Transcript - Episode 29: Rory McIlroy, The Masters, And How To Play Faster Golf

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Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome to the Birdie Board podcast.

So I am going to try something a little different on this podcast.

Usually, I just choose a single talking point and talk about it throughout the whole podcast,

but I know that a lot of podcasts and a lot of YouTube videos that I watch kind of break

their episodes up into segments.

So on this episode, we're going to go over four different things.

The first thing I'm calling Tor Talk, this is where we go over the previous PGA tournament

and then look forward to the next one.

I'm not going to go super in depth.

I'm not trying to be ESPN here.

Just trying to touch on what happened last week and what's going to be coming up.

Then we're going to go into Weekend Winds.

Weekend Winds is a segment that I'm just going to share a general golf tip.

Maybe a couple, just dive a little deeper into different things.

Then we're going to go over to back nine stories.

This is kind of a history segment, kind of learning about our sport.

And then finally, I have a segment called Club House Updates, which is just kind of giving

you guys some updates about Birdie Board.

So the first segment here is called Tor Talk.

So you're probably well aware last week was the Masters Tournament.

And we saw Rory McIlroy win again.

This was a pretty significant win for him, not because he won the career grand slam like

he did last year.

He is part of a company of people to have done it back to back.

He is the fourth person to ever win back to back tournaments.

He joins Jack Nicholas, Nick Faldo, and then of course Tiger Woods.

All Roy McIlroy now has six career major wins, which is really starting to get up there.

He had a great run at the beginning of his career in the early 2010s.

Then he had a bit of a dry spell.

And now we've seen him win Masters in back-to-back years.

So at one point, he had a six shot lead during this tournament.

And that pretty much entirely went away and then he was climbing again.

But eventually he did recover from losing that six shot lead and then won in the end.

So Rory basically needed a double bogey to win at the end.

And he had a pretty errant tee shot.

And I think I was thinking during that shot that for a regular golfer, we would never

find that shot.

But they're on the PGA Tour.

They had a lot of eyes on it.

So he found it over in the woods pretty easily.

I have a cuz there were so many people around it.

I think this is, I've talked about this in the previous episode.

This is where the idea of the gallery rule comes in.

That if we all were playing with galleries, we would be losing a lot less shots.

That probably helped Rory on the last hole.

So he has his tee shot pretty far right.

I still got up there pretty good distance.

He did have a small opening where he was able to get it out and his ball landed in

a bunker.

And then he just needed to get a bogey to win.

And he was able to do that.

If he didn't, it would have created a very fun overtime because it would have been a playoff

scenario between Rory and Scotty Scheffler.

Scotty was the one who finished in second place.

He went bogey free the entire weekend, which is incredible.

I think a lot of us can go bogey free, but it's usually because we only have double bogees

on our scorecard.

What was very interesting for Scotty, it's incredible he didn't end up winning.

But that was the first time that that had happened since 1942.

And he lost by just one stroke.

So Scotty basically played perfect, just about perfect for four days straight and he still

didn't win.

So like I said, Rory is now at six majors overall.

He was the first winner or first one to do back to back in over 20 years.

He had a four and a half million dollar payout.

So last year's payout, I think was like 4.3 million.

So pretty good back to back years.

His total score was a 276.

A lot of times for me, I watch PGA definitely the major tournaments, but all these middle

tournaments, I don't watch very often.

So the total score doesn't stand out as much to me.

But what does is 12 under, that's a little bit better or easier to understand.

That means he averaged three under a round or so.

Next week is the RBC Heritage tournament.

It's played at Harbor Pines Town Golf Links.

This is a very nice golf course in South Carolina and it has a lighthouse on it, which

is kind of what makes it famous.

It's just a cool visual.

It is a public golf course.

So if you ever wanted to play here, you could.

The prices tend to range from like pretty much $200 to 450.

I don't think for most people it's on like their bucket list of golf courses like Pebble

Beach would be.

But if you're looking to play a PGA level course and you're in the South Carolina area, maybe

you play at Harbor Town Golf Links someday.

It's a very different course in Augusta.

It's a lot shorter of a course with tighter fairways and very tree-lined.

Augusta is tree-lined, but if you hit it into the trees, it just falls down and you have

a shot.

That's not going to be the case at Harbor Town Golf Links.

It's going to require a lot more precision over power from the players.

And what's just really unique is this tournament backs up right to the master.

So you're going to see like some players just not going there.

They're emotionally drained after the masters.

They've been only preparing to play on Augusta.

Now they have a short week and now they're going to be playing at this other course in

South Carolina.

So it's just an interesting tournament coming up right after the masters.

And I think because of that, it really opens up the door for the leaderboard to kind of

get weird to see how these players react after such an emotional tournament.

All right, so that's it for our tour talk moving on now to Weekend Winds.

So let me pose this.

Have you ever been playing?

I think most of us have been playing in a for some.

And we have that one golfer who just is scoffing super, super slow.

There's probably a lot of reasons why.

And that's kind of the point of this segment is let's talk about pace of play and really

ready golf.

So ready golf is what most courses push for the traditional ordering of golf when you

hit your shot is the furthest person out.

Whether you are on the fairway or chipping or on the putting green is the one to go first.

This is what you will typically see in the PGA.

The T shot is always going to be the person who won the previous hole.

And it usually starts at on the first hole in a random order.

That is what I would say traditional ordering.

Ready golf is saying whoever is ready to go can go ahead and go.

So on the T box, if you're ready to go and your buddy is still trying to figure out what

club they're going to hit even though you know it's going to be a driver.

They know it's going to be a driver.

But for some reason they're looking in their bag like it's going to be something else.

You can just go ahead and hit your drive.

You don't need to wait for your buddy to get their driver even if they won the previous

hole.

If your friend is looking for their ball in their 50 yards behind you and you're ready

to go, go ahead and hit your ball.

Keep that pace of play.

That's what the idea of ready golf is.

It requires a little bit of communication.

Watch to see if your friends or your friends are about to hit.

If they're not about to hit and you're ready to go, go ahead and go.

You can also ask them, do you mind if I just hit my shot or establish that you're going

to be playing ready golf?

They're usually fine with that.

I see this being a problem on the putting green the most.

So as someone is putting.

Go ahead and get behind your ball and start reading your line.

Get ready for your shot.

As they're going through their warm-up routine, go ahead and do all those motions that you

typically would do as you prepare for your own putt.

You don't need to wait for them to finish the whole routine and putting.

The only thing I would say is as they get up to the ball and they're about to putt,

go ahead and stop.

Make sure you're not a distraction.

Get out of that, continue your putting routine.

There's so many times that I see someone just standing there, getting ready, as someone

else is getting ready to hit their ball, they're not even reading their putt, they're just

standing there waiting.

Then once that person hits their putt, then they go ahead and go and do that.

They're whole routine and add so much time to the whole putting thing and they could

have just started reading their putt as the other person was reading their putt.

Don't be that type of person to go ahead and keep your pace and start reading your

putt on the green.

I will say it's more common on the green to follow the traditional ordering, so don't

be surprised by that.

A lot of times people go first, further out.

Another thing that is pretty traditional is most times people wait for everyone to get

onto the green before they start putting.

Now your group might be really relaxed and really playing ready golf, or maybe you're

just trying to pick up the pace.

For example, maybe you're behind a little bit and the group behind you is starting to

hit up on you.

That might be when you really play true ready golf, regardless of who's on the green or

not, you're just trying to get through the hole.

Another thing you can do while other people hit is start to think about the distance of

your shot, grab your club, don't wait until it's your turn, things like that.

There is a cart efficiency you can think of.

If you know where someone's ball is, go ahead and drop them off at their ball, let them start

to hit and you go drive and look for your ball.

They can walk over to you, or if they don't want to walk, just go pick them up after you

find your ball.

Try to do that.

Don't always just ride with each other.

Take your time and drop one player off and then go ahead and look for yours.

Don't park at a ball unless you just know exactly where everyone is.

This does kind of allude to how walkers sometimes are faster, is because they get to walk straight

to their ball.

If you're riding with someone else and they're not following this rule, then they're going

to actually play slower than a walker.

I believe that if cart riders follow this and drop a player off and then go to their

ball, then they will actually end up being faster than walkers, but that's not typically

the case.

Of course, it depends a little bit by the course.

It is really easy to play ready golf when you're walking and I also would really encourage

you all to try it out.

It's very, very peaceful and it's great exercise.

That was the weekend wind segment.

Next is our back nine stories.

And then to stay on theme, we are going to go over a little bit of Roy McElroy's history.

So Roy McElroy, he was born on May 4th in 1989.

He is from Northern Ireland and I always kind of get Scotland and Ireland confused so I

looked it up on a map.

So if you're looking at a map, Scotland is north of England, kind of the United Kingdom

and then Ireland is the little, I would say a little, the larger island to the left of

the United Kingdom and then Northern Ireland is the northern part of that Ireland.

So that is where Roy McElroy was born.

Early in life, he lived in a place called Hollywood, which is actually a place in Northern Ireland,

not in California.

His mother was named Rosie McDonald and his father is Jerry and they both were from the

Hollywood area.

His parents met while Rosie was working at a waitress at, as a waitress at a bar that

Jerry managed.

They married in 1988, so just a year before Rory was born at the age of 27.

Rory grew up in a very modest lifestyle.

He didn't grow up rich or anything like that.

They lived in a semi-detached household in Hollywood, attended a local Catholic school

in that area until he passed what's called 11 plus.

This is like a test that people do in Northern Ireland when they're 11 to move on to upper

school.

He was introduced to golf at a very, very young age and there's a very popular video

that I'll talk about later of Rory hitting golf balls into a washing machine.

His dad introduced him to golf with a set of plastic clubs when he was just two years

old.

His father was a pretty good golfer.

He was a scratch golfer at one point and then there was a pretty good athlete on his

mother's side playing Gaelic football, which is kind of like a weird combination between

American football and soccer.

He did end up winning a championship in 1982 with them, so definitely some level of athleticism

in the family.

Macaroni regularly asked his father to take him to the Hollywood golf club, which was

the nearby golf course, and he gained attention when at only three years old he was hitting

his golf ball 40 yards already.

He practiced tripping at home while tripping his golf ball into the washing machine and

then he studied golf technique videos by Nick Fowdo and then he often went to sleep holding

a golf club which created muscle memory for him with the Interop Lacking Grip.

All of this at like three years old.

By age seven he became Hollywood's golf club's youngest member and he started to dream at

that point becoming a professional golfer.

He'd self-described himself as being very intensely passionate about watching Tiger

Woods saying he was only eight but he watched every hole of Tiger Woods victory at the 1997

Masters tournament.

This also gives you a little bit of an idea of the age gap between Tiger Woods and Rory

Macaroni.

So like I mentioned earlier they kind of grew up in a modest household so they didn't

have a ton of money.

So to fund Macaroni's golf ambitions Macaroni's parents took extra jobs outside of what they

already did.

Jerry or Gary, I don't know exactly how to pronounce his dad's name, worked over 100

hours a week to help.

He cleaned toilets and showers at local sports clubs in the mornings and then served as a

bartender at the golf club at night from 12 to 6pm.

Then he returned to the sports club to work behind the bar in the evenings.

His mom looked after Rory during the day and worked night shifts rolling packs of 3M tape

at a local factory.

Due to his parents conflicting schedules they just didn't end up seeing each other very

much but they saw that it was kind of necessary to try to give their son what they always

wanted for themselves and their families.

Rory is a single child so this was really just a passionate effort from his parents.

So after Rory found success as a professional golfer in the late 2000s through the early

2010s he bought his parents a home and he said I'll never be able to repay mom and dad

for what they did but at least they know they'll never have to work another day.

I'll do whatever it takes to look after them.

So they have a really tight knit family and it's really cool.

At age 9, McRoy had his first significant amateur victory at the U10 World Championship

held in Miami Florida.

After this win he was invited by a broadcaster to appear on a television show called Kelly

and this is where we see him Rory McRoy for the first time at a very young age chipping

a golf ball into a washing machine on a late night television show.

In 1998 McRoy shared his ambition to win all four major titles which he was able to achieve

last year.

At just the age of 12 he became a scratch golfer.

In 2005 McRoy finally decided to leave school and he began his amateur career.

So that was the back nine stories kind of about Rory McRoy and his life growing up.

The last segment here is Clubhouse Update.

So this is just birdie board updates in general.

One of the most exciting things that has happened is I've had the most downloads for

this podcast in the last 30 days so we had 76 downloads.

So hopefully you are a new listener listening to this.

If you are welcome I hope you enjoyed this kind of new format of the episode and I didn't

scare you off.

The Masters tournament I saw a lot of increased activity on all the social media, a lot more

downloads.

I used birdie board with a group of friends last weekend and we played stableford.

It was a lot of fun.

Birdie board worked perfectly.

We were able to keep up with the match the entire time.

So I think that's it for this episode of the Birdie board podcast.

Thank you for listening.

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