Greg Peterson on the Origins of Machinery Pete and His Golf Journey | TT Live! Ep. 7

Hey, doing well, guys. Thanks for the invite to the conversation. Yeah, yeah. And we've got—is it fair to say both Scandinavians here? Am I the only German on the set or what are we looking like here, guys?

There's something in Petersons. There are a few of us around.

Oh, went real well. My wife Jackie and I were able to get out, visit our daughter in Southern Ohio with our 2-year-old grandson, spend some time there. And yeah, it was very good. Low-key, as we get older, yeah, home is just a good place to be in general. So, we had a little blizzard, an old good old-fashioned Minnesota blizzard there through Christmas, but no, things are good.

Hey, great memory, Zach. Yeah, I turned 60 and, um, yeah, I guess can't report any mid-life, late-life crisis so far. So, it's all good. You know, I have a little plaque up here sitting off to the side. Our two daughters used to get tired of me smiling when I would say it, but every day is really a gift and a blessing. So, 60s, hey, let's bring it. Let's go.

Well, that's something I'm not asked that often about, Zach. I appreciate how you come at it. 10-year-old Greg Peterson was in Benson, Minnesota. That's where I grew up. My dad and mom settled there in the mid-60s. My dad got into the John Deere dealership business. So, I kind of grew up around—that was my entry to the farm equipment world. So, at the time, Dad had two stores, one in Benson, a little small farming town in west central Minnesota in Swift County, about 3,200 people. And then he used to have a store in Hancock, about 15 miles up the road. And then eventually closed that and built a store in Morris, Minnesota. So, yeah, I grew up around the machinery and, you know, Benson was a great place to grow up, still a great place. Mom and Dad still live there. It's my roots. I try to work Benson into as many references as I can. You know, we are kind of where we're from. And my wife is from Rochester. So, we've been living in Rochester, Minnesota for 36 years, but I'm still a Benson boy at heart.

Absolutely. Hey, it's got—oh, really? You get 1 million bonus points for the Benson connection. That's awesome.

Oh, man. Cavana, oh, Cavana is a very prominent name around Benson and Swift County. So, yeah, that's awesome to connect that way, Scott. I remember a couple years ago, I was filming—I was in Watertown, South Dakota. We were filming something for our TV show. And it was a kind of a pioneer days type thing. And it was a guy doing a blacksmith demonstration. And I was particularly interested because my great-grandfather was a blacksmith in a little town of Tolley, North Dakota, way up, I think, northwest of Williston. And he left the blacksmith shop to become a John Deere dealer in 1920, which was my family's entry into the farm equipment business. But as I was watching this blacksmith demonstration, I got visiting with the guy. I think he was the mayor of—I think it was, I don't know if it was Edmore, North Dakota, somewhere up in North Dakota, but we talked for quite a while. Then I finally asked him about the anvil sitting right there. I said, 'Where'd you get that anvil?' If people follow me on social, they know I like to post auction prices of anvils. And he said, 'Well, you know, I actually bought that anvil 25 years ago off an estate sale in Benson, Minnesota.' And I just went, 'What?' And he said that the anvil actually had roots to a family that came to farm and homestead in Benson in the 1860s. So, here's a chunk of iron or chunk of metal, this anvil, that literally came to Benson 100 years before I was born. And here I am staring at it. So, the connection of man and machine and equipment has always been kind of fun for me.

I was a really quiet kid. Really shy. I think my high school classmates still chuckle when we get together. They're like, 'How did you end up going around speaking all the places and doing TV stuff?' But no, I wasn't a sports heavy. I played basketball and golf. Those were my dad's two favorite sports. So, when you're a little kid, you just want to be like your dad. And so, on the basketball front, I could shoot pretty good, 6'3", but I only weighed like 160, 165 lbs. So, I was our center for our high school basketball team. And so, all I had going for me was sharp elbows. Couldn't jump. If you left me open, it was two points. There was no three-point line back then, but I loved basketball, but I've been playing golf since I was 5 years old. Our father played college golf for the Minnesota Gophers in the late 50s for a legendary coach, Les Bolstad, at the time. And so, we just wanted to be like Dad. So, we lived on the edge of the golf course in Benson, Minnesota, which, you know, a lot of small towns, it's hit or miss what you have for a local golf course. But in Benson, we had a fantastic golf course. So, we had sort of free reign. And that's where my two younger brothers and I kind of grew up. Just throw the clubs over your shoulder and off you go.

It's with your hand-eye coordination playing college football, Zach. I have no doubt. The only thing with golf you need is just some time. And your scores would evaporate. They would drop so quickly. It's a very frustrating game. But that's kind of what I love about it. As being a shy kid growing up, one of the things I loved about golf—and I loved the teamwork aspect of, you know, of basketball in particular, making the right play, the right pass. But golf is all you. And there's no excuses. So, when you get done and you've, you know, back in the old days when they had scorecards, and you filled that out, that scorecard said everything. And you didn't have to say it doesn't need—it didn't matter. Well, I got a bad bounce or that was this or that wasn't fair. It didn't matter. It's just what did you shoot? Yeah. That brutal honesty. Which has correlations to, you know, I think on the auction side when I compile all these prices that you strip out all the emotion and it's just like what did it sell for? I sort of like the simplicity of—and golf is—yeah, it's been just a game of a lifetime. I love that you can be 90 years old and enjoy playing and you can be 5 years old and—it's been a big part of my life, a lot of fun.

Well, Zach, you pay attention. Nothing gets—I mean, nothing gets past you. I appreciate that about you and thank you for noticing. But this summer, there was a kid from the college I went to, Gustavus Adolphus College, which is St. Peter, Minnesota, little Lutheran school. About 2,300 kids. It's where I met my wife, Jackie. My sister went there, my two brothers, my sister-in-law, one of our daughters went there, but I played college golf there. And we had a very good Division III program. At the time, we would tangle with some of the Division I schools and do pretty well. Our coach was a guy by the name of Whitey Skoog, which if you ever are in Williams Arena, which is where the University of Minnesota plays basketball since 1917, if you look in the rafters, you're going to see a retired banner jersey for Whitey Skoog. And Whitey was credited, if you can believe it or not, with being one of the inventors of the jump shot. So, basketball back in the '30s, '40s was played on the floor. You would just shoot set shots. Well, Whitey was a young kid from up northern Minnesota and he—Whitey was a great athlete and he jumped when he shot. So, my dad and my dad's brother looked at Whitey Skoog and he was like Dr. J. He was a Scandinavian version of Michael Jordan. There you go. '40s and '50s. He went on to play for the Minneapolis Lakers when they had George Mikan and won, I think, five NBA titles. And he wound up going to Gustavus when he retired and was the basketball coach and also the golf coach. So, I played for Whitey, my brother played for Whitey. And Whitey didn't really golf, but this was the mid-'80s. I was there from '85 to '88. And in the Division III scheme, I think we finished fifth, third, seventh and like 10th, our team. And myself, I finished as high as I think tied for fifth. So, I just enjoyed competing. And when I got out of college—or what you saw this summer was a note—it was a kid from Gustavus right now. His name is Jimmy Abdou. Abdou, and he qualified for the US Amateur. And which is—if you don't know competitive golf, they have probably 60 or 80 qualifying sites all over the world and you maybe get 100 guys and the two lowest each site advance to the national tournament. And there you take 312 guys, the best amateur golfers, you play for two days and you get down to 64 guys. So, in 1992, I qualified for the US Am and at the time it was at Muirfield Village, which is—that's where Jack Nicklaus's Memorial Tournament is every year. I did not play very well at that tournament. I did not qualify for the match play. You play two rounds to get down to the head-to-head matches. And then amazingly, I qualified again when I was 38 in 2004. And the US Am that year was at Winged Foot, which is out in New York, very famous course. And I went out there and I had two really good first two rounds and I made it into the match play. And my first match was against an 18-year-old kid from North Carolina and his name was Webb Simpson. And Webb was—he was the most polite young golfer I've ever run across. And Webb wound up winning the US Open eight years later at Olympic Club. And Webb has had an amazing career. He's been on Ryder Cup teams. He's won the Tournament of Champions with the famous 17th hole in Jacksonville, Florida. Great guy. So, I got past Webb Simpson. And my dad was out caddying for me, retired John Deere dealer. And in the second round I played Ryan Moore, who wound up winning the tournament. Ryan's been on the PGA Tour for many years. He played, I believe actually, I believe he played college golf for UNLV.

Well, Ryan was—he was a kid from small town, Washington state. I think it started with a P. I can't remember the name there, but he was a nice kid and he was at the top of his game. That summer he won the US Am, the US Public Links and the NCAA Championship that year. So, here I am. I'm 38 years old. I'm playing Ryan Moore. And he was again just a very nice young guy. I played as good as I could and he beat me like a drum.

And five. He made seven birdies in 14 holes. Yeah. And it was amazing to see. And again, Ryan went on to—he got the winning point at the 2016 Ryder Cup here at Hazeltine. It's been fun for me to follow him all those years, but on the golf side, that was sort of like the pinnacle for me. I had—as I was building our Machinery Pete business when I got out of college, I mean, the business was so small. I had two part-time jobs for five years. One of them was at the local newspaper in Rochester called the Post Bulletin. And so, I'm reporting on high school basketball and football and track and wrestling and I loved that. It helped me as a writer to crank out stories on a 16-year-old kid who, you know, had two homers in the Dover-Eyota versus St. Charles baseball game. And one of the things the Post Bulletin—they knew that I was a golfer, so they said, 'Hey, Greg, do you want to write a golf column for the paper every week throughout the summer?' And I was like, 'Yeah, that'd be awesome.' So, people in Rochester, Minnesota know me more as a golf writer than the Machinery Pete guy. Which is kind of funny, but I loved writing about golf. And again, it can seem weird for non-golfers, but I think the life correlations between playing golf and living your life, being a good husband, trying to do well in business, the correlations are there because in golf, you can hit a really good shot, but it might bounce sideways into a bunker and you make a double bogey. And as a competitor, you know, curious to get your take, Zach, on what you've done, but I figured out—and what my college golf coach, Whitey Skoog, helped me figure out was those bad bounces are going to come. And the whole trick is just to mentally be able to control yourself enough to analyze kind of the data of this round I'm playing or this tournament and how well can I handle this so when I get up to my next shot, I'm clear focused on the next shot. I'm not dragging forward emotion like, 'Oh, you know, that wasn't fair. I made a six on that hole. I had two good shots.' I used to love competing against guys that would get emotional like that because frankly, I knew I was just going to kick their butt. Because if you're dragging emotion or you're dragging plows around behind you emotionally, you're wasting your time. And so, Whitey was great about helping us analyze, you know, and then figuring out also—he would ask us after the round. We used to mock him almost amongst ourselves like he would always ask us, 'What were you thinking about on that shot?' And as I got older, I realized what he was really doing was coaching us to identify mistakes and then don't make them again. Identify it and then the next tournament, when things get tough, okay, let's not go down that road. If you don't identify them, then you're apt to repeat them.

Well, that's a good question. I went back when I was playing my best, which was in my '20s and '30s, I was never a technical golfer. I didn't have any lessons growing up. When I grew up, my brothers and I—there was no range on the course in Benson. We just went out and played. And we took little tips from our dad, who was a good player, but I mean, there wasn't like YouTube on cell phone with people slow motion analyzing your swings. And that's how good young players now—they have all this feedback. That's how they learn the game. That ain't how I learned it. And so for me, when I went out to play, I just wanted to have a clear head and just go compete. And so I didn't get hung up on the fact that I pushed the first three shots or I pulled a couple. I didn't drag that with me. I just—I would adjust to what my body was doing that day. My hands are a little slow today, so I better close the club face or I'm too quick, I better shut the middle on the face. So, that's sort of how I played. It was kind of an intuitive way. Now, to complete the story and be completely honest to you, what I would have to say is that after I made that US Amateur in 2004, I was 38 years old. And at the time, our two daughters were 13 and 11. And that was right about the time, to be honest, I started to like, 'Holy cow, our two girls are going to college here in a few years. College is expensive. How's this all going to work?' And so, my headspace had been—up to that point had been building the business, but number one was I was trying to be the best dad I could be. Because I mean, that's job number one, be a good father and husband. Because your girls—they're just going to snap their fingers and they're 30, 35 and 33 like they are now. So, I knew that was job number one. And then when I got to be about 40, it was like, boy, it's time for me now to really lean into this business that I've been building. And I did that. And when I did that, my golf game went south. So, being a feel player, non-technical, plus getting older into my 40s and 50s, I went from going to the first tee expecting to shoot 70 to going onto the first tee being scared. I didn't know where the ball was going. And so, as a golf writer, I do hope to write the book here in the next few years about this journey, this challenge of, you know, having a high expectation and then all of a sudden, seemingly I didn't do anything, but all of a sudden the results are the opposite. What happened? And the easy thing to do would have been to quit. And say, well, I don't quit. So, I still enjoy the process. And my results in tournaments have been very poor for 20 years now. But as I've got older, I've started to realize we hopefully learn truths about ourselves as we age. And I think one of the things I've realized is that I'm kind of a one-track guy. So, what I focus on, that's going to be good. I'm going to have fun doing it. And it's—you know, I don't mean to sound non-Norwegian here, but like you said, you expect it to go well. And by golly darn, it's going to go well. And so the last 20 years had to be business. And I've had so much fun building that. And now that I turned 60, I'm attempting to find that lost golfer part of me in there somewhere. But I want to reintroduce him to this old version of me, these things I've learned and say, hey, I think we can get along okay. Let's just have some fun and go try it. So, my biggest challenge the last few years playing golf when I step on the first tee has been to clear my mind. Because I'm thinking about the five social posts I got to do and those two auctions and these prices are coming in and I just talked to this dealer. It's all wonderful, love it. But it's almost like a digital cleanse. I have to put my—I leave my phone in my truck. And I just try to have the mindset, let's go out and play. And it ain't going to be perfect, but that's the fun of it. And let's just enjoy the process. And the greatest thing I love about golf, guys, is just it's the—we live in an increasingly impersonal world. But when I go play golf with my buddies here in Rochester, it's so fun to go, hey, Scott, how you doing, man? How you have a good week? How are the kids doing? And then you have three hours or three, four hours and you're playing 18 holes to talk to people and to listen. I really, really enjoy that part about golf. So, it's been a winding journey, but I'm excited for what's to come.

Well, senior golf tournament cycle at the national scale is 50. Interesting side story there. That's all due to Arnold Palmer. Because when Arnold turned 50, I believe it was 1980 or '81, the USGA, which is United States Golf Association, changed that—you had to be 55 before that. They so wanted and needed Arnold Palmer to be in the US Senior Open, they changed the rules for Arnold. By the way, Arnold Palmer was the speaker when I was at the US Amateur at Winged Foot in 2004. We had a dinner the night before. And Arnold Palmer came in to talk. And it was so interesting. I was sitting next to Tom Lehman's brother from Minnesota, very good golfer, Jim Lehman. And Arnold—we were sort of hoping he would tell war stories about, you know, winning the Masters and the US Open and stuff. But what he talked about that night was decorum. And Arnold Palmer got up and went on a tirade about guys not taking their hats off when they come inside to a restaurant. And how disrespectful that was. Arnold was, you know, an older guy at the time. But you know, we certainly enjoyed his perspective on things. So, basically at the state level here in Minnesota, it's 55. And I just turned 60. So, the last five years I was hopeful when I turned 55 my golf game would magically come back. But to this point, I mean, I'm a four handicap now. And I hate that. I do not like any part about that. I want to be what I used to be. But you know, it is what it is. I can either quit or I can enjoy the struggle to grind that game back down again.

Well, when I was a kid, Jack Nicklaus kept it on. And my dad kept it on when he putted. So, we wanted to be like dad. But most guys take the glove off. I'm trying not to be a cranky old guy here. But some things about modern golf I don't like. One is the clothes, the fashion. I don't like tight-fitting clothes. The Euro cut, I hate it.

You know, if you go back to watch golf when Tiger Woods was young, it was all baggy Ashworth shirts. And the pants were pleated pants and stuff. But I'm so old, I go back to the Sansabelt stage of the nice tight 1980s. It's funny when—if my daughters ever see a picture of young Greg on the golf course, they're like, oh my god, what are you wearing?

Well, just hit the hybrid off the tee, Zach. As I get older, I think the number one rule and truth with golf is it really doesn't matter what you shoot as long as you have fun. And what's been fascinating, the game of golf was dying on the vine through—probably in the 2010s on, it just, you know, our world was our cell phones. And that didn't fit with going to spend, you know, two to five hours on a golf course without your phone. It just didn't fit. But ironically, the pandemic changed everything. When people were so cooped up—and I live in Minnesota here, and we were forcibly cooped up almost more than any place. But importantly, Minnesota is the number one per capita golf state. And so, even though the time our government here in Minnesota was very restrictive, they did allow you to play golf. They advised you to keep the pin in when you putted so that not everyone would pick up the pin, get germs or whatever. But the game of golf just exploded here. And those people wanted to get out and feel human again and talk to people and play with your buddies three, four hours, have a couple beers, whatever. And that's stuck since then, five years ago. We were wondering whether young people would stay with it. But I think they figured out, you know, this is a crazy game, but it's kind of fun. And it's the fun of being with my buddies and my friends. And again, it doesn't matter if you shoot 186. Just go have fun and enjoy being outside. And you get some good exercise. It's fascinating, but again as a writer, I would weave in a lot of these different angles. And I wrote a golf column one time here in Rochester. It was—I think I wrote for about 12 years, but I wrote a whole column about that moment when you hit a shot. So, it doesn't matter if it's an eight iron or a driver or whatever, okay? Woosh. You hit it. You're in your follow-through and you watch it take off. Now, you've done your part. You did everything you could control. That ball's on its way. And you hit a really good one. And the feeling that you get in here, in your eye, in your head, in your hands, the sensation, very positive. Now, what you can't control is what happens when that ball comes down. And the whole point of my column was that moment—I call it a moment and a half—before you know the result, it's like anything's possible. That eight iron you hit, that might go right in the hole. That might be the hole-in-one you've been waiting for your whole life. Now, it might be a perfect shot and plug in the front bunker, you might make a triple. But that's the fun of it is those moments in every round where you hit a shot just right. And then as it's coming down, what's going to happen? That to me is the allure of the game right there.

You know, I make fun of my Iowa buddies that just mow ditches all summer. So, it's just one of those things I've got to deal with and accept that I can afford to play the game now, but it's hard not to be biased. I mean, I'm in such a golf community. It's just unreal. We're a town of 25,000 people and we've got three completely unique separate golf courses.

I'm sitting here and I'm looking kitty-corner right in my little office here in the basement of our house at a picture of the 18th green from Sand Hills out in western Sand Hills in Nebraska. My dad and brothers and I went out there in 2010, and one of the world's greatest golf courses. Middle of nowhere in Sand Hills in Nebraska. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, I think with golf again, the trick is really, you know, expectations, which are really how you become a really good player. Like you said, Zach, my brothers and I helped each other growing up playing, competing against each other. You want to beat your brother, you want to beat your dad, but it's all good. It's like sharpening iron. You just sharpen each other.

But then again, you can have just as much fun by having a regular group, or I like just going out and playing with new people.

Because, you know, God gave us two ears and one mouth, so...

And I just love that piece about golf and social, which always has kind of reminded me of the auctions, honestly. Because when you go to the auction, yeah, you may be one for that corn head, but really the biggest value you're going to get from that time spent there is the conversations you have with people. And I was talking to Zach, and Zach told me something that made me think. I've always really enjoyed that piece about golf.

Because there's really two kinds of golf. There's golf for fun, which is awesome. If you do drift into the competition part about golf, that's a completely different thing. And that's played up here and in here in your heart, not so much the swing and all the putting. And it's just you've just got to find a way with your swing to get it done and make it happen. And I just love that piece of it.

What I love about it, golf does play to all parts of our culture and economy. So, yeah, you got the kind of the hoity-toity end of it, which is fine, whatever. But yeah, I grew up playing a little old town of 3,200 people. Green fees were, I don't know, eight, 10 bucks or something and you just play. And one truth I love about it is that little white ball does not know or care who you are. So you could be a billionaire with the nicest clubs, the fanciest clothes, you came up in the Mercedes, you put your tee in the ground, that ball don't care. It just doesn't. Or you could be... I've run across guys in tournaments. One year I had my heart broken at a tournament in my hometown of Benson one year.

It was a 27-hole tournament. We used to call them shortstops. You get 50 guys come in, good players come in and we play 27 holes. You play 18 and then nine more. So I was standing on the 26th hole on the tee box and I was in the lead. And the guy chasing me was up in front and he was an old Dutch potato chip salesman. Drove a truck. And his golf shirt did not cover his belly button. His gut hung out. And he didn't wear golf shoes, he wore tennis shoes. And he wore big sunglasses. He looked nothing like what you see on TV. But again, that little ball doesn't give a crap. And Judd, his name was Judd. Judd could play. And I watched him on this hole, he blasted a shot. I mean, he was dead. He was way over the green in the long grass on a downhill. He had no shot. And he took out his seven iron and he hit the most incredible little shot through the grass up this hill, down, and then it stopped right by the hole. He made the putt. He made it by one shot. And Judd was the greatest guy, but again, I love that you would look at Judd and you would say, 'I'll kick his butt.' But that little golf ball doesn't care. And Judd won, so that's the beauty of it.

Yeah, you know, I know how Scott's mannerisms and then I know how he's...

Hey, I have an idea here guys. Maybe you two guys can help me with it. And frankly I'm kind of amazed this idea has never occurred to me before, but like we're talking about it, I've been playing golf my whole life. And now building the Machinery Pete brand and our whole thing all these years. What I really need to start is an annual Machinery Pete Open where we just invite the farm audience. Like let's go to Des Moines, let's go to Champaign, Illinois, come up to the Twin Cities, Rochester, or wherever. Hastings, Nebraska, we'll come out your way. And we bring people in and we raise money for like my friends at Farm Rescue, Terry Johnson, great guy running the company there helping folks in ag in need. But for ag folks who do love to play golf, like let's get together once a year. Just like Scott was saying, it's so fun just to...

Yes, the competitive angle. You know, as a competitor as a kid growing up and like yourself playing college football, Zach, I mean, if you can find an outlet to channel the competitive gene, golf can really fit the bill there. I have a lot of friends I play with here in Minnesota. One in particular up on the Wisconsin-Minnesota side. He didn't start till he was 23. Played college basketball. He was shooting guard, I think, for River Falls. I think shout out to them. They just won the D3 football. But I mean, if you compete and again, golf itself is littered with stories. There's a guy named Larry Nelson who has won the US Open and two PGAs. He's got three majors. I think he's in the Golf Hall of Fame. He didn't start playing till he got back from Vietnam. He was 21 years old. Because again, that little ball, it don't care. And so golf is an amazing game that way. And I do know there's a lot of farm folks, you know, a lot like my little town of Benson where I grew up, the golf course is really a vital piece of your community. Whether it's community owned like it is in Benson or private, whatever. You were proud of where you're from. Hastings, Nebraska, Benson, Minnesota. You know, Scott, you said South Dakota. What was the whole town again? Mayberry. Okay. There you go. But if your town has a nice little golf course, that means something. That's a big thing. It's a great asset for the community.