00:00But, yeah, anyways, Wyndham gets long left of the green, and that was a defining moment, I think, of the
00:05day,
00:06because it was the first time I thought Wyndham got, like, his mind was racing.
00:10You could tell that he didn't know what to do, and Shinnecock Hills will make you feel that way,
00:15and that's what happened behind that green because he was thinking about, you know,
00:19if you weren't watching the coverage, this shot long left of the green, it is a 40-yard shot with
00:26nothing but upslope,
00:27and then as soon as you get to the upslope onto the green, it starts flattening out,
00:32and then eventually it works down off the other side.
00:34And so what are your options?
00:36Towards that bunker, right?
00:38He had three options.
00:40First option is take on the shot.
00:42Remember, he's not in the fairways, he's in some trampled down rough pizzas here.
00:48Second option, he can play out to the right towards the bunker,
00:54which if he gets the ball into the bunker, it slows the ball down, so it doesn't keep working away.
01:00Third option, there's a little sliver behind the green that's very, very narrow,
01:05and he could have played it out to the left, and then from there he could have either chipped it
01:09up
01:10and putted it up, but it was going to be at the green level.
01:12And so I thought he was going to go left.
01:16He ultimately decided to try to take the shot on, came up short,
01:20and then from there I'm thinking there's a chance that he could walk away with a 7 or an 8,
01:25but he was able to get the next one on the green, and it was a good, overall, a good
01:316.
01:32So that's the story of the one par 5 on the front.
01:35Scotty makes birdie, Wyndham makes bogey, of course.
01:38I think he's starting to get close.
01:40Sam Burns is the one who's surging the most there.
01:42It's kind of right around that time, actually.
01:43I'm thinking about when I heard that roar at the 7th hole from Sam Burns.
01:48That was right around the same time we heard the roar.
01:53And how much did that, because just from your perspective, being embedded in that group,
01:57where neither guy, either Wyndham Clark or Scotty Scheffler, had their best stuff today.
02:02We talked earlier about Scotty needing to go out and post a low number
02:06and ends up shooting, I believe, a 1 over 71 today.
02:10And Wyndham ends up with a 3 over 73, but, of course, gets it done at 4 under.
02:14But how much did what you heard around the course play into the way those guys are reacting,
02:19hearing the cheers for Sam Mothers?
02:21To be fair, man, there wasn't a ton of roars this week.
02:25Which we will talk about.
02:26It was refreshing getting one big one from Sam across the property.
02:31The only other roar I remember was Scotty's chip-in at the 14th hole the day prior.
02:37Yeah, but other than that, it was swing pickings.
02:41But then it started heating up as we went, as really the rest of the back nine.
02:46But I wouldn't characterize Scotty not having his best stuff.
02:49I thought he gave himself opportunities, just wasn't able to make a mid-range putt
02:54to get his stuff going.
02:55Yeah, it was just a momentum thing, right?
02:57Like, you have a bogey at 1, a birdie at 5, a bogey at 7, a birdie at 10, a
03:01bogey at 14.
03:03You're looking for a couple in a row, right?
03:04It was a good, I should say, he had a good iron shot at 7.
03:09And he got gusted, ends up in that front bunker, which wasn't a bad spot.
03:13But then after the bunker shot, he left it in the same bunker, hits it up to 10 feet,
03:18and makes a good bogey.
03:19Yeah.
03:19And I went and looked at the bunker after, and you could tell, like, where he hit his
03:24first bunker shot versus where he hit his second, because they don't rake in the last group.
03:28That's kind of a fun fact, is that no caddies rake in the last group, because there's nobody
03:31behind him.
03:32That's right.
03:32And I could see the difference in the depth of the divot in his first bunker shot versus
03:38his second.
03:39And I thought to myself, man, that is just a bad break.
03:43You know, he had a good bunker shot, just had no idea there was that much sand in that
03:47part versus the next.
03:48And on that next tee, I asked Ted, it was like, a lot of sand in that bunker?
03:53And he's like, yeah, holy.
03:56So anyway, sometimes it's just how it is.
03:59And honestly, it just, it was kind of a bit of a storyline of the week of the bunkers, because
04:03there were so many pebbles, and it was-
04:05Wyndham had some complaints about it yesterday.
04:07And native sand, yeah.
04:07But I think it's one of those things where, and we were going to talk about the course in
04:11depth, but, you know, at a certain point in time, you have to say, this is what
04:15Shinnecock Hills is.
04:16You know, if you can't, you can't push it to extreme degrees because the weather, to
04:21your point, can change on a dime.
04:23And you can go from, you know, these sort of light 20-mile-per-hour winds to 40 miles
04:26per hour, and then many holocases are unplayable.
04:29And the same with the bunkers.
04:30When you have winds, and when you are near the ocean, you're going to get little pebbles
04:35and rocks and things like that.
04:36You are going to get wind that takes sand out of, you know, so you have variable amounts
04:40of sand in different bunkers, depending on how protected they are by the wind on that
04:43particular hole.
04:44So I don't know where you land on that.
04:47I mean, I think that there is a view held by some that there is too much complaining.
04:53I don't know where you land on that.
Comments