Fairway Rollin' - Reactions From Collin Morikawa's PGA Victory

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

House and Nathan Hubbard talk about the new PGA champion Collin Morikawa and what brought him victory at TPC Harding Park (00:43). Nathan also talks about his on-the-ground experience at TPC Harding Park during the tour (33:22). Hosts: Joe House and Nathan Hubbard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, my eagle enthusiast, it is Sunday night, the Sunday night recap here on Fairway, Roll in the golf podcast on the Riga Podcast Network. I am your starter, Joe House, joined as has been our way here since the restart of the delicious and delightful PGA tour by Nathan Hubbard. What up, Nate? House, I am back in L.A. after an amazing week on the ground at the PGA championship. Major golf. It was awesome. Major, major golf. So let's start here on this Sunday night. I began deliberately by shout out to the eagle enthusiasts because it was an eagle that ended up being the most memorable moment of the tournament. And you kept during our enjoyable text thread

sitting and watching the event, you kept these, you know, once every 45 minutes, win. is the memorable shot of this tournament going to happen? Who's going to hit it? And then we had it. It was Colin Morikawa on the 16th, an iconic instant legend shot, his t-ball on 16 that he puts to whatever it was, 11 feet that clinched the PGA championship. I think the first thing we got to do is shout out Kerry Hagan, the entire PGA, because the setup on this course was awesome.

At the beginning of the week, we talked about the fact that this was a long-ass course, 7,200 yards, but a par 70. But it was so clear that they had set it up so that down the stretch, this drivable par four, the 16th hole, with the cypress trees guarding the approach, was going to force the best hitters to make the best shot. And we saw some great ones. We saw a great one in the morning, I guess, from Ryan Palmer playing with Jordan, right? the other guy who shot 64 today.

Exactly. And that sort of, you know, that foretold what was going to come in the afternoon. We knew that 16 was likely going to be the spot where somebody won it. 18 could have been the spot where somebody lost it. But that shot that Colin hit, you know, you got to wonder if he saw some of the shots that JT had spun there earlier in the week, those low, just, you know, fading runners that just ran up and on to the ground. He hit the exact same shot and it won him the tournament. It won him the tournament.

The funny thing as you gave the shout out to the PGA of America, super deserved. When we were basically like this time a week ago sitting and talking with Golf's Digest, Joel Beale about, you know, what to anticipate with this venue. one of the points that Joel made that we both agreed with is we love how the PGA of America lets the score be the score. You know, they are not out there trying to manufacture a kind of competition. They let the venue speak for itself and the competition comes from the quality of play of the guys and whatever defenses show up in terms of the golf course, right? Like the wind never really got super crazy out there.

Some guys were disadvantaged by the wind at different times. Yeah, Thursday night it was a beast. Yeah. Thursday night it was a beast. But on the weekend, you're exactly right. This course played for the best golfers. And we had been worried house that this was going to be a bomber's paradise and only a bomber's paradise.

And what was so great about the subtlety of the setup is that those bombers were in it at the end. but the guys who didn't hit the fairway fell back and didn't finish. Then the most amazing thing about that very point, look at that leaderboard. It's a beautiful combination of ball strikers and bombers, right? And ultimately a ball striker carried the day, won the event. You know, you had, but you look, you had DJ there. You had Bryson there.

You had Fienow there. And Morikawa was number one. in Fairways hit, right? We talked about it with our guy Justin Ray, that these 15 to 25 foot putts were really going to be the differentiator because it was so long. Guys who hit the fairway,

we're still going to have long irons coming in. So that's where the ball striking component came in. But Morikawa, number one in fairways hit, first in proximity to the hole, and therefore probably first in shots gained punting, because we didn't ask him to make a whole lot of three footers this week, which was nice. But that's why he won the golf tournament.

He did end up, I believe, number one in strokes game putting. And I would like to see, I mean, obviously he did lead in proximity to hole. I love that, you know, feet made. I love, you know, when you look at the aggregate amount of feet made putting wise, I bet it wasn't that big a number. He just played so well. What I don't get is why do we constantly underestimate this kid? They paired him with Henrik Stenson and Zach Johnson, who was the talk.

of the first day because he shot like five under. Two major winners. Right. And then they pinched him between groups with Rich Beam and Sean McKeel and another group with Bud Colley and Lucas Glover. No offense to any of those guys. But he was not in the feature. He was completely unnoticed on Thursday and Friday.

The first four names you mentioned are all major winners. So, I mean, to be fair, right? Stenson, major winner. Rich Beam, major winner. I mean, you know, those are all. Zach Johnson, major winner. Those are all major winners. Absolutely.

But he was not in those featured groups with DJ and Spieth and Jordan and Brooks and Tiger and Rory and JT. We just have not put him in that upper echelon. And guess what? Those days are over. He's the man now. His announcement to the golf world, he is on the scene. I've seen it already 500 times on Twitter. We'll see it another 5,000 times.

He has as many major champion victories. major championship victories as he has miscuts. And House, we should have seen this coming. And I'll tell you why. This was the perfect setup for a guy to break through and win his first major. The PGA is usually a tournament where we see that happen, based on some of those names that we talked about before. But in hindsight, there was so much about this tournament that wasn't quite majorie,

that was going to allow, was going to be that X factor. Last week we said, what's it really going to be like to not have those fans? Is that an advantage? Is it a, you know, disadvantage? And in this case, there was no tension on site. There just was not. This was a made-for-TV event. This is like if you go and visit the set of like your favorite sitcom, like, if you went and saw the set of friends, there's no fucking ceiling on the set, right? It's like, oh my God, this thing is all fake. Like there's no real doors behind all the, the, And so that's what this was. It was kind of just made for TV, and it just let a bunch of the air out of the balloon. It didn't change the drama on TV, which was amazing. But these guys were not hearing the roars that they normally hear. They did not have the scrutiny that they normally had. And I think we were right to be thinking about, hey, who are those young guys who were those

young guys who could break through? We talked a lot about the California kids coming back to a place and a course that maybe they knew. and in hindsight, all of those signs were there. This was a course where the veterans who hung in there right there, Paul Casey hanging in at the end, but the veterans were at a bit of a disadvantage relative to all of these amazing young guys at 21, 23, 24, 25, who we saw hanging in there till the end,

I think in part because they just weren't feeling the nails and the temples that you normally do at a major championship. And the reason for that you think is because of the absence of fans, that the drama, the heightened tension that comes from just a collective group sound on the venue. Is that what you're getting at? It was dead out there. I mean, I walked Thursday and Friday with Tiger Woods standing next to him so much so that I knew he had a respiratory illness. And any other major title, that's how close I was to me. He was coughing and hacking. We need to talk about that

because I got a crazy tiger conspiracy theory for you. But the fact that I could get close enough to Tiger Woods to know that. And at a normal major, you don't see Tiger. It's 20 deep. And so there just wasn't the scrutiny and the pressure. And, you know, when somebody makes a bomb two holes ahead, it hits you right before your T and off.

And that causes you to shift a little bit and yank it into the Lake Merced. It just wasn't there. And that's okay. It doesn't delegitimize this win in any way. But it was absolutely, in hindsight, a factor. It was ghostly quiet out there. Ghostly quiet out there.

I mean, I'm glad you made that last point because I want to make sure I know where you're coming from on this. You are not suggesting that the impact of the absence of fans in any way diminishes the quality of, of the outcome with Morikawa, but the, uh, it did, I think open the door. And this is the point I believe that you're making to a bunch of guys who have,

um, both young and old who've been around the hoop. I mean, we heard through the throughout the broadcast that Paul Casey now has played the most majors without a win, um, at least in this field. I mean,

there's other guys out there. Um, but you know, guys like Tony Fee now, who we've been waiting for that breakthrough moment, you know, around, he performed well. He performed admirably.

But you're the young guys, Matthew Wolfe, fearless. And you just wonder if the crowd had been there and it was, you know, that the, the kind of stage that we were more accustomed to with the major. What do you have felt some of that pressure?

Morikawa obviously felt no pressure whatsoever. I mean, if he felt any pressure, he didn't, he didn't show it one iota. Sheffler 24. Wolf is 21, Morikar was 23, champ is 25. I mean, these guys were out there just battling the whole way down without some of that pressure.

And like you said, it doesn't delegitimize it. But the only real tension that got introduced was Kepka's sort of WWE comments that sort of amplified up some tension. He just put the laser beam on the wrong guys. He put the laser beam on Bryson. he put the laser beam on DJ. And meanwhile, there was a whole horde of young guys who don't give a shit who just stayed under the radar, played great golf on Sunday, didn't have the yells and the screams and the people to really clamp them down, save for the couple of lunatics on the road outside the fence on 12 and 13,

who shout out, they were cutting through the fence with their keys and stuff. But besides that, they're just, you know, they stayed below the radar and allowed them just to focus, play golf and finish. Yeah, well, and the behavior of the leaderboard, the up and down cadence of the number of guys at any given point in time who shared the lead really kind of bear out that point because there were many moments through the afternoon today where there were six guys who shared the lead. I think it might have gotten all the way up to eight at one point where everybody was at 10 under at one moment. but, you know, ultimately, the, the, we, we were having an ongoing conversation, who is going to break from this pack and how is it going to happen? And it does make sense. We talked about this with Justin Ray on, uh, the show that went up Wednesday when we taped it with Justin. It was Tuesday. We mentioned Morikawa, the, the cow connection, the fact that he has a little bit of comfort playing competitive golf there, his exquisite ball striking. skill and we just sort of wondered to ourselves allowed, you know, where does that put him, you know, we didn't know what to do with him exactly. Well, because his putting has been the thing. It's always been the thing with Colin. I mean,

I got some time with our homie homo this week. And, you know, he has been for a long time talking about how this is the guy. Morikawa is the guy when it comes to ball striking. And when he was, you know, mentoring him at Cal and spending some time with him at Cal, his basic message was like, if this guy can develop any kind of short game whatsoever, he's going to be unstoppable. And, hey, first and strokes gained putting, not surprise he won the tournament. But we did see through the afternoon house like you talked about, one by one, like we do in that regular major cadence on the back nine, we saw guys start to fall off. Matthew Wolfe made that great run. He made the eagle at 10. Then all of a sudden, he started to miss a couple of short ones, right?

Fienaus, maybe making a run, all of a sudden, 16, which he should have been on the green or he's behind a cypress tree on the right. He hit the tree, you said it. I mean, the cypress tree is sitting there. And, you know, part of the beauty of that hole and the design and the way that Kerry Hague set it up without making it absolutely drivable today, if you do go just a little right, the tree is going to catch it and jumped up and bit Fee now. Yeah, it did. And so, again, the course was not, we talked about it being getable.

Speath came off his round, which was super enjoyable to watch him and Ryan Palmer go out it in the morning. But he came off and said, look, every pin except 11 on the back is getable. I wouldn't be surprised to see somebody shoot a 30. So that started the alarm bells because he's not a, you know, he's not a grandstander on that stuff. And at the end of the day, I think the course held up really, really well. 64 won it. That's a great score in a major.

There weren't a whole lot of other guys who went that low today who were able to grab it. So again, shout out to the course, which was just set up so beautifully. I wish every major could have this feel in terms of the playability of the course, the way the greens function,

the punishment for the wrong T-shot, right? But at the end of the day, the opportunity for guys to go win it instead of who's going to screw up the least. And a totally legit score, right? 13 under is right on par and on point with any kind of major you want to put this venue up against. There was nothing tricked out about it. It was, you know, golf course, see golf course, play golf course.

Part of what Scotty Sheffler himself said was the comfort that he immediately felt there because of that sort of aspect of it. Now, look, we've gone a little bit of ways here where all we've talked about is the winner. The proper... We haven't talked about the losers. Which is correct. But really, there was just one really, really, really big loser. Yeah. And that's Brooks Kefka.

Yeah. What do you attribute the Saturday night comments to? Brooks is the least respected or talked about four-time major winner ever. Ever. Feels like hyperbole. We know that he's had this chip on his shoulder because... And rightly so. He just was, because he came so far out of nowhere that, you know, Joe Buck was screwing up his girlfriend's name when he won the U.S. Open. Nobody had any idea who he was.

He didn't know that Brooks got a new girlfriend in the meantime. Well, the point is we didn't know who Brooks was. And before we could blink, he had four majors. And we just didn't give him the credence. Maybe because Tiger was starting to resurface and we were still holding on for that, maybe because the Golden Child's Beath was still out there. We just didn't give him the credit. It's true. We didn't. And it clearly developed a chip on Brooks's shoulder, which until now, he's used his motivation to just come out and kick everyone's ass in majors. But my sense is we've watched him really trolling Bryson a lot lately. And Bryson himself has been talking for the last, you know, four or five months about his brand.

And, you know, all his concern about his public comments, all this. you know, Brooks, maybe Brooks decided, hey, if they're not going to love me as the good guy winning, maybe I'll take it, I'll take the Hulk Hogan turn for the worse and go play heel and see how that does me. Because look, at the end of the day, this was a Bryson-esque call for attention on Saturday. So much so that the gentleman of the game, Rory McElroy, who basically called a penalty on himself and requested a worse lie earlier in the week, you know, from a ruling in the run. rough. Rory himself came out and was just like, look, man, I wouldn't throw darts at a guy like DJ. You know, he, even he, uh, had an issue with it. Now, none of it matters if you come out

today and you play great. But you know what he did? He shot a 74. One guy, Jim, Ghalem Herman, shot worse than the 74 today. So Brooks has got some splaining to do. And he was very gracious in his post round comments about Morikawa. And we need Brooks because the comments made it fun. He helped inflate that bubble of the made-for-TV thing and make it a bit like a wrestling event. And so I think some of this was about, you know, fun and about the entertainment part of it. But some of it, you got to believe,

is that chip and that psyche, chip on his shoulder and the psyche thing with not really getting the full respect that probably any other four-time major winner would have. So that all makes a lot of sense. And in that context from that standpoint, if indeed he was being quite deliberate in terms of trying to up the pressure and trying to do some psychological mind play as a way of like, you know, taking a look. It is now all, it's not a cliche, but everybody is extremely familiar with this idea that when he sizes up a major, he feels like he only has to beat a handful of guys.

and this was a mini version of this. The Saturday night interview, you know, they basically put the question to him and he sized up the leaderboard and he kind of went through it and said, as far as he was kind of concerned, there was only really one guy to beat and then he took his best swings

in terms of the verbal games at DJ and really set the stage for something. Now, part of the charm of all of that is Brooks E is recognized by the sporting public. now, right? Like the moment that we're at now with professional golf and what he's done, he, he does get credit. He got a front row seat at the SB's, no doubt. There you go. And the sporting public was on him today. I mean, I'll be interested in seeing what the handle was

for bets on him today. But he went into all, I'll just speak to myself. He went into a whole a whole bunch of different parlays and stuff that I had. And I wasn't even counting on him winning. I was just expecting him to top 10, top five. I tried to keep it easy with him. It was apparent, and this is the interesting thing, right? Because at the outset of the week, we were talking to both Joel Beale and Justin Ray about Brooks. We wanted to know how he physically was doing. And we had reasonable optimism that the walking at this venue wasn't going to be that big of a challenge.

And then game-wise, where was his game? We saw him at Memphis. His irons were awesome. So, you know, his ball striking from that like 115 to 130 range was on fire at Memphis. It looked great. We thought that might carry over to this. I really have no idea what to attribute. He came out hacking today.

I mean, he was lost on the drivable par four. seventh, he took out an iron and hit that into the left rough. And I sent a text to you and hope that's it. He's done. He took out an iron and he hit it in the rough. It's over. It was a weird choice. It was weird today. And it's a reminder that he's not all the way there. And so you asked about his comments on Saturday night. Maybe he knew he wasn't 100%. and he has that tiger-esque gene, and he was just trying to talk his way into it by knocking back a couple of the guys

who he thought might actually have the game to beat him today. I'm with you. Let's talk a little bit about some of the guys that you were impressed by, even though they didn't win. I mean, Colin just did the thing that looked like it was going to be necessary, which is somebody going low and grabbing the golf tournament.

Was there anybody else that caught your eye that impressed you. Well, I think we have to, we have to talk about Bryson because Bryson DeCambeau played a great major and he kept his cool, uh, besides, you know, leaning on his driver and snapping the head, which just like the entire course knew within 15 minutes. Nobody knew what everybody else's score was, but for some reason, that bit of info that Bryson had broke his driver traveled the entire course. I was eight holes away from him and players knew about it. And so there was just snickering up. up and down the course about this. But he kept his cool, you know, he made some comments after

one of the early rounds where he said, look, I hope people will appreciate what I'm trying to do for the game of golf and not focus so much on the things that, you know, I do out of my passion, which, you know, okay, some people are like, those are kind of weenie-ass comments. But, you know, listen, what we know about Bryson is he's secretly a really sensitive guy. And he's hearing all these comments and he's processing them. And a lot of the stuff we get from him is that sort of defense mechanism. But our question coming into this week was not as the game there. The question coming in this week was, is his mind there?

And boy, was he in it. He competed in a major. I don't have any doubt that at this point, this guy should be on the favorite list for the next bunch of years coming because he is still getting better. Yeah, I agree. I mean, at whatever point that he got himself to 10 under on the front, I immediately live bet him to win the golf. tournament. I thought, okay, he, he, this is the guy that's going to separate himself.

He and Fienau had a great thing going. They both birdie, the first two holes, they came right out of the box, um, hot. And, and, and I don't remember what was he, did he birdie seven? Um, and then, and then he probably bogeyed eight and nine after I immediately, I put the money on the win. Yes, exactly. No, you put the sink on him, but his numbers kind of tell the story. Um, you know, look, he made that. 95-foot bomb, you know, not today, but I guess it was yesterday. Saturday, yeah. Saturday, right?

That's how he ended the Saturday round. But, but, you know, okay, so he was, he's going to end up finishing second in shots gained off T, but he was only 29th in accuracy. And he was 27th in Greens and Regulation. So second and strokes gained off the T, but only 29th in accuracy. And then 33rd in shots gained approach and 63rd in shots gained around the green. 15th in putting is fine. But those intermediate areas are where he's got to get better around the green and those

approaches. And then the approach wedges that we know about. But then this core setup is what kept him from getting over the top and shooting, you know, 18, 19 under because his accuracy wasn't strong enough. And the rough really did penalize you on approach if you didn't put it in the middle of the fairway. And the interesting thing. with him. He had some

putts that could have changed you know, maybe the momentum, although in view of the fact that we didn't have fans there to, to, um, and to, you know, make, make noise. He had his own eagle putt on 16. He had a super makeable birdie putt on 15.

He had a super makeable birdie putt on 17. He couldn't get any of those to drop. And that's why he just got, he was stuck on. on 10 under. And then he left, he had, we thought, I thought maybe even 11 under might sort of up the ante a little bit.

And he hit a wedge. He had a great drive on 18. And then either, I don't know if it was a club thing or what, it got up in the air, but his approach on 18 stunk. Yeah. It hit and spun back to the front of the green and that was it.

Yeah. He was basically out of it at that point. Look, I think in terms of a couple other guys who we got to give a little hat tip to, Scottie Shephler, who we talked about on the kickoff show, you know, so many months ago as being one of the guys to watch, had a little bit of a slump through the restart. But the guy is cool, calm, and collected, strikes his irons well. And he did not seem phase today. He shot 6568 on the weekend in a major championship finished T4.

Super impressive. We talked about some of the other young guys to be sure. But, man, I didn't expect to see J Day up on the board. he really he really acquitted himself well i i assumed that his performance at at the memorial you know mirfield village both those tournaments were because those are his home home courses i pretty much had decided we weren't going to hear much from j day uh you know going forward but but i was really impressed with his game the way he managed it yes he he was one of those guys who made a couple shots down the stretch where you went up that was it he's done um but but uh you know kudos to him

and then we got a shout out our boy our boy jol damon who finished with the T-10, all four rounds in the 60s. He really is playing great golf. And it's a reminder with his game, along with the DJs that we've, DJ's performance, which is that, you know, from week to week, it's not always the best measure of how a guy's actually playing. You know, you got to take a broader view and widen the aperture and look at a longer series of events because some guys just don't have it in one week, or they're hurt,

or they're not mentally in that tournament. Damon has been playing really good golf, and that is symbolic of this entire leaderboard. The guys who finished well are basically who we thought they were, right? Which is to say they've all been playing great. That's right. I mean, and we've been sort of anticipating a breakout moment for Damon because he started off calendar year 2020 super hot.

I mean, he legitimately had a chance to tie for the lead at Reveen. era back in February. I mean, he was playing great golf and having great finishes, great results. I think this is his best finish in a major ever, but it doesn't feel that surprising when you think about, you know, I love that, that phrase widen the aperture and look at the context of the kind of year that he was having. Okay, Nate, we're going to change topics, but before we do that, I want to give a quick shout out to Fandul, Fandu who was sponsored the Fairway, Roland Doe contest in connection with the PGA championship this week. As all you birdie buddies know, sports are finally back.

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in terms of ultimate golf results. They clearly enjoyed each other's company. So we had your brother homeless hubs, Mark Hubbard, Max Homa, and Joel Damon all staying together there in the San Francisco area and I know you visited them with a little bit. What was Damon's state of mind like?

Well, he was as cool as he could have possibly been. I walked the practice round with him and Mark on Wednesday and they may or may not have been playing a little money game paired together on the same team. And let's just say, I felt a lot better about Joel's chances this week than I did about homeless hubs as after that round because he carried Mark through the whole back nine. Now, the conditions were different.

It was windy as hell blowing probably 25, 30 and cold and coming across. But Joel just has that precision with his approach shots that, you know, plays well of this golf course. But that's, you know, that's what we saw from work hour today, you know, on steroids. So he could not have been more at ease. I was talking about maybe following him on Thursday. And he looked at me and said, dude, are you crazy? You can go watch Tiger Woods with no one around.

He said, if I wasn't playing, that's what I would do. So that's what I did. And I think the golf gods were kind to him this week for that reason. That's incredible. How generous by J.D. I love it. The Den Mother. I love it.

That's outstanding. Now we have one last guy to talk about. And then we're going to maybe set the stage a bit for what comes next. Because we're on this sprint right into the tour playoff. and then we're going right to New York for the U.S. Open, and then we're headed, you know, off to the next, the wraparound season, and then into Augusta. So it's never going to stop.

We got the first event of the next season comes the week after the U.S. Open. So Dustin Johnson, glass half full or glass half empty? I feel a little bit heartbroken for DJ because this is a pattern at this point. It's a pattern. He's the only guy who's gone 0 for four in closing 54-hole leads in majors. He should have more than one. That's just a fact. He's too good of a golfer at this point in his career to only have one.

I still take glass half full away because as you and I spoke about, he had an awful week a few weeks ago where he shot double 80s. and, you know, was withdrawing with back injuries and this, that, and the other. I think the fact that he came out without a whole lot, I mean, he was not on a lot of people's picks this week. If they had, you know, on Fandul to spend big money on a player, not a lot of people were picking DJ this week. And for good reason, he hadn't necessarily showed it. But again, when you widen and broaden that aperture, the guy won a tournament in Connecticut, you know, pretty solidly. And a great field up there too.

A great field. And the way he played the back nine this week and more acutely the way that he putt, I think gives a lot of reason for optimism coming into these last, you know, the last event. He's not going to play next week, obviously. But as we get into the Northern Trust in Boston and then we go to the BMW in Chicago and then end up at the Tour Championship, there's no reason to think, you know, this is a guy who's not going to compete. Well, I want to give a shout. I can tell you one guy that did pick DJ this week was a friend of the pod, our guy Pat Mayo from Canada. He's a draft kings and PGA tour guy at the PME.

He gave out Dustin Johnson as his pick for the week. Better to be lucky than good. But I mean, I love, I love Mayo. So I just had to tease him. I'm glad you mentioned, by the way, fan duel. So there is somebody out there who has taken down first prize in the Fairway Roland Doe series. The Blue Jacket is on the line.

Congrats to Lazarus Michael J. So I'm assuming that's Michael J. Lazarus. I'm going to call him Mikey Las. Took down the first tournament, $5,000, $602 points. he had a lineup of Burger, Sheffler, Zander, Morikawa, Tony Fienow and Paul Casey.

That's some classy picking. Do you know how you ended up, Nate? I stopped watching after Speeth's round yesterday. All my guys made the cut. I definitely was in the money. And then after Speeth's round yesterday, I knew I wasn't going to take down the jacket. I knew Jordan was going to take down my chances of winning the jacket.

I finished. It looks like 2,24th, which I mean, I accept that I only had five out of six guys make the cut, but I did have more cow out there. And I won 10 bucks. So that's that's a W as far as I'm concerned. Adaboy. There we go. All right. So let's let's just set the stage for what comes next. We have coming up this Wyndham Championship event down there in North Carolina, which is basically the last event pre-playoff. before to set the playoffs that lead into the tour championship. And a couple of interesting guys are going to go play there, right? Yeah, well, Brooks Kepka is on the list. Now, with his finish, I'm not sure that they've updated the points yet to tell us exactly how far inside the line he is. But at this point, there's some positioning because that first event, the Northern Trust at TPC Boston, only 70 of the 125 guys are going to come out of there and keep going to Chicago. And so for the people who are, you know, in the 50 to 125 range, this week is a big week to up your status.

And for the people who are in the 126 to, you know, we'll call it 150 range, guys like Zach Johnson, who's at 127, or Matt Wallace, who's at 129, Sergio, who's playing, who's at 132, Justin Rose, who's at 135. I'm not sure if Rose is playing. But those are the guys who are going to be fighting to earn a few points to get into this playoff. And the reason it all matters is the winner today, I think made $1.8 million, maybe $1.9. The winner of this FedEx series makes $15,000 goddamn million. That's pretty good. Now, I am seeing, I'm going to see if they've updated the standings. Because poor Brooksie, limping to the finish at only three under.

Okay, he's, I believe he's 92nd now. So he's inside the top 100 kind of comfortably, but you really want to get as close to 70 as possible. That's right. It's going to take a big week at the Northern Trust for him to just move forward. Yeah. Okay. Well, look, Nate Dogg, thank you so much for giving us some time here on the Sunday night. By the way, Rose is playing next week. Rose is playing next week. So we're going to see all those guys who are on the cusp. And Rosie, by way of his classy finish, I think he birdied 18. He shot a 67 today. And he picked up 32 spots. He's all the way up to 103rd now.

But it does make sense for him to get comfortably inside the 100. He looked in form this whole week. I honestly thought he had a reasonable chance of going out and grabbing this one. In any event, Nate, thanks for going up to San Francisco. Shout out to the PGA of America. shout out to Pat Cravitz, our homie, head of communications for that place. Shout out Susie Whaley, shout out Carrie Haig. Shout out Joel Damon for sending you over to watch Tiger Woods without anybody near him.

We're going to save your conspiracy theory about Tiger. Is that okay? That's fine. Okay. Shout out Colin Morikawa. Shout out Colin Morikawa. Thanks, buddy. All right, my Bernie buddies, there you have it.

Congrats to Colin Moracau with a PGA championship for 2020. is in the books. It's a miracle that we were able to have this tournament. It was super exciting and excellent. Thanks to Nate for coming on. We will be back. I'm not sure when. I need to go sleep for three days after watching wall-to-wall golf for the last 25 hours. But until then, let's hit him straight out there.