Deeply researched audio documentaries that tell the definitive stories behind golf's greatest clubs + weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today.
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Wednesday Mornings in St Andrews (with Fiona Steel Captain of St Rule Club)
Episode 296
Tuesday, November 10, 2026 • Duration 59:53
Wednesday Mornings in St Andrews take on a new meaning for the Ladies of St. Rule Club
Most golfers plan one trip to St Andrews. Fiona Steel plays there every Tuesday, but her Wednesday mornings have taken on a deeper, more meaningful purpose for her and some of the other Ladies of St. Rule Club: helping those living with dementia get back on the course.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co-host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. "The Professor") sit down with Fiona Steel (Captain of The St Rule Club), the St Andrews ladies' club in its 130th year, whose side beat the Professor's in a recent inter-club match on the Eden.
Fiona walks us through club life in the home of golf, where no club owns a course, the Links Trust plans the tee sheet years ahead, and a captaincy runs on volunteers. Then she tells the story she most wanted to share: the Wednesday sessions she and past captain Marion Todd built with Tony Pennock of "Fore" Get Me Not Golf, now thirty weeks in.
The conversation dives into:
47 mph winds, a canceled medal, and why the Eden hands the advantage to the higher handicapper
How St Andrews works: clubs without courses, a tee sheet already being planned for 2028, and a Links Ticket wait list closed for two more years
What captaining properly takes, from catering meetings to the inter-club liaison committee, and why a ladies' club still matters
Wednesday mornings: one volunteer per player, tea and a tray bake, golfers who hadn't swung a club in five years, and why Fiona thinks every club in the world should do it
Pace of play the Scottish way: push trolleys, no caddies, ready golf and a four-hour four-ball
00:00 Cold open: Fiona Steel on the Wednesdays every club should copy
00:50 Welcome: Johnny Blue Skies and a Brewers hat
04:01 Introducing Captain Fiona Steel, and the Professor's Eden scar tissue
06:23 The Professor's teaching: why ideas arrive mid-run
09:55 Holderness & Bourne: the Cunningham quarter-zip
11:31 Fiona joins: a medal blown out by 47 mph winds
13:36 Why the Eden favours the higher handicapper
14:53 Net eagle, net par, net birdie: the Professor's last three holes
15:45 Inter-club matches, long lunches and serious scratch matches
19:10 The Herkless Trophy with Marion Todd
21:19 Run, hit, run: learning golf in welly boots among the sheep
22:52 Joining St Rule, and why locals belong to several clubs
25:28 Clubs without courses: how the Links Trust runs the tee sheet
27:33 The golden ticket: the Links Ticket wait list
29:06 The phone call: becoming Captain
30:46 What captaining properly takes
33:38 Why a ladies' club still matters
35:04 Angela Bonallack and the over-90s who still play
38:10 Bridge, mahjong and a ladies' club with a golf section
39:44 One decision: golf for people living with dementia
41:12 A golf club in his hands: Tony Pennock's father, and week 30
45:14 How to start it at your own club
47:25 Selfish at its worst, selfless at its best
49:28 Filling the space: golf, mobility and the research
51:28 Pace of play: push trolleys, no caddies, four hours
55:24 The St Rule Trophy and the pink jumpers
57:39 What visitors to St Andrews should understand
1:00:19 Thanks to Fiona, and Holderness & Bourne's Buckley sweater
What is NewClub?
A golf club without the real estate. One membership, a rotation of great courses, tee times, competitions, trips already on the calendar, and people who love the game the way you do. We play as visitors of the clubs and courses that host us, and those relationships are the heart of what we do.
What is The Bag Drop?
Deeply researched audio documentaries telling the stories behind golf's greatest clubs, plus weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today. Hosted by NewClub founder Matt Considine and The Professor, Dr. Kevin Moore.
Like A Rolling Stone (with Kyle Franz Golf Course Architect)
Episode 295
Tuesday, November 3, 2026 • Duration 01:55:41
What does it take to build a golf course people will still be discussing and debating thirty years from now?
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co-host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. "The Professor") sit down with Kyle Franz (founder of Kyle Franz Golf Design), the architect behind the restorations at Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Southern Pines, Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms, and Broomsedge with Mike Koprowski. Kyle walked onto Pacific Dunes as a 19-year-old intern for Tom Doak and has been pushing the edges of classical architecture ever since. This time he brings the story of Whispering Pines, an Ellis Maples course near his home rebuilt with a small crew, a tight plan and a price point meant for everyday golfers.
The conversation dives into:
Pacific Dunes from the inside: a $35 twilight round at Bandon, a dozer spotted on No. 5, and the Tom Doak email Kyle still carries in his bag
Why Donald Ross is golf's Rolling Stones, and why Frank and Ellis Maples deserve more of the Pinehurst credit
Edgy on purpose: Citizen Kane, the Velvet Underground, and why Kyle is fine if not everyone loves what he builds
Whispering Pines' Moneyball approach: eight people through the winter, sand played as waste areas, and a green fee built for high school teams and Friday flights out of New York
Why a golf course is a band, not a solo act, from Joey Hancock on Broomsedge to a street artist shaping bunkers in Texas
Karen Peek's first golf memory isn't a great shot. It's her mom and aunt on the lesson tee at Rackham, laughing to tears and hitting it terribly.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co-host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. "The Professor") sit down with
Karen Peek (Director of Golf Operations for Golf Detroit and an LPGA teaching professional) to talk about growing up on Detroit's municipal courses, chasing the LPGA Tour through four Q-Schools, and why being genuinely glad to see people is the best business decision a golf course can make.
The conversation dives into:
Learning the game from Ben Davis at Rackham and Chris Williams at Palmer Park, the only two Black members of the Michigan PGA section at the time
Four tries at the LPGA Tour, never once feeling comfortable at Q-School, and a putting saga that runs from hypnosis to a new Scotty Cameron ordered two weeks ago
Why teaching is a skill, not telling people how you do it, and why the boyfriend lesson ends the golf before it ends the relationship
The 150-yard markers at Chandler Park and why she isn't getting drunk on golf's boom
"Hey dude, what's up?", the private-club pro shop that never said hello, and why she can charge more because her courses are nicer
Ben Davis's legacy: humble, fierce, and always moving golfers off the range and onto the course
Shared, Not Gatekept (with Jeff Warne Founder New Holland Golf Club)
Episode 293
Tuesday, October 20, 2026 • Duration 01:18:56
Many private club models seem to rely on keeping somebody out. Jeff Warne would rather keep out those who want just that.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Jeff Warne (longtime Director of Golf at The Bridge and founder of New Holland Golf Club in Aiken, South Carolina). Jeff has been sketching his ideal club since 2001; now he's building it as a members' club with UK-style visitor access, in a market where most new builds lock the gate. He makes the case that good golf should be shared, explains the one-page doctrine that filters his membership better than any pitch deck, and gets into firm-but-slow greens, golf's distance problem, and 60 trips' worth of Scotland.
The conversation dives into:
Why good golf should be shared, not gatekept, and how visitor tee times in the gaps are meant to keep members' dues down
The one-page doctrine that doubles as a filter: hand it to a consultant or an AI and it comes back exclusive, luxury, manicured — the words that undo the whole idea
Firm but slow: why Brian Schneider's greens carry more slope, and why "we need more pin placements" usually means "slow the greens down"
Sixty trips to Scotland, an unplanned run through Arran and Kintyre, and why to skip the famous-eight van tour
The distance debate, bifurcation, and why Al Geiberger's 59 still towers over today's 59 watch
Don't Shrink the Game. Educate It. (With Samuel Beckman Golf Course Architect)
Episode 292
Tuesday, October 13, 2026 • Duration 01:23:34
A tragic argument in golf right now is whether the game needs to get smaller. Designer Sam Beckman has a different answer: educate.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co-host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. "The Professor") sit down with Samuel Beckman (owner and designer behind Emergency 9 Golf) to talk about building golf courses that clubs can actually afford to keep — and about the high school coaching job that turned out to fill the void he missed from leading large teams in corporate America.
The conversation dives into:
Why Sam came in at roughly half the master planning fee at Ridgeway, on purpose, and what "any budget" really costs the person who says it
North Hills, where the greens had shrunk from six thousand square feet to three thousand, and every one of them is being rebuilt — from a single pin position to as many as sixteen
The tee boxes at Port Huron that Matt couldn't stop noticing, and why Scotland taught Sam that you play through a golf course rather than over it
Glen Flora's restoration: two bunkers a year, built in-house with a Kubota front loader straight through COVID, and a membership that went from 160 to 275
Why the superintendent is a co-author on every project, and the day one of them answered a steep bunker face with "we're gonna buy robots"
Twenty-nine girls on the Lake Forest team, a Coaches Cup played for an old brass flower vase, and the freshman's video that got Sam through a bad day
Ryan Gerard hates losing more than he likes winning — and he'll tell you that's a feature, not a bug. Or, as he said to his caddy, JP, recently: “Just, Let Me Be Mad.”
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Ryan Gerard (PGA Tour professional) to trace how a public course in Raleigh with no standing tee times built one of the tour's most interesting, unfiltered, and fierce competitors. Off a PGA Tour season with back-to-back runner-up finishes and a third at East Lake, Gerard is candid about what actually drives him, what he'd change about American golf, and how he keeps his head on straight when it isn't going his way.
The conversation dives into:
Why beating a friend seven straight times in a putting contest still wasn't enough — and how being the youngest, smallest kid at Wildwood Green built a competitor who "hates losing more than he likes winning"
The pitch for a lighted, low-cost par-3 "kids course" in every major North American city, sparked by a course he stumbled onto in Gullane, Scotland
Ted Scott's line about the best golf happening when expectations and reality line up — and how that explains the jump from irrational confidence to unconditional and real contention
Why his coach will always protect his self-described “graffiti on a rail car” swing instead of popular wholesale changes or overly smoothing things out
“Let me be mad”: the 20-second anger reset strategy we caught from Chasing Sunday, and why he thinks frustration is not a negative but one of his superpowers
Fittingly, we recorded our shortest episode ever to explain why the next ones will be much longer!
Eight years in, The Bag Drop is biting off something new: fewer releases, deeper research, and three- to five-hour episodes on a single golf club’s history, strategy, and story. Matt and the Professor explain why the most fascinating untold stories in golf live at the club level, the question they brought home from Northern Ireland together at twenty and haven't shaken since, and the five rules they have set to do it faithfully. (PS. The weekly interviews and conversations are not going anywhere!)
The conversation dives into:
Why the untold stories in golf live at the club level, and why studying a golf club is really a way of studying people
A trip around Northern Ireland at twenty, the question "why is this the way it is here?", and the Professor on why one round as a guest never tells you how a club actually works
The Professor's numbers on the quiet comeback of long-form, and what hours of conversation can do that a two-minute clip can't
Admiration for Acquired, and a five-hour episode that finally made the model make sense, and permission to go that deep
Nineteen million Americans have tried golf since 2020. About one in four of them stayed.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Matthew Reagan, PGA (co-founder and general manager of Operation 36) to talk about why golf keeps losing the beginners it works so hard to attract — and what changed the day he stopped teaching the swing first and started people 25 yards from the hole.
The conversation dives into:
The year-four gut punch: a junior program running at 95% retention that still lost forty golfers, and the single thing the kids who stayed all had in common
A year of three-hour nine-hole rounds, a drive to Pinehurst, and the flip that turned into Operation 36 — start at 25 yards, shoot 36, back up
Why the environment around a beginner matters more than the technical ability of the coach, and what that says about how golf picks its heroes
The women who told him they had always wanted to play but had never been given permission to start that close to the green
Opening the app to everyone in 2027 — couch to course, course to coach — and what an app should refuse to pretend it can replace
Jim Hartsell will tell you the best golf course in the world is 4,800 yards and a par 66. He is not being cute about it. He would like you to come after him.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Jim Hartsell — architect, three-time Bag Drop guest, and author of A Round of Scottish Courses — for a conversation about what thirty years of returning to the same small Scottish clubs teaches you about why golf places matter, and what a golfer owes a place once he starts telling everyone about it.
The conversation dives into:
Why Dunaverty — 4,800 yards, par 66 — is his answer to "best course in the world," and why he thinks the question is usually asked wrong
What choosing eighteen favorites instead of eighteen best freed him to write — and how a chapter actually gets built, including the sheepdog trials that unlocked a lost course on Arran
The night the Old Course put a flag on the 18th green made from a drawing his nine-year-old son had left on his laptop
The green-fee trap: why North Berwick and Brora keep going up, and why tour operators refuse to take a £30 course seriously
Whether writing about Dunaverty, Askernish and Isle of Harris is quietly changing them — and what the members themselves say about that
Three rules for being a good guest at a Scottish club, including the one about tipping too much
What happens when a guy with a Wall Street background decides he’d rather make putters than climb the corporate ladder? For Al Vikmanis, the answer has been a winding path through Arccos, data analytics, custom putter design, metal 3D printing, ferrules, and whatever comes next. The common thread is a willingness to follow the rabbit hole wherever it leads, and a belief that the journey itself is the point.
In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Al Vikmanis, Founder of 3DP Design to talk about the science and craft behind modern golf equipment, from why MOI matters in a putter to how sound actually becomes feel, why 3D printing opens up design possibilities traditional manufacturing can't, and why a ferrule can become a surprisingly personal piece of golf gear. Along the way, he gets candid about leaving Wall Street, embracing work that feels meaningful, learning from spectacular failures, and building a career around curiosity rather than a five-year plan.
The conversation dives into:
Al's early days at Arccos, helping turn enormous amounts of shot data into something golfers could actually use
MOI explained without the engineering degree, including why more forgiveness isn't automatically better for every golfer
How sound becomes feel in a putter, and why putting with headphones on might be costing you more than you realize
The unlikely path from smuggling putters into a Wall Street office to teaching himself CAD and eventually 3D printing golf clubs
Why custom ferrules have become a form of personal expression, more like putting stickers on a skateboard than simply changing the cosmetics of a golf club
The failures behind Al's work, including a collection of enormous 3D-printed mallets that looked like the Starship Enterprise and sounded like tuning forks
00:00 Cold open: Kyle Franz on the five who set golf's course in America
00:45 Welcome, and the Mid Pines walk that got the Professor back into golf
02:12 Story time: the drivers-only league night
08:47 The Professor's teaching: two years of every decade on your phone
11:34 Introducing Kyle Franz and Whispering Pines
13:29 Holderness & Bourne: the polo that started at Winged Foot
15:22 Kyle Franz joins: can an architect have a favorite?
17:49 Pacific Dunes at 19: was the public ready for it?
24:28 Doak's reversible course and the case for edgy design
27:54 Confidence in the dirt: Tom Doak's email to a 19-year-old
29:43 $35 twilight at Bandon and a dozer on No. 5
34:50 History as a tool: what the old links really looked like
39:29 Citizen Kane, the Velvet Underground and patience with edgy work
41:33 Donald Ross, the Rolling Stones of golf
45:23 Frank and Ellis Maples, and Robert Hunter's verdict
48:17 Raleigh Country Club: Ross, McGovern and Maples in one course
52:52 Hidden gems: Fraserburgh and a green in Rio
59:37 Karoo and the category-five hurricane brief
1:02:45 Whispering Pines: waste areas and only a few rakes
1:08:27 Putting a number on affordable
1:13:11 Moneyball shaping: a small crew and a Bear Bryant speech
1:16:45 Long-term planning: Minikahda and the pond on six
1:21:55 Delegation: Hanse in the dozer, Coore on the Sand Pro, Doak on foot
1:29:13 Casting the crew: Luling's barrancas and a street artist's bunkers
1:35:39 Broomsedge, Mike Koprowski and those flagsticks
1:43:14 It takes a band: why great courses are collaborative
1:50:06 Tour pros as architects: Crenshaw, the Prairie Club and Tom Lehman at Cal Club
2:05:06 What's next for Kyle, and thanks
2:06:35 Holderness & Bourne: Andrew Bailey, from the merch tent to Pebble Beach
What is NewClub?
A golf club without the real estate. One membership, a rotation of great courses, tee times, competitions, trips already on the calendar, and people who love the game the way you do. We play as visitors of the clubs and courses that host us, and those relationships are the heart of what we do.
What is The Bag Drop?
Deeply researched audio documentaries telling the stories behind golf's greatest clubs, plus weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today. Hosted by NewClub founder Matt Considine and The Professor, Dr. Kevin Moore.
23:39 Biking to Palmer Park and learning from Chris Williams
25:07 Losing her dad at 14, and the comfort of the individual game
27:51 Par was the standard, practice was the answer
31:37 Four tries at the LPGA Tour, and advice from people who haven't been there
36:43 Q-School: prepared until she got there
38:45 Hypnosis, acupuncture, and a putter over the knee
42:53 Lemons into lemonade: joining the LPGA to teach
44:50 Teaching is a skill, not telling people how you do it
48:16 Six-foot-four students and "please don't apologize"
52:41 What Carol Mann taught her: people need to know you care
56:28 Horrific lessons and the boyfriend at the range
59:35 Delivery over knowledge: listen first
1:03:13 Get them on the course, the sooner the better
1:04:14 Nobody knows what 300 yards looks like (hit one more club)
1:08:49 The 150-yard markers at Chandler Park
1:11:23 Don't get drunk on the boom
1:13:19 Building comfort: staff who look like your golfers
1:15:26 "Hey dude, what's up?"
1:17:36 The private-club pro shop that said nothing
1:19:23 "I can charge more because I'm nicer"
1:22:55 Ben Davis: humble, fierce, always smiling
1:26:26 Thanks, and the outro with Erin Hills
What is NewClub?
A golf club without the real estate. One membership, a rotation of great courses, tee times, competitions, trips already on the calendar, and people who love the game the way you do. We play as visitors of the clubs and courses that host us, and those relationships are the heart of what we do.
What is The Bag Drop?
Deeply researched audio documentaries telling the stories behind golf's greatest clubs, plus weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today. Hosted by NewClub founder Matt Considine and The Professor, Dr. Kevin Moore.
🗣️Contribute to the show! — 📧 email: thebagdrop@newclub.golf
Chapters
00:00 Cold open: modern golf is being run backwards
00:31 Welcome, and the Professor's two-week research retreat in Scotland
01:43 When to play links golf: September, or the late-April sweet spot
02:54 Today's guest, and why New Holland stands out in Aiken's private boom
05:40 The Professor's teaching: Brad's Drink, BackRub and other names that didn't stick
09:13 Titleist: SM11 wedges, and getting fit before the clubs go away
10:35 Jeff Warne joins (with notes on everything we just said)
12:03 Sixty trips in: stop playing the famous eight
14:27 A missed qualifier, the Arran ferry, and Shiskine and Corrie to themselves
17:51 Walk-up tee times at Machrihanish and a lunch standoff at Dunaverty
20:58 The first trip: book a few big guns, then play Prestwick St Nicholas
22:44 The scale problem: courses built for Watson and Nicklaus
24:32 Bifurcation was the answer, and Geiberger's 59 still stands alone
27:41 Accessible golf at home: Myrtle Beach (really) and Maine nine-holers
30:24 New Holland's access model: members first, visitors in the gaps
33:19 Shared, not gatekept: members and visitors, not public and private
35:03 The doctrine: 25 years of notes, typed in 40 minutes
36:37 Exclusive, luxury, manicured: when the polished rewrite becomes the filter
44:05 Native vegetation, construction traffic and the jungle coming back
46:51 100% invested in less, and moving a third of the dirt
50:40 Any pressure to bend the UK model?
53:50 Want exclusive? Join somewhere else
54:49 Why established clubs can't open up: the bag room doubled
57:01 The hundredth property, and the Tree Farm that got away
1:01:50 Firm but slow, at 102 degrees and three-quarters of an inch
1:04:23 "We need more pin placements" means slow the greens down
1:06:46 Long Cove, grainy Bermuda and why fast greens are easy
1:10:38 The scene in 20 years, and why culture is the hard part
1:14:02 Handing The Bridge to Mike Sweeney
1:16:43 Public golf, Gold Hill and making the group big
1:18:31 Thanks and sign-off
What is NewClub?
A golf club without the real estate. One membership, a rotation of great courses, tee times, competitions, trips already on the calendar, and people who love the game the way you do. We play as visitors of the clubs and courses that host us, and those relationships are the heart of what we do.
What is The Bag Drop?
Deeply researched audio documentaries telling the stories behind golf's greatest clubs, plus weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today. Hosted by NewClub founder Matt Considine and The Professor, Dr. Kevin Moore.
0:54:05 The Mona Lisa and the graffiti on a rail car
0:55:31 Stealing Matt Wolff's bunker shot
1:08:19 "Let me be mad": the mental reset from Chasing Sunday
1:14:22 The Presidents Cup snub and process vs. outcome goals
1:20:34 Is competitive golf actually fun?
1:24:28 Takeaways and the upcoming deep dive series
What is NewClub?
The premier private golf society in the United States. NewClub blends the community and access of a private club with the variety and affordability of public golf. Members enjoy thousands of reserved tee times, competitions, and events at exceptional partner courses across our local chapters, plus signature trips and exclusive perks.
What is The Bag Drop?
Deeply researched audio documentaries that tell the definitive stories behind golf's greatest clubs + weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today.
🗣️Contribute to the show! — 📧 email: thebagdrop@newclub.golf
Chapters
00:00 Welcome: one of us is practicing, one of us refuses
01:29 Beating balls, and taking the doubt out with Golf Blueprint
02:45 The four-ball partnership is off
03:41 Matt's real golf strength: recruiting
05:00 Professor's facts: long form is quietly coming back
08:01 A return to conversation after a decade of the algorithm
09:05 Ad read: Titleist GTS, unboxed at night and gamed by morning
10:40 The Professor is a seven-wood guy now
11:21 Fixing the top of the bag with a four wood and seven wood combo
12:41 A short episode about going long
14:07 Eight years of The Bag Drop, starting at the Merit Club
16:33 Three years of the Professor, and curiosity on steroids
18:32 The decision: fewer shows, deeper research, three to five hours
20:23 Why clubs: study a club, study the history of people
22:56 Northern Ireland, and why one round as a guest explains nothing
25:01 Not the historians, and why that is the advantage
27:26 Acquired, Costco, and learning through a narrative
28:18 Smart Brevity, and what short form can't do
30:16 A decade of hearing "there's a past here you don't know"
32:40 The rules: no AI list of facts, no embellishment, the pursuit of truth
34:24 Time to get to work
What is NewClub?
Founded in 2017, NewClub is the premier private golf society in the United States. It blends the community and access of a private club with the variety and affordability of public golf. Members enjoy thousands of reserved tee times, competitions and events at exceptional partner courses across our local chapters, as well as signature trips and exclusive perks. NewClub is making the game more meaningful for those who love it.
What is The Bag Drop?
The Bag Drop features weekly stories from the culture, community, and characters shaping golf today. Produced by NewClub Golf Society, each episode blends authenticity and expert insights for passionate golfers at all levels. Special guests from clubs, courses and every corner of the changing landscape join us for thoughtful, in‑depth discussions on all things golf.
🗣️Contribute to the show! — 📧 email: thebagdrop@newclub.golf
Chapters
00:00 Cold open: the moment Operation 36 got its name
00:52 Welcome, and a fall morning in Athens
01:20 Ten kids under eight: not rested, but refreshed
03:35 Unplugging, the Slack away message, and the phone-off experiment
06:45 New York, Mumford and Sons, and whether you could live there
08:37 Today's guest: Matthew Reagan and Operation 36
10:10 What Op36 did to Athens Country Club
11:19 Scotland as the barometer: beginners go straight to the course
12:00 Professor's teaching: sampling versus early specialization
15:13 Ad read: Titleist AIM Enhanced and seeing the ball go in
17:18 Matthew joins The Bag Drop
18:16 Sixteen, upstate New York, and a course you could play for free
20:25 Campbell, Ryan Dailey, and deciding to coach
21:46 What actually turned him into a golfer, and it was not technique
25:28 Gamification, variability, and why golf hooks you
28:58 Three juniors at Keith Hills, and a program that grew to eighty
30:01 Ten levels, bag tags, and making a three-footer fun for an hour
32:19 Year four: forty golfers do not come back
33:59 North Carolina Long Term Athlete Development LLC
34:43 The one thing the kids who stayed had in common
36:09 A year of three-hour nine-hole rounds
38:08 The drive to Pinehurst, and the flip that became Operation 36
40:08 Teaching calculus to a seventh grader
42:01 Narrative, and the data nobody else in golf has
44:16 One in four: this is not a junior golf story anymore
45:42 Bootstrapping, licensing, and taking the junior out of the brand
49:15 Shrinking the variables until clarity becomes motivation
51:06 Competence, relatedness, autonomy
52:40 The women who never had permission to start close
55:33 The cultural headwind: America starts on the range
57:05 Aligning a club top to bottom, and Op36 at St Andrews
1:02:41 The ego of the young coach, and a $400-a-month membership
1:05:25 A gymnastics gym on every corner, and not a golf program
1:08:55 What a club needs before this works
1:12:23 If a recession comes, which programs survive
1:15:46 Opening the app in 2027: couch to course, course to coach
1:18:22 Golf Genius, and learning to run an engineering team
1:24:56 One thing you can do to make somebody's first nine better
1:31:07 Close: reviews, Titleist AIM Enhanced, and thanks
What is NewClub?
Founded in 2017, NewClub is the premier private golf society in the United States. It blends the community and access of a private club with the variety and affordability of public golf. Members enjoy thousands of reserved tee times, competitions and events at exceptional partner courses across our local chapters, as well as signature trips and exclusive perks. NewClub is revolutionizing golf membership, making the game more meaningful for those who love it.
00:40 - Welcome to The Bag Drop 11:08 - Al Vikmanis joins the show 12:12 - From Arccos data to custom putter design 18:51 - What Al learned from working at an early-stage startup 21:03 - Leaving Wall Street and finding meaningful work 24:21 - MOI explained 30:33 - Why sound is feel 34:11 - How Al got into making putters 37:44 - Why custom 3D-printed equipment doesn't scale 41:20 - How metal 3D printing actually works 43:32 - Where 3D printing fits into the future of golf equipment 47:20 - The early failures of 3D-printed putters 51:08 - Learning from bad ideas 54:09 - How Al and Patrick Boyd started working together 56:52 - Why golfers love custom ferrules 59:24 - Ball markers, divot tools, and personal expression 1:02:21 - The creative side of Al Vikmanis 1:10:53 - What's in Al's golf bag 1:18:12 - What comes next for golf equipment 1:20:12 - “The journey is the point”
What is The Bag Drop?
The Bag Drop features weekly stories from the culture, community and characters shaping golf today. Produced by NewClub Golf Society, each episode blends authenticity and expert insights for passionate golfers at all levels. Special guests from clubs, courses and every corner of the changing landscape join us for thoughtful, in‑depth discussions on all things golf.
What is NewClub?
Founded in 2017, NewClub is the premier private golf society in the United States. It blends the community and access of a private club with the variety and affordability of public golf. Members enjoy thousands of reserved tee times, competitions and events at exceptional partner courses across our local chapters, as well as signature trips and exclusive perks. NewClub is revolutionizing golf membership, making the game more meaningful for those who love it.
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