The Tao of Scottie Scheffler and Rank-and-File Rumblings at the 2023 Players

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:05
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a brid egg Frida egg, the gridded Frida egg Frida, egg Frida egg brigg Frida egg bride egg lie.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off the hump.

00:00:34
Speaker 1: Brendan. Should the Players Championship count on the winner's resume as half a major? That's my question for you.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: I think so, yes, maybe even three quarters of a major. Then you start to get into more, uh, you know, arithmetic that that feels like we're inundated with too much arithmetic and points waiting and points designation these days. But I do think it should count as something right. This has been the great sort of mystery of the Players, not mystery but sort of I don't know, chasing the car for the Players Championship has done the dog chasing the car for as long as it's been around. It's like, want this major status. It's not a major, but it's something else. It's certainly more than your regular PGA Tour event. It's more than a FedEx Cup playoffs event. I think half a major would be a fine and suitable arrangement.

00:01:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it feels different. You know, we had the Genesis Invitational recently, which a lot of people name as the best regular PGA Tour event, and winning this for Scotti Scheffler this past week definitely was different than John Rahm winning the Genesis or Max Homa winning the Genesis a year ago. You know, it's just there is a different feeling about it. The celebration is more of a major like celebration, but it's certainly not on the level of a major. There has to be like some way that we recognize that as a career achievement. So you're saying maybe even three quarters. But I wonder if this could ever catch on, if we could ever like talk about a player's accomplishments in this championship in terms of career the way that we do for majors.

00:02:17
Speaker 2: I mean, it feels like such a uphill, indomitable climb to start redefining majors or redefining career tallies like that. But it wasn't that long ago, right that we were talking about Jack Nicholas having twenty some majors because of his US amateur wins. I mean, that was like the eighties, right, And so we have redefined and changed sort of the guardrails on these things recently, but it feels pretty set and stone. And this was when we did those spotlights on the shotguns start on some players of the eighties and nineties. It was interesting. We always got to the players and it was like a segment, like it was something we assigned weight, and there was a lot of color around certain players, players championship wins, but we never really knew how to conceptualize that, and that was when it was in its you know, more nascent days. Right, we're talking about Freddy Couple's, Davis love how Sutton, those types like. It certainly stands out on the resume as it is, but if we want to sort of assign it some objective weight, a half major is fine by me. Even a little bit more, especially as this is now and it's I think it's fifty fiftieth players next year, it starts to have a little more and I think it means a lot more to the players than maybe it does to the fans.

00:03:33
Speaker 1: Right, this is the most PGA tour friendly we've ever been on this podcast. Probably it definitely means something to the players and I think that just as a fan watching it. Yeah, there's definitely an aura that's different about it. Now Here, here's what the consequences of half a major for the players would be for some different major tallies. So Jack Nicholas would have nineteen point five. Now he I believe all of his before the players moved to TPC Sagras. So that's that's a debate. Was was the players half a major before going to TPC Sagrass Because I don't know if it was, you know, like before it was at Sawgrass.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: Like Goofy experiment or something. Right, it was sort of this lab experiment at that point.

00:04:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was at Sawgrass Country Club, which nobody thought was all that good of a venue. I'm not sure that the crowd there was very good. But in any case, Jack won three of them. Tiger Woods would be at sixteen in his tally, right because he won two players, so you know, add to his fifteen. Now here's where it really starts making sense. Steve Elkington would have two majors by this way of counting. Fred Couples would have two, Hal Sutton would have too. Davis Love the third would have two. Now those are four players Elkington, Couples, Sutton, Davis Love who all seemed like they should have more majors than they do. All of them have won by our current way of counting, and it just seems like they should have more, they deserve more, or that their careers were more than just one major. Well, they won two players each of them, and so that would bump their tallies up. And then you know, some interesting players would have one point five Jerry Pate, Tom Kite, David Duval, Adam Scott, a bunch of players there at Sergio Garcia, Stenson, Jason Day. Those are some players who seem like they should have a little bit more than one major as well. So it's sort of interesting that way. A lot of players where you look at their major tallies and you're like, why is that just one or two? A lot of those players have won the Players Championship, and that's why it feels maybe like they should have more majors. So it's like we've been sort of perceiving this significance of a Players Championship to a player's career all along, but we haven't officially counted it yet.

00:05:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no one in that list where it felt like, well, this is regrettable, or this is a step too far, This is too much credit we're giving someone. It felt like people that should deserve that, like you were saying, deserve a little bit more. Like we know Adam Scott, Sergei, David Duval are a little bit more than something of a one major player. Whatever their career I think can't be you know, whittled down to one major and maybe adding a half here feels a little bit more appropriate. There was no one in that list that it felt like, ah, that's giving them too much credit for what they did as a professional golfer. So I think you're onto something here with this metric.

00:06:36
Speaker 1: Well that's that's my theory, all right. So you're listening to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison. That's Brendan Poor Ethan Today. As you can tell already, we are trying a slightly remixed format. This won't be every episode, but we're thinking our Tuesday shows going forward will look something like this. Basically, I'm going to bring on a member of the Frida Egg team or the Frida Egg community, whether it's Brendan or Andy or Meg or Joseph Lamannia, and we'll dig deep on a couple of stories in the golf world, maybe bring on a guest. So today we're going to talk about some of the complaints that rank and file PGA Tour players have had about the new designated event model. A lot of these complaints came to the surface at the Players Championship last week, and Brendan was actually there reporting from the ground for the Friday Egg. But first we're going to talk about the winner, Scottie Scheffler and his really unique mindset when it comes to golf. And to help with that, I'm going to bring on our friend Sean Martin, whose title is Lead Comma Editorial at the PGA Tour. Does your title have a comma, Brendan, not that.

00:07:47
Speaker 2: I'm aware of, I don't think so. That's big time when you start getting commas involved. But that appropriate for someone like Sean.

00:07:54
Speaker 1: Any exactly, any punctuation, and the title sort of indicates a significant personage. All right, let's start out to Jean. All right, Sean Martin. So Scotti Sheffler won the Players Championship. For a lot of people, this was a somewhat boring outcome, and indeed he won by five shots, so I sort of understand where that comes from. But I think there's a lot too Scotty Scheffler that's worth talking about. When it comes to Scheffler's playing style, what do you usually focus on? What are his kind of leading characteristics as a as a player.

00:08:28
Speaker 3: I think he is the requisite ball striking skill needed to be an elite player. He's led the tour in Green's regulation each of the past two seasons, second in trros cat off the team. Now he's gained a bit of distance over the last year, about ten yards, and he's really in the upper echelon of the tour as far as driving distance. I don't think we often think about that with him, But I think the thing that separates him is the short game. There's a lot of great ball strikers out there, and I think we saw it this weekend. I think we're starting to understand. I think we're starting to hear more chatter about what a great short game Scottish Scheffler has. And I don't know if it's the size him being six foot three and two hundred pounds that you know, maybe we're not quick to associate that type of player with having a great short game. He's definitely not built in the mold of Corey Pavin. But I think the short game is getting the respected deserves and it's a great compliment to the great ball striking. I'm not comparing him to Tiger, you never should do that, but it's kind of like Tiger, great ball striker, one of the great iron players of all time. But when he did get in trouble, he did have the short game to recover and keep Boge's off his card.

00:09:27
Speaker 1: Short game and then you know, when it comes to scrambling, if you want to identify scrambling as a discrete skill set, Scotti Scheffler seems to be an extraordinary scrambler and maybe just that that's another way of saying that he has great short game ability. But when it comes to like saving par getting out of nasty positions, he seems to have a particular gift for that, doesn't he.

00:09:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think the short game comes apart from his upbringing. You know, we've talked a lot about growing up at roy LuxS Country Club, being on the back of the range with Justin Leonard and Harrison Fraser and Colt Ghast, all of whom took lessons from Randy Smith, just as Scotty did. And you know, when you're a seven year old kid and there's adults back there, what's the one area of the game where you all can compete. It's the short game. And Randy said this week that you take Scotty from nine years old and on and he probably won seventy percent of those short game contests against other pros. Colt Knows tells a great story of he was hitting bunker shots one day while he was on tour and Scotty's just sitting there watching him, and he was trying I think, an especially difficult shot, kind of a short sighted shot that got up quick, landed soft, and Colt is shagging his balls on the green. All a sudden, this ball comes out of the bunker stops near the hole, and he says, Scotty, where'd you learn to do that? And he said, I was just watching you, and it's just such a quick study of what he is. But I think you're right too, that scrambling really does go into you know, anytimes at a position. It's not just around the green. We saw it augusta National in the third round last year with really that boge save that kind of kept the train on the tracks. He was headed for a big number for being derailed, and you know, he hammers I think a three iron out of the pine straw out of the trees and is able to save both from there. And you talk about huge bogies and that was a huge bogee for him, And I think some of that goes to the mental part that you've kind of touched on that we'll probably talk about later.

00:11:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, why don't we get to that. You know, you wrote a thread on Twitter that I found very interesting because you made a connection between this playing style that Scotty Scheffler has his strengths as a player in scrambling and short game. You made a connection between that and his mindset or his mental approach, or his kind of psychological landscape, but whatever you want to call it. You were looking for a connection between the way he plays the game and the way he thinks about the game. So could you just sort of step me through your theory there about Scotti Scheffler's mindset as it relates to the way that he plays golf.

00:11:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the simplest way to put it is Scotty Scheffler doesn't take himself too seriously. He's very competitive, and the people around him hammer that home. He's very competitive at home, he's very competitive on tour Tuesday Wednesday, even he's very serious when he gets to the golf course when he's playing a tour event. He's very driven in that way. But I think we see in interviews he doesn't take himself too seriously. I think the best illustration of that was the Master's post victory press conference where he talks about crying like a baby before the final round, where he was so afraid of that Sunday that it drove him to tears. And I think the only way that you can be willing to share that moment is if you don't take yourself too seriously. You're willing to be vulnerable, You're willing to be open. You know. A post victory press conference is this moment where we're celebrating an athlete at the peak of their athletic achievement. It's all about their strength and what they've achieved on the field of play. And Scotty is able to take that and instead be open and show his weakness. And I think when he translated that to the golf course, what that means is Scotty Scheffler does not lose his mind over a bad shot. Let's say, like he said, he's not defined by his golf score. And there is a big difference between saying I'm a bad golfer or you know, even I'm a bad person because I'm a bad golfer. If you were defined by your score versus I'm a person who hit a bad golf shot. It sounds like a minor difference, but when you look into it and some psychology behind it, there is actually a big difference where you have separated yourself from your result, and so therefore the result is not catastrophic because if how you define yourself is by your golf score, then you are undone. You're destroyed by a seventy five. You are insecure about your future because all of a sudden your game is bad and you're playing poorly. Maybe you're thinking about your card. Whereas if you're just I'm a guy who hit a bad golf shot, you know, I can become a guy who hit a good golf shot on the next one. And I think that's the biggest thing is how quickly he gets over it. I said in there. I think that, you know, he goes about it differently, but I think he may have the best kind of sea ball hit ball demeanor since DJ, where it just doesn't seem like between shots he's obsessing over what just happened. Instead, he's finding his golf ball and figuring out how to get out of the next situation.

00:14:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, I want to go back to what you're saying about being defined by a bad golf shot or a bad round of golf, or even a bad tournament. It seems like this concept of identity is really important to Scotty Scheffler. He doesn't see his identity as being a golfer, right, and so if he plays a poor round of golf, he doesn't have to say to himself, my identity is a golfer, and I'm clearly not a very good golfer. And so if you, if you make a golfer, your identity playing poor golf can be pretty devastating to you in a in a you know, a very personal way. Scotty Scheffler defines himself outside of golf, right and so you know, and he talks about how he defines himself in this way pretty openly so how does he see himself, how does he see his identity?

00:14:51
Speaker 3: Sure? And I think this goes I think you can't really talk about this without talking about his faith, which you know, some people may wonder what places I have in golf or on the golf course, but when you're looking at Scotty Scheffler, you're looking at the number one player in the world. It's a vital part of who he is and how he's able to perform the way he does. And you know, ultimately, Scotty has said that, you know, as a Christian, he views himself as a sinner in need of a savior, which means inherently he views himself as imperfect which is perfect for golf because golf is a game where imperfections are inherent to the game and how you recover from them. And I think again, that's what allows Scotty to be open and to be vulnerable, as we saw at the Masters, is you know, he doesn't walk around believing he needs to exude this air of perfection. He doesn't need to be the alpha or the number one or just the big dog, let's say. And so because Scotty finds security in his faith, he finds security in his relationship with Christ. The golf shot doesn't matter. He plays the game because he feels like he was gifted at it and that gift was a gift from his God, and so he can enjoy that gift. But he doesn't feel like he has to earn it in a sense. He still works hard, he still wants to make the most of the talents he was given, but he doesn't need to win tournaments or shoot good scores to feel valuable as a human being or to find value in himself. And so you can separate the golf score from how you define yourself. So Scotty Scheffler that shoots seventy five, yeah he'll be angry. He'll be frustrated. You know. He talked about how the Tour Championship made him sad that he lost the FedEx Cup, And I thought even that where he just used the word sad to define something, It's not a word you hear athletes who is often they'll say mad, angry, frustrated, stuff, set, pissed off. Those are more macho terms. Let's say Scotty said sad, which is a term I mean. I have young kids, and young kids often describe themselves as sad. So Scotty Scheffler has emotions, he has feelings. He doesn't, he's not a robot. But ultimately, yeah, when he hits the bad golf shot, has the bad round, and it doesn't go beyond that. It's it was a bad golf shot, it doesn't. He doesn't catastrophize it, which is a common kind of thought distortion we can have. I think we've all felt that, where you take one piece of information and your brain ultimately goes to the worst possible scenarios. You know, someone doesn't call you back, and it's like, oh my gosh, were they in a car accident? Are they okay? Are they dead? Do they you know, or do they just not like me? You know, yeah, or they exactly?

00:17:27
Speaker 1: And which which gets at sort of the egocentric nature of that kind of reaction, right, if something bad happens, then that is a an affront to me, and and that is there's a kind of arrogance about that type of reaction that's very natural to humans. And I'm not saying this is like a bad thing or something that I'm not guilty of, but it seems like Scotty is he's pretty advanced in not personalizing those things very much, as seeing a lot of what happens to him and in his life as being sort of beyond his control, as separate from him. And that can be a pretty useful attitude when it comes to golf exactly.

00:18:04
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, the not catastrophizing. I mean that's huge because how many of us, you know, we make a bad swing. Even let's just say on a golf course, we're like, uh, here we go, I'm gonna make double here, I'm gonna shoot eighty. I'm gonna lose my card. I'm gonna, you know, lose my spot on the team. I'm not gonna travel if I'm a college golfer. I think that, you know, catastrophizing, which is something we all do but we don't want to admit it and we're not open about it. That can send you down that spiral. You know, we've talked about DJ before, how he forgets quickly. It's a similar thing with Scotty and then with the anger. I think, you know, I'm trying to find the thread that oah yesterday, trying to remember what I wrote myself. But there's a book that I know a lot of the guys on tour have read called a small book about a Big problem, which is about anger, written by a Christian councilor named Ed Welch. And the quote that I tweeted yesterday from there was what makes us so or sorry? It's a question what makes us so important that life must go according to our plans? When life throws us unexpected trouble, an arrogant person gets angry, someone who realizes his insignificance responds, if the Lord wills, and going back to Scotty, you even see it in the Netflix documentary. But right before they tee off in the final round of the Masters, Ted Scott points at his shirt and the shirt says God is in control, and so for Scotty Scheffler and Ted Scott, the results are in Scotty's hands in a sense, he's holding the golf club. But there really is no other sport besides golf where you are more at kind of the mercy of where you are in less control. Let's say, you know, once the ball leaves the club face, and we saw yesterday on seventeen, we sent plenty of times, once that ball leaves the club face, it is out of your control, and even the slightest gust of wind can have a huge difference. You know. I think there's been a lot of discussion on Twitter on dispersion patterns and how they're much wider than we realize. I believe there's a study that they did with iron Byron a long time ago that showed the effect that even I think a five one hour gust of wind can have on a golf ball, where even a six iron shot it can be a difference of five to ten yards. Someone's gonna correct me on this, I'm sure, but the point being that if you hit a golf ball and while it's in the air, a five mile augusts of wind five mile an hour gust of wind comes up, your ball might end up in a bunker. You're perfectly struck shot might end up in a lake. And so I think realizing that saves the golfer a lot of frustration because you could have executed your swing perfectly, had perfect contact, and your ball still going a bunker. And so for Scotty, where he sees that is okay, that's the sovereignty of my God. And yes, I want to win the Masters, and I'm going to be upset. If I don't win the Masters, I'm going to be sad and mourn that. But ultimately, you know, I'm going to believe that my sovereign God had some plan behind it that I don't know what that plan is, but I'm going to trust that plan is good because I have a God that loves me, and so there's a great comfort in that. It doesn't exempt him from emotions, but I think it keeps those emotions from driving him off the rails.

00:20:55
Speaker 1: And it also doesn't exempt him from responsibility, because he seems to take a lot of responsible when it comes to doing what he can and working hard to be as good a golfer as he can be. But he has a mantra about control. I'm not ultimately in control of where I place in this tournament. You know. I admit I'm humble enough to admit that I might go astray and not play well, and that's in a way not really in my control to an extent, because we can all work hard and not play very good golf. And in that same vein, he often uses the phrase it's not up to me, or the rest is not up to me. I'm going to go out and do my best and the rest is not up to me. Now, the way you're describing this from Scotty's perspective is very accurate. You know, he said he's he defines himself in public as a Christian, and this is consistent with Christian teachings that he buys into. You know, God is ultimately in control, and I'm going to do my best, but I'm imperfect. I'm a sinner and and that's that's my place and the universe. And that can be a useful attitude for a golfer. But I want to be clear that there are many ways of arriving at this end site. You don't have to get at it through Christianity. A lot of people brought up Stoicism as a potential kind of philosophical background for this way of viewing oneself. I think that Buddhism would have similar teachings. But suffice it to say that Scotti Scheffler's attitude is that I am you know, humans are in this universe fairly insignificant and always flawed, and so who am I to say that every shot I hit should be perfect? And that ties back into his ability as a scrambler. He seems to have the ability to hit a poor shot and just sort of say, you know, that's being human, that's part of the human condition. I'm not going to get too invested in that bad shot I just hit. I can be sad about it, i can be disappointed, but ultimately, I'm not going to take it so much to heart, not going to lose my mind. I'm not going to go on tilt. And that's why he's able to recover so quickly and then hit the next shot extremely well, right talented short game artist, and he is able to get himself into that mental space when he's scrambling of just you know, cleaning the slate and starting over again. And so, you know, his mental approach and his playing ability seemed to just really fit with each other. And I thought that that's something that you pointed out that that I really appreciate it, and I think is a profound insight about him.

00:23:25
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think trying, and I think we've all done it, trying to control our lives only adds stress because it actually reinforces how little control we have over our lives. And so again, you know, we all know that the optimal state on the golf course is as little stress as possible, because it is a stress inducing game. And so one of the other things I tweeted about was anger versus acceptance. So you know, you can get angry or a bad shot, you can you know, how could I do this? What was I thinking? Why did I hate it? There? All of these are just shots that are are statements that add to the frustration, whereas acceptance is is okay, I just hit it into this bunker or okay, I just missed this fair way.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: What do I do now?

00:24:05
Speaker 3: And there are studies where the talk about acceptance of what happens are linked to greater psychological health. It keeps us from exacerbating negative mental experiences, as one study said, And so really, what's better for golf than doing that than avoiding making the inherent frustration even worse that, you know, moving on quickly, forgetting quickly. As Max Homer's wife Lacey told him after he missed that short, little three footer that would have won him the Genesis two years ago, she said, forgive quickly. Basically, you know, have your moment, be mad you missed the Pott. Move on, and he did, and he won the playoff over Tony Fenow. And so again, I think that's the biggest benefit of all these things, and how we see it in Scotty's game and why he's such a good scrambler is moving on quickly, forgiving quickly, forgetting quickly, and not getting hung up on just the bad shots, the negative emotions that are inherent for all of us in the game. It's not you'll never avoid having the negative emotions. We're all going to have them. It's what you do with them.

00:25:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, this is one way to be successful in one's mental approach to golf. I doubt that it's the only way, but you know, I think if you look at Tiger Woods, he had a very different way of approaching the mental dimension of the game. But Scotty Scheffler's approach really does seem durable. It seems like he could keep doing this for a long time because the impact on his psyche of a bad shot or a bad tournament, or the disappointments that are inevitable in a career in golf don't seem to have a devastating impact on him.

00:25:37
Speaker 3: You know.

00:25:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's able to brush that stuff off and that gives him probably some longevity.

00:25:42
Speaker 3: And you're expending so much less energy. I mean, negative emotions are so tiring and so taxing, and by sparing yourself that you're expending so much less energy. And I'm sure that Scotty Scheffler often falls back on Romans eight twenty eight, that all things work out for the good of those who love him, speaking of God. And so when Scotti Scheffler loses a golf tournament, he doesn't know why he lost the golf tournament, per se, doesn't know why that ball went in the bunker, why that gust of wind came, But he can find comfort in that. And so after he's lost a golf tournament, where can you find comfort? And I think even his wife and his family do a great job too, of they're very similar people. His Meredith, his wife has been with him since high school. You know, she told him on Master Sunday, whether you win or lose, I'm going to love you. His parents, his dad, David, was a stay at home dad, while his mom was a lawyer in Dallas. You can tell that David supported his kids and wanted them to do what they loved, but didn't really care whether it was a sixty five or a seventy five in a junior tournament. He still loved his kids. He had a couple daughters that also went and played high level college golf, and they were still his kids and he still loved them whether they shot sixty five or seventy five. So really, throughout Scotty's life, I think that's been imbued in him, and I think it's a wonderful message about parenting as well.

00:26:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I go back to that time when Scheffler's father said to him after a win. It might have been the match player, it might have been the Masters, you can maybe remind me, but he said something to the effect of, I'm proud of the man you are exactly, and it's great that you did well in this golf tournament, but what I'm really proud of is who you are as a person.

00:27:18
Speaker 3: Right, And it's it was after the match play, and so he had just become number one in the world, and nothing that statement is about golf results. It's not I'm so proud that you became number one, I'm so proud you won. It's I'm so proud of the man you are that you are my son. And so there's just kind of an unconditional love there you know, because if you say I'm so proud of you he became number one, it's like, well, then are you proud of me if I fall to number two? But the person that Scotty is isn't going to change. So he knows that his dad loves him whether he's number one or number two, because he just loves Scotty for Scotty.

00:27:49
Speaker 1: This is all very wholesome and well adjusted, and you can see why some people might find it boring, but I do find it genuinely and insightful about any your approach to anything in life, trying to separate out the person you are versus your performance and your chosen profession. We maybe don't do that enough in America right where we define ourselves so strongly through our professional identities. It's hard sometimes to carve out a space for yourself to be something other than who you are professionally. But I think it's probably very healthy to do that and would probably help most people perform better in their jobs or you know, whatever they're doing for money, to be firm about that separation. And so, you know, going back to what his dad said to him at the time, you know, it might have seemed a little cheesy. You might roll your eyes at it, you might think that's kind of goofy, But what he's reinforcing there is a separation between the real identity and the professional identity, and making sure that even at an important moment, those two things are separate.

00:28:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, and full disclosure. Reason I tweeted that in part was I work at the PGA Tour. Obviously, players week is one of the longest, most important weeks of our year. And it had been a long and somewhat stressful week. And you know, finally, Sunday tea times are late. You don't have to worry about the seven am t time. It's more about the two o'clock tea time. And so I spent the morning in a coffee shop right there outside the gates of TPC that I often frequent, and just spend some time reflecting on what we're talking about now, about Scotty and freedom and not being defined by your work. A mutual friend of mine and Scotty's this man, Brad Payne. He's the president of College Golf Fellowship and kind of the tour chaplain. Scotty's not the only guy he has this conversation about identity with because, frankly, especially for golfers, it's easy to get tied up with your scores, your identity. You know, it gets you in to certain tournaments, it gets you a certain amount of money, it gets you a certain status if you will. But it's not just about golf. It's all of our work. Right. If I do well, then I'm going to get the promotion, and I'm going to get the title, and I'm going to get you know, whatever next great thing that I'm looking after. And so we all get wrapped up, like you said, in our work becoming our identity. And so for myself, just spending some of that time reflecting on not making work your identity and realizing and remembering how well Scotty does that was kind of what led me to tweeting myself. There's a lesson that I had to remind myself as well that you know, my work is fleeting. My work is not who I am. My work is what I do.

00:30:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's not what people are going to remember about you. They're not going to say, Man, was he a great lead comment editorial at the PGA tour.

00:30:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we're we're all gonna be forgotten A lot quicker than we even would like to realize, I think, And it's not going to be our work that people remember. You know, some people that knew us will remember how we treated them, hopefully well, but we're all gonna be kind of quickly forgotten after we pass I think you see it when really famous figures pass away almost how quickly the world just moves on from these people who did things that were incredible in these achievements that no one has ever matched, and the world just moves on. If they move on that quickly from you know, famous athletes and presidents and sports figures and you know actors and et cetera, then how much more should we not make our identity our work?

00:31:06
Speaker 1: All right? On that note, that was that was a really fulfilling conversation. Yeah, that got pretty deep, but I love that. Yeah, we don't. We don't need to dispel it with humor or anything. I think there's some real truth there in what you were saying. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Sean.

00:31:21
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me. And I think you're exactly right. I think it's something we often don't talk about. It's stuff that might be a little too sentimental or maybe a little too vulnerable, hit too close to the soft spots that we we don't discuss. But I think it's important and so I appreciate you let me have the opportunity to talk about it, all.

00:31:39
Speaker 1: Right, And coming up after the break, we'll bring Brendan back to talk about some of what you might call the rank and file discontent on the PGA tour that came out this past week. Our sponsor for this episode is Athletic Greens. I take AG one by Athletic Greens. Literally every day. I gave AG one a shot because I was just looking for a healthy way to start my day and get off on the right track. I take AG one first thing in the morning, and it just gives me an immediate boost. It makes me feel energetic and healthy. I started taking AG one because I just noticed that my daily habits as a whole weren't the healthiest. And in the meantime, I was covering athletes like Scotti Scheffler, Victor Hovland, even Tom Hogy who are supremely disciplined in taking care of their bodies. So I thought to myself, there's no reason I can't or shouldn't take a similar approach myself, and I've started by making AG one part of my daily routine, getting seventy five high quality ingredients that set me up for long term gut health support. If a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine, then Athletic Greens is giving you a free one year supply of Vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to Athleticgreens dot com slash the fried Egg. That's Athleticgreens dot com, slash the Frida Egg. Check it out, all right, so, Brendan, The big topic early last week before the tournament started was the new designated event model on the PGA Tour. Now, I'm sure that many listeners are very familiar with this already. We don't need to rehash it too much, but just as a short refresher, what is that model? The d e M as you might call it.

00:33:44
Speaker 2: The designated Events model? Right. We got word of it early on right at Bayhill Week. Then there was this seven hour players meeting for next year. What we understand is a they're no longer mandatory right for the top players. The big question during this bridge year is how big are the field's going to be who qualifies for them and maybe what events are they? Is it going to be rotating, but a big thing has been who's going to qualify, and what we got at Bayhill was of course this general framework right, and it seems to be final for twenty twenty four. It seems to be final. I suppose we're doing a lot of this. I don't want to. I think by the seat of our pants is a little reductive, but it's flexible. I would say it's open to discussion, but it seems to be the final arrangement for next year. It's the top fifty from the FedEx Cup in the preceding year, it's an in form kind of in season hot form exemption of the current top ten not otherwise eligible, and that season's FedEx Cup there's a top thirty o WGR carve out for someone who may be injured. What else is there help me with? There's the non designated, the non designated spots, so like if that's the cadence of the schedule, is supposed to be three non designated, then two designated if you play well, and those non designated events like a I don't know, a Chris Kirk or Eric Cole is the most recent example. People have been citing you play your way into the you know, immediate instant designated events that are coming down the pike. So and it's they're trying to fill between seventy to seventy eight guys and as you may have heard, they are not planning to have cuts for these events, the ones that aren't majors or players or FedEx Cup, which you know often didn't have a cut anyways. So yeah, no cuts, seventy to seventy eight guys with a handful of exemptions.

00:35:33
Speaker 1: Okay, and somehow or another, the points are going to work out.

00:35:37
Speaker 3: You know.

00:35:38
Speaker 1: The really important thing here is that the fields are primarily going to be filled with the previous years FedEx Cup standings, the top fifty. So fifty is the new magic number on the PGA too. Or if your top fifty, then you're in the next year's designated events, and that's going to be a big deal. And so, you know, a big thing that this model has to do is to make sure to reward the top players and get them in those big events where we want to see them, but also allow for new players to come into the top fifty and for players who are not performing well to be you know, kicked out of the top fifty on a year to year basis. This is what people have started to refer to as churn in this designated event model. Churn is the word of the week, really, you know, like everybody's talking about churn. But it's a really important concept here, right because we want new people to be able to enter the top fifty. And if new people enter the top fifty, then of course other players have to fall out, and so, you know, I think this is a big subject of debate. It was something that players were talking about a lot at the players last week. You were there on the ground talking to people. Tell me about some of the players that you talk to and what they were saying about the designated event model.

00:37:00
Speaker 2: It depends on who they were and where they stood in the in the FedEx Cup or the general kind of owgr standing, whether they were a top tier, elite, middle class. I talked to one elite elite player, like the most elite player, maybe a shadow commissioner type elite player who took offense or it didn't take offense, but it was bothered by the term elite that it connotes something of this wasn't earned right, This wasn't they didn't shoot the score the scores. It is elite, it does sort of it seems to have become a loaded term in political.

00:37:34
Speaker 1: Political Absolutely, Yeah, it means that you have a trust fund or something, or that you were given what you have.

00:37:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, your last name is right, the right last name, or you were born in the right circumstances, and so it does sort of disassociate these players from their scores and what they did on a golf course. So it depended on who you were talking to the notable thing. And we knew. So I got there on Monday and it's players only, no fan and we knew this meeting was coming on Tuesday morning, more or less at the krack of dawn seven thirty, which I wondered if like that was a strategic choice to maybe weed out some of the the only, the the most diehards. You know, if you get more guys, then you get some guys who were maybe on the fence or just not motivated to talk or all of a sudden whipped up being there. I don't it was probably just to get it out of the way before a full day of practice. But seven thirty you get there Monday and it's like, oh boy, how explosive is this going to be on Tuesday morning? And what we got out of it wasn't a lot. We got the James Han we heard, We knew he wasn't happy about it. He had articulated that's a strong word, probably a strong word for what he did, but he sort of typed some things and shouted some things and said some things that you know, portrayed a strong opposition. We heard Lanto Griffin wasn't particularly thrilled about the way things are going and didn't like that Rory was this and there was too much power being given to the top guys. That was kind of all we heard, right, We didn't hear that it was explosive in the way that people were expecting on Monday. And then slowly as the week went along, folks talked to more middle class players and again maybe that's not a fair term. Either is the same way Ali it is, but the non top fifty or the guys who might be a part of the churn zone or not even near the churn zone. And there started to become a little more dissatisfaction. I wouldn't say there's outright anger about it, but dissatisfaction in the process. I talked to Nick Hardy, I talked to Will Gordon, I talked to a few others off the record who just seemed a little bothered by the communication around this, that they weren't involved in creating this framework or thedm or the churn. And I think the bother was that it wasn't just a PGA Tour bureaucratic process, right, It wasn't just coming from Panavidra like there were players involved in this pretty heavily, just not that. So I think there was some irritation with the communication around this. And this probably goes back to Wilmington and certainly through kind of Q one this year and going back to Bayhill. Kevin Streilman had a quote to I believe it was Rex Hoggard Golf Channel about that who's in Streelman's someone who's been on these advisory councils and in the room and a long time tour memberies felt like a little hurt that they weren't involved. A bit more on the process. Now, one of the tours big weaknesses is this unwieldy group of players that all think they have an equal voice, and in theory they do, but in practice it's just not feasible, right, especially when you need to be nimble and adapt and change or die.

00:40:47
Speaker 1: The problem before was precisely that they were involved in the process, and so yeah, and obviously it doesn't feel good to have somebody hands something down to you like this and say this is how your job is going to be now. But that was exactly the point, right, was to have the top players get together and determine what the new structure of the PGA tour would be going forward so that they were more rewarded. If other guys were involved in that process, then the output would have looked very different.

00:41:18
Speaker 2: So yeah, yes, exactly. So I don't think it was this big explosion of this kind of class warfare that we expected or some expected, but there was hurt about the lack of communication. Will Gordon got to this sort of riding the fence with me pretty well, I thought, and he's like, look, I am so grateful to Rory, I am thankful to guys like Adam Scott for standing up because like the tour would be skewered. I think he meant that the tour would be gone if these top players didn't come in and you know, A bring loyalty to it and B bring ideas, new ideas to stop the flow of players to live last summer. So I think there's appreciation. Nick Hardy was the same way. He's like, I support all these changes, I'm behind all these changes. So it was like a little bit of a difference. James Han got way too much like profile and way too outsized a voice in all this, But there was like a sensible sort of voice in middle ground from some of these players who maybe weren't involved in the process. And Gordon I thought Hardy did that well. Streelman too, to a lesser extent. Ryan Armor, who was quoting a Dave Schadlowsky piece in Golf Digest.

00:42:27
Speaker 1: He called himself a mule. Yeah, I'm just a mule doing the pro ams and the charity stuff. That quote got picked out, you know, and I don't want to say that. You know, everything that Armor said was James Han like unreasonable, but he did he did, you know, sort of threw a bit of a pity party at one point in one of his quotes. But the guys that you talk to Will Gordon and Nick Hardy were extremely reasonable. And Nick Harty has been on the podcast before. He's one of our favorite guys on the PGA tour. He's a very, very very bright person and a reasonable person, has good self awareness and wouldn't say ridiculous things, and he didn't when he talked to you. We'll get to what he said in a second, but I want to just pick out something that Will Gordon said. I think the economics are rewarding the right people, and I think anyone who argues with that probably needs a reality check. That's what he said. But he also was adamant that the communication around this wasn't good, and I believe that because the communication to the public hasn't been good either from PGA to her leadership. It's been totally messy, disorganized, confusing, and so I completely believe that a lot of the rank and file players didn't hear much and were a little caught off.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: Guard, right right. I think it's like their entire future livelihood or their entire future profession is being decided more or less without them, I think was their general sense of it, and I'm now did it need to be? That's again getting back to what we were just talking about it. I don't think there was time nor room for a lot of feedback back and forth sort of working sessions A would be too counterproductive right in a time that something needed to be done, and I think we're probably gonna get that over time anyways, like this will be molded and shaped and changed, and maybe that feedback comes in and they realized they overstepped in one way or they could go stronger in another. But yes, there was I thought Gordon got to that real well, and he played well this week. You know, I wasn't totally expecting these guys to necessarily go into it, because Gordon Hardy are younger guys, right. I threw it out there more or less expected, and I expected some sort of deferential cliches without a lot of substance. But I felt obliged to at least ask him while I had him, And they really gave some real thought to it and real voice to how they were feeling, because you can get it from Han the Hans, and it's allegedly Matt Kocher was worked up in the meeting, like guys who've been established a non tour and all of a sudden, maybe they're having their whole the way it's been changed on them pretty significantly. But I was shocked, not shocked, but pleasantly surprised, appreciative that Hardy and Gordon went into it. And like you said, there are two guys that understand the survival was on the line here and it's probably for it to work for them to benefit, like Gordon did this week with a fairly nice payout. I think he may have trailed off on Sunday, but he was in good shape. They have to let seed some power and control to these and it's not every guy has an equal voice, but sprival depends on these stars really taking more ownership.

00:45:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Now let's get into a few of the things that Hardy said, because I think he was right on the money with a potential big issue with the designated event model, and he was essentially talking about churn right the word of the week, That's what he was talking about. He said. The new Struck sure motivates me because once you get in there, the truth and the fact is, I think it can be very difficult for you to get out, especially the way that the points are structured. I loved all the changes, especially after I got the rundown in the meeting, But once I saw the fed X Cup points distribution, I was like, Wow, you could never find yourself out of there, especially with a player my age. I know that if I can get myself to the level of that golf, I know that in my young career and with a lot of career ahead of me, I know that there's a lot of potential for me to stick around in there for a long time. The point is three hundred points for a fifth place finish in a no cut event versus a cut and one hundred and fifty player event getting a fifth place finish of one hundred points, that's a massive difference. I would say the differential is too drastic. So basically what he's saying is that once you get in the top fifty and your exempt into the next year's designated events, you're just going to rack up fed X Cup points to the point that you're probably going to be in the top fifty going into the next year, and that it's going to be pretty hard for players who are not in designated events to get up to that level. I think that's basically what he was saying there, right, And this is a pretty reasonable point. Now, I don't know exactly how the points are going to work out. The tour says that they modeled it and that the churn rate is going to be something like forty percent. But looking, you know, listening to Nick Hardy and just looking at this points distribution myself, I'm like, it's going to be hard for there to be forty percent churn when you're offering so many FedEx Cup points in designated events. The designated events are going to be very, very comfy for a lot of players to just rack up points, maybe not even playing as well as they would have to play in non designated events to get into the top fifty. Would you agree with that? I mean, what would you say about what Nick Hardy was saying? Did it resonate for you?

00:48:00
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, I think especially coming from someone where he is in his career understanding what he needs to do to make the most money or be the most successful, it really resonated. And this is one of the great kind of I don't know if it's unknowns, but it's a toss up right now, and that, like you talked about with the communication, there hasn't been a lot of transparency transparency around this model. And these models that the tour used to get this forty percent churing rate, and then what were the models used to figure out the FedEx cup point waiting right, So that was another thing that came out I think it was Rex Haggard as well. Golf Channel. The designated events are gonna have seven hundred FedEx cup points. The other ones will be the five hundred FedEx cup points. Some people reacted like, wow, that's not enough the draft that should be more drastic, because these designated events are going to be so substantially deeper and better and bigger, that should be just its own class of points. Joseph Lemania, I know, has argued for different kinds of points, like totally you know.

00:48:58
Speaker 1: Really what different systems?

00:49:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, points lists, I should say. So you had one opposite of Hardy that this should be more weighted, we should get more points in these top seventy events. But Hardy does have a good point and what I found so sensible about him. I may be wrong, they may be wrong, but we're here to find out. And they both use this sort of we're in a trial and error, and so there's this understanding they have objections, but there's also an understanding that like this isn't like martial law. It is a trial and air period and hopefully input will be taken, Hopefully mistakes will be recognized, corrections will be made. But it is a problem if you have guys coasting the non competitive six seventh, eighth place finishes and no cut events getting an outside number of points relative to grinding to a cut of one hundred and forty thirty man Field and a close second place finish, it does seem like an issue. But what we're doing in this trial and air period, we're we're pitting sort of hard pre skepticism and maybe our skepticism about how it could be a pretty close shop versus this sort of unknown and yet to be revealed model that suggested forty percent churn rate. And also what was the modeling done on the FedEx cup waiting? We don't know that. And Gordon got to that a little bit. He goes, you know, I think their model was biased to the fifty right, what about fifty one to one twenty five? Were they brought into like certain models of how they would gain access as opposed to just dropping And I guess they go hand in hand at certain points if eighteen of fifty drop out anyways, then you know that that's going to be you know, fifty one. That's taking into account fifty one to one twenty five. But he did have some distrust of the model or questions about whether it was too biased towards that top fifty.

00:50:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, which are very valid questions. But then the other side of it is that if the designated events don't offer enough FedEx cup points, then we're going to have a situation where top players are not properly incentivized to play in them. Because one of the new elements of the designated events model as compared to this year, is that they're not mandatory, right, top players are not required to play in them. They just have to be incentivized through bigger purses, prestige and fed X cup points to play in them. But if those events don't have high enough fed X cup points, then players may see like, well, if I play in this non designated event, then one, I'll get just as many points, two I'll be playing against presumably a field that does not have the top players in the world in high numbers in it, and three bringing in another consideration that I don't think people have talked about enough. Non designated events are going to have really good OWGR because they're full field events.

00:51:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, field SIZEWGR.

00:52:00
Speaker 1: Formula strongly prefers big fields. The designated events are going to have seventy to eighty player fields. I'll be curious to see even if the designated events have all of the top twenty players in the world, I'll be curious to see what the difference is in the OWGR offering for one hundred and forty four player fields at non designated events versus the seventy eight player field or whatever it is at the designated event. I feel like the OWGR distribution for that is going to be a little bit closer than people might think. And so players might kind of look at this and say, well, I'm going to go ahead and skip three or four designated events and kind of be able to determine my own schedule, play in this non designated event, get my OWGR, get my FedEx cup points, and that's fine with me. And then the whole purpose of this model is thrown out the window, because the whole purpose of it is we need the top players to play in designated events. So this is the type rope that they have to walk with the Fedesque Cup point offering in these events. They have to offer enough points so that top players are properly incentivized to play in them, but they can't offer so many points that it becomes impossible to break in to the designated events. I think that's going to be really, really difficult.

00:53:20
Speaker 2: Not to mention they also if some of those guys do decide to start start skipping, like how do you get the title sponsors to continue to fork over the money for these elevated purses that are twenty plus million dollars? And one thing that became pretty apparent during the Players week is like these top guys still want a fair amount of schedule autonomy right that this is the non mandatory thing. Like JT, for instance, this week playing vals Bar. He wants to play vals Bar. He likes vals Bar. He does not like Austin. He's not going to play Austin now. Austin's going away anyways, But you know what I mean, it could fit to a different place at a different player. He didn't hate Austin, he said, he's just never played well there that's going to happen. Genre said similar things like there are events that are non designated or not yet non designated, that I'm always going to want to play, and that I really like. Now you're telling him he has to play bay Hill. It doesn't have to, or he should play bay Hill. I don't know that they're always going to those non designated events are still going to be populated by guys who like to go to some of these venues like a JT and Ballast Bar. So that balance, like you talked about, of that factor the FedEx Cup, the OWGR points and keeping the sponsors happy. Title sponsors want to pay twenty million, twenty plus million dollars when uh, all of a sudden two or three, this happened to WGCs and Mexico at the end, like those guys, you'd have five, six, seven guys who are in the top fifteen to twenty were all of a sudden not going, including like Tiger when he was such a rainmaker. So that's a balance you got to walk between making them so so much better where they're worth your while and you know, keeping everyone happy.

00:54:57
Speaker 1: All Right, one more quick break and we'll come back to talk about a couple of storylines to track in the coming week. All Right, so we're gonna talk briefly here about Club TFE. This is the Frida Egg's membership. You can find out more information at the fridagg dot com slash membership, but it's basically a big content offering. We have the Club TFE blog, we have a weekly course profile, we have a monthly member only video, we have all sorts of fun member activities. Actually, this week we have the NC DOUBLEA tournament starting to heat up, and so we started a member only Frida Egg NC double A pool and we're giving away to the top finishers some pro shop credit. Basically, it's just a fun thing for the community to do. Last week we did a Players Championship pool. So we have these kinds of activities on a regular basis where we just get together with members and have a little bit of fun, and that's really what it's all about. Speaking of getting together with members, we had a virtual hangout last week on Friday of the Players Championship. This hangout featured Andy Meg, Cameron, Matt Joseph Lamania, Shane Bacon and it was a lot of fun. They just basically talked about what was going on at the Players and they fielded a bunch of member questions. So these are the kinds of things that we do. Aside from just sort of beaming new content out at you through the blog and through the course profiles, we're also engaging with members and creating a really fun little community. So the membership is one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and again you can find more information about the total offering at the Friday dot com slash membership. All right, Brendon, let's start with you. What is your storyline to track this coming week.

00:57:01
Speaker 2: I think we'll just keep it, you know, on the topic that we've been focused on so much here, and that's sort of the new PGA Tour, the new designated era, and keep it to pro golf. I think one thing I'm really focused on here is this when we start to get more of the middle class backlash, they're out from under the thumb of Panavidra. They're away from the big the moat, you know, they're out and back in the world and away from the home game of the PGA Tour where the tour could kind of really have some influence. And obviously all the top guys where there Rory is not at Valspar there's going to be media. There's gonna be local media, right Tampa Bay guys who I'm sure just want to pick a guy here or there. What's happening to our beloved event, what's happening to players of your caliber, your class. I'm wondering if we get a little bit more of the backlash coming and irritation and frustration and along with that, along with the player I think that's going to continue to come out by the way throughout the year at the especially at these non designated events where a lot of these guys can have an outsized voice. They don't get press conferences. I think that's like JT and speak ok Shade, like they're not gonna have Prescott, but it's these local media guys who will pick them off, whether it's Canada or Tampa or Detroit or wherever it is. So I think that's something to watch for. Do more complaints start to come out, because I think they do feel like it's still a work in product progress and this thing's going to be sharpened and changed. And then on the non player side, I'm really curious how this is gonna work with title sponsors. Valspar has seemed sated at certain times in the past. Good Cleveland company, by the ways, Sherwin Williams, I think this is apparent. I gotta shout that out. But Alan Shipnak had a Q and a or it sounds like a tournament director called him up and just really vented and really let it rip that we are totally in the dark. We've gotten almost no communication from the tour. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We have to communicate to our title sponsor who wants to get out or has worked thought about getting out, and we're getting no guidance and no support from the tour. It's one side of the argument. It felt pretty compelling. I don't know. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. But this is now the tour's time to get on their horse and do what they have to do as salesmen, as pr as relationship managers. The players, the top players came in and did what they had to do more or less rescued, rescued or ideated the tour survival. The tour now has to and it's not fun or easy, has to manage it and make it work, and a big part of that is going to be with the vals. Bar or RBC or whoever, or Rocket Mortgage, those types, And it was a little alarming to read that from a tournament director so bothered by the lack of communication, the lack of understanding, the lack of support both with their title sponsor and just from the tour. In that Alan Schipnock Q and A with the tournament director, I thought that was a little alarming. And are we going to start to get more of that testimony at a Valspar week And I'm curious to see what they have to say the director sponsorship whoever this week.

01:00:09
Speaker 1: Part of the whole rationale for the former PGA Tour model was that you could sell to every sponsor of every event on the PGA Tour that you are just as important as every other event. Now the PGA Tour has to admit that some events are less important, less star studded than others, and that's going to be the first time that they really have to communicate that clearly, and some are not happy about it already, you know. Last August, actually the Valspar tournament organizer Tracy west is her name called Bob Herrig of SI Golf and said, we are in a tough spot. No question. When they elevated the Genesis and the API earlier, we were already going to be in a tough spot. But now that they are being required to play in them, holy smokes, we're in a very difficult position now the mandatory element has gone away. But I think that sentiment that we are in a tough spot now that top players are going to be so strongly encouraged to play a certain set of designated events, We're just what are we going to get? You know, how are we going to sell this to our title sponsor? How are we going to continue existing as a successful tournament.

01:01:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think another thing that's probably happening you talked about the communication. We've always been told all these events are equal and nothing's lesser. I think another thing that's probably happening there is with the networks NBC, CBS. They've paid a lot of money for packages they thought were pretty defined, and I think NBC ended up with sort of the short end of less designated events. The new schedule. That interesting, and you're now telling people more or less broadcasting not to use a pun, that these events are lesser and they're not as good, And I think they view it as like we don't get that. In the NBA or the NFL or whatever other sports college basketball they might have rights deals with we don't tell them, like, look, Jaguars Titans is a bad game compared to Cowboys Eagles, but we kind of know it is, right, we just don't say it and define it. It's not as going to rate as well. So I think that's another thing that probably needs to be sorted out. And it's interesting, like we always holler and shout about well, they just need to adapt, like Chang, like your product sucks, fix it, man, and not to empathize with anybody here, not to empathize with some suit or some top player. But there's like complicated, there's a million moving parts all of a sudden with making a dramatic change like this, and we're sorting through that. And that's what I'm looking forward to this week is well we start to figure out what happens with these non designated events, Like I don't want to say the tour falls apart. It's a house of cards if these title sponsors or these events start to really go away, but they're necessary, they need them. They have to keep this train run in two Yeah, so it's interesting.

01:03:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, it will be all right. So my storyline is Live Tucson, we have a live event. I think I forgot until I was looking at what storylines I could talk about in this segment of the podcast. I was like, Oh, there's a live event apparently in Tucson this coming week, and that sort of gets it the aspect of this week's live event that I'm curious about, which is is this thing going to have juice? Because Live my Coba really didn't attract the attention and generate the excitement that I think Live Golf was looking for for its opening event. On the schedule. There were some questions around how many people watch the telecast. It seems pretty clear that not many people did. And I'll be curious to see now that Live has come to the United States for the first time this season. Right, they started their season in Mexico, which was an interesting choice, right, starting at a resort. Now Live is going to be in America. It's going to be in Tucson. So you know, I'm just going to be looking out for what the crowd is, like, is there going to be excitement around the event? Our people? Are more people going to watch the broadcast on the CW. That's going to be an ongoing story this year. But certainly, you know, it seems as though because Live has not been recruiting top players at the pace that it did last year, it's going to be really really challenged to get people to get excited about their events.

01:04:44
Speaker 2: I'd say, opposite making your American debut, Opposite the NCAA tournament first and second round weekend. Oh yeah, that's right, not like ideal, Especially Tucson, where Arizona is a whatever, they are a two seed. Oh my god, they're gonna be playing two of the days. I don't see how it resonates very much just because of that.

01:05:06
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of that, But that's so funny. It's like that, it's like the best weekend in sports basically.

01:05:12
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's that that. You know, there were a ton of rumors last week about guys like poking around about a pathway back to the tour and how that would even work. I wonder if we start to see that out loud or exhibited again, you know, kind of everybody has to smile and keep waving from the Potemkin village because that's part of their contract, right, So we'll see if that starts to whittle away at any at any point.

01:05:36
Speaker 1: All right, Brendan, thank you for coming on the podcast. Folks. If if you like this format, then let us know in a review. But we're just trying something new for our Tuesday show, So thanks for doing this experiment with me.

01:05:49
Speaker 2: Talk to you soon, Thanks, Errett.

01:06:01
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Podcast was produced and edited by Matt Ruschis. Thank you, Matt. If you've been enjoying the pod lately, leave us a rating and review in iTunes or wherever else you listen to your podcasts. Those ratings and reviews really help us find new listeners and keep expanding and improving what we're doing here, So thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again soon