Ian Baker-Finch on The Open at Royal Birkdale, his top 5 courses in the world, & life after TV

All right, I'm pleased to be joined. My next guest is Ian Baker Finch. We've seen him in TV for nearly 30 years. Retired for just the past year or so. Of course, he's the Open Champion of 1991. Ian, how are things going? How's retirement treating you? Yeah, it's good. It's not, I never wake up in the morning wondering what I'm going to be doing that day. You know, it's not really retirement. It's more retirement from television, retirement from CBS. I've got plenty of things to keep me busy. Still travel quite extensively and get back to Australia probably four months a year as well. So I was curious, when you go back to Australia, how often do you get back to your home area where you actually grew up and learned the game? I don't play as much golf where I grew up because it's more like the Florida of Australia. Where I grew up was in the Northeast. Ironically, 26.5 degrees South and where I live now is 26.5 degrees North. So it's very, very similar weather, warm climate, grasses, just a handful of really good courses. The great golf courses in Australia are either in Sydney, some in Adelaide, some down in Tassie, but the great, great courses are really all in Melbourne in the Sandbelt. So when I go home, I spend most of my time there. Yeah, everybody raves about the Sandbelt and Melbourne, Royal Melbourne, of course, world-renowned courses there. In terms of playing golf though, yeah, you can't miss Kingston. In terms of playing golf, how often are you playing these days? How many days in a whole year are you playing golf? I would say 150, I'd say three days a week. In a good week, I'll play every day. If I go home to Australia and I'm in Melbourne and the weather's good, I'll play every day. But in general, it's three days a week. I try and get out there and do my best to get around to golfing whenever I can. You've played all over the world, Ian, and I know it's not fair to have you square down to five of your favorite courses, but if you had to pick five from everywhere you've played in your life, 65 years, what are your top five courses? I would say Kingston, Heath, and Australia in the Sandbelt. I would say Taraiti in New Zealand. I would say Sunningdale in the London area in the UK. I would say Old Sandwich up in the Boston area. I love that, it's a core Crenshaw course. And how about out on the West Coast, California Golf Club? So they're my favorites. They're the ones I love to go back to and play. And of course, I should throw Royal Birkdale in there, right? That's where I won the Open, and that's where we're going back to soon. So yeah, certainly one of my favorites. My favorite Open venue, for sure. Now, that's interesting. So we have top six. There's Ian Baker Prince's top six in the world. But you say it's one of the great venues. I'm curious, what makes it a stout test? What do you like about Birkdale? It's the wind. It's the natural flavor of the course. It's a difficult golf course, but it's really, really fair. It's undulating, it's rugged. It's got all of the aspects that great golf courses have. Without, it's a really hard thing to explain. It's almost, it's an old Lynx. It's probably 10,000 year old sand dunes, right? But it's played beneath the dunes. You know, people can get a great vantage point around Royal Birkdale. The fairways are beneath the dunes. The greens are cut into the dunes. The T's are up on top. It's just an incredible experience. It's really just great. Yeah, I noticed some of that. I was there in 2017. I just noticed, especially that par five, 17, right? Where you just have the dunes, they're just so tall there. And like you said, the greens sit below. In some ways, I mean, if I'm hearing this right, you almost get a little bit of Chambers Bay feel to some of those things. Is that just the way that you have like the slopes, like the higher dunes around the fairways and greens? Or is that apples to oranges? Yeah, I think so. I think great Lynx have a unique quality and character of their own. I just, there's just something about Royal Birkdale where there's not a lot of elevation change, but the dunes are pronounced and the holes are open and flowing and all of the troubles laid out in front of you, there's nothing hidden. But at the same time, you sort of round a corner and there's something new in front of you. And the holes are separated from each other, although the course itself is in close proximity. I would say everyone that's played in Open Championships and has played multiple venues, everyone would put Royal Birkdale in their top three. It's obviously the home of golf is St. Andrews and the mother of all golf courses. And most people would say, hey, St. Andrews is the one. And some would say Muirfield and some would say Royal Birkdale. But there's just something about it, just makes it something special. Not just because I won there, but yeah. And I think, interestingly, it's had a couple of changes. And I think the changes will even add more credence to the value of the course. The new 15th, the Par 3, I think is going to be an exceptional test and a great addition. The old 14th, the Par 3 before, was nothing special. It was just a really good, solid Par 3. Once again, hidden into a sand dune from on high, down through the sand to get up. But the new one's going to be something special. I think the changes to the fourth hole as well, the Par, sorry, the fifth hole, the Par 4, around after the fourth, the Par 3, that will be exceptional as well. So the new bits that Tom McKenzie and Martin Ebert have done will make it even more special. Speaking of special, what's one of the most emotional memories that comes to your mind when you think about winning there in 1991? Obviously, holding the putt to win and knowing that it's finally over. It's never over till it's over, even though I went to the last hole with a three-shot lead. You still have to play and finish. And I played for bogey, I played safe. The feeling, I think, at the Open Championship of walking up the last hole and the crowd coming in behind you as you walk up. I'd had a couple of other opportunities in the last group on a Sunday at St. Andrews in 84 and 90. So I'd had a chance to feel that and witness that without being the eventual winner. And doing it in 91, I think that would be the most special. Walking up there, the classic old Art Deco clubhouse in the end, just that final experience, knowing that you'd won it has to go down as that most heartfelt memory. Well, speaking in favor of memories, I mean, you've spent a lot of time with Jim Nance over the years in the States, covering the NBA Tour. I'm curious, what's a memory, a story that really comes to mind that you really enjoyed with Jim Nance in your time there? Well, there's so many great stories of the CBS crew. Jim is such a champion at what he does. He's the Tiger Woods or the Jack Nicklaus of sports broadcasting, but he's equally as good a person. You know Jim very well, and he lives his life being Jim Nance. What you see on the screen is what you get with Jim day in, day out. I consider him, love him like a brother, and miss he and Frank and the whole team. We just have such a camaraderie there, and it's all Jim's the glue. Just his energy, his enthusiasm for the sport and for what you guys are doing, or what makes him the glue? Yeah. Well, being as good as he is and as famous as he is, as I said, he's the Tiger Woods, the best at what he does, the best at his craft. But he still makes everyone else feel like they're equal, a big part of the team. When he meets, as you know, you know him well out there on tour. When he meets people, he meets them well. He spends time with them. He makes them feel like they're the most important person at the moment. That's just how he is, and that's how he is on the show. So yeah, as I said, I miss him a lot. I miss that team. What did life feel like starting the new year without kind of that? You'd known him for 30 years, being on the road. So how has life been without this existence for you? It's been so much more relaxed. I'm a lot more patient now. I'm not a patient person at the best of times, but I'm not in as much rush now as I was because for so many years, like at CBS, it's 22 or 23 weeks a year. Add in the other travel weeks, the times to Australia, whatever. I never really had a weekend to myself. It's funny, when I finished playing, I had every weekend to myself because I didn't make a cut for two years. And then when I started doing TV, that position was juxtaposed where I was never home on a weekend, I was working. So I try and fit, I'm gone three days a week, leave Thursday night, get back Monday morning. So three or four days a week, I'm gone. I would try and fit into the week, everything that goes on in a week, I'd try and fit into that three or four days that I'm home. So I was always in a rush, always trying to get those three rounds of golf in, always trying to get everything done. And now I don't have that rush. I have more time for things like this. I have more time for the Australian PGA Tour. I'm the chair of the board back home. So I spend a lot of time making sure that everything's going well there. I speak to the CEO four or five times a week. I just have more time to do things, more time with my granddaughters that live nearby, more time with my wife, with friends, just a lot more time to myself, I think would be the best thing. And to be honest, as much as I miss all of the crew and the team and the techs and the production crew, and obviously my announce team, I don't, I'm not missing the work. I don't feel like, oh boy, I wish I was there this week. I made a good decision and I'm comfortable with that. So I think that's the best of all, is knowing that I made the right decision at the right time. So there's not like a fear of missing out kind of feeling that overtakes you at all as you watch some of these tournaments unfold, like watching the Masters or PGA. You don't have that fear of missing out, it sounds like. No, no, because I'm not missing out. I'm tuning in and listening to the team. Just in a new way, you got that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm a consumer now. Just a different side. Well, every time I've seen you at different tour events, there's something, there's gratitude that you have. There's something that comes across. You're just the way you are with people. You're very gracious. You're very thoughtful. And I'm just curious, like, what's your moral compass in how you treat people? I've always wanted to ask you that, Ian. What is it about the way you treat other people that you're trying to hold yourself to? Always treat others like you'd like to be treated yourself. Always be humble. As I said, I think Jim Nance does an unbelievable job of doing something similar in someone that's so famous and so amazingly good and talented. But to me, it's, I'm just a golfer. I've been very lucky to be a good golfer for a while and then to be in the television game and be able to be a part of the world of golf for so long. And I'm quite humbled by that, I guess. So yeah, I just try and treat everyone as a friend and treat everyone as I'd like to be treated. And you are my friend until proven otherwise. So that type of attitude, I think, is where I come from. Plus, I had some good years where I was cocky and playing great and won a major and won many other times. And then I also had a couple of years where I didn't play so well and realized that I'm still the same person, whether I won or whether I missed the cut. Well, I want to, as we wrap up, a couple of brief things on the current game. I'm curious what you think about what we're seeing with slow play at the moment. I know on the PTA Tour, it seems like a lot of players are so easy to overthink preparation and how they go and go into a major championship. I talked to Danny McCarthy and some other guys. They don't want to play more than nine holes a day during a major. And so their prep, to me, compared to what you guys used to do, seems a lot different. But with slow play, what's your kind of thoughts on where they're at right now with your slow play? Well, there's so many moving parts. It's very hard to just say, hey, they're too slow, they need to speed up. There's a lot of reasons for that. And I'll start with the greens are too fast. The hole locations are too difficult. The golf courses are tricked up to make par relevant. So there's a lot of things that add to the four hour we think is perfect. I actually think three hours is perfect, but let's say four hours is perfect for a threesome. Five hours is ridiculous. More than five hours is unacceptable. But there's reasons for it. They've made the courses so long. These guys are walking back 50 to 100 yards to every tee. So if you add 75 yards both ways, it's 150 yards times 18. You've got more than 1,000 yards longer that you have to walk than a normal person that walks off the green to the tee. As I said, the greens are so fast that it's impossible to chip it close. There's a lot of three putting. There's a lot of six footers for second putts, that sort of thing that makes a difference, especially if it's windy. And then the caddies get involved so much now that there's so much information coming in because the implications are such that the money's big. The depth of talent is so great now. There's thousands of extremely talented youngsters, women and men. It's difficult to get ahead. So every little cent counts in the dollar, right? Every 1% counts. So there's a lot of information. And I think all of that added up just makes golf laborious. I mean, it's easy. You could point at aim point. It's possible to do aim point in 40 seconds, but realistically you have 40 seconds to hit each shot and you can't do all of that in 40 seconds and play fast. There's just so much going on. So until the powers that be say, we're going to put our foot down and we're going to make four hours relevant again or four and a half hours relevant, nothing will change because they come out of high school, they come out of college already slow. It's not like the PGA Tour makes them slow. So I think it's an appropriate point to bring up Garrett, but I'm not sure anything's going to change anytime soon. Some will say, hey, it's not broken. Golf's really, really popular at the moment. Growth of game is such that around the world, more and more people are playing, more young girls are playing, more women are playing, more juniors are playing, golf clubs are full. So why change anything? But people aren't taking five and a half hours to play at the club. They're taking three and a half hours. And thank God for that. One last thing I wanted to get into real quick is this, the rollback. Do you think the powers that be, do you think this will happen at some point in the near future? It won't be a rollback. By the time it happens, 2030, it won't be a rollback. Guys are already using a ball that conforms. Cameron Young uses a tightless ball that's an exceptionally good ball, low spinning ball, that conforms with the 2030 rollback. And he's out there winning tournaments, hitting at 375 yards. So it's too little too late in my opinion. But in saying that, I'm 65 years of old, age with gray hair, and I don't want to sound like that guy. The older I get, the better I was, that type of thing. So everything's positive in the game. I get the angle that people say, hey, why fix something that's not broken? But at the same time, we're going to lose all of the great championship golf courses if the players continue to hit at 375 yards. And the kids coming through from the Corn Ferry Tour, and then the kids behind them in college, they're hitting it further than the tour guys. So it's only going to get longer. It'll be at a point where 180 mile an hour ball speed is the average. It's not far away from that now. As a few of the older guys drop off, 180 will be the average. It was only five years ago that it was 171, 172. So the ball is not necessarily the problem because the science in the game allows the players to make the right choice between shaft, head, spin rate, ball. It all adds up now with the great science and information sharing, all the great coaching that's around. So something will need to be done eventually, I think. At least draw a line in the sand now. But for the average player, the bigger the head, the better. The longer the shaft, the better. Use long putters, whatever it takes to allow people to continue to play well in their old age. So I certainly wouldn't change anything for the average player. If I may just quickly say, the game is already bifurcated. The powers that be say we don't want to bifurcate the game. We want everyone to use the same equipment. But Scotty Scheffler and Rory McIlroy and Cam Young, they're playing back there at 7,800 yards. And my son-in-law, who's a really good young player, he's probably playing about 7,100. At my age now, I'm still shooting under par when I play. I'm playing blue tees, you know, 64 to 6,800. The members are playing 6,200. My wife's playing 5,500. The beginners are playing 4,500. I mean, the game's already bifurcated by the tees that we play. So I think there's better ways of looking at the future. Great stuff, Ian. Always appreciate your time. Good to see you again, my friend. Thanks very much, Garrett. Thanks for having me on and continued success. I wish you all the best.