, some of the rules get really convoluted because there'll be, you know, rule 14.1 A, you know, point three point this. And so this one's really neat though. So not every golf course has made a localized rule, because courses are allowed to make localized rules about what happens when a ball enters a building.

So if they don't descriptively say in their own local rule books, what happens if a ball lands in the pro shop? The rule, technically is you can play it where it lies. It's six. It's very similar to if you hit it over a red steak, you know, a hazard mark, but the ball's playable. You don't have to take a penalty stroke. You can hit it out of there if you choose to, instead of taking the penalty stroke and playing it as an unplayable lie so you can be sitting in the middle of a clubhouse. You could be sitting in the golf course restaurant, open up some windows and doors and fire away. If that course hasn't made a specific rule.

And I'm not making this up, folks, this is if you look it up, it's the US Jay in Royal and Anderson that it is absolutely 100% a rule you can play through as they call it. So you can open up a window, open up a door. If you have a line of sight and you think you have the nerve to tackle that shot, you are technically allowed to play. Now, I'm not saying the most course they're going to let you get away with trying it, but by rights, push comes to shove, if you show in the rule book, you're in the right. Well, and I and I was going to say we added an instance that we heard about at our home course that the window got broken next to the pros office.

So if that ball had landed on his desk, technically, I guess somebody could stand on the desk and try to shoot it back out the window. Yeah, it was a like 180 yard approach shot going uphill. And the guy, I guess just misjudged and went with too many extra clubs or whatever and smoked it and put it through the side window. Right. Plopped it right in the middle of the guy's office. Oh, if it were me, I'd go ask if I could play through, and I'd go in and I'd try to chip it back out through the same broken window I already hit through, or go out the door, and then you go out the next door. There you go.

You play the roundabout approach. Oh, geez. That. Where do you come up with this stuff? I like reading. I like reading about golf specifically. I also want to do a shout out to Luxury Box. As I say every episode, it's where we get to record this. This is actually in one of the simulators that Dave has here at Luxury Box, and it's a great opportunity for us to showcase the room that we're in and showcase the screens and stuff like that, and eventually down the road, we hope to do more with the simulator to have some fun with people we have on the podcast.

But thank you, Dave, for allowing us to come here to use this facility and to record the podcast here in this room. It's a great opportunity for us, but if you're looking for somewhere to swing when it's raining out or it's cold or it's the winter, the luxury box is the place to go. All right. So let's talk about what we got coming up. So we actually have a very, very busy weekend coming up with Labor Day weekend. So it's a long weekend for us. And we've got two rounds tomorrow around Saturday and two rounds Sunday and then Monday, one round Monday. Oh yeah I didn't know about that yet, but I guess we're doing one. I haven't told you that. So apparently we're doing a lot of golf this weekend.

And and we love to do this because we don't get a lot of time this time of year to really get out and play as much as we want. It starts getting darker early. The weather starts to turn, so we make sure that we get out and play. But man, that is a lot of golf this weekend. So tomorrow, two rounds of Brookhaven. Not sure I'm really looking forward to that, but two rounds of Brook cave. And then where are we going Saturday. Saturday we're going to Apple Greens down in the Poughkeepsie area. Okay. It's kind of I guess from what I understand, it's halfway between Poughkeepsie and New Paltz, New York. It's down there in the southern part of the Catskills.

We've been there a couple times this year for other courses, some for tours, some for, you know, just for fun. Great area. It's beautiful. It's very similar to up here as far as you get a lot of wooded courses. It's mountainous, so you get a lot of sloppy courses. I've never seen this course, but it's something we're going to do debating doing for tours next year. Yeah. And I think that's the best part, is that Don loves to invite us on these opportunities to go play these different courses, because he is looking around the area and trying to find new courses to play. And so, just like he did with Amsterdam, he's doing this with Apple Greens and he's like, hey, you guys want to come and do this?

And Brett and I were planning to basically make it a golf weekend, and we're actually planning to go up north towards Vermont, maybe do some stuff there. And then he and I talked to, hey, why don't we shoot over to Massachusetts? And we decided to go to the Springfield area, and we're playing two courses over there. Yeah, I just want to send a small message out to my children that in the event that I do pass away at some point.

And I didn't leave you much for inheritance, it's because Don made me spend it all on golf. Yes. I just, I just I just want to let y'all know that. But yeah, we got two more great courses coming on after Apple greens on Saturday. We're going to go to Springfield, spend the night there, probably go out and have a nice dinner and some drinks or whatever. But Sunday we're going to get cracking early. We're doing Veterans Memorial Golf Course right in Springfield. And then a real short drive from there to chickpea. Massachusetts ought to do Chickpea Country Club, which I was planning on doing a couple of years ago and got rained out. So they gave me a rain check. We're going to see if it'll honor that.

If not, they do a phenomenal twilight rate of like $39 or something like that after 3:00 or 4:00 or whatever it is. So, we're going to have a really good time doing those two rounds. Yeah. And the best part is Don is actually decided to join us for that. So we'll be spending a lot of time with the director for the U.S. amateur talking to him. And I think part of it is he wants to see these other two courses again, see if they're worth making tour stops. So I love the fact that he goes and plays these courses. He talks to the pros and he says, hey, this is what I want to do. And all the pros are usually excited to hear that the U.S. amateur wants to come to their course.

Yeah. And the great I mean, for those of you who might be thinking to yourself, yeah, I'd like to join the tour, but everything seems too far west of me. You know, he's worth spreading out into that, you know, western Massachusetts area, because, you know, like Adams mass, places like that, they're not far at all. Even Springfield, mass. Is not terribly far from Albany. It's about an hour and 15 minutes, if I'm not mistaken. Drive. So it's, you know, a pretty quick thing as far as travel golf goes. That's a pretty quick trip. But we'll be coming to a course near you soon. You know, Don spreading east, northwest, south everywhere you can go on to try to get more eyes on our tour.

Can't say enough good things about the tour you've heard of. Say it before, and I'll say it again that it is for everybody from high handicap golfers to low handicap golfers. You weren't supposed to raise your hand on that. I'm sorry. I thought you were calling out. I had to mill the road guys like myself. The cool thing is, you always get to compete against people that are like ability, which is so important to mention.

I can't mention enough times because I don't want to go out there and golf against guys that are 15 strokes better than me on average. Jake doesn't want to do it either. No. Nobody does. You'd like to go out and feel like you can get some fire, you know, competitive fire going amongst you and your golf partners. That's the cool thing about this tour is you could be a 25 handicap and go out and win and go home, you know, with a visa gift card and win a couple skins for your flight and so on and so forth. It's a lot of fun. All right. So if you've been listening to this, we really hope that you will make sure that you like and subscribe.

And if you want to know when the new episodes come out, make sure you hit the bell on YouTube so you know that the new episodes are out. We're starting to get some really good traction. I like to see that. I appreciate everybody that has subscribed and is listening and watching what we're doing. We are really enjoying doing this and we are going to continue to do this. As I spoke about last episode, we will be going into season two. It's hard to believe that we're talking about that. But come October, it's going to be after nationals for the U.S. amateur. We're going to be going into our season two when we start the 2627 season. So I'm really looking forward to that. So I hope you'll subscribe, make sure you hit that like and make sure you hit that bell for notifications.

And with that, never leave a birdie putt short, especially on aerated greens, because then they're going to be really short.