No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1154: Forecasting The 2028 PGA Tour Schedule

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

With 2028 looking to be the first year of meaningful schedule changes on the PGA Tour, Soly, TC and DJ do their best to carve out a theoretical schedule that embraces the new realities of the tour, ye...t makes noticeable improvements over the current structure with particular emphasis on implementing an actual “playoff” model to crown a tour champion. Support our Sponsors: Titleist Whoop East Sands Golf Co If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here.
Starting point is 00:00:31 Got a little bonus episode for you this week, something we've been teasing for a while. I am joined by the gentleman to underneath me as we are showing on the screen here. Mr. T.C., hello, T.C. Greetings, Sali. I'm really excited for this exercise. DJ Pi is here. Hello, DJ.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Hello. I'm not excited. I'm stressed stressed the hell out. This was so hard. This is what D's dream 18 felt like. Exactly. This is, I do feel like this has been hanging over my head for the last 10 days or so since we really started grinding on this. And it's it's it's engendered some empathy for me for. Which is rare. Yeah, for the folks of the PGA tour among others. You do kind of got to hand it to him. Yeah, we'll get into it. But I'm happy to be here. If the title of the episode wasn't obvious enough, what we are going to be doing today is trying to draft a future, a couple future different PGA tour schedules here.
Starting point is 00:01:29 We're going to break down all the details of that. The biggest exercise we're going to take on is making a set schedule for 2028. Beyond that, we're going to dream a little bit. We're going to play some hypotheticals. You know, if you're able to move this, then can you do this? and you know we're working under a lot of constraints that we're going to we're going to break down as well and yeah we got we got a lot to discuss decide a whole new championship series a whole bunch of things uh that we're going to get to this episode is brought to by our friends at title list and
Starting point is 00:01:56 title's new gt s drivers they launched on the pj tour at the houston open in late march and have already landed in the bags of over 50 pGA tour players i believe two of the three of us as well it's already landed it has not for your boy yet um some a stomach bug got in the way of my fitting unfortunately unfortunately, but I've been hearing nothing but rave reviews from UTC. Yeah, I'm in the GTS3. Went down a degree. I'm in the 10 degree. I think the ability to change the weights in both the front and the back has been a game changer.
Starting point is 00:02:31 Gained a little bit of distance, but the biggest difference for me was the dispersion, tightening it up. And it's, yeah, it's just like I'm getting the same characteristics, but just tighter dispersion. And then I got to give a shout out to my forewood as well. I went to the contrast on the face. They went back to the stainless steel face. And I feel like I'm back to it's, I feel like I'm back to like an old friend like the 975F. But with all this technology behind it,
Starting point is 00:02:58 it has been, it was my favorite club by far in, in England on our trip. And you guys can testify to that. It's been a game changer for me. Neil was smoking it on Tuesday at Chinataka as well. It was, it was concerning. I also dropped a new. GTS 300 mini driver popped up on tour this week at the truest. If you're watching online,
Starting point is 00:03:18 there's a couple fantastic looking pictures of that. But you can go to Titles.com to get fit for GTSS drivers starting May 13th. Titles.com to find a fitter near you. I need to do that actually because I missed my early window that they were arranging for us. But I'm going to get on that. So as mentioned, all right, here we go. We're going to be doing, we're going to talk a little bit on the upfront here about what a new version of the
Starting point is 00:03:43 PGA tour might look like. You know, again, we've talked a lot about the future of this schedule, when it's going to change, how it's going to change, and kind of been teasing that we're going to dive into it and solve it. And I think we kind of solved it in a way. It's very rough, like needless to say, but we have a 2028 PGA tour schedule that we are going to go through line by line with you today. If you're watching online, you'll be able to see this in our very fancy Google sheet that
Starting point is 00:04:11 we put together with some notes for each week as well. Again, we're working under the assumption that there is not going to be big changes for the PGA tour schedule in 2027. You know, roll-ups, rollout around the players did not really tease us or make us think. There might be some semblances of this in 2020. I think you can change the way you do the championship as of next year, which I'm not sure if they will. I actually doubt that they will, but that's more realistic to change than the actual
Starting point is 00:04:40 structure of these tournaments and and kind of this brand new look of the PGA tour, which again, after doing the exercise, I don't think it's going to look maybe as different as I thought it might when I walked away from March. I don't know how you guys feel about that. Yeah, that's, that's where I'm at as well as I think that we left that press conference at the players hearing about, you know, expanded fields at the signature of 120 man fields with cuts, 21 to 26, big events, big markets. We're doing this. We're, but we're also having scarcity like it's just a lot when you read all the the six bullet points or whatever they had uh kind of from roll app's first big uh media appearance i think it was very hard not to walk away and be like
Starting point is 00:05:22 hell yeah sign me up and then it was like okay here's a blank spreadsheet why don't you build what you think uh this is going to look like in the new world and and knowing what we know about the pj tour knowing what we know about how the structure works the fact that there's not just 120 golfers that they need to cater to. They do need to cater to a couple more than that. But then how do you don't forget about these guys? And then this contract goes through this date and this date's fixed. And oh, by the way, 2028's an Olympic year.
Starting point is 00:05:53 So then the open, all of a sudden was just like, oh, God, it just, hold on. It just looks like the schedule now. Like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on. I thought we were going to do all these different things. And you start to slot stuff in and you're like, oh, this is kind of the only way it can work without completely blowing things up. And like, I just don't think that if you're a, you know, billion dollar company, you can just take all of your incoming revenue and be like, no, no,
Starting point is 00:06:19 we're just going to hit pause and we're going to rebuild the rocket ship like from scratch. I don't think that's what they're going to do. And so I walked away from this exercise just to pour a big kettle of cold water on this exercise. Like I walked away being like, oh, man, 2028, I don't think is going to look that different either for a lot of reasons. that we can get into. Yeah, the big thing for me was, yeah, 28 is a mess because of the Olympics. So you've got the open going back to,
Starting point is 00:06:45 bumping back to August, which means shorter, shorter days. And then you've got twice at Riviera that year because the Olympics is at Riviera. So you can't really do a playoff event at Riviera like we've wanted to do. Be like five weeks apart or something like that.
Starting point is 00:07:04 Yeah. And, you know, I think some of it comes down. down to the like somebody's going to have to do something they don't want to do right and it's going to have to be top players playing three weeks in a row uh including a major or like because there's just not that many weeks that that that you have to play with here Cadillac as you'll see keeps keeps tripping us up we got to move the PGA back to august i'm going to do because all the future venues are fucking Texas and Oklahoma and all these places that you're not going to go in august i think the pGA tour ceded that
Starting point is 00:07:38 or they like they seated that territory to the pGA tour and the pGA tour is done dick with it you know so it's no no like the pg of america seated that territory to the pga tour in august oh in august and they just haven't done anything with it we're going to change that too though yeah yeah but you know and maybe maybe some of these future dates that are in places that you can't host a pGA championship in august cool you know what maybe we're taking the pGA championship in August. Cool. You know what? Maybe we're taking the PGA championship to another country. Okay. Maybe we should do that. We're going to dream on the back end. I promise T.C. we're going to let you cook. But we are working under constraints as we make this 2028 schedule.
Starting point is 00:08:21 And here's what they are. Okay. Sorry, real, real, real, real quick to what T.C. was saying. If you, if you want to lay out what, what Rolap was saying, and you got this like late January, but by I got them all right here. Oh, sorry. I got them all right here. It's 100. So what he said in his press conference in March, 120 man fields with cuts. And just remember that 120 man field because when we talk about these signature events,
Starting point is 00:08:46 they're going to look different than they currently do. They sound super exclusive now. They sound like they're shutting out a bunch of people. I would argue that to begin with. But even the way they're structured now, a lot of people are going to be playing these events. So 120 man fields and these signature events that we're going to go through. He said 21 to 26, track one. events in that he included the president's cup and what we have laid out that we're going to get to
Starting point is 00:09:09 we can get to 21 what i didn't realize until getting through this is we're really talking about a 31 to 32 week time period when he said starting in the late january to early september that's only 32 full weeks uh so i don't know a way you can get to 26 without changing what i what I would consider to be a core of this, which is everyone's going to play all of these. And I don't know if that means literally incentivizing them or forcing them to technically play all of them. We have kind of set this up to be like,
Starting point is 00:09:42 we're not going to put three of these in a row because you're going to be there. Like you're going to be heavily incentivized to be there. These aren't skippable. We're not going to have this situation of truest, you know, Cadillac and PJ Championship and back-to-back-to-back weeks and having Rory and Scottie not play together in any of those.
Starting point is 00:10:00 That's what we're building around here. So that's important. I would pause there real quick to say the other big thing that stuck out to me as you move through this is like I, I really am struggling to see how all of these things can be true, which is that one, we're going to have a track one PGA tour and a track two PGA tour. two, we're going to play 21 to 26 of these track one events. And three, we're going to create scarcity so that people like miss, start to quote unquote miss golf. I think you start to lay all those things on top of each other. And I'm like, wait a minute, man. How are we not getting right back to opposite field events and two events on the same week?
Starting point is 00:10:41 It's just, it's a lot to squeeze into a much smaller window than I realized. Yeah, when you think about the 120, you know, if there's 120 guys in these events, let's say 20 to 40 of those are kind of shifting in and out based on recent play and, you know, moving up and down, that then takes it to, you essentially have to absorb the corn fairy tour into the tier two stuff. And then, you know, maybe there's, there's no corn fairy tour. You just go PGA tour America's, you know, the bottom half of the corn fairy tour kind of goes, goes into that. And then the top half of the corn fairy tour goes into tier two. And then on top of the top of that you have to develop a point system that integrates both of those levels so that there's easy
Starting point is 00:11:28 relegation and promotion and tracking between the two because that certainly doesn't exist right now and I think that's a downfall of the current system is that you know like a guy at this point in the season who's off to a terrible start on the PGA tour and isn't getting into you know most events is is now wondering, all right, should I put all my eggs in the basket of the Corn Fairy Tour and play more out there so I can set myself up to kind of earn my way back up here next year. It's just, like, I think the Corn Fairy Tour stuff, and then not to mention the DP World Tour, do you strengthen that alliance and make that, you know, integrated into the Tier 2 events? And that's a little bit more worldwide. And that goes through the fall and the silly season,
Starting point is 00:12:13 because that's still going to exist as well. Just a lot. going on well i think just to like triple reiterate what you're saying so like going back to the math it's like let's say that there's 31 weeks and we're trying to play 25 of these events all of a sudden you have six off weeks for for these track one guys where you're going to have the track two guys have the kind of center stage and it's like okay you can take six of those you know call them like the premier mule events which i still think can play well on tv if you have you know like an event like colonial or something that might not be a track one event but is a really upper echelon track two event like that still makes sense to watch on a sunday afternoon i still think it can make
Starting point is 00:12:56 sense as part of the tv package but man you can't get into this situation where those track two guys but i shouldn't say you can't i doubt that they would get into a situation where those track two guys are like all right you're playing one event this week and then you're off for four weeks when the weather's great and then you're off for another three weeks until we've got another hole so then it's like going back to the scarcity thing is like dude what are what are we talking about are we having opposite field where these guys are playing is it some hybrid like you're saying tc between the corn fairy tour and the dp world tour all of that sounds cool but also feels like a cluster fuck sally i think we're when we were talking about it earlier i think you can do it in a way that
Starting point is 00:13:35 is uber confusing on that second level as long as when you get to sunday afternoon you understand what the putts mean i don't know if you want to elaborate on that thought a little bit and for the the purposes of this podcast, we are going to be focusing a lot more on the top championship level. And we're going to be a little vague on how to sort out exactly what you're talking about here. But if you're going to tier this system, that's a problem. That's a question that needs to get answered as well. But I think what we're going to ultimately ladder up to today is when we change the championship structure, the top level structure at track one, we're going to simplify a points list that can only be earned.
Starting point is 00:14:13 those points can only be earned in track one events. And let's just call them championship track events. When we show them up on the schedule here, everything in yellow on the screen here is going to be a championship track events. That is for the PGA Tour Championship. Like that is what everybody is playing for. Again, this can be loose. 100 exempt players, 20 of the spots can be up and down for promotion,
Starting point is 00:14:33 relegation, Aon Next 10, swing five, whatever you want to call it. Like that is the detail part that we're not going to, I don't have a specific answer rolled out for you exactly here, But this is an opportunity at that level to break the exact problem you're talking about TC of like, am I a PGA tour player? Am I a corn fairy tour player? Like let's solidify that to the point where those guys are all playing under one points qualification system that is listed on the website, is available to you, but it's not like it's not the Bible.
Starting point is 00:15:05 It's not like the guideline of what's happening here. Like there is a priority ranking system in professional golf as it stands now that we like don't have access to. Like we don't see exactly how that qualification list works. It works off FedEx Cup points and all that stuff. But that there's a chance to like break that up completely and start from scratch on that at the PGA tour that I think can simplify things and make, I don't know, make the blending of the corned fairy tour and the PGA tour make a lot more sense. And I think that's kind of the world we are headed towards in some way. But one fallout I'd say from this. And again, I might be one of the last people defending the 80-man fields, 70-man field signature events.
Starting point is 00:15:47 But like one of the appealing things of this was, I'm going to be really vague when I say this. Like guys, 75 through 120 on the PGA tour list don't matter that much. That's just a matter of fact. They don't matter that much to the signature events, top-level events. What they did matter towards was the, if they weren't getting in those fields, how much those guys were guaranteed to strengthen the next level. tier of events, which is going to hurt them a lot in this new model. When you get to the cognizant part on the schedule, and again, where cognizant's going to sit
Starting point is 00:16:21 on our schedule is kind of how it sits now in a run of signature events, they're not going to get many, if any, of the top 100 players on the PGA tour into that event. And that's a problem they're going to need to solve for with that blending of Corn Corn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour in that track too, I think. Totally agree. Yeah. So it's, it's big, it's big, even if we, again, we're going to get to the schedule. It's got to look that different, but it is big changes in, and potentially even more.
Starting point is 00:16:50 And it's worth emphasizing as well, 2028 could be very different than 2029. Could be different than 2030. You know, it really, it really could. Which is crazy. I've said this a million times. But I feel like we started talking about this in 2020, 2021. Or it's just like, oh, dude, wait till 23. It's going to look, you're not even going to fucking recognize it.
Starting point is 00:17:13 Oh, well, just wait, just wait till 25. Okay, well, just, well, now, as you, just wait till 20, 27. And now it's like, I think 2032, by the time we get to 2032, some of these contracts run out. Yeah, but that's an Olympic year. 2048. Down in Adelaide. Yeah, 2048, I think is going to be. Or in Brisbane.
Starting point is 00:17:31 Completely different. But, yeah, it's, I don't know. the pessimist in me is like, man, it would be better if, you know, what we say all the time, if you were going to blow up pro golf and start over, it would probably look a lot different. The pessimist is like, well, you can't really do that. And I guess the optimist in me is the biggest strength as I'm looking at this schedule is consistency. And these events that have been around for a long time. I think you're going to see that with the first event that is on our schedule here.
Starting point is 00:18:03 If you don't think we're doing this in good faith. Yeah. You think we wanted to put Torrey Pines first? No. No. Spoiler alert. No, we did not want to. But like, man, do I think that's a good event for the PGA tour and a good event for broadcasters and a good event for golf fans? Like, yes, I do.
Starting point is 00:18:20 And so check it out. We're going to Tori Pines north. Not Tori Pines. So anyways, the point of all that is like, I think it's, yeah, if you were hoping to tune into this and be like, okay, we're going. And we're starting in Dubai and then we're going to Hawaii and then we're going to Brazil. And then we're going, that's not going to happen. So I'm tempering expectations, I guess. So again, going back to relapse criteria from the presser, late January to early September,
Starting point is 00:18:48 open with a big marquee event at an iconic venue in the West to finish in primetime on the East Coast and evaluating markets like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Boston. He said something about scarcity. Scarcity is not the number of events, but rather scarcity is about making every event we have matter, about promotion relocation between the two tracks, merit-based system, and also said looking to enhance the postseason
Starting point is 00:19:13 considering the potential integration of matchplay, which we are absolutely going to have in there. We'll be integrating match play. So those are the, what he has said out loud is going to happen constraints here and some self-imposed constraints, as we mentioned. We tried really hard not to get carried away in fantasy, land like we're not going to ban on dunes you know we're not going to pine valley we're not going
Starting point is 00:19:34 to cypress we can we can do all that that they're not realistic 33 and we also are working under constraints as best as we could and this was a really challenging part of sponsorship agreements like i don't think the pj tour is going to be in a huge hurry to just rip up contracts from people that have pledged to give them money into the future so did our best to find a home for places that have contracts in 2028 or those that are we think would might be likely to renew the one that stuck out that we couldn't find a home for was colonial which is contracts ends next year I believe but that is been a PJ tour event for a long long long long time wouldn't surprise me that is one that as we also found out in this exercise you change one variable and the downstream effect could be could be
Starting point is 00:20:20 massive so we had to had to do one iteration that was going to have some some unanswered questions in there I think that that colonial example is one to almost zoom in on because I think it's pretty illustrative is if you're this new group at the PJ tour and you're looking at the balance sheets and you're looking at the sponsor commitments and you're looking at all these different things and you have these two events you have Byron Nelson and you have Colonial right next to each other it is so clear from where I'm sitting which of those is a better event. It's also very clear which of those has a long-term sponsorship commitment attached to it and which doesn't and then you're like okay now the schedule is getting
Starting point is 00:20:56 more pinched than ever. It's just, I don't know what will happen. And which is at a TPC course that they operate. Yeah. It's like I, you know, I don't know what that, what's going to happen, but like, man, my best guest is, is pretty pessimistic on, on which choice they would end up making to look at what happened to Hawaii. Right. It's, you know, I get it that they're, I was going to say they're not running a charity, but they kind of are. That's a whole other conversation. I don't know if they are. Yeah, it's a, it's just, it's, yeah, it's weird. It's weird. Yeah. Like our dream 2028 schedule would have Coppola as the kickoff. We are sad to see that go, but that has been announced.
Starting point is 00:21:32 It's not happening. So that's not going to happen here. Not going to be Sony on the calendar for a lot of reasons there. But as we just saw with the Cadillac, the proper spacing of these bigger events is going to be important. So we're working under a self-imposed no three in a row rule in setting out these signature events. What we have found to be a struggle and I think is going to be a tough, something to navigate for RoLap and the gang is not everyone. has the same strategy playing into majors. And it's also impossible to, are very unlikely to implement a strategy, the same strategy around majors as far as where you're putting your signature events,
Starting point is 00:22:10 either before or after them. It just is not going to gap out very well to do the same thing for all four of those majors plus the Olympics in an Olympic year. So there's going to be some on the schedule that have a signature event the week before it. There's going to be some that have a signature event the week after it is not uniform but there's a lot of do you know a lot of shuffling of the deck here and putting the cards in a certain order that make it quite challenging but i think we just overriding fact though was we were not going to do three in a row anymore and make it easy for these guys to skip them so and not four out of five i don't think we have any four out of fives as well so before we get to the schedule i do want to work quickly from the bottom and no of where we're
Starting point is 00:22:52 what we're laddering up to. So one of the biggest flaws currently with the PGA tour is a playoff that is not a playoff and a championship that almost nobody cares about. And like that's a goal of all this is we're going to change. No offense, TC. No offense. No, none taken.
Starting point is 00:23:08 I mean, you know, he's the open, or he's a champion, domestic champion golfer of the year. On paper. Yeah. I would, my stance on this is that it is a pretty laughable championship. in general and kind of always has been and people don't actually care about it,
Starting point is 00:23:25 but it does not always have to be that way, right? It almost feels disingenuous to like try to convince anyone that you might care about the PGA tour champion. Like I'm going to try to convince you that you should and would care about it. And in this structure that we're going to lay out, I have a hard time believing that you wouldn't care about who would emerge victorious out of this. So again, in this system that we're going to propose, the track one events are going to contribute to this championship race in an F1 style. Like the points, and I'm not going to give you 500 FedEx Cup points,
Starting point is 00:23:55 whatever the numbers are going to be. That's for the simulation people to figure out and make sense of it. The key of that, though, is in Rollap has said this out loud, is like don't create a system that allows like Rory McElroy to skip a playoff event like that happened. I think that was last year. Now, the only thing is if Rory doesn't care about winning the PGA tour season, he just cares about majors, like then, then the incentives don't really matter, right?
Starting point is 00:24:24 Yeah. Right. Yeah. So. So it might be the exception, I guess. Yeah. So what we're going to get to ultimately here is a 16 man match play at the very end with three different tiers of that 16 man where the top four seeds are going to get double buys.
Starting point is 00:24:42 The next four seeds are going to get single buys. And the bottom eight are going to be playing in the first round in match play. So it's all going to ladder up to 16. And there's incentive for everyone to play through the whistle at the end because of the earning of the double buy and the single buy. Not a ton of incentive between 9 and 16, but this is the system that we're working on. And that's what we're going to get to by the end here. So teasing that, we'll talk a little bit about more when we get to the end of that. But how do they get there?
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Starting point is 00:27:25 you're going to get the spoiler part of this but if you're listening in your car I promise you're not going to miss out here on too much but if we are looking at the 2028 schedule again working under a late January start as mr. rollap said I am looking again if you're if you're looking at this online the dates you see here are the Sunday of the tournament so as you you're you're seeing this. 2028, the fourth week of the year of January, ends on January 30th. And that would be NFC Championship Weekend. NFC Championship Weekend as well.
Starting point is 00:27:58 Correct, yeah, sorry, championship weekend. Both those games are played on Sunday. We are sending the Century, who has been rumored. I forget if that one's been officially reported as taking over a sponsorship at Torrey Pines as Farmers has dropped. Tori Pines is your kickoff event. You could do it on a Saturday finish like they have in recent years. You could do it on Sunday to go up against championship weekend.
Starting point is 00:28:21 I don't know why they would do that. This spot takes a little bit of creativity. Again, we had to stretch this one to try to find a way to get to 21 total events. And stretching it back into a January start. There's no way to avoid football if you want to start in late January if your roll-up. A previous iteration that we did of this included the Amex. in this spot. But based on reading, if I'm reading the tea leaves,
Starting point is 00:28:46 he's talking about like a dramatic opening start. And I don't think a track two event is what would kick off the 2028 PGA tour schedule. And for anybody that wants to play beforehand, the Dubai Desert Classic typically, historically it ends on that January 23rd date. They could maybe bump that up earlier and have that be something. You could even, if Gulf Australia knew at all what they were doing, they could, you know, bump something into the beginning of the year and have that.
Starting point is 00:29:20 But based on the announcement that we saw that they're going to a course that does not yet even exist that Greg Norman is building in Adelaide, that they're completely fucking clueless. So we're kind of writing them off here. We are most definitely writing off Australia for the 2028 calendar. We are going to give you your 2029 and beyond. To have fun with that. We are struggling to fit all of the American events into a calendar here. And we asked Brian about the international aspect of this.
Starting point is 00:29:51 And his answer did not leave us thinking that is where the PGA tour is headed. So again, what a schedule we put together look a little different from a global perspective. Will we love to see the PGA tour be more global? The answers to that are all, of course, yes. Again, we are working in a reality-based system where the money, is in the U.S. and the dollars are, the corporate dollars are here, and that's where the events are likely to be staged. So, Tori Pines, not my, again, not our favorite venue, but has hosted the PJ Tour for a long time, it's recognizable. You got the paragliders out there, Nancy will be
Starting point is 00:30:26 there. You know, it always used to kind of feel like the kickoff when, when Tiger would play it as well. Kind of a return, if we're going to have tour on the counter, getting the top players playing it is, is better than having the mules play it, I think. So, and, hey, maybe if, they're going to commit to it. Maybe we can get a little renovation going on. Sure. Get somebody in there. I know it's a muni.
Starting point is 00:30:49 I know the city owns and operates it, but it doesn't mean that it has to just be Reese Jones. Correct. All the way through. Like, I think there's some pretty low-hanging fruit that they could make work at Torrey to really enhance the golf course and the competition. I also would say that outside of maybe pebble,
Starting point is 00:31:09 you know, I think the, the reason that the west coast swing and and the hawaii swing and all that works so well is as i now know very well over the last four years there's a lot of midwesterners northeasterners cooped up in their houses in mid to late january just look at just dying to look at pretty pictures of golf courses on the ocean uh torrey pines is the closest we come to to that outside of capelua you know i mean it's a great visual it's great visual kick off uh you know it's like super bad i completely ignored my hatred for tori
Starting point is 00:31:40 finds in coming up with this plan. Well, it's also like the reality again, Brian Rolap's going to probably see this differently than us golf nerds are going to see it. It's a smaller portion of the population that dislikes this golf course compared to what you're trying to achieve from a ratings perspective. I don't think like the golf course being pretty dull is is a shared opinion amongst the masses. And I don't think it's preventing them from getting a lot of people to watch the golf there on a Sunday afternoon. And that's a driver of a lot of these decisions. So That's going to take us to the next week, which is the Sunday would be the February 6th, and we are slotting the waste management Phoenix open in for that one.
Starting point is 00:32:18 That is an off week for the NFL between the championship Sunday and the Super Bowl. It has usually gone up against Super Bowl Sunday trying to wrap up before the Super Bowl stops. We had it there originally, but had to reorder some things to, again, avoid having three in a row right off the bat, off the year, and finding a spot for Genesis. and there's a downstream effect of all of these. So if we wanted to start the year with back-to-back bangers at Tori and Waste Management, those are the two we land on for those slots. That puts the Amex, which is under contract as well into the future.
Starting point is 00:32:53 That puts it. 2020 is the last year of the Amex deal currently. That is on the calendar for February 13th for Super Bowl Sunday. So no longer of trying to avoid. They probably still would try to avoid it, but not worried about getting the stars out on the golf course during Super Bowl weekend. You could, I could see flipping those and have an Amex on that February 6th. I know waste management likes that Super Bowl Sunday date, but then you just, now you're
Starting point is 00:33:21 into four out of five weeks for for the big dogs. So. And you would, we see the problem. I just, I don't know what to do. You'd be giving Amex. Yeah. You'd be giving Amex the off week between the, right. the champion. You're going to want something in that off week, uh, signature event wise.
Starting point is 00:33:40 And again, it gives this classic, like the problem we just kept running into was like, okay, well then are you starting the event with a mule event with amex in the early part? And I don't see a world where amex becomes a signature event. It's so hard to establish momentum. It's the opening drive,
Starting point is 00:33:57 baby. We got to establish the run early, T.C. We got to, we got to pound it. So if you're keeping track at home so far, we got Torrey Pines signature, waste management signature, AMX, Mule Drive on February 13th. The next week, that Sunday is...
Starting point is 00:34:14 It's appropriate that day of the mule drive. We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that later. Be careful. That's a specific event. Okay. Okay, I'm sorry, a mule event on February 13th. That takes us to the next week, which is the Genesis invitational held at Riviera.
Starting point is 00:34:31 That is under contract for that year. Again, of course, going back to RIV later this summer for the Olympics. Ideally, we would like to see this in a playoffish, postseason-ish slot. Seemed unlikely that we would go play there in the Olympics and then come back just two weeks later. I don't think it's a total deal breaker, but again, I mean, we've seen that there was a COVID year when you have back-to-back tournaments at Neerfield Village that were good tournaments. It's almost awkward because it's not two weeks. It's like a month, right?
Starting point is 00:35:02 or it's like, which is almost like an awkward amount. Right. Two weeks almost makes more sense. Whereas like a month is like, yeah, do we like, do we got to keep everything up? But then you got to worry too about like, all right, if you do move Genesis to a playoff event, does BMW stay a playoff event?
Starting point is 00:35:18 Does BMD, you know, I don't think you want two car companies in the playoffs. That's a good point. So maybe you throw, you know, maybe into 29, you throw, you throw Riviera into the summer or into the playoffs and then BMW bumps up earlier into the schedule we'll get there god it's there's you could stop on every single one of these and i've got to but it's like we can we got time it's also like as anybody talked to the riviera members like do that i'm sure they're dying and give up their golf course like you know like it's just a funny like how many fucking things you need to bounce right in or it's it's it's a
Starting point is 00:35:52 fucking miracle that any schedule exists at all you know that's where i'm almost like if i was a i feel like a lot of the tour people of the the organizers of this have far more patience than i would for podcasts like ours like you you guys don't know what the fuck you're talking about you have no idea how hard it was to even get it like this what do you mean change it uh anyway but at the same time it is stupid to go to memphis in the in august totally you know and i there's a reason to go to riviera in february correct um but again we'd love to to see rib in a different window for 2028 we think it's most likely that it would stay in this west coast swing and that is going to do it for the west coast swing three of the four our
Starting point is 00:36:31 signature uh events made a quick uh if you're watching live we just made a quick uh schedule adjustment there um on the actual dates but the the tournament ending February 27th would be the cognizant that is under contract so that will be staying in our lives yeah listen it's gonna be bleak Grab your fucking lunch pail and go clock in for that one. I don't know what to tell you. It's not going to be a good event, you know, but if we have proper relegation promotion, like it could be a life changer for somebody. Can we set it up properly?
Starting point is 00:37:02 Yeah. We get rid of the overseed. Let's beat these guys up. This is the part where again, you got to make this all work collectively and under what they said and the scarcity element, but also if you're the PGA tour, why you punting a pretty like a pretty prime end of, not a lot, not a lot else going on at the end of February on a weekend like where it's hard to just set out to have a objectively bad tournament you know and like we're punting on this weekend god I feel so stupid
Starting point is 00:37:29 but so much again this comes back just like man you know when they kind of nailed it was like i don't know like 1999 like 2005 like that yeah man the schedule used to be awesome like why do we ever change why why why did we change anything again uh you know the whole house of cards falls apart but yeah and then and then you think about all right maybe we put the Cadillac there. Well, then you then you run into all right, we've got and that's where it's kind of like, all right, maybe all right, the players goes back to May. Then we open that up and then we could do the Cadillac earlier and then we got to have a proper lead into the Masters and everything because everything just kind of falls by the wayside.
Starting point is 00:38:06 Now we got to move the PG. Now we got to move the PGA. There's a whole other set of phone calls for you. Great day to be recording this. We're created here on May 7th as we're publishing it. 93 in Pontevira here today just on May. in May. So like it is like a yeah, the the May players wasn't that fun either when it got super hot and. May players was great. Yeah, it was just it was that last year they had it though. It was smoking hot and it was like, ah, okay, I think I'm kind of ready for March. It was better with Bermuda. Okay. So that is going to take us into the next week where we're going to hit the
Starting point is 00:38:38 mini little Florida stretch of signatures here. Upper track events. March 6th Sunday is Bay Hill. And this is something that I think the Cadillac, helped emphasize here, which is like your longstanding tournaments at venues that have, I don't want to use the word iconic for a golf course that I despise, but like it's recognizable. People know it. It has the Arnold Palmer tie. Like this is an asset to the PGA tour. Like you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater on with this new structure and like Bay Hill is an asset. People know the golf course. It's familiar. Like the familiarity is what's, it helps.
Starting point is 00:39:18 people to tune in. And we do not need a bunch of Cadillacs popping up here. So when in doubt, we are- We are prioritizing the classic events over these brand-new markets that they're also talking about. I, again, I, this is just changing my mind probably, but the, if you had two TV screens in front of you and you had, you know, everybody was really pumped about the Philly Cricket Club, you know, that was it that, I think it was the truest that went to Philly Cricket club a couple years ago and it's like man if you have on your screen if you're a normal golf fan and you have the truest at philly cricket and you have arnold palmer invitational at bay hill and you can click either to watch it's like 98% of people are picking bay hill you know because of the
Starting point is 00:40:01 reason that you're that you're saying so it is a which again is kind of what we're talking about before we came on here is the more we get into like no it's not 28 it's 29 no it's not 29 no it's actually 35 and you keep trying to set up all these new strongholds it's like i don't know at some point you got to just kind of commit to these places and start building some some equity year over year over year into into this repeatable stuff now i will say mastercard is only signed through 27 i just can god there's no way that can go away right no way i'd be i'd be stunned i'll say the counter to to your what you said dd have an rb rb um uprising military honta ardi's army wasn't this the whole the don't tread on me thing is it kind of
Starting point is 00:40:49 that what this is about um i i think in a mega long-term plan for the pGA tour the like the alternative isn't like popping up a catalac at at deraal it's like building an all new set of tpc courses like real golf courses that you own operate wire can tweak can like be in control of like you were for the players this year to like set it up to be a really good championship like that is a more long-term answer I think than like just hearing like the tour folks talk about all the benefits that come from having a place that's already wired and that they control the agronomy of uh and don't have to deal with members and the dates become you know all of a sudden when you want to move dates around you can because it's your golf course um which is not something we're going to get to in the in the next
Starting point is 00:41:37 decade, I don't think, but... It does make sense to be an organization sitting on $3 billion of you know, monopoly money to go do that type of stuff. Which is ironic because it doesn't sound like from talking to people close to the situation that they want to have capital intensive projects
Starting point is 00:41:53 with that $3 billion. But I agree, like you would think that that would... The other thing, I think to keep in mind when we're talking about TPC courses is there's maybe a misconception that all the TPC courses are owned and operated like some of them are just licensing that's a whole other
Starting point is 00:42:12 kind of words we could do yeah do a whole other thing on that yeah so uh you know there's there's that to run into i'm sure they get more sway over even the ones that are licensed however they're you know you're still you're still working with outside stakeholders got a story for a different day but the story about how dean beeman almost took over personally took over the tpc network and probably would have made between half a billion and a billion dollars if jack nicholas would have had his way uh is just it got there's a lot a lot with tbc network as well that might be a future future deep dive that we that we make so all right we're at the players may well march 6th so again if you're keeping track tory waste management amex um genesis cognizant bay hill and now we're at the players
Starting point is 00:42:59 march 13 major not much has changed to this point guys i'm sorry to report But again, we're keeping with our theme. We have not gone three in a row yet. But this is five out of seven weeks where we are going to have big, massive track one events kind of culminating here at the players here, March 13th. And it's in its slot that it's been in for quite some time now. The week after that is the Valspar.
Starting point is 00:43:24 Again, staying in the same spot geographically. Signed on through 2030. Signed on from 2030. Gives us a break from the two straight track one events. and we're going to throw a track one event here in the next week. But keeping the through line here in Florida as well, we're not, we're staying in Florida, we're not leaving it and coming back like they did this year.
Starting point is 00:43:43 I think that was a takeaway from this as well. And just to check in here, if we are going on like just strictly track one, track two, and we're keeping the corned ferry tour fenced off as its own thing. We've gone from January 1st to March 20th and the track two guys have played three events. So that illustrates the issue.
Starting point is 00:44:02 You could keep the Puerto Rico Right It's there last year, this year Like you could keep a You know, an opo field just to keep those guys warm Right That's where I think the
Starting point is 00:44:19 Where I think a lot of that The Sunfai Center The corn fairy events are going to pop up Opposite a lot of these events That are going to include a lot of quote PGA tour Or track two players again like the nomenclature is going to change I think you got to get rid of the corn fairy. Like the corn fairy tour just, like, you just lop off the top half of that,
Starting point is 00:44:37 and that becomes track two events along with. Yeah, I think that, I think you're, I think you're right. So after Valspar, again, Cadillac is not a fan of that event. This sucks, man. It was bleak. Just a complete, yeah, just a big, cumbersome mess here. Not a good golf course either, but it is under contract through 2030. So we have to find a spot for it.
Starting point is 00:45:03 We are, again, staying in Florida for the month of March. That one is going to conclude on March 27th. So March looks like Bay Hill players, then a break with Valspar, then to Cadillac. Those are the four weeks that we spend in Florida. We know what's coming up here in April. Which I really wanted a better lead in to the Masters. Like I wanted to move East Lake or even go back to Sugarloaf or something. like have the Atlanta lead into the Masters,
Starting point is 00:45:33 which maybe we can talk about that for 29. But that, that, that this was a fork in the road as far as putting this together. Um, because again, spoiler, we are going to put a signature event here between the Masters and the PJ
Starting point is 00:45:45 championship in Atlanta, um, being that there, there's a market for golf in Atlanta. They have East Lake again, not my favorite, but like how much of East like, do I not like because it's August and would it be a lot better in the,
Starting point is 00:45:58 in the springtime? I think undoubtedly would be a better. event. Vibes would be higher on site, I think, in terms of attendance and just people wanting to be outdoors. So I don't want to write off Atlanta and East Lake completely. And I think that there is a spot somewhere in here that would make sense. And there is a world where exactly what you're talking about. T.C. happens ahead of the Masters that they, they, they, everybody plays in Atlanta, then heads down the road and plays in Augusta. And then I feel like then, then it opens up that May 1st date for like, let's say they wanted to do a big event in Nashville or
Starting point is 00:46:28 something like that at that new bounty club which is word but again this is where Cadillac made things really hard on us in that we got to find a spot for it if you put it in the March 20 spot that's three in a row with Bay Hill players Cadillac and four out of five if you put a signature right before the Masters now uh you know then you have Cadillac Atlanta signature then masters and then you got to move heritage the week after that to somewhere else on the calendar which we we kept with keeping the heritage after the masters because that's something that people have tended to enjoy as well. So all that to say, after the Cadillac, which ends March 27th, we have Houston.
Starting point is 00:47:07 Solly, real quick, do we know that Cadillac wants to be a tour sponsor? Because January 2028, there's an administration change. And I could see you wanting to get out of that contract as well. I was going to say, can we put this one in pencil maybe as a Atlanta question mark? if all the things go go properly maybe we can get our Atlanta dream here the the administration change in pencil or the Cadillac in pencil okay it Cadillac made things a lot harder as we mentioned but we're going to go Cadillac and we're staying in Houston Houston moving back to the week before the masters instead of Valero being there now
Starting point is 00:47:52 I believe Houston I forget when the Houston contract is up shout to Josh Carp who helped us with this exercise sending over. Houston contract is up in 2028 after 2028. So is Valero. But there's a lot of these. Or the, you know, Joe Gorder, the Valero chairman is also the head honcho on the board these days. PGA Tour Enterprises board, I believe. So now, like, do you think Valero is cool with being.
Starting point is 00:48:24 Attractative. Subjugated here? or do we want Houston back so then we don't have to overseed for the Chevron? Well, that's... Now we got the pond on the Chevron. Completely forgot about the Chevron. You know, that's what I did not forget about the Chevron. That's why I put Houston here in that I don't think the PGA tour would play after the Chevron in May.
Starting point is 00:48:47 Like, Houston either has to go first week in April in this scenario or where we have it here is second week in May, where we have Valero. unless you move to serve like i you know i you got to separate a little bit from the chevron um and this was the closest to what they're currently doing so we know also in this new world i don't know if the texas children's hospital charities can can afford the pony up gang yeah for real i feel really good about the masters it's like we get april i feel i feel like that i think you can set your watch to that one i do feel pretty good on that That is a date that is locked in. We are not, that is not a hypothetical.
Starting point is 00:49:29 Players, Masters, PGA, U.S. Open Olympics and Open Championship are in Penn, not decided by us here. Those dates are. So how do we feel about Heritage the week after the Masters? Because that's where I, I think there's another fork in the road here. I think it's, you know, you go back to the Heritage just being, like nothing of, like, I love that tournament. Like, it's like top three tournament on tour for me. Nothing about it feels like a.
Starting point is 00:49:56 signature event from an on-site perspective, and nor do I think they want it to, right? It, like, it feels like kind of the, the come down after the masters and we said they want it to, you mean like Hilton Head and like Hilton Head? Yeah, just, yeah, but you got to remember what a, what the new world looks like here of like, if you're not a signature event, you're not getting the top 100 players. Like, it's not, it's not, you know, you're going to get a couple guys coming over from Augusta, like, the other thing I would say, T.C. is like going into the, sponsorship game is like you've got the rbc heritage and the rbc canadian open i don't think you can can
Starting point is 00:50:31 can you can't signature event because it's the field's going to be locked and then how do you get all the other canadian guys is that really like a national open but that's where i think we need to have an honest conversation about the canadian open of like it's not really a national open as it is right now it's just rank and file pGA tour event with a few sponsor exemptions so the same as the spottish right I think if I'm them, I'm like, hey, let's, let's just lean into being the best possible PGA tour event that we can be, which is being a signature event. And, you know, I don't know if there's something there with taxation and, you know, guys not wanting to go up there and fork over a big, big chunk of change. But in my mind, I would think that RBC would tend towards wanting to make that one, you know. And I think part of it is like the Canadian Open, if you can buy it.
Starting point is 00:51:24 bumped at later into the year, like into late July, early August, then it's better time of year up there in, you know, I know they're going to want to have it in the Toronto area. Better time of year for that, get the ball running a little bit on the ground. Like, I know they had the, they had the PGA Tour America's championship there a few years ago, and like it played totally different than it did in June for, you know, the last two years that they've had it at, at TPC Toronto. This fork in the road for 2029 is a more interesting conversation because there's later summer dates that open up with it not being an Olympics year where all of a sudden, you know, if RBC, if Heritage is not a signature event, there's more opportunities for some of these hot weather locations to get a signature event in April. Then you can move into Canada.
Starting point is 00:52:17 Canada makes a ton of sense in summer to have a signature event. So for 2028, it's tough. but I agree that this is, I don't think it is like dead set that RBC Heritage has to always be a signature event on the calendar. But again, it's, this is a different world where the next tier down is like, dude, do you want to have a tournament? Yeah. So I think, I think Heritage with its long, long track record, Harbor Town, Pete Die, just renovated. I think that is going to be a signature event on the PJ Tour calendar going forward. Totally cool with me.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Yeah. Yeah. Sold. Solly. Let's move on. Zurich is under contract for quite some time. And this is the spot that we have at April 24th. I think you can make an argument.
Starting point is 00:53:06 Again, in a different world where you are playing a signature event right before the Masters, you could do Zurich right after the Masters and bump heritage back a week. But for connectivity purposes of keeping that, you know, easy Augusta to Hilton Head travel. and kind of more on the traditional dates. We have Zurich ending April 24th, which breaks up that possibility of three in a row again. Zurich's going to get crushed. You've got 120 guys that,
Starting point is 00:53:35 I mean, I guess not all 120 are going to play the Masters, right? You've only got, say, 70 playing the Masters. But even still, right now it's like we have what? They go deep. How many signature events do we have now, eight or something, plus the Masters and, or plus the majors and the players and all that. It's like if you're taking that from 8 to 15, 14,
Starting point is 00:53:58 like that, this is exactly the kind of thing where if I'm Matt Fitzpatrick, I'm like, oh, well, obviously I'm like, I'm not playing that because I'm playing this Atlanta event. I'm playing this Chicago event. Because my brother already has his car. Yeah, right. So it's like, yeah,
Starting point is 00:54:10 I think we might need to rework the Zurich team concept yet again. But we'll leave that for a separate episode. We'll do a whole, that episode is going to be on TZ's channel. We'll do a whole, a whole separate episode on that. I all, again, we're going to get some dream schedules. I want to, I want to open up a world where the team events, the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup are played in the summer.
Starting point is 00:54:33 I want to open up that, that discussion at some point. Where are you putting those? We'll find a spot, T.C. We'll find a spot. And I don't think those need to be postseason events. If the U.S. wants to win them, I don't think they need to be taking five weeks off before they play that one. After Zurich, we end on the month of,
Starting point is 00:54:53 we end on the month of on May 1st with a new signature event because I don't think you can call it the Tour Championship. I think this is, again, Eastlake was just redone. Southern Company, Coca-Cola, they seem quite interested in golf. They were willing to float an event in Atlanta in the summer, which has just been complete mayhem.
Starting point is 00:55:16 I'd imagine they'd still want to be involved in golf if you are going to get even more top players to come play in your city. May 1st, not like perfect Atlanta time, but that's pretty close. It's probably starting to get pretty hot by then, but it's definitely not August. I would think Atlanta makes more sense here still than the Philly, New York, Chicago markets likely. Yeah. It makes sense for. So we have put a signature event in Atlanta ending May 1st. Any thoughts there?
Starting point is 00:55:46 we wish everybody well we hope please enjoy a little break here with the valero may 8th which would be the week that we are in right now again to avoid what we are currently playing under which is Cadillac truist right into the PGA this would go Valero then Truist which is under contract until 2031 into the PJ championship which is May 22nd Love it. So in 20, so in 2028, our PGA championship is at the O Club in San Francisco. Yeah. So we're going.
Starting point is 00:56:31 That's Olympic Club. Charlotte, Olymp. You know, Charlotte, San Francisco. And then back east, eastward-ish. Eastward to May 29th would be Byron Nelson, which is again a contract. CJ is under contract. For a while, right?
Starting point is 00:56:50 Isn't that one like, that one's like 2032 or something? C.J. Cup Byron through 233. Oh, actually. So how? We just did,
Starting point is 00:56:59 just redid Craig Ranch. So again, that's got to be. All right, let's do some horse trading. Let's hold this at Frisco at Omni PGA Frisco. And we can free of it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:12 Free that up from PJ championship. Jail break for the PJ championship. Yeah. I would like I would listen to that proposal. God, I just would love to introduce some of those CJ executives to our great friends at Colonial. Can we just why don't we just move it over there? You know? Who loses there? From if we've learned anything from the Trinity Forest again, can we get down to the weeds of like what actually matters for these events? Like the salesmanship club struggled to fundraise with an event held as far south, as Trinity Forest sits.
Starting point is 00:57:46 Sounds like they need to get better at sales. Probably. But in the just north of Dallas where a lot of their base, I guess, is coming from, is where they want to hold the tournaments, despite the qualities of the golf courses there at TPC Los Kalinas. So drywall down there. TPC Las Kalinas. I mean, I think the colonial, like, yeah, it feels like, all right,
Starting point is 00:58:15 Do we want to, in this new world, do we, you know, that feels like tier two because it's a, the, what's that sponsorship going through the Schwab, 26. This is the last year. Yeah. Current sponsorship. And I think that's the only tournament on tour that's run by the club. So I'm sure they have a pretty advantageous. But also. Financial position.
Starting point is 00:58:38 Yeah. And I don't know if the tour wants to indulge them. This is where I think we're probably just not privy to like what kind of. contracts can they walk from what where can they move where can they do horse trading where can they move someone from one thing to the other because like i mean charles schwab also sponsored the champions tour through what 2079 like of course they want to be involved in golf you know so it's like well i think tim fincham like basically put a gun to chuck schwab's head this is all alleged allegedly like hey you're going to do this i don't i don't think you mean literally but i don't
Starting point is 00:59:13 My sources are different than yours, but I don't think you be. No, no, this is all, yeah. It's all legend. Figurative. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, we don't have a, again, there's a totally different world where colonial finds a way into the schedule here that I would like more than this. But Byron Nelson, we have that ending May 29th, which leads us right into Memorial Tournament Week, which is in its traditional spot two weeks ahead of the U.S. Open.
Starting point is 00:59:43 They tried that within the week leading up into it. And I don't think Jack was a fan of that or the players were a fan of that. Nobody's showing up in my tournament. Which, again, the downstream effect of that would be you've got to move the travelers after the U.S. Open if you're going to have the Memorial right in front of that. So, Memorial. And you're crushing the RBC Canadian Open. Correct.
Starting point is 01:00:05 Like nobody's going to show up to that. Which is what is going to happen here with the RBC Canadian Open here in the June 12th spot. This is RBC with one. signature event in April and a non-signature event or track one event in June. Can see a world where that changes on a year-to-year basis potentially. I think a part of this is going to be establishing the tradition of these are the big events. It's not tied to the big sponsors. It should be tied to the big events. And maybe RBC has two of these. Who knows? I'm not sure. And maybe they're in a different spot in the future. But for 2028, I think this would be a track two event.
Starting point is 01:00:38 Feels for like for golf's a game of history for historical purposes the RBC Canadian which should always fall on June 6th. It feels like kind of a like remembrance, remember it's date. I would love to see that happen in 29. Yeah. The only thing we know is Scott O'Neill is going to be up to something during this week in 2028. June 19th is the U.S. Open that is at Wingfoot in 2028. as locked into that date.
Starting point is 01:01:11 I think Travelers loves their spot after the U.S. Open. They've been very successful in pulling the top players to play after the U.S. Open anyways, and especially in the year where geographically, Wingfoot and Hartford are about as close as you're going to get to a U.S. Open venue that is locked into the, in a Track 1 event for the week after the U.S. Open ending June 26th. Isn't it funny how Travelers just, I don't know,
Starting point is 01:01:35 I mean, it's all, it must be the golf course. It must be a bunch of different things. the market, I suppose. You know, there's so many people that are around that tournament that can come out and make it feel big and make it feel energetic, but it just feels so different than the, the heritage. Like we're saying, like that one, the week after major and this one, the week after major are just universes apart in my mind.
Starting point is 01:01:55 Travelers rules. It's great. Yeah. Like that's like, to me, that's the ideal of like you're close enough to a major market. Yeah. I mean, like the distance from where a lot of people live in New York to, where the travelers is in Hartford is not that dissimilar from where people live in and around Boston in Providence and where TPC Boston is. Maybe it's like a telepathic or you know, I don't know what the right word is for that.
Starting point is 01:02:22 My vocabulary always sucks, but like it's late June, like literally the word travelers like makes me want to travel. And like when I think of travel, T.C. I think about our friends at East Sancer. Really good stuff there. Love that. You want to tell the people about what East Sands is? Yeah, East Sands travel company that we've partnered with over the last, I'd see, six months since we first announced our partnership with East Sands. Nick and Haley are nest members and longtime, you know, NLU listeners, viewers, subscribers. They've been in our ecosystem for a while and kind of batted this back and forth with them.
Starting point is 01:03:00 And they're a Canadian couple. They live in Vancouver and they lived in St. Andrews for, you know, a period of time after i think after they got engaged and caddied at st andrews and eventually started a travel company and they're the people that we've kind of been i think we've been approached by a lot of different travel companies along the last 10 years and and always kind of politely declined and this was the first one that felt really authentic and and kind of close to home for us so they do you know everything in the uk british isles ireland they can do netherlands they can do Netherlands, they can do Australia, they can do, you know, basically anywhere in the world.
Starting point is 01:03:42 They're tour operators and extremely well thought of, and they don't do cookie cutter trips. Like, everything is truly custom. So if you want to, you know, like if you want to go with a set of your girlfriends or, you know, your parents or, you know, the usual buddies trip with 80 year buddies, like they can do all of the above, they can do the gold plated trips. They can do more kind of, hey, we feel adventurous enough to drive ourselves. along the way, they can do that as well. So, you know, great, just good people, I think, is kind of the, you know, I could spend hours talking to Nick about hidden gems and stuff that you wouldn't otherwise glean from some of these tour operator itineraries.
Starting point is 01:04:25 This might be a weird way to describe it, T.C., but we do not have time to plan your golf trips, but it's almost like, we get a lot of questions from people asking us where we should go. It's almost like, it's an extension of how we would plan it, and they have the time and and way better system set up to plan your golf trip. So like you can go to east sandsgolf.com slash NLU, get an easy quote for them. You will end up on a call with them and they will help set you up. If you are even 1% intimidated of trying to organize all that goes into a golf trip,
Starting point is 01:04:53 like contact them and they will make your life easier for extremely fair cost. Yeah. And they have a great nest member discount. Reach out to them about that. It's, it's, you know, per person discount on the trip. And it's been cool. The people that have booked from, you know, starting this partnership in December,
Starting point is 01:05:13 people have booked for this year, have come back from their trip. And we've gotten great feedback from people like, oh, we're going to book with them for the next 10 years kind of thing. So, yeah, like, and really, if you're not interested in booking a trip yet, like, file this away. It's something, hey, if 2028's your year who will file this away and set yourself a calendar reminder in January, 2027. to reach out to Nick and Haley. And if you forget, just contact us and we'll point you in the right direction. That's eastsandsgolf.com slash NLU, and they will get you on your way. All right.
Starting point is 01:05:50 So we're halfway through the 2028 year, more than halfway through the 28 calendar. After we've just finished our U.S. Open and Travelers run, we're now the week ending July 3rd. I have John Deere, who was under contract as well. This is, Sally, I've heard a lot of noise that there. They're trying to strong arm the John Deere and to becoming a champions tour event. Ah, I hate that. This is part this true. Like some bits aside, I'm like, man, this is kind of part of a, this is a little bit like Bay Hill. I mean, this is like a, this is a PJ tour event, man. I feel the same way about colonial obviously too. But it's like, if you have a sponsor, you have a market, you have all these, these things that really want to prop this one up. And you need to have a couple weeks where these track two events are are shining. I just. Let me know what I can do to put my support behind getting the John Deere one of those spots. It's a truly great event.
Starting point is 01:06:44 I heard from somebody around the tour that is not in charge of putting these things together. It was like keep an eye on this could potentially become a signature event. Like I think this market would make a ton of sense. Like John Deere is so in on golf that like it would surprise. It would be awesome. I don't know if that wasn't like somebody especially close to the situation, but it was like keep an eye on this market. Like I think I think a signature event could work here. That's where they get 2028.
Starting point is 01:07:09 I don't feel a Chicago kind of thing where you got. Yeah. Don't quite see it. But all right. So we have that in a traditional spot there. And then the week ending July 10th. This is interesting. I think you can be very fluid here with the next couple of weeks and change a couple
Starting point is 01:07:26 things. We do have a new signature event here ending July 10th. We're calling this a Chicago event. We are again floating the idea here that maybe the BMW change. championship could move to this date in our world. I would not consider the two events we're going to have leading up into the tour championship. I would not consider them playoff events anymore.
Starting point is 01:07:48 I think we're going to get rid of the playoff nomenclature until we get to the playoff where you play off against somebody directly. We are not going to have golf tournaments called playoffs anymore. So if you're BMW, you get 120 players in your Chicago market there in summer, July. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, we're gonna go to Chicago every other year. Like, that's gonna be our anchor. And we're gonna go Philly, Denver. This could be in Nashville one, you know, places like that, you, and kind of bounce around. I don't know if you, if you want to go to Nashville in mid-July, but, I mean, they're going to St. this in mid-August this year. Yeah, it's going to be, that's an interesting push and pull between what I was saying earlier, where you have sponsors that probably don't want to be tied to one and only one market,
Starting point is 01:08:47 and they do want to bounce around a little bit and kind of spread the, spread the sales around every three years, every four years. And at the same time, you're trying to be like, you know, man, I'd love to go to Olympia Fields every year so I can learn Olympia Fields better and remember that 18th hole here versus there. You know what I mean? it's like a that that's a hard task for roll up
Starting point is 01:09:09 and the gang to to navigate hard sell for Chicago country club members totally smack dab in the middle of your summer you know four ways to clanging and banging before it four ways to clanging and banging on the way out damage course for the remainder of the year like there's an impact to
Starting point is 01:09:25 hosting a you know one every year that's where it's like all right it's once every four years and it balances between medina and say Olympia I think that's great which takes us to the next week, which would be some sort of mule event. I have the rocket question mark in there. That contract does expire prior to 2028, but just redid their golf course too. Yeah. You know,
Starting point is 01:09:47 it seems like they're they're committed to it. Does not have to be the rocket there, but I think it is a track two event the week of July 17th in the model that we have laid out here because the next event is the Olympics. The Olympics will be held at Riviera, ending July 24th, on a Sunday. I floated here the 3N, potentially to be opposite the Olympics, in that it might be a little bit of a fight to, to have a,
Starting point is 01:10:15 I think the PJ tour, some sponsors may want an event opposite the Olympics, just because the Olympics field is limited and doesn't have, you know, there's a possibility you will get a fair amount of guys to play that week if you don't want to go over the next week to play the Scottish Open. Most guys do go over to play the Scottish Open for the week, July 31st because the week ending August 7th is the Open Championship in
Starting point is 01:10:41 28. Weird date, as we mentioned with the Olympics, but an August Open Championship there just creates an interesting kind of flow here. L.A. to Scotland the next week is interesting, but I think you can kind of lock that in though. The Scottish Open is going to be the week before the Open Championship. 2029, I'm saying you guys are playing four weeks in a row. We're going to London. We're doing Wentworth. And then we're going to Ireland.
Starting point is 01:11:10 And then we're going to Scotland. And then we're going to the Open Championship, wherever that is. 2029. Get on the bus. It hasn't been announced. 2028, it's, it's Lhythm. But you're traveling, big boys. All right.
Starting point is 01:11:22 Traveling and playing four weeks in a row. Yes. Yeah, maybe. Chartered, chartered aircraft. We'd love to hear their response, T. T.C. Yeah. Yeah, maybe.
Starting point is 01:11:35 And you got a line of the dollars for all those. I promise we would let you dream. See, Steve. We will get there. Salesmanship club on it. No, don't get the salesmanship club on it. They don't travel well. They can't even branch out into parts of their own.
Starting point is 01:11:54 From the open. Hell yeah. Now we're talking. This is the mule drive. All right. The week ending, August 14th is the mule drive. I think this is one of your best ideas I've ever heard. I've been thinking about it all week.
Starting point is 01:12:09 So after the Open Championship, the top 50 guys are going to get a buy into the first postseason event. I haven't the spreadsheet into Genesis, but that moved. So we're going to have one last track. Which I think it's super dope also because like after the open, like there's this whole thing between where do the majors fit into the season and when is golf season. Like it's just very clean to have. have the open ends. That's kind of the end of the regular season. You know, it's like you don't own that event and you can't really,
Starting point is 01:12:41 they probably won't market it that way. But I feel like from a golf fan perspective, it makes sense to think about it like that. I like that. For 2028, 208, it'll change. It's different. Yeah, true.
Starting point is 01:12:50 Yeah. Because that's the thing, like 2028, the PGA tour is seating so much of this valuable summer real estate that they want to have in July and early August to the majors and the 11th. Olympics and all of that. So in this event, so after the Open Championship, in this scenario, the top 50 guys are going to get a buy into the first postseason event.
Starting point is 01:13:19 And again, I don't even like calling this a postseason event, but for the sake of argument here. We're going to go from the big fat signature events of 120, 70 guys are going to play the first one, 50 guys are going to play the second one. And from that 50, you're going to distill it down into. the final 16 that will play match play for the tour championship but backing up into this august 14th week again top 50 guys are in and the remaining mules will play off for the final 20 spots to get into the first postseason event inside can we can we lay out what how they're playing off what they're doing here because we're going to bring back not starting strokes starting points
Starting point is 01:14:02 because we're going to do a modified stable for an event out and Denver, a TPC Colorado, folks. Yes, we are. So if you're, you know, if you're coming in and, you know, like, because one of the criticisms that you could see is some of the guys that are, that have been playing signature events all year but aren't in the top 50. Say, all right, you know, I've played all these signature events all year. I've played against the top competition.
Starting point is 01:14:28 You got these carpet baggers coming in off tier two that are, you know, because you're going to have to go what? How many guys are going to have to play in this? 100? 120? So you're going top, you know, so take the top 50 out. You're going all the way down to like 170. Yeah, it would probably be like the, it would be, what, 51 to 120?
Starting point is 01:14:52 It would be like 70 guys from the track one and then probably another 50 guys from track two. So to your point, it's like. You get the Cinderella stories, but if you're coming off track one and you're 50 to 60, let's say you get 10 you know let's say you get 10 starting strokes if you're 50 to 55 56 to 60 you get you get you know six starting points and that's what a thing we're doing modified stableford we're doing uh you know absolute sweepstakes aggressive play just you know make it an absolute shootout out out there kind of like the old international was right and the top 20 get in and if you're you know if you're if you're if you're if you're the
Starting point is 01:15:38 hundred and 70th ranked guy and you get in great good for you man and if you get in like you got a mountain to climb still ahead of you yeah right i mean there's a lot of a lot of seating that has still come from the from the early part of the years but yes a modified stableford with starting strokes uh well we haven't made out for this is like how you you know how you host a tournament there as well you know is it just like a winner of the tournament based on the starting strokes as well i think probably Sorry points. Starting points.
Starting point is 01:16:06 Sorry. But that takes you to the postseason. And we're going to have two events here, as we mentioned. So that was ending August 14th. Ending August 21st would be a new event, I think, as it stands here. And it would be in New York. Anyways, essentially the Memphis event moving to somewhere that's not Memphis. Correct.
Starting point is 01:16:30 We'll call it the Deutsche Bank. Yeah, we're reinvented. in the Deutsche Bank playing it. In this model, again, kind of going off of the cities that Rollup had mentioned, New York and Philly probably make the most sense in late August. This would be the top, yeah, top 70 players in playing off for there. And from there, I don't have the exact points worked out, but again, it would be heavily weighted, you know,
Starting point is 01:16:57 if Scotty finishes 51st in New York, he's not out of Pebble. It's going to still be in like the championship. show up in New York, he is out of pebble. Correct. Like if, if I think you can get to incentivize this of if you don't play, you know, you're you're getting knocked. If you're first overall and the math works points wise where you could skip it like they need to make the rule like if you skip it, you are ineligible for a double buy. Like you must you must play here if you want to, you know, be eligible for the double by. So go out from top 70 there. week 34 ending August 28th we have the AT&T Pebble Beach I think AT&T wants to keep at Pebble Beach we are moving it this is this is the event that is maybe the most hamstrung by where it is on the calendar in terms of the west coast swing like it's the worst possible time probably to be at pebble it would be must see TV as like the last full PJ tour stroke play event of the season it's a regular season.
Starting point is 01:18:04 final in a way there, keeping the AT&T on that one specifically. I think there's a world where the season ends with matchplay at Pebble Beach. If, again, in a different world, AT&T wanted to stay in the winter for whatever that reason is, but having to find, finding a better home for the AT&T, Pebble Beach made sense in this final spot in August. Do we have celebs? That's a great question. Is it a pro.
Starting point is 01:18:33 Get the celebs out there on Tuesday. Hey, you know what? The celebs are playing the hay and they're playing of it, MPCC. Yeah. Yeah, we can get creative. I haven't worked that part out, if I'm being honest. Honestly, why don't you just have a celebrity event in February? Like, no pros.
Starting point is 01:18:51 Just have a celebrity event. Just have a big fundraiser out there in February opposite the cognizant. Or you make the AMX a big, you know, pro AM thing or something like that. think the and then as far as pebble is concerned maybe that goes back to a mule event like what the pebble beach yeah you know like that their whole thing was getting when you got 150 ams in the event and how much fundraising they could do i don't know that's a it was pretty it was pretty fucking cool see scottie shoot 62 on sunday at pebble beach this year i think we need to i think we need to i think that's good for what we're trying to build towards well and then if pebble don't
Starting point is 01:19:33 doesn't want to give up, you know, hotel. Like if the negotiations get tough there, I would remind Pebble that, all right, you're a steward of the game. You're also hosting the Pure Insurance Championship in September for the PGA Tour champions. Maybe you get rid of that. Now,
Starting point is 01:19:49 what do we do when, let's say, in 2032, the Pebble Beach hosts the U.S. Open, or in 20131, Riviera hosts the U.S. Open. We got to stay focused, T.C. We got to do. one year at a time. 2037 Pebblebee chose the US Open for 24.
Starting point is 01:20:10 Solly, the only question I have here, and you got the, you got me thinking with the mule drive. So we're all building towards like I get it. We've got the, the play in game, you know, the top 50 mules versus the 70 kind of guys on the outside looking in is great. Sign me up. There's a point system like you're saying with Stableford and like a way to kind of level the playing field there.
Starting point is 01:20:33 which is great to decide who gets into the top 70. Is there, I don't want to get back into Steve Sands, whiteboard kind of territory, although I can feel why originally that was- Steve Sands or Steve Kornacki? Steve Sands, back in the day with like, when he had the whiteboard and like, here's what if this guy makes the best part,
Starting point is 01:20:51 what could have- 2014? Yeah. But is there some sort of like, because what we're working towards is like you said, we have the playing game, then we have top 70, then we have top 50 down into a 16-person match play. bracket. If we want to have like for double buys, for all that stuff, like you want to have on
Starting point is 01:21:11 whatever that second event is, currently Pebble on our schedule, the one that goes from 50 to 16. You want to have a lot of interesting stuff on, is he going to be the seventh seed? Is he going to be the sixth seed? If he's the seventh seed, he plays against Rory. And if he's the sixth seed, he plays against Scotty, like all that stuff, I think can make that second to last event really interesting. Is there some sort of season-long points that goes into that, that 16? I feel like there has to be. It can't just be the top 16 coming out of Pebble, right? So this is where I again want to start with that and tease that in the beginning is like
Starting point is 01:21:48 how I feel currently about the PGA tour is like the race between Scotty and Fitz and Cameron Young in the FedEx Cup standings right now means fucking nothing. Like nothing. When they get to the end of the year, the top, 30th ranked guy has the same chance of winning the championship as the first ranked player in the world. I think that's just a bad, bad system. And we're going to, part of what makes football and basketball and baseball, postseason feel like the only thing that matters, again, it's very different with golf in the way,
Starting point is 01:22:21 especially now the way it's structured with, if you're going to end with stroke play tournaments, it's just really hard to host a tournament that's four rounds and 72 holes and exactly like the other tournaments and make that one feel like, no, this is for all the marbles. It's the same thing we be doing all year long, but like now this is for all the marbles. But it's really easy to understand when it's like Ludwig is playing JT today. And like the winner goes on and has a chance to win the title and the loser is done, which is what we're going to, what we're going to get to. Now, in this scenario, in this top 50, there's three levels, there's four levels really you're playing for. One, to get into the playoff. Two, it's to
Starting point is 01:23:01 get, I guess there's three levels, to get, to play yourself past the first round and get into the second level of buys and the third level is to get past the first two rounds into the double buy system, which will be the top four players. So is there a world where Scotty shows like, you got to get the math right on this? So like, yeah, do I think that there should be massive, you know, Scotty's been number one all year long and like can fall to the first round in the match play at the end? I don't think so. Like I think like you could lock up a double by going into the final tournament. But again, got to incentivize guys.
Starting point is 01:23:34 Like, you can't, you can't skip it. Like, if you skip it, you are losing how many, you got a purse as well. Like the guys, yeah, you're playing a big ass. No, Sally, I will say like. And you're about to have an off season. Like, you're playing the post season. I still think we should allow the top seeds.
Starting point is 01:23:49 Like, all right, if you're the one seed, we get through the, you know, like you get your double by, you're choosing who you get to play. Two seed, you're choosing who you get to play. And it's, you know, And then from there. Same thing with like the...
Starting point is 01:24:03 Makes that 9 to 16 more interesting. All right. Sally, a couple questions for you before we get to this bracket. Where are we playing this match play? The only question, TC. We've ruled out. We've already played RIV twice. We've played Pebble.
Starting point is 01:24:17 Atlanta's gone. What are we doing? Because I think FedEx's sponsorship is up after 2027, correct? For the entire FedEx Cup? I don't know. I would assume the FedEx Cup of the FedEx Cup. like, send you, you know, championship or... I didn't think about that.
Starting point is 01:24:34 There might not be a PJ tour in 2028. But, you know, Fred Smith, rest in peace. Of course. He's past, like, he's the one that signed those deals. They, they're, they're not doing great right now. Amazon just announced that they're, you know, going to open up their, their shipping services to sellers that aren't even, selling on their platform.
Starting point is 01:25:02 I'm saying you do it, you do the AWS, you know, PGA tour. It's like the race to, you know, the race to AWS or whatever. Race to the data lake.
Starting point is 01:25:16 And you have, and then the winner gets to jump in the data lake. But you have this at chamber, you have this first one at Chambers Bay up in their backyard in, uh, Tacoma. I will, let you dream here for the venue because what I'm proposing here again is not a golf tournament.
Starting point is 01:25:34 We are playing a series of golf matches that are closer to, I hate to say this, but closer to the match than they are close like the tour championship as we've known it. Okay. We do not necessarily need big hospitality. We do not need these are made for TV events that are going to be on the West Coast in prime time. Like these matches are going to tee off around 5 p.m. on the East Coast and you're going to play match play into the event. It doesn't have to end on a Sunday. Like, NFL is basically essentially starting right around this time. You know, we can, you could, there's a world where you could even continue this and play at Pebble in the days after the tournament.
Starting point is 01:26:11 You take Monday off and then Tuesday, the playoffs begin right at Pebble Beach. And you're playing match play. You know, match play at Pebble is a different animal where you're guaranteed to play the best stretch of holes on television and get the best out of the golf course. So it needs to be. So the aversion to match play, I understand from how they've currently done it. You would have a one-week tournament that is a variation of all the stroke play tournaments you play. You know, your guy in the original version, single elimination, your guy could be out. The guy you want playing on the weekend is out on Wednesday.
Starting point is 01:26:46 That's a bad thing. Just tough thing to model. There's also 64 guys in the field. Yeah. Previous iterations. And the pool play just like every time you flip to a match, I have no idea what it's for. I have no idea if a guy is eliminated. It just was a confusing mess, and I understand that tournament going away.
Starting point is 01:27:02 But matchplay is an excellent way of deciding a champion. And there's so much stroke play that's going to lead up into this, ultimately deciding on like, again, it's the way we've been programmed to think about matchplay, if Rory beat Scotty at the match play, we wouldn't view it as anything different than all that happened that week. But yeah, then Scotty won three tournaments after that. But now in this way, like the playoff is like, if Rory and Scotty end up in the championship,
Starting point is 01:27:31 like the winner of that is the PGA Tour champion of the year. And I, again, I don't want to live in the world where forever the PJ Tour champion means nothing. Like, I think that should matter. I think everything that they played for should ladder up into something with a dramatic conclusion
Starting point is 01:27:45 that is different than what happens at East Lake. And we just have to wash completely like men in black, red light what has happened with the championship in the past. Like a dream of a system where we would care. who wins this. And if you'll if you'll look at the bracket with me, I ran a model here based on millions of simulations. Based on the top 16 finishers in 2025. And how the bracket shook out here was the four buys, the four double buys went to Scotty Schaeffler at one, Rory at two, JJ Spawn at three, and Justin Rose at four. And this is just FedEx Cup rankings. I forget where it
Starting point is 01:28:26 cut off here but I think after you know before the probably the playoffs started in 2025 yeah well no way that Justin Thomas is beating Tommy so that those are your four double buys then your seeds five through eight were Tommy at five Ben Griffin at six Russell Henley at seven Sepsraka at eight and then your guys that in the first round like the the they have Bob McIntyre was nine
Starting point is 01:28:51 Keegan was 16 JT was 12 Cam Young was 13 Madh Mnogh was 10, Andrew Novak was 15, Ludwig was 14, and Harris English was 11. So those last guys are playing in the first round of this. They are the bottom eight guys are all the way. And to win the championship, they're going to have to win five matches. Dolly, did you really simulate this? Yeah, this feels like there's some serious bias here. I put, I put, I asked Claude to, I forget what the actual weights were,
Starting point is 01:29:21 but I think I said in the early rounds, give it 55% weight to the lower seeds. and in the later rounds, I said give it 60% or something like that. So I had it run a simulation. This is how it shook out. I think this would be a good way of it shaking out. So Robert McIntyre played Kagan Bradley. That's a 9-verse-16. Kagan was a 16 seed, but he beat Robert McIntyre in this simulation.
Starting point is 01:29:43 All hard moves on. Seems extremely unlikely. He goes out to play Rider Cup lock, Cep Straca on the Thursday match. In this scenario, the eighth seed, he would be a Rider Cup lock. the season that he's had. The other early round match, JT versus Cam Young, ended up working out quite well for that one.
Starting point is 01:30:04 Again, I don't anything could happen in these matches based on the simulations JT won that one. He moved on to face Tommy Fleetwood. Andrew Novak and Matt McNeely would have played first round. Novak was the 15 seed. Mav was the 10. Novak pulled the upset off in that one. It's furious.
Starting point is 01:30:20 Novak hater. Harris, English, and Ludwig are playing the opening round. Ludwig beat Harris English. He goes on to play Ben Griffin. Too much flushing in that in that match. So in that 16, 14 seed, Ludwig plays Ben Griffin the sixth seed on the Thursday night. Ludwig won that one.
Starting point is 01:30:38 He would move on to play Roy McElroy. Russell Henley beat Andrew Novak. He moved on to play JJ Spawn. Justin Thomas beat Tommy Fleetwood. He would go on to play Justin Rose. And Kegan beat SEPstraka. He would go on to play Scotty. So again, Scotty's first match is going to be against the 16 seat in this one,
Starting point is 01:30:57 Keegan Bradley. Justin Rose is playing JT. You could, you could name that the, that could be the AT&T region. The next one, you know, Team Rose versus JT could be the Comcast business region. Morgan's family region. I love all that. Again, the winners of these is not nearly as important as it is to say like, all right, Scotty gets a clear advantage.
Starting point is 01:31:22 Rory gets a clear advantage, but you got to go win three match play rounds. You can't let anybody beat you. Like if you want to win the championship, you lose your out. And if Kegan beats you, you do not deserve to be the champion of the PGA tour that year. And, you know, Kegan had to win five matches to go out. In fact, we are going to, we're going to pull your, we're going to pull your exemption for the following year, too. You have to drop down to the tier two events. If Kagan beat.
Starting point is 01:31:45 So is there any world where Spieth gets an exemption into this top 16? Of course. trying to think of you know all all eventualities here uh this is a merit-based system needs you got to you got to play good golf to get to this point and like right what i don't want to happen is i don't want to get to uh you know if if mav mcneely won this i want people to have said like yeah mad mcgneely was the pj tour champion like he won the post he's like he won the playoff he beat five other guys everyone he went up against in the playoffs he beat like in the rounds of golf that really at it on the PJ tour. Yes, did Scotty have an amazing regular season here? But like the New England Patriots went 17 and 0 one year and like didn't beat the Giants when they had to play them head to head.
Starting point is 01:32:33 And I don't want to do starting strokes. I don't want to do advantages in these matches. I think it's just like, dude, I don't care how good your season was, Scotty. Like when it's time to go play off, you got to go beat the other guy. Like I want there to be mystery in this. And I think there's a little hurdle to clear with fans of like it would feel weird that you know last year if andrew novac won the championship but it's extremely unlikely when you look at this bracket and that possibility has to exist like this this should not be a formality of the math should should play out here in the end at the tops there should be mystery and what's going to happen and it'll feel weird maybe in the beginning but by the time we get like the fifth iteration of this of like you get like a rematch of a prior super bowl and you can
Starting point is 01:33:16 come up with a name for what the championship match is called like this could be really fucking fun i think this is it blows any uh any other previous iteration of the tour championship out of the water and should make people not afraid of match play when you set it up to be this is not a golf tournament we are playing match we are playing off for the title here at the end you can let the fans follow the matches in the final couple matches you can let them walk the fairways with it like create a vibe and an atmosphere around these events you know you don't need to have massive hospitality in so many different places when you're playing match play with only a few matches out there that can that can open up other golf courses that you could go to that
Starting point is 01:33:55 you know maybe the footprint isn't big enough to host uh you know all the all the things that go into one of these tournaments like that's a good point just dream just dream with me a little bit here for an actual exciting postseason and i do not see a route to an exciting postseason that involves golf tournaments stroke play golf tournaments god totally that's an impassioned speech I didn't even think about the fact that if it's match play, you can go to more in different golf courses, especially if you're not leaning on big ticket sales and hospitality and that comes. To Steamboat Jay's credit and infinite wisdom,
Starting point is 01:34:29 I believe he had kind of pitched this for a tour championship. I don't know if it was match play, but a smaller field tour championship really, really limited capacity, but you go to Bangor courses and make it a TV product. But again, that misses the point of like, what's the tension when it's spread over four groups and it's just a four-round matchplay event?
Starting point is 01:34:57 Yeah. Or stroke play event. And there is a world where the compromise here is that's metal match play, meaning you're playing stroke play against the other person, so you have to play all 18 holes. Like that, in theory, could be the compromise so you don't have a five and four
Starting point is 01:35:10 and a big TV gap to fill. Yeah. I would still very much prefer it. Here's what I would say about that. From a match play perspective, I feel like I got to watch it from the jump. And a stroke play, I could probably pick it up around six or seven
Starting point is 01:35:23 and be like, you know, and not feel like I missed much of anything. And you're not, you're just playing golf alongside somebody in metal match play versus match play is like, dude, I got to make this 12 foot or it means nothing.
Starting point is 01:35:38 You know, I lose the hole. It's such a different way of playing. golf them like that's a 12-footer it's a 33% miss chance and if i just keep playing the odds then you know blah blah blah it's all what do you say to the haters that say why would we ever decide our we play stroke play all year why would we ever do something different in our championship and i would argue that it's the most pure form of yeah the current championship is not identifying a good champion it's not a good conclusion it's not for the fan like you are an
Starting point is 01:36:10 entertainer. Like this is whatever it happens the tour championship is decidedly not for the fans the way it's currently structured like most definitely not. So the cash distribution. Yeah play play play some match play golf on television to wrap up your season. Football season is about to start. You're about to have all this off time like give us a peak closure to the season. Uh, I would I think this would be an amazing thing for golf if at the end of the PGA tour season you actually cared who won it. Like who won the 2019 tour championship as we're sitting here right now. No. Who won the 2019 U.S. Open?
Starting point is 01:36:43 I bet you remember that. Gary Woodland. Yeah. Like, why is that the question? You know, why is that, I have no idea who won. 19 Rory? I don't remember. I think it probably was.
Starting point is 01:36:57 But who knows? Like, that's the whole, that's, that's my point. So if you are going to tease that the match play as a possibility, again, that's where it's like, dude, Rolap said this. This is, this is no longer just a pipe dream of, of, of, podcast fanboys here. Like you said that you're going to entertain matchplay for it. Like try it.
Starting point is 01:37:15 At minimum, you got to try it. I don't let them talk you out of it, please. Agree. Sign me up. I love it. Time me up.
Starting point is 01:37:24 Well, then, Sally, what are we doing? Are we doing silly season in 28 or like, what happens to that stuff? Sure. Let them play a bunch more events in the fall.
Starting point is 01:37:33 Good, good championship. Utah. Asheville. Well, by then you'll have kind of that. I do kind of like what they've done in the fall now as far as setting the deck for next year and who's in the top whatever and who's got a chance to play their way in. I do think those events serve a good purpose for, you know, we've, we've often called them like almost optional watching golf events, but there's still good weather.
Starting point is 01:37:57 There's good golf courses. There's a lot of people who are looking to play. I mean, it's, I think they're, I think you can still do that in the fall. It's a little less silly than the silly season, but kind of a like, you know, top whatever we want to say, 70 guys, 50, however you want to lock it as far as like exemptions for what would be 29. It's like you lock that and then you give the other people a chance to kind of reshuffle and play for a position. I think it's still a good way to do it. I agree. The RIP to the Wyndham. True. Honestly, didn't even think about Wyndham.
Starting point is 01:38:31 They are contracted. This is the last year of their contract as it stands now. We alluded earlier that we were going to do 2029 and beyond. It's shocking. We went a little farther and longer in all of this than we were planning to. We made a couple, a lot of references to how things could possibly change into the future as well. But why don't we table 2029 and beyond once we have a little bit more intel from Mr. Rollout,
Starting point is 01:38:57 which I think we're going to get at the travelers here in just about a little over, a little over a month and a half here. So maybe we make that a back half. Maybe when the 2027 schedule comes out. we could dive back into that. This is where we can have fun. T.C., what's where stuff changes? I promised T.C. he would cook.
Starting point is 01:39:13 I promise I would let him cook. What's one thing that's not going to keep in the fridge, T.C. What was, give me one thing from your 29 schedule that just has to get out there. Get the wheels turned. Let's take a look. I think it's, I mean, it's a co-sanctioned Irish Open. We're doing that. We're doing a, you know.
Starting point is 01:39:33 Which should happen. That should happen for golf. Yes. Yes. Um, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's the PGA. We're moving the PGA. We're moving it back to August. You know, we're going to start, let's start making those plans now.
Starting point is 01:39:46 If you're, if you're listening, we get, we're good. We simply have to. We got to get back to August. Gloria's, what did you call it? Glories. Gloria's last chance. That's last. Chorus last.
Starting point is 01:39:55 Maybe we move it to Terry hot for glory's last chance. Um, you know, and then, then the players goes to May. And then, And then, you know, or we just or we just get rid of the PGA championship, generally speaking. Now we're talking. Or we make that a track two event. Can we upgrade the players to track one? Track one.
Starting point is 01:40:23 Yeah. All right. Well, this is good. We got to do a bunch of. You should do some shrooms before we do the 2029 schedule. I also. Yeah. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:40:33 I also think like maybe, I don't know, maybe you do the. the like the Zurich turns into the co-ed event right and you do that in concert with the LPGA not as an afterthought in yeah you know November December you do that when you know when it you know when it makes sense and when you're trying to get eyeballs on golf yeah I think just a true what would without constraints what would you love pro golf to look like is uh would be the next exercise and we could have a ton of ton of fun with that it's not nearly as fun to do what's that contract expire but we're trying to give people we didn't want to do a dream a dream schedule and then the 2028 one comes out and it looks kind of somewhat like what we laid out and people would be
Starting point is 01:41:16 disappointed as well so try to try to try to try to put on our commissioner for a day half here this is cathartic this is helpful I think there's enough stuff to be excited about there's enough stuff that's familiar there's enough stuff that's still frustrating that we could still keep bitching about it's a good it's a good equilibrium here yeah start making the phone calls to chambers bay tc we that's that's crucial piece. We got to build a clubhouse. No, we don't. We don't. That's true. That's true. We don't. Thanks to everyone for tuning in, Dege and TC here. Thanks to our friends at tidalus, Woop and East Sands. We do want to take a moment before we go to tell you a little bit about the Nest. Nest is our member program here at No Lang Up, our privatized version of Patreon, if you will. You get
Starting point is 01:41:59 exclusive podcast videos, merch discounts, and a lot more. It's been a big priority for us this year. out this membership program to make it the best that it possibly could be for those of you that are looking to dive just a little bit deeper into the NLU multiverse. But a quick rundown of what your membership gets you. You get two Nest exclusive pods per month. We're recording another one of those today. Sometimes he's a golf related. So twisted and knots about how that one's going to go. I'm so unprepared for it. I'm going to do horribly. Sometimes non-golf, but we're looking to make these a larger window into everything we're up to here at No Lingup. You also get access to Nest exclusive video. We have a great backlog of NEST exclusive features. You can go back and watch this year. We've already dropped two Nest exclusive vlogs, one from the tournament champions on the LPGA tour, one from our time at Pebble, working on one this week from our time around the players as well. We got Nest number discounts, 15% discount to the NLU Pro Shop. You can use that on as many orders as you want. You can access the refuge, which is our message board. It's a great place to get involved and connect with like-mind folks in your area and across the country. Also working on
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Starting point is 01:43:21 Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. Cheers.

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