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

This episode of the Birdie Board Podcast takes a new format, breaking things into four segments that cover everything from professional golf to practical tips and the stories behind the game.

First up is Tour Talk, where Corey recaps the Masters Tournament and what made Rory McIlroy’s back-to-back win so impressive. From losing a six-shot lead to closing it out under pressure, there’s a lot to unpack from one of the biggest events in golf. He also looks ahead to the RBC Heritage and what makes it such a unique follow-up tournament.

Next is Weekend Wins, focused on one of the most common issues in recreational golf: slow play. Corey breaks down the concept of ready golf, how to keep pace without rushing, and simple habits that make a big difference when playing with a group.

In Back Nine Stories, the episode shifts into the history of the game with a look at Rory McIlroy’s early life. From humble beginnings in Northern Ireland to becoming one of the best golfers in the world, it’s a reminder of the dedication and support that shaped his career.

Finally, Clubhouse Updates shares what’s new with Birdie Board, including recent growth, real usage in group play, and how the app continues to make scoring and match play easier for golfers.

If you enjoy golf with friends and want a mix of insight, tips, and stories, this episode brings it all together in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Birdie Board Podcast is brought to you by the Birdie Board app, the easiest way to track matches, scores, and handicaps with friends. Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

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 um 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 gonna go over four different things. Uh the first thing I call I'm calling tour talk. This is where we go over the previous PGA tournament and then look forward to the next one. Um I'm not gonna go super in depth. I'm not trying to be ESPN here, uh, just trying to touch on what happened last week and what's gonna be coming up. And then we're gonna go into weekend wins. Weekend wins is a segment that I'm just gonna share a general golf tip, um, maybe a couple, just dive a little deeper into different things. Then we're gonna 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 Clubhouse Updates, which is just kind of giving you guys some updates about Birdie Board. So the first segment here is called Torah Talk. So you're probably well aware, last week was the Masters tournament, and we saw Rory McElroy 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. Overall, Roy McRoy now has six career major wins, which is really starting to get up there. Um, 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, uh, and that pretty much entirely went away, and then he was climbing again. Uh, but eventually he did recover from losing that six-shot lead and then won in the end. So Rory needed basically a double bogey to win at the end, um, and he had a pretty errant T-shot, and I think I was thinking during that shot that for a regular golfer uh we would never find that shot. But there on the PGA tour, they had a lot of eyes on it, so they he found it over in the woods pretty easily because 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 T shot pretty far right. Uh, it still got up there pretty good distance. Uh he was 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 bogeys on our scorecard. Um, what was very interesting for Scotty, it's incredible he didn't end up winning, uh, 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 uh 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. Um, he had a four and a half million dollar payout. So last year's payout, I think, was like 4.3 million. Uh, so pretty good back-to-back years. His total score was a 276. Um, a lot of times for me, I I 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 uh 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. Uh, this is a very nice golf course uh in South Carolina, and it has a lighthouse on it, which is kind of what um 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 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 than 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 gonna be the case at Harbortown golf links. You're it's gonna require a lot more precision over power from the players. And what's just really unique is this tournament backs up right to the masters. So you're gonna see like some players just not going there, they're emotionally drained after the masters. Um, they've been only preparing to play on Augusta, and now they have a short week, and now they're gonna be playing at this other course in South Carolina. So it is just an interesting tournament coming up right after the masters, and I think because of that, it's 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. Alright, so that's it for our tour talk. Moving on now to weekend wins. So let me pose this. Have you ever been playing? I think most of us have been playing in a foursome, and we have that one golfer who just is golfing super, super slow. Um there's probably a lot of reasons why, and that's kind of the 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. Uh, whether you are on the fairway or chipping or on the putting green, is the one to go first. This is what you're you will typically see in the PGA. Um, 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 gonna hit, even though you know it's gonna be a driver, they know it's gonna be a driver, but for some reason they're looking in their bag like it's gonna 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 and they're 50 yards behind you and you're ready to go, go ahead and hit your ball. Keep that pace at play. That's what the idea of ready golf is. Uh, it requires a little bit of communication. Uh, watch to see if your friend 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 gonna 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. Outside 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. And then once that person hits their putt, then they go ahead and go and do that in their 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. Um, 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, um, 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's 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. Uh another thing you can do uh while other people's hits is you know start to think about the distance of your shot, grab your club, um, don't wait till it's your turn, things like that. There is like a cart efficiency you can think of. So drop your 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. Uh, 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 if you just know exactly where everyone is. Uh 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 gonna 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. And of course, it depends a little bit um 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. Alright, so that was the weekend's weekend wins segment. Next is our back nine stories, and then to stay on theme, we are gonna go over a little bit of Rory McEroy's history. So, Rory McEroy, 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, uh 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 island. So that is where Rory McElroy was born. Um early in life he lived in a place called Hollywood, which is actually a place in Northern Ireland, not in California. His mother was is 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. Uh they married in 1988, so just a year before Rory was born, uh, at the age of 27. Uh, Rory grew up in a very modest lifestyle. He didn't grow up rich or anything like that. Uh, they lived in a semi-detached household in Hollywood, attended a local Catholic school in that area until he passed what's called 11. This is like a test that uh 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 very popular video that I'll talk about later of Roy 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 uh at one point, and then there was a pretty good athlete on his mother's side playing Gaelic football, uh, which is kind of like a weird combination between American football and soccer. Uh, but he did end up winning a championship in 1982 with them. So definitely some level of athleticism in the family. Uh McElroy regularly asked his father to take him to the Hollywood Golf Club, which was a nearby golf course, and he gained attention when at only three years old he was hitting the his golf ball 40 yards already. He practiced tripping at home while chipping his golf ball into the washing machine. And then he studied uh golf technique videos by Nick Faldo, and then he also often went to sleep holding a golf club, which created muscle memory for him with the interlocking grip. All this at like three years old. By age seven, he became Hollywood's golf club's youngest member, and he dreamed started to dream at that point of becoming a professional golfer. He'd self-described himself as being very intensely uh passionate about watching Tiger Woods, saying uh 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 McElroy. Uh 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 McEroy's golf ambitions, McElroy's parents took extra jobs outside of what they already did. Uh Jerry, or Gary, I don't know how exactly how to pronounce his dad's name, worked over a hundred 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 6 p.m. 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 um just a passionate effort from his parents. So after Rory found success as a professional golfer in the late 2000s to the early 2010s, um, 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 nine, McRoy had his first significant amateur victory at the U 10 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, Roy McRoy, for the first time at a very young age, chipping a golf ball into a washing washing machine on a late-night television show. In 1998, McEroy 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, McElroy finally decided to leave school and he began his amateur career. So that was the back nine stories, kind of about Rory McElroy and his life growing up. The last segment here is Clubhouse updates. 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 we played individual net stable ford specifically. 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.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

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