Golf, Rain and Radar at The Algonquin in St. Andrews, NB

Halfway through the round at The Algonquin, the rain started, and Jared and Adam had to decide whether to keep playing. They pulled up the radar, which showed heavy rain but only for a short stretch, and went with the plan most field crews would recognize: hit it, see what happens, and if it gets bad, sit for a minute. One of them summed up the day: "We fly docks in the rain. We play golf in the rain."

Episode 009 of Tap Into Data breaks from the usual format. There are no slides and no guest interview, just two hosts, a golf cart and a recorder at The Algonquin Golf Course in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.

Overthinking it

The front nine went fine as long as nobody thought too hard. Around the turn, one of the hosts noticed the change: "Now my head's starting to think, which is never a good thing in golf." For the first six holes it had been simple: pick a yardage and hit the shot.

That set up one of the better stories of the day. On a long par three in the final group of a club season a few years back, one of them decided to muscle a four-iron instead of taking the easy shot. He shanked it into a shed, tried again, and ended up with something like a nine on the hole. Later in the round, after a tidy shot that played around trouble instead of over it, the lesson came out plainly: "Sometimes it's just good to just slow down. Play it safe, right?"

Their playing partner got the same advice after second-guessing a club and going with a pitching wedge instead of the 56 she had picked first: "Don't doubt yourself."

A betting game with a brutal opening

On a par three listed at 205, one of the hosts explains Vegas, a game he played every Friday night for years with the same four guys. Each team adds its two scores, so a four and a five make 45. If the other team makes a birdie, your number flips, so 46 turns into 64. Each point is worth 25 cents.

Last Friday, his partner opened with birdie, par, birdie, birdie, eagle. That put their team up 600 points through five holes, which is $150 at a quarter a point. He went out in 32, and one bogey was enough to shake him. He finished one over.

Chasing all four majors

The longest story in the episode is about golf trips. One host and his wife went to the Open at St Andrews in Scotland for their honeymoon. When they got engaged, she had asked him where in the world he would go to see a golf tournament if he could pick anywhere, and he said, St Andrews. They started in Ireland, went on to Scotland, and caught the Wednesday practice round, when past champions such as Tiger Woods and Tom Watson were on the course.

The flag from that trip hangs framed in his office. He also went to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 2019, and he wants to frame a flag from all four majors. The Masters is the one he's missing. He entered the ticket draw for years without any luck, and it didn't help to keep hearing from people who won it year after year.

The coincidences kept coming. Another golfer on the course turned out to have been at the same Open, at the same time.

Coastal golf, for real

The back nine was meant to be the best part of the course. A friend had told them holes 11 through 18 were his favorites, probably because so many of them run along the water. Then the weather arrived, just as their friends had predicted, around 4:00.

What followed was wind off the ocean, sideways rain, thunder, and two hosts keeping an eye out for a lightning alert. One of them had left his rain gear out of his bag. Balls that went into the long grass stayed there. In the middle of it all, one of them declared, "This is coastal golf."

The small stuff

Plenty of the episode is just two friends talking. One host keeps a saying on his golf balls: "can't catch me," from when his daughter was learning to run and used to shout it at him. Kids' camp runs two and a half hours, which is barely enough time for coffee. Crows squawk over something hidden in the woods. Back home, wildfire smoke had canceled outdoor activities in London. And the fescue at The Algonquin is thick enough to keep a pile of lost balls, though one search did turn up a stray Pro V1.

This episode has no inspection workflows or AI talk. It's the people behind the show on a day off, including a golf-in-the-rain stretch that has become one of the channel's most-watched clips.

Press play to join Jared and Adam for the full round, rain and all.