00:00Ben is, you know, it's pretty well documented, you know, his whole his whole story with, you know, having no place to play.
00:08Basically, after the he he was on the Americas tour, but because of covid, there was everything was shut down out of the country.
00:16So unless you're on the Corn Fairy tour or the PGA tour, and if you recall, too, Corn Fairy and PGA had like a two year rolling cycle with tour cards and nobody got promoted.
00:27Nobody got demoted. So players that were not on the Corn Fairy tour really left with nowhere to go.
00:34And so Ben Griffin, that's when he picked up the the job as a loan officer before he had an opportunity to get back, go to Q school and, of course, have a backer to help him out along the way.
00:45And we've seen where that has taken him. But even even so, his story on the PGA tour has changed.
00:52You know, he he used to be a player, a young kid who enjoyed like any young, young player, Joyce, going out of the town, having some beers, hanging out, you know, eating crappy.
01:03Anybody can relate to that. Right, Charlie? We'd all say yes.
01:07Me? You talking to me?
01:10Well, he's vegan. He made he made that decision a couple of years back.
01:15He felt like the more he leaned into this diet and being a vegan and not drinking alcohol, the better he felt and the more that he was able to play.
01:27And I think that's kind of been a big recipe for him is for a guy who's he is the Iron Byron.
01:33He's the the Sung JM, the guy who plays 30 events a year.
01:36All of a sudden, he's winning golf tournaments and, you know, for the longest time, he's just been a really a solid player, a cut maker.
01:45It kind of is challenged at times.
01:47You know, he's he's been in some final groups, was close to winning in Jackson a couple of years back.
01:51It just didn't quite get it done.
01:54But the thing that's I've noticed is his driving.
01:58And particularly, I would say just his ability to to gain strokes off of the tee and his distance pop.
02:07I saw a ball speed on the 13th hole today from Ben Griffin at 185.
02:14Wow.
02:15That blew me away.
02:17It's so much so that it had me shaking my head that I took my foresight with me out to the golf course today.
02:22And I bombed a drive on the 17th hole out at Shoal.
02:26And I looked down at the ball speed, Charlie.
02:28What do you think it was?
02:31OK, bomb drive.
02:33It's warm.
02:34It's humid.
02:36Perfect season for golf in Alabama.
02:38We're trying to chase Ben Griffin's 185 number.
02:41I'm going to say you were one.
02:44I don't think you saw an eight in front of it.
02:45I'm saying 179.
02:47170.
02:49Wow.
02:50OK.
02:50How do we feel about that?
02:53Now, granted, I wouldn't say I was totally warmed up, but I will say I hit it good enough to where I thought it was going to be closer to 173, 174.
03:06And I was just thinking, I was like, how would I possibly get to 185?
03:11What would I have to do right now to get to 185?
03:14So I just made me have an appreciation for either the work that Ben's doing in the gym or how good his mechanics are to where he's at a point where he can go at it that hard and hit it relatively straight.
03:30Where last year and really just over the course of Ben's PGA Tour career, I could probably go back three or four years and just look at his overall accuracy.
03:40That's the thing that has held him back the most from winning.
03:42And so this year, I believe he switched to a ping driver.
03:46That's been something that that he's like leaned on heavily for accuracy.
03:51I'm 99 percent sure that's what he's using.
03:53But that's been a huge key for him is just finding a couple more fairways around and not having the one that just goes off the map.
04:01So, I think that's what I'm going to do right now.
