No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 692: The Great Merge

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

The golf world was rocked by a stunning announcement Tuesday morning that the PGA Tour would be forming a new "commercial entity" with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, including LIV Golf, as well as the DP World Tour. The boys fire up an emergency Live Show to discuss what details are known at this point, what the road back to the PGA Tour could look like for players who made the jump to LIV, some potential FTC-DOJ legal roadblocks, and a ton more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up live show brought to you by the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia. And there's a drive in a deep left field by Cassiano. So that's a home run and that'll make it a 40 ball game.

Solly here, Pymand is here. Hello. Hello. Really glad to be with you. What a heck of a day. TC is here. Hello TC. Hello. Can you guys explain to my wife tonight that why we're why our anniversary dinner is being postponed? I believe you could blame Mr. Monahan for that. And I believe you'll find a way to do that before tonight's show is over. Neil Schuster is here. Hello, Neil. Good being with you. It was a thrill watching TC work the phones. Fucking phones.

I need phones, baby. TC had two phones on his ear all day. Just with his sources, unbelievable. Our resident journalist was all over the tally today doing some big J journalism. Kevin Van Volk and Bergus here. Hello KVV. Hi, Sally.

I've never gotten to go on tour. So I'm so excited. The first one I get to go on might be a Neom. So thank you for that. For the record, this show is presented by our friends at High Nune. As you all know, the moment everyone has been waiting for the High Nune pool pack is back. You can grab a case, text the group. I've been passing out cases.

We had a friend come over for dinner last night. I gave him a case on the way out of the house. I'm making so many friends to thanks to my High Nune supply. They got lime, peach, and the limited edition flavors, which are both of the house. I'm making so many friends to thanks to my high noon supply. They got lime, peach, and the limited edition flavors, which are both of my favorites. Guava and Kiwi, and it's made with real vodka. Real juice has 100 calories. Gluten-free has no added sugar, and you can look for high noon on drizzly or at your local convenience or liquor store, or at highnoonspirates.com to find it near you. say enough great things about uh... the high noon sunsips especially as summer is about to kick off

guys were doubling up here because this is gonna be a popular show uh... as you can see here i'm fitted in my favorite rowback white hoodie you guys know rowback these guys understand quality there's only one way to describe rowback that is best fit best feel they are kicking off summer is the perfect time to load up on the best gear that we own their performance polls are fantastic they've got these awesome USA theme designs. You go to see me

wearing one of those in the LACC video that went up recently that our film room match that T-Cie put my ass in. T-Cie is wearing the the T- animal outfit to stunt on me yet again. The four-way stretch and moisture wicking fabric. The polos will get you through a warm summer day on the course. Their performance hoodies are the stretchiest softest hoodies in golf if you want to be comfortable and relaxed on the course. Then wear a rowback hoodie. Can't take them off. And when we do take them off, I'm usually wearing a QZIP.

I'm very sad to be hearing that the end of QZIP season here is happening here in Florida. So everywhere we go, we are seeing rowback. And with Father's Day approaching, you can use code NLU on rowback.com for generous 20% off your first order through the end of this week. That's spelled R H O B A C K dot com 20% off polos, Q Zips hoodies and more with code NLU summer is calling. Let's move. We're going to call it. That was smooth. That was a night. That was a smooth transition. All right. You ready to talk, Rod big? Well, I was going to say until the pips once the sponsor has we got to run a lot of ads

on this show, guys. I'm sorry. We are the new PGA tour here. DJ, what, what do you got for us? Well, we also had to work today. Like, so, you know, someone's got to pay when we actually have to work, you know, I, I feel like, it was a true. I went to the coffee shop this morning, mind in my own business had just, I'd say, four

things on my to-do list today. It was going to be a really easy day. It was, Neil, you know that, that scene usual suspects when I got, he takes a sip of coffee and he realizes the Kaiser Soze thing. He drops it on the floor to share. A harbour shop quartet. Are you freaking kidding me? That was essentially me today.

I'm just like phone melted out of my hand, just unbelievable, like very surreal day. I thought I was having a stroke. I'm not sure about surreal death. I don't have a stroke. I'm not sure about you guys. I thought I was getting punk. I thought it was definitely a fake account. Like that's a fake account CNBC. People make sure AI's gone too far. All right, so I just had a slack note around like 10.

He was like, Hey guys, I'm going to a doctor's appointment. Somebody told me there's a big news from the DP World Tour. And I kind of in my head did the Michael Keaton wanking, Jeff, like, oh, we have big new year sure. Okay. And then you know, it's just, you know, things started to blow up. I think there's some, our doctor is probably sending somebody a child protective services message. I'm like, this dude came to a appointment today and didn't pay any attention to any of the stuff about the birth of his child. It's about to happen here in a few weeks. So best tweet. Maybe the day the Max Mayer said, live golf just put off the Michael Scott paper company in real life.

I don't know. As someone who doesn't watch the wire, what, what does that mean? That's from the office. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. I did watch the wire. So a Dundermifflin paper company, Michael Scott quit it and was running a business that was just the Michael Scott paper company. It was just as basically a sabotage done to Mifflin. They were undercutting their clients basically giving away paper for free. And it was killing Dundrum Eiffel, but they had no room to run. The company was going to run out of money. And they just came back to the negotiating table and called the bluff of the other company

and they bought them out. And it's not perfect analogy, but it was really, really good. And that greatly enjoyed that one today. It wasn't funny how much easier to understand today was because I've been watching so much succession. It's totally agree. I totally totally agree. I was like, oh, okay, this makes it.

I've seen this one before. I, I, what they're doing. Yeah, this makes total sense. I wonder if that people involved in this have been watching too much succession. And we're like, we gotta do it. We gotta do a deal like this, guys. We gotta do some. We gotta do some.

Yeah. It's not a merger. It's not a merger. It's not a merger guys. Can we start there TC? Yes, let's start there. Let's start there. So we're going to just run bear with me just for a second. I'm trying to bullet point this out.

I'm probably going to stumble. I'm probably going to trip all over the place. But let me just kind of a true like what do we know and when did we know it situation? This comes from a truly like from the moment I dropped my coffee on the ground until right now. I think we've been on the phone the whole time calling, texting, whatever with anybody who we will kind of pick up the phone and feel like we're in a pretty good spot. And so kind of here's what we know.

First of all, TC, you said merger, CNBC said merger, golf channel said merger all day. I said not a merger. You're right. You're right. I'm sorry. Let me correct the record there. I apologize. You're not the merger. I don't think this is a merger. I think that was the big thing that like as soon as that was the first red flag that went off for me. That's what blew my mind. It was like, there's like no way. It's not gas. It's not gas. It's not gas. And so I think the reason to point that out is merger, maybe this is just me, but that really infers

like a 50-50, like your skills, plus my skills, coming together, we can really dominate. What I think this was instead is kind of a live bots are not gonna like this. Kind of a snuffing out of live. I think that the PIF wanted to see that the table for a really long time, they wanted a way into the ecosystem of golf.

They started to live kind of as like a Trojan horse way to do that. And that's what they ended up getting today. But that's a new entity. It is. It's a new entity. So what's going to really end up happening is that the PJ Tour is splitting into two entities.

You're keeping the classic 501 C6, which sounds like it's going to be kind of merger, but latter is really good. 501 C6 is going to remain intact, which is going to handle kind of all the boring stuff, I think tour operations, retirement plans, administrative stuff, things like that. And then we're also going to be starting a new for profit entity. Let's refer to that as new co as the PJ tour likes the hundreds, the hundred. Well, actually, let's refer to that as the hundred. I'm sorry if you don't watch succession. So what's going to happen with the hundred Neil?

Here's what's going to happen. The PJ tour is going to put all of its commercial business interests into the hundred. The DP World Tour is going to put all of its commercial interests into the hundred. Golf Saadi, the PIF is going to put all of its commercial interests into the hundred. Of which includes live, which includes live, which probably includes the Minotaur, the Asian Tour, the Minotaur, all that big investment in Asian golf. The Minotaur? I got to imagine all that. Chain smokers.

Chain smokers were kind of part of parcel with all of those. Does that include the AID already merged? The lady stuff, the romco stuff stuff the probably I believe it would I think it's all their golf all their golf entities get thrown into this new company I'm not going to keep calling it the hundred that's very confusing they'd all get thrown into this new company and what they're going to basically do over the next yasser said three weeks on cmbc that sounds impossibly fast. I would imagine it's going to take a lot longer than that, but get layered on the deal.

They're going to try to come up with a valuation for what that new company is worth. Let's just use big round numbers. Let's say it's worth $10 billion, and then they're going to basically let the PIF not live the PIF buy into that new company as an equity stake. So if it's worth $10 billion, $3 billion. And they wanna buy 20% that's gonna cost them $2 billion, right? And so that's what's going on.

That money is essentially like, kind of just like walking around money for the PGA tour now, right? I mean, that's, it's basically on top of what's already being funded, on top of how the business already runs. It's basically kind of pulling a new company like kind of out of nowhere and giving it like, I'm saying two billion as an example,

but I would imagine it's gonna be a fuckload of money as just like a supercharged way to go do a lot of things that we're gonna get into. DJ, you wanna hit the mission? The mission. So what this really does is it kind of like allows the PJ tour to take on private equity investors for the first time. So you've heard on this podcast hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

Lots of years. Three years of times that the tour is a 501C6. It's a membership run organization that limits the amount of things that they can do. It means they can't just write Rory McElroy, a $20 million check. It means they got to handle fields, certain ways. It means they got to treat the mules humanely. It means they've got to do like a lot of different things

that membership organizations have to do. But as part of this, Neil, there's a couple of very important things. Yasser Alramayan, the guy you saw on CNBC, the guy who is the chairman of the PIF, I believe it's his title. He is going to be the chair of this new company, whereas Jay Monahan is going to be the CEO. But the PGA tour is going to retain the majority voting rights.

So essentially, the PGA tour controls what's going on here. So I would just throw a little bit of cold water up front on like the Saudis bought golf, the Saudis run the PGA tour, the Saudis basically took over everything. Yasser is Jay's boss. All of that stuff, I think we're going to have to get a little deeper into it and might be just a little misguided. And we will. But let's keep hitting the finer points and then we can break it up.

So Neil, your next question probably is what happens to these existing tours, right? What happens to the PJ tour? What happens to the DP World Tour? What happens to the live tour? All of these things. Great question, Neil. By all accounts, the PJ tour is going to stay pretty much exactly how it is now. They're getting ready to release their schedule for 24.

That schedule is probably going to look very similar. Maybe a couple changes in who knows, right? Who knows what will happen over the next couple of weeks before that schedule kind of comes out. But I think they're going to stick to their same designated events schedule, they're going to stick to kind of all the changes that they've made over the last couple of years will probably stay intact, at least through 23 and probably into 24.

What's going to happen, I think, did owe for the DP World Tour. What's going to happen to I think, did owe for the DP World Tour. What's going to happen to the Live Tour is very interesting in that I think things are by all accounts going to just finish throughout 2023. They obviously have their schedule. They've got their whole list of events

that they're playing. They're going to finish out 2023 and then they kept using this phrase like empirical evaluation, right? They're going to really, once that season finishes, they're going to take a hard look. They kept saying empirical, which is really funny to me. That's incredible, it's, baby.

Because they're just going to look at, like, let's really give this live thing a sharp, I don't know anything about it, but I want to learn about it. Yeah, let's check out their profit margin. Are the iron heads? See what kind of money they're bringing. Are the iron heads worth 750 million? Yeah, or two billion. I mean, the ACEs with the last valuation I saw was $2 billion,

you know, who knows. So they're going to bring in some people to investigate that, figure out kind of what these things are worth and then make a decision, you know, my words here, kind of like if or how a team golf fits into the future of elite professional golf. My interpretation of that simply is just like, we're really going to let you down easy here, but like, hey, we kind of need to go away. And like, we're not going to like stunt on you on on TV right here. And we're not going to squash this thing right away. But like, we want your money, but like, your concept is not what we're looking for here.

Not, not going to, not going to work here anymore. Well, all right, let's keep it rolling on specific so we can, we can, yeah, pontificate and, and blow theid on, you know, our personal opinions on that. Sure. So, Neil, I'm sure next question is probably what happens to these live guys, right? So, you've got the iron heads and the cleaks. All these guys really, really, you know, just trying to finish high in that team championship

rounding out 23. What happens when they want to now come back to the PJ tour starting in 24. Not a lot of clarity around that as best we can understand kind of from all the people in players and everybody that we kind of talk to is that there's going to be a re-application process so everyone from Phil to Bryson to Brooks to Cam to C1 Kim can go through that process. I think it's gonna be really interesting in that there's probably a little bit of discretion

as far as how that re-application process goes, right? Like I don't think it's just fill out a form. I think that's like, I think there's gonna be a lot of, there's probably gonna be like a committee who's set up to weigh cases and kinda see like, hey, a trial, do you have a full board? Oh, it's a board. I would call it a death panel, but I don't think you want to use those terms.

Uh, I think it's probably some combination of like Ed Hurley, some players. Maybe Jimmy Dunn and a few others just swinging the hammer. Yes or no? Yeah. And I think that just makes it really messy and really interesting and really fascinating and is going to give us a million things to laugh about and joke about and think about over the next year or so here when we're, you know, so early in this. So early.

So early. That committee is looking at things like, you know, hey, did you perhaps tweet this on March 6th? Hey, did you perhaps write up bylaws for a new league? You know, Stan Galley, did you tweet this this morning and then delete it? Yeah, and also, I mean, in the case of someone like Dustin Johnson or something like, hey, were you just like kind of pretty

normal and cool, they're out the whole time? Like, all right, sweet. So what would happen? It's the scene. Fuck you, fuck you, you're cool. But that's exactly what's gonna happen here. That's it's truly what's gonna happen here. That's it. It's truly what's gonna happen. So I think, again, this is kind of speculation, but informed speculation based on a lot of

the people that we talk to is, as that application process goes, I have to imagine there's going to be like a pretty significant and case by case fine for all of those people who want to come back. So for all of the people who are like, man, these guys like cash big checks, the game, the system, all of that, I got to imagine me speaking here, I got to imagine that that is not going to quite be that simple. And it's going to be like, if you'd like to come back to the PJ tour, you can write us a big fucking check. Give me one of those big ones, Neil, I don't care. I'll take one of the big ones. And if not, if you don't want to do that, then you're welcome to play on whatever tours are left. Oh, wait, by the way, we just fucking gobble up all of them, which brings us to

a whole monopoly DOJ thing. We'll get there. Let me, there's a few other ball points I want to hit, which is those are tees, all pending litigation ends. Yes. Or I'd eat a billable hours. I Hate that. Lawyers or the lawyer's. Hate that. But they're probably going to be useful when we have to get all these details out which Yasser and Jay had no answers for on any

interview today. And then so we said there's a process to be established for players to reapply to the PGA tour or the DP World tour for membership at the end of the season. And what else do we miss?

And the other tour retains administrative oversight of the PGA Tour, including sanctioning of events. So that I think is the key that you were talking about earlier, DJ. It's basically like the PIF, getting a seat inside of the PGA Tour ecosystem. It is not like the PGA Tour going to live golf. It's not the cleaks taking over.

It's not any of that stuff. It's basically taking the PGA tour structure, essentially turning it into a private company and allowing people to become private. Which is exactly what was, that's been proposed by Andy Gardner and Jay Woodney and it take the fucking conversation. We'll get there.

We'll definitely get there. Last thing I want to say, last thing I want to say, all of this because Neil, I'm sure you're ripping your hair out about this part, isn't this supposed to be a player run organization? Where are the players? Why did nobody know about this? Which is a whole other thing we can talk about.

Where are the parents, too? Where are the parents? All of this is a framework agreement, right? So all of this is Jay and Yosser have agreed to like, kind of handshake terms, like here's what the frameworks can all look like, drop the litigation and we'll move this thing forward. So the lawsuits have gone away.

But all of this still needs to go through and be approved by the PGA Tour Policy Board, which has, you know, players from the PAC that sit on it, which has a lot of other people that sit on it, all of those things. So like, while it's, it seemed pretty fucking official today and the terms that they were talking about it, it's, it's not official yet. The policy board still has to push it through, which now, Jay's next, you know, 40, I don't

know, 24 hours are even tougher because as everybody knows, he just had a player meeting, which we'll get into. We've got some insight from that. Then he had to do, he had to meet with the media, take a bunch of questions. Then he had, I think they've got a pack meeting tonight that got moved. And then I think they're doing another meeting after that with like what I'll call the Delaware group, basically, like the players that were in the room, that kind of the big dick players. So he's the player is not the players. And so he's going to have to kind of maybe not walking Neeman in that group. But yeah, the horses, not the needles is going to have to get yelled at by many, many,

many people today. What do we miss? Does that all make sense? I think that makes sense. Let's go around the horn. Solid, I'm going to kick it to you. What's your take? Have a take.

Don't suck. I want to just first, it's been like eight hours, nine hours. Maybe the craziest day of, crazy day of my career easily doing this. But now you just like roll off the tongue, it rolls off the tongue of like Jay and Yasser. Like this is fucking insane. Like we have not paused to say like how I could not, we followed this story from the go back, going back three years as closely as possible, almost everything that has happened to this point has been rumored in some way. Like there's rumblings, there's smoke, there's a shitload of smoke out there that doesn't

ever lead to anything. There was not a people on any of this, like truly, truly remarkable. There was not a people on any of this. None of the players knew about it. I still am struggling to, I think everyone's kind of struggling to come to terms with it. And I think again, not a good, I see how like channels mind control you, like through news channels, I literally at the gym, CNN and Fox News are on two different screens. And I watch them cover the same stories and I watch them just like angle things in there.

Bad start was, hey, this merger between the two tours, because my, again, my first thought was, this is fake, this is not actually real, what is actually happening here. And of course, when you dig in to the details a little bit, it does start to make sense. I think there's a lot to not like about it and a lot to talk about. But again, I cannot express how shocking this was and we did not see this coming.

So I don't want this to come off as in a told you so. I told you so in any way. But nothing that happened today was what any of us thought was like, eminently gonna happen. But there's a lot of a reason why a lot of us had this kind of stance on live that we did because it was never about the golf. It just never was.

Like, that was a huge core reason why I never liked it. It was like, look at what these dudes are doing. This is about sports washing, their regime. It's about advancing in the business world. It's about normalizing, doing business with them. It just made no sense to dump all that money into golf on these players with no eyeballs on it and continue to do so. It didn't make sense from a business standpoint. What they got today is exactly what they wanted. The PGA tour is an enormous, to that fund. The golf aspect of this was always a teeny, tiny aspect of their future plans for their country

and for their finances. They want to do business around the world. They want to normalize doing business with Saudi Arabia in general and holy shit did they accomplish that here. They advanced their entire agenda almost through to completion in terms of wanting to have a seat at the table.

They can rub elbows now with important CEOs in the US and the PGA tour has completely enabled them in that. And maybe this was all more inevitable than I've realized or understood, but that's what happened here today. That's why they are wanting to do this. Why the PGA tour did it was, hey, we just like funded our tour with a shit ton of money and wiped out our biggest threat all in one blow.

Is it gross? Is it like extremely hypocritical? Are there some really tough questions that Monahan and the leadership are going to have to answer an extremely upset membership group that did not leave and take the Saudi money that now are getting, the Saudi money is getting forced on them and the guys that took the money might be coming back. It's going to be a total and complete shit show yet at least I can kind of see what they did this here today. I don't know if it's a bad decision making along the way

that has led to this point, but it makes more sense than just like, hey, the two, like live won this thing. Now the two tours are merging. It's like, no, the live was just fine to let everyone die. And the PGA tour finally c cave didn't said, let's just all get out of this. TC over to you. Oh, baby. Man, I, you know, it's all, I thought all this was just about shotgun starts. It's about growing the games. Yeah, exactly.

And you know, the game's going to be so big now. We're in shorts. I'm on the sides are making golf their thing. We're going to help. Guys, I, I, I go back to like three or four years ago and Jay Monahan wouldn't take the call from anybody. And it was arrogant and standoffish. And now he paints the Torah into this corner

to a point where they have to take this deal. The legal stuff wasn't going well. I don't think the DOJ investigation was big, but I think they had him dead to write some some things. And they were pretty sloppy with both the majors and some of the collusion going on around vendors, and that sort of thing. But, you know what, overall, it's just,

like, I'd be so pissed if I'm Rory or if I'm any of these players who stuck around and were loyal, and, I mean, you're looking at Jay Monahan and his cabal of execs there at the tour, who hid behind the 9-11 families this week last year in Canada, like if I'm already see, if I'm like, if I'm the Canadian open, I'm like, hey guys, two years in a row.

Can we kiss something? This is not cool. We got a lot of big men. And blocking scene. We got blocking. Yeah, basically try to, try to, that stuff out and then they're, you know, they're willing to have these conversations. What changed, Jay? You know, and then he says, yeah, I looked

yosser in the eye and I trusted him. Like that sounds like George W Bush, who's a boot in the eye. I think you added the look to the that was. He spent 10 minutes with him immediately. Trust me. No, no, they had lunch and play golf. Okay. Well, anyways, I just think like Jay painted a minute this corner and then does this and it's like, oh, see, like this was our only way out. Yeah, because of all of your actions and all of all of this stuff. Also, I have no idea how this is ever going to pass muster

with the DOJ and the FTC. I know. If this was if this was anti-competitive already, they all spent tens of millions of dollars building a case about the last, you know, antitrust stuff and now they're going to supercharge it. It's like the legal stuff is, you know, accused each other of it, but now let's go away with the legal stuff because it doesn't it doesn't help anymore.

Isn't it funny how just like expensive it is to or like how much cheaper it would be to just say the quiet part out loud? You know, I mean, it's just tens and tens of millions of dollars to just like pretend like nobody's going to say the quiet part out loud. And I know the legal fees are, you know, those were mounting. That's an immediate savings for the tour that was flowing out the door. It's significant amount, like a shocking amount to the players. What one player told us what how much was he spent in on today? Like half a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock.

I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock.

I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock.

I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it's a shock. I think it, I think the case was going well for the PJ tour. I think the point was that it was just going to like, can, like, continue to be dragged out and dragged out and dragged out and dragged out. But also, and that was, I think, like, the inflection point was like, just understanding from Yasser, from whoever, just like, no, man, we have, let me write a number on a sheet of paper for you. Here's the war chest we have just for legal fees. And like, when you said it earlier, Deid, Deidre, like, hey, he set aside, he's earmarked $5 billion just

to put the PGA tour. Yeah. Well, no, to fund to keep live going. Basically, just like without a year or two, and he's to kind of destroy the PGA tour. Like, here's the amount of money that we have for this tour goal. Yeah. So I think there's something there, especially with, and I'm sure, live will try to do the failing firm defense thing, which is old from a little antitrust people

of like, Hey, we're not a going concern. We're not going to survive without this. And the whole thing with that is like, A, it never works. And B, that's not going to work because you set this thing up to fail, like, like not to succeed in the first place. It's, it's not a profitable enterprise to begin with. But I can't help but think like the Secretary of State lands in Saudi Arabia today, right after this is announced, Saudi Arabia was talking about cutting oil production over the weekend. Maybe they staved that off. I just like, maybe there's stuff happening in the government here saying that, hey,

this will all be washed away, but based on what the. You know, in the government here saying that, hey, this all, this all be washed away, but based on what the, you know, Connected DOS is connected to, you know, what they purport to me, they don't, like, they don't support this sort of, of merger agreement very often. KVV, let's go to you. Yeah, just this is a real day. Definitely had the AI deep fake impression early on. It's a great reminder of how weird Twitter is now without the blue check mark stuff.

As you don't know, like, wait, is this the actual CNBC account? Or is this like someone faking a CNBC account? Oh, wait, no, there it is. Actually, on the television. It's not Bryson just tweeted something at us. Yeah, is that the real Bryson? Oh, exactly. Crazy.

Bryson, I don't think you want to do this, bud. Adults. Send him a link. Who would love to hear that? Hey, pop in, Bryson. Yeah, I would love to have you. You're familiar with YouTube, from what I've told. You know, I think I was there at the very first live event.

So I feel like it's sort of a surreal kind of full circle moment for me. Obviously, I've not been shy about some of my moral objections to some of this stuff. You know, I think that the interesting part of, I mean, we all read that Graham Wood article in the Atlantic years ago about talking about, you know, as tough as you might think things are in Saudi Arabia, like they could be way worse if someone other than MBS was sort of running things. There is progress going. It was sort of favored in and it just showed a very favorable light and after I tweeted that and after I was in London, I had a couple like actual like Saudi dissidents

reach out to me and like you know it's just all a front. It's all a front for the sort of you know the PR stuff that they're doing up front. There's still torture in people. There's still killing gay people. Please don't be part of this stuff. And so we got on the phone and talked and I'm bummed sad for those people who are going to just feel like in the end that the sports washing totally worked. And I just don't know really any other way to look at it like this. I mean, we knew that money was going to sort of be the end all kind of nuclear weapon and all this and turns out that that was the case.

And maybe this was sort of like the death before dishonor sort of moment for the BGA tour. Like they had to choose between, they got a dire, they're going to sort of dishonor themselves and sort of admit like, hey, we didn't actually have the firepower to kill this off. And so they absorbed it in a way. And honestly, Saudi Arabia got exactly what they wanted.

Is that they're going to have a say in this, they're going to be able to have connections with major business leaders. They'll probably be a PG-Tur�sponsored event in Saudi Arabia at some point. I would have to think that that was part of the sort of like, hey, and Jay agreement, like, hey, if we could go away, like, you need to sort of throw us a bone on some of this stuff. And I think that in the long run, like, Saudi money is just gonna be everywhere.

It's gonna be in sports everywhere. And people like me are gonna have to sort of accept that and get used to it and sort of, you know, do what soccer fans did, which is kind of, create a disconnect in it because, you know, obviously, there's a lot of countries out there with a lot of because obviously there's a lot of countries out there with a lot of money and there's a lot of, I reminded of that scene in the West Wing

where CJ is trying to get the Secretary of State to sort of not sell weapons as she's like, it's a big world and everybody's got guns. It's the same thing. Neil, you said this in our chat today, like gas wins wars, not bullets. That's like, I think, a quote from World War II stuff. That turned out to be true. Oil still runs the world and it probably always will until we're fighting for water. That's diminishing.

So let me pick, let me pick it up right there, KVV. I got to get my take in here. I feel like from over the last year, but since the beginning, when, when Liv started ramping up, the way I've kind of, you know, we get a lot of what about China, what the PGA tour does business, what about Uber, you know, a lot of what aboutism stuff. And it's always been, maybe this was just a blanket of security for me, easier for me to comprehend if the money from a foreign government, whether you like them or not, was being for lack of a better term, laundered through an independent organization. So to me, it was different if PGA Tours working with China, that's what these executives are paid for

to evaluate if that money's worth it. Can we do this? Is that good business or not? That's kind of up for them to decide that's why they get paid the big bucks. It was always a little bit of jumping the shark for me when it was now a foreign government, whether it was the US, Norway,

I you tell me name a government, or Saudi Arabia, is just gonna run the leak. And they're gonna decide and try to host tournaments that are gonna declare who the best golfer in the world is. I struggle with that concept of not having the intermediary. And you're doing direct PR for that government? Yes, exactly. And so their goals are always gonna be different

than identifying the best golfer, which is basically what I care about, probably what you guys care about. So in that sense, I feel like this solves that on paper, the idea of this, right? So now they are basically, the Piff is now a supercharged opt-of, or, you know, grant Thornton, right? So I mean, the players, they're probably going to see a Ramco right there next to Morgan Stanley, right?

So they, yeah, that's, that's the, like you said, it's happening in every other sport. On paper, I guess that's the lesser of two evils for me. I mean, it was clear like we said earlier, lives not going away. Then there's going to be argument, okay, and now is the PGA tours corrupted, the calls coming from inside the house, all that stuff. I mean, they've gone to great lengths

with all these TV appearances today to say, like, no, they maintain control of the PGA tour. I guess we have to wait and see on that. But I think, and this is all personal, but my take is that, you know, there's some smart financial people at the PGA tour. When you start jacking up these purses, it's not hurting this year because everybody's kind of like rally around the flag. But I think you look two years out, you look three years out,

you look at the, what the legal fees cost and you look at doubling the purse sizes. Maybe you can get some of these sponsors to pay up. But I think a lot of the long time ones are like, I'm not paying double for the same product, right? Like it'd be like us going to somebody and saying, pay double for the ad read. Well, that doesn't work for my CPA man. So I'm sorry, we're going to have to go look elsewhere. And that's just the fact. And I'm sure that the the CFO, the financial guys at the tour, like, yo, this doesn't look good. We're in your demographics. And your demographics going like this and dying.

And all we, and the only lever we have to pull is more commercials, right, or this for that. So what this does is it closes the gap, right? The PIF basically is going to float this probably because I think another piece of the high level details, I think there is a combined, everyone's putting their stuff into a new entity. I think outside of that, I feel like the PIF might be offering more money as well as a sponsor.

Do you know what I'm saying? They're gonna, it's not just them buying in equity, but they're also probably gonna do a ton of stuff just as an OMP, official marketing partner, right? So that is a bit of a safety net now, right? And so if you think about it, then DJ, you said this earlier, if you'll lobotomize yourself and you take out all of this drama and bullshit that's happened the past two years on paper, it probably does

put the toward a much stronger position. But it's hard to do that, KVV, with all this stuff you just outlined, the geopolitical stuff, the human rights stuff, it's harder. Now, for me, it's still better than the alternative of live outright winning. And for me, that was because of foreign government. Saudi Arabia named the government. I just don't like that idea of them running a pro sport. I really do feel this way. It's going to feel extra stinky if all of a sudden,

JT and Max have to get up there and like do PR work for the Saudis, right? And I think that it's a totally different situation if that happens to be the case. Now at the same time, if I'm tour leadership, I have seen how the Saudis have fought in this, how they've played this game. It's been dirty. It's been really dirty at a lot of different levels.

And now you've let them in the house, right? Now you are taking billions of dollars for them. They're not gonna want nothing for that, right? So I don't know once they have this seat at the table, I don't think the PGA tour really has all that much leverage to keep them at a distance. Like I think that's gonna be rather pervasive at this level of investment.

Now, is it about, you know, invest, I don't know exactly what their plans are for the advertising, but when you pay an organization billions of dollars, you are expected to get something in return. We know what they wanted out of live, and that was to get into this ecosystem, but where it goes from here is where, like, if I'm the tour, I don't know how you can trust these guys

for what, you know, what, they're buying something here, I don't know if you could possibly lay out what that actually is at this point. I think the hardest part about that is, and I don't know that you could possibly lay out what that actually is at this point. I think the hardest part about that is, and I don't know that we've, you know, Neil, you were scratching at this, but like, I don't know what the alternative option for the tour was.

Trana, I know we talked about this earlier, and I think you're totally right. And like, the alternative option was four years ago. Sit down with Andy Gardner and the PGL and figure out a different source of funding and unlock all of this private capital and private investment and do all of that stuff a number of years ago, right? But if you're not going to do it four years ago and just like on June 6, 2023, you got

to make a decision. Like I don't know what other decision they had. If I'm being totally honest, and that sucks because like when I, the first gut reaction I had to the news was just like fuck this fuck that you've just been saying for two years These people are awful that you've never had to be you know apologize for being a member of the PJ tour Here come the 9-11 families all this stuff and now you're gonna go take their money like fuck off Which I still feel that way to to an extent But the more I thought about it all day. I'm like man

I don't totally know what the alternative option was because of the slow gas leak you're talking about, Neil. Even if you do. And that's, and that's, I don't like an endorsement of, of this decision. But even if you do the PGL stuff early on, guys are still going to sell their steak. That's not to say the Saudis couldn't, a mass of steak here, you know, unlike, they had to say they were involved. Yeah, but then they weren't. But like, they could always, you know, you could always buy back in or like when there's a market for it, right? But like, you know, how many, yeah, like the devil's in the details, right? How many board seats are the Saudis going to get? You know, like how, how is the one on the PGA tour policy

board? But yeah, but the PGA tour policy board, like, does, is that still just controlling the PGA tour policy board. But yeah, but the PGA tour policy board, like does, is that still just controlling the PGA tour, like what's the new entity's governance structure gonna look like, you know? That's where I think it's, they have, they are outnumbered on that, right? That's, that I think is the key detail with like, the Yosser being chairman, the PGA tour

still has the representation. Majority state. Majority state. But like, you know, if you have fishers, they're like the way the boards work, right? you know, if you have fishers, they're like the way the boards work, right? It's like if you have fishers in your board and there's people that disagree on different sides of things,

like it's not like you're voting as a clean block starting with with jargon, poison pills or... Oh, yeah, it's like, let's say you have some dipshirt on your board who like, you know, let's say Grayson Warrings on the board or James Hanson on the board, like, you know, like there's stuff there. There's, let's say Grayson, boys on the board or James Hanson on the board, like, you know, like there's, there's stuff there.

There's, let's say Randall Stevenson goes rogue. There's all sorts of stuff there. You know, I don't know. It's just, I guess for me though, it's like, it's, it's the way that it's, it's how reactive the tour was and how arrogant they were until they weren't. So it's like, you know what? Well, Cody, maybe we can get that. We can get that.

We can get that. We can get that. we can get that strapped up of the guy that got stabbed. It's the quote from like, what are you gonna do stab me? Like, well, yeah, man, that's kind of what we're gonna do, right? Like, so that's kind of what happened here with the tour, I think. Real quick, before I don't know when we're gonna find gaps in the show to be able to do this, but I got to say we, surprise we got this far without,

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Well, I think let's move into some questions, right? I think we put together a bit of an FAQ section, just because there's a lot of, I think there's more questions than answers right now. I feel like we've laid out our initial thoughts, kind of the nuts and bolts, the framework, as Yossir and Jay said to us. But I'm gonna toss one out to you guys.

What is the name of the new venture? Let's start there. I said this on Twitter, the only thing the Gulf War is gonna be unified on this name is gonna be stupid. That's the only thing we can guarantee. Fireball's holdings, possibly. No, I have no idea. I mean, I don't think it's something like something very

bland. It sounds like it's just going to be the PGA tour. I was going to say I think the outward facing thing is going to be just, I don't think anything's going to change with like the PGA tour branding. I'm sure like the actual company will be, you know, global golf holdings or the golf court, the football team. I saw something floating around of the international golf group or something. That was a Twitter handle that got grabbed up sometime in this month. I don't know if there's anything to that at all, but it will be done. Also, of course, I tweet this out as well, but Ashley Perez's comment about this new tour being iconic.

It rings true. It rang true at the time and it rings very true today. We know it's gonna be iconic. Could be the iconic golf tour. I'll teach next question. T.C., how much did the lawsuits influence this decision and how much did any trust situation influence this decision? I'm told the lawsuits, yes, the antitrust not so much.

It was, quote, not pernicious enough to, like, bring this to just such a point. But yeah, I mean, who knows, right? Like, I'm sure, I'm sure Jail say one thing. I'm sure the tour lawyers would say something else. But I get the sense that, like, even though they'd had some rulings, like the PGA tour of motion to dismiss did not get approved. And like, I don't think that was a good thing. That was gonna, at best, bleed some dry.

Stretch it out, yeah. Yeah, and at worst, like, times ticking. I don't know, I just, in, in like, for the last two or three years, like, Monhan's been sloppy with communications, with the majors, with all sorts of stakeholders, strong-arming vendors, hiring PR firms to do mock raking, all that stuff. And it's like, dude, it's just, like, these same people should not be in charge of it moving forward. Even if we get through this and this gets

approved, the people that led us to this point should not be the people to leave us forward. Where does this, is this? I'm imagining in my head, a scenario where Jay Monhan tried to teach Fred Ridley to use signal so they could have like cough-director on traceable conversations. It would have been way better. Does this, I got to think this, you said the antitrust stuff was not pernicious, but now is it a little more pernicious if the two people that were suing each other combined? Like, isn't there precedent that you can't do that?

Totally. That's where I struggle. I'm like, unless there's some wink wink at the federal level, which, hey, maybe they're counting on DT to take the W next year, and then DT is going to say, hey, you know what, I'm waving this through if you guys have an open at Turnberry or something like that. Like, maybe that's in the cards here.

But not only that, it's the DOJ. You've got this is the DP World Court, too. Yeah only that, something like that. It's the DOJ. You've got the, it's, this is the DP World Court too. And it's, like, you're a pass to approve it. You're a better, old thing. You have to approve it. Like, they've made a lot of different rulings in the tech sector on antitrust that the DOJ hasn't come to the same conclusion or it's just taken longer.

So. If I may, just guy said earlier that nobody called this, I must correct the record. The only one man that I know that called this was DT. When he talked about the inevitable merger with Liv coming, that just what to call that out, the DT was right on this one. Where was this? It was on True's Social, right? This is right after Cam won the open, I guess, yeah.

I think that was. I think that was. So he called this a long, long time ago, which I think you should read the actual tweet. You said all these golfers that remain loyal quotes to the very disloyal pga in all of its different forms We'll pay a big price when the inevitable merger with live comes and you get nothing but a big thank you from pga Officials who are making millions of dollars a year if you don't take the money now You will get nothing after the merger takes place and only say how smart the original signies were good luck to all It congratulations to really talented cam Smith on his incredible win nothing after the merger takes place and only say how smart the original signies were. Good luck to all. It congratulations to really talented Cam Smith on his incredible win.

So I don't want to ask it. It's not actually accurate, but that's interesting though, because it brings up a good question about, I think the for profit entity is important detail because it probably enables them to make some of these guys that stuck around whole. That has to be, that's why they're all furious in this player meeting, right? But like now, it's probably like, hey, you know, to the PIF, like you got to pick up the check here. So Neil actually, Jay talked about this and he did some media availability today. And there was a question, obviously, like, what do you, how do you look these players in the

eye who you basically said, be loyal to the tour? And, you know, they were, and then they got screwed out of hundreds of millions of dollars. It came up early in the show. We were talking about like that some of the live guys would pay back fines or whatever. It seemed less like that in Jay's mind. He wasn't going to get specific about it and more like there will be and he used this word equalization come around. So I would think that preparations maybe yeah, maybe live guys wouldn't be eligible for

the PIP or maybe they wouldn't get that the guys who stayed would get money that live guys who came back would not get. So it would be like, they already got their money. Now you're going to get yours. We'll make sure that everybody feels essentially whole so that we can move forward without, you know, a bunch of other things. We'll make sure to wander it through some type of thing where we slap a sponsor's name on it, such as the Comcast Business Top 10. Real quick though, I do think we don't have to do any more.

Just real quick is like now that it's a for-profit thing, like they can run it, they don't have to do it like a membership. So you're just envisioning the t-shirt cannon, baby. Like, baby, but I think that was like part of the stupidity, right? It was like because of the member, is that what you're saying, Tron? Well, yeah, so, hey, I was gonna say like, I think a lot of those live signing bonuses too, like, there were like three and five year deals.

So, like, a lot of these guys have only made, you know, I'm sure that a lot of them were 33% or 50% up front or whatever, but like, they haven't made all of their deal. And I doubt they get paid out on the full amount of the deal. No, but I think if fair amount was up front and then also the two of the four year deals will have passed, right? So consider the, you know, I would think guys of upfront money, they got greater than 50% of it, at least. I don't know each case is different. Yeah, or through through two years, but also, I think too, it's just yeah, it seems like the for-profit nature of this, you know, they can be

subjective with they, like you don't even need the pip anymore, right? You just pay guys out. It's just a matter of, I struggle to think, how does this all sit where competitions and all this stuff still sits within this 501 C6? And then you've got some of this other holding stuff with the, I know PJs were superstores and TGL and all that stuff already sits in there, but basically I'm sure anything franchise they do or anything,

like it sounds like all the broadcast rights are going up into this holding company. It seems like such a sham from like almost tax avoidance. And I'm sure that that J's basically sitting in there saying to all the mules, you're going to have equity in this holding company. And that equity is going to be worth, you know, let's say you're going to you're going to have 0.1% of 0.1% and that equity is going to be worth, you know, let's say you're going to, you're going to have 0.1% of 0.1% and that that's going to be worth $15 million, right? Wolf, wolf, T.C. That I don't, when I just grab to get to be million. I'm going to have to ask about it 55 more times before I

understand that, you know, not for profit and for profit part. And like, why was this not possible before? Like why until I've always understood it to be extremely complicated. It's exactly known for profit. And it's like, don't quote me on this, not a lawyer, but this seems like the classic have your cake and eat it too.

On, like, they have the best pension in sports. It's like, noted, everybody's written about it, and that is all contingent on the nonprofit stuff and something that they pass with the IRS like back in the 70s. And so you can't have it both ways. Like I don't know how you can just, oh no, don't touch our pension, but now we're just going to be like profit, like we're just going to stand up a for-profit business over the top of this. It's like, I don't know how you can do all this legal stuff for the last year and a half and then expect people to just turn a blind eye to that when you want to like change the rules of the

game. I just want to live and for the PGA tour. Yeah, like why, like, if this was possible, why didn't you do this two or three years ago and at least take the conversation and say, you know what, this is a great idea. We're going to, we're going to adopt this instead of getting bare hugged by the Saudis, even when your shareholders, the members, the mules don't even understand that you're getting bare hugged. Like they're like taking the opposite side that everybody normally takes on the bare hug.

Like normally it's the shareholders who like want you to sell out and Jay would not want to sell out. It's the opposite in this case. So DJ and KVV question for one of you guys. DJ said like they don't have to do the Comcast business top 10, the PIF. They don't have to like, wander it through some like,

faux meritocracy anymore because like the 501 C6 was what dictated that all payment had to be based on like performance. But I think the beauty of that model was it was very easy to explain to your members. Totally. Play better. It's like, it takes us out of your hands, right?

But now they have to come up with like, is it more like a team where it's like a sour cat? How do you decide who gets what without these guys? This could turn into just a massive cat fight amongst these like, the horses and the mules and like, almost certainly will. but I guess they have nowhere else to go. So that, you know, there's no competitor right now. So I guess what I would say is you're also starting with like just like unstable nitric glycerin, right? Like all these guys are like all you did, all you did, it's like the rock. Yeah. All you did was just like poison gas. All you did, all you did, it's like the rock, yeah. All you did was just like,

the ex-boys and gats. All you did was piss off all your members, right? Like, I shouldn't say all you did, but like pretty much, you know, what, 95% of guys are just like, yo, this fucking sucks, I'm never gonna trust another word you said, and now it's like, all right, let's talk about money. Yeah, I'm sure that's gonna go.

Well, kind of how it happened, you know, you hear about, I'm not in the, you know, all right, let's talk about money. Yeah, I'm sure that's going to go. Well, I kind of have what happened here, but I'm not in the finance world, but sometimes it blows my mind when I hear my wife talk about how bonus season works. Right. It's just big secrets. Like the MDs are just like handing it out like in an envelope, don't tell anybody.

I got you this year. Is that what this is going to? That feels like a bad long term play for the PGA tour. That's what the last three years or four years have felt like under Jay Monahan. I mean, I guess they react to all this. They were kind of doing it at least through the OMP deals and through the PIP and all that stuff, but this just feels like a free for all. Almost like when the NIL stuff came out

and the NCNL just throws their hands up. It's like, now what? Now what? Do you think that since, since the designated, is this a reaction partly to the designated event stuff not going well? I would guess pure speculation, but I would guess that it's like the idea of getting, like Neil was saying earlier, getting sponsors for the designated events I think it's all fall the money TC

I really think that like these sponsors are saying to them and some of their probably the longest running ones like I don't want to Like like let's take the the Schwab for instance. It was an invitational right when Schwab took over It was an kind of an elevated event, right? Where it's like oh, this is an invit, you guys are in the top tier of events. I'm guessing they went back to Schwab, I was like, hey, do you guys want to be a designated event? And I, it's probably a hard sell, I'd be like, well, I mean,

what are we gonna get for the double the money? Well, nothing, but like, you're gonna, you gotta like rally around the flag a little bit. And I feel like somebody like, that's probably gonna be like, no, we'll just sit tight, like, we'll to be like, no, we'll just sit tight. Like we'll still be a partner, but we're going to sit tight. And so all of a sudden, more and more of those sponsors over the next three years start saying that.

And you've got this big delta on like, we have to pay these purses and we don't have the money. And you can't, you don't only go to the TV contract once every eight to 10 years, right? So like, that's, can't find it there right now. So I got to think that it's just strictly a financial thing. Well, so on top of that, you had two to three designated events worth of legal fees, right? Like, you're adding on extra, I mean,

just the money is kind of all the same. It's got to go somewhere and. It's just crazy to me that like we're here right now, like less than 365 days ago. Monahan was sitting there with Jim Nance saying what he said, less than, you know, however long ago, he was saying the stuff that he said with legacy not leverage. He was standing up in March at the fucking players, like, you know, saying the stuff that he said, like, like, like, like, like, it's worth revisiting the quote because it's because as it relates to 9-11, I've had two families that are close to

me that lost loved ones. So my heart goes out to them. And I would ask any player that is left or any player who would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour? I get that this is so scripted. That line is so scripted. I get this is what executives do. They sort of each it when they have to they invoke, you know, family stories when they have to and the money is what matters. But God, you'd have to feel dirty. Like if you are like one of Jay Monahan's friends who like had themselves dragged into this fight. All of a sudden it was like, man, never mind. He addressed this in the in his meeting with the media today. He said, I recognize everything I've said in the past

and in my prior positions, I recognize that people are gonna call me a hypocrite. Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment and I said it based on someone that's trying to compete for the PGA tour in our players. I accept those criticisms, but circumstances do change. I think that in looking at the big picture

and looking at it this way, that's what got us to this point. So basically, like, look, I played that card because they were trying to steal our players. I didn't actually like mean it. I don't actually care about the 9-11 families because now we've got their money and like, there are a part here now. So yeah, that's the information I had at the time. I think a big distinction too is it seems like now they cared about who had control of the money coming in. Right? Like they wanted, they wanted to control, they talked a lot today about growing the game and all this money flowing in.

It's, it's about control of where that money goes, too, right? Does that go back to the players? Does that go, is that going to, you know, the DP World Tour? No, it's flowing into the PGA Tour and then they decide what to do with it. Whether it's Jimmy Don or Ed Hurley, or Jay Monahan, or whomever, I think that's the big thing for me. It's like Ed Hurley and Jimmy Don are like in control.

Like Jay Monahan is not, those two guys are. So is your beef more with those two guys or your beef with Monahan then? Well, I think they're in control because like Monahan has kind of thrown up his hands and he's like, I have no control of the situation. I've let us into something that I don't know how to fix. Well, I'm just really shocked by you.

Read that quote out and all the things that were said in the last year by Jay Monahan. And then you have to walk it back. I feel like nobody learned, he didn't learn a lesson because I'm watching CNBC this morning and it's like this, this is a done deal. I mean, he went to great lengths to even like talk over the host and be like, we're gonna figure this all out. Like we are gonna get this done.

And I'm looking at this, I'm like the policy board can nuke this, the US DOJ can nuke this, the European commission or whoever runs the justice department in Europe, they can nuke this, the European commission, or whoever runs the Justice Department in Europe, they could nuke this. Like I feel like this is far from a done deal. And I don't know if that's a Hail Mary.

Flying the banner too soon, mission accomplished. A little bit, right? Like am I, am I off base with that? Or do you have to just project this confidence to, you know, generate, like to basically switch directions and get the inertia going the complete opposite direction. I think it may, here, I'll just, I'm thinking of this up on the spot,

but I'm thinking they gained it out this way and like the initial shock and you hear that what is happening, the initial reaction by everyone, players and everyone's gonna be pissed at some level, right? Yes. But as of today, as of yesterday, whatever you want to situation, you want to put yourself in, a decision had to be made based on the information as it currently stands.

And as dirty as it feels, taking their money for your members, which is we've not fully stressed and slowed down enough on how much fucking money we're probably talking about. I mean, I think everybody's going to get made whole bill of players of dollars, so much money about to come in and you wipe out the existential threat to your tour that still exists people you know the tour has moved forward They've set all those things but like they're still a threat out there for you If the anti-trust stuff comes through if live drags its lawsuit out for five to six years and drains you for $300 million in that process

That's not going to go well. How much your sponsors are actually going to buy into this stuff is still a major question, Mark. That is all to say, like, hey, I can make all those problems go away today. Is it going to be unsavory for you guys? Is it going to be like suck a little bit to, you know, imagine Brooks walking back in this room and fill taunting his way through it and Bryson tweeting it, no laying up, a little emoji face with taunting. I'm sure that bothers you guys a lot.

But like, what's the actual right move sitting here right now? I think like getting it out like this and getting through it all at once. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's the best. Yeah. Like I think this gets through. I think this happens, but I don't think Jay survives it because. But then you know, I don't think I don't even think anybody trusts and any more to keep this going. I don't even think some of the top players trusted and to begin with, right? But he's the guy in charge and they were in a precarious spot to change leadership.

And now once it's kind of, hey, we're on great footing here financially moving forward, it's like, let's get some real pros and to kind of manage this thing. I think both things can be true, right? That I think, Sali, what they did today, makes a ton of sense. I was saying earlier, like,

if you hit me a worksheet today, that just spells out the problem. And it says, like, come up with a solution. Like, at the end of the day, like, this looks pretty good. This is a pretty good solution, and a pretty good way to, like, wriggle yourself out of there. I think that can be true.

And I also think like using like, using like the, not to be like too much of a dipshit here, but like the 9-11 family stuff is like lighting your cigarette with a blowtorch, right? Like that is like the biggest fucking gun you've got emotionally and it is so fucking craven and soulless to pull that card, to play that card, and then to go do this.

And that's where I'm just like, man, congratulations. Like, that's a great deal that it seems like you made today, but also like, go fuck yourself. That is just- That was a conscious decision that they made. That is such a shitty thing to do. It's an organization, as a strategically from a communications perspective.

Somebody made that decision. It's insane. This was on golf channel today. This is a statement from the 9-11 families united. The statement reads, PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9-11 community last year in the PGA's

unequivocal agreement that the Saudi live project was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia's reputation. But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9-11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance Al-Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones make no

mistake we will never forget. Like that is brought on, like whether or not you people want to make the connection between 9-11 and the Saudis and whatnot, like that is fair, criticism brought totally on the beach. Or not making the connection. The PGA toward it. No, I'm so I'm saying, like I'm saying, put that aside, whether you want to make that connection,

the PGA toward did this and that statement. Yeah. The two people that did it are still gainfully employed by the PGA toward leading the charge on this. Well, that statement. And the two people that did it are still gainfully employed by the PGA tour and leading the charge on this. Well, I guess, did back to your point earlier about being lobotomized, which I can't get that out of my head because it's a great way to describe. I wish I could be lobotomized of all this stuff on pay.

It's almost like you could argue the PGA tour as an entity, as an organization is, this is great and this is a win. But the people that managed the tour, this is a massive, massive loss, is kind of where I'm netting out a little bit. I truly like it. We're going to do it later, like a winners and losers segment. I think Jay is absolutely the biggest winner of the day and the biggest loser of the day. Right?

Like, and that's where I'm at. This is bizarre because you could argue that everybody is able to argue like live fans are able to argue that live live has has won the PGA tours becoming live, which we can talk about it. Like what does this mean for live? Let's get to that. And you know, the PGA tour, like if you look at the the bullet points we read out earlier, I'm like, oh, man, like as an organization, you guys are back in charge of the best golf in the world, basically. You have the decisions to run the season and the tournaments as you see fit and basically dull out the, you know, set the schedule and that's a win for the organization.

Real quickly, I think it's very telling to the the tacit approval and positivity from each of the governing bodies within the game. The USGA, the RNA, the masters, all of them. It's like, hey, we're in support of this. We're, you know, it's like, I don't think that it shouldn't be shocking. I mean, they were all, they all had a bullseye on them as far as colluding. And I think they were all like, I think, I think the PG of America got cold feet when they, you know, they're, they're letting guys in. I think they were on the verge of figuring out a way to give some of these guys world ranking points to keep the, you know, to keep themselves out of

the crosshairs. Like that's, like things weren't going great on that front either. Listen, today was a very unproductive work day for a lot of people. And if you sat in your office all day scrolling golf Twitter, trying to figure out what was going on, you are not alone. The folks at Misen and Maine did the exact same thing. They only took one break today. That was to write this ad read. The differences the guys in the Misen and Maine office

were wearing the world's most comfortable dress shirts while they watch professional golfers. Try to catch up on news about their own league. These are dress shirts that feel like t-shirts and have all the performance qualities of a workout shirt. They're lightweight, breathable, moisture wicking, blah, blah, blah. You get it. So if today was a wash work wise and you need the rest of the week to double down and catch up in a more comfortable, to do it, do it in a more comfortable dress shirt.

Again, I wish I had these things back when I was running up enormous dry cleaning bills when I had to go into an office every time. We like the Strat boys, we love a discount, so you use code Strat for $35 off any purchase of 125 or more, and then TC and I got this added to use. You can use code C Suite for absolutely no discount at all

because you only pay full price for things. So you strap for $35 off any purchase of 125 or more at mizzoomain.com or C suite for no discount. I hope Jay was wearing a mizzoom main today. He's got to be sweating through that suit, man. That's you got to have it for the pits. No, I don't I don't think Jay was wearing missing, man, because he's always, he's still.

He just can't get a properly tailored suit. Can we get him a sharper fit and suit? Like, he's a good looking guy. Like, get him a good suit. Like, Yasser looked so slick in his thing, and Jay's like, and straight. I love it. I, one thing I do want to point out,

I don't know when to shout this out or whatnot, just acknowledge the secrecy this was done in for something this complicated has blown my mind all day. Like the amount of people that within the organization, again, players up to the top players in the world that did not know about this. Rory did not know this was happening. Tiger did not know this was happening. Like NBC CBS ESPN didn't know what's happening. None of the sponsors obviously knew what was happening. Like it was a just a total and complete shocker to everyone involved. God, I mean, just you see see, like you said,

with the governing bodies, like, imagine Juan and Fred Ridley here and they're like, what the fuck, man, how the heads up? Do you have a brand, brand no look, I got wrestled from a sleep at some point. No, you know, you know, a gust of new, you know a gust of new. I like, all I say though, is it's, it's just, isn't Hurley had an Augusta member member by the way. Yeah. Oh Jimmy

I for sure This sweet from Christopher powers put the Cody put that one back up for second. I want to read this one out loud This this crack me up. It's just catching catching up on Brandl Feel for our guy the amount of sensory blitzkrie must be dealing with wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy Brooks was tweeting about Brandl and then and then took it from Twitter to Instagram. We posted the tweet on Instagram cross. Can we I would say now can we do a live guys now? Like is that an ex?

Yes, it's been a sensory blitzkrieg all day. Guys, I got a bounce. I got a bounce. I got to go to dinner with my anniversary dinner. anniversary dinner. That's our anniversary. Yeah, but I will say I just I can't believe everything today happened. And I'm starting to feel like rather hopeless in that there's still this like membership

organization that sits under this now non or this pro, this for-profit entity. Like we're still not going to be able to think like fix, slow play. We're still like like, like none of these guys can agree on anything. Like T.C., How do you think this this You know is going to impact the rollback the ball discussion Hey, let's maybe I'm rooting for y'all sort of kind of the side of the sky's a muscle Sure, they love golf as much as they say So he's need to hire the group of Selena Spenjemen to not disrespect.

Inclusive business model shared prosperity. Talk about their vision. I hope the vision fund can get a seat on the board TC. I think Yasser has a seat on the vision fund board. I think that's how it works. I think Yasser needs to finance the rollback. All the companies that are worried about the dollar should sense of it, finance the rollback. You can get a lot of quick wins.

Actually, not that many people really want it. Maybe the Saudis have buy all the OEMs, all of them. And it's just rolling in. Your golf clubs will be standard. It's just driver. It's not. It's pretty cheap to hear Jay and the gang talking about using this to cash tag grow the game.

No, it's cool. Like that's why we're doing this like you. So all right, all right, DC happy anniversary. Smell yeah. A question we have outstanding here is what does this mean for for live? Is it worth also probably worth starting with what is live versus what is the PIF? Again, we kind of emphasize at the top of the show saying that the this is a partnership agreement between the PIF? Again, we kind of emphasize at the top of the show saying that the, this is a partnership agreement between the PGA tour, the DP World Tour and the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia,

which includes live in terms of what commercial interests they're bringing in. The letter says, through a framework agreement, the PIF is contributing its golf-related commercial businesses and rights including live golf. Of course, this was going to happen, but it felt a little weird for like a bunch of live boys and live players to be a little bit taunting today

as their league essentially was announced that it's closing. I don't know how they view this as a win or, for the people that were like pretending to have liked live how in the world was just a celebration day. I agree with you in like, that it's technically not a win, but it's easy to argue that it is because it is, it basically establishes the credibility of what they did, which is like we're here to disrupt golf

and you have to accept that. And that's basically what happened. They, you know, got, you know, bought out basically for, and so now they get to continue to play golf. And like, in a way, you can, that's the crazy part about this. She's both sides, both teams can argue, argue victory. But no one was arguing that live didn't disrupt golf. It was like, does that thing suck or not?

And it's like, yeah, well, obviously it sucks. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't mean anything. And now it's going away this quickly. I was the other way to the bank, brother. If you were a fun, uh, fun, Brendan steel feels like a win today. Yeah, I know. It's like the guy for them for the individual players, I can see why they're like, yeah, you should have taken the money. See how, see how right I was about that. I got my money. And now I'm probably going to get to come back. So like nice guys finish last basically. I think that's still a wait and

see. I think there's a wait and see. I'm with you, but I'm basically just trying to outline, you know, if I'm putting myself in their shoes, like I can see how you want to take a victory lap on this. Yeah, I think it's a couple things. One, just to again, so there's no uncertainty here of what we're talking about, they're going to get through the 2023 season, live that is, and then this new group, the PJ tour, Y to get through the 2023 season, live that is. And then this

new group, the PJ tour, Yasser, the Piff, the DP World Tour is going to take a look at live and it's PNL and it's going to be a lot more L than P in that. And they're going to basically say, like, okay, let's figure out what the place in our new company is for team golf, which speculation here on my part would be none or very, very little. Maybe a little bit of a bone and some sort of a Ramco team series. Where is it TGL? Do the remaining roster spots of TGL get filled out by guys that were on the farmland part

of live? Maybe. But what I can say pretty fucking confidently is not going to happen is the PJ tour putting up a title sponsor like John Deere or RBC or Quick and Loans or whoever, but only to compete with themselves with a live event. So all the fans of the fireballs and the cleaks and stingers, like you better savor these last, say these last couple of events. That merch is going to be valuable. No joke. I'm not lying about that. That's not a, that's last couple of events here. That merch is going to be valuable. No joke.

I'm not lying about that. That's not a joke in that. But to your point, Neil, I don't think the point of live was never like, it was never because live was such an inescapably brilliant idea. It was just like, I'm not rooting for me to win. I'm rooting for you to lose. I was kind of the vibe of breaking this door down. Like, yeah, well, you think they wanted to run a league themselves?

Absolutely not. It was like, no, this was just a stepping stone to like, we want a seat at the table. And so in that way, it is a mission accomplished for them. And you know what I keep thinking about though? Is how like real and perfect the Taylor Gooch big head comp is? Is he CEO at the end of the show? Yeah. Yeah, it's just like, you know, you just sit on the roof, drink a big gulp. And it's like, oh, yeah, man, I just like just kind of floundered into this like perfect setup. I just got accidentally joined. I accidentally joined with the league. Oh, oops. Yeah, I guess I'm going to make all this weird. I guess I'm going to win a couple of them. Well, that's like, that's cool.

And then now I get to come back and play. Do you guys think, Michelson's happy today? No No way either I mean, he's he's talked all this shit about Jay and now Jay's his boss again Like he's a person who's around that he says to go back and sort of if he wants to continue to sort of be on the PJ tour Which I don't think he's even going to do that. I doubt it. I mean, probably just go into the sunset. Play out this last live season. And then, I mean, if it is, in fact, the last live season or just play majors.

Yeah, just play the majors going for it. Right. Yeah. I also hope that the right like this is nothing to do with that. Like, none of the he's claiming the tour was sitting on $20 billion worth of media rights. And if he's not a real thing, like that the tour was hiding all this money, that's also not a,

none of this is addressed by what just happened. Like Phil, he's gonna of course play the I was right again card and the live boys are gonna play that card again, but this is not what Phil wanted out of this other than getting a shitload of money. I think that though that he will frame it forever as like I was a huge agent of change. And I actually don't think that he's like

a highly wrong in some way. No, I don't know. We if like, you know, if Phil doesn't what I think probably need a lot of money, he doesn't sort of go into this deal with the Saudis quite as sort of brazenly. And maybe Liv never kind of happens without someone like Phil to sort of form the backbone of the whole deal. Like I think he'll he on some level, I'm gonna be go down in history as one of the people who changed golf forever and brought all this money. I'm the person who made you rich, I'm the kingmaker. And I think he'll probably feel pretty smug

about that forever. He's not like, he doesn't need to keep playing golf. To have money, he probably needs the juice of it, but he's gonna be sort of, on some level he's gonna be annoyed that like it wasn't an outright win, but he's forever going to frame it in his mind of like I won. I think the way that a lot of this stuff works is, and I think this will be the same thing,

is we could sit here and talk for three hours about all the intricacies and all the reasons he was wrong, and NFTs and media rights, and all of these different things. But man, the further we get from this, the more and more and more simplified it's going to be. And so when we're looking back on this in 20 years and KVV, it's like, Hey, man, I got room for one sentence in my brain, like, what happened with that whole weird couple of years on the PJ tour? It is going to be like Phil was right. Like, I think that is how it's going to go. And I'm happy to like, you know, sit at the bar and like explain all the details to somebody, but nobody's gonna give a shit.

It is gonna be like, no, Phil was totally right, man, he shook it all up and the torque pitulated and you know, now we play for $70 million a week. I, uh, I feel the true goat not to share. For sure. I feel completely changed the whole model of golf. Like I hate that that's, it's a true like,

unfortunately you got a hand into a situation just because people are going to do that. The examples I'm thinking of in my head are truly horrific and I shouldn't say them out loud, so I'll just challenge you guys to come up with. Come up with like an example of some, but like, yeah, there's a lot of people that like went in and just destroyed a bunch of shit and changed things. And things were very different on the back half of that. Let's go with the guy that tried to lie to the shoe bomber, the guy that tried to fuck

that guy Richard Richard read. Yeah, let's go with that. Like he can take credit for like, yep, flying's a lot safer now. Thanks to me. That's pretty much how I classified it. I would argue it isn't though. I mean, maybe I would argue there's some guys before him. Security theater.

You know, security. Yeah, well take that offline. TSA. You get what I was saying. Come on. TSA. Yeah, what I'm saying. Come on. I do. I know what you're saying. What about a year hate to get maybe it re-blocked by Phil because we can murder the shoeball. What? Also him unblocking everybody. That makes a lot more sense now. That could have been part of the agreement as the Phil had to unblock people. Do we think Phil knew this? I actually don't. I don't think he did. I think because

they were so concerned about leaks that they wouldn't, they were going to do the worst guy. I think this biggest upset of the century is that to do something this big and not nobody knows about it. Like, in truth, that's like the word on everybody that we've talked. He's like, I had no idea, no idea, no idea. Players, you know, sponsors, whoever you want to bring up. And that's just like, that's like, that's where I'm like, you got to hand it to

him. I mean, Jay did run it like straight up, like a total flea flicker caught the defense napping. So let's dig into that a little bit. Cause it's all, I want to hear, did you talk to anybody who was in the player meeting and kind of how that all went? because let's get into a little bit of the like, should he have told anybody, should he not have told anybody that that kind of situation? Golf golfers are notorious for not being able to keep secrets very well. There's a lot of big J journalists, ourselves included that are hunting for for angles and getting, you know, asking questions a lot and call it, guys are pretty talkative, right? But there's a back and And guys are pretty talkative, right?

But there's a back and forth on what you can say, what you cannot say. We've known a lot of stuff throughout this whole process that we just have to be quiet on and we can kind of insinuate when we form our opinions on it. But you know, you can't outright say like so and so told me this, dude, none of it. I had nothing, no freaking clue.

And none of the dudes truly had any idea that this was coming. Like, more of Cala tweeted, he had no idea it was coming. JT, I talked to JT today. He had absolutely no idea this was coming. A lot of guys are taking a few days. A lot of them didn't run straight to the press after the meeting to like start shredding this thing.

I think everyone needs a few days, maybe a week or two to like download on all of this and start picturing it, start understanding what the picture looks like. But the vibe in the player meeting tonight was not of that. It was a lot of reaction, potential mule uprising. But the music kicking everything. Oh, Rick Run Goods, tweet said Johnson Wagner estimated the negative positive splits being 90-10 in the player meeting, including a standing ovation when the room

called for new tour leadership. Talk to two sources that did not player meeting, including a standing ovation when the room called for new tour leadership, talked to two sources that did not necessarily say that it was a standing ovation, but maybe some muted applause when Grayson Murray called for Jay's head for maybe the third or fourth time, which I believe happened in the meeting as well. You know who should run the tour?

We're here now from the honorary Grayson Murray. Yeah, you know who would have fixed this shit and really see all this covered, probably Grayson Murray. It is good to see TC and Grayson Murray fighting some common ground. And I've regret that he left the show before I could say that because. But yeah, I think people are very, I don't know. Again, the emotional reaction to it is, it's, again, it's really, really hard for guys

to sit there and stomach this when like, obviously the better thing is like the golf road to get back together for the PJ tour to have a lot more money and to no longer be fighting a legal battle and to get rid of a competitor. But it's really hard for this stomach when like these are the dudes that didn't take the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars from this, this league that have stuck their neck out for this, for this tour multiple times have become kind of martyrs for this tour. Like, end up looking like idiots. Talk to a couple guys and they're like, well, now I look like a fucking idiot for standing up for this tour multiple times have become kind of martyrs for this tour, like end up looking like idiots, talk to a couple guys and say, like, well, now I look like a fucking idiot

for standing up for this. Like, now the Saudi money is basically forced upon me and I have no choice to take it. Like, that is, like, Saudi money has now taken over the game of golf. It's everywhere now and golf, which I think we've kind of have said that over the last couple years. This is inevitable that it was gonna end up this way.

It's just still kind of shocking when it happens in the way that it has. And I don't know what the right answer is. I struggle to sit here in armchair a lot of this, really, because a lot of criticisms that I felt of Jay kind of get addressed by the fact that it's like, dude, his job's like make money for the players.

Like, okay, well, yeah, they haven't addressed this, like, which makes it really shitty to watch golf on TV. Okay, his job's to make money for the players. And at the end of the day, that's jobs to make money for the players. And at the end of the day, that's like what drives, we have a mission statement. Like we have drives all the decisions that we make. And the PGA tour has a mission statement,

or the commissioner has a mission to, whatever it is, specifically, I don't know what it is, but it's to make money for the players. And that is what drives the decision making. And through that lens, it's like, yeah, fuck man, this sucks. This is like really dirty. Yeah, it's just not exos for those guys though.

There's just so there's a lot of, you know, emotion involved in this, especially when you ask guys to, you know, vamp for you, you know, come on. This is your tour, guys. This is your tour, like, like, let's, you know, let's rally here. And then, yeah, just to then come out with this and not tell anybody, that's why everybody's pissed. And the smart decision and blind-siding people with a smart decision are two different things. Yes, that's extremely well said.

And I think just to pull the thread on that, and then again, just underscore this, you talked about these guys who, Neil, who took that task and who said, JT, know, JT, Max, Spieth, Rory, we haven't really talked about Rory all that much. All these guys who like, it weighed on them, I'm sure going into the media room every time and taking all these questions and probably made for awkward conversations and probably made for a lot of like really weird, just years here.

If those guys leave, just to say the quiet part out loud here, if those guys leave, the fucking tour doesn't exist anymore. Like, at all, like, it's not just like, oh man, hey, we kind of did you solid here. It's like, no, you guys like saved the tour. If Scotty and Rom and Xander and Cantlay and Spieth and JT and all those guys, like, if they leave eight months ago, we're not even having this conversation because then the PIF wins and they've just moving everything to live. You know what I mean? Like the only reason we're even in this spot now is because those guys did what they eventually got Dicto for four, which is nice.

But if I'm like, John Rom, I'm like, okay, I need to be made whole for this. No, that's what I'm saying. Three hundred. Yeah, I think they will be. So once the emotions die down, I'm sure I'm sure that's in the works. Do you think they can give like John Rom and Skyd Sheffler and Roy McRoy and all this three four hundred million dollars each? Like maybe over 20 years, I don't know, but like the idea that that's going to add up

pretty quick. So if I'm Ricky Fowler, I got my hand out too, even if I'm not a elite player. Well, that's going back to what I was saying earlier. It's like the organizational structure now without the meritocracy argument is broken down. Like, yeah, how do you decide how to divvy that up? Check your locker, Nailer. There's an envelope with that.

Exactly. That's going to get messy KVB, but at the same time, what choice do they have? Now there's no, there's no competitor. So that's where he was like, truly, it's an anti-trust case now. Did you guys want to start off awfully good? Really? It's fucking crazy. Also, now. This is starting up awfully good. Really too. It's fucking crazy. Also, I want to go back to you.

No, real quick, if we're talking about making players whole and sanctions, like I could see a situation where it becomes, all right, Phil, you got $200 million. It's either like two years and you can come back or you can pay back this amount and you can play right now, right? And there's probably answers to that question, I think. There's a scare. So there'll be settlements where people will be like, I'm just so sick of this, I wanna go play golf.

Yeah, right? And now we're all playing for so much more money. Like, I don't even wanna think about it anymore. So Phil's almost a billionaire, so thanks for asking. He's, the money should not be a problem. But, so I wanted to point out that you brought up and I think earlier today is like. And it goes to the question of like, is what happens to live?

Like hasn't been a lot of chatter out of the official live, you know, accounts. Norman finally talking about like being blindsided. I got to think the people working over there. Like, yeah, you could argue this is a win for the golfers. Even the image of great Norman's name. No, no, the guy, yes, or said, he said like, oh, they call it a point. Link, where does Greg Norman fit in? Yeah, I told him five minutes ago.

Yikes. Yikes. Oh, my God. Imagine having ridden for Greg Norman just and not, and not gotten paid by him over the last year or so. And just totally eviscerated within one day, just go. But he will do the same thing that that Mikkelsen did. He'll probably one will probably get a fat payout, right?

Or he'll get litigious AF. And two, he can argue like see, look at my, how I disrupted things, look what I did, I changed the game, right? And again, I think with Norman or same thing with Philly, you can make that argument. Garrett Morrison, the Friday transcribed exactly, Yosser's answer when I said ZBC and it's

totally awesome. It's worth reading. It said to you, Will Greg Norman, see, he's still involved. And the Yosser said, um, he is, um, I, uh, I made the call just before, uh, this and of course, um, he's, um, uh, uh, a partner with us and, um, all the stakeholders that, uh, we have or we'll have with us. They they had a call just right before this interview That is so damning Which I don't want to like I am English as Yosser's second language I don't want to rag on them too hard But it didn't come across great. I didn't think in the in the interview as well

He didn't seem especially well prepared and it's extremely confident things I didn't think in the interview as well. He didn't seem especially well prepared and it's extremely confident things. We got that. I didn't see my Jay was trying to reinforce like after he would talk, be like, no, like, you know, we're going to get this done. And it's just like, man, how, I guess that's part of the job. Like, you know, Gidele has to eat shit for the owners. But I mean, God, after how it's real, like it's gotten, how can you sit there?

I just, hey, so weird. It's bizarre. I feel a little bit sad for Greg Norman. Like, he just complied. I mean, I don't know why. He can create a mute KVV. Just kidding. No, he just complete, I mean, like, look,

he's wanted this world tour, which I think actually like has, you know, value for many years. And he's been completely like, obviously a dick about a lot of the way he's handled it, whatever. But it's just like, it's like failing cyber Kendall Roy, like watching, sitting on the carpet. Somebody needs to get somebody right now. Get me a Photoshop of of Normans face sitting watching the water. He's just got to be so like deflated deep down. Like I'm, yeah, I'm not involved in this. And honestly, also, I feel sorry for the Australian fans because I think the Australian fans are going to get fucked over again in this.

Like, live use them to sort of say, hey, look, and there will be no tournament in Australia. I'm sorry, they're just won't be. Like, they're going to get fucked twice. There's too many stakeholders now, right? You got to keep a lot of people happy. I mean, this is, I don't know. It's, it's, um, I said it after the live, Adelaine, it's like, you, you thank your live,

your, your, your Saudi sugar daddy for bringing it. Like, it doesn't make it, I mean, it makes economic sense to do it. And now we're right back at, I don't know, it's gonna be even, it's even worse for that kind of opportunity in landscape now. That's so true, though, KVD. Norman's gotten, he cucked twice. Yeah.

Like, by the same thing of like the PGA tour, like, I know, we'll just take your idea and ex communicate you. It's a true, you can't fight city hall situation for him. He's also not a serious person. Yeah. That's true. Surely you just, but this whole thing. Yeah.

I'm sorry, Greg, I love it. You're not a serious person. You need to get the fuck out of here. Oh my God. This is what I got. I got three minutes left. All right. Because you know what? Like like New kind of a day, but I got a wreck league basketball game tonight. I got to get some buckets. I want to hear your eyes. I want to hear your winners and losers. I like I said earlier, I would I would ride that the PGA tour as an entity is a winner. And I would argue that the management of that entity

is a loser. That would be my first two off the top. Would you guys agree with that? I would agree with that. Yeah. I think it's really tough to consider it a massive W when you go home at the end of the day and you've got all your best players in the world, the 9-11 families and like

a good amount of fans like pissed off at you. I think it's hard to be like, man, I fucking killed it. And I think they don't know it yet, but I think the PGA tour members, especially the guys in the top 30, the what is it, the not the Delaware cabal are massive winners. I think if you give it two years, those guys are all going to get paid it some way or another. I think, I mean, lives the loser, I think the I think the Saudis are probably the winner though, like just as a for their goal for their goal, for their goal. Like they got exactly what they wanted. I think they don't have to the headache of running a tour anymore. They just get to sit on the board. They get to go to all the tournaments.

They get to have their name plastered on billboards as an official marketing partner. I mean, that is a runaway win for the Saudi Arabian public investment fund. Here's kind of maybe a backwards way of getting into this answer is obviously we don't know all the details. We can't know all the details, we can't know how bad the situation was the tour. We can't know what other options there were. But to go confidently into a decision that would knowingly be this unpopular, knowingly put your own comments like up against what you said today versus what you said a year ago, what you said several months ago, knowing how bad all of the optics would look on all this and just still go down that route tells Tells me that there's probably something there

that makes them very confident in this decision, right? Like this may be like, probably explored all options and thoughts and said, this is the best option for us going forward. Is it black and white? I know like, I can't wait to, I can never predict what the next criticisms of us are gonna be.

That's not like defending all of this. This is gonna be extremely gray, extremely not easy to swallow for anyone. And I still think like that was probably, again, for the goal they're trying to do, which is to create playing, or money and playing opportunities for the Tor Pros, this was probably the best option.

It does it feel good? Does it make me wanna watch more golf? Does it make me a bigger fan of golf? No, it, it, again, I was only really rooting for the PGA tour in this because I knew a fracture golf where I was going to suck and I knew Liv was never going to make it. And I, maybe we can just go right back to our full on hate of the PGA tour and all of this because I don't, we don't

need to root for them to win anymore because they did probably win this, I think. I think they are the winner today. I mean, they are getting the Saudi money and the Saudis are going to get what they want. Again, they didn't care about golf. They wanted to use golf and the golfers to get what they wanted, and they got that today. Before I go, I want to just rory winner or loser here, because I think you could argue

there's going to be two camps on this one. Yeah, I think winner and loser, I think more lose than win today for what he cares about. I have very, very, very wide margin, and I think slowly lose than win today. For what he cares about. I have very, very, very wide margin. And I think slowly those two scales are going to flip over time. Right? Like I think what you're saying, Neil, is give it, you know, give it a couple of months, give it a couple of years, let all this kind of simmer down.

I think like when we're looking five years from now, I think it's going to be probably a massive W. I think if you look at it right now, it's a massive L, right? He probably, I don't wanna say wasted years of his career, but like, man, if you don't think that took a toll, like you're not paying attention, right? And I think it would be crazy to think that there wasn't, there wasn't a toll that was on him these last couple years, having to like be the fucking pain sponge for all of this shit, right? And it's some of that's on him for taking that on.

But man, I don't know, we're pretty, it's pretty clear how we feel about Rory in these parts. And I commend him for being, you know, at least trying to do the right thing. And say what he actually see or what he actually thought. It's what he thinks, right? I mean, that's, I guess that's a win personally. You can, I guess you can like lay your head easy on the pillow if you're, you know, speaking your mind. Yeah. I mean, I didn't from my perspective.

I think Roy stood for something that he believed in and his reputation remains sort of intact. I'm sure from your fucking idiots perspective that he's like, took a massive L and he's like crying in his, you know, million-dollar mansion, whatever, but I think in the end, like, Rory, you know, had some beliefs that he wasn't willing to sort of compromise and he said buy him. Yeah.

He said, at last July, he said, you know, when it kind of seemed like his stance on live had softened, he was basically like, look, I think the Saudis want to invest a lot of money in golf. I think ultimately that's a good thing. And it seemed like it was softening and when he's asked about it again, he's like, I want to be clear, like, what live is doing? I don't agree with, right? But he didn't stand on like the morality clause of like the Saudis wanting to invest in golf, right? So I don't think he comes across nearly as

hypocritical as like J and the PGA tour exec team do of going on TV and invoking the 9-11 families today. Yeah. I mean, it's like the money is a, it's water, baby. It's coming downhill. Can we get it in the storm drain or is it going to flood the, you know, flood the streets, I guess? I'll leave you with that, guys. I got to go. Thank you, Neil. Yeah. Could we triple threat out there, Neil? I will. I will add on to it's, it's, it's hard to sit here in armchair. A lot of this too of, I don't think this option was on the table two, three years ago from the Saudis of like, hey, we want to, like this exact option was not on the table,

right? And the Saudis did have to power play their way into this situation. And, and the, the tour is up against an unstoppable force of truly, truly billions of dollars and also assholes on the other end that are willing to starve you out, and spend it just to starve you out, right? Like that combination is lethal, truly lethal for the tour.

That's what I think Jay wants to scream from the rooftops and probably can't, I've just like, dude, I couldn't have done this two years ago, it has been shitty to go through and now we got to this point. And like, I don't feel good about it either. But like, what the fuck was I supposed to do? What other key decision points would you guys point towards

of being like, should have done this? Other than obviously the dumb interviews. I think, yeah, you're honestly right. Like if if Jay had come, if he had been like a massive change commissioner and been like, Hey, guys, like, we got to do this sort of thing But this is a way to get more money and do it. I think it would have been hard to sort of move that and he's not that person Like he's a make sure the bills get paid make sure the sponsors feel happy kind of guy

And so it did take something like this to move it forward. So I you know, I guess in the end Like he was the one who brought peace to golf or at least Jimmy Dunn is probably the real person who brought it. And but Jay was able to sort of sign off on it. I mean, I think I've been thinking a lot about like Jimmy Dunn's role and all this. Like, and if Jimmy Dunn doesn't have like moral objections to the who 9-11 stuff, who the fuck am I to sit here and say like that I have objections about it? Like, you know, maybe I should sit this one out in that sense because- Tell us just why that is for the, that I'm not familiar with Jimmy's situation.

Jimmy done what his financial firm was basically in the, you know, Twin Towers. He happened to not be at work that day. He lost a ton of his friends in 9-11 and people always ask like, why is 9-11 connected to Saudi Arabia? Well, you know, 11 of the 12 hijackers were Saudi Arabian citizens, and there's a lot of evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia did sort of train some of these guys or did sort of

ask them to be involved in these hard Muslim extremist Muslim organizations. This court case has been the proceeding forward that they will not let go through that the Saturday events have fought it at every single end. And so, you know, there's 9-11's families feel very much like Saturday, maybe it's still refusing to claim any responsibility for stuff at 9-11. And I think they have every right to feel frustrated about this. But, you know, Jimmy has sort of said, and he's done a lot of, there's, you know, classical ESPN sort of feature about how, but Jimmy has said, and he's done a lot of, there's a classical European feature about how broken and hurt he was and how he golf put his life back together. It's hard to sort of square that in my mind, but also I didn't lose. One of my friends, his mother-in-law was killed in the Pentagon.

That's as close as my connection is to it. Jimmy's had literally people he worked with and some of his best friends. And so, if he's willing to stomach this and be okay with it, I think his point is probably like the money is there anyway. We got there everywhere in sports, there everywhere in society. And I would love to hear from him publicly

about how he sort of came to that decision, but this is what he does. He makes people merge their businesses and get along. So it's not a merger. It's not a merger. It's not a merger, excuse me. I think the one kind of final thing that I wanted to dive into, if you guys are interested, is just what, so taking the DOJ stuff out

and the monopoly stuff, and let's just save it like all of this goes through the way that they're stealing it all out. What the fuck is this podcast now? This is such bullshit that we get tasked with dealing through this. I wanted to talk about how many majors Roy was gonna win.

So the Saudi maybe public investment fund. Let's just say that, you know, all that stuff goes through the way that they claimed it was gonna go through today. What does that actually mean for golf? Because basically you have all of these powers kinda consolidated in one place. You got a massive slush fund of cash.

Like, are we talking like, purses just go to the moon immediately? Are we talking investments and other things? What do you, what do you think we're headed? Dude, it was like three hours into this dropping today and I was like, wait a second, let's talk about this. Is there like a new tour? Is this a still the same PGA tour?

Is it the same event? So the events moving around, I still don't think we have answers to any of that. If I was to guess, it's going to look relatively similar. But again, I just, I have no experience dealing with the Saudis and taking billions of dollars of their money. But first thing that came to mind for me was like, well, yeah, they're going to want an event in Saudi Arabia.

They have a formula one event there. They have wrestling there. They have, obviously, the Saudi international. Obviously, they have live events there. Like, that's what they want. They want to introduce tourism to Saudi Arabia the same way that's gone to the UAE and Dubai and things like that. So I don't think we can answer that right now.

I struggled to even kind of guess. I think that they have an image of what that's all gonna look like, but how binding is the agreement? How long does the agreement go? Can the Saudi's money, does the Saudi money dry up quickly if they don't get what they want out of it? Do they fund it annually?

There's so many questions that need to be answered. There's so much of what happens to the current sponsors of the PGA tour. Like, do they, if you were on the fence about doing this, do you want to continue down this path? Like with Saudi involvement in it, probably, but like they didn't know this was coming. TV partners, like so much is about to change.

And I don't know what it's going to look like. So it's hard to sit here. A couple of questions we got. Like, how am I supposed to feel about this? Like, dude, I truly don't know. I don't know how I feel about it right now. I, we knew Liv wasn't gonna last. We've said that for as long as we possibly can.

And we knew there was gonna be some kind of reconciliation. Again, I think we predicted a couple months ago. I predicted like it would end up with, Liv moves to the fall. There's an Aramco team series that's joint shared of some kind, something like that, and the PJ Tora keeps their Monday or January through September schedule. And that didn't quite end up happening, but something along those lines ended up happening

in terms of some kind of agreement reached. I think a couple things that you touched on there. One, I think it's a new company, and this would be like an investment in that company. So I would imagine that's like an annual check that they're sending to underwrite things. I think that's your partner in the company. I don't really think that's getting cold feet or going away without dissolving the company or divesting the equity, I would assume. But two, I think there's a couple interesting things.

The DP World Tour, we haven't really even talked about at all, but they have to be doing fucking back flips today, I would think, about their tour looked like it was teetering on the edge of just emulation over the last couple years, and now it just seems like the kind of thing that a big influx of cash and like strapping yourself onto, you know, kind of a rocket ship with all this other stuff just seems generally great for the DP World Tour, which is interesting. We know with like the Aramco Ladies series and the team series and all that stuff, we know that there's an interest in women's golf. I wouldn't be surprised if we see, you know, this investment kind of becoming a, the first step towards pulling the LPGA under that umbrella as well, which is,

you could convince me and twist my arm, is could be a good thing for women's golf, could be a bad thing for women's golf, who could say, truly don't know. But I think once you start looking at it like that, it's like, man, there's, we're truly just scratching the surface of like what's going on here. Parentheses, footnote, all of those things, provided this is able to even go forward because it seems comically like it shouldn't. And what happens if it shouldn't?

Then what happens? Then does live pick back up and everybody pretends this agreement never happened. And oh my God, dude, I don't feel qualified for this. I really don't. Yeah. What if the Saudis just decided to run all sports? I mean, what's the stop them now from like saying,

yeah, we want an NBA team. Like, you know, it's just, you know, why shouldn't you get an NFL team? Like, I think they've kind of opened the door to that. And, you know, like the pit fainting going anywhere, you know, it's going gonna be worth a trillion dollars and not too long. It's how much money is a trillion dollars, DJ.

It truly have no concept of that. Yeah. It's true. I don't think I fully wrap my head around and definitely haven't iterated this enough on like, imagining what this new entity could be. We're probably thinking like way too small. That's right, me.

Yeah. We've always pictured all these individual tours, and we've always also said, like, hey, if you were designing a tour now, you wouldn't look like the PGA tour. I didn't know you'd kind of snap your fingers and just get rid of that structure. Like, they've claimed to have done,

which is where it seems like they have a world of complications ahead of them. And I, gosh, there's got to be so much uncertainty down the road here from in Pontavidra about how things are going to pursue, you know, proceed. And I, I, yeah, I think it's like what close to wrapping up tonight, because that is all the reaction you can have on day one to this of like seriously, we might have to move to close to daily pods, because a lot, it's going to happen. A lot of opinions are going to be shared, a lot

of thinking needs to be done on this because holy shit. Yeah, what does it mean for the rider cup? Are the European tour guys back in the rider cup? Is Sergio back on the rider cup team? Well, not only that, but like, again, this is my super rudimentary understanding of it, but like if the DP world tour is putting all of their commercial interests into this new bucket, like, doesn't that include their share of the Ryder Cup?

Sure. So now does that mean the PJ tour and the Piff? We really have like in the your part of the European Ryder Cups? Like guys, we might be getting pretty late in the late stage capitalism section of this. I just don't know what's left after this. I don't know what the stage is after this. So I was in this. Tomorrow at 8 a.m. for three hours of rider cup talk.

Is that on board? I'd like to rerecord our episode we did last week. KVV, you did a great job on outside the lines today. On ESPN, that was great. Appreciate the ambush marketing of going on with your hat on that one. I'm going to Rob of going on with your hat on that one. But I'm going to Roblo and FL hat, but that's true. I'm about to join my woke friends on MSNBC.

A little for Fred. So you going on that out? Going on Chris Hayes. So yeah, so if you want to, if you want to continue this conversation, you can sketch me over there. I think you're right, 840. Be kind of a sick, well, yeah.

You could do a bit like a very prosaudy bit, that would be kind of funny. You and McDermott is saying in the chat that Keith Pelley said they can't play in the Ryder Cup as they are not members. Right, so that's like the whole thing, right? Is like players are still not members. Like nothing has really changed on that. So like that's the whole thing is like, if Liv goes away, which is speculation, but I feel like pretty informed speculation. If Liv goes away, like it's, but I feel like pretty informed speculation.

If live goes away, like it's not like they flip a switch and all these guys are suddenly like members back at the PJ tour. Like all that means is like those guys really can't play on any of the premium tours because like all those lawsuits still, like all the rulings that have been passed out and still hold up. Right. So those guys are not members. I want to go to a live event now because it's really.

For sure. It's a really. So bleak. Interesting energy. Like members. I want to go to a live event now because it's going to all really. So bleak, interesting energy, like what that's going to be. I mean, maybe Trump bedmasters, the one to go to, I think the, the one big positive out of this is like, it just seems like everybody's going to start stabbing each other pretty quick here. And it seems like the leaks and all the stuff that like we've kind of heard, but haven't been able to confirm and can't quite report and all that stuff.

Just watch this space, guys, because it really seems like people are going to be chatty. You know, as to who's a winner is golf media companies like us, because we just got a way more shit to talk about, like all these people think that we took an L on this. Brother, let me tell you what. We're laughing to the back. We exactly. So, let's just state this, though, in case it was unclear, like everything we've said about, you know, the people that have been like complicit in sports washing to this point, PJ Tours 100% complicit in sports washing now. Like there's no debating that, like again, for the folks out there that thought that we were just going to defend the Torah on everything possible is like, no, dude, we were very, very, very clear on exactly what we

had issues with. And now that line has been very, very strongly blurred. And there's no other way around that now. So can I can I also shout out the golf channel? Oh my god. For sure. I just saw a tweet from James Colgan said 637 PM today. golf channel finally took a commercial break. That's eight plus straight hours of live TV without a break. That is unbelievable. That's so hard. One, I didn't know that was all possible. I had to get one jab in there. That is a contract, man. She's like, those went away pretty quick. I don't know. To do that on short notice, like they didn't know this was coming today, like to do that

on that much short notice, rich learners out out there at US Open sites. And I feel the thing, honestly, took me eight hours to download all my thoughts and to talk to people and source it and to go on TV as quickly as they did to have people talking about it around the clock was really impressive. And they did not carry the tours water for it. And I'm excited to watch some golf channel tonight because I think they're gonna have some more good content.

Love it. Man. What should I reply to Bryson who's getting him, getting in my ass? It's really like, hey, come on the pod. It's not being a scary big cat. Come on the pod. I think that's great.

He'd love to hear your thoughts. Kutron's been on my ass about writing these glowing things about Bryson. Just send him some of those glowing columns. They're like, hey, there's some people here have been writing for you. Like, did not think I'd have Phil and Bryson in my mentions that as of today did not have that to start today, but Hey, well congrats to us for scrambling the horses scrambling the jets as fast as we did today Cody got off a flight

He was preparing for the show while on a flight, shout the Delta's Wi-Fi, I believe, as well. He's currently running the ones and twos from an air from the airport that he landed at like two hours ago from the back. It's claimed if you see Cody the airport by the beer, at least. But it was a very, very, very bizarre, weirdly fun. Oh, pricing deleted his tweet already. Oh my gosh.

It's gross, man. Yeah, I'm sure he, he replied to the tweet about the players not knowing about it. Again, as Norman knew about it one minute before the announcement, I'm going to guess that Parison was not told about this. One of the most bizarre days of my career, I think we can defendably say,

and who knows, maybe it's just the start of some really dramatic days here in the future, but holy shit, I still can't believe. More people text me today than when I got married or when we announced we were having a baby. I got to swear to God. It was a total, my phone absolutely blew up today. People haven't heard from in years, just like holy shit.

The question is, did any of those people you gave the free high ludes to, did today hit you up? Or are they just using you? Oh, they're definitely just using me for sure. Definitely for sure. Hey, man, cracking these dudes. Just, just thinking about you over there. Hope, hope you do it. Okay. I do want to send a congratulations out to Ellie, Dela Cruz for his first majorly hit. But tough news day for Ellie to get his call up to Cincinnati Reds. He's batting clean up and playing third base. But he has got his first Major League hit tonight.

And I'm excited. What's that game? I'm excited. Guys, Cody, thanks so much for scrambling in action today. DJ as well, TC and Neil who have left us already KVV for, you know, you're covering covering this on multiple sites. Yeah, we got a couple tweets to get to here. Of course, Spencer Hall just thought about a Saudi

fun and merger of the Big Ten and the SEC and went blind and started smelling toast. Just a lot of really good to see how far this reached today, outside of the normal golf circle was really, really entertaining. And anti-Fautos, the Canadian opened his golf cast, Tionos. Poor guy. Poor guy. Oh, it's really deep, deep drives the last couple of years.

There's a drive. There's a drive. There's a drive. I don't know. Just see it again. Oh, and the Saudi's oh, no, half the pivot. Oh, darn it. That's, that's terrible.

Or is it? I don't know. All right, guys, thanks so much for being available on Short Notes. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Record number of people watching our show live. First ever emergency live show. I hope it's not the last. This was kind of fun, but Golf Road has changed forever as of today.

And we will be here to bring you all you need to know and the hot takes along with it. So thanks everyone for tuning in. Thanks to all the sponsors. Thanks for everyone for putting up. Thanks to all the sponsors. Thanks for everyone for putting up with the extra sponsor load tonight, which we acknowledge and do appreciate from our sponsors, because this was a lot of fun to put together.

So we'll see you back here on Sunday, a lot of live shows next week for the US Open, all that good stuff. And thanks everyone for tuning in. Go Fireballs, bang a leg! Everybody knows the aces. Good luck, club. Get the right club. Be the right club today.

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