Fairway Rollin' - Travelers Championship to Continue Even Though Players and Caddies Have Tested Positive for COVID-19

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Joe House is joined by Nathan Hubbard to discuss the PGA Tour’s current state of affairs after multiple players, including Brooks Koepka, pulled out of the Travelers Championship because several players and caddies have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. We talk about players’ failure to follow proper protocol and how they perceive the virus, and then preview the weekend. Host: Joe House Guest: Nathan Hubbard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Friends and welcome to this golf podcast. Unlike any other, you have done it. We're back. It is another week of Fairway Roll in the Golf Podcast on the Ringer Podcast. Network. I am your starter. Joe House, my birdie buddies. Lots to get into this week.

We continue to try this grand experiment. with professional golf of trying to conduct professional golf tournaments in the face of a pandemic. And we are learning new things as we go along about what works, what doesn't work in terms of safety protocols. We have breaking news in terms of announcements of positive tests. We have available to us, fortunately, our PGA correspondent on the ground, Nathan Hubbard, available to help us make sense out of everything we're seeing, including the breaking news today of Brooks Keppka withdrawing from the tournament in addition to a positive test by Camp champ. Let's get on that first tee with Nathan Hubbard, my pals.

All right, my birdie buddies, we are on the tea with our PGA tour correspondent. The boots on the ground. Nathan Hubbard, what's happening, buddy? House, it doesn't feel good right now. feels complicated. The commission is about to give oppressor. I think he's going to reprimand some people. Maybe not by name, but they know who they are. Well, some people

deserve to be reprimanded. Of course, we are talking about the current state of affairs with the PGA tour and its efforts to test its players and the caddies and all the relevant attendees, support

staff for the Travelers Championship up in Hartford, Connecticut, that area. And, you know, we have some positive tests that have developed over the course of this week. Some COVID-19 tests have dropped in the positive direction. Yeah, unfortunately, that's a negative. You know, the thing about this house that, you know, we're going to hear a little bit more from the commission a second. We'll talk about it on the pod. But I think we know what he's going to say. They have established this bubble that is actually working. Because as far as we can tell, none of the transmissions have happened within the bubble or are golf related in any way. And the problem is that we have some

individuals right now who just aren't taking this seriously. And we got wind of it at Harboretown this weekend when J.T. came out and didn't actually criticize any of the players, but he said, hey, no offense to the people in Harbortown or on Hilton Head, nobody's taken this seriously. And he had a bunch of players who literally sort of slunk backwards and retreated into their houses in their hotel rooms because the beaches and the restaurants were a madhouse full of people. And these guys can only make money that, like, the PGA tour is eat. what you kill only. And so a lot of guys have been thinking about how to protect themselves. But the problem is they're not locked inside the bubble. And we have had some cases now of people who have left

the bubble, some as responsibly as possible. Others were finding out not as responsibly as they could have been who have now re-entered and peed in the pool. Yeah. So let's go through the positive tests and then try and construct the timeline here as best we can. And I do want to ask your, your view on one aspect of what you just shared, which is, as far as we know, the bubble seems to be working. We don't have perfect information about how Nick Watney contracted the virus and why it was that he tested negative on whatever that was Tuesday, and then positive three or four days later. But we think for the most part that his having contracted the disease occurred prior to him arriving and then it didn't show itself. It was in some

kind of incubation mode until he started feeling symptoms and got tested again at the end of the week. Is that basically right? That's right. And part of the mystery and difficulty with all of this is that it's clear the incubation period for this thing is different and different people. And what we had today, late last night, Tuesday night, was Graham McDowell pulling out because his caddy Ken Convoy had tested positive after feeling ill Friday when they missed the cut at Harbor Town. All that came after the news of Cam Champ having tested positive. Cam Champ's, Cam Champ's positive test occurred at the beginning of the week in the context of the TOR's regular way, beginning of week testing, where everybody arrives and goes through a round of testing.

And he was, I think, the only player that tested positive as part of that test protocol, right? Cam did not play Harbortown. Right. So he was required when he came back into the bubble coming from Houston. We don't know whether he flew private or commercial at this point, but he was required to, he didn't take the charter, obviously, because he hadn't been there. So he had left the bubble for Harburtown. He came back into the bubble on Monday and tested positive. Now, we should revisit that because there are some words that have come now from the Players Council and that have come from the tour itself and that we're going to definitely hear from the commissioner in a few minutes. that are sub-tweets. Because while I think you have heard players stand up and defend a lot of Nick Watney's actions last week,

and look, this is complicated. We don't know a lot about it. Watney looked at his whoop band, could tell his respiratory system was working harder and said, geez, I better get a test. And as soon as he found out, he disappeared from the property. But it looks like in some other situations, players broke protocol.

And we can talk about the timeline of some of these tests, but some players have clearly broken protocol. And so now you are starting to see players say, hey, wait a minute. There was a note yesterday that came out from a players council. You've got Johnson Wagner, you got Kisner, you got Spieth, you got Charlie Hoffman, you got James Hahn. Those are the five guys on the executive council of that thing, whatever it is. They sent a note yesterday that said, hey, we hope Nick's doing well. He's got our full support. But guys, we have got to do better. There's too much fist-bumping, handshaking, lax attention to the rules. This is not a joke. And we've got a set of additional asks of the tour that we're making, including, by the way, related to food. They've asked for nightly dinner service. It doesn't appear that the tour has conceded to that just yet. But there's a bunch of guys, as you and I have half joked about over the past couple of weeks,

there's guys who are stuck in these hotel rooms that have no food service, and yet they're not allowed to go out to dinner. So you've either got guys who've been sneaking out, you know, trying to find ways to order food and get it through a packed, you know, hotel lobby or whatever. A bunch of the players are starting to try to start policing themselves. But when you saw Graham McDowell's caddy test positive yesterday and before that, the Cameron Champ incident,

in which it appears some protocol was broken by the player. Yeah. And just to, you know, we can go ahead and share what the report seemed to suggest. He took the test and then rather than sit tight and isolate himself until the results of the test were announced, he went and interfaced with, interacted with people inside the bubble who were already sort of safe and potentially, you know, impacted some folks on the inside, clean inside the bubble without having the known outcome of his own test. That's what's being discussed at this point.

That's the report at this point. And, you know, what's interesting is in basketball right now, even maybe in football, you can see the alpha guys who are telling the players, the rest of the players, here's what we're going to do. and let's get in line. This is where we're missing Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods is sitting at home, and I'm sorry, you know, James Hahn and Charlie Hoffman do not carry the weight of Tiger Woods.

And, you know, he has not come out forcefully at this point and said, guys, we got to get our shit together. And, you know, golf is a sport of privilege house. We know that, right? It can breed an exceptionalism. And what that can sometimes breed is an arrogance, right? too many guys believing that this doesn't apply to them. Hey, I'm a pro golfer. I got here on a private plane. This virus impacts somebody else. And the behavior, as we've talked about, has been a little

loose from some people as a result. The tour protocols are in place. They're solid, but the players have to follow them. And this matters because it isn't just about hitting a white ball around. There are thousands of people who are impacted by this. It's the players. Again, eat what you kill. They're not on contract. A basketball player can get sick. He's still going to make money. This thing gets shut down or a golfer gets locked out for two weeks. He's in trouble. Think about this. Brooks withdrawing from this event. He's now, I think, 140-something in FedEx. He's 148 in FedEx. He misses the FedEx Cup playoffs if he doesn't move up. So, and by the way, he's rolling right now. If he's got to isolate for two weeks, this could cost Brooks Kepka 15,

million dollars. Well, let's talk about sort of the state of play as we know it at this moment. And we're taping Wednesday afternoon just a little bit of a handful of minutes before the commissioner comes on to share the tour's updated stance on what's happening and whatever J. Monahan's going to say about the protocols. So you mentioned Graham McDowell's caddy having tested positive. We also had the news that Brooks Kepka, his caddy was tested positive as well. And as a result, we know for sure that Graham McDowell has withdrawn from the tournament. I don't know whether or not Brooks has formally withdrawn, but it seems like he is inclined to withdraw out of an abundance of caution, right? Yeah. What we know is that Ricky Elliott, who's Brooks's caddy, Ken Comboy, who's Graham McDowell's caddy and Graham McDowell all attended a funeral together in Orlando on June 15th. By Friday, the 19th, after McDowell and

Comboy had missed the cut in South Carolina, Convoy started getting a sore throat, and he lost his sense of smell. And the tour, when he reported that, as he, you know, that was the right thing for him to do, said, come back up from Orlando, back up to Harbor Town and take a test. Comboy found out on Tuesday that he had tested positive. And at that point, McDowell, even though he had tested negative on Monday, withdrew out of an abundance of caution, and said, I'm going to take one more test on Wednesday before I fly home to isolate. It turns out that McDowell has taken that test and test negative, but out of the abundance of caution, he's withdrawn. Now, McDowell, Kepka, Chase Kepka, and Shane Lowry all played a practice round together on Tuesday. And this morning,

when they heard last night that Comboy, you know, McDowell's caddy had tested positive. All of Brooks and that whole crew, including his caddy, took a test. Well, this morning, Ricky Elliott, Brooks's caddy, tested positive. And that's where Brooks is stepping in as a leader on the tour and just doing the right thing and saying, I got to withdraw myself from this environment to keep everybody else safe. Right. Now, we don't know the results of his test,

the test that Brooks took in that interim period? He tested negative on Monday and again today. Today, okay. His coach also tested negative and they had all been hold up in the same house together. Right, right. So if he continues to be negative from now until, you know, the convening, I don't know whether he was imagining going and playing in Detroit. Where's the, yeah, the rocket mortgage is in Detroit.

Yeah, he was in Detroit. Whether that was part of his schedule or not, I imagine that it was for the very reason that you mentioned a couple of minutes. go, which is he's in a mode where he needs to win, I mean, he needs to garner as many points as he can to remain on tour and be eligible for the tour championship. You know, it's a, it's a big financial deal, but it's also really important to the tour that they have somebody like Brooks Kepka, one of the top five players in the world, you know, participating in their event. So at the moment, we think that Brooks is withdrawing from this event.

We know that McDowell's withdrawing. on from this event and we are going to hear what the commission has to say. My question to you is, are we approaching a moment where the tour has to reconsider its path forward? Are we reaching a moment where they have to think about canceling tournaments or postponing tournaments again? I don't think so, not yet. Because the good news in this is that, again, it appears none of this spread. has anything to do with golf. And it has everything to do with personal responsibility. And that's what the tour and the players are doing

by circling the wagons right now. One of the things that you saw in the PGA note that got sent out, at least it's been sent out to the players and agents, I'm pretty sure the commissioner will talk about it now, is some changes that they've made to testing and to some of the protocols. They're tightening it.

a bit. One of the things they're doing is all coaches now have to be tested. The other thing they're going to announce is that players have to be tested both before they take the charter, and that test happens on Saturday of the tournament, but also when they get off on Monday. So more testing for players. There was also a very subtle but important point. The stipend that they've offered to players who test positive, which is something like $100,000. Oh. To help that person through. That's better than the stipend.

A player will not be eligible if he has tested positive for COVID-19 after not following the safety protocols. Oh, okay. And that, I think, was the shot across the bow because they have put out a bunch of these, you may not, you cannot, you shouldn't guidelines, but there's zero disciplinary enforcement. Yeah. And now what they've said is, hey. Other than suspension, right? They always have the right, the authority to suspend a place.

player. Yep, but at this point now, there's a real financial penalty for a player who shows up, breaks protocol, and test positive. I'm interested in one aspect of what you just shared, which is the testing. What do you know about the kind of tests that they're using, how quickly they get feedback from those tests? You know, are they the tests where you can know, get a positive or negative result in 15 minutes, or do they take longer? You know, what do you understand to be the technicals around the testing? So they're using a variety of tests. Most of the testing that's happening you've seen through some of the Instagram stories

of players are those deep brain swaps. Right. The brain, the brain, exactly right, the brain exploration. Which are not a favorite of people, but they know they've got to do them to get through. and those take a couple of hours to return results. Okay. But there are some other tests that clearly are taking days to return, right? You've got Graham McDowell's caddy who took the test on Saturday.

It looks like maybe Sunday at the latest, didn't find out until Tuesday. So you've got some shorter and longer turnaround times that's affecting. When you layer in the variability of the incubation period, of this thing. It's making some of the contact tracing harder to figure out. These guys were at a funeral together. Brooks and Graham's, they were at a funeral together on the 15th. Graham McDowell's caddy traveled to Orlando from Houston on the 13th. And he did not test positive until, he didn't get his positive test result until the 22nd. So that's a long period of time for somebody, who is either asymptomatic and spreading or, you know, symptomatic, obviously, and spreading to come

in contact with people. But that goes right to the heart of the challenge that the tour is confronted with, which is fields of 150 to 160 guys each week with an exact one-to-one ratio of caddy. So you're talking about a group of 300 to 320 folks of actual in the competition. and then, you know, another set of an additional whatever, some number of in the hundreds of volunteers, of tour infrastructure, of production team for the, for the television element,

all of whom also have to be tested for this bubble to work. And the challenge that we're seeing in real time right in front of our eyes is, you know, folks who, live their lives and go off and have contact with other human beings, there's no assurance that you can keep yourself 100% safe. I mean, McDowell's caddy wasn't able to fly from Texas to Orlando with McDowell because McDowell's plane was too full. And so he flew commercially.

That's at least the way this is being reported. and he suspects that his issue arose in connection with that commercial flight. But as we've sort of talked through here, he didn't show symptoms or test positive for an additional eight or nine or ten days. And, you know, in that meantime, he came in contact with a lot of different people. And in that meantime, they were in Hilton Head where. cases are spiking in a state where cases are spiking and where everybody it sounded like in listening to the players, all of the people there were vacationers pretty much pretending that it wasn't happening. You think about the waterfall effects of this now. You've got physios who work with

eight players, 10 players. They don't make a lot of money. But somebody breaks protocol, goes and sees their physio, well, now that physio's got to quarantine for two weeks and loses out on all of the, you know, potential opportunity down the road, you got players then who worked with that physio who go, geez, you know, am I, am I going to test positive now? How long is it going to take me to test positive? Do I have to self-isolate? Do I not? Right. And this has broader implications for all the sports. Golf is like the least clustered sport. It matters how this goes. That's exactly the point. It's why we keep talking about it. This really is the guinea pig. You know, this is the first experiment. And, you know, in many respects,

the challenges for the tour are different from what the other sports are imagining and envisioning much more complicated because of going city to city and guys are coming from different places every week. But in other ways, it's simple. Guys staying in rented houses taking a casual stroll on wide open acres of land and bright sunshine. Like, if we can't avoid spreading the virus that way, we are in big trouble. Right. And look, those of us who have been been wearing sweatpants for three and a half months as sports fans. We need this to work. Yes. We need it to work. That's right. Yeah. Well, I think we'll hear what comes of Tim Monaghan's, Jay Monaghan. Tim Monaghan's an old high school pal of mine. Jay Monaghan's presser. But in

the meantime, we had a tournament last week. It was a pretty great tournament. We had a great winter. We had a great broadcast. We had scintillating golf and we had a golf tournament where your brother was the leader, the co-leader on Thursday. Let's start with that. How did he sleep Thursday going into Friday? Mark Hubbard co-led the RBC Heritage in Harboretown, South Carolina, alongside Ian Poulter. You know, how's Marky doing? How do you enjoy that? Well, he enjoyed. He enjoyed, because he putted his face off. And, you know, he sleeps well. It's, it's only Thursday at that point. Yeah. But I can tell you that as the news started to trickle out that Nick Watney had tested positive, he started to wonder if the golf gods were going to cancel a tournament on him right, right when he was,

right when he was playing well. Look, I think, you know, we didn't actually talk. We texted a tiny little bit on Thursday night, but we didn't even talk on Friday as everything was breaking because I just was going to let him do his thing. Right. But, you know, his putting stats on Thursday were so good that, you know, you felt like at some point he was going to have to strike the ball just a little bit better to come back down to Earth. And, and, you know, the guy who eventually went on to win is the guy who really put the best of the whole week. And that was Webb. I mean, his ball striking was great. he gave himself a bunch of looks. But when those greens got really slow later in the day, which they did, you know,

it was Webb from a putting perspective who really brought it through. And I think in Mark's case, you know, we also had a weather delay on Friday. And he was coincidentally the last guy out. And so he got back at the restart on 14 at about 745. Oh, man. And so he played those last five holes in pretty much complete dark. And that didn't help. And that's just the luck of the draw. It's how it goes. You got to play four great rounds of golf. I think he feels really, really, really good about his game right now. Listen this week, he's on a course that he loves. And it's firing on all cylinders. But at some point, you go to bed with the lead. And by the time you wake up, somebody's six strokes ahead of you. It tells you a little bit about the course that was being played. and the quality of play. And this is one of the things I wanted to make sure we touched on.

I think we are being treated to extraordinary golf, which is, it feels like it's coming together through a couple different factors. One is obviously the talent of the fields, the depth of the fields is kind of unprecedented for these events and for these venues because of the pent-up interest in the world's best players of getting back out there and playing, but we're also seeing some interesting things, both the colonial in Fort Worth, Texas, and the RBC Heritage event were competed at times of year that are outside when they're normally competed.

So the course conditions are kind of different. And, you know, the guys are just going out there in the absence of fans and the absence of grandstands in these relatively quite. at tournaments and shooting lights out, just taking it low. I mean, especially the back nine this past Sunday at Harvard. There were six guys that could legitimately had a chance at winning the golf tournament. I mean, what do you do if you're a mancer? You hit 18 of 18 greens. You shoot a 65 and you still lose.

You know, just tip your hat, right? You just got to tip your hat. I mean, look, the truth about these, the last two events. you know, something to look forward for this week, to be honest, is the last two courses were played at the wrong time of year. And what's great about Harboretown, you know, this has been talked about ad nauseum, but it's worth saying because it brings up the longer debate about players' length and how we should be adapting courses. The last two courses were not for long hitters, as we know, but the wind at Harbottown is the thing. That's the defense. The wind was absolutely

down. And the greens were absolutely receptive and soft. And so it just changed what the course is about. If you put the ball in the fair way, you had a wedge in when we saw a lot of guys just hitting wedges. And so it became a putting contest. And again, Webb Simpson was draining 10 to 20 footers like they were going out of style. Mark did that on Thursday. He had the lead. Webb did it the most from there and he won the golf tournament. Do you think there's any reason that that same pattern is not likely to repeat itself this week? Aren't we in the exact same mode this week? Well, this week it's a little bit different. I mean, it is another course that is not for bombers.

But there's a lot more thinking to do on this course. They couldn't be two more opposite courses. Like there's long, wispy grass. everything is tight and firm. There's tons of runoffs. There's much, much, much more penalizing rough. The green complexes are big. And the greens are a heck of a lot faster than they've been the last two weeks. Now, that's not necessarily saying much, but this is going to be a very different course. I mean, I think it sounds like 15 under is going to be a really good score for this week. That looks like it's something that's going to win this week. And this is the moment in time when the course is at its very

best as opposed to what we've seen the last two weeks. So that's the point, you know, I wanted to make sure we covered. They are playing this event in exactly the schedule-wise when it falls every year. I mean, this is exactly when this event is competed every year. And it is secretly one of the top five to ten favorite courses of a lot of these guys on tour, not just the tournament, because the tournament does such a good job of catering to the players and the fans are so receptive. And, you know, we had that, it's the scene of the crime with Jordan's, you know, trap shot. But, but, but it, it really is a tournament that these guys look forward to playing because of the course. And so you can just hear, uh, underneath all the noise about COVID, you can hear players who are really happy to be

on a course that's, that's showing its best self. And, and interestingly, also a Pete die design, right? We're going from a Pete die design to another Pete die design. Um, and so there are these corollaries guys who for whatever reason succeed in Pete Dye design venues. Also some, it's worth noting, we're going from Bermuda grass greens to Poa up here in Connecticut. And for what, you know, a lot of guys have different experiences. Some guys are Bermuda guys and some guys are Poa guys. Now, let's let's not get it wrong. You still have Bryson trying to figure out if he can get 200 mile on our ball speed to fly at 370 on the 17th hole. But so we're still going to see some of the loopiness.

And maybe it's fun. Maybe it's not that that's entering in to the tour right now as these guys are changing their bodies. But it's going to be a little bit more of a different test and a little bit more difficult, I think, of a test than we've seen these first two weeks back. Oh, interesting. Okay.

I honestly was expecting scores. at least comparable to colonial, if not pushing up towards what we saw last week with the, you know, around 20, I mean, Web 1 at 22 under. An answer had a birdie putt to tie him on 18. Well, let's see. This is not going to be a U.S. Open course. That's for sure. But I think 15 under looks like a really good score this week. Okay.

That works for me. How much of last week's broadcast were you able to catch? I saw a lot of it. It was Father's Day Sunday. I really felt like we got an extra Father's Day present. Happy Father's Day to you, by the way. Thank you. Same to you.

Sunday, because there was, you mentioned the weather delay on Friday, also weather delay Sunday afternoon. And so the CBS broadcast moved from the network channel over to the golf channel. And CBS used up all of its ad inventory during the network broadcast. And so when they came back and the majority of the broadcast was on the golf channel, we got uninterrupted, unvarnished, just pure golf television for about an hour and some change with, you know, Nance and Faldo and, you know, the CBS team, you know, just enjoying the outstanding golf. It was blissful.

Blissful. That's the word I like. And just sitting out and letting us listen to people play golf and the players talk to each other, the players talk to their caddy. I mean, on PGA Live, that we were treated to Bubba Watson playing with West Bryan. They were completely out of it. They were at the bottom of the standings post-cut. but they had a shit-talking fest for 18 holes. And it was so fun to watch. You heard, you know, the day before that, you heard Bubba in a trap with a live crab climb under his ball, call for a rules official because he didn't want to have to kill the crab with his bunker shot on national television.

and his statement was, we got enough problems right now with the Corona stuff. We don't need crab problems. To which his playing partner, the number one player in the world, Roy McElroy, said, I don't think those are the kinds of crab problems

most people are worried about. And we got it on national television. It was extraordinary. And by the way, I don't know if it's deliberate or not. Bubba's not afraid of being on camera, but he also has a little bit of an instinct for some comedy timing. He's been pretty good. Bubba. He's been great. And, you know,

the tour seems to be figuring it out. Guess who's paired together in Hartford this week? Bubba Watson and West Bryant. So that's terrific. I think, you know, God loves social media because it seems to really be helping move this broadcast forward. And you always have to filter out the signal from the noise. And there's a whole, lot of hate, as we all know, on social media. But there's enough truth that's been communicated that it sounds like CBS, and to a lesser extent, the tour has absorbed, that we're starting to get some of this fun stuff. And whether it was Ryan Palmer and Webb Simpson, you know, bitching about Carlos Ortiz's caddy for getting to rake the bunker on 18, as guys are still

coming up the fairway, or some of that back and forth with Bubb and others, you really just get more of a sense for how mentally difficult and interesting the game is. If you're not careful and you talk over it and you put up a bunch of graphics, it just looks like guys whack in a white ball around a field. But when you really bring in what golf is, which is all in between the ears, and allow the players' processes to be broadcast on television, it becomes a hell of a fun thing to watch. Well, that's it. It's like the rhythm of, you know, how the guys go from shot to shot, the conversations they have with their caddies, their own internal mental process. We talked about it last week with Jordan Speath when we got to see him with his caddy in Texas. But just

watching all of the guys, we're getting this rare insight because of the rare opportunity with no fans, how quiet the venue is. And the network's own recognition that there is interest. in seeing this, you know, this coordination occur and hearing the process and letting us in on, you know, how these competitors go about competing. That's genuinely interesting. And also we're getting personality out of the guys because of it, including, you know, like just rare, unexpected moments like Bubba, a hermit crab crawling up to Bubba Watson's ball in the bunker. like the guys walking off of the green on 18 Ryan Palmer and Webb Simpson in their caddies on Sunday and noticing that the there is an unraked bunker on 18 like giant you know that the the caddy had had seems to have forgotten that one of the previous competitors they thought it was Carlos Ortiz's caddy perhaps responsible for you know leaving the the bunker untended but like that that kind of

of in so we don't get that in in a normal kind of a golf broadcast so we to me as a golf nerd I feel like it's a real um treat and I just wanted to sort of keep going this way like I don't miss golf fans not be you know not being present in any way shape or form house I've got great news for you let's hear it the show goes on the commissioner has uh taken the podium and is basically just updating uh the world on the additional health and safety protocols that they're going to take to keep this thing moving. So Brooks is out, but the tour has made some changes. They're tightening the bubble a little bit more.

They're going to make coaches test. They're bringing a fitness trailer on site. You know, they do have that monetary punishment in the form of taking away your stipend if you don't follow protocol. And they're really now pushing on everyone players, but also all of the players' teams to really step up and do their part to keep this thing going. So golf is still here. Amen. Now, interestingly, we had Webb Simpson as a potential guest here on Fairway Rowling this week, but Webb out of his own sort of abundance of caution withdrew from the event.

And so there's not going to be any opportunity to sit down with him. We've got a commitment out of him that we will talk at some time in the future. And honestly, I'm hoping to get him with his caddy Paul Tesori because they've been a hell of a team and the run, the heater that Webb is on right now is a shared. It's a team kind of heater, it feels like, to me. But, you know, the news that the event will go on feels like the right news to me. What do you think? I agree.

As we talked about, this is bigger than just golf, right? This is the example of whether U.S. professional sports anyway can continue on through the summer into the fall because if you can't do it again with a bunch of guys in houses walking apart from each other on a grass field how the hell are we going to do football well i think that's the right note um for this week who do you like well i really like brooks god damn it there's a lot to like here's what i think i mean i i i think it's time for bryson to put up or or not shut up because he's interesting to watch, but it's becoming a little bit of a circus at this point. And it's a show he's playing so well. Yes, he's driving the ball a million miles. But last week, he was top 10 in

ball striking two. It's just been the putter. And he's been close. In all of these tournaments, we've seen him back. He was close before the break. It's time for Bryson to win and to put it all together. I think his attitude is great, which is I'm just thinking every day about how I get better. He's in front of the microphone a lot. The players are hearing a lot of questions about his beef. I mean, he looks like a human peep at this point, like the Easter candy. He's so fluffy and big. But it's time to go win a golf tournament. And he's now got two of his potential contenders who've pulled out, Daniel Berger pulled out for non-COVID related reasons on Sunday because he's been kicking ass and doesn't need it. It's time for Bryson to step up and do it. He's hit 80%

of his greens the last two weeks. It's just a putting. It's going to be really hard to go against him. I mean, he hasn't finished worse than eighth in any event since the first week of February. He likes this venue in his past eight rounds there. He only has one round at 70 or worse, and he shot a 70. There's a 64 mixed in there along with some 66s. You know, at an absolute bare minimum, putting a little bit on Bryson to top 10 feels like a good likely return on investment. And just the way the season's kind of been going, I also agree that it is kind of a moment of accountability for Bryson. I mean, golf is impossible.

So picking the winner of a tournament, you know, Rory McElroy is playing in this golf tournament. John Rom is playing in this golf tournament. Justin Thomas is playing this golf tournament. Dustin Johnson is playing in this golf tournament. All those guys can win this golf tournament. right they could all show up and kick ass they there these are guys with long track records of kicking ass at golf so uh but but you know i'm right there with you i expect to see bryson one two

or three to be honest with you yeah i think if you're looking for a little bit of value you're not going to get a lot of value with walking neman after his play last week but he was fifth last year in this tournament and obviously played well last week there's two guys further down who i'm in interested in. Vaughn Taylor was fourth last year at this tournament, and he had some, he played some great golf at Harboretown. So did Wyndham Clark, who was 15th last year, but, but he has an ability to go low. His short game is out of control right now. I saw him up close in Phoenix, uh, shoot the low round for the week there. He's putting and chipping, uh, incredibly well right now. So I like it. Those are guys who I think if you're looking for value, you can go after.

And, you know, I never tell anybody to bet my brother. But when we were talking about all this earlier today, his quote to me was, I was on autopilot stripe show out there. So if this tourney gets effed up, I'm going to be pissed. Nathan, I have a longstanding practice of not betting on your brother because I just can't be responsible for, you know, any, any particular outcome, but maybe you're talking me into it this week. I just, just don't blame me if things go sideways. That's the only thing I ask. I never recommend it. On that note, we'll see what the week brings us, brother. It's been a pretty

wild ride two weeks in. Thanks for coming on. We shall reconvene in about a week. Golf continues, house. Golf continues. Okay, my Eagle enthusiasts, there we have it. Another complicated and interesting week on the PGA tour, rooting for the very best outcomes

at the Traveler's Championship, which means outstanding golf and hopefully no additional positive COVID tests. We are coming back next week here on Fairway roll in should have some potential player guests coming on. Our PGA tour correspondent Nathan Hubbard will be on and we're getting our man Harry Guyon from Against All Odds and Odd Shark ready for his resumed season debut.

Until then, my part saving pals, let's hit him straight out there.