Recap of the Masters from someone who was there.

... are in Ottawa tonight. My friend Brad Fritsch is a, call him a an amateur scout for the Ottawa Senators. He was the only player on the PGA Tour sponsored by the Ottawa Senators and he joins us on the Adam Gold Show. Also Red Rooster Golf, by the way, go check out the website. But that's your, that's you swinging the driver on the website, correct?

I don't even know. I go to my own website. No, I go to the fulfillment page, Adam.

I'm a worker bee now. Oh, okay. All right.

Well, it's a really beautiful, beautiful shot on the website. Great, great golf clubs. If you play golf, go, go get Red Rooster Golf Gloves.

Sign up for it. All right. By the way, good luck to your Ottawa Senators. Not tonight. Thoughts? I'm not in the building tonight, so there's a very good chance they'll put in a better performance against the Hurricanes. My record's something like 1 and 26 when I actually watched them in the building against the Hurricanes. Okay. Wow.

Well, they're up there, so it's not, it's not here. Well, Hurricanes last regular season home game is tomorrow. Let me, let me ask you about Jon Rahm at the Masters over Brooks Koepka. I mean, after the double bogey, which I watched on Thursday, I watched him four putt the first hole for double bogey. He basically did nothing really wrong for the next 71 holes. He didn't like his drive on two, but he made birdie anyway.

Your thoughts on what we witnessed for four days. It was just a clinic and especially for a guy who got the bad end of the draw. Now, what it got to, it's hard to get a bad wave because the field is so small, but he did have later in the afternoon on Friday to begin his second round.

And then the awful conditions on Saturday played a bunch of holes in that too. So he, he played so well and it was surprising you and I were texting before yesterday's fourth round started and we both agreed that Brooks was, I mean, obviously he was in the lead, he's in the driver's seat, but we thought, we don't think he's going to back up. Ron will have to do something really, really special and ended up being, Ron played a very solid round of golf, but there were lower scores out there as evidenced by Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth, among others, uh, Brooks had the one of only two rounds over par among players who finished in the top 10. Now the two players ahead of that group also shot over par can't lay in Victor Hausland, but it's, uh, it wasn't, I mean, the jokes and the memes are there, right?

About 54 holes versus 72. I just think that Koepka has played so well for an extended period of time. He won the tournament, which I found out this week for he, uh, he won the tournament on the lift tour.

I don't really pay attention. And then he scorches the Augusta national golf club for three rounds. It's just regression to the mean, in my opinion, like he, he, it's really hard to sustain that above average and beyond play for so long. He was due kind of a bad round. He certainly didn't get everything out of that round that he could have. Um, but all credit to John Rahm. I mean, he, he put on a masterful clinic, Tita green, and he was, his putting was good enough and, and as chipping the up and downs on the par fives that he made were, were great.

I mean, he, he just, he did everything he had to do. Yes, Koepka backed up. Um, but in the end he was just, he was definitely the best player, uh, last week at Augusta. You know, I thought like there aren't a lot of turning points, you know, over a 72 hole event, but I thought the first thing that we saw when they restarted play on a Sunday, I think it was Sunday morning when, uh, cause Koepka and Rahm were playing together. They're on the seventh green and Koepka has got a par putt and Rahm has a birdie putt, uh, from just inside him and Koepka misses his par putt.

Rahm rolls in the bird. First thing they did on a Sunday morning at about eight 30, uh, that two shot swing just brought everything closer. If that goes the other way, Koepka makes it, Rahm misses and it's still four.

I just think the whole thing plays out differently. But if you go back and Koepka said it, if you go back to his first two rounds and he was able to play those two rounds without interruption, Koepka said it wasn't, Koepka said it, uh, I guess, but he putted poorly and still was 12 under par through two rounds of golf. If he putts better, who knows what that number is and maybe that's just Augusta national, you know, you know, heavens not letting you get everything you want, but it could have been further ahead. So it may be the rest of his game, maybe the Tita Green game just was going to fall off somewhat and Koepka's short game and his putting just couldn't save it for sure. And that's always been his. I mean, if you want to call it a weakness, his putting isn't the same at the same level as his ball striking is.

And that certainly was the case for the first two rounds. Now with Augusta, you can hit the green, you can be eight feet for birdie and you could be playing absolute defense on your birdie putt. It just depends where your ball is on the green. That ball could be downhill and breaking, you know, three feet right to left.

And that's certainly one that you'd love to make, but you want to be able to make the next one. So I'm sure that among a lot of his missed putts, shorter putts in that first, those first two rounds would have been putts like those. Um, I think we, we do a little bit of a disservice to John Ron by talking about the rest of the seal, but I just think that the Koepka, it was nice to see Brooks Koepka in the mix. Um, he's certainly one of the players on the live tour that has a large chip on his shoulder, but he's always had one. And it's not about the PGA tour versus live to him. It's about, he loves the majors. He thinks he's the best player, especially in the majors. And he wants to win as many of them as he can. He doesn't treat the regular events like he does the majors.

He, he said it himself, he doesn't get up for the regular events. So this was a big deal to him, but I think it was great for him psychologically, because we saw in the Netflix series that he had some serious doubts about his game, his health, whether he could return to form. And this was a, and so did I, and this was a great indication that there's nothing that can hold him back except for injury.

Yeah, I do want to talk about the live dynamic here. And I agree. I don't think if Koepka's body wasn't failing him, I think Brooks Koepka is still on the PGA tour.

I think so too. I mean, he basically admitted it. In the Netflix documentary, he admitted it, but he admitted it before then that he just didn't know how much longer he was going to have as a competitive player because he never thought his body was going to be the same.

So I don't think he makes that move. But I just, I want to draw a distinction, not between Rahm and Brooks, because I think they're both giants. Brooks is a four-time major champion. He wins a major champion and just validates that major, I think.

He's just that good. Even if Nicholson had won, and he played a great final round, and I thought he could post a nine, and my gosh, he might scare people. He might do like an old Jack when Jack Nicklaus won in 86. It wasn't like he went and overtook everybody. Like, everybody fell off the leaderboard. When Nicholson finished minus eight, I tweeted that to the effect, I'm not so sure he didn't just win because the leaders were on number 10.

You're getting number 10, number 11, obviously 12 is very, very dynamical. You can make any score there. And then whatever happens on those three holes, then the leaders might have to press on 13 and 15 where disaster awaits too. So, and Rahm at the time was at 10 under, I believe. So 10 versus eight, Mickelson in the house. That was a huge putt that he made on 18 to finish at minus a total seven under 65 for the day, which was an amazing score, especially for a guy who's done nothing on the lift.

Right? Like nothing, one top 10 in, in all of the events so far, the rest mostly in the thirties and forties, it's been very strange, but it's nice to see him play well. I mean, Phil is, is engaging. I was there Thursday through Saturday and the crowds are around Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Jordan Spieth and everyone else and Roy McElroy.

Sorry. And then every other player has, you know, they're very diehard fans, but they don't attract the general casual fans that those four players do. So Phil is very much still a draw and play well like that was at 52. It's ridiculous. And you want to major at 50, which is also, uh, yeah, we're going to talk, we're not going to have a chance to talk about Rory McElroy.

I've got my own thoughts about that. And you and I have talked about Rory before, but, uh, and Rob, by the way, is not one of those, you know, he's a golf star, but he's not a superstar, but there's no question that he is, he's world number one now, but basically you've got like three players, uh, kicking it back and forth to each other between Scheffler, Rory and Rob. Uh, but Rob is, you know, one of the giants currently playing. It's different when he wins a major than even when a Cam Smith wins a major or if Viktor Hovland had won this, we know Viktor Hovland is going to win a major at some point. He's too good a player, uh, or, um, Hideki Matsuyama who won the master a few years ago. Uh, but Rom validates when a player of that stature wins a major, it just makes the major bigger, doesn't it? I think so. And especially since he's been around the top three for the last couple of years, you know, interchanging with McElroy and Scheffler at number one, uh, he won the U S open to Torrey Pines kind of been waiting for him to do a little bit better in majors and contend more.

And finally he gets it done. Um, confidence is such a huge thing in golf and I can't imagine he's not an uncommon. I can't imagine he's not a confident player, but winning only validates it obviously in others' minds, but in his as well, you saw how emotional he was, how much it meant to him.

He's a fiery player and at times fire can be somewhat of a disadvantage for a player. The monotonous, you know, Tiger woods, uh, Retief goose. And if you remember him, my guys who stone faced and yes, they get excited when they, when they make a big pot, but when they don't make the big shot, there's nothing in their face that betrays any emotion.

Ron's not like that. He'll, he'll tell you how he feels on the course. And sometimes I think that's, if you can say it's held him back a little bit, that means he's among the most talented players out there almost ever because I think that type of emotion in golf doesn't always serve the player the best. So for him to win, uh, you know, backs up as us open when he's won four times this year already. Um, and it's kind of a, it's kind of a cat and mouse game between McElroy, Scheffler and Ron right now. Like who can kind of push and make the biggest strides in the majors this year. I'm still waiting for Rory to break through my goodness.

I mean, it's been what eight or nine years, which seems impossible nine years, but, um, yeah, just amazing. August of 2014 at Valhalla, uh, outlasting Mickelson and Fowler and Jason Day, uh, and burnt V's burger as well, uh, at the PGA that year, the live controversy. We're talking with Brad Fritsch, uh, former PGA tour player now with red rooster golf.

You guys should check that out red rooster.com. Um, the lift controversy never materialized this week. We thought that would be the constant conversation for three days.

Then they would play. Um, but it was never brought up by CBS. It was never a big deal. The players didn't talk about it.

Even Mickelson's post game is post round press conference yesterday. It didn't come up. It sorta came up, but Phil didn't feed it.

Why do you think that is? Well, I think he did. He did a masterful PR job after Saturday's play when he was talking about, I'm really close to having this great round or great stretch of golf because my teammates have been helping me, Cameron, Tringali, and Brendan. I don't know if you saw that.

I did. I mean, it was kind of like, come on, man. Like all of a sudden we're, we're a hockey team and you're in the locker room working on each other's games.

Okay. Um, but he, he did a great job selling the team concept there. I just think it was nice for everybody to kind of have a decompressed week and everyone's together and most of them are friends. There aren't a ton of guys that anybody is going to shun. I mean, Mickelson has his friends out there. Good friends with Keegan Bradley, right? Um, you know, the only guy unfortunately is probably Patrick Reed that doesn't have too many close friends out there, but everyone has their guys. And regardless if they don't see them on tour every week, they do see them around home. And we've heard stories about that like McElroy. And I can't remember who they said he was playing with a lot at home, but there are, they're still friends. It's just, they've decided to go a different way in their profession.

And that's okay. I think most of the controversy has died down because the lawsuits have been, they're in flux and nobody's really talking about those right now. So nobody's really suing the PGA tour and nobody's leaving anymore. Everybody's gone. Everybody who was going to go is gone.

Exactly. So, and the players who did stay exercise their considerable leverage on the tour and pretty much got what they wanted, um, via these designated events. So I think that, I think it was just nice for everyone to be around each other. All the best players in the world were together and it was just golf and it's Augusta national, which does its absolute very best to stay away from controversy.

As you saw with very little talk about live, no real chance for anyone to talk about live via, you know, player interviews after I think we noted both on Twitter that there weren't any post round interviews. Well, why was Amanda Balionis there? I know cause she's great.

She does a great job. She interviewed Brooks after which I thought you always want to get the guy who didn't win, who maybe should have. And that was good.

Like you want to get that. And Brooks was very good about doing it. And he made a lot of sense with what he said to Amanda, but it was very strange that you didn't get any Mickelson or Spieth comments during the broadcast. Right.

It was, that was noticeably absent. And it's funny cause Tim Brando, who has done some masters before online for masters.com was very critical of CBS for not talking to Mickelson. And I responded to him like the masters didn't want any of it. The masters could, the masters can make their own rules. They determine when the azaleas bloom for people who don't know, they will put ice, they will pack ice on azaleas.

If they think they're going to bloom too soon, they will, they control everything. They allowed, they allowed three pine trees to fall where there were a bunch of people that nobody got hurt. That's, I was there about 40 minutes earlier watching tee shots for probably 45 minutes and we had kind of sauntered away and then we see that that happened. I can't believe nobody got hit. I can't believe it. That's the masters right there, Brad French. They control everything. So I was not surprised at any of that.

Let me ask you one more thing and then I'll let you go. A golf digest writer, I think it's Dan Rappaport, I'm not sure, said that the fact that Mickelson, Patrick Reed, there were three of the, three of the top six finishers play on the Liv tour, that it proves that Liv should get points. And Myra, or however he phrased it, my response to that is simply, it doesn't, I think they should get points anyway.

They probably have to tweak their events a little bit to do so. But that those are just three players, well Koepka, that played great, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the tour is better than we thought it was. We know there are great players on that tour.

Correct. Like there's no controversy there. Brooks Koepka, oh my goodness, he finished second alone.

That proves Liv is something. Well, we knew Brooks Koepka was a fantastic player when healthy. Phil was an anomaly, I think, because you never know which Phil is going to show up. And are we surprised that Patrick Reed played well at Augusta? He's won there before many PGA tour events.

So I think that's a strange take by a media member who probably just, you know, doing it for the interaction. But if Graham McDowell and Ian Poulter and Brendan Grace and other players who were not in the field played really well at the U.S. Open this year, maybe that validates it a little bit. But, you know, the players who are generally less competitive than Koepka and Nicholson and Reed, if they do well in majors this year, maybe there's a case. But talk about world ranking points. Those are really important for Koepka. My goodness, that's because next year is his last year, I believe, for major eligibility across the board. So those are important tournaments for these guys. Don't don't think they're not. I know you don't, but others are important events for guys who don't get world ranking points year round to play well in the majors.

That is a huge, huge thing for them. Koepka went from like in the 100 to like the low 100s to in the 30s by finishing second. Tied with tied with Mickelson for second. Brad Fritsch. Appreciate your time at Brad Fritsch on Twitter.

Go check out Red Rooster Golf dot com. I thank you, man. I'll talk to you soon. Yes, sir. Go Sens, maybe.

I want the Hurricanes to win and get the get Canes Twitter feeling good about themselves again. Otherwise their their identities shot. That's an interesting place, Adam. Yes, it is. It is. I waded into it on the on the weekend.

Those people are crazy. I saw that. Thanks, Brad. All right. Take care.