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00:00Talking about an expert caddy, helping navigate situations on the course.
00:04That is what Joe Greiner has done for the past two weeks for Justin Thomas in the absence of Matt Minister, a.k.a. Rev.
00:11Rev, of course, had a pretty serious back issue that ruled him out of caddying for JT at the Masters.
00:17And Joe Greiner, who's just split with Max Homa, steps in last minute.
00:21Sort of a get-to-know-you phase, I'm sure.
00:23I mean, they don't already know each other.
00:24They've been in the same team rooms a number of times.
00:26But just in terms of working together, that first week of the Masters is a trial of sorts.
00:30And they go out in their second start together and win the golf tournament.
00:33I thought it was interesting this week of just seeing how involved Joe was with reading putts with JT.
00:41Just more so than you'd expect a sort of stand-in fill-in caddy to be.
00:46So what do you make of just – there's no sort of controversy brewing here in terms of who's going to be on JT's bag long term.
00:54Or is there?
00:54Well, it's not for me to decide or know, really.
00:58I think, dude, obviously it's going to be up to JT.
01:01I think the way I understand it and the way I think most everybody else understands this whole situation is that, of course, Matt is hurt.
01:09When he's back healthy, it's going to be his bag.
01:13Now, this is probably the one thing you probably didn't want to happen if you were a rev, is to have a Joe Griner, who's a top caddy, on the market right now.
01:25I'm not saying that JT is going to go out and hire Joe after winning.
01:29Could it happen?
01:30Maybe.
01:30But I would be surprised.
01:32But you just never know.
01:35He wasn't hired to be the full-time guy.
01:38He was hired to be a fill-in.
01:39But you just never know when guys win and what happens.
01:42But, yeah, Joe, I think he's the perfect fill-in because, first off, he's a terrific guy, an easy conversation, someone that's going to keep you super relaxed and has a ton of experience, not only caddying, but winning.
02:01So I think that's really nice to have just to go through that experience with somebody else, too, probably helped him on Sunday just to be able to have different conversations, keep it a little lighter, you know, just keep the conversation maybe much more like buddies, you know, where it's not quite as business between golf shots where you're just kind of hanging out, talking a little bit.
02:26But as soon as it's time to get to work, I think JT and Joe seem to have a really good rapport.
02:34You could tell by just a reading of putts, their general conversations.
02:38And then I thought strategy, too, when you talk about just having an expert team around you, it was interesting because the ninth hole was a hole in which many players were driving it up near the green.
02:53JT with a one-shot lead.
02:54I know it's early still.
02:56There's still nine, ten holes to go with the leaders behind him.
02:59Alexa lay up and ends up making a par, but still, that was one strategy he picked.
03:05And then another one they had, too, was the – this was the par five 15th hole.
03:11And another one, I thought he had a plenty of good number to go for it, but also decided to lay up.
03:16So, to me, all that talked about was – in the pre-round interview, you said, I just want to have patience on this golf course, pick my spots.
03:25And I think that Justin and Joe did a really nice job of knowing when they had green light, yellow light, red light.
03:32And I feel like they did a really nice job of not pressing too much today.
03:36So, whether Joe is ever going to be a future caddy for Justin, I think today when you just evaluate them on their decisions that they made, you could tell that they both navigated the Sunday very, very well to give him a chance.
03:54And if Novak would have made that putt on 18, they both would have been so gutted because I felt like they played the round that they were looking for, which was almost having full control of the event.