According to Scott Fawcett, he once watched a good player talk himself into a bad shot in a Dallas fairway. The player was Stratton Nolen, in the trees on a par 5 with the 2014 Texas Amateur on the line. What pushed him, Fawcett says, wasn’t the lie of the ball but the guy he was playing against.
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More than a decade later, Fawcett is using that hole to challenge one of golf’s oldest habits. His message to players is blunt: “What your opponent’s doing is literally irrelevant.”
On the Looper Talk episode with host Tim Palmer, posted on October 20, Fawcett described the moment. The 2014 Texas Amateur at Brook Hollow was in its late rounds. Will Zalatoris, who Fawcett was caddying for, had a seven-iron into the par-5 10th from the fairway. Nolen, an Oklahoma State player, was in the trees with little to work with.
According to Fawcett, Nolen saw Zalatoris sitting in good position and felt he had to make birdie. Fawcett said that pressure led to a poor escape and a six, saved only by a 30-footer. At an Oklahoma State seminar the following year, Fawcett says he asked Nolen whether Zalatoris’s position had affected his decision. Fawcett recalled the answer: “100%.”
Here’s how Fawcett framed it: “What he’s doing should be irrelevant to the mathematically optimal choice for you.”
Fawcett’s telling can’t be checked hole by hole, and he said himself he didn’t remember which round it was. The results are public. Zalatoris won at 10-under 274, with Nolen second at 7-under 277. Nolen said afterward, “I was outplayed today,” while Zalatoris called him “a great player” who “really pushed me.”
Fawcett’s argument is structural. Golfers don’t share a ball. Nobody can block your shot or take your line, so your opponent’s score only matters at the end of the round, not for any decision in between.
He added a point about uncertainty. Three holes after Nolen’s trouble, Fawcett said, the situation flipped, with Zalatoris in the trees and Nolen in the fairway with a pitching wedge. “You just don’t know what’s coming from your opponent,” he said. That’s why he calls trying to predict an opponent’s next move “an irrelevant exercise.”
Fawcett is the creator of DECADE, a course-management system that stands for Distance, Expectation, Correct Target, Analyze, Discipline and Execute. It uses a player’s shot dispersion and PGA Tour scoring data to pick aiming points.
He has worked with players including Zalatoris and Bryson DeChambeau, and a 2023 report said about 30 players at the U.S. Open carried his strategy packets. After DeChambeau won the 2015 NCAA individual title, he thanked Fawcett publicly. The NCAA later banned Fawcett’s seminar from schools as an “unfair competitive advantage,” according to Fawcett.
His line is a familiar one: “It’s not called being aggressive, it’s called being correct.”
The obvious objection is match play, where you really are playing one opponent. The episode touches on this in a chapter on when to take risks in match play.
The segment closes with one of the speakers saying his father always told him that “your opponent is the golf course at the end of the day.” It’s the same idea Fawcett was making.
Most golfers have felt the pull to force something because a playing partner just stuck it close. Fawcett’s argument is that the pull is noise, and the best target comes from your own dispersion, not theirs.
That’s a lot to ask in a Saturday four-ball with money on the line. But the Brook Hollow story suggests it’s hard at every level, even for someone good enough to finish second in a state championship.