Steve Elkington - Part 2 (The 1995 PGA Championship)

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle.

Mike Gonzalez 0:13

Then it's Steve, how important was it for you to be able to go over to Australia and win that open in 1992?

Steve Elkington 0:20

Well, Bruce mentioned it, the course, uh earlier, the Lakes. I won the Australian Open at the Lakes in 92, and of course you don't remember every shot, but uh what I do remember was playing the last hole. The storm came up, and it was the first time my grandmother with my grandmother, my mother, my father, Alex Mercer, his wife, my brother, everyone was there. It was the first time my grandmother had ever been to a golf tournament. She was from Orlenbar, came down for on the train to see me play, and the storm blew up. You remember the last hole at the lakes was a par three? Uh long par three was about a it came back to that circle clubhouse. You would have been there, you were thinking when it was probably before they put the the circle clubhouse in, was it? Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 1:03

Yeah. Yeah, well it's it's interesting it finished with a par three because you you know who redid the lakes golf club, don't you?

Steve Elkington 1:10

Well the latest deal was Michael Clayton, right?

Bruce Devlin 1:13

Yeah, the first you know the first people that redid it.

Steve Elkington 1:16

Was it you?

Bruce Devlin 1:17

Yeah, Von Hege and Devlin. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I was a member at the Lakes. So where was so the first was always the first, right? Yes, it was.

unknown 1:29

Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 1:30

And the tenth was always the tenth, right? And they the last used to be a par five. Okay. Seventeenth was a par three, and sixteenth was a hard dog leg across the lake. That Nicholas Nicholas is the first guy that I've that I ever saw that would take a shot at driving that par four, and he was able to do it. So that'll give you an idea how how s how long he was in those days.

Steve Elkington 1:54

Well, there's a great picture in the locker room where he went for the he went for the double water carry there at 17, I think. He flew at 320 yards in 1965 or something. That'd be right. That wasn't equivalent, was 350 yards in the air in today's game, where it was with a wood with a balada ball.

SPEAKER_04 2:15

Yeah.

Steve Elkington 2:16

Must have had some wind. Probably had a bit of wind. Yeah. But he was Jack was Jack had some pretty good legs on him. But anyway, going back to that Australian Open, the last hole was a path three, and a southerly blew up. And here we are on the last, and I'm hitting a one-iron, and I pulled it, and it was gonna be fine. It was going up the left, and it was gonna go in one of the bunkers, which was fine. But it hit my mother in the purse, rattled around, and stayed on this side of this downslope. And I got up there, and now I've got the worst situation sitting in that little Kaikuya grass with some paramaticrass around it. You know what I'm talking about, Bruce? I do. I mean, you could just have a nightmare, yeah, like a wire, and uh somehow I nudged it up over the bunker and and uh Peter McQuinney, you remember that name? I do, yeah. Yeah, he was in the he was in the tournament there, and I finished up winning the Australian Open at the Lakes. And Alex Mercer and Shirley Mercer were members there, and we had a terrific night that night with my mum and dad and and uh and my Nana and everyone. It was great.

Mike Gonzalez 3:17

Well, Steve, let's turn to your major championship performance, and then we'll just kind of tick through them in the order they were played. But uh uh just uh as an overview, 57 starts in major championships, 37 cuts made, eight top fives, ten top tens, eighteen top twenty-five, some really good finishes. Let's start with the Masters, where you had 11 starts, eight cuts made. Um best finish uh was uh third in 93 and and uh and fifth in ninety-five. Well, what do you what what what's your favorite memories of the Masters, and where do you think you had the best chance?

Steve Elkington 3:51

Those two third places there, I even though I was right there at the top, um, I didn't have a chance in either one. I think it was Langer in 93, and then Crenshaw won, that was his second, and then Crenshaw won in 95, that was his second. But I wasn't I wasn't in contention. I didn't feel like I was sweating the green jacket coming down the back. No, I don't know how either to explain it to that. You either know you're in contention, Bruce, or you don't. Yeah. And I was slightly out of that window because it was too many strokes or whatever, but or the course at the time. But no, Augusta was uh I thought Augusta was pretty hard for me. Uh I'm not a very high ball hitter. In fact, I like to keep my ball down mostly. When Tiger Woods came on the scene, and I wish I could have hit my long irons like he did, and I think he ruined a lot of guys trying to hit their long irons high. But I've always thought that probably one of the easiest shots in the world to hit is a low long iron. I mean, if you have the course set up, you can you can hit a low three-iron uh pretty easily, I think. Bruce, I don't know if you'd agree with me or not.

Bruce Devlin 4:51

Well I do do, and I and I think one of the reasons too is you know, the old typical blade like the Slazzinger's three-iron that you said you loved to hit. I mean it was very difficult to hit a three-iron the same height that you could hit a just a regular seven-iron, for instance.

Steve Elkington 5:09

So that's right.

Bruce Devlin 5:10

It's uh the new clubs today are are built. Um, you know, where you look at I I don't know if you agree with me, but I look at today's seven irons and they look exactly like my five-iron did. Yeah. So uh, you know, it's got a number on it, but uh to be quite honest with you, there's no correlation between the numbers on golf clubs today and what they were back in the you know 70s and 80s. No no relationship whatsoever.

Steve Elkington 5:37

No, and they they build them with lower center of gravity, which gives you the height you need it, and the shafts are better, and they throw it up in the air better, and all that. But I've never really seen a really top player that didn't kind of sting it medium height. I mean, there were some guys that were exceptional that hit high long irons like Jack and Tiger and Greg Norman.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Yeah.

Steve Elkington 5:58

But that's like three guys. Yeah. Most everyone that was any good would sting that ball medium height, and that had all the all the spin on it it needed to keep all the control on it.

Bruce Devlin 6:10

Yeah. Of course, yeah, you know, we you've got it, you've got to start talking about you know, it's not only the golf clubs, but uh uh, you know, a lot a lot had to do with the golf ball. Uh you know, you you had to it was you had to be pretty talented to take that the old wound ball and keep it down as low as you know? It's it it wasn't so easy.

Mike Gonzalez 6:35

So Ste Steve, when you came out, what was the evolution of the golf ball technology? What what sort of ball existed at the time you started on the tour, and and did you have to evolve your game with the change in golf ball over time?

Steve Elkington 6:47

No, I think I just blended in with everyone else, but I I won with the 384, the title 384, and before that there was the low trajectory and the pro trajectory. The 384 was a great ball. I think it won all four majors the year that I won the in 95. I think John Daly used it, Corey Paven used it, uh, and Crenshaw and I both used the 384. It was a great ball. And then um then, you know, Greg Norman was there at the time. He was using a terrible ball, which was the two edition, spun like crazy. We used to call it a wooden pineapple. You remember that ball? Oh, I do remember that. Terrible ball.

Bruce Devlin 7:21

Yeah, that was a spin in Jesse, wasn't it?

Steve Elkington 7:23

He could hit it all right, but you know, he was spinning his irons like you know, you see some old footage of these balls spinning back the greens 30 or 40 feet, it was unreal. Um but I was with Titlist Company my whole career, and uh so I was able to just sort of I didn't have any equipment problems with at all. I used the same basically, I got nine sets of irons made when I came out of college. I spent a week out at Carlsbad with Joe Chanessa, who kind of recruited me to be with Titlist, and we made nine sets of irons, and I said, Joe, mate, I only need one set. And he said, nope. He said, We're staying here until you've ground all nine sets. I'm not gonna grind, I'm gonna approve nine sets. And I took those nine sets and I have them about a one rim over from here, and I if I wore out a seven, I just put another seven in from another from another set, they were all identical, and I made a few of the sets with a little bit more offset in the long irons and a little less in the shorter, but basically I had nine sets, and I basically played the whole career with those nine sets. Amazing. And uh I would change drivers. Titus never made a good driver, they never had one until now. Now they've got a really good one right now, today.

Bruce Devlin 8:37

As good as any today.

Steve Elkington 8:38

Yeah, but they used to have some good three woods. Remember, they used to have the PT13 and the PT15, they were pretty good. Uh, but I remember I won, you know, the Varden Trophy year there you mentioned, which I had the bubble head, that orange club tailor-made driver with a steel shaft. So uh, you know, I was always looking, you know, we weren't thinking about a ton of distance back then. We were thinking about fairways. And the longest hitter in my day was Dan Poe, and I think he averaged 280.

Bruce Devlin 9:09

Yeah, definitely was uh definitely you were always looking for the one that you could keep on the fairway.

Mike Gonzalez 9:16

What's your first recollection of playing a metal wood?

Steve Elkington 9:20

I know exactly the the time it was. It was 1993. And I was at the BC Open in Indicott, New York, and I was staying with Von Mois. You remember Von? He was a rules official. We were staying in the best western across the street, and he had one in the corner of his room. And I said, What's that? And he said, Jim Colbert gave me this. He said, It's brand new techno didn't use that term, he said, brand new wood, tailor-made it was. I said, Well, I'm gonna hit it tomorrow. And he said, Yeah, you can hit it. So I went out on the same course that I just played all week and I hit it 40 yards further than I was on almost every hole. I couldn't believe it was the greatest thing I've ever seen. I shot 62 and I bolted up the board and I finished about 10th in this tournament coming out of 50th that day. I remember exactly where it was. Ah, that's amazing.

Mike Gonzalez 10:10

And you you stick one in your bag uh right away, or did it take you a while to sort of figure out?

Steve Elkington 10:14

Well, there wasn't any around. They were just sort of testing them at the time, but no, I knew I knew that was coming because that was that was a big, big difference.

Mike Gonzalez 10:24

Yeah, you you probably were were there any smaller balls knocking around when you were a kid just learning the game, or do you you probably didn't have to go through that transition though?

Steve Elkington 10:32

No, I grew up on the small ball. The big ball didn't come to Australia and it and we would eventually float into Walga, you know, months later, but then they weren't very good. But we used to we used to go down on the in the hard pen and make them spin. It was it was like hitting a balloon, Bruce, back in the day, uh the big ball.

Bruce Devlin 10:49

Yeah, and uh I think it was I think my memory's good. 78, I believe, is when That sounds about right. Yeah, that was when that was when we uh crossed over from the uh from the little the 162 to the 168. And uh of course I can remember where you could play the open and both. Yeah, you could use both. You could have a little ball and into the wind and a big ball downwind. It didn't, you know, of course, all that's changed too, and probably correctly. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 11:22

Yeah, yeah. Let's move on to the U.S. Open. Uh 12 starts, nine cuts made, uh always some tough venues. What's your recollections of some of the U.S. Open you played in?

Steve Elkington 11:33

My recollection of the U.S. Open was my son Sam says, How dad, did you not play good in the U.S. Open? You're the straightest hitter I've ever seen of anyone. And I told him this. I said, I had the worst attitude at the US Open. I was somehow felt I was slighted because I the rough was too high, just off the edge, and it wasn't high out in the out in the rough. And I I had psyched myself out. It's very clear to me currently that I totally psyched myself out of the US Open. I had the wrong attitude completely, and I was always pissed off about what they were doing to the course, and I shouldn't have been, and it's absolutely my loss. There's my regret that we asked me 30 minutes ago that I should have been prepared in a different way because my attitude was always excellent. But it was terrible with the U.S. Open, and it cost me. I had no good win, no good finishes in the U.S. Open.

Mike Gonzalez 12:31

Well, let's move on to the Open Championship then, huh? It was certainly better. 15 starts, seven cuts made, but uh you had a top five, two top tens, uh, and you mentioned before, but we can talk about a little bit more. That's uh that best finish in 2002 when you were in a four-way, four-hole playoff with uh Ernie Ells, uh Thomas Levet, yourself, and uh and uh Mr. Appleby at Muirfield.

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Steve Elkington 12:56

Well, I had a chance in '95 at St. Andrews, the one that Roka got beat by John Daly in the playoff. If you ever watched that tournament again and you were in my sh in my camp, you would think, well, Elk's going to win this tournament. But I had all these makeable putts on the back nine at St. Andrews in 95, and I couldn't make a one of them. And I remember leaving St. Andrews that night, went over to Glen Eagles, my wife and I, our baby was just born, and and I I knew that I would never win a major because I didn't have enough courage, because I thought I had it laid in front of me, and when I had the chance, I couldn't hit it hard enough, or I or I was too timid, or whatever, but I I hit the ball good enough, but I couldn't make a putt, and I knew I wasn't going to make it, and that it really bogged me down. Now, I happened to get a chance a month later at the PGA at Riviera, and that was the reason I won at Riviera was because of what I did wrong at St. Andrews. I got back on the horse and I was lucky enough to find myself in contention, and the whole back nine at Riviera was all about just get out of the way and let Elk do what he wants to do and see what happens. And that was that was why I won that from that downfall at St. Andrews. But as you were mentioned there, the 0-2 at Muirfield, very hard course. I played the best round of golf probably of anyone's ever played, except maybe David Graham at Mary, and I hit all 18 greens and all 14 fairways the last day and shot 65 at Muirfield and um got into a playoff. So that was my best golf ever, was on that course because that course is so hard and so minefield. So that and Carnoostie. Carnoostie, you know, never I couldn't play Carnoustie. It's a tough course, isn't it? I couldn't play. I never got comfortable at Carnousti at all.

Mike Gonzalez 14:46

I think there's a lot of players probably say that Carnousti is a hard, hard golf course. Yeah. Well, let's let's let's go to the PGA championship then because you mentioned your win at Riviera. What a great place to have a major win.

Steve Elkington 15:01

Yeah, I knew the course well from Planet Riviera in the LA Open. Um it's on Kaikuya. Um I was a sweeper of the ball. Bruce knows all about what Kaikuya grass is, it's a particular strain of grass, it's very spongy. Growing up on it and Wagga, you know, you can't you can't dig into it. You've got to sort of sweep it. And and it everything suited me about that course, and and I knew that I would have a chance there, because as good as I was playing coming out of Riviera, I mean sorry, coming out of uh St. Andrews, but again, I was a few back on Sunday, but I wasn't I was only about two groups away from the lead. Ernie Ells, I think, had a six shot lead, but I've I found myself standing in a fair way at the 12th hole, a birdie twelve to go seven under for the day on Sunday at the PGA, and that's where I just said, okay, let's I was six back and now I'm two up. And I rode it as hard. I I had my foot to the hand to the pedal the whole way in. I hit it at every flag, and I'm like, if we're gonna break it, we're gonna break it going in there. So looking back on it, it was it was great. I mean, it couldn't have been bad. And then I birdied the first hole in the playoff to beat Colin Montgomery. So I knew I knew I knew I had to birdie something because he's not he's not going backwards. That guy was unreal when he got going.

Mike Gonzalez 16:19

Yes, birdied seven of the first twelve holes, so you got you you came out like a house of fire. And uh, you know, 64 on the final day. That's pretty strong. You know, hearing you talk about that round uh reminds me of the conversation we just had with Lanny Watkins and the mindset he sort of had as well in terms of closing tournaments. And course uh you you might remember his his scoring at Riviera as well. He seemed to really excel at that golf course. And he hearing you talk about that, it just it it it's it it it sounds exactly like w the way Lanny described his mindset there.

Steve Elkington 16:52

I remember when Lanny won to Bob Hope and then he won then he won Riviera right back to back. Uh and he came to Houston, he was working with Claude Harmon senior at Lochenbar, and I saw him and he's this is a guy a tour player that just won two weeks in a row, and I think they rode around and Mr. Harmon watched him play for two days and they're having lunch, and I was sitting on the side, and they he said, I got two or three things that you need to work on, Lanny, and Claude Harmon with that the way he talks, he's like, the first one was first thing you need to do, he says, when you go to the course, you may do you gotta make sure you have your clubs. That's number one, he said. The second thing you need, he says, you need to change the way to go to the bank every once in a while in case someone's following you. That was the second thing he told us. And uh I'll never forget that Lanny came down to get some big tip from Mr. Hyman. Those were the two two tips he got.

Mike Gonzalez 17:54

Now, do I remember you saying something about uh between uh you know coming from the the the open championship to this PGA that uh you might have tweaked your ball flight a little bit from a little right to left and maybe a little left to right?

Steve Elkington 18:08

Well, Bruce knows at St. Andrews that a a draw is the preferred shot there because the golf course is out and back in. So if you hooked it on every hole, then you would be in the middle of the golf course, every hole. So, you know I Riviera suited a fade, which suited me. I mean, I would twirl the club face open about a degree and then I would grip it with a slightly open face, as of course was back before we had adjustable gear. You know, Bruce, like I today I would take a 10 degree drive and I would, you know, make it a nine.

Bruce Devlin 18:41

Yeah.

Steve Elkington 18:42

And that's perfect for me. It would sit a little open and I could pretty much play if we were on track, man, my swing paths probably zero degrees with a one degree open face, would put a left or right curve on it very slightly. And that's something that we monitored that Bruce and I would do out of sheer just uh trial and error, right?

SPEAKER_04 19:05

Yeah.

Steve Elkington 19:06

That's how we learnt that. And um, of course, Hogan we knew set his clubs open. He had them underslung. I mean, Bruce, we could talk a whole segment on he Hogan set the grips and all this, and I know you played with him, but he, you know, he had a built-in Faye built into his clubs, is that correct?

Bruce Devlin 19:23

That's true. And uh we we had an opportunity uh before chatting with you, we talked with uh Robert Stennard, who runs the Ben Hogan Foundation here in Fort Worth. And uh he has some of the uh Hogan clubs that that he built trying, you know, he was a he was a tinkerer too with golf clubs. I mean, he his first couple of years on the tour, you know, I I think he was at a point where he was thinking about gee, I don't know if I can make this, and then all of a sudden uh he found out the way to play, but you can see some of the old clubs that he made. Uh I I mean it shocks you to think that today some of the modern golf clubs look exactly like some of the prototypes that he made back in the 60s, and uh it's a it's remarkable.

Steve Elkington 20:13

Yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, I've been lucky enough to have a look at a set of clubs at Hogan. It was in the Dublin when we were doing that show where I interviewed you in Dublin, uh Dublin, Texas, where Hogan's family was, and I went down there and shot that show on my series, and uh you were playing in the Hogan Memorial Day or whatever honoring Hogan. Well, I we went to the museum and we shot that show, and uh there was a set the the lady there let us get the clubs out and have a look at them. Yeah. And uh, of course, they're everything that I knew they would be because Jackie Burke had told me all about that. And uh underslung grip was set at five o'clock, so when you put the rib in your hand, it would roll the face, you know, clockwise a bit more. Right. And of course, Hogan talked about, you know, he wanted to have an active right hand and and he didn't want to didn't want to hook it. Yeah. All he was doing was catching up. That's it.

Mike Gonzalez 21:09

So let's talk a little bit about uh your other successes and and uh I would say based upon strength of field, they've got a rate right up there with uh with uh uh some of your uh success in the majors, and that's your two wins with the players' championship uh wins in in 91 and 97. And and uh uh uh tell us maybe first start uh with the 91 uh win. These were both a T PC, I assume.

Steve Elkington 21:35

That's correct. Yeah. 91 was a you know, that was a I just won on tour in 90, so back then they used to offer a 10 year exemption. They st well they did in 97 as well. I was the last one to win the 10 year exemption, but that was that was like better than winning money, as Bruce will attest. Having 10 year job security is pretty good. But that was where I drove it on Sunday in that divot on on the 18th hole and hit that three iron shot out of the divot. And the interesting thing I remember about that was Payne Stewart was the only guy out of the top hundred that wasn't playing that week. He was hurt and he was commentating. And I'd hit my drive up 18, and Payne Stewart was up ahead of me, and he was looking at this ball in the divot. I didn't know it was in a divot, and he was I I started to overhear him talking. He's like, oh, this is one of the worst breaks I've ever seen. He's hit this great drive, and now he's in a divot. And um I remember that, and uh, but but again, going back to Bruce and I, we've talked about it already. That three-iron shot, I was fortunate probably it was a three-iron and not an eight-iron, because Sandfield divot with a three-iron, not that big a deal if you're a sweeper for me, and I was able to pinch that three-iron off the off that divot and hit it up there and actually hold the putt to beat Fuzzy and uh oh, I think a couple of guys in that tournament. I think Zinger, yeah, Zinger was but uh but you know, to 97 97 when I won the tournament by seven strokes, that was my best ever 72 hole event. I led every every day, and um, you know, by the time I got to Sunday, I was pretty worn out, but I, you know, I it was a you know, huge amount of money, huge amount of exempt status, and so on. So I was up for it. And um it was an interesting story which actually helped me with Scott Hoke, who was, you know, I I like Scott Hoke, but he has a bit of a reputation for saying stupid things. But he uh on the first tee on Sunday, we were getting ready to tee off, and he said something like, uh, well, you know, if I win this tournament, I'll be exempt till I'm 50. You know, he must have been 40 at the time. And I looked at him and I was pretty nervous and I said, mate, this tournament has nothing to do with you. This is my tournament. And that was it. That was the only thing I said to him. And it and he actually helped me because it snapped me back into the right mode I needed to be in. Absolutely. And I actually shot at I shot the low round of the day with a three-shot lead and one by seven. So I thanked him.

Bruce Devlin 24:05

Yeah, he he give you he gave you the right injection, didn't he? He gave me the exactly what I needed.

Mike Gonzalez 24:11

Bruce, Bruce, how would you have reacted to that if uh you know one of your contemporaries had said something like that on the on the first T on Sunday with you holding the lead?

Bruce Devlin 24:20

I may I may have added a few superlatives to what uh I think I did. Yeah. I think I did too. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt that one little bit because that would be most most people well I shouldn't say that, but uh I think Australians uh sort of inbred in us a little bit, maybe. Uh I'd have reacted the same way. Yeah, got to have a bit of fight to you.

Mike Gonzalez 24:52

Yeah, and interest interesting that it puts you in the right frame of mind for the day, right?

Steve Elkington 24:55

Because what wasn't this the day you sort of got to the course late, you were a little bit rushed anyway, and uh Yeah, well I wasn't rushed, but I I I deliberately got there only 20 minutes before my time because I didn't want to be interviewed. I didn't want to go and hear from the people telling me that I'd been leading the whole week and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I I got to my spot 20 minutes before I teed off, and they said, Can we do an interview? And I said, No, I'm running late. I said that to them. You know, is it two o'clock? And I said, No, I'm running late. So I went over and I'd already been swinging in my room and always putting on the mat. I was ready to go, I was all warmed up anyway. Went and hit 10 balls and and um I had you know, one of my caddies, I had three caddies in my life, bullet, bullet bob, uh, Robert Thomas Burns, aka Bullet. He had a few rent wins with me, and then Gypsy, Gypsy Joe Grillo. Gypsy was on the bag that day. And uh I had Dave Rennick who caddied for um VJ and Jose Maria. He won with me at the at the PGA. I at the yeah, he won with me at the PGA. I I always thought it was important to have great caddies, but on that 97 win with Gypsy, we were up pretty good on the front nine, and we were on the ninth hole, there's a lot of people around, and and this guy's yelling at us as we're walking off the knife T. He's going, Elk, I need you to choke about right now. He says, You're killing these guys, and I'm I got money on all these other, you know, all this. And and Gypsy, I see Gypsy cut across in front of me, and he's going after this guy. I said, Gypsy, get back over here. We're not gonna be fighting out. Well, we're playing here. And he's like, No, Elk, I am this is bullshit. I'm going over to talk to this guy. I said, All right, whatever, go for it. So he goes over to that rope, you know, he's a big guy and he's got a cigarette in his hand and all this. And he says to that guy, he said, Hey, pal, he goes, I see you're pretty excited. He says, I'm pretty excited over here too. He says, How about we get up here at the end of this hole? We'll see who's the most excited out of me and you. I said, Gypsy, get over here. We're not fighting on this hole. We're getting ready to play the back nine on this deal. So, uh, you know, that was fun. And I had some great caddies. And that, of course, was the year that I I remind my son Sam that I beat Tiger. Tiger was about 45th on that tournament, and then two weeks later he became, of course, Tiger when he won the Masters by 17 strokes or 12 strokes in 97, was his first win. So I have to remind him that he was in that tournament, by the way. As as were everybody else. Uh I smoked him. I smoked him in 90. I smoked him at 97 plays.

Mike Gonzalez 27:26

Hey, talk a little bit about some of the team play you're involved in in your career. You you you played the first few presidents' cups, uh, but you had some other uh other wins with uh various partners in team events.

Steve Elkington 27:37

Yeah, you mentioned in the shark shootout. I won I won the shark shootout with Raymond Floyd, who was a great friend of mine, and uh he was amazing to play with, so positive. As Bruce was saying about Mr. Book, I don't know if anyone's more positive than Raymond. Uh and uh one with Mark Kalkovecchia, he was a great player. He was a guy that would get so hot, get so get going so good, it was unreal. And then I won with Greg Norman, but uh referencing the uh the President's Cup, the the thing that I liked the most about the President's Cup was Peter Thompson was our captain. That was the thing I liked the most about the President's Cup. And I remember one specific story, we're in Melbourne, which we won. It's the only tournament we won the President's Cup. And Tomo was in there, and Frank Noblo was on our team, and he was in the team room with us, and Tomo didn't have didn't want any input on any of the teams. He's just gonna put the teams on the board, and this is that's how it's gonna go. And we were fine with that. And um he knew he knew what he was doing more than it more than we did, Bruce. I'm sure Tomo, of course, doesn't miss anything. But this one day uh he had put up the 36 hole pairings. So if I was out with Greg in the morning, Greg Norman was my partner, and I I could see if I was out in the afternoon in the in the thing. And Frank put his hand up in the room and said, Hey uh hey Captain, he says, Um hypothetical question here, he says, What if I played absolute garbage in the morning and uh I should be benched, but you've already committed this to the afternoon? Do you think you should rethink that in case we've got someone sitting over here like uh Craig Parry or whoever is playing his ass off, for example? He might want to get a go. And Tomo sat there for a second and he said, nah. He said, Some of the best rounds I've ever played in my life is after I played absolute crap in the morning. I had to go right back out in the afternoon. And I've never seen anyone cut to the chase as much as Tomo. Uh, what do you know? Give me something on Tommo, uh Bruce. Well does that sound like Tomo?

Bruce Devlin 29:47

Yeah, the yeah, the well, because he was always telling us what to do. But uh we were playing in uh in Japan one year, and uh Alan Murray and Colin McGregor and I can't remember who else it was four of us. We're all staying at the same hotel, and we decided that we were gonna play a little joke on him. So uh breakfast time we knew where he'd be, you know, he gets down there fairly early. So we all got dressed up in a collar and tie, and we marched into the breakfast room. One, two, hook, ho, hook, ho, walked right up to him. Squad, hold, left turn, and we all bowed at Peter and then left. So, in other words, we were uh he he was telling us what to do so much of the time that we decided, uh damn, we're gonna we're gonna show him, and that's what we did.

Steve Elkington 30:45

I thought you were gonna say for a second he he was supposed to be somewhere in that coat and tie for a split second.

Bruce Devlin 30:50

Oh no, no, we we just decided that we were because he honor him. Well, yeah, he was always, you know, if he if he was out of a nighttime, he had a jacket and a tie on, you know. And uh we were all lounging around, you know, pants in a shirt. And uh he kept saying to us, you know, you're supposed to, you know, when you nighttime when you go out to dinner, you're you're supposed to look respectable, you know, you're not you're not playing golf in the nighttime, so dress up like like you should be dressed up. So we decided to do it for breakfast.

Steve Elkington 31:21

What was it like what did Tomo hit the ball like when he was when he was going good? What was that like? I've never really had anyone in front of me like this that saw Tomo play like I know what he did with his record, but what how did he do it?

Bruce Devlin 31:36

He was uh back in those days, uh the two guys I loved to watch were Peter Thompson and and uh Norman von Neider. And after after watching Peter two or three times, I decided that it was like watching paint dry. Uh it was uh, you know, it never looked like he ever hit the ball extremely hard. Uh he never curved the ball a lot. Uh uh it was like, you know, he was he was picture yourself, uh you know, you you hit the ball a lot like him. Uh whereas Norman, Norman von Neiden would curve the ball. And so I I the more I got around the the two of them, the more I uh tended to watch Norman play more than Peter. But he was uh well, look at his record. I mean it's a you know, in in one respect, I know um he he dominated the senior tour when he came back to the United States. One nearly every week. At that time I was doing the television, so it was fun to watch him play then too. But uh I I just wonder if he had decided to do what a lot of uh you and I and Crampton and David Graham and you know all the guys that have followed us, what he would have done if he'd have played over here on a consistent basis. I I had to believe he would would have had one hell of a career here in the United States, but he chose Europe over over the US. That you know, plain and simple.

Steve Elkington 33:10

Yeah, there's no doubt what you said there is true. Would he get out in front and just stay there, or would he or could could he get hot late or would he always just always there, just you know, super steady all the time, you know.

Bruce Devlin 33:23

The holes he's supposed to birdie, he'd birdie, you know, hard ones he'd find a way to make power.

Steve Elkington 33:30

It's interesting when you think of really good players like Jack or Tomo or Tiger and you start to think ahead when they on the golf course, you're like, oh well, yeah, he'll birdie 13 at Augusta, and he'll birdie 15, so he's at six now, he'll be at eight, and he might get one more nine. You've always it's almost like you've you they precr they program us to know they're so good that they that it's almost foregone conclusion. Is that true?

Bruce Devlin 33:51

Right, and if we were and if we were close, we were always thinking, well, you know, well, I'm I'm even with him now, but yeah, he's gonna go two ahead if I don't birdie those two. So I you know, I gotta I gotta go shooting at the flag and that sometimes.

Mike Gonzalez 34:09

Well, you had some great guys come before you, Steve, from Australia, um and and and uh some some guys too that were from your era. Um other remembrances of some of those guys. We talk about Peter Thompson. What about Kel Nagel? Did you have much exposure to Kel Nagel?

Steve Elkington 34:27

No, I didn't I didn't really know Kel Nagel, just uh I only got to see him play. I met him a couple times with Alex Mercer, but I never got to play golf of Kel Nagel, wish I did. Um I was in Europe, there were some sort of pretty interesting players on that tour. Michael Clayton was over there, Peter Sr., who was pretty prolific. I stayed with Peter Sr. one time when he won in Malmo in Sweden. It was just amazing what that guy could do. You know, he with his swing, I think he had ten-finger grip and he sort of lashed at it, but he was so straight. And um there was a bunch of good Aussie players all over the place.

Mike Gonzalez 35:04

How about Bruce Crampton or David Graham? Were you able to overlap much with them?

Steve Elkington 35:08

Crampton, not so much. Never, never got to see. I wouldn't have got to see Bruce much unless I knew his boys, but I didn't, I don't, I don't even think I've played much golf with you, Bruce. No, we've got to be a good one. I've only been around the golf with you quite a bit, but never I don't even know. I know we haven't played in a tournament together. I don't even know if we've played a whole round of golf together, but any rate. Um David Graham was our captain in the President's Cup, knew him well. Um never got to play golf with him either. So there was a pretty good size gap. I'm 58, so I played, you know. How old are you, Bruce? I'll be 84 in October.

Bruce Devlin 35:46

Okay. So you're a generation and a half behind me.

Steve Elkington 35:49

Yeah, yeah, that's too too wide. And all the other boys they just mentioned were the same age, right?

Bruce Devlin 35:53

Yeah. Crampton was uh Crampton's a little bit older than me. Actually, Dave's nine years younger than me, but uh uh obviously he and I, like I said, you know, we traveled together a lot on the tour and spent a lot of time together. He was uh he's got a pretty good record too.

Steve Elkington 36:12

Yeah, he does. And I played the golf a lot of golf with the shark, you know, when I was on the tour. And you know, Shark when he was, or Greg Norman when he was swinging well, he was awesome to watch too, because you know, he hit it so straight and far and long irons, and he was a great putter.

Bruce Devlin 36:30

He was a good driver too. Might have been uh at that time that he was winning, might have been the best driver of a golf ball that ever lived, really. Yeah, exactly.

Mike Gonzalez 36:39

And at that time, most of the time we're talking about wooden back in the wooden era with a wooden driver, yeah.

Steve Elkington 36:45

I walked with him in uh 83 at Turnbury when he shot 63 the first day. I think he was low round of the day by like seven strokes in the afternoon. Wosnom, I think, shot 70 in the morning, and then Norman went out and shot 63 in the afternoon. And I think the 11th hole at Turnbury's back up the hill long par four after the par three. I was I waited because there were so many people following Norman going down nine and ten. I just waited at 11 green, and I watched two or three groups come up there, and they weren't reaching the green in two because it was so windy on 11. They're hitting driver three would short. And Norman comes up there, and you could see he'd hit it a bit further than the others where they were, the other three groups. And then he took a driver off the deck and he ball ran up and hit the flag and finished that far from the hole. And I'm like, this guy's playing on a different course than anyone else today. And the rough was this high that day. I mean, there was it was out there not too far off the fairways, it was three feet high. You were walking through it, and uh it was unreal what he did that year.

Mike Gonzalez 37:50

So, who were some of your favorite players uh of your area, some of your some of your best friends, uh particularly back in the 90s?

Steve Elkington 37:57

Well, Billy Ray Brown and I were roommates in college. We we we stayed friends for, I don't know, a long time. But Mark Lye was a guy that was kind of one of my real good friends. I'd stay with Mark back in the day, and of course I was with Shark and Ernie and Nick Price and all those kind of guys. Um but you know, we we all on the tour you finish up, and Bruce just mentioned that David is younger, but you do finish up in the sort of age group, guys of college and so on, but I would play a fair amount of practice rounds with Tom Watson, Paul Azinger, Lenny Watkins, Tom Wyscoff, because they wanted to gamble. Now I didn't necessarily want to be in the giant gambling games, but I finished up just getting in them because I wanted to be with them and we would play these pretty good sized games, and they wanted to put a lot of pressure on themselves before the tournament. They wanted to stand over four or five foot parts for a lot of money. When I say a lot of money, I'm talking a thousand bucks, which was a pretty b pretty good amount of money. And I remember one year at Augusta, I think I was playing with Greg Norman and against Tom Watson and Zinger, and we beat them out of a pretty good amount of money, and uh Tom Watson gave me a check and it on the memo it had set of McGregor McGregor uh 693T woods, which is a set of wooden wooden woods, and and he put that on the memo like he sold them to me. So I wish I would I wish I would have had that check today, but it was worth about a thousand bucks or something. So I guess isn't that interesting.

Bruce Devlin 39:32

We've got to expense that baby. Take take the cash and and uh expense the uh check.

Mike Gonzalez 39:40

Exactly. We may know the answer to this question. You might have given it to us earlier, but uh the question I like to ask is if you knew uh at age twenty uh what you know now at age fifty-eight, what would you have done differently?

Steve Elkington 39:58

Well, I just played golf at the Floridian in a pro member, and I played with a kid named Willie Mack, and he's a young kid that's trying to make it on the tour, uh, African American kid, and I think he's got a bit of pressure on him because of his heritage, and he's getting a lot of exemptions and a lot of people are asking him questions about all this and that. And I played with this kid uh on last Sunday, a couple of days ago. And he he he would for sure be much happier if he was just exempt on the tour today and he wasn't having to get exemptions and so on and so forth. But I told Willie Mack, I said, mate, after the round, I said, you don't I don't know if you even need to hear this, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. I said, you have all the physical skills you need to be a really good tour player. In fact, I said if I stepped into your game today, I probably could play the tour with your game for the next 20 years. I said, you may think you need all these new different things because now, you know, they they gotta work on their swing, they're working on their stretch, all these things. But uh he he had everything he needed. And um they gotta work more on their mentor, Bruce. They gotta they gotta they that's the biggest thing that I don't see, you know. They're all looking at their swing and some of them forget how to score. Look at Ricky Fowler, you mentioned his name earlier this year, he worked on his swing so much and now he can't score. Um you know, I'm affiliated with a bunch of these tour players in my company, and I've got some that are hot and some that are cold, and and you know, and they're all looking at the cameras all day long. You know what I mean?

Bruce Devlin 41:40

Well, and uh probably the uh I've said this before, uh Nicholas to me was uh the most uh capable guy of having conversation with you after your t-shirt, you walk you know, walk along the fairway with him, and then about 15 yards short of the green, that was the end of that conversation. It was, you know, now I've got to concentrate on what I'm trying to do and uh you know, talk about somebody that was always positive. I think Jack probably was, you know, as good as anybody that's ever played the game.

Steve Elkington 42:16

Yeah, I like players that have big legs like Jack. You know, I I I've always strengthened my legs for in my fitness when I played the tour. I didn't do anything with my upper body ever. I I would ride the bike, still do for an hour a day just on the just to keep my legs really strong. And Jackie Burke used to tell me, you know, once the legs are gone, then everything's gone. Yeah, yeah. I remember when Tom Watson should have won the British Open there uh that Stuart Sink won, and he walked in the press room. First thing out of his mouth was they asked him what happened. He said, Well, I lost my legs on uh the 70s, whatever it was, the first playoff hole. He said, My legs were gone and I couldn't get underneath it. But to me, you know, Freddie Couples had big legs, Fuzzy had good thick legs, Walrus, you know, good strong legs. And of course, Mr. Burke told me that's what took Hogan down from the accident. He's lost his legs and he couldn't do anything. And is that would that would that be fair?

Bruce Devlin 43:10

No, I'm not so sure. You've got to look at what Hogan did after that accident, my guess. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's that's might be one of the most remarkable things uh in golf to think that 16 months after after you nearly killed in an automobile accident, you come back and win the US Open. That was just astounding. And then I think he won I think he won five or six majors after that accident, if I'm He did. Was that at Merion? That was it at Oakland Hill. No, Marion or Oakland Hills was uh fifty want to say fifty one. You were there? No, no, no, I was not there. I was I was a I was being a plumber back in Australia in fifty one.

Steve Elkington 43:57

Sorry, mate.

Mike Gonzalez 43:58

Things were a little different.

Steve Elkington 44:00

Was 10 years older than Mr. Book, so that he would be 108 today.

Bruce Devlin 44:03

That's right. Yeah, he would be. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 44:07

Yeah. Um who was the most impressive player of your era, Sans Tiger Woods? If you put him aside, who else would probably be the most impressive to you as you watch them play the game of golf?

Steve Elkington 44:20

Well, I before I answer it, I can't not say Tiger Woods in some way because he was a different player and he he hit the ball with so much sting, so much so much so much power, so much precision that that cannot be left without saying that. Um you know, he was the most dominant player. He was like Ian Thorpe in the pool. He was better than we were. It was over the four days he was able to demonstrate that. But the other player that I like to watch that was in full flight was unbeatable, was Nick Price. And Nick Price was from top to bottom, when he was winning all those tournaments in the 90s and all that. I mean, no one played the game simpler than Nick Price. Now, there's other guys that I like parts of their game. You know, I used to love watching Crenshaw playing around the greens and Sevy, and I like watching Azinger hit little low wedge shots and Greg Norman drive the ball straight. All this, but altogether Nick Price was probably the the most complete looking player when he was in full flight. Good pick. I think that's a good pick.

Mike Gonzalez 45:30

And seemed like such a simple movie out of the ball, too. Very repeatable. I used to love to watch him play.

Bruce Devlin 45:36

Upbeat tempo. Yes. Right? A little quicker than most, but uh like Tom Watson.

Steve Elkington 45:42

Yeah, he got about as good as didn't he? Lenny Watkins. Lenny Watkins, Tom Watson, you know, that that speed, Nick Price, all three of them were up tempo. I didn't I didn't like, you know, that's not my tempo, of course. Everyone recognizes mine a little bit slower than that, but I still loved watching that action. Like a piston.

Mike Gonzalez 46:08

You know, we could probably do a whole episode just having you guys opine on the differences between the game back in your eras and the game today. Uh, but let's just touch on that briefly, and then I want to have you guys weigh in on the new player impact program that was just announced by the PG Tour, um, or kind of announced by them, at least acknowledged by them after someone else reported that news. But but let's first just talk about differences in the game. I mean, the equipment one is obvious, but what are the some of the biggest changes that you see, Steve, between when you were playing back in the 90s and and the game today?

Steve Elkington 46:45

There was a lot more guys in my day that had what I consider signature games. I mean, when I think of some of the players and how they played, whether it was Hale Irwin, had a particular polished game, Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Craig Stadler, they all had their Bruce Litsky, Corey Paven, Lenny Watkins, they all had a certain amount of their own style. Today the players are sort of swinging a bit more of a model. They're sort of they're trying to, they've got so much technology that they are, you know, um they're becoming sort of uh robots are terrible word. They're they're they're playing, you know, a straighter ball flight, higher ball flight, not as much curve, but it seems to me the guys that win a lot, I'm getting a little bit scattered here, but you've got to have control of your spin. I remember Lee Trevino telling me, and Mr. Burke for that matter, everyone that plays the best at their position in all sports control the spin a lot. When you think about tennis, or you think about snooker, or you think about 10-pin bowling, it's the guys that control the pitchers, the guys that throw these curve balls, the guys that have tight spinning balls that control the spin, they're the bet they're the ones that are the best players. And a lot of those guys that I just said did that.

Bruce Devlin 48:10

Yeah, I'll j yeah, I'll just add the add that uh you know to m to make Steve's point, uh I think even back uh you look at look at the players of um that were just before me and and uh past me, they all had you know, most of them didn't go to college. Uh they came from all parts of the, you know, the mountains and the seashore and they all swung differently. They um you know you look at well look at Burke and Demerit, Sneed, Hogan, Middlecoff, uh, you know, they all swung com I mean completely different. Now they were all fine players and knew how to get the club back to the ball square, but boy, they sure look different. And and I I agree with Steve. I think today uh the game is uh the ball doesn't curve nearly as much. Tiered high, let it fly. Um, you know, shorter, shorter club into the green, so what, you know. Uh I and I think the perfect example of that might be the uh DeChambeau open last year when I, you know, I mean I saw him hit a lot of shots out of the rough, but it didn't seem to matter that much because he was only hitting, you know, eight iron stuff.

Steve Elkington 49:30

Yeah, DeChambeau, um I don't think Augusta liked very much when they said that the par for him there was 68, and and I don't think they liked the 20 under either that they shot in November. And I think I enjoyed the masters this year because Augusta set it up as traditionally up on those ledges, Bruce, as you know. And mate, if you want to hit it over there to the pin at 11 with the pin way left, then go for it if you want to, but they won't do it because they can't they they're not quite precise enough and there's too much uh too much risks there. But I really enjoyed watching the the golf this year at Augusta because it's well protected with great design. Yeah, of course, nobody knows more about design than you, but hey, those pins are over there, they just can't shoot at them, they don't have the they can't do it. Yeah, we should never talk about the 11th hole.

Bruce Devlin 50:18

That's my that's my one shot I'd like back, although uh I was leading the masters by three shots going to eleven on Saturday, and I uh to be honest with you, I did not shoot it at the flag. I shot, you know, I hit a I hit a perfect six sign, or what I thought was a perfect six sign, but I've failed to carry it off the downslope in front of the green, and it's left in the water. Eight. Yep. Eight. Eight quick eight. What is the deal with you and the billiard? I don't know. I'm I guess I guess I love the water. As a matter of fact, the gentleman that's on with our uh podcast today was the I call them benevolent dictators uh at Secession Golf Club in Buford. He was the president there for five and a half years, and he knows how much I love water, don't you, Mike?

Mike Gonzalez 51:12

Yeah, and Steve, uh you probably haven't heard this, but uh Bruce and I were walking down the second fairway. It was the summer we were gonna redo all the bunkers and put in these eco-bunkers. And uh so we knew they were gonna be where they're gonna be for 50 years, we better get them right. So he wanted to be there and uh so anyway, we're walking up the second fairway, it's a little short part three, and and he kind of puts his arm around me and and as if to accent every syllable, he taps me on the on the chest and says, he says, write this down. And then he points to a little palmetto on our back tee behind second green, he says, put me right there. And that's where he wants to be.

Bruce Devlin 51:53

So I'm gonna go swim with the dolphins when I'm uh when when they have no more use for me here in this world. I'm gonna go take a swim with the dolphins.

Mike Gonzalez 52:02

And we hope that's a long time coming. So, guys, you've both probably read a little bit about the PGA's new$40 million pool where they intend to uh reward, I guess is uh uh a word, uh uh maybe the top ten players measured by some fancy algorithm yet to be explained, but it's called the Player Impact Program. I I don't believe uh the the payout of the money is yet to have anything to do with performance on the golf course, and I thought maybe uh you guys could weigh in. Steve, you want to start with that one?

Steve Elkington 52:34

Sure. I think um well Tiger's not gonna be able to play on the golf course this year, it seems, right now, but he'll still win it because he has 15 million people that follow him. And I saw he put a photo up of him the other day, and there was 250,000 people commented on that photo. So, you know, I don't know which way, you know, there's no hard way to say it. It's it's basically appearance money for about there's eight of those guys, it's already preset, and these guys have so many followers that the tour, the tour does not own the media rights to a tour player, they own the rights to us when we play inside the ropes, but they're trying to get creative. Either in their press or whoever wrote it said they don't want these players going overseas, they want them to stay here and we're going to incentivize them for staying. But this is a shut this is a shut door program. Nobody else can get in it, but the guys that are already there, it's already prepaid almost. Nobody's breaking into that top ten.

Bruce Devlin 53:37

Well, I think that uh part of it may have uh have something to do with the Premier Golf League that uh read that that organization was uh trying to get some of the top players and you know play for 240 million and pay them all different different amounts of money. Uh there's no doubt about it that the top ten guys probably are the ones that are you know that that drive the uh the credibility of the game, I suppose. Uh keep the sponsors happy. I always said that the one thing that I think should have happened in professional golf is once every five or six years you are to support every golf tournament. So, you know, I I gather that there's one part of this New Deal that says that you are to play one more golf tournament than you would normally play. What is that? I have no earthly idea what that means. Uh, you know, there are 12 majors well, there are 12 big tournaments. The majors and the world golf championships and uh players championship. Uh you know, I think that accounts for 12 tournaments. Uh so if you only play in the in those 12 tournaments, do you have to add one? Uh I don't know. That's what I read that you had to add one.

Steve Elkington 55:02

I think if a guy plays 20 events, they want him to play 21 or one that he hasn't played before. They want him to add a new one that he's never played before. So they would essentially, you know, get the top ten to play, each one of them would play an event they haven't played before. So that I think that's I think that's the idea.

Bruce Devlin 55:21

Yeah, well, I I sort of like that because the tour is, you know, the tour is made up of uh what 46 is it 46? 46 different tournaments around the country. Obviously, you can't play in every one. Yeah, is six years, you know, every six years you've got to play in a tournament you that you haven't played for the last five. I don't know if that's the right thing, but that might be the only part of this whole thing that I think makes sense that you play a tournament that you haven't played in a long time.

Steve Elkington 55:53

Well, we will see the algorithm won't work because, like I said, Tiger won't be playing probably for quite a while, and he's gonna win that ten minutes, and that and that's fine, I think, with everyone that I've read talked about Tiger moving the needle, is what they're calling it, the moving the needle program, right?

Mike Gonzalez 56:08

Yeah, exactly. So it'll be interesting to see how this thing evolves over this first year, but uh I wanted you guys to sort of weigh in on that. Steve, let's just finish up by uh telling our listeners a little bit what you're up to these days. We know uh Bruce had mentioned you've got uh podcast called the Secret Golf Podcast that you do with uh uh a Scottish lady. Yes, Diane Knox, yep. Diane Knox, yeah.

Steve Elkington 56:29

Russell Knox's uh sister. She's an excellent broadcaster. She had a her own uh show in Scotland that had a million people listen to her, so she's she's a super uh talented person on the air. But I own a company, a media company called Secret Golf. Uh I have 33 tour players, both men and women, that add content to our program. And we have an app called the SG Tour Gaming App. So when I think of gaming, golf gaming, I what what what we do is we do peer-on-peer gaming. So what that means is us four, for example, can join the app and we can set a little purse, maybe twenty dollars for the week, and we will pick our players for the tournament this week, and we can set the breakdown, and we're gonna see who's the best out of us four. But we do that on a bigger level. Clubs is where we like to get most of our people, but that's that's what we do.

Mike Gonzalez 57:24

Yeah, good. And uh uh finally just uh maybe share with us how you'd like to re be remembered as a golfer.

Steve Elkington 57:31

Well, I hope I'm not done yet, but uh I think it's a record. You know, I understand that now that I'm out of the game slightly, that I realize when I go around the country and I talk to people that I gave people a lot of enjoyment from watching me play golf with my swing and so on. They they pulled for you, they liked, they enjoyed watching you swing and so on. So I have to uphold all the great qualities that the tour and all the players like Bruce and Jackie Burke and everyone else have have done, and and uh I'm just one of the fish in that school of fish of golfers, but you know, when I think of the great players like Jack and Tiger and you know Hogan and all them, I'm not in that league. I'm the next level, but that's fine. I I know exactly where I sit. But all said and done from a guy that had a Red Devil three iron from Wagga.

Bruce Devlin 58:30

Well, we sure appreciate you being with us today. I did all right. Yes, you did all right. You did a wonderful, and uh it's it's been great chatting with you, and uh maybe along the way we get a chance to do it again sometime.

Steve Elkington 58:44

Yeah, we certainly will. And I'll I'm gonna come up and see uh Kel's course and then I'll be able to sit with you. Please again. Yeah, I wish you would. That'll be fun. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna bring my son Sam up there. We're gonna have a play the young ones. There you go. We'll do that for sure. Mike, thank you for organizing this. It was means a lot to me to be with Bruce today.

Mike Gonzalez 59:07

Well, great. Uh Steve Elkington, major championship winner. Been great having you. Thanks, guys.

Intro Music 59:14

Then it started to.

Mike Gonzalez 59:15

Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Good of the Game. And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, but tell your friends until we tee it up again for the good of the game. So long, everybody.

Intro Music 59:39

It went smack down the fairway. When it's time to just let it just smack enough line. It headed for two, but it mounted off line. Mac edits as long as you're still in the stage, okay? When it's mid down the middle, file away.