The Challengers Andy Johnson

On-screen text: Charles Schwab Presents

Andy Johnson: At this point in my life, golf is, is my life. I am either talking about it. I’m writing about it. I’m thinking about it at all hours of the day.

On-screen text: The Challengers.
A series about people who QUESTION. ENGAGE. SUCCEED.
Andy Johnson

Andy Johnson: I’m Andy Johnson, and I’m the founder of Fried Egg Golf. I grew up playing golf. I was playing competitively as a Mid-Am into my late twenties. And I was the person that watched golf on the weekends, played golf on the weekends, read about golf during the week, and just absolutely nuts about golf. The things that I was interested in weren’t always the things that were covered in mainstream golf. And understanding golf course architecture really brings another dimension to the game. I have this theory that if somebody’s interested in something, that means there’s thousands of other people that interested in that too.

On-screen text: What if we made golf architecture approachable?

Andy Johnson: I thought, What if we made golf architecture approachable and simple and easy to access? So I started The Fried Egg Golf. Obviously, you want a golf course that makes you make decisions and makes you think. I thought I should play over here, and I ended up in a terrible place. But then, you know, what’s beautiful about golf architecture is the art of it. If you hired 10 different architects to look at a piece of land, all 10 would come back with a different design.

On-screen text: Meadow Club
Fairfax, CA

Andy Johnson: We’re at Meadow Club, which is in Fairfax, California. It is an Alister MacKenzie design. Back in the 1920s, they didn’t have the ability to move a lot of earth, so what they had to do was they had to use the natural features of the ground. And one of the things you notice at Alister MacKenzie’s golf courses is he was excellent at picking out the most interesting parts of a property and jamming as many holes as possible on those parts.

On-screen text: 8th GREEN
10th GREEN
11th GREEN

Andy Johnson: So here in this just small vicinity, you have the 8th green right behind me. You’ve got the 10th green just to the left. We’re on the 11th tee, and the 11th green plays right on the ridge.

On-screen text: 7th GREEN
8th TEE BOX
8th GREEN

The 7th hole comes right back on the back side of this ridge, and then the 8th tee comes from on top of the—It’s probably, maybe one of the most dramatic parts of the whole golf course.

Andy Johnson: Everybody knows the Masters, those roars on Sunday.

On-screen text: Augusta National
Augusta, GA

10TH GREEN
17th GREEN
7th GREEN
2nd GREEN
15th GREEN

Andy Johnson: One of the reasons they echo through the golf course is that the holes are so close together because the greens, the tees, are all placed on these really interesting ridges. So they’re just kinda packed together, if that makes sense. A lot of his courses feel so intimate because you visit a place, you go away from it, and then you come back to it. And it creates this sense of familiarity, but you’re coming at these really cool features from different angles.

On-screen text: Pasatiempo
Santa Cruz, CA

Andy Johnson: So when you start to kinda take a step back and look at the entire golf course holistically, it gives you another thing out on the course that brings enjoyment other than how you play. You can look around and say, “Oh, what a cool bunker that is. This is amazing how this hole goes over this piece of land.” And it kind of takes away the pressure of, “I need to make a par to break 90 for the first time.” That’s still part of your golf life, but it gives this other thing that brings enjoyment other than how I played today.

Andy Johnson: So I thought one of the biggest gaps in golf coverage was golf course architecture. And that’s when we started to dive in and really focus on taking great photos of great golf architecture and explaining it in really simple terms. When I started doing that, I was not good at it.

On-screen text: Oak Hill
Muirfield
Pebble Beach

Kaley Johnson: Yes, he’s colorblind, but he is a photographer. He couldn’t write, but he taught himself how to write. He teaches himself whatever he wants to learn.

Kaley Johnson: My name is Kaley Johnson, but most people know me as Mrs. Fried Egg. I’m Andy’s wife.

On-screen text: We put out at least one piece of content every single day on The Fried Egg.

Andy Johnson: We put out at least one piece of content every single day on The Fried Egg.

Kaley Johnson: He is a writer now, the great podcaster. He’s such a natural.

Andy Johnson: Excited to chat with Tom Doak today on the latest episode of The Yolk with Doak.

Kaley Johnson: Everything just continues to evolve and expand. And it’s cool to see the audience continue to grow.

Andy Johnson: One of the coolest things that happened a couple years ago was Rory Mcllroy in a press conference before Southern Hills PGA talked about how he got ready for the tournament by watching one of our videos.

On-screen text: The Fried Egg
Fried Egg Guides: Southern Hills, Site of The 2022 PGA Championship

Speaker 3: Rory, on knowing the golf course, what did you do to know what to work on once you got here?

Rory McIlroy: So Fried Egg did a little video with Gill, so I watched that.

Andy Johnson: That was really cool. (Laughing) At eight years in, I feel like The Fried Egg’s working.

Andy Johnson: I wanted . . . I was trying to hole it, so we didn’t have to hit another one.

Andy Johnson: And I think the thing that probably I feel the best about when people talk to me is when they say things like, “You know, I’ve played golf for 20 years, and I loved it. I never thought I could love this thing more than I used to. And now because of paying attention to golf courses and the architecture of ’em, I love the game of golf even more than I did before.”

On-screen text: Tens of thousands of golfers watch, read and listen to Andy’s work every week.

On-screen text: Fried Egg golf’s architecture videos have been viewed more than 1,000,000 times.

On-screen text: Ask questions. Be engaged. [Charles Schwab logo] Own your tomorrow^®

Andy Johnson: All of my friends send me pictures every time they get Fried Egg lies, and you know, when I get a Fried Egg lie in the bunker, I do feel a little bit of pressure.

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On-screen text: THANKS TO:
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JIM O’NEAL