Akshay’s ascendance, Player gripes on Bay Hill, Rahm drought ends
The Shotgun Start
Fried Egg Golf
4.7 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andy and Brendan are just about ready to head down to Ponte Vedra for a "major" March event, but we've already missed out on one Players tradition! Andy can't believe that the yearly TPC Sawgrass arrival videos did not make it into Sunday's Arnold Palmer Invitational broadcast. NBC couldn't cut away from a duel between Daniel Berger and Akshay Bhatia on the back nine that ended with Akshay's third playoff win on the PGA Tour. The two break down Bhatia's comeback win and standing in the game as one of the premier players under the age of 25. The constant comparisons between Rickie Fowler and Arnold Palmer and some complaints from Justin Thomas regarding the setup at Bay Hill also feature prominently in this Arnold Palmer Invitational recap. The Players DID release their featured groups on Sunday afternoon, leaving a spot for an injured(?) Rory McIlroy and a struggling Justin Thomas to be on non-stop coverage for the first two rounds. Andy's "Event of the Week," the Puerto Rico Open, was "must see TV" with a leaderboard full of young talent including John Daly II, Blades Brown, and winner Ricky Castillo. Patrick Reed notched another DP World Tour top 10, but could not stop the blaze of Dan Bradbury at the Joburg Open. Brendan then shifts the conversation to Jon Rahm's win at LIV Hong Kong, his first individual win since 2024. Neither Brendan nor Andy are moved much by this win for Rahm and point out that maybe playing a LIV schedule is not the best preparation for a major championship, unlike the test presented by Bay Hill this week. Lastly on results, Zach Johnson is one-for-one in his Champs Tour career, taking down the James Hardie Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational! Sorry to all Ben Crane bettors, as he finished outside of the top 30 in his Senior Tour debut. This Gambling Podcast regrets the error. Check back on Tuesday as Andy and Brendan go live(?) to preview the 2026 Players Championship!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Now the shotgun start in golf is full of mathematics. |
| 0:04.0 | There's a lot of setup work that we have to do in order to make a tournament work. |
| 0:09.0 | So I'm going to demonstrate to you just exactly how we do a shotgun start here. |
| 0:14.0 | And here we go. |
| 0:17.0 | All right, all right, all right. |
| 0:27.0 | Gentlemen, start your engine. Greetings and welcome to a Monday edition of the shotgun start. |
| 0:43.4 | It is March 9th. |
| 0:45.4 | Andy, how we doing? |
| 0:47.2 | Brendan, I'm doing all right. |
| 0:49.7 | I got to say, I've constantly reminded that, you know, in society, we can't have nice things. |
| 0:57.4 | Um, what's the problem? We had a nice golf tournament this evening, I think. |
| 1:02.9 | We got good tournament, but it was missing one thing, one big thing that it was missing. |
| 1:07.8 | What? The, uh, the TPC Sagrass Arrival videos. I, I feel a void. |
| 1:16.2 | I feel a big void in my life not getting the Sunday TPC soccer ass arrival videos, uh, |
| 1:25.5 | during, during my Bay Hill viewing. I think I was checking the weather just for my flights. |
| 1:29.9 | I think it was thunderstorm in there tonight, maybe. |
| 1:32.9 | I think maybe they've already announced preferred lies for Thursday. |
| 1:35.9 | You know, who knows? |
| 1:36.5 | Just a nice little dollop of water on Sunday night for it. |
| 1:41.1 | Probably at max capacity making sure it's emerald green uh yeah that that is you know they still |
| 1:49.7 | disrespected the the legacy of mr palmer by announcing feature groups during play sunday uh what's the |
| 1:57.5 | potential for uh i mean Rory's in there. |
... |
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