No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 493: SGL/PGL Developments

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

There were some developments this past week, as Greg Norman was announced as the commissioner of the new event series. We chat through everything we know, everything we've heard behind the scenes, the pros and cons, developments at the PGL, and a ton 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. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast, Sali here, DJ Pied to my left. Hello, Pied Man. Hello, Sali.

How are you? I am wonderful. TC is here. Hello, TC. Good afternoon. Hello, Sali. Congrats to your mountaineers. Oh, big win, big home win.

We have a lot of talk. We're actually recording this podcast a little bit early. So early in fact that our copy here from, from DraftKings is telling us that the fall classic is upon us, the DraftKings Sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the 2021 World Series has a no brainer offer you have to take a swing at.

Now this, we had Game Five is tonight and if the Braves win this thing, then this, this copy will not let me, let me stop it. That's not gonna have it. I grew up as a Braves fan. I've been to probably 13, 15 World Series games. I think they've won one, maybe two. I can just assure you that the Braves are not going to. And draft Kings have saved the same thing because they're telling you that they're,

you're going to have opportunities to play game six and maybe game seven. New customers can bet one dollar on any world series game and win $100 in free bets. If either team gets a hit, I don't expect that we would see a double no hitter, but you know, I don't know.

I don't know what they say. DK is calling, is calling some stuff for you. I'd be happy to lose my dollar if that was the case. Well, they could, it's impossible to have a double no-hitter. Well, they'd have to play. Eventually, they'd have to be. Or they could score. Or they could score.

Yeah, you could score. You can also do same game parlays. You can combine multiple bets from the same game for bigger payouts on the DraftKing Sportsbook. The more legs you add, the more money you can win. DraftKings is safe, secure, and reliable. Best of all, you can deposit them and draw your cash from whatever you want.

So, download the DraftKing Sportsbook app now. Use, use promo code NAU just bet $1 on any World Series game and win $100 in free bets. If either team gets a hit, that's promo code NAU with the Draftking Sportsbook. An official sports betting partner of the 2021 World Series must be 21 or older New Jersey, Indiana or Pennsylvania, only new customers, only minimum $5 deposit and $1 wage are required. One per customer or a chicken supply is eDraftking.com slash sportsbook for details Gamming problem called 1,800 gambler. Majorly baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Majorly Baseball Visit MLB.com. Huge. Shout out to Rob Maynford for signing off on that.

We are going to preface everything we talk about about a million times, but the first thing we're going to say is it is 11.39 a.m. on Sunday. We're going early here. The Butterfield is currently being played. We're going to talk about down the back half. Butterfield. We're watching. Literally maybe Laplady said it. Yeah. We are watching it here as we record, but the majority of this show, if not the whole show,

is going to be about some developments that happened in the world of golf this past week. It's going to be what did we know and when did we know it here today? Talking about SGL, Saudi, Golf League, Live Underpar, Golf, all kinds of developments. We're going to talk to some PGL, it's got some irons in the fire, there are things are moving there. But wait, DJ, I thought they were the same thing. Saadi, that's a great question, man, they're not the same thing. And we're going to get into, we're going to get into why a couple of things to preface,

I think here. Number one, no huge reveals in this podcast. Let's just get out in front of that. I don't want someone, this is probably going to be an eight hour podcast. I don't want somebody to get to the end and be like, you didn't tell me that, you know, so and so is jumping next week. That's not going to happen. There's a lot of known unknowns.

A lot of known unknowns. Shout out to Rummy. There's a lot of, you know, we can make our best guesses on which players we think may jump ship if players do jump ship, but we're not going to have any of those out here. So let's, let's just get out in front of that. There is a very much a, there is so much smoke out there in the smoke is legitimate. Yeah. It does not mean that the, the fire is definitive. I will say it could be white smoke, could be black, could be green smoke. And I think we're not prejudiced against any kind of smoke in this house. I think we can say definitively that there is one man that will be jumping ship, Mr.

Coker. Jason Coker. And Jimmy Cly, we're putting that in the joke category of everything that we're going to talk about today. Well, if you're Jason Coker, I can someone offer you $20 million to go play golf. I would say you take it, but that's neither here nor there. Number two, I wanted to get down in front of this too. I think we're going to try to keep them moralizing to practical use, if that makes sense. I think there's been a lot of, I've been very, I don't know, frustrated as the right word, but I've just heard so much stuff about this behind the scenes and, you know, when you really start extrapolating out like what we're actually talking about here, which is that maybe or maybe not some

of the best players in the world are sitting in a room talking about maybe or maybe not leaving the PJ tour and an upstart league trying to basically upend pro golf over the next 10 years. It's driven me to a point of that's very much like, why the fuck is everybody not talking about this? This is insane. In a serious fashion. In a serious fashion. And listen, nobody gets off more jokes and gifs

and memes and all that stuff, but it has gotten very tiresome that the only dialogue around this is just like, oh, they're holding their bones on, ready? Which of course, of course. He looked at TC as he said that. But what I will say is like, think even even we have spent the last seven days

Talking to agents talking to top 50 top 30 top 20 players in the world about what they're thinking What's going on? What are they hearing what's who's committed? Who's not committed like talking to agents talking to organizers of these things like I feel very very confident confident without, you know, sounding like a tool or fluffin' ourselves too much that we've put in a lot of work here for this eight-hour podcast that we're about to do. And I feel very confident we know as much or more than most media outlets about this topic.

And I feel pumped that we're actually giving it the due time to talk about it here, because I think it's wildly important. And we're gonna do our best to identify what the facts are and what the general speculation is between the two. And it is interesting because the more strings you pull, the more like the announcements that came out this week, the train is leaving the station on the Saudi Gulf, like the super Gulf, whatever you want to call it.

They are moving ahead. It might be one car on the train. It might be six cars on the train, but there is a train and it's leaving us. There is a train. They made an announcement this week. We'll talk about that. We'll go through all of that. Who is aboard that train is still a giant question mark.

So like, let's lay out the, well, let's just go right into it, laying out the facts that we learned this week or what we know about the SGL as it is now. I think it's technically SLG, the super league golf was originally how it was announced. I always have it as SGL for points, you know, for the facts. So this podcast, we'll call it the SGL, but starting now we'll use facts.

The first thing to talk about and what really kicked all this off, I mean, we were talking about on the podcast a lot last week like, hey, buckle up, like some stuff's, some stuff's about to go down. And one of the things that apparently went down this week was an embargoed media, I don't know what you call it, kind of like a press conference or press meeting in New York. A junket?

A junket? Yeah, sure. I like that. Like a super bowl media day of, just, well, we're not going to moralize. But apparently but the, uh, apparently in in New York, there was a meeting this week with some handpicked media outlets. A lot of people were very loud to beat their chest about not being invited, which is always sick because like golf week, I think, was the one that, uh, reported the news that we'll get to next, but they were very like, hey, we've been critical about these Saudi golf endeavors endeavors in the past and we were very much not invited this meeting golf channel same boat I don't know if golf digest was there or not If we were reading the tea leaves it seemed like some stuff from golf.com golf magazine came out after the embargo

Golf.com golf.com TZs taken to call like that as many people are calling that one red like Bamberger was being Like held hostage with a gun Do you see my key was great? Yeah smiling through through good a teeth a little bit in that piece But the news that golf week did break was that we have apparently an announcement of a 10 event series Which would be part of the Asian tours larger? 25th event season schedule so this is all backed by the PIF, the public investment fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

And it's all being put on by a company called Liv Gulf, Liv underpart golf investments. We're sticking to the facts here. No joke. Right. No joke. Right. No jokes. This is not funny. Uh, they are going to be headed up by CEO by the name of Gregory Norman, an Australian guy. And the CMO is Joe R. Curie. You used to play some golf. Again, that's a joke. Cate Greg. Greg Norman is very much the CEO. Greg Norman is very much in. So he is stepping aside from his Greg Norman Enterprises, Greg Norman Company, Shark Enterprises, whatever it's called,

to focus on this 100% Bob Herrig of, VSPN, reported that he has signed on for a four to seven year commitment to basically run this 10 event series. Do we need to unpack anything from that? I think event series is no worthy. It is not a league. It is a part of the Asian tour, a big question mark within all of this has been how the official World Golf

rankings gonna work. How does it work if you, you know, is this involved breaking off from the PGA tour? Do you get banned from the PGA tour for playing in this event series as part of the Asian tour, which is the Asian tour, as part of the official World Golf Ranking. You know, the whole board, the way the OWG are board works is a whole different conversation. But I do find it interesting that this is engulfed within the Asian tour. I think would make it really hard in my mind for the tour to go after people that played in this.

It was a totally agree. It was a jitsu move from them. This was a very... The investment in the Asian tour was what? $200 million of Earth. Well, that's what they... That's what they... Yes, exactly.

Is that separate or is that the same? Because I read that as separate. I mean, they're also doing $200 million to prop up a bunch of Asian tour events and make those bigger. I agree because if you do, we're talking 10 events, 10 year, 100 events, $200 million is not the kind of money

we're talking about. We're not talking about $2 million per event of this event series. So $200 million, I wouldn't call it a bribe. That's not the word I'm looking for, but it's very much of like, hey, here's the money, yo, we got to go do this series as well. And I think the Asian tours notoriously been pretty mired and kind of left behind with, you know, all the growth of the PJ tour and the European tour and a lot of the stuff they've

done together and obviously a massive potential growth spot in the world of golf. That's why you've seen so many PJ Tours events and European Tours events kind of try to get a foothold in certain Asian markets. And so it's just, it's very, very interesting, like you said, that partnering with the Asian Tours a massive, massive significant part of this. And I don't know if there is a name for the event series,

but if I were to name it, it would be the, and I took that personally to it. And why do you say that? Because we have one thing being, again, a clarifying point on this, that the Saudi Gulf League is different than the Premier Gulf League. We started talking about the Premier Gulf League

almost two years ago on this show. Part of the money allegedly or confirmed, I'm not even positive, maybe five to 10% of the money that came with the PGL was coming from this, you know, the Sovereign Well Fund of Saudi Arabia. A lot of people portrayed that as all of the money coming from that. The messaging was very unclear on that, but the Premier Gulf League guys either took the initiative to divest from that to say, all right, we got no more Saudi money.

That wasn't even a big part of it. You guys, that was a storyline. We don't want the Saudi money anyways. Let's go do our thing. And the Saudis said, and I took that personally, and allegedly, according to sources within the PGL, say they 100% stole our idea. This is a totally separate league

that they went off, event series league, whatever you want to call it, went off and started with their money. They took their money and went and just tried to copy it, basically, which is muddydied the waters greatly because PGL, which we're gonna talk about in the back end, has seemingly gone to the back burner, which we'll, again, we'll discuss.

So that's taken to personally one. Yeah, I was gonna say, talk to me about taking a personally number two. I don't know if we're going to that one yet, but the next one's Greg Norman. That's what I was talking about. Greg Norman, who's talking about number three, like, tried to start a world tour in 1994

and was basically thwarted by the PGA tour and Tim Finchham and Arnold Palmer. And I admittedly need like a full background on that whole situation, but he is now the CEO of this breakaway league slash event series. I think the gist of it was, Norman was not pumped about the minimum number of events that he had to play to be a PJ Torn member because what he was saying was, listen, if I can

play X number of events and keep my card and do my thing, why do I need to play, you know, this minimum because that's times of the year where I could be traveling around the world and making more money through appearance fees and all of Australia. Yeah, exactly all of Australia. Yeah, exactly. All of this stuff. And so he was trying, and this is probably a bad recap of this, and somebody who covered this much more extensively can probably give you a better breakdown. But yeah, he tried to get a very similar thing. I think Jason Sobel tweeted, it was really funny to see two headlines, like 25, 27 years

apart or whatever, like Norman to head up World Tour. And it's just really funny how that's just been on the back burner. I obviously in his mind for a really, really long time. Let's stick on Greg Norman for a second. What does the announcement of him joining this mean? Why do you think they did it? And does this have any credibility with players? Does it seem like something that's going to help attract players? What do you guys think on that?

I think it's detrimental on the player front. Like the players seem like they hate Normani. He's a cartoon character, right? It does not. I, it's, yeah, from some of the conversations we had this past week, I don't think, again, we haven't gotten to the Trump part yet, but we're talking about at minimum,

regardless of what you stick to all the facts. Well, I'm just saying like, but we're talking about at minimum, regardless of what you stick to all the facts. Well, I'm just saying like, if we're talking about does this give you a gravitas or anything like Saudi Arabia money, Greg Norman Trump, the chances that that is not polarizing some, like the amount of the way you gotta weave through it to be like, oh yeah, that's what I stand for right there. It thins the population.

It does. It really does. So, to answer your question on the Greg Norman thing, I don't think it helps. Now, I think, again, we're talking about this SGL thing, the Train Leaving the Station. They're adamant that it's like, here's the event series, here's when it starts, here's our guy, like this is a real thing, we have a commissioner, and we are going. And I think for their purposes, a big name to run it is their guy, like this is a real thing, we have a commissioner, and we are going. And I think for their purposes, a big name to run it is their goal, right?

Because, again, the trains leaving, but they don't have as far as I can tell, anyone confirmed that has bought a ticket on this train or has been gifted a ticket. Well, and I think, so there's credibility from the, in the public eye. Yes. But maybe not in the stakeholders' eyes.

But, you know, they need, like they needed action, right? Whereas I think the PGO, which we'll get to, you know, is more, we're kind of working behind the scenes to, you know, do this stuff. But basically the SGL is like, hey, we want to make this, we're going to set all this stuff up and then show you that, you know, maybe year one, nobody shows up, but we're still going to do it.

And I want to point out again, we know it's not called the SGL, but we're just going to keep saying that. That's fine. I just want this, this kind of, I don't know if you guys have ever seen that meme where there's like two rabbits and they are holding care, like the, there's a carrot growing out of the ground. And one of the rabbits has enormous greenery on the top of his carrot and he's boastfully standing next to it. And then the other guy is kind of sheepishly standing there because the greenery that's above the ground is very small, but the carrot under the ground is enormous. That's what the SGL versus the PGL kind of feels like to me, right?

It feels like it's kind of a Theranos vibe of like, you know, we are, we're leaving the station, we're going. And I don't know if there's anything in the back And I don't know if there's anything in the back. I don't know if there's horses in the back, but it might suck, but we're doing it. We are doing it. And I think, again, I think that's important to kind of keep, keep in mind here, because I think we're going to get a lot of PR, a lot of messaging from this league and like, do talking to agents, players and everyone's just kind of like, yeah, dude, I don't know who's playing

in this. Like, it's, it's not like everyone's just kind of like, yeah dude, I don't know who's playing in this. Like, it's not like it's just sitting there secretly, everyone's agreed to go. It's not there yet. But on some level, like you've got guys like, let's say like a jazz, shenanin, and a wonton, or whatever, like, like, he could make, like a guy like that who's kind of a, you know, top 100 guy in the world,

but really doesn't have any foothold in the US or like some of these world guys could go and make like, oodles of money. 100% yeah. And all right. So let's get back to that because that's a very important, that's a very important point that I want to talk about more. Let's get through all the, all the facts here. So you mentioned Trump a couple times.

Again, we're sticking to the facts here. What do we know? When did we know it reported by noLangup.com the golf blog. No laying it up. It's a great story. That was the last time we talked about Trump. I was going to say last time we got the insight and tell that Rory had played with Trump. We were the first to report that and it made CNN. It made the tonight show. It made everywhere. And they called us the golf blog no laying it up. and it made CNN, it made the tonight show, it made everywhere, and they called us the golf blog, No Laying It Up. I see Anderson Cooper on TV.

According to the golf blog, No Laying It Up. And that was the first retraction or clarification that the White House made. Exactly. That's a whole separate story. So what did we find out this week? We found out that at least one Trump property, which is Bedminster was a site visit was made this past week planning a August 2022 event at Bedminster also not far away and I'm directly in conflict with the FedEx cop.

I even heard they were trying to have an event December 2021. Like I don't know if that's included in this 10 event schedule, but like they are pushing for one. It would be tough there. Also other Trump properties rumored to be reported to be considered are Dubai and Trump turnberry. Also heard separately, like some people talking about Dorao that was not originally within the source that passed along this information, but yes, it seems like Act three of the, and I took that personally for Trump losing his 27, sorry, the 2022 PGA championship at Bedminster

for him losing the termberry falling out of the road for D'arral, you know, going, falling off the PGA tourist schedule that he wanted to be involved with this golf league. In favor of group hostelinas. Yeah, exactly, exactly, trying to improve. Next goes in. They're standing in the world lead stage.

So in my mind, this helps, this does help paint the picture for like how real this event series is gonna be. Like the events sound like they are going to be played. Figuring out who the hell is gonna be playing in them is the next frontier and that's where we will be very up front that it is all speculation. And it seems like based on all sources that we've spoken with that there is a ton of

pitting players against each other. I don't know if we want to talk about that now, if we want to stick to facts for now, but it seems like a lot of telling people like, hey, so and so's in. All right. Well, actually, he's really not going around to a bunch of different players. Well, it sounds like a lot of like, so and so took a meeting. Like, so they're definitely in.

Right. Exactly. I mean, and it's like, oh, we had a meeting with X. So like, he's, I mean, that sounds like Xander Shoffley. That's not what I meant. We had a meeting with X player, like, he's, you know, so he's definitely in. Yeah.

And yeah, I don't think that's the case. Right. Dude, is there anything we can speculate on? Like, who, what types of players might be a good fit who who could be whose ears are parking up on this kind of stuff? I think a it seems like the guys that are like were like they're their international players. They play Euro tour or Asian tour and or PGA tour like but they're not like them going to this wouldn't sink their career per se. I think for me and they're like three buckets, right?

Like the big, like the, and then I think the second bucket is the big, big names that are kind of past the pros. Yeah, I think aging superstars is one, and I think this is totally hypothetical. I'm not reporting any of these people to be jumping, but I think in that bucket you would put your, you know, a lot of the people we saw, like requesting releases for the Saudi international and we'll get to that, but I think that's your, like, film Nicholson obviously is kind

of the most rumored name, I think that's not breaking any news that's, you hear that kind of from everybody. I think Stenson, I think Adam Scott, I think Justin Rose, I think like some of those guys that are like, hey, I've done pretty much everything on the PJ tour and you're going to give me I've done pretty much everything on the PJ tour and you're gonna give me $20, $30, $50 million to go play this event series for three years. Like hell yeah, I'm in. And I wanna be very clear that as of October 31st, remember recording this, we can almost certainly report

that no one has signed on to this. None of those guys have committed, but those are the names you keep hearing as being interested. And again, I think like the league is taking those guys and going to Bryson and going to DJ and going to Brooks and saying, we got these guys, are you in and then their feedback is like, well, if he does it, I'll do it.

They're like, okay, well, he's doing it. It's okay, so will you do it? Like, I don't know. Is he really actually doing it? And that's where it honestly seems where everything is sitting right now. It seems like a house of cards both ways, right? Where it's like a house of cards in that if you do get

critical mass to jump, then all of a sudden it becomes a very interesting conversation where it's like, holy shit, if they have this set of players and they start to get a foothold and they start to get momentum, then all of a sudden it's like, what if they sign like these new, up and coming stars? What if they head off? Right, yeah, sorry up and coming stars? What if they head off?

Right. Yeah, sorry. And I think we can get to that in a second. But let me head off a couple more things. One, I think the big massive question mark with a lot of the Saudi stuff is what happens with the Saudi international, which is their event that's taken place for three years now in Saudi Arabia. And as far as the release outlines,

that will now become the flagship event of the Asian tour, which I'm sure the player's championship and the Wentworth event love being, using that language to kind of put that on the same level. But as you call it the Asian players, that would go well, I'm sure. The BMW Asian players, GIP, the Saudi masters. And then this was reported a couple of weeks ago now, but eight players have requested a

release to play in the Saudi international. Solid. Why is that a big deal? Because the PGA tour has said they will not grant releases for us. And I don't know if that was before joining the Asian tour Asian tour? No, it was like how I understand it. Strategic Alliance between the US and European tour. Part of that alliance was like, hey, you've got to drop Saudi. Like you can no longer sanction that event. European did that. European tour did that.

And I took that personally. They went to the Asian tour that whole, that's my understanding of this sort of operations. Which I think a very interesting question that that brings up is, can't like do Euro-Tor players have to get releases? To go to the Saudi. Yeah, let's say they're not PGA-Tor players.

They're only, they're like a, you know, I'm trying to think just a Euro-Tor only guy, like a Eddie Pepperel, like would he have to get a release to go from the European tour? That's a good question. I would assume yes, that would be my guess. Well, I think it used to be, I mean, it used to be co-sanctioned, right, with the European tour. That's a good question. I would assume yes, that would be my guess. Well, I think it used to be, I mean, it used to be co-sanctioned, right,

with the European tour. And now that it's not anymore, I would assume they do. Okay, but I don't know. But those eight players, just for those keeping score at home, Dustin Johnson, Graham McDowell, those two players have won the three iterations of this tournament, I believe.

Abe Answer, kind of a surprising one. Lee Westwood, I forgot to mention him, but it maybe put him in that aging superstar bucket. Tommy Fleetwood, a little curious how I feel about that one. No moralizing, we'll save that for later. Henrik Stenson, Kevin Naught is kind of whatever. And Jason Kochrack, who is, I believe in Ambassador for Gulf South. Yes. Very cool. And then the last bit of news, I think, worth, work.

Cool. The last bit of news, I think, worth reporting was just, and this is pretty non-specific, but just, there was a mention in the press release about several high-profile, C-suite level executives being hired by this league. Only one that we've heard the names aren't, you know, they don't super matter, but I heard, like, a name like Ron Cross is a guy who used to work for both Augusta National, I used to work for the PJ Tour in the commissioners office. He's like a very, you know, lack of a better term, like a very serious guy.

Real deal. Like a fixer. Yeah, just kind of like a very special project. Like a very legitimate executive, right? And I think that seeing... Like Greg Norman's not a very legitimate executive. Like if we're being totally honest here, it's a bunch of like fucking cartoon characters involved in this thing so far. Like you said about Norman, it's just like this cartoonishly, I won't say evil, that's not the word I'm going to use. But it's just like...

It's a side show. It's a total side show. And then so just see like, legitimate executives get involved is I think no worthy. But also he's a guy that got let go by the tour and which I don't know to leave and make a bunch of money and how. Don't know the details of that. And the other guy we heard too is slugger. Yeah.

Well, I was going to keep that one up to sleeve. I don't know how confirmed that is, but yeah, definitely heard. I've heard that from more than one source. Slugger White dozens of people. Just talking about cartoon characters. And I just want to be clear on the Norman front. Like of course, Norman has been, I would say very successful in his off course ventures.

And has been a very successful businessman, but I say like executive, like running a world tour, he does not have that experience, right? Right. So Ron Cross fills that, I think fills that void, I think to that point, right? I mean, so that Ron Cross fills that, I think fills that void, I think, to that point. Put more validity behind this. I think so.

I think the, you know, the Saudis should be concerned if they're bringing in sluggard to kind of, because I guess sluggard and Norman go way back. You know, sluggard's not exactly imposing Sharia law out the door. You know, he's not exactly very strict. Well, now he's got a new rulebook behind him. He can enforce.

He doesn't work for the players anymore. So all of that's, I think, kind of, did we miss anything? I think that's kind of all the news that's come out, everything that we know about the SGL or whatever they'll end up calling it. But I think what makes it really interesting to me is we're kind of in a bit of a face off now just between all the money, all the people who have spent their entire lives

kind of proving like money rules everything. If I have money, I can do whatever I want. And on the other side of the chasm is all these players who haven't jumped yet, right? And so it's just going to be really fascinating to see all these people saying like, I can buy anything I want versus these players who have to sign on, right? To some extent. And I think there's a conversation to be had and maybe we have that now about what the

long term effects of something like this can be and what it looks like 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, if they have the investment to keep doing it because I think there's something very interesting about this idea of someone brought up on Twitter earlier this week, like Victor Hoveland, if we're shifting all this stuff back three years, is this something Victor Hoveland would have signed up for? And when you think about it that way, it kind of makes your head spin a little bit,

just about, hey Victor, you know, congratulations, you just won the USM, you've made eight cuts on the PGA tour. Would you like to go grind in Columbus and Boise and all these places to try to get your corn fairy card? Or would you like to have $20 million to come play our 10 events? What would you prefer? By the way, your 10 events, you can earn OWGR points and work your way into the majors probably much faster.

And win another 15 to 20 million playing events too. Where I think that's something where I think, because some of this boils down to agency stuff too, right? Where you've got guys at like the Wasserman guys, those are the guys that I've constantly heard that like the Saudis are very, very keen on, like, just putting out their Ricky Fowler. Like they've said, like, hey, we want Ricky Fowler. Ricky's interested in it. Like, you know, I don't know what the discussions have been, but for a guy like Ricky who's,

you know, in his mid 30s now, or how old's Ricky? 32, 33? Probably 30. Yeah. Yeah, 33. About to start a family, like, for him to get, let's's say let's say they gave Ricky $100 $150 million and Ricky You know can basically ride off into this. I'm so much money rushing that off. Yeah, totally so much money And then you know in like and then like I've heard that Finau

J. Day and Havlinder kind of their other like big big target Immediate targets. So I think what again what gets really interesting I think I win a lot of this stuff was first being talked about, I think I was probably very in the camp of like, and you gotta remember this was all before the car accident and before a lot of other stuff, but it was very like, well, if they don't get tiger,

like it's over, nobody's gonna care, it's gonna be totally, you know, no juice, it's gonna all be fake. And then when I, the more I start thinking about it, the more that 10 year investment becomes very interesting to me, right? Where it's like, maybe they're not trying to have a big, massive, critical mass right away. Maybe it's like, hey, if we can get Phil and Stenson and Rose and Adam Scott and then Philip the rest of the field with a bunch of, you know, either European tour,

journeyman or these people who are like, yeah, cool. I'll sign up and take the money. I started going to Cornfairy tour. Then I think it can, it almost feels like then it chips away at a, especially if it's a league built around being an entertainment product, especially if it's, you know what I mean? Let's, at this point, I think it's worth noting just like,

what is the goal of this league, right? And it's, I don't think in any way is it to be like financially solvent, right? And I don't think in any way is it to be like financially solvent, right? It is a burning through, noodles and noodles and noodles of cash, which they have to do with their goal is, which is sports washing, a human's rights record.

That's like the goal of what they're doing. And also, I think to, like I think they do legitimately want to be a tourist destination, like who wants to go to Saudi Arabia for vacation? That's beyond me. But like, if you think about- In 20 years, you should be.

Dubai, I've never heard about that in my experience. Like 20 or 30 years past, I mean, think about Dubai and Abu Dhabi, like who would have thought those places? So, yeah, I mean, Jack's vision for the Kadea, that golf.com has reported extensively on. I know they're building a ton of golf courses. So some of this is to support the investments that they're already making, but clearly it's, you know, like, so some of it is diversifying their economy, but also a large portion of it is

just like, hey, let's shift the narrative around some of these. Exactly. So it's not to do, like, what, what, what I think brought us in on the PGL side of like a brand new vision for how golf is to be displayed to golf fans and all that note. This is like, to be honest, it sounds like the PGA toilet bit way worse for golf fans. It doesn't, I don't know who's broadcasting in this, we can talk about that. I don't know what the benefits really are for golf fans, but I don't think that's the point.

So for them, I think that is an important note because if they don't get these big names, that is still along that theme of the train-ledensation. They're going, even if they don't get the big names, they're fine to burn through this cache to give it to co-crack. Yeah. Well, and I think, too, there's kind of an example here with the Aramco Ladies series, where they've been putting this on for how long now. They started that in 2020. They've done four events so far.

The next one's next in about two weeks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. But, you know, it's like, I don't know, I don't, like I still don't know what that is, right? It's just this ladies series that there's an individual thing. There's a team component of it, but it all seems so ham-fisted and just like doing it just to do it instead of, but I think that also kind of serves as a good example of they have no shame in using ladies golf or different formats or co-ed golf

as kind of a cudgel here and saying, hey, like this is, you know, we're going to do some equitable stuff here and kind of try to flip the script and kind of push the narrative back on the woke mob. A lot of it feels like you can't get me on that. Look at what we're doing over here, you know, which puts the ladies in like a really fucking weird spot, you know, and I think some of them have talked about that. And I know our young hitter, Megamacklaren,

wrote a nice piece about that and how conflicted she was about going over there initially. And then eventually got to the point when this is, I think, a larger conversation where, again, putting all the, the moralizing aside and all the columns about, you know, what this means. And oh my god, like this is gonna, you know, this says this about you and X, Y and Z.

It's just really interesting to see what's gonna win out, right, and if I'm being really fucking cynical here, and it's depressing, but man, it's a lot of money. And it just seems like when we're talking about it over the course of 10, 15, 20 years, like, yeah, you brought up the Abu Dhabi in Dubai and like how many of those conversations do they still get attached to, right? Just kind of people, eventually people move on and people, you know, it just kind of becomes

part of life. Like, it's all like you were at the Ramco F1 race in Austin. How was that? You know, was there a lot of people talking about a huge story down there? A huge human rights violations going on or a lot of people just drinking and eating hot dogs and listening to loud cars. But I think the way this has entered

the golf conversation is a little bit different in terms of like the way we were entered into it was like Phil Mikkelson leaving his like home away from home event totally. The waste management for a payday in Saudi Arabia was really tough. Well, there's something so personal about it, right? Where it's different when they buy a Premier League team,

which I know that's the whole Newcastle United thing that they're mired in and that's going on now, but it's so personal when it's co-crack, saying, I will not play this existing PGA tour driven by charity thing anymore instead. I'm going to take all the money and go play over here. The part that is a lot of people have a lot of issue with, including myself, is to go

and say great things about what is going on in Saudi Arabia, right? Without really experiencing. In Patrick Read. Yeah. You don't actually really experience it all. You take money from the government to go and say wonderful things about what's going on and your Patrick Read and you go into classrooms and they all cheer for you. And Paul Casey. That's a great feeling for me. Yeah. Paul Casey doesn't go play Saudi Arabia because it was

UNICEF sponsorship and then it turns out, actually I did a little more research on that. The UNICEF sponsorship wouldn't cover that. You can't go and learn unless you go. It's like, no, you clicked, then go travel there and experience it like any other tourist would and tell us what you think, rather than you can't go and take the paycheck and then come and tell us what you think of what goes on there, because you're just selling their message.

That's where the issue is, right? So I don't hear Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen stand up at the Aramco series and say, like, thank you so much to the Saudi Arabian government for all they've done for this sport. And so that makes it more tolerable for me as a sports fan than some of what has happened in golf. Is that fair? Totally fair. I think that's very well said. I think that's where someone like, like there were a lot of jokes on Twitter this week about it. But I think that's where someone like Dustin Johnson ends up in an interesting situation, right? Where I think he strikes me much more as the Hamilton Verstappen.

Like, yeah, I'm just fucking here to play golf. There's no pretense with Dustin. When you're talking about like this amount of money and this kind of series and stuff, like that has to kind of go out the window a little bit, right? And it's like, I don't know if they're going to get a guy like that without them being willing to play ball, at least a little bit. Which it's also worth mentioning, like we heard from a player this week

that used the phrase brand suicide when it comes to Saudi Arabia. And I either forgot about this or don't remember this or didn't know what happened that Dustin Johnson had to take his RBC logo off his sleeve when he went and played there because RBC didn't want to be seen there. Look up the winner photos of Dustin Johnson winning

in Saudi Arabia the most recent time. And you can look up from the week before that and see where the logo's changed. Wow. Which is another one that, again, man, I mean, the money only matters if, you know, if it's coming in, if it's not filling the big enough hole, right, like if your sponsors are going away,

if your equipment companies are going away, which is a whole other thing we got to talk about. Like, if the Saudis are filling those coffers, I mean, maybe that shit doesn't matter to these guys. But also, this is all being discussed, talked about whatever by agents, right? But agents are paid through off-course endorsements, right? So if you're losing your endorsements in some way

to get on-course money, they don't get paid for that. That's what I get a appearance for. That's what I've been super interested in is, let's say somebody takes $50 million to go, does the agent get, they get their normal cut of that? I don't think there is a normal cut of that. They're negotiating this whole deal, but we can, we'll look at them.

I don't know. So I think the biggest thing with the, like, next up with this is just like the balls in the tourist court. Or the, right, of like, hey, are they gonna ban? Well, I think so that almost gets us much more to like our PGL conversation where it's like, so we'll run through all the PGL stuff in a little bit here, but what I think this whole Saadi thing is gonna do,

and I forget who made this point. It might have been Aiman Lynch on in the column here out this week, but what's going to happen here now is I mean Greg Normans, a lifetime member of the PGA tour, right? So does he, like, is he going to get banned? Is he going to, what's going to happen there? And I think the Saadi stuff, especially if they're looking to start in August 2022, if not sooner. I think before that, that would just be when Bedminster would be. I just, at least if nothing else, it's going,

I guess actually the quickest we'll find out is with the Saudi International, which is in February, right? And I think players need to know 30 days before if the release is going to be granted. So the tour is early to mid-January. So in the next, you know, a couple months, we'll at least have movement from the PGA tour. So to your point, the ball is in their court and I guess we'll find out.

Because I think this is this actually plays in before we even get to the PGO because the PGO is basically saying, Hey, like we're going to we'll kind of wait and see how this, how this happens. They've had a major structural change or strategic change in how they're trying to go about things. But it's, you know, it's definitely insightful for them to kind of sit and wait and say, hey, this is a great example of use case here and we'll adjust as necessary based on that. And 100% can confirm this. The at least a group, not collectively as a whole, but individually, more than one PGA tour

golfer are, I don't want to say using this pop up league as leverage with the tour, but using it as leverage with the tour. In terms of, let's have this conversation because these guys are putting up this. Hey, like, where is, like, what can we do here? Boom, pip, $40 million. Exactly.

Players championship, boom, $15 to $20 million. TV contracts are going from $400 million to $700 million next year. You think there's not gonna be more, like individual person's going up. FedEx got money's gonna continue to rise. There's gonna You think there's not gonna be more like individual persons going up. FedEx got money's gonna continue to rise. There's gonna be, there's a bunch of things that Torres already done that are like,

they kind of have to because players are coming to them saying like, where's this new money gonna come in? Where does that come from? Well, even now, like they're basically saying, where's the current money? Like they're getting 26% of the pot and they're looking at, you know at NFL, NBA, all this, and granted you've got the charitable aspects

and you've got, but like, guys like Phil Mickelson or some of the Seattle guys are basically going to a lot of hands and saying, hey, open the books, we want to audit you. Like, we want to bring an independent, probably non-grant, thorton auditor in here, and really ask the questions of like, like where's the other 74% of the money

that we're not getting going? I would, one thing I totally, totally missed is the podcast that Mikkelson did with Gary Williams. Gary Williams started a podcast after leaving Golf Channel and a five-club, I think. Yeah, and Phil was his first guest. And if you go back to that episode, it's probably, I think it's like a 30 minute episode.

If you go to the, kind of like the last 10 minutes, he really gets into a lot of the stuff. And like again, to the point we made kind of starting the show here, like shocked that those comments didn't make more of the rounds. And I don't know if this is just like, I'm not trying to be calm to send. I don't know if it's just like too big of a topic.

Like, like I said, we're gonna end up talking about it for two hours here. It's not easily digestible. But I don't, hearing the most visible active player in the world talking about some of the shit he's talking about was frankly and directly blowing my mind that it just like him basically saying like, yeah, what we're basically the setup that we have

on the PJ Tours fundamentally, possibly unfixable. Like it doesn't make any sense and it's basically like pissing off all of the top players in the world. The PJ tours using us to, they put us intentionally in a hole every year so that we have to play more events and fight our way out against all these other,

essentially lesser players. And he's talking about that with the wraparound FedEx cup season. And it's just, Retro. I'm sorry, the Retro-an-season. And I would just, yeah, if you're interested in this stuff, go listen to the back half of that episode.

I guess it's intriguing. Like to Greg Normans, to kind of give him a compliment of sorts, all the stuff that emerged after his initial dalliance with this world tour stuff, essentially the WGC's, right? That was how they, so quick pin in that. How they, essentially this is, it's almost like the questions kind of like,

as old as time, right? It's the same thing with the PIP stuff, it's the same thing with the FedEx Cup. It's basically you have this setup and one of you can probably even explain this better than me, but you have this setup as a 501C6 where you're this member run organization, which is the comment that or the phrase that we always, you know, make fun of when it comes to rules or all kinds of stuff to not make

the players look bad. But where that really like hamstrings the tour is that it's run equally by members, right? You can't just, you can't treat number 125 differently than you treat number one. Exactly. And that was Phil's whole thing about, that was another comment he made on that Gary Williams podcast was like, Hey, there's 200 players and we have four votes on the board like this out of what nine. Yeah. Like this doesn't, like this doesn't make sense. And so they're not even running our own tour. So the point I was going to make, I didn't mean to cut you off, but with the WGC's is like that's almost like the first instance, at least I can think of, I'm sure there were other ones before, just like how do we get this top tier a lot more money without just sending them a check, right?

And it was basically these like limited field events and that's how they kind of headed off this first push towards the world tour was we're going to start these WGC's with that only the top players can get in, they have massive purses. So then they did that for a while. And then they said, okay, now we're back to square one. We're still not getting enough. Where's all the money going? Okay, we'll start this FedEx cup, which is going to be a basically just a massive cash redistribution system. And then, you know, that went on for 10 years. And now it's like, Hey, we're back to square one. Okay, cool. We'll start this PIP. You know, what's going on with this? And now you can even see it like, this is conjecture, but like to look at a player like,

like Patrick Cantley, right, who wins the FedEx Cup, maybe one player, maybe one player of the year. If not, you know, I think we're all the most best player this year, but second best player this year on the PJ tour, is he gonna be in that top 10 P pip conversation? Probably not. Sander now, Zander, like those guys, like that next tier of, you know, I'm a top player,

but I'm not top 10 pip. I have no juice. I'm not getting like that, that money, like now what? And it also, and also a press one. It also puts them in a weird spot where it's like, dude, I don't want to, I'm practicing to be one of the best golfers in the world. Like, I don't wanna go out there and make fucking

social media videos. I don't wanna like start a beef with somebody. Or I don't, like, what am I supposed to do other than just like go out and be one of the best players in the world, which is what I'm doing. And that's where it gets so, and you can roll your eyes. I would encourage you to roll your eyes to a certain extent

and a lot of this stuff, but that's where it gets to the point of like, man, these guys are, they're underpaid, like comparatively to other sports, comparatively to other players, and I don't totally know what they do about it, right? And it's just, that's where all this stuff gets super fascinating to me. It's wild to, like the scale of which we're talking about in that potentially Ricky Fowler, if the numbers are to what they've been rumored to be, Ricky Fowler could in a couple years make more than the greatest player ever in the history of the game who changed the finances of the game forever ever made on the course.

Ricky could do it in like three years allegedly. Three years 50 million. Guaranteed and then walk away from the game at like 36 and just go do it every once in a while. So the scale at which we're talking about this, I mean, once you start talking millions, like it's hard to really gather. I mean, all of us in the room have so many millions

to we can actually relay this conversation. But like, yeah, there's a huge difference between $140 and $150 million. But they all become the same when you're talking about numbers of this size. Well, and that was the, I think it was an Australian report or British report, I can't remember, but the one that said, essentially, they've offered was at the US writer-couper that they offered $150 million over three years, which is probably not true, and that's like an outrate, truly outrageous amount of money. But if you're that US writer-couper,

it's like, all right, should I take that money or should I just assume that I'm gonna win the FedEx Cup for the next 10 years in a row? And I'm not gonna get hurt. Yeah. And it's like, dude, that's where it gets to, again, suspend the moralizing, and it's very, very, very, very complicated, and there's the moralizing and it's very, very, very complicated

and there's lots of ins and outs, but also we're talking about a ton of, get money. Generous. It's easy for us to sit here and say, I say no to the money, like it's not being offered us, which somebody did have a great question in that if each of us were individually offered $10 million

to go cover the Saudi tour, who of us would take it? It'd definitely be Randy, to be honest here. I think so, we'll get into the structure of the tour, because I think there's a lot to be said on that and how it's kind of holding back what their upside is or what their flexibility is here. But go on back to the WGC's. This was Finchham's way of saying, hey, you know what, we're going to evolve here a little

bit or set this up. And the WGC suck. Yes. They're fucking terrible. Oral. Like, there was, there was supposed to be one this week, WGC HSBC in China. It's like the worst event of the whole fucking year. And that's the one they're keeping. That's what, that's one that's kind of blowing my mind.

That's the worst one. Yeah. Is that the one they're keeping? Or is that the one going, is that one going away? Who could say? I'll look at it. I think they're keeping that Or is that the one going away? Who could say? Who could say? I think they're keeping that in the match play, I believe. Okay.

But I think, that's a perfect example of all this is done in the most myopic sense of it's not about the product, it's not about the fan, it's not about the tournament or even growing the game on a global scale. WGC's don't do shit to grow the game. It's simply about the PGA tour keeping the status quo. Well, I think it was cool. Yeah, not to get mired in this conversation,

but the, I think it was cool seeing the Mexico. Mexico was cool, right? Like, that seemed like one where I would flip on the TV and be like, holy shit, these people seem like they're loving golf. That's awesome. And then it goes away. They are keeping that one.

Match play and HSBC. And then there's all the what aboutism of and I'm like, what about the HSBC? Like the Chinese government does not want the PGA tour in China. Like it's very opposite. It's a different thing. Like that's, and again, that emphasis on going over to just go say great things about the host country,

that's the host country funding it versus HSBC funding in turn is different things. That's where the what about is really spirals. That's where I personally would draw the line. You're welcome to draw the line wherever you like as a listener and a follower of this board, but that's where I knit out, I don't know where you guys knit out there, but we'll be up front of that.

We're a million percent consistent on everything, but that's a complicated issue and that's pretty much where the line is kind of like one of those billboards it's like the vegan verse animal like where do you draw the line but all the animals like that's where i'm that's for my miss that's part of the reason why randy's not on the pod this week he's busy fighting off uh... you know like he's with pita

the bullpen city the whole bullpen thing it's a defense of the cows and randy just won't stand for it uh... alright so I tried to round up some very pragmatic or as rational as I can be pros and cons for this SGL just as we as we start to move out of this and talk about other stuff. Let me run through some of these. Let me see what you guys agree with this agreement.

Let's start with strictly for players. For players, what are the pros of joining this league. I think one Udels and Udels of guaranteed money. I think that's pretty obvious. Number one, we touch on it. But number two, OWGR points through the Asian tour. That's a big deal. And that's why you see a lot of, maybe not a lot, but you know, you see, solid. This is, I don't know if you want to speak to manipulation and some of these, some of these events having outsized OWGR moments. But to me, what that is, it kind of skips down the list of pros here. But to me, what that speaks to is basically this ability to do what Brooks, Capka, and Peter

Uline and a couple of other guys, you know, Julian Surries and other one, like other guys did when they would leave college as like very decorated college players and go over to the European tour to try and earn a card that way essentially, or earn kind of their place on the global golf stage that way. I think this partnership with the Asian tour allows at least the hypothetical of that, right? It's creating a whole ecosystem, right? You can just go play the Asian Tour hope to get into these Saudi events eventually. And, you know, I still don't know the whole details behind. Do we have details on what the events are actually

gonna be like? How many people are in them? Is there a team format? Is there any of that? We don't have that. I don't think so. I don't think so. But that can be the, you know.

That can be the stuff to come later. So the way it's described now, it seems, I really struggle to see how the tour can say you can't go play in these events. I agree. Like, because they're supposed to be, like, their whole thing is we're doing what's best for our members.

If it's super lucrative for your members to go play in some of these events, you know, and play in tour events as well, like then, like, they should be allowed to do that. If the goal of the PJ Tours, essentially to help golfers make as much money playing golf as possible. Like a trade-or in this, it seems hard to.

And what's wild is shoot that down. Even the players, and I don't even mean, I don't mean that literally. I mean, like as players, I mean, including the golfers, the agents, the team, whatever involved in this, all of the players, the Tor execs, all of that. They, no one involved in this, all of the players, then the tour execs, all of that, they, no one involved in that even understands whether or not they can or can't block it. Like one side says, oh, yeah, we can totally block those.

Like, yeah, you definitely cannot. And it, even, you know, you talk to individual players, they're like, yeah, I don't actually know what the answer is. Like it would be a true legal fight. And there isn't a clear cut answer as to what the power of the tour would be in that regard, which brings a whole other question into play, which is, you know, is there going to be some sort of weird, I don't know if what you call like arbitration or whatever, where like players, like it's just legally unclear whether they can play and players are going to end up missing events or how,

like I don't know how that works. Well, it feels like a very, like with Monahan, it feels like something that he's got, it's the most powerful tool that he has, but one that like once he uses it, like you can't put it back, right? Like it's gonna lay bare that like, it's a lot of these players versus the PGA tour, instead of, hey, we're all in this together, this is our,

like it's a very, it's kind of a point of no return. Yeah. What is there, yeah. Let's throw out a theory here. What if Dustin Johnson jumps to the defending champion, by the way, like, which isn't a little thing. Yeah, jumps to this new series. The toward bands him. What what is stopping DJ from like, all right, well, I'm top 50 in the world. I can get a start in this tournament. tournament. I don't have to be a tour member to get a start here because I have this criteria. I can go do that.

Or, all right, cool. I'll get a special exemption to several of these PGA tour events and get my card back through special temporary membership. I think the tour would be on the tour to say, hey, you can't, like to go again. I think you literally can't play in the event. I would think. Yeah, so. But how can they do that? That event, I would think. Yeah, like so, so.

But how can they do that? That's what I'm saying. It's a great legal can of worms. And also, like how bad would it look if DJ wanted to go play the RBC Canadian Open or the Travelers Championship and you go to that tournament director or that corporate sponsor?

Hey, number, you know, number three golf from the world wants to come play, but we're not gonna let him fuck you guys. Like how bad is that look if you're a sponsor? Yeah, I don't, I could be totally wrong here. We did a whole podcast on the PGA tour handbook. I don't remember reading anything in there. It said you could, a player could be banned

from the tour for playing in other sports leagues. That's what, yeah, unless it was like some sort of conduct thing, right? Like if you broke a rule, if you were, you know, if it was the steroid thing or, you know, something like that. Conduct, I'm becoming sort of, it's like the ultimate ban of hammer, right?

So just to tease that out a little bit, let's say that the ban is not possible, and it's not something that you can do. What's stopping Ricky Fowler from saying, cool, I'd love to take $100 million to complete your event series for three years, and then I'll go back to the PJ tour. Like, and then if that's the case,

and that's a sweepstaking. Again, moralizing aside, and your Ricky Fowler, it's like, man, $100 million is $100 million, right, at some point, it's just, it's wild. So, all right, a few more pros and cons here. We mentioned this, one big, you know, one last job for a lot of these aging bank robbers here. Let's get the old gang together.

You know, let's go boost some cars. Let's go boost some cars. One last, one last job we'll ride in the sunset. And I think a big one is seemingly there's no conflict with the majors here, right? And I think that's on both the SGL and PGL side. I think that's almost like the most important topic here. And I don't know if it's something we want to get into now or later, but the fact that all of this, I'm giving, you know, I think golf is a very, very niche sport in that the people who watch it week to week make up a big part of the fan

base, right? Like I don't know how many there are casual fans who watch the masters that I don't think like the casual fan base is some astronomically, you know, massive number compared to the hardcore fans. I think it's a pretty solid base, right? And so with that said, though, a lot of this is we're just talking about, you know, everything that goes on outside the biggest events in golf We're not talking about the majors. We're not talking about the Ryder Cup in either of these instances all that stuff remains the same

We're kind of just talking about regular season golf as of now. I mean the PJ of America Seth Wal has been you know pretty much The most outspoken one in being locked in step with the PGA tour to this point Which I mean it could come out Fred really could come out tomorrow and say, like, yeah, we're not going to let anyone play the Masters that plays this tour. Which would you like to unpack why I don't think that's going to happen? Like, because either on the board of the OWGR, it would be putting the OWGR in a really awkward spot. Also, like the Masters has has shattereddered from the rooftops with the Latin America amateur championship and the Asian Pacific Amateur.

Pacific is like, hey, this is like super important for us. Yeah, and it's just, if you're going to have a new league whose whole goal is just building a worldwide tour, you're essentially as one of the majors if they're deferring to you, right? Like, let's say they're bringing in all these brand new people who have never watched golf before, right? All those people are taking their cues from this new league, right? Like picture when all of us got into F1, like we're listening to F1 podcast and we're watching the schedule

and we're just kind of, they're telling us what's important, right? If this new league is telling you, hey, we're off this week because these events are so important. Like, all these majors are just getting a, like, what's the downside for them? Right. Like, they could potentially be getting, you know, even if this thing works at all, they're getting incremental worldwide audience.

And they're firm doing nothing. And truly only the only events that will have all of the best players in the world in one place. Yeah, it's, I don't. And, and no, unless the PGA of America and the PGA tour seems like they have kind of the closest relationship, but I don't, I don't know why any of the other majors would, would head any of this stuff off. I just think it's, I think it's interesting that like the PGA of America almost has, they, they have a board seat with the PGA tour and then B, they would have to, like,

they're too big as money makers come from PGA tour players. Right. Right. So you can't really, like, they can't upset the Apple Car. They need to be supportive of the PGA tour. So that's kind of what I had for pros, cons for players, just worth, worth talking about all this because I think it kind of wraps everything up. As they had announced the event series previously, it was, I believe, six events in the US and six events in Saudi Arabia.

So we could legitimately be talking about these guys going to Saudi Arabia six times, playing six different events. I don't think that's a pro. Well, now we're down to 10 events, right? We originally thought it was 12 events, now it's 10. So, well, it's 10, but the Saudi international is not included in that 10.

Correct. So I would think anybody who's getting a major payday, I think there's probably a pretty strong wink, well, it's 10, but the Saudi international's not included in that 10. Correct. So I would think anybody who's getting a major payday, I think there's probably a pretty strong wink, wink, like, hey, you're going to be playing the Saudi event as well, which makes it 11, and then if they add another, one of the US would probably, probably at 12. But this goes in the rumor camp, though. We don't know the location of the event. There may be two, like there may be, you know, Asian tour or order of merit type stuff to where if they play, you know, let's say these are all Asian tour sanctioned events, you

know, you get it. Let's say they're given a $10 million bonus to whoever wins the Asian tour, then you're compelled to go play the Singapore Open or, you know, over in Perth, they're somewhere like that, right? I think continuing down the cons list, public perception is a big one. I think we can talk about the money all we want. But if it does publicly turn into the Saudis plus Donald Trump golf league, that's going to be a tough, tough, tough one for most of the world to overcome.

There's a downside as far as the money goes to because you're going to be getting less exposure based on your equipment contract and your apparel contract or, you know, whomever your sponsors are, with like, to the audience that they're, that they kind of signed on to, you know, appeal to. Right? Like, that's not to say that you could probably get a, you know, a couple of Japanese sponsors or Chinese sponsors or, you know, Middle East sponsors, but they're not going to be the same sponsors. Um, I think one thing to think about is there's potential for just legitimately like far worse, like, peer set or player competition, right? Like if you're, if you're trying to build your whole year around the majors and, you know,

doing all of those things, it's possible these, I mean, at least in the early going, it's possible these 10 events fucking suck as far as like competition. Likely. Right. And so I mean, I know golf tournaments are golf tournaments at some point, but I think there's a reason you see guys play the on the PJ tour the week before the masters or play, you know, they want to play big events to get juices going. And I just, I don't think it's going to help you win a major by not playing against

the best players in the world. I don't think that's a very hot take. And then the last thing is, is obviously just like lack of context, right? Like lack of any kind of PJ tour history or legacy building and you can kind of roll your eyes at that if you want, but let's just face it, like there's gonna be, there's far more PJ tour winners than there are major winners, right? And so I think that's worth something. And it just kind of all that stuff goes out the window as soon as you start this new upstart league. So really quickly, I pros

and cons for fans. It's all you want to go through. Some of these. Yeah, I don't know. I could be pretty quick. I don't really know what the pros are for the fans. I totally, I was trying not to to openly shit on it, but like I die. Man, I don't see a lot of pros for fans. Maybe the, like, the major is being a complete sweepstakes and like those being just turned up another 10 notches. As I'm squinting and trying to look for more pros, I think it would be, stand a reason that, you know, if they start with the Asian tour, I could kind of see the world domination plan then extending into Australia or extending into South America or some of that, you might get some cool events in those

types of places. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe you get like some cool courses, but yeah, other than that, it's a tough scene for fans, I think. I mean, I'd watch a tournament at Turnberry. Yeah. I mean, I think that could be interesting. I think I don't think this trickle is quite down to fans, but pros could be a strengthened PGA tour as well. I agree. That if this is used as leverage, but I think it is strengthened for the players

and not for I don't think it is going to include like, all right, we need to redo our TV package now because we want to make it better for fans. It's like, no, they just care about getting their money. It just, that's, you know, the sponsors got to be happy, players got to be happy, and that's really it. Fans don't are not in the equation. There's a super interesting parallel here where like in the early 80s, Nicholas and Palmer tried to kind of stage a coup on like Dean Beeman and these guys ended up strengthening the tour,

and what it kind of laid bare some of these issues from the start too. So, you know, like, but anybody that says like, oh, how dare these guys break away or whatever, like yo, like Nicholas and Palmer tried to do it themselves, right? It's not like the PGA tours some sacred cow that we can't, is some sacred how that we can't mess with or anything like that. The PGA Tour is simply the organization

that runs this shit. It's not golf, it's not pro golf, nor should it be. Yeah, I was talking to Rainy about this a while ago and we were talking about baseball, stick with me for a second, but we were talking about how it's, baseball services like this kind of center of gravity during the season like it's just very nice at the end of each day or you know mid afternoon or whatever you just kind of there's always something to to check right

So he's like oh how did you know the guys win last night or who do they please pitch in tonight? What's going on and you just have this like six months of kind of Ebs and flows, you know when when things are you know what the schedule is is blah, blah, blah. And we were kind of talking about like, why is golf not like that? And you know, cause golf plays every week and there's, it's Thursday to Sunday and they're at a different place. And it seems like it should be fairly similar. And it's just not. And I think a big part of that is just in baseball, you have such a set schedule and you have

such a set context. You have such set context. And where I'm going with all this is that golf is truly just making it up as it goes. It's all bullshit anyway. You know what I'm saying? And that's what I'm saying. Other than the majors, it doesn't matter.

I never realized that until really like digging in of just like, oh man, like it's just it's just bolting on all this shit. And that's where it turns into just this big bloated ship of barnacles, right? Where it's just like, dude, there's, oh, fuck, we've got this problem, all right, WGC's. Okay, now we've got this, I don't know, but let's make up something called the FedEx, go.

Okay, over here, let's make this the PIP. What's this, Genesis, you guys are pissed, you guys are an elevated event. And what we talk about all the time with like the whack-a-mole of just all these problems, it's like truly, it's just, and I'm not blaming them or shitting on it. It's like, I don't know what you do differently,

but yeah, it's just truly like making it up as you go. And it's hard to- Netflix series! Yeah, it's just really hard to have like a cogent, cohesive, consistent product when that's the case. And I think that's what- It's structurally unsound. That's what I think a lot of this, you know, lays bare.

So what I will say, last con I had for fans, I mean, obviously all the above that we've been talking about for the last hour, but I think the other thing is what you touched on a little bit, Solly, but just like the fracturing and decentralization of ProGolf feels like a bad thing. I mean, I do think other people around the world might totally disagree and I think having more events around the world would be a great thing, but

Ultimately, I think it's good for golf that the PJ tour is a clear number one thing, right? Like you can watch the PJ tour every week and say I know that the best like the majority of the best players are there and that win at Riviera really fucking mean something whereas I just don't think it's a great thing if all of a sudden, you know, if the best players in the world are fractured all over the place, that just... That win in Jedda means something.

Yeah, it just really seems like a mess. He won in Medina last year. Just makes it so confusing and so unnecessarily bloated. It, uh, what the SGL really, it can't be overstated. The three things that we talked about between, It, what the SGL really, it can't be overstated. The three things that we talked about between, it's a big PR hit as we've noted,

brand suicide to be doing stuff with Saudi Arabia. That's one. Norman confirmed that the quote we heard is like, Norman will push a lot of players out. Like Norman will put, it's polarizing enough that like people don't wanna be involved in that. That's two big hurdles. Tiger in Norman hate each other. Or Tiger hates Norman.

Yeah. And so then three, now you add in, we have, I don't know the limitations or the extent of Trump's involvement, but that is three huge things the hurdles to clear in terms of like telling a story as to why you want to do this. It becomes more and more clear that it is purely and solely about the money, right? There's not a grand vision for the game, there's not a greater competition, there's not growing the game, there's not on any of that other than collecting

a big fat paycheck, there's nothing you can even fake storytelling wise to be the reason why you would go do this. That is a, that's gonna hurt them. That is a hundred percent gonna hurt them. It's inherently like un-serious. Yeah, and that's where I keep, I don't know, I know I sound very like depressed and cynical,

but it's like, like I'm with you, I'm, I will sign your petition on everything you just said, but also like gestures wildly at everything else in the fucking world, and it's like, yeah, none of that, that stuff seems to matter less and less in every facet of everyday life. And eventually, like the money kind of seems like it just wins out.

I think you're right, but I think this is a, you're talking to a group of people that have a lot of money. Like totally. It is a different conversation for the Peter Uline kind of camp. Maybe he's not the best example different conversation for the Peter Uline kind of camp. Maybe he's not the best example, but like, yeah, like a current PGA tour. Like this ball, man. PGA tour, you guy. Like that's different. Like, you, like that's a

different conversation than like Patrick Kale, Roy McAroy, Justin Thomas, Ricky Fowler, that dudes that have more money than they will be able to spend already in their lives. Their lifestyles are not going to change from, you know, taking $50 million more dollars like you're going to be doing pretty much the same things that you are currently doing. So like you have to clear that reputational damage you're going to do to yourself. Just for, again, just for money, I think that that is going to keep them from getting some of the big names they want. Guys like Bryson that love money and make a lot of it. Make very reckless decisions on the regular.

I could see that working out, but I've heard Brooks is out. Brooks is not doing the SGL, is 100% out. We out this bitch. So like, I don't know, and he loves money too. So that, again, if he's not willing to do it, who are you giving this money to? So it seems like if we're putting a bow on this, moving on, I mean, it seems like it's poised to go

one of a couple different directions, either flame out spectacularly and just blow up on the launch pad and never get off the ground. To, it seems like a great way to just incinerate a bunch of cash over 10 years and never really build a foothold. Or three, it seems like a way if you're really committed to a slow build,

it could be something we're talking about for legitimately like 10 or 15 years that maybe or maybe not kind of incrementally has progress each year. I think is that a fair solution? I think it's become more palatable to do like the Saudi Arabia European tour event as the years have gone by.

Totally. The pressure seems less. I think people shout, like they should get tired of shouting, right? Well, so you're like, there's like exhaustion in my outrage. So year two of this circuit, like so and so dips his toe in.

And then it's like, oh, well, I mean, that guy didn't get his roasted as bad as I thought. Now I may sign Austin Echo. That money cleared the bank account, right? And that is more likely than like everyone is going to be playing in Saudi Arabia next year. Yes. There was I think Garrett Morrison from the Friday, responded to a tweet I had and called it the quote, why is Jason co-cracks Yacht bigger than mine style of recruiting, which is, which is really well said. And I think it's a real thing.

I think like you said, if, uh, that's what also makes it interesting is like, to any players who want to, you know, I think that's why you see a lot of guys being super coy about this and not openly flaming it. I know Rory's kind of one of the few guys who basically said like, I'm not taking your fucking money. I know who you are. I see what you're trying to do and I'm not doing it.

Like if like you said in five years, some of these guys were kind of on the edge now. If it still does start to build momentum and all that stuff, I get why guys aren't shooting themselves in the foot right now and saying things they can't take back later. A couple guys have. Yeah. JT's and Roy is saying like, yeah, I'm not doing that. Which, it looks really, really bad if you do do end up doing it in five years, but we'll be believe in you remember

that. I don't know. All right, deep breath. We need a quick break here to check in with our friends at rapsoto. You've heard us talk a lot about these mobile launch monitors. You can go to rapsoto.com slash NLU and you can use promo code NLU for $75 off a mobile launch monitor.

These things are extremely accurate. They get within 2% of a $20,000 unit. They're mobile launch monitor app from RAP Soto. It automatically tracks stats. It's towards video with shot tracer. It helps you figure out your club gap and understand the true distance as you're hitting each club. If you're putting new driver in the bag, maybe you change over into the new year, you're

going to want to test that against what your current setup is, what your launch angle is, all that stuff. The Rapsoto is going to give you all of that. Rapsoto Mobile Launch Monitor gives you immediate feedback and data and creates a better practice environment. You're not going to mindlessly hit golf balls, which I'm guilty of more often than I'd like to admit. It's extremely portable.

It's about the size of a range fire and you can use it indoor and outdoor. So again, go to rapsoto.com slash NLU, use promo code NLU for $75 off their mobile launch monitor. Let's get back to the pot. Guys, I want to be positive. I want to talk PGL, the positive golf group. Enough about the negatives for fans and players and just sport at large. Let's talk about some positives. All right.

So so last week from the PGL, I think they were employing what sounds like a very similar model to what the Saudis are doing, which is here's a ton of money up front to join jump ship. Let's all, you know, ride off in the sunset together over in this direction. It sounds like there's been a bit of a fundamental change and they're trying to work much more closely with the PJ Tours, all right? Correct. Yeah, so they've essentially, before they had $750 million set aside to pay these guys up

front to jump ship, to essentially put their toe in the water and dare the PGA tour to ban them or whatever. Like they were going to move forward without having this certainty. Right? And now if said, hey, we're going to, you know, instead of that, we want to work with the PGA tour, we want to give the, give the play all the players. So not just the top 50 guys. All the players want to give you equity in this thing. We're going to lock up 50% of the equity of this, you know, potentially 10, 12, 16 billion dollar sports league. We're going to, we're going to give you 50% of that. And we're going to also save 10% for another nonprofit that essentially acts in the

best interests of the game worldwide. And then your partners and like broadcast or commercial partners, or if they wanted to give 10% to Tiger Woods, they could give 10% to Tiger Woods. Another 10% set aside to if NBC Comcast needed to be netted up for the hit that they're going to take for the current PGA tour media rights deal or CBS or whatever, they could use that towards that. So essentially 70% of the equity is kind of up for grabs here between charity current stakeholders.

Current stakeholders, anybody that kind of matters right now. And the important part is the PGA tour inherently has no equity, right? There's no, it's a 501 C6. There's no, it's structurally, they cannot create value. It's true, yeah, it's just eating what you kill. Correct. Yeah. So what would, okay, it's just eating what you kill. Correct. Yeah.

So what would, okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly, it almost sounds a little bit like the WGCs, where it's just almost kind of like, although I guess the difference is the WGCs are mostly run by the PGA tour, but it's basically just what they're pitching is just a bolted on, like totally separate entity, bolted on thing

that would be kind of a bridge between the PGA tour and the PGL. Correct. And I think where I struggle with it is like, how do you measure, like when you talk about this equity piece, it's not the tour, it's not PGA tour ink getting the equity, it's the individual players themselves. And now it is that pass players as well, how far down the list do you go?

If you're a corn fairy member, do you get that? Future members, how do you cut them in on it? So it's not just, hey, you were here at the right place, right time kind of thing. But that's a big reality of like, hey, like you're talking about, you set this thing up, it goes well, it's like it's 10, 12, 14, but like it looks like Formula One. Right? It's a massive, a massive enterprise and hugely valuable,

and essentially it allows you to fix all these structural defects that exist with, the top players not making enough money in their eyes, or some of the product stuff. And I think it's essentially something too, where the tour is essentially, they would be forced to reckon with, all right, why are we not doing this?

Why can we not make this much money on our own? Like, where's this extra money coming from? Right? Well, okay, so the very natural question is like, where is this with the PJ tour? Monahan just like won't open the emails. That's why. Like straight up. So it's like, you know,. That's why, like straight out. So it's like, you know, so at some point,

like the PGA tour is so invested in keeping the status quo going. That even if this was, like this would be a, you know, let's say it's a conservatively, it's a $4 billion upside to their current members of, hey, like you're gonna get equity in this $4 billion enterprise. That seems like something that you should maybe explore.

So essentially, he's basically saying, hey, I'm gonna take it to the players and the players, if Monhan won't take the deal, then I'm gonna go to the players directly and say, hey, this is because a lot of the players were, I guess, a little bit sheepish about bailing on their peers and taking the money and bailing on friends and saying, hey, you know what, you guys are great, but I'm going to take this $60 million paycheck up front. Plus, I'm playing for $4

million a week, whereas I think they're basically saying, no, everybody gets a cut of the pie. We're going to get more over here because we're playing for more. It'll be deserved more. Yeah because we're playing for more. We deserve more. Yeah, but all boats are rising. Well, it also keeps like a very necessary infrastructure in place. That's what I think a lot of this stuff hasn't really addressed the fact

that you still need a feeder system of some kind, right? And you still need some way for turnover and some way for players to be identified as the next thing, right? And you still need like some way for turnover and some way for players to be identified as the next thing, right? And that can't just, that was a big problem I had or a big question mark, I guess I had with the original PGL was just like, we're going to take the top 48 guys, we're going to move over here and relegate some guys somewhere. But yeah, your band from the PGA tour, but like, if yeah, you don't play good in year one, like your career's over.

And I think it was always very clear that like, this PGL concept can't work without the PGA tour, without relegation. Yeah, it can't work without what looks like the existing tour, but also the existing tours never really going to be like, yeah, cool, why don't we're tired of running like the best tour in the world, so why don't you guys just please? Why don't you guys take it over for a while, which is where it gets to the point of like,

it has to be something that works together. It seems like. But if I'm the tour, I'm also understanding of not wanting to be the one. The guys that are currently in power wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be the ones like turning the keys over to someone else to run their tour, right? Even if it's great for the players and all that. And I think there's still, there's a power element still in play, right? Where it like, it would be a huge concession of power, total BGA tour to do that.

And I think there's some pride involved in that and skepticism about how it all would all work out and play out. And they would want it. I mean, they would drag this out as long as possible until they're forced to do this. That could be 10, 20 years for all we know. But at some point too, I think this is a smart strategy shift

because at some point, if this is viable, if this is as lucrative, even half as lucrative as they're making it out to be, then why wouldn't, you're supposed to be structurally looking after the best interests of your members or your players. Like this seems like a much better way forward for those top 48 guys.

Plus the other guys are still playing for, you know, seemingly just as much money, the entire ecosystem's still in place and it gives them another level to graduate to kind of bet on themselves. And all the tournaments, the PGL wants to use, let's say it's Riviera or Mirfield Village or Bay Hill or something, they want to go to the best tournaments and say, hey, you're now a PGL event, you're not a PGL tour.

We want to play the best courses, we want to play the best events, we want to keep this history going with these events. So it seems like the only way that this would ever go down, if it was to go down, would be incorrect me if I'm wrong, but essentially like turning public perception inside of the PGA tour members and basically like making them force a vote or making them force this change. Just a boring idea, right? Right? But I don't think that I think we're overstating how powerful monohans position is, because I think, at some point, there's stuff that they're not doing that they're asleep at the

wheel on, and people are figuring out about it and calling them on it, but some of it they legitimately just can't fix. Right. Right? Because I think the other thing to like, think about what the PGL is, like it's not this big money grab. Yeah, it's, it's much more lucrative for the top players, but also like it's, a lot of it is stemming from like

the product will be better with the team component and with relegation and with the top 48 guys in the world playing this 18 events together every year, like guaranteed. Well, basically it just keeps, yeah. It seems like it would allow you, if it's maybe the biggest if in golf history, but if they were to work together and cooperate on this,

it basically just allows you to have like a totally different set of media guidelines or regulations or any of that stuff around. I would hope so that's where I'm like I am less excited about them working together because like the tour stink on media regulations, television broadcast, all that stuff. It's gonna wait. Totally independently of as far as the current PGA tour structure, right? They would be free to negotiate all their own commercial rights deals and, you know, everything on that end, the only connection would be essentially that these guys are shareholders. And they would have a certain amount of leadership within it or voice within it,

but at the same time, like, it's a brand new distinct organization. They could use PGA tour rules officials or something like that, so there's familiar faces out there. But, but at the end of the day, like, think about how much money they're leaving on the table right now with, you know, staging 48 events and none of the sponsors know who's going to show up most weeks. Or, you know, like basically, you're kind of moving into a much different classification of sponsor, like World Cup, Olympics style instead of just regional United States. Right? And I think there's a lot of upside there as far as sponsorship goes,

as far as efficiency goes. With when you sign on a sponsor, it's a $140 million sponsor and not a $25 million sponsor. That's what I was racking my brain. I'm not smart enough to figure out how this stuff would work, but I'm trying to figure out where the money comes from. And, you know, it just sounds like way too good

to be true to be like, no, no, no, like all the, you know, the William McGurts and like you guys, like you guys will still play like your normal PGA Tour event and like you're gonna have great purses and great media deals and also like all the best players are gonna play over here. And you guys are gonna have extraordinarily amount, you know, an exorbitant amount more money to play for.

It just starts to feel very like, I don't know, like there's not enough eyeballs or money and all that stuff to go around. And that's where I am a little skeptical, I guess, and I would need to hear more. I think at the end of the day, like because I do think they're kind of overstating, all right, like the PJ tour, the Euro tour,

they're gonna be fine, people are gonna keep watching. Like those, obviously those sponsorship levels decrease and all that, but on the requisite side of that, like those, that becomes much more of a feeder system and you only need $140 million in-person versus half a billion, right? But also, I think there's just such a...

So, sorry, break that down real quick, because the thought of what you're basically saying is they're looking at the amount of per se over the course of the year that are going to the top 48 guys, right? And especially, essentially splintering that off into its own prize pool. Correct. Yeah. So if I'm, I'm trying to picture this, right, because it's not as if there is unity among the players.

Like this should happen, right? And they're all going to Monahan, be like, why won't you take the meeting, right? So there, it seems to me like the momentum with the players is like to go to Commissioner and to the tour and be like, here's what they're offering here, how do we up versus, how do we do all this stuff, right? So, if I'm in monahands shoes and I am portraying to my players,

currently our situation is great, here's all the money we have locked up, FedEx cups going up, players going up. We have point two billion dollars in the bank. Pip going up, we got, we're good, we got all this money. If I'm saying that yet also like taking meetings and and trying to almost in a way, like signaling to the players, we are looking into a way to totally restructure our tour. You're sending two different message to your members. Totally. I mean, and I think that's why like Jason, I really tend you a spot, right? Or I think, you know, because essentially like everybody knows that there's structural defects with the tour.

The tour can't necessarily signal that, but I do think if enough players went to him and said, hey, you know what, like we need to investigate this. I mean, PGO guys have been talking to agents and players for, you know, the last few years. That's what I'm saying. I don't think that it doesn't feel like they're at the point of beating down the door of Jay's office to be like, yo, why are we not looking

into this? But I think some of that is like, we go back to co-cracks yacht, right? Unless we get two years down the road and all of a sudden, yeah, these guys are, you know, spending like making a bunch of money in Saudi Arabia. I think it puts the players in a much, a much better position to go to the tour and be like, hey, man, like, I don't want to go fucking playing Saudi Arabia, but like, we need to figure this out. I want to go to the tour and be like, hey man, I don't wanna go fucking play in Saudi Arabia, but we need to figure this out. I wanna go party on Cograxia, and after hearing so much about it. Or talking, again, Cograx is not committed.

This is pure speculation about us. Talking about the, the, like the Mikkelsen podcast, where it's like, feels saying all this stuff. Like a lot of the players are starting to wise up. A lot of them don't know shit from Shine-O,

and they're like, they're, they're trying to, you know, just play the best golf that they possibly can and don't understand that, like, they don't really have as much of a say as they think. But I think there's a, there's a new breed of, of, of guy out there or even veterans that are, they're kind of saying, hey, wait a second, like 26% of the revenue, like even just on the current revenue,

why aren't we getting more of the current revenue, much less opening the door for these much larger world wide deals? And I think it goes back to the WGC's of like, hey, like here's an example of something that the PGA tour is done. That nobody gives a fuck about. Right? And so why do we trust them to monetize our business to the best of its ability?

Right? I also think though the players, waste our roiko vote of no confidence. The players share some of the culpability in the product not being that interested. 100%. Like they don't care enough. They're not beating down the door.

The office is like, hey, we got to change the telecasts. Like they just want to get their money and go home. Like that's one thing, right? So. I think the, yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, I think it is an interesting spot for the tour because by all accounts, other than some outside threats coming in, sponsors are there,

the money's there, everything's pointing up. Ratings are what they have pretty much always been. It's not, they're not like, they're not cratering, right? As much as like it's not fun to watch. They're bleeding away a little bit. I mean, right? A little bit, but it's not like a dying sport.

It's not, like more. And that's just the tiger effect. Yeah, more events are popping up and there just doesn't seem to be a shortage of opportunities for events, right? So internally, they, there, there's almost no chance I would imagine they are screaming. They're looking around and being like, wow, we got to gut things. We got to change our whole entire structure. We got to do all that. And until it, it becomes like it becomes like very apparently clear that 75 to 90% of the top players

are insistent on this happening or their jump and ship, I think that gap between this happening and the like monahan seating control of all these events is probably pretty enormous. That'd be my estimation. Do I think this is more interesting than current of course? Do I think this would make sense to the top guys to make this much more money of course? I just think it is like... Because there's also equity in here. There's also equity inherent with all these teams as well. So these guys are still getting, you know, if the team owner cuts that man on the equity, there's that piece of it. It seemed more likely that when they were a separate league,

the people have to bounce for that it would happen than the tours almost merging. In my opinion. I agree. And I think that that's an interesting thing that would love to ask Andy about or talk to about is like, what happens to the PGL if the PGL tour just flat out says like,

absolutely not interested? Do they then swing back the other way to, okay, cool. I guess then we'll get the war chest out and we'll try to just pick off your best guys and figure it out. Why does the PGA Tour need the PGL? Why can't they set up this? That's what I was gonna say.

That was gonna be the last thing I was gonna say was what's to stop the tour from looking under the, like taking a meeting, looking under the hood of this and poaching it into what would probably be a much worse version of. That's a great question. And I think some of it's just the lack of creativity or lack of motivation to do so.

I think that again, they wanna keep the status quo, they wanna keep them. Well, I think a lot of it too is, and I understand why this happens, but a lot of, I think shifting to something like this is essentially, I don't think you can do this and the FedEx cup, right? Like I think you'd have to almost blow it all up

and to your point, Sully, like, I don't see a huge reason to do that. The only thing that really feels like it can force the hand of that would be like cratering ratings or cratering, like when the idea of a big-ass media deal goes away, then all of a sudden, it gets interesting, but until then, it's just, it's very... They were just able to sell this package for, you know, a 75% increase or whatever. Like, I doubt they're looking at, like, oh, all right, now we gotta, like, flip the whole script

of our structure. So... Which, I mean, I think, too, there's a certain element of, like, when this new TV deal does kick in, maybe the product sucks that much more, like people do start switching off, right? I mean, I mean, like, think about the tour, like we're talking about an organization that for the last five years, like, has had a barely working app. Their website sucks.

Like they're online, like having confidence in them to think outside the box or even just, just evolve on anything is, like, I think that's even giving them too much credit. And that's where I'm at on like this, the current tour evolving into a very fan-friendly engaged product. When they just sold this tournament schedule to these people for this much money, it seems like that set things back even further.

I don't know. I get kind of where the PGL guys are at in terms of wanting to work with the tour. And I think that the best case scenario for golf fans or for those of us that are kind of rooting for this structure is like the tour continues to not answer the phone calls. And then PJ says, all right, well, we'll go, we're going to go poach guy. We're going back to the poaching model. And that's more, that seems well likely to happen than the tour. Would you ask me that?

And instead of everybody getting, getting their cut of equity, only the top 48 guys are gonna get their, their cut of equity. For being right place at the right time. Yeah, kind of, the whole thing makes my head spin on both sides. There's a couple other, like, little wrinkles as well.

Like the, like, for instance, the, in the UK, Skye's contract is coming up and Discovery wants in on that. They own the rights, you know, basically for the whole digital rights. They own all the international rights. Yeah, except for the UK.

Yeah. And Skye's owned by NBC Universal. So how does that work? How does the tour balance those two things? I think it's gonna be super interesting to see what things look like without the fall series, or having those events not count for FedEx Cup points, because seemingly that's also going to be a big cornerstone.

The fall is going to be a big cornerstone of whatever the tour is going to roll out as far as international events as well. So if the tour is playing in Australia, you know, maybe three events in Asia and maybe, you know, one or two in the Middle East or in the UK, like. So that's what I don't get is that, man.

Yeah, if the chorus from these top players is just... I want to play less, but the other... Like, I'm playing too many fucking events. I don't know that it's like, hey, we can play in travel. Yeah, welcome to, what if you could spend Thanksgiving in Australia? Yeah, but it's, you know, it's like, hey, we can play in travel. Yeah, welcome to, what if you could spend Thanksgiving in Australia? Yeah, but it's, you know, it's like,

hey, we're not gonna do the falsies anymore where you feel like you're getting lap, but also you have to go play these. Like it's just biting in the trees. It's like the, truly like the worst of both worlds. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I, going back, I don't think there's, there's nothing imminent here. Right, that's a, a source we talked to this week too,

which is like very casually, just like, yeah, like 10 to 20 years. Who knows what this might look like. That's like, ah, come on, man, I'm kind of looking for 2022 here. But this is where like the seeds get planted. Yeah. Maybe it's a 2025 thing. Maybe it's a 2026 thing of, of, you know, because, because let's say out of this $700 million contract, you know, uh, right steel that like not enough money flows of the players. Like, I like, like personally, I thought the PIP stuff was almost insulting to the top players. Like, hey, we're going to carve out 40 million from this, you know, one point, whatever billion dollar pot. Like, we're going to give this to you guys, but only 10 of you are going to get it and,

you know, each guy is going to get on average $4 million. Like, that's,'s sucks, right? It's not great. Yeah, it's not needle moving, I wouldn't think. But- That was another thing Phil said in that. I keep shouting out this podcast, but he essentially said the same thing.

Just like, yeah, cool. Like that's like a shiny object. That's very nice of you, but like that's now what we're talking about here. Where's the money? Yeah. Yeah. I still, I don't think

that there's just a ton of money sitting or a ton of money like being funneled to places that aren't the players, right? I mean, it costs like whatever it costs to run the PGA tour for the year, something like three-quarters of a billion dollars, right? So it feels comparison of like M.E.A. NFL revenues are different than they go. And the accounting's totally different because they're funneling money through these individual events and then those are inherently non-profits as well. I was gonna say we haven't really talked about the chair.

Component, which is, I forget the actual, and I don't know how they do all this accounting and all that stuff, but I forget, when I was working at the tour, I remember it definitely blew my mind. Just how long it took them to get to $1 billion of charitable giving and then how long it took them to get to $1 billion of charitable giving, and then how long it took them to get to $2 billion?

Because it was something like, you know, it took like 65 years, 50 years, something like that to get to, to get to $1 billion and it took like seven years to get to $2 billion. So like, a lot of this money is, I mean, that's just the way the tour is set up. And I know many people will again, roll their eyes at that.

But there is a ton of that money is going out the door and charitable endeavors too. And also, you know, I would say that they're probably being, I think, pretty, pretty aggressive with their accounting. So I just pulled up the 2018 financial statements for the tour, total revenue, $1.4 billion. Salaries, other competition employee benefits, $141 million.

So that'd be monahan, all the execs, all the different tournament directors, all the different people that work on the individual tournaments, all the employees, all the media people. But are they counted in that? Well, the tournament directors are separate. Because they're their own entities. Yeah, if their events not run by the tour.

I could go to part nine, Colomay, lines five through 10 and give to a more full answer there. But total fund rate, like total other expenses, 1.1 billion dollars. Which so all the purses would fall under expenses and all that. Like, you know, I think at some point,

like I just have no doubt that like knowing everything I know about Tim Finchum and the Dean Beeman book, like golf's driving force, there's a lot of dead bodies under the house. Not literal dead bodies, but you guys know what I mean. There's some skeletons in the closet, happy Halloween shit. I cannot confirm or deny that. It's obviously very, very complicated. Don't know where things go from here,

other than I just, I think where it's all, so on the SGL versus PGL, again, like the SGL thing is like a totally different strategy, and that's what we're gonna hear a lot about, and they are going and they are on a tight timeline. This thing is the trains leave in the tracks, as I've mentioned. PGL seems to be on a, on no timeline of any kind, if we can say, and probably not gonna be what we hear about

in the coming months. They have still said, I think they've been repeatedly saying they're targeting their first event for January, 2023. So that date is out there, whether that's fungible and whether, I don't know how that works, but just for context, that's what they have set. So, I mean, basically given them the same treatment, like pros.

Well, I think, you know, again, starting with the players, I mean, I think it's interesting to think about this. And so, let me start with this, that all these pros and cons that we're talking about assume some sort of partnership. And assume basically like the PJ tour signing off like turn the keys. Let's let's go with what you're proposing here, which is obviously

fairly unlikely that it'll be that simple, but let's just for argument sake. Let's talk about it in that way So I think the first pro is that both like the stars and the rank and file players are seemingly earning more money and the rank and file players are seemingly earning more money without having to jump ship or nuke the tour or any force, any kind of bands or any kind of stuff like that. I think it's interesting to think about the idea of, you know, these top players earning what they say is kind of their market value. Whereas the rank and file players have a very clear path to do the same thing. And I'm sure Andy could talk more about their ideas on promotion and relegation and how that stuff would work, but it seems like a pretty objective system

rather than just the Saudi thing, which seems very like cool man, like you've got the look or you've got the, you know, whatever, like here's $20 million, like we'll sign you other than Cokrack. Uh, and Abe also sounds like so many of the two. Abe's got the look a little bit. No, I know, I know.

He's really got the look. I think like some of his fellow players have called him dishonest Abe. We'll stand some of his talks with the soddies. What I'm getting at, I don't think Cokrack has the look. He seems like an arbitrary place to spend money. But the point is, I think that gets much more into the kind of F1, like, who's your dad

and what did he do for a living? Cool, you're on my team. List sort of. Keep landsstroll. Sort of. Sort of vibe, then just an objective, like, you know, Patrick Cantley, you're not the most exciting player in the world, but you're clearly

among the best players in the world. So like, welcome to the PGL, which I think is interesting. And I would say a pro for more players than it's a con. But if it's fully team stuff, it could be the team owner basically saying like... It's possible, yeah. Yeah, like this guy, even though he's 88th in the ranking. And that's where I don't know how that stuff would shake out. I think another pro is probably the potential,

much like you're saying with the sponsors, just to be like a much more global superstar, right? I think if you're just playing in more events, I almost feel like this stuff is a little exponential, right? Where it's like, you can take all the best players and put them in the WGC's, but if the events aren't exciting and they're not actually world events

and they're in Akron and they're in Miami and Austin and Austin and all these like US cities like yeah you're probably not going to grow the international fan base that much whereas if you do take all those best players and you do move them around the world I think it does turn into much more like there was that great F1 thread going around about you know how these events just turn into like actual true events which I'm sure you can speak to, Solid, but. And you can treat them like real athletes and there's actual storylines and there's actual, there are employees of this thing.

You can do whatever you want as far as the storylines and as far as covering it like a real sport instead of just all these guys are gentlemen. Right. Couple more on the pros for players list. I think again, we mentioned this, but no conflicts with the majors is a very big deal. No threat of a ban is a very big deal. Having a set schedule, I think is both, I put that both in my pros and cons list. I mean, it's, it's a big

deal to know that, okay, I know I have to play these 18 events, no ifs, or buts. If I'm having a kid, I can't take the week off. I still need to be at the event is a very like that's a huge deal. But it's also very nice to just know like, oh my God, that means I have however many weeks off every year. And I have a four month off season. And I have all these times like, I know I'm not, I'm not playing golf. I heard, I mean, how good was John Rom talking about that on the podcast this week, where she's like, dude, it was like two straight years.

So I just didn't rest at all. Yeah. Like, that's fucked up. I think there's something as far as like immediacy. I think there's a chance to be like the face of like a founding team. You know, I think if, if you look at like, I don't know nearly enough about soccer, Premier League, Champions League, any of that stuff, but I would imagine all those teams have like their legacy dudes, right, who are kind of the founding members of that team.

You see it in football where like you still talk about so many of those, you know, the Johnny Unituses and like people like that that are kind of like the face of of those teams. And I think the other big one is just I, it could be more events, right, that these guys more events, right? That these guys are playing, but it's also 54 events instead of 72 whole events, is a pretty key distinction.

I've definitely been deep on this block of like, man, other than the majors, I'm not dying to watch golf on a lot of Thursday afternoons. Like, I'm just, I'm just not. If I'm being realistic, I've, or maybe these are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday events and they're in prime time. You know, or something like,

like there's much less rigidity or structure to what they have to do, schedule us. There was, what, go to the Formula One race kind of made me think too of like, what, not everyone playing on this day at this golf course at this event needs to be playing for the same thing. Like they have formula four,

they have women series races in between practice sessions and all that stuff and it flows for the people that are just like there to watch racing. Like, yeah, it's kind of cool. Like they're go the women and they're all, there's a crash on turn one. What if like the, you know, if this PGF festival, you have 48, these 48 dudes are doing their team thing

and then like the right behind them are like the dudes are playing for the stroke play tournament. And like on one side of the golf course, you know, it could be, you know, maybe it's 48 guys on each side. And like you don't have to have, you know, that's a way of merging like all of this stuff, right? And that's very interesting. I mean, the whole time I'm thinking like,

dude, how could they not have tournaments where they're weaving women into these events? The WGC's are 80 people. You could have 50 women on the other side of the golf course if you wanted to. I just think about that. Just from the chance of just women always talk about, or the women's game, I should say, it always talks about I remember Mike Wolland talking about what a big deal it is to be on network TV

Right if you have like if you have them going off on the other side of the golf course or you have them going off on a Friday or or whatever just think about like the chance you have of Moments whether it's like a hole in ones whether it's a you know some kind of great interaction whether it's whatever and you Start to do the math on, like, you can only speed golf up so much. You can only make it so exciting, especially when you get down to the, down the stretch and you're on the 18th hole, like, you know,

there's gonna be 15 minutes while they're playing that hole and there's gonna be about 60 seconds of action, right? And you have a lot of time to fill and that's just another, it's a good time filler. Out of big stage is what I'm trying to get at. Cons for players, what I see, basically what I said about the set schedule, the inflexibility of the schedule, I know Rory spoke about that

and loves being able to say, hey, I play when I want and I don't, when I don't. And that's a big deal. And then the other thing is like, just to speak very realistically about this, we've talked a ton about media deals and these guys need to be mic'd up and these guys need to be doing this and they need to be doing more social stuff. They need to be doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that's, that takes

a toll on players and right now they make a fuckload of money without having to do any of that stuff. And so if I'm one of the top players in the game, I think that's a big one I would circle just as, hey, it's a lot more money, but it does come with, with a cost. As far as pros and cons for fans, I'm happy to report. I have more pros on my list than I did for the, for the SGL. I think the team aspect is super interesting. For sure. Right? A chance to build a new media deal kind of around those, those top guys, almost to take like the best parts of the existing media deal while also building out, you know, like I keep saying, you know, Mike DePlairs is a very, very obvious example of something that

would be great. Well, it's like everybody has a like there's a midfield battle. There's like, it's, it gives you the the wherewithal to kind of keep track of everything a little bit better versus it being 154 guys. And you can maybe keep track of 15 of those guys. Instead, it's gonna be, hey, you know what, these guys are, here's the bottom of the mix race late in the season. You know what, the bottom four guys are getting relegated. Well, it'd be sick to be like,

God, Red Bull's got to drop Cooture, man. Like, he is killing that team. They got, you know, Ludwig is Ludwig guy. Ludwig guy is coming up the ranks. They gotta replace him. He's gotta come in. Yeah, but he loves this. Like that, there are so many layers to like,

just think about when Matt Coochers, I'm just using him as example, his decline started in stroke play. Did you really notice it? Like for a while, you'd be like, ah, whatever happened to that guy kind of. Whereas like, we can tell you all about when Nikita Mazepin

has done as the lowest rated driver and for me the one this year, because you have the context for it, if it's all contained within a set number of people versus this whole system. Yeah, I mean, those are obvious, I think, for fans. It goes back to context, right? There's so much more context.

I know, I've mentioned this on the pop before, but one of my favorite things where Andy ever said about the pod was the pod was he was talking about watching the memorial. I'm like a Thursday or Friday afternoon and he was talking to me exactly about this just a lack of context and he's like, I sit down to watch it and it just turns into like,

hey man, you're watching some golf here, huh? All right, well, how about a John Rom shot? Here you go. All right, you like that? How about a Ricky Fowler shot over here? Oh, pretty cool. Oh, let's check back in. I want Rob's doing it.

And it's just like this, it feels like the wallpaper, you know, the screen saver just bouncing off the sides of the screen. It's just totally aimless on those early rounds. And I don't know how you do that without, I don't know how you fix that I should say without some sort of mic-dub element,

some sort of like contained, you know. Crying a little bit. Yeah, well, something you can get your arms around. You can't get your fucking arms around it. 156 players. We can't even get them to cover the cut on Friday afternoons. And that's like the most obvious storyline

you could possibly have. And yeah, I mean, we could, you can, there's tons of pros for fans and all of this. I think it just comes down to like, we're not as big of a part of this equation as we like to think we are until players are upset with how fans get treated, which is not even close. You know, this all can make perfect sense to us and is not going to be how, potentially how pro golf plays out. Just because of that, I mean. And I think the only con I'll mention from a fan perspective just to be as balanced as possible here is I think it's a totally legitimate. I don't agree with it, but I think it's a totally legitimate gripe that like maybe pro golf shouldn't be turned into just a entertainment circus.

Right? Like maybe there's a lot of people who love the entertainment circus, right? Like maybe there's a lot of people who love the 156 guys, 72 holes, stroke play, that's gonna be the way that we identify the best champion and it's great that number one 56 can beat number one on any given week. There's a lot of people who love that. I think it's pretty boring to have 50 of those events a year, but you know, I can see that as a calm as well. There's nothing stopping these guys from showing up at the John Deere Classic either. Well, that's what we're gonna say. The John Deere Classic's not one of the 18 events. If they wanna go play, that's like the NASCAR guys

going and playing in the dirt track. Yeah, exactly. I don't know, I think that's about all I got. That pretty much exhaust my list. I just, at the bottom line, if you took anything from this, the Saadi League and the PGL are two radically, radically different things. Fastly different things.

And I am extremely confused by everything, right? Because it is, like I said, so much smoke, it's really hard to see. It's like going into a house that's just been burning. Like, I don't know where the fire started, right? I don't know. I don't know if there may be some flames in there still burning. I don't know what they are.

It just seems like there's so much smoke. And when you clear it all out, it's not a ton there in terms of like the best way I can sum it up. There's not some huge secret alliance where everyone's getting ready to jump. Like it is very undecided how this is gonna play out. A lot of the people involved in this are close to being involved with it or think you'd be the ring leaders are as confused as to what is going on as we are relying to you.

It is just, it is unclear behind the scenes as to who is gonna be doing this if anyone. And the strategy, the Saudi League to roll out Norman and probably be announcing some golf courses soon, probably be releasing a schedule soon. I don't know if they have even one single commitment and if they don't, other than co-crackers, you know, if they're trying to just like bully their way

and to get people to commit, I really don't know. I hope that's clear in all of this. It's like, there's been times during the past couple years where I feel like we've all been like, go, this is getting ready to pop off, and I'm not sitting here saying that right now. Well, I think it is getting ready to pop off, but I think the pops are much smaller than we thought

they were going to be. The league is popping off, it's just not the players, necessarily, that we know, or that we, I don't know. It's diet pop. Yeah, exactly. We are, the Butterfield is coming to a close here. Lucas Herbert has a one shot lead over Reed as we go to wrap up.

We want to do a little what's in the bag and then we'll talk a little Butterfield and see if that has wrapped up. It's all in what you tell us. What's in the bag? Well, usually it's what's in the bag, but this is not directly in the bag, all right? We're gonna do, we do these sections

where we talk about some kind of club or change we've directly in the bag, all right? We're gonna do, you know, we do these sections where we talk about some kind of club or change we've made in our bags, but we've done some ads for Quader in the past. We've never really fully talked about like how, one, how great Quaders are and how often we're wearing them, at least for me. Like that's what I wanna do this one today. I wear the legend pretty much,

every round of golf, extremely comfortable shoe, looks extremely stylish. I probably need a fresh pair because mine are starting to stink a little bit because they get worn so much. But also the daily, the best possible name for a shoe you could have, I wear them, get this daily. We're in a pair right now.

You've got DJs got his on right now. They've got like this knit pair that, you know, all right, I guess what is, these big mesh? I don't know what, what, what, what, what, you're different. You're different times. There's what, what, there's different time. There's like a mesh, there's knit, there's like a plaid kind of thing.

And I think also like this is kind of what's in the bag. It's just what's in the travel bag. Sure, when you travel. There you go. The one I actually wear mine went while I'm traveling. They're great airport shoes. They're one of them. Yes, they're slip on, slip off.

The wool ones are my favorite. I'm on, I think probably my fourth or fifth pair of those because I do wear them on the rig. And we just wanted to give a shout out to our friends at Quater for that. You know, near where's the money makers? Like crazy. The legends are my, are my rain shoes.

Like they're in penituum. As far as moisture. Which I didn't use to like, so you look at those shoes, they look big and boxy. I didn't never liked wearing those golf shoes or I never desired to wear them, but that's not how they feel. They're some of the most comfortable golf shoes I've worn.

I had the best grip of any golf shoes. Very true, because I've got a little, and slip and slip, I'm swaying too much in my swing, I can tell, and you need a good pair of sturdy golf cleats. What are their golf news we wanna chat about? Bell Rive. Yeah, huge news emerging out of St. Louis. sturdy golf cleats. So what other golf news we want to chat about? Bell Reef? Yeah, huge news emerging out of St. Louis. Bell Reef to host the 2030 Presidents Cup.

I can't, this is no offense to, no offense to the Presidents Cup, no offense to that. So I know you ride hard for the Presidents Cup. Big presence Cup. No offense to anyone. I can't tell you how excited I was for the last two hours of conversation

and all these like potential shakeups. Imagine the exact opposite of that. It's just like, what if I told you this year that, you know, we're going to the Quill Hollow for the president's cup on the horizon, Bell Rive? Like get the fuck out of here. No thanks, unsubscribe. Where's the next US one?

I don't think that's it. Is it Medina? Oh, Medina Medina, that's right. That's right. Which, you know, listen, maybe the president's cup goes by the wayside, because, you know, we'll see. We'll see. The biggest news of the week on Mayan was,

was, use golf facts. Oh, of course. 180 hours of video, forensic videographer went in and really, you know, got down to the nitty gritty and said that, you know, basically came up with the conclusion that golf channels replay of peace, sand, fiasco down the Bahamas was digitally altered. You believe that shit?

Yeah, I do, 100%. It changes, but what I think about it. Again, I am not casting stones because we're not in press conferences asking questions or any of that stuff. hilarious to me. The guy is what would you say is one shot off the PJ tour event. Correct. Lee right now. This is clearly a burner that has been tied directly to him. Like tweets from this account have accidentally gone out on his own account.

Shitting all over Rory McElroy, Justin Thomas, all kinds of different players. Now we have him like, like, or her. Well, and then there's a whole, there's a lot of the only real journalism in this is being done by all these burner accounts that are diving into, you know, whether the recovery email for the other recovery email for the, for the account and whether it's, whether it's actually like his father-in-law or his, his wife, the, the point is it's clearly tied to somebody in Reads orbit. And I, to my knowledge, I don't think he's ever been asked a question about it.

And it's like, here's your, your family or your agency or your somebody in, like, accusing the tour's largest broadcast partner of digitally altering footage in which you're live. Yeah, in which you are like. Which they don't even have the budget to show shots most of the time to say. And maybe it's just like total lunacy, but this is just, it's one of those things

that I'm like, dude, if this happened in any other sport, it's all anybody would talk about. And golf is just like, oh, well, you know, I guess, you know, we'll see. What else is on? There was, you know, people found earlier this week that that use golf facts was going on to all the Patrick Reed, Wikipedia pages and scrubbing it of any sort of controversy. Really?

Yeah. It could be like the zodiac though. There could be, there could be use golf facts as kind of a brand now. True. Like, there could be all kinds of use golf facts. That could be just a username that you try to lock up in other spots now. We could, how you know you're getting the best information

that anyone can update it. Cortezodiacker, they tracked them down. You guys see that? I did. Yeah. Which, you know what, Jay, you know, is it a coincidence? Jay went to Bermuda with P.

She's just sitting there probably, probably sipping on stuff at the, at the Fairmont Southampton or whatever. Jay, Jesse, not Jay Monahan. Right. Little Jay, not Big Jay. But yeah, I don't know how he got to the top of leaderboard unless we didn't see much of the footage on the way up.

I don't know if he even could be digitally enhanced. Shot, he shot 65, just really, really strong. What? What? People are saying Scott Stollings is in contention for a can-do-like round today. 62, three clear the best in the field and probably, you know, six or seven clear

of the average today. Unbelievable. What was it? Do we want to talk about Bermuda just as sure on a macro of not the island to the tournament? The Butterfield. It's kind of wild that maybe intentional,

unintentional, that the Saudi stuff pop ish off this week against truly one of the biggest messes of a tournament in terms of filling out a field I think I've ever seen. This is the example of what we're talking about. Being too many events, being a bunch of guys that do not move the needle, playing for whatever money, and trimming this exactly out of the equation. Tommy armor the third decline,

a spot in the field. I can't. So a couple of things. I know I feel like I shit on this event pretty hard at the end of last week's podcast, which I will stand by. I don't shit on any of the people playing in it. I get it.

Oh yeah, of course. It's a very, like, wood play. Wood show up. It's been entertaining with the conditions too. And it's kind of funny that, you know, the winner of this gets a master spot and full FedEx cup points, like the same as, you know, the winner of this event gets 500 FedEx cup points. And an event where they couldn't even fill out the field.

Like, it's all you want to talk about manipulation. But I guess that's because they canceled the same even close. I think that's because they canceled the China event. I think that's why. But it's just, yeah, talk about, just talk about an answer to question nobody's asking here, I think is kind of how I sum up this event.

When people are asking, hey, how do I find a tax haven? How do I launder my money? All that stuff. Butter fields your answer. Strength of field is a 68 this week, which is out of 70. Which is pretty, let's see, it's pretty much kind of the strength of field that you'll get on the Europe, like the last five of the last seven European tour events I've been

less than this one. Which have been very weak European tour events to be fair. This would be like the bottom, bottom, wrong of the PGA tour. I think this is not your case of manipulation. If that's what, if that's what you're angling for here. So, but they would have needed a reach. It's not not manipulation though. It, I'm trying to think what the strength of field number is to actually clear where you

don't default to the minimum first. So this is one of the rare PGA tour events that defaults to the minimum of 24 first place points to the winner of the event. So they're manipulating. So this, that's interesting. They're getting more points than they would otherwise. So technically, if that's the case, then the European tour is manipulating way worse than you'd care to admit.

Sure. We can find Colin Grant. Because I have counting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty European tour events this year that have defaulted to that. So, anyways. Anything else in the room? We had the crazy... Lauer.

Yeah, Lauer, he's falling off a little bit here in the final round. Lauer, Hard K is back from the... Back from the brink. Lauer is currently, he's playing 18, but he's currently two over on the day It had kind of a tough 15 and 16. I wanted to talk about a Patrick Flavin the is it Flavin or Flavin? I don't know Flavin Flavin the he's actually my new Ohio alum Monday his way in and he's looking like he's gonna finish top 20 to T17 had kind of a tough tough Sunday

plus one tough Sunday, plus one on Sunday, but really, really played well. Big ass payday for him. That Ludwig guy, T51. Exactly, he's coming. Congratulations. And then I think also, the AMPM split on Thursday was insane. It was like hurricane conditions on Friday,

or on Thursday, and the guys that went out in the morning got absolutely viscerated. And the guys that went out in the afternoon were like, this is a breezy walk in the park. I like watching this golf course. I think it's fun. I think there's some weird, funky little change of direction holes, elevation change

that actually shows up on TV. I think it's a fun little. You called them like very un-Pigy-a-tor like home. Yeah, which is I think refreshing. Yeah, it is. The guys I've had, you know, greatest couple of it. Cut in corners and stuff. And I don't know, I don't think this term is kind of fun.

But let's feel this week. Biggest takeaway otherwise, peace pants. What's up there? Possibly digitally altered pants. I mean, he's wearing dark socks with crazy, crazy shoes. And then his pants aren't even getting within six inches of the tops of his shoes. Is that legal? That they're technically shorts?

They could be comprised. Well, it could be it's permune. It could be where the shorts with know, the shorts with the log socks with the suit jacket. You see that? That commercial. Exactly. Maybe it's because he's just buying stuff from Biggs. It's big so far ahead.

And it's getting, it's shrinking. It's possible. You know? Yeah, that was, that was my big takeaway from permuta. It was just like how bad, how poorly dressed he was. The last thing I had was just the Dubai night event on the ladies European tour. I watched a little bit of that.

That was good viewing. Look like some funky, so I always wonder like when you get off Last thing I had was just the Dubai night event. I'm a ladies European tour. I watched a little bit of that. That was good viewing. Look like some funky. So I always wonder like when you get off the reservation when they're playing the lights, how do you see anything? I saw who was, I forget her name that was under a tree or something, like literally playing from the dark over there.

It was like, how do you play golf shots? When you literally can't see, it's very interesting, interesting golf shots. Which we're going to do a little bit of that. We're going to have a closest to the pen and our NIT event this coming weekend. I believe Friday or so. I think it's Friday night.

After the first two rounds, we'll do 36th the first day. We're going to do a glow in the dark, glow balls, closest to the pen. Oh yeah. Awesome. What's the distance, glow balls close to the pin. Earlier. Awesome. What's the distance you gotta take off the glow ball? 10, 15%. I don't know, we did it at Coins event.

It felt like probably like 10 or 15%. Yeah. And the ball didn't spin at all either. So we're doing it from back of nine green to 12 green over the trees. Oh, interesting. And then we're gonna put the pin on the slope so you can kind of use a feeder and interesting. Yeah. And then, you know, we got a couple pros

playing. Hubert, Lauren Coglin as well. It's going to be it's a NIT is our nest invitation alternative. It's the culmination of all the events we have through our nest membership platform. If you're interested, go to nolangup.com.s I'm very excited about that. And we've got Taurus sauce, Grand Rapids. Big one, big one this week. That's three. Yep, episode three, Grand Rapids, and then we've got the loop, and then we've got Kingsley Club after that, just to mark your calendars for upcoming episodes,

upcoming podcasts we got. Who could say, yeah? Mike DeVries coming on this coming week to chat about his footprint in golf architecture in the state of Michigan, and his career and what he's got going down in Tasmania as well and all kinds of stuff. So, you know what, I don't want to hype it up too much, but I think Grand Rapids was like one of my favorite days of... It was really good.

Tour of Sausages I've ever done. Yeah, I agree. I think it's gonna... Go down as one of my favorite episodes too. Wednesday. Wednesday, Wednesday 9 PM Eastern on our YouTube channel, you can find that there. If you wanna be a part of the live premiere,

and it'll be there forever as well. Quick around the horn section. CC, what you burn it on. I wanna give a big, big pat on the back, corn fairy tour for getting corn fairy tour, Q school, final round, televised, or I think it's live streaming. I think it's on NBC sports gold, not on the cock for some of the next Sunday, 10 to four, uh, from,

from the landings club in Savannah. I think that's a, it's one of the best, like, coolest days of golf out there. Guys are truly playing for their livelihood and applaud them for showing it. Hell yeah. I'll give a shout out to Neil. We played a hickory event this week at the Winter Park 9 shout out to our friends at Louis Vogue Off for some rental clubs on that one, but it was, it was blast. Neil hit the shit out of the ball. It looked like the 97 masters out there. There's all these like, it's, you know, it's a bit of an older field.

I'll, I'll say very welcoming field. It was great to meet a bunch of new people, but they're kind of slapping around and kneels absolutely just complete aerial attack with the hickories. Like, the crack of the bats just ringing out around the golf course, it was very cool. So, I'm shot at...

And then you got to attack my ants. And he got a legitimate fire ants situation. I posted that on the NLU Instagram, giving a heartfelt apology to Bryson, saying that we had no idea what was really, at risk here, Bryson, very cordially came back in the DMs. It's just that I was trying to tell you guys. You gotta just tough it out though, right?

It had a nice fun little back and forth with him, but, and then I'll also give a shout out to you. I saw last night in Soho, Edgar Wright movie this weekend. It was awesome. Go check it out. I don't really, I wasn't prepared for the round the horn section. I just want to give a shout out to Fall. Fall and Jacks, we got the sliding doors of our house open this weekend and sit back,

watching football and not a crazy travel schedule right now is the time of the year. It's nice to be nice to be in Jax and I'm very, very excited about it. You guys dress up tonight? I didn't do the whole dress up. You got to cost him. I have to have kids. Yeah.

What are you going to be? I'm missor incredible. That's a big one. I Freddie was Captain America last night. I don't know if he's changing it up tonight or whatever. I thought about doing the Urban Meyer. He's Patrick Reed for, uh, how are we? Uh, the, uh, the Urban Meyer where you strap like a blow up doll to your waist.

Oh my God. Put your hand down there. You got a headset on. You got the, the Redo, Ohio State, you know, pull over on. That would have been provocative in the neighborhood. Yeah. I was going to do the Greg Norman and just be in a bathing suit with Jessica C through bathing suit, basically walking down the beach.

You can almost chop your your hand off. So that's true. Made through this whole podcast with no references to saws or Greg Norman, almost cutting his own arboh, pretty impressive. Or just, you know, Greg Normans like thoughts on himself and, you know, just the narcissism and play there. Almost made it. We almost did it. So, all right. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. This was cathartic, I think, for a lot of the, you know, for us to voice some of the things that we've heard going on behind the scenes and I'm really excited to see

how it plays out. I guarantee that we'll be more on this in coming weeks and months. So thanks for watching. Saudy Leak, bad. PGL, good. Thank you for joining in. Cheers. 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.