Connect with us

Opinion & Analysis

Q&A: The man who started No Laying Up and #toursauce

Published

on

At times, professional golf can be a humorless enterprise, and the coverage of the sport usually follows suit. That’s where No Laying Up comes in.

A Twitter account started two years ago as well as a golf website that mainly began in 2014, No Laying Up has risen into the consciousness as a funny and witty alternative to a sometimes subdued golf media. You can find the hilarious stream of golf thoughts –especially during live tournament action — on its Twitter account @NoLayingUp.

The No Laying Up group, a team of a few golf fanatics, also prides itself on finding fresh angles on golf coverage in its website writing. The greatest example in that regard would be Tour Sauce. No Laying Up’s own invention, Tour Sauce refers to a list of actions on a golf course that only Tour pros can do without looking ridiculous. No Laying Up released Tour Sauce to the world in a magnificent four-part series (here’s Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV) and it has caught on as a Twitter phenomenon with #TourSauce. Additionally, No Laying Up coined the popular #PrayForTedScott on Twitter.

Chris Solomon, a No Laying Up co-founder and the man in charge of its Twitter account, stopped to chat with GolfWRX’s Kevin Casey about No Laying Up’s origins, its place in golf media, some #PrayForTedScott, and, of course, heaps and heaps of #TourSauce.

Kevin Casey: You guys are called No Laying Up and Zach Johnson is famous for doing the opposite, so you are pretty vocal against him on Twitter. How are you feeling after Johnson won The Open? 

No Laying Up: There’s categories of guys I don’t like. Bubba and Poulter are in a class of their own. Those are really guys I just can’t stand. I wouldn’t say my dislike for Zach Johnson is nearly as justified as it is for those two. It’s really not personal with Johnson at all, I just don’t like his style of golf. You can’t win the Masters laying-up on every par-5. We celebrate the guys who have bigger personalities and have more firepower to the game. So that’s why I wasn’t excited to see Johnson win the Open.

KC: No Laying Up is never shy to call out players, with Bubba and Poulter being the primary examples. But, as you said, it’s tougher to justify with Johnson. It seemed like there were some who attacked you on Twitter for your Zach comments. 

NLU:  I wouldn’t really say attacks, just some people were kind of surprised at how much I was hating on him Monday. But it can’t be that hard to understand, really. Plus, I have no idea what we did to get blocked by him on Twitter and that fueled it a lot more than our hate caused it. I’m not even sure what it was, but it must have been the thinnest-skinned thing in the world, because I don’t remember tweeting at him ever and then just finding out one day that he blocked us. It took Poulter an embarrassingly long time to block us. Ted Scott definitely blocked us. Steve Elkington, Brandel Chamblee and Tim Rosaforte have also blocked us. Bubba has not blocked us yet though! I commend him for it; I don’t know how he hasn’t at this point.

KC: You jokingly tweeted that you wear Johnson’s block as a “Badge of Honor.” Is there anyone who blocked you that you seriously feel that way about?

NLU: Yeah, Poulter. I was trying to earn that one. That one was completely justified. The rest of them are for thin-skinned stuff, but I worked on Poulter for a year-and-a-half and that’s one I’m pretty proud of.

KC: You’ve detailed it before, but can you go through the origins of No Laying Up?

NLU: Me and a couple of buddies, who go by the aliases Tron Carter and Big Randy, always had a group text message for many, many years talking sports, mostly golf. Some of the things my buddies came up with were just too funny to keep harnessed in our little group. The whole time with the stuff they were coming up with I was like, “We need to get this on a website, we need to do a blog.” Finally, I said enough of this and I just made the Twitter account one day. I didn’t even put any thought into the name. I just made the Twitter account, gave those two the password and I was like “Let’s try this.” We did it for a while, shared the account and just got bored with it after a year. And we were like, “We should really do something with this.” So last January we bought the domain and the four of us (including Neil at that point) started the website and decided to see if we could do some real analysis. It’s hard to get credibility on Twitter if you’re just tweeting dumb stuff all day. If you can back it up with a chance to show that you have some golf knowledge as well, it works better.

KC: So you wanted to start this to get that funny content out there, but golf coverage can be a little dry at times. Was the idea of getting this alternative out there also a factor? 

NLU: Definitely. We’re big fans of Spencer Hall and Ryan Nanni from Every Day Should Be Saturday, so that was our inspiration from the get go. Every time we write or do something on the website, our goal is for it to be something you can’t find anywhere else. Golf.com, Golf Digest and these websites will all have this same story, like some slideshow of Rickie Fowler’s girlfriend the day after he wins. We don’t want to be doing stuff that everybody else is doing. We’re not really inspired by traffic numbers; we don’t have advertisements. If 50 people read a piece and love it, we’d prefer that over 5,000 people reading it and being indifferent.

KC: When you guys first started the website, did you have any structure planned out?

NLU: We had a basic structure of we wanted to do a preview and a recap for every week. We’ve kind of axed the recap because it’s a lot harder to do a recap and not generalize everything. The previews are a lot harder to do than they look because it’s difficult to find fresh new nuggets about something like the Wells Fargo Championship. So we did have that structure in place and trying to do features once a week. But with full-time jobs on top of this, it’s hard to sit down at night and pound something out when we’ve got other stuff going on and me living on the other side of the globe in Amsterdam. That was the structure, but we also threw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what stuck. It’s always about finding a fresh angle and it’s hard to think creatively like that full time.

KC: You guys are kind of a counterculture outlet for golf. How much do you think there is a market for that audience-wise?

NLU: It’s pretty obvious that there is a space for this. Just to see how much this counterculture has grown in this last 1.5 to 2 years is great. I think a lot of us counterculture people are based on Twitter, while a lot of golf media types are website-based. They use Twitter to interface, but their job is to write. For us it’s more about having fun on Twitter and finding like-minded people to talk golf with. That’s where I spend most of my time and people on Twitter want more to be entertained than to talk serious golf all of the time. I love going on Twitter to see people’s reactions to shots in the moment. So there’s a space for this, but I mean it’s not paying the bills. I don’t have an interest in becoming a full-time golf writer and following the Tour week-to-week and pounding out deadlines. The reason golf writers have to produce all of this Tiger and click bait stuff is because that’s what pays the bills. They’re being judged by how many people go to the website and they’re balancing the line between journalism and trying to get clicks and that’s why we’re able to operate in the function we do. If we were revenue-based, we would be doing the same thing.

KC: So we need to talk about #TourSauce. Can you briefly describe how you guys came up with this concept?

NLU: It was something that my buddies and I would do on the golf course. We knew each other and our games really well and had really great matches, improved a lot over the years. We just started thinking we were better than we were. It was to the point that we were rooting for a 65 degree day when we could justify wearing pants, which is an example of Tour Sauce. It snowballed into you hit a good shot and your buddy says nice shot and instead of saying thank you, you give a tip of the hat. And we kept one-upping each other and it would turn into this hilarious side game of who could pull it off the best. It kept going and going until finally we were like, “We have to get this on paper.”

KC: You guys have done a lot of these Tour Sauce moves yourself, but some are really crazy. Like have you ever actually acted out “The Apology?”

NLU: I’ve never seen that one done. But we did have someone tweet us a picture once of hitting a ball into someone’s yard and they signed their glove and left it on their fencepost. Also, one of my friends won the member-guest at his club and after he sank the winning putt on the 18th green, his two little kids ran out onto the green and greeted him, and his wife came out and kissed him. And to top it off, he took out the flag and took it home with him. It’s funny because my mom’s totally in on it now. My dad was playing in the same member-guest this past week, and he was in second place going into the last day and she was like, “I’ve got my high-heeled boots on and I’m ready to run onto the green if he wins.”

KC: You and Kyle Porter did a Tour Sauce Power Rankings. What pros do you think have the most underrated Tour Sauce games?

NLU: [Justin] Rose was the first guy who came up there. Patrick Reed isn’t an underrated Tour Sauce guy; he’s one of the sauciest guys out there. Sergio can be really saucy, too. He’s never happy with a shot; he’s always leaning and can be pouty. Keegan Bradley can be very saucy — when he misses a putt it looks like he just found out his dog died. He’s basically got his own Tour Sauce category too with his pre-shot routine. Phil can get really saucy with how analytical he gets on a lot of his shots. Everyone has their own flavor of Tour Sauce.

KC: So #PrayForTedScott. We know its origins, but you actually first used the hashtag during last year’s Open Championship. Did you in any way expect the avalanche that followed after you first used the hashtag?

NLU: I remember some catastrophic event had happened somewhat recently and I had remembered seeing “Pray For.” But it was far enough away from that event that I felt OK making the hashtag. It was meant to be a joke about Ted being in danger because of the way Bubba treated him. I just did it and it took on a life of its own. It’s so ridiculous in a way because it all stems from that one Travelers incident. Bubba doesn’t really yell at his caddy and he’s not really hard on him, but it will always be funny to me to keep that line of jokes going forever. At the same time, I’ve never seen a player do that to a caddy, at least on camera.

KC: Did you get any DMs about #PrayForTedScott?

NLU: I’ve gotten a few messages like, “You’re doing God’s work right now.” A few of them are from players. The funniest to me is which players will favorite an anti-Bubba tweet, which is public for people to see. And you can tell right there, OK, that guy doesn’t like Bubba.

KC: No Laying Up had an excellent podcast a couple of months ago with Justin Thomas as a guest. I’m curious how did that come about? 

NLU: He started following us back in January or February and he would favorite a tweet and message us here or there. I just shot him a DM and asked him if he was interested in doing a podcast and he was down to do it. I think he appreciates the golf counterculture. He knew I wasn’t going to ask him about Spieth and run through the same narratives and everything.

KC: It seems like you’ve kept in contact with Thomas, too, as well as other Tour Sauce fans Billy Horschel and Scott Langley.

NLU: We’ll exchange messages from time to time. It’s funny, some players will DM me random things that they can’t say in public. I have some screenshots I would never take or send that would be very interesting on Twitter. It’s cool that Twitter gives you the opportunity to develop relationships with these guys. They can appreciate somebody who tells it like it is. But at the same time, Horschel is friends with Poulter, so he probably hates my Poulter stuff. I protect the guys we’re friends with. I don’t call out Thomas or Horschel on Twitter. I can definitely be criticized for being hypocritical when it comes to the guys I like. I’m very soft on them on Twitter.

KC: Are there any guys who lay up too much who aren’t really contending at the moment that you dislike?

NLU: There are certain things about guys where I’m like I’m out on you. Like, Will Wilcox, you can’t play with a yellow ball, get that off my screen. For Johnson and some of those short-hitters, the whole mindset of No Laying Up is not that you’re not allowed to lay up. When Sergio laid up on 17 at the BMW last year from like 223 yards, he can get on from anywhere he wants to, but he played with fear and laid up. That’s the kind of thing I’m most against. I’m not advising golfers to play outside their ability. It’s just that I love the guys who will go for it and be aggressive.

KC: What are your favorite Tour Sauce moments of 2015 thus far?

NLU: Probably the entire montage of Spieth yelling at his ball at the Masters. Kevin Na comes to mind on No. 17 at Sawgrass when he did the club throw and he hit it to 5 feet. Spieth also did that at Colonial when he hit it to 15 feet on the 72nd hole. Living in Amsterdam it’s tough to watch a lot of golf, so I’ve been relying on people to report Tour Sauce to me.

KC: Are there any new Tour Sauce moves you’ve noticed since writing that series?

NLU: Some will pop up. A caddy will stand over a putt with the pin behind his back, as if he’s going to putt it. If you’re my partner and you’re lining up a putt from behind the hole, I go stand over your putt as if I’m the caddy and I’m going to putt it. Another one is when you hit a shot into a blind green and you think it’s really good but there’s no applause from up around the green, you can act confused as to why there wasn’t an ovation.

KC: You’ve said that Tiger kind of invented Tour Sauce, but have you ever looked at players from previous generations in regards to purveyors of Tour Sauce?

NLU: It’s funny to go back and look at and see the old highlights from the 70s and you see guys doing the spike mark blame. Nicklaus in ’86 when he missed the putt on No. 12, he tapped down a spike mark immediately. So people always get that to me. Jack had some premature tee grab sauce for sure and he was also the purveyor of the hike-up-the-pant-leg-before-getting-the-ball-out-of-the-hole. I think he basically invented that. Palmer had all of the leaning going on and the follow through finishes and what not. Tour Sauce is not new, it’s always been there.

KC: No Laying Up is a big fan of a lot of these younger guns. I know this is a long-term projection, but how many majors do you think Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth each end up with?

NLU: This was a question I floated to Shane Bacon a while ago: Between Rory and Spieth, do they beat Nicklaus’ 18 majors? I’m confident they’ll beat Tiger’s, but I’m less sure on Nicklaus. I’ll say they each win six more majors; Rory wins 10 and Spieth wins 8. No one will ever remember to look back at that prediction, so it’s the safest one you can make. But overall, I think this will be an unbelievable rivalry for the next 10 years. It’s impossible to put into words how amazing the state of the game is.

KC: What is the future of No Laying Up?

NLU: We would love to redesign the site; we just haven’t gotten the time to actually sit down and do it. We had one design and redesigned it to what it currently is like a month later and we haven’t touched it since. I would love for the site to look a little cleaner, a little better. We have some new merchandise coming out; we’re trying to perfect the shipping and all of that process. We would love to have some towels and pullovers in the pro shop. I come up with ideas all of the time, and then I sit down to write and hate what I write. I have an arsenal of unpublished drafts. I’d like to pick the podcast game back up, but we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.

I wish my other friends with No Laying Up just had more free time because when they write, it’s some funny and really good stuff. If they had the time to dedicate to it, the website would really be something.

Your Reaction?
  • 134
  • LEGIT18
  • WOW7
  • LOL9
  • IDHT2
  • FLOP7
  • OB10
  • SHANK54

Kevin's fascination with the game goes back as long as he can remember. He has written about the sport on the junior, college and professional levels and hopes to cover its proceedings in some capacity for as long as possible. His main area of expertise is the PGA Tour, which is his primary focus for GolfWRX. Kevin is currently a student at Northwestern University, but he will be out into the workforce soon enough. You can find his golf tidbits and other sports-related babble on Twitter @KevinCasey19. GolfWRX Writer of the Month: September 2014

38 Comments

38 Comments

  1. Scott

    Jul 28, 2015 at 3:58 pm

    NLU is a pretty funny site. I could not stop laughing at the Toursauce articles

  2. John

    Jul 27, 2015 at 8:49 pm

    I am 59 years old and I think NLU is really funny. It’s a game people, not a religion. Of course the problem, Kevin, is most of the knuckleheads on here either have no sense of humor, or are so full of tour sauce that it’s impossible for them to laugh at themselves. Great read.

    Oh and by the way, if jerks like Hogan often was wouldn’t like NLU, I’m all for it.

  3. Pingback: What I’m Reading (July 27) – Kyle Porter

  4. No sauce

    Jul 26, 2015 at 9:31 pm

    Guys talking about tour players sauce sounds really…… (insert the word). Got to be one of the worst sayings so far! Definitely tops the idiots yelling BAABAABOOEY and that is saying something. Keep your talking about tour guys sauce to yourselves.

  5. Patricknorm

    Jul 26, 2015 at 6:23 pm

    Without naming names , my son is a prominent pro athlete and this is the way they talk all the time. In front of a camera it’s very professional and orderly and polite but off camera and amongst friends this is what they do. When you’re a pro you have a lot of insight into your sport because well, you’ve been doing it at the highest level for 20 years. Pros get bored by the lameness of other players, announcers and team owners.
    Let’s face it I like this guy and went to his website, read the articles, the Twitter account and it’s all authentic. Lighten guys ( male and female) it’s 2015 and if you play golf at a fairly high level like I do and play way too much and get way too serious, this is the kick in pants some commenters need.
    I been a pro athlete , hung around the guys for close to 40 years and this website is pretty close to telling it like it is. There is luge out side the ropes, lines, arena , etc.

  6. Christosterone

    Jul 26, 2015 at 4:45 pm

    I think the NLU group of writers are fairly typical of the post 1970 children…I am counted in their ranks sadly.
    NLU is a perfect microcosm of this generation….his persistent references that he is not “totally” into it and that he is so ready to point out that he is not full time nor are any of his “writers.”….or that his website is not completed or page views don’t matter or that he is over seas or blah blah blah….basically he is too cool to engage in anything thereby avoiding ownership of failure…or a lack thereof….newsflash NLU, the world is governed by metrics and generally speaking, you are what you earn…with very few exceptions.
    NLU’s mentality is typical of people who are afraid of failure…they never fully engage so are never held to the any judgment….he can simply brush aside criticism with the excuse that this is not his full time endeavor…were it to be he would be subject to failure as he would have no excuses…
    So, as I stated before, I am proud to engage fully in the pursuit of catching lightning in a bottle on a golf course…
    I can never throw on a #23 jersey and drop 63 on Larry Bird at Boston Garden….but I can play Sawgrass and maybe, just maybe drain a 20 foot snake like Tiger in 2001…and that is exciting to me…
    Hope this helps explains NLUs polarization…
    -Christosterone

    • Kevin Casey

      Jul 28, 2015 at 5:04 pm

      I definitely understand where you’re coming from here, Christosterone. I totally get why NLU is polarizing, and each side has valid reasons for standing where they do on this. It in no way confuses me why some people aren’t fans of or outright dislike NLU.

      The only thing I’ll say here is that Solomon was pretty honest in why NLU is structured the way it is. As his answer above showed, he is very aware that NLU would be a much tougher endeavor if the goal was to make money off it. As you can see in Solomon’s answers, he’s definitely not a big fan of everything with golf coverage, but he also gets that NLU would probably cover golf in a very similar way as the other sites if making money was a goal. He seems to be fully aware that if he and his friends tried to put all of their effort into making money here, they would fail and/or NLU would lose its character and become like any other golf website.

      Maybe I’m reiterating your points, I don’t know. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t see Solomon and NLU using these things as excuses. I think they just understand that NLU works best as it currently is and it really wouldn’t as a full-time money-making venture.

  7. Matthew

    Jul 26, 2015 at 3:22 pm

    The reason wrxers don’t like NLU is because they’re full of #toursauce and don’t like being made fun of

    • Christosterone

      Jul 26, 2015 at 4:09 pm

      I think many of us view the “tour sauce” crowd as being “too cool” to play aspirational golf.
      There is a zero chance I could ever be a tour player, though I’m completely excited to throw on a pair of knickers with matching foot joys and tee off at sunup to chase that perfect shot….
      And while I may never achieve it, my dream is to occasionally play a hole as well as a pro…I could never dunk a ball from the free throw line like Dr J or throw a 50 yard spiral like Brady….but on rare occasions I will catch magic in a bottle and birdie a hole or hit it to a few feet from a long way out…
      And I am ecstatic on those rare occasions….and while these guys view everything through a cynical “ironic” prism, I choose not to….unlike these guys, I am not too cool to celebrate the occasional lucky putt or hope for better shots in spite of the fact I may be 10 over par….
      -Christosterone

  8. Dean

    Jul 26, 2015 at 2:19 pm

    Wow, there are some incredibly humorless people ’round here. I bet some of you are a blast at parties.

    NLU is great, and quite funny. I hope they keep it up.

    Good article, Kevin. Trust me, some of us “get it.”

    • Kevin Casey

      Jul 26, 2015 at 2:40 pm

      Haha thanks, Dean! I don’t have any qualms with people who are against NLU. I’m obviously not one of those people but NLU is not an entity many people feel neutral about.

  9. JH

    Jul 26, 2015 at 11:23 am

    really golfwrx? these guys are a bunch of dooshcanoes. terrible article.

  10. Spikey

    Jul 26, 2015 at 3:24 am

    What a bunch of total cnuts

  11. D Louis

    Jul 26, 2015 at 2:28 am

    This site seems to decline a little more every week with really entertaining, breath taking articles like this

  12. Slimeone

    Jul 26, 2015 at 12:32 am

    Lame.

  13. Sean

    Jul 25, 2015 at 10:29 pm

    All that matters in the end is how many. It doesn’t matter how you do it. The scorecard doesn’t care.

  14. Kyle

    Jul 25, 2015 at 8:21 pm

    The part 1-4 tour sauce articles made my night. Love the tweets keep em going!

  15. Mlecuni

    Jul 25, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Anything positive ?

    • Kevin Casey

      Jul 25, 2015 at 6:48 pm

      What do you mean?

      • Mlecuni

        Jul 26, 2015 at 8:05 am

        I mean that there is more in the game of golf than unfavourable judgments with the only perspective of selling merchandise or make a joke, especialy over a two times major winner.
        I dont reconized the golf that my familly, friends and myself love in this article.

        So any construtive critisism ?

        • Kevin Casey

          Jul 26, 2015 at 10:20 am

          If you didn’t find any positivity in this article, you were not reading very closely. NLU isn’t about always saying unfavorable things. They tell it like it is, positive or negative. The point for them is to have fun. Some of their jokes have a positive connotation, others have a negative one. I certainly understand that NLU isn’t for everybody, but it’s misconstruing it to say that they are always negative.

  16. Gary Gutful

    Jul 25, 2015 at 5:21 pm

    I lay up all the time.

    #OnPar4s

    • Kevin Casey

      Jul 25, 2015 at 6:49 pm

      Haha, on a regulation PGA Tour course from the tips, I would have that same problem over and over again.

      • Steve

        Jul 26, 2015 at 7:39 am

        Regulation PGA Tour course? What is that? This isnt football or basketball where the dimensions are the same everywhere? You just keep proving your knowledge.

        • Kevin Casey

          Jul 26, 2015 at 10:47 am

          I’m curious about this, Steve. Does your dislike for me all stem from that one disagreement we had over the Road Hole? If so, that is really strange and petty. People disagree all the time, there’s no way to have any lasting friends if every time you don’t see eye-to-eye with someone on one issue you treat them as a new enemy.

          But that’s just one option. I feel what’s more likely is that you’ve disliked me for a long time, and it first bubbled up in comments on the Road Hole argument. I can understand this option far more than the first one. But yeah, I am legitimately curious which one of these strikes closer to the truth.

          Anyway, all I meant by regulation was your average PGA Tour course. They’re obviously not all the same, but they all tend to be far longer than the courses I play (where the tips are maybe 6,600 or 6,700 yards at most) and have much more trouble (narrower with more trees and bunkers, and rough that is actually somewhat penal). I really don’t see why there was any need to gripe over my phrasing here.

          • Steve

            Jul 26, 2015 at 1:25 pm

            You seemed to know very little, but come off that you know alot. Just in you recent articles. 1. You think a hole in a major championship that is playing over par isnt fair. 2. You pick someone as a favorite to win the Canadian open, that wasnt in the field. 3. You think there are regulation pga tour golf courses.

            • Kevin Casey

              Jul 26, 2015 at 2:03 pm

              So from what you’re saying, it seems like the first scenario I offered for your dislike is pretty much correct, which is very strange…

              As for your points, 1. You just did not get my argument about that hole on Thursday. At all. That is clear from your statement. 2. That’s fair, for the most part. I did offer a mea culpa on that, it was a dumb mistake and I own up to it. Although, I didn’t pick him as a favorite. I put him on one of my DK rosters. If I could have picked 12 players with no restrictions, Pettersson wouldn’t have been on there. But there’s a salary cap to rosters and I have to choose players who are further down on the scale in a field. Regardless definitely a stupid error that I regret. 3. Once again, you’re just not getting it. I already explained what I meant by that phrase.

              • Patricknorm

                Jul 26, 2015 at 6:28 pm

                Hey Kevin I’m a big fan of yours and keep up,the good work. It’s like any pro sport. You’re closer to golf pros more than anyone of us will know and everybody has an idea. But they don’t know. I have a son who’s been a pro for,10 seasons in another sport, makes well over seven figures and it amazes me all,the time when people argue with me about his sport. They think they know but don’t. That’s what you’re up against every time you write and article it seems. Hang in there.

            • The Infidel

              Jul 30, 2015 at 8:14 am

              Steve – Take it somewhere else or get therapy. Those are your big boy options.

  17. Ryan

    Jul 25, 2015 at 3:40 pm

    Doesnt surprise me that a few WRXers are too dense to get NLU. Great interview, Kevin.

    • Kevin Casey

      Jul 25, 2015 at 6:49 pm

      Appreciate it, Ryan! Helps to have a great subject like Solomon and NLU.

  18. Jang Hyung-sun

    Jul 25, 2015 at 3:29 pm

    Ben Hogan is spinning in his grave over this nonsense.

    • Christosterone

      Jul 26, 2015 at 9:20 am

      I sadly do a lot of these…though to defend the pants pull up, I have ripped a crotch seam getting a ball out of the cup so at least I have an excuse on that one…
      -Christosterone

  19. ABgolfer2

    Jul 25, 2015 at 3:19 pm

    There is no wrong way to win the Masters as long as the winner plays by the rules and displays proper etiquette.

  20. TJS

    Jul 25, 2015 at 11:53 am

    “You can’t win the Masters laying up on all par 5’s.” Yeah this quote is so special since he’s talking about the guy who actually won the Masters doing just that…not a very informed group of “Golf fanatics.” Should’ve ended the interview right there…idiots.

    • Kevin Casey

      Jul 25, 2015 at 12:06 pm

      Solomon very well knows that ZJ won the Masters doing exactly that. Look at what he says in the sentences around that one. Context there makes it pretty obvious that what he’s saying here is that he sees winning the Masters by laying up on every par-5 as blasphemy, as the wrong way to do it. He knows it can and has been done, what he’s saying is that he doesn’t like seeing it done that way.

      I can see how that sentence could be misconstrued on a quick read, but if you pay attention closely to everything said in that response, you’ll see what he’s trying to say there.

    • Matto

      Jul 27, 2015 at 6:44 am

      It was said in the same vein as the “you can’t play golf with a yellow ball.”
      Well, obviously…you can.

      • Kevin Casey

        Jul 27, 2015 at 8:57 pm

        Exactly. You said it much better and quicker than I did haha

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Instruction

The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

Published

on

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply.  Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean.  Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

More from the Wedge Guy

Your Reaction?
  • 0
  • LEGIT0
  • WOW0
  • LOL0
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP1
  • OB0
  • SHANK0

Continue Reading

19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open betting preview

Published

on

As the Florida swing comes to an end, the PGA Tour makes its way to Houston to play the Texas Children’s Houston Open at Memorial Park Golf Course.

This will be the fourth year that Memorial Park Golf Course will serve as the tournament host. The event did not take place in 2023, but the course hosted the event in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Memorial Park is a par-70 layout measuring 7,432 yards and features Bermudagrass greens. Historically, the main defense for the course has been thick rough along the fairways and tightly mown runoff areas around the greens. Memorial Park has a unique setup that features three Par 5’s and five Par 3’s.

The field will consist of 132 players, with the top 65 and ties making the cut. There are some big names making the trip to Houston, including Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Tony Finau, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala.

Past Winners at Memorial Park

  • 2022: Tony Finau (-16)
  • 2021: Jason Kokrak (-10)
  • 2020: Carlos Ortiz (-13)

In this article and going forward, I’ll be using the Rabbit Hole by Betsperts Golf data engine to develop my custom model. If you want to build your own model or check out all of the detailed stats, you can sign up using promo code: MATTVIN for 25% off any subscription package (yearly is best value). 

Key Stats For Memorial Park

Let’s take a look at several metrics for Memorial Park to determine which golfers boast top marks in each category over their last 24 rounds:

Strokes Gained: Approach

Memorial Park is a pretty tough golf course. Golfers are penalized for missing greens and face some difficult up and downs to save par. Approach will be key.

Total Strokes Gained: Approach per round in past 24 rounds:

  1. Tom Hoge (+1.30)
  2. Scottie Scheffler (+1.26)
  3. Keith Mitchell (+0.97) 
  4. Tony Finau (+0.92)
  5. Jake Knapp (+0.84)

Strokes Gained: Off the Tee

Memorial Park is a long golf course with rough that can be penal. Therefore, a combination of distance and accuracy is the best metric.

Total Strokes Gained: Off the Tee per round in past 24 rounds:

  1. Scottie Scheffler (+0.94)
  2. Kevin Dougherty (+0.93)
  3. Cameron Champ (+0.86)
  4. Rafael Campos (+0.84)
  5. Si Woo Kim (+0.70)

Strokes Gained Putting: Bermudagrass + Fast

The Bermudagrass greens played fairly fast the past few years in Houston. Jason Kokrak gained 8.7 strokes putting on his way to victory in 2021 and Tony Finau gained in 7.8 in 2022.

Total Strokes Gained Putting (Bermudagrass) per round past 24 rounds (min. 8 rounds):

  1. Adam Svensson (+1.27)
  2. Harry Hall (+1.01)
  3. Martin Trainer (+0.94)
  4. Taylor Montgomery (+0.88)
  5. S.H. Kim (+0.86)

Strokes Gained: Around the Green

With firm and undulating putting surfaces, holding the green on approach shots may prove to be a challenge. Memorial Park has many tightly mowed runoff areas, so golfers will have challenging up-and-down’s around the greens. Carlos Ortiz gained 5.7 strokes around the green on the way to victory in 2020.

Total Strokes Gained: Around the Green per round in past 24 rounds:

  1. Mackenzie Hughes (+0.76)
  2. S.H. Kim (+0.68)
  3. Scottie Scheffler (+0.64)
  4. Jorge Campillo (+0.62)
  5. Jason Day (+0.60)

Strokes Gained: Long and Difficult

Memorial Park is a long and difficult golf course. This statistic will incorporate players who’ve had success on these types of tracks in the past. 

Total Strokes Gained: Long and Difficult in past 24 rounds:

  1. Scottie Scheffler (+2.45)
  2. Ben Griffin (+1.75)
  3. Will Zalatoris (+1.73)
  4. Ben Taylor (+1.53)
  5. Tony Finau (+1.42)

Course History

Here are the players who have performed the most consistently at Memorial Park. 

Strokes Gained Total at Memorial Park past 12 rounds:

  1. Tyson Alexander (+3.65)
  2. Ben Taylor (+3.40)
  3. Tony Finau (+2.37)
  4. Joel Dahmen (+2.25)
  5. Patton Kizzire (+2.16)

Statistical Model

Below, I’ve reported overall model rankings using a combination of the five key statistical categories previously discussed.

These rankings are comprised of SG: App (24%) SG: OTT (24%); SG: Putting Bermudagrass/Fast (13%); SG: Long and Difficult (13%); SG: ARG (13%) and Course History (13%)

  1. Scottie Scheffler
  2. Wyndham Clark
  3. Tony Finau
  4. Joel Dahmen
  5. Stephan Jaeger 
  6. Aaron Rai
  7. Sahith Theegala
  8. Keith Mitchell 
  9. Jhonnatan Vegas
  10. Jason Day
  11. Kurt Kitayama
  12. Alex Noren
  13. Will Zalatoris
  14. Si Woo Kim
  15. Adam Long

2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open Picks

Will Zalatoris +2000 (Caesars)

Scottie Scheffler will undoubtedly be difficult to beat this week, so I’m starting my card with someone who I believe has the talent to beat him if he doesn’t have his best stuff.

Will Zalatoris missed the cut at the PLAYERS, but still managed to gain strokes on approach while doing so. In an unpredictable event with extreme variance, I don’t believe it would be wise to discount Zalatoris based on that performance. Prior to The PLAYERS, the 27-year-old finished T13, T2 and T4 in his previous three starts.

Zalatoris plays his best golf on long and difficult golf courses. In his past 24 rounds, he ranks 3rd in the category, but the eye test also tells a similar story. He’s contended at major championships and elevated events in the best of fields with tough scoring conditions.  The Texas resident should be a perfect fit at Memorial Park Golf Club.

Alex Noren +4500 (FanDuel)

Alex Noren has been quietly playing some of his best golf of the last half decade this season. The 41-year-old is coming off back-to-back top-20 finishes in Florida including a T9 at The PLAYERS in his most recent start.

In his past 24 rounds, Noren ranks 21st in the field in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, 30th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green, 25th in Strokes Gained: Total on long and difficult courses and 21st in Strokes Gained: Putting on fast Bermudagrass greens.

In addition to his strong recent play, the Swede also has played well at Memorial Park. In 2022, Noren finished T4 at the event, gaining 2.2 strokes off the tee and 7.0 strokes on approach for the week. In his two starts at the course, he’s gained an average of .6 strokes per round on the field, indicating he is comfortable on these greens.

Noren has been due for a win for what feels like an eternity, but Memorial Park may be the course that suits him well enough for him to finally get his elusive first PGA Tour victory.

Mackenzie Hughes +8000 (FanDuel)

Mackenzie Hughes found himself deep into contention at last week’s Valspar Championship before faltering late and finishing in a tie for 3rd place. While he would have loved to win the event, it’s hard to see the performance as anything other than an overwhelming positive sign for the Canadian.

Hughes has played great golf at Memorial Park in the past. He finished T7 in 2020, T29 in 2021 and T16 in 2022. The course fit seems to be quite strong for Hughes. He’s added distance off the tee in the past year or and ranks 8th in the field for apex height, which will be a key factor when hitting into Memorial Park’s elevated greens with steep run-off areas.

In his past 24 rounds, Hughes is the best player in the field in Strokes Gained: Around the Greens. The ability to scramble at this course will be extremely important. I believe Hughes can build off of his strong finish last week and contend once again to cement himself as a President’s Cup consideration.

Akshay Bhatia +8000 (FanDuel)

Akshay Bhatia played well last week at the Valspar and seemed to be in total control of his golf ball. He finished in a tie for 17th and shot an impressive -3 on a difficult Sunday. After struggling Thursday, Akshay shot 68-70-68 in his next three rounds.

Thus far, Bhatia has played better at easier courses, but his success at Copperhead may be due to his game maturing. The 22-year-old has enormous potential and the raw talent to be one of the best players in the world when he figures it all out.

Bhatia is a high upside play with superstar qualities and may just take the leap forward to the next stage of his career in the coming months.

Cameron Champ +12000 (FanDuel)

Cameron Champ is a player I often target in the outright betting market due to his “boom-or-bust” nature. It’s hard to think of a player in recent history with three PGA Tour wins who’s been as inconsistent as Champ has over the course of his career.

Despite the erratic play, Cam Champ simply knows how to win. He’s won in 2018, 2019 and 2021, so I feel he’s due for a win at some point this season. The former Texas A&M product should be comfortable in Texas and last week he showed us that his game is in a pretty decent spot.

Over his past 24 rounds, Champ ranks 3rd in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and 30th in Strokes Gained: Total on long and difficult courses. Given his ability to spike at any given time, Memorial Park is a good golf course to target Champ on at triple digit odds.

Robert MacIntyre +12000 (FanDuel)

The challenge this week is finding players who can possibly beat Scottie Scheffler while also not dumping an enormous amount of money into an event that has a player at the top that looks extremely dangerous. Enter McIntyre, who’s another boom-or-bust type player who has the ceiling to compete with anyone when his game is clicking on all cylinders.

In his past 24 rounds, MacIntyre ranks 16th in the field in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, 17th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green and 10th in Strokes Gained: Total on long and difficult courses.

MacIntyre’s PGA Tour season has gotten off to a slow start, but he finished T6 in Mexico, which is a course where players will hit driver on the majority of their tee shots, which is what we will see at Memorial Park. Texas can also get quite windy, which should suit MacIntyre. Last July, the Scot went toe to toe with Rory McIlroy at the Scottish Open before a narrow defeat. It would take a similar heroic effort to compete with Scheffler this year in Houston.

Ryan Moore +15000 (FanDuel)

Ryan Moore’s iron play has been absolutely unconscious over his past few starts. At The PLAYERS Championship in a loaded field, he gained 6.1 strokes on approach and last week at Copperhead, he gained 9.0 strokes on approach.

It’s been a rough handful of years on Tour for the 41-year-old, but he is still a five-time winner on the PGA Tour who’s young enough for a career resurgence. Moore has chronic deterioration in a costovertebral joint that connects the rib to the spine, but has been getting more consistent of late, which is hopefully a sign that he is getting healthy.

Veterans have been contending in 2024 and I believe taking a flier on a proven Tour play who’s shown signs of life is a wise move at Memorial Park.

 

Your Reaction?
  • 13
  • LEGIT1
  • WOW1
  • LOL0
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP0
  • OB0
  • SHANK1

Continue Reading

Opinion & Analysis

Ryan: Why the race to get better at golf might be doing more harm than good

Published

on

B.F. Skinner was one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century, developing the foundation of the development of reinforcement, and in doing so, creating the concept of behaviorism. In simple terms, this means that we are conditioned by our habits. In practical terms, it explains the divide between the few and far between elite instructors and college coaches.

To understand the application, let’s quickly review one of B.F. Skinner’s most important experiments; superstitions in the formation of behavior by pigeons. In this experiment, food was dispensed to pigeons at random intervals. Soon, according to Skinner, the pigeons began to associate whatever action they were doing at the time of the food being dispensed. According to Skinner, this conditioned that response and soon, they simply haphazardly repeated the action, failing to distinguish between cause and correlation (and in the meantime, looking really funny!).

Now, this is simply the best way to describe the actions of most every women’s college golf coach and too many instructors in America. They see something work, get positive feedback and then become conditioned to give the feedback, more and more, regardless of if it works (this is also why tips from your buddies never work!).

Go to a college event, particularly a women’s one, and you will see coaches running all over the place. Like the pigeons in the experiment, they have been conditioned into a codependent relationship with their players in which they believe their words and actions, can transform a round of golf. It is simply hilarious while being equally perturbing

In junior golf, it’s everywhere. Junior golf academies make a living selling parents that a hysterical coach and over-coaching are essential ingredients in your child’s success.

Let’s be clear, no one of any intellect has any real interest in golf — because it’s not that interesting. The people left, including most coaches and instructors, carve out a small fiefdom, usually on the corner of the range, where they use the illusion of competency to pray on people. In simple terms, they baffle people with the bullshit of pseudo-science that they can make you better, after just one more lesson.

The reality is that life is an impromptu game. The world of golf, business, and school have a message that the goal is being right. This, of course, is bad advice, being right in your own mind is easy, trying to push your ideas on others is hard. As a result, it is not surprising that the divorce rate among golf professionals and their instructors is 100 percent. The transfer rate among college players continues to soar, and too many courses have a guy peddling nefarious science to good people. In fact, we do at my course!

The question is, what impact does all this have on college-age and younger kids? At this point, we honestly don’t know. However, I am going to go out on a limb and say it isn’t good.

Soren Kierkegaard once quipped “I saw it for what it is, and I laughed.” The actions of most coaches and instructors in America are laughable. The problem is that I am not laughing because they are doing damage to kids, as well as driving good people away from this game.

The fact is that golfers don’t need more tips, secrets, or lessons. They need to be presented with a better understanding of the key elements of golf. With this understanding, they can then start to frame which information makes sense and what doesn’t. This will emancipate them and allow them to take charge of their own development.

Your Reaction?
  • 14
  • LEGIT4
  • WOW1
  • LOL2
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP1
  • OB0
  • SHANK11

Continue Reading

WITB

Facebook

Trending