Golf is the thing. Anything in golf that doesn't change, anything that changes the best in playing? Does this man a one time winner on the PGA Tour? The point Alan is he didn't go Hollywood. You need a fourth Before we get to the episode, we should tip our caps to echo our corporate sponsors here. And of course Lydia Co the New World Number one is a long time Echo ambassador. Michael, do you do you know my affection for Lydia and I share it? Just a charming person and an outstanding golfer. You've done her far better than I. What can you tell us about her? Well? I still have her hat from the Olympics in Rio is his gorgeous New Zealand hat, and asked her I could keep it. She said yes. But one time I was talking to her, I said, where does your power come from? She says, it's from the ground. You know, It's like a really old school thought. And she has beautiful footwork. And I always you're seeing the club and she's like she's dancing. And as I'm as I'm observing this, I always noticed her her Echo biome shoes like they just seem to give her superpowers. Have you observed anything along those lines. Well, you know what the great teachers say, there's only one thing that connects you to the ground in this game, and that's your They don't say your echo shoes, but in this case it is her echo shoes. So that's pretty cool. The secret to Lydia Ko's success along with many other talents. But she's wearing the right footwears all right back to need a fourth Okay, so fun guests today. He uh, it's a hey, has one on the European Tour professional golf, has one on the europe and two, has one in Asia, has one professional golf tournaments in Australia, and it's currently I think you guys know who this is. But Um ranked by Today's Golf and Magazine a seventy nine most influential person in golf. Um one behind one behind one behind um Alan Actually, well is not committed the entire list to memory, you know, and had a tattooed on my forearm. That makes it easier. But Gulf Coast architect Great Rota, one of the more intelligent voices in golf, Well, this gets easier, Jeff, because we know about your your design history and your friendships and is this person the tournament director of the sand Belt Classic, your founder, very very involved in the sand Belt invitation. That would be one Mike Clayton. Clayton, welcome, thank you. Interesting. What's been going on? What do you uh, what have you been doing? Um? Well, it's January and Melbourne, so nothing happens, right. So I've been watching a bit of tennis. I went to the key On Classic Tennis Tolman last week and watched Andy Murray play dam at All. And I watched Taylor Fitz, big tall guys. I was sitting with someone I knew about tennis. Taylor Fitz, that American kid was from California, right was playing Alexei Popper in Australian Russian. Australian who was I'm gonna said, this is a future of tennis. Six ft five long limbs, just smashing it. So, um, it's kind of I always liked watching tennis. It's fun. I watched Keon was the first place I heard an American accent. And I heard Billy jen King say grass when I was like nine sixty. I was not knowing sixty four. I've never heard an American accent because we we didn't have a TV at home. So Billy Jane King was the first American accent I ever heard of Kong. My mom took me there and like the mid sixties probably, So I went there a lot and watched the Strand Open. There are a lot of watching You can play corners, and so that's what I've been doing, really, and playing golf in s Andrew's Beach, which is always fun. Page plays golf every day usually still every day. Yeah, most days. I mean even if I go and play five or six holes, you know, jumped the back fence and Sandraw's Beach and duck out in the twelth hold and play five or six holes, yeah, because I just I've got an old set of ram golden Ram irons stuck in the bag last week, which is kind of They're fun Tom Watson style Tom Watson grinder with a square toes and high toes. Yeah. So I've been playing with them, which has been interesting. Three I like crop of three irons. Good. They weren't that hard hard to hit that? No they're not. I mean you smash it. No, they're not that hard to hit it already. And all this modern stuff just dumbs us down right and you think in some ways big head of drivers that are just like, I mean, you hit a good driver to say, yes, so what But someone said, what you're driving it? Well, I said if I was, if I was seeing these drives with my old Cleveland Classic, I would be driving it. Well, this doesn't count. This is cheating hitting it with this thing. It's true. But if you saw a four handicap or a tin handicap hit a modern driver next to Rory mcarrowy hitting the driver, you still realize there's a fast skill gap there, like it's still quite hard to drive. Oh yeah, that's just it's ridiculous. How sure I hit it. I might play with these the old guys I play and I think I'm kind of a reasonable hitter. And I go and played with Lucas or you and they hit at a hundred yards past me. It's like, it's ridiculous. Yeah, anyway, So that's what I've been doing. Good fun. January is always great in Melbourne because it's tennis and the weather is nice and it's kind of every one's a holidays and the golf courses are great because it's the best time of the year for the golf course. So it's and people visit the people down. Lawrence Donnegan was down with his son playing the Master with the amateurs, so we played a bit and in fact he came down for Christmas, so we played the Sand Belt Tom and then stay for Christmas and then played Southern and I had to go back to school, which was unfortunate. Probably better in Melbourne and Scotland and January. Um so more importantly, how good a caddy with Michael Bamberger. Well, he never caddy for me, but um, it was always it always seemed very competent. You know, I think there were um which has already had to be right unless you're a squirrel. I mean, I mean squirrel cave for me quite a lot. Then he came for you obviously for years. But there are a few guys like that who were great. But um, if you weren't in that great category, then competent, nice guy who turned up and was arrived was already needed. Right for the listeners set the scene? I mean, what year, what tour like? When did you get a glimpse of bamburger? You know as a looper? Is this really necessary? I'm trying to remember. I'm pretty sure because Steve Elkington and I traveled a bit that year he played in Europe. In fact, we were we were rooming together in Sweden watching the We didn't get out on Sunday night and we were watching the the Bob Toy Bunker shot it and that was six It was am I right, it was a Bob. We watched the Bob Twin Bunker shot against Greg Norman in a hotel room in Foster Borow and Melmo and Swade were playing it Falster anyway, So um, I think I remember Michael, it wasn't there long. You were riding the Green Road home right when you were cutting for facts and you came to Europe for a bit, and were you in then in five Saint George as I was yeah, yeah, ready six five right, yeah eighty five? Yeah you qualified synt Ports now, I believe it or not. I was the exempt. I've made the top twenty on alisy Ere before, so I was come on totally there the one time. I wasn't example very often. But so who did you work for there? Jimmy Hall who was an American. He was on his honeymo when he was twenty two and Royal synt Ports is you guys must know it. Uh, you're Jeff great golf course. Uh. We're trying not to use the F word in a in abusive ways here, but I have to share one abusing thing. Uh. One of the years they were playing at some ports I think it was here, Darren Clark one so many years later, whenever that was. And Mike Donald's, you guys know, was a great friend of mine, and we were playing at Saint Ports and Mike never played there before. In Mike's port fan but in a very humorous, in appropriate way, he says, I don't know what the funk they got next door here, but there's no fucking way it's harder than this fucking golf course. Do you guys remember the caddy, Lauren, what you would I don't think you took Alan might not, but Mike definitely. Lauren Duncan of course, Yeah we still um, we still yeah, we still message each other a lot. Uh. In I was saying, I think the checkers in it was a little motel right on the same ports course, and then went out one night for for evening golf and Dave mcneally Lauren Duncan were on the course a three old road again and again. You know, literally stays light till mont Derby, almost probably ten o'clock at night. And I've been around a lot, and but for whatever reason, I've only seen Lauren Duncan once in my entire life, and it was that evening in a Royal Simports. So just last year I was moved to right to Lauren and asked him if he remember that evening. Dave McNeilly, I've seen hundred plus times since then, and I said, by any chance, to remember that evening and he said, not only remember the evening. We started the evening at we started the afternoon at Royal St George's. Amon Darcy gave mcneili and me a lift from Royal St George's to our caravan park and we took this back road and you guys might know the back road. It's very rural and Amon Darcy stopped the car to look at a cow with a large head. It's like, how random can't you be that I selected one night of thousands and thousands, said you remember that a Dorsey stopped the car to look at a calibl lark. But I shared the story because Mike especially would appreciate that really was that little story probably captures a lot about the European Tour because Duncan cared there are a lot he was for obviously standard in that. Remember he dressed up in the plus fours in the bow tie when he came for Stadler in three, when he played with Watson the last day, and I mean, Dunk was great. He came for me a lot. He was a really interesting guy. I was told him, you should have been a school teacher, had been an amazing school teacher because he was really smart and he just had a great personality and I could explain stuff and had a great view of the world. And he came from it. Was a terrific guy. And he's living in he's getting ready to play golf. Last week when I was messaging him, he's living in down in Scottsdale. So um, he's going. Well done. I wish he came more, but he's kind of done with it. He's fed up with it. I mean that that's such a romanticized era in Gulf kind of the eighties. On the European Tour, you had all all these Hall of famers coming through and the Ryder Cut became, you know, the super Bowl of golf and it still feels like it was a little wild and wooly out there. I mean, was it as much fun Mike to be a part of it as as it is for those of us to kind of look back and try and and try and recreat it and imagine what it was. It was. You don't realize that at the time it was luck the Australian Tour at the same time when Greg was playing in the tour was flying and the Graham Marsh and David Graham and I'm share are lots of great place down here. But yeah, Europe was um, I'm gonna trouble was much better organized. By the mid eighties, Randy Fox was Randy had everything pretty organized. We would turn up a terminal one that you know, six thirty on Tuesday morning, British wise and fly to somewhere Stockholm, madrad Ord, Paris and pick us up in a bust and tuck us the golf course when to play a practice around and go to the hotel. And it was fine. It was We didn't know it was pretty organized, but it was. Looking back, it was great fun. And you don't realized how great that era was until you look back on it and when you had you know, savvy fellow lil Anger was he Monty a little later a Lazabel just to touch later. But there are amazing players. It was a great era and lots of Sam Tyrens and Mark James and Ken Brown and Darcy and you know that the second tier in Europe was it was a it was a busloader Gordon Brandon Jr. Because we were really good players. So it was a fun area to play. And the courses were we play. We're playing Portmarik and Walton Heath and Stangingdale and Shawn Ty and Foster bro and put it the Hero in Madrid, so we put a lot of good golf courses too. So it was what was you know, no one apart from the real stars made any great great amounts of money. It was a great ear to be a part of. And not just great players, but like big personalities right like these are these are Hall of Fame talkers and racing tours and I mean it was was the camaraderie you know that uh palpable. I mean, obviously we're trying to beat each other, but it seems like you kind of moved into caravan and there was there was there was a lot more hanging out and a lot more together and it's yeah, there was. I mean the Australians all we were boringly. We all finished up buying houses and Bagshot just just ten minutes down the road from Sangandale. But that wasn't until the late eighties really, So in the mid eighties when Michael was there first, we were just on the road. Every week. We would go to the Holiday Inn in London. We would check in at the South Africains John Bland and David Frost and Bioki and Petter Fowler and Nobelow and Turner. We were just checking into the Holiday And in London on Sunday night and go out and it on Monday Tuesday, and so we so no one really took a week off because what else were you going to do? So I played in I laugh at these guys who were tired. After three weeks we started in the Tasmanian Open in Milton, Tasmania. Obviously in January I played twenty three out of twenty four weeks in seventeen countries, because um, what else were we going to do? So we went four or five in Australia, then straight to Asia and went from Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, career, Japan and then straight to a week off when stayed with Jamie crowin San Diego, when Tom and Jamie was still living in San Diego and Cobra was well, Cobra was four, so Coba was sort of just getting going then really you know that he was making some great clubs, and so we had a week in San Diego and and then we went to Europe and started playing over there. That was Jamie's first year in Europe, so it was um and we just kept playing. So it was kind of wild, really, Jeff, do you I feel like you're born in the wrong era because I kind of picture you, you know, as one of a throwback guy who would have loved Barnes drolling around and playing with the old equipment on its wild and wily courses like H twenty four doesn't sound any fun, um, but I played Europe late nineties and you could see what it was like. It's still kind of was that. Uh, it was just a group, the players and the caddies and even the equipment reps and the rules officials. We all just you're all in a foreign country together, right, So you're all together and you just everyone stay in the same hotel. There'll be a caddy hotel and a player hotel and all the players. You just go down to the bar and the hotel at some point at six thirty or something, fine, three or four people and go out to dinner. It might be different people every night, So within three months you know the whole two and you're sort of part of it. It's sort of probably why the Ryder Cup has been so strong from the European side, because they're just together. You know, that's not a team, it's not a tour of individuals. At least it wasn't then. Um, it was just great fun. You know, you'd land on the plane, you'd fly from Heathrow, There'll be fifty people on the plane, players and caddies and you landed zero Airport or something and going to Crown and there'd be a coach bus trying to take us to the course two hours. And once people are on the bus, especially the caddies, they're like just telling the driver, who's some Swiss guy, just go, just go. Everyone's here, just go. So if you didn't get your bags first, you could. The bus would just go and you would just be stuck two hours away from where you were going to go. Stuff like that. Um, and you're getting sixty people on a forty seat bus and people are sitting on golf bags, and you know, there's this really what I wanted to do, But it was just incredible fun. Um. As good as it is to get handed the keys of a brand new car every week and stay on your own and do your own thing, it's way more fun to do it the old schoolway. So yeah, it would have been brilliant fun. But I'll take my era. Yeah, in Switzerland, I got. I hated that golf course. Just the most beautiful place in the world. That view from the seventh hole is probably the best, most beautiful view in golf looking down the mountains. I don't know how many miles you can see from from that. To you, it must be tens of miles down that, but one of the worst holes we've ever seen. It's just a heart miserable. I hated that golf course. Um. I always about to go there and not play, just go there for the weekend, just not playing like you remember the remember the course southside of Florence. I think it was called I remember, yeah, yeah, I do, yeah, yeah, Colin burn caddy for me. That who was Colin was a great friend of Duncan's. That Colin Kadi for Goosen when he won both his opens. But remember Colin coming for me there. But great ice cream in Florence. So it was an US weight great os cream. Yeah, I think to your point, but both jump it and Mike, you know, uh, of course all four of us missed, you know, the tour as the tour in the US when it was really the tour, but European in Europe in the eighties, Mike, when you got definitely was really a tour. And what you're describing is is golf without an entourage. The entourage was the tour, and all the tour was was you know, John Cardmore and fifty caddies and ninety players. Uh, that's about it. A couple of equipment guys being had an equipment guy. But it was and you know, the currency changed every week, and it felt like I've been interesting to talk to the guys who played in the sixties in Europe in the seventies. But I guess Jack was a big style. But it felt like, yeah, we were playing with some of the best players in the world, which was probably the first time that had happened in Europe. Sevy and transformed that tour through his presence, and you know that those other guys fell down and Langer and as great as they were, got dragged along by Sevy because he was he was just the guy every weekend. It was everyone loves Sevy. I mean, he was amazing and it was he I'm sure he had his moments, his appearance, money fights, and he's you could get a bit cranky at times, but you know, there were how do you imagine how much pressure was on him to being the main guy there. Not every didn't play every week, but every week he played, he was the main guy there, like Tiger was, you know, expected to win. You know, you can't miss the cut because all the people are gonna turn up on the weekend and what you play. So there's a lot of pressures on him that we didn't really appreciate, probably, but he handed it brilliantly and it was such a great player to watch. I mean, God, I wish I could see him play again. What's your best Sevy story? There were lots of seventy stories. I mean, the best service to there his shots, just watching his shots. But um, we were, you know, we were in a car. Not that sappens very often, but we're in a car. One was going back to the airport or something. We just finished at the same time. We jumped out a car and at the airport and I asked him, so, what was the best shot you ever hit? Without even thinking about He said the chip at Letham. I said, I said, what about the three wood in the Ryder Cup? He said, the chip was for me. That was for the team. The chip was for me, which was you know, but that is the coolest chip ever though, like, yeah, well he played it looks like it's going in. It just didn't look that difficult and he made it Cain'd of look easy. But it was in long grass and it was a bit grainy, and it was just and it was the Open, you know, it was the last hole of the Open. He's Mr Green and he needs to get up and down. He just and he hit it so quickly walked up there, grabbed the club and just said the most beautiful chip. It was a great shot. But I remember him playing it wentworth I was an amateur. I was over there. I wasn't even playing the Torrent. We're over playing the British Amlar. We went out to watch the Martini. It was a cold, dark, miserable day, thirty six hours the last day because I lost the day for rain. And the tenth that went was that kind of you know, Jeff, the part three were hit over. You either go left on the left side of the green and put across, or you go over the pine trees at the flag. And it was back then it was a three iron shot, and most of the guys I've watched were just hitting it left and putting fifty ft across the green. A couple of went over the trees, and Steady just aimed left. There's slight. He sliced his three I like thirty yards for twenty yards around here, and just sliced around the trees to about fifteen ft. It was like, who does that? I mean, it was just the most amazing shot. I mean it was just like how did you even one? How did you think of it? And having thought of it, what made you even want to try it? And then how did you pull it off? I was like that shot over the wall. Usually that Plark in Switzerland. Jeff, Yeah, I mean we were. We were in the player's tent off the eighth green, and Billy Foster came in and he said, I've just seen the best shot I've ever seen. Of course, because they missed it on the TV. They got the t shot and and he when he chipped it in. But I went back there the next year. I said, Billy, was that really where the ball was? He said, that's where the ball was. Like, it's unimaginable that shot he hit there Nicholuse. Billy walked out in the fairway and he looked in the bag, assuming that he had the sandwich. He said, my god, the sandwich was still in the bag. He's got the wedge. Just just a ridiculous shot he hit there. Beat Barry Lane. Sorry, Barry Lane beat him, Which was How was that? That was kind of out of nowhere? Berry Lane dying a couple of weeks ago. That was such a shock. Well, he was a He was a cool player too, and um, yeah, there are too many Sevy stories. Yeah, it was funny. We were playing yesterday, was playing with a friend of mine who I've got a five wood in the bag and we're talking about hybrids, and he was saying how much he hated hybrids. And I said, this beautiful ping forward used to hit it really well, and Sevy looked at it and just kind of shook his head, said, you can't play with that? If I was gone, had to hand on the backs, gone, what an idiot? And when yeah, just because I can't one, I was like, you said, he doesn't mean I can't eat a forward? Yeah, pin four. It was just a look of disdain, like, how can you play with that thing? God? Anyway, that's a sad story. But yeah, I can imagine the withering judgment. Yeah, well I mean, I mean, yeah, yeah, those I'm playing with Sevy and Greg hunting dog on. Yeah, the six that hanging out Jeff, which which no one ever hit for two long pat five kind of uphill second shot had the bounds on the right and up that out of bounds really in play, but that was narrow. You could make eight there in a in a heartbeat if you hit it in the trees with your T shirt or your second shot. Me it was just a drive and a bunch of three on up the fire and Sevan Greek at these one or two or three on something. They's an enormous second shot long and they both flew it on the green. Yeah, I'd be like it was just like these guys are a different level, which was that was another good Yeah, that was an interesting seventy story eighty three Masters Australian Masters Sevi and Greg and Sevees driving it like an arrow. I mean that's a narrow, tight driving course. He snap hooked it off the hit a tree and bounced out the first round. But that was the only bad driver I remember him hitting. Called Manuel Ramas was cutting for him and run the Portuguese Open about five or ten years before this. So Sevier just brought him down for to cattying for him for a one off week and he was playing beautifully but just not doing anything. He just bumping around. He hit the three wood into the tenth that hanging on the end of the wind three would just blisted this thing to about six ft. Just a beautiful shot through the wind and Mr part and I said to Ramas, it's not putting that well is he? He said, nobody will be by Augusta, which was three when he won by four, I think we're chipping at the last holder beat Watson by four shots. You know he was he was that was kind of peaks heavy and it was and he came down. It was playing Australia every year. He first came down here for the when he first came down for the seventy six Australian Open at the Australian when Jeff the ninth hold used to be the eighteen and as an apocryple story probably true that Kerry Packer, who was who was the richest guy in Australia, who owned charl nine, who transformed cricket, and his ChIL nine was the first in the Australian Open, was the first torment to televise every hole, all seventy two holes was on TV starting in seventy five or seventy six. Anyway, Savy was down on that way down the bottom of the hill there on the Monday, hitting bunker shots out of the butt out of the bunk on the on the on the what was the alienh Green, nother ninth Green. He was practicing bunker shots, hitting four or five balls, and Packard had no idea who he was, and he ballowed from the top of the hill or screaming at this guy, dare you betting bunker. There's things that are practiced fair away and Sev six and went home first round. What he played two rounds, But yeah, no one spoke to severy like that, no matter who, and neither of them had any idea who the other was. So here was Sevy getting screamed at by some big fat guy up on the first team from fifty yards away bellowing at him for hitting father six balls out of the bunker. That wasn't gonna work anyway. Sevy came back in seventy eight to play at Raw Melbourne. He played Row Melbourne every year the five years the Australian PJ was at Row Melbourne, which was kind of his course. I mean, Jeff obviously lives on the course, but Mackenzie built that course for seven You didn't know it, but he um he built that course for Sevy. It was just gave him space but concrete, hard greens and much more difficult shots from the wrong side of the fairway. But if you could play from the wrong side of the failure and hit a great enough shot, you can still play the whole Yeah, you can still get it on the ground and get it somewhere near the pin and if you didn't then you he could get it up and down. So and it was you know, hard fast greens, and it was it was just made for him. That place more more southern Augusta even you know, that was Servy's place, and he I watched him play. I was going to caddy for him in because a friend of mine was his Ed Barner's agent in Australia, so he set up for me to caddy for him. But I had an exam on university exam on that Wednesday, on the day of the pro am, so I couldn't do it, which I should have just skipped the examles, of course you should have. That's the most that's the worst decision in golf history other than you know, Phil at Wing, other than to Phil at wingfoot but oh my god, so alright, so I puttished up watching him play pretty much every hole and then he was he finished third that that week. But Halo and one but and you couldn't get two more different games and Halo and then Sevy, I mean, just which was why that that last day at Letham was so great, you know, and just tearing his hair out of this guy hitting one fail away and beating him. Um he Savy came back every year for five years and he won there and one I think. But he just played that course beautifully. It's great. It was amazing to watch him play there. As you surely know you know. Link Soul is a clothing and a lifestyle brand. I've been wearing it for at least a decade. It's cool stuff. It's super comfy and one of the Firepit loves it. We're believers. If you go to Links all that m and use the promo code fire Pit twenty five, you will get off your purchase. You're welcome, and we're also giving away a two links old gift card per episode. So go to the fire Pit YouTube channel and leave a comment from this episode and say how much you loved it, because surely you're loving it. You're a golf fan. You have to be loving this. And the winners will be notified and promoted on our Instagram and our Twitter feeds. So get involved. We're trying to have some fun. We also have to pay the bills here at the fire Pit Collective. So back to Night a Fourth like what We're what We're Norman and Sevy like together and have I played or have I just this paiper and I got along and you know, each represented a nation. Yeah, I think I got on pretty well. I think, you know, Sevy helped Greg with his short gime when he first went to Europe, and that was think I had a lot of respect for each other's games. Sevy was much more interesting. Greg was obviously you know, I guess you's had better either, but Sevy was probably better with the rest. But um, yeah, they were the number one guys in their respective continents, really, and they carried the tour for you know, for a long time and made it really. I mean, they were the ones who dragged the people out to watch. But Sevy, there was much more joy about the way Sevy played, especially I was gonna say later on, I mean, there wasn't much joy in watching Sevy play the way he did when you were in Europe, Jeff. But Sevy played the game with much more joy than Greg. I think Greg always didn't look like he certainly the last eight or ten years he played in Australia. Seriously, he never looked like he loved playing here. He looked like he was always here under sufferance. But Sevy never looked like that. You know, he never lost his love for the game, even after the game fell out of love with him. Really, but you know, if you I think it always an interesting question would be if Sevy was on the first team, Greg was on the and see who would you go and watch and um, you know yeah Sevy and um, the same question with Tiger, And I think it's I've watched, I've seen I mean, you guys have seen him playing more than I have. But I watched Tiger play the last round at Best Page and in two thousand and two, the last two days of Hoylake and the President's Cup match against a Bans and it was like unforgettable golf. Really, Yeah, that's peak Tiger. Yeah yeah, if you had a well it was peak Tiger was two thousand and two to two thousand and nineteen, so I mean he was still that he was the best player at Ron Melburne. Yeah, no, that was moment he that was that was a magical week. Yeah, you know to watch you know, yeah, I think you watched Sevy play nine and Tiger play nine, right, but um, yeah, that they were the two most compelling players to watch. The Sevy was much more charismatic than Tiger. I think it um both incredible players to watch, all right to modern times. Then talk modern was actually so Allen and Clate's UM Today's Golfer put out a most Influential Golf list plates are seventy nine. Chipnunk is more. You are more influential than Mike Clayton golf and you're actually both Donald Trump's eighties six, so you're beating him. That's hilarious. Well that's I mean, that's poppy cocks as something might say. I mean, and I didn't make the list, So you guys are clearly more influential than us. I clicked, you know, I clicked on that thing thing. This is gonna be another ridiculous list, not so, I was another word proves it's completely ridiculous. In factly, when ship Nunk Clayton UM, I think the next two would um, Jordan's speaking came Smith. So it was what it was. It was ridiculously it was. But I think your your influences being underrated because you've been a great oracle and talking about the modern game, you've uh your your your design work. I think is you know, you've been in at the forefront of kind of this more minimalists approach to the modern architecture like I would say you were. You should have been ranked higher, Mike, because you've you've become an important voice in the whole sports. So don't don't, don't, don't be too self deprecating. But I think you connect the generations like you probably you connect the old generation to the new generation because you never stopped playing and watching and reading and writing. And it's probably true. Yeah, there's other people who are just so romantic about the seventies and eighties like you were just talking about. But you've never been not passionate about the whole thing. So you've seen the whole thing change, and you can explain to these kids today what golf used to be like and connect it really well. You watched how much it changed. You know, it's changed. Um, it's changed a lot. You know. It's the biggest question that we're talking about the game. The game is fine, and we talk about golf. We talked about this live thing as if it's golf and it's only professional golfer is not golf at all. It's just it's not it's not even that important really, And how farther ball goes is not really that important for everyone except you know, the best the best players in the world. But it's important because you know, those courses were designed to test the best players in the more and they don't do that in a way that they are intended to do. It would be my argument. But so, you know, so that's a big question that lives things interesting. You know, um gol sid it's interesting as as an outsider to watch it all play out. Really certainly the live thing is well, I think we're all interested observers, really interesting to see, you know what, what's really going to happen with this? It's a game of politics and the game of bluff. Who's going to win? Is anyone going to win? Is everyone's gonna lose? You know? He is Pelly going to lose the court case? In a when's the court case? Jeff? A couple of weeks. These guys know better than me. It didn't. It's always been February. I never got an exact but yeah, so are we assuming that John Hagen argument that Keith Pelly's hoping he loses so that all the live guys can play in Europe? I don't know. It would have been an interesting it would have been an interesting approach for europe to just stay on their side the whole time. I don't know, Well, perhaps the easy way after them is to pretend to be fight them, but just hope they lose the case. And then it means that Westwood Poulter and Dustin Johnson if he wants to go and play the British pre Jack and don't play the Bridigese PGA, you know, and so all the live guys if they want, you can go and play in Europe. So that's gonna be fascinating to see how that plays out, because now the European Tour has this you know, strategic alliance and the PG. The PG Tour owns part of the European Tour, and you know they're supposed to be allies and all of this, and so it's I think you're right that that Pelly would love to have all those guys back. I mean, it doesn't help him to have a German Open without Martin Kahimer and stuff like that. But um, at the same time that you know, the PGA tour is helping to pay their bills now, so it's it's complicated. Yeah, that's why it's also interesting, really it's just fascinating to watch it. So and they're coming down here playing Adelaide, which will be I suspect the Australian version of the Live Golf will be the biggest version of it because we're so starved of watching the best players. We never see them, really, never see them on mass like Live is gonna bring so as much as I kind of, I mean, I'm an equal opportunity heiter when it comes to the PGA two and Live really because they're both in the having done Australia favors. But um, I think it would be a massive thing down here. I think the crowds are going to be crazy, people from all over the country. You are going to add like to watch because because you take it for granted in America that you you know the tour is going to come and you get to watch Tiger Woods and you get to watch all the best players in the world whenever you want. Really, we just don't see them anymore. Again and again, talking about the generational span, I remember, Jeff, when you know, Nicholas and Palmer and Player came down here pretty much every year because I had a deal with Loszenges. Part of the deal of getting the royalties from all the all the clubs that donelupst and just sold in Australia with their names on it was they come and played here. So I grew up in an era when you know, it was normal to see the best players in the world player every year, and we're don't do it anymore. So you and Nicholas, I mean he always talked about the Australian Open is really meaningful victories if you went into five times, I mean there was a point of pride and yeah, five sick player one of maybe seven off. I mean Parma one of the think I only one at once. He wanted a raw Queensland, but he played it decent. Palmer didn't play as much as the others, but he played you a lot. He's trying. Open trophies are pretty impressive engraving on there. I think Gary seven, Jack five, maybe your six five or six. Yeah, you know, I mean Saracen's on it, and you know there are a lot of great players on that trophy. That's a pretty good trophy. That's a good trophy. Norman, Yeah, Norman and Gregg one at six times, I think, yeah, yeah, Like if you spend all your time in the US, it's just it's quite everyone you bump into is like pretty anti, you know. But every time you bump into someone outside of the US, they're a little bit more neutral about the whole thing because of that issue. Because every every two is lost the best players in the world coming over the last thirty. People just want to see the best players player. They don't really care what vehicle they come under. They just want to see him play, you know. So it's interesting the perspective difference outside of the US and in Soude the US, it's quite different. I was at the Dunhill this year. We obviously I'll watched you play there on Saturday, but I drove up from London on I left London at three o'clock on Thursday morning and Hug he said, made me behind the sixth tea at Krust. So he walked out, I'll five away to the six tier one one thirty or whatever was. Roy mccra was waiting on the tea for the group I had to get out of the road match. Fitz Patrick Shane Larry was behind him. We're also waiting on the tea and Matt Fitzpatrick was the group by on him. He walked off the fifth grade. And so the three of them, three groups around the six tea, And Huggy's bitching about this tourment, This bloody tournament takes forever, slow play, playing with hackers. It's a pay in the art this tourment, said Huggy, we're watching Roy McElroy play golf. How much people in Australia give to watch Roy mcarroy play golf? He said, yeah, you're right, stop your whinging. You know, it was it was just it was just we just don't see those guys. So it was he's how you bitching about having to wait for ten minutes to watch Roy mcaway two off the sixth kinds I want one of the best part fives in golf, downhill, cool tournament, roy mcaway playing golf. But of course how you see him play all the time, so he just takes it for granted. But you know, not to be taken for granted watching Roy mcaway play golf. Ever, do you have a sense of Greg Norman talks about his desire to grow golf globally through this Live to Do. Do you have a sense that is a truthful stement or not? I don't know how quite know how to word what is his goal? Um, I think Greg's goals to make money for Greg. Probably I might be wrong, but you know, um, you know, I thought you can't. You know, it would be silly to expect a bunch of twenty five year olds to think of this at the time. But if in or eighty one, the early eighties, Savvy and Greg and Nick Price and you know, all those guys Fellow playing in Europe had gotten together and said, let's create a great tour outside of the United States, so we can I hate the phrase, grow the game in our own country. So when let's all go play the Australia, let's all go play the suffic and Open. Let's create a great tour in Europe. Let's go and play the Japan Open. Let's create a viable, a great and viable to outside of the United States. Then they could have done that. There are enough That was the only yera where there are enough superstars to create that. But you can't expect twenty five year olds Savrianno Balastos and Nick Fellow and Great to even think of that idea, let alone create it. So that that would have been and if that tour had growing and captured mcaroy in Westwood, Poulter and Adam Scott and Ogilvy and all of the best non American players early else, it would be the best too in the world. Now would be incredible because it would be miles more interesting and you would you would go to the best courses and they would be playing for phenomenal and has some money, and that would have been a great way to expand the professional game around the world. You could have organized Asia and my golfing Asia better, which has always been wildly disorganized. So that seems like live they're going to throw some money out and make it much better than it's always been. But that that was the chance to really create a great world to it. But a forty eight man exhibition kind of exhibition slash torment playing fourteen times a year, mostly in America still hawen. How many weeks are in America now? Eight? Half of them yeah for live, Yeah, half of them in you understand more than half. They have an announcer schedule for this year. I think it's going to be eight or nine out of fourteen. Yeah, So that's kind of yea. If Greg was organizing that creating a hundred and forty man world tour and trying to get all of the best non American players to play thirty five weeks around the world. Not that they have to play. Everyone has to play thirty five plays me as they want. But that would be something truly that would grow the game internationally. But now the PGA two is such a dominant tour that all the focuses in America, and so it's, um, it's a pity for someone who played in Europe and lovesly European tour of it. Hopefully it still remains a relevant, strong and relevant too, but I mean arguably, I mean, we saw how many Australian kids went to play the tour school in Asia this year. Asia might become a pretty significant tour to live money flows into that and they started expanding that because that's always been a pretty poorly administered professional gaming I mean, we paid that tour for used to go for ten weeks in I paint Stewart played My first year in Asia was the first year he didn't play. He played there for three or four years, and you know, Bob Tway was up there, you know, but a bunch of young Americans who were trying to Jeff Sluman, just waiting to find their way unto the PGR two. And part of that was to go and play in Asia in February and March and April Joey Sinde Lauren. You know there are a bunch of guys went up there and played good players. So you know, the rest of the world needs to get us act together. But I'm not sure that Lives is the way to do that. You know, it needs to be bigger than that, and more players than that, and more countries than that, and you know, so it's interesting, as I said, you know, it's it's fascinating as someone who doesn't play anymore and doesn't I kind of care what happens, but it's not affecting me. Affects the kids that you know, kids I care about, and you know, whether they make a living out of playing professional golf. But the rest of all, they used to get up guys act together and stop putting on a cow one night a show and trying to win back the the flat of plastic. Go to the page I too, because obviously that's why you're gonna go, because that's where the best plast and that's where the money is, But what does it look like in a hundred years or fifty year? Is the the professional guy? You know, do you set about the professional game with a fifty year vision of where it's kind to be outside of the US or is it just dominated by America? Who knows? I'm even five years this live experiment. Uh, it's has a shorter time horizon. And what's it gonna look like in two years? It's it's such a big question. I mean, they're trying to piece it all together right now. They have an announcer schedule, they have announced the TV deal or hemorrhaging top executives. They haven't signed any players. Like it's fair to wonder, like, where where is it going to go? And even in the short term, let alone the long term, and then does it exist in five years? Do do we think that just the sat is just got This is all too hard? I mean, Paul Paul McNamee is a friend of mine. In fact, you know, we're watching the tennis at Yong the other day and he said, you know, the Saudi has brought the wrong sport. Because he's a big critic of the way tennis is organized. He says it's just a tennis is incredibly badly organized. I mean, the tennis wishes it was golf with all the money in golf. And he's a massive critic of the way the tennis too was organized and how poorly the players have played. Obviously not at the top end, but you know, he said, if you're not in the top hunder in the world and playing in the ground, Sam, you're not making a living playing tennis. So, um, well, I've heard some rumblings that that there's there's there's a breakaway tennis league that's that's trying to get in with the public investment funds, so they may yet, you know, reshape the tennis game as well. Paul's view was that all forty eight of the top forty A players were well not forty because forty probably doesn't work with a probably sixty four with the sixty four draw, But um he said that all sign everyone. Yeah, the same is the LPGA really you know, you know, if if Lives it up to destroy the LPGA two, they would just sign the top fortypg A players and they would all go. I assume I think lives vision is to partner with the LPGA and and just play on weeks that don't compete with the LPGA, and it would be an additive. So keep the LPG schedule and then come play eight live events and everyone makes money and everyone's excited to be there, and you know that that's obviously more productive if you could partner and not compete, or to be fair, I think they wanted to partner with the PGA tourists just they don't have any room too. There's just no dates in the year, you know, Like so I don't think they wanted to be come in and bully, but they kind of had to. You know. Yeah, it's interesting because I mean this could be whole of their podcast. But you know, when Andy Gardner hatch the Premier Golf League, I mean that goes back to two thousand and eighteen, and he was he always thought that they could coexist and he was trying to forge dialogue and ultimately kind of this last ditch effort, he tried to give a make make all the tour players equity partners in the Premier Golf League and um, but the Saudi's at that point, we're already on the scene and they had they had more money and and they weren't as interested in partnering Jeff. I mean I think they saw like, we we can just do this and um with it without the PGA tour. But I mean, I'm retracing all this in a book and it's a fascinating chapter with the PGL and what could have been because that that they really were serious golf people and they had they had this grand vision. I've read their hundred sixteen page perspectives that laid out all these different ways to engage fans and to rethink the entire support and it's really cleverly done. And um, but of course the Saudi's came in. They hired a couple of of the pgl's top guys and they just they just stole the idea essentially, and but they did it their way, which was with a lot less finesse and a lot more money. And um, we could have been having a different conversation where this this competitor which towards the tour needs. They've always needed a competitor, right, but it could have been a lot more elegant. But it's not the way I played out. Have the PAGL gone away that I just the no longer roup writing Andy Goddener, and I mean where is he gone? Yeah, I mean I suspect they're building a a um a nine figure lawsuit against the Saudi golf folks because when you read this perspective, I mean everything that's in there live just flat out took. It's not even subtle, and they used every idea, every idea and um and so yeah, I think you know the fight's over. They're not. They're not gonna be a third breakaway league. That's impossible. There's not enough stars to support two circuits. So I think the idea is mostly dead. But um, I don't think we've heard the last from the PGL, just from a legal standpoint. So if the Saudis decade that had enough and saw that we're gonna box tennis instead of golf, and they went away with the PAG replace them, they might try. They might try, um because you know they had they had money from UH investors and from institutional lenders, and you know it's mostly European money, some Australian money didn't have the taint of of the Saudias and all that. I mean, it could have been an interesting product. That's that's we're getting. We're getting yeah, we're getting in the weeds here, but it is fascinating stuff. I mean, Mike, as as we alluded to earlier, I mean, people come to you for podcasts and to write articles about the state of the game and and where it's all headed art. Uh. You know, Michael and Jeff and I have talked about this a great length with other guests. But are are are you concerned? I mean when when you look at it all the trends from participation to uh, golf course openings to the professional game, Like if you put you on the spot here, like, what is the state of game right now? It's pretty good, isn't it. I mean, in terms of the little world Jeff and I inhabit, the architecture ward, I think it's it's in great shape. And I think the last thirty years will we look back on in a hundred years Instead, it's being incredibly productive. So I think, you know, in terms of the golf course, that the golf courses we're playing, that the game is much better. Um, you know, outside of America it's really affordable. Club memberships are still cheap, and clubs still do really well in Australia and and from what I can tell and in England, so it's you know, it's affordable, it's I mean Australia's look at American, they're amazing how expensive the game is to play it kind of country club level, how much it costs and reversing that American. I played with a couple of Americans last week Metropolitan, my home club, and we were talking about what it costs to join Real Melbourne. It was I don't know, it's what's fifteen or sixteen thousand Australian dollars to join and then six thousand dollars a year Australian dollars four thousand US. I think they can't get their head around that. Remember, I agree with the greatest silly sixth old place in the world, and it's just giving it it away, so you know, it's cheaper to four. COVID was the best, you know, for all the silly growth of game initiatives and how much money got spent on growing the game through all these wild ideas. COVID did a better job than any of them in growing the game because what else We're going to play golf? So it's um. The courses are great. The professional game has lots of money in the professional game, and people are interested in it. I'm going a goal still going well. Public golf has never been better, So it's um yeah, I think the game is in great shape because ultimately it's a great game. It's a cool game to play. It's good fine. It's you play with the world, the disparate group of people and who will tend to love playing it not but most of them loved hang And it's a great game to travel with. It's it's the best, it's the best game to travel. Where you got all these amazing places around the world you played tennis, I mean towns courts, the towns court, unless you're on the center court at Monte Carlo, which is a pretty cool place for wimbled not or something. It towns courts, the town's court. But there are so many amazing places to play golf that that's the one great attraction of the game is the places that we play it. And you can go anywhere and find anyone on the first team have a have a cool game because you kind of bonded with this common affection for a crazy game. So I think it's doing fine. You know, there's there's um, you know, golf in newspapers are sort of dead. No one buys newspapers to read golf anymore. But there's never been better or more great golf riding. To be access you just need to be on you know, I see these old guys that have gone. You know that that I meant the fact that there's no golf on you know, newspapers anymore, as if we kind of go back to the nineteen seventies. But you ask him if they're on Twitter. Of course they're not on Twitter because they barely heard of it. But you can read everyone on Twitter. I mean, there's more access to great golf rowing now than ever. Just get on Twitter and follow all the guys who put great golf content up there. So much golf from reading now, it's amazing. So it's some guy comes in great shape. Really, the only thing is the ball goes too far for the best players, so the courses don't play the way they shortened. So once the administration gets their heads around that, then the game will be even better off. Because I think it's you know, I kind of like the Year of Jeff when Bill Rodgers was hitting a three on under the last hole of Victoria to win the Australian Open. I mean Greg in Veness, Greg at the nine on that day, last sole of Victoria's and up and over the hill four and sixty four me to Paart five with a tea. That's ten yards further back than when Bill Rodgers played when he won the Open there. That was a really good hole when it was a driver three on. It's not very interesting when it's a driver nine on. So the game is more interesting when you know it asked more of the second shots. But once we get around that, the game will be will be perfect because it's such a great game. It's an amazing game, you know, and it's spawned, you know. I mean we were talking about Michael's book that Green wrote Home It's spawn some and so many others. You know, it's spawn so much great writing. It's a it's a great game to read about when people don't read enough golf, which I think we would all agree that. I think that there lots of people who play golf and they take out of the game what they personally want out of the game, and that which is fine, that's kind of its purpose. But they would never read a book about golf. That the thing to read a book about golf on this there are so many great golf books that are so much fun to fun to read about. I mean Tom Callahan's book. Is that great picture of you, Jeff reading Callahan's book on Arnie, which was an amazing book of such a brilliant book, I means, such a it's a fun right just read great Golf Friday about someone who was a compelling figure and you know it's um. There's so many great books to read about golf, even if you don't play it. When Mike and I bonded over um, Australian sports r Jeff Roades told me that your best sports book ever written was a Handful of Summers by Gordon Forbes. So I went and border in Lily Whites in London, which I don't know if Willie Wait still exists. It was one of the great sports stores of the world, I think. But that you said, you told me if I went in there, i'd find a copy of it. Sure enough it was in there. I lent it to Frank Nobelo and never got it back, which was always a great listen and never lend books so to buy not a copy, But I mean that was a great sports books just just a brilliant sports book. But there's so much great golf rotting that even if you didn't play golf you could read it about golf and just love it because the rotting is so great. Small of the ball, the better the rotting. Right, Yeah, that's George Plimpton. Yeah, only might because so many of of our listeners maybe won't even know the name. That they do know the name, they won't know how to spell it, and they really don't know anything about the man whose accomplishments his personality. But you're just old enough to have known Peter Thompson, and I'm wondering if you could could could could it could just give us a short biographical sketch of what an extraordinary man he was, both as a golfer and a politician and as a person in the game. It was no shot on um, I was walking. What was I watching them? Maybe the sandbolt so much? Remember um with Andrew his son, and we got to talking about because Thomas Noah made the game look easier than him ever, he looked like he was just playing a Saturday afternoon four ball in a tournament. It was amazing, I said, you know, was it was? It was the game simple for your dad because the way he thought about it, or was the way he thought about it so simple because of he just stumbled upon a really simple way to play it. And he said, you know, he said, and I never knew his his dad just disappeared. He was at the time, he was an only child. His father disappeared during the depression to go and make some earn a living, and his mother divorced eventually for desertion, which was a grounds for divorce back then, because that was in the year in Australia before no fault divorce. You you have to have a reason to divorce someone, and desertion was reading to divorce someone. So he said, he grew up with nothing poor, started playing off on a public course and just fan balls and hit a ball around. And but he he always had it. He had a great mind for golf. He was he played it so beautifully and simply and thought about it so simply. But he um, My dad took me to Metropolitan to watch the Australian PGA in nine seven. I think I was there for a couple of years, sixty seven and sixty eight. He stid of walked in there and he said, as Petter Thompson, he's the best player here, will go and watch him. So I didn't have any idea what I was watching, but I watched him and he was kind of my hero from that day on really, and I watched him. I took up golf a year later and went down to watch him play every chance I could. When he played the Sad Belton play the Torments in Melbourne and the first vic Open I played, you know, Yary year, I played with him and the third round was like god, I was so nervous playing with Petter Tom couldn't believe it. And he hit this drive out of the neck on the second hole. It um Yarry, yeah, just straight into those Cypres streets, left with the team. Couldn't belie of it, like out of someone like that hit a shot like that. But he was And I grew up reading him. I mean he wrote in the age most weeks, so his writing was you know, at the time, I disagreed with most of the things he was writing about, only to realize as I grew up and learned a bit about golf that I was completely wrong almost every time, and he was completely right everything he was saying about the game, and so he was incized if he was controversially, he was a beautiful writer. He thought about the game on a different level, and he was the talking about the world tour. He was the he was the one who really tried to instigate the world tour. He was the one who was writing about a tour outside of America because he realized the game needed to provide more jobs for more players. So he essentially set up and started the Asian Tour, and he went played in Japan a lot, He played in Europe, lot, and he played a lot in Australia obviously, and he was the main guy in the in the sixties. He was the main guy. He took no appearance man, He just he played because he realized that the game had to develop and him as the the most important non American player around the world, it was fell on him to kind of pull it together, which he did. You know, he walked the walk and he he and Kilnego were incredible but brilliant minds, simple, great writer, beautiful player only and he would turn up to Jeff I'm sure you were a pennant Dinners of Victoria, where he would come and speak to the Pennant team, and he would turn up at dinners and lunches and just speak just because he it was. It gave any kind of event that had no right to be important kind of gravitats because he was there. He d dangerous with his presence, almost in a positive way, not not like it was. He would just turn up and just be Petter Thompson, which would just be really cool and talk about golfing, great speaker, funny, deprecating, self deprecating. He played played down what he did, but he knew what he'd done was important. You know. He had a great sense of without being bost he had a great sense of his importance in the game and who he was. And he always you know, his legacy was incredible. Really when he when he won the Australian Open in eighteen seventy two, he was in his mid fifties, right, No, no, no, he was forty two. He was nine twenty nine. He was the same he was Annald Palmer. Yeah, yeah, so he was. So I remember him writing, you know, and forty two when I was like, you know it was I right, No, sevent two, I was fifteen sixteen, So forty two seems like ancient you know, he was an old man. Of course he wasn't old at all. But and he wrote about when he won. He wrote about you know, obviously there was more pressure on David because in truth this was a much more important torming for him to win that it was for me. So he was playing it down. But um, he had a beautiful shot into the seventy second hole. He was one behind him, had a seven eye to a foot, just a beautiful shot which was in the elastic Keyonga which was a short path for he bumped a three with off the tea and hit a beautiful shot. But the famous story of the playoff, of course, stupidly and unimaginably. Now there was an eighteen whole playoff on Monday which was televised. So Peter had probably gone to Royal that lay, which is just around the corner, to warm up, hit a few balls and warm up, David said, David sitting balls on the range of Kyonga and Guy Wolston home. It was a terrific English player who emigrated to Australia and lived here and played here for in the seventies. Um Peter was up on the balcony of the club was having a cup of tea, and David Graham kind of turns around and said, he's not even taking it seriously, he's not even hitting any balls. What's he doing because he's probably stuck off and hit balls all that day. But anyway, um, I didn't know, I'll play off. Peter walked under the tea and just kind of it was a kind of a bit of I guess it was probably pretty not that organized, not that ma sure, but pretty just ted his ball up and hit it, and David was upset, Um, well, you know, we didn't toss a coin, and he said, well, I made three. The last home was my honor goes. David was obviously nervous, and now he's upset and Snap walks that having hit twenty perfect drives on the practice flay, Snap poked it out in the practice fair and walked down there to find white steaks on the side of the practice fairways balls out of bounds. He's now going to walk back to the teeth. As he's walking back to the tea, Peter hits his second shide up fifty yards shot of the green and and then proceeds to pitch to the twenty ft and knock it in made four and David made seven, and he beat him seventy four. But you know it was over even before David hit a shot, really, and he would play those sort of Penny would play those sort of mind games. He was. It was a great sledger. Is a sled is sledging a word in America. Jeff thinks it's a cricket game. For needle, it's need It's a needle, yeah, needle. Yeah, it's called sledging and cricket. So Tom I was a great sledger. He kind of throwing a little kind of Lee Travino type barb every now and that. It was actually clever and quite funny. But yeah, he was. I'd love to hear that because he always seemed like such a perfect gentleman, and I pictured him as, you know, a boy scout out there. I like to hear he had a little bit of an edge, you know about that day I played with him, The area of the fourth old area was a great part three and we're hitting seven eyes chef, so that was kind of some indication what the wind was like is and the green used to kind of bow off at the sides of it. They changed it years later and ruined it and Tom don't fixed it. But um, you hit the edge of the green and always kick off the edge of the green into the deep bunk on the left. This pretty good shot with the seven iron and just kind of got in the wind and kind of turned a bit left and hit this thing. And I went down the bunker and yeah, as I pulled my tear to the ground, he was walking up to hit and he said, he said, the wind got you there, didn't it. It was that was just Tomo, you know him. The wind got you there. It was. It was just a he was Yeah, he was great. He was great because he was Yeah. It was the way you would talk to someone playing a friendly game on Saturday afternoon at the club. He just he never treated toime and golf any differently, and people would get upset it. He would kind of throw these little needles in, but it was it was exactly what you would say to a mate playing and not playing a friendly game. He just treated the same. But but he was great for the young players. He was. Norman Vonneider had mentored him when he was to the point where the first year he went to Europe, Voneyda said well, because Petter didn't obviously have much money of the first year he was there and nine fifty one, and Vonnier offered to split the prize money. Let's just split our prize money, which was von saying if you run out of money, I'll back you. Don't worry about it. But I mean, Petty was six in his first open and there was no need for him to put his prize money, but yeah, he was so so Vonneider had really helped him, and Peter kind of took that on board, and you know the next generation, Graham marsh and David Graham Stewart again, Bob she here. He was a great mentor to all those guys, which is sort of what we're trying to do with the Sandbolt Toma. Jeff, I guess is really carry on that legacy of Thompson and Voneida of helping young kids have find their way in the game because it's not absolutely Yeah, well this is why you're so indispensable. You, like Jeff said, you can bridge the gap from for Peter Thompson and Semi by Sterios to take her woods too. You know, the modern architecture like it's it's quite a golfing life you've had. Yeah, it's been a you know, it's I've loved it. It's been a wild ride. Really, it's still started because I my parents bought a house at the back of a golf course that no longer exists. They sold off the houses but when we jumped the fence to caddy just to make some money. Really, so it's a it's a it's a pitying caddy has gone out of the game in Australia. But um, yeah, it's been up. You know, golf. Golf finds you really more than we find it almost. But it's a cool game, you know, it's been an amazing game to be involved and just yeah, I can't believe that people have met really and it's amazing. Caddied for a caddy for a friend of mine at the Wills Masters in Victoria and he played with Norman Voneider And then when I turned pro John Kelly and I won the Australian Amet as well. We went and stayed with Norman Vonida for a week at Carrelbin and he trying to taught us and play with this and here I was like in or of Norman. Norman voneider and six years later, I'm saking my girlfriend into the flat so after he'd gone to sleep, and who's now my wife? And you know, but I mean, you know the thing that I mean having got to know vonn in the years after, I mean, the last thing Norman Vona would kid about was me snaking my girlfriend into the end of the house after he'd gone to sleep. I mean, it would have been full of encouragement for that sort of behavior. But god, he was such a legend, Norman Vonia. What a player he was. Wow, I think you still got the record for the most number of torments one in Europe in a single year. So he was you know, he was a he was a god in Australia. That's a good bit of trivia. You can make some money the week of the Open in the in the pubs, they're asking asking the fans that Norman h can I get one more? Can I get one more? In here? Of course, last call for both of you guys when you worked to other, are you very much on the same page. You have different ways of looking at a golf halls and what a golf cours should be. Um well, I think that having both grown up at ray Melbourne. Jeff was a caddie and living on the course, and me is just you know some of who played it lots we and we both love St Andrews, so we all see the same things. I think you know, and Mackenzie was you know, he was transferring the sort of golf you have to play it on the old course. You transferred that around the world. He certainly took it to August and he took it to Roy Melbourne. So I think we all sort of see that that same sort of the way the game has played the old course and helped plays out and the choices you have to make. I think Jeff and I both see the see the game the same way because Rayal Melbourne was such an influence on as kids, and when you go to the old course and play there, you know this will makes sense now. So I think we both see the same sort of things. Really that makes sense. Jeff, I think it's completely true. I think we see it the same. I think it's nice to have two different generations to where I'm seeing three yards after team, you're seeing two fifty um and you just sort of getting because the philosophy works at any yet length really, you know, solid architecture. Royal Melbourne would be fine. Shorter or longer, it doesn't really matter. I mean, that's why Target is the best player there, because even though he's hitting at forty yards further than Severy was in it's still plays right. The right spots still the right spot, you know, and the right shots still the right shot, and it's still it still needs that the old course Royal Melbourne August that you still need to be one of the very very very best golfers in the world to sort of exploit and play it properly, you know. And that's just golfer is more interesting. It's more depth that way than just simple hit it here and hit it here, you know. So I think both of us very fortunate to grow up like around such incredible architecture, you know, because everywhere you go golf is not quite as good except for just a few there's just a few select places in the world where it's as good as real Melburn, but not many, you know, So we had very fortunate education just by geography. Really, proof of how great Royal Melbourne was, I thought, was Lydia co playing this train open there. How she took that thing apart and won by seven shots or something, and Stacy Lewis was complaining that Royal MOLBN didn't reward good shots, which was exactly right, it only rewards great shots. But Lydia was just this was pre They're going to see lead Better in the A swing. But you know, as great as watching Sevy entire play Royal Melbourne, as interesting was watching the best woman in the world and how she got her way around that course and how she figured out how to play it and the shots she hit, and that was just as fascinating. It's amazing. So um she was is great. She's back at number one right now. She she number one the world again. She is yeah, yeah, she's she made it back, and you know she's not with Leadbetter anymore, and she's kind of gone back a little to her roots and her old, older swing and I think she's gearing up for another big run, which would be delightful. But yeah, you're right, that's an overlooked victory when people talk about her, just pure genius, like the way she remember that week that was that was an incredible stuff. Oh but not many top tens, not many courses. Let would let that happen. You know Role Melbourne and they all course Augustin probably not so much off the taste we played, but um, anyone, it's there for everybody. It doesn't matter what length you hit it. Um. Role Melbourne has the similar challenge. You get the same shots and you get every opportunity if you hit good shots at your length, you can play Role Melbourne. You know, it's not length is proportionately rewarded, not disproportionately. Imagine Bethpage Black but girls playing out there. I mean it's just doesn't work right. But Role Melbourne, it gets better almost the shorty hit it, you know. Um, yeah, genius. She didn't miss a shot for years, did she. She looks like she's back to where she was. Yeah, she's fantastic. Yeah, she was just an amazing player. She was almost the best part of the world of fifteen. When do you when they Canadian open at fifteen and it was phenomenal half creative players she is. That's good stuff all right? Before before you let might go, do you have any any parting thoughts? Jeff, No at all. He's giving you guys a few stories you haven't heard, yea more than a few. Um No, thanks for coming, Thanks for johning us. We couldn't do it. We couldn't do it without you. There's seventy ninth most Important President Goal podcast. Yeah, he's trending. He's trending alright, Mike. Well, if you see the little red phone icon at the bottom, click that. We we have a tradition of our guest leaves and then we talked about them behind their back, so we're gonna carry that on. Okay, thank you so much for your time. It was It was a great pleasure. Mike Clayton, what a gent Yeah, I'm telling you, like golf trivia between Bamburger and Clayton would be interesting. Um, many facts that he doesn't not obscure European tour players from the early eighties like that. That's the sweet spot. That's why I interviewed the guy the other day. He'd read he's read a book about Johnny McDermott and he's Irish himself, the author of the book. And we talked for thirty minutes, and then the guy wrote me note he said, I haven't talked to anybody for thirty minutes on the phone since high school. I'm like, minutes is nothing, But here we are in our fifteen with Mike Clayton, and literally we did not scratch the service. What he knows about the game, what he feels about the game, the fact that he still needs to play every day, the golf courses that he snuck onto, let alone the courses he played legitmanly. I mean, he's got such a rich golfing life. And when he jokes at Leader Thompson has a polly Met, he used, well, Peter Thompson death, it was the polly met the poly mets probably, but Mike Clayton's right there too. Jen Stevenson's name to even come up. He genuinely plays golf. He genuinely plays golf every day. I don't I cannot remember a day when he plays golf every day. And he would travel, if he went somewhere for golf, he would tag his golf clubs before his clothes, like it's clubs first, clothes optional, you know, like fantastic and talk about golf. He can talk about anything, like he talks about anything until he's very well read. Um as he said, he's probably read every golf book ever written twice, you know, some of them ten times. He just just it's a loft Tom Passion for for a guy ron incredible. I interviewed him about Greg Norman for this this live book that I'm writing, and and he was recounting on top of his head all kinds of old tournaments and details and shots and scores. And I went back and looked him all up. He was right about every single number and every single detail. It was uncanny. I mean, stuff from the seventies, like just an incredible mind for it. But let's get back to Jan Stevenson. What's that story. No, it's just you know, icon of the game that I thought this might be like shades of Norm Bend Nita's a flat sneaking in. But now I'm disappointed. Um, Um check the you know, as as Mike representatives, Peter Thompson did, as Adam Scott does. That unpretentious spirit of the Australian golfer is one of the richest links in the game. As you've gotten to know some of these younger players coming up, you know, with the sand Belt, the Invitational and other things that you do. Um, is there any jeopardy of of golf, of Australian golf losing that spirit or are you seeing it in the next generation. No, I think that's a bit of a trait of all Ozzies, to be honest, we all sort of it's good and it's bad, right. It keeps everybody sort of unassuming, and it keeps e gooes in check. But it also probably it's a little negative to sometimes we chopped down our stars a little bit bringing back to earth. Your mates are always bringing you back to earth. Um, they're not letting get not let letting get your head of self, head of yourself too much. Like you go to the US, the newspapers make every golfer seem like just an unbelievably great golfer. Here even the best player is getting bagged because he buggy the seventeenth pole on Saturday and he really should have been to in front that at one in front. That really wasn't a very good effort, you know, whereas the US is how good is this golf? To what an unbelievable chance for these guys are black, you know. So it's just a different perspective we have. But it keeps everybody being a pretty decent bolk, you know. Um yeah, I'm men, look at Am and Leashman and Scotty, I mean and they're all pretty um, they're good humans to be around, no matter what they've done in the game. You know. There. I mean, Scotty has been incredible since he's one of the Masters. He's been back to Australia every year, there's been tournaments. He plays more than he needs to at in these modern worlds a massively discounted rate. He basically comes because he just he knows, like Clay says, like Tomo used to do, golf needs in Australia, golf needs. Adams got to come play and he feels that and he does it, you know, and most of the odsies are like that. So um, I think that side of things is all their mates. If you grow up around Australians very long, they'll keep you in your place. Voice of experience. Well, and he's what a mentor just sort of from mentoring, but just mentoring on a high level. He's like sort of like the godfather of Australian golf a little bit like he's um the one you ask if you've got any questions, and he to this day he is playing golf. These are all these days he plays golf. He's playing golfers with juniors, kids, anybody who loves golf, you'll play with him. You know, girls, guys, kids, growing ups, old people. He just plays golf. You're into golf, he'll go play with him. So there, he's had an incredible influence across sort of the elite golf landscape. Um, since he came back from Europe. So he came back from Europe. I think in the he stopped playing Europe sort of thing, maybe ninety eight and ever since then he's just been floating around Australia playing golfer golf courses and good golfers have been attracted to sort of playing with him. And he's the wisdom and experience and sort of pragmatic, no nonsense way he goes about explaining golf for these people. It's a little bit like Tomo. Mean Tomo was, there's only one Tomo. Tomo made a complicated thing, very very simple. Um. He made Peter Peter Fowler just a quick story about to Peter. It was a great young Australian player. Ended up playing well, still playing seniors tour in Europe and stuff. But he won the Australian Open I think three or eight eight three um, and he was about to head off to Europe or something, and he calls Peter and he goes, Peter, I really want to have a good year in Europe, and I want to sort of play well, and I just really think I need to get better. And what do you think I need to do to be a better professional golfer? Tom, I said, shoot lower scores. And that was it. But fundamentally, when you and you just think that's ridiculous, how rude is out, that's not a very good lesson. But the longer I've played golf, the more I realized that that's actually the only lesson you movement, just go and work out how to shoot lower scores. Um. That's how simple he viewed golf. It's like, well, if you're not going very well, just have have a few shots less and you'll be doing better, you know. Fantastic And Clacks is a little bit a little bit like he's a little bit like that with these guys. He doesn't let them complicate it. They keep it simple. Um. And if you spend any time around him, you'll lock golf more at the end of the day than you do at the stop. You can't end it any better than that, So, uh, great stuff. Um, all right, let's been another need of fourth Mike Clayton, fantastic guests we have, we have more coming, so thanks for listening. Um, I'm going to sign off for Michael Bambery or Jeff Ogilvie and Mike Clayton is salent ship Neck. But we appreciate you've been part of this podcast out there wherever you are, and well we'll keep bringing them to you. That's the end. Mm hmmm, h oh my god. It's a dangerous group here