Subpar - Bonus Episode: Colt and Drew’s instant reaction to the PGA merging with LIV Golf

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

On a special bonus episode of GOLF's Subpar, Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz react to the PGA Tour's announcement that they are merging with the Public Investment Fund and LIV Golf.  -- Thanks to Ralph Lauren, the Official Outfitter of the United States Ryder Cup team and of GOLF's Subpar.  The RLX Golf collection is available in select Ralph Lauren stores, exclusive private clubs, and resorts, and online at RalphLauren.com. https://www.ralphlauren.com/brands-golf?&utm_source=OtherPartners&utm_medium=GolfSubparPodcastRLSponsorship_GolfSubpar_PodcastPlacement_2023_GolfSubparPodcastRLSponsorship -- As Colt Knost and The Sleezyman have frequently told you, there is not a better speaker in the game than the Rokform speaker.   Go to Rokform.com and enter code SUBPAR for 25% off. -- Thanks as always to our official sponsor FanDuel.   If you’ve been thinking about joining FanDuel, there’s no better time to get in on the action. The app is so easy to use. They’re always giving you great odds. And when you win, you can get paid INSTANTLY! So step up to the tee and take a swing at betting the PGA TOUR. Go to FanDuel.com/Subpar and sign up to get a NO SWEAT FIRST BET up to TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!

All right. Well, hello, world. Welcome to a very special edition of subpar. Colt knows Drew Stoltz reacting to what has been a wild day in the game of golf. The PGA tour, the DP World Tour, and the Live Tour have decided to merge. Sleys, I don't even know where to begin with this thing. Summary it all in one sentence. Go. You just can't. I don't know. I still, you know, the news is wild. I feel like Liv thinks it's obviously a huge victory for them, in some aspects it probably is.

I don't know where we're going from here, because we don't know what the schedule is going to be. We don't know how live players are getting access back to the PGA tour. All we know is that the PIF has decided to join forces with the PGA tour, and basically it's more of a partnership than a merger. But that was some crazy news to wake up to this morning.

This is not a podcast I expect to be doing yesterday when we left the studio. I will say this. We're going to get into a lot of the aspects here on this little break. down. But my reaction, first of all, when I first heard this, but beyond the shock was one, this is good for the golf fans. When Liv first came about, and finally the PGA tour had some competition that took some of the stars away from the game of golf. I was like, the only people

losing here are the fans. The players on Live are getting paid. The players on the PJ tour, as you've seen with everything they've done, got way more money. All the guys playing that we love watching are benefiting from this financially, right? The only people that lost are the fans. We don't get to see them play against each other as often as we were like. The second thing that came to mind for me was I think the PGA Tour leadership comes off looking very poor in this entire situation. If you look at from the day that Liv was announced, it was like, okay, we're coming, we're going to have limited fields. PJ Tour says that sucks. We're going to have no cut events.

That sucks. We're going to have mandatory events and schedules that you have to play. That sucks. You fast forward a year and that's essentially exactly what the PGA Tour put into place as a counter with massive purses, by the way. basically a mirror image of live golf. On top of that, in order to keep guys from going to that tour, they preach loyalty. They proposed the lifetime band, said,

you go over there, you will never play on the PJ tour again. Guys that stay loyal to us, we will take care of you. Also, lastly, but not least, the source of the money. That was a huge issue, right? Jay Monahan said, I believe, almost a year ago, you've never had to defend yourself for being a member of the PGA tour, more or less, paraphrasing, right? As if, like, this site is bad.

We're on the moral high ground. now you fast forward a year. Not only is that not okay, but quote, we are pleased to move forward and I applaud the PIF for its forward-thinking approach. I mean, there's really no other way to put it on this that they've just backpedaled on everything. And it's been a complete 180 from everything we heard a year ago. Yeah, there's a PGA tour player meeting taking place in Canada right now. Jay Monahan's obviously going to be there.

I hope he's borrowed some of the Toronto Maple Leafs goalie's hockey gear because I don't think the players are going to be very happy with him. like you said, he sat down with Jim Nance on national television on CBS right about a year ago. It was in June at the Canadian Open. By the way, shout out Canadian Open. I am so sorry for everything y'all have had to deal with between this, live last year and the two years before you were canceled because of COVID. They're getting body bagged up there north of the border. Shout out to the, where you are sorry.

It is a national open. It is a great tournament. The second longest running event on the PGA tour, and I feel horrible for them. But, man, I don't know where to go with this. It's like you went on national television and told everyone, you know, how you need to stick with the PGA tour, how what they're doing is wrong, the source of the money. It's blood money. And now you have completely gone the other way. Like I was shocked when I woke up today.

Now, I've said all along. All I want is the best players in the world to play against each other as often as possible. Well, it looks like that's going to happen now. But I'm very interested to see how we move forward because Jordan Speeith, John Rom, Justin Thomas, Zendor Schaffler. They all turned down massive numbers to stay home to the BGA tour. I'd be pissed. You came to meet you preached all this loyalty and now boom, they're coming back.

And you find out through Twitter or an email. Like, come on, man. Like you look at Roy McElroy, Max Homa, all those top players. They talk about how they spent hours and hours and hours and days and weeks over the last year in these meetings. For nothing. It was just a huge waste of time. Rory stressed himself out beyond belief trying to deal with this, trying to be the voice of the PGA tour. And now, you know what?

We're going to merge. Not quite sure that I'll let y'all know about that. But yeah, that was my decision. Y'all are out. Here we are. Yeah. There were all those names I called everyone and all the reasons I said that tour sucks and we're so much better than that. Just kidding.

It's actually, now we are pleased to move forward and I applaud the very organization that I've been dragging for the entire past year. And to your point, Cole, we talked to Stuart Sink on the radio earlier. today. He said every communication with the PGA tour starts out. The PGA tour, comma, your tour, right? That's Jay's big thing. He's like, this is your tour. I am merely the vehicle. I am the, I put into place what you guys vote on what you guys want to have happen. I just make it happen. But this is your tour. You control it. And here we are. This announcement comes out of left field, not a single conversation with anyone that I've talked to. No notification, no heads up, no nothing. And now he's holding a player's meeting after

the fact. That's why every tour guy we've talked to, every text we've gotten, any guy we've talked to on radio. They all say the same thing. Like, I feel betrayed. I'm shocked. There was zero discussion on this. None of us had any idea that this was coming. And to have your marquee players, the same guys you ask to go stand in front of the media and go to bat for you and defend the PGA tour and to carry the flag for you. They find out the same way you and I find out and everyone else finds out on Twitter when they wake up in the morning on a press release. Like, dude, there's just so much talking out of both sides of your mouth, whether it's the criticism of live and the source of the money and all that stuff. And then also,

saying like we need loyalty uh you know we're going to take care of our players this is your tour every action has contradicted his words at this point and i think it's a um he can have a he can have a reckoning coming when he eventually has to speak to the media because there's he's going to have some tough questions to answer now we haven't heard anything from tiger woods but everything i know is that he found out the same way we all did he found out this morning there's the man who's put more money in all these golfers pockets and in the PGA tours pockets than anybody and it's not even close. You can't even compare it to anything.

That man took time out of his day to fly up to Delaware for a player meeting to try to sort this whole thing out. And I get it. He's not playing as much as he used to. But damn it, you, that guy should know before anyone. He should be involved. He turned down, what, 700 million? Almost a billion dollars.

Allegedly $700 million to go over there. And by way, stay with the tour. And if he leaves. the tour's gone. Whatever Tiger decides, whether Tiger's playing every single event on the PJ Tour or zero, if you're the PJ Tour,

you want Tiger Woods in your camp. You want him on your side. So when you're going to announce, arguably, quote, what I would call probably the biggest decision in global golf that's been announced since I've been alive, you might want your guy

that basically built the sport that you're seeing today. Every single one of those guys more or less has been influenced by Tiger Woods, maybe a little heads up or a little discussion or something from him because every single player right now is saying the same thing. I've not talked to one that's like, yeah, this is cool, this is what I want.

And Jay did a great job communicating with us. And we're all on board. None of that. They're all like, we didn't know shit. And that is an enormous problem. He comes across looking really like not even a take-aside type of guy. But objectively, he looks really bad in this situation. I mean, I've heard from so many players today and they're just shocked.

cannot believe this is what happened. And I think down the road, it's probably going to be good because there's going to be more money involved. There's going to be all the players are playing against each other. But the betrayal is, I think, is the biggest problem for them right now. But there's so many questions. Like, what they said is we are going to figure out a fair way for the live guys if they choose to reapply for PJ tour membership. What does that look like? I don't know.

You know, Brooks Kepka, major championship would technically have an exemption. Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, same way. you have a guy like Cameron Tringali who's never won before. He left. Now, where does he go? What does he do? Go to first stage of Q school? There's so many questions.

I think we're going to find out a lot over the next week or so. But man, this is just like I said, not what I expected to wake up to this morning. Probably like you. When I first woke up, my buddy texted it to me and it was a CMBC article. I was like, oh, yeah, this is a joke. And then all of a sudden, there it was. And I clicked on Golf Channel and there was nothing. And then all of a sudden, boom, interrupt.

it and there on some CNBC show was Jay Monaghan and Yazur sitting down together saying, talking about the merger. Old friends. Just old buddies. Hello, friends. By the way, the fact that they could meet up in London and play around a golf together and in this day and age, not one person snap a picture on a cell phone, post it to Twitter, something that this has been completely hush, hush is unbelievable to me that that could

actually take place. And I just, man, there are a lot of people called, the line's been drawn in the sand. Basically, you've become a live guy or a tour guy, right? That's the thing. And there have been some very harsh critics on both sides. Now that they are together under one umbrella, I cannot wait.

It's already happening on Twitter to see the backpedaling that goes on in the complete about face where all these comments you've been making for the past year or so, now you come together, oh, this is a different situation. This is not what I was talking about. Now, this is better for the game. Now this is better for the fan, which is ultimately what it's all about. It's like the internet lives forever, dude. Your interviews live forever.

Everything you've done on TV lives forever. There's going to be a lot of 180s full. There's been some people with some really, really strong stances that said that they would never be involved with anything having to do with live. So on the media side, golf side, whatever, where do you go? You quit your job or your action's going to, you know, speak louder than your words? Words are easy. But it's gut check time for a lot of people out there.

And I cannot wait to see the little montages that are put up of current day quotes versus six months ago quotes or a year ago quotes because they're going to be completely, they're going to be the exact opposite. What do they say, Slees, in this world, there's two things that are undefeated. One of them's money? One of them's money. What's that other one again? My memory.

My memory. Father time, that's what it was. How about the man behind live, Greg Norman? Yeah. Who also found out the same time we did. Yasser was asked on TV, does Greg Norman know? He goes, he was informed this morning before. we did this.

Formed this morning. He was informed this morning. He will be taking an active role going forward. We're thrilled to have him. He was informed this morning. And by the way, if you read the press release, the official press was there's a lot of names mentioned in there. One I'm very curious on is Jay Monahan's been named CEO of this deal.

So there are going to be a lot of players, like you said, at this meeting and going forward really pissed off at Jay, saying you didn't handle this well. You've done a complete about phase, yada yada, all the stuff, all the hypocrisy. But yet he's in place going forward in this deal. And I don't know if he can be voted out as. CEO of this new tour, you know, on the PJ tour, which only has one year left, as we know it before this merger kind of takes hold. I guess potentially that could happen. But going forward, he's supposed to be in there. But one name you did not see anywhere in

anything was Greg Norman. And I don't want to speculate, Colt, but I got to think if Jay and Yassir got together and they were going to put this thing together behind closed doors, based on the relationship between Jay and Greg, I would have to assume, and this is speculation, be very clear that if we agree to this, one condition, Greg's not involved going forward. I just can't see those two coming. There's been, there's too much scar tissue. So nothing will change going forward. Liv is going to play their 2023 schedule. PGA tour is going to play their 2023 schedule and then they're going to figure it out. So I guess just stay tuned. We're going to see what happens, but it's a wild day in the game of golf. I'm, you know,

I thought maybe at some point this would happen just because the game of golf needs it, but I cannot believe one year into live that it's already happened. Are you more of a high flyers guy or a four aces or a clique skye? I did like Max Homa. He goes, since we're all going to be friends again, can we discuss some of these team names? And he added in his Google search, what the F is a clique? Yeah, there's going to be some. To be fair, Graham McDow is on live. He responded, can you let me know when you find out, brother? Watch all. Everybody's going to go be friends. The players, by the way, have put this to bed.

They play practice rounds together at Major Cheney. championships, they're friends. I think they all get it. Capitalism. Yeah, you took some money. I don't blame you. Who am I to cast judgment on that? It's more the media that have been, like, I think, creating the divide in this thing. It's just like, live is this. You're the worst. Or live guys like PJ chores sucks. They just copy everything we do. They're not morally superior to like all. It's been more media driven. The players that I know are all still cool with each other. They all text each other. They hang out. For the most part. Yeah, for the most part. I think there's a couple relationships out there that

I think we'll continue to not be good, regardless of what tour they're playing on. But a lot still to be seen. What's the schedule look like? You know what I mean? Like now we got the best players in the world, but is this going to be more of a global tour where we potentially maybe even see these guys less in the United States than we did when they were on the PJ tour? Team element, all that.

I don't know. But this is a hell of an announcement. I did not expect it. And there's some people, other than Brandel speaking, I think he is very highly anticipated. Jay Monahan's is very highly anticipated. Bill Mickelson's presser. The one guy going to have the biggest grin on his face

walking into LACC saying, ask me anything. A complete opposite of last year at Brookline. He's going to be smiling ear to ear on this thing, ready for any mic, I think. No doubt. He is just going to walk in and say, so how's everyone doing?

Any questions to that? Maybe he'll come on now finally, because we've talked about it 100 million times. It's been set up basically in the past. Maybe now that everyone's squash the beef and we're all under the same umbrella, what? Maybe Phil comes on here and, you know, has a couple of pops with us. I wouldn't count on it. But either way, fascinating news coming out.

Yeah, like I said, there's not really much more you can say right now because we just don't know enough yet. But I know the golf world is a complete shock. I'm interested to see or hear how the player meeting went up in Canada, even though I have learned that several players who are not in the field because the Canadian Open field is not that strong since the U.S. Open is next week, reached out to see if they could chime in through Zoom and were denied. Really? So you need to be in Canada. Apparently.

So you got Rory, the guy, he'll be there. Whether he knew about this prior to, I have no clue or not. But there's not that many other big dogs up there. They're all getting ready for L.A. So the fact that it's your P.J. Tour, comma, your tour. Hey, I'd like to join the meeting discussing my tour. Nope. Can't be on it.

You can read the clip notes after it. That's some of these decisions, man. I just, it's hard to wrap your head around. I agree with you. We'll be back on next week's golf subpar.