No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 636: AMEX Recap

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Jon Rahm continues his heater with a fourth win in his last six starts as he claims the AMex with a one shot victory over Davis Thompson. We recap the week and sing the praises of both Rahm and Thompson, evaluate recent results through the prism of the OWGR and run down the leaderboard - despite TC's absence from the pod. We also shout out Victor Perez's incredible hole out en route to a win in Abu Dhabi, Brooke Henderson's wire to wire win at the LPGA Tournament of Champions, LIV's TV deal with the CW, plus a fun early US Ryder Cup roster building exercise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast, Sully here. No DuVal chant to start the show this week. Unfortunately, proud of the boys. They fought hard.

Listen, it was a dream season, if you will. And you know, a little bit beaten down over here, but overall, you know, the better team won that game. So I'm sorry. I won't be greeting you with a doval chant. Niels here. Hello, Neil. Good evening, Sally.

Good evening. We're on a Manskey watch with, with John Rom back to back, heading to a place he's super comfy, exciting times in the golf world. DJ Pies here. Hello, Mr. Pie. Hey, guys, Sally, I'm, I am beating down myself a little bit for different reasons. Had a murder mystery party last night. A little, a little slung over this morning. A little knives out party. Kind of. Yeah, yeah. It was, uh, it was good stuff. More of a, more of a British

60s kind of, uh, vibe, but it was, uh, it was very fun. Was this, was this a family affair? Yeah, it was my brother, uh, and his girlfriends kind of joint birthday. So who'd done it? Well, you know, I don't want to spoil it if anybody else finds the same kit, but it ended up being my brother. Not surprising. They're paying.

Yeah. We do have some breaking news. Of course, the new ProV1 and ProV1X are going to be available this Wednesday, the 25th around the globe. We got to experience. We did a little testing of the golf ball out at TPI. We have no idea what we're doing when it comes to testing, but it's an eye test thing. A feel testing, if you will, test it all kinds of combinations.

Randy said he loved the ProV1 X because of the window that ball is coming out of. He's finally launching it high. I believe the word he said was unbelievable, which I've never heard him get excited about any one of his own golf shots in that way. Casey, she has told us that her ability to hold greens with the added height and spin of the Provi 1 X. She's holding greens that she's never been able to hold before in her life. So we're thrilled to hear that. Neil, what's your golf ball and why? I'm playing the Provi 1, tried and true, not the Provi 2. Unfortunately, the Provi 1 and my biggest takeaway, I haven't played a ton of golf with it yet is more aesthetic. I love the feel of it.

It's softer. It doesn't, it doesn't have the click. I like the white space on the ball. I think the, the like direct horizontal title is logo, the, the arrows on the side. It's, and it's easy to find white space if you're not looking for, uh, for any logos. So it's been a nice change so far. Dej, what are you in? Uh, I'm in the ProV1X.

I'm almost going to seed my time to, to kind of double click on what you're saying about Casey. I really like listening to her fitting stuff just because she seems like a prime candidate for something like the AVX, right? Like a longer distance, you know, kind of less spin ball. And it was very interesting to hear why she got fit into the ProV1 X and how much she's liking it. Because what she's looking for is spin specifically and it was kind of a good way to flip the, you know, this is only for super elite players, kind of narrative on a tidal bit.

I'm in the ProV1. I, you know, was messing around with the X. I wasn't crazy about the X. Just didn't fit my field profile, if you will. And then I'm playing around with the Probe one. I've got to go up over a tree with a 54 degree out of the rough. And I kind of caught it a groove low. It barely got over the tree, but it was hot. I was like, oh my God, that's going to hit the green and just fly. And they hit the back of the green and held with out of the rough with that golf ball.

I was like, okay, that's it. That's my golf ball forever. That's my golf ball and play. So again, they're available worldwide, starting this Wednesday, the 25th shout out to our friends at Titleist. John Rom has won his fourth event in his last six starts. I think we can all agree if he wants to be number one, got to play better. He's got to he's got to play better. He's losing to a third of the time that he's going out there right now. And I think I, we just got to, we got to see more. I think you could flip that on its head. It, it, you just keep doing the right things. It'll come, you know, like that, that successful comment. Some point, John, don't, don't worry about it. What a, what a week, man. I was saying to

you guys in Slack. He's, when he going he starts running down hill like he's just Absolutely relentless. Like I thought that that bunker shot on 18 was the perfect example of just oh no You're you're not gonna be getting any oxygen like I'm gonna be holding you underwater. You there's nothing to do He's the way truly truly just he won't sink and not only will he will he not sink He's making other players sink around him. You know, it's just you're not going to get close to me, man. There's nothing there's nothing you're going to do. I'm not going to make a mistake. Other than 13, his one, his one blink in basically like a pretty flawless week.

I mean, it's just it's really, really fun to watch him get going and, and, you know, not to fluff our own podcast, but I think solid. The interview you did with him last week was the latest in a number of examples of just how fun he is to listen to. And the more you listen to him, the more you want to root for him, the more you want to root for him, like the more fun it is when he plays well, it's just, it's a really fun cycle that I think we're in with with John Rom and I was floating to you guys on Slack too. I would be happy to offer some sort of ROM forgiveness program to Randy if he ever wants to come back on this podcast and and discuss that I think he needs to answer whenever he is back next for some really horrible takes and I just like to really put the screws to him

As far as like hey, you know ROM goes out and wins every golf tournament He plays more a kawa. What did we see in Hawaii? Like how we we looking, Randy? How are we looking? Well, let's just talk about it a little bit. Sorry. I don't know why I got on that tangent. If I can play the role of big Randy for a second here, though, because I, you know, was typing up some notes and I was just like, dude, I don't think Rob gets enough credit for being the superstar that he is. Both, you know, his golf is already back to his 2021 levels. As I was going to say, like, if you haven't listened to that podcast yet, first of all, what are we doing here? It's second of all. Like the guy, there's, there's, there's so many reasons to root for this guy and be so impressed with how he speaks,

how he analyzes things, his willingness to just, you know, be outspoken. I was, I loved that podcast and it finally got into the point where like, it was like two days later, and I was like, Oh, yeah, English is his second language. Like, and he just ran circles around me and that whole pot. He was like, he was there for a debate. He was prepared. He had listened to a bunch of our podcasts was ready to debate me. As soon as we hung up, he was like, listen, I don't know how many times I'm going to shoot 63 to win a golf tournament.

You guys are barely going to talk about me on the podcast afterwards. But he's got this awesome chip on his shoulder. But I think Randy's defense in this scenario would be like, all right, it's time for major number two. It really is because the talent outpaces his major total to this point. Now he's still young. He has met and exceeded all of the realistic possible hype you could have had for that kind of player coming out of coming out of college and all the success he had in the amateur ranks.

But I just wanted to shout him out for just being just a consummate professional I don't even know who he works with out of a golf swing perspective I've never heard of issues going on with his golf swing. He just shows up every day and it's just a really good point Like always there. It's always there and I swear I I'm gonna say something that I don't think you can track or measure If the golf hole was like a quarter of an inch bigger, I feel like Rahm would have 30 wins. I feel like nobody hits puts closer to the edge than Rahm.

It's just, he always hits really good putts. He's a positive, strong, game putter. He's a very good putter. And it feels like he's always around that hole. And it just one of the, you know, when the week's where it goes in, there's no one that can touch him. But I'm so impressed. And I think we're just going to see him just re-hit

that gas pedal for, we were already seeing it for 2023. So Ali, so much good stuff there. The vocabulary, the second language vocabulary that's better than mine, always impressive. I think we actually spent some time with them back in November and talking to him about how he hits driver. And it, it, it talk about a repeatable swing. He's like, no, I just get to the top, I get to the spot and I go. And I remember saying to him about how he hits driver. And it talked about a repeatable swing. He's like, no, I just get to the top.

I get to the spot and I go. And I remember saying to him, like, John, go means a lot of things. You're gonna need, we're gonna need a little more than go. You know, he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, no, like, walk, like, let's hear the feel. And then he kind of got into like getting to his left foot

and getting to, if you're looking at a clock on his follow three, he tries to get to like 10 o'clock or sometimes nine like get his belt buckle around. And so now when I watch him, the way that he gets to like the outside of his left foot, I can't like I see it all the time now. The way he gets through the ball and it's such a simple move that I agree with you completely. It's just like he has the one of the most repeatable moves on tour. And the last thing I wanna say to your point of like burning the edge, I think when you watch him, he expects so much out of himself, especially like on the greens.

He expects to make every putt, whether it's 30 feet or 10 feet. And then he gets, you know, he gets like frustrated with himself. It almost makes you like tricks you into thinking he's not playing as well as he is. It released for me, that's how I feel. I'm like, oh man, Ron's having a tough one. And you're like, I into thinking he's not playing as well as he is. Or at least for me, that's how I feel. I'm like, oh, man, I'm having a tough one.

And you're like, I actually know he's not. You know what I mean? Like he just, it's almost like his reaction to everything. It's not a positive reaction. So you're like, oh, man, he's not, you know, he's struggling out there when it's just like, no, man, he's just expecting everything to go in, which is the mindset you have to have to be one or, you know, or two in the world. But I would say that he is the top dog right now.

I think he's a good example too. I feel like we've say this kind of every time he wins, but he's not the, you know, Rory, oh my gosh, let me just watch him hit T-Balls guy. He's not the spieth. Oh my God, he just, he made another 30 footer. This is crazy guy. He's more like Dustin Johnson, right? Where it's just like, no, man, his, his floor floors just crazy high on everything. And he just plays good every week.

And Amax is a good example of a tournament that, that wasn't meaning to do this, but by his own admission bit of a putting contest, right? As I believe he's putting content. As I believe he's set in the past, he was like 60th in Strokes game putting this week. It's not like he, it's not like he filled it up. I guess the stats are weird. And the reason because they're only shot like on one course. But point being like even today was a good example. Like he wasn't, he wasn't filling it up.

He just kind of like plots along. He just doesn't make mistakes, man. And I know that's not the sexiest, like most interesting thing in the world to watch until, Neil, what you just said about his golf swing is something I will watch every time he's in contentia now. It's like until you unlock one of those little keys or one of those little appreciation things about him

is where, once you do that is when I think you start to realize, oh my God, this is the dude. It's kind of how I felt like with JT in Hawaii a little bit, which is, yeah, we look at his numbers and we look at his strokes gain and we look at how many tournaments he's won and how old he is and all that stuff, but that does not add up to actually being able to see it

in person and seeing, oh my God, you can hit that shot. I'm never gonna forget that, holy cow. And it's just really hard to dig for those little pearls about ROM, I think. Bear with me on this one for just a little bit, if you will, because ROM is kind of the example I use when I try to say, it's going to be very Trent Delphry. You can't lose games and expect to win games and get out. I love that. But you can't like get better at golf, and I mean shoot lower scores at golf without being way better at golf.

And I mean that in terms of you can fluctuate with putting in short game and like you can have a there's two ways of shooting if you take our games two ways of shooting 74, you know, you can hit seven greens and scramble your ass off or you can hit 14 greens and two putt everywhere, right? But there's no way to actually get better unless you are hitting the golf ball way better, like way, way, way, way better. Like a true talent of a player comes down to how close they're getting the ball to the whole in regulation. And ROM is the model for that right now of how to do that the most efficiently. You don't think of ROM. If I was to ask you guys to name the best drivers in the world, ROM wouldn't be one of the first names you'd come up with. He should be, but his combination of like,

he's way above average distance, and he's above average accuracy. Like, it's a deadly, deadly combination. And then there's just not that much that can go wrong with the iron swing. So we're talking about a floor of a guy that almost can't go horribly, right? Like, he's gonna have rounds where he's gonna,

you know, misputs and he's gonna have a couple, he's gonna get hot and he's gonna, you know, missputts and he's going to have a couple, he's going to get hot and he's going to, you know, I'm saying get hot under his skin and, and make some, make some mistakes. But he is like the epitome of the most well-rounded golfer on the plane. I don't mean just mean hottest. Like I just think he is the most all around skilled player in golf. And I, he's ready to pin his ears back and go. Well, I, solid, I agree with you. I didn't think he was the best driver until I started looking at the stats. I think it was the, you know, Mexican open last year.

And it was like, oh my God, like, you know, the numbers prove it out. But he's kind of a boring driver. He's like the, to me, the prototype for the modern golfer cut off the left side of the golf course, hit this heavy power fade that he could probably get 10 to 15 more yards out of it if he turned over or changed, but it's like, it's just on repeat, like this soft fade. I mean, there's nothing soft about the swing, but it's just like the left side doesn't exist.

And we're just hitting this little fade out into the fairway. And it's so controlled. And he's not. It's just really, really, the more you think about it, the more you dig, the more impressive it becomes. But like, first impression is not exactly what you said. Like it's not the sexiest driver. Like that would be, you know, Rory hitting these like mega high drivers the way he's like creating torque JT same thing the way those guys create speed. Like Ram's almost putting a governor on himself, which is amazing.

Which if I can't really quick, he is number one in Stroke's gained off the T over the last six months, over the last 12 months, and over the last two years. He is number one. He's the best in the world and numbers and number 21 in approach. So he's number one in Stroke's gain T-degree over the last two years. He's a fucking boy. He can't say that. He's a big ass. He can't say that. He's a 44 event. So Matt, Neil, I know I've thrown red meat into the liars here. You got to have a car comp for for job rock. I got you. The crown Vic.

He's a police interceptor. Okay. He's got the brush guard on the front. He's got the spotlight. Like, you know, the shit is kind of, it's kind of a horse, right? Like it's not the sexiest looking machine. But like when that thing gets closer of it, open your room with your kid, but when that things, when those lights start blaring, you like, you better scoot over, all right? Because he's coming. Like he's, he's an interceptor. He's

durable, right? Like he's best all around. Like that's what a police interceptor is on the road. It's the best all around, right? Like it's going to track you down at some point. Built Ford tough, baby. Yeah. If you didn't get a chance to watch the golf this past week, I'm going to give you a quick play by play of how Sunday played out. So, Ram before TV coverage even comes on, just think that part in there. Ram birdies the first two holes hitting them both within three feet on the first two holes. And then we go to the back nine. He missed a short par putt on 13 to fall back into a tie for the lead with Davis Thompson, who we're going to have some chatter about here. And then on 14, Thompson's looking at a nine footer

to take the lead while Ram's got an eight foot par putt. Thompson misses the nine footer while Ram makes a clutch par save from eight feet. We flip over to 15, Ram hits it as a brutal lip out for birdie on 15 supporting my theory that nobody lips out more than John Rambo. He actually mentioned that in the post round, if you will. And then we get to 16 par five, 600 yards with the bunker that is 18 feet deep down the left side.

Thompson hooks one into the fairway bunker, has to chop it out. And then Ram sends one with an iron from 280 plus yards. Pulls it a little bit. It gets lucky that it doesn't go down into the death bunker. It's a pretty poor chip, but it drains the birdie putt. Lips it in. I got a never tweet that actually worked positively for somebody in terms of me saying that it ron lips out every time goes in goes to take a one shot lead. Davis Thompson hits the green on 17 and we're going to pause here as we he has a putt from way downtown on 17 from the back of the green. Big left to right here. We saw a couple of putts from the groups in front. Tom Kim, namely on that same line. So you see that putt start out to the left. You know, it breaks right goes into the center of the hall. His putt, for sure, starts breaking, breaking, breaking, breaking going towards the hole from 48 feet

and clangs off the stick that he left in the hole and popped out a foot and a half away thoughts. I think you take the stick out. I mean, I don't, you know, at least I don't, I think with the way the pros, they have caddies, like I don't know why they don't tend. I mean, the only guy I see really leaving the stick in on those 15, 20 footers, it's Fitzpatrick, but it seems like most of these guys have, you know, once I said, you can leave the flag in some guys experimented with it.

And now it's like, eh, everybody's taking the flag out again. Am I off base with that? No, I think that's right. Well, Brooke Henderson famously, uh, leave, leave the pin in, uh, victory today. But Adam Scott, as well, I believe goes through ups and he goes back and forth with it, I think, but, um, it's,. But it's hard because it literally, there was somebody tweeted this at us, golf died just headline. Flagstick out, the science behind why the flag should should be pulled 99% of the time. Golf.com, the science proves you should leave the flagstick in when you

putt. Like, I don't need both sides of the science aisle telling me what's the right answer here. All I know is Bryson leaves it in, and that guy pretends to know science and doesn't, so the actual science probably says to pull the pin. That would be my, that's my best guess. Sounds like you gotta do your own research, Sally. The, I mean, I think the big thing behind leaving it in is I know in that situation, obviously, he's trying to,

he's trying to make that pup, but he also wants to give it a run and doesn't want to have a six footer coming back. Right? And I think that, like theoretically, is the thought behind leaving it in, right? If this thing's coming in really, really hot, I hopefully take some speed off of it and slow it down. I think it was coming in pretty hot.

It was. I'm not saying it wouldn't have dropped. I think if no flags, it was there, it would have dropped. But it's one of those that, you know, if it's two inches the other way, three inches the other way, you know, either way, it's, it's, it's coming in there pretty, pretty spicy. And now all of a sudden you've got a four, five footer coming back when, you know, I, I don't know, it's, I'm not going to try to draw some big sweeping conclusion from it.

I think it's just a super, super unlucky break. I think we should start tracking for this year, maybe a new segment, there's the rubber, the green power rankings. Like you can throw that one up at the top for me, right? Just something funny to look back on. Yeah, you remember when like Riley Davis, Michael Thompson, made, you know, clank it off the stick.

I like that. That has the title belt, the rubber, the green title belt. Uh, I like that. That has that has the title belt, the rubber, the green title belt. Yeah, rubber, the green title belt. I like that. That was, I mean, that's just truly the rubber, the green. Like I don't think he did anything wrong. I can see why he left the stick in, but I'm saying like, I bet I wonder next time he has a putt like that, does he have his caddy tended or or does he, you know, like, does he change anything if he could?

I don't know. Just a total unsustain shaded theory here. I feel like if that ball hit the pin more squarely, it would have gone in. And if it hit it less squarely, it would have gone in. Like it hit, there's a certain way of like hitting like kind of a side angle of the pin when it's moving fast, where it jams between the pin and the lip and like pops out. I feel like it, you're almost more likely for this to happen when there's a little bit of wind,

and the pin is leading towards one side and it's just hard to fit the ball in there. Again, this is extremely unscientific, but I felt like on that one, if the pin was out, it would have hit the back left of the hole, and I don't see that not going in, right? I don't think that, I might have done a little pop up and go right in, but it wasn't like it was flying so hard to have not going in, right? I don't think that, I might have done a little pop up and go right in, but it wasn't like it was flying so hard

to have not gone in. And yet, it was that perfect speed where it could jam between the pin and it just kind of went aerial. That was the thing I saw in the replay. It was like, oh man, that thing was not like on its way down. Like it was still moving smoothly, but gosh, it's just, they put, they file it away for like golf is really,

how hard it is to wait on the PGA tour. David Thompson made five Eagles 20 birdies. Has a ball glance off the flag on the 71st hole and loses to the hottest player in the world. And that's so that's kind of what not not good enough. So where you finish the recap. That's what I would say the context of this rubber.

The green is hard to overstate. It's like coming right off the corn fairy tour, having the week of your life, a chance to take down the hottest player in the world, almost runs into just a miracle, you know, unbelievable putt and just, it just not meant to be, right? Like that's, I don't know, that's brutal, but also got to take a ton of confidence away from this week for, for Davis Thompson. There's something kind of cool about the Amics and mostly thinking about the Adam Long year, but I'm a big, big fan of the, I was far myself like, it's the perfect example of a tournament that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, like, oh, no, I,

I won't be participating. We're like, I don't, I don't need to watch that. You, you could put it on TV or not. I don't really care. But you get down to those last, like like five, six holes at that golf course. It's really, really fun. And it's fun when they, when you get that David versus Goliath, I believe Davis versus Goliath as Puget or calm, called it, which is a good headline. But you get Adam Long versus Phil, you get Davis Thompson versus

Ram. Like those are really fun matchups. And I think it's probably the exception to the rule. Typically think it's probably the exception to the rule. Typically it's, you know, Hudson Swofford, like it was last year, just out there kind of with a bunch of fairly anonymous guys. But it was, I had a really fun time today. I was, I was glad to be watching it. You guys, you guys want to talk Davis Thompson at all? I do, but I want to add one thing to that, Dej. I think it's also fun because it's such a, like, it looks like a, like, blown up

miniature golf course when he started coming down the stretch with like the deep bass bunker on 16 and like the, all the fake, we're even all the dormant, like, all the dormant stuff even just like it looks like you literally got the, the astro turf. And he's like, every hole has water on it and every hole has has these like, they, oh, these natural rocks. It's like, no, all these were just placed. Like, it's like, it looks like funtasia out there. And it's kind of a party atmosphere. So yeah, it's a, it's a great energy,

especially watching from New York City. You're like, kind of, whether it looks great, man. Like, everybody seems to be getting a little buzzed out there in Palm Springs. Isn't it funny? I can hear it in your voice. I could hear it in my own voice. How different are opinions of the PJ tour,

the West Coast Swig are now that we've both moved back to Cold War. For sure. A hundred percent. Man, I love this sort of event. I mean, no, it's just my chair. Just watch this thing. Hey, good for them.

It's more of a good for them. Hey, what looks like they're having a great time out there. Yeah. Let me ask you guys this. I was thinking about it today. Can I say one final thing what what were you referring to there about? I've gone through ups and downs of my enjoyment of watching PGA Tour Golf, and I maybe loved it the most when I lived abroad,

and I would travel and I would come home and get home at nine o'clock on a Sunday night, and that'd be like the first time I'd watch golf would be like 10, 12 holes remaining. Like the end of PGA Tour Golf, any golf event, European tour team, the ends are really good. And when I started investing way more time into watching golf and watching more Thursday through Sunday, I started to hate it. And like then you like, and you get to Sunday night

and like, oh shit, that was a really good finish. They saved the tournament in there. It's like actually, you know what the probably the other part of this is actually worth watching. Some Saturdays are really worth it, but for the most part, especially this time of year, if you watch just the back nine on Sunday, you're fine. Like you're totally fine.

You did not miss anything else. This tournament epitomizes that because it's super hard to keep track of the first three days. Who's on what course and who has what to go and the coverage is scatter shot and all that stuff. It's just an archaic model for a tournament that I'd be curious to pick your guys' brains out here in a second, but what were you gonna say?

If I put you guys, if I body swap you with Davis Thompson standing on the, let's call it the 17th tee. Over under one and a half golf balls lost on those last two holes. 17th tee. It was like a 150, 151 shot. Like 16, it's like closer to 160. Okay, well they were, but it was playing down today, because the announcer said it twice. So we'll call it 155. That is a bigger, that's not 17 at Sawgrass, right?

Like that green to me looks pretty appealing to hit into. I think I'm hitting that green. I'm worried about the T shot on 18. Now, maybe I'm blowing it, blowing it way away, way right off that T. Oh gosh, there's a lot of trouble for me in the water. I think I'm missing, I'm losing a ball. That's fine, that's'm blowing it. Oh, yeah. blowing it way, way right off that tee. Oh gosh. There's a lot of trouble for me in the water. I think I'm missing. I'm losing a ball. That's fine. That's still lost ball. I say one ball. I'm under one and a half. I'm losing zero balls, I think, because I

think I can hit with a nine iron hit the middle of that green. I don't less than 10% of T shots went in the water on that hole this week. There's no win. There's no conditions. Well, those are, those are PJ tour players. I know, but I'm, I think I would, I think I would hit that green. But I don't think I would, if you gave me 10 tries to par number 18, I don't think I would once. I don't think I was, there's no, that whole max can't take on risk. Yeah, very uneasy.

Well, that's what, that's what I was thinking when you were talking about Ram and how he just trust that like leader cut so much. Like, do you see where he was aiming on a. Yeah, doesn't care. It's like in the middle of the pond. I was just like, God, dude, golf tournament on the line. Just like, oh, no, just. And then they showed us. So, this bunker shot. And it again, it's just left foot, even on a shot like that. It's just he's his swing is so natural to him. It's awesome. It's you, but you got to look for it. I think that's when it

gets, I'm starting to appreciate it more and more every year. So I, I, you know, all, all credit to, uh, to the butcher. He's ballin' out, man. And I think last thing on him for the, the ROM appreciation stuff, at least until he wins, you know, next week at Farmers and we got to do all this over again. I love that he, he strikes me as, I'm sure there's a list you could put together if I gave it some thought, but one of the few players that wins on, doesn't matter what golf course he's shown up to. Nope. Right.

And I think that speaks to a lot of what we're saying about his floor is just, I mean, he just drives it well and hits it well and puts it well and that tends to work everywhere. But it's like he wins, he's won Palm Springs twice. He won that weird ass tournament in Mexico. He also wins the super hard tournament at Olympia Fields. He also wins at Torrey Pond. You should have won a memorial. You know what I mean? Like it should have won a memorial. Did he? Oh, I guess, yeah, that's right. It did and it should have won again. Yes. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Okay. But I mean, he just truly like doesn't, doesn't matter, which is when,

you know, you look at something, I'm not trying to be woefully unfair and compare Davis Thompson to John Rom, but Davis Thompson's very good player coming off the corn fairy tour. But like you dig into his last year on the corn fairy tour and it's kind of like Feast your famine, right? A lot of miscuts and a lot of like really good finishes, which tells me either it's like a golf swing consistency thing or it's like a, you know, he doesn't put it well. And so when he can just smash it off the tee, it tends to go, you know, tends to go better.

So it's just, I think that's increasingly rare in the world of pro golf and another reason to shout out John Rom. But which, and we can, it's easier to just kind of track. And I posted something just and how many win, Ram has, this is his eighth win on the PGA tour in 132 starts and how that compares to it's very much slightly behind pace with the speeds and, uh, and Rory's and whatnot, but still it's incredible. But this is not to say that we're forgetting about the fact that he's won a ton of times over on the DP World Tour.

Like John Ram is 28 years old and he's won 18 times in his career, which is just insane. He's won the Irish Open at two different courses. He's won the DP World Tour Championship multiple times. He's won many events in Spain throughout the year. He's won the Spanish Open three times, I believe, and it's one of the worlds. Yeah, I don't think we need to re-letigate this. We'll be here a while if we keep listing off his accomplishments to this point. So we got a lot to get to.

We got to go down the leaderboard a little bit in honor of TC. I want to give a shout out to our friends at rowback. If you can see me now and only you two can see me right now, you know I got my new gray rowback hoodie on. The quality, it's incredible. We love their gear. You'll see it in a lot of our videos. You'll see it in a lot of our content.

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Can't keep them in stock in the pro shop. Can't keep them in stock. Too good. You know, not till spring, coming back in the spring. Anything moral on Davis Thompson? Yes, I have a few thoughts. First off, I mean, University of Georgia just has a knack for pumping out, like, really, really solid. Just solid is the word solid PGA tour professionals. And here's another one, fresh off the corn

fairy tour from Auburn, Alabama. I was digging into his PGA tour profile. Apparently, loves double stuffed Oreos, air Jordan's one helped his team, high school team when the state basketball championship, he's six four. I read that as well. I would love maybe this is a deep dive podcast. Would love a list of tour players who are state champions and other sports. I think that'd be an interesting list and perhaps, you know, we can we could spearhead that. We could we could effort that for sure, but I didn't know anything about Davis Thompson. So that's why I was looking it up. He what struck me first impression watching a little bit of coverage Friday and Saturday was easy power off the tee. And what's always hard for me watching a telecast

is figuring out who's actually tall and who's not. Like some guys like trick you, you know, like I think I never realized, Ram is a unit. And like not just like in a girth way, like Ram's like 63, he's a big dude. But like it doesn't really come across on TV. Rory, not a big dude, but doesn't look small on TV. And so Dave is talking, I'm like, oh, man, he's 64.

And so then that makes the easy power thing a little bit. Because they had some numbers going and he was like, hitting 181, it looked like he was literally just chilling off the tee. So it seems like he's got some horse power off the tee. So it seems like he's got some horse power off the tee and then just the ability to get hot and make what five eagles in the first two days and just go on to like go into blackout mode and then keep it together through the truly the very end of the tournament. I mean, other than the rubber, the green stuff on 17, he's in a playoff. So really impressed. I thought it was, you know, he's probably

here to stay. Do you want to talk our OGR conversation that we had offline? I think this, this place in well with Davis Thompson and the joke we made at the top of the show of Ron winning four out of the last last six times in somehow not ascending to number one in the world, which it is a little more complicated than it's not, it's not a power, it's not a power ranking. It's not an eye test thing. It's a mathematical formula. But this week's event, the American Express Championship gets 52 points for the winner and the winner of the century tournament of champions, which also was John Rom got 37 points to win that tournament.

Does that make sense to you? So you can certainly have an opinion that that that doesn't make sense. I understand the people who say that, who say big events should be worth more. Yada, yada, yada, that's fine. I get it. The reason I wanted to dig in, this is like a very good example

of a tournament that really illustrates the changes that were like pretty quietly made to the OWGR late last year. I think they kicked in at the FedEx, right? The first playoff event. And essentially the headline of this is just like, if you don't have a deep field, you're gonna have less points.

And so it opens up a whole can of worms on. You're gonna set a way to best. Would you rather fight one? It's a, what was it duck sized horse or a hundred blah blah blah? Like, I think you know, in a lot of horse size duck or a hundred duck sized horses Yes, that's the that's the question. That's the century and that's the amics and so I know it's hard to just like rattle off numbers to You know nobody's like taking notes right knees down But to your point the winner got 37 John Rom got 37 points for winning the century this year

The winner last year came Smith got 62. That's how out of whack, that system was, whereas a lot of these terms have stayed pretty close to the same, right? Where the winner today, John Rom got 52 last year. I think Hudson Swapher got something like 50. What we were talking about,

Soli was this weird conundrum of like, yes, I know that a limited field event is harder to, is harder to win. It's, it seems like, right, because you're playing against so many more big names and it's big names only and it's good golf course and it's all that stuff. But when you really see the leaderboard and what I tweeted out and what I put into slack with you guys was like, here, here's the top 60 players on the leaderboard and what I tweeted out and what I put into slack with you guys was like here, here's the top 60 players on the leaderboard. Let's highlight just the guys that played in the century. Last week, look how many other guys are in this field that are beating those guys.

And it's just so easy to like, to forget how good the average PJ tour player is and how hard it is to beat that guy on a weekly basis. And how freaking many of them there are. And that's kind of where I think it almost it's it gets kind of hard to explain, but it's like the the issue almost in a way is like there's just too many good guys like there's too many good players. And I don't know how the tour can really draw that line where they are trying to highlight these the best players

in the world through limited field designated events like because if you think about it from the tourist perspective, what would make the most sense to them? 30 man fields where they pick 30 superstars and a superstar wins every week and fans become a much bigger fan of John Rom or Scotty Sheffler or Sam Burns or Cameron Young or any of these guys. But like how do you get to those 30 guys without really upending the entire OWGR is a question that I do not have an answer to because I think when you spell it all out on paper like this and you see why the MX gets more points in the century, I'm like, yeah, that makes total sense to me, man.

I know you might not think that Alex Smolly is a world-beater, but he beat Cantlay, or he beats Sehith, or he beat, you know, a lot of these guys this week. He bit Zalatoris. I don't know if that, if it ended up that way, but when I pulled my screenshot, that's how it looked. And there's just a lot of Alex Smolly's out there that you got to account for. And there's a lot of Davis Thompson's, and there's a lot of guys who can puzzle up and really even beat.

And a lot of Riley Davis's, a lot of Davis Riley's. Can I throw on Riley Thompson's and there's a lot of guys who can pop a lot of Riley of a lot of Davis Riley's. Can I throw a lot of red shoes out there just to put this in perspective like. So Davis Thompson is just barely slightly going into this week below average PGA tour player. He is negative point one strokes gained, which 0.0 would be average in terms of, you know, your field strength added just between a half stroke above average and a half stroke below average. In this field

alone, there were 87 guys. Okay. So if you take, let's just call them all equal for, you know, it's a shot difference between the guy at the top of that list in the bottom of those 87 guys. Like you're basically throwing 87 Davis Thompson's out there. And one of them is gonna get hot. Maybe two of them, maybe four of them, maybe seven of them are gonna get hot. And like adding one more Victor Hovelin to that, in my opinion, does not offset 87 of those guys

that you gotta go out and beat, right? It's, you know, it may not offset 10 of those guys. It's just a mathematical thing of like, you know, what Vegas would tell you if it was like Hovelin versus, I mean, I'm not offset 10 of those guys. It's just a mathematical thing of like, you know, what Vegas would tell you if it was like, hoveland versus, I mean, I'm not using ROM on purpose because he's kind of can beat anyone right now. But hoveland versus eight, these 87, give me the 87 legitimately every single time. And that's just the math kind of working its way out to say like, winning these, this

is a harder tournament to win than the century. I really honestly do believe that. Data golf probably would tell that same story. I'm guessing, but it's not that far off, but man, just to go stand on a range and see that many dudes that are focusing their asses off on playing the best possible professional golf and know you got to beat all of them is incredible. What I would add to that is I think, because we talked about this with the RSM and the DP world tour championship, same conversation. Yes.

And on paper, it passes the eye test to me, or eye test, or like first impression test of, oh, well, yeah, the century should get more world ranking points. Like that's like a reward. But I almost think there's a good hedge here where just because the purse size is 20 million, which is attracting attracting and you're basically like rewarding the top players, doesn't mean that has to like associate or line up with the world ranking points. I almost think it evens it out a little bit or it's a good compromise with the rank and file PGA tour player of like, yeah, okay, listen, these

guys have earned the right to play in these designated elevated, whatever we're going to call them, these big 20 events every year. But they're not going to get like a outsized amount of world ranking points. So this gives you a better chance to go ball out in the AMX so that you can get into that tournament so that you can win more money. And I think people are having a hard time separating out the purse and the status and the like the elevation of these, these like limited field events with like what is actually harder to win. And that's the reward is it's not as hard to win the, you know, the elevated event, not the elevated events, but like the century, which is a limited field. So if I can just to make a point to this though and there is a balance, right? Ron, Ron, I talked about this in the pod last week of, you know, he thinks it's

more important to beat the best players in the world, which like I, I, I agree with in a way. And I just, I don't know if this is right to say this. But if you take the top 19 players in the, so I gave you that example of half show to a negative half a stroke, 87 guys in that field, but between them, they added 118 performance points to the field. Like that's what gets added to the field. Those 87 guys contributed that. And that's the same amount at the top 19 guys add to the field.

Okay. So that's Rob Cantler, Sheffler, Zander, Finaus, Allatura, Sungjae, Sam Burns, Cameron Young, Aaron Wise, Brian Harman, Tom Kim, Tom Hogi, Taylor Montgomery, Aaron Wise, Brian Harman, Tom Kim, Tom Hogi, Taylor Montgomery, Keith Mitchell, Danny McCarthy, K H Lee, Justin Rose, and Jason Day. Those that that group added the same amount as those 87 guys, which as I'm saying, that seems a little off. Like I feel like those top guys should probably be adding a little more to the field than

87 of the top guys. It's kind of counter to what I was saying earlier, but that's how the math shakes out. And maybe, you know, that's one to five, you know, one top player for every five average players that you're adding. Math probably does check out there, but to your point, you'll be I test. Like, yeah, it's going to feel all

really. Like I feel like I have, I would say the same thing if I was him because what gets his juices going is beating Rory is beating the top players. Like that's, I bet if I was him because what gets his juices going is beating Rory is beating the top players. Like that's, I bet if you asked him winning the century was probably more of a thrill than winning the Mx, right? But technically the math is saying otherwise. And I guess what we're asking the OWGR to do is come up with the most like statistically

accurate way to rank the best golfers in the world. And I kind of like the idea like I'm coming around because I think if we go back and check the tape, the RSM versus the DP World Tour conversation, I was kind of like, man, that's bullshit. You should get more points for winning the championship event. But I'm starting to, I've really thought about it the last two, three months or even before this pod. And it's like, yeah, well, maybe that's not,

like that's just not the fact of the matter, right? And we've asked them to have an unbiased system for, like, ranking the best golfers. And it is harder to beat a massive field than it is to beat a limited field. That's kind of what it boils down to. Even if that doesn't feel as like, like, there's not as much adrenaline for a guy like Rom. I can see why he says that. And I think what's interesting about this conversation is one, I think it's kind of at odds with the fan product,

right, which I think is a very interesting conversation, right, because like I was saying, like if I'm the PJ tour, I just want the best player to win every week and the best way to make that possible is to kind of have only the best players in a field, right? But I also, I think it's really interesting going forward just to think through, the way I say it is this, I think that OWGR

is not necessarily to rank all the PGA tour players, like who's better than the other one. I think it's kind of there to rank them compared to European tour players and Japan players and Korean players and South African players. I think that's almost more the goal of it to the point where I'm almost getting to, I'm almost getting to a point where it's like, man, outside of the data golf stroke gained, you know, kind of like modified stroke gain that they used to roll in, live guys,

Euro tour guys, corn fairy tour guys, PJ tour guys, like data golf does the best job of that in my opinion. Outside of that, man, I'm almost getting to tour guys, like, Datagolf does the best job of that in my opinion. Outside of that, man, I'm almost getting to the point where like, maybe it just makes sense to go by money on the PJ tour, or maybe it just makes sense to go by FedExCupPoints or something like that, because otherwise you're gonna keep having these two things that are at odds with each other,

where you're gonna have what's best for the fan product, and what's best for Alex Smolley, or what's best for, you know, all these best for Alex Smolley or what's best for, you know, all these people. I think it all rolls up into the same issue, which is, man, you're trying to keep 200, 300 people all very, very happy just on the playing side. Let alone, caddies, let alone agents, let alone fans, let alone sponsors, let it, like, it's just so fucking complicated that at some point, they're going to have to just draw

a line in the sand and be like, all right, listen, I know that we tried for a very, very long time to do the most mathematically responsible, balanced, equitable thing. We're just not doing that anymore. And we just, like, in order to protect our product, we're gonna do this is what I think will end up happening. But I could be around.

That opens up a can of worms to me though. Like, I don't, you know, because then it's like, if it's just money based. I'm not saying I want that to happen, but I get what you're saying. The marketing message from the tour, when they're designating or elevating events, is add odds with the world golf ranking, giving more points to the amics. That's truly two mountain goats booking right there. Those are opposites. I get that.

But I'm kind of in my head, I'm like, all right, well, I'm going to go to the market and I'm going to go to the market and I'm going to go to the market and I'm going to go to the market That's truly too mountain goats booking right there. Like those are opposites, okay, I get that. But I'm kind of like in my head, I'm like, all right, well, they're separated out. Like the reward is you get to play in these elevated events because you've balled out for the last year or two.

It keeps the system open. Yeah, it keeps it open. I think that actually refreshes things. And I'm starting to come around with the idea that that might be a pretty good system. So it's hard to understand though. And that's like my first impression of that system is like, this is out of whack. This is not right. But maybe that's not the case. Now DJ, I want to, I want to pull a, can I, please, can I still one thing in here that it really doesn't matter that much? Like it just doesn't took all fans. That's

what I'm getting to. It's fun. It's fun to debate, you know, the who's in the top five and who takes world number one, to the players. It matters a lot because of incentives built into their contracts. And the top 50 cutoff matters a ton for the masters and that matters. But like what this, the changes have done is make it more fair in that 50-ish range, right? And we'll have to Victor Perez here in a second. Like he would be knocking down the door. He would be through the door

into the top 50 based off of his win, probably an Abu Dhabi under the old system, right? And he's being held back by it by the current system, right? And it's just, he's not bursting through the door in the same way that it would have. And so again, if you are one of the golf fans that cares that much about the, you know, the 60th, first 70th ranked player in the world, be up by, be, be my guest. Be as bad as you want about the ODIBG. So you said to your ears, Solid, they, they fixed the manipulation. You should be what I've been screaming about for four years. Like, people just started listening this year.

People started caring about it this year. I've been trying to say, but the last thing I'll say in defense of the ODIBGR is like, it is a really interesting balance between strokes gained, which I view as the best metric of how good of a player you are, which is that determines how many points you get in the events, and then also your finish in an event being the distribution of those points. It's a very circular system of like, you know, the old way you can get an overflated OWGR ranking OWGR ranking. And that was also what was used to determine the field strength in the next event, right? You know, your data golf ranking may have said 80th, but the OWGR had you 20th.

I'll use an extreme example. Your 20th ranking counted towards the field in the next event. It was this vicious cycle that just kept repeating itself over and over. Now it's like, Oh, OWGR says you're 20, but your stroke gains as your 80th, we are, we are counting you towards your 80th into this field. And it's just, it's going to be, it's like, oh, OWJR says you're 20, but your stroke gains as you're 80th, we are counting you towards your 80th into this field. And it's just, it's gonna be, it's pretty damn fair. It's gonna take some time for like the year cycles to keep running out.

And as time goes on, it's gonna be very kind to John Rom as the point system from the, the events from the old point system start to roll away. It's just the immediate returns are not there. That's my opinion. You know, the only thing I want to add to that real quick is because when you start throwing around fair and OWGR in the same sentence, you know whose music that is,

the live boys are going to come in hard and say this is not a very fair system. And the reason I think to spell all of this out is again, I don't have these numbers specifically. I know people who know how the formula works could spin them up very easily. But if the century is getting that few points for having, what, is it 17 of the top 20 players in the world? What do you, like, let's wave our magic wand and say that live fulfills all the other

OWGR qualifications, which they're woefully short on now. Let's say all those go away and they start getting points. Like, what do you think their field points are going to look like? They have a lot of things to do with the field points. their OWGR qualifications, which they're woefully short on now. Let's say all those go away and they start getting points. Like what do you think their field points are gonna look like? They have nobody in the top 50 other than Cam and Dustin Johnson who are still kind of falling quickly as they stop playing OWGR events.

Neiman, they have no big, they have, and Neiman, right? They have no big names yanking up the score and they have a limited field. So like that, even if they got points as it is, it would be like almost nothing. So it's rigged. And Davis Thompson is the perfect example of why they're not going to get points. All right, because there's no open, like Davis Thompson qualified for the PJ tour through the Cornfairy system. That was the feeder system.

Like that's the whole point of having that system. And Chase Capka and James Pied play in live events. They did not qualify for that. That's why they can't points. But, Dej, I want to, not, maybe not a counterpoint, but I want to sum up your, you know, I guess red flag with this, which is, I'm going to pull something from, from our nest member message board. The refuge from a, a bunk, user bunk, he said, like even the shout out, he

said, Cameron Davis, Davis Riley, Davis Thompson, Michael Thompson, these people are indistinguishable in my mind. And I think that's the little bit to like the point that you're making of like, yes, those are the 100s horse sized or duck sized horses that are like, I don't know, I would have trouble picking them out and line up and I watch golf every week. And that's tough for the fan product a little bit, whereas like, lives arguing like, hey, look at these big names we got over here,

they should be getting tons of points because they're going head to head. Which I think from a fan, like who would you rather watch perspective? I agree with live in that regard. And that's why we're deep in on the PGL concept. And that's why I think like restructuring the PGA tour, I'm in on that.

Like let me hear more. I would read your pamphlet about that. Because I totally... We're getting paid by the PGA tour, you can't say that. Come on. Well, that's true. Well, our contract runs out at the end of the year. So, you know, we can learn to contract. We're an approving year.

That was a joke. The I agree with, I agree with user bunk on all of the Davis Thompson, Riley Davis, Riley Thompson, Michael Thompson, you know, I agree with that. And I was thinking about that today and why that is. And I think golf is not like basketball, right? Where all the most flashy, splashy, exciting basketball highlights, you can just tell who's different, right? Like immediately in short bursts. And you can tell, like, oh my god, that guy's a better shooter than that guy. That guy, I can't believe he got that shot off. I can't believe he

got that pass off. I can't believe he can jump that high. Like all of those things. Football is the same way. I think baseball is maybe a little less so, but you can still see it in the way guys play the field and the way guys hit and all that stuff. Golf is, and John Rom is probably the best example of this. It is just the totality of a season, right?

And the margins are so much more imperceptible between Davis Thompson and between John Rom and that's why the qualification system matters, right? I mean, that's why you can't just pick one guy from the line and move them to the front of the line. Like, so I agree with all of that, but that's also why I'm saying that from a PJ tour perspective, trying to constantly smash your head against the wall to come up with like a more and more and more and more and more perfect system for how we rank these guys and how we fill fields

and how we, like, doesn't fucking matter. I'm with you, Sally, in that, like, you can explain that and you can have the most perfect rollout and the most perfect landing page that explains all of the data, Like, nobody gives a shit. And that's where I'm almost like, eventually, they're just going to have to rip the band off and be like, well, these 30 guys are in the field because we fucking chose them. I don't know what to tell you. Sorry.

This is what fans want to watch. And that's going to make a lot, a lot of Davis Thompson's and Riley Davis's and Michael Thompson's might be a lead like, we need six. We won Lee two Lee three on the LKGA We have the chipy we might have to start calling Davis one Davis to top three and If our if it feels like our tone on these things has changed over the last six years

It's because it's way easier to turn on the mic and be like this is stupid like why are they doing it this way? This is so dumb. And it kind of just ends up working itself out. Like, the more you learn about these things, you're kind of like, oh, so that's why they do that. Okay, well, that makes sense. Or, well, that's why this is it plays. That's why this is it plays.

So there's a shitload of stuff that goes on a pro golf that I still don't agree with from a big picture standpoint. But like, it's way easier to criticize the existing system than be like, okay, we'll come up with a good one. Come up with a complete, total good one. They're gonna evaluate 35 different tours, different countries, different people running them, and all that, give me a flat system.

It's gonna accurately evaluate all these players. Go right ahead and be like, okay, well, I'm just gonna go back to make in front of the original system. Right. You see what these guys fucking tweeted? I, but I will raise my hand and say, like, I do like having a system. Like, I don't want it to become a, like a glorified, you know, like, what I don't like about

live is that like, they can just start picking whoever they want, which DJ you and I are in record for saying, like, you know, we're six months away from Jake Paul playing, right? Like, because so at least like, there has to be some type of measurement here to evaluate this because I want to identify like the fact is golf is about consistency being the best golfer in the world is about how Long can you sustain your hot streak basically? And I think the OW jars an attempt to identify that and so if they're telling me that and attempt to identify that. And so if they're telling me that beating 85 of these average, when I say average, I mean, PGA tour, like average player on the PGA tour,

beating 85 of those guys is harder than beating, you know, one or two other guys from the top 10. Like I gotta, I have to kind of believe them on that, right? Like they're working the numbers out. And I'm, I am not a math guy. So, yeah. And that's what I was, I feel like I've brought this up on the podcast before, but talking to a buddy of mine

a couple months ago, I remember his exact phrase was like, man, we're really going to, we're about due for reckoning in sports in general around the question of like, why do we even play sports? And that's kind of where I'm at with golf. It's just like like today was a great example of like the qualification system work to get Davis Thompson there. He got into the tournament. He held his own against John Rom and like he

came up just short, but that was like a really great example of sport and who was a better player on that given day, right? And that's I think a lot of what we're talking about building this whole ecosystem is around, you know, identifying the best golfer. And if that's the goal, I think they're doing a really, really, really good job. But if the goal is TV product and money and TV money and sponsor exposure and all that stuff, all of a sudden like, dude, that's a very different game. That's, I would do things very, very, very differently if the person was a number one goal. Right, and that's where it's like, that's what tomorrow golf's for. Right, like that's, maybe that's the solution,

but I do like, I mean, maybe that's the, maybe I'm becoming an old soul, but like, I like that there, we are trying to identify the best golfers still. And I think the problem and the reckoning is going to be that, you know, maybe that question is not like a $60 billion question. Yeah.

Like maybe the market, maybe the market isn't there, like for the answer to that question, to be worth like $200 million a year to some player. Like maybe that's just not how the math works. And that's where again, we're just like, when you just get like an influx of, you know, kind of like irrational cash. It yeah, it tends to like shake things up and people, you know, get a pretty outsized opinion of their own value in this, in answering this question of who

can get the ball in the hole in the fewest amount of strokes. Like it's just, it's, it's not, it's very weird, guys. All right. I'm cutting you guys off. Too much OWGR, man. You guys are talking too much OWGR. That's a change of pace down lead aboard us a little bit. Xander a very ho hum 25 hundred T3 finish for Xander coming off the back injury. It's entry that is good to see that that was a a temporary issue. Chris Kirk playing some freaking golf and other T3 finish for him. He had a great look at a birdie on 18 that would have put him within one and yeah, got guys playing some extra golf. Chris Kirk is a like a souped up version

of that duck sized horse. He's a duck sized, but he's feisty man. That's a duck sized horse. Yeah, he's a little bit bigger than the duck, exactly. Shout out to your University of Georgia, just producing those, those consummate pros. I mean, just writing them, just, the guys that just live in that 20 to 40 OWGR.

Yeah. Just killers, man. Not what? Not killers. Now, I guess not killers, more just like they're, they're in the battle. They're in the fight. Yeah. Taylor Montgomery does it again,

solo fifth finish, They're in the fight. Yeah. Taylor Montgomery does it again. Solo fifth finish. Huzzle adjacent on 17 to dump one in the water. Uh, to when he looked like he had a chance to win that golf tournament, but managed to manage the scrape together a bogey. Uh, and get him just another enormous finish. He has not fit. He's finished outside of the top 12. Uh, he finished outside the top 15 one time in his last 13 starts going back to the end of the last corn fairy finals.

Like he is just a freaking force and every week it's kind of like, okay, it's time for him to fall back a little bit and stop doing this. And it just does not happen. His name is going to come up later on today because we have fun. The exercise we're going to do later on. So he, uh, he drives it. Awesome. And he puts it awesome. You know where that works? Everywhere.

The PGA tour. Yeah, I'm so stoked for him, man. That's gonna be a big, big year watching Taylor Montgomery. I think we could see some Cameron Young ask stuff out of him. Notable names at T6, Tom Kim as well. Throws some hands behind the ears after birdie and 17

That guy's gonna streak naked through the 16 hole at waist management. It's gonna be it's gonna be incredible I'm so excited to see him and Phoenix and after missing the cut last week, too He could be taking the the kid title Yeah, but it sounded like from JT and and spieth Yeah, that he might be that he might be the anointed kid. The kid Pat spieth being the kid passing the title down to young Tom. I think the kid has to has to wear his emotions

on his sleeve. That's like the biggest prerec. And I don't know who who's doing that more than Tom Kim right now. Sorry, just a quick shout out to 25 year, the German kid. Maddie Schmidt, I love the big putt on on 18 to top 10 get in the next week. I always love the, you know, someone coming out

of nowhere, like we talk a lot about, you know, going between tours and and playing weird schedules and all that kind of stuff. I think it's, it's hard when you have to show up and, you know, try to top 10 to get in the next week. And I love when people do that. So that was fun. I have two shout outs. One is JT Posting. I feel like he's showing up more and more and Posting up. One thing I really like about his game is he hit some bad shots today.

It felt like every time they showed him, he was not doing great. He hit some bad shots today. It felt like every time they showed him, he was not doing great. He has a better, the opposite of Tom Kim, a really good ability to bury negative energy. When he misses, it looks like every putty hits is gonna go in, he might be the best putter out there. And when he misses him, he just kinda swallows

like the F-bomb that he's probably saying to himself. And I saw that when I was out at the F bomb that he's probably saying to himself. And I saw that I, when I was out at, um, at the century on, uh, that Thursday, I followed him for a few holes and he just has a really good demeanor. So I don't think he's going anywhere. I'm, I'm, I'm putting it on record. I think he's going to have a big year. And then two, maybe less of a shout out, but is Scotty, Shephler, I mean, the forgotten man, like, are we concerned about Sheffler?

He just seems to be, you know, I guess, I'm T 11, but he just, you know, I don't know. He's the perfect example of that like anonymous world number one. Yeah. And this is the, the, the luxury that people like Spieth and Rory don't ever have where it's like, if they finish first or they finish 70th or they finish 13th or they finish whatever, everybody's gonna analyze it to pieces.

If Scott, he doesn't win, like nobody really cares. Where he finishes. Which is kind of why I brought it. I think that's interesting. I'll boldly go with Sully as T11, 2200. I'm okay, I'm not worried. And I'll say this about post and JT Post and it's kind of like Steve Nash might be too, too, too, too lofty of a comp, but like JT Post

and can play offense, man. When the, when the, when the birdies are there, that guy can run downhill. Now the uphill stages, we're going to cross, we're going to weave this metaphor through a couple of different sports here. uphill stages. He's not like top of the list of like who you, who you want on your team. I don't think but man, when that when there's birdies to be had, JT Poston is the guy. I'll give you a different comp if basketball comp. I think he's more Jamal Crawford. He's not starting lineup, but God, if you need 20 off the bench quick, like throw him in, man, he can get you a bucket for sure. Jay Neal 11 asked was the genocide guy in the Mx this year. I do regret to inform

everyone that Yopto Soros and Marno was regrettably not in the field for those who don't know that story. He was a genocide omaniac from Indonesia. I believe it was that played in this tournament for many years. Even as of 2020, I believe, was playing this event before somebody caught on that he should not be playing in this event. So I'm reading between the lines a little bit on this pro-am. This is a pro-am. So let's just state that.

You wouldn't know it from watching the telecast, but it is a pro-am. I'm guessing this is the cash grab pro-am, where people are paying to be in it. And so it's almost like the tour is saying, well listen, these guys want to play with the pros, but like, they're telling the telecastcast, we don't have to show it. But it feels like, like what are we doing with this tournament?

Which is a, which is a change from years past, because they, they used to show a lot more of the Ames in, in years past. Like, it's been a long time since they have then, because since I've been really following golf, they, they do not show Ames. It's not a celebrity program is what it's not new. So it's these things, I had imagined turning, bringing a significant amount of money for people that paid a play in these programs.

I have no idea what a spot costs. I would guess North of 50 grand, right? So for 156 play, I mean, probably every spot is not a paid spot, but there's 156 players. So I'm 50 grand. That's 8 million bucks right there that come in for the tournament. And it is an interesting, I kind of wanted to chat with you guys about like what the future of this tournament looks like or tournaments like this as we get ready to enter into a whole

new phase of the PGA tour, which by many accounts that we've heard, the schedule is going to get flipped on its head. And the whole structure is going to get flipped on its head. It seems to me, this event screams like what are these events going to look like in the future, right? Is it, I know it's going to be a non designated event and it's going to just be a second-tier event, but we've heard all kinds of things about, you know, timelines of certain events might shift around a lot. This one seems like a prime candidate to get either chopped or totally rearranged if that ends up in the list. I would, that's where I disagree though.

I think if you compare this because of that revenue stream, which is exactly what I was kind of getting at, that might be a reason that this event is still like, oh no, we, we're making money on this pro-amp part of it, which like softens the blow a little bit, or maybe subsidizes it. Compare that to a rocket mortgage, where you're basically just trying to convince one partner, like, no, man, this is still really valuable. This is still equal to all these other designated events.

You're still a PGA tour, stop, all this stuff. I think you're probably gonna see more tournaments go with this Pro Am model, where it's like, no, let's get some rich people to pay to play with these pros for three days. And that'll kind of help subsidize the fact that it's not a designated event. I think the only place I would disagree there is that I think all that Pro-M revenue is basically what makes up the charitable giving of the tournament, right? Like what we're, I think what would be at stake

would be the TV revenue of how do you, if you're the PJ tour, how do you package, you know, now we're looking down the road here, but I'm sure there's some language in there to be able to change stuff if things radically change with the PJ tour schedule next year, but like the reason they can charge $700 million a year for their TV contract is because they have 45, you know, events of equal kind of value.

And if all of a sudden you're saying, like, I don't know, these guys are the genesis and the century. And those events are super, super, super popular. Like, they're not going to be popular enough to, you know, bring in enough eyeballs to subsidize all the impressions or whatever that you'd be losing from these events basically becoming irrelevant, right, in a new contract. So, how do you keep them relevant? It goes back to our OWGR question, and how do you keep all these guys happy, and how do

you keep a thriving PJ tour that is both maximizing the top end, and also making sure that that, like, fatty middle doesn't go away, because that's why everything gets packaged for such a big amount. And I'd say, just a FedEx cup, it goes to all the stuff that's built around like a season long race. And I'd actually say Neil that the Pro-M model is like one of the most antiquated things about PJ Troye. Like this Ann Pebble or have this tradition back before golf was this big television product of this was like the local attraction and how you brought people into the tournament was you had, you know, Clint Eastwood out there playing, you know, at Cyprus and things like that before it just it seems like three golf courses trying to get cameras on everything and trying to

get all these players through the field and it works up against the NFL. Like I'm fine with this because nobody really cares this weekend. But if this was like a February tournament, it would be such an easy screaming of like, this has got to change. This one's got to change. It's time for eyeballs on this. So like a hyper local experience, like a pro-AM makes sense when you're not like trying to get a ton of media impressions through television. And that's my, I have no real understanding of how those happen, but that would be my guess on the structure.

Why, why there's a couple of events like this this time of year. I agree, that makes sense. One other thing about this term is, MX is a little bit of a rogue sponsor to me too. Like I don't associate them with golf in a big way. Mastercard would be more the sponsor I would associate with, you know, in that realm with golf. So it just feels like it's very, everything about it feels a little just out of place

with the pro-AMPs and just, I don't know, it's interesting. Yeah, I could be totally wrong on this, but I'm guessing this is, it's just one piece of AMX is, you know, I think this one's probably much, much, much more about onsite hospitality. Yeah, exactly. And getting people out of, getting, you know, super, super rich AMX customers out of cold weather places and out to Palm Springs for the week to do whatever,

you know, I could see them making this worthwhile just by entertaining like the right people at an event like this. Moving across well across the globe over to Abu Dhabi, Victor Perez wins in Abu Dhabi at Yoss links by Intermatic Fashion went out shot of Front 932, went in birdie to 10th and 11th holes, three part of the 14th hole while there was a yacht party going on right across like they go check the highlights on the DP World Tour YouTube page because they have an excellent cut between him three like missing a par putt and then over to a bunch of people just jamming on the yacht as

as he finished it putted it for bogey you could hear the music too. Smash is an awesome long iron to win on 15 rolls in the birdie to retake the lead over Menwool Lee. And then he finned along the higher end into the bunker on 17 short right of the green part three. And he's got a longish bunker shot. It's back into the win. And he just clips this thing so nice. Lands it five feet behind the hole, spins it back into the hole. Let's lose an awesome celebration goes up by two, makes a mess of the 18th and two puts for a bogey to have a, you know, only a two shot lead 18th and two puts for a bogey to have a, you know, only a two shot lead of her men who lead almost chipped in for eagle to tie it. But third career, DP World Tour win for Victor Perez should launch him to somewhere

around 60th in the world. I regret that this tournament is on very early in the morning. Don't get to watch a lot because Yoss links as a fun golf course way better than Abu Dhabi golf club that, you know, used to host it with the big Falcon Which had the hero cup last week the wind blows. It's wide. It's got cool green contours It's just a refreshing change of pace for for this golf tournament and it's it's a delightful watch But big win for for Victor Perez not a big dick win T.C. tried to call it a big dick win Getting way too liberal with that phrase. It was not like Patrick Harrington finished in like fourth place Let's just not get carried away. It's a nice win for Victor.

TCU is back channeling with me trying to, he was like Bobby Valentine with the disguise on. He's texting. Make sure you guys talk about this on the pod. Don't let solid get away with this on the pod. Make sure he knows it's a big dick with Ludwig's in the field, which he wasn't just a lot of, a lot of stuff coming in our parents. So cowardly to not do that on the group chat where I could defend myself. That is so cowardly, T.C. I think he's tried to, I think he's tried to stick to his no slack during vacation promise. So he's just, he's backshadowing. I got the text. Yeah. Our pairs corresponded. It seems to be, it seems to be, uh, you know, up and arms over there. I was going to give Patrick

a shout out. He was trying to be the oldest winner on the, on the Euro tour. D.P. Amazing. Yeah. So, you know, I know what you were using that as a way to say like, I feel it's not that deep, but like shout out to him.

Your boy, Noren, T5 or T4. So I was playing, playing some good golf. Men who leaves, fun to see up there. Shout out to Blandy, you know, very fun and easy to make fun of the, the live guys, but Blandy seems like a guy that's fund of C up there. Shout out to Blandy, you know, very fun and easy to make fun of the live guys, but Blandy seems like a guy that's kind of when he has had an opportunity to play some non-live golf.

He's tended to show up, I think. And I'm with you on Yoss links. It looked like maybe it was all the red hospitality, it was just reminding me of the Ryder Cup, but a bit of a like Middle East Whistling Straits vibe around some of those greens, right? It's very fun to see like those guys get mega shortsighted and have like really gnarly chips up and over stuff.

It was just, I had a fun time watching that tournament too. I would like to shout out Victor Perez, Frenchman, not, you know, potential to be like, who would you guys say is the best Frenchman in modern golf history? I mean, it's Duboison. It's Van Develle. After that, it gets a little, the list gets a little light for me, which has always kind

of surprised me that French, the French don't have a more robust, you know, roster of performance. I would say not by career accomplishments, but Mike Lorenzo Vera is the goat French golfer ever. He's the best. Good answer. I did a podcast with him. It's a great listen. Go back and say, Hey, man, do you have headphones by chance? He's like, Nope. Sorry, man. It's a go. Okay, cool, cool. Yeah. We'll work around it. That's totally fine. That's totally fine. He was the best. He was such a great interview. Yeah. I'm trying to think who else, Alexander Levy, I think is, you know, a name. I couldn't tell you too much about him, but there's not really not really too many up there. Which is quite a little vague, almost one of major.

Yeah, a little surprising to me that there's not a, I don't know much about French, like the golf culture in France, but it's always been a surprise. Since, didn't have Ray almost win that Pebble Beach? Yeah, have Ray, that's a good one. He's been, he's made some noise, but nobody's winning anything. Yeah, it's not French golf. I don't have a huge knowledge of French golf,

but as I understand it, it's very much the private golf scene, not a lot of golf publicly available in a lot of places like Germany and France and things like that. But that's not my area of expertise. Which is interesting though, because France is a proud like sports country. So that's why it's, I guess, why it's surprising to me that there's not a bigger push into, you know, high level golf.

Nikolai Hoigard. I feel like, you know, TC's going to come at us for that one. Let's just cover our bases. Top 10 for him. And my guy, Adrian Moronc from Poland, played some really good golf as well. Uppercase G. Yeah, I think he is. On the LPGA tour, Brooke Henderson put the field in a body bag at the Hilton, what is the Hilton Grand Vacations?

I forget what exactly it's called, but just there are 13th career win at the age of 25 or third win in the last eight months. She held a wire to wire when this is, she's won every single year of her career, dating back to 2015, other than the weird 2020 COVID year, which was quite challenging on Canadians. And it just kind of felt like she was the forgotten woman

there for a little while and she seems poised to. She just seemed more, she looked a lot more athletic this week. I don't know, I feel like her golf swing has looked a little funky to me over the years and not very visually appealing. And now it just seems very much like, oh, that ball is going exactly where she wants it to. And she seemed incredibly in control of her game for all the golf that I watched this week, which, yes, she should 16 under Maya Stark and Charlie Hall finished

second at a tie at 12 under par. So it was it was smooth coasting for Brooke. Almost too smooth. Like I kind of wanted to watch more of that tournament. I really like like known first LPJ event of the year. But it was I mean, she was just on cruise control. Like it was so obvious that she was going to win that it was, it was kind of, you know, kind of almost, almost made a little bit boring, but why are, why are always fun when,

when you start leading by three and you win by four, you know, I always, always respect for, for somebody who does that. And then I think the other thing to shout out for, for really both her and Nelly, big equipment switches. So it's always, you never quite know how the 14 brand new clubs in the bag are gonna go. I'd Henderson was always a ping player, but switched. And it goes and wins her first start out with Taylormate.

And Nelly switched Taylormate as well and finished what? Fifth, fourth, so forth. Yep, five back, yep. So said only because, you know, that's a big wrinkle that can cause some issues. So not that we're, So said only because, you know, that's a big wrinkle that can cause some issues. So not that we're not that it's, you know, righted off, it's going to be a massive success, you know, forever, but it's good to see good early returns, you know,

something like that can, especially in the women's game where the money is different. And I think players maybe, I'm not saying those two necessarily fall into that camp, but I'll just say, I think you see a lot of players playing PXG clubs because of the money that they pay and they probably leave a lot of performance on the table. So I think especially on the LPJ, you don't want that to derail anybody's decision-making or performance. And so it's good to see both of them play well this week.

And I think we're worth giving Marty's fish a shout out. It's just a killer, man. It's just have every it's all about the celebrities in this event. Not about the women for you, Neil. I see exactly. No, that's not it. I just every time I turned it on, it was it was Marty Fisher on a cut that was on the screen, which is.

I'm basically calling out what I was watching. So my if that's your issue, then I would go talk to the broadcast about it. No, but it, so it seemed, I want to bring this up. It seems like the things that get the internet in a bit of a, you know, get all hot and bothered. Don't seem to bother the LPGA players and that they seem to know what this event is. It's kind of a hidden giggle. I mean, there's only what 30 players in the field on the women's side in the, so they play, they invite a bunch of celebrities and former, I mean, on a cause of former LPGA star, of course, to play in the event. I imagine that helps with TV ratings. It seems to be like everyone

is having fun there. There was a kerfuffle early in the week that there was no lockers available for the LPGA tour players, which again got kind of the internet up in arms. He had a bunch of the women spoke out and they're like, no, it was the same last year. Like, I really don't think the focus should be outside of the golf that's gonna be played this week. And this event just feels really caught between a bunch of different things for me, and I can't quite put my finger on it,

but on the surface, it's like, holy shit, this seems like the women would be furious about not having lockers, and yet a bunch of like alley-h, Jessica Corda, Marina, Alex, like I'll spoke out saying like, no, it's not big of a deal. You shouldn't be making a big deal out of this. And I don't know, it's just a very confusing week on the LPGA tour,

because then they go off for several weeks after this. And it's just like a weird kind of kickoff, almost like a preseason event that somehow still counts. Yeah, and I think on the locker stuff, I tried very hard to not think about that too much this week, but I'm guessing that where I believe it all stemmed from Beth Ann Nichols report, right? And golf week about how, you know, there's no locker room access and all this stuff. I think I always get frustrated when players push back

on that type of reporting because I think that the LPGA, like it's exactly what they do need. And I think this whole like, why don't you just cover the birdies and bogies? That's what people really want to hear. It's like, ah, they don't always, though. Like that's really good in theory. But I think the number one rule in the content game

is you can't have too big of a difference or disparity between like the coverage that people want to see and the coverage that you want people to want to see, right? And I think there's a lot going on on the LPGA always about like, oh, if you would just like put up the scoreboard, everybody would see how good these players are. It's like, that's, that's not how it works. And I think what Beth Ann does as like a really good champion for not only It's like, that's not how it works. And I think what Beth Ann does, as like a really good champion for not only, you know,

women's golf, but just golf in general, is like trying to cover it the way that the men would be covered and try to highlight like, hey, if we're trying to make all of these strides in women's golf, these are the kinds of things that we need to fix. These are the kinds of things that are absolute bullshit that should not happen anymore.

And so to see players push back against that was almost like, yo, you guys are like losing the fucking plot here. Yeah, in my opinion. But I think my reaction to that though is like, if there's no lockers for the players and the players aren't mad about it, then I don't really know what the story is there, right?

You know, that's kind of my thought. Like if all the players were mad and then they got mad at Beth and for writing the report, I would totally agree with that, right? I, and going back to like what happened with the, the CME dinner last year and the, the LPJ players looking really bad and her report on that. Like that goes firmly in the category of what you just said in terms of, yes, like we're covering this like a real sport here. Like that you guys did not show up for your sponsor for this dinner. Like something very wrong happened here versus like, ah, if the

players aren't really rumbling about it, aren't upset about it. There's no great injustice here. I don't really know where where that really fits in the I'm kind of going to ride the fence here. I sort of agree with you both. So I'll see your point, but I would I would almost say like I think the players should expect more than. I mean, if there's locker rooms to be had like why the fuck aren't they in the men's locker room?

Like that's, to me, that is bullshit. Like it just says a outside observer. I'm like, well, is there a locker room at this course? Yes. Like, why aren't we using it? What's, what's the deal here? And that, that's where maybe I don't, I just don't think Bethan. I mean, she's been doing this for so long and knows the tour so well that I don't think she's ever just trying to stir up controversy.

Like, just because maybe a player wasn't on the record about it doesn't mean that players weren't upset about it. I think there were some very, very vocal players that were saying, you know, we need to stick up for the sponsor and that's true to an extent for sure. But I'm going to guess, without talking to her at all, like I'm gonna guess Bethane probably had more that either couldn't be on the record or something that was pushing her to write that story that didn't just, didn't do my work.

And it's all to cash and was on the record, and I'm not saying no one was, but it just, it, I don't know. It was a weird thing for the players to get upset about writing the article too. I just, it is a kind of a weird jump start to the season on the LPG tour. I can't tell if things are things are not going well over there or not. It doesn't

seem great if I was to from the outside looking in. I would agree with that. And just speaking of covering it like a real sport and things that don't seem great, first kind of alerted to this by the excellent preview that that Randy and Tron and Cody and and Jen put together on the LPJ side. What's going on with the tie players, man? Howdy-tovitanicate, 78, 78 on the weekends. Aria, Jutana, Garn, 84 in the first round. They both would be the caboose in this tournament finishing last, you know, last and second to last. Just very, very weird stuff that really bums me out because I love watching both of them play. Yeah, I

don't have an answer for that, but it's something to some to keep on the radar for this year. And yeah, please check out we're doing some bonus content this year on the no-lying up podcast feed. We are keeping the same same cadence to our podcast, but adding an extra episode, I believe, 20 ish 22 times maybe throughout the course of the year, usually published on Thursdays or around major chabits, chips will be live on Fridays and Sundays around the women's majors, not counting the aviangues, it's not a real major.

And some periodic updates throughout the year, extra bonus episodes that drop on Thursday. So check it out, there's a preview of those guys. And Jen from Groot or Golf did, it was fantastic, it had me. It's just the amazing effect of like, gosh, it makes me want to flip on the Hilton right now and watch these, a lot of these people they were talking about because it just added a whole different layer around it. And that's so out after watching the Netflix tennis series, which you can talk about. It's just context. So it's so true. And I will say, I don't know if it's a celebrity pro-an that they're playing. It's more of just like a retired baseball player and Marty Fish pro-an. It's celebrity that we're just celebrity that words doing a lot of heavy lifting. Yeah, the word celebrity. I don't

know if it's celebrity. It's like former athlete Pro Am. Yeah. We got a we're going to do a rider cup segment after this, but we've got to do a quick touch in on feels like this. I can't believe this was this week that a TV deal for live golf was announced with the CW, according to release the second and third rounds of Liv Weekend Tournaments will air on Saturdays and Sundays on the CW and the CW app. The opening round will be streamed on the CW app. Financial terms of the deal weren't released,

sources told ESPN that as a revenue sharing agreement LivGolf won't receive rights fees from the CW network and would continue to pay production costs as it did during its inaugural season in 2022. The CW will continue to tag them on Instagram. They will not be paid for your work, but it could be good exposure for you. We will tag you on Instagram. My reaction to this was kind of like, man, I don't even, I just don't even really want to joke about it.

I don't really have, you know, it just seems, I honestly couldn't believe that the live boys, the BOIs, were like touting this as a huge win for live golf and that they, normally I was saying all kinds of things. They had all kinds of bitters on this. I was like, dude, see, Debbie didn't even buy this. Like nobody even bought this. Like there were no bitters for this. The home of seven. And now their product, the one thing they had an advantage of was their, their shit was so easy to find and watch on YouTube. And now it's going to be on the CW app.

Nobody's going to download and watch that. I think honestly, if I were to guess on this, I'm curious, guys, you guys overall opinions on it. I think they're embarrassed by the amount that, the fact that you can see how many people are watching it and they want to move away from that model. They're going to a non-Neilson rated channel now so they get to make up their viewing numbers

and I think that's a non-zero part of this equation that they did not like that you could see that 13,000 people were watching the Bangkok live event. That's a fair point, Sally. I think there's something to that. I also think there's something to just the type of, there's a lot of status involved with the whole operation. So the ability to say, oh, we have a deal.

We have a partner. It's going to be on quote TV, right? That's a big deal. A lot of people say we couldn't do it. Yeah. We couldn't do it. And I think even we, just to bring it back home to us, like years ago, we've had different broadcasts,

companies, channels say like, hey, we want to redistribute your content here. And it sounds great. But then you start to dig into it and you're like, wait a second. Like, we can put it, you want us to put it exclusively over here. And then we're going to like share like whatever deal you do or we could just put it out for everyone to see and control our destiny. It's like I would rather do the one, the second one, right?

And it's like, but I think to your point, so I like there's a, there is a little bit of a, a status thing and a, you can't see the view numbers. Like we can kind of control the message a little better. So I think there's something to that for sure. I think there is a bit of, I agree fully with what you guys are saying. And I think it's so much of this on the leadership, which again, has continued to jump ship, apparently. I think their biggest directive was just like,

get this thing on TV, and now they can say that they succeeded in that. I agree with you completely there. I think there's some hypocrisy going on as far as what the goal of this whole thing is, because from what I've been told, this is young and disruptive. Look how fucking cool our viewers are. We've got whoever the hell is coming to our tournaments.

We've got a DJ going on here. We've got music on the range. We've got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. To take it to very, very, very basic cable TV away from YouTube where like I said, like you were saying you could have just been in front of everybody on the planet all at once. Feels like a step backwards to me and reading a little bit more about the CW. It seems like they have been, I mean, they're basically just like syndicated

reruns of fucking smallville and Riverdale and, you know, stuff like that. Don't forget, seven. Or like, seven. I don't know if it's seven heaven still on. In some occasion, I haven't been on CW. But they're doing that. And then some expensive young people's scripted programming and their ratings have just been awful.

So I read one thing on TV line or something that was about how they're going to pivot towards like older consumers because their median age of their viewers, like 56 or 57. And so to me, I'm 58, sorry. So to me, I'm like, well, okay, you're clearly doing this to make it easier for the olds to find your product and check some of those like management boxes, which just seems like you're trying to recreate as was kind of the prediction, just like a way shittier version of the PJ tour that's harder to find with worse players, which like surprisingly I'm not super

interested in watching. But I do think where I'll give them a little bit of credit if we're talking about that specific, hyper-specific demo on a Sunday afternoon when somehow, I don't even know, but this is like the thing is, I don't even know how they're gonna hear that this is going on, but if word spreads that Dustin Johnson and Cam Smith

are battling down the stretch at Rich Harvest Farms or whatever. Like this does make it a little easier for an older crew to find it, right? And to scroll on your TV and find that back nine. I think compared to what we said about the, you know, I don't wanna speak out of both sides of our mouth,

but like compared to what we said about the AMX, I think those first two rounds are just like a very, very disposable content. So like in no sense, like who gives a shit where it lives anyways? Right? Like, we just got done saying that the AMX is not really worth watching Thursday, Friday, even Saturday. And so on this, like, do I think anybody, anybody is going to tune into the CW app to watch golf on Friday? Sorry, golf, but louder on Friday. I don't, I don't think any, I think those streaming numbers

are legitimately going to be like in the four figures, maybe. But does it make it a little easier to find the back nine on Sunday? I think it does. I think I'd love to like learn about the actual human behavior of watching television, right? I mean, it was surprised to me in learning this, like CBS and NBC are the two most watch networks

in the United States. I just, I just, I just surprised by that, right? I don't know how. Do you know how easy it is to find channel four and find, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying it's like, that's why the PJ Tours is what it is. Yes, golf ratings, the PJ Tours ratings

are boosted by this, this like habit of, I'm assuming older people flipping on the same channels since they were however many years old. Like that's what it is, right? If you go watch LPGA ratings on the golf channel, which is only golf fans versus being on NBC, the NBC ratings blow it away. And I think that's purely just habit

like of people, what are the sports channels? I'm gonna flip through these and see what sports are on. And again, I would, I don't know enough about human behavior to understand that because I just know golf. Now, who is adding, who has the CW in their like channel flipping mode for watching sports? Like, who is already sitting there? They're existing audience on the CW is not going to care about live golf. And I, there's not, there's clearly not enough fans of live golf to flip over and have any meaningful impact when they could watch it for free on YouTube. Nobody was watching it. And so I, I, I just, I think this is, that's where I go back to their embarrassment of the actual numbers on YouTube to say, like, all right, we got on TV, did our job. And now I just blow up a mind that

Cam Smith can be playing golf on the, on the C the CW. Like that's the CW app. Okay. First off, CW is Kirkland signature WGN and and not like T, it's like TBS then WGN then CW, right? Like it's, it's, it's a, you know, I, yes, I've heard of it, but like I haven't watched it since I was in middle school. And two, if I was a consultant for live, what I would say, and you can hire Icarito if you'd like, yeah, you know, you wouldn't say no to the money, you wouldn't say no.

I'd say, stay on fucking YouTube if you weren't scared about the view numbers, try to grow it and sell direct like billboard sponsorships to the My Pillow guy, right? Put him in the background and get as many fucking eyeballs as you can and start selling like they do at Yankee Stadium for, you know, who but WB Mason, like that's, to me, a better route because you're still in growth mode. All of a sudden, you're going to go be invisible over here on channel 46 or whatever channel it is, but it's definitely not channel four. So I, I'm with you, Solid. I think it's a bit of a vanity play here. Well, and it seems like what is consistent with, with that is, look, in the lead up to live launching for like two and a half years, we were warning

people. Anyone that would listen, I was stopping people on the street, like, you're not even going to believe what's happening with golf right now. That something was brewing. There was an undertone, like there was so much smoke and there were warning signs. And like even when things blew up last February, we had all had a nice laugh for like a week. And we got back to like shouting from the rooftops, like no, no, no, they're gonna put up tournaments.

Like they're gonna have a tour. There's gonna be people that go and play this. Now, did they get way more big names than I thought they would? And, you know, 100%. I just, we were adamant that it was not dead. And there was just because there was so much outside evidence that supported that to that point. And that is just not what is going on right now. Like I've been digging and digging. I'm not able to uncover anything that makes me think that live is in for a big year. There's not even like fake juice coming from live

anymore. And I will again raise my hand as being dead wrong if this ends up being wrong. And again, emphasize my surprise that everything they've overcome and are able to overcome to make it successful. But it would be a way bigger upset now than it was a year ago for them to surge forward this year,

just based on the general rumblings we're hearing or not hearing for that matter. I honestly don't know of a single play they have to make any meaningful difference in the coming year. The last point I make is if the CWDL had revenue attached to it, I'd feel differently. But the fact that it probably doesn't, that's the, it's like there's a difference between a TV deal

and a bad TV deal. Like what's worse than no deal is a bad deal. And you guys should sign a fucking bad deal. Like it just so you can say you did. And that's kind of, I rest my case. I don't know. I'm with you, Sally, and that, like, I don't know if it's people like being, with like a crippling fear of being wrong or if it's some sense of like objectivity in reporting

this news or something. But I just don't get how people can't look like trust their own eye on a lot of this stuff. Like you, they've signed no new players except for like Mito maybe, maybe like nobody even cares enough to find out if Mito is part of live or not. They like signed a TV deal where they're not going to get paid and they're going to bury their stuff on the CW app. Executives are apparently quitting in mass.

I just don't, who thinks people still, after all of that are just like, well, we'll have to see, we'll see how it goes. We'll just, we'll see, we'll see. That's like, yeah, what are you doing, man? Just call it like you're seeing it here. This is, it's not good over there, guys. They've only announced seven of their events for this year.

As a matter of fact, they also have an announcement they're full schedule. Yeah. Which that is actually consistent with last year though, because around this time we were still screaming like, yeah, name one event you're gonna have and they didn't. And they managed to pull off eight events successfully if I may say that.

So that part doesn't stick out as much to me. But if you'll allow me, I wanna introduce a new segment to the show that I think, you know, we don't always have to have it every week, but I'm calling it this week in James Han tweets. And again, I wanna emphasize this of James Han was on the PGA tour policy board as a player director as of last year.

There was a tweet that went out that said, people will make fun of the TV network, age of some of the players, the OWGRBS shotgun format, the funding, the music, whatever. All they've does is forge ahead, gain more market share and do what they said couldn't be done while the PGA tour and its minions are asleep at the wheel. James Han quote quote retweeted that with well said and he was met with responses like, is it well said though? And as you drive to a PGA tour event and oh God and oh, I hope third leg Greg sees this and none of this is true and has lived not invited you yet, James, figured you were right in their wheelhouse of 300-ish in the world,

and lastly, fucking leave already. Again, one of the people in charge of making the policy at the PGA tour being obsessed with all the things going right at live, and being the only guy that voted against all the changes to the PGA tour, and that's James Han. So forging ahead, which, if I can bridge this into something else, and there was, you know, the podcast we had with John Romulus last week and the clip that went out on social media was kind of me.

I was trying to challenge John a little bit of like PJ tour players like you guys Kind of could have come to this conclusion earlier that you all needed to play together, right? And it wasn't like PJ tour management's job to dictate like hey or to change all the structure of all these things. We're working in dictate a schedule to you and I've heard so much talk to dictate like hey, or to change all the structure of all these things we're working in dictate a schedule to you. And I've heard so much talk over the last months and years of like leverage leverage finally the players have leverage finally the players have leverage and I've always struggled with that concept because there's not. You know, it didn't really completely dawn on me to the point where I'll finally say this out loud for the first time is.

There's a lot of discussion around this leverage thing and what live has driven regarding the PGA tour. And I think people, including myself, maybe have misconstrued things about how the PGA tour works, how management works and things of that nature. Like the players are the PGA tour, you know, there's no need for a union. There's not collective bargaining against an ownership group. It's not like other sports in that regard. It's not like the PGA tour management is rejecting all of the ideas from the players like the players do have control. Now for too long,

the power within that power that the players have as a group has not been held by the people that have the most value, meaning like the median PGA tour player has had too much power within the player group and it's contributed to why there's so many events. Why FedEx Cuppoints get spread so thin all over the season and live hasn't necessarily given PGA tour players more leverage over management in my opinion, but it has given the best and most valuable players in the world leverage over the average to mediocre player that has held too much power for too long. And like John Rob is not going to say that part out loud, right? But it finally seems like it's like saying no, like we're getting our share of the pie here or else like we're going to play golf elsewhere.

Like things can't stay the way they are. And that conversation would have been really difficult without an existential threat to the group. So I think I've kind of inherently thought that in my head, but haven't said that out loud of like the top players needed leverage against the rest of the group that was bigger in numbers, but not bigger in value. And they finally got that. And that is what's driven the change. The ductside horses. The ductsize horses. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't want to reheat the OWGR stuff, but then I also like the idea that like there's still a system in place where there's a bit of a meritocracy where it's like, yeah, these guys are getting rewarded with massive purses and these elevated events. But, yo, if you play well, you could get into those because you're still getting more points for, you know, the, the full field stuff. All right. Moving on to one of my favorite segments. We're finally kicking off a Ryder Cup year. This is brought to you by our friends at BMW, of course, partners of ours and

partners of the Ryder Cup. We're going to be doing check-ins monthly throughout the course of the year. And I'm kicking this off for our January episode. I want to go through. I gave you guys a homework assignment, and I want you to draft your U.S. Ryder Cup team as of January 22nd as we're recording this. We're gonna do a year upon, we're gonna wait for TC to get back for that one. So hang on, our friends across the pond. But I wanna hear your guys 12 players for the Ryder Cup. As if you had to go right now to Marcos Mone,

who are you taking with you? Couple of questions. We're saying the Ryder Cup is next week. I'm saying you gotta make your team right now. Yeah, yeah, okay. And you and you, it's however you interpret it. Who's on your team? got to make your team right now. Yeah, yeah, I think. Okay. And it's however you interpret it. Okay.

Who's on your team? Who's taking a rub right now? If you had to set your team right now, let's put it that way. Okay. So I did mine in order of locks. So like the most locked to the least locked. So if you want, Neil, I don't know if you did yours in the same way. Maybe we can compare notes a little bit.

So we're not. Yeah, kind of what power ranking to. I, I, we're gonna, if we're gonna, I need a list from, from one person to the next, because otherwise we're gonna cross pollinate. Could we go one, one, one, one, two, two, two? Exactly, that's what I'm thinking. Okay.

That's where I'm saying our teams are gonna get super. Yeah, that's fun. That's fun. Just, just skip over. If, say, I had I had him at whatever number, if somebody else brings him up. Okay. Okay, so starting with my list,

I, number one, lock of all locks, not worried about it at all. Number one, Justin Thomas. Number one, for me as well. Number one is Justin Thomas. Number two, for me, I had a guy, I know Neal's worried about him. I'm not worried, but he slots in just behind JT.

That is Scott Sheffler. I had Scott Sheffler at number two as well. My number two for safest to be on the team is Jordan's Beef. Oh my God. That's interesting. JT and Speed are gonna play golf together in Rome, like that's happening. It would take such a ridiculousy poor year

from Speed to not be on that team. That's happening. Well, I had him on my list as well. He was number 10 on my list. Yeah, he's going to care what the data says. I had him in six. He's going to be there. That's very interesting. Okay, I love it, Sally. Number three for me and really three and four kind of go together on this list could be interchangeable, but a lot of the same reasons you're saying there. I have Xander and Cantler, three and four respect, respect. I based on performance. I have maxed three. Ooh. I think I mean, T three at century wins

in the fall, wins last year played great at the presence cup. I think max is like a total lock for this team. I had Scotty at number three, because I haven't used him yet like you guys had, but I also have Cantlans and are at four, five kind of bridge, that they're together as well. So I will, I'll pick up on yours, Neil. I had Max on my team as well, but down at number eight,

just no disrespect to our guy, but let's see it in the majors, right? I know we saw it in the president's cup, but I think he would be first to say that as well. Let's see a good big major year. I still think he's on the team, but that would only make me feel better. Number five, I had a guy I've always written for,

big, motherfucking tone. At number five, just an absolute lock to be on the team. So my four is Zalatoris and my five is Colin Morekawa. Okay. And I feel like those guys both, Zalatoris, I think, has earned it. And the, if you go to the Ryder Cup page, he's at, I think he's two or three. And then Colin, I think he's got enough experience where he fits in there too. And he's, you know, he's played, hadn't played great, but he's earned it probably with, with previous appearances. I mean, he and DJ balled out at Whistling Straits.

They did. I'm going big tone is my number six on the list there, Pie Man. Neil, I love it. Zalatoris is number two on the current standings, which we can get to in a second. I had him down my list a little bit at number nine, just because I'm still, it's still a little worried about the back stuff.

I don't know. He came back at century, you know, played well. It looked like he played okay this week. I'm sure he's, hopefully he's, he's doing well, but it's still just a little, a little tickle of a concern in the back of my mind. So I have more cow at number six for all the reasons you mentioned. And then moving down the list, I had Cameron Young at number seven, just ahead of Max purely giving the edge to the majors that we saw last year and kind of some of those golf courses.

I think it'll help to learn more about Marcos Simone, but you know, and I believe I mentioned Max at number eight. I mentioned Zalatoris at number nine. I mentioned Speed at number 10 earlier. So the only other thing I'm gonna add is Sam Burns at number 11. And same thing, you know, kind of has fallen off the map a little bit, but looked great at the president's cup and I would be kind of shocked if he's not on the team.

Where do you guys have, catch me up to number 11? I'm kind of right there lockstep with you. I mean, you have Cantlay and Zander a lot higher than I do, but I have Cam Young at seven. I've spooked at six, because I think he's in, but I can't give him the second spot like Solitude. I've got Cam Young at seven. I've got Zander at eight, Tony at nine,

can't lay at 10, and Sam Burns at 11. Sweet. And I feel like this team, like there's one spot to me, then I have like five or six guys, but like the one to 11 is like, it's hard to say, like those guys are all locks to me right now. You know, it's like, I'm ride with, I'd ride with that squad all day long. So all you have any differences in that top 11

Well, so seven is my is more a cava for me And then I go Sam Burns at eight Zalatoris nine maxes 10 for me and Cameron Young's 11 I need to see a little bit better putting out of Cameron Young this year. I need to see it right and I I Would be surprised if there wasn't a little bit of regression from Cameron Young this year I thought I was going to be talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy

who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy

who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy who was talking about the guy 11 guys were really easy. And honestly, as we're sitting here right now, I don't think 12 is very difficult either. And I'm worried we're all going to have the same exact team.

Well, also, I have a, I'm still a coin flip. I have two guys I haven't picked. I just want to say Dustin Johnson is still on the Ryder Cup page. So he's one of my two guys. So you can throw him on 12 for me. I be very happy with that team. I, I am a coin flip right now between Taylor Montgomery and Dustin Johnson. And I think it it depends what you want to say about the live stuff. I actually honestly, I was kind of convinced by ROMs case for live players playing the Ryder Cup. And you guys kind of going back and forth on that. Really, I think I am kind of lockstep with you guys on like, hey, this is not a PJ, you know, this is kind of a PJ tour versus live thing.

It's not a PJ of America, Ryder Cup versus live thing. And Dustin is the kind of guy, like I don't think he's coming in the team room and totally, you know, nuking the chemistry. Honestly, people don't even seem like mad at him, even though he's basically the precipitating event that caused everything to happen. And so like personally, would I feel a little differently

towards Dustin Johnson? I think I would, but these guys really don't seem to. So I think, as of right now, just because he's a Dustin's a question mark, and we haven't seen him play in months and months, I'll take Taylor Montgomery, because he's like one of the hottest players in the world. But if you get to, you know, like late July, August, and Dustin is just beating people's brains in

in these live events and flashes in the majors a little bit, like, you're, it's not going to be hard to convince me. You mean you don't want JJ Spawn or Hogecoin? It's interesting. I guess, you know, we'll see where we, we'll see where we get to, but right now, right now I'm selling Hogecoin, but I do think he's a really good player I think he's this is woefully unfair of me and this is where the like you know analytics shuts off and the golf fan turns out like I'm just I'm good on top of okay on the on the rider cup team I just I don't really want to be in that world. I don't want to be around anymore You know, I got I got to raise a beef here on, on Kalei at 10 for you.

He went three, oh, and one at Wistling Straits. He's one of the five best players in the world. He fits perfectly with Zander. I, I'm going to need an ex-explanar on him being number two. He's, he's tried not to be a homer. He's tried to, he's tried to, he's a coach, coach is kid. I think that's, you know, teach a little humility. They were incredible at the presence cut too.

I was, there's a bit of a recency bias with my one to 11. And that's why like I have max, I think max is just like, I agree with you on the major stuff, but man, the guy wants to be there. He's great for publicity. He's great for the team room. Like if you're asking me to pick my team, I'm putting him at three. Like can't lay to me seems like he's not, you know, he's a cat.

Like he, people, he's a little bit over here on his own, doing his own thing. Like he's not, if I'm drafting the team, the cant lay or zander are, they're a duo. And that's why they're to me eight and 10. Like, that's where they are on my list as far as like team building guys, right? Like, I have speed ahead of them and I shouldn't.

And like you have speed at two where like that's right. The speed's going to, they're going to play him a lot. He has a partner and like that. He's, it can't lay in Zander or locks for this team. Barring injury, there's almost nothing that could keep him on. And I agree with you. I'm not like, I'm just saying in order of how I would draft them, that's how I would do because I would like to get some young blood on the team too.

I think that bodes well for the future. Like I think that Zalatoris and Cam Young should be on this team. And I think you make a good argument about Cam Young and a potential regression, but I also think those guys are absolute bomb threats. And, you know, they have, they would probably pair pretty well together. So I've, I've got them a little higher on the list right now. But your, your concern or your pushback on me is valid because I have ridden for can't land the past and he is a killer.

Who, uh, who do you guys got on 12? It's Taylor Montgomery. It's him. I mean, he's, there's not a lot there right now. And if I had a concern, it's kind of what happened with the president's cup, the zalator's injury, the Kisner pick at Quail Hollow just didn't make a ton of sense. And they, you know, it could be saw-hith, it could be Aaron Wise, it could be any number of guys that we haven't fully factored in. It could be Davis Riley for all we know. Somebody

is probably going to go out and have a great year. But as of right now, it's only one guy that has emerged to be one of the best players in the world. And that's Taylor Montgomery. Outside of DJ, it's the options on the, you know, on the website or the rankings would say it's Montgomery, Hosecoin, Kisner, Keegan, Chris Kirk, Brian Harmon, Billy Ho, J.J. Spawn, a lot of, a lot of horse, duck sized horses on that list for me. I'm not, I don't know. I mean, like all those guys are good players, but do they get me jacked up to pick them? You know, it feels like a bit of a happy Gilmore. Like Gilmore, you're on that list, right?

Oh, sorry, better luck next year. You going Montgomery as well, Neil? I honestly could see myself going like a hoech. You won't do it. I think I might take Billy Ho, like just for veteran, like attitude. I would assault the president's cup. Yeah, I would love that. He was bad. Yeah, that's fair.

I would love that a year a year ago. I was on that block for a really long time. That's an old guy's pick for me. Oh, like, oh, Billy Ho is a competitor, man. He's so, he plays so hard. Oh, yeah. That's a stupid take for me. I'm hand up.

That's a bad take. I'm with you. You know what? I'm going mega core. I'm going Brian Harman. Send it. I'm listening to that. Yeah.

I would listen to that. I don't know about Marcos Simone, but it's manipulated. It could make sense. I feel like Harwell with a lot of guys, right? Like, quiet. He's not scared of, you know, he's not scared to be there. He's been around a long time. I think Harman's probably, the guy in that list

that, you know, fits in the team the best. I know this is an old take, but like, when the NCAA first switched to match play, Harman was the fucking dude at Georgia in those first couple match play. Ricky Cries as well. He did. Well, yeah, I've Ricky Cries.

I don't and he was after a match against Brian Harman. I don't know that you know, Harman can be fully complicit in. I don't think he did anything specific to make him cry. But yes, that he was, he was the event that made Ricky Cries. So I think he's a true like, I think he'd be a match play, dude. Yeah. But who knows?

Who knows? Long way to go. It's going to be a great year to follow. And I'm excited to track it. So thank you guys for humoring me with that exercise. Keep an eye out. It just makes you feel the whole year a little bit differently. Oh, now who we taking out of our town.

That was a great extra. And it really matters because it gives me into, like, I got to be thinking about this all year. Yeah, we got to or else the capids are going to know who to pick. Of course, of course, they're going to get the final advice from us. That's pretty much all I got for this week. Anything else before we wrap? Long pod.

Long pod. That was a sneaky long pod. I think the only thing I just have extremely quick mention is the the budget commercials, Neil. I don't know. We want to talk about those as well. The private aviation commercials. I think maybe this could shed some light on really some of our OWGR conversation and TV models and all of these things is like, oh, it only matters. Like we're just trying to appeal to like nine people. We don't really care what what happens to the rest of these people. And I think

that's how you end up with commercials that are for, as I can understand, it back up private aviation. Like what to do when your PJ doesn't show up. What do you usually do? Usually I just drive after Uber after that. But when you're on a business page now, couldn't gas up the jet. John L.A. shows up and we ride to the big game together. Just truly horrible commercials. Maybe laughs so hard. I think it was a Casey that said it, Neil, or you said it, someone on Slack that I've never seen such an expensive product have such a cheap looking commercial.

Yeah, that's my anywhere. Just a low-fi commercial about the literally the pinnacle of luxury, which is private aviation. Like, I don't think, I think that's like the true sign of, you even heard it from some of these live guys. Like, what would change about your life if you took the live money?

Well, I'd probably fly private more. Like, that's kind of it, right? Like, you're on your own schedule, you can buy your own jet. And these commercials are so fucking bad. Like, poorly edited edited bad cameras, the whole nine yards, bad graphics, everything about them. The guys doing that weird voice, the like villain guys doing the weird voice, which is just close, we're sponsored by wheels up, of course.

And we fly only wheels up. We travel. That's right. This is the guy. After we stop riding D, we hop on our wheels up. That's. That's, can we please in it right there? I got nothing else on top of that. That's it.

Back, back, even the name sucks, badge it. If you're in a pinch, badge it, like what the fuck are we doing? Tough. Tough. All right. Thank you, everyone, for Tudor did. We will be back. Max Holma podcast coming this Tuesday.

We'll be back for a farmers recap. The tournament starts Wednesday this week. Don't forget that Wednesday through Saturday this coming week and flipping over to CBS for Friday Saturday, the debut of the year. So looking forward to that, we'll see you back here at this time next week. Cheers. Be the right club today. Yes. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most.

Better than most. Expect anything different. Expect anything different.