Talk Birdie To Me

Great voicemail from wolfpacker Andrew in Perth about a recent experience on his local driving range, and how he has played a significant role* in a Tour Pro winning a tournament. Great message, love it Andrew!

*role may be slightly overstated.

We're live from Titleist and FootJoy HQ thanks to our great partners:

BMW, luxury and comfort for the 19th hole;
Titleist, the #1 ball in golf;
FootJoy, the #1 shoe and glove in golf;
PING will help you play your best;
Golf Clearance Outlet, they beat everyone's prices;
Betr, the fastest and easiest betting app in Australia;
And watchMynumbers and Southern Golf Club.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Feedback pod today and some great questions and comments from you.

We start with with feedback for you, the wolfpackers, listenership and viewership to Talk Birdie To Me increases each month, and our February numbers were (again) a new high with over 56,000 audio downloads and over a quarter of a million views on YouTube. We know you've got plenty of ways you can spend your time, and we appreciate very much that you carve out some of that to spend with us, so thank you!

Okay onto the show. Daniel from Holland reckons Nick and Mark have gotten their Top 20 list out of whack and feels that the National Moonah course should be ranked higher, and explains why. Last week Nick outlined the Top 5 hardest 3 final holes in world golf - Roger reckons he missed one, do Nick and Mark agree? And Falco has a smokey to add, from one of the Melbourne sandbelt courses.

JD has a huge prediction for 2026 for Jeeno Thitikul - Mark thinks it's a chance, Nick says it isn't. We then discuss how many majors in 2026 would be considered a 'success' by Scottie Scheffler.

Message from Scott on the Ritchie Smith interview from a few weeks back - if you missed it, worth going back to, it was great. Callen enjoyed Marks masterclass on bunker play and recalled some advice Mark once gave him on a golf day! Sven loved the swing critique of 9-year old Sophie recently, and shares a story of how much his daughter enjoys beating him on the course.

A wolfpacker has done an extensive trial (300 balls!!!) with a stimp meter and shares the results with us.

Lots of feedback on sandbaggers. Humble hates the handicap system and says it is fundamentally flawed, Aussie talks about his inconsistency, Syd reckons his club has sandbaggers that emerge at a specific time of the year.

And we wrap with Nick and Mark telling us where their handicaps are at the moment. We leave Dan's out of the discussion, his is a very long way behind Nick and Marks but improving (painfully slowly).

We're live from Titleist and FootJoy HQ thanks to our great partners:

BMW, luxury and comfort for the 19th hole;
Titleist, the #1 ball in golf;
FootJoy, the #1 shoe and glove in golf;
PING will help you play your best;
Golf Clearance Outlet, they beat everyone's prices;
Betr, the fastest and easiest betting app in Australia;
And watchMynumbers and Southern Golf Club.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We start off this week with Mark delivering on his promise to Nick to buy him a gift from Temu....does it work or is it underwhelming? We find out. But then onto far more important things like Hannah Green's win in Singapore. A great performance, Nick and Mark discuss how she played, her swing, and her hubby on the bag! Big year on the way for Hannah.

Nick tells us about how he managed to get his green card when he moved to the US. It wasn't looking good for a while, until he rolled out something pretty special....he tells the story.

The New Zealand Open was at the weekend and the boy from windy Wellington, Daniel Hillier played beautifully. Mark says that he loves how Daniel plays, and he has only scratched the surface of what he can do. Although Daniel did have one thing that annoyed Mark, and he fixed that at the weekend....Mark explains the thing that bugged him.

Then...buckle yourself in....Mark absolutely rinses the New Zealand Open saying that a few things he saw 'made him sad'.

For BMW, Nick's Touch of Class this week is Shane Lowry. He led by plenty and then had a meltdown at the Cognizant Classic, that wasn't the Touch of Class, but something else Shane did was....Nick plays the audio.

And Marks 'That's a Plus' for Hostplus is young 17-year old golfer Amelia Harris who played in the NSW Open in Wollongong (finishing 8th!), and then did something unexpected and impressive the following day.

After the turn, we discuss shanks in tournament golf, one particular one from a few years ago from a superstar comes to mind. And then, for Betr, Marks Top 5 is the 5 'supposed' reasons for hitting a shank. In the middle he is reminded of a shank he hit in a tournament when he was paired with Lee Westwood....it's a wild story.....

Lots of golf from the weekend, and Nick takes us all over the world in the PING global results. For Southern Golf Club, plenty of feedback - questions and comments on Austen Truslow's chipping, Pros doing maths along with their caddy, a gentle whack for Nick over Tour Pro Jamie Donaldson, and a wolfpacker who saw Mark playing recently at PK North and thought he might have a future in this crazy game. And we finish with a wolfpacker question about golf shoes, we get the inside word from the FootJoy boss Snowy.

And for the Golf Clearance Outlet, Nick's Masterclass today is on hitting fairway woods.

We're live from Titleist and FootJoy HQ thanks to our great partners:

BMW, luxury and comfort for the 19th hole;
Titleist, the #1 ball in golf;
FootJoy, the #1 shoe and glove in golf;
PING will help you play your best;
Golf Clearance Outlet, they beat everyone's prices;
Betr, the fastest and easiest betting app in Australia;
And watchMynumbers and Southern Golf Club.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A couple of weeks ago, after ripping some of the Top 100 course lists apart for some dubious selections, Nick O'Hern and Mark Allen decided to do their own list, and ranked their Top 10 Australian Courses, you can find it in the feed if you've not heard it. However, the Top 10 courses were:

1 Royal Melbourne West
2 Kingston Heath
3 Victoria
4 Peninsula Kingswood North
5 NSW
6 Royal Adelaide
7 Barnbougle Dunes
8 Cape Wickham
9 Peninsula Kingswood South
10 Royal Melbourne East

So today, we move on to 11-20....which will be tricky, and perhaps a tad controversial. If you think in the 11-20 (or the 1-10) Nick and Mark have missed a course, or gotten a ranking badly out of whack, let us know - the only rule is if you want to put a course in, you've got to tell us which you would remove.

And a caveat, we have not considered Seven Mile Beach, Huntingdale, Royal Sydney or Long Island as they are too new and we feel need time to settle in.

Let the debate begin !!!
We're live from Titleist and FootJoy HQ thanks to our great partners:

BMW, luxury and comfort for the 19th hole;
Titleist, the #1 ball in golf;
FootJoy, the #1 shoe and glove in golf;
PING will help you play your best;
Golf Clearance Outlet, they beat everyone's prices;
Betr, the fastest and easiest betting app in Australia;
And watchMynumbers and Southern Golf Club.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Feedback pod today, and we start with a bit of snake chat. Snakes on golf courses, snake names, and snakes on a plane (okay maybe not that last one). Then wolfpacker Andrew poses a question to Nick and Mark that gets some serious pushback from the boys! But it does lead to a chat about pathways for young pros.

Wolfpacker Greg has a theory on how to improve your golf game. We discuss his theory and whether it has merit. After the turn we have a question from David who has a sandbagger at his club, and he's after some advice on how to deal with this particular gentleman.

A comment on the chat from a few months back about whether a male scratch marker could beat an LPGA Pro (hint: they wouldn't). A question for Nick about the shaft he uses, and Mark recommends a short doco he saw on YouTube called Tiger 2000 - you can see it here.

And we finish with a wolfpacker who used to be a caddy and had some exposure to Ian Woosnam, Nick and Mark tell a couple of stories about Woosie.

A fun feedback pod today, keep it coming!

We're live from Titleist and FootJoy HQ thanks to our great partners:

BMW, luxury and comfort for the 19th hole;
Titleist, the #1 ball in golf;
FootJoy, the #1 shoe and glove in golf;
PING will help you play your best;
Golf Clearance Outlet, they beat everyone's prices;
Betr, the fastest and easiest betting app in Australia;
And watchMynumbers and Southern Golf Club.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.