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00:00But let's get to it now, the Players Championship.
00:03Everybody loves this event, the fifth major, of course,
00:06as it has been called in the past.
00:08We have, of course, Scotty going for three in a row.
00:11He's a big favorite, as always.
00:13But I wanna start with him, Smiley,
00:14because watching him over the weekend,
00:17and we know that he can be a machine,
00:19but I think there's a small chink in the armor right now,
00:23and I wanna see if you agree,
00:24because it feels like three years ago,
00:27Scotty putting is a little bit back right now,
00:31and it's something that maybe has to be cleaned up,
00:33or else he's not gonna be as invincible
00:34as he's been in the past at this event.
00:37Well, at the beginning of the year,
00:38it was the ball striking for him that was off.
00:40Talking to Ted Scott, his caddie,
00:42last week on the range at Bay Hill,
00:44that was one of the things
00:45that just was a little off for him.
00:47You know, most of the time,
00:47he's got this shot that he can rely on,
00:50that can go left to right.
00:51He was missing left quite a bit.
00:52So at the beginning of the year,
00:54kind of working through the golf swing,
00:56coming off the rust of the hand surgery that he had,
00:59that was kind of a point of emphasis heading into last week.
01:02And so you wanna see, all right,
01:04did you clean up the ball striking?
01:06How close are you to being Scotty Sheffler
01:08of just what he's able to do TD Green?
01:11And he was first in that statistic last week.
01:14So even on a week in which Scotty
01:16wasn't a part of the storyline,
01:18I have to look at the stats and say,
01:20okay, he solved what was one of his issues
01:24at the beginning of the year,
01:25which is he's a superstar,
01:27best in the world at hitting the golf ball.
01:29And he proved it last week that he's still the best.
01:31Yes, the putter was off,
01:33but he also putted pretty well, I think, on the West Coast.
01:36So just hasn't had everything, I guess,
01:39working in sync at this point this year.
01:42Like one thing's been off every round.
01:44It just hasn't had that day in which everything goes right.
01:48I feel like he's trending in the right direction,
01:51especially into a place that he's wanted to use on our own.
01:55And last year, let's remember,
01:57I mean, he was how far back on Saturday?
01:59Oh, man, he's, he, he came roaring back.
02:04I think he got to 20.
02:06I think he was at 20 because we were on the 16th tee.
02:09And I was walking with this group
02:11and I believe he was at nine under.
02:13And then he, I think he birdied 16, 17 and 18,
02:17I believe to get to 12.
02:19And then he shot like seven or eight on Sunday.
02:21I gotta go back and check all this.
02:23I haven't done like my full prep yet,
02:24but that, from my memory,
02:26it was just how silly it was that Sunday for him.
02:29This is also a tournament, as you know, Smiley,
02:31where historically sometimes what wave you are in
02:35on Thursday and Friday can really play a big role
02:40in where you get on Saturday and Sunday.
02:42I saw one stat that 14 of the last 70 winners
02:46had the Thursday a.m., Friday p.m. lineup.
02:51But that doesn't seem like it's gonna be flipped this year
02:53because it sounds like Friday late
02:56is when you're gonna potentially start
02:58to get some of the wind start to come through.
03:01Yeah, I'm sitting here looking at the forecast.
03:02We're getting five to 10 miles an hour on Thursday,
03:05which is hardly no wind at all.
03:08Friday, we're getting 10 to 15 northeast.
03:10So if I had a choice, I would want to be playing,
03:15gosh, I would probably want to late early, honestly.
03:18It's, Friday's gonna be the tougher of the two days.
03:21So maybe Thursday in the morning,
03:23like you're talking about, could be pretty good, too,
03:25to get off to a good start.
03:27But Saturday's gonna be the day
03:28which is where the golf term's gonna be won.
03:31It's, you know, you just try to get yourself
03:33in contention going into the weekend,
03:34but then Saturday's like a hang-on day.
03:36It's gonna be blowing, apparently, at 15 to 25,
03:39and the gusts could be much more than that.
03:42So if we remember that one year
03:43where JT shot that crazy 68,
03:46and that weather that was just absurd.
03:48I mean, they were getting gusts to like 40.
03:50The guys could not get it on the green at 17
03:53because of how hard the wind was blowing.
03:54They're hitting six and five irons.
03:56So I don't think we're gonna get quite that extreme.
04:00Not sure what direction it is at 17,
04:02but still, that's gonna be the day
04:04in which it's gonna kind of separate
04:06who's gonna be in contention going into Sunday.