No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 619: Houston Recap + Evin Priest

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Another Tony Finau win means another lively Sunday night as Soly, Tron and DJ recap the week in Houston with some notable performances and insightful quotes about the Tom Doak design at Memorial Park. Then it's off to the DP World Tour in South Africa where Tommy Fleetwood wins for the first time in three years and a check-in with the LPGA as Nelly Korda outduels Lexi Thompson to reclaim her number one world ranking. Then we bring on Evin Priest of Golf Digest Australia for an international perspective on the latest with LIV golf, his experience attending multiple tournaments this year, what lies ahead in the upcoming offseason, and more.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, another joyous Sunday evening in the Solomon household. And I made chicken, Piccada, lemon Piccada, meatball, something angel hairpasta. It was incredible. Just a celebratory night here.

I'm going to have a beverage as we go through big tones, not one, not two, not three, not four, but fifth PGA tour win joining us. Of course, had to call them in from the bullpen, Mr. DJ pie. Hello, pie man. So all right. Great to be with you to talk about what is surely I would say. I don't think it's overstating to say the most momentous win in PGA history today. Tony, you know, at the Houston Open, unbelievable, unbelievable stuff. I wasn't going to go that far, but appreciate you willing to do that. And here as well, straddling the middle of this argument, not choosing sides at all, always been totally fair to both sides. Mr. TC, hello, TC. Yeah, as people know, Randy's on a silent retreat this weekend for big tone to win, you know,

against the field of plumbers and firemen is, is, I think a little bit weak. You got to be really careful, TC. You got to be really careful tonight. It's going to be a tough one for you to navigate the Fienau Fleetwood conundrum tonight. You got to be really careful, as I'll almost say. I mean, he beat be a big, big player in Alex Noren, their T4 for Alex Noren, but you know, Alex Smalley, then Taylor, things of that nature. Yeah. Well, listen, it was, it was a huge week for us, Alex Noren fans, if I may say.

First of all, he made a guest appearance on episode three of Taurus Soss, where he agreed with everything I ever said about him, I feel like I was kind of underrated storyline of that episode. Very much a theme going on of like all these, all this justification I thought I would feel. I really don't feel when these moments do happen. He shot up the leaderboard at the Houston Open. Before any of that though,

we spent some time with him actually out in Phoenix. I got to see one of the best pros in the world. We're, you know, picked their brains. We got to see them work on their crafts. And I witnessed a ball striking exhibition from Alex Norden that revitalized my soul. I don't want to spoil too much of the video because it'll be on Calaways channels. But watching Norden smoke fairway woods at over 170 miles an hour and shape them low draw, high draw, low fade, high fade, whatever way he wanted to, I just didn't, don't think

I realized he had that much speed. I know he can hit the ball, but I did not know he had that much speed. He was doing it with some of the new stuff. So I, some of the new fairway woods that we can't talk about yet, but I can tell you about the Rogue ST3 would. I've got the Rogue ST LS and added perk that we have given to this club this year. The no-ling up branded Calloway Rogue ST3 would head cover. TC and Neal feel nostalgic for the glory days. High school golf, they have the big, but the big birth of fuzzy head covers when they were all the rage, haven't seen them in years. So we made our own with Callaway and you can get it for free when you buy a

Rogue ST three wood on the Callaway website and Callaway Golf.com. Pick and customize your Rogue ST three wood. And on the order order summary page of the first page of checkout, you can enter code NLU to add the head cover for free. How about that deal? So Callaway Golf.com Rogue ST three enter code NLU to add the head cover for free. How about that deal? So calibagolf.com, rogue ST3 would code NLU at checkout and you get a head cover added for free. massive, massive spot for the three wood coming up here in episode four of a tourist sauce.

A couple defining moments, I believe, as they're called out in the episode. Some of those noren shots you're talking about just sounds like somebody who is just mired playing just a shit golf hole number six at vis-b. He's got a car of all these three woods from the trees, from the beach, from all the places that there are to miss on that golf hole. But we don't have to re-litigate that. Well, I mean, I think it sounds like we're, you know, A, we're talking about a once-in-former top 10 player in the world here. And then there it is, who is, you know, as high as eighth, I think in the world. And then B, somebody who, it sounds like he passed the eye test. You saw it.

It was a pretty impressive part of the eye test. It was. I agree. Speaking of the eye test, Sean, were you with me that day at the players when we just sat and watched him hit the, the cut chips? Yeah. What's the timeline now for 45 minutes now? Because it started at 15 and it got up to 30 a couple. No, I was like an hour and a half. That was a lease an hour and a half. Maybe unbelievable.

Unbelievable. And I've just, you know, Vita Fade ever sits. So, yeah, it's great. Great to see him have have another good week. You know what's interesting? You mentioned Randy, of course, on a on a silent retreat this week at some sort of trappest monastery up at the mountains, listen to the trap draw, listen to the trap draw for more on that later. How does Big Tone keep doing this? Two wins while we're in Scandinavia while Randy's out of the country. Another win this week when he doesn't have access to his cell phone. I know Randy has like some, some ski trips on the books and things like that early in 2023.

I'm gonna be hammering the betting markets with our friends and draft kings to play some heavy big tone bets next time. Randy goes out of town. I'll just ask this question to start. Will you finally accept Fina? Will you accept him? I think I'll accept it a year ago.

I think DJ did as well. Totally. I think if anything, this is purely vindicating of what we've been saying. The guy is a, he's a monster. I don't know, like, you know, I think that's where this all started from was this should have been, you know, not win number five. It should have been win number 15.

Uh, when, when the guy gets going, he's just, he's unbelievable. Did he, you know, I don't even think we need to talk about the fact that that he was what, three over on the back nine, if anybody had been even close to him, he would have, you know, crap the way. I don't think we need to talk about that. I don't think we need to talk about that. I don't think we need to talk about the fact that he himself said that, you know, on the first hole, he was thinking he might not, it might not be his day when he started the

day with what a six shot lead, four shot leads, something like that. I don't think we need to talk about that stuff. I think what we should talk about is his, apparently he's the best driver in the world right now. That kind of blew me away. I don't think he missed a fairway on Saturday at all 13 fairways and like horrible, horrible conditions, which I thought was pretty fascinating.

Just, you know, it's hard to deny this week. It was a true exhibition. And let me say, suspending the bit, suspending all things. Obviously, obviously a fun guy to root for. He looks like he's having the time of his life. I love seeing the family out there. I love seeing all, I mean,

I'm even in on all the TikTok dances and everything. I'm a big tone, you know, I'm a big tone appreciator, even if maybe his style of play does noise line up with what I would like to see in my superstars. And even if I don't think maybe he's maxing out his generational talent, I'm still, I'm still happy for him that he got his fifth PGA tour win. Put him in the, in the Mark Wilson's seven slides in there amongst all that praise. I think I counted seven in there.

And a lot of guys, that's more praise and there's ever been. You have to admit that. Fina was the least uncool golfer. Yeah, right? I might as well go far to say, like no golfers are cool, but he's the least uncool golfer.

I think that's right. I think that's right. T.C. will you accept Fina? Again, I'm like the UN, I don't know if it's blue hat or the white hat or whatever, the white helmet. You know, I've got a new- Butro's Butro's Butro's Carter.

Yeah, neutral observer here. I think it's fair to demand greatness from people who you think have that capability. I think Tony Fienaal has like very, very elite level talent. And I'd like to see him win tournaments beyond the like, like, suspending the bit like you said, Dej, like, yes, he won the Northern Trust at Liberty National over a great field of golfers. Otherwise, he's won the, and like, I know he can't control, you know, where or when he wins, but like, I'll even be willing to say it's better than not winning. Totally. But also, it's like, you know, the 3M Detroit.

That's so great. You know, Puerto Rico, this event and what else is he won? I think those are those are the four, right? Like, I think that's kind of life wins. Yeah. Yeah. And then so, but like that's that's kind of the deal, right? Like he's he's not winning big dick events.

And it seems like we're poised. So it seems like we're poised next year could be a massive year. Maybe maybe he's going to rattle off a major, rattle off a bunch more, you know, big wins. I would love that. Nobody would love that more than me. You know, I think it would, it would really bring true some of these proclamations for this massive talent that me, T.C.

Randy, the silent majority really have been, uh, have been pointing out for years now. And also, I'm going to ask you, will you just thank us for making, it's fucking November 13th. And we're all like giddy to talk about golf on this podcast. I think about how boring this would be if we're just like, man, Tony Fina, what a player, huh? After a wire to wire like six out of win, right? Like, come on, you should be thanking us. Oh, that's a huge thing to do. That's what you should be doing. Yeah, I'm impressed.

I'm impressed. I'm honestly impressed that you could bend over backwards to make me thank you for what I've been through over the last several years of just trying to convince you that the guy's a decent player. That's all I've ever tried to do. I've always said he's a decent player. That's why we've expected and demanded more out of him. That's the whole fucking point.

A huge point that I've screened for the mountain tops along the way is you guys have tried to paint him as somebody that chokes away events that doesn't perform in the final rounds. And it's just not the case. It's just you can't say it. And I've got some numbers. I test the I test like what Max did to him at Riviera or the he shot 64 that day.

It was with the greatest final round He's ever played. I listened back that episode you guys all said that you all said there was a great did everything he possibly could I put out on that day he had he was plus 6.6 and strokes game on that day All I gosh that day look Fina was scoring average when he starts in the top five the last two years when he starts the final round in the in the top five is scoring average is 68.9. He scores almost a full shot better than his normal average. He has been plus 2.3 since 2018 when he starts the final round in the top five. That'd be good enough to be the second best player in the world right now.

Like that's only behind Rory's current strokes. Why isn't he the second best player in the world right now? I'm saying he plays even better when the pressure is on. People don't want to believe that, but that's, that's just fact at this point. Is he complacent then when the pressure is not on? Sure. Let's go with that. That could be the new block. If you want to spend that one, he was, another example, he was plus 4.7 this year in, in the Canadian final round and got clipped by Roy McElroy. Like when he's tried to win something, I believe that would count as a big event.

I would think so. He's still had some horrific luck in those, like run up against some dudes that he just- We're not gonna do the luck thing. Boy, we literally are gonna do the luck thing. Cause now it's like, now it's starting to even out a little bit. He's so old, you know how much luck he's had? He's not wearing it out yet.

It started to even out. Now when he gets in contention, he's got five wins now for in the last 15 months. The only other guys that can say that He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not.

He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not.

He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. He's not. No one said we'd love to see him get lucky or it's some bigger events. It's that that's all I'm saying.

Okay. That's probably next. Oh, sure. No one was really harder for that than me and TC. There's no sign of it. So I've got many, many questions about this three fits. SLC said how responsible is Sally for the era of female dominance. We are now witnessing.

I'm taking no credit at all. Exactly. Because I think DJ and Randy and I should be taking credit, because we've been the ones that have sought this, you pulled this out of him. It's like, you know, she had a movie with Blash. He did say a lot like that. A lot of people asking, what happened to the, uh,

the chin strap of the, the, the, the bet, the go T bets at the, uh, NIT between you and Randy, DJ, any, any response? I'm pretty sure I, it was like a week ago, so it's hard to remember, but I'm pretty sure I did it. I don't know if anybody has any photos of me at the NIT to to conflict that, but I'm pretty sure I did it. Solid, if you want to play this game, so I'm still owed a hundred bucks from everybody for the formula one thing last year that I get on one stuff. That's tough. Yeah, that's true. So listen, I mean, I really didn't know that. I truly didn't know that glass houses things of that nature. Okay. I'll gladly pay for that. Kala, Kala band said,

does the big tone situation make you second guess a life lived with sincerity? Tron and big Randy troll their way through a never ending bit and seem happy. You care. And therefore, it could never truly win prompting frustration. And maybe contribute to the big left miss. Why am I being lumped in here? You literally just lumped yourself in in the last thing you said. I think there's something interesting there. That's, you know, that's kind of what I was going to say when you're rattling off all

the strokes gained all the, all the, what do you want me to do with that information? Well, what would make you happy? Stop saying things that things that are wrong like just stop saying wrong things that's the main thing that it could be the eye test he should have more wins than he does and not everything is hard to take you seriously and not everything is distilled down to like oh like a strokes gained or this or that it's like yo like the game's played on a big that is the game that is the game though like you that you people I hate to try to make the game's played on a big thing. That is the game. That is the game, though. Like you, the people, I hate to try and to make strokes gain into this nerdy data thing. It's literally just your evaluation of how you

played the game. You can do scoring average, but that doesn't just like in a specific moment, like there's been moments, you know, whether like where I'm like, holy shit, like, big tone is not going to hit this shot. Well, and he doesn't hit that shot. Well, he now, there's plenty of times when he does. I know, but it's not a reverse hit this shot well and he doesn't hit that shot well. He now there's 20 times when he does. I know. I know. It's not your reverse that. And I think he got no one has supported it more than you see in that regard. Exactly. He just needed some reps in the big moments and he's gotten them now.

And it could be a huge year next year. I think no one's predicting a bigger year than me for big tone next year. Joe Howley 20 is Finau winning a major in 2023. No, but I mean, what will it be? We did this on Twitter, TC. So if he wins the Masters, that's a limited field event. So that doesn't go. He should go play the Ned bank. US, US open. US open. US open's got a bunch of scrub qualifiers, right? PGA's got all the club pros. So that wouldn't be. No, I mean, I wouldn't be a big win, which is the, which is the major he would be most likely to win in 2020. The open, he just got the lucky side of the draw probably. And for sure, that's

a good one. I'm going to write that one down. Number one, and then PGA tour, they let all the way up to number 125 and that and the players change. That doesn't count. I didn't say it was a major. I'm just, it is a good question. What, what, what is his best chance? What's, what's he most likely to win? It seems like it's been a gust of a gust of, he's been pretty close just because he's, you know, bombers and he's driving it great. He hits his irons great. If he can figure out the putter, it seems like kind of that, you know, I'm sure there's numbers four and or against this, but, you know, kind of where the, the putter evens out.

A lot of bad putters win it, win it Augusta, right? Because everybody tends to put poorly. So it seems like that would be the best chance. But LACC, probably a good, good look for him too. And can we talk about like, you know, this is a, this is a real golf course. Like this is not like a standard Tony Fienau PGA tour, bomb at golf course. So this is, this thing required a lot of different shots, a lot of precision, a lot of really, really freaking good contouring around these greens that made it really interesting chess match.

I know a lot of people were not watching the golf this time of year. It's just natural. But to watch them play a muni and have two or three guys, two or three guys, was it that finished better than ten under par in a four round golf tournament? Like that's outrageous. And like Finau truly separated himself because the scoring opportunities just were not plentiful on that golf course.

And it was just so many cool little pins and put in the, you know, front left corners of Greens where there's huge mounds taken it away. You got to decide if you're taking that pin on, you're bringing Bogey into play. That was just interesting golf. I wish this golf course. It plays so great in the fall.

So it's in the right spot. I just wish more people would watch a tournament like this and more people would play it because it's a really good tournament. Totally co-sign. I think that's, you know, offsetting any leaderboard concerns I have with like, yo, this is just like a really, it's a really underrated cool fun golf course to watch. There's some big holes out there too. Like there's, I think, I was talking to Zach earlier.

He was like, yeah, there were a couple holes in the practice room where I didn't even get it to the fairway So he texted to can dope and you know, I was like well that was probably the those probably the holes that kept going Designing right about that the fact that that kept that about that co co design credit on this one No, but it's it's great like I love watching it's It's turned up in spots without being gimmicky. That makes sense. Like, you know, some of the slopes on the greens, there's some great runoffs, but they're not pushed up unnecessarily. It seems like everything's kind of a grade. You know, pretty nondescript piece of land it looks like, but there's some cool little creeks

and stuff running through that they that they brought in. I don't know. I really enjoyed watching it Thursday Friday. I tried to watch it Saturday and it was just kind of like, you know, and then I got shifted over to CNBC after that, which we can get to that. That's tough. But the point is saying that, like, I don't know if Finau has like a golf course profile

that is like, he can only do it on certain kinds of golf. No, totally. Some of his wins, it's not even necessarily like a bomber's paradise golf course is where he has gotten his wins or his best. Like an iron player's paradise. Yeah, you're like, I mean, he's really good at dialing back off the tee as well. Think of the golf national too. He was one of the best US players in Paris.

So like, and that golf course was proper golf course. The opposite of. I thought I was saying he had a lot of quotes about like kind of dialing it back and hitting low, low drivers and almost kind of, yeah, just like crafting it out there, which is so the opposite if you were just kind of stereotyping him. So the opposite of what you would think his game is, which is just ball speed free kidded as far as you can and figured out he's he's kind of not that player, which is, which is really interesting. It's fun to kind of go

a level deeper. I think also just like worth mentioning and I don't know his caddy situation at all. I don't know anything about his old caddy. I don't know anything really about his new caddy. I just, it's interesting that you know, made a caddy change and now has won what three times in his last like 20 starts or something like that.

I think that's. Who's he got on the back or a panic Mark or Mark or Bannock. Yeah, he lives in jacks actually. Well, how long has he been on the bag? I thought he made a change like at the beginning of this year earlier this year. No, I think it looks like he was he was on the bag for when Fienel won. Uh, he began the 2020 PGA. Okay.

Well, still hardening park. So two basically little over two years ago. And he's what four wins in the last two years. Yeah. Correct. And a bunch of other close calls. That's the thing. Like now those close calls, I think look a little different in terms of you can't get it done. It's also like, yeah, you've won a bunch and you've been super close at a bunch of events is is very different than what I believe you said via Slack earlier DJ, which was Mark Wilson asked career which I'm going to have to throw a penalty flag on that. I'm throwing a challenge flag on that one. That's a good point.

Mark Wilson got it done in like the Phoenix open and some actual like real events. Yeah. I'm going to pull up Mark Wilson's career. You want to do it off the same. If you want the same number of wins, I believe, right? Same number of wins in his. Yeah. What are we going to be able to re-evaluate when Sony open,

when Finau gets into his 40s, we can maybe re-evaluate. Mark Wilson got so fucking hot that that's go swing. I remember everyone. They're all in the spring. He's all his win for between January and March. Would you rather have them all be in the spring

or all in the fall though? You know, but also in one of the worst golf periods that we're, a period that we will not see again. Some swimmers and firemen like Jose Cosseras, JJ Henry, Tim Clark, Steve Marino. That's a tough time period.

Malinger. Yeah. Stephen Ames was like top 10 in the world at a certain point in that time period. So he also won the Wisconsin State Open in 2001. And not for nothing, I think he's turned into a good, good broadcaster. I'm Mark Wilson fan. What else you guys got from,

Tyson Alexander make a huge birdie on the 18th hole for a solo second finish. Made almost a million dollars with a second place finish. That kind of surprised me a little bit. So that, that plot was probably worth about 200 grand or something like that. Which is pretty cool for a guy that's 34 years old and finally got his PGA tour card and

is bounced around and all that. That's one of those stories of like, good for you, man. Those last 12 years of mini tours and bouncing back and forth between Corn Ferry and Latin America, you just made a million dollars. That's what I think we say this about the fall every year. It's true at the risk of being condescending to some of these events, very optional viewing. If you want to plug in, there's there's good stories to be had. There's you can go deep.

There's a lot of good stuff that you can really sink your teeth into. And if you don't want to watch, I don't think you had to watch Tony Fingal win the Houston open. You didn't have to do that. Nobody's making you do that. You know, so should these events exist, probably not, but you know what, is it taking anything off the table for us, the viewers? That's right. They're out there doing it. You know, I respect that. Let me, let me throw a couple at you. I gathered some quotes. Okay. I'm going to read some quotes for you guys.

I think maybe this will spark some, some things to talk about. I'm going to read the quote. You guys tell me who said it. Okay. They're kind of long. So I'm strapping. Let's dig. I'm going to stop you first because I have some quotes that I got to read the quote, you guys tell me who said it, okay? They're kind of long, so I'm strapping. Let's dig, I'm gonna stop you first because I have some quotes that I gotta read to you. Wow. I think this is urgent. And this quote is that this podcast is brought to you by CashApp.

Quote. The easiest way to spend, save and invest with friends. Hopefully everyone in your group has a cash tag. If not, you need to be harassing them. I will say it, that's not in the script, but harass your friends to get on cash app. It connects you effortlessly with your friends and your finances.

Couple of shout outs to get in this week. I wanna shout out the guy in the Austin airport that came up to me and flashed his cash tag right in front of me to say like, hey, I'm on cash app, because of you guys, I'm like, okay, I'm kind of eating right now, but thank you. Did you spend any money? I did not send them any money on the bill.

One guy did that a couple weeks ago, he said, they did the one of those things like your third at has to buy you lunch and he tagged me into it and I bought a lunch a $7.20 for it. I hope that covered it. I want to give a shout to Justin Fields just in general

there's no really a cash app plug into this. He's probably going to win. He's probably going to win me a fan. It's probably going to win me a fantasy championship this year. So we'll do that. That's so much harder. Shout out to the land.

He's got great play. I'll schedule shout to the landlord that takes payments in cash app. Shout to Valets. I was a DJ. Pinellas. If you're those like, never have cash. So if I can never, you know, tip the valet with cash app, that's, that's always preferred. Everyone that participated in the cash app game during the live shows this past year,

we're going to be doing a bunch more of that next year. And always eternally shout to the guy that sent you the money that he owes you before you have to request it. Cash app, easiest way for you and your friends to enjoy sending, spending, saving, investing, splitting, tipping, donating. That's money, that's cash app. You can download it from the app store or Google Play store, create your cash tag today. You get a free $15 when you use code NOU and $10 goes to youth on course.

You're supporting, growing the game in the right way. We can only say that when Randy is not on. All right, Deeds, let's play your quote game. So I saw it real quick. Eagles first round of the fancy playoffs. I'm not worried about first round. I'm gonna get a buy into that. Okay, so bills second round.

Hate gotta look into this. He's gonna be in a shootout. He's gonna be in a shoot. That's the thing. The Bears defense is so bad. He's gonna be in a shootout the rest of the year. He's gonna be a shootout. He's gonna be a shoot. That's the thing. The the Bears defense is so bad. He's gonna be a shootout. It's the rest of the year. He's number one fantasy quarterback going forward. All right.

We are gathering a couple of quotes from from the week here. Just, you know, a little roundup. We're going to play a little who said it. I'll read it. You guys, you guys tell me tell me who said these quotes. Ready? They're kind of long. So so strap in for him.

All right. This is regarding the golf course. It's a huge change of pace from what we usually play on tour. I'm a big fan of Mr. Tom Doke, the designer. I like the strategy that's involved. I like that it's not overly punishing with lost balls, shots in the hazard, but it really makes you think the bunkers, even like some of the kind of dugout areas in the rough are really strategic on all the holes and the big, sloping greens really make you have to think not only on your approach shots but being creative around the greens. I like that your brains kind of needing to be constantly turned on and it's a really fun strategic challenge. Who said that?

Hmm. James Han. Great. I'm gonna say Scotty Schaeffler. No, good guess. That was Patrick Rogers, Stanford grad, Patrick Rogers, thoughtful, thoughtful young man. Wanted to discuss this just because, T.C., I think he's kind of right on the line of death panel versus like appreciating the slow culmination of a career. He's 30 years old. He is playing really freaking good golf right now. He's kind of one of those guys that like, he always keeps his card. He always kind of just like plots away. He's never really, you know, he's scared victories a couple times. I think a couple runners up, but no wins on the PJ tour. And it just kind of seems like one of those things that, you know, this is like what careers used to be

like, you know, as you would kind of toil away, chip away, chip away, chip away. And then when you turn 30, 31, 32, all of a sudden you started, you know, getting some wins. And it seems like that's going to be the case for him. And I'm just curious if you guys have any Patrick Rogers thoughts because you could also convince me that his career up until this point is kind of like, well, that's the guy we need to get rid of. It's like that, that's what we don't need showing out the fields. So I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, it's a little bit of both, right? I don't think he has kept his card through all these years. I think he just like keeps showing up to these tournaments and like they're like,

Oh, yeah, Patrick, you're on the list, right? Sure. Go ahead. Yeah, here's your spot. Come hit balls right here. Like I don't, if you told me he hasn't, like, it's got a special exemption into the tour, I would totally agree with that. He's provided somehow no memories in how do you, how do you keep a card for this long and not really give us much to go off of?

I think he's always in that like 85 to 115. He finished 128 after 2020, 2021. But then I think he's never finished better than 74th. That's crazy. And like he makes a ton of cuts too. Like in 1920, he made the 27 events. He made 20 cuts, but he had, he only had seven top 25s, one top 10.

He's just not. And then like, next year, he played 34 times next year. He's played seven events already this season. It's crazy, man. I know. I know. It's nuts. And I think, you know, it's just, it's one of those guys that like if you were one

of his buddies or if you were like really closely following his career, you know, if you were for whatever reason, a massive, massive Patrick Rogers fan, like I think it would be a very interesting roller coaster to kind of be on almost like a, a bit of a home-a-esque kind of career, you know, like absolute world-beater in college and then just like you keep waiting for it to happen. And it doesn't quite happen. And I'm predicting, I think it's going to happen this year. I think he's going to win. Who's the other guy on that college team? Cameron Wilson. Cameron Wilson, who's now like a yeah he's like a finance guy now. He's so good. So good. I also, Rodgers dealt with a lot of wrist

injuries and that's just something that it's held both he and I back over the years of really trying to reach our full potential. But his like his data golf is insane. His worst every year was minus 0.49 strokes gain and best ever plus 0.43. No one has a range that like doesn't, you know, a multi multi year range that doesn't span over a shot. Like everyone's is way more volatile than that. It's insane how much he hovers around. I bet if you average it all out, he'd literally be like PJ Tore average.

Which is probably that way week to week too, right? And you need that, like that's not necessarily the recipe for success anymore is making cuts. You need almost that high volatility, high variance. Mavick Nealey's talked about that on the podcast before. For sure. All right, let's move on. This is the second one of three here. It's a little bit longer one. I've never played good in the fall. I don't know why that is from the time I got to college basically up until last year. I've always struggled in the fall. I don't exactly know why that was. I've always kind of tried stuff in college. That was the middle of our season. So it was weird for some reason. Maybe it was because of football, who knows. I've never played well. And last year was really the first time I did, and it was kind of nice going into the off season, feeling very comfortable with where my game was at. I was just able to fine tune a couple of things

instead of really feeling like I had to work on a ton of stuff. It was more like, let's kind of get this thing rolling and go into the beginning of the year, I just really played well. Shephler. That's exactly right. It's Gotti Shephler. Just another interesting one,

a guy that like seems very, very consistent. I thought that was kind of interesting for him to highlight like, yeah, for whatever reason. That time of the year, I just never played well. I thought you were going to say, Noren, just because he's such a big Oklahoma state cowboy. Sure. Go, folks, baby. I thought that was interesting. He also just talked about like many, many players have the last 10 years just being absolutely fucking exhausted after the president's cup. And like, so I thought it was interesting because, you know, when you have that mindset going in of just like, dude, I, I really need to play well in the fall because I need to not get

too far behind. I need to not feel like I'm chasing. And also I'm exhausted. I just think that's like a really, that's a pretty fascinating dynamic. Can I throw something out here that doesn't really fit into what you're doing here, Dej, but I think it does with what we just watched talking about how Houston was such a great fall golf course. I know that in Texas and the fall football rules, I know it does, but especially with this elevated look into the future, the eight, the Byron Nelson and the Schwab looks like a really awkward spot in the calendar. I'm guessing that those events are going to get elevated some of the years if they do that. But we've always said like it rains a shitload

in May in Dallas, like those events are just not meant for that time of year. Wouldn't that make sense to have a true Texas swing in the fall? Like wouldn't a bunch more of the Dallas guys play those events so you'd still get good fields this time of year. I know your ratings are not going to be nearly as good going up against football, but as the tour looks to restructure, you know, I know that somebody's got to pay for, you know, somebody loses whenever you do any of these changes and it would be these events losing in some way.

But man, it doesn't, from a 10,000-foot view, doesn't it look make way more sense to have those events in Texas in the fall? They should let Schwab out of their champions toward contract and let them say, hey, you know what? Well, let you out your champions toward contract if we can move colonial to the fall and you guys keep sponsoring it. Love that. That's interesting.

All right. Last one. This is after very difficult conditions on Saturday, as you guys know, you heard all the time. It's pretty cliche one shot at a time, but I think it's a lot easier to be present when the conditions are so tough. You really have to focus on every shot, create a picture and hit a shot. I think I did that really well all week, but especially today. Justin Rose. He put like shit today. Oh, that was this was this was after Saturday.

Okay. Sorry. Scott Percy. Great. No. Big tone. That was big tone. And I just I thought I was a very interesting window.

I'm not trying to take, you know, an interesting answer and flip it into a negative. But a little with there of maybe falls asleep at the wheel a little bit. I thought that was an interesting thing. It's hard to, it's a little easier to stay focused, stay locked in when the conditions are tough. I think A, that speaks to him playing well at difficult golf courses, right?

Maybe he locks in a little bit more. I also think it speaks to, maybe he falls asleep a little bit more. I also think it speaks to maybe he falls asleep a little bit at some of these, some of these easier setups. Maybe that explains some of the weird mistakes in the past. But that's just one, one man's read. One man's read. Curious that you guys. He's a true artisan.

He's trying to do, you know, craftsman spoke shit out there. Right. He needs to. He needs to. Just, yeah, there's an impressive reach. That's all I could say about that. It's truly impressive. Well, what's your, what's your read on that? Nothing? Other just to see like I think there's something to the most talented players when it's not pin your ears back golf that they it activates something within them, right? Like when it's not

homogenizing everything. I'm not saying that it's tough. So I'm not saying that he falls asleep. I'm just saying like, so a lot of these dudes like it when it gets harder because they can do things with the golf ball that Aaron Rye to pull out a name cannot do, right? So, you know, that's, I'm sure Aaron Rye had a fantastic round three. As I said that, but there's that that's probably what he means

in terms of like when you can we can throw out like I need to shoot this number and I just need to focus on this golf shot. That is, you know, there's something that gets activated within that. So. And I saw it. So it turned right should be your favorite player, you know, considering the double gloves and the glandular stuff that you've got going on. Iron covers. Yeah. But let me be clear. I love that quote from big tone. I think that's an awesome, awesome mindset. And I think it speaks to the same thing that we say, you know, every, every major that we watch is just like the difficult conditions separating the best players from the not best players is exactly what you don't get

on the PJ tour week to week. And that's activated by this golf course too. Exactly. Yeah. Sometimes difficult conditions. Like, I would say when Bay Hill gets like hard and windy and firm, it just becomes like a crap shoot. Like, it's just kind of silly. You can't, you got to hit it over water and hold these greens that nobody could really hold.

It just becomes, you know, people are going to win at three over par. Something that's exaggeration. But this, like, activates all of the mounds, all of the slopes, everything that like makes this golf course interesting is activated with just a little bit of wind and a little bit of condition. So. Got his big tone, open championship, Hoylake could be a, you know, you get some, you get some wind, you get some

Candidys, he's got a couple, he's got a solo third, 2019, he's got a T9 before, comfortable and links golf. Well, and I just want to final bow on memorial too, is there is a reason why you don't see this a lot on the PGA tour. And I've not been to Houston, but like, it's a very flat golf course with perched up greens. I would imagine unless you're in a grandstand viewing is tough. Like PGA tour golf is stadium viewing.

It is set up for like you to be able to sit on a mound to be able to see down onto the green. That's there for the entertainment product. Do I think that that can take away from some of the intrigue of watching on TV? Absolutely. I do. So a rare week where it's like, hey, this might not be as good on the ground. You might not be able to see up to these greens, but on TV, it's going to get a lot more interesting. That is a rare win and trade off for the sickos, if I may say. They should move the Byron Nelson here and just play both double the purse. Yeah. I like that gets rid of an event keeps the person safe. That's a heavy play. That's not a lot of pocket if yeah. All right, do you want to go over to you want to go across the pond to South Africa across the pond and south way down to the netbank. Yeah. I'm going to let you, across the pond and South, way down to the

net bank. Yeah. I'm going to let you take it away here. I'm very curious to see how this is going to go. Well, hold on. We've got a few other things to tidy up real quick. Joel Damon continues to top up on those FedEx cup points heading into the holidays here. Congrats to him.

We talked about it last week. Love when he, he's making money week. Love when he's making money. Love when Joel Damon's making money. As I said, the tournament was moved to CNBC on Saturday to make way for the olds that got the 4 to 7 or 4 to 6 PM time slot on golf channel, which is a fucking disgrace. And then basically people want to say, well, yeah,

you're going to create a two-tier tour system. You're moving the third round of a regular season PGA tour event to CNBC to make way for the Charles Schwab. It's a playoffs, TC. Come on. It's super ball. It's a champion chip. Come on. Yeah, super ball. Biggest event called. Yeah, I don't know.

That just really, really missed me. Man, it really pissed me off. I really trapped my ass. And then Mark Hubbard. We didn't talk about Mark Hubbard. We didn't get about this. We didn't get about this. Mark Hubbard got de-cute in round two.

At the turn, he changed out his driver for another driver. Knowing it was a penalty, he thought he was going to get just a two-shot penalty on every haul, but wanted to test the driver in tournament conditions. Knowing he was going to miss the cut and turn out, it got it, turns out, it got him de-cute, which yeah, he's not afraid to, when he's going to miss the cut, he will do some weird stuff. He'll do the hockey pots. He'll do whatever.

He's there to bring some entertainment to, to, to, and otherwise, uh, unnoteworthy, miss cut. I'm all for it, man. You think he's going to get fined for conduct on becoming. Yes. I would think so, right? For sure. Yeah. Which, which in reality, like it's probably the most professional thing that you could do

to walk in and try to try to squeeze something out of that round. When you know you're going to miss the cut, actually, you're out there. If you think about it, you should be paying me. Anything else from Houston? Team Rose popping up. It was. Popping up and then popping down. Not a good day today, too over today in the final group.

Listen, underestimate him at your own, at your own peril, dude. I think I'm good on Team Rose. I think it might be. I think we might be beyond his best years. What was that quote that someone said about Tiger and everybody got off mad. It's on the back night of his career. He was like, he was like 40 at the time and it had like 18 surgeries.

And was it, did Rory say that? I think maybe it was. Rory's like, oh, you know, you look at someone like Tiger. He's probably on the back night of his career and everybody got all pissed off. He rose on the 19th. Well, it's great question from Mick Altred. Greg is 90. Paul from D Foggy said, blows my mind seeing Rose play on the PGA tour. I can't believe

he didn't go to live. I assume he'd be one of the first names. I'd love to know why he didn't go. Do you think it's Ryder Cup related in his legacy? Oh, I think it's 100% writer cup related. Yeah, it has to be. Which, but that has been busted through by so many dudes that I would have thought their legacy meant something to them. I would have thought Rose would have, I'm in the same boat and I don't want to make it this simple, but it remains like no one from Excel has gone. And, you know, we don't, we are wrapped by Excel. We don't really work on that side of the business and we don't really have any communication on that side of the business or understanding as to why that is the case. But it's astonishing. I would think that if

Rose wanted it, maybe he doesn't want to go. I don't really know if he's really even been asked about it, but he would fit the profile so perfectly. Yeah. I mean, well, hey, first of all, maybe they wouldn't give him a team rose Mm, right, so that's that's part of it. You could join his fellow countryman Hendrick Stenson Counterpoint counterpoint T.C. It's all about having someone you can lean on and I think paparez proved that this year Oh, but he would lose Morgan Stanley Which is a short partner. Well, maybe he's already learned what he needs from Morgan Stanley That's true

Bottom line I think rose cares deeply about like a captaincy. Like that's very much in line with which is, you know, good for him, which is admirable. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like literally paying like probably $50 million to be a captain of a rider cup team.

Like that's admirable. I would say instead of instead of monetizing it like stents. And exactly. Now you can put them to a lie detector. I actually, and just for the record, that was a joke when I said fellow countryman Stenson. That's what live put in the press release when Stenson joined the logistics and joined his fellow countryman, Ian Polter, Lee Westwood, and Laurie Cantor. Anyway, off to South Africa for Africa's major. Am I right, beach? You are. You are. I'm a massive fan of, I think that's their whole slogan, Twitter account. They're just branded this thing as Africa's major, which is fucking sick.

But anyway, Tommy Ladd gets it done. This is his second Ned bank. You know, it has two national opens, two majors, two premiums, but he is. It's just not the stuff blown through that too quickly. That's clarify what the majors are. The netback to the Africa's majors. And he's I think you're going to say British masters. No, he's never won the British masters. I thought he did. No, he's won the open.

The friends. I guess he hosted it. He hosted. Yeah, which is like winning. I think throw a win for that. And then and then he's won the Kazakhstan Open. And then two premium BDEs, which is the the back-to-back Abu Dhabi championships, they won and then he won a national championship, which was Tommy won the British par three championship back in the day.

Not many people doing that. That's actually kind of sort of a cool block. I still have a question from Kyle Porter. Is there a difference T.C. between big dick events and premium big dick events? That's a great question. I think that's where the I test comes in. If the conditions are right, it gets upgraded to premium. Yeah, exactly.

If there's a great Luder board, the horse is great or, you know, there the conditions are right, it gets upgraded to premium. Exactly. If there's a great leaderboard, horse is great, or, you know, there's the winner, the winner fits the narrative. Exactly. Is it like peacock, though, even the premium version has ads? You get to have to worry about that. I'm not worried about ads there. No, but I mean, it's good to see Tommy. Tommy playing well.

He's a spring chicken at 31. People are saying, why is Tommy not, not, not getting the female treatment here? Tommy's won a lot overseas. Again, he's only 31. He's two years younger than the female. That's wild. He's only 31. Yeah. The year older than the Patrick Rogers conversation we just had. And he went through a, you know, he went through the wilderness for a while too. Like, can we put the pause on this part exactly right here? So one a lot overseas. Yeah. Okay.

He's just fucking six wins. I'm going through with you. My guys went on the CV or Fina winning five times on the PGA tour. Is that a lot of wins then? Do you actually can see how it is? Now it is. But like, as of like eight months ago, he hadn't won five times on the PJ Tours. That's the whole fucking point.

It takes years to do this research. A lot of this research has already done. Now new shit has come to light. Now we're gonna have to reanalyze. Yeah. But that's why Tom can't just go on a whim. He had treatment over the last two years because he had already done all this shit.

I think the problem here with the Fleetwood thing is Finault or Fleetwood was extremely legit. Like he was one of the top 10 ball strikers in the world, 2017, 2018, and he's fallen off significantly from that. And I, we've seen it from Fleetwood. Like we know it's there. And it hasn't been there for four, for four years now. And the writing for him is where like people are like, what, a, a, Fennel, why do you guys hate Tommy? Like, no, there's no hate here. We've seen peak Fleetwood

though. And I still, I, I'm still not seeing that quite yet, right? And he needs like an actual BDE, BDW, uh, to, to bump up into like being like, I'm totally buying in on this. He is not still not the same player as what he when he peaked four or five years ago. That's a long time ago, TC. He's just he's one, he's won two majors in the last three years. And he finished top five in two of this year's majors. More net banks. No, the fucking PGH Championship and the Open Championship. Those are kind of back doors though, T.C. If I was about to remember it, that's fine.

That's fine, they are, but he's coming back. So I know I'm not trying to set you up for failure. I know you probably don't have this off the top of your head, but I might. I've always wondered on the Fleetwood ball striking stuff. Like how much of that is the I test like messing with us in that he just like looks like a ball striker and how much of that is statistical.

I got it for you right here literally he was 10th in the world spanning 2017 to 2018. I look this up today. He was number 10 in the world in ball striking on on stroke scheme approach strokes came off the tee like that's extremely legit. He's 56th of the last two years and he's 45th over the last year. So that's an enormous fall off. And for referencing for reference, Finau is 16th over the last two years and 11th over the last year. So like basically Finau has become what Fleetwood was at his best. How much did Morcaw fall off this year? Well, be careful here, Deach.

No, I'm just gonna come after you. That's unfortunate. It's unfortunate, the Deaches, that that. No, what I was gonna get at, it was like, I know it's not one to one. I know Morcaw is a better iron player. I know there's a lot of that stuff, but it's solid, throwing you a bone on the hole,

sometimes it bounces your way, sometimes it doesn't situation. A couple of those majors could have bounced Tommy's way and we could have been looking at him as a more cala type player a couple years ago. It's true. And sometimes it just doesn't happen. So I'm well aware of that. So I had it happens. I think it's a fly at selectively. I agree. Well, people were shitting on the Ned bank a little bit. I just I will say Ryan Fox arguably one of the hottest governors in the world right now, finished second. Uh, Shubanker Sharma finished third.

Richie Ramsey. We don't have to tell you how he's been played. Richie Ramsey. I want to shout him out. He's been playing good career renaissance. Yeah. Uh, went from almost losing his card to like he's in the top 20 on the Euro to now. Bez. I don't tell you about Bez. Also, also Westwood's not

there anywhere. He used to just clean up these net bags. Yeah. Hoover him up. So, Landy, Landy had a terrible weekend, but he, uh, he was playing well. And then, uh, great, Gracie. Gracie shot 75 today. They kind of, kind of spit the bit a little bit. So to answer your question, Dej, over the last two years, Morcao is the second best ball striker in the world. And in the last year, he is sixth best. Okay. So.

So he's still, he's still. So yeah. And then, uh, trending downward, though, TC. Yeah. Rasmus shot 76 today as well. He was in. Fuck, man. I hate that. I hate that. Minwool Lee played well. And then Thomas D.T.ry. He's good everywhere.

It's crazy. Like he's got to burn himself out. I know. I don't know how he yeah. I don't know how he keeps doing all this continent hopping. Seems like he's played like 15 weeks in a row. I'm like four different continents. It's wild. So, uh, and I. So, you bring in our guests here pretty soon? Yes, we shall. Morakawa was number one in 2021. Like he was the best in 2021 ball striking and he is sixth best this past year for your reference. What I'm saying is sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes life feel like that. Sometimes it don't. Before we do, we want to chat a little LPGA as well. Yeah. We had Nelly Corda first win since coming back from her blood clot returns to number one in the world. Tough, tough, tough viewing window. The a-dustrement online opposite for me the one the Houston open the red zone channel and your local football games if you're watching that. So yeah, I'm guessing not a lot of people are tuned into that, but very good little duel

with Lexi Thompson coming down the stretch as well. So that was a huge win and get her back to number one in the world. I kinda, Lexi, I can't do it. I kinda throw my hands up on this one a little bit. I was scrambling, like trying to watch it and eventually was just like, dude, I'm not paying for this many apps and subscriptions and devices to just like, it's just not going to happen.

I'm going to follow it online. I'm going to follow the highlights as they go out, but like, man, we got to make that easier to stream and all this like, it's not linked from the fucking website. It's just, you know, going to detective hunt just to even like watch this thing. It's, it's very, very unfortunate because I was pretty keyed up. That was a pretty fucking awesome leaderboard that they had. And it was just, it was not going to happen. There was too many forces working against it.

Bowned by the tropical storm. It's a 54-hole event. But you know, shout out to the Doyle guy at Dex Imaging or whatever. He's put up some money for that event, the Pelican Championship at the Ridler's Place. And I heard there was some turned up pins out there a weekend too. It's a fun golf course to watch. I have always enjoyed this tournament.

And Nelly, I just put Nelly on like a flat Florida golf course that is probably very similar to the places she practices. It looks way too easy for it really does. And she's just really underrated wedge player too and medium range putter like her birdie can I'm not he's still kind of trying to figure out how to get the best way to get these numbers in but her like birdie execution percentage when she gets a wedge in her hand has to be one of the best on tour. It's just it's not all length and you you know, flush five irons from her, like her,

like down to getting the ball in the hole. She's just an extremely refined player. And kind of sneaky returning to number one in the world also. Totally. And, you know, kind of a reminder of like what a lost year it kind of turned into with some of the blood-caught stuff and how long she was out and having a bounce back from that stuff, it's just as unfortunate that it obviously had to go that way

because she was kind of primed for a true like, nobody's going to catch me type of year and obviously had that pop up. So hopefully a big one next year. Guys, I think this time next year, we were talking about a new world number one win grant. I think she's primed to absolutely take over once they lift the facts. Which is kind of wild that, yeah, if there were different governmental border policies

in place, we might have a different number one. The world is a weird reality that we're living in. I'm on the Lynn Grant hype train. I think there's too many good like between Lydia and Tittscoon and and Nelly quarter like just too much to overcome like and Jin Young co kind of falling off a little bit this past year Like probably prime for a you know revival next year too much to overcome like the the strength at the top of the women's game is It's not ripe for a fresh overtaking of of a world number. I'm not saying it is. I'm just, I think she's that good. I think she's a predator.

I'm also worried about Janie on coast injury as well, but the ladies get a full, full off season after this week. They got CME and then they're, they're not back to what? Like early February or mid February. Whenever the, I think I thought it was January, the Orlando event, the tournament champions, but then they got a new sponsor. I don't know how that's shaping out, but big big flash. A big flash out. I think so. Oh, man. Maria Fossi had boggy the last two holes. I hated

seeing that. Default onto T7. She had a really good week in Buehde. Concert her way to the long drive contest. Thanks, some golf. Hated that seeing this, Maya Stark tripled 18 to fall from, she was in a tie for third at that point and fell back into a tie for 10th, but she's also playing some very, very serious golf. Was Maya Stark the one, like a month ago that was using the driver that wasn't yet approved

for how to do that? Yeah, I think that's right. That's right. Yes. That's sick. Don't call me Arya Stark. Before we do bring Evan in here, I want to tell you guys about our friends at Roeback Active, where you all know Roeback. These guys just understand quality.

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That's 20% off polo's Q the end of the week. That's about RHO BACK.com. That's 20% off. Polos, QZips, hoodies, and more with code NLU. They just dropped from joggers. They got shorts. They got vest. They got it all. Robac.com code NLU. We made it 53 minutes in with no live talk, but now I think it's time. Studio 54, baby. Bringing in our Aussie friend Evan Priest, coming in from Sydney. I believe he's down in Sydney, is that correct? Sydney, Australia, yeah, flew in exactly a week ago. It was very, very interesting journey to get here. I had, I was sandwiched between two very large men

on the flight from Jacksonville to Dallas. And then I was seated next to, I got upgraded to business, and I've sat next to Terry Bradshaw from Dallas to LA. And he forced me to drink whiskey with him and then of course he had a bit of a hot mic moment on the NFL. It made a regrettable joke and then a really long flight to Sydney from LA which got diverted to Brisbane and we had to sit on the tarmac and get refueled. After 32 hours I'm here and I'm ready for some Aussie

sand build action And just to be clear. It sounds like if you're going through Dallas you flew No wonder you and T.C. are friends. You just start talking airports and airlines and flights off the bat Like just straight off the bat didn't you have to ask him anything about it? I know right like I actually thought of Tron when I was on that flight I was just like fucking American Airlines like this is the last time. And then like, Quantus is like has the same reputation in Australia that American Airlines has and they're actually partnering in the airlines, which makes total sense. Yeah, a lot more.

And fucking one hour out from Sydney, literally on the home stretch, the pilot gets over the PA and says, Hey, we're diverting to Brisbane and we're going to be still in the time act for an hour and a half, we put 40 tons of fuel in the jet and then you'll get to Sydney. So they just didn't have enough fuel like to begin with? Yeah, like, I can't really. Quantices either too cheap or the pilots just didn't realize it'd be windy over the Pacific Ocean. So that was not enjoyable. But we're back in Australia, we're ready to roll.

And so I will, I will mention American Airlines also lost Victor Hoffman's clubs this week. So I just want to get that on the record. We're cutting this whole part out. So it's totally fun. Evan, welcome. Thank you. Well, yeah, I wanted to have you on. Preview some of the Ozzy Sandbelt summer, as well as kind of, you had a really, really

insightful piece. I guess a couple of weeks ago now on kind of what to expect this live off season and you've had kind of a front row seat for it. So one and two, you know, kind of get an Aussie perspective. We had clates on the pod a couple of weeks ago. But, you know, we've got a lot like a big following down in Australia. And I feel like there's a there's a definite. Australia and I feel like there's a there's a definite shift in perspective or or you know differing perspective down there versus what we have in the States like what do you think we miss here in the States on live? I think what you miss in the States on live is just The the Australian players and for that matter international players around the world They don't have that same loyalty to the PGA tour. You know, they didn't, we didn't grow up with an event

in our backyard. You know, if you grew up in Dallas, you had a number of events, probably too many events, that you could drive. You know, we're cutting those down though. We missed that, but we had an idea on that front. Right, right. But yeah, like we just don't have that,

like that sentimental tie to the PGA tour. And we do love it. I love the PGA tour. I grew up dreaming of being a reporter on the tour and telling the stories of the best players in the world, but we don't have that loyalty that is so strong that when a huge check comes along, we still think about it. When I say we, I mean, the professional golfers, not myself, the loyalty isn't that strong. It's like the Australian players who leave Australia to play overseas, they travel

to play for what is them the best place in the world to play golf. And when Mark Leishman left Australia, when Cameron Smith left Australia, when Matt Jones, that was the PGA tour. And it was nothing personal when they decided to leave the PGA tour to go to live golf. It was just suddenly there's a new place that suits them. Obviously, financially incredible offers to go to live golf, but also, it gives them a longer off season. It lets them use their spare, like it might not be that much spare time in the end when you think about it, but it's more about being able to commit that spare time to certain things in Australia

to go home and see grandparents and all that sort of stuff. So I think that's the number one thing people miss. Like Americans at least. And Americans don't miss much. Like you pretty clue it onto to what Australians would feel about the tour, but I think that's just the number one thing. Yeah. My reaction to that.

So I would very much expect the exactly what you said about the PGA tour to be true, right? I mean, you would go to go play the best, you know, either some combination of the best competition or the best money, right? Like that's where you would go to go play. Like, I guess where it kind of just breaks my heart and where when I tune into Watch Came Smith on live, it feels like such a waste of talent, like because they're not playing on, you're not playing in the most competitive environment anymore.

Maybe that's where the golf ends up eventually. Yet it's very clearly the financial part of that one out, right? In the terms of a shitload of money was paid out to these guys to go do it. Yet gosh, man, I really enjoy watching Cam Smith compete. And it just sucks to not see that on the PGA tour anymore. And that's where I guess my perspective on that is I don't have any loyalty necessarily to the PGA tour. Yet I see that as the best likely option currently for competitive golf.

Maybe in 10, 5, 10 years that has changed. I just don't know if I have the patience for that. It's kind of where I sit on that spectrum. Yeah, exactly. And I agree with you. You don't necessarily have to have a sentimental tie to the PGA, to as an American, to still disagree with Cameron Smith going to leave Goal. And I absolutely agree that like, I've developed a good relationship with Cam. I'm a huge fan of he's like you guys. I just like watching the guy play Goal. I'm devastated that he's not going to be able to have a chance to win Memorial for the foreseeable future or Tory Pines or River Errorror where I really thought he was going to win in his career.

Like that breaks my heart. But at the same time, I think we will learn through this divide. We've lived golf that professional golfers don't view golf the way we do it. And that's been more evident than ever. To a lot of them, it is a job. And like you and I were just dream of waking up one day and being able to swing the golf club like Dustin Johnson just for the, on the range for one hour. But to them, it's, it's like that, they don't love golf.

They, they enjoy it, they know they're really good at it. It's a means to earn a lot of money and set up their family for generations. But they don't obsess over the memorial and Riviera, like you and I and everyone on this podcast does. So I think that's sort of like, it's been a slight awakening for a lot of fans and for Kim Smith, it's he values the majors and for the and the players championship for that matter more than anything in golf and outside of that he was always open to playing wherever was was the most enjoyable for him. It's outside of the majors. Golf is not really about money for camera Smith. It's about the comradery and the bonds with team players

and sort of connections back to Australia. And he just didn't get that with the PJTua, sadly. Like even when he moved over, he was 50-50 whether he was really enjoying living in America and playing golf in America. For the first three months of his PJTua career, he didn't go inside a single locker room. He's Caddy Sampinfold used to go in,

grab whatever he needed from the locker rooms and head straight out of the range and Cam would literally drive from the range, the car out to the range, until he got comfortable in that PJ tour environment. So for him, it's more about like, he's really excited by a new frontier. And whether you agree, that's the right frontier

we live golf I think Cam was excited by a new challenge and for him it was a bit of a free kick he has five years worth of exemptions into the majors as we know it you know without the major organizations making their stances known but for him it was like I get to do something exciting I get to spend three months in Australia and getting paid handsomely to do all of the above. And also, I could be part of something that in 20 years time was seen as a revolutionary leg. Who knows, but that's, I would imagine that's the way he's thinking.

On the Australian front, like what, I guess live wise, there's gonna be one live event there. I heard a rumor through the grapevine. Somebody reached out on the DMs. He said, third leg Greg is flying into Adelaide. It's just announced actually tonight They just announced it tonight. Yeah actually. It's what is it orange something golf club. Did I see that? Great. Yeah, the great. Yeah, which which acts coincidentally has a funny sentimental title Greg Norman That was where he won his first ever professional event in 1976

So they're sort of going back there and he's bringing his own tournament to the place where he started his winning career And yeah, they announced that so that's that's actually gonna go up against the Zurich Which is which is really interesting because in a way if you were a live fan you would say well This is this is gonna expose the weaknesses and the flaws of of the zero classic and the teams format and why that event isn't as good as it could be. And then on the other side it's like, well, it's kind of two weeks after the Masters, is that really appropriate? Can we just let golf settle down after the Masters for a couple of weeks before we get into stuff like this again? So I don't know how I feel about it sitting in that late April schedule, but Australia is getting a golf tournament for a long time. It's been starved at top

T professional golf. The world's best player is going to be heading to Adelaide. Adelaide has a sand belt that's kind of similar to the Melbourne sand belt. And it'll get people talking about golf. So it's hard to be angry about it. I'm not thrilled with how this Australian event has turned out, but they get to watch some of the world's best. It's going to be good. Are there other Asian tour events that are going to pop up as well in Australia, as like a little cottage around that one?

Do you do an Australian swing in the spring there or no? I would say so. Based on the schedule, I would guess that it's going to come after that live event. Whoever decides amongst those 48 players who wants to hang around in Australia will go and play some of those international series events. But I believe that when live were sort of courting Cam and Mark Leishman,

I think the idea was to always have more events other than just the live event. And in an idea world, they would let Camsmith sort of design and that event to suit himself and to look like how he would want to golf tournament to look like. There are no details on that just yet. If I had to guess, it would be in Queensland, it would be in his backyard and more family and friends would get to watch him play golf, which I haven't been able to do very often. But that's the idea is to entice these players to come down for more than just one week, Yeah. I think what's so interesting about that is, and I really

like the all the perspective on Cam and kind of the fish out of water feeling on the PJ tour. I think that's all super interesting, but it's also a little, I almost wonder if the push and pull has gone too far in the wrong direction, as far as appealing to the players, because like you said, you know, Cam, we want to give you an opportunity to design, you know, a tournament that the way you would want it to look is like, well, the way Cam would want us to look

and the way that I would want it to look are probably two very different things, and that's why I haven't had any interest in going to a live event, or honestly watching them for more than 10 or 15 minutes. The guys look like they're having a fucking great time, but like, I don't care about that. And so I'm just curious, Evan, from your perspective,

obviously you've been to at least one event. I know you went to the Dural event. I don't know if you went to any others, but I'm curious what it has felt like on the ground to you and where that push and pull kind of nets out. And I know that's kind of looking into the crystal ball a ways down the road, but does it feel at all like catering to the wrong stuff or like who's going to kind of be left

holding the bag on this if you're if you're catering to all of these guys and kind of what they're looking for instead of kind of what actual fans are looking for. Yeah, an interesting point you bring up and I tend to agree that what a two apply at once and what I want is a golf fan a two different things and we say that often with golf course design. Like what a top player thinks is a great golf course is not necessarily what the four of us think is a four of us think is a great golf course.

And a deficiency of the PGA tour. If we're in the interest of full disclosure here like that also falls into what they have given us from an entertainment perspective. Exactly. Yeah. So when it comes to like the running of an event, DJ, absolutely, you would be foolish to design an event that Cater's around just the players because what they want is not necessarily going to be sustainable long term. But I would say they haven't done that.

They've actually catered this to the 18 to 30 30 year old beer drinking, you know, sports fan that wants to, might not necessarily love golf, but wants to be part of like this new dramatic league that's kind of disrupting world golf. And it's kind of like, it's like a similar crowd I would imagine to like the Darts crowd in England or around Europe. Like I don't think any of them are hardcore darts fans, but they want to go for the party, the atmosphere and to say that I was a part of this. And I think some of the sports fans in America, they know how disruptive Liv has been. And they just want to say that I went to it and it was a party, it wasn't as bad as the media are telling us it was, that sort of stuff.

So I think they're catering to that crowd. And that's what I noticed in, I went to Boston to answer your question, DJ, I went to the Boston event and the Miami event. The Boston event felt a bit more like authentic competition, even though it sort of wasn't, but it felt a lot more like legitimate than Miami did. Just being at Doral, which is a fucking terrible golf course, and having Donald Trump there,

and just just these circus of like wealthy, white celebrities and stuff. It just felt awkward for me as someone who wasn't a player or an official or anything like that. It was still a lot of fun. I will say that about my own. It was fun to watch each competition day was pretty exciting. The players were having a great time, but I just felt like the crowd made me uncomfortable

in a way where it's in Boston. It felt like just people who loved sport. And they were much darker than a PGA to a crowd. They were younger than a PGA to a crowd, but they were having fun and they were so, it looked like people who don't usually go to golf tournaments. And if you're gonna chalk up a victory to live golf, I think that was one of them.

So yeah, but if they go to better golf courses, live golf. And we haven't seen the schedule that they're going to reveal for next year. But if they start going to some more serious golf courses that aren't just kind of thought about in the commercial sense, I think that's where they could maybe exploit a hole that the PJ to was left by not going to great golf courses, that remains to be seen. It was fun. It was not going to be the serious and legitimate competition of the PJ tour, but they were leaning into it. Boston felt like, hey, we're not trying to try to be the PJ tour. Everyone thinks we're

trying to copy the PJ tour or that we're trying to be arrival to it, but they're actually trying to go the opposite way with the music and the concerts and the shotgun starts. The shotgun starts actually, in my opinion, that Sunday in Boston was one of the more exciting Sundays in golf this year. And whether you like that or not, they produced that. That leaderboard felt like it was easier to produce a good winner and a good story than some of the sleepier events on the PGA to a calendar. Miami, I felt like it took a little bit of a step backwards in terms of the sleepier events on the page I had to go to calendar. Miami, I felt like it took a little bit of a step back was in terms of the legitimacy,

but the entertainment was ramped up, tenfold. It was, you can't help but, you know, acknowledge that the live team's finale was an exciting event and it was really watchable on Sunday and that was sort of my takeaway from it. What's been the media experience on site of these? Yeah, see that's where I think live lets us off down a little bit is... Are they still doing the drink robot or was that just at one? That was just at London. In London, yeah, I didn't go to London but I did see videos of that and I would have loved that in Miami

because that would have been cool. But yeah, it's like it's difficult because I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to make it the opposite of a PJTU event. Super casual and funny, and I understand where they're going. But at the same time, it's just so awkward when there's people who are trying to create funny content, hashtag content, and then journalists who are like trying to write stories and maybe give these things some legitimacy. Like if serious reporters are asking serious questions and the golfers have to answer them,

it may legitimize the entire operation, just that little bit more. But when you've got reporters amongst comedians and YouTube influencers, it's just, it doesn't mesh well, it doesn't look good or sound good on camera. And the press conference after DJ and the four aces had got their victory on Sunday in Miami, it was an example of that. It was kind of thrown together last minute. They walked off the stage with their champagne bottles and into a gym. And there was like family and officials and just live fans in the back of us, kind of like,

you know, testifying to like everything DJ said. And I was like, we don't need to be dunked on. Like we're just reporters. We're not out to get live. We're just here to tell the stories. And everything DJ was saying was kind of like, you know, slam dunk on you man. And then he was getting some fans in the back of him.

Yeah, tell them DJ. And I was like, we don't need this. Like this, Mike. And I just thought like, like we don't know one needs this. I don't need this as a reporter. Liv doesn't need this. It's like this, Mike. And I just thought like, we don't know what needs this. I don't need this as a reporter. Liv doesn't need this as a tour who's trying to get off the ground. And I think constructive feedback will be provided. And maybe next season, it'll look a bit more segmented where reporters have their time

and the influences and the comedians have their time. And they'll produce a product that maybe looks a bit more polished than what it was they see them. That's what we said a couple weeks ago is it's hard not to think that one of the biggest mistakes they've made is just like they can't get out of their own way from just being like massive dickheads and you don't have to weigh in on that. I'm just I'm speaking from from where I'm at is like man if you just just had a little bit of humility and like you know hey we're different from the PJ tour we hope you like it and we're just bit of humility and like, you know, hey, we're different from the PJ tour. We hope you like it. And we're just we're out here, you know, doing the best we can to put up an alternative

product. But instead it's just like, fuck those guys. We're going to run antithesis to everything that they're doing. And it's like, well, look at the players that that attracted and then look at the crowd that that attracts and then look at it. And it all just adds up into this kind of like, I roll of of an experience like like a little bit of what you're talking about. So it's it is so weird to me that man, if they could just get out of their own way and produce something like the Boston experience, man, I would be kind of fucking terrified if I was a PJ tour. It's like a extremism in politics though. Really? It's like you've divided, you've drawn

the line so hard like you've done this the whole thing that is such a middle finger. Like when you have like the dirty mic, the golf editor like tweeting out like, dissing tweets. You're clarified now about the players, like the actual players championship in the field and how live stole all those players.

Like you've drawn the lines. Like and it's really hard for people to jump across those lines. Like it's super hard for like, for people that are against this thing, like jump back to this side of the, like, oh, you know what? I was dead wrong on like all of these things when they all still exist, especially with Norman at the head.

Like, that's the thing is, and you know, that's what's been thrown out there this week, which has been shot down as well, but story from Jamie Corrigan at the telegraph was that Mark King was said to, is, quote, is known to have attended several live events this season. And it's understood that the American has met with Yasser Al Rameyyan, the governor of the Saudi public investment fund, which is funding the rebel circuit. If a deal is struck to bring King into the live hot seat, it will cause alarm on traditional

tours because King has such a strong record of success in the industry. Also Bob Herrick comes out to say, you know, Majid Al-Sarroor said, Greg Norman is our CEO and commissioner. Any suggestion that changes are being made to Greg's title or role is patently false. I have no reason to distrust either reporter on this. So I don't know exactly what's happening here other than what do you know about the future

of Greg Norman at the helm of live? I would say he's definitely going to be there next year. Those rumors, maybe they had some substance to them. Maybe there were things internally to them, maybe there were things internally that lived, maybe weren't happy about, I don't know that. But Greg sat in on a press conference with us reporters when I was still in Florida two weeks ago, and every part of the language that he was using was that he was going to be there next year. I think if he was going to be ousted for Mark King in the coming months, I don't think he would have been flown down to Australia by a lift to announce this event.

What I could see happening, and no one's told me this, it's just me guessing, is that maybe they both eventually work for Liv Golf. Maybe Mark King has a role that is the general manager of football, and then Greg Norman is the CEO of the team, or whatever it may look like. But if you were live golf, it's not like you would want Mark King on your team, wouldn't you? Like he brings a wealth of expertise,

relationships and connections and legitimacy as a businessman. So I think Greg is definitely gonna be there next year. I wouldn't say he's gonna be ousted and I think that if live we're looking at what he has been able to achieve this year and you do have to give Greg some credit where it's due. He got this thing off the ground when people thought that he wasn't even going to be a single tournament and there's

13 of the world's top 50. It's kind of you could you could look at the victories and the defeats that he's had this year and you would some of the defeats you know he's made some comments I'm sure that he's regret and maybe set set-lib, live back a little bit, but at the same time, he's got this season, it actually got the world talking about golf more than it ever has. So either way you look at it, I think Greg has had a lot of wins, some defeats, and I think he'll definitely be there next year. What do Australians think about Greg? Like, really even pre-live, like going into live, one was the kind of consensus opinion. Kind of like, I wouldn't say polarizing, I would just say it depends on what age group you ask.

If you ask anyone over the age of 40 or 35, he's a hero, he's the guy who carried the torch, he carried the PJ tour for 15 years in between, you know, Nicholas and Tyga and, and they love it. He can't do wrong in air eyes. But then there are younger generations who see the way he's used social media and, you know, some shirtless and naked photos and whatnot. And they just can't identify with that. And maybe that's Greg becoming a little bit more Americanized

and confident himself and like happy to throw himself out there and his personality out there. A lot of himself out there. But that doesn't resonate with a younger generation who don't appreciate the profile he kind of earned to be able to do that if that makes sense. Yeah. What's a guy, I just keep thinking about Cam setting up a tournament like all right we're going to have my tournament and it's going gonna be a by-a-thought it's gonna be both fishing and golf You gotta go catch fish round one is fishing round two is golf round three is fishing around sports golf

Yeah, it's so Talking about the team element. How much do you think these teams change heading in the next year? As in like the players going to the team. Yeah, as in the players like, you know, let's talk about the players and then be like, you know, about how much the team focus. Like it sounds like the teams are going to travel together and they're going to have a team physio and and you know kind of a fifth guy on the team that's that's kind of, you know, an alternative sorts. Like just kind of the whole ecosystem of the teams. Yeah, I think it's going to look considerably different. that's kind of an alternate of sorts, like just kind of the whole ecosystem of the teams. Yeah, I think it's going to look considerably different.

I think there's going to be a lot of movement of players going to other teams, because I'm being told that it's seven spots that are available for next season for top players to come across to live. So if you're going to get seven players and there's only 12 teams, that's a favorite of movement. And there's already talk about

whether Taylor Gooch might leave the four races and that will create a bit of drama. But I think they want movement. I think Liv Golf wants movement because that makes it appealing in the way that players transferring clubs in the English Premier League during the transfer window is interesting. So I would suggest a lot of shuffling around,

even some of the teams that are based on nationalities, may shuffle as well, they may lose some players from their country and game players from their country. And then I think in general, just the business operation of those franchises is going to look a lot more like what they're designing it to be, which is the players are going to live in the same city, which is kind of bizarre. I've already heard about coaches moving into state and facilities being thought about, purchased for the team to practice together, get worked on by physios together, and then hop on whatever, private jet or whatever they might do to travel to the next tournament. And I think it's going to be kind of like these traveling pods that will manufacture that kind of rivalry. So I think it's going to be pretty exciting

that there's still some question marks that remain about it in terms of like for me, a big one is a parallel and logos and how that's going to work because the president of Liv sat us down in Miami and explained how the franchise concept will look like next year. But one thing that sort of wasn't clear was, you're going to have these top players who have, like, what they called legacy deals with apparel companies. And then they are expected to sort of wear the team uniform and maybe give up some of those logos

and some of those, you know, sponsorship deals that they've acquired over the years. And it wasn't clear who's going to be giving up deals and who's going to have to wear the team uniform and where there's going to be a compromise. But the franchise concept, I think, they have to lean into it. They have to put all their eggs in that basket because while they may lack the legitimacy and the history and the context of the PJ tour, the team's thing is where they can find their corner of the golf world and mark it at well and exploit it and maybe attract a new fan base.

That's where they're trying too, is like reading your columns, is like trying to get their piece of the pie back from a investment standpoint, right? Like they're gonna try to sell these off eventually and recoup that $2 billion that they've sunk in. This thing, which again, it's just like, I don't know how this is not just like floating over

this whole conversation is like, you know, there's like 18,000 people watching this on YouTube. Like, what are we fucking talking about? Like, how does any of this work unless like, I don't know, I keep coming back to this whole year was just they're never gonna get more press than they got this year with more players going over and changing and Phil's quotes and all this stuff. And it's just like, man, I haven't run into anybody on the street that's

just like, Oh, did you watch live? I fired it up last week. It was amazing. And it's just, I don't know, it's really hard to wrap my head around like the actual like what are we actually talking about here? Is it on TV in Australia? Like is it? No, no, it's not. I'm told that the alternatives to watching live that outside of YouTube around the world are those sort of Facebook streaming services like DAZ

and those kind of networks. There are countries around the world which are showing it on TV at the moment. But DJ's point is really interesting because and DJ made a good point, I think it was in two episodes ago that I listened to when it was like, all the interest I'm finding as a golf fan from Liv is tied to the context of their history as a PGA to a player. That I haven't warmed to a golfer just yet who I don't know anything about other than his form on the

live golf tour. Everything's well, I'm watching Bryson because Bryson was just on the PGA tour and I love watching Camp Play golf so maybe he's an exception but you know Phil Mickelson and Brooks Keppel, I don't really care about watching him when there's no overall higher purpose. I'm just watching it because he's just left the PJ to it and the implications of doing so. So I think going forward, like how do they keep that interest in house, so to speak? How do they be interesting

when they're no longer at war with the PJ to R? And that was one of the questions I put into that piece about, like where do you go from here? You've disrupted, and that was a success for them. So after the disruption and the Duff settles how do they still gain interest? And I think again, it's all the team franchise stuff

That's how they can manufacture drama in house within the league itself and not piss off other tours around the world But still have a bit of you know like scandal and you know players moving teams and maybe Pat Perez fires off about one of the other live golfers and then there's a bit of a feud and a bit of a beef. Like I don't know but if I had to guess I think that's where the hype and the interest is going to come from as they finally corner of the golf world, settle into it and aren't sort of at war with the other tours anymore. Which I think is so interesting too. I totally agree with you Evan in that like from a as much as I can wrap my head around

like the financial model, that's what it seems like, where all the value is gonna be driven from is these franchises, but also I think it's super interesting and kind of underrated to spell out that what we're talking about is basically like, leave the PJ tour, you have spent, you know, and put a lot of the like up and coming talent off to the side, because that's a whole other

Conversation, right? But if you're trying to win over Zander Shoffley, for example Coming out and saying like, hey Zander, I know for 26 27 years all you've done is focus on individual Golf and stroke play. I want to beat the guy next to me. I am by myself Okay, you need to put all that aside. And now you're playing team golf. Like that's what all we're going to focus on, essentially, except for the four tournaments a year that you actually care about, then like, now you got to pivot back into this whole other thing. It's just such a weird disconnect that they're going to be kind of asking players to do. You know what I mean? And that's right. It just, I'm not dismissing any of this

stuff. It just constantly kind of like, it just seems like there's a lot at odds with each other. You know what I mean? I hear what you're saying, but like, at least from my experience covering Boston and Miami, they really are buying into that team's concept. You know, the teams are practicing together, eating together, sitting by the pool in Miami,

having a couple of beers after the practice round or the pro-AM together. And they've been able to give up that, it's all about me, individual component to the PJ2. And maybe easier than we thought they would. I could understand how you might think that, you've done something for 27 years, like you said, with Zander Shuffleel, whoever it might be.

You've done something for 27 years and we're asking you to push that to the side and suddenly become a team sports guy. But I think a lot of them in a way have missed playing. Yeah, that might be a positive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, well, Ken Neiman said to me, he said, you know, I really missed playing teams golf. I played a lot of teams golf with a Chilean national team.

We traveled around and there was a lot of conradery and we're sort of getting that again. And I'm, and I'm sure that's not that's not the number one reason why all of these players went across to Leap Golf, but it's certainly a byproduct and an offspin that they are enjoying. And from what I saw, the team's aspect, they are legitimately enjoying and they are legitimately looking at the leaderboards and thinking, oh, what are my teammates doing? And there's an example that I didn't really think about until Mark Leachman's Cady Matt Kelly, who's a friend of you guys. And he said that on the final day,

Leach was like, I think it was like four over par three, nine holes or three over par three, nine holes. And he was headless. He was furious that he was letting his team down after playing really well the first two days. And he sort of said to Mattie Kelly, you know, fuck it. Like, this is a new nine hole match. If I go to under par in this last seven holes or whatever, I can at least contribute to the team. I can help take the team forwards, but I can't, even I can't

reverse what I've done in the past 11 holes. I can actually get that total of the team score, you know, one stroke more under par and maybe get us to second, maybe even get us into a playoff. And it legitimately inspired him for those last seven holes. And that's going to set it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing that's like, you know, only one guy wins the golf tournament, but knowing that, you know, cool, you, you, you would have otherwise missed a cut, but it keeps you grinding and keeps you in the, you know, it keeps you in the mix, keeps you in the tournament. There's something to play for. Like, that's a pretty powerful thing. And that's where like, I don't, you know, I keeps you in the mix, keeps you in the tournament there's something to play for. Like that's a pretty powerful thing. And that's where like, I don't,

you know, I like have to explain to me personally, like team golf is like the most fun events that I've played in the last couple of years have been the force event with Neil, just because it's like, you're not doing it by yourself. There's something to like not doing something by yourself. I, I don't, like I have no doubt that the players are having a lot of fun, that the team aspect is revitalizing

and legitimately a fun part of it. Like there's something else going on inside your individual golf. I think like coming from a fans perspective, the huge hurdle to clear is like, why would I care about this? Like why when and why would I care about this? And I think it's like something that you just can't,

like we're in the middle of this right now, and I think 10 years from now, like if this thing still exists, it'll be a very different conversation when we have a bunch of years of transactions and there's actually, you know, there's team memories maybe with some of these teams and all that, but like in this phase of it,

it's still very much of like, I can't like fake that I would care about the result of this tournament. Any team event, any individual part of this when it's just like not what I enjoy about golf. Yeah, an example of where the reconciliation sort of has worked is the sport of cricket, which is played by a set of all the Commonwealth nations,

my country of Australia included. And the Indian Premier League, like it shared a lot of similarities to the business model in the lift golf. And that was franchise teams tied to cities in India and owned by billionaires who just love the game of cricket and they wanted to buy the best players and have transfers and trades. And that was obviously not something that the International Cricket Council, the ICC,

loved because all the money was being made in test cricket, which is, you know, when countries play against each other in series, but they all found a way to sort of work to schedule where every year, for I think it's 12 weeks or 14 weeks, the best cricket players on the planet go to India and they get paid a lot of money and everyone is sort of okay with it and then they go back to playing serious cricket, test cricket, domestic cricket for the remainder of the year. Now, those guys are accustomed to playing eight, nine months of the year. So maybe it's easier for them to swallow. For golfers, the thought of playing 32 weeks a year,

most of that on the PJTura and 10 or 14 on the lift tour is probably too daunting for them to even agree to, but that's the only way I could see reconciliation going forward is live just having its own schedule at the end of the year. And I couldn't see the PJ tour giving that up because at the moment there's nothing really inner for the PJ tour. The PJ tour has everything in place. They don't necessarily have to concede any ground or any territory to live unless stars

keep leaving the PJ tour. Then they might have to consider, well, is there anything can we come to the table and have peace talks? But at the moment, I don't know what would be in it for the PJ to reach out and extend an olive branch, but the only way I can see reconciliation happening is live having its own window in some part of the year. What do you, Evan, you know, based on everything we've kind of talked about, you think at this time next year, you think live has more momentum or less momentum? It's a great question. It would be hard to have more momentum when you have disrupted

the entire ecosystem of World Golf and signed 13 of the top 50 players in the world. I think if it had more as much momentum as it did this year, that would be a victory. And I don't necessarily think Liv Golf needs as much momentum this time next year. I think it could be happily plateauing and just like starting to settle into its corner of the world of golf. I don't necessarily think it needs to create more headlines or disrupt anymore.

It needs to start to refine its product. It's kind of like a bell curve. Like it got to the summit and now it needs to really polish up that level that it's on at the moment. So I think we're definitely past peak momentum. I mean, after Cam, you know, there was a bunch of rumors still of big splashes to come and they just haven't come.

And once it wasn't about these new guys that were in it, like, I know it's up against football and it was weird times at night. Like, viewership absolutely tanked in the fall. I mean, it was, you know, at least from the viewership numbers that we can't see, which is, you know, YouTube on Australia, UK, United States markets that they want to win. Like, they, I know a lot of them have touted, have touted, you know, we're on this many TV stations. Like, well, you definitely want to win these US markets.

There's a reason why you've talked about TV deals for, on repeat. And it cannot be helping you get a TV deal when no one is choosing to watch it on YouTube. And so that's why I'm curious, what happens this fall? And I think that the rumors that have, I guess this winter, this offseason, if you will, the rumors that have been, kind of even floated, have been super easy to shut down.

They tried to float Xander and can't lay to it, which was almost immediately shot down by pretty much everyone. I'm kind of left wondering, like, is that it? Like, are they going to be able to, you know, come up with anything else this fall? Do you see the damn breaking in any way? Do you see a new wave of guys? Do you see any top guys that you think are suspect to potentially, you know, have a leap?

I do think that if they do get any one of those, that there is a possibility of the damn breaking, but I don't know who crosses the picket line at this point. I don't see a damn breaking. Again, I think they've signed the majority of the players that are gonna be on the lead to are going forward. I think there'll be a handful of decent names, signed in this next two months.

But I think Liv Golf is quite happy with the stable that it's got at the moment. It's more about the product itself. We now have the stars. How do we sort of commercialise that, make it an autonomous financial entity, but also a compelling product? I think that is all the franchise stuff. I just think it needs to really lean into what it knows it has that is different from

the PGA tour and just absolutely fucking go for it. I don't see a top bunch of players coming across. I think the penalties in place are so severe at the moment that I think those who are willing and brave enough or you would call them courageous enough to go and do that have done that. And I think both are now going to sit and settle on their sides and just see how this plays out. It's funny, I think the, like, I just keep thinking about what happens and because I assume all these are like three to five

of your deals, right? Like what happens in three years when there's a mass exodus from, like, you know, some of these guys have gotten the bag and they wanna retire or in five years when, you know, your contract's up and cool, like, are they gonna layer in a bunch of new college players or a bunch of new andeogal trees who just won,

tasted DJ. But it's just one what? Where? Exactly. Not Asian Torban and Egypt. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's agon my face.

But it's like that's really the next big thing that I see is like that year three kind of, hey, how do you like replenish or refresh this thing once you've already got, like you've already paid all this upfront money. If the franchises aren't able to pay a bunch of, you know, upfront fees and live has to subsidize it again, like what's the, you know, at what point does that money dry up, I guess, right?

Yeah, it's a good question. Like, I think there's so much unknown until we really see the pathway flesh itself out. The international series is going to promote, I think it's three, the top three on their order of merit to live. So they're going to, I guess if you were to go into bat for live and say, well, they're gonna replenish with a bunch of stars, it would be to say that at least the top three players in Asia

are gonna be progressing to live golf. And whether that's enough to satisfy some of the top players who, you know, like, I don't know if it's Lee Westwood or Ian Polter who just decided at the age of 48 or whatever it might be that enough's enough and I'm gonna retire, Can you replace the star power of Lee Westwood or Ian Polter or those kind of guys? I don't know. But I think that they are confident that you know in the next 10 years the guys who are coming up

through Asia are going to be their own little marketable stars. Maybe not to the American goal for audience but the international goal for audience and I think they're going to really rely on that that pathway with the international series on the Asian tour. So let's talk. So we've got the Aussie PGA kind of switching gears. We've got Aussie PGA at Ro Queensland, got Aussie open at Kingston Heath in Victoria. Are people just

frothing at the mouth down there to have some professional golf after several years of you know, nothingness with what the country being locked down? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, frothing at the mouth is probably a really good way to put it because you know like the Australian open, I think, is the fifth-oldest golf tournament, golf championship in the world and it was cancelled twice. It hasn't happened since World War Two. So for the fans who are really wanting

to watch our national championship go ahead, it's now, it's almost sort of worth the way, in a sense, in that it didn't happen for two years. And now it's gonna happen in this world first where the men and the women are gonna play together for the same prize money on the same golf courses on the Melbourne Sandbelt. And of those two fields,

we've got the the Raining US Women's Open Champion, Minjee Lee and we've got the Raining British Open Champion in Cams with kind of not going head to head but certainly sharing the line light of that week. So they're absolutely frothing for that but at the same time the Australian PGA Championship which is going to be the week before that at Royal Queensland, that's kind of carving out its own little identity as this cool event on a cool golf course. It was redesigned by Mike Clayton. It's going to host the Olympic Golf event in 10 years time. And that's shaping up to be a nice little event there in itself. So the two weeks are going to be awesome. It's kind of nice. The place in the schedule that it sits gets a lot of attention from Americans except for

the Australian Open, which will kind of go up against Tigers event in the Bahamas. That is unfortunate, but I think they're going to be enormous crowds, you know, 15,000 a day, which is huge for those. It doesn't sound like a lot to a PGHR event, but 15,000 a day at Royal Queensland and at the Australian open down in Melbourne. That's massive. That'll look huge on TV, and there'll be massive amounts of atmosphere, and hopefully, you know,

in an ideal world we get can winning the men's draw and Minji winning the women's draw and sort of cementing their incredible 2022's. I feel like if that happens, they need to like have them play off. I've been through, I've been through. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's going to be so cool because like Kingston Heath is one of the best courses on the planet in my opinion. And to see the world's best players navigate their way around that is just so awesome. And especially, it's going to be so interesting to see the different distances that the women are having into greens, which you know can be so trash or it's on the sand belt. those approach shots and nuts. And imagine like a final round where you've got Kamsby with hitting a 9-9 into the seventh green at

Victoria Golf Club and then Minji Lee hitting a sixth sign. And just sort of, as a golf nut, just watching the different trajectories and spin and the way they approach certain pins with slightly different clubs, it's going to be incredible. And I can't wait for it. Awesome. I guess last question, Any there was only one Australian player in the PGA Tour event this week. That was Jason Day. Now, of course,

Minbulee was over in South Africa, but like, that's crazy, right? Like, there's always, there's always at least a half dozen, you know, in a PGA Tour event. Is there another wave of Australian guys kind of coming up to replenish the Australian guys on tour, whether that's the Ryan Ruffles of the world, if he gets his card or, you know, even guys younger than that, kind of the next wave. Like who's coming to the coffers?

Yeah, it's a really good question. It's always hard to know if we can replace the crop that included Jason Day and Adam Scott, Mike Lee, Shwena, and Kim Smith. That's hard to get the crystal ball and so that's going to happen again for 10 years or so. But some of the really good players that are coming through, go. I called Harrison Endocott from Sydney. He just got his P.J. Attuacad, through the Corn Ferry Finals. He's been getting a couple of top 10s and he's really playing well. And there's a guy that just won the Asia Pacific Amateur, Harrison Crowe, who also won the San Andres Link Strophy. And he's

really exciting because he's just got this sort of like, James Moostal at a cheer where he just absolutely goes for it. He's aggressive. He doesn't really think about the repercussions. And there's guys like that. And then there's a guy called Jeffrey Guine, like write that down, that he is gonna be an absolute superstar. He won the Junior Players Championship at Sawgrass just a couple of months ago. He's 16 years of age, still an amateur,

and playing pro tournaments in Australia and getting top 10s and leading through 36 holes. And he's just an absolute wizard from driver through to part of it. There's no real like weakness you know, weakness in his game and there's no real like strength. Everything is just so pure. So he's definitely one to watch in the next few years, but I think there's a good crop coming through.

I don't know if they're gonna win the Open at Sin Andrews, but I think they're gonna be really exciting and good for us. He's to cheer on the PJ too, or that's for sure. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for all this having this been great, great hearing your perspective. Yeah, thanks for jumping on having this been great great here in your

perspective. Yeah thanks for jumping on. Now we'll have to do it again sometime around maybe sometime again a couple months here after the Aussie swing. Sounds good guys. Thanks for having me on. Cheers. When you're back in town assuming American Airlines and Quantiskeet. I'm not looking forward to that but hopefully we can we can fly through Hawaii and cover the Hawaii swing and let it all make it worthwhile. There you go. As an American Airlines loyalist, I'm going to go ahead and have to dump you here Evan.

Thank you very much for joining. Thanks, Holly. Cheers. All right. We got a few things to clean up here as we go to RAP. Who knew we would get this much time out of the Houston Open recap. Paparez didn't interview this past week on the son of Butch podcast with Claude Harmon. Son of Butch or son of Aubbot. I don't know, but a lot of the headlines that came of it were

Pat explaining that Phil did something unexplainable to him or across the line that can never be uncrossed. It is the rumor that has been everywhere really in the golf world. And I still, we're not going to tell what it is. I can't believe it's not fully out there yet. Everyone knows about it. But it's, it's, I'm just bringing this up as a shock of how this has not been officially published in report on yet because pretty much everyone in the golf world and many people, it's got so many DMs this week that we're like, you're not going to believe this Phil story is like, yeah, dude, like it's out there. It is absolutely out there. But yeah, that's something that definitely,

definitely a good way for, for some, you know, to really squash something. Yes. To really make it go away is just the most famous person did something so horrible. I'm not going to tell you don't ask me about it. Don't ask me about it. But it's fucked up. It's super fucked up. That's a good way for people to just kind of forget about, about asking about that. And then your boy, Imagine Ella just posts,

if you know you know on Insta, on Insta's story with it. It's like, well, I don't want to tell the story either because I don't want the tracker accounts to report it as us reporting it and whatnot. And it's not ours to tell.

Like you got to do the actual journalism on there and get comment from Phil and all that, which he now plays for a tour that doesn't really require that. So I doubt we ever get that full story. So. But, Solly speaking of the tracker accounts, I'm worried about the tracker accounts.

They're warring right now. There's some tracker accounts going at each other right now. Well, they didn't have that. They're blowing so much smoke this past. I mean, they all try to do the, you know, the, a lot of them that I named last week were trying to do the Cam Cantlay rumors and shockingly, what do you know? It comes out. Brian Wacker had it that Zander denied or Zander or Cantlay, one of them denied that the lift thing was happening and pretty, you know, pretty much confirmed that it was all smoke and it's just something we're gonna have to deal with basically all winter long. First of all, if no one's gonna be doing any committing,

I don't think in the near term when the next event is not until February. People are gonna be wanting to stall this out as long as possible. But their quotes were like, we're gonna get it done before the end of the year. Yeah, I guess people are like, which they very well may,

but they're not gonna come out and say who, please make fun of me for the next four months. We're going to keep wanting to get world ready. There's only one but there's only one above out there. Gary Koch and Roger Maltby are out at NBC at the end of this year. Golf week had this, they will not return in 2023. The decision was made to refresh the team for the future of the PNC will be their last event. Maltese was originally told that 2021 would be his last year, but with bones going back off the air to go back on with Justin Thomas. He was renewed for 2022, but not renewed for 2023. The Gary Cooke part was I guess was news, but what's your guys what's your guys reaction to this?

There was, you know, simply menting among media people involved in this. And I'm curious you guys take on this. I mean, Dij, I think I speak for both of us when we're both co-heads. Massive co-heads, Coke beans. I don't have a super strong opinion. I really like both of them. They've been a massive part of my golf watching for the last, you know, however long I've watched golf. I think, so I think you said this earlier that I don't, I don't think they're the problem with golf on TV, but I also don't think they're the solution to what ails golf on TV. So that's kind of where I'm at. I think Gary Coke, you know, is still very, very, very additive to the broadcast. I think Rod, you're kind of not really putting him in the best position to succeed, having him kind of try to wind through crowds and keep up with, you know, keep up with on the

ground reporting and stuff like that. That's a fucking hard job, man. That's really tough to be getting in and out of the cart and going up to see lies and all that stuff. I think that's not really putting him in the best spot. But I think Cokes got a lot of really good insights. I think it is a bit of a, it's a bit of a weird fallacy. Maybe that like by refreshing the broadcast, all of a sudden, you're going to like bring in all these young fans. Like, I don't think that's

going to happen. That said, I don't think it's going to hurt either. So it's kind of, it's kind of a nothing really to me. I think seeing how it could, it could, I think seeing how freaking good, I think seeing how freaking good John Wood has been immediately is kind of a like, oh yeah, maybe we should do this more. And smiling. I think smiley is really, really good. I think similar on the CBS side, I think Colt knows has done a really good job. So, you know, I, it's a heck of a career.

Everybody should be so lucky to have a career like that. I'm definitely not crying on the way out, but I applaud them for a lot of great work. Here's what I think. Yeah, I feel like some of the issues aren't just, like they're not, they're not announcer commentary raised. They're like NBC like slack cutting and burning budget and you know, resources and all that.

But here's what, what kind of donald me this past week of how, how much Johnny Miller brought out of those guys, like having Johnny Miller and those guys interact was great to me. It really was. And Zinger is not for everyone. I'm not even positive. He's for me. He, he just brings a different aspect to it. Almost kind of like a funny like folksy aspect to it, whereas Johnny of like a funny, like folksy aspect to it, whereas Johnny Miller was like dead serious and gonna speak very directly,

and it kind of sparked really intelligent conversation amongst those guys. And Zinger does not facilitate that same thing to the point where I just don't know if they fit in the puzzle anymore. And that's not an indictment of those guys. It's just kind of like, dude, the way you guys are doing it now

is just different than when Johnny Miller was there. That's kind of my reaction, which is really, I wish you hadn't said that. That kind of just made me rethink everything and like, man, we might be building this franchise around a really bad point guard. And like, that might, I don't know if that's it. Well, that's the way like, like the way that NBC, like philosophically does their broadcast is very different from CBS to where like NBC, everything runs. It's all conversations back with, with like the 18th whole tower. Like, all right, Raj, what are you seeing out there?

Johnny, I see this or singer, I see this. Whereas, whereas with CBS, it's like, they send it out to those guys a little bit more. They, you know, like, there, there's not as much interplay between between that, if that makes sense. I feel like John Woods out there putting up 28 and night, which doesn't, it doesn't do you much good if Zinger's got, you know, 13 turnovers every, every game. We're not, we're not going to win. Zinger might be Westbrook He's getting up a lot of shots for sure

So yeah, I think it yeah, I think people need to be very prepared for so much to change in the golf world And it might be slow like it's not gonna happen overnight But shit's gonna change it just it very clearly cannot roll into the next year with it looking Similar, there's gonna, you know, it's not going to change as fast as it should. And it's not going to change as like clearly over the last five years. It's not changed enough. Um, but do you think it's going to change though? Or do you think it's just going to be like a bad facts of like what was there?

Like that's where I think it's going to be. It's like true change. Yeah. I think it's going to be like smiley's great. And I think having him on the broadcast is awesome. But again, like I don't that's not like a change to me. I think that's still going to be like smiley's great. And I think having him on the broadcast is awesome. But again, like I don't that's not like a change to me. I think that's still going to be like it's like going to be any of the important shit is going to change. No, I just think this is like a very small thing that's going to change. Like the goal golf

schedule is going to look different. The events are going to look different. They're going to have to change like graphics. They're going to have to change the way they present their product. Pacing. It's not going to be a media. Yes, it's going to, it's going to change. It has to, it has to, I mean, it really does this time around. Like if it doesn't this time around, then it truly never will. I, I, I don't think it's going to be that. I really hear about the have the football pulled out. Oh, like who's going to cheer for it there?

Who's going to change it? Like the people with the PGA tour that have been in their jobs for the last 10 years. Maybe those jobs change schedule schedule is going to change. Maybe those jobs changed. Schedules gonna change. Yeah, for sure. Schedules definitely gonna change. I don't think the telecast is gonna change. I think we're, I think if it was gonna change, they would have changed it over the last fucking 60 years.

I think they would never have changed over the last 60 years until they absolutely have to. And now is the time they actually have to. And now I think it's like too late. It's kind of like you're already, you know, I don't know. Could be. It has to change. Things will be different.

There's no way all these people at the tour keep their jobs over the next four or five years. Like there's just, there's literally no chance. It can't happen that way. Like the players are going to instigate change. I don't think Data Golf would say no chance. I think there's, I think there's a fractional chance that it that does.

They're going to get to the point where the players instigate enough change that if things don't change, they're going to ask for leadership replacements, 100%. Maybe there's no way those regime change. Maybe a lot of the players are idiots though. Awesome. Yeah, but they're like starting to turn the corner on at least some of these things. Yeah. Like big J get the fuck out, man. I don't know. I think if I'm a player and I'm looking at like what Rory's year has been

like, I think the last thing I'm doing is like, man, I should get more involved. I did a really, like fuck that, man. Well, sorry, it kinda goes into the next. I'm like, I'm with you. I'm just being realistic about like, if, maybe. Golf TV. Like that's an example of, you know, golf TV's going away.

Now like they're collapsing into Discovery Plus, I guess. Which is where I'm like, is that a positive change? Like that, that seems like a very negative change. Oh, I know, but I'm saying like that's like that's kind of the way that like this thing was supposed to be the future. That is a puzzle, though. It's the same way that like PGA Tour collapsing into ESPN Plus was definitely a positive. Like now I don't have to pay for ESPN Plus and PGA Tour live.

It always under one umbrella. And did I, yeah, And did it. Like they, but based on like how they build broadcast, based on how they build golf TV, I mean, at the start, it was going to be like this massive paradigm shift, bring all the international stuff under one umbrella, you know, outside of the US and and have this whole headcount and everything like that. And that's like, I think this whole thing is just giving them license to keep the best performers from that, but let the rest of them go. And they're, I mean, they're cutting billions of dollars

in costs over at Discovery, right? Like it's, you know, I don't think between Discovery and NBC Universal Comcast, like things are going all that well, right? I'm saying for users, I don't think it's gonna be, see universal Comcast, like things are going all that well, right? Yeah. I'm saying for users, I don't think it's going to be a, I don't know, I don't watch, we don't have golf TV here in the US. So I don't know what this product looks like. I just don't think some people were out there saying like this billion dollar deal is getting torn up and the PJ tours losing all this

revenue. I do not think that's the case at all. Like the rights are purchased. But I'm just saying like it's like wood, wood discovery, sign that, you know, billion dollar a year plus deal. Moving forward, fuck no, they wouldn't, you know what I mean? Like that's, that's the thing. It's like this stuff. Like, all right. Yeah, we got another eight years or decade of this, you know, of these deals, but like, man, they better figure out how to fix this stuff in the meantime. Because otherwise it's going to get bleak and like the sports just going to like

collapse and upon itself. And and fix it while you have an existential threat like threatening to pull all your best players away. And you're that's where it's like, dude, you're, I don't know, they're going to be fighting a 15 front war over the next like five years. Like what the fuck are they going to change about the telecast? Like that is that I just I don't think that's gonna. I know they might be 23 thing But it has to change at some point something has to do it. How many times we've been saying that for the like Fulmys 16 times. Yeah, and I just won't be fool to get guys good example this week

They come out with the new app on Tuesday the new app is dropping. That's big for you. It's seemingly been in that's where the last two. It's seemingly been in development for the last four years, you know, delayed a billion times. I think the guy heading it has been promoted six times since I'm I am I'm not I've no preconceived notions. Let's see how it goes. Gosh, they could have done this a year ago. We wouldn't be in this mess. They would have kept everybody. What else is priority here?

Let's try to wrap this up here before we hit the two-hour mark here. All right, the Alex Fitzpatrick story that Ryan French Monday Q info posted where basically all sorts of weird shit happen with college golf, I guess. The PGA tour, you standings. The top five guys, we're going to get exemptions through to final stage. One of the events that was counting towards, it's always weird because the actual amateur events don't count towards PGA tour, you, it's just

these college events and pro events that they happen to play. You got some weird cover stuff that was happening in 2020. Yeah. Yeah. So so Alex Fitzpatrick, like he was playing as an individual. The is Matt Fitzpatrick's brother for those that don't know. Correct. And right.

And Patrick's brother. Exactly. I think he was playing in the Merido invitation. All as a basically as an individual instead of it with his wake forest team because the team wasn't playing, I guess, at that point because the COVID regulations and which also gave him like a bad draw and weird weather or something. Yeah. And so then I don't know, there's like, it sounds like there's lawyers involved and all that. And then like in the like the tour because they're well, I think

that the crux of it was basically like they counted this event when Some people thought that they shouldn't count this event and because they counted this event it bumped him out of the top five Yes, and so bumped him out of exemption into final stage Is that correct? Yes correct and there was also a tidbit in there about like him thinking about not playing in like certain NCAA Regional events because he didn't want to ruin his PGA tour you. Which is whips of the A on wrist reward challenge. Right. I mean, what would Mr. Palmer think about that?

Exactly. So, you know, the tour in their communications brilliance, you know, no comments at no comments at people start poking around. Well, sorry, I think we skipped the important part, which is that. Oh, they gave him a. He gave him an exemption into final stage. So he did not earn it. He didn't play second stage.

And all of a sudden, just showed up. He was on the entry list for final stage. And then people started asking around. What the fuck? And the tour said essentially no comment. He will be playing final stage. And everybody that I've talked to agents, I've talked to other players, I've talked to like,

everybody's kind of like, yeah, like the whole explanation that the tour gave, like from comms and from competitions, people, it just sucked and like it makes it, like even if it wasn't shady, and if it was like, hey, you know what, like we're gonna do right by this guy, the rules weren't clear,

or there was a very extenuating circumstance here, like it doesn't sound like they explained it well at all. And they're just like, yeah, you know what, fuck and deal with it. Like this is how it's gonna be, no comment, okay? And you know, and it's like, like as the tours trying to engender more trust and transparency and visibility and get veterans,

like who are already wary of PGA tour you, like on, you know, like in the boat for these elevated events and for just the radical wholesale changes that they're making to the PGA tour corn fairy tour ecosystem uh like you would think that like transparency and you know good communication would be like go a long way but evidently they don't it's crazy fucking nuts man. a long way, but evidently they don't. It's crazy. Fucking nuts, man. I told you guys, I struggled to get like worked up about any of this when like 99 problems out of a hundred are about like approving the entertainment aspect of like I can't like do how far down the list of the somebody getting a exemption into the final stage of of cord fairy school. It goes

for like how big their problems are at the top that That like, I can't, I just can't, I cannot find it to myself to get worked up over this. But it's just crazy that like, they, they build themselves as like, yeah, we're like the serious competitive golf landscape over here, we're the adults in the room, we're serious competition, and then like, they do shady, weird shit like this, and then just say deal with it.

Well, I think they were threatened with more suits too according to the report, right? So whenever there's lawsuits involved, being overly communicative is not usually recommended. So I imagine their hands are tied to just be like, like fuck this, we're in a bad spot here. Like we're just not gonna say anything. There's hopefully no one notices.

I don't know, like I really don't know, but I can't put this on the same level as like your products unwatchable. Like, let's talk about that. What if we started there? And that's where I'm kind of like, hey, I think there's a very interesting conversation to be had, probably amongst a smaller group, if I'm being honest, about, you know, the pathway to the PGA tour and nepotism and communications and some of those things.

I think there there is probably an interesting conversation there. I got to say I think our fire pit guys treated it like they found 45 corpses in Alex Fitzpatrick's basement. The way that story was written, it was about you know, 1800 words where I feel like it could have been about 300. It was, it was very well reported, but it was just a little bit too. It was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, The line about the moral compass thing in here was like, are we really equating this to like what's going on morally in the golf world? Is that, is that what's happening?

Like, but I, I, I do think it's a good window and like, this is how the tour operates on like a competitions and communications. Well, I think this also stems from like them trying to do something that we are all like in support of. Like, all right, getting some auto exemptions from some of these college guys, getting the talent straight to the PGA tour.

And like, was it maybe not that well thought out? Probably, like, do they have it clearly licked on how what scores count and what don't? And I think they air on the side of like, Hey, we kind of maybe messed up a little bit in the scoring. And they're not obviously, I think your comment here is they didn't admit this. But like if they were to do an honest debrief of it, it's like, we don't, we don't have like a great hand around this.

Like we're going to give an extra exemption to one guy based on that. It happens to be Matt Fitzpatrick's brother. Like I think like the radar goes up. That is. The radar goes up when that's the case. But I think it's like a convenient story to maybe Matt lead on them big time. I just don't know that that's the case, right?

I think it's just like, yeah. But like, I guess that that just comes back down to it. It's like, yeah, like then like why don't they just do that? Like just just just just to the obvious thing and be like, yeah, you know what? We clearly fucked up. We gave him a spot in the final stage. I haven't dealt with Fitz a lot. I know you guys have spent more time with him than I have. Isn't his whole thing just hard work and meritocracy? I don't know that he's kicking the God damn

door down and trying to get his brother in business. It was weird with his brother, with the Walker Cup, not this past time, but the first time and I'm going to have to go and get a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit these little fucking bonfires everywhere. And there's, there's two or three in a week. It's crazy. It's like, I would say there's, there's dozens of bodies and Jay Monane's basement, but

he doesn't have a basement. Well, maybe the fire patient get on that. Maybe they need to, maybe they need to dig into that. All right. Can we please wrap this with this final question here from darts 146 806 911 that is phone number Why did Max treat check-o the way he did today? So I think you need to address this because you're a massive Max and Red Bull guy I'm a check-o guy. I'd like you apologize. Maybe so We're on to the formula one section which means nowhere golf So what happened this year Max Verstappen has won already won the driver's championship. Red Bull has won the constructor's championship as there's several races still left to go.

There's basically nothing left for Max to race for other than like he's had an incredible teammate, Sergio Perez, who has helped him at every stop of the way. Anything he's ever been asked to do as a part of the team. Sergio has done it helped Max win the title last year. And Max is probably going to win it no matter what this year, but like when it comes down to it, it's like, yeah, you got to do this for Max. Sergio does it now. Sergio has a chance to finish second in the drivers championship this year.

And as the race was finishing, Max is directly in front of Sergio. And again, has nothing to race for and is not going to win the race or finish on the podium. This is just strictly for points. And he has a chance to like very minimally, extremely minimally pay back Sergio for all of the sport he's given. And he gets asked by the team to let check out pass him just to get a couple extra points, maybe two extra points. And Max just ISIS them on the radio and does not respond and does not let him pass. It was the most cold-blooded psychopathic bullshit I think I've ever seen. It's like, it is just a true, true psychopath.

I can't, I can't explain it. You give him an inch, man. You know, you give him an inch. Who knows what they're going to ask him to do next week? His entire explanation was already like, we've talked about this, we talked about this last night. It's about last summer, since last summer, that you will not do this to me, which I wonder if,

I don't know if he said anything since then, if he has had any comments, but yeah, that was total bullshit. I'm not cool with that. Don't try to paint me in a corner before I change the takeout TC. All right, I'm not standing for that. Okay, try to paint me in a corner before I change and get the takeout TC. All right, I'm not standing for that. Okay, give me a chance to tell the story here

before you paint me in a corner what my take's gonna be. He's your guy. You got to ride for it. I don't think Max would do all it live. I thought it was sick. I mean, just a true psychopath. Period. That'll make the Netflix.

I think that's a true, like, you know, who did you think he was? Yeah. Well, you know, of course I stung you. I'm a scorpion. That's what I fucking do. Fair point. All right. Now I'm all worked out.

Putting on these stab-knit. Yeah. This podcast is over. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. Thank you. We need regime change for Evan Pries for calling in as well. And saw I can grad some big. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. It seems like it was a long time ago already. So I'm sure it's taking people all week to get through the end of this episode. But thank you for lasting all the way to the end. We'll see you back here next week. Cheers. Right club. Be the right club today.

That's better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. you