No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 463: Peter Kostis on the evolution of modern golf

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

He's back! Peter Kostis joins the pod for a wide-ranging discussion on the changes in the modern game including the economics on tour, equipment, course architecture, broadcast coverage and much more!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Laying Up Podcast, Sully here. Got a really interesting episode coming up here with our good friend, Peter Costas. I will say the content of this episode is very different from what I had in mind, but we kind of got going off on a bunch of different tangents.

I knew once I got Peter going, could just ask a bunch of follow-up questions, kind of engage him in some of the knowledge he was sharing, and it would be an interesting conversation. It turns into a bit of the modern evolution of golf, or the evolution of modern golf, if you will. I kind of wanted to grill him on early 90s golf, and the questions there really just kind of led

to a whole different conversation than what I'm picturing. But I promise you're gonna enjoy this when he's got incredible insight. We went for quite some time a couple weeks ago when we did record this. So this episode is brought to you by our friends at Woop. You know Woop, we is the fitness wearable UCS wearing in all of our videos.

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healthy your body is and how much strain you're ready to take on, how much sleep you need in a night, how much sleep you actually got, how many times were you disturbed through the night, all insights you get from your whoops. You can go to whoop.com, whop.com, use promo use promo code no laying up all one word that is 15% off Any of your purchases there again woop.com promo code no laying up all one word for 15% off Thanks a ton to Peter Cosses for the time and enjoy the episode cheers So usually in this situation we try to do a book report style read up on everything we can You know try to teach the listener something

But this is it this is a different topic because I wanted to bring in someone that was a part of this era and can probably tell us more about it than anything I could find and scour up on the internet. That is Peter Kossis Peter. Thank you for, thank you for coming back. It's been about a year, I think. Just about, I think, time flies when you have it fun, right? Exactly, exactly. The impetus for this podcast are a question, a big question I wanna have answered. And you and I have talked a lot about TV stuff,

both publicly and privately. And sometimes find myself just wondering how golf got here with the commercial load and things like that. And it just kind of dawned on me. I asked that myself that question, like when did we get here? And I just kind of said, wait, was it always like this? Like maybe I just don't remember it as a kid you know being the way that it is and

That's what I wanted to ask you is when do you when did golf change or did it change has it always been this heavily commercialized product that we see today? No when I started my first 4a and into television was the 89 writer cup at the Belfry which USA Network put on then I started in 90 with USA full time and CBS part time and then throughout the vote from 91 on with CBS for almost 30 years. Remember that Frank Chirkinian who I affectionately called the Godfather of televised golf, he was a producer director.

He did both jobs back in the day. What are the two jobs? Can you explain what the difference is there or why they're different now? The director is the guy that conducts the symphony of camera men to produce shots. He'll tell the cameraman, you know, get a close-up or do this or do that or whatever. And the producer decides which of those shots get on the air and win. In today's day and age, it is absolutely completely impossible

for one person to do both of those jobs because the telecast has gotten much more cluttered and much more complicated, right? Back in the day, Frank would produce and direct the shows. And a lot of people don't realize this and there's no reason for them to because this is kind of inside information, but Frank had carte blanche at CBS because CBS golf in the early 90s, late 80s was a substantial chunk of the net profits of the CBS network. There were certain times when golf was almost 20, 25% of the net profits of the CBS television network. Could you compare that to what that might look like today, just for the listeners? I think they're breaking even maybe. I mean, I have no access to the books,

but I will say this, when you look at the evolution, there's a whole bunch of stuff to talk about, this could end up being a three-hour podcast, but when Frank started, Dean Beaman was the original commissioner of the PGA tour in these times. Then he left and Tim Finchem took over and then Finchem left in Monahan now. So you've gone from a golfer, a professional golfer to a lawyer lobbyist in Finchem to a marketer in Monahan, right? And during this evolution, along comes a young kid named Tiger Woods. And I mean, he was electric. Still is for that matter. But Finchum saw the Golden Goose in Tiger, and he thought he could turn golf into a major sport rather than the niche sport that it always has been and probably always will

be. And so Tiger comes along, Finchim ups the purses, ups the rights fees dramatically. I mean, the rights fees from the early 90s to now, I don't know if they've more than quadruple, whatever. I don't know the numbers exactly, but they've gone up astronomically. So obviously, if you have to pay more for a product, you have to figure out how to pay for that product. And that leads to all kinds of commercial interruptions, sponsored segments within the telecast,

luckily for me, that included the Connaca Manolta at the time, Bissop swing vision camera, which I loved, but it was still a sponsored segment, right? And so the 90s gave birth to the commercialization of golf, in my opinion. That really was, when Tiger came along in 1997, 1996, 1997, that changed everything. And it became more about money and less about pure golf. So you're saying it coincides with Tiger coming along in 96 more than Finchham starting, I believe, January 1 of 1994? Yes. I mean, the product was what the product was

when Finchham came along. I mean, there were some, obviously, the great players back then. I mean, you had Fowldo and Kite and Nick Price and Greg Norman amongst others. Nicholas was still around, but headed toward the senior tour at the time. Things dramatically changed when Tiger came along.

Nike commercialized him. Nike tried to turn him into the new Michael Jordan for their product line. And the birth of commercialization of professional golf was born. Take us back to pre-Tiger. What did golf on television look like? How many hours was it on?

What were, I think we've documented and it's been evidence to us that it's about 18 minutes of commercials per hour now. Compare that to what it was like back then. Was it normal for a PGA tour event to be on Thursday, Friday? Was it only weekends? What did the commercial load look like?

Can you compare it to what it is today? Well, USA Network had the rights to carry early round coverage or they attained the rights, well, with the masters actually in CBS. And there was nothing in the 80s, as I remember early 80s especially, on Thursday of Friday. It was just weekend coverage and a couple hours each day. Then the masters expanded, USA Network came along with CBS

signed a contract to be their provider for Thursday Friday, and it actually wasn't even Thursday Friday. Initially, it was just an hour or two on Friday afternoon. And back in the day, we would have to go in for rehearsal. Frank would make us go to our towers or wherever we were and we would rehearse for an hour or an hour and a half on Fridays. So for us, being able to go on the air with USA Network made it a little bit more palatable that just sitting there and talking to nobody just to get some reps in, right? So it didn't affect us in terms we still had to be there by Thursday. We worked a little bit on Friday and then Saturday Sunday was the big deal.

Eventually that morphed into a couple hours, Thursdays and Fridays for most weekends. And then in 96, yeah, 96, 95, 96, the golf channel came along. And so they're now looking for obviously live golf to put on the air and boom. Here we are. You got golf 24, 7, 365. Would golf channel have survived if they didn't miraculously coincide with Tiger? You see what I mean? Getting that head start. In both good ways and bad ways, I think obviously mostly good, Tiger coming along and what he provided to the golf world and to the sports world in general was phenomenal for golf. And without it, no, I don't see the golf channel surviving whatsoever. It wasn't going to happen. He created the excitement. He got the late Friday afternoon t times so that golf channel could put him on the air when he did play. Obviously

purses skyrocketed rights fees skyrocketed and coverage of golf was never going to be the same. Because I've got 1996 total purses on the PGA tour total purse was $66 million. And by 2000, uh, by 2000, four years later, $163.6 million. And 2007, just seven years after that, 270.3 million. It is just insane. What happened? And we often refer to the Tiger Tax and that all the, anybody that has played golf post 1997 should have to tie some money towards tiger for how much money he's made everyone. Was there any other confluence of events in just, I mean, salaries have risen a lot in baseball

in football, in basketball, in a lot of other sports. Tiger gets a lot of credit for this at deservedly, but were there other factors as well? In just how sports were presented on TV and how they really caused this boom. I know Tiger, like I said, he deserves a lot of the credit, but there had to be some other factors in there as well, right? Well, I mean, television coverage in general

across all sports improved tremendously because technology improved in the 90s, right? Everything changed. It's impossible to look at this from any other than a kind of a mosaic point of view. You watch baseball players in the 80s and the camera would inadvertently pick up somebody in the dugout smoking a cigarette, right? I mean, there's pictures of Roger Maris after hitting three home runs and he's smoking a cigarette in the dugout smoking a cigarette, right? I mean, there's pictures of Roger Maris after hitting three home runs

and he's smoking a cigarette in the dugout between innings and diet and working out was not existed. And you look at the evolution of all the sports, obviously Tiger brought it to golf, but he was starting to change across the board. And we went from golfers, go into the golf course, hit some balls, go on a playoff practice round, go on a playoff tournament round, go on home, getting changed, going out for dinner and drinks. Now, you've got a

dietician, you've got a trainer, you've got a coach, you've got almost a 24 hour approach to preparing for your next five hours of golf. It's changed. The entertainment value has, I think, been diminished. It's much less fun, much less spontaneity, much more scheduled and much more business like now. Drize is the word I keep coming to, right? And it's trending that way. It's like that in a lot of sports, right? Baseball analytics, basketball analytics have just optimized. I gotta tell you that, although it's not in the 90s,

the analytics that have come along, you can make a case that Billy Bean with Moneyball, what's the beginning of it, but now with Chatlink that Donna Orrinder started at the PGA tour, I get incredibly bored watching a baseball game and having announcers talk about launch angles and exit velocity and whatever. You know, that doesn't add to my enjoyment of watching a baseball game. And to a large extent, I'm not sure that statistics engulf, I think it's a lazy way to approach announcing.

Just spew up some stats and then use the stats to form an opinion, rather than going out talking with players and getting some insight as to why they're doing x, y, or Z. I think stats and green reading books and all that stuff has led to a certain degree of laziness in terms of the professional game of golf. A quick break here to checking with our friends at Pinehurst. Now is the time to book your fall Pinehurst visit at Pinehurst.com. Of course, we have the 2024 US Open coming to the number two course.

The famed Donald Ross course is Masterpiece, newly renovated number four course by Gill Hans. There's the Tom Fosio number eight course. There's the Gill Hans and Jim Wagner creation, Decretael 789 yards. Some of the most fun golf you'll ever play anywhere. There's the Fisseldew Pudding Green, which is free right there. Roll right inside of the doose for wings and beers and whatever you can possibly imagine. It's just an incredible place. I cannot wait. We're going to be there in October. It is marked on the calendar.

It's called the St. Andrews of American Golf for a lot of reasons. There's so much great golf in the area. There's the newly renovated Manor Inn. They got the Pinehurst Brewing Company for a little place to kind of escape Pinehurst at night and into a place with a little bit of nightlife. So again, go to Pinehurst.com, book your fall visit, your next year's spring visit, or you just find something for this summer. There's a lot of opportunities available at Pinehurst. We thank them for their partnership of this podcast. Donny Friddle, let's get back to Peter Costas. I forget if I ever brought this topic up to you,

and this is maybe trending more on TV side than the original pre-tiger 90s topic that I proposed to you, but you see on other sports, like NFL, like the broadcasters and stuff, sit down with the quarterbacks that week, to talk about what they're up to and stuff. And I always wonder why, when it comes to golf, why are there not little segments filmed with players

to say like, all right, we're gonna show you like a flyover of this 14th hole. Tell me everything you've learned about this hole this week and how you're gonna play it. And then when that player gets to that hole on Saturday or Sunday, you may have these clips to say like instead of just doing a basic flyover of it, here is this person's

strategy and all the things he's going to think about while playing this whole. Something like that, I feel like it would be so engaging and I don't see any innovation on that front. I'm sure there's a million reasons why it can't happen. That's why I want to ask you why it can't. There's one reason why it doesn't happen. It's money. It's time.

And time is money. You know, I mean, you now are a converted formula one fan, right? Yes, yes. The Drive to Survive series was instrumental in that, right? Yep. And in the football, you've got what's it called? Hard knocks. Hard knocks, correct, sorry.

You could do that in golf, you could do that with a cornferry tour, you could have a series, you know, highlighting the trials and tribulations of these kids that are on the cornferry tour, trying to make it to the PGA tour. That would be mesmerizing and well done, it would get people to become fans of these players as they get on the PGA tour. Right now, they get on the PGA tour, nobody knows who the hell they are. But all of this costs money. And you're right. NASCAR drivers get interviewed 30 seconds before they run out onto the track to drive a car 200 miles an hour around an oval. Golfers, if you approach them in the parking lot two and a half hours before they're around a golf, are completely against being interviewed because they

don't want to have the wrong question asked that upsets their mindset. Like a really, you know, you're part of the product. You are the product as such, if I'm going to pay all this money for the right to put you guys on TV, then you have to give me something back in return in the name of interviews or this or that. I think some of that stuff is interfering with the telecast, but you could do some things pre-round that might be enhancing of the telecast.

Amen. I mean, I think cutting away to an interview when the leaders are on the 16th hole, to me is stupid. Yeah. I don't wanna hear from somebody who just finished what it was like. We saw them, right? I wanna stay with the leaders and maybe get some insight

pre-round as to what they would do if they were in this situation, ultimately on the 16th, 17th, 18th hole. Amen. I just never understood what those interviews need to be live. You know, tape them. And if something really interesting happens, play it when you have a chance, but they I just don't understand why those have to be live. And I think to your point, I don't, I don't want, you know, European tour has done interviews with players on the course while they're walking

from T to green. I don't need that. I don't think you're going to get much of it, you know, unless unless the questions are very pointed, it just feels like one shot at a time kind of stuff. It doesn't really provide that much insight, but kind of some strategy stuff. Yeah, go ahead. It provides zero insight. Right?

The first time you ask a pointed question will be the last time you ask that player, that pointed question. Yeah, because you'll get blackballed. Right. I know from experience with Tiger. Right. What's your experience there with Tiger? Remind the little. Tiger wouldn't talk to me for a year and a half. And his agent, Mark Steinberg, asked the powers to be at CBS, not to have me assigned to his group. What was it you said or asked? I was just talking about his golf swing. And if my producer, you know, says, all right, cost his swing vision tiger. And he's just hit it 20 yards in the woods. I'm supposed to tell the people at home why I thought what happened and why it went

20 yards in the woods. What am I going to say? It was really a great swing and he just aimed it there. Yeah. And so he got he got upset that he thought I was being too critical. Now after a while, we talked and kind of figuratively kissed and made up. Golfers, professional golfers are a fragile breed mentally. And they are not, they're not like and be an interviewed during the process or even slightly before the process.

So it doesn't add much to the viewer. But as I've told you before, Sally, nobody gives a hoot about, I'm not going to use the term I use last time about the viewers experience. You know, rats ask we could say it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a lot of podcasts history. But it, it, it, a lot of what you're saying though, it just feels like there's no buy-in from the players on this whole concept of we are here to entertain view.

Like the whole reason we make a lot of money is built on entertaining both people in person and on television, right? It is very stuck between, and I get like, a lot of the things that they believe will help them play better golf, which helps them earn more money. But if I'm looking at Formula One, it is, everyone just kind of seems in on this whole thing

of like, we gotta need to create some drama here together, right? I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna be honest because we're gonna sit up on podiums together and talk about this because like that's interesting. And I'm gonna say something critical about you and you're gonna be sitting on podiums together and talk about this because that's interesting. And I'm gonna say something critical about you and you're gonna be sitting two seats away from me and we're gonna get your reaction to that. And like that, that kind of buy-in just doesn't really

exist in Pro Golf. And that's kind of why I wanted to bring you on as well. It was like, was there a change in that when the money got big, has it always been like that? And maybe we can work our way back into figuring out this decade again. But I just don't see it changing and I just didn't know what the history of that was like. Well, it's an evolutionary process. And I do want to talk about the evolution of the golf swing, the evolution of equipment

and golf courses, et cetera, et cetera, during that time period, because I think it was instrumental into what we have right now. But back in the day, if a mishit shot cost you whatever, a thousand dollars in your payout at the end of the week, all right, thousand dollars is a lot of money, but it's not a hundred thousand dollars, right? Right.

When you start playing for $30 40 50 thousand dollars of stroke. The players became a lot more protective over their time and and energy and. The amount of money they could make in a year. Yeah, trust me, they are not playing for points. They're playing for dollars. Points are dollars. That's the thing that, you know, they always try to make everything about the points, but it really the points are worth nothing unless you, they're like poker chips.

You change them in for cash at the end of the night. You do that at the end of the year. You change them in for cash. Yeah, but each chip has a dollar value on it. The points don't, but don't get me started on that. That's the whole, that's a whole different issue. So you touch on, you know, when you talk about equipment, golf swing, stuff like that.

So I'll ask this question, and I'm curious, this is a hypothetical. If Trackman existed in 1995, you know, what Trackman spits out today with today's equipment is very different than what it would have spit out in 1995, what would that information availability have done to golf swings? How would golf swings be different? How would that have changed the game when we're not in this post, you know, ProV1 equipment boom.

You see what I'm getting at? Yeah, I do, but I don't think, I don't think the golf swing would have changed just because of Trackman or launch monitors. Some individual players may have changed certain things in their swings, but I don't know so this is something that I've studied for 50 years. The evolution of the golf swing throughout time and until around 1990, 1995, it evolved because of changes in golf course design and golf course

condition that the players faced and equipment changes. Now under equipment you can go all the way back to the 1800s where guys played him in boots and tweed suits and had to bend their left arm. They had no range of motion because their clothing was so restrictive to hickory shafts, to steel shafts, to graphite shafts, you know, to featheries, to gutter perchia, to ballata, to pro v1. All of these things interacted, right? Everybody's golf swing evolved basically because golf course designed back in the day,

we just saw it at Rural St. George's you play a lot out on the ground, right? Not so much up in the air, because of the wind and so on and so forth. Then, then along comes architecture changes where Trent Jones and others put bunkers in front of greens. And now you had to start putting the ball up in the air. And so along comes Jack Nicklaus. Up until then, most players had a low trajectory,

low launch, high spin trajectory to keep the ball down out of the wind and so on and so forth. We had the 1.62 ball in the rest of the world and the 1.68 ball in America. You can go back and say part of the reason why Europeans and worldwide golfers have caught up to American golfers in terms of production as a player is because they got rid of that small ball and they are all forced to play the big ball and they had to change their golf swings accordingly. That's really where the evolution of the golf swing took place. Equipment changes, golf course condition and golf course design changes and then along comes Tiger. I go, I circle back to the beginning. Now, there were some guys back in the day like Frank Strifacci,

who is the grandfather of our current US amateur champion. Right? And he would carry weights around, and he was one of the first ones to actually lift weights and play golf. Mike Austin was another guy, big, big long hitter. But it wasn't mainstream until Tiger came along. And people started seeing what Tiger could do with a golf club and a golf ball

and his workout ethic and all of a sudden fitness became, it came to the forefront in preparation for a golf tournament. And so now the golf swing changed again because fitness changed the body. So you can say that your body is part of your equipment, I suppose, but fitness and strengthening and becoming more flexible and better aerobic conditioning to keep your heart rate down. And all of those things Tiger brought along. And as a consequence, you know, guys were going to the gym at six o'clock at night rather than going to the bar.

And that's where the evolution of the golf swing has taken place and is now set up for what we have in the in the 2020s. Virtually everybody works out. Everybody's got custom made equipment. Now they got launched monitors to to maximize that equipment and make sure it's fit correctly for them. And it's becoming more science and less art. Is there is there more room for science in golf? Like how much more optimized and how much further can things get? You know, whenever you're in the current, it always feels like you're up against the

cutting edge of technology and that it can't get much better or much deeper. But do you see it? I mean, I don't see it stopping, but how much further can things get? I don't know that they can get much further along. I do really think that we're up against the edge, except for the fact that now what's happening, and this is one of the untold secrets about the evolution of our current equipment, in terms of golf clubs, in the early 90s, 80s.

I mean, it was rare when you saw a Nick Faldow who was six foot four come along and play well. Greg Norman was, I don't know what he was, 6'1, 6'8". Most of the players were 6'0 or less. Now you're hard pressed to find anybody that's not 6'0 over. And last week in the open we had a guy of 6'9. So the equipment is so much lighter, so much stronger that bigger people can be fit correctly to be able to play golf properly. Back in the day, you had George Archer, right?

Six foot five. But the clubs, the steel shafts were so heavy, you couldn't make them too long because they were unwieldy and you couldn't control them. So he had a scrunch six foot five down into five foot nine. And it's a consequence. He tore up his body. I don't know how many surgeries he had over the course of his career, but it had to be in double numbers for sure. Now you got guys six four six five six seven setting up to a guy to a golf ball and looking just like a guy that's five ten. So that's where I think bigger, stronger, faster is going to come from the athletes who are playing golf now because the equipment allows for that. So if you've got bigger, stronger, faster players playing your sport, you can't blame the golf ball for it going farther.

You've got an engine with a thousand horsepower instead of an engine with 350 horsepower. Cars are going to go faster with a thousand horsepower, isn't it? Yeah, and I think that's where the little bit of the confusion lies are, it's always been a great advantage in golf to hit the ball further than the next guy, right? It's always been that that's not new, right? It's just I would say when things changed into the 2000s, when the driver heads kept growing, kept growing, and I don't have the timeline specific on that. I mean, when we're in 1995,

we're not talking about 460 C.C. drivers, right? When the golf ball started spinning less and the driver heads got bigger, it made way more sense to be bigger, faster, stronger because the punishments were just not as strong for off center and offline hits when creating more speed as they would have been, say, in the mid 90s. So why I think a big reason why we're seeing weight, everything trending towards the speed,

speed, speed, speed, speed thing is that the punishment just, the risk isn't that big to swing really hard and fast at a club head that is that big. Bryson referenced it last week as we're recording this last week at the open saying, you know, the mishits are not flying right right now. I was like, whoa, like these guys are planning for mishits to be to be very accurate shots. And that that, that I think is contributing so heavily towards where things are trending. And I just, I wonder if that,

one, if you agree with that assessment, and two, if there's any way to put that toothpaste back in the tube. I kind of agree with that assessment. I mean, we've known for quite some time that the ball doesn't curve quite as much on mishits. They're blaming the ball for that, but in reality, I think it's the club head that's not making it curve so much.

I mean, I see plenty of 15 handicapped who've come for lessons who can really curve that golf ball. That can't even fight it, right? I don't blame the golf ball for that. That said, it's gonna be difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but remember, I said the evolution of the golf swing occurred That said, it's going to be difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But remember, I said the evolution of the golf swing occurred because of golf course design and golf course condition, correct?

Now you've added in, you've got Mark Brody and Stroke's gained. And now everybody has arbitrarily bought into this concept that the farther you can hit it and the closer you can get it to the green, the better you're going to score. Well, that's true given the design and the condition of some of these golf courses that the tour is playing right now. But you go over to Rural St. George's

and you saw where Bryce had hit it a couple of times and you couldn't even get it out of it. He's complaining that he couldn't get the ball to stop on the green while he was hitting it out of two feet of hay. If the golf course condition was such that example, don't graduate the rough from the edge of the fairway outward. I mean, you can, but graduate the rough from the tee to the green so that the closer you get to the green and the shorter the iron you're going to be using, the more penal the rough needs to be. You can't have three inches of rough from T to green

and have it be fair for everybody, right? The guy who hits it far that's going to have a huge advantage so he's going to continue to hit it farther. But if you know hitting it farther off line, farther and offline is going to be punitive, then you're going to rain back your swing. You don't have to worry about whether or not the technology can be put back in the toothpaste tube. Part of this whole explosion and power and whatnot has been lazy architecture, lousy golf course conditioning, and the fact that the tour doesn't

necessarily go to the best, most difficult golf courses in each venue, because they're so worried about infrastructure and a lot of other stuff that they take the best course available. They don't want to see guys embarrassed, weak, and weak out, so the condition of the golf course, and plus they don't want it to take six hours. So the condition of the golf course is not as difficult don't want it to take six hours. So the condition of the golf course is not as difficult as say a royal saint George's was. Yeah, that's, if anything, you know,

to take away from this first 30 minutes or so is how intertwined all of this is, right? So as soon as you say, you know, the golf course conditioning and all that, well, you're limited when it comes to golf course that you can choose from when the footprint and the infrastructure footprint of the tour is so big. That's something that I'm still kind of gaining appreciation for, like parking offsite, you know, trucks you need for all the food that comes in, all the television crew, all of the hospitality needed for the television

crew and the other media and all of this stuff is it's not a non-factor and it does eliminate a ton of golf courses. And then you have to find the golf courses whose memberships want to give up the golf course for a while. Now we're on, you know, step five of figuring this out. And architecture is way down this list and course conditions way down this list because you want uniform-ish conditioning week to week because that's what's written in the PGA tour player handbook. And it's just not as simple as, and I wish every golf course played like Royal St. George's of course, like that is the most interesting style of golf to watch. That's just not realistic in the Midwest in the middle of the summer or even a lot of the

coastal places in the US. And so then you end up with, you know, how do we challenge players? Well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to sink the bunkers. We're going to narrow the fairways, you know, and then it becomes this game of hitting it high long and golf ball that doesn't spin that much. Is that is that a good summary of a two minute summary of how we end up with what what it looks like today?

Yeah, everybody's looking for a silver bullet to solve this problem, right? But it isn't a silver bullet. This is death by a thousand cuts. Yep. And it's all of these little licks with the knife that are causing us to bleed out. You have to realize that going in.

You know, I mean, you can make golf courses difficult. I mean, colonial country club is an example of a golf course that I think plays fairly well, considering it's an old golf course, you know, it's barely 7,000 yards, same with the Hilton head, but the infrastructure surrounding those golf courses is insufficient. I mean, the TV trucks were on a street outside the golf course. Everything's jam packed in there because not because the golf course can't handle the tournament, but because the golf course property can't handle the infrastructure around the tournament. And why? Because you're charging sponsors a lot of money. So they got to bring in a lot of people. You got to have bleachers

and you got to have hospitality and you got to have, you got to have, you got to have. And so this has now become a Barnum and Bailey circus that picks up and goes for week to week. And it requires a fairly large footprint, certainly way larger footprint for infrastructure than you need for the golf course. Yeah, and there's not a lot of courses that were built in the 20s and 30s that, you know, I just have tons of lay-ons sitting around it that hasn't been developed over the years or you know

hasn't been needed to expand the golf course to make it a tour course at this point and it's complicated. It really is and that's where I don't want to say I'm losing hope, but I don't see things trending or reversing trend in a entertaining way, especially with rights fees going up. But what you're saying, golf used to be very profitable for CBS to now it may be being break even. With rights fees going up almost 100% into the next year, it certainly does not make me encourage that we're going to see less commercialization and golf going forward.

No, I mean, the only way you're going to get less commercialization and golf going forward is for people to buy a package. They're going to have to be willing to pay a pick a number, ten bucks a week to watch a CBS telecast that doesn't have commercials. Pay-per-view doesn't exactly grow the game either. So it's not just about the golf anymore. It hasn't been for quite some time. So going back to the mid 90, as we're talking about this, I feel like I'm watching now very, very souped up ad vehicles, right?

In 2021 when watching professional golf. If you're at a tournament in 1995, did it feel a lot more like you're watching a golf tournament? Does that question make sense? Oh yeah, no, it did. And I'll go back to the masters, right? In 95, 96, 96 was the famous masters tournament

that Faldon beat Norman. And back in the early 90s, or the masters was obviously one of the top two top three tournaments in the world. People can put it one, two, or three according to their own biases. But we would go and see these announcers, especially those who are professionals, were invited in to play their golf course on Sunday. So we get a feel for it. It was low key. We would play.

We would go put our greens. We would do all kinds of things. We felt like we were a part of the tournament. And when we went on the air on Saturday, we had pretty good insight as to what may or may not happen that day. Now, you're not allowed anywhere near the golf course. And that Sunday is now drive chip and put. And the women's amateur tournament ends on Saturday. And it's a much bigger, much more commercialized

venture. You look at what the master's was in the 80s and 90s. It was an exclusive event, an elite event that focused on 70, 80, maybe 90 players. Now you've got the Latin America Amateur to qualify, you've got the Asia Pacific Amateur to qualify, you've got all kinds of stuff. You look at the commercialization of the Masters and that's a pretty good insight into the commercialization of golf. I mean, they went and bought half a

downtown Augusta for infrastructure for parking, spent $25 million on a driving range. It used to be a parking lot. So it's completely changed now. And the masters make no mistake about it is a business. That's a pretty good snapshot of what's happened in the golf world worldwide. It was, but it's one of the few places though that that Business commercialization has not the viewer has not had to pay the price for that You know what I mean? They are still so adamant about and a tremendous viewership experience those parking lots are free The concessions prices are quite low. And I go back to the David Owen book, the famous book, The Making of the Masters, and reading about the television

negotiations between CBS and Augusta National in the 1950s about the back and force that went with like the long term vision of Clifford Roberts of not hitting people even back to the 50s of over commercialization of the product would not help the long-term health of the event and cutting edge of technology and expand like being a leader in how the product was presented is I believe what contributed so greatly to the masters just having an incredible boom whatever area you would define that as having a boom, but they have a leg up on on every PGA every golf event in the world. I think not in small part due to their approach to how the tournament was presented from a media

standpoint, right? Like they let media, like you said, that you got to play the golf course before the tournament. They always let media now play the Monday after the tournament. You know, they were bringing in writers back in the 30s, I believe, on trains and Grantland Rice was brought in to the tournament to cover it, to get the word out on it. And they have this enormous press building now

with that is the nicest of any press building in golf. And it's a circular thing, right? They have all this money now because the business has gotten so big, but their vision has always felt so long-term to me and everything I watch on the PGA Tour feels extremely short-term. I'm curious to get your reaction to any of that. Well, it goes back to what I said about Steve Jobs and the lost interview and understanding that you have to keep improving your product.

And I will say yes, the Masters has done an exceptionally good job with their layout of how they make money and spend money. And back in the day, and I don't know if this is true or not now, so I can't say that this is where it is now, but CBS would go down, have a meeting with the folks in Augusta, and they would propose a production cost, what it would cost CBS to put on the tournament. And I assume there was some haggling here and there, whatever, but they would come up with a figure, whatever it was. And that's what a Gustavational would pay CVS. And the four sponsors that they had for the one minute per hour

for each sponsor, they would take whatever that figure was divided by four, and that's what they would pay as a sponsor. And that was it. So the rights fees, as we say, were pretty low. You never made a profit. CBS never made a profit at the masters. But obviously, the masters was a very profitable commodity to have in the CBS portfolio.

So it gets back to, if the masters had charged CBS $100 million for the right to put on the tournament, it wouldn't be four minutes of commercial per hour. I can assure you that. It gets back to the rights fees that the networks are forced to pay in order to put on the PGA tour product. And the PGA tour is one giant advertising vehicle. They don't care about the quality of the viewer experience. The masters makes their money. CBS puts on the production. Now they have a world feed there as well.

But then they charge television rights for Japan, for Australia, for Argentina, for wherever, all these countries pay a rights fee to show the masters and then that adds up. They make a ton of money, obviously. Ticket sales are not exorbitant, price-wise. Obviously, as you said, food and beverages is minimalist, very cheap by today's standards for a major sporting event. So yeah, the masters expanded, like golf is expanded, but they did it correctly. They kept the patron and the viewer and their experience in mind when they decided they were gonna do this and not do that. I feel like a sucker sometimes watching the tour golf, you know, a whole three, four hour window,

and I never feel like my time spent watching the masters that do I feel like the Mark or the sucker. You know, somebody trying to sell me something. It's it's a golf tournament first and I know it's a huge huge huge business But like I said, I just it's different when the when the viewer doesn't have to pay the price There's a reason why it's so many people's favorite event to watch right has of course as a million factors to contribute the golf course It's amazing. It's you know the one of the most historic places in golf. It's one of the oldest golf tournaments now. And I just think that that parallel, I guess, you know, if we're talking about pre-tiger era to now, how has, how have the majors changed in general?

What majors have changed the most or what's something maybe we don't have appreciation for evolution- wise in major championships from pre-tiger to now. Well, I think the biggest thing that's changed with the majors is that they've had to step up with their purses. And again, let's, I'm going to take one step back again and understand that there are a lot of people who enjoy watching the European tour on television. Fewer commercials, a less cluttered telecast. You could say that the European tour

is the PGA tour of 1990, both in purses and in uncluttered viewing. So people like it, but they don't realize the reason they like it is because the players are playing for way less money. The TV rights fees are much less expensive than the PGA tour rights fees. And so they're allowed to be able to put on a telecast like that. In terms of the majors, look, golf has always been

late to the party with societal changes, you know, whether it's admitting blacks to the PGA tour, the PGA of America, or women members at certain golf clubs. Golf has always been late to the party and racing to catch up in social areas. And the US Open was viewed as a elitist blue blood Northeast country club tournament championship. And so they went through and now they try to democratize the US Open. So they started going to public golf courses like Aaron Hills and Tory Pines and whatever. They wanted to show the world that they really were interested in the small guy, not just the big fat cat. Now they're going away from that a little bit, going back to

some more traditional golf courses in the coming years. The PJ of America has gotten bigger for sure. They were at the forefront. You can like the golf course, you can not like the golf course, but by going to Louisville, Kentucky, virtually every PGA championships that they've had there has been a captivating competition. You know, you can say the golf course is what it is, but it's produced great tournaments, whether it was Tiger Woods and Bob May or Rory McElroy finishing in the dark. It's always been exciting. So they started trying to kind of emulate the masters in the sense that we're going to have it on our own golf course for X number of times per decade.

Is major championships and how they compare to regular PGA Tor events in terms of importance. How has that evolved over the last 30 years or so? Because as I see it there's a lot more big PGA Tor events, there's a lot, you know, the elevated events we have WGC's. It feels like we have so many more weeks per year that are trying really hard to tell you these are very important weeks in golf when maybe in the 90s we had four that were very clearly the biggest weeks. I wonder if you can kind of compare how that comparison has evolved over the years.

Well, I mean, again, I hate to beat a dead horse dead, but here I go. I mean, what are the five biggest events in professional golf in your opinion? Say the open US open PGA championship, the masters and the Ryder Cup. And how many of those does the PGA tour own zero? Okay. So in an attempt to compete with the big five, they started with the players championship and then they added in the the World Golf Championship events and they're trying to create their own majors as it were. But I think enough time has gone by now to know that especially the World Golf Championship events,

have really taken a back seat to what they were originally envisioned to be. I mean, the players championship is a good championship. I think that golf course has undergone more facelifts than Phyllis Diller or whatever, but it's a good golf course. It's a good test to golf. And if I may interject, they have done a tremendous job

passing along the benefits and the greatness of that golf tournament onto both people in attendance and the viewer. They have bigger television windows, they have less commercial interruption, they have more online viewing, the amphitheaters around the T-boxes and greens are designed for tournament golf.

Concession prices are still the same as what they would be at a normal PGA tour event. If we're comparing to the masters, but I feel that both watching that tournament and watching it in person that I feel like it's a big, big golf tournament. It's a golf course that identifies a specific champion. It's not too bomb and gougy and I walk away with good vibes after the players now. It's a little forced down our throats a little bit, but it is though. They're one event that they treat differently than the other ones.

And that's not that doesn't go unnoticed. No, and like I said before, the evolution of the golf swing and the controlling of bomb and gouge focuses around equipment golf course design and golf course condition. And the design of that golf course is in my opinion excellent in terms of allowing every single one of the 156 players that show up there to be able to take their style of play and compete to win. There's a mix of short straight hitters, big strong players. Tiger has ad dominated that tournament over the years. Golf Course design is integral to how what style of play the players use to try and win the championship? I think that works really well when you have a golf course designed for this championship at the headquarters of the PGA tour. But that's not, that's just not something

that, or is this a, is that's the future of golf that we have 40 plus designed stadiums for, for PGA tour golf around the country. And that's, that's, you know, that are this well designed to test the professionals or are we going to keep going to places where, you know, pro golf pops in for one week and the other 51 weeks of the year, it's either members or public that play it and that's really what it's designed for. Well, I think it's going to be a combination. I think we're leading more towards that.

I said, I said years ago and got rigged over the Coles for it that rather than the USGA going in and bastardizing golf courses by taking a 45 yard wide fairway, cutting it down to 24 yards and therefore having the fairway bunkers be 20 yards in the rough, they decide how they want to examine the players abilities, build a golf course that examines according to their standards and hold the tournament there. Have a US Open Golf Course in California, have a US Open Golf Course in wherever, Pine Hurst, and have an East Coast, West Coast, alternate, and you can build four golf courses at each venue, hold the US Amateurs there, the women's open, everything, and then make it open to the

public for the rest of the year to go challenge your golf game on the golf course that held the US or women's open or whatever. And I think that's going to happen with the PG of America. They're building their golf course in Plano, Texas, right? They got 36 holes there. I would imagine they're going to have the PGH championship there. Certainly, the Dallas tournament will be there. So I think we're going to see eventually that happening. I mean, let's remember this desire to protect all of these oligov courses, I think, is a straw man

argument. The first 20 or 30 back then, British opens were held at old press week. I don't see anybody be moaning the fact that press work hasn't had an open championship since 19 whatever. Evolution is a real thing and you have to evolve. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's maybe not so good. But I would love to see a public private venture between the PGA tour and some real estate developers or whomever, some municipalities build a facility for the next 50 years in a certain town or state or whatever. You know, I mean it's like band and dunes and cabinet links and cabinet cliffs and all these golf courses have proven if you build that they will come,

if it's good enough. And so you don't have to have it necessarily in a metropolitan area on a golf course that's become bastardized in order to rein in the current crop of players. One quick answer to this one. Do you feel like the gap between pro golf and amateur golf is getting bigger or smaller?

Probably getting bigger, but it's always been huge. It has been huge. I just, I find that the answer, like what you're talking about there with designing a golf course that, you know, other people are gonna play most of the year yet is appropriate to test the pros. That's getting harder and harder as time goes along. The bigger that gap gets between the two levels. I see. I disagree there. The standard answer for most people is, well, you've got to build a

bigger golf course. That's a bigger footprint. That's more climate change. That's more cost. That's more blah, blah, blah. The reality is that some of the best golf courses on the PGA tour, very few of them are played over 7,200 yards if you look at them. And the good golf courses were designed properly, challenged the golfers in a myriad of ways, and they're entertaining. Let's build the 8,000-yard golf course community because the golf balls going so far, they haven't had the right answer. I think that was lazy architecture to just make a big golf course because you got guys hitting it far. I don't disagree with that.

I think the exacerbation of the distance issue has been built the T's back. Throw the T's further back. Well, I was just going to make guys want to hit it even further and make the game honestly look like what it does, what it does today. But I find that it's incredibly, it gets harder and harder and more and more complicated and you have to dance closer and closer to the fairness line, which I do think exists in golf of you have to firm things up so much if the ball is going to go this far for some of these design factors to really matter. Because

otherwise if they're able to hit wedges in with it being anything less than very firm, the angles kind of stop mattering. And guys are going to just the challenge of so many golf shots is not really there when one guys can hit wedges 160 yards. So a 460 yard par four is not long anymore. And, you know, even if a really, really well designed, it's unrealistic, unless we're gonna go and redesign and rebuild all these golf courses, it's unrealistic

to expect a lot of repeat 420 yard par fours to be perfectly well designed and play the way they're intended to be designed condition wise, you know, when you have weather factors that are required there. You know what I mean? It's just so complicated when the ball is going to go this far. Yeah, but as well, and I go back, I think I mentioned this in an earlier podcast that Butler National, I thought was a great golf course, exceeding the difficult, but great golf course. And then they had a redo in the 90s. And Tom Fazio went in and I played and found myself

in a handful of fairway bunkers. And I was captured by the fact that every bunker I was in, it was 175 yards from the green. And I needed six iron to get there. I needed a seven iron to get over the lip. So it was, it was a half a shot penal. And if I was 100 yards from the green and needed a sandwich to get on the green, I needed a lob wedge to get out of the bunker.

And so that's the, the graduated bunkers toward the greens that penalize whatever club you were using from that distance. That's why I'm a huge proponent. I mean, someday John Deere is going to figure out a way to have a rough more that starts at two inches at 250 yards. And as you drive it closer to the green, it'll get up to eight inches,

50 yards from the green. This is where it gets circular though, because then we have tour rules on how high the rough can be because we don't want the players to get injured because they're the product and they're the ones that are basically setting the rules, right? Yeah, I mean, well, the tour has to realize that eventually I think people are going to get sick and tired of guys hitting at $350 and having carte blanche to knock it on the

green from wherever the hell they are. Would you agree with this? Okay. It's stripping out all the complications that come with this. If we're talking just from a simple fact of this, that the, would you agree with this statement, the ball doesn't need to go as far as it currently does. That can be driver head, that can be ball, whatever it is, the combination of whatever the factor, but guys don't need to be hitting it. The distance, they're currently hitting it for golf to be entertaining or whatever people think golf should be. The ball doesn't

need to go this far. Is that accurate in your mind? Again, you're looking for a silver bullet solution to the, to the, no, I want to, I want to, I want to unpack it from that answer, right? Not even thinking about solutions, right? Just, just from that answer, should the ball,

is it a good thing for the ball to go this far? I can't answer that. I can't answer that question, yes or no. It's just too complicated. It's not a fair question. It's like a senator with somebody in front of the committee and saying, yeah, I want a yes or no answer. Yes.

How do you world and world hunger? It's a lot more complicated. It is. I'll give you something to react to then there. I would say it is not a good thing for the ball to go this far for a myriad of reasons. I think one of we're starting out. And again, not looking to place blame, not looking to make any changes to it. Just let's just say, talk about this issue. So for starting out, the ball keeps going further by air, right? So that means you, what once made sense for a T-Box

to be right near green, now that T-Box has to go backwards. And now we're walking backwards only to cover that space with the ball in the air, right? Second thing, we can all agree that at some sense, there is a scale which makes the most sense. We can all disagree on what that scale is, but there is a scale where golf makes the most sense. We can all disagree on what that scale is, but there is a scale where golf makes the most sense, right? It doesn't make sense for the ball to go 500 yards

and to play 800 yard par fours, I think we can all agree. And it probably doesn't make that much sense for the ball to go 50 yards and to play 80 yard par fours, right? So there is a appropriate distance that the ball with the size of the hole and the size of the ball for this to all make sense. We don't play putt putt courses and we don't play a thousand yard holes. So why do we want to this and maybe it's not going to keep trending this way, but for so long the game has kept trending to let's let it go further and further and further and cover that distance by air.

Now to the point where honestly sometimes like I have trouble seeing where when I go to tournaments seeing where balls land, I think it is your perspective on what makes your eyes aren't even telling you that story anymore because the ball goes so far. And with ignoring all other the million complications with that, I think working from that can help lead to a solution of just just asking that simple question, like why are who is benefiting from it going this far? Because it's not golf courses. It's probably professional golfers and it's probably equipment makers. And is that the best thing for the game long term?

Well, you keep saying the game is if the PGA tour professional game is the game. I've said it over and over and over again. The game is not people who are paid to play golf. The game is the people who pay to play golf. And 95% of all golfers, that includes you, that includes me, that includes Mary, the 25 handicap, and Joe, the 15 handicap are playing teas that are too far back for how far they hit the ball to make golf enjoyable.

There's no two ways around it. So you can't give me the argument that the footprint of the golf course needs to get bigger and it's going to cost more money. Hell, people are playing from too far back as it stands right now in the golf courses we have. And we only play professional golf on whatever 40 golf courses a year, something like that. But would you agree that, sorry, would you agree though that, you know, if you have equipment, let's just say equipment A is 1990 equipment and equipment B is 2021 equipment, that I would play, if I'm Joe Schmoh off the street, I would play a different set of teas with equipment A than I would equipment B. So like the equipment change is offset, right?

It's, I'm not really actually gaining anything because I just moved back a tee, right? You see what I'm getting at? I don't see players at any club that I'm a member or play at, visit, whatever, that are looking for another set of teas to go back to. They're already too far back. I mean, where do you draw the line?

I mean, do you go back to Steel Shaff's and do you put a limit on, I'll tell you what I do understand now in retrospect, is that the powers to be, the RNA of the USGA, they never envision 6'5, 220 pound athletic studs swinging a golf club in 2022. Yeah. Swing in a golf club in 2022. Yeah When they set their standards and I'm sorry, but you got guys six five six six six seven Abled to generate a tremendous amount of force Whether it's with a deadlift or a golf club and and they're gonna hit them all farther. There's no two ways around it So do you roll it back for everybody to or you just say look you can't be more than six foot four to play golf?

You know do you do you put a heightened strength? Restriction on guys it's it's a very complicated Issue that doesn't have a simple solution can definitely definitely Agree with that going back here and we talked about the evolution of a lot of events i want to know uh... the evolution of the writer cup we touched on this a lot we did a deep dive podcast on the nineteen ninety one writer cup which i would point to that being one of the key uh... events that changed it i know uh... eighty seven i think change some things all there's it's hard to point at

one event that changed things but what can you tell us about the evolution of the writer cup and what you remember about it from maybe the 80s and 90s? Well, I mean, again, I'll go back earlier than that. And I go back to the 1.62 golf ball versus the 1.68 golf ball. When the 1.62 golf ball was eliminated, that's when Europeans in particular started to get better at golf. was eliminated, that's when Europeans in particular started to get better at golf. It took a while, right? Well, especially the guys that grew up playing only the one golf ball, right? That probably had to have an effect. Correct. And that gave birth to the Faldos and the Langeritz and the Sevis.

They started to be able to compete on a level playing field, right? A few of them started to come over and when they saw Sevy having success in America, they realized, hey, you know what, I can compete over there too. Eventually, it was Tony Jacqueline who became the captain and convinced the Europeans. He did everything in a first class way, right? He did everything for the European team that everything the Americans were doing for their team. Cashmere sweaters and and first class travel and and everything. And they started to believe and they started to become a team. They had the original pod system, sorry Paul Azinger, but you didn't have

the original pod system. The Europeans had it. The Spaniards playing together with other Spaniards. The English playing with other English. Their pods were countrywide, not personality wide. They started to believe, and then once that belief took over, and they won in 87, at Mirfield, the first time they won on foreign soil, it was all hands on deck. They now knew that they were equal. And belief that you can accomplish something is probably the most important thing to have without that belief, it's hard to do.

I mean, Roger Banister, no one believed you could run a sub four minute mile until Roger Banister did it. And then everybody believed you could run a sub four minute mile. Now look where they are now. And it's the same with the European golfers. They didn't never believe that they could compete here and there. Maybe win a match here and there. But then all of a sudden, when they won an American soil,

that was to be the turning point. And they started to believe, you know what? We got this now. Did the PGA of America have any idea what they had on their hands with the Ryder Cup? You know, how big it could be or, you know, was it always treated with the grand ore that it is currently treated with?

No, no, never, ever, never. I mean, as I said before, 1989 was the first time the PGA of America charged a rights fee to a television network to put on the Ryder Cup. That was the USA network, and that was $225,000 if I remember correctly, for the rights fee. Up until then, it was a time by on ABC television. Jeez. So in other words, the PGA of America paid for ABC to come out, do it, it edit it and they put it on the air in a time-buying

So that wasn't that long ago you're talking about the 90s, right? So when you look at when you look at the evolution of of the Ryder Cup that was the 90s was the The decade where it really exploded. I remember people were laughing at NBC were really exploded. I remember people were laughing at NBC because USA paid 225,000 for the 89 Ryder Cup and then I believe I may not have my numbers correct, but I believe NBC paid 10 million to the PGA of America for the next five Ryder Cups. Oh wow. It's probably a good deal by the end of that deal. Oh, no question. Absolutely no question. But everybody was laughing at NBC. It's probably a good deal by the end of that deal. Oh, no question.

Absolutely, no question. But everybody was laughing at NBC. It's not worth it. Look what it is today. What are some tournaments from the 90s, PGA tour events that no longer exist. It can be there for golf course purposes or just overall tournament vibe purposes that no longer exists that you hold fondly in your in your heart or in memory for any reason.

Well, I mean, it wasn't that long ago that the PGA tour, the West Coast swing was nothing, absolutely nothing. For all intents and purposes, the PGA tour started at Durural in Miami. And I remember a couple of years where, you know, the number one qualifier at Q-school was guaranteed to get into every tournament. And they had to add him to the field a couple of years at Dural because everybody was starting their year up at Dural.

Nobody went to Pebble, nobody went to Torrey Pines. A few people went to LA, the Australians and the Europeans. They came and they started their year at Duraal. So that's the most memorable for me in terms of how the tour has changed, where the West Coast now is a lot stronger. You could argue that the floor to swing isn't quite as strong as it used to be back then.

Yeah, it's funny looking at the 1990 PGA Tour season Wikipedia page. First of all, it's very fun to go and click on these events because you know, you click on the name, you're like, what is that event? And then the new name of it pops up, which I know you're a big fan of how the tour retroactively calls events, the, you know, the Charles Schwab challenge when, uh, dating back to the 1940s and 50s and stuff like that. But deraille, the, the highest purse in 1990 of any event prior to deraille was one million. And then you get the deraille and that purse was 1.4 million March 4th, uh, there at deraille, uh, 1990.

Yeah. And now that's, that's absolutely rock bottom minimum for a winner. Yeah, seven million per se I think get give 1.08, but like, yeah, any big event of any kind gets at least 1.4 million to a winner. That was more than shoot. That was more than the masters that year. The masters was only 1.25 million that year. British Open wasn't even a million dollar person in 1990. And more a cow will one over two million dollars for winning it.

But it's, it's wow. Yeah, the Western Open obviously becomes the BMW. But then I click on the the Shearson, Laman Hutton open. Do you know what that one becomes? That's Tory fine. Isn't it? Yeah. That's the, that becomes the farmers by way of the Buick invitation on the and hyzer bush classic becomes the mickalo but

Kingsville and then that one goes away. The bank of Boston classic becomes the New England classic. Then that one goes away. The Buick open in Michigan span from 81 to 2009 without a name change the entire time. That seems like an event that you know it's had to be tough. When that one went away that had to be kind of jarring. Was it not? Oh yeah, I mean, there's there's lots of them, you know, not going to Flip Michigan. You know, you can say what you want. There's a lot of jokes about Flip Michigan, but we enjoyed that tournament a lot. You had the, was it Bell South in Atlanta, is that right? Yeah, that's that's gone away. I suppose the the golf in Chicago. I remember the old Centel open at Butler National and that morphed into the

The public golf course in Chicago, but having an annual stop in Chicago was was big. Yeah, it's changed a lot and it's changed largely because of was big. Yeah, it's changed a lot and it's changed largely because of money. And you know, you can go back, you're going to go back and also remember the international in Castle Pines, where that went away because Tiger wouldn't play in it. And Tiger was the end all be all. And when the rights fees went up and the tournament became more and more expensive to put on, with no tiger playing. And it became a liability for the folks who cast a pie. So they just said, see you. Geez. Yeah, I didn't think about the effect Tiger would have had on tournament city

wouldn't play and how those just automatically got got separated out into probably a totally different category, huh? Oh, no question. Yeah. And so people were being forced to play, forced to pay, quote unquote, tiger fees for a tournament where a tiger would never appear. And it became problematic for them to make ends meet. So that there's the, there's the beginnings of the turnover in the tournaments that we had in the early 90s, don't we have now?

This is incredibly difficult and unanswerable question, but what would you say that tiger impact would be on one certain event in terms of television ratings and in person attendance and everything that made it worthwhile for a sponsor if you were able to put a dollar on dollar amount on what it meant to have tiger at your event that you sponsored versus not have him. What would your estimate be? Oh boy. Well, that's two questions actually. I mean, having tiger there would virtually assure you of a sell out of tickets, sell out of sponsorships, and you wouldn't have to worry about going out and beating the bushes to get your income. I mean, when he had the issues in Scottsdale in Phoenix and didn't come back,

the Thunderbirds had a really work hard to get the people to come back out and endorse the tournament knowing full well that Tiger wasn't going to play there again. But when he played there, it was out of this world. You can make a case that Tiger winning the Masters in 97 and going all the way up until 2019, he elevated the status of the Masters. I guess I hadn't really thought of it that way. You know, a black man winning that tournament becoming arguably the most visible golfer or athlete in the world, let alone golfer. I think he brought the masters out of the dark ages into the current times and they took the mantle and ran with it.

Yeah, gosh, this, again, we could probably do a whole deep dive on just Tigers impact. And I know we've touched on it here and there within this episode, but it really will, golf will never ever ever ever be the same thanks to in no small part to that guy and what he brought to it. So like you said, some for better or some for worse.

I mean, definitely for the better of all professional golfers out there, I'd say his tree created, he created more professional golf careers than anyone ever. Right? I mean, it just became much more economical to be a pro golfer, not even at the PGA tour level. Well, I mean, it even goes past that. I mean, obviously every guy that plays professional golf today ought to be thankful to Tiger

for the amount of money they're playing for. That goes without saying. But there are a lot of other things involved, but there are a lot of teachers couldn't really make a living. And then all of a sudden, when tour players started to have teams of trainers, physical trainers, swing trainers, and so on and so forth, they created an industry and teaching. They created an industry in fitness.

Tigers reach has been very wide and very broad across the spectrum of the game. A golf. There's absolutely zero chance you and I would be having this conversation right here right now. If it was not for Tiger Woods, no, none. It, uh, I would not have a career at golf. I could effectively say and, uh, who knows. See, there are some things that, like I said, there are some things about Tiger that are

good and there are some things that are bad. That is well played by Fred. We're going to get you out of there on that one. We're going to enjoy a high note like George Constanza but thanks again so much for spending some time with us chatting with us and it wouldn't be a podcast with you if I didn't just spill some water like much like I did in the very first one. Thanks again for joining me. I hope to have you back sometime. Cheers.

Thank you, sir. Take care. Be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most.