Sophie Walker — Sky Sports Golf Presenter & Former LET Pro | Bonus Episode

Welcome & Meet Sophie Walker

Nish 0:35

Every good story is about the journey, and this is the story of our journey trying to play the top 100 courses in the UK and Ireland in just ten years. This is the top 100 in 10 golf podcast.

Sophie Walker 0:44

Well, it’s the dream, isn’t it? That’s you know, I wrote in my yearbook in year eleven, you know, I want to be a professional golfer and I got the ticket. Someone asked me this yesterday. And I was like, in a failed tour pro.

Nish 0:58

So would you tell us how you know what clubs the players are playing?

Sophie Walker 1:01

Oh, it’s a secret.

Nish 1:02

Bonus episode, a chat with Sophie Walker. So she’s a current Sky Sports Golf presenter, former LET pro, playing in over 150 events. She’s finished runner-up at the 2010 Scottish Open. She’s played in five opens, including the first women’s visit to St Andrews, led the US Open at Shoal Creek, and has a degree in sports science and business management from Loughre University. She’s also ace and she’s chatting with us today. It is Sophie Walker. Now, before we start our episode, I’m going to ask anybody watching or listening to this episode, please give us a follow or a subscribe. It helps us get amazing guests like Sophie. Welcome, Sophie.

Sophie Walker 1:41

Welcome. Well, it does help when you live only a mile down the road as well.

Nish 1:45

I didn’t want to say that. Um, what an intro that is, that’s amazing.

Growing Up in a Golf Club

Sophie Walker 1:51

I know, I sounded really good, didn’t I? I was thinking, I’m not sure I’ve used my degree at Loughford University, but I met some great friends and um put on a couple of kilo and drank too much. Standard university.

Nish 2:02

Seems like a solid, solid outing to me. With university education, there, I think. Yeah. Um, tell us a little bit about when you started playing golf. Uh, was it like a did you get the bug straight away? Was it a bit of a slow burn? How did that work out for you?

Sophie Walker 2:15

I started from a really young age, but not joining a golf club. Um, the local pro cut down uh a John Letters Seven Iron, I think it was, uh, because my dad was the handicap secretary at Cleethorpe’s golf club, played off single figures, was quite involved with the club, and he transitioned from playing football to cricket and then joined the golf club. So I would go down with him of a weekend and kind of get thrown in the pro shop. And poor Eric Sharp, who um was my coach for you know 20 years, he would just look after me. So I would draw draw paintings. Um, I would terrorise him, playing hide and seek in the in the shop from the age of maybe four to ten when I could join the golf club. Because back then you couldn’t join a golf club until you were 10.

Nish 3:03

It’s just general across the board, right?

Sophie Walker 3:05

Yeah, well, our club, yeah, and it wasn’t a posh club at all. And um I would go out and sneak out on the golf course with my dad with this club because we we lived on the back of it as such. You could we you could walk to the the furthest holes, the sixth hole. So we’d walk out on there and I would hit the odd shot at night. And being from the seaside, we had a pitch and putt, which was quite popular. So I’d go down there with my best mate, his grandma would take us, and we would play pitch and putt. But I didn’t really start golf golf until I was age 10. And the first year, no, I didn’t particularly take to it. Um, I was playing with the the women, not the juniors, and you know that they felt really old to me, and I didn’t I didn’t quite understand where I fitted in in the club, and then I realised there was a massive junior section and it was okay to play with the boys, there was over a hundred of us, and from then on I kind of lived at the golf club. So from age 11, I had the bug.

Chris 4:04

And was that do you think that has that passion always kind of been in been within you kind of to play golf? So that you’ve kind of been out there as a as a real young kid just hitting balls? Is that were you kind of hooked at that point, do you think, or was it a bit later on that you actually thought, you know what? I actually I love golf.

Sophie Walker 4:19

I wanted to be uh a sports person. Okay. Um I think if probably had my time now, I would have been a footballer. Okay, I was a good footballer as a kid, and still, if I if I go home back to Cleethorpes, I’ll get some dads coming up to me going, You were great at football. And like, I mean, oh no, I was good at golf, and they said, Oh, yeah, you used to play with my lad John O and Ashley, and and I I absolutely loved football, but it we got cut off at 13, 12, 13. And and luckily for me, I was good at golf, I was good at sport, and golf took over from football. The same boys that I was playing football with were playing golf at the same time, so it meant that I kept my friendship group and I just transferred playing football with them onto the golf course in that way. Um, I am fortunate, I’m I’m good at bat and ball skills. So golf, I can’t really remember learning golf. And I think when I teach golf, I have to remind myself that there’s so many things I do that I don’t even know I’m doing because it’s just almost been through osmosis from watching my dad, watching my coach Eric Sharp, going out for hours and hours and hours, uh chipping and putting, it’s really like you don’t have to think about it because we did it that much as kids.

Chris 5:35

Yeah.

Sophie Walker 5:36

So yeah, we just lived lived at the golf course. I rode my bike to the course, had my uh clubs in the locker. It was about a hundred pounds to be a member for the year, and probably got a fiver off mum and dad and brought some chips and played. Yeah, we played 54 holes a day really in the summer because our golf course was flat, yeah, and juniors were encouraged. You know, the juniors could play for the the teams, not just the junior teams.

Nish 6:00

Yeah. Well, at what point did that turn from you know, I’m just almost playing subconsciously to actually I think I could make a career out of this.

Sophie Walker 6:10

Yeah, uh probably I had an amazing 2000, I think it was, where I pretty much won everything I entered other than the British girls. So I won the English girls at 15 around Sheringham Golf Club. Uh, and that that was really where I thought, hang on a minute, I could be pretty good at this.

Nish 6:29

Yeah, yeah. Oh, nice. Well, it gets competitive ju

Nish 6:32

7ices flowing as well, that doesn’t it? It’s like actually I’m good at yeah, right, okay.

Sophie Walker 6:35

So yeah, I must admit it’s that the the competition is a big bonus, or was a big bonus for me.

Chris 6:41

Right, I had pretty much the opposite experience. I came pretty much dead last in the under 16s boys at Sheringham as well. Okay. So that’s that’s why your Satir is the pro and I’m Satir as a as an absolute hacker.

Nish 6:53

Um you had around about 13 years on on tour. I mean, that’s something that listeners, viewers, people who follow golf generally and socially and casually, they just dream of that, don’t they? Like, what is it like being on the women’s tour, life as a tour pro, like paint the picture for us?

Sophie Walker 7:12

It’s it’s well, it’s the dream, isn’t it? That’s you know, I wrote in my yearbook in year 11, you know, I want to be a professional golfer, and I got the ticket. Um pack a bag and see you later. Kind of six weeks in a row, nine weeks down in Australia, just bouncing from country to country. That was cool. I I was fortunate that my best friend Nikki was Australian. So once she came to Europe, she couldn’t go home. So she would either come back to our house or she would say to me, Hey, look, we’re playing in Amsterdam. Can we go a day early? And then we’re moving on to Prague. Instead of going home, can we can we go to Prague? So I find myself on kind of a a tour of Europe because the Australian is keen to do it, and I think that was great for me in terms of experience. And we just bounced around. The tour was a bit more stable in the sense that it was South Africa and Australia first, then it went into Europe from April through to September, October. Yeah, and it was very European based, which which suited us. You’d turn up on a Monday. If you were a rookie, you probably needed your practice round on the Monday and Tuesday because you weren’t in the Pro on the Wednesday, and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you were playing and you pack up your stuff, put your tour bag on. There was a big van, so you you paid Eric you know, 40 euro, the bad man, and he put the bag on the van and he took took your luggage, so you could travel to the next destination kind of just with a suitcase. And if you wanted to have a couple of days off, you could go see the sights and then tee it up again. What a life.

Chris 8:52

What was that? What was that transition like? So obviously you’d done you’ve done really well in the amateur game. What was that transition like to then going to be a kind of tour pro?

Sophie Walker 8:59

It was reasonably small. I led my first event on tour. I was like, this is it. All right, Tenerife. But I had a really poor final round. I think I look back on it. I think I shot like I shot 79, 80 in the last round, being a final group. So that was a bit of a baptism of fire for me. First year kept my card quite comfortably. The one thing that I think I should have done better was back myself more. Um, like trying to get sponsorship was really quite difficult then. Yeah, wasn’t on TV as much, you know. You just had to hand your CV in. There was no social media, you couldn’t promote yourself that well. Living in Lincolnshire wasn’t in a hub of people that would that could sponsor you. Got got really fortunate that I had Eastern Airways sponsor me to start with. But I I felt like I should have maybe invested more of the money that I did have to get a really good caddy, to bring my coach out more on tour. Because Eric didn’t want to come on tour, he’d done all that. Yeah, he was a really successful coach in the 80s and 90s, and he he didn’t want to come out to Europe and fly around. I should have maybe just invested in more stuff back myself, so I didn’t feel like I was turning up to a golf event just me.

Chris 10:20

Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 10:21

And if you look at it now, they all have little groups around them. Yeah, my golf game, I was ready to play tour golf, but I probably didn’t put the structure around me. Yeah.

Chris 10:31

Um is that something that kind of came later, or did you just you kind of got used to doing it solo and then?

Sophie Walker 10:37

I got used to doing it solo, and and I think that was probably an error, really, to take me to, you know, you spoke about 13 years on tour playing in majors, but you know, I didn’t win on tour, uh, I didn’t get over to the LPGA, and that was maybe a financial restriction that I put on myself as well.

Chris 10:57

Yeah. What do those financial restrictions look like? Kind of at the time. Well, it’s just backing yourself.

Sophie Walker 11:01

So you you know, you you you’re talking, you’re probably talking about spending back then two and a half grand a week.

Chris 11:11

Okay.

Sophie Walker 11:11

Uh it’s more than that now. Yeah, yeah. But that would get you the decent hotel, the the the good caddy, you know, the physio, all that type of stuff that’s just what you’d expect a top athlete to be like. I kind of felt like I still did oh well, I thought I did all right as an amateur, not having all of this. I’ll be fine. But I think I did have it as an amateur because I was with England Golf. Yeah, I just didn’t realise. And that was a I think that’s a big jump from going from an amateur and get turning up, and they’re looking after everything. Basically, they give you your passport, you know. It’s like, and you get on that flight, off you go, and we’re gonna look after everything. Here’s your team uniform, blah blah blah blah, to nothing.

Chris 11:51

Yeah, and so what age would you have been then when you made that?

Sophie Walker 11:53

I was well, I was late, I’d finish uni, so I was 21. Yeah, okay. Yeah, um, they do it a lot younger now, but that’s why you see the Swiss golfer very good at it, Australian golfer good at it, where they have um whatever you do as an amateur, it progresses into being on tour. So that team almost stays the same. That transition across, yeah, okay.

Nish 12:16

Yeah, so you’re not just cut adrift like under the amateur that and that you just sort yourself out now. Yeah, yeah, because I suppose it’s like um in football, like now, because clubs will do this whole kind of you know, they want to educate the players as much as possible and get them ready for life after football. This is kind of yeah, life into the prof because you that’s where you when you’re trying to move people, yeah. You know, you do need to organise this sort of stuff, and so even just organisational skills are quite important, aren’t they? It is, yeah.

Sophie Walker 12:41

You know, you’re very accountable to yourself as a as a golfer, like when you get out when you practice, how hard you practice, when you go into the gym. Um yeah, there’s a lot to manage.

Money, Sponsorship & Going Solo

Chris 12:50

I mean you’re basically just running a little mini business, which is you, right?

Nish 12:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and and then obviously you then got into broadcasting. So, how how did that shift?

Sophie Walker 13:01

Someone asked me this yesterday. How did you get into the commentating? And I was like, in a failed tour pro. So um I actually had to write this down because I had to look at it. So 2014, I’d been on tour seven or eight years, and I’m a bit of a realist, and thought, you know, I’m not getting enough out of this. I’m putting, you know, I feel like I’m putting the work in, but I’m not getting enough out of it. So I started to apply for jobs, and I applied for a job at England Golf, and someone who works at the LET helped me with it, Polly, who’s now smashing it. She’s like the head of the Solheim Cup for the LET. And I said, I’m gonna apply for this job. And it was like 18 to 20 grand a year at England Golf, and she put the CV together and she’s like, Are you sure about this? I was like, I need to start, I need to start progressing, do do something else, maybe. Please look around. And we sent it in and I came. I think I I definitely came top 10. I think it was the year that Charlie won, and I probably won like 10 grand. She’s like, You’ve just won half your salary. Anyway, I just didn’t even get a reply, didn’t even get like an interview. Okay, well, all right, I’m top 10, so maybe I should go back and start playing a bit more. And so I’d already started thinking in 2014. Then 2015 comes along, and a guy that I live with at university, he works for your golf travel, Oliver. And he said, Look, sir, if we’re starting doing this YouTube stuff, um, we’re doing uh Turnberry one night accommodation, two rounds of golf for both courses. It’s a winter deal. I still remember it now, it was 189 quid. Yeah, so I’m going on travel up there for 189 quid now. It’s only 2015. Like, how expensive is golf now? And um, so he said, we’re gonna try and promote this. We’ve got these guys on YouTube, Coach Lockheed, Mark Crossfield, uh Rory, who was a YouTuber. And what about you? I know the women’s open is up at Turnberry. You could go do this, you’d get a couple of practice rounds. So I thought, oh, let’s give that a go. I quite enjoyed it, and then we started to do more and more and more.

Chris 15:09

Yeah.

Sophie Walker 15:10

And I’m thinking in my head, Gricky, you’re golf travel, maybe, maybe I’m gonna get some sponsorship out of this. Um that’s the way I think we turn up at Turnberry, and I got in, so I’d I’d qualified and got into it. And I remember speaking to Ollie, and he would be fine with it now. And uh he said, So if so if got some exciting news. I was like, Great, this is it, this is it. Tuesday the open. He goes, just look at Charlie Hull’s um arm sleeve when you see her, and they sponsored Charlie Hull. I was like, Oh, I have traits around doing YouTube like this, and obviously, I mean probably better sponsoring Charlie than it, but it was me looking at it now. But I was like, oh, but then I was getting better at YouTube, I was getting people were liking what I was doing. The golf world was quite negative about it at the time. Uh Paige Spirinac era that was kind of cool. Um, but I was seeing I started to see a vision of like this could be where some more golf’s going. Doing that, met Rick Shiels, met Pete Finch, all that type of stuff. But in my head, I sort of thought, well, I’m not watching a lot of this YouTube, I’m still watching television. So maybe I could transfer this into television. And I got my first Sky Sports gig because we were me, myself, Amy Bolden, and Carly Booth were doing an American golf show. It was at the X Cell down in London, and it was at Manchester at Trafford, and they wanted somebody to promote it. So I said, Well, as I got us the gig, girls, I’m gonna do the promotion. So I went on to Sky, sat in the studio and chatted a bit there. Cool, and that’s kind of how it started.

Nish 16:54

That’s amazing. Yeah. It just just happened.

Sophie Walker 16:57

Just happened, yeah. Yeah, I watched loads of golf, so it wasn’t a struggle at all. Yeah, I did get far too doled up. You should have seen me in makeup. It’s like you sit in makeup and they’re like, you come out with all these lights, and uh now I’m like a little bit more natural. Oh, yeah, right. Can I get a little bit more natural?

Nish 17:18

Yeah, you can’t do that. I I yeah, I I love that.

Favourite UK & Ireland Courses

Sophie Walker 17:21

But it’s great confidence though, to just kind of take to it naturally and yeah, I think I probably had more confidence at the time in that than I did in my golf game. And I would it so when I was on YouTube, I was playing really well. Like the camera didn’t bother me. And I thought, oh these cameras not bothering me. And then when I went into the Sky Sports studio, I was like, well, I watch this all the time. I I know I know what we do, I know we stand up there next to the screen. Yeah, I know they’re gonna ask me to demonstrate something. So I I got more confident in that than being by myself on a course and looking back, maybe it was part of a team. I like being part of a team.

Chris 17:57

Yeah, I guess in some ways there’s a bit less pressure on you because as an individual, isn’t there, in those in those situations? Yeah, you can like you say you’ve got a group of people around you to kind of to bounce off.

Nish 18:05

Yeah, um we’ll turn it back to the top 100 just for a second. Okay. Um so far, out of these amazing courses that we’ve got on our Fair Island, uh what’s your absolute top favourite golf course? Which is the one that you’re like, oh, how could it be just take it there now?

Sophie Walker 18:25

Yeah, I I at the top of my list is Reddish Vale, isn’t it? I always I always kind of f flirt between Sunningdale and Royal County Down. They’re the two that I just I yeah it’s just flip of a coin, is it? Yeah, like when the weather’s good, it’s Royal County Down.

Chris 18:46

Yeah, yeah, which is never so have you played both of those in tournament play or yeah, so when you’re an amateur, you get to play some great golf courses.

Sophie Walker 18:55

Uh and we had the British um, or that’s the RA will now call it, the women’s amateur, at uh Royal County Down, and me and Mel Reed with our families, we rented uh a cottage up in the up in the hills, and we played a British amateur there, and those days were so much fun. Yeah, yeah, great fun. Um, I think I I lost in the quarterfinals, so I met that would mean I’d have probably played it six or seven times, and since then I’ve not played it, but the memory just lives lives with me of hitting the golf ball kind of into the greenery, but then looking to the left and seeing like all the the sea and everything. You just don’t you don’t often get an amazing golf course with good stuff to look at, yeah it’s kind of one or the other, yeah. Um yeah, Ireland is great, and then Sunningdale. Um I played Sunningdale for some loads as a kid, yeah. Semi-finals of that I got with Olly Fisher one yeah.

Nish 19:50

If you when when you’re playing a course like that, you know, obviously now you you you do the two things, or you have done the two things, you played it as a tour pro, yeah, and you then also played the course as just somebody for the love of the game and just fun, right? What that how is that different? Is it different?

Learning to Actually Enjoy the Places

Sophie Walker 20:07

Yeah, I mean when you play it and it means something, your head’s down, right? Totally down. I went in. I went and played in a golf day for uh Footjoy, the the new the new clothing that they were doing up at Gullane, and I stood on the seventh Tee and was like, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s nice. I’d played uh a British amateur there, semi-final, they had got postponed. I’d spent seven days up at Gullane on that seventh T. Obviously it’s match play, so I would have played it six or seven times easier. Yeah, never noticed it. Never noticed it and it’s like head down, didn’t yeah, wouldn’t have even looked up.

Nish 20:45

It’s a bit sad that, isn’t it? Actually, that I mean it’s when it isn’t, it isn’t. It isn’t because it’s your job and that’s what you’re trying to do, and you’re focused, and that’s great because that’s that is your focus. But then you know, you you might play somewhere in the world, you might never go back there. But it’s a stunning golf course, and it’s like actually, I’ve not had any chance or ability to take that in.

Sophie Walker 21:03

And that’s a bit like when you’re on tour and travelling. So, look, I did say I I did well with looking at some places, but also when you wasn’t playing well, I would not go on that river cruise. I would say no to stuff and miss out on places, and now you look at that and you think, oh, I might have to go back to New York to see New York. Or luckily, when I went to India, I went to the Taj Mahal, but I went to India like 10 times. I went to the Taj Mahal once. Yeah, so you think, oh, maybe you make more of an effort, and and that’s that would be what I do say to some players now. Like, if you do have an afternoon, yeah, get off Netflix, get out your own head, and just go and see a place, and that will fill your cup up a little bit. You don’t have to be active, yeah. Just try and see it.

Chris 21:55

I think that’s sorry, don’t I was gonna say, how do you reflect on that time time on tour? Because obviously it’s it’s quite a hard, tough grind, right? Isn’t it? You’re out there and you you’re playing for your for your wage, you, your, your wage packet, aren’t you? Um, like you say, though, you kind of missed out on some experiences. But what how do you reflect on that in total that that kind of time on tour?

Sophie Walker 22:12

Oh, yeah, I mean, like, I had some amazing experiences as well. But talking about like taking it in, my first uh AIG Women’s Open was at the old course at St Andrews.

Chris 22:22

Nice.

Sophie Walker 22:23

That was the first time the women had ever been there, yeah, right. But I’d just come out of amateur golf and I’d played the scent rule and we’d play it all the time. Like I’d played the old course I’ll play the old course five, six times. A year as an amateur, yeah. Then I turn up here, and it’s just like, well, it was only I I played this like you know eight, nine months ago.

Chris 22:43

Yeah.

Sophie Walker 22:44

And looking back, I’m like, oh my goodness, like how amazing was this? Like enormity is. I do have photos, thankfully, of me on the bridge and and stuff like that. But now when I tell people, I was like, wow, that what a privilege that was to be in that tournament. Yeah. Oh, that sorry, R&A championship. Um yeah, so it’s that’s so I think you have to look back at it really to appreciate the fantastic things that you you ended up doing.

Nish 23:11

I suppose it’s that almost arrogance of youth, isn’t it? It’s like, no, I’m focused on my job, I’ll just do what you know, whatever. You don’t and that what great advice to somebody to go look, yeah, take the day trip or take the morning and just go and soak up the culture. And I mean, as I mean, as as you coach now as well. So if somebody was uh an aspiring tour player, anything like that, I mean, do you think that’s beneficial just for their kind of mental well-being as well? That it’s time away from the game, it’s doing something fun that you’re enjoying, which hopefully then takes the the laser like for for seven days, all I’m thinking about is golf, and that’s it. Yeah, but that’s that must be mentally exhausting. Yeah, but forget the physical.

Sophie Walker 23:57

Lottie Woad, Lottie Woad plays a lot of golf. I mean, she play every day, she’s a bit like Charlie in that sense that that’s that’s the way she really likes. And we said to her, you know, you don’t have to play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, because then you’ve got Thursday, Friday, that’s seven days. And it’s a bit like that interview with Tiger where you go, you’ll learn. And then we saw her uh earlier this year uh in the Asian Asian events, and she was doing a nine-hole program, and she’d played nine holes on the Tuesday, and she said, ‘Oh, I played with Megan Khang, and she was advising me not to play as much practice rounds.’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ because sometimes I think I might have been burnt out before I even started. Yeah. Because um, you know, I turn up at a golf course in France that I might have played the year before. Laura Davis had had won there four times and probably played it 40 times. So I’m thinking, I need to learn this and I need to do this. When really that there should have been, you know, if I’d have had a good caddy, I could have relied on the good caddy. Just step back and be like, okay, it’s only golf. Like the the Addish books are great. Yeah, we can play this. It’s better to take if you’re doing six weeks in a row, which they don’t even do that now. Like three weeks is almost the maximum, isn’t it? For tall players. You don’t need to overplay, you need to be ready on Thursday, and you need to be peaking on Sunday.

Nish 25:19

Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 25:20

Not the other way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Nish 25:22

That’s yeah, it’s fascinating, isn’t it? I wonder if there’s more, is there more awareness of that now as well?

Sophie Walker 25:28

Yeah, you’re you’re more than aware of it.

Nish 25:30

I’ve gone down with all the lingo, the whoop bands.

Sophie Walker 25:32

Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got Erlin Harlan. Did you see him the other day? He had it on, so it’s got exactly the same.

Nish 25:39

Yeah, I didn’t know you could do that. Um, is it on on the courses and these these top courses? Is there a course that’s like your hidden gem underrated? People don’t talk about it enough call of course.

Sophie Walker 25:50

It has to be in this country, right? Yeah.

Nish 25:53

Give us both. Go on then. I forget that you’ve got the privilege of having played Everton of the World. But if you’ve got one that you like.

Sophie Walker 26:00

Tell me, but what I played Ganton the other day. What ranking’s that? If that’s must is that in the top 50? Uh it’s in the top 50, yeah. It’s like it’s not really a hidden. I thought that was in really good. I’m not a big fan of the last, but I don’t think many people would be because it’s got the drive that come through it. Um, but I’ve I enjoyed that, and I imagine it’s a course that you could play year round and get it for a slightly cheaper fee in the winter or autumn, and it still be. I need to go back because I need to revisit those first seven at last.

Chris 26:28

Yeah, so we played Ganton. So Ganton was one of one of my favourites that we’ve done. Yeah. The night before we played Ganton, Nish went out until about 3am and got locked out of his house. Oh, okay. So, like now. And then drove two hours to that lovely lady.

Nish 26:40

Well, left the key in the back of the door. Oh, she was out with you. No, no, she she was in.

Sophie Walker 26:45

Oh, she left that key in the back of the door.

Nish 26:47

Oh, absolutely, it was a gorgeous day. So I just slept on the the the deck in, and it was like seven o’clock in the morning, and like this but my phone rings. Obviously, I’m just glued to it. And I was like, Where are you? And she was like, I’m upstairs. And I went, I’m on the deck in trying to get some sleep. He was like, Oh no, I was like, and I could see because from here I could see right through there, I could see the key in the back. I was like, we’ll talk later. I was like, I need to get ready for golf.

Sophie Walker 27:14

I also I um 4 and be ladies is a good day out there.

Chris 27:18

Okay, yeah, we’ve not done that yet, have we?

How Women’s Golf Is Changing

Sophie Walker 27:20

Yeah, because that’s that’s just a short course, but it’s built to be short, they’ve not just put teeth forward, yeah. So it’s nice and positioning. That’s good. I I do like Heathland as well as Lynx.

Nish 27:31

Yeah, well, kindred spirits are like a Heathan Heathland course. That’s my that’s my favourite. Now, uh top 100e kind of related stuff. Right. Um we’re gonna later, so we’ll give you everyone a little bit of a preview. We’re gonna later, you’re gonna we’re gonna give you the the courses, the top ten courses that are above what we’ve played, but then you’ve played as well, and you’re gonna give us a little rundown and a review. Uh, but before we sort of get to them, and we’ve touched a little bit upon what it was like playing as a tour pro and and things like that. At Elite Courses, obviously that’s what this podcast is about, you know, how how has the how has the game evolved because the women’s game is growing so much, and now how do you think that’s been changing now in the world of of golf?

Sophie Walker 28:21

Yeah, I I I think the R&A venues um are excellent. Um they I mean they always have been. When I was to talk about the best courses I’ve played, the chances are it was uh an amateur. So that that they’ve been great, and now it’s nice to see that progress to the AIG Women’s Open with going to uh Royal Lytham this year. Porthcawl last year was great. I I went on down the driving range, um, would have been in Asia towards the end of the year. So we’ll talk in October on the LPGA, and I did a thing, what was your what was your best course of the year? And 90% of them said raw Porth cawl. Yeah. And and they were all asking before they went. Um, so I you know, Net Nelly, I wouldn’t say Jason asks Jason Nelly’s caddy talks a lot, yeah, yeah. And he’s married to one of my friends, so he did a lot of the talking, and she was just stood there kind of hitting balls and asking the odd question. But um, I remember saying, like, no, no, you’re gonna really like this. And then Lydia Ko. had never been to Wales, so she’s like, I have no idea what to expect. So for all those players to go to a different country, yeah, and then be like, I mean, the drive into Porthcawl is beautiful. You you could be you could be in Australia, it’s so nice. That that it’s like a couple of K down the coast, and it’s a it’s not a private road, but it feels that way, and the people are swimming, surfing, it’s amazing. And then you turn into into Porthcawl and it’s it’s a great setup. So there’d be that um, yeah. I I just think people are getting it, aren’t they?

Nish 29:59

I mean, 50% of the world are women, like it’s mad that that’s yeah, yeah, and golf’s getting it.

Sophie Walker 30:06

Um, yesterday I played Hillside and I was speaking to uh the woman I was playing with, and she said, Oh, we played against West Lanks in a scratch match the other day, and their highest handicap of a woman was 0.6. You know, that’s some real good and that’s the the other the I don’t know if you want to call them the elite clubs, the best clubs in that top hundred tend to have the best players, the best male players and the best female players. And I’ve always found if I walk into a golf club it you know, gender, race, sexuality, disability, they all come below ability. So if I’m good at golf, they’re gonna speak to me. You know, like that’s just the way it is. And a lot of these are all because yeah, you’re on the first T is literally next to the clubhouse, isn’t it? And then you get that look of oh, she’s going off the yellows, oh she’s going off the white, that’s hard to hear. And then you hit it and oh, okay, and then after that, it’s just a very welcome but I I I I’ve said this, I I’ve been very fortunate that I haven’t had a lot of a lot of what people talk about, you know. I I I haven’t. Um the the the men on the men’s tour, they see they saw us when I was or they see them now as as equals because they’re doing the same amount of practice, they’re going to the gym the same amount of times, etc. etc. So that’s not not the issue um in it. It’s maybe the decision makers need to just start looking around a bit and just negative comments, they just don’t help, do they? You know, no try and be able to do that.

Nish 31:46

Has ever been in disparity in um like facilities or anything like that ever? Or has that changed its old?

Sophie Walker 31:53

I mean, sometimes though there was an event in Morocco, which is why I say the men always backed us. So there was an event in Morocco where the men played on one course, we played on the other, they had the better course, we but our course was still excellent, like so that that wasn’t the big problem. We shared the same um where we at, so that was nice. We got to sit with them. So you’re coming from your round of golf and you’re sitting with like lads that used to play county golf with, it was lovely.

Chris 32:18

Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 32:19

And then you’d go the the the driving range setup was interesting because the first year we were there, we were on a fair way of another course, so it wasn’t brilliant, and they had a nice range. Yeah, there was a putting green by the clubhouse, which was the men’s putting green, and we had the women’s pussy greens. I was like, okay, well, that one’s a bit bigger than ours, that’s a bit of a shame. And then what happened was Robert Rock, who was playing, was coaching. It was right at the time where Rocky was starting. Rocky started coaching women really successfully before we went on to the onto the men’s side of it. So he would be playing, and then he would come over and teach a couple of the female tour pros and uh went on the range. So we we suddenly had this new range built, but it was further away. But it was this academy, it was unreal. Uh suddenly the women’s range was better than the guys, but it was a bit out of the way, so none of the guys knew it was there. So Rocky comes down, gives a lesson, and he goes back and he’s like, You should see this range. So we were like, Well, hang on a minute, we’re not allowed on yours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the next thing you know, the guys start coming down to our range, and uh, because they’ve got a great pitching area, and there’s baskets of balls, and they get handed pro V ones, yeah, and we get range balls like this, and so Rocky’s like, Oh, I’m giving a woman a lesson. So he picks them up and he gets the pro vs. So you go and pick the pro, and it’s only because the person working on the range has been told this, you know, it’s not he’s like you can’t have them, yeah. It’s like, oh, okay. So just stuff like that, yeah. And the male tour pros are like because I’m just gonna go get them for you. Like this is an absolute joke. Um, but just just stuff like that, it’s like you just didn’t see that, did you?

Nish 34:08

You didn’t yeah, it’s not a consideration, it’s just not been considered.

Sophie Walker 34:12

I think that’s that’s more of it. Um the guys got courtesy cars, we got minibuses. Absolutely fine on a minibus. Yeah. If they haven’t got courtesy cars, yeah, yeah, or not a mini-bus are okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then if I go in the car, if I turn up at the hotel or whatever, and I stood next to a tour pro, a male tour pro, he could be like, Sophie, do you want to jump in my car? And that’s okay. Yeah, yeah.

Chris 34:39

I just can’t get it. Do you think that’s changing with kind of like social media and stuff? And I think I guess female golfers becoming more kind of celebrity kind of levels of uh you know of status. Is that changing how things are operating on tour?

Sophie Walker 34:51

It is. I I mean the the prize purses are going through the roof. And look, if I was a player, that’s all I would care about. Yeah, you know, Chevron um major championship, first one of the year, they put another million on it on top of the purse. Yeah, but now I’m not playing, obviously. So I’m not as selfish because we are selfish and I’m seeing the bigger picture behind clip. I would love to put that million into the infrastructure, yeah. Yeah, you know, get more people watching, pay more for television. I’m gonna be turning on Nelly Korda, she’s gonna be four holes in. I don’t want that, I want her from the first, yeah. Put more money into TV. Get more people watching it, then the prize funds will go up as well.

Nish 35:33

Yeah, for the sponsorship.

Sophie Walker 35:34

It just feels a little bit at the minute that they’re just whacking it all into the prize fund for the players, yeah, for the impact. Like the last two weeks on the LPGA tour, a million dollars have just been whacked into the prize fund. Like, wow. Yeah, I don’t want to be turning up on television being like, oh sorry, we don’t start our coverage till 12 o’clock. Yeah, um, because we can’t afford it earlier. Or sorry, we’ve only got three hours of coverage, and obviously a round of golf takes four and a half, so you’re missing that. Or the the players saying, Oh, why don’t we get shot tracer?

Chris 36:08

Well, we can’t so I are the people there kind of trying to bridge those gaps. Are the people kind of working towards those goals?

Sophie Walker 36:16

Yeah, but even like at the tournament, you know, make everything better at the tournament, have more staff. Yeah, there’s not there’s not the LET and LPGA run a phenomenal tour with a very skeleton staff. Yeah, you know, I can go to Asia and there’ll be four referees. Right, okay. And the oh it’s slow out here. Whoa, yeah, because the referees can’t yeah, yeah, can’t get to you. Yeah, put a bit more money in that, okay. You’re not gonna see it in a prize fund. And I get if you’re a sponsor, you want to be like, look at me supporting them.

Nish 36:50

You just said something actually about pace of play then, because it was quite a famous moment, wasn’t it, with with Charlie when she sort of went off to the tea box and she was sat down and she was smoking a cigarette, and it was like almost, I think everyone was like, took it as a or this is a real comment about pace of play in general. But actually, there’s a bit of context to that. Then you could be playing at a tournament if there aren’t enough referees, then yeah, you’re like that that could be a long round because you’ve got to wait for that now.

Sophie Walker 37:16

Yeah, I mean the women’s tour is no slower than the men’s, it’s just that you see it because there isn’t enough cameras to jump from basically it’s featured group coverage, yeah. So that we’re we’re only probably showing 12 people, so we can’t jump off you and just go to someone else, and that and that’s why it looks slower. Um and look everything slowly, Charlie. She likes to play fast.

Nish 37:41

That’s amazing, isn’t it? I don’t I don’t even consider I’ve it’s never entered my consciousness that yeah, if there just isn’t enough, there aren’t enough camera crews and whatever, like you’re not gonna go.

Sophie Walker 37:50

There’s nowhere to jump because we don’t have enough cameras to um jump to another player. Yeah, which is we’re on the case.

Nish 37:58

So you’re right, yeah. If that money was just filtered down to that, and then the products improves, the pace improves, the sponsors come flocking, the price fund goes up anyway.

Sophie Walker 38:07

Hopefully, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I don’t want the players to think that I’m trying to swindle them out of money, but they are earning good money at the moment on the LPGA. It’s not like that, you know, the the the price fund increase has been amazing, amazing in the last five years. So that thank you for all of the sponsors for that. But I don’t uh but the infrastructure needs to be supported as well.

Nish 38:28

Yeah. Fascinating. This is absolutely fascinating stuff. This um is there anywhere that you have been this is probably my last point on this, but is there anywhere that you have been that you’ve been surprised by a club that that could be positive or negative, and that you know could be like, oh my god, I didn’t we this is like the driving range you had, we were like, actually, our driving range is a little bit better here.

Sophie Walker 38:51

Oh, okay.

Nish 38:52

Is there anywhere that you’ve been a bit?

Sophie Walker 38:54

I mean look, whenever we whenever I went to a golf course, it was in the best condition it’ll ever be in.

Chris 38:58

Yeah.

Sophie Walker 38:59

You know, we’ve got it for the week. The members must be thinking, God, I wish I was out there. We we we very rarely get it in poor condition. Everyone’s super duper nice to you, like everyone’s putting on a on a show. So no, I’ve I’ve I get treated amazingly, and also on Tell E now, they want to treat me for better because I can speak about it, can’t I? Um so yeah, like I I I’ve said to myself over the last few years, because I still do play golf, um, even if it’s just socially or whatever, I want to tick off more of what you guys are doing. Try and try and play more of those courses, and I still have a huge buzz, uh, you know, playing a McKenzie course, like really into that cult. Like I’m I’m a big fan of kind of all the classic designers. I love it when I get an invite to the coast to play some golf somewhere. Now we’re over here, it’s obviously you know, the Birkdales and the Lyhams and and Hillsides, etc. But all the way down that coast, anywhere you get to go to that is just a treat.

Nish 40:03

Yeah.

Chris 40:04

Do you still get do you get more enjoyment out of it now that you’re doing it non-competitively?

Sophie Walker 40:08

Or um what I try and do now is I book the day off. So if I’m going there, yeah, I try and like not teach before or after, yeah, so I can just go and appreciate being somewhere really special. And like yesterday, you’re on the 18th Tee-Box at Hillside, and you’ve got like the open championship being set up to the left of you, and then you’re thinking to yourself, well, this ain’t bad, is it? Because I’m on like an amazing golf course, yeah, yeah. Right now, and and Hillside’s going to be open when the when Birkdale’s on. Like, how cool’s that? You could just be going down the 18th and just looking over. Yeah, yeah. Um, but we’re we’re very much like the last course we played, we think is the best, don’t we? So I I’m I’m very aware that I’ve played Hillside and Ganton recently, so I’m like, oh yeah, they’re really good. But you you go back to places and think, yeah, like this is so good. I’d I’d really like to play. I keep saying this over and over, Swinley Forest. I need to go and play that one. That’s the one that is I need to get that ticked off. And I’ve got Muirfield to tick off on the open rotor, and then I think I’m done.

Nish 41:09

From Sky Sport, so we are playing Swinley Forest in June.

Chris 41:12

We are in June, yeah.

Nish 41:14

Good day.

Sophie Walker 41:16

Um, the women’s amateur is at Muirfield, and I’m going to be covering that. So if anybody’s listening, and North Berwick as well, so they’re the two. Yeah.

Nish 41:26

So they call it a gullen, they called Mefield Gullen number four, didn’t they?

Sophie Walker 41:31

Very lucky to I’m gonna call her a friend now, uh, Katrina Matthew. I work with Katrina uh Beaney and she lives in North Berwick, so I’m gonna try and tap her up around. And she has said yes, so it’s on record, yeah. It’s officially out there now, yeah. But I don’t I think she might be a bit like me if it’s kind of raining, we won’t play.

Nish 41:51

It’s it is you are right, that whole kind of day out element. We touched upon it with with John at Wallasey in our interview, and it he said, you know, we we when the visitor’s coming here, we want them to feel that it’s their day out, their one day out of the year golfing, and that’s how the experience should be. And that’s why we try and cover it a lot. That’s where we go, it’s like what’s the clubhouse like, what’s the welcome like, what the members being like, what’s the club? Absolutely, yeah. And gluten crucial sandwich, yeah.

Sophie Walker 42:19

Oh yeah, I used to be a bit club sandwich, but now I’m like, well, is it the sausage roll?

Chris 42:23

There’s the that’s the deciding factor. So you do what I do, I do a club sandwich to start the round and then a halfway hot sausage roll if that’s available.

Rankings Surprises & the Top 100 Debate

Sophie Walker 42:30

We actually had to have going back to food, sorry. Um so yesterday we were at Hillside and it was like we’ll have a sausage roll. I thought, yeah, great. And uh they were like smaller than they used to be. And you know, normally like when things get smaller, they stay the same price. Yeah, and uh one of the members was like, No, no, they’ve made them a bit smaller because they were just too big just to eat sneakily at halfway, but don’t worry, they’ve lowered the price. That’s no shrink late. So me and my mate were like, Well, we’ll just get two each. No, we’ll get three because we’ll split it. So we had we had one and a half. I love that.

Nish 43:03

Yeah, good halfway huts always a winner, isn’t it? It is, yeah. Um wonderful. Well, look, let’s let’s get into the nitty-gritty of top 100s then. So so we will give you the list shortly, but when is there anything in the list that you ever look at and you you’ve ever thought, I don’t know why that’s there or why that isn’t isn’t there? There’s a notable omission sort of thing. So I mean, and one big notable thing was, and that was recently, was Wallasey. They’ve done a lot of work and it’s now come back in. I mean, I can’t imagine. Was it not in the top 100? It wasn’t, it only came back in last year. And I can’t imagine that golf course not being comfortably in the top 100.

Sophie Walker 43:43

Right.

Nish 43:44

So is there anything that’s like a bit of a surprise package or something that you’re like, oh what the hell is that not doing in the list, you know?

Sophie Walker 43:50

Um I suppose what that what I’d say about the list is there’s not many new ones, is there? You know, we haven’t if you look at um other countries that we don’t build many new golf courses in in Britain, do we? Um so I I would say that obviously the the the Trump one has come in, hasn’t it? Yeah, Dumbarnie went in, didn’t it?

Nish 44:12

Dumbarnie, Queenwood, Queenwood’s relatively new, isn’t it?

Chris 44:17

But beyond that, I don’t think there’s many, is there, to be honest, that’s probably a lot of people.

Sophie Walker 44:26

And there’ll probably have been some form of cool tournament that’s played there. Yeah. And yeah, I love going and looking at like past winners. Yeah. Know like if you go into Lytham and you’re looking down and like who’s got the course record at County u down when it’s like course record or Rory McIlroy and he was like sixteen. Yeah that’s that’s cool.

Chris 44:46

Is there any way that we should look out for your name on any of these out there?

Sophie Walker 44:50

In the top hundred, probably not in the top hundred, because they they’re like they’ve all been played by great um players. I tell you what, somebody I don’t know if you are I’m sad, but no, I’m not sad, it’s number one on Netflix. You know the Fiories at Hope. Yeah, Fiori’s they’re in Morecombe, aren’t they? Yeah. And uh got course record at Morecombe. So when they do the the flyover, yeah, that course that’s my mortam’s a great I love Morecombe, it’s a great course.

Chris 45:14

That’s my economy. We should go.

Sophie Walker 45:16

Okay, so well that what I am surprised is is it’s number 19 is Royal Birkdale. Is that right? No, no, number nine’s Royal Birkdale. Yeah, Ik I’d probably put that bit

Nish 45:26

Well, no, it’s it’s it’s out of the top ten. It was in the top ten, and then before we started playing it that year plummeted for some reason. Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 45:37

Yeah, I would I would put Royal Birkdale um in the tight inside the top ten. Yeah.

Nish 45:42

Yeah. It was it’s a real surprise, isn’t it? That you know.

Sophie Walker 45:46

Um I suppose they’ve got the redesign now, which will that’s what we wanted.

Chris 45:50

We were yeah, because I think it was basically at the time that they’d just I assuming they’ve been doing the the redesign for the for the open and it just dropped that year, so yeah, maybe whether or not it’s gonna come back up this year or not. I don’t know. Who knows?

Sophie Walker 46:01

I really love the changes. I wasn’t a fan of the fifth, yeah. Never felt it fitted with Royal Birkdale. And they’ve stripped it all out now. Yeah, they’ve stripped it out. You can see the green, it’s it’s beautiful. It’s gone from being like, oh, that’s my worst hole on the course, to being like, Oh, it’s one of my favourites now.

Nish 46:24

Nice, yeah, and that yeah so they know what they’re doing, don’t they? Yeah, that’s dropped it down the rankings, it’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, obviously, you’ve gotten now into broadcasting and playing for fun, yeah. Um, do you take much note of rankings? And I mean, it’s this is our world, so I do a you know, it’s a bit of like I would say I only take uh only rankings to if I played them now, yeah.

Sophie Walker 46:50

Because we don’t like we need we need an English open on the LET. Like I’m embarrassed that we don’t have an English Open. Yeah, and we’ve never had a Sol heim Cup in England, which is also shocking. So maybe I would take more notice if we had big events at these places. Obviously, the you know the R&A are putting events there, but it would be nice to have an English uh how cool it’d be to have an English open at Sunningdale. Yeah, absolutely, please. I’m pretty sure you’ve got the power to make that. Oh Walton Heath was great when we went down there for the AIG, stuff like that. Yeah, great. I get I get they’ve got to be sent more central to London to get more fans. I understand that, but I do think we’ll have loads of people up at Lytham. Yeah, yeah.

Chris 47:37

Well, we’re thinking of going out.

Sophie Walker 47:38

I think we’re going over here. You can’t see at the men’s open.

Chris 47:41

Well, no, you can’t. You can’t, yeah.

Sophie Walker 47:43

And they’re all drunk, aren’t they? Okay, lots of friendly abuse when I’m walking around.

Nish 47:50

That’s it, yeah. Banter, they call that abuse. Yes, that’s it. Um, well, so we’ve we’ve teased it and we’ll we’ll we’ll get to this bit now because I’m actually quite looking forward to this this little segment. But before that, I I’d I’ll tell you about this, Chris. So I sent uh Sophie the the list of the the top 100 lists, essentially, and I was like, you know, wherever you play, whatever. I put everything in bold and I had to play like spot the non-bolded golf course. You know, we just go, oh, that’s pretty dependent. Did you count how many I’ve played? I didn’t know that must be 70 are.

Sophie Walker 48:19

I can’t count Sophie. What’s it?

Nish 48:23

You you’d played a big significant chunk of golf courses, which is what inspired this segment, really. So we’ve gone with the top 10 courses that you’ve played, but then they’re above what we’ve played. We’ve not played anything in the top 20 yet, I think. 20s. A couple in the twenties, haven’t we? Not in the topics.

One-Line Reviews of the Great Courses

Sophie Walker 48:44

Some of these we were talking about the other day. So um during the Masters, I had a little get together with some old golf friends who we played amateur golf together, and they’ve got their amateur status back on never turned pro. One of them had won the Birkdale scratch, so is still on the emails. And uh she goes, Oh, I got another birddown scratch. She’s off plus one, but as a solicitor, so you know, works a lot. And uh I said, Oh yeah, how much is that then? And it was I’m sure she said it was 85 quid. It’s in June, right? 85 quid, two rounds at raw Birkdale on lunch. Nice, and I went, that would be a thousand pounds. She went because she lives she lives in 2000, you know. Right. And I was like, That’d be that’d be a thousand pounds. Yeah, yeah. I said, just take the day off, enter, do it. You two enter, my two friends are both off like scratch plus one, they’d get in. What a lovely and say, could we play together? You know, because they’re not gonna win because siters at the back play together. 85 quid. And that that’s why you’re gonna struggle to get on these courses because they are you know punchy, aren’t they? Now and I would be like, Yeah, I got on that for that, or you played with a member here and it was 35 quid.

Nish 49:55

Okay, you’re not allowed to tell us in your little one-liners, you can’t say how much it was, right? You’re not allowed to do that. That’s the new thing, right? Okay, so here’s how it’s gonna work. I’m gonna give you the courses, and you can give us a one-line, it can be good, bad, something true, a review, a funny moment, a memory, anything like that. Whatever you wish. Okay. Okay, yeah. So we’re gonna start. You mentioned it already, Royal County Down.

Sophie Walker 50:19

Oh, I put breathtaking, uh, not often you get the layout and the views together. I lost seven and five in the quarterfinals of the AM there, though.

Nish 50:30

Though I love that. Um all right, Royal County down. Well, I mean, we can’t wait to play that, can we? Um everybody says R C D, don’t they? A lot of people. Everybody unanimously feels like it’s number one. Um, the old course at St Andrews.

Sophie Walker 50:45

My first open, smash it left.

Nish 50:49

Just everything left.

Sophie Walker 50:50

Everything left. Even if the fairway’s in front of you, hit it at the bush on the left. Just left.

Chris 50:56

I can definitely do that. Yeah, that’s my go too short.

Sophie Walker 50:58

If you hit right at St Andrews, you’ll come off and think that’s really hard. If you hit it left, you’ll be like, crazy.

Nish 51:04

What was everyone talking about? Amazing. That’s cra that’s a great tip. Um, this is this is on the you said that on a provisor that I know exactly where my ball’s going when I hit it, but there you go. So close your eyes, John.

Sophie Walker 51:16

Um the AIlsa course at Turnberry would be number one if it wasn’t for the owner. Lighthouse as a halfway is phenomenal.

Nish 51:26

Amazing. Yeah, you can’t ignore the owner, can you? That’s why I just said Turnberry. Um number four is Royal Dornoch.

Sophie Walker 51:36

As good as they say. It’s a long way away, yeah, but worth it.

Nish 51:41

Yeah. Amazing. Uh Royal Port rush.

Sophie Walker 51:45

I’m gonna take a little bit longer with this one.

Nish 51:48

Please do.

Sophie Walker 51:48

So I had a big birthday last year and I played it on my birthday, and I thought I was just playing it with a couple of us, and it ended up being a surprise birthday where loads of my friends turned up. Yeah, so we played Royal Port rush on the day of my birthday in the morning. They couldn’t have been nicer to us, like uh like sorted out clubs. Um, I got a birthday cake at the halfway house, and then my friends that turned up that didn’t play golf were all welcomed into the club house. We had great lunch, loads of drinks, just the best day. Yeah, brilliant. Loved it, yeah, really did love it.

Chris 52:29

Fantastic. That sounds like heaven. Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 52:32

Who cares that you know Sheffler won the open there? Yeah, it’s all about my birthday last year.

Nish 52:38

Yeah, uh, and sticking with the Royals, Royal St George’s, down in Kent.

Sophie Walker 52:44

Our England organiser, Linda Bayman, lives in the pink house at the back of the fourth green, and we used to go and stay there as kids um and go and play it. It’s wow, it’s uh on the edge of the earth. You get French radio there, and it was my very first uh open championship that I worked on when Collin Morikawa won. And it was COVID times, and I felt like I had the place to myself. It was brilliant. And I walked around with Collin on the second day, and I came in, sat in the green room with bones, ledge, and I said, I think I’ve just seen the best player in the world. And he said, Who were you at with? I said, Collin Morikawa, and he said, He is. So that’s how good Collin Moriawa was at that time. Yeah.

Nish 53:25

Wow. Or Cochlin, as we call him, he thinks he’s thinking he’s Welsh. The well, yeah. That’s amazing, that you get French radio, though.

Sophie Walker 53:35

I remember being as kidding, maybe you don’t now, but it was that like when I used to stay at our house and used to be on the on the uh like messing around in the car. She’d be like, Stop, stop with the radio, and we were like messing around and you’d get like French radio. It’s bombing.

Nish 53:46

I need to take a little wireless with me when we when we get down there. Um okay, well, it’s it’s back to back. It’s Sunningdale old first, and then Sunningdale New.

Sophie Walker 53:55

I’ve got old. My favourite test, the perfect course set up for a women’s championship.

Chris 54:02

Hint hint. You’re really pushing this.

Sophie Walker 54:06

It’s so well set up for players that hit the ball that certain distance.

Nish 54:12

Right, okay. Yeah, so so I’m I’m uninitiated with this now.

Sophie Walker 54:17

Well, you know, like a player that hits a seven iron in the air 150 to 160 yards, a player that’s carrying the ball 250, 260 in the air. It’s just it’s perfect for that, can’t it? Yeah, the bunkers are in the right positions, the layout of the par fives to start. Um, like you you gotta start well, then hold on to it, and then pick it up on the way back. Um and it and it looks good, so yeah. So, what number’s Sunningdale?

Nish 54:46

Sunningdale’s in the top ten, I think. Yeah, it’s right up there. I think it’s yeah, 67, I think, isn’t it? How about Sunningdale New then?

Sophie Walker 54:53

Sunningdale New. When I used to play um the Foursomes there, if I could get through that and knew I was alright, it’s a big golf course. Um another time of the year, we played it in the March. We’ve never played it in the summer, we only played it in the March. And it’s one of those courses that if it’s not next to the old, it’s better. Yeah, you know, so it they’re brother and sister for me. I don’t think there’s one that’s better than the other. Yeah, it’s just that because they’re next to each other, it probably doesn’t get. I’m glad it’s got more credit, actually, but got more credit in the top hundred, but maybe not with the rest of world golf.

Nish 55:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um we have because we have just done the shares the halfway house with the old, so that’s yeah, and I was gonna ask you a little bit about so have you done the carvery lunch there at Sunningdale because that’s quite famous, isn’t it?

Sophie Walker 55:40

No, so when I used to play the force, I used to play with Oliver Fisher, the lad that shots at 59, that one. Yeah, and just that one, you know. Yeah, he was bloody brilliant back then. Uh I mean you can still go now, Oli. Uh and we used to go, we’d have breakfast, and we’d go and play 18 holes, we’d have the sausage sandwiches halfway around, we’d come in, we’d have a sandwich, we’d go back out, we’d play 18 holes, whatever, we’d come in, and then he’d then we’d have to go to like Pizza Express or Wagamama. Like this boy ate so much food. So I never really did the carvery because it was you once you start Sunningdale foursomes after that first day, you’re 36 a day, so you don’t really get a chance to sit. But we did demolish the halfway house on many. I can make time for a carvery.

Nish 56:24

Yeah, don’t you worry about that.

Sophie Walker 56:25

Um also you have to get changed like to go into the jacket. We’ve got to go jacket tie as apparently. I don’t look great in a jacket and tie. There you go. What does a woman wear when it’s jacket and tie? Yeah, I thought that was a really funny one. So we were at Lytham and we stayed overnight at the dormy house. I’m going off piece, and then we come in for breakfast, and breakfast is in the clubhouse, and the guys are getting like turned away because they’re not wearing the correct attire. And I walk in and he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. What I should be wearing. So I get away with wearing like I get away with wearing whatever, and the other guys have got to go back and put their dress shoes on, and all we’re doing is driving home. So people are just like just want to be in something comfy, and I got away with it, and other boys had to go and change. So there are some perks to being a woman. Yeah, I mean, if you look at what Nelly Korda wore in the first round of the Chevron Championship, she looks unreal, but she’s in a racer back top, right? Which you don’t know what that is because you’re looking at me like this. Um, like a vet, you know, a vest goes in at the back, yeah, okay, right, round your shoulder blades, no collar, white, and a skirt. Well, that wouldn’t be allowed on any golf course anywhere in you know regulation, normal amateur golf. So us women, we we look, we like it both ways, don’t we? In the sense that yeah, we we do get away with wearing different clothes than you like.

Chris 57:48

What do you think about those kind of old traditions in golf? Is that something that you’re in favour of?

Sophie Walker 57:52

Or yeah, yeah, I am, I am, yeah, I am like there’s things we’ll have to move along. I I get that with the mobile phones um and stuff, but yeah, I think it’s it was invaluable for us as kids, the boys having to wear a suit and tie, us having to change our clothes, stand up, give a speech. Yeah, it that it helps us in life, it really did. Um mixing with older people, um, you know, going I mean the first time I went to I went down to the telegraph, junior telegraph awards, and you’ve got the knives and forks all laid out. Yeah, yeah. Like what do I do there? And yeah, you had to it was good it was good. It was good for me. Yeah, um some of them obviously were a bit, but they are changing.

Nish 58:43

Yeah, there has to be a point in your life where you do learn that, and you’re not good at what it was. I’m still not learning this. No, well no, it’s true. Sorry, what what what are we on now? No, no, no, it’s right. Well is that it’s that no no no, it’s two more. So there’s there’s role Burtdale now, yeah. It’s the running joke through this podcast. I’ve actually played Birkdale twice and Chris hasn’t played it yet, so I always keep bringing that up. I mean, I think in the first year, I must have mentioned Birkdale in every episode before it’s our first reference point. But we have to bring that in anyway because the open is is happening. Um, but yeah, what what do you think of Royal Birkdale?

Sophie Walker 59:14

It’s my favourite open venue, and maybe because it’s closer to us, and whenever I used to play the open there, the I felt like the first tea box was full of my friends and family, which is great. And I like the fact that you ne you you never feel like you’re sharing the golf course with everybody anybody, and also that it’s gettable. You know, if you play badly, you’re not gonna score well. But I I’ve always felt at Birdille, if I could get through the first, what’s the first part? Five, six, if I could get through the the first six, then I could make a score. Because coming in, those last four, especially on the women’s card, you can pick up some shots there. Yeah, um, but the opening T shot I’ll wind off the left.

Nish 59:57

It’s an amazing goal, of course.

Sophie Walker 59:59

It is, and coming back coming up 18 to that iconic clubhouse.

Nish 1:00:03

That’s it, yeah. Um I’m I’m very fortunate. We are gonna play there, we have an opening potential club. My friend is a member there, and uh, he got married in the clubhouse as well. So we’ve had like all the internal, like we’ve seen everything inside, yeah. Um but it’s just you know, we always found it really friendly, I’ve always found it really welcoming. Uh there’s nobody like standing to ceremony or anything like that. There’s there’s never been a time when you don’t sort of feel I shouldn’t really be in this little bit, you know, anything like it’s always been great.

Sophie Walker 1:00:33

And that terrace overlooking 18 is just and these golf courses as well, you can walk down them now and be like, Oh Jordan Speith did it over there, like you know, yeah, Rose hold from there. Like this is what’s great about what you guys are. Yeah, there’s a plaques as well. I do think more courses should have little plaques just so you can see where it where it was. I don’t know if they don’t do it so people don’t hit shots from there all the time.

Chris 1:00:59

Yeah, that’s got a massive uh continual divot.

Sophie Walker 1:01:01

But yeah, because I there was rumour, I think, that they were going to put a plaque where Spieth hit from, but they didn’t want people to go to it because it’s wild and way.

Nish 1:01:10

And at the time it was on the driving range, so you might get in, like then you go, Oh my goodness, he was really wild. He was wild, yeah.

Sophie Walker 1:01:18

Yeah, so somebody that was playing well, you know, who’s leaving it. I’m sure people playing bad have hit there. But that’s what’s cool about these golf courses. There is a chance that you know, you’re not gonna go to Wembley, are you? You know, you’re not gonna play Wimbledon centre court, but you can go and play these golf courses.

Nish 1:01:33

That is exactly what my friend at Birkdale said. Because the first time we played with him, he was like, It’s the only sport in the world you can pay your green fee and you can play on the same arena that the professionals are playing on. You can do exactly the same thing. Yeah, you can’t play at Wembley, you won’t play old tracker, you won’t play at Wem.

Sophie Walker 1:01:49

Walking over that if you’ve done the old course, yeah. Okay, walking over that bridge. I mean, it’s just like unbelievable.

Nish 1:01:57

Yeah, but it makes it worth uh going through ballots and all sorts of things as well. That moment is yeah, it’s amazing. Oh, it’s not lost on us, Sophie. It’s not lost on us at all. And the final one is Kingsbarns, so that was one of the new ones we talked about.

Sophie Walker 1:02:12

Yeah, I think it I think that’s just about to say it’s the best new one. Yeah, I think it fits um what that area needed at the time. There was a lot of uh shorter traditional links courses that were quite hard. Like the old course when it’s not windy has that wide fairways because it shares fairways. Whereas Kingsbarns has got I don’t want to put it to an American Links because that’s not that’s not right, but off the Tee it’s generous, so you can get off the Tee and then you can enjoy from there. Whereas if you think if you go to Lytham, I mean there’s a bunker everywhere, isn’t it? Like you can struggle to get off the tee Carnoustie off the tee at these these um open venues or good links courses, whatever. Whereas Kings barns, it can get you off the fairway and it can allow you to enjoy high quality links golf, yeah, but bigger and better, yeah, like great views, massive clubhouse. It’s got that feel that because it’s new and you learn, don’t you, what people like if you’re coming for a day out?

Chris 1:03:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 1:03:20

It’s got that to it as well. It’s it’s a lovely par three on the um on the water there.

Nish 1:03:25

I can’t wait to play things well. Good views, yeah. Um, I’m gonna ask you one follow-up question that I haven’t prepared you for. But it’s actually it should be a dead easy one. The highest ranked course we’ve played is Carnoustie. What did you think of? I mean, it’s one of the most famous golf courses in the world, Carnoustie. But what were your general impressions of the let’s go with the quality of the golf course? I nerded out on all the stuff in the clubhouse and whatever that for me is amazing. But golf course hard.

Sophie Walker 1:03:57

Just really, really um, I just felt like the bunker pin positioning was perfect, and also you might think you’ve missed a bunker, but the way the fairways gather it in, you could be 20 yards left of a bunker, but if you put a little bit of fade on it, yeah, as it hits the ground, it can catch. So the bunkers aren’t 10 yards wide, they’re like 30 yards wide. Yeah. And that’s interesting, yeah. Yeah, that that’s what I thought about it. I don’t feel like some of the courses gobble it up as much as that one. That one did. Yeah. Um, county down’s the same, they gather into into low points.

Nish 1:04:36

I’m gonna stay there, didn’t we? Actually, but we got the full experience, it was 40-45 miles an hour winds.

Sophie Walker 1:04:42

Yeah, um but the difference in the weather that you get from being there to being at St Andrews on like the same day, yeah, yeah, is you know, it can be unplayable at Carnoustie, and then it’s okay you know, across the water. Yeah, yeah.

Nish 1:04:57

It was, yeah, we had such a good day. Like it was just a the golf was tough. I think we’ll agree the golf was tough, but it was just like um we’re on Carnoustie, we’re on Carnoustie, yeah. This is a good thing. Yeah, yeah, it was yeah, what a fabulous, fabulous place. But then yeah, we we sort of uh did our drives at 18, didn’t we?

Sophie Walker 1:05:18

Yeah, they do well there, catering you think for what you were talking about, the experience, the hotel. It’s like ace, isn’t it? Yeah, and that’s why now Turnberry’s been like ripped out and I mean and stuff all the rooms in Turnberry are great. Turnberry’s got the best breakfast, like has it?

Nish 1:05:32

Has it? Yeah, it’s been to Gleneagles though. That’s breakfast is pretty good. But that deserves a special mention that breakfast. Okay, yeah.

Sophie Walker 1:05:40

I I thought Turnberry breakfast was my favourite.

Nish 1:05:42

Anything you can have for breakfast, they’ve got it at Gleneagles. Like it’s it was incredible.

Sophie Walker 1:05:46

What’s your view like?

Nish 1:05:47

Oh, okay, maybe not the view.

One More Round — with Dad

Sophie Walker 1:05:49

Because the view is kind of over this screen, over the first tea, then out to Ailsa. Yeah, the hotel’s got it. This isn’t the clubhouse, this is the hotel.

Nish 1:05:58

Yeah, yeah. That yeah, that wins, I think. Um okay, so if there is uh you know, if you could play one more round, and this is anywhere in the world, tomorrow morning, where is it, and who are you playing with?

Sophie Walker 1:06:13

Oh, all this is I mean uh recent months, this is why I’m saying this. It would be Cleethorpse Golf Club with my dad because I lost him at the end of last year. So uh he’d moan constantly about the lack of sand in the bunkers, and it’s just his bunker play was rubbish. Um yeah, and uh have terrible out of the bunker is exactly so we just go there and Have a couple of pints after, really.

Nish 1:06:36

That’s amazing. I love that answer.

Sophie Walker 1:06:39

And he would actually he would like to like see who you would want to play with. He would you we’d probably have to put Justin Rose in there because that was his favourite player. And Greg Norman, because he used to look a bit like Greg Norman when he was in his younger days, and he had the the hat. We got him the hat, yeah, and he did use it wear a lot of the shark stuff. So yeah. Excellent.

Nish 1:06:59

Was he hoping to get a spotted?

Clinics, Coaching & the Short Game

Sophie Walker 1:07:01

Greg Rosie, Rosie and Dad at Cleethorpe’s.

Nish 1:07:04

Amazing. Excellent. So what is it you’re working on at the minute then, Sophie? What’s your swing wise? Left shoulder cut. Yeah, yeah. Right shoulder through. We obviously know about your broadcasting and things like that, but you know, you run a lot of clinics and things like that as well, don’t you?

Sophie Walker 1:07:17

Yeah, well, the broadcasting um is obviously you get picked for broadcasting. I’m I’m the head analyst for the LET, so that’s that’s great. But if there’s not an LET event on, I’m not working, or and it’s a world where someone has to choose you to do it. So there’s a bit of free time. And um myself and Amy Bolden, who was just moved back from Dubai, very good LET player winner on tour. We we started to do a couple of golf clinics together, and they’ve gone down really well. So um it’s something that we’ve I did we we did uh one together at Ganton. Hopefully, we’re doing one next week. It looked fantastic, yeah. It was really interactive. Uh people got a lot from it talking about how tour pros think, how we negotiate short games. So it’s easier to demonstrate when you’re not hitting shots more than for kind of 30 yards, isn’t it? And then people can start asking questions. And looking at it, I don’t think enough people ever have short game lessons. Most people have an A-TIN, don’t they? They golf lessons or a driver. Yeah. Um, so just little snippets that we the techniques that we think about, what we look for in putting, the drills that we use, and then just any QA that they just want to kind of yell at us. You know, what do you think about anchoring? What do you you know, all that type of thing. If the ball’s plugged, how do you play it? Oh, it’s like plugged, you should be able to get out when the light’s good.

Nish 1:08:43

Yeah. What do you think about Akshay’s anchor non-anchor?

Sophie Walker 1:08:48

I just don’t understand why they don’t just put a limit on how long the club can be. I know. It seems like a very easy thing to make the driver that could you make the driver the longest in the bag and then we’re set 45 inches or whatever it is.

Nish 1:09:00

Yeah, I don’t see why they keep having to have the same conversation.

Sophie Walker 1:09:03

Maybe the the head of who decides it as an anchor, I don’t know.

Nish 1:09:06

Maybe he likes maybe he’s like yeah, nobody’s seen that.

How Broadcasters Know What Club You’re Hitting

Sophie Walker 1:09:09

I don’t I that for me that’s the easiest one to to change.

Nish 1:09:12

Yeah, it’s not it’s an odd one. Um question about your broadcasting. Has there been anybody that you’ve met in your travels as a broadcaster and you’ve just gone speechless because you’ve just been like, I can’t believe I’m gonna be able to do that.

Sophie Walker 1:09:26

You can’t go speechless at broadcaster.

Nish 1:09:30

I’m gonna have to gather my thoughts here, I’ve got to get through this because this is an amazing person I’m speaking to.

Sophie Walker 1:09:35

Uh I I’ve got two, probably golf world-wise. So Tom Watson came into the booth at the open championship, and I was I just said I’d I would like to go in. I just thought I’m not gonna butt and I uh can you put me in with even if I don’t speak to him, I’ll just sit with him. It’s absolutely fine. So that was that was really cool. And I I don’t know, my dad was quite a big Tom Watson fan, but I was geeking out on it. And I think at first, obviously that they’re old, aren’t they? They look at you probably thinking, Well, I don’t know where I cheese it, like this. And then I start asking him all the questions, and he was like, All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then um I had to Annika Sorenstam was I I had to normally when we do a walk and talk, it’s about on the fifth hole or something, it’s not anywhere important. It’s like, well, obviously it’s all important, but yeah, it’s not the end of the round, it’s sort of par five, whatever. I had to interview her off the first tee in Sweden at an event that she was hosting. Wow, yeah, and we came to where at one o’clock she teed off at two minutes past one, and then I was straight in there with the microphone. Yeah, and and I’d not done it much, like I wasn’t um and I didn’t have earpieces in. Um as I didn’t even know I needed them. And my camera guy said, Can you hear the producer? And I said, Nope. And he went, Right, okay, I’m just gonna give you the signal then. So we worked on signals, yeah. Won’t do that again. Brilliant, yeah, incredible. And then who else? Like some of them are great. Like, if you think about the people that really enjoy golf, we’ve had Niall Horan, one direction, like he c he came and sat in uh an event in Northern Ireland, and he was in the commentary booth with us, and you can see his his his agents like just 10 minutes, yeah. You know, like yeah, because he’s on the time limit, isn’t it? It’s not the agents doing their job, yeah. He was in there 45 minutes. He’s like, I love this, I do this all the time. I watch golf constantly. So that they all as long as they like golf, the what the the most nervous you get is when they’re not into golf. Like you could get a CEO put in there that just sponsors the event that doesn’t but most people, if they’re at a golf event, even if they are a celebrity in another area, yeah, they’re bang into their golf. So yeah.

Nish 1:11:53

So before we wrap up, so I want to tell everybody what your socials are. I do have another question I do have another question. It’s sort of a well, no, it’s not a question, it’s a it’s it’s something cool though. So you can find Sophie on Instagram, that’s @SophWalks Golf, and you can also find her on uh x slash twitter, and that’s @soph walks. Now, I’m gonna give everyone a reason to follow you. You did a post, uh and it was I think it was a reel that you did just recently, and it was how you know what club the players are playing. So, would you tell us how you know what clubs the players are playing?

Sophie Walker 1:12:30

So I said this um it’s amazing what the I’ve done a couple of podcasts. Rick Shiels it blew his mind because I was mentioning it like and he went, What happens? Like this. So they have caddy signals.

Chris 1:12:45

Okay, yeah.

Sophie Walker 1:12:46

So um, or if you’re at the open, you have somebody just stood on a par three and their job is to signal you, but but on a general event, it’s the caddy signal. So you’ll go up to the caddies at the beginning of the round, hi John, Tom, Sue, I’m Sophie, don’t let any help out there, really appreciate it. If if you forget it doesn’t matter because they’re only helping you out, they’re doing you a favour and it’s signals. So um you have you’re all looking. Okay, so it’d be like top, top of the bag, bottom of the bag. Yeah. So nine iron, eight iron, seven iron, six iron, uh, wedge, gap wedge, and then top of the bag that way. Okay. Yeah, so five iron. So do you remember that one at Augusta where Brooks Koepka got done for it because the caddy went like that, five.

Nish 1:13:36

Right.

Sophie Walker 1:13:37

Don’t you remember that? It was on the par five, uh, and Ricky went like this, and they said, was Ricky signalling to another caddy that it was a five? And Ricky said no, I was signalling to the TV people that it was a five. Right. But most of the time they do it at the side of the they’ll they’ll do it at their side. So I say to the caddy, don’t look for me. Don’t look and go. Yeah, yeah. Just like that can be seven iron as well, like because obviously it could be high, three, you know, can do it that way or that way. But obviously, they haven’t got three irons and they haven’t got two irons, so it’s quite easy with that. Don’t go, yeah, because that might distract people or whatever, just put it at the side like that, and then I will add my bushnel or be close enough to you to see it.

Chris 1:14:19

And what would that change? So if you’re in sort of like uh you know running down the last stretch and you’re in a sort of match player kind of situation, would Kelly still. Well, there’s a famous one.

Sophie Walker 1:14:27

There’s a famous one. 17th hole, Solheim Cup, Finca Court esin, Carlotta Ciganda against Nelly Korda, part three. It’s a hundred and just under 160 yards or whatever, and her caddy signals the wrong number on purpose because he knows Jason’s looking. Yeah, yeah. And she at seven iron, and he signalled, I don’t know what he signalled, eight or um, and she stiffs it and Nelly pulls it and misses a green. And the little Spanish lad Alvaro, he said afterwards to Suzanne, the captain, I’m not gonna do his accent, but yeah, I lied. I got that brilliant that’s amazing.

Nish 1:15:06

Yeah, honestly, I saw that post and I was like, I need to ask Sophie about this.

Sophie Walker 1:15:10

But there’s there’s other ways that you know, so I would always write down um the colour of the shafts. Okay. Uh Jeeno Thitikul. I I did myself over here. Jeeno Thitikul has different colour grips. Right, okay, and I knew them all. And then I mentioned it to somebody and they put it out on our coverage. And the next thing you know, our producer was like, That’s amazing. So, what a seven irons blue, an eight irons purple, whatever it was, and they did a big thing on it. But Jeeno’s dead easy because she just has different colours, so I don’t need a caddy signal from Bangpot. I’m just like, oh yellow, nine iron, done. Obviously, she when she changes the grips, it’s annoying. But she does that because her dad, when he’s watching on television, or when he was watching as an amateur, he wanted to know what club she was hitting. So that was her signal to him, the colour of the grip.

Chris 1:15:54

Wow, that is a good question. Yeah, I don’t think you’ve ever even thought about how broadcasters like know what clubs are.

Sophie Walker 1:16:02

You do sometimes guess. Yeah, you you do have an educated guess sometimes, yeah. Um I know because you ask for their numbers at the beginning of the round, yeah, the allergies, but you will find that the more experienced caddies they’ll never fail really to unless unless they’re coming down the stretch. Yeah, and really in the zone. That’s obviously that’s yeah, that’s yeah, they’re only they’re only doing it to help the broadcast out. And if you look when the caddies walk off the back of the green where they position their golf backs, right in front of the camera, so they’ll see the tight lists getting laid down. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay.

Nish 1:16:37

So that’s a reason to follow Sophie on Instagram, just for that. For absolute nuggets like that. Sophie, thank you so much. One more now. It’s my favourite phrase. Yeah, um, no, thank you so much for joining us today. That was yeah, yeah.

Sophie Walker 1:16:50

I’ll see you at Swinley Forest in June then, eh? Absolutely, yeah.

Nish 1:16:53

Yeah, we’re gonna make it worth our while now. Um, brilliant. Thank you so much, Sophie. I hope you hope you enjoyed that. But we had a great time. Uh I certainly had a great time asking you my one more question every time. Next time on the Top 100 in 10 Golf Podcast, we’ll be reviewing our incredible day at the home of Stableford, the Wallasey Sea Golf Club.