00:00As we kind of I just want you to kind of set up decade and how it came about for you, because obviously you're a great player in your own right.
00:08But where did where did all the stats and the analytics come about in your head where you're just trying to figure out, hey, how is course management going to be dealt with the correct and proper way?
00:21When did the light bulb go off for you?
00:22You know, it's really interesting. Like everybody thinks their story is so unique and interesting, but I do believe mine is somewhat randomly interesting.
00:28I went to Texas A&M, got finance and econ degrees. And honestly, the more that I've thought about it, the econ degree helps me more than the math degrees do, just because it's really the application of it.
00:39So I played professionally for six years out of college. I did all right. I mean, one on the Hooters Tour and other places, but obviously never made it to the PGA Tour.
00:46And then I quit in 2002 and actually started playing a lot of poker around Dallas and these underground illegal card games.
00:54I actually met Como in one in 2005. And he and I became pretty good friends for about a year, year and a half before he finally said, you know, what, what do you do for a living?
01:02He's like, I teach golf. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. I played professional golf for six years and it had literally never come up.
01:07Small world.
01:08So I went out the next day, I went out the next day to his, I mean, he was just at a place called the Golden Bear Driving Range here in Dallas and went out there the next day.
01:15It was my first time to really learn modern ball flight laws and on and on.
01:18Well, then Como and I started really studying poker together pretty intently for two or three years.
01:23And that was when I first started thinking about golf, like as a math game.
01:26Like we all know that chess and backgammon and poker are just explicit math games.
01:30But it was the first time that I really started like digging into why did I not make it?
01:34And so I wound up getting in a bet with a guy in 2008 that I was a better, better player as a 35 year old amateur than I was as a full time playing professional when I was 25.
01:44So the bet led me to enter Q school.
01:46Well, I wound up getting through all four stages and got some crappy corn fairy status, which apparently it's easier to enter Q school with a full time job than it is actually go play professional golf with a full time job.
01:55So that went about as well as you would think.
01:56That's when in 2010, they started releasing the strokes gained statistics and they released putting first and actually wrote a thread for an online poker forum just titled this drive for show putt for dough.
