OverDrive - Hoggard on the BMW Championship, Scheffler being a creature of habit, and a look ahead to the Ryder Cup

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Rex Hoggard on the BMW Championship, Scottie Scheffler being a creature of habit, and a look ahead to the Ryder Cup.

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Top-10, Tommy. Top-10, Tommy. Bob McIntyre's at 4-under. Victor Hovlin's kicking around, but Sheffler clearly the Pace Gar and a chat about it. We're joined now by Golf Reporter. He's a podcaster.

He does it all for the Golf Channel NBC. Here's Rex Hoggard. How you doing, Rex? Good. How you guys, Ben? We're doing very well. Sheffler versus the field the rest of this tournament. Who would you take?

I think, I think, what you just said resonates because that's the way we used to think about Tiger, right? You would always take Tiger against the rest of the field. I would say Scotty Shephler for the rest of the season, and it's a very short season. It's just this week and next week, but I would pick Scotty against the rest of the field. I guess the only thing that would hold me back,

and the one thing we've learned, the one thing we know about Scotty is he's a creature of habit, and he loves routine, routine, routine over everything else. And being went out as caddy last Sunday, Ted Scott, he had to go home for some personal reasons, so he had to have a replacement caddy. He has a replacement caddy this week. That, in my mind, is the only thing that you can sit and point to you and be like, well,

maybe Scotty's a little uncomfortable with another caddy on the bag. And if that's what you're banking on, I don't know if the field has much of a chance. Yeah, no, it's a great point. I mean, when you look at this playoff format, Rex, as much as we're talking about Scotty as a guy who's going to be very tough to beat between now and the Tour Championship at Eastlake, does it need a tweak given the way Rory treated the event last week at Memphis and the way maybe that didn't speak to the importance of the so-called playoff run in the PGA lexicon?

After watching the playoffs for the last two decades and it seems like they have changed something every single year. They have evolved, they've moved, the points have changed, the formats have changed, the tour has done everything to try to turn this into something closer to a true playoff. And I think that's probably the issue right here. I guess I'm in the minority here, and we've talked a lot about it the last two weeks. You had one player out of 70 skipped the first playoff event.

And let's be clear, Rory had said he was going to skip the first playoff event, I think pretty much after last year's first playoff event. He made it clear that there's no reason for me to be here if I'm safely inside that top 30. At that time, I think he was inside the top five. He dropped one spot. He had a really bad week in Memphis, so it made no sense to him. I think we've created a lot of solutions looking for a problem because I don't see this right now as a problem. I was actually a little surprised.

More players didn't skip the first playoff event simply because of the way the season stacks up. You have so many big events back to back to back that the top players are probably really tired. So the fact that it was only Rory, one out of 70 players, I think it's pretty encouraging if you're at the tour. Certainly, this becomes an issue where next year if you have two or three players doing it, and the tour has to look at it, but I don't think it's an issue right now. Well, I think it's particularly an issue with the players we're talking about here.

Like, Macquarie's a needle mover, right? Like, if, you know, you can give you 25 different names where if they're seventh on the FedEx list and they don't show up, it's not going to resonate. Right. But if Rory doesn't show up, if Schaeffler doesn't show up, if Shafley doesn't show up,

that's the issue, isn't it, Rex? It's the guys we're talking about that could skip. And twofold. You're right. The guy that moves the needle, him skipping is a big deal. The other one is the event he chose to skip. How did he chose to skip, chosen to skip this week, the BMW championship. That too would have been surprising, and we probably would have talked a lot about it, but it's not FedEx. And FedEx is a pillar on the PGA tour. It's called the FedEx Cup season. So we all know how important this is to them. So those two things, I certainly see where you're factoring into it. I guess I turn the conversation the other way. I don't know how you can compel the players to play all three playoffs. events. Simply because they're independent contractors, and it's not as though you can mandate you have to play here. And one of the solutions that have come up, and I feel like this is the cleanest solution, is after the regular season, you just restart, you do away with the points altogether. And you go to that first playoff event in Memphis, and if you finish inside the

top 50, then you advance to this week's playoff event, the BMW championship. And then if you're inside the top 30, after that event, you go to the tour championship. That, to me, seems like the cleanest way to do it and turn it into a real playoff. But as we discussed this week a lot, the idea that what if last week Scottie would have finished 51st, Rory, 50 seconds, and Xander 53rd, then the sponsors aren't happy. The TV partners aren't happy. The fans aren't happy.

So I don't know if there's a clean solution. With Rex Hoggerton, and with the Ryder Cup this year, and it's always a massive event, it just feels, I don't know why it feels bigger this year, maybe because of the Keegan Bradley connection and that story, because it's in New York, it's at Beth Page, because of what happened the last time they played in the Europeans played a beating on the Americans. I mean, let's call it what it is.

It just feels like it's so much more amplified. And I think Sheffler was talking about it this week that there's a big layoff after the tour championship until you actually get to the end of September. And he was mentioning maybe they play in Napa, I think it is. There's a tournament halfway through September.

Like if you, in your conversations with players who know they're going, how much of the next couple of weeks is even in some ways preparation for the Ryder Cup? I think coming out of Rome two years ago, and you referenced it, yes, the European Tour ticket to the United States team that week. And there were a lot of issues that went into that. One of them was that they were rusty. The Americans hadn't played. Most of the Americans hadn't played in a few weeks, really, since the Tour Championship.

And you look at the Europeans going into that Ryder Cup, and Rome, almost every single one of them had played the week before at the beginning. MWPGA Championship, which is the European Tourist flagship event in England. So they had all had a chance to essentially have a scorecard in their hand and go out and compete, have some pressure, knock some rust off. This time around, I think both teams, it'll be interesting to watch both teams because Kagan Bradley has spent a lot of time talking with players. I think most players who will be on the team will play that event in NAPA, as you just pointed out, just to get some reps in, just to get a scorecard in your hand, to go out

to feel a little bit of pressure. It's interesting, Europeans will actually do. something very, very similar. They'll leave the BMW PGA championship this year and fly over as a team and spend pretty much four or five days before going to the Ryder Cup at Beth Page together. So every team is trying to find an angle, and I think this is a good one. Hey, Rex, Tommy Fleet would up at the top of the leaderboard yet again here at the BMW, but of course, you know, made headlines for the wrong reasons last week in Memphis,

having the lead multiple times and not being able to close. he's earned 32 and a half million bucks on the PGA tour and nobody has ever earned more in the history of the sport without winning on the PGA tour, 162 starts. And yet he tweets out, hey, with every disappointment, I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to finally winning. Do you buy that or is this guy just never going to get it done? It's tough because in sports fandom,

it's easy to point to the guy who can't get it done and just say, oh, well, something's wrong with it. him. He can't finish it up. But I think Tommy Fleetwood is a legitimately nice person. He's a literally good person to be around. I think he truly believes in his mind that he's moving in the right direction. And I guess that's the only thing you can do. I'll just go back to last Sunday. And I would compare it also to the Sunday at the Travelers Championship, where he also took a three-stroke lead into the final round. And you don't have to connect a lot of dots to figure out what goes wrong with him on Sundays. It's not necessarily as driving. It's not necessarily

is ball striking, but his short game, which is brilliant 90% of the time, just seems to abandon him at the most crucial moments. We saw it on Sunday last week in Memphis, where he had an opportunity to get up and down on a par five, which in make a birdie that you had to make, a par on that hole was pretty much giving a stroke away to the field. And he just didn't have that short game. He didn't have the touch. And that's, of course, where you're going to feel it. You don't have to be a sports psychologist to understand where pressure manifests itself. and it does it on the little shots, it does it on the little puts and the little chips, and then, of course, ebogie 17, and that was pretty much the difference right there.

I don't know how you get over the hump, because it's always, if we go back two weeks, to the Wyndham Championship, and Cameron Young, I would have argued, was probably the second best player on the PGA tour without having won the PGA tour, and he pretty much blew away the field. And it's an entirely different scenario when you're walking down the 18th T, I mean, the 18th Fairway with a six-shot lead. Like, that is an entirely different pressure. This, what Tommy has gone through, eventually, I think he does get in a position

where he has that three or four-shot lead coming down 18, and he can't finish it off. But certainly, there is something there, a hurdle, hump, a distraction, whatever it is, he can't get over. With Rex Hoggard of the Gold Channel, Roy McElroy speaking today or this week about, you know, being asked in the past to be a playing captain for the European team at the Ryder Cup and he said, no chance. I'm paraphrasing, but you can't do it. Not possible. Shot it down.

Keegan Bradley was asked about that. I like Keegan's answer, somewhat diplomatic, but also I think there was honesty there. He goes, no one's ever really done it. I don't know. Like, what do we know over the last 20, 30, 40 years? What is your instinct telling you, what is your reporting telling you

on if Keegan Bradley is, in fact, going to play for the Americans at the Ryder Cup? at this point in time i truly believe he's going to play for him and i don't even think it's really his decision anymore i a few weeks ago i made the comment and i still believe in it and don't quite have as much base in my voice now as i did before but it'll be the players who automatically qualify scottie seffler zander shawfley jj spawn currently but there'll be three more who automatically qualify they'll be the ones that will say of course kegan is one of the top 12 american players right now i can break it down for you however you want he's a top 12

American player according to the world ranking, according to strokes gain total on the PGA tour, according to the data golf, I can keep going on and on and on. There's no way to splice it up. Now, the difficulty here, and I tend to agree with Rory, I think in the modern era, I don't want to say impossible, but they're going to have to figure out how this works, because what's going to have to happen is Keegan is essentially going to have to give up his captaincy when it comes time to play. And I don't know how you do that. There aren't any really machinations. There aren't any rules or regulations to govern this exactly how he gives that up. And there's also the issue, and I thought Rory did a good job of bringing this up. Essentially what

you're doing, if Kagan is a player, and I do believe he will be, you're kind of limiting him to only one match a day on Friday and Saturday because he has other duties to do. He can't play both sessions. That makes sense. You're kind of tying your hands with a player. Why would you want to do that? So there's a lot of things they'll have to figure out over the next couple of weeks, because I do believe he'll be on that team. Well, why did the U.S. do this to themselves, Rex? When you think about it, they got out an assistant captain list for 2025 that includes Jim Furek, Kevin Kisner, Webb Simpson, Brad Snetterker, Gary Woodland.

There's plenty of good names there. Like Furek, couldn't they just name Furek, the captain, and sort of end this sort of conundrum? I don't think they wanted to go back to Furek because that didn't go very well in Paris. No offense to Jim Furik, but I mean, the America's lost pretty bad there as well. I think what the PG of America was looking for was something different. They felt like they needed to change gears for whatever reason. And Keegan Bradley was going to be that guy because he wasn't the guy who was on the inside track. If you'd have asked me three years ago, like name the next four U.S. Rider Cup captains,

I would not have mentioned Keegan Bradley's name. And clearly the PG of America wanted to zig why everyone else thought they were going to Zach. And there's a lot of reasons for it. I don't think they anticipated this, though. I think when they made the decision, they didn't anticipate him, not just winning once, but winning twice in this cycle. Go back to last year. He won the BMW championship, of course, the Travelers this year. And he's been really consistent.

And I don't think they anticipated that at all because it brings such, as I mentioned, it brings such a level of issues. It brings such a level of distractions. And the Europeans won't have that at all. We had this debate this week on golf today, where the idea that the Europeans are coming in, A, with a cap, captain. We know he's a good captain and he can win, Luke Donald. And their team is virtually the exact same team that they had two years ago in Rome with the only exception of one of the Hogarth twins. Like pitch with everyone you want. That to me is frightening if you're the Americans because all the Americans have right now is distractions and questions.

Rex, it's always great catching up with you. Enjoy the rest of the season. I'm sure we'll catch up well before the Ryder Cup. We can't wait. Appreciate it, guys. There is Rex Hogger of the Golf Channel. Unmistakably Canadian It's the music that raised you The artists raising the bar Hi, this is Brian Adams Hey, my name's Brad Emmons

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