No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 655: Mike Whan on the USGA's proposed distance changes

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

On the heels of today's announcement of a proposed model local rule of the golf ball rollback for elite level players, we're joined by USGA CEO Mike Whan to explain the position of the USGA and R&A and what lies ahead in the process.  After our chat with Mike, we outline our reaction to the announcement, address some misconceptions about the proposed changes, and have some fun with listener questions as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a special semi emergency podcast of the No Laying Up Persuasion. Sully here, DJ Pai is here. Hello, Pai Man.

Hello, Sully. Thanks for having me on the program. Thrilled to be talking about golf balls today. And somebody who's no longer going to be air mailing greens, Mr. Icarita himself, Neil Schuster, the ball is rolling back, buddy. Welcome. Good to be here. Always down to talk about this eruption in industry. That's, this is, this is my bread and butter. To be clear, it's not really back for amateurs. I already gave

misinformation of this podcast. Well, I was going to say, what if Neil just plays those balls? Anyways, like everybody else plays regular balls to the Neil plays those balls and then you're going to hit the perfect number every time. It lists a lot of a lot to glean from two years announcement. No doubt. Guys, the rollback episode is presented by our friends at rowback. Look at that synergy. These guys were way ahead of the game. They're back for another year of sponsoring the No Languah podcast. We wear their clothes all the freaking time. The hoodies, the

polos, the Q-Zips, the joggers, the T's. You name it. I wore multiple, multiple polos out at the players championship this past week. I was not alone because everywhere I went, I saw a ton of the rowback logo that will stripe on the back, the dog logo up on the shoulder. They're everywhere. Their polos are not boxy at all. They went through so many iterations of the collar just to make sure it always keeps its shape. The Q-Zips are fantastic. The Herringbone one is my favorite, just incredible material. We can't keep these on our shelves in the no-ling up shop whenever we have them ordered. Then finally, the hoodies, the hoodies are the best in the game. The most comfortable,

the stretchiest, the softest. You can get so many wears out of them before you have to wash them. Am I the only one that does that? That's not in the copy either. But I like Shazam. No, I just like wear them like four times before I even have to wash it. Like that's, I hate throwing stuff in the wash after one wear. But if I think I think you can stretch, you can stretch it out. I got to say I was we're at Pinehurst a couple of weeks ago for a NLU event, 300 rowback hoodies. Everywhere. Running, running around the cradle, running around the fists will do, running around the do's. I just, there's a reason. There's a reason.

There's a reason. You can use code NLU at rowback.com for 20% off your first order. That's R-H-O-B-A-C-K dot com 20% off polo's, quzips hoodies and teas with code NLU. Check it out. rowback.com. Guys, before we get going here, I just have one question. And it comes from Kirk McGinsky. He said, Hey, Sally, first time, long time, how about you bifurcate these balls, respectively? Hell yeah.

Kirk, DMV, man, I might get you some pro shop cred. You can save it from when that rowback comes back. All right. God, that's good stuff. Not expecting that. That's good stuff. Watch you bifurcate bofa. Yeah. Oh, it got me good today. I needed that uplift. Like none of the distant stuff is fun ever at any point.

And like for like a quarter of a second, I read it in like a really aggressive tone. And then I realized it was a it was funny. And I was like, dude, I needed that lift up today. Thank you. Thank you, Kirk. Here's my here's my prediction. I think this is going to be a fun podcast. I think we can take I think we can take this gravely seriously. But at the end of the day, we're talking about golf balls and sticks and hitting them. And it's just, just chill out. It's going to be fun. I know. If you guys could save me some time at the end, I'd like to talk about the press conference scene. I mean, it looked like a, like a diplomatic engagement. You got the USGA and the, you know, in the war room. You got not in nature. Swimmers over there coming up, talking about crossing the Rubicon and, and it's just,

it's like golf as a sport is both very serious, but just it can be such a parody of itself. And I, like, I thought they did a great job with press conference. It just made me laugh when I tuned in. I was like, oh my god, this is hilarious. And then we have tech issues. It was great. I think, I think we're not gonna, absolutely not gonna turn this into a live discussion,

but I think because of the live discussion, I just have felt like a kid who's been in the classroom for a little bit too long, right? We're just, we can only learn presidential facts for so long here, man. I can't take, we can only read so many court documents and human rights appeals and, oh, now these guys are appealing this.

And now this person's getting involved in this lawsuit. Like, you know, we're gonna hit our breaking point at some point and it just have to laugh it, by forgetting these balls at some point. I think that's well timed. And I think it speaks to the energy in the room today. I do love that you're talking about how much fun we're gonna have in this pod.

But like the first thing we're gonna do is turn it over to an interview with the CEO of the US Gulf Association. Here's the fun guy. Mike one is joining us shortly. We've recorded that. We are going to get to that shortly and then react to a lot of stuff on the back end. But first, if you'll allow me, why don't we just document get it out there in public? What happened today? So what happened was the RNA and USDA proposed a model local rule MLR. You'll hear those initials a lot on this episode that gives competition organizers the option to require use of golf balls that are tested under modified launch conditions to address the impacts of hitting distance in golf. What does that mean? What does that mean?

It's a special local rule basically a fancy way of saying a bifurcated rule to say, like, hey, we're going to change the way we're going to test these golf balls. Here's how we're going to change how we're testing it. And the TLDR of that is like, hey, the ball's not going to go as far. It's probably going to fly like 15 yards less distance at the highest level. And here's exactly how we're going to get to that blah, blah, blah. The MLR is intended for use only in elite competitions. And if adopted, we'll have no impact on recreational golf.

That was a huge takeaway from the press conference today was we can get to some of that feedback that they the RNA and USDA had heard over the last year based on their last year's proposal or areas of interest or whatever. I'm not going to keep all the facts straight to this. They basically said, do not touch the amateur game, amateur games, driving, do not, we're not coming for your golf balls at the amateur level from my cold dead hands. Basically, manufacturers and golf stakeholders can provide feedback until the 14th of August, 2023. And if adopted, the proposal will take effect in January, 2026 So again the emphasis point here is this is a proposal and there's now a five-month period where St. Golf stakeholders can provide commentary, can provide feedback and then from there

There's going to be a decision made that will take effect in January 2026 So this is where it gets a little in the weeds just bear with me on this a little bit So golf balls that conform to the model local rule must not exceed the current overall distance standard limit of 317 yards. So what does that mean? The way they currently test golf balls, which is at a speed of 120 miles an hour, club head speed with I'm not even going to bore you with the RPMs and the launch angle all that. The important thing to remember, the ball can't go farther than 317 yards plus three yards of tolerance, I believe, that they have in there under those launch conditions. So 120 swing mile an hour,

the ball can't go farther than 317 yards, how it currently stands. And this is off the iron buyer and the swing machine robot, do HIKI, correct. So now they are changing that to the ball cannot fly farther than 317 yards, wind swung at 127 miles an hour.

And again, they're tweaking a little bit of the RPMs and the launch angle in there. I'm not going to bore people with the details of that because I don't think I fully understand the anyways, but the important thing to note of this is like, Hey, if you swing at seven miles an hour harder, it's still going to go the same distance as, you know, if you swing it at 120, that's going to be starting in 2026 only for elite competitions. So essentially, if I'm summarizing it, if you drive it like 320, it's probably going to go somewhere between 300 and 305 now at the highest level. That is the change that is currently happening. Yeah. And set another way, basically all the golf balls

that tour players are playing today will will be deemed nonconforming. So ball companies, equipment companies are going to essentially have to come up with a new line of conforming golf balls starting when this would be implemented, which would be January 2026, if it's adopted. That's another huge element of this is who is going to adopt this. We asked Mike, what about that? We will talk about that on the back half as well. We'll talk about how it addresses the distance issue,

what level does it address it? It's an incredibly, incredibly complicated topic that we are going to try to have some fun with. The first things first, I think we should play our interview with Mike one. We threw all the questions we could have in a 20 minute span and he answered them great. I think we start there and we'll see in the back half of this to break this all down. All right, Mike, as best you can, can you summarize what you and the USGA believe to be the distance issue in golf? I think you, if you look over the last 20, 40, 60 years, there's been a consistent predictable increase somewhere about a yard a year, maybe a little more, more recently and sometimes flat. But generally, if you look over a long period, a yard a year is as predictable as the weather. So I've always said, this isn't about fixing today. We're okay today. We're experiencing some great things in the game,

but at this high level, if in the next 20 years, we're another 20 yards and 30 years, we're another 30 yards, we're going to get to the point where the game is sort of unsustainable to the average course trying to host it in. If I'm being asked with you, we're kind of, we're not doing a great job as a role model, sometimes a major to that today. If you think about what's happening in major golf courses, in terms of, you know, the amount of money being invested to lengthen golf courses, make sure that they can stay relevant. It's a tough message to courses all around the world, but that's what it takes. If you want to continue, and this isn't, people want to make this a PGA tour, a European tour, not about that,

it's thousands of qualifiers and state amateurs and significant amateur events, college events. And as Jet Nicholas said to me, it's difficult to build a golf course. It isn't 7800 yards these days. Nobody needs it, but they all think they're going to host something significant. And so you're talking about creating acreage

and water and nutrients and cost, that all gets to get transferred back. So for us, we're just looking forward to say, our job isn't really report to members or to report to shareholders. Our job is to report to the game and say, well, the game be okay in the next 20, 30 or 40 years. And when the answer is questionable or no, then make actions now to make sure that our kids and our kids kids don't inherit a game that's somehow more strapped with issues than we inherited. And that's our job. How would you say your perspective on the issue has evolved since you started with the USDA?

Well, probably quite a bit. I mean, you know, first I was the LPJ Commissioner for 12 years and I'd be the idea if I told you that I felt we had a distance problem at the LPJ. There was plenty of room to go back on almost every course we played typically played for what you would consider the blue teas on a regular golf course. So there's room to go back and so we didn't really feel like we were pushing any golf course to the edge. I always used to argue before I got to the USJ like what's wrong with today? I was always stuck in today. Tell me what the

problem is today. And when I got to the USJ I spent time with the USM, the RNA, I realized that this is a group that really spends 90% of their time focused on the future. And realizing that if you're going to change the future, you can't wait until the future hits. And when we started this process in 2018, and here we are in 2023, talking about a 2026 potential change. The distance game was quite a bit different today than it was in 2018, when we started talking about it. So it's much more of a forward looking entity. When you're in a commissioner role like I was, I can't speak for other commissioners,

but in my world, you're focused on your members and vocational opportunities and chances to play. And that's 95% of your life. In 30 years, you know, it's a great discussion for Friday afternoon, but it can't be your core conversation. Same as true sitting in a manufacturer. You got shareholders and market share to address. And so you sort of have the freedom in this role to think about the game over a longer period of time and in responsibility to make sure that the game is going to be healthy long term. Mike, I'm curious, especially coming from the

world of Pro Golf and now into the USGA, which kind of has to umbrella all aspects of golf. How do you see the push and pull between Pro Golf and recreational golf and when you're weighing something like the local rule versus a full rollback? And what's the push and pull been like for you on the pro game versus everybody else?

Yeah, when I got here and they explained to me how this process works, you know, every time we have a change in direction, we have to go public with it. Can't tell anybody until you go public with it. Then we have to take a period where everybody tells us everything they feel about that. And I said, where I come from, if I was a former CEO

or as a former commissioner, you go tell everybody and then you go to the podium. Like you know where you're members are and then you've got to go to the podium. This one you go to the podium and kind of hear from everybody because the only way to make this kind of legally fair for all the manufacturers in the world is to not have, you know, not be doing things before you come to the table. So it's a unique proposition like today when I announced that somebody said to me, well, where's the NCAA on this? I'm like, I can't talk to the NCAA until today. You know,

where is so and so I can't talk to them. Half today. You know, where is so and so, I can't talk to them. Half of my championship team found out about the MLR ball today because it's not in our best interest to share this more broadly outside of the governance group. So it's quite a challenging process. If back to the original question, when I walked in, what I originally said is,

hey, if we feel like we have to do something about it, let's just do it across the board. So we don't have to make a bunch of individual entities make choice. That just seems hard. And you know, she was going to choose yes, and who's going to choose no. And so last year, if you remember, in the area of interest, we announced a golf ball that was going to be across the board, tested at a different speed. And I got to tell you, during that feedback process, it was so loud and consistent.

Please don't do anything that has a negative impact on the recreational game. Not just today, because it's too obviously, it's as good as it's been, maybe forever right now. But in terms of what's happening in the recreational game, and not making it harder or harder to get started, and just not changing people's game. And so that was so consistent. By the way, that was consistent when you talk to tour players,

talk to PGA professionals, whether you talk to association manufacturers, retailers. So it was such an across the board thing that I probably changed my perspective. And then I walked in and said, if we're gonna make a change, you better sort of make it across the board. So you don't have to create all this kind of uncomfortable choice.

But listening to that feedback and having a lot of those conversations, I realized that that message was coming from the right place, coming from people saying, you know, took us a long time to get the game on this kind of downhill run. And so the risk and kind of going to this process is now we do throw a bunch of choice back in the game

and you may not love how that choice nets out. I've said this a bunch today and people may not agree with me, but there is no way stakeholders in the game can't see their feedback in what we announced today because I gotta tell you a lot of things changed over the last six to seven months based on that feedback. If you remember we were going to test each individual

ball and individual parameters that maximize that ball's flight. Manufacturers came back and told us the challenges that created both financially, time wise and from an R&D process. We didn't move forward with that. We heard about this as it relates to the recreational we made changes to go to an MLR. We heard we a lot of people about if you're going to do this, don't make it difficult for me at a local level to implement this at a championship level. I've got to go figure out what's the MOUI driver? Like how the heck am I going to figure that out? Or whether or not the person's three hybrid as too much face rebound? And so there was real concern about the ability to implement the change that we were talking about. Or whether or not a freshman at college was going concern about the ability to implement the change that we were talking about.

Or whether or not a freshman at college was going to get the kind of service on a unique driver head that you could get at the PGA tour, the European tour level. So all of those things that I'm rattling out to you are implemented or incorporated in this change. You may not like this change. People made challenges change and that's human nature and that's fair. I enjoy good debate. But it would be impossible to say that the feedback process hasn't affected

where we've, where we've knitted out and you guys know me well enough that slow, steady and listening for six months, you know, probably isn't on my resume, but it has been in fairness to the process, it has required me and the team to slow down. And for a long period of time, not allow you to move forward and have to listen. And when you have to listen, you know, the only one learning is my father would say, when your mouth shut, the only one learning is you. It's been eye opening to see the evolution of this based on real quality stakeholder feedback. It doesn't mean all the stakeholders are happy. And by the way, the same stakeholders said, please don't test the, you know, the retic, the recreational game. Now with them, like, oh, I don't like

an MLR. So, so your sense is you do it like any change and I get that, that's a fair position, just not one that I'm going to endorse. So I get it. It's, um, this stuff is hard. I knew it was hard before I got here. I knew it was hard when I moved in. And I asked myself at 58, you know, are you up for this in terms of making sure you're going to, you're going to be committed to this kind of process. And I'm enjoying it, even though I probably shouldn't admit that. I'm allowed. So a question I have, it is it relates to, I got a lot of questions, but one is,

how does what you've proposed here with the, you talked about sustainability there, the future of the game, how does the MLR at this level, how does it address sustainability, right? Because I think I'm struggling to marry the two right. I think a full rollback would address sustainability in a much higher, you know, quotient, if you will, that's probably not the right word, but a much higher level than what is currently proposed. So can you make the case for why this MLR is going to help with sustainability?

And when you mean full rollback, you mean a rollback across both recreational and professional games? Correct. Correct. So a lot of people say to me, why don't you just make sure that distance doesn't go any farther now? Just draw a line that doesn't go any farther now. By the way, that's what they thought they did in 2004, about 22 yards ago, was drawing a line in the same. Because it's difficult to do that. For us to draw a line in Sanus Leibal,

whenever I fly farther than this, we can implement this governor on the ball that falls out of the sky at a certain yardage. And then when you do that, you take away the advantage of people trying to get longer, trying to create an advantage, the difference to be short and long hitters. We don't want to take athleticism out of the game. We don't want to take the drive to have an advantage in distance to go away.

So when you talk about kind of being able to stay at this distance, the reality of it is, if we implement this MLR in 2026, I feel fairly confident by 2036, we're going to be about right back to where we are now in distance. The reality of it is, if we implement this MLR in 2026, I feel fairly confident by 2036, we're going to be about right back to where we are now in distance. If things continue just the way they are, we'll be back 14 yards and then 10 to 15 years, we'll be back to where we are now, and we'll kind of be living in that window where massive increases in space and property isn't necessarily required across the board. But we're also not, you know, we're not going to be living in a year which we're on average 30 yards longer. We're going to kind of be between where we were in 2010 and where we were in 2022.

And that's kind of the window we live in and we'll have to relook at this in 10, 12, 15 years. In terms of your question about sustainability, I mean, listen, we spend a lot of time going to a lot of courses that invite us to come see them because they just finished their 30-minute-dollar renovation. And look at all the length they built, and on every tee, there's 110 yards to walk back, and those teas are beautiful. They're immaculate, they're manicured, they're watered and nutrients and cut every day, and they're used maybe once every six years, but they are phenomenal. And so, you know, but that's what courses are seeing is required. And I'll be the first to admit that the US open

We're guilty of that as anybody else and we saw distance and a lot of changes in the country called same thing It's happened in LACC. We've we've been following Gil around for quite a while now And we love those changes But we also don't want to send a message that if you want to stay relevant in this game We're the next 10 20 30 years. That's what it takes and if you't show me it. And if you need to build a T-box behind a green, and you have to wait until the guys put out before hitting, that's just OK. Because, you know, and so handing this challenge,

people say to me, who wins? Because the players don't like it. Who wins is 30,000 golf courses? But if we do nothing, we're essentially saying, hey, that's on you. I had this conversation with the guys, you know, and an interview earlier today and he was having fun with me and I was highly caffeinated.

And then they said, you know, this just doesn't have any other sports. And I said, you know, Tom Brady throws a football that's larger in college than it wasn't high school. And larger in the NFL that it wasn't college. And he goes, well, why would that be the case? And I said, because they don't want Tom Brady to throw a 96-yard out.

Because if he has the high school football, 100 yards is a problem. And then are you going to tell every stadium in the world that you got to owe them just who cares? We know that. Just every state of just build bigger and we'll deal with it. They don't do that.

They make small changes to make sure that the game can sort of stay in the stadium and the best are still the best. I mean, if you told me that you guys not going to hit a 346 year drive in 2026, but it's 340, it's 346, it's gonna be 332. Are we all gonna be incredibly awestruck by 332? 100%. Is he still gonna make long par fours look dinky, of course.

And that's okay, that's what the best in the world should do. But if we just turn him, if we just turn our back and say, hey, we know what's coming in the next 30 years. And by the way, we all do. Even the ones that will look you in the face and go other distances totally done, we're not going to get any longer. How would you could say that with a straight face,

given the data for the last 60 years, speed training, youth development, come on. Now, we all know what's coming over the next 30 years. And to simply say we know what's coming, and we don't care. That's, like I've said, I'll have this argument with anybody in the world who wants to talk to me about solutions and distance. I just won't talk to the guy that starts the conversation with distances

and going any far in the way. If that's how you start the conversation, I'm not sure we have much to talk about. Mike, any thoughts you know, you brought up kind of college football versus the NFL and any, any thoughts as to where kind of cutoffs will be with this, whether it's going, you know, lower levels into junior golf, the US junior, versus the NFL and any thoughts as to where kind of cutoffs will be with this, whether it's going, you know, lower levels into junior golf, the US junior, things like that, or even upper level. I mean, is this something that the US senior open is going to look at or is it really just

a problem for kind of the, you know, the top 200 players in the world? No, it's definitely going to go beyond the tour in our world. I also think it might be a timing thing. Do I think the NCAA will be here in 2026? I don't know. Do I think the NCAA will be in 2029? I'm fairly confident. Even if they would tell you today,

no way, no way. I get it. People reacted the message when they first hear it. I think in our case, the amateur and the US opener are given. I haven't really had a chance to talk to my championship team, but seeing what I've seen in my first two years here, the US Mid-Aim certainly would benefit from this.

And quite frankly, we're probably not too many years away from the junior AM, having kind of similar, I mean, I could tell you, we're picking junior AM golf courses in terms of the distances we're seeing. And that's how I feel so confident about the future of distance. I can see 16 year old the days that are at that elite level and what they're doing. So, will it go to the senior US open up maybe, or maybe not initially, but probably certainly longer term. So, I do think that if you jump three years ahead of 2026, if that's when the

implementation happens, I think it'll be even more broad scale than it would probably be in 2026. Because I think people will get there on their own time. And while that may frustrate me that it's not all happening on the same time, I like the fact that we'll give golf the choice and that you'll have an easy way to get there when you cross that bridge. And I think people will cross that bridge

in their own time. Mike, I'm personally of the opinion that the golf ball traveling a certain distance is not only due to the characteristics of the golf ball. And I think that two items, in my opinion, that are a factor in and contributing to how far the golf ball goes are the size of driver heads, which kind of leads to limited risk of wailing on the golf balls, I'd like to say, and also how the golf ball spins. Those, neither of those items are on the table with this current proposal. Why not? Can

you explain to me why the, that's not currently being discussed? Yeah, that's a good question. If you remember back to a year ago, we introduced the concept that we were working on at the time, the way this process works is I have to tell you exactly what we're working on and why and what we're not working on. So very strange, you know, I'm good a secretive guy, but now I'm telling everybody exactly what we're doing. So a year ago, we said, we had a real interest in seeing if we could take the sweet spot of a driver and the rebound effect of the face down a level. So we'd do two things. Have a little bit more distance reduction. But more importantly, off center hits would have more penalty, kind of the way they were kind of pre these larger scale, larger sweet spot drivers. The reality of doing that, Chris, is when we kind of looked into that, you'd have to reduce that sweet

spot to such a level to have a real meaningful impact that you're getting down to about the size of for Simon Wood's sizes. And when you get down there, then you're really talking about three woods, five woods, seven woods being affected. And quite frankly, hybrid clubs as well. So if you were gonna make that kind of change with smaller sweet spot, less forgiving for mishits,

we found pretty quickly that it wasn't gonna be a driver or she was gonna be essentially every metal wood club in your bag. And it became both a difficult to service that in terms of a cross because beyond more, just want to lead to her, also kind of cost prohibitive for the player and really difficult for the local pro to forget how to implement. What I would tell you is that concept of less forgiving and more reward for centered. It's not off the table.

It's off the table in the current proposition. So our deal with the manufacturer is and quite frankly with the media through this process is when we're not working on something we owe it to you to tell you and when we are we're working on something. One thing we did say in this most recent notice in common is while we're not working on that immediately, not for the not for the immediate future, we're certainly going to continue to look at that. In the short term, we will be looking at what we call face creep, which is clubs that are conforming kind of out of the box, but over multiple hits in time.

And you know, as residents or material, anything else starts to give way in that club, starts to actually go from conforming to non-conforming. That's something we think we can address in the not too distant future and how we test golf clubs. Exactly how we'll do it to be determined, but something we're pretty focused on solving here in the not too distant future and how we test golf clubs. Exactly how we'll do it to be determined, but something we're pretty focused on solving here

in the near future. Mike, I think last one, and we'll get you out. Obviously, I think the big elephant in the room here is kind of going away from some of the unification stuff. And I know there's a difference between the MLR and the bifurcation and kind of the way the semantics that go into it. But at the end of the day, it's still,

tour players playing a different ball than maybe the large amount of recreational players. I'm curious, A, kind of how you feel about that, how you guys got to that point, and if there was kind of a breaking point where all of a sudden that came on the table for you guys. Yeah, I mean, if I'm being honest with the three of you, I've been struggling with bifurcation since I got here.

I knew there was a bit of a struggle and certainly when I walked in, I've probably played in a thousand programs, when you're 12 year commissioner, where you play about 50 of them a year. And I played in the programs with at the men's level, the women's level, the senior level.

And I'm smart enough to know that everything in that bag is not what's in my bag even though the brands are very similar in terms of what we pull off the head cover. And that's not neither a problem or good. I also know that as a high level and very focused golfer, I care what the top level players are playing, even if you tell me it's slightly different. I've said this many times, there's got to be a reason why Mercedes Benz then's $150 million in F1 racing, even though none of those engines will ever want to car you when I buy.

Because if you're focused on how to make it work at that level, then what they're probably building in my engine is pretty high tech. And I think the same would be true here. I would trust whatever is the number one ball or what a number one guy plays that I actually follow or guy I think my game is a lot of like. Even if that technology was slightly different,

I do believe that the balls that would be played if this is implemented in MLR and the technology that would be very similar to the technology that would be available to the guy testing at 120 versus 127. And I know enough about ball manufacturers to know that the chase and the race for making the best MLR ball would come in different, some would go out of the dipoles and some go out of the core materials, but they would really be fighting to be the best one there. And whoever was the best one there would mean a lot to me. And that's always been the case.

If you told me that the driver I was using wasn't the exact same driver's rowing, but the technology was pretty similar, you still have my attention. And I think the same would be true here. And as the guy who's putting plenty of his life on the manufacturing side of the business, I can't imagine anybody

backing down on their ability to make sure that tour players are validating the technology that they're working on and are indeed, because we wouldn't be talking about something drastically different. We're not talking about a ball that's 50% of the other ball. So I think that's that's trouble. Some and I get the fact that people don't like it. We want to play. I mean, the people who sit across me in a plane and go, I want to play exactly what the pros are playing.

I said, but I got bad news for you. Like, if you had to show it up at a PGA tour event, first thing that Andy was your MLR sheet of paper, and you're going to learn about about 12 rules that are playing, that you're not playing in your member guest, then you're going to walk back to a T. You never even know existed in your member guest. And so, and you're going to see a whole locations

that your home pro wouldn't put in front of you because you'd still be putting today. And so it's, you know, if you think we're playing the exact same game as them, I think we're kidding ourselves, but we're playing a close enough game that it matters and it'll always matter to the consumer. I'm gonna get a little greedy at this

is bad interview technique because we said last question, but this is truly the last one. It's a, if you were to gauge the temperature of other event organizers right now, what do you think the appetite is? at Augusta, the PJ of America, PGA tour, DP World Tour to adopt what you guys have proposed? What's the temperature in the room? I know it's not decided, but what can you tell us? I'd be lying to you if I said I have a great handle on that because this weird process

again, you know, I got to start doing that now as opposed to start doing that three weeks ago, where my old commission days three months ago, It doesn't, you know, listen, at the end of the day, when you talk about change, everybody says change is a good thing and, you know, control the business until it actually is, oh, I'm the one you're talking about change? And wait a minute. I didn't know what I meant. So listen, if you're the one being affected by this, if, you know, I've been, I've been a commissioner along enough to know if you stayed up in a room with turpliers and say, good news. Two years from now, you're all gonna have to start

working into a new ball. And by the way, that ball will be 13 yards, 14 yards shorter. That probably isn't the greatest player being you've ever had. I get that. But I also think that with time, I think what people hear about change the first time the initial reaction is screw that.

Don't wanna hear about any change. That's affecting my life. But I think in time, I have learned in some of the players I know really well in some of the players I know really well, some of the professionals I know really well, some of the certainly golf courses around the world that are both friends and quite frankly, would say silent, but quietly saying,

please don't stop, please don't stop. Because they know what this means. If we just look the other way, what this means to golf courses is quite significant over the next 20 to 40 years. So if I if I gauge you my emails today, which is probably a better analogy, I'll bet you I'm pretty close to 50, 50 of thank you and don't you stop and 50% of I can't believe you're you're this much of an idiot.

You know, there's there's virtually, there's nobody in the middle going, I'm still thinking about this. I'm not sure where I am. You're either I thought you were smarter than that, Mike, or I can't believe that's all the farther you're going. Like, you know, your governance is weird because no matter who you tell, they don't like the answer. You know, and I say this to some players that have been around the world and are really serious about this thing. They'll go, that's it. That's all you're doing. When I say to some players like, seriously, you want me to, you want me to adjust and the rest of the world doesn't have to.

But I do believe this would be something that we would do once. And then I don't think we're really looking at this again for 15 years. So I think for the average person playing at a high level, it's something they do once or maybe twice in their career. I don't want this to be somebody said to me, and I interviewed you before. Why not 123? Why not 124 as your club is being said, because I don't want to be doing this to players every four years.

That's both uncool and totally disruptive on a regular basis. That's not good to manufacturers. It's not good to players, not good to golf courses. I think you do this and then you get out of the way for as long as you can get out of the way. My father used to say, good uppires at the end of the game, you forgot they were there. Sometimes you got to insert yourself.

So at the US, you had like to be able to make a change and I believe it would be good for the game, you forgot they were there. Sometimes you got to search yourself. So at the US, you had to be able to make a change that I believe would be good for the game in one term and then get out of the way for as long as we can. Great. Thank you so much for joining us, Mike. Really appreciate it. No, it's been a busy day for you.

And we afford to have a many of these discussions in the coming years. We appreciate your time. The good and the bad news is we now have three more seasons we can talk about. We'll have you back any time you'll come. Thanks again. I take care. Thanks Mike.

All right, Neil insisted I hit the air horn before this house ad, but I am not going to do that. I'm going to save your ear trumps and abstain. I still have final on. I'm the final copy editor when it comes to the ad copy. This episode of the No Laying Up podcast is brought to you by the nest. No Laying Up's community of avid golfers around the world. Listen, the Nest is centered around the No-Lang Up season-long event series that kicks off

this month. There's events across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., our dynamic message board where members discuss golf and golf adjacent topics. And members also have access to exclusive content like our monthly Nest Podcast, Kevin Ben-V Volkerberg's new monthly members only column. We also offer Ness members 15% off all purchases in the NLU Pro Shop, early access to limited inventory and annual member gift that will ship out for all 2023 members next January. So if you're looking to maybe meet some new people, place some more golf,

meet other avid golfers or get deeper into the NLU universe. You can learn more about that, what's included in the NES membership at no layingup.com slash join. Did I miss anything? I'll also say if you get through this podcast and you think, man, these guys didn't quite go there with the takes on the golf ball. There's gonna be some takes on the refuge. Oh, yes. Highly encourage you to seek out some of those high octane takes. I actually wrote that this morning and I'm glad you read it because I, I, I, there are a few extraneous words in there, but that was great, Sally. And I think I'm underselling some pieces of how dynamic the,

the refuge message for it is. So, uh, yeah, go check it out. I think the nest, we're going to have a, it's been a big start to the year in the nest. So anyway, thanks for the support. Big start to the year everywhere, guys. I'm going to for the support. Big start to the year everywhere, guys. I'm going to sprinkle in some questions we got from the audience as we go along. I'm going to start with this one. And I'm going to throw this to DJ.

Mr. Goodley Cooks, this is our friend Ben, he said, should I keep in care about any of this? I mean, that's a macro question for really all of ProGolf, I would say. But I would say if you are listening to this podcast, you probably care about the finer points of the game. And for that reason, you should care about this because I think it's going to change things in a, you know, not a massive, massive, massive way, but in a way that will be noticeable. I mean, the golf ball going

shorter off of the tee, I think, is going to, you know, I think it changes the skills that get rewarded. Obviously, distance still gets rewarded, but it changes the perspective or the proportions by which it gets rewarded, I think, which is interesting because it could potentially shape the way that pro golf looks and the way that the world rankings work and the way that the FedEx couple is works and the way that leaderboards work in general. I think it's interesting just from like a pure, you know, Neil, I know this would get you going, but I think it's interesting just from like an industry disruption perspective. I think it's fascinating to hear all the different stakeholders get excited about it,

complain about it, not understand it, completely miss the point. Like I think just the drama in all of that is really interesting to follow and is going to be highly highly entertaining to follow along. But listen, if if that stuff is not of interest to you and you want to watch, you know, three, four majors a year and what made wake me up on the back nine on Sunday, yeah, there's probably not that much that you really need to pay attention to because things are not going to change in your regular Sunday game. You don't have to go out and buy new golf balls

unless you're really competing at a super high level. So really not much is going to change. It's Neil, the best advice always. You get out of something, what you put into it. I think that's the same with this rule change. You can be as into it as you want, Ben. Yeah, I think that's, I'd echo that, Dege. I was thinking about it a lot in prep for this podcast and the, you know, I love analogies. I was trying to put myself, what is the sport that I watched?

It's if I was a casual golf fan because I'm getting a little sick of like, oh my god, you know, unity and the equipment and between the pro and the amateur game. It's it's been around for 400 years, et cetera, et cetera. But I look at it like the way I watch F1. They made some rule changes to F1 the last couple years. I kind of read some of them in passing. Like there's a salary cap or whatever, you know, team expense cap.

And then they changed the engines and some of the porpoiseing and all this stuff with the cars. It didn't impact anything when I watched a race last year or when I watched Drive the Survival Month ago. Like the cars still look like they're going really, really fast and the interpersonal stuff and kind of the competition between the teams is still what I care about. So if that's how you and I doubt

there's a lot of really casual fans listening to this podcast, but I think if you zoom out from a macro standpoint, I don't see, like I'm a big believer, and we'll talk about this when we kind of get into it. It's not the absolute distance. It's the relative distance. And it's still going to look amazing when Rory hits it 305, or DJ hits it 305 instead of 330. You know, it's the, it's the, it's the sum of like the ball still going dead straight. And it's still like, like Scotty Sheffler's drive on five at the players.

It would, that would still look amazing going 305 instead of 318. So that's, you know, I echo. So yes, to Mr. Googly Cooks, like, I mean, yeah, you don't, I don't really think it's, as big of a change for the casual fan as it's maybe being made out to be right now in the golf media. And I think the only thing that I guess I would add to that or tack on to my statement and just to be kind of fair on both sides here is I do think that that unification of the rules is a big deal to some people.

I don't personally feel a lot of people. Yeah, and I think it has been for a very long time. And I think that it's easy to kind of poke fun at the way that that gets romanticized because I think we are all close enough to the pro game to realize that we're not even playing the same fucking sport as these guys, right? But like I think there are Mike talked about that in the interview, like the guy who sits next to him on the airplane and you know wants to go back to the back to

Pebble Beach and say I played it the same way as As all these other guys and I use the same equipment and I can really stack up and my score is directly comparable to their score I think that's a that's a real huge deal to a lot of people So if that's a huge deal to you then like yeah, that's kind of going away And I think you have a right to be kind of pissed about that. And I think I would very much understand that anger. But I think personally speaking, it's just not something that I care about all that much. And I think it's something that, you know, the negatives of all of these distance gains

tend to outweigh the positives of how I feel about that. But, you know, Mr. Goodley cooks, you might feel differently. And if so, I would totally understand that. It is an endless web of actions that have consequences, that have actions, that have consequences, that have actions that have consequences, right? I think we've all kind of gone through our own personal journeys on what we think of the distance issue. My feelings are different than they were a year ago.

There's a point of ignorant bliss that I think I reached at some point. It was just, it was so gleeful. It was, I was glowing. I was just like, oh yeah, I'm fucking rolling back. Figure it out, guys, figure it out, figure it out. And the farther along you get in that evolution, you're kind of like, all right,

like what are the actual answers? Like what does it actually look like here? How do you solve for that? And that's when it becomes, you're kind of like, all right, like, what are the actual answers? Like, what does it actually look like here? How do you solve for that? And that's when it becomes, that's kind of like where I feel like we are right now today talking about this. And it's going to take probably a long time to dive in on all that and explain it in a way that makes sense. And it won't make sense to everyone. And definitely no one, not everyone will agree with it. And I don't even know if I agree with myself sometimes on it. But I was just, I thought a good thought exercise to kind of get this going would be for each of us to go around and explain what your stance is on distance as best as you can describe it. What would you say, you know, about your position on distance? Who wants to start? I can kick it off. I think for the last

I can let's call it a year, since I started really thinking about it, and not being like, yeah, just get rid of golf teas. That seems like a good answer. You know, like some of that, some of that stuff is awesome. Awesome. Takes out there. We're going to get you some of that today. Yeah.

Well, you know, so that we'll save that for the end, but I have been pro bifurcation for a while. And I, G.J. I think it's important what you said about like the unity stuff is, I do think that's cool about golf, but at the expense of the game kind of getting out of control. And the reason I'm pro bifurcation, I think it's just always, I feel pretty pragmatic. It just does never made sense for a gust of national to be spent at $30 million to move,

you know, T's back 50 yards. And it just feels like the game in a lot of anecdotal ways is getting too big and you know Mike Wong was just telling us that as like you know these golf courses like everybody's making these courses massive and they're trying to plan for the future so you know maybe like right this second it's not completely out of control but I still feel like Let's just let's reset things now. I you know, I'm actually shocked that they rolled it back I thought oh, let's cap it here, but I thought might gave a great answer to that as well I like I said earlier. I'm a big believer in the relative versus the absolute impact this has like when people are like all now The you know you're gonna you're gonna hurt the guys that hit it really far. It's like, no, they're still gonna hit it farther.

Like that's, I just, let's get that out of here. Like that's a horrible argument. And then they might actually get more of an advantage, right? So I think that's a stupid example. I gave my F1 example, but another thing I'll say is like, in the sports that I still play, bifurcation, since I was a kid has never bothered me. And so I'm, you know, I'm giving you like, why do I feel this way? I play Reckleague basketball right now.

I don't care if the three point line is high school, college, I play in different gyms. It doesn't really matter to me. It's almost like when you show up, it's like, oh, okay, we're playing the three point, you know, the NCAA three point line that I like, I'm probably not going to make as many, but it'll be fun when I do. And oh, we're playing the high school line tonight. Hell, yeah. Right. So it doesn't impact when I watch a college or pro basketball game like, oh man, I wish I could shoot from the NBA line. Like not really. You know, same with like baseball when I was a kid or tennis. Like, can I stop you just on one part of this though? Because I, there's a lot of analogies that fly

around about it. And this specific golf one is equipment based, right? And the basketball one would be like, if they made special shoes that let you jump a foot higher, right? Like that's the equivalent of like the golf ball going farther. Like the better analogy, I think, is baseball bats, right? Like the, the metal bats first, wood bats by for kids. Which I was, yeah, I was getting to. Yeah. Yeah.

Listen, I was trying to give you a plethora of analogies. I know. I've heard swimming. I've heard a lot of stuff. No, and I get, and Mike brought up Tom Brady and throwing 90 yard out routes, which I hadn't heard that one before, but he's right.

The football's different in different leaks. What I've done is we've done this. Maybe the football famously. But we've done this with driver length, right? There has to be, we have to be, I don't know, some of it's a little bit of common sense for me. It's like, okay, the game, like he said, the recreational game is great. The game of golf is hard enough. Heard some stuff from Harry Higgs earlier, basically like kind of the Nimby argument, or he said,

like, get off my lawn. Like, you know, and then some of it's like is is right now the time to do it. Well, I appreciate that he's not kicking the can down the road. And I think the fact that this is a, you know, a modified local rule, and it's not just like you have to do this or else is an interesting way to go about it. It almost gives a little bit of a testing period. So I appreciate that we're addressing it in some way. And I feel like bifurcation is as big of a tragedy as some feel it is. And I'm not trying to downplay that feeling. It just doesn't, I don't feel the same way. So I'm pro bifurcation and have been.

I'm going to go back a little further with my kind of stance on distance, if you will. Just done, you know, I think, I think it, if I read a lot of Twitter replies, I think people are confused as to what the issue is and I don't mean to mansplain that and I just think like the reason I think it is I think the game of golf is out of scale. I think the core issue of that that is driving that is the ball goes too far. I just I do think it goes too far, but it's really drill it down. I had to still it down to one point. It's that it's too easy to hit the ball far for the best players. Like golf is still really freaking hard for the majority of players, but the top level as play gets better and better and better, it limits the opportunity for the best players

in the world to separate themselves. I think the combination of the modern golf ball and its characteristics along with massive 460 CC driver heads is what leads like my conclusion that it's too easy to hit the ball far like you can say all you want about training track man all the science that goes into hitting it farther it's because it got permission to do it. They got permission to lean on it and wail and lean back and don't fear it going offline they're heavily incentivized to create as much speed as possible because the punishment for mishits is not severe enough. That's the bottom line for me. I'm not even saying like, I want this, but bottom line is if you used a ballata and a persimmon driver,

guys would not swing the club the same way. Like that's the path I'm going down. I don't know what the right answer is. I know they would figure out a way to hit it as far as possible, but it wouldn't be the way it is currently. And I think I as led to a homogenized game, it is led to driver wedges and it leads to so much of the test of the golf course, just getting bypassed by air. Part of like what makes golf interesting is the intricate contours and layers to the on the ground design that make it really fun and it's not just a how far can you fly at contest

Which I think golf has trended towards and turned into over the last 20 years So a lot of people have a lot of different reasons as to why they are don't care about anything I just said or are against the distance Issue but that's the core of it for me and it it's not like just, hey, you want to punish the guys that hit it the farthest. I'm like, not really. I think it's just, again, relative scale is what drives a lot of my opinion here.

Dej, what do you think? Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you guys have said. I mean, it's funny what you said. Echo chamber. Echo chamber. It's funny what you said earlier, Sally, about like, hucking them from the cheap seats and like fuck this fuck that fix it I don't care blah blah blah

It you almost kind of I feel like I've almost gone full circle in that like I started there I've learned a ton from whether it's Tour players whether it's people at the tour whether it's people at equipment companies whether it's other media whether it's People at the USGA whether like I have tried really, really hard over the last couple of years to talk to everybody I can think to talk to about this. And that has completely confused me and completely made so much like I was joking earlier with you,

Solid, like, listening to two different people on complete opposite sides of the spectrum. I'm like, man, I kind of agree with like 98% of what he just said, but I also kind of agree with 98% of what the other guy just said. And I think that like illustrates just how complex this issue is, but however, at the same time, like when you keep going around on that full circle, you get back to like, what are the universal truths of what we're actually talking about here? And that's where I'm like, well, I think the equipment goes too far.

I think the ball doesn't spin enough. I think the driver's too easy to hit. I think the game at the highest levels kind of generally being deskilled. And that's at the point when like Mike Wahn and Martin Slumberes and the USGA and the RNA are like, that's their job to step in when they see that happening and do something.

So when you talk about like, what is my position on distance? I think you talk about like what is my position on distance, I think first of all, it's my position on distance in the pro game. Like that's very, very important designation to make, right? And I think that has been made a bunch of times today. But I think it's all those things I just said. I think it's, you know, being able to hit the ball really far

is a skill that should be rewarded proportionally. I obviously nobody's gonna disagree with that, but touching on what you were saying, Sally, I think that proportions like gotten so out of whack that it's almost become a prerequisite now to like you have to swing as hard as you can or you're losing, you know, you're kind of losing distance to the field. No pun intended. I'm with you, Neil. I've always kind of been very pro bifurcation because I don't think everything I just listed off about the pro game is, you know, I don't think those ills should come at the expense of, you know, how much fun the game is to play.

And I'm certainly not getting any better at golf, no matter how far I hit it. Like it's, it's not really a recreational issue. But at the same time, I think if we tried to do a full rollback of everything, people would probably understand that golf with a smaller footprint is just as fun. I just, I guess, I'm not naive enough to think that we can explain that to everybody and have them agree. So I ran a poll on that last night on Twitter. I said, if, you know, basically the three issues with kind of, you know, rough options, if you will, are a rollback for everyone or bifurcate or don't do anything, right? And rollback for everyone, that option got 14% of the Twitter

books, which I would assume to be more of the hardcore golf fans that are following us and voting on Twitter, 14% of them wanted a actual rollback. All the fans, all of us, not in my backyard. Totally. That's right. But yeah, make the pros roll it back. It's, it's one of those things that I've said, like, you know, I've used this example before,

but like I love collecting vinyl records. And do I think that's the best way to listen to music? 100% I do, I love it. It's more, you know know connects you to the music more It's more it makes it more interesting. It's it's just generally a better experience Like do I think that it's realistic to convince everybody to only listen to music that way going forward? I really don't I don't think that's gonna that's not gonna go well Well, I just want to I want to bring back up though, so I'm you know on the record as pro bifurcation for

Logical reasons. I've always started felt logical to regulate the thing that everybody's using the ball, like kind of the same, you know, piece of equipment. Like that feels like a good place to start. I do understand that that kind of leaves the manufacturers holding the bag, the R&D, like there's a lot of complexity to this. There's a couple of things, though, so I think you touched on that I don't like about the announcement today. And one of them comes from a quote that Martin Slumber's head, I care deeply about golf

being a game of skill and maintaining that balance of skills. And I think this is a step in the right direction to making sure that it's not, you know, bombing gouge or like you said, we're bypassing everything. But I'm with you and that like I do wish that it was more about the skill of driving, not just like, like, it is that spin and that lack of penalty. The driver is the easiest club for me to hit in the bag. And I assume that that seems to be what most of the pros reach for on a regular basis. And so some of that stuff is like, I think we're, it's a step in the right direction, but

I don't know if it's solving the problem of that balance of skill or returning that balance. I think you could do it in a couple of ways, right? Guess let's say there's a problem that needs addressed. And let's say there's a formula to get there to 100% of addressing. Let's say, let's say, again, Greer disagree with this, the ball goes too far. We need to address this problem.

I would say what they've proposed addresses somewhere between 30 to 35% of the problem. Like the rolling back the ball a little bit of distance brings some bunkers back into play, bring some strategy back into play, brings more emphasis on the mid-iron game in theory back into play on it gives a little bit of chance for the top guys to separate themselves from the rest of the field, just a little bit, right? And the remain let's say the remaining part is what you're talking about, putting the risk reward back into hitting the ball far would be a bigger problem in my mind,

than just this arbitrary number that we decide on on how far the ball should go. And I think that kind of brings us to like our first misconception of the day, right? Is that I saw a lot of comments about, you know, when this was announced, like, oh, finally, shop making is coming back and the ball is going to spin more and this, that and the other thing. And I just call me like pessimistic or cynical or whatever. Like, I don't think that's what this is, right? I think what's gone. I think what's going to happen is that, you know, the people who make the title is probably one are like, they know what tour players are looking for

and they're looking for high launch and low spin and they're going to create another ball that's high launch at low spin that just doesn't fly as far, right? And I don't think that like all of a sudden they're going to be like, oh man, you're changing. And maybe I'm just not a ballistics expert and what's going on here, but I just don't think that this rolling back to 2004 distances is the same as rolling back to 1990 technology. That's absolutely not what's going on. So I wish it was candidly, but I don't think that's what's happening. And Elephant, the room here is we are sponsored by Titelist, right? We've switched over from Calaway to Titelist to start this new year. I goes without say. I hope people understand that item one A of when we

discussed began discussing sponsorship with them was separation of church state on this topic, right? I assume that we are the church and they are the state when it comes to comes to this issue, but our opinions are our own on this. I think it has been extremely helpful and enlightening to have conversations with them about the realistic nature of how all of this stuff changes, but we can all sit here and say definitively, I am speaking my opinion on this and you guys can clarify your opinions on this is like, I am speaking on behalf of what I like my priorities are engulf and as much as I would I would very much encourage titles to continue to pay us their bottom line is not my my biggest priority in this. It is about the game that I love that I want to see develop in the best possible way. That's where 99.9% of my interests are on this. I don't know if you guys have anything you want to add or clarify on that. I would just say it's been educational talking to them about it for sure.

I brought up in a meeting with a titleist like, oh, you know, the game's already bifurcated. Like you go into a tour truck and they're playing Frankenstein clubs and balls in honor on the market. And they were adamant with me that that is not true. And I was like, well, I can confirm that is, you know, which I agree, like for them, it's not. and I appreciate that. But I don't think it is that way with other club manufacturers. And I think there are some strike differences, and the attention and the technology that

goes into these clubs is we're not quite playing the same equipment across every manufacturer. I'm also empathetic of their perspective here. I do think they are stuck holding the back. Like the expense to the manufacturers is retooling and R&D and basically kind of nukes the whole marketing strategy of like play what the pros play. But like you said, Sally, it's like, well, I think you guys are, you know,

you're a good operation and I think you can figure it out. And I think the same competitive advantages will go into a pro ball, right? And there's still, like I thought Mike Wann had some good answers on this as well about how Mercedes and why they spend so much money on F1. Like there's still benefit to what the pros are playing because these guys are the experts on making

the best ball and golf. So clearly, I disagree based on title list's announcement today or their response to this. Like we, you know, I kind of an agreed to disagree on some of this stuff based on what I as a golf fan want to see in the pro game. I don't want a short change. The unification aspect that we've talked a lot about. I just, I do think that us sitting in this room care less about that than maybe people out there or people that have responded on Twitter. I've been surprised at the sentiment of like, you know, some 10-15 handicaps being like, no, no, it's the same thing that Rory is playing is so important to me. When we play different sets of T's, we play in our different conditions, we play such an entirely different game already. I'd say 0.01%

of any of the golf all of us play listening to this is like trying to imitate the pro game in some way. Like every now and then you get a chance to go play Pebble Beach and maybe you want to go play the back tees and maybe you want to play to the US Open conditions and simulate everything those guys just went through. But I think we're talking about like the 99.9% of golf in this. And that's kind of where a little bit of my issue with what came out today is, and I we tried, I tried to ask this to Mike, it's like, I don't really know what this accomplishes other than, again, very simply like making the pros hit a little bit like, yeah, a lot less far. I don't know if that really addresses a lot much, what percent of the issues of

golf and sustainability that are presented here other addresses a lot much. What percent of the issues of golf and sustainability that are presented here other than a few courses? Can you guys help me with that? No, I think that's fair. I mean, I think the sustainability aspect of it is the strongest case that the rollback stuff probably has, right? It's very real.

And I don't, I'm sorry, interrupt you, but it gets brushed by by anybody that's anti-rollback of just like the cost of adding teas, going backwards, and maintaining all of that turf, and buying real estate is real. Like that's not nothing, and it gets glance pass. It's always brought up by people that are in favor of it, and people that manage golf courses,

but I've never heard a good response to that, other than just like to brush past it and say, well, but. Well, and that's where I think that I would feel a lot more for, you know, I, this is where I just don't have like enough of the numbers and research and all that stuff in front of me, but like I would feel a lot more for the Jacks Beach munis and the, you know, brown deer parks of the world. If they were constantly adding teas and trying to stretch things out and all of those things,

which I don't, I just don't know that they totally are, right? I think the game is probably being descilled at all of those places because me and you and you are hitting the ball farther and we have shorter clubs in and all of that stuff that we're hitting it further offline is another issue. But like I think that's kind of what's happening

at the local level. I don't know that that money is really being spent to really, really increase the footprint because just because I don't know like how realistic that is, I think there's probably a lot of really, really bad money that's been spent around stretching out golf courses because everybody thinks that they're going to host a US open or everybody thinks they're going to host a US open qualifier or all of those things, which is, you know, you can certainly debate like whether those places should be spending that money in the first place. I think it's also very interesting that like the people who are building the Chambers

Bays and Aaron Hills and all of these like gigantic, you know, golf courses for US opens, you certainly don't have to be doing that. And I don't think it's a matter of, know $100,000 here here there or one way or the other as to like whether or not they're able to do that right like the people who are hosting tour events are Fucking desperate to host tour events and they're gonna spend whatever they need to spend in order to do it I don't want to conflate that with you know the munis of the world and All those places, but I am with you solid that like of the world and all those places. But I am with you, Solid, that like philosophically, if we're looking to shrink the footprint of the game,

like a full rollback for everybody, would have made a lot more sense in this clearly is not that. So it is a little bit of a talking out of both sides of your mouth to me. At the same time, I do kind of respect the USGA's path forward and how they've kind of decided to map out their championships on much bigger time frames and go much more to a US open rota and like we know that we're going to marry and we know that we're going to Oakmont. We know we're going

to Shinnocock. We know we're going to Pebble. We know we're going to Pinehurst because I think that stops other places from like, oh man, if I just build 18 new T boxes, like maybe I can host the US Open, it's like, well, no, dude, they're all spoken for. You're, you're, that's not going to happen. Like, they're not coming back to Aaron Hills. Like, that, look at the fucking schedule. Like, that's just not, that's not going to happen.

And so in a way, I think it's, it's probably going to stop a lot of places from making stupid mistakes. But at the same time, it's not, you know, they're not waving a magic wand and like making all the golf sustainability issues go away or nearly as many as like they probably could. So I don't know, it's a long, rambling answer. Well, I think there's something to, there's a lot of different like scales you could put this all on, right? And let's, let's pretend there's a scale that is like enjoyability of watching professional

golf on one end and enjoyability of everyone that plays recreational golf on the other, right? And like the higher, I would definitely say technology has helped a lot of people, myself included, enjoy recreational golf more, right? I mean, I think the majority of people would say that, right? Hitting it farther is fun, hitting it straighter

is fun, shooting lower scores is fun. And but if you take that, I think there's an argument to be made on the other side of that, though, too. If you want to shrink the ballpark, you would also shoot better scores and probably, I want to hear that. I do, but I think like the majority of people are thinking along that line, right? If I don't want to lose the technology I have, it's helped me enjoy the game. Golf is thriving, don't mess with recreational golf. I buy all that, right?

But if you keep pushing that scale up, the guys that are investing the most time and effort into the best technology are going to really start to separate themselves, right? And there's no, there's no such thing as perfect golf. But each year that comes along, where technology evolves a little bit more, we get closer and closer to gaining towards quote unquote, perfect golf, right? Again, we're never going to get there. That's there's no such thing. But it gets better and better and better to the point where the gains are so minimal that you're going to end up with a level of parity and a homogenized product at the very top that I think we're already in, right? So basically, how much importance do you want to put into? Does it really matter to most golfers, these intricate little details

we're talking about? Like, I think Ram should be hitting more eight irons and the greens than wedges, right? Not a lot of people at the players were talking about like I think Ram should be hitting more eight irons and the greens than wedges, right? Not a lot of people at the players were talking about that when I was there a couple of weeks ago. Not a lot of casual golf fans care much at all about what

we're talking about here. I still think they don't know the distance difference to their eye between a three 20 drive and a 300 yard drive. So I'm I'm in on like rolling this back and I think the entertainment aspect of that

can filter down in ways that they're probably not thinking of. But the reality is golf has always been unified on this and it has seen such great gains on the recreational side that like it has put the governing bodies and the event organizers in a really tricky spot of figuring out what level the pro game is supposed to be played on. That's the part maybe I'm more sympathetic to than I was two years ago of I still think it does go too far. I just like finding that right answer. Holy shit. Is it like 10x more complicated than I probably thought it was? I think the beauty of the unification stuff that I was going to make a counter argument to my

feelings on bifurcation is just the simplicity of it. And it almost sounds so simple, but then you start to dig into it. And I don't think it's that simple, right? With just how much, you know, with all the things we've already talked about. And I agree with you on the sustainability piece of this of like, ah, this is a little bit of like, you know, we're using the sustainability thing as a, maybe to market this change. But we've talked about this in the past with like Augusta National being so green and that being the model for American golf of like, oh, you know, a casual fan thinks like, oh, that course isn't green enough,

right? I think there's something to be said for the US GA saying like, you know what, we don't need these courses to be like 8,000 yards, right? Yeah, it might only impact like where we go with our tournaments, but that kind of is a little bit symbolic to me. And I appreciate it. And I said something in the press conference earlier, which I was like, I appreciate this kind of leadership. He said not doing something about distance is borderline irresponsible.

And you know, passing the book to the next generation is not the answer. And so it's like, you know what? I appreciate that like, yo, he's not, he's gonna address this in the best way that they have come up with. And so I like you said earlier, one solution leads to some unintended consequences.

I guess, well, you know, there's a, there's gonna be a reaction period here for the next six months. But I do appreciate that this is a tough problem that they're trying, finally trying to address. And I want to call that out as like two thumbs up. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think it's solid to your point. Like I, I, I totally agree and sympathize with the fact that nobody at the players is talking about this and really like you kept, you know, you keep bringing it up. But was it the golf talk? I think it was the Dylan DeChair golf.com story had a great kicker quote that was

It's kind of like I forget what it was exactly But like essentially the the tour pros don't want this TV doesn't want this the fans doesn't don't want this like who is this actually for and I think that's like That's the strongest argument on the other side of defense And it's one that is very very very very real and you're gonna hear it a lot from the equipment companies and from the PJ tour and from a lot of people over the next five months. But at the same time, all those people at the players that you're over here in conversations about aren't in charge of fucking making rules for the next 40 years of the game. Like they haven't done all the studies that Thomas Pagel and the boys have done over there. And it's like I'm, I sound like a dork.

I know. But like the USGA has been a huge, a huge, a huge punching, a huge punching bag for a long time now, really since, I mean, going back more than a decade now, but like that, this is the job that they are tasked with. Like this is what their role in the game is supposed to be is doing exactly stuff like this and the RNA as well. But like, you know, obviously, we're, we're US centric over here. But like, you know, obviously we're, we're US

centric over here. But like, if they're not looking out for this exact kind of stuff, like nobody is. And one point I do want to make, I know it's not apples to apples, but we've spent approximately 18 hours on this podcast over the last year talking about how the PJ tour should have been more proactive and how it's so hard to change things when everything's going well. And they should have been more proactive and how it's so hard to change things when everything's going well, and they should have changed their structure and they should have really kept, you know, kept their walls up and made changes that would have kept guys from jumping to a rival tour, and they didn't do that. And I think that's what the opposite looks like is when you just are driving a hundred miles an hour with your blindfold on, saying like, ah, you know, hopefully there's

not a bend in the road because everything's going fucking awesome right now. And I think the USGA has the wherewithal and is taking their role seriously in saying like that's, that's not our job. Like our job is to do the really hard stuff and the really unpopular stuff and they're going to take a lot of shit. And there's going to be a lot of people that don't get it. And there's going to be a lot of people that disagree both in good faith and bad faith, but that's kind of the job that they signed up for. So I'm happy they're out there doing it. And it's very, very, very worth noting, God, this has been easier 20 years ago. Like before we got to the 99% of the problems of what needs to be like unwound here is because it has taken this long to get to this point.

And if things would have been curved and stopped in the early 2000s, it wouldn't be nearly as difficult as this is going to be. I have a weird analogy that I thought of, Neil, you like this, because you like analogies. But hell yeah, I was playing golf. I was going to try to keep the location quiet just in case so I didn't offend anybody. But I was playing golf at Sawgrass Country Club earlier this week. And it's a community that was built, I think in the seven, the golf course was built in the 70s.

The community around it was probably built 70s, 80s, 90s, and everything. It's on unbelievable land, some of the most valuable land on the northeastern seaboard of Florida. And it's a relatively dated community, relatively dated golf course that house by house is getting fully renovated and looks incredibly,

a house that'll pop up that's awesome and one that'll be right next to it that's like, yeah, not so much. And I was thinking about this, it was like, I was thinking about through the prism of the PGA tour of, look, is it like, would if this started right now, would this look entirely different

than it currently does? Yes, but this is what it looks like when change happens to something that's already in motion, piece by piece by piece, right? It just, it has a lot of remnants of what has always been there and it is not an overnight change because now the problems to solve overnight

are so freaking expensive that you can't remodel every single house out there. There's stakeholders, right? The homeowners are stakeholders in this community now and it can't just change overnight. And I know that's not a perfect analogy, but that just kind of, that one stuck with me a little bit of like that's kind of what changing an environment at the PGA tour is like and totally separate in governing body ruling land. That's kind of what this is like.

And I think it speaks to, you know, I know Mike kind of alluded to this too, but it speaks to the difference between not liking what was proposed and like wanting nothing done, right? Like it's kind of, it's very much like, okay, if everybody agrees that this might be an issue in like 20 years, then the answer is not to do nothing. Like the answer, like you might pick Knits at what it looks like now, solid, to your point. You might be a little upset, I wish they would have done this differently.

I wish it would have done this differently, but at least they're doing something, right? It's kind of where I walk away from today. I guess the flip side of that would be like, you know, the only worse than no deal is a bad deal. But I also appreciated what Mike said, you know, the only worse than no deal is a bad deal. But I, I, what I also appreciated what Mike said, you know, on, to us earlier was, uh, some people were like, well, why do you have to take the test at 127? Like, why is it? This is a pretty drastic change. Why are we rolling back? And he's like, because these guys are so good,

they're going to continue to figure out ways to hit the ball farther. Like, they're going to be conforming with this ball. And they're going to get stronger. Like they're gonna be conforming with this ball and they're gonna get stronger and they're gonna figure out more like hacks to physics or whatever. So that distance is still gonna gain. So we'll probably have to revisit it, but his goal was to do it in 15 or 20 years and not five. And I appreciate that.

I think it's like, let's make him, you know, he's trying to make a meaningful change here. It makes it more sustainable for, you know, so we don't have to have this conversation every year or like every five years. And it's worth noting, this is not about punishing the highest swing speeds. It's still going to all be relative, right? They picked a number that is higher than the average swing speed of every single current PGA Torpro.

In my mind, that's their way of saying like, hey, the balls, no one is going to hit it on average more than 320 in the air anymore, Right. That's our ceiling. That's it. Right. Unless you can average higher than 127 miles an hour off the clubhead speed at perfect optimal launch, no one's going to average 320 and carry. Now listen, there might be, you know, downhill wind and all these things that lead to somebody averaging more than 320, but like, that's going be really frickin hard to sustain. That's gonna be really difficult to achieve now. And it makes more sense for that number to be 320

than it is 340. And here's why and blah, blah, blah, but going working backwards from there. So that part I do agree with. Do I think it like fully addresses, like I said in the beginning, all the aspects of this, absolutely not. And I don't think they're trying to.

I don't think they're ignorant to that at all. I mean, just talking with Mike about the spin and things like that, it sounds like that's maybe to be dealt with in the future as well. It was a lot more complicated than I anticipated. Yeah. With that, yeah, you can change your hybrids, your fiberwoods. And I think in that way, it's like there is some compromise with manufacturers of like that's, you know, this is, it could be worse., it could be worse. Like, it could be worse. And but also like, it sucks for them.

I get it, but it's like, we, I don't think a reset of this stuff is a bad thing. That's, that's kind of where I've landed for now. Should we get to what happens next? Sure, what happens next? So this is going to now be open for comment as we've said a couple of times for the next five months. I'm sure the PJ tour is going to weigh in. The PJ of America is going to now be open for comment as we've said a couple of times for the next five months.

I'm sure the PJ tour is going to weigh in the PJ of America is going to weigh in. Of course, the masters is going to weigh in a bunch of tour players are going to say a bunch of probably stupid stuff. Can I read to you what the tour what the tour has weighed in? Can I read today? They said we continue to work closely with the USGA and R and the RNA on a range of initiatives, including the topic of distance. Regarding the notice to manufacturers announced today, we will continue our own extensive independent

analysis of the topic and we'll collaborate with the USGA and the RNA along with our membership and industry partners to evaluate and provide feedback on this proposal. The tour remains committed to ensuring any future solutions identified benefit the game as a whole without negatively impacting the tour its players or our fans enjoyment of our sport. You want to read into that? Yes. So a couple wrinkles here. So difference between a model local rule and a flat out rule change is that basically tournament organizers have the option to either implement them or or not implement them. Neil, I don't know if you want to do this now, but I know we got a list of other model local rules that are probably much less serious than this.

But let me hit that. I think there was Thomas Pagel from the USG had a good quote. He said quote, bifurcation is a word that causes anxiety. You can call it bifurcation, but I think we are giving the game options. If you conduct elite level events, you now have a tool to deal with elite level distance by 2026. So what I think that's a good way to think about it. And now, but that leaves the USGA and the RNA open a little bit to, you know, making them so like losing some credibility, some power. I mean, and then Mike was explaining

like, well, it'd be like, if it was in a former job, he would try to get these guys on board with it before they announce it. It's just he can't do that. So it's an interesting conundrum there of like, you lay the gauntlet down, all these other power brokers say, you know, give you the double middle birds and you go on your way. So it'll, the next six to nine months will be interesting. I do want to give you a list though, because I got deep in the weeds on this is the first I'm hearing of model local rules. And I was like, Oh, what other local rules are there? You guys may have heard of some of these restriction, restricting use of green reading materials is a recent one.

So one ball rule, of course, prohibiting use of distance measuring devices, prohibiting use of motorized transportation, in course OB, drop zones, lift clean and place, preferred lives, preferred lives. MRF 10 is animal relief, including holes, dung, and hoof damage. We've had some of that on, on on a horse sauce, which is great. F23 is a hot button topic right now. That is temporary, immovable objects, which I would argue has had changes to program in a drastic way compared to how amateurs play a course like Pebble Beach. And you have. And I will continue to ride for that. I actually didn't get a chance to ask Mike what he thought

about that. But that's about where we get it back on the horn. There that. I actually didn't get a chance to ask Mike what he thought about that. But that's a bummer. We can get it back on the horn. There's a few I didn't know about that I thought we're interesting. MLR 11 ball deflected by power lines. Apparently, that's a power lines. Yeah, replay. Like I did. You can replay it.

Just no, no harm. No, no, if you ever have power lines go across, you got to aim for, basically got to aim for them because that's, that's a rare chance that you get to to replay a shot. Yeah, we're working. Yeah. When we played that one course with the power lines going down the middle of the fairway, I that's interesting. Love another guy. MLR 9.2 relief from tree roots in the fairway. Didn't know that was a local rule. That that would probably come in handy on strapped because we we played on strapped where that has come into play. And

indeed, I know you're going to like this one, MLR F15 mushrooms on the putting green. You got a mushroom growing out of putting green. You do get relief from that without a penalty, which is good to know. What about those gas pockets that we found in Tallahassee? I couldn't find anything on sinkholes. Unmarked sinkholes. I don't know. I have to dig deeper into the rulebook.

But all that to say, there's over 80 different MLRs. And a lot of them are used weekly on the tour to kind of change the way that game is played versus how we play it. I think cards is a good example. Range finders is a good example. Range finders is a good example. So like sometimes I think the unification thing is like, well, if you start to dig into it, there's a lot of subtle differences that we as amateurs get a ton of value out of from an equipment standpoint that the pros aren't using. And we we almost forget about it pretty quickly. And I also

will get back to the PJ tour in a second here, but like I would just maybe not immediately right at first as the balls are rolling out for the high level players. But like if they're looking, you know, you heard Mike talk about like eventually this would be in the US junior eventually, it'll be in college golf. Like, Neil, if you want to play the MLR ball, I don't see how that's not going to end up eventually being like pretty accessible to you, right? So if you still want to play what the highest level players play, like be my guest, man, like go ahead. I'm sure you'll be able to go into a Dick sporting goods and buy an MLR ball. But I don't know that anybody has that, you know, crystal ball quite.

I got an idea for you, Neil. Like you have to go patent trademark. You were the one, we all saw the video. Probe tip, you came up with the Probe tip. You came up with that. If they try to use that, you need to fight them on that. OK, that is your IP right there. So all of this is a long way of saying essentially now the, the, it's pretty clear. It was very black and white.

One word answer will the US open and the open championship adopt this local rule, you know, if it goes forward and it was very obviously yes. But now we wait to see like the masters has a choice of whether or not they're going to adopt this ball. PJ championship has a has a choice. And then all PJ tour events have a choice of whether they're going to adopt this ball. And now it kind of becomes a very, very, very interesting power dynamic between the top players on the PGA tour and the USGA and the R&A. And I can't hardly don't know how that's going to go. I can certainly offer my guesses, but what do you guys think? Well, I think based on just some rumors flying around, like I asked Mike for the,

the temperature and I am sensitive to the fact that he, this is the beginning of the process, right? We're all kind of getting the information at the same time, although I'm sure that there's been some conversations going on and whatnot, but temperature in the room as I understand it would be that Augusta is on board for this. Obviously the RNA and USGA are on board. And the PGA tour and PGA of America potentially needs some more convincing.

That is how I understand it to be. That, and I feel obligated to kind of mention that because I think that's driving a little bit of my apprehension around, or lack of excitement around this going on, whereas if it's just the returnements that end up adjusting this, it's going to be a lot harder to get really excited about it or think it's going to make much of a difference. And that's where I almost wonder if it turns into a game of chicken, right? If up until the absolute last minute, the PJ tour is saying, don't do it. We are not with you.

We are not with you. We are not with you. And the USJA on January or, you know, whatever, August 15th or 18th or whatever the, whatever the comment period ends says like, nope, we're, we're fucking doing it. Like are, are they, are they going to swerve at the last minute and say, all right, if, if all PJ tour events are out, then we're not going to go ahead with this. Or are they going to say, we told you guys we were doing it? And we're going to do it. Yeah. I don't know which of those is more captivating. But it's, I don't know if, as a fan, even if I have, I got, I would have to think this through

a little more, but let's say three of the four majors, well, let's just make it easy. We'll say four of the four. Let's say the PGA of America jumps on board. So you got the four majors have this, this new ball in play and the PGA tour has whatever, you know, the current conforming balls in play. The players like, I don't know as a fan, if it would impact my viewing, because they're going to set the course up

for the new ball in proportion. In proportion, right? So I don't know if the game would look dramatically different for me. Like you've said, I mean, when the weather's 40 degrees versus 75, these guys figured out pretty quick like how to control their golf ball, what club to hit.

You know, so it's almost kind of an interesting thing of like, okay, who changes balls the best, going into the masters, like impacting just like, it's an interesting, that's gonna be it. Like I don't know if that's a game, what am I trying to say is, I don't know if that is a deal breaker, if the PGA torque doesn't jump on board and the majors are.

But I think that's going to be a messier world than what you just laid out. Like the PGA tour essentially like they like loan out their players to other events and like the Augusta, the USGA, RNA, and PGA of America make a ton of money on the backs of the professional golfers. Right? So that all seems to work overall in conjunction pretty well. As of right now, though, there's rumblings all the time about, you know, US open funding, the entire USG operation and things like that to the point where it's like, it did you made a great analogy kind of privately about like, it's like government versus privatization, right?

Is like a huge part of this conversation. I'm wondering if you could maybe tell that a little better than I could. Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of, that's kind of right what it is. I think there's a lot of people who look at, you know, I think this all comes down to like what you think the USGA and the RNAs role in the game is. And if you think that they're there to be the governors of what's going on, then this kind of thing should be pretty non-negotiable, right? It's not like the government comes out and says, like, hey, we want to change the speed limit

and then Haliburton says, like, well, we don't think that's a good idea. So we're not going to do that. We're just not going to listen. We're going to just speed whenever we want. I know there's plenty of instances where private corporations have plenty of instances where, you know, private corporations have, have plenty of influence over, over policymaking. That's a podcast for another

day. Listen to the trap draw for, for a debrief on those types of topics. But I just think it's really interesting if we get to a point where the governing bodies of the game of golf say, this is what, this is where we're going. And the PJ tour or the game of golf say this is what this is where we're going and the PJ tour or the NCAA or any other kind of big organizing body says like nah, we're good thanks because that's kind of breaking you know breaking from the people who are supposed to be governing and kind of plotting the direction so I think Saw your spot on with some of the anti-USGA animosity that you're going to

feel from players. And I think some of them might just be as simple as like, yeah, I didn't really read it, but like I'm good on the USGA. Like no, thanks. You guys don't know what you're doing. There's going to be plenty of wire, these eight handicaps, 10 handicaps, making rules for the best players in the world. Go the rough up. Yeah, there's going to be plenty of that, which is obviously always cartoonishly stupid. But I don't know, man, I just think it's, I don't know how it's going to go. I think my gut would be, I don't see a world in which the PJ Tour doesn't follow suit.

I think they would like claw and scratch their way up until the finish line of like, don't do this, don't do this, don't follow suit. I think they would like claw and scratch their way up until the finish line of like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And that's both because I think the PJ tour makes a lot of money from endemic companies. And I think that obviously the players make a lot of money from endemic companies. And they are going to protect those interests, which is understandable. But at the end of the day, I just don't see a world where in 2026, we say, well, we play this golf ball on this day at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. And then when we get to the biggest tournaments of the year, we play a completely different golf ball. I just really don't see that happening.

And I don't think it should. I root for the, you know, I'd like the powers that beat us stick together on something like this. I guess point I was making is I don't think it's a deal breaker because I do think the majors have all the leverage and this comes from the PGA live conversation. Right. Of like all you're hearing on the live side and and and both is like oh well now all that matters is the majors where all the players get to play together. Well these guys still are going to want to win those tournaments. So they're going to be like, all right, I'll play whatever ball you tell me to if I have a chance to win a US Open. Right. Because all you mentioned, uh, core setup stuff and I know you're joking, but like they

grow the rough up stuff, which I think is interesting. And I think it's a very natural, uh, solution point for a lot of people to get to. I thought again, we keep shouting out Thomas Pagel is, I forget his, his actual title at the USGA, but it's kind of been Wands, Bright Hand Man, it seems in devising a lot of this research and rules, changes and proposals and stuff. And I thought he made a really good point. He's governance officer, his title,

chief governance officer. I thought he made a good point too. I know it's fairly obvious, but about, you know, when you're trying to have one unifying set of rules or even one unifying MLR in this instance, like you have to, you can't really ignore the fact that Scotland and Akron and Japan and Miami and Buenos Aires and, you know,

all of these places are like vastly different places and you can't just be like oh the USGAs position is to grow the rough or to have firmer greens or to have more trees or to have more bunkers or whatever like that that's just not how it works man that can maybe work on like a One-off basis right and you might say like on the whole at the US Open, we are gonna have thicker rough. And I guess, you know, when you're really only going to Oakmont and Pebble and Chinacock and some of those places like that,

that might make sense. Doesn't really make sense of Pinehurst, but that's neither here nor there. But it's way different when you're trying to also bring in like, hey man, they're also hitting it way too far at the Latin America Amateur Championship. They're also hitting it way too far at the Latin America amateur championship. They're also hitting it way too far at the Thunderbird Intercollegiate.

They're also hitting it way too far at the Asia Pacific Am. Like all of these things are... Just grows rough up. Yeah, yeah. Right, ah, fuck, I didn't think about that. Which also just... I'll see the rest of my time.

Doesn't address the problem. Like it's not the... And that's a... Why does it not address the problem? Well, because if you grow the rough up that eliminates shot making ability out of or a greatly reduces shot making ability out of the rough, then it becomes a contest of who can get it closest to the whole in the rough and hit wedges out in the guys with the highest speeds can get through the rough,

the fastest. And it is, it exacerbates the difference between the longest hitters and the shortest hitters. And it makes it less about the accuracy, because everybody's gonna be in the rough if you make the fairways as narrow as you're talking about. And it just has this horrible, if you go watch Wingfoot and tell me if like, growing the rough up addresses any issue. And they have trees out at Wingfoot as well.

How did that go? Bryson with his protein shakes, one of the US Open by six shots. Like, it's not as simple as Web Simpson wants to try to make it. It's right. Which some people might enjoy that. Like, that's fine. That type of golf.

And I'm, I just, you know, I think it makes golf more one-dimensional. It's almost counterintuitive, but I agree with you there, Sully. And what's the unifying factor around the world? The golf ball. Yeah, exactly. And I'll say to that, Neil, it's like, with the current structure of how things are gone, like, maybe it makes sense, like, make it almost unplayable out of certain spots. Like, all right, you have to get penalized in some way for hitting it over here.

But that's mostly because of how far the ball goes and how hard it is to challenge guys currently, right? If you go, like, if you, you can make St. Andrews really challenging, if the ball doesn't go real as far with through contouring, adding you add in all these different obstacles that are supposed to be in the way of these guys bunkers and things you got to avoid trying to get the ball out of the air all these different tasks that are supposed to be a part of the test of golf get bypass when you can bomb it to the green, balls at spin as much as these do, make the wedge parts a bit really easy. You can't hide pins from these guys. Like go, we have already recorded a 1995 majors podcast, which has gotten delayed because the emergency probably I'd do a couple of weeks, whatever.

Go watch the 95 US Open at Chinatown. It's like get an understanding of what a different style of golf looks like. And if you watch that and you're like, do this boring to me, I'd rather. I want to bomb a wedge at make birdies. Who doesn't want to watch birdies? It's like, I'm not going to argue with you if you really like that. But I think that can get rather boring

on repeat. And that's like where we're headed, and it's only going to get worse if something doesn't change here here. Echo chamber, guys. Come on. You're supposed to fight with me on some of this. I wish I could. Honestly, I love fighting with you. I just, you know, it's kind of... It's Martin's Lumber's called Course Setup or Red Herring today, which I greatly appreciated. You know, that's obviously not the first time he's heard something about Course Setup

being an answer to a question. So... Well, it's also just not as simple as, you know, I would commend like what the PJ of America has done, I haven't been down there yet, but what they've done with the Frisco Complex, right? And like that is a brand new golf course that is meant to host big dick events and big, big bold professional golf solid by all accounts and from the video we did on it. I mean, it looks like it's a lot of the course setup stuff

that that we like, you know, and it's certainly not thick rough and tall trees and all that stuff. It's it's firm and fast and wide and tough contouring and tough pin locations and and all of those things and and in frisco texas like that's a, you know, kind of a perfect like checks all the boxes, right? There's tons of space, conditions are right. You can make it firm, you can do the setup stuff that you want to do, but like how are you going to do that in at the memorial when it's going to rain in May, every freaking year, and it's going to be soft, and Geiser is going to turn it into, you know, a dartboard. How are you going to do that at all the like it's just really hard, man, to find a course that both has like strategic interest and isn't just driver wedge and isn't

just, you know, hit it right at the pin dartboard contest and also has room for hospitality as the PJ tour creates designated events and is trying to turn these into more of circuses and festivals and bigger, bigger, bigger events. Like it just becomes like, like it's a smaller version of our rider cup problem, right? Where it's every two years, every four years in the US, we have the conversation of like, man, why don't they have the rider cup at band and dunes? Like that would be awesome. It's like, well, that's, there's 500 reasons why that's not realistic from a hospitality

standpoint, from a commercial standpoint for like the end of the day, it still is a lot of these events we're talking about are still like big money making events. And there's a lot that comes with that too. You can't just, they don't play, you know, TPC whatever in Memphis because it's the best golf course in America. They play it because it's like the home of FedEx.

Like there's just realities here that you got to deal with. And course design is not quite as easy as like waving a magic wand. And I'll say this, even if you sitting here listening to this, think you don't care about how far the golf ball goes, you do. And I'll run you through a quick test here that will prove that, right? You have a 470 yard golf hole. Let's just take this example. We can, would you guys, would it make sense? If you wailed on a drive and hit it great, would it make sense for that ball to go 450 yards?

That would not make sense. Is this a qualifying question? Part four or part five? That's a part three. If you wailed on it and hit it great, would it make sense for the ball to go 50 yards? No, so that would not make sense. So inherently, you do agree that there is an appropriate distance the ball should go for it to for the game to make sense for the scale of the game to make sense, right? And I think the people that are pro that think the ball goes too far are just saying like, hey, we are two, we are too close to 450 on that. We're closer to the than we should be, right?

For the scale of this to make sense, right? The 470 art holes probably designed for you to hit it into a certain part of area of the golf course, and then the next test is designed for you to hit it from around this range into this green. The green is probably designed to challenge a 170 yard shot better than it can, 120 yard shot. And that's what the issue is. It's dumbed down. It's bypassing so much of that test, and it has made the scale of the game not make sense. Like there's already governance in place to limit how far the ball goes. We're just sliding that back a little bit. There should not be as nearly as a drastic of a change as people think

it is. Now the stakeholders, it is extremely drastic. Like a question that still has to be answers, like who the hell makes these golf balls and makes this equipment and how's all that going to work? How's it going to marketed? And what events are gonna do it? Still huge outlying questions, but for most golf fans, this should be pretty simple, I think. I really do think so. Well, Neil, you were joking about, is it a part four or part five?

And look at what was that Marion when they had the 295-yard part three and everybody freaked out? Like that's another good example of it. What's the problem? You can all hit it 295 like what it's a one-shotter like it's all, you know Who says that? other than just like the the eye test basically of like well, that's just not what it feels like it should be like it That can't go only one way right like that's got it. It's got to kind of go both ways. I saw a good comment online It's like man these guys are able to

These pros are able to adjust when they're hitting the ball 20 yards farther, but they can't adjust when they're gonna hit at 20 yards shorter. Yeah. Yeah. Justin only goes one way. Like that was Nick McKay. That's always, he's always always got good stuff. We'll get a couple questions in here and then I know it's time to probably wrap up, but Ian Gordo 18, what profile of player benefits the most from this? The guys that hit it the farthest. I agree. Because they're still going to be hitting shorter irons into greens.

The player that gets hurt is probably the middle class, if you want to call it that, who's going to be having to hit six, seven, eight, or say seven, six, five iron in. Kyle Porter had a good tweet on this. I'm not going to bore people with the strokes gained analysis But basically like if you take ramen ZJ's drives and then you scale them both back 10% and you put them You know now you put ramen 135 and ZJ at 180 instead of 150 Basically that gap expected strokes to hold out widens for rom going back farther So like top players should want this, which

listen, maybe top players have gotten too much of what they wanted over the over the recent weeks. This might cause more of a divide, but it may not sound like a lot, but like over 72 holes, that's going to add up a little bit. And if I'm the, if I'm the games like top players, like I'm getting more of a chance to showcase my skills, if we don't bypass so much more of the golf course by air. Yeah. I think we also, back to Thomas Pagels quote, it gives the setup team optionality too. I was like, yeah, like that stroke-skeying stuff right now, that's what it looks like.

But now they can move some tease up, right? Or move them back. It's not just, like you go to a PGA Tour event, you go to a media day for the US Open, and you look back and 50 yards back there, like by the fence is where they're gonna be TN off from. And it's like, okay, there's just no more room.

It's also, we're kind of getting all of our rants out here at the end of the day, into this pod. But like, I reject the notion that hitting it as far as possible makes the game as exciting as possible. I'd say like all the balls going really far, kind of just makes it kind of, makes you kind of numb to it going really far. The most exciting golf tournaments don't happen like in Colorado. Like it's not that much more exciting to watch balls go 400 yards at altitude.

Really? You must have pulled it back. Chipotle spec was maybe an exception. That place was wild for a lot of different reasons. But once it once a year, right, The beauty of it is when it's unique. Like I always think back to Bryson at Bay Hill, it was like, yo, that was sick. Like he's going for the green there,

but when all these college kids start going for it in 10 years, it's like, yeah, well now it's kind of stupid. I was gonna use the same example, Neil, and like it's the same as kind of what we were talking about on the podcast this Sunday, but like it's all relative to where you draw the line, right? Like the Bryson thing, it wasn't interesting because he was hitting it specifically 385 yards. It was interesting because he was the only guy that was hitting it 385 yards. And like once you skew that like once you draw the line in a different place, it stays

interesting. So like as far as the who does this benefit and what's going to change and like it's going to be almost imperceptible if they do it right right like the only big issues would be if a manufacturer can't crack the code on how to make the ball go shorter and they you have a bunch of guys freaking out trying to do who can't hit their ball properly and all that stuff. But based on the window that they have, like basically giving them what, three years almost. Yeah. Like that feels like the normal product cycle to where they're gonna work out the kinks, and it's gonna be fine.

Like I don't know. It, I'm not saying it's much ado about, about, you know, thing, but it is worth, it'll be expensive. Yeah. And that, and there's a specific, somebody's got to say, specific stakeholders here that are bearing that, that cost and that cost.

And that sucks, right? I do get that, but at the same time, I think, you know, we spent two hours explaining why we think that that should be. Can we talk about the costus idea? Yeah, as I say, what's the best idea you guys have heard so far? Because I know what mine is. Please, do you have it pulled up? Yeah, Peter Costas said, I know this sounds simplistic,

but just required drivers in three words. That was not out simplistic. Sounds super complex. Just required drivers and three woods to quote face collapse or have a breakable part that breaks becoming non-conforming. Uh, when the clubhead hits the ball at more than a, they pick a number, more than 125 miles an hour, no bifurcation, just a cap on max clubhead speed. 125 miles an hour. No bifurcation, just a cap on max club head speed. Ace clubs. So in on this idea, like I love the thought of like, all right, yeah, if you break 125 with this one club, that's out. Like you may pack five drivers in a, in your bag, you only get to another MLR, not being able to use a damage club. True. But yeah, just a lot of, and not to, not to, you know, single him out or pick on him,

but listen, that's when you start throwing out face collapse and limiting club head speed and all that stuff is like, that's provocative, provocative glowing brain shit. We were talking about our slack today. If, you know, here's, here's Rory on on 18 at Augusta. He's really on 17 and Augusta. It would be a better example. He's, you know, he's one back. He's going to really go after this one. He's going to try to hit it 123, but he cannot hit it 125 because he doesn't want to suffer that devastating face collapse and have to hit three wood on, on 18 T. Just really sick. Guys go around with five drivers, you know, just just collapsing faces and pull it

into one. I think he's that he's a he's a he's collapsed pace. That's right. Stroke's gained face collapse. But I think it does, it does, if we're going to bend over backwards or squint or or whatever to try to make a point here, I think it it is there is something interesting about that point in that like the last thing I would want is punishing club head speed. Like you do not want to punish like guys who are athletic and guys who have figured out how to swing it faster because that's a skill, right? Like you just got to, you got to keep it within proportions, man. I got to call out our guy Danny Woodhead. He had to take that essentially said, what if in football or baseball, you weren't allowed to use your speed or it just didn't matter?

That is not what's happening here. That is absolutely cool. That's not it. That's not what's happening here at all. It is the scale at which that you're actually getting rewarded more. You're getting rewarded more. It's not by much, but you're getting rewarded more for having speed now. And it's just kind of amazing.

The pretzels, people have twisted themselves in of like, you know, what if the Major League Baseball didn't allow you to hit home runs anymore? It's like, oh, that's not guys, it's not what's happening here. But it's also a good example of like, if you left it up to the fans, it would probably be 15 home runs a game.

And like, is that really what we're looking for? Like, yeah, it's probably not. Right? Yeah, I know it was sick. We'll say that. But it was sick for a little while. Anything else before we wrap? looking for like, eh, probably not. Yeah. Right? Yeah. We'll say that. But it was sick for a little while. Anything else before we wrap.

This is, I'm sure this will be the end of the distance debate, and we can kind of put this one to rest finally. Did we successfully put everyone off? Yeah. Big day, man, it's a both like, you know, perhaps nothing has changed. Perhaps everything has changed. Josh Elliott moment. And I will say like, you know, whether nothing has changed, perhaps everything has changed. Josh Elliott moment.

And I will say like, you know, whether you agree or disagree, or your feelings on bifurcation or whatever, I do want to give Martin Slumber's and Mike Wands some credit for there's just a lot, like every other aspect of like society right now feels like everybody's kicking the can down the road on a lot of things. It's easy to do. And I just think it's cool to see somebody like, no, we're not, we're gonna just,

we're gonna do our best to fix what we think is an issue and we'll fix this gene. I don't know if they have the right fix for it, but I think I think that deserves some credit. They're doing something. We're not doing anything. You know, we're talking about it. Well, that's true, I guess. We need to start being about it, Deach. That's right. You know what I'm saying. I'll play the MLR. I'll do it. We need to put the MLR. It not tell you just so you finally stop the air mailing greens. Oh, man, I can't. I was not going. I was not jumping today.

I'm not jumping today. I got some water log balls. It's going to be 42 here tomorrow morning. I was thinking about going to go playing and see how that's going to be what it feels like to play a rollback ball. So we'll be flortical though. Oh, for sure tomorrow's going to be flortical. For sure. So thank you, everyone, for tuning in. I encourage people to open their minds. I know people think we're extremely close minded about this, but I would tend to disagree with that considering all the private conversations we've had over the last couple of years and basically everything we just laid out to you. But this was truly a, you're not going to please everyone with this discussion

no matter what happened and guessing if you hated it, you probably have already turned it off by now anyways. But we're doing our best. We're doing our best to paint the pictures clearly as we can. I think if you hated it, sense hall of tweet. No, at Trump Carter NOU. He's waiting, he's standing by waiting for all feedback on this one. That's what he said, I can't be on the pod because I'm handling all the replies. Very sincerely,

like, my mind is, this is where I, this is how I currently feel. And I, I, that, but I don't know that's the right answer. Like my, my feelings on this topic have changed over the last two, three years. You know, it's like it, they constantly changing. So it's not like, this is not an I'm right, you're wrong situation. There's also a feeling of like, what I want being a bit of a fairy tale. That's kind of what I've grappled with more over the last couple of years than like, again,

you have to actually propose something that's gonna clear the hurdles, the very real hurdles that need to be cleared. That's like the dose of reality I've gotten. That's not coming from now being sponsored by Titles. That's just like coming from talking to Mike Wann about this directly, talking to Jay Monahan about this, talking to any other stakeholder involved in this.

It's like, yeah, dude, you live in podcasts world. We gotta make decisions here that can affect our businesses and the sport, it's a little bit more serious at this level. And I guess on that note, the only thing kind of left in the chamber for me is like, I think where my position has maybe changed, at least a little bit, is truly like nobody, nobody likes great architecture more than me, but I think I've softened just a little bit on

the fairy tale that like, if you just move the travelers to, you know, Pine Valley. Pine Valley, then like now of a sudden, 15 million people are gonna watch it. And I don't think that that's the case. Do I think over time slowly and steady, like that is gonna be a better product and there's gonna be a slow accumulation of fans

and like it will ultimately lead to a better product? I do, do I think that is like a light switch that is going to go off and, you know, do I think that is like a light switch that is going to go off. And, you know, do I think also coming out of this, do I think that like this is gonna be some huge rollback and now all of a sudden the PJ Tour schedule is gonna look a lot different? I don't.

Like I think I've just kind of been, it's a bit of a like, that's a result of us getting this far though, I think. That's what I was gonna say. It's a lot of like compromise leaves everybody feeling kind of me. And that's a little bit of what this is. But I still think that compromise is better than just not doing anything. So agree.

That's it. Here's an inspiring quote for you. Agreed. I think that's all I've got. We appreciate Mike Wahn for dialing into the show. Give us some insight. We appreciate all it's a feedback period is open. We'll take any of your feedback over the next five months.

As we mentioned at Tron Carter, NOU, he's standing by waiting for your tweets. So, and then yeah, you can buy for Kate these balls. Well, you said Kirk's a merch, please, because that was, that was the perfect up. That's good stuff. That's good stuff. Thanks for one for tuning in. We'll see you back here for Vals Bar Recap on Sunday. Cheers. Cheers.

Be the right club. Be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Better than most.