Fairway Rollin' - The Case of the Embedded Ball, With Jason Sobel

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

House and Hubbard sit down with The Action Network's Jason Sobel to discuss the controversial episode involving Patrick Reed picking up his embedded ball (01:30). They also talk about the upcoming Waste Management Phoenix Open and who some of their favorites are going into the much anticipated tournament (45:32). Hosts: Joe House and Nathan Hubbard Guest: Jason Sobel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Friends and welcome to this extraordinary edition of the golf podcast, unlike any other. This is Fairway Rowland. The Golf Podcast on the Rigger Podcast Network. I am your starter, Joe House, my birdie buddies, my part saving pals, my eagle enthusiasts. The golf gods are great. They look down at us in this time of 2020. and said we have not yet done our part to make this year a wonderful year. Lo and behold, they picked a weekend without any football whatsoever

and really no other interesting sporting events going on and bestowed upon us in all of his glory, the villain Patrick Reed. There is only one way for us to properly undertake this week's podcast on the line of course, our PGA tour, correspondent, Nathan Hubbard. And then we had to hit up our homie from the Action Network Golf Bet, Serious XM. Jason Sobel is on the line. The tea is wide open, fellas.

Let's get this going. First of all, Sobel told me when I texted him that I'm not allowed to say happy New Year to him anymore. So I will say, welcome and happy 2021 golf season, Sobel. Happy February to you, House. Yeah, you can't say happy new year. I mean, you text me on January 31st. I was like, dude, there's no happy new year to be said anymore.

So, yeah, it only took a few weeks for golf to get into some major controversy. I guess we had some major controversy already. But yeah, on a week when you nailed it because golf is firmly entrenched in the spotlight of the sporting landscape with no football going on. And all of a sudden we get a major controversy and a major villain winning a big time golf tournament. which gives us plenty to talk about at least. It's very, very sexy. Nate Dog, I want to begin with some superlatives because we kicked off the podcast for the 2021 golf season last week and it was deliberate.

And this is something that Sobel touched on in last week's column that he wrote. The golf season, you know, traditionally on the calendar, it's a couple events in Hawaii. It's a nice tickler out in the desert. And then it's time for some big big. boy golf. And that is this event at Torrey Pines every year at a great venue, a venue this year in 2021, which will be hosting the U.S. Open. And as always, the tournament delivered some outstanding golf play from some outstanding golfers, right? And we're not going to talk about any of it. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. It really did. I mean, the things that are going to get lost in this

is, you know, Frankie Molinari shot a 66 on Sunday for his second top 10 in a row. And our boy, Top 10, Tony, I'm writing a song for him. It's going to be the tune of like a spinal tap song, but I think I'll have it ready for next week.

Yes. Top 10, Tony, it had a T2, you know, another signature misputt. His new putter setup, dude, his eyes are too far back from the ball. We talked about it last week. You said it last week. You were on it. The arc of his

putter. If you look, he's just, he's going to keep missing putts until he gets, he overcorrected, I think. But he's on a role. Sobel is all in on top 10, Tony, and I don't blame him. He made a bunch of great bets last week. And the only thing I do not understand is he relocated to Arizona to Scottsdale. He damn near won this tournament last year. So you'd think after a couple of top tens and including a a T2 last week. He'd be getting ready to win in Arizona this week. But no, he's going to Saudi Arabia. I don't get it.

Well, you do get it. Listen, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like Will Zalotaurus, we got to talk about who's just becoming an unbelievable consistent player. You know, there was Victor. So listen, underneath all of the Pat Reed saga, by the way, there was also a Rory Sunday bed poop again, which I don't get it. Just the back nine bed poop, too. That was what was so disconcerting.

I just, I don't get it. It's becoming, it was basically the worst round, along with Adam Scott, of anyone who was remotely in contention. But so there was a lot of really interesting golf going on underneath the surface. And it just got completely consumed by Patrick Reed. And what is now the most conspicuous burner account in all of golf, Patrick Reed's wife's golf Twitter account. So good.

I'm telling you, the golf gods. I just want to thank them so much. I wish we could kiss them on the lips. Nate, you just went through. through all of those interesting golfers and didn't even mention John Rom and didn't even mention Zander Schaughley. And we are going to talk more about Rory McElroy because Sobel has his column up as he's the hardest working man in golf, Jason Sobel. I really appreciate the hot, well, you're one of them because you already have your waste management preview up on the site.

And I know that Rory is featured prominently in there. So I want to save our Rory takes, our Rory analysis. Other than the embedded lie drop that he took, we'll talk about that, but I want to save his performance for when we get to the waste management preview. So, well, I just want to bounce a couple of these things off of you. The performance of Patrick Reed was extraordinary, which is to say completely out of the ordinary, which is to say hasn't been replicated ever. And this is we're going to, as we always do, hit up our homie, Justin Ray, for some of the stats. He says over the last 30 years, seven-tenths of one percent of PGA tour winners have ranked 63rd or worse that week in Greens hit. Since the PGA tour started keeping stats in 1983, Patrick Reed is the only player to win a tournament by three strokes or more while ranking outside the top 60 that week in Greens in regulation.

I mean, that's extraordinary, right? Absolutely. And extraordinary is the word for not just the tangible analytics that are out there, but the mental fortitude that he put together. And say what you will about Patrick Reed. If you support him on this and say he's getting a raw deal based on prior reputation, fine. If you think that he's a cheater and think that he did something completely wrong, fine.

We'll get to those takes. But whatever you think of Patrick Reed, you have to admit that the guy, when his back is against the wall, he just puffs out his chest and plays better. I mean, you look at a few years ago, well, go back more than a few years, the Ryder Cup in Europe, he's shushing the entire continent when he's beaten their guys. Two years ago, the Hero World Challenge, where he built a little sandcastle before hitting a ball and got roundly and rightly criticized for that, we tend to forget, but he played really

well on the weekend, finished in third place. Last year more criticism in Mexico, he wins. This week, a ton more criticism, he wins again. And I don't want to compare anybody, let alone Patrick Reed, to Tiger Woods. But I will say this little thing about the two of them. Tiger Woods was able to compartmentalize better than any other player that we've seen in an awful long time. Now, granted, Tiger was compartmentalizing some different things than Patrick Reed is compartmentalizing. but the fact that Patrick Reed is able to take,

ah, the entire world hates me. Everyone thinks I cheated. All this stuff is going on. It's swirling around in my mind. Let me just put that in the far back reaches of my brain right now and let me instead just go play my best golf on a Sunday afternoon, beat everybody else by five shots. That is remarkable.

It is, like you said, how's extraordinary. Nate, I want to drop this dime on you before you chime in because it amplifies the point that Jason just made, and this is another Justin Ray Dime. Since 2010, there are more than 50 players with four or more 54-hole leads or co-leads on the PGA tour. Of that group, so we're talking about 50 players since 2010, only five of them have won at a clip of 75% or better.

Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Jimmy Walker, Bryson, and Patrick Reed. I mean, he's got stones, right? Well, he almost won the race for Dubai last year. I mean, the guy, yes, he's a... But this is a serial killer-level sociopathic compartmentalization. I mean, I was texting with Chris Vernon during the tournament. I was like, if he wins this,

I really think it means he has, like, three grandmas in his freezer. It's insane that he's able to block this money. out and just create this alternate reality and go do it. But you are right. I mean, the hate is going to flow. This guy is one of our killers. The only problem is what he may be killing next is the U.S. Ryder Cup team because so much stuff happened this weekend and so many things came out about, you know, the undercurrents of sort of toxicity and the things that have been said about other top players. I mean, just the used Golfax Twitter account

absolutely shreds Justin Thomas. How are they going to be Ryder Cup teammates? And maybe it's left over from when Jordan left him to go play with J.T. in the last Ryder Cup. And Reed was furious about it. But there's other golfers who are taking a fist to the mouth. I don't not know how he's going to be able to stop

the insanity that flows from this weekend. Well, Nate, I am interested. So I thought the way that we might handle our respective views and sharing a points of view on this was to get sort of your perspective as our PGA tour correspondent on the ground, the guy with his ear sort of in the circles of other players. And we have some players who came out publicly and said some stuff. But just sort of sharing with us the sentiments. And again, you don't have to attribute the sentiments to any one player,

but you have your ear around it. And then I thought, you know, very interesting to get from Jason, sort of how does this translate into this new, nascent building, extremely exciting gambling relationship that the tour has. And, you know, just what kind of integrity impact there may be

with this kind of a rule situation. But Nate, talk to me about sort of, sort of what we saw what Zander Schaughley had to say. We saw what Lanto Griffin had to say. What's kind of the sentiment, your sense of the reaction

of the players? I talked to four players who said, in the absence of the moment on an average Thursday tournament, that they probably would have played it the same way.

And they would have asked and in the spirit of of fast play, and we should talk about fast play because the slow play problem is part of the reason why these rules are in place, but that they would have played it that way. But they also said in this context, that, look, golf is a little bit like democracy. And there are some baseline norms that have to be followed, and it has to operate with the organizing principle that at a high level, everybody's operating with best intentions. And when the fabric of that common ground gets pulled apart, it becomes weak. And what we saw this week was a guy who most of the players

simply don't trust to operate within the framework of integrity and best intentions. And slow play had, like I said, has been identified as a big problem. So a lot of the rules err on the side of trusting the players to operate with best intentions. And the embedded ball rule is basically that way. But what we saw was possible abuse of the rule from both the least respected player on tour when it comes to integrity of the game and probably one of the most respected rules followers on tour, which is what happened with Rory. And so in this case, I think the guys are going to say change it. A playing partner needs to validate that the ball is embedded or if they can't tell, then call a rules official over before you touch the damn ball. That solves the problem.

100% right. And I'm very glad that you shared that anecdote of the folks that you spoke with saying they all would have probably played it the same way because we know that's true now with the benefit of the 48 hours that transpired. We watched Rory do it. Yeah. So we know that they would have played it the same way or virtually the same way. And one of the things that, that, you know, having the benefit of time to contemplate, it is apparent from the circumstances on the ground that Saturday afternoon is that it was soaking wet and the guys all were very comfortable with the ball in their hand because they were playing lift clean in place.

We got over an inch of rain on Friday. It was saturated. Right. So So Sobel, you know, in view of what Nate just shared, which is the idea and, you you know, Dave Shadlosky, uh, writer for Golf Digest. You know,

he tweeted and it's a pretty simple, uh, idea, new local rule for the tour. No ball in hand under any circumstances, except for lift clean and place in the fair way. If you need to pick up your ball to identify it in the bunker, rough,

or you want to try and figure something out, you call over a playing partner or you call rules official. Seems pretty simple. To me, house, this entire thing comes down to, two red flags. Look, I know people are arguing whether

Patrick saw it bounce or not and a tournament marshal. By the way, we shouldn't be looking at volunteers to make decisions that weigh on the outcome of tournaments. These are people who just said, hey, I have nothing else to do for the weekend. They gave me a shirt and I paid them 100 bucks and they let me stand

on the 10th hole this week. They already measure 12 foot puts on Shotlink as 25 footers. It's just brutal. I mean, can you imagine, Nate, you and I were texting the other day during this whole thing or just after it was happening. I said, can you imagine if someone said, hey, your local NFL team needs people to sell beer? You can't actually watch the game, really, and we're not going to pay you. But if you pay us, we'll give you a shirt and you can sell beer at the game the entire time.

You think people would be like, oh, that sounds like a great deal. At least I'm somewhat around it and inconvenienced for a handful of Sundays. is like, no, you wouldn't do that. The fact that the PGA tour still runs largely on the fact that a volunteer workforce helps them run tournaments is just amazing. And by the way, they're good people. But in a lot of cases, they're, you know, retired folks who love golf and they're close to it. But, you know, retired folks generally can't see very well.

They can't move very well. That's what happens when you get old. So we can't be relying on to chase down balls, you know, that are smacked 45 degrees offline. So whether the volunteer Marshall said, I didn't see it bounce or it didn't bounce, I give Patrick Reed the benefit of the doubt. I don't give him a whole lot of benefit of the doubt, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't see it bounce live. Fine. Here's my two red flags. First of all, I've never seen a player pick up his ball and then call the rules official. Well, the ball is not where it was in the first place. That just seems fishy to me. That's where did Rory do the same thing where, hey, it was in his plug mark and it was embedded? Yes, but he also didn't call the rules official over after picket. It just reeks of just strangeness right there, I guess. Just kind of trying to get away with something. The second part and the bigger part of this is, okay, so Patrick didn't see it bounce.

He didn't think it bounced. He thought it embedded. Well, after the round, he goes to the scoring trailer, and he watches the video, and he sees that, yes, indeed, it did bounce. Then he walks out of the scoring trailer, and after a long phone call with somebody, he goes on TV and says, it is almost impossible for a ball to bounce in the rough and then embed. Okay, well, he's just contradicted himself.

Either the ball didn't bounce, which he already saw that it did, or it didn't embed, or what he's basically telling us is the impossible just happened. I just walked across the pond on 18 and, oh yes, my ball bounced and then embedded in the rough on 10. Really? Really? Is that what we're trying to buy here? House, where do you come out on this? I mean, I have to say that I took a little bit of a contrarian point of view. I mean, look, F. Patrick Reed for the cheating stuff. I was a little more empathetic here because I really do think that he played it the way that he thought you normally would. We saw the way Rory would do it. And as Sobel just pointed out, I think he got on a phone call that

lasted about 15 to 20 minutes, maybe with the with the person who tweets, from the Use Golf Fax account, who knows. But somebody told him that he had a problem. And so he came out trying to give a press conference instead of speaking, you know, authentically. And I think he tripped up a little bit there. But where do you come out on it? So I want to start with that end of the round moment

because imagine what we would be talking about if he had self-dissed a penalty. He had an opportunity staring him in the face. to rewrite his entire sort of image and standing in the golf community, and he elected not to do that. Now, I wish he got better advice because I think he could have elected to take the penalty. He was clearly playing great golf. He scrambled his ass off in an unprecedented way as the stats showed out.

And I wish he'd done that because how cool of a story would that have been? He still would have won't one by four. That's right. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad that he didn't because here we are, it's much more fun to talk about this. Now, here's one thing, and I was very surprised by very many aspects of learning about this rule. It is, and this is why I think Nate and Jason, both of you, were inclined to cut read some slack in this instance. It's a reasonableness standard. And the reasonableness standard is based on the information that a player collects as he assesses the situation.

And the guts of the rule is it reasonable to conclude from the available information that the ball is in its own pitchmark? That's it. That's the whole analysis. And that's why Rory conducted his affairs in the kind of the ho-hum way that he did. He did not ask for any other eyes to come observe the ball in its natural. state before he touched it. And why Patrick almost got to the point where he could have rendered it, ho-hum, I thought it was fine for him to ask the volunteer standing there.

And, you know, she was unwittingly cast into this position of, you know, being a decider. But that's just because for the most part, we don't really under, I think the Gulf public writ large doesn't understand how this rule operates. That's just honestly to me, Patrick collecting information. He asked all of his playing partners in their caddies, did you see the ball bounce? No. He asked the official, I mean, the volunteer standing there. She was closest to the ball when it landed. Did she see it bounce? She said, no, it didn't bounce. She didn't say, I didn't see it. She said that it didn't bounce, so suggesting that she was watching it. And under all of those, circumstances, it was absolutely

fine for Patrick to go ahead and take the relief, which is what he should have done. The farce of calling in the rules official is what drove this whole thing over the edge. And it was... Did he do that because we shit on him and he gets called a cheater?

Maybe so, right? Self-awareness. And he's like, look, I'm leading the golf tournament on a Saturday. I'm going to make sure that nobody calls bullshit on this. So just to be safe, so nobody gives me, you know, crap on Fairway Rowland or the 10 shows that Sobel's on every single day from 6 a.m. to 2 in the morning that I'm going to make sure that I do this right. Why do we crap on him for that? It's extraordinarily self-defeating. And it's self-defeating because he went

completely off the rails as soon as he picked the ball up, right? You can't summon the rules official and move the ball. Those two are incongruous. Exactly. It's just dumb. Yes. Reputation comes into play here. And I know that we'd like to sit here and say, well, they're all golfers. We treat them all equally. They all play by the same rules. The analogy I keep coming back to is if you've got an all pro left tackle who hasn't given up a holding penalty in three seasons and you've got a rookie right tackle who gives up three holding penalties every game, guess which guy the referee is going to be keeping a little bit more of an eye on?

He's going to be watching the rookie because, quite frankly, he knows that that guy is going to commit a violation of the rules at some point. And so, yes, are we watching Reed more carefully than we watch a Rory McElroy? Of course. Patrick Reed has had more rules controversies, more rules stafoos over the past three or four years than the entire rest of the PGA tour combined. That is not a coincidence. Well, I'm interested in pursuing this idea of farce with the rules officials because we had,

speaking of other sort of extraordinary circumstances, it was CBS's first broadcast of the season, and they had, this is still weird to me, an actual live, currently active rules official as part of the broadcast, like not a retired person, the way that. that the NFL and the NBA do it, where they get an old referee to come be, you know, in the booth or available to them to ask rules questions of. No, this is a guy

that, you know, eight months ago would not give relief Ken Tackett to Bryson DeCambeau who was trying to move a ball away from a fence. Now, they asked Tackett for his review of what went down with Brad Fable. Fable is the rules

official who came over and observed the scene. And the instinct of Tackett was to immediately launch into cover speak for Brad Fable, the rules official who arrived on the scene, rather than then, and this is unfortunate for Ken, because I don't know whether or not he has any experience with being on television before, if anybody was in his ear.

You have to do the common sense thing first, right? Which is, well, Patrick called over a rules official, but that rules official couldn't say anything. about whether or not the ball was embedded because the motherfucking ball was sitting four feet away from from the hole. All that rules official could do is come over and observe the mark that Patrick had made with a tea and stick his hand down in the grass and see whether or not he felt, you know, a hole that Patrick said was there.

That rules official was completely deprived of making any kind of assessment as to whether or not there was an embedded ball present there because there was no ball there. And it would have been good of Tackett to have at least done that common sense observation. I agree. And you have to give a lot of props to Faldo and to Nance and to the rest of the CBS crew. Amanda did a great job. I thought they really handled it well. They did not back down from it.

You could hear coming out of the break one time, Faldo saying, guys, Patrick, and they clearly were having the discussion about how to go at him. They were looking at Twitter. They were seeing the uproar. I thought they did a good job. You know, the truth is in that situation, he's not supposed to call a penalty on himself if the ball isn't embedded. He's just supposed to replace it. So I think, but they just didn't make enough of why if he really wasn't sure did he not call

the rules official before he touched the ball? Speaking of CBS, the fact that they kept coming back through on Saturday, and Nate, you're absolutely right. I am 100% convinced that whether it's the commentators themselves, a producer in the truck, Somebody at home texting them. They're like, hey, get on Twitter. The entire golf world is talking about this thing on social media. And you guys have to bring it up some more.

And you guys have to address it. And then 24 hours after the fact, they lead off the Sunday broadcast at 3 o'clock Eastern time with a 15 minute, basically roundtable discussion discussing it. I thought it was maybe a little over the top. I thought they could have showed live golf while they were talking about it. The coverage gap was a problem. because the OSU MSU game had run way over. And so instead of a 15-minute coverage gap, it became a 30-minute coverage gap.

It's always a problem. It's always going to be a problem. And then we got Butler Cabin discussion of Patrick Reed before we actually got golf. Well, Patrick Reed's making an eagle. Right. We get all of that. I will say that just a few years ago,

CBS would have glossed over it on a Saturday. We'd all be sitting at home talking about it and tweeting about it. on Sunday at 4.53 p.m. Eastern time, as Patrick Reed's doing something, they'd make a casual mention of it, and then sweep it under the rug. So I think the fact that they spent so long on it was CBS basically raising their hand and saying, hey, we have some journalistic integrity and we're going to show it now. We might not have done it in the past, but now we are going to address these issues as opposed to just pandering to the PGA tour and trying to sweep everything under the rug.

One other thing I just want to say, I don't understand why the golf journalists who were there with grounds passes on Saturday did not go out to the spot to see whether it would have been possible for a ball moving at that velocity about three feet off the ground to embed. Like maybe it was super soggy, but we could have gotten a lot more information around whether Patrick's original assessment that it was embedded was reasonable or not if they'd just gone and looked at the spot. in defense of golf writer, since you're going to pick it my golf journalist croties. First of all, I'm not sure how many people are out there. Like I,

right now, like they've cut back so much on the amount of media credentials they give. I just don't know. Faldo should have walked down there. Dottie should have walked down. Somebody's got to go do it. Colt knows was out there.

Colt could have made his way over there. Somebody's got to go over there. And look, there was so much going on. Do it do an extra work? But, Cole's not doing any work. I don't know. No, I'm kidding. I love cold. No, that is an excellent point. I will say that when you've got all this stuff sort of swirling around, okay, so it happens on 10, by the time he gets like 11, 12, 13, it's like, okay, I get it. Like, this is the big news of the day. Yes, takes a little creativity to go, hey, everyone's going to zig over to the interview area and go get him. I have to zag over the 10. That wasn't about the golf writers. I didn't really mean the golf arts. I just wish somebody had gone and checked the turf. I should have gone. I mean, it's my fault.

Here's the thing. It was apparent from the order of play of the day, and this is, I'm interested and curious in your reaction to this, that rough is unlike rough that anybody's played in in some number of months, maybe since Wingfoot, right? Because it was from Rory's reaction, the way that Rory handled his shot,

it's apparent that there was a prevailing sentiment amongst all of them, that the rough was deep, that it was definitely wet at the bottom and that it wasn't that extraordinary that a ball might embed. I mean, you know, Roy didn't ask for another set of eyes. He just went in and grabbed the ball.

He's like it's embedded. These guys had been sloshing around in very, very wet, muddy turf, and they made that assumption clearly that, I mean, it would be interesting to know how many other calls for embedded ball there were on Saturday. Right.

And we haven't gotten that set either. It comes down to this for me. I think Patrick is getting more shit than he maybe deserves for this, because I think he actually played it the normal way. I think what he screwed up probably was being self-aware enough to know he might get called for, you know, cheating or bullshit if he didn't call a rules official, but not being self-aware enough to think soon enough in the process,

maybe I don't touch the ball before I call the rules official. And that's it. that's it. That's the biggest challenge. This is, you know, for both of you guys, when we play competitively, when we're playing for the money that we play for, for 10 bucks or 20 bucks or whatever we play for, when we encounter circumstances with the ball up against a tree, up against a fence, on the line of a hazard, any of it, our instinct, at least my instinct, I'll put it in the form of a question to you guys. I never do anything before I consult with the other guys that I'm playing golf for money with.

Because there's honor among thieves. That's it. That's it. So come over here and look at this. Would you please come look at this? This is what I think is the situation and this is what I intend to do. Do you agree with that? Yeah, of course.

By the way, since we're talking sort of theories and what's going on, there's a lot of theories out there. I don't know if I buy into this or not, but a lot of people are trying to point out, and this might be just Patrick Reed haters, that the way he picked up the ball, when he marked it and then picked it up with sort of the palm of his hand

and could have pressed down as he picked it up. I mean, is that, I don't know. Look, innocent until proven guilty, and so I won't sit here and say, he's a cheater because he made his own embedded impression into the ground by picking up the ball and pushing it down when he picked it up. Do you think there's anything to it?

Did you see the drone shots yesterday? First of all, good job CBS with the, drone shots. But as they would expand and go around the greens, you can see, and so, well, you've been out, you know, how many people are actually there when a camera crew is following, even in the strip down COVID times, is following the final group. There were probably two microphone people. There were multiple camera people. There was a couple of carts and their drivers. Somebody would have stood up and said, you know, in the last 48 hours, I think I saw Patrick push that thing down. It's like the conspiracy theory. There were too many people there for something

to not leak. So I just don't buy it. Well, that's a different sort of analysis, though, Nate, than what we did observe, which was him poking around. I mean, he didn't just pick up the ball and then leave that area clean. And in fact, look, I have, I'm not going to say where I got this from, and I'm not going to read the whole thing. No, I have a text from a player from a PG. tour player who said his issue is he spent time checking around in that area to test

the surface and it's very possible that he and he his own self you know punctured the surface that he did it even unintentionally and then he gets up and he cleans his hand with a towel but he didn't need to call for the rules official that's right

so why would he have even done that that's right unless he was covering his ass I just don't feel like many people in the public right now are bored. They also think that these are the first two embedded golf balls in the history of the game. Right. And that it's never happened before. Like, oh, what do you do? Oh, my goodness. Like, I'm exaggerating. But I will say the difference between the two besides just their reputations,

besides the fact that Patrick called in a rules official after he picked up his ball, is the fact that Patrick basically gained an advantage from where he dropped and Rory gained no advantage. Yes. Yes. I think at a macro level, here's the problem. Like we said earlier, there's honor among thieves. This is a game of integrity. It only works if everybody follows the norms. And the truth is everybody believes there's a bug in the matrix and his name is Patrick Reed. And so it just doesn't hold together if you have somebody who you don't trust playing alongside. And so the tour now has to think, as you alluded to earlier House, how do we change these rules so that nobody's touching the ball. You're not supposed to touch the ball. You play it as it lies. We don't touch the ball. We don't do it because that's how you catch a punch from your pal. I don't want to get a punch. That's right. Whether it's Rory, whether it's Patrick, nobody should be touching the ball unless, you know, unless, you know, it's absolutely clear and obvious, and it wasn't.

And so change the rule and let's get on with it. And if we're really going to be upset with golf writer's Sobel, nobody asked about Justine's Twitter account, and I don't understand it. We're going to talk about that in a second. But I want so. on this integrity point, particularly because of his background and who he writes for, to help us think through the gambling implications, if there are any. Maybe there aren't any. But at this early stage of golf's relationship with gambling and trying to build support among the gambling public to gamble on golf, what kind of impact, if any, Sobel, do you think this might have?

So for those out there, and I'm guessing that most of the people that are listening right now, understand the tie between the PGA Tour and gambling. But for those who don't quite get it, I will give you this one very simple fact. I was on a Zoom call last week with a couple of PGA Tour VPs, including the recently hired VP of gaming. The PGA Tour now is a VP of gaming. If you weren't sure just how serious they were about bringing this whole thing into the public consciousness. They're doing a show. NBC's doing a show on Peacock Premium this week, centered around gambling.

It is basically a gambling-related broadcast of the Waste Management Phoenix Open. I mean, they are all in. They've got four official betting operators. We at the Action Network have a partnership with them through golf bet. I mean, they are all, all in. So yes, this could be a major factor. We saw Points Bet, who's one of those official betting operators, refund all the money, or I guess refund it in the form of having free bets out there to

make with any outright bets that people lost because they didn't have Patrick Reed. And so is it a marketing ploy by points bet to get people out there? Yes, it is. Yes. Yeah, why not? But you know what? We're sitting there talking about it. It gets people kind of fired up, gets people saying, hey, well, you know, that was cool. I mean, it's the same way. I always talk about this guy. You know, if John Rom wins. in Phoenix this week. And he goes from 10 to 1 to 8 to 1. They make him the master's favorite. Is it really because he's a master's favorite or is it because a certain book wants to get out

there and send a press release saying, we've installed him as the master's favorite. And we all go on radio and TV and write about it and they get a bunch of free publicity. But so it really, it matters. I mean, with the whole GameStop thing from last week with Robin Hood was about, you know, people are starting to use that app in a lot of ways to gamble on stocks. and if you stop, you know, if the rules are fundamentally unfair, or there is a, you know, a misdeed that works against the little guy, the whole thing unravels. And we got to be careful here because there's a lot of people sitting there going,

I got screwed, right? I got screwed. It's easy for you guys to say, you know, fairway rolling guys, that if he just called a penalty on himself or whatever, he still would have won by four. Maybe not, right? Maybe that shakes him and, you know, Hovlin doesn't, hit, doesn't yank two wedges or nine irons into the shit on 14 and Vick comes in and wins. So I, the integrity here is critical, as you point out.

And so I really think the tour, given if they've got a VP of gaming, that VP of gaming is probably standing there behind closed doors right now saying, we got to make this explicit and overt in how we got to stop relying on the integrity of every, every player, because at some point that, that starts to pull the fabric of this apart. What's really funny to me, guys, is that the PGA Tour, of course, golf is a game of integrity. The PGA Tour has an integrity code for its players. I mean, you know, Rory McElroy can't go out and bet on himself this week if he thinks he's going to win. There's an integrity code that they have.

And yet things like this, things like they won't divulge suspensions and fines. They won't. in a lot of ways, the PGA Tour is trying to progress into the future generation of, you know, hey, we're going to have gambling. It's going to be legalized and regulated and we're all in. And yet part of the PGA Tour is still stuck in 1973 where they don't want to divulge anything and they want to keep it all in-house. And I don't think you can have it both ways. Well, So, well, I do want to give credit.

I think credits do here. You guys correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't the tour itself publish in its own social media, the video footage of the entire episode? I mean, I thought that was pretty extraordinary and not something that I would have anticipated getting out of the tour in any kind of previous years, right? No, I wonder if they had ruled a violation on Patrick, do they still go and post it? Like, if it was, hey, after the fact, we're going to dock him a shot because we think that it wasn't in bed, whatever the case might have been.

as opposed to, hey, look, our player did the right thing. And our rules committee said, our rules officials said, hey, it was textbook and everything turned out great. Here, let's show it to you. Yeah. Okay, I take that point. But on the gambling point, I guess I'm not that concerned about it. And the reason I'm not that concerned about it is because every single week, when I bet on

football and basketball, there are calls made by the referees in those games that tilt the outcomes of those games that I always feel like call into question the integrity of what's going on there. For instance, the pass interference call that was levied against the Green Bay Packers at the end of that game against Tampa Bay after the referees seemed to ignore dozens of pass interference calls that might have been levied against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, dozens is an overstatement. But that kind of thing happens across the sporting world.

And yet every single week, I still sit down and place these wagers on the sports that I love because that's part of how I enjoy consuming the games. One point on that is we got to be careful. We don't go to the other end of the spectrum and start to put a whole bunch of these outcomes in the hands of the rules officials. There are two kinds of rules officials out there. The players will tell you. And Sobo, you chime in on this. But there is the kind of rules official that we saw get with Patrick, who, you know, is working with the player to try to find the right outcome.

There are some rules officials who sometimes want to make the story about them, just like we see in basketball sometimes, right? And so I hesitate to go too far the other way and start to make it about what the rules official decides on the course. I'd so much rather it be among players and try to really have there be sort of a system of checks and balances between the people in your threesome or your playing partner. Yeah, and I'll just add to that, Nate, that the rules. of golf inherently are there to help the player as opposed to penalize the player. This isn't

like some sort of gotcha thing like, hey, your ball's embedded. If you do something wrong, you can get a penalty. It's, hey, your ball's embedded. So if it is indeed halfway underground, you're entitled to help yourself to a free drop. And if you use the game, the game's rules to your advantage, you're going to be better off for it. This is not, it's going to help you. as a golfer more so than hurt you in the long run. You just, what you're saying is you've got to use golf facts. Sobel,

that's what you're saying. Use golf facts. What a great name for a Twitter account, huh? Let's do that before we get to taking on the Waste Management Phoenix Open. So one of perhaps, maybe the very best outcome of all of this.

I mean, there were many, many great outcomes and wonderful content across the board. But there has been, a Long Harbored suspicion that the Twitter account it's at use golf facts

it was founded in December 2019 and it has a particular point of view as it relates to Patrick Reed. It's a very supportive Twitter account for Patrick Reed and his standing in the game and that Twitter account

takes issue with a lot of people across the golf spectrum. People and institutions where Patrick Reed doesn't seem to be getting the kind of fair shake that the author of this Twitter account seems Patrick is entitled to. This Twitter account simultaneously, it seems unintentionally, tweeted something that in all caps that was repeated on Patrick Reed's own Twitter account. It all caps. In exactly the same time, maybe within minutes, of each other, these posts about Rory Macaroy's

embedded ball situation being identical to what Patrick himself encountered. Now, she was right. Within a little, within a short while, the allegation about Rory, it remained on Patrick's

account, but came down from used golf facts. And so I don't think there's any conclusion for any of us to reach, but that the author of that tweet and the person that handles both of those accounts is none other than Justine Reed. Yeah, it was the other way around. I think it came down from Patrick's and it stayed on used golf facts because it was whoever runs the account responded with that those words about

Rory to like 25 different golf journalists who were who were sort of slamming on Patrick. The moral of the story here, guys, is don't let your wife have your password to your Twitter account. Listen, I think it would be great. My problem with it, she's got some hot takes. My problem with it is the feces that are being thrown around Ryder Cup teammates about Ryder Cup teammates and other golfers. That feels pretty dang aggressive and not in the spirit of the game.

It also feels like this is a burner account that is like not such a secret burner account anymore. Like, I feel like whoever's running this burner account is starting. of throw their hands up and go, you know what? I don't know. You got me and I don't really care. And I'm going to keep tweeting from here. Yeah. That's fine. All the above.

When are we going to see like Webb Simpson's wife's burner account? Where she's just complaining about all the kids that she's got to deal with while he goes off and plays golf? She doesn't need a burner for that. She could just say it. Nobody would take issue with that. Adam Scott's wife's account tweeting ugly pictures of him around the house. Whatever. I love it.

Well, let's talk some golf. We have coming up this week, the Waste Management Phoenix Open in Scottsdale, and we have a pretty great field. Maybe it's a surprise, maybe it's not a surprise, but Rory for the first time ever at this field, in this field, a bunch of guys coming directly from Tori.

We will be missing some guys who have played this event in the past because it does directly conflict with the Saudi Arabia money grab event where a handful of players, the most prominent players in the game are going to fly across the world and collect checks and play in the middle of the night. None of us care. But, you know, we should all be so lucky, I guess. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but, you know, good on them, I guess. I mean, we've talked about it on the pod before.

It's DJ is going over, Bryson's going over, Fianowenow's going over, a couple of Patrick Reed is going over. Do you think there's a line of demarcation here between people who might be interested in the PGL and those who are going to be loyal to the tour? Part of PGL is we're going to pay you more money. We might, you know,

one of the knocks on the PGL was that it was funded by Saudi money, right? And there were some people who came out, including Rory, and said, I'm going to defend and I'm going to stay with the tour. and then there were people who seemed to be more open to the idea of of PGL. Does the choice to play this event versus go do the money grab, tell us a little bit about who might be open to the money grab if the PGL continued to hover over, you know, like a ghost?

I like it. What do you think, Sable? Yeah, perhaps a little bit. I thought the PGL was sort of dead in the water right now. I will say that the one thing I could never get past when it came to this is that the PGA tour and the European tour basically own the official world golf ranking. They sort of, they sanction it for whatever, if that's the right wording for it. But they basically preside over the official world golf ranking.

And so if the PGL became an official tour and they wanted to get world ranking points, well, the PGA tour and European tour can basically say, nah, we're good. And so what would happen is all of these players who want to take the money and take the Saudi money and go play on the PGL, well, they wouldn't get any world ranking points for doing so. If you don't get any world ranking points, you're not going to get into the biggest tournaments of the year. You're not going to get into the Masters

and the other three major championships. And if you don't get into those, what are you even doing? Why are you playing professional golf? And so to me, just that little domino effect right there as to, you know, could they even become a sanctioned tour? And if they can't, because literally their competition would have to sanction them.

And I don't see that. happening, then how would they ever get guys to commit to their tour, their circuit without ever being able to play in a major championship or a world golf event or anything else like that? Well, the good news is this week in Phoenix, the strength of field is enough that even with those guys going over to Saudi, this is a super strong field where people who win this tournament are going to get a bunch of world ranking points. And from a money perspective, I assume this is still going to be an incredibly lucrative event, even without 250 plus thousand people a day, because at least we're going to have 5,000 people house. And I am so excited to finally hear

some screams and roars from drunk people watching golf in person. So are you, Nate, one of the 5,000 that's going to be there any of the days? I think there is a decent chance I'm going to be one of the 5,000. I expect, and Sobel, you may know a little bit more about this, but I expect there's going to be another 3,000 corporate types around there for a total of something like 8,000. But I think so. I do know that the 16th hole, which usually has, I've lost track over the years, 21, 22,000 seats around it as far as bleachers and everything. I've hung out there for the past, you know, largely for, you know, probably 12 of the last 15 years I've been at this event and spent a lot of that time at the 16th hole itself. But they are not going to be part of the general

admission tickets. So if you want a ticket to 16, you basically have to pay up. It's more than a general admission ticket, but you have a specific ticket for the 16th hole as opposed to, hey, I got in there at 6 o'clock in the morning. I ran through the front gates. I went to 16. I got my seat.

That's not the way it's going to work this year. Well, they have to do it that way, right, to ensure the distancing that's required. Yeah, and to make sure that they, those things are basically, we call it a stadium, but it's basically a giant bar with seats. and so the food and beverage component in the age of a pandemic is going to be the part that is the most interesting to see how they handle.

I do think here, I think the tour has made really good decisions about how to first shut down and then bring back the sport, how to keep, you know, how to handle cases as they come up. I think they've just been thoughtful about it. And so I actually give the tour the benefit of the doubt here that they've done a lot of thinking about how to open back up and bring. bring in fans in a safe way, it matters to bringing back fans overall. Because if we can, you know, we said this last week, if we can do it in Phoenix, we can do it anywhere. So this is actually a sneaky, important week for sports, getting back to the sort of energy that we're used to. One of the things that's, we won't know the answer to for some time after the tournament is completed is whether there is any public health impact.

Arizona is a hot spot right now. And, you know, has been kind of in the crosshairs for a few weeks of the resurgence of the virus. So I am going to be particularly interested in seeing how they at this venue have folks spread out in a way to minimize the impacts. I mean, we have all been lucky enough to play golf with friends in our relative locales. and we know how to be distant, you know, among, you know, dozens of people, but this is, you know, thousands of people on a golf course. So it'll be interesting to see. And Sobel, you've seen it.

You walk in, you come into the tea. And there, if you're a player, between you and the green on the left side, there's a stable of 3,000 donkeys who are drunk as hell. They've done Google research on, like, your nanny's boyfriend's name, and they're screaming it as loud as they can. Like there's just a ton of great fun heckling that goes on. They're crowded in there like it's Coachella. You know,

the guys will run through and high five that crew. They'll throw souvenirs into the crowd. And sometimes people get in there and crowd surf themselves. I don't think we're going to have any of that this year. So it will be a markedly subdued 16th, I would imagine. I can tell you that my buddies, brothers, Dave and Mike Leonard, they're the guys that do Leonard's list. They make a laminated list.

You have to laminate it because you can get beer all over this list. but they literally have facts about every single player in the field. Right. And they give them out to everybody in the section, right where you walk in, just left of there. They're the guys in the Vikings and the Arizona State jerseys. They're there every year. They've been there for 23 and 22 years, respectively.

The two brothers got a text from Dave the other night. They will not be there on site this year for the first time in over two decades. Wow. He's like, it's just not worth it. He's like, it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be the same. We're not going. Well, there'll be some drunk idiot who tries to pick.

up the mantle and fails miserably. But look, I'm just excited to see it. Where are all the coeds and high heels who are a little tipsy and try to walk around a golf course going to go? Well, that's, they're going to have to wait a year. Yeah. That's all. And we will wait a year to see them as well.

Let's talk about the great field at this event. And let's get some of your thoughts. So, well, since you've already put in the time and the hard work on this, John Rom, who just played at Tori, another top 10 finish, Justin Thomas, which is great. Zander, off of his very best finish ever at Torrey Pines. Rory, who we talked about in defending champion Webb Simpson, all at the waste management here.

You have an early sense, Jason Sobel. You have an early kind of preference for Rory McElroy. I'm kind of interested in hearing the thesis. So it's a little two-pronged here. So first of all is the fact that TBC Scottsdale is a place where you have to drive it well. And if you drive it well, you can have success. And if you don't, you're basically not going to be a part of the leaderboard. And Lori McElroy for all his struggles over the past year,

struggles to win at least, maybe not struggles necessarily with the full part of his game. But he drives it as good, if not better than anybody in the world. And he has for a long time now. And so you look at the driving numbers. He's second on the PGA tour this season and strokes gained off the tea. He was second last week at Torrey Pines and strokes gained off the tea. And so I think a change of scenery, you mentioned earlier, House, that this is the first time he's playing this event.

I think just a change of scenery, sort of recharge the batteries, get him a little refreshed to see a different golf course to be able to think his way around it. And I love the number. The other part about this is he opened it 12 to 1. He's down to plus 1150. Last time I checked as we're recording this now on Monday evening. But the fact that he is nearly double the number of John Rom,

who's the tournament favorite, Justin Thomas was just a little bit higher than Ram. Zander Schauffley, in fact, has lower odds than Rory McElroy. And so I just think it's a good number for Rory. And at some point, the guy's going to win something. It's been 15 months. the WGC, HSBC champions in China was the last event he won November of 19. At some point, Rory's too good to keep screwing up on Sundays.

Well, Nate mentioned the screwing up on Sundays. Nate, what are we to make of that back nine at Tori? I mean, Rory really put himself in legit contention on a front nine 33. I think he shot. He was either two under or three under on the front. His name was among the top. five names when, and by the way, kudos to CBS with the bug, the leaderboard bug in the lower right, outstanding. And they were flipping, you know, they were, they were keeping it up to date.

It was updating instantaneously. And they were flipping, you know, the page so you could see 10 to 12 names. Great, great job by CBS with the introduction of that info. But Nate, Rory really let us down on the back nine on a Sunday. What's going on? It's what he'd done the week before. on the European tour event as well. It's what he has struggled with is putting four rounds together. Let me say why I love Sobel's pick here. And that is because the back nine in Phoenix

is fun as hell. And 15 is a absolutely reachable par five. 16's the crazy par three. 17 is a drivable par four. And 18, you got to hit a great T shot, but it also gives you a birdie chance. So guys can come in somewhere between four and maybe even five under just coming through those last four holes.

So it's going to give Rory with his driver an ability to totally differentiate himself with three good drives and a good T shot on a par three coming in to maybe reverse this trend that we've seen. Sobel, I want to ask you about another player. We talked about him last week on this show, Fairway Roll, and we talked about a handful of guys we were trying to forecast what kind of season they might have in store. And Nate made the astute observation that we had to wait until this week for the Ricky referendum. The state of game for Ricky Fowler, where is he and what is he capable of in 2021?

Because 2020 was a lost year for Ricky, and Ricky his own self said so. Is there any reason to think that there is a performance lurking? in Ricky Fowler that's going to remind us of the caliber of player that he once was. Not this week, but I do think that he is gradually progressing. The numbers have been pretty good. He's made a couple of cuts now. And so I look at Ricky and I say, you know, would I put my money on him this week, whether it's outright, whether it's top 10, even a top 20 type of prop?

No, I'm not doing that. I don't think he's ready for it, even though he's won on this golf course before and played it really well. Now, if I look at down the road where I'm trying to find, value in, say, a PGA championship or an open championship as far as a futures bet. Yeah, I think that it's well within reason that three to four months from now, Ricky's game could be back to where he wants it to be. And he could be one of the games, if not best players, at least better players. He could be a top 10, top 15 type of player within not too long.

I just don't think it's going to come in the very short term. But over the, if not long haul, sort of medium haul. I do think that Ricky's got, he should have some reasons for optimism. I am cautiously optimistic about his game moving forward. You know, it's not as if he's shooting 80s out there. It's not as if he's gone through a huge slump. Didn't have a good year last year, as you mentioned. But I still think that he can come back pretty quickly from everything he's sort of gone through, put himself through, whatever it might be.

Yeah. Nate, give us a couple of names that you like this week, other than Rory. Yeah, look, I love Max Homa this week. He was T6 here last year, and he has been in really good form. He had a real chance to win at the MX in Palm Springs. And he topped 20 this past week at Tori. He's not been at his best on Sundays. And he wasn't last year. But I think Max is bringing his game into form. So I'm excited about that. And look, I just, Zander was T-16 last year, but he was plus three in the final round. And it was a colder, windy day. It was a tougher weather day. But, you know, he was in contention to win that. And coming off at T2 last week, I think that's why his odds are so high.

He looks really good this week. Yeah, I'm on a new guy, a little bit out of left field. So, well, I'm joining your, your homie, Chris Murphy, your colleague, Chris Murphy. I really love Will's Allotaurus this week. I just think, you know, we are rapidly approaching this moment where he's going to burst on the scene. He's on the scene because all he's doing is collecting top tens every week. I got a lot of funny texts from people who saw him on the Sunday broadcast and are like, does that guy dye his hair?

Why does he look like, you know, this beautiful surfer specimen? And I don't have a good answer for that, but I do know that he is one badass golfer. And the heater that he is on right now, I think this would be a good venue and opportunity slash moment for him to kind of burst on the scene on Super Bowl Sunday and show the entire world. This is me sort of making a narrative pick,

although there's plenty of analytics. You can check out Chris Murphy's column on Golf Base. at the Action Network and see the underlying analytics that support Zalotaurus. But I'm on WZ this week. Okay, so a few things. First of all, you can also check out my preview in which I have him for a top five this week. So I like him as well. If you look back, he's played seven PGA tour sanctioned events since the beginning of September.

He's been eighth or better in four of them. That's remarkable. I mean, the kid has just burst onto the scene and not shying away from anything. I will also say that he's one of six players who finished 32nd or better last week. So is in form, is playing well. And is also top 30 in strokes gained off the tee this season, which, as I identified before, and Nate backed me up on this, is very important this week. And so you look at Zalotaurus and then you start going down the list.

And it is List, Luke List. Henryick Norlander, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns, Sunjay-M, all guys who drive it really, really well, and played really well last year. Last week, I just think it's like, it's almost like one of those neon signs glaring at us like, hey, here's the guys, they're right here for the take. And whether it's top fives, top tens, top 20s,

they're right there for us. I walked with Wyndham Clark last year on his opening around 62, and he was money. This course, he's a good potter, and like you said, he drives the ball well. This course sets up well for him. There's two guys who we haven't talked about. You know, we did talk about Fowler. This is sometimes a litmus test for his game and how courses can sometimes shock guys into, you know,

getting their game in order, maybe even faster than we thought. I think that happened to Patrick Reed last week, to be honest with you. He missed the cut at Amex and he didn't even hit the ball that great as you laid out. But I'm also really excited to see two guys. One is Gary Woodland, who, you know, House, you picked him last week, probably the only pick that you made last week that didn't play out. But this is a special place for Gary Woodland. His friendship with Amy Bockerstead is worth seeing if you haven't seen the video.

This place really matters. People love Gary Woodland here. He's just a rock star at this event. So it'll be interesting to see if he can jumpstart his game here. And then the other one is there's a guy who has four major. in his trophy case and has a streak of three missed cuts going, which he's almost never done in his career. And that's Brooks Kepka.

And so I am really waiting to see whether Brooks, who has now just not shown up these last couple events, can find a way to get it together with a few fans in the crowd this week. I like it. For the driver of the golf ball point, we've seen it from him before. We haven't seen it so far this season. I do want to very quickly defend.

Gary Woodland was on the leaderboard on the, Thursday, he just fell off over the course of the tournament. He made the cut and he talked about, you know, how he put his hip injury from last fall in the rearview mirror. But I really like my James Hahn

pick. I liked him last week. I did too. I don't know what happened. Who, Han or Woodland? Both of them actually. Yeah, sure. I was on both of those guys. Here's a deal, guys. You do enough shows. You want to picking everybody in the field so you just say, yeah, I was on them.

That's what I found all the touts do in this business. I hate that word tout. But all the touts do is just you do 18 different podcasts in a week and you wind up mention everybody. And then after some guy wins, you go, say, yeah, I told you if you would have listened to the Tuesday show at 3.37 p.m. I told you about him. The Ryan Seacrest of golf.

These are the kinds of problems that you have. Well, this is why I gave him such compliments at the outset of the show because he put his picks in writing. He's got, now, it is more names than you can fit into a fantasy lineup or anything else. But look, if you, we all know that the correct way to play golf gambling and golf wagering is to, you know, spread it out, sprinkle. Because you can't grab any one guy on any venue and expect any kind of particular return unless it's Tiger at the Masters or Burnhard Langer at the Masters. That's the only one I always ever feel comfortable enough with. But I'm also on another name who had an outstanding,

and I love the way that you wrote it up, Sobel, Sunday. And by outstanding, I mean, he was all over the place. It was very enjoyable, Sun J.M. The Sunday performance, another guy who showed up on the leaderboard, he was either four under or five under on the front. Five under, yeah. Five under. And then made the turn and came up with two doubles and three bogeys.

and ended up wherever he ended up for a one over round after starting off absolutely incandescent on fire. But that's a guy who for sure fits your parameter of being capable of driving the ball with accuracy and length, right, Jase? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, Sung Jay on any given week, I'm still trying to figure out exactly when and where he's going to play his best golf. He's tough to figure out because he plays every single week.

Yeah. And so he just goes out. out there and just, you know, I don't know, one week he might be a little tired, doesn't play great. The next week he goes out there and, hey, it's just, he's feeling it again. So I'm still not quite sure I can find a rhyme or reason. I've not gotten into a good rhythm with picking Sung J.M., but all things considered, again, a really good driving course. He's a really good driver.

It should match up pretty well. And he's played well here in the past. He was seventh, I believe, here two years ago in his debut at this one and 34th last year. So a couple of good starts, and he's gotten a lot better since then. Yeah, Nate, I'm going to give you the last word, one last pick. And then we're just going to thank the golf gods. You have a sleeper for us? My sleeper is health.

Let's not have this be a super spreader event. That's right. Let's have golf wonderfully guide the way to bringing fans back to sports. And I would love it if this week, instead of the snail or the drop, that we actually, the big story is about the golf. Yes. Let's have it be about the golf. And let's all just let Saudi Arabia happen while we're asleep. And, you know, who cares about the outcome of that?

Agree. Real quick. So we'll, because we're not going to talk to you before Sunday. Again, who you have for the Super Bowl? As a longtime New England Patriots fan who watched number 12 play for what, 20 years for my team and rooted for him, I didn't even know until this week he was playing for the bucks. I thought he retired or something.

So I am all in on the chiefs. I have heard, as we're talking right now, there's a couple of COVID cases on the chiefs. And so one of them, DeMarcus Robinson, and I just heard this from my producer. We're out of call just before we started doing a podcast. And so I haven't seen official. But if that is the case,

and if it is indeed spreading to the offensive unit of the chiefs, then I withhold the right to change this pick. but as of right now, I'm going to go with the Chiefs minus three, minus three and a half, whatever it is. Yeah, fair enough. Nate, who do you got? Rams 2020. Stafford all day long. I still trying to figure out who's going to play quarterback

for the Washington football team. We have a long way to go. Hopefully not Jimmy G. I don't know if Jimmy G. Have fun with Kirk Cousins next year. He's not coming back here, no chance. All right, gentlemen. We've covered it.

Thank you, Golf God. for this glorious moment you've bestowed upon us. Jason Sobel, Nate Dogg, Nathan Hubbard, thank you guys very much. Let's keep going with the wonderful 2021 golf season.