Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Good afternoon, everybody. It's Master's Week and Taylor's Azora of
Serious XM is with us. Taylor, Happy Master's Week. My friend.
You're down where most people would just love to be in.
That's Augusta and ain't no better place to be in
this week. I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's true, Jim. Thank you. It is a labor of love.
To be here on these grounds is such a special spot.
It brings out the best in everybody when they're here.
It's just so beautiful. The fact that you don't get
to have your phone on the golf course, I think
is a real treat. It requires you to be more
(01:01):
present than just about anywhere else in your life and
pay attention to all of your surroundings and the people
that you're with. It's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Have you had your Memento cheese sandrich yet?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I haven't had my first one yet. I do. It
is my favorite Tomento cheese, but I would say it's
not my favorite sandwich at Augusta National. I'm more of
an egg salad or even a barbecue guy. They have
some great offerings here in those departments, but they also
have a new tomato pie that they've unveiled this year,
(01:36):
and that is that's the most important thing that I
need to do when this interview is over.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, now, you know a lot of people don't know
this about Augusta, and I think it's it's a lot
of fun. Is when you step in the behind the
ropes of Augusta on on the event days, it's like
walking back in time. It's like you're entering a museum
where people are going to play, you know, an event.
(02:04):
It's to golf as Masison Square Garden is to basketball
and it's a cathedral. It's funny that crossover wise, right,
audience wise, you're in year out. The Masters is the
potentially the only golf tournament a number of people will
ever watch. So take us behind the scenes and give
(02:28):
us an idea of like walking back. As they said
in the fifties and sixties, you can buy those Permento
cheese sandwiches, you can buy those tomato pies, and you
still aren't going to break the bank. It's ridiculously how
cheap it is to actually eat there.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, it only cost a couple of bucks. You can
have a sandwich in a soda or a or a
beer for about five or six bucks total, and the
prices have not changed much over decades and decades, which
is a real treat. Now there is a wonderful merchandise
building here. There's actually several where you can do a
(03:08):
significant amount of damage for yourself and for your friends.
But it is it's There's a man that meant a
great deal to my life named Ron Green Senior, who
wrote for a Charlotte newspaper for many years. He covered
sixty masters and he just passed away in the last
(03:28):
year and years ago. He wrote about Augusta National and
he called it Eden with flagsticks, and it's just a
great way of putting it. It's it's just such a
special place. It it was. It was a nursery gym
before it was a golf course. And I think this
and certainly after mister Jones and mister Roberts bought the place,
(03:54):
they wanted to continue to celebrate what it used to
be with what it became. And that's still the ninety
plus years later, is the grounds still looks like a
nursery with a golf course around it.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
You know, prior to starting things here, we had a
little conversation about the challenge. I mean, you can watch
golf on television, but translating golf on the radio is
very difficult. And I must say, you and the entire
(04:30):
serious XM team and I do listen to you guys
and half for years on the golf broadcasts are able
to capture it in a way that in many to me,
it's more exciting to listen to than it is to
necessarily watch.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well. I really appreciate that it is. It's my favorite
assignment of the year. Getting to work with Mike Tico,
who is truly one of the best that's ever done
this in the history of broadcasting, and the rest of
our team. I am just I marveled just as much
at our producers Jeremy Davis and Justin Ware, and our
(05:07):
engineering team and everyone else that helps. We have someone
that is seated next to me right now, Brian Fisher
is in charge of all of our logistics this week.
I mean, everybody that is here is the best at
what they do, and I think that you hear that
when you listen to the broadcast. I think it's having
the right team in place is a big reason why
(05:30):
we're so proud of of what you hear during the broadcast.
But it is it's a very different assignment than broadcasting
it on television. Jim Nantz is one of my dearest
friends in the world, and I think it takes a
ton of talent from him and the rest of his
team to know when to speak and to to when
(05:51):
to not speak on a broadcast because of all that
you can see and how beautiful and powerful the visuals
and the sounds are that you're seeing on your television
screen and what should support what you should verbally support that.
With that the real talent to be able to know
the right things to say and when to say them.
(06:14):
But on the radio, it's a completely different skill set.
You have to be all the senses and you have
to be able to describe the wind and the trees
and the green and the grass, and the color of
the sky, and what the player is hitting and what
they're wearing. You have to and how many people are
(06:37):
around them when they play a shot, on top of
calling the shot. So you know, Vin Scully, to me,
was the best ever at doing that, the longtime voice
of the Dodgers, who of course had great success in
television and radio and called the Masters for years. I'm
sure you remember that he was the best at describing
(06:58):
that beautiful sky behind Dodger Stadium and how it was
seventy five degrees and it looked like there was a
thread of a cloud that was ten miles away. He
would do that and then describe the baseball on the field.
I think that all of us are charged with doing
that when you listen to golf on the radio. It's
(07:19):
one thing to do that for a football game or
a basketball game when you have one thing happening in
front of you, But when you have as many as
eighteen things happening out on the golf course and deciding
which piece goes next and what all, and be able
to call it in its entirety, it's a big challenge.
(07:39):
I would argue calling golf on the radio is the
biggest challenge in sports broadcasting. But because of what I
just mentioned.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I would agree. I'm gonna say, though in serious XM
piss so I could say this tennis is a little
difficult too, because it will go so fast. But X
does an outstanding job of both doing it. Now, you
just talked about guys like Vinnie and Jim. Jim is
(08:08):
of the Less is More kind of Vinny was God
love him the other way, which was he painted pictures
on television that you were seeing in front of you.
But wait a minute, he's just picking up stuff I
wasn't seeing. He was like, Okay, this is cool. So,
(08:29):
as we said before, it's a challenge logistically, where would
are you on you know, as as the as a
broadcast goes, Where will you be during the I know
you you've got different tasks, and we'll go over this
task first coming up on Thursday, and then change over
(08:51):
on on on the weekend, But where will you physically
be during the tournament?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So Mike Tarico Johnson, our lead analyst, and I will
be in the press building. We'll be right where I'm
sitting right now, which is we are on the back
end of the tournament practice area, so the range where
all the players are warming up, and I'm looking at
a monitor right now Rory McElroy. Rory McElroy is literally
(09:18):
right now hitting shots in my direction. So I'm three
hundred and fifty yards away from him on the other
end of the range here at Augusta National. And so
we're stationed here and we have four rooms in the
bottom of the press building. We have a couple of
production rooms, and a couple of broadcast rooms here in
(09:40):
the press building, and this is where our main broadcast
originates from. And our producers Jeremy and Justin they are
constantly looking at every camera on the grounds to decide
what goes next and decide what we're going to call next.
And then we have a number of terrific commentators that
(10:01):
are stationed out on the golf course. As an example,
Brian Patrick is in the grandstand in a tiny little
broadcast booth that's at the top of the grand stand
to the left of the fifteenth green the park five
fifteenth here at Augusta National, and he's watching what's happening
in front of him on the fifteenth hole, and then
(10:24):
directly beneath him is the sixteenth tee, so he can
just turn around and look below him and watch hit
shots on the sixteenth. So if something of significance is
happening in one of those two spots, Mike or myself
will toss it to Brian there at that position and
say let's go to fifteen and Brian Katrick. The same
(10:47):
can be said with John McGuinness who's at the top
of the twelfth tees in the grand stand that magnificent
grand stand at the top of the twelfth hole. He's there.
And if something happens at Amen Corner on arguably the
most famous hole in the world, we go to John
McGinnis on the twelve. Now, if we don't have someone there,
then we'll call it from here. But that's sort of
(11:11):
the way that it works. And I wish everyone could.
I wish they would televise Jeremy and Justin chursing this
broadcast because I think, kind of like you, I think
everybody would find it fascinating to see sort of how
the sausage is made and what happens next.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You know, it's just talking about holes in preparation for
the Master's I talked to Curtis Strange the other day
and Curtis was saying that what he thinks fans don't
quite understand about Augusta, I'd like your opinion on this.
He says, there are holes where even the best, like
(11:53):
a Rory McElroy or you know, or Justin Thomson, any
one of these spectacular golfers come to Augusta and it's
just the hole that tortures the year after year after year.
It doesn't matter how well they're playing. I mean, they
can win the tournament, but this one hole, and it's
different holes for different people, just seem to torture. And
(12:15):
it's the way that the golf courses laid out.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, it is. And it's if you're like, as an example,
let's say you're most comfortable hitting a draw. You're a
right handed golfer and you're comfortable playing a shot that
starts right and ends left, Well, that would work out
really well for you on most of the holes out
here because they are, as we call in the golf business,
(12:38):
dog leg lefts. Sure, the first hole in the eighteenth
hole are dog leg rights, and so on the eighteenth hole.
As an example, if you are a drawer of the
golf ball and you have to hit a cut, you
have to hit a fade on the eighteenth hole, and
you're not comfortable doing it, then you're gonna hit a
(12:59):
draw over the fairway bunker on the left and you're
going to be over where a practice area used to be,
and you're going to have a completely blind shot into
the green. Most of people that are watching this will
remember tiger Woods. When he won his first Masters in
nineteen ninety seven. He hit it over there on the
last hole of the tournament. Thankfully for him, he had
a huge twelve shot lead at the time. But yeah,
(13:22):
but yeah, I mean there are a number of shots
like that if you're somebody that you know. Jack Nicholas,
as an example, liked to play the ball from left
to right, but he was so good and figuring out
exactly where he needed to start a golf ball in
each hole, even if it required a draw. But as
an example, the second hole here is a par five,
(13:45):
and it is a huge dog leg left and if
you don't hit a good draw around the corner, your
ball is not going to go all the way down
the hill and you're not going to have a chance
to go for the green and two and make a
birdie or an eagle. So yeah, there is a there's
a comfort or an uncomfortable amount of shots here that
may not fit your eye. I think probably the best
(14:09):
example now that I'm thinking about this would be the
thirteenth pole, the par five. Yeah, they've linked in the
tea there, they've moved it back a bit, but you
have to hit i would say, jim a hook instead
of a draw, and you have to really move the
ball twenty to thirty yards from right to left off
of that tea there to find the fairway and go
(14:29):
for the green. So and if you don't, you're in
the pine trees to the right, or you're in the
creek to the left. And we've seen a number of
players lose the masters right there.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Another place where we've seen a bunch of players lose
their masters is on the greens. Yes, and the pin
placements for all four days seemingly get more diabolical from
Thursday to Friday ses Saturday is Sunday if you can. Again,
(15:00):
we talked about this earlier. The topography of the course
is something you don't really see on television, and that's
not just for Augusta, but it is for all courses
in general. Explain some of the greens that and challenges
that they have because of the you know, you want
to hit the ball over the cup some it will
(15:22):
draw back on some of them, the others. You don't
want to kit too far in front because he'll trickle
off the green and back into the fairway.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, we just visited with Rory McElroy before you and
I started here, and we are asking eight eighteen different
players to describe eighteen different holes, and we asked Rory
to describe the first hole, and he did a very
good job of describing that green. As you were talking
about just how difficult it is to navigate these greens,
(15:53):
he said, there's almost four different sections to the green,
and they have tiny little islands where they'll put the
hole location in each corner of that first green, and
if you don't hit the ball onto that little island,
then your ball is going to go some thirty forty
to fifty feet away from the hole, or if you
hit it closer to the fringe, it's going to roll
(16:16):
all the way off of the green and you're gonna
have a very difficult chip coming up for your third shot.
So those are great points. The sixth hole is another
example of that, where you just have a tiny little
amount of green to hit the ball, like the sixth
the back of the sixth green. If you don't hit
(16:36):
it exactly into that section of the green, then you
fifty feet away from the hole. I would say the
best example is the twelfth hole. The Sunday hole location
on twelve is going to be to the extreme right
portion of the green. It always a traditional spot there
(16:57):
on twelve and Jim, if you hit the ball anywhere
right of that hole is going to land on the bank,
and it is going your golf ball is gonna roll
all the way into Rayce Creek. And you're going to see,
like Jordan Spieth dealt with nine years ago or Tesco
Molinari dealt with six years ago, You're going to see
(17:17):
players have to drop and hit their third shot, and
chances are they will lose the Masters because they went
after that flag and they barely hit it right of
the hole. The only person that was lucky enough to
not say that is Fred Couples in nineteen ninety two.
Somehow his ball stayed on the bank and didn't go
in the water. They had some rain and it softened
that bank a little bit and he was fortunate enough
(17:38):
it stayed there. He made par and went on to
win his only Masters tournament. But I would look at
that twelfth green is maybe the most challenging shot comes Sunday.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Okay, all right, we're gonna get in here a wrap
up time. So two things. I don't want to put
you on the spot to pick a winner, but give
me two or three people who god, there's like twenty
who could win it, but sure give me three or
four that you think our people you should do watch
it well.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Scotty Scheffler's won two of the last three and I
think that he's just so comfortable here, and he is.
He's the smartest player in the field when it comes
to managing his game. He always hits the correct shot
and he puts it in an area where he can
play his next shot from. He just is. He's a
(18:29):
plotter of the golf, of the game, and I think
he always gives himself a chance. And I know that's
not going out on a limb, but I think he's
just the most sure thing in the field. Justin Thomas
has never won the Masters, and he's had a couple
of chances where he's finished in the top ten, but
never a real chance in the last couple of holes.
(18:51):
I really like the way he's played so far this year.
I think that this is his best chance to win
a Green jacket, especially with the way he's hitting his
irons right now. So I like his chances. Jason Day
has a great record here, terrific short game. You have
to be able to get up and down from around
the green in order to win a Green jacket, and
I think Jason is maybe the best when it comes
(19:14):
to his ability to recover from a missed approach shot.
So those are three guys I'd watch, And then the
obvious name that everybody's thinking about is Rory McElroy trying
to complete the career Grand Slam and win the Masters.
Is this is his eleventh chance, Jim to complete the
career Grand Slam. He has not won a major in
(19:35):
over a decade, and with each passing year there becomes
more and more pressure because he is arguably the most
identifiable player in the game. Rory, to me, needs to
prove to himself that he can get off to a
good start on Thursday, not make too many mistakes, and
give himself a chance on the back nine on Sunday.
(19:56):
He's never really been in the fight with three or
four holes to go. Sure, I think he absolutely has
the game to do it, but I need to see
it to believe it.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And the TPC is not augustin National.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Well, that's right, and he had already won that event before,
so he doesn't feel the pressure. I don't think he
puts himself under as much pressure playing that tournament as
he does this one. Rory has the most active mind
of anyone I've ever met in golf. If I want
to know what book to read, I'm going to ask
(20:31):
Rory McElroy. I mean, really, out of anybody in my life.
He is such a well read, thoughtful person. But I
think that also hurts him when it comes to something
he desperately wants, because he thinks about all the things
that come with it, and I think that turning off
his brain will be a real challenge this week.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well, I don't think he's going to have to turn
off that brain. He's gonna to me tough. Okay, let's
get to the important stuff Channel ninety two on Serious XM.
More than we can find, you guys. Let's talk about
the highlights and what we can listen to in our
cars or on the apps from you guys this weekend.
(21:13):
Let's start with Serrico and the Gang doing it. Mike's
as a longtime friend and there probably isn't anything he
can't do. You know, he was actually hired by ESPN.
His first gig was to do lacrosse, so he's come
a long way from lacrosse. Anyway, give us what's going on.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, on this weekend, Jim, It's an incredible privilege to
have Mike as a teammate this week. And when I
say teammate, I mean it. He is one of our
teammates this week. He makes it very clear that he
doesn't want any special attention, that he wants to be
a part of this process just as much as everyone
else is, and everyone just so appreciates his kindness, and
(22:01):
obviously we are all marvel at his talent. This man
is anchoring the Olympics, and next year he's going to
do play by play on television for the Super Bowl.
He's going back to call the NBA for NBC. He
doesn't have to do that this this week. He does
it because he loves it, and I think he really
enjoys being with us, and that is it's a real
(22:23):
treat to get to have him be part of our team.
So he'll be leading our coverage come a Thursday afternoon
at two Eastern times and Thursday through Sunday from two
until the finish of play. Each day you can listen
to Mike. We will be on the air at seven
am Thursday and Friday with early coverage the honorary starters,
Jack Nicholas, Tom Watson and Gary Player will be out
(22:45):
on the first team. We'll be able to call that shot,
that action actually on Thursday morning, and then each of
those three join us for an interview, which is wonderful.
Some of the early coverage you'll hear that in the
morning are full blown. Play by play doesn't start until
two o'clock, but Augusta National allows us to do one
group before that, and obviously one of those days it'll
(23:08):
be Scotti Scheffler and the other day it'll be Rory McElroy,
So that'll be exciting to get to call all of
their shots before the actual play by play starts in
the afternoon, and then Saturday and Sunday from two to
until seven till the finish of play. Each day. We
left the third round in the final round as well.
It is it's a real honor to get to call
ourselves Masters Radio this week on Channel ninety two.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's also the exclusive place for Masters Radio.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
That's right. Yes, this is the fifth straight year that
we have done the play by play and good Lord
Willing CBS. By the way, this is the seventieth consecutive
year the CBS has televised the Masters. They're the only
ones that have ever done it, and we're at your
number five, so hopefully we can keep this going for
(23:58):
a long time to come.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
In nineteen fifty six, they covered it with six cameras,
Chris seventy five. Seventy five cameras is what Lance Barrow
has got at his disposal this time, and that doesn't
count drones, and god knows what else the CBS has
pulled out to get there. But I actually had a
(24:23):
very brief period of time where I was a runner
for CBS on golf. I was I was Check Whitaker,
God love him, his wrangler to go get the guests
for him and pretty much did whatever Chuck Will told
me to do. But yeah, CBS doesn't I'll stand a
(24:44):
job as you guys do on the radio. So let's
make sure that people get to see it. One real
final quick thing, congratulations on your new gig, which is
the voice of the Tennessee Titans.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Thank you. It's an incredible honor and it's a chance
of a lifetime to be an NFL play by play
man and to do it in the town that my
wife and I love so much, in Nashville, is a
dream come true. So very excited but I'm going to
be where my feed are this week, Jim and enjoy
the greatest off event in the world.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
All right, well, look, all the information on what's going
on on your coverage and the entire teams coverage on
Serious ExM will be in the showbox below here and
also obviously we are doing a column on this conversation
and so that'll be on Atherton, so you can find
us on three different places and we'll make sure that
(25:42):
everybody knows what's going on. And if you haven't tried
Serious ExM and specifically check it out ninety two, give
it a go. I think you're gonna once you get hooked,
you'll get hooked. You will not want to leave home
without it. Is the saying go. So again, you know, Taylor,
(26:03):
thanks so much very much for being with us. We'll
catch up with you later down the line because there's
a few other golf tournaments that we're probably gonna want
to chat about.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I would love that on down the line.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
So thanks so very much, and that's its gang for
this week, and we'll talk to you next time.