No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 646: Saudi Ladies Discussion + New Faces to Watch on LPGA in '23 + Lucy Li Interview

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

It's an absolutely jam-packed women's golf show for you! Cody, Tron and Randy begin by recapping last weekend's Saudi Ladies International before turning their attention to this weekend's Honda LPGA Thailand. Next, Cody runs down 7 new faces on the LPGA in 2023 everyone must know. Finally, Lucy Li joins the show (at about the 1:46:00 mark) to discuss her upcoming rookie year, how she's evolved from that little girl we all saw eating ice cream at the US Open, and a lot more. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back into the No-Lang Up Podcast. My name is Randy. I am joined by two associates today. We are talking LPGA. We're talking Women's Golf, going to be a fun episode. PGA, we're talking women's golf, gonna be a fun episode. First, Mr. Cody McBride, live from somewhere in the Dallas, Fort Worth area. Good morning Cody, thanks for joining. Good morning, Biggie, happy to be here. Finally turning weather wise, I know you're getting some fresh powder though out there in Denver still, but I'm excited to be here to talk a little

ladies golf, Pumped man. Wonderful. And then also joining us from Jacksonville, Florida. Tron Carter, Mr. TC, good morning to you, sir. Good morning to my esteemed colleagues. We've got the garage door open today. Weather is great. Golf season is heating up.

Wonderful. Before we dive into the episode today I want to thank our sponsor and that is foot joy as the LPGA season kicks into gear We want to talk about our friends at foot joy the official shoe for no laying up foot joy is the number one shoe at the Honda LPGA Thailand and honestly, it's the number one shoe at just about every level of women's golf It's the number one shoe on the about every level of women's golf. It's the number one shoe on the LPGA, the Ladies European Tour, at the NCAA Women's Championships, at the Women's Amateur, the National High School Golf Championships, the

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I'll be honest, the, uh, some of the ladies styles in foot joy, they need to bring those to the men's. They're fire. I knew you were going to say that. There's like a leopard print. There's so good. There's some really, really like fire stuff on the lady side. Yeah. Real quick. It's, of course, thanks to Titleist for joy, everybody over there. But T.C., have you been the dry joy guys for a long, long time? Have you been, as a collection man, growing what's going on here?

Give people a update. Yeah. She's got the metalwood collab last week. I'm going down to New Zealand next month and they sent me some spikeless ones as well. I've normally struggled with spikeless in the past. I'm going to give those a try. I guess spikeless is real big down there. But yeah, the collection's grown.

I'm trying to keep it under control, though. My mother-in-law is always on me. She helps me. She's got me on like a one-in-one out policy as far as clothing and and shoes. That's so on the one-out just so people are listening or these donations are these these you're giving them away to the great people of Jacksonville Beach what's going on? It throws them a little bit of a little bit of both you know it's

shoes are tough because it's you know know, it's size based or whatnot, but as our close. Yeah, it's mostly the, my old shoes that are, that are non-facil being donated. I'm giving any of my foot joy. Well, good. And don't, don't hit them up in the DMs. Don't be that guy. I've already had some people asking me about all sorts of crazy stuff. But biggie, I'm pumped, man. Are we, are we ever going to get this LPGA season like started? Oh my god. What's going on? I know. It's tough. We, uh, we, of course, we had the tournament of champions last month down in Orlando. And then we got to wait a month. We have the

Thailand classic kicking off. Well, when most of these people, when most of our listeners are listening to this, it will have already kicked off. We have a couple of events here was supposed to be three the event in China got canceled But then we got to take a little time off But then we really get going in earnest next month at the drive-on championship out in Arizona So we're getting we're getting close, but yeah, it's it it's, it's a weird, weird start of the schedule, you know, kind of start, stop, start, stop, start. The ladies' bone saw invitational on the European tour back to back with the, what about China? Uh, okay. What a foot of a wild, wild back to back between the two tours.

But better for the ladies trying to get around. I mean, who wants to fly all the way back across the world to get? So, PC, I think that's a good place to start. I mean, the, as you call it, the ladies' bone saw invitation, officially known as the Saudi ladies' international was last weekend. Guys, Lydia Coe, she appears to be picking up right where she left off at the end of 2022.

She won this event by one stroke, a little intrigue at the end, little, she played the 18th hole, she was in a bit of trouble, was looking a little shaky, but pulled out a par to win by one stroke. Lily Avoo's got to be kicking herself. She boggyed 18. Would have finished in a tie with a birdie. But yeah, let's start here at the at the lady's Saudi. I think like I said, the big takeaway.

Lydia Coe, she has won now three of her last four starts worldwide. She's back to number one in the world. She's married. It seems like all things are pointing towards a huge year with Lydia Coe. And I think it's great for women's golf. I think it's great for golf period. I think the big thing is like, guys, I, it's time for her to win another major. It's my big takeaway. Is that a concern for you?

You don't think she has the form this year to get it done? No, it's not a concern. I think she absolutely has the form. I think she just has to do it. I think this year is shaping up to be something that like the LPGA tour hasn't had in a long, long time, and that's like dominant truly dominant performers and we talk You know stacking Lydia with Nelly with Brooke Like having them being able to separate themselves from the pack and that's before you add on any of these other

You know not even up-and-comers but people who are are still top 20 players in the world that automatically will contend weekend and week out. Like I truly would like a word. Exactly. I like I truly think that like you're going to see a true like lift and shift of the top five players in the world against everyone else. What who would you include in that five? You mentioned three. Yeah, I'd say for sure Minji. So all right. So Lydia, no Korean. That's I mean I think that's the big the big variable. List your five Cody. I'm going to come back because this wasn't a fully fleshed out take. I'm standing strong in my three right now. I like it. Okay. I'll come up with two more names. Also I just want to say from the from the ladies boats all Lexi shot 63 66 on the weekend. Got off to a poor start, 72 in the first round,

but 63-66, she appears to be playing very good golf. Or TC was she freed up because her first two rounds, she was... That's true, too. It could be like a vintage coacher situation. Yeah, that's... Back door, top five kind of thing. Yeah, that's 63 on Saturday was impressive though.

I will say that guys it's like it's such a bummer how much royal greens like we can talk about all the geopolitical and you know human rights stuff and all that but on a purely golf level It's just wild hell like shitty of a golf course royal greens is and Like there's two events there a year. Or really, you know, more than that now with Liv. It's like there's, like it's hosting more professional golf events than like any course in the world right now. And it fucking stinks.

Very, very wide. Even when you get in the desert, like it's not penal at all. And the only thing that's really protecting you is when the wind does start to blow. But I don't know. I agree with you. I think one thing to note here before we dive into more architecture talk is the fact that this was the first time that they had equal purses for a men's and women's event, a $5 million purse, which is crazy. Largest purse on the ladies European tour by far, and something that I mentioned in the preview podcast is just Saudi, PIF, and Aramco continuing to get into

the LET and seeing kind of what that fully devolves into, because I made a bold prediction that at the end of the year, like I'm pretty sure that the ladies European tour would be AOK if it was completely presented by Ramco. Yeah, it seems like it might as well be, right? Yeah. It seems like it is already headed that way. They, I don't, I haven't done the purse breakdown, but if you look at total money available on

the LET this year, the money from the Aramco events, both the Saudi Ladies International and the team series events through the year, it's just night and day different than their other non-Arram co-events. So the more I've thought about, like, live and live, dipping their toe into women's golf, it seems like their best avenue is just through the Ladies' European tour, really. And I think they're finding legitimacy in the Ladies' European tour.

And then I think that the interesting thing is down the line with the LPGA being so worldwide as is, you know, it's easy to imagine a scenario where the LET and the LPGA simply combine and you have this global women's golf tour, which I think a Ramco is gonna be a big part of. There's a lot of stuff around that. I mean, I know the commissioners talking to them, she has to take the call, right? It's very much different position.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch. And I know like some of the, you know, biggest women's golfers in the world are already sponsored by Ramco or have played in the team series events and they're already dipping their toe into that and would be the first ones to jump ship. A couple of other notes just on the leaderboard, Lynn Grant played really bad. That was kind of a shock, 72, 78 for her.

Maybe she's just been hanging out and tweeting and you know, polishing some rust off the game in this event. But that was, that was pretty, pretty jarring to see. I think one of my predictions was for her to be top five, or like the top, like the number one player in the world by the end of the year. And I think the weak prior kind of defend her a little bit. Didn't she take second the weak prior to Aditi?

She or my wrong. Aditi's playing some freaking golf. Yes, she is. We got to talk about her. God, the Lachity Serapian Tourism website is so bad. Thank you. I was just going to say this is impossible. So Lynn Grant finished runner up to Maya Stark, the week prior.

And then a D.D. won the Magical Kenya ladies open. Correct. But the young Swedish generation is common between Lynn and Maya. They have some others in the pipe. Yeah, they have some others in the pipeline. Watch out for the Swedish women. Well, Cody, where do we want to go here? Do we want to dive into the geopolitical conversation

around the event and why it's such a, I think, such a difficult decision for the women, whether to plan it or not. Do we want to, Cody, have you finalized your five golfers that are going to lift and separate? Where do you want to go right now? Thank you. Well, it's good you have political first.

Oh, okay. And they talk, you know, get super golfy in the second half here. All right. Let me, let me start this by asking you guys a question. And we've talked about it a little bit already. But do you guys, are you able to see it, and maybe give people a little bit of an out here by separating what is a P.I.F investment, what is an a Ramco investment, what is live golf?

Like are you guys able to see through and kind of parse theirs? And and what is where you guys are kind of your optics are from, or is this all kind of batched in the same? I think there are differences for me. I think, I mean, going back to, gosh, what was it, five, six years ago, whenever we saw that first wave of PGA player starting to skip. It was always usually the waste management on the PGA side.

When they, you know, and I remember specifically when Phil Mickelson decided to skip the waste management and go play in the Saudi international on the men's side, that really made me upset. And it made me upset not because it was a Saudi tournament per se But here's a guy of Mikkelson who had great success at Arizona State is beloved in Scottsdale Phoenix area obviously has a great chance to win a

Lot of money at the waste management year to year, has made a ton of money on the PGA tour. For him to kind of turn his back on what I think is like, hey, there are 500,000 people that want to celebrate you, Phil, in Scottsdale. Like, these are your people. For him to, ask you all that, take the money, go play play in Saudi that rubbed me the wrong way and

Really that Saudi tournament could have been anywhere else in the world And I still would have been the same level of upset because I Thought it was a a dumb decision on his part really a greedy decision to go take appearance fee money And miss out on the Scottsdale tournament. On the women's side, I think, so let me backtrack a little bit. I think what I'm trying to say is I've always kind of separated the Saudi international golf event, both on the PGA tour, the LET from what's happening with live golf. In my opinion, you know, if folks wanna go over and play the Saudi international tournament,

that's fine, right? I can be upset in circumstances like with Mikkelson, where I think, man, it just makes so much sense for him to play in Scottsdale. On the women's side this year, quite honestly, with no LPGA event going on. I don't play many of them one bit for going and playing in a one-off tournament in Saudi

Arabia, where I got upset, I think, is with Liv Golf being, in my opinion, completely funded by Saudi Arabia. It just feels like more of a, and I know people are probably sick of this word as I am, it feels more of like a sports washing operation with like, hey, yeah, we're gonna try to do this golf league, but really we're just trying to wander our reputation. Still the day comes where there's a live type league for women and LPGA players start leaving the LPGA to go play in that league. I can't get mad at them for going and playing for a $5 million person Saudi Arabia because as you said, Cody, the PIF, right, the PIF, It's got its tentacles everywhere in our society. You can't escape it. So, do I wish it was different?

Yeah, sure. I wish it was different, but man, it's so intertwined and intertangled that seems like a fool's errand. So, I, this is very long-winded, but I don't have an issue at all with any of the LPGA players going over and playing in the Saudi event. I feel like I, I don't know what to think on the one hand, and that's a okay to say. Yeah. No, it's like I feel like my, my opinion on it changes.

I do have, I don't know a problem with the ladies European tour. Ladies playing because it's like, all right, like if you don't play in one of the highest person event of your entire season on your tour, you're gonna fall behind, you're gonna, you know, it's like the ends versus the means on that front. And then, you know, you may not have a career if you, you know, if you fail, like, if you fail to play in this one,

it's gonna affect your season, you may not keep your card, all that stuff. But on the other hand, like George Severicus and Amon Lynch had a great back and forth about it on golf channel this week about, George was saying like, hey, like morals or morals, right? And if you've taken a moral stand against this, but now, but now

the circumstances change with the purse or with it being a sanctioned event, like that shouldn't change what your moral stand was either. So like I think my overriding thing. And so so first things first, ladies, European tour members, you know, I think they're, I can see them playing in it. I have more of a problem with the, with the LPGA tour players, like going over and playing in it, but less of a problem with them playing in it versus PGA tour players who, like this is, you know, like Liv has, has come and tried to destroy the PGA tour, right? And you've got, you know, or like, you know, try to put a dent in the PGA tour, right? And you've got, you know, or like, you know, try to put a dent in the PGA tour and steal players

and all that stuff where I feel like on the lady's side, it hasn't been the same tactic or the same, like, they're not trying to upset the structure of the LPGA tour at least not yet, right? So it's like the PGA tour players that have gone over and played in the Saudi international, like they're still aiding and abetting, setting up side all the human rights stuff and all the Saudi Arabia stuff. You're still aiding and abetting like this other entity that's trying to take money off the table of your main tour. I think the thing that just bums me out is like, there's no fans, the golf stanks, it's

just totally juiceless. And like, it does feel soulless. Yeah, I totally. Yeah, it's like, what's the point, right? And like, even if it's, you know, I saw something that like Saudi Arabia is doubling down on punishment for, you know, people speaking out on social media. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's like, all right, cool. Like, so Dustin Johnson and Bryson, you're going to go play with MBS and you know what, he's going to totally

change his mind on that. Like, you know, that old thing's told for the nature of this podcast. Let's say that Lexi and add another. I want to try to keep this as focused on the ladies as we possibly can because I think you can interchange them and you'll still get the same outcome. Where I get to with it is I think inevitably the size are going to get bored with golf, right? They're going to get bored with live. They're going to get bored with and you know what's even easier to close up shop is the Aramco team series or the ladies sought international. And at what point does that leave?

You know, like it's like who's funding golf? That's always been my big thing with live and with everything. It's like should should a nation state have a seat at the table with the RNA and the USGA and the PGA of America and the PGA tour and the LPGA who are, you know, you can argue in nitpick all you want, but who are truly stewards of the game versus a nation state who has a completely different set of priorities here. And as soon as the price of oil dips back down and, you know, let's say a Ramco does their IPO and all that. And, you know, there's more seats at the table

of Ramco slashes their marketing budget and distances themselves from, you know, the piff a little bit on that regard. Like what's to say that they're just not going to leave ladies golf high and dry? Like that's, that my main thing and you know, people could say on the flip side, hey, you gotta You know get while they're getting good and and kind of ride the hot hand and squeeze every bit of money out of it right now and then Figure it out when that inevitably does happen, but I don't know. It's just it's kind of a question of of why, right? It's I come back to the why. Why are they doing this? And whether that's live or Saudi international or whatever, you know, and

sure, certainly, you could probably say the same thing with the Dubai events or any of the Middle Eastern events, but at the end of the day, like, there's fans at those events. Like I've been to the Abu Dhabi event. It's like, it's like a legitimate golf tournament, right? Like, and, you know, there's a lot of fans at those events. They're good, they're good golf tournaments. There's no fans at Royal Greens. It's a terrible product. I would venture, Cody, I want to give you the floor here because you have a unique perspective. But I just wanted to add, I get the sense, you know, when we

talk about this, this Saudi event specifically, and I'm curious to talk to some of the players that went over there, but my sense is it's probably not even like an enjoyable trip for them, right? It's got to be very weird. I have to imagine it's not like they're going out and just feel free to like explore and see sites like they do anywhere else. So it's like from the players perspective, yeah, you have a chance to earn a lot of money and I get why that's the motivating factor. But it's not even like, turn on to your points. Like there are no fans enjoying the event.

I suspect the players are, it's not really an enjoyable week for them. So yeah, it's like at the end of the day, like, what are we doing? Cody, in like, on the men's side, at least they've got the yacht that they can go on to off shore and do it, you know, and they got all the hookers and blow and stuff out there. Whereas like, I don't think they're providing that for the ladies. Yeah. Cody, you tell us, man, you have such a unique perspective, given your past career and everything that way. So what are your overriding thoughts here?

Well, I think where you guys are coming from is very normal. And I like having these discussions because I think people's perspectives, their point of views, they change over time, and that is a okay. If you are not seeking out and taking new information and analyzing that and trying to figure out where you're coming from and where your new stance is,

you just become another one of the little trolls who are just marching along with the same picket, you know, sign going, saying the same thing over and over and there's no real change. And changing your stance and your optic on it is, is a-okay. I would say the first thing that I would like to point out is an anorquist. She changed. For a long time, she was probably the person on the lady side who got the most heat about rocking a ramco or a golf Saudi logo.

She had it on her bag, she wore a head wear, she had it on her clothing, and she realized that no matter what the money was worth, that the amount of heat, the backlash that she got, it was not worth it. And that is a okay. And it's also a okay, in my opinion, for anyone else to reach out and say, Ramco wants to sponsor me. Let's put this and figure out what is what is this actually worth to me? Because if you look at the money that's available in women's professional golf, it is like decibel points compared to men or or anything else. It's ridiculous. Big, I'm going to go back to what you kind of ended your thought with. Is that gearing

up for the lady's Saudi event was the first time ever that I had multiple LPGA players reach out to me and say, hey, I know you, I've listened, I know you've been over here. Can you please walk me through what to expect and go from there? And not just people that are close to the brand, but others that were completely random DMs. And I provided them all the information that I possibly could. And I frame it with King Abdullah economic city truly is. and I say it's a propaganda village because it's built to not host local Saudis. The reason why it's there is because that was their first attempt at what an actual resort town possibly could look like. So what I would say is and I

asked the ladies who were there, did they feel comfortable? They've, I'm sure they felt comfortable on the golf course because there's nobody else out there with them. And there was nobody else out there with them until the weekend when people were actually bust out from Riyadh or anyone else to come and watch them play. But that is not the real experience that you get. And I know that's not the experience that they are used to as these women continue to travel the globe. And they go to awesome destinations and they're able to go out and see the sights and experience the culture. What's the point of traveling if you're not experiencing the culture?

And this week when they went out, there was no culture to experience because it's completely whitewash. It's westernized for a reason to look good on TV to make sure that everybody's safe. And it's okay to change your stance when it comes to the money. But what is not okay is if you take a hard stance, and I'm going to be hard on some players here who have been very, very vocal in opposition of Saudi. And I don't care if you put golf Saudi, a Ramco, or anybody else's investment

into the game of golf. If you are brave enough to stand out there and say how horrible and atrocious all these actions are that the government of Saudi Arabia does. And then you have a change based off of the amount of money that is put into the ladies European tour and realize that you professionally will not be able to survive unless you play in these events. That is okay.

But you're going to get heat from it. You're going to get blowback from it. All right. And there's reasons why is because the ladies that are making these decisions, the ladies that made the decision to go play there have that option. The ladies that currently live in Saudi Arabia, the ones who everybody wants to send out, go fund me's or donate to this group or anything else like that. Those links that you send out are still overseen by the government of Saudi Arabia.

All right, and those women that live there, Saudi nationals, that are still under Sharia law, every single day. All right, there is nothing that golf is going to do to change that. And everybody has to realize that. This isn't about business, this isn't about politics, this is about religion for them because it is intertwined with their daily activities. And everybody needs to like flat start at that point and realize that what we are used to in the Western world and the majority of every other country in this world, the freedoms that women have are never going to be experienced in a country that practices Sharia law.

And if you start at that baseline and realize what you're attempting to do to grow from there. Like that would create a little bit more honesty in the things that you are saying. All right. It is one thing to be able to walk on the street. It's one thing to finally be able to take your burka or your schmog off. It's one thing to be able to drive a car, but when you're still actively persecuted because of the gender that you were born into, there's something wrong with that. And there is nothing that any of this stuff involved in golf will do to change that because that's just how it is. That is the sect of Islam that they believe in. Those are the rules and the bylaws that they have chosen to experience

That is where this whole thing is coming from So first acceptance of that on top of that There is so much money. I don't blame Lydia, I don't blame Lexi. I don't blame any of the L.E.T. or L.P.G.A. girls for going and playing because it was a hole in the schedule just like you guys said. Maybe I would have a different stance if there is an L.P.G.A. event and they chose to go do this. But I would say on the flip side of that to the L.P.G.A. tour do better. Create a schedule. Right. Fine. Which we talked about on the last one, right? Of like the, you know, like having these ladies fire

their schedule back up to go to the Orlando tournament champions event. And then, and then not having another tournament for a month is fucking ridiculous. About a $5 million ladies purse that's a non-major. And I know we're gonna get to an amazing article that was written about does the amount of money that the purse is in constitute it becoming a major which I do not think I do not agree with that stance at all.

But all of this goes back to the fact that for some reason the ladies European tour based off of the assistance of Aramco, Golf Saudi, PIF, whoever you want to say, are willing to put up this money to support the ladies. And if people on the LPGA tour have an issue with that, go to your sponsors and say, we need more. It trumps the vast majority of events that run on the LPGA tour. So when you're putting these curls in this situation, it's not it's not a like a greed thing for them. And I love the fact where George and Amy came from this. And George was very, very firm pointing

out the hypocrisy in Amon. And rightfully so, but it's not a greed thing for them. It's literally them trying to not not survive, but live a competitive schedule. Now back to Megan, and I'm talking about Megan McClellan because she put herself out there and it was a tough, tough stance to take. And people say, if you don't like it, there's other tours that she could go play on.

Well, she did. She came to the United States. She played on the absent tour. She's tried to get her LPGA tour card. And it didn't work. And there's a lot of things tied to that. A lot of it is just being away from home. I don't blame her for going and playing the L.E.T. full time. I don't blame her for going and playing in any a Ramco sponsored event at all. The same thing with Lauren. one of our young hitters went and played. Last year, another one of our young hitters played

in a Ramco event in New York City. I have no issues with it. Because at the end of the day, what are we expecting these women to do? And I am okay saying that is a difference. And if that makes me a hypocrite, I'm okay, I'm still gonna sleep fine at night, because I can see the difference between that versus going to my Acoba and worrying about what I'm going to do

with my $300 million that they just gave me. So you brought up Meg McLaren. I think she deservedly is a poster child for this whole issue. She has changed your mind, which Cody, I agree, there is nothing wrong with changing your mind. I think in most instances, it's a very powerful thing to do. But just to kind of give some background, a couple years ago, January 2020,

she came out publicly and said, she was not gonna play the event in Saudi Arabia. I'm quoting her, I've decided not to play based on what I think sport is being used to do in Saudi Arabia. It's far more complicated than anyone individual, so it's a personal decision and not something I would push onto anyone else. But based on the research of organizations like Amnesty International, I couldn't be comfortable being part of that process. We take for granted a lot of the choices and freedom we have available to us, but I try

to make my decisions based on who I am as a person, not just a golfer. It's obviously a huge tournament for us, but this to me is about more than golf. I wish sport as a whole looked through a lens deeper than what benefits itself So that's what she said in 2020 Cody as you said You know, she's she's been competing on the L.E.T She's come over to the states and participated in in the LPGA Q series has not earned her card. And then we fast forward to this January, three years later, and Megan through her Twitter said,

quoting her, I'll be playing the next run of, sorry, I'll quote the whole thing. This winner has pushed me harder than ever before and I've loved every second of it. I'm looking forward to another season on the LET and I'll be playing my first event in just over a week in Morocco. I'll be playing the next run of events after that,

including Saudi and other Aramco events that fit how I see my season going. There have been reasons I haven't done so in the past, and while most of my feelings haven't changed, sport has only become ever more intertwined with politics. I will always believe it is better to look rather than to look away, but the world is more powerful than single individuals with limited scope for change. Using these competitive opportunities and doing what is necessary to be the best golfer I can be is quite probably

my best route to increasing my platform, voice, and financial status. out to increasing my platform, voice, and financial status. What I then choose to do with that platform, voice, and financial status will hopefully make this world a better place in the long run. And that will always be my aim. So how do you, yeah, how it's tough? What I would say is that Megan went on to Miss the Cut and did make a dime on the trip. But I guarantee you she learned a ton about herself, not only from putting herself out there

and changing her stance, but vocalizing it and then trying to do some about it on the back end. And I appreciate her stating that it truly was, I mean, even it was listed at the bottom of the list a financial decision, which is a okay to say. That's what I was saying earlier, right? Like the like the George, George and Amon thing, you were saying you agree with George, but you're taking the stance of Aiman, I think, where George was saying like, you shouldn't change your mind. And if you believe in something, you believe in it, whereas Aiman was like, Hey, I, youin was like, hey, I see the gray area here

and I see, and I'm not, I'm kind of right in the middle. I don't know what to think, right? It's like a, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing. It's truly two shitty decisions. This is a hard, shitty outcomes. This is a hard place to be at because what you're saying is that we're also like, we're

on this podcast, we're supposed to provide opinion on, I guess, the girls and these ladies' decisions to go. But what is my decision? What do I believe in? Like I have a hard time getting past. Like I have a huge issue with Sriha Lama. I've seen the horrible things that it is done at countries across the world I've saw a new country pop up in front of my eyes and because of my job

I had to go invade that made-up country and go like Do stuff as part of my older job like it sucks I've seen the hardship of it. It should realize horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible. Because at the end of the day, no matter what you look, the way that the Quran is written is that a woman is less than a woman is a tool. All right. The only reason why women are in this world is strictly for breeding. All right. And it doesn't matter what advances you make as a society. It's they take a very, very traditional route in their views and opinions. And if you want to look out of the flip side of that, look at like, you know, Dubai or Abu Dhabi,

where people, I've been in multiple flights. I've flown all over the Middle East and Seen women get on board flights. It doesn't matter if you're coming from Turkey Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon. You name it. They'll get on a flight in a complete burka Head to toe covered and as soon as you clear their airspace going into Dubai It is a massive train of women to the back to change their clothes and they'll come out wearing as western clothes as you can possibly imagine. Dubai for a long time has been considered the Las Vegas of the Middle East for that reason because you see how things can go and they're easing of how they interpret the Quran has changed drastically over time. But that's how I feel.

But again, like I cannot put my views and opinions and try to analyze any of these other people. We're all hypocrites in this whole thing, right? Yeah, there's no, there's nobody has the high ground and I think that's that was the question or the point that I want to bring up is I think Meg Megan has taken a lot of heat and It's both deserved in some respects because of her very public prior stance of her very public prior stance, but it's also like, I respect her being open and honest through all of this.

I have much more respect for how she has gone about it. Then if somebody just wants to be totally, I'm just gonna pretend none of this is a problem, I'm just gonna go get my money and come back. Like you're certainly entitled to that too. But if you're asking me like, who I respect more? I think Megan's the much more interesting person. She's being more human, more vulnerable, more more open.

But yeah, there's just at the end of the day, there's just no high ground for anybody to take. I don't think. Yeah, it's a tough thing for the sport at large. I think the other thing, I mean, going back to what you said earlier, Cody, of what this is about and why they're doing this. I think obviously religion is at the forefront,

but what they're trying to do is normalize relationships with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for business purposes as well, right? They're trying to give cover to businesses, you know, make it. Hey, we host Formula One, we host ladies golf tournaments, they're trying to normalize their appearance to the world, you know, that's whether that's sport washing or just PR, whatever there's it, that's a PR, that's a public relations play, you know, whatever you want to call it. Again, on the golf side, it just comes back to me of like, all right, are you actively biting the hand that feeds with your current tour? And like you said, Randy, with with the waste management or Pebble Beach or whatever tournament was opposite the Saudi international, and there's a tournament sponsor putting up

$10,000, $15,000,000 to host a tournament on the PGA tour, and you're actively spitting in their face and flying to the other side of the world. And probably going to not play well for the next few weeks afterwards too and skip some more events to do that. That's that's a different conversation then hey we don't have a tournament for five weeks. I'm going to I'm going to go do this in my free time kind of thing. And and when they just use the the the most tired grow the game platitude right to kind of shield all of it. Well we're just trying to grow the game platitude, right, to kind of shield all of it. Well, we're just trying to grow the game. That's what really makes my blood boil, like get the fuck out of here. Like, just say it's about the money. Exactly.

Yeah. Do you think, so if we go flip to the men's side real quick, is this what they originally tried to do with the European tour? I think so. I mean, it's basically like, you know, the European tour, I mean, the Saudi International was a sanctioned event on the European tour for the first, what, three or four years of its existence. You know, the only difference, I guess, is the fact that the PGA tour had events opposite it, you know, like on their schedule. Right. But the LKGA tour doesn't. Of course, but like, so if we go back and I'm trying to, where I'm going to get to this is that what I think that they're doing, their investment into the WIMS game is very successful for them right now.

Well, they're getting far more bang for their buck out of that than they are for the billions of dollars they're letting on fire with live. Right. For sure. And I go back to like knowing that the European tour had basically an offer from whatever Saudi element we want to say that it was coming from and the PJ tour. And this is where the strategic alliance came from ultimately.

And just wondering like how different this whole thing would be right now because if you look, like, I don't really envision a live like circuit for the ladies. I don't think they need to do that. Like they they can literally just say, okay, well, now we're like, we just control the ladies European tour. Yeah, they're just leveraging the current infrastructure. Yeah, we're going to have bigger purses and we already have events in the States and we'll put a couple of events, you know, we already have Asian events and we'll throw an Australian event on there and and hey,

we can even have a joint event with the live if we want. And like, it's such an easier path for them. And it always goes back to like, when you look at the live side of it, like, wow, what the difference is what could have been if the European tour would have took the live or the Saudi money there and live would have like never really been a thing. I think it's crazy that the Saudis are basically using golf to show, hey, here's where Western society can improve. We're doing equal versus, we're doing this or that. And it's like it's kind of putting a thumb in the eye of the PGA know, of the PGA tour, of the LPGA tour of the USGA, like it's pretty ironic that that's,

that it's playing out like this, where they're doing the things that make, you know, they kind of create the moral high ground for them with regard to women in sport. What do we think, guys? We wanna, we wanna move on, anything else we wanna, I think we covered it, right. I mean, there's no, there's no right answer. There's no wrong answer. There's no, it's like, like, you know, my, call me a hypocrite. My feelings change by the day on it, but for me, the, the guiding North Star is like, is it about the golf?

And it's not. Right. It's about all this other shit. And it's like, all right, like if it was about the golf, then I'd feel, I'd probably feel differently, and I'd probably give it a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt. We briefly touched on Emma Ballard wrote for women and golf, womenandgolf.com. She wrote an opinion column, essentially asking the question with the Saudi international

raising its purse to 5 million, being commensurate with the men's purse. Are they trying to make a push for a women's major? And I guess for, I mean, what sticks out to me is when I think of like a major golf tournament, I think of a celebration of golf, really, with the best players in the world, with fans, ideally at a great golf course. And I think a lot of that is missing at this Saudi event, which we've just covered. There's no atmosphere, the fans, the quote unquote fans, you know, are maybe being bust in from elsewhere. It's not like your casual golf fans are going to go just travel to Saudi Arabia for a major. So I don't think they'll ever get major status, but it's an interesting question as the purse continues to grow

and it's almost on par with a lot of the women's majors as is. Well, I feel like Mike Wann said a dangerous precedent by glossing the Evianna major, simply because purse and all that. And I've said the same thing about the Evian. I don't consider it a major because I think it's a bad golf course. It's just because a sponsor puts up a bunch of money doesn't mean it's a major, right?

Is there cash in involved? Is there, you know, is there fan excitement? Is there a reason for it to exist? Like under those circumstances, absolutely not. This isn't a major. Just like the Evian is not a major in my opinion. Yeah. What made up?

I don't like this made up world where you can just say, oh yeah, this is a major now. We just changed things all willy nilly. Like what is this? No, stupid. Well, we have consensus there. All right, we're gonna put, we're gonna put

Saudi behind us. Let's look forward, like I said, this week, really tonight, whenever you're listening, especially in the United States, it's primetime overnight golf. We have the Thailand classic Nana Kurtz Madsen is your defending champion. The women are going to be playing for $1.7 million per 500 CME Globe points. per's 500 CME Globe points. The TV times at least Eastern United States are on golf channel 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Wednesday night into Thursday night into Friday and then it's 10 30 p.m. to 3 30 a.m. Eastern Friday night into Saturday and Saturday night into Sunday.

We have a good field. Nine of the top 10 players in the world will be participating. Lydia Co. Minji Lee, Atayatidikum, Jin Young Co. Inji Chun, all making their LPGA debuts. None of them were at the tournament of champions in Orlando, which I feel like is a whole other discussion. And then after this week,

they played next week in Singapore at the HSBC Women's World Championship. Guys, we should have some good golf this week. Admittedly, I don't know a lot about the course in Thailand. It's CYAM Country Club, but I am excited to watch some golf. It'll come on where I am in the mountain time zone. It'll come on at 8 p.m. and will be some good prime time viewing. Our CME points, I mean they're even more worthless than FedEx points. Because essentially it just totally reshuffles once you get it into the Naples event and

it's like a free for all. They wipe out. Right, so you're just trying to get into the Naples event. Whereas there's at least some currency attached to FedEx Cup points. Yeah. What do we feel about that? Because part of me likes having it wiped

and listening, if you make the tour championship, you got a shot. It makes the tour championship a hell of a lot more interesting. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah, I like it. I like the fact that it's, hey, you get there and then it's literally whoever plays the best. Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, I think it's, hey, you get there and then it's literally, whoever plays the best.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, I think it's just a matter of, it's also like, all right, CME probably made that decision as well, right? Like they've granted the CME guy, we can talk about him. Except for you. But yeah, it's just an interesting,

comparing contrast, I think. Yeah. Wait, is somebody coming to fill your pool up or what? No, the fucking construction guys. Let me, let me close the grouch, Lure. Sorry, they're finally doing the asphalt like this week and next. Hell yeah. Good for you. Randy, one other thing too is just the, I saw Saki Baba is in the field as well, playing

with Madeline. Really? I miss that. Yeah. Saki Baba, Madeline and say Young Kim. Hell yeah. Eat 12 a.m. local time. Saki Baba, of course, the Women's Amateur champion and first team all name in the world

at golf. I mean, doesn't get any bad. So, so swaggy. And then Allison Corpus as well. She's she played really well kind of towards the end of last year. I think she's she's on the upswing as well just kind of picking out random names kind of going down going down the field list. Not even going down a leaderboard. I know we don't have a leaderboard to go down for your TC. I'm sorry. Hey, big. I want to get out in front of this one for you too. I know you mentioned to who the, you know, the stars are going to be playing this week, but Brooke is also in

the field too. So I don't know if you had anything that you wanted to say about her victory. We haven't really talked about him much, but anything on what you thought of the kickoff tournament and what you think Rick season is going to be. Yeah, Brooke won the tournament of champions last month. It was her 13th LPGA victory. And good start to the season for her. She won a major last year. Had a successful season, won the shopwright in addition to that.

I think it pertains to good things for a game from all accounts that I've read. She seems to be in a good place. Switched equipment, switched equipment to the Taylor May driver. Yeah, it's a good start for her. I had been vocal saying, hey, listen, Brooke, we're gonna need another major from you.

She did that last year. So I have no problems with Brooke, we're gonna need another major from you. She did that last year. So I have no problems with Brooke, no problems with Canada. I wanna be very clear about that. I think we can look forward to hopefully, you know, her having a good year. If we can get some health, right? Like if Jin Young co's healthy, if Nelly Corta can stay healthy,

Cody, I'm coming back to your take earlier. This really is shaping up to be a dynamite season. I truly believe. I know, maybe my take of five was a little short because the more you look at it, you realize, I'm gonna ask for a couple more squats here, okay? I don't know. No, we gotta make cuts.

Five is, that's a good exercise. It's easy to rattle off 10. It's not as easy to rattle off five. You gotta make cuts. Okay, I'm gonna do it. All right, first, Lydia, Nelly. And let me just say, Miji, hold on, let me interrupt you with Lydia.

And what's fascinating about Lydia, she's 25 years old, she's on the verge of the Hall of Fame. But I mentioned, you know, her needing to win a major. She hasn't won a major since 2016 when she was 18 years old, which is incredible. So I think that's we've seen her flourish again in her golf game and she's winning a lot of regular week to week events. She won the tour championship last year. I think that next step is to get back in the winter circle at a major. So go ahead Cody. Well, I like the changes that she made in order to improve her overall game. I think no offense to Sean Foley, but I think freed up Lydia is very good.

Little, little bit of concern here with another caddy change. That's okay. I know, but she had that reputation for a long time and then was kind of consistent there. But I think these changes are sagging up. I agree with you, Big. She needs to win a major. But also, I think that like getting married, I think is kind of like a new lease on life for a lot of people. It makes, I don't know where the travel schedule is actually going to be, but it seems to be very, very happy. And hopefully that continues to roll into like her play and like the actual major events. And I just, sorry, the other thing that's unique with Lydia's she has been very vocal about Probably not playing professional golf beyond the age of 30

So if we take her to her word assuming that that's still her intention. She has five years left So that's that's where we get to like yeah, we if you really want to be Among the the greatest of all time. I think we're going to need some more majors from Lydia. Yeah. Yeah. But as long as she stays healthy, I think a lot of things change. And who knows what they want to do, ultimately that decision based off because she's been playing like professional golf for so long, but ultimately whatever they decide to do with kids and everything else like that, I just, I don't know. And I know that date like 30 used to be like 28 or something, right?

And then who knows where to eventually end up at. But it would not surprise me once you get a point if she does, you're like, no, I wanna go live like a second life. It's not, like she could still have like two full careers and something else after that. If you wanted to, it's crazy to look at how successful she has been and how young she is. It's just nuts.

But back to this list. What did I was? I left off Minji. You had Lydia, Nelly, and Minji. So you have the one, two, and three current ranked players in the world. Really going on. Well, the next one, this is going to be a shout out to you, but a former Sun Devil who obviously is making waves. We've discussed a lot. It has a very bright future, specifically on the LPGA tour as soon as maybe rules or something like that change, but that's going to be a link grant. Her game is incredible. I'm excited to watch her this weekend.

It's something that like, I've never quite seen somebody like just dominate. And I know this goes back to like her college codes has quotes. It was like, you know, you've never seen somebody more ready for professional golf than Lingrant. And I kind of look at it where we're at now with like kind of looking at Rose and like, what Rose is going to?

And like, why is Rose still in college because she could be an absolute Barnburner there as well So for those that don't know yeah for those of that don't know Lynn Grant playing primarily on the L.E.T. Last year she the LPJ events she did play and we're not in the United States, but still she played 19 events worldwide in 2022. She won four times, she had to runner up three third place finishes and then seven more top 10s. So I mean, we're talking about 15 of 19 top 10s is complete predator. It's very good. Now, the competition on the LET is not what it is on the LPGA, and I think that's part of the fascination is we're all hoping.

Either the United States government changes policies for entry into the country, or Lynn changes personal preferences as far as COVID vaccinations go, but it's going to be good for golf whenever she is consistently competing against the other best players in the world. Is that four Cody? That's four. Final in G-Chun. Wow.

Number five for me. Wow. I know. I left a lot out. That's fine. I know I listen a lot out. That's fine. I I Tidacone. I know I listen young co listen there's there's an argument to the come rule could be like number one. Yeah. Well that is true.

I'm not prepared to have that argument this time but we'll we'll check on in this and we'll check back in next month see where we're at. I think there's a more interesting like it's it's almost like all right who could say right like we'll see what at. I think there's a more interesting, like it's it's almost like, all right, who could say, right? Like, we'll see what happens. I think there's a more interesting argument to be made of like, who else is going to make the leap to being elite in this conversation? Because like, like Matilda Castron or Yuka has not played well. Right.

Hopefully or Megan Kang, like Megan Kang seemingly has all the game in the world and just needs to raise the consistency a little bit and win. Yeah, honestly, TC, I think that's a great question. And just going down kind of the preliminary world ranking list. Like, I think Lillia Vu as somebody that is really, really interesting. I think, you know, we've talked about Maya Stark. She's kind of been overshadowed by Lynn Graham,

but Maya Stark is really good. You know, what point is Cup Show in the elite conversation? Like, you know, she's really freaking good. Somebody like Leonna McGuire. I that's what's so fun. I think about where we are right now. Women's golf is there's a real discussion making a top five. And then the people that missed that top five. There's there's a ton of young very good talent coming. I'm struggling a little bit with Leona. I know she's got three top 10 like the last However many majors eight majors or 10 majors or whatever, but she's also like 28 like kind of a late bloomer

Only has one win on the LPGA tour Like you know, she's she's still not in the top 10 in the world. And like it's just, she's kind of got that like big tone kind of thing going. Like she's like the big tone of the LBGA tour. You know, and maybe that poor tens that like, there's some serious run of good play coming, but it just seems like she underachieves against her talent and work ethic and everything because it's seemingly she's doing all the right stuff. It's just a matter of like putting them all together.

I'll play this game with you. What list are you going off of right now? I'm looking at the world ranking. Just like the world rankings. Okay. Who do you think, so where do you think Charlie Hall is going to stack at the end of the year? Do you think she is?'s she's over achieving or under achieving right now? Charlie Hall. Yes. I mean, I don't view Charlie Hall as like in even remotely close to the same talent level as Leona McGuire based on what I've seen at

Soulheim cups and just up close and everything. But she also has two LPGA tour wins including a tour championship seven years ago. You know, she's got three ladies European tour wins. You know, she's got plenty of top top five top 10s and majors like it's you know, so I think like that's the thing It's like Charlie holes just another just another player Leona McGuire You think of her as more than just another player, but yeah in actuality Charlie holes record is actually better I looking at this list for like holy cow again. You just don't realize how deep this is and then you'll find a name And they're just like really like? Like this is where they're at? Yeah, I think Leona is still being boosted

by her fantastic Soulheim Cup a couple of years ago. I think it was very important for her to win last year. I think, you know, probably nobody more than herself. She wants to win more, but getting the first, which first Irish woman to win more, but getting the first, which first Irish woman to win on the LPGA, which is kind of unbelievable to me. She's getting some added juice by being Irish, I think. I think that's fair.

I think that's fair, you know. Yeah. But going to take it. I feel like the Irish, they ride for their own. I think another theme that's definitely emerging this year is the Japanese. Japanese are bringing some depth to the proceedings. We've got to figure out who's manipulating and who's for real because it's worth mentioning Japan, just like Korea has a very strong domestic women's golf league.

And so you'll see tons of Japanese women in the first page of the world rankings. And a handful of them have never played an LPJ event. So it's hard to suss out, it's almost like Japanese baseball, right? When, when we get these players coming stateside and they've had great stats in Japan and it's, and it always seems like it's a bit of a toss up between like, okay, well, who's actually going to translate to the, to the American League and, and who's not. Yeah. The list of players to watch out, I have two Japanese ladies on there. But now a lot of that was solely based off their records in Japan. Now I'm starting to second-guess it, but it's okay. Too late to change the changes and proceedings now. Well, I mean who are they? Yeah, should we get into that? I tasked Cody with, of course, we're starting a new season.

We're gonna have a ton of new faces on the LPGA through Epson Tour graduates, through Q series, through folks moving over from Korean Japan. Cody, let's get into your top 10 new faces in 2023. Number one, and this is not in any particular order. I thought we were going to attend a one. Okay. You want me to rank going 10 to 1. Okay. You want me to rank them? Kind of.

Okay. I'll start by 10 because that's kind of how I did it, but then I started moving and manipulating things a little bit here. All right. Minami Katzu. Do you guys know who Minami is? I'm not familiar with that. I Japanese star.

Okay. Japanese star, okay. Youngest winner ever on the LPGA Tour of Japan. She won an amateur event in 2014 at the age of 15. She won eight total events on the Japan LPGA Tour. She won the Japan Women's Open twice in 21 and 22. And she's qualified for the US Open. Played at 2019 US Open and placed tied for 20 second. She sounds like Sally's worst nightmare.

She very much. If you want to talk about like a manipulator and how this works into like total rankings, she could be it. But you know what? She's not resting on her ranking in the Japan LPGA. She like actually came over, she qualified via Q series and is gonna play LPGA to her full time. So I give her a ton of props for that.

Very good. All right, thanks. Thanks for the feedback. No, no, Cody, that's wonderful. I just don't know anything about her, but now I'm excited to, you know, that's the name I'm gonna follow. Another young lady.

Hold on, hold on, before we get there, like, do we, like, because you could say the same thing, you could basically put Hanaka Shibuno on the other end of the spectrum. Yes. Where like, she doesn't play full time on the LPGA tour. She does know. She does know. She does know. She does know. She does know. She is now. Okay. Yeah. Did that start recently? I believe last year was her first year. Yeah, last year was her first year. Okay. Okay. He regrets the error then.

Okay. Never mind that because I was going to say, how do we treat her? Because she won, but then continued to play on the Japan tour. Correct. You know, is she choosing to manipulate, but I'm sure there's also some some COVID stuff in there as well. Right. Yeah. And you know what? We don't knock people around here for going back and playing their their hometown tour. Oh, just like you say all the time. That should be celebrated. More people need to go play in Australia. We're not going to knock

these young ladies for going back to Japan and playing. Right. They're not getting boosted that much anyway. As long as they're they're still sticking to the LPGA full time and everything else. We're fine. Keep that stuff out of here. TC. Yuna Nishimura. I had no clue who this person was. Everybody wanted to write about, you know, though, 22 years old, six time winner on the Japan LPGA tour, turn professional in 2019. She does have five career LPGA starts, so including solo fourth at the 2022 total Japan classic. So a little home field advantage there. But she also was runner up in the 2018 women's A's in Pacific Pacific Amateur,

and then place fifth at the same event in 2019. Again, Q series came over, went through all qualifying, got her card, gonna go full time LPGA, that counts in my book. Yeah, respect. Love them coming over and earning it in Q series. All right. Do you guys know any actual Arab professional golfers? Women's professional golfers are just Arabs in general or men. That's shoot that something shoe, shoe guard guy.

Okay. Very good. I'm going to live for a little bit. So I don't qualify this year coming through Q series. She's a graduate of Wake Forest University. She actually went to, well, she didn't graduate from Wake Forest University. She went to Wake Forest University for like a year and a half and then decided the United States isn't for me and then went back to London.

But originally from Casa Bllanca, Morocco, she's the first LPGA member ever to qualify from a North African country. That's not Arab though. Well, Morocco is not Arab, is it? I think people might disagree with you there a little bit. Right? Oh, I'm staying.

I'm staying. We can't just be willy-nilly on what is an Arab country and what's not, right? Okay, come back when you get to this. Okay, I think it is part of the Arab world, according to Wikipedia. I didn't want to hang you out there, but I just wanted giving you enough rope. Okay, I'm going to pronounce this incorrectly, but in Ness, lock leg. Okay. How do you spell that for me?

I-N-E-S. L-A-K-L-A-L-E-C-H. Anyway, she advanced, came through Q-Series, she went through all three stages of qualifying school. She's one in event on the ladies European tours. She became the first Arab, North African, whatever winner, period and professional golf. It kind of reminds me a lot of the lady from Tunisia when we're watching the Netflix tennis documentary. I was going to bring her up. Yes. Yes. There's a lot of similarities between her

pathway and kind of how she's going about doing things and having like a pure, you know, like Tunisian team around her. It's kind of the same thing that NS is doing here too and it's gonna be really, really cool to see her kind of grow and how she actually performs on the LPGA tour. Now, she had a very, she was a good junior player, grew up probably, there's not very many clubs in Morocco. Her dad and grandfather taught her how to play golf. Like I said, she ended up coming to Wake Forest to play golf, but ultimately decided that that wasn't for her.

She was like, kind of caught in the middle of constraining on her studies and constraining on golf. She ultimately decided to concentrate on her studies transferred to a university over in the UK. Finish disrespectful to Mr. Palmer. Exactly. Then picked up golf back again and it's truly like just rounding in the form here. I'm very, very excited.

Not only because she's a first and that's always kind of cool to track, but truly, truly seems like she could dominate. So excited, rookie to watch out for. Next, Bailey Tarty. A lot of people know Bailey Tarty. She was a stud at the University of Georgia. She's come painfully, painfully close. The last three Q series, like missing out by like a bear, like barely, barely, barely missing out all three years. It's been horrible to watch. She's been writing the absent tour.

We're also, she continues to miss absent tour by like hundreds of dollars each year. She finally made it through Q series this year. She ends up finishing. She's like the Taylor Montgomery. She very much is, but Bailey, what she can do, she can go deep. Like she is not afraid of like, she can throw up 61, 62, 63, she's a birdie machine. Part of that kind of reminds me a little bit

of like Marina Fosse here, because part of like throwing up a ton of birdies is, you also throw up like a bunch of big numbers. Hi, Barry. And yeah, it is kind of scary there, but very, very sad. It's like Adam Don. It's either like, Bernie, Bernie or double.

Yeah, what would the three- Strike out, home run or walk. Yeah. Next one, everybody's probably familiar with this name. She was a star and the original Netflix golf documentary, Short Game. Her name is Alexa Pano. Yes. She's coming off of the Epson tour.

That's how she got her card. But if you followed women's golf at all, everybody knows who Alexa is. They think of the very, very small girl that was just beating up everybody's brains and pining her at the US kids golf sheets. Qualified for like the drive chip and putt multiple times, it seemed like she was always like 15 years old and then last year she just popped up and was like,

hey, I'm finally 18 and I'm not gonna play college golf and I'm not going to play college golf and I'm going to turn professional. She's very, very close with the ladies that are still playing college to this day though. So you'll see her, like her, one of her best friends is Anna Davies, who won the Augusta National Wim Zameter last year. She's playing in and again this year very very tight with that group of people She always seems to have her dad on the bag. It's kind of those two versus the world and surprisingly she still is going to carry The New England Patriots logos on all of her clothes which shocks me when you see like an actual like sports team just sponsoring random people She She's like Ben Curtis. Yeah.

So Alexa is near the top my list of most fascinating new faces for all those reasons you mentioned Cody. The decision to turn pro and skip college golf is an interesting one. She's just 18. She's obviously going to be traveling the world. I hope it ends up being a success story. These are the type of cases where I just...

I hear you. I've gotten larried. The concern vibes here. Yes. It's felt like there's a lot more sizzle than steak with Alexa. And that's not even necessarily a slight on her. Like if she's got endorsement deals lined up and making good money, then do it, you know, but it's just seems like there's you know more of a, I don't know, there's just not as much of a body of work from her.

I mean, she's definitely performed, whether you look at H-A-G-A events, or you look at other nationals, she's qualified in, you know, she's played in US Open, she's played in junior AM, she's played in every possible women's amateur event you could possibly play in. But you're right, it is a big step. Well, it's like she's played in all those, but she hasn't really won them. Yes. That makes sense. I know she won the Rolex girl,

she won the Dustin Johnson junior world, but there's no like US women's am finalist or, you know, that sort of thing. Right, some pretty poor performances that the Ann was, I'm right there with you. What is always concerned me is that there seems to be a lot of pressure here. And I understand her dad on the bag, but I think it's one of those things where hopefully the step of having a LPGA tour card is like, she figures out a way and kind of has a

little bit more ownership of her game to put the actual staff around her to make her perform to the best of her capability. So hopefully we see something from her. But like I said, it's a name you can't ignore it. Yeah, if you follow anything, you have a Netflix account for like the last whatever 10 years. I'm sure that's been served up multiple times. I still need to go back and check and see what's going on with that Cornicova kid or whatever his name is because I think he was the He was one that always made me think of like, oh really? I've never watched that that show before It's crazy. You go back and watch it now. I mean, I put that it's not in front of the godfather for you But it's definitely it's definitely behind probably more germane to my my profession

Yeah, the next one was the took medalist honors at Q series Han Ron Roo obviously Korean national 21 years old She won the 2018 Korean Women's Amateur. She took fifth at the 2018 Asian game. She's played in the US Open, qualified for the 2016 Women's Open, unfortunately missed the cut.

Didn't end up turning Perone till 2019. And then this is where my, again, the KLPGA deep dives, I continue to just get sucked down this little vortex that they have there. Have you guys ever had her to the jump tour? No. Have never heard of the dream tour. I've never.

So KLPGA has like multiple levels of developmental tours beneath them. So I guess. Like Ricky Ball, AA. You start in the jump tour. She had she had five top fives in 2019. She was then promoted up to the dream tour. She was only on the dream tour for two months. She earned four wins in two months. When she got to the dream tour after rattling off those four victories, they said, Hey, you're out of here. You're up to the KLPGA. She played the rest of that year on KLPGA. And then theoretically though, she wasn't considered like her full

rookie year until 2020. She won her first event on the KLPGA. So she had four events in a row on Dream Tour, won her first KLPGA event. And then since then, she's just like continued to beat up on everybody. 21 years old, total of five wins on KLPGA. She has competed in six LPGA tour events so far. Type for 13th at the 2020 US Open and took seventh at the BMW Ladies in Korean 2021. So she, just another Korean superstar comment, fascinating deep dive again. The more that I dig into the KLPGA, I need to get back into the political side of it, because I know when we were there last year.

That was a ton going on, but it's just, it's this whole world is wild to me. Like honestly, we could probably go over like, at some point in time we need to go over and like live the KLPG like life for a couple of weeks. I would love to go do some more KLPG a stuff and just, just, oh, I want to go down to Busan, do all that stuff. It's Randy, you would be, you would be like a pig and shit.

Is it Ryu? Is that her last name? Yes. She's already a top 50 player in the world. She's currently ranked 46. She just finished tied for ninth at the Saudi international. She could be a name that we see on a lot of leader boards. Well good. I'm glad that my my list is is matching current results. Thank you

big. That's the affirmation that I need. And listen, this was very hard because there's a lot of people of all the people who qualified via Epson tour, via Q series last year. There is no person that has me more excited this year to keep an eye on. Then this player, you guys, you might remember her from a very famous Apple commercial that she was a part of. She played in the women's amateur at 10 years old. Everybody remembers her from the 2014 US women's open at Pyners, Everybody remembers her from the 2014 US women's open at pioneers

Chomping down on ice cream the whole time. All right. She's only last year she played Bless her she won twice on the absent tour. That's Lucy Lee an Absolute world-beater in the making it's been a long time coming if you think she's been playing Oh, what is she now high level 20 years old. High level competitive golf. She said she's 10 years old. She has 10 years invested in this already. It is nuts. What's her upside? Like are we talking Lydia Coe

or are we talking like just top 20 player in the world? No, I'm talking like she's gonna be rookie of the year. She'll be in the top 10 in the world by the end of the year. Like, she is, she's still. What she's been doing the last couple of years. She beat up the episode tour, which I like to see. No, I love to see that, but like, it took her a couple of years to matriculate.

So what makes you so sure that she's gonna be rookie of the year? Over the Korean girl that you just hear talent. Talked about similarities. The amount of LPGA events that she's already played, how she's been easily integrated into the LPGA tour, all of this stuff. Her friend group, you name it. Okay. I dig it,. I like it. You're being bold. What's the point of being bold here? I've, like I said, I saw some other bull positions

by other golf personalities out there. Zephyr said that Lydia wasn't gonna win this year. That was his bull prediction. Wait, Lydia. Is he counting the saudi or no? No, this, he wrote that before. He has to count the saudi. I mean, how would you not count that event?

Yeah. What is there an asterisk behind it now just because of where it was held? All right. So how many how many players is that on your list? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Okay. So we got three more. Nope.

I'm cutting it. It's seven. Cutting it seven. Wow. So no no grace Kim, no Gina Kim. Don't believe in him. No linear straw. Well, linear is that's a different different bucket all together. Okay. Cody, I dig it. Thank you. So, so this different bucket is people that graduated from the Epson tour that you're not you're not uh... excited about her paying attention to well listen if you're gonna spend so like i thought about this a lot

lucy like lucy season last year on the epson tour like she like beat beat beat up folks and even when like you even when she had bad weeks like they still were not horrible weeks. Like a lot of these people that are coming off the Epson Tourist is the highs and lows. It's hard to like, it's hard to look at that and then try to like envision what that their

first year on the LPGA Tour is actually going to look like. Yeah. I mean the Epson Tourist is a fucking grind. Like makes the corn fairy tour look like the, you know, like the major leagues. Well, not only that, if we're giving people like, how partial credit for like, L.E.T. wins and partial credit for Japan wins and like all this other stuff, like, what are we doing to the Epson tour? Yeah, that's true.

But I would say like KLPGA, like, or Japan, who who wins the war, that's higher level competition than what's on Epson. 100%. So I think we should give it more credit, right? Yes. You're trying to take away Lucy right now. I see what you're doing. No, I'm not.

I truly think. I'm no agenda. I truly think. We'll hear from her. She's coming up later in this podcast. You have what I do. I'm trying to speak for the rest of the world. I do the same thing on our PGA tour podcast.

Listen, I hear you. There might be some holes in this analysis. That's okay. This is where we learn from. Is this based on the I test? Is this based on a lot of it's based on the I test. Unfortunately, that KPMG money hasn't trickled its way down to it. We don't have anything to analyze here. No, we don't. All right, Cody, thank you for that.

A few odds and ends here to end. You mentioned we have a fun interview coming up with Lucy. Maybe I'll ask her if she's going to feel any additional pressure with Cody anointing her as rookie of the year. Some odds and ends. So the Soulheim Cup, let's start here. The Soulheim Cup, they are going back to playing every even year. So we're going to get a Soulheim Cup this year in Spain and then next year the Robert Trent Jones Club in outside Washington. And free golf, man.

I love it. And both the US and team Europe have named their respective captains, Stacy Lewis and Suzanne Pedersen. They are going to be captains for both Soulheim cups. So I don't think a big surprise there. I think it makes a lot of sense. I actually like both captains. Hopefully we get a contentious soul.

I'm cupped this year and it just loves. And that's my hitter. Some LPGA news. I think the big news today, they just announced a mixed field. It had been rumored, but today was the official announcement for a mixed field event with the PGA tour at Tiburon Golf Club. It's going to be in December, December 8 through 10. It's going to feature 32 players.

So 16 teams, one PGA professional, one LPGA professional, over three days, four million dollars per. Guys, I want to praise progress. I think this is better than obviously what we've had, which is nothing the last several, several years. But we gotta get some type of joint mixed event that's not a silly season exhibition event. I think this is a good first step.

I wanna be very clear about that, but I think we can still we can still do more. We can still do better. Totally. It's only 16, you know, it's 16 and 16, right? It's, uh, I, you know, praise progress. It took long enough, but, uh, we finally got rid of the fucking shark shootout. QBE shootout, whatever.

Um, you know, Grant Thornton, I'm sure you're guy Ricky. You'll be one of the one of the guys playing in this I think that was announced right didn't they announce the first time I saw that it was Ricky and Nelly Okay Maybe I want to see some provocative teams like I want to see how you know, I think this is a team loss. Oh Your dream match-up speed TC Oh, what would your dream match up speed TC? Great question. I mean, I would say like Lexi and Patrick Reed.

Patrick Reed was still kicking around. But give me a sec on that. Do you think Lexi's disappointed that Bryson left the stable, that they're no longer in team Puma Puma coberland probably has to be sad I'm sure those the the shoots just aren't going to be the same T.C. I'll buy you some time another announcement coming out of the LPGA they're changing the cut size for all their events effective immediate excuse me effective at the drive on in March. So it's now going to be the top 65 in ties,

which is a G-Creece, I believe. It used to be maybe top 70. I always thought there were way to many people making the cut on LPGA events. So kudos for trimming that down. It's now going to be top 65 in ties on LPGA. Do you think this is a decision like that guys based off of pace of play or is that based off of writing checks? What do you

think it benefits more? I think it benefits both things. I think it's probably more pace of play and flexibility on that end versus the chat. I mean, check wise, it would seem like it would be a pretty negligible difference right? Yeah, it's always interesting though when you talk about I don't know I always look at things of of the money's coming in and then like how many how many times it's actually being dispersed out Yeah, and it's a fascinating kind of wormhole to go down As I have my my my desired team Yeah, obviously some things have to change before this happens, but Ludwig and Linger. Oh my god. Fucking good with that. Holy cow. Yeah. And then you do, you

know, you could do something like Rose and you know, Rose and and my girl, Rose and, and my little Thorbeer. Rose and Thor Bjornsson. Yeah. Do you like the two, you know, Stanford, Stanford people. Yeah. There's some provocative teams you can get in the mix. Right. I am excited.

More up. What I, what I hope it's not is like, you know, there's, there's like, coaches always played in the QBE shootout. Right. I hope like it's not like Matt Kutcher and, you know, like, I don't know, Anika or something like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, like, don't turn it into novelty stuff. Like, it should be like, the best possible talent that you can get.

Not like, hey, this person's 44 and has played in 14 of these the last 20 years. Right. You know, this is the event where like Max played with Kizner last year, right? Correct. Who'd be a good teammate for Max? I think Marina Alex. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll be a fun guy. I was going to say him and Danielle seem to be. I know the team title is connection there, but they seem to vibe and discuss things quite a bit. I just feel like Marina and Max kind of, I don't know, both like super hard workers, pretty intense. Like, seem to squeeze the most out of their games. You know, kind of punch above their weight a little bit. Is it, is Max a gamer? I could see him in any part, maybe, could just be like team gamer. Yeah, talking about respawning and

beating up on noobs. All right, more odds and then sorry. Did you guys have a chance to watch this LPJA all access series? They did at least episode one. What'd you think? All right, is it Gemma or Gemma? I wrote down Gemma. Yeah, I think I was going with Gemma. I thought Gemma or Gemma? I wrote down Gemma. Yeah, I think I was going with Gemma.

I thought Gemma as well. It was nice to get to know Jody, you were at Shadoff. Yep. A little bit better. I don't know, I think it was good. It's impressive how quickly they turned it around. Let the music was maybe a little bit overwrought. That was kind of one of my takeaways

from a production standpoint. Some of the narration I think was maybe a little bit forced or maybe standpoint. Some of the narration, I think, was maybe a little bit forced or maybe that's kind of the other, like they went the other direction from like having a talking head on screen versus having somebody narrate or having multiple people narrate over it with Cheyenne Woods and Hope Barnett and everything. But I think that net, it's really well done.

I think it's a credit to the LPGA. And obviously they don't want to highlight some of the stuff that was like rife with controversy, like the locker and stuff. And they move past that pretty quickly. Well, yeah, but props to them, they could have completely buried it, and they didn't.

That's true. Yeah, I thought it was good. I don't know what my expectations of it really were, but if people haven't checked it out, go to the LPGA website. What I am concerned about this in a project of this site is that I just don't see them pushing it out that much. Maybe it's because we've been overwhelmed with the whole full swing stuff going on, but you got to let people know where

it's at. So maybe that's on us a little bit too. You need to share it around. We can have some of it. I think too is I think there's just I think it's going to get more interesting as they get. Hopefully they do it for the outside of the United States events. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure which events they're going to do it for, but like the the non-domestic events, the international events like I think that's where it could be super, super, super interesting. I'd love to see them in Thailand this week, or I'd love to see them in Korea or at the Toto, or it'll be fantastic for the international crown

out in San Francisco. But I think that, and then I think just, the Hilton Grand Vacations, this is is like, in my opinion, like the least interesting event of the entire season. No offense to our guy, Flask, Big Flask. We love Flask. It's the worst event of the year. It's, it's not even close.

Yeah, it's horrible. I thought the LPGA was super well made. I like you. I was impressed with the production quality. I'm glad. I'm really happy that they're doing it. I think my like one wish would weirdly be like like show less golf. Like I don't yeah, the tournaments happen. Like I don't need to know that Brooke won the the tournament of champions like dive into off course stuff with the players you're profiling. I hope they can do more away from the course

and I hope they can get some tension and drama and frustrations on camera because I don't think we see that much from the ladies and obviously they have all the emotions that anybody else has and I know they get frustrated, they get mad, they get upset. Like I wanna see some of that. Like be real. Like that's the biggest thing, not the app,

but just being real. I think there's a level of that too of like, there's a risk of like trying to overproduce it, too. Trying to make sure that all the, you know, the in-location, you know, the tenor changes when there's a full film crew around. Like, do, try to do less, or try to do more with less. Try to have a leaner crew. Maybe they're already doing this

and this is one of their things. But like, I would rather it be real and more authentic and more nitty gritty and less well produced than it being more sterile and really well produced and trying to get to this, you know, this weird threshold that they're trying to clear that's a Netflix threshold or something like that. Like focus on the quality of the substance, not the quality of like the presentation.

It always goes back for me of watching the the hyper cut that they love to bring out of patty tea warming up. If you actually played that out for like the full warm up and listened to her and what she's discussing and yardages and everything else like that, that's what you're going for here. People found their way to your website. Like that's they don't really need to know like what happened in the tournament. Like tell us what the minutiae was around it.

Yeah. I mean, that's the same feedback we had for the full swing, too. Yeah. It's like show us more nitty gritty craftsmanship behind the scenes, details. I think to a certain extent, that one's more for the masses. I would say that the LPGA lean into like some of the nitty gritty and go after core fans and like really serve the core because I think some of the opportunity is going after core fans whether they're male or female.

Getting them over shifting them over to more to the LPGA versus trying to get a brand new fan that's never watched golf before. That's such a great point. They, you know, when you talk about ways that the LPGA could differentiate and draw in those hardcore golf fans, I think that's a great example TC. Like take us into places that we just can't get to with the PGA tour golf.

We talk about, you know, being able to play some unique courses that the PGA tour can't get to it with PGA tour golf. We talk about being able to play some unique courses that the PGA tour can't go to. I think like this access, they should be trying all kinds of shit on the broadcast, which I know is a can of worms with the partners and the contracts and everything, but it's like, man, you gotta exploit where you can to really try to differentiate.

And I think draw in the hardcore golf fan is such a worthy goal. Yeah. And choosing which events to do, like no brainer then, go fucking hard on Wilshire. Yeah. Like go hard that week, like no brainer, go hard at Harding Park for the team thing.

Like that's gonna be, that's such a great opportunity to get great, authentic content and just basically just be a fly on the wall in the, because they're what, four person teams. Yeah, yeah. You know, for that, that's cool. That's built in conversations that are going to happen

one way or another that you don't have to tee up. And it's a good golf course at Harding Park with great scenics. The two things that really stood out for me from this is that number one kudos to the LPGA for actually investing in something that's different and unique and serving it on their platform. Number two, it goes back to what's going on at NBC? Why is something like this not on like golf channel that LPJ tour is paying and producing and and putting this stuff out there? Why this seems like it's Taylor made to be shown on like on TV like I just don't understand why What like what is going on with golf channel? like on TV, like I just don't understand why,

like what is going on with golf channel? They have no appetite for anything original or like they would rather run info commercials and you know, reruns of like the 2021 rocket mortgage classic to fulfill. Yeah, just some sort of make good for, you know, a corporate contract. It's, it's, they're so fucking lost in the sauce and lazy and just there's no pride whatsoever with golf channel.

It's bad. It's a bad spot. I thought about that a lot, uh, just trying to come up with similarities between this and kind of what the LBGA's intent of it. I think it is watching full swing. And then of course, I think we all naturally compare it back to like F1 and what driver's survive was able to do. And then you like, you know, you think about like new fans, what drive to survive was also able to do. But then like the multiple levels of like depth that you could go as a fan in F1 and like you can sign up and

and pay to get your driver's audio in live during the race not just like the TV covers but like full time everything that's going on like there's different depths that you can go to and I just like it feels like LPGA and this could go down that route if they wanted to because it seems like again, from our experience being on site, the LPGA tour and their players are like, hell yeah, whatever you guys want to do, let's do it. So let's show it here. And like, you know, it's a soul I'm cupping here. I think they'll, they've got an opportunity to highlight that. They've got an opportunity to highlight, I think, an Epson tour episode. Yeah. Yeah.

It would be like, you know, follow, say, three players for three weeks and condense that down into like, you know, it doesn't need to be X's and O's and, and, you know, a highlight tape. It's like, no, like show me, like show me them driving up to the, the U.P. of Michigan. And, you know, and then fly fly across the country to their next event or driving the seven hour drive to their next one, bunking up. Show me the nitty gritty, show me what it takes

because that adds context to why the LPGA, that's the place to play, why that, the hard work that it takes to get there makes the competition that much more valuable and interesting, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Guys, the only, the last thing I had was Commissioner Molly Marcusamon was on the Claude Harmon, son of a butch podcast.

Believe the episode was January 25th, if anybody wants to go listen to that. I was a little disappointed I think. It was like 45 minutes of just not a lot of substance I thought. And I don't know if that's just the commissioner still kind of getting comfortable in a role and doing interviews like that, full disclosure, we would love to interview her sometime on this network. I hope that's something we can get done this year. But it just, I don't know, I listen to her and it just, I leave getting the sense of like, okay, well, what did she really tell me that I didn't know, I listen to her and it just, I leave getting the sense of like, okay, well, what did she really tell me that I didn't know?

I don't know, I don't want to like judge her whole performance, I don't want to judge whether she's a good commissioner off of that, but it is, I'd be remiss if it was like, it's a little concerning to me. She needs to, I mean, she needs to get some dubbies, right? I think, but, you know, who knows, maybe the all-access series was one of her things, or like there's, there's, but tell us what your dubbies are. Yeah. I feel like she needs to get some wins in the bank, because she's taking some else on me, the CME, being a, you know, Serena Williams, dinner,

the locker room stuff, even if it's stuff that's like... Schedule. Schedule. Yeah. Yeah, the locker room stuff, even if it's stuff that's like... Schedule. Schedule. Yeah, the schedule, it's not necessarily her fault or she needs a year or two to ramp up and get her people in place and get her priorities in line or shift the philosophy of the tour.

I get that that stuff takes time, but at the end of the day, you gotta do that stuff while making sure that some of this other stuff doesn't happen. And it comes down to details and relationships and trust with players, right? And then just be real. Not the app. Not the app, T.C.

Not the app. Well, yeah, just tell your story and communicate. I think that's where the same thing with that that's Same criticism I have of Jay monahan like he's a dog shit communicator as far as public, you know At least public facing I was gonna say the exact same thing to it is you know I think everybody when they get to those positions in these like organizations are are so eager to chase like Perfection and things have to be like finalized and exactly where they need to be before we say anything to the world about them. And then they realize like oh fuck like that kind of blew up in our face and didn't work out as we planned like it's okay to give updates as you go.

It's okay and what I would expect it Molly to say is yeah you know I saw the schedule. It we're trying to make make it the best that we possibly can by giving additional playing opportunities to our members. We understand that it's spread out all over the place and we're working on it. These are the things that we're trying to do. We're trying to stack events so they're in the same region or in the same hemisphere back to about these.

Call out what the issues are. Like just say it, it's okay and say, this is what we're doing to work towards that. We're working with our sponsors. We're doing the best that we can. And at the end of the day, we have our players like the front. We're trying to make it so they perform the best. You know, I was where I felt like there was more talk about what was important to Mike Wahn.

Yes, what was important to Mike Wann. Yes. What was important to Molly Marku some on it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Wann's priority was events, events, events, sponsor, sponsor, sponsors, tournaments, you know, that sort of thing. And it's like, all right, cool. Like, I guess you're saying you agree with that,

but you know, take the baton and take that a step further. What, like, what needs to be improved with the events? Is it just purses, is it venues? Is it where they sit on the schedule? Like the shadow creek ones are a perfect example. Like why can't you play the shadow creek event? And then go to Hawaii, build it out to where it's all puzzle pieces, you're fitting all these puzzle pieces together,

but build that out to where, you know, all right, and cool, if Shadow Creek's not willing to do that, then cool, talk to somebody else out there in that area, but like, you know, like a five or six week, you know, off time between what you're trying to make as your centerpiece tournament of champions, and the beginning of your season is just, like that's not workable.

That's like an insult to your players. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it could get much worse from where we're at right now, schedule-wise. Oh, I think it could. I mean, really? It could. Oh, if you look at like seven, eight, 10 years ago,

like it was, I mean, the schedule, like the per sizes of like, double, there's, there's, there's, far more like, good venues and all that. You're just saying strictly date wise, and like, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. add like I 100% way better sponsors way better venues everything. Yes. You are 1000%

correct. But like there's this massive holes for no reason outside of like appearing to just like you kind of need to appease it like this random sponsor here. But again, like some of the stuff too is like, all right, like why is the sponsor doing this this, right? Is the sponsor doing it to fill a hole in their hotel blocks? Are they doing it because they want to put the best product possible out? And like, the best product possible isn't late May in the desert in Nevada, right? Like the best product would be when everybody's watching the West Coast swing and you know the Florida swing and like figuring away to all right like maybe you go every every other week or every 10 days or something and you go off off peak where you go you know what we're gonna have

Tuesday finishes we're gonna have Friday finishes or you know something like that like get again think outside the box no bad ideas and you know what like that, like get, again, think outside the box, no bad ideas. And you know what, like that shadow Creek one, it already is a made for TV thing, right? There, there's no fans out there. It's not like they're, they're relying upon volunteers that are coming out on the weekend. I believe they don't sell tickets. You have to, you have to stay at the resort for some ungodly amount to be able to, to attend the tournament. Really? Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, hopefully we can chat with Commissioner Samon sometime in the near future, but just wanted to flag that for folks.

We are nearly two hours in, but I can't stress enough. We have a great interview coming up with Lucy Lee. We're going to talk to her about her career to date, her expectations for her rookie year, and a lot more. So gentlemen, thank you for your time and your insights this morning and look forward to doing it again. Thanks guys. All right, joining us now, we had talked, we had mentioned that we had a great interview coming up at the, on the second half of the show. LPGA rookie, Lucy Lee.

Lucy, welcome to the show. How are you today? And also, I know you're not in Thailand. Where are you today? Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. I'm a big no-ling-up fan, so this is exciting for me. I'm at home in Palm Desert right now.

Okay. How has the offseason been for you? You earned your LPGA tour card, I should tell folks, through the Epson Tour last year. You finished number three on their race to the Tour. You won two times. And so now having done that, it's a bit of a long

offseason for you, especially, of course, not playing in the tournament of champions, not going to Thailand. I imagine your first start will be in Arizona at the drive-on. Is that right? Yeah, so that's going to be my first start of the year. It's been really, really long. The last tournament, well, like real tournament I played in was the Mediheal at Satacoi in like the first week of October, so it's been a really long time. Wow. So what, what, what, what do you say of real tournament?

What other tournaments have you been playing in? Oh, well, I played the Pebble Beach like Taylormate, Pro Am. That was in November, but that's kind of a chill tournament. So I wouldn't really count it as a, like a real kind of LPJ thing, but that's kind of a chill tournament. So I wouldn't really count it as a, like, a real kind of LPJ thing. But yeah. Are you, you're not beating up any local money games or anything? You know, I get, I've got some games going at Big Horn, but not really. I've been practicing and, you know, been busy with school and stuff like that, but probably start getting into that little more. Yeah. Well, gosh, Cody, where do you want to start here?

I almost want to throw it to you to kick us off here. Well, yeah, I think Lucy, rookie season on the LPGA tour, but it's definitely, you're very familiar with LPGA. You've played in multiple events going back years and years and years, but I think we'll start with you and kind of what are you excited about this year? Yeah, I'm really stoked for it. I've been looking forward to this for years now.

And last year I got to play in, I think eight LPJ starts. So definitely kind of got in there, it got started. Cause I know it's a pretty big transition from amateur into professional golf and then just from the developmental tours onto the LPJ, so I wanted to get like a head star on that, so I'm feeling good about it, but you know, the sixth month's off doesn't really help that much, but I'm just really excited to be able

to A, B and Real cities this year and get to play some good courses and travel. I'm really excited for the international events, especially in Europe. But unfortunately, I don't think we're playing any links courses, which I was really looking forward to. So I'll go on to the next year. And then Asia at the end of the year, I'm also excited for the Canadian Open too. Can I ask you about your travel? I think that's an interesting thread to pick up on. And I say that only because you're 20 years old,

you're a very young woman. I'm curious how you intend to travel, what your plan is to travel. Who do you think will be traveling with you most weeks? I'm sure there is a lot of thought that went into that. Yeah, for sure. So I've been on the Epson for the past three years. So I've definitely kind of gotten that not down because of those like in the US, but kind of gotten into

the, you know, swing of that. And so my aunt usually travels with me all, all the weeks. And then my mom will come out sometimes just because you know like you said I'm 20 years old and I'm a girl so it's kind of not the safest to be traveling by myself. It's hard to get rental cars when you're 20 it's very expensive. That's a great point. It's either impossible or like 5x like markup or something ridiculous, but so yeah, definitely for the short or foreseeable future, I'll be traveling with family. Now, is this the fun ant traveling with you?

How do you pick or is this just the ant who's able to travel with you? How did what went into that decision? So she's been around me and my golf for a really long time since I was young because my mom and my dad are really busy and she and my mom are sisters. They're really close. So she's basically like my second mom and she takes care of me and so, you know, yeah, definitely fun to travel with her and just have someone to help me with all of my stuff. Not only like traveling with you week to week and everything like that, but this is the same aunt

that when you guys eventually went down to Miami and started working with Jim, she, you guys moved down there together, correct? Yeah, so well, we went, it's kind of the same thing as I am in Palm, Bessarag. I was there for maybe four or five months a year so just to get some better weather and practice facilities. I love the Bay Area, but it's kind of tough especially this year with all the flooding going on. So it's just nice to kind of get out and be able to practice in good weather, but it's been really good in Palm Desert

this year, but today it's like 50 degrees and it's going to be like this for the next week. It's crazy. I'm guessing that would be considered cold for you. You don't like practicing. What is 50 degrees out here? It's like no one's out there. I practice today. There's going out there. I mean, I know in some places that's like more, but like 50 degrees here is, it's colder than it is in most places, I think. Sure, sure, sure. I believe that. But I'm from California, so I don't know what cold weather is.

It's good. Yeah. That's good. So what, we started this here and big asked a very good question about traveling and trying to figure out your schedule because you know, you going to have pretty much really good access based off the status that you're coming in. We talked about rentals and who else is traveling with you, but we started this whole

thing talking about fast food. I want you to break down, what are we doing on the road? Are we staying at hotels, Airbnb, are you a cook or are you wanted to get some fast food takes out there? So let's hear. So I think we're doing mostly hotels. And I'm very happy that I get to eat the LPGA food, not the absolute food, which I don't touch.

But yeah, so that I do like cooking, but it's tough on the road so yeah So sometimes like if my honor my mom like well if I have super late tea time or I need to get home I have super late and then early tea time so I need to get something quick You know, I love going to Chipotle on the road That's like my go-to for sure and if we're gonna be in real cities will actually have Chipotle and that's really exciting and that's kind of my go-to on the road. What's the go-to Chipotle order? I'd say I just started being healthier.

I just started being healthy, it's okay. So like my favorite Chipotle order is, you know, brown rice, no beans, steak, like the hot salsa, fajitas, pico, I love salsa, so I get like all the salsa's basically and a little bit of cheese and lettuce, but now I started doing chicken and sofritos, which is not as good a steak, but it's fine.

Who's giving you all this bad advice on what you can and can't eat? Myself. I'm just laughing at real cities having a Chipotle. Let me ask you this, and I think it not only has pertained to your time on the Epson tour but obviously will as well on the LPGA tour. When you're not playing golf, what do you like to do? Do you like to read, watch stuff? Are you trying to get out and see the sights? How do you like to pass the time?

Like during on tour? Yeah, like on tour. If you're in a city for an event or are you just locked into the golf, maybe there's just really not much time to do anything else. Yeah, I would say that if I have a chance to go and see things, I'll do that mostly on practice round days or a program day, something like that, if I get there early enough. But during the week or when I'm busy and I'm playing a lot,. If I get there early enough, but kind of during the week, or like when I'm busy and I'm playing a lot,

I'll just kind of just sit at home and like watch the office, play games on my phone. It depends on if I'm taking any courses or not. If I'm taking like a college course, I'll do that. But if I'm just in like the summer, like my school off season, I'll just do that basically. I'm a big sports fan, so if we have if it's NBA season, playoff season, I'll be watching that. Well, we're about to be in playoff season. Who's your NBA team? I don't

really have one right now. I'm a big LeBron fan, but that's not going that I think they're pretty I think they're out of the playoffs already and then I was rooting for the Suns because I'm a big Chris Paul fan but I'm not sure if I want I'm still rooting for them or not I'm a little bit on the border about Katie going to the Suns so I'm not I'm just gonna watch it and enjoy the show Lucy, I know you're a California kid if I could encourage you to come on the Sacramento Kings Bandwagon with me. They're such a fun team. The atmosphere there is electric. They likely will make the playoffs for the first time and maybe your lifetime. Honestly, I forget if if their drought is

over 20 years. But let me put in a word for the kings if you need a team come play up time. All right. Is buddy still there? They traded buddy. They traded buddy to Indianapolis. Okay. But we have the air and Fox, D'Amantus, Sabonus, Kevin Hearder, rookie Keegan Murray. It's a fun team. Lucy,y would happen to step i thought he was your your writer died all i do love stuff i love stuff create the worries are doing surprisingly worse than i thought they would be doing but you know post katee warriors i will root for so their

in contention if they're in contention in the playoffs i will be rooting for them. And you know, I love Steph, but I love Morris, Andre Godalla. He follows me on Instagram a couple of months ago. I'm a huge Iggy fan. I'm trying to get to play a round of golf with him when I go back to the Bay Area. So I'm working on that.

He's one of the nicest people I've ever met. You heard it here first, Andre. When you listen to this, you got to hook her up. When Lucy comes back, you got to set up the round. I will. I'll hit him up on the deans. Lucy, so one of the things I was most curious to ask you, switching gears a little bit here, I think a lot of people, when they hear your name, golf fans,

remember you as an 11-year-old, 12-year-old girl making her debut at the US Open. There's a lot of different ways we could go with this, but I guess what I'm curious is how many people that you come into contact with in and around golf tournaments? I mean how many people still want to talk about that 2014 US Open? Still remember you as that little girl eating ice cream. And how do you deal with that? How is that?

You know, because obviously it's like, well, now I'm 20 years old. I'm on the LPGA tour. I mean, so much has changed since then. I'm curious how those interactions go, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I would say that even nowadays, if someone recognizes me, it's usually, maybe they'll recognize me because they saw me playing on LPJ last year, but the first thing they'll bring up

is definitely the US Open, the ice cream. You know, that's like the first thing people ask me about is ice cream, and I get interview, you know, interview questions about that. Every time I get interviewed, basically, I think when I was playing the Dana and I was leading or whatever, I'm pretty sure that every single time they put me on the screen, they put a picture of me eating ice cream up on the screen at the same time and I was like I mean I get I think we get it after the first 10 times you did that but you know it's a little bit for me it's a little bit of mixed feelings I think

A. I'm very you know obviously very grateful for that experience. I wouldn't, you know, be who I am without that. And so I think it's, I still think it's really cool that people remember that. And, you know, and then on the other hand, you know, I do think I've had a great career since then. And, you know, obviously don't want to be just known for that. But, you know, I think that, don't want to be just known for that. But I think that kind of just embracing it is not a bad thing. And I just, I think it's good, except for when they show that like 30 times enough broadcast.

But yeah, it seems like they skim over a lot of other things just to get to that one fact. And maybe, you know, it's almost like they're intentionally forgetting that you're like not only in play at other LPJ events, but had, you know, have played in majors and had like an amazing amateur career to back it up with team competitions and everything else.

Yeah, for sure. Definitely, I think that my amateur career stands on its own, you know, separately from that, you know, playing the career scout when I was 15 and being able to do a lot of cool stuff like that definitely is when I look at back in my amateur career, those are the moments I'm proud of. Obviously, I'm very proud of being able to qualify for the Open at 11, but I think that being able to have more sustained success over kind of that time is something I'm proud of. Yeah, for sure.

I think just, I know you brought up your books and you're still actively pursuing your degree, which great for you. I don't think there's a lot of people in your situation who would still put education up at that level and still actively work to like finish your actual work. But was there a time?

Did you ponder going to college? Was that something that was interesting to you or was it always, you know, I'm going to play, finish out my amateur career and then when I get to the right age and when I feel ready to go, I'm in a term professional. I would say that, you know, I thought about it, but I always kind of thought it was important to kind of follow my instincts in my gut and, you know, all of my friends around me, they're a community colleges and doing all this

and I just never, it just didn't feel right for me. And I always knew that my education was super important to me. So I knew that that wasn't something that I was going to give up to go professional. So for me, I just made the choice that I felt the most confident and felt right for me. With regards to your golf game, then, you turned professional in 2019. I believe late 2019 and had status started out on what was then the Symmetra Tour, what is now the Epson Tour.

And so competed out there, obviously 2020, 2021. And then last year, 2022, you won two times for the first time on the Epson Tour. I'm just curious how you would assess that build up on the Epson Tour. I'm just curious how you would assess that build up on the Epson Tour and what you learned those first couple years and how that's positioned you not only to then start winning last year but propel you now onto the LPGA tour full time. Yeah, definitely. You know, the first year I played with COVID, it was kind of unfortunate because I had a pretty good, I had a good season, I finished eighth on the money list,

but with the shorter schedule and almost, you know, they cut the cards that they gave me out in half and the status wasn't very good. So that kind of, you know, stalled my, the start of my career. And then going into 2021, I started out okay and then I kind of, well I started out on the Epson, okay and then I played really well at the open and the Mediheal out in the Bay area and so I was feeling really confident. And then I went out on the Epson tour and it just, I don't know what happened, it kind of just fell apart. And so I definitely, after those last few months on the Epsom tour, kind of lost a lot of my confidence. You know, golf is a very fickle sport, but it's tough to build yourself back up when that happens.

And that was kind of what I worked on through that off season, was being able to have confidence going into last season. And so just starting off the gate last year, I felt like, I kind of tried to shift my focus from results to more of being able to enjoy the process a little bit more. And so coming out of the gate, I kind of felt like I was just enjoying being out there and little bit more. And so coming out of the gate, I kind of felt like I was just enjoying being out there and competing way more. And so I think that was a huge part of the reason why I was so much more successful last year than the year before. And definitely, even better than I had

hoped it would. So I'm very happy about that. But definitely a lot of lessons that I learned through that, but definitely a lot of lessons that I learned through the tough times. I feel like you learned from the good and the bad, but especially being able to kind of come out of that taught me a lot of lessons. And even when you're playing well, you kind of have to keep pressing on. What's speaking of lessons, few questions I want to ask you, but most immediately when you say learning lessons, what's maybe the biggest lesson that you would tell 12-year-old Lucy that you've learned over these last eight years or so since you've been really in the national spotlight. I mean, I would probably tell her to not be so hard on herself.

That's something that's been tough for me, especially having success early on was just, I was always really hard on myself and I thought I should have been achieving more. And a lot of that self pressure I think kind of affected me in different points, you know, it's sometimes more than others. And now I've just learned to, you kind of have to forget about your past and like move forward and look at what you can, you know, do better going forward and not really why you should have been doing better, I guess kind of a thing. That was definitely the biggest lesson I learned in that everything happens for a reason

and you have to stay patient. The only other thing I was going to ask you, you had mentioned embracing the process, learning to enjoy the process. I'm just thinking, does that mean more practice time, more range balls? Does that mean more time in the gym? Does that mean kind of a better diet? Does it encapsulate all of those things? Or was there one particular area where, you know, you really felt like you had to embrace

the process or the grind a bit more? Um, I would say that I, I guess the process for me was more, I've always enjoyed practicing, so that wasn't necessarily what I had to kind of work on. It was more of just enjoying the process of this is what I need to do. And if it doesn't necessarily translate into my results, as long as I can look back and see that I was doing what I needed to do, that that was more of what I needed to focus on, then just being really down on myself because of the results

weren't there, if that makes sense. It does. We joke all the time about being process oriented instead of results oriented. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that at the end of the week you look up and see your name next to a position on a leaderboard and you can completely judge yourself just based off that single number and not realize how much good came that week. Yeah, and the margins and golf are so raised or thin that things can turn really quickly.

And you just can't let yourself get in the way of good golf, I think. Is there anybody that you reach now for advice mentors or people that are kind of part of your team that I guess others wouldn't kind of expect? Well, so I'd say, well, previously I've been super fortunate to have been in contact with Mickey Wright and she was my mentor for a very long time and I got to learn a lot from her. Sometimes I still pull up the emails that we had exchanged from then and kind of go through them again and just the endless wisdom there was there. And also, Johnny Miller, he's still my mentor, but he's retired now, so he's enjoying his best life. I haven't seen him in a while, but he's really great.

He gave me a lot of confidence, I think, when I was younger. Not necessarily like a ton of, you know, he gave me good advice, but it was a lot of just, he gave me a lot of confidence because he taught me different shots and me good advice, but it was a lot of just, he gave me a lot of confidence because he taught me different shots and so like that, but he was mostly just like there to tell me how great I am, I guess. Sometimes you need someone, sometimes you need someone outside of, you know, yourself or your family to tell you that. And he was always a great mentor and he calls me

champion so you know it's just really great to have that. Yeah especially coming from from him who's like seen and done everything a phenomenal person to have around. Yeah he's really great. He's he's less critical in person. I miss him. I miss him on the I mean, I really miss him too. But some of the commentating can be a little rough nowadays. Yeah, it's say that for sure. What about your your peers? It seems like you know, not only golf, but specifically women's golf center in a phenomenal place. you have young stars coming up your close friends with almost all of them from competing on the same

teams to traveling together for a jg a stuff some of our college and others are professional but i mean do you have kind of like a good group that's out there now That's out there now. Yeah, for sure. Especially on the LPJ now. I'm really excited, you know really a voodoo and Andrew Lee and a lot of those girls that I Sofia a lot of those girls that I've played in that Curtis Cup team on our on the LPJ now And so that's really really awesome and it's I'm very happy for their success and really excited to be able to travel with them and also my friends in college You know this Stanford girls, I'm close with pretty much all of them. And so I'm really excited for them to be done with that and turn pro and be on tour with me. But yeah, I definitely agree that, you know, woman's golf

is probably in the best spot it's been in for a really long time. And I think it's, I'm really excited to see, you know, where we go in the next few years. I bold predictions for this year. What do, let's see, first of all, your game, if you wanna say, hey, I'm gonna win LPJA event this year. I already said that for you earlier in this podcast, so you don't have to worry about it. I already crowned you. I said, you're probably gonna be working

the year this year, so I have that on you. That's how I feel about you, Lucy. But what about you? What are we expecting? Awesome. I appreciate that. Yeah. This is what I like to say.

I like to set goals, not expectations, because I think that they're different. And my goal is definitely to win, to win on the LPJ. And if I could win the US Open at a public beach that would be, I mean, I mean everyone wants to win the US Open at a public beach, but I just think that would be so amazing, you know, being close to there. So those are probably my biggest goals, but also, I'm trying really hard to get into the Soulheim Cup team this year. That's definitely up there.

I think that would be really, really awesome, especially with a lot of my friends who are going to be on the team this year. All right. I want you to do a self-scouting report for folks that haven't, that just remember you as that little girl eating ice cream. How do you describe your game, your strengths, maybe relative weakness here or there? How would you describe your game to folks that are going to see you again, not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time,

this season? I would say my strength is definitely my ball striking. I am really good with my short irons and wedges and I think I hit surprisingly far for my size. I also think people think I'm a lot smaller than I am. But yeah, so I've gained a little bit of distance in the off season too, so I think that's going to be pretty big. My website I should be in the top 20% of driving distance in LLVJ, so I think that's really good. I've been my relative weakness, probably my putting, but I've been working really hard on

that, so I feel pretty confident in that going into this year. Yeah. Lucy, you're talking about Adden distance, but what have we been doing? Like speed training, you just been hitting the gym really hard. I need some tips, so whatever you can give me. I don't really hit the gym that much, but yes, I did some speed training,

just go out there and hit drivers the brisening way. That's the number one tip for getting distance, I would say. And then I also just don't know why I gained five to 10 yards with my irons. It kind of just came out of nowhere because I wasn't working on that. But that's really exciting because that was definitely my like iron distance has always been lagging behind my driver distance. So I don't know if I just caught up all of a sudden, but that's really good just hopefully being able to have shorter clubs in.

I'd say the other weakness of my game is that I hit it like, well, it's not necessarily weakness, but I flight it pretty low. So if I play really firm courses, it can kind of, it can be an issue at times. I've been trying to work on that, but that hasn't really gone anywhere. So. Now I know why you're lamenting no links courses this year. Exactly. Well, Lucy, we can't wait to watch you this year. I think you're such a great addition to the LPGA tour. And as Cody said, I mean, the women's game

is in such a fun place right now. Can't wait to watch. I know I would say enjoy the rest of your off season, but I know you're getting a little antsy and can't wait to tee it up again in a real tournament. But enjoy this last month or so before before really starting in earnest and really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you so much.

I'm excited to get started. Once we get started, we really get started. Yeah, it is kind of a long start here, but very compressed once we get the ball rolling. And don't worry, me and Bigger areger gonna be there on the 18th hole of Pellow Beach when you raise that track. That was awesome. Thanks Lucy. Thank you so much. Yes! That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most.

Better than most! Expect anything different?