No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 777: 10 Year Oral History

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

We are ten years into No Laying Up, a text thread among college friends that's turned into more than any of us could have imagined. Come along for a three hour conversation about the origins of that initial text thread, the website (21:30), the first podcast (35:00), Justin Thomas marking the first podcast appearance from a tour pro (55:30), the first detonation of golf television coverage (1:09:00), our Rory-DT news scoop (1:23:00), the first Tourist Sauce (1:50:30) and Strapped seasons (2:14:00), and a ton more. A more extensive list of some of our favorite web posts, tweets, and other moments from the last decade will be available soon on the No Laying Up website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying podcast. Sully here. We have a wide, wide range of people up on my screen that I'm looking at here. We have seven folks on for a bit of a different episode, a bit of a look back.

It has now been somehow 10 years since we started the golf blog, no laying it up, which we'll get to that little phrase. I'm sure it's a point on it. But this was an idea of the first guy I'll introduce, Mr. Kevin Van Volkenberg, who has come joined our team in the last year of doing a look back on the last 10 years at no laying up and have a little bit of fun in the process. Hello, KVV. So long before along before your dick riders, your disruptors. And I just want to say I'm

proud of you and proud to be a part of this squad. Yeah, we want to take a look back on what the last 10 years have been like. You know, not everybody has been around for this journey. Some people might have picked up the blog in 2015 or the first time that Roy McElroy joined the pod or the first time you played in the Pebble Beach Pro Am or maybe even the first time they hired some dumbass writer for me as a pian to put some written words on the website. But I think we thought it would be fun to sort of tick through some of the notable moments in the podcast company history. So I'm going to take you all the way back just at the start to 2013.

A bunch of a small group of friends joined together at the University of Miami of Ohio. Oh my God. Throwing out. Conversely of Miami, Ohio. Okay. Excuse me. Five. Five years.

Is it coral gables? Please fact check for me on this. What would be the proper term? Well, first, let's go around the horn a little bit here and introduce people. Hopefully this isn't the first one you listen to. Down KU very, very bad episode. A bit of a flu game. The guy who's sick more than anybody I know, Mr. Tron Carter, hello, T.C.

Hello, hello. You know what? I haven't been sick all year. I don't think I got strep throat right now, though. It's, T.C. Hello, hello, hello. You know what? I haven't been sick all year. I don't think I got strep throat right now, though. It's not good. Bad. Neil is here. Hello, Mr. Neil. Good afternoon. I do also want to give a shout out to our sponsor. It's the nest. No laying up community of avid golfers want to sneak that in on this holiday episode. The reason we bring it up is there's still time to join the nest or have, you know, gift the nest to a friend and you get the 2023 member gift, which will be going out in January.

So go to no laying up.com forward slash join for more information and all the benefits of joining the nest. Sally back to you up to my esteemed colleague in the top left corner, Mr. Big Randy, hello, Big. Hi, Sally. Great to be here. Kevin, it is Miami University. And if you must, you can say Miami University of Ohio, got you. Not Miami, I've Ohio. Miami, Ohio works for, for short, but university of Miami, uh, that's the one in Florida.

You could go with the real you as well. Uh, DJ Pies here. Hello, Hi, man. Hey, go with the real you as well. DJ Pies here. Hello, pie man. Hey guys, good to be with you. Run in the ones and twos as he does, Mr. Cody McBride. Hello, Cody. Hello. Sorry, apologize.

If you can hear some background noise, it is smoothie time. It's that time of day. We can finally break our fast here in Dallas, but Sali, 10 years, I don't know where the time went. How are you feeling today? A little nervous, you know, just going kind of going back through some old stuff over the last couple of days, trying to get ready for this was a lot of cringing, a lot of apprehension about doing this

because listen, there's some stuff in our past that we're proud of and some stuff that I have a feeling we're going to relive today that we're going to laugh about that, you know, yeah, we had to try some stuff. We had to throw stuff off the walls. Neel and I had to get kicked out of a couple of Reddit groups trying to promote our own stuff for it to eventually take to get out and run. I got just that's part of the history of no leg up. But listen, we're here to be made fun of. That's kind of the most of the reason to do the show every week. It's for people to make fun of us and they'll be plenty of stuff within that to make it happen. Yeah. So I spent his make it happen. Yeah.

So I spent his morning deleting tweets. Yeah. It's just scrupping hate to see it. Scrupping. You just as a good house-cleaning opportunity. Absolutely. Melt. Well, where do you want to go, Kev?

How do you want to run this? Well, now that I know it was Miami University, maybe at Ohio. I want to start back then where the origin story begins, guys. Well, now that I know it was Miami University, maybe at Ohio. I wanna start back then where the origin story begins, guys. I'm just gonna ask some questions along the way and I hope you will sort of take the wheel from there. But who started the original text chain that talk about golf that one day became no-ling up?

I don't know. I don't know who started it. I guess to go back to Tron and I, who's actually real name is Todd for those that don't know. I don't know who started it. I guess to go back to Tron and I, whose actual real name is Todd for those that don't know, we were back in 2004, we lived two doors down from each other in the dorm, and we became fast friends, mostly through NCAA football and Tiger Woods golf.

I had to, you know, I had to like, swear to my parents, like listen, the reason I got a 2.45 in my first semester, I promise it was not partying. TC and I were just up to like 4 a.m. playing Tiger Woods every night. Like that was the problem here. That was not a party issue. And then TC and Randy ended up being fraternity brothers. And like it wasn't like the three of us were like three amigos.

We weren't like best friends in college. We kind of I knew Randy through TC. Randy was a golf fan allegedly. I don't really know if he is a golf fan. But he would we started during college going back to my parents house in double and a high out for the memorial every summer. And we would just go tear it up. We would, what was the party we tried to sneak our way into? Randy was a Duke realty party. Who was, why can't I think of the name that we was the, it was the answer. The answer. Yeah. Let's put down. Is that a real person?

We don't get out somebody in this. Okay. Somebody told us to go to the Duke Realty party and just like if anybody asks say you know the name West Podel and then start talking about the Anson project. And like we did that. We had a couple beers. Finally somebody came up to us and was like, Hey, who, uh, you guys know anybody here? I'm like, Oh, yeah, West Podell sent us here. Like, yeah, we don't know anybody there. If you guys can finish those drinks up and get, go ahead and get out of here. That'd be, that'd be great. That'd be swell. It turned out it was the duke lacrosse party you were supposed to be

at, which is where you met Neil eventually. Oh, come on, dude. So going back, I think solid. So, so solid came on spring break with, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, And then Randy and I went to the Phoenix Open. That was really kind of the biggest entry into our golf fandom was, you know, us hanging out with the Thunderbirds. It was the FBR Open at the time. That was in 2007. And then, yeah, Sally, my biggest recollection from those years, yeah, there's a Randy right there. My biggest recollection from those years at the memorial is my biggest recollection from those years at the memorial is hanging out on the putting green and this drunk guy talking about he's yelling at at Nick Price. Hey, Fowdo. Hey, Fowdo. Nick Price just turns around and goes, I'm Nick Price, damn it. Like 10 minutes later, we see the guy getting escorted out. He was he was blacked out, I think.

Was that the guy that also said, oh, there's David Duval. I got a menace. I bet he shoots 66 today. Was that the same dude? I think it was different guys. Yeah. You start being friends. You started checks text chain.

It goes on TC. I just want to know what was your first impression of Salih? Like I heard he was rocking some double ear rings. Obviously, a pretty good incidentally football player described to me what that was like when he stumbled into your dorm room. Yeah. Well, first of all, I wish that, you know, I think Salih said 2.45 GPA. I wish that like I think my GPA did below 1.51 or one, one semester when I was living

with Randy. But yeah, Salih rolled up. He had double, you know, zirconium earrings. He had white, he had these white Jordans. He's baggy, baggy jeans, Hollister button down that he would always wear kind of had like this little jerry curl thing going. It was 2004.

I don't regret it. It was. Absolutely. Playboy. Neil, were you aware of what was going on at the time with all these boys were starting to come together as pals? I was because solid came on that trip that ski trip with us and then Randy and TC shaperoned my college spring breaks to Aruba. That was a few years later where Randy actually had to he had unsubscribe from the last couple days of the trip. He couldn't handle it. I got a Jeep stuck in the Jeep stuck in the mud. So yes, I was I was very aware of

of these two hooligans. Nice. All right, big. When did Todd Schuster start referring to himself as Taran Carter? That's a great question. I think it was, you know, there's a line from the whale where they, I don't think I'm spoiling anything where they ask, Brendan Frazier, the main character, like, how did you get to obese? And he goes, you know, just a little bit at first and then it kind of gets away from you. I think that was a lot like Tron.

We were watching a lot of Chappelle show in that day, of course, Tron Carter always making juice. That was one of the best episodes. And I think Todd just generally started working in some, some Tron references a little bit at first. And then, and then it just, I can see what you can get to live with. I think the, the moniker became an alias when we, and I know I'm getting ahead of myself,

but when we started the website and the podcast and, and that's when it got cemented, but certainly during those Miami years, um, there were a lot of references just to, to Tron in general, making juice and, and a lot of the Chappelle show universe. And yeah, later on, I kept going with it because I had a job and I want my boss that I was doing this on the side. That was all of us, like, had a name of some kind. I was like, ah, if you Google our name, I don't know if I want this coming up. I'm not really proud of this.

Well, it's all you then. What can you tell us about how Phil Lendus became big Randy? That is a story that he's going to have to tell, I think. Yeah. So the very bridge version during the same time we're watching a lot of some fellow shows. People are going to be so disappointed. This is such a, this is I disagree. I think it's the line. The people that I built up in their mind. Very, very relatable. Well, the same deal. Charden and I lived in an off campus house. A shit hole. Disorder. And on the second floor, there was one restroom and it was kind of a

long, perpendicular restroom and across the hall lived a guy. And one day, one one weekend, the main door to the bathroom broke off of its hinge and there was no longer a door to the bathroom, which opened up a sightline for the guy living across the hall when he was working at his desk, you know, you could see into the bathroom and be in there doing, doing their thing. And one day I walked in there and it must not have seen me. I don't know if I was using the toilet or taking a shower or what, but he called in, was wondering who was in the bathroom. And, you know, as I'm one to do, I didn't really feel like having a conversation at that point. And I called back that it was Randy in the bathroom and kind of squashed the conversation right then and there. Now you might say why the name Randy and well during that time the real world sandy ago season was going on and the few main characters were a gentleman named Brad and his sidekick big brandy and they were they were just hooligans. They were a couple of fools.

They liked to have a good time. And I think, you know, Randy was just kind of a name in my head at that point. And so after that day, you know, it certainly wasn't an immediate thing, but, you know, Randy kind of became a funny little nickname. And like these gentlemen, once we started putting takes out in the world. I the idea of an alias append name made a lot of sense because yeah, it was like well

let's just kind of try to separate these worlds. I'm not sure if we're ever going to say anything that it's going to get us in a lot of trouble and we do, it will be a lot easier if I'm not as easily associated with my full government name. So that was the impetus behind Randy. Do you guys remember when you first played golf together? Was it the Italian American golf association? Oh, it was there though. I think that was just that was just.

That was just. Well, I thought this was what I would have been asking, but yeah, this was there though. I think that was just, uh, that was just a, well, I thought this was going to have been asking, but yeah, this was either summer of 06 or summer of 07, then we would have probably played at Riviera Country Club. Now defunct, uh, and country club was a very, very loose terms. This was a semi private, uh, semi public golf course as well. But, uh, of course, I worked at growing up and, uh, we would duck over there and squeeze out in the afternoon. Not the Riviera that people are probably thinking.

Right. Double in a high up. Riviera, a coach club. A helpful context. Oh, shit. Riviera is not a, that went on a business. And then I think there were a few other times where we played together. Like Randy came on a, I think it was down in Charleston.

We were playing with Neil. There was pockets of the others playing together, but not all four of us until, I think it was down in Charleston. We were playing with Neil. There was pockets of the others playing together, but not all four of us until I think the first time all four of us were physically together. Neil, were you at the president's cup in 2013? I was when it was in Columbus. Yeah. And it rained for four days straight. It rained on Randy and I.

You guys were in hospitality and you didn't get wet at all. I got to Uncle Jim. I Randy was furious about that. He said, T.C., we used to clown on these hospitality people here and we haven't even seen you all week. I remember that distinctly. That was the worst tournament I've ever been to. I went to a lot of a lot of golf tournaments at the PJ tour.

I didn't realize obviously that you four were there at the time, but the worst tournament I've ever been to, just absolute abysmal. Solid boy chief leather lips just raining down on everybody just having a nuke in the entire week. I've never been colder and just wetter and more miserable than after that term. I must have the radio. It sounds like Randy had to. Well, I must have suppressed it because I was getting ready to say, I don't think I was there that week, but it's all, obviously, remembers me there. So I must have been there. But I, yeah, maybe you weren't there then.

Maybe I, like, maybe I just reported back to you that we never saw T.C. because he was in hospitality the whole time. Hey, I ran the, who knows? T.C. you got some of a couple other moments to talk about. Yeah, just a couple other seminal moments that they kind of, you know, set the tone or set the stage. June 2012, the big jungle bird interrupts. Mike Davis's web Simpson trophy ceremony at the Olympic club. That one really, really captured Randy and I's fancy and this sets off. And then powder cake just galvanize a yug bed online.

and then powder cake just galvanize a young bed online. Yeah. And then January 2012, even before that Kyle Stanley chokes away the Torrey Pines, uh, farmers event and it comes back and he wins the following week and he beats Spencer Levine who was leading by six shots going into the final round. six shots going into the final round. So, uh, yeah, those were two things that really galvanized our interest and, and, and kind of took the text thread to like, this is crazy. You believe this is happening because we're on a fantasy golf league together too. Like we always, you know, especially that time of year, we were just kind of always shit talking about Yahoo fantasy golf. You're massive losers. Well, we're still enormous losers. Look what we do. But yeah, so it was the texture. I was not just golf was the thing. I mean, we were big into college football betting

in like 2009, 2010. You guys paid for picks from somebody. I remember this in the picks for awful. We lost so much money units. It was so many units. I remember it's Like, oh, this guy makes you pay for picks. They got to be good picks. And they were not ever good. That's how that's one of the first memories I have of the text thread. Solly's dad is showing up on all sorts of telecasts of West Virginia basketball games at this point as well. So I was more mid to it all. But yeah, okay, more mid 20 tense. Yeah. I know a lot of this dates back to a text thread, but was there, you know, was it hot and then there was off seasons of it?

Or was this just constant, you know, 24 hours a day communication back and forth? Because you guys are off live in normal everyday lives now. Like, what was the routine of this conversation? I don't know if I remember that everyday lives now. Like what was the routine of this conversation? I don't know if I remember that well. I mean, it was just kind of like a group tech, I can't tell you what happened in a group techs throughout a month from two weeks ago, right?

You just kind of block out 90% of it. Half the time it's probably Randy and TC just sending each other things that tickled their fans. You know, made them laugh. But it was just everything that had to do with sports, you know, it'd be the same thing that TC throws in our slack now is what kind of what goes on there because this is a disgrace since I Florida is going to destroy Cincinnati and the sugar ball, whatever. I don't know what it was exactly, but it was mostly shit like that.

Yeah, I think I think between college football, college basketball, pro sports, you know, the meat of the golf season, there was enough there for it to be a year round depository of just any and all sports takes as I remember it. Bringing that full circle though, it was, I was amazed at how well you guys would have like running jokes, like the level at which things would go to just like made me laugh every single day. I mean, again, it was just kind of like kind of how our bits now kind of build off of each other. If you came in hot at one moment, you'd have no, I have to, I still don't know what you guys are referring to with some of your bits,

but they just started building off each other. And I we probably said it like 15 times. So like, do guys, we need a sports website of some kind. We need like a blog. We need something. We weren't really thinking podcasts at that point because podcast, I mean, Simmons was doing his podcast, but that seemed really, really technologically challenging at the time. We were huge readers we need something we were only thinking podcasts at that point because podcast mean Simmons was doing his podcast But that seemed really really technologically challenging at the time We were huge readers of every day should be Saturday and that was kind of like the idea of like hey There's kind of all this alternative media going on in football There's some baseball and all this stuff like all these fan sites like there's nothing like that engulf

We should do it. We should do it And it just like took us forever to finally pull the trigger on it until we started the Twitter account February 2013. I think it was that I don't remember talking about the name. I don't remember how he came up with the name. I know we shared the password and said truly some of the dumbest shit ever. And then we started the website like almost a year later. Yeah, I was working overnight at this point too. Like so I was just by myself all night. I don't know why I, you know, memories are a tricky thing. This could be accurate or it could just be me kind of making things up as I look back, but I do remember I was actually living back in Oxford at the time. I was coaching basketball and substitute teaching and just doing a lot

of nonsense. And I remember sitting in the living room one afternoon in the winter. I think we were watching golf. It would have been the West Coast swing. And, Sali, I don't know why, but I feel like you created the Twitter account and you're like, I just named it no layingangUp and it just kind of went from there, like I don't remember giving it a lot of thought. I just remember you kind of being like,

oh yeah, I created this Twitter account. Here's what it's called. And I remember the reaction kind of being like, well, what's Twitter? Do we just like, what do we do? Do we just like tweet stuff? You know, it was just very like, well, what's Twitter? Do we just like, what do we do? Do we just like tweet stuff? You know, it's just very like, okay, what is this for?

Great. That's my memory. But like I said, that could be bouncing back and forth. It should be wrong. On like the name, I think on the name, we talked about, hey, what's a good name? And then we, you know, something in that, like going for it, knowing up kind of that vein and we landed on knowing up. But yeah, right at your point,

like I had no idea what Twitter was at the time. It was very much a, you know, solid was like, Hey, this is, this is kind of the next best thing, having a website. We can just say stuff. But it was, we had no strategy for like how to, we were just tweeting into the abyss, like unless you're tweeting at at people nobody was ever going to read it and we were just a bot account. We were a total bot account and and it was I got I don't even I don't even remember like how we got up to a certain amount of followers is a lot of type a lot of freaking time spent saying very dumb things seeing what throwing stuff against the wall seeing what stick stuck and what didn't way more stuff did not stick than did stick.

And I think we just got, did that throughout the year and got kind of bored with it by the end of the year. We're like, we need to place like expand thoughts on this and like kind of, you know, stretch this thing out because 140 characters is really, really difficult. And that's when, that's when Neil ended the picture. And I think like November 2013, we started to like, like incorporate this thing

and, and, and, and what's some heavy, heavy investment that we put in, I think it was somewhere around $200 that we put into by the domain of the website. Is that sound right, Neil? Yeah, and then another 75 to my guys to Raj for the original logo. But I remember I was actually pretty deep into Twitter. My senior year college, this would have been like spring of 2012. And then I, that was, and then I, I started on Instagram like the summer of 2012, but I remember following the NLU thing because I was using it pretty actively, or you know, at least lurking on Twitter as I started my, you know,

disruptive technology research sales career out in San Francisco. So it was fun to watch that from afar. And then you guys, yeah, you set up a phone call like TC have is like, Hey, I want to go on the phone with you. When you get you on the phone with you, Randy and and, uh, Salier, at the time, Phil and, and Chris, uh, we've got an idea for you. And these guys thought I was a tech wizard. Absolutely disruptor. He works in the tech industry. He can build a library. I remember like, I remember, I was walking all over the Neil works with computers. He could walk him back from, uh, the Embarkadero. I was actually picking And I remember like taking a call. I remember Neil works with computers. He could do it. He's walking back from the Embarcadero. I was actually picking, I remember this vividly.

I was picking up 49er tickets from a friend's mom or something down in her office. And I was walking back talking to these guys about, we want to start golf blog. Nobody talks about golf in a fun, interesting way. Like we should do it. We want to start a blog. I was like, all right, let's do it.

And so then we just set about my buddy that I work with this guy, Chance Tidyman set me up with this guy, Sriraj to create the original logo, which we had as grass with the, there it is, grass with the sprinkler head. And I remember him like, he set the first one over and it was like too polished. I was like, you need to make that sprinkler head look dirtier. But I still really like this logo. I thought this was great. And then of course, I don't know how to code, but my roommate at the time, Mr. Matt McClure does know how to code excellent coder.

So he helped me build the WordPress site and got the, uh, watch the, you know, the YouTube videos, got the go daddy domain name. And I think by like the end of December, the site was up and running very, very bootleg to start things off. If I remember, I think we use my KPMG corporate dial in for that, for that call because it was because we could dial internationally to all get on the same line and talk about it. Really. Yeah. Hi, man. You described yourself as one of the first 10 early fans of No-Lang up. We're going to the PJ Tour of the Time.

What do you remember about this, Sarah? When was your first recollection of discovering No-Lang it up? It had to be the Twitter account. And I don't remember like a specific Twitter. I do remember, sorry, there was a Scarface related one about Ted Scott. There was a lot of prayfer Ted Scott stuff early so much Bubba content and I leave it I'll leave it at that But I remember that would really resonated with me

And I think there was a lot of us calling people terrorists a lot of that a lot of that I can't want to do things tan line At tan line, I remember that so I was running all of the like PJ Tour social media accounts at the time, which was a very still can't believe that this was a real job that existed. I was like 23, 24 and it was like, yeah, I don't know, just take all the passwords. You can tweet from anywhere, you know, if you want to do it while you're on the toilet, like, I guess go ahead, no one's going to look at anything. No one's going to approve anything.

I was just kind of like the voice of of this billion dollar company, which was wild, but very, very fun. But as part of that, like just naturally, my job was kind of keeping tabs on all of, you know, all emerging social accounts. So I'm sure I was one of, you know, indirectly one of the people you're just firing tweets at on a fairly daily basis. So I came across the Twitter account and then made me laugh way more than I probably should have.

Definitely made me laugh a lot more than many of my coworkers at the PGA tour, which was a pretty early target. And still, I think remained a target until we started dick riding. I'm 20, 20. Till we got purchased. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I was a to target until we started dick riding, we're 20, 20, 20. Till we got purchased, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, it was a very subversive account, I remember, among the halls of the PJ tour, a lot of like,

you see what these fucking guys said, man? These guys don't get it. Like, oh, I mean, they kind of got a point. I see where they're coming from on that. And so I started following through that, and then just started listening to the podcast once it started and was probably, yeah, one of the very, very early listeners through that,

and then skipping ahead just a little bit got to know a lot of these guys just through DMs. And like, oh, that was, you kind of got us on that one. That was pretty funny, goings and like, oh, that was, you kind of got us on that one. That was pretty funny. You know, going back and forth ended up meeting Tron at the tour championship. I forget what year that even was like 2014 or something like that. 20 something 2014 2015 and then ended up meeting Sali at the open championship in Scotland at St. Andrews in 2015. KVV was there as well. I was thinking about today. I think we had met at the at

Chambers Bay just a couple months. That's right beforehand. But anyways, that's that's a little. Yeah. All right. In 2014, Neil, the website is launched on January first, you said to pay $200. Who authored the first post on

the website? I remember we were going gonna do season previews, but we just didn't have anything going. So it's like, all right, I'll write a test post. I had set up some Google alerts, and an alert came over, I don't know, it was late December that there was a murder suspect that was caught in a PGA tour superstar bang in balls

in one of the simulators. And so that's what I wrote, like, I don't know, 150 words and and send it out the door. You could still find that if you search, I think murder Suspect NoLayingUp.com. I think it will pop up. So I'd like to, exactly. Neil, I'd like to, as a journalism professor, I'd like to just a little bit read your lead here. Murder should never be a light topic. But, whatever, however, if you should have been some chialoid of Jasper

was nabbed by police and a PJ Superstore range stall. Let's hope he was at least hitting driver. Not bad, there it is, Amy. You know, I would say, I don't know if you'd notice, I put this in the doc there. I was an update. The guy was only sentenced to five years in prison and 10 years probation. So it's very possible that our fellow here is out

and about in the world again. Maybe he's a listener. Who knows? If you're listening, he didn't touch with Neil for a merch code. I'm really disappointed the update to that was not also on nolayingup.com. Where were you on the follow up?

You broke this story, Neil. That's a good lesson. That, you know, maybe we don't want to be breaking news, you know. I got to stay on the beat, man. I got a lot of other things going on. But I, listen, happy that guy served his time and hopefully he's back in the simulator. They've probably gotten better since then.

All right. In January is the original tour sauce tag. Who would like to tell me about how that came to be? So this was a thing that was probably years and years and years in the making. This was a thing that my buddies and I did in Chicago, whenever we'd play golf with each other, we would just do the dumbest shit

that only makes sense if you're a tour player and makes no sense to do with your buddies. But just doing really, really dumb stuff down to like, you make a 20-foot putt, you wave to the fake crowd that's there or something like that. And we we kept like trying to one up each other, right? So, you know, you spray a drive way offline, you would do the wayward point as if there was people standing up there. And everyone just kind of started getting more and more out of control of like, you know, you may go sign like sign a glove and give it to the Marshall that's coming by.

We would actually do this stuff during rounds of golf. I could make people really uncomfortable. And you know, just saying, super stuff to each other, like not today, I have to the round. I'll sign after the round. And we just kept doing it to see how far you could take it. And eventually we just started writing down all these things and brainstorming. And so I decided to do that.

It was one of the first things we'd post on the website. It was just a list of how to act like a torporos, what I think we'd call it at the time. And I could be end up doing four or five of these. We started really scraping the barrel on it. But this post, again, Neil and I were spamming this on multiple Reddit boards, probably, and spamming it to anyone that would probably read it.

Any website, you could or message board, you could post it on and just try to get it out there for other people. It got like, I don't know how to get well. It did really well actually. Like that. Is that a one? 4,000 reads though. I mean, again, we are, we don't have anybody reading this blog at this point.

I'm wondering what the scale of doing well is compared to what it would look like now. I just remember, I don't know, that's a good question. I don't remember the numbers, but I know it was significantly like orders of magnitude better than the Sony preview did. And it was also, it was also on like, I mean, became like a social media thing, right? Like that was like the biggest thing. I remember from the outside looking in that no, like up was like known for was just like, oh my god, Mark and a four inch putt for the win. Like, oh, that had no like a tour sauce tour sauce tour sauce. And that was like, that went for a really long time to the point where when we finally started like a travel series, it was like, oh, we'll call it tourist sauce, which now like six years

later is like, yeah, what, that's like hard to say. What's it called again? So yeah, I don't know. It's like this inside joke for, it kind of had to be there, I guess. I don't know, just watch them. All right, in April of that year, the first podcast that goes up,

tell me where did this podcast get recorded and what do you spend the first literally 20 minutes talking about? This was the first literally 20 minutes talking about? This was the first NLE board meeting at the at the Habachi joint on Hilton head island. Uh, Randy, Randy's a time share owner on the island of Hilton head. And uh, we went down, you recorded it inside the Hibachi. No, no, no, we went there first. The Hibachi place. That's okay. And then we recorded it after at Randy's time share. Tim Clark.

Tim Clark was sitting right next to us. We had some Kieran E2 bonds. And then, yeah, and then we had the infamous, thing at Chipson Salsa. It was also this side of our first media pass. I was able to work some connections through the the Tommy armor family to get a credential. We were too scared to use it properly, but we did get one. I remember like trying to convince you to go in the media center like, no, they're going to turn you away. I'm like, no, you've got

a credential. Do it. It was total, total pretender mode but we we were able to we followed Billy Horschl for 18 holes. We talked actually talked to Pat Perez on the putting green. Randy got back down by you Ricky Bard story. You got to tell that story. Tell that one, Randy. Me. I feel like I'm probably not the one to tell it. I'll set it up. So Randy, we're we're waiting basically Randy and Tron had spent some time at this guy, François House, who I guess hosts Ricky Barnes. Yeah, François is, my dad has a friend, and this friend did business with this very rich Frenchman. And part of the business,

he's from Alsace, I'll sauce over here. Yeah, part of the business turned into, this guy had to like get some properties around the country for this Frenchman. So one of the properties was this really nice house in Hilton Head. And they would always be there the week of the tournament. And Francois would always host a party. I don't know if it was Wednesday. It was before the Tuesday or Wednesday before the tournament started. And Ricky Barnes was a player that was staying with what which I don't know how that came to be. And the other guy was in James Driscoll, the big sun protection guy.

Yeah. So at this party, we, you know, very casually, we're talking to Ricky Barnes and James Driscoll, you know, we're rubbing elbows with tour players. We're all feeling ourselves. So I think fast forward to maybe Friday afternoon, and we're hanging out. There's like a bar behind the main club, or what used to be the main clubhouse, the bar area kind of overlooking the putting green. And what is that?

Number nine, I want to say nine green. Number nine. Yeah, it was like that. It was we're hanging out in the railing on the way to the media center too. It's all like right in that area. And Randy decides, well, no, Ricky Barnes walks into scoring. I'm like, Randy, there's Ricky. There's Ricky. You got it when he comes back out.

You got to say something. You got to say something like you hung out with them earlier this week. So here he comes. It was in previous years that he hung out with them. Oh, previous year. So he comes back out. I remember like Nudge and Randy say something. Says he goes, Hey, Ricky, you hanging out with Prince,

Swah, Prince, Swah this week. And he just looks at him. He kind of sighs. He's like, yeah, cool man. And then that was it. And it was just like oh man, that was a tough change. Cool. Man, whips of whips of Joey Votto later. Sure. Yeah, that's right. For sure. Very similar. There were, there were, uh, we were texting with Royce, have a teenie's ex life.wife. Was that that same?

Yeah, she was. She was. Do you think that's why you two? She had such a fucking run on Twitter for her. Oh, there she was. That was awesome. Yeah, she was in it. Sabo.

Shum's a one woman takequake. Well, yeah, so then after the Habatchachi, we roll up to the time share. I think we just put a cell phone down in the middle of the table, bag of chips, and we were often running. Randy had a recording device. It was like a, we didn't have microphones, but it was like a reporter. Yeah, something you would interview somebody like for transcribing. So we just set it down in the middle of the conversation.

Which was worse in a cell phone probably. It was probably somehow worse than a cell phone. If you listen to that audio quality, it was not not the best. No agenda, no plan. We just like, we argued about Kutcher probably for like a month to that point. I was like, all right, we're going to settle this right here right now. And so the very first first take 20 minutes, it's just 20 minutes of Kutcher talk. Imagine in this day and age, what now would take to have 20 minutes straight for talk of Matt Coocher. Well, and then Coocher goes out and wins the fuck.

And he was shredding Coocher and I was like, it's a say it was like the fiend out debate, but it was with Coocher. I was like, no, he's like a top 10 player, man. He just cuts and gets top 10. He's going to win more. And he went out and won that week. He hold the bunker shot. And it was like, it was almost as glorious as big tones emergence. Some other topics

that were brought up on that first pod, what are your top five PGA tour tournaments? Big, you said, RIV, Northern Trust, Torrey Pepple, Phoenix Memorial Quail, TC, similar memorial, does not like the players. Sully, you shit on the San Antonio in Houston. So some early kind of, you know, things were solidified there who are still what we are. You do, you each mentioned what one PGA tour course outside of the Masters you would play to any of you remember what those were. I'm terrible. Neil, you said whistling straight. Wow. I hate that tour. Not a PGA tour. I hate that tour that take for a lot of reasons. One, it's not a tour course, the two that I'm out on which But also let it be a little bit let it breathe. Why did you think the whistling was

Because it was a PGA was there Correct the next thing there is a couple that there's a couple key moments in podcast number one that that are part of the education process, but still things that ring true to this day, you touched on in the first or expecting that at all from the big guy in TC himself. Absolute, solid dumping on San Antonio and Houston. Not so much like those cities or those courses, I think you are more schedule-wise. Which you were praising the PJ tour for having a solid calendar year season from front to back, not running two to three poor courses in a row there.

When we get to where we'd like to play, I think this is where one of the true defining moments of the C-suite comes through. And Sully just straight out says, you guys are dumb, you have to pick a private course. Don't know what you're doing here. And steers the conversation all to private golf and which TC immediately jumps on and says, yeah, I want to play Cypress band. Another classic PGA tour video. No, they used to host the East host, the Bing Crosby. We'll allow it from the crowd. Which listen, I'll double down on this. Like, if you get,

you get to play one, like, don't pick a public one that you can go pay to play. Like, you get a pass. You get in the door. I would that I'll stand by that take for sure. Another block there that big firmly planted himself on was a love for Harbor town. If it was going to be a public resort available location. But again, another surprising take was Neil coming in and he wanted to get down to the snake pit. He won't be wanted to be in Tampa, not for the golf strictly for the strip. Oh, wow. That's part of our preview that year. It was part of our written preview for the basketball. That was one of our better previews ever. It was Neil horse wondering and voicing it out

loud. Why is there no PJ tour events in the Pacific, Pacific Northwest? Uh, still asking that question. Agreement there. And then of course, TC was just fine guys. If you're going to back me into this corner, I want to play the short course in Monterey Peninsula. Do you dream? Your dreams come true. Yeah.

Just say I feel like you guys have kind of checked those all off. I'm going to get you out the quail. He sounds like you want to play quail. Well, in our distance, quail was was much newer back then. I don't think, you know, we we in our defense, we had no idea what the fuck we were talking about. Yeah. That's too. Well, got such an artificial bump because Tiger played. Yeah. Like he'd Tiger played it like three out of five years or something. Everyone's like, oh, this event's awesome. Very early on, of course, knowing new rules came out that the long putter was going to be

removed. You know, all you guys in a green, what's going to happen to web here is he dead after the long putter goes away. And then another interesting segment there next big name of what American to win a major. So he brings up none other than Dustin Johnson and Randy and the hardest, no possible. It's absolutely not. No game in which a conversation ensues about his athletic ability, how tall and big he is, what shocked Neil didn't realize he was such a big fellow.

You guys got a chuckle that he was from Columbia, South Carolina, and you're like, who would have thought? Why is he playing here this week, which, and then there's just a lot of, a lot of love for some interesting characters of Patrick Reed, Jimmy Walker, Richard Flower, and Neil with the pull of the century, bringing up,

how come nobody here is giving any love or respect to none other than Brian Harman? When is he going to break through? I was so early on Harman and MegaCorp. That's, that's, that's stocks done so well, my portfolio. Happy with it. Which Neil, Neil's like golf knowledge in 2014, where would you, where would you put your golf knowledge in this time period? Yeah, yeah, it's say average below it. Maybe it'll slightly below average. I wouldn't say I was, I wanted to see a pop board like if you could aggregate like all of the early pods, like Neil, like new like 20 professional golfers, like decently well. Like so is the same names always came up. He always was talking about Brian Harman. I don't know why. There was a name.

Georgia. Georgia played against TC in high school. Speaking of another, uh, a Georgia lad that named the came up in the, the writer cup segment that's just stumped the, the kid. He just didn't understand it. And that's when Salian TC mentioned, uh, Jerry Watson qualifying for the writer cup. And Neil just not having a clue that was had to ask the class for assistance. And once they explained that it was Bubba, he was like, of course, man, come on. Come on. Keep him.

Honestly, right when you just said that, I was like, he's Jerry Watson. I literally still was watching. It took me a minute to pick up on what you're talking about. I think one thing that was born out of this segment was we did a another article that did well the first year was we assigned PJ golfers to a football team positions on a football team, right? And I think it was because I was so surprised at Dustin Johnson was a good athlete. I was like, oh, let's, you know, we started talking about that after the pod was over. We should redo that one. That was so. I guess I still think about that one. Who was our quarterback, Phil?

I think lefty was the quarterback. Yeah. I remember was Chaz on the team. I don't think so. No, he was practice. Cool. You know, practice. Yeah, he was he was on special teams, I think.

Jason Day was a free safety. I think Gary Woodland was our running back. Sergio was the scat back. I remember that. Can I bring up just real quick before we move past it? I didn't realize that this was before the first podcast, but this was, I should have put it on my list. March 18th, 2014.

You guys remember that? What happened that day? This is if you could search the LPGA's YouTube channel, you can find out. Hang out with Jessica Corda. Hell yes. Please explain what this is. Well, yeah, I've got a reason just to show you how big of an NLU fan I was. I fucking watched this. I remember like watching this with what this was live before you guys even started the

podcast. If I'm remembering correctly, it's been a while since I've watched it. This was with Craig Can, who was then the, I believe director of communications at the LPGA. I think Neil called him special. This was like, I don't know what happened. If I think Google actually, I think Google had account reps, and this might factor in a Niels later career,

but had some account reps that were just really pressing for these golf hangouts. When the Google Hangouts program came online, it was basically just video chats, where you could just video chat with a bunch of people. And I remember being at the tour and they pushed these so hard on us, like, oh my God, this going to be so good. We're going to connect players directly with fans. They can hop on these video chats and ask questions. And so we at the PJ tour,

there's like, there's a free, free trail to look down. There's so many bad ones of me just talking to awful PJ tour players. And so the LPGA started doing the same thing. And on this one, they had Jessica Corta on and they also invited in some fans. One of them was no like a co-founder, Neil Schuster, alongside, I believe it was a Stanford University golfer, like someone from the women's golf team at Stanford. And they come on to kind of like ask questions,

it's solid, I don't know if you remember kind of the rest better than me. So I remember it as like, I don't either Neil didn't grasp this or we didn't like address this going. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it was not like this came through a personal connection. So what happened was my a guy worked with Trevor. New the account rep or the golf person at Oakley. And somebody dropped out and he was like, hey, I've got a buddy that runs a golf blog. And so it was like the morning of, they were like,

hey, do you, like will you do this? And I was like, yes, sure. And it was like at this office, this company I worked at GIGO, and we had like a webinar studio in the back. And so I'm like using the company studio, which was like pissing off my boss. He's like, what are you doing in there?

I'm like, they, don't worry about it, man. So I was all stressed out. I couldn't get the tech to work. And so I was like a very sudden thing. And so I hopped on. I came in so freaking hot. And the tech wasn't working. And he's late coming in.

I'm just going to show the thumbnail with the video I've never seen this until just now. Neal's like sweating as he comes in. I was sweating so much like people were outside. It was a big open, open floor plan. Everyone's like, what's, what's Neal doing in there? Like, you know, I'm like, basically like not doing my job. It was like, why did I agree to do this? And then I come in, I'm immediately just going to sales mode of like, we're a small shop check us out. Well, that's to Sally's point. The best part about this is I had to be some wires crossed where like the LPGA was like, oh, this would be a great opportunity,

like bring fans on to ask questions to Jessica Corda. And I kneel whether he admits it or not is like looks to be under the assumption that like everybody's there to ask him questions. I was under that assumption straight up. Like I thought it was like a team effort and I was late. So it's like, let me do a quick intro. Let me get set here and Craig was just like,

Hey man, why don't you just like, why don't I think they could mute me at the time? But he would have could have. I was sick. I was watching this in my office with a friend of mine who was like the only guy that I worked with that with new and no leg up was we were watching it live. We were both like oh Narlie I had the button down on I think I had gnarly pit stains. I was super stressed out because I

Yeah, couldn't get the tattoo work man. We need to ask Jess Cordo if she remembers this moment So for the bigger oral history the written oral history The fact that this only has 4,00 views on YouTube is at travesty, which is a Travis 4600 have to be from like when we've referenced. Like you guys got to go watch this. Wow. Tough. Thank you guys. Thank you.

DJ Seminal moment in NL history. You have said that you wanted to put a hold here for in the doc for something that happened on May 28th of this year. Do you remember what that was hold here for in the doc for something that happened on May 28th. If this year, do you remember what that was the day one of the initial NLU merch chain email thread. That email thread ended up being about 48 emails long, which is a foreshadowing of how inefficiently we ran the operation for about four or five years. But we went back and forth on merch ideas, ended up ordering a hundred t-shirts. And I think gave a lot of them away. I set up a square marketplace to start with, but this was the beginning of the merch operation.

I still got one. I should have, I should have wore it for this pod. But the gray, no laying up t-shirt, I think Tron shipped the first batch. And then the second batch we got, I started shipping around my bedroom in San Francisco, which got unwieldy quick. Yeah, we got those and then and then we got some Nike dry fit ones too. Smaller order of those. Those were like team like, you know, for the pros only. Pros being us, not professionals worth mentioning to Neil, I don't you don't have to air them out. But wasn't there a company that still had this address on file? And just like,

yeah, shipped a whole last year shipped like 100 bucket ads to it. 1819 McHallister Street in San Francisco. And the lady that the thank God that got doctor lives there, this woman just DM me on Instagram, like, hey, did you used to live at 1819 McAllister? It just took a box big picture. I mean, yeah, it was tough. So you can imagine if you know where we got our bucket hats, you can kind of do the math on what company that was. Yeah. But yeah, April, that was what April, or sorry, August 29th, 2014.

Was that for shipment going out? All right. Speaking of August, in August 2014, the world meets Ashley Bogey-Evani. Oh my God. So, like, can you please take us through and remember who Ashley is and how she became part of the no-ling up lore. This might have been our big break looking back on it. So, it was the 2014 bridge stone in Akron or Akron, as Rory would say. And Rory is just absolutely collect, he's just destroying people at this point. He wins one of the open championship for UX prior,

goes and wins this one and then goes on to win the hall a few weeks later. And he hits his T-shot on like the 15th hole. I forget what hole it is. They're all the same hole at Firestone. And it gets caddy and all that are standing off to the right. And he goes and stands to the left of the T-Box, like, really randomly.

And there's a blonde, like, in the front row who's just like flipping her hair around and like making eyes at Rory. And I just, again, talk about like shooting a thousand shots. Like, I made a, I'll probably, a thousand vines that were somewhat like, like this. Shot this with post-setted of like, the blonde is doing all she can to get

like Rory's attention. It was like the line I used or something, and it just went apeshit. It got like a million views or something. It was like the most viral moment we probably have. So then I ended up writing an article about it with a somewhat of a breakdown of what's called Breakdown of Rory's blonde admirer.

And it made like the today show, like it was everywhere, like this, she started like a mediator on the back of this. And I believe that led to, and one of the first NLU exclusives. Exclusive, that's right. I tracked her down for an interview and asked her what life was like

since going viral on the internet. But I think if I had to point out that was probably where we got on Rory's radar, I would have to think like if we had to trace it back to something because this was the talk of the golf we're holding 2014. Not a whole lot was going on back then, but the girl who was making eyes at Rory was a headline maker.

I have two questions from that initial Vine one. Do we ever find out the guy standing behind her is with her? So I think you need to read the exclusive because I think that I think I asked that question. I think she, uh, friends, I can't remember. I think she friend zone him. Yeah, friend zone him. Okay. And then also just want to point out the shirt Roy was wearing is among Nike's ugliest. Yeah, probably that's back when he was great.

He was great when he wore a bad clothes. Probably would compete with the next day's ugly one. Yeah. Well, I hope Ashley's doing well now has a family or not whatever she wants. We should see them reach out actually here. So out there, Neil, you have another hold in here. What happened in November of 2014? So as TC alluded to, we shipped out, we used to batch the shipments for orders when we had to take them to the post office. So TC shipped them out in August, then we didn't really do much. We probably had like 60 shirts still available. Billy Horswell wears a shirt, uh, a no laying up shirt to work out in and post a picture on Twitter. We sell out of

the remaining 60 shirts in like two days. So that was kind of like, oh, hey, that was, that's cool. So shipped about a bunch of shirts in December of 2014. Billy was, I don't know why I remember like one of the first 250 no-lang up followers. I had to think. And at one point he unfollowed us. And I think we tweeted something like, if you love something, you got to let it go. Something really weird at him. Like, I billion followed us. But you know, when you love someone, he was one of our biggest, we were his biggest fans back in the day. And he refollowed us after we put a call out for him that he, you know, that that he was one of our earliest followers or whatever. And I remember, I don't

know why I remember that so distinctly. In December, no, I'm going to end up debut the Saucy's. What were the Saucy's? Not popular. PGA tour HQ. You can bring the Saucy's out. You want to tell us about what they are, then, Deach? Well, as I remember, I mean, it was basically like a website post rounding up all the biggest like tour sauce moments of the year. Very harmless in today's world at that time, just a media rights violation apocalypse of just, you know, how can these guys dare take photos of their TV? This is in direct breach of our media rights and regulations.

It was just, it was a dumpster fire, but it was a great fun to follow. I remember following these rapidly. But also the tour wasn't even like posting highlights back then. Of course. There was no setup for this at all. So it was like up to the fans to post highlights of funny things that happened.

And it's a good thing the tourers got that figured out now. I know that was a decade ago, but they really got their fucking. All right, so 2015 comes around and as the calendar flips, one Justin Thomas comes on the podcast for the first time. So how did Justin Thomas you reach out to him and how did he become part of the NLU universe? Well, pausing for a second, we were, it's again worth pointing out like we were, this was all just a hobby for all of us. And it was not something we dedicated a lot of time to. I was living 2014. Most of the I was in Chicago. The I was in San Francisco. Randy, where were you in 2014? Literally who could say, no, I had just moved to Columbus. Columbus, TC. You were in Atlanta at this point, I believe. you in 2014 literally who could say no I had just moved to Columbus Columbus TC you were

in Atlanta at this point I believe yeah I was in Atlanta in 2015 yeah I moved to Boston late 2015 and it was like not really getting a whole lot of steam and that's when I got the offer to go move abroad so I moved to Amsterdam in like October of 2014 and if I recall it I have to check I don't think I did one single podcast between October, like that, to end out the year. I keep telling myself, I need to go back and find this email. But somebody emailed, like, I, I, there couldn't have been a hundred listeners of the podcast at that point. But somebody emailed us early 2015 and was like, Hey, what happened to the podcast? I really liked listening to those. And I was like, Huh, there's one list, like, there's a listener.

And I don't remember what the one was that we got picked back up on was like, huh, there's one list, like there's a listener. And I don't remember what the one was that we got picked back up on. But I mean, it was probably Bacon or Porter where the people that I did the pod with at the most in that time period. And I think we did. I don't remember exact month that JT came on for the first time, but he was a rookie and we he followed us on Twitter and he would like randomly retweet us or whatnot.

And we exchanged a couple DMs and I was like, Hey, like we'd love to have you like, would you ever want to do it? Like come on the podcast and he's like, Sure, I don't know what a podcast is, but I'll do it. I was like, Oh, shit, that's sick. And I was like, Okay, when do you want to do it? I'm like, Okay, why I actually live in Amsterdam. So I'm like six hours ahead of you.

So like if we could do it, I get nighttime for me, that'd be great. He's like, Okay, yeah, yeah, cool. How about we do like 830 Eastern PM? six hours ahead of you. So like if we could do it, I get night time for me, that'd be great. He's like, okay, yeah, yeah, cool. How about we do like 8.30 Eastern PM? And I was like, okay, all right, I'll see you then. I'll see you then. So if you go back and listen to that podcast, it literally went to bed, woke up at like two

and we recorded it at 2.30 in the morning, my time. I don't know if you knew, like thought time zones were like opposite or what they were, but it literally just like asked me to go record it the middle of the night. And I was just like, sure, yeah, we'll do that. Let's do that. Let's do that. Did that episode in that point? Like, there weren't. I don't know if there was a single podcast out there that had ever interviewed a Tor Pro, like uninterrupted for 45 minutes. I don't think other than DJ's hangouts. It was up there. That was groundbreaking stuff. Yeah.

It was funny. I remember like as the podcast was picking up steam, I remember, like, meetings going to the PJ tour and just being like, man, fuck these guys. Like, we don't, we got access to all these players. Like, why, you know, why are these guys? Like, we should start a podcast. We have access to all these guys. We can go do all this, like out in the range. They're like, yeah, why don't you just like do that?

You're not going to like get paid more or anything. You could just like get that off the range. They're like, yeah, yeah, why don't you just like do that? You're not going to like get paid more or anything. You could just like get that off the ground. I was like, well, all right, I'm already doing like 15 jobs. I don't know if I can add, add a podcast to my repertoire. But all right, we'll see how this plays out. But all that's to say, like we weren't on the same, like we weren't even in the same parts of the world. So like imagine getting West Coast time with Neil Central time or a couple Eastern times with Randy and TC and me over in Europe time. Like there

was no like all of us get together and recap a week and golf at that point. They were extremely haphazard mostly previews. I don't really think we recap that much stuff back then and it was all extremely random but mixing in some interviews here and there. But I mean, it was just like a weird little hobby that it was again, we had really bad data back then. I think a lot more people were listening to the pod than we were aware of. Just because we were using some horrible archive website to like upload stuff.

We did again, no clue what we were doing. We didn't have microphones like the first 90 episodes that we did of this thing. But I don't remember a whole lot of stuff in between that, but I know we did one with JT one with Max. I think that year and one with Charles Howe. I think we're like the three players we had on in 2015. If I, if I remember right, I could be wrong. So I have some early highlights here and some guests in front of me here. So Shane Bacon was the first ever outside person to ever come on the pod in June of 2014. Then Kyle Porter,

then Adam Sarson, and then Shane Ryan, and then there was some preview stuff. Shane Bacon again, it's a bunch with Porter. Ashley Mayo was on an early one, Porter again, and then Kevin Van Volkmerk was on the 40th episode. So yeah. And then Justin Thomas was the, I believe, the 17th episode. So you got some there Cody for us? Yeah, yeah, we'll roll the tape. Oh, no. Gentlemen, thank you for tuning back in episode two of the No Lang Up official podcast.

Unfortunately, not all in the same room this time. We are in four different cities spread out. From United States, but here to deliver our usual, welding hot takes. Get the right club, speed the right club today. Not enough. Better than most. How about in? That is better than most.

Better than most. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the No-Lang Up Podcast. I am Chris Solomon. I'm ecstatic to announce for the first time ever we have a PGA tour player on the podcast, Justin Thomas, Mr. Billy Horsel, Charles Houth, Rory McElroy, Jordan Speat, Smiley Kaufman, Peter Uline, Matt Every, Harold Varner III, Jason Duffner, Eddie Pepperel, Zach Blair, Graham McDowell, currently a member of the web.com tour, you know him as Max Homa, Max, what's going on today?

What's up? My arch enemy, Mr. Shane Bacon. Kyle Porter here, Jamie Kennedy. Barstool Trent. Amanda Baleonas, we are going to welcome for the first time the director of content from the PJ Tours Scratch TV, Mr. DJ Pihalski. Hi, I'm Max, this is Bob from the Crack n' Drop.

So we have a very special guest this week and kind of what maybe coming our theme here on the trap draw I want to find a little different angle go off the beat and track a little bit with our interview and we were able to track down Bob met. God, you sound good. No, just squeaky clean. We stepped up our might game. We'll throw back two to here with our old recording devices. Yeah, we'll back to the stream, in ten, we put up the string.

But I think we got a good one on top tonight. We're excited. We have JC Poston. Gentlemen, that really to me needs no introduction. He's, I believe he's number seven in Lo Sinco. Siete. Oh, Siete. Okay. Okay. Yes, that's seven.

A6, 6, C.S.A. 7. So, Siete, that's a no-sinco. Okay. And ahead of such luminaries in the world rankings as Hunter Mayhan, Tim Heron, Fred Couples, G. Milka Singh, Derek Ernst, none other than T.K. Kelly. Young Merchie and G. Schuh here. A special edition of the trap draw

We'll welcome in Tron Carter here just in a second and the franchise The Cricut's the Cricut A nice father Long time listener first time guests on the podcast How we feeling tonight franchise So I'm bridging years there a little bit just in trying to get the trap dry in on the same file. Trapped draws going to start in 2016, of course,

we'll get to the boys technology issues there. And also like, you got two golf podcasts going on. But, but, so I think in the beginning, there's a lot more professional players than you would expect there. Also,

you're right. You beat up bacon and porter. I don't know if you ever sent him checks in the beginning there's a lot more professional players than you would expect there also you're right you beat up bacon and porter I don't know if you ever sent them checks in the mail or whatnot my question When it comes to it is what were you recording this stuff over in Amsterdam? No, not kidding We were I'd record like I would Skype somebody on my cell phone and like put it near my iPad, which is where I recorded it locally, right? So you would hear my voice directly in the iPad

and it would go like speakerphone from the iPhone into the iPad, which maybe you would believe that if you listened to it because yeah, the first time I interviewed like Rory, that's exactly the audio quality you would expect to have gotten out of it. Man, I just, I can't stop laughing Cody because it almost happened to me there when the, the trap draw gunshot hit for the first time. You remember that guy that said the email about how he, how he almost drove off the roads. He felt one of his tires and blow it out. His stereo was turned up so high when the track audio started. How about the fact that John Van Develle was the first, the first episode of the track

draw. So good. Uh, I got, so a couple of other things that happened in 2015 that I think are the press in or just, you know, foreshadowing, Randy gets back down at the House of Prime Riv about the same Francisco with the medium rare thing. I don't think he's ever lived that down since. Keegan Bradley and Miguel in Hellhippenaz getting the fight.

Oh, yeah. That was the week me and Neil met. Yes, that was at the match play at Harding Park. So what I remember about that T.C. is that Sully was asleep in Europe, and you had been given the controls of the main account and you were like freaking out about like Sally not being there and you were sending him like alert alert red alert messages like you know Miguel and Kagan got to fight.

Well, it's too big. It was like too big of a moment for you to feel like a tweet. Well, yeah, I think we had I think I was fired off to too many hot takes. We were like, hey, I can't have this, Sally, you do this. I think that was probably the beginning of the year 2015 after a couple of years on Twitter. Well, it was so happy. It'd be like, you know how often we disagree

and have different takes, but like, under the same Twitter account, nobody knew who was saying anything, so it'd be like, fuck this course. Like, man, I love this course. Like none of the tweets made sense coming from like different people. I remember one of the last times I tweeted from the main account, like, just from behind the curtain, it was like, I think it was a picture of Stu Sink's hatline tan.

And I, you know, I was like, oh, look at this. It's funny. I put the picture up and then like a bunch of other accounts were like, you stole my content, motherfucker. And so I was like, oh, God, I'm, I'm good. I'm I can't just you can't just parachute in. There's no context. But yeah, I remember the, you know, that night or that day, I'm gonna find the image because there was TC literally sent me like 14 WhatsApp's overnight of like, you gotta wake up, you gotta wake up, you're not gonna believe this fight, you're not gonna believe it, you gotta wake up. You gotta wake up. You're not gonna believe this fight. You're not gonna believe it. You gotta wake up.

It was so sick. What else happened in 2015? Josh Elliott with this glorious madness. That was another just seminal moment. That was during the players. Zach Johnson gets hit by the air cannon at the John Deere said in his post-traumatic interview that he thought it was a pipe bomb. Going off.

What else? I played sweetens cove for the first time. And September 18th, 2015, I tweeted RIP cat. That is, that's a big one. That's worth putting on your timelines. Yeah. DJ you and I and Saul, I met at the British Open that year. It was the first time three of us. We, oh, we had developed, I guess you would said we'd met at Chambers, which I'd forgotten, but it's always the first time you'd met either of us.

I remember we had lunch at, I think, the scores hotel, which was right behind the first T, and I felt like I was going on a blind date to meet someone that I had been texting with for a year and a half in, but rolled up and gave me a big hug. I don't remember much about the rest of that thing, just that you were going back to your job after that. And there was still, I don't think any talk of you leaving to do this as a thing that was a no chance. Definitely not.

No, I just remember solid getting there and solid, I'm sure you remember this too, like we walked around. As soon as I remember vividly meeting kind of like right by the 18th green there with hashtag chat Coleman and was kind of like, what do you want to do? I don't know what you want to do. Let's go walk the golf course. And we're walking the golf course, talking about all these different things for, I don't know, four hours, five hours probably. And then-

So they're in a wind delay. We get there that day. Have you ever met before? Like, I guess we've never met. This was the first time, but I don't think either of us realized it for like hours and hours. We talked so much online. Well, because we, uh, I just got, I remember I was living in Amsterdam at the time, but I just got back from the state. So I was super jet lag, but I was a no mad at this time.

I was like, oh, whatever. I'll jump over to the open chamber. Chad's like, we got a couch for you. Come stay over here. I'm like, okay, whatever. I'll jump over to the open chamber. Chad's like, we got a couch for you. Come stay over here. I'm like, okay, we get there and there's just a windowlay. And we literally like, okay, well, I guess we just like go grab a beer and we just drank for 15 hours. Like we literally were up until like three o'clock in the morning.

And we had a tea time at the castle course at 6 a.m. the next day. And I remember vividly being like, oh, we fine. It will be totally fine. Like, I'm a run home, grab a click hour and a half nap, and then like, I'll meet you guys there. Like, we got this shit. Nair, that's not what happened. But we were drinking into flat.

The, the Calaway had provided until 4 30 a.m. And you guys were like, huh, like, how are we gonna get to this T time? Like, we'd probably, we be tough to get it over like that. I was like, well, I got this rental car. Like I guess if you guys want me to come along, but I, you know, I guess I'm going to go home and literally like sleep for like 40 minutes. And I'll come out and I roll back up to the apartment. For some reason, DJ, I don't know why I guess you were staying somewhere else, but I was like, I had to work. And I was kind of thing where I called you like five times didn't answer.

I was like, I think that's the flat that I left like an hour ago, but maybe it's random flat that I'm not I knocked on the door. Like crept in like it was a horror movie. Saw some cowboy clubs. I was like, okay, cool. I was like, so we got to tell like 20 minutes. Nothing can't couldn't find you at all. Walked around the flat, like opened up one of the doors

and saw he was like completely asleep, like holding his phone in his hand. I'm sure having like just swiped right for hours on the European tinder. I shook him and was like, hey, are we gonna, and he was like, and then immediately fell back to sleep. I was like, all right, well, I'm going back to bed. I woke up at 2 p.m. I missed the tea time by eight hours.

And meanwhile, I was off. I was off good reporting and you were like, text me like, Hey, are you gonna join us for this afternoon tea time? I was like, that was my window. I got to do work now. And then Zach Johnson tapped out on those spike marks T.C. It's right. He did.

He did. That was, that was tragic. At that same Open Championship, you went viral with the Tiger Tender tweet, or just to said swipe right all these, which is kind of one of the first times that things kind of exploded. That was good. Twitter is fun. 2016, Tron Carter, you penned a piece, an eye on CBS and I put, yeah, I put this one

in there. I can share this the official coverage take and just one of the great detonations of our time. I remember reading this. I was at a UNC Miami College basketball game. I was visiting a friend in Raleigh. And I remember reading this on his couch before or like, I guess that's Sunday. And I was just like, good God. TC went through the watching entire broadcast, you know, went through all the commercial breaks. It's just a complete

and utter detonation. I think it probably still rings true today with some of the coverage stuff. So TC, I was I was very proud of you in this moment for writing this. Yeah, the coverage stuff had been bubbling up. It's really since we started knowing up. It was just getting shitty or shitty or I think that was the year that Speed almost won at Riviera and they didn't they didn't show him and it was, you know, and then it was leading in the pebble. Pebble was an absolute disaster at that point on Pebble Saturday and Torrey Pines and all that stuff. I missed Kepp Goening waist management. People may forget how awful it was. They were truly not tracking the people

that were winning the golf tournaments. It was so bad. I think that I remember the most being on the outside of it is that there was no one to hold TV networks accountable. Like media reporters were never interested in golf stuff. They were completely oblivious. They were writing about the NFL, the NBA.

And so you guys were the first people to ever truly give a shit about like how fucking bad the TV product was. And so it forced like it got under that sort of digit could sort of comment in this. But it got under people's skin because it was like places that had never been criticized before had just only been sort of praised were suddenly getting like nuclear grenades lopped into them on a weekly basis. Yeah, which, which I would say set back relations with the PJ tour for quite a while. I remember that, yeah, we didn't do all other podcasts about some of those, some of those early meetings and getting together with the PJ tour telecast people and like, that fucked that. I remember that, yeah, we can do all other podcasts about some of those, some of those early meetings

and getting together with the PJ tour telecast people and like, that fuck that. If we're going to do that, they got to come to Sundellie. We're not going, we're not going down there. They got to come up here. Uh, there was still, yeah, a lot of that. That was a few years later though, though, that was just when things were starting, you know, finally, like it was a couple of years that were just like, like don't even bring that name open this house. We don't talk about. We don't talk about those guys in May of 2016 right after an episode with the tour junkies DJ Mahowski debuts on the podcast for the first time.

DJ, what do you remember about this? It was right after spieth had blown the master. Yeah, bleak times, obviously, for a lot of us on spieth island, but the very similar to Neil, Google Hangout days, trying to hide out in a conference room, hoping no one's gonna ask what I'm doing, trying to keep my voice down, but also trying to like, project for a podcast. So yeah, good, good times. This was, this may have been like peak Twitter though,

like Golf Twitter, maybe, maybe into 17. I don't know if like 2018 things kind of started to die down for whatever reason. But man, the speed collapse was like it, she was just happening on Twitter at that point. I mean, just go back and like look at numbers of engagement on stuff back then was so different than it is now. Just sports Twitter in general was absolutely flying off the chain at this point. Yeah, May, May 24, 2016. I wrote this down. So I think DJ and I had met at the torch championship, the year prior, we're walking around with Ed

Reed. And then our wives were walking around and then read. Yeah. Yeah. You see, and I would go get a beer. We came back and just see to Alex, we're like, oh, hey, this is our front ed. What? head. What? He's a ballman. Ken Duke shoots 65. I think I was, I was walking around yelling big gravy. Yeah. And then yeah, Alex and I went to the players. And then that was when we kind of decided like, Hey, like we should move here one day.

So the following year we move there. Some other notes I have that DJ fixes a spike mark JFK and wins the first ever tour sauce award in the wild competition. Yes, I put this one in there. I still get a kick out of this. We ran a tour sauce like basically sending your best tour sauce and, you know, doing it out in the real world and DJ sent in a vine. I couldn't get the video because vine doesn't exist anymore. He was tamping out spike marks at the gate of JF vine. I couldn't get the video because vine doesn't exist anymore. He was tamping out spike marks at the gate at JFK. I got a real kick out of that one. So DJ, appreciate your submission there. Of course. Of course. Probably wearing the original

t-shirt too. I remember that. Yeah. In May of 2016, Charles Howell comes up to Salih on the range at the memorial. Just remember, like, I'm, well, I'm first of all, inside the ropes for the first time ever. And I'm wearing the t-shirt. And I'm like, very much the, I wish I wasn't wearing this fucking shirt, kind of situation here. It was felt very, felt a little bit too much. And he just like, is mid-hitting balls. And he starts walking towards me. And I was like, oh my god, what did I say about Charles Howe? Like, oh my god, this guy's about to punch me. He's just like, hey, are you, are you one of the no-lang up guys?

I was like, yeah, he goes, I just want to shake your hand. I absolutely love your stuff. And I was like, I was like, what the people, what are you, who, what, how, how are you following this? I didn't even know you had a Twitter account. Like, what's going on here? And we ended up exchanging info. And then he came on the pod later that year.

But he was one of our very, very, very first progress that we had on there. And then that's where like, JT Rory and I think Speed were all playing together that week. And JT is like going to miss the cut by like a million. And he gets to 14 and he, he like pulls driver out and like looks over at me like, as in like a, are you ready for this? And I was like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And he unleashed as a driver and hit it into the crowd. And like the whole T-Box is like laughing. And walking off Rory's like, oh, I can't wait to see the tweet about that shot.

And I was like, fuck, what? Like, what? Again, I'm like, on the other side of the world, I have no idea that this thing is like, you know, actually, it's actually real people that are following this. I was like, Rory, Rory is paying attention to what is going on here. And that would kind of set the stage for how life would change a lot over the next year. Speaking of September that year, the Ryder Cup is played at Hazeltein.

So you are walking around following the Rory McElroy Dustin Johnson, Brooks, Keppka. And I want to say, who is the other Thomas Peters in that match. And what does what happens as you're sitting there behind one of the teas during a fucking rider cup match? So I leading up to this had just like, you know, this is kind of peak like business before Capca's won a major like the same way TC invented Ludwig. I invented Brooks, Capka. Like I was just a, you know, this was, this was my guy.

And I wanted Capka and DJ to get paired together for no reason other than I just thought they were just bombers. They would be really fun to watch play. I wanted to, I tweeted about it just for months leading up into this thing. And the last session they finally get sent out together and they're paired up against Rory and Thomas Peters. And Rory and Peters are three up standing on the ninth tee at Hazeltein. And I'm like, you go back to that tee.

Like I was, this is the first time I've ever like walked a tournament like this inside the ropes. And I was just, I wanted to go see every single possible shot. I'm like, you get to, you leave the eighth green or whatever the eighth was in that routing. Everybody goes right. And I went back to the tee. I was like, the only person that would go back to the tee.

And I'm sitting on a bench, I'm fucking exhausted. And Rory tees off and he like, only person that would go back to the tee and I'm sitting on a bench, I'm fucking exhausted. And Rory teased off and he like, comes over and like throws something in the trash can and like sits down on the bench next to me and like slaps my like my thigh with his head with the back of his hand. And he's like, Hey, you got your wish like pointing at DJ and Kevka. And like he's three up on them like taunting me in the Miller Ryder Cup. I was like, what the fuck is going on here?

Like he had remembered that I had said all this and he's bringing it up mid Ryder Cup match in the middle of this. And it was that was truly when I was like the moment I always reflect back on. I'm like, whoa, this thing is like way bigger than I think any of us had possibly imagined it would be. And just the fact that you know, Roy's shit talking us during the middle of a Ryder Cup match. And then that Ryder Cup ended and I was talking to him a little bit afterwards and I had to send him a DM afterwards like hey would you ever want to come on the pod

you know and he iced it I remember he iced it for like three weeks never responding I was like what the fuck did I say that was a stupid man like so I don't even like him and he's like oh sorry I went off the grid for a little while. Love to do it. You want to do it tomorrow? And I was like, oh, sure. So, like, call it off work the next day or made up. I think I was fake sick the next day.

We recorded the next day. And like, it was posted November 1st, I think it was. And that was, you know, that was the moment everything changed. It was like 5x any pod we'd ever done. It was like, starting to get aggregated in a bunch of places. And it was kind of like, oh shit, like podcasts are kind of a thing now and that was kind of what set things off and running.

All right, Neil, what happened in December of 2016? Well, I'll play it off of what Solage has said. We had our guys shout out to Barry, out in Hawaii. He was our original graphic designer. So he would help us run up like torso, silhouettes and do our on-demand printing, which was the early days of our, our operation. There he's like one of those guys like in Tin Pan Alley, like the old songwriters that like all the other songwriters like, oh, that's, that's the guy, man. But that, that, that

Barry was the dude. It is. John Prine. Yeah, exactly. Back in Golf Twitter, man, that was, he, Barry is the guy. So Barry made some some like Rory shirts. I can't hear you. Almost like a cartoon graphics of him, you know, talking to the crowd when he was playing reading singles. And I think Rory saw saw the the shirts we had and. No, no, no, no, no, let's let's let's set the scene here. There was a text sent. I sent a text to Rory and said, Hey, if we made shirts that like had your face on them, your image and said, we can't hear you. Like, what, like, would you be okay with that?

And would you want us to send you some? He's like, Yes, yes, that's okay. And send me boxes of them. Like that was, that was the approval we got on this. That's an important part of the story. That's true. So then saw it was like, he sent me an address and bell fast. And he said, he needed some boxes of shirts to bell fast. I was like, okay, that's that's pretty cool. And then I think I want to say, it was like three weeks later,

we probably got a cease and desist through Rory's team. What's he prefaced by saying, hey, guys, you know, I hate this. I hate this part of the business, but apparently, apparently, he pays a lot of money for my image and likeness. So we had to, we just stopped making those shirts, but I always felt like that was a seminal moment in the, in the NLU history.

If you need the evidence here, I have it. If you would like me to present the evidence that we got approval for this, just if there's any, any attorneys out there that are still, you know, trying to rate clawbacks on these, but.

No, I think we got approval, because this one, like, definitely was like a picture of Rory. Most of the silhouettes and stuff, you know, it wasn't like somebody's likeness. It was more just the act of the torso that we were. There was also one that said enjoy the show. Yeah, I would remember that. I said, by the way, if we made a, a, enjoy the show, share it with a silhouette of you bowing to the crowd, or I can't hear you. With the obvious silhouette of you with your hands to your ears, a, would you have checked B? Would you want one? He said, I would not object that I want boxes of them. Oh, support times. Also in March, then, 2016, we put our first order of H&B polos in, which was portended on, you know, selling many and many of those and William Murray came out with their logo that

Uncannily like ours also Randy the chef stood on the roof Eugene And then Neil you and Randy came to visit me in Boston and I took you guys to play 36 holes and you posted some stuff on Instagram, I think. Other Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter or something, you're like 36 holes, dude. I do. That was a good day of golf. That was a fantastic day.

A couple little hangers on 2016. We talked about Traptor our earlier debut in July of that year. Do you know how many episodes you guys did in 2016? Like six four no six. I'll say The record says five I think when you guys debuted you debuted with your intro music, which I think is shocking and truly Jars people to this day, but we had to wait for, I think it was no laying up episode three or four maybe,

Sully for the entry music. A lot of people ask about that. Who did the max up? Was that a you? Clash? Or staff at the time for sure. Like our enormous staff that we had, just laying around waiting for a project. No, I, I, I manually made all that download illegally, probably downloading

all the, all the audio clips for it. Has that ever caused an issue? It did. The tour finally came to us like in 2017, like, Hey, you can't like do this, even though fair use would say we definitely can. But like, Hey, here's a, here's, we signed something with them that like they released the rights to it for free for us to be able to have that. So we did a deal. On the trail, bro, front, I'm not sure, Dick, right? Or yeah, I'm not sure if Mr. GZ is aware that we're using his music. But that's what you think we think we do think we do think. So that's not nothing. Yeah. All right. In 2017, Mr. Roy McElroy plays golf with president Donald J. Trump.

So how does this come about that? No, Ling up finds out about this and what resulted from it. So it, it's like, it's around February 20th. If I remember right, and I remember that because like my deadlines for usually February 28th, like I couldn't have been that much more busy at work yet kind of checked out at this point. And I woke up to a DM from someone I didn't know and that just really random but said, Roy played with Trump today, Roy made an eagle and Trump shot about 80. And I just like didn't think anything of it.

We're going to a lot of DMs and just a lot of random info. And then I like around lunchtime, I checked back on that on my DMs or whatever and I just like didn't think anything of it. We're gonna lot of DMs and just a lot of random info. And then I like around lunchtime, I check back on my DMs or whatever and I saw that and I was like, man, that is kind of specific. Like why, you know, it could be a rumor or whatever, but that's including some specific details. So I reached out to Rory, I was like, did I hear about, you know, who you played golf with yesterday

and he was like, yeah, I was fucking unbelievable or something like that. And I was like, yeah, I was fucking unbelievable or something like that. And I was like, whoa, like how is this not like being reported on? I mean, this is, yeah, this is 2017, he's president, right? Yeah, Trump had been president about a month and it was a big like story about how much golf he was playing already in the presidency.

And there was nothing out there that he played with Rory and I was like, hey, can I like run with this? He's like, yeah, sure, go ahead. And I've typed up like, if I remember like 189 words or something really tight, I had no idea what I was doing for breaking news and posted it. And it just went. I consult on this. I might have.

You really might have. You might have written something behind the scenes. And it just goes absolutely ape shit. Like, because I didn't know at the time that the words I had chosen in the, in in a being rather important because I said Roy played 18 holes with Donald Trump because at that point it leaked out that so the White House press corps whatever and they asked about it and he had said, yeah, I played a few holes with him. I tried to avoid the the documentation that he had played 18 holes and so then the White

House press corps like picks up the story and is like this says they played 18 holes And so the first correction like the Trump administration ever made was like later confirming like yeah He played 18 holes with Rory like and so it goes ape shit It goes on the tonight show. It's on CNBC. It's on CBS NBC everywhere Don't care that Trump is golfing but obviously he's a little embarrassed because the president's team has gone to great lengths to hide the fact that he's been playing golf from the public. On Sunday, for example, the White House claimed the president would spend the day in meetings, but then a professional golfer blew Trump's cover.

Just this past Sunday, the president teeded up with professional golfer, Rory McElroy, at Trump International. The golf blog, No Laying It Up, posted this picture from clear sports of McElroy with the president, and their for some at Trump International Golf Course. A White House spokeswoman told reporters Sunday that the president played a couple of holes. Then, after learning that McElroy had shared

the president played 18, the spokeswoman explained that the president intended to play a few holes and decided to play longer. No one plays a few holes of golf. Anyone up for four holes? And like they on CNN, I think this is one that fucked it up. Like they try to make this whole story of, you know,

Trump said he was only playing a few holes, but the golf blog, no laying it up, said that he played all 18 holes. And that little clip got picked up and put on like, Jimmy Fallon and, or I think it was Seth Meyers or whatever at that point. And it just went absolutely apeshit. And that was like what we were known for for quite some time

was like being, you know, I think it was sighted in the New York Times, like we were linked in the New York Times and all that. And that was like the, obviously, easily the most viral anything we'd ever done had ever gone. We got to play with Paul Neal too. That's a great shout out to Neal's Yankees. That's right. I do remember Roy getting costed about it at Augusta, Christine Brennan, really read them the riot act about how could he play with it? And Roy was like, you know, it's the president, like, you know, I probably

would play with any president. I don't think I'd play with him again. It was very hard to go on like a mini apology to. Yeah, he pissed everyone off in that, in that, because he later saying, you know, I wouldn't play with him again, pissed off the right. And then he'd pissed off the left when he actually played with them. So at the end of March in 2017, a solid T.C. take a trip to Northwest England, T.C. What do you remember about this?

The sort of a scouting trip, right? We were, we had packed up our stuff in Boston. We'd had Freddie. My wife, Alex had Freddie in January, late January, uh, that year. And then we were moving to Jacksonville. And in the midst of that, I was going to, she's a saint. I was going to Northwest England with Sally and met him there and we played a bunch of good golf

and we're like, this is pretty sweet, man. We should maybe think about trying to make something of this. It was our first food toggle. It was like golf breaks, I think was sponsored it, but in reality, they just like paid for our golf to go play and we were happy to give them free advertising, for some free golf at the time, but it was, yeah, I remember we were standing. If I remember, we were standing on, I guess, I, I always grew the holes up, but probably the

14th green at Real Liverpool, whatever the one is by the ocean. And we were kind of like, what if we made this a job? What a way, what would that even look like, right? Like, this would be really fun to just do this all the time. And I was two and a half, three months away from the end of my succumbent and answering him. And I was two and a half, three months away from the end of my succumbent in Amsterdam. And I was gonna have to go back and work in Chicago. And I sweared that was the first time we ever even entertained it being a full-time job.

And I think it was like five weeks later, I submitted my letter of resignation to like not go back to KPMG in Chicago and said, all right, we're gonna do this full-time. I'm trying to think, God, we played the bell free on that 15. I remember it. We were pretty much like, yeah, this place sucks.

I can't really say anything positive about it. And, you know, that was kind of the last, like the last time we really were like, it was a pretty early lesson of like, all right, only go to places, like don't really take money from, you know, travel boards or tourism boards, just figure out where we want to go and then get sponsorship aside from the golf courses aside from the destinations.

So when it comes to monetization, what was the first ad read that you did on the Nilling Up podcast? I want to say it's mid March 2017. So like right around the same time, we had a contract that was negotiated via WhatsApp with Callaway through hashtag Chad for an amount that, I'm not gonna say the actual dollar amounts out loud,

but like we started at like one certain dollar amount that sounded like the most money in the world to me and we ended four X that, like no, no, like we have to start way big with this. Like so big. And again, it was not, not an amount of money that was very meaningful in hindsight. But we like throughout that number expected them to come down within 30 minutes. They're like, okay, yep, that sounds good. Send it over.

We're like, oh my God, we got said and it was not, not even close to six figures, just at the scene here, but, which divide that by, by four people at this time, that was like, our entire income, aside from any merch dealings at the time. And that was, Well, that's the thing. Yeah, like, like, I think in 2017, this is right around the time that, I think we start, like, realizing, like, whoa, we have to pay taxes on unrealized income. And I think that was, you know, 2017, especially in 2018, but like before we even went full time, I remember I'd gotten married with our first kid. And then it was like, you know, the IRS, you know, we like followed our taxes and our account was like,

Hey, you need to, you know, you got to pay however much in taxes on this thing. And my wife's like, wait, let me get this straight. You're doing this stupid golf bullshit on the side. Man, we're not making any money off of it. And we have to pay taxes on it. Like for money that you haven't made, like, this is insane. It's important to know we were making a little money, but we weren't that money. We were just leaving it in the business, but as we would come to find out, you actually do have to pay taxes on income. Well, 26, I will say just to give you a sense, though, I made a goal.

2016 was dunk watch year. So I was trying to dunk in 2016. But the other goal I had was to hit a hundred K in merch revenue at the year in 2015. We had done 11 K. So this is kind of big stupid goal in my head very big. And December 31st, I had the franchise by a quarter zip to put us over the mark by like $8. So that was like, in my house, like holy shit, we did it. It was pretty sick.

So yeah, like then that's when the tax thing came to Tron's point. You know, I think once you start getting up in that range with the merch stuff, it was like, oh, well, we should, we probably have to pay taxes. That's cool. All right, Neil, what happened in April,

if Master's Week, I guess of 2017, April 10th? It's the first time about you, KVV. They hosted a, I believe it was called the Mulligan Cup, the day after the Masters at the Champions retreat, one of the few places where there's nine holes by Gary Player, Jack Nicholas, and Arnold Palmer all in the same property. I walked in wearing the note that the aforementioned no laying up long sleeve black dry fit shirt. And I remember like it was like Porter and Bacon and you know all just the just the boys club looking at me like very much. Who is this in posture? Who is talking identify yourself? You're not solid. Who's this pretender? And I was like

oh shit guys I come in peace. KVV could not have been nicer to me. So I just wanted to call that out as our first meeting. Thank you. A few days later, just a week later, something else happened. April 15th, 2017. Can I go back to the deal? Maybe like that one. The champion retreat. Is that, is that when they had you labeled as Neil Carter?

Potentially, that's happened several times though. But I think that that was probably maybe the first of many situations. I remember had a good deal. That's a good story, but does KVV do you remember that story? Do you remember meeting Neil? I do. I remember it was out on like the back porch, whatever rocking chairs in the back porch. That's right. The previous year we had stated the champions retreat and stayed up drinking until like 4 a.m. and then played golf the next day. Those some of those nights at the Champions retreat and stayed up drinking until like 4 a.m. and then played golf the next day.

Those some of those nights at the Champions retreat were just like a who's who of knuckleheads. I remember there being the Australian reporter saying he would cut off two of his fingers if Jason Day didn't win three majors in the next few years. He shall remain nameless. But there was a lot of like, a lot of bold claims thrown around late at night at 2 a.m. About the future of golf golf world. So I'm glad you you think it is nice because I I hope that I was I always try to be at least kind to Younger media people. Yeah, let's read that into the record But no laying up was like nothing absolutely nothing

I remember being like who the fuck is this? Is this a real like I thought it was a fake profile. Like, why is there an ESPN journalist like following us and paying attention to what we were doing? I don't remember the first time we ever talked, but it was that you, you counseled us for many, many, many years and supported us and encouraged us along the way to the point where we're kind of like, ah, I guess we got a fucking higher room. I guess kind of like, we've got this guy. It's, it's time. Sky's been ghosts right in some of our stories behind the scenes. Yeah. We might as well bring them on. TC was was the April 15 or you say April 15, 2017.

Was that when the April 15, 2017, VU and Randy blacked out at the at Harbor Town. Well, I believe it was it was right around that same. I was the lead the next day. First time it met Randy. We had 1400, Michael of ultra cactus lives. First time I met Randy, we had 1400 Michelov ultra cactus lines. Yeah, no free ass, but it was a cactus line flavored.

I don't think they make it. I don't think they do. I think they see that. Yeah. And then the next day, so that was April 14th. And then the next day, of course. So we met Panther Mike. We rolled up to see Island and Panther Mike had sent us a DM on Twitter.

He said, hey, if you guys want to come down and play a seaside course at Sea Island, be my guest. I work here, you know, just swing on by. So we get to, so we drive down, we get to the security gate and the guys like, hey, like, you know, what's up? Like, hey, we're playing golf. He's like, who are you playing with? Panther Mike. I think he works here. I don't know.

We had no idea what time it was. What's his real name? Yeah, I don't know. We don't know. Panther Mike from Twitter. I think. I guess maybe Mike. So we're going to show up.

Cool. Panther Mike comes out and play golf with him. And it was great. He's been a friend ever since. And gave us one of the the wicker baskets. That's right. It is like the top of the flag stick. The guy thought we were trying to steal it on the way out. We're like, no, panther Mike. It's a promise.

Shout out to panther Mike. In May, Sally, you submit your official resignation letter to KPMG. What did your bosses at KPMG think about you leaving a promising career to go join the no laying it up block? My the Dutch partners could not have been more confused. So like you're playing professional golf. Like, no, absolutely not. That is not what's happening. So this has just been going on the whole time. Well, yeah, I mean, the other guy's been running it really. I'm just kind of, you know, I've kind of joined the other guys. I definitely wasn't writing blogs on company time, not even close. And, uh, yeah, I was playing with the move in with my parents, but it was, I spent like six, five or six weeks

going around the UK and Ireland, uh, following the European tour round for three of those weeks and just playing a bunch golf and truly just living off maybe maybe 50 pounds a day both in hotel. It was the original strap plan. I was getting a fair amount of golf of my golf for free like the strap boys are want to do as well. But went around doing that and then like moved home like July 31st, moved in with my parents and was like, okay, I guess this is my job now. And just had absolutely no idea like what that entailed or like what the product was or what we were doing. And it was a lot of trial by fire for the remainder of 2017 figuring that out.

That said, Solid was working like 18 hour work weeks in Amsterdam. That's not true. Like my actual job. Yeah, no, fuck no, that job was so busy dude. Oh my God, I was just, I'm my golf to like the golf writing time would be golf watching time is 9 p.m. to like 12 p.m. on Sundays. And that was it. I mean, I was working. It must have been then July and August, you like

took you didn't work in the summer. Summers were I in Europe, you don't work in the summer. Like you take like three, four weeks off at a time. Yeah, definitely. I just remember talking to you and you're like, yeah, like I used to work all the hours in Chicago. Chicago, now it's like, and now it's like, you know, I don't like, I work six hours some days and then like these people just don't work.

Oh, that's great. It's definitely a different standard, but it was also, I had an hour and 30 minute commute each way and so it was like, it was extremely, the times, the times were not great. The time zones worked in my favor, though. Like I could get like caught up on the train on the way, like to work in the morning and write blog. I don't even remember what I, I've wasted way too much time writing back then. But same. All right. Neil, what happened in May 17? Yeah, just a quick one here. Apparently, stand up to Tron movement begins on Twitter.

There was a logo for it and everything. I think Tron, it just might have been the year of beef. This is the year of impossible. This was before I was working with you. I think T.C. was just had his fastball at the time. He was just blowing pitches. No, you know what this came from? I just remembered was I think this we didn't even put this on the list, but I think this

was a holdover from the blog cabin, which was one of the first big like in person meetings of a lot of these people when I was working at the tour. They're like, we're wanting to get all these influencers down to the players, really show them like TC on episode one, the player sucks. You know, we want to show these people that it doesn't suck and that it's actually pretty fun. So like, who would you invite to something like this? I was like, I mean, all my friends, I guess.

Like if you're asking me to make the list, like, you know, that's who it would be. And so they rented a house inside the gates at Sawgrass and got like a bunch of you guys together. And a porter was there at all these flights. I was flying in for an answer, that's right. Yeah, a guy died on my flight two seats in front of me. It's tough.

But I think that was where that came from was like, you know what, some people need to start just fired back at Trot. You can't let him get away with all this. Who people need to stay in up to Trot. That was the year that Zach made it. He made a nine on the 17th hole, exactly. The island green and saw grass. Randy, you and you and NPD map Powell were also getting into it at this point,

which he might he may have had some some pressiant takes about. He said golf is dying. Golf is dying. Yeah, I will say the blog cabin real quick. That was Neil and I went down there. I remember that was the first time I had been to I might have been since since Jackson that that Hilton heads. It's the first podcast. It was the first time that we the four of us got together. Yeah, I remember we we were amazed by all the smoke shops in uh I hope out by the beach. Yes. We went in there and then we got to. Yeah. I remember we we were amazed by all the smoke shops in, uh,

out by the beach. Yes. We went in there and then we got to the house. I think nobody was there. And we were just like hanging out on the pool raps and generally acting in a pool. We feel the test shoot for golf channel that week. I just forgot about that. Remember that T.C. Remember T.C. You guys were looking for a show. You guys were looking for a somewhere to play in T.C. And I were like, oh, you got to go play Hyde Park. It's so good. Yeah, I went out like humid.

I parted nine hole in when Jackson, we're like, let's leave. Man, this, this sucks. We literally left after nine holes. There's no grass. I'm in the midst of all this.

I was going after Kurt Schilling on Twitter. Sure. Kurt Schilling might have started the stand up to TC move. Alright, so I have here in June of 2017, TC, you played in the BMW chair in charity program. I did. I played with Chesson Hadley, Chipper Jones was in our group. My dad, the franchise, was on the bag. And he knocked over AJ McInerney's bag. AJ had the cleanest bag of, like, title list MB, crombed out wedges. And my dad just, like, knocks over his bag. Like, we're standing there waiting, like, it's sitting on a cart path. we're standing there waiting like it's sitting on a cart path or standing there waiting for the tea to clear so we walk up to the tea because it's slow

going and I mean I wanted to crawl into a hundred foot deep hole at that point. That was a huge I put that on the list because that was a what a world moment of like TC was on television playing in a professional golf tournament. Shank, I like borderline shanked and Craig Brooks was like, yes, is Tron Cauder of no-ling up. Prabaka some call him the spicy commercial. That was just a very much what that like as of even a year ago to that point, this thing was almost nothing and that was happening. That was an all-time performance from the franchise. He almost got a heatstroke,

had to ride in Chipper Jones' cart. He didn't, he was a huge home improvement at the TV show, didn't recognize Al Borland. I know you were sitting there on breakfast. And he got, he's like, he's like, who is that guy right there? And then he, I was like, that, this is like a pro. He didn't know there were less celebrities or whatever. And so he just like points at him. He's like, I know you from somewhere. Who are you? I know you. And I was like, Dad, that's, that's, that's Al from home improvement. And he just blew his mind. All right. In July, it's all you and I meet up at the British Open.

You don't have a place to stay initially. So I say to you, why don't you just stay this big flat of ESPN people? There's sure that won't be a problem at all. And I think you can take it from there. I don't know where I'm taking it exactly from there. Oh, just say they get you got a little bit of death stairs from my colleagues about like, why the fuck did you write this blog guy to come stay with us? Like, and he's getting his laundry done here. Like what it was going on here? Like, what the flat people could have been nicer?

Remember I lost my wallet the last day that we were there? We had a panicked look all around the town for my wallet. We had to sort of, someone had found it like on the, at the car park, whatever. But during that British open, you had one of my favorite tweets of all time when Jordan Spieth made a miracle bogey and then went on a ridiculous run. What was that selling one? This is the, I called it the Sistine Chapel of Torsoz, but it should have been the Sossteen

Chapel. And I still like wake up and I called sweat thinking about how I mistyiled this one. But it's the, from the Sistine Chapel, the, what is it called? What's the actual, the, what of Adam, something of Adam, this painting's called, I should know the creation of Adam. Yes. With Jordan pointing at him, that's, I memorialized in the Kill House for quite some time. You made that on your phone. I remember being so impressed that you were like walking around, watching the stuff, and you were like, like, deep in your phone. I was like, what are you doing? You're like, do you think this is good? Like this is I'm leaving. Excuse me. All right. In August, DJ, it's your last day with the PGA tour. How did you come to

this decision? Yeah, I think it was, I remember having a ton of like late night convos with Tron at this point where I would just go out in my yard and we just talk for like an hour and a half about just golf and Business in the world and where things might be going and what if we did this and how could we possibly do that and maybe you know A lot of that stuff and that all kind of led to video Exactly. Yeah, fitting to video So that all kind of led to you know, I was pretty clear like didn't not that the tour was the tour was a fantastic spot to be. No one says more nice things about the tours than me, but it was just clear I didn't want to be there like forever. So it was looking

to go do my own thing and go do something else. And so kind of came up with this hair-brained idea between you guys and the golfers journal of like, all right, well, if I, I don't know if I can make this much per month here and this much per month from the golfers journal doing stuff, you know, they were just getting started at the same time. And it was like, I don't know, that seems like enough to kind of jump off the cliff and figure it out on the way down. And so, that's that's kind of what we did.

All right, Salie, the same week you stayed in the locker room at Firestone. Tell me about this. All kinds of ideas floating around at this point. There was this, the tour at this point was very much on board with the like, dude, let's throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks here. But it was I was weirdly operating within the bunch of people. The tour probably hated us. And a bunch of people were like big fans of what we were doing.

And it wasn't rising to the level of needing any kind of approval of any kind. It was like, hey, one of our good, good friends now at the tour, and no longer works there, was like, hey, I can, you know, once you come cover the event and I can get you like, there's a bedroom like actually in the locker room. It's kind of sweet. Like you should, you should stay there. But like, here's the deal.

Like you got to like get up early and like get showered and like get out of there. Right. Like, you know, when players start coming in, like, you need to not be there. And I we went out drinking the night one of the nights before and I got up like just a little later than I should have.

And I showering like actually in the locker room there. I was the only option. And I remember like going back into my into my into my bedroom. And I the locker or the bedroom was right by the M part of the locker room. And like the first

player there that morning was Rory. And he sees me like in a towel going into this room and he just looks at me and he's like, what the fuck are you doing? That's a long story. You didn't see me here. You didn't see me here and got changed. It was out of there for the day,

but I stayed there for most of the week. I remember right. I never knew that, Holly. True, no. But this first time hearing of that. Yeah. A real king of the road hobo situation. That's every lock. That's every lock the Nate locked with no one pretty much how I live 2017.

Like he's just like, Oh, KVV, you'll find a place for me to stay in Berkdale. All right. Come on. It'll be free, right? Golf adjacent gets filmed in August. This is really kind of one of our personal favorites. Maybe a lot of people hadn't seen this, but tell me about Golf adjacent guys.

What I know this is the real degenerative of strapped in a lot of ways, but big what's your memories of it? We were one of my favorite courses on tour, Quail Hollow. I believe they were hosting the PGA Championship when it was still in August. And I don't know what these guys can tell me exactly what what deal we did, but I know one of the deliverables was like, Hey, we got a film of video at the tournament. And it was like, cool, but we're not allowed to film like any golf.

So it quickly was like, what, like, what the hell can we do? I don't remember. I was a genesis of like you and Neil on camera. Like you guys just go off and be for sure. You guys. And that was like the first. It was also DJ's first video project with with NLU. That was kind of the maiden voyage. We'd film the Wolf Hammer video the day before. But that wouldn't go out until later on. That's right. And so we were. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was from my perspective at the venue, it was like, well, are you okay? Like not going out and like watching a lot of the golf when I was like literally like that's totally fine. And I think it quickly

turned to like, let's just go to as many places as we can add a golf tournament and see what we can get into. And so, did you can add some color, but it honestly was like a great time. I had a very fun time filming that. I think one of the highlights was getting back in that worker dining compound, getting to ring the the chalbell, finally working up the nerve, go to some people, try to get them on camera.

Neil, I remember that was, we were very uncomfortable doing that, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable day, which would, we're tend to a lot of fun things down the road. Yeah, I don't know how we got into that situation, but I think it was a couple of us had to we were all there and a couple of the turner, right? Yeah, a couple of us were doing like maybe live social media like we did a live game. Type stuff from the range.

And that was like our first time doing that. I remember that. I've totally forgot about that. And so I think Tron and Sully were doing that and the three of us were kind of just like, I don't know what to do. And so for whatever reason, I don't know. It seems like you guys would be funny like on camera together. Why don't we just go try to figure something out. And then obviously had such a fun time with that that we're kind of like, oh, we should, you know, there was a seed of an idea there, I think, probably going forward.

I'll call out to Paul. Paul never gets easier. Yeah. Shout out to find bomb. That was great. I was going to say never never get easy. Never get easier to just coldly go up and ask people if they want to be on camera. That would not change over the next six years. That's that's easily the worst part of the job. Uh, Sally, this time for some reason, you went on the Asian swing of the P.J. tour. Tell me about this. Yeah, I was again, just one of those things I had nothing going on in life. Apparently I was living with my parents and a contact that tour was kind of like, hey, you know, we can, you want to like come cover like Malaysia and Korea and China. And I was like, for sure, like, of course, no plan like for how to do it or whatnot.

And, um, but like 2017 was kind of my, I mean, I played a shit ton around the UK and Ireland that summer and then it was like, all right, let's get acquainted with the golf world. Like you need to get out and meet people. Like I thought it'd be really valuable to spend some time with Hudson Swafford and whatnot in Korea and sure enough it was now.

And so it was like, all right, I was sure I'll fly 24 hours to Malaysia and just like go and around a hundred degree heat with humidity at CIMB and watch a lot of the golf there and then on to J.J. Island and Korea and playing screen golf there. And my visa for China never came through. So I got to go home after playing a little golf in Korea after that one. But yeah, it's spent like just like three weeks on the road, just again, nothing else going on in life. And something that will never happen again,

I can promise you that. On November that year, the gang all packs up in hits to Australia for tour sauce. Guys, how did this trip come together? Zach was going down there for the Australian Open and he had become a pretty good friend of ours at that point and was like, Hey, you guys, like, do any of you guys want to come? Yeah, that sounds sick.

Yeah, we had, I think in our those big late night phone calls with TC, a lot of that was just like, why is nobody doing like a travel show in the way that like golf travel actually looks? And why don't we do something that's a little more vloggy and a little more dare I say buddy strip, you know, kind of a vibe. And so we're like, oh, we could do that. And it was like, well, I don't know how to really like work

the camera or edit anything, but I'm sure we could figure it out on the fly. And so that was, that was basically that. And I think we ended up talking BMW into sponsoring it with, I think the plan was just like, nah, just trust us. We got this shit. Like we got dope. Don't worry about it.

And then they said, like, well, we want to see a pilot first. And we're like, all right, cool, but like, we, we, if you could help us the cars, that would, that would go a long way. So it was a good bomb harder play and then they picked it up after this all the pilot. And then they got like a whole thing of speeding tickets. I think it was two speeding tickets. Let's be fair and balanced about that. That just came up on my time hop. I might have a speeding ticket right?

Yeah, it was like five. Yeah, I think we were down there. We showed up like Sunday, fluent Sunday morning. And I think we left on Friday. Like we were down there for like five days. It's crazy. I remember I did. I did. I tripped. So I was back in Columbus and those guys as worked me a video, they had just gotten you were taking that little kind of small chartered plane across to where Tasmania maybe. Yeah, and the pilot was late and he was face time you are playing Hackey set.

Yeah, I was like, I don't know if we're in the right spot. What the fuck is going all down there. You'll find out soon enough. I want my children to know that I chose them over this trip because Salia asked me at one point if I wanted to go to Australia and play golf. I said, Oh, I don't think I can be away from my kids for that long. And I that concept could not have like I could not have understood that the time. Like you don't want to come to Australia and just play golf and hang out.

Like how can you not make this work, man? Like that's that's how I want to do so bad. I think this is it. It's might be a little blurry, but this is the Neil speeding ticket that he got in Australia as well. I got some serious speeding cameras down there. All right. We're getting into the modern era here in January that you're the kill house lease

begins. We talked about this on the nest pod, though we didn't have Sally or Randy on that. What it was it like being roommates guys when you guys had to just shack up together? Well, no, from my perspective, I moved down in late April, I want to say of that year. I think Chris, you had already met your future wife to be. And so I think the dynamic shifted a little bit where you started spending more time at her place, probably. And so for long stretches there,

I sometimes it felt like I didn't really have a roommate or saw it would just kind of pop in. And yeah, it was to back up to the origin of this thing. It was kind of like, all right, we had I was still in Australia. I remember and DJ like DJ was like looking out for a place that was going to be like, all right, we're going to shoot string this like if I'm going to move to Jacksonville if we can just like get a house that like, hey, I'll rent like the bedroom. If like the company can pick up like half of the rent, like I'll live upstairs or whatnot. And we can figure it out.

And as people come on full time, if Randy wants to move down, he can. And like that's how we'll like shoestring this thing. And that's DJ Founda House while on a bike ride, is that right? Yeah, right down the street from my own house. On his own street. So it was very convenient for him. And it was like, I think this is perfect.

And we signed the lease. I always signed unseen for everyone, but you, I think, at TC would have been there, I guess at is perfect. And we signed the lease. I was sidenseeing for everyone, but you, I think T.C. would have been there, I guess, at that point. But he also had a home with his wife. He was not living in. Well, yeah, people thought that they were like, yeah, like, do Freddie and Alex live at the Kill House as well. I guess.

And so the name Kill House, of course, comes from what Tiger Woods would, his Navy seal training. When we had a house, we, of of course had to call it the kill house. And so we got it. Yeah, I lived upstairs and we worked downstairs pretty much every day. And then Randy moved in four months later. And you know, we I ended up moving in with my then fiance, like maybe 18 months after Randy got there.

And then six months after that, COVID hits. And Neil and his girlfriend at the time end up getting out of New York and coming and living in the Kiles for how long were you guys ended up being there, Neil? Over two years from March 2020 until October, November. No, I guess it would be November of 2022, 2020 to 2022. Yeah. Yeah. Two and a half years, which I guess now we can get to the point of at least a point of doing this show is to break a bit of news here. I don't know if we want to wait all the way till the end or if people care, but the killhouse is no more as of December 31st of this year. It has been cleaned out. It is done and it's no longer going to be our storage location

and we are officially moving out of the killhouse. Almost assuredly, going to get a big ass shivin of hats at some point. I would say that we should be surprised. Strange, strange. No, it's just going up there. Whoever, whoever moves in next. Nest members would know that. We did know it to the killhouse on the November episode. It's right.

Broke it all down. If you want a full breakdown of that, it would, Neil, answered a lot of great questions about that. So you should join the nest if you're not. Now, what happened in January 29th of that year? January 29th, the refuge message board was launched. Wow. In the twisted mind of Mr. Big Randy.

You love message board. Mr. Big did you know what you were creating? You love message versus a reds fan? Did you have any idea what chaos you were potentially bringing into everyone's life when you brought the message forward to four? I think yes and no to that. I think yes in the sense that I didn't specifically know what kind of chaos it would bring to us, but I was aware that it likely would bring some type of chaos at some point. Couldn't have imagined what ended up, you know, some of our highlights

or I guess low lights, if you will, on the message board would end up being. But yeah, I always, you know, I have message boards are always a great way for me to kind of keep in touch with the reds and Miami athletics and I don't know. I always found them to be for a certain type of people that likes message boards. It's a real community hub. And I think that was my hope, my thought. And yeah, we launched it and like a lot of other things. I was like, well, I'm not really sure what's gonna happen here,

but it'll be fun to see as we go along. And yeah, it's both, it's been both like way better, way more stupid than I think I ever could have imagined. But still kind of the central nervous system of the, both the nest community and just I think NLU in general, if you want to get lost in the sauce, go to refuge.nolangup.com. You can, you can spend some hours on that message board. A lot of fun shit in there, movie club, TV club, all various kinds of clubs. You can meet all kinds of people. You can join a roost, do lots of stuff. Neil, in February of 2018, you almost get arrested outside waste management.

I, I, I don't know. I, I think the cop and I were had an understanding. He just, he asked me to leave. He asked me to stop trying to set up. What were you doing at the time? Just tell us. Well, we were out covering the waste management as a team. So as another like team trip Randy, I don't think you made that trip,

but we went out there to kind of cover the Saturday extra Avaganza that happens at the waste management. I shipped, of course, shipped a bunch of shirts out there. Got it. I rented a t-shirt cannon. And we were all set to, you know, Huxen, we're testing it. Yeah, we're forcing it. I think we hosted something. And I think the tour freaked out about us taking a t-shirt cannon out to the course on Saturday morning. Well, it's just like word had word had spread like throughout the whole executive team. Which like these guys, they got a t-shirt can it up there. They're playing it a fired off during the turn of it.

And it just was like wildfire getting phone calls from media officials. Hey, do you guys have a t-shirt can it? Are you bringing that thing? You can't do that. Which is, you know, which is fair. I understand. Try to squash that one. So, and I feel like at this point, we were kind of trying to like, I had just come on full time, like a few weeks prior. We got DJ on, we got Sully on full time. We're kind of like trying to make this thing into like a serious operation. And then we have a fucking future. Well, so I had a bunch of leftovers. I was beginning to get the fire off. It's harder to get to make this thing into like a serious operation. In the future. Kid. And then we have a fucking future.

Well, so I had a bunch of leftovers. As we didn't get the fire off, you know, it's harder to get rid of the shirts when you don't have the can and to launch them out of. So I figured, hey, let's, you know, let's do a little 10 bucks for a shirt, you know, teens or two low cardboard signs. Cause see what we can get into out in front of the tournament. And as much as people love free stuff, you know what they hate is people trying to sell them stuff. And I wasn't getting many bites and the cop starts kind of mosey and on over to me. He said, you can't do that. He laid it on pretty thick about how the Thunderbirds, this is a charity event. And I was like, you know, don't go there

with me if we want to look under the hood here. I've the Thunderbirds finances. I'm sure we could find a few warts. But I was asked me to keep the Thunderbirds out. Come on. I was asked. Thunderbirds are good. Yeah. Shut up. Neil. You just got you got put the body bag by the Thunderbirds. All right. No, the cop. The cop asked me to leave. I said, okay. So I took the shirts back to the room, load up a backpack with a bunch and hand them out at the event. And it was it was great. Lovely. All right. DJ, what happened in April, April 25th and 2018? Randy, you remember this day?

Oh, I think I know. I think it was one of my first days in Jack's Beach as a full-time resident. But you might not, you might not specifically remember because you, yeah, we were out of the West Coast. and this was you passing out at band of dudes. That's right. That's right. That was a whirlwind. That was I'd okay. So I just moved in a couple weeks before and then we took a big trip out to band and I think the last day we ended with 36 holes plus 13 on the preserve. We were sitting in dinner. We were supposed to get on a red eye that night and like truly it was the most exhausted I have ever jobbed life. Yeah.

In hindsight, I didn't drink much water, got up, felt sick at the table. And so I remember thinking like, oh God, I don't know if I'm going to like get sick, but I need to get to the bathroom. And so I stood up and started walking back out of the main restaurant there at the main lobby at band and back to the bathroom. And I think as I was leaving the restaurant, if anybody's ever fainted,

you just feel like all the blood rushes out from your head and it's that weird feeling. And I actually got back by the bathroom. I specifically remember this and I laid down because I felt like I was gonna faint of course. And I was like, man, what am I doing? Like I'm gonna look like an idiot if anybody sees me. Like I gotta get up.

And the next thing I remember after that was getting woken up by an Asian man of, I don't know his name, but he was like, are you okay? Are you okay? I was like, Oh, I don't know, man. What's going on? I remember trying to tell him, like, yeah, my friends are in there, eating dinner, but this is where I kind of lose a lot of memories. And I'm sure you guys have much different memories. They were just sitting there at dinner and he's like, your friend. It's a tall friend. He fell down.

Playing on the ground. What? He was just a table. Yeah. So we're like right at this point of just, you know, everybody's canceling their health insurance and trying to figure out like, oh, we'll just kind of like bootstrap this thing and we'll get on these cheap plans and whatever. And I remember vividly being like, hey, Randy, man, like, they're calling the ambulance. Like, is that what you want him to do? Like, is that, uh,

you tell me my fall. Yeah, my fall head hit my head. He's like, yeah, I think that's probably good. Yeah, I need stitches. I mean, it sounds bad. And I guess, in a sense, I was lucky, but it was like, yeah, let's, we should probably get this stitched up. But I ended up going to the North Bend or the Kooz can get super lining. Yeah. And nurse Karen in there, traveling nurse was like one of the better characters I've met in this whole in this whole entire time. She was funny. DJ and I had her laugh. And I mean, it was high spirits back there in the actual little emergency room. And then the next day, got some breakfast and walked the labyrinth. And it was it was an all-time day.

I had left early to catch a flight. And that was when we started talking to each other like, like war buddies like brother. So we were just running this bit for I don't know three hours like I'm hitting the LZ brother. I'm out of here and I get back to New York I just have a video waiting for me on the tarmac of Randy in a hospital bed like brother It got real weird after you left and I thought it was like I thought you're joking. I was like you guys are taking it too far here I thought you were joking. I was like, you guys are taking it too far here. Yeah, that's a tough one. Shout out to Ben and you know,

Dej, I think they were gracious enough to extend one of our places to stay an extra night. That was very nice. And thank you to you, truly, for being willing to stay an extra day. We, as you said, we got to walk the labyrinth there the next morning. We, as you said, we got to walk the labyrinth there the next morning. We walked around the University of Oregon up in Eugene before our

flight out. That was, uh, got to see coach Altman on the flight. It turned into a bit of an enjoyable, yeah, extended trip, but, uh, not one that any of us were planning on. It's kind of an interesting time period though, because it's like, you know, you got all these reminders of like, all right, we're trying to be this serious company. And then there's all these weird reminders as well. Like, you guys aren't a serious company.

You're like, you know what? As much as you try to like move forward here, you're still the same morons. Which, yeah, I think this is on the back end of my, I got deep into the Twitter audit game. And to beat it, golf's got a new big four. That was, that was ill advised.

Stand up to Tron was, was, failed. The TC came back with a vengeance. And then, guys, April 2018, something seminal happened as well besides the band in trip. And that was the PGA tour came out socks and live underpar hat and all sorts of swag. And we immediately start making fun of it like from the jump. And they're like, wait, like, why are you guys making fun of this? Like, this is our new thing. And like, because it's fucking stupid, like, this is outrageous.

And yeah, it would be another two years until Joe or Curie, uh, the mastermind of that. You made it two years? I thought he only made it a year. Yeah. Made it, I think like two and a half years, because he was, he was there when DJ left, I think. He had just gotten, yeah, he had just gotten there. Going to pause real quick here in Ask Cody,

you're still in the military at this point. Where are you when you first start to sort of become aware of no-ling up where you're downloading episodes of the trap draw in Syria, whatever, please expand a little bit about how this became a part of your life. I also was on hardship tour, just like, Saulia described his when he was gal venting across the world, sleeping in hostels and, you know, rummaging around to find his next meal.

I tuned in. It had to have been early 2016 because I remember listening to Bob May and I don't know how the trap draw was directed to me. I still am confused by that. I'm sure it was an Apple podcast thing where I just went in and searched golf and somehow the trap draw was at the top of the list. But I remember it being summertime and like, Bob May was definitely the first episode that I went and then I went back and listened to John Van Develle. And I remember being like, that's such a seminal moment in my golf watching career. But what it was is that we're just getting ready.

We had just finished the clearance of Manbij, which Manbij is a large city in northern Syria, just west of the Euphrates River. And I had basically been sleeping out in the field with me and one other American, the linguist that traveled with me and like 12 of our Kurdish Syrian partners. And you don't speak a lot of English

when you're at these, basically out living in the field. We're in the field for like 37 days straight. And podcasts kept me through that time. And I remember coming back to refit from Manbij and we had like seven days off. And we're getting ready for the clearance of Raqqa. And I remember sitting like at our small camp at the cement factory in northern Syria and like trying to get my podcast to download. And for some reason, I'm like, well, where the hell? Like these trap drop podcasts go like, I've listened to three and I have nothing else left. And then for some reason, I like put two and two together and found

the knowing a podcast and moved over from there and it kind of been, you know, obviously was hooked ever since, but there's some some key deployment times, not only in 16 and 17 and when we get through an 18 where the podcasts, both of them truly bringing me the utmost amount of joy, I hope we get to a little April Fools podcast eventually that I listened to the entire thing because I didn't have an option. There was nothing else left and we just kept that thing going, man. God, I was so sick. Awesome. All right. In July of 18, the ganghugs over to Scotland for tourist sauce. How did this come about? Yeah, same thing. I think the Australia stuff was a success. And, you know, we're looking to go do another one. We had, you know we're looking to to go do another one we had you know hoodwinked BMW and to sponsor another one of these things which was which was great put together and Calaway we had double sponsor on that season put

together an unbelievable itinerary I think the only thing I put a couple random things in here July 9th Randy gets back down by Ricky Fowler at North Barrack I think we've we've probably talked about that after just shitting on him violently on the podcast. Finally, it has an opportunity to go put a floating finger in his chair. I knew I was on the land. He made no effort to come outside to where I was.

Why was I the one that needed to go to him? July 11th was the Ealy Sox Day. Many people will remember a day that now, I believe has caused them to change their, and loosen their socks rule, which is, you know, very cool. I think the big reason to kind of put this one on the, on the docket though is, like, if I tried to do this trip again right now, I would literally, I would die. I would not survive the trip. I think it was like every day for whatever was a week or eight days or

10 days or whatever. It was like wake up at five, drive an hour and a half, walk 18. And the rocks out of the road. Yeah, the rocks out of the road. Walk 18. Holes, drive two hours, walk another 18. Holes, drive three hours to some weird B&B that we're gonna stay for like six hours. Hall, all your shit up a staircase, share a bedroom with somebody, sleep for like four and a half, five hours, and then wake up and do it again. It's just not happening again, I don't think.

But it was pure adrenaline, I think, for at least for me, I'm sure you guys felt the same way, but pure adrenaline until I think for at least for me, I'm sure you guys felt the same way, but pure adrenaline until until it wasn't, I remember vividly the drive to like through Dundee with with Tron and Randy, and I think Sol and I were the other car. And for whatever reason, I think we were doing a little better. We kind of had a little spring in our step still

and we like look back and like I just remember be like those guys are not gonna make it. I don't know what we're gonna do, but like those guys are not going to go on. We might have to leave a beard at this gas station. I was hurting. Yeah. I don't think I could handle a trip like that. Don't try to do multiple like more than two regions of Scotland, the same trip.

But I think that was also, I mean, shift 2018. So five years ago, like I was was 32 and ran to your three years older than me. I think like the difference in that, honestly, it was very real. Like three years later, I could not have done it. I totally could not have done it. DJ, I got a question for you. You, we had talked about Australia. You, you took off the end of year for that.

And I'm, I'm assuming that that first part of that year, you were spending an awful lot of time editing and trying to figure out how to make these videos. I think TuraSauce episode one debuted in June of that year. And then a couple weeks later, the guys are like, yo, we're going again. I can only imagine the year like, dude, like I'm not even done yet with this.

Yeah. Honestly, it was not because Matt Golden, who a guy we should have mentioned previously, stepped in the picture and we get a lot of random emails from people like, oh, just, you know, I want to get involved and I'll do whatever, which is not helpful, right? Of just like, you know, hey, man, it's very nice to people reach out, but the worst thing is just like, hey, you just like give me the direction is where I'm like, ah, dog, I love golf. Yeah, exactly.

But Matt was wise beyond his years to reach out and say like, hey, I'm a video editor. Looks like you guys are doing more travel video. I specialize in just like taking a big pile of disconnected footage and like spinning it up into a story. You can just dump it all on me and go from there. I was like, oh my God, buddy, this is, you could not have been more of the right place

at the right time. And so he did a lot, or most, or all of season one. And by the time we got to season two, it was a little more like, you know, I took on a little bit more of it or kind of took some of it off of his plate. So the edit bay was still in a good spot at that point. We were ready to take on new projects.

Now watch this space though. Watch this space. We ended up doing three of them in one year and was that maybe a mistake? Sure. Sure. But you know, at that point, we were doing okay. Certainly this is the time we're thinking of new

in different concepts. The first day of strapped is shot in August 15th of that year. Guys, how did strapped come to be an idea that you were looking to move forward on? Randall? Well, I think it was, you know, some of the feedback we were starting to get was, hey, you guys are taking a lot of awesome trips to far-flung places around the world. As a viewer, I'm not sure if I'm gonna ever get to those places. Do you ever do anything that's more relatable to, you know, Joe Schmo and Middle America?

And that was the seed. D. Do you remember us having a work day at, God, I'm embarrassed. I've found that native son. Yeah, they had a bar in this grocery store, a couple of ramen bar. The Kill House. Is that right? And so, Dejan, I got a couple drinks and we just,

I don't know, as I remember, we just kind of sketched out a vision of what a, what we thought a fun, funny concept would be. And I think we're pretty true to it. With that first strapped season and certainly, you know, funny concept would be. And I think we're pretty true to it. With that first strapped season, and certainly have tried to stay true to it. But I think Iowa specifically is a question that gets asked. And from my perspective, it was like, man,

where's somewhere totally random that nobody would ever think to go to in some place that I've never been to. And I was like, I just always feel like Des Moines, Iowa is like the place that held that spot for it like in my mind like, I wonder what Des Moines, Iowa looks like. And sure enough, we went. And I think my favorite thing was Neil promptly missing the flight. And just, I think it just adds to the stupidness

and I don't know, zaniness for a lot of better words. I'm just straight up, I just left too late for the airport and missed the baggage check deadline at JFK, which is tough. The other piece of this, I didn't go on the Scotland tourist trip, which was a bummer. Before you guys left that trip, it was like, oh, we're going to Scotland and then like the next month, we're going to go to Michigan. We're going to do a Michigan thing. And so I was like, all right, cool, I'll sit the

Scotland one out because I didn't have the vacation days, but I'm in for Michigan in September. Like, sign me up. These guys get back and it's just like, yeah, yeah, so how how how we feel about Michigan? Yeah, we're not doing that. I was like, Oh, okay, cool. And I think remember DJ being like, but we have another idea. And I was like, I will. Like, put a lot of this stuff on the timeline.

It's like, man, Neil had to take a lot of days off work. I don't know how he made this work. This is this is wild. Yeah. All right. So one of the most famous podcasts gets recorded in September of that year with a young cornferry tour player Max Homa. Guys, what happened on this podcast that makes it special? Yeah. This is a hand up for me. I believe I was I was raised. That's brave of you. That's right. You're running the ones and two.

Let me get out ahead of this one. Max was in town for the Cornfairy Tour Championship. This is of course like coming on the heels of, you know, he's he's like one of the best players in college golf. He's one of the best amateurs in the world. He gets his PJ tour card right away. Historically flames out and then has to battle all the way back on the Cornfairy Tour to get his PJ tour card back, a struggle that he detailed, you know, in great detail on the podcast. Turns out that was the second time we had to record that podcast because we got done with it.

And Max is like, he's almost in tears, he's talking about this great struggle he's gone through and how proud of himself is that he's really like pulled himself out of these depths and he finishes and we're all like, God, that was awesome. And I go to his stop and I just realized like, oh, the card like corrupted, like none of that recorded,

like none of that, none of that was saved. Randy, you wanna talk about all the blood rushing out of your head. I was like, I don't know, man, like, maybe we can do it again tomorrow. I don't want to take anywhere your time is like, no, fuck that. We're doing it again right now. But like fire back up, fix whatever you got to fix. Like we're going to tape it all again.

And so unfortunately, that was, or fortunately, maybe that was the, that was the second take of that podcast, which probably made it a little more cogent, a little more organized. We did the next day. It was the next day. It was, it was, yeah, it was. No. It was the next day. It was, it was, it was, it was,

it was, it was, it was, it was, it was better the second time even. I was going to say the laughs felt very genuine for having heard those stories the second time. So he was better at telling him the second time too. Uh, we have a scandal on strapped in October of that year.

Uh, that because, uh, got some boys got to play at a private course. Am I, semi, semi, semi, semi, semi public. We've been over this, we've been over this. This is all we've been.

I was way out on season two of strapped. I was deep in this boxing training, worried about getting beat up in public. Kind of life's coming at me fast. Randy and D's like, no, we gotta do another one, man. And I was like, all right, they were like, what if we come to you and D's like, no, we got to do another one, man. And I was like, all right, they're like, what if we come to you? I was like, cool, come to me. So they came up to the, the Northeast for strap season two.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. You're going to have to drive. Turns out my license is suspended. I remember that. Yeah, I got this. For that ticket. How many tickets you're getting this time period? No, I got got, I was taking a trip. I drove up to Montreal earlier that honestly, I think I might have been 2017. And I got caught in a speed trip. I stopped at West Point just to check it out. And you know, went from like

60 down to like 35 cop just nailed me. And I, you know, I was a rental car. I was like, man, I know, you know, it was one of those classic young idiot moves. Like, fuck this. Just gonna act like that didn't happen. Well, that wasn't a good idea. I went to renew my license and they, I went to the DMV in New York.

First time I go, I didn't have a social security card. So I had to get that for my mom. Second time I go, I get all the way through like three hour process, get to the end of the day and say, oh, no, no, no, you are your licenses suspended. So I had to like, fact something to this county, West Point. It sucked. So that was, that was that story. That was tough.

We had another deleted podcast. That was a great point. During 2018 as well. August 2018. Episode 16 of 2018 as well. August 2018. Episode 16 of the trap draw. Gaston. I still haven't saved. I will say what we're over two years into the trap draw. And we were up to episode 16 at this point. For those who are good all this trap draws going to, you know, it's going to come out when it comes out. Okay, don't don't ask about it.

Our friend Rick Clarkson came on the pod and just dished on all things PGA tour, back end, house sponsorships work, you know, had a list of talking points. Sure. And then, you know, it turns out that those talking points weren't, weren't necessarily PGA tour approved. And his, his pension was going to get yanked. I don't know if we know that. I know he was something had shook him. I don't know what he saw by the TV. He was very loyal.

Yeah. This was the beginning of solid deleting stuff for NLU. That's right here with the, if you want to join dots, this is where you should start people. Exactly. Exactly. Episode 16. Digging. It does dig deeper. It does bring up a good point though, Deji.

We kind of brushed over the fact that leaving the tour, obviously, you maintain a lot of friendships, business relationships, and you join the boys. And are you kind of playing this middle ground of like somewhat negotiator as as Sally continues to take advantage of their hospitality, but at the same time TC is just dumping on them constantly. Like what kind of what was the dynamic? So no, it never it never got too bad. There was always, I remember vividly there was a pretty good stretch where I was clearly the only one whose phone number anybody had.

So any issue was just like, I'll just call DJ. He's, you know, and I think I've pretty deftly, hopefully managed some of that. Like, yeah, I can help you with that one. That one, you know, let me send you a phone number. You might need to talk directly to somebody else on that one. But it was all good. I think most of the time I'm sure all these guys would have tested most of the time the meetings with the tour were always like privately like listen like don't tell anyone but like I agree with what you're saying like this is you guys are you guys are right out with this keep pulling the thread of that would but like you know we got to kind of slap your head a little bit on

some of this stuff that will forever tickle me as we we heard that the episode so ruffled the feathers of the PGA tour leadership that the episode was transcribed and printed out and provided at some type of meeting in which they were discussing action to take. And so just the idea that they had to- They all gathered around a speaker listening to it in a conference room at one point, one of the executives got up and said, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I can't believe he's airing our secrets like this.

Yeah. Which to your point from earlier, Tron, it's like, yes, it's like deeply stupid, unserious stuff. But at the same time, it's, you know, like, it's also reaching that level. So that like push and pull of, is this a serious thing or not a serious thing? It was like really funny at that time. It's still fun. Of course. And also, I would say, I think we've recognized

in the moment, like, this is what you guys are. This is what you guys are spending your time on. Awesome. I can think, you know, a little bit of hindsight now, but maybe a couple other meetings that should have been taken around that time. But a bit of better use of everybody's time. They, they knew what the trap drawer would become one day. Neil, you mentioned the boxing match that you'd been in, which I like to, I haven't even mentioned of that to, you know, here, discussion.

Season finale, season two is strapped. We're one and out in our boxing career, fired up about that. Let's solid live stream the fight on Twitter, which I got super nervous about that. Like right before I got in the ring, I was like, oh shit, man, this is shit to us. But this is real. But no, that was, I think for me, defining moment to like, you know, I had some feeling pretty swaggy after that. I was like, fucking, I'm just gonna quit my job. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this thing full time. So that was, that was the beginning of me I'm just gonna quit my job. I'm gonna do this thing full time.

So that was the beginning of me exiting Google and then in February of 2019, February 1st of 2019 was my first day at NLEU. All right, in November of that year, Tiger and Phil are playing a match in Las Vegas. You guys end up interviewing them. Please tell me about how the Tiger and Phil interviews came about.

Yeah, it was funny enough, there was an agent who now through a series of events, we now works with the same agency that we're represented by, but he had set us up with some, I would say mid-tier level LPGA players way back in the day. That was our link. All of a sudden, he ended up over at Excel and was like, Hey, I'm kind of running like the match media. Like, would you guys want to come out and interview Tiger and Phil? And I remember being like, damn, I'm glad I responded to you about Bronti Law back in the day. Like that was, that was a good good decision. And he's like, Yeah, we'll do an interview with with Tiger and Phil separately, all that plans change all of a sudden. The last second feels like I'm

going to leave if you don't like interview me now. Soans change all of a sudden, the last second feels like I'm gonna leave if you don't interview me now. So DJ asked to grab a cell phone and go interview Phil in the bathroom while I interviewed Tiger. And that was a very much a, and you're one of doing this full time of like, oh, yeah, we just interviewed Tiger and Phil for our podcast and did not see that happening

in the very first year. Only thing I'll add to this is, the leather jacket thing was not my idea that was Kevin Hopkins, who he's mentioning, that was his idea to start with the question about whether the leather jacket was performance art or not. He's like, oh, do that, I'll lose and fill up right away.

That'll be a great question. Just punch him in the face. He'll be totally loose and then you can ask whatever you want. I was like, are you sure? He's like, definitely, definitely. Phil did not take it that way. Let's go. I'm just out out of the Kevin Hopkins on that one. All right. In February that year, Neil, you used

your first day with NLU at coincides with a flight to Orange County where you do what? Uh, picked up an RV for the day one of Torosau season three RV from LA to San Francisco ran and that driving it back to LA. That was that was a big trip. That was a lot. This is this February 2019. 2019. Excuse me. Okay. Had you ever driven an RV before? No, but we didn't have to have a class C license for this one. So we got the biggest rig we could that was like not a a tour bus. And some of the highlights, I mean, obviously the George Gank is laying his hands on Randy RV breaking down in Big Sur. Do you think that's the 10th? Do you think that's the 10thest moment in the history of NLU?

That was tough. I mean, we were playing off the rig there. Everybody's a little fried, weather sucks. Everybody's a little fried, the weather sucks. Yeah. That made the weather was awful. We're in the tightest, tightest living spaces. God, that was, that was tough. That was tougher than Scotland in my opinion. For sure. Living space got even tighter.

But then once we got rid of you, you clowns in San Francisco, Randy, I, we took our time to back down the coast. Yeah, all in all, I, I look back fondly on that trip. highlighted Neil, I got the like a neuro virus. I remember our day in San Francisco, I was literally just dry heaving everywhere. We went to a USF basketball game and I would get up like every three minutes, just go dry heaving the bathroom. That was such a. They were running good offense offense though Randy. Randy's like I'll be right back. I'll be right back. It was a really good time getting back down the city of California. One thing I wanted to

call out February 18th 2019 tweeted at Brennan porath. I don't think Jay Monahan's first two years as the commissioner could have been any more disappointing. So much promise yet puns it on every pressing issue. God, if we only knew how much weaker and poorly managed, it could get from there. At that time, you were only focused on connecting the fucking swamp on 17. You didn't realize how complex you had a canal. Which he also played play. It was TV product. Yeah, he put it on that two. There's plenty more there, but we really ramped it up in 2020.

Blake, February, film another season is strapped and Neil, you come up with an iconic ask here when Ben Shaw hands you a, a small marker that says strapped. But you think it says? I thought it said St. Rapio. Because he was, you know, just that out of his preacher, if you look at the coin, the original, it does look like S T rapio.

And I was like, I'll tell me about this guy. It sounds like a, you know, I thought I knew my saints, but apparently I don't, you know, I never heard of rapio. Easily the best part of that is if you go back and watch it, like, Niels Ernest is which I admire greatly. But Niels Ernest is to just fully sell out like, you know what? I'm interested, man, I'm going to meet this guy on his level. I'm going to get exactly what I was thinking.

I'm going to get into your world, man. Tell me about this guy. I'm open to it. It was, was my part of the best part of that. And then the two of you guys say, are you fucking? Yeah, I traded a glance with DJ. I'm like, holy shit. You, you hear this?

Neal's Yeah, inhaling that oh my god. I can't believe what just happened. I believe I believe the line in heels it says strap you Shit That's a hostile response In April of that your TC TCU making an ace at sweetens, but it turns out what? Well, no, I made an ace, real ace. Neil saw it with his own eyes. I did. They were kind of glazed over at the time. I think that was my birthday. And then the next

day, Zach, do me, it was a better shot. I made, I hit it off the stick. Couldn't see the bottom of the stick. He acts like it went in and, you know, everybody dumps beer on my head for a couple of minutes. It was like 50, there's like 70 people around the green. It was like closest to pin contest, right? So it was a huge, a huge sale made on that days. Coordinated. Yeah. And then Neil, Neil picks me up on his shoulders and, you know, the video is awesome. You can see the pure joy in people's face. We might need to share that one. They have just like, people are almost crying.

Rob's there with his daughter, heart's full of their gym. Heart's full has got this great video. And it was true. Just like massive. And golf's the greatest. I can't believe which is provided a moment like this. And it turned out it was all fake. Really, really funny.

Neil would happen to April 13th in 2019. It was a merge sweepstakes at the Masters with Maddie Kelly, Viches Caddy, Joe Scoveran, Mike and Michael Greller, all rocking NLU t-shirts under their caddy whites. I remember watching this. This was the Friday round. I was watching this at a bar in New York. And I was just like, Oh my God, this is unbelievable. Although I don't know, we just had sent some shirts and these guys all just decided to wear NLU shirts

and I thought that was like, that really tickled me. What happened at the colonial year? This is, this is coming, dude. We don't have to talk about that one. That one could be left alone. I just wanted to see a look at Neil's face. Will set the filming trip. That one. There's a horrible horseshoe. Yeah. There's a high bar with you with things that we get to, if we make it into 20 years, we'll tell the story then. Yeah. I'll answer that one in the nest pot. How's

that sound? That sounds great. I think wip April 23rd We went on tour sauce Ireland April 27th the night out at Reedies. I don't know if you guys if anybody remembers any of that I just put that on the list is like Probably the drunkest I've ever been in my NLU 10 year Fantastic and then betting a hundred dollars on red on May 8th was another highlight Perstrapped I thought that was that was really. I got Monday, May 13th, another big day. This was the birth of ambush marketing. DJ gets a email says.

I'm going to call them this one. Hey, DJ, hope you're doing well. I'm passing this along from the tour regarding the promotion. NLU has launched on NILS account yesterday regarding wearing no laying up gear at PGA tour and other tour events. This may seem harmless, but this type of activity is commonly known as ambush marketing and legally known as torsious interference. And we ask your team to end the promotion.

Full disclosure, we take these steps for anyone doing a similar promotion. And most companies understand this concept is not legal. And this is highly illegal. And therefore, we rarely, if ever, have these issues and quote. This was after Neil called on his whole army of minions to go try to stand in front of TV cameras with no legal. No, I said, if you were, if you wear NLU gear, the tournaments and you end up on TV, I'll give you it's like a 50 bucks in the pro shop.

I thought it was pretty torsion. Cornless. Neil's going to hire the John 316. Apparently, it's highly illegal. So that's, that was, that was always makes me chuckle. June, June 7th, I put on here. Neil with the events of June 7th. Neil was cadding for me at the BMW charity ProM.

And that we had this just biblical raid delay in the morning to the point where nobody thought we were going back out. So Neil, would you have like 14 blue moons? Just sitting at the blue man. I got, I got drunk. Blue man. I got I got drunk. I did. I got drunk. And then it was like three 30 in the afternoon.

It was like, oh, we're going back out. It was like, oh, no. It's so humid. So I get that stupid staff bag I had to lug her out. Short curly hair with a little mustache. I didn't find this. But I not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm gonna make it. He's like, I got I had too many beers. It was it was human out. It was not good. And so DJ and I did not have a good partnership. No, we're not not vibing that thing. I think I was blowing jewel smoke in his in his backs wing. He's starting to get mad at me. Well, I was mad because I was laughing because I was like standing over the ball. And I could just hear this or I could just smell like the faintest whiff of like, you know, peppermint or whatever. Like, oh, there's, there's Niels' jewel smoke. Okay, I guess I'm full of trigger.

It was just so hard not to laugh at the entire situation. All right, in July of that year, some ESPN writer shot 73. And as I'm absolutely happy that we had crabs in the backyard. Pretty fun moment memory for me. The first Emily's summit happens in Denver, uh, becomes the sort of blueprint for a lot of great events. Afterwords, you guys go to Valley Neal. Mushrooms consume there too. A lot more than future.

A lot more than golf. That's a really man. That a lot. Wild world of golf with Jim Furek. We talked about this recently in our off site. Uh, how did you convince Jim to do that? Solid. Uh, what went into that? I have no idea. I have. I was not. It was cowboy. They used to sponsor day. They were like, yeah, yeah, we have an extra day with Jim.

So we're just going to tell him to come to Jack's beach and he didn't really have any details on it. So he was like, what? Where's your, where's your crew? What's your crew? And I was like, and I showed up looking like fluff is cat. You know, I was like, that's a. You had an up hair dye to dye like the bottom part of your, your hair gray. No, Jim just got an adduous with it. It's like, yeah, that was a great day. We like it.use with it. It's just like, yeah, that was a great day. We like it. Jim liked it. November that year, we meet Cody for the first time

in Southern Pines. Cody, what do you remember about this meeting with DJ? I met TC and Sali earlier that year at one of the ringers, but that was the first time meeting the entire crew. A little nervous Nelly, I would say, getting ready as they're, you know, moving their way across the Carolina's for tourist sauce Carolina. But it was awesome. I still think it took me probably three times after that of formal introductions with Randy for him to remember

who I actually was. But that is not one of them. I thought you're going to say that to anybody. I was going to do a big dog. I would note as well too, is that we filmed on that day on November 11th, Veterans Day. I deployed final deployment there, but a lot of things change after that, but very honored to be a part of NLU content. That Cody, I remember after that round in Southern Pines, me, you and Hubert went and you're showing us all the the old holes, all the old like hidden holes at at Southern Pines, me, you and Hubert went and you're showing us all the the old holes, all the old like hidden holes at, uh, at Southern Pines. And we just sat down in one of those like hollows for like an hour and a half, just chatting. That's like one of my favorite NLU moments ever. So, uh, do you want to have another November, what

happened November 15th? I put this one on there as another hand up, uh, because I was going through my photos. And I saw these fishing photos from Solly and Charles. I was like, what the fuck was this? And I was like, Oh, that's right. I lost. That's the only time I feel like I've I've lost full cards of NL you footage. You guys plan this whole fishing expedition. You had this great day out of the water when raining. I are like, oh, we're going to be like the B plot. We don't really have to come up with anything. We're walking around talking about Jim Calhoun's goal goal Rilla and like all this stupid, stupid stuff that we had to end up scraping the bottom of the barrel because I lost that whole card of of fishing stuff. So hand up there, guys, sorry. Looked like a hell of a fish,

Ellie. The nests get slunched November 22nd of this year. I don't know if you want to add anything there. Neil, we had geared up for this for, I don't know, two, three months, Randy and I kind of going back and forth and then looping in McClure and we, yeah, we launched it. Twenty seconds of four years, which is, which is wild to think about, but I'm one of the fucking solos. No, one of those things I'm super proud of. I think it's, it's just been an awesome, it's been a ton of fun to build like a true community and put some structure around it. I think it gets better every year. So, uh, out out to all the next members. So why did you shave USA into the side of your head in December of that year?

DJ and I took a road trip, a BMW road trip, and we were around Ryder Cup courses, and we had to had to have some stakes on the match. Like, you know, you got to have a hook at the end of this and it was whoever lost it had to shave, shave USA into the side of their head. And I choked. Only reason I put this on there was to talk about the next couple days after this because I remember you had to go to Hannah's work party with like USA shaved in your side of your head, but then you also had to go down to medalist. I've got to. Yeah. So really like really tightly after getting USA shaved in your side of your head, but then you also didn't go down to medalist. I mean, so really, like really tightly after getting USA shaved in the side of my fucking head, I got like a random calls like, Hey, do you want to come down to like medalist and play with with Matthew Wolfe and George Gankus?

I was like, fuck yeah, I do. I got USA shaved in the side of my head though. Like I need to like warn them before I get there and shirt off like get there and like you got to take your hat off inside and you go in the pro shot like meet the pros. And you're like, it's a I lost a bet. Like I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to show up at your club with USA shaved in the side of my head, but kind of plays down there probably.

Yeah. That was that was the that was right before the company crisis. Where Patrick eats caddy punched a fan at the president's cup and I missed that night. When the calendar flips here to we come around to March where COVID sets in here, COVID day at the players that one year up my ad and this is that this set in motion my eventual kind of decision to leave ESPN because I wrote some sort of tweet that got me in trouble at ESPN because the tour got really pissed off and complained about it to my bosses. And I was so pouty about it. I was like, maybe I don't want to work at ESPN for the rest of my life. Maybe I want to look around and see what else

is out. So I don't know if there are any other COVID players things that you guys had. They wanted to. Yeah, just I just remember, you know, monahead and going on. CNBC, early that week as markets are melting down, you know, down thousands of points. And one of the greats is to do a victory like a great screenshot of the history of the game. Yeah, yeah. And we also did, I think we did a, like a three hour podcast about the, you know, the future of golf and some of the, you know, machinations behind the scenes as far as a global tour and PGL and all that. We were covering the hell out of that during this stretch January, February, March. Well, this was a big chance for us.

I was down in Florida and then never left after I was down there for the players. And then the killhouse became my home as mentioned earlier. But our whole, we had, I think 12 event, we're gonna do 12 events in 2020 with this whole event schedule planned out. All of that got blown to shit. So we basically started just doing topic-based pods and I think really got comfortable with the group podcasting was really when,

kind of we were forced to change the way the business works. So I think a blessing you disguise for us. Episode 275 was really where we started talking about the world tour. That was January 27th, 2020, and we're at what three years later, we're at 790, 790. So we upped the frequency quite a bit since then. DG remember what you published on a video published on March 4, 2020, I think it was a very exciting new series that was getting ready to come out that ultimately was was stomped due to COVID.

And that would be open season such a sick idea. We were going to Sali's progress, Sali was playing like the best golf of his life. We're like, oh man, you're gonna, let's really like, what if we pulled out every obstacle? Could you qualify? Could you make it interesting and in qualifying for the US Open?

How close could you get? And if you can't get close, then at least we'll have like something fun to watch and we'll get a bunch of instructors and players and caddies and it was gonna be such a sweet idea. And then it was like, I don't even actually know if there's going to be a us open next year or so. Sorry. Want to talk. Neil, you shaved your head to do the results of the census out here. What was the, you had to meet a certain threshold. Why did you shave your head?

Yeah, I didn't think, you know, I thought if we get over a thousand responses in the NLE census, I'll shave in a multiple choice would be Friars cut, skillet or Mohawk. A skull it, excuse me, not skillet, skull it. A skull it was a runaway victor and we, I think we got like 4,500 responses. So just just a note to say that that a shoe store always pays his debts. I had though, I had been growing out my hair for like 15 months, I think, since I had left Google. And so, T.C. did the honors and shaved my head for me. And then June

12th is a big one. This is one of my all-time favorites, the Bryson quarantine video. Also, the black and white one you did from Colonial was around this time of him. Like, you know, champ, champ, Bryson's bombing it away. Like that, which got my, got my accounts suspended. The PJ tour got my accounts suspended on Twitter, which yeah, just circling back to some of those 2014, 2013 moments, apparently, at least they were consistent. They may have not have evolved, but at least they were consistent, I guess. He's not a PJ to remember now to each. Maybe we could release have evolved, but at least they were consistent, I guess. He's not a PG-Turk member now to each,

maybe we could release that on the nest. That's a good point. That'd be great. March 2020, another important milestone. As the world is shutting down and everything, used golf facts, use golf facts interacts with no laying up and yours truly for the first time. Their first tweet was in March or in December 2019, they went after

Lou Stagner on January 3rd, 2020 and then interacting with us March 2020. And then we will come back to that in 2021. Kicked off a nice friendship between the two you guys. One Benjamin Hôteling starts as an intern at that knowing up after probably catching your guys' eye on the radar for building his own course in his backyard or back yard. The strapped boys go on, they make their radio debut and what's up Peoria. Any memories of this guys? Yeah. First trip back on the road. Strapped. Of course, the C-seats since the strapped was out into the world first just to make sure the coast is clear. They have a course stay at home. What is that?

Deach, in September that year, you and Randy go on a trip to Branson, Missouri. Leave that was Tigers course. I just thought I'd feel like this trip just kind of got lost to history of Randy. Maybe one of the hardest I've ever laughed. I think on that trip just throughout, it was the whole Branson experience. It was all the tax I've ever laughed. I think on that trip just throughout it was the whole Branson experience. It was all the taxidermy everywhere. It was the fact that I'm not saying Branson's bad, but Branson's weird. Yes, exactly right. I think that the fact that the course was such a hard walk that those two standard bears went down and we had this witness step in, step in and pick up the

standards for the, for that weird made for TV tiger, or a JT event. We're, this is right around the time Randy has declared Rory dead and Roy's walking off one of these greens and walks past this. It's just like triple takes like what the fuck are you doing here, man? That was funny. The dudes, the dude perfect guys just stormed the, That was funny. The dudes, the dude, perfect guys, just storm the final green. The dudes around the field, just an unbelievable, and we found Tiger's ball. So this was like, well, I was going to say Tiger pumps is like ceremonial first t-shot at Payne's Valley.

So far out of bounds. It like, and nobody were like, that honestly could be wanting like the last golf shots he hits. Like, why don't we go look for that golf ball? Let me see if we can even go back for it. We spent 20, 25 minutes just in the deepest woods looking for looking first ball. And we got it. We rocked him, man.

auctioned off for kids charity. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Right before that, the PGA tour did away with their live under par campaign. I think we were deep into calling for Jay's head at that point. Also, most of your NLU memories just revolve around Monahan. It's over the last year. Why are you so obsessed with me? Also, a prominent golf statistician,

Databoy, strategist, threatened to sue on July 7th, 2020, which is also Niels Bertha. I'm Bertha. Not the first time you've been accused of being a melt to me, or the last. Mitt Casey at the NIT that year. Uh, it's eventually I'm not sure how long it was before case came on to do merch, but that was the beginning of a different probably era of merch stuff for

your nails. Is any, any comments? We met Casey, but she didn't start working with us till 2022. Uh, I'm not sure. So I remember I caddy for it at the NIT. I was so proud that we were going to win and she just didn't have it. Just ball strike. You can kind of let her down. I remember we had talked, I talked to her at we played a tournament in 2021 at in Detroit at Rackham and had sat there and had a couple beers with her and we were kind of starting

to peel back the onion. Hey, what would this look like if you can't work? January 2021, Cody joins as the chief security officer, Mr. McBride. What do you remember about this? Just it was a from the time that we got, you know, the boys were on tourist sauce to me deploying and it was kind of a surreal moment sitting in my team room and Kabul Afghanistan knowing that it's my probably going to be my last operational deployment as the guys make fun of me because I'm want to watch a golf YouTube video with everybody there.

To us being of course delayed because of COVID and stuck in Afghanistan for an extra couple months coming home. I stayed in the same bedroom that you ended up staying in later on KVV as I was horted by young DJ Pi through the fall of that year and then yeah, picked it up. And I think it was one of those things. I remember my onboarding call with Neil and, you know, I come from like a very structured organization. I'm like, okay, so how does like everything work and how do we communicate and Neil's like, yeah, like your email, man. And I'm like, no, but there's got to be like day to day stuff going on. And he's like, yeah, like, well, we have like a WhatsApp group, but like, we're not going to put you in that. I'm like, okay, well, like just email me, I guess.

I mean, know if you need me. I don't know. Well, yeah, February of 2021 was when we stopped using what's after run the business and Cody implemented Slack, which was a, which I would say a game changer for team comms. Sure. And so his presence was felt immediately. I also want to back up at some point. I thought it was October of 2020, but it might have been a little later. DJ rents out a movie theater in Jacksonville through a private viewing of heavyweights with the NLU team and the WAGs.

One of my favorite memories, obviously, because I love the movie heavyweights, but when a back when movie theaters were really struggling, nobody was going to them. You get a real deal on just rent in the place out. I was like 200 bucks for like 10 people or something, right? And it was, it came with all this like popcorn and snacks. You could watch whatever movie you wanted.

So we did that at a sun race cinema. I hope they still do that. That was awesome. I don't, I don't think the wags will like the movie selection, but we don't really care. This is for your spouse, kind of, right? Neil, in 2020, you set the over under at Nellie Corta for major victories as what? Levance. That was June 27th, 2021. I remember vividly I was in a hotel room in Denver

before another event we were doing in Denver. Sunday pod. Nellie had just won. You guys asked me to set the over under and I stand by that number. I just want to say. I thought you walked that back. We're so early in this Randy. Okay. You know, 2021 memory, I remember coming on board and like every, the big planning thing for that year was of course, gonna be writer cup. And I remember the boys being like, yeah, we have this RV spot reserved,

but we want nothing to do with RV. Can you like handle that? And I remember being like, yeah, you like that seems like your class C. I did, but I remember being like, oh, yeah, that's, that's fine. Like we can, we can figure this out. And oh, my God, we made it through that writer cup doing live shows, but barely by the skin of our little teeth, their comms issues. I think overall, like sleeping in the spot was

fantastic. You couldn't have drawn it up any better, but holy cow, what a project to start it out. I was when Ludwig was born, too. Exactly. Yep. Boom. In 2022, January, Casey joined Sosquad as the merch name, says I said, kind of rethought the way that we did merch. And then easily the most confident person at at NLU. I would, I would, I would, I would have that no offense to anyone else on this call. No. Uh, one of my favorite early moments of all time, the strapped boys break bad in February this year, uh, and in the waffle house, 90 minutes south of my middle beach and decide to, to bust the budget, uh, truly an ode to friendship

uh, and really a culmination of all the kind of things that have built up to that point. Guys, what do you would like to say about that point other than they're all out of fucking paper towels? We stuck it to the man. You stuck it up until that point. Yeah, that too. Uh, just a lot of factors, bad golf.

We kind of skipped over it. I feel like maybe I would have been a lift. If we were factors, bad, bad golf. And you know, we kind of skipped over it. I feel like maybe a little bit of a lift we were planned. Yeah, go ahead DJ. Well, I was just going to say a little bit of what kind of led to that was just before this was the Tallahassee one too. And it turned out we all had COVID on that one and it rained the whole time. And it was just like no, the people that we met were great, but the golf itself is just miserable. So it was like six strap shoots in a row of just like rolling the boulder up the hill.

And that day, that day in Charleston of just like, oh my God, we got there super early because we were like first T time, played four holes, got soaked, and then it rained all day. It's not like we have like playing cards or anything. We're just like doing the wordle for, you know, hours trying to do crossword puzzles, just like killing time inside that fucking clubhouse. Charles Grepeberger, that was a highlight.

I remember that. But it was, it was a lot of compounding interest of just like, man, this was like six or seven of these in a row that are just tough, tough, tough. Well, I know I'd push back because I think we bounced back from the COVID one with New Mexico. Oh, you're right. That was sweet. Well, you're right. Also, you know, you got the big guy sleeping in the van. Like that one took a toll on the boys too. Even though it was a lot of fun, that was, you know, we were roughing it a little bit. I think that hotel in Espanyola,

when we couldn't find a hotel, that whole night we're driving around for like an hour and a half trying to find a place, it was up there on scarier accommodations, I think. So you fast-forward to the waffle house, draft isn't going good, and I was gonna say before, one of the things I get asked was, had you guys planned to do that all along?

And we really did not. It was truly Neil got up to go to the bathroom and I think I looked at DJ. I'm like, what are we doing, man? This is bleak. And in the time of play. Yeah. And the time that Neil went to the restroom, I think we were both like,

all right, let's let's let's do this. We have to radically change course. And so that's what we did. Any other 2022 memories are kind of, you know, just going to move in through the end of the 10 year span here quickly, but just throwing out any other opportunities. I would say, I mean, just generally, like live shows ramped up. I think we started to like, see our, you know, see our lines a little bit better in 2022, but I wouldn't say anything, any specific, I don't have any specifics for you. In January of 23, you begins working with titleists, you know,

any comment on how this came about? It was the end of an era. We had six great years with Callaway. And, you know, we were just, you know, our agency did a deal. They did a deal. We were doing kind of annual contracts with them. And we were not able to secure any long-term deals with Callaway. And kind of figured it was time for a fresh look at how we approached our equipment stuff. And the team there was just been made kind of an unbelievable sales pitch to us in look at how we approached our equipment stuff and the team there

was just been made kind of an unbelievable sales pitch to us in terms of what they could help us with and how it fit in with our strategy and how well our brands were aligned and it was a difficult decision. It was not. It was kind of something we just kind of thought we'd just keep renewing forever, but making the switch, you know, it works extremely, extremely thankful for all that. And we said this last year for all the Kallowee gave us over six years. But at this point of our lives and careers, it made a ton of ton of tons to switch. And it's been just fantastic working with them over the past year. Everything they've promised us they came through on. And it's been, it's been, it's been great for our golf games. It's been great for the content. That was the main thing for us was it had to make sure it made a ton of sense

for the audience. And I think it definitely has. So that's my, you could throw our visit to the title performance institute in December of 2022 on the list of highlights just like whoa this is this high level stuff that's going on out here. So that was it wasn't no offense to Calloway we had great years with them but didn't seem like it was that tough of a of a the time. It was like, all right, this feels right. Let's take the plunge. There was a lot of going back through old photos and stuff of just, you know, it felt

like a return to kind of like what everybody was playing when they were kids or when they were teenagers. Or Randy, even when he was on Taurus' off-aurus, Scotland, we're expressively asking him not to. That was great. Yeah, it was good to get back into something familiar. The all shot match between JT and spieth and Neil and Sally becomes the most watched NLU video ever. Spieth is like bouncing shots off of rusted trucks to sort of highlight his sp, speediness. And then in February of that year, a senior writer from ESPN joins the squad.

I remember what made me laugh a little bit about this is Neil saying, like, I didn't realize like you were like kind of a big deal after a other reaction to it. Like it was kind of, you know, a bigger deal than I thought. So I was fired up for it. It's, that's, you know, I got to, I got to, you know, pick my head up and look around more often. Well, yeah. It's all you played in the AT&T Hebbel Beach program that year, just, uh, you know, one of the best moments, I think on the podcast this year, just take us real quick through how that came about.

Or what, what do you remember? Yeah, play with my good friend, Chris Stroud. Um, yeah, and, uh, we we got paired up with Bill Murray, which was again, one of those sentences that you're just like never would have thought that would have been what I end up doing for a full-time job. But yeah, never dreamed I'd get to play in that event specifically on those golf courses in that setting. And it was about as much fun as you could possibly have playing golf. And that was the first of two times in 2023, the Pebble Beach made somebody cry on the Sunday night recap pod, which I believe KVV followed me into those waters.

After you go to the US women's open with his daughter this in June, the Pebble Beach. I did truly an indelible memory. If you guys let me go for my job tomorrow, I would still always have that of bringing Keegan to pebble so that will forever live in my heart. At the players that year, I walked up to surprisingly, Rory. I didn't even really know that Rory knew who I was, but at Rivi era that year he had seen me from across the, across one of the holes during the program and marched right across the one of the greens and struck his hand out and said, how the hell do those knuckleheads convince you to come work for them, which made me laugh quite hard. And I saw him later at the players that year, I said, you know, I know you're sick and tired of talking about golf. Would you be interested in coming on the trap draw to talk about succession? And he was like, I would love that. Absolutely. And so I think

that was a big surprise when we had Rory on the trap draw that year. And then I guess I would close with 2023 is just one of my favorite moments ever of TC having a dream that Tommy Fleetwood was going to win the open championship and then I'll let you take it from there. Yeah, I mean, it didn't necessarily say what year he was going to be the national champion for the the the open championship in. So yeah, I flew to I, or Dallas, and then Frankfurt, and then Manchester, and then got a ride from a listener of the program to Hoy Lake and hung out and got to hang out with Fanny on Tommy a little bit afterwards.

It was great. And watched what we were going to shoot to one over on Sunday. Yeah, I mean, he didn't win, you know, he didn't win, but I think golf won that day. That kind of brings us to the modern era guys. It's 10 years, any closing parting thoughts? November 15th, 2023, the TGL dome class.

I think there's probably skipped over a few things there in 2022, 2023, but the recent stuff's not not quite as much fun. You got to let the, you got to let it, those vintage is breath a little bit more. Sure. So, you know, why don't we go get 10 more? How's that sound? I love it.

I love that idea. It's been a lot of fun. It's still, you think back on a lot of moments and a lot of throwing a lot of stuff at the board in 2014 that we, this would become a full-time job was against all odds that we continue to grow it and do this, and we have the listeners that we do and the content we've made. It's a dream come true that we thank everyone that's been along on the journey with us for however long

you've been on it. Probably quite some time if you made it three hours into this episode, but it's been a lot of fun working with all of you and going through all these challenges and overcoming them and continuing to evolve this thing. It's not this no years that is exactly like the year before. That's what makes it really interesting. So let me ask you guys one closing one.

KVV and I were talking about Groundhog Day earlier today. If you had a Groundhog Day one and LU Day, just live it over and over and over and over and over. What's the day? Well, it would not be the day, DJ your birthday party that I had the shanks for 72 hours straight and hit no shots off of anywhere but the Hossel as sweetens for that. So that would not be it. I mean, think a little bit more what it would be. I think if you guys need some time to think, I would throw out the day at Karn, going out there playing the round of golf and like the really still morning and then playing

me like the full on all shot, like Scotch ForSums, whatever that was in the afternoon was like maybe the most fun I've ever had on a golf course. I would bottle that one up. Yeah, I would say there's like a three or four days in a row that Ireland trip where like even that morning at Balli Bunyan and then the afternoon playing Playing and like the hurricane conditions Uh, and then Reades and then all that. Yeah, that was then Karn. It's like that was awesome. I would say that the photon Yeah, finale Taurus sauce Scandin Scandinavia is up there for me. Is that how you say it?

Go for 10 catch me. Come on, three hours. I only have one mispronunciation. Really good. I'm afraid to answer. This is so permanent, right? No. Yeah, there's a huge stake to the answer to this question,

Sally. So I mean, I'm going to put you in jail if you don't pick the right one. Deach selfishly, I'd probably pick the second episode of straps where shot the career around in my life, got some crabs set on the back porch, stayed up talking to you guys about music and stuff to hold over the two a in the yard. Yeah, not next day. You know what I might pick? Barn Bougal lost farm day.

Like that combination, jumping that flight, playing 36 holes, like the job was not stressful then. It's a lot more stressful now. You could truly enjoy playing golf a lot more back then and being away from your email and phone. And that day, I have really, really, really strong memories from. God, Metro was so hot. Yes. It would not be the next day.

Yeah, that was one of the worst days I think. I think we locked ourselves out of the out of the house that day too. That was maybe the next day. Royal Melbourne. All right, that's for next the next 10 years. So thank you everyone for doing this. Thank you Cody and KVV for organizing all this and your interest in it and anyone that listened to it this far. We cannot wait to be back in 2024, bringing you another year of content

and we greatly appreciate your support. Crack on. Cheers. Give it a big blow. Be the right club today. Yeah. Yeah. That's better than most.

How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Expect anything different. I don't know.

Expect anything different.