00:00There wasn't a world where I had Aaron Rye winning a major this year.
00:05And I think Aaron Rye is a fantastic player.
00:07Now, I could have seen something at maybe the Open,
00:13you know, just waves and just, you know, having to hit the ball straight,
00:17not having to rely on your putter quite as much,
00:20windy conditions, give me Aaron Rye there.
00:22PGA and Aronimic, I had in a small bubble of players going into Aronimic,
00:28never seeing it before, knowing nothing about it,
00:30not even knowing it was a Donald Ross golf course.
00:33My perception of this place was that this was never going to be an Aaron Rye week.
00:40Now, as the week went on, I started to kind of see the golf course.
00:43Those things kind of changed where, you know, I asked you that question,
00:46where it was like, what do you think about Russell Henley,
00:48Sepp Strzokka, J.J. Spahn, and Teal Hatton?
00:52And, you know, we kind of debated those four guys of, like,
00:55who could be one of the not-so-long, accurate players,
01:00contend and win here.
01:01Little did I know, I should have threw an Aaron Rye in that whole question.
01:05Well, here's the thing is, if you had told me,
01:09if 2024 Aaron Rye was on the board this week,
01:14I would have loved that version of Aaron Rye.
01:16He hadn't even played well this year.
01:19So he actually had two injuries.
01:21I don't know if you saw the report.
01:22He had, like, a lower back injury and a neck injury.
01:25And so that's why he's been playing.
01:26I saw him on the range in Houston, man.
01:27Like, he, somebody got into the tournament while I was sitting on the range,
01:31and I watched Aaron Rye withdraw.
01:32I was like, ah, that's a bummer.
01:34Well, and it's one of those things, too,
01:36like, where a guy that gets hurt,
01:38you just never know the full extent of the impact on the swing
01:42or the ability to score.
01:44And it's one of those things where it's like,
01:45depending on the nature of your team,
01:47it's like, it could be a long thing,
01:48or it could be something you get right,
01:49and you start playing well right away.
01:51So that's what I say is, like, end of 25,
01:54there was some debate as to whether he deserved to be on the Ryder Cup team
01:58at Bethpage last year.
02:00But really, the form he'd shown towards the end of the last year
02:02wasn't as good as end of 24.
02:05I mean, that whole summer, was it,
02:07it was either Rocket or John Deere,
02:08where he had, like, that driver off the deck
02:10into that narrow par 5 up the neck.
02:13And was he contention there?
02:14It was Rocket.
02:15Okay.
02:16And then, of course, wins the Wyndham.
02:17I think we probably picked him.
02:19One of us suggested, Aaron Ryan,
02:21like, over 75% of the tournaments that year for one and done.
02:24He was a machine.
02:25And then has a little bit, you know,
02:27worse year last year, and then has the injuries.
02:30But this isn't, like, if you told me back then
02:32that Aaron Ryan was going to win a major the next two years,
02:34I would have said, oh, yeah.
02:35Like, that doesn't, it's a, he's a long shot.
02:38That's not crazy.
02:40But for it to do it this week, you know,
02:42it's, it's, it's, it definitely was a shocker this week.
02:45He won in Wentworth, if I recall, correct?
02:48Yep.
02:48Yep.
02:49The DP event there, and honestly, took down some big names.
02:52I think Fitzpatrick was, like, a name that he took down.
02:55And his wins, like, he's, he's definitely not shied away
02:58from playing against some really top-end talent.
03:01And we touched on this in the, in the episode,
03:04right when we finished the championship.
03:05But I was just amazed looking at his percentages
03:08of fairway accuracy, man.
03:09He's a 70% accuracy dude off the tee.
03:12And his golf swing is, it's so interesting, man.
03:16Like, because he, he takes it back fairly inside
03:20with his hands.
03:21Like, he gets his hands back inside, but the face is shut.
03:26Like, it is shut.
03:27And then he just gets vertical from there.
03:30And he's deadly accurate.
03:32And he, but he's so meticulous, man.
03:34Like, were you, were you and I talking about that,
03:36like, drill that he was doing on the range
03:38where he just sat there for, for 10 minutes
03:41working on that drill, standing on the stick?
03:43I just got to correct real quick here,
03:45because I want you to get back to what he's working on there.
03:47But that was actually last fall as a T3 at the BMW PGA.
03:50He won the following week at the Abu Dhabi HSBC championship.
03:53But he had two great weeks in a row.
03:55That was last, that was at the end of 2025.
03:57But yes, that was at Oakmont where he had the two alignment sticks
04:00and one he was standing on between his feet.
04:02And you talked about this on the recap show,
04:05just tirelessly working on the most minute position
04:08over and over and over again.
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