No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 694: Canadian Open Recap

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

OH CANADA!!!! Native son Nick Taylor wins the Canadian Open in a playoff over Tommy Fleetwood with a dramatic 72ft eagle putt at the 18th hole to become the first Canadian to win their nation's open since 1954. We break down Taylor's performance as well as the close call for Fleetwood, the course at Oakdale and Rory's week on the course. We then shift to the off the course drama from earlier in the week as more details emerge about the proposed framework agreement between the Saudi PIF and the PGA Tour. We theorize LIV's potential future, the communication - or lack thereof - from the PGA Tour to its members, the lack of initial details about the new structure, and what happens next if the deal does (or doesn't) go through. 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, oh, Canada, we have arrived at the RBC Canadian Open recap, not planning to start the show with the Canadian Open, but I think we have to based on what we just saw going counterclockwise below me on the screen is Mr. Kevin Van Volk and Berg. Hello, KVVV happy Sunday night.

Thank you, Sally. I spent all day researching mergers acquisitions and then turns out it should have been researching Canadian golf. Big Randy is here to NLU pod appearances in the same week. I cannot believe it myself. Hello Mr. Big. Hey, hey, hey, I think that fulfills my quota for the second quarter of this fine year, but it's great to be back. Hello, fine, sirs. Randy is not going to be talking men's professional golf for the rest of the year. So if you have any questions for him, get them in before the show ends. Joining us as well, we needed the full slate as full of a slate as we could on the Sunday

night. That's DJ pie. Hello, pie man. Hello, guys. Happy to be with you. Happy to talk about M&A. Happy to talk about Nicholas. We met all of just a great moment for for Canadian golf and maybe not so great moment for all the rest of golf, but excited to talk about it. We're going to get plenty of pot shots in on TC. I do have to defend them first. He did not elect not to be on the show tonight because of what just happened to Tommy Ladd. He is indeed traveling out towards LA, which is where I made my way out to today. Uh, uh, uh, he did a little premature victory lap, of course, on Twitter.

Uh, but we're not going to take a shot at him for that. He's not bailing on his duties tonight just because Tommy Ladd did not come through. No, he sent two disconnected statements from each other and the second one, which I think is relevant, just said, let him know I'd love to be with of this evening to grieve, but I'm boarding a flight to L.A.X. Please do not demonize this guy for a solo second out of flute putt. Oh, God, we can, it's a time we'll get to the full statement after the ad break. Thank you, TC. This episode is brought to you by Titlest and the tour leading title is DS.

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It was my own fault, but I needed somebody else. Don't fit yourself either. Don't like go be messing with the head on the driver. The title of the sky is when we were out there this week, they told a story of like Max trying to mess with his own driver head and he took it back to JJ and was like, do just do do whatever. I'm sorry for whatever I did, but you need to take care of this. So if Max can't figure it out, you're not going to figure it out. When you're in the fitting bay, tell your fitter you want to try the title is T SR. We've all experienced the benefits of T SR in terms of speed and playable distance off the T. I play a draw off the T heading into my fitting.

Uh, I was dealing with a big left miss. I got the T SR 310 degree with the sure fit. Huzzle set to C1, which was a little flatter and open. And I paired it with a low spin shaft. Again, none of this I could have done on my own. I have since reintroduced the left miss, which is no fault of J.J.'s, but we're going to work that out before the end of this month. That's my promise. I've not been playing any golf. The performance of TSR is no secret for the last four seasons and counting. Title S has been the most played driver on the PGA tour right now, five of the top 10 and 10

of the top 20 players in the world have a titleist driver in the bag. Head to titleist.com to find a fitter near you and see which T.S.R. driver is right for your game. Guys did Nick Taylor save golf tonight? I feel like he did. I feel like for the second year in a row, the Canadian open got about for a week to start it very poorly for them. We got a good of a finish as they could have imagined. We've been awesome if Janan said been like,

and Canada saves golf soul yet again. No 9-11 family's preaching, preaching of the broadcast this week, but we were of course gutted for Tommy Ladd. I want to reiterate, there is no rooting against Tommy Ladd in this household, and for any of us on the screen, only rooting against TC and his constant, constant, constant defending

and many, many visioned fun plays that he seems to place on it. But Randy, did you like the golf this afternoon? I have a feeling you did. I hope you did. It was. It was fun. I was, for as many laps, I guess, as we had Thursday and Friday at the leaderboard.

I tell you what, by the end of round three, I was excited for today's action between Rory and you had a slew of Englishmen, including obviously Fleetwood going for his first victory, our DJ, your guy Justin Rose, gunning for a win. I don't know, it just felt like it oddly turned into this pretty compelling leaderboard. And obviously the golf today was was exciting. I the question I'd love to ask you guys was I mean was that a good playoff? Was it like what happened there? That was a hell of a putt the winnative for it. But yeah overall saw a great day. I only took one tiny little nap and that was, you know, that was hours ago. So, um, it's on a one-stop strategy today.

So, that's good. That's, that's better than that. Exactly. You know, he went for the hard tires all the way to the finish theory. The hard tires had to go longer and in a little bit of wet condition there in the back half of that one, as the rain started falling to play off. But I think there's something funny, Randy. You know, I did not watch a lot of golf this week.

We're doing a lot of, uh, trying to beat the bushes for some facts, trying to hunt down some info, Randy. And I was down in Chicago this weekend. I was taking the train back up to Milwaukee, figured I, you know, I'm not going to watch this golf, but I turned it on on my phone, watch it, watch it the entire way home. It was unbelievable. And was the golf good in the playoff? No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say it was great. But like, man, just knowing what's on the line both personally with TC, the vision fund, all the all the the big tone Tommy Ladd, like kind of ether. What's going on over there? And then just know what's going on for our neighbors to the north. Seeing how hard they ride for Nick Taylor. It's like kind of one of those cool things where

it almost doesn't matter how bad the golf is. You're just kind of like, man, I just can't look away. This is spectacular. And also before we get too deep into it, Nick Taylor kind of like is on a career year, guys. You're playing really freaking good golf. And I feel like a lot of this stuff kind of gets like men in black, you know, wiped from your, wipe from your psyche after you watch it. But like I remember sitting in Phoenix, uh, KVV, when we did the, the pot out there, just a awesome final round, uh, out of him, he obviously came up a little short, but he's just looked like a different player this year. And it's cool to see not only a win payoff, but for that win to pay off, uh, it's just, you know, he's one of those guys

that kind of makes up that like fatty middle of the PJ tour that doesn't really get talked about a lot in this whole, you know, live, everybody should be making $100 million conversation. And it's just, you know, I'm just, I'm here to shout that out. Hell of a year going for Nick Taylor. So good for him.

And it seems like he's, he's making some massive, massive strides forward. Nance, Nance was calling this one of the greatest moments in Canadian sports history. If you think that's a fair, do you say sports are golf? I think he said sports. I'm glad you flagged that. That made that made me double take. But look, I was at the winter Olympics in 2002 when the Canadians won the gold medal in hockey for the first time in 50 years. And they were grown men just weeping openly. In the, so look, I gotta put that up at the top,

but maybe, you know, Nick Taylor makes the top five. I don't know. That was a sweet moment. That was very nice. That was a sweet point, if I may, if that's in the top five of sports history for your nation, you're not a good sporting nation. I think that's fair. Sorry. So I go ahead. No, I mean, I think you guys are exactly right with that. I might have been Jim getting a little carried away, but I'm

sure there were also 50 year old grown men weeping by the side of the green. But look, we, of course, all respect to Nick Taylor. Can we get to the real headline here? Adam had it when getting absolutely truck stick. That was one of the highlights of the golfing year for me. You can see the champagne. I could see I could understand exactly what happened almost immediately. Nick Taylor makes the putt. I see champagne getting sprayed all over him. And I see like the the caddy like turned to be like, what what just happened? And Jim Nance says it out loud. Adam Hadwin just got tackled by security.

They're starting to join in on the celebration. The many views of it got circulated afterwards. Incredible form tackle. Maybe the best play better ever you could possibly be given. Is the title on the 18th grade? Well, I love that he drove his legs. I mean, he didn't just stop with the, yeah.

Absolutely. He wrapped him up and then drove him into the ground. Oh, it immediately reminded me that the clip that's gone viral on how big a swifty is you guys are, but the clip of Taylor swinging bad, bad blood in one of her concerts. And there's a fan that's like getting kicked out and she starts yelling at the security guard in the middle of it. She's not doing anything. She's fine. That was Hadwin's, if you watch Taylor's patty, he's still hugging Taylor and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no because I do think this whole day, this whole tournament took on such larger stakes for all of us purely because TC has been writing for years and years for Tommy Latt. He said, quote, tell them, subquote, the sting of the loss is one thing, but the sting of letting

vision fund shareholders down is another. Have I taken my eye off the ball, spending so much time doing investigative journalism? I'm not sure, but I still believe in Tommy. Where do we go from here? Well, we go to the Los Angeles Country Club, a course that the captain, George C. Thomas, designed specifically with flusher like Tommy in mind. We will see you out West regards TC. Wow. I love to imagine TC in like the rental car line, like just banging that out, you know, asking you for a quick edit. Yeah, there was some improv there. There was a couple

of mistakes on the fly, but, you know, just just a real tough scene for Tronies. You know, I saw it. I think as a, you know, someone who's real tough scene for Tronies. You know, I saw that I think as a, you know, someone who's kind of been through this with big tone, any, any advice you would offer him. I just wanted to be clear. Are we comparing zero PGA tour wins for Tommy Flea Woods in 119 starts with Tony Fienaus six wins? Are we, is that the comparison we're making right now? I appreciate you just really putting up the defenses there, but we're talking big tone when he was, you know, the, the mule like, you know, the foremost mule, just one Puerto Rico open win, you know, when

he was, he was in Tommy shoes. Yeah. I mean, I tried to warn you guys that the expected wins for Tommy, for Tony Fee now were out of control that the luck was going to start regulating. The numbers don't check out as much with Fleetwood. I will say in defense of Tommy lad, this was,d, this was his best PGA tour performance to date. I would have to think. I don't know what his total stroke scheme was for the week,

but if that would technically hold up, but that was the best effort we've had from him on the greens. We've seen putts from him come up woefully, not literally short, but woefully short in terms of putts that he's needed, five footers he's needed to make. Like that all happened this weekend. I thought Tommy was gonna win.

That being said, steps up to the 18th hole under 500 yard par five. Yeah, it's a funky hole, but all he has to do is hit an iron and maybe a five wood or maybe another iron onto the green and two putt and he wins the tournament. And Mrs. the fairway off the tee on 18. Mrs. the fairway with his layup, and then has to kind of scramble a little bit to make par.

That was his opportunity to win it. He had another putt in the playoff to win it, did not make, had a couple other looks in the playoff to win it, did not really sniff the hole. It was a missed opportunity. He got done a little dirty by some luck at the very end, a 72 footer for Eagle, not very common to see fall against you,

but it's good to see Tommy playing really good golf. It is good for TC to eat just a little bit more humble pie, but I'm ready for Tommy to win one now. It's TC can't gloat when he finally does win one at this point. It's been 120 starts. So I'm over it. It's fine with it.

I've made peace with it, and I'm excited to go see him win something. The only thing I will say is, you know, for those that don't remember, Tron did promise a suit and tie formal apology if he doesn't win the US Open. So it's all I'm with you. Massive Tommy guy, massive finneau guy. Hope it happens. I just, you know, I don't want it to happen next week. I hope he wins the open. I'd be all in for that. Guys, we might have to check the tape. I'm not sure if I'm the only one who remembered Tron saying this was going to be black tie. I think we're talking tuxedo here. Randy, listen, as somebody who made a promise to do full on mutton chops, uh, and, you know,

for your Tony Fienau bet and never coming through with it, I think you might have to get grow. You might have to sit this one out. You might have, I think that's only fair. I got to, I got to keep you honest here. But the Tony, okay, we don't have to really do it. Let's move on. It's, no, it's similar. It's similar in that like it is. It's, it should be happening and it's not yet at the same time this didn't feel, it doesn't feel like he's getting done in by bad luck. Like a lot of the, again, I was, you guys were rolling your eyes at it. He was shooting final round 64s and getting

edged out and playoffs. This was a different scenario than what Fleetwood has put for it. And even if Taylor's putt doesn't fall chances are it nestles up there. He makes four and Tommy's got what at best of 50 50 putt to tie the hole. I mean, I think Taylor making floor there probably gets him victory. He just ended up making three. Yeah, Fleetwood, you know, some folks asked me actually this morning at where we had a very wonderful, roost major event out here in Denver and obviously Tommy being at the top of the leaderboard. they said, do you like Tommy? I said, I love Tommy. Nobody likes Tommy more than I do.

But if I have to be consistent and call out his shortcomings and not having one on the PGA tour, it's really tough to overlook. I, you know, Parmin wonders if he careered it with the putter this week and he still doesn't win, that's not great. I don't know. It's up for Tommy.

I know you guys are incredibly bored by the expected win stats, but just to put a little perspective on it, he should, his expected win is about two and a half wins on the PGA tour to this point. So he has had some bad luck. I want to at least acknowledge that, but it feels a little different.

I've kind of, the only dogging I've done of Tommy in recent years has been like, dude, he hasn't been the guy that he once was. Like, T.C. just kept trying to convince us that he has been for like four years now. It's been a long time we've been putting up with this and it seems like he's finally starting to be back and hitting the ball the way he should be and being a very serious threat.

So that's at least worth acknowledging. Can we talk about 18? Where's what you guys dance? Thumbs up, thumbs down 18 at Glenn Oak. Was that what it was called? What was the name of this? I kind of quirky. I don't know.

Oakville I believe. Oakville. It's very nearly blokeville, but I like it. Let me make the case for all right. Part five, it's quirky. Randy, there's only one way to play it. Everybody plays it the same way. You know, listen, how many holes like that do we get week to week on tour? That doesn't really bother me too much. I like that. It's a little weird. And listen, everybody's got to play everybody's got to play the the weird little par five and and we'll see what's what. I mean, honestly, it was kind of like a

par four and a quarter, most of the week, maybe not even that. So I think much, much to do about nothing in the end. But yeah, sign me up for some weird holes every now and again. I'd like to issue a formal apology. I called it Oakville. It's Oakdale. It's Oakdale. So apologies to everybody. Randy, I, of course, will preface this with, I have never been to this place. I don't know what's possible from a land perspective. I only watched about five holes in this golf tournament.

So, you know, that's, that's all, all comes with the territory. It just seems really close to like, if there was a little more room up that left side to actually being a spot where like, you could tempt somebody to hit a driver or you could tempt somebody to like, actually make a choice off the tee, right?

That's, I don't mind when all the, like honestly, I don't mind when all the tee shots end up in the same place. In a way, it almost reminded me of like, 18 at East Lake, right? When like, when it's firm and everybody just gets down the hill and you just kind of all wind up in the same place. In a way, it almost reminded me of like 18 at East Lake, right, when it's firm and everybody just gets down the hill and you just kind of all wind up in the same spot and you all kind of have the same sack and chalk coming in.

It reminded me of that a little bit, but I guess uphill instead of downhill. But I, yeah, it seemed like it was close. You got that cool creek going through there and it just seems like the way it's going right now, it's like truly just a waste of like 60 yards. Whereas if it was rerouted just a little bit, you could have maybe made it a little more interesting.

I do like that it makes everybody hit fairway wood to if you're gonna go for the green too. Like nobody's gonna hit iron in there. So that's sort of a test of like they're all ripping fairway woods in there, which is fun. It and like if the T-shirt was a true throwaway, then I could get down with it being kind of silly. But we saw it not be a throwaway.

I mean, Tommy missed the fairway, Nick Taylor missed the fairway in the playoff. Like it was not a guaranteed hit the fairway. Reminding me a little bit of 14 of your field village where it's kind of feels like a full throwaway T-shirt. Like, hey, if you screw that up, you have totally put yourself behind the eight ball on this and we kept seeing it get screwed up.

And I don't know, it was kind of working for me. It's kind of like, dude, I'd rather see that as like a finishing hole than like a, a kind of just a vomit and figure it out par five or something like that. I don't know. There's a little just the right amount of quirk to it. Brian, I want to shout out Brian Matthews drove it over the creek twice this week.

That's how I was just looking at the, uh, at the scatter chart. That's, that's wild. That's interesting that you like kind of some of these like really narrow hit the, at the scatter chart. That's, that's wild. That's interesting. That you like kind of some of these like really narrow hit the fairway or die holes. I'll be interested to hear how that, how that take ages over the next couple of months. I think you just got to hit the shot, man. Everyone's playing the same course. He's got to hit the shot. I never said everyone's playing the same course. That's a dumb big Randy thing and we're not going to do that. All right. We're not doing that here. It's just interesting. It's just interesting.

I think you put this on the hillside of Marco Savote. Get that creek going through there. I don't think we get the same answer. What hurt. Maga's tall. In a non-roadbacked ball world, I'm in on making, if you're going to try to force fairway woods into guys' hands on the 18th green or 18th tea, this works for me. And we're going to see some forced like 290 part of threes this week at the USO, but we got a lot, a lot to unpack in this, I think. By the way, you mentioned Brandon Matthews. On those two tee shots, he had 151 yards in and a hundred and seven yards in into the far five.

107 yards in. Yeah, 170 yards in when when the pin was up front, he drove it 368. It had a hundred and seven yards in. He was eight over at the time to just absolutely absolutely. Not too. Anything else from from RBC Canada and Nadian open. Yeah, do we need to talk about Rory? I this did not come across my desk. I don't know what I don't know what the rib did this week. I thought

he was up there and then now he's not up there. Is that is that accurate? He shot even par 72 today when he started the start of the day, just two shots back. He finished five shots out of the playoff. He had a very good day with the wedges on Saturday. He did not have such a good day today. Finished the week 44th in Strokeskin approach overall after being second in Strokeskin off the tee, absolutely man handling the ball of the tee and had a pretty good putting week. So I think he hit something like 12 wedges in the third round. I'm gonna give a shout out to I believe it's Ron Claus that does Try red watcher. Yeah, yeah, we're the very red red wedge wedge watch. That's a tongue twister On Twitter. That's very good notes, but also roll back the temple. He's got 12 wedges in

Truly just just jarring to see some of these names in front of him on the leaderboard. Andrew Novak, Dr. Brandon Wu, Mark Hubbard, Eric Cole, CT Pan, just tough. And a week or again, we're like, oh, all these guys should be making $400 million. It's like, yeah, maybe they shouldn't, but we could get to that later. I think we should give a haptip to Harry Higgs for a pretty good finish. It's been struggling a lot lately. Yeah. 11 under finished to tie you T12 and Ludwig. I feel like we should at least mention that for an honor TC.

Yeah. Ludwig finished T25 in his first start as a as a professional. Um, TC want to of course want to point out there was a bad course fit. So, um, I don't really know why exactly, but he wanted that stated into the record as well. Also for roaring total pass for this week. Yeah. I mean, for all the shit that's been going down, I don't know how the hell he's going to have any energy going into LACC, but I certainly certainly hope he shows up with some, but I was, we were prepared to put the bump Canadian open all the way down the down the agenda tonight because obviously a lot more shit

Happened in the golf world this past week first before we get to that Want to shout out our friends at rowback active where you all know rowback They understand quality. There's only one way to describe rowback. That's best fit best feel We're kicking off summer It is time to load up on the best gear that we have in our clauses to performance polos the USA theme design that I called out in the LACC YouTube video, which you can check out, watch that before the US Open pops off this week. I told TC like, I'm wearing this one,

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That is Roeback. Father's Day is approaching code NLU at roeback.com for 20% off your first order through the end of this week. It's rhobback.com, 20% of polo's Qzips hoodies and more with code NLU Summers calling check them out now Guys just before we move on I just cuz this news is just coming across my desk Nick Taylor shot 75 in the first round. Yes. Yeah, that's wild man

That is news to me the Canada was overwhelming him early on Oh, yeah, I just really dialed in just wanted to state that read that into the record for for anybody who missed that as well. 75 and then go and shoot 17 under Randy. I mean, what does that tell you about just staying in the fucking process? Stay in the lock dead. Staying in your think box. That's impressive.

I was also going to say Terrell T-Rell T-Rail, Terrell. Patton Terrell. Shot 264s this week and did not win, which is, gotta be kicking himself for those 272s, I think. But good week for him as well. Shot 64 of the double today. He doubled the eighth hole and made 10 other birdies today. So shout out to Terrell. All right, guys, we have done two podcasts this week

on all of the changes that have happened in the world of golf, which if you're just tuning in now, we're going to do our best to kind of answer some questions on this that you might be having. And as well, kind of document how we feel about everything that's happened over the past week as the week has has gone along, I feel, it felt differently about it as of when we recorded Tuesday night, felt differently the next day. We have scoured the phone lines and talked to as many people as possible. I would say between all of us, probably 30 to 40 people at this point of trying to understand

exactly what's going on, different perspectives, stuff that is on the record, off the record, all this stuff, and it's all gonna kind of get emalgamated here into our overall opinion of how it's all happened. But KVV, let me start with you. How do you feel now about all of this? Has your feeling on any of this evolved as the week has gone along? I don't know if we feel the same about this,

but I'm a little bit more concerned, I guess, from the PGHR's perspective that they may have sort of left some opportunities there to seek other investment. And also, I don't know that they're going to be able to control the board infinitely, like the way that they think, but I have some sort of thoughts

and maybe some perspective when we can get into that later. I think the timing of this to me feels rushed. I think we could all probably agree in some ways. Like even if you sort of look at this, like oh, it came together in seven weeks, which I believe is Jay's timeline when he spoke on Tuesday, that still seems super fast.

And can you imagine how restructuring NLU in seven weeks? Oh my God. Let alone like changing the entire men's professional sport in seven weeks. We do never know what Niels is up to. Yeah, we got to check Niels, uh, Niels tail number. See where he's been jetting off to just bringing this back real quick of saying like this ain't done, right? To your exact point, this is, I think everyone's first news that they heard was the live and the PJ tour merged.

That was what I thought for the first hour, maybe two hours in. I was like, well, can we, can we go backwards here? Like, what is that, what the hell is that mean? I don't understand what that means. And then you start to pull out the players had no idea this was going on. How does this happen in a player run organization? Well, it's because it hasn't gotten to the players yet. But it should have very clearly communicated at the beginning was this was a framework agreement that had been reached between basically four people and their staffs

getting together between Yasser Al-Ramayan, Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA tour, at Hurley-He who is an independent director on the PGA tour board, and Jimmy Dunn who is also an independent director on the PGA tour board. That is who put this deal together, and they have reached an agreement that now has to go through a long process. A lot of process, does it hold up legal scrutiny, does it get the players approve it, have the players reacted to it, they didn't even know about it until Tuesday morning and hadn't met with J2's day afternoon.

I think if we all can agree, all of us, all listeners included agreed to back the fuck up and just say, like this is not done. We have a lot of reasons to think it won't happen and won't go through. We can explore some of that. We're gonna talk a lot about it on this episode as if it will go through, but just flagging that as a reminder here, like this is not done.

And as the week went along, it felt farther and farther away. Sorry, Kevin, go ahead. No, I was just going to hit this back to you. I don't know how many texts like this you got, but I certainly got 25 of them of like, hey, the Saudi just bought the PGA tour. Like, what does that mean? So I'm going to kick the seaO because I think you have the best grasp of this. When someone says the Saudi's bought the PGA tour, what actually does the framework agreement say? So again, what has happened is, part of this melts my brain a little bit, right?

Cause I don't really know how nonprofit organizations are run. I don't understand why the PGA tour has, you know, doesn't, has it opened up a for-profit entity. I know there's some parts of their business that are run in a for profit entity, some of their TPC stuff. PGA tour superstar, I believe all falls into their for profit bucket, whatever. I don't understand how the tour gets away with their, their, you know, 501c6 status and all that and how they've just been able to prop up this, what they're calling calling new co which is a partnership agreement between the DP World Tour, the PGA Tour and

the Saudi Arabian public investment fund where they've all agreed to contribute all of their commercial assets from their individual tours and leagues including live golf obviously on the PIF side all into a what they're calling new co, which is a for profit separate entity. That is again, this best is I can describe it is going to be about investing in the game of golf. Like that is, you know, they could be buying Pebble Beach is the example that's floating around there. They could buy the LPGA tour. They could buy the PGA championship. They could buy what a dick sporting goods. I don't know what what it all it could be, but basically it's essentially an investment arm that the PIF, the Saudi Arabian public investment fund

has agreed to contribute assets to. And when they add up whatever the all the asset contribution is, the PIF will basically say, for whatever stake they're gonna take in this, they will meet with cash to buy into this. Basically, it would be a funding of this entity through an independent valuation of what they've been able to provide with assets.

DJ, I'm sure I screwed some of that up, anything, you know, trip your alarms there. No, I think that's right. I mean, I think it's with you, I'm thoroughly, thoroughly confused as far as what remains the PGA tour, the 501 C6 and what is the new company and how are those two things related and what's the hierarchy and a lot of that stuff. I think what makes it even more confusing, which somebody brought up. This week is just the fact that all the tournaments on the PJ tour for the most part are owned and operated by like local organizations, right? Like the PJ tour doesn't, like it, it sanctions the Canadian open,

but it doesn't own the Canadian open. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't organize it. It does, and then it gets, it gets even more confusing when you start getting into like championship management department at the PJ tour, which does own and operate some of the events. So it's like, it's just this big, massive, erector set, the PJ Tories in general that has just been like building and building and building and

adding wings and adding rooms and adding wheels and adding this for 60 years. To the point that it's like, I think was so funny. Saul, you mentioned this, like the first time that it was on TV was live and the PJ tour merge. And like that made my brain explode. When I saw it, because I'm like, what, how can they merge? Like, live doesn't like have anything? Like what, what, that's not, that doesn't make sense. But I think like if you're not somebody who follows this stuff for like 60 hours a week, it has a bunch of conversations Like, I obviously understand why people like thought that that was the case, right? And what's so complicated about this is like,

we've just been talking about it for four minutes, just trying to explain the first bullet point of what the fuck is going on. And truly, until you read bullet points one through 18, like you're not gonna have a full grasp. So like, of course, and this is not anybody's fault, this is not pointing fingers, this is just the way it goes is like, of course, it's going to get distilled down to like, well, the Saudis bought golf, well, the Saudis bought the PJ tour,

well, the Saudis bought Roy McElroy, well, Phil one, well, Jay's an idiot, well, Roy's a cuck, well, all of like all of this stuff. And it's just like, some of these might be true. And some of those are totally true. Maybe all of them are true, but they're all true with nuance and with complexities and with all of those things. So Randy, is that your nuance these nuts? Is that your read on it? And I think the other thing is like, that I keep coming back to you as I've thought about it all week and we're kind of like a week into it now is, does like at some point, it's almost like you can drill down

into all these complexities as much as you want. But at the same time, it's still gonna come back to like what is the headline and what is the like top bullet point because it still needs to be simplified at some point. Do you know what I'm saying? And if I may just saying, all right, to answer again, back to Kevin's question, I'll let you go here in a second, Randy. But did the Saudis buy the PGA tour is there is a huge sticking point between the live

boys and other writers, I guess, that have been approached this is saying, all right, live is funding a lot of stuff now, right? So they pull all the purse, yeah, it's funding. Yeah, that's all right, yeah. The Saudi and the public investment fund is funding this thing now. They control all the purse strings. Yasser Al-Ramayan is the chairman of the new co, right?

The new company here. And they're providing all the money. They control everything. It's something that has been written and inferred. Yeah. But what the reality of the situation and acknowledged in the CNBC interview by Al Ramyan is that the control of that entity,

which is CEOed by J. Monahan, the control of it remains with the PGA tour. They have three seats on this board and Ramayin has one. The PIF has one and it is not a super vote. They have a first right of refusal for any additional investments to be made in that new company. That doesn't mean PGA tour sponsors. That doesn't mean that they can buy more votes or more shares in this. The control lies within the PGA tour. I'll remind of said that specifically in CNBC. The interviewer favors said the governance stays with the PGA tour. I'll remind said that specifically in CNBC. The interviewer favors said the governance stays with the PGA.

Reminds it except for certain things that have to have the full board. The normal circumstances, the control stays with PGA. We are there for a number of things you know to have the right governance, to have the right business propositions in to make growth. But the control we trust, the PGA tour, we understand and we honor and we respect the history

that the PGA tour has. and we honor and we respect the history of the PGA tour has. He refers to it multiple other time to say the control stays within the PGA tour. Can I, Randy, any reaction to that? Sorry, we keep jumping over you. No, DJ, please go ahead because I wanted to circle back in just the rollout and some of the comms around the proposed agreement. So keep going. So I think there's two things to take away from all of that.

One is as explained to us, as explained on, you know, CNBC and in SI and in all the interviews with all these different people, I think the most basic way that it's going to work is, again, we explain this in the first podcast, this new company, all these people put all of their assets into a bucket, an independent, you know, evaluation is done to figure out what the valuation of that bucket is. So if all of, you know, the PJ tour and the DP world tour and the PIFS golf interests are all worth $10 billion, and the PIFS wants to buy equity into this company of 20% then they're gonna kick $2 billion

into this new company. What it's not is just like a fire hose of irrational money the way that live is, right? I think what got really confusing about some of the reporting is just like, whenever like Jay needs a check, he just like, you know, he just invoices Yasser. And I think, hit me up on Venmo, what I think.

And I think what this strikes me as much, much more. And I think, I would think that this is like music to the ears of the like, what about Uber, what about Boeing, what about, you know, all of these other companies, like people is like that. This feels like so much more of a traditional, like minority investor relationship, like they have done in like hundreds and hundreds of other companies. So is that like, does that make me feel a little like weird and icky?

Like yes, it does. But does that make me feel a lot, lot, lot different than we are going to prop up our own golf league. We're going to bring all these guys to Saudi Arabia. We're going to have them do in tours and schools. We're going to do all of these things, you know, with Patrick Reed and all these other guys. Like does this feel a lot different than that? It does. And the second thing, which I think kind of like dovetails with that is I think there's a reason why They want to be woven into the fabric of the PJ tour, right? Like there's a reason why they just they don't want to come in and

Torpedo everything there's a reason why they wanted to get into golf and it's because golf looks the way that the PJ tour does Right, and there's a reason that they want to be Part of that fabric and in those conversations and they want a ramco to be an official marketing partner of the PJ reason that they want to be part of that fabric and in those conversations and they want a Ramco to be an official marketing partner of the PJ tour. And they want, you know, when Jay is at the players championship and he's in hospitality and it's like, oh, hey, Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab and Grant Thornton and AT&T and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, have you met my friend Yasser?

Like, he's right here. Like, that's the whole point when we've talked about all this sports washing stuff is, man, they just wanna be legitimized. Like, that's the end game. They wanna be at the table to have, like, American and global blue chip companies take Saudi as seriously as, like, an investment partner.

And, I mean, like, what better way would you get that than, like, being part of the PJ Tour, which already has that ecosystem? So, like, better way would you get that than like being part of the PJ tour which already has that ecosystem? So like what it is not to me is like, I'm gonna come in and completely blow everything up. So it's like no, no, no, you don't like, you don't get it. I'm just like trying to get in the door and then I have everything that I'm looking for.

I think it's like the, and I don't know how I feel exactly about this, but I'm gonna sit here and present it a little bit what I think the PJ tours perspective is, is that instead of viewing the Saudis like movie villains who want to come in and like destroy golf and take over and run it their way. It's now more like, oh, what they want is to be respected and to be part of the community that we have. And so that's when the sort of tone change and that's where like Jimmy's like well I wanted to find out what they wanted and when they've once as they found out what they wanted They would play golf twice whatever is like yeah, come on. Actually these guys are great for us Let's go ahead now. I don't know that I quite buy into that but yeah, can I jump in there? I think that's I expect If I think any

I like to consider myself a sane person would ask what took them so long? Oh, yeah. To simply ask, Hey, what do you guys want? Like that, that, that strains belief to me. And if I was to answer that in like the most defend, I want to make it clear. Like if this is starting to sound like we are flipping over backwards to defend the PGA tour on this, I'm still confused on what I think at all of it all. I think they, this did not go well. I'm not like excited about any of this. But I think if I was to answer

that Randy, I think the flipping of the the ruling in the UK put the tour finally in a spot where as well as the, you know, one that already winning the case in terms of having to have Yosser sit for a deposition room, which is never going to happen. That's a huge power pulling for the tour. And then when in the UK, the European tour won out, they won the sports resolutions decision to be able to say we can force our rules and regulations against the guys that went over and played live. That was also a quiver in the arrow of the tour side.

Yes, like the Saudis could afford to run these legal cases for as long as they wanted. The tour didn't want that, but finally the tour got to a spot where they could start to dictate the terms of what this agreement would look like, which if I'm being objective on it, probably looks pretty decent for the PGA tour. Now, the players individually, they have a huge problem here. They have a communications problem. Do they have a long way to go on the legal front and the antitrust front, all that? yes. But like overall, they don't, they got rid of their competitor, which might have been illegal. And they also got a shitload of funding in the door. Like if I'm that, that, that part, horrible, horrible route to getting here, hate how we got here, not

even sure if I'm excited for golf going forward. But in a vacuum, getting to that point is at least some kind of a win for the PGA tour. I can squint my eyes and yes, I agree with you. I think what I get held up on is it's such a blank slate. And in the, what, five days since it's been announced, we've heard like new details about, you know, what the players will be getting. And I just, I have a hard time saying this is a good deal

when we don't really know what the deal entails. I think at a very top level, like, hey, the tour needs money and they need this fight to stop. Like is that, is this a good deal along those lines? Sure, because, you know, if that's all we're judging a bite, but there's so many other factors that we simply have no idea about. And it points to like the players obviously

have no idea about either. And so I, I, I can't get all the way there. And I did want to just, yeah, go ahead. No, I think there's something, like just to quickly build on that. I think we also have to call out the fact that, like you just said, all of these interviews are kind of based on like, hey man, trust me, I was in the room.

This is how it's gonna go. There were no details discussed, but trust me, we're good. It's like, well, respectfully, I gotta play some quotes back to you that you've said over the last couple of years. And like, I just, I don't think I am in a trust what she said.

And I think that's, if I was a player, I totally understand the reading of like, yeah, man, I'm not gonna trust anything you fucking said. Like, why would I do that? And I think once, like, where I get to personally, like, once you read bullet points, one through 18, you start to realize, like, man, this kind of seems like it takes shape. And I can understand how they got to this point and kind of what the, what the game theory was of, of getting there.

But yeah, I don't necessarily blame anybody for not trusting the vision coming out of, you know, day one here. Sally, did Yossher sell out his own live voice? From where I'm sitting, and I want to, I want to back up to Randy's point, like, I'm not all the way there for this, just to clarify in my stance. Like, I don't, I don't think anyone possibly could be. I don't, I think there's way too many details to be worked worked to worked out. But to answer your question, man, it certainly looks that way. It again, it live made no fucking sense like to it made no sense other than

to have an end goal that looks something like this, which is exactly what you just outlined of where Yasser is going to be where the Piff is going to be on the global world stage. Do you want to be like in the room with all of the important people that sponsor the PGA tour and be a scene as a major major player in an in an investment group with the PGA tour to be able to go and invest in whatever you want in golf. Or do you want to like be on the CW and not ranked in the top 150 like shows in the United States, the market your desperate to try to win. Ignore all the the shit they say about trying to win the world and all that stuff. There's a reason why most of the events in the United States, they want to win the United States. They want to do business with the United States. So if you just back up and say, like, live made no sense, yes, he absolutely, he, he paid these players a ton of money. They,

they should have known that the rug could have got pulled out from underneath them at any point. Does it seem to me like it got pulled out from underneath them? It absolutely does. Jay Monahan is now the CEO of the organization of which live belongs to Greg Norman found out about this 90 seconds before they went on television to announce it. Like, that doesn't sound to me like live is about to keep going. I know Martin Kimer is saying it's going to keep going. Of course, Greg Norman is still saying it.

The live bots are of course still saying it. I cannot imagine a scenario where like Monahan does his empirical review of live at the end of this year and it's like, oh God, I've hadn't realized the cleaks had this farm system going like we gotta keep this going and see how this like plays out. Like we have to see how this plays out.

I don't see that happening. I like Yasser and the Piff have gotten what they want out of this deal. And I think there's going to be some form of team golf going forward. I think that seems to be important to Yosser, but I don't see how live with all the divisiveness and all of the shit, like which we can go back over and highlight what it's been like to get to this point. If you'll allow me at some point, I think that he did sell his players out.

So to just clarify, and sort of give the live perspective here, what Norman is saying is that live is going to continue. Certainly, they are making plans for 2024. Norman said to his people that it's going to continue as a standalone enterprise. And that now they've, I think I don't think he uses this word legitimized, but they've been, they've had sponsors knocking down their doors, including Aniser Bush, Marriott, ESPN, those are the news to me, surprised to see that as people

who might want to suddenly sponsor them. That I think the fire pit reported that. And so, you know, maybe like look, Jay said, you know, in his press around Tuesday, he did not see a scenario in which live ran concurrent tournaments, but perhaps maybe the team golf might have some sort of future in this new enterprise. So I don't know what, what version, I mean, I guess in in order to avoid like total humiliation defeat, would live, continue on and exist in some other form

where there's events that kind of run on during the silly season where maybe some other players are allowed to participate it. I don't know. You have to ask yourself, and I think the live people have made very clear that they believe that Yossar cares so deeply about live And he was you know involved in every detail and getting down to the logo and all that stuff

He's kind of never let his baby die and I think My feeling of that was being misread in the sense that I think all Yossar really cared about is getting the PIF To the table with larger investments because he may like golf, but his job with larger investments because he may like golf, but his job from just being the governor of the public investment fund is to get investments in Saudi Arabia so that they can build the things they want to do and change the sort of future of Saudi Arabia's economy.

I don't think he really cares about. Phil Mickelson's grievances with the PGA tour. I think there's probably three, like I think there's three scenarios that are possible from live as I'm thinking of this now. I think one, the best case scenario is basically the live becomes the priority and they love. I think that would be more based on the business model. If you could make franchises, if they can do their empirical analysis and they say, well, if we put Rory and John

Rahm and Scotty Sheffler and Jordan Spieth and Max Homa and Justin Thomas on these live teams, then that outweighs what we're currently doing with the PJ tour and we actually are going to move the PJ tour events, basically, live is going to become the priority. I think I was told that Rory would not be wanted by any team because he was a little bit of a... Well, that's true. According to some of the reporting. Be that as it may. I think that's my charitable reading of like the best case scenario. Do I think that's going to happen? Absolutely not. But I think the second best situation is what you said, Kevin. I think it's, oh, Liv is in the fall. It's time for like, Liv's ramping up. This is, you know, tour championships over.

We've got this sprint of, you know, eight, 10, 12 weeks. It's live season, get ready, you know, whatever. That's an option too. And I think number three would be the worst case scenario. And the reason I say this is because I don't like, in what fucking world are we like, when would we ever run two podcasts like at the same time like competing with each other like that like a you

know, I know we have the trap draw and the main pot, but like we're not going to just put out to like podcast recapping the Canadian open. That's just not not how it works. So I think the third option is what's to stop the piff. And I think the third option is, what's to stop the PIF? And I think it's interesting to hear them keep saying standalone entity, right? Like no, live is its own thing, lives a standalone entity, lives by itself,

lives is over here. Because what's to stop the PIF? You know, maybe this is tinfoil hat, but like when any trust stuff starts coming up and the government says like, you can't run both of these leagues. What's to stop the piff from saying, oh, no, no, no, we're not live. We just fund live.

Like we support live. Live is a standalone entity. We will like spin that off. We will move our investment over to this new company. Like, you know, live, it's been awesome. I wish you all the best. We taught them how to walk now. They must be.

Exactly. Fly by them. And, you know, the cliques are already how to walk. Now they must be alive. Exactly. The cliques are already working on their 2025 schedule. We wish them all the best. We know they don't have any funding and we know that their business model doesn't work and that they run it, what, a billion dollar a year loss. But we wish them all the best. Like, doesn't that, I don't know,

I have a very fun, like rudimentary understanding of the antitrust stuff, but that seems I don't know, I have a very fun, like, rudimentary understanding of the anti-trust stuff, but that seems like it would be, oh, at least, a way to get, move that ball forward. And, and, you know, essentially put a bullet in lives head without actually doing it. I, yeah, this is my subjective, you know, look into this is, I think it would have been off-putting for anyone speaking on the tour side to come out and say like, I'll live dead.

Like, you know, as nice as Monahan could have said, it was like, yeah, I don't see them running concurrently. We're going to do a full review of it at the end of the year, which like, yeah, let's take a look at the in what's coming in from this and what's going out. Let's look at what the value is going to be to this, which again, if we're talking about the assets that PIF is contributing towards the new co like live is a liability in that like I don't understand what you you're going to end up forking up more money if that's what the asset is that you're bringing to the table or you can just kind of shutter it and say, all right, well, that's what we're bringing with the Ramco team series and then bubble and golf Saudi and all this. Here are assets. Now we'll fill in the rest of our our stake in this with cash. That's what you really want. And we're going to get our seat at the table. Seems much, if we're talking about a reconciliation process of this, which is a bunch of this stuff that needs sounds not very far along and it took several days before we finally

heard. Yeah, PGA tour guys that were were loyal are gonna get equity out of this deal. I was like, whoa, okay, well that felt like something that was not very clearly communicated earlier in the week and feels like you're just tacking that on. But it does not, if we're talking about a path to reconciliation between all of this, I don't understand why having the two still run concurrently

when the CEO flat out says he doesn't see how that happens. I don't understand how live continues to exist. Despite people out there thinking that Yosser controls everything because he's the chairman of the of the new co. I also think it's a very smart decision to keep it going like as is now because you know, if this deal falls apart or something, not only has Jay and the PJ tour, like completely shown their ass on like, Oh no, we totally reverse course without telling you guys, we took all the money that we told you guys not to take. Yada, yada, yada. Like if this thing does totally fall apart and, you know, something happens with investigation, something happens with

legal proceeding, something happens with any trust stuff. Like if you have lived still stood up and you have this coffer of $5 billion, like man, it's hard. Like I've said a lot of stuff about people going to live and how I feel about that. I don't think I'd blame anybody for really taking the money at that point. When it's like man, my commissioner essentially

like whether he's trying to do the right thing or not, went about this totally the wrong way. And then he stepped up. Yeah. And now there's what $200 million on the table for me to go join this league. Like, cool. I'm going to do it except for Roy. So one of the things that I was interested in was a little detail and thing that I think

it was that's a part of the illustrated thing that Yoss are basically offered to drop the lawsuits, even if they didn't come to an agreement that it was sort of just the fact that they were kind of meeting and talking was part of part of it. Obviously the dropping of the lawsuits fully is sort of part of the framework, but I mean that has to be like, I guess let's say this doesn't work, then it's just a department sort of knocks it out or they can't quite agree on the structure going forward. Do the lawsuits pick back up? Like I kept thinking to myself, I bet Phil's pissed about some of this because like his stuff

with the lawsuits was kind of the biggest and the great thing. Great day for a lot of this. He said it was a great day for golf. That's what he said. That seemed to me to be like with the mask where you're like tweeting through your tears, like you're smiling with the mask on like I think you know Phil's sort of whole claim of like you're gonna see what's gonna come out like he you know he was determined that that was gonna expose Jay Monahan as a you know

being involved in collusion like Now that this has happened like none of that in theory goes forward I can't imagine that some of these live guys who taking this personally are thrilled about that aspect of it Like not only are there is their future of their league in doubt, but now they can't potentially expose all these hypocrisy that they've been talking about. All it's collusion that they've been talking about. I really quick, Randy. I was going to say, I won't, the only thing I won't join you on is the saying that none of the collusion stuff will come out. I think there's some bodies buried at the PGA tour level that Phil probably is right about. He was just dead wrong on like 90 other things, but go

ahead Randy, sorry. Well, I just, I wanted to make the point like if, if the PIF has to fully divest, live and live is still a standalone entity and they take new money, there's nothing to stop them from relitigating against the tour. My understanding is this is a closure of the litigation as long as PIF is in control of live. I think that's right, but I also would be pessimistic that like what new money is gonna pop into fund that. I mean, again,

like all that money, like we started with like irrational money. It depends. It depends. I mean, you have some of the best golfers in the world. And that's where I just get back to, we don't know. And I don't think we know enough to, you know, we don't know what kind of sanctions, proposed sanctions are going to be against these live guys to potentially come back to the PGA tour. We don't know if if PIF divest live, how they handle the money that is potentially owed these live guys, you know, if they have to pay off a lot of that contract and somebody gets a golf league that, hey, we have a bunch of star players, you know, you're not forkin' over the money to attract that talent, which

I think is where a lot of that upfront capital went. I don't know. I can see a lot of, I just get back to like, they're, we just don't freaking know. And that just brings me back to just don't freaking know. And that just brings me back to why did this news break when it did? Can you imagine another major sports league rolling out such a seemingly half-baked nebulous vague agreement with such import on the future of their game. Like it just doesn't make sense to me. Some does stink, something smells, something's not adding up. Again, I keep falling back on like everyone we've talked to from any kind of legal standpoint.

Reading Matt Stoller's newsletter this week of just like very clearly outlining that it doesn't even come close to passing any antitrust considerations. I hate waiting into that stuff because I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand how to, how, you know, Ed Hurley and Jimmy Dunner, not idiots, they know how to do mergers and acquisitions. Like I have to imagine that there is huge antitrust considerations that have gone

into this. I just can't explain why this isn't an enormous antitrust violation, especially when the commissioner goes on television and says out loud, we are taking a competitor off the board with this move and making them a partner. That does not seem like the right thing to say, like this, it's just a peak behind the curtain of this comedy of errors that has led us to this point that makes me say, like, I think we're on like the 30 yard line with 70 yards to go optimistically on all of this. I mean, we're talking about hasn't gone to the players yet for support. There's a board vote. I believe coming on the 27th of June,

if I have that right. And about what? There's no detail. That's what you've already that take the that take the competitive off the board thing reminded me of that Trump thing where they said do not congratulate the top of his thing to like the president of the Ukraine or whatever would and the first thing that President Trump said was congratulations. Someone had some talking points for Jay to read and it probably said in big letters like do not say like we eliminated a competitor and he just stumbled right into it. Rolled if you cannot imagine that that was like the way to sort of roll this thing out.

Which to be clear, I think the act of all of this is more of a problem than him saying it. It wasn't like DOJ people were like, I don't suspect anything. Oh, now I suspect this. Oh, man, you almost pulled the world over. Right. Good, ready? Well, it's like, dude, you give them the silver bullet there.

Like, Mr. Monahan, allow me to read back this quote of yours. No, I think Solid Year Point about something stinks. That's where I find myself firmly. I made a tweet to the effect of like, I could squint my eyes and you could pretty much convince me of a dozen different scenarios. Like, I'm not confident in any of this. The thing I wonder, and maybe to set up a, a, a talking point here is, you know,

it's been reported subsequent to Tuesday that the PGA tour, um, their finances and specifically, they're, they're ongoing legal fees are an issue. And I just want to raise the question, one, it's probably convenient to blame it on the legal fees in fighting PIF and live. And I don't doubt that that's contributing to a problem. But how much does the PGA tour make sense? Under this new elevated event structure

and these massive payouts and these elevated verses and their squeeze and sponsors, you know, I don't think there are a ton of sponsors knocking at the door to get into the game of PGA tour goal at the values that they'd have to. I think that's exactly right. And that was the part that made me feel like I wasn't taking crazy pills for the last decade as new TV deals continued to skyrocket. And these purses just continued to go up and up and up and up where I was like, I said it to you guys like as a joke on Slack today, but I was like, as the Canadian Open finished. I was like, man, that was awesome.

I don't know if it was like $3 billion worth of awesome, but like, it was cool. That was really cool. But I don't know that it makes sense to dump $35 billion into this thing. And Randy, I'm so with you that it just has happened slowly over the last decade, but the engine for this cruise ship just doesn't fucking make sense anymore.

And it hasn't for a really long time. And I think that's kind of like the irrationality that we're fighting, because it almost, like it almost got to the point where, you know, they were trying to almost like bluff their way through it, is kind of how it looks looking back on at the last three years, right? And that's where I think, you know, to your point,

like why didn't this happen sooner? Why didn't they come to the table? It's like dude, cause they're calling the other side fucking terrorists. Like that's the, like that's how they've chosen to attack this. And in fairness, I was too. Oh, it's true.

And I'm absolutely same. And that's like looking back on it now, it's like, oh yeah, like I don't know if they just thought like this would go away. And I think what's interesting about like the legal fees, because I've seen a lot of stuff that's like, oh, you know, first of all, like legal fees shouldn't have been that high. Like that doesn't make sense. And then, you know, $40 million, like that doesn't seem all that crazy to like, you know, keep a sports league alive and all those things. And I think what you're looking at is like on the other side, on the live side is like, yeah, we're going up against a mountain that's $5 billion tall. And like, why do we, you know, want to keep spending this money and keep, you know, trying to,

like, I think it was a accumulation of all of those things. And I feel like they were looking at the projection and just like, oh, God, like we could keep trying to bluff our way through this through 2027 and hopefully we don't lose Scotty Shephaler and John Rom and all these guys, but like why don't we just call it stop the flight now? It's sorry. Sorry. Let me just say which I don't want this point to be lost, which is insane. Yes, because why like did they not game this out three or four years ago. Did they not know that the PIF had with seemingly endless reserves? Like that's the part that just it circles back like incompetence. I don't know what else it could be. I think it's also wild. I can't believe I'm like throwing this life line but like imagine running the PJ Tour during COVID also, right?

Like trying to stand up all of those events and trying to, like it was a very weak time, I think, to come in and disrupt the PJ Tour. And I think credit to the people who did it. Yeah, correcting a previous tweet of mine. But you do gotta hate it too. But wasn't there like some like venture capitalist money that they could, I mean, we've talked a lot about the PGL and stuff and how this isn't the only money that was available

with PGL tour. There's had to be some other people who were like, dude, we'll give you billions of dollars if you'll let us. But those people want to make money off that money. And like, I think if you got to... So it's Saudi Arabia though? Not off that money. And like I think if if it's not even though not off this though, like they they're talking about a $600 billion fund that this small golf play is a is again a pawn in a global scheme to do this. If out if Apple or Amazon comes in and invests in the PGA tour,

it's not to whitewash an image or to have some big marketing expense because it's going to return something, right? And anyone that can't any private money that came in is still going to have to deal with dumb money on the other side that's willing to outspend you like no matter who that was like the Saudis We're not going to go away off of this golf thing because they barely tapped into what they had available for this Look at how much they offered just offered messy One dude and didn't ultimately end up getting him. So I think there's a bit of the fact that this was not gonna go away and this the only way to one, get the players back that you lost and make the litigation go away

and potentially create a marketable product in the future was for this reconciliation. I don't think like outside money without having camsmith, DJ, Brooks, Bryson, all of the doot fill, all the dudes that contribute to making golf a lot more interesting. I don't think that's a very good investment. I would not advise making that investment. I think it's different before before live exists, right? And that's what it may be. Yeah. Randy, maybe that's some of to live exists, right? And that's what Mary Randy, maybe that's some of to your point, right? Is like, Hey, we could have an irrational

actor down the line. Like, what could we do to restructure? What could we do to fix these problems that, you know, the the mule issue of the PGA tour, right? Which we have been talking about for a long time. Like, Hey, this doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense. And then once there's like an irrational actor in there, it kind of like is a catalyst and speeds all that stuff way up. But I don't think you're getting, you know, Hey, man, here's a billion dollars, like go win the war. And, you know, kind of funding like a against an opponent or an adversary that's like trying to just outspend you like you said to all. My thing is with PIF specifically, like you, back before all this, the tour was signing releases for guys to go play the Saudi international, you know, the DP World Tour, whatever the official

unofficial relationship was with a Ramco. Like, it wasn't like Saudi wasn't already in the game of golf. And so this is where it's hard for me to square the idea of like Jimmy done. Well, you know what, I'm gonna do guys. I'm gonna call up Yasser and I'm gonna ask what he wants and people be like, holy shit dude, we've never been thinking about that. Like if you rewind there. That's where the man Jimmy thinks of these ideas. Yeah, that's good thing. Like, if you

rewind to 2018, 2019, and you start getting whiffs of some discontent, obviously with COVID, you know, you, there's a need for capital. I just can't imagine at that point, like in part of your strategic planning, like, how did we not just ask Yasser what he wants? And if it's truly like, hey, I want to invest a lot of money alongside of you. Like, that's a deal you take in 2019. I just don't get how they couldn't have gone down this path in 2019, which then avoids all this bullshit that we've seen for the last two and a half, three years. I think that's, I think that's spot on. And I think like to, you know, the credit of the

people who have said this, like, that's been reported out there a bunch of times, right? That like, you know, Yosser came to the PJ tour and was just like, Hey, I got $2 billion and I want to spend it in golf. And they just like didn't take the call. And I think looking back on that and I would not go back and listen to the podcast that we did around that time. But it's like, like, I think it was just trying to kick the can on like PR stuff. Like I think trying to like, everything is totally, totally fine. And now we're going to take $2 billion from like the Saudi Arabian government. I think they just didn't want, didn't want their name on that press release. I think that's all I think that's all it is. Go back in time. Like Jamal Kashoggi happened, I think what October or September 2018. And like going

and selling a a a a tour with a reputation with a ton of corporate sponsorship as like the clean whitewash class acts tour going around less than a year after that and like selling a huge part of your tour. Not essentially selling, but you know, in a way, I'm using that word in formal. I don't mean literally like a maybe they would have come up with this for proffed any whatever. That was a different circumstance, right? There was no one like screaming like you should take Saudi Arabia money and No, let me be very clear. It's not easy. It wouldn't have been easy, but I think the four of us could have sat down in a conference room over a day And potentially gamed out a situation where it's like guys I think we got to bite the bullet and take this money now

because you look at what they're doing. They're doing the same thing now. Plus, they're all hypocritical as fuck. And it's like, if you couldn't game that out, again, what's the incompetent? I don't know, I just really, really struggled with that. Yeah, man. And this is the guy that's going to lead the new company.

Like, if I was a player, I'd be like, why are you fit to lead this new company? That's bad. It's those my next question. That's Jason. Is Jason arrived this? Is this the J the commissioner any year or six months? I don't see how at this point now. I mean, none of this has gone well. And I think like, I could understand not getting in bed with the Saudis

because like, again, I don't think that offer comes in, you know, again, going back to like what the position of strength the tour is actually in now, it's like, hey, you also got to sit for a fucking disposition a deposition that he's not going to do. Like the Saudis are never going to let that happen because they have way different motives in all of this, right? So now you are, you, you're going to win off of that. And again, like I said,

the ruling in the UK is contributing to whatever deal the tour got now, being stronger than maybe it would have been four years ago. I don't know what they would have got. I, it's a hard thing to game out because it's not like that money come, you know, came in with no strings attached to it in any way. Not that this money comes in with no strings attached, but it's just a different, it's a totally different, comes to a different set of worries that I'm not smart enough to fully understand and I don't know if we ever will. Did any of this go well? Are we going to, is anyone in the game, like any golf fans in the game in a good spot from this?

Absolutely fucking not. It's a total nightmare. It's a disaster. But like Randy, this is kind of I was listening to you and DJ talk on Wednesday. I greatly enjoyed listening to it. And I was just a little surprised to like not hear any acknowledgement of like where this problem came from, where the Saudi power came from. And it's everyone that took their cash to play in their events and on their tours like Dustin Johnson, Phil

Michelson Brooks, Keppka, Cameron Smith, Ian Polter, Lee Westwood, walking Neiman, Mark Leishman, Henry extension, Charles Howe, every time a person took their money, it enabled them to have more power and they accumulated enough power. And the reality just took enough power away from the PGA tour that they could afford to get to a spot where they could sit there and starve them out over five years of legal cases. And it was two sides running towards a cliff, but one of the sides could just build up, build another extension out onto the cliff and the other one couldn't.

And the tour caved and it sucks ass for the roms and JT's and Rory's and Spieitz and Scotty, but and I'm not just like, and I'm not just talking because they didn't like enrich themselves as if they stood for something and all of this in the face of like the Saudis attempt to like bribe their way into golf and at least like ultimately send I ruined

professional golf and if any of those players I named earlier like had a spine Professional golf would have been able to save this off But it's like the individual decisions including the 11 of them that sign up to sue the fucking PGA tour on their way out Like that has led us to where we are today like all of us including golf fans are now forced to like if you want to watch men's Professional golf you have to help the Saudis exports watch their image now. And like, dude, I don't know what the tours play was to counteract that other like counteract that other than the individual decisions of people leaving contributing to all of this. Of course, that plays a role. You're going

to get me fired up here though, but we why we can't hold. I think it's patently unfair to hold individual golfers to a higher standard than we would any other American company. And hell, our own American government. Like to say, these guys for taking ridiculous sums of money eroded the power of the PGA tour. I would say yes exactly. And I think some of them, that's exactly what they wanted to do because they saw an organization that was probably bloated that had terrible, you know, communication with its players that they couldn't really peek under the hood and see the finances of. And it was like, if we can't, and this is always crazy to me, like how it was like, if we can't, and this is always crazy to

me, like how a quote unquote, player run organization can't like swiftly act or adjust to the wheels of the players. But if they saw like, Hey, there's nothing for me to do within the PGA tour, I have to shake it up from the outside. Now, is this like a completely honorable thing? Like at the end of the day, it's just about getting more money to play Progolf, which let me be clear. I don't give a shit about like that's, I don't care. But I do under, I can't understand why some of these guys would choose to take the money one because it's a lot of money. And as we have just seen with the PGA tour, they have no problem taking a lot of money. And two, it's like, with the amount of investment

into, you know, American companies with our government doing business with Saudi Arabia, I just cannot hold individuals to a higher standard than we would corporations in our own government. And to that, I would say there's a strong, strong difference in the government on behalf of its people, doing business, oil trading, arms trading, all of the stuff like these golfers are not doing any kind

of, on any kind of diplomatic mission when signing up to do PR work for the Saudi Arabia. Like that's a huge difference to me. And I know that I don't conflate the two things the same as a public investment in Uber or anything that the Saudis, you know, have business with or in the companies that sponsor the PJ tour that Saudis have business with is way different than like Patrick Reed going in in the Saudi schools and like what

helping whitewash that image for me, that's way different. I know that's not the same belief that a lot of people hold. Yeah, I would say Patrick Greetz probably doing more than like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and whatever other American truck. Like, I'm serious, right? Like, at least there's probably some. It could be total, you know, what's the word I'm looking for?

It could be totally insincere and just to fulfill a contract, but like shit, it's not nothing. Yeah, it's a lot there. I'm sorry. No, it's great. I, I, I, I, you didn't address the suing, like going back and suing the folks. No, it's gonna be one of the things I was gonna say is,

Randy, I'm with you and a lot of the stuff. Sol, I'm with you on the suing. I think Randy you say this all the time Difficult difficult decisions are difficult And that's kind of where I'm at with with someone like Rory right is where it becomes like Man Rory you you did What I would hope that I would do if I was in your position and you saw something that you didn't want to do And you knew it was going to cost you a lot of money

and you didn't do it and that's great. And I'm happy to see that. But I also think it's tough for Andy and this gets kind of back to your, maybe we should have looked around the corner. Situation is, as you're spelling it out, I'm like, oh, so the only defense against this was hoping that all the tour players

would sing kumbaya and say like, please don't pay us hundreds of millions of dollars more. And like, yeah, that, that ain't going to happen probably. So I like on a macro level, it's like, we got no chance of that. But on a micro level, it's like, you know, some guys made the decision for themselves. And I guess I, that's worth celebrating to a little bit. I don't know how you counter the Saudis will into pay tens of millions of dollars for like Ian Polter and Sergio Garcia in their 40s though. Like I don't know what the tours move other than like, again, of course, and that's what I'm saying. It was over before it started. Yeah.

If that's your defense, it's like, oh, you're fucking dead. You have no chance. Which to Randy's point is like, well, someone, someone should have been a little more cynical in the room to realize that. I think it's, guys, let's fast forward to the end game here. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

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And if a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine, then athletic greens is giving you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athletic greens.com slash NLU that's athletic greens.com slash NLU. Check it out. Guys, sorry, a little bit of levity here before we dive back into the more pressing issues. Just seriously, Jessica had one is issued the following statement on Twitter, sorry to leave you all hanging had to get the toddler ready for bed. I'm thrilled to report that Adam had one is still among the land of the living.

And in true Canadian form, apologize to the security guards. Well, well played both Adam and Jessica. That is well played. KV, you sounded like you had some reaction to what we were discussing there. No, I'm, look, I think the best thing that you've said in all this all is like, we're really early in this and nobody has any fucking idea like what the actual structured agreement is gonna look like. I really feel just getting back to the point of like, okay, the tours probably not giving up control

of their tour, but is that always gonna be the case? I think that the five years from now, like, you know, I was talking to somebody today and they were like, you know what? Like, yes, they have the majority of the board seats, but like, how is the sort of voting shares versus ownership shares gonna be structured in the deal? And what happens when you manage to flip

one of those board people? And as you're the chairman, you're saying, you know what, like you manage to flip one of those board people? And as you're the chairman saying, you know, like, you have a fiduciary duty to sort of, you know, your shareholders. So you should really vote with me on this. You shouldn't sort of have your allegiance to this old ass tour that's been, you know, kind of behind the times on a lot of different things. And so I mean, look, you, you tell me if you're from Jimmy's perspective, like Ed's perspective, I don't think there's any scenario in which they, look, you tell me if you're from Jimmy's perspective, like Ed's perspective, I don't think there's any scenario in which they like from what I think is a position

of some strength and some weaknesses certainly gave away control of the tour, but I also don't think that they can see that far into the future and thinking like, you know what, like you might have it in the way of the tour in 2033. But can I flip that in terms of for the short term, if like, let's say we, like, we kind of all agree here that if you get once they get to the end of the year, they take the very honest and true and hard look at live and say, look, maybe this is the best return on money. We're going to shutter this. Then you have, if you get through the, if in the short term, if with the control of the board, you can get rid of live and come up with the structure that everyone's are going to agree to and

to give equity to the PGA tour players and to properly issue the sanctions or the punishment, whatever that's going to be, maybe the live guys are not eligible for the PIP or whatever that's going to be to kind of level the scales between the players. If you get that through in the short term, what are you worried about? Whatever the flip is in the long term, I go, you worried about this original cast of live characters that left that are now four, five, six, maybe 10 years older, breaking off again, or you worried about, what are you worried about at that point, right? If you've reunified all the players, got them back together, gotten the guys rewarded, and

you now have one, and one tour entity. Yosser has what he wants out of it. What do you lose in the future? Yeah, maybe you, you know, maybe the Saudis want to do something totally different in Progolf at that point, but I don't, as I understand the structure of this, I would be stunned if that was even a possibility. So one of the things that I'm worried about though, is that it's all based on funny money. All right. So we're not really getting return on the investment by paying these players way more than their fucking worth. All right. So that's just the facts in that like every other sport

has to base and a road to about this and my column. Every other sport has to base like how they pay their players based on the revenues that are coming in and the losses that they sort of result from that. This is not that. So yes, like Saudi Arabia has a lot of money. Price of oil is like way down. They're no longer have the control through, you know, with OPEC that they once did in terms of being able to manipulate the oil market is forever. They're going to like let's say the expectation is now, like, well, Rory deserves $200 million, and we're going to sort of pay in that because it's available to us right now.

The whole point of this whole exercise is to diversify Saturday's economy away from oil. So what's happened in 2033 when we're past 2030 vision fund here and what the whole deal is supposed to be. And Ludwig Aberg is like, well, where's my 300 million? And they're like, you know what? Like we don't really have that money anymore because oil for us is a continue to fall. We diversified our economy and you're kind of fucked. You know, you're this, that's if you're putting yourself down a path that I don't think is sustainable in any way that.

And look, unless you're going to tell me golf is going to start generating interest and money that it hasn't over the last 20 years with tiger woods came through. I just don't see that being a long-term viable plan. And I want to This is a part that's still confusing to me and it's definitely going to be confusing to other people But it's again worth acknowledging like the the PGA tour the 501 C6 is what is going to continue as is with corporate sponsorship as is and the piff is making an investment in this new code this investment arm in this which I believe is what Jimmy is referring to when he tells sports illustrated that players will have the opportunity to have the, a Ramco or whatever spot, whatever like the corporate sponsor that has been out a Ramco has sponsored, the Ramco team series, F1 races. That is the, those are the dollars that are going to flow down to the corporate

level and the tournament sponsorship distribution level. Like in the same way we see optimum out there, we're going to see a Ramco or whatever the PIF representation is that is gonna be, which is different than the play of the investing in the investment arm of the new company. As I can't, it doesn't like fully make sense to me, but the two are still separate things in my mind. It's not like this $2 billion or whatever that we keep throwing out that number that's gonna get invested in is straight gonna get distributed straight to players through purses.

Like, I don't think it's that simple. I don't know if I can explain it, how it actually works, but I don't think it's simple. But no, purses are, so let's say purses are already an unsustainable amount, right? That's part of the whole thing that the tour probably leaked to the journal, which is like, we dipped into some of our reserves, the legal funds, and the purses that we promised we can't meet those obligations anymore. So now we're bringing in money that isn't actually have to have a return

on that investment from the Saudis. Like I just, I feel like at some point you reach the, you go down the road to this and what if the Saudis are like, yo, like we're running out of oil, like we can't do all of a sudden and it's like, well, where is my $25 million pip this year?

Like the expectations of these players is a little bit to be absurd, because they're not just generating this money. That's why I think it's on the tether to reality. Is it NFL revenue like salaries are based on the fact that NFL is a billion dollar money maker golf salaries in this in this going forward in terms of what they are rewarded for tournaments are not going to be based on reality. I think I think though it let's say in that scenario, like the Saudi funding dries up, then we just get back to what it was normally in theory, right?

I mean, it's going to get back to like dollars and sense like starting to make sense again. And that's where I'm kind of add too, is like all these dollars are like buying equity into a like company, right? Like it's not just like, it's not just like continual firehose of money. Exactly. It's not lighting on a fire. It's an investment more than like paying filmicles in $200 million.

And that's where I'm at KVV is like, it can't really be said enough is like when the money was irrational, it was for like irrational purposes. And as soon as it becomes like four rational purposes, it seems like it's going to be rational amounts. And that's the live money they lit on fire was to get the opportunity for this investment. Exactly. And that's like taking all the arrows in public and doing all the things that Randy's clearly dying to go to. Well, then all the, like, the Chess and Hadley's of the world who want to be made whole or just going to have to, they're not getting that in the end. And they're going to have to realize that, like, it's not the Chess and Hadley's obviously,

but like, John Rom is not ever going to be made whole for having stick stuck with. I think they think that he will. I think they think that he will and they have to continue to tell him that he will. But like I'm with you that like, I don't know how that works. Unless like this thing is so wildly successful, which brings me back to the point, Randy, you and I were talking about is like, man, oh, oh, what there was just like so much headroom on the like super niche game of golf that, you know, as I said the other day, from the minds of, you know, from the people who brought you the FedEx cup and the fireballs comes like this product that just is going to take the world by storm. Like, I don't think that's going to happen.

But it's such a good point. That just needs to be it that's that that underlying that underlying but I think what's so funny is like Again, if we bring up Randy's boyfriend tough time to say it tough wording to say it But he was very much like yo, this is a once in a lifetime thing And I think that's what he meant was like no, no, no, no, no, like this is going to be like for a very short window. It's about to be like a complete fucking cash machine, like get in the money booth, grab as many dollar bills as you can. And in 60 seconds, we're going to turn it off and you get what you get. And I think that's probably what that was right. Yeah, that was right. Totally. It was right about some things. It was right about a lot of things, man.

He was a complete showed in how he did it. He was wrong about a lot of things, but he was definitely right about a lot of things. A lot of things that weren't hard to, you know, the stars were subsidizing the rest of the tour. We all knew that. He was way off on the tour, just hiding fraudulently, hiding a bunch of money for them and having $20 billion in unsold NFTs. Which again, TC pointed that out today too, on Slack, but just shout out to all those people

who thought the tour was hiding all this money. Because apparently, apparently that ate the case because they just, I don't know, they never put the NFTs up for sale. I mean, the maybe they could have jumped on that and then the market was hot, like Logan Paul might have bought one. one like you never know. He was also right about these Saudis being scary mother fuckers that throw gay people off buildings when he said that he was right about that part. So you can't you do got to give it to him. Quote you got hands to him on that one. But the I guess the part that I'm like pre-mad about is we're going to get into this cycle where like fill taking $200 million, leaving,

you know, cooperating with the Department of Justice in an anti-attract trust suit against PGA tour and starting a lawsuit called Michelson at all, all while, you know, glad handing all the Saudis and doing all that is going to get lump in the same bucket as like, oh, we'll worry is playing for it. Now, those two are the same thing. This, this totally real equivalence is the same thing. It's 100% of where we're headed in all of this dumb ass shit. And it is gonna, that's the part where like,

dude, if I'm like Max or JT or even the guys that have been like way less vocal about this, it's kind of like, all right man, like you play for the Saudi money now or you retire and like that's kind of what the decision's been forced upon you. Or Japan tour. That's the camera said. You can play the Japan tour.

And that's the part that's like it, if it gets to the point where everyone's got their kind of dividing line on where this all goes. But one thing I've appreciated about when that, when Formula One goes to Saudi Arabia, like Lewis Hamilton stands up and says like, this is bullshit. We shouldn't be here. And the the human rights record is horrible. And like he the money he gets from this does not buy off his statements. And the money the live guys have gotten have totally bought off their statements where they've tried like Bryson's on CNN trying to fucking explain 9-11 now. And now Monahans on TV trying to

explain 9-11 is this deal goes to close. But like, if Rory can still stand up and say like, hey, this, this country's human rice record is terrible. And yes, I do play on a tour that is funded by it, but they've not bought my opinion on that. That still feels different to me than totally selling your word and your, your morals out for a foreign country. Who thought it was a good idea to put Bryson on CNN? That was fucking Bryson. That was a good idea. That was a bad calm. You think Bryson just texted. I think CNN thought that was a good idea, which was correct. And I think

Bryson thought that was a good idea. How about him saying that he feels bad for the tour players that were told one thing and you know, we were told one thing and it came exactly true. Like no, at no point was the live thing to be like, yep, halfway through our second season, we're going to totally flip and merge with the PGA tour here. No, this was not what you guys were told. You guys got sold out and if it was, hats off, but I certainly didn't hear that. Yeah.

Yeah, fuck man. What are you guys think we're going? Like, let me just paint you a picture here of the 2026 Aramco LA Open at Riviera. What do you guys think your relationship to week-to-week pro golf is? Has anyone publicly talked about what these golf events are going to look like? I haven't heard one fucking thing. I mean, no. First of all, details about anything. Yeah, that's the whole thing. As best I've heard, as of right now, and of course, this is gonna be like a 10 year shift, right?

Yes. Which is also fucking cool, is that it just feels like we're gonna be in transition for 10 more years. But as of right now, it's like, no, the 24 schedule is the 24 schedule and we're doing designated events. We're doing, you know, kind of the, whatever the fuck we want to call them, regular events're doing designated events. We're doing, you know, kind of the, the, whatever the fuck we want to call them regular events, not designated events like the, the mini, you know, many runs of those events into designated events into major.

Mule runs. Mule runs. Yeah, we're doing mule runs that lead to, you know, the, the big events and like by all accounts, things are staying the same for the most part. And again, if we go back to those live scenarios, like who the fuck knows, something might totally change. But as of right now, with the information we have, like, that's what it sounds like. Is that it basically just becomes like the PJ tour with, you know, probably the majority of those guys coming back to it. And, you know, probably some new sponsors. And probably a lot more money up front with one big cash infusion that gets used to your points all day for more investment stuff

and probably off the course stuff as much as it is like persons. I don't think we've done that enough justice because again, the details are so scant right now, but this for profit entity is not the golf tournaments, right? It is something that's I think truly just like an investment arm that players are going to have in theory. If it all goes perfectly, have an equity stake in.

But again, like that makes no sense to me because like how are you coming to this like 10 billion dollar thing that oh, no, no, it has nothing to do with like the product. No, no, no, no, totally. This is like a totally separate thing. You know what I mean? It's like $10 billion thing that, oh, no, no, it has nothing to do with like the product. No, no, no, no, totally. This is like a totally separate thing. You know what I mean? It's like, I do. That's where I'm just like starting my brain starting to like separate, liquefy.

But I think that's what you, you, again, I would love somebody to define what this means. But like the commercial interests of the PGA tour are transferred and owned by this entity. Right. I just, I need that part explained to me. Like what that is, but the tournaments are not run of the PGA tour are transferred and owned by this entity. Right? I just, I need that part explained to me, like what that is, but the tournaments are not run by the for-profit entity.

It's still confusing as shit, but I just think that like, it, like I think, again, the example I use was like, I think there is gonna be PIF money through a Ramco or whatever it is that comes to the PGA tour and there's PIF investment that goes into the new company and they're two Same thing, but they're two separate funnels. Do you think? Maybe this is just hitting me, but fuck notes. Do you think the fact that we can't even fucking explain it? Maybe like leads you to believe that golf might just be like a little too complicated as it's currently set up

You know, it's like and that's what it keeps coming back to like, Kevin, we were talking about it earlier. It's like, how do you, you know, I use my cruise ship analogy, like the cruise ship has just gotten so big. And the engine has a fit essentially like stayed the same. And you're trying to run this giant cruise ship without owning the masters, the US open, the PJ championship, the open championship and the rider cup, although maybe you own half the rider cup now, who the fuck knows what's going on with that. But like, I don't get how, I don't get how you just continue to like make these guys

95% of their money without taking advantage of any of the biggest events and the events that people care about. It just makes like how much longer can that keep going? I've taken crazy pills. Yeah, I the big thing that was popping in my head was, what are they going to try to buy with this sort of goal? So it's all rolled up into one and it's like a monopoly and we have all this money and flux of like,

keep joking about does the tour want to buy Pebble Beach? If they do, please redesign part of it. And it would, it's better spend the great. But like, what if they try to buy, I don't know, the RNA. Like is the RNA, is it possible to buy the RNA? I don't know. Like is it possible to buy the USDA? I have no idea.

These are things that are way beyond my expertise, but why would they not try? Like if you're telling me like, oh, we own the day-to-day operations golf, but not something that actually people give a shit about, well, fuck, then let's try to buy this or whatever I don't think there's any scenario where they could buy the masters, but I don't know never say never Yeah, it's true. I mean what if they buy an OEM like yeah, go ahead rainy. What if they buy a title?

Then we're really owed by the PGA tour By this podcast Wow No DJ to your point. I was just gonna say, kind of circling back. It's gonna, I'll stand up for Mikkelsen a little bit. Like all of that that you just said about the tour and like this doesn't make sense

and how is this sustainable. Imagine if you felt that way as a member of the PGA tour and simultaneously felt completely helpless to affect any change on that organization. I will push back on that just a little bit and like probably one or two other ways that he could have explored. Do you think he thought representation? What do you think he got it? You think he put a fucking bolted board in the locker room and said, Hey, guys, I got some thoughts. I'd love to get together and chat about this.

Like I think it wasn't. Also, I need money. Really fucking. What was it on the place that there is that? What is the pack? You, well, you just pack like 18 years ago or something like that, wasn't he? He could have arranged a Delaware meeting with Tiger. If he and Tiger had played nice and been like, we're're gonna use our combined leverage to sort of get more money, whatever. Yeah, I just, I'm, I'm, I think you're totally right until you get to the point of like,

he just hit exhausted all other options. Like this was all he could do. Again, I like all this stuff. I can squint my eyes and see a lot of different things. Sure. I think it comes down to where maybe some listeners have mistaken my loyalty for the PGA tour to just be like, dude, like you guys had an agreement. Like when you are a member of the PGA tour, you all agree to donate your, that contribute

your rights to this tour. Like that's where the money comes from. Like I've told Max this, like Max without the PGA, like without the PGA tour or a league to display your talents, your talent's not worth anything. Like you can go be Mo Norman and go host like corporate functions and show off your talent, but the what you're the most valuable from you beating like other top players and like them selling the market around that.

And that is kind of the whole deal of how the tour works. And you have an agreement to say like, dude, you're not gonna go play competing events. You're not gonna play North American events. Blah, blah, blah. And that's like that middle finger towards all the people that were left behind is where it's like really a struggle

to fill lining his own pockets along is the reason this happened. There's no $200 million. Phil doesn't do this to reshape professional golf. Like there's none of that. It's totally, totally self-indulgent. But we see that in every sport. You know, we like golfers want to be just like other pro athletes. That's we see that from the player side and the owner side in every other sports, though, with the collective bargaining. They, they make sacrifices for each other. They're, they're very much like Aaron Rogers and Tom Brady and those people, there are,

they could command more money if they, if there was no union, LeBron James could be paid to infant amounts of money if they were not, they're like, all right, the collective good of like dragging these 12 man towards us is, is good for all of us. And like, the Bronn has been part of the labor negotiation. Well, that's where I don't think the players, they're independent contractors. They don't, I'm saying they don't necessarily want it. Look, they can't unionize on a nonprofit, whatever. But like at some point, they had, they had decided to but when Jack and Arnie had decided to bust away, they could have had a like organized labor. They could have decided we're our collective. We're going to do good for the sort

of, you know, lower level kind of touring tour pros like I don't necessarily agree. Well, I'm just saying you're I'm an independent contractor like what KVV what do I care about your individual media rights? Well, you're something but that's what you've agreed to. You're an independent contractor in name, but you're a member of the PGA tour. You have given your media rights to the PGA tour. Right. My point was we see I don't know what's a good example. Some player who has a contract agreement, Lamar Jackson has a contract agreement with the Baltimore Ravens who all of a sudden, I don't feel I'm worth that. I'm going to hold out until we can come to the table and agree to a new contract.

That's my point. I'm saying that every time there's a collective bargaining agreement thing in the NFL, like all those guys could be like, you know what? Fuck the union. Like we'll just go across the pick of line. We'll play as infinite contractors from now going forward. And they don't do that. They decide, look, collectively, we're better off together. And golf has, there's no chance of whatever happened in golf. I just, I don't know, maybe we're talking past each other and making points that are totally disconnect from each other.

But I think I just don't see the, like they have an opportunity to be sort of selfless for the good of the game. I think it's a stupid saying, but I think like in other sports, they do sort of grasp like, all right, like our league is healthier in the long run if we're sort of working together towards some large goal instead of every man being out for himself. I think solid to your point, I feel like we would be talking about a both sides of our mouth a little bit too. If we were to say like, man, this is the logical conclusion. How did they not reach it sooner?

And also like, why didn't Phil just squash this? And you know what I mean? Like eventually there was going to be, if it wasn't Phil, there was gonna be a powder keg that kicked this thing off to get it going, which I think is probably maybe some Randy's point, right? It's like, and if you don't wanna be that person, like that's great. And Rory, like you don't have to be that person.

And he probably sleeps a lot better than Phil does to be honest. And, but I think it was gonna happen eventually, right? And so I feel probably dumb. It is like dumb money came along. Yeah. If like stupid, stupid money came along was the only way. Like Phil doesn't go do this for like the same amount of money he would have made on the PGA tour, right? There's no way. Like it was all about the huge ass payday that was going to go. They went on pricing said that part out loud on CNN. Like, oh, yeah, we were compensated for this for taking the risk like that's that's that's what we were compensated for.

I'm still convinced. I didn't really want to do this, but he was it was a little fact that he used the word leverage in that ship. No quote. He was really trying to walk it upright to the line, get as much sort of as he could from the tour. He's going to back away. And then once the quotes came out, he I think he didn't understand how book excerpts

work out. The smartest man in the room. Once that book excerpt dropped, he thought he was going to walk it back before the actual book came back and be like, yeah, look what I was doing. I was playing both sides, so I always come out ahead. He was like, all right, well now I gotta go. And then part of his anger was like, well, fuck you guys. I was trying to do this for you all you. I was trying to basically bend the suits over to get us paid. I don't think that was really true, but I think I, that's my deep down theories that Phil didn't really actually want to leave. We have talked a lot on this show tonight.

Basically, as if this deal is going to go through, after starting it with like, yo, this doesn't look like it's going to go through for a lot of different reasons. Can you, you guys want to help me game out? What happens if it doesn't go through? Either by the players shooting it down or by the department of justice shooting it down with FTC. I don't even know how that works, but it does seem great. Certainly, of course, with that

with that preface on all of my comments as well, I have no idea how this is going to go. I think that it's interesting, like I said, an hour ago from the, you know, live perspective is like, man, if it falls apart now, how is Yasser not feeling like it's, oh, just win, win for me, man. I don't care. If it goes ahead, it's awesome. Then I get what I wanted and what I kind of started, you know, was aiming for at the start of this deal. And if it doesn't go through, then like my league just got supercharged because all these guys hate their commissioner, which I will say the one thing with Yossir, I think we're quick to assume he's automatically

telling the truth to one side and not the other. And he absolutely could be telling the truth all the way to Jimmy and Jay and all of these guys. But if we do believe he's cold enough to essentially stab all the live players and employees in the back. I'm not putting him past him for him to stab the PGA and some big hitters on the other side as well.

I just wanna insert that. The only thing I would push back on just a hair on that would be, like I think people who are coming to this think that all he does is like run Saudi golf. Like this is such a small part of what he does. And so what I don't think he wants to do is like, you know, we just mentioned like, hey, Jay has the ear of all the top CEOs in, you know, the country certainly and a lot of them

around the world and blah, blah, blah. The last thing he wants to do is just be like, man, I totally knifed this, this monahan guy so I could get the cleaks like a better bargaining position going into the 2024 season. Like I don't think that, like he's not a fucking like super villain. Like I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal is to like do better business. And I think what does a lot better business is knifing Martinimer than it is knifeing like the PJ to report. And all of their corporate

sponsors just put it over seeing a ramco is way more important job. Yeah. Sorry. That's what is main job is to obviously overshade the piff but like being the president to you over. Yeah. And I think I agree with that, Dej. But I do want to say I'm not willing to say that 100%. Yeah. And I think that's fair. But, but I do want to say I'm not willing to say that 100%. Yeah, and I think that's fair. But yeah, I guess just to put a finer point on that KVV. I mean, at least based on my understanding, it's like all the what about Uber, what about Boeing, what about, you know, F1, what like that's what Yosser's doing too. Like he's at the top of all of those things. And so based on like Jeff Oglevy said this on the fire pit pod that he did with Alan Shipbuck,

it's like, it's like, man, yeah, you kind of go talk to like the F1 people about how the investment's going and they're like, it's pretty great. Like we, you know, they fund what we're doing and they kind of stay out of the way of the operations and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, that's probably certainly

what the PJ Tours are hoping for, right? And if that's the case, then I don't know, maybe what they're looking for. How much more sense does that make than like, oh, Saudi Arabia is starting their own 14 event race car series, you know, with, you know, with some of the best drivers, but not as mentioned, there's blowing money on it and no one one's sponsored and no one's watching it. Or like, hey, you can be a part of a pretty decent-sized part of the biggest racing circuit in the world, I assume for me the one is, which one of those sounds like a win for more people.

Now flip that back over to golf. Like, a 10,000, 50,000-foot view of all this. What makes more sense for the PIF to want to be involved in one big global tour that this will eventually start looking like a spec on the timeline or to fight it tooth and nail forever and have all the bad PR around you or leave that you're gonna probably have forever

if you continue to just go your separate ways. Which one makes more sense? If you're a yawster. I think the part that I keep wrestling with is so if you read a lot about Saudi Arabia like MBS was certainly the reason that the US wanted to make him an ally and then certainly the reason that the like Jack Kushner was like, no, I'm going to be like close friends with this person. It's because he is a pretty progressive leader for like Saudi

areas history. And so if you sort of think about, or what's the alternative to MBS, well, it's probably something much worse. And if you read a lot about that, it's like he's kind of like keeping some of the much more hardliners at bay. And so if you're, and I think it's probably naive, certainly to say this, if you're thinking about, let's say, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They want to move the country a little bit away from oil, probably a good thing, long run. They want to become a more progressive society.

They want to make this city, you know, on the coast of Western coast of Saudi Arabia, like a tourist destination. They want foreign investment. They want to kind of open up their country. I'd say they want the perception of that more than they want the actual thing. Right, that's what I'm getting to is I don't think anybody who actually studies this human right stuff tell you that it is all perception based. It is not actually truth that it that they're still want to sort of torture gay people behind the scenes. You still want to crush dissent. There's absolutely no free press in Saudi Arabia. And so I think the sheen of it is sort of like good intentions.

And the reality of it is much different. And that's where it's hard to sort of square. I was like, I don't think Yasser is like an evil guy. Like, you know, he's someone who probably has seen this pretty progressive person. He went to Harvard Business School. He wants to kind of, you know, move his country in the direction of being respected on a worldwide scale and not seen as like, you know, thugs. And the reality of

like, MBS is, if you've read a lot about him, like, he's a very different kind of person, kind of anger has a temper, like, came to power by essentially imprisoning his own cousins and family. It's complicated. as all kind of world things are. And the fact that we are talking about this on a golf podcast is strange enough. That's such a joke. I think that, you know, it's easy to say, like, no, no, they're trying to do good.

And I think what I've always just said is like try to sort of understand that what the perception is what they're sort of hoping for while not actually making real changes within their country. Great. Yeah. And it seems like it's worth, it seems like it's going pretty well. Kind of working to be on it. People that tell me it's great. Yeah, that's awesome. So, you said, what happens if this doesn't go through?

Because that what I asked, I thought, right? Yeah, it is. Because we just keep going. Okay, I'm like, have I missed remembered? Yeah. I mean, again, I don't really know, but it seems like it's going to be a colossal failure on the PGA side, which I believe would have to necessitate just about a full clean of house of leadership, right? Which can I say on that front, if I'm on the J of it all,

like how, man, I said this on whatever day this came out Tuesday, Wednesday. Tuesday. I said that morning, like if you've done all of this stuff the last couple of years and that's the tack that you took and you said the stuff about 9, 11 families and you said the stuff the last couple of years. And that's the tack that you took. And you said the stuff about 9-11 families and you said the stuff about apologizing for the PJ tour, I just can't ever imagine myself going and sitting on CNBC with this dude and like looking arm and arm

and high-fiving about like, we're going to go grow the game together. What I cannot fucking wrap my head around is why Jay wouldn't like resign and just say, Hey, you know what, I'm not the right guy for this moment. Like this is not it. And then a new leader comes in and says, Hey, based on where the previous leadership took us, this saudi thing is the only thing that we've got. This is the only move that we can do. I just, man, Randy, I guess to your point, I'm kind of hitting that, that point as well. It's just like, how do you not throw in the towel and just be like, enough is enough, unless there's some sort of like fucking savior complex going on or something. And true, like, only I can fix this. I got to drove us into this snow storm. I'm going to keep

driving until we get out. It's kind of how it's starting to feel. And it's just everyone's the hero of their own here. And it kind of sounds like Jay is a figurehead. Like, right, do you guys agree? Like it seems like Jay is not at the forefront. The thing that I have a locker room right now, he does not have the lock. The thing I can't shake, the thing I can't shake is the fact that Jimmy done joined the board in in November and this got done that fast. Do you know what I mean? Like having him come in and who knows? Maybe all this groundwork, I mean, actually, no, I'm not going to say who knows because Jimmy Dunn's the guy that fucking reached out and got this guy in the fall rolling. I was going to say, you know,

maybe all this groundwork was done before, but like, no, it wasn't clearly. And so Jimmy came in in November, learned the lay of the land and then whatever the reporting is, you know, in April, was like, all right, cool. I'm ready to go like, let's go make a deal. Basically, and the fact that that happened so fast in the grand scheme of this whole timeline is kind of mind blowing to me, which on the J front, I'm with you on like, yeah, over a change in leadership right before this happening, have made way more sense. If they had any like plan and continuity of it, they, it, it, I always will forever stick with me. I will let you say the line of what you, what the perception of what you think the PGA tour would be versus what the reality

is through the lens of TV shows. So it's never, so as people think it's house of cards and it's actually V. And this has been V like season 18. It's this past the this past week. None of this is there's no master plan here. This is flying by the seat of a lot of pants. But it would make sense to replace J. You know, right now, but if this plan that is now laid out goes into. I don't know why you replace him. You would choose to replace him once this plan that allegedly he has come up with.

Like if you're, if you're the tour players right now, you either like don't like this vision at all and vote no on this and you probably change leadership right then and there. Or if you do see it through, why are you doing that? Why would you change leadership then? Like it's, it's this plan that they came up to you with. He's going to be the CEO of this new co. Like why, why would you change leadership then? Like it's this plan that they came up to you with, he's gonna be the CEO of this new co, like why would you fire him then, or why would you replace him then?

I don't know, you know, that doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to go forward with the plan and also replace him. Well, I think it would be two things. It's not really his plan and two, this guy has painted us and the tour into a somewhat of a corner over the last three, four years. I don't know.

That's where I would start. And beyond that, just thinking about, okay, if the deal doesn't get done, what happens? I honestly don't know beyond that. I hate just using that as my answer, but it's the truth. I don't know. I have't know. I have no idea. Which again, just God, fool me 800 times, I guess.

And I know I just got done talking about how I'm not going to believe the people who just pull the wool over our eyes. But God, I can't picture a scenario where her, her, her, and Jimmy Don are not thinking about how to make this go through. where her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her also interesting. Oh, sorry, go ahead. So I'll just go say quickly. Like it also, that's where I'm at with like the antitrust stuff. Like if it gets stopped on the antitrust grounds and they didn't intend for it to get stopped, which I can't even game theory out why that would be the case. If it gets stopped, then these people are way more incompetent than I could have ever even imagined. Like it seems to, right? It seems too obvious that it would get stopped. So they have to know something.

Like unless they're desperate, unless they're desperate. I think that's worth mentioning. I found it amusing. I don't think I would read too, too much into it, but the anecdote that done in conveying the news in the situation of Rory, use the metaphor, I believe I have this right, we have 280 over water and sometimes you just got to go for it.

Like that's not a high percentage shot. And I'm not sure if we just picked maybe not the best metaphor. I hit a couple of those little squirters. That's a five-witcher Rory. Maybe he was trying to speak to Rory's language. I'd be like, yeah, I got that. of. It's not a win or a win. No, we could do this shit. To me, it's like, man, there's a lot of room to go wrong with that.

What do you guys make of, and I think Sally Jenkins has been the one national personality that I've seen kind of hammering on this. And I don't know what's there, what's not there. But just in terms of, do the players, if I'm a player, I think they deserve to know what Jimmy and Ed Hurley he stand to potentially gain. Personally, financially, their companies, like that's another piece of this, where it's like,

what are the conflicts of interest from these people that are really pushing this agreement? It is certainly on the list of like, we think we need answers to one of which like, hey, what the hell is this thing? I think yeah, that's that's probably definitely on the list. I will say Randy, like, maybe this is super naive of me to say, but Jimmy's very, I think, conscious of his reputation in the world of golf.

And I would imagine it is, too, at least, much less of a public facing person. Like Jimmy's the president of Seminole. He's a member of Augusta. He's a member of Chinnacock. Like he's golf is very much part of his personal story. It's that you know, we know who Jimmy is, and we don't know who a lot of other mergers and acquisitions sort of investment guys because of golf. I don't think that Jimmy would sell out golf for like a, you know, two, three million

dollars for his own sort of firm, just because like it's two, three million dollars. Like he sees himself as someone who's saving the PGA tour and professional golf. And so while they might benefit, certainly someone has to get paid for all of this work going through and it's probably his firm and Ed's firm, but I kind of, and maybe it's just naive to say this, I just don't believe really that there's an amount of money

that would have them light their reputations on fire in that sense going forward. There's something to do with like the honor of golf and like what their reputation means is in the golf community. I don't know if I think they would do it like with malicious intent, but I, you could convince me of Jimmy,

perhaps wanting to be the person that quote unquote saved professional golf as a huge motivating factor. And certainly if the PIF is investing two to three billion dollars, I believe M and M. N. A. brokers, the firms who broker these deals are paid on a percentage of such a deal. And so Ed himself might not be like, but there just is enough conflict of interest, potential conflict of interest, where if I was a player, it would absolutely be something I would need to know airtight.

Like you got to tell me exactly what your motivations, what you seek to gain, all of that. Well, I mean, he was on golf channel saying he's like, what makes my spot interesting in this is like, I'm the only one not begging for the PIFS money, right? Which again, that sounds like a great PR statement. I think you're exactly right, Randy. Like, if I'm a player, that's on the long list of questions that we need to get figured out before like June 27th, which is not a short period of time, not a long period of time.

I think you guys are spot on on on both counts. KBV, I'm kind of with you in that I think you guys are spot on on both counts. KBV, I'm kind of with you in that I think this is kind of Call Me Night you too, but I think, you know, there is kind of a bigger than the moment type of thing going on here that, you know, I think these guys want to be involved in saving the game. I am totally with you. It wouldn't shock me at all if if like fees are being waived on some of this stuff. I know that sounds ass-on-eign compared, like alongside the rest of this conversation, which is basically like kill everybody and get as much money as you possibly can.

But that's my sense, based on talking to people, is like that's not actually how it's going, but Randy, I'm totally with you too, and that like if I am a player, like I of course kinda know know that right and I need to know like what's going on and who like especially when there's four fucking people in the room. Like I don't know how you don't leave all of these meetings and be like tell me everything about these four people like what the hell guys you know.

Yeah, I think it just goes back to again if I'm putting myself in a player's shoes, I just I feel like I would be uncomfortable with the amount of stuff we simply don't know. We simply don't know what it has. And it's a it's a it's a monumental decision. I knew. I know. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy.

I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I really thought, I don't know what I thought.

You want to get to just a couple questions we got, we got sent in. I mean, I think we've properly covered our thoughts on Monayah's future tenure. We've got a lot of questions about that. Power draw lefty, are you sellouts for covering Saudi golf? You guys have any answers to that question? This is so stupid.

I'll go ahead, Deez. No, this is where I get to the point of like, I feel very confident that I'm not speaking out of both sides of my mouth. In that like, for all the people who are like, doll, you fucking ride an Uber, you ride in a, you ride in a Boeing airplane. It's like, yeah, dude, I do. I just took an Uber to the train station. This is the same thing to me.

There's a big difference between a minority investor that works with companies and a expressly sports-washing organization that is run by those people. Those are two very different things. You nailed it with, I think, the Lewis Hamilton example, Sally. If Rory stands up and all of a sudden is saying amazing things about what Saudi Arabia is doing to the Gulf being a force for good and all of a sudden is saying amazing things about the what Saudi Arabia

or maybe is doing to, you know, the golf being a force for good and all that, we got a problem. And then we're going to call him on that, right? But that's not what's happened here. Like the Saudis are not going to own Rory's words. I bet I'll say some nice words about Yasser. And I think like people at the tour seem to have relatively strong opinions of him. I think that's still different than like,

they're doing great things, they're trying to change, that's gonna be a big problem. Yeah, he also has $600 billion, which might have something to do with that. Probably helps. Can I also say, the question is, are you guys sell it for covering Saudi golf? To which I say, are you so fucking stupid

that you actually think that like, are war journalists who cover wars or who are criminals? Like get a fucking clue. I'm sorry, I'm sure you didn't mean it that way. No, I think he was asking it ever. Thug in cheek. Maybe it's a tongue in cheek. Some people are not.

But not, you see, Phil said something I was favoring tweets are talking about this. Like, you know, you cover the Olympics in Russia. Yeah, because that's an event that's going on, and I'm covering it as a journalist, or as a media person, or whatever sort of we are. The idea that that's the same as taking money from Russia, like covering an Olympics and going on there,

is just so beyond silly, I don't even know how to explain it. Yeah, I mean, some of this week might be explained by the fact that we all got DMs asking us to retweet live articles that were going around for pay. So if you're ever wondering if that stuff actually does happen, then yeah, we got the screenshots prove that. I personally turned out a billion dollars. There's a couple of retweet things.

I know people said I wouldn't, I would take the money, but you just personally wouldn't. Yeah, I would take the money. No, they offer them a Ben Moatumi, like right away. Rainy, what's your what's your number right now? You got to go play at every live event for the remainder of 2023. And you have to just you have to try your hard to take it really serious. It's a lot lower than I think you would

if I'd be in a Honda P. Oh, I'm sure that'll probably close this topic for the rest of the year. And we can get back to the golf here in the coming week It is US Open Week coming into this we had Ashley Buhai won the shop right. It was her second LPGA tour Went fourth worldwide win last ten months you won the women's British Open last year at Mirfield if you will Remember Randy any color to add to that the I'm not gonna lie the golf world was kind of sucked up into a vacuum this week And I didn't catch a whole lot else. I'm not going to lie, the golf world was kind of sucked up into a vacuum this week and I didn't catch a whole lot else. I'm not going to lie either. That goes for me as well. I will say I think through no fall to their own, the women's game is going to take a bit of a back seat this weekend and next week, but then I look forward to the KPMG the week after the US open. And of course the US's Open, the first week of July where we will be,

you know, heavy, heavy, heavy into the Women's Game. So not a lot of color to add there, unfortunately. Adrian Dumont Deshsasar. I hope I've been shot. That's like that. That's the right. Adrian Dumont Deshsasar. Deshsasar. I I think we know it is. He wins in his, I was trying to be a guy. I'll tell you what it was, baby. Apologies to the Deshard family if you waited this long in the podcast.

Exactly. This guy's a heavy header, man. This is a big deal. Windson is first start on the corn fairy tour after finishing third and PGA tour you are immediately reaping the benefits of the very the much faster promotion system that the PGA tour has implemented finally. And you're sick for for those that don't know. The way it works is the top five basically all go directly into the PGA tour ecosystem.

So if you stayed in college and you played all four years or six years like Ludwig did, you go to just kidding. You are. He you go to, uh, that's just kidding. You, uh, he's gonna get you. He's just 23 and a half years old. You, uh, you are rewarded. If you're top five points earners, you're rewarded with a direct path to, if you finish number one, like Ludwig, Abert did, you get a PJ tour card right away, which is why he was in the field of Canadian Open and already finished finished whatever we said T25, which is incredible and awesome for him. And I believe the next five, I'll get Cornfairy Tour cards. I think two through five do. Two through five. And get six through ten, get Condititor America's. Well, that is. But Adrian was the beneficiary of that. When straight to

the Cornfairy Tour and won in his first start. So like this is kind of what a lot of people have been saying about, you know, like these kids are kind of beaten down the door and we need to get them up and get them, you know, places to play and, you know, there's no need to like artificially kind of keep them down. Let's, let's get them in the mix and, you know, get them up where they should be And that seems to be a runaway success. I'm going to leave you guys with this question after all of our discussion. Just what do you think the chances are, or what do you think the best case is that at the end of this,

whenever that may be, whenever the dust settles, whenever that possibly could be, that the golf world, from a golf fan perspective that we end up better off than what we were before Before we were before any of this started happening So Randy's laughing do we start with him? Well, no, I mean, I feel like DG and I my opinion hasn't changed DJ since we chatted on the last Wednesday podcast Yeah. I gave you a go. You go. Let me think about how I want to formulate this week to week. I think probably not better. I don't know. I guess I'm torn. The majors, I think,

it'd be better because the majors are clearly what we can all agree on matters. And I think that the the attempt to sort of elevate week to week on the PGA tour, like, you know, you're telling me it's all awesome. Like every week is just so awesome over and over again. Like the players is so awesome. Like I this to me sort of revealed like, yeah, you guys are just kind of full of it. Like I don't care about money. I don't care how much money you guys get. None of that is interesting to me.

I care about watching great players play great golf on great golf courses, and you're very rarely offering me that. And so I will continue to sort of hopefully for NLU, go to all the majors and write about all the majors and understand the importance of those. The rest of it to me will be just providing context for who these guys are. So I think that's extremely well said. I want to leave a little bit of opening and oxygen for the idea that again, maybe there's

some radical ass format that they come up with that has way, way, way more upside than the week to week PJ tour now, right? And I use the live example like genuinely, like if they look at it and they say team golf is, you know, going to be way more successful for X, Y and Z reasons, therefore we're pivoting to entirely team golf. Like that's a very different conversation. And that's one where I'm like, I can't predict what that looks like. That might be the upside might totally be there.

Who knows? I might be open to like the Team Golf aspect if it's like, okay, there's two teams and there's four guys in each team and this week those guys are having a mini rider cup and that's what's the offering to, like, I don't care about, everybody can kind of rotate or whatever, like I would kind of be like,

I you know what, I'll flick that on. And that's where, if it ends up there, like who knows, that could be way, way worse, that could be way, way better. Truly can't call it at this time. But KVV, I'm with you on real quick.

Just laugh at that. Is it, laugh at this if you want though, but the TGL is a thing that Tiger Woods and Breu McElroy are involved in. And like it's, I don't know how you tack on, I don't know how they're going to tack on like more team golf into that. I really don't, right? Which it regardless of what you think of it, it's going to have Tiger Woods involved in like the only way you're going to have Tiger Woods involved, right? So it's not going to go away in the snap of the finger. I'm receiving word that TGL is the indoor simulator golf league. Again,

I'm not asking you to be a blind supporter of this. I'm saying Tiger and Rory are involved, which makes it harder for it to go away and that it's going to be where we see Tiger Woods playing golf. Again, I struggle to think of like how exactly they're going to do both of those things. Yeah, you're just talking about it like they're porting them into the matrix. I thought it was like going to be like top goal. We don't know how to get to see them. I agree. Yeah. Kevin drinks it.

No, no, it's like they're playing video games essentially. And now they're having like now it seems like they're doing all the like very foeseries teams like Los Angeles golf club. Just we're you know golf but louder basically seren Williams and her husband Alexis so he had both investors in the first team. I I saw I'm glad you brought it up. It's part of the it's part of the landscape. But I'm not going to be doing I'm not going to be taking TGL questions at this time. It's kind of how I'm going to be bigger questions. Yeah, we we simply cannot at this time.

Uh, I think we're wrapping up that question. I think Cavier right on like, I don't, I don't see how you can keep polishing the turd, so to speak, to make it all that much better, right? Like, if, you know, depends how you feel about seeing a Ramco signage all over the place at PJ Tour events, I, I hate to say it. You watch F1, you get used to it pretty freaking quick. And I think the world moves on. And if the PJ Tour kind of has, you know, more firepower and all of those things,

I'm sure it will be a slightly better product. I don't think it's going to completely revolutionize my Sundays going forward. I'll hold my breath on that a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. A long way to say it. We don't know. revolutionize my Sundays going forward. I'll hold my breath on that a little bit, but Yeah, I don't know. A long way to say it. We don't know. I think I'm with you guys. I you know, I'm 39 years old. I've probably been watching PGA tour golf in some former fashion for what 25 years and

it's outside of a week where there's a good fit. Like, my point is, it's never done it for me. And so I don't have an expectation that week to week PGA tour golf is really ever gonna be the thing that I love about golf. KV, I love how you said it's context for the majors. And then, you know, I think this week has really made me think about like, why do I love golf? And a lot of times

that's for the actual experience that I have playing it with friends and family or sometimes just by myself. So I don't know what I just, I am not, and I only wanna put this on like leadership necessarily. I'm just not sure what it would be that would be like, oh my God, I gotta watch this week. I got to guys. I don't know if that even exists for me. It needs to be a player. It needs to be like a rose-sang player

that we all get really excited about and becomes must see TV. I think, I mean, I just don't. Which players that we like in this generation and that are fun to watch, but there's no tiger and fill as of right now that are, unless Speed starts doing it again. Speed is the one that is like,

oh, I'm not gonna miss that when he's in contention, but the rest don't jump the same way off the page to me. Yeah. At the next Tigers out there, probably, it's probably 11 years old, something, you know, just biting his her time. Which, sorry, which does go back to like, how could they make golf more interesting to me week to week KVV use said courses, which I think fits hand in hand with some type of technology rollback, either on the equipment and or the ball. Perhaps it's like guys, we don't have to play 49 weeks of the year.

Maybe there are things, but I just have no confidence that the tour is, we'll go down those avenues. I thought the fan was like, at the height of our most complaining about the PGA tour, the fan was so far down the priority list. Where do you think the fans sitting right now? Can you go far, we can't pull over any farther. We can't be farther down the priority list.

They're not even like trotting out the, you know, the talking points of like, how great this is gonna be for fans yet because there are just obviously no details yet. That's why I feel like it's just like a pastor now. It's like a way to re-assure it money. Like the fans are totally irrelevant to any of it. They'll dress it up and be like, no, no, definitely the fans are here, but like they don't. Like that doesn't matter as you have billions of dollars in a spiket that gets turned into. Oh man, this conversation just always gets

so depressing. But it's like, well, let's, why don't we end it and let's go to the fucking major week that I'm extremely excited about. There's no reason this conversation should drown out a week that we are really, really excited about. I think it's had to jam three shows into this week to cover it because it is obviously extremely important, but like, it's not going to ruin US Open Week for me, maybe a little bit, but not all the way. No, it's going to bring it all back into focus, man. It's going to, somebody's going to go win a major this week. It's gonna change their life.

It's gonna change their Wikipedia page. It's gonna change how we view people. It's like, God, the PGA was such a blast. I had such a good time. And now I wanna go, I can't wait to see what Brooks does this week. And what does that have to do with the Traveler Championship? Nothing. And it's never gonna have anything to do with it.

You know, and that's, I'm with you guys. We're on to LA, man. Well, let's wrap it long episode, long ass week. I'm ready to get some sleep and what's guaranteed to be another long ass week with a lot of freaking golf. We'll be out at LACC for a few days. KVV will be out here all week arriving I believe on here on Monday and we will be bringing you live shows on Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday like we do for all majors

We'll have a preview pod out overnight Monday into Tuesday and very excited for LACC I've heard great reviews of the weather and the course and the setup so far and exciting out there and check it out tomorrow So Thank you everyone for tuning in this past week. Thanks to all the crew for scrambling to cover it as well, or as much as we have in the past week. It was, as you might imagine, Tuesday, it was a record amount of downloads

in about a 24-hour period that we've ever had on anywhere on our show and definitely a record tuning into the show live and then I watched it on YouTube. So we thank everyone for this port and turning to us this week to to help you provide some content through a very tumultuous time and hopefully I promise we've probably never worked harder in a week to get as much information to be able to paint the pictures clearly as possible. Can we're doing that to the best of our ability? So thank you for all that to have helped with that and contributed that and to you

guys as well. So without any further delay onto the golf accounts and not the golf for money. So let's go into US up in a week and we'll see you guys later this week. Cheers. Cheers to the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about in? That is better than most. How about in? That is better than most.

Better than most.