No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 775: PNC Recap

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Tiger and Charlie Woods one again starred at the PNC while Bernhard Langer and his son Jason took the top spot in Orlando. We start this weekend's recap pod elsewhere with a recent ESPN report about the potential imminent private equity investment into the PGA Tour from a combination of US based investors and the Saudi PIF. We also look back at some critical decisions from the tour over the last 3-4 years and play some revisionist history (17:00). We also get into Rahm's public silence since his LIV move (52:00), the mule uprising (55:30), Finau staying put (1:02:45) and potential talent changes at NBC (1:04:45). Then it's time for the on-course update portion of the pod (1:07:00) with the PNC, Q-School and then we close with a 2023 Superlatives game (1:13:15). Awards handed out include: Shot of the year, mule of the year, best major championship hole of the year and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang podcast, Sally here, final Sunday recap of the year. I have a feeling we might be doing a couple more pods before the end of this year because I'm guessing there's some news coming, but assuming it's not Sally here, DJ Pies here.

Hello, Mr. Piedman. Hello, Sally. Good to be with you Sally here, DJ pies here. Hello, Mr. Prime, man. Hello, Sally, good to be with you. Happy holidays, my man. Kevin Van Volkenberg is with us as well. Hello, KBV. How are you? Happy Sunday. Sally is my guy Aaron Rogers would say it's been a long December. And there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than last coming here. I will bet anything that next year will be better. Actually, next year might be the most lame duck year. We'll get into that.

We'll get to all that. The no-bang of podcasts of course brought to you by our friends. It's a titleist. This one a little under the radar last week. There's too much going on, but do you guys see that there's a new, someone new joining us with the titleist staff back at a team event last week? Did you guys see this? I saw this at the at the ad shoot. I was lucky to see this up close in

June. No one's asking for behind the big thing here. I could see the big, sweet show. No, I was under a bargo. You know, I respected bargos. I respect the process, but love English journalist headed to the team. Ludwig. If people don't know how early TC was on this, this was, this was contingent on us signing with titleists a year ago was that they had to go get Ludwig. So I'm glad that, glad that got finalized, but you know, it's been in the works for quite some time,

of course, but TC called that one as well, about six or seven years ago. I think it was, but for the gear heads out there, if you are one of those, he plays a title is ProV1X Golf Ball. The TSR-2, a nine degree driver, he switches between a T MB-2 iron and a TSR-3 hybrid. I might be doing the same exact thing right now.

He's also testing the new T200-2 iron. That is what I just put in the bag and, booo, let me tell you, I'm hoping, I don't wanna hype it too much because I'm hoping in the bag and boy, let me tell you, I'm hoping, I don't want to hype it too much because I'm hoping there's not enough time for you guys to get one. In case we have any competitions coming up anytime soon. But I put the new T100 irons in the bag last week, the foreign through Petching Wedge,

three Voki SM9 wedges, the 50 F grind. He's got a 54 S grind and he goes back and forth between the 60 degree eight bounce M grind and he goes back and forth between the 60, uh, 60 degree eight bounce M grind and the 60 V grind as well. So I'd have Ludwig on the squad. Hopefully, uh, we'll be able to get together for some content, uh, sometime soon, uh, which I think Pymin has just teased that maybe we already did that. No, he was actually, we did some other title as content, but he was so deep into, uh, working

with the fitters. He was getting, you know, he had just signed this deal and was, uh, he was not doing a lot of content and stuff at the ad read. He was, he was getting absolutely dialed with all of the things that you just mentioned. So, uh, looking forward to, to the results, I would also shout out not part of the ad read, but I would shout out our, our big what's in the bag video that we did. Last week as well, I believe that went up on the YouTube channel, just kind of a big, long, deep dive into what's in everybody's bag. So check that out at your leisure as well.

All right. Fair amount to get to this week. We're not going to lead with the PNC guys. We're just not. All right. There's enough going on in the world of golf. And I think probably takes precedent over what I assumed to be Bernard Longer and his grandson's final victory.

I did not, I didn't see the last hole, but I assume they didn't blow their lead there with the scramble. But it appears the PGA tour and the PIF are headed towards a deal. We're going to talk a little bit about that. We're going to reflect on the path that has taken us there. A little bit on John Romer's and the mule uprising is continuing and maybe getting legal, getting hashtag legal up in this bitch. Big tone, not leaving. We got some rumors and some reports as to who might be taking over the color chair on NBC. We'll talk a little P and C, a little Q school and some various nicks and nacks. But starting at the top, a story on ESPN this past week, said a multi-billion dollar deal between a group of well-known US sports team owners and the PGA tour is imminent as the

tour still hopes to reach a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia's public investment fund. This is what the sources told ESPN this past Friday, the agreement with strategic sports groups, which we talked about last week is a consortium of billionaire team owners that includes Tom Warner and John Henry Arthur Blank, Wic Grousebeck. It would infuse more than $3 billion into a new for profit entity, which is called PGA tour enterprises, the sources said. They're also continuing talks with officials from the PIF, which is financing the rival live golf league. Fadeaus reached with both strategic sports group and the PIF, more than seven billion might be infused into PGA tour enterprises,

which would combine the commercial assets of the P tour, Piff and DP world tour. Hi, man. That's a good thing. I think yes, probably on the, on the whole, I mean, I think it's, it's probably a step towards, you know, backing up four or five years here when we, we really started ramping up this podcast. I mean, I think that, you know, a lot of the problems can be traced back to the structure of the PJ tour being fairly outdated, right? And you see some of that with the

mule uprising and, you know, kind of the, the tour kind of tearing apart at the seams almost over this idea of, you know, is this a commercial based entertainment product or a membership organization designed to provide as many playing opportunities for its membership as possible. So it feels like this is probably the first big solid concrete step towards that changing and not only changing what 20, 25 might look like, but really just like changing how the whole structure of the PJ tour operates. And I think all of this kind of came from the June 6th announcement about the merger between the merger, don't call it a merger between the PJ tour and PIF.

I think this is the result of a lot of the players feeling pretty blindsided about that announcement and kind of saying like, Hey, if you were looking for money, there's a lot of people looking to to provide money. And so this kind of seems like it dilutes a lot of that, you know, what was announced on June 6th, as far as, hey, it's going to be the PJ tour handshake deal with the Piff and we, too, together are going to go forward and form a new golf league. And I think this kind of dilutes that down a little bit, probably makes some of those players, you know, concerns and interests feel heard and then probably still leaves room for the

PIF to get involved in the way that was originally kind of spelled out in the framework. So long answer as far as is it a good thing or a bad thing, but I mean, I think it's interesting. That's for sure. What do you think, Sally? I think that's a wrap on the app. That's the whole situation. That's the whole last several years. I'll, I'll, I'll lined up on one.

I don't want to follow that. KVV, you want to follow that? You got anything to add on that? Yeah. Let me stop you right there, guys. I don't care. All right. I just don't care.

All right. Wake me up when the majors are here. I think I've had enough of this discussion. It's all still theoretical. I know these two reporters, I think if they're saying in a deal as close Don Benet, I'm actually wow that it actually really is this is not some Twitter sort of rando throwing darts at a board and being like see look what I got like these are real big-time people who have You know a track record. They don't get things wrong. So that's great. I think for all the people involved who want to see things come back together Good for you. I just you got to convince me to care again, because right now I'm just,

I'm 24 babies all about the majors. That's just what my bad news. My approach is going to be. I news. The venues are not great next year. The venues are great. But these the stakes are real. In that report, it says more than seven billion might be infused into PGA tour enterprises. On this one, I want to pump the brakes on this one a little bit, not doubting any of the reporting here. I think I can kind of add up where they're getting to that number, but I don't think that's like what the initial, I'll probably phrase it wrong. I'm getting not a corporate head, if you will, as much as I love the C suite, but that's

the amount that's been potentially committed, but I don. But that's the amount that's been potentially committed, but I don't think that's the amount that's gonna be initially infused from what I've heard. That would put the stake. Again, if there's like, I don't know, I've seen this down around between a 10 and $12 billion valuation of the PGA tour, that would put the strategic sports group in PIF

as more than 50% owners combined. And I do not think from what I've heard that will end up being the case. I believe some of that money might be in some sort of line of credit in some capacity. But I don't think that's gonna represent their actual initial ownership percentages. Again, just, just say, let's let's let that one shake out.

Also talking to you guys about this this past week, it was very much just like a, you read that article, It says $7 billion and like, Oh, okay. If it has said $2 billion, you just said, Oh, okay. Like, what? I'm like, just totally billions of dollars get thrown around now and golf and you don't even flinch at you. Like, try to make sense of whether or not it does make sense because so much shit has just defied all logic leading up to this point. But I don't know. I have refused to believe things could get any worse

or bottom out more than they have. So I feel like this has a lot of potential to be a good thing. And I would say, you know, listen, the devil, you know, sometimes better than the devil, you don't. Right. When it comes to pro golf, so who knows what we're getting in bed with here as, as golf fans, but also a lot of these people seem like pretty serious folks who run pretty serious operations. And I think golf could probably use a little bit of that as we've, we can probably glean from the past three years of inmates running the asylum and all kinds of things just turning into a complete fucking circus.

It seems like probably having some more big sports business adults in the room seems like a positive as well. And so, you know, I'll put that on one side of the equation and on the other side, you know, I'm not trying to sound like a revolutionary, eat the rich type of person, but like, dog, I don't know the last time the fans have been at the forefront of any of these decisions and I'm going to probably reserve, you know, I'm not going to hold my breath that all of a sudden the TV product is going to be overhauled. The commercial load is going to be overhauled. Things are going to be built to be as entertaining as possible. I'm sure blockies are going to be running around somehow in all of this. I'm sure DJ Khaled's going to be involved. It's just

you know, once you, when the stakes get higher, I would think from like a private equity standpoint, and when you do infuse all of this money in, and you wanna raise those stakes, it does mean that like, you know, I guess that's a positive and a negative, things have to be run a little more seriously.

And so I don't know what that's, I don't know that's going to mean as far as what the actual product looks like. Kev, I fully, you know, support your, uh, your right and your enthusiasm for the, I don't fucking care. Let me know when it's 2025, you know, mindset, but, you know, we continue to, to wait and see. However, it seems like dominoes are at least starting to fall as far as some of this stuff coming into focus. Did you for the first time, I think you you made me actually consider like, could it get significantly worse? Like the experience. Like I hadn't really considered like, I don't know, DJ Khaled in the boot or like, you know, just,

you know, blocky playing and featured groups, like all kinds of things that they, these private equity people could hope to use to make money. So fingers crossed for that. I mean, I didn't really think about that dystopian future being a possibility. But worse, if it gets worse, that's, like, that's totally fine. Like, it just becomes ignorable, right? Like, the worst place to live is like teetering on the edge of like dude it could get good this weekend I should watch and you get punched in the face on repeat. I mean it's worse

You just like don't watch anymore like nobody's gonna watch if it gets somehow gets worse than this And I guess what I would say is as far as the optimism would be The teams that are owned by like and the leagues that are run by the you know The guys who own all of these teams and properties. Like their main focus is on the actual product itself, right? Like when you are tuning into an NFL game or a baseball game or an NBA game or whatever, you're tuning in to watch the actual competition and golf sometimes feels so fucking far from that that maybe a dose of, hey, what is your actual product here and why does it suck? Seems like a natural step one could have been taken a number of years ago, but maybe it

takes blowing up the structure of the league and really reconsidering a lot of this stuff in order for that to happen. So who knows, man, I was doing some reflecting this past week and I'm going to quiz you guys a little bit later. I want to run down some things, but I was kind of laughing a little bit this week of like, man, if you could like really, really, really, really stretch things, I kind of try to convince myself this week of like, huh, could the tour and the executives have purposefully tried to screw this up so badly so that they finally break free of this structure, like potentially made

every wrong decision along the way to break free of the structure that holds it back from doing anything like, you know, moving forward or, you know, positive. I was like, that's how far along we are in this. I'm like, dude, wow, this couldn't have gone much worse. I hadn't thought of it that way. That's interesting. I mean, so you've, you've had conversations with some of the people who make these kind of decisions. Like, do they seem like, you know, third-level chess kind of masterminds who would like purposely tank their own product to be able to see a better day tomorrow. It doesn't strike me. Imagine pitching that in a meeting, be like, all right guys, what if we just made this way, way worse? The only, I, the only conversation I think I've had with Jay Bond in the last like two years was at the players this year and they were, you know, there's player meetings that week talking about changes and everything.

And the one line he said to me that I always talk with him was like, people hate change. He was just almost sounded like defeated. If like we're trying to push some things through here and like we can't get anything through here. So listen, is that an unbelievable stretch from that one line he said to the theory I just threw out there. Sure. But I'm, it's fun. Whatever. It's into the year. We can throw some shit out here. But a couple of other quotes within this article that I thought were fantastic. This is about the ROM signing.

Is it a source familiar with the negotiation said, it was nothing more than a shot across the bow. It was a fuck you by piff to the tour that they can grab anyone. Even the guy who was adamant about not joining $300 million is a rounding error to the Saudis. Their message was, you wanna keep fighting with us? Really, you wanna keep talking to everyone in boxes out?

Good luck with that, that's their message. And this was not me, I am not the anonymous source, despite the fact that that was basically exactly what I was saying on our last couple of podcasts here. For all the ROM, you know, six more years of of live glory ahead of ROM. I think that's, I don't know, I think there was a lot of quotes in this in this piece that seemed to back up a lot of what we were saying on whatever that was last week's pod, last month's pod, to pose that a year ago that we did that. I don't know who could say continuing

quotes that Yosser stood down for a while, but as he kept reading about all those other suitors, I think he just decided, let's go after the Masters champion. The guy who said he couldn't be bought for any price and name a price he couldn't refuse. The lesson here is if you have enough money, you can do whatever the fuck you want to in America. The Saudis have figured that out. Yosser understands that. Continuing on, the major benefit of doing a deal with Piff is that they is so that they

are not John Romney, you to death. It isn't like the tour can get billions elsewhere. There are very deep pockets that one end. The tour doesn't really want to be in bed with the Saudis, but they have so much money, so much muscle, they can destroy you. That's what the ROM signing signal. They get to rub shoulders with all these billionaire American sports magnets. It's a long game for them.

They're not stopping with golf. They want a piece of everything. These quotes sound like they're coming from Ava on barkstale. They go again, playing him away games. Jay, my hand money, they got no spenders only, they got no owners, all these owners, only spenders. That's right. Um, and if it sounds like I've shifted my tone on this, it is a total waving the white flag of defeat in terms of like, maybe I was naive to think the PJ tour could outrun the Saudis, but I see absolutely no path that doesn't include. If you want, get my number one thing, if I've said this 50 times, probably on the show,

my number one thing is getting the best parts of the world all playing golf together. And the only way to get that ever happening again, the Saudis have to be involved in whatever deal comes together. I don't understand the move to flirt with suitors and pursue deals outside of the PIF, which has probably let us down, even further down to the PIF gaining more and more power. But the only way we're going to see good competitive golf is a deal with the Saudis.

Though I still think the exact same things of everything I ever said about sports washing and the dudes that sold out to live 100 million percent. But the only way to move forward here is some sort of reconciliation. It's over. Wave the white flag. Yeah. Here here. Can we revisit some history here?

This is a little, a quick pop quiz I have for you guys with 12 questions. 12 decision points. 12 forks in the road going way back several years. You can answer as quickly as you'd like or you can expand on any thoughts that you have. But I just want to looking back at decisions the tour has made over the last going back three, four years. I want you to say if they were a good decisions or bad decisions with the benefit of hindsight, okay. I want you to say if they were a good decisions or bad decisions with with the benefit of hindsight, okay? Number one, I'll start with that decision. Not Not some of these are

These are very easy Number one not taking the meeting with Andy Gardner Kevin Seems pretty bad. Seems like you could have you know Set up your own type thing with without Saudi money or with Saudi money at that time or with Saudi money at that time and And perhaps box these things with you know what? Especially bad because I think if out of Andy Gardner was your guy It would have given just enough like cover from the Kishoggi stuff if that's what you really wanted to do and say like, oh no, no, there's some sort of money involved in this, but it's really, you know, it's it's these British guys who are into this stuff.

So in the interest big dumb bad decisions. I totally agree with everything you said, but I think in the interest of fairness on that one, it we've said this on the show a lot of times, but if you think, you know, we're going to keep saying the mules, but if you think, you know, we're gonna keep saying the mules, but if you think the mules are having a hard time swallowing the pill right now as the fucking house is on fire, I can't imagine when everything's going so fantastic. They just signed a new TV deal.

There's hundreds of millions of more dollars coming into purses each and every year for them to just walk into the boardroom and say, actually, we're gonna blow it all up and we're gonna partner with these guys who have never done anything in golf, would have been a tough sell. So yes, in hindsight, bad decision,

but I think also understandable decision from a pure like putting yourself in that moment at that time, I guess, perspective. And we said that at the time, we were like, these people are not visionaries. Like they, everything, the trades are running on time, the money said that at the time, we were like, these people are not visionaries. Like they, the, everything, the trades are running on time, the money keeps rolling on the door.

There's no possible way this apple cart can get upset. There's no possible way it can, everything can go off the tracks. There's no way. Let's just keep going and collecting those paychecks. Number two, Deed started with you, not taking the meeting with Yosser

back in the day before this all started. Yeah, I'm gonna say bad decision. I'll just coastline everything. My my colleague just said about the anti-gardner meeting. But I will also, you know, reheat everything I just said about the, you know, I get why it didn't happen, but in hindsight, incredibly tough, tough decision. So like, what if Jimmy Dunn had taken a meeting with Yosser and been like, Hey, man, like, what if we just get you in a gust of membership

and you just like keep focusing on that primarily? Man, like just, you know, we can do that. But the exchange is like, you gotta leave golf alone. I will, Jimmy was not on the board as of 2021 when this was allegedly a Tubby. No, Jimmy could have made some back to me in roads there. I mean, you know, could this all have been avoided if Yasser just got as a gust of membership

100%. I mean, don't you think it's not like, look, it's not like MBS is like super in a golf, right? So like he wouldn't give a shit when we're in another. If Yasser was like, yeah, we decided that golf wasn't a wise investment for us, but we're going all in on the MBA. Like MBS wouldn't be like, no, wait a minute. I think golf has a growth market.

You've been like, great. I'm going to, you know, go back to torture and people and run in the oil state, like do whatever it is I do. So damn it. Number three, introducing the PIP, the player impact program, topping off your top players. This is a good call, Kevin first. I think yes, even though the people who took the pit money still left, I think it's possible

that if you hadn't sort of sold many of them left. But like, what did you keep? I'm trying to think of who might have, did you keep like Finaw? You know, did you keep? I don't think Scotty would ever left, but, you know, who knows? I think probably, I mean, but I certainly did piss off a lot of people, but it kind of pissed off the kind of people who weren't going to get a live offers anyway, right? So this could have been the easiest possible

contingent to add in there. Like, hey, click this money. You got to stay on the PGA. We can't have you become a vendor, not a member, not a good standing here. Like we kind of need you to stick around here. Listen, maybe there was some kind of legal constraint that was, you know, made that not possible. But man, that seems like that would have been a good one to keep it in high. Bryson claimed that he didn't get like, he didn't, he was so mad. You had to complete this.

Yeah, you had to do like a charity thing and you had to do like two different things to do it. And you didn't get half of it because he didn't complete his charity thing before he left for for live. So that's why he's had to had to sue the tour. It's personal. Can I say I'm going to say bad decision on that one. Again, I probably defended it at the time or probably saw the logic at the time, but ultimately is like just a total

half measure, right? Of continuing to try to continue to try to like duct tape all the holes in this broken system over and over and over and just playing whack-a-mole on all of these different stupid problems that were popping up. And it just as you look at it now is like, I think even when you talk to the players, like I think even the top players don't like the pip and feel weird about getting money for being on TV more than other players.

And the players who aren't getting money really fucking hate it, just seems like a good way to. Great. It reminds me a lot of the early FedEx cup days where it's just like, no, no, no, no, like you guys don't get it. Our math equation is perfect here. It's all makes so much equitable sense.

And it's like, right, but human beings think it's really fucking stupid is kind of how the pip reads to me. The total giveaway for the pip over the last two years is something like 150 million, something like that. What if they had just given all that money to fill in Tiger? And basically, I was like, yeah, try to start a league without one of these dudes.

Like go right ahead, like fill. get this. They could have taken it and still gone. That's the bad part of it. Well, you got to, yeah, there's some contract law. I'm sure that would have locked Phil down at least until he, I don't know, put it on black and the relate or something. I just, I don't even know how you do that. Like, that would have been grounds for the membership to really get up in arms is if they just cut a check to those two guys without any, because that's why the pip exists the way it does is to make it look equitable

or make it look like it's out of the tour's hands and it's based on, you know, it's merit-based, it's not, you know, basically it's designed to make it look like it's not meant to keep guys from leaving, right? So unless you're paying Phil $75 million for like showing up to a, you leaving, right? So unless you're paying fill $75 million for like showing up to a, you know, chipping clinic at he's listening. He's listening. I don't know how you like

literally get the money to them. I think that's part of the problem. Yeah, it is a good idea in principle, bad execution. Of course, again, you had to actually lock the players down for this to have made any sense getting more money to your top guys did make sense, but going from 50 to 100 doesn't seem to be popular with anyone. I don't know if that was necessary move, but anyways, next up, did you go first threatening players with suspensions for leaving for live? Was that the right decision? I am going to say yes. I'm going to say it was. I don't think it looks great now, especially if things are like Gonna start to come back together anyways, and maybe you can make the case that if they would have you know almost like let everybody jump So that you can like merge eventually anyways, and since it does seem like that's what like I don't think the piff wants to run it

Golf league. I think they you know, we've said that a hundred times on the show But I'm gonna say yes. I'm gonna say that did probably stem the tides of like a whole swath of guys jumping and even like draw up the negotiations to where at least for a time the tour seemed to have the upper hand in the negotiations. You can argue now that they probably don't, but I think the suspensions probably help them retain that for a long time. Kevin? Yeah, I think I agree. I think if you had no suspensions, just everybody would have just bounced over and played whatever live events they could. The entire P.J. tour would have been the

running of the meals. And so, I don't really know why anyone would have stayed around other than they wouldn't have fit in with their schedule or they didn't want to take a red eye to Jetta or Singapore or whatever, but I would think that the suspensions are the only thing. The guys who truly thought about, okay, if I do this, I might jeopardize my eligibility in majors and that's what really matters for me

that I think that probably held on to at least some of the guys, right? And I agree. And I separated out threatening players with suspension and actually suspending them as two separate decisions. But I still I agree with both of them. And I can't tell if it's just I still see people saying online that they should have been allowed to go play wherever they want.

I can't tell if it's just like the most disingenuous comment you could possibly make even totally and completely ignoring the entire structure of the PGA tour and how that would have worked. It would have been a five o'clock free crack giveaway and everybody would have fled and it would have been a horrible, horrible move for the PGA tour. Next one, I think we can probably find common ground on this one. Invoking the 9-11 families on TV at the Canadian Open. Do that's where you're good. I'm going to say, I'm going to say bad moves. No, I'm going to say first. You want me to go first. Let me go first. I'm gonna call that one bad. I'm gonna get out in front of this one and I'll take any any barrel fire that comes

from that one. But I'm gonna say that was not the best decision. Yeah, nothing to nothing to add there. Bad bad move. Just a few months later, the designated event model was that a good move made in August of 2022? I think a little bit TBD, right? I don't know that we, I would love to see it at full strength for another year. It feels like it was still kind of, it felt like it lost a lot of steam towards the end of last year, right? It felt like Phoenix and some of the early ones were really,

really fun and felt like bigger events. And then you got to, you know, whatever Quill Hollow and some of the others and it was pretty easy to just kind of look the other way or made it feel like a run of the middle event. So I don't know, I might try to tap out of this one. I might go no decision on this one. Maybe just too many designated events.

Maybe you just stuck with like, I don't know, four or something, I would have know, four or something. I would have been, it's interesting. I think it was good for the fan. I think they were interesting. I got way more hyped about those events than, you know, slightly elevated events is how it kind of ran previously. I do just wonder. I mean, the tour had very quickly halfway through the year, ended up having to wave the white flag and say that we're on a path of unsustainability between the lawsuit and the elevated Perseves and not being able to re-up with sponsor trying to pass those costs on the sponsors and not be able to get the money to say. I was I was in support of it because I had the one thing you cannot deny the tours able to do is they can sell some shit man.

They can they can make that revenue come in. And despite nobody watching it, they get dollars coming in the door. And I thought they could, they could sustain it. And it turns out they could not. So. And now we're seeing sponsors like walk away, like Wells Fargo from something that is wildly unsustainable. So that's interesting. Yeah, it's, it's weird. I think, you know, as I'm looking forward here and just kind of trying to wrap my head around who's mad about FedEx Cup points and who's, you know, as I'm looking forward here and just kind of trying to wrap my head around who's mad about FedEx Cup points and who's, you know, going to be playing what events and just trying to like think through the whole landscape. The only thing I don't like about the designated events is I think you could almost argue it doesn't go far enough in just calling out

that we're playing two different tours now, right? I mean, there is a way to play in between those two tours and I actually think one of the coolest things, it's so convoluted to actually explain to a normal human golf fan, but the whole little mini sprints in between designated events and how you can, you know, you can play good at the Palm beaches, classic or whatever, and play your way into, you know, whatever the next designated event is, signatory event is, like that model is really, really cool. I think it just has to almost start with, you know, just almost taking it even farther and saying, Hey, these are basically two

different tours. And I think that would make a lot of the, the indigestion of the mules, kind of, you know, I think that would quill a lot of that of just like, now listen, man, this is why these two things are are set up the way that they are is because we're playing on two different tours. We're trying to treat them like the same types of events, but just one has all the good players and one doesn't is seems fucking stupid. Probably goes back to the structure in some way.

I think it all is probably end up there. But I think they should have taken like a blood oath in that Delaware meeting where they all cut like a piece of their hand and then a held hands and did like a thing that basically they couldn't break it. Like in a mystery novel or something that that would have been more impactful. Was what was wrong? Rahm would have been bound by him. Sorry. Was walkie in that meeting was the first of the job.

It was the only one up until Rahm that jumped at that meeting. So yeah, cool guys. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back. key to that meeting was the first to jump. He was the only one up until ramen jumped at that meeting. So yeah, cool guys. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back. You guys do that. Next up, doing the framework agreement with the Saudis, June 6th. I'm going to say bad because you needed to involve like at least three or four players in this and basically tell them

you cannot leak to anyone, not to your family, not to no-ling up, not to anybody else. You have to literally keep this as lockdown as possible so that when we open this up to a larger wider audience, the players don't have a complete shift. Because you know what? I don't think the framework idea Agreement was bad It was just that the players were so pissed they weren't involved that then they dragged it out for six friggin months I actually think that Gossar was probably like hey, we got a deal I'm ready to like move forward like let's let's get this thing closed like fairly quickly like and

The players had so many warring factions amongst them and were so, their pride was so hurt that now, it's got, that they basically lost Ram because of that. And if they had sort of figured this out four months ago, Ram would still be a person who could play, they're on both tours or whatever, it wouldn't be quite as, you know, hit to his, I guess, word and reputation.

So I know that's a convoluted answer, it's not a yes or no, but I think it yes, good idea, not executed well. I'm in the same boat. I think, Sali, especially with everything you, you just said a minute ago there about the inevitability of this and, you know, how this was probably where all of this stuff

was gonna end up anyways. I think when you look at it that way and, you know, I know the framework was very scant on details, which was the main complaint about it. We don't really know how the structure was going to shake out or what the safeguards were in there to kind of stave off like a, basically like a hostile takeover or any of that stuff. Making the best possible assumptions, it seemed like a good deal for the PJ tour. And it seems fairly, fairly close to like where we're probably going to end up anyways, but I'm with you, Kev, that I just cannot wrap my head around the idea of just not telling anybody.

And this is not a rhetorical question. Like I've been thinking about it for six months now. What was the benefit of not telling anyone? Was it purely like, oh, we can't, you know, we can't let the word get out that we're going to, we're going to do a deal with the Saudis because like it might be a PR nightmare because otherwise like that, that feels like, it was like a voiding a raccoon and just driving to a fucking telephone pole. Right. I see. I, this, okay, I had the next one up on this list was going to be not telling the players about the deal. That, that questions were combined these into two. But look, look at how everything has gone in the last two years when players are involved

in the decision making. And there's no uniform opinion about one single thing. Like there's not one single opinion that everyone's going to agree on. Like one, you could not have communicated this in any way to players and it not gotten out. Like there's 0.0% chance of that one. And two, like the second, I think that there is a more likelihood that the executives finally reach the decision, reach the conclusion that we cannot win this, that we're going to

end up here at some point. We might as well do it now while we're in the best possible negotiating position. And like the chances of Ryan Brem and the mules like signing onto that, which I will get to here in a second, was next is here, like there's just no way you could have convinced 200 people to be like, you're right, it's time to make a deal with the size.

All these dudes that have turned these guys down for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars potentially, like, you're right, let's do the deal now. And so that's the only part that I'm like, man, I don't see how there could have been any benefit like telling people, like you had to just be a pain sponge and just be like, all right, we are gonna get, it's time to wave the white flag and do this.

So, now doing the, like going on TV and doing the whole thing and giving you a Oscar exactly what he wanted before anything's actually finalized, I don't really know about, but anyways, there's three left here. Involving private equity in the negotiations. Was this a good move or bad move? It seems, I mean, I guess TBD, we'll see what ends up happening or what shakes it out. I mean, I think that's probably a big reason of why they lost ROM, right?

It was like if they would have just gone ahead and done the deal with the Saudis, then it out. I mean, I think that's probably a big reason of why they lost ROM, right? It was like if they would have just gone ahead and done the deal with the Saudis, then I don't think the Saudis would have poached, you know, one of their biggest, most visible players for leverage. But I guess you could argue that if things are going to end up, you know, what next one? The next one is flirting with PE groups outside of using the PIF. So there's two things, right? They they brought in outside one, and then some of those conversations led to potential deals without including the PIF, which is what Yosser took personally to go and poach

wrong, which again, using the outside PE groups is, for my understanding, is a way of getting by DOJ scrutiny, which obviously this was immediately scrutinizing their column for the Senate within our month. by DOJ scrutiny, which obviously there's a immediately scrutinizing they're calling for the Senate. Then I'm on for you then, Sally. Would you, here's, yes, or good or do you about it, stripping the provision in the thing that said, you can't post each other's players. Because in retrospect, I would just said to the Justice Department, bring it on.

Like, we'll figure this out later. Like, don't we're not going to work, how does it work? People do it all the time. You think the Justice Department isn't like, you think that Justice Department has enough funds to go up against the PIF? Like the, this works both ways too. The PIF is an amass of amount of money

to be able to fight any kind of legal claim. Like, you could basically tie that down for years in federal court. You guys can say, yeah, you know, we don't think it's a monopoly. You wanna go toe to toe with us forever. Like, we'll just keep like fighting this as much as we can.

Yes, I'm sure there's, you know, just apartment people who are saying like, well, we just been rejected outright. But like, I think I would just called their bluff and said, like, yeah, we're not going to do that right now. You were think we'll figure out the, you know, the monopoly part later. I don't know, like the just apartment is the end all be all

of like saying, don't do this. And you say, okay, they wanted to appease him. They thought that it wouldn't happen. I'm sure he also was like, okay, we're not going to take your players. We want to get this deal done. So like, I think they've they kind of whiffed on that. I think coming back to the original question, I think it'll probably end up being a good thing.

I mean, I think just getting more voices in there probably probably ends up running it like an actual business rather than the PGA tour with new financing. Feels like a weird year. The PGA tour getting an allowance from the PIF in order to change its structure just felt like a very weird thing. So hopefully this allows it to run a little bit more like a normal business. I get the sense that with the antitrust stuff going on, the DOJ, the Senate hearing, things probably felt a little hot under the collar for a lot of people involved in this with some emails.

Some emails that may have been involved in the discovery of all that to say, like, all right, I don't know if we want to do a, not on the pif side, but on the PGA tour side to be like, I don't know if we want to do a, not on the piff side, but on the PGA tour side to be like, I don't know if we want to do a, you know, stand up against the Justice Department for too long here because we kind of need this deal to go through because our tour is dying. But I don't know. That's outside of my comfort zone of expertise. But any more on your list, otherwise, I guess for you, finalizing a deal with the Saudis. This is not even hindsight yet. It hasn't happened as of the time of us recording this. Finalizing a deal with the PIF for a new structure of golf.

This is a future looking one. Is this a good call? I don't know that you have another call. That's a good answer. Yeah, kind of the only call. I think just to underline this, we've said it 85,000 times, but I think that's entirely the wrong thing is like, if you want to cut these guys out now, awesome

We'll take Tony Fino awesome. We'll take my guy Feet you will not take my guy Fino here. Oh, I'll hat and we'll take you know whoever else just one by one by one We're just gonna we're just gonna take them all and so I it feels like that's kind of the only option Yeah, I mean I probably I think I echo my honorable colleague, Mr. Pai here and say, I'm not sure what else you do. Yeah, I don't think at this point, once you learned that players couldn't be swayed by any argument other than money, not like protecting each other, not protecting the tour that basically gave them the startup in order to make this kind of money,

I think you just had to kind of be swallowed up or die. You know, someone was like, why don't you, someone said to me today, like, the PJ Tours finally, like, learning what, like, real competition is like, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the PJ Tours should probably start drilling oil wells to see if they can come up with some funds to, you know, compete in this fair market. And your Tours should learn to go. And your Tours should learn to go. Fair competition.

Yeah. Seems like a very... I did it. Stop the avocado toast is what they need to cut out, right? Or make it home. Yeah, that's right. Sorry about your loss in the budget. In the avocado bowl. Yes, yesterday, solid, by the way. Yeah, sorry. We can be a tough guy. I'm going to be for this semi-final win for Montana. That's right. Congratulations. In North Dakota State. Slay the dragon there. It's all I got one for you. This was a great game, by the way, keeping J. Monhan as the

Chief of the PGA tour Don't say too loud. I could see it on your face. He's gonna burst through your door. Correct. The obvious answer is no. The only I think the only like reason I have advocated for him to keep his job over the last several months and even years now to this point is like the feeling of instability that has already been at the PGA tour and when in doubt, like it if he loses his job and you don't I don't know who takes his job, but whatever comes in from a PGA tour player and I see that level of instability, even even if it's like the wrong guy to rally behind,

having a some sort of faith and some sort of known quantity in that in place to be able to navigate this is provided some value to the tour. Again, we just revisited all the individual decision points and do I think going 20, like three for 12 and getting those right is not a good percentage and not done well. But I still think like firing him again, remember, thinking back a year ago, over a year ago, like mid-Summer 2022 when like the Reed wave happened, the Bryce and one, the Keppka one, how fast like it was like quicksand, how fast it was falling. And I honestly thought it might flip 70 70 30 until like guys going to live and it kind of stopped at a certain point. So where would the tour of benefit didn't stop?

Did they stay for Jay Monayun specifically? I don't know, but like I just think like firing him, that would have been the time to do it, I think, and at a certain point they committed to it and said we're going to ride this all the way through. Do I think he should be like in charge of golf going forward when this is all done? Absolutely not. Which might happen. I know. Wasn't that how the framework was originally set up? I know. Correct.

So, wild man. I don't know. What do you think? I agree with a lot of that. I think that the tactics, I, gosh, it's a complicated one. It's hard. I feel like one of the biggest problems has been communication and the way that a lot of these messages were delivered both to the public and to players. And I think some of that goes beyond Jay specifically.

Right. And so I think just getting rid of him doesn't necessarily clean up all of that stuff. Is that fair, you think? And if I could simplify the question, like if what's what's what would I rather have happened here, what's an easier solution here, like change the structure of the tour or fire monahan, it's fucking changed the structure, right? Like I, I, this, now his job is to navigate all of these while staying within the structure of the tour. But dude, that was a really, really challenging job. And the stuff that is TV facing, public facing, did he do a good job of no?

Did they, again, invoking the 9-11 family, it's going on television, the communication, the lack of communication to the public throughout all of this, communication to the players, just the overall vibe he put out going out in public was like all wrong. But again, I don't think it's like sub in this

and this goes entirely different throughout all this because it just seems, it may have taken longer, it may have happened faster, but someone else in charge may have like, let this thing off a cliff as well. I don't know. I guess we'll never know. We've talked at length about this. And I, I think people's interest is probably like whatever, man. Jay, no, Jay, whatever. But I still think the most interesting question in the whole deal about him is who would you have had replace him? Like, it isn't to me.

It's not a binary like yes or no. It's like, well, what is the other option? And if you come, if someone could come up, they really good name at some point was like, hey, this person could have strategically done things or rally the troops to sort of fight this, you know, threat, then I would listen to that argument. But I still, no one has like a good name who's like, this has been the person to tap, whether it's from, you know, someone from, you know, the private equity world, the banking world, someone from another sport, someone from the playing background, like there is no great solution to this hypothetical question.

So in the end, I'm kind of like punt. Like, yes or no, I don't know, unless you have a better option, it's, I want to know what the replacement would be. And there's a reason why these replacements come from within. At the PGA tour is like, it's about running a member organization. It's not about running a business or running private equity, right? I mean, to be a lot easier, if it was set up in a way to make sense instead of serving

the 200 members, I mean, that's, uh, well, how would Fenshinif handle this? I was just being about him. Yeah. That's one of my favorite weirdest things is those two live in next door to each other. I had a lot of eat your boulevard and just, can you two live in next door to each other and a lot of you dream of art and just can you imagine seeing each other at the coffee shop now? Nowadays, what do I do? What's off-drawn, buddy?

Sorry. Oh, you want to hear about that time? I didn't lose any sponsors during the financial collapse again. That was my version of this. What's at the 9-11? Families are fired up against you. Oh, yeah, I read about that. That's tough. Sorry.

But you wish you had a 22 year old tiger word right now. Don't do it. Yeah. That would be pretty cool for you. Well, I'm in a mode of lawn. So I'll just, I'll see you around. I'm not going to vote a lot. Somebody's going to vote a lawn. I don't know what the answer is.

I mean, I think a lot of the tactics early on, the like iron fist, you're not leaving, we're gonna suspend you forever. Like I think that is the Finchum playbook, right? I mean, I think he would have done a lot of that same stuff. I don't know that, I don't know that Finchum was ever necessarily, I mean, I guess you could argue that, you know, he kind of squashed this world tour idea once, right? The first time around when it came up, but I don't think that was backed by just endless

money the last time around. So I don't know that it's, I don't know what he would have done. I mean, it's fascinating. That's the thing. I will say again, it can be, for a lot of people listening, I'm sure easiest question ever should Mondahan have been fired. Like the answer is yes. And I don't even necessarily disagree with that.

But again, I keep falling back on not only do you going up with an opponent that you were never going to beat or never be able to outspend also held back by such a ridiculous structure of a of like a business is just such a difficult combination. Like there I'm not these answers were not easy. Like it was not obvious as to what could have been done to stave this off. I'll throw you, I'll throw one out there though. The huge part of the reason that live succeeded is because Mikkelsen was open to the idea, open to the argument.

His whole beef over and over and over this year has been like, they wouldn't listen to me. I had all these meetings with them. I had these people lined up and Jay wouldn't take the meeting. Jay, it seemed like personal after a while. Phil was pissed over and over and over again. He felt like, you know, we don't get the percentage of revenues that other athletes get from their sports.

And that's bullshit. There's, you know, all these reserve funds and they won't tap into what, whether, you know, some of that was total bullshit or not. Phil is convinced that he was right. I think maybe you could have sort of kind of tried to bring your enemy close instead of pushing him away. And basically, we're like, you know what, screw you.

Like, go do your thing. Like, if the DJ probably doesn't leave, if Phil doesn't leave, like, Bryson doesn't leave, like, all these people saw that as, well, this guy's a freaking legend, like, he's gonna give this thing credibility. That makes me more interested. If it was just like a bunch of bum European tour guys,

they'll, they'll, League would have never really had been an actual competitor. But you, oh my God, Phil Mickelson. Like that, that was a huge freaking blow. And they, and at some point, they just underestimated him as a like chaos agent. I think that they should have brought him in closer. I think gosh yeah that that just for my my days at PGA tour HQ that would that would have been a

tough pill to swallow. I sure was. I was going to have a lot of good ideas. Mr. Michelson's online one. He's got ideas of how we can run things better. I mean look at the US foreign policy. Sometimes you got to bring in the bad actors in order to keep the worst actors in line. I was going to suggest your boy Kushner would have been a good one to fix this KVV. I think maybe a good commissioner. I mean, it looked but bring in Trump instead of having Trump, I don't know, buddy up in the Saudis, give don't take take away Trump's tournament or whatever. I mean, who knows? They're all open to all kinds of ideas

that I morally can't get on board with. Anything's on the table. Can I say something in a vacuum here? This is to say nothing of this person's other comments. This is a true, you know, despite what you heard, you got a head to a Trump was the only guy like three years ago. There was like, oh, yeah, just take the money. They're going to merge eventually.

Like just like, you kind of nailed it, man. I really hate to, you hate to say it, but that was pretty much exactly what happened. I would say it felt like with, if I'm looking at how Phil has played all this and handled all this, like, look, you know, we're not paid at the right percentage, that was a lie. Like, he's still like 78 lies in all this. If I, again, not knowing the answer this, but if I had to guess it was kind of like, all right, look, I won't go do this if like we stand up this endeavor thing, right? Like, you know, but you got to answer by tonight.

Let's hold on, give us a second. You know what, I'm guessing I got to go to live. Sorry, we tried. You guys didn't listen. Got to go to live. Got to do it. Got to do it. You didn't want to listen.

You couldn't get this done in time. I got to go to live. That's it. You didn't want to listen. You couldn't get this done in time. I got to go to live. That's pretty much how I felt like it was. He was never gonna run. He was never gonna let that money get away from him. That was always, it was always gonna go this way. All right, that's the end of this game.

That was a longer game than I thought. We got to go. That was great. That's a great way to, a great way to frame it. I think just, so it said the big disqualifying thing on the monahan front would be, like you should have taken those early meetings. And he should have had the vision

of like what was coming. So, Salih, I'm not arguing that like in the moment, any of those were necessarily wildly the wrong calls other than the 9-11 thing. I'm not saying any of the like micro decisions, like at the time were necessarily wrong, but'm not saying any of the like micro decisions, like at the time we're necessarily wrong, but not being able to see the chessboard three, four years ago is where I think I, is the strongest case towards like,

all right, this guy, this is not it. And both literally go back to the first ever episodes, we started to talk about PGL, we literally called that out. We're like, they don't have to do this. There's this, there's, it's so unrealistic for them to think that they will even possibly see the vision of this. And even saying that out loud, I didn't think the tour was going to crumble. Like I just like, yeah, they're kind of teflon, man.

Like they, stuff just bounces off of them. And it did not end up working that way. I think, you know, honestly, the better question is like, should J have ever been hired? Right? Like, is he, And in a simpler time, I think the answer is easy. Yes. Like he's great. What sponsors? Great with people. When everything's going great, he might like people who are so stoked when he took the job, players, caddies, like everyone was fired up. Finally, Finch him is gone. Jay is

personable. Let's see. Employees. I was there at the time. It was, it was, it was people were pumped. He was great. And then like when it came like wartime, did it, did it go well? And it, it did not. It, it certainly did not. So I'm sorry, Tom, but you're not a wartime. Listen, we're deep into this pod. Also deep into fall, quickly approaching the holiday season, rowback is ready. We cannot go anywhere without seeing that subtle dog logo. Whether you're your hoodies on inside or out, you can find that subtle dog logo in the top corner. Shout out to our guy TC for wearing an inside out hoodie for an entire episode. They're fresh off new restocks of our favorite polos hoodies and Q-zips.

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20% off bottoms, quzips, hoodies and more with code NLU. Get ready for the holiday season with rowback. The wrong thing, you want to do this quickly, I don't really care that much about it. There was some quotes given in Spanish that were maybe taking out a context, maybe not who can tell with the disinformation campaign in the Saudis are running. But he said, I am under very strict instructions not to do public events, which I have imposed on myself a little bit for myself. And for the change I have given to the world of golf in the last week, Ram said, giving

a categorical no when he asked to be planned to give an interview. He said, there's nothing, there will be nothing until February. I'm not allowed to. So there was a lot of pushback from the live universe about, uh, see, you guys got this wrong. He did this to himself. He said, he himself wasn't going to comment on this stuff. My point is like, what fucking difference does it make? Like if ROM doing this has decided that he's going to clam up and not give any interviews

to February. It's the same fricking thing that I talked about as a key's neutering himself because he doesn't want to sort of just be his natural normal self all throughout rom's career. He's never said to himself like, oh no, I can't talk right now. So so you might be right. Live didn't say anything about it. John is not allowed to give interviews. John, you know, even though they made it very clear in their initial contracts with guys that you couldn't talk unless you got, you couldn't do interviews unless you got Liv's permission. If they didn't do that with Ram, that's fine. I'll even concede that point.

Ram, doing this to himself, just proves the point of like he is not going to be his genuine self anymore. And that's a bummer. You can claim like it's the right move for him, whatever, but it's a bummer for the fan because John is interesting. John is articulate. John is smart. I want to hear what John Rom has to say about golf was just thinking last night about like when he walked into the booth and did all that stuff during, I think it was, you know, harbour town. And he gave us sort of the breakdown last year of like, speed and can't

lay and the slow-play stuff. Like he he's not gonna probably do stuff like that. So at least, you know, for quite a while. So that's a loss for all of us. Don't have much to add. I think that's, I think that's spot on. I think the hard part on a lot of the ROM stuff is, I think I just, I don't know, solid we were talking about a little bit this week.

We saw each other, but I feel like I'm, I'm almost like delaying any feelings on all of this until we kind of know what's going on the next couple weeks, right? Where it's like, if we get to four months from now and nothing has been resolved and the live season is fully underway and he, you know, everything is going kind of as it is right now. It's a different conversation and then I think it'll hit me a little harder. I'm like, oh, man, it would have been cool if he was. I'm like, oh man, it would have been cool if he was at

Riviera. Oh god, it would have been cool if he was at whatever tournament. But until we know like for all we know this my I mean, this is a you know drastic exaggeration, but like who's to say that they don't get a deal in place by the end of the year and Part of that deal is like live guys can come back and Ram is playing at Rivera before the live season starts or maybe he's playing but like who the hell knows. So I'm going to knock it to worked up until we know what the hell is going on. That's honestly my reaction when I read that was just kind of like guys I don't want to say anything because this is why I'm doing this right. I know this merger spell to go through.

I just got a fat bag of cash. I might not have to hit more one shot on live past 2024. Like, just let me collect my cash. And when everything comes together, you won't remember that I did this. It was kind of, it sucks. It all sucks. It definitely sucks.

But it is such an, it is hilarious to see live scramble so hard to be like, no, no, no, we didn't deny that you could do it. We didn't deny it. No, that's not how we operate. It's like, yeah, that was in your contract. That is exactly how you operate. But this seems like it was a year ago,

but I believe this came out on Monday, December 10th, is that right? Yes, or I guess last Sunday, there was a letter sent to the PGA Tour Policy Board from Susman Godfrey, LLP. Hope I'm saying that right. Signed by 21 players, members members of the PGA tour, they've wrote on behalf to, on their behalf

to obtain information about the PGA tour's consideration of several proposals that we alter the structure of the PGA tour and may have a profound impact on our clients' lives and the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of other PGA tour players. The board has recently received multiple bids by prospective capital partners that will potentially transform

how the PGA Tor operates, who controls it and who owns it. All but a handful of PGA Tor players have been kept entirely in the dark about perspective transaction. How will impact them and what conflicts of interest may impact the decision makers.

Blah blah blah. Come to the names already. Solid just shut up. And could we just go through these names? It is signed by maybe the 21 exact guys you would think it was signed by. make a small bubble block. Come to the names already. Solid just shut up and we just go through these names. It is signed by maybe the 21 exact guys you would think it was signed by a couple of curve ballstone in there. But Ryan Brem, T.C.'s boy, Wesley Bryant, T.C.'s boy also who actually has since removed his

name from the letter M.J. I don't know. You could do that. Remove your name from the letters. It's like when you can get Twitter blue and you can edit your posts. Exactly what happened. I think he's, I think he's still the rest of the names to call. Oh, I got. MJ Duffy, as I believe I say it, Dylan Fertelli, of course, Tommy Gainey, Brent Grant.

First I'm hearing of this name. I'm not going to lie. Lonto Griffin, of course, James Hahn, of course, Scott Harrington hated seeing that one. I like Scott. He was great. Andrew Landry, Nate Lashley, Brandon Matthews, a former, once a young kid, or always a young kidder, but that was one I was surprised to see on there. William McGurt, Grayson Murray, Scott Tiersie, Eels Boy, Chez Reevee on there.

That was tough. My boy, Chris Stroud. That was a tough one on there, but given his quotes last couple of weeks, not surprised. Calum Terran, DJ Trayhan, Richie Wyrinsky, and Masters champion Danny Willett are the ones that are signing this letter and have legal representation that is being paid for by the PJ tour, seeking information on how this deal goes down. So they're just asking questions. All right. The PGA tour paying for this solid might be the strongest case towards what you said earlier. Maybe they're just trying to sabotage it so it gets so bad that they could just really blow it up. You know,

maybe it's like, oh, this is going to make you guys look so bad. Gorsal paying for this. This sounds great. All right. Listen, in response to the mules, we're going to have a lot of fun as we have all year at the expense of the mules. I respect anybody who can who can get a PJ tour card. It's an unbelievable needle to you know to get your way through. I think there is a place for you know There's a place in the world of golf for all of these guys, you know,

the best players in the world need players to beat. Otherwise they, you know, it's hard to tell who the best player in the world is. Things of that nature, I think if somebody is trying to, you know, like, there's probably a lot of truth to like, you know, these guys' careers are about to be upended. We kind of alluded to that. I think there is probably a tidal wave coming to wipe out the mules or at least a lot of them.

But man, if you have not been paying attention for the last like 18 months and you're just now like coming around to what is happening in the world of golf and you're, you want to get hyper fixated on FedExCup points, distributions. At now, like, I really don't know what to say to you, man. That's some really great A Weapons Grade tone deafness from this squad going on. I... We left out the best line if you want to talk about tone deafness, which is the PGA tour players who have been kept in the dark about this process are the lifeblood of the tour. They deserve to know what is happening.

Pretty sure this was all circulated like very heavily. And again, just because you didn't read it when it came out, it's not really my problem. But you can disagree, man. You have representation. Yeah, you have representation. There was a lot of memos. Okay, I get a lot of emails. I can't be expected to read them all. Yeah, that's kind of what this reeks of. I don't know. That's where again, I'm not a lawyer, but I'll play one for the next 45 seconds if you want me to to say like,

all right, if I've read this of like, again, I don't know exactly, understanding what the PGA Tours mandate is and understanding how the organization is run. Like, they probably have a decent case here, right? Of like, you know, you're about to make some changes here that's going to like totally chop off our legs.

Like does that seem like you're serving the best interest of the members of the PGA tour by doing this? Like, that's how we pause. That's a fair. Pause real quick to underscore like what the actual complaint is here because the complaint as I understand it is that basically FedEx cup points are getting so lopsided that now this is this is, I, this is they they want a Disclosure the details and analysis of any proposals by prospective capital partners like this is so this is about the potential new deal

Right that that's coming through from private equity. That's a separate there in example uprising there though about like how it's not fair to you get you know so much fewer points not fair, you get, you know, so much fewer points, 262 percent fewer points for finishing fifth of the barbersaw that you do at fifth of the Riviera. Like, I think that's, that's probably a pretty good, that's an attachment on this day. Of course, I'm citing the tweet from Atron Carter, NLU, who I believe broke this news at 1.44 AM on, nobody has done more for the mules. He invented half of these. True. Yeah. But second to say like, Hey, again, speaking to how the structure works, like the mules,

quote, the mules have representation on the policy board, right? Like, and the policy board is how these decisions get made, right? Not every decision gets thrown out to the PGA tour players to have a vote here. So yeah, there is actually information that has gotten you guys about this. And two, yeah, there are people not named Brent Grant that are going to make the final decision on these things. And yeah, you're going to have to live with it. But I'd be mad if I was in their spot, that things are changing. Sure.

Does it make perfect sense that things would change? Absolutely. So yeah, we're going to probably make fun of this in the process. So can I just still make people laugh about Chris Stroud talking about wanting to form a union like You know again, I've commented previously like who's in your union man But it makes me laugh though to think more I think about it. It's like who are you bargaining against? It's a player run to Who is your antagonist in this thing like if you honestly if what he needs is a caucus, like they need to basically like band all the meals together, form like a mule herd and basically say, we will refuse

to play internaments. Any of us unless you and have that be their line to say and their bluff because I don't really see what the and then you're basically like organized against the top point. So that's that's where they need to organize the meal. You who's going to cross the picket line and why is it blocky? Blocky might be the only guy that can reunite some of these some of these factions. I don't know. Oh, anyways, that was that was more funny that it was serious. Big tone is staying despite

numerous reports from aggregators out there, tried to break news that tone was gone. That could have could have could have been a career ender for some if they didn't just live in creating. I think live rumors out there, but big tone is stayed. I think big tone stayed because he wants to play with his kids in the PNC. He's got a major for promised them like six, seven star. Oh, that's right. You got to want a major. Well, get to work. I think I have no, you know, or players. This is not an official report, but I think big tone stayed because like the offer probably went away, right?

Isn't that like the whole thing is like, why do you need big tone if you've got ROM? That's what we kind of talked about the whole time on the last podcast is. ROM is the big hammer to swing on like, let's get this deal done. Otherwise, we're going to keep doing this. I don't think like, you know, I don't think you're just going to go sign like a million symbolic guys. So that's I think they're like, like, really my guess like, and Tony knew that they were like negotiating against each other that like they were, you know, you think they were like, Oh, you know, Victor, we could up our offer. But, you know, we got some other for irons in the fire too. So that ESPN article

said this now, they were still negotiating the trying to recruit players to ROMs team. Like, I don't know if I'm Yoss or dude, I'm absolutely, I'm spending 85 million or whatever would be on Fee now to like, if it's all rounding error to me anyways, I mean, that's what that's even more than the go, whatever the final things are pushing through in this, you're gaining more and more power the more you do that. Why, why do the ROM thing if you're not going to do more? That's what I mean. I think the ROM thing was the thing.

I think that was like, I think they put a hole in the boat. They don't need to just keep putting holes in the boat. I mean, if it becomes a run on the bank, that is a very good thing. If I like, I don't know that that's what's going to happen. I don't know. You know what's kind of funny though about the lift stuff is like in the beginning, it was like, yeah, man, like money's just flowing.

Everybody's flying private. Katies are allowed to get whatever they want. It's so sick over here. And then they're like, yeah, man, like, money's just flow. And everybody's flying private caddies are allowed to get whatever they want. It's so sick over here. And then they're like, yeah, actually, like, you know, fuck the caddies, like, fuck all the families. Like we're just going to give all this money to Rom, man. Like they, they're you know, like unlimited money for like all you people. But like, Rom, yeah, like, whoop,

Capponeo for that guy. Another note, NBC is eyeing Jeff Oglevey for the open color seat, which this is report coming from the sports business journal. Guys, I think this might be the best news we've heard in golf in the month of the separate. I think this would be a fantastic addition. I think Brennan and Porath put this well as like, I'm not ready to live in a world yet where like both color commentators on the major networks are like widely accepted as like being good at their God job.

For golf nerds too. Yeah. For Trevor and Jeff, like would be the two dudes that'd be like, wow, like we really couldn't do much better than this. What a what a win for us. Maybe we're also just getting old. Maybe there's like a whole crop of youths out there saying like, why are they going with all these old guys?

Jeff Ogle V like get him the hell out of here. You know, this might just be us agent guys. Be cool with some of management's decisions. Who knows? Welcome, guys. Welcome to the aging bracket. Other names in that article listed as as as possibilities were brand old David DuVall and Brad Faxon, also Paul McGinley,

who auditioned for it at the Hero World Challenge. Also Kevin Kizner will be serving as an analyst at the century and at the waste management. I did not see that one coming. Didn't know about that. I was just announced today. This also ate no hobby. I would say. Yeah. This is more like a part-time gig. I'm for it. I listen. The Kisner stuff can, can, I've probably had my fill of it specifically, but I think that's at least a sign of trying new things for, for NBC. So I'm going to, I'm going to praise progress. He could be really good. I think that's at least a sign of trying new things for NBC. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna praise Progress. There.

He could be really good. I think you got to be great. He could be. I wouldn't reach B&B like up for some of this. Like Rich B&B is more famous in Europe than he is in the United States because he does so much great stuff on Sky. Yeah, good question. Probably more fun to work on that Sky and then it would be, you see,

but that's just my guess. Probably. I think Kizner, Kizner strikes me as what the line we always use. I feel like if not trying to get somebody who's going to do like an impression of a broadcaster and it's just going to kind of be themselves, right? And so I'm I'm all for it or at least trying it. And if it sucks, then you go do something else. But at least give it a shot.

I love it. PNC championship. Finally, the golf this week. TC's favorite event. He was absolutely gutted to miss the show tonight. I believe he's going to the Jags Ravens Sunday night game. He's waiting all day for Sunday night, of course, but I wonder if he's got, I hope he doesn't get a physical altercation with any of those, you know, Jack coach dirty. Any of those guys on this, on this, on this set. Yeah, I put out the word for Baltimore people to leave

him be. So he did want us to know that what a disgrace it was that Bernhard Langer was playing from the upteas, the 6,000 out of 10. He put the same teases as Strikers daughter. No, he's playing up up from Strikers. I think you're playing the same tease. I think they were playing. Okay, I think the only people playing farther up than Bernhardt were like Trevino and Wilma G. Tough. Not good. Wilma G apparently should have been playing from one T back, from Gordon to the actual

written rules. I saw that was tweeted out there. I don't care. Let me talk to you. You say you like you too. I was just, I was making sure that T.C.'s voice was heard. He would want the protest to be lobbied to the record, you know, filed into the record. Anything I wanted to be upset about with the PNC, I stopped myself. I was just, this

is a hidden giggle, guys, this is exactly what golf in December should look like. I'm not going to get mad about Charlie Woods, Pip Steppen drives and a bunch of videos circulated about it. Like, it's not for us. I'm sure, but it's, you know, it's for the, the family's out there. There is a cool element to it. I mean, for those that have grown up watching Tiger and get to watch him go, his daughter was on the bag this past week. If you didn't see it and obviously playing with his son, like, it was way cuter when Charlie was like 10 and hitting all these drives and all these mannerisms. Like now it seems like an adult.

And he's like 14 now. But look, it's harmless fun. I enjoy flipping the P and C on it. The last few years, I've been like truly kind of musty stuff because I think back to the tweet, I forget who tweeted. It might have been Claire Rogers or some of the couple years ago was like, there's literally one person in the world more exciting to watch play golf and Tiger and it's his son.

And that one always stuck with me. But look, as a 14 year old, it's not quite as fun. But look, is it close to jumping the shark? Maybe, but it's also harmless fun. And I enjoyed having on the background. When Monica made her son, thank the sponsors, that was a moment today. I was like, ooh, that might be taking this. You have a little too serious.

Yeah. I think that's my solid. You mentioned it, but that's my favorite part about this is like, this is so specific, but there was a way that Charlie put his hat on. Like after he took his hat off and like shook hands with everybody. He like put his hat back on in the same way. I was like, oh my God, I've seen that. No, only one person puts their hat on that way. And I've seen it like 8,000 times and just the little ticks and the little mannerism. What's that? It's so good. I did such a kick out of that. I am not here for the discourse about any of it. I don't, if he plays, if he becomes the world's best golfer, awesome.

If he doesn't, also fine. But I do get a kick out of watching this. But KVV to your point, the other big manor in my picked up was the fang in the sponsors. That's just, well, that's just genetics, man. You just, that's just in you. Hell yeah. Yeah, whatever.

I thought it was fun. I liked when he waived goodbye to his ball. That was fun. Like, people were all upset about the, this idea that people were upset about it. I was like, wait, I've seen way more people who are mad because they think someone else is mad. This is like the classic Twitter like invented, like, oh, I was told, wait, I've seen way more people who are mad because they think someone else is mad. This is like the classic Twitter like invented like, oh, I was told this stuff.

Curry wasn't a good tutor. No, what's? This is, I, I, as reported here on the, again, on the no laying it up podcast, Tiger will, this was, Tiger was asked about the future of his deal with Nike. And he said, I'm still wearing their product future of his deal with Nike and he said, I'm still wearing their product when asked twice about it and he said that twice. So I believe that is a sign that this was indeed his last tournament being played with the Nike swoosh as you may have heard here first couple of weeks ago.

But we'll see. I got to think, yeah, I don't know if I'm reading between the lines, which nobody's asking me to do. I would say his son wearing the grace and stuff. Got to think Charlie Woods probably had some Nike stuff lying around if that was a priority to the family. So that would be the other big clue, I think. Yeah, there's, I'll let that one play out. There's a lot of rumors going around and what not. I think we have a decent idea of what's going to happen. But I'm not I'm not a gear head to that extent. People are like sad about him leaving Nike

and it's like, I get it is iconic. It is, but you know, I don't know. Just just a lot shit going on the brand. Yeah. We're all going to be okay. We wait for the brands. I know. As always. Yeah. What about the brands? No one's thinking about the brands in this, in this case. Q school was rained out on Sunday. It has been horrific weather here in Jackson. It will finish up on Monday. Five PGA tour cards will be given out of the top five right now are Harrison endocott, Blaine, Hale, Spencer, Levine, Trace Crow, and Raul Pereda. Also tied for fifth, sorry, is Hayden Springer. Julian Surrey, Kyle Westmoreland, Danny Walker, Chris Peefish,

are just a few names outside of the top five. A lot of people are pretty mad, it's all about that there's only five cards available. Not, I don't know if a lot of people, but Greg Chalmers, former PGA to a player, furious that they're given out more European tour cards, more cards through the European tour than they are given out through QSchool. I don't know if you saw that, but created a little bit of a inner fighting in amongst my for you timeline, which you know can be a bit of an

adventure on the X. Can't, yeah, can't say I've spent months and months and years thinking about this, but I got to think like a full seasons body of work. I was just going to say it. It seems like it would out for four days in Jacksonville and DeSaturday. It's literally the top 10 for the DP World tour. Like we're in guys that are one, 26 through whatever, uh, playing in this. I think we're good here.

I just, he's getting a lot of, a lot of burn on this, on this podcast already, but I got to give Tron another shout out of just how he continues to have this force, Gumpy, uh, type of presence and every, seemingly every storyline in golf. It's just the Ludwig stuff is a perfect example. The Sheffler stuff's great. Like he went and played golf with Spencer Levide last week. And his child, you know, just his childhood hero. If Spencer comes and gets his PJ tour card, fresh off the heels of that, it's just it's, it's a get you gotta, you gotta hit it to him. Well, Dijon, to bring us home, we're going to, you know, this is potentially the last recap pod of 2023. You have a great idea for a way to close out the pod for the year.

Yeah, we're just going to do some superlatives. You know, we don't know where we're going unless we know where we've been. Right. So we got to now is the time to look back on just a historic year. So I put together some, some awards. Of course, we're going to be coming into movie season here pretty quick award season in general. So let's, let's start by handing out some golf awards. Gosh, where should we start? Let's start with, this is a fun one. Let's start a favorite shot you saw in person this year. KVV, let me start with you.

Just throw out the nominees and we'll kind of pick a winner. All right, so at the Ryder Cup this year, I told you, D.J., I was like, I think I'm going to go follow, you know, Max and going up against Victor Havlund and Ludwig Averk. It seems like a fun one to start out the Ryder Cup on. And you know, I think obviously we all three were there. Crowd was a little bit kind of muted, a little bit tepid in the beginning. We were sort of kind of laughing at how tame the first T was. And Ludwig blew a shot, kind of right of the green. And it's like, oh man, Victor's going to have to chip. This should be fun. And Victor Havan hit this like little nippy pitch that he

had to throw, like probably 20 feet right of the hole. And it trickled the trickle the trickle the trickle the trickle and dropped in the cup right like probably 15 feet for me and the whole like I think all of Italy like exploded it was just a huge, huge eruption and kind of set the best shot that I saw this year was that little nippy pitch. The victory He had to hit it from on the green actually had to hit it over a little ridge and throw it way right to the hole and hit it That one the wire cup that was the wire cup was over with that pitch. That's it. That's true. I think you I don't know if this was going to be yours as well but Subash to mom Hit his his second shot into the second hall at Royal Melbourne at the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship.

This past year I should have called it this guy. Totally. Totally. No, so if you didn't listen to that recap, he is the first Nepalese golfer to ever make the cut at the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship. His parents make bricks from mud in their in their village. And he dropped out of school to help them make mud bricks to earn enough money to support the family. And eventually was sent to live with his aunt

in the capital city. He became they needed somebody to make more breaks. He became a lot of it for the structure. It's really iron heads now. Not too much to live. I could not handle that. I could not handle that. Um, he became a spotter at the local golf course. That's where he picked up the game and is becoming an extremely, extremely talented golfer at that. And he hit this shot into the wind on this firm golf course in this really long par four that had to start way right to get around these bunkers, land in the front part of the green and roll up to like 15 feet. And Ben and I were sitting behind

this green and we're like, what a six shot. And we didn't realize it was him. It was like holy, he's like a five foot five, maybe a Nepalese guy that does not get the travel of the world and play golf. and he hit that shot in competition and he recently just won the All India championship this past weekend. He won the final match nine and seven He's an absolute baller. Missed a cup. I want the age of Pacific amateur But that shot like rang in my memory of like It's a really cool event

I went to and it was a very memorable shot of like I don't know when the next Netflix golfer is going to like stun me with how good of a long irony hits, but that was the shot. All right, these these nominees are going to be read into just so they make the Wikipedia historical record. Roy's chip on 17 on Saturday at the Ryder Cup, the one like when he was down. I love that. Yeah. And he hit that thing that just like ripped the emergency break and that like I almost had a heart attack. I think when I saw that one in person, Max saving par at 18 to keep the rider a couple live when he had to take the unplayable was a very tense moment to see in person. And then kev, you wrote brilliantly about this, but I'm going to give a shout to our

guy, the three putt king at the NIT. You know, three-puck king, of course, is his message board, Alias. He made it to the finals of our NIT, our nest invitation tournament at Fields Ranch. He got to number 13. I'm just gonna say three-puck king. Derko, that's his real name.

He would love to, I'm sure, get his name, real name. Yeah, I was depending whether to dox him, and I realized you were really sorry about him. But he, I think Derek probably knows not a good short game, very, very bad short game for the three-butt king. He's probably what, a 20-something handicap, something like that. And he hit this shot on number 13 at Fields ranch, which was like a 245 yard, like par three straight up the hill that just had like, it's like a 150-mount-ar ball speed off of this like four iron

that he hit just up against the wind to a back left pin. It was one of those unbelievable shots I've ever seen coming from like a 25-hadi cap. It just it truly just is gonna be imprinted on my mind. But I'm going to give the award to Haveland Chippenon. I think that's I think that's a no brainer that that that, you know, is going to echo in golf history. All right, let's go to this moment should have been a bigger deal.

More people should have been talking about this. Uh, more people should have been talking about this. What I have a feeling we're all going to have the same one. Maybe. Oh, no, I think I have an on you. But go ahead. Phil, Michelson finished fucking runner up the masters this year. Yeah. That was, yeah. That was, I thought about that one for sure. Like we should talk about that every single week. This year, only John Rom beat Phil Michelson at the masters. The same Masters he went to the champions dinner and didn't say a word. He went out and finished runner up. He's been mind solid. He also lost like 40 pounds, like two weeks before that Masters.

So he showed up his high school weight. Yeah, it's all things you do got to hand it to him. It is that he finished runner up as a 53 year old at the Masters this year. Incredible. Can't let me go. I'll throw a couple out here because it sounds like you went a little off the off the map. I'm going to put Liliavu's ascent in here. I know she did get a lot of run, but just going from like losing her card to winning four times and two majors and becoming the number one player in the world. All that is just worth shouting out at every turn. Nick Taylor went in the Canadian open. I know that got a lot of run, but that was also like five days after the merger was announced.

And so I would like to issue a milk, a personal mayoculpa. We did not give that enough burn on on this here podcast. So congrats. Belated congratulations to Nick Taylor. I thought Yasser playing the Don Hill under the name Andrew Watervin. I don't think that got enough run. I think that is way funnier than that it was given credit for. And it's something that we should have talked about way more. And it just people people just let it die, which is unfortunate, because it's very funny. And then I'll also say blocky, do in the shift at the raising canes right after the PGA is something that that should have gotten some more run

to that was. Kevin, did I did I take any years? No, I thought we were going to go with like specific shot on this. So I was, I was, uh, mine was very sort of news. Is that bunker shot that spieth hit, uh, uh, uh, waste management? So it was like, growler said it was was the greatest, like, Bunger shot that Speed has ever hit. And this dude said a lot of good Bunger shots was like a 60 yard, sort of back pin water, you know, on all sides. And it's like in that peninsula part of that green. And it just like skipped like right up close.

And the only reason we got to see it is because some fan took a video of it on their cell phone. The broadcast had no record of it. So you kind of maybe wonder how many stupid good shots out there, a current PG-Jour that just never, we don't ever know about, like probably a lot. Solid, what's your, what were you given the award? I mean, Andrew Waterman probably,

that we, I totally forgot about that and that's what this award should be for. All right, you kick off the next one, Solid. Let's do. Let's do Mule of the year. This is an easy one who wins the title for Mule of the Year. A popular one. You know, he's had line in the CMAs here coming up shortly. And that's of course country music sensation. Eric Cole. He had I think I have stats here. He had 678 starts this past year. He made $421 million. And just kept banging out hit after hit after hit, even with all those, you know, the Spotify streaming doesn't, you know, get me, netch a lot

of money these days, but out on tour. He had lined and, and every city he went to and absolutely the mule of the year. It is. It is me. It's throughout another possibility though, before you move over. Well, Link, right, lingering on from just, let's talk air cold one more second. Previous high, like you're joking about the amount of money he made, he made five and a half million dollars

on the golf course this year. Previous high of his career and he turned pro in 2009. He is not young, he's 35 years old, right? And so as a rookie, at five and a half million dollars on the PGA tours, previous high in his career was 221,000, just a true breakout year in the in the truest sense of the word. So of course, he's on my list as well. But, Kevin, I think I know where you're going next. Kevin, I feel like the really the mule of the year should go to Ryan Armer because he coined the term, like there want us to be mules out there.

Ryan Armer embodied everything that a mule should be. I think he was 167th in the FedEx cup. He had like one top 25. He made 33 starts, made like, you know, half the cuts barely in that situation. Or I think Ryan Armer might be the mule of the sentient. He might be the mule. I just might think the mule. It feels a lot like.

He also got into it with TC about that. He was upset that TC claimed that, you know, that he referred to himself as a mule. He's like, I didn't say that. And TC was like, then why did you use the word we in the very next sentence? TC was what came back at him Frost Nixon style. I was like, no, no, no, I have receipts right here. Yeah, I totally agree. It kind of feels like, you know, when Oxford does their like word of the year, it kind of feels like Mule might be the golf

golf word of the year. But I'm going to add, I'll throw a chest and Hadley in there, demanding to be rewarded for his loyalty to the PGA tour. I think is a lasting quote that should be read into the record. Nate Lashley for kind of just spearheading some of this mule uprising and also apparently being just an Airbnb mogul, just running all kinds of rental properties. It's very mule like behavior. That's true. I'm going to give another nominee to Adam Schenk. Like, I would say prototypical mule,

but just a fucking awesome year. Finish ninth in the FedEx Cup, lost their playoff, seven top 10s, one five, nine plugs. She asked, really? Yeah, and some of that's skewed because it's like all based on like the tour championship, right, but still.

And then another one, you could quibble with this one a little bit if you want, but I'm gonna say, Sep Strockcker, just a complete glow up this year. I feel like that, like, I feel like he's a quintessential mule. He won the John Deere of the, you know, the John Deere classic, which is the ultimate mule W. 14th in the FedEx Cup, made over 5 million bucks, played on a winning Ryder Cup team, just the stuff of the stuff of legends. But I think, I think, I'm going to go with you.

I think it's Ryan Armer. I think he gets. Yeah, I think it's time for two. I think he's he should be grandfathered in as like it should be like the Ryan Armer Mule Award for this moment going forward. Yeah, so yeah, I like that. I like that. Okay. Can have started with the bleakest moment of the year.

All right. So it's deep thought about this one. I think I'm a pretty good one. Mine would be when they had the Flash mob and live London. I rewatched it today just because I couldn't really believe that it was real that it wasn't from like 2005. And it's just like all the people, it's the song for the Flash mob is party rockers in the house tonight, which is perfect. And also like all the fans, if you watch,

I'll link this in my Twitter, are just standing in the back with their arms crossed. And it reminded me of like the scene in Mean Girls when they like start doing the like grinding like jiggle bell rock and like all the teachers just like, oh my god, just more fun. It's just straight like it's just it's the most roasted I think that live ever got on Twitter about anything. It was like the kind of the at the low point. I mean, you might say this like lives origin story of like getting wrong started in that moment.

The yossher was like, I will never be embarrassed like the kid and that led to wrong. So he has that last laugh, but that moment right there I was like, man, it is this is bleak. I pray somebody had the tweet that was like that, that dude, the older guy with the glasses and that cartoon that like sits really depressed at the computer. And it was like live bots logging on to defend a flash mob. All right.

Well, obviously, nothing's going to top that. That feels like it's going to be a sell. I'm just going to throw out, I mean, seeing Yasser and J on CNBC was bleak as a bleak moment. Morning session of the of day one of the Ryder Cup, just getting blank, you know, four O, uh, Ron Price testifying for a Congress was bleak. And then big one. This is maybe a personal one, but just watching Rory play number 14 at LACC, hitting that wedge into the lip of the bunker and making bogey on the par five and losing

by one is, uh, could have could have taken a part there. That would have been fun. It's all anything to add. My bleakest moment was after a year of just getting bludgeoned and beaten over the head with money, money, money, money, money on everything, uh, just looking so forward to that final event of the year, you know, that big trip over to Italy and like flying back on the plane for my favorite event in the world after you guys just got their asses handed to us and having Xandarin can't lay that article come out about Xandarin can't lay making the rhetoric up about money. With one final bleak moment like this is the worst golf year I've ever had in any of

my careers of covering the sport and that was just that was when it was really bottoming out. All right. I put one on here. Best major championship hole of the year. So this is obviously going to be non, non Augusta version. I'll throw out the 18th at Royal Liverpool with the OV all the way. I have the right.

Yeah. What was almost my pick was pretty cool. And then these are, these are pretty normy picks here. I didn't go to, to hipster. I got that one. I got number six at LACC. That's the, the dribble part for the most off the map I was going to get was somehow qualifying the rider cup as a major and throwing

in number 16 at Margo Simone. I actually, you mentioned it, but I 14 at LACC, I actually thought was a kind of a really challenging part five. They couldn't get there into except for wind them. And that's what made that shot such an unbelievable like, hey, I have this literally like eight yard area. I have to hit into with a three wood. And that was one of the best shots that I watched this year too was when I'm just absolutely roasting that three wood while Rory was kind of, you know, until after making Bogey in that in the group ahead.

So that 14 was honestly trying to think back on like God, there were a lot of the LACC holes actually ended up being kind of duds like 15 was supposed to be sweet. That was kind of a dud 11 didn't really produce a whole lot of great moments 18 definitely did not the way that one finished. I, uh, okay, nothing really stuck out 14 was supposed to be a sweet hole that drive before and it ended up being kind of kind of not great. So yeah, six of LACC was my vote, because that one met the hype. It was fucking phenomenal. All right, let's call this the Disappearing Ink Award. This is just, I'm gonna, it's going into Wikipedia. It's gonna be, it happened, but when somebody tells you about it three years from now,

you're not gonna believe that it happened. And this could be someone's performance for the year. This could be, you know, however you guys want to to take this kind of an interpretive interpretive award. Solid, where'd you go with this one? So Brian Harmon won the open by six shots. I mean, I watched it. I was there. I watched it all. I saw it all like, this is not a surprise to me, but I think we're going to look like we're going to do that 2023 open. Well, which one was that one? And kind of forget that that happened. Yeah. Six shots. That's crazy. Six shots. A major championship. He'd never want to all the speed to our wins were by one shot or less or in playoffs. He'd never,

anyone on major championship by six. Like that was, that was, that's going to sound fake three years from now. That's well. I know I didn't make me think about when the last time Brian Harman won a turn by six shots, you know, probably college, but maybe like juniors like, you know, It's been a long time. Mine would be at the US open Ricky Fowler shot the lowest round in history of the US open and then 30 minutes later, Zander Shoffley tied the lowest round in the history of the US Open. It was kind of like, cool. That was fun. Like no one will give two hoots about that.

And they would be like, really? Like the two lowest scores in the history of the US Open happened like right next to each other. And that was kind of no big deal. I think mine, I like both of those. I think mine is going to be, you know, just trying to explain to my children that there was there was a quorum of people just grown men with tears in their eyes, lobbying for Lucas Glover to be on the Ryder Cup team. And he, you know, he parlated all into like a TGL thing. It was supposed to be this whole simulator golf wig,

but then the roof collapsed. So never really like off the ground. But yeah, I don't know, he made like six and a half million dollars. He went back to back events. I was like truly the hottest to put his pants like we're all covered in sweat. It was crazy. It was like this two week phenomenon. People were just losing their minds about, I have a late nominee. This is when when Nance called blockies up and down, one of the greatest up and downs in history. Love you, Nance. I mean, you got caught up in the moment. I think maybe that one will feel a little strange when Solid and I do look back, you know, 20 years from now.

Oh, God. All right. On that note, we got just a couple more here. Pro golf shot of the year. I'm going to just throw up blockies ace. I mean, that's good. If that is like, I don't know that anything burned hotter than that. Did it go in?

Did it go in? Did it go in? No. Rory. Hey, Rory, did it go in? Rory. Did it go in? I went Nick Taylor's putt. That was sick and it probably didn't get to run and deserve, but that, like

when your national open, that was 71 foot eagle putt in a playoff. That was awesome. I had a couple nominees. I'm not sure they top either of those, but win Clark's seven iron into the 18th green on Saturday in the dark. Twirl the club like one of the most vicious trolls ever kisses the pin makes birdie there. That was pretty incredible. And then the other two that I had was big Bob McIntyre's three wood into 18 at the Scottish. And then Roy's two iron to follow it to beat him. Those were, you know, two, two really fun shots to see. Only, only others to add. Roy driving that green at the match play, hitting it to three feet, like the 370 yard holy hits

it to three feet to win his match. And then Carlos right after he'd done the succession part. That's right. And Carlos Agonda stuffing it at 17 to basically clinch the Soul Humb cup in her home country was was pretty pretty epic stuff. All right. Let's do I got two more. We're going to call this the best picture award, just best best film of the year, best tournament of the year, all the way top to bottom. What tournament do you have the most fun watching? What was going to be the most, you know, kind of historically significant from this year? What's the one that you're going to put in the time capsule as 2023? This was this was the best of

us here. So I'll start with you. And now that you describe it that way, I don't know if this holds up, but like the best like heavyweight fight that we saw this year, Green Book, I feel like was Riviera with ramen maps. Like that was just a the true highlight golf course, the PGA tour amongst many, many, many, many, not good golf courses, true like a, you know, two rider cupbers going head to head, which we do not see a week to week on the PGA tour. And that dual, those shots that they hit down the stretch, that was, that was like the, that was peak PGA tour golf. I went PGA tour there just because the majors were kind of not that close and not that exciting

this past year. And that was, that was, I felt like the most fun tournament to watch. That feels like all the way down to the end to where Max almost chips it in. Like that, that was an awesome finish. That feels like the token Indy that gets nominated for best picture. I don't think it has a studio support to necessarily win, but it's a great nominee. I had a great time watching that film. Everybody should go see it.

It's really, really good. Which is Barbie. Go ahead. Yeah. For me, DJ would be the feel good nominee and the best picture thing would be me taking my kid to Pebble Beach. The women's us open. I get to see Michelle Weasel last-ever tournament. The big studio pushing a lot of money behind it would be live atalately. People drinking out of shoes,

running with their shirts off. So that I would want those to be, if we're as long as we're putting together a best picture category with all appeals to all audiences, those are mine. I'm going to say the PGA. I think like just top to bottom Brooks returning. This is, you know, we've all got the context of full swing and him, you know, am I ever going to be good enough to win one of these majors again? He comes back in, slams the door. We see Hoveland showing a different sign of Hoveland, maybe signaling that he's a different dude that there's going to be showing what's to come,

Bryson playing well at a major, and of course Blocky. Blocky's the Jar Jar banks of that film, but just took audiences by storm. You couldn't get away from them. So that's what I had. And it's my category, so I'm gonna give it to the PGA Championship. I think that's a good, good pick. And last one, person of the year. This is in the Time Magazine style. However you want to, however you want to take it,

Kev, you take it off, person of the year. Gosh, I mean, I actually decided on Phil Mickelson as the person of the year because just remained like the most, you know, volatile, like, I mean, finish second of the masters. That's what I kind of wanted to acknowledge, first of all, is I even amidst all this chaos and craziness, he managed to play an unbelievable round of golf. I think he shot seven under that final day to finish eight under total. You know, say what you will about Phil, but the motherfucker is pretty good at golf. And on that course, he probably, you know, well, maybe that's the last gasp of Phil ever being

graded a Gustav, but maybe not. Like maybe 11 rounds someday had 58, whatever like Jack did and he's in the mix and he's continue to be a huge Twitter troll, taking shots at everybody, me included. He's just a, if you look at the very strict definition of like person of the air, not man of the air, like it's not an honorary thing. Whatever reason I just landed on, like he remains this sort of, you know, volatile, interesting, weird, fascinating,

sometimes funny, sometimes dickish figure. So shout out to you Phil, I'm sure you're not listening, but thanks for all the content over the years. Solly, I struggle with this one, and it may not be popular one. I have a feeling it'll get lost a bit to history as it goes. You know, he was a part of the losing side on the PGA tour side. But person of the year, the person who just, you know, didn't make, didn't put every foot

right, didn't make all the right decisions, but took leadership in a, in something he believed in, right? As far as supporting professional golf, that's Rory. Jay. It's Rory. Michael Boyle. I'm going to leave the board. What he tried to do to save professional golf over the last couple of years, made him pretty unpopular with a lot of people, players and fans alike.

And I really do think it was coming from a really good place in terms of what he believed was best for fans, like what he believed is best for golf fans. That kind of culminated in like him sharing your article KVV from a couple of weeks ago, like just ripping pro golf for how it's treated fans. It was like if you just listen to like how he's talked about it, he's talked about making the sport more entertaining for people. And he tried his absolute best up against the Saudi public investment fund and the mules and he lost. And it's losing

with dignity. Yeah, there's not going to be like a glorious book written about how he he saved professional golf. But the dude fought for it really, really hard. He could have been way more out for himself than he was. And he finally had enough of the structure of it and walked away from from it all. But gave a hell of an effort when like they needed that so freaking badly. If the Delaware meeting never happens, like who knows like what the shaping of, we still don't know what the shaping of professional golf looks like, but it could have gone way, way, way worse. And that's worried be my person in the year. I'm a fanboy.

I don't care who knows it. There was a lot to that answer. Well, I'm sure that the fact that I nominated Phil and you nominated Roy, that mine won't get caught like aggregated at all by Sir. Just be yours. So thanks for that. Well, there won't be any, like addressing that we attempted to some balance in this discussion. I think you could make a pretty strong case for, for Yasser as a person of the year in golf. I think you can make a similar case for Jay as person of the year in golf. I think you can make a similar case for Jay as person of the year in golf. What is person of the year mean?

Cause I always thought it meant like kind of the biggest make here. Like the most impactful, positive, negative, most impactful. That's a common misperception. So based on the fact that people always bring this up that Hitler was named person of the year by time magazine like way back in the day.

And like Trump was person of the year just. Nair's your headline for how filling and up person of the year by time I was eating like way back in the day. And like Trump was person of the year just. There's your headline for how filling that person of the year. KVV compares filled in Hitler. Well, I didn't want to bring that. I assume you knew the infamous Hitler thing. No, I mean, it is like just news maker over the years. It's blocking it. That's move on.

Yeah. You took the words out of my mouth. That was blocking you. Blockies on my lungs. It's blocking man of my mouth. That was bloody. Blockies on my lungs. It's not a lie. It's a blockie. I've had it in the air, but I think it says a lot. If you're looking at it like on paper,

it would be shocking to me that it's not John Rom. The dude won four times. He won the masters. He signed the deal that may have like brought golf back together. And the fact that that's not the first person on the tip of our tongues, I feel like just kind of shows this weird disconnect where people just don't connect with John Rom for some reason that I don't really know what it is, right? And like he's maybe the best player on

the planet, right? He is one of the most visible, famous tournament. He balled out at the rider cup. He signed with Liv. He did all of these things that are like, dude, he's the guy. He's the newsmaker of the year. And the fact that he's not top of mind ever is just startling to me. And it goes back to a lot of a lot of what Randy says. I think he just doesn't do it for a lot of people. And I don't know why. And that's endlessly fascinating to me. But ultimately, I think he he's my vote. John Rom.

And I, Rom does it for me. Like, I think he's, I've always thought he's awesome, like great to talk to, great to listen to, just a great kind of model professional. And it, but it's hard to like view everything that's happened over the past week. And like again, kind of back to what drove it for me. If like, Rom had zero leadership during any of this. Like was fine to just go along for the ride. And at the very last second, when you know, several years into the war, switch sides over to the other team and helps weigh the fight to the

other side. Like, is that newsworthy for sure? Like if that, if that's kind of your model of the answer, then it's, the ROM is definitely the answer, but it's pretty hard to ignore that final part of just changing jerseys at the very end. And it's like getting traded to, or like getting side to the playoff roster of a baseball team and in claiming a world series win. Those guys are sick. I love you guys do that.

All right, anybody else? Anybody want to want to cast a final vote based on that? Or are we going to just have a three-way stalemate? I think it's right. No, no better way than a three-way stalemate here to end this pod as we wait for the the PIF and the PGA tour and the SSG to get this finalized. All right. That is it. long episode for the PNC recap where we barely talked about the PNC, but I had to put a bow on a lot of things from this past year. Thanks everyone for tuning in.

We will have more episodes before the year is over, but I don't know if we're gonna all get together and shoot the shit like we have done on all of these Sundays. If you can, leave us a review in the iTunes store, Spotify store, I usually ask maybe once a year that people do that. If you're looking for other ways to support no laying up, you can of course join the nest. Where can people find that DJ?

I believe it's nolingup.com slash join. That is exactly right. I forgot what it was. That's why I asked you. But a lot of offerings there, it's basically kind of our membership platform. You get access to a message board. You get 15% off in the pro shop, plus you get access to limited inventory. There's nest exclusive merchandise.

There's a monthly member podcast. There's giveaways. There's an annual gift. There's access, early access to events. And we're hoping to really throw some gasoline on this in the coming year. And so if you're looking for a way to join the show or to support the show, and all we do here,

nolingup.com, slash join, and a lot more information you can find there. So, we just had our annual offsite meeting with the whole staff. We, the NASDA might be the person of the year in 2024. Mm-hmm. That might be the goal. We might be taking it as a next deal this year.

I'm kind of like, you know, kind of like that 2006 person of the year was just everyone on the planet. It's you. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. We will see you in the new year.

Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. It's a great club. Be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. How about him?

That is better than most. Better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most.