No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 766: Ludvig, TGL Roof Collapses, Rory Leaves the Board, RSM Classic

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Ludvig Aberg dominates the RSM Classic, Rory leaves the board, Lanto Griffin has some quotes, the TGL roof collapses, and that's just a bit of what's discussed in this week's recap. We also talk DP World Tour, CME Group Tour Championship, LIV free agency, Azinger out at NBC, Tiger playing the Hero, and a ton more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the no laying up podcast brought to you by our friend Ludwig Aberg, Obert. Still don't know how to say it. Sally here, TC is here to celebrate.

What up TC? Hello, hello, good to be here. TC would have taken the night off. He's not feeling great, but I believe he has some things he wants to talk about tonight. DJ Pies here. Hello, pie man. Hello, happy to be the Scotty Pippin to TC's Michael Jordan in this flu game that we're about to witness. This episode is actually brought to you by our friends at title is the number one ball and golf and the choice of course of RSM classic champ Ludwig.

I'm just going to not say ever say his last name. I mean, that's going to be my new policy. I'm just going to just commit to one. Just be confident. Uh, just do the wrong one. Just stay on the wrong one forever. I'll bear. How about that?

That's probably actually closer to the, uh, than the, than the correct one. Uh, and the winner of the LPGA season finale, Amy Yang. I want to give a shout out to our friends at Titleist. They had me out back in June. I think the hottest day ever recorded. It was 107 felt like 116 that they had there in their track band data to do some ball testing with Jordan Speeth and Scotty Sheffler.

You guys heard the podcast we did with them on that day back in June, but they also produced a video where these guys just went around, hit some wedges, hit some seven iron tism drivers with different golf balls, talked all about spin and carry and all of the characteristics of golf ball of a golf ball. They're looking for kind of I loved playing the game. You've done that with some of the guys, Dej, after they hit a ball, guessing what some of their trackman numbers would say, it was actually kind of crazy to see what they'd come up with. Crazy also to see how much they could just shift. The ball didn't matter that much to them.

Like, oh, this is a lower spin ball. Okay, I'll spin it more manually and move just to get the right spin number. But it was sick. It was great spend some time with them as a lengthy video and people seemed to be ready to it. So check that out on Titles homepage. Just search for Jordan Speet, Scottie Sheffler, ball fitting ball testing something along those lines.

Shout out to them for that. It was a lot of fun. I love it. Ball, no, no. Guys, we're, uh, we're going to run through. We've got a lot, lot, lot to talk about tonight. I can't believe it. It is November 19th. And we have this many things on the agenda, but it was a very fun week. We're going to throw, I'm going to throw out nominees for Story of the Week TC. I'm going to let you pick where we go first. Okay. Here, here are your nominees. Ludwig Aberg. I'm just going to say A nominees for story of the week TC. I'm going to let you pick where we go first. Okay. Here are your nominees. Ludwig Aberg. I'm just going to say Aberg Ludwig Aberg goes 61 61 to win at sea island.

Rory McElroy leaves the PJ tour board. NBC declines to renew Paul Azinger's contract. Amy Yang wins the $2 million CME tour championship. Rory wins fifth his fifth race to Dubai. Nikolai Hoigard wins the DP World Tour Championship. Something called the Netflix Cup takes place. The dome that was supposed to host TGL in January collapses. And Blandy gets a super max extension with the cleaks as free agent season opens up in a live golf TC.

Where do you want to take us first? You know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna pull an upset here. We're going off the board. I didn't even think about this as an option. You could just keep drawing it out of we do this. My friend my friend Sean Martin this week. I mean, you're on this a right-in candidate. Yeah, this is a right-in candidate. You know. Sean, Sean was up in St. Simon's covering the RSM Classic. Went out of his way to go to Starbucks over and over and over again. He wrote it into his gamer story on pjtore.com.

He had a viral tweet about going to Starbucks this week. Nobody hates small businesses more than Sean. So I just wanted to get that out there to lead things. promo code Cal Poly next time you're in Starbucks for five percent off. I'm going to have to stick up for Mr. Martin. He does say not a lot of stuff is open either early or late on C Island and his claim is that the coffee shop. The other small business coffee shops do not open early enough in Starbucks does. He's an early riser. So which is ironic because that one's named wake up it's the name of the coffee shop well that's a clear number one story the week TC what's number

two number two's love big I mean it's uh 61 61 that's that's unsharted territory like I think McKenzie he shot 63 61 or sorry 60 60 63 and lost by four. He lost ground on the weekend shooting 60 63. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's amazing. There's nothing else I need to say about a lot of it. Like, you know, we're we're kind of entering a phase where I think we're going to have, what do you call it when, you know, people can do their penance or do their, you know, like, not like recidivism, but what's the, what's the word? Oh, it's a lot of big amnesty for the rest of the year. People can, can get on the boat, they can get on the bus.

Not fall for this. We had a Ludwig treaty this summer that you violated, so I don't trust it. Sally, I'm not talking about you. It's crazy that you're projecting like that. Can I, I'm talking about everybody else, all the other haters. Can I, this is a unscheduled game. I'm back and forth on this with Ludwig. I can't figure out who he is, what he is, like in terms of how big the ceiling is.

He's really old as we've established I think throughout the course of this year. I think that's why I thrived at Sea Island. Exactly. With all the other old stuff. Yeah. I probably just like the course with his flip-flops on all the rest of us closing early out there. Can I just like go down the list of like the top stroke gain, ignoring strokes gain on this, but I'm just going to say like, because love isn't enough data to show what he is yet. But like, is stroke gain on this, but I'm just gonna say, like, because Lovevig doesn't have enough data to show what he is yet, but like, is he better than this guy?

And I'm not saying like, hey, does he project better than like this guy? And I wanna, I don't know where I would slot him in. I know where, I don't know where TC's gonna slot him in, but I think it gets pretty interesting quickly. Like, all right, is Lovevig a better golfer? Again, I don't mean right now, but he's got a better golfer than Again, I don't mean right now, but he's got a better golfer than Victor Havlund.

So tricky time of the, you know, they bring a both win tournaments that, yeah, they, they kind of both win tournaments at resort destinations. Havlund at my Acoba and Puerto Rico and Lovic at Cron and, and chef, like he shelved that this year. He won BMW, he won the tour championship. Almost on the edge. It's a good cop. It's a really good cop. But he hasn't played a fucking major yet, right? It's really hard to project.

It's kind of like a jackney pitcher. Yeah. 14 events is a professional. Yeah. Yeah. 14 events is a personal one to him. And he lost in a playoff and one of the other ones. Yeah, at some point this year People were calling him mule big

I think literally one person probably did as a joke and it's a chip you're gonna wear for quite some time It's he a better golfer than Scotty Shephler Okay, I want to see what the cutoff is maybe Maybe long term like I I don't think we can fully say is he Potentially yeah like he could be they right now. I think the I test says he's I think he's probably better than Adam Scott so like if we skip down the list is he better than max homa is he better at golf than max? I think what's interesting about a lot of these guys is like the differentiator what puts them so high up on a lot of the Stroke's game stuff is their iron play, right?

And I think Max, Scottie, Victor are all in that camp. I think if TC would probably even concede if there is a weakness in Ludwig's game, it's probably been that the iron play has been a little less sharp than, you know, the wedge play everything else. So it's like, you know, how much of that is kind of they are who we thought they were. And, you know, maybe that gets a little better over the stretch, but like, if you look, go back and look at, I was thinking to myself, like Scotty feels like the natural comp. I don't really know why, but he did for a start. And I'm going back looking at Scotty's old strokes game stuff.

And they started out like in 2019 when when Scotie's I guess that was his rookie year on tour. They're kind of like whatever you call it like strokes game distribution sheet like what they gain and off the tee, what they gain with their irons, et cetera. Like looks pretty similar to the Ludvigs. And I'm like, oh, maybe there's like a similar path here, but Scottie's Iron Play has just gotten like eight times better since then, and I don't like projecting that out for somebody else feels like projecting like two perfect storms. You know what I mean? So I don't know that that's gonna happen,

which is where I think like, Hovelin feels like a really good comp right now until we see like that really huge jump. That's a long way. Not answering the masks. No, it is. It's, but it's, it's such a weird profile, right? I think just the question becomes does it become a really good iron player or putter, right? Like one, probably one of the two and he is a top 10 player in the world.

He is a top 25 player in the world just based on how he drives it. Like he drives it so well, it's hard to screw it up. Like he's just going to, he's hard to screw it up. Like he's just gonna, he's gonna top 25 tournaments to death. And to win a lot, you're gonna have to have, he had an amazing putting week. He was fourth this week and putting. He was also 14th in Strokes Game approaching the green this week. Like if the way he drives, he's gonna win every single tournament he plays if he puts up numbers like that. So, if he can consistently perform really well in one of those categories, I think we're gonna see a very, very, very elite player. But I struggled to come up with like a comp form

because of what you said, just the iron play just does not check out yet. But. So I counterpoint, he shot 61 on Saturday and he was 40th in putting. He barely, he barely gained any strength. But he did approaching the green. Like that's what I'm saying, one of the two.

Yeah, totally. He does one of them. I think he's, I think he's a much better iron and wedge player than he's shown thus far as pro career. I think that's something where, that's the other thing. Like the sample. It's been 14 events. I was trying to give him, you know?

Yeah. I mean, the guy hasn't played him major yet. And I feel like his, I feel like his, his, uh, like, he's played in a rider cup. He's one, he's won events on DP World Tour and the PGA Tour. Granite was a mule event. And he's like, he hasn't played in a major yet as an amateur or a professional.

I feel like his game's tailor made for Augusta, right? I mean, I would say even more like PGA, US Open style, right? Like just drive it down there farther and straighter than everybody else and figure it out. See, to me, and this could be famous last words, to me, he seems like he's ready to print like a hundred million dollars playing like PGA to our golf just the way he drives it. And if the precision isn't there with irons when the slopes get a little more dramatic at tournament at majors and it gets a little bit firmer, like it's just a different, it's PGA to Tour Golf and major championship golf

are totally different. He's got to be able much better iron player to be competitive in those. So I don't know. I think you're drastically under rating his, his ceiling. Well, I haven't seen that. I don't, it's ceiling. Sure. That's, that's unproven to this point though. I think it's, it's, I'm reacting to what we've seen so far. We've seen the driver. That's going to play everywhere. I still think like Augusto's still a second shot golf course is cliche as that is. And a lot of uneven lies and a lot of shots that a lot of knowledge required to it. I I would not say his game is tailor made for a gust.

So that doesn't jump off the page to me. It seems tailor made though for a shit load of PJ tour tracks. See, like I would I would push back and say Cron didn't seem like it was tailor made for his game with the, you know, some of the uneven iron shots and all that stuff or the way you played it, you know, at Bay Hill, for instance, like that's a tough setup. Or, you know, some of it like his best collegiate performances were in heavy wind and, you know, kind of crazy conditions. I feel like he's a gamer, He's a mother and like his approach play

Has been above tour average, you know, really like thus far and I feel like you get him a little bit more experience And he's only gonna get better and better and better. I think we're just seeing a glimpse of what he is I think that's like the most exciting thing going forward, right? Is like we can I'm happy to sit here and make all kinds of like silly stupid predictions Truly no idea though. Like I cannot wait like we have a full year next year of him playing you know all these like a lot more BDEs T.C. We're gonna see him in majors for the first time. We're gonna see how the hype stacks up. It's like there's we're gonna get into plenty of this but there's so much bad shit about pro golf right now. Just like so much.

And I think this is tip, tip, tip top of the list of like things that I'm just cannot wait to watch in 2024. Maybe the only thing to be honest is just like, well, at least we get love fake. Like that's, that's gonna be cool. At least we get to watch that. The, the, I believe the tweet you're referring to from Sean Martin said that he said a real conversation

between two tour winners at Starbucks this morning. Player one, there is no world where we'd be able to beat Ludwig on a consistent basis. Player two, I didn't really know who he was after playing six holes with him. I thought he was the next fucking Tiger Woods, which is, you know, a sound like mules. B, I like, I don't want to compare anybody to Tiger. That's your response. Thank you. See, unless it was Tiger making the comparison, we don't know.

It's an odd named tour winner. You might have drove it up from baby privacy was was docked up there. In front of the, he also said, just saw a five year old shout do it for TC as Ludwig walked off the seventh green. He politely obliged and fist bump the young lad. Ludwig is a true class act. You have to feel for him though. No matter what he does, he can't escape the shadow of a tankerous podcaster, which that's

we didn't talk about. I know we're going to get to Fleetwood probably later, but you know, is the, is it going to be heavy lies, you know, TC's crowd? Is this all the trust going to hang around his neck for the rest of his career? You got to think about that. Maybe that puts two tries. Oh, I think he's already vanquished it. It's already. He's totally shown that he can live up to the moniker's, the platitudes that we place upon him. And now it's, it's like he's home free. So, I don't know.

I think in all seriousness, like he's, he's as good, like he's better than could have anticipated that he is. And I can't, like DJ, like you said, I can't wait to see what he does. And he's just, he plays fast too. That's the other thing, just watching down the stretch today. Like it seemed like my Kenzie Hughes was slow slow playing him and he was playing so fast and so under control and just like there's there's nowhere the balls gonna go other than 10 yards offline. We've poked a lot of fun it.

Smart and early on here, but his game story was really good. You should go read it on pjjor.com. But a lot of the I loved a lot of the stuff he had in there early about like, there's no idiosyncrasies in his golf swing. It basically looks like an AI generated golf. And it's just, it's that same like way that he plays. He just like see the target hit the ball. Like there is no, doesn't seem like there's any doubt. And that could be the whole, you know, podge-carrington, like, that stuff creeps in eventually, type of quote, but God, we're in a very, very, very fun spot. Couple, couple numbers for you guys. Fourteen events as a pro, we've mentioned this. He is now up to number 32 in the world.

Fourteen starts as a pro. He is number 32 in the world. There's just, yeah, but that'd be like 132. And then it has to live, guys, that true, true, true. Which, which solid, I do push back a little bit on like he's a top 25 guy like, yeah, he's a, he's a top 40 guy right now with 14 events under his belt. Like I feel like he's gonna be inside the top 10

within next 12 to eat. We have to push back. I said he's already a top 25 player. Like I'm asking if, if he is a top 10 player. No, but you said if he's gonna make the leap and I feel like he's already, like I'm asking if if he is a top. No, but you said if he's gonna make the leap and I feel like he's already like I feel like he's already well in his way to making that leap to a top 10 player. I think agree. Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. I don't know if he's I'm trying to figure out if he's like a rom right? Is that is that what we're watching?

That's who he like reminds me like he looks like a fucking bully. Yeah, I'm up. Yeah. I mean, Ram, again, better iron player, even at, you know, at this age and at a younger age. We've joked about a lot of the age, but like, he is 24. Like, it's not like, he's not 21. He's not like a, yeah, it's not a Matt Wolf guy who still should be in college, right? So see, I don't know. Like sometimes I push back on that, like,

I hate it in the NBA draft. And they're like, yeah, this guy is like 18 and two months versus, you know, this guy's 19 and seven months. Clearly, this guy's got a higher ceiling. Like, we're, and it's funny too. Like we talk about guys in the past that's like, you guys talk about Tommy Fleetwood. Tommy's 32. You know, he's 33, Matt. And, and, and you guys talk about Max. Like, he's got his whole career ahead of him and Tommy like, you know, what, we might as well stick a fork in him. He's done. That's my idea.

Strong. I don't know. Years. Eight years. He won't work. He's like, of course, his team. I was getting bad. Like it's the 32 even.

Yeah. Oh, he's a good dig that clip. Spend the week digging up that clip where we said stick a fork and Tommy. He's done. Yeah, I don't think it has any. You would say old. I don't think it's so old. He's so old. He's so old.

That's that's not where that take is covered from. Couple of things, maybe something, maybe nothing. I know he's playing a lot of mule events. He's playing a lot of, you know, Minneapolis and Detroit and things of that nature. He's not playing any majors. Ludwig's scoring average over the 50 rounds. He's played on the PJ tour.

Do you guys see this? 68.32 or something. 68.32. Exactly. That was a really good guess. Point three better than Scottie's tour leading number for the season. Which again, I know he's playing very different events, but sporty. It's better than a higher number, certainly. And also we should have like said this upfront, literally tied the PJ towards scoring record this week. Imagine if we had, you know, I flashed back to that RV frequently and just like, imagine if you could time travel in and just tell these guys

like one bit of information, just like, Hey, I know you guys think T.C. is crazy. What if I told you in two years, Ludwig is literally going to have the PJ towards scoring record. I think, you know, I think I think we would have some pretty good looks on the faces. What do you think is like I guess on it's not like on its head, it feels, you know, it's like, oh my god, like how did like it's a par 70? I know this is just like, you know, total strokes. It's not in relation to par or whatever, but like that's like the greens are so, they's so here up there. So I'm gonna put up their Monday and greens are so pure you can make putts.

Not a whole lot of trouble for guys, you know, off the tree. We're noting all in here this week just for the record. Yeah, totally. And it's, you know, and it's not, it's not long and, and, but I do think it's interesting where like he's played, he's one of the mountains in Switzerland. He's won now by the sea. Our guy knows Faratu tweeted this. I would point out he's won in the desert as a collegiate.

So he just needs to go down one in the rainforest. He's perhaps in the foothills. One of the prairie college. It's very, you know, perhaps in the foothills, one of the rare. It's gonna win like that, that, that drawing that's everywhere that shows like the lagoon, the meadow, he's gonna win in all those. Of course, I might be captain planet. Can I, can I give you a fun little nugget I just discovered

here? What do you think Ludwig's masters odds are right now, as we sit here on the on the draft King sports book? It's a great question. I'm 50 to one. That was going to be my guess. 30 to one. Oh, my. Better than Tony Finau, Max Homa, Justin Thomas, Cameron Young, Bryce Nishambo, Will's

Allataurus, Ricky Fowler, SungJay, and Matt Fitzpatrick, walking Neem and Jason Day, Hadekimatsu. I'm a Windom clerk. Tom Kim. I'm like, what Clark Tom Kim. I was open. Tommy Fleetwood Justin Rose, better odds than all of them. He is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12th guy on the board and odds. People know the electrons. The 12th.

They're going to vote with their walls. That's interesting. We mentioned McKenzie Hughes finished runner-up Tyler Duncan T3. I only have a shout out to Eric Cole for this first album, a debut album, so many chart-topping singles off this album, so many great finishes this week, the country music sensation. T3 finished, probably got rookie of the year snatched away from him this week, with Ludwig's win, but outrageous rookie year he played like 78 times and he, that's a long tour. That's the only way they make money these days, T.C.

They got to get out on the road. Spotify, we don't have to get into it, but it's a mess. Um, an awesome, awesome season for him. And he will be the poster child for like, I just like for the mules, which I believe we'll talk about the mule uprising here coming soon. But dude, just do it air cold. It's possible. Like that dude came in with absolutely nothing. Seven of 37 events, what seven top 10s pretty, it's pretty solid. So I'm glad you mentioned rookie the year. I think Ludwig is probably going to lock that

up. I put together, I didn't want to tell you guys about it because you would have researched it very, very quickly. I want to quiz you guys. Can you name the last 20 years worth of rookie of the years? No, no. Just to see how it goes. I'll give you a little, I'll give you a little hint on each one. Do you literally remember last year, 2021, 2022 season, who would rookie the year? Absolutely not. Come on. He finished, uh, top two, he was finished I'm not sure if I can get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a He was a runner up the masters. Little's outsourced. Little's outsourced. 19-20. Fifth in the FedEx Cup as a rookie. T-4 at the PGA. I already talked about him on this here podcast. Cameron Young. No, Cameron Young, remember he was... He cannot win it twice. By definition, get what it's like.

T.C. never should have invented him. Scotty Shed. Okay, 2018-2019. Oh, Scotty. Okay, 2018, 2019 guy played 800 events, seven top 10s. Sung J M. Sung J M. That's right. Can you just say the final year, you give me confused when you start with the 28 just say 2019. That's okay. This year, this year ended in 2018. Okay. He was a winner at the Byron Nelson.

Jason Aaron wise. 17. he won twice as a rookie Justin Thomas no He won the green Briar he also won the twerking team in Tortilla. Oh, Zander Zander 16 One in his first start you believe that surely you'll remember that First start it was the fries dot com open. He only had two other top tens We're gonna start to get into the bleak territory the rookie of the year might not be that first he just got a war in champ Emiliano Grillo. Oh, what?

15 Maybe the biggest forgotten man and on the PJ tour right now He rubber gum. No, he didn't have a win. He won. He did win. That is true. Yeah, that's true. It feels like a macular grid.

He wasn't that good to lost in a playoff. That was the highlight. Second at BMW. Daniel Berger. Uh, 14. One, the Puerto Rico open. Tony Fino. Come on, TC.

I think to... Victor, I'll... You're boy. 2014. It was like... one the Puerto Rico open Tony Fino. Come on TC. Make sure Victor. All your boy 2014. It was like, you understand your concept of this. Robert comments and Victor. I'll be sick. He might be out of cold beds right now. Chess and badly. All right. The wrap around season is making me feel done. 2013. Come on guys. This is this one's pretty easy. I really think Jordan speed 2012. I don't think you're going to get only PJ tour win of his career. Wanted to play off at my

coba. The question mark. John. John huh. 2011's easy. None of these are easy. 2011's 2011's easy. Come on. One twice. One of them was a major. Duffner or King Bradley. King Bradley. Yeah. Uh, 2010 guy loves dirt bikes. Ricky. Ricky 2009 runner up at the BMW Championship attended by a young DJ pie. Oh, championship attended by a young DJ pie. Oh, uh, leash. It's slug hill. There's no fucking way you're going to get this one. 2008, baby TC gets it. I was so hard to find his player page of PJ tour.com. You can't even search for his name without like

changing a bunch of settings. It won't even pop up. One career win, you won the Zurich. I feel like TC and Rady talk about him in an ininate amount. So Margin Tina. Andres from Merrill. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm just a Merrill. Yeah. Oh, seven brands, that are like, yeah, you search. I don't know. It's crazy. Oh, seven brands, that occurred. Now I'm going to draw that one out.

Oh, six won the Seattleest Western open in front of DJ Pi, how's he again? Nothing. Kenny Perry Trevor Imelman. Oh, really nasty season eight top 10s and 24 starts. That's take that air. Cool. Oh, five, Sean O'Hare, oh, four. This is a good one. This player played literally doesn't exist on PJ Jordan. I come even when you change all the settings, it really can't find it. He didn't go to live or anything.

Did not go to live that I know of. He's from Galesburg, Illinois. He turned pro in 1987. And he won David J. tour rookie the year in 2004. Bart Bryant. Huge in Japan. Jim, what was hockey?

One of major in 04. Todd Hamilton. Todd Hamilton. Wow. And 03. I think you can get one of major. Hit one top 10. It was a major like we're Benjamin Curtis.

Oh, that is your last 20 years of rookie of the year. Congratulations, Ludwig. That's it. You you had to look forward to. Thank you for that. You check. Oh, I feel like Eric Cole had it locked up until this week. Like because it like, you know, people were trying to make that a thing. And it was like, no, like Eric Cole's clearly had a better season. It's longer. Just like, yeah, all of a sudden, Ludwig gets the win.

And it's, you know, it's snatched from Um, the next 10, the, uh, those that are in the first two designated events, that is going to be McKenzie Hughes, Bo Hossler, Ludwig, Ben Griffin, Taylor Montgomery, remember him, uh, Matt Kutcher, back Nick Hardy, JJ respawn, Sam Ryder and Luke List. You sold all your Montgomery stock, me and T.C. Held. We were long. I'm of Montgomery we knew that was coming back around. Oh, it'll mean it's he didn't really come back around. He just held on for dear life. But we're playing.

How about culture you want of 2024? Culture kind of kind of punching back. Can you try to nice ear man? You know, kind of I know it's weird. And then, you know, Hardy, I think I'm buying a lot of Hardy stock for 2024. The Hardy boys. Um, I think I'm buying a lot of Hardy stock for 2024. The Hardy boys. I think you're going to have to disclose that if you buy any more Nick Hardy shock, if you get a more than 5% ownership, I think you need to disclose that.

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You guys want to keep on with pj tour stuff or you want to cut do a DP world tour I feel like what's let's get the the competitive golf out of the way, okay Little circle Nikolai Hoigard wins the DP world tour championship by two after birding five of his final six holes Shout out final round 64 including a 31 on the back nine with a bogey and a three-putt par on the I think you put it from the French on On 18 he should have got he should have made birdie on 18 as well. So he could have shot 29 on the back nine very easily To win he finishes second in the DP World Tour Championship because Roy won before he had shown up, which is Roy's fifth DP World Tour Championship.

Raps was way by. I think the tournament is the DP World Tour Championship, whatever. Allegedly. If it wraps up the, the, you know, before it's played, you can't expect me to have the name right. I'm not going to apologize for that. And they stole the best 10 players for, you know, the 10 players that didn't already have PG next. Next. The next next. Next. 10. Yeah. The PG and tour cards were earned by Adrian Moronk, Ryan Fox, Victor Perez, to our Bjorn Olsen, Alexander Bjork, Sammy Valamaki, T.C.'s guy, Robert McIntyre, Jorge Campio, Rio, who, his, his, his, his, his, his, soon, I don't know how to say his name.

I think that was right. And Matthew Pobah, 85 stutters on hits a, hits a shoe, that's right. T.C. are we getting tired of winning at this point? You know, I feel like this is the agenda. I feel like, I know this is a win for TC. He's got to do it. I feel like, I mean, well, we got to talk about that. Those spoilers.

We got to talk about that, but the Hoigard, Foxy, Valamaki. I mean, this is like the, like, you know, I love the super group of all of his dudes today. Sammy Valamaki was, he was racing at the Vegas F1 race. You know, and then he went back over to Dubai. You know, it's it's time for Rasmus to to shoulder get off the pot. You know, Nikolay's forgotten. Why guys serving himself. Yeah, we need we need Rasmus to kind of reengage here. Yeah, you know, even my guy Jorge Campio, you know, love seeing Foxy get his tour card. It would be really interesting to see which of these guys actually take advantage of this.

Yeah. Who stays over there. Don't have a lot on the DP World Tour stuff. I think it's only thing I had was like some of the Ryder Cup culture stuff, Kareon over. I know maybe that's just confirmation bias or it's now viewing it through that lens, but like, seeing Ram out there, seeing Rory out there, seeing how close those guys seemingly have remained.

I don't know that they were super close to Niklai Hoyguard before the Ryder Cup. And I think it just speaks to a lot of the culture stuff that we've probably talked about in the past. And the DP World Tour, like just the way they package everything off. I want to end the video with stuff, especially. guys juggling the juggling the balls on the wedge. It was great.

Oh, well, that, yeah, that and then big, and then big game pop, you know, hitting it off the driver at the end. But yeah, just like, I would say even after Nikolay won, just all those guys coming up to him and those, like them just bullshitting after just seeing real human conversations instead of these, you know robots. Listen, are you guys going to shit on a fleet with you? You know, why do you wait for us to shit on them? I'm going to be honest, I didn't watch it. What happened? What happened? It's not good. Yeah, he just, yeah, he would just didn't, he just didn't have it on the back. How many times we got to do this, man?

I mean, how many times? I got some, he's 32, okay? He's got plenty of BDEs under his belt already. True. Come on. Let him, let him, let him find it. I'm gonna give you some haunting numbers here, some research here on your own. There have been, since February of 2018.

So after the Abu Dhabi shot that we saw after that win, that we saw and celebrated with him, when he has started a final round between first and fifth place, like entering those, Datagolf would project that he would win 3.4 times. Okay, just based like just like, if you keep being Tommy Fleetwood, you're gonna win about three and a half times

based on where you've started. This is the big tone index, right? Big tone index. And then, so then the house, I have a separate stat that tracks like given how you played, like how your luck like shook out or whatever, given how you played, how many times we'd expect you to win. That goes all the way down to one.

That goes from three and a half. So he has basically shat the bed in so many final rounds. And the actual number of wins is counting since then is zero. So whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He must have come. He must want. He's won twice since that he won. He won Africa's major. He came back from outside of fifth place to win that I believe it the way it's counting it. So jotty billers, jotty billers Listen, he shot he was 300 through two holes today. Oh, that changes every time. I didn't know he shot 34 on the front He shot 34 on the back. He shot 68 It's three birdies coming down the stretch 10 11 15 three birdies coming down the stretch, 10, 11, 15, yet a disastrous bogey on 17. He lost by two.

Three put on 17. He finished solo second. Like again, I'm not gonna, I still believe he's 32 years old. He's one of the pre-eminent ball strikers in the world. He's a streaky putter. We got to raise the got to raise the floor there. But overall, the putting stats were fine. We just got to we got to keep juice in that sample size. It's going to happen guys. I fell for it today. He had like an eight foot par putt on 17 and inexplicably had an eight foot par putt.

He hit the middle of the green. He knew he needed birdie, but had an eight foot par putt. And I was like, I think he's going to make this one. There's no way he can miss another one. And he missed it again and did not. He blew his drive way right on 18 and did not birdie 18. So it's just he's got their conceding puts to it. It's.

I don't it's just it's just tough to talk about him like in the past tense or talk about in the past. I'm going to throw. I got this grotesque. This is on becoming. No, a couple guys. You know, a couple just just you know what? Yeah guys, we got to be better. That wasn't great. Let's move on. That's all takes

Couple guys in the DMs today, you know, some friends even in the text and the WhatsApp some saying you know what I'm worried TC I'm worried and all I would say is he's gone from 23rd at the end of 2022 to like 15th at the end of 2023. He's he's had a great year. He had what like nine nine top tens this year worldwide at a 24 events. All right. I need some listener that has a lot of time on this Monday. I need you to go dig into the Tony Fee now stuff from 2021. T.C.'s quotes. I need you to stack them up like that that part right there. I need to stack them up. That's all I need. Yeah, but Tony had never done it before.

Tommy had done it a lot before. You know, back to back, like Abu Dhabi, French Open, like national opens, Africa's major. Why? All sorts of great performances in majors. 63 is out the ass and in the US open. All right, let's move on. There's a lot of news we got to cover. Dege, I am really upset on the list of topics that you gave to choose from off the top didn't have my number one Which is of course, Lonto Griffin's quotes, but I believe there may be some things that are more pressing than that, but

Roy McElroy has decided to leave the policy board in a statement that was released from Commissioner Monahan and Ed Hurley-He, the board's chairman, so given the extraordinary time and effort that Rory and all of his fellow player directors have invested in the tour during this unprecedented transformational period in our history, We certainly understand and respect his decision to step down in order to focus on his game and his family. What's your guys' reaction to Roy stepping down from the board? Why now? Like, you know, why not? Like six months ago, 12 months ago before, I don't know, it just feels like now they got to get somebody back up to speed.

It feels, it feels disappointing. Say that. Yeah, it feels a little like, you know, in for a penny and for a pound, right? If you're going to, if you're going to do it, let's do it. It seems like a lot of what was driving, you know, I'm not saying him specifically was, was driving a lot of the changes, but I mean, he's like so integral to a lot of this conversation that it was kind of like, if, if you're going to do it, let's do so integral to a lot of this conversation that it was kind of like, if you're going to do it, let's do it.

And I'm with you, Tron. It's like bringing in, you know, I don't know what play, what comparable player you bring in that kind of brings the same perspective to the board that someone like Roy does. You know, I think you can bring in somebody and we can get into the kind of the mules comments about the situation, but some of the names they threw out of replacements are all names that like make total sense, but they're not Rory, you know, having a literal seat at the literal table, right? And it just seems like if you're kind of putting it through the stress test of like, man,

as the PJ tour better or worse with Rory on the board. I would think it's probably better, but I also get that he's got to put his golf first, and he probably has been wildly, wildly, wildly distracted. And you can't say that that hasn't cost him in some way at some point this year, I'm sure. So I get it, but it also, I'm with you, John, that it's like, man, if you're going to do it, it seems like you've got to kind of stick to it and do it. Here I put it.

Yeah, I think subjectively, it seems like the right decision for him, right? Like, you know, they had a board meeting this week and he's in Dubai and he's got a dial in for an all day board meeting from eight time zones away. Like, that's tough. Yeah, it, we mentioned this on this show many, many times throughout the course of the last several

years of like, dude, are you good, man? Are you good? Can you handle all of this? Are you sure? Are you sure you're not energy's after? Every time we talk to him, you know, ran into him, we would be like, hey, how's the energy? He's like, dude, I'm fine. I'm fine.

I'm doing fine. And it was just only a matter of time before that ran out, really. And I do think, if you look back to what he was trying to accomplish and how hard he worked on that in terms of setting up the designated event structure and like getting all the players to come together getting tiger on board getting all these guys to like come up with a plan for the future of the PJ tour that all felt pretty controllable and once June 6th happened I feel like he and a lot of the players lost so much control. It just became a whole different level of

conversation when you're talking about private equity and mergers and all this he and a lot of the players lost so much control. It just became a whole different level of conversation when you're talking about private equity and mergers and all this stuff that's like, he's probably, dude, I don't, I don't know. I had a pretty decent idea of like how we could get the most value out of the PGA tour, getting all the players together, playing the same events and coming up with a plan for that.

But the rest of this conversation is like not necessarily something I wanna stamp my name on and look, maybe you stayed on the board a few extra months from that to like make sure there's a smooth transition and they're not to invoke any panic or I don't know. I'm kind of. Anti-guric human board, too, right? Like that's a big deal. Like, you know, kind of filling some of that vacuum that you're talking about.

So it, it, uh, it, the timing is weird. Uh, that him leaving the board and resigning the board does, does not seem weird to me at all. It really is kind of dude. How much flack he's taken from just the public in general. Like I met one of my neighbors the other night and he just wanted to talk golf. He's like, yeah, we don't like Rory in this house. I just want to be like, oh man, like Randy, I've looked around the golf world, man.

I'm telling you, this is one of the guys to root for. I really have, uh, and it just, he's telling you this is one of the guys to root for. I really have. And it just, he's taken a lot and it's just time to step back. Randy's brought that up a couple times over the last like year or so of, I mean, I think he's brought it up as kind of an illustration of, you know, why Monhan probably shouldn't be in his job anymore. But like, you imagine like how, how little Rory needs that type of feeling, right? Like that, your neighbor, like how,

imagine how hard it would be to turn someone off from being a Rory fan. Like somebody has fucked up massively. And, and, and, So hopefully this wasn't Mr. A. It was not Mr. A. No, no, no, no, no. It's not a new neighbor.

So the new neighbor, so it's a, maybe an unsafe neighborhood, but, and I'm sure Rory has probably, you know, I'm sure his mouth has gotten ahead of his brain in spots and he's probably said stuff he shouldn't have or weighed in where he wishes he hadn't or whatever. But yeah, a lot of that is just, I think it really keeps coming back to him being the face

of a lot of this stuff instead of the people paid to be the face of a lot of this stuff. Yeah. Kind of thinking we should start calling calling acting commissioner, Jay Monahan. So I don't know how long that's gonna interroom commission. That's the thing. It's like, you know, everybody keeps saying,

all right, this thing's gonna drag, you know, we're trying to give like, hey, we're not prognosticating like crazy here. We're just letting this thing play out behind the scenes. We hear plenty and it's, everything we hear, it's like, yeah, this thing's not anywhere close to being wrapped up or, you know, it's just about to get, like, start getting really interesting.

And to me, it's like, all right, if that's the question, then, like, how much more time are you gonna give Monahan? Like, it seems like he's not even running the show anymore. Early he's trying to get, he and Monahan, you know, kind of dig them out of this hole. It's like, you know what, at some point, like you guys have just lost all credibility and you gotta rip the bandaid off and bring somebody else in even if you need to, you know, kind of brief them and get them up to speed.

Let me ask you guys this from a, Roy, how you doing perspective? How are you guys doing? Just pro golf in general, because it seems like a lot of time, How are you guys doing? Just pro golf in general, because it seems like a lot of time, a lot of time talking boards, talking, restructuring, talking, you know, equity pitches, all of these things like a, uh, friends of golf. Man, I'm, I'm good on so much of this stuff. And it would be a lot more fun to talk about Rory's golf than Rory's like, you know, decision to be on or off the board. But that's,'s just got to be catching up with the golf population. So I'm going to again point to your neighbor as a canary in the coal mine. I mean, it was just like, I kind of took me all the way until this week.

I think I said this through on Slack too, is like, just what a fucking awful year of golf. Like truly awful year. I mean, this is not the other, among the worst things that happened. But you know, when I'm Clark and Brian Harman winning majors, like, doesn't normally contribute to like the most interesting year in golf. Nobody gave a fuck about live. Like, it wasn't even controversial or fun this year. Like, it last year was wildly fun to see how stupid it was, but now it's just met with total and complete apathy. Nobody watches it. They've drained resources. Oh, you know, they've drained eyes, I think, an interest away from the PGA tour, the merger, the fake merger, whatever the fuck that was, just

totally through a wet blanket on this entire season. There was like serious momentum going on like, who was going to actually win the championship this year and the designated events were like pretty darn interesting. And I totally fell asleep from June 6th onward, I think, just because it was like, why the fuck would I ever care about this? There's now no plan or anything secured for the future of the game. The news that's starting to come out about this sounds absolutely horrific. There's something now called the Netflix Cup. The Four Aces collapsed this year.

So did that roof. Like, so many people invested energy into a screen golf league that's going to fall apart before it even starts. Cantlay and Xander turned the Ryder cup into a fucking pay for play thing and the US gets spanked 16 and a half to 11 and a half. It's been an absolutely awful year. And even the master's kind of thank God Scottie didn't win the masters, right? Because TCC said that was the worst case that ever happened.

And you know, trees were falling on people with the masters. They did. They gave you a saying they had to test the trees. All sorts of stuff. I mean, I sent that through. You know what I was doing, I was doing well until until the roof collapsed this week. And that was, I was the literal and, you know, figurative straw that broke the camel's back for me. Down in so far, so far, stadium or arena. Yeah, if you missed this, the TGL stadium, the arena that did not look at all what the renderings of the arena said it was going to be. But living in jacks, I feel like I've seen that, like they've done all these renderings

for like what the stadium is going to look like. What law J is going to look like all that. It kind of reminded me of all the stuff that the Jags put out for the last 10 years and it's like, wait, no, that's not at all what what you guys pitched here like that. This is like an inflatable indoor tennis facility. It looks like the roof of that collapse this week and they have gotten more significantly damaged from storms that rolled through after that. Originally, the TGL said that they were, that there was no delays noted yet. Now they're kind of backtracked a little bit on that. And from what we've heard, the delays will be significant.

It's not like you can just thinking about this. You cannot just like push this back into like major championship season, right? This was supposed to be in this part of the year. And I would not be even the least bit surprised if this gets pushed back an entire year now. Yeah, it sounds like it's a 2025 deal now. It's wild, man. I think, man, that was the first thing that hit me was like, okay, so it seems like the way they're building these teams

are literally like filling holes. Okay, who's available on, you know, January 17th, okay? That means these two guys gotta be on this team. This guy's available, he can come in so we'll put him on this team. He's not playing, you know, AMX. So that means he can play here, like all of that stuff. And then you throw in actual like hard ESPN time windows, right?

Like if something like this is on golf channel, it's just like, oh shit, we don't have anything going on. We can just like cancel backer vans. And we'll, you know, we'll put this is on golf channel, it's just like, oh shit, we don't have anything going on. We can just like cancel bag of ants and we'll you know, we'll put this up on Monday night instead. ESPN I would assume is not the same way and you start to like look at all this stuff. I was like, oh my god if this like Gets moved even like a couple weeks. What a shit storm that's gonna be and yeah, I don't know if you guys have heard anything more But it sounds like it's gonna be pushed way back probably for some of those reasons. So let me ask you this, they got a year now.

What? Back to the drawing board here, guys. What would you, what would you change specifically? What do you, what do you got? What would you want, really want them to do? Number one thing, I don't care if you fake it, I'd really don't care. You got to have a draft.

You got to give us something like, you got to give us something that we can go back and be like, they fucking passed on Lucas Glover. I can't believe they passed on him when he goes and lights up the league. Like, you gotta give us something to get some interest in these teams. We don't know how you form these teams. We don't know, we have no allegiance to any of them.

I know you're trying to base them around, say, give us some kind of draft and balance. So give us something to discuss. So you gotta give, if you want this league to be taken seriously, you gotta give give media something to some talk show bait. You got to do something more than just roll out like this rollout that has been pretty soft and flaccid. A flaccid rollout, if you will.

And I think there's no opportunity to go, everybody gets a restart. Flaccid, but elongated. It's been an elongated roll. Very droopy rollout. That's a reference to the roof, not anything else. But I think total Mulligan here can serve the whole league better here, really. I know, I mean, we know a lot of people that are involved in the league. Like we're definitely not rooting for this.

We feel for the people that have put a lot of effort into this. And it does suck. I mean, Tiger and Rory have put a lot of effort into this. And it does suck. I mean, Tiger and Rory have put a lot of invested energy in this. And that all changed within this past week, which is quite unfortunate. Lucas Glover being on a 2025 TGL team is starting to feel like some of those dudes

that made the Ryder Cup like the year it got canceled for 9-11. Right? And they just like guys played really, really well in like 99 and somehow made the Ryder Cup team and it got pushed all the way back to 2002. Trying to forget who, what? I think it was, hopefully they don't yank his spot.

Who was the US player that totally felt how Sutton, he was 27th, and then he fell all the way to 125 before that Ryder Cup, but he had to stay on the team. But I think back to your point, this has been my biggest criticism of this whole thing, and now maybe they have an extended period of time to fix it, it's just the whole thing feels like it's built around convenience for the players, convenience for the owners,

convenience for all of these people who are not the fans. Instead of building it towards what people would actually want to watch it now If they do have a delay and they can take advantage of some of that stuff and start planning for it Maybe there's a way to really spruce up some of the excitement rather than like just defaulting to Ah, that's kind of minorly inconvenient for that guy so we can't do it. I mean are they gonna do that? No chance like we're we're listening to the John your end and and Andrew Martian podcast this week and Mike

McArley was on there and it just doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence. Like this is the same dude that brought you golf pass. That's T.C.'s line about McArley. That's going to be a score too high. Oh, it just doesn't like it's like there's really serious about all the shit that shouldn't matter and they're really Unserious about all the shit that should matter seemingly the room. I don't know

You know, I think Dick Sullivan for the PJ tour superstar CEO and the Atlanta Drive GM he should be running this whole show. He's like a theo Epstein like character a Theo Epstein like character. God, I know you can't look right into the camera and break the fourth wall when you've got a bit going, but Trot's tweet about Dick Sullivan and how during this free agency period, the Iardheads need to reach out for a blue flame thinker like Dick Sullivan and from Atlanta Drive to really like push the team into the future was that's that's as good as it gets TC Twitter has like back to your back to your question from earlier of like you know what a shitty year for for golf how are we feeling about the pro game and it's like trying to find these little things these

little angles these little nuggets to entertain yourself and be less depressed about like that's why like I've just thrown myself into the cleeks. You know, I mean, Landy getting that extension and hopefully they bring in a couple more guys to, you know, round out the team with him and Kimer. Like it's just, you know, you got to like, you got to find the silver linings. You got to find those raises sunshine. We got a lot. We still got a cover here. Xander and Cantley withdrew from the hero. I don't really know what to make of that.

I don't really even think the live bots are faking like he's going to live, which is kind of, that's actually kind of disappointing, you know? It's been gonna bits, like we need to keep that, that going of just free agency's open. That's very true. But any live teams have two openings? The cleaks?

Yeah, the cleaks. That's interesting TC, can we? And like how, so that's the other thing? Yeah. The cleaks. That's interesting, TC. Can we? And like, like how, so that's the other thing with Liv. How is Smash not traded wolf yet? I mean, maybe nobody wants him. It's partly poison. But like, they need to like why, like really lean into this stuff. Be like, yeah, we traded him for the fur, you know,

and then I would be monumental. I mean, you know, they, he was the first round pick. Like the fact that these guys are the fact that these guys are actually like signed for different terms to the different things. I don't want to take the live free agency seriously, but I will for like two seconds. Dude, just like tell me the terms of the contract and this thing legitimately gets infinitely more interesting. Way more interesting. Right? Like imagine the example I was using you guys, like imagine if like the Texas Rangers were just like,

we signed Jacob to Graham. Don't worry about what we're paying him or how many years we signed him for. We'll just trust us and we'll let you know if he's no longer on the tee. But like what puts him in context with fucking dain-dunning, who they also signed, is like, how much money you're paying them. And how many years, you know, the contract is for it.

All of these things that like fans can use as a barometer to measure, you know, a player's performance versus their compensation. It's pretty fucking 101 stuff, man. Well, and now that you're not getting OWGR points, what you never were, but now that that has been communicating as official, you got a steer into like what makes you different, right? Like you are like the team golf league stop trying to pretend you can do both things your band from PJ tour.

You know, you're not going to get world ranking points. You're not going to be in the top 50. That's not how guys are going to get exempted in majors. That's done and over with it always was. So lean into like what makes you different. Otherwise, it's just fucking boring, dude. No one's watching it and no one cares. Brooke get Brooks kept a schedule, by the way. He keeps squeaking, he keeps his, blowing you up on it, scurrying, he needs a schedule, even the PGA tour has a schedule for next year. And they have no idea what they're doing. At least make it up.

Right, at least just put it, put something fake out there. Brooks is just trying, he's trying to do his 2024 plan. He's trying to get his vacations on. It's a wedding, A lot of weddings. Sports business journal had an article this week about change coming to PGA tour event purses funded, how they're funded starting in the 2025 season. Now to the other way.

With the tour asking tournaments for an additional fee, the article said the PGA tour will begin asking tournaments for an additional purse fee starting in the 2025 PGA tour season. It will make a significant shift in how its tournament purses are funded in the 25 season as prize money pools continue to rise. Sources told sports business journal this week. What's going to happen if you do this? The source says it means there's going to be less money to charity. The title sponsors aren't going to put any more up. So now we have to take money from the charity. is that what you want?

But then it said, but one source still questions the sustainability of rising per sizes, even with an anticipated influx of cash from Saudi Arabia's PIF or another investor. Source said, our TV ratings aren't worth it. You're playing in a sport that has a cap on it and we've reached our cap.

I feel like I spend 90 to 95% of the year like not trusting my gut on stuff. I was just like, go back to 2018, DJ Pai was saying, it's like, well, this is not adding up. Like, is anybody checking the sheet? Like, this is not adding up. No one's watching this. How did persons keep going up?

I don't get how like, okay, so what happened when Liv and Piff came in is like, I think everybody would follow me here. They injected a outrageous amount of like irrational money. The irrational money was for like, hey, we need you to jump over from a that league to this league. I know people are going to say some pretty mean things about you. Here's what that money is for.

And we're eventually working towards like a super long term. You know, it's like acquisition costs of players. And now like here comes this other money into the PJ tour, which we can talk about in a second. Like that's a rational money too, it seems like. Like how does that ever get made up, right? Because like the first amount of a rational money

was for like getting people to jump. I don't get what, I don't get what happens here if that money's not just like coming from somewhere else. If it's not coming from the charity pile, if it's not coming from growing TV revenues, which how the fuck are you gonna grow those? Any more than like what they are now,

they're already like a fake inflated number. It just blows my mind, man. And again, I feel like I spent 90% of the years just being like, ah, nobody else is really talking about this. Like, maybe I'm wrong or insane or maybe I don't get it. And then one, you get one quote like this from a tournament director of just like,

yeah, no, nobody's gonna pay that. Nobody's watching these tournaments. Like this doesn't make any financial sense for these title sponsors. Like, you guys get that, right? I'm like, okay. All right, good. Okay, cool.

And now it's gonna actually make it's crazy to me. It is crazy. I don't know where we're headed. And now we're like, now we're gonna bring in, all right, let's say we don't bring in Piff, we're gonna bring in a bunch of private equity guys, who even if they're taking the long view, those guys aren't gonna like front a bunch of money

so that, you know, William Gert can make right like 4x. What he should be making in the fall series. Like this is insane. And I think it's, it's part of some larger shift towards, you know, whether it's a for profit model, like, you know, I'm sure this fits in with the tour trying to bring more tournaments in house with championship management, they'll be owned and operated then. But also, maybe it's the way the TV contract is written and they can change that, where that money flows differently through the organization and all that. But it's the same thing we hear about the Netflix stuff, full swing stuff.

It's like, that's not like actually making people watch these golf tournaments. It's like, I'm sure the rate, like the ratings are like, like, it's a massive win if the ratings stay the same year or year and don't go down. I think there was a, it was a Boston Globe or something this week that had some more details on some of the potential ownership group that was basically like this giant cabal of sports owners, right, it was the Fenway sports guys, but then it was also like Mark Lazare and like all these other dudes

just getting together to like basically put together pitch. Sounds like friends of golf, 2.0, T.C. I know those are your guys, but. No, they're the staunch enemies of the friends. And a bit as a go. Uh, but I wonder if I think they kind of alluded to this at some point in there. Like from a investment standpoint, when you start to look at like other teams, right? And you start to look at like what, you know, what all these guys obviously love owning teams

and owning like these sports properties. When you start looking at, you know, what NFL teams are going for, an NBA teams and baseball teams and all of these things like the, like this investment in the PJ tour probably looks much, much smaller, right? And much more appealing. And so I guess my question is like, how you grow the PJ tour as, you know, and this is where people are a lot smarter than me on these things. But how do you grow the PJ tour into something that ends up being worth what they're

talking about? And my point, I think, is like, I don't think you do it by keeping this same structure. Right. I think that like those people would want to front that kind of money to be in the like Rory McElroy, Zander, Shoffley, Patrick Cantley, Ludwig, Max, like Justin Thomas, Speed superstar business. And that's where I'm like, try it, like I would be trying to wave my hands if you are talking to a Lanto Griffin or Ryan Armor, like I know we skipped over these quotes,

but it's just like, dude, you're about to get hit by a fucking train. I don't know what the future looks like for either of those, right? It's like you either have to, you know, all this money's going to have to come in and then like try to be recouped somewhere else, which it seems like it, that's not gonna happen

by keeping this status quo. That's gonna happen by radically changing the business model. And then if you're keeping like the under, kind of like the underling rank and file of the PGA tour, you're doing that as almost like a feeder system or kind of like out of, it's almost like a charity at that point, right? And that no pun intended.

But like you're kind of just standing that up not as a money-making property, but just as like, hey, we need a feeder system into the thing that makes a ton of money. So when we get to, I don't know if there's a good time to talk about like some of the quotes about Roy leaving the board and you know those guys view on stuff, to the thing that makes a ton of money. So when we get to, I don't know if there's a good time to talk about like, some of the quotes about Rory leaving the board

and you know, those guys view on stuff, it's just like, man, we're talking about vastly different things here. I've been anticipating this more than maybe anything in my entire life, these Lanto Griffin quotes, because I just, I can't believe we could be this far into this and still having this conversation.

I can't believe Lonto has talked with Rory as much as he claims he has and still like not have this get through his head, but I'll get through these. Until lives in Ponte V. It's like, and like we're talking about a guy that's that's kept his PGA tour card three times. And he's made close to $800 on. Just on the PGA. It's made take a second8,000 on just some of the pages. Made taken second, but these these quotes are worth it. And I actually trim these down because

there's there's a lot. And it's this Adam shoe packs article in golf week Adam shoe pack. Of course, the Mule Whisperer continues to get these guys to go on the record, saying the most ridiculous things. I don't want that to stop. But Lotto said, Rory is great because he was approachable by everybody. But at the same time, he was bought by the tour. The head of the board has the same sponsors as the tour and the players. There's influence there. I'm talking work day. I can't remember them all golf pass.

The guy who's running the board is being paid by all the title sponsors. It's a little sketchy to me. Okay. What? I think that. I talked about that before with like Grand Thornton with Ricky or like, you know, funneling these things to the top players. Yes.

But they also did that to keep these guys. I was going to say, just because some of that is true, doesn't I don't think make it necessary like nefarious? No. It doesn't mean that that's in simulation that he's bought is just that he's going to nod and go along with anything the tour tells him or J tells him or the board tells him. I don't I don't quite follow that. That money was not coming to you, Lonto, regardless, right?

And again, the Roy's a value driver for this tour, the PJ tour would be fucking stupid to not be pointing their sponsors towards their most valuable members. So anyway, and it's funny to me too, where like, like, Wanto, the, the entire reason they have to do that is because the bylaws specifically state that they can't let him up with cash. Right. And the fact that you've made $8 million on tour, despite providing zero memories of any kind is again, why that money has to come from an outside sponsor. Anyways, he continues. There are certain guys out there among the top players who won't give you the time of

day. And there are guys like Rory, who will, I talked to him for about 30 minutes of the players. And then again, Canada, which is really nice to him. And he listens. There are some guys out here who wouldn't do it. Justin Thomas wouldn't do it. Colin Moore, Calo, wouldn't I feel like there's an elitist group. Rory feels like he can listen in and understand where we're coming from to someone like that with a person with personality. Brantson, that occurred just to throw a name out.

Someone who is respected by everybody, but also has some perspective and isn't just making $40 to $50 million off the course and is going to be guaranteed to be in every elevated event. Gotta say, I kind of agree with Lanto on some of this too. I think there's some interesting stuff there. I appreciate of naming names on.

What a drive by on JT and more, a coward who are not in leadership position here and have not ignored Lanto. He hates Excel. But I think he's saying like, hey, we don't need another one of those guys representing, you know, the, the mule class. He also said, Roy was bought.

Then he also said, yeah, Roy, like listen to us and care about it. So you got to kind of make your mind up here on how you feel about Rory. But um, then you get true. I might not agree with everything you say, but I do appreciate it. Go to the record here. It is. It's one of those like, you get like 20% of it's right. And, uh, you like, you're missing the important 80%. Like, yeah, if you just honed in on this 20% like, you are technically right about this. But again, you are missing the forest from the trees.

I'm really glad he didn't go after Cantley because he's got that Stanley patch on his shirt. Lonto does. That could have been made you think about who's bought. You know, Stanley Black and Becker versus DeWalt, you know, um, Lonto continued, give them all the money they want. But when you start giving them the points, I got a problem with that. Do you know what fifth place for an elevated event next year makes in FedEx Cup points? 300. It's two, it's 110 for a normal event. So I go play Tory Pines with 156 players in the cut and Roy goes to LA the next week

in a 78 player, no cut field. And he gets nearly three times the points for the same finish. How is one going to compete with that? The guys that are making the decision are obviously going to look out for themselves. That's where there is a disconnect for guys in my position, the normal guys. So having someone who will listen and not only be concerned about the top 10. Man, I was like, you can, you can play your way into the top 70. Like that's the whole fucking point. Why should I get less points just for beating worse players? That's where I have a problem.

You don't understand though, the guys that are better at golf than me. Keep getting more points than me. How do we change the system? So it benefits me the lesser golfer, the lesser, the lesser value player to this tour. How do we change things so that things are better for me? How do we do this? Huh? They told lots of figures out that it's like two different.

That's kind of what I was going to say. Like it's basically almost like two different points. And that's where it's just like, man, I think maybe they've done a bad, like they haven't wanted to rip the whole bandaid off at once, but that was my train analogy before. I was like, do you not realize, like you're just standing on the tracks here, man?

You're about to get run over. And if you haven't seen this coming, I don't know really how I can explain it to you. Yeah, and there's two different tours. The dude that you just said was listening to you was not the creator of this train that's coming down the track also. Also like there's probably no tour if you guys keep pitching about this and like the rank and fight.

I guess we'll get to Ryan Armor Squats. I'll let you get there. I didn't even copy and paste those because I got so many long to ones here, but I continued. The top players deserve a lot of credit, a lot of money, but Roy shouldn't have an advantage over me in the FedEx cup. If he wants $20 million, per se and a hundred million dollar pit money, take it. We don't give a shit. I told Roy this.

I said, beginning of the year, what's your goal? When the FedEx cup, when majors win three, four times, do you know what 70% of the guys out here, their main goal is to keep their job? He said fair enough. We care about money that comes with good play, but we're more worried about keeping our job. Every year, there's five to 10 really good players that go back to court and fairy tour that have been out here for a long time. Do you think Rory is worried about that? JT had the worst year he'll ever had this year and finished 71st. That was pretty great year for me last year. I had surgery and I was hurt, but I still managed four top 10s. To have the deck stacked against us, we're losing points, money starts. It feels like who's making these decisions?

Like not you. I would like you guys. I think that's like the whole point is like no, I think your guys' equal voice has now been changed, which I would be pissed about too if I was him, but I think when we're looking at the grand scheme of things, solid, you very eloquently put this on the pod a couple of years ago now, but status quo, not in option. Like that is the fundamental disconnect here is like, it's part of the problem. Yes, and that's what I think is leading to a lot of these quotes.

It's just like a total misunderstanding of that. Right. I would argue that there's not enough guys losing their cards every year. Right? That's kind of the whole fucking point here, dude. Again, I feel like the PIP screwed up a lot of this conversation, because again,

we're not talking, like he's talking about favoritism of the guys that are beating him on the golf course. Like, their golf scores are lower and better. They're better than him at golf. This is not a popularity contest. This is not a meltwater mentioned contest to find out who gets in these events. Yeah, there's going to be some sponsor exemptions and all that, but that's not really any different than how regular events are run now.

Like, again, it's just changing from the status quo that was ridiculous to start with. And yeah, it's going to be worse for you, but like, I need like one of these guys when they do these rants. Make the case for why more focus, more money, more energy should go to the huge, like very replaceable lot of the lesser players. And we're talking about some of the people that we're friends with here, right?

Like it's always a tough part of the conversation to have. Like we are friends with people that are in this group, but like you guys have to be honest about what value you're providing, like professional golf and understand that it's probably not a lot and things might change and you might not make eight million dollars in three years anymore. Or you might still, under the current structure,

you probably still will if you play decent golf. I don't know. It's hard. I think the counterpoint or like the, the biggest case for the mules would be like, let's go to baseball, right? If you are, if you're the 150th ranked golfer in the world, right? You would, or 150th on the PGA tour or whatever, you would say that like, nobody gives a shit about you. No one's buying tickets to watch you. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. watch you. Nobody cares.

Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Like if you're 150th in baseball, you're the fifth best player on the, you know, the 30th team basically, which is like a pretty good, it's a pretty respected position, right? And I think what's unfair, I was talking, I kind of stole that from Wolfie is writing something for us

about he's been Jim Herbens agent for a long time, Jim lost his card for the first time in a long time. And he was just kind of talking about like this scenario and what happens when someone loses their card and yada, yada, yada. And I think the best case is like, in order to become Rory and Rom and Scotty and all those guys, like, you do need a field to beat right and I think in order to

get to that point where the where the PJ tour was for 60 years. Like that was a pretty good model for a long time and now we're entering this era where it's like you know it could be the devil you know is better than the devil you don't who knows if like a world tour. I know we're pretty bullish on it but maybe it maybe it does become a big calendar of WGC's and it does become soulless maybe it does become a big calendar of WGCs and it does become solace and it does become kind of like maybe no cuts does stink. I don't know, but I think that would be the biggest case is like, hey, we need to have a full field. Otherwise, these guys wins don't mean quite as much. I don't know your reaction to that. I've been to, I, this this my job to cover golf. I go to a fair amount of PGA tour events and

don't recognize like 20 to 30% of the field. If not more, it depends. I mean, RSM probably a little more than that. Like the reason why there's 156 like players that tee it up in these events is literally just based on like the sun and the amount of daylight in a day. Right. Like that doesn't mean it's the right amount. Like, they try to maximize the number of opportunities. Like, there's 24-min of the one drivers. It would not make sense to put 100 for me the one cars on a track. I know it's not a perfect analogy, but there's 20 here.

The 20 guys you got to care about. It's going to be a few replacements here and there. And that biggest shit show aside, that seems to be working out quite well for them. There's just not a lot of value. I read off the man, people are so up in arms about who's going to get into these designated events, signature events. I read off the 10 guys that got on the top. Could you read them back, without checking the list, could you read them back to me? Again, it just was joking early.

You could have just pulled those names out of a hat. I don't think, by the time we get to Riviera, I'm not sure I would have totally remembered. So again, it's we're so far distracted by the fact that there's going to be change and not even thinking about how to how do you make this an entertainment product, right? And again, it's so broken that like this isn't going to solve anything. And again, until you figure out the television thing, you're not solving anything. And that's a that's another thing to add to the list of the worst call for your ever was NBC took it to heights that we unknown to man. Well said, guys, I think if there's more familiar faces every week too, like, you know, contending and all that, that makes it more digestible for the viewer, right? Or, you know, like Lonto said, hey, there's five to 10 good

players going back to corn fairy tour every year. Like,. Yeah, man, that's what makes it fucking mean something. Sure. Otherwise, it's, you know, and like, I think we've been, and then he says, do you think Rory's worried about that? And it's like, no, because Rory's really freaking good. He's good. That's the point.

I think we've made this point too. I'm just kind of being devils advocate with the full field stuff, but the, like the line is interesting no matter where you draw the line, right? So like if there's 50 guys on a world tour, numbers 50 through 55 are going to be, I would argue probably even more interesting than numbers 200 through 205 or whatever they're going back to the corner fairy tour. And honestly, the best case to make in this is like, Hey, the PGA tour is one enormous commerce center with hospitality and like for 80 plus percent of the people that attend these events in

hospitality and even for fans, like, they just want to see golf more than they do. Like, you want to see specific players, like, there is a group of 80% of the field that it's very replaceable, right? But like, when you go to the 17th hole at TBC, you'd rather watch somebody play than nobody play. So in a smaller field, it might not be the same flow of people going through a hole in a tournament.

That is your case, right? If you want to sell hospitality units that are going to be open all day, and you can charge this much for it, like the case is like, there's going to be golf on the course by the lot of us. But again, don't confuse that with actual power because extremely, extremely replaceable

and who knows how much value that's actually driving. But it just truly feels like, guys, like be more ambitious, like put some stock in yourself and, you know, and have some confidence that you can reach those heights and play your way. And there's nothing saying you can't play your way and be beaten the, you know, the next best guys in those so-called you'll. And if you can't do that, why should you be in it? Like make the cat. Why should you be in it? Like just because it's always been, you know,

like, all right, it's been 125 cards. There's 175 to 200 guys that get a dozen or more PGA tour starts a year. And like, there's plenty of opportunities in there. I would say there's probably too many opportunities, right? And there's, there's, there's too many tournaments. And like Ryan Ormer goes on to say, you know, hey, that, that, you know, the tour has succeeded. And the reason why we have 40 some events and not just 22. We have a lot of talented players that basically want to play in the US. We want to be here. We have a lot of great events. And I hope they continue. And it's like, Hey, man, like, like, why, like, why should there be 47 events? I think that's, that's what gets to like the, the big conundrum for me is like, hey, man, like, like, why, like, why should there be 47 events?

I think that's what gets to like the big conundrum for me is like, dude, how do you keep enough gas in that engine to support both of these things forever? Right? Like that's where I am just like kind of boggled, like mind boggled on how to, how to figure that puzzle out and how to figure out how to put up these like absolute, you know, golf super festivals with the 50 best players and there's all the sudden, you know, I don't know, this spirals into a whole other thing, but like the, you know, are the fans really going to tell that much of a difference? Maybe it'll take 20,

you know, 10, 15, 20 years to really understand the difference between like a designated event and the Schwab or the John Deere or whatever, but I think a lot of golf fans really just like watching CBS at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and are not asking for a lot of this stuff. And I think a huge part of the problem and the disconnect here of us as golf fans trying to decipher how this means is just there's two different universes here, right? There's real like rooting sporting interest, which is like the television product, right? And there is corporate interest, right? And you, you, you do quote, got a hand

at to them. When it comes to the PGA tour, they can sell their asses off. They get money to come in the door despite not a lot of people watching it. They get people to re up. They get people to continue to spend. And again, like so much shit happening. The golf fan is really valuable, much more valuable than the average NFL fan. The income level is higher. The, you know, just the, the, I can't really explain it. The whole, the whole, like, hospitality element of golf, bringing people together. It's an easy sell for like RSM to put up the money to do it and bring a bunch of their clients from around the country and like put them up at C. Island and host them to watch a golf tournament for the week and the, you know, their money gets

raised for charity and like that's going to continue. Like that model has been proven around the world. There's DP World Tour events. There's LPGA Tour, there's ladies European tour. Like that stuff will continue. But if you're actually want to make a real media product with real actual interest, we're talking about something different than that, right? And I think that's where the separation is going to have to get really divided. And I'm not an expert on all that. Like that's a fifth grade level intelligence, which is pretty much what I have on this stuff.

But like, it is, that's why we end up with these massive commercial deals with the sponsors because they don't separate selling like hospitality and on-site experience from the media deal and then it just punches the fan in the face and it's this whole complicated web that doesn't inspire me at all, because I don't know. And that's the whole thing with that pissed armor off

in the first place when he coined the Mule term was, because he's like, hey, we're, you know, we're showing up for these pro-AMs or these hospitality things. And that's how the time begins to be. He said hospitals. Yo, the way. The hospital visits. Yeah.

But like, yeah, man, like that's you doing your job to justify those tournaments and those spots. Like to me, it's insane that the tour, the purse this week for RSM was $8.4 million. The purse for farmers insurance open at Tory is $8.7 million. Like how for detectives? That's wild, right? Like how, like those two things are so, like, un-proportional, even if farmers in Tory is not a designated event, it's just a regular event.

It's still like, it's like smack dab, that's the beginning of the golf season. That is West Coast Swing, that is good TV ratings and all that. RSM's relegated to golf channel and a three hour window and it's like those two things, like I would say, you know, nothing at CRSM, like it's a I like

C Island I think this love foundation does a great job with it that's more similar to a corn fairy tour event than it is to a designated or signature event or a farmers you know from a yeah yeah exactly it's like the fact that the tour is basically over the last decade plus two decades like credit to Finchham they've they've tricked, you know, feeling like these things are the same when they're clearly not. And like sponsors are paying like farmers is getting a screaming deal compared to RSM. I feel like they're probably both getting ripped off, but which becomes the question. Like how do you keep both of those guys in the boat going forward? And that's the job that's going to get really freaking hard. Yeah. Um, on a completely separate note, Paul Azinger is out as the color commentator at

NBC. Um, I did not realize his contract was up. I, I feel like I would have been following that a little bit more closely, but his last event was, he might not have had her cup unbeknownst to him. He will not be calling the hero. He didn't really see like he was at he was at a proven year this year. What's your guys reaction to the singer getting not renewed or fired? I don't know how you how you how you would call this.

I think zinger's an honestly, I think zinger's a net positive in the world of golf. I I could have done a better job over the past couple of years? Sure. Certainly. Do I have a keys to blame for all of the Comcast NBC woes that are plaguing the golf world? Absolutely not. I, I don't know. It's easy to, easy to dump on.

I think he probably could have done more homework and some spots and whatever, but I thought more often than not, I actually, you know, kind of got a chuck a lot of listening to him. So I feel like I might, I don't know, miss him necessarily, but I certainly wouldn't have minded if he stayed on to be totally honest. That's where I was at until maybe midway through this year. And then I feel like he had some real clunker performances and just clearly like you could tell he just wasn't like I like Zinger. I think he's I think

we gave him a long leash too right? Like we supported the hell out of the set hand up the first few years and a lot of people were hand up here. I totally I totally let a lot of his performance like because I love Zinger. Like he's such a great dude. He's a great relationship with them. I think he once was a great announcer. I really do. I know it was once a year at the US Open, but he was really good. And when he came on with NBC,

it's just a different environment. I don't want to blame all of NBC's, like I don't want to blame his performance on the air, on NBC's woes, but it's a totally different production truck, team, windows, chemistry with co-host, like a lot of things that it wasn't working. I did not think it was very good. It was, I think it will be time to move on.

I still love Zinger. I don't think it's still such a drop in the bucket compared to how much stuff needs to get fixed with NBC. So it's not the biggest priority, But I struggled to marry why I was so hard on Fowdo, not hard enough on singer, when it probably deserved to be a little closer call. But I'll alone that one. It was just it didn't need to be said, right? I mean, we kind of all heard it as it went along. And it's like that guy, the guy co-commercial or the progress commercial. Yeah, she has just blew there.

We all see it. We all see it. I feel like you just, no, I mean, I do think he was horrific at the Ryder Cup. Like, you guys didn't have to listen to it because you were there. He was so bad. It was almost to the point of like, hey, like, I'm clearly mailin' it in over here, guys. I dare you to do something about it. Yeah, I mean, I don't even know

how much of it is performance based and how much it is like NBC just continuing to just slash budget. And I've, from what I've heard, the cuts are going to be even more, even I don't know how you cut any more than they have, but it's going to be even more significant for 2024 in the, multiple of millions that still needs to come off the books, I believe, and some, and some capacity. But yeah, it's, it's probably, but we're growing personal, I'm getting it worse. I have a feeling, but, um, Brian Roberts, come on down. Who's it going to be? Who's going in the seat? I got to think facts. And I feel like it's brand new. I think it's,

I think he's too polarizing. I think they'll go safer. I think facts and already, you know, on you know, facts and feels already doing play by play week to week. I don't, I don't know, if you go outside, I think you got to pay probably more than you are paying somebody probably in house and just promoting him up a chair. Probably feels like the cheapest move they can make, which is why I think I love love I think he's great. I think he's great for golf nerds, right? I don't know if he's going to resonate a ton with, you know, the audience is the same kind of reason I love Trevor. I'm a man who's as why I like Brad Faxx and talking golf to. He's a true golf nerd and and I think he speaks to me when he talks, which I don't I don't know who Zinger

was speaking to by the end. And that's where maybe a writer could. You know, I feel like as a golf nerd, we deserve a little bit more. We need something. You know, some handouts and some hand plans up. You know, I'm like, hey, you know, give us something to work with here. I don't know, I think Brandyl,

the counterpoint to that is, if they wanted to go for juice or for somebody polarizing or somebody, hey, you know what? Yeah, yeah, it's like, you know what? Like I feel like I'm like, Johnny, check this shit out. Exactly. You know, and Randall say what you want about him. Like he's exceptionally well prepared. I think he does. I think Randall be my number one choice.

I don't know if they'll do it, but I would I would tune in to listen to to Randall specifically. I would be all in on that. I'm going to put it back. No, I like Brandel on TV, like, but his, like, live from and golf central stuff where he can flesh out a thought in 60 to 90 seconds. I think is really good content, right? Again, might not always agree that that color chair is, you got to be so, it's just so in and out so fast. I've heard him he does some golf like he does like some of the stuff from the studio when they do the the coverage gap stuff

And it's just not the same person out. I don't know. I don't know that I don't know if that moving from that It's two different roles. It really is two different roles I would not probably part of the reason we don't like a lot of color commentators That's just a harder role than we probably give credit to it just I think Trevor like hats off to Trevor for what he's stepped in and down over the last However, what is it two two seasons now? These just these first season Just this is okay. Yeah, I mean it kind of feels like he's been

Yes, but you in the sexual chair, but I'm shot to Johnson Wagner did the car God damn this past week. He was I like it. Yes, he was really good. Do you think they would they would Yeah, Johnson's great. I really enjoyed his stuff. Do you think they would maybe Call up no below I? Wonder Yeah, it's a good question. But again, you've probably got to, you've got to compete on the dollar amount

probably to hire him away, I would think. Honestly, I think that operation such a shit show now that you gotta, there's some hazard pay that's gotta come to get people to wanna walk into that. We're a CBS and other shit together now. It's a call of a game where he probably doesn't want it. Yeah, and Paul McGinley probably doesn't want to travel that much or do it. And it's like, I feel like they've kind of gotten away from,

because before it was like a prerequisite, it was like you had to have won a major. That's what I was going to say. That's the elephant in the room that we have not, I feel like everybody that we've brought up has not won a major. And that has always been the like unspoken prerec. So if you're looking at like major champions, I don't know who the fuck would want to do it.

I mean, could it be a female? Maybe. I don't know who I don't know who would be. I don't know either. Who would it be like Morgan or Karen Stupel's or someone? Karen, great. I don't know. We'll see.

Not a hard decision. It's just so fun to talk about this versus talking about like, you know, who's Amazon Prime going to hire? They're going to throw $20 million a year at Sean McVeigh. No, this is just like, maybe this guy will do it. Maybe we can get this guy. Yeah, where I mean shit, like I feel like the other elephant in the room is Phil. Right? I'm like, man, Phil wouldn't have like torched his career and his credibility and his legacy. He would have been the perfect guy for this. He'd have been so good on CBS. I really do, really do think so. But I think he's priced, I don't know, he's priced to go to Kemp.

Phil finished second in the Masters this year. really do think so, but I think he's priced, I don't know, he's priced to win a kip. Phil finished second in the masters this year. That was one of the great things that happened this year golf. Despite what Phil has done to the world of golf, that was wildly entertaining. You know, who I have not given any thought to this until literally just right now, but major champion that I think would be really, really good would have a lot of interesting stuff to say, get in and out, be very punchy, furic. Hmm. I think would be super interesting.

That is interesting. But he has all the money. I don't know what that's right. I don't know why he would ever do it. Yeah. But I think he'd be really good. He, uh, I think he likes competing though. I don't think he's done playing.

He loves playing the champion's tour. He's still just an absolute grinder. What about the tough job? It's a tough job. It's a tough job career money list here. Luke Donald will be good. I got another idea for you. He's going to be he's going to be busy with his writer cup cap and see but 100 Mayhem.

Sure. He's fun. Again, not a major champion, but he was great, great, great on the at the writer cup of her first guy. And I don't know. He'd be, he'd be interesting. So I almost feel like they need to like totally change up the whole thing. Oh, really? Like, I could agree.

No, like, not, you know, I mean, nothing against Dan Hicks. I like Dan Hicks. I did, like, I think we're just ready for some new juice. And maybe, maybe, you know, if they did this, I'd be like, fuck that man. Like, why, where's Dan Hicks. I think we're just ready for some new juice. And maybe, maybe, you know, if they did this, I'd be like, fuck that man. Like, where's Dan Hicks? We didn't know what we had in the last. Which just been new juice though.

Like no mulpe now, no Gary Koch and now no Zinger. Like, I'm a Koch head though. I like Koch. I like mulpe. I like this. It's probably too young for that job. Probably. Kurt Byrum.

He's fantastic, but I don't know if again, I don't know if his name carries necessarily like for the press release. I like him for a golf nerd. He's a great. He's one of the best like golf nerd announcers, but again, it's a, that's just a totally different world. So I think to your point, you're on on changing it up, I felt like Zinger. I kind of always felt like that was like a half measure, right? Towards like, hey, we're going to, we're going to get like a little less serious. We're going to get a little more relaxed. We're not going to change like the, like the, the truck or the rest of the booth or anything else. And so like Zinger is just going to stick out like a sore thumb until you bring in smiley, who's a little bit more relaxed as well and

a little younger and a little more at ease. But I wonder if they'll revert back to like, no, no, no, no, that was a horrible idea. We need to actually be super serious. Or if they will like totally change it up and like, okay, let's build around smiley and let's build around, you know, some of these other guys, Duval would be another one, I guess I would throw out to look in major champion, NBC guy. Why not pull somebody from sky? Like they have a great broadcast on that side too. You know, because we'll see what a fair.

I tweeted that today, man. It's like that, that would be the perfect rap on 2023 is if Fowl knows somehow back in their lives on a weekly basis. But God, I miss Johnny. Miss John guys an hour and a half into this pod. Uh, Tiger Woods is coming back to the golf course. It's gonna be playing the hero here in a couple of weeks. Dej, I know you're super pumped up about this.

I, no, don't make me sound like a cynic. Oh, all my, my point on, on Slack was, you know what, for better or worse, man, we've, we've been doing this like starts and stops and these leaving and these surgery and he's coming back and this, oh, this, well, this, the, oh, it's leaving and he's surgery and he's coming back and this Oh this one this the oh it's a big comeback. Let's tweet all the gifs. Let's tweet all the oh my god He's how far to the masters all that's like we've been doing it for like a decade man And you know hope he comes back and plays well and plays pain-free and hopefully it's a fun week at the hero world challenge But I really have not given it too much thought

This is first hero since the car accident. I think it is. That's what's messed up. I literally have no idea. It all just flattens into some, like, kind of big weird mess the last decade. I don't know. 2023.

He played the Masters. He played the Genesis. He withdrew at the Masters. He finished T-45 at the Genesis. 2022, he played the Masters finish 47th. He withdrew at the PGA championship and missed the cut at the open championship 2021, which is the, this is before the accident. Yes. So he he played the only events he played in 2021 were like the fall majors, which was the Masters in the US Open during the COVID year in 2020. Actually, and then he played the Zozo that year.

So. I just, I hate the hero. Like, I hate it so much because it's, it's, it's so antithetical to everything that the Torah spouses to be about. Right? Like, all right, we're going to give OWGR points. It's like this free OWGR give away to the guys that happen to be in this. Which?

Now there's not many points in it because they read it this and they know But yeah, but for but for however long it was artificially juicing stuff and it was It's like it's just it's stupid. I know offense to dr. Michelle. No, where's Just it's just depressing almost. I'm like, it's I'm good. It seems like there's a good. It seems like they do a lot for the foundation and Tiger builds a lot of his own off-the-course stuff around it, but it seems like you can kill two birds with one stone.

And you can do a lot of that stuff in a more way that was a greater good to the Gulf world. I'm kind of with you. A lot of it feels very like, you know, do as I say, now does that do, kind of think. As all these people are talking about like, oh, no, real events have cuts and these had this and that and the other thing.

That's what I'm saying. And now it's, well, this event does it. But, you know, idiots will watch it, you know, they'll watch it. Did I get you outwatch it? T.C., you should have led, but the number one reason to not like the hero, I think, which is fair is it's it's clashing with the Australian open, right? And how it just like makes it a total X for the top players in the game that I can do this five o'clock free crack give away

down the Bahamas or travel around the world to play the Australian open and get taxed at 49% of my earnings. It's it's pretty easy. And you know, it's at the place where your boy SPF was hanging out. Will you apologize for that? And you apologize for that? All we have to do. Now he's probably killed. Has he got his sense of it?

He's got his peers. I don't think he's gotten sense yet. He's not returning to any of my texts. Ha ha ha ha. Netflix cup. Did you guys catch a lot of that? I'll be honest. I didn't watch it.

But I fell like it wasn't for me. You did not miss out on much of anything. And that's fine. I've accepted that there's things in the golf world that aren't for me, right? And so it's like, I'm not going to wait. I'm not going to shit all over them because they aren't for me, right? And so it's like, I'm not gonna wait, like I'm not gonna shit all over them because they're not for me, right? Like, I, you know, I don't have a leg to stand on

for evaluating this. Before you go, Deach, I wanna do what, if this idea was like brought to us, they're like, hey, we want you guys to host like the Netflix cup with F1 drivers and race car drivers, or you know, race car drivers and PGA tour players. And my brain is trained on anything video for like the rounds of comments DJ's giving me on anything editing or any ideas.

Trains my brain just to know like what he's going to say, right? So it'd be like, okay, first thing was, all right, we wanted to be eight guys. DJ back. No, that's way too many guys. Way too many guys. What is this way to you guys? We don't need eight guys. Eight microphones live all at the same time.

It could be a nightmare to sub mix all at the, you know, right live as it's happening. All that's the other thing, it's live. Also, DJ, you would throw up a sandwich like, why does this have to be live? Why does this have to be live? Why can't we edit it? Spend a day editing it.

Package trim out the bottom 45% of it that is Unusable for TV use only the best parts in air and in pretend like it's live even those recorded the night before That's been the two easiest notes and that was the two biggest difficulties. I had it was a total cluster fuck from the jump Bert Kreischer. I don't really know who he is was all over the place. Marshall and Lins was actually a breath of fresh air, but there was 75 different announcers going on top of your show. It was it was totally not for me. I don't know who it was for. I know it was more promotion for full swing and drive to survive.

And the F1 race being in Vegas and all that stuff. But it was just a bit of a tough scene. Was it trying to be for everybody? That's the problem, right? F1 race being in Vegas and all that stuff, but it was just a bit of a tough scene. Was it trying to be for everybody? That's the problem, right? Yeah, I don't know. TCM largely with you, like, hey, this maize isn't meant for you sort of situation. But also parenthetically, it's like, yeah golfers,

some of which you know very personally, and F1 drivers playing golf, like, I fucking seems like it should be for me. Really? That's not for me. Like, I don't know. Seems like maybe I would have some interest in that. But yeah, I just, I tried to watch it.

It was, I'd say 70 to 80% too much, Steve Aoki. I made it through about 40 minutes and then was just kind of like, I don't really know what this is or who this is for. And I've been a long wasn't it was like two and a half hours, three hours. It was shockingly long. I still I still can't hear Steve Aoki's name without of course still being gobsmacked that his dad started anymore. In the cake video where he hits the first of the wheelchair, the squid games crossover.

Joel Damon was nice. You know, it was still a weird environment just in general, but I don't know. The first iteration of the match was really weird as well and they developed that and learned a lot from the first one and improved it. So, I know this was Netflix like trying to show they could do live sports and I know they want to be players in live sports and some capacity into the future. So, that's why it had to be live. But yeah, it was pretty clear early on as like, ah, I don't think this is going to be for

me. So, I think there's something there with, I think there's something there with golfers and like, marsh on linch or some, like golfers and non-golfers, golfers and kind of like fish out of water is a very fun combo. And that I think makes it very approachable for non-golfers and I think it makes it very interesting

to golfers. And then when you just make it like 900% more complicated than that is where I'm like, ah, I'm good here, man, but I'm with you. Again, do another one, man, I don't care. It doesn't, you know, don't cost me nothing. Have fun. Keep trying to keep trying to push things forward. I think it's probably as much as I would hate to admit,

you know, from a hashtag shrink the game perspective. Probably a good thing to have a live golf event on the front page of Netflix, right? That seems great. I think there's a lot of things to learn and take away, but yeah, I don't know that I'll necessarily be following the crew on that journey. Yeah. And really on the race, too, like we're stopping at a bunch of quotes, going to do a total 180 today, and we're singing the praises of it. After he won. After the race ended and everything. But basically saying, what are we doing? Who's this for?

We need to kind of pay more attention to the track or pay more attention to our core fans and the actual racing and not the spectacle around it. I feel like there's some lessons to be gleaned there in the golf world as well. Both PGA Tourists. I think there's lessons to be learned even from like F1, right? I don't know if we've talked about this all that much like head on, but I, listeners of this podcast, well aware, well aware,

how deep all of us got into F1 a couple of years ago, based solely on the Netflix series and like, oh my God, these guys are, when you package them up like this, they're so interesting. This is fascinating. I can't wait to see these rivalries. And then, you know, if the, I'm not saying the product on TV doesn't match that, right? Like F1 product is phenomenal on TV. But when you don't like, it's almost like growing the fan base in like a sustainable way,

right? And maybe nobody gives a shit about that. And I'm overthinking this. And it's you're just trying to juice the numbers and thereby juice the hospitality and juice the TV advertising and all of that stuff. But like I still don't really know how F1 works from like a very like technical perspective. Like I don't know all the strategy. I don't know all the tire changes. I don't know all of the like the really like X's and O's type stuff. And it was so easy for me to just fall away and be like, yeah, never mind, I don't actually care. And that's that was always my point with full swing too was like you can get all these

people in with like cotton candy and you know, get them in the front door. But like dip and dot. Got a. God. If you're not actually like into the actual product, you're just like tricking people into spending some time with this and maybe someone will stick around and I'm guessing a lot. What about the next 10? That's right. What about tricking these people into watching 18 minutes of commercial prowl or versus F1, zero? But I think it yeah. But my I guess follow up on that, like I haven't watched F1 race in like two years.

Like I just it was I still watch it pretty regularly, but it's one of those things where it's like, you know, it's more digestible. Granted, yeah, like some of the format stuff, it's two, it's a two hour investment versus four rounds and all this stuff. But I think there's always just been this, like you said, trying to trick people into watching golf

versus like, no, like why don't we focus on the golf and bring people along a little bit and force them to get up to speed? I think it honestly, F1, the regulation changes ended up having a reverse effect on me. I don't know why. I like the previous version of the cars racing, which goes against my argument

if they need to change the equipment in golf, but listen, we can, it's a separate conversation. But that is close to everything on the men's side. I know it was an extremely, all the match is pushed back until Q1 2024. I was originally scheduled for December. That has been delayed. And that is going to be Rory, Max, Rose, and who else remind me? Lexi, I believe.

Lexi. Lexi. Finally getting some females involved in that. And on that note, the LPGA CME Torch Championship was this past weekend. Amy Yang wins the $2 million prize. If you do not follow this closely, if you qualify for the CME Torch Championship, there's 60 players that do qualify. Total reset of all the points.

It is a just straight up horse race. Winner gets the prize winner of the tournament. It has worked since they've been doing this. It has worked out really well for the LPJ tour. There's been like the big guns, the ones that have had the best seasons have ended up winning Nelly Corda and Jinyoungco at a great duel a couple years ago, say on Kim one at one year. And this was not the surprise,

is a surprise name, she was 31st on the year. Not the name you would stick out and say you had the best season on the LPGA tour, but that is how this tournament works. And she shot 2700 to win and kind of ran away with it there at the end. Yeah, it's tough. I think, you know, Tiburon, I don't think Tiburon's the best setting for this or the best, you know,

it seems like it's kind of a shootout, not a whole lot of fans down there. It's not a big area, right? Naples, it's kind of, you know, there's not a bunch of juice down there. But yeah, I don't know, just $2 million to the winner. And then I think next year they're bump bumping into $4 million, which seems a little bit gimmicky to me, like make it a little bit, you know, and I know we bitch about this with the tour championship. But like, if you're trying to make this great made for TV product, and then the TV broadcast feels like, you know, a freaking funeral procession, like there's no, you know, there's, there's

no juice to the TV product. Then like the $2 million prize, first prize doesn't really mean anything. That's, that's kind of where I'm at. I, it seemed like the LPJ had so much like awesome momentum this year. And it still seems like they're going to, yeah, it still seems like they're going to, you know, great spot with the schedule and all the prize money they have committed for next year. To the point where I was like very pumped to watch this, you know, great spot with the schedule and all the prize money they have committed for next year. To the point where I was like very pumped to watch this, you know, today, like, okay, a season ending event and you've got a big check on the line and, you know, I don't really care of, you know, Lily of Wu or whoever, like, gets passed in the last event. And I think part of that's kind of what makes it fun. And I think that was almost what I preferred at the tour

championship too. I don't think everything has to necessarily like be super, you know, it doesn't have to be a math equation that like the good guy has to has to win in the end every time. It can be a surprise winner or whatever. But man, no offense to anyone. I know that, you know, anytime the LPJ is on TV, it's usually a, you know, it's, it takes an effort from probably a smaller number of people to even get it up to begin with. But it's tough, man, when there's just not like you said, not a lot of juice on the, on

the telecast, it just really doesn't feel like a season ending event. It doesn't feel like it's the biggest prize. And you just kind of end up switching back and forth and watching a little bit of C Island and watching a little bit of this and looking at your phone and you just kind of end up switching back and forth and watching a little bit of sea island and watching a little bit of this and looking at your phone and you just kind of end up like a man with a lot of hours. Two hours go. You know, up again. Yeah, it's on against NFL and I think the other thing that kind of lifts me about it.

And like again, like we're nitpicking here, props to CME and Terry Duffy and all those guys for like putting up a bunch of money for it. Like this is the biggest person in sports, but like it's crazy to me that like, like the fifth place person makes under $200,000 in this event. When the winner makes $2 million, like it's so top heavy, so,

Allison Lee and Nasa tied for second, and they got $445 grand a piece. Winner got got two million. That's just out of proportion. Yeah, and even that, man, it just doesn't, it's kind of the same thing we say about the men's toward championship. Like, the money isn't really is what hooky me, it's what's hooky me to watch and hooky in a lot of people to watch.

I don't think, you know, it just, it really didn't seem like it had much buzz, right? You can pretty much tell from buzz on social media whether or not it's generated much interest in it. It hasn't the past. This event hasn't the past, but I think it kind of just comes down to how I mean, you guys have covered the LPJ in great, great detail this year, but it just seems like it, there's just a kind of a bit of a parody problem on the LPJ tour. There's just, I mean, Lily Aviv had an amazing season.

She finished fourth this week. She was number one, she's number one player in the world. And she was number one in the list coming under this week. And Celine Boudier won four times, but it just doesn't have like the, there's not the star power like clear names at the top. Some of the biggest names, the biggest like, the names that carry the biggest cloud had pretty bad seasons. Nelly's dealt with some health health issues had equipment changed this year and hasn't really

carried the torch this year and Lydia Coe's fallen backwards. Lexi's fallen backwards and it's just a transition year for the LPJ tour, I think. But parity, I don't think is it's nobody's fault, but it's not it's not helping to generate a whole lot of buzz on the weekends unfortunately. I think I'm the on the telecast side too. What I always come back to is like, why it seems like, you know, the, the hurdle on the men's side to doing anything fun or interesting is always the players, right? And it's always like, nah, I'm not going to wear a mic. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that.

I'm not doing on course stuff. I'm not doing whatever. I just don't think you'd have the same amount of problems on the women's side. And so I don't ever get why the LPJ always like tries to feel like a soup like not it almost feels like a diet version of like the men's broadcasts right? You try to which is bad. Yeah, which is already bad. And now you don't have the resources to even like get up to snuff and do the same thing

that the bad telecast does. So man, why not try something different? Why not try something wildly different? Why, again, might people up or get just creative and do some totally different things? Where I think the other thing here too, is it just feels bolted on after the Asia swing. Yeah, I think, you know, they go to Asia for four weeks

and they come back for the onica thing, down at Pelican, and then this. And Timberon, I've played there a few times. Naples is great. My wife's from there. Like, it's a nice place. I think it's a really boring golf course. There's just not a whole lot going on out there.

We're gonna see it again in a few weeks for the Grand Thornton co-ediment too. And there's just a lot of other options, I think, for that. Now, I think on the positive side for the LPGA, they came out with their new schedule for 2024. I think it's a huge step in the right direction. They made a bunch of strides as far as per sizes and added an event in Boston.

The whole Chris crossing the country is a lot better for 2024. Like they've slotted the match play out of Shadow Creek into April. Chevron's not going against ANWA anymore. They've got some great venues for the women's majors with St Andrews and Lancaster. And, you know, gosh, where's the, it's so highly for the women's majors with St. Andrews and Lancaster and, you know, gosh, where's the, it's a holly for the KPMG. You know, so I think there's, there's some super positive momentum there. And again, they're planned for, I think it's like, it's a wildly larger.

I think it's like 70 million versus 110 or 120 million total per size for the season just from 2021 Under 18 million next year. Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a massive massive increase in three. Yeah, it seems like Within the circle of the LPGA tour things are great, right? Like I mean again through see me tour championship the sponsors put up the money players love it And you know that that's a success right in in terms of what the commissioners goal is to get the players paid. I just, I personally, of course, we all would like to see the fans get rewarded with some, some buzz, right? Or, you know, it's not going to happen up against football. That's just like the elephant in the room, right? And that's, it's, it's just a difficulty of running golf tournaments all year long,

is the year ends when football season's already going on. So, which is where I guess the only counter to that would be like, you probably have, maybe it's a losing battle and that's why they don't even try. But I think like, if you're not going to draw in casual fans, because they're probably watching football, like, then just really cater to the golf fans, like, throw some great golf fans and make it like can't miss for the people who are not in football and just love watching golf. Also, I mean, again, NBC not on the cutting edge of innovation on this.

You don't need to be innovating here, but YouTube TV is great features, multi-view features across networks where you can watch, I mean, I think that last night I was watching eight, you could do four college football games at once. One of them was on FS1, one was ESPN, one was ABC, like, hey, I wanted to watch both golf tournaments today. Give me an option to multi-view both of them. This is, I don't have to, I should not have to ask for that. This is already in existence on other networks.

How can you not get both your golf events up on the screen at the same time? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the screen at the same time? It's, it's solid. We will give that to you, but, but we're going to cover the screen 80%. That's the amazing thing about it is there's big, big black bars on the bottom of the top. Run as many ads as you want. You don't need to do playing through anymore. Like you can run so many ads. Can I tell it?

It's ringing. You can make the entire thing. Yeah, guys. I want to watch a movie on peacock the other night, which I am accidentally a paying subscriber to peacock because I get fucking tricked into doing it every time they have a major or whatever I have I always have to resign up and then I put that last hour on there. You're the one that goes in place for it.

Have my like credit card notification set up and I get dinged like you know once a month like your peacock payment went through. I want to go watch a movie on peacock and there were as a paying peacock member there were three minutes of unskippable ads before I could watch the movie. Nice company man nice company. It's amazing. Well on that note we got to get TC over to it's football night in America. I know he has been waiting all day. He's a clapper, which we didn't even mention the clapper

in Jack. You know, who knows of NBC? You'll try to get Jason Garrett, Jack Collinsworth, Coach Dungee, some of those guys involved in some of their golf broadcast. It seems like they're big into that cross collaboration. Last note I had John Smoltz as a vance to the Champions Tour final stage. That would be, I hope he gets a card. That would be fantastic. Like that would be like a weekly,

almost like following a weekly sponsors exemption of how he would stack up on a season long on the Champions Tour would be fascinating. That's so impressive. Really is. There's so many good golfers in the world. I feel like he played like he's done it before, right? But he's playing wildly better than he has in previous years when he's tried to do. Yeah.

So all right, that is a wrap extra long fall. I'm not going to apologize this one. A lot happened this week. A lot needed I'm not gonna apologize to this one. A lot happened this week. A lot needed to be discussed. We did not have our one hour fall podcast rule in effect this week. May serve as a double up.

There's nothing going on next weekend. So may serve as a double episode for all we know. But thank you everyone for tuning in TC. Thank you for battling through your flu game or as what was the LSU women's coach what's her name Kim Kim it might be COVID but I'm not testing I don't know if you had that you know it's just it's just a little little throat or sinus infection thank you everyone for tuning in hope everyone has a great holiday week we'll

see you back here soon. Greg Long. Cheers. All right. Let's give it a big, right club. Be the right club today. Yes. Ready? That's better than most. How about you? That is better than most.

Better than most. Better than most.