No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 257: Kevin Van Valkenburg

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

(Best) friend of the pod Kevin Van Valkenburg from ESPN joins to chat about some offseason stuff, including five things we want to see happen in 2020, three things we each wish we never said, Tiger's win at the Zozo, and some excellent listener questions. Thanks as always to KVV for the time, this was a fun one.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different. All right, guys.

Well, I'm going to to the No Laying Up podcast. Sully here are going to get to our interview here shortly with Kevin Van Volkenberg. I wish I had a good, great reason why KVV was on. I texted him and said, I wanted to do some kind of off-season podcast with him. You don't really need a great reason to have KV was on. I texted him and said I wanted to do some kind of off-season podcast with him. You don't really need a great reason to have KVV on. He's one of the smartest people in golf, one of the easiest guys to talk to. Throughout some questions on our message board, asking some of our refugees to send in some questions. KVV is one of the most thoughtful guys out there. He's getting to all the questions there on the message board that we didn't

get to in the interview because this one went pretty long. We also cover five things we want to see in this next year in golf and also three things we each wish we never said. Just come to some kind of random somewhat off-season topics but really really enjoyed this. I think you're going to enjoy this. Have several interviews coming down the pipe here in the coming weeks and look forward to getting those out to you. We got really excited about what we have on the rise in here. Checking in quickly with our friends from Callaway, our friends at Odyssey Golf, the number one putter and golf stroke lab, black 10 and the bird of prey putters.

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You'll see exactly why it's very popular. It's pretty hard to line up a putt wrong with this putter. You just stand over it, I've tested it out a little bit. Haven't fully put it in the bag, but a couple of our guys are already using this putt wrong with this putter, you stand over it, I've tested it out a little bit, I haven't fully put it in the bag but a couple of our guys are already using this putter, a couple of putts in the putting ring and they threw it right in the bag. It's pretty easy adjustment. Whenever I do make the change for my putter, Chad's trying to get me to change, I just love my O-Works putter and the micro hinge insert on that. And when I do make a change, it will be to the Stroke Lab Black 10 putter. I need

to get out there and make a commitment to it. For more details on that, audicygolf.com as well as CallawayGolf.com. Also going to check in with our friends at Erbil Active. We still get a lot of questions about about this. How do you spell it? What is the CBD company that we've been talking about? It is herbal active, URBAL, ACTIV. People are like, hey, what's that CBD oil you're using? It is not oil, it is a water-based oil, does not go very well with your body and water does. It has no THC, you're not gonna get high from it.

It is just a very soothing calming thing that we put in our coffee, take a couple drops, before we go to bed, I've been sleeping a lot better. I have some fun crazy dreams with the CBD, but I do sleep completely through the night, and it's just a nice level setter. We've really enjoyed it,

and you've heard all the nice things we've had to say about it, you are B-A-L-A-C-T-I-V.com, that's urbalactive.com for more information, N-L-U-20 for 20% off of any purchase you make on the website. Without any further delay, here is our discussion with Kevin Van Volkberg and everyone have a great week. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang Up Podcast.

I would say friend of the program, but it might be best friend of the program, recurring guest, Mr. Kevin Van Volkberg from the sp and uh... kvv what's going on i hope calpore isn't crying somewhere now after hearing that i'm the best friend of the program but you know things change you know i texted you and kyle to do an offseason kind of weird grab bag podcast and you didn't even respond what i thought you know pod i know

everyone's got that's why you didn't even respond Well, it's got his own pod. I know. I know. This is everyone's got that's why you Get my hate. I just save them up every month and then hope that someday I'll get a text from you and then I just launch it Well, everyone else has a pod now so it's hard to get hard to track some of these guys down and Yeah, Kyle said he didn't have my number my new number for some reason whatever so well we get it I like to refer to myself as, you know, no laying up adjacent, you know, not exactly part of the fam, but, you know, adjacent to the fam. That is a great, great way to describe it, so we don't have to pay you, and we still

get to, yeah, a lot of your content. The last time you were on was, I swear this is kind of coincidence, but it was right after Tiger won the Masters, I believe. Oh, nice. And you helped us kind of bring that into perspective and help us kind of digest the enormity of that situation, which I still feel like people, like, still kind of win away quicker than I think it should have. And I'm feeling, obviously, with him winning the Zozo, it was not quite the same level, but

I do feel like this one's kind of drifting away rather quickly It was just a minor blip on the sports radar that he won another golf tournament What did this win signify anything for you like a were a week we're recording this on Friday the week after the Zozo What did it did it hits you in any way? I Tigers really good against limited fields. When's he going to win when against a full field? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, emotionally, this did not do much for me. The course not really like super inspiring and like already had sort of emptied the cannons

on Tiger takes and now it made me fail emotionally. So it was good. You know, he drove it good. I think it just, I think maybe we got a little bit excited last year thinking like, oh my gosh, like this season is going to be awesome. And what we found was that he was just emotionally just out of gas. And you know, that's why like him just basically being a non factor at the end of the year seems a lot more like, oh okay, like no that makes sense. Like he really was putting everything he had into, you know, getting back to the championship

and then winning the Masters, you know, the sort of flip around the season and then all of sudden it was like, oh wait, like that was really a hard mountain to climb and maybe emotionally like he's not ready to grind it out at the you know, Val's bar or whatever this year. So, you know, I think this is hopefully, correct me if I wrong, there's the 6,000th surgery on his knee. 6,000 and one. Okay, thank you, that's important. Hopefully that will maybe benefit him a little bit more this beginning of the season and we'll see a little bit more consistent play I sort of wonder like is Tiger just gonna be you know how fill used to be like just pretty good at the early part of the season and then kind of fade late That'd be okay. I'd be fine with that. I just I'm a little bit

I Guess I thought for sure I picked him to be like a contender at Port Rush because I was like, oh, of course, where nobody's ever been before really and it's going to be firm and fast and the weather's going to be factor and you can hit Irons off all the teas. That sounds like Tiger to me and then he was just basically like, which hole are we on here? I don't know, care what's going on. So that was pretty much the one of the more disappointing sort of performances I think of his going on. So that was pretty much the one of the more disappointing sort of performances, I think, of his major career.

And I was like, oh, maybe I kind of completely misjudged where he was with the entirety of his game. And he's just pretty much like, hey, I'm the Master's Champion. So who gives a crap about the rest of this year? So I'm hopeful we'll get a little bit more of a complete effort health-wise out of him, I'm sure. Well, I think a lot of us had come to the come to terms with that, you know, this whatever aging version of him, his best chance to win majors was going to be open championships. And we've kind of always had that in our mind. I at least thought, I mean, Augusta

is so much more challenging from a driving perspective than it was when he won his previous four. And I know they linked it before the 2002 and he won that year and obviously won in 2005. But they linked it again before 2006 and not just linkedinning it is not what's necessarily made it harder. It's just the trees that they literally planted on the sides of some of these fairways that make it not okay to miss fairways by a wide margin. And honestly, if the 11th hole, if they didn't have a path over there

that was okay for a ball to go, go way right, go way right. And it actually landing on the kitty litter over there twice, I think if I remember right. Yeah, yeah. Then I don't know if he wins that thing. And so I think from that perspective, I I don't know if he wins that thing and I so I think from that perspective I try to emphasize this when he won it was coming down the stretch

He had like a 10 to 12 the 15% chance of winning this thing before the 12th hole happened before everyone went in the water on 12 and It's not and we can all fall in this trap of Assuming that past results are gonna like predict future things and we're gonna fall in this trap of assuming that past results are going to like predict future things. And we're going to do a little segment here on things that we wish we never said. And I have one on there that I'm surprised no one has rubbed in my face more than they have.

Yeah. I got way more than one. But one of those being like, Hey, just because Rory, like just because Rory won four majors doesn't mean he's going to win for the next four years. And so I think we all kind of thought, yeah, this might be, you know, a lot of us would have said, I wouldn't be surprised if Tiger won another major before the end of the year. And he was a complete non-factor. The question I think remains, and we've seen, and we've got enough data now and enough

instances of this happening where people have somewhat written them off and he's come back to just say, it has to be health correlated. Almost every dip has to be health correlated. So how does he balance resting with staying sharp with tournament reps? This is kind of like the hardest question, right? I mean, I was, I think I've joked a couple times about like, why would you do anything but play in the majors essentially? Like just play your practice rounds, play your money games, and just basically like show up for majors, you're exempt for everything for life. But it's clear he needs some reps, like he needs to actually have tournament stuff and that actually gets him.

That's a, he would say that's a dumb take by me. That's a really dumb take. Come on. I've ever, I agree with the word take, but I think that we do that on everything, by the way. Every time we say the word really, it's like, really? Really? I don't know where KVV is, but horrible call today. Yeah, I mean, he's got to figure out like what are the right tournaments to play and what

ones to just straight up skip. And I think the thing that always annoys me a little bit is Tyre's done so much for golf and made so many people so much money that I feel like at this stage of his career that he should just pick and choose whatever works for him and not do like there should be no one in like the you know Ponderview just saying like hey like you know, it's stiny. We do a small really need him at this turnie like this tournament's hurting. You know what? If that tournament is hurting, you had 16 years of Tiger's career to fix it. And you know, so I don't think that like one more go-around

is going to help it and save it long term for the future. And so that's why like if he wants to play a Royal Melbourne, he should play. I was gonna say CC at Presidents Cup for every that you're saying. Yeah. The idea that he should, you know, that they should be pressuring him to play because like, they're trying to help out Australian golf, that's not a tiger problem. You can figure that out on your own.

He should get to pick and choose whatever he wants and you should look at your bank accounts and see the literally billions of dollars that he has put into them and be grateful for that and not ask him for anything more. Because whatever his goals are going forward, they should be his goals are going forward, they should be his goals and no one else's.

Yeah, and that's where I wonder with his, and we're going to talk some about this too, how his content deal with golf TV and their relationship, discovery's relationship with the PGA tour, how that factors into his involvement with the PGA tour, right? Because now, discoveries arm just continues to get longer and longer, their reach is longer and longer, now they're gobbling up actual independent media organizations, or I should say an organization that presents themselves as being independent

that now no longer is, they are owned by a, well, I guess for the listeners, can you help me explain, because I don't really know if I could, the relationship between discovery, which owns golf TV and the PGA tour, like, who has an arm and who, or an investment reach and who, and how that all works together. God, that's a great question that I don't know that I could answer intelligently. I mean, I think that the sort of, that's the hardest part about all this stuff, right, is that media conglomerates

are so like overreaching and everything. And this includes my own employer. And so everyone's hand is sort of tied directly into the sports that they broadcast. And so what favors are being asked behind the scenes and stuff that, you know, what's being over, you know, expense account dinners, what's being sort of asked to be like, hey, we really need Tiger on this and such, such thing. Are we really, you know, whether it's NBA, we really need this game and this broadcast slot? Like I don't know the answer to that. And it's, I guess, a little bit sad that some of those things dictate decisions that athletes have to make or whatever, but that's the modern world. Like there wouldn't be

enormous billion dollar business deals if people executive weren't saying like how can we leverage this going forward for our own interests, our own financial interests? And I think what's going to be interesting and you know, no one really knows this is that the contract for CBS is coming up soon, right? Like the, with the PJ. So what happens going forward? Well, at what point we've thought this a lot about the NFL and stuff is like, well, at some point does the NFL just say, can we just put everything on the NFL network? And if you want to watch NFL, you've got to have it on, you know, it's, it's so beneficial. The NFL and it's so popular that, of course, they're not going to do that because they can sell it to the, you know, the broadcast networks for the CBS and Fox and what NBC for billions dollars. But could the PGA decide, you know what, we're in Eastport and we feel like this is going

to benefit us better. What if we just put everything on discovery? What if that becomes the competitor to the golf channel and where we broadcast like all kinds of good stuff and we keep throwing up all kinds of cool content there that's not available to anyone else? What would that do to golf? You know, it's sort of, if you look at like the way that everything's trending and everything's going towards streaming and less kind of on television. At some point, the PGA Tour has never been particularly forward thinking a lot of things, but what if Mon-Hans like, you know what, this is actually our chance to sort of stamp

this as our own kind of deal. And we're going to appeal to just the junkies. We're not going to try to bring in this huge audience anymore. We're going to put it where we want to put it and have exclusive content there. And that's what we're going to put it, where we want to put it, and then have exclusive content there, and that's what we're going to roll with. Yeah, that's, I've been very careful as to what I've given out as far as what I hear on the TV negotiations, and that it is a moving,

it's not, at least as far as I can tell, it's still a moving in progress kind of thing. I don't think what you just referenced is going to be the deal. Quite confidently can say that won't be the case for this, at least this round of negotiations. I don't think they're ready. I know for a fact they're not ready to say we are taking it all in house and we're doing this all. It's mostly because of that last part you said and part of their, a big, big part of their marketing strategy is, hey, let's just deal, it's definitely not,

let's just deal with our hardcore fans, let's just present to them because their whole thing is trying to get a ton of engagement across multiple platforms with this, what I would consider non-existent fan out there that they think exists, trying to reach all these casual fans and draw them into hardcore fans,

but really kind of not giving, I would, from an outside view, I would not say they're delivering on that, on that strategy. So, it is going to stay on network TV in some capacity. What that looks like is still a variable, but I know it is going to look different. But the overall point being like, we're not journalists on our side. We are just golf fans. You are a journalist, but I'm sure you through your career, we're not journalists on our side. We are just golf fans. You are a journalist, but I'm sure you through your career, you could see it function more

than it does in the current society of like there used to be like really independent media that would report on these sports and things. And the issue I kind of see with a lot of these in, like these in house and group content deals, and this is going to be, we're going to do a segment later on five things we want to see next year, and I'll just give away one of mine right now. It's that I want to see these golf content deals work for the fan and start to be something that are productive, whether that be golf pass or golf TV or, you know, with Rory and with Tiger, what you've done, what they've inherently done,

I mean, Tiger's getting paid a lot of money from discovery. To Tiger's never sat down and talked about some of these things and like done these videos and all of a sudden, you know there's a ton of money behind it. He's doing shot shaping videos on the range now and all this stuff. So, imagine how much pull he has

from within that organization. And that doesn't just mean that, you know, these networks aren't going to show negative things about tiger. It's like, no, tiger wants like a highlight clip taken down, or if his team wants something taken down, it's going to get taken down. And guess what? Like his agency represents a lot of players on tour. So not only does Tiger have that pull, they can, they can say, like, I don't like this Matt Kutcher debate over a ruling being posted on PJ tour.com. That's got to come down. And it's just like, I, all these things are not serving the fan, I think. And it's just as kind of a scary and slippery slope that things are trending towards. And I say that as someone that has conflicts of interest,

of course, and we try to be as upfront with those as we can. But do you see, is that as a journalist, is that weird you out anyway, the way things are somewhat trending in golf? Yeah, I mean, a larger question is it turns that way in society too. So like, you know, it's, you're never going to see the Washington Post write a sort of deep dive expoze in Amazon, right? And so like there's one of our most important media organizations that can't touch like maybe the most powerful thing in business. And so you see a reflection of that in everything. And I think, you know, one of the examples I thought was the most absurd of this last year was, you know, John Rom at the players, you know, he's trying to hit a 200-yard hard draw out of the sand over the water at the players, you know, he's trying to hit a 200 yard hard draw out of the sand over the water at the players

and he has this, you know, sort of really fascinating discussion with his caddy about it and everyone who was watching the players was like, oh my gosh this is a great clip. This is exactly what we want and of course, you know, it gets taken down like it's as soon as it's not we're not talking not talking about a rights violation because like golf channel put it up, you know, it wasn't there was some, we all saw the broadcast. Like this happened so to like erase it as though it's like state run media and like the dear leader is offended by the idea that, you know, anything on flattering would get out there. That's just super frustrating as a fan.

And so yeah, it does bug me, it does bug me to think about how many magazine articles of a publication that's connected to a certain player, agency or whatever, that they're just kind of puff pieces. That there's nothing hard digging in there. I think everyone is facing the reality, which is that media doesn't have the power in a lot of ways anymore independent media. Because if you're Rory, what is the benefit to you to sitting down with ESPN and saying, hey, just ask me whatever you want? I want to be on the cover of this, or I think it's good for me to be on this. He can just do his own podcast.

He can do his own sort of magazine shoot where he says, hey, you know what? Don't talk to me about this subject and this subject and this subject or else I'm going to pull out of the interview. And so, you know, if you're someone who values like independent journalism and being able to actually talk to someone about something that's not their, you know, their charity organization or whatever. Hey, that's important, but like, that's not super, that's not the only, if that's the guardrails that we're going to focus on, we're only going to sort of say, well, how great are you? Like, how wonderful are the things that

you're doing? Like, that doesn't present a pretty complete picture. And so I think that's one of the, I think I don't pretend to listen to a lot of golf basketball. I just, it isn't really the limited exposure that I've had to. It's not been particularly interesting. So I've kind of given up on ever buying whatever the episode, I think. But I think that that's what's kind of a bummer about it. And in large is that no one's going to ask Rory, like, I think hard

questions on any of those podcasts. And yet he's the one player who's actually pretty good at handling all that stuff. It's seeing the big picture of stuff. So it's like, we've taken the most interesting player and made him totally bland because like he realized, like, hey, I can, I can sign this deal and I can make money off of this. And I don't have to ever say, you know, yes to anything because I'm always like, hey, guess what? I'm doing this podcast. I got my exclusive window into the world. And yeah, that makes sense for Rory, but as a fan, that

makes less sense for me. And that's, uh, that's a bummer. I think. Yeah, it just, yeah, I don't know who else has the pull that Tiger and Rory have that could go this route. I know LeBron has done things like this, and I guess I don't want to be speaking from an ivory tower here. Like we, you know, in exchange for access,

we have to cooperate in a lot of ways, you know? I mean, it's like everyone that works in media has to we can't It's just that's just a function of how things work, right? And it's it's a tough tough line to balance it's something we try to be cognizant of and you know We hopefully know when to pull the plug on you know refraining from saying something when it's really deserved to call it out But yeah, I think just all that stuff works together into like golf some of the best stories of the year, the most, I don't want to say viral. I just hate that word, but the most talked about stories of the year were like, Koocher and his caddy, that rom thing

at the players was awesome. It just basically anything that starts up controversy is so freaking good for golf. If you want, if in line with your marketing strategy of trying to reach this casual fan, those are the things that are gonna do it. And not, wow, this guy is a class, class guy, and what a model citizen, an unbelievable role model for the kids. And it's like, it's not playing dirty.

It's like just giving a more real picture into how things actually are. And it's not, and I don't, it's not the up and down podcast on the PGA door network with L.A. Day. I promise that's not the one that's like going to really, it's not an answer to any question anyone else is asking. But. Well, and we, we have now in the few podcasts, the, in the many podcasts that I've done with you where we've probably bagged on golf past story a few times, in part because we kind of know where we can take it and because where it's like generally, like there are plenty of

other conflicts of interest that we probably don't touch because we don't want to ruffle too many feathers in that sense, but like it's frustrating. It's a you know so much when so much of your sport is tied up with corporate money, and that's basically what is the, you know, you couldn't have PGA tournaments unless you had sponsors to sort of put them on. It's not like it's a league where like, hey, here's our games and you can come and the ticket prices are the sort of main function of why people, how you pay for what you got your ticket tickets or TV.

Like, someone's got to put up $20 million in order to have the farmers insurance open, right? So, yeah. But that's where, it's where I think like the tour is actually in a really good spot to turn their, I guess to, I don't want to say give hardcore fans the middle finger. If I, if I'm talking to Jay Monahan,

and I say like, hey man, like, and I've told him this, I'm like, Hey, sometimes it's hard to watch golf on TV. Like it's hard to watch it. He doesn't say this, but if I'm him, I'd be like, Okay, well, what's my job here? I put money in the players' pockets. I keep the sponsors happy. And if there's enough people watching it

that keep the sponsors happy, that make the players a lot of money, why would I ruffle that? What is my duty is not to you as a fan, which sucks, but that's the reality of the situation. And of course, the argument against that's like, how long can this go on if people aren't watching? Ratings took a tumble this year. It's hard to really judge what ratings even actually are because of Tiger always being

a factor in that and just the constant and we don't know what his involvement is going forward but they can kind of negotiate on the fact that he is going to be around in some capacity. So it is just like an unanswerable question and I guess I just vent it from frustration for, you know, at the heart of it all, of course, we're just golf fans and we're trying to you know, at the heart of it all, of course, we're just golf fans and we're trying to represent the golf fan as best as we can and just so much of what is going on out there just is not serving the golf fan. Here's my counterpoint to, I guess, what we are sort of pretending like the monahan argument would be. And actually, it made this point about the deadspin sort of controversy this week where

deadspin basically went away and there was some argument like what kind of traffic they should be focused on is that what Companies are or are gonna realize is that it's not the total amount of viewers that you have it's how Loyal the viewers that you have are to the place where you're trying to advertise, okay? So if I have 20 million people who watch a tournament, let's say half of those, if this is Tigers involved, Tiger and Phil are dueling at the masters, or whatever, and it brings in the huge amount of casual fans.

Those casual fans aren't going to be like, oh my god, when is the US open? Like when can I watch the players after this? When can I get the next tournament? They're going to be like, okay, well tell me when Tigers involved next time out. Like. Like, I don't care. I'm only interested in tiger. And so I think in some ways, like, what I hope that companies start to understand, is if you provide like a really loyal fan base to that are connected to your product and

have like feel good about it, they're much more likely to want to like actually spend money on the products that are being endorsed. On the program, or the connection that they're making to, and saying, hey, these gallery drivers are great. They're going to have warm feelings about the warmer feelings about the ads that are on there, as opposed to, hey, let me hurry up and tivo through this, because I want to get to the next shot. And in PRUS, they're just going to get way more exposure to it. They're going to

constantly be bombarded with ads from the same golf company or the same insurance company. And if they even if they are get annoyed a little bit, it likes, you know, by the standing in the hall of fame stuff, like it's still going to penetrate their skulls a little bit. So they're like, hey, they don't need an omega watch man. I go, where's really worried about that. And that's cool. Is that five years now that we're still remembering that from?

I'm pretty sure. That might have been the best, the low key best ad run. We've, we've, we've, we've know, we touched on one of the questions we got here, but I want to do the few topics that we did prepare, which is the first one being five things you want to see in the next year in golf. I don't know about how you came up with your list of five, but mine are like avoiding the Tiger Grand Slam. I don't have Rory winning a major on there.

Some really obvious stuff. I've got love for Speedwin the Masters. There's a lot of things I think are pretty obvious that it kind of went just at the next level to it to be like, here's some things I'm realistically looking out for, but I'll let you go first. Okay. Mine's kind of a reference, but I have some serious ones, but this one is said to be relevant. I would like golf.com or golf digest or kvv.com or whoever, like three ideas for a son out there to hire an actual physicist and get him a media credential for the week to pose actual physics questions to Bryson during the tournament. I want like physics Twitter to like ride hard for real physics.

Okay. After the whole terminal velocity thing at the masters, I was like, am I being bamboozled here? Because like terminal velocity might be the one physics term that I have like a working grasp of. So when he dropped that and I was like, wait, that's not right. Like is Bryson actually like the monorail salesman from the Simpsons?

Like what kind of slight of hand is going on here? It's like the most guglible one of all of them too. It's like, oh, that doesn't work. Then that commercial where he and Tiger are like talking about, like, Bryce is talking physics, I'm like, wait a minute. Tiger's the Stanford guy here, and Bryce is the SMU guy, and Tiger's playing the meathead. This whole thing feels like inception.

I got, maybe I don't really think that Bryce knows what he's talking about about this stuff. So unless Bryson's like some sort of like Sasha Baron Cohen character and he's been fooling us this whole time, I want physics fact checking like in the mix. Oh man, God, that's an idea. I'm wondering if we could get a credential for that. We could hire one week physicist for that. You know what?

That has me, what I'm also out on is golf commercials where the two subjects or whatever the multiple subjects are that are filming it are not in the same room. It's very clearly like a one shot, over to a one shot and a one shot, and it's all the scripted conversation. The reason why the Tiger and Connor sketches

commercial works is because they're in the same room together and they're laughing about it. The golf TV one before the with the Japanese lesson was surprisingly well done considering they weren't all in the same room together. And I know it's a lot harder to do that and all the production that goes into that. But it is immediate turn off the back. Nope, they're not the same room. I am not paying attention to this Well also how funny is the like the European tour stuff for they're all in the same boardroom And they're like oh like they're doing a relief try. Oh, it just shows you like how much more like dry and funny Like English people are than America like those guys just they they're so like don't take themselves Seriously enough to where it's fun like I it would be hard for me to like put, think of who, what Americans you could put in the room like Stenson and Westwood and Fleetwood and Eddie

and sort of have a similar kind of vibe. I just don't know, I mean, it would have to be like the lesser guys, right? It would have to be Max Hema and have to be, you know, I don't know how, you know, so who else would throw in there. But like if you put like JT and Spieth and Bryce and in there But like if you put like JT and spieth and

Brison in there. I need to do it. I just would be whole from the player the year last year Like all yeah, just put those two in a room together. It's just electric That bad boys coming home with me great job man Thanks, bro that's some pornography quality acting there. Oh, that needs to be, we need to work that into more content next year. That boy's coming home with me. I do have a, I wish I would have gone more of the round that you went with that. I do have a bright someone related, related one later.

I'll start off with a somewhat serious one, but I want to see Dustin Johnson win a major, um, I think it, again, he doesn't quite fit in that obvious bucket of like, Hey, yeah, I, of course we want that guy to win. I don't think it's necessarily going to be a huge popular win for golf fans or anything, but we're talking about like one of the most talented players of the generation that it pays to be a huge ass bomber. And he has won a ton of golf tournaments. And when he finally broke through and won the US Open, I think a lot of people felt like

that more were to come. And I know we just got done talking about how that's not necessarily the case. But the amount of opportunities he's had to only have one to just put, to just puts you in a totally different category. And he deserves to be in that and belongs in that and I wanna see him do it. And also because Big Randy has issued him 12 months to live and he will be officially pronounced dead.

Yeah. God. Clock is ticking. I know. I could use in on the dead James back away. I talked to him a bit about that and he laughed very hard at Randy saying that he was living six feet under par. That was it. I know. We don't deserve Roy. And yet, what sucks, put him behind a paywall and we only get

to hear about these little snippets that you're in there. Well, that's what I'll just go right into my second one, which is the golf content deals need to provide the fans something of value. A lot of money, there's a lot of suits involved, which automatically is just going to trim out probably the most interesting parts of it. But nothing really noteworthy has come of it. And I just, I already talked about this some, but that was one of my five things I wanted to see. This clearly going this route, so I want the golf world to be better for it.

I'm not trying to hog the content for us necessarily. I want it to be out there for the golf world to enjoy. You know, if some of our most interesting characters are gonna go that route, I want it to be something that people talk about. And I don't think that's currently happening. Yeah. Give me ping pong matches like in the master's houses that they ran to whatever or like, you know, a window into a dinner like the week

of the tournament, you know, where Phil has sort of people gather around and his cut and takes at the table or whatever. It's something fun. You know, something that's exactly like not staged in corporate. Yeah, something very, you know, something that's exactly like not staged and corporate. Yeah, something very uncut is fine. There's something, something real. We want it to be real. So, all right, your second one. I want to see Paparez when I turn them in. Can I? Paparez and I don't share the same politics when I'm saying interest, but Paparez is one of the real ones, man. Paparez, I talked to him him I walked up to him for a feature that I was writing about someone else last year and I was like oh man it was like that on that Ranger of Yara and you know big tournament rib and I was

like hey Pat you know is there any way I could talk to you for five minutes he's smoking a cigarette he's like yeah fuck yeah I'll talk to you we talked for 30 minutes and he just smoked cigarettes the whole time and like hit one-handed wedges and like Fire and off all these takes about cavernic and about Arnold Palmer and about Patrick Reed and the president Oh my god, it was awesome and fascinating because he truly Gives no F's like he just doesn't care about stuff and he kind of got like he one of the things we talked about in the thing was like how And he kind of got like, he, one of the things we talked about in the thing was like how easily you can get screwed by like a sort of one comment, like a viral sort of take and about his thing about Tiger and essentially saying like he knows he's not like good enough to win right now. And you know, every blog in the world like picks that up and was like, oh my god, Papras is dunking on Tiger wouldn an ungrateful shit it. And that wasn't like if you understood the

context of it, Papras is like saying like he's only going to play in tournaments that he knows like that he can compete in and he just knows he's not good enough right now, which was exactly true. And so the idea that like Papras was like taking a shot at Tiger was just totally ridiculous. And I he's you know, he's not along here at all and he knows exactly He's like one of those guys who just knows like what tournaments he can and can't have a chance in So I think it would be fun. I would just love to see him get into a press conference afterwards And just like nuke everyone who you know just for fun because it would be great fun great content Well the counter to everything I've said of like wanting real stuff is that also on the other side, golf fans aren't prepared to take it.

Like, because we're gonna get real stuff, we ruin it and we freak out and we make a big drama about Pat's comments. Even though they're like, nobody had an issue with it, like the factual nature of the comments. It was just the fact that it came from a player, which we should have been celebrating. It's just, it's awesome that that happened.

But so to your point, you're talking like, yeah, you're gonna need like Max Homer or someone to do it like what like what real reason do they have to do it Right? Do you want to be known as the goofy guy and the loudmouth and you know people will throw it back in your face Yeah, you've only won one tournament like who are you to talk on this topic? It's like well Yeah, I mean that's that's true like okay. I'll go back in my shell And that's like what's just gonna continue to happen forever? Nothing is dumber to me than like the idea that you have to have like credibility to,

or the gift you have to have won a lot to speak, whatever. Like even Phil, when he talks some shit, people are like, well, yeah, we're no tiger. Okay, so what is the bar? Like, it only snams seed is allowed to criticize tiger, or only, you know, can we get some smelling salts and wake up Bobby Jones and like get him to criticize People I mean it's just like absurd it the idea that like That's what Brannel takes a lot of grief about right?

We won one tournament. Well guess what he played on the PGA tour like he led the masters for around come on Like that's that's ought to be the bar that we clear the The bar is my me and my eight shaky eight handicapped? No, like if someone played on tour, they have a pretty good credibility to be able to speak about these kind of issues. They have the perfect credibility, right? Because they're not, brand was not corrupted by relationships with a ton of the most powerful people in golf, right? So like Davis Love, I think he's now taking over, not for CBS. mean, he's a very nice guy. I think he's an interesting guy.

I really do. I mean, I think he's kind of been painted as a very boring person. And I'll get to want it to that here in a few in a bit as well. But I don't think he is boring, but I don't expect him to be really outspoken or critical enough on television. I think it's going to be very much the class acts open, you know, with him coming in and sliding to the CBS fold, but it's a very safe role to play. And I don't fault him for playing it, to be honest. And I just think that, you know, someone like Brando lives in that very, that space of like, yeah, I'm not afraid to ruffle some

feathers. I don't have, you know, 30 career wins to my name in a major that puts me in the golf hall of fame and makes me this figure in golf. Like I will speak my mind and getting to know the guys that speak their mind is I'll tell you who the best dinner hangs are and Brando might be up there with one of the best dinner hangs. I think I've I've had in the game of golf. So I would just make format. What's your third? I want to see Justin Thomas like contend in in a Masters or British. He hasn't really contended in those two yet. And I, I just wanted to, I want to stay injury free so he could sort of be returned to

more kind of the peak of his power. So I can make, or I could have made an argument at some point that he keeps going to be the best of his kind of generation of the speed brooks, ROM, rice, rice and Ricky sort of group. And I wrote something once that he was like, Hey, this guy might be our Johnny Miller, like a guy who could just get hot and who isn't afraid to go just deep. And, you know, now sort of feel like this is kind of one of those important years for JT to really sort of be that person. Yeah, I like that. I mean, I think it was hope maybe heading that way before he got injured this past year. And I think the injuries kind of made people forget about him just a little bit.

And myself included, I mean, I think that, you know, we saw what happened this fall when he, you know, dialed back in, got healthy, wins BMW and wins the CJ Cup yet again. It should be a big year next year for him. And I know the major championship performance is way up at the top vis list of things to improve on. Along the same lines of a major championship. I want to see the PGA championship have an infinitely better setup than in 2019. It was one of my, it just as burned in my memory as one of my least favorite viewing experiences of the year this past year. It was the classic cone of everyone's going through this tunnel

and only the long hitters are gonna merge the other side unless you have a guy like Speedh is just gonna put his ass off for it. They need to figure out a way to taper fairways. I mean, if, you know, letting the shorter hitters at least be in the fairway, the fairways were so narrow at Beth Page that even the shorter hitters just from a natural dispersion cone couldn't hold the fairways. And the shorter guys are

coming into greens from 190 while the longer guys are coming into greens from 140 from the rough. And it's just so everyone's going to miss fairways. And the long hitters aren't punished for missing them because of the fact that you know they they're just rewarded from being closer to the green and being able to hit nine irons out of that onto the green. So having been a harding park scene where some of those T's are is gonna be long as hell, but I'd like to see landing areas.

If guys wanna lay back, hit three woods to wider parts of the fairways and come in from 200 yards into some of these par fours, while other guys can try to get it in narrowed necks of fairways, hit in the rough and get a little bit of punishment for. I'm fine with that. I just want to see,

I know Aaron Hills gets so much criticism for that open just because of how soft it played, but we ended up with Brian Harmon versus Brooks Keppga, which was two completely different playing styles, and it lets a lot more people in. And maybe I'm just working off this. I've read, recently read the golf.com, like the player survey,

and the question, there was two questions within it. And it was, what's, what's harder to win? The players of the PGA and like 78% or something like that said the players. It's like, hey, everyone can win this one. So, okay, if you want to be a major, like, be a hard tournament to win. I mean, I guess shorter hitters would say it is harder to win the PGA because of that prerequisite, but maybe they're just who they were surveying, which is some of the more top players. And then the next question was, which would you rather win the PGA, the players, and it was flipped like inverted? And it was like, yeah, the

PGA. Most people wanted to win that. It just goes back, I think, to the thing that we've said for a long time, which is the PGA just has no identity. Like like we just don't know what it's supposed to be like is it a holler you can't be us open light is what I'm saying like that is not nobody's winning there I don't think is it a holler is a Beth page like my I guess my other side take it out as Beth page is just secretly just a bad major venue it might be a vlog okay My is it for my fourth one here? Yes. Okay. So the US Open this year is June 18th to the 21st. All right. Do you know when the senior US Open is?

Sally. I do not. It's the following week. It's a Rhode Island Country Club. And Phil Michelson will be 50 years old. I had to as soon as you said that I had a big one. I saw this coming. Ladies, we're so open at Wingfoot, where I think you'll have a zero chance to do what he did in his thick. But then he could just basically drive down 95 or drive up 95 to whenever to Rhode Island. I'm totally butchered what interstate he should take care of. I'm not familiar with Northeastern geography. And but he feel could totally go out and try to win the senior US Open. It would be so fun. He could just of it. I'm not familiar with Northeastern geography. And but he Phil could totally go out and try to win the

senior US Open. It would be so fun. He could just do it be like, well, why not? You know what? It's a tournament. I'm eligible for it. I'm going to come out here and try and throw my and then man, if Phil won the senior US Open, the takes would be so fun because we like, oh my god, Phil's got the career grand slam. Who said the career grand slam had to be all for, you know, of the PGA? Why can't it be the senior PGA? Is this not Gary player changed a bunch of the majors around? Oh on the seniors I

I won 15 senior mages. There's no chance to make a thing can even touch me He literally did change the major like the how they recognize senior majors because he won some senior opens I was like hey, those should. In my day we didn't have to starve ourselves with protein drinks we just put down the cheeseburger we was half through. I want to get to a question about that that era here shortly here but my next one is kind of where I wish I would have gone with more of these but I want to see someone more of these, but I want to see someone blow up at Bryson.

I want to see it. I feel like it boiled this year. It got to a simmer. It just never, the stove got turned off. Enough players out there say things about him. He was in that same golf.com piece. He was the vote of the top player that people didn't like to play with. And people are waiting out, you know Brooks has said some things about him and then kind of confronted him on the range

JT did the whole look at his watch thing while he was doing his thing The northern trust I want somebody to lose it. I would guess it's probably gonna have to come from a non-American that won't be on like Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams with him But some but it's gonna happen. Maybe it's our boy paparez. That would be the one to actually do it. But he does enough things that have pissed people off. And it's something that people talk about behind closed doors. And I just want somebody to give it to us.

I want the controversy. I want I want the pga tour.com to have to scrub it from their website. And I want to. I have a candidate for you. Okay. How about Patrick Reed? He would have no problems doing it.

That would be just like, gosh, what's the comparison of that? But there's no winners in that fight. I don't think anybody's winning. I don't think any fans are like, oh, yeah, go get him, buddy. We like the idea of like, Dremel on green, like fighting like Dennis Robbins or something of people. Yeah, that seems appropriate. But I think it has to come from like an Eddie, Eddie Peperal got kind of, I guess he called

him a twit this year that might be nominated. But I don't know, someone like Lee Westwood or someone to just get into it with them. I'd like to see that. Okay. I'm all in on that All right, you're final one. I would like to see a slow-pay, slow-play penalty enforced at a major Okay, not just like with like the winner of the Asian amateur or the Latino amateur But like someone who is

Literally like two holes behind the pace like I'm not gonna get greedy I'm not gonna say they have to be in contention, but it has to be like a player who is literally like dragging his group down and rules for the comes in and just like, you know what, next warning is a shot penalty. Oh, sorry, I'm negdling you a shot and let this to sort of like, eruption handle it because I don't think that like the players ever think of it seriously enough and we need to have some kind of you know it has to be sort of that we've had blatant cases of it and I mean I think at Oakmont a few years ago we were joking like spieth and Zach Johnson and Bryson's group at Oakmont was like at least a whole and a half maybe two holes behind at some point and so you know I don't know who how you pick out one of which one of them but you just sort sort of say, look, you're all in the clock, you're all being timed and visually,

bam, you're going to take a penalty. Yeah. Well, here's my question. I'm sure it has something to do with the way the rules are written. But other rules in golf players can call penalties on other players. Why can't they do that with slow play? That would be fascinating. Like why can't Brooks time Bryson and and and stroking for I think what we need is maybe for Pat for us to call the penalty on Bryson and then just light him up like I think it's all keeps coming back to our our Lord and Savior Patrick Pat Pat Pat. I want to pull a pat if you're out there listening. Can you please listen to his podcast and do what we need, what we need for golf?

We are headed to Phoenix this week and trying to track him down for a podcast. We were supposed to do it when we were in Reno and he's like, no, now I'm gambling, man, I can't do it now. So we're unable to get it. That's literally what happened. It was like he didn't just didn't respond to my text for like two hours.

Like, oh, sorry, I was gambling. We'll do it some other time. Maybe you could just go into the morning. Maybe you could just go into the morning. Maybe you could just do the pop right here on the range while you spoke cigarettes and hit one hand and wedges. I was like, oh, you want to reschedule for the morning?

He's like, nope, I'll be sleeping. I was like, oh, cool. Okay, right. That's cool, Tuske. All right, my last thing. I want to see Tony Fiena, we have a big tournament. I'm a big fan of his game. I think he's been incredibly consistent and I'm so tired.

He's just seeing people immediately respond with, oh, he's only got one win. It's an opposite field event. I've said it 20 million times. Those podcasts, there's a lot more to golf than just winning or else they wouldn't pay out all the other places. Correct. And he is constantly, constantly beating a lot of the best players in the world. He very rarely only one time ever has he beaten all of them, which is just I think more of a

more of a reflection of law. I don't want to say luck, but more of a just being the bad side on the bad side of probability more than it is in the indictment of his game. So I'm ready to see him win a big one. Players or something like that would be awesome. A WGC, of course, a major, but just something that would basically something that's not an offset field of it. Well, great example of just like real quick like about how some of that is out of your control. Like, remember what he's getting contentioned in, I think, was in China with a zander and like he hit a, all that, he hit a sprinkler head and like bound it over the green. Like, how is that a sort of a fair break, you know, that it's just, right? He probably wins

that tournament if that doesn't happen. And that's just kind of completely ridiculous luck, you know. All right, we got, we're gonna do it. It's a little segment here on three things we wish. We both wish we never said, I can't wait to hear what you come up with on this. And then I got a couple questions from the refugees. I want to make sure I get to as we do have some good ones. But all right, let's start it off with you.

What's the, what's the number one on your list of things you wish you never said? God, I mean, I, I mean, you're, I tried to run this. Rugby twit. So they're not like, oh yeah, it's not rugby. Yeah, for those who are unaware, like, I was one time getting a haircut and there was like, Rugby on and I was like, I know, be really good at this. It's like Leonard Fornet or like, you know, like basically any American college football player.

And I just like kind of made a joke like dashed off a take like I mean, but like if you got like urban Meyer and like all the best like NFL players, you can totally dominate rugby. I literally the other day still got it like a death threat from New Zealand. Like this is not that was eight months ago or something. Oh my God. New Zealanders is not like fly to the Concord's man. They were so mean to me.

Like they were like Mike, we're gonna's man. They were so mean to me like they were like my Kili it you have to come is why yes Making anyway, I was like whoa, it's like yes, I mean rugby probably would be number one But why do they sound a little bit Scottish? Well because all of my impressions on the little Scottish of my impression sounded a little Scottish. So again, saying that Americans could dominate rugby would be number one. Yes. Because that was clearly spoken from a place of ignorance.

Would you have acknowledged? Yes. On your golfer, let it list, what do you got? I said after I was at Berkdale with you, in fact, and I said that it was inevitable that Jordan's beef was going to win a PGA championship at some point, and it was obvious that he was the best player of his generation. I think Brooks might have seen that and like Bench pressed it into the sun because obviously it's who's now like 40th in the world has sort of gone into the weeds a bit, and I'm

still encouraged that this year that he'll may come back and do okay, but that was maybe a bit hyperbolic on my part. Well, do you think he will win a PGA? Or is this going to be a double thing where you also regret? You regret the regret of saying that? Well, the idea that it was inevitable, of course, is going to win a PGA, seemed totally shortsighted, and also didn't perhaps take into account that PGA might be like Beth Page all the time from now on.

Like, what if they set up harding to be super hard? And he's 40 yards behind some of the better players, and he's no longer the best six iron player in the world anymore. And so maybe it was three in the world anymore. And so I just, my maybe it was three in the morning when I was writing that. And I didn't quite think of the larger implications. But I just, my point was like the PGA doesn't really carry the physical,

the mental scars of the US open, you know, liquid fill or worry with the masters or, you know, it's, he's, I think to be for win another major at least, or a couple more, but at some point I had him with eight and was like, oh, it's going to keep rocking these up. Yeah. Well, to that's to my point, I didn't, that my, my thinking with the PGA Championship setup was in line with what you said about Speed, and that I don't want it to be, like, just because I'm a Speed fan, I don't want it to be catered to Speed.

But what kind of a championship is this? If Jordan, if we're gonna eliminate a guy led with the talent of Jordan's speed from winning it. So what kind of a golf championship is that? He had maybe though, maybe one of the all-time greatest putting weeks ever, and he wasn't even close to being in contention. So.

Right. And so like even he said, he's a guy that's gonna be the one that's hardest for me to win. And it's like, well, what do we, why, why, why is that gonna be the case? Why do we have to do that? And I just, yeah, so that's, those two things are aligned.

I'll go with this one then, for my first one, I said that Roy was gonna win 10 major and Speed was gonna win eight. I think, I think back in the day, I forgot how many majors that were played a year. And in my defense, this was said when those two held all four majors, shortly after, Speed 1, the 15 US Open.

And there was like 800 people that listened to this podcast that time. So I felt like it was a very safe thing to say. Please don't go back and look for other similar quotes, but I would like to revise both of those totals if I could. And of the two, I think it's more likely that speed gets to eight than Rory getting to 10, just because he's younger.

Yeah. But that's, that's my record. 10 is a lot. That was so many. Only four guys have ever got to 10. So many. But it's not Gary Blair. He had 4th the age of 25.

Like, that wasn't an, it wasn't an insane thing to say. It was just wrong. Yeah. Or what's next? So I made a lot of jokes along with a lot of other people, maybe even someone hosting this podcast about Web Simpson, back when he was texting his way onto Tom Rothman's Ryder Cup team.

But I'm all in on Web now. Like, Web might be the best iron player in the world. He was sift in Throaks gained off, you know, the T, like total Throaks gained last year. And that's with ranking 114th on Tour and Pudding. Or it's gonna be in driving. Yeah, I mean, that guy's just gotten to be a better, the great putter again after the whole,

like figuring out the arm block thing. But like, Web was a baller at the Ryder Cup. He was basically, well, only guys, who was like, yeah, we're, I'm coming to play. And so, hell yeah, puter at the Ryder Cup. It was basically, well, only guys, it was like, yeah, I'm coming to play. And so, Hell yeah, I put Web on the Ryder Cup team and was saying, I don't care, like, just let's do it. The Web's earned the chance to like basically play alternate shot every time we play

in one of these team matches. Web legitimately almost made one of my top three here as well. Based on, we'll get to my next one here, but it was gonna be kind of a similar thing. And that Web is the classic case for us of how we had to change our mentality. Once we actually started to gain an audience that was, and it became clear that people were acknowledging what we said, we couldn't, no, we couldn't, that's not what I meant. We couldn't not like a guy for no reason. And it was basically like, oh yeah, his, his followers ugly, like, let's make fun of that guy. And that was I don't know what I meant. We couldn't not like a guy for no reason. And it was basically like, oh yeah, his follow through's ugly.

Like let's make fun of that guy. And that was not maybe not the best use of anything, anyone's energy. And it was like, no, it just became hard to explain. Like why do you dislike web simps and like, no I don't. Like I'm just making, this is just jokes. And web is a bona fide player. Like, that's not even up for debate

and has kind of had a career renaissance after the anchor band, which should have, I don't know. I don't want to get sidetracked on that conversation, but just kind of really wrecked some really elite players momentum of their career. And web's one of those guys. You know what they should have the anchor band really quickly is like hockey with the helmets thing. You know what they should do on the anchor band really quickly?

It's like hockey with the helmets thing. You should have like if you were you were grandfathered in. You know more players like beneath them could come in with anchors, but you're good to go. Yeah. Okay. So along the same lines, I wish I never said anything along the lines of Jim, Jim Fierrick being boring or stale.

And part of this I think think, is an indictment of the previous era of golf media because golf fans shouldn't have ever had that thought. But that's a reflection of everything I had consumed from him, you know? And this is not realistic for everyone out there, but I was in the extreme fortunate position to actually talk to him personally for the first time two years ago when he came on the podcast at a Callaway ad shoot and I was blown away

I'm like, dude I've never heard you talk like about these topics and at this length and how nice he was and Not even like not even in the realm of boring or dull in any way We're talking about a guy that has transcended generations with a style of play that has not aged well. Like he is basically the only guy from the previous era that didn't grow up bombing the ball that has survived this long. He's almost in the top 50 in the world still coming back from all the injuries. He was in the top five in the world as of five years ago. And we filmed, and this might be a recency bias, but we filmed a wild world golf with him

at Jack's Beach Golf Club this past week. And he was awesome. He was fun. And after the round, like, you know, Tron's kind of struggling with his wedge game. He's like, come on, let's go the range and go back up balls. And wait, Tr is struggling with this. I know, it's shocking development. It's all right.

Spoiled part of the, the part of the wild world of golf. But what's the range of game? A chipping, like a wedge lesson. And even like said something to me, it's like your ball position is kind of creeping back in your stand, like the bad wedge you hit on, you know, 13 was, the ball is like creeping back in your stance, but you had it back up on 16 and you hit a really good wedge.

I was like, oh man, I never thought about my ball position that it varies that much from shot to shot. And then we're like, hey, do you want to be areas? I love one. And we sat out on the picnic table and just told stories. And here is the third greatest earner in the history of the game of golf hanging out at municipal golf course. Like on his own time, he had no obligation to us at all.

Had a great time doing it. And he was like, man, like that sucks that for a long portion of his career, I kind of thought of him as like the caricature for a dull golfer. And maybe it's a reflection of me, but I just was, that was something I wish I never said. All any comments I would have made about him

the past came from a place of ignorance. And that's definitely something that I wish I never insinuated or contributed to. I think that maybe some of it might be Firk getting so comfortable with who he is that he could just kind of like cut open a little bit, cut it up a little bit more now. But I think you're right. Maybe no one ever thought to like get Jim Furex like thoughts on a lot of things. And I went up to him at Riviera asked him some stuff for a story that still may be published by SPN someday, who knows, but and I talked to him a little bit about

the Ryder Cup and he gave some pretty good answers about it. And you know, he's one of the real ones too. Like he'll give you the truth as or as close to what he can. And man, I admire that respect that. I would love to sit and pick his brain about a lot of things and go. Yeah, no, we're going to get him back on the pod. He's great in the wild world, but we're going to get some get some more thoughts from him. So all right, you're up. You're your last thing you wish you never said. This is not golf related because I mean, I the obvious ones for me would be to pick maybe taking back that tiger column that I wrote where I said, maybe you should go into teaching But you know in some ways if I helped motivate tiger to come back masters like

Sure, let's maybe use six months ago or so I said like It's funny how like Ben Rothsberger has convinced everyone that it was Antonio Brown's fault that they've got thing broke up And I was like, maybe I'd like to rethink that one now that it was Antonio Brown's fault that they got the thing broke up. And I was like, I don't think I'd like to rethink that one now. Maybe my anti-Rothas burger sentiment clouded me there. So that would be one. I think one's called Tom Brady, a weasel in Prince.

You're going above and beyond the three things. You're just calling a lot of attention to seeing it. You know, there's a lot of bad takes out there. KBV land. I mean, I don't really get, I would over my skis too much, but you know, when you think about the totality of your career, man, I mean, there's no Gary player takes to like, you know, where he's some of his thoughts on apartheid back in the day. I don't know.

I was in a take back right there, but we won't even make jokes about that. That's like third reaction. I don't know how you got apartheid into three things you wish you never said. So, only let's just say it was a different time. It was not something we've brought up. Oh, all right. So is there official third then?

Let's just, that'll just be my crap. That's a good, that's a great thing. I get like seven different ones there. All right. I wish, I don't know if there's anything in particular. I wish I didn't say before the 2018 Ryder Cup. Okay. I do wish I phrased the hype leading into it better

because clearly I had aggravated some European fans to think that I thought the US team was going to stop the European team. In retrospect, I did say that they would win. I thought the US team was going to win. I think that was just what I believe. I really did think they were going to win. I clearly discounted how much of a factor the golf course was going to be.

And I think people thought I was the same guy that I was out in Chippenock, the road to column that said the rider cup was over and that it was not even going to be a competition anymore. I also said before 16 that the U.S. went four of the next five, which I do only got to win four in a row now. Three in a row. No, because they're 160. So that was, so my thinking was they're going to win 16. They might lose 18. They might. They, because they're 160. So that was, so my thinking was they're gonna win 16. They might lose 18. They might. They're gonna win 20. They're gonna win 24. And I think they flipped the curse in 22 in Italy.

Does that, does winning three in a row look a lot more challenging? No, yes, it does. But that's something I can be wrong about in the future. Okay, so I just maybe wish I would have phrased that a little bit differently. And I was also afraid to dig too far back in the archives because people might say, oh, I might have to go listen episode 21 to see what these guys had to say. And I don't, I'm terrified of what's actually. Yeah, I don't want to hate to be fact checked about our pre-writer-cut bots. But yeah, okay, that's, that's, you know, it's funny. It's like ship neck takes so much grief for

that thing, but like Bamberg picked him to like win bad touchdown. Like you asked to win bad touchdown, like seven points, like literally that week. That's different than calling the writer cup over. That's true. That's true. All right, let's get to some of the questions from the refuge through this out on our message board

and got some really good ones. We've touched on a few of these things within it. One of them being, this is from Robert Hunter. You've been pretty outspoken about geo-media and the wake of dead spins, whatever the hell is going on there. His question for you, where do you generally see non-traditional sports journalism

going in the next 10 years? Are we forever gonna be caught in the cycle of novelty turns into popularity, which results in acquisition slash monetization that drives away the original user base? How do you escape that cycle? I'm most curious for your particular advice on this because that sounds like it could apply to some part of my life as well. Well, I think that what we're going to have to get beyond is like the idea of altruistic sort of people buying media things for like the good of society. And like, you know, these families that used to run newspapers, whether it was the Shulspurgers or the, you know or the people who owned the

Tribune Company or the LA Times or all this stuff. The kind of generation of media that I grew up with were these people. It's a good thing for America that we're, we're have a good robust media. That's kind of dead. That doesn't exist anymore. And I lost it. Yeah. It's gone.

So, I think that you're going to have to have media companies that provide, they're going to be smaller in scale, I think. And they're going to have to provide content that's valuable that people will be willing to subscribe to, like paid directly for, so that you remove the advertising model from it. Because if you want truly independent media,

you can't have it, I have it attached to a company that's basically saying, I can't do this, can't do that. And so that's something, obviously, being real, it's a hard thing to say if you ever wanted to criticize Calloway, obviously you wouldn't do it, because that's something that you're attached to. So at least you're upfront about that. And that's, I think what your credibility,

like people ought to be able to decide for themselves, like, well, what credibility does this person have on this thing? And so that's, I think, an important part of going forward. Do I want to subscribe to this? Does their credibility sort of matter? And I don't know. I mean, honestly, it's a billion dollar question. If I knew the answer to, how do I build an independent

media site that will not only please readers but make money, like I would do it's a billion dollar question. If I knew the answer to, how do I build an independent media site that will not only please readers but make money, like I would do it in a second, because I would never have to work again and I could play golf all the time. But also, if someone's saying to you, you're like, hey, do you want one fifth of 500 million dollars to give us snowing up and then we get to do whatever we want with it? You might be like, okay guys, we're gonna go ahead and do that.

We do know someone. You don't have 51% of the voting interests of pro-trash holdings, so I'm gonna go ahead and vote into a solid company. Well, that's where, you know, it is not a simple answer. And like some of the criticism we'll receive, you know, is in relation to the fact that we have, like sponsors and advertisers and partners. And I always want to tell people,

and I try to avoid, you know, engaging any of that, because it's like, what would you rather, would you prefer the alternative that we just like didn't exist? Like do you, like do you think we should just do this for free? Like that we, like shouldn't be able to pay for the microphone that we're talking into and able to pay for the microphone that we're talking into and the computer that's recording this and you know all and our time being valuable.

It's like yeah you have to trust us a bit to you know choose the model correctly and that's why we're always you know when people are coming at us for Xander's driver going over is like hey you might not want to listen to us on this because we have this conflict of interest. And there's a very good chance that you can easily connect the dots and want to believe that we are covering Caloay's ass on this. And that wasn't the case. But like, if you wanted to believe that, like, that's fine. Like, trust us to be able to cover the other issues and we'll like make very clear like

what our conflicts are in other ones. And like, I think we hopefully do that better than some of the journalistic entities within golf. Totally, and just disclosure is an important part of it. Like if you're gonna promote like, Jack Nicholoss courses and you know that like your Ryan Balanze went hard at this on Twitter

for the sort of golf magazine, whatever the other day. And I think it was fair. It was totally like, if you're gonna promote this stuff, you need to disclose that you have a financial partnership with it. And I think it was fair. It was totally like, if you're going to promote this stuff, you need to disclose that you have a financial partnership with it. And you guys always disclose that. I guess there's a thing that runs at every end of every tour, tour stuff video that's like special thanks to Travis Matthew and Callie Golf and all that stuff. So I mean, ESPN makes it pretty clear like who we sort of are, you know, have deals with. Like we all that, like we have a deal with the NBA, we have the NFL,

and hopefully we're valuable enough for the entity that we can still do good journalism and that we feel like people will trust us to not be compromised. But if they don't, then we are certainly subject to criticism for it, just disclose it. But bringing everything full circle with what we've talked about today,

with the way that organizations are conglomerating, is that a word? I guess. Sure, it is now. I'm sure it's from a movie. It was now. It's like literally impossible to like not, you know, be double dipping somewhere or, you know, and I'm sure there's there's probably conflicts of interest that we have that I didn't even realize or thought of, you know, when I dipping somewhere or, you know, and I'm sure there's probably conflicts of interest that we have that I didn't even realize or thought of, you know, when I've criticized something and been like, oh yeah, that probably pissed someone off, but yeah, it's literally, it's an impossible game.

Like it's just, it's a tough, tough market to, basically, my point being like, for like ESPN, like you need money to pay for your salary and the talented people that bring The good content and all that stuff and it's it's a very circular thing and it's just an incredible challenge that It's a very good question too of just like what's what is the future of this because I think a lot of your criticism was based on Again, what we talked about earlier too is like the empty engagement like trying to reach a number of people without worrying What the retention is or what the actual, what you're actually giving that audience. Correct.

So, all right. This one's from anti-fowl, though. This is a longer question, but I could not, as soon as I read this, I could not wait for you to get involved with this one. All right. So, he says the question, can or cannot be answered in the Gary Player voice. Take a look at the current golf health regime fitness exercise, taking care of one's body, CBD, CBD oil everywhere, preferably from her black,

active private jets, Bryson's dream machine, secret German blood replacement procedures, teams consisting of golfer, caddy, physio, coach, trainer, nutritionist. Now, take a look at the 1970s. Beer everywhere, flying coach. God knows what Johnny Miller was up to. So many dinner parties where people thought meat and jello belonged in dishes together. Jello was a vegetable back then. Siggurettes upon cigarettes upon cigarettes. What player from this era would suffer most if air dropped into that era? And for purpose of the question ignored differences in equipment and technology is available as a variable. And also what player from that area would benefit the most if allowed to compete with the current understanding of sleep goods cigarettes bad. Wow. What a question.

The walrus was the first person I thought if you brought them forward, like what maybe they would benefit because like, like, stouter had a game, man. He had great hands. He was just a bear. He was hot tempered, like, bad ass.

I think remember we were watching that with that year we played it sweet and sweet and sweet, we were watching old masters and like just watching like how much GAME he had but like just what what low simmering rage he had and after every shot, he got to think that like maybe Fures cigarettes or Fueh Red Meat or you know maybe a sports psychologist might have helped a stoutler kind of you know focus his game a little bit more and the going backwards, I struggled with this one more because it's a harder thing to gauge.

For some reason, the first thought I had was like Bubba because even though the equipment would be sort of different, like people would, I think, not be as open to his weirdo-ness and would, like, be more antagonistic towards him and, like, you know, but that doesn't really work for the fitness one. Is there anyone that popped into your head, like, from today that would be, you know, the would be going backwards? Yeah, there's a huge one, Bryson.

Yeah. Like, that would be just, like, the weirdest of like all of the all of the technicality and all the things He you know all things he gets super into the weeds of to be it just like oh yeah You guys are drinking before the round like yeah, I don't I don't know how to compete in this thing. I don't know how to do this God I imagine Bryson talking about what special kind of like ash He was using in his wooden driver as opposed to like you know birch or whatever of like ash he was using and his wooden driver was supposed to like you know birch or whatever would like I got these special titanium screws that I got in here and if you really like you just catch one just goes forever and this. Well I also think Phil might be a bit of a struggle because of

how many different things he's willing to try and how every time he thinks he's got something figured out. Oh yeah I just needed caffeine so I got to drink like 11 shots of espresso in my coffee. Imagine if he would have had that mentality with the shit that was going around back then. Oh yeah, like now I know, like I just need like three lines of cocaine before I go play now instead of the normal one. Let's go down now to Phil Mickelson. He's this guy. There's no pain and coffee. You're doing this. Do well. I don't know what to think about it. He's got the turkey baster out to his tongue here again at the 11th fairway.

You're the gust of national. We're not that far off from some sort of story about how Phil has planned to use cryogenics to freeze his head. Oh, for sure. Come back. It's going to get real weird here in the next decade. Anti-aging stuff. Feel as the like the weirdo elder statesman who comes to a gasseria in his 70s and like

just fires off some takes about whatever is going to be amazing. Um, all right. This is from Hello friends. He enjoyed the Teddy Bridgewater feature you recently published. Uh, sure. Let Teddy Bridgewater feature. You recently published. I've been sure that may post that one. Said are or were there any potential golf features in the past handful of years, you would have liked to dive into in the non-tiger division if given full clearance. There's an obvious one. Okay. Oh, go ahead. I think you're going to say it. Well, I think a really like great Patrick Greed story a really great

Rory story would have been fascinating. I think I like writing honestly about people who are lost who are struggling and so I Think I tried I pitched him over Twitter or DM once he never responded to it But a Steven Boatage story about how are you so good at something and then all of a sudden a year later you like you absolutely cannot do it and you your life feels like it's falling apart and like a Smiley Coffin story like that I think would be fascinating. I mean I think you just you can learn a lot of interesting things about people when they just feel like I can't do it like everyone has stood on a golf course and been like I just I don't know where the ball's going like I'm completely. And so what's it like to be a

professional who has had that? Was that the one where the one where you were going to go? No, I thought you'd say Anthony Kim. Yeah, well, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's because a little obvious because it's just we've talked about that so much. Right. But yeah, I just also think he just doesn't want to be found. I think that's correct. He's very much just And a lot of people are holding out hope for him to come on the pod and that's the track him down I'm not saying we've given up. We're still trying and we will continue trying But I just don't think he wants to be involved in golf anymore. So This is from Eric our bends in relation to kind of what you just said has KVV kept up with Lydia Coe's play after his feature from about 18 months ago

Anything that he's seen her swing results that believe in the things she's closer to getting back to the top of the LPGA I have I always look for her whenever I turn on the LPGA or ever when I sort of dial up every scoreboard just kind of after I see the winners are and stuff and see the players are interested I scroll and I scroll and I scroll and I see where she is kind of near the bottom. But she's been playing a lot better actually this year. It's like four top 10s I think, or whatever you call this year, like this wrap around it. There really is no end to the LPGD season. I think that I thought she has a new coach again and she probably, I would say it's a safe bet, it has new caddies

because she's had about 20 caddies in her time. I think the last interview I saw with her she was just talking about how she kind of lost confidence and you know Lead better said something or no who was it some oh the whole kind of premise of that story was like did did David Ledbetter essentially take like a scalpel to the Mona Lisa, like in trying to tweak her swing. And Ledbetter's point was like she was never gonna consistently be good long-term without, you know, doing a little bit of something different. And he was trying to make her more athletic and whatever. But the biggest problem with what happened in Lydia is that she just

kind of lost her touch and she was such a wonderful wedge player. Like she just was such a great feel player and if you lose your feels, sometimes they don't come back. So, you know, I don't think Lydia's ever going to get back to where she was because there's just too much scar to show and there's too many players who can hit it long and there's just wave after wave after wave of good young players coming still and so you know it's unrealistic to think that she'll ever be the number one player in the world again I think which is bummer because she's a really fun kind of personality but you know she always said that she was going gonna be done by the time she was 30 and So I think that in some ways

the one ways away but I always felt like that I used that as the kind of lead to my story even though it had been written about I asked her about it and she was It was just like yeah, like it was clear like she didn't want golf to be like her whole life and so that better sort of point was always that She's gonna come to a point at some point off to be like her whole life. And so, let butters sort of point was always that she's going to come to a point at some point where she wants to be her own person and get away from her family. And I know, you know, a lot of kids people figure that out. He wanted her to figure it out like Michelle, we did is like, you know what, I'm going to be my own person and make my own decisions.

And so, you know, Michelle didn't really reach her potential until after she had kind of done that and said, you know what, I'm 27 years old, I'm going to figure this out now for myself and then finally want a major. So maybe that breakthrough is coming from Lydia at some point. Or maybe that's unfair to her family. I don't know. One of the hardest things is that like her parents have never given any kind of English language interview that I've ever seen or heard. I don't even know if they've given an interview in Korean. And so it's hard to know what that relationship's like other than rumors that were here.

Michelle was 24 when she won their US Open, which was 10 years into her, like nine years into her professional career, which puts on perspective to use of some of these women. Last two will get you out of here. This was going lengthy, but people love here in KVV What My regular

Best the best friend of the pot. This is from C Devlin on the refuge as someone who's covered both the NFL and PGA tour What are the biggest similarities and differences with dealing with the biggest stars are the egos that much different? What about access and the way they handle and approach media and which athletes are more real and give more and which give more coach speak? And also is one of them more self unaware of the tour of the NFL. Well, so one of the things about the NFL is that players essentially have to make themselves available to the media once a week at least and then after games. And if they don't, if they skip out on that media sort of stuff and media and the NFLPA complains, they can be fine for it. It's sort of something

that's written into the collective bargaining agreement, I believe. I haven't read it, studied it, but that's always been my understanding. And so, you can't necessarily like ever pull Tom Brady or air grogers or peaking manning aside and say, like, hey, can I ask you this question about the specific thing? But sometimes if you have relationship with those people, you can. Like, you're in a spate, you're allowed into a space where they walk through the locker rooms and you could sort of grab them and say, like, look, I know you already talked on the podium, which is what most quarterbacks do.

They don't sort of, unless Drupalese talks in the locker, I might just say it's maybe not 100% of a certainly, but a lot of quarterbacks prefer to just do their one availability week. So compare that to golf. Like, can you get Tiger aside to ask him a question if you have a relationship with him?

Like if you've covered the tour for a long time, if you're Bob Herrick or you're Steve DiMiglio or you're someone who, you know, he's seen around and isn't gonna feel like, you know, you're gonna publish something that's off the record that he says, then you can ask him a question about something. Yeah. And sometimes you're gonna do that with Phil. And I would say golfers are probably a

little bit more available in the sense that there are, I don't know, it goes both ways. And it's a hard thing to split. So there's 125 golfers, right? So like, you're always going to be able to talk to someone because not all of them are going to be like, no, man, I don't do media. like you're always gonna be able to talk to someone because not all of them are gonna be like, no man, I don't do media. But are the highest level of golfers, like are they available? Well, they're all kind of only gonna do

their press conferences really, and then they're gonna say, well, that's, I'm sorry, that's what I've already done for media. Whereas like the NFL is kind of more specific. Like here's the time when you're allowed to talk, and if you don't get them within that time, then like you're really not allowed to talk to them unless you call them on the phone individually and you have a relationship

with them and then the PR staff might get upset. I don't know, it's a hard, I guess they're probably similar in some ways. I feel like this super long rambling answer. What really comes down to is like if you build a trust with someone, if you have a relationship with them, you can get them to sort of, like I have written about guys who were in college, when I covered them in college, when I covered University of Maryland,

who then I could go up to Ravens locker room and say like, hey man, can I talk to you about this name? I was like, yeah, just call me on my cell, here's my cell. And so like certainly there's like golfers who can have build relationships with me as well, but if you walk up to someone totally cold, I'm like, hey, I'm from ESPN, that's not going to really do a lot for a lot of them.

There's going to be like, I don't really care. I don't know you. So. Well, that's what I was wondered with. I've kind of always said, without any real evidence, like, oh, golfers are just way more relatable to normal people than a defensive lineman is in the NFL. I've always said that, is that the case?

I don't know. I would say most, it depends on, I think that's a matter of perspective, because most golfers come from some means, right? They're even just to play golf. You have to have enough money for someone to pay your AJA fees or to buy you clubs or to sort of like let you travel all around the country. Whereas there's a lot of football players who come from pretty rough areas

of the country. And so relatable to me as a white guy who's 41 might be different than relatable to a 23 year old kid who came from Liberty City in Miami. And so that's where it's a complicated question. Are they relatable to what most of the media looks like? You know, maybe. I mean, but I've formed really good relationships with a lot of guys who have really different backgrounds, and we're super willing to talk to me because they've been through a lot of shit growing up And so they didn't like think that like the the NFL team should be able to control who they don't and don't do and don't talk to

You know the coach couldn't tell them like yeah, don't speak to the media because they would like screw that man Like you ain't and don't for me. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and talk to whoever I want in my own judgment. So I You know, I think it's it's hard the easiest answer is just a case by case basis. All right. We're going to get you out of here on this one. Last one from JAS on the refuge. What's your biggest feel goods golf story of 2019?

I mean, it was definitely the time I shot 73. No, no, it's hard to go with against like Tiger, right? I mean, I think it just resonates. You know, Camtia, maybe just because that was a really cool story. And I think meant something generationally for, you know, Gam is scram father, teaches him the game, he's scram father's dying, he wins. But Tiger just, I think, resonates in so many ways.

I mean, the sticky thing on my Twitter is still like the string of tweets that I wrote the day after the Masters where I was just still like tearing up kind of thinking about where I was in 1997, when he won and my dad to call me and talking about it and how I felt like, you know, I related to Tiger at the time as like the kid, but then as I got older, now I related to Tiger at the time as the kid, but then as I got older, now I relate to him as the dad and hugging his own kids and what that means for the passage of time. That's hard to top that. Again, I don't believe, it doesn't matter to me whether Tiger's changed in that time

since he won the Masters to win he won the last Masters, but I've changed and I know what that means. Like I've been in my whole life kind of has been ripped apart and put back together and I've been a lot of cool places and done a lot of cool things. And this podcast is ranked right up there at the top cell. Oh man, what a way to end it. Well, I want to thank you, Mr. KVV for coming on as well.

As if he's still around, Mr. Player, please send my regards. We appreciate it for coming on as well as if he's still around Mr. Player. Please send my regards. We appreciate it. His appearance as well and always appreciate your insights. Thank you so much for joining us. Any time. All right, bud. All right. Be the right club. Be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most.

How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different?