Tom Patri, Matthew Laurance, Hal Sutton, & Ross Greenburg Join Me...
I close out Season 9 in style with 4 of my all-time favorite guests: Top Instructor Tom Patri, former Actor & Host of Backspin Golf Matthew Laurance, PGA Tour Legend Hal Sutton, and the former President of HBO Sports & multi-time Emmy Award Winning Executive Producer Ross Greenburg.
This week Tom Patri updates us on how things are going in Southwest Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian. We hear about how the recovery is going for local residents plus the trickle impact on the local golf scene. Many golf courses won't recover because bermuda grass can't tolerate the salt water dumped on them from the surge. Local PGA Professionals are looking at a very difficult Winter season without golf courses to teach on and students who may not come down this winter because there aren't places to stay. Please go to www.redcross.org and donate to help our friends in Florida get a roof over their heads and back on their feet.
Matthew Laurance starred in the movie Eddie & the Cruisers. He shares the story of a very cool recent event where they showed the movie at a local historic theater in Lexington, Kentucky. The event was used to help raise money for victims of the flooding in Eastern Kentucky. Matthew also didn't hold back his hatred when we discussed LIV Golf.
Hal Sutton and I started out by talking about his new golf course design project. We also hear which designers have influenced him. I asked Hal about the burden of expectation placed on him as a young player and what he would say to Tom Kim to help him deal with that. Hal joined my guest from last week, Tony Ruggiero, on Tony's podcast Tour Coach and they had one of the most important golf conversations that I've heard in a long time. We recap that conversation which included why we focus on our bad shots instead of the good ones and how some players place blame on everybody else instead of taking responsibility for their own golf games when things go wrong.
Ross Greenburg has won over 100 major television awards over the course of his career. We talk about the movie he did along with Billy Crystal titled "61" about the 1961 homerun record chase between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. We also talk about 3 other films he's done: "Extra Innings From 9/11...20 Years Later", the Disney movie "Miracle" about the 1980 US Hockey Team, and "Jack Nicklaus, Making of a Champion."