No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 947: Harris English flushes it at the Farmers

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

Harris English comes out on top at Torrey on a week marred by slow play and sickness among the field - plus JT takes tour members to task over a need for more cooperation with TV partners to improve the tour telecasts after some less than ideal ratings numbers from the Amex. Then it's on to the Back 9 (52:00) where we discuss Seth Waugh's interview with Eamon Lynch, comments on the rollback from new PGA of American CEO Derek Sprague, TC on the Cleeks rebrand and other LIV news from the week, feedback on KVV's podcast on Bethpage tee times, and and a ton more. Support our sponsors: Titleist AT&T fanduel.com/nlu Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the no laying up podcast. Solly here Saturday night edition. Shout out to farmers for the Saturday finish. It might not be the best for ratings. I think it's good for golf fans though. I got my guy TC here. Hello TC. Hey Solly, I'm'm pumped a lot to talk about tonight. I watched more golf last two days than I've

watched in the last two months combined. And, uh, and I enjoyed it despite Tori's best efforts. I enjoyed it. I watched a lot of golf, none of it productively. He just hands and pacifiers all day holding babies. It's a, it's a lot to do two things at once. Kevin van Volkenberg is here with us as well. Hello, Kevin. So it's great to be here. Thanks for having me back on your program. I've been knee deep in the Beth page drama all week. We'll get to some of that later, but it's fun to watch the pro game for a little bit. I do have some updates to come. Yeah. We're going to talk Tory. We got of course the back nine, a bunch of topics on here. We want to talk some Seth

wall interviews, some Derek Sprague interview, a whole bunch of, you know, there's some lit up big cliques rebrand. As Kevin mentioned, there's some follow up to the Beth page. Maybe a little Gary player stuff in there. Some corn fairy LPGA, USGA, and some, of course TGL. So that's kind of, that's the run show tonight, but big news of the week, the 2025 title, Pro V1 and Pro V1X golf balls are now officially in a golf shop near you. It's got more speed off the tee, more control with the irons and more spin with the wedges. There's a great clip on the DP World Tours.

They did an unfiltered video from last week in Dubai. Padraig Harrington's in the locker room asking, you know, one of the title straps, like, Hey, what's up with the new 2025 models? The rep goes through them all and says more speed control spin. And then right before they cut to the next scene, Patty just he says it all. Well, who doesn't want that? Like what's what are you waiting for? Get out there and get some new golf balls. I posted it on my stories earlier

this week, but the Pro V1 Pro V1X are also immediately available with the enhanced alignment, extended alignment side stamp for more precise aim and accuracy. Sometimes I'll draw a line on the ball. This is gonna save me from that inaccurateness and the smudges that come from putting a sharpie and trying to draw a line. I always hate the line that I end up drawing on the ball.

So it's a perfect alignment tool. If you like alignment tools, it's gonna be great. I need to do a little bit more experimenting with it, but I appreciate them sending that over. In addition to the enhanced alignment, Tilos also offers over 40 different alignment aid designs through their website or custom order. How about that?

40 different alignment aid designs. I might need to have him do one that looks like the spear. Oh, that might be kind of sweet. Even like a little clique, the clique, is this a rebrand? This is an old clique hat that you got on tonight? Yeah, I'm a loyalist to our roots, but listen, Sal, we'll get there.

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Visit Titleist.com to learn more and find out which model is right for your game. Taking it out to H.E. at Torrey Pines. He wins for the fifth time first in a few years, gets the first interview with his daughter, running on the green. The Flusher is back, TC. I'm thrilled.

The more I've gotten to know Harris, played with him. What was that? A year and a half ago at the RSM pro am his caddy ease. A great guy. He was really good when we were growing up and he won a bunch of southeastern junior golf tour events and I've kind of kind of looked up to him ever since then. And the more I get to know him, the more like, and all the guys up at Sea Island, all the guys on tour really are like, dude, he's just like the most genuine, authentic, like comfortable in his own skin, thoughtful dude. So happy for him. He's finally healthy and as Randy, you know, so accurately foretold, he's absolutely flushing the ball.

And that was a really, really smart, steady round of golf today. He, he, he, he wasn't hitting a bunch of fairways on the front nine. Potter was good, played smart golf on the back nine. It was just, it was, it was really like fun to watch him build that round of golf. I was convinced midday Saturday in round three on Friday, I was like, Oh, this guy had a little personal action maybe on HG. What a wonderful guy to have action on when he's in contention. Cause he mentioned it in the post-round afterwards.

He's like, yeah, I may look calm on the outside, but emotions were going a mile a minute. I never felt that watching and rooting for him today. I was like, Oh, he's kind of totally, he was minus 1300 when he was in the middle of 17 fairway with a one-shot lead. Like the books were giving him so much respect. I know 18 is a par five, but a lot could go wrong on the part on that hole. And we saw so many putts get missed over the course of the last several rounds of this tournament. Dude, that was a grind and a slog five and a half hours in that final group and

just having to CBS did an awesome job all week covering like the elements of those short putts. Short putts on the POA with that much undulation around the greens and the wind on top of it and just getting them baked out. It was just really, really, really difficult to keep that steadiness throughout the day. It was really hard to get close to the pin, so it was lag putting and chipping from just off the green all day long. Dude, his lag putting was insane.

It was so good. So then that on the was it the 12th hole or 13th hole that that pitch shot like he he was he was short of the green that pitch shot. Seventy five yards. 12. Oh, my God. It was just chef's kiss. That was and that they did a good job documenting that to the pin was up on a tier and the greens were firm enough that he had to look like he took like around a 56 degree instead of a lob wedge landed at

the bottom of the slope, had it skip up to the top and stuffed in there and made the par. It was just, it was, it was impressive. He's a lag putting extraordinaire. He, uh, he had cracked like, if I look it up back in 2021, he, you know, won a couple of times in 2021, won the travelers, won the century. He had made it all about a fifth in the data golf rankings in the world at the time. Uh, so good. So good. He's battle. He made the rider cup team, of course, that year battled some injuries, but I think like the best is still potentially

to come for him. I mean, he's just supremely, supremely talented. And just to have the, uh, the short game play out the way that it did. I mean, such a good putter too. He's never had a strokes, a season on the PGA tour in 14 years where he's lost strokes on the greens. Never had a single one to hit it that good. And to, to putt it like that as a dangerous combination. Do you see, I think you made a good point in our chat and our Slack that he's so good, good that he makes you want more, right? It makes you feel like, did Harris under achieve

a little bit? Like he should be a guy who's winning a couple of tournaments a year. Yeah, he's absolutely, like I think he's one of the most talented guys of his generation. I've always kind of said that. I'm like, he's a sleeping giant. He's just never really, like, I mean, shit,

he's won five times, that's good. But like, I think he has the upside to, I've bet him shit, probably three out of the last five years in the PGA championship. Like I was convinced he was going to win at Southern Hills a few years ago. Like he's just got that kind of game and he's played well. He plays well at Memphis. He played well this week at Tor.

He plays well on hard golf courses. And you know, he's just, it seemed like the harder that golf course got today, the more comfortable he was too. So I don't know. I'm super impressed. I know like I'm a Harris English Homer, but really even as his post-strand interview was just, you know, like you'd tell it meant something to him and he's, he's a, he's a pros pro. He's a class act.

Like he's, he's a dude, man. TCA did promise that we would invite him on the trap draw to talk about the drive by truckers because after I wrote about Jason Isbell, uh, backlash, uh, the beginning last year, he wrote me a note, but said that he'd been watching Isbell since he was with the truckers way back in the day. And I was like, well, come on the trap draw, let's do a perfect club about this. So if you could just bump that ahead and management, you know, I know I'd give that to you guys. Is that trucker show in Baltimore? I think you're very confused that that whole day, that one time. And you know, he just loves like, he just loves drinking light beers. I think.

He's like the poster boy for like, like what probably when we started this podcast, like, ah, that guy's boring, you know, but then we've got a chance to get to know him a little bit and he was, he was great. He was a episode four 67 on the no laying up podcast. It was a long time ago. He's a great interview. Like, and you know, didn't give like cookie cutter answers, gave you, you know, straight up answers on a bunch of stuff. And, uh, so go back and listen to that if you want to get to know him, uh, a little bit better. And, uh, he's caddy Eric got a crazy story. I mean, he, he, like he came up, I think he was friends with either Ken Green or calc from like either growing up or at some point. And he was a good player and then came

out, caddied for those guys. I think he went to prison for a while and just got caught up in the wrong stuff and then came back out and he caddied for Anthony Kim for a long time and caddied for Jeff Overton and he's been on Harris's bag for probably 11, 12 years now. So it's a really, really cool, cool pairing and they're like the way they talk to each other and stuff. It's, it's fun to watch. We got, uh, Sam Stevens shot a 400 par final round, 68 hit it in the water on 18, then hit the stick with his fourth shot. Uh, almost hold that out. Save par, put a little threat on that one. He did not play the 18th hole very well over the final two rounds. He made

double on it on Saturday and then hit it in the wide. He made par. He three putted from five feet. It was tough. I watched that was, that was very tough. He just blacked out for it. It was like a rolling Brown. When he played awesome round of golf on the conditions were, I mean, the conditions weren't really difficult on Friday, but, uh, you know, he had a very, very good round of golf going, uh, the kind of, kind of blew that at the very end, but He went under par on, on the South course, all three rounds and went over par.

And my God was that round too. Yeah. He was the, the, the Thursday that was difficult everywhere. Uh, so I would call that the bad side of the draw. I mean, I think, I know a lot of people said, uh, you know, you'd rather have the easier course in the harder conditions, but with North, you want to get your birdies, uh, all at once. If you can, I would think. I assume Harris was, was Harris the good side of the draw? No, he was bad. Yeah. He was the good side of the draw. He got to play the North course on Wednesday. But, yeah, I thought Stevens, Stevens and Novak, watching both those guys, like I know Novak shot 74 today, kind of a bad miss, like short-sighted himself on what

was that 15. But, but otherwise like, like he didn't back down and he hit, he hit some really good shots when he needed to. He made a lot of putts and just one of those rounds where like, he kind of looks like, he's got kind of a JB Holmes aesthetic going on. Yeah, but then every time I looked over, like, you know, he was pretty talkative out there and he was, he was, he was pretty engaging to watch. And then getting to watch, uh, is it, is it pot heater?

Yes. So I think it's, I think it's pot heater is the way I literally watched like three videos in preparation for this podcast about it. But the South Africans pronounce it pot heater, like with a kind of an H. If Trevor didn't do that on the broadcast, we're not doing it here. Trevor might be Americanized now. That's very true.

But I mean, like basically hitting to watch him as well. He was a little wayward today, but I mean, he was flying at 350 at sea level in like cold day. 50 degrees. Like he had 192 ball speed when it was 50 degrees off the first day. My 205 ball speed.

Do we do we in testing a couple of weeks ago, the BSI meters DCR are blinking red on on pot Gator. I need a response from you on this one. Well, he's 20. I feel like he's he's like he's like, you know, unrefined uranium right now. We got I love it. We never defined what BSI was and you didn't even, you didn't even blink. You knew exactly what I'm like, you know, like your guy Lantos out there. He's a BSI for those listening to BSI is a ball speed imposter, which I would very much

argue that Lantos data golf skill raking looks a little different than pot keepers, but he's got some time to grow into it. But yeah, that was a wild, wild, wild final round. Fun to watch, man. I'm, I'm excited. He's involved. I'm excited. He's on the PGA tour and he seems like a really like good kid. Like, you know, he's got a bright future. Adam. I would, yeah. The golf, the long narrow golf courses he should, you know, his, his data set should start blinking at you early in those weeks. Like, you know, his, his data set should start blinking at you early in those weeks. Like, um, you know, just Torrey pine south is, is, was a fit for his game on the Novak thing. I'm forever a fan of that guy. Uh, cause way, I made like

a really like slight mention back in summer of 2021 when you don't meet, you guys may not remember this, but people were arguing for Phil to be on the writer cup team in 2021. And he was like 240th in the world or something like that. And I just made a comment. I was like, Phil is right next to Andrew Novak on the rankings. Like Andrew, no, that's not a guy. That's a tennis player. Like that's like, we're not putting Phil on the team. And he replied to that tweet. It said, he said low key dangerous on the tennis court, not going to lie. So he's a listener of the show and he did not take any offense to that as well. So he's a Wofford Wofford terrier, just like they, they referred to him as having played basketball in college at some point. He was an intermural

basketball. 2017 Wofford intramural basketball champion. Yes. A research failure. I was like, wow, this dude played college hoops. No, it did not hold up to fact check. Technically he did play hoops in college. As did you call, I'm sure. Couple things on him that they kept CBS kept like putting a camera right in his face after a couple of those final shots. And he was giving you like a react. He was talking to his caddy but

give him a reaction of like, yeah, that one might have been a groove low, you know, it may come just off the front. And you know, he didn't on a shot in 18. He's like, I got what I was looking for out of that. But it's just a perfect tweener. And I couldn't take enough distance off that one was kind of like a, I mean, just getting guys talking about the nitty gritty details instead of announcers guessing on that stuff was just, I just, that was some of the most engaging stuff, man.

Thank you, Justin Thomas for sending memos to us. A shout out to, to like, I thought Dottie and Trevor and Ian Baker Finch were on point. Like coming down the stretch, I know like on 17, they were talking about Novak's strategy. And then Harris taking, like it was just very clear, concise strategic analysis in the moment. Same thing on 18 when H.E. hit that AOC ball, you know, the hot left ball. And it was like, you know what? Like he's going to take his medicine here and all that. And then I think from there you got, uh, you know, you got Dottie, she was calling out Lanto yesterday for potential backstopping, you know, taking advantage of Ludwig being sick as a dog and like not, not being able to mark his ball. And then today going off on the pace of play,

it was great. I was Dottie on Dottie unplugged. I unleashed. I'm here for it. Dottie is such an OG just forever. I'm surprised by me. Like I heard her on the on the broadcast on Friday and I was like, man, it's good to have Dottie back in my life. And I would not have said that five, six years ago. I don't think I feel like she's gotten more direct and more on the nose. Can we can we talk a little bit of the pace of play stuff? She said it's got to improve, it's got to happen. I need answers from people on this when this comes up into the future. And I need more people to at least acknowledge

the point that I've made on repeat about this being a traffic issue. Like I need some reaction from, I need some solutions from people other than just like they need to play faster. I need to hear that in the public. Or like, am I crazy, am I losing, I'm losing my mind on this topic of like,

they gotta fix the slow play, they gotta fix the slow play. Like everything that's happening in golf is making golf slower. And jamming this many guys on golf course with this much daylight, there's only one way that this ends. I just don't, I'm surprised, I'm amazed that people don't recognize

that the tour would like it to go faster, like would absolutely like it to go faster. And if it was easy, it would be done is my overall point on it. And what I feel like you're just throwing your hands out and be like, Oh, it's complicated. Like the traffic's bad. And I'm like, they can start by raise the fines the traffic's bad. And I'm like, they can start by raise the fines, like higher. And then I would say, just enforce the rules. You always say this, the rule is you're not on the clock until you're out of position. Or change the rules. Change the rules, basically. Like I think you're not going to solve it by not changing the rule or enforcing the spirit of the rules.

I think that's a place to start. There's structural changes. I think the smaller fields in some of these events, especially around shorter days of the year, are certainly going to help as well. I think the signature events should be weirdly approving ground for this as well. Of, hey, we're playing twosomes and, you know, we've got 75 guys in the field, like buckle up boys. You're playing fast today.

And the times are way better when they're all off the first tee and twosomes like our plus probably, uh, compared to a winter threesomes, both sides. And I guess I, I, I still don't understand the point of needing a shot clock or needing to play under 40 seconds if you don't have anywhere to go. Right. I don't think that's going to solve the problem. It's not going to make the round of golf go faster to make guys play fast to go wait on the guys right in front of them in the next group. So the point that you made to me when I wrote about this last year, I should think was a good one was that like traffic, you know, is a snake, right? We, we sent that video around, be happy to share it again, that if there's a backup way far ahead,

that it can just basically is a domino effect. So I think in this era when we can time everybody, when we can, we could put an apple tag on every single person in nowhere they are at all times, like if you are constantly causing backups, then I think I could see, We're yanking your license, baby. or constantly asking for, you know, a ruling or a second ruling or whatever I think I could see, or constantly asking for a ruling or a second ruling or whatever. Like I could see scenario where it's like, Hey, you know what? You have a total of like eight minutes of extra time ruling for this tournament.

If you use them up, you can't ask for a ruling anymore. You're just going to have to play it. It's like a malivision. They didn't ask for rulings all the time back in the seventies and eighties. They just played what they understood the rules to be. So if you are constantly causing backups, I could absolutely see you be like, yo, you're getting bad starts from now on. I don't care what your ranking is.

I feel like that would at least be a positive solution to move traffic forward. You are the part of the problem. Get going. Yeah. There's micro and there's macro solutions, right? I think also, I mean, they could certainly look at the equipment, the ball, things of that nature. We'll get into that a little bit with your guy, the D-Man, the Sprague.

That's what I'm talking about. That's a solution, that's a change. I mean, Tori this week, it hasn't rained. It hasn't rained in San Diego in six months, six months. And do you see how thick that rough water you have to dump on that golf course for it to look like that? It's fucking crazy. Added wind and those green speeds and like there was all it. That's where I'm like, I hate to be apologist for the players on this.

Like, dude, it's just not going to go fast in that format. Like it just absolutely is not. My speeds, my green speeds, 100% absolutely. But like that's a reflection of technology. Like the green speeds are fast. We should have they could have done it

to pull to pack or there's certain courses they can go to or, you know, maybe they slow the greens down, but make the whole locations more extreme and try that out once in a while. Like, hey, you know what? This week we're gonna, they're gonna be rolling in a nine guys.

Buckle up, it's not a putting contest. Yeah. It goes faster at Kapalua, I swear it does. I still, I maintain this as a very serious proposal. A very thin, can't see it on TV, gray chalk line around the hole, 30 inches and in, scoop it. Like we just don't, like if you really wanted to go faster, like you don't need people marking putts inside that level,

taking their time reading those, like that would seriously change the pace that everybody moves at. That would never happen, but yeah. That would erase 40% of the shots that think of any more commercials they could air. Then I would make that sacrifice. Anyways, AT&T has a new guarantee because most things in life are not guaranteed.

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I love it. Personal endorsement. What's next for you on farmers? There's a lot of other stuff happening throughout the course of this week. Jackson Coyvon, Luke Clanton, both impressive again. Just wanted to shout them out. Danny Walker hit all 18 greens and regulation in route to a first round 65 on the South course, which is like, Whoa, that's crazy. It's not like the norovirus was running wild in the street. Was that what it was?

I think so. I mean, it started, the WD started, I think we thought that a lot of them were because guys found out that they were going to be going back to Torrey in a few weeks, or at least some of the top players. But it turned out like, I mean, there were, I think 15, 16 guys WD'd between that and then suspension of play guys being way off the cut line, you know, after, after what was that Thursday. But yeah, I mean Ludwig, obviously he was going through it.

Yeah. So like, can we tell you, you tell us about your experience with the norovirus? I believe it to be, and I hope it's not too quick of a reaction or recency bias of like, I don't think I've ever been that sick. It was like 30 hours of, it took me four days to get anything more than applesauce down. And it was just like, it was 30 hours of not, it was just

the worst lingering between like not just puking violently, but the weird feeling of like, should I, do I have to? Do I have to? Which is worse than just violently puking. I could not imagine playing golf with any of that. So if anybody had that virus, was withdrawal, I don't understand how Ludwig got through that. I thought he was going to bounce back today because I was like, he must not have the real thing if he's not withdrawing because otherwise he'd be running to the bathroom every 20 minutes. not withdrawing because otherwise he'd be running to the bathroom every 20 minutes. For him to shoot 74 in the third round, like going through that. I mean, he hit five greens or five fairways, which is, that's not a Ludwig round of golf. Hopefully he hopefully bounces

back for, for a pebble. Cause he, he should have won this tournament last year. I think leaderboard wise, Sungjae, just a completely non-competitive top five, backdoor top five. That was kind of sick. Chris Ventura playing nice golf, T4 from him. What else? Taylor Pendreth finished T7. I didn't see a single shot from him this week. A lot of BSIs in that top 10. Will Gordon up there as well. Lonto up there might say. I get all the stuff about going to somewhere where they already have the infrastructure set up and all of that. For Genesis you're saying?

For Genesis. But man, can we have gone to the North course? That would have been way more fun. Or, hey, cut down a bunch of the rough and make it play different or something. Do something. I guess the public is going to be playing on the course for the next couple of weeks. Just to have them just trudge through the rough then please like give us some light

rough. When the Greens play as firm as they did this past week, like light rough would play at Torrey like it's still it's a layer of it's it's not a turkey shoot from the rough that's when golf that's when pro golf gets really boring is when the rough isn't up in the greens are soft and it rough doesn't have any effect on your shots. It's almost as too strong of an effect now you can't even take on risk or try to land a ball on the green. Introduce that element to it. I

think it could potentially play as interesting as Tori can play. Just rough that deep is just, and I get it. Like we, a lot of birdie fest this time of year, people like seeing a winning score under 10 under par. I thought that was a relatively refreshing watch overall. It, just the challenge of it is interesting. It's just like the most dull kind of challenge in my opinion.

It'd been fun if like Scheffler and Rory were involved in this. I would have liked to see them like take this on, you know, hopefully they'll play Genesis who don't know what their plans are, but it would have been fun to see that. There's a lot of guys like, especially I think on Friday, there was a lot of guys like double, you know, chipping from rough to rough, basically around the greens. And then it's such a double-edged sword because there's so many holes that look like the drone shots are so spectacular. And then when you really look at a really high drone shots, you're like, that's the piece of land they had to work with. This is what they came up

with. Are you kidding me? Like, it's just, it's such like that 13th hole at part five. I mean, especially with that pin today, that was the most Mickey Mouse dog shit part five. And it's like a three shot hole, which I normally love three shot part fives and it's, it's just not good. Just bad design. So anyway, I didn't know people were going to call us haters and all that. So I'll get back to the leaderboard here. Solly, do you see Lanzo's outfit today? I believe I did. Yes. He was wearing blue shoes, blue pants, blue belt, blue polo and a blue hat. Shout out to you. Joel Damon, good week from him. 75 today, but he was lacing his hybrids in his traffic irons into some of those par threes.

And par fours. Keegan T15. Yes. Yes. The giraffe. Get ready, Xali. What am I getting ready for? My guy's going to have to just recuse himself because he's going to make the team on points

and recuse himself later. Do you think he recuses if he makes it on points? No, I don't actually. I think he'll probably play if he makes it on points? No, I don't actually. Who is the captain if that happens though? He's going to be playing captain. I can, that would not be such a, that'll be such a disaster. I'd have to, the giraffe would have to turtle up with that. I can't have my guy. Oh God, no, that would be awesome. If Keegan just said he'll only play like singles, maybe that would be a scenario. But lastly, Sammy Vala Maki, T15, just wanted to shout him out. Ryan Gerard, T15.

What does lastly mean? What does lastly mean? I don't know. I don't know. Gotterup played well. I like, I think Gotterup, I'm buying stock in Gotterup. I think he's, he's, he's another like, he's just raw and he's just like, there's so much low hanging fruit to improve upon. How many, how many fair it only, only three rounds or no. So how many fairways do you think got her up hit this week? This is all four rounds at 56.

Don't look how many, how many fairways they got her up hit this week? 22 16 of 56 second and driving distance though. So that's what Tori rewards. I kind of respect it. Yeah. What else we like I used to really look forward to watching this tournament. I think it probably had a lot to do with the cat. Maybe a little bit of CBS. It feels like I know the PGA tour season feels like it starts three different times, but this is one of them that where it felt like it started. And just what we've seen out of this tournament, really the last time I've seen it, it's been like, Oh, I'm going to go to the PGA tour season. I'm going to go to the PGA tour season. I'm going to go know the PGA Tour season feels like it starts three different times. But this is one of them that

where it felt like it started. And just what we've seen out of this tournament really the last two years, I have to shout out the effort they've made to do the Wednesday through Saturday format to get away from football. A lot of the which what was the first year they did that? This is I think the third iteration of this if I remember right. There was a great article we we sent the leak out a couple a couple years ago and just like what they

give up to do that like you give up the Pro-Am if either either really damages the Pro-Am or they give up the Pro-Am to do that, which is a big hit. And farmers again, not a sponsor of ours, but they do so many great things in golf in terms of the Advocates Pro Tour, which will on Sunday, they'll have the broadcast out for that event that they host out at Torrey pine South on that Sunday. And so I appreciate the effort that they they're putting into this tournament and

keeping the tradition with it, but man, it's, it's turned into kind of a Blakelin with the field and you know, the golf course and just how it has all really evolved. Um, it it's, I don't know what, what its identity is at this point. It seems like the more they improve Pebble or even Amex, like Amex is stealing guys. Like there's, you know, people just have to skip tournaments here and there. And I know Mexico is kind of a built in week for guys to do that before, before it heads to Florida.

But yeah, it just feels like it's kind of like, I don't know what, I don't know what this tournament is at this point. It's just sandwiched between, you know, kind of, and really the more waste management Phoenix open, like that, that continues to be good. Like this is going to be the one that guys have to skip then the way that the schedules currently constructed. So, Sully, I want to talk about the decorators tweet. Do you see this? Oh my God. It's got to be really good. Yeah. So the tour, which the tour has been doing a better job of late on the socials, just not tweeting as much. Granted, I called them out this week for the announcement for the Genesis coming to Torrey. They tweeted out a picture of North course, not the South course, which seemed like kind of an affordable mistake and it

was up for five hours. That was actually on the website. And then play was suspended at 5.05 PM Eastern time due to high winds during the second round of the at farmers insurance open. That was on January 23rd. And the tweet was presented by at Decker, which is a decking, the official decking company of the PGA tour, which evidently they, they, you know, signed up for exclusivity or for, for, you know, the weather delay tweets. Yeah. The weather delay tweets. So, uh, and they, they just got like, there were, you

know, like a hundred replies and they're just absolutely getting gutted by people. Thanks a lot. Decorators. It's one of them. It 15 to 25 mile an hour wind too high for everyone. Now the winds were higher. Ball balls were winds on the North course were absolutely brutal. Balls were blowing off of it. No, do green speeds need to be this fast? No. And it all contributes to that. It was a justified delay. It really was.

There was a lot of people grandstanding on that one, but it was a justified delay. But is it very funny to have your delay tweets presented by someone else other than the tournament sponsor? Yes, it is. These guys will sell. He said these impressions are unhealthy, but damned if there aren't a lot of them. Hashtag Chad. Got to know what they paid for the official place suspended naming rights. And then tomato Tommy 10 decorators media agency. We saw incredibly high engagement from our partnership with the PGA tour. Thumbs up.

Love this one. Thanks a lot at Decorators. Now that was a... I texted you guys on Thursday morning watching Max and Hedeke play a hole in the North Core. Like, dude, let's get some more cameras over there. Like there's some absolute carnage about to go on over there. But what are tour news you got for us TC? Yeah. We talked about Genesis moving to Torrey pine South 2027. I just want to, is the cat going to limp his way around? I don't think there's any way or hell the cat, the cat, I wouldn't think he would have probably tried to play Genesis though He was talking about that. I would like play it if it had been at

You know at RIV but I gotta think you're right like there's no way he tries to do it which is another bummer for the tour because that would have been a ratings bump if you know, the cat was gonna roll out to to play RIV I Wouldn't if he was gonna play Genesis, I, he's won on this course like 84 times. I know there's a lot of rough, but I don't know. I think he- Pretty big walk. Potentially could.

I don't know. Get out there, hit two irons again into the fairway. Come on. I think he's still probably steamed from flying the green by 40 yards during TGL this week. It was not the tech's fault. It was not the tech's fault. Tigers is rusty. Just hit a sand wedge 130 yards.

What else? We got 2027 open championship going to San Andrews, the old course, which as I understand it, 2028 is open for either one of the English sites or potentially Port Marnock. And then 29. Which would be the first time ever being held in Ireland. Yes. Port Rush is in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. And this is, Ireland is a separate country for my American friends that are not as,

maybe a little bit more geographically challenged. This would be a very, very different statement to take the open championship to Ireland. Are the British gonna like annex Ireland? Or is this like history going backwards again? I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question.

I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question.

I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. shed the British take it to Australia, which again, through all of me and KVV's research, all of us calling it the British open could not be much more justified. We all grew up

with every single newspaper and every television broadcast calling it the welcome to the British open the 1973 British open guys. I call it the open championship. Um, you know, that's just just me, but I think I've gotten some of the nastiest, nastiest emails from some Irish people for floating that out as a rumor in the, like a well-substantiated rumor in the past that they're going to go to Port Marnock. And I'm like, yo, like talk to your government or talk to the RNA. Like don't talk to me. I'm not like, you know, making a political statement or something here.

I'm just reporting what I've heard. Rory's talked about it. They're doing all sorts of infrastructure improvements at Portmarnock all that and then guys I heard Via a club captain with some loose lips at a boozy lunch. I'm told that the 29 The 29 open championship is rumored to be a Muir field DC back to Muir field for the first time you That's just reporting. There's so many secrets are spilled in journalism over boozy lunches in dark cloakrooms. And it was not a boozy lunch at Muirfield or anywhere in Scotland. I'll take the Scots out of

that. And then tying off a loose end from last week, we were talking about what Sepp Stracke is as far as what kind of real estate is Sepp Stracke or how do you define him? And this guy, Mustache Adam on X said, Ari Sepp, he's an upper middle-class house that has a great yard, 4,000 plus square feet with an amazing finished basement that has room for a simulator, but located on a busy, busy major street. It's a really nice house, but the location could be a lot better. I thought that was a good way to kind of, you know, frame it. So, Sal, you want to talk about JT's letter to the players? Yeah, this, we'd heard this was kind of percolating, that it would be going out there, but Justin Thomas sent a letter,

which was basically posted in public, just calling on players to participate more in television broadcasts. He admits some of it of, you know, we're all inclined to say no, I've been a person to say no to some of this stuff, getting mic'd up and doing interviews and just getting out there in front of it.

I'm very much paraphrasing this thing, but it's essentially things we've been calling for on this podcast for the last eight or so years of just give players, give fans a chance to kind of see personalities and just get inside the bag and these conversations and stuff near. So I'm assuming that there's something already in the works on this and that, you know, with the developments of the walk-in talks that CBS has done over the past few years, I'm guessing they're ready to take this up a step and just might guys up.

And I think it, as we always say, when we have this conversation, it's not that we're expecting the most hilarious things ever or the most personality ever when these guys are in serious competition, But you can do so much stuff with recorded conversations. We've seen that in TGL of like, this was said 90 seconds ago when we missed it, you know, well in the submix, but like we can flash back to so and so saying this thing that is just so additive to the to the telecast. It gets really old to watch hours and hours and hours of the hearing the same commentators talking the whole time. And here's your Novak.

Yeah. That was the perfect example. Those little snippets from Novak were just like some of the stuff that sticks out the most. So if they can actually execute on this step that again, was extremely obvious, it should have been done a long time ago. I promise I'm not going to get bitter about this. This would be a great thing.

It could very much be too little to late, too late as we'll get to with some of the other news that is happening on the ratings front. But this is a good development, good for JT kind of putting himself out there on this. I'm sure he's probably gotten poked and prodded and ridiculed a little bit in the locker room for it and on the X app as many are wanting to do. But it's the everything. It's good. It's good. It's good leadership, if you will, of saying like, I'll be the guinea pig on a lot of this stuff, but let's all do this. Let's all get in the game here. Speaking of which ratings. How we looking? Not great. There was 232,000 people that watched on golf

channel, the Amex on last Sunday for Sepp Strock is when there was 534,000 for Nick Dunlap the week before this is from Josh Carpenter, Josh A Carpenter on Twitter great follow for a lot of sports business stuff. Two years ago was 391,000 for John Rahm which again it's not it's not great the Golf Channel ratings are always gonna be way less than Network TV and Sony and and Kapilua and Amex because of football gets squeezed in a lot of ways over to golf channels. So it's never rated well, but to get 40% of the viewers that you got the prior year is tough. I understand there's been some changes to Nielsen. So I don't know if like we're gonna get like, I think this

is the new like the new Nielsen calculation, which should be more favorable to the tour though. Oh, really? Oh, really? Okay. I thought it was hurtful is from I don't know. I don't know what the new Nielsen changes are. But that's a lot. That's not a lot of people watching your golf tournament.

And that's not a good sign. So maybe maybe figure something out. But I maintain that they have just wildly underestimated the backlash to all the making everything about money. It's just people are turned off by it. And I don't know how you get those people back. It won't be before the game comes back together. Like there's no possible way anything could happen to make people come back before that. Like that's maybe that's it. So maybe it's a good thing. Maybe we should be rooting for the ratings to tank as as hard and, you know, as big as possible.

There was a tweet too, from Josh Bennett, jish swish, who is felt like a callback to when I was sitting in my, you know, 300 square foot apartment in Boston, like nine or 10 years ago, 2016. I remember this logging everything from Riviera and filleting, you know, CBS, but this was golf channel. He said, I recorded golf channels, three hour and 47 minute broadcast yesterday and noted to the second of everything they showed in hopes to provide data for debates on the timeline about the quality of the golf broadcast. Here's a thread of what I found. I would love to hear your thoughts. So he did commercial load.

He did, you know, shots. He did type of shots. He did drone shots versus blimp shots. He did everything as hell. I know I, my funniest note after this review, I noted seven seconds of quote, showing airplanes in the air. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to go through all it's incredible

detail of all of it. But a lot of people's takeaway was just like how screwed golf coverage is and how stale it's gotten and how many putts you're watching and how many commercials you're actually watching how much playing through you're actually watching. And yeah, it's it's not which it just it feels so noticeably different on golf channel than it does on CBS these days. Yeah, and I thought CBS was not dealt a great hand in terms of names on the leaderboard and you know, not exciting golf.

It was a close tournament. There weren't a lot of exciting moments that really happened on this Sunday. But as you said, TC earlier, they were all over all the key details of so many of the shots Colts like, like just the whole team on just the shelves, the pins were on and whereas, you know, all the considerations of all the shots, what a good shot was going to be on 16 in particular with that pin on the far left and wind off the left, like good golf nerd stuff.

So I salute them for a strong start. You know, it's not easy with Nance being in Kansas City to just do that. They make that part seamless as well. There's no delay and they care. They give a shit about their product and they continue to improve it. They have some improved technology and graphics

on some of those kind of drone tracers and the little spots where they're expecting it to land and things like that. And man, it just seems like they're happy to do things without like, here comes the big debut of blah, blah, blah and draw all this attention to it. They just do it. Just do it.

Show us, don't tell us. And that's where like golf channel, it just seems like such a stale presentation. It's not even the substance of the presentation. It's just the way that they presented even at this point too. There's just no energy or creativity with it. So I don't know. I don't know where that leaves us. I do really appreciate the, this is CBS now, that the new kind of shot tracer where the

guy hits it and then immediately we flipped to the 3D kind of version of it and you see the ball in the air. Like, you know, the alternate version was just like you're watching a ball against the sky, no context at all where it is, you know, for a good six seconds until it lands. This is just a way better like way of tracking where shots are in the air. So shout out to them for that. And the stuff they've done on like, all right, here's for Harris English's first two drives on this whole went in the, you know, in the first two rounds, like just speaks again, it just is it's solid effort context and keeps you engaged.

So. Seller's shy, man. He's like, well, he's doing the damn thing. Like allegedly, and I don't time this stuff out anymore, but like their commercial load is allegedly the same as NBC, but like it just feels different, which is all I care about. Which to me, that's even more damning.

Right, yeah, like I don't care actually what your commercial time is. I care about what I feel like when I'm watching it. If I wanna, you know, if it drives me crazy, that's obviously a bad thing, but it does not on CPL. All right, we're getting down the wormhole and people are gonna, you know, we gotta pull ourselves out. Complementary on that.

Drawing this together, TC, keep it positive, keep it positive. Last bit of tour news and then the back nine. Yeah, Netflix announced full swing season three, premiering a month from today, February 25th, featuring Keegan Ludwig, Joel Damon, Bryson Big Tone, who was Sally's pick this week to win who finished, missed a cut, finished plus five, I believe. Ricky, Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor, Shane Lowry, Team Rose, Neil Shipley and JT, as well as a big look into the president's cup. Are you guys excited for the new season

or hopeful? I don't know. I like watching it with my kids because they are kind of simplistic golf viewers and they want to just see the sort of stories of people that they kind of know, but they're not really deep in on. And so I think if bright, if there's a whole Bryson episode, I think that could be a lot of fun. I'll be in on that. I feel like I already big tone Ricky. None of that interests me. Team Rose. No, thank you. Like Shipley. Yeah. Ludwig. I can see getting to that. Keegan. Yeah, definitely. That's appointment TV for me, but I think it's, it's hard to follow. So, I mean, 2022 was like the year that live, like the golf world blew up.

It was very good to have cameras in there for that. 22, 23 rider cup carried a lot of that. Like those final two episodes were really three were, were fantastic. And following the picks process and the Keegan stuff and all that was what made season two what it was. I don't think President's Cup can carry that in the same way. So on that regard, it's a tick down for me. The Bryson part is great. That's great news. Just not like it wasn't a dynamite year last year in golf and kind of how I felt about drive to survive as the years go along.

It's kind of like I kind of see the formula here and I don't know if I need to be really invested in watches. I'll watch it of course, but I'm still kind of, I'm hoping, I don't know this to be the case, but I've said this in prior reviews we've done a bit of like, I don't know how, if you're, maybe it isn't the goal to keep the hardcore golf fans involved and I get kind of what the purpose of putting it on Netflix is, but character pieces versus something like that tells the story of the year is as a challenge because like you don't, we're not following any real chronology is where you kind of, you'll kind of lose me a little bit, honestly, and that's just my opinion though. I didn't finish season two. I just thought it was like, went off a cliff. It's just not

for me. And I'm just wondering like, man, like I know you filmed a bunch of good stuff. Where did all that stuff go? And how are you going to cure it? Like, it shouldn't have to be an either or, right? Like, you know, or I think if it is an either or, why isn't it both? Why can't you do full swing for, you know, casual fans or non-golf fans and then do something that's, hey, you know what, we've got access to a bunch of this footage.

We cut this up for a true behind the scenes. It's nothing crazy, sexy or, you know, captivating, but it's just, hey, here's a look behind the scenes on the PGA tour for a year, you know? And maybe that pro shop link will, we'll get out of that, hopefully. I think the creative choice to sort of focus on one person each episode has now become kind of limiting in the sense

of like, all right, we've got to get this person's participation, so like, are we going to show anything unflattering about them? Probably not. And like the what they do in this sort of timeframe is sort of dependent on their results and how compelling is that? Like, what is a Ricky episode from last year going to tell me? Like, that's really compelling and interesting. Unless it gets really into like Rick feels like he's lost his game and it has sort of a these things need to be telling stories that honestly don't always have like a it's all great. Happy ending the Chris Ryan episode Chris Ryan test of like 30 like what if I told you you know what if I told you speed

and JT your friends that like that's if I told you all these guys are class act think about a Ricky episode that's like about Ricky feeling lost and broken. And he's wondering if he ever has his game. And that's the end of the episode. That's the end of the episode where it's like, we don't know if it's going to get better. That would make me want to watch a PGA Tour event, especially if he's in contention and potentially going to win. But I don't know if they're quite ready to show players in that real light yet.

Um, yeah, one other thing I had like last thing from PGA Tour wise was, Nance was during his intro on Friday, he's in Kansas City. And he was talking about he, he was meeting with my homes earlier in the day. And my homes was talking about how he's a big fan of Ludwig He wants to go play in in Lubbock with with with Ludwig down to Texas Tech and he wants Ludwig to play in his charity golf tournament and I'm a tough draw for you, DC

I'm worried. You got a lot riding tomorrow buddy a lot. There's a lot going on. And this is after Buck Tech won the national championship too. We're, we're going to live doors coming up next week. Anybody who wants to, to dance on TC or if he gets to dance on you, that's the price you pay. We will. We'll be seeing him. I'll find it out next week. Yeah. Kaiser. You guys are, are, are threatening to declare me the junior knower of the group. You get downgraded to junior knower and you have to refer to for that for a whole year. I'm so

in on that. No Lang Up is brought to you by FanDuel from the T-Box to the green. FanDuel keeps you in on the PGA Tour action every step of the way because right now new customers can bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets. If you win that's $ 300 bucks. If you win, you can bet on outright winners, longest drive, close to the pin and more. I know who TC's pick is gonna be for next week. Just, is he gonna be back and recovered enough for you to justify it? Like you've been saying it already,

who's gonna win next week? Yeah, I just think we need to get an IV in him and make sure that I don't see the odds out quite yet. But yes, we need to get an IV in him and just make sure that he's got all that vitamin B12 and he's ready to rock the Ludwig. I mean, he basically won last year and he's gonna go back to back.

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on to the back nine. Real quick, some odds shifting as far as the TGL league title. Oh no. For this season, the updated odds Los Angeles golf club plus 300 Atlanta drive plus three 10 Boston common golf plus 380. The Bay plus 430, which I still feel is extremely disrespectful. Yeah.

And then Jupiter links is all the way to plus six 50 New York golf club is plus 700. I wish I could, I could short both of those teams in like a short parallel. Those are both of my teams. There's a lot of TGL to come. We're going to get to that. But some interviews for this past week, Seth Wall sat down with Ayman Lynch from Golf Week. Not going to read the whole thing, but I could just an awesome interview like Seth. Ayman gets a lot of people, of course, and Seth was just fantastic in this one. I got a

couple nugs to share from that if you all will allow it. But please, this is this is the first hole. First hole of the back line here. I should say. On pay for play, Seth said, because if you take any lesson from the last few, pay for play for the Ryder Cup, excuse me, take any lesson in the last few years,

the world is tired of talking about money. Golf was supposed to be about, be playing for a higher purpose. That's what the Ryder Cup signifies, you know? And because we give 20% of our television rights to the PGA Tour already, we are paying the players. We're paying all the players, not just 12. I don't think it's going to change their lives because it's not a big enough number to matter to them. They can monetize their participation in a

way that blows away whatever you can pay them. And I just think for the players to be asked for it to be paid is kind of a bad look. Spot on. He's just talking like a guy who was no longer the CEO of the PGA of America and can speak on things directly. Again, the whole thing, he talks about the phone call he made to Donald Trump to take away the Bedminster PGA, which was just an interesting perspective on all of that. And now he still maintains a good relationship with him and all kinds of really, really good stuff in there. But what I found to be the most interesting on live or the current golf situation in general, he said, I'm surprised it's taken as long as it has.

It's complicated, but I've done a lot of complicated things that haven't taken this long. That part of it is sort of indefensible. I think there will be a deal for a couple of fundamental reasons. You and I have had this conversation, but live is a failed economic experiment. Destruction needs one of two things, hopefully both. You need a better product or you need better pricing. No way you can say they're a superior product and they have no pricing because there's no economics.

It's not sustainable. I don't care how much money you have, burning it doesn't feel very good. And I don't see any way out for them. I don't see light at the end of the tunnel where it's gonna transform that league. So they need a deal. And the tour needs one as well.

SSG, the new owners need one. There's no question fandom is shrinking and sponsors are getting edgy because they're being asked to pay more for something that's less. It's not a crisis, but every week that goes by is like a dull ache. Both sides need a deal. And I think now you have a new administration that's going to be much more deal friendly than the last and a president who likes the game and wouldn't mind being the guy that fixed

golf. That'd be something he'd like to say he did. Yeah, all things we've said on this pod, but again, very meaningful coming from Seth and just good sanity check for me personally of like, okay. Like it's like a normal person here. He sounds like a normal person talking about the golf situation instead of like feeling like we're being lied to by everybody

in the golf industry right now. So. Kind of a shot, shot at Jay as well. He, there was a question. Do you think Jay Monahan has done a good job? He said, I think he did an amazing job during COVID. He's done a really good job of understanding the players, being part of the ecosystem and being a partner.

I think he was put in a very tough position. It's not just Jay, but the board. They made some mistakes, which really turned a, a really hard situation a lot worse. That's about as harsh as I've heard on Jay from somebody in the ecosystem. It's hard to argue with a single word of that. So I will say that the president of the United States did say that he was hoping that MBS would invest a trillion dollars into America in the coming years.

So who knows if that's kind of helps sort of grease of grease things a bit trillion dollars is a lot of money. That's like 14 live events. So that just might be it. Sally take us to, uh, Derek Sprague, your guy, new CEO of the PGA of America. Derek Sprague did a couple of sit down interviews. Uh, really it's just, um, the, the one part in the interview he did with Mike Stachura from Golf Digest. It says, a ball rollback has been discussed

for nearly two decades, but interest accelerated in 2018 with more research to define the issues surrounding distance. USGA and RNA presented the research as an open forum, specifically using the phrase, our absolute priority is to ensure that all key stakeholders are involved in an open and inclusive process. But Sprague, who previously served a term as PGA of America president nine years ago, did not see the final decision playing out that way. Sprague's predecessor,

Seth Waa, did send a memo to the USGA and RNA specifically objecting to a rules proposal in August of 2023, four months before the rollback standard was announced. And in that memo Waa made reference to conflicting data regarding distances. Current PGA Tour statistics show that average driving distance has gone up 4.1 yards since 2018 or an average of two feet per year. Sprague's comments have clearly set the PGA of America and PGA Tour in opposite camp in the distance discussion

compared to golf's other leading stakeholders, which include the USGA, RNA, and Augusta National. Sprague's quote was, I wasn't involved in that, but I can tell you from what I've heard is that there hasn't been a lot of discussion. To my knowledge, we haven't had a lot of dialogue on it. We really want to have a seat at the table because we're a key component in the golf ecosystem. This guy sounds so unserious. I mean, straight up, like Seth Wall came from running a multi-billion dollar global bank and he sat on boards. And Derek Sprague was running TPC Sawgrass for the last decade. Get the fuck out of here, man. For those that don't know, there was open comment periods. The USGA has, you know, doesn't rule with an iron fist.

There's been a ton of seats at the table for everyone involved. It's fucking gaslighting is what it is. Try to say that you weren't involved in it. Like a wheat. And like, I don't agree with Seth's take on it either, but I think he's a serious person. He's not outright lying about it.

Like, it's just so funny to me that the PGA of America was so intent on having one of their own become the head of the organization that they like wanted to cut their nose off despite their face. Like, you know, like to just basically put one arm behind their back in order to have one of their own as a leader. It's just, It blows my mind.

It's so unserious. It's also just pandering. I don't think that this is a really thought out logical position. I think it's just pandering to the kind of what you think will be the more popular position with people, which is, oh, no, everybody wants to hit balls. The other interview we did with Golf Week, he said, like I've said in some prior interviews, I don't know what recreational golfer or many tour professionals, quite frankly, that want to hit the ball shorter. It's like, Oh, that is, that is the most elementary possible under, that is the pandering. Like that is the most elementary understanding of the issues at hand that you could possibly have. And of course he understands it beyond that. But to, to put that out publicly

is just straight pandering. But anyways, not going to do a full distance thing tonight, but we could I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing.

I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing.

I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. his TV career, which he was saying one, you know, he said one guy up in New York, one suit up in New York basically ended his career. That guy didn't even last a month in the Fata's tenure before he stepped down. And then he was talking about his design, you know, Sally is working on TPC Craig Ranch right now. He said he's into just, you know, old school

classic traditional stuff. But he had a really good story about Rome. He said he was one of 10 former captains in attendance in Rome, and he was disappointed by how the American players treated the group. We were in a room across from the locker room. We were not allowed in the players locker room. At the hotel, they had a massive team room and we were not allowed in there, Watkins said.

The European team room and locker room are all about bringing them in, making it a celebration of their history and tradition. Our guys wanted nothing to do with us. Can you imagine Palmer and Nicholas and Hogan and Jackie Burke sitting there? It's me and Crenshaw and Curtis playing. We'd have been spending all of our time

in that room with those guys. Not one person even came in and said hello to us. That soured me on that bunch of players really fast. Meanwhile, the European team has a locker for Seve that all 12 players have to worship at before they go out and play. Be sure to tap the Seve statue in the middle of the room. What have we got in the live corner, TC? Second hole. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, uh, to recap, we got a Clique's rebrand this week. Huge rebrand. All right. They dropped an absolute banger of a hype reel

to announce the new branding. What was the line? Tradition, tradition refreshed? Tradition refreshed or unleashed or something like that. They came out with a $5,000 leather weekend bag. And then they've been holstering this clap back to Max Homa for two years on socials. Max said, what, what the fuck WTF is a clique, I think is what he said. And, and so they, they had this whole long reel that explained what a clique is

and, and, you know, some, some catchy stuff in there of Blandy showing his hardware from both of his senior. I'm a senior teller. Yeah, so they clapped Max on socials and then it just, it was tough. It was a tough week for the Cliques. Their whole, like everything that went on this week was like, it was like an AI chat GBT spit out of like, what should we do on social media this week?

It's like, Oh, you should do like the live account clap back at max, uh, uh, on this, what did they say exactly about, uh, we'll trade you YouTube advice for major advice or something like that. Uh, just like they, there's a new live social person that's trying to, trying to make some wavelengths over there, but it was just, it seems so wildly misdirected. It's just like a bot that needs reprogrammed, uh, over there. It tradition, refresh,

tradition, refresh, focus on your own product. Like what are you doing drive-bys on max for? It's not like max is like a super like relevant person in the game at the moment. So like, what the fuck is this what are you gaining they have to draft off the pga tour that's their only hope of any kind of relevance but tradition refreshed in a league that is entering its fourth season like it just got me so like the fucking tradition of the cliques got me so good but it's it's a hundred percent serious. It's the most serious video though. Like what Adrian Moran can the shower shower. I would love to see the storyboards for that.

Like, all right, then we're going to get Adrian coming up in the shower. Like this, this shot here slow motion. They filmed it up in Italy and like Northern Italy, I think. Uh, I don't know. Yeah. They, they also announced they're going to kick off 2025 season under the lights in Saudi Arabia. Uh, speaking of bots, Rick shields signed to live, got a letter, misjointed out of it. Uh, there's a way I watched that video. Yeah. What do you guys think of that? I think it's like the speech and debate kids getting a letter, you know, in the thing. I just, uh, it was like the varsity letter for, for playing the one match.

I mean, what good for Rick. I mean, he obviously he's just going to do whatever he can to, to make money. And that's, you know, more power to him. If that's your thing, whatever, but it's not exactly my thing. But you know, people like, he's obviously very successful at YouTube. So I can see why Liv would want to go after him, but just not my thing. He's been rep by performance 54 for quite a while now. And he, I'll just say his, his YouTube subscribers went up pretty,

it was parabolic there for a while over a couple months stretch a couple of years ago. People in Indonesia just loving those ratios, shipping videos. A lot of people in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Romania, Neil used to play that game back in his old days. I don't know Rick personally. I like him. The brief online interactions we've had, I have absolutely nothing against him.

It made me a little sad just in general of like the kind of the OG YouTube pioneer is doing what we've been accused of doing for a long time of like basically selling out to a tour, which it's not accurate on our part, but like he's broadcasting that he is doing this and the harassment like we've gotten over the years for our perceived relationship with the PGA tour, which never made any sense. But like this is actually happening on this other side. Like they're buying up a media

person for their to, you know, kind of inflate their image. And I'm guessing those same people that were harassing us won't send that harassment. I'm not asking people to harass Rick on that front, but it's just like, yeah, people have long said, Oh, you guys would sell out in a heartbeat. And it just kind of makes me a little sad to see it happening. Speak for yourself, solid. I'm already sold out. I got the, it's something too, with Rick where it's like, honestly, like,

I think it's a good move for live. Yeah. Something they probably should have done a couple of years ago, right? Of like, make it, you know, your product truly different. Is live just going to end up being YouTube golf? Like everybody wants, you know, the bread, they, they celebrate the Bryson stuff. I mean, Bryson gets way more views on his YouTube videos than live telecast do. Like, are they just eventually going to see like the opportunity, you know, instead of standing up all these events that we're just hemorrhaging money on the

opportunity to reach so many more people via YouTube. I mean, it's Neil's point about how Logan Paul should have been like the first tea at live. Like that's, you know, if you want to make it funny and different and whatever, do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last thing I had was just third leg Greg did an interview with Australian Golf Digest allegedly wants to bury the hatchet with Tiger and Rory.

I don't think that's Greg's decision to make. It's kind of what I'm seeing there. He wanted to be thanked by them though. He wanted to bury the hatchet, but also like have them acknowledge that he put a bunch of money in their pocket. Which they've done. They've done that so many times. His quote was, I would love to, I'd love for them to recognize the fact that like Tiger with his PIP money, that only came because of live, right? So Tiger benefited from that. Rory's definitely benefited from that. I would love to sit down and talk with them about it. No question about it, because I'm not a judgmental person and you only learn the facts and truth when you hear

the other side. And he said, I, but yes, what I like to sit down with them. Sure. Absolutely. And you know what? I'd win the debate. Greg, that is exactly why nobody wants to sit down and talk to you. Like that attitude right there. One, like gas lighting on the front end of, yeah, many people have said like, Oh, Liv's been great for the finances of top players of the PGA tour. And I'd win the debate. Like you've had your chance. It's time. They told me Liv's telling you to go away. It's moving upstairs. Speaking of going away. This brings us to our 12th hole, the third hole of the back nine, the Beth Page tee times scandal.

KVV dropped this, this week on Tuesday. If you haven't listened yet, please do. Uh, KVV. Yes. I'll throw it over to you. What was the, I mean, any surprising reaction? What's been the reaction for those that haven't listened or are unaware, do a quick intro as to what it was as well. Yeah. This is part of our public golf series where we're just trying to find stories that

are outside of the world of pro golf that we think affect a lot more people. And in general, what the first two that we've kind of tried to understand is like, when you go to book a tee time these days online, like there's a lot of cities where you just are totally fucked if you cannot like even if you are clicking the minute that the tee times are available. And the reason is clearly that people are gotten really, you know, good these days at building bots and they the bots are overwhelming this for up software that is in a lot of cities in America that runs a lot of golf courses around the world.

It doesn't seem to be particularly good at defending itself against bots. So in this episode, we took a look at the most famous public golf facility in the United States, Bethpage State Park. I just ticked through the history of not only why it matters that this is available to the everyman, the kind of the hack golfer. This was kind of the entire reason that it had a glow up. It's not only the reason it started way back in the days of Robert Moses, but the reason that the USGA invested $3 million into it because they wanted to have an open for kind of the everyday Munich golfer.

We found over the course of the history know, the history of it just barely really scratching the surface, plenty of people who admitted to botting the site when it was a phone system, when it was an online system, people who are still botting the system. Now we found someone on Reddit who was able to get us a tea time that, you know, giving under like a fake handle, you know, pretending we were a resident in Texas. And you know, I think the reaction to my surprise was that the state just kind of had nothing to say. They was just like, no, we don't think bots are a problem. I emailed them a long detailed thing, kind of basically saying, this is everything that

is we want to know that's coming, we're going to talk about in the podcast. You have 10 days to respond and nine days and you know 23 hours later they sent a thing right before five o'clock on a friday that was basically like yeah here's our response and it was basically like we take this concern seriously we don't think bots are a problem you know we we check ids at the door what if i told you they are yeah and so the the the fallout first of all, was that I got a lot of a lot of emails from people saying, Oh my god, I'm so glad you took this on. This has

been such a frustration to me and my friends. Some people saying, Yeah, you know, I've been able to sort of get on the system, but it's because they use a bot, you know, maybe everyone should learn to build a bot that's not here and there. You know, a

friend of ours, I won't use their name, but they had a really funny story kind of talking about how a person from their work was sort of using a bot to, I'll just read it here. A guy at work during COVID. A very reputable workplace. Very, very reputable workplace. A guy at work during COVID was basically using a bot to get tee times at BethPage and it worked automatically. You showed up one day to play and the cops had showed up because they had accused him of hacking a website and since it's a.gov website it was hacking into a government site. He explained what he was doing which wasn't hacking and they let him off but they put him in the back of a cop car and off the jump and in handcuffs. I just thought you'd appreciate this story. So there are some instances where the

state parks are trying to use the cops to sort of go after some of these people. But one of the things that I found out this morning is that one of the people, the guy who was in our podcast, Eric Benyak, who had sort of taken this on as a personal crusade, the state parks suspended his account and basically prevent him from future making tea times at Bethpage, which I find to be like incredibly petty and incredibly sort of BS, uh, in this situation. Possibly like illegal.

I mean what first of all, I would be really curious. And I sent us the state another email this morning asking for comment about this. What evidence do you have other than what like Eric talked about himself on our podcast? Did you do an actual investigation? Did the person whom we hired as a broker on Reddit to make us to see time, did that person get suspended? Because that guy was on Reddit basically bragging for two full days about how he could get tee times for anybody if they wanted him. He was basically like taunting the fact that he appeared in the podcast, that his Reddit handle is and offering up

his services for other people. And so, it didn't get any response from the state. I'm sure no one is working this weekend. It just is sort of like a pretty ridiculous example of like, you're not focusing on the right things. Here, Eric is like, actually, you know, foiling the state to try to get these, you know, this information to sort of prove that, hey, tons of out of state people, 20% of the T times booked on these courses every month are from out of state people, 20% of the tee times booked on these courses every month are from out of state accounts, which seems impossible, unless it's getting hacked. Like you cannot book tee times, having to wait two extra days, which is what the state parks current rules

are. Some of the other things I actually got a call from someone who works within the state of New York who has access to the 4UP software, who talked to me about, this is how I think the system is being manipulated. It's very easy to change people's things, their accounts after the fact, so that they have access that they shouldn't have.

Basically said too, it's absolutely true that you could run a report in the 4UP software very easily on every single account that would show you how many times this account has played the black. You're only allowed to play the black once every 28 days. So it'll be very easy to find out if this is being violated. You're only allowed to play the red once every 14 days. We had tons of stories of people just basically playing it whenever they wanted to. So there's a lot of stuff here. And one thing too, they wanted me to add is like the real problem here is in Albany.

It's with your gal, Kathleen Hockle TC. Like it's not with the state park system as much. There are people who are certainly at the course who want to get this right, do want to sort of combat these bots, but the people in Albany truly do not care. The tee sheets are filled, they're getting care. The t-shirts are filled, they're getting paid, the state's in a deficit, so they're trying to make as much money as they can in any way back. They're not going to invest time or energy into this, but it's shitty for the

people out there who don't have time or the wherewithal to have an engineering degree and build a bot or pay someone to build a bot. It is truly just bots fighting each other for tee times day after day. And yeah, some people can sort of sneak in and get a cancellation here and there, but it is just, it is, it is a war of bots and the regular golfer is getting screwed on it. Well, it goes back to like what, what, what Fink was saying out in LA, right? Of like, you know, golf helps save his life, right? Maybe like, Hey, if you can't get it tee time and go play golf helps save his life, right? Maybe like, Hey, if you can't get it, see time and go play pretty hard for golf to make an impact on your life. Right. And I think so it's ripping that opportunity from people. You know, the state seems fine to give Delaware North a

sweetheart deal on, you know, or, Hey, you know what, maybe this is something Derek Sprague should spend his time looking into and have, have his PGA pros that probably staff, you know, there's probably some of them on staff up there. Look into that. Make this make this part of your crusade, Derek, if you want to grow the game so much. Right. I mean, there's tons of juniors kids who who get to play Bethpage. And that's a huge part of like junior opportunity to play golf in Long Island. If you're you know, if you're not a member of a country club, like what do we want the game to be? Do we want it to just have access to really rich people and people who have the, either the time,

the wherewithal or the money to buy bots? Like that does, that seems pretty fucking ridiculous. Like that it's, it's just, Well, and it's people that are making money. Like they're taking money out of the state's coffers, right? That's the, that's the other thing. Or if it's like, all right, I got to play Beth page a bunch when I was a junior, but now I'm 18 and I can't play it anymore. That sucks just as much. Well, it's funny to me too, like the, no, we don't have a bot problem. Their comment to you and Eric's suspension just don't go really hand in hand

to me. I'm like, me. I don't know. That's really much. In a Ryder Cup year too. I mean look, it could Eric's suspension have been one rogue employee, like any employee has basically the ability to suspend an account and then you have to call and convince them to unsuspend it. So this could be the actions of one person who sort of decided, oh, this is bullshit. Like we need to look into this,

who's pissed off about the state park system being embarrassed this way. But that still doesn't make it right, right? That's just ridiculous. You know, like someone high up needs to go in on Monday and basically be like, you know, this is not the way that we are dealing with this. Guys, I'm gonna reroute the golf course a little bit here. We're going to do a composite routing because I think our, the eighth hole

actually plays better right after this. And that is golf now announced this week, their new Athena technology for golf courses, ushering in a new era of revenue optimization. This is according to their press release. Just what I hear all the time from people is like, I would love to use a system that prioritizes revenue optimization. And yeah, so DJ has glossed this, the Greek goddess of price gouging. My first thought was, man, I would hate to be an assistant pro managing the shop on the day where you get

a rain out and there's 65 different rates out there because, oh, this is a 920 rate and this guy's booked before. And we're going to charge him $67, but we're going to charge this other guy $117, even though it's 15 minutes later. Just stuff like that. It just seems like this is the way that the world's going. Now I know Kroger just announced they're putting facial recognition technology and to check out kiosks and stuff like that. It's just really dark and bleak, I think. And it sucks that golf courses and pro shops at the local Muni are turning to revenue optimization strategies to just extract every last cent. And then meanwhile, you got Bethpage that

is willingly letting brokers and bots scam people out of $30, $40 per tee time. Maybe focus on that first. $40 per tee time, you know, like maybe focus on that first. Amen. I just, just this desire to use AI to like, basically cut out any human element of anything like running a fucking t sheet is kind of an art, right? Like you're able to fit people in here, you were able to sort of do some, you know, do a solid for this guy here, you're able to get pair up these people who might be good. That's a kind of part of what makes golf

special, right? We just like a fucking bot basically like, oh, charger 150. This says that the next hour is going to be very lucrative for us. That's just a lot of Athena. That's so good. Forecast looks great. It's 45000 daily pricing decisions it's capable of. There's 24 hours in a day.

There's only like 14 or 15 hours of golfable time in the middle of the summer. Even 45,000 daily pricing decision to direct my complaints to Carson Daly and Rory on this one. Just see if they get to the bottom of this. Kevin take us to the next hole because this is a fun one. All right. So the Gary player played with Grant Horvath this week in a YouTube video and a lot of I mean,

I must have been tagged in 50 things. People asking me to to do the Gary's impression or that they could no longer watch Gary without thinking of me doing this. Which thank you. I appreciate that deeply. I have zero major championships. He has nine. So together we have nine major championships. We're clearly on equal ground.

I did get a very funny note from one reader who I will keep anonymous. He said, hey, I wanted to pass this along with regards to the Gary player, Grant Horvath video. The video was filmed at the club where my parents live in Jupiter. Everyone there hates him. There are days that he does that kind of stuff for hours on the range and he's been asked multiple times to stop.

At its worst, he will stand by the first tee near the practice screen and introduce himself and do his shtick for 10 minutes. The starter gets so mad. He starts with, hello, I'm Gary Player, the most traveled man in the world. I'm 89 years old and I can kick my foot over my head. Most people start politely leaving when he starts asking people to feel his abs. If you have been harassed by Gary Blair, please reach out to me for either a class action lawsuit or an anecdote on a future podcast.

You may be entitled to specific compensation. Guys, another good or feel good one. Corn Fairy Tour was a good watch this week. I watched quite a bit of that. They were on that Saturday to Tuesday cadence, which freaking rules. Like the more golf you can throw on a Monday, Tuesday, even a Wednesday. Great stuff. Kevin Price from PGA Tour wrote this up. 23 year old.

I'm going to butcher the pronunciation here. Sudarshan Yellow Mir old, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation here, Sudarshan Yelamaraju, I think. He's pretty good at this, right? He beat the tournament scoring record by seven strokes. The tournament's been around for eight or nine years. This was down in the Abacos. Second year on KFT, he finished 99th on the points list last year with only two top 25

starts. He had only conditional status and then finished 36 to Q school. His family moved from India to Winnipeg when he was a little kid. He started playing golf at six and then he moved to Toronto area and turned pro because he couldn't afford college and didn't get any good offers and beat the shit out of everybody down in the Bahamas. And just a really good interview afterwards and different kind of background, both, you know, guy growing up in Canada and hitting in indoor domes and all that. And now he's a corn fairy tour winner and inside track and getting his tour card for next year.

So great stuff there. Other news and notes from down there, Hank Libiotta, last week's winner, finished T7. Good to see Hank playing well. And I mean, probably only a couple more good starts for him until he can lock down his card. Friend of the program, Luke Guthrie was the first round leader and finished T5. It was his first top five in kind of any sort of PGA Tour sanctioned events since 2019. And Luke's just the easiest guy to root for. And, and I mean, he was among the top, what 50 or 60 guys in the world at one point, uh, out on the tour and, and, you know, just, he's been just kind of climbing his way back for the last six, seven,

eight years. And then Chris, the lamp rack finished fourth as well. So one thing I'd like to say, I hope all the people that complain incessantly about the smaller fields on tour, dedicate some of that energy to following the corn fairy tour, tracking the stories and seeing how the season goes along. They go to Panama next week. They go to Columbia after that end of February. They're down in Argentina at the jockey club. Unfortunately, those aren't televised, but you can still track it and keep up to date with it. But I think all these

people that are lamenting, oh, these guys don't have chances or these guys don't have... The boundaries have just shifted a little bit, right? Or the thresholds are just a little bit different. And to me, making it from the corn fairy tour to the PGA tour is still like the biggest jump in golf. And it's down to 20 guys making it this year, you know, instead of 25 for the regular season. So there's like, it's a really good crop out on that tour this year, as far as PGA tour, you guys and gritty veterans and up and comers. It's awesome. So up, LPGA cancellation. This is weird, guys. This is really weird. The Fur Hills Saree Pok event at Palos Verdes Golf Club was canceled this week. I think it's a March event. Cancel canceled this week due to the underwriter failing to fulfill any portion of payment obligations to the LPGA tour for both 2024 and 2025 events.

This is like the fact that they didn't pay and then they put it back on the schedule for this year and announce the schedule. No, no, we're good for it. We swear. This is coming. This is a sweet golf course too. That's a really, really freaking good event. This is tough. It's a bummer. Yeah. And I feel bad for Sari Pak. I don't know what for... I think Furhills is some small investment firm out of Silicon Valley. I'm not sure if the, like, if the sponsor is the problem or the underwriter is the problem.

I think the underwriter was out of Korea. So trying to get more info there, but I just thought the whole thing was nuts. And also I had an idea for LPGA commissioner. Please. I think Jay Monahan should pop over there for the next five years. You read this Friday is like, you've made such a, you've made such a mess out of the men's pro game. They like, you should go pay it forward on the next five years. You read this five year Friday as like... You've made such a mess out of the men's pro game. They're like, you should go pay it forward on the women's side.

And I think he's pretty good at like drumming up sponsors. And the guy could sell, you know. He could sell decorators. Ice to Eskimos, right? And it's like, yeah. I mean, there's an official, you know, rain delay or suspension of play tweet partner for the PGA tour. Like, hey, bring that expertise over to, you know, line up a better sponsor than Fur Hills for the Ballas Verde event. Right. So, you know, that was

just my thought. So, 7th hole, or the, you know, 2nd to last hole, penultimate hole, we had some USGA stuff, national team additions were announced, 14 returning players from 2024, 8 new players. The more I talk to people about this, I think the regional teams and the state teams are where it's really going to make a difference. There's going to be, you know, all these regional and state teams that ladder up to the national team as well. And then I guess they're doing a, like, there's an elite AM roster now, which I think Koyvan and Clanton are on. And then there's a young professionals thing that they're going to do eventually as well. So Walker Cup pricing is out. Not sure when tickets are going on sale yet, but I don't think there's very many of them, probably a couple hundred, but a

hundred bucks a ticket for Friday practice round, 200 tickets for Saturday and Sunday. And each adult applicant will have the option to apply for one complimentary junior ticket per day. That's out at Cypress point. That's going to be a, a hot, hot ticket in September. And then, yeah, so it's basically just on NBC and golf channel to step up with some decent coverage for it. And then, uh, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. to get a major in the future. Andrew Green redid it six or seven years ago. It's crazy to turn around that quickly. Have you guys ever played there? Yeah, we played it. We filmed out there with Pat Hearst. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Before I had the Solheim Cup. But yeah, I don't know what to do. Hollywood actor going, getting like going back for more plastic surgery. Yeah. After six years, they took out all the trees. I mean, they did all the things that must they're just lengthening it and making it tougher. I don't know. It

was hard. It sounded like bunkers and bunkers and lengthening and bunkers were deep. I mean, I don't know what what work could possibly need done there. But interesting. Last guys last hole TGL week three react. We got for me what worked, what didn't. Yeah, I like the dirty bird. Billy brushed the dirty bird a little bit. I like the idea. I think he admitted to rushing it a little bit as well. This one was kind of circled on the calendar. I think for a lot of people like that's this we'll find out what the TGL is at this point. You know, no Rory, no Tiger, no opening night kind of carrying it. I didn't

like the answer. It was kind of like, ah, man, all the fears of it kind of all came to fruition on that one night. We are going to get hit really, really, really hard with TGL here. It hit many, many times over the, I didn't realize it until I looked it up. I think there's a, there's seven matches in a nine day span, uh, uh, for the TGL at a certain point from February 17th, there's a triple header, February 17th, uh, another match on February 18th. Uh, and then, uh, two more on February 24th and another on February 25th. So it's still on the weekly case.

It's Monday this week, Juke Links against Boston Commons, 630 Eastern time. And then the following week is Tuesday, they're off a week and then the triple header start, then that crazy stretch starts. But yeah, it just kind of the same thoughts I've had with all of them. The gameplay just, it was really unimpressive. Like it, the ball doesn't really roll in the ground. It's the same view of the ball in the air and it just isn't that interest interesting. It just kind of feels like a cheap video game of the, the final edge of the technology for all this, all the talk about it being about the technology,

it just seems like a disappointment there. I know my golf spy had a thing going around on just analyzing, listen, we're sponsored by Foresight. So if you want to discount our opinion on, I've never had a full swing simulator. So I don't attest to them, but it doesn't seem to have the strongest tech. And to our jokes of Tiger, you know, blowing it over the green by 30 yards, I think they do have some tech problems. If I was being just objective on it and the players are trying to try not to complain about it during the middle of the action and you can tell, but it just kind of seems like that that part is, is, is missing from it. And I didn't expect to have that kind of complaint

about it, I guess. I really wish the balls would roll in the greens more. Like, sometimes like in a slope and have it rip all the way across. Like that would build some drama and some fun of like, oh, this is gonna hole out. No, it just stops like basically within a foot or two, no matter what. It seems like they were so obsessed with making it serious

golf and tethered back to reality that they beat all the, all the interesting, curious stuff out of it or all the, all the variables out of it. It just doesn't feel like it's evolved over the three weeks. Like, like I thought it would, you know, and, and it's all to your point, like the, the graphics and the, the gameplay just doesn't, I was expecting to be more blown away. I think the triple headers might be tough, like six straight hours of this. I feel like cats are going to be exhausted in there. I don't know it's different teams and all that, but six hours of this straight is going to be a lot. So we'll see. We got, I mean, Boston common hasn't, hasn't played yet. This is their debut this week. So we'll

see what happens. Maybe the real changes come between years one and two, you know, it, it, we get to year two at this point. I know it's a good point. Well, it's talking a little, a little bit. That's the thing. Like McCarley like can't, hey, they've showed him this week and he was like staring off into oblivion at one point during the thing. But, uh, are, you know, Arthur blank was there, uh, doing his normal thing. Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. AB he was doing his normal thing, which he, you know, he's normally always on the, always on the field for the Falcons games. TGL was different. Uh, you know, it's, it's, Bryson would be really good in this format. He would be really,

Bryson should be the fucking playing commissioner next year. Frankly, Billy was great too. I thought he was going to, like, I was worried if Billy, you know, all right, is Billy going to be too into it or a little bit cringe and all that? I thought Billy was, I thought Billy was good. Uh, he can't, he didn't throw the hammer one time. He's too analytical about the hammer. He was right though. He was like, once you're ahead, like it doesn't make sense to give up the hammer and give the other team a possibility of, of getting two points out of a situation. The hammer needs some tweaking. They got to figure the hammer out. Audience should be able to throw the hammer out. Audience should be able to throw the hammer

or the commissioner should be able to throw the hammer. Or like every three holes, it should automatically work. So that was a... With a hammer is like a surprise. It just comes out of nowhere. I don't care if it was fake. The first, especially the first week, the crowd noise carried a lot of the shit.

Like there was energy and this week it was so flat. So maybe they need the paid seat fillers to take things into their So I, maybe they need the paid, the paid seat fillers, to take things into their own hands. Maybe they need the fanatics there, but it really did. I thought that honestly added to the, like kind of some jeering for bad shots and stuff in those first couple of weeks, way better than the third week. It just kind of was like, Ooh, why are we,

why are we doing this? And then, well, then Billy was saying, saying producer Jeff, shout out to New Bar, friend of the program, wanted to wanted me to keep this thing close quote or, you know, wanted it to not be a blowout for a bunch of blowouts. Because that's the one thing we haven't really gotten a super, super competitive one. And then, you know, Billy backtracked on all of that and said, no, I was being sarcastic. It certainly didn't sound really, you didn't think it sounded like, I mean, I thought he

just, yeah, I thought it was just like a bad execution of a joke. I don't think one, I don't, I don't think they were throwing the match of any kind. I think there was definitely probably like, Hey, can we keep it close to this time? Like there's been blowouts, but I do not think there was any, that was, that was the Luke Elvie talking points that were floating around on this, that was, that was the Luke Elvey talking points that were floating around on this, on the everything app this past week. Every single person had to see who's betting on this thing.

I had not forgot, I had not thought about that man in quite a while. So thank you for bringing that back to me. No, I do not, I do not think that they're throwing matches of any kind. I do think think that they're throwing matches of any kind. I do think he was joking. On that note, that's guys, that will conclude our back nine, our second nine.

Saleh, I want to toss it over to you. We got a banger of a Tuesday upcoming this week. We're actually going to set out a day early. So coming up this coming week, we are going to be at Pebble Beach doing some live shows like we did last year. We're going to be live on the range Wednesday. It's going to be 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time, 8 to 11 Pacific time. That's on Wednesday. And then we're going to be live on Thursday afternoon,

actually during the television window, four to seven Eastern time or one to four Pacific time. We're going to be doing that from a hospitality house near the course and got some fun things planned for all those live shows. So because of the Wednesday, Thursday lineup for this week, we're bumping up our Tuesday episode. It's going to come out kind of Monday night overnight into Tuesday. KVV and I sat down with Joe Mayo, the now famous golf coach, former coach, once current coach, former coach again, Victor Hovland. Kev had some great quotes from him in the Victor Hovland piece that he reported and has a great relationship with him. And we wrangled him for, for a podcast interview. It was only like the second, third one. He, he said he's ever done. He said he's turned

on hundreds of requests, but we got him to sit down and it's fucking electric, man. It's awesome. Like it's great. He, he could put us all out of business if he just started a podcast. Cause he is like just an incredible storyteller and just brought the heat. And I hope we need to have him back like quarterly. Cause I just want to pick that guy's brain on golf. He's awesome. So truly, truly stay subscribed and be ready to hit the play on that one as soon as it hits a, as of Tuesday morning. So Sam Stevens, a instructor. Yeah. He got a little shout out, Mayo got a shout out there on 18 when, uh, he hit that nipper, uh, into the 18th green. But so it's about 36 degrees here in Baltimore snow on like 80% of my yard.

I went and found the grass today. Just had to get a little bit steep on the ball, track some chipping. I was like, I gotta try to snow in on some of this. I can't right now. I'll give me, let me get past the tournament and then I'll get deep on it. Cause I feel like I'm, I'm conflating two different things right now. But you're Victor. Yeah. Essentially. I'm competent. We had a good, good one from Neil this past week as well. Neil's personal golf pod. And that was really happy with the feedback.

Yeah. I've got a lot of great feedback on that. We kind of were doing these house meetings on YouTube of just kind of updates on golf and things like that. It just kind of, it was hard to do with nine people on a screen, 10 people on a screen at a time. And we're kind of, we're going to separate them out. So me and DJ basically interviewed Neil about golf and some of his favorite courses, favorite experiences, life experiences. And we chatted for a long time with him, got a lot of great feedback on that one. So we're going to keep going around the horn with everyone on those. And they're off to a great start.

So we're stoked about that. Yeah. One thing I wanted to shout out, uh, blocky and the fireballs both followed no lang up on Instagram. So I just, I'm just going to ask people, are you following on the grant? Are your friends? How about your family? We're going to be doing a lot more social content this year.

That is a, you know, we're going to have some offsite meetings out of Pebblewall or out there as well, but it's a goal of ours to, uh, to do a lot more, uh, on Instagram. So if you're not following us on Instagram, please do that as well. Yeah. And then lastly, I wanted to give a shout out to the DP world tour, uh, kids clubs video. You guys watch that? I haven't watched it yet. It's really good. I mean, continues their run of just top shelf. I saw, I watched there like, how do you go viral thing? Uh, which I had very low expectations for it. And I was like, God, there's, it is, there's

a bar for good. Like it is still really good. Bangers only. So that's going to do it from this week's episode of the No Way In Podcast. Tune into the live shows this week. There's going to be a lot of fun. We've got guests lined up. Some fun guests, some fun themes we'll be working through. We'll be on the air for a long time. So we're going to do a lot of different stuff. And everyone tune in to the public. It's going to be a great event.

Hopefully, weather looks a lot better for this to get four rounds in this go-around as a signature event with all the best players in to help. It's going to be a great event. Hopefully weather looks a lot better for, uh, this and the, to get four rounds in this, this go around, uh, as a signature event with all the best players in the world. So it's going to be exciting. TC thanks for running us through the back nine. Kev, thanks for joining as well. Everyone get a little bit of sleep and we'll see you tomorrow out in Monterey and thanks everyone for tuning in. Unsuspend Eric's account bet page. Seriously.

Governor Hock, you'll unsuspend this account.