Fairway Rollin' - Aaron Rai Wins the PGA Championship!

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

House and Nathan react to Aaron Rai winning the PGA Championship at Aronimink. They break down the top 10 finishes, including Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Cameron Smith, and much more. Plus, they react to Bryson DeChambeau missing another major cut, and is Scottie Scheffler still the best golfer in the world?(0:00) Welcome to Fairway Rollin’!(1:40) Aaron Rai (-9) wins the PGA Championship(11:10) Takeaways from Jon Rahm's T2 finish(18:10) Is Justin Thomas back?(19:40) Does Rory have beef with PGA of America?(23:55) Cameron Smith's return to contention(33:15) Does this PGA schedule make sense?(36:05) Thoughts on CBS’s coverage(39:30) Is Ludvig Åberg a dog?(45:45) Reacting to Bryson DeChambeau missing the cut again(51:25) Is Scottie Scheffler still the best player in the world?The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines.Hosts: Joe House and Nathan HubbardProducers: Tucker Tashjian and Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome to this golf program, unlike any other. Yes, my friends, this is your PGA Championship Recap here on Fairway. Roll in a golf program on the Ringer podcast network. And on Netflix, I am your starter, Joe House, joined by my incomparable accomplice. Our PGA tour boots on the ground, Nathan Hubbard. He was not in Philadelphia this week, nor was I, but it was. was a magnificent week in Philadelphia. The fans showed up, they showed out,

and we have an unexpected winner. Two pegs in the ground. Me and the Nate Dog are about to get it on. Let's go. I am one of Mochanui. On July 10th. Maui, you will board my boat and restore the heart of Tiffiti. And here we go.

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Kind of a weird week, house. I mean, there's just no way around it. You and I had a lot of thread. And the iron cover, head covers. Everybody will hear about that in the next couple of days, all of the non-golf sickos. And it'll be very charming because Aaron Rye is a very charming fellow. Yes, it will be.

And it deserves a winner. About all they could say on the telecast about Aaron Rye was wonderful guy, lots of people like him. I mean, but golf is weird. I mean, the guy was in the last group with my brother a week ago today. My brother beat him head to head. And he comes out a week later and wins the PGA. I mean, if you look at his history over the course of the last year, you just, you don't see it coming when you look at the finish his house.

I mean, the guy just, he missed two cuts at Valspar and the players. He was 48th at the Masters. He was T-73 at Pebble, T-50. I mean, it just, you do not see it in the results. But I do think you see it in the way that this guy as a player was so perfectly, matched to the test that this course provided. And we'll talk a lot about it because I felt like, I don't know about you, but I felt like chatter about this course and the setup pretty much overshadowed all the storylines of the

week, didn't it? And I think at the end of the day, though, this guy in his game, his discipline, he made the most birdies, he was top 10 in accuracy. He just stayed within himself, even when he nails a 60 whatever footer on 17 to put the sort of nail in the coffin. He was as calm as anybody that you're ever going to see. And I think it was his sort of demeanor and approach that ended up giving him this major house. Well, your observation about meeting this course where it needed to be met is exactly on the money. That is my conclusion here. And it was a befuddling conundrum the entire week. I mean, we came on this show last Monday,

sat down with Justin Ray and tried to forecast as best as we could, what were the requirements for being successful at Aronimic? And we kind of landed on one place on Monday, and then the guys were arriving Monday into Tuesday and playing practice rounds and coming off those practice rounds and giving us their observations about how they thought they might tackle it strategy-wise and just what the conditions seemed to reflect.

And over the course of the week, it seemed like that animal, that is this erotament golf course in the greater Philadelphia, all those amazing golf courses in that area, it was very organic. It changed. It changed from day to day. It changed inside of days. There was a demonstrable difference Thursday and Friday between the morning wave and the afternoon wave in terms of performance. And, you know, the challenge all week long was. was who the hell's going to run out, come out on Sunday and grab this thing, right? Yeah.

And Nairn Rye did it with a 31 down the back that I think if he needed that last put on 18, he would have drained that for a 30. But I do think that in hindsight now, we saw some tantrums from a lot of the players. We saw many tantrums in the interview booth from Rory. We saw them from Scotty. We saw it a lot of people who, even Rom, who had. to apologize for whacking a divot into a volunteer's face. This course had a lot of constraints house. The rough was penal, and the green complexes were such that it ended up not being remotely

like Winged Foot, because if you tried to play the way that Bryson did at Wingfoot, you went home the way that Bryson did at Erronomink. And so it just required this patience and humility to get through the constraints of the golf course to just be comfortable with 25, 30 feet in being the best that you were going to do. And I think guys who tried to push the envelope and do these majestic shots into greens to get close to pins quickly found out that that combination of wind, of firmness in the course and the greens, and then the difficulty of the rough around the green complexes just took some ways of playing away from some of the best players. And I think it's why guys had trouble separating until Aaron decided on the ninth hole with that eagle that he was going to

go make a run. And again, I think in that moment, it was last week, honestly, his being in the final group and his disappointment with the way that he performed, he didn't play terribly, but he could have won that golf tournament. And you could see it afterwards. I was there. I watched him. He thanked all the police. He thanked everybody around him. He's a gentleman. But he was disappointed. He had a moment with his wife where you could see and sense that he really, you know, if it wasn't regret, he definitely felt like he had let a moment get away from him. And sure enough, this week, it was it was just that patience that pushed him through that that back nine. I'm not going to say something crazy, like the test that he undertook at the Dunes

Club in Myrtle Beach was superior to the test that the guys who played in the, the signature event at Quail Hollow undertook, but I will say in one specific way, it seems like the accuracy demanded off the tea down at Myrtle. The intense requirement that you find the fairway, because if you didn't find the fairway down there at the Dunes Club, you were staring a bogey potential right in the face, and that was what undid. Aaron, now, Aaron is not a long hitter. and did not come into this golf tournament

as a very strong putter on tour this year. So our formulation coming in when we were sitting and trying to forecast how might this week go. We did have a premium on accuracy. We did have a premium on ball strikers. And here is Aaron Rye finishing second on strokes gained approach to the green for the week

and Aaron Rye finishing fourth in driving accuracy. But the big change is, in performance, he caught a heater with his putter, finished fifth on the week in strokes game putting against this field. And that was ultimately the thing that vaulted him to this win, right? Yeah, I mean, it's only the third time this year that he's gained shots with the putter. And last week was the telltale sign. Last week was the first time in over a year that he's gained shots across the major categories

on approach off the T round the greens and with the putter. And so I think that's exactly what it was. I mean, he has been, certainly, again, we talked about discipline as a player that manifests itself in the accuracy of his game. But look, he was first on approach. I mean, he didn't need much, right? The way that he went about winning this golf tournament was getting the ball in the fairway, getting it to the green, and then, you know, the occasional 68-half footer

that he rolled in. He just sort of kept within himself. And I think the mistakes that we saw from guys who had a chance to win this golf tournament. And I think the psychology of this final round, part of that is why Aaron was able to go, because Rory did not make a run. And when it looked like Rahm out of the gate, burying the first couple holes was going to go grab this thing by the throat, he just sort of stalled out. And Ludwig continuing to miss those short putts.

And right, you just sort of go down the list of guys who are going to make the, Normies Pucker. None of them really made the sprint. And I think it's part of why you saw Maddie Schmidt hang in there for longer. It's why Alex Smalley bounced back and somehow managed to shoot even par and finish second today in a share for it anyway. And I think it's, I think it's why Aaron Rye had a little bit of an easier psychological time on that back nine, because it was there for the taking nobody was sprinting away. And it didn't feel like there were nipping happening at the heels of the leaders. Well, the formulation that we kind of thought might be the prevailing way this thing was going to play out,

which is long hitters, great putters, just didn't bear any fruit because it was much more important to be accurate off the T than to be long off the T. Rory finished north of 50 in driving accuracy. No, he finished 75th. Rom finished 54th. Those two guys basically lost. their opportunity to win the golf tournament by their inability to hit the goddamn ball in the fairway off the tea. It was a choice. And in particular, for Rory, it was the par fives. You know, he finished even on the par fives relative to Rye, who was six under on these par fives. And that was part of this course, too. Another reason why the door was open for a player like Aaron is it had fewer par fives, which just meant there were fewer opportunities to actually go get it. And the way

they set up the 13th, the drivable par four today, everybody was a, going in that front bunker, you had almost no one actually get to the green. They didn't actually make it a hole where you could eagle and separate. And so again, Rory's high trajectory ball flight there taken completely out of play because he couldn't keep the ball on the green. And so it really was this specific puzzle of setup and conditions that allowed for a disciplined player like Rye to rise to the top. Yeah. Let's do glass half full, glass half empty. It's is a major championship. And it was a very unique leaderboard, not a leaderboard.

You know, it was peppered with some of the suspects that we had coming in, you know, and even a little bit of, you know, further down. I mean, I was absolutely thrilled for Kurt Kittiyama to show us at 63 this morning, finished inside of the top 10. He was a name that came off of our lips when we were saying not an obvious name. obviously Rory and Xander grabbed a lot of oxygen this week, Gauterup, battled his way all the way back into a top 10. He showed out as a guy.

I got to take a little bit of STFU juice and take a sip or two because Justin Rose, you know, looked like he was potentially in danger of missing the cut. He was. Thursday. It was more than that. Friday, but got himself inside and then a very tidy 65 on Saturday, put him in contention, and he had a chance, you know, coming down the stretch

where he's another guy that could have on the back nine gotten hot and gone and tried to grab this golf tournament because for a long time, it looked like six under or seven under might have been enough to at least get into a playoff. And all of those guys were kind of in the mix for that. But let's go right to the top. we threw our hands up at the beginning of the week about what to do with John Rahm and Bryson D. Shambau. We just didn't know.

Now, I, early in the week, felt great pessimism about Bryson, and I'm sorry that I moved off of that, and we can talk about him in a moment. But John Rom reminded us all of his major stature, his major class, you know, 69, 70, 67, 68 over the weekend. And that is some outstanding golf. And he just couldn't get any putts to go. It felt like, you know, down the stretch.

Yeah. I mean, the stats will tell us that his putting was better than his approach play this week. And I think that there were just some times where you expected him to deliver some kind of a dart that he just wasn't really able to do. And again, I think he was a little bit befuddled by the condition. and by the firmness in particular of the greens. These were just not approachable whole positions. They decided, I think, out of the gate that with the lack of length and with the rough being the way that it was

and the fun for the golf setup guys around the greens was that they were just going to put these pins as far to the corners as they could. And I think it just took clubs out of a lot of guys' hands. I'm not even sure that Rom, if you watched him, was not striking his irons as well as it was he just at times was overly aggressive towards pins that then the ball would, you know, land in the spot that he was going for, but the conditions wouldn't allow the ball to stay there. And so he'd run off the greens and miss them. And I think that as much as anything sort of explains why Rom didn't get there. It sure felt, though, House, like this is one that slipped through his fingers.

You thought that he was going to really start to make a run today in particular. Birdie's one, birdie's two, and then the bogey on three just kind of put him in neutral for the rest of the day when it felt like, man, if he could have made one or two more on the front of me, did Bertie 9. But if he makes one or two more on the front, then suddenly it's his and it feels like a train rolling. And he just kind of got thrown in neutral. And by the way, this is kind of what happened last year, right? when it felt like he might make a run and then the putter just let him down. So I think net net, this is a glass half full situation for John because after a couple of majors in which he's come out looking a little silly, it certainly felt like John Rom was in contention with, if not as a game, certainly as a minus game.

Yeah, and I mean, my only gentle quibble with your assessment, I don't feel like it slipped through his fingers because that would suggest that it was kind of in his grasp, but I never felt like it was in his grasp. I wanted him to go grab it, and the way he began the round, it felt like he might go grab it. It was there for the taking. It was a unique formula.

He was different from the other guys at the top of the leaderboard. He was very good off the T, top 10 for the week, off the T, and inside the top five on around the green, and that is clearly how he was, you know, keeping himself, around par and just grabbing the opportunistic birdies where they were. But I would say that's got to be a glass half full for John Rom, right? We're in agreement on that. 100% it is.

And it reminds me when you talk about his around the green game. And we were looking at, I want to talk about Goderup for a second, just to say, we were looking at Goderup's odds this week going, why is he at 60 to 1? Like, if this guy's won twice on tour, this is a big boy's golf course where his length that seems like should really help him. You know, he's been playing decent. Like, why is he that far down?

And sure enough, he was in the mix, and it felt like around Friday, and even a little bit at the start of the round yesterday on Saturday, that this was a tournament that he could go grab. But the problem with Chris Goderop's game this week was around the Greens. And he got exposed. He hit, we saw multiple flop wedges from that rough that just did not, hold or did not get there in the way that Rom's real brilliance with his hands, I think, kept him in this tournament.

I mean, you look back at Goderup was second off the tee, which is exactly what you'd expect. He was 24th and putting. It really just was, or 26th in putting, I should say, but it really just was his play around the greens that they kept him from being able to be a real contender in this tournament when it felt like he might be. And I think, again, that speaks to the strategy of the course, which is that. If you don't just, you know, by the time the weekend rolled around, the play was bounce it in the front of the green before the green and let it roll on. If you try to actually land the ball on half of those greens, the ball just would not hold.

Yeah. And the gotter up. I mean, he basically was undone by a three over on Saturday afternoon. I mean, he was definitely in the mix. And to your point, he finished on Saturday, 70th around the green, 71st on approach. and that's how you get those bogeys down the stretch. But I don't regret including him as a guy to keep an eye on. And I will continue to do so.

I think he's a great fit for what the test is at Shinnecock coming up at this U.S. Open. Got to give out some flowers to J.T. We wondered, is J.T. back? Well, I think we have our answer. That charge that he put on, you know, the sort of late morning, early afternoon here, getting home with a 65, including a Bertie on 18. just outstanding. The people were there for it. It just wasn't enough from where he started. Yeah. And even Saturday, like, he struck the ball well enough. I mean, made five birdies on

Saturday. It just was this stretch of four bogeys in a row in the middle of the round, starting on nine that felt him. That's what it felt like took Rory out of this tournament, was those four bogeys coming down the stretch on Thursday when he got in the press conference and described his round with a single word, shit. And he was right about that. But I think he was... He was telling the truth. Yeah.

So for J.T., though, there's something about this tournament that just gets it moving for him again. And he showed a little bit more of that dog. And that run today was pretty impressive. You never really felt like it was going to hold up. But as the wind picked up a little bit on the back, suddenly you thought, man, maybe he's going to be in the mix. When Maddie Schmidt and Aaron Rye are in the lead with Alex Smalley there, you could see those guys. having a collapse. And if Rahm and Rory just didn't bring their A-games for whatever reason, there was a chance that was going to hold it. But I think it probably pretends good things to

come for JT. Yeah, me too. And I'm excited for it. Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have-to-dos so you can focus on the can't-wait-to-dos. It's a new workday. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Rory and Zander, very interestingly, finished both tied seventh, and they both shot 6669 for the weekend. So the 66 on Saturday put both of them in contention.

They were inside the top six, seven. for odds to potentially win this golf tournament when we woke up Sunday morning. And, you know, I got a little bit down on each just because it felt so wide open coming into the Sunday round. And both of them gave us a nice, you know, tidy one under. Grab the, I mean, for Rory, it was a very interesting week because of all the press conference behavior, which was bizarre-ish. To me, I, like, I just didn't really understand.

And where his head was at. He was very kind of aggressive. And I don't know if he has an act to grind. You see him all shut the fuck up at the player or at the at the fan? Yeah, because somebody did a USA and, you know, add him right after he, you know, kind of duffed a shot, yeah, out of the rough into the bunker. And I look like he pointed to security to go. Yeah.

Give the guy a visit. Yeah. But the press kind of like, what was the. thinking in sitting down on Tuesday and saying there's no strategy off the T. This is just throw a peg in the ground and smash driver on every. What do you think what's going on there? He walked it back a little bit. I think all week long for whatever reason, he had a little bit of a bee in his bonnet.

And I think it could be, you know, the carryover. We didn't see him much after the Masters. A lot of the live stuff went down. He did show up at Quillard. Hollow but and had a comment on that. But you sort of felt there was some pent up. He was backed up. And so he sat down and gave a couple of these press conferences that to your point, like I love his honesty always. I love how transparent and direct he is and unfiltered he is. It's what we love about Rory. But it did it did add to the buzz and the noise about the setup and the

course generally that seemed to in some ways be a distraction for some of these guys for whatever reason. I wonder if he has something against the PGA of America. Talk about that. The entity that's responsible for the Ryder Cup, right? So the last time that he had anything to do with the PGA of America, it was up at Beth Page where his wife is getting a beer thrown on her and the fans there are cursing him, his family, his wife in person relentlessly. and, you know, the overwhelming takeaway.

And Donnaces, there wasn't a problem. Yeah, maybe. There's that, right, for sure. And there was definitely a sort of, there wasn't a lack of security, but there wasn't the kind of, you know, jump into action personnel on the grounds at Bethpage, going at fans that were being like hyper aggressive with curse words. and the proximity to the players in quite a few of those spots at Bethpage with the vitriol

and not having that layer of kind of security that I think we see even a kind of regular tour events. I'm just wondering aloud if there's something where he just feels like, you know what, I'm going to call it like I see it when it comes to this entity putting on tournaments. Well, you might be right. He seemed sort of remarkably dispassionate today. And when he did the interview with Amanda at the end, he said that he felt like he played the golf that he needed to outside of the par fives and the drivable par four, you know, which he just didn't, he didn't make anything happen at those holes. And I mean, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? I mean, like, that's the whole ball game on this course is the point, I think.

But he, I kept sort of waiting for him to, to break out and really make that run. And it just didn't seem like, for whatever reason, he had that in the tank, this guy. go round and that was reflective of the way that he spoke to the media through the week. I think you're right. Yeah. Cam Smith, glass half full and glass half empty. Like, I was reminded like, I brought him up with you. This is a scary brother right here.

Well, not only that, you brought him up to me after Thursday's round. You texted me and I'm like, that dude's missing the cut. He's missed the cut at all of the previous, the six previous majors leading into this major. and there had been a handful of times when he had shot a perfectly reasonable score on Thursday and then came out and puked all over himself on a Friday. Well, he didn't do that. He shot a 68 on Saturday

and then came out and shot another 68 on Sunday that should have, could have, would have been a 64, a 65. He's a guy who completely lost his bid because that driver went bananas. Yeah, 79th out of 82 players with the driver this week. And everything else was scary good. Holy cow, like a reminder of the skill that this dude. He was saving par from all over that entire portion of Greater Philadelphia.

It didn't matter where the F he was. He could save par. And he, I mean, he gave himself all the birdie looks. And he still had putts that were like, if a couple of those putts, you know, go, we're talking. about a different deal. I miss him. Yeah. I love the skill. It's crazy. I think for a long time, we all have been wondering if he gave a shit. And there was no evidence of it. There just was no evidence of it. And the first evidence that we got is that he made the very what clearly was a difficult decision to part ways with the guy who's been his coach forever and go to see Claude Harmon.

And yikes, the problem seems to have been that a swing was messed up, not necessarily that he cared less because that's what we saw this week. I mean, he was third on approach, 14th and putting. Like if he can get that driver under control, Cam Smith, it appears is going to be back in the mix because he he always has that calm, cool temperament. He's the guy with the mullet who just doesn't give you, like this is the kind of tournament that he's actually built for, right? He doesn't seem to get too high, doesn't seem to get too low. And so if he can get the swing back, who it'll be fun to have him back in the mix. I'm going to just raise my hand right now. I'm not sure.

He doesn't have, I'll have to look to see if he has status. I didn't look it up in advance to be in the U.S. Open or whether he has to qualify. I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head by virtue of his British Open win, the Open Championship win. That was 2022. So maybe he still has a sufficient exemption to be in at Shinnecock. But assuming he plays at Shinnecock, I will absolutely be. I mean, I'll say goodbye to the money.

That's fine. I'm just not going to not have something on him in view of how he, because this is one of the things I had on my list to talk to you about, which is this golf course, this setup had what I'll characterize as a democratizing effect. It was a protecting par kind of design, which is something that I think we've come to expect out of the, USGA and out of the US Open. And, you know, we've had a handful of these out of the PGA championship over the last handful of years. You know, the winning score has been in single

digits and four of the last six and some of these venues even. Both Oak Hill and Southern Hills are places that have hosted U.S. opens in the past. So I just wonder about, you know, the sort of, you know, what the goal is for the PGA. of American in, you know, creating a championship and what kind of champion they want for it. But this certainly fit Cam Smith. It did. And by the way, I think his win at the Open does not extend to the U.S. Open. So because of his world ranking, he's going to have to go through qualifying to make it.

Well, will he do that? We'll see. But I think looking at his odds for the Open this year would be a more interesting bet to me, because he's definitely going to be in that tournament. And we know what he's capable of there. I think you bring up the interesting question, though, House, which is indirectly was negotiated and debated all week, which is what is the point of this tournament?

What is the identity of the PGA? Should it be in this time frame? What is it trying to do? And I got to tell you, like, I think I like, Carrie Haig got a lot of indirect doubt and hate leading up to this tournament. Like they just were like, oh, the course people are going to burn this thing. It's going to be 20 under.

There's no way. And I think Kerry Haig does a really good job of taking each year and making it its own thing, its own test that requires golfers to figure out how they're going to play it. I don't think the PJ has to have the identity of the U.S. Open, which is we're just going to kick you in the mouth. Go back to Valhalla. Everyone was complaining that Valhalla was too easy and that it was, you know, the rough was not as hard as at all. to be in that this was no different than a PGA court. But, you know, that that ended up being a great, a great PGA.

So I just think I like the way that they approach us, which is that they take each course with its own identity, they create a puzzle that the field has to figure out how to unlock. That doesn't mean that the number one player in the world is going to win the PGA every single year. Scottie did win last year because he played well. And Zander won the year before because he played well. But I think it having something that's a little bit different, even though, let's be honest, this wasn't great television.

For whatever reason, I didn't get the butterflies down the stretch that I normally do when there's a packed and crowded leaderboard like this. There weren't these beautiful visuals of this course. I can't when I close my eyes sort of like envision a hole from tea to green having just watched it for four days. It just wasn't that interesting. but I'm kind of happy with where this thing sits. I don't know.

Do you have a different opinion about what the PGA is right now? I'm interested in all the feedback we'll see over the next handful of days because there were some pretty compelling thought pieces out there from folks in the golf media about this championship occupying this spot on the calendar here in mid-May. And we talked about it over the several weeks coming into this. It just feels like it's too soon after the Masters. And we barely, you know, have gotten past the afterglow of the Masters.

The tour because of the way the schedule is sort of being engineered, had three signature events post-masters in advance of this championship. And so it was just not really easy to get yourself, like, kind of prime. There wasn't enough of that so-called scarcity that lead. to, you know, being ready. And I wonder about in a reimagined schedule if there's a place for this to go back to August, because you do wonder in terms of venues, what does that mean? What are we giving up? What's the exchange rate here for playing a place like a RONAMIC? Like, that golf course isn't in prime shape right now. It'll be in better shape in three weeks or so,

maybe maybe a month? The flip is that the weather actually was part of the defense this week and actually made the tournament interesting. I almost wonder if you do it in the summer, it's going to be lush because it's going to have had the rain and there's going to be no defenses and guys are going to stop balls on the greens. And Aaron Riley is the wind. I will say this.

That wind, that is consistent. That would have been a defense. And we saw, I would say, kind of different golf course every single day of the tournament. But certainly a different golf course from Thursday to Sunday. I mean, it was baked the F out for the afternoon play today. And that's why, you know, it's so impressive that we got the 65 out of Rye in the afternoon wave. Because it looked like, oh, it's a Sunday go-low kind of opportunity.

You know, I texted that to you watching Kurt Kittiyama go out and just burn this whole thing down. He putted absolutely beautifully. I mean, Kittia's numbers across the board were incredible. And then JT came out and validated what Kittiyama put down by dropping his own. 63 out of Kittiyama, 65 out of JT. And it felt like, okay, let's go. But the version of the golf course, it wasn't out there. That's right.

It was only out there for Rye who found every fairway and then converted that into greens and regulation and managed his way around kind of perfectly. So I'll just be interested in what the feedback. is and where the thought sort of leaders in golf sort of take us if there's a direction that we go from here. I do feel like there is a room for something between the first week of April and mid-June, which is, you know, the gap between the Masters and the U.S. Open. And it had previously been the players in May. The players was sort of the thing. But that that was, I don't know if, you know, the cadence of what the tour itself is imagining as its optimal thing, if that fits.

So, I mean, I think they like having a tent poll event in March, April, May, June, July, August, and then September being the sort of international competition. I think that's the structure that they like. I'm not sure that it's going to be changed. Well, let's let's dig into that a tiny bit. What's the tent poll event in August? They think it's going to be a revamp tour championship that is match play. That's what they think. I mean, that's a cute idea. That they can move away from the Eastlake and show us some new courses.

And we both have heard, you know, yes, some new courses, some West Coast courses, some primetime golf in August that precedes the football season. What I would wonder aloud is, is there a room and that you would have to, to, you know, have a real, it's probably not on the horizon over the next five years because the Open Championship is already going to have to be competed late in 2028 to accommodate the Olympics. You know, the Olympics are in Los Angeles in 2028, right? So they've already had to rejigger stuff.

So maybe it just isn't reasonable or feasible in the next five years to see any kind of move for the PGA championship. but the overwhelming feedback this week, the people I talked to, I went on some shows. They're like, I had no idea that we had a major this week. People were surprised by it. Well, so that was factor one. Factor two was I actually think that the bunched nature of the leaderboard made it hard for us to get any storylines breaking through.

Like, they really didn't have their research done on Aaron Rye, other than he's a nice guy and everybody knows the head cover story and, you know, that he's, you know, his wife is a pro golfer who hit it close in the par three contest and he won the part three contest. We spent a lot of time on Alex Smalley and Alex Molly's mother. I'm glad that we didn't spend. The trade was if, yeah, if we'd had to spend the back nine talking about that, that would have been kind of scary because there's a lot there. But the, the, the, I think that because nobody really broke out of the pack,

we just didn't get as much of a development of the storylines that you normally would. I mean, how did you feel CBS did this week? I kind of felt like it was nice to have a broadcast packed full of golf shots, and they had to do that because lots of people were in it. So they had to sort of show us around the course. There was a lot of bouncing back and forth between holes. There was an awful audio engineer problem today where there was echoing. the mics were not synced properly, so you'd hear a guy yelling twice, and you've heard feedback

loops, and they just had a problem for most of that back nine. But how did, other than that, how did you feel about the telecast? I like that they gave us, you know, the drone footage. That was helpful. You had an interesting dynamic, and, you know, I might be a tiny bit in the bag for ESPN here, but I like the ESPN version of this, both Saturday and Sunday. day. Like the wake up, the way there, it was SVP as the maestro, right, pulling the strings. And, and I thought they were kind of on point. I liked, um, did they have a sense of humor. They have a self-awareness. Does you like David DeVall? That's not, I actually thought that he was good. You know, he, he, um, has had a, like a prickly on-off kind of thing. He was supposed to be part of

broadcasts. He was supposed to have a regular role on these broadcasts, including with like golf channel and live from and then he decided he wanted to try and compete on the champions tour and there was like some some hurt feelings over how all that that whole thing went down but he calls it like he sees it and he is not full of shit in any way shape or form right yeah yeah i'm with you i thought i thought he did a good job i mean i i don't understand why we couldn't get an interview with erin rye in the 30 minutes between the time that he put out it took a long what was saving it for Molly and Maddie Schmidt finished. I mean, I don't get why we didn't pull him aside. That was the moment to get him. And, you know, this is a guy who's very reserved and very gentlemanly. But like, if ever there was somebody that you wanted to get an Amanda interview on right away to try to get some emotion out of him, it would have been that moment. And we just didn't get it until he was already, you know, accepting the trophy 30 plus minutes later. So that felt like a miss too. I think they're just, you know, I think the, you unique special parts of this course were just hard to show on television.

And so it just, that's right. It just didn't have the intrigue. And when you layer that into what you just talked about from the calendaring of it, and then, you know, when Scotty just kind of, I mean, they kept trying to sell us that Scottie was going to win this golf tournament. I mean, they could have cut coverage on Scotty way sooner today. But I understand it because I think there was kind of a ho-hum about, about the tournament overall. So that said, while I think it will go down as a somewhat forgettable PGA, I really appreciate and value the test that they set up.

And we just have to remember in these situations that a course like this, a course like Oakmont, because of the constraints can sometimes breed a winner that doesn't come from the usual suspects because it requires that the usual suspects, sometimes dramatically change the way that they play, and sometimes they just aren't able to do that. Yeah, that's the democratizing effect that I kind of had in mind as I was watching this whole thing go down and see that leaderboard with all of these names. Yeah, there's a name that we didn't talk about yet that I want us to talk about, because you and I were texting a lot about it.

And it's Ludwig Oberg, who, of all of the players in this golf tournament, I actually come away with the most sort of change. view of. Interesting. And I've now seen it enough. I mean, he was first T to Green this week. He was 64th in putting. He was just missing short putt after short putt after short putt. And he appears to be a lovely soul and a good human being and someone who we all could easily root for. He is still very, very young. It's early in his career. But 26 has not been good for Ludwig. He has a lot of really high finishes, but he's not, I mean, you, I don't want to steal your words.

Is he a dog? Well, we haven't seen it yet. He stood on the back T on 11, on the back nine on, with a how was it a four-shot lead at the players championship. Yeah. On the 11th T, a sizable lead, an ability to just take that, that whole thing home. And now I'm wondering or loud, we are wondering, loud, is there's kind of a fulfilling element to this. Are we, you know, feeding our own narrative with every opportunity that we

see him contend, but it's kind of failed contention. I mean, after that, his worst performance was, was T-21 at the Masters. We had higher hopes for him at the Masters, but he had a string of top tens between... It's not as he good at golf. That's not the debate we're having. The debate we're having is, is this guy a dog? So here's... Does he lay down a little bit in the... The only thing that I, I, um, want to take issue with he was it was him and erin rye so the the bar he saw it he was with erin rye like how is this going to go down with erin rye is out here hitting every fairway hitting greens and i mean can i think about this in the match play way i just thought he was taking it a little too like he was very quick to tip his hat and give a smile when he you know put yeah or or you know i he hit

the ball over the green by 16 feet and then chipped it up to eight feet and the you know clap clap clap oh thank you very much like bro you i want to see some fire out of out of me i mean t four in the pga championship he did kick scotty sheffler's ass for the for the for the week and you know scotty uh singularly more dramatic than anybody else just could not figure out how to put this these green it it never made made sense to him. He could never figure it out and string a couple together. It was an abysmal putting performance. But I mean, as we continue to go on, like, Oberg was on a lot of people's card in terms of a guy that should be a high performer. She could win when I woke up this

morning and exchange texts with folks. Who do you like down this board? Well, the way that Oberg is playing because of that ball striking, because of off the T. Like, okay, those are the skills that should be setting the pace for this golf course. That's how you win here, right? Third best finish of the 10 majors that he's played. So, you know, we're not going to throw him out. Well, it's the second best finish, right? So second at Augusta, his first time out in 24.

And then this will be his second best finish. I think you're probably right. I just, I think what I want from him because of the beauty of his swing is generational greatness in addition to what feels like pretty close to generational talent. And we just, he's still figuring out how to close stuff. That's what it is. And, you know, he's only 10 majors in. So Nathan, chill the fuck out and give the kid a great.

But I want what we want when we see it. I really do come away from this. Like, man, maybe he's got more of a ceiling than I thought. He's going to need to find a way to push through because this was there. Again, he made five birdies today. And Rye made six in an eagle, so whatever. But it was the four bogeys that just felt, yeah, it was hard to watch him putt this week. He just, he missed a lot of shorties.

Scotty seemed to be putting like it was 2021 again. So, you know, maybe it was just a function of the course and that a lot of guys struggled with with the short ones. But I, Ludwig needs to show us something about whether he's got that fight. That's the last mile for him is it's not about, can he put himself in the mix? It's not about does he have the talent to do it. It's Kenny close. It's that back nine fight. That's the thing I think we were both like,

come on, man, just show a tie. And maybe it was just, we're being overly harsh based on our observations on his demeanor. Maybe, you know, I wanted to see a little more. I mean, he was one under on the back. So he shot under par, but like it was over by the time he started making birdies. I mean, birdie 13 and then gave it right back on 14, which is a tough hole. But it just, it doesn't, you know, just didn't feel like he was really fighting to go win a major today.

Well, and again, he, I think it's probably not fair, but all you need to do is look at the guy that was standing next to him in the T-box. That was, that's the biggest complaint that I have. It's like, yeah, that guy is going out and winning the golf tournament. What are you doing? Where is your, you know, charge for this? But again, and look, he can go win the U.S. Open and not surprise us. And we'll then chalk up his dispassionate sort of stoic-faced demeanor and general sort of affable way he carries himself as a competitive advantage, right? And he'll stuff it right, you know, right down our throats. But I think at the moment, he's got a really interesting opportunity. And because all the talent is there. It's just, it's just, it's just, Can you go close? I will drink that STFU juice. I promise you. I'll take a whole glass.

But you know, you know the STFU juice. I'm not going to drink. What's that? Bitch-ass Bryson. I mean, we talked about Bryson D. Shampo last Monday on this show.

You meet Justin Ray. We conveyed a lot of skepticism around what was going on with him. And, you know, particularly the challenge. of navigating this highly peculiar, peculiar, live situation and what it,

um, means to his own, you know, career trajectory and all kinds of stuff like that. Uh, and then he came at and he sucked. I mean, Houston,

I mean, we have a problem. Really sucked. Yeah. Well, that's now, we now have miscuts in three of the last four majors. And we have been badly missed cuts.

This was a, he was a, he was a, was defeated by a bunch of the PGA pros. I mean, this was a bad, bad week. Blocky beat him. Beat him. He played a practice round with Blocky for views for the Graham,

and Blocky went out and beat him. Yep. So what do you make of it? I think that, I think two things. One is there's a little bit of the Victor Hovlin syndrome here, which is I think he's outsmarting himself. I think he's tinkering? I think he's tinkering a lot.

And I think the length of his wedges is a problem. You can just see it. He's not able to, he can blast the crap out of the ball. He's a really good putter. He cannot get the ball near the hole. And on this course in particular, for all of the things that we've just talked about, this was a course where you had to be precise. And there's a reason why the guy who finished first an approach won the tournament.

But Bryson is tinkering too much A. And then B, I do think that people have fallen a little bit out of love with him. And I think he feels that deeply. I think there is something about this man that has this sort of showman clown-like exterior because it is, he wants to be loved. And he's at his best when, you know, he's rolling in an incredibly long putt on 18 at Valhalla after round three

or at Augusta after round three to actually put the scare in and the crowds behind him. He manages that well. But I think chaos and discord and, and anything that isn't sort of tailwinds seem to bother Bryson DeShambo. And right now, getting all of these questions about Liv, I mean, he was noticeably absent from the interviews this week.

And that was a choice by him, for sure, to remove himself. And it just, I think he doesn't quite seem to process how much he wears it on his sleeve. It was really obvious by Thursday morning, I think, to you and me when we, processed how the last couple weeks had gone, that Bryson wasn't in the right mental headspace to perform it as best. So I don't, my problem house is right now, I don't know how he fixes it

because so long as Liv is in limbo and he's trying to keep up the, hey, break 50, you know, for the Graham kind of thing, he's going to be in this in this state of purgatory where he's kind of a golf clown, not a professional golfer. Yeah, I wonder about what the experience on the grounds. And if folks were there Monday through, well, there'll be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, what kind of support? Because I think he was getting support. I think fans, you know, show up, they want to see him in the first place. Yeah. So that element of it was, was there. But I think, you know, ultimately, there's no choice to, to, but to conclude that he, the distraction is just too much. Like, he, he isn't just practicing golf. He isn't just in a mode where he can shut anything,

everything else out and just focus on, on his craft. It seems like he's working hard. I mean, he was one of the last guys on the range. I don't know if it's that. For me, it may be just the competitive reps. Remember, he did. He pulled out of both Mexico and Virginia, and we don't know why. Now, maybe it will come to light that there's an injury, and that would be fine. I don't know why you, you would be secretive about that. Yeah, something was going on in his personal life, too, if you remember when he won on that live tournament before the Masters, he was in tears, and a lot of people seemed to under, it's actually interesting that that hasn't leaked out.

But, you know, he's been in the White House doing the physical fitness stuff. He's been in a bunch of places. Look, when I say clown. He's doing a whole lot of stuff other than playing. When I say clown, I just mean entertainer, right? And that is how he thinks about him. So I mean that actually in a good way. Like he is super important for the game.

But I do think those comments where he was kind of like, you know, if the players don't want me sulk, sulk, sulk, then I won't come back, but they, you know, they need me as much. Like I think probably just overplaying the hand from a leverage perspective. He fancies himself kind of like a Steve Jobs business guy. And and he's, he is as just as much of a showman as Steve Jobs was in terms of his ability to sort of create drama. But I do think that for his,

But for his soft heart, it's a distraction. Just like Steve Jobs, you better have the product. The product is the thing. You can clown it up as much as you want. The product is the key. Yeah. And it worked in 03 and 04, and it's not working in 05 and 06. Yeah.

Anybody else, 25, 26. I think we did enough on Scotty. He still will be the prohibitive favorite going into Shinnock, the U.S. O'Brien. Did it worry you at all? It just felt like he didn't have it. fully this week, but he was still in the mix to me. And I wonder if just there was something about this, this entire golf court.

I mean, he came out and shot 67. He did the thing on Thursday. We've been begging him to do. His best round of the golf tournament was effing Thursday. And we had been saying, like, you know, if he could just get the Thursday figured out, then, you know, everything will, will flow from there. And that had to have been his best putting day. I didn't sit down and do the round one putting numbers, but yes, it was.

Yeah, so, you know, we can, he'll talk, somebody will ask him the question, he'll move on quickly. Like, why were you comfortable Thursday? And the simple answer might be he played Thursday morning. And the rest of his rounds were all in the afternoons. And we experienced this golf course, the organic change from morning to afternoon and the difference in scoring between morning wave and afternoon wave. and the difference in golf course condition, every afternoon versus every morning, it's not a shock that the lowest scores,

with the exception of that badass Aaron Rye, who dropped the 65 on us on the Sunday afternoon when it was time to win the golf tournament. Otherwise, maybe it's as simple as that. Maybe it's as simple as that. Yeah, he didn't make enough parties this week outside of Thursday, and I think that's sort of what it came down to. And you've got a little sense that he,

felt like the pins were, uh, yes. We're, we're tough. And, and, um, for a guy who, you know, again, if he ever is going to have an Achilles heel, it's going to be that putter. That's, they're, the ghosts don't seem to creep in very often, but it, I, Saturday I just watched you knew he was out of it when he missed his third, you know, put put putt inside six feet. Then it was just like, all right, this is just not his weak. I don't, I, did you, you had us, that's a different take than I thought you were going to give us

Because at some point, I thought you might make the argument that the, the Schaeffler run is over. Do you still feel like he's the best player in the world and that he's sort of separated himself still even from Rory? Or do you feel like he's come back to Earth a little bit here? Well, there's no choice but to conclude that the gap has closed some. And the numbers tell some of that tale. I will say his, whatever the explanation is for his discomfort at this place did have me wondering, I went back into some numbers to just sort of reset and get my perspective in order. And the ball striking is still there.

The off the T numbers are still there. And it could be we expect him to play at the Byron Nelson coming up here, the C.J. Cup. He's going to play this week. He revamped Craig's Ranch, which is the next tour event. And if he comes out and wins by eight strokes, you know, I'm not going to be on on any program saying, you know, is the Scotty run over? Because he won two majors last year when we were wondering,

you know, going after his performance at last year's master's, is the Scotty run over. And there are still two majors to be competed in this season. And on top of that, you know, still the tour championship of the playoffs and everything, plenty of opportunity for him to put it all together. But the gap has closed. Well, it's the first time that he's lost strokes putting since the Scottish Open last year. So that's why he didn't compete more heavily for this golf tournament.

To your point, I think everything else was there. He just missed too many putts this week from inside 10 feet. Right. And that's it. We are all to shit a cock, Nate Dog. It is a handful of tournaments, you know, in this May, June kind of bridge period that will let us, I think, catch our breath a little bit. I don't think, are there any signature events between the memorials? Yes, we've got the memorial.

It is before? It is. So we've got Craig's Ranch. Then we've got Colonial. Then we've got Memorial. then we've got Canada, then we got the U.S. Open. Okay, so Memorial is sufficiently in advance of the U.S. Open. The guys will not take the beating from Jack.

And then, you know, whoever that winner is, you auto fade because of how exhausted he will be. Yeah, well, they've separated them for the reason that you just laid out. They actually, because they can't get Jack to stop all the fuckery on the course. They've got to move it away from the U.S. Open so that people show up. Well, that's great. We have opens back to back, the Canadian Open and the U.S. Open. That will be a fun. Just like the Scottish into the end of the British.

Yes, that's a nice parlay. But look, we hear Fairway rolling. Kudos to Aaron Rye. Kudos to two glove wearers all over the world. I mean, shout out time againy. It is full on golf season. And please throw a peg in the ground and let's all hit them straight out there. Must be 21 years older, older and present in select states.

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