📍  📍 Warning. The speed golf baby audio experience contains radical ideas about how fast you can play golf and how good you can feel while you play. If that's not your thing, there are a thousand golf podcasts you can listen to instead. So go find one of those and now speed golf baby, let's go. I'm Adam Lorton, executive producer of speed golf baby, and welcome to the speed golf baby audio experience, where we are all about speed golf, the faster, fitter variant. Of the beautiful game of golf,  whether you wear a hat or a headband on the course, please subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you're listening to. Also rate and review us. It's a par five, five stars for speed golf, baby. And if you haven't yet subscribed to the speed golf baby YouTube channel, that's where the magic happens. And finally, if you're speed golf curious, get the speed golf starter pack for free at speed golf dot baby slash start.  Last time on the speed golf, baby audio experience, you learned the official 2024 rules of speed golf with PGA pro Garrett Holt  on today's episode.

We've got a major championship preview talking about the Missouri speed golf open coming up Memorial day weekend at Horton Smith golf course in Springfield, Missouri, joining me on the hype train. It's Scott Dolly director of speed golf, USA owner of the world record, which he set at this very golf course. So synchronize your watches people, because we're about to step up to the starting line. And now Scott Dolly. Scott, welcome to the show

Adam. Good to be back, man.

major championship preview. And this marks 10 years of speed golf in Springfield, Missouri. A long time speed golf hotspot. So I wanted to open the show by asking you to recount a couple of your favorite early memories from Springfield speed golf. 

Absolutely. I didn't get a chance to go to Springfield. I wanted to, for the longest time. My first chance to go was in 2019. Back then they actually hosted the event at Rivercut. Rivercut had a flat front nine, kind of along the river.

The back nine got up into like these little tiny hills and stuff. Great golf course. I just remember  the community aspect of it. You know, finishing up on the 18th and, and a lot of the people in Springfield I'd never met before now, of course, we're all friends. They come out every year.

I've seen them for five, six years in a row, but back then it was just great to be welcomed into this local speed golf community there in Springfield. That was great. Then of course we hopped over to Horton Smith. In 2020 that was the year when I played some really, really good speed golf. And I, I felt like I lipped out five or six putts. 

And there's a video that Nick Evans did pink streak speed golf. It was the 2020. Front nine and back nine. And actually, I believe that was the first fully recorded speed golf round. Kind of  preemptive of, of speed golf baby. But I think that was the first fully recorded speed golf round.

And I mentioned at the end of that round, I think I shot 72 or something like that. And, and I said, man, I know this sounds crazy, but I could have shot 66 today. There's a world record out there. Well, one year later, I went out the first round shot 66 and 42 minutes and shot the world record. And you know, so I felt like that was just kind of planting the seed from a year before.

It was really cool to see that turnaround. And for that to happen, I've got nothing, but good memories of that golf course. It is out there for the taking, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. Cause you can, you can very, very easily get yourself, you know, behind a tree, you can get yourself out of position and then you're struggling to make par.

So yeah, Garrett's done a great job there. Andy Dalton is another, long time member of that community. And just, just a great experience.  I hope everyone who plays speed golf gets a chance to go to Springfield one year.

I agree. You got to make the pilgrimage to former speed golf USA ambassadors of the year. Garrett Holt and I shared the award in 2022, Tim Shrike last year. Springfield, definitely a hotspot for speed golf. 

Another memory of mine that I'm I'm not going to be quick to forget Rob Hogan closing in the back nine in the 2022 U S open. I mean, it looked like he was just out of the tournament because he had shot one. What? 85 in the first round. And you know, of course he was going fast, but it was like the opposite of what you would expect in a normal speed golf tournament.

Usually as the golfer, you shout out your scores to the scorekeeper. Hogan was going so hard. He was going to 10 intensity. His scorekeepers were yelling the scores to him.

That's crazy. Yes. You know, I was on the receiving end of his great back nine. Actually, I, I had a pretty good start to, to that final round that day. I went Eagle.  And, you know, I had the tournament in my hands. We've talked about this before, so I see it from a little bit of a different angle. But at the same time, you know, it's great to see Rob come over.

We had international participation. He had already won the French open. He'd already won the British open. He'd already run the one, the Irish open. And it just almost seemed inevitable. And I gave him my best shot. I know the other guys out there, Nick and Jason were working their hardest. And Hogan came through with the win.

But it's been great. Pretty cool to see his name on the US Open trophy. I'll tell you that it's never going away. 

Iconic performance from the big bearded Irishman. And to think that that's not even close to, you know, top five career highlights for him. 

Exactly. I kind of want to have him following me around one day and every time I mess up, he can just go, no, no, no, no, no.  Really put me in my place. 

Yep. I love that. Let's talk about world's qualifying. So the stakes are a little bit higher this year than they would just be at a traditional Missouri speed golf open because people who compete in the open division can earn qualifying points toward world championships.

Now, only if you're qualifying for team USA, the British speed golfers are going to have a different qualifying system, I'm sure.  Let's take a look at that. So we've got our preseason leaderboard your preseason top four qualifiers right now, Jason Hawkins will not be in attendance at Missouri. Scott Dolly will be there. Nick Gooden will be there. Expect Nick Gooden to post a score. He's been so close so many times. 

Listen, I gotta say something about Nick. He has not had, he has not had that round yet for him. And it's like, he's so close. He shot 32 on the front nine one year. And that's his home course. So he hasn't gotten the fullness out of his game. He hasn't had that round where everything comes together.

And I feel like it's just a bullet train coming at us at some point. He's going to let it go. He's going to let it ride. And he could shoot the world record to be honest with you. 

Well, right. And  Nick Gooden. He just did a marathon like three weeks ago or something like that. So he is going to be in probably the best aerobic shape that he's been in a long time. 

The remainder of the world's qualifying leaderboard for now, Jonathan, Jeff, Steve Vansel, Garrett Holt would normally be playing, but we'll be out with injury this year, West cup, Nick Evans, Luther Olson, Luke Granallo, and somebody has got to be the last place on the leaderboard.

It's Adam

Come on, Adam.

Let's go. 

Time to climb, baby. Nice.

It's climbing time. Indeed. I ran Hills this morning as a matter of fact. All right. So that's your world's qualifying picture. The top performers from the open division they will get their two scores on the leaderboard for now, and they'll be able to update as they produce better rounds throughout the year. Your top four scores from any of the seven qualifying major rounds. So there'll be, two rounds in Missouri, two rounds in Kentucky and three rounds at the brutal U S open. We have coming up in New York. 

One more storyline from Missouri. We've got YouTuber Josh Mayer, who's going to be playing in this speed golf tournament, 115, 000 YouTube subscribers.

This guy, makes a full time living, making golf, YouTube videos. And Scott, you're going to meet up with him tomorrow. Is that right? 

Yeah, that's right. We, we talked at the beginning of the year and he said, Hey man, I want to come play. Like, I think a great challenge for me. I, he had some sort of injury leg injury that he was recovering from. And he's like, I've wanted to do this for much longer, but I was injured. I want to train and then I want to come out and play in one of your events.

What do you think would be good? He's up in Dallas. And I said, come up to Missouri, man. It'd be  a great time. So he has been training with, along with his wife over the spring. And he, what he wants to do is come down and just get a quick nine hole training session with me before. Yeah. So he has a better idea of what he's doing when he goes out in the tournament.

So he will be there. He's going to play 18 holes on the Sunday of the event, first round. And I'm really looking forward to it. He obviously is going to have a blast. It's going to be amazing. And I think the way that he films his content, it's going to attract. A lot of his viewers to be more interested in speed golf and possibly even looking for ways for them to be able to play.

Well, you know what I love about this? So much of the speed golf you see on YouTube or in social media is like people want to try it for the first time. And so they appropriately, they try to bite off a manageable chunk. And so usually they play a single hole. Now, I actually think that's a terrible idea.