Fore Play - PGA Tour & LIV Golf Merge — Emergency Pod

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Monumental announcement — “the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) today announced a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf, on a global basis.” We instantly react to it all, and speculate about the future of golf.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. I've got a buddy who struggles with that shot. A lot of his name's Frankie Barrelli. So the guys actually gave him a nickname of Butter Knives because he always knifes it across the green. Bro, 100. Now you've got to break 90. We appreciate what you guys do for golf.

It's been really cool. Thank you. You're making it cool. We appreciate it. I was like, hey, Phil, you only? fucking 2999. And he grabs 100. He's like, yeah, I won 90,000 of these yesterday.

He goes, take 100 and go fuck yourself. What? What are you going to be? It's a hobby. All right, four play, emergency podcast. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. I don't know that I have many days in my life that I can remember where every single

group text that I'm on pops off at the exact same time. I especially cannot remember a single time where all of those group texts pop off because of golf. golf doesn't do this. This is probably the most surprising news that I've seen since maybe Kobe died, just in terms of like shocking news, not maybe necessarily the biggest thing in the world, but in our world and for just how shocking, stunning, unexpected it was, how often we talk about this, how much the live golf versus PGA tours become the centerpiece of what we talk about

in this show. We talk about on the sports world, Brooks Kebka winning the most recent major championship. Who's going to go? who isn't Rory Monaghan, Norman, Tiger Woods taking a stance, all that over the last year and a half. And then bang, out of the fucking cloud. CNBC of all people tweets out today, breaking, all caps, PGA tour agrees to merge with Saudi-backed rival live golf.

Nobody had it in the golf world. CNBC clearly had it. NBC is an enormous partner of the PGA tour. So I imagine that's the connection there. we just watch these guys, the PIF guy, Yassir on CNBC with Monaghan, a stunning visual. It's me and Frankie right now. Dan's driving. He's going to try to hop on.

Trent Ryan's on a plane. We're going to try to get him on if we can. But we've got to get something up, obviously. Holy fuck, Frankie. Dude, this, I got a text. I'm like laying in bed, just kind of rolling over, getting ready for the day. We got a big day of filming today. Got in really late last night from the Barstow Classic.

So I'm super groggy. My one buddy, Andrew, texts me. he goes, live merges with PGA Tor. And I was like, I immediately go to Twitter, nothing on Twitter. Zero, literally zero. Dan Rappaport, Dylan DeCere, Brandl Schambly, all these guys. I looked up no laying up. Every single person, four play, everything.

Nothing. Zero. So I wrote back to him, nope. Like, it's just one of my buddies that's working in finance that's like looking up the TV probably. He's like, dude, it's on CNBC. I'm like, you're wrong. They're probably just like debating it. Literally arguing with him.

He goes, dude, turn on CNBC. see now. So I turn it on and they're like, we have breaking news. Monaghan and Yassir is coming on here. And where they're going to talk about like the Saudis own the PGA tour now. I was like, what's what is fucking going on? So craziest day in PGA tour history. The interview just now with the, with the Saudi funding and Monaghan sitting next to each other. I mean, my biggest is instant takeaway this happened what 25 minutes ago my biggest instant takeaway is how the fuck is monahan still involved in this how can you say what you said and and be the be the chief police of the morality of of the saudi government the saudi and everything that happened you bring in the nine 11 families

you do all of that stuff and your first instant reaction to live and all of a sudden you're sitting next to him how can anyone take that that guy seriously i mean that is the big it's backpedaling. I'll take the money. I'll do whatever I have to do just to get this out of my way, kind of move I've ever seen in my entire life. Holy shit. Yep. Yep.

So the Mahan situation, and I think that if you go back, everyone is sort of believed that at some juncture, the two of these leagues will come together. It's unsustainable for them to just be at odds with each other forever, for half of the golfers at the top of the game to be playing in one league and half and the other. And maybe it's not that skewed.

But if you look at Brooks and he's probably the most dominant major player of the last five, six years, he's there. Cam Smith won the open three majors ago. He's there. DJ is at the top of the game of golf. He's there. There's a lot of big, big names on both sides. They couldn't just forever sustain being at odds with one another, having this tension,

having court battles against one another. So we all kind of thought, yeah, eventually down the road. And the main sort of the prevailing theory is that once Monaghan and once Greg Norman are out or once one of them are out, they could come together. It's very personal between the two of them. Greg Norman has had a gripe at the PJ tour for like 30 fucking years. He's been wreaking havoc. He's unliked in a lot of circles over there because of that.

Now he was able to get this enormous backing and be the kind of the wedge figure that he's been. And Monaghan has obviously been trying to protect the tour, but also has a personal thing against Norman because of that. And so the two of them could just never. come together, there's no way. Bang, out of the clouds, out of the fucking clouds. You've got Yassir up there.

You got Jay up there sitting with CNBC. They asked him, the, the interview was surreal. It was surreal listening to two of these guys next to each other. And shout out to the interview. I was trying to get my CNBC open. I didn't have it on this app. I was trying to fire it up. People were tweeting about

what was going on. So it was hectic over here. The interviewer asked him a couple questions that were that were phenomenal. He asked Monaghan directly. He said, you know, how are you prepared to react to the reactions from your players and supporters of the PGA tour that didn't know about this and are now going to find out? Are you worried about that, concerned about that, whatever? And Monahan's answer was essentially to ignore it and to say, you know, we're not really worried about the reaction right now. We're worried about the reaction over the next 10 years and how great this is going to be for golf.

And that question, that answer was also directly to the question of, you know, how prepared are you to react to people having a very negative response to what looks like the Saudis are going to have a controlling financial and economic stake in golf going forward, golf globally. And he did not refute that. He did not deny that. And if you read the PJ-Dor statement, you read the way that this is all about to come about. it's going to be a for-profit organization now or company, that the Saudis are going to be in charge financially of the world of golf, DP World Tour, PJ Tour, live golf, all under one umbrella. That's just what's happening.

And they haven't finalized. That was another interesting part where, you know, the fact that they announced this, yet it hasn't been finalized. Like they were, they asked the, you know, Yasser like, okay, when are you, when can we expect like all the details to be finalized, confirmed, released. They said, oh, in the next few weeks, we're planning to have that. It's like the fact that they chose to announce all of this without having all of that officially signed, deal, delivered.

There's got to be some reason that it was to, I imagine Monaghan's got to be making some serious cake to be, you know, doing this in this situation. But, but, holy shit, wild, wild, wild day. And, man, we haven't heard from anybody yet. We haven't heard from the Rorys, from tigers, these folks. I have no idea how they're going to respond, but when you've been up there and been the guys that have been against this, been staking the tour, and then your leader,

Jay Monahan is up there with the other guys saying, yep, we're coming together and, you know, they're essentially going to financially be running the show. That's a weird spot to be it. It's just, I don't even know how to process it.

I don't even know how to process it. Everyone's tweeting out the video of when my, John of him was talking to Nance. Dave just tweeted out. He goes, how can, like, this is actually unbelievable. I want to just play it because I want to, like, remind myself exactly what he said. Hold on. Let me see.

Let me get to it. I want to play this. And then we're going to remember that now this is all just lost. This story that was first reported in the New York Post yesterday by Brian Wacker, about a 9-11 coalition of families and survivors of the 2001 terrorist attacks. 9-11 families united sent a letter to the representatives of phil dustin bryson reid and others quote expressing their outrage towards the golfers for participating in the new league and accusing them of sports washing and betraying the united states in quote that's gotten a lot of steam over the last 24 hours that story first reported again in the new york post how much did you talk to your players

about the possible ramifications if they signed on with the new league? Well, I talked to players. I've talked at a player meeting, and I've talked to a number of players individually for a long period of time. And I think you'd have to be living under Iraq to not know that there are significant implications. And as it relates to the families of 9-11, I have two families that are close to me, the lost loved ones. And so my heart goes out to them.

And I would ask, you know, any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, now you're just, you know, does Monahan have to apologize to every single person on the PGA tour or anybody else that he's going to be associated with? he's just done that for his league, right? If that's how he felt about individual players leaving his league and going to live and being like at the end of the day, if you go play there, have you ever had to apologize to people for the backing and the money and what you stand for? And now you've just done that for the league forever.

If that's how you truly felt two years ago. You've done that for your league. You're the commissioner. Yeah. That's fucking wild, dude. It's been like 14 months. How many months ago was that? This is insane.

It really, like you, you really have to ask then questions. Like, why, how did it get to this point? Is it court cases? Like,

is the PGA tour not confident that they're going to lose? Court cases, they're going to lose the court cases. And in which case they lose those court cases, they're going to be in a horrific spot with no leverage guys. They'll be able to come back, play whenever they want without them merging and benefiting from it. So was he between a rock and a hard place and just had to bite the bullet?

Did he finally make just a bold, bold move? he hasn't made any bold moves yet. Like he just hasn't throughout the entire time. He hasn't done anything particularly bold. He has just basically done what people would expect him to do. He's tried to total line for the PGA tour, yada, yada, yada, all the BS, set all the talking points, tried to leverage the moral high ground. And then now he was just in a spot where he said, fuck it, I'm going to do something bold.

I'm going to buy who the fuck knows? I imagine these questions will come out. There's Trent Ryan who's at the airport. Hey, Trent. Hey, guys. How we doing? We're doing great. We're doing great. Good. I actually just want to join from two seconds. I'm literally,

I'm at the Milwaukee airport. I'm about to jump on this plane. I apologize for the audio. I'm pulling a lurch. The audio, Alex Bush, I'm sorry. I just wanted to say one thing. Always take the money. I was wrong. I had said things before where, you know, I don't want all these guys to go. I don't want them to go to live. I was wrong. You should always take the money. The guys who did not take the money. They're in a bad spot now. They didn't get any of the money. And those guys are coming back to the PJ tour. So like I said, I was wrong. Always take the money and I'm going to hop on this plane and I just got to hop out of here. But I wanted to hop on and quickly give my thoughts on it.

I appreciate that. The whole situation was so fluid that everyone was wrong in some aspects. Some people were super hard on one side or the other. I get that. But so many things happened where it's like in our situation, and there goes train. In our situation alone, like we never, we talked to guys like Billy Horshaw and all these guys on the PGA tour that were like, Like we don't actually hate these guys personally for what they did for their families. We had guys from Live on our show, right?

Like we, we are saying, like, we didn't hate these guys personally when you had these decisions to make financially for your family. It made sense. Some of these guys that were lower tier on PJ Tor. It made complete sense. It was the whole morality issue of it. And, like, sometimes you got swept up in the fact that, like, yeah, these guys did do 9-11. Like, these guys are bad guys. They're fucking bad Mammajama is what they did at, because.

Chogi and all these things. Like they don't let, they despise gay people. They don't let women do anything in Saudi Arabia. It's fucking crazy. And like all of a sudden, we have to just like accept the fact that they're going to be funding this golf tour that all of our best players going to.

It was a wild time. But individually, like the Phil Mickelson's, the Dustin Johnsons and whatever, you always, you always understood that they had something else going behind their decision. They genuinely felt like it was the right decision for them. You saw it on the Netflix series with Dustin Johnson being like,

if you got offered, 10 times more money to do your same job. Would you take it? And if you say, no, you're a moron. Like, those guys just use, like, their brains. And we're like, I'm just going to make more money. And I think it's going to work out. And at the end of the day, it just fucking worked out.

Well, I've been flip-flopping on all sides of this. At the end of the day, like, they just won. Like, those guys just won. Phil Mickelson, what he's done for the game of golf is actually fucking insane. Think about the couple of years that guy has had. And look, it sucks to concede. to the fact that money just rules everything, right? Like we like to think in this world that folks can and are capable of looking at what's good,

what's righteous, what's the proper and best thing to do based on like an ethical and moral compass. And at the end of the day, that just doesn't fucking matter. And that I think to a degree sucks. I think like resigning that sucks. And the Phil example is one where today is a victorious day for Phil. Phil has been given props over the last six months by many people, including guys for the PGA Tour as the reason that the guys in the PGA Tour themselves over the last year have made a lot more money than they ever used to make or would have made. Last week, Victor Hoble had $3.6 million at the Memorial, which that's not a major championship.

That's not the Players' Championship. That's the Memorial. $3.6 million at the Memorial would be a stunning number a couple of years ago. A stunning number. A lot of people attributed that to Phil. but you cannot lose sight of the fact that Phil Mickelson, a year and a half ago, had quotes released, and this is what hurt him reputation-wise to the point where he went into hiding for several months,

is that when he said, these guys are bad motherfuckers. They do bad, bad shit. I shouldn't be talking to them, but I am because of leverage. Like when he spilled it all out like that, in the same way that Monaghan now was eating his words and looks like a fool, that made Phil Mickelson obviously look like a fool.

Like the fact that you're able to admit that, you know that this is wrong, that these people are on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of sort of the moral ethical compass. Yet you're partnering with them because of money. That makes you look bad. And in this case, like, that is just winning out. It's just going to win out. And at the end of the day, like with the, with the Monahan situation and all of that, they just didn't have that many cards to play. They should have gotten ahead of it, clearly. They should have understood that something was coming. The PGA tour. was incredibly cocky and acts like total fucking assholes for years and years because there was no existential threat.

They were the only person at the party. No one else was coming. There was never even an opportunity of thought that someone else could come. And once they did, they got caught with their pants down and their only move when you're, and we had the Borrellys example that Bryce and DeCambos stole of like somebody just opens a pizza shop next door and offers every one of your employees who are making 50 grand a year, whatever they're making a million dollars a year. They're just going to leave and you don't have a pizza shop anymore. And that was what was happening to the PGA tour.

They didn't have much leverage. So they played the moral card, which I can't blame them. Like, they might have played the moral card because they believed in it. They might have played the moral card because they just didn't have any other fucking cards to play. When somebody offers your top stars, $200 million, they're just going to leave. And when you play those cards and then you end up just backtracking that clip that you played is a horrific look for Jay Monahan. And he will have to live with that juxtaposition for the rest of his life, that clip a year ago. and then hitting him sitting there next to Yasser saying,

yep, we're going to partner together. We're going to create a for-profit league that the Saudis are essentially going to fucking own. It's going to be a bad look forever. It's such a big story too because it's it just doesn't happen. This doesn't happen in our lifetime in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB. It doesn't even happen in like in soccer leagues.

It's like this just doesn't happen. And this happened in golf in our sport that we cover. It's clearly like golf since the pandemic has taken off in terms of participation. Golf now with this type of investment. The Saudis are not idiots with their money. If they're investing this type of money, clearly we believe that it was a lot of the sport washing reason. I still believe that.

But them continuing to double down, them now having this massive of a day where they're going to financially partner with and the PGA tour, DP World Tour and be kind of the main, you know, kid on the block. like that's that's a big investment in the future of golf and there's going to be an enormous amount of money in the world of golf and boy oh boy do we just have a day a future now that it's not it's not slowing down man the future and the intrigue of of golf and the leagues and the players uh is only getting fucking spice here and we're halfway through the major season my phone's on fire my phone is on fire right now i mean it's I've never I can't even imagine that this had this has happened. I just can't even fucking imagine that this has happened. So one of the main.

I mean, so much. What do we think is going to happen to like the live format of, of like what they do? Do we think it's going to be so mainstream now that like groups like tailor made and all these, all these big companies are going to start like just sponsoring like the four aces and shit like that? Like are these guys? Do we, in our opinion, we don't know any details.

we think like PJ tour players are just going to play in the team events now. Like from the go from the memorial to just like the team event and like Kalam Orakawa and Rory are on a team and it's sponsored by huge like banks and all these fucking big American corporate companies. Is that what the future of golf holds? Because that's exactly what we said they always should have done. In theory, right, this could be the best of both worlds, right? Like we've, we've said that the team concept, we love team golf.

Everyone plays team golf. the majority of people go out on the weekends, you team up with your buddy against two of your other buddies, you have a little Nassau game and you play team golf, the Ryder Cup, the President's Cup. We love the shit. Team golf is what we thrive on, yet it's not what's played, you know, 99% of the time in professional golf.

So we always, we always conceded that Liv was kind of onto something with the team aspect, even though they didn't quite nail it. It was always weird following the leaderboard. So now there is this opportunity that if they could partner, and they are, but if they could partner properly and format it properly where there's a pretty key consistent element of team golf tied to the prestige and the history and the meaningfulness of the PGA tour, that is literally what before Liv even existed. We talked about.

We were like there needs to be team golf more often. Maybe you go out on tour. Maybe there's a section of the year where you literally play with your partner for eight events of the year in that team standing stand or you have a foursome. That's your crew like they do on lip. there's got to be a way that they can format this combining the two that does keep the team thing alive that makes it thrive because that team aspect is something we've always rooted for it's what's in every other sports what makes it amazing when you watch the NCAA college golf last week and there's five of them out there and they're hooting hoot and hollering the mississippi state girls are out there doing the dog like the dog barking like that shit and team golf is great and it's what people play on the weekends what people play more often when they go on buddy strips and you just never see it so yeah there's There's endless, endless opportunities. The biggest question I've been seeing is like, is this why Rory has been kind of like sad face for the last month? You know, is this why Roy has been muted?

You have to believe that it's, you know, tied together. The fact that he was asked a few weeks ago, you know, about live and his thoughts lately, you know, then he basically just said, I'm checking out on that conversation on being that guy. You have to think that he kind of knew. And this might have been a reason for all of that. And that stinks because we love Rory. I mean, this show is pro Rory. I still stand by when we spent an hour and a half,

an hour with him a year and a half ago. He is the most impressive person. I think I've ever spent time with in person. The fact that he's big of a superstar as he is, the fact that he has won as much as he's won. And yet the fact that he's as humble and cool and normal and engaging as he is, I fucking love that guy.

I don't think he's going to be going anywhere, but this has got to be terms of all of this happening when he's been the face of the PGA, the face of we're going to carry the torch, we're going to carry this thing into the future, we're not going to cave to live into all the negatives that we see in live. And then his boy, Monahan, just caved on CNBC in front of the whole world. It's got to be a tough spot for him. Clearly, that had to be weighing on him for the last month or so.

So Tiger Woods, I mean, Tiger Woods fucking flew less than a year ago with Ricky up to have a meeting with everyone at the BMW and basically was the guy. He was like, he was like, inso facto, the commissioner of the tour at the time. And he hasn't really released anything or we haven't heard from him yet. So there's a lot of things that are still going to come out from this. But, but yeah, man, it's a monumental and stunning day in the world of golf today. It's definitely good for the game of golf. There's no denying that.

It's just everything gets bigger. Everything, you know, the money is bigger. The production will be bigger. Everyone on the tour is going to be making more money. I saw a big cat even tweet out though like this isn't like a big loss for Rory like he could still say that he was the guy that held his ground and now he's just going to make a ton more money

because of how much money's coming in. Yes, you're going to look like the guy that lost the battle. You're going to look like the guy that was kind of shut out of the deal. This is very succession like where it's like at the end, you know, you have a deal with someone at the end. They just fucking, they just change it on you and you're like, what are you talking about?

I mean, the way that they asked, they asked the Saudi guys if Greg Norman's a part of it and they like couldn't even come to like he couldn't even yes here like didn't even know how to say the words he's like well you know like right well before we came on I kind of just like talk to him and the stakeholders but that's it that's that's really all I did I just told them that this is happening there's like a lot of people that were shut out of this deal it feels like you got calom or cow all these guys talking out saying we didn't hear shit I love getting my news from fucking Twitter so guys like rory are saying I battled this like you were saying I battled this for so long I was your guy. I now, now I have to publicly lose that. That sucks. Publicly losing like arguments like that suck. I mean, when we lose many arguments in the barstable world, it's like you feel like your life is crashing down.

You're like checking your mortgage statements, making sure you can even pay your bills next month because like someone, someone defeated you in an online battle on the dozen trivia. You're like, holy shit, my life's over. But now Rory's like, I mean, think about everything, people get, all those assholes at golf tournaments that are going to chirp them now.

Yep. They're like, oh, you lives bitch now, Roy, it's just going to be nonstop. Live paying your bills more. They're going to be chirping them hard. And you're right. That is like it's a, it's a funny world where the stigma around the public perception and the public storylines is different than the reality, which is the reality is this is going to be good. I think you're right for Rory, for Morigala, for these guys, for their bank accounts, for golfers being bigger globally now. Like if we've talked about the positives, we have conceded.

We have conceded a lot of the positives this year that Live has been conjuring up. The fact that they are going global, the fact that, you know, I think after their event in Australia, we said like, they should just do their whole series in Australia. They're fucking massive in Australia. They had fans, lines everywhere. The hype was crazy. They had a party hole. Like, now if you could combine that global impact that they've been able to have in a very quick period of time

with what's already good on the PGA tour with the team aspect and someone who's smart and getting paid a lot of money and they all come together can sort of format all this properly. This could be a mega boost for golf globally, for professional golf globally, because we have spoken a million times about how golf weekend and week out on the professional level is not overly riveting. It just isn't. The majors are awesome. The players championship awesome.

Phoenix Open awesome. The memorial, if you get a playoff or if you get a certain leaderboard, the RBC Canadian last year, Roy versus JT, awesome. We had a playoff last year, I think it was, where it was like, Zalotaurus versus Straca, I think. And it was like, that was awesome. So occasionally you do get a great average week result, but a lot of weekend and week out,

it's not the most riveting thing in the world. So if you can inject live and there's money and the global reach that they are hoping to achieve, like it would be, and it most likely will be insanely good for these guys. But right now, right, the public perception that you just lost, that like everything you said was just wrong, you got defeated,

that Phil and Brooks Kepka could get to take victory laps online, which Phil already tweeted out, awesome day today with a smiley face. Brooks Kepka just tweeted out, wellness check on Brandl today. Colin Moracawa tweeted out, like you said, I love finding out news on Twitter

and then followed up with, and you think yesterday was the longest day in golf. So clearly like everyone is weighing in. And yeah, when you were the face, Rory, of the PGA tour standing their ground and then the PGA tour caves,

that is inevitably going to lead to the same assholes that are just haters online or are going to hate on you online. They're going to chirp you at tournaments. They're going to heckle you a little bit. And that just sucks. That's like unnecessary for a great dude who really, I think, did what he thought was the right thing. And, like, is going to now be in a position where he's just getting chirp pretty hard on the storyline is that he was on the losing side.

Even if he's winning and going to make $100 million or whatever, he's just going to have to deal with that shit for a while and that fucking sucks. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much unknown right now. We have to hear from Tiger. You have to hear from Rory. You got to hear from Greg Norman. I mean, they're going to take victory laps if Greg Norman's even involved in this.

We don't know what the landscape of golf looks like right now. It is so raw. It's so new. It's on CNBC. I mean, has Brandl spoken yet? I mean, Brandl is a friend of the program. You've obviously had him on the show.

He's given us more than enough time of his own time to come on this show. He did a sit down with you. He's been great to us. But he fucking suffered one huge loss today. That is, I mean, he's the, he's the punching bag. Brooks Kepka wrote, what did he write? I mean, Brooks had a fuck. Wellness check on Brandel today.

Wellness check on Brandl. It's just, yeah, if you go so hard on one side, if you're gonna fucking either win or you're gonna lose. And there's winners and there's losers in this thing. We don't know for sure who are the, you know, fully are the winners. We don't know anything yet. We don't know anything yet. It's the most unprecedented type of announcement.

They don't, they haven't released any. details. The only thing that they released was like the business side, which, which like if you really dig deep into it is like the most important side. Like the Saudi government's just going to run the financials of the PGA tour within a couple of years. They're going to slowly take over and invest money and the fact that they're going from a nonprofit to a for profit and to be able to make billions and billions and billions of dollars now. Like what is that even going to look like? Who's getting that money? Are the PGA tour players going to benefit from it? Are they all going to get paid out from the Saudi government just for this buyout?

Like was there like a was there a merger where all stakeholders quote unquote got paid? Like there's so much information now that we do not know. Like what if Rory McElroy got $30 million just for this happening? You don't know any number. We don't know anything. We know nothing. That's so that's what's so weird. They came out and announced that we're going to partner together, but we haven't decided how yet.

It's kind of what they said. They gave general ideas. They gave general sort of, you know, it's going to be us, the Deeper World Tour. and, you know, there's going to be now for profit instead of an average profit. But like, they literally could not answer questions on how it's going to be done on if it's been signed. It hasn't been signed. Greg Norman, like you said earlier, Greg Norman, they asked, does Greg, where's Greg Norman involved this? And he literally said, oh, yeah, I called him right before we came on the air here.

So it's like, clearly no, he was not involved in that. Calmore, Cal, he's pretty high up. You got to think he's a top five or 10 guy on the PGA tour side for the player's side. And, you know, they talk nonstop about the PGA tours made up of the players. Like, they make the decision. So if he's one of the top guys on their side and he had no clue, very few people knew about this,

this had to have been kept very, very tight to the chest. And then it makes you wonder, like, was this deal, was this monumental deal in the history of professional golf done by just three, four, five people?

That's it. And those people aren't even players in the game. Like is, you know, how involved was Phil? Was Phil Omega involved on their side? And if Phil was involved? but Rory or you know Morikawa weren't than like those guys aren't going to like that that this whole thing was basically done by Phil negotiating with J. Monnet, you know, who the fuck knows how all that's going to come out?

But yeah, we do need to hear from a lot of people still. We need to hear from a lot of people. Big time. I'm looking at somebody's hitting me with these. Oh, look at this. So I just got from somebody the note that was sent to the players. Today's a monumental day for your organization And the game of golf as a whole

The PGA Tour, your tour Is leading the formation of a new commercial entity To Unify Golf One that sees the end of the disruption and distraction That has divided the men's professional game For the better part of three years Look at that and it goes on and on Holy cow

Holy cow They're going to have to pay the guys that said no You have to you have to They have to the Saudis have to the Saudis have to pay the guys that said no the Rory Macaroys the Tiger Woods is all the guys that said the Patrick

Cantley's guys that could have made a boatload and shit ton of money that are now staying they're going to alienate their best players. The Kalamorikawa's like they're going to piss them off do you think there's a chance that those guys in that case could say fuck you we're just going to go start our own league oh we can't

you can't this is the global league now that's it's over and actually on NBC NBC, the guy made a pretty good point where he's like, is this even going to get approved? Are you guys now a monopoly in golf? Have you just, have you just like stopped the idea of any other entity or league ever forming? Because now you have DP World Tour. You've got you've got PJ Tour and Live and you're all one big conglomerate that's worth $20 billion in cash or whatever the whatever they have just sitting in their banks over there.

I mean, that seems like a monopoly of a sport to me, which is everything the PJ Tour was fighting against. But it's interesting because like there are those. monopolies in the other sports, right? Like Major League Baseball, National Football. Yeah. National Hockey League. Those, you know, like, those are the NBA. You literally have to go play in Europe if you're going to play anywhere else, like basketball.

You don't have a fucking choice. Right, right, right, right. You, so I don't know. I don't know if those are, I don't know if those leagues, like, are those leagues aren't non-for-profits, are they? Because the PGA tour, it was. So maybe they were able to get by by that, but. Fuck.

They're for profit. I think those leagues are all for profit. He mentioned them on him where he's like, all these other leagues are able to benefit. off of having huge funding money coming in making a profit whatever it is the c6 c7 whatever they end up are now i don't know any of the fucking information but i do know that they're going we're not the right we're not the right guys no but like i'm and and i don't even know what this means for golf but i'm picturing fucking like i'm picturing domes on top of like the memorial next year so there's no rain i'm picturing like the most insane amount of money coming into golf like NFL money

The NFL is king in America. And they have so much money, the commercials, the TV deals, just the content around the sport, the amount of money each player makes. Like, it's just so fucking the Super Bowl is the biggest thing because they have the most money. It's just cash is king in this country and the NFL has it. Now golf has the most. Golf has the most money out of any professional league in America. They can do so much now. the possibilities are endless i mean apple just came out with their fucking little glass that like changes

the world that you can like you wear the ski goggles and all of a sudden you're walking down the street and the street like turns into a rainbow but like i can't even imagine how much money is going to be being put into golf like what is golf going to look like are they going to change public golf for people now like is like are the people going to see a difference in this is golf changed for like the viewers and like the players has the amateur game changed now i don't like what happens to golf as a sport there's so much money behind it. Does the, you know, it is a good question. Like if the Saudis become so powerful from this and who knows, we don't even know how it's going to be structured yet, but if they do,

then like does the USGA not matter? Does the R&A not matter when they come out with a rule change or whatever? Are the Saudis able to just trump all that and be like, yeah, we're not going to do that. We're not going to roll the golf ball back because we're the, we're the majority stake interest in this whole game. We own it economically around the world. So this is what we're going to do. Like they might be able to achieve that kind of position, which again, Nobody fucking knows. It's all speculation. They didn't release a lot of details for what I'm starting to see in a lot of, like you said, my phone is red hot right now. I've got endless text throughout the time of trying to do the show and trying to digest all these things coming in. A lot of the theories right now are clearly that the PGA tour and the Department of Justice was going to open up the PGA tour and what they were going to find were going to be a lot of communications and a lot of instances where the tour was. colluding, air quotes, with everybody, to essentially stop Liv for being successful, and that that was not going to go in their favor on terms of a ruling.

And then if it doesn't go in their favor, then they were going to be in a spot with almost no leverage whatsoever, and that the Live players and Live were going to be able to do whatever they wanted in regards to tour, tour membership. They're going to be able to claim that they had the right to play in this, this, and this because they had earned tour membership and that the tour by colluding with all these other, you know, whoever they were colluding with to try to stop, live, you know, loses all ground on trying to keep people out from playing and all of that. So to avoid all of that and to try to cash in as best they could and try to, you know,

while they still had some leverage, get a good play for them in their future, that that's why all of this happened. I don't know if that's true. It makes a lot of sense to me. It probably makes the most sense of all of this. And that Jay Monaghan, rather than have everything stripped from them from a legal standpoint and from the United States justice system decided that he would rather stand up there, sit up there and look a little bit foolish while getting a deal done, then have everything

stripped away and lose every battle imaginable. So that's sort of the best theory that I'm hearing so far and why this all happened and why they kind of rush to announce because like we said, why if you think this is all going to be done and finalized in a few weeks or at least you're going to have a lot more details in a few weeks, why rush out and announce it and it has to be that they believe, the tour believes, believed there was some eminent rulings or some eminent information coming out that was not going to go in their favor and that they just had to partner like that it doesn't make any other fucking sense why they would do this so quickly yeah they've been so strategic with everything else

everything's been so like they've been by the book pj tour has one stance and everyone that is on pj tour side has stood by that stance and they've all just kind of collectively been against the morality of Liv and everything's just been going that way and Liz been going the other way. And then all of a sudden, like you said, on a Tuesday morning on CNBC, it's just like, nope, all that is out the window. Everything that's happened. The biggest drama in sports is now times a billion. And no one knows about it. Not even the players.

Holy shit. 4 p. Yeah. There's got to be something going on. There's what? A 4 p.m. players meeting. That's what I'm seeing.

That's what I'm seeing. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, Thursday's show will be a banger. We obviously had to get this up. Big thanks to Chevy. Chevy sponsors us throughout the entire year, the Chevy Silverado, EV. This bad boy is, it's badass. It's unstoppable. It's literally Chevy. You know Chevy. You know the bow tie mixed with just the best current technology. You can imagine an all electric vehicle in that iconic truck, zero 60 and under 4.5 seconds. And they got the whole family of Chevy is now coming out in the EV family from the Equinox Blazers or the Bolt. You can go check those out on Chevy. They got charging stations popping up all over.

There's like 2,000 certified EV dealerships now around the country. Frankie's been to some. I'm going to go to some soon. My lease is about up here, so I can't wait to check out the Chevy's in person. But I've done it online. I've done it on Chevy.com. I've played with all the interior, the exterior, the different colors, different gadgets, the infotainment system, which I believe is 17 inches diagonal in this silver auto EV,

which is amazing. So, yeah, it's just a phenomenal vehicle. Do yourself a favor. You don't have to trust me. Go to Chevy.com. Check out a bunch of their EV family for yourself. But yeah, what's amazing now is that by the time we record the podcast tomorrow night or whatever, there's going to be 10 times more information out about this and quotes and reactions and everything else. So holy shit, holy shit, monumental day in the world of golf today, Frankie.

Monumental, absolutely monumental. Yeah, it's fucking insane. We'll be back on the show on Thursday with obviously way more information. The full group will be here. Yeah, you know, we were right. we were wrong. We were probably more wrong than we were right. I think no one saw this coming in the world. If anyone's on, I mean, a lot of stuff I was wrong about. A lot of stuff I was wrong about. If you were die hard live, if you were, if you were flying the live flag and going to all the

events and you were team four aces and the crushers and the, and the high ballers, you were fucking, you're doing victory labs today. If you were, if you were just letting this whole thing be kind of fluid and you were just going with each, each news that came out, it's the craziest day of all time. You have no idea what to think. I don't even know what to think anymore. I'm happy for the game of golf. I'm mad at Monahan for like being allowed to be up there on CMBC. I would have rather this whole thing happened and him just not be involved. I hate seeing how it's it's so hypocritical. It's so hypocritical. And like that's how I'll end it is like I can't get beyond the hypocrisy of it. I'm very happy that it's happening. I'm so mad that the people that

are involved in it are so hypocritical. It's insane. We said the hypocrisy of the whole thing was was crazy from the beginning. They hated the Saudi league, but they also sent, the LPGA would send, like, all their LPGA players to the Saudi funded league and, like, they were just playing a tournament over there that literally said the Saudi investment fund on the fucking bottom of their scorebug for the LPGA. I mean, players play in a Saudi event. They were always happy to take money from companies that were on the board of the Saudi fund.

So, like, it was always just so hypocritical. People that worked for the PGA tour literally worked hand in hand with the Saudi fund. And now there's saying you can't go there or else you hate the family's a 9-11. And now of a sudden all this happens for years. And then right on a random fucking Tuesday, he's up there with the guy, with the guy. They're sitting next to each other in some studio in New York City. It looks like a week ago. It looks like they fucking, they pre-recorded that because the way that they were talking

in the panel, they were like, we're starting to edit it up. We talked to them earlier in the day or the week, whatever it was. He's just sitting there with him being like, yeah, this is the best thing for golf. No, you don't get to say that. you don't get to say that monahan someone else might be able to i don't know it's fucking crazy man it's fucking crazy this is crazy i say crazy a lot on this on this show this is the crazy yeah this is one of the craziest things that's ever happened in our seven years of doing this show this part this paragraphs i'm reading from the pj tour semi really quickly under the terms of the

agreement the board of directors of the new entity will oversee and direct all the new entities golf related commercial operations businesses and investments the new entity will work to ensure a cohesive schedule events that will be exciting, will be exciting for fans, sponsors, and all stakeholders. PIF will initially be the exclusive investor in the new entity alongside the

PGA Tour, LiveGolf, and the DP World Tour. So, in terms of who's going to have ruling and who's going to have say, right now, it sounds like the PGA Tour is going to have in terms of the conditions and the golf side of things will have the say. But when they put in there

that the Board of Investors will have the say going forward. Whoever ends up on that board of investors, you can bet you have you looked at any business in the history of the world, that comes from who the investors are, who has the money. And when it says that PIF will be the exclusive,

initially for now, exclusive investor and will make a capital investment, you don't make all those investments and then not end up with the board seats to get whatever fucking ruling that you want. So it might not happen initially, might not happen instantly. But you could bet your ass,

with those terms right now that the PGA tour released in their own statement on their Twitter account, on their website that they wrote that the PIF will initially be the exclusive investor in the new entity and then under the terms of the agreement, the board of directors of the new entity will oversee and direct all the new entities golf related commercial operation. That clearly means that the PIF is going to get their way and get control this whole fucking thing because you don't become the sole biggest investor in the whole operation. and then not end up with pretty goddamn good control of that board of investors.

So our board of directors. So that's kind of what we got to look forward to. Again, I imagine by the time Thursday show comes out, we'll have a shit ton more to talk about reactions from guys. Rory's playing the RBC Canadian Open this week. So I'm sure he's going to have to do press conference. The media can literally just run up and ask him questions right now.

So yeah, the whole thing's wild. The whole thing is fluid, as we've said, and we'll have a lot more to talk about on Thursday show. So big thanks to Chevy.com. Big thanks to everybody for listening. And we'll be back on Thursday. Hit it hard. It's hard.