No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1150: Nelly wins Chevron; FitzBro's take Zurich

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Nelly Korda wins her third Major Championship at the 2026 Chevron Championship. While Team Fitzpatrick locks up brother Alex's Tour Card after winning the Zurich. Join us as we break it all down, run through this week's news and notes, plus more. Presented by Titleist. Titleist - #1 Ball in Golf Arccos - NLU15 for 15% off at https://www.arccosgolf.com/ AT&T - Connecting Changes Everything Looking to travel this year, check out East Sands Golf Co.: https://www.eastsandsgolf.co/nlu Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: https://nolayingup.com/esf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Lange, a podcast live version, recapping this week's Chevron and Zurich, joined by my guy, Mr. Big Randy.

Hello, Big. How are you? Hello, gentlemen. I am, I'm doing well. A lot to talk about. about tonight excited to dive in lot to talk about running the ones and twos and on the mic tonight mr cody mcbride hello cd hello sally happy to be here nelly corda who would have thought huh where we got not see that one coming we rocked them did not see that one coming we're going to

hear from tc a little later on as well he's calling in uh from across the pond uh as mentioned we got to talk about nelly corda wins her third major championship at the chevron matt and Alex Fitzpatrick get it done at the Zurich. That was an exciting finish. A lot of men's golf news came about this week as well. We got a new Ryder Cup captain, well, a Ryder Cup captain for the United States side. There were some layoffs at the PGA tour. We're going to talk about that, some scheduling changes, signature event coming up this next week

with some light commitments on that one. Royal Lhythm gets the 2028 Open Championship. A lot going on. We're going to get to all of that. Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick, your winners in New Orleans. were both gaming their Titleist ProV1x golf balls. Every single one of the 18 players who made up the top nine teams on the leaderboard played a ProV1 or ProV1X with 76% of the field teeing up a Titleist golf ball.

And all of those players are extremely dialed into their flight, spin, and feel needs. Golf ball fitting is hugely important. And so is the order in which you get fit. Titulus fits the golf ball to your irons and wedges, making sure the golf ball is doing everything it needs to for the scoring clubs. then they fit the top end of your bag to your golf ball, making the necessary adjustments to the driver or the other clubs in the game. There's a great video on Titleist YouTube channel about Cameron Young's golf ball fitting process,

the tweaks he made of the setup, the ones we've been talking about a lot for the payoffs he's had in his game. So go check that out. Go to Titlest.com to learn more about what golf ball is right for your game. Got a couple DMs from people this week asking me to diagnose what kind of golf balls they should be using. Please go to Titleist.com to learn more about what golf ball is. is right for your game, they can give you a much better answer than I can give you a guess, but they'll give you the answer right there. So big, why don't you take it away? We are going to

start with the Chevron. We have a lot to talk about. Yeah, the Chevron championship from Memorial Park in Houston, Texas. As we all predicted on the preview pod, Nelly Corta wins, and she did it in convincing fashion. Who did pick her? What's that? Did anybody pick her? Yes. Okay. Hell yeah, we did. Randy and Cody did. I got caught up with emotions. I picked L.C. I was thinking you picked her too.

No, I got caught up with L.C. That was a, it's a, yeah, all right. I don't regret it, but I do a little bit. All right. Well, Cody and I were the ball and overs this week. Yeah, Nelly, wire to wire, dominating performance all week. She was the story of this week. She set a 36-hole scoring mark for this championship going out 65-65,

over the first two rounds. She shot 70 in round three, which was good enough actually to tie the 54 hole scoring mark. And she came into today with a five-shot lead over Patty Tavitaniquet, six-shot lead over running in, two players that have won major championships in the past. So I think there was some interest in how Nellie would do with a big lead, some women that had been in big moments trying to chase her down.

but honestly, guys, it really was never in doubt. The front nine at Memorial Park has been played easier all week than the back nine. A large part of that, three par fives on the front nine, including the first and third holes. All three of those women in the final group birdied the first and third hole. So no changes in the scoring. As close as it got all day was four shots. You had Patty T.

She made a nice birdie on the par four. walked in a put. That was probably the swaggiest moment of the day, in my opinion. But like I said, got to within four. It never got closer than that. Nellie was just hitting fairways, hitting greens. She hit 16 of 18 greens today. I believe she hit 59 of 72 greens over the course of the week.

Just an expert ball striking performance. And honestly, Nellie, her putter was like fine. It wasn't great. She had some really good birdie looks. I'm thinking at eight, definitely at nine that she missed. So this could have been a bigger lead. Anyway, she takes it to the back nine. Maybe the only point of, you know, what's she doing.

She made a pretty sloppy three-putt bogey on 12, and that dropped her back to four shots clear. But she quickly erased that. she absolutely flagged an approach shot on 14 for a kick and birdie 13 that was 13 13 excuse me he went back up to five and it was a formality coming in uh credit to nelly she had missed the green on 18 okay chip left her about like maybe a 12 foot putt for par cash that for the win she finishes at 18 under par she wins by five shots over both Ronny and Patty Tabotaniquet.

Yeah, as far as play by play, not the most dramatic, really not the most dramatic weekend. One of the least dramatic that we've ever seen, if we're being honest with that. There was no drama to be at. I'm not going to pretend there was drama. But I think the big takeaway was just how dominant

of performance this was from Nellie Cordo. and just some numbers on her this week and for her career as we open this up for some reaction. It was a wire-to-wire win for Nelly. According to the LPGA stats people, Nellie is the third player in the last 50 years to go wire-to-wire at a major championship where she had at least a two-shot lead after each round. So just to give you an idea of the dominance there. I mentioned 40 of 52 fairways this week, 59 greens, just was wearing out Memorial Park, just was in position all week.

It seemed like this was Nellie's second win of this season. An interesting little note. She has three runner-ups to go with those two wins. She is the third woman. It's been two golfers have beaten her this year. Yeah. She's the third woman. No, it's all right.

She's the third woman since 1980 to have five consecutive top two finishes to start a season. She joins Onika Sorenstam and Kari Webb in that category. She's the sixth American woman to win three or more majors before the age of 28 with the win today. She joins a slew of Hall of Fameers there. The last American to do that was Amy Alcott, who also was the first person to jump in the pond at the then Dinah Shore. So some symmetry there. And yeah, 17 LPGA wins now for Nellie Korda in her career.

Third major championship. She's getting closer and closer to the Hall of Fame. By my count, I believe she has 21 points now accrued. You need 27 for induction. So, I mean, I wouldn't rule it out that we could see that this year, perhaps. Yeah, it just, just dominions. I'm curious, Ollie, obviously Nellie played well.

I think the course and the way it was set up played into her hands. It was definitely a setup that was favoring the longer hitters. Is that what you saw? What were some, I guess, big takeaways from Memorial Park as well? Yeah, this was watching this and knowing that they, I assume,

I don't know the actual years. Cody probably knows the answer to this, how long the commitment is to have this tournament at Memorial Park, but this is... 20229. This is the path to 11 majors. This is having a major championship annual at this golf course for Nellie.

But the same time, you got to go out there and hit the shots and to shoot 65 to start and just, you know, before the weekend even gets there, if you were a little late to arriving to watching it, which I was a little scattered at the end of this week and, you know, look up and she's seven shots clear, whatever she was at a certain point. It was kind of over from the beginning.

I don't think that's necessarily going to play out that way over the next four years, but it is a tailor-made golf course for Nellie, having some big greens there to just when you, when it was, once you got out to that lead, being able to hit just safe spots into big parts of the green and two-putter way around, made it really, really hard to catch her.

Like I just, it just never felt like there was a path to victory. And it just, it wasn't a tough setup. And the rain kind of, the rain muted the golf course a little bit. They were pretty aggressive with the whole locations, and it wasn't a pillow fight.

I mean, she, you know, no other scores lower than 13 under, and only five players were better than seven under, which I think people might not know just by seeing the leaderboard in the corner of it. It looked like more of a birdie contest than it actually was. But this is what we've been asking for from Nellie for a long time, really. It, I feel like she's starting to catch. up major wise to what we were hopeful for in her career. I'd say like just back of the napkin, just throwing this out there math of like maybe like one major behind what would have been the

most optimistic case for her to this point at age 27. But we know the talent's massive. She's had a lot of close calls in majors. And just to see her close the door on one, she'd already answered the question whether or not she could do this. But like just to get the reminder of like, no, now this is 2024. Nellie. Like forget about last year. I'm back. I've lost to two golfers so far this year, and it's going to be May. Shout to Justin Timber, like, it's going to be May very, very shortly here. It's a remarkable, remarkable stat. Jo Jo Kim and Lauren Cogler are the only golfers to have beaten her here in the first four months of the year.

I know she's giving the Asian swing, but that's still remarkably impressive. So kudos to Nelly, and man, I wish it was more exciting when you're this dominant. But hat tip to you and congratulations. Yeah, Cody, I'm curious what you feel about. Well, Wang, you know, we didn't have like the drama moments, right, that you associate with major championships maybe, but we did have a dominant performance by the player of this generation. So that's not nothing. What are your thoughts kind of coming away from the performance Nellie put on? Yeah, I think you can't be, there's going to be a moment in this podcast where we switch over and become, poo-poo and point out things that rightfully so need to be changed. But this part of it right here, Nellie Corteur paid some damn good golf.

There was so much water that came down on this golf course on Tuesday. They didn't even practice at all. Everybody was closed from the golf course. They came out Wednesday. You know, the LPGA, they have pro ams for majors and all sorts of silly things. Our friend, Angeliot, she didn't even play a practice round. She wasn't in the pro am on Wednesday. and she wasn't allowed to come out on the course

and she used that time to just hit balls. Shot 77 in the opening round and then ended up finishing in the top 10 here. That kind of shows how crazy the weather was this week. But Nellie did everything that she needed to do. On Thursday and Friday, the story was all that moisture that came down. Tons of mud balls.

Everybody wanted to complain about mud balls. Do you know who didn't complain about mud balls? Nellie Cora. She hit the shots. She made the putts. She had a phenomenal short game. And the thing that that kind of drives me crazy from being on site for the two days that I was down there is that there's so much undulation on these big white greens that are down there. And these pins are tucked up on ridges on tiny little plateaus and stuff.

And that was completely washed out. All the shot making that showed us how Nellie ended up winning at 18 under par was kind of just gone because of the product and everything else that goes around us. But, man, she hit fairways when she needed to. she hits so many damn greens and yes we can sit here and jump up and down and say wow nellie still has a balky putter but like when you're watching every single one of nelly's putts like she makes a hell of a lot of them and it's it's really cool this moment is it should be celebrated for what she accomplished here uh she just played awesome golf from start to finish that's kind of where i'm at big yeah i mean truly had she had a very good putting week she would have won by 10 or more i i think

that just speaks to how well she hit the ball relative everybody else. Solly, what did you make in her post round, a little media hit on, I don't know if it was on Peacock by that point or NBC. You know, they were like, Nellie,

what's your message this week? What's your takeaway? And she says, I want the kids to know you can miss short puts and still win majors. I'm like, I don't know if we want to be telling the kids that necessarily. I get what she was tried to say. I'm sure the emotion of the moment.

it might not have come out exactly that way. But here's my armchair, you know, psychoanalysis of that. I think she's been in her own head about the short misses lately. And she's saying it out loud that like, hey, I'm so good that I can miss some short. I do not have to put perfect. Even if I do miss some shorties, then I can, you know, still dominate the women's game the way I just did. And there is a little lesson in that of like, you know, kids grow up thinking they need to be perfect. and that pros don't ever miss short putts.

And here she has missed plenty of short putts so far this year. And she just won the first major of the year by five shots. Like, yeah, there's a little lesson in that, I think. Rainy might not be the stone called killer message that you want in that moment. But it did sound a little peculiar coming out. But again, I think that's a, you can tell there's been a little bit of a mental journey for her to get to this point. And whatever it took to get her to this point, I think we should celebrate. For sure, not only a mental journey, but I think how she,

you know, we talked about this in the preview, how she's going about setting her schedule up completely different. And that might not always go along with everybody that, whether that sponsor obligations or tour obligations or anything else, she is so locked in on these majors. She knows exactly the bugaboo that like the U.S. women's open has had for her. She's already thinking about that. This was just step one of the season to get to where she needs to be. And hasn't been at all like, I'm sure she's mad as hell that she got beat twice, right? that she had two second place finishes that fired it up to get to hear. But three, but she's like,

the way that she's going about it and putting more emphasis on these big weeks, I think is great for Nellie Korda and what we want her to turn into. I don't know if it's great for the LPJ tour. Well, that's a good question because one of, if you did listen to our preview early in the week,

we had 12 storylines. And one of the storylines was, is this Nellie's tour or not. You know, in 2024, when she won seven times, she won the Chevron, you know, she famously won five consecutive starts. It was like, yeah, this is, this is Nellie's tour. She is the player of, you know,

of kind of this current generation, if you will. And then last year, she goes to the whole season without winning. And it's like, what, huh? Like, how is that possible when everybody was winning, right? literally everybody it seemed like was winning and now for her to kind of come out this season again and yeah she's only won twice but man she just looks she looks really comfortable right and and like i'm trying to remember the last squirrely shot like iron shot or drive i've seen her maybe at shadow kind of like off the top of my head but the only

kind of buckles or wobbles we've seen are with the putter. And if, you know, if she can get some confidence there, I don't know. It just seems like, you know, to answer my own storyline question from earlier, like, is this Nelly's tour or not? Like, hell yes, this is Nellie's tour. Definitely. She goes back to number one in the world with the win this week. Gino Titicum, who will talk about a little bit later, missed the cut, is not having a good year. Like, this is, Nelly Corta is now who everybody has to chase. And Cody, I think that's good for the women's game. I think that's good for just bringing out the best in her fellow competitors, right,

for setting kind of the gold standard. I'm excited and I feel like as excited as I was in 2024 and she did not win any more majors that year. I just want this to keep going. Like let's have another really dominant Nelly season and then see how everybody else reacts to that. I think dominant in a different way. I would say we don't need like, you know, that big run of wins was awesome at the time. But like I would much rather be sitting here and come end of July and being like, Nelly is about to win her third or fourth major.

Yes. And I think that's where she wants to be too. And that's why I say I don't know if it's like if this is this is what's best for women's professional golf. I don't know if it's best for the LPGA tour because I think Nellie, you're going to see her increasingly pull back from some regular tour events, which traditionally, you know, Nellie played in a ton of them

outside of like Asian swing stuff, which is great. And I think that's, she needs to do what she needs to do in order to set herself up to compete at her best. You know, you talked about seeing her hitting these shots, but like also like kind of having that little like spunk. She got a little hop in her step again here. And I think it's because she's like, super relaxed and it has full of energy and has not been on the road for three weeks in the

row leading up to this, which we've seen. And I think, you know, I'm very curious on what, we know that the LPGA tour schedule is going to look a heck of a lot different here in the next coming years. But like where this is at and where what levels of events are kind of being upgraded or degraded because we're kind of running into something where the PGA tour is going after as well. I think it is what's interesting here, Randy, is that I feel like we've been kind of waiting for, it's a reheat of 2024. I feel like we're going to have a lot of the same conversations around the excitement and the buzz as to what's going on in women's golf. And I think it's been the LPJ could be a lot more popular in the United States.

If we had the number one woman's player be a woman and she goes on a great, be American, excuse me, and go on. I was like, what? to be American and go on like a great major championship run and like start generating the buzz like onica generated back in the uh you know in the early 2000s whatever that might be and it like it we've talked there is a there's an there's openings out there for nellie to get out and run as well because the Koreans dominated women's golf for a really long period of time and there's a little gap there it's not the gin young co of her prime there's some great young korean players but it's not there's not a dominant force there's no nb park out there right now um you know yani sang she's chinese

but she uh you know i think the general public tends to group the asian players together and and they tend to think that the l pga tour in america is not as strong uh when that is the case and they're just the japanese women are coming on strong we've we've documented that as well but there is an opening for a dominant player right now and i think gino's probably going to bounce back from this i don't think it's i don't think you brush gino aside in this conversation but it's a great opportunity again. And I hope, well, we go nine majors in between the last major that now they won. And it wasn't a real great run in most of those.

I hope it's a much different conversation over the next nine. And maybe like a little bit of a Rory, like, all right, now we're freed up. Now we got three. Now it's like, let's go and out and get some. But I probably got to clear the U.S. Women's Open hurdle, like not just win, but like got to be competitive in a U.S. Women's Open. The other things you mentioned, Cody, I'm curious how this.

struck you. I just thought it was a little interesting, again, in her post-round media hit today, Nellie talking about how mentally taxing this weekend was, right? Playing with and holding a big lead across 36 holes. You know, it's obviously, I imagine it's really hard to win a major, but when you're going wire to wire and you have a, you know, you're up multiple shots at the end of each day. the only thing that can happen is like bad right the only surprise um i'm i guess my question would be like

yeah it seems like sally to your point i to draw a comparison to rory like maybe this does freer up a little bit it's just a different way that she's now won a major championship and i yeah maybe another tool in her toolbox going forward she should be looking around with a lot more confidence now to say like, oh, I'm the best. You know what I mean? Even at Chevron, it's on a great run, but it's like, oh, this is a great run? But is this who I am now for a turning? Now two years later to be on a very similar run without the same number of wins, but like

the clear domination of this tour, that's what's got to be the freeing up part. There's a way of you can get there and like kind of freak out and kind of go into majors with a ton of expectations and pressure. Or you can do it really confidently and say out loud, I am the best and feel like good things are about to happen to you. And maybe I'm more optimistic this go around that we get another major this year. So I'll ask you guys this. Do we think Nelly wins another major championship this year? And what's her best opportunity? I mean, she must, right? She must. I, it is different when you get to some of the other venues for her, though, man. It is. I hate to say that, but it is. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I would think she would have a good look. at Riviera, the U.S. women's open. I was thinking too, just strictly, I mean, her distance is a weapon and her ball striking on top of that, like she just gets so many more looks than anyone else does. And even when she does miss a fairway and she's coming in with an eight iron and everybody else is coming in with a four hybrid trying to hold greens, like it's such an advantage. I'd say like LPGA Tour also can put their kind of put the, I know the USGA runs, the U.S. Women's Open and whatnot, but LPJ is more, seems to be more involved in that kind of stuff than the PJTor is on the men's side and kind of put their finger on the button if they really want to and say, let's play this. Let's play a little longer. We wouldn't mind if Nellie Korda won a bunch of majors this year. I don't even disagree that they should do. I think that would be appropriate. I don't think that's rigging the game. I think it's appropriate to make sure that the LPJ Tour is not a wedge contest, which the major championships do a much better job about it.

as well so i would think she would have a great opportunity at hazel team that's where the kpmg is um i would think riviera if it's kind of playing long and difficult and it's a ball striking test right i would think that would set up well for her the evion's always squirrely i i have truly have no idea um and then sallie i just don't know a lot about royal litham and st anne's and how that that's where the aig is this year I don't know how that maybe pertains, but yeah, like Cody said, when she's hitting the ball, the way she's capable of hitting the ball and just fairways greens and giving herself looks, it's like she can win anywhere. I'd say Lhythm is not a place.

I would not describe it as a place she can't win, but I would say it is, it's on the tighter side. There's 250 bunkers or something on that golf course. It is a test of your ball control much more than it is distance, like a lot of open venue. but it definitely trends on that. But again, it depends on what yards they play it at, you know, and it depends on the draw. It depends on a lot of things. So she's not of a great Evian record.

Two top tens in her career, T8, T9, and 22 and 23. And that's that's it there. So we'll see. You know the one thing I agree with, I'm going to go with Riv there. What I love about her, every time we get over for the AIG, it always surprises me because she talks about the

challenge of links golf, never really growing up playing league's golf, and how much she enjoys it. And I know a lot of that came from like showing up at St. Andrews big and like having this incredible performance, but like she was real close to a top 10 of Walden Heath the year earlier to last year, not the year for her, but I think she was just battling all sorts of things. And we sat there and called radio of her missing every put possible, which was impressive. And I know this is going against what I said earlier. there's a difference from like those short putts are for birdie and when those short puts like she's grinding over back like 20 foot or after 20 foot or after 20 footer for

par and you're like this is not comfortable or fun to watch anymore or I'll try to crawl on radio and be like uh hopefully she gets it turned around by next hole she just wasn't there at all so I don't know she might surprise this Rive would be incredible though I mean I couldn't I don't want to say I can picture it but I don't know I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. I think, but that's 99% of what we do. For sure. I think the one thing about like, is this Nellie's tour? Yes, I would say that. I think everybody that works in the professional women's game would agree that that's where we're, we're at now. But in order for it to really elevate and make it, she needs somebody to battle with. Yes. And I think there needs to be somebody

out that can be her fill. Like you need, you need the counter punch. And even if it's only a run, if it's H.J. for a week and LC and then Patty's showing up this week out of nowhere, that's great if we can keep rotating them through. But we've got to have somebody up there who's almost consistently there that can do the counterpunches back. It's set up so well if if Gino can win a major and really start to have success the biggest weeks of the year, right? I just, Gino v. Nelly, not every major, but on occasion battling it out like sign me up for that i think uh last thing you know neil was texting us all weekend just boys the road to 11 majors is a lot shorter after this weekend neil famously after

nellie's first major which i believe was what 2019 uh we we were like neil what's the over under for uh major wins in in her career and neal throughout 11 and i think we were all just just completely flabbergasted. It is a little shorter feeling after today. And I got to say, with the Chevron being in Memorial for the foreseeable future, like, I mean, she's going to have many more looks there, definitely. Solly, are you willing to revisit? Is Neil still, you know, are we still laughing at Neil?

Yes, the over under he set was 11. He didn't say, like, I could see a way that she gets to. he thought it was a 50-50 chance that she would do one or get to 12 majors that's what that's the over of 11 majors so yes we're still going to laugh at that but um i think it's also you know i think we go ahead and roll it Cody i think we have some some feedback from somebody involved in that hey guys what's up i wanted to give out that i don't know what happened let's do you for always believing in me thank you try it one more time Cody see if we'll play from the start Guys, what's up? I wanted to give out shout out to Neil for always believing in me. Thank you. For those listening in your car, that is Nelly. Interpost game press conference, not the presser in a selfie video.

Shouty out, Neil, for the 11 major prediction there. So what's your over-under number? I guess maybe that's where we can leave the Nelly talk. What's a new fair career over-under? This is going to sound low, but majors are hard. to win and 27 is not super young in the women's game four and a half i think if she got to five majors that would be remarkably impressive and that sounds that always sounds low at this point but two more majors on her career would be really really really good it's either four and a half or

five and a half i was thinking maybe five and a half which still feels low but i think is fair for a lot of reasons. I mean, I'm just picturing like, God, win at Rive, go to Hazeltine. Like, let's go to the Evian three for three this year. But we spend most of those major recaps wondering why on the real golf courses she doesn't come close to being herself. So I'm not getting out of,

I don't think this solves those problems. And problems are relative, right? She has a runner up to women's British. She has a runner up the U.S. Women's Open. She could have won in 2019. KPMG Boom's PGA at Hazeltine as well. A couple other, another runner up at Chevron back at, and so there's been close calls,

but anyways, we will see. For once, we're not going to give me a lot to do it. I think if it's four and a half, I'm going over. Yeah, like, I probably would do. But five and a half is hard to go over. That's why I think it's, you know, you probably, if it's four and a half, you've got minus odds to go over that.

But I don't think it'd be minus odds over five and a half. would be my guess. I don't know. You know, we've never, Nellie's really never talked about how long she wants to play, recently engaged, have no clue. I think a lot of the time for people who cover women's golf,

we just kind of naturally always say that people pumpkin at 30, but that's not the case at all anymore. I think it's hit or miss. And I think we see a lot more moms, you know, the women leaving the tour going, having a baby, back and playing.

So who knows? I think, I don't know, would we be happy if Nellie ended her crew with only five majors? Like, I feel like, I feel like it's so much more than that. So that's an interesting question. Five gets you, Sayri Pock, Amy Alcott, Yanni Sang. Six put you with Betsy King, Pat Bradley, Patty Sheehan. seven majors put you up with mboree webb julie ingster and then kind of eights the rarefied air i mean that's betsy ralz and then double-digit major wins onica obviously had 10 uh and then i mean

she's she's the leader for anybody that played after like 1970 so i think five is like an exceptional career obviously but i think if nellie could get to that like seven major mark like a car Web, NB Park, I feel like that's almost, it feels a bit more fitting for maybe what I sense her larger career impact to be. I'd say got to get two more this year for getting to seven. You got to go now. Like you got to go while it's happening for you. And she's going to have, going to have plenty of the opportunities. I mean, you could track a lot of stuff in a lot of different places. I would guess Arcos could set something up like this that could track her major winners. It'd probably be, you know, probably too much power in that technology there for something

that's as easy to track as that. But Arcos is the official game tracker, the PGA tour, probably the smartest platform in golf. You're seeing it in real time with guys like Matt Fitzpatrick, wins at the Vowspar, wins at the RBC, and just did it again at the Zurich, of course. It's been very open about it. Arcos is a huge part about how he understands his game. It's not just tracking stats. It gives you real insights into how you actually play. It's the stuff that becomes your secret weapon and understands your tendencies where you lose shots how to adjust that's how you get on runs like matt is on right now i just got a bunch of feedback on it that my short game sucked so i completely changed my wedge setup and it's only a sample size of one round but uh it was it quickly

quickly changed around by just changing my wedge setup the easiest way to get all that now is the new arcos air been using it for a few months now it's out now inventory is tight so if you want one you got to go get it no sensors on your clubs no phone required just golf it's like a health app for your golf game. You're not just sitting, you know, you're not sitting there counting steps or tracking your sleep manually. It just happens in the background. That's what Arcos Air does. You put it in your pocket, play your round, and it tracks everything. It's completely frictionless. You make some edits when you're in the clubhouse after the round, and then it gives you a report on your game. It tells you you chip like an eight handicap, but you putted like a plus four handicap. You

drove it like a 12. It gives you direct feedback on everything you did, and you will learn something. You might have a number in your head, and it'll play a lot different than that. So you get the smart laser range finder as well it takes it even further it's not just giving you a number it factors in slope and wind so you know if you laser 150 it'll say it plays like 162 back into the wind it gives you make it you can make up shots in so many different ways using this platform so if you want to play smarter and actually understand your game go get arcos you can go to arcos golf dot com that's a r ccos golf dot com use code nLU 15 for 15% off love arcos yeah i can't wait to start using it. I've not have not

a golf yet. I've not played around a golf yet this year. Boys, can we just run through quickly Tybo on some of our storylines? I think that will help frame some further discussion from the Chevron. Anything else, one of our storylines from early in the week

was, I believe this was Tron's wondering aloud if Gino has that dog in her. Not a good week for Gino. She missed the cut. She goes 74, 73. everybody's entitled to a bad week. Gino has not had the greatest start to this season. Are we worried?

Are we just chalking it up to, you know, maybe something's off mechanically. She'll get it fixed. Or are we getting a little worried about Gino and her lack of breakthrough in majors? Mr. Great Opportunity, the Evian got kind of one taken from her, really, at the Evian. It feels like she should have a major at this point.

This is a dip. This is, I'm not selling everything on Gino. I think we have put a little spotlight on our major championship record for good reason. But if you made me pick, will she win a major this year or not? I would still say she will. So I'm not selling off Gino's stock just yet. But we need to see some of that dog to T.C.'s question.

Cody, do you feel differently at all? I mean, I think maybe the early season win at home is carrying a lot of weight for me. But man, her major performances are are tough. I don't know. It just, I'm not worried.

I'll say that. I think eventually it's going to come. It's one of those things where we forget she's truly super young and gives herself so many opportunities. I think eventually, like, eventually it has to happen. But people said that all the time about, you know,

a lot of other players. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with her. As much as he said, she doesn't let it mess with her mind. It's not a mental thing. Clearly, there has to be something. That's just human nature there. But this week was not good. But I probably could have told you that when we showed up and it was wet.

And like, she just, she doesn't have the horsepower for it. But she does, I mean, she does win. It's the low scoring majors. And granted, it was kind of a weirdly low scoring at the top, but not that low scoring throughout. So I don't know exactly how to evaluate that. But decent side. missed opportunity but I don't think nobody was

beaten Nellie this week anyways. She, yeah, not a good putter for Gino. The only thing I would say is like, my advice to her would be however Nellie has started approaching majors and whatever she is doing to try to ramp up and play her best golf the five biggest weeks of the year,

I feel like Gino needs to start maybe taking a page out of that playbook. And just learning, like, how do I peak, you know, the five majors of the year because she's good enough to win any week. But yeah, she just has not played her best golf when it matters most. So I'm not selling either. I'm still holding out hope there. Another storyline will Japan go back to back?

Guys, pretty disappointing week, if I may say so, for the Japanese women. Mal Saigo was your defending champion. She shot plus four overall, finished tied for 59th. We saw Nasa and Chisato Iwi missed the cut. The best Japanese women finishers, Manami Katsu and Rio Takeda, were tied for 12. Had you asked me Tuesday, or had you told me Tuesday, that no Japanese women would be in the top 10, I'd have been pretty flabbergasted, to be honest. So I think that's, you know, maybe just a bad week, but something to note that's interesting.

We had a Hyju Kim discussion. She obviously has won a couple of times already. A pretty good week for Joju. She finished what, solo six this week, not really competitive in terms of winning, but kind of the non-competitive wiki top 10. Good week for her, good payout.

Didn't have the distance. Another player that's like Memorial Park just was not set up to capitalize on what she does well. Charlie Hall, can she ever win a major? She did not this week. She did top 10. She finished at minus five, kind of another non-competitive top 10 there for her. She was not low English woman. That was Lottie Wode who finished at tied for seventh. And then maybe we'll pause here for just a second. There was a storyline about can Mingy Lee become a four-time major champion? And she did not.

She did not play well. She shot two over, finished T-49. But early in the week, the LPGA put out a thing saying Minji Lee is going for the career grand slam this week. Guys, I think we need to have a real conversation about like what is the modern LPGA career grand slam? Because as is, they consider winning four, any four of the five current majors to be the career grand slam. I just don't think that's right. And, Salli, you know. Can we lump this in with the final, final, when we do the big macro Chevron? I think that works with that.

I think that all flows together. We're going to get through these. We'll put a bottle in there. We got some things to get off our chest. Another storyline this week. Is this Lauren Coglin's time? It was not. Unfortunately, tough Sunday for L.C.

She shot 77. She finishes tied for 55th. I was saying, where have all the American stars gone, right? And this is kind of non-Nelly division. You know, never would have guessed Ryan O'Toole would be the, the low American not named Nellie Cordo. She had a good week, finished tied for seven. Angel Yin, as Cody said, overcame that opening 77 in the first round to finish tied for 10th. But, you know, Andrea Lee missed the cut. Rose Zang missed the cut. Lindy Duncan missed the cut.

Those are three of the higher ranked American golfers at the moment. Allison Corpus, you know, type of 27. There's just not a lot of excitement right now outside of Nellie Corda most weeks for American women. And we don't have to go into it all right now, but I do think it's just worth keeping an eye on. Like, I think we, who's that next kind of great American golfer? Is it 17 year old asterisk tally? I don't know, but I feel like we're doing for somebody to kind of break through. And then this leads to two of our other big storylines this week.

And let me just read what we wrote on Tuesday. This is the first big litmus test for the enhanced. improved broadcast for LPGA events that was announced at being in the year. Very curious to see if it's improved over the bare bones skeleton operation at Carlton Woods the last few years. In conjunction with that, we add Will Memorial Park feel like a major championship venue? So who wants to go first here? Because as great as Nelly Cordes Golf was this week, I was so freaking frustrated by the broadcast.

and the effort or lack thereof that NBC put into showing this major championship. I'd say outside of Bones. Outside of Bones. I think Bones was the one. Every time Bones's voice came on, I'd perked up a little bit of like, oh, Bones is there, big time event. And he should honestly get everybody's pay for the week. Like he was the only, he added gravitas.

He was like really the only thing making it remotely interesting from a viewer perspective. Rania, I'm glad we talked about this. beforehand, like we talked for for quite some time about Nellie's excellent golf. Everybody teeted up this week. Like all of the players know that it is technically a major championship. One of the five weeks of the year you want to peak the most. And Nellie was able to do that and do it emphatically. And that's worth celebrating.

I think we sitting here can, you know, celebrate the companies like Chevron that are investing in and supporting women's golf and by all accounts, like putting on good tournaments with solid purses, the players seem to be quite happy with it. But we also have to accept that something like this, this tournament, whatever it is, is still very likely to be at odds with what the golfing public considers to be major championship golf. And there was almost nothing there this week that made that feel different than any week-to-week LPJ events.

And let's drill down. Is that more of a memorial park as a venue? or the broadcast presentation by NBC Golf Channel? I think you can you can ask that question. Is it an LPGA thing? Is it a Chevron thing? Is it a Memorial Park thing? Is it NBC Golf Channel?

And I kind of throw my hands up and say, I don't care. I don't know. I don't know who to blame or where to point to blame. I like Memorial Park. I think it's a fine golf course. I said this in the preview. If you're going to have a major at a singular course every year,

it needs to be a banger, a banger. And you all made fun of me when I did that. But the overseed, though, and it's, you know, it's a different golf course than when it's played on Bermuda and the chip shots around the green are different. And the slopes come alive a little bit different. And it's still, I think it's better than Carlton Woods.

But I think it, we are taking an event that was, again, we talked about this a lot in the preview, but was the Dinish Shore, was a tradition out west, there was an environment around that event. And you move it. to Houston and call it still a major championship. And then, so I've asked myself this question of like, all right, yeah, they moved it. It's been here a few years now.

We're critical of it every time. And they, you know, hypothetically, somebody would come to us and say, okay, how can we make it a major? And my answer to that is you can't. Like, it's not one. It's not one. There's not, you're just, you're putting on an event and you're calling it a major championship. The graphics are the same.

You're mailing in. I mean, the, the TV product did not feel any different than it hadn't. prior years. I think we were excited about, you know, there are a couple more drone shots, maybe some more tracers out there. We were excited with what we saw in the West Coast, but it, it combined the lack of environment out there, no fans out there on Thursday. I think it improved as the week went along, but like the shot of the tournament was Nellie stuffing it in there on 13 and no reaction from the broadcast, a short reaction from the broadcast and no enthusiasm at all from the crowd there. Even when Nellie made the put,

Carbanks makes the call and like just nobody chimed in within any comment on any of it. And it just, it's such a, it is passing all of the responsibility onto a viewer that doesn't want to do any work on this to like make the leap in our own heads that this is a major championship. And it's not working. And I don't, I know why it's this way. Like a company has come in and throwing up a lot of money to put up the biggest,

you know, a bigger person than they normally play for on the LPGA tour with the hook. Yes, this is a major. Like, yeah, we're going to call it a major. if you give us this amount of money. And that works for the players. That works for Chevron. That works in general, but you've made it very hard on fans.

And you've diminished the other major championships, I think, with this process. So that's a rant, I guess, a little long-winded. I'm curious to your guys' reaction to that. But I guess I'm tired of like trying to make the leap internally that this is a major championship because there's just almost nothing that screams that it is. Cody, you want me to go or you want to go?

I'll go big. I think there's something here at Memorial Park. I love the fact that it's a public access golf course. I think the city of Houston, I think the Astros Foundation have done a phenomenal job. It's a fucking Tom Doak golf course. I said this before we started. I think the biggest thing in like the resto renovation that Doke did was for a golf tournament on the PGA calendar that was hosted in the fall.

And Overseed was not in the question there. And when the PGA tour event moved to the spring, which they wanted for sure and they brought Overseed into the picture, yeah, it looks really good, but a play is a lot different. You're not going to have firm and fast. That's just not how it's going to be. Even without the massive amount of water on Tuesday, it's not going to play like that.

And that stinks because for everybody else, people that live in Houston, people that play Memorial Park weekend, week out, It's a really tough golf course with awesome greens. Really, really cool green complexes. And that's where the teeth is at. And it's just never going to happen this time of year, no matter what it is. I think the major or non-major, we talk through this a lot. You're right.

We can't say if you can slap a price tag on it, that what makes it a major, because Walter and Shirley probably heard that and are like, oh, shit, we can raise our purse to nine million next year above the five that we just moved the J.M. Eagle up to. and maybe we can get a sixth major on the calendar, which is great for the tour, right? And everything that Chevron is doing is great for the LPGA tour, but it's degrading everything else around it,

like all the other majors. KPMG has done an awesome job. That major championship wasn't even a thing, really, until KPMG came along and really boosted that up. The U.S. Women's Open's Open. AIG Women's Open, AIG putting a ton of money into it. It's great, but it's so hard. I mean, I think we learned this last,

year and like how events over time can turn and how we like totally embrace the back nine of Evian and realize like, holy shit, this is fireworks. And like, I think it's because we got used to seeing those holes and realized how quick things can get off the rails and like how much is still in play. None of that is the case at Memorial Park. The broadcast put in zero additional effort to help show why this place is so cool because it's not a flat property that they showed. I didn't see it like outside of a random handheld cam like one time on the bleachers in

15 and a couple other times. They barely used any of the drones. We didn't do any drone tracer. Maybe that's not just in the LPGA budget, even though Trackman is is proudly put right there in FM. If we saw that, this is Texas commercial one more time. They don't need to show it every damn commercial break.

And there's a difference here when it comes to broadcast. schedules themselves. The split between Golf Channel to NBC, I understand. But they're splitting their windows on Thursday and Friday with nowhere to go. And then on Peacock, you know, for the weekend, which is fine, I can get over that. But completely two different crews for the week, which like, no offense to Cara, people aren't, aren't used to you being the lead announcer for a major. And if that's going to be the way for all majors going forward, there needs to be.

something else there. I love the fact that Bones came in. I agree with you big. Everybody should donate their paycheck to whatever charity Bones wants it to go to. But like Amelia, choosing Amelia for the second and dumping Karen, that made zero sense to me.

Let's dump our person on the team who's actually, you know, outside of Morgan, won a major championship. Like does this weekend, week out, knows these players, these shots better than anyone else? The whole thing is laughable. And from I said this, before we got the show started, is I spent two and a half days down there on site

and this whole entire weekend sitting here watching it. And I feel worse off for it. I don't know what I'm doing. And we're supposed to be the people that are trying to make new fans of something that we love. All right? This stunk straight up. And one of my favorite golfers won the tournament.

and I don't know how to fix that. Right. It's an LPGA. But isn't it an entirely different lens if this was just one of the bigger events on the LPGA tour? That's the thing we've been saved before. It's a signature event. And it just makes this whole conversation super murky. And again, I get why it exists, but like this is not the best thing for golf fans, I think.

What's weird is, okay, if I may, I've had stuff in my head all weekend. Cody, I'm with you. The overriding emotion that I felt, as a. viewer as a viewer Saturday and today is just anger like just insulting I was insulted by the effort NBC golf put out this weekend specifically they've had better telecast previously like the founders Sharon Heights in California was a better telecasts and this major championship which is mind boggling to me the LPJ tour finds itself where their broadcasts partner is actively harming their product.

And until new commissioner Craig Kessler addresses and does something about that, I don't think anything else matters. You know, you can toggle the schedule. You can make whatever changes you want. But I think priority number one for him needs to be, we got to fix this shit. Because if you sat through yesterday's telecast, we're seemingly like all the handheld cameras to your point, I think went away. I there was essentially they just showed the final group and took commercial breaks in between

you know all the the shots for the final group over 36 holes this weekend it's Texas it it was it was an appalling commercial load like you said there was nothing in the presentation of this that would make a new viewer feel like oh my god this is an important event like this is this is important I I just think this is a a massive issue for the LPGA tour. And it really just erodes credibility everywhere else until you figure out what is going on here and how this can be presented more as a major championship.

I'm willing to get on board with Memorial Park. Teach us about the holes. Show us cool views. Walk us through the strategy. If we're going to see these holes year after year after year, let us get comfortable with them, right? 100%. Hopefully they can parlay the setup to,

get the most drama and the most excitement out of the individual holes. Okay. But if this is what the telecast is going to be, this is dead in the water. I, you know, if anybody listened Tuesday and was like tuning in for the first time, like, I apologize to you. This was not a fun experience. I've said before, like being a fan of LPGA women's golf can a lot of times just be hard and frustrating. And I've never felt that more this weekend. I think. think Sam Flood, Tommy Roy, like they should be ashamed and embarrassed by this. Great supporters of the women's game. It truly is they don't give a shit. And it could not be more apparent watching Saturday and Sunday this weekend. I am so disgusted. And I would just say Craig Kessler,

this is the issue. You own this major championship. You got to fix this, man. I don't care about where the past champions stay at the hotels. Like, that's great. I don't care about the person. increase i don't care about any of that until you give me a reason to care about the golf and and make it a fun exciting viewing experience and i think they are so far away from that i i just cannot believe it i'm i'm angry i was angry all weekend i think there is the the defense i'll give of of craig and just the the new nature of his tenure is where i'm i would say he's got a year now he came into this uh you know he got it moved he got he got he got this moved to Memorial Park, which was a dub. And I would guess there was not the time necessary

needed available, I should say, to get what you're talking about fixed ahead of this year. And that's a new goal for next year. And in year two, the expectation might be different than it may have been for year one. I think those frustrations are entirely fair. I think it would have been probably unrealistic to expect that this new administration could have gotten all of this turned around this quickly when you're locked into a TV contract with a broadcast that just doesn't care. I just can't imagine accepting it, though, like not, not raising a stink about it or not just acknowledging it to the people, like the fans. Like just tell us.

Just tell us what we're all seeing. Like I just want somebody to verify the truth before my eyes. LeBron tweeted about it. We're good, dog. We got this, man. Did you not see that? I agree with the line of thinking that you're going down, Sully. But to me, it just, it brings forward, I think, a bigger issue that Craig has on his hands is that you're right.

This might be his first Chevron championship. This might be Chad's first Chevron championship because this is also in Chad's alley. There are hundreds of people that work on that LPGA tour staff that it is definitely not. And I hope they sat into post-tournament AARs and debriefs and went through this because they go through this every single year when it comes to the Chevron. after they move this tournament to Texas. And Craig doesn't make every single decision. He might sign off and approve ones that make it to his level, but he's not the only idea guy.

He's not the only decision maker. He might be the final one, but things have to get to his level first. And if people are okay with this, at the heart of the LPJ tour, that is a bigger issue. It's the only issue. It really, it's the Canarian.

To me, it just, it tells me everything about the organization as a whole. Like if this is, you're calling this a major, you own it. And if it's this poor from a viewer experience, it just erases credibility from everywhere else, you know? I just think it's a massive, massive problem. I do have, I did come with a couple things that I think, you know, not just throwing, you know, ice on all of this things that they could do to actually make this improve. The broadcast stunk, it felt flat. A lot of that is because of, you know, there's nobody there on Thursday.

There's nobody there on Friday. And I understand people got to work. Kids are in school, everything else like that. You have to figure out a way. I don't care if it's field trips. I don't care if you got to come up with some sort of program or anything. Get kids free tickets. Give them sack lunches.

Get people there. You have to get people there. And then maybe on the way out, give them free, tickets for the weekends if their parents bring them or something like that. You have to get people there because that not only feeds the players, it frees the broadcast. Yes. It was a substantial buildout on site. You could tell that when the PGA tour left, the LPGA team came through and pointed out

which grandstand they wanted to be removed, but it was the largest buildout I've ever seen at any of the women's events that I've ever been to. And I think that should be applauded. There was so many options. or like most of the time. I remember in Frisco last year, if you went out, like by the turn we're six and seven are at on Fields or Ants each,

you couldn't get a bottle of water. It was not good at all. So tons of options here. Great, great to see. On the broadcast, I think it's very simple. Use those pre-tournament days. Big, like you're saying, do some drone overviews.

Utilize the personality and the staff that you have. Bring heat maps in. Talk about angles. That's what Memorial. Memorial Park is. You can lay over all the shot data that you have from the men's. How cool would have been to say, hey, from this spot on 14, this is where Gary Woodland hit his second shot in from. This is where Nellie's at. Compare and contrast the two. I think there's so much that they could there could do there if they wanted to actually bring that up. On the history of this event,

I understand that people struggle and there's confusion there. Instead of just showing who the winners were for the last 20 years, which I feel like we got hit over the head with that. Talk of the story of why. Talk about why Chevron invested into this. Lean into it. Instead of looking at it as a black eye, like educate the fans for why it is a major, why we are here. I think there's little things that once you add them up will go a long way outside of

figuring out who the voices are on these actual telecasts. All very good suggestions. Yeah, for the amount of shots they did not show, like truly, we saw Farrow Keefe, we saw kind of the low-am battle, I guess, today. Yeah, I don't know why. But again, like, what does that get you? What does the low-am get you? You never like, why is that important?

You know, huh. Like, no real stats, no like, hey, if you miss on this side of the green. you know, the, the scoring numbers, like nothing like that. Morgan Pressel, I just, I can't. I can't. She does not say anything ever, ever, ever. It's horrible. Yeah, drones, talking about strategy.

You could have had Karen and Bones out there with the final group, you know, talking about like, here's how you want to play the hole, some good drone stuff, interlace some heat maps. But there's just nothing. It's just like, what are we doing? I feel like the joke's on me. Like, fool me seven times now or however long I've been paying attention to the Chevron. And I'm like, okay, nothing's going to change.

Like, I think it's just on me at this point to like just wait is. It's going to like triple frustrate us in the media where we are like supposed to treat it like it's a major. Yet all that's what I'm like just like just slapping the label on is what makes it the hardest. Like we wouldn't talk about it for an hour if it wasn't considered a major. but then it's not passing the test for being a major. So then we just end up doing this conversation every year, which is not a fun one to do. One thing I will shout out, like,

LPJTor socials were, I've been a lot better and were a lot better this week. Like, just really good, really good visuals. They picked up a lot of Nellie's round that wasn't in the broadcast window, which has been issues in the past. Yeah. You know, I think that's a big improvement there, not just the quality of it,

but the fact that it's not necessarily, in the window, but it's because of NBC properties on that. They weren't able to put that stuff out on social. And they are now, which I think is an awesome improvement. Solly. They also have threesomes on the weekend and not having full round on television. It's like, okay, not a major. It's just unsurious.

I know. It's just unsurious. I know. I think we should move on, even though, unless you guys have anything else in the chamber that you'd like to empty. Somebody pointed out, you know, they made a big thing of running in putting for par on 18 talking about oh my gosh she's going to make this

and it's going to be 54 whole straight holes of bogey free golf and she bogeed 17 like there were just so many they did that on 17 ahead of the put that she hit and then she missed it and they'd pretend like she hadn't bogeed it when they got to it's petty you didn't see any handheld camera like truly this was a step back

for the telecast from week to week this season and this was their first major like it just makes no sense to me I get it. You're just turning people away. Our message board, people talking about trying to watch with their daughter, trying to watch for themselves,

and giving up. Like, that's what it is. You're actively turning people away. And again, it's like, I'm sorry. I feel bad.

I feel bad. I can't recommend this product this week into people. It's horrible. I'm going to play this back for you for the Chevron preview next year. Just like me with the Rider Cup stuff. Like, don't try to convince yourself next year. Don't do it.

Save for Snow Hive this year. Like, we could just replay it again. Yeah. Be fired of. The one thing that I know we're being a dead horse so we can move on. I still would say complete freedom that the, an LPGA telecast does not have to try to be a make-believe PGA tour telecast. Yeah.

Do something new. Do something exciting. Do walk and talks. They were doing it on the West Coast. They were. I don't know where that went. I don't know why everybody feels the need to talk over catty conversations. I don't know.

I don't know what's going on there. But like sometimes just laying out and being exciting, just get excited. I don't know why people, it's Nellie quarter. She won't a major. Like, why was one of those boring golf terms. I was taking ambient noise. Yeah. All day.

And bones. I don't want to throw bones into this because bones, bones is trying. But I would have taken ambient noise just watching. Let me just hear the sounds. Yeah, just give me, give me something to, you know, connect me to it. I just want to feel like, you know, it's not something just playing in the background. And AT&T, those folks, they believe in connecting people to greater possibilities. They do that through a network that keeps people meaningfully connected to those who matter most,

friends, family, and more. So the moments that matter feel closer and clearer because it's not just about being more connected. It's about being better connected, wherever life takes you when they're The connection matters. It has to be AT&T. To find out more, head to ATT.com backslash connect to change. AT&T connecting changes everything.

Not my best there. That wasn't my best, but I was looking for an off rate out of that. What I think we could have gone through? Yeah, sorry. On the PGA tour, the Fitzpatrick brothers shot a best ball 57 on Saturday to grab a four-shot lead going into Sunday over Davis Thompson and Austin Eckroat. It was an up and down day for the Fitzpatrick's. Of course, switching back to alternate shot in the final round.

A fair amount of bad golf between the two of them on the back nine. Their four-shot lead dwindled down when they made double on the 12th hole. It looked like Matt Fitzpatrick did not want his brother to get a tour card. They bogeed the 14th hole as well, which put them back into a tie for the lead. Alex had a great approach shot into the par 317, but Matt hit a poor put there. Alex put Matt in the green side bunker 35 yards away on the 18th green and Fitz hit just a nasty, nasty spinner out of the bunker to tap in range. They go on to win by one shot. Alex Fitzpatrick gets a PGA tour card is exempt through 2028 and into the signature events.

I think we have the clip of the shot, Cody. This one, I think this one deserves a replay because it was fantastic. All right, here we go. The third for Matt Fitzpatrick. Golf ball does it spin? Oh, what a shot! Unreal. I thought he thinned it.

Is that any good? I thought what he hit, when she said all golf balls, like, oh, my God, that's going in the stands. It sounded like it was a lot of golf ball. But if you watch that replay again, like you see it kind of like side spinning. Even as it comes to rest, it had so much juice on it. But I was thinking about that. That had to be one of the weirdest. pressures a professional golfer could have the final round today for Matt.

Coming off the win last week, of course, won the Valspar, won the European tour as well this year. And he's not only playing to win another event for himself, but like his brother is in on a sponsor exemption. And his brother gets a PGA tour card exempt through 2028 with a victory. He gets into the PJ Championship, gets into the signature events with a win. It had to be a completely different level of pressure. you're playing for yourself but now you're playing for your actual brother and to watch them get

it done it was freaking awesome that was one of the best possible outcomes for this tournament i know it's going to make some people upset and i that makes it even better that makes it that makes me enjoy it even more guys because that was freaking theater today well i my first thought my first thought i'm sorry and i'll move on that clip you just showed the the the way the announcers the excitement and you had the crowd react like that was more juice than we're we saw at any point in the Chevron all week. And that's arguably like the worst PGA tour event of the year. So just to give you an idea of like the Gulf.

I loved it. I'm like I'm turning into a big fitsy guy. Yeah. Obviously having a great season. This is now his third win, second straight. Saw him take it down in Hilton Head last week. I, the other thought that popped into my head talking about like having to play. well to get your brother who like may or may not be deserving of a PJ tour card like into the

show imagine if yannis onto ticumpo like had to win the NBA cup for his brother to like earn a roster spot on the bucks or something you know like some real pressure here to bring your brother along it was very cool it was a very cool moment what you said questionable whether or not he deserves it randy can i can i throw a couple challenges into that to begin with one please Alex is one on the DP World Tour already this year and his sixth currently in the DP in the race to Dubai, which top 10 get PGA tour cards already. Now that's not the same class that he just got exempted into, but Alex was by all accounts trending into being a PGA tour player as it stands now.

Secondly, it'll win the tournament. It'll win it. Like second doesn't get you much of anything other than a decent paycheck. Of course, you don't get world ranking points for this tournament. Like it is a get in out, get guys. grab bonk shot 80 teams and you got to win it grand your brothers playing awesome golf he's a third rank player in the world uh and yes there's some nepotism involved that but you got to win you got to do it like you just go out and beat all those dudes like you can't tell me that guy's down a pga tour

player you even with a partner you don't win a pGA tour event and have your your ability question as to whether or not you can be a pGA tour player and he made like i think he made nine birdies in the best ball portion of it that's just me scorecard reading he could have made more than that for all I know. And it's hard to tell in the alt-shot data kind of, you know, exactly how he compared to his brother there. But he just won the Hero Indian Open, had another top 10 on the DP World Tour and now goes and does this.

Like I, you must tip your cap here. There's, there's some bad comps being made out there with a different tour as to this kind of exemption or whatever it is. But like the guy earned it by winning. I have zero issue with any of this. You're exactly right.

I will, in the moment, Mayaculpa, perhaps too strong to say a P, not deserving a PGA tour card. I guess where I was like a little like, wait a second, he gets into all the signature events for winning a team competition with his third ring brother. I think that's maybe what was like, yeah, I don't know about that. But I was not familiar. I know he's in the Fedora 5 and I think we have an update here in just a second maybe on T. on TCs, Fedora 5. Hand up was not that aware that Alex was playing that well on the DP World Tour. So I will walk that back in the moment.

Thank you, Sally. I think that's, it's, it's fair in a vacuum. Like, wow, you win that and you get into all of these events. But I think that there's also a little bit of realism in how things work in that Zurich is one of the companies. And this event is one of the events that is doing something different, which a lot of us have asked for. It's not my favorite event still, the team format,

but usually the Sunday is pretty exciting. And it's a lot to keep track of with all the different golfers you're looking up at and wait, who's, it's a lot. But there still needs to be like some, a little bit of a carrot with this event to get a sponsor to sign up for it. And like the master's invite goes away, is gone away with this event.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I could be, I don't believe you get a master's invite for winning this one. Like you need to have something. that gives a company a reason, I guess gives the tournament a good pitch to players to come and play in it, right? And I'm fine with that being part of it because, you know,

there are some stresses to the PJ tour system. There have been in the last couple of years. Like, I don't, I don't think it's hurting anything to have Alex added into the signature events. Like, the guy won a PJ tour event. And I know it's a team format, but like you still got to hit the shots. And you cannot, you can't,

there's no one person team that wins this thing. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. They're still doing sponsors invites into the signature event. So I guess I can't have like that big of a problem. Two year exemption. No, no master's invite. He does get invited to the PJ championship based off of it though, which is interesting and the players. So he's he set there. Is that T.C's music? I think that's T.C.'s music. I think I feel like we need this Timmy trumpet. We got our guy. He is hot in the bullpen. It's been warming up a long time. Hello, T.C. Called it from across the pond. How are you? Good day, mate. That's what I'm starting.

Crack on. Yeah, God, no, you don't get a master's in fight. I froze in the moment. I'm like, oh, God, God, please don't tell me you getting the masters for winning this one. I will say, Alex Fitzpatrick won, he won the DLF this year. He won the Indian Open. He won a National Open, Randy. And that quarter has not won a DP World Tour event this year.

Solly, you said Matt has won a D.P. When did he win recently? He won't late last year. Oh, okay. Was it this season, though? No. That's what I'm thinking of. Okay.

Apologios. Anyway, they're at the top of the Fedora 5. Bottom line. Period. Point blank. And that is a new move, right? That was just announced this weekend. That's a new move. So last week, this is the second week in a row.

We've had the Fedora 5. last week was rory scotty cam young jackson coivan and then p and the fitzpatrick brothers were tied for fifth wow big jump big jump big jump big jump and i actually announced it this morning brandy that's what i'm so even before they won so uh but yeah we've got we've got the fitzpatrick brothers we've got coivan moving up to second uh another win for him he just keeps keeps keeps wins winning. He just won't stop winning. This was, this was a, what I would classify as a big dick event as well. And then we've got Rory bumping down to three and he's going to be idle again this week, which, yeah, that's fine. I just, I think, I think we're going to see a play out what we talked about quite a bit after the masters of him,

him played a pretty light schedule from a PGA tour perspective this year. And then we've got Cam Young. I've dropped Scotty out. I just, I need to see more. from Scotty and Pete. And then P remains at 5. Just, I'm still bullish on P. I think P at the P.

Eteronimink's going to be tasty. Is he in Aronimink? Who can say? Yeah, I would have to think so, right? He'd be OWGR. He's up there in the OWGR. I think he's like,

top 50 in the world, isn't he? He's definitely... Okay. I think he is, but either way. Are you good with Fitts' Alex Fitzpatrick's status? Oh, I love it. I bet the mules are going to just be beaten up

player relations and I think Kirsten Byrd, who does all the eligibility stuff at the tour all week. So, yeah, it's delightful. Reed is in the PGA officially, special exemptions typically even anybody inside the top 100 of the OWGR as of May 4th 2026 and he's 22nd the world right now so yeah he's gonna yeah problem there you go and then yeah sally you're kind of skipping over it but you know two pairs of

European teammates in the top five at the Zurich a pair of Danes per Norwegians just saying get them on the team and and Englishman as well And Englishman. Yeah. And then, you know, Penge and Wallace had a couple of good rounds together as well. So a lot of green shoots out there, Sali. Yeah, I don't have the energy to fight this anymore, TZ, especially as we get into our next topic.

We don't have a lot on the Zirk today, unless you got, if you guys are ready to get into, we got a lot of news and notes to clear up here for the rest of today. One of those being that Jim Furek has been named the new United States Rider Cup captain. what that's i'm sorry tc your your keyboard are so loud we're coming through it's coming through my my air pods i promise anyways back to the topic jim furek is named uh the the riter cup captain uh here for the united states are you shaking in your boots yet tc i am i am it's 2018 uh you know pair maybe maybe the second time's the charm

fool me once, Sully. Shame on Jim. Fool me twice. Shame on you, Sallie. Fool me three times. Not going to get fooled again. Meanwhile, Dodo's been setting up his little fun house over at a Dare Manor

for months now. Yeah, I don't know. We don't have it. I like Jim. But yeah, like Stu Stink can't get a look. Nobody else can get a look. Can I ask a question for the audience? Solly, Antron.

I know Furek was the captain when they lost in France at what Le Golf National. What was the takeaway? Was the captain, was he to blame? I know, Saw you were like, ah, they set it up. They were always going to win. Like, what, how much responsibility did Captain Jim bear that week? I'd say a fair amount. I don't think he brought the best possible team that he could have.

I think a fair amount fell against him, just the way that the late season calendar kind of went. Bryson won two playoff events and was one of the four captain's picks. I do not see a world where you don't take him. Like it would have been a Billy Horsal, 2014 situation all over again. Like, how can you not take the guy that just won twice? Tiger had just won the tour championship the week before.

And he was a captain's pick. Like, how are you not bringing Tiger long? Of course you're bringing him. Phil was the questionable one, but this Phil had been on every team ever to that point. He was a different player in 2018. And look, you get to that, you get there and you're like, oh, this is a disaster for Phil. But, you know, bring Phil next year.

And Big Tone was the fourth captain's pick. And Tone played well. And the pairings that he threw out were bad. They were really bad, especially in Foresomes. If you listen to our podcast, we did with Duncan Carey after the last Rider Cup, like he basically said, like, you're team Europe basically said, we won. Like we won. We've out chest them because they clearly don't know what they're doing to handle this golf course. I will say this. I, when I saw the news, I was, I rolled my eyes.

I was like, oh my God, how can, what are we, what are we doing? But I read Shane Ryan's, he wrote a great article for Golf Digest. I thought about this a little more. And I think there's an opt. I'd rather they do this than do the Stucink thing you're talking about T.C. Or do the Justin Leonard thing or do something that somebody that hasn't done this before that is just that doesn't jump off the page to me as somebody that's going to upset the apple card and own the process. I'd rather take my chance with someone that has done it,

failed, and can show the opportunity to learn. Now listen, was Jim two and seven playing in Ryder Cup team? Were his team's two and seven in the Ryder Cups that he played? Yes. Was he 10, 20 and like three, I think, career record as a Ryder Cup player? Yes. Is he 0-1 as a captain, yes. Has he been assistant captain on multiple losing teams? Yes. But that doesn't mean it has to be a failure and that he's an idiot. I don't think Jim's an idiot at all.

I think he's a smart guy and I like Jim a lot. And I think that he feels a debt to Team USA, that he wants to overcome all the failures of the teams that he played on, even the ones that he cat. I just think he loves this process and really genuinely cares about it a ton. And it's more. a reflection of how bad the PJ of America has mismanned this whole thing

that there wasn't really a good option available than it is like a I don't want to pre-indict Jim for the 2027 captaincy I think he's like falling on a sword here of like we're kind of screwed we're we're going

we're going across to Dodo's fun house we're going to be massive underdogs the chain said it's like there's a 5% chance of team USA wins I don't know if I necessarily agree with that but it it's a tough one but it like at least gets you back on the track of the task force and it really does pull back the curtain for how bat shit fucking crazy it was to have put kegan in the captaincy last year which was was one of the great own goals of our time i mean it just a

complete obliteration of the process they hit us over the head with the task force you know we're rolling assistant captains up through this whole thing and you know you're going to get experience and we're going to do a system and we're all going to do it the same way and blah blah, blah, we've learned from Europe and just lit it on fire. So Kiz could be an assistant captain. So Gary Woodland could be an assistant captain. So they could fuck up the course set up that they could not even come close to just defending. They came close to the very end.

But like they got obliterated on home soil, one of the worst captaincies of all time. Like that was what they did. And now they almost have to like work backwards into getting somebody back on track into whatever system they were setting up. I don't know if this is going to work necessarily, but it maybe puts you on a better track to getting the groundwork laid for 2029 at Hays and team. I love it. I love all of this. I think it, honestly, Shane kind of flipped me on it.

It's a great article on golf digest.com. I don't know if you guys got a chance to read it, but it is like, dude, what else were you going to do? Like, I don't think it necessarily. I thought it was so defeatist. They should let the creator be the captain. What did you say? They should let the creators be the captain.

Captain, have like a contest. Or bring Tom Watson back. Let him be the captain. Or bring Tom back. It's still a little discipline in the locker room. Yeah. They panicked after Davis Love brought in Tom Watson. That couldn't have been a bigger disaster.

They panicked after Zach Johnson obliterated things in Rome and brought in Keegan. And it just, it was, it's such a mess. They've, the organization has no plan. Like, there is no plan here, obviously. they're they're they're desperate they're trying to figure anything out here so what if they what if they brought poulter in to be the captain like poulter's never going to be on another european team that's right here like i was planning to bring up poulter later on not necessarily in this capacity so this is a little bit of a surprise in the curveball but uh yeah i i don't i'm if you can't

tell them at rock bottom with team USA. I think I think we can I think there's a couple more layers under this kind of it's too. How far away are we like a year and a half? Yeah. I don't think you can hurt me though. That's where I'm kind of at. I'm kind of like when the reds bottomed out in 2022 Randy. I'm like, all right, let's tear it down. Let's lose a hundred games. Let's build back better from there. God, I still remember sitting in an RV at Whistling Street. Yeah, I think this is like, It would be like a decade plus of dominance. It should have been. It should have been.

If they don't take ZJ to Italy, I firmly believe it should have been. ZJ's captain seat was so bad that they blew up the plan and put Kagan in place and then lost a home rider cup. It could not have fallen out worse from that RV at Whistling Straits. I blame ZJ for almost all of it, actually. Kagan, it's not Kegan's fault. It's ZJ's fault for being such a bad captain that they felt like they, that anybody that was on his staff couldn't possibly be the next captain at home.

It was one of the biggest follies in the history of this event. What if they brought Mickelson in? And it's almost like a Bud Kilmer situation. Like the guys want to win in spite of him. And kind of like Herb Brooks, you know, if everybody rallies together to hate the captain, they won't have time to hate each other. Yeah. I'm open to anything.

I'm open to anything. Those are two of the most provocative ideas, Mickelson and Pulter. Like, I love where your head's at. would love to get you on the task force. Otherwise, like otherwise, we're just going to get this steady stream of just, oh,

it's the worst. It's so boring. It's so tame. I know. It's going to come down to, does Jim feel, if he's sitting here right now, and feels like he,

he knows what to do, he's almost already done it wrong. It's almost like, I think you need a more of a period of, of, um, information gathering. an AAR from where it has gone wrong in the past.

And like he's got to do it differently than he did in 18. And he's got to learn from the experience. And I just, he probably, the entire organization has a ways to go and understanding what they need to do to go up against the competitor that's willing to do absolutely fucking anything to win this. And I'd be surprised if they got there.

I'd be stunned if they got there by 2027. But I don't have a better answer for what they should have done right here. I don't think Tiger was ever the answer. I'm on record with that one. I, the only other recommendation I've had that seems to get nowhere, it doesn't seem to be on the radar is Hunter Mayhan. I've never heard anybody speak about the Ryder Cup as clearly as Hunter Mayhan does

in terms of what the Team USA needs to do. He probably needs to run as an assistant captain in some way, but I hope Hunter Mayhan is an assistant captain for Jim Furik. He played on Rider Cup teams, at least one Ryder Cup team with Jim Furik in 08, and I think he should be involved in the process in some way. That's fine. bring in Mike Tomlin. Mike Tomlin's not doing anything

right now. Maybe Mike Brable will be available then. Ravel's got time. Leaders of men. Yeah. Damn it. All right. God, this is going to be a tough 16 months for for Solly. It's not.

You can't hurt me. You cannot hurt me. There's nothing you can do to hurt me. I'm at rock bottom. I got a question. How much longer do you think they were going to, they were planning on delaying this announcement before they had fucking LD and Dodo over their last week like, wow,

guys, what the fuck, man? Like, we got to get this out there now. Just pick Furek. I had heard it was going to be Snetiker,

and I don't know if, if that was the actual case, that seemed like a really tough turnaround to do President's Cup and Ryder Cup and back-to-back years. We've not seen that done. But, yeah, I don't know.

Long ways to go. I think there's going to have to be something go horribly. wrong on the European side for them to have a chance. You're going to need like a big injury and the ROM thing to not work out in some way. And then like you then you have a chance maybe to compete. Otherwise if Europe shows up at full strength, as it stands

here now, I just, I don't, I don't see a world where that happens. But I've learned learned my lesson. You don't need to replay the tape from Italy. We're not doing it. Okay. On other news around men's golf, a round of layoffs hit the PGA tour on Thursday. This is from Josh Carpenter

at Sports Business Journal. They laid off 56 full-time employees on Thursday as the organization goes to a right-sizing amid its new for-profit structure. This was according to people with knowledge of the TOR's operations. The 56 jobs represent about 4% of total staff, which numbers more than 1,300 globally. In addition to the layoffs, the PGA Tour is not filling 73 open roles that had been posted. The tour next week plans to reallocate some of the lost positions and reinvest in 30-plus new full-time roles, including some senior-level jobs.

So despite the move tour sources say the organization was profitable in 2025 and believe it remains on a strong financial footing moving forward. And then the moves on Thursday came after the tour offered voluntary retirement late last year of which 30 employees took part. TC, we knew this was coming. This was in the news. What's your reaction kind of to this news? Yeah, obviously people's lives and livelihoods affected. But I think definitely lighter than what. I think a lot of people thought was coming, including Ian Poulter, who we referenced earlier.

Yeah, that was crazy. I think with any leadership change, you're going to get a change in strategy. And I mean, I'd be lying if I tried to distance ourselves from like we've talked for the last eight, nine years about how behind the times and bloated and in the wrong spots, the PG, G8 Tour is. So I think reallocating some resources and positions and kind of rearranging some deck chairs is a natural evolution. And yeah, I know, I'm sure they're going to beef up the championship management side of things even more as they try to take on various tournaments here and there. You know, a few people I was kind of surprised not to see go, if we're being honest. But I think bit. You know, I'm sure there'll be some other kind of waves of this. But yeah, I think that

was FTI consulting was who Rolap had used at the NFL and brought them in here. And so, you know, various people I talked to said they thought the cuts were going to go deeper, if anything. So yeah, I think just natural course of things with with a leadership change, you know, between any organization, especially one that's that's evolving and changing. is rapid as PGA Corps right now. Yeah, I think that's well said. Brian Rolap stood up at the Tour Championship last year and said, expect significant change to the organization.

I would say there's like a zero percent chance that that meant that wasn't going to come in a change of resources of some kind. Like, I have to re-out. If they're changing the model, they've gone to a for-profit model, they're changing the competitive structure and how that's going to work. They're changing a lot with the organization. And of course, yeah, the conversation online around this, I found pretty disconnected from reality and how things work.

And it's never fun when people lose jobs. And, of course, we have empathy for those that are affected. But like an audit of what's working from an employment perspective at the PGA tour and what isn't is not like, it's not indicating anything necessarily about the financial viability of the PGA tour model. It gets such a drastic leap. Like if you're, you know, how many people did I say were let go? 56, I think.

56. I mean, 4% of the work. under probably under $10 million in annual salaries. And like the conversation from a certain corner of the internet was like this was that the live news was fake and planted to distract from the PJ tour failing. Because they had to cut around $10 million worth of salary. That's a complete out of the thin air estimate. I have no idea what the total is. And by the way, they're going to like, you know, rehire and hire other positions.

And yeah, it's truly like it's, it's. It's change. It's not, it's not just cuts for cuts sake, I don't think. So, yeah, I'm just, I'm very, very good on live players, specifically Ian Poulter, that have enriched themselves beyond anyone's wildest dreams using, like, people losing their jobs for clout, like for social clout. Like, this is politics or something. Like, the narrative, it was clearly, like, there was like a live distribution list that went out after the horrible live news came out that it was like you know all the live bot accounts were

throwing out oh this is a distraction from the pga tour uh firing 500 people 500 people ian polter went online not only they discredit everyone's reporting around that he said it's simply staggering the amount of bullshit that pours out daily such a shame and disappointing i guess it will make for a good book one day that was a tweet he sent out last week uh replying to the the very very descriptive live reporting that has not been actually disputed then he went multiple tweets he said said here in replies to the news that the PJTor would not be going to Hawaii anymore, he said, here comes the cost-cutting exercise from private equity funding. Next up, you'll tell us something silly like the PGA tour going to lay off 500 members of staff.

He sent another tweet later, he said, here comes a private equity cost-cutting exercise. I'm sure next they will be, they'll be laying off 500 members of staff. He then replied to the news that around 50 people were laid off said, it's not good to hear about people losing jobs. That's not ideal for them at all. Hope they aren't affected too bad and fine roles elsewhere. quickly. I heard the number was significantly larger, hopefully not true. So again, he started this week by saying that it's staggering the amount of bullshit that pours out daily. Then throughout multiple tweets saying 500 people were being laid off that hundreds of thousands of people

saw never bothered to correct the record on all of that. And it just, that one just, I knew these people were just behaving in a very despicable way over the last several years. And that one like sent me over the edge. That was just like one of the, the lamest things I've ever seen from a tour pro on a social media perspective. It just, there's no links these guys will not go to. Have you seen Twitter account? Of several years?

There's no links these people will not go to to try to win this. I'm worried. You might be too, you might need to pull out from the discourse, man. I just don't know. You're too online, man. Yeah, you might be too online.

I don't know what we're supposed to just like ignore all of this. I think so. I think that would be the healthy. I will say the one, the one thing that I will give them a little bit of slack on is I do think that some of the reporting from Monday Q info, Ryan French last week, like he got virtually every fucking detail wrong on it and is just totally skated free on that stuff. I think Bloomberg and Brody at the Athletic had great reporting, flew down to Mexico and did all

of that. But I do think that like, you know, if we're going to want him to correct the record on something like that, then, you know, if somebody gets a lot of details wrong of, you know, live shutting down this week or imminently, like I think that that's, you know, we probably have to call it both ways there too, right? Yes. In a way, PC, I think like you have what he initially threw out, you have a dark period where, which I thought some of Brody's reporting actually filled in some details of like, it sounds like it was in question there. And a little bit of jumping the gun of saying, yeah, take the under on whether or not the subject is going to happen.

Yeah. It's the jumping the gun and just the emphasis on being first. Yes, that definitely was there. It was there's an imminent bombshell announcement coming, which never happened, and take the under on whatever their next event is. That's paraphrasing it. And neither of those things end up being true, which gives everyone on the other side an easy thing to point to of fake news and Arlo White

and David Farad and all that stuff. And it conveniently allows them to ignore. the very buttoned up and accurate reporting from all of the other entities, right? That is the dog whistle, I guess, out there for everyone to rally around. So I'll agree with you there. But we'll get into this now. Brody Miller's on the ground report from Mexico. This was for the athletic, and this came out Monday, and I'll summarize some of what he wrote there.

But basically, because of the last minute nature of the visit, Brody, who went down to the event, was without immediate credential. He bought a ticket for Thursday. He said he was struggling to get Liv Staffers on the phone with the chaotic nature of the week. But as Livest staffers began to return calls, he got a credential for Friday and Saturday. But when walking around Friday,

a Liv security worker pulled out his phone, stopped him, pulled out his phone and showed him a company chat with a large photo of his headshot and said, you need to come with me that there was a security alert sent out on him. And it sounds like he made a phone call.

and like, oh, he's good now? He's good today? Okay, never mind. All right. No, you're free to go. And Live executives adamantly denied knowing anything about it or knowing that he was in Mexico City on Thursday, which of course can't be true if his picture has been circulated through Live Security. But he goes through in great detail about how O'Neill was under the tree at Augusta. Everything's great. You know, we've talked about this last couple of weeks of we're funded through 2032. We're meeting with Rollap. Everything's great. But by that Sunday afternoon, by Master's Sunday afternoon, he wrote the situation changed. in part due to the U.S. war with Iran, leadership team members were told their positions were at risk, and during a mad dash of meetings in New York City and Mexico City,

O'Neill and his leadership team attempted to ensure Piff would at least fund the league through the remainder of the 2026 season. Sources speaking to the athletic on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that funding came down to the wire. So it was coming down to the wire whether or not Mexico was even going to happen. and that I had not seen that reported that specifically anywhere until until Brody reported that. He also noted that not one live official was willing to go on the record with the athletic,

despite the many public shots live folks have taken at the reporting around on the ground around this incident. That's my wording there. And also reported in that in the center of the putting green before the first round, the league's two largest stars by a wide margin, Bryson DeShambeau and John Rom, we're seen having a lengthy private chat, the ever demonstrative Deschambo energetically spoke with his hands as Ron listened and seemed to ask questions.

This multifaceted symbol of the league's strength and vulnerability couldn't be ignored. At least a dozen other golfers were clearly distracted by what was taking place. It said, Liv attempted to provide Deschambeau to the athletic Saturday, but Deschambeau seemed frustrated after his two over par round, declined to speak, even uncharacteristically walked past autograph seeking kids,

then withdrew from Live Mexico City on Sunday morning, citing a wrist injury, said he'll return for Live Virginia in two weeks. Also that they almost had to delay the shotgun start because those two were still having that chat, which is crazy. No, I mean, it definitely sounds like everything was in flux. And it just sounds like, again, it was in flux, right? It wasn't a certainty. It wasn't a, hey, this thing's shutting down imminently kind of thing.

But excellent work from Brody. I recommend everybody to go read that article at The Athletic and making that trip and just color. and then everything else starts to make a lot more sense with a few of those details he has in there. I also didn't realize that Brett Bear and Sharky were so tight as well. So I think that's where Brett Bear was getting some of his info. Brett was the one that said definitely.

That's the one that I'm like, oh shit, I guess I'm going to put his reputation on the line with that one. Definitely done with funding after 2026. Bryson spoke with the, The journalistic entity Flushing at Golf, he technically said some words. I don't know if he released spoke. Damn it, Sally. I forgot.

I'm in the UK. I didn't let Flushing it know before I got here. I forgot to mob up, guys. You better watch your back. You're not mobbed up right now. Oh, man. Bryson said there's a lot of moving parts like in any business. It's a startup, right?

And so there are going to be times where we're squeezed and punched. This is one of those moments. But I'm going to do everything in my power to make it work. and I really see the value in franchise golf. This is not just for myself and the team aspect that I really believe in on the Crusher side. It's for Michael Assasso. It's for Caleb Sarat.

It's for Jocel Biasterre. It's for David Pooge, John, Phil, DJ, myself, and the guys that have been here from the start were okay. It's now our responsibility to take care of these kids that believe in us. That's why I'm really doing it. There's so much value to squeeze out of this whole thing for golf in general. Also said, we're still working on a potential contract. I haven't given up on that.

And I think there will be a solution. But as of right now, my job is to help make the league work after this year. I just feel like I have a responsibility. I put a lot of effort into it. So that's what I'm going to do. We're going to, and he said, as long as Liv is here, I would figure out a way for it to make sense.

So I expect Bryson to play for free next year by that. He may even fund this thing based on that. I don't think, I think it's pretty much confirms that Bryson's not, doesn't need to seek a half billion dollar contract from Liv. I think that's, the whole, those circles were getting very frustrated that people weren't widely reporting, but Bryson's, like that Bryson had put an end to all of it. Like, we're good to go here. It's like, hey, we still got some pretty big questions here about Live Golf's future.

And I actually read it the other way. It's like, as long as Liv is here, I would figure out a way for it to make sense was like, oh, so we are exploring the fact that Liv might not be here, Bryson, because I don't know if that's been said out loud by Scott O'Neill or anyone else at this point. So it was, then they scrubbed it. Well, he said we're funded through 2026. He didn't, he did not intimate. He did not say out loud, like, as long as we're here.

He's still publicly working under the assumption, like, yes, we're going to be playing next year. Bryson was kind of the first one to say, like, yeah, if it's here, I'll be playing. Which is like, oh, okay. So maybe he was reporting wasn't so wrong last week, guys. Sally, I think we're bearing the lead here. OKGC. I knew you were going to go straight to that. I mean, that's that's the news of the week, right?

Team Smash, my favorite team has rebranded. The world's, on the world's golf tour, they've rebranded to the Oklahoma Golf Club. Yeah. Which is funny that like, you know, Peter Euline went to Oklahoma State. He's not on the Oklahoma golf team. Randy, who's your team? I think I was a range goat's guy. Okay.

Maybe a high flyer in the very beginning with Phil, but yeah, I forget. I took the quiz at one point, and I honestly, I kind of forget. It's very funny that, like, the tour is going to Doral this week, and like a year ago, live was at Doral. So the tour is going back to, you know, obviously the tour went to Durrell for many decades, but, you know, just thinking of just a year ago, like, you know, Doral and what the the rippers one down in Doral and and and like this week's going to be fucking bizarre put you're going to be a weird one yeah your big boy pants on Randy it's

going to be a big one a lot of people skipping Rory skipping a second straight signature event here um I think five the top 15 I read are not going to be in the field this week is this what do you make it at TC is this a scheduling issue we we kind of I mean it was pretty easy to point at the schedule when it came out, this five out of six week stretch was going to be a pretty massive problem for a lot of guys. It was not expected that everyone would play all of this stuff.

But it's also hard for me to get worked up about it knowing everything's going to be changed in some form or fashion in 2028. But I haven't thought on that as well. Who else is skipping? I think it, I don't have the list in front of me. Apologies.

I should have gotten prepared on that one, but I know I can pull it up on data golf and see. Like it's Scotty. Then it goes Cam Young, Russell Henley are the top data golf players, then Morikawa than Fleetwood. So also skipping, that would be, you know, Rory is skipping, Fitz is skipping. Fitz has played a lot of golf. He's played three weeks in a row.

That makes it Zander skipping, looks like, as well. So that you have Quail Hollow the next week, and then we're right at the PJ Championship. So and basically anybody who's going to play C.J. Like I'm surprised, I'm kind of surprised to see Scotty playing. He's not. Oh, he is. He's not.

He is playing. He is playing. Okay. Yeah. Like, he's not playing Quill Hollow. He's skipping next week. Oh, he's skipping. Okay.

Yeah. So we're getting. Yeah, three, three signature events with, without Scotty and Rory playing together in them, um, which I'm, I'm of two minds on the Rory thing. Like I, I, Rory was kind of the inventor. of the signature event model and he pushed really hard for everyone to have to play all of them and was beaten on that and voted out on that by the the players.

It was originally you can skip one was the original agreement. The model now it's you can play whatever you want in that. I'm kind of like one side of my brain is like, dude, you wanted everyone to play all these. I kind of need you to play in these. You invented these. These sponsors poning up the money for them. The other side's kind of like, yeah, you try to get everyone to play them. They fought you on it.

So why wouldn't you take advantage of the rule as well and how it's set up? And clearly he's focused on the majors and he's going to do whatever he wants, you know, to try to be as ready for erroneous as possible. But it's just a bummer. Like I just, something went wrong here with the schedule and, uh, and just having it fall out the way it is with three signature events between majors and not good, not good commitment from all the top players. Yeah.

I think, yeah, I think we're already, I think, yeah, I think we're already, like, all right, like, I'm not putting my heart and soul into this tour anymore. Between Jay leaving him out to dry and, you know, other stuff. So I'm surprised. I'm a little surprised Scotty's not skipping this one. Instead of, he won the PGA championship at Quill Hollow last year. I think that, but I'm guessing CJ has something to do with that. Yeah.

Like that he doesn't play three in a row would be my guess. Yeah. But I bring this up because I've been, I've been looking into. to kind of, we're going to do a podcast here in the future on a proposed 2028 schedule. And it's, it's harder to put together than you might think with the volume of events that Roll-Apps talking about in the window that he's describing between Super Bowl Sunday and Labor Day. And before Labor Day, like, it's like 29 weeks if I have my count right. And if we're talking about 22 big-time events, like only seven down weeks in there is,

is different and tight. And there's going to be, they're going to have to figure out getting all of tour guys to agree on what they're willing to play in a row and how they want to do things leading up into majors and after majors is going to be a challenge and i don't know how they're going to end up getting that through what the rules are going to be on commitments to all these events um what sounds like i mean based on rolaps comments in march it sounds like it's not like you don't have to show up but we're going to write the the rules or we're going to write the the the incentives as such that you're going to fall behind you're going to be very disincentivized if you don't show up yeah should start docking points if you don't show up yeah that'd be saying work in other news hawaii off the schedule officially um as reported uh earlier this week we knew that was coming sony likely to become a champions tour event um god the old will love that all right sallie do they need to do they need to lower the champions tour like age to 45 or something.

I feel like we're just going to start getting these these these these rudderless mules that are just languishing in the slack, you know, in the trade winds between about 44 and 50. And then they go and play a little bit of corn fairy tour or pick off some sponsor exemptions. Or you rely on those guys to play the B track events that aren't, you know, among those 18 that roll out. Yeah, 45's a big leap. Midam tour. I wouldn't be so, if they ever did that, I would, I would think they kind of have to age it. Like, it would kind of suck if you just turn 50.

Yeah. And then, like, almost kind of like, all right, this year's class, 49 gets in. This next year's class is 48. Because, like, if you just turned 50 and then all of a sudden they're letting 45-year-olds in at the same time as you is going to be like, ah, fuck, that sucks. Also, who cares about the two people. Yeah. There's more champions to our discussion than I ever want to have. Did see Ben Crane and Rory Sabatini on the leaderboard, though, for the champions?

Did you know that? Jay's cleaning up right now? Yeah. Brian Gay. I think Routif won today. Longtie J.D. Royal Lidham, per Jamie Corrigan, is getting as the favorite to get the 2028 open championship, which we'll see that again later this year for the 8th.

AIG women's open. Great, great. This is great. I thought Lhythm was maybe potentially, it has been out of the road up for some time. This will be the first time since 2012. It's got one. And I thought maybe it would come in a post-rollback world. But good, Northwest England, it's a lot of majors up there, T.C. But this is a very major worthy venue.

And I'm excited for this one. Yeah, you guys were talking about the number of bunkers. I think it's a hundred. I always thought it was 250 something. It's 171 or 178. It's in that. Really? Yeah.

I've been saying 252 for like a dollar. That's what if I. Yeah. Which like I don't feel like it should be that hard to count them up and I can't find a straight answer anywhere on the internet. Cody. Cody is saying 167. Okay. And there's like there's 20 alone.

Wikipedia. Don't hold me to it. Oh. There's 20 on like 17 or 18. I mean 18 is like it's one of the well bunkered holes I've ever seen. Yeah, and then what Martin Dempster reported that it was between Libham and Royal St. George's, which sounds, I mean, Muirfield was widely presumed to be kind of next up. But I'm assuming that the club either doesn't want to do the changes that the RNA is pushing for with regard to, you know, just letting Ebert and McKenzie bless the golf course. as well as just do some stuff for,

I think a lot of it comes down to a number of spectators and how big the build out can be. But yeah, I don't know. I'm stoked for Lidham though, because I was worried Lhythm was falling by the wayside. It's not. That needs to be in the Rota. Other news.

Average shot times are going to become public on the Corn Ferry Tour. T.C. I cannot imagine how excited you were. Awesome. About this one. This came from Sean Zock, first place I saw it. It's going to include a ranking of the fastest and slowest players, times by shot category. And one of the objectives is to change the negative perception around the speed of play and is a step towards the same treatment coming to the PGA tour as well.

I retweeted that if you need to see the full article as well from golf.com is on our timeline as well. So that'll be fun. It's long overdue. Hopefully it goes well. We'd love to see every major tour do this. I think it's transparency. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, Randy. Yes. Last thing I had, again, we kind of have to do this now that Scott O'Neill is putting together a business plan for Liv

that is going to be entering the market with this. We must report the ratings from last week. Heritage got 4.35 million viewers was the fourth most sports watch program that weekend. All the others in the top 10 were basketball. Live average 49,000 viewers on Sunday for the final. round on FS1. That's down from a hundred.

Is that big data though? Sorry. I don't know. I'm assuming that's big data there. They're down from 110,000 in the prior year. They did have big Friday and Saturday numbers for them on Fox 396 and 33,000 on Friday and Saturday, respectively. But I over 50% decline on their final round Sunday on FS1.

But I'm sure Scott can sell that. I'm sure that's totally normal and totally fine. And that's, this is. That's business. It had to be people just curious, like, what the hell is going on with live being in the news so much? In Chippolda pack. Yeah. And just the shared prosperity.

If I was Bryson, I'd be like, dude, I withdrew for round four and you're raised. Price just went up again here, man. I think that's what's so interesting. I would love, God, I would love to be a fly on the wall if they do an investor roadshow. If Scott goes out trying to sell. because it's, oh, God, we don't need to spend more time here. But it's like the one asset is, is almost Bryson, right, and getting him signed. And he wants all the money is almost prohibitive to bringing in outside investment because you got to sign him to such a contract.

It just is, it's a loser. It's a money loser. I don't know how you square those two things. You say it's a bad model? Right. So, anyway. Last thing, Jackson Coyven won his third consecutive SEC championship and just is winning everything in sight and is truly one of the best amateur, best amateurs of modern times and feels like we're giving a weekly update on that at this point.

Put him on the team. I think he will be on the Ryder Cup team next year. Yeah, that's not even like a Ludwig leap at this point. I'd be stunned if he wasn't on the team. I mean, I don't know. You say that. You come out. then the pro circuit could as treated you know luke clinton one of your boys tc a little differently

than we thought that that was going to go you know matt fitzpatrick got he got kind of yeah jerked around by pGA tour you ended up fighting or sorry yeah Alex with Patrick and you know ended up coming through on the other side thanks to the team event so all good um that's going to come close to doing it. We're going to be headed to Dural again, as we mentioned on the PJ tour this week for the Cadillac. LPGA tours off to Riviera and Maya and Mayacoba. DP World Tour headed to Turkey

for the Turkish Airlines open. Here at No Lang Up, we are, you know, we're deep into major season. We've got a lot of pots on the stove. We want to take a minute and just make sure you're up to speed on what we've been churning out in a lot of different places. First up, if you haven't seen it on our on the No Lang Up YouTube channel, we got a

new, just kind of a refreshed video series out there. It's called Hitting Cups. Cody, you want to tell us a little bit about this series? Well, yeah, we wrote this up before we knew T.C. was going to be in for it. So TC, tell us what did you do, man? In the hitting cups or this week? Well, no, not this week. Tell us, hitting cups video.

I got a funny story for you guys from this week, too. But yeah, hitting cups. I played the FSGA, one of the winner series events at the Slammer and the Squire. You must go, guys. We have a lot of golf. We'll call Paul of Fame. I didn't ask if you found any apples out there or chilled towels or friends from no commercials. That was not part of the cutback.

36 bowl event. The video focuses on your second round, though. Yeah, I shot like 83 in the first round. I made, I think I made a lot of PARs. Unfortunately, I made like four doubles that day as well. Huber and DJ broke down my second round. it's electric, very volatile. It felt like I was playing golf in a,

every hole was independent from the other holes. There was no momentum or anything like that. But yeah, it was challenging. The lack of grass down there in January, tough. And actually, I played a, I played an FSGA, the Florida mid-am qualifier this week on West. Wednesday at the other course, the King and the Bear down there. And I was got off to a slow start. We didn't film this one or anything. Got off to a slow start. Had my Arcos on and everything.

I was all stoked. First competitive round with that. Bogey the first two holes. A couple good up and downs. He's hitting my iron. He was like horribly. A couple good up and downs. Bertie 14. It's par five. good part on 15 get to 16 I'm 248 yards out from the stick uh middle of the fairway it's like 230 to cover 228 23 to cover um and i like big big pond there and i fucking rinsed it just clanked it off the rocks in front of the green and i'm thinking there's like 65 guys in the field for about five spots and so I'm thinking all right I've probably got to shoot even and one under, maybe one over gets through. So I'm like, listen, I just got to drop one.

There was really nowhere else to drop. Like it was either there or go 20 yards up and drop next to the lake. So I just reloaded. And Neil, Neal's Augustapod was ringing in my head of like, hit the shot, DC, hit the shots, hit the shots. So I'm, you know, it's kind of one of those like no caddy or anything. It's just just me. I'm playing with two other delightful guys. And they, you know, I'm like, hey, guys, I'm just going to redrop one here.

Just rinse that one. And at that point, I'm like, I really, at this point, I'm out of the tournament. I just want to hit the shot. Drop another one, rinse that one. So at that point, I finally, finally go through a full sleeve, finally hit one up, short right of the green, about 40 yards. short right hit a nasty little wedge to like seven feet missed the putt made an 11 uh yeah and then hit one to like 12 feet on the next hole I was I was kind of I was kind of spiraling

at that point it's like three putted from 12 feet and then I was just humming on the back nine like you guys are following like what are doing like focus put your phone away yeah fuck I mean I'm What? I made an 11. Like, I was just like, man, that was, that was exhilarating. You hit the shot, though. I hit the shot. I really didn't even hit the shot. Well, I don't know.

It sounds like it was kind of a layup. Yeah, well, then I made a couple birdies on the back, or made one bird on the back and then came in, I think, and wiped one into the water on, I think my 15th hole. But otherwise, like, I think I shot 81 with an 11. And I was like, holy shit, I want to go play more tournaments. This is, this was awesome. So it was, yeah, that was, that was pretty, pretty invigorating.

And then, yeah, I flew over here the next day and I played, I played south. I took a look around. I had my driver fitting at the, at the title of Wilburn facility, got fit into my GTS3. I've already planned with it. I switched to a forward. uh solid the turf over here it's i feel like i'm back the the the i played southport in nainsdale yesterday i had a walk around cleave hill on uh on friday after after wborn and then i played hillside today and i got four me tomorrow morning before you guys get over here so i am uh

i'm stoked to be over here and um yeah just games starting to come together a little bit though but i needed that like i'm so i'm like all right i'm signing up for more tournaments that that that 11 was like the blood was flowing man like i wasn't even bad it was i was just i was thrilled so and then when and then we're in we're in we're in scoring afterwards and you know they're just just going through and like good round going all of a sudden the guys calling out the scores to the lady typing him in and he was like three you know uh here four three 11 11 11 He's like, I'm sorry I said that hell out. I'm like, no, I hit the shots.

I hit the shots, man. Yeah, but, Sally, the weather over here is unbelievable right now. Like, people are, people are walking around with tears in their eyes. They're saying this is the best weather we've ever had in late April. It's like mid-70s and no clouds. It's unbelievable. Well, I'm already very excited. And yeah, I've been, I'm already filled with envy from very far away as of right now.

Check out hitting cups on the YouTube. Check out hitting cups. Because you can, you can watch me make, make some volatile, volatile scores. Next up, maybe thematically appropriate. We dropped a Ness podcast. We dove into some competitive golf DJ sat down with Neil Ben and myself for a little bit of discussion, a little bit of a therapy as well, just to chat about why we, you know, seek out competitive golf as adults.

The podcast is available exclusively for our Nest members. If you want to learn more about the Nest, get to access this podcast, got a no layingup.com slash join. Lastly, Randy, we got some great new stuff in the pro shop, I believe. We do, we do. We'll shout out some H&B stuff.

I think everything to get you ready for spring, summer golf. We have long sleeve, short sleeve polos, solid stripes, some prints, all really good stuff. as TC is want to say whenever we talk about H&B stuff, it's just tasteful. Everything they do is tasteful.

It's really good stuff. They also have some layering, some hoodies, some Q-Zips, things to keep you comfortable. Sounds like you guys won't need much of that over across the pond. But if you do, they have that. Yeah, head to store.

dot no laying up.com. We have a lot of fresh new items there. Great for yourself. Great for a gift. Check it out. And keep an eye out. We'll be doing a little bit of filming here in England in the next coming week. That'll be some content you will see here

pretty shortly. We'll have a lot more filming going on as well this summer. Going to be jaunting around in between a lot of these events. And then Randy and I are chopping tomorrow. Tomorrow night. He's going to talk me off ledge from the Jags draft. I think we had a coup in Mali, African coup. A lot of stuff happening in T.C. A lot of stuff going on. A lot of stuff going on. Thank you for tuning in for two hours of weekly

recap this week. Thank you to our friends at Titleist, Arcos, and AT&T. Cody running the ones and twos and the mic this week. That is a lot more challenging than he makes it look. Big Randy. And for T.C. calling in a late. What time is it? 2 a.m. where you are at 9. 2 a.m. Get to bed. You know, Sully, I don't need to cut off this perfect thing. We also have T.C.'s magical, the No Laying Up podcast this week is going to cook. And I know we got it in the can a long time ago, but T.C., do you want to set anybody up what exactly they should expect? Yeah, it's an 18-course meal, an 18 whole meal, really. It's my dream 18.

It's a worldwide dream 18. No rules just right. you know, it got weird. Took him weeks to figure. A lot of effort went into this. Oh, it was an existential crisis. Can you move one hole? Like you move one hole and then it,

and then you got to rejigger your entire, entire board. All the details of the structure around that will be on Tuesday's episode. So check that out. TC's dreamate team will come out this week as well. So thank you everyone for tuning in, either watching it live or on your podcast for everyone, Matt, running the socials behind the scenes. I'm ready to get on that airplane, TC.

I'll see you here shortly and crack on. Sure.