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Joe McNeil: All right. Welcome to the Joe McNeil Podcast Solo Edition. This is episode twenty-three. My partner in crime, Jay, had other stuff going. So he was not able to do this, but I have done twenty-two straight weeks, and I'm not gonna let this thing not have an episode. So that's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna talk about just a little bit of what we've been up to. Just got back from Indiana. Goodness sakes. Well, this is Saturday that I'm recording this on, which normally we record these on a Friday, but Saturday, and I I'm just not even sure. we got in late last Friday. Good night. It was that was interesting. So I'll talk about that a little bit. Went out to the Rolex Girls Junior Championship. It's an AJGA invite. Destiny was invited. it was at Sycamore Hills in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Get this back pillow out of here. phenomenal golf course. One of the few in Indiana I had not played because we lived up there for 30 years. Unbelievable. Maybe my favorite, to be honest with you. It was on it was up there with Victoria National, Crooked Stick. It's awesome. They hosted it. It was incredible. As you go pull in there, the entryway is lined with sycamore trees. It's got, you know, kind of reminds you of Magnolia Lane in Augusta. It's it's just phenomenal. Really cool drive up. You see the seventeenth and eighteenth holes on your right hand side and then the driving range over on the left. And it was just an all overall just unbelievable event. They fed us breakfast and lunch every day and like really good breakfasts and lunch. They had omelet stations and just what you would expect from a high end club, but for a junior event, they really ran it like it was a professional event. It was a lot of fun. They had members working it. They were out marking with the little white flags because the rough was pretty thick. So if your ball was in there, you couldn't find it. But they were they were out marking. They had a scorer walking with the with the groups and stuff. It was it was really good. Destiny played very well. she was tied fifteenth through two rounds. Then final day, she did not play very good. to her standards. The wind was crazy. It was over thirty miles an hour the final day. but a little bit of indecision and then getting confused by the swirling of the wind and then starting to second guess. And we we all know how that is, kind of snowballs into that. So she ended up finishing tied twenty-seventh out of seventy-two girls. still overall was a very solid event. I think there was she was two under each of the first two days on those rounds. And No, she would like to have some of that stuff back because she had some putts for four under to had some some eagles that were makeable. really challenging, tough course. You had to be specific on where you hit it. And it was a good it was a good experience. you know, AJGAs, I talk about this all the time with any of the students or the people that I consult with or working with swings and you know, whatever we're doing with their game. It is the premier And easiest way to get in front of college coaches. There was 31 college coaches at this event, 31. From Arizona to Wake Forest, all the top schools. obviously they're there recruiting the 2028s, but that's that's how you get in front of these things. So if you're a junior golfer trying to get discovered by college coaches, get in the AJGA events. You're like, I don't have stars. Then sign up for the one day qualifiers. They don't hurt your ranking. They're like a hundred bucks or a hundred and ten dollars. If coaches are there scouting, they're probably gonna be there any anyways on that day of qualifying. Send them an email. Send them an email. Let them know I'm playing in the qualifier, right? This is a school I'm interested in. Invite these coaches to come and get some eyes on you. Here in Texas, we didn't even have enough on some of the qualifiers. So If you were a boy, you could get in. Girls, I don't even think that filled up. So if you have not you don't have any status playing AJGA, you could get in these Monday qualifiers. Now, if you got the game, if you can shoot seventy five, seventy-six, I've even seen some seventy-eights get in these open events, you have a chance to get in and play. So I wouldn't obsess if I was a junior golfer over getting stars. Obviously, you know, it's it's helpful, but The way things are now, everybody's got a gazillion stars or is fully exempt. I would be if I had to start over and had no status, I'd be paying playing the one day Monday qualifiers. I would go get a practice round or two and I'd really give it a go. If you've got the game to to do it, you're gonna be playing with all the other, you know, kids that are probably going to college. So it's it's great. The weather in Indiana, so we live there for years. It's usually muggy in the summers. Not this week. Seventy degrees was the high. Fifty five was the low. It was unbelievable. Now, I do have a couple gripes with Indiana. not really the daylight that it gets early. I mean, it gets light very early. I mean, you can get up at five something in the morning, it's getting pretty light. But it stays light till like ten o'clock at night. So I was, you know, a if you're a parent and doing this or a kid, you you know it's exhausting these tournaments. You're out there as a parent, you're walking, you're trying to drink enough, trying to eat enough. You're you're out there for what, probably six, seven hours maybe, and then you're getting back trying to rest. So I'm like, I want to go to bed. And I like to go to bed early anyways, but let's say it's nine fifteen, some dude's out mowing his yard. Nine fifteen. I'm like, come on, Indiana. It was like 9 30. The dude was still mowing his yard. Like, come on, man. Come on, go to bed. but it was still light out, so it's kind of hard to. Anyways, anyway, so we've got what do we got coming up? I'm leaving Sunday for basically Topeka, Kansas. There's a
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course out there called Fire Keeper, US Women's Amateur Qualifier. We're gonna get two practice rounds and then play that. This is gonna serve two purposes. It's a bonus if we get through. So you always want to play the qualifiers and have a chance to play in the United States women's amateur. But if we don't, and it's a long shot, there's only two spots. And I think there's at least 35 girls in this. Kansas State, Missouri, you know, I think Northwestern. There's a lot of really good players. So it's a good chance to kind of sharpen up that competitiveness. And then our next event will be Like July 10th is when we leave, and that is the United States junior girls. that is in at Old Chatham in Durham, North Carolina. So we're kind of using this thing. Kansas is a long drive. We weren't able to get into the Texas tournaments because we had, you know, other other obligations. So we're like, let's drive out there. It's a twelve hour drive. we don't have to fly. The practice rounds are reasonable. This course is supposed to be really, really good. This'll be a good last practice before we go to the US girls. if we get through, it's a bonus. But that's that's the two things. So the goal is to just get the game sharp, experience some competition. And you know, it's kind of your your last second thing before the U.S. junior girls. So, Anyways, June fifteenth, college recruiting open. So congratulations to all the twenty twenty eight golfers that are now being officially recruited by college coaches. June fifteenth until August first, text, email, voice calls. No face to face. So if they're out there watching at a tournament, don't be offended if they don't say anything to you. they aren't supposed to. So they shouldn't be talking to mom and dad either. So Just hey, enjoy the exposure at this time. And one piece of advice I would give you as you're doing these calls, be yourself. Be yourself. Nobody wants to sign someone and then find out when they go there that, you know, hey, that's not the person I recruited. Just like you don't want to get recruited by a coach and then turn around and go there, and that coach is totally different. So I think it's fair to all parties just Be yourself. Be yourself. But if your goal is division one golf, AJGA continues to be the biggest stage. Okay. If your goal, I'm gonna say that again, if your goal is division one golf, AJGA continues to be the biggest stage. 31 college coaches at our last H A G A event. If you want to get exposure, that's where you want to do it. yeah, the Texas Women's Amateur was this week. And I think this is really cool. our friend, I'm gonna butcher her last name, but we we do we are friends with these these people. Gia Aloalia. She won the Texas Women's Am. So Gia was Destiny's four ball partner. Unfortunately, they didn't qualify together. wasn't a great day then, but we played with Gia, not this year, but the year before we've played with her a lot, but we played with her at US Open qualifying in Bentwater, and she was finished as an alternate, was playing really good. She played, I think she played the US Juniors last year, but definitely played the women's am. And in the women's am, She made it out of stroke play and into match play. Gia is a super solid player. She's going to TCU, which is actually pretty close to their home. Her dad, Ancor, was the caddy, I believe I saw in the video, but Texas Golf Association ran the Texas Women's Am. It's stroke play for one round and then match play, but she won all her matches, blew everybody out in all her matches until the last one, and then won one up. And they they have a video on the TX GA Twitter and I think they put it on Instagram too of Gia hitting like a twenty five, thirty yard bunker shot to get up and down to win. really impressive. But Gia's good. and she is clicking on all cylinders, chillingers. I don't know what I'm saying, but she's clicking and she got a spot in the US Women's Am in Tennessee. Hopefully we can join them out there. But just wanted to say congratulations. to Gia. She's a really nice kid, well deserving. And it's good to see that twenty twenty seven Texas girls succeeding. They're really good players. They're really good players. Shout out to another friend of ours, Carly Marshall, who's going to Notre Dame. She won matches against let's see here. OU. Savannah Barber at OU was the number one at OU and is now graduated, I believe, and turning professional, I think. We don't know her real well. We've met her a couple times. Savannah's really good player, really nice. But Carly beat her in match play. And then Carly had to play Sydney Givens, who is at Georgia, our Bulldogs, and she beat Sydney as well. So Notre Dame got him a good one. And Carly's playing really well. as well. So it's it's just twenty twenty-seven girls. I don't know. I should have looked this up, but the last time that a junior golfer won the Texas Am, I I got a little bit of time. Let's let's let's see here. When was the last time? A junior golfer won the Texas women's am. I'm sorry, I can't multitask. I'm trying to talk and type at the same time. One, the Texas women's Okay. Let's see if it knows. It says Searching the web. aren't you thankful for AI? It Okay. Based on recent history, Gia appears to be the first true junior golfer to win the Texas amateur in at least the past two dec decades and likely much longer. Are you kidding me? That is crazy. It's all been that I mean it's twenty twenty seven girls in Texas, super strong. So amazing. I on another note, as I'm praising these twenty twenty sevens, it may not last long because the way the rankings work. So if you know anything about junior golf, there's junior golf scoreboard, Rolex, then there's Tugger. I hate Tugger, sorry. I know a lot of college coaches endorse it, but it leaves out so many tournaments. It's not updated on a timely basis. and I don't like it. I just don't like it. I do like junior golf scoreboards, very easy
to understand. You know what you're getting. They should update their graphics a little bit, I think. and I like Rolex. So junior golf scoreboard is going to record every multi-day event and rank you on the field, rank how you scored against the course rating and They're gonna compile all of this stuff and give you a rank. And then Rolex. Rolex is specific to AJ G A events. Rolex was created by AJ G A, I believe. and you're gonna get some other elite events throughout the country that will also give you Rolex points. so, anyways, you have those two junior golf scoreboard and Rolex, those the two major rankings. As of last week, Monday, this or this week. Monday. Destiny was the number one 2027 golfer in junior golf scoreboard and Rolex. She was the number two Texas golfer across all classes and number 10 in the country in her class. That's pretty cool. Right. So Destiny McNeil, Ashley Shaw are the 2027 Georgia recruits. They are currently ranked number seven in ten. So to me, this has got to give Georgia women's golf the third or fourth strongest recruiting class for 2027. I got a fly on my face. Great. so that's pretty cool. And we celebrated it. We put it out there. I did it not to have everybody go, hey, look at us, look at what destiny has accomplished. Because Her first question when I go, Hey, you're number one in the rankings, she goes, Well, what do I get for that? nothing. She goes, then why do I care? I go, Well, it's a cool thing. It is a cool thing. It's a cool thing as her coach and as her parent. We've worked really hard for this and to have that even if it only lasts one week to be able to say, At this point, we were the number one in Texas. That's pretty cool. validates kind of what we do and you know Obviously, if I'm Georgia or any school that's recruiting, and you find out the kid that you recruited has ascended to that, that's pretty cool. Right. but the rankings, the way they work, it's just the past, right? It's not forecasting the future. We don't have any idea what the future is. but I think it's pretty cool. So we celebrated that. I saved it. I save all these things to Instagram. So I have, you know, destiny's progression as she goes. And Yeah, it's fun. It's it's a lot of fun. And we'll keep going at that. We may only hold it for a week, obviously, with Gia. Excuse me. with Gia just tearing it up and then Carly tearing it up, and you got just so many in the 2027s are just great golfers, and then you got some really good 28s coming up and twenty nines, and it's just it gets it's never ending. It gets it gets it's really, really good. So We have yeah, the Kansas US junior girls and then at the end of the month w the junior PGA is being held at I guess PGA Frisco. They got the two courses up there. So I think the PGA championship and the Ryder Cup are gonna be there this next year. So we're excited about that. And I think it'll be fun to go up there and and play those. That's a really tough field as well. These are incredibly good fields that Destiny's getting in and And competing in. we're looking forward to that though. Should be good. And then as far as what else we get into, we're managing the Rolex rank right now. We've got she's got a she had her two wins last year. I can't believe I caught that. I mean, I don't know if I caught that on live camera, but that was a mosquito. I caught it like Spider-Man and I I I dispatched of it. But but the way it works, like with these rankings, every 12 months, right, your tournament falls off. So if you've got a really good one, you're gonna drop in the rank. If you've got some bad ones, you'll move up. So there's some formulas and stuff, and you should pay attention to that. but not obsess over it. Anyways, one of her wins, her second of two wins, is falling off July 3rd. So her Rolex is gonna take a dip. And that's what determines if we can get in some of these invites. So We need a good need a good tournament at the US juniors. not it doesn't have to be great, but you know, we'll see if we get in those. Obviously sh her junior career is winding down. But those invites, I kinda like to play those for the rest of her career before college just for the good competition 'cause we're playing against this is another SEC golfer or this girl's going to USC. This one's going to Wake Forest or this one's going to Vanderbilt. OSU, all that. It's it's a lot of fun. to compete against them. Obviously, they're going to be competing in college. So I'd like to keep that that rolling. So hopefully we maintain that rank for as long as possible. Last week, the US men's open was going on. Wyndham Clark winning another US Open. He is like the modern day Patrick Reed. nobody that I know is a fan of Wyndham Clark. He tore up the locker and all that. And I I saw this thing where they were like, Why don't people like him? It's just he tore up that locker, right? Yeah, I mean, that's not great. But that was at Oakmont. He missed the cut, tore up the c I I don't know anybody that plays golf that hasn't had a temper or thrown a club or or broken a club or or felt like destroying a tea box. I mean, have you played the sport? It brings out the worst in ya. but I don't think that's why people don't like him. I go back To he won the US Open. I really had never heard of him. I knew he's a standout at OSU, but he took a long way to come around, right? He wins. And it's much like when Patrick Reed won. I think Patrick Reed won like Dural. And I remember after he won, he was like, I'm a top five player in the and they were like, You're a top five player. And then he goes, Well, yeah, like Michael Jordan said that. And they go, Michael Jordan sent that to you. And then it's like, well. No, he was kind of like recalling Michael Jordan said like you always have to believe of yourself like that or something. And so he just came off really arrogant. Patrick Reed did. And, you know, it was hard to like him. Well, Wyndham Clark, that was when there was
like live going on. There were there were some issues, right, with professional golf. And he goes, Well, I'd be fine if you make it exclusive to, you know, like a hundred people or we we trim down the fields. You're only saying this because you just won the US Open. Because two weeks prior, you had no s you you know, you didn't have the same status. That was my thing. So it rubbed me the way Patrick Reed, he's probably a really nice guy. But some of these dudes, when they sit down, the personality is just it's like this guy thinks he's better than everybody. He may not think that, but I think I think that's the reason people don't root for him. He can he comes across like that. He's obviously working on it and he's apologizing, but it's like once you do wrong in in the public eye, it's really hard to get him back. so I don't know, we'll see. He he should start a YouTube channel so people get to know him. I think Bryson DeChambeau rubbed people the wrong way too. I remember when he was like fourth at the Masters as an amateur, or he might have been a professional at the time, but you know, he wears this weird hat, he's got a weird swing. And he was kind arrogant with his interviews. Then lo and behold, he does a YouTube channel and starts getting support. and Bryson's likable. His game is in the toilet right now. I didn't watch the video, but I saw he had a video that said, I've missed three straight I mean, he's missed three three straight major cuts. So that's that's alarming. He was starting to play good in the US Open and then just bad second day. Hope he gets it back. Golf needs villains. Golf needs, you know, the ones that anyways. All right. And then what do we got? We got LPGA going on. We got the KPMG PGA championship at Hazletine, record purse. Can Nellie Corda make it three straight majors? not yet, but I think the lead was like thirteen under, maybe it went to twelve last night and she's at six. So two rounds to go. Definitely could make up six shots. But I think it'll be hard. I'm I'm shocked with And the the US Open could go with this too. Like the score wasn't super low with the US Open, but it was lower than they forecasted. All we heard was how hard this is gonna play. my gosh, it's gonna play so difficult. And then they slowed the greens down. You had tons of people under par. And then, you know, here's a LPGA, which I haven't checked the leaderboard today. But I hope they make this harder. I mean, it's a major. I don't want to see 20 under hit a major. Maybe I'm in the minority. But I don't want to see twenty under in a major. That's not what I want to see. I wanna see them struggling. I wanna see them struggling. I wanna see it hard and difficult. And twelve under through two rounds is yeah. So we'll see. let's see here. I just gave Chat GPT a bunch of stuff, but yeah, they didn't give me a ton of stuff. And then Who is the LPGA? There was one LPGA. she's a club pro and she made the cut and I thought that was cool. Club. bro making the cut at KPMG. Sorry, this is this is bad. Well this is why this is a podcast. So I maybe we'll cut some of this stuff out. Searching, searching, searching. This is not it. I mean it's not even it. Well anyways, there was a there was a girl that made the cut. I think that's really cool. I think that's amazing and I think That's what we like about, you know, some of these club bros getting in these majors, you know, Michael Block and stuff. It's like it's like, hey, that's that guy I know. That's the guy I get the lesson off of. It's kind of fun when that happens. all right. So switching gears just a little bit, I said that we were going to branch out and do a vlog V L L V L O G. And so I took the camera with me at the Rolex Girls and I recorded. I recorded us getting up at 3 30 in the morning, making coffee, riveting, traveling through the airport. I recorded the Airbnb. I did all kinds of stuff. And then I recorded some golf, but not tons, because I'm like, you know. Well, I get done and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna edit all this. It's two hours. Two hours of footage. I'm like, what in the world? There's like 20 minutes of walking through an airport. Who on earth would want to watch that? I don't want to watch it. And I was trying to give an inside look of what it looks like. so I don't know if it's ever going to get edited, unfortunately. I've got it loaded in the computer. My computer keeps crashing. It's obviously not power enough powerful enough to edit all this stuff, but I do need an editor. Be nice to have that so that I could just dump all that on them. But I did learn something. So we're gonna do this again in Kansas, and I'm trying to get like a shot list. What do I need? Just little 10 second clips, right? I want to document like, hey, this is what we do. and so I am still working on that and hoping to do that. But I thought of while I was out there a great little, I don't want to say segment, but a video, and I am gonna try this, but I'm putting this out on on here. there's all those college coaches and they can't talk to twenty twenty-eights, but they can talk to twenty sevens. And I'm a coach as well. And I'm like, I should go up to them. I didn't think about this until the last day after I'd ran into so many and said hello and you know, how you guys doing, you know, things like that. Just real quick chit chat. I should go up to them and ask them a question. Why not? And just record it. Hey coach. What's one recruiting mistake that almost everybody's making? Boom. Hey coach, what is one characteristic you're looking for in your 2028 recruits? Boom. Hey coach, what is one thing that gets somebody crossed off your list? Boom. Hey coach, what is one thing that gets some moves somebody up on your list? Boom. it'd be really cool. And I don't see anybody else doing that stuff. So You've been warned, college coaches. I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try to do just real quick. It won't be anything. It's not gonna be
invasive, but I'm gonna have the mics with me as I'm out on the course. And when I see those coaches, I'm going to shamelessly go up to them and try to get a one question answer. And I think it would be it could be helpful to a lot of people. I think it'd be good content. So it's questions I'd like answered. I'd like to I'd like to know what they're thinking. So it was good at the U.S. Junior Girls. We were able to connect with the Georgia coaches, see them and wishing them the best as they're recruiting Destiny's future teammates. And it's all good there. So I think that's about it. We had I've had, you know, kind of off and on episodes, but I had the one on COVID and I got some hate over that big time, man. just to be clear, my stance is I love freedom and you have the freedom to have opinions, wrong or right, and you have the freedom to state those opinions. Now, I'm not twisting anybody's arm to listen to this podcast or watch this podcast. So if it irks you and you just don't like it, you're free to turn it off or just not watch that episode. But if it triggers you and you have to insult everything about my life, you know, maybe this just isn't the podcast for you. I like freedom. I like freedom of choice, wrong or right. I like the fact that I can make a decision today and suffer consequences for it if it's a poor one. Or you know what? I can reap the rewards of that. But I I like freedom. There's a couple things. Now I'm going to get into I don't know if I'll I I might do this one day. I might do a I might do a a Bible segment. So if you're not into the Bible or Jesus or Christianity, you can turn it off now. But there's a couple verses that come to mind. And I'm not exactly sure where this is, but I know it's a verse. I probably should have looked all this up, but there's a verse that says, it was for freedom's sake. That Christ set us free. Freedom's sake. So he did it to give us freedom because God loves freedom. When God created man in the Garden of Eden, the first thing he did was give them a free will. God's into freedom, guys. He's into your free will. Because if he just created us and then forced us to love him, then we're just robots. But he gave us the will, and we can choose whatever that may be. You can choose to love God. You can choose to hate God. You can choose to hate your fellow man, or you can choose to love your fellow man. You can choose to be kind and you can choose to be mean. But all those decisions have consequences. And that's a beautiful thing. So when I give an opinion and you go, You're dead wrong. That is your opinion that I'm dead wrong. And I might be dead wrong. Okay? I'm wrong all the time. But if it bothers you that much and you're stressed out over what I say, take a break. Take a break. There's there's millions other podcasts out there. much more popular than mine. But I digress. So, I think this is about it. I'm gonna wrap this up in a solo episode. Hopefully this was enjoyable. Please drop a line, any comments, questions, or requests of topics. This is episode 23. So I thought about breaking down how junior golf scoreboard works, Rolex. if you'd like that and you think that's helpful, let's do it. I mean, one of the things we're doing for our students, we were talking about this this morning. I was like, let's do mock college interviews. We're gonna set that up and ask these kids questions that those coaches will be asking. Try to prep them. I'm sure coaches would all say that's the most awkward thing of it, right? You're asking these kids, these kids have these canned answers. we got some good stories with with a lot of that stuff. But 28 recruits, be yourself. Be yourself. If they don't love who you are, if you're a crappy person, change. But if you're if you're a good kid and they don't love who you are, that's fine. Go where you're wanted. It's important to go where you're wanted. Okay? All right. Thanks for listening. And this has been episode twenty-three. Hello, you're still there. Great. Hit like, subscribe, make sure the bell's on, you won't miss another one of these fantastic episodes.